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You have accessed part of a historical collection on defense.gov. Some of the information contained within may be outdated and links may not function. Please contact the DOD Webmaster with any questions.
Contracts For Oct. 27, 2015
Northrop Grumman, Falls Church, Virginia, has been awarded a contract for the Long Range Strike Bomber. For more information, please click here.
Strategic Initial Outfitting Transition, Anchorage, Alaska, has been awarded a $32,694,267 firm-fixed-price contract for medical equipment. Contractor will provide delivery and installation of 463 pieces of medical equipment. The equipment will be delivered by the contractor to 84 military treatment facilities worldwide and is expected to be complete by June 30, 2015. This award is the result of a sole-source acquisition. Fiscal 2013, 2014 and 2015 Air Force working capital funds in the amount of $32,694,267 are being obligated at the time of award. The 10th Contracting Squadron, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado, is the contracting activity (FA7000-16-C-0005).
Raytheon Co., Colorado Springs, Colorado, has been awarded a $24,627,922 fixed-price contract for operations and maintenance services. Contractor will provide non-personal services that will ensure the availability of the Cobra King and Gray Star's radar facility to collect on 100 percent of the tasked data collection opportunities that pass through its field of view. The necessary support shall be provided 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. Work will be performed at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, and is expected to be complete by Oct. 30, 2016. This award is the result of a sole-source acquisition. Fiscal 2016 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $14,551,633 are being obligated at the time of award. The 25th Air Force, Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, is the contracting activity (FA7022-16-D-0001).
URS Federal Services Inc., Germantown, Maryland, was awarded a $289,539,631 time and materials contract with options for aviation maintenance and depot support. Bids were solicited via the Internet with six received. Work will be performed at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, with an estimated completion date of Jan. 28, 2017. Fiscal 2016 operations and maintenance (Army) funds in the amount of $710,273 were obligated at the time of the award. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-16-C-0001).
Adaptive Methods Inc.,* Centreville, Virginia, is being awarded $8,448,000 for cost-plus-fixed-fee delivery order 0001 against a previously issued basic ordering agreement (N68335-15-G-0018) for work associated with Phase III Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) efforts. These efforts include SBIR topic N02-152, entitled “Environmental Mission Planner – The Total Solution.” Work will be performed in Centreville, Virginia, and is expected to be completed in October 2018. Fiscal 2015 and 2016 research, development, test and evaluation; and fiscal 2015 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $725,000 are being obligated on this award, $400,000 of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Lakehurst, New Jersey, is the contracting activity.
*Small business
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'Disgusted' onlookers watch as man defecates on steps next to River Derwent in Derby
The solicitor representing Daniel Robertson said he 'wanted to put the matter behind him'
The steps by the River Derwent where Daniel Robertson committed the act (Image: Martin Naylor)
“Disgusted” onlookers in Derby city centre flagged down a passing police car after witnessing a man squat down and defecate right next to the River Derwent.
A court heard how Daniel Robertson told police he was “getting rid of what he needed to” when they confronted him about his “abhorrent” act in the city’s River Gardens.
And his own lawyer even tongue-in-cheekily said his client “wanted to put the sorry matter behind him” after saying how the 38-year old was “embarrassed and ashamed” at what he did.
Allison Wright, prosecuting at Southern Derbyshire Magistrates’ Court, said Robertson was in Derby after travelling through to the city from Manchester on May 25.
She said: “It was around 1.45pm in the afternoon when a number of people walking over (the) bridge flagged down a patrol car.
Onlookers had a view from this bridge of the 'disgusting' act (Image: Martin Naylor)
“The defendant was squatting down and defecating on the steps right next to the bridge at the River Gardens and the people were saying things like: ‘That’s disgusting’, and: ‘You can’t do that there’.
“I am assured that the weather that day was nice and there were a lot of members of the public in the area at the time.”
Mrs Wright said officers walked down the steps to where Robertson was and arrested him.
She said: “In his interview, he told them he had been drinking all afternoon in the River Gardens and had fallen asleep in the sun.
Derby man punched security guard at four-star Grosvenor Hotel in London
“He said when he woke up he immediately felt the need to go to the toilet, telling officers: ‘I squatted down and got rid of what I needed to.
“He was asked what he thought the members of the public who had seen what he was doing would feel and he replied: ‘They would be disgusted by it, I would be disgusted by it’.”
Robertson, who the court was told has previous convictions for shoplifting, was charged with outraging public decency, which he pleaded guilty to.
Theo Addae, mitigating, said his client was from Plymouth and had left the city, first travelling to Manchester, and had stopped off in Derby on his way home.
He said: “He is deeply embarrassed, ashamed and apologetic for what he has done and wants to put the whole sorry matter behind him.
“He had been drinking for most of the day and had fallen asleep before waking up and feeling the need to go to the toilet.
“He is currently on benefits but has been accepted on to a performing arts course at Plymouth College of Further Education which he is due to start in September. He just wants to go home and get on with his life.”
Derbyshire baby killer Kathryn Smith 'should have conviction overturned', appeal hears
District Judge Andrew Meachin handed Robertson, of Ladysmith Road, Plymouth, a £120 fine and ordered him to pay £85 costs and a £30 victim surcharge.
He said: “What you did was abhorrent, members of the public were around and saw what you did. It was quite frankly disgusting.”
Robertson replied: “I know.”
Derby city centre
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S.L. County settles 2011 lawsuit over man's unlawful detainment for immigration status check
By Marjorie Cortez@DN_Marjorie Aug 25, 2014, 9:50pm MDT
Share All sharing options for: S.L. County settles 2011 lawsuit over man's unlawful detainment for immigration status check
Handout photo of Enrique Uroza. The Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office and attorneys for Uroza, detained 46 days after posting court-ordered bail, have reached a settlement in a 2011 lawsuit that alleged his unlawful detainment. Claims against the federal government are ongoing.
Handout photo,
SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake County has settled a lawsuit filed on behalf of a man held in the Salt Lake County Jail and by federal authorities for 46 days after he posted court-ordered bail.
The plaintiff, Enrique Uroza, was detained by the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office to check his immigration status, which the county officials believed was required under SB81, passed by the Utah Legislature in 2008.
Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder said in a news briefing Monday afternoon that he was pleased to work with the ACLU of Utah and private attorneys who represented Uroza in a "mutually agreeable settlement" of claims against the county. Claims against the federal government and federal agents are ongoing.
Under the settlement, Uroza will receive $75,000 for damages, attorneys’ fees and costs.
Salt Lake County has also agreed to permanently end its “SB81 procedure” under which it held detainees whom jail officials suspected of being undocumented immigrants for at least 48 hours.
"The county conceded that the jail’s SB81 procedure was unconstitutionally implemented as it applied to Mr. Uroza, which was an unintended consequence of the jail’s attempt to comply with the state Legislature’s SB81 bill enacted in 2008. The county suspended the policy in 2011," the ACLU of Utah said in a news release issued Monday.
The county further agreed to an ongoing dialogue with Uroza’s counsel about its current policies and procedures relating to jail detainees and immigration issues, according to the ACLU of Utah.
While many community members and law enforcement representatives lobbied against the passage of SB81, the bill passed both houses of the Utah Legislature by a wide margin.
SB81 stated that county sheriffs "shall make a reasonable effort to determine the citizenship status of a person charged with a felony or driving under the influence … when the person is confined to the county jail for a period of time."
After passage of the law, the sheriff's office consulted with the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office for guidance how to implement the policy.
"Part of the issue is our reading of the law. Our perception was SB81 was mandatory. Subsequent review of that statute suggests it's permissive. The language is essentially telling us 'we should,' not that 'we must,'" Winder said.
The current policy at the jail is all inmates are treated the same at booking, irrespective of immigration status, Winder said. However, if inmates tell jail officers they were born outside the United States, their files are placed in a bin apart from those of other inmates. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has the responsibility to review those records, Winder said.
Uroza, who at the time was a sophomore at Weber State University with no criminal history other than a minor traffic ticket, appeared in state court in June 2011 to face forgery and theft charges. His bail was set at $5,000, and a judge remanded him to the county jail for processing.
Uroza was booked into custody at 2:34 p.m. on June 13, and his bail bond was posted approximately 10 minutes later, according to the complaint. Despite the bail order, Winder and his officers refused to release Uroza, the lawsuit stated.
Uroza, in a statement released when the lawsuit was filed, said he took action "not just to vindicate my rights, but to protect the rights of everyone who has been or would otherwise be subjected to indefinite detention by the police."
John Mejia, legal director for the ACLU of Utah, expressed gratitude to the county and Winder "for their willingness to carefully look at their jail policies and to permanently end the SB81 procedure.”
“We think that this case highlights the dangers of the state Legislature’s attempting to delve into the complex area of immigration enforcement and the difficulties that laws like SB81 present to local law enforcement agencies," Mejia said.
When asked whether state Legislature should create immigration policy, Winder said he "didn't want to poke anybody in the eye.
"Sometimes there can be a tendency to say, 'Well, the effects of this, we'll live with' when we pass a particular law. While I understand that, it is not necessarily 'they' who will be living with the result. This, I think, is a classic situation of how unintended consequences affect us," Winder said.
In 2008, while the Utah Legislature was debating SB81, civil rights attorney Brian Barnard noted that implementation of the legislation could be problematic.
"On its face, the proposed legislation doesn't have civil rights violations," the late Barnard said at the time. "Those civil rights violations are going to come more when it's applied and is applied in a discriminatory way."
Winder said it is possible that under the county's original interpretation of SB81 that other people may have been held too long in the jail.
The jail conducted a comprehensive review of its bookings at the time, Winder said. The immediate change in policy likely resolved those issues.
"This particular factual situation was so unique because of the rescinding of the bail. There could have been individuals during that period of time found under similar circumstances. I don't think for the length of time, this one was probably a little unique there," Winder said.
Winder said spending $75,000 of taxpayer money to resolve the issue was not insignificant. He said he hopes state and local governments can work more closely in the future when state lawmakers craft legislation that has such broad impact.
"Somehow, the system's got to be improved to ensure these downstream effects don't occur," he said.
Winder said SB81 and the county's interpretation of the statute created "a bad situation, with hopefully a good result."
Email: marjorie@deseretnews.com
How long you can wear an N95 mask Can you keep using your N95 mask over and over again?
Will COVID-19 end soon? It will look different after omicron, Bill Gates says Bill Gates recently explained what the COVID-19 pandemic will look like after the omicron wave ends.
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$47M affordable housing development breaks ground in Coachella
Melissa Daniels
Palm Springs Desert Sun
Construction on a $47 million, 105-unit affordable housing development is kicking off in the city of Coachella this month, following years of city and state officials cobbling together grant funds to create a mixed-use, centrally located development.
It's the first project in the Coachella Valley to receive support from California's "cap-and-trade" program, or funds that commercial enterprises spend in order to offset greenhouse gas emissions. The funds are then disbursed by the state for affordable housing and aid to disadvantaged communities.
Coachella officials held a virtual press conference Monday to announce that they've broken ground on Pueblo Viejo Villas, located at the northeast intersection of Cesar Chavez and Sixth streets — a step toward realizing long-held plans to create housing as part of downtown planning efforts.
Around $14 million in cap-and-trade funds were secured last summer, capping off a five-year effort to draw from the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program to support development in Coachella.
"This project, for us, represents, the fact that residents that are from lower socioeconomic means will get to enjoy that lifestyle, get to enjoy a higher quality of life," said Mayor Steve Hernandez. "At the same time, this project represents a large investment and continued investment in our downtown."
Pueblo Viejo Villas will include 50 one-bedroom apartments and 55 two- and three-bedroom apartments, plus a street-facing commercial component for retail or office space. A newly constructed bus hub will also be part of the development, slated to be finished in mid-2022, according to a .
However, Hernandez said the fact that Pueblo Viejo is the first project in the valley to get cap-and-trade funding shows more work is needed to see those funds used locally.
"I think it's evidence we need to do more to ensure that communities like Coachella have access to these funds," Hernandez said.
Though many California officials see the need for affordable housing in their communities, funding for the Pueblo Viejo Villas shows how many agencies and private sector companies can get involved to make it work. Craig Shields, chief of climate investment at the California Department of Housing and Community Development, praised local officials for finding a way to fund the project.
“Like many communities trying to bring affordable, vibrant neighborhoods and reduced environmental impact, you’ve managed to arrange a dizzying number of puzzle pieces to make it work,” he said.
Funding for the project includes:
More than $30 million in construction and permanent loans from Citi Community Capital, about $26 million of which will be paid off at the end of construction;
$9.2 million in funding from the city of Coachella;
$17 million in low-income housing tax credit equity provided by WNC, Inc.;
$8.4 million from the state's Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) Program;
$6.5 million from AHSC to the city of Coachella, SunLine Transit Agency and CalTrains for transit, pedestrian and bicycle improvements;
$1 million in HOME funds and housing vouchers from Riverside County from the federal HOME Investment Partnerships Program;
$1.1 million in Infill Infrastructure Grant from the state Department of Housing and Community Development that goes toward trees and other area improvements;
$1 million in Community Resource Development funds from the California Department of Development Services and the Inland Regional Center.
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Affordable and sustainable
The project's development and future management will be handled by Chelsea Investment Corp., an affordable housing developer that's created more than 11,000 homes. Previously, it constructed farmworker housing at Cesar Chavez Villas.
ConAm will be the property manager. Pacific Southwest Community Development Corp., a nonprofit out of San Diego, will coordinate onsite services.
One-bedroom apartments at Pueblo Viejo Villas will rent for $420 to $700 each. Rent for the two- to three-bedroom apartments will range from $440 to $980.
Residents of Pueblo Viejo Villas can quality if they earn between 30% and 60% of the area median income, which is currently $64,500 annually for a four-person household. That means a family of four earning between $19,350 and about $38,700 could qualify as prospective tenants.
Additionally, 10 units will be set aside for developmentally delayed individuals.
A phone line has been set up for prospective tenants to call about future leasing opportunities at (760) 290-7115.
The site development also encompasses a new bus hub directly adjacent to the housing so residents can have reliable transportation, with four new busses coming to SunLine Transit Agency to increase frequency along their routes.
Additionally, there will be at least 50 spots onsite for bicycle parking, native and drought-tolerant plants, and trees for shading. Solar panels will be built to provide shade to parking spaces.
More:Four-story apartment-retail building planned for downtown Indio
More:Thermal Beach Club approved with 'unprecedented' promises. Some residents say deal 'neglects' community
The project is the first in Coachella to be designated a Net Zero Energy Project, which means that it produces as much energy as it uses on an annual basis.
Louise Bedsworth of the California strategic growth council said it’s important to ensure new projects are built with “climate resiliency” in mind, such as having ways to protect residents from extreme heat with proper shade and ways to decrease pollution.
“This project really exemplifies what we’re trying to accomplish,” she said.
Melissa Daniels covers economic development, hospitality and local business in the Coachella Valley. She can be reached at (760)-567-8458, melissa.daniels@desertsun.com, or on Twitter @melissamdaniels.
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30 years later: lessons learned from the Berlin Wall
By Elspeth Jones
Thirty years ago marked an abrupt end to one of the most powerful symbols of division and inequality in the twentieth-century zeitgeist: the Berlin Wall. The intervening years have seen the field of internationalisation rise in prominence, yet at the same time many of the nationalist and anti-intellectual tendencies that gave birth to the Wall in the first place are re-emergent in the world. What have we learned since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and what do those lessons teach us about the road ahead?
Not Athens nor Rome, Delhi, Kyoto or Buenos Aires. Berlin is the city in which I always feel the greatest sense of history, perhaps because it interlinks so meaningfully with my own story as an internationalist. It was the first place I lived away from home, and at a pivotal moment in my life, as an 18-year-old taking a gap year before university. This was 1975, the year after the Bundesrepublik established its Ständige Vertretung (permanent representation) in East Berlin and exactly the halfway point in the existence of the Wall, although of course we didn’t know it at the time. Practising my German while working as au pair for a diplomatic family in East Berlin sounded very glamorous to me, although it was a little worrying for my parents.
Having diplomatic status was both a blessing and a curse. I and others in the Western diplomatic community could travel freely across the divide created by the Wall, but it was difficult to hold conversations with East Germans or really get to know them, as we were constantly under observation and there were microphones in the house walls. Talking about the West could have resulted in trouble for the Western diplomats, but for East Berliners the consequences would have been much worse. Any sense of growing friendships might have been perceived by our ‘minders’ as a precursor to smuggling materials, or even people, across the territorial boundary. As someone who thrives on engaging with others, this was a frustrating side of my life there.
History repeats
I saw first-hand how the Wall divided this wonderful city and how propaganda, combined with travel restrictions, affected perceptions of life ‘on the other side’ – on both sides of the Wall. Being fed a diet of untruths will eventually result in assumptions being made which have no basis in reality, unless experience tells you otherwise. Unsurprisingly, this causes me to view present-day global issues from a certain vantage point. Lack of respect for experts, facts and the truth; ideological dogma as opposed to critical enquiry; cries of ‘fake news’ – all of these can easily arise through lack of knowledge or understanding and can have devastating and corrosive effects.
It is often said that we should learn from history, but in most cases we don’t. Many countries around the world are currently affected by rising populism and nationalism, including Germany itself. In the UK, it is frightening to see striking parallels in some of the rhetoric used by ardent Brexiteers, with language which helped propel Europe into WWII. Around the world we see hate speech and intolerance of ‘otherness’ being whipped up for political ends, and of course in the USA a new wall is being built.
The role of internationalisation
But what does this mean for us in international education? First of all, it means looking at ourselves, our own openness and willingness to engage. We may be good at setting up partnerships with universities in other countries, but how willing are we to learn from different academic traditions, alternative perspectives on education itself, ways of teaching, expectations of students and alternative research paradigms?
We need to consider carefully the role of mobility in the way we think about internationalisation
Internationalisation has for so long been focused around Anglo-Western conceptualisations that, in spite of calls for decolonisation of the curriculum, alternative forms of knowledge creation, or valuing indigenous and local perspectives, we are still stuck in our old ways. There may be more South-South cooperation but it is often perceived by people in those countries as second-best to working with institutions in the Global North. In a self-perpetuating cycle, Western practice largely dominates our discourse and influential research is published in English. A recent blog by Hans de Wit reminds us that, even in making choices about which conferences to attend, we may be building our own ‘walls’ and failing to understand and appreciate the importance of work being done in other parts of the world.
Second, we need to consider carefully the role of mobility in the way we think about internationalisation. It may be true that ‘travel broadens the mind’ and there is certainly plenty of evidence for this. But we have to recognise that a very limited number of students and university staff will have the opportunity to take part, generally those with the financial means and sufficient ‘mobility capital’ to do so. In the face of this reality, we need to take more seriously the opportunities which may well be on our own doorsteps to develop globally-aware and interculturally-minded students. Right in our very own communities, the results of global migration patterns and the presence of increasingly diverse local populations may offer challenging intercultural spaces for collaborative work and constructive engagement with otherness. We need to become much more intentional about incorporating internationalisation, or ‘interculturalisation’, at home into curricula and practice across our institutions. Information and inspiration are available for academic staff as well as administrators through the EAIE’s Internationalisation at Home Expert Community, and interest in this aspect of the EAIE’s work is growing annually.
The chance to influence societal views through internationalisation must not be forgotten
Third, the chance to influence societal views through internationalisation must not be forgotten. Yes, we can help our students develop open-mindedness, but institutions also have a local and regional role. How can international and intercultural perspectives make a contribution to promoting tolerance and respect or reducing hatred and division in our societies? Some of us have been working on this theme, which will be explored further in in a Winter 2019 EAIE Forum article, and at a conference in Prague next year.
Every five years, Berlin celebrates the fall of the Wall, but this week’s 30th anniversary marks a real milestone: the Wall has been down for longer than the 28 years in which it divided the city. Those of us interested in the internationalisation of higher education can help to ensure that we learn the lessons of Berlin, valuing our freedom of movement and also becoming more purposeful in developing in our students the kind of thinking which will help prevent such ideological and societal divisions in future. We all have a role to play in this endeavour.
Want to stay abreast of news like this and other important developments in the field? In addition to highlights in the monthly newsletter, EAIE members enjoy full access to publications, research and more in our resource library.
Elspeth Jones
Leeds Beckett University, United KingdomElspeth Jones, Emerita Professor of the Internationalisation of Higher Education at Leeds Beckett University, UK, and Honorary Visiting Fellow, Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation (CHEI), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan.
Myths and realities about global citizenship
EAIE Forum
A border too far
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Copyright © 2022 By Edge Foundation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
https://www.edge.org/conversation/david_christian-we-need-a-modern-origin-story-a-big-history
Printed On Mon January 17th 2022
ANNUAL QUESTION
We Need A Modern Origin Story: A Big History
Conversation : CULTURE
A Conversation With David Christian [5.21.15]
In modern science, and I include the humanities here, science in a German sense of science—rigorous scholarship across all domains—in modern science we've gotten used to the idea that science doesn't offer meaning in the way that institutional religions did in the past. I'm increasingly thinking that this idea that modernity puts us in a world without meaning—philosophers have banged on about this for a century-and-a-half—may be completely wrong. We may be living in an intellectual building site, where a new story is being constructed. It's vastly more powerful than the previous stories because it's the first one that is global. It's not anchored in a particular culture or a particular society. This is an origin story that works for humans in Beijing as well as in Buenos Aires.
It's a global origin story, and it sums over vastly more information than any early origin story. This is very, very powerful stuff. It's full of meaning. We're now at the point where, across so many domains, the amount of information, of good, rigorous ideas, is so rich that we can tease out that story.
DAVID CHRISTIAN is Professor of History, Macquarie University, Sydney; Author, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. David Christian's Edge Bio Page
I'm a Russian historian, and I love teaching Russian history. I taught it during the Cold War when it seemed exceptionally significant. Teaching it in Australia, where I was, was a bit like talking about the dark side. I felt my students needed to know about that world.
I'm not Russian, but I was teaching Russian history and eventually I realized I was giving the subliminal message that humans are divided, at a fundamental level, into competing tribes. Having lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, I remember it vividly. I was a schoolboy in England where this tribalism threatened to blow us all up. That was a very vivid experience for me. I thought, for historians to keep teaching this subliminal message—that we're divided by tribes—is not a good thing.
Years later I went back to H. G. Wells' Outline of History. Right at the beginning—he wrote it at the end of World War I—he says exactly the same thing, that we need a history of humanity, because as long as we teach history as a story of competing tribes, wars are going to repeat themselves and all the horrors of World War I are going to repeat themselves. I'd stumbled on the same sort of idea: We need a history of humanity. In Australia there was no world history at that time, so there were no models that I was aware of. I had to think it through myself.
I'd always read science because I'd always been a science nerd. I loved writing by good scientists for intelligent readers. I thought, we need a history of humanity. What would it look like? I realized immediately that you have to take the Paleolithic era seriously. Chronologically, most of human history was spent in the Stone Age. In Australia the Stone Age survived until very recently. Then I started thinking you had to talk about human evolution. You have to go beyond the borders of the history discipline and talk about how humans evolved. Then I thought, yikes, now I'm in biology. To do that seriously I have to talk about how you get from bacteria to multi-celled organisms. In other words, I have to have some grip on the whole history of life on earth. To do that seriously I have to talk about the origins of life, which means talking about how the planet was formed and getting into geology. Then, I thought, to do that seriously I have to look at astronomy. This started looking terrifying until I realized there's a starting point, with the Big Bang.
In the present state of science this is a story that has a beginning, and of course, cosmologists are trying to look beyond that beginning. As I understand it, at the moment there's no hard data that takes you beyond the big bang. So here's a starting point: Could you teach a history course that began with the origins of the universe? That would be the way to give a sense of humanity as a single species facing shared problems in the modern world. That's how I began teaching Big History in 1989 at Macquarie University in Sydney, and it was a lot of fun. It was such fun.
I invited colleagues from all different departments, but none of us had a clue how to put the bits and pieces together. An astronomer would talk brilliantly about the Big Bang, someone else would talk about the origins of stars, the creation of the earth, and so on. But because of the culture of specialization, each lecturer brought their own jargon, their own suite of favorite problems, their own techniques, and so on. For students this was really tough.
Over the years I started giving more and more of the lectures myself as I slowly got on top of the agenda. Gradually, a larger story began coming into focus. I'm not the only person to have done this; Eric Chaisson in Boston had, Isaac Asimov had been doing similar things. A clear story came into focus and I realized this project was not as crazy as some people thought. It was very do-able. Then I eventually realized that what we were really teaching was a modern origin story. Of course, we were also doing what C. P. Snow had talked about. Very early on I realized I would have to help my students across the divide between the two cultures—from the sciences to the humanities. What happens at that borderline?
For several years I gave lectures on the philosophy of science, trying to help students get a sense of why the claims of science are so powerful today, why they need to be taken seriously, but also why they're not absolute. Most students have a simple epistemology with two default positions: Either science is right, and therefore everything before science is wrong, or they're all stories. I needed to maneuver my students into a more complex and unstable central position where science is powerful but not absolute. The origin stories of the past were not completely wrong. They were probably the best shot given the knowledge available at that time. I include things like indigenous dreamtime stories in Australia; they were the cutting edge science of their time, but they're not the cutting edge science of now. And if you live now, you need to take what science says very seriously. Maneuvering students into that position was important.
I realized a lot of things. One was that students loved this. Even though in the early years we didn't know what we were doing, and they knew we didn't know what we were doing, they loved it because of the questions we asked. A bright young person goes to school and they're full of questions, and their questions are about the meaning of life: What is this cosmos I'm part of? What does it mean to be human? They go to school and the first great disillusionment, which we've all suffered but we've buried it deep in our subconscious, is that the teachers more or less say to you, "Shut up about the meaning of life. Get on with your French verbs, or your American History, or your Russian history," whatever it is.
What we learn is that school is not about meaning; it's about a whole series of technicalities or fragmentary bits of meaning. At no point does someone try to help you put them all together. Then you go to university and you think, at university at least there will be philosophers. Same thing happens. We all get used to this. We all get locked into this culture of specialization, which is so deeply embedded in education and research. People's egos are tied up with it. You define yourself as a specialist in this area or another. Students loved this course because of the questions we were asking. And the questions we were asking were those questions: What is your place in the cosmos? What is the cosmos of which you are a part? Are you a large part of it? Are you central? Are you marginal? Is there anything distinctive about humans?
Gradually, over the years I've come to believe that modern science contains rich answers to a lot of those questions. We can say to students, "These are great questions. We won't be able to give you perfect answers or complete answers, but we can take you a long way. Modern science can take you a long, long way as you pursue those questions." That's what we try to do in the Big History courses.
One of the things we asked ourselves, as we were trying to put together this story and trying to put together a coherent story that linked what we think of as the natural sciences and the humanities, was what sort of story would emerge at the end of this? In the past, say in the Christian tradition, or in fact, in all cultural traditions, you have unifying stories. We don't seem to have one in the modern world. I'm talking about the natural sciences here. Many scientists are so worried that a concern for meaning, or story, or significance, or purpose will somehow warp the mapping process that scientists are engaged in. At the methodological level, that's true. You don't let your preconceptions warp what you're doing. But at an ontological level, I don't think that is true.
It's a global origin story, and it sums over vastly more information than any early origin story. This is very, very powerful stuff. It's full of meaning. We're now at the point where, across so many domains, the amount of information, of good, rigorous ideas, is so rich that we can tease out that story. E.O. Wilson has been arguing for this for a long time. In Consilience he argued for this. It's the same project.
It turns out, as we tell it at least, there is a coherent story. There may be various ways of doing it, but the way we do it is very much a story about increasing complexity, and it's a story that's very relevant for humans. The early universe, say, half a million years after the Big Bang, was very simple. You have clouds of hydrogen and helium, you don't have any other elements—smatterings of lithium and beryllium. And they're very homogenous, roughly the same density, roughly the same temperature everywhere. Gradually, over 13.8 billion years more complex things appear, but they only appear where the Goldilocks Conditions are just right. That's the story we tell.
We tell it—this is just a convenience—across eight thresholds of increasing complexity. The first is the Big Bang itself, the creation of the universe. The second is the creation of stars. Once you have stars, already the universe has much more diversity. Stars have structure; galaxies have structure. You now have rich gradients of energy, of density, of gravity, so you've got flows of energy that can now build more complex things.
Dying stars give you the next threshold, which is creating a universe with all of the elements of the periodic table, so it's now chemically richer. You can now make new materials. You can make the materials of planets, moons, and asteroids. On some planets, particularly rocky planets, you get an astonishing chemical diversity. The reason is because most of the hydrogen and helium from the inner solar system was driven away by the solar wind. In the inner planets you're left with an environment that's remarkably chemically rich, and that's the environment that eventually gave birth to life on this planet. The odds are increasing that the universe is crawling with life.
Life is a fifth threshold; planets are a fourth threshold. One of the wonderful things about this story is that, as you widen the lens, I'm increasingly convinced that all these very big questions that we're asking that seem impossible when seen from within the disciplinary silos begin to look manageable from the large scale. Let me give two examples. One is life itself.
I have a feeling that within this story it's possible to offer a fairly simple but powerful definition of what makes life a different level of complexity from the complexity of, say, simple chemical molecules or stars, or galaxies. With life, you get complex entities appearing in extremely unstable environments. Stars create their own environments so that they can work mechanically. If you have complex things in very unstable environments, they need to be able to manage energy flows to maintain their complexity. If the environments are constantly changing, they need some mechanism for detecting changes. That is the point at which information enters the story.
What were just variations in the universe suddenly become information, because something is responding in a complex way to those variations. Something like choice enters the story because no longer do living organisms make choices mechanically; they make choices in a more complex way. You can't always guarantee that they're going to make the same choice. That's where natural selection kicks in. You have millions of organisms making different choices, and natural selection allows the right choices to get preserved within the lineage. Making the right choices matters.
That means, in a sense, that purpose has entered the story at this stage. You could perhaps define life within the story as complex entities that appear in extremely unstable environments. This is complex complexity! To survive in those environments, you need capabilities that stars don't need. You need to be able to detect information. You need some mechanism for making what we can call choice. That is why living organisms are so complex and why they give the appearance of purpose.
If you move on to human beings (our fifth threshold of increasing complexity) you can ask the question, which students are dying to ask: What makes humans different? It's a question that the humanities have struggled with for centuries. Again, I have the hunch that within this very broad story, there's a fairly clear answer to that. If all living organisms use information about their environments to control and manage the energy flows they need to survive—biologists call it metabolism—or to constantly adjust—homeostasis—then we know that most living organisms have a limited repertoire. When a new species appears, its numbers will increase until it's using the energy that its particular metabolic repertoire allows it to fill.
Yet look at graphs of human population growth and something utterly different is going on. Here, you have a species that appears in probably the savanna lands of East Africa, but it doesn't stay there. During the Paleolithic—over perhaps 200,000 years—you can watch the species, certainly in the last 60,000 years, slowly spreading into new niches; coastal niches in South Africa. Blombos Cave is a wonderful site that illustrates that. Then eventually desert lands, forest lands, eventually into ice age Siberia, across to Australia. By 10,000 years ago our species had spread around the world.
This is utterly new behavior. This is a species that is acquiring more, and more, and more information. That is the key to what makes us different. You can ask what it is that allows us not to be locked within a limited, metabolic repertoire, but to keep expanding that repertoire. There may be a very simple answer. One should expect a simple answer because, on Paleontological time scales, this happens in an eye blink. It happens so fast that arguments that say, well, humans are different because of this, and this, and this, and this, and this, they don't work. There's got to be one thing that, like a key, unlocks a door. I suspect it's linguistic.
Chimps, we know have language. We know they can communicate ideas. We know that chimp mothers can teach their young to use sticks to extract termites from mounds. We also know that information does not seem to accumulate generation by generation in other species. If it did, we would see evidence of it. We would see a species that was gradually widening its niche. We don't see that. Humans have crossed a linguistic threshold. It's as if suddenly human language is more efficient. It's crossed a threshold beyond which information accumulates faster than it's lost. That means something profound. It means we're the first species in 4 billion years in which information accumulates across generations, through the cultural mechanism, not through the genetic mechanism. The cultural mechanism, of course, is orders of magnitude faster than the genetic mechanism.
Here, you have a species where information can accumulate across generations. That's it. That is the foundation for explaining everything that makes us different. If you add in that more information for a living organism gives you more control over resources and energy flows, then what you're doing is watching a species whose control over the energy flowing through the biosphere increases, and increases at an exponential rate. As information accumulates, some of that information speeds up the process of the accumulation of information. Printing is an obvious example, or the Internet. And basically that's it.
If such species exist on other planets, you can guarantee one thing: Hang around for a few hundred thousand years, and there will be something like an Anthropocene. This species will dominate flows of energy on its planet. That's where we are right now. We're managing these colossal flows of energy; we're benefitting from them; they make us staggeringly wealthy; they give us a buffer against crude needs that is something utterly new, but they are on such a scale that they're beginning to disrupt old biospheric cycles, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle; they're disrupting biodiversity. That's the challenge for the future. Can we maintain the good things, the things that make a good life for us as a result of our increasing control of energy, without undermining the Goldilocks Conditions that allow us humans to build this extraordinarily complex civilization?
I don't want to over claim; I'm a historian, I'm not a scientist. I'm not mathematically literate in the way that I ought to be if I was a scientist. The hunch I'm making is that just widening the lens like this has the capacity not to dilute your ideas, but to bring some of them into sharper focus.
About a year ago, I saw a fabulous production of Waiting for Godot in Sydney. I first encountered Godot at school and it didn't make any sense to me at all. This production finally made lots of sense to me. I realized what people more sensitive to drama than I realized years ago, that it's talking about a world without meaning, that they're waiting for meaning. That's one of the meanings of Godot. And of course, Godot never turns up.
The poignant thing that was brought out in this production was that, in a cold, bleak world of disconnection, of despair, of no meaning, no purpose, there's only one thing left, which is a desperate friendship between people who are quite different. That's all you're left with. And that image of modernity has dominated thinking for a century-and-a-half. It's connected in some way with specialization, which was the strategy of scholars in many disciplines for dealing with the vast tsunami of information that began to flow over us from the late 19th century.
Break it up. There's too much information. We can't deal with it all. Break it up. Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach captures beautifully the terrible sense of loss of meaning that accompanied specialization:
“The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.”
I increasingly think that this idea is wrong, that within modern science there is a story that's even bigger than those of the institutionalized religions. It's not deistic. It's about a universe without teleology, without a conscious creator. But, as Dan Dennett explains beautifully in his book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea.,it's a universe which can blindly create interesting and complex things. That's the story.
Dan Dennett describes this beautifully, but you can find similar ideas if you look in the early writings of Buddhism or in Greek philosophy—the idea of a universe that's not shaped and created by gods, but in which things appear. You don't need a driver. You don't need a creator. Teasing out this story, this rich story, is one of the things we're trying to do in Big History.
I'm increasingly convinced that as we do this many problems that once seemed intractable will begin to seem more manageable if you approach them from across multiple disciplines. That, I'd like to think, includes all the challenges that we'll face in the next fifty or 100 years. Challenges of climate change, declining biodiversity, the fact that there is a mass extinction going on at the moment and it's caused by the fact that we humans are hogging so many of the resources of the biosphere that other species are impoverished. We've impoverished them, and we're driving many of them to extinction.
Those challenges, too, I hope will become clearer if we can help more students and researchers to step back from the specializations a bit. I think of this sometimes as the view from the mountain top. If education and research are about learning about particular landscapes here and there—the landscape of genes, of genetics, the landscapes of French literature—then sometime you need to stand back and look at the whole thing from the mountain top where you see how they're all linked together.
One of the reasons why this approach of Big History, this attempt to put everything together, which E. O. Wilson called "Consilience," is so important is partly because specialization, for all its achievements in the last century-and-a-half—and they've been staggering—is part of the reason why so many people struggle to take science seriously, to understand science. One of the things that Big History can do is help us see that there is a coherent story behind modern science. I use the phase "modern science" in this broad sense: Rigorous contemporary scholarship right across the board. From my own students, and from the students who are learning Big History through the Big History Project in schools—there are now several hundred schools teaching Big History through the Big History Project and using the website materials available—there are many students who are worried about science. They're scared of science. They don't want to grapple with it. But once they see that there is, within our modern understanding of the universe, and the earth, and the planet, and biology, that there is a coherent story that's full of meaning, that will lead them into science.
This sense that scientists are just mapping the universe, they're not in the business of meaning, has been rather damaging. Yes, as a methodological principle, you're mapping. You're describing the world. You don't let your own biases, your own opinions, your own beliefs get in the way of what you see. That's absolutely true as a methodological principle. But if you then impose that on science as a whole, you create an image in the minds of many non-scientists, of science as a domain where you learn lots of powerful and skillful tricks, many of which are quite difficult to learn. But no meaning!
If we tease out what I call ‘the story’, and I'm aware that many scientists might be slightly worried by talking about story, or origin story, but if we tease out the story that this is a meaningful account of our place in the universe and of the nature of the universe, you'll find that will undercut a lot of contemporary resistance to science. It may stop words like "scientism" being used as an accusation. As far as I can see, the word "scientism" is just science with a pejorative loading. It's the word you use if somehow you don't like, you resist science, you fear science, but you’re not sure why.
If I'm right that there is a rich story here within science, then the idea that science, too, is telling a story, a story that has a lot to tell us about our place in space and time, should not be worrying. In this sense, science is like all philosophical traditions. It's a mapping process. It tells you where you are in space and time, and that mapping process, which is present in all origin stories is powerful and meaningful because it tells you who you are, and where you are. By doing that, it tells you what possibilities are open to us. There is an educational challenge for science to present itself as meaningful, to present itself as being as meaningful as any other great philosophical tradition, and, in addition, much more powerful because it sums over so much more information. And it's global.
I taught in San Diego for many years, and I taught Big History. I had a lot of students who were Creationists. They had the courage to say to me that they struggled with all of this. One of the things I found was that many of them are struggling in a way that is admirable. They're looking for big story. They don't find it in science because we don't teach it that way. Eventually they go to their churches because they do find a big story there. Quite a few, I realized, are a bit uneasy about this, because they realize there's a mismatch between the big story which they get from their churches, and the science that created the iPhone that they carry in their pockets. They're a bit uncomfortable about this. The reason they will go to that story, despite the discomfort, is precisely because science does not present itself as containing an alternative story. That's why I'd like to think that Big History can lead many students to see science as not merely powerful knowledge, but as meaningful knowledge, as knowledge that tells you about who you are and what you are.
I've floated the idea that what I call collective learning may be what makes us different: in other words, the capacity of humans to share information with such precision and in such volume that information at the cultural level increases from generation to generation. That's a fundamental threshold; it's what defines us. It explains why communities are so various, because each community accumulates information in slightly different ways. It explains why when communities meet the synergies are so powerful. It's the source of technology. It's the source of science. It's the source of civilization. It's what makes everything that’s human.
If that's right, to explain what makes us different, we need to distinguish between two problems. One is how our ancestors crossed that linguistic threshold. Explaining that is a fiendishly complex, technical problem that involves a vast range of evidence, some of it neurological, some of it archaeological, some of it anthropological. The second problem is much more manageable: Defining the threshold itself, what it changed. That we can do, and we can do quite simply. We could also look for the evidence that the threshold has been crossed. In a sense, I would like to put aside the problem of how and why this changed. It's got to be something simple, because on paleontological time scales the change is so quick. Chomsky's idea of a slight neurological change that gave us grammar may be on the right track. Whether it's literally true or not, we don't know.
If we put aside the problem of how we got human language, as opposed to chimp language, what we're left with is defining the nature of the threshold. It's quite subtle, but it's not hard. If you think of languages as communicating with a certain level of efficiency, then information theory comes into this. There's rich material in the information theory, and I wouldn't pretend to understand it in detail. The point is, you can measure the efficiency of information systems. So much information is conveyed with a certain degree of precision or not.
You can imagine a scale where, at lower levels, information is flowing. It's like a game of telephone. If I say to someone, "One, six, Z, capital Y, W. Pass it on," that information is going to die quite soon. If I say, "I'm in New York," and pass it on, that information will carry. It's as if chimps live in a world where information might be able to survive one or two exchanges, but it can't get much further. We've crossed a threshold which may be neurologically quite small, beyond which we have what Terrence Deacon has called "symbolic language," a language where words are incredibly compressed, packets containing a lot of information.
I can say four syllables "Pink Elephant," and suddenly an image will pop into someone's brain of something that's never existed and never has. Symbolic language allows us to talk about things that are not here. It vastly increases the range of what we can communicate. Once you cross that, then you're in new territory. You may be in such new territory that you will block off other species that are close to crossing that threshold, which might have been the fate of some other hominin species in the last 500,000 years.
In summary, we can define the general nature of the threshold that makes humans different. We can say what it is that makes us different: It's a language so efficient that information accumulates across generations, cultural information as opposed to genetic information. We don't yet know exactly how that happened. But it may be that we can go a long way, leaving that as a black box which we hope the linguists or the neuroscientists may solve in the next decade or two, and go on to the next project, which is looking for evidence that our species has crossed that line.
The evidence has to appear somewhere between 250- and 50,000 years ago. We should look for evidence of a species whose niche is expanding. By 50,000 years ago that evidence is getting pretty powerful in Africa. Maybe by 100,000, maybe even 200,000 years ago. You should look for evidence of symbolic activity. Whenever you find hominins nearby ochre rocks that seem to have been scraped or used or marked, there's a hint there that you may have a species that is thinking symbolically because it probably painted itself. This whole problem about the origins of language, we need to unpack a bit, distinguishing between the hard problem of how we got a more efficient language, and study of the consequences of getting a more efficient language, which we can talk about.
What are the institutional structures within which Big History exists? It's a very new project. The project is trying to break through some of the barriers created by what I think of as a culture of specialization, both in research and in education. I began teaching it at university. For years I just thought, I'm teaching a boutique university course. But a few other universities got interested in it and picked it up. It's now being taught in different forms in a number of universities. The University of Amsterdam picked it up, and they've taught Big History courses for years, modeled originally on the course I was teaching. Southern Methodist in Dallas has, quite independently; John Mears began teaching a course there. Eric Chaisson has been teaching an astronomer’s version in Boston. There are probably, I'm guessing, 30 or 40 universities, mostly in North America, that are teaching Big History in some form. There now exists a college level textbook, of which I am the lead author. That's aimed at college students.
Eventually, I would love to construct a series of research conferences around Big History. Their agenda would be to take ideas such as information, or complexity, what the Santa Fe Institute is doing. Or the question, what makes humans different? Questions that run across many disciplines and bring together experts from different disciplines. That's the university level. At Macquarie Univesity, we’ve formed a Big History Institute that will organize such conferences, as well as supporting big history teaching in high schools.
Since 2010, Bill Gates has been supporting the creation of a free, online site on big history for high schools. That's the Big History Project. It's open to everyone. Anyone can go. There's a public version, which is a ten-hour course in Big History that you can do. Another version, a Big History course for high schools also has very rich resources. Now, four years after we started building that, there are over 100 schools in Australia teaching this. There are over 400 in the U.S. There are many other schools that are using some of our material, but not formally teaching Big History. That's at the school level.
I've taught Big History in Korea for five years. I've been teaching summer courses there. There are one or two schools teaching big history in Korea. There are schools in the Netherlands. Most of those schools are using the material that's been put together for the Big History Project. I had a lot to do with the basic structure of that, not with all of the details. There's video materials, there's printed material, there's graphics, and so on.
As far as we can see, the Big History project is doing very well in schools. But we've gone through individual schools, not through the educational bureaucracy, for the very simple reason that if you go through the educational bureaucracy, you're immediately involved in complex negotiations about how you fit in with existing curricula and syllabi. If you go through individual schools that are willing to experiment with a new syllabus, you can try it out. You can improve it. You can get feedback. At the moment, we're at the level of going through individual schools. We would like to see these courses going into schools in non-English speaking countries. We're already talking to schools in Hong Kong, which may provide a way of eventually producing a Mandarin version.
I've been contacted by many primary school teachers who say, we'd love to see a primary school version of this. I can see absolutely no reason why the basic story could not be told at a primary school level. That would set students up for a more sophisticated level later on. Then an even more sophisticated level, perhaps, at university. One of the other problems with education at the moment is we have this idea that a student does a course in this, then they move on, then they do a course in that and they move on. Whereas good education ought to take the form of a spiral: You encounter a set of ideas, a complex set of ideas, as a primary school student, as a child, then as a teenager, then as an adult. And each time you go deeper. In the past, that’s how people learnt their own origin stories.
What comes after Big History? I'm not sure. This is very, very rich territory. I have this hunch, as I keep saying, that the big research problems now lie—E.O. Wilson's been saying this for a long time—between disciplines, increasingly. They lie between disciplines for the simple reason that such rich research has been done within the disciplinary frameworks. As more and more people begin to take seriously the idea of an overview of all modern knowledge, it'll generate astonishing intellectual synergies with something of the power of Big Bang cosmology, which was the first great scientific synergy of recent scientific history. Bringing together the science of the very large, with the very small. Many scientists thought that was completely undo-able. When they came together, they came together with the force of an intellectual Big Bang. Big History has the power to generate lots of smaller big bangs on questions like what makes humans different.
What's Related
Director, Big History Institute and Distinguished Professor...
[5.21.15]
Beyond Edge
The Big History Project
David Christian's Macquarie University Home Page
Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History
By David Christian Paperback
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Two new operatorships
February 28, 2002, 15:30 CET
Statoil has been awarded two new operatorships in the North Sea round 2001 by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy.
"We are pleased that we have been awarded the production licences we applied for," says Karin Ask in Statoil's new areas business cluster. Ms Ask is also happy with the process round the awards.
Statoil will operate one licence in block 33/12, south of the Statfjord field. The group has been awarded a 70 per cent interest here. The other licence lies in block 30/6, south of the Veslefrikk field. Statoil's share there is 18 per cent. The state's direct financial interest (SDFI) will be a partner in the first licence, while TotalFinaElf, RWE-DEA, Paladin Resources, Svenska Petroleum and SDFI are partners in the second licence.
Statoil has also received a small 0.950 per cent share in block 2/4 north of Ekofisk, with Phillips as operator. The other partners are Norsk Agip, Norsk Hydro, TotalFinaElf and SDFI.
See also the press release and map on the ministry's web site.
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ERS Staff Directory
Brandon Restrepo
Brandon J. Restrepo
Research Agricultural Economist
brandon.restrepo@usda.gov
Brandon J. Restrepo is a research agricultural economist in the Diet, Safety, and Health Economics Branch of the Food Economics Division. He conducts research on economic issues associated with food labeling, diet and health, and obesity. His recent work has investigated how nutrition information, food prices, food assistance, and unemployment affect dietary behavior and diet-related health.
Before joining ERS, he worked as an economist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, where he conducted cost-benefit analyses of regulations that governed food safety, drug safety and effectiveness, and tobacco product manufacturing practices. He has also worked as a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, a postdoctoral researcher at the Athens University of Economics and Business, and a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Brandon earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics at The Ohio State University and his B.S. in Economics at St. John’s University.
Todd, J.E., L. Mancino, B.J. Restrepo, C. Kavanaugh, C. Dicken, and V. Breneman. 2021. "Food Away From Home and Caloric Intake: The Role of Restaurant Menu Labeling Laws," Economic Inquiry 59(1):53-71
Restrepo, B.J., M.P. Rabbitt, and C.A. Gregory. 2021. “The Effect of Unemployment on Food Spending and Adequacy: Evidence from Coronavirus-Induced Firm Closures,” Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy 43(1):185-204
Restrepo, B.J., and E. Zeballos. 2020. “The Effect of Working from Home on Major Time Allocations with a Focus on Food-Related Activities,” Review of Economics of the Household 18(4):1165-1187
Restrepo, B.J., and J.H. Cantor. 2020. “The Effects of Soda Taxes on Adolescent Calorie Intake, Sugar Intake, and Blood Sugar,” Health Economics 29(11):1422-1434.
Restrepo, B.J. 2020. “Intake of Trans Fats among U.S. Youth Declined from 1999-2000 to 2009-2010,” Public Health Nutrition 23(6):1103-1107
Nakaguma, M.Y., and B.J. Restrepo. 2018. “Restricting Access to Alcohol and Public Health: Evidence from Electoral Dry Laws in Brazil,” Health Economics 27(1):141-156.
Restrepo, B.J. 2017. “Calorie Labeling in Chain Restaurants and Body Weight: Evidence from New York,” Health Economics 26(10):1191-1209.
Restrepo, B.J. 2017. “Further Decline of Trans Fatty Acids Levels in U.S. Adults between 1999-2000 and 2009-2010,” American Journal of Public Health 107(1):156-58.
Restrepo, B.J. 2016. “Parental Investment Responses to a Low Birth Weight Outcome: Who Compensates and Who Reinforces?” Journal of Population Economics 29(4):969-89.
Restrepo, B.J., and M. Rieger. 2016. “Trans Fat and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: Evidence from Bans in Restaurants in New York,” Journal of Health Economics 45(C):176-196.
Restrepo, B.J., and M. Rieger. 2016. “Denmark’s Policy on Artificial Trans Fat and Cardiovascular Disease,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 50(1):69-76.
ERS Publications by this Author
Frequency and Time of Day That Americans Eat: A Comparison of Data From the American Time Use Survey and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey The Association Between Restaurant Menu Label Use and Caloric Intake Adult Eating and Health Patterns: Evidence From the 2014-16 Eating & Health Module of the American Time Use Survey
Amber Waves Articles by this Author
Trans Fat Levels Among U.S. Youth Fell From 1999 to 2010 Working From Home Leads to More Time Spent Preparing Food, Eating at Home ERS-Funded Eating and Health Module Paints Fuller Picture of How Much Time Americans Spend Eating Time Spent Eating Varies by Age, Education, and Body Mass Index New National Menu Labeling Provides Information Consumers Can Use To Help Manage Their Calorie Intake
Data by this Author
Eating and Health Module (ATUS)
Topics by this Author
Education, Information & Labeling
Last updated: Friday, July 16, 2021
For more information, contact: Website Administrator
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Frontpage / Terms of use
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Cassini captures Earth – and all of humanity – from a billion miles away
By Graham Templeton on November 14, 2013 at 10:00 am
On July 17, did you look up and smile? If not, you’re one of several billion people who were captured in candid pose when NASA’s Cassini space probe looked back at Earth from about 1.5 billion kilometers (932 million miles) away. Cassini has always been able to flip around and snap pictures in Earth’s general direction, but this picture was special since it used the enormous bulk of Saturn to block the usually confounding brightness of the Sun. Cassini, which was launched to survey that most ostentatious of ringed planets, captured an absolutely incredible image of both the Earth as a pale blue dot, and of Saturn as a striking, luminous apparition.
In reality, the picture is cobbled together from many shots taken over a period of Cassini’s circuitous orbit. Remember that Cassini was launched in 1997, the same year a computer finally beat a human Grand Master in chess; it’s incredible that technology built and launched more than 16 years ago could capture images of such fidelity over any period of time. NASA took several months to build the final, indelible image which is featured above. Click below to see it in all its full, super-high-res glory.
Click for full detail on one of NASA’s most amazing and expensive photos ever.
This picture is being referred to as the Day The Earth Smiled photo, which really could not be less catchy if it tried. Still, it’s at least accurate thanks to NASA’s awareness campaign, which tried to get everyday citizens to smile at the sky for the first posed interplanetary photo most of us have ever experienced. Light from the sun refracts around the swirling weather systems of gas and debris that make up Saturn and its rings, creating a halo effect that makes our sixth planet look truly breathtaking. In the annotated version, you can also see Venus, Mars, and some of Saturn’s moons.
Cassini and Messenger’s nearly simultaneous views of Earth, from totally different directions.
This Smile Day photo probably won’t ascend to its predecessors’ heights of popularity, but it does stand as one of the most visually sensational shots our planet could ever enjoy. Until we can take a photo of the Earth next to the Sun in mid-supernova, we’re unlikely to find a context more dramatic than a Saturnian solar eclipse. As if to confirm this, NASA’s Messenger probe took some vanilla Earth-shots from orbit around Mercury, while on the very same day Cassini grabbed this picture through Saturn’s glowing outer atmosphere. The Messenger pictures are much more typical of this type of stellar photography, and despite being taken from less than a tenth the distance, they cannot compare.
The Pale Blue Dot (Earth), as seen by Voyager 1 on its way out of the Solar System
These sorts of pictures of course invite references to the Pale Blue Dot (pictured above), a concept popularized by Carl Sagan with a book of the same name. There is something about the insignificant physical size of the Earth relative to the rest of the universe that always seems to either excite or upset people. That feeling of being dwarfed can apparently evoke anything from spiritual connectedness to strong materialist nihilism, and neither side seems willing to compromise on its interpretation. The Pale Blue Dot shows the human race to be either the universe’s most precious and fragile miracle, or as just another mechanical aspect of its unfeeling physical logic.
Either way, it’s a stunning photo that will inevitably come to influence how the next generation envisions their own embattled planet.
Now read: NASA activates 622 Mbps laser network between the Earth and Moon
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Justin Edinburgh: Tributes paid to Spurs legend who died in hospital following cardiac arrest
He was rushed to hospital earlier this week
Justin Edinburgh has been rushed to hospital (Image: Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)
Tributes have poured in for Leyton Orient manager Justin Edinburgh after his death in hospital yesterday (Saturday, June 8).
The club confirmed the tragic news that the 49-year-old had passed away after suffering a cardiac arrest.
The Basildon-born coach and former Spurs player fell ill earlier this week, reports the Mirror.
Leading the tributes, Orient chairman Nigel Travis said: "We are completely heartbroken by this tragedy. All our thoughts and love are with the Edinburgh family and we know from the messages that have flooded into the Club over the last week that the wider football world will share our sentiments.
"The success that Justin brought to Leyton Orient was incredible, but more importantly the impact he had on us all as a winner and a wonderful, inspirational human being will be his legacy and will stay with us forever."
Justin Edinburgh celebrating as team wins Vanarama National League match in April, 2019 (Image: Getty Images/Harriet Lander)
Justin Edinburgh: Leyton Orient release statement confirming club manager dies following cardiac arrest
Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker also paid tribute to his former teammate.
He tweeted: "Deeply saddened to hear that Justin Edinburgh has passed away.
"He was an excellent coach and a terrific fullback who was delight to share a dressing room with and have as a teammate. Thoughts are with his family. #RipJustin"
Tottenham also paid tribute in a statement which read: "We are deeply saddened and shocked to hear of the passing of Justin Edinburgh.
"Our heartfelt condolences and thoughts go out to his family and friends at this terribly difficult time as well as everyone that worked alongside Justin at Leyton Orient."
Edinburgh, 49, joined the Orient’s as Head Coach in November 2017 and having secured a mid-table finish in his first season, went on to lead the Club back into the Football League as National League champions in 2018/19.
Having started his playing career at Southend United, where he made 37 appearances and helped the club win promotion from Division Four, he was transferred to Tottenham Hotspur in 1990 and went on to make 215 appearances, scoring once and being part of both FA Cup and League Cup winning sides during a decade at White Hart Lane.
Three years at Portsmouth followed before the Basildon-born full-back returned to Essex to end his playing career as player manager of Billericay Town between 2003 and 2006.
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The first visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park by all the G7 Foreign Ministers. Credit: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan.
Japan–China Spat And The G–7 Meeting At Hiroshima – Analysis
April 23, 2016 Observer Research Foundation 0 Comments
By Observer Research Foundation
By K. V. Kesavan
Next month (May 26–27), Japan is hosting the Group–7 meeting at Ise Shima. Earlier this month, as a forerunner to the main meeting, the foreign ministers of G–7 met in Hiroshima. Successive Japanese governments have always considered holding this high profile meeting as a significant diplomatic demonstration underlining the importance of their country. Japan has so far held the meeting of the Group five times since 1979 — the last meeting being in 2008 in Toyako, Hokkaido, when Yasuo Fukuda was the prime minister.
While every Japanese prime minister attaches utmost importance to the high–level meeting, there are special reasons this time for Shinzo Abe to feel upbeat about it. In fact, the timing of the meeting is significant for two reasons. As Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida noted in his recent article to CNN on April 9, the rift between the nuclear and non–nuclear weapons states has grown deeper following the failure of the last NPT Review Conference. Further, North Korea’s nuclear test in January 2016, followed by its ballistic missile tests in February and March, posed a serious threat not only to the East Asian region, but also, to the entire international community. In addition, terrorist attacks such as those that occurred in Paris and Brussels further heightened those concerns. The G–7 Summit is expected to address these issues.
Second, the meeting carries a lot of implications from the point of Japanese domestic politics as well. The focus of the Japanese political parties and electorate is now concentrated on the outcome of the July upper house election which would be crucial for Abe to carry forward his political agenda, including the amendment of the Constitution, implementation of various legislative measures on security passed last year and the levying of the second phase of the consumption tax in 2017. If Abe is able to win two thirds majority in the upper house, it could set in motion the long process of constitutional amendment.
Abe believes that the G–7 Summit will greatly enhance the position of his government in the eyes of the electorate and boost his chances of achieving his political goals. On the contrary, the Japanese opposition, which remained badly divided and unprepared, has just taken certain steps to project a united front to stall Abe’s efforts. Realising its blunders during 2009–12 when it was in power, Katsuya Okada, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan ((DPJ), has taken certain steps to rally the opposition parties under one umbrella. The DPJ and another opposition party, the Japan Innovation Party, have now merged to form a new entity called Minshinto to pose a challenge to prevent Abe from winning 2/3 majority in the upper house.
Though it is still not clear, they appear even to be ready to have electoral adjustments with the Communist Party of Japan (JCP) which has been so far treated as a political outcast all these years. If this happens, it will set a new trend in Japanese politics with long–term implications.
As a preliminary step, the G–7 foreign ministers’ conference was held in Hiroshima on April 10 and 11. Foreign Minister Kishida, who hails from Hiroshima, took exceptional interest in highlighting the deliberations of the meeting. In particular, he wanted the Hiroshima parley to send a clear statement to the world on nuclear disarmament, terrorism and maritime security. Kishida believed that a statement on disarmament and terrorism made from Hiroshima would carry a special meaning and significance. Incidentally, the visit made by John Kerry to Hiroshima was the first ever made by a serving US Secretary of State and as such it carried a great deal of symbolic significance.
One direct outcome of Kerry’s visit is the rising expectation among many Japanese about a possible trip to Hiroshima by President Barack Obama himself when he comes to Japan for the May Summit. Public opinion in Japan is overwhelmingly in favour of such a visit. But opinion in the US is sharply divided as many fear that such a visit could also give rise to demands for an apology from the US President for the use of atomic bombs in 1945. Political analysts also worry somewhat about its possible adverse impact on the current presidential campaign in the US. The White House is carefully weighing its options before taking a decision on Obama’s visit.
Apart from the long customary joint statement that the foreign ministers make every year, two other statements made by them have drawn considerable attention. First, the Hiroshima Declaration issued by them makes a strong case for nuclear disarmament and non–proliferation. Again as mentioned earlier, any statement on disarmament coming particularly from Hiroshima carries special significance because of the traumatic experiences of the city in 1945. Second, their statement on maritime security lists a number of measures for ensuring international cooperation for maintaining peace in the oceans. To be sure, even the statement issued by the foreign ministers last year in Lubeck, Germany, talked about several aspects of maritime security. The present statement on maritime security strongly reiterates a number of measures for establishing a maritime order based on the universally recognised principles of international law such as the UNCLOS. While stressing their commitment to freedom of navigation and over flight, they expressed their concern about the deteriorating situation in the East and South China seas and expressed their opposition to any provocative, unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and heighten tensions.
As expected, China has reacted very sharply to the statement. Anticipating an adverse statement, China had urged Japan, even as early as February this year, not to take up the South China issue at the G–7 meetings. In fact, following the meeting between Abe and Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang in Seoul November 2015, relations between the two courtiers seemed to be improving. They agreed to resume the Japan–China High–Level Economic Dialogue, reopen talks on the joint development of gas fields in the East China Sea and quickly launch the Japan–China Maritime and Communication mechanism to avoid any sudden crisis situation.
But the G–7 foreign ministers’ statement on maritime security has angered China which described it as an unwarranted “interference in China’s internal affairs”. Accusing Japan of having “hijacked the G–7 platform to hype the South China Sea issue”, China urged Japan to stay away from the South China Sea issue as it is not a party directly involved in it.
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Observer Research Foundation
ORF was established on 5 September 1990 as a private, not for profit, ’think tank’ to influence public policy formulation. The Foundation brought together, for the first time, leading Indian economists and policymakers to present An Agenda for Economic Reforms in India. The idea was to help develop a consensus in favour of economic reforms.
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Radicalization Drivers for Women and the Growing Role of Female Jihadists
After the fall of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), an international debate on the repatriation of ISIS fighters took place in societies over the culpability of ISIS women and whether they should be considered as a serious threat to society.
European Eye on Radicalization, 10 May 2021
by Francesco Bergoglio Errico / Photo credits: Al Hayat
Western media often depicts these women as “jihadist brides” who had been brainwashed by their husbands into joining ISIS. However, upon deeper analysis, and through the publication of reports and books written by experts on terrorism, it is evident that the debate is far more complex.
In an article titled “ISIS in Their Own Words” and co-authored by terrorism researchers Anne Speckhard and Molly D. Ellenberg, it was discovered that poverty, family conflict and prior trauma were the main drivers of women joining ISIS.[1] The authors interviewed 38 jihadist women on the subject. They found that European recruits mostly cited family conflict as the main driver towards recruitment, whereas Arabs mostly cited poverty. Women from Europe also cited discriminatory practices that made life and employment difficult.
The authors found the biggest drivers to be:
Spouse/Partner influence (55.3%)
Internet recruiter influence (18.4%)
Parent influence (15.8%)
Friend influence (13.2%)
In Denmark, authorities arrested 13 people (among them five women) in February 2021 on suspicion of planning at least one terrorist attack. Another person linked to the suspected attack was arrested in Germany. During searches, authorities found ingredients for making bombs, detonators, pump guns and a hunting rifle with binoculars. It is believed that the women were an integral part of the planned attack, although their exact role has yet to be made public. Examples such as this one will be used throughout the article to demonstrate the pervasiveness of the growing phenomenon and to illustrate various drivers which pushed them towards radicalization.
The Power of Romantic Love
In November 2020, Swiss authorities arrested a 28-year-old female citizen after a suspected knife terrorist attack that injured two other women in a department store in the southern city of Lugano. She had tried to travel to Syria in 2017, but was blocked by Turkish authorities and was subsequently sent back to Switzerland. It was reported that she had mental health problems and was admitted to a psychiatric clinic upon return. Furthermore, she was a known jihadist by the authorities, and she fell in love with a mujahid (fighter) online, whom she attempted reach in Syria.
As author Kimberly Mehlman Orozco stressed in her book, “The Jihadi Next Door: How ISIS is Forcing, Defrauding, and Coercing Your Neighbor into Terrorism”, romantic love is one of the most powerful sensations a person can feel and can be an effective tool for conscripting terrorist recruits. So, the Swiss woman’s case is a prime example of how virtual romantic love can be a predominant factor in choosing to perform Hijrah (pilgrimage). Although there is no information on the motivation for the attack, the woman’s mental problems and her failure to reach her husband in Syria were important factors that plausibly led her to carry out the attack.
In Norway, a 34-year-old woman faced trial in March 2021, after living in Syria’s “Islamic State” for six years. The woman — born in Pakistan but raised in Oslo — left for war-torn Syria in 2013 after falling in love and marrying online. The man she married was the notorious Bastian Vasquez — a brutal terrorist of Chilean descent who appeared in some of the most violent ISIS propaganda videos. The woman reportedly said that she was so blinded by love for Vasquez that she believed everything he said. She said her husband was violent with her and that she felt “trapped” in the “Islamic State”. However, she lived for six years in the “caliphate” where she worked as an online recruiter trying to entice other women from around the world to come join. She even followed the strict ISIS customs of remarrying immediately after her husband was killed in battle. The woman got remarried to his friend — an Egyptian fighter. When he too was killed, she remarried again.
Jihadist Financiers
In Germany, authorities arrested three people in January 2021 responsible for channelling funds from all across Europe to the Syria-based terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). One of the arrested people was a German woman, Valdete M., who also held Serbian and Kosovan citizenship. She was accused of making two transactions in 2018. This case shows that women can be an integral part of the system that finances terrorist groups from Europe.
In Italy, 10 people, among them three women, were arrested in September 2019 for membership in a group led by Jameleddine Brahim Kharroubi — a business owner of Tunisian origin who funded the Jabhat Al Nusra terrorist group based in Syria. Kharroubi’s Italian convert wife served as a figurehead to a company owned by her husband. Another woman acted as an accountant and helped to manage a flow of money by issuing fake invoices. Finally, another Tunisian woman had bank accounts, in which checks were paid and transfers were made.
In Sweden, a woman who returned to the country from the “Islamic State” was convicted on March 8, 2021 for bringing her two-year-old son to Syria against her family’s will. Other inmates at al-Hol prison camp described her as dangerous and complicit in the recruitment system. Terrorism scholars Brune Descamps and Vera Mironova, in fact, highlight how women in al-Hol and other camps are part of an online fundraising system specifically for women detained in the camp, as well as being part of an online recruitment system. Social media users’ posts from women in al-Hol are similar to the following: “Donate [for the sake of Allah] to free your imprisoned sisters”. In March 2021, the non-governmental American SITE Intelligence Group discovered an ISIS-linked social media account that issues payment details to assist families in al-Hol camp. Journalist John Beck reported that with the money raised, many women try to escape, while others simply use it to meet their basic needs in the camp. It is possible, however, that some of the proceeds for these humanitarian campaigns have gone towards terrorism.
Unaware Husbands
This above mentioned case demonstrates how families of muhajirat (travellers) are often clueless of their recruitment and radicalization. In fact, the husband was reportedly unaware of his wife’s plans, which proves that women can take independent actions and not all of them are simply duped victims. Moreover, this case shows the active role of women in the online recruitment system based in the al-Hol camp.
The Swedish case is very similar to the story of Valbona Berisha — an Albanian living in Italy, who went to Syria in 2014 with the youngest of her three children. Her husband had never noticed his wife’s radicalization and was not aware of her plan to travel and to marry in the “Islamic State”. After five years of living in Syria, the Italian ROS forces were able to help the father bring his son back to Italy. The mother, meanwhile, died in Syria.
“Cub” Mothers
In Germany, Stefanie A. was arrested in March 2021 upon her return to Berlin on charges of taking her young son to Syria in 2016 to join her husband — an ISIS fighter. In Syria, the couple sent the boy — alleged to be under the age of 15 — to a firearms training camp. The boy later went on to participate in military operations until he was killed in March 2018. This case proves that women are not merely ISIS housewives, but active participants — willing to send their sons off to die in battle.
In another telling case, Moroccan foreign fighter Ahmad Taskour and his wife Sbai El Hamel Nadia left their home in Italy to join the “caliphate” in December 2014. They took their 13-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son to Iraq. When the terrorist attacks happened in Paris a year later, Taskour appeared in an ISIS propaganda video praising the attacks and threatening France and other “crusader” countries.[2] His son then appears on camera, repeating the threats, saying in Arabic. “I wish all our Muslim brothers and soldiers of the caliphate in France well for this blessed operation, and this is the beginning of the rain for you crusaders, and it is our soldiers who will win.”
It is clear that the mother was aware of her son’s military training and complicit in the indoctrination of her children. Here she represents what researcher Charlie Winter calls the mother of “ashbal al-khilafa” which translates to “cubs of the caliphate”. These “cubs” represent the next generation of ISIS jihadists. To this date, the family’s whereabouts are unknown, however, there is an open court case against Taskour in Milan.
In France, police arrested a mother and her four daughters on April 4, 2021 in the city of Beziers. Investigators focused one one of the daughters — an 18 year old radicalized through online ISIS propaganda videos — who they suspected to have plotted an attack on a religious site near Montpellier. When police searched her home they found a sharp sword and chemicals that could be used for explosives.
Growing Prominence in Asia
Elsewhere in the world, there are growing instances of women actively participating in terrorism. In Southeast Asia, one of the most dramatic acts of terror was a motorbike suicide attack that was carried out on police headquarters in Surabaya, Indonesia in May 2018. The culprits — a family of five — belonged to the Indonesian ISIS-inspired network, Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD). Only a day before, a family of six carried out a terrorist attack in the same Indonesian city, which left dozens of people injured. The father had driven his bomb-laden car into the grounds of the Surabaya Center Pentecostal Church, while his 16 and 18-year-old sons drove their motorcycles into the Santa Maria Catholic Church where they detonated explosives. Meanwhile, the mother, along with her 9 and 12-year-old daughters, blew themselves up at Diponegoro Indonesian Christian Church.
In the Philippines, a woman by the name of Rezky Fantasya Rulie and two other women married to members of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) — a pro-ISIS group based in the country’s south — were arrested in October 2020 on suspicion of planning a suicide attack. When police raided the house where the women were staying, they found a suicide vest and materials to build an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). It is reported that Rullie’s parents had forced her to join ISIS and marry Andi Baso — a suspected Indonesian suicide bomber in training who was likely killed in a clash by the Philippines army in August 2020. Furthermore, Rullie’s parents, Rullie Rian Zeke and Ulfah Handayani Saleh, killed themselves in a twin-bomb attack at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church in Jolo during a Sunday Mass service in January 2019.
Rullie had been on the radar of the Joint Task Force (JTF) after they received intelligence reports that she was tasked to take her husband’s role as suicide bomber after he was killed. It is likely that she became more radicalized after her husband was killed and more determined to carry out a suicide attack. Often, the death of a family member or close friend can trigger the final phase of the radicalization process called “jihadization”, in which the individual is willing to die for the “cause”. While some women believe it is their duty to remarry, others, like Rullie, decide to commit a suicide attack as a “last gesture”.
Although women have joined terrorist organizations in the past, it is with the advent of the “Islamic State” that more women have joined the ranks of terrorist cells — ISIS in particular. This article clearly demonstrates that women have played an active role in recruitment, financing, training and carrying out actual attacks. The cases mentioned in this report serve as a warning to countries around the world facing the question of whether or not to repatriate their citizens. States must also be prepared for possible clandestine returns of these women, who could slip off the radar of authorities or be perceived as victims rather than active participants of terrorism.
The original article is available here: https://eeradicalization.com/radicalization-drivers-for-women-and-the-growing-role-of-female-jihadists/
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FutureWear
Area served Worldwide
Headquarters Paris
Products Couture
Founder Marine Serre
https://marineserre.com/
Ecofuturist Fashion
Hailing from Brive-la-Gaillarde near Corrèze, France, Marine Serre left home at fourteen to attend a specialist visual arts school, followed by a two-year fashion course in Marseille and then moved to Belgium where she graduated with high honours from Academy of La Cambre Mode in 2016. Serre’s graduation show “Radical Call For Love” caught the attention of international stockists such as The Broken Arm, H. Lorenzo, Dover Street Market, Opening Ceremony and Space By Nordstrom. Post- graduation, she interned under Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen, Matthieu Blazy at Maison Margiela and Raf Simons at Dior. Then, worked as junior designer at Balenciaga, Paris while simultaneously working on her label. “To see the process and assist these designers was great. You have to take the time to understand [the design process]. You learn a lot by looking.”
During this time, Marine Serre won LVMH Prize 2017, presented by Rihanna, at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. The prize, worth 300,000 euros came with mentoring for a year and helped in strengthening her design aesthetic. Serre made her runway debut in February 2018, in Paris. Since, her collections have been met with keen interest from both editors and retailers. “Going to the market and just looking at people on the street… What’s really important to me is that the historical part is there, but not present in a way that it looks like; I used old fashioned images and tried to make them new,” explains Serre to BoF. “I was really into sports and wasn’t into fashion. I was like a little boy at the time. Fashion for me was something to show that I also liked to dress up and be a girl.”
That explains her design aesthetic: a hybrid of French couture silhouettes, sportswear references and eco-futurist vision. Fifty per cent of her collections is designed with upcycled materials such as lace table cloths and vintage silk scarves. “Generally, the process starts with research in dead-stocks or second-hand stores; if the material found is interesting and fits the collection it gets selected,” Serre told PAPER. “The second part is then about finding the best way to use and treat the fabrics and materials. Once arrived in our studio, the materials are carefully reviewed, one by one by our in-house upcycling team.”
Well, the future looks bright. Her Fall ’21 presentation was critiqued by Vogue as, “a terrific cross-generational cast of characters, kids included; a neat and effective assertion of the need for fashion to exist in reality, and to make sense of our lives. Now more than ever, we’re caught at the crossroads of function and fantasy, looking for pieces that can offer a way to somehow simultaneously head off in both directions without feeling tugged one way or the other…” Looking forward, the young designer aspires towards a flagship store in Paris to respond to the increasing demand of stockists.
https://www.vogue.com/article/lvmh-prize-2017-winner-marine-serre
https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/designer/marine-serre
https://www.ssense.com/en-us/editorial/fashion/marine-serre-is-wild-at-heart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Serre
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How do the owners and employees of a small restaurant in Brooklyn respond to a world-changing tragedy just a few miles away? Not by fleeing or closing, but by staying open for business and serving the needs of the neighborhood.
By Ron Lieber 8 minute Read
Like most major streets within a few miles of the World Trade Center, Brooklyn’s Smith Street served as a conduit for people trying to flee as the towers collapsed. Before the neighborhood was engulfed in a cloud of dust, before paper from offices in the World Trade Center began blowing over New York Harbor and settling on the pavement, before thousands fled over the Brooklyn Bridge, parents were the first to take to the streets. The neighborhood is filled with schools, and as the enormity of the tragedy became clear, people raced one way up Smith to retrieve their children and back again to take them home.
In that crowd was Saul Bolton, who ran to the local elementary school to pick up his son, Miles. Unlike many parents, Bolton not only lives but works in the area. He and his wife, Lisa, own Restaurant Saul, a restaurant on Smith Street, and Boerum Hill Food Co., a bustling café a few doors down that’s typically open at least 12 hours each day. As he walked back down Smith, away from the school and past his restaurants, Saul was faced with the same decision we all faced last week: Should I simply go on working?
At first, he was inclined to shut his doors. “He thought we should just close down,” Lisa says. “I think he just wanted to get out of the city.” At that moment, all Saul could think about was his children. “I was torn,” he admits. “I felt as if I should be with my kids at a frightening time like that. Do you have a responsibility to your family at that point or to your customers and your community?”
As ash rained down on Smith Street, the Boltons struggled to answer those questions. But they quickly realized that as business owners, they had a responsibility not just to their own family but to their employees’ families as well. Both Boltons admit that when they opened their restaurants, their obligation to provide their staff with livelihoods wasn’t the first thing they considered. But on Tuesday, it seemed important since many restaurant workers live paycheck to paycheck. “We couldn’t just close for a week,” Lisa says. “People were still going to need to pay their rent.”
Then the crowds descended. They came in such numbers, so quickly, that no one at the restaurant had time to wonder why until later. “I think people didn’t want to be holed up in their apartments all day, especially in New York where apartments are all so small,” Saul says. “What better place to run into members of the community, to sit with your friends, or just to sit and stare into space than at a neighborhood café? It just felt like a very neutral space.”
Lorena Asidao Spence, who works at the counter at Boerum Hill Food Co., stayed until the late afternoon on Tuesday. “I could see people breaking down crying in the street,” says Spence. “This is New York. People are supposed to be too tough to be engulfed by that kind of fear and agony.” But for all the sadness, Spence also recognized that for the regulars, it felt good to see that some part of their routine had not been horribly disrupted. “It’s a way to feel as if part of your life is under control even when everything else is out of control,” she says. “Even if it’s just a large latte. Or being able to come here to talk, as the teachers in the neighborhood do. And a lot of the regulars did come.”
Though many people felt uncomfortable about returning to work later in the week, Saul didn’t feel that there was anything unseemly about conducting commerce in the midst of a national tragedy. “It’s not as if we were jacking up the price of gasoline or sitting behind bullet-proof glass taking away everyone’s money for rations. People want to hang around and eat somewhere. This is a normal business where people want the product.”
In retrospect, Saul wonders whether he should have discounted the food or given it away to the teachers, but he participates in plenty of charity events and doesn’t feel badly about having earned money this past week. “Did I feel righteous about being open? No,” he says. “I’m not making big money, and I’m tired as hell. People are thanking me for being open, and I get satisfaction from that. But what you do for a living is what you do. You should think about the tragedy and document it in whatever way makes you comfortable. But should we all just stand back and not work? To me, that’s ridiculous.”
Saul doesn’t see the decision to stay open as a political act. He does note that Starbucks chose to close all its coffee shops nationwide on Tuesday and to keep most of them in New York and Washington, DC closed Wednesday, and wonders if the company saw things differently. Certainly, his cook at the Boerum Hill Food Co. does. “The terrorists want us to stay home and do nothing,” says Galit Rasad, who served in the Israeli army’s parachute corps. “To close down is wrong. If life stops because of the terror, they are satisfied. If you stop life, you let them win.”
By Wednesday, as the Boerum Hill Food Co. was doing land-office business, the Boltons and their employees also realized that hard work was a form of therapy. “People feel better if they keep moving,” Saul says. “At one point, Lorena said that she hadn’t thought about the attacks in more than two hours. We were so busy just picking up orders, trying to remember whether the coffee was iced or hot, soy or skim. She was happy that she didn’t have to think about it for a little while.”
Unbroken Chain
Saul didn’t have the luxury to lose himself in those details for long. Both restaurants were running out of food, and Saul realized that deliveries might not begin again for days. It’s easy to forget what a global industry the restaurant business has become once you have a chain of suppliers delivering regularly. But when your lettuce comes from California and your fish from France and New Zealand, any disruption in the transportation infrastructure causes complete chaos.
By Wednesday morning, Saul had no dairy, no meat, and no vegetables. Bridges and tunnels all over the region were closed. So he took off for Jetro, a large wholesale operation in Brooklyn that’s closed to the public, to check out sections of the warehouse he had never seen before. “I’d only used Jetro for dry goods,” he says. “But it turned out that they had great meats. I bought three days’ worth of lettuce, everything they had. They had oxtails for my oxtail terrine from the same supplier that my upscale meat-delivery guy uses. They even had arctic char. Who knows how they got it, but it was beautiful fish.”
By Thursday, many of his purveyors were delivering again. By that evening, Restaurant Saul was subbing rib eye for hangar steak and swapping butter cookies for the gingersnaps that accompany the lemon creme. Everything else, however, was available just as described on the menu. He even had a few specials. “New York is a massive machine that does not stop,” Saul says. “All of these people running these little subcultures of commerce were all out scheming to figure out how to start up again, looking at all the different means of transportation to circumvent the obstacles. These people do not stop.”
It was a good thing too, because customers weren’t ordering the way they normally do. “First, it was the people who had walked over the bridge on Tuesday,” Lisa says. “They were very thirsty. We sold out of bottled water, and then we sold a lot of lemonade.” At dinner, Saul had to make a second batch of mashed potatoes — which he’d never had to do before, particularly when the temperature was in the 70s. Later, Boerum Hill Food Co. ran out of hamburgers. The barbecued ribs were huge sellers, as was the spaghetti with meat sauce.
The next morning, the odd ordering patterns continued. “Normally, people will come in and have toast or a muffin or a croissant. Maybe one-third of them will have eggs,” Lisa says. “Wednesday morning, it was all pancakes. I walked in, and everyone had them.” One of the local schools called to open a tab on its credit card, so teachers could come over and eat for free at lunch. Later in the day, someone called to send a couple of dozen sandwiches over to the firehouse around the corner. There, the firemen stood outside staring at one of their emergency vehicles. It was caked with dust, dented, and all of its windows were shattered.
Saul’s more upscale venue, Restaurant Saul, is normally closed on Tuesdays. The Boltons weren’t sure what to expect on Wednesday since the entrée prices make it a special-occasion destination for many neighborhood residents. Still, they served 29 tables that evening, not bad for a Wednesday. Many customers couldn’t finish their food; one family had its meals wrapped after their teenage daughter kept bursting into tears. Two tables over, however, a party of four ordered appetizers, entrées, and desserts, and wiped their plates clean. The group included one man who worked at the World Trade Center but hadn’t gone in Tuesday morning.
Will people ever feel normal about eating out in New York again? Boerum Hill Food Co. seems to be just the sort of neighborhood refuge that people seek out in times of crisis. With Restaurant Saul, it’s tougher to tell. The restaurant’s revenues were already down 30% in the year before the terrorist attacks. The Boltons are lucky in certain respects, though. Saul says that they have an “old economy” rent on the space, and because he and Lisa are the sole owners, they don’t have investors breathing down their necks.
By Thursday, people in the restaurant were at least trying to pretend things were normal. Couples were out on dates. People laughed loudly and joked with the waiters. Meanwhile, Saul worked quietly back in the kitchen, cooking up pasta for 200 to send across the Brooklyn Bridge to feed the rescue workers.
Ron Lieber (rlieber@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior editor.
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Christopher Kraft
Assistant Administrator, Financial Systems
Mr. Chris Kraft currently serves as the Assistant Administrator for Financial Systems in FEMA’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer (OCFO). In this role, Mr. Kraft serves as the principal advisor to the CFO regarding the consolidation and integration of integrated mission-essential financial, acquisition, and asset management systems. The financial systems modernization initiative is a key strategy to achieve compliant financial management (FM) services and optimize FM operations across the diverse DHS systems. The OCFO ensures the funds necessary to carry out the Department’s mission are obtained, allocated, and spent in support of the Department’s priorities and in accordance with law and policies.
Mr. Kraft previously served as the Deputy Director of the DHS-wide FSM program, where he led the effort to move DHS components to modern integrated financial, procurement, and asset management systems. His leadership was instrumental in moving the Transportation Security Administration to a modern system in October 2020 and preparing the United States Coast Guard to successfully migrate in November 2021.
Mr. Kraft formerly served as the Program Manager of the FEMA FSM program. Prior to joining FEMA, Mr. Kraft oversaw several modernization projects for the Department of the Interior, Interior Business Center. Mr. Kraft began his federal career in 2011 as the Assistant Director, Financial Systems, at the Department of Justice, Executive Office for US Attorneys. Mr. Kraft also has experience with several Big Four accounting firms and large commercial companies, including SiriusXM where he served as the Vice President of Corporate Solutions.
In addition to earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Decision Sciences/Management Information Systems from George Mason University, Mr. Kraft holds a Juris Doctor from The George Washington University School of Law.
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Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell
U.S. Fire Administrator
Lori is considered an expert in executive leadership, emergency response system evaluation, public safety resource deployment, community risk assessment, data science/analytics, strategic planning, costs and benefits analysis, advocacy, consensus building, policy development and implementation, and generational differences in the workplace.
As a doctor of public health and a data scientist, Dr. Moore-Merrell recently served on the Biden-Harris Transition Team to conduct agency review for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as part of the COVID-19 response planning. She has also served on the Public Safety Committee of the transition teams for both the mayor of New York City (2013) and the mayor of the District of Columbia (2015).
Lori serves on national and international boards of directors and advises elected officials, CEOs and local metropolitan fire chiefs in areas of her expertise while providing them scientific data to make fact-based decisions. She was recently awarded Honorary Membership in the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs Association for her expertise in areas of fire prevention, fire suppression or other related disciplines. Lori is only the fourth individual to be presented this honor in the 54-year history of the organization.
Dr. Moore-Merrell is an international speaker, presenter and author. She has also been awarded the James O. Page Achievement Award by the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Section of the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) (2001), twice awarded the IAFC President's Award for commitment to firefighter safety (2009, 2019), the Dr. John Granito Award for Excellence in Fire Leadership and Management Research (2010), the Metropolitan Fire Chiefs President's Award of Distinction (2013), the Mason Lankford Award from the Congressional Fire Services Institute (2019), and the Homeland Security Today Mission Award (2020).
Lori is a principal member of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 3000 Technical Committee and is an advisor to the chair of the NFPA 1710 Technical Committee. Lori served 9 years as a commissioner to the Commission for Fire Service Accreditation and 3 terms as a board member for the Center for Public Safety Excellence. Dr. Moore-Merrell is a member of the International Fire Service Training Association Executive Board, as well as the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Fire Council.
During her 26 years at the IAFF, Lori spent more than 17 years leading a research team made up of international fire service organizations and other partners, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the UL, the Urban Institute, the University of Texas, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the Commission on Fire Accreditation International. As principal investigator and senior project manager on projects funded by FEMA/Assistance to Firefighters Grants totaling more than $23 million, she led the team to produce landmark reports and other tools to improve residential and high-rise fireground operations, community risk assessment, fire and EMS resource deployment, and “Big Data Analytics” — all to help drive executive decision-making. These reports and other resources have changed the face of fire and EMS deployment in countries throughout the world.
Dr. Moore-Merrell has also managed emergency response system evaluation project teams, including secure data procurement, geographic information systems analysis and workload analysis in hundreds of fire departments throughout North America.
Lori began her fire service career in 1987 as a fire department paramedic in the City of Memphis Fire Department, Memphis, Tennessee.
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Vera Residences by Damac Properties
(+93) Afghanistan (+358) Aland Islands (+355) Albania (+213) Algeria (+1684) American Samoa (+376) Andorra (+244) Angola (+1264) Anguilla (+672) Antarctica (+1268) Antigua and Barbuda (+54) Argentina (+374) Armenia (+297) Aruba (+61) Australia (+43) Austria (+994) Azerbaijan (+1242) Bahamas (+973) Bahrain (+880) Bangladesh (+1246) Barbados (+375) Belarus (+32) Belgium (+501) Belize (+229) Benin (+1441) Bermuda (+975) Bhutan (+591) Bolivia (+599) Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba (+387) Bosnia and Herzegovina (+267) Botswana (+55) Brazil (+246) British Indian Ocean Territory (+673) Brunei Darussalam (+359) Bulgaria (+226) Burkina Faso (+257) Burundi (+855) Cambodia (+237) Cameroon (+1) Canada (+238) Cape Verde (+1345) Cayman Islands (+236) Central African Republic (+235) Chad (+56) Chile (+86) China (+61) Christmas Island (+672) Cocos (Keeling) Islands (+57) Colombia (+269) Comoros (+242) Congo (+242) Congo, the Democratic Republic of the (+682) Cook Islands (+506) Costa Rica (+225) Cote D'Ivoire (+385) Croatia (+53) Cuba (+599) Curacao (+357) Cyprus (+420) Czech Republic (+45) Denmark (+253) Djibouti (+1767) Dominica (+1809) Dominican Republic (+593) Ecuador (+20) Egypt (+503) El Salvador (+240) Equatorial Guinea (+291) Eritrea (+372) Estonia (+251) Ethiopia (+500) Falkland Islands (Malvinas) (+298) Faroe Islands (+679) Fiji (+358) Finland (+33) France (+594) French Guiana (+689) French Polynesia (+241) Gabon (+220) Gambia (+995) Georgia (+49) Germany (+233) Ghana (+350) Gibraltar (+30) Greece (+299) Greenland (+1473) Grenada (+590) Guadeloupe (+1671) Guam (+502) Guatemala (+44) Guernsey (+224) Guinea (+245) Guinea-Bissau (+592) Guyana (+509) Haiti (+39) Holy See (Vatican City State) (+504) Honduras (+852) Hong Kong (+36) Hungary (+354) Iceland (+91) India (+62) Indonesia (+98) Iran, Islamic Republic of (+964) Iraq (+353) Ireland (+44) Isle of Man (+39) Italy (+1876) Jamaica (+81) Japan (+44) Jersey (+962) Jordan (+7) Kazakhstan (+254) Kenya (+686) Kiribati (+850) Korea, Democratic People's Republic of (+82) Korea, Republic of (+381) Kosovo (+965) Kuwait (+996) Kyrgyzstan (+856) Lao People's Democratic Republic (+371) Latvia (+961) Lebanon (+266) Lesotho (+231) Liberia (+218) Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (+423) Liechtenstein (+370) Lithuania (+352) Luxembourg (+853) Macao (+389) Macedonia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of (+261) Madagascar (+265) Malawi (+60) Malaysia (+960) Maldives (+223) Mali (+356) Malta (+692) Marshall Islands (+596) Martinique (+222) Mauritania (+230) Mauritius (+269) Mayotte (+52) Mexico (+691) Micronesia, Federated States of (+373) Moldova, Republic of (+377) Monaco (+976) Mongolia (+382) Montenegro (+1664) Montserrat (+212) Morocco (+258) Mozambique (+95) Myanmar (+264) Namibia (+674) Nauru (+977) Nepal (+31) Netherlands (+599) Netherlands Antilles (+687) New Caledonia (+64) New Zealand (+505) Nicaragua (+227) Niger (+234) Nigeria (+683) Niue (+672) Norfolk Island (+1670) Northern Mariana Islands (+47) Norway (+968) Oman (+92) Pakistan (+680) Palau (+970) Palestinian Territory, Occupied (+507) Panama (+675) Papua New Guinea (+595) Paraguay (+51) Peru (+63) Philippines (+48) Poland (+351) Portugal (+1787) Puerto Rico (+262) Reunion (+40) Romania (+7) Russian Federation (+250) Rwanda (+590) Saint Barthelemy (+290) Saint Helena (+1869) Saint Kitts and Nevis (+1758) Saint Lucia (+590) Saint Martin (+508) Saint Pierre and Miquelon (+1784) Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (+684) Samoa (+378) San Marino (+239) Sao Tome and Principe (+966) Saudi Arabia (+221) Senegal (+381) Serbia (+381) Serbia and Montenegro (+248) Seychelles (+232) Sierra Leone (+65) Singapore (+1) Sint Maarten (+421) Slovakia (+386) Slovenia (+677) Solomon Islands (+252) Somalia (+27) South Africa (+211) South Sudan (+34) Spain (+94) Sri Lanka (+249) Sudan (+597) Suriname (+47) Svalbard and Jan Mayen (+268) Swaziland (+46) Sweden (+41) Switzerland (+963) Syrian Arab Republic (+886) Taiwan, Province of China (+992) Tajikistan (+255) Tanzania, United Republic of (+66) Thailand (+670) Timor-Leste (+228) Togo (+690) Tokelau (+676) Tonga (+1868) Trinidad and Tobago (+216) Tunisia (+90) Turkey (+7370) Turkmenistan (+1649) Turks and Caicos Islands (+688) Tuvalu (+256) Uganda (+380) Ukraine (+971) United Arab Emirates (+44) United Kingdom (+1) United States (+1) United States Minor Outlying Islands (+598) Uruguay (+998) Uzbekistan (+678) Vanuatu (+58) Venezuela (+84) Viet Nam (+1284) Virgin Islands, British (+1340) Virgin Islands, U.s. (+681) Wallis and Futuna (+212) Western Sahara (+967) Yemen (+260) Zambia (+263) Zimbabwe
Dubai Properties
New Development and Projects
Developed by Damac Properties, Vera Residences is a residential project located in Business Bay. The project is expected to raise the status of the Dubai Creek and will be at the forefront of residential towers, business centre exciting destinations and lush green gardens.
Vera Residences is 30 storeys of serviced apartments and will offer a selection of studios, 1, 2 stylish bedroom units. This Dubai off plan development will be connected to a network of waterways and main roads in the Emirates like Al Khail road, and Sheikh Zayed road.
Stylish studios, 1, and 2 bedroom apartments
Introduced by Damac Properties
Elegant design & spacious living
World-class amenities
Handover by the end of 2020
Vera Residences is one of the best property investments in Dubai as the investors can enjoy an outstanding investment opportunity with the potential to earn 10% per year in rental yields, with attractive payment plans.
Vera Residences is located at Business Bay Dubai, and offers a wide range of amenities for stylish living.
Community View
View of gardens
Communal gardens
Public park
Excellent Dining Options
Unit Sizes
906 Sq. ft. – 1,059 Sq. ft.
AED 1,301,000 - AED 1,483,000
20% + 4%
RERA Registration Fees
Next Installment
1% per month
On the 32nd month
Last Installment
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Mr. Paul M. Peloquin Sr.
ATTLEBORO- Paul M. Peloquin Sr., 82, of Attleboro, passed away peacefully at Life Care Center in Attleboro, on Sunday, April 15, 2018, after succumbing to cancer, after a short illness. He was the devoted husband to Pauline (Godin) Peloquin, whom he shared 60 wonderful years of marriage with. He was born on April 23, 1935, in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Paul was the caring son to the late Ludovic J. and Ida R. (LeClair) Peloquin. Paul was a proud veteran of both the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army, serving during the Korean War and later serving in the Massachusetts Army National Guard. For many years, Paul was employed in the paper manufacturing industry, working as a Slitter for many years. Paul spent his years of employment working at the Fortifiber Plant in Attleboro and also at L & CP in Newton. In addition to his dear wife, Paul is survived by his three cherished children, Paul Peloquin Jr. and his wife Karen (Nelson) of Taunton, Barbara Bonin and her husband Timothy of Attleboro, and Mark Peloquin of Chicago, IL; his blessed 7 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren; his sister, Marguerite (Peloquin) Suffoletto of Wakefield, R.I.; and also many nieces and nephews. In addition to his parents, Paul is predeceased by his siblings, Reginald Peloquin and Leona (Peloquin) Thivierge. Relatives and friends are invited to attend a visitation on Sunday, April 22, 2018, from 2 to 6 p.m. in the Duffy-Poule Funeral Home, 20 Peck St., Attleboro. A funeral will be conducted on Monday, April 23, 2018, at 9 a.m. from the Duffy-Poule Funeral Home, followed by a Mass of Christian Burial, at 10 a.m., in St. John the Evangelist Church, 133 North Main St., Attleboro. Burial will follow in St. John’s Cemetery, West Street, Attleboro. In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation in Paul’s memory to Attleboro Elks Veterans Fund, 887 South Main Street, Attleboro, MA 02703.
ATTLEBORO- Paul M. Peloquin Sr., 82, of Attleboro, passed away peacefully at Life Care Center in Attleboro, on Sunday, April 15, 2018, after succumbing to cancer, after a short illness. He was the devoted husband to Pauline (Godin) Peloquin,... View Obituary & Service Information
The family of Mr. Paul M. Peloquin Sr. created this Life Tributes page to make it easy to share your memories.
ATTLEBORO- Paul M. Peloquin Sr., 82, of Attleboro, passed away...
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Mr. Robert William Hoyle
NORTH ATTLEBORO - Robert “Bob” William Hoyle, 85, of North Attleboro, passed into the arms of God on Saturday, June, 4, 2021, after a courageous battle with cancer. Born on June 5, 1935, in Providence, RI, he was a son of the late George Sr. and Ann (Miele) Hoyle. Robert was the beloved husband of Marilyn (Pistolese) Hoyle and a father to his step-children, Ronald Caponigro Jr, Laureen Angelo, Cheryl Wyman, Michael Caponigro and Andrea Downey, their spouses, 7 grandchildren and a great-granddaughter. He is also survived by his brothers, John and his wife Carol of Lincoln, RI, George Jr and his wife Carol of Cranston, RI, Harry and his wife Jan of Cranston, RI, and his nieces and nephews. The family will honor his legacy by living life to the fullest. Bob graduated from LaSalle Academy in 1953 and from Providence College in 1957. He served in the Army Reserves during the War in Vietnam, achieving the rank of Captain. He was a member of the American Legion. Before retirement, he was a Financial Manager for the Kendall Corporation and General Electric. The family expresses deep gratitude to the caregivers and staff, who provided for his care at The Branches of North Attleboro and Beacon Hospice of Fall River. Relatives and friends are invited to attend a visitation from 9-11 a.m. on Wednesday, June 9, 2021, at the Duffy-Poule Funeral Home, 20 Peck St., Attleboro, followed by a Mass of Christian Burial at St. John the Evangelist Church, 133 North Main St., Attleboro at 11:30 a.m. Burial will follow in St. John’s Cemetery, West St., Attleboro, MA. To view a livestream of Robert's Mass of Christian Burial please click on the following link: https://my.gather.app/remember/robert-hoyle
NORTH ATTLEBORO - Robert “Bob” William Hoyle, 85, of North Attleboro, passed into the arms of God on Saturday, June, 4, 2021, after a courageous battle with cancer. Born on June 5, 1935, in Providence, RI, he was a son of the late... View Obituary & Service Information
The family of Mr. Robert William Hoyle created this Life Tributes page to make it easy to share your memories.
NORTH ATTLEBORO - Robert “Bob” William Hoyle, 85, of North Attleboro,...
Send flowers to the Hoyle family.
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Mr. Robert E. Lee
September 11, 1935 - November 25, 2021
Robert E. Lee, age 86, of Falls Village, CT (formerly of South Attleboro, MA), passed away peacefully, on November 25, 2021. He was the beloved husband of the late Jean M. (Logan) Lee, to whom he was wed for 59 years. Born in Attleboro, MA. on September 11, 1935, he was a loving son of the late Joseph and Delia (Gilligan) Lee. He was a loving husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He is predeceased by his brothers John and Thomas Lee. Robert grew up in Attleboro, MA and was a 1953 graduate of Attleboro High School. Upon graduation, he served in the United States Air Force. After completing his military service, he attended the University of Massachusetts and graduated from Bryant College. Robert worked for the Rhode Island Division of Taxation for several years in various managerial positions. Following his time working for the Rhode Island Division of Taxation, he was the Business Manager for Paratronix, Inc. of Attleboro, MA. for several years. Robert was active in several community organizations. He served as a coach and a member of the Board of Directors for the Darlington American Little League and Darlington Plains Youth Basketball organizations for several years, was a member of the City of Pawtucket’s Pension Board for several years and was an active member of the Knights of Columbus – Delaney Council for several years. Robert enjoyed traveling and went on numerous trips and cruises with his wife. He enjoyed reading, dining out, following his favorite sports teams, and keeping in regular touch with friends, going all the way back to his high school years. In addition to his wife, he is survived by his son, Robert E. Lee Jr. and his wife Mary-Anne of Hudson, OH, his daughter, Cynthia (Lee) Conklin of Falls Village, CT, his four grandchildren Brigid and Connor Lee of Hudson, OH, Melissa Rabbitt and her husband Adam Lomazoff of Waltham, MA, Jaime Lee Conklin of Stamford, CT, his 2 great grandchildren Greyson and Cooper of Waltham, MA; his sister, Joanne (Lee) Keough and several nieces and nephews. His Catholic Funeral Mass, to which relatives and friends are cordially invited to attend, will be celebrated on a date to be determined. Visiting hours are omitted and those wishing to, may remember Robert with a donation to Noble Horizons (Attn: Bill Pond), 17 Cobble Road, Salisbury, CT 06068.
Robert E. Lee, age 86, of Falls Village, CT (formerly of South Attleboro, MA), passed away peacefully, on November 25, 2021. He was the beloved husband of the late Jean M. (Logan) Lee, to whom he was wed for 59 years. Born in Attleboro, MA.... View Obituary & Service Information
The family of Mr. Robert E. Lee created this Life Tributes page to make it easy to share your memories.
Robert E. Lee, age 86, of Falls Village, CT (formerly of South...
Send flowers to the Lee family.
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In-Depth Articles
Citizen Health & Safety
Revenue & Spending
Open, Accountable Government
Blog: The Fine Print
EPA to Put Environmental Justice on the Cost-Benefit Ledger
by Matthew Madia, 3/19/2010
Safeguarding Public Health and the Environment, Cost-benefit Analysis, White House Influence and Interference
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) needs to better account for environmental justice when analyzing the costs and benefits of proposed regulations, experts said yesterday at an EPA symposium. BNA news service (subscription) reports:
Participants in a panel discussion on economic analysis frameworks suggested that EPA consider new methods that allow regulators to measure the broadest health impacts and compare those health benefits with those resulting from policies that protect the most vulnerable populations. […]
While cost-benefit analyses have traditionally focused on how efficiently a rule can provide health benefits, they do not often consider how equitably those benefits are distributed, panel moderator Kelly Maguire, an economist at EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics, said.
Under the leadership of administrator Lisa Jackson, EPA has shown a renewed spirit for environmental justice, which EPA defines as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” Too many environmental hazards disproportionately impact low-income and minority communities.
I would be wary of attempts to assign a dollar figure to environmental justice impacts, but in principle I do believe it is important to more fully gauge the distribution of environmental regulations’ benefits – and, more importantly, the risks of not regulating – across all peoples and places. (Costs are already well counted.)
The strategy of accounting for environmental justice seems consistent with the cost-benefit analysis philosophy of Cass Sunstein, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). OIRA sets economic analysis guidelines for all regulatory agencies, and reviews the individual cost-benefit analysis accompanying significant proposed and final rules.
In a speech at the American University Washington College of Law last month, Sunstein spoke of the Obama administration’s cost-benefit strategy:
“We’ve tried to engage in cost-benefit analysis…in a way that is at least as rigorous as ever before, I hope more rigorous than ever before, but also in a way that is humanized in the sense that it takes account of qualitative and well as quantitative considerations – monetized values aren’t all that matter; it takes account of distributional considerations – are people in distress being helped or hurt?; and it takes account emphatically of the interests of future generations.”
Again, while I fret over the rigor of cost-benefit analysis, Sunstein’s comments sound good in principle. Unfortunately, OIRA has not revised its cost-benefit guidelines to reflect this shift in priorities (I’d prefer they scrap all together the current guidelines written by Bush-era administrator John Graham). It is unclear whether agencies are better accounting for those benefits of regulation that cannot be “monetized” – things like lives saved, hardships avoided, cleaner skies and waters, good health, and other types of social gains that can be achieved through environmental justice.
EPA expects to issue this year its own guidelines for the consideration of environmental justice in rulemaking, according to BNA. OIRA ought to follow suit, overhauling cost-benefit guidance for all agencies in a way that ensures it is a helpful tool for decisionmakers, not a deregulatory wedge. A new, “humanized” approach, to borrow Sunstein’s term, could be reflected in new cost-benefit guidelines and/or in the new regulatory executive order President Obama promised last year.
©2015 Center for Effective Government
This an archive site of the materials produced by the Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) and is maintained by the Project On Government Oversight.
Project On Government Oversight
1100 G Street, NW, Suite 500
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Bears may place Kyle Long on injured reserve
(Photo by Jennifer Stewart/Getty Images)
LAKE FOREST, Ill. (AP) - Chicago Bears right guard Kyle Long has a tendon injury in his right foot, and the team is deciding whether to put him on injured reserve.
Coach Matt Nagy said Wednesday the three-time Pro Bowl lineman has a boot on his foot and is "week to week." The Bears are still trying to figure out the "complete extent" of the injury.
Asked if Long has any broken bones, Nagy said, "I'm not going to get into the details of it." But he added there are "some issues" with a tendon.
The Bears could place Long on IR with the intent to return in eight weeks if they don't think he could be back sooner.
"Those are decisions we're going through," Nagy said. "We're not there yet. We don't need to be. Once we get to that point, then we'll decide what we want to do."
Long was hurt in the closing minutes of the Bears' 24-10 victory over the New York Jets on Sunday. Tight end Dion Sims rolled into him while the two were blocking for Jordan Howard on a run.
The injury to Long leaves the NFC North-leading Bears (4-3) in a painful and familiar spot with him as they get ready to visit the Buffalo Bills (2-6). Chicago could also be without star pass rusher Khalil Mack (right ankle) and No. 1 receiver Allen Robinson (groin) again. The two missed the win over the Jets.
The 29-year-old Long made the Pro Bowl his first three seasons after being drafted in the first round in 2013. But he missed eight games in 2016 and six last season after playing in 47 of a possible 48 from 2013 to 2015.
Nagy again said the latest injury was not the same as the severe one to his right ankle in 2016 that required surgery. Long also had operations on his shoulder, elbow and neck after he was shut down last year.
"It's tough to hear news like that - one of our brothers and other family going down," quarterback Mitchell Trubisky said. "We're going to support him all the way and back him up and then it's next-man-up mentality. We've got a lot of depth at the O-line. I feel really comfortable with where we're at and who's stepping in there."
The Bears could move Eric Kush or rookie James Daniels from left guard, where they have shared time. Kush missed the game against the Jets because of a neck injury but is expected to play against Buffalo.
Another option at right guard is Bryan Witzmann. He signed with Chicago three weeks ago and made 13 starts last season for Kansas City while Nagy was the Chiefs' offensive coordinator.
One scenario that can apparently be ruled out is moving Cody Whitehair from center to guard, a position he has played. Nagy said the Bears haven't considered that.
"It's tough to see (Long) go down with the passion that he plays with," Whitehair said. "We hope for the best for him. I know we've got the right guys that will step in for him and give their best."
With Long out, the line loses not only one of its best blockers, but a team leader.
"He helps me a lot with technique stuff," Daniels said. "He also (tells me) if there's a certain look, just be alert for things like that. Both ways, it's nice to have him around."
NOTES: Nagy said the Bears will take a similar approach with Mack and Robinson, after both were held out of practice last week on Wednesday and Thursday and limited on Friday.
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Oh! Christmas tree? Cardboard display is the talk of a town
by: WAYNE PARRY, Associated Press
Posted: Nov 29, 2021 / 11:49 AM CST
Updated: Nov 29, 2021 / 11:54 AM CST
ASBURY PARK, N.J. (AP) — It has been called beautiful, awesome and brilliant, a transcendent work of art that reimagines the holiday experience with local touches of the Jersey Shore.
It also has been called ridiculous, ugly and hideous, something akin to a pile of Amazon shipping boxes or a giant cat-scratching post.
Good grief!
A fresh-cut natural Christmas tree usually graces the Grand Arcade at Convention Hall on Asbury Park’s historic boardwalk.
But this year, in its place is art made of cardboard in the shape of a tree that also incorporates elements of the seashore, the city’s architecture and its rich musical heritage, which most notably includes Bruce Springsteen. It is designed to be recycled after it is dismantled.
“I like that it’s different,” said Chris Trifari of neighboring Neptune as he strolled by the tree. “It’s pretty interesting.”
“I think it’s very creative,” said Asbury Park resident Elizabeth Khimitch, who brought her two dogs to be photographed in front of the display. ”It fits the Asbury vibe, which is different and unusual.”
Others were not as appreciative.
“It looks like an Amazon package,” said Anthony Solimando, a former resident of nearby Neptune City who recently moved to Hoboken.
“Not a fan,” added Amy Mackey, who lives near Asbury Park. “Asbury has conformed into this artsy town, but tradition is tradition! This is art, and I wouldn’t take my child’s picture in front of this tree. Can’t we just have our traditional tree?”
“No lights?” said Zuzanna Humeniuk, of Wall. “It’s creative, but not festive at all.”
The change came about this year when the city’s art community approached Madison Marquette, the private owner and manager of the Asbury Park boardwalk, about creating a Christmas tree sculpture for Convention Hall, according to Austin Leopold, the boardwalk’s property manager.
“Because the boardwalk is a focal point for Asbury Park’s thriving arts and music community, and because we have a long-standing and very strong relationship with top-name local artists, when presented with the concept for the sculpture, we passionately embraced the idea,” Leopold said.
Michael Lavallee, a local artist who goes by the name Porkchop and whose work has been displayed throughout the U.S. and Europe, created the piece with Brad Hoffer. They call it “The Giving Tree.”
He said the company told him there would not be a natural Christmas tree at Convention Hall this year.
“I was asked to come in and do something festive-ish,” said Porkchop, who studied in Virginia and Philadelphia. “It wasn’t my intention to take away anyone’s Christmas tree. If you’re not going to give people the big tree they want, some of them are going to hate it. I understand that. But they weren’t going to get that traditional Christmas tree anyway.”
The piece uses natural and artificial lighting to cast shadows on parts of the tree while illuminating others so that its appearance changes throughout the day.
Amy Quinn, Asbury Park’s deputy mayor, said that the city is not involved in the Convention Hall display, but that she considers herself a fan. She notes that the city will hold a traditional outdoor tree lighting in a park Friday.
“I love the take that the local artists had on the tree,” she said. “I love that it’s different. Love it or hate it, people are talking about it.”
Follow Wayne Parry on Twitter at @WayneParryAC
This Nov. 26, 2021 photo shows “The Giving Tree,” a Christmas tree display made out of cardboard at Asbury Park NJ’s Convention Hall that is…
This Nov. 26, 2021 photo shows “The Giving Tree,” a Christmas tree display made out of cardboard at Asbury Park NJ’s Convention Hall that is delighting many in the seaside town, but dismaying others who miss the fresh-cut natural tree that is usually on display there during the holidays. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)
Family shares memories of Belton drowning victim: …
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2016: The Year We Hit Peak Nostalgia
Dani Di Placido
Senior Contributor
I write about film, television, pop culture, and other fun stuff.
FILE - In this July 25, 2016, file photo, a fan maneuvers his smartphone as he plays "Pokemon Go" in... [+] Hong Kong. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
It’s almost over. 2016 has been a tough year, a year where change happened so quickly, it made us uncomfortable. Where every innocent discussion at the dinner table inevitably turned to politics, and instantly, descended into toxic rage. A year in which beloved celebrities appeared to be dying off in alarming numbers. And not random old musicians that your dad liked, but cultural icons that changed the world; Mohammed Ali, David Bowie, Prince, Harper Lee and Carrie Fisher, to name just a few.
In a bid perhaps, to cope with the celebrity deaths and violent disagreements, we looked back to a simpler time. We wanted to remember when things were the same. Not like now, when they started to be different, because different is frightening. We wanted our beloved old franchises rebooted and revitalized, to know that no matter what happens, our favorite fictional characters will always be there for us.
2016 was the year of mass nostalgia.
This was the year Star Wars decided to move into fictional historical fiction with the unnecessary explanation behind the Death Star’s hilariously flawed design. Rogue One actually turned out to be a very decent movie (better than The Force Awakens, in my opinion), but at this point, Star Wars needs to come up with something better than “remember this?”
The Jungle Book was given a shiny new coat of CGI paint, which, surprisingly, turned out pretty good. The box office success and positive response meant that Disney is now hard at work updating their entire back catalog into live action. Next up, The Lion King. And then, The Jungle Book 2. We’re going to see a lot of photorealistic talking animals next year.
Batman V. Superman blasted into theaters earlier this year, answering decades of fervent fan prayers, and proving to be a perfect example of how to ruin a fun idea with convoluted narrative, rushed world-building and a complete absence of humor. The film redeemed itself with its extended edition, but the pressure is now on Justice League to put a smile back on the face of the once-whimsical DC universe. Personally, I’m hoping for the return of Wonder Woman’s irredeemably ridiculous Invisible Plane.
This was also the year that magic returned, first with a brand new Harry Potter book that turned out not to be a book at all, but a screenplay, with questionable involvement from J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was a well-received stage play, but the story itself reads like something found in the depths of an obscure fan fiction forum. The plot involves Harry and Draco Malfoy’s offspring traveling through time, accidently creating alternate versions of the Harry Potter universe and revisiting deceased fan favorites. It was pretty much Rowling’s prequel trilogy, and we should all hope that the screenplay is never, ever adapted into film.
A new Harry Potter series did hit the big screen, however, with the snappy title of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a prequel set in 1920’s New York, with no Hogwarts or Harry Potter in sight. Despite the absence of the Boy Who Lived, Fantastic Beasts made 750 million worldwide, proving that Rowling’s wizard world is one that people want to see more of.
But nostalgia alone isn’t always enough. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot was given a sequel, Out of the Shadows, which made half the money of its predecessor, hopefully killing that terrifying quartet of baby-faced animal people forever. Let the lesson be that nostalgia only works if it’s actually entertaining.
Ghostbusters, a mediocre comedy starring four men who hunt ghosts, was reimagined into a mediocre comedy starring four women who hunt ghosts, and ignited the ire of a million men’s rights activists across the internet, declaring that the reboot “ruined” their childhood and, possibly, threatened the very fabric of existence itself. After all the drama, the film turned out to be offensively bland, and not nearly as entertaining as the gender war which preceded it.
Netflix jumped on board the nostalgia train with a reboot of Full House, imaginatively titled Fuller House, and brought back The Gilmore Girls, who still talk inhumanly fast. But revivals are never going to quite capture the essence of the original, no matter how many easter eggs they pack in there. So Netflix took the nostalgia game to a new level with Stranger Things, which wasn’t a reboot but a tribute to eighties cinema. Stranger Things stars a team of nerdy kids who battle an interdimensional monster, to the tune of synths. The show encapsulated everything that made eighties sci-fi great, providing that warm, fuzzy feeling of “remember?” without the crushing disappointment that normally accompanies reunion specials.
Pokémon made a spectacular comeback last summer with the launch of Pokémon GO, an enhanced version of that Game Boy game we all used to play during long car rides. This version of Pokémon, however, could only be played by physically leaving the house and walking outside, searching for creatures that only players could see. It was like sharing a mental illness with thousands of strangers.
For a while, it was fun to spot fellow players, unable to look up from their phones, circling PokéStops like flocks of Pidgeys, seeing Drowzees everywhere they looked and making new friends along the way. But eventually the fun wore off, and Pokémon GO started to become a genuine grind. It felt like walking around the map of an old RPG, waiting for random enemies to spawn so that you could finally level up. Except you were physically walking around and getting kind of tired, and seeing a damn Drowzee every single time your phone vibrated.
The game has received several updates since, but it’s doubtful that it’ll ever return to those days where it was a genuine phenomenon. Winter didn’t particularly help either. The game popularized the idea of augmented reality, and will undoubtedly spawn a host of copycats. The summer of Pokémon GO was a lot of fun, and it proved that the concept behind Pokémon hasn’t lost its appeal in the slightest.
Concepts and stories have always been recycled. Disney’s brand is made up of stories which are hundreds, sometimes thousands of years old. And many of the sequels and reboots that came out this year were great standalone stories that even improved on the original. But it’s been a long time since I’ve watched a big-budget blockbuster and been immersed in a new world. Star Wars and superhero films have monopolized the market, making it difficult to justify taking the risk on an original story.
I like these films, but I also long for the unfamiliar. There’s been a lot of real-life drama this year, all across the world, enough to inspire many a story. Amongst this misty sea of memories, more of this generation’s stories need to be told.
Here’s hoping next year is full of pleasant surprises.
Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website.
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August 17, 2006 By Mark Pellegrini
When most people think of Freddy Krueger, they think of the stand-up comedian version who makes more bad puns than kills. However, you’ll find little of that in the original installment of the franchise. The first Nightmare on Elm Street film isn’t a campy, silly slasher horror-comedy like the majority of the sequels. Actually, the first film is a legitimately good horror film with a strong story, unique scares and impressive actors. I’d rank it as highly as I would movies like the Exorcist or the Shining.
You should all know the overall story of a Nightmare on Elm Street, but I’ll regale you with a brief summary anyway. In the town of Springwood, Ohio, the parents are keeping a terrible secret from their children. A decade ago, they burned alive a serial killer named Freddy Krueger who had been set free on a technicality. Now, Freddy has come back from the grave, invading the dreams of their children and murdering them in their sleep. Nancy, your average high school girl, has to find some way to defeat Krueger or suffer the grisly fate of all her friends.
I’ll go ahead and say it: typically, slasher films are not scary. They just aren’t. They’re fun, they’re gory, they’re intense…but they’re never very scary. The original Nightmare on Elm Street is not a typical slasher film. It delivers a healthy amount of scares through a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere accompanied by eerie music and a genuinely frightening rendition of Freddy Krueger. Krueger is a vicious monstrosity, hardly cracking a single joke. His horribly burnt face is perpetually shrouded in darkness, giving him a mysterious quality. Freddy’s origin is excessively dark and the way he murders the teenagers is all-together shocking. This Freddy is nothing to laugh about.
Wes Craven pens a very intriguing tale of mystery and suspense; you’re not always sure when someone’s dreaming or when they’re awake. Craven takes full advantage of the possibilities of the “dream world”, allowing all kinds of impossible things to happen. Freddy can appear and reappear like a ghost, hallways lead to cavernous boiler rooms, sheep run around wild, and so on. Just about anything is possible in these settings, so you’re never sure what to expect.
The special effects are very impressive, especially for a 22 year-old low-budget horror film. Tina’s death is easily one of my favorite horror movie kills of all time. Many of the other effects, such as Freddy coming through a wall above Nancy, were done cheaply and easily yet remain just as believable had they been done with million-dollar CGI.
The acting in the film is excellent, to say the least. Heather Langenkamp plays Nancy with a remarkable amount of believability and emotion. Johnny Depp plays a throw-away character, Nancy’s boyfriend, but doesn’t do a bad job of it. He has a very memorable death, as well. John Saxon plays Nancy’s father, the lovable jackass. And then there’s Robert Englund. The original Freddy lacks the trademark comedic edge but Robert makes up for it with an eerie presence. Even out of make-up, there’s something about Robert that’s just…scary-looking.
The original Nightmare on Elm Street is a genuinely marvelous horror film, one of the essentials, and the only installment in the franchise I’d say you *have* to see. This film is certainly worthy of an A, a fantastic horror flick.
Filed Under: Horror, Reviews
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Partnership Helps Chicago Leverage Private-Sector Data Analytics Expertise
The city's partnership with insurer Allstate to leverage data analysis as a means to improve city services could represent a new means for public CIOs to take advantage of private-sector expertise.
Adam Stone
In the past, public-private partnerships have mostly involved the delivery of services, much like the way Chicago teams with Comcast to bring the Web to low-income families through the Internet Essentials partnership.
Recently, though, the city has found a new way to partner with the private sector, joining with insurer Allstate to leverage data analysis as a means to improve city services. In an era driven by big data and data analytics, such efforts could represent a new means for public CIOs to take advantage of private-sector expertise.
The city has just 42 health inspectors to monitor some 15,000 food establishments. The best way to tackle this Herculean task is to start by checking in on those restaurants most likely to be in violation of code. But how to know where to begin?
Chicago IT officials paired their extensive open data with Allstate’s analytic muscle to come up with a solu-tion, leveraging outside talent to augment internal skills. At a time when skilled workers with deep analytical skills are in short supply, the partnership gave the city access to capabilities it might not otherwise have been easily able to acquire.
“We have been looking for ways to use analytics and data to improve the quality of life for residents, or to improve the efficiency of city operations,” said Chicago Chief Data Officer Tom Schenk. To that end, city IT managers and Allstate volunteers looked at a wide range of variables: Does the establishment serve alcohol? How long has it been since the last inspection? Have there been local burglaries, sanitation complaints or unusual weather? In all, some 600 data sets were considered.
“All of that information is available on the city’s open data portal, so it was essentially a matter of gathering what was already there and pulling it all together,” said Gavin Smart, Allstate’s quantitative research director.
Those data produced results in an initial two-month trial, with the city proving that data analysis could help inspectors zero in on potential problems much faster than in the past.
In September and October 2014, the health department found 1,637 violations in eating establishments. Of those, 55 percent of critical violations showed up in the first month and 45 percent in the second month. That’s about as expected.
At the same time, the city ran its own model, using data analytics to determine the most efficient hypothetical routes for inspectors. In the simulation, 69 percent of violations turned up in the first month. Data-driven inspec-tions were more timely and more effective, meaning fewer people would have potentially gotten sick. That’s exactly the outcome project planners were looking for. “We want to catch the violations earlier,” Schenk said. “That is what reduces the exposure of patrons to unsanitary restaurant conditions.”
Why did the data-driven model show such strong results? A number of factors likely came into play, including the productive teaming of the city CTO’s three data scientists with the Allstate volunteers, as well as a quantita-tive approach that’s just beginning to take hold in public management processes.
What Data Can Do
The Chicago simulation worked because data works. As public CIOs are learning, the rise of big data and analytics has profound real-world implications.
In this case, the city’s access to data-savvy talent came about partly thanks to the Civic Consulting Alliance, a nonprofit group that helps to broker public-private alliances in Chicago. The use of data is a powerful new tool in these partnerships, said alliance CEO Brian Fabes.
“The challenges have changed and now the tools have changed, in the evolution of technology and the ability to dive in and use data and analytics to find new ways to do things,” he said. “This is a great, very specific ex-ample of that. And we are starting to see lots of other examples like this all around the country, with big data and data analytics providing a window on what is happening and generating ideas about what is to be done.”
Allstate, for its part, saw the project as a way to drive positive social action from the kinds of data-driven modeling it already has been doing in the insurance arena.
“That is the beauty of working with data and mathematical models, that you can see the impact of the things you are doing, you can see how well they are performing,” Smart said. “When you can quantify things, it is easi-er to see how well you are doing and what the opportunities are.”
Allstate engaged with the city through its Project Lightbulb, a company program that gives each employee four hours a week to pursue work-related interests outside their daily responsibilities. Sometimes this includes professional enrichment; sometimes employees use the time to work on theoretical models and tools. In this case, three to four analysts used their time to help the city solve its restaurant problem.
“This is a great opportunity to give some of our folks a chance to learn from people in different fields, as well as help those folks make some progress in their particular areas,” said Smart. “And it’s a great way to be able to give back to the community.”
To that end, Allstate volunteers worked primarily on developing data sets and building mathematical models based on available data. That information is sprawling — 600 data sets were put into play. This raises a question: With big data capable of doing so much, how do analysts know when to stop? If they are counting everything from the weather to local robbery statistics, is there anything that doesn’t go into the equation?
“Whenever you are approaching analytic-type projects or problems, you can almost go on forever looking at data sources that might be predictive,” Smart said. The solution is to work within constraints — how fast do we need a result? — and also to accept that any improvement, however imperfect, still counts as a win.
“If we can get something done, get a Version 1 model completed within some reasonable amount of time that shows some reasonable improvement, we can always look to other people to move it forward,” he said.
In the push to put data into play, Schenk noted that there are pros and cons to the kind of public-private ar-rangement that arose here. While the project did give the city access to data pros at a time when such talent is pricey and hard to come by, it’s also true that any engagement with an outside partner can bog down the public CIO in contractual paperwork.
At the same time, the move toward opening up access to public data can help overcome such bureaucratic roadblocks. “When the data is already publicly available, there is no nondisclosure agreement we need to sign,” said Schenk. “It lets us sidestep months of work, since they already have the ability to access that data very easily.”
Still, that very openness merits a word of caution from Smart, who reminds CIOs that analytics will forever be a moving target.
“As the analytic capability grows, people need to be mindful of how to maintain a lot of this. From our own experience in predictive modeling, we know that if you have a model that has been in production for quite a while and then trends start to change, it can produce some deterioration,” he said. “You need to have the re-source and capabilities to keep refreshing and rebuilding those models.”
For now, the partnership between the city and Allstate is continuing beyond food inspection analysis. In their latest joint venture, analysts have set their sights on prioritizing elevator inspections based on available data. The hope is to isolate those most likely to fail in order to maximize the benefits of city inspections and best serve the cause of public safety.
Adam Stone is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine.
See More Stories by Adam Stone
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What is Conveyancing?
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Conveyancing is the area of property law that deals with the transfer of real estate between sellers and buyers.
Although it seems quite straightforward, property law can be quite complex and conveyancing has to consider issues such as contract terms and conditions, mortgages, covenants, easements, caveats, the type of property title, the type of tenancy, local council regulations and zoning to name just a few.
What are the steps in the conveyancing process?
Generally, the process begins with the drawing up of a Contract for Sale. The Contract will include things such as:
The street address and legal property title details
The length of time between signing and completion of the contract
What’s included or specifically excluded from the sale
Special conditions specific to this particular property
The purchaser needs to get legal advice, review the contract, arrange inspections and start making loan arrangements before anything is signed.
The contract is signed by both parties and may be immediately binding, depending on the circumstances of the sale. You may however, have a cooling off period available, or be able to withdraw from the contract under certain conditions, so it’s important that you know the exact terms and conditions written into the contract
There is a set length of time between the contract becoming binding and the contract being settled or completed. In this time the purchaser of the property has a lot to do including conducting various checks on the property, paying stamp duty, organising insurance and getting any loan arrangements in order, and the seller of the property should be making arrangements with their bank to have any mortgage discharged as well as making plans to move.
Before settlement, adjustments to the purchase price are agreed upon between the parties to cover council and water rates as well as other costs which may be allowed for in the contract.
On the day of settlement, everything has to be in place. The purchaser or the incoming mortgagee has to show up with the funds, and the seller or outgoing mortgagee has to turn up with the property title and the document/s needed to release the mortgage. Everything is handed over including the keys and the property is considered settled.
After settlement, the new owner needs to be registered as the owner on the title, and various government bodies need to be informed of the change in ownership.
As buying property is one of the biggest financial decisions you will make it’s important that you get expert advice. Legal expertise and diligence is well worth the cost.
Contact us to find out more or to arrange a consultation with an experienced Solicitor located in Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast.
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Gardiners Lawyers is owned and operated by Andrew Ellison and has served more than 10,000 clients on the Sunshine Coast since 1995.
We are a small client focused boutique firm offering a range of fixed fee services.
All aspects of your matter will be handled personally by a Solicitor.
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AS OF FEBRUARY 2021
BRADFORD HU
Former Chief Risk Officer
Bradford Hu is a former Chief Risk Officer for Citigroup. In this role, he lead the global risk management organization, which is responsible for developing the Group’s risk...
Bradford Hu is a former Chief Risk Officer for Citigroup. In this role, he lead the global risk management organization, which is responsible for developing the Group’s risk governance framework, recommending its risk appetite and ensuring that all risks generated by the businesses are measured, reviewed and monitored on an ongoing basis. Hu reported to Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat and is a member of Citi’s Executive Management Committee.
Before assuming this role in January 2013, he served as Chief Risk Officer for Citi Asia Pacific, where he was responsible for managing the firm's risks across all of Citi’s businesses in the region’s 17 markets, including consumer banking, corporate and investment banking, securities and trading, and private banking services.
Prior to joining Citi in 2008, Hu worked at Morgan Stanley for more than 20 years, where he served as CEO of Morgan Stanley Taiwan and held a number of senior leadership roles in Firm Management, the Global Equity Division, Global Capital Markets, and Investment Banking. He has more than 15 years of experience in Asia, having worked and lived in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Taipei.
Hu is the Chairman of the GARP Board of Trustees and serves on the Board of Trustees for The Asia Society and The Museum of American Finance. He is a member of the Financial Advisory Roundtable of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; as well as a member of the Advisory Board for the Amos Tuck School of Business.
A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985, he earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science with a concentration in economics, and received his master’s in business administration with high distinction from the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, Dartmouth College, where he was elected Edward Tuck Scholar. Hu is married with two children.
Chairman, Audit and Risk Committee
DR. VICTOR NG
MD, Head of Risk Architecture, Goldman Sachs
Victor Ng is Managing Director, Head of Risk Architecture. Previously, he was chief risk architect in Market Risk, global head of Corporate Risk, global head of Risk Modeling and...
Victor Ng is Managing Director, Head of Risk Architecture. Previously, he was chief risk architect in Market Risk, global head of Corporate Risk, global head of Risk Modeling and co-head of Derivatives Research in Fixed Income. Dr. Ng joined Goldman Sachs in 1995. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, he worked at the International Monetary Fund as an economist and before that, he was an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Dr. Ng is a member of the Board of Trustees of GARP and its Financial Risk Manager (FRM) committee. He is also a member of various risk and capital related working groups and committees of ISDA, IIF and SIFMA. Dr. Ng has published in leading finance, economics and econometrics journals and was an associate editor of the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics.
Chairman, Compensation Committee
JACQUES LONGERSTAEY
Chief Risk Officer, Nuveen
Jacques Longerstaey is the Chief Risk Officer at Nuveen and a member of the TIAA Enterprise Risk Management leadership team. Prior to joining Nuveen, Jacques was the Chief...
Jacques Longerstaey is the Chief Risk Officer at Nuveen and a member of the TIAA Enterprise Risk Management leadership team. Prior to joining Nuveen, Jacques was the Chief Investment & Model Risk Officer in the Wealth & Investment Management Division of Wells Fargo.
In his over 30 years of experience, he has been the Chief Risk Officer of State Street Global Advisors and Putnam Investments in Boston. While at Putnam, Jacques was voted Risk Manager of the Year by the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) in 2004.
Prior to joining Putnam in November 2003, Jacques was co-head of the risk management group at Goldman Sachs Asset Management in New York and London. From 1987 to 1998, he held various positions at J.P Morgan and Co. (economist and fixed income researcher for the Benelux, head of the Bond Index Group, developer of the RiskMetrics value-at-risk methodology).
Jacques holds a degree in economics from the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of GARP and chairs the compensation committee. While living in Boston, he was the Honorary Consul of Belgium covering New England.
Chairman, Governance Committee
GEOFFREY GREENER
Chief Risk Officer, Bank of America
Geoffrey S. Greener is Chief Risk Officer of Bank of America. He is responsible for overseeing the company’s governance and strategy for global risk management and compliance,...
Geoffrey S. Greener is Chief Risk Officer of Bank of America. He is responsible for overseeing the company’s governance and strategy for global risk management and compliance, including relationships with key regulators and supervisory institutions worldwide. Greener is a member of the company’s executive management team.
Greener’s team provides independent oversight and guidance for managing risk and ensuring compliance, including the development and implementation of risk management measures across the company. His team leads efforts to build and sustain a strong culture in which all employees understand the importance of managing risk to deliver responsible growth and serve customers, clients, and communities. Greener has also served in a number of senior roles throughout the company, including Enterprise Capital Management executive.
Greener participates in several organizations that focus on risk, finance, and climate change governance and policy, including the Board of Trustees of the Global Association of Risk Professionals and Stanford University’s Sustainable Finance Initiative Advisory Board. He is also a member of the Bank Policy Institute’s Chief Risk Officer Advisory Committee.
RICHARD APOSTOLIK
President and CEO, GARP
Richard Apostolik has led the world’s premiere association for risk professionals for 14 years. Previously with Bankers Trust’s (Deutsche Bank) strategic ventures group, Apostolik...
Richard Apostolik has led the world’s premiere association for risk professionals for 14 years. Previously with Bankers Trust’s (Deutsche Bank) strategic ventures group, Apostolik developed financial risk management initiatives designed to provide credit risk mitigation and management services to financial service companies. He also served as JPMorgan & Co.’s global head of energy brokerage activities and Chief Operating Officer of its global listed product businesses. He ran his own consulting firm and was responsible for the start-up of SG Warburg & Co.’s North American futures and options business. He was an attorney with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, practiced law with a private law firm in Chicago, and was the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s house counsel. Apostolik holds a BSBA, MBA, and JD from the University of Dayton.
BEN GOLUB
Chief Risk Officer, BlackRock, Inc
Ben Golub is the Chief Risk Officer, co-head of the Risk & Quantitative Analysis Group and a member of the Global Executive Committee of BlackRock, Inc. He is responsible for the...
Ben Golub is the Chief Risk Officer, co-head of the Risk & Quantitative Analysis Group and a member of the Global Executive Committee of BlackRock, Inc. He is responsible for the investment, counterparty, technology and operational risk of BlackRock and is also the chair of BlackRock's Enterprise Risk Management Committee. Previously at BlackRock, Dr. Golub was co-head and co-founder of BlackRock Solutions, BlackRock's risk advisory business beginning in 1995.
He is a board member of the Global Association of Risk Professionals, a member of the MIT Sloan School of Management's North American Executive Board, and a member of the MIT Sloan Finance Group Advisory Board. He is also the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy, and the Chairman of the International Partners Committee of the Asset Management Association of China.
Dr. Golub earned a bachelor’s in management in 1978, a master’s in management in 1982, and a doctorate in applied economics and finance in 1984, all from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
ANDREW GRAY
Managing Director, Group Chief Risk Officer, DTCC
Andrew Gray is Managing Director, Group Chief Risk Officer, with global responsibility for all aspects of DTCC’s risk management, including credit, market and liquidity risk,...
Andrew Gray is Managing Director, Group Chief Risk Officer, with global responsibility for all aspects of DTCC’s risk management, including credit, market and liquidity risk, model risk, operational risk management, third-party risk management, systemic risk, information security and technology risk management, business continuity management and global security management. He also has responsibility for DTCC’s Enterprise Data Management program. Prior to this role, Grey served as Managing Director, Core Business Management, with overarching responsibility for DTCC's businesses, including clearance and settlement of equities and fixed income products, Asset Services, Wealth Management Services, Insurance & Retirement Services, Institutional Trade Processing and Data Services as well as the firm's marketing and communications function. He serves on the Board of the International Securities Services Association. He also serves as a Board member for the external Advisory Board of the NYU Stern Volatility and Risk Institute as well as the Board of Trustees of Global Association of Risk Professionals.
Before joining DTCC in September 2009, Gray spent more than a decade with Merrill Lynch. Most recently, he served as Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer for Merrill’s Latin American and Canadian businesses. Prior to that, he was a managing director in Strategy and Business Development for Merrill’s Global Markets and Investment Banking businesses and for Global Securities Research & Economics. Previously, he was a principal at Booz-Allen & Hamilton, the global management consulting firm.
ANDREW KURITZKES
Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer, State Street Corporation
Andrew Kuritzkes is an executive vice president and chief risk officer for State Street Corporation, responsible for leading the company’s risk management function globally. He is...
Andrew Kuritzkes is an executive vice president and chief risk officer for State Street Corporation, responsible for leading the company’s risk management function globally. He is also a member of State Street’s Management Committee, the company’s most senior strategy and policy-making team.
Prior to joining State Street in 2010, he was a partner of Oliver Wyman and led the firm’s public policy practice in North America. From 1986 to 1988, he worked as an economist and lawyer for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Kuritzkes is a member of the US Committee on Capital Markets Regulation and of the GARP Board of Trustees. He served, from 2012 to 2016 as a member of the Financial Research Advisory Committee of the US Treasury’s Office of Financial Research and, from 2006 to 2015, as a member of the Financial Advisory Roundtable of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
He has written and spoken widely on risk, financial structuring and regulatory topics. Kuritzkes holds a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School, a Master of Philosophy degree in economics from Cambridge University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale College.
STUART LEWIS
Chief Risk Officer, Deutsche Bank
Stuart was appointed to the Management Board of Deutsche Bank as Chief Risk Officer in June 2012. In July 2019 he assumed responsibility for Compliance, Anti-Financial Crime, and...
Stuart was appointed to the Management Board of Deutsche Bank as Chief Risk Officer in June 2012. In July 2019 he assumed responsibility for Compliance, Anti-Financial Crime, and the Business Selection and Conflicts Office in addition to gaining responsibility for the UK and Ireland.
Since joining Deutsche Bank in 1996, he has held senior roles including Global Chief Credit Officer, Global Head of Loan Exposure Management Group, and Chief Credit Officer for Asia Pacific. Most recently, he was Deputy Chief Risk Officer and Chief Risk Officer for the Corporate and Investment Bank. He was previously Head of European Credit Risk Management at Credit Suisse.
In 2013 Stuart was elected to the GARP Board of Trustees. He is also a member of the Foundation Board of the International Financial Risk Institute and served as Chair from 2016 to 2018.
Stuart is a visiting Professor at the Finance Department of the London School of Economics. He helped establish and advised on the content of the MSc Risk and Finance Programme, where he is a regular speaker. He also works in partnership with the LSE’s internationally renowned Financial Market Group as a member of the Advisory Council and through his support of the Deutsche Bank Doctoral Fellowship Programme.
Stuart attended the University of Dundee where he obtained an LLB with honors. He also holds a master’s in legal studies from the London School of Economics and took the Law Society finals examinations at the College of Law, Guildford.
LEWIS O’DONALD
Former Chief Risk Officer, Senior Managing Director, Nomura Holdings
Lewis O'Donald recently left the role of CRO at Nomura Holdings. During his eight-year tenure, he was responsible for the successful application for market and credit risk-based...
Lewis O'Donald recently left the role of CRO at Nomura Holdings. During his eight-year tenure, he was responsible for the successful application for market and credit risk-based capital for Nomura and its major subsidiaries. He sat on many subsidiary boards for Nomura, including their American business, UK-based subsidiaries, their re-insurance business, and the Frankfurt business. He remains engaged with regulators and other stakeholders in the design and regulation of the financial industry.
Prior to working at Nomura, O'Donald worked for Morgan Stanley, starting in fixed income trading, then working in risk management and finally as Senior Risk Officer for the global wholesale business.
O'Donald is currently a Trustee of GARP. He holds a doctorate in mathematics from Oxford University.
ALESSA QUANE
Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer, AIG Insurance
Alessandrea (Alessa) Quane serves as Executive Vice President, Chief Risk Officer for AIG, bringing more than 20 years of experience to her role on the Executive Leadership Team....
Alessandrea (Alessa) Quane serves as Executive Vice President, Chief Risk Officer for AIG, bringing more than 20 years of experience to her role on the Executive Leadership Team. She oversees the management of risk on an enterprise-wide basis. Alessa has served in a number of increasingly senior roles within Risk and Actuarial at AIG, including Chief Corporate Actuary, Head of Global Actuarial and Value Management, and Chief Risk Officer of AIG Property Casualty.
Alessa has extensive experience in both the domestic and international markets, having spent 13 years in Europe creating and leading the pricing and corporate actuarial functions in Europe and the UK. She relocated to New York to create the enterprise risk management function for the international business within Property Casualty. Prior to her tenure with AIG, Alessa specialized in pricing and research for non-standard auto at Allstate.
Alessa is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society, a member of the American Academy of Actuaries, and an affiliate member of the Institute of Actuaries. Alessa holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a major in actuarial science from Drake University. She was honored in 2019 with the Stuart A. Klugman Distinguished Alumni Award from Drake University for her achievements as an actuary and chief risk officer, her professional engagement and community involvement.
Alessa has served as a frequent industry speaker on topics related to global enterprise risk management issues, the importance of women in positions of influence in the insurance and business arena and the promotion of the insurance industry in our educational system. She serves as an executive sponsor of AIG’s Women’s Executive Leadership Initiative, chairs the North American CRO Council, is a member of the Drake University School of Actuarial Science and Risk Management Advisory Council and the GARP Board of Trustees. She was a 2019 David Rockefeller Fellow.
FRANK RONCEY
Group Chief Risk Officer, BNP Paribas
Frank Roncey began his career with Paribas in Paris in 1989 as an OTC interest rate options trader and market maker. In 1992 he became Global Head of Bond Options Trading, and in...
Frank Roncey began his career with Paribas in Paris in 1989 as an OTC interest rate options trader and market maker. In 1992 he became Global Head of Bond Options Trading, and in 1995 was appointed Head of Forex and
Forex options trading for Paribas, based in London.
Two years later, he became Global Head of Market & Liquidity Risk for Paribas. Following the merger with BNP that formed the BNP Paribas Group, he was appointed Global Head of Market and Liquidity Risk as well as Operational Risk for the newly merged Group in 2001. In 2004, Roncey became Chief Risk Officer for the Americas.
In 2009, he took on responsibility for the risk oversight of BNP Paribas’ retail banking activities in the western United States — Bank of the West and First Hawaiian Bank — in which capacity he took a seat on the Board of Directors of BancWest and Bank of the West.
In 2011, Roncey became Group Chief Credit Risk Officer and Global Head of Retail and Corporate Risk Management in the Group Risk Management department. He was appointed BNP Paribas Group Chief Risk Officer on 30 September 2014, becoming a member of the Group Executive Committee.
He is an active member of the Global Association of Risk Professionals and the International Financial Risk Institute (IFRI).
Roncey is a graduate of leading French Engineering college École des Mines. He also holds a master’s in business administration from the HEC business school in Paris.
Senior Advisor - Climate and ESG Risk Management, HSBC
Alan Smith is Senior Advisor - Climate and ESG Risk Management, HSBC. He is a member of HSBC’s Climate Business Council whose remit is to develop the Group’s sustainable finance...
Alan Smith is Senior Advisor - Climate and ESG Risk Management, HSBC. He is a member of HSBC’s Climate Business Council whose remit is to develop the Group’s sustainable finance strategy; provide oversight and governance of climate initiatives on behalf of HSBC’s Group Executive Committee; and facilitate implementation across businesses, functions and regions. He co-chairs the HSBC Climate Risk Oversight Forum which is shaping the Group’s Risk Management for Climate Risk across the Group.
Alan is an active member of The Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment, a United Nations Climate Action Summit and COP26 flagship initiative, which represents the commitment of the global private financial industry, in partnership with key private and public institutions, to foster the more efficient integration of physical climate risks in investment decision-making.
Prior to his current role, to which he was appointed in April 2020, Alan was Global Head of Risk Strategy and Chief of Staff to Group Chief Risk Officer at HSBC. In that role, he was a member of the Group Asset and Liability Management Committee from 2015 to 2020 and a standing attendee of the Group Risk Committee to the HSBC Board from 2016 to 2020. He joined HSBC in 1994 and has worked with HSBC for over 26 years in a variety of senior finance, risk, and capital management and investment banking roles in London and in Saudi Arabia.
Prior to HSBC, Alan, a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, worked with KPMG London where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant with the ICAEW. He has a master’s in finance from the Cass Business School, City – University of London, which he attended on a UK Commonwealth Scholarship. He did his undergraduate degree at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica.
Alan is a Church Commissioner of the Church of England, a Trustee of the Global Association of Risk Professionals and sits on the advisory board of the Centre for Risk Studies at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. In 2015, he co-authored his first book, “Dreaming a Nation” which won a Frank Collymore Literary Award in Barbados. Alan is a professionally qualified English Cricket Board Level 3 Advanced coach and a playing member of the Marylebone Cricket Club. He represented Barbados at the junior international level in cricket.
PETER TUFANO
Peter Moores Dean and Professor of Finance, University of Oxford
Peter Tufano is the Peter Moores Dean and Professor of Finance at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School. Previously he was a Professor at Harvard Business School for...
Peter Tufano is the Peter Moores Dean and Professor of Finance at the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School. Previously he was a Professor at Harvard Business School for over two decades and founded the Harvard I-Lab as well as Commonwealth (http://buildcommonwealth.org/). Tufano advises business and governmental groups in the US and Europe on financial services matters. Tufano's work in risk ranges from corporate risk management, to risk management in government and university settings, to household risk management.
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Geek / Technical Personal Development
When Standing on the Shoulders of Giants Isn’t the Right Thing to Do
Post date 7/3/2015
In almost any endeavor, you can go it alone, or you can get help. You can spend all of your time researching and practicing and tweaking until you figure things out, or you can buy a book or hire a consultant and have someone tell you what they have already figured out after years of his/her life were spent on the topic.
Leveraging the work that has been done by others is a shortcut, and it is perfectly fine to take them. If you want to learn how to do software development, you don’t need to build your own computer architecture, as you can leverage the existing Von Neumann architecture in most modern machines. You don’t need to start from first principles. Someone already figured it out, and you can take advantage of it.
This kind of advice is ingrained in our culture.
Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Don’t spend your time doing that task when you can hire someone to do it for you faster and at a level higher quality, which saves you time, too.
This is the way it has always been done, and it’s the best way we know.
On the other hand, sometimes we advance the arts and sciences by starting over and exploring our assumptions.
In Bret Victor’s talk The Future of Programming in which he pretends to be an IBM engineer from 1973, complete with transparencies and a projector, he talks about the problem of people who think they know what they are doing:
He starts out explaining the resistance to the creation of assembly code by the people used to coding in binary. Coding in binary WAS programming, and assembly was seen as a waste of time and just plain wrong.
He goes on to talk about exciting advances in programming models from the late 60s and early 70s, and extrapolates some tongue-in-cheek “predictions” about how computers will work 40 years in the future, predictions that lamentably did not come about. Today we still code much the same way people did back in the 60s.
Ultimately, he warns that there is a risk to teaching computer science as “this is how it is done”.
The real tragedy would be if people forgot you could have new ideas about programming models in the first place.
The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person is to think that you know what you’re doing, because once you think you know what you’re doing, you stop looking around for other ways of doing things. You stop being able to see other ways of doing things. You become blind.
Game design applies here, too. Video games from the 70s, 80s, and 90s were quite varied. People were figuring them out because no one knew what they were. They tried everything.
Eventually some key genres popped out of this period of experimentation, and some control schemes and interfaces became common. It’s hard to imagine real-time strategy games without Dune 2‘s UI conventions.
Five years ago, Daniel Cook wrote about reinventing the match-3 genre:
It occurred to me that game design, like any evolutionary process, is sensitive to initial conditions. If you want to stand out, you need to head back in time to the very dawn of a genre, strike out in a different direction and then watch your alternate evolutionary path unfurl.
When people think of a match-3 game, they have something in mind because all match-3 games tend to be similar. Triple Town ended up being quite different, yet it was still recognizable as a match-3 game, and people loved it.
Some people merely need to leverage existing infrastructure. People are using Unity for game development because, much like Microsoft’s XNA before it, it handles all of the boiler-plate for you, and it also provides a lot of the technical tools in an easily-accessible way so you can focus on the development of the game rather than the technical details of making a game.
But some people are pushing what’s been conventionally thought of as possible. Spore, for instance, had to procedurally generate animations for characters that weren’t prebuilt, which meant someone had to figure out how to do so. There was no existing 3rd-party library to leverage. The shoulders of giants here weren’t high enough.
I’m part of a book club right now involving algorithms. We’re reading Steven Skienna’s mostly-accessible book The Algorithm Design Manual, and it’s been enjoyable and challenging. I haven’t studied algorithms since college, and I kind of wish I could go back and check my notes from class.
But what bothers me when reading this book is the warning about trying to completely invent a new algorithm on your own. Skienna argues that most problems can probably be adapted by sorting the data or otherwise thinking about it in a way that an existing algorithm can solve it.
And he’s right.
But someone had to have figured out these algorithms in the first place, right? Someone saw a problem and had no way to solve it, so he/she came up with a way, optimized it, and published it.
But today I’m expected to just learn what they did and use it, and I feel like I’m being told to stay away from actually trying to figure out a better way on my own, as if all of the algorithms that can be invented have been invented.
And if I just want to solve particular existing problems, it’s probably practical advice.
But if I want to explore an entirely new kind of problem, what am I supposed to do with old assumptions and solutions? Square pegs don’t go in round holes, and I don’t think we want a future where we are taught that round holes are the only kinds of holes in existence.
← Treating Indie Game Development as a Business Isn’t News, Is It? → Independence Means Having Real Choices and the Opportunity to Make Them
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Home / Audemars Piguet / Dial: Black / Buckle: Deployant / Movement: Quartz
Brand Overview | Audemars Piguet List
YOUR SELECTION Audemars Piguet Dial: Black Buckle: Deployant Movement: Quartz
Gold - White (1)Steel (2)
Diamonds (1)Display / Exhibition Case Back (1)
Gold Bracelet (1)Leather - Alligator/Croc (1)Leather - Black (1)Leather - Other colors (1)Steel Bracelet (1)
More about Audemars Piguet Watches
Jules Audemars, aged 23, and Edward Piguet, aged 21, founded Audemars Piguet in 1875, in the Vallée de Joux, which is considered by many to be the cradle of prestigious watchmaking. Audemars started producing component parts for movements and Piguet got the job as a repasseur, whose job it is to make the final regulation of the timepiece. They founded a firm later known as Audemars Piguet et Cie. Since 1882, members of the Audemars and Piguet families have always sat at the Board of directors and directly or indirectly run the company.
Audemars managed the production and monitoring the technical part, and Piguet focusing on sales. However, instant success was not to come. The two talented watchmakers focused on the production of accurate watches with sophisticated mechanisms. After the company formation, Audemars Piguet opened its new branch in Geneva. Since 1889, the company has created its own components and assemblies within its manufactory. Quality control has always been strict, and only products of the highest quality are permitted to be launched into the market. Between 1894 and 1899 the company produced about 1,200 timepieces. These included many watch complications. When the founders Jules Audemars and Edward Piguet died, in 1918 and 1919 respectively, the company continued its activity steadily growing and expanding its fame and prestige. Later Audemars Piguet launched several watches such as the world's smallest minute repeater and a jumping second pocket watch. In 1925 Audemars Piguet amazed its supporters with the release of its thinnest pocket watch. Only three years later the company created the world's first skeletonized watch. As the success of the company's business grew, its customer base expanded to include Tiffany & Co, and Cartier. During World War II the manufacturer began producing ultra-thin chronographs, the heart of which was Calibre 2003. The sales of Audemars Piguet grew further in the forties and fifties. Together with Jaeger LeCoultre it designed the thinnest automatic movement. The latter included a 21 carat gold rotor placed in the center. In 1972 AP launched a line of mechanical watches with hexagonal screws that fastened a porthole-like bezel. Thus was born the Royal Oak, in honor of the British Royal Navy's line of ships bearing the same name. The Royal Oak is among many of the most specialized and complex watches produced by this famous manufactory, and, designed by Gerald Genta, easily the most recogizable. Today Audemars Piguet maintains one of the leading positions in Swiss watchmaking. Audemars Piguet produces less than 16,000 watches each year, equating to less than 45 for each day of the year. Thus, when one wears an Audemars Piguet wristwatch, one is wearing a rare watch indeed.
Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Ladies Watch 67653BC.GG.1263BC.02$39,500.00
Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Ladies Watch 67650ST.OO.1261ST.01$11,500.00 $11,500.00
Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Ladies Watch 67651ST.ZZ.D002CR.01$14,200.00 $14,200.00
About Audemars Piguet
Jules Audemars and Edward Piguet were both in their early twenties when they founded Audemars Piguet in 1875. In 1972 AP launched a line of mechanical watches with hexagonal screws that fastened a porthole-like bezel. Thus was born the Royal Oak, in honor of the British Royal Navy's line of ships bearing the same name. The Royal Oak is among many of the most specialized and complex watches produced by this famous manufactory.
Like many other brands of luxury watches, Audemars Piguet has a number of ambassadors, including tennis player Novak Djokovic; Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar; Formula One racecar drivers Sebastien Buemi, Rubens Barrichello, Juan Pablo Montoya and Jarno Trulli; Argentinean footballer Leo Messi; professional basketball player LeBron James; pro golfer Rory McIlroy and Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh.
Audemars Piguet's signature line continues to be the Royal Oak and its sportier offshoot, the Royal Oak Offshore. Each year, AP releases special and limited edition timepieces from these two collections to its adoring collectors, many of whom have more than a few Audemars Piguet Royal Oaks and Royal Oak Offshores in their existing collection.
Limited editions are especially desirable within the Audemars Piguet brand and in recent years have included: Royal Oak Offshore Grand Prix Chronograph in forged carbon & titanium, gold and platinum; Royal Oak Offshore Rubens Barrichello Chronograph in Titanium, Gold and Platinum, Royal Oak Offshore Shaquille O'Neal Chronograph in steel with and without diamonds; Offshore editions celebrating anniversaries of several countries including Mexico (Pride of Mexcio) and Russia (Pride of Russia); and watches with colorful dials and names such as the Volcano, Bumblebee, End of Days, T3, Alinghi, and Survivor; and editions specifically linked to the launch of a new AP boutique, such as the Ginza, Rue St-Honore, Rodeo Drive, Worth Avenue, Orchard Road, and Rhone Fusterie.
Audemars Piguet List
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Failure to yield right of way kills motorcyclist in Bryan
On Behalf of Freeman Law | Aug 7, 2020 | Motor Vehicle Accidents | 0 comments
A large number of motorcycle accident are attributed to the failure of the other driver to yield the right of way to the motorcycle. One of the standard rules of safe driving that is taught to all young drivers is that a vehicle making a left turn must yield the right of way to other vehicles headed in the opposite direction. These two factors combined to cause a fatal collision in Bryan between a Nissan Pathfinder and a Yamaha motorcycle.
The crash
On Monday, August 3, 2020, the Pathfinder was traveling south on North Harvey Mitchell parkway when it tried to turn left onto Phil Gramm Boulevard. The Yamaha cycle was heading north on Mitchell Parkway and had the right-of-way. Unfortunately, the driver of the SUV failed to stop or slow down, and he turned directly into the path of motorcycle. The motorcycle slammed into the turning vehicle.
The driver of the motorcycle was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the SUV was not injured, but he was given a citation for failure to yield the right-of-way during a left turn. Initial reports of the accident did not mention potential driver incapacitation due to alcohol or drugs. Unless further investigation reveals new evidence, such as speeding on the part of the motorcyclist, the driver of the SUV appears to be indisputably at fault for this accident.
Legal recourse
Anyone who has been injured or lost a loved one in a similar accident may wish to consider making a claim for financial damages. If so, the assistance of an attorney with experience in auto and motorcycle collisions can be very valuable. A capable lawyer can evaluate the evidence, suggest legal theories to support a claim, and provide an estimate of the likelihood of recovering damages for medical expenses, lost income and pain and suffering.
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Press Release: If LBA Can't Look After A Pond, Can They Be Trusted with Our Climate?
Commenting on Leeds Bradford Airport’s expansion proposals, Leeds City Council’s Nature Team say they don’t have confidence in the airport’s ability to protect local wildlife. The Nature Team are following up serious questions raised by Natural England last month, as they try to understand how much damage would be done to local biodiversity if the airport is allowed to expand. Natural England’s report advised Leeds City Council not to grant planning permission unless LBA gave answers to a range of questions about protecting and enhancing natural resources.
In a five page report, Leeds City Council’s Nature Team have highlighted concerns about LBA’s lack of concrete commitments to protect wildlife and natural resources around the Yeadon site. Reporting on a pond for Great Crested Newts, which LBA has failed to maintain, they say: “It is disappointing that this ... pond has not been managed by the Airport and has been allowed to become unsuitable for Great Crested Newts. This removes confidence that the Airport can carry out positive biodiversity management of its assets. It should be brought back into good condition...” Great Crested Newts are at risk of extinction and have international importance - they are strictly protected by law.
Chris Foren, chair of the Group for Action on LBA, said: “If the airport’s Australian owners, AMP Capital, can’t be trusted to look after a pond, how on earth can they be trusted with an airport? They certainly can’t be trusted with our climate! We’re pleased that the Council’s Nature Team are forcing LBA to take their responsibilities seriously. The airport’s chief executive got paid £2.3 million last year - but they couldn’t find the money to look after a legally protected and very rare species.”
Chis added: “AMP Capital have tried to present the application as being all about a new ‘green’ terminal building. But it isn’t. They want to extend daytime flying hours and allow more planes to fly at night, which would mean doubling their greenhouse gas emissions in the middle of the climate emergency. That’s plane crazy.”
Report 3 NATURE_TEAM-3354564-1
Download PDF • 616KB
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georgiebull.com
Fiction Fridays
*Beloved Books*
Indie Book Reviews
The Blue Hour: Book Review
Author: Dreena Collins
Image credit: Dreena Collins
A scorned lover, a lonely, disillusioned old man, a little girl who does not speak, a man struggling to care for his mother and young son. These are a few of the characters in The Blue Hour. Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. The people whose stories are not often told, but arguably should be.
I found the short stories in The Blue Hour to be a candid look into the cracks and holes in society that the most vulnerable often fall into. These short stories are weaved with twists and turns, but often come back to the themes of love, loss and sacrifice. Any reader would have to have a heart of stone not to feel for these characters. There is rarely a happy ending but, true to life, people in such circumstances rarely do have happy endings.
I would compare the author’s style to that of Edgar Allan Poe and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but more contemporary for a modern audience. The twists, all largely unexpected, invite the reader to re-read the stories to spot the clues: a clever tactic. Dreena creates strong images with her writing, often focusing on the little details. As a reader, I felt more like a fly on the wall while reading these stories, a fly that has somehow found its way into the house to spy on people’s private and intimate lives. I could almost see the action playing out, like a film.
One of the stand-out techniques of Dreena’s writing is that focus on the smallest details: the way people move, the way people speak, the tiny gestures people make that most of us would miss going about our daily lives. Often such small, seemingly inconsequential things, can tell the whole story.
An extract from the first story, Little Gems And Riches, is an example of how the author paints a picture of a character in an interesting and unusual way. In this case, Arthur, an elderly man:
He turned back to make the long journey to the kitchen again. He shuffled in his pyjama bottoms, feet poking out from open slippers, nails and toes both peeling like baby snail shells. This was the indignity of having to move.
While reading Little Gems And Riches, I could almost physically feel Arthur’s effort - and perhaps even pain - in moving around; his confusion and struggle in having to keep on top of everything; his unhappiness in his obviously strained relationship with his son. The image of the character is built so well that I could just tell, even before Arthur spoke, that this was a tired, slightly grumpy old man, a bit set in his ways. Even though the story is not told from Arthur’s POV, I felt that it was definitely Arthur’s world I had been sucked into. I sympathised with Arthur, and with his anguish, at the end; I had become fully immersed in his world, and it was a shocking conclusion to see his world shattered.
Let Me Tell You A Story was one of my favourite stories in this collection. This story is about a little girl who does not speak, who is under constant pressure from her school and father to fit in. I gathered from the story that the girl perhaps has learning difficulties, but whether she does or simply chooses not to speak is left up to interpretation.
The author uses the image of an old coat to describe how it feels to not quite fit in, and I feel this is a perfect and powerful analogy, especially for a young character:
You see, I feel like I am that old coat sometimes. Almost right, but not quite right. Almost myself, yet not. Stitched up and sewn back together, a little bit wrong. And everyone else can see it. They can see the stitches, where I am broken.
I used to work as a support worker for people with autism and learning difficulties who were also non-verbal or spoke only a little. For me, this story sums up the frustration that I have witnessed in so many of these people as they struggle to be understood by others. Like the little girl in this story, they are often misunderstood by the community as having ‘nothing to say’ when the reality is that we can communicate in many other ways other than speech, and we regularly do.
I would say that there is an important lesson in this story: that we should not judge people against others and instead try to understand people as individuals. It seems that the root of this little girl’s suffering is from being compared to others and being held up to everybody’s expectations of her, rather than people making an effort to engage her in a way she might feel comfortable with. It is, overall, a heartbreaking story but I would consider the ending a happy one.
This is the excerpt that convinced me to purchase the book, from Something Old, Something New:
He had morphed, in her eyes, into someone else - into two people. He was both the Adam she had known and loved, and yet this other Adam: this liar, this cheat. He was both of these people. Popping in and out of focus. And it was impossible to resolve this neatly. For one to erase the other. Because both versions of him were true.
I feel that, although the entire story is beautifully crafted and gently unravels into an unexpected twist, this paragraph sums up the heart of it. As someone who has known a man like Adam and been in the same situation as Claire, I cannot emphasise enough that this is exactly how it feels to find out an image-altering truth about a person. The truth cannot always erase the lie that we so desperately wish to hold on to. I feel that Claire’s story perfectly captures the difficulty of how hard it is to let go of someone you love who is not all they appear to be. Throughout the story, Claire attempts to clarify her thoughts, alternately trying to convince herself that Adam would not be a good person to build a future with, but ultimately falls back on her infatuation. It could be argued by some that perhaps Claire is not a good person; however, I would say that she is perhaps the most ‘real’ of all the characters that appear in The Blue Hour. This is a story that I feel many people could connect to, and I also believe it has great social relevance.
The stories in The Blue Hour lead to a few unanswered questions for the reader, for example: I don’t know for sure who the man in Connie’s photograph is in The Best Things or what role he might have had in leading to her current circumstances, but I can make a guess. I also have my suspicions on what relation Katie might be to the mother in The Blue Hour, the titular story. However, I don’t find these few missing answers frustrating; rather, it’s nice as a reader to be allowed to ponder sometimes. Just as in real life, we will never know the full extent of everyone’s story, and I feel that is rather fitting to this collection of stories; an interesting series of snapshots into character’s lives that leaves the reader wanting more.
Dreena Collins was born in Jersey, Channel Islands, where she now works in education. She has been shortlisted and longlisted in several writing competitions, including the Wells Festival of Literature Short Story Competition, and the Bridport Prize. Previous publications include poetry featured in Mslexia magazine and Interchange periodical, as well as a short story in the Eyelands International Collection (2018).
Dreena plans to release a second collection of short stories in June.
The Blue Hour is available to buy on Amazon.
Find out more about the author and her writing at:
http://dreenawriting.co.uk
facebook.com/dreenawriting
Instagram: @dreenawriting
Twitter: @dreenac
Indie author Georgie Bull reviews the best fiction on the Indie book market
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Leading US green builder speaks about 'Fortune-creating' architecture at Aspen Institute
by Global Good News staff writer
The Aspen Institute, an international organization working on environmental and economic concerns, invited Dr Jeffrey Abramson, a leading real estate developer and green building expert, to speak at its March forum titled 'Powering the Planet: Energy for the Long Haul'.
Dr Abramson is a senior partner at The Tower Companies, the largest green builder in the Washington, DC area. The companies' portfolio consists of 4.5 million square feet (418,000 sq metres) of office buildings, apartment buildings, and hotels. One million square feet are green or sustainable projects (including six LEED certified buildings), and another 2.5 million square feet are in planning stages to be green or sustainable.
Recently recounting his presentation to the Aspen Institute audience, Dr Abramson said, 'We need to expand our concept of the cities of the future . . . to learn how to harness Nature's intelligence within the built environment.' He proposed that a truly healthy city displays more than merely economical, ecological, and environmental balance. It should have no crime or poverty, create health, enhance creativity and success, raise educational outcomes, 'and even enhance spiritual fulfilment'.
'I've always seen real estate as fulfiling a spiritual need. It brings people together. . . . Is it possible [for] the built environment [to go] beyond this one idea of connecting people, to where we can connect our lives, our thinking, all our actions, to the very intelligence that runs the universe in perfect order?'
'Human beings respond to space. We feel it. It holds us back or it elevates the spirit. . . . [There must be] a science that allows the built environment to positively affect people.'
Global Good News will feature the continuation of Dr Abramson's address at the Aspen Institute in the coming days, in which he describes the science of Vedic architecture, the purpose of which is to connect individual life with cosmic life.
* Please see the previous Global Good News article about The Tower Building's numerous awards, including LEED Platinum certification.
Global Good News comment:
For information about Maharishi's seven-point programme to create a healthy, happy, prosperous society, and a peaceful world, please visit: Global Financial Capital of New York.
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The Arts Mean Business, and More, in Greenville and South Carolina as a Whole
Dec 23, 2021 11:28AM ● By Donna Isbell Walker
For the past 20 years, Greenville visual artists have been inviting the public to their workspaces. Every November, Greenville Open Studios draws thousands of people to watch them at work and, the artists hope, purchase some of their works.
The 2021 Open Studios event featured more than 135 artists, all of them within a 15-mile radius of downtown Greenville, working in just about every style of visual art you can imagine, from painting to jewelry, photography to pottery, fiber art to mixed media.
Clyde Lyon, a metal sculpture artist, participated in his first Open Studios in 2020, but he was a fan of the annual event long before he moved to Greenville from Raleigh, N.C. In fact, the arts community was part of what drew him to the Upstate when he retired from his career as an accountant.
Lyon didn’t even start his second career as an artist until 2019, when he was trying to repair a metal sculpture he’d bought years ago.
In looking for the right nails to fix the broken piece, he found a company that made the nails, and he soon began using the distinctive nails to make his own designs, which he gave out as Christmas gifts to family and friends.
But it’s not just Greenville that makes artistic expression and aesthetic enjoyment a priority. The arts scene throughout South Carolina is vibrant, with many cities, including Columbia and Charleston, making a similar commitment to visual and performing arts.
The Columbia Ballet is one of the longest-running arts organizations in the state; it celebrated its 60th anniversary this year.
“We’ve consistently performed every year for 60 years,” Executive and Artistic Director William Starrett said in an interview earlier this year. “We’ve never not been in business. It’s pretty amazing for an arts group in the Deep South.”
The Koger Center for the Arts in Columbia and the North Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center in Charleston, much like the Peace Center in Greenville, present live music, Broadway productions, and more.
At last year’s Open Studios, Lyon had one visitor to his studio, but in the first 15 minutes of this year’s Open Studios, the traffic to his Eastside studio had increased by 500 percent.
Open Studios, he says, is “one of Greenville’s great assets.”
Not every artist who showcases their work at Open Studios is able to make a living through art alone, but the event itself is proof of the city’s commitment to the arts, Lyon says.
The arts are “one of the magnets that pull people here from everywhere,” Lyon says.
As Greenville has made a name for itself in the past two decades, thanks to a revitalization that started with the blossoming of the downtown area, folks have talked about the arts scene here.
But while the recognition might be fairly recent, the arts community has deep roots in the Upstate, and in South Carolina as a whole.
The Peace Center for the Performing Arts opened its doors more than 30 years ago, the Greenville Chorale made its debut in 1961, and Greenville has enjoyed local theater for the better part of the last century.
With Artisphere anchoring the springtime arts calendar in May, and Open Studios representing the autumn arts scene in November, it’s rare to find a month that doesn’t offer something to satisfy the desire for visual or performing arts in Greenville, or around the state.
Charleston benefits from its rich history, a number of arts schools, and the world-renowned Spoleto Festival. You can walk through the historic areas of Charleston and watch art being created, thanks to the artisans who weave traditional sweetgrass baskets right there on the sidewalk.
But the arts aren’t just something beautiful to look at or interesting to watch. The economic impact on the state is real and measurable.
The Spoleto festival, a staple of the springtime calendar in the Lowcountry since the 1970s, brings tens of thousands of visitors to Charleston each year to see world-class performers for a couple of weeks of performances.
A report released by the festival in 2021 estimated that Spoleto’s annual impact on the Charleston economy totaled $42.7 million. The festival employs more than 500 people, between full-time, part-time, and seasonal staff members. Spoleto itself costs about $8.5 million to put on, according to the 2021 report.
And according to a fact sheet released by the Americans for the Arts Action Fund, the arts represent 2.5 percent of South Carolina’s GDP, contributing $6.2 billion and generating 54,244 jobs in the state.
Fun fact: The Americans for the Arts Action Fund says that in 2019, arts and culture were a bigger industry in South Carolina than agriculture.
And the state of South Carolina’s commitment to the arts continues. The South Carolina Arts Commission released its strategic plan for 2021-2025, and its vision is simple: “We envision a South Carolina where the arts are valued and all people benefit from a variety of creative experiences.”
But while the goal is simple, the plan is wide-ranging, and it includes making sure that arts grants are distributed in each of the state’s 46 counties and developing a robust grant portfolio for both arts organizations and individual artists throughout the state.
There’s no doubt that the Covid-19 pandemic weakened the arts scene in the state during the past 20 months. The Peace Center put its Broadway season on hold for 18 months, reopening in October 2020 with social distancing and masks for the production of “Hadestown.”
The Peace Center returned with a robust 2021-2022 Broadway season, a run that will include the return of the cultural juggernaut that is “Hamilton” next June.
Similarly, the Koger Center took a break from its Broadway series, but returned this fall. Its latest Broadway production, “Anastasia,” was presented in November.
Spoleto had to cancel its 2020 event, returning to in-person performances in 2021, but at a reduced capacity. The festival is looking to return in 2022 with a full lineup. The new season is set to be announced in February.
After the dark days of the pandemic, it’s thrilling to see the arts return to life. As we look ahead, let’s celebrate and rally around the state’s arts community. It’s time.
Donna Isbell Walker is associate editor of Greenville Business Magazine, Columbia Business Monthly and Charleston Business Magazine.
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Guest column: Learn to play just for fun
Submitted to the H-T
David Pillar is principal at Jackson Creek Middle School, former assistant coach at Bloomington High School North, and four-time IHSAA basketball state championship referee.
A few weeks ago, almost 100 parents, coaches, administrators and student athletes convened in the Jackson Creek Middle School auditorium for a Community Conversation co-sponsored by the Monroe County Community School Corp. and the Indiana High School Athletic Association to discuss sportsmanship.
Topics were posed to and discussed by a panel made up of IHSAA Commissioner Bobby Cox and members of the Bloomington sports community.
Sportsmanship has recently been a popular topic on television, in newspapers and via social media. Commissioner Cox stated that in many ways, ESPN is the best thing and the worst thing that has happened to athletics. Sports, events, teams and athletes are now getting coverage and exposure at rates never before imagined. However, trash talking, taunting and brawls get substantially more attention as well. Fans, (short for fanatics), and parents verbally and physically assaulting coaches, officials and each other is common place. While this poor behavior is happening, our young people are watching and hating every second of it. Mark Sterner, facility manager of the Twin Lakes Sports Recreational Complex and panelist, shared data from the National Youth Sports Coaches Association that reported that up to 75 percent of students in youth sports would prefer their parents did not attend their games because of the stress it brings and the behavior the adults exhibit.
Last season, the boys’ basketball teams at Hammond and Griffith had a brawl resulting in both teams having their seasons cancelled. The schools sued the IHSAA, an organization in which membership is totally voluntary mind you, a Lake County judge granted an injunction, the seasons continued, and Griffith advanced all the way to the Boys’ 3A State Final game. This year, the girls’ basketball teams at Pike and Ben Davis had a brawl of their own, and although there was anger and public disagreement, both schools took their punishments and seasons and careers ended early thanks to the erosion of sportsmanship.
Indiana is by no means the only state dealing with these issues, but we are the home of the NCAA and a leader in amateur sports. The largest gyms, some of the most talented athletes and, of course, the best story of basketball ever told on film takes place in Indiana, so it’s fitting that we have conversations to somehow convince everyone that sportsmanship is a critical component for sports to thrive in this and many other communities.
Commissioner Cox shared that what happens in school-based athletics is an extension of what happens in the classroom. The talents and leadership qualities we teach are manifested by our young people in performance and in competition. Mike Mossbrucker, a panelist and athletic director at Bloomington North said, “We don’t have high school athletics to get people college scholarships; we have them to help build good citizens and teach hard work.”
South student-athlete and panelist Ivy Kehoe said, “The reason we play sports is to have fun.” Hear that? Fun — not exposure, scholarships or headlines. Somewhere along the way, we lost that. Let’s work to find it so we can keep the games great.
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Lyn Bowtell may be a nine-time Golden Guitar winner but she says learning to accept rejection is also part and parcel of a career in country music. The singer-songwriter, who has a Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Education, is seen as an inspiration and mentor especially to industry newcomers. She sees many aspiring musicians come through the sessions at the Academy of Country Music, where she is musical director. "My advice for anyone young starting out ... when you get nominated [for an award] celebrate the heck out of it. The music industry is full of 'no's, it's an industry full of rejections. And that's just how it goes. If you're not getting lots of rejections you're not putting yourself out there enough," she says. "Always celebrate your wins, even if they are small, you must celebrate them and live in that moment. "You've got to remember why you picked up a guitar or started singing or playing the piano in the first place." Bowtell is returning to her happy place with her latest album, produced by fellow country music star and friend Shane Nicholson. The album has a retro feel, harking back to the 1970s and 80s, and combines her love of soul and blues in what she describes as an alt-country style. Some of the songs have been in Bowtell's "back pocket" for 10 or 15 years, she says, just waiting to find the right space to emerge, while others were written fresh during COVID lockdowns. The farmer's daughter has come a long way since first performing in country music clubs in her home territory, the Darling Downs in Queensland, aged just 13. Her win at the 1995 Queensland Champion of Champions event was the first of many. Bowtell has been a Star Maker winner, won Alternative Country Album of the Year in 2015, has twice been awarded Vocal Collaboration of the Year and in 2020, just before the pandemic hit, won Heritage Song of the Year with Luke O'Shea for the single Sing Me a Story. Bowtell is well known for her collaborations, including with Kevin Bennett, Felicity Urquhart, Adam Harvey and Catherine Britt. Her partnership with fellow singer-songwriter and sound engineer Damon Morton has kept Bowtell happy and supported. He's an introvert, Bowtell is the extrovert, and they strike a successful balance personally and professionally, she says. "He's a great lyricist. He's really good at putting on those 'high intensity' glasses, where he looks at every single syllable, and he looks at what the meaning behind each lyric is. And he's very aware of things that I would miss sometimes." Bowtell describes the Tamworth Country Music Festival as her "second home". The festival has been postponed from its regular January timeslot this year, due to surging coronavirus cases. It is now scheduled for April 18-24. To mark the 50th anniversary of the iconic Tamworth Country Music Festival, ACM (publisher of this website) created a new podcast, Celebrating Aussie Country. The podcast was recorded and released before the recent surge in coronavirus cases that forced the festival's postponement. We are sure you'll still enjoy the interviews and the music. Just bear in mind any references to performance dates are no longer current. In the 10-part series, available only on Spotify, you'll hear from established and emerging artists and their music. To listen, you'll need to download the Spotify app on to your mobile phone and search for Celebrating Aussie Country. If you already have Spotify - and you're reading this story on your mobile - click on the banner below and your phone will take you direct to the podcast. Each podcast episode includes an interview with the artist and some of their music. People with free Spotify subscriptions will hear a 30-second snippet of the song, while those with premium Spotify subscriptions can enjoy the full version.
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January 15 2022 - 12:00PM
Podcast: Golden Guitar winner Lyn Bowtell has a new album scheduled for March
Lydia Roberts
Lyn Bowtell is regarded as an inspiration and mentor to younger members of the country music "family".
Lyn Bowtell may be a nine-time Golden Guitar winner but she says learning to accept rejection is also part and parcel of a career in country music.
The singer-songwriter, who has a Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Education, is seen as an inspiration and mentor especially to industry newcomers. She sees many aspiring musicians come through the sessions at the Academy of Country Music, where she is musical director.
"My advice for anyone young starting out ... when you get nominated [for an award] celebrate the heck out of it. The music industry is full of 'no's, it's an industry full of rejections. And that's just how it goes. If you're not getting lots of rejections you're not putting yourself out there enough," she says.
"Always celebrate your wins, even if they are small, you must celebrate them and live in that moment.
"You've got to remember why you picked up a guitar or started singing or playing the piano in the first place."
Hear Lyn Bowtell talk about making music in our new podcast. If you already have Spotify on your phone and are reading this on your mobile, click on the banner below. Otherwise, download the Spotify app on your phone and search for Celebrating Aussie Country. For more instructions, click here.
Bowtell is returning to her happy place with her latest album, produced by fellow country music star and friend Shane Nicholson.
The album has a retro feel, harking back to the 1970s and 80s, and combines her love of soul and blues in what she describes as an alt-country style.
Some of the songs have been in Bowtell's "back pocket" for 10 or 15 years, she says, just waiting to find the right space to emerge, while others were written fresh during COVID lockdowns.
The farmer's daughter has come a long way since first performing in country music clubs in her home territory, the Darling Downs in Queensland, aged just 13.
Her win at the 1995 Queensland Champion of Champions event was the first of many.
Read (and listen) more:
Adam Harvey recalls a near-death experience in the Outback
Aleyce Simmonds reveals tragic inspiration behind her songs
Redneck Gentlemen shoot the bull (and the breeze)
Bowtell has been a Star Maker winner, won Alternative Country Album of the Year in 2015, has twice been awarded Vocal Collaboration of the Year and in 2020, just before the pandemic hit, won Heritage Song of the Year with Luke O'Shea for the single Sing Me a Story.
Bowtell is well known for her collaborations, including with Kevin Bennett, Felicity Urquhart, Adam Harvey and Catherine Britt.
Her partnership with fellow singer-songwriter and sound engineer Damon Morton has kept Bowtell happy and supported.
He's an introvert, Bowtell is the extrovert, and they strike a successful balance personally and professionally, she says.
"He's a great lyricist. He's really good at putting on those 'high intensity' glasses, where he looks at every single syllable, and he looks at what the meaning behind each lyric is. And he's very aware of things that I would miss sometimes."
Bowtell describes the Tamworth Country Music Festival as her "second home". The festival has been postponed from its regular January timeslot this year, due to surging coronavirus cases. It is now scheduled for April 18-24.
Listen: new country music podcast
To mark the 50th anniversary of the iconic Tamworth Country Music Festival, ACM (publisher of this website) created a new podcast, Celebrating Aussie Country.
The podcast was recorded and released before the recent surge in coronavirus cases that forced the festival's postponement. We are sure you'll still enjoy the interviews and the music. Just bear in mind any references to performance dates are no longer current.
In the 10-part series, available only on Spotify, you'll hear from established and emerging artists and their music.
To listen, you'll need to download the Spotify app on to your mobile phone and search for Celebrating Aussie Country. If you already have Spotify - and you're reading this story on your mobile - click on the banner below and your phone will take you direct to the podcast.
Each podcast episode includes an interview with the artist and some of their music. People with free Spotify subscriptions will hear a 30-second snippet of the song, while those with premium Spotify subscriptions can enjoy the full version.
This story Retro album puts Bowtell in a happy place first appeared on The Northern Daily Leader.
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Easter Virtual Choir
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Scott Saiki
Representative Scott K. Saiki currently serves as the representative for the areas including McCully, Kaheka, Kakaako, and Downtown. Since the 2018 legislative session, he has taken on the leadership role as the House Speaker. In August 2019, he was also named president-elect of the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan organization serving the nation's 7,383 state lawmakers and legislative staff.
Representative Saiki was born in Honolulu. He received his B.A. from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and his J.D. from the University of Hawaii at Manoa's William S. Richardson School of Law. In addition to being a state representative, Representative Saiki currently practices law.
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Home Features Interviews IN FLAMES guitarist Björn Gelotte
IN FLAMES guitarist Björn Gelotte
,,We have been very fortunate.’’
July 1, 2017 by Ron Willemsen - More about our team
In Flames is one of THE leading bands from the Gothenburg melodic death metal scene and they have been around since 1990. Although not a founding member, guitarist Björn Gelotte is a well respected member of this influential five piece. Although being a guitarist he entered the band in 1995 as a drummer and played on ‘The Jester Race’ and ‘Whoracle’ as such (besides also providing lead and acoustic guitars). In 1998 he switched to guitar permanently. That and other things he explains before his guest appearance with Alter Bridge and his own show with In Flames at Graspop later that night.
Björn Gelotte and singer Anders Fridén (photo by Anne Swallow)
First of all, you entered the band as the drummer, and then you became the guitarist. Why the switch?
,,Well, I am a guitar player to begin with. Back then, when I joined the band I was nineteen. I was hanging around at youth centers playing guitar and bass and drums and teaching other bands to play. My cousin is the reason I’m in this band because he knew I played a little bit of drums and when Jesper [Strömblad, founder of In Flames] was looking for a drummer he thought of me. Jesper played them but he kinda sucked at it, didn’t like it, my cousin said ‘my cousin is great’, which I wasn’t but I sucked a little bit less than Jesper so I was in. The cool thing was I could write music, I could play some guitar on the record so it was worth it. But as soon as Johan [Larsson, bass player] and Glenn [Ljungström, guitarist] quit I suggested finding a real drummer at the same time, because playing drums is a lot of work. So when the opportunity arose and I could go back to the guitar nobody was happier than me.’’
What is the ultimate festival feeling for you? When is a festival successful?
,,If it is well organized, has a strong line-up and there is a good vibe. The weather is not too warm, not too cold, it’s not pissin’ rain and people seem super happy. Positive energy is something that you draw from when you play on stage. [Referring to Graspop] Hopefully people will be awake tonight when we play because it’s gonna be late [In Flames began their set at 00:15 until 01:30!] but I think they will. We played at Hellfest and started at 01:00 and it was packed, that was fun at night.’’
In Flames (photo by Patric Ullaeus)
How difficult is it for a band at such times, because you are waiting all day long before it’s your turn?
,,I think the hardest part is to keep the energy up, so I go watch a lot of other bands, hang out with those, play a lot of guitar before, be sure I eat, get a little bit of a nap, we’re not nineteen anymore. It’s more a mindset than anything else since you know it’s gonna be a fun, it can’t go wrong.’’
You played at tons of festivals, what is the worst festival you ever played at?
,,Oh, we did a lot of shit festivals, haha. It’s hard to compare because in the beginning we were so amazed by the amount of people at these shitty festivals that they actually turned into good festivals. A lot of American festivals that we did in the beginning sucked ass like Milwaukee Metalfest for instance, a huge festival back then. Cradle Of Filth was playing as was D.R.I., it must have been 1999. One of the first festivals they had for our genre and that was really shitty, but we were so fresh and young and so amazed of going to the US for the first time so it looked amazing, but looking back at it, it wasn’t. But that’s what I mean, it’s really hard to compare, it was the right thing for us to do and we loved every second of it, I probably wouldn’t do it today though.’’
In Flames most recent album’Battles’
What was the best festival you have ever played at?
,,We’ve been very fortunate. We played at a lot of festivals and most of these, especially European festivals are good. Graspop is a very good example of something that works really well. We had some excellent shows at Wacken, Rock am Ring, Rock im Park. We played on the main stage and you play for a lot of people that probably wouldn’t buy a ticket for a regular In Flames show. They didn’t leave, that’s awesome. The only thing that’s missing at festivals is the intimacy because you are always 10 to 20 meters away from the audience which makes it’s hard to get this connection, but the positive site is that you got the chance to play in front of all these people.’’
Did playing at festivals change over the years for you?
,,Yeah, you learn how you built your setlist, the stage is always double or three times the size of the club stage so you learn how to feel comfortable. You also know that on a festival everything is up in the air, all the different bands need the power, there are change overs, it keeps you on your toes though.’’
You announced a tour with 5FDP the day after their Tilburg debacle. Do you have any doubts about it?
,,I don’t think so. My hope and guess is that everything is gonna be awesome. On a personal level I want Ivan [Moody,singer of 5FDP] to be good, do better. It’s always a tragedy when somebody is not feeling good, something is amiss. He is an amazing singer, it is a great band. I just wanna do this tour and be sure everybody feels good. I’m really, really looking forward to this tour.’’
Björn Gelotte with Alter Bridge at Graspop 2017 (photo by Jasja den Heijer)
Being 25 years in the business, what keeps the In Flames motor running?
,,I think the reason that we’re still having so much fun and doing this is because the guys in the band all want to tour. Touring for me is extremely important, playing live shows. Writing is fun, recording not so much, but the reason that we love what we are doing is because it’s our thing. You don’t write for anybody else, you write for us five so when you play the songs that we played a thousand times it’s our songs, and that makes it easier to be proud and honest and have fun playing.’’
Header photo by Patric Ullaeus
Follow IN FLAMES on their Website and Facebook Page
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Jakes Story
Jake's Story
"You saved my life. Thank you!"
When Jake was sentenced to eight years in prison, he told the judge, “Thank you.”
After more than twenty years addicted to methamphetamine, living on the streets or in jail, he felt tremendous relief. He had no more worries about where he was going to sleep or where his next meal would come from. “This peace came over me. It was God relieving me from the addiction and the lifestyle I’d been living for so long.”
Jake knew prison would be lonely, but he had been alone for years, with no one to stand behind him morally or emotionally — not even his family. “I turned to the one who had given me peace, and that was God.”
While in prison, Jake prayed every night and attended church services and Bible study. He also earned his GED and took college courses. His good behavior qualified him for early release, but he had nowhere to go.
After many years apart, Jake reached out to his mother, who connected him with Hope Gospel Mission. He joined the program and focused on rebuilding his life. “Coming here has been the biggest gift anyone has ever given me,” he says. “The staff here knows everything it takes to build a spirit-filled life. They do amazing work.”
So amazing that when Jake came across a pipe filled with meth while cleaning up some garbage, he immediately called his supervisor to come and take it. "I handled this of my own free will, with no hesitation. I could not believe it! Then I grabbed another handful of garbage and found a pad of paper and on the front it said, ‘Believe It.’"
It’s easy now for Jake to believe he has a bright future, and he hopes to lead others out of addiction as well. He plans to enroll in AODA (Alcohol and Other Drugs) counselor and peer support classes and hopes to work as a counselor when he completes his degree.
Jake has also fully reconciled with his mother and calls his teen-aged son and daughter every day.
“When I came to Hope, that’s what they gave me — hope,” Jake says. Every day, he sees your contributions changing his life and those of the other residents, and he is very grateful. “You saved my life. Thank you so much!”
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Home / World / Airplane on the ground to argue about champagne
Airplane on the ground to argue about champagne
World December 10, 2017 17:57
stuttgart - The pilot of an Airbus A320 had to make an unscheduled stopover in Stuttgart because of a passenger who wanted more champagne. The 44-year-old woman from Switzerland went through the ribbon according to the police when the crew refused.
The woman flew Business Class on the flight from Moscow to Zurich and did not pick up that she no longer got any champagne. She did not let herself calm down and became pawing. Then the pilot was fed up with it: he put the device to the ground in the meantime. The woman had to get out and pay 5000 euros.
The rebellious passenger then wanted to board again, but the pilot refused to take her. The aircraft then left with the 43 other passengers. The unplanned stopover probably costs tens of thousands of euros. It is still unclear whether the woman has to pay in full or in part for those costs.
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Home / World / Giselle (19) sells virginity for 2.5 million euros
Giselle (19) sells virginity for 2.5 million euros
- The 19-year-old Giselle has sold her virginity for 2.5 million euros to a businessman. He defeated a Hollywood star and a Russian politician who, according to the American woman, were also in the running. 'This is a dream that is fulfilled.'
On the website Cinderella Escorts, where you could bid on the virginity of Giselle, she tells that she did not expect that so much would be offered. 'I intend to pay my studies with the money and travel. '
Giselle was criticized for her action. However, she does not like that much. 'I think this new trend to sell your virginity is a form of emancipation and I do not understand why people can be against it,' she explains. 'Besides, if I choose to live my first time with someone who is not my first love, then that is my own business. '
In Germany, a hotel room would already have been booked to complete the transaction. Security officers from Cinderella Escorts will accompany her. The American can cancel the deal at any time.
Previously, Cinderella Escorts also sold the virginity of a Romanian model (18) to a businessman from Hong Kong for 2.3 million euros. The German company would raise 20% of the final price per auction.
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Massive typhoon hits eastern China, Taiwan, killing 5
Sep 28, – Typhoon Megi weakened to a tropical storm after hitting the coastal city of Quanzhou in Fujian province before dawn, packing winds of up to 118 kilometers (74 miles) per-hour, China’s National Meteorological Center said. A massive typhoon left one person dead in eastern China on Wednesday, a day after killing four and […]
12 years urged for Palestinian minor over stabbing
Sep 26, – Ahmed Manasra, a 14-year-old Palestinian, was convicted in May this year of the attempted murder of two Israelis in a knife attack last October. An Israeli prosecutor called Sunday for a 12-year jail term to be handed down to a Palestinian minor for stabbing an Israeli child in October 2015, his lawyer […]
Russia holds separate joint war games with India, Pakistan
Sep 23, – Russia’s Defense Ministry said about 70 mountain infantry troops arrived in Pakistan Friday to participate in the exercise. The ministry said the drills starting Saturday will help “develop and strengthen military cooperation between the two countries.” Russian soldiers have arrived in Pakistan to take part in the first joint military maneuvers, just […]
Pro-Kremlin party wins big majority in Russian parliament
Sep 19, – With 93 percent of the ballots from Sunday’s vote counted, the United Russia party was on track to get 343 of the 450 seats in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, CEC head Ella Pamfilova said. She said she did not expect the results to change significantly in the count […]
Ravaged by conflict, Yemen’s coast faces rising malnutrition
Sep 16, – Even before the war, Hodeidah was one of the poorest cities in Yemen, the Arab world’s most impoverished nation. Now, the destruction of the port city’s fishing boats and infrastructure by the Saudi-led coalition’s airstrikes over the past 18 months of war has deprived the townspeople of their prime livelihood. Sitting by […]
Air raids kill 23 civilians in jihadist-held Syria town- monitor
Sep 16, – The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it did not know whether Syrian regime or Russian warplanes carried out the strikes on Al-Mayadin in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor. Twenty-three civilians including nine children were killed in air strikes on a town in eastern Syria held by the Islamic State jihadist […]
Nigeria’s urgent polio vaccination drive targets 25 million
Sep 04, – Two toddlers discovered last month were Nigeria’s first reported polio cases in more than two years, putting the world on alert just months after the African continent was declared free of the disease. An emergency polio vaccination campaign aimed at reaching 25 million children this year has begun in parts of Nigeria […]
8 troops killed in suspected rebel attack in north Paraguay
Aug 28, – Paraguayan Interior Minister Francisco De Vargas reported the first five deaths from the attack in Arroyito, a town about 305 miles (490 kilometers) from Asuncion. Dr. Bernardo Jacquet, a physician at Hospital Concepcion, located some 55 miles (90 kilometers) from where the attack occurred, later said the death toll had risen to […]
Italy quake death toll hits 281, state funeral planned
Aug 27, – Three days after the quake struck the mountainous heart of the country, sniffer dogs and emergency crews continued to scour the town of Amatrice, which was leveled in the disaster, but there was no sign of life beneath the debris. Hopes of finding more survivors from Italy’s powerful earthquake faded on Friday, […]
Gun, bomb attack on American University in Kabul kills 12- police
Aug 25, – The attack began at around 6:30 p.m. local time (1400 GMT) on Wednesday with a large explosion that officials said was a car bomb followed by gunfire, as suspected militants battled into the complex where foreign staff and pupils were working. Twelve people, including seven students, were killed in an attack on […]
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Dr Stefan Ramsden
Lecturer in History
+44 (0)1482 465943 | S.Ramsden@hull.ac.uk
Faculty of Arts Cultures and Education
Biography Teaching Outputs
Stefan is a social historian specialising in the history of the British working classes during the second half of the 20th century.
His publications focus on changing patterns of sociability and modes of belonging, with particular reference to the impact of post-war 'affluence'.
His recent book, 'Working-Class Community in the Age of Affluence', has been published by Routledge as part of the series 'Perspectives in Economic and Social History'.
Stefan is currently researching working-class involvement in the St John Ambulance Brigade across the 20th century, as a lens through which to consider change and continuity in civil society.
Module convenor and lecturer on 'Thinking About the Past'
Lecturer on MA module 'Practicing Modern History'
Seminar tutor on 'The Past: Reality and Reconstruction'
Lecturer on 'The Bloody Code: Crime and Punishment in 18th Century London'
Lecturer on foundation year English Language for Academic Purposes'
Academic supervisor for PhD 'Heritage Consortium' programme.
Recent outputs
View more outputs
Working-class community in the age of affluence
Ramsden, S. (2017). Working-class community in the age of affluence. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315462936
Taskscapes and community in rural Yorkshire, 1920-1965
Ramsden, S., & Rowling, J. (2021). Taskscapes and community in rural Yorkshire, 1920-1965. The Agricultural history review, 69(1), 111-131
First aid and voluntarism in England, 1945-85
Ramsden, S., & Cresswell, R. (2019). First aid and voluntarism in England, 1945-85. Twentieth Century British History, 30(4), 504-530. https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwy043
'Class, politics and the decline of deference in England, 1968–2000'
Ramsden, S. (2018). ‘Class, politics and the decline of deference in England, 1968–2000’. Contemporary British History, 32(4), 570-71. https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2019.1568693
'When the Girls Come Out to Play: teenage working-class girls' leisure between the wars'
Ramsden, S. (2018). ‘When the Girls Come Out to Play: teenage working-class girls’ leisure between the wars’. Social History, 43(3), 418-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2018.1477329
Professor Joy Porter
Matthias Wong
Dr Jenny Macleod
Thomas Biskup
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IBP 2021 Award Ceremony
The ICAS Book Prize 2021 was awarded last Tuesday, on the first day of ICAS 12. This year, ICAS takes place entirely online. We are happy to share the recording of the live stream with all those who could not be there.
This year's IBP included two new languages, Japanese and Russian, and an experiment with prizes for articles. It is also the last IBP to be organised under the inspiring leadership of Paul van der Velde as its General Secretary.
ICAS participants could attend the award ceremony via a live stream on Tuesday. The live stream was accompanied by an introduction and interludes by Paul van der Velde, ICAS Secretary and ICAS Book Prize General Secretary. His speeches were, very appropriately, pre-recorded in the Japanese Garden of the Hortus botanicus in Leiden.
We are happy to share the recording with anyone who could not be there:
Nearly 1000 submissions, nine languages
This year's IBP included two new languages, namely Japanese and Russian. The IBP 2021 now includes publications in English, Chinese, German, French, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and Russian. With this multilingual approach, ICAS is increasingly decentring the landscape of knowledge about and in Asia. Moreover, ten institutions in Asia, Latin America and Europe either organised or sponsored the respective language editions. The secretariat of each edition, in cooperation with the IBP Secretariat at ICAS, put together a Reading Committee consisting of scholars in diverse disciplines, focusing on various regions and working on and originating from different continents. The reading committees together considered almost one thousand submissions.
Read more: Nearly 1000 submissions in nine languages. The Ninth (2021) ICAS Book Prize Edition
As usual, prizes were awarded in each language edition for the best publications in the two categories of the Social Sciences and the Humanities.
You will find them along with the shortlisted books and accolades of each edition in The Newsletter 89 Summer 2021
Prize for articles
ICAS 12 also experimented with awarding prizes for articles.
Paul van der Velde:
Many times I was asked whether it would not be a good idea not only to include books but also articles in the IBP. In view of the fact that the organization of the IBP alone is already a quite daunting task, I always friendly rejected the idea. However, I was well aware that, certainly in the social sciences, a lot of the academic output is in articles. Therefore we welcomed the idea of the Association for Hong Kong Studies to have, on an experimental basis, an Hong Kong Articles Prize.
Two prizes were awarded. See: IBP 2021 Hong Kong Article Prize
Farewell and thanks from Paul
Paul van der Velde will leave IIAS this year to enjoy a well-deserved and undoubtedly active retirement. This also means that this is his last year as Secretary-General of the IBP. Paul stood at the cradle of IIAS, ICAS and the IBP. We here at IIAS have yet to grasp the full significance of his departure.
Slowly it is sinking in that this will be my last IBP as Secretary-General. I do that with a smile convinced that my successor Martina van den Haak, who was IBP Acting Secretary from 2008 to 2013, will do so with much gusto. She will work in cooperation with the secretaries of the language editions and with Paramita Paul, who has succeeded Sonja Zweegers as the editor of The Newsletter and as Secretary of the IBP English Edition. Many, many thanks, Sonny, for all the efforts in the past years.
A special thanks to Alex McKay who has been involved with the IBP almost from its inception and for the past four editions was the Chair of the Dissertation Reading Committee.
Needless to say, I would like to thank all IBP Secretaries, Members of the Reading Committees, the Authors who in the past have submitted their publications or dissertations, the Publishers who provided the copies of all these wonderful books and our sponsoring institutes. Many thanks and it will come as no surprise that I am eagerly looking forward to the 10th edition in 2023!
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7744 Conner Rd., Powell, TN 37849
Karen Rhea, M.D.
Dr. Rhea joins Internal Medicine Associates in January 2020. Prior to moving to Knoxville, Dr. Rhea served as Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Geriatric Department at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. She earned her B.S. degree in Biology from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina and her Medical Degree from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. Dr. Rhea completed her Internal Medicine residency at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a Fellowship in Geriatric Medicine at Duke University.
Dr. Rhea looks forward to establishing relationships with new patients.
To request an appointment with Karen Rhea, M.D., call 865-546-9751 and press 3. Specifically request an appointment with Karen Rhea, M.D., with the appointment manager.
© 2017 Internal Medicine Associates. All rights reserved.
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★ Categories:
Theo Albrecht, Jr. Net Worth
Theo Albrecht, Jr. was born on 1950 in Mulheim an der Ruhr, Germany, Germany. Theo Albrecht Jr. and the heirs of his brother, Berthold, inherited one of the world's great retail fortunes, which grew from a corner grocery store in Essen, Germany opened in 1913. After World War II, their father, Theo Sr. , along with his brother Karl, took over the store and propagated the discount revolution in German retailing -- building their Aldi supermarket chain based on a no-frills, low-price strategy similar to Wal-Mart. In 1961, the brothers split ownership: Karl took the stores in southern Germany, plus the rights to the Aldi brand in the U.K., Australia and the U.S., while Theo Sr. got the stores in northern Germany and the rest of Europe. In 1971, Theo Sr. bought U.S. grocery discounter Trader Joe's. Together, Aldi Nord and Trader Joe's had estimated sales of around $35 billion in 2015. Theo Sr., who was kidnapped for 17 days in 1971, died in 2010, at the age of 88, and Karl died in 2014, at age 94. Although the Albrecht heirs, like the family patriarchs, have been known maintain a decidedly low profile, the families of Theo Jr. and Babette (former wife of Berthold, who died in 2012) are fighting in court over how control of Aldi Nord is exercised through three family foundations, with Theo Jr. accusing Babette of extravagant spending. Not much is known about the personal lives of family members. Theo Jr. and his mother, Caecilie, sit on the board of trustees of the family foundation.
Theo Albrecht, Jr. is a member of Fashion & Retail
Age, Biography and Wiki
Birth Place Mulheim an der Ruhr, Germany, Germany
Residence Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany
Occupation Part owner of Trader Joe's and Aldi Nord
Parent(s) Theo Albrecht
Relatives Berthold Albrecht (brother) Karl Albrecht (uncle)
💰 Net worth: $21.5 Billion (2022)
2011 $14.4 Billion
2015 $19 Billion
2018 $20.64 Billion
Some Theo Albrecht, Jr. images
Biography/Timeline
In 2010, his Father Theo Albrecht died, leaving the ownership of the German supermarket chain Aldi Nord and US supermarket chain Trader Joe's to his two sons, but Berthold died in 2012. Theo Albrecht Jr. and the heirs of his brother Berthold inherited the fortune, which originally grew from a corner grocery store opened back in 1913.
1950 births Albrecht family Living people German billionaires German businesspeople in retailing Trader Joe's
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Inside one of the UK's last Victorian-style Turkish baths
Wednesday 19 May 2021, 5:21pm
Video report by Hannah McNulty
Stained glass, original green and white tiles, decorated pillars and a plunge pool - Carlisle's Victorian Suite is one of the last remaining Turkish baths in the UK.
Built more than 100 years ago in 1909, only eleven are still open. There used to be more than 400 and now a campaign has begun to 'save' Carlisle's Turkish baths - even though the city council have repeatedly pledged to keep them open.
Around £400,000 is going to be spent renovating the baths, on James Street. There are calls for a long-term future to be mapped out.
Turkish baths began in the Middle East, but the trend for relaxing with different steam and heat treatments and the freezing plunge pool caught on in the UK from the 1870s.
Those wanting to preserve them say one in Harrogate attracts over 40,000 visitors per year and, with a bit of vision and a lot of cash, so could Carlisle's.
Visitor numbers pre-covid were in their hundreds and before it reopens next month it's due a lick of paint and £400k has been earmarked from the Borderlands project which aims at increasing growth in this region but there are calls for more to be done.
Leader of Carlisle City Council, John Mallinson, said: "I'd really welcome the opportunity to dispel any threat of demolition and I'm rather surprised that the groundswell of support for Victorian Health Suite and we really welcome that. We take it as an indicator that the people of Carlisle really do want this preserved."
Julie Minns, from Friends of Carlisle Baths, thinks this is a slightly hidden gem in the city and it needs a bigger profile so has started an online group.
She said: "I have had comments from people who've lived in Carlisle for 30 years who had no idea it was here
"I've spoken to people who've been coming here for 47 years, came off their factory shift and left feeling like a million dollars."
Plunge pool inside the Turkish Baths. Credit: ITV News
She continued: "We would like there to be a guarantee in the longer term for this building. it's one thing to say there's no intention to get rid of the building - you can't, it's Grade Two Listed - but there's another to say it'll be maintained as a Turkish baths.
"I think with a bit of vision and ambition it could be quite a compelling offer to local people and visitors."
Dorothée Pullinger: Why was she so important for women's equality?
When will the 'Galloway Hoard' be displayed in Kirkcudbright?
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HomeSmart LivingHealth News
Drones Bring the Doctor to You
By Ivanhoe Broadcast News on December 22, 2021 Health News Medical Breakthroughs
Cincinnati, Ohio. (Ivanhoe Newswire)— Some drones have the capability to deliver packages to someone’s front door. But the technology has limitations, so it’s mostly used outdoors. Now a team of scientists is working on a first-of-a-kind solution that would bring healthcare delivery closer than ever before.
You might have heard them buzz or seen them overhead. But imagine these robots on a special medical mission.
“We are building a telehealth drone that will have the ability to go inside people’s homes,” stated Manish Kumar, Ph.D., Professor of Mechanical Engineering at University of Cincinnati.
You heard right, inside the home! Something that no one has been able to accomplish before.
“That’s very, very challenging from technology point of view, because once you go inside people’s homes, you lose connection with the GPS,” continued Kumar.
University of Cincinnati engineers are designing and testing special sensors that would allow the drones to maneuver through a front door, into a patient’s living room carrying a tablet or smart phone. Patients would connect with a doctor for a telehealth appointment … and access a special medical kit attached to the drone so they can measure and transmit health information.
“We’ll be able to get a read on their heart rate. We’ll be able to know what their oxygen level is in their body,” explained Debi Sampsel, DNP, Director Telehealth, UC College of Nursing.
“It’s going to let, uh, all the people stay at home for, for longer time, more independently,” said Kumar.
Landing a drone safely in your living room. These researchers hope it will be all science and not fiction.
Researchers say the prototype is ready and tested for use in people’s homes. It will be ideal for patients who live in rural areas miles or hours away. In the United States, one in four people do not have a primary care provider or easily accessible health center. The U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion says increasing access to routine care is critical for improving health.
TOPIC: SPECIAL DELIVERY: DRONES BRING THE DOCTOR TO YOU: MEDICINE’S NEXT BIG THING?
DRONES BACKGROUND: Drones offer benefits and challenges when it comes to delivery. Shoppers are worried about privacy when it comes to drones landing at their door; however, 39 percent of them say it won’t affect their purchases. Consumers are worried, however, about damages to their packages, theft, jobs being replaced by using drones to deliver packages, cluttered airspace and property damage.
(Source: https://clutch.co/logistics/resources/drone-delivery-statistics-benefits-challenges)
BENEFITS: According to UNICEF, there are “exceptional” benefits. Delivery of goods and medicines by drone reduces the risk of transmitting disease, limits physical contact, and is faster than previous methods. Some reports suggest that drones’ use of aerial spraying of disinfectants in public outdoor spaces have also helped to contain the spread of COVID-19. In addition, drones can take off and land vertically in small areas. This will require less space compared to helicopters and planes.
(Source: https://researchfdi.com/drone-delivery-market-covid-19/)
NEW TECHNOLOGY: Drones have the potential to make an impact delivering medical supplies to areas hard hit by disaster, which happened in Haiti through a startup company called Matternet ( https://mttr.net) Drones could also provide care from a safe distance if a patient was highly contagious and could deliver medicine to the bedside of a patient from the pharmacy, eliminating human steps and interaction if needed. Also, for the elderly this could be useful because it could allow people to receive care at home for a longer period of time, which would extend their independence.
(Source: https://www.dronesinhealthcare.com/)
mille7m9@ucmail.uc.edu
Read the entire Doctor Q&A for Manish Kumar, Ph.D., Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Previous ArticlePropel Stent Clears Chronic Sinusitis
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Your Brain on Meditation
Limb Lengthening: Chandler’s Journey
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Greenfield Continues Living in Fantasyland
Greenfield continues living in a fantasyland dreamed up by Chuck Schumer and the coastal liberals bankrolling her campaign.
DES MOINES, Iowa -- As we enter the last week of the election, failed real estate executive Theresa Greenfield continues living in a fantasyland dreamed up by Chuck Schumer and the coastal liberals bankrolling her campaign.
SHOT: Yesterday, Greenfield reiterated the disingenuous claim that she’s going to “do what we’ve been doing from Day 1, which is go out there” and “keep traveling.”
CHASER: As of September, after FIFTEEN MONTHS of campaigning, Greenfield still hadn’t visited nearly half the counties in Iowa. Not to mention many of her so-called “public events” were clearly *private* events, closed to the public and carefully guarded from cameras and the press.
SHOT:
That was a lot of disingenuous talking points to swallow, so here’s big gulp of a CHASER:
Greenfield has been anything but “clear” on court packing. In May, Greenfield said she didn’t “believe we need to expand the Supreme Court.” Then immediately after President Trump announced his plan to nominate a judge to fill the vacant seat, Greenfield jolted to the Left to align with AOC and Chuck Schumer and said, “I wouldn’t say I’ve formed an opinion on that.” She was then forced to walk back these comments, shifting her position once again.
“Getting big money out of our politics” is precisely what makes Theresa Greenfield the most hypocritical candidate Iowa has ever seen. She has benefitted from more outside spending (100+ MILLION) and raised more money from coastal elites and out-of-state liberals than any candidate in Iowa history.
OpenSecrets reports more than 92 percent of her contributions ($26.6 million) came from out-of-state.
Greenfield top donations hail from the following metro areas:
New York – $3,255,788
Washington, DC Metro – $2,269,323
San Francisco – $2,256,387
Boston – $2,003,111
Los Angeles-Long Beach – $1,793,343
Still have a bad taste in your mouth? Here’s one more REMINDER to clear it all up: Greenfield has been hit with two FEC complaints for illegal coordination, another for breaking other campaign finance laws, and she was flagged by the Federal Election Commission for accepting illegal excessive contributions (which she has now missed the deadline for)
BOTTOM LINE: In the final days of the campaign, Theresa Greenfield has continued her pattern of lies and deception, but the truth is perfectly clear: Two-Faced Theresa is a fraud, and Iowans can see through her history of lies and deception.
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THE WILD WIRE - BLOG #14
MOOSE MATCH-UP
In the middle of its three-games-in-three-days scenario this past weekend, the Wild (and its fans) got a glimpse at the AHL’s top squad, the Manitoba Moose.
The two sides hadn’t played since late October, and at that point, Manitoba was 3-3-0-0 after a split at Wells Fargo Arena.
Since that point, the Moose are 23-3-2-2, including their 4-3 win over the Wild Saturday night. Manitoba scored in the opening minute Saturday and eventually opened up a 3-0 lead. Give the Wild kudos for climbing back into the game, but getting that far behind the eight-ball against the league’s top team was not a recipe for success.
The Wild and Moose square off twice more this weekend as Iowa makes its first trip of the season north of the border. All-time, the Wild is 7-1-0-0 in Winnipeg.
KUNIN TO THE CLASSIC
Wild forward Luke Kunin was selected to represent the organization at the upcoming 2018 AHL All-Star Classic in Utica, New York.
Kunin will skate for the Central Division in the three-on-three tournament format.
Kunin becomes the fourth all-star in team history, joining defensemen Matt Dumba (2015) and Gustav Olofsson (2016), as well as winger Alex Tuch (who replaced Teemu Pulkkinen) last season.
Here’s to hoping the injury Kunin suffered Saturday night versus Manitoba doesn’t keep him from participating in the festivities. Initial word is that he’s day-to-day.
RED, WHITE AND BLUM
Introducing the 2018 U.S. Olympic Men’s, Women’s & Paralympic Sled rosters! #TeamUSA 🇺🇸
Details → https://t.co/JcdKE6nLsz pic.twitter.com/Kl774zltCX
— USA Hockey (@usahockey) January 1, 2018
Former Wild defenseman Jon Blum has been named a member of Team USA’s men’s ice hockey team at the 2018 Winter Olympics, which take place in South Korea next month.
Blum, currently playing for HC Sochi in Russia’s KHL, spent two seasons (2013-2015) with the Wild organization, playing 19 games with Minnesota and 120 with Iowa.
Congrats to “Blummer” on what I’m sure we’ll be an awesome experience!
Two other Team USA member also have “Wild ties”:
- Jordan Greenway: Minnesota’s 2nd round draft pick in 2015 / age: 20 / 6’6” forward / Boston University
- Ryan Gunderson: 5’10” defenseman / Bensalem, PA / played for the Houston Aeros (AHL) in the 2009-2010 season, when they were Minnesota’s affiliate
Tomorrow night (January 9) at 7 p.m. is our monthly “Hockey Gone Wild” radio program on 1460 KXNO with yours truly. Jacob Born, our newly hired PR guru, will join me and I’ll be sure to make him feel uncomfortable, as it will be his first time “on the air” with the organization. We’ll have a Minnesota Wild and Iowa Wild interview, plus a ton of hockey conversation…
- Wild Joe Radio
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Home » Business » Largest Retail Chain of Hypermarkets In India
Largest Retail Chain of Hypermarkets In India
Hypermarkets offer wide range of products including grocery items, shoes, clothes and beverages at one place. So, you do not have to roam around the market to shop for different household things, personal care products, clothing items and other things you require in your routine life.
List of Hypermarket Retail Chains In India
Hypermarkets offer the ease of shopping. Many retail chains of hypermarkets have been opened in India in the last few years.
Here is a look at the largest retail chain of hypermarkets in India.
1] Big Bazaar
This hypermarket is indeed a favourite among the masses. It was established in the year 2001 and is owned by the Future Group. The popular retail chain offers just about everything you require for your day to day use.
Food items, home improvement products, furniture, jewellery, footwear, toys, sports equipments, beauty products, craft supplies, personal care products, apparels and various other things are sold at its retail outlets.
Many attractive schemes and offers are launched by Big Bazaar every now and then to benefit the customers. These offers are a good way to boast their sale.
There are more than 250 Big Bazaar stores located in around 120 towns and cities in India. These outlets have been running successfully and the brand is expected to open many more stores in the times to come.
2] More
This hypermarket chain is among the largest in the country. It was established in the year 2007. More was earlier owned by the esteemed Aditya Birla Group. It is said that the Aditya Birla Group later sold it to Samara Capital.
It is known to be the fourth largest hypermarket chain in the country. There are numerous More stores operating in different Indian states including Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and NCR among others.
It has also launched its online grocery stores by the name MyMoreStore. These stores provide online grocery retail services in NCR, Pune and Bangalore.
3] Spencer’s Retail
Spencers is owned by RPG Group. The largest Spencers store is opened in Kolkata. There are several Spencers stores in various other parts of the country. These outlets provide fresh and packaged food, electronics, apparel, books, cosmetics and household items.
The renowned chain of Hypermarket operates in more than 35 cities in the country and has around 160 stores. The brand owned by RP Sanjiv Goenka Group acquired the retail chain Nature’s Basket in May this year. This has strengthened its position in the market.
4] DMart
DMart also known by the name Avenue Supermart is yet another big retail chain in India. There are over 180 DMart stores located in different parts of the country. The first D-Mart store was launched in Powai in the year 2002.
Photo: DMart
DMart stores can easily be found in the Indian states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh Tamil Nadu and NCR.
The headquarters of the retail chain is located in Mumbai. Almost everything including beauty products, apparels, home appliances, fresh and processed food, grains, cereals, kitchenware and cosmetics are available here.
5] Easy Day
This retail chain of hypermarket in India is owned by Future Retail Ltd. Its first store was opened in Ludhiana, Punjab. Local residents were employed in the store after giving rigorous training to manage the retail outlets.
Today, there are more than 500 Easyday stores operating in 15 Indian states including Punajab, Haryana, Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu among others. More than 75,000 customers shop from these stores each day.
6] Reliance Fresh
Reliance Fresh forms a part of the renowned Reliance Industries of India. It was founded in the year 2007. It is known to offer fresh vegetables and fruits at the most reasonable price. There are hundreds of Reliance Fresh stores across the country.
Tonnes of fresh fruits and vegetables are sold here every day. The store is always stocked with wide variety of fruits and vegetables. It also offers others items such as processed food, beverages, cereals, pulses, cosmetics and home care products.
Reliance Fresh has built a good customer base owing to its quality products and quick service. It has its presence in around 93 cities in India.
7] Star Bazaar
Star Bazaar is owned and managed by Tata Group’s Trent Westside. It has opened hyper markets by the name Star Hyper. Star Hyper stores are located in several parts of the country including Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolpapur, Bengaluru and Pune.
You will find a wide range of clothes for men, women and children at this store. Beautiful accessories and wide range of footwear are also available here.
Grocery items, beauty products, bakery products and various household things are available here at reasonable rates. The retail chain believes in providing quality products to its customers. They also offer convenience of shopping by providing easy home delivery service. No wonder, Star Hyper has created a strong foothold in the market.
8] HyperCity
HyperCity Retail stores came into existence back in the year 2006. The brand was earlier a part of the K. Raheja Corp. Group but is now owned by the Future Group. This mega hypermarket chain offers numerous products.
You can lay hands at fresh and packaged food items, apparels, personal care products and household things at the HyperCity store. There are around 20 HyperCity stores opened in different parts of the country.
You will find HyperCity stores in different Indian cities including Jaipur, Bhopal, Navi Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Vadodara, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad to name a few.
9] Lulu Hypermarket
LuLu Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate company that operates a chain of hypermarkets and retail companies. It headquartered in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It was founded in 2000 by M. A. Yusuff Ali who hails from Nattika, Thrissur district in Kerala, India.
10] Spar Hypermarket
SPAR Hypermarkets India is a result of a strategic partnership between Dubai based Landmark Group’s Max Hypermarkets India Pvt Ltd. and Amsterdam based SPAR International. The company started with one store in 1932 and now comprises of 12,400+ stores in 43 countries across 4 continents.
At the heart of these core values is the commitment of SPAR stores worldwide towards Freshness, Choice, Value, & Service.
Big Bazaar DMart HyperCity Hypermarket Reliance Fresh Star Bazaar
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Congregation Beth El Cantor Elaya Jenkins-Adelberg with Rabbi Rebekkah Stern (left) and Rabbi Yoel Kahn.
Honors, happenings, comings & goings — Dec. 2018
By Rob Gloster | December 21, 2018
The sensational boys soccer team at Jewish Community High School of the Bay made an unprecedented run to the divisional title game in late November, but then lost 2-1 to to Anderson Valley Jr.-Sr. High School in Boonville. The North Coast Section’s Division III championship game had been delayed two weeks by smoke from Northern California wildfires.
After a scoreless first half, a header by junior forward Ethan Finestone, off a pass from Sam Lieberman, gave the JCHS Wolves the lead in the 54th minute. But the Panthers evened the score on a penalty kick 12 minutes later, then got the decisive goal on another penalty kick in the 76th minute. The JCHS defense allowed only two shots on goal the entire game.
“This season was so special because of how the team continually improved and how it grew together as the season advanced,” coach Aaron Pollock said. “That improvement and growth led to such an exciting run in the NCS playoffs where, despite the disappointing result in the final game, we outscored our opponents 13-3.”
Matt Epstein (back left) stands with Lori Starr and Adam Swig, all honored by the Irish-Israeli-Italian Society of San Francisco. Seated from left, society co-president Quentin Kopp and secretary John Shimmon.
In what must have been the year’s final celebration of Israel’s 70th birthday, the Irish-Israeli-Italian Society of San Francisco held a gala luncheon Dec. 10 at the city’s Italian Athletic Club. More than 250 members and guests enjoyed Israeli cuisine and feted three honorees: Contemporary Jewish Museum executive director Lori Starr; community event entrepreneur Adam Swig; and Matt Epstein, director of security at the JCCSF and a fire chief in Sonoma County. Epstein saved the day by grabbing one of the lit candles from an unsteady Hanukkah menorah as it fell onto the paper-covered head table, prompting cheers from the crowd. He’d just returned from his second deployment to Israel, where he trained with Israeli firefighters, and said, “I can’t tell you, as a Jew, what that means to me.” The society’s co-president Quentin Kopp (who is also a J. board member) and longtime secretary Abraham John Shimmon received lifetime achievement awards.
Marc Dollinger, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Chair in Jewish Studies and Social Responsibility at San Francisco State University, was one of nine people chosen to light candles on a gigantic electric menorah at the Golden State Warriors’ annual Jewish Heritage Night Dec. 10 at Oracle Arena in Oakland. Jerry’s Kosher Deli provided music and led the after-game crowd in a selection of Hanukkah songs. (They also celebrated the Warriors’ 116-108 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves.)
Sue Fishkoff speaks at Oakland Hebrew Day School
J. Editor Sue Fishkoff spoke to middle-school students in Oakland Hebrew Day School’s beit midrash (study hall) on Dec. 5. Associate head of school Bat Sheva Miller has been teaching the students how to recognize media bias, particularly in reporting about Israel. Fishkoff discussed journalistic ethics and techniques with the class, working with articles from a recent issue of J.
In early November, Holocaust survivors Anna Rubin and Henry Stone shared their stories of survival to kick off a five-week display of CHAIM, a mobile exhibit curated by Iris Bendahan of San Jose that travels to Bay Area schools and public facilities. Rubin and Stone spoke at the Saratoga Library. CHAIM, which earned Bendahan a Morris Weiss Award for Outstanding Holocaust Education from Jewish Family and Children’s Services last year, promotes tolerance through the lens of Holocaust stories.
Rabbi Adina Allen of Jewish Studio Project (left) with other recipients of the Pomegranate Prize
Rabbi Adina Allen, co-founder and creative director of the 3-year-old, Berkeley-based Jewish Studio Project, has received the Covenant Foundation’s 2018 Pomegranate Prize, which recognizes five rising leaders in the field of Jewish education. As the daughter of an art therapist, Allen practically grew up in community art studios, and at JSP, she relies on a methodology that combines Jewish text learning and creative arts. Allen, who was ordained by the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in 2014, received her award at a November ceremony in New York.
Anita Friedman accepting Silver SPUR award
Anita Friedman, executive director of S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services, received the Silver SPUR Lifetime Achievement Award in November. The award, given by the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), is considered the most prominent honor for lifetime civic achievement in San Francisco. In addition to her work leading JFCS, Friedman has served on local, state, national and international boards and commissions, and served as a consultant to Israel’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.
Varda Rabin was honored as recipient of the 2018 Judith Chapman Memorial Women’s Leadership Award in early December by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation. She was feted at the Ann Bear Memorial Women of Valor Luncheon at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, an event that featured Oakland Mayor Libby Schaff.
Varda Rabin gets Ann Bear award from Danny Grossman of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.
The Anti-Defamation League honored civil rights leader Clarence Jones and Clorox executive Laura Stein at its 2018 awards luncheon this month. Jones, an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, was a political adviser, personal lawyer and speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr. He received the ADL’s Civil Rights Award. Stein, who received the organization’s Distinguished Jurisprudence Award, was honored for her personal commitment to social justice organizations and her work on Clorox’s pro bono services. She is executive vice president and general counsel at the Clorox Company, which is headquartered in Oakland.
Woody Weingarten
Woody Weingarten has been sworn in as the newest member of the Marin County Commission on Aging. The 23-member commission is a federally mandated advisory council to the Marin County Board of Supervisors that works “to promote the dignity, independence and quality of life of older persons through advocacy, information, programs and services.” Weingarten, who served for a year on Marin County’s civil grand jury and was chair of San Anselmo’s Quality of Life Commission for six years, was managing editor of J.’s predecessor, the Jewish Bulletin, for 24 years. He lives in San Anselmo.
Joel Gussman’s Hanukkah Boat
Joel Gussman, commodore at the Cal Sailing Club, sailed his “Hanukkah Boat” in this year’s Berkeley Lighted Boat Parade earlier this month. Boasting a giant Star of David in blue lights and a large dreidel in orange lights, Gussman’s entry took second place in his division.
Elaya Jenkins-Adelberg was installed as cantor at Congregation Beth El in Berkeley on Nov. 30. Jenkins-Adelberg, who had her bat mitzvah at Temple Sinai in Oakland and served as a song leader at Camp Newman, has been at Beth El since July.
Rabbi Jill Perlman
Rabbi Jill Perlman has been selected as the next senior rabbi of Temple Isaiah, a 900-member Reform congregation in Lafayette. Her tenure will begin on July 1. Rabbi Perlman currently serves as the associate rabbi of Temple Isaiah in Lexington, Massachusetts. She was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2010, where she also earned a master’s degree in Hebrew literature. At Isaiah in Lexington she was known for her work in social justice, and received the Maurice N. Eisendrath Bearer of Light Award, the highest award given by the Union of Reform Judaism.
Jeremy Shuback is leaving his job as video producer at BimBam after six years. The Oakland-based nonprofit is a new media studio that creates digital content to raise Jewish literacy and give people (from toddlers to adults) the opportunity to use Jewish values, customs and rituals to become better and more involved citizens.
JCHS boys soccer loses in championship game after historic run
JCHS boys basketball dream season ends
JCHS basketball moves on to semifinals
Super Bowl Sunday’s other trophy: the Golden Tallis
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6 Ways to Watch the Sundance Film Festival for Free
And tips to avoid the crowds and hassle!
Jan 7 7 minutes read
Many Wasatch Front residents' experience of Sundance comes in cycles of good intentions.
Mid-January, the headlines begin popping up in newspapers and on newsfeeds—one of the largest and most prestigious film festivals is about to begin, practically in your own backyard. You think to yourself, "That would be fun. I really should get tickets this year." A week later, the rumors spread on Facebook or at work from that friend of your cousin who saw Emma Stone and James Franco walking down Center Street. That's when you remember: you were going to plan a unique date night to the festival. But by the time you log on to get tickets, most are already picked over or you become overwhelmed by all the packages, the prices, the planning, the traffic, the crowds, and you decide, "Maybe a Redbox will be easier. I'll plan better next year."
Then, come mid-January the following year, the headlines appear and . . . Sundance hasn't crossed your mind for 11 months. You're back to square one.
But seeing a Sundance movie doesn't need to break the bank or take hours of planning. Whether it's the hassle, the crowds, or the cost holding you back, here are six ways you can watch Sundance films for free, plus tips for those who want to better plan for next year.
1. Take advantage of Best of Fest Sundance tickets.
To give back to the community that supports their festival, Sundance offers free screenings of award-winning films specifically for locals. This year’s Best of Fest screenings will be on February 2, 2020, in Park City (6:30 p.m. and 9:30p.m.), Salt Lake City (3:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., and 9:00 p.m.), and Sundance (7 p.m. and 9 p.m.). The titles of the films will be released February 1, and locals can reserve tickets using Sundance’s eWaitlist two hours before a film screening. Learn more here.
Tip from a seasoned local: When reserving tickets online or in person, be sure to log in or arrive early, as tickets can disappear fast. It’s also smart to come with a backup plan, in case the movie you most want to see is sold out.
2. Enjoy a free Townie Tuesday film.
Summit County residents get an extra perk during Sundance with special, free film screenings on January 28, 2020, at the library (9 p.m.) and the Redstone Cinemas (7 p.m.). These, too, will be distributed through Sundance’s eWaitlist two hours before the film screening. Learn more here.
Tip from a seasoned local: If all the Sundance ticket packages and passes seem overwhelming but there is a specific film you want to see, take advantage of early access to individual tickets for Utah locals, which begins January 16, 2020.
3. Don’t forget the free summer film screenings.
If you want a more laid-back experience of Sundance, try the free summer film screenings Sundance Institute puts on in Salt Lake City, Park City, Ogden, St. George, and Kamas. Though the movies begin at dusk, the fun often begins much earlier with free concerts, Q&As with movie stars, and other fun events. While this summer’s film screening schedule has not been posted yet, 2019’s screenings ran from late July through August. Check back here to learn what movies are playing near you.
Tip from a seasoned local: All the films at Sundance are not rated, which means finding family-friendly content can be a bit like playing Russian roulette, unless you know what to look for. If you are concerned about film content, carefully read the film’s description, look up past films by the same director and writer on IMDb’s Parents’ Guide to get a feel for their style, wait for reviews to be posted about the films, or look up the films being shown for the Student Screenings Program, which the Sundance Institute selects specifically for junior high and high school students.
4. Have your local school take advantage of a Sundance student field trip.
Do you want to give your kids a chance to participate in a historic and iconic cultural experience? Then have their teacher look into Sundance’s Student Screenings Program. Since 2000, over 73,000 Utah students and teachers have participated in the screenings, which are designed to introduce students to the art of filmmaking and tell diverse stories from around the world. For more information, email [email protected]
Tip from a seasoned local: Did you know students can get discounted passes to Sundance? Sales for upcoming festivals usually go on sale in fall, so be sure to take advantage of the savings early!
5. Become a volunteer at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Do you want the full experience of Sundance without the hefty ticket prices? Consider becoming a volunteer, but know this option requires considerable commitment. The festival requires volunteers to spend at least 24 hours working over the 11-day festival—a commitment that comes with perks such as private film screenings, free tickets, access to awards parties and ceremonies, etc., depending on the number of hours you volunteer. Find out more information here.
Tip from a seasoned local: Demand for tickets is lower in Salt Lake City and Ogden, so those are the best venues for price-conscious and crowd-averse attendees.
6. Try checking your Netflix, YouTube, or Amazon accounts.
For those of you who prefer the comfort of your home to crowds, Netflix may offer a unique way for you to experience Sundance right from your couch. Several 2019 Sundance Films began streaming on Netflix, YouTube, Red, and more during or shortly after the film festival. If you are not concerned about being among the first to watch these independent films, you can still find many past award-winning Sundance films on Netflix, Amazon, YouTube Red, etc. The one perk to this way of viewing Sundance films is that many of these films have reviews and content summaries on Parents’ Guide or Common Sense Media, which allows you to find the perfect fit for your family.
No matter what your style or mode of movie watching, don’t let the crowds or cost of Sundance scare you away. There are many cheap, easy ways for you and your family to enjoy Sundance and participate in one of the world’s most iconic film festivals.
Tip from a seasoned local: If you like what you see from the festival this year, check back in fall 2020 for local discounted passes, packages, and the best deals for Sundance 2020. If you don’t think you can use 10 to 20 tickets yourself, split the cost and tickets between friends and family.
Here at the Kasby Real Estate Group at iPro Realty Network, we’re passionate about Utah’s vibrant local culture, and more than anything we love the people who make this community strong. For more local tips, interesting community tidbits, and housing advice, subscribe to our email or follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
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Miralem Pjanić claims he was disrespected by Ronald Koeman in brutal interview
"He had a cross against me from the beginning."
Miralem Pjanić was one of many misguided signings Barcelona made during Josep Bartomeu's tenure as president. Bringing in an ageing player who was never likely to break into the starting XI seemed a waste of resource at the time, and has proven to be exactly that since.
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But this is not the fault of the player, who was still entitled to be treated with respect as a member of the playing squad.
Following his departure from the club for Turkish side Besiktas, Pjanić has revealed his side of the tragic tale that saw him fade into the background while at Barcelona, hammering Ronald Koeman's management, in an interview with Spanish newspaper Marca.
Among a series of revelations and allegations, Pjanić claims he was disrespected and that Koeman had a "cross against me from the beginning."
"I don't know what he wanted exactly," Pjanić said of Koeman when he first arrived at the club.
"He didn't try to explain things to me or find a solution. I would go to ask him what he wanted from me, positionally or what I was doing well or badly.
"He didn't have problems with my play and didn't give me answers. Time went on and the situation went from bad to worse, without any reason."
Pjanić continued: "I was being professional, so this is difficult to understand."
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The Bosnian midfielder's main issue with Koeman was his lack of communication.
"I'd have preferred things to be said to me directly, but it was what it was," he said.
"It was a very odd way of communicating and it's the first time I've ever experienced this. I've had a very good relationship with all of my coaches. I don't know what happened, I honestly don't know. He didn't want responsibility or confrontation, because I guess that couldn't be handled."
He went on to explain that from the very beginning there were problems.
"My situation was complicated from the beginning. I got there after two weeks away, started to train little by little, alone, to prepare myself to start with my teammates. Three, four, seven, 10 days went by and the coach never came to talk about the season, about me, to speak about anything. It was strange, but fine.
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"It was tough physically and mentally and it killed my confidence because I had no communication with him. It was very strange.
"The coach is the one who says who plays and who doesn't, but there are ways of doing things.
"He had a cross against me from the beginning. It was hard to accept."
Asked what he thought Koeman's issue with him was, Pjanić was unsure.
"I've honestly asked myself a lot of times, wondering what I did wrong. Maybe he didn't like that I said I wanted to play more public," he said.
"But any coach would say 'okay, this is a competition and I like to hear that'. That might be it, but I'd have liked him to tell me to my face that I wasn't for him. It didn't exist though and I don't understand him. It's complicated because it's the first time it's happened to me and I've never seen behaviour like that before."
Read the full interview on Marca's website here.
🎧 From The Corner, with DAZN and JOE. This week, Mike Costello on why boxing needs characters like Derek Chisora.
FC Barcelona,
Ronald Koeman,
Besiktas,
Miralem Pjanic.
Check out the latest series of All To Play For, with Joe Cole and special guests.
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Jr. Blues Sign Hudak to Tender for 2022-23
by Zachary Defreitas
Springfield, Illinois – The Springfield Jr. Blues, proud members of the North American Hockey League (NAHL), are pleased to announce that we have signed forward Hadley Hudak to a tender for the 2022-23 season!
Our first tender signing of the season helps us bring in the New Year – a little later than normal, but this has not been a normal season by any stretch of the imagination. As the season continues to roll along we will be signing more tenders in preparation for next season. When we sign players we will announce them on our website and social media to give our fans an introduction to the newest members of the Jr. Blues family.
Our first signing and first introduction is Hadley Hudak, a forward from Canton, MI who is currently playing for Victory Honda 18U. He has appeared in 45 games between 18U AAA and T1EHL this season and has recorded 13 goals and 20 assists. In two seasons playing 18U AAA for Victory Honda he has appeared in 106 games and has scored 27 goals and 36 assists. Hudak is a former teammate of current Jr. Blues defenseman Andrew Schultz for Victory Honda in 2019-20.
We want to congratulate Hadley for his hard work to this point and look forward to seeing how he continues to progress this season!
A tender is a contract, of sorts, a player signs announcing his intentions to play for that particular NAHL team and that NAHL team only. Once a player signs a tender with an NAHL team, his playing rights belong to that team within the NAHL and he may not be recruited by any other NAHL team.Tendered players are not eligible for the NAHL draft, which is held each year in the summer.
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Home News 11 Dead in New Zealand Hot Air Balloon Crash
11 Dead in New Zealand Hot Air Balloon Crash
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) – A hot air balloon crashed and killed all 11 people aboard near a rural New Zealand town some 94 miles (150 kilometers) north of the capital, Wellington, officials said Saturday.
Wairarapa District Health Board spokeswoman Jill Stringer said the 11 people died when the balloon came down near show grounds north of the township of Carterton.
Police confirmed there were “multiple deaths” when the balloon crashed.
Witnesses told local media of seeing 32-foot (10-meter) high flames rising from the balloon’s basket before it plummeted to the ground.
“I was watering the garden and heard a noise, the noise of the gas to raise the balloon. I looked over and I couldn’t believe it – one side of the basket was on fire,” said local resident David McKinlay.
“It was just above the trees when I first saw it … it looked like he (the pilot) tried to raise it a bit higher … all of a sudden there was just 10 meters of flames,” he said. “It was like a rocket coming down – it was just unbelievable.”
The dark blue and maroon striped balloon was about 500 feet (150 meters) in the air and dropped quickly, turning to “just a sheer flame as it hit the ground,” where “there was a big bang,” he said.
Rosalee Thurston was in a car with her husband and daughter when they saw “a puff of smoke in the sky and then flames as the balloon fell to the earth,” she told TVOne News.
Another witness who asked not to be named said the balloon “clipped a power wire and tried to go up, then they’ve sort of gone across the road then it’s caught fire.”
Before the accident he had waved to the balloonists as they passed overhead.
“Then I heard the screams and looked out the window and heard it coming down. .. I heard them, they sounded like screams of joy but they weren’t,” he said.
“I ran down the road to see if I could help but by that stage it was too late. It was just burned out,” he told the “Stuff” news web site.
The stricken balloon hit power lines as it fell, causing electricity cuts in the local area for about 20 minutes, officials said.
Police said they have no details yet of what caused the early morning crash in clear, bright conditions with minimal wind. The region is well known for its hot air ballooning.
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Lowell Burton Gillman
Lowell Burton Gillman, age 89, of Cokato, died Saturday, January 11, 2020, at his residence. A funeral service will be held on Monday, January 20, 2020, at 2:00 p.m. at the Johnson Funeral Home Chapel in Dassel. The interment will be held at the Dassel Community Cemetery following the service. There will be a one-hour visitation prior to the service on Monday at the Johnson Funeral Home in Dassel. Lowell Burton Gillman, the son of Claude and Katherine (Wessels) Gillman, was born on November 13, 1930, in Dassel, Minnesota. Lowell grew up in Dassel until 1935, when the family moved to Litchfield. In 1944, the family moved back to Dassel. Lowell attended District #48 up until 8th grade and graduated from the Dassel High School in 1947. In 1948, Lowell moved to Cokato. Lowell was baptized at his grandparents’ home in Lamson and was confirmed at the Spring Grove Methodist Church near Corvuso. He had been an active member of the Walker United Methodist Church. He had served as a chairman of the Church Board, ushered, and was very involved in every aspect of the church. On May 23, 1952, Lowell was united in marriage to Sadie Caroline Compton at the Zion Lutheran Church in Litchfield. Together they made their home in Cokato. Lowell was employed as a Service and Parts Manager for Holt Motors in Cokato for 54 years. Lowell also worked on the family farm helping his father and son. He enjoyed spending time doing field work and tinkering on the tractors as well as woodworking. Lowell was a hard-working, humble and kind man and a dedicated husband and father. Lowell enjoyed spending time with his family. He was proud of his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. He loved getting together for holidays and special events. He was always willing to lend a hand from helping his son and dad with farm chores or fixing farm equipment to helping with projects for friends and family. He liked to travel taking trips with family to Texas, Vegas, Tennessee, Mexico and Puerto Rico. He especially loved when people would come and visit and have a cup of coffee with him. He is survived by his children, LuAnn (Thomas) Ollig of Winsted, Debbie (Denny) Johnson of Cokato, Bonnie (Dwight) Hatfield of Cokato, Stephen (Tammy) Gillman of Rockford, Stephanie (Boyd) Birdsill of Spooner, WI; grandchildren, Aric Johnson, Tina Joiner, Michelle Campbell, Lisa Grack, Chad Hatfield, Beth Ollig, Laura Root, Breanna Kresser, Sarah Gillman, Zachary Beise, Luke Birdsill, Abigail Birdsill, Alyssa Gillman, and Cody Gillman; great grandchildren, Kayla Grack, Brandon Johnson, Dylan Grack, Jade Hatfield, Hunter Hatfield, Tyler Johnson, Madison Campbell, Owen Johnson, Cole Johnson, Evan Grack, Jordan Grack, Grayson Root and Hadley Kresser. He is also survived by his siblings Marvel (Donald) Blom of Hutchinson, Marcia (Floyd) Anderson of Apple Valley, Mary (Harlund) Carlen of Dassel, and Irene Krejci of Hutchinson, sisters-in-law, Esther Klima of Cokato, Judy Compton of Eagan, and Lota Compton of Oklahoma. He was preceded in death by his wife, Sadie, parents, Claude and Katherine Gillman, brothers-in-law, Richard Krejci, Cyrus Weispfennig and father and mother in-law, Edmond and Esther Compton.
Lowell Burton Gillman, age 89, of Cokato, died Saturday, January 11, 2020, at his residence. A funeral service will be held on Monday, January 20, 2020, at 2:00 p.m. at the Johnson Funeral Home Chapel in Dassel. The interment will be held... View Obituary & Service Information
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At Bush Library, A Chance To Be The Decider-In-Chief
KERA | By Lauren Silverman
Published April 27, 2013 at 1:52 AM CDT
President George W. Bush leads his National Security Council in the Situation Room of the White House on Oct. 12, 2001. At the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, this Situation Room has been rebuilt with the original furnishings.
The Situation Room is one of the most mysterious and important rooms in the White House. It's where Lyndon Johnson made decisions about the Vietnam War; where Bill Clinton learned about the bombing of the USS Cole; and where George W. Bush gave the order to begin the Iraq War.
Now, that famous room has been rebuilt in Dallas, inside the new George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
Trying to get kids interested in history is nothing new for presidential libraries, and neither is replicating rooms in the White House. The Truman, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Clinton libraries all have full-size models of the Oval Office, but none has the Situation Room.
The Situation Room has the standard trappings of an office conference room: mahogany wood paneling, navy blue carpet and a large oval table that fits about a dozen people. That's how it looked when Bush took office. When he decided to renovate in 2006, Bush held on to the original room and turned it over to Alan Lowe, the director of the Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
"When I came here four years ago, in our temporary storage area, we had these huge crates literally full of two rooms," Lowe says. "So we've reconstructed the conference room here and the other room we received, called the Command Room, is now at the Reagan library, where they've reconstructed it."
This room, where Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney spent countless hours, will now be a space for school kids to learn about decisions usually made behind closed doors. Lowe says they'll use technology to connect the room here in Dallas with Reagan's library in California to reenact real-world events.
"The first two scenarios we're looking at are indeed Sept. 11 and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan," he says. "So we would have the students here and there playing different roles."
There will be a large flat-screen TV on one of the walls and students will have handheld tablet devices to provide instant updates — gadgets Bush never had, but technology that's found throughout the museum.
In another room, The Decision Points Theater, visitors can deliberate on the crises that defined Bush's presidency. Picture Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, except instead of Regis Philbin, your host is one of Bush's former chiefs of staff.
You have four minutes to answer prompts to address a situation, and can use dozens of touch screens to consult advisers. The scenarios range from the Iraq war to Hurricane Katrina.
Whether you're in this theater or the Situation Room, the message is the same: don't just accept what happened. Put yourself there, and make a decision.
1 of 9 — The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas uses news clips, interactive screens and artifacts to tell the story of Bush's eight years in office.
The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Dallas uses news clips, interactive screens and artifacts to tell the story of Bush's eight years in office.
Benny Snyder / AP
2 of 9 — Statues of former presidents George W. Bush (left) and his father, George H.W. Bush, greet visitors to the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas.
Statues of former presidents George W. Bush (left) and his father, George H.W. Bush, greet visitors to the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas.
David J. Phillip / AP
3 of 9 — Docent Patricia Flynn demonstrates an interactive with information about conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Docent Patricia Flynn demonstrates an interactive with information about conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.
4 of 9 — President George W. Bush's baseball collection is among the exhibits at the library.
President George W. Bush's baseball collection is among the exhibits at the library.
Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images
5 of 9 — Boots commemorate George W. Bush's tenure as general managing partner of the Texas Rangers.
Boots commemorate George W. Bush's tenure as general managing partner of the Texas Rangers.
6 of 9 — Memorabilia recounts Bush's two campaigns for president.
Memorabilia recounts Bush's two campaigns for president.
7 of 9 — Beams damaged at New York's World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 are on display.
Beams damaged at New York's World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 are on display.
8 of 9 — One of the exhibits at the library features the bullhorn President George W. Bush used at ground zero in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
One of the exhibits at the library features the bullhorn President George W. Bush used at ground zero in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
9 of 9 — An ornate dog dish is among the gifts given to President George W. Bush that are on display at the library.
An ornate dog dish is among the gifts given to President George W. Bush that are on display at the library.
Copyright 2013 KERA
Lauren Silverman
Lauren Silverman is the Health, Science & Technology reporter/blogger at KERA News. She is also the primary backup host for KERA’s Think and the statewide newsmagazine Texas Standard. In 2016, Lauren was recognized as Texas Health Journalist of the Year by the Texas Medical Association. She was part of the Peabody Award-winning team that covered Ebola for NPR in 2014. She also hosted "Surviving Ebola," a special that won Best Long Documentary honors from the Public Radio News Directors Inc. (PRNDI). And she's won a number of regional awards, including an honorable mention for Edward R. Murrow award (for her project “The Broken Hip”), as well as the Texas Veterans Commission’s Excellence in Media Awards in the radio category.
See stories by Lauren Silverman
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Does Fox's 'Empire' Break Or Bolster Black Stereotypes?
By Eric Deggans
Published March 18, 2015 at 10:22 AM CDT
Terrence Howard (center) stars in <em>Empire</em> with (from left): Jussie Smollett, Serayah McNeill, Taraji P. Henson, Bryshere Gray, Grace Gealey, Trai Byers and Kaitlin Doubleday.
As its freshman season ends Wednesday night, Fox's hip-hop family drama Empire has emerged as that rarest of birds in the broadcast TV industry: a show where the viewership is always going up.
When the series debuted Jan. 7, it drew a respectable 9.8 million viewers, according to the Nielsen company. But then the show about a family-run music empire achieved something few others have ever managed: It increased its audience every week, growing to 14.9 million viewers on March 4.
Anchored by powerful performances from Oscar nominees Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard, Empire features unapologetically black characters operating in a mostly black world. So it shouldn't be surprising that, among the show's average 11.6 million viewers per week, Nielsen says 7.5 million of them are African-American.
But that's where the other controversy about Empire emerges. Because some critics say the show has earned its success by trafficking in "badly written dialogue and ham-fisted stereotypes."
Pundit Boyce Watkins denounced the "ghetto-fied hood drama" as "coonery" he refused to support. One commentary on GlobalSocial Media News Service asked, "Do we need to go back to the times when 'pimps, whores, drug dealers and gangsters' were glorified?"
Still, much as I like to call out stereotyping in media, I think these critics are off base. Empire is much more than a collection of horrifying black stereotypes, and it moves further away from such narrow characterizations with every episode.
To understand why, you have to look at how stereotypes are typically deployed in today's TV shows and how Empire plays with them — along with other nonwhite-centered series such as ABC's Fresh Off the Boat and Black-ish.
Chuck Hodes / Fox TV
Taraji P. Henson stars as Cookie Lyon on <em>Empire</em>.
The biggest backlash centers on Henson's character, Cookie Lyon, an in-your-face matriarch who spent 17 years in prison. She took the rap for a drug deal gone bad so that her husband, Howard's drug dealer-turned-hip-hop mogul named Lucious Lyon, could build his career and their company, Empire Entertainment.
For some, Cookie is the embodiment of all the stereotypes black women face on TV. Dressed flamboyantly with floor-length furs, color-coded nails and eyelashes big as manhole covers, she's quick to anger and ready to throw down at a moment's notice — beating her youngest adult son with a broom when he disrespects her, while lovingly using the three-letter F-word to refer to her gay son.
Still, that sometimes-twisted motherly love is what helps keep Cookie from being an empty stereotype, according to Darnell Hunt, an expert on media and race who leads UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies.
"Exploring a character's humanity sidesteps a lot of pitfalls of stereotyping," says Hunt, a professor of sociology who co-authors the Bunche Center's annual report on TV and film diversity. He says scenes that show Cookie defending her gay son from his father's homophobia, her sharp intelligence and her struggle with continued romantic feelings toward Lucious help create a more fully rounded character.
This is something I also saw way back when HBO's The Sopranos was popular. Some Italian-American groups complained about the glorification of yet another Italian mobster figure, and they had a point. But the humanization of Tony Soprano and his family also helped move the characters beyond stereotypes to tell a broader story.
In Empire's case, it helps that the show has fleshed out some characters that were empty stereotypes when the show began. Early on, Empire presented Cookie and Lucious' eldest son, Wharton-educated Andre Lyon, as the picture of a clean-cut black sellout, with a white wife and few connections to black culture.
But in recent episodes, as Andre has struggled with bipolar disorder, we have seen him move from a cardboard villain to something more complex, with a wife who has stuck by him through his past mental issues in a way that deflates misconceptions about the emptiness of an interracial marriage.
Carole Bell, an assistant professor at Northeastern University who studies media, politics and identity, said many of the new shows on network television that feature nonwhite characters — including ABC's Black-ish and Asian American-centered Fresh Off the Boat — begin with more stereotypical characterizations that have broadened as the shows progress.
"I don't think Cookie is just a stereotype, but the character does reinforce some aspects of the stereotype," Bell says. "All these shows delve into a rich, specific ethnic culture, but they often start with the stereotypes. What makes all of these shows work is they have many elements — the characters aren't tokens, they're multidimensional, they're at the center of the plots. And the more diversity you have in characters, the more latitude you have; no one show has to represent all black people."
There are some simple ways to decode whether characters are empty stereotypes. Are they defined by their race or is race just a part of who they are? Do the characters of color sacrifice their own well-being regularly for the aid or comfort of white characters? Do they act out stereotypical pathologies for no logical reason? Are they isolated, with no other family, friends or lovers of color in a mostly white world?
But even the best portrayals of nonwhite characters can feature the double-edged sword of advancing some stereotypes while defeating others.
Hunt recalls how NBC's The Cosby Show tried to "re-code" black culture on TV, focusing on the upper-middle-class Huxtable family in stark contrast to comedies like Sanford and Son, What's Happening!! and Good Times, which presented black characters almost exclusively in poor neighborhoods.
But, Hunt says, some people also used the success of Cosby's characters to argue that racism and institutional inequities weren't holding black people back anymore, feeding into the politics of blaming poorer African-Americans for not working hard enough to succeed the way the Huxtables had.
And there are other criticisms for Empire; most notably, that darker-skinned characters, especially among the women, are assistants and servants to the lighter-skinned characters. So darker-skinned actors like Derek Luke and Gabourey Sidibe play, respectively, Lucious' head of security and executive assistant, while lighter-skinned actors such as Henson and Howard play the power brokers.
It's an example of how, in a world where network TV is growing more ethnically diverse with more shows about more different kinds of nonwhite characters than ever before, questions of how those characters connect to long-running stereotypes become more complex.
"Often, you have to ask, are you reinforcing the dominant views of society or are you critiquing them?" Hunt says, noting that, for some shows, the answer to both his questions might be a "yes." "That's a difficult topic, sometimes."
Eric Deggans
Eric Deggans is NPR's first full-time TV critic.
See stories by Eric Deggans
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Ari Lennox Has Always Felt Slept On. That's What Motivates Her.
By Michel Martin,
Janaya Williams
"I just feel like that kind of just followed me all throughout my life. I've always kind of been slept on a bit," Ari Lennox says.
When critics talk about musician Ari Lennox, they use words like "classic" and "timeless" to describe her soulful R&B sound. But it's been a long road to this recent breakout success.
After years of grinding independently by uploading her music online and working odd jobs like driving Uber, the 28-year-old became the first female signee to J. Cole's Dreamville label in 2015. With the release of her debut album, Shea Butter Baby, earlier this year, audiences are showing up and showing love for the other side of Lennox. That means frank songs about today's realities — from being broke or moving your first place to figuring out where you stand in relationships that aren't so clear cut.
Lennox's grandmother was one of the first people to recognize her talent, but even with that encouragement, the Washington, D.C. native says that she's always grown up feeling like an underdog.
"I always wanted to solo at the church and they didn't ever give it to me. But eventually they did and I froze. But then I killed it," she explains. "I just feel like that kind of just followed me all throughout my life. I've always kind of been slept on a bit."
Lennox says she grew up on the music of John Legend, Erykah Badu and D'Angelo just as much as Coldplay and Red Hot Chilli Peppers. This mix of cross-genre influences helped to shape her sound into something distinct in the R&B field. "I just wanted to sing like all of them and I think somehow like my voice kind of matured into this," she says.
It's Lennox's voice matched with vivid, relatable storytelling, like on the song "New Apartment," that connect with fans her age who are going through similar milestones.
'I think there's this narrative that the world just wants to hear about simple things or just extreme like sadness, 'Oh, I've just been broken up with' or something like that," she says. "I think that's why it's hard for people to realize, 'Oh I could talk about the fact that I had a dog once.' Those are some of the most beautiful songs ever."
It's still surreal to Lennox that she has fans all across the country singing her lyrics back to her on tour. She's happy that songs like "Static" and "Broke" are giving other people an outlet for their emotions and says she sees what her fans are getting out of her music.
"I think a lot of people just feel free," she says. "They feel like they're living their best college life or like their best independent grown woman life like experiencing their own place for the first time or just being able to relate to dating someone who doesn't have that much money and it's just like, 'Well, I don't care. I love you.' Or just rockin' their curls and knowing, like, it's beautiful and natural is beautiful."
Lennox spoke with NPR's Michel Martin about her ultimate goals for her music, Uber driver horror stories, her dreams of "retiring" in Washington, D.C. and more. Hear their conversation at the audio link.
Web editor Sidney Madden contributed to the digital version of this story.
Michel Martin
Michel Martin is the weekend host of All Things Considered, where she draws on her deep reporting and interviewing experience to dig in to the week's news. Outside the studio, she has also hosted "Michel Martin: Going There," an ambitious live event series in collaboration with Member Stations.
See stories by Michel Martin
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ProvidersSchool/Community Partners
Out of School Time Activity Planning
Optimizing how schools, community partners, and families
plan and manage before-school, after-school, and summer activities for kids.
For School/Community Partners
Our Advisors & Mentors
To make out of school time (OST) activity planning and management easy for schools, community partners, and parents while providing service providers an equitable platform to reach customers. As a public benefit company (B-Corp), our social mission is to sponsor and organize OST programs that help advance underserved communities.
Foster trusted partnerships
Through close collaboration with key stakeholders, including program providers, schools, community partners, and families, we strive to build service offerings and tools that empower communities, enable and advance young people, and drive growth and operational efficiency.
Advocate for equity and serve all communities
We are focused on advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion through the sponsorship and organization of OST programs that center around underserved communities.
Protect the privacy and data of our stakeholders
We are steadfast in our commitment to maintain the highest ethical standards and protect the privacy and data of our families, providers, schools, and community partners.
As parents of active school-aged children, Kiddo's co-founders Garrick Yau and Matt Yeh were frustrated with the absence of a single digital space to research and manage after-school and summer programs for their children. The information sources available consisted of paper flyers sent home from school and browser searches, which generated incomplete results with minimal information about the quality of the service providers and their programs. Garrick and Matt also wanted to take meaningful social action that would provide OST opportunities for children in underserved communities. The Covid-19 pandemic created an immediate sense of urgency to launch Kiddo because the pandemic has deeply exacerbated the social disparity in our communities, while crippling small businesses, including many OST activity providers.
Garrick’s commitment to education started with his first entrepreneurial venture that focused on building sister-school partnerships between public school districts in the US and in China. He continued to launch a second education venture in collaboration with Columbia University, where he received his MBA. The collaboration with Columbia University, Teachers College, focused on bringing students from different parts of the world and from different socioeconomic backgrounds together to investigate complex issues and participate as researchers, engineers, and ethical and creative contributors to academia. Through Kiddo, Garrick and Matt are able to help provide valuable OST experiences to children of all backgrounds.
Kiddo is a multi-dimensional, mission-focused company that provides families and OST program providers a trustworthy platform to connect, while delivering schools and community partners comprehensive tools that streamline OST activity planning and management
Dr. Chris Clouet is a former special advisor to the Commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE). His work with districts focuses on providing greater access to technical support to promote system operational efficiency and district health in the areas of financial stability, positive climate and culture, equitable outcomes, effective board governance, transformative leadership, high quality instruction, and engaging content/curriculum.
As a superintendent of schools for the last two decades, Dr. Clouet has led diverse urban, suburban and rural districts throughout Connecticut and in New York. He brings extensive knowledge in implementing innovative programs that enhance and emphasize student achievement, the instructional core, and student voice as keys to district improvement and overall system success. Dr. Clouet’s international experience includes leading educator visits, research, and professional learning in various other countries. Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, he began his classroom career in Bridgeport Public Schools as an elementary and secondary educator teaching bilingual, English as a Second Language (ESL), math, language arts, World Language and communications media as well as serving as an ESL instructor in the Adult Education program.
Ani Matson is the Founder and President of Digital Marketing Strategies (DMS), an independent consultancy that helps clients make core transformations in marketing strategy and operations to power growth through digital advantage. Ani is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and currently teaches the “In Search of the Big Idea” course at Georgetown University’s Master’s in Integrated Marketing Communications program. She is also the President of the DC Chapter of the CMO Club and a Board Member of Every Mind, a non-profit organization that empowers individuals to reach optimal mental wellness.
Ani has extensive strategic marketing expertise, and before launching DMS enjoyed a twenty-year career in a broad range of leadership positions that cut across marketing strategy, digital transformation and data analytics. She was formerly the Chief Marketing Officer for the National Education Association’s Member Benefits Corporation.
Kimberly Rusnak is the Project Director of the Children’s Opportunity Fund. Funded jointly by the government of Montgomery County, Maryland, and Montgomery County Public Schools to leverage public funds to attract private investment, the Children’s Opportunity Fund, champions, plans and funds strategic investments that improve the lives of low-income children and families in the county. With a focus on innovative, evidence-informed efforts targeted at closing the opportunity gap, the Fund identifies priority areas for investment based on unmet need, aligns resources toward effective multi-sector collaborations serving the county’s most vulnerable youth and their families, and seeks new funding sources.
Through her previous experience as a Program Officer with the Social Innovation Fund, she oversaw a portfolio of innovative interventions ranging from cradle to career. She has always been drawn to public service and spent three years in Senegal with the Peace Corps and also volunteered with AmeriCorps through Hands On Atlanta.
Cindy Stewart Rivarde joins the Kiddo mentor team through Maryland Tech Council’s Venture Mentoring Services. Cindy serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Rockville Economic Development, Inc. (REDI). She combines her extensive experience and demonstrated success in creating vibrant downtown spaces, encouraging economic growth, and promoting cultural initiatives to lead REDI in new and inventive ways that attract, grow, and retain businesses within the City of Rockville.
Prior to joining REDI, Cindy served as the Deputy City Manager for the City of Coral Springs, Florida and as the Community and Economic Developer for the City of Modesto, California. She obtained her law degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law, a master of fine art in painting from Towson University, and a bachelor of arts degree in dramatic art/studio art from the University of North Carolina.
Sally Sternbach is a Maryland Tech Council Venture Mentoring Services Managing Committee member and a board member of the Nonprofit Village and National Philharmonic. Prior to retiring in 2016, she led the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development and Rockville Economic Development, Inc. over a span of 14 years. Sally spent 19 years with AT&T federal sector, taught accounting and finance, ran a social services non-profit in NYC and a tourism development organization in West Virginia.
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Korea, France to collaborate in scientific analysis of 'Jikji'
The cover of the second volume of "Jikji," currently kept at the National Library of France / Courtesy of Cheongju Jikji Korea Organization
By Park Han-sol
Cheongju city government in North Chungcheong Province and two of France's national institutions will launch a joint scientific project to analyze "Jikji Simche Yojeol," better known as "Jikji" ― the world's oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type.
The city signed a memorandum of understanding, Friday, with the National Library of France, where the only extant original copy of "Jikji" is kept, and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS).
The analysis of the book's materials and its state of preservation will be carried out by the Cheongju Early Printing Museum, Chungbuk National University's paper-based artifacts preservation center and CNRS's conservation and analysis center. The research findings will be announced via international academic journals and conferences.
Through this collaborative research, Cheongju will push ahead with its project to produce some 60 faithful copies of "Jikji" that can reflect the condition of its original paper material and printing method. Although the city mulled over the project back in 2007, it then failed to come to fruition due to the lack of technology necessary for detailed analysis of the pages without damaging the original.
The Buddhist text was published late during the 918-1392 Goryeo Kingdom in 1377, at Cheongju's Heungdeok Temple ― 78 years before the Gutenberg Bible, which was widely known as one of the earliest books printed using mass-produced metal type in Europe.
The artifact was enlisted on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2001.
The book was first acquired by Collin de Plancy, a French consul in Seoul, in the late 19th century. Later, it went into the hands of collector Henri Vever, whose death prompted its donation to the National Library of France in 1952. The original metal type print had two volumes, but only the second has survived.
hansolp@koreatimes.co.kr More articles by this reporter
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10.22.2018 / Awards
Earl G. Graves School of Business & Management Building Wins AIA Baltimore Excellence in Design Award
The prestigious awards program has recognized the new six-story, 135,000-square-foot building at Morgan State University in the Institutional Architecture category.
Replacing the School’s 1970s-era facility, the new building supports the University’s business and management programs and services with state-of-the-art learning, study, and collaboration environments, along with inviting public spaces that nurture community engagement. The design reflects the energy and spirit of the School, offering a framework for creating a strong academic community, while embodying the University’s commitment to sustainability.
Architecturally, the triangular building serves as a physical bridge between the University’s West and Main campuses, and provides a metaphorical connection between the University’s past and its future. The building stands on the site of a historic moment in the civil rights movement, when Morgan State successfully protested for the desegregation of the Northwood Theater in 1963. The project also signals the University’s new role in the community, reflecting an ethos of openness and welcome, with the transparent curve of the atrium’s façade opening out onto the terraced West Quad.
AIA Baltimore’s annual Excellence in Design Awards program recognizes excellence in architectural design by chapter members as well as AIA members with projects in the region. Built and unbuilt work is judged by a distinguished jury of AIA architects. Learn more about the program here.
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Canceled flights put a damper on Christmas celebrations for thousands of travelers
Published December 27, 2021 at 3:05 AM MST
Many people who went ahead with family gatherings this month found they had trouble getting there. Airlines have canceled many flights, blaming winter storms and the omicron variant.
We called reporter Leslie Josephs of CNBC and asked how things look today.
LESLIE JOSEPHS: It's looking a little bit better than it did over the weekend. We had over 2,000 cancellations since Christmas Eve, which is, of course, not welcome news to a lot of people traveling. But it is getting a little bit better. Anyone traveling should frequently check in with their airlines, make sure that their flight is taking off - because these things tend to cascade. You get one crew down with omicron, and it can cascade through the rest of the ranks.
INSKEEP: I did hear from somebody the other day about a canceled flight, and they got the word more than a day in advance - plenty of time not to arrive at the airport to terrible news. Is that the standard now?
JOSEPHS: Yeah, that's what airlines like to do. Sometimes you'll see this with a hurricane or a blizzard or some kind of issue that they can see far in advance. They don't want people crowding the airports and having to overwhelm their gate agents, ticket agents and so forth. It's not, you know, what they used to do in the '90s. Now a lot of us - most of us have smartphones. They want to let people know as soon as possible, so they don't have those issues at the airport.
INSKEEP: You know, when I first started hearing about these cancellations, it seemed fairly simple to me. There have been more positive tests among airline crews, and so they don't have enough people, and so flights get canceled. But is it really that simple? Is that what's going on here?
JOSEPHS: Well, I mean, omicron is - the cases are going up. We've seen, you know, every industry, from Broadway to restaurants, get hit with this and having staffing issues there. And it is an issue for airline crews. I mean, they're not immune. They're largely vaccinated. Airlines are pushing the CDC to maybe lower the quarantine guidance for breakthrough COVID cases now to five days from 10 because that sidelines crews for a long time. And this is supposed to be among some of the busiest days that they've had since the pandemic began. So they want to get every dollar possible.
INSKEEP: Well, let's talk about trying to get every dollar possible. I think you've done some reporting on this. Americans will be aware that the U.S. government bailed out the airlines at the beginning of the pandemic. They've received tens of billions of dollars in subsidies. And the idea of those subsidies, like many subsidies across the broader economy, was that airlines should keep people employed. Airlines should keep people on the payroll. You would think that if they were keeping people on the payroll all this time, they would then be available in an emergency like this. But that doesn't seem to be what the airlines have done.
JOSEPHS: Well, they were not allowed to lay anybody off for taking that more than $50 billion in taxpayer payroll money. But what they did do is encourage a lot of employees to take buyouts. So they had lost tens of thousands of workers through those voluntary measures, leaves of absence. And then once the vaccination wave came around in the spring and summer and people started traveling again, airlines had a lot of trouble ramping up. And some of their schedules were too ambitious. And we saw cancellations. Usually, it's one airline at a time having some issue. Now what we're seeing is many dealing with omicron. But they're staffing up as quickly as possible, of course - dealing with the same tight labor market that lots of industries are.
INSKEEP: Wait a minute, did they spend the federal subsidies to buy employees out instead of keeping them employed?
JOSEPHS: They used it for payroll. So the large majority - employees were kept on the payroll. But they did take some hits for buyout packages and so forth. And now they're trying to hire back. They're hiring pilots as quickly as they can - sometimes offering pretty rich signing bonuses so they can have pilots and not have the issue that they're having now. But they're a bit behind still.
INSKEEP: Leslie Josephs of CNBC - thanks so much.
JOSEPHS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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Brother’s Illness Leads Longtime Minot Resident to Early Retirement
by: Malik Wilson
Posted: Oct 9, 2019 / 07:02 PM CDT / Updated: Oct 9, 2019 / 10:37 PM CDT
MINOT — A Minot resident who has inspired over 2,000 kids this year must retire because of his brother’s illness.
Glenn Blackaby has been living in Minot for over 20 years now, moving here from Harrison, Ohio, in hopes of beginning a new career, and to live with his sons and nephew who was stationed at the Minot Air Force Base.
After settling, Blackaby took on what he thought was just a seasonal job with Dakota Air Museum, but turned out to be more.
“It just so happened that the next spring after working at the museum, though this was a seasonal job, the board asked me if I would take on a full-time position as curator and I like to think that that had to do something with my knowledge of aviation and history and some of my other skills,” said Glenn Blackaby, director of Dakota Air Museum.
Fast-forwarding almost 20 years later, Blackaby moved his way up to becoming the director of the museum where he was able to give in-depth tours and engage with each and every person who came to visit.
This year alone Blackaby reached over 2,000 kids in the community whether it be at the museum or out at other local events
“A lot is fulfilling the mission of the museum. A lot of that has to do with educating the public about this great story of aviation it also has to do with, not only educating the public but inspiring the public with the story,” said Blackaby.
His commitment to that work over the last two decades cut into a lot of family time. The majority of his family left for Indiana while he stayed behind.
And his brother’s recent ALS diagnosis brought Blackaby’s time at Dakota Air Museum to an end, forcing him to retire and move to Indiana to help take care of his brother.
“I felt like it’s time for me to take care of him. He wants me to be there with him and I have other brothers that want me to be there with him. And so, I kind of have mixed emotions. There’s sadness with leaving this place and on the other hand, I’ll be with other family in Indiana,” said Blackaby.
Blackaby’s inspiration has touched many. Even those who work along side him say he can’t be replaced.
Brinlee Sisk, Front Desk Assistant) “I don’t think Glenn can be replaced to put it shortly, the work can be, but Glenn is definitely not replaceable to anybody at the museum or in the community,” said Brinlee Sisk, front desk assistant.
Blackaby said he will always come back and visit Minot and the Dakota Air Museum.
The Foundry owner Rachel shares home decor ideas for the holidays
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les Nouvelles - September 2021
les Nouvelles - September 2021 - Full Issue
Volume LVI No. 3
Empirical Benchmarks To Estimate The Valuation, Damages, And Transfer Price Discount/Capitalization Rate
Connor J. Thurman and Robert F. Reilly
Owner/operators often retain specialized analysts to perform intellectual property valuation, damages, or transfer price analyses. These analyses may be performed for transaction, financing, taxation, planning, accounting, and litigation purposes. Outside of the intellectual property dispute context, these analysts can serve the owner/operators as consulting experts. Or, performing dispute-related intellectual property analyses, these analysts can serve owner/operators—and their legal counsel and other professional advisors—as testifying experts.
Business Secrets, High Potential Assets Under Development
Pierre Ollivier, André Gorius, Philippe Simon and Veronique Chapuis
The importance of business secrets has increased pursuant to the evolution of new paradigms (such as the growing value of data and the development of IT and AI in innovation) and to the creation of a legal protection in many countries and more recently in the European Union and in France. In addition, one must underline that the present digital era creates high risks of illegitimate confidential information disclosures by human error or cyber attacks, as compared to the economy of past decades. Consequently, business secrets should be at the heart of any company’s strategy to protect and value its key confidential information and data, thereby procuring a competitive advantage. The value and the need to protect these business secrets as a particular asset are generally implicitly recognized in enterprises, but not yet fully established. This article aims at explaining how confidential information can be a business secret benefiting from a legal protection and, as a consequence, how its value and even its recognition as an intangible asset can be established to the benefit of the company and its users. The authors have chosen to refer to business secrets in line with the French expression “secret d’affaires,” as it seems to offer a wider approach than the expression “trade secrets” used in some national laws. All these assets relying on highly secured business secrets can also be the basis of immediate business value, not only of future value, for instance in R&D that leads to innovative business models and value creation in strategic alliances, competitiveness, reputation, expertise exposure, etc. High-growth enterprises are naturally particularly concerned, but medium and small businesses or even start-ups should not underestimate their interest either. In conclusion, the governance of business secrets is worth the investment, despite its apparent burden for companies.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)—An Australian Perspective
Kristen Migliorini
The pure economic benefits to artificial intelligence (AI) are significant. While economists are analyzing the impact that AI will have, there are some real complexities to AI that are in the early chapters of a largely unwritten story.
Compulsory License Provisions In Biopharma Alliances
Mark G. Edwards
Due in large part to the widely divergent prices of, and ability to pay for, pharmaceutical products around the world, the prospect of compulsory licensing by one or more governmental authority has loomed over the biopharma industry for several decades. With several hundred COVID alliances in place, and expectations running high for imminent regulatory approvals of multiple COVID-related therapeutics and vaccines, now seems an appropriate time to examine industry custom and practice with respect to compulsory licensing provisions in biopharma alliances.
Licensing SEPs—Round Three
Joseph A. Alfred
Patents that are essential to a standard must be licensed in a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory manner. If we understand the English and legal meaning of these words, there is no wiggle room for so-called super FRAND rates nor for charging a premium for a standard essential patent (SEP). We should be able to ask three simple questions and derive a FRAND rate.
Technology Convergence And The 21st Century Car
John Carney, with Matteo Sabattini, Bowman Heiden and Richard Vary
Technology is changing the world today in almost every market and product sector. Consumers are increasingly embracing technologies enabling “people-centric smart spaces.” Smart phones enabled a single device to efficiently navigate the Web and Webbased commerce of purchases and banking, host a multitude of applications, and take and make phone calls, of course. Technology convergence came to the attention of many consumers in the improved functionality of today’s smart phones. Through smart phones, humans can interact with their environment and the IoT. A recent study by Gartner identifies a number of the elements of this people-centric smart space trend that are driving convergence into many products and markets.
Connected Cars And Technological Innovation: The Right Policy For The European Union And The United States
Adam Mossoff & Urška Petrovcic
The car industry is going through one of the most revolutionary changes since the invention of the car.1 Connectivity, which permits cars to share and obtain information with other devices, is a central piece of this historic change. It will increase road safety, as “smart” cars will be able to anticipate events unforeseeable to human drivers, such as road accidents, broken-down vehicles, or pedestrians and cyclists suddenly coming onto the road. It will permit greater efficiency of traffic management by automatically changing the timing of traffic lights based on the existing traffic. Car connectivity will mitigate congestion, shorten commutes, and reduce pollution. Of course, connectivity will also permit fully automated self-driving cars to finally become a reality.
No Stone Unturned: The Fight Against Counterfeiting In The United Arab Emirates
Yahia H. Hamade
With glistening shores along the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) occupies a strategic position of regional importance. The UAE comprises a federation of seven emirates, consisting of Abu Dhabi (which serves as the capital), Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm Al Quwain. Owing to its nautical history and exceptionally entrepreneurial spirit, the UAE has an open economy with a high per capita income and a sizable annual trade surplus. Successful efforts at economic diversification have significantly reduced the portion of GDP from the oil and gas sector. The UAE’s strategic plan for the next few years focuses on promoting the country as a global trade and tourism hub and developing industry. The country’s free trade zones (FTZ)—offering 100 percent foreign ownership and zero taxes—are also helping to attract foreign investors to the desert nation.
Business Research Skills As Facilitators Of Biopharmaceutical Non-Core Patent Out-Licensing
Cornelius Enuezie
A European Commission report into patent licensing (Radauer and Dudenbostel 2013) concluded that the technology industry out-licenses more non-core patents than the pharmaceutical industry. A literature review suggests that this variation may be due to the perceived risks associated with holding patents in both industries, and these differences influence business models within each industry. Two distinct groups of patent professionals were identified; those within technology (referred to in this paper as technology patent professionals, or TPPs) and those in the Swiss pharmaceutical industry (or SPPPs). From a review of the literature, five business research skills were identified as being effective facilitators of successful patent licensing. Statistical analyses of the survey responses show that TPPs are more proficient in these skills than SPPPs. This discrepancy suggests a need for SPPPs to receive more business research training to achieve higher levels of non-core patent out-licensing. Findings from this study are used to develop a new workflow model that encompasses the application of these research skills to generate economic value in the form of extra revenue and cost savings. The global applicability of this model is suggested as an area for future research.
How To Identify, Prepare And Package Data For Monetization In AI
Charley Macedo, Nicole Spence, Benjamin Beavan and Barry Brager
As computers have become more powerful and the collection of data has exploded, monetization opportunities for an organization with respect to its treasure troves of data are becoming more and more prevalent. In order to assist organizations on how to prepare and package data for monetization in artificial intelligence(AI)/machine learning(ML) opportunities, 1 this article provides an overview of key considerations outlined at the 2020 LES USA and Canada Annual Meeting in a virtual presentation that was shared with the same title.
The Intersection Of IP And Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Susan Hallen, Kate Gaudry, Stephen Kabakoff and Sean O’Connor
In 1956 at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, John McCarthy coined the term “Artificial Intelligence,”1 which he would define as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.” The usage/capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) as a technology have been accelerating ever since, as computing power has grown exponentially, and more research has been devoted to artificial intelligence and its use cases. As a result, artificial intelligence has become an umbrella term that encompasses everything from Natural Language Processing/Understanding (NLP) to Machine Learning to Robotics to Deep Learning, and much more. Think of it as Cognitive Computing…a range of technologies that mimic the human brain and take actions.
Protection, Enforcement And Licensing Of Trade Secrets In View Of The COVID-19 Pandemic
John Walker and Dallas Wilkinson with the CEEM Advisory board
On June 24, 2020, the LESI Chemicals Engineering Environment Materials Committee (CEEM) held a webinar on the important topic of trade secret management and more broadly, IP management. The webinar drew together expert panelists from a wide range of industries and regions within the CEEM sector. This article further explores the issues discussed at that webinar.
The Fate Of Dependent Patents In Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, And Vietnam— A Comparison With The Situation In Germany And India
Heinz Goddar and Chandavya Ing
With the existence of the patent protection system, it is possible to study and research how the patented invention is invented based on the published specifications of the patent. However, with the advancement of technology, it happens that the later inventor or newcomer found an improvement to the earlier patented invention and wishes to put the later founded patent on the market. This challenge is seen a lot in advanced-technological fields such as telecommunication, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT), where there are many patents covering certain technologies.1 To put the later founded patent on the market, the later patent has to depend on the earlier patent and the later patent is normally called a dependent patent, which cannot be used without infringing the earlier patent.2 In order to commercialize the dependent patent without infringing the earlier patent, licensing from the right holder of the earlier patent is needed. Still, negotiations for licensing are not always successful. This disables the dependent patent from entering the market, and the public is not able to enjoy the new improvement. Also, the right holder of the earlier patent cannot benefit from the improvement embodied in his patent.
Effective Utilization Of The Patent Opposition System in Japan
Takashi Hinatsu
More than six years have passed since the patent opposition system, which had once been abolished by an amendment to the Patent Act in 2003, was reintroduced on April 1, 2015. In view of the current situation as to patent oppositions, the following article discusses effective utilization of the patent opposition system.
What Is The Difference Between A Software License Agreement And A “Software As A Service” (SaaS) Agreement?
György Kratochwill
The act of people buying and downloading software (or purchasing it on CD) is very general nowadays. And with these activities, a software license agreement is being concluded. But, as new technologies emerge, new business models appear, and they need a different legal background and a different kind of legal documents to protect them. The “Software as a Service” (SaaS) model is becoming one of the most general business models, as more and more companies use it, from small companies to big corporations.1 But what is SaaS, and why is it different from a more typical software license agreement from a legal perspective? And what are the main issues that must be regulated in an SaaS agreement?
Promoting Innovation Where Market Incentives Do Not Work
Sung Hee Choe, Amy Finan, Julie Barnes-Weise, Emma Wheatley and Gillian Fenton
There are well developed paradigms for licensing new drug and biologic technologies in the biopharmaceutical space, based on widely understood principles for the development and commercialization of human therapeutics, vaccines, and medical devices that are subject to regulatory oversight. A typical license for an investigational therapeutic may involve upfront consideration, milestone payments that correspond to key inflection points in clinical development such as Phase I, II, and III clinical trials, and regulatory events such as filing of a New Drug Application (NDA) or Biologics License Application (BLA), and NDA/BLA approval by the relevant regulatory authorities. Typical license agreements also include earned royalties for a defined period, as measured from the date of regulatory approval, or based upon the terms of applicable patents, or a blend of these approaches. The financial terms of a typical biopharmaceutical license reflect the parties’ approach to modeling the anticipated future market for the technology. Many well understood and applied models that generate the net present value (NPV) and return on investment (ROI) of the technology in question assume that the future market includes populations of willing buyers and sellers over a defined, continuous period of time and a defined geography. The licensor assumes that sales revenue earned by the successful licensee will produce a royalty stream that satisfies the licensor’s expectation of the value of the technology. The licensee assumes that the volume of sales will be sufficient to recoup the licensee’s investment in the technology and in developing it to the point of regulatory approval. But what about situations where these expectations do not work?
Patent Waiver In The Time Of COVID-19
Madelein Kleyn and Enrique Longton
In light of the Covid-191 pandemic that has plagued the world since its December 2019 discovery in China, there has been growing support for the reduction or outright suspension of Intellectual Property (IP) rights related to Covid-19 treatments and therapies. Those who favor this approach refer to it as “patent waiver.” The IP rights most frequently mentioned in this regard are patent rights, although other intellectual property rights have not escaped similar scrutiny. The movement to waive patent rights has become more widespread over the last several months with the approval of safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines credited with reducing transmissions of the virus and lowering morbidity and mortality rates. These encouraging results are seen among those who have been fully vaccinated and those who live in places where vaccines are readily available.
LESI FRAND/SEP Study
LESI Dispute Resolution Committee
FRAND/SEP litigation and licensing is of utmost practical importance in an increasingly connected world and grabbing the headlines globally. So, a good time for LESI’s Dispute Resolution Committee to provide a study comparing the current state of play (July 1, 2021) in the major jurisdictions for such disputes, namely Germany, the UK, The Netherlands, France, the United States, China and Japan. We are very grateful and thankful to all of our authors, being extremely busy top-tier patent litigators in their respective jurisdictions to have delivered a very practical and hands-on guide to Fair Reasonable and Non-discriminatory/Standard-Essential Patent (FRAND/SEP) litigation and licensing within a short time frame. Namely, many thanks to Prof. Dr. Tilman Müller-Stoy and Alexander Haertel, Bardehle Pagenberg, Germany, to Mary Foord-Weston and David Wilson, Carpmaels & Ransford, UK, to Rien Broekstra, Boukje van der Maazen and Daan de Lange, Brinkhof, The Netherlands, to Marie-Ange Pozzo di Borgo and Jean-Hyacinthe de Mitry, Gide Loyrette Nouel, France, to Doug Lumish and Alan Devlin, Latham & Watkins, USA, to Nongfan Zhu, KWM, China, and to Yasufumi Shiroyama, Anderson Mori & Tomotsune, Japan. All opinions and views expressed within the following comparative study are solely the authors’ opinions and views and do not reflect the opinions, views and beliefs of their law firms, clients and/or other third parties.
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Geneva, Switzerland Just Introduced The World’s Highest Minimum Wage
Copyright Adobe | Roman Babakin
<a href="https://stock.adobe.com/images/geneva-city-street-rue-carraterie-view-in-summer-with-swiss-flags-on-the-street/88507953">Adobe | Roman Babakin</a>
By: Tricia Goss
Posted at 10:50 AM, Oct 06, 2020
Although some U.S. cities, counties, and states have chosen to increase local and regional minimum wages, the federal minimum wage has remained static at $7.25 since 2009. While that might sound low on its own, comparing it to the minimum pay rate in other countries can cause it to seem downright insignificant.
Case in point: voters in Geneva, Switzerland recently approved the highest minimum wage in the world at 23 Swiss francs (or about $25) an hour. Geneva is the second-largest city in Switzerland as well as the most international city in Europe (it’s the headquarters for the United Nations, and more than 40% of its population comes from other countries),
The country of Switzerland does not have a minimum wage, and voters declined to establish one in 2014. In fact, Geneva voters turned down the proposition of a set minimum wage twice in the last decade before giving this one a “yes.”
Adobe | KseniaJoyg
Experts say the COVID-19 pandemic made the wealth gap more evident, prompting 58% of voters to decide in favor of the initiative. Geneva is the third of Switzerland’s 26 cantons to do so.
Mercer’s 26th annual Cost of Living Survey ranks Geneva as No. 9 on the list of the most expensive places to live in 2020, up from number 13 in 2019. Recent research shows that more than 90% of Geneva’s inhabitants live in rented accommodations. The cost of monthly rent for a typical two-bedroom apartment in Geneva costs 3,000 francs (approximately $3280 in U.S. dollars) or higher.
The new minimum wage means workers will earn at least 4,086 francs ($4,470) a month for a full-time workweek, which is 41 hours in Switzerland. Comparatively, the average American needs to earn at least $21.21 per hour to afford a typical two-bedroom apartment.
Australia currently has the highest national minimum wage at 19.84 Australian dollars per hour, which converts to about $14.21 in U.S. dollars. Geneva’s new minimum wage will go into effect on November 1.
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There’s A New U.S. Quarter With A Fruit Bat Instead Of An Eagle On The Back
10 Class-Action Lawsuits That Could Owe You Money
Inspiring Couple Buys 2-Acre Homestead And Retires In Their 30s
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Two Americas: How systemic racism through property taxes impacts education
By: Elizabeth Ruiz
LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Every morning in the heart of Korea Town in Los Angeles, families drive by UCLA Community School to pick up food.
“I have kids and this food helps us out a lot,” L.A. parent Eddie Lopez said.
Principal Leyda Garcia says the structure of the K-12 school is designed to support families.
“Schools are so central and integral to young people’s lives and trajectories," Principal Garcia said. "So whether it’s having social workers, or access to a legal clinic like we do, or medical or counseling, it’s just this idea that the community is responding to the needs of the whole child.”
Supporting families at UCLA Community School is essential to the success of its students because many of them are living in poverty.
“We have about a thousand students, and we are 80 to 85% Latinx, about 95% of our students are on free and reduced lunch,” Garcia said.
Latinx students and other students of color feel the impacts of systemic racism through education. A lot of it has to do with the way schools are funded in the U.S. Historically, America’s schools are financed in large part through property taxes, the tax paid by owners of other homes and businesses in a community.
It’s a system that some experts say automatically puts low-income communities at a disadvantage. Dr. Bruce Fuller is a professor of education and public policy at U.C. Berkeley in California.
“In a lot of parts in this country we’re still highly dependent upon this property-tax wealth and that means poor communities have to tax themselves even more than middle-class communities, and even when they do that, they raise less revenues than middle-class communities just because these poor neighborhoods have very low wealth – both residential and commercial,” Fuller said.
Low-income communities aren’t able to supply their schools with as much tax money as more affluent communities. According to Fuller, states like California, Illinois, New York and Texas tax wealthier businesses more heavily and redistribute those dollars into lower-income school districts to help spread out the funding more evenly.
But even if schools get similar dollars from the state, UCLA Research Professor Patricia Gàndara says disparities still exist as parents and community members in wealthier neighborhoods are able to fundraise in a way that poorer parents can’t.
“In a community that doesn’t have all of those assets in the community, whatever they get from the state is it,” Gàndara said.
Some argue students who are determined enough can get a higher education and better life for themselves and their future family. However, Gàndara says that's not true.
“We’ve done studies of that and I’ve heard that too and it makes my skin crawl because I know firsthand that’s not true,” Gàndara said. “Schools that serve very low-income children often times don’t even offer the courses that are required to be able to get into college. So you can be an A student, but you didn’t take the courses that are required for admissibility to the university.”
Gàndara says Latinos are more segregated than any other group in the West. She says they’re likely to go to school with other children who also who have fewer resources and whose parents may not know how to navigate the system. Think about SAT prep and college applications. Gàndara says their test results are weak not because they’re not capable, but because they’re not afforded the same opportunities.
“Every once in a while, there’s a student who breaks out of a situation like that and ends up going to Harvard or something and everybody says ‘oh see, there’s the evidence that anyone can do it’. That is such an outlier,” Gàndara said. “As long as we segregate off the poor children and the children of color into their own schools, and the middle-class children who are more affluent into their own schools, the society as a whole doesn’t care.”
In her studies, Gàndara found that students of color who do have a more equitable future are students who are integrated with other middle-class children.
“They sat next to kids who had some privilege. And they heard about college which they would have never heard about in their own communities, and they heard about that teacher who really prepares you for it, or that class that you really need if you want to apply for college.”
Fuller says one way of integrating people of different race, ethnicity and class is through public policy.
“In California we’ve had a major initiative to build higher-density housing – apartment buildings – around transit hubs, around subway stations. These sort of simple devices in the policy world help to diversify the residents in local communities,” Fuller said.
Garcia says changing the mentality that minorities aren’t worth as much should be the first step. She says we need to create healing spaces where people feel good about who they are and understand their potential.
“Toni Morrison says one of the main functions of racism is distraction. Because you have to prove and over and over that you’re a human being, that you matter, that you’re a human being, that your language is powerful and that it means something,” Garcia said.
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Climate change making wildfires bigger, stronger, and more prevalent
By: Dan Grossman
Since the beginning of the year, wildfires have burned over 3.2 million acres in California. Since August 15, when California’s fire activity elevated, there have been 25 fatalities and over 4,200 structures destroyed.
In August, three of California’s four largest wildfires on record sparked. Currently, the largest, the August Complex fire burning east of Chico, stands at 803,489 acres.
“We’re living in a world with greater wildfire risk from one-degree warming. Two degrees of warming will intensify those risks,” said Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh, professor of Earth System Science at Stanford University.
Dr. Diffenbaugh says in the last 40 years there has been a tenfold increase in the amount of land burned by wildfires, and that number directly correlates to Earth’s warming from climate change.
He says the science is pretty straightforward. As temperature rises fuels dry out more easily, which makes less-prone areas spark plugs for fires. Then add in the changes in humidity, wind speeds, and long-term weather patterns that are all affected by climate change and wildfires become larger, stronger, and more frequent.
Seventeen of California’s 20 largest fires in history all started after the year 2000.
“Very careful, objective, hypothesis-driven research has shown that about half of that increase in the area burned in the western United States is attributable to the long-term warming,” said Dr. Diffenbaugh.
The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions says between 1984 and 2015, the number of large wildfires doubled in the western United States. It also estimates that for every one-degree rise in Earth’s temperature, the average area burned from a wildfire could increase by 600 percent in some places.
“We have two of the three largest wildfires in California’s history burning right now so it is a simple fact,” said Dr. Diffenbaugh.
The increase in fire activity also increases the strain put on resources.
Recently, national fire managers raised the United State’s fire preparedness level to five, which is its highest level, making all fire-trained federal employees available for assignment.
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Scheffler wins re-election bid with more than 70% of the vote
Barrett Lawlis
Lancaster Eagle Gazette
LANCASTER - Per the unofficial final results from the Fairfield County Board of Elections, Mayor David Scheffler will return for another term in Lancaster.
With 3,770 votes in his favor, Scheffler took 72.03% of the ballots cast in the Nov. 5 election.
Challenger Tiff Piko had 1,464 votes, taking 27.97%. She could not be reached for comment following the final update.
"I don't know how I could be unhappy with the results of the election. I think it reflects the satisfaction Lancaster residents have with the job I've been doing," Scheffler said.
He added he's kept an open door policy and encourages any citizens with questions about city policies or upcoming issues to reach out to him.
"I've always been very open whenever someone says they have an issue or question. I try to get them answers, I give them my number so they can call and make an appointment," Scheffler said. "However, I don't think a single person has ever taken advantage of that."
For his next term, Scheffler said he's going to focus on city finances. With the defeat of the proposed income tax increase of .45%, he knows he's going to have his work cut out for him getting the message out to the citizens.
"I guess I did a poor job in educating our citizens about city finances and government, and considering there's so much misinformation and so many misunderstandings across social media, I really do believe in the open door policy," he said. "I want people to understand what the city is planning."
For now, Scheffler said he will be focused on the city's budget. Introduced at Monday night's Lancaster city council meeting, the proposed budget is $6 million less than the 2019 budget.
"One of the things I'm trying to make sure people understand is that finances in the city are regulated. General fund money cannot be spent or given to the enterprise funds, and enterprise funds can't be spent by things funded by the general fund," he said. "It's one of the intricate parts of government that needs to be understood."
Scheffler added he's not sure what services will be impacted by the smaller budget, but "something" has to happen to help close the gap between the city's revenue and its spending.
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Test Review: PLS-5 English
by Leaders Project | Nov 25, 2013
Download: PLS-5 English Test Review – LEADERS PDF
The PLS-5 is designed for use with children aged birth through 7;11 to assess language development and identify children who have a language delay or disorder.
The PLS-5 is designed for use with children aged birth through 7;11 to assess language development and identify children who have a language delay or disorder. The test aims to identify receptive and expressive language skills in the areas of attention, gesture, play, vocal development, social communication, vocabulary, concepts, language structure, integrative language, and emergent literacy (Examiner’s Manual, pg. 3). The PLS-5 aids the clinician in determining strengths and weaknesses in these areas in order to determine the presence and type of language disorder (e.g. receptive, expressive, and mixed), eligibility for services and to design interventions based on norm-referenced and criterion referenced scores. Although it is not intended to determine if a child is gifted, it may provide appropriate supplemental information regarding their language development.
The PLS-5 consists of two standardized scales: Auditory Comprehension (AC), to “evaluate the scope of a child’s comprehension of language,” and Expressive Communication (EC), to “determine how well a child communicates with others”(Examiner’s Manual, pg. 4). Administration time varies based on the child’s age and can range between 25-35 minutes for children aged birth through 11 months to 45-60 minutes for children over one year. Specific AC tasks assessed include comprehension of basic vocabulary, concepts, morphology, syntax, comparisons and inferences, and emergent literacy. Specific EC skills include naming, describing, expressing quantity, using specific prepositions, grammatical markers, sentence structures, and emergent literacy skills. Three optional supplemental measures are also included (Language Sample Checklist, Articulation Screener, and Home Communication Questionnaire). Scores are provided at three month intervals from birth through 11 months, and at 6 months intervals from 1 year through 7;11. The PLS-5 yields norm-referenced scores including standard scores, percentile ranks and age equivalents for the AC and EC scales as well as for Total Language (TL). However, the manual warns against the use of age equivalent scores as this type of score does not provide the sufficient information to determine the presence of a language disorder, can be easily misinterpreted and have a number of psychometric limitations (Examiner’s Manual pg. 17) The test recommends that examiners calculate norm-referenced scores to identify speech and language disorders. However the test does comment that evaluation of a child can also include portfolio assessment, dynamic assessment and parent/caregiver interview (Examiner’s Manual, pg. 9). Caregiver’s responses to the Home Communication Questionnaire may support items on the AC and EC scales from birth through 2;11. According to the test manual, the PLS-5 may only be administered by trained professionals including speech-language pathologists, early childhood specialists, psychologists and other professionals who have training and experience in diagnostic assessment of children of this age.
Standardization Sample
The standardization sample for the PLS-5 included 1400 children aged birth through 7;11. The standardization sample was matched to the 2008 United States census and was stratified by demographic factors including age, sex, geographic region, race/ethnicity, and primarycare giver’s highest education level. Inclusion into the standardization sample required completion of the test without modifications. English was required to be the primary language for all subjects for both comprehension and expression. For preverbal children, English was the primary language of the caregivers in the home. Approximately 3% of the sample population was from homes that spoke a language other than English. No note was made in the Examiner’s Manual to match the standardization sample to U.S. census data regarding children who spoke languages other than English in the home. The standardization sample consisted mainly of children who spoke SAE (78.9%). The sample also included 4.2% of children who spoke African American English (AAE), 5.8% who spoke Spanish influenced English, 4.4% who spoke Southern English, and less than 3% who spoke other dialects. Scoring rules were adapted for children who spoke AAE, Spanish-influenced English, Chinese-influenced English, Appalachian English and Southern English so that children would not be penalized on test items that assess dialect specific linguistic skills. However these modified rules only accounted for a portion of the other dialects in the sample. No information is included in the manual explaining how participants were selected. The manual does not discuss whether participants with disabilities were included in the standardization sample. This is relevant because inclusion of participants with disabilities in the standardization sample lowers the mean score of the test and negatively impacts the test’s ability to distinguish between typically developing children and children with disorders (Pena, Spaulding & Plant, 2006).
Content: Content Validity refers to how representative the test items are of the content that is being assessed (Paul, 2007). Content validity was analyzed using literature reviews, clinician feedback, expert review and response processes. New items on the PLS-5 were refined from the PLS-4 to reflect current research on language development and were determined via literature review and clinician feedback. Children’s response processes and clinician feedback during the pilot and tryout phases of the PLS-5 development was used to ensure the appropriateness and breadth of test items. Tryout testing to evaluate the appropriateness and breadth of the PLS-5 took place between February and July 2009. Two samples were collected: a nonclinical sample of 455 children aged 0-7;11 who had not been previously diagnosed with a language disorder and a clinical sample of 169 children aged 2- 7;11 diagnosed with a receptive or expressive language disorder based on a score of 1.5 SD below the mean on an unspecified standardized language test. Since we are unable to evaluate the accuracy and validity of the language tests used to classify the clinical sample, the standardization process merely determined if the PLS-5 scores of the children matched their scores on other unspecified language tests. It did not determine the presence of a disability and the clinical sample’s true diagnostic status is unknown. As well, according to Spaulding, Plante and Farinella (2006), the practice of using an arbitrary cut-off score to determine disability is unsupported by the evidence and increases the chances of misdiagnosis. Currently, no commercially available test is considered acceptably accurate in identifying a disorder based on a score alone and research demonstrates that standardized language tests do not consistently diagnose children correctly (Dollaghan and Horner, 2011).
Items were revised or deleted if they did not sufficiently differentiate between the clinical and nonclinical samples or if the items were considered unfair or too difficult to score. PLS- 5 content was assessed for bias during pilot and tryout testing via a review of a panel of experts with experience in assessment issues related to cultural and linguistic diversity. The panel included speech-language pathologists and one psychologist who are professors at various universities in the United States. Specific information regarding the background and training of the “panel of experts” was not provided. As a result, the expert review panel may have been limited in its ability to accurately assess the test content for bias. According to ASHA (2004), clinicians working with culturally and linguistically diverse clients must demonstrate native or near-native proficiency in the language(s) being used as well as knowledge of dialect differences and their impact on speech and language. It is unknown if this panel of experts was highly proficient in the variety of dialects and complexity of linguistic differences for which they were evaluating content. Therefore we cannot be certain that test items are free from cultural and linguistic biases. Due to lack of information regarding method of selection of sample populations and diagnosis of the clinical population as well as the training and background of “the expert” panel, content validity of the PLS-5 cannot be considered sufficient.
Construct: – Construct validity assesses how well the test measures what it purports to measure (Paul, 2007). It was measured by comparing the performance of special groups of children with language disorders or delays to typically developing children. The TD children were defined as children who had not been previously diagnosed as having a language disorder and who were not receiving speech and language services at the time. The children with a language disorder or delay were defined based on a score of 1.5 SD below the mean on an unspecified language test. The diagnosis of each group of children was compared with their status to determine the diagnostic accuracy of the PLS-5. Once again, the lack of information regarding what measure was used to determine diagnostic status immediately calls into question the construct validity of the PLS-5. Also, as mentioned previously, the use of an arbitrary cut score has been demonstrated not to be an effective or accurate way to determine disability (Spaulding, Plante and Farinella, 2006). Clinical samples identified through the use of arbitrary cut off scores should not provide evidence for construct validity and diagnostic accuracy.
Reference Standard: In considering the diagnostic accuracy of an index measure such as the PLS-5, it is important to compare the child’s diagnostic status (affected or unaffected) with their status as determined by another measure. This additional measure, which is used to determine the child’s ‘true’ diagnostic status, is often referred to as the “gold standard.” However, as Dollaghan & Horner (2011) note, it is rare to have a perfect diagnostic indicator, because diagnostic categories are constantly being refined. Thus, a reference standard is used. This is a measure that is widely considered to have a high degree of accuracy in classifying individuals as being affected or unaffected by a particular disorder, even accounting for the imperfections inherent in diagnostic measures (Dollaghan & Horner, 2011).
The reference standard used to identify children for the sensitivity group was a score below 1.5 SD on an unspecified standardized test of language skills. The reference standard was applied to two groups of children to determine the sensitivity measure. One group was classified as language disordered (LD) and consisted of 229 children at least three years of age who scored at least 1.5 SD below the mean on an unspecified language test and were enrolled in a language therapy program at the time of test administration. The second group was classified with developmental language delays (DLD) and consisted of 23 children between one year and 3;11 who scored at least 1.5 SD below the mean on an unspecified standardized test of language skills and were enrolled in a language stimulation program. The test manual does not specify the language tests used to classify the groups of affected children. As well, the test manual does not explain why, other than age range, a distinction was made between the two clinical groups since they only differentiating factor is age. Therefore, the validity of these tests is unknown and we are unable to determine the accuracy of these tests in identifying children with language disorders or delays.
It should be noted that children included in the DLD or LD groups were classified with moderate to severe language delays. Children with mild language delays were not included in the study (Examiner’s Manual pg. 93). In fact, to better distinguish between children with a developmental language delay and typically developing children the distinguishing score was shifted from 1 SD (cut score of 85) to 1.5 SD (cut score of 77). The authors noted that the initial inclusion criteria were amended because at scores of 1 SD below the mean it was difficult to distinguish children with mild language delays from those children that were typically developing (pg. 93). This inflates the diagnostic accuracy of the test because it does not reflect the test’s ability to distinguish between TD and children with mild DLD. Therefore, the diagnostic accuracy reported by the PLS-5 demonstrates a spectrum bias, which occurs when “diagnostic accuracy is calculated from a sample of participants who do not represent the full spectrum of characteristics” (Dollaghan & Horner, 2011).
Many issues result in insufficient construct validity for the PLS-5. The reference standard was not identified and therefore could not be evaluated. Additionally, the reference standard used was not applied to the children classified as typically developing therefore we cannot be sure they are free from the disorder (Dollaghan, 2007). This affects the base rate, sensitivity and specificity measures and likelihood ratios. Construct validity is reduced because test designers excluded children with mild language disorders in order to inflate the diagnostic accuracy reported in the test manual.
Sensitivity and Specificity: Sensitivity measures the proportion of students who have a language disorder that will be accurately identified as such on the assessment (Dollaghan, 2007). For example, sensitivity means an eight-year-old boy previously diagnosed with a language disorder, will achieve a score indicative of having a language disorder on this assessment. For the group of children identified as LD (ages 3;11-7;11), the PLS-5 reports the sensitivity to be .83 at a cut score of 1 SD or more below the mean. According to Plante & Vance (1994), validity measures above .9 are good, measures between .8 and .89 are fair, and measures below .8 are unacceptable. Therefore, the sensitivity of this measure would be considered “fair.” It is important to consider the implication of this measure; a sensitivity of .83 means that 17/100 children with a language disability will be identified as typically developing and will not receive appropriate services. For the group of children identified as DLD (ages 0-3;11), the PLS-5 reports the sensitivity to be .91 at a cut score of 1 SD below the mean. This measure would be considered “good” according to the standards in the field (Plante & Vance, 1994). However, the reported measures are invalid due to spectrum bias noted in the typically developing and language delayed/disordered group. Additionally, because the reference standard was previously determined to be invalid or unknown, it is also unknown whether the sensitivity measures actually reflect the test’s diagnostic accuracy.
Specificity measures the proportion of typically developing students who will be accurately identified as such on the assessment (Dollaghan, 2007). For example, specificity means that an eight-year-old boy with no history of a language disorder will score within normal limits on the assessment. In the clinical study with the group of TD children, the PLS-5 reports specificity measures to be 0.8 at a cut score of 1 SD below the mean, which would be considered a “fair” measure according to the standards in the field (Plante & Vance, 1994). It is important to consider the implications. A specificity of .8 means that 20/100 typically developing children will be identified as having a language disorder and may be inaccurately referred for support services. In the clinical study with the group of DLD children, the PLS-5 reports specificity measures to be .78, an unacceptable measure according the standards in the field (Plante & Vance, 1994). 7 Additionally, because the reference standard was previously determined to be invalid or unknown, the specificity measures do not reflect the test’s diagnostic accuracy.
The same reference standard was not applied to both the specificity and sensitivity groups. This decreases the validity of the test due to spectrum bias which occurs when the sample population does not represent the full spectrum of the clinical population (Dollaghan & Horner, 2011). Due to lack of information about the reference standard, the diagnostic status of the specificity group is unknown so we cannot be sure about the accuracy of the specificity measure. Sensitivity and specificity were also determined to be unacceptable, despite reported measures considered to be “fair” or “good” (.80 or above), due to lack of information regarding the reference standard as well as spectrum bias caused by different reference standards being used for different clinical populations.
Likelihood Ratio: According to Dollaghan (2007), likelihood ratios are used to examine how accurate an assessment is at distinguishing individuals who have a disorder from those who do not. A positive likelihood ratio (LR+) represents the likelihood that an individual who is given a positive (disordered) score on an assessment actually has a disorder. The higher the LR+ (e.g. >10), the greater confidence the test user can have that the person who obtained the score has the target disorder. Similarly, a negative likelihood ratio (LR-) represents the likelihood that an individual who is given a negative (non-disordered) score actually does not have a disorder. The lower the LR- (e.g. < .10), the greater confidence the test user can have that the person who obtained a score within normal range is, in fact, unaffected.
Likelihood ratios for the reference standard are not reported as the reference standard was not applied to the typically developing group. While the reference standard was applied to the language disordered group and the language delayed group, the PLS-5 does not report how many children in each group scored below a score of 77 (the cut-off score). Thus, the sensitivity value does not truly reflect the test’s diagnostic accuracy and consequently likelihood ratios cannot be calculated.
Overall, construct validity, including the reference standard, sensitivity and specificity, and likelihood ratios of the PLS-5 was determined to be insufficient. An unspecified reference standard invalidates the diagnostic accuracy of the test because we cannot be sure children identified as having a disability by the reference standards were accurately diagnosed. As well, because no reference standard was applied to the non-clinical group for the specificity measure we cannot be sure these children are free from a disorder. Inflated diagnostic accuracy reported in the test manual contributes to concern regarding the validity of the PLS-5 in detecting the presence of language disorder. In addition, the authors changed the diagnostic criteria for distinguishing between LD and TD individuals to below 1.5 SD when they realized that scores below 1 SD did not distinguish between the two groups. This produces spectrum bias because it excludes those individuals who have a mild disorder. As a result, the population used to 8 determine the validity of the PLS-5 does not represent the clinical population encountered by speech language pathologists, which is likely to include children with mild language delay or disorder. This makes the PLS-5 inappropriate for real-world applications and intentionally leads an evaluator who has not carefully read the manual to believe the PLS-5 has a level of accuracy which it does not possess when applied to real clinical populations. The test manual does not state that it is only intended to identify children as moderately or severely delayed. In addition, in determining concurrent validity, the reference standards used (below 1.5 SD on the PLS-4 or CELF-P2) were themselves invalid measures for determining the presence of a language delay or disorder and these comparison populations did not cover the entire age range for which the PLS- 5 was designed. Therefore, the diagnostic accuracy of the PLS-5 is insufficient and the PLS-5 cannot be considered a valid diagnostic tool.
Concurrent: Concurrent validity is the extent to which a test agrees with other valid tests of the same measure (Paul, 2007). According to McCauley & Swisher (1984), concurrent validity can be assessed using indirect estimates involving comparisons amongst another test designed to measure similar behaviors. If both test batteries result in similar scores, the tests “are assumed to be measuring the same thing” (McCauley & Swisher, 1984, p. 35). Concurrent validity was measured by comparing performance of a clinical sample on the PLS-5 to two other child language assessments: the CELF-P2 and the PLS-4. The study conducted to compare the PLS-5 to the PLS-4 consisted of a sample of 134 children aged 0- 6;11 as this is the age range for the PLS-4. Correlation coefficients for the study were .80 for the AC and EC scales and .85 for TL. The study conducted to compare the PLS-5 with the CELF-P2 consisted of a sample of 97 children aged 3-6;11 as this is the age range for the CELF-P2. Correlation coefficients for the study ranged between .70-.82. According to Salvia and Ysseldyke (as cited in McCauley and Swisher, 1984), a correlation coefficient of .90 or better is needed to provide sufficient evidence. It is important to note that the entire age range for which the PLS-5 is intended was not standardized. According to the test manual, the PLS-5 is intended to diagnose language delay/disorder in children from birth to 7:11, however concurrent validity was not determined for ages 6;11- 7;11. Further, concurrent validity “requires that the comparison test be a measure that is itself valid for a particular purpose” (APA, 1985, as cited in Plante & Vance, 1994). The PLS-4 has a specificity measure of .90 but a sensitivity measure below .50 which is unacceptable according to the standards in the field and should not be used to determine the concurrent validity of the PLS- 5. The CELF-P2 had a sensitivity of .85 and specificity of .82 on the core language score indicating fair diagnostic accuracy. However, since it only compares children between 3-6;11 it does not account for children in the range for which the PLS-5 is intended (0-7;11) it should not be used as a comparison measure. Due to comparison measures which do not meet acceptable levels of validity and/or measures which do not cover the entire age range for which the PLS-5 is intended, concurrent validity was found to be insufficient.
According to Paul (2007, p. 41), an instrument is reliable if “its measurements are consistent and accurate or near the ‘true’ value”. Reliability may be assessed using different methods, which are discussed below. It is important to note, however, a high degree of reliability alone does not ensure validity. For example, consider a standard scale in the produce section of a grocery store. Say a consumer put on three oranges and they weighed one pound. If she weighed the same three oranges multiple times, and each time they weighed one pound, the scale would have good test-retest reliability. If other consumers in the store put the same 3 oranges on the scale and they still weighed 1 pound, the scale would have good interexaminer reliability. Now say an official were to put a one-pound calibrated weight on the scale and it weighed two pounds. The scale is not measuring what it purports to measure—it is not valid. Therefore, even if the reliability appears to be sufficient as compared to the standards in the field, if it is not valid it is still not appropriate to use in assessment and diagnosis of language disorder.
Test-Retest Reliability: Test-retest reliability is a measure used to represent how stable a test score is over time (McCauley & Swisher, 1984). This means that despite the test being administered several times, the results are similar for the same individual. Test-retest reliability was calculated by administering the test twice to 195 children from the normative sample ranging in age from birth to 7;11. The administration was conducted by the same examiner, and the testing interval ranged from 3-28 days. Correlation coefficients were calculated for Auditory Comprehension, Expressive Communication, and Total Language for three age brackets: 0;0-2;11, 3;0-4;11, and 5;0-7;11, yielding nine correlation coefficients. The reliability coefficients ranged from .86 to .95. According to Salvia, Ysseldyke, & Bolt (2010, as cited in Betz, Eickhoff, & Sullivan, 2013), many of these reliability coefficients are insufficient. They recommend a minimum standard of .90 for test reliability when using the test to make educational placement decisions, such as speech and language services. As well, the small sample size of children in each age band limits the reliability measure. Thus, the test-retest reliability for the PLS-5 is considered insufficient due to a small sample sizes and because three out of nine correlation coefficients were less than the accepted minimum standard.
Inter-Examiner Reliability: Inter-examiner reliability is used to measure the influence of different test scores or different test administrators on test results (McCauley & Swisher, 1984). It should be noted that the inter-examiner reliability for index measures is often calculated using specially trained examiners. When used in the field, however, the average clinician will likely not have specific training in test administration for that specific test and thus the inter-examiner reliability may be lower in reality. Inter-examiner reliability was assessed in a study where two examiners assessed 54 children in two age brackets: birth – 3;11 and 4;0 – 7;11. Inter-examiner reliability coefficients ranged from .96 – .99 across 10 subtests for both age groups, indicating acceptable inter-examiner reliability (Salvia, Ysseldyke, & Bolt, 2010, as cited in Betz, Eickhoff, & Sullivan, 2013).
Test developers additionally conducted a second study, referenced as the interscorer study, to evaluate the consistency of scoring rules for test items that are judged subjectively or where there is room for interpretation. For example, item 38 on the EC scale requires the child to answer questions logically. To be considered correct a specific answer is not required. Rather, the examiner judges the item to be correct based on their interpretation of the child’s answer. To examine inter-scorer reliability, scores were compared between trained scorers and the examiner to determine if scoring rules were clear and objective. Trained scorers consisted of five individuals who had been trained in applying scoring rules to the subjective items. Two hundred test protocols were randomly selected for use in this study. Interscorer agreement ranged from 91.9 to 100%, indicating acceptable reliability (Salvia, Ysseldyke, & Bolt, 2010, as cited in Betz, Eickhoff, & Sullivan, 2013). This implies that most clinicians will arrive at the same score decision for items that have subjective scoring and that interscorer reliability meets acceptable standards.
Inter-Item Consistency: – Inter-item consistency assesses whether “parts of the test are measuring something similar to what is measured by the whole” (Paul, 2007). Inter-item consistency was calculated using a split half coefficient for three populations: the normative sample, children with language disorders and children with language delays. Correlation coefficients ranged between .91 and .98 for all three groups. Please see the chart below for correlation coefficients.
Population AC Coefficient EC Coefficient TL Coefficent
Normative Sample .91 .93 .95
Children with Language Disorders .97 .97 .98
Children with Language Delays .96 .93 .97
Based on these numbers, inter-item consistency is considered acceptable (Salvia, Ysseldyke, & Bolt, 2010, as cited in Betz, Eickhoff, & Sullivan, 2013).
Overall, most types of reliability for the PLS-5, including inter-item consistency and interexaminer reliability, meet standards established as acceptable for the field. Test-retest reliability was compromised, however, due to unacceptable coefficients and issues regarding sample size and short latency time between test-retest administrations that could lead to a practice effect. Regardless, “a high degree of reliability alone does not ensure validity” (McCauley & Swisher, 1985, pg. 35). As noted in previous paragraphs, the PLS-5 was not found to be a valid instrument for identifying the presence of language disorder or delay.
Standard Error of Measurement
According to Betz, Eickhoff, and Sullivan (2013, p. 135), the Standard Error of Measurement (SEM) and the related Confidence Intervals (CI), “indicate the degree of confidence that the child’s true score on a test is represented by the actual score the child received.” They yield a range of scores around the child’s standard score, which suggests the range in which their “true” score falls. Children’s performance on standardized assessments may vary based on their mood, health, and motivation. For example, a child may be tested one day and receive a standard score of 90. Say he was tested a second time and he was promised a reward for performing well; he may receive a score of 96. If he were to be tested a third time, he may not be feeling well on that day, and thus receive a score of 84. As children are not able to be assessed multiple times to acquire their “true” score, the SEM and CIs are calculated to account for variability that is inherent in individuals. Current assessment guidelines in New York City require that scores be presented within CIs whose size is determined by the reliability of the test. This is done to better describe the student’s abilities and to acknowledge the limitations of standardized test scores (NYCDOE CSE SOPM 2008, p. 52).
The clinician chooses a confidence level (usually 90% or 95%) at which to calculate the confidence interval. Although a larger range of scores is yielded with a higher confidence interval, the clinician can be more confident that the child’s ‘true’ score falls within that range. A lower level of confidence will produce a smaller range of scores but the clinician will be less confident that the child’s true score falls within that range. The wide range of scores necessary to achieve a high level of confidence, often covering two or more standard deviations, demonstrates what little information is gained by administration of a standardized test.
The PLS-5 provides CIs at the 90% and 95% confidence levels for AC, EC, and TL. For example, consider a child aged 2;0-2;5 who received a raw score of 22 on the EC subtest, that raw score converts to a standard score of 77. As this score falls 1.5 SD from the mean, this child would likely be classified as having a mild expressive language disorder. However, according to the manual, at a 90% confidence level, the child’s true score falls between 72 and 87. The lower bound of this interval would suggest a moderate to severe expressive language impairment while the upper bound would classify the child as typically developing. We cannot determine eligibility for special education services and provide a disability label based on a measure with this much variability (even if the test were a valid measure).
Linguistic Bias
English as a Second Language: Paradis (2005) found that children learning English as a Second Language (ESL) may show similar characteristics to children with Specific Language Impairments (SLI) when assessed by language tests that are not valid, reliable, and free of bias. Thus, typically developing students with limited English proficiency (LEP) may be diagnosed as having a language disorder when, in reality, they are showing signs of typical second language acquisition. According to ASHA, clinicians working with diverse and bilingual backgrounds must be familiar with how elements of language differences and second language acquisition differ from a true disorder (ASHA, 2004).
According to Paradis (2005), grammatical morphology has been noted as an area of difficulty for children with LEP. In the AC subtest, children are presented with a grammatically incorrect sentence such as, “Her can eat cookies” (pg. 52). Children are required to make grammaticality judgments and provide the correct response. A child with LEP, who has difficulty with pronouns, may respond with “Her ate cookies” which would be considered incorrect. The answer however may reflect the child’s lack of exposure to English pronouns rather than a disorder since an acceptable response to this sentence could be “she ate cookies”. As well, many items in the EC subtest are judged correct based on the grammaticality of the child’s response. For example, a child is required to correctly describe pictures using present progressive tense or formulate grammatically correct questions in response to picture stimuli. All of these items could be challenging for a child with LEP and they could be misdiagnosed as having a language disability. Despite research demonstrating the similarity in expressive language of LEP children and LD children, the manual makes no mention of this fact to alert clinicians to the potential inappropriateness of the test.
Dialectal Variations: A child’s performance on the PLS-5 may also be affected by the dialect of English that is spoken in his or her home and community. It is important to consider the dialect issues caused by the test being administered in Standard American English (SAE). For example, imagine being asked to repeat the following sentence, written in Early Modern English: “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them” (Shakespeare, 2007). Although the content of the sentence consists of words in English, because of the unfamiliar structure and semantic meaning, it would be difficult for a speaker of SAE to repeat this sentence.
Speakers of dialects other than SAE (e.g. African American English (AAE), Patois) face a similar challenge when asked to complete tasks such as sentence repetition e.g. “When he came home from school, Joey ate a snack”, EC #57), story retelling (AC #53-57, EC #58-60) and sentence formulating (EC #61). Consider how taking a test in your nonnative language or dialect will be more taxing – it will take longer and more energy for a 13 dialect speaker to process test items in a dialect that they are not familiar/conformable with. As a result, the child’s performance will necessarily be affected and is not comparable to a normative sample consisting almost entirely of SAE speakers. The PLS- 5 takes into consideration dialectal variations in scoring but does not account for the variety of dialects spoken in the United States. As well, if the examiner does not speak the same dialect it may place an extra burden on the child or they may be uncomfortable using their dialect and attempt to switch to SAE despite being less proficient. The test designers fail to recognize this inherent bias and do not suggest accommodations that examiners can make or even acknowledge this bias in the manual.
Socioeconomic Status Bias
Hart & Risley (1995) found that a child’s vocabulary correlates with his/her family’s Socioeconomic Status (SES); parents with low SES (working class, welfare) used fewer words per hour when speaking to their children than parents with professional skills and higher SES. Thus, children from families with a higher SES will likely have larger vocabularies and thus will likely show a higher performance on standardized child language tests. A child from a lower SES background may be falsely identified as having a language disorder if they are unable to correctly label items or answer questions that rely on vocabulary exposure such as the understanding analogies items in the AC subtest.!Children from low SES often perform more poorly than age-matched peers from middle SES on standardized language tests. In contrast, there is often no difference in the abilities of these two groups to learn novel words, demonstrating the bias of standardized tests against children from low SES as these tests are highly correlated to SES (Horton-Ikard & Weismer, 2007). According to Peña and Quinn (1997), children from a low SES have less exposure to labeling and may be at a disadvantage in tasks that require labeling such as picture identification on the AC scale [e.g. television (#31), rollerblades (# 46)] or picture naming in the EC scale [e.g. balloon (#26)]. A child from a lower SES may not have had exposure to certain items such as a rollerblades, which would impair their ability to correctly answer these questions. According to Hart and Risley (1995), students from low SES on average have significantly less exposure to vocabulary and less familiarity with books. They would be especially challenged on the story retelling and would be less able to demonstrate emergent literacy through book handling and print awareness on the AC scale (#63).
Prior Knowledge/Experience
A child’s performance on the PLS-5 may also be affected by their prior knowledge and experiences. For example, a child from a city may not know what a frog (AC #51) or motor boats (AC #58) are because they have not been exposed to these things previously.
It is also important to consider that the format of the test may affect a child’s performance if they do not have prior experiences with the specific type of testing. According to Peña, & 14 Quinn (1997), children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds do not perform as well on assessments that contain tasks such as labeling and known information questions, as they are not exposed to these tasks in their culture. The PLS-5 contains a number of tasks that are dependent on prior knowledge and experience. Many items on the EC scale are based entirely on labeling. A child who has not been exposed to this type of testing may not perform well on these tasks. For example, EC item 30 requires the child to label items as the examiner points to various pictures [e.g. cookie, scissors, banana]). A child may label scissors as “used for cutting” as they have been exposed to function-type description tasks in their culture rather than labeling the object itself. According to Pena and Quinn (1997), children from different cultures tend to use functional descriptions to label objects based on culturally dependent maternal teaching strategies and different cultural expectations. As a result, he or she may be falsely identified as having a language disorder due to poor performance on similarly culturally dependent tasks such as this one.
Further, many tasks on the PLS-5 require the child to respond to a “known question,” where the clinician obviously knows the answer. The child and the clinician attend to a single image and the child is required to provide information. For example, on the “understands negatives in sentences” portion of the AC subtest, the clinician provides a probe and the child responds by pointing, (e.g. “Look at all the babies. Show me the baby who is not crying”). If the child has not been exposed to this type of question, they may answer incorrectly because they are unfamiliar with what is expected of them and their performance will not reflect their true skills.
Further, a child’s performance on the test may have been affected by their prior exposure to books and toys. According to Peña and Quinn (1997), some infants are not exposed to books, print, take-apart toys, or puzzles. The PLS-5 requires the child to interact appropriately with different toys including blocks, a teddy bear, and various kitchen items. If the child has no prior experience with these toys or this type of play, their performance may not reflect their true skills. The PLS-5 demands the child attends to the test book for the length of the assessment, something he or she may be unaccustomed to doing. He or she must also realize that pictures and symbols have meaning and have familiarity with how to attend to them. This is referred to as print awareness, which is a learned skill. Lack of prior exposure to books and print materials may result in a lack of familiarity with letters and sounds. This can appear to be a delay in pre-literacy skills including phonological awareness and letter knowledge when compared to a normative sample largely made up of children with adequate and mainstream exposure to print and books. This may negatively affect the child’s performance on the AC scale when they are required to identify word initial sounds (#51) or rhyme words on the EC scale (#53).
Cultural Bias
According to Peña & Quinn (1997), tasks of language assessments often do not take into account variations in socialization practices. For example, the child’s response to the type of questions that are asked (e.g. known questions, labeling), the manner in which they are asked, and how the child is required to interact with the examiner during testing, may be affected by the child’s cultural experiences and practices. For example, during test administration, children are expected to interact with strangers. In middle class mainstream American culture, young children are expected to converse with unfamiliar adults as well as to ask questions. In other cultures, however, it may be customary for a child to not speak until spoken to. When he does speak, the child often will speak as little as possible or only to do what he is told. If a child does not respond to the clinician’s questions because of cultural traditions, they may be falsely identified as having a language disorder. Also, a child’s level of comfort making eye contact with the examiner or speaking to an adult may affect their performance on items in the EC subtest that require the child to elaborate on or retell a story or formulate sentences.
Attention and Memory
Significant attention is required during administration of standardized tests. If the child is not motivated by the test’s content, or they exhibit a lack of attention or disinterest, they will not perform at their true capacity on the assessment. Further, fatigue may affect performance on later items in the test’s administration. Even a child without an attention deficit may not be used to sitting in a chair looking at a picture book for an hour. A child that has never been in preschool and has spent most of his days in an unstructured environment and playing with peers and siblings may find it very challenging to sit in front of a book for extended periods of time.
PLS-5 administration time varies depending on the child’s age, ability, attention span and willingness to participate during the test. Administration time for young (birth – 11mo) children ranges between 25-35 minutes and increases up to an hour for children 3 years to 7 years 11 months. This can be taxing for children, particularly if they are struggling with the test or are uncomfortable with the testing situation. The test manual does permit break time for children to rest, have a snack or go to the bathroom in order to optimize their attention and focus. However, even with these concessions, many children (even those from mainstream, middle class backgrounds) will still be highly resistant to finishing the test or performing to their best ability due to lack of interest and/or motivation in the testing materials.
Short-term memory could also falsely indicate a speech and/or language disorder. Many of the test items require the child to hold several items in short term memory at once, then compare/analyze them and come up with a right answer. A child with limited short-term memory may perform poorly on standardized assessments due to the demands of the tasks. However, he may not need speech and language therapy but rather techniques and strategies 16 to compensate for short-term or auditory memory deficits. Further, as the sample population did not include children with attention and/or memory deficits, results of this assessment are invalid for children with attention deficits.
Motor/Sensory Impairments
In order for a child to participate in administration of this assessment, they must have a degree of fine motor and sensory (e.g. visual, auditory) abilities. If a child has deficits in any of these domains, their performance will be compromised. For example, for a child with vision deficits, if they are not using proper accommodations, they may not be able to fully see the test stimuli, and thus their performance may not reflect their true abilities. A child with motor deficits, such as a child with typical language development but living with cerebral palsy (CP), may find it much more frustrating and tiring to be pointing to/attending to pictures for an extended period of time than a typically developing non-disabled child. The child with CP may not perform at his highest capacity due to his motor impairments and would produce a lower score than he or she is actually capable of achieving. Further, as the sample population did not include children with motor/sensory impairments, results of this assessment are invalid for children with motor and sensory impairments.
Special Alerts/Comments
The PLS-5 was designed to assess receptive and expressive language abilities in children aged 0-7;11 in order to determine the presence of a language delay or disorder. The test consists of an auditory comprehension scale and expressive communication scale to evaluate specific areas of strength and weakness. However, results obtained from administration of the PLS-5 are not valid due to an insufficient reference standard and insufficient discriminant accuracy to properly identify children with a language delay or disorder. Furthermore, there are other issues of concern that call into question the validity of the PLS-5 as a diagnostic measure of speech and language ability. The PLS-5 manual states that it is a valid test with sensitivity values that appear to be fair or acceptable according to the standards in the field. However, it is critical to note that these numbers are misleading as the clinical populations chosen for the sensitivity measure were chosen through an unspecified measure. Specificity measures reported as fair were invalid since no reference standard was applied to the non-clinical sample for the specificity measure. Additionally, the clinical sample used to determine sensitivity and specificity was subject to spectrum bias. Only those individuals who were clearly language disordered/delayed were included in the sensitivity sample and only those who were not receiving speech and language services were included in the specificity sample. Mildly delayed children and children who were borderline typically developing were excluded from diagnostic accuracy measures reported. Diagnostic accuracy measures are irrelevant as they were not based on a population representative a real world clinical population.
In addition to unacceptable measures of validity, accuracy and reliability in determining the presence of language disorder or delay, the PLS-5 contains significant cultural and linguistic biases which preclude it from being appropriate for children from diverse backgrounds. This is noted in federal legislation which requires testing materials to be “valid, reliable and free of significant bias”(IDEA, 2004). As many parts of this test are largely vocabulary based, it will likely falsely identify children as language delayed or disordered from non-mainstream cultural and linguistic backgrounds or who come from lower socioeconomic status.
Labeling children as disabled and placing them in special education when they do not need to be there has many long lasting and detrimental consequences. These consequences include a limited and less rigorous curriculum (Harry & Klingner, 2006), lowered expectations which can lead to diminished academic and post-secondary opportunities (National Research Council. 20002; Harry & Klinker, 2006) and higher dropout rates (Hehir,2005) Due to cultural and linguistic biases such as vocabulary and labeling tasks as well as assumptions about prior knowledge and experiences (Hart & Risley, 1995; Peña and Quinn, 1997), this test should only be used to probe for information and not to identify a disorder or disability. Even for children from mainstream, SAE speaking backgrounds, the test has not demonstrated adequate validity and diagnostic accuracy. Therefore, scores should not be calculated to determine classification or referral to special education services. A speech and language evaluation should be based on clinical observations, consideration of the child’s prior experiences and development history, as well as the parental report. Performance should be described in order to gain the most accurate conclusions about the nature and extent of language skills and to develop appropriate treatment recommendations (McCauley & Swisher, 1984).
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (2004). Knowledge and skills needed by speech-language pathologists and audiologists to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services [Knowledge and Skills]. Available from www.asha.org/policy.
Betz, S. K., Eickhoff, J. R., & Sullivan, S. F. (2013). Factors influencing the selection of test for the diagnosis of specific language impairment. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 44, 133-146.
Dollaghan, C. (2007). The handbook for evidence-based practice in communication disorders. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brooks Publishing Co.
Dollaghan, C., & Horner, E. A. (2011). Bilingual language assessment: a meta-analysis of diagnostic accuracy. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 54, 1077- 1088.
Hart, B & Risley, T.R. (1995). Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. Baltimore: Paul Brookes.
Harry, B. & Klingner, J., (2006). Why are so many minority students in special education?: Understanding race and disability in schools. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University
Hehir, T. (2005). New directions in special education: Eliminating ableism in policy and practice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Publishing Group.
McCauley, R. J. & Swisher, L. (1984). Psychometric review of language and articulation tests for preschool children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 49(1), 34-42.
National Research Council. (2002). Minority students in special and gifted education. Committee on Minority Representation in Special Education. M. Suzanne Donovan and Christopher T. Cross (Eds.), Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
New York City Department of Education (2009). Standard operating procedures manual: 19 The referral, evaluation, and placement of school-age students with disabilities. Retrieved from http://schools.nyc.gov/nr/rdonlyres/5f3a5562-563c-4870-871f bb9156eee60b/0/03062009sopm.pdf.
Paul, R. (2007). Language disorders from infancy through adolescence (3rd ed.). St. Louis, MO: Mosby Elsevier.
Paradis, J. (2005). Grammatical morphology in children learning English as a second language: Implications of similarities with Specific Language Impairment. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in the Schools, 36, 172-187.
Peña, E., & Quinn, R. (1997). Task familiarity: Effects on the test performance of Puerto Rican and African American children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 28, 323–332.
Plante, E. & Vance, R. (1994). Selection of preschool language tests: A data-based approach. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 25, 15-24.
Shakespeare, W. (2007). Hamlet. David Scott Kastan and Jeff Dolven (eds.). New York, NY: Barnes & Noble.
Zimmerman, I. L., Steiner, V, G., & Pond, E. (2011). Preschool Language Scales- Fifth Edition (PLS-5). San Antonio, TX: Pearson.
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HomeChampionshipTime for Widnes to see the fruits of their labour
Time for Widnes to see the fruits of their labour
16th November 2018 James Gordon Championship 0
Relegation for Widnes has resulted in cost-cutting and put their academy products at the forefront of their squad building for 2019.
Of the 25 players they have signed for next season, 17 have come through the club’s acclaimed academy system, which pre-dates the seven seasons they have spent in Super League.
While fans are frustrated at the lack of new faces in the squad, the reality of the situation for clubs like Widnes is that they need to produce their own players – it’s worth noting too that Super League’s most successful teams have all been built around their own; namely Leeds, St Helens and Wigan.
It is to Widnes’ credit too that an increasing number of their products are landing top flight gigs elsewhere – Danny Walker (Warrington) and Matt Whitley (Catalans) both earning moves following relegation, while Adam Lawton (Salford) has also made a return to rugby league.
Leeds have both Richie Myler and Anthony Mullally that have come through the Widnes ranks, while Hull KR’s Chris Atkin was cut by Widnes when he became too old for the Under 19s academy.
Questions remain as to whether the Vikings can compete with their established rivals like St Helens and Warrington – Saints’ stars Danny Richardson and Mark Percival are both Widnes lads – but clearly the work that has been done by the club’s new Performance Director Phil Finney and his team over the past decade has been worthwhile, and has put the club in the position where they can field a team of “their own”.
It is time now for Widnes to start to realise the fruits of their labour, and Finney’s new role means he can now graduate the work he’s done with the academy players and turn them in to first team stars – and no one knows more about these players than him.
He said: “When I started all those years ago, we just wanted to create a system that gives young players a platform to play at the highest level.
“Over time you start to see opportunities and we can transition those players a little better than we have done in the past.
“So it’s getting an opportunity to influence the culture and the environment that those young players are going into and help make them successful established players.
“I think it’s better the devil you know sometimes. We’ve got a lot of young players that have been associated with Widnes since 11 years of age, and players need to develop and fulfil their true potential which I don’t think you’ll ever realise until your mid to late 20s.
“I think they need time, they need to be afforded that opportunity to keep working as hard as they can and be part of an environment where they feel valued and people know them inside out, and I think that’s what we do.
“They’re all going to get the opportunity and it’s theirs for the taking.”
Though compensated for their departures, losing Walker and Whitley was a bit of a blow to Widnes but the club couldn’t stand in their way of taking up Super League opportunities.
Finney added: “I think that’s one of the disadvantages. We’ve got a really good team trying to identify players that are going to become Super League players.
“Both Matt and Danny probably weren’t on the radar of other clubs, so we gave them the opportunity to come here to develop and then as a result of relegation, they felt like they’ve wanted to move on for their careers which for us is disappointing as a club and staff.
“But both of them have made a big contribution and it’s not only the academy set up, it’s helped put on the map as players who have progressed through our system to play for England Knights at a senior age and we wish them all the best for the future.”
Finney will work closely with new Vikings head coach Kieron Purtill, who himself has experience of developing younger players through his work with England Knights and as assistant at St Helens and Huddersfield.
The former Leigh coach said the academy and the players it has produced was one of the attractions of the job, together with the facilities at the Halton Stadium.
He said: “If you look at the depth it allows you to have, you’re almost carrying 40+ players within a squad which makes things a lot easier.
“The academy boys will be given a fair chance to show what they can do and that puts pressure on the guys in the first team squad.
“It allows us to mix and match and come together as a 19s and a first team. There’s lots of positives to come from this club.”
Of the 17 academy products in the squad, Danny Craven, Tom Gilmore and the Chapelhow twins have all established themselves in the first team previously.
Three players on three year deals are probably the ones that the club see as the next shining lights of their system.
Prop Owen Farnworth has impressed on the handful of first team appearances he has been afforded, while both stand-off or loose forward Brad Walker and back-rower Liam Walsh have represented England.
The average age of the Widnes squad next season is likely to be very young – but it appears to be a gamble that the Vikings are willing to take.
Because if they can’t back their own academy development, then it raises worrying questions about the future development of the player pool.
For clubs like Widnes, producing their own can not only furnish their first team squad, but also act as a way for them to generate much needed revenue to aid sustainability and competitiveness.
Kieron Purtill
Matt Whitley
Phil Finney
Widnes Vikings
Rochdale Hornets bring in Wigan youngster
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Edinburgh Eagles excited to represent Scotland in prestigious Challenge Cup
Warrington academy coach departs for another Super League club
Wigan Warriors form new partnership with Ireland Rugby League
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Who would Beijing prefer wins in November?
Elliott Zaagman
China looms over American politics, yet while bilateral ties are straining, a new president might not be welcome news.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, it will be Xi Jinping facing his US counterpart (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
Published 5 May 2020 14:00 0 Comments
Follow @elliottzaagman
The 2020 US presidential election may well go down in history as the “China election”. Indeed, if the past month has been any indication, the narratives around this race for the White House will heavily feature how each candidate plans to manage the rapidly deteriorating relationship between the world’s two biggest economies.
Trump and his campaign have aggressively attempted to promote him as the “tough on China” President, even going as far as to label his putative rival with the moniker “Beijing Biden” in a recent attack ad. Yet team around former vice president Joe Biden seems comfortable using China as the playing field for political mudslinging, responding with an ad accusing Trump of being too trusting of Xi Jinping, and failing to adequately protect the American people from the Covid-19 outbreak.
But as each side of politics attempts to position itself as the one most able and willing to take on China, it is not yet entirely clear who Beijing views as its preferred candidate.
It seems safe to assume that any alternative to a presidency as globally unpopular as Trump’s will improve America’s standing in the world.
Precedent offers little indication. While traditionally hesitant to outspokenly support one party or another, China’s leaders have historically seemed to display a degree of greater ease when dealing with Republicans. It was the Nixon administration which famously established formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. Henry Kissinger and Hank Paulson, both former cabinet officials in Republican administrations, appear to have achieved degrees of trust and success with Beijing’s Party establishment that is extremely rare among America’s political elite. In the years of China’s reform and opening up, the pro-globalisation economic policies championed most loudly by the Reagan and post-Reagan Republican party were beneficial for corporate America and exporters alike.
Whether as a result of active decision-making or of sheer luck and circumstance, the fondness expressed in Beijing for certain prominent Republicans doesn’t seem to have a clear parallel among Democrats. Hillary Clinton, for example, has a track record with China’s rulers that could at best be described as “complicated”. Her reputation as an outspoken critic of human rights-violating regimes around the world understandably makes China’s Communist Party officials uncomfortable, and many Chinese associate her with a tendency for self-righteous preachiness of the United States that they perceive and resent.
It’s partly for these reasons that support for Trump in the 2016 election was a common sentiment in China. His deal-making attitude as a “businessman” led many to believe that he could be easier to negotiate with than more ideological American presidents of the past. Trump’s “America first” approach to foreign policy offered opportunities for China to expand its global influence as the US focused inward. And although perhaps driven less by interests-based strategy than simple human emotion, many simply would be happy for any instance which would knock the US’s global prestige down a few pegs.
Trump during a 2017 visit to Beijing (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)
China and the Trump presidency
Regardless of the degree to which Beijing may or may not have preferred Trump to Clinton, it appears fair to say that they, like much of the world, have found the decision-making of the current President difficult to predict. Despite Trump’s fiery campaign rhetoric towards China, Xi and his fellow top leaders do seem to have been taken by surprise by how aggressively the tough talk was followed through on. “Prior to 2016, Beijing’s assumption has been that there was a default template for politicians’ strategies during a campaign and after the campaign,” explains Rui Zhong, China analyst for the Wilson Center in Washington DC.
While on the trail, American politicians tended to stick to being tough on states (like China) that the US was competing with, and then moderate that position after getting into office.
Yet rather than moderate its position, the Trump administration has doubled down. In a cabinet that has seen record-setting amounts of staff turnover, fierce “China hawks” have consistently had the ear of the president. Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Robert Lighthizer, Peter Navarro, and Matthew Pottinger have played prominent roles the administration’s approach to China, one that has only intensified in its antagonism. Under Trump, US-China relations have reached their worst point in nearly half a century, as a trade war, tech tensions, and a series of nasty spats over global influence leave very little room for cooperation between the two superpowers.
Unlike previous Republican administrations, this presidency has done little to gain the support of the pro-China corporate elite, but instead courted the populist right far less interested in China’s massive market and far more concerned about the threat of Chinese economic and military power.
Is Biden Beijing’s candidate?
Considering Trump’s confrontation with China, it’s tempting to conclude that Beijing would welcome a Biden victory in November. Indeed, there are some indications that this is the case. The former Delaware senator has for decades supported the “China engagement” doctrine, including throwing his support behind the granting of Most Favored Nation trade status in 2001. Biden is a known commodity for Xi, having met with him on a number of occasions in his capacity as Vice President. What’s more, the pro-globalisation corporate lobby that has lost some influence in Trump’s Republican party may be finding more of a home – and more influence – as “Biden Democrats.”
Op-eds in China’s state-run media have also indicated that the relative predictability of a likely center-left Biden White House would be more comfortable for Beijing than the current state of affairs. Other Chinese commentators have somewhat-cynically theorised that the liberal idealism of the American left offers opportunities for exploitation by the PRC that the hawkishness of the right does not.
A 2012 visit by Xi and Biden to the International Studies Learning Center in South Gate, Calafornia (Photo by Tim Rue/Corbis via Getty Images)
Yet although some in Beijing may feel more comfortable working with a hypothetical Biden-led America, there’s a strong case to be made that four more years of Trump is in their best interests. Any hopes of a “return to normal” post-Trump appear increasingly fanciful as the presidential race goes on. In his long career in Washington Biden has been known to change his positions, but one thing has remained consistent: he has always had a sharp sense of the current consensus in both Washington and the Democratic Party, and has rarely strayed far from it. Currently, that consensus is that China is not a friend to the United States.
As a bipartisan tide in Washington turns against China, the areas in which a Biden administration’s posture towards China could differ from Trump’s are limited. However, there are a number of areas where a shift away from Trump-style foreign policy could hurt Beijing. As a state with few formal allies but tremendous economic might, the withdrawal of the US from many of its global leadership roles under Trump has provided an opportunity for China to reorient its global diplomatic presence.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, it will be Xi Jinping who will be calling the shots from Beijing, and he will be doing so indefinitely.
In 2019, Malaysia’s then prime minister Mahathir Mohamed expressed this bluntly. “Well, it depends on how they behave,” he said when asked if his country would take sides in a US-China trade war. “Currently the US is very unpredictable as to the things they do.”
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has also distanced himself from the US and cozied up to China, to the point of tearing up a status of forces agreement, effectively ending the country’s longstanding alliance with the American military.
Even among close allies, the US has struggled to form a united front, as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom have all been very reluctant to ban Chinese telecoms equipment firm Huawei from providing their 5G network infrastructure.
It seems safe to assume that any alternative to a presidency as globally unpopular as Trump’s will improve America’s standing in the world. Yet while Trump attracts the lion’s share of the attention, there are many broader trends which transcend him. China’s power relative to the US has grown steadily over decades, and their interests are diverging in a number of ways. The era of US hegemony is coming to an end, and global power is becoming increasingly multipolar. This is unlikely to change, regardless of who is in the White House.
But … what matters, to the one person who matters most?
Yet as much as analysts may enjoy speculating how the two potential presidential scenarios could affect the geopolitical chess board, there is one constant that is highly unlikely to change: barring unforeseen circumstances, it will be Xi Jinping who will be calling the shots from Beijing, and he will be doing so indefinitely.
In his eight years so far in power his words and actions have displayed a consistent worldview. He is by nearly all accounts obsessed with maintaining internal control. He has ruthlessly and effectively consolidated power. Xi is a student of the fall of the Soviet Union, which he believes was largely a result of Gorbachev’s liberalising reforms. Whether in response to unrest in Xinjiang, protest movements in Hong Kong, online dissent, official corruption, or even a pandemic, Xi has used a number of tactics but has maintained one single strategy and direction: crack down, stifle, and take further control.
Xi appears quite willing to sacrifice international relations in the name of centralising his domestic authority. He has encouraged a nationalistic fervor both at home and abroad, embodied in a combative “wolf warrior” style of diplomacy that rallies China’s online mobs but severely harms their relationships with their most important trading partners. Considering his leadership priorities, this does make some sense. An open China, friendly and interconnected with the rest of the world leads to a population with many different interests, goals, philosophies, and yes, even leaders. A closed China that views the outside world as a threat has little choice but to rally around their leader.
There may be many people in China, its government, and the Communist Party that would rather deal with a Biden presidency, while others may prefer another four years of Trump. Yet at this moment, there only seems to be one person whose opinion really matters. And it appears his preference is perpetually whoever and whatever allows him to gain and maintain domestic control.
Debating constitutional change in Samoa
Philippines: Bangsamoro, between conflict and Covid-19
Stephen Blank 21 Apr 2017 15:46
Despite encroachments, China is still Russia’s preferred partner
As long as China doesn't challenge the fundamental system of rule in Russia (as the US does), then it will remain a preferred partner if not an ally.
Rowan Callick 9 Apr 2020 10:00
WHO and China: Compounding politics and policy
The World Health Organization has been heavily criticised for appeasing China instead of leading the Covid-19 fight.
Mark Beeson 9 Jan 2020 12:00
Climate leadership: An idea whose time has come?
The Canberra Bubble seems to stifle good ideas, so the challenge for citizens make our leaders take security seriously.
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House-CleaningDavid Bromwich
House-Cleaning
David Bromwich on Trump’s latest moves
Donald Trump’s strategy for succeeding in the November mid-term elections consisted almost entirely of an effort to foment immigration panic. After it failed and he lost his Republican congressional majority he made a feint at appeasing the Democrats, with a deal to keep government running, then threatened to invoke emergency powers to build the wall his right-wing base demands, and at last offered a hint of moderate conciliation. In the meantime the actually existing Trump administration was falling apart in several directions. It was also adding new members who have committed it to policies that invert the whole tendency of Trump in 2016. The new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and the national security adviser, John Bolton, are believers in US force projection whose appetite for wars can only frustrate Trump’s announced purpose to withdraw from the wars we are already in. The extent to which this president understands so basic a fact about a government he nominally leads is hard to gauge. But in the Trump presidency so far, the underlying condition is chaos – renewable by whim, chance or microscopic provocation.
Trump hired Bolton and Pompeo partly because they share his passionate hostility towards Iran. It didn’t occur to him that they would be lukewarm supporters of his agreement with North Korea and do their best to thwart his pledge to detach US armed forces from Afghanistan and Syria. In one of the morning hours he could spare from the wall with Mexico, Iran returned to Trump’s mind, and on 30 January he tweeted a denunciation of his intelligence chiefs Dan Coats, Gina Haspel and Christopher Wray: they were ‘naive’ for telling the Senate that Iran wasn’t working on a nuclear weapon. Half of Trump’s argument for exiting the agreement Obama signed with Iran in 2015, along with the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, was that the nuclear danger was real. (The other half was the fact that Iran was ‘the world’s leading sponsor of terror’ – a misleading Israeli contribution to American political discourse.) To be told by the CIA et al that Iran had no nuclear weapons was clearly as disappointing to Trump as the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate was to Bush and Cheney when it came to the same conclusion. They had planned a war – a war that Bolton and Pompeo still have on the drawing board – but to justify it now, Trump’s neoconservative add-ons will have to hire new intelligence chiefs.
Ever since the hostage crisis of 1979-81, the very idea of Iran has triggered dread in millions of Americans, based on no knowledge whatsoever. To find a superstitious fear as drastic and persistent as this, you have to go back to the idea of Injun Country in the old West. But Bolton and Pompeo are men of large ambitions: even as they were reviving the memory of a familiar enemy in the Middle East, they turned the situation in Venezuela into an international crisis by recognising the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, as the legitimate president. Pompeo went further when he imposed new sanctions and told the world that every country must now ‘pick a side’. Like many such messages from US leaders, the words emanated from that rhetorical limbo where a moral precept has the air of a command and vice versa. (Barack Obama: ‘In Syria, the only way that the civil war will end … is … a government without Bashar Assad.’ George W. Bush: ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.’) To judge by their previous careers, neither Bolton nor Pompeo shares Trump’s conceit that he can destroy the Iranian regime by a method short of war; on the other hand, Trump may actually be tempted by the promise of military action in Venezuela, where the US can show its muscle quickly and with impunity.
With these new advisers, Trump is more thoroughly committed to war than he may have realised when he appointed them. Both are inside players with sharp elbows. They have named Elliott Abrams special envoy to Venezuela – a sign of the warrior diplomacy they are also building up with their appointments at the Department of State and the National Security Council. Abrams was responsible for organising the Reagan administration’s support for the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala when they committed atrocities with US backing, and for brokering the shipment of arms to the Nicaraguan Contras for their attacks on ‘soft targets’ (i.e. civilians). On 1 February, Pompeo definitively proved that the Bush-Cheney doctrine was back by declaring US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty: an action Trump had been warned against by Gorbachev as well as Putin. What next?
Throughout the last four months, in the president’s tweets and in the mainstream media, the prospect of waging war on a nation of eighty million or starving a nation of thirty million were mere blips on the screen beside the ‘ongoing national conversation’ about the border wall. Trump pulled off the wildest stunt of his first two years when, in October, he dispatched 5200 active-duty troops to the border, on the pretext that the army alone could defend US citizens from the caravan of refugees heading north – many of them violent, some of them terrorists, according to Trump. The distraction might have gone some way to minimise his losses in the midterm elections, had it not been for two events that could not be steered to his advantage. In the last week of October, parcel bombs were mailed to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, George Soros, CNN and other opponents of Trump. None of them exploded, but the suspect captured on 26 October turned out to be a Trump supporter, with tell-tale stickers and slogans plastered over the van he lived in. The following day, 11 Jews were murdered at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The man charged with the crime was an antisemite who despised Trump as a weakling incapable of defending white America. Neither the attempted terror bombings nor the mass shooting could be linked to the president, but it was impossible to dissociate them from the frequent brutality of Trump’s words and gestures, the mayhem he sponsors, the people he makes unhinged. The bombs and the mass murder took the border out of the news, and the Democrats picked up forty seats in Congress – the upper end of their most optimistic hopes.
Midterm congressional defeats of a sitting president are a common stimulus for cabinet reshuffles. The Republican losses in 2006 prompted Bush to drop Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defence, and accelerated his loss of confidence in Dick Cheney. But as usual with Trump, the scale of the thing dwarfs every preceding instance. On 20 December the secretary of defence, James Mattis, resigned after Trump tweeted his vow to withdraw from Syria. This led to a reiteration, by policy experts along with many Democrats and almost all the mainstream media, of the moral importance of staying in Syria. Solemn admonitions were combined with praise of Mattis as ‘the adult in the room’, but no one stopped to ask why Mattis had jibbed at this particular exercise of the president’s power as commander in chief while saying nothing against the abuse of the army in a counterfeit emergency on the border with Mexico. In any case, by the time he resigned a house-cleaning of the periodic Trumpian sort was already underway. The attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was sacked on 7 November, the day after the midterm elections; the president’s chief of staff, John Kelly, was dismissed on 8 December; and the secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke, under suspicion of corruption, finally resigned on 15 December. So at the start of the new year, the administration had an acting secretary of the interior, an acting secretary of defence (a Boeing executive Trump respects for his corporate knowhow), an acting attorney general (an obscure lawyer who drew Trump’s attention defending him on Fox TV) and an acting chief of staff.
Such unnerving changes of personnel – often punctuated by a fanfare of derision or mockery in presidential tweets – have become a characteristic feature of the Trump White House, an arrhythmia which renders all estimates uncertain. Another aspect of the disorder, by now almost as familiar, is the passage of Trump’s friends, loyalists and former campaign officials from scandal to indictment and from indictment to trial and prison. Paul Manafort, the second manager of Trump’s presidential campaign, was convicted in August on eight out of 18 counts in a Virginia federal court, and faces a longer sentence for having breached his plea agreement by lying to investigators. In December, Maria Butina, a Russian who had entered the US on a student visa, pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiracy to act as an illegal foreign agent; she had successfully contacted elements of the Republican Party, the National Prayer Breakfast and the National Rifle Association. Even if, as James Bamford has argued, Butina was a freelance Russian gun enthusiast and her indictment a case of fantastic overreach by the FBI, it deepened the impression of an espionage implosion in the vicinity of Trump. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, pleaded guilty to the charge of lying to the FBI about his discussion of sanctions with the Russian ambassador. His sentence was postponed by a DC district court in December (with a strong indication that he will serve prison time) in order to allow him to assist another possibly related prosecution in Virginia.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, was sentenced in December in a New York federal court for tax fraud, lying to Congress and paying hush money to prevent Trump’s affairs with two women coming to light during the campaign. It has since emerged that Trump’s own negotiations for a Trump Tower Moscow continued throughout his run for president – ‘from the day I announced to the day I won’, as he allowed his new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to admit. The significance of this concession is that the timing of the negotiation dovetails with Trump’s public pleas for sanctions on Russia to be rescinded. The inference requires very little imagination: he needed sanctions to be lifted so he could get loans from sanctioned Russian banks in order to build his Moscow hotel. Trump has denied this but has allowed Giuliani to concede that ‘he does remember conversations about Moscow. He does remember the letter of intent. He does remember, after that, fleeting conversations.’ Cohen’s prime Moscow contact was Felix Sater, a real estate developer with links to organised crime, who wrote to Cohen in 2015 to say that together they could ‘get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this’ so that ‘our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it.’ On 14 June 2016, the day the Washington Post ran the first story on the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, Cohen met Sater in Trump Tower New York and said he wouldn’t be travelling to Russia after all.
There were to be further discussions with Russians by other actors in Trump’s orbit – above all, the Trump Tower meeting to pick up information on Hillary Clinton, to which Don Jr agreed with alacrity. The next turn of the screw is an arrest and a trial away: federal prosecutors may put Cohen on the stand to say that he kept both Trump and Don Jr in the loop on the Moscow deal – a fact that would show Don Jr’s state of mind when he accepted the meeting, at which opposition research was being offered in exchange for sanctions relief. Quite possibly, a profit to the Trump Organisation of $300 million was riding on it, and Cohen’s testimony so far seems enough to invalidate Don Jr’s claim of innocent political curiosity. Trump, reverting to gangland argot, called Cohen ‘a rat’ and advised his justice department to investigate Cohen’s father-in-law. But the inquiry by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has stayed on course, and on 25 January another close associate of Trump, Roger Stone, who professed to have advance knowledge of a WikiLeaks release of the DNC documents, was arrested in Fort Lauderdale. Stone is charged with seven felonies, including lying to the FBI, lying to Congress and witness tampering. His alleged collaborators in the Trump-WikiLeaks affair, Jerome Corsi and Randy Credico, have been subpoenaed by Mueller. Some protection may be afforded Trump by his nominee as attorney general, William Barr, a right-wing Republican who believes in a strong chief executive; on 14 February Barr was confirmed by the Republican Senate, and he will work to keep Trump in office. The interesting question is whether he will allow the Mueller findings to be published, and if so with what redactions. The fear that Mueller might be summarily fired seems to have lifted, but given the possibility that Barr will filter and obscure Mueller’s report, as Cheney buried CIA challenges regarding the international danger posed by Iraq, the team conducting the probe doubtless have a back-up plan. Mueller’s discretion up to this point has been his most valuable asset. His performance has far exceeded any expectation of a roundup of the usual suspects. Also, the person now at the centre of the people ‘of interest’ is the president of the United States.
New York bankers ‘always knew the Trumps were dirty’, a retired banker told me. If they owed 10 per cent on a collapsed enterprise, they would leave the investors holding the bag. Appropriately, the financial forensics analyst Andrew Weissmann was among the first appointments Mueller announced. In November, a police raid on the Deutsche Bank offices in Frankfurt looked like another piece of the puzzle – especially if one recalled Mueller’s subpoena of the bank a year earlier. Readers of Bob Woodward’s Fear may also remember Trump’s consternation on hearing his lawyer John Dowd mention Mueller’s interest in Deutsche Bank. Woodward reported the reaction without inquiring into its possible cause, but the moment stands out from the mood of that book, an explosion amid the general sprawl of improvisation and inconsequence.
Why might Deutsche Bank matter so much? A knowledgeable veteran of the corporate and finance world explained it as follows. When the New York real estate market and the big banks threw Trump by the roadside, he had to find other sources and shelters to rely on. Deutsche Bank was one. The many Russian purchasers of Trump apartments were another. The Russian government, as Cohen’s testimony showed, was a third. An excellent investigative report in the New York Times by David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner took us back to the origins of Trump’s business ethic: he followed his father in sailing close to the wind, and in learning how to hide evidence under one shell or another. It began with New York housing, in rental and repair scams. For example: purchase boilers for your apartments from a standard manufacturer, but run the billing through a shell company; pay the manufacturer the list price and inflate it by 20 or 25 per cent on padded invoices; send the overflow to members of the Trump family. Gradually, Donald scaled up his methods to encompass far more complex designs: labyrinthine patterns of chicanery that would require massive resources for a prosecutor to unwind (this is presumably what ended the New York investigation of Trump’s SoHo project). As an outlaw strategy for a billionaire, it was hard to beat: no state or federal agency could justify the time and money necessary to pursue him. Not, anyway, until he became president and treated the Justice Department as if it were another branch of New York real estate. It now seems likely that Mueller will produce overwhelming evidence of money laundering, as well as tax, business and bank fraud, and the deceptive use of a charitable foundation for personal aggrandisement. Some of the evidence will tie the president to Russian and Saudi influence; the rest, handed over to the Internal Revenue Service and the State of New York, is likely to implicate officers of the Trump Organisation who are also members of the Trump family.
The question remains whether the citizenry – between 35 and 40 per cent of eligible voters – who register across-the-board approval of Trump will accept the removal of a president solely on the grounds that his success was founded on corruption and he won the presidency with a conflict of interest between his business and his country. The word ‘collusion’, which has no legal status, has rooted itself in popular journalism to describe the putative co-operation between Trump and Russia, but the legal term ‘conspiracy’ has a sharper definition and a higher standard of proof. Democrats have made things easier for Trump by droning on about Putin, with the clear suggestion that a written or recorded bargain to subvert the election is waiting to be discovered. That would qualify as conspiracy. But such evidence is hardly likely to exist, and by fixing the public mind on the idea of collusion, at once vague and four-square, Democrats as well as anti-Trump media have blurred the difference between a dereliction of constitutional duty and the violation of criminal law. None of it will precipitate a decorous surrender by Trump. Unlike Nixon, he will deny to the end and blame everything on the ‘witch hunt’. Fox talkers like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and their common source, the Drudge Report, whose influence the Democrats have long underestimated through a mixture of snobbery, pride and laziness, will goad the president to stand his ground. Trump will continue to encourage his base to defend him, by whatever means they choose.
The plausibility of impeachment charges, if it comes to that, will depend on the accumulated mass of circumstantial evidence. ‘The lieutenants in Trump’s orbit,’ as Garrett Graff noted in a report for Wired, ‘rebuffed precisely zero of the known Russian overtures. In fact, quite the opposite. Each approach was met with enthusiasm, and a request for more’; all of them, from George Papadopoulos to Don Jr, ‘not only allegedly took every offered meeting, and returned every email or phone call, but appeared to take overt action to encourage further contact’. The lies told by the Trump team, lies known to his Russian contacts, would provide a foreign power with immense leverage over the president. What, then, counts as circumstantial evidence? One of the earliest modern definitions comes in Burke’s 1794 report for the House of Commons on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the governor-general of Bengal. Partisans of Hastings claimed that a great proportion of the evidence of corruption against him was ‘merely circumstantial’. Burke pointed out that all evidence apart from confession derives from circumstances, and evidence of this sort ‘when it is most abundant in circumstances … is much superior to positive proof’, for it comprehends
all the acts of the party, – all things that explain or throw light on these acts, – all the acts of others relative to the affair, that come to his knowledge, and may influence him, – his friendships and enmities, his promises, his threats, the truth of his discourses, the falsehood of his apologies, pretences, and explanations, his looks, his speech, his silence where he was called on to speak, everything which tends to establish the connection between all these particulars, – every circumstance, precedent, concomitant, and subsequent, become parts of circumstantial evidence.
The description is finely suited to Trump. His every utterance in response to the inquiry has contained an equivocation – the richest being his assurance to the press on 14 January that ‘I never worked for Russia’ (emphasis added). Consider his dangling a hope of pardon to some friends and his public banishment of others; his forgettings and rememberings, timed for the approach of the next subpoena; the falsehood and contradictory explanations offered concerning the hush money and the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations. The circumstantial evidence is constraining in a precise sense: one can’t imagine anyone behaving like this without a purpose. And by now the nature of the plan, if not the particulars, is clear en0ugh. His run for president was meant to widen and intensify his fame in the US, but he would almost certainly lose the 2016 election: he was counting on that. Meanwhile, he would amass hundreds of millions from a hotel project in Moscow, and leave the bits of treachery scattered and invisible in his wake. Who had the motive or the energy to track an eccentric billionaire known to be dicey?
The majority of Americans have always been non-political. The weekend before the midterm elections, I was at an academic conference in Nashville, Tennessee. I ducked out one evening for a drink with a friend, but the band in the pub was too loud and we took our beers to a fenced-in porch. The talk had slid into predictable anti-Trump musings when a man nearby called out: ‘Which one of you is the lawyer?’ I said I was a teacher not a lawyer, but Robert (as he introduced himself) followed up with another question: ‘What are you?’ ‘I’m a Democrat,’ I said. ‘I’m a Republican,’ he replied as a way of starting the conversation he’d been wanting to have, ‘and I voted for Trump. You see those cranes, all the construction going on? We’ve got work in Nashville and the tax cut helped. I know some of the economy comes from Obama, but I give Trump credit.’ He added that Trump said what he thought, was fearless, a relief from politicians and so on.
Robert connected his liking for Trump to a workplace accident. He heads a local union that installs elevators; one of his crew, a friend, had been killed when an elevator fell on him. There was a lot of red tape involved in getting the insurance to pay up. At this point, my friend cut in: ‘Don’t you see you’re being taken for a ride? The Republicans are the union-busting party. Any progress you’re going to make will come from the Democrats.’ Robert didn’t deny it, but his grievance was general: all the inadequacies around insurance companies and, for that matter, unions, reminded him of something about Democrats. And here (out of nowhere) came a denunciation of the Clintons. ‘What was all the money with the Clinton Foundation and Haiti? We’ll never know the truth.’ When I asked where he got his news, the answer was Yahoo. Robert’s companion, Billy, who was pretty hammered and had been quiet until now, weighed in with an aphorism: ‘I vote Republican to preserve my poverty and integrity!’ Somehow the name of Trump’s supreme court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, came up, and turned the discussion to the mob action around his confirmation hearing. ‘Those people were disgusting,’ Robert said. I said, but the right-wing mobs carry weapons and beat people up, that’s a whole different category. A young black man from the bar, overhearing us, stepped up and joined forces with Robert: ‘The leftist mob, they’re bad!’
It was a peculiar evening, and I suspect the weirdness of it could be matched anywhere in the US today. Why is it so easy to talk to people like Robert and so hard to change their minds? The Democrats have a language problem. They refer to Trump in clinical jargon as a ‘narcissistic personality’, toss about Greek words like ‘homophobic’ and ‘misogynistic,’ ‘transphobic’ and ‘xenophobic’, and actually made themselves believe that Trump calling Hillary Clinton a ‘nasty woman’ was shocking, when in most people’s minds it was another forgettable piece of bad manners – vulgar, yes, but we knew that. The elevation of abstract language with no salt or savour, and no traction in common speech, the anathemas that come across as finger-wagging, the antiseptic prudery that runs in a pipeline from campuses to centre-left journalism and finally to the Democratic Party: these misjudgments form a pattern with a history. They include such manifestations as Obama’s statement – ‘I should have anticipated the optics’ – to excuse his appearance on the golf course at Martha’s Vineyard a few minutes after his statement on the beheading of the war correspondent James Foley. Slips like that are the result of an entrenched complacency which few in the academic-corporate-political-digital elite are ever made aware of. The saying ‘believe all survivors,’ widely publicised at the Kavanaugh hearing, may be a resonant slogan but it isn’t identical with ‘treat all accusations seriously.’ Most Americans still believe that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty, and it would be a moral disaster for Democrats to discard the principle as the condemned property of right-wing libertarians.
The party of Hillary Clinton, NPR and the New Yorker had better watch the increasingly careless deployment of the phrases ‘white man’ and ‘white male’ as dismissive epithets. ‘They call themselves moderates and problem-solvers, consensus-builders and pragmatists. Monochrome and male, they do not embody social change and few hold out the promise of making history’: so ran a pair of sentences near the start of a New York Times story mocking the absurdly retro views and skin colour of Democratic ‘centrists’. The reporter is a recent graduate of Harvard whom the Times picked up from Politico – a symptomatic trajectory. The cliché about ‘making history’ because you are the first non-white, non-male, non-straight person in some category, exhibits an attitude the Ivies and the 24/7 outlets have projected into mainstream journalism. The annual Women’s March in Humboldt County in northern California was cancelled in January because the participants were going to be ‘overwhelmingly white’ – a story that got coverage in very different tones of voice depending on the presenter’s venue. You don’t want the laughter to turn into votes, but the too-white notion has been gaining ground in Democratic circles ever since its use by Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries: it was said that as a senator from Vermont he represented ‘a very white state’. The educational value (if any) of such a reminder is lost on people – the vast majority of humankind at any moment – who can’t be talked into voluntary self-denial on account of their race. The potentially useful suggestion that ‘more black people here would be a good thing’ will not be heard where the grammar says ‘there are too many white people.’ Giddy with their deserved triumph in 2018, the Democrats and their allies in the media are pouring fuel on a resentment that could bring another election like 2016.
The cause of the government shutdown in December and January, namely Trump’s insistence on money for the wall and the Democratic refusal to supply it, did not vanish with the president’s decision to reopen government. Trump looked very bad in this controversy, but the Democratic congressional leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, will look almost as bad if they stick to their policy of not-a-dollar-not-an-inch for the wall. They now say the very idea of a wall is ‘immoral’, but stretches of metal fence are built and functioning in San Diego, El Paso and elsewhere, and Democrats had already signalled their readiness to add more, until Trump upped the ante and made it a mutual test of will. Why spin out moral maxims in the heat of a merely political contest? By the middle of the shutdown, Trump had surrendered the largest and most picturesque element of his pledge – an unscaleable wall across the entire border, paid for by Mexico – but he has now accepted a compromise appropriation for border security and invoked emergency executive powers to make up the difference and build his wall. While Democrats challenge this in the courts, Trump will press his side of the stand-off, right through until October 2020, and good fortune will not attend the party that gets to pick up the pieces. The twin mottoes of the woke left, ‘Abolish ICE’ (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and ‘No Borders, No Walls’, can never win votes in the US, for the same reason they could never win in Britain, France, Germany, China or Russia. The bland saying ‘we are a nation of immigrants!’ isn’t an argument either. What is wanted is a return to humane enforcement and a law by which long-time residents, people who know no other country as their home, may be provided with a decent path to citizenship.
The shutdown of the government produced bewilderment all round while giving pleasure to the anti-immigration alarmists who provoked it when they called Trump a coward. Democrats leaned heavily on the incivility of the government layoffs and suspension of pay, with considerable help from the mainstream media. This was a fair political signal to liberals, who think well of government workers, but it couldn’t appeal to Republicans and independents who have been taught to despise the needy, to hate government and inquire no further: the perverse morale of Reaganite common sense. While summoning compassion for the plight of Trump’s victims, Democrats might also have pointed out what people were missing in the absence of government. The work stoppage resulting from the shutdown was a chance for the opposition to remind Americans what the government does, and to say to inheritors of Reaganite contempt: ‘Now do you begin to see? You like the DC museums to be open. You like the security lines at the airports to be relatively quick and efficient. You like the national parks and the rangers who help you there. You do want your meat inspected and your vegetables checked for poison, and you don’t want the post office replaced by the Trump Delivery Service.’
An original impulse in the Democratic Party has been handed over to its margins. One of the few genuinely dissident figures in Congress, Tulsi Gabbard – an Iraq veteran and representative for Hawaii – has announced her candidacy in the primaries, and made a leading issue her determination to withdraw the US from ‘regime change wars’. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in collaboration with Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, has begun to publicise the environmentalist programme for a Green New Deal, which, on the pattern of William James’s moral equivalent of war, would divert military resources to retard climate change and build up protection against its effects. The Senate vote of 68-23 requiring US troops to stay in Afghanistan shows the kind of strength it will take to complete even the negative part of such a programme. In his State of the Union address on 5 February, Trump reassured the country that ‘there’s nothing anywhere in the world that can compete with America,’ and when he repeated the sentiment – ‘members of Congress, the state of our union is strong’ – he was answered by Republicans in the audience with a chanted chorus of ‘USA! USA!’ His approval rate in February climbed to the mid-forties, and even this incoherent speech got high marks from viewers who liked the mix of unctuous salutations and lurid Mexican anecdotes, topped off by the warning that things will go well provided we keep away from ‘foolish wars, politics or ridiculous investigations’. Re-election seems just as likely as impeachment. He is fighting for his life, and he would rather sue than settle.
David Bromwich
David Bromwich is the editor of Writing Politics, an anthology of political essays.
Warthog Dynamism
Short Cuts: Springtime for Donald
Short Cuts: Alexander Hamilton’s Worst Idea
More by David Bromwich
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Apple Watch Series 7 Already Facing November Delivery for Some Models
Friday October 8, 2021 6:33 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple Watch Series 7 pre-orders began minutes ago and some configurations are already facing extended delivery estimates into November on Apple's online store in the United States, including some aluminum and stainless steel options.
Some customers have expressed their frustration that Apple did not provide more details on Series 7 configurations and pricing prior to pre-orders beginning, forcing some people to decide which model they wanted to purchase in the heat of the moment. For customers who did not manage to pre-order their desired Apple Watch for launch day delivery, some configurations will likely be available for Apple Store pickup on launch day.
Apple Watch Series 7 pricing starts at $399 for aluminum models, $699 for stainless steel models, and $799 for titanium models. Apple has finally updated its Apple Watch Studio page that helps with choosing a case, size, and band, and the Apple Watch comparison page is also now updated to reflect the Series 7's tech specs.
Apple Watch Series 7 will begin arriving to customers and launch in stores on Friday, October 15.
Related Roundup: Apple Watch Series 7
Buyer's Guide: Apple Watch (Buy Now)
Related Forum: Apple Watch
[ 192 comments ]
xObeyThePanda
This is ridiculous. Some models are even showing ‘unavailable’ giving no option to even buy it. Was considering buying one, but Im going to take this as a sign that I should wait until next year.
dumastudetto
Most of the models and configurations were never available for launch day. No one is getting a stainless model delivered before November. What a crock.
We are living in extremely tough times at the moment. It's just sad that so many of us have to endure this level of suffering. Stay strong buddy!
ACURA2015
***Guys, this was expected, its not Apple's fault China is having rolling black-outs, there is low chip inventory and high demand on products, so don't be surprised if things get worse before they get better***
Carac
Titanium models may have started with Oct 26-28 delivery dates. I had mine ordered within 30 seconds of the store opening and never saw a date sooner than that.
Mr. Heckles
it also depends what band you want. My wife picked one and it will deliver October 28. I ordered her watch with a different band and it would deceiver October 15th.
gusping
The fact Apple gave no info until today tells me all i need to know. I will keep my S4 and get the S8 next year
Apple Watch Series 7 Now Available for Pre-Order
Friday October 8, 2021 5:01 am PDT by Juli Clover
Apple is now accepting pre-orders for the Apple Watch Series 7 models through its online storefront and the Apple Store app. Pre-orders are available in more than 50 countries. There were no major design changes to the Apple Watch Series 7 as was rumored, but the new models feature a larger display with slimmer bezels and new 41mm and 45mm case sizes. Charging is 33 percent faster thanks...
Apple Online Store Down Ahead of Apple Watch Series 7 Pre-Orders
Friday October 8, 2021 12:03 am PDT by Juli Clover
Apple's online store and Apple Store app purchasing system are down ahead of Apple Watch Series 7 pre-orders, which are set to begin at 5:00 a.m. Pacific Time in the United States. "You're... early," reads the Apple Store message when visiting the U.S. website, which comes with a reminder that device pre-orders begin at 5:00 a.m. Apple has been doing new device pre-orders at that time since...
With Pre-Orders Open in Less Than 24 Hours, There's Still a Lot We Don't Know About the Apple Watch Series 7
Thursday October 7, 2021 8:19 am PDT by Sami Fathi
Pre-orders for the new Apple Watch Series 7 open in less than 24 hours. Despite that, Apple has still not shared basic information that customers would logically need ahead of pre-ordering any product, including information as fundamental as pricing. The Apple Watch Series 7 has been shrouded in a cloud of mystery ever since its announcement at Apple's event last month. At its announcement,...
Apple Discontinues Apple Watch Series 6 as Series 7 Pre-Orders Begin
Friday October 8, 2021 7:03 am PDT by Sami Fathi
The Apple Watch Series 6, introduced by Apple in September of last year, has been discontinued following the launch of the new Apple Watch Series 7. Following pre-orders of the Apple Watch Series 7 opening up earlier today, Apple has removed the Series 6 from its website, no longer offering it to purchase for customers. The Apple Watch Series 7 replaces the Series 6 and now leaves the Apple...
Apple Watch Series 7 Pre-Orders to Start This Friday, Available on October 15
Monday October 4, 2021 6:02 am PDT by Sami Fathi
Apple today announced that pre-orders for the new Apple Watch Series 7 will start on Friday, October 8, with availability on Friday, October 15. While Apple announced the Series 7 alongside the iPhone 13 last month, the company didn't provide any information on availability besides saying it will be available "later this fall." The new Apple Watch will officially be available for pre-orders ...
Apple Watch Series 7 Begins Shipping to Customers
Monday October 11, 2021 7:59 am PDT by Hartley Charlton
Apple Watch Series 7 customers are starting to see their orders ship ahead of launch day on Friday, 15 October. Some customers who obtained a launch day delivery of the Apple Watch Series 7 started to see their order switch to "Preparing to Ship" over the weekend and now orders are starting to ship. New Apple devices are typically marked as shipped as the release date approaches, even if the ...
First Apple Watch Series 7 Orders Arriving to Customers in New Zealand and Australia
Thursday October 14, 2021 3:13 pm PDT by Juli Clover
It's Friday, October 15 in New Zealand and Australia, which means it's Apple Watch Series 7 launch day. Customers in that part of the world are always the first to get their hands on new devices due to time zone differences. Apple Watch Series 7 models are now beginning to arrive to customers who pre-ordered on Friday, October 8, and new Apple Watch owners are sharing photos on Instagram,...
When is the Apple Watch Series 7's Release Date?
Thursday September 9, 2021 2:00 am PDT by Hartley Charlton
Apple announced the Apple Watch Series 7, the company's latest and most advanced smartwatch, at its September "California Streaming" event, revealing the long-awaited features of the new device. The Apple Watch Series 7 was announced alongside the iPhone 13 lineup, featuring a larger design, a bigger Retina display with slimmer display borders, improved durability, faster charging, new color ...
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Cherkizovo Group
Cherkizovo Group is the largest producer of meat and fodder in Russia and one of the top three producers of poultry, pork and sausage products. The most well-known brands of the company are Cherkizovskiy, Petelinka, Kurinoe tsarstvo and Mosselprom.
History and turning points
Cherkizovo Group was founded in 2005. Today JSC Cherkizovo is the largest producer of meat and fodder in Russia. High production standards, careful selection of raw materials and components, innovations and technology allows Cherkizovo to create products that satisfy customer needs. The most well-known brands of the company are Cherkizovskiy, Petelinka, Kurinoe tsarstvo and Mosselprom. In 2013 Petelinka brand was recognized with Product of the Year award and new marketing campaigns and branding initiatives significantly increased the share of branded poultry products in sales. Cherkizovo became Russia’s second largest pork producer, increasing its sales of hogs by 50%. As part of a unique project for chilled meat production “Cherkizovo - Express” the company has formed a strong portfolio of brands and implemented production modernization program at Cherkizovsky plant. The construction of feed plant in the Bryansk region, hatchery for 240 million eggs p.a. and grain storage facility of 215 000 tones in the Lipetsk region is now underway. And large-scale projects aimed to double production capacity at the Bryansk and Penza poultry clusters were completed. Due to its vertically integrated structure, which includes agricultural land, grain storage facilities, feed production, livestock breeding, growing and slaughtering as well as meat processing and integrated distribution, Cherkizovo has consistently delivered sustainable revenue and profit growth. In 2013 Cherkizovo’s consolidated revenues exceeded $ 1.6 billion.
Production and major brands
The Group includes 8 full cycle poultry production facilities, with a total capacity of 550,000 tons live weight p.a.; 15 modern pork production facilities with a total capacity of 180,000 tons live weight p.a.; 6 meat processing plants with a total capacity of 160,000 tons p.a.; 7 fodder plants with a total capacity of 1.4 million tons p.a.; grain storage facilities with a total storage capacity exceeding 700,000 tons; and a land bank exceeding 140,000 hectares. In 2013, Cherkizovo produced more than half a million tons of meat products. The company uses the most modern hi-tech equipment. Products manufactured in ecologically clean regions of Penza at company’s won stock-farms are produced on “Cherkizovo - Express” production line. Thanks to portioned plastic trays packaging chilled meat stays fresh for several days. Customers can enjoy a high quality product combined with more than a dozen different marinades, from the new product line. This year, Cherkizovo Group’s flagship brand in the meat processing received an updated name. Now all of the company’s sausage products, hams, delicatessen, vacuum packed chilled meat, and other products of the Cherkizovsky Meat Processing Plant will be called “Cherkizovo”. The logo placed on the products has also been updated. The new Cherkizovo brand will emphasize the link between processed meat products and the company’s agribusinesses, since the Group’s main competitive advantage is making sausages out of meat from its own farms. The slogan “Quality from farm to fork” also underlines this, and it will be the focus of marketing communications. Group controls all the links in the agricultural chain. Cherkizovo grows wheat and corn on its farmlands in Voronezh, Orel and Lipetsk regions, and this grain goes to the company’s own feed mills. Cherkizovo is almost completely self-sufficient in feed, which guarantees biological security of company’s livestock. Group breeds more than 200 million broilers and more than one and half a million pigs every year. This means that company’s meat processing plants receive farm-fresh chilled meat that has undergone strict veterinary control. The new logo of “Cherkizovo” products bears a stylized anagram of Igor Babaev (Chairman) initials - “I.B.” in accordance with centuries-old tradition of Russian manufacturers, who put their name on the product as a guarantee of quality.
Recent investments
Cherkizovo is making significant steps towards becoming the market leader, constantly improving its production efficiency and investing in new projects.The company has acquired LISKO-Broiler, one of the largest poultry producers in Russia. The deal was based on the enterprise value of approximately RUB 5 billion. As a result of the acquisition, Cherkizovo increased its market share by 2 p.p. to 13%, making an important step to the poultry market leadership. Operational land bank of the Grain Division in Voronezh, Lipetsk, Moscow and Orel regions was increased from 40 000 to 58 000 ha. The Group invested in modern high-tech agricultural equipment in order to promote the efficiency of the grain segment and expects a harvest of approximately 250 thousand tons of grain in 2014. Cherkizovsky plant launched a production line “Cherkizovo Express” for semi-finished products production, with a capacity of about 100 tons per day. Cherkizovo Group plans to significantly increase the production of poultry and pork in the Voronezh region, investing about 4 billion rubles. The company intends to build 7 feedlots with a total capacity of more than 35,000 tons of marketable pork per year in Voronezh region in order to expand pork production. Project implementation will enable Cherkizovo Group to triple pork output at regional facilities to more than 50,000 tons of live weight per year. In 2012 Cherkizovo signed an agreement on establishing a joint venture for the production of turkey meat with the Spanish company Grupo Fuertes.The “Tambov Turkey” project is being carried out in the Tambov region, and its successful implementation will allow the company to take the leading position in the market for turkey meat.
Cherkizovo is committed to being a socially responsible company, which seeks to reduce its impact on the environment and keep good relations with the communities in which it operates. The company also makes considerable efforts to communicate with shareholders, suppliers and employees. Cherkizovo complies with applicable environmental legislation and observe biological and veterinary safety requirements in poultry and pig-farming operations.In a highly competitive market Cherkizovo plans to focus on marketing, brand development and strengthening of sales and logistics, while maintaining high profitability and increasing their goods share in food stores. The company sees its strategic potential in more than 20 thousand employees, working for Cherkizovo Group. The Group’s strategy includes both organic growth and investment in new projects, driving the consolidation of the Russian meat market. Within the last five years alone, Cherkizovo has invested more than USD 1 billion into the development of Russia’s agriculture sector. Thanks to business diversification strategy, which proves to be effective year to year, the company was able to achieve success and gain customer trust providing the highest quality products.
Achievements and plans
The Cherkizovo Group products released under the Petelinka brand won two gold medals in the “Product of the Year” category at the international exhibition World Food Moscow 2013, while Petelino Trading House exhibit took first place out of 1600 participants as “Debut of the Year 2013”. The secret of Petelinka’s golden victories is the freshness of its natural products, its professional team of poultry farmers, and its policy of continuous monitoring for quality at all production stages. Production is based in an environmentally pristine area of the Moscow region, and the products spend a minimal amount of time en route from farms to store counters in order to remain fresh and tasty. The company carefully analyzes the state of the meat market, to be able to take advantage of growing sectors and promising niches. One of these niches is a fast growing market for turkey meat. Turkey consumption in Russia is still very low; the whole market is worth a little more than 100 thousand tons. Furthermore, due to the high nutritional value turkey meat can be used in the production of sausages. Dynamic development strategy of the company is producing positive results. On a reported currency basis sales for 1H14 increased by 12% to $872.3 million (1H13: $779.6 million). Gross profit increased by 69% to $255.1 million (1H13: $150.6 million). Gross margin rose from 19% to 29% in six months. Cherkizovo plans to further develop its brands and strengthen logistics, as well as expanding into new markets. The company’s strategy also envisages the creation of new enterpises by using the most modern high-tech equipment.
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Sprint shares gain premarket after company returns to profit in Q1
Published: Aug. 1, 2017 at 7:46 a.m. ET
Trey Williams
Shares of Sprint Corp. S, +1.11% were up more than 3% in premarket trade on Tuesday after the wireless company reported earnings for its fiscal first quarter that were above Wall Street expectations. Net income came in at $206 million, or 5 cents per share, after a loss of $302 million, or 8 cents in the same quarter a year ago. FactSet's consensus was for a loss of 1 cent per share. Revenue for the quarter was $8.16 billion, up from $8.01 billion last year and in line with FactSet's $8.16 billion consensus. Sprint said it added 61,000 total customers in the quarter, despite losing 39,000 postpaid customers. The company also said it is increasing the low end of its operating income expectations for the full year and is forecasting a range of $2.1 billion to $2.5 billion. Sprint previously expected operating income of $2.0 billion to $2.5 billion. Shares of Sprint have declined more than 5% in the year to date, while the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.08% is up more than 10%.
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The 10 highest-paid female athletes: Naomi Osaka is No. 1 again with over $57 million in earnings
Trey Williams reports for MarketWatch from New York. You can follow him on Twitter @Trey3Williams.
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Transfer/Transport a Patient
news article 2019-11-19 massgeneral-hospital-for-children
Children-
NewsNov | 19 | 2019
Celiac Disease Researchers Link Early-Life Environmental Triggers with Changes in the Developing Gut Microbiome
Katharine Grantkgrant6@mgh.harvard.edu
Maureen Leonard, MD, MMSc, lead study author and clinical director of the Center for Celiac Research and Treatment at MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC), has been studying infants at risk of celiac disease for the last seven years. One of her goals is to better understand the factors that may contribute to celiac disease development.
Living with celiac disease herself, Leonard understands the impact that a celiac disease diagnosis can have on physical and mental health, as well as lifestyle.
Since the spring of 2014, Leonard and her research collaborators have generated extensive data through the Celiac Disease Genomic, Environmental, Microbiome and Metabolomic Study (CDGEMM), a longitudinal, prospective study with nearly 500 infants and children currently enrolled in Italy, Spain and the United States.
Over 15,000 stool samples, 5,000 blood samples and 100,000 data points have been collected by the CDGEMM team as of November 2020. This research has culminated in the publication of the first study results in Microbiome.
First Study Findings
Researchers know that genetic predisposition and exposure to gluten are necessary for celiac development, but there is mounting evidence suggesting that environmental triggers may play a key role in celiac disease pathogenesis.
Results from a recent study of 31 infants at risk of celiac disease pinpoint early links between certain genetic and environmental factors and alterations in the developing gut microbiome, the community of microorganisms in the gastrointestinal tract. This study investigates the impact of three early-life environmental triggers on the microbiome during the first six months of life: birth delivery mode, antibiotic exposure and infant feeding type.
Each genetic risk profile and environmental trigger, when considered alone, was associated with changes in the bacterial species, functional pathways and metabolites in the gut microbiome.
When grouped together, the infants exposed to at least one of the three environmental triggers had alterations in the microbiome that were associated with immune dysfunction and inflammatory conditions. Alternately, the infants not exposed to any of the environmental triggers had alterations in the microbiome associated with beneficial immune-modulatory and anti-inflammatory effects.
Identifying these biological changes that occur prior to the onset of celiac disease is a vital first step toward a better understanding of celiac disease development.
The MGHfC CDGEMM Study
The recent study was the first in a series of planned studies drawing from the large-scale CDGEMM cohort of infants at risk of celiac disease. Because celiac disease has a genetic component, infants with first-degree relatives with the condition are considered at risk. The cohort aims to enroll 500 at-risk infants and follow them from birth through 10 years to study celiac disease development. As of October 2020, 231 infants from the United States and 252 from Italy have been enrolled.
The study’s clinical coordinator, Victoria Kenyon, emphasizes that “this study would not be possible without the dedication and participation of our 483 children and their families. They remain committed and eager to help, even when so much is required of them.” Giving back to the families, members of the CDGEMM study team are always accessible and busy planning fun activities and incentives for the children. The children, affectionately called “GEMMS,” even have their very own lab coats! Due to the efforts of all parties, study retention rates remain high.
An Overview of Celiac Disease
Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease that affects approximately one percent of the population worldwide. When individuals with celiac disease ingest gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye, an inappropriate immune response causes damage to the small intestine. People of all ages can develop celiac disease, which can manifest through a variety of systemic symptoms. The only treatment at this time is a strict gluten-free diet, which typically resolves symptoms and allows the intestine to heal.
Study Methods and Analysis
The 31 infants enrolled in the first CDGEMM study were included based on qualifying criteria. First, they needed to match the study’s factors of interest: underlying genetics and exposure/non-exposure to certain environmental triggers. The environmental triggers studied are birth delivery mode (vaginal or cesarean section delivery), antibiotic exposure at or during birth, and infant feeding type (formula-fed, breastmilk or combination).
Second, the infants needed to have stool samples available from three time points: birth, three months and six months of age. None of the 31 infants chosen were exposed to gluten during data collection.
The study further categorized the infants into “environmentally exposed” and “non-exposed” groups, in which infants exposed to at least one trigger counted as exposed. The infants were also categorized based on their level of genetic risk for celiac disease.
Out of the 31 infants, 26 were genetically predisposed and 5 were not. The genetically predisposed infants were those carrying at least one of the two versions (alleles) of the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) gene that predispose people to celiac disease: HLA-DQ2 and HLA-DQ8. All people with celiac disease carry at least one of these alleles, passed down from one or both of their parents. Infants with one copy of HLA-DQ2 or HLA-DQ8, or infants with one copy of each (heterozygous), were deemed “standard risk” in this study. Those with two copies of HLA-DQ2 (homozygous) were deemed “high risk.” Therefore, the genetic groupings were non-predisposed, standard and high risk.
The researchers looked for patterns and relationships between many factors at once in this study. They collected cross-sectional data, taken from one “slice” of time, as well as longitudinal data, collected at specific time points as the infants grow. This gives them data from snapshots of time as well as dynamic data.
Using 87 stool samples, researchers explored how the genetic and environmental risk factors altered the composition, function and metabolite production of the gut microbiome in these infants.
Exploring New Territory
The groundbreaking study design allows for the investigation of both the taxonomic composition of the microbiome (which species are present in the gut) and the functional characterization of these microbiota (what these species are
doing). The study subjects are also unique due to their lack of exposure to gluten. In addition, the nature of the CDGEMM cohort allows the researchers to study biological changes that occur prior to the emergence of disease symptoms.
Based on these early results, researchers cannot yet link the microbiome alterations seen in this study directly to celiac disease onset, but “the results lay a solid and promising foundation for future studies,” said Leonard.
She is hopeful that with additional longitudinal studies that follow these infants from birth through disease onset, it will become clear if, and how, the alterations noted in this study directly contribute to celiac disease onset.
For more information and updates on the CDGEMM study, please visit: https://www.massgeneral.org/children/celiac-disease/genomic-environmental-microbiome-and-metabolomic-study/.
Gut Microbiota in Infants: First Results from the CDGEMM Study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy2g67BcbwA
Maureen Leonard, MD
Clinical Director, Center for Celiac Research & Treatment
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
Related Centers/Departments
Center for Celiac Research and Treatment
What will we discover next?
Learn how researchers at MassGeneral Hospital for Children are finding new treatments that advance pediatric care.
Exceptional pediatric care
A new model for children's health care: learn more about MassGeneral Hospital for Children.
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Outgoing Missouri State Rep. Deb Lavender reflects on her six years in Jefferson City (AUDIO)
December 9, 2020 By Brian Hauswirth
A veteran Democrat on the Missouri House Budget Committee will be leaving Jefferson City at the end of the month, after losing a Senate race to State Sen. Andrew Koenig, R-Manchester.
State Rep. Deb Lavender, D-Kirkwood, speaks on the Missouri House floor in Jefferson City on May 15, 2020 (file photo courtesy of Tim Bommel at House Communications)
State Rep. Deb Lavender, D-Kirkwood, was elected to the House in 2014 and served three terms. She’s most proud that Missourians approved Medicaid expansion in August.
“I guess what I can say I’m proud about is my individual district (the 90th in St. Louis County) passed that by 70 percent,” Lavender says. “So I think my six years of educating my district why Medicaid expansion is important, I think that’s the first thing for the state of Missouri that I think is the best thing that’s happened in a long time.”
Medicaid is a federal and state program that assists with medical costs for residents with limited incomes. 53 percent of Missouri voters approved Amendment Two, which will provide healthcare to Missourians who earn less than $18,000 annually.
Lavender is hopeful that some of the rural hospitals that have closed in recent years will re-open, now that Missouri voters have approved Medicaid expansion. She says the issue is important statewide.
“We’ve closed ten hospitals over the last decade and especially in our day of the COVID virus right now, people are traveling to St. Louis for their medical care,” says Lavender.
Amendment Two expands Medicaid for residents between the ages of 19 and 64 with an income level at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level.
The implementation of Medicaid expansion will take place in 2021. House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith, R-Carthage, has said it’s projected to cost $200 million in state general revenue and $1.8 billion in federal funding each year.
The Missouri Chamber of Commerce, Lavender and other supporters say Medicaid expansion will create more than 16,000 new jobs annually during its first five years, while increasing personal income by $1.1 billion annually.
Another issue Representative Lavender has tried to raise awareness about is fund balances. She is the ranking Democrat on the Missouri House Appropriations Subcommittee on health and social services.
Lavender says Missouri currently has more than 450 individual bank accounts, with $6.8 billion in the bank. She’s disappointed that more hasn’t been done in Jefferson City with the fund balances.
“What I have figured out is that there’s no one person accountable for fund balances,” Lavender says. “But in some cases, I think it’s a place where we have learned to hide money.”
Lavender questions whether all of that money is needed. She says if it’s not needed, it should be spent appropriately. She also supports decreasing some professional license fees.
Lavender says her future is still to be determined. She notes she has always practiced as a physical therapist during her time in Legislature, and has kept her physical therapy practice during the last 18 months of campaigning.
She’s also still interested in state government and in the fund balances. She emphasizes that she has enjoyed serving on the House Budget Committee, and in the Legislature.
Click here to listen to Brian Hauswirth’s full interview with State Rep. Deb Lavender, D-Kirkwood, which was recorded on December 7, 2020:
https://cdn.missourinet.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/bh-lavenderinterview.mp3
Copyright © 2020 · Missourinet
Filed Under: Business, Health / Medicine, Legislature, News Tagged With: Amendment Two, Carthage, COVID, fund balances, Kirkwood, Manchester, Medicaid expansion, Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Missouri House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith, professional license fees, rural Missouri hospital closings, State Rep. Deb Lavender, State Sen. Andrew Koenig
Previous Post: « Missouri K-12 statewide testing to move forward, but results won’t be used for accountability purposes
Next Post: (Audio) Missourinet Morning News 12-9-2020 »
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The votes are in: Melville House’s books are here to help explain the UK’s political mess
Nikki Griffiths
The UK has taken to the polls in the third general election in five years—the first December election for almost a century. At the moment of writing, latest opinion poll… Read more »
Climate activists Extinction Rebellion have a book coming out as the UK sort-of declares a climate change emergency
On Wednesday, the UK became the first country in the world to declare a national climate emergency. This comes after weeks of protests took places across the UK and other European… Read more »
Mary Wollstonecraft to become the subject of some Bronze Statuecraft
In the US, it’s been a weird and unchill year for statuary. In the UK, where things are looking a lot chiller, they took another turn for the brighter this week, when… Read more »
This week in rappers whose names do or do not describe them accurately: Novelist
It is a known fact that rappers sometimes go by monikers that simply describe who they are, as human beings, accurately. For example, the GZA, the Genius, truly is a genius. Young MC is—or… Read more »
Donald Trump is not welcome in the UK as we try to sort out our own political mess
Awwww, poor Donald Trump. His state visit to the UK has already been postponed once, and now, as he tries to plan a second go around, things aren’t looking good. According… Read more »
Bernie Sanders is visiting the UK, days before the general election… to sell books
US Senator, progressive firebrand, and What We Do Now contributor Bernie Sanders will be making it over to the UK before Donald Trump. The Donald’s state visit was postponed earlier this year… Read more »
A shadow chancellor sheds some light
Jeremy Corbyn, head of the UK’s opposition Labour Party, has been accused of numerous shortcomings, from an excessive devotion to bean-eating to an inadequate devotion to cookie-eating. He has also, like British opposition leaders… Read more »
The 1950s called and asked for their headline back
Tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail has caused outrage and been widely criticised over a sexist headline that ran on its front page last Tuesday, March 28th. Alongside a picture of British Prime Minister Theresa May and… Read more »
The UK reacts to Donald Trump’s victory (Brexit? What Brexit?!)
On 24th June millions of Brits woke to the news Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, and Michael Gove had done their worst and coaxed an impressionable, disgruntled nation into voting to… Read more »
Writers and activists urge new UK culture secretary to make libraries a priority
Sigh. It’s an endless battle, keeping these libraries open. You know how it goes: if your branch isn’t being sold off to be turned into luxury condominiums, or converted into… Read more »
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The Most Revealing Moments From Mic's Interview With President Obama on Iran
ByJake Horowitz
During a Democratic presidential primary debate in 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama declared that he would engage diplomatically with enemies of the United States, a stance that was strongly criticized by his rivals at the time. Two years later, as president, he reiterated his strategy during a historic speech to the Muslim world in Cairo.
"Rather than remain trapped in the past," Obama said in 2009, "I have made it clear to Iran's leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward."
Now, the president believes he is close to making that vision a reality. The nuclear deal with Iran that was announced in July is the result of two years of intense negotiations between Iran and an international coalition led by the U.S. The agreement requires Iran to give up key parts of its nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions. Obama views the deal as one of his crowning foreign policy achievements, and the only way to keep the U.S. from getting dragged into another Middle East war.
But the deal still has to make it through Congress, and serious doubts remain about whether it will actually work.
Last week, Mic asked readers what they wanted to know about the Iran deal. Young people from around the world submitted video questions on a wide range of issues related to the deal: how inspections of Iran's program will work, how the deal affects Israel, what the deal means for U.S.-Iran relations and much more.
I posed some of those questions from people in Iran, Israel and the U.S. straight to the president. (Yes, he knows how to use an iPad.)
Drew Gurian/Mic
Our interview took place on the same day as the first Republican presidential primary debate and one day after Obama's speech at American University, where he laid out his argument for the Iran deal. In that speech, he struck a defiant tone, saying that no other peaceful alternative exists to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
In our wide-ranging conversation, Obama hit on the same theme. He seemed confident. He acknowledged critics' concerns about the deal, but dismissed much of the opposition from Republicans in Congress as partisan posturing. He said he welcomes discussion, stressing that he considers the Iran deal to be the most important foreign policy debate since the Iraq War. Still, he came off as a man who is laser focused and certain he's on the right side of history.
Here's a breakdown of what we discussed:
Why he believes the deal is so important
The effect of the deal on the broader Middle East
Criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike
Our conversation lasted 21 minutes, and I was struck by Obama's extreme confidence in the face of great risk. He deftly broke down each counterargument and used professorial logic to dismiss his critics. This was Obama the president, but also Obama the law professor.
Before leaving the room, Obama told me he enjoyed our conversation. He seemed to be having fun. He listened to tough questions from young people around the world and replied just as seriously as he would when getting pressed by any journalist or member of Congress.
The big question, as Obama spends the next two weeks vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, is whether young people will be motivated to speak out as a result.
You can watch the rest of our interview here, and a full transcript here.
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Getting a Republican to Implement Democratic Defense Policies is Unnerving the GOP
So it looks like Obama is going to nominate Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense after all. Andrew Sullivan says his core qualification is that he was a clear-eyed critic of the Iraq war even though he initially supported it:
Unlike so many of the lemmings and partisans of Washington DC, Hagel actually called out the catastrophe of the Iraq War as it happened. The neocons cannot forgive him for exposing what they wrought on the nation and the world. For good measure, he has a Purple Heart and has served in combat. Not easy to say about most of the Iraq War armchair warriors and war criminals.
Which is to say, as Chuck Todd said this morning, this nomination is about accountability for the Iraq War. All those ducking responsibility for the calamity — Abrams, Kristol, Stephens — are determined that those of us honest enough to resist, having supported in the first place, be erased from history. Or smeared as anti-Semites. Or given that epithet which impresses them but baffles me: “outside the mainstream”. Rephrase that as — after initial support — being “outside the Iraq War mainstream” in DC — and you have a major reason to back him.
I won’t pretend to have a firmly considered opinion about Hagel. On general principle, I don’t like the idea of nominating a Republican to run the Pentagon yet again. Doing it once is one thing. Doing it a second time sends a message that there just aren’t enough Democrats around who are qualified to run the warmaking branch of government.
Still, there’s no getting around the smartness of the strategy. When it comes to defense policy, Obama’s tenure has mostly been marked by (a) withdrawing troops from warzones, (b) cutting the Pentagon budget, and (c) repealing DADT. Getting a Republican on board as the public face of those policies gives them a bipartisan cast that would be nearly impossible to get otherwise. This is one reason that I think Republicans are so unnerved by Hagel. Despite what they say, their real problem is that they don’t like the idea that one of their own will be telling the country that it’s OK to withdraw from Afghanistan and it’s OK to shave the defense budget a bit.
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Deputy shoots man at WWE Performance Center near Orlando
By News 13 Florida Orange County
PUBLISHED 6:46 PM ET Aug. 31, 2015
An Orange County deputy shot a man accused of trespassing outside the WWE Performance Center on Monday afternoon.
Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said deputies responded after staff at the performance center reported a man trespassing on the property.
The Performance Center is on Forsyth Commerce Road, in the Azalea Park area east of Orlando Executive Airport. The center is about 3 miles south of Full Sail University, where WWE records its NXT series of pro-wrestling shows.
Demings said when deputies arrived, the suspect, a 29-year-old Hispanic male, charged at them in the performance center's parking lot. That prompted one of the deputies, identified as Cpl. Stephen Wahl, to open fire, hitting the suspect once.
The suspect, who was not immediately identified, was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center with life-threatening injuries and was last listed in stable condition.
WWE referred to the suspect in a statement released Monday as a "deranged individual with no WWE affiliation, who had a court order prohibiting him from being on WWE property."
WWE Executive Vice President Paul "Triple H" Levesque posted the following on Twitter after the incident:
Unfortunately a deranged individual with no WWE affiliation, who had a court order prohibiting him from being on WWE property...(1/3)
— Triple H (@TripleH) August 31, 2015
was involved in an incident with an Orange County Sherriff’s deputy in the parking lot of the WWE Performance Center... (2/3)
We defer to the Orange County Sherriff’s department for further comment and information. (3/3)
Sheriff Demings said the man had a "fixation" with one of the female wrestlers, known as Divas in WWE. That woman, who was not identified, was not at the performance center Monday, the sheriff said.
Demings added the suspect had three previous run-ins with the sheriff's office in the last 30 days and at one point was Baker-Acted. The sheriff's office had obtained an injunction against the man, but had not been able to serve it to him before Monday's shooting.
Demings also said deputies were told the man had a knife. They did not immediately find a weapon at the scene.
In mid-August a man named Armando Montalvo was arrested at the facility after smearing human feces, urine, and milk on the facility's front doors. Those who work nearby said they saw him that day threatening WWE employees.
"He was waving the chain, waving the chain telling the guy to 'come on, come on' and the cops came and took him down," said Juan Rodriguez who works next to the WWE facility and saw the confrontation two weeks ago.
According to court documents Montalvo also traveled 1,100 miles to WWE offices in Connecticut and pretended to have a job interview to get inside the building to threaten employees.
Cpl. Wahl, who has been with the sheriff's office for 18 years, was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, a standard procedure after every officer-involved shooting in Florida.
Monday's incident was the fifth deputy-involved shooting in Orange County in 2015.
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Concurrent of stunting and overweight/obesity among children: evidence from Ethiopia
View ORCID ProfileAlinoor Mohamed Farah, Tahir Yousuf Nour, Bilal Shikur Endris, Seifu Hagos Gebreyesus
Alinoor Mohamed Farah
1Department of Public Health, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Jigjiga University, Ethiopia
ORCID record for Alinoor Mohamed Farah
For correspondence: alinuriana@yahoo.com
Tahir Yousuf Nour
Bilal Shikur Endris
2Department of Reproductive Health and Health Service Management, School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
Seifu Hagos Gebreyesus
Background Nutrition transition in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) has led to childhood nutritional outcomes to shift from a predominance of undernutrition to a dual burden of under- and overnutrition. Yet, Infant and young child feeding programs in Ethiopia mainly focus on undernutrition. It is therefore crucial to assess the prevalence and determinants to better inform infant young child feeding programs.
Methods We analyzed anthropometric, sociodemographic and dietary data of children aged 6-23 months from 2016 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS). A total of 2,674 children were included in the current study. Concurrent of Stunting and Overweight/Obesity (CSO) prevalence was estimated by distal, intermediate and proximal factors. To identify factors associated with CSO, we conducted hierarchical logistic regression analyses.
Results The overall prevalence of CSO was 2.45%. The odds of CSO was significantly higher in children of low household wealth category, compared to their counter parts in the richest category (AOR=2.07, 95%CI=1.06–4.03, P=0.033). In boys, the likelihood of CSO was 1.60 times that of girls (95%CI =1.03–2.49, P=0.038). Above 12months of age was significantly associated with a higher odd of CSO, compared to below 12months of age (AOR=1.76, 95% CI=1.07– 2.88, P=0.026).
Small birth size was significantly associated with a higher odd of CSO, compared to large birth size (AOR=2.53, 95%CI=1.45–4.41, P=0.001). Children who did not take vitamin A supplement within the previous six months had a higher odd of CSO, compared to those who took (AOR=1.91, 95%CI =1.19–3.07, P =0.007).
Conclusion Our study provided evidence on the co-existence of stunting and overweight/obesity among infants and young children in Ethiopia. CSO was associated with various factors originating from community and child levels. Therefore, identifying children at risk of growth flattering and excess weight gain provides IYCF programs in Ethiopia and beyond with an opportunity of earlier interventions.
Child malnutrition which includes both undernutrition and overweight are global challenges which is associated with an increased risk of mortality and morbidity, unhealthy development, and loss of productivity[1]. Although improvement of child undernutrition in Ethiopia has been achieved, stunting remains an important problem in Ethiopia, with thirty eight percent of children <5 years of age affected. However, economic growth and urbanization in countries like Ethiopia have given rise to a nutrition transition, where there is as shift from traditional diets to “western diets” (energy-dense diets)[2]. This has led to an increase in overweight and obesity. On the other hand, undernutrition decreased but the decline has not been happening as quickly as the rise in overweight and obesity, leading to a double burden of overnutrition and undernutrition[3].
Dual burden of malnutrition could occur at country, household, or individual levels. At household level at least one member is undernourished and at least one member is overweight whereas at individual level the dual burden of malnutrition often manifests as stunting or micronutrient deficiencies co-occurring with overweight or obesity[3-5]. At individual level, history of stunting coupled with consumption of high dense energy foods and micronutrient deficiencies owing to shared underlying determinants or physiologic links may also result in clustering of nutrition problems such as co-occurrence of stunting and overweight particularly among young children[3].
Children who are stunted and gain abnormal weight later can be at greater risk of unhealthy development than other children. In other words they are at high risk of non-communicable disease since they impose a high metabolic load on a depleted capacity for homoeostasis[6]. Further, concurrent under and over nutrition it a public health challenge in a sense there is a need to strike a delicate balance between reducing undernutrition and preventing over nutrition [5]. There are substantial studies on dual burden of malnutrition and mainly focused on prevalence and trends of double burden at different levels[2-5, 7-28] but few studies investigated factors associated with the dual burden at individual level and in particular among infant and young children [13, 18, 21, 22, 25].
To the best of our knowledge there were no previous studies in Ethiopia on cooccurrence of stunting and overweight among infants and young children that explored factors associated with it. The previous studies focused on inclusive measure of child undernutrition and failed to capture the severity of malnutrition for some children who suffer from more than one type of malnutrition. Therefore, aim of this study is to assess the prevalence of co-occurrence of stunting and overweight/obese among infants and young children in Ethiopia and factors associated with it.
Study subjects and Methods
We analyzed anthropometric data of children aged 6-23 months from 2016 EDHS which is nationally representative survey. A total of 2925 children aged 6–23 months were found in the dataset. A total of 2674 children were extracted and included in the final dataset after exclusion of incomplete data.
A multistage stratified two-stage cluster sampling procedure was used to select samples. A detailed information of sample design and procedure is presented elsewhere [29]. We included children aged 6-23 months with complete height, weight, dietary and non-dietary data.
Study design and data source
We used data set from national representative cross-sectional household survey that was conducted from September to December 2015. At individual level, we estimated the prevalence of double burden of malnutrition defined as co-existence of stunting and overweight/obese within the same child. Stunting was defined as length-for-age Z-score (LAZ) below -2SD and overweight/overweight was defined as BMI-for-age Z-score (BAZ) above 2SD from the respective WHO 2006 growth standards reference median. Weight were measured using SECA scales while length was measured using Shorr measuring boards and children were measured while lying down [29].
The data used for this study was extracted from the fourth EDHS. The survey was implemented by Central Statistical Agency (CSA) at the request of Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH) and funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Children recode data file in the form of STATA was used for analysis. Statistical analysis was performed using the STATA software package, version 14.1 (Stata Corp., College Station, TX, USA). Survey command (svy) was used to adjust for the complex sample design.
We estimated weighted prevalence of CSO by distal, intermediate and proximal factors. Overall differences across the categories were statistically tested using design-based Pearson chi-squared test. Multiple hierarchical logistic regression was used to examine the effect of distal, intermediate and proximal factors. First bivariate analyses were done for all potential predictors of CSO. Then, hierarchical regression models were run using variables which demonstrated P<0.20 during the bivariate analyses. The three-level hierarchical regression models were run following the recommendation of a previous study that suggested to take into account complex hierarchical relationships of different determinants at different level [30]. The first, second, and third models included distal, intermediate, and proximal factors, respectively. As mentioned before, variables with P<0.20 value during the bivariate analyses were included in the multiple hierarchical logistic regression analyses. In other words, model-1, 2 and 3 included the distal, intermediate and proximal factors which demonstrated P<0.20 during the bivariate analyses. To put it differently, we used model-1 to assess the overall effect of distal factors and excluded the intermediate and proximal factors. We used model 2 to assess the effect of intermediate factors in the presence of distal factors which were considered confounding factors. Proximal factors were entered in model 3 in the presence of distal and intermediate factors which were also considered confounding variables in model 3. Variable significant at p-value of 0.05 during the hierarchical regression analyses was considered to be determinant factor at each model in which the variable was first entered regardless of its performance in the subsequent model(s). The approach was meant to avoid the possibility of underestimating the effects of distal factors[30].
Background characteristics
The background characteristics of children are presented in Table 1. Fifty three percent of children were females and the rest were male. Sixty six percent of children were older than twelve□months and the rest were younger than twelve months. Overall, 31.4 and 11.9% of children were stunted and overweight, respectively. The overall prevalence of CSO was 2.45%. CSO prevalence among urban and rural children was 1.62 and 2.56%, respectively. Among boys and girls, the prevalence was 2.96 and 2.0%, respectively. The age-specific estimates were 1.86 and 2.77% in those aged under 12 months and above 12 months, respectively. The prevalence of CSO by other child characteristics is shown in Table 1.
Bivariate analysis of the relation of distal, intermediate, and proximal factors with CSO
Determinants of CSO
The multiple hierarchical logistic regression model presented in Table 2 indicated that house hold wealth, child’s age and sex, birth size and vitamin A supplementation were significantly associated CSO.
Hierarchical multiple logistic regression analysis of the relation of basic, underlying, and proximal factors with CSO
The odds of CSO was significantly higher in children of low household wealth category, compared to their counter parts in the richest category (AOR=2.07, 95%CI=1.06–4.03, P=0.033). In boys, the likelihood of CSO was 1.60 times that of girls (95%CI=1.03–2.49, P =0.038). Above 12months of age was significantly associated with a higher odd of CSO, compared to below 12months of age (AOR=1.76, 95% CI=1.07– 2.88, P=0.026).
Small birth size was significantly associated with a higher odd of CSO, compared to large birth size (AOR=2.53, 95%CI=1.45–4.41, P=0.001). Children who did not take vitamin A supplement within the previous six months had a higher odd of CSO, compared to those who took (AOR=1.91, 95%CI =1.19–3.07, P =0.007)
Using a national representative sample of infants and young children, the current study aimed to determine the prevalence of CSO and its associated factors among infants and young children in Ethiopia. Our study provided evidence that there was co-occurrence of stunting and overweight among infants and young children in Ethiopia. We found CSO associated with factors at different levels. The basic factor associated with higher odds of CSO was being poor. The immediate factors found associated with higher odds of CSO were male sex, age above 12 months, small birth size and no vitamin A supplement use for the last six months. Our results showed high level of stunting among infants and young children, with 31.4% of children being stunted. Overweight was also prevalent, though not as high as stunting. We found that the 2.45% of children concurrently suffered stunting and overweight/obese. There are studies that documented prevalence of co-occurrence of stunting and overweight among under five children in African countries. The prevalence determined by the current study was higher than studies compared to previous study conducted in Ghana that assessed dual burden of malnutrition among children younger than five years [22] but lower than a study conducted in South Africa and Libya that reported prevalence of 18% and 7% respectively among under five children [15, 27].
Similarly, studies from Asia and Latin America countries determined the prevalence of concurrent of stunting and overweigh. The prevalence of this report was within the range of report from Ecuador that reported a prevalence of 2.8%[10], higher than study from Mexico that reported a prevalence of 1%[16] and lower than a prevalence from China that reported 5.06%[21]. A recent study that examined the dual burden of malnutrition among children aged 6-59 months in the Middle-East and North Africa (MENA) and Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) regions also showed a prevalence that ranged from 0.4 to 10.7% in MENA regions and 0.3 to 1.9% in LAC regions [31]. The prevalence of current study is higher than prevalence of almost all LAC regions and within the range in most countries in MENA regions.
We also found several factors associated with CSO. Children of low household wealth were more likely to be concurrently stunted and overweight/obese. Children of low household wealth were more likely to be concurrently stunted and overweight/obese. This could be due to the fact that infant and young child caring practices like hygiene, proper feeding and health services utilization are often poorly practiced among poor households compared to their richer counterparts[32-34]. This finding also agrees with the existing literature on concurrent of stunting and overweight [22, 25]. Children who reside in the rural areas had a higher risk of being concurrently stunting and overweight though insignificant. This finding was also consistent with the existing literature which shows children residing in rural and less urbanized areas are at risk of being concurrently stunted and overweight[21].
We also found higher odds of CSO in boys and those children above 12 months of age. This could be due to fact that most stunting occurs more during the period 12 to 23months of age[32, 35]. In general, children under-two years of age bear a higher burden of both overweight and stunting, particularly in LMICs countries[21]. Further, our finding of higher risks of CSO in boys than in girls was not in agreement with previous reports which demonstrated higher odds of stunting and overweight in girls [22]. Small birth size was also significantly associated with CSO. This finding was also in agreement with the existing evidence which suggests low birthweight linked to poor health and nutritional outcomes [1, 35, 36]. Fetal growth restriction is an important contributor to stunting in children and evidence showed that low birthweight was associated with 2.5–3.5-fold higher odds of wasting, stunting and underweight[36]. Further, other evidences have suggested low birth weight babies who exhibit catchup growth may be at risk of abnormal weight gain in childhood[37-41]. In other words, intra uterine growth retardation might induce a catch-up fat mass for the fetus before even born [42] and the rapid weight gain appears to promote adiposity after about age 2 years particularly in LMICs [43]. Thus, it could be easily acknowledged that low birth weight child would be at a higher risk of being concurrently affected by stunting and overweight/obesity. Vitamin A intake was also associated with a significantly lower CSO prevalence. This would be most likely due to the role of vitamin A in promoting linear growth and reduce the risk of stunting[44-47].
The first 1,000 days is a critical time for physical and intellectual growth and set a foundation for long term heath and development [1]. As a result of greater awareness of significance of stunting as one of major public health problems, stunting reduction has gained increased international attention [48]. Similarly, overweight/obesity in this age group deserves attention because at early stage of life catch up growth have been identified as one of the risk factors that lead to progression of abnormal weight gain. [49-55]. Therefore, it is important to identify children that are at risk of developing CSO as early as possible to limit progression of both growth flattering and abnormal weight gain. Further, evidence have shown that if only under nutrition is targeted with an aim of targeting growth may unintentionally contribute to abnormal weight gain[56].
The current study has the following limitations; first, recall bias while reporting the birth, infection, dietary history of children is still an issue of concern [57]. In other words, collecting data like birth size, history of infection and dietary related data are solely based on memory of mothers or the caretaker which might have led to recall bias. Further, due to the cross-sectional nature of this study a cause and effect relationship could not be inferred.
Given the above-mentioned limitations, the current work has some strengths. First, the EDHS data is a national representative data and conclusions about Ethiopia can be drawn. Second the data is reliable and of high quality since the standardized procedures are employed by such kind of survey. Third, appropriate statistical method was used to explore the relationships between the outcome variable and its determinants.
In conclusion, our study provided evidence on the co-existence of stunting and overweight/obesity among infants and young children in Ethiopia. CSO was associated with various factors originating from community and child levels. Therefore, identifying children at risk of growth flattering and excess weight gain provides IYCF programs in Ethiopia and beyond with an opportunity of earlier interventions.
All data are fully available without restriction
The dataset for this study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Ethical clearance for the survey was provided by Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at Jigjiga University. Online application to analyze the secondary data was requested from DHS Program, USAID and we have been authorized to download data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) online archive.
The authors declare that they have no competing of interest.
AM conceived the study, prepared the proposal, analyzed the data, interpreted the findings and wrote the manuscript. TY, BS and SH were involved in developing the study proposal, data analysis and reviewing the manuscript.
The authors will like to thank ICF international to grant permission to use the EDHS data.
Email: alinuriana{at}yahoo.com, daahir571{at}gmail.com, lebiluka{at}yahoo.com, Seif_h23{at}yahoo.com
Adjusted Odds Ratio
Body Mass Index for Age Z-score
Concurrent of Stunting and Overweight/Obesity
Enumeration Area
EDHS
Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey
IYCF
Infant and Young Child Feeding
Length for Age Z-score
Latin American and Caribbean
Lower, Middle Income Countries
Minimum Acceptable Diet
Middle-East and North Africa
Minimum Dietary Diversity
Minimum Meal Frequency
NRERC
National Research Ethics Review Committee
Small for Gestational Age UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
United States of Agency for International Development
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Posted February 14, 2020.
You are going to email the following Concurrent of stunting and overweight/obesity among children: evidence from Ethiopia
Alinoor Mohamed Farah, Tahir Yousuf Nour, Bilal Shikur Endris, Seifu Hagos Gebreyesus
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Velma "Sally" Davis Stewart
Velma “Sally” Davis Stewart passed away on June 7, 2021, at the age of 100 blessed with amazing health throughout her years. Velma was born in Memphis, Tennessee on November 11, 1920, and attended Maury Elementary, Bellevue Junior High School, and graduated from Memphis Technical High School in 1937 where she met her husband “Rut”. She lived at 2535 Union Avenue for 70 years in a house built by her father as a wedding gift until her move to Houston at age 96 to be near her daughter Gwen. She worked at several jobs during her life but was most proud of working at the IRS for 25 years retiring at age 85. Velma’s faith was an integral part of her life. She was an active member of First Evangelical Church for over 65 years where she helped with Sunday School and enjoyed her adult Sunday School Class, The Encouragers. Her hobbies included sewing, reading western novels, vacations, eating out, and just having “good ole fun. “ Velma’s personality could be summed up in one word- FUN- fun to be around, planning fun, and having fun such as her 4th of July picnics, trips, and birthdays. Being very patriotic, her July 4th party always began with a rousing Strauss march parade around her large backyard followed by volleyball, ping pong tournaments, and fireworks. Family trips included driving in an unairconditioned car from Memphis to Acapulco! Birthdays were always a fun tradition complete with games even as adults. Her favorite party games were “penny hunt”- hiding pennies all around her house and bean bag throw. Since she was a cowgirl at heart, she requested that her 85th birthday be spent at a dude ranch in Texas complete with horseback riding. For her 90th birthday she wanted to dance and dance she did and then again on her 95th! She loved her family beyond measure including nieces and nephews. Velma “Sally” was the glue and matriarch for both sides of the family. We will all remember some of your sayings such as “Let the Good Times Roll!” and “If You Did Your Best- YOU WON!” She was beautiful on the outside but even more so on the inside, always willing to help anyone in need and generous almost to a fault. In a note she penned she listed five things she loved the most- her family including in-laws, her friends, nature especially winter trees, the Mississippi River, “and most of all knowing Jesus Christ as her personal Savior.” Velma was preceded in death by her husband of 48 years, James Russell “Rut” Stewart and her grandson Graham Stewart. She leaves behind her three children Marilyn Witt ( Bill-deceased), Jim Stewart (Traci), and Gwen Ennis (Ken); her grandchildren Caroline Witt, Stewart Witt (Amy), Emily Ennis Leitch (Justin), Eleanor Ennis Langston (Brad), and Harrison Stewart; great grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. She was also preceded in death by her parents Erma Whitley Davis and Edmund Pettus Davis and a special lifelong friend Madeline Schwill. A private burial service will be held with a Celebration of Life service to be held on July 10th at 2pm at Memorial Park Funeral Home. In lieu of flowers, the family asks any donations be made to the Salvation Army or the American Red Cross. Click the link below to view the webcasted service: http://webcast.funeralvue.com/events/viewer/55467/hash:5E33790DB2CDA045
Velma “Sally” Davis Stewart passed away on June 7, 2021, at the age of 100 blessed with amazing health throughout her years. Velma was born in Memphis, Tennessee on November 11, 1920, and attended Maury Elementary, Bellevue Junior... View Obituary & Service Information
Velma “Sally” Davis Stewart passed away on June 7, 2021, at the...
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B.A. Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH – 1970
M.D. New York University School of Medicine
NY, NY – 1974
Internship: University of Connecticut Health Center
Farmington, CT – 1974-1976
Residency: (Internal Medicine) Roger Williams Medical Center
Providence, RI – 1976-1979
Fellowship: Roger Williams Medical Center
Dr. Mark Lewis was born and raised in New Jersey, and after graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and Magna Cum Laude, from Dartmouth College, went to NYU Medical School. He completed internship, and junior residency in internal medicine at the University of Connecticut . This was followed by Dermatology residency, and a subsequent year as a teaching fellow at Brown University/Roger Williams Hospital. Since then he has been in private practice in Marblehead, Massachusetts. For the last 20 years, he has been Chief of Dermatology at North Shore Medical Center. He has been on the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Academy of Dermatology, and for many years has had an appointment as Clinical Associate Professor in Dermatology at Tufts University. In his spare time, he enjoys golf, photography, and plays in a country/folk band.
Diplomate, National Board of Medical Examiners
Dr. Lewis sees patients in:
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Nielsen named one of America’s most JUST companies by JUST Capital and media partner CNBC
New York, Jan. 11, 2022 – Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN) was named one of America’s most JUST Companies in 2022 by JUST Capital, along with its media partner CNBC, making this the fifth year in a row Nielsen has been recognized as part of the JUST 100 list for its commitment to serving its employees, clients, communities, environment and shareholders. The annual JUST 100 list is a ranking of ESG and stakeholder performance. Nielsen ranked third out of 15 media companies and 87 out of all companies, with its highest issue scores in human rights, customer privacy and community development.
The JUST 100 list was created to evaluate and celebrate U.S. corporations that outperform on the issues that matter most to the American public—such as creating jobs in the U.S., paying a fair, living wage, prioritizing accountability to all stakeholders, protecting worker health and safety, providing benefits and work-life balance, cultivating a diverse and inclusive workplace, producing sustainable products, and protecting customer privacy.
“We are thrilled to be recognized by JUST for the fifth year in a row as a company doing right by our employees and our communities,” said David Kenny, Chief Executive Officer of Nielsen. ”As a leading data and analytics company, we are particularly proud of the recognition of our privacy practices and are committed to serving our employees and clients by prioritizing ethical leadership, long-term financial growth and fostering a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace.”
For its annual rankings, JUST collects and analyzes corporate data to evaluate the 1,000 largest public U.S. companies across 20 stakeholder-focused issues as identified through the most comprehensive ongoing public opinion research on Americans’ attitudes toward responsible corporate behavior, surveying more than 150,000 participants since 2015. The 2021 Annual Issues Survey was conducted in association with SSRS—an objective, non- partisan research institution that provides scientifically rigorous statistical surveys—among a general population sample of 3,000 U.S. adults.
Nielsen shapes the world’s media and content as a global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics. Through our understanding of people and their behaviors across all channels and platforms, we empower our clients with independent and actionable intelligence so they can connect and engage with their audiences—now and into the future.
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Meg Chari
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TN NORWAY
By POD on December 12, 2020 0 441 Views
Norwegian submitted the petition under the temporary reorganization law that applies until the new year. Lawyer Håvard Wiker has been appointed as reorganiser. The court will shortly appoint members of the creditors’ committee, who will assist the airline during the negotiations.
Norwegian is now trying to save the business through several channels. On Monday, it became known that Irish law has granted bankruptcy protection for two of Norwegian’s subsidiaries in Ireland.
In Tuesday’s ruling, the court points out that although the process in Ireland may be sufficient to make the airline viable, the lack of Norwegian rules on recognition of foreign insolvency proceedings means that Norwegian must open a parallel reconstruction in Norway.
Furthermore, the court considers that the process in Norway can be coordinated with the process in Ireland, as this will increase the probability of a successful result.
A reconstruction will be in the interest of all parties, as a bankruptcy will result in a completely insignificant dividend to the creditors, it is said.
67 billion in debt
According to the quarterly report from November, Norwegian’s debt is NOK 66.8 billion.
At the end of September, the airline had current assets of NOK 9.6 billion, of which NOK 3.4 billion in cash. The short-term debt then amounted to around NOK 16 billion.
“Based on current known cost cuts, it is estimated that the company will run out of cash during the first half of next year,” writes judge Leif Villars-Dahl. After an overall assessment, the court finds that it is probable that the airline will be able to reach an agreement on reconstruction with its creditors.
The ruling from the town bailiff’s office cannot be appealed.
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2004 Di-Ko
Elia Kazan Biography
Born Elia Kazanjoglous, September 7, 1909, in Constantinople, Turkey; died of natural causes, September 28, 2003, in Manhattan, NY. Director and author. Director of stage and screen, Elia (pronounced EE–lee–yah) Kazan played an important role in bringing to life some of America's most treasured plays and movies. His intimate work with playwrights such as Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams transformed Broadway. Kazan was also known for his skill in dealing with actors and helped bring up some of the cinema's enduring stars, including Marlon Brando and Warren Beatty. Controversy followed Kazan for decades after his decision in the 1950s to testify before the House Un–American Activities Committee (HUAC), but his career never suffered.
When Kazan was four years old his father, a rug merchant, moved to New York from Constantinople, Turkey, and shortened the family name from Kazanjoglous to Kazan. The family lived in the Greek section of Harlem for a short time before moving to the suburb of New Rochelle. Despite the shortened name and growing up in the suburbs of New York, Kazan always considered himself an outsider. Expected to become a rug merchant like his father, Kazan decided to take a different route.
Kazan had an interest in film and literature and after high school he entered Williams College. At college, Kazan's sense of isolation and separateness was further enhanced. He was not invited to join a fraternity and instead worked as a bartender and waiter at their social gatherings. Kazan attributed some of his desire to succeed to the revenge fantasies he harbored during his days in college. He decided to study performing arts after seeing the influential film Battleship Potemkin. He graduated with honors in 1930 and attended Yale University Drama School for two years before heading to New York.
In New York, Kazan joined the Group Theatre. He studied as an actor with them and also worked as part of the stage crew. It was with the Group Theatre, which included famed actor and teacher Lee Strasberg and writer Clifford Odets, that Kazan became devoted to the "Method" form of acting—one which asked the actor to find a matching internal emotional truth to mimic the emotion exhibited by the character. Kazan eventually became disillusioned with the Group Theatre, particularly with the influence that the Communist Party held over the group.
Kazan began directing plays in 1935. During that time he was also acting in plays, including several written by Group Theatre member Odets such as Paradise Lost, Golden Boy, and Night Music. In 1940 he had his first film role, playing a gangster in City for Conquest. Despite offers to remain in Hollywood and continue acting, Kazan passed up a long–term contract with Warner Brothers and chose to concentrate on directing. He returned to New York. His first critical success came in 1942 with the comedy Cafe Crown. That same year his direction of Skin of Our Teeth won the New York Drama Critics Award.
It was not long before Kazan was noticed by Hollywood again—this time for his direction. In 1945 he made his directing debut with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, in which he used actual locations in the city for some of the film's scenes instead of sets. The lead actors of the film won Academy Awards for their performances and Kazan went on to direct several other critically acclaimed as well as popularly successful films in the 1940s. Kazan continued to pioneer on–location filming with Boomerang!, which was shot in Connecticut. In 1947, Kazan won an Academy Award for Best Director for Gentleman's Agreement, which starred film icon Gregory Peck. The film addressed the issue of anti–Semitism and also won Best Picture. In 1949, Kazan directed Pinky, which successfully tackled issues of racism.
While his film career was gaining steam, Kazan continued directing award–winning Broadway plays. In 1947, he won a Tony award for his direction of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. His long collaboration with playwright Tennessee Williams began around this time, including his direction of A Streetcar Named Desire, Camino Real, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Sweet Bird of Youth. Kazan also directed the highly successful production of Miller's Death of a Salesman. In 1948, Kazan, along with Lee Strasberg and others, formed the Actors Studio, which produced such stars as Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.
On April 10, 1952, Kazan made the most controversial decision of his life. On that day he appeared before HUAC and listed the names of eight former associates of his, calling them Communists. His personal relationships suffered the most. The testimony led to a long–standing rift between him and Miller. On the other hand, Kazan's directing career suffered little. He went on to direct such films as On the Waterfront, which won eight Oscars. In 1956, his film East of Eden introduced the young James Dean to filmgoing audiences.
Despite continuing success on Broadway—he won the New York Drama Critics award for Sweet Bird of Youth in 1959—Kazan became frustrated with the financial burdens and restrictions becoming prevalent in Broadway productions. He abandoned Broadway and began focusing on writing novels and screenplays. He also left the Actors Studio to co–direct the Lincoln Center Repertory Company. After two disastrous years with the Lincoln Center's first acting company, Kazan resigned.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, Kazan focused even more on writing. As a writer, Kazan wrote six novels and an autobiography. His novels America, America and The Arrangement were turned into films, which he also directed. One of the last films he directed was The Last Tycoon, made in 1976, starring De Niro. In his 1988 autobiography, Kazan said he turned to writing because he was tired of interpreting the work of others.
In 1999, Kazan faced controversy again when he was given a special award by the Motion Picture Academy. Even after 40 years, Kazan was still seen by some as a traitor and his award was protested. Others, including director Martin Scorcese and De Niro, supported the award and Kazan. During the award presentation many audience members withheld applause in protest, while others gave him a standing ovation.
Kazan was married three times. His first wife, playwright Molly Day Thacher, died in 1963 after a 31–year marriage. His second wife, actress Barbara Loden, died after 13 years of marriage. He is survived by his third wife, Frances Rudge, four children, three step–children, six grandchildren, and two great–grandchildren. Kazan died on September 28, 2003, of natural causes; he was 94. Bart Barnes of the Washington Post wrote, "[Kazan was] widely acclaimed as one of the 20th century's most innovative and influential American artists." His direction bolstered the work of American playwrights, introduced some of stage and screen's most influential actors, and created a kind of filmmaking that has influenced generations of movie makers.
E! Online, http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,12590,00.html?eol.tkr (September 9, 2003); New York Times, September 29, 2003, p. A1, p. A20; Washington Post, September 29, 2003, p. A1, p. A9.
— Eve M. B. Hermann
Elia Kazan Biography forum
Karen Jurgensen Biography Jean Kerr Biography
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GENERAL ENTRANCE QUALIFICATIONS INTO THE UNIVERSITY
A full time Bachelor’s degree at the National University of Lesotho shall normally be of a minimum of four (4) years duration.
The minimum admission requirements for a Bachelor’s degree is a Lesotho General Certificate of Secondary Education (LGCSE). Applicants must have sat for a minimum of Six (6) subjects with an achievement rating of C (60-69%) or better in four (4) subjects including English Language and D (50-59%) or better in the remaining two (2) subjects chosen from designed five (5) subject groups.
CALCULATION OF ADMISSION POINTS SCORE (APS)
The calculation of an APS score is based on a candidates’ achievement in six (6) recognized LGCSE subjects. The University shall assign LGCSE eight-point rating scale of achievement as shown in the table below.
Lesotho General Certificate of Secondary Education (LGCSE) grading
Achievement Marks (per cent)
A* (1) 90 – 100
A (2) 80 – 89
B (3) 70 – 79
C (4) 60 – 69
D (5) 50 – 59
E (6) 40 – 49
F (7) 30 – 39
G (8) 0 – 29
A maximum of APS 26 is required for admission into the university. That is, an applicant must have a maximum of four C grades (4 points), and two D grades (5 points).
This can be calculated thus:
4×4=16, 5×2= 10
16+10=26
These are the minimum entry requirements and the University shall admit students based on merit, which means, a candidate that has APS 10 will be admitted before one that has APS 12.
Application forms are issued immediately after the results of the previous year matriculation (LGCSE) results have been published by the Ministry of Education and Training. Closing date for applications is 31st March.
NUL Academic Year
NUL runs one academic year which starts in August – May of the following year for both undergraduate and graduate studies. There are two semesters in one academic year (1st Semester from August – December while 2nd Semester runs from January – May of the following Calendar year). This applies to both full and part-time programmes. Examinations are normally written in December, May and supplementary examinations in July.
Policy on Students with Disabilities
The University is committed to responding to the needs of students with disabilities. It is required that disability is declared during the application process.
Payment of Fees and Registration
Payment of fees at NUL is governed by the university financial regulations and policies. ADM 4.01 stipulates that “fees are payable in full, on or before the beginning of the [given] academic year’s registration. Financial clearance is a pre-condition for academic registration. Thus, no student will be allowed to register for studies, admitted to residence or be allowed to attend classes until the University shall have received proof of required payment of fees. Fees for any one academic term (of the two semesters) must be paid in full or in installments approved by the University Management before the beginning of the term.
Payment of fees shall be made directly to the NUL Standard Lesotho Bank Account No. 01400-3377-5301 and proof of payment must be presented to the relevant section of Finance and Administration for financial clearance and to the relevant faculty for academic registration.
Accommodation in Halls of Residence during vacations
During short vacations, students who live a long way from home may apply to remain in the Halls of Residence. Students will not normally be allowed to remain during long vacations. Students who are writing supplementary examinations may be allowed into residence one (1) week before the examinations. Any such stay in residence will be charged at M100.00 per day.
Surcharge for damage or loss of University property
Students who damage or loose University property or equipment including Library books or periodicals will be charged with the cost of repair or replacement.
Study Permit and Visa Requirements
Assistance with application for and inquiries regarding procedures for study permit and visa requirements can be sought from the International Students Office of the Dean of Students Affairs at +266 52213347/48/50 or write to the Dean of Student Affairs rc.mokoma@nul.ls .
Students’ Loan Bursaries
The University does not run any bursary scheme for students. The majority of local students are sponsored by the Government of Lesotho through a loan bursary scheme administered by the National Manpower Development Secretariat (NMDS).
Since 2010, NMDS shifted away from sponsoring every admissible student in favour of a quota based system. The University follows Faculty-specific criteria to allocate the given quota. Students without a bursary are admitted on a self-sponsoring basis and they become personally responsible for payment of all mandatory fees.
Regardless of whether a student is sponsored or self-sponsoring, the responsibility to pay all mandatory fees lies with such a student.
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Quarantine concerns loom over NHL participation in Olympics
Los Angeles Kings’ Tobias Bjornfot (7) and Edmonton Oilers’ Connor McDavid (97) battle for the puck during the second period of an NHL hockey game in Edmonton, Alberta, Sunday, Dec. 5, 2021. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press via AP)
NHL MVP Connor McDavid calls the idea of potentially having to quarantine for up to five weeks in China following a positive COVID-19 test “unsettling” as the NHL’s participation at the 2022 Winter Games remains up in the air.
The Edmonton captain and one of three players already named to Canada’s provisional Olympic team spoke Tuesday as coronarivus cases and postponements continue to rise across the league.
“It’s obviously going to be a very fluid situation,” McDavid said before Edmonton hosted the Toronto Maple Leafs. “There hasn’t been a ton of information come out, and then there’s that three-to-five week (quarantine) thing … it’s kind of been floating around. Obviously, it’s unsettling if that were to be the case when you go over there.”
The NHL skipped the 2018 Olympics in South Korea, but committed to Beijing as part of the extension to the current collective bargaining agreement signed with NHL Players’ Association. As recently as last week, Commissioner Gary Bettman said the plan was to go,but the NHL has until Jan. 10 to nix the plan without financial penalty if COVID-19 causes enough of a disruption to its season.
“I’m still a guy that’s wanting to go play in the Olympics,” McDavid said, according to The Canadian Press. “But we also want to make sure it’s safe for everybody. For all the athletes, not just for hockey players.”
The International Olympic Committee has said an athlete who tests positive for COVID-19 in China will need to produce two negative results 24 hours apart. If they’re unable to do so, the quarantine period could last from three to five weeks.
Vegas defenseman Alex Pietrangelo — named alongside McDavid and Pittsburgh captain Sidney Crosby as provisional members of the Canadian squad — said he was not sure if he will be going to China because of the potential of being away from family in a long quarantine. Golden Knights goaltender Robin Lehner, a Swede, has already said he will not go.
Medical experts for the league and players’ association have a previously scheduled meeting set for later this week to review COVID-19 protocols. All but one NHL player — Tyler Bertuzzi of the Detroit Red Wings — is believed to be fully vaccinated, though the league is currently only recomending booster shots.
Asked if the increase in positive tests and postponements were giving him flashbacks to March 2020 when the sports world and much of society ground to a halt, Calgary general manager Brad Treliving wouldn’t go quite that far.
“I don’t think anything is going to feel like that,” he said. “That was a cold slap (to the face).”
The NHL went to every Olympics from 1998 through 2014 before declining to send its players three years ago. Owners have always been lukewarm on the Olympics for a number of reasons, including the disruption to the league calendar.
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Marriage & Family Therapists of New York
CALL US NOW AT
Anger M'gt
THERAPISTS MFT TEAM
The NY MFT Professional Team
Dr. Joan D. Atwood Ph.D., LMFT, LCSW, Founder and CEO
Dr. Atwood is a nationally known social psychologist.
She has 30 years experience working with individuals, couples snd families.
She holds a Ph.D in Social Psychology, and three Masters Degrees--psychology, social psychology, and social work.
She is licensed in NYS as a Marriage and Family Therapist and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.
She is a full time Professor of Marriage and Family therapy and has taught Psychology at several universities.
She has written a multitude of books, has published over 100 articles and has been on many TV shows.
She has a private practice in Williston Park, Sag Harbor, Rockville Centre, and NYC.
Brian W. Atwood
Brian Atwood is the Vice President of NYMFT Business Affairs. He is responsible for media, publicity, marketing, and all business aspects of the agency. He specializes in Addictions and runs psycho-educational groups related to this area. He has over ten years experience. He also provides workshops in psycho-education concerning drugs and alcohol to schools, businesses and agencies. Most of his groups consist of middle school through college age groups. His counseling experiences covers all ages. In his spare time, he is a DJ/Producer/Remixer at Ultra Music, Underground Miner at Local 147 Sandhogs and CEO and Founder of Funky Element Records. He finds working with and helping people extremely rewarding.
Lisa. M. Gaudioso, M.S., M.P.S.
Lisa is the NYMFT Vice President of Clinical Administration. Lisa is a School Psychologist and has been working in this capacity for almost twenty years. She holds two Masters Degrees-one in School Psychology and the other in Professional Science. In addition, she has taken many post graduate courses in psychology and administration. She has advanced training in Behavior Analysis and has worked with families and children using the most current state of the art techniques. She has worked with children experiencing all types of issues, ranging from autism to anxiety to family based issues. She is an advocate for families and children and is an activist in this area. In addition to all of the above, Lisa also does Psychological Evaluation and Testing. Lisa loves working with families and children and is always willing to go the extra mile.
Concetta Gallo, Ph.D., LMFT
Dr. Concetta Gallo holds a Doctorate in Sociology, a Professional Diploma in Marriage and Family Therapy, and is a Certified Hypnotherapist. She has published two books on family therapy and has conducted workshops and presented papers at professional conferences on the effects of alcoholism on the family, the relationship between power and money in gay relationships, and family stories. She has taught various courses on the undergraduate and the graduate levels. When working with couples, she focuses on the reality of the couples and the strengths they bring to the marriage. Additionally, she specializes on communication techniques, substance abuse issues, gay and lesbian relationships, and power structures in couples. As a hypnotherapist she specializes in smoking cessation, weight loss, general anxiety, and relaxation and imagery techniques to chronic illness caregivers.
Kay Murphy, Ph.D., LMFT
Kay Murphy is a Supervisor for NYMFT. She reviews cases and conducts weekly case consultations with the MFT Team. Kay has 25+ years of private clinical practice. She has extensive experience working with all issues affecting couples (heterosexual and homosexual) and families, conflictual relationships, which includes marriages, pre-marital, siblings, parent/child, gay children, divorces. She also deals with grieving issues, especially related to 9/11. Kay is also an AAMFT Clinical Member and Approved Supervisor.
Nicole O'Brien, M.A., MFT
Nicole O’Brien has a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and Disability Studies and a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. Nicole uses her therapeutic skills to help individuals, couples, and families from all different backgrounds reach their goals for happier and healthier lives. Much of her clinical experience involves working with couples and families dealing with conflict, transitions, marital discord, and parenting. She also works closely with adolescents experiencing issues with self-esteem, sex and gender identity, family conflict, and drug use. Currently, Nicole works intensely with families with adolescents exhibiting high risk behaviors. Nicole strongly believes in creating a safe, empathic, and open therapeutic environment for all her clients.
Laura Pulitano, M.S., Adv.Cert.
Laura Pulitano holds a M.S. Degree in Counselor Education and has been working for 17 years as both a middle school and high school counselor. She is currently working on an Advanced Certificate in Mental Health Counseling. Laura has extensive experience working with individuals, families, and groups and with culturally diverse populations. She also has expertise in learning disabilities, anxiety, eating disorders, depression, gender identity issues, at-risk adolescents, self-esteem and grief issues. Her current work also involves working with individuals and families with substance abuse issues. Her therapeutic approach focuses on prevention, therapeutic treatment, and teaching alternatives to self destructive behaviors. She practices and promotes mindfulness meditation as a means of self-awareness and relaxation therapy.
Antonio Carratelli, M.A., MFT
Antonio Carratelli graduated from New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, where he received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Applied Psychology. While studying Organizational Psychology, he discovered Systems Theory. He has since completed his Masters of Arts Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy -- a theoretical framework based on system dynamics. In addition, he holds Certifications in Nutrition and Wellness Consulting, Yoga Instruction, and Reiki. His interests and research foci include the LGBTQ population, sexuality, and the intersection of spirituality, mental health, and leadership. Additionally, he facilitates Stress and Anger Management workshops and offers Organizational Consulting for teams, leaders, and business owners.
Natasha Lazartes, M.A., LMFT
Natasha Lazartes, M.A., LMFT is a bilingual Marriage and Family Therapist working with Individuals, Couples, and Families. Her areas of interest include: couple conflicts, trauma, acculturation, anger management, self esteem, anxiety and depression. Natasha has many years of experience assisting Individuals, Couples and Families in building better communication skills and reunification. She has completed a Program in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a trauma treatment focusing on mind body connection. Natasha works with her clients to assist them in enriching and expanding their lives.
Daniel L. Araoz, Ed.D
is an international and national scholar and therapist. He is the past president of the Academy of Family Psychology, author of many articles and several books on marriage and family issues, founder of the "American Journal of Family Therapy," AAMFT Approved Supervisor and AASECT Diplomate in Sex Therapy. He is also the founder of the LI chapter of MFT and is internationally known for his work on hypnotherapy. He believes that couples should and could be happy in their exclusive relationship and that even though "significant others" have different personalities, bothhave to understand and learn to live with the other person's characteristics. Dr. Araoz does personality re-education, not behavioral training. Partners become each other's helpful "other."
Richard Belson, D.S.W
is a Professor of Social Work, specializing in both doing and supervising Marriage and Family Therapy. He has received the Presidential Award for Teaching Excellence at a University and has been cited in many professional writings and the media. He studied with Jay Haley and Cloe Madanes, two pioneers in the field of family therapy, and has since developed and presented many workshops on Strategic Family Therapy both nationally and internationally. The Ghandi Technique, which he developed, is used by therapists for resistant problems through out the world. His specialty is the Healing Power of Humor, which he has applied to many family situations with people ofall ages.
Marvin Glassmann, Ed.D. LMFT, LMHC
sees both families and couples, but is especially interested in working with those dealing with extra marital affairs. He also has an interest in dealing with the issues of a rather neglected group,the senior population. He studied for four years at the Ackerman Institute for the Family, a world renowned training facility. He is a former president of the Long Island Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. He is an Approved Supervisor and directs a field placement program for MFT interns, as well as those who wish to achieve Clinical Member status of the AAMFT. He embraces the approach that most individuals and families wish to solve their issuesin life and he is available “to shine the light” on the not always obvious solutions.
Laurie B. Levine, Ph.D., LMFT
Laurie holds a Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy. Over the last 15 years, she has been working extensively with families, couples and individuals as well as providing supervision, training, community talks and teaching at the graduate level. Much of Laurie’s clinical background is in the resolution of psychological trauma. She has a broad focus helping people deal with parenting issues, marital conflicts, adolescence, individualconcerns and women’s issues. Laurie also works with senior management in corporations helping to resolve morale, personality and conflict issues.
Long Island : 542 Lakeview Ave, Rockville Centre, NY
101 Hillside Ave, Williston Park, NY
75 Ridge Rd West, Sag Habor. NY
New York City : 19 West 34th Street, New York, NY
©2015 Marriage and Family Therapists of New York, PLLC
For Low Cost Therapy, click here for AskDrJoan.Com
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Discovery may provide potential target for new therapies to treat bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder, which affects nearly eight million Americans, takes a toll not only on patients, but also on their families and communities.
A new study by scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has identified specific genetic variations closely associated with increased susceptibility to bipolar disorder and other conditions. The discovery may provide a target for new therapies.
In the new study, the researchers focused on a gene known as PDE10A, one of the many genes that has been linked to bipolar disorder, and the proteins this gene produces. These proteins help regulate intracellular levels of a messenger molecule called cAMP (cyclic adenosine monophosphate), which is involved in a variety of biological processes including learning and memory.
"We began with the idea that behavioral changes in bipolar subjects might be due to these genetic variations in the cAMP messenger pathway," said Ron Davis, chair of TSRI's Department of Neuroscience. "We did find that this was the case and, indeed, that these variations were in one specific gene for the cAMP messenger pathway called PDE10A. The variations that we found in the gene may alter the function of one form of PDE10A and lead to susceptibility to bipolar disorder."
Recently evolved region of the ‘dark genome’ provides clues to treatment of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder
New gene therapy addresses primary cellular deficit associated with limb-girdle muscular dystrophy 2B
New test provides a more objective way to assess negative urgency
The research, published recently by the journal Translational Psychiatry, examined human brain tissue from patients with bipolar disorder, as well as brain tissue from individuals without the psychiatric disorder.
"The PDE10A19 protein is interesting because we previously didn't know it even existed in the human brain and because it's found only in other primates -- not mice or rats," said Research Assistant Courtney MacMullen, the first author of the study. "Once we understand how this protein helps neurons remain healthy, we might be able to develop medications to treat neurons when they function abnormally, such as in patients with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia."
The results suggested abnormal variations in PDE10A19 might alter cAMP signaling by interacting with another protein known as PDE10A2, restricting its activity and disrupting the entire process.
Davis said that the complexity of gene expression in the human brain is greatly underestimated, and that future neurogenetic studies ought to begin with a deep study of each gene's ability to code for proteins to avoid false conclusions, particularly when it comes to the development of potential therapies.
"We need to know much more about this large family of enzymes and the roles they play in disorders like bipolar disorder," he said.
Source: Scripps Research Institute
Tags: Adenosine, Bipolar Disorder, Brain, cAMP, Cyclic adenosine 3, Enzyme, Gene, Gene Expression, Genes, Genetic, G-Protein, Intracellular, Mental Health, Molecule, Neurons, Neuroscience, Pathology, Protein, Psychiatry, Research, Schizophrenia, X-linked
Existing drug used to treat constipation may boost people's ability to think more clearly
Study shows aberrant changes over time in the brains of people with bipolar disorder
Omicron variant spike protein shows significantly weaker membrane fusion activity than other variants
Saliva test could be used for lithium monitoring among patients with mood disorders
Prevalence of type 2 diabetes is elevated in people with a psychiatric disorder
Mushroom consumption may benefit a person's mental health
Study reveals aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 via floor drains
Antipsychotic drugs associated with increase in risk of breast cancer
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New emphasis on interactivity at Iowa State Insect Zoo
Less than a year into her position as the program assistant in charge of the traveling Insect Zoo at Iowa State, Ginny Morgal is putting her stamp on the program by bringing a new level of interactivity and encouraging students to take ownership of what they’re learning.
EPA regional administrator to talk about water quality issues at Iowa State March 5
Karl Brooks, regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency's Region 7, will speak at Iowa State University about one of the nation's biggest water quality challenges: nonpoint source pollution. Brooks will discuss collaborative efforts of the EPA, Iowa farmers, state agencies and Iowa State University to seize a new opportunity to address water quality concerns related to agriculture. His talk, "Private Lands and Public Priorities: EPA, Iowa Agriculture, and the Quest for Land Health," will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 5, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. It is free and open to the public.
'Totally Biased' host W. Kamau Bell will speak at Iowa State March 4
W. Kamau Bell, who hosts the FX hit series "Totally Biased," will present a comedic, topical exploration of the current state of America's racism in a talk at Iowa State University. Bell's one-man show, "Ending Racism in About an Hour," will be at 8 p.m. Monday, March 4, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. It is free and open to the public.
Fortune 500 entrepreneur to return to the classroom, speak at lecture during Iowa State visit
Success for Diego Veitia has come from a combination of his own hard work, knowing when to take advantage of opportunity and, he says, a bit of luck. The Iowa State graduate is the founder and past chairman of INTL FCStone, a merchant banking group, which is No. 30 on the 2012 Fortune 500 list. Veitia is returning to the classroom at Iowa State to serve as an Executive in Residence for the College of Business.
Federal spending cuts would be a blow to Iowa’s economy
Federal spending cuts will have a direct impact on Iowa’s economy if Congress does not act by the March 1 sequestration deadline. Dave Swenson, associate scientist in the Department of Economics at Iowa State University, says if there are across-the-board cuts Iowa stands to lose around $292 million in direct federal funding, and such a large cut could harm the state's slow recovery.
Iowa State industrial design class tackles tractor rollover safety products and outreach
David Ringholz was searching for a project idea for the graduate students in an industrial design studio class he teaches at Iowa State when he heard a startling story on the radio: Tractor fatalities had reached epidemic rates. Less than two years later, Ringholz's team is ready to unveil the prototype of a device that addresses one aspect of tractor rollover fatalities: response time. It’s an amazingly simple product design that could save hundreds of lives in Iowa alone.
Changes to Pell Grant limit access for community college students
The Pell Grant makes it possible for countless students to achieve their goal of earning a college degree. However, changes to the eligibility requirements for the Pell Grant may be limiting, instead of expanding, access to higher education – especially for rural community college students.
U.S. egg industry improves efficiency, environmental impact, according to Iowa State researcher
The U.S. egg industry is operating at much greater efficiency while leaving a smaller environmental footprint than it did 50 years ago, according to a first-of-its-kind study conducted by researchers at Iowa State University. Improved genetics, disease prevention, nutrition and production methods allow the egg industry to feed more people while producing less waste and requiring fewer resources.
Kepler spacecraft helps astronomers find tiny planet beyond our solar system
Astronomers have discovered a planet beyond our solar system that's about the size of the Earth's moon -- the first time they've found a planet smaller than any of the planets orbiting our sun. Iowa State University's Steve Kawaler was part of the research team that determined the size of the tiny planet's host star. The findings were published online on Feb. 20 by the journal Nature.
It may be educational, but what is that TV show really teaching your preschooler?
Most parents carefully select what television programs and movies their children can watch. But Douglas Gentile, a professor of psychology at Iowa State University, says educational shows could come with an added lesson that influences a child’s behavior.
Iowa State’s MIRAGE lab mixes real and virtual to create new research opportunities
Iowa State University researchers have mixed the real and virtual worlds to create a unique research lab called MIRAGE. The lab's props, technology and stagecraft provide full-body immersion in virtual environments. That is helping researchers study new ideas in military training and better software for 3-D viewing.
Positive employment outlook for Iowa State MBA graduates
It is a busy time on campus with career fairs and employment recruiters meeting with students preparing to graduate this spring from Iowa State University. And with graduation still months away, the majority of students in the MBA program have already received their first job offer.
Iowa State professor defines connection between narcissism and envy
Understanding the relationship between narcissism and envy may provide some insight into sudden outbursts of aggressive behavior. Narcissism has long been associated with envy in the field of psychology, but an Iowa State study provides new evidence about that connection.
ISU livestock experts react to Russian ban on U.S. meat imports
Russia has announced that it will ban U.S. beef and pork imports because of concerns surrounding the use of a feed additive that helps animals add lean mass rather than fat. But Russia’s decision won’t have an immediate sweeping impact on Iowa livestock producers, a livestock market expert at Iowa State University said this week.
Iowa State nutritionist says new rules for school vending machines are long overdue
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is proposing new federal rules for foods and beverages sold in school vending machines, stores or as ala carte items in the cafeteria. The rules aim to cut down on the amount of calories, sodium and sugar in products sold to students during school hours.
ISU researchers receive grant to enhance soybean resistance to sudden death syndrome
Researchers at Iowa State University will use a grant totaling more than $5 million to strengthen the genetic resistance of soybeans to sudden death syndrome, a disease that has cost Iowa soybean producers millions in crop losses.
ISU experts: Keep retirement savings on track despite financial setbacks
In tough economic times it may be tempting to dip into or cut back on retirement savings. Financial counselors, however, say that’s a bad idea.
Economic study finds mortality and fertility factors in educational achievement
Access to public schools is one explanation for the educational gap between students in rich and poor countries, but a new study shows other factors are more significant. An associate professor of economics at Iowa State University said students are more likely to drop out of school in countries with higher fertility and mortality rates.
Iowa State researchers work to identify early warning signs in juvenile offenders
Red flags are easy to recognize in the days following a tragic event like a mass shooting. That’s why a group of Iowa State researchers is working to identify those early warning signs in juvenile offenders before they turn into a pattern of criminal behavior.
Iowa EPSCoR builds state’s research capacity in renewable energy and energy use
Iowa EPSCoR is building the state's research capacity in renewable energy and energy use by hiring faculty, launching studies and building partnerships with schools and industry. The project is driven by a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation and a $2 million grant from the Iowa Power Fund. The project is led by Iowa's three Regent universities, Iowa State University, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa.
Frequently asked questions about winter weather
Iowa State has policies and procedures to deal with cancellations, closings and parking. Click on the headline to read the basics you'll need to know when winter weather strikes. Always check the Iowa State homepage for information about class cancellations, closings and the latest updates.
Professor volunteers for hometown design team
Muscatine Journal Feb 28, 2013
Landscape Architecture Assistant Professor Matthew Gordy is helping make a mark on his hometown of Muscatine. He is part of the volunteer team designing a new band shell for the banks of the Mississippi River in the city's Riverside Park.
Virtual reality chase leaves students' hearts pounding
KCCI-TV Feb 21, 2013
It takes just a second -- "Your heart will pump. You'll be stressed." -- for it all to become real.
Hard-wired to hate exercise?
The Wall Street Journal Feb 21, 2013
Panteleimon "Paddy" Ekkekakis, professor of kinesiology at Iowa State, says many sedentary people push beyond their instrinsic range when they try to exercise too quickly or intensely, which can make them hate the activity and want to stop. But there are ways in which people can continue to feel good even slightly past their ventilatory threshold, Ekkekakis and his colleagues have found. Listening to music, playing to one's strengths, and working out with friends or as part of a team can help people stick with exercise and boost endurance.
Des Moines Business Record Feb 15, 2013
Young people aren't alone when it comes to a decrease in wages, says Peter Orazem, economics professor at Iowa State. But the positions they fill are typically more vulnerable to pay cuts than those held by people who are more established in their careers.
Shooting in the dark
The New York Times Feb 12, 2013
Extreme acts of violence don't occur because of one factor, but many, says Iowa State University Distinguished Professor Craig Anderson. "But if you look at the literature, I think it's clear that violent media is one factor; it's not the largest factor, but it's also not the smallest."
Brent Holland: 'I don't make happy paintings'
DSM Magazine Feb 8, 2013
Painter Brent Holland, an Iowa State associate professor of integrated studio arts, is featured in this profile in DSM Magazine.
Economic forecast: Still sputtering
Des Moines Business Record Feb 8, 2013
Economics Professor Peter Orazem says Iowa should fare well in 2013 with its traditional core strengths of agriculture, manufacturing and financial services. But some smart policy decisions at the Statehouse could set the stage for how well the state fares economically for years to come.
Midlands birthrates fall to lowest point in decades
Omaha World-Herald Feb 8, 2013
ISU Associate Professor Susan Stewart, psychology, tells the World-Herald that in tough economic times, fertility tends to drop. Birthrates in Nebraska and Iowa dipped in the late 1920s (headed into the Great Depression), and fell again in the 1960s and early 1970s, just as they are declining now.
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Covid-19 news: Wales rows back omicron restrictions as cases fall
The latest coronavirus news updated every day including coronavirus cases, the latest news, features and interviews from New Scientist and essential information about the covid-19 pandemic
Health 14 January 2022
By Michael Le Page, Clare Wilson, Jessica Hamzelou, Sam Wong, Graham Lawton, Adam Vaughan, Conrad Quilty-Harper, Jason Arunn Murugesu and Layal Liverpool
A man wears a Wales face mask on Queen Street in Cardiff, Wales
Matthew Horwood/Getty Images
Latest coronavirus news as of 1pm on 14 January
Wales joins Scotland and Northern Ireland in planning exit strategy from omicron restrictions
Wales is reversing some of its restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of covid-19 over the next few weeks, as cases there have started to fall. From Saturday, the number of people who can attend an outdoor event will rise from 50 to 500. That will rise to unlimited numbers on 21 January, although covid passes will still be required. From 28 January, nightclubs can reopen and pubs and restaurants can return to operating normally, although covid passes will still be needed for cinemas and theatres.
Tighter restrictions were introduced in Wales in late December as the country experienced a surge of omicron cases. But these peaked on 30 December and have since been falling equally rapidly. Scotland and Northern Ireland also set tighter rules in December, although in England, omicron restrictions were limited to advising people to work from home where possible and making face masks mandatory again in shops, cinemas and theatres. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Wales First Minister Mark Drakeford denied the move was a U-turn and said he was following the science. Scotland will also remove any restrictions on numbers at large sporting events from next week. Northern Ireland’s First Minister Paul Givan has said restrictions could start to be eased next week.
Other coronavirus news
Panic buying has started in some shops in China, when citizens were told on the Ministry of Commerce website to stockpile food and other daily necessities. They were told “to store a certain amount of daily necessities as needed to meet daily life and emergencies”. State newspaper, The Economic Daily, said the move was to ensure people were prepared in the event of a covid-19 lockdown. Covid-19 cases are very low in China, but there are local lockdowns and mass testing to try to stamp out local outbreaks.
Israel has now administered half a million fourth doses of coronavirus vaccines, in an effort to blunt its surge of omicron cases. But the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation said last week they would not be recommending fourth jabs, as three doses were continuing to provide good protection after three months.
The Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson tested positive for covid-19, her spokesperson announced today. Andersson was reported to be “feeling fine”.
Essential information about coronavirus
Where did coronavirus come from? And other covid-19 questions answered
Covid-19 vaccines: Everything you need to know about the leading shots
Long covid: Do I have it, how long will it last and can we treat it?
What’s the fairest way to share covid-19 vaccines around the world?
Covid-19: The story of a pandemic
What to read, watch and listen to about coronavirus
New Scientist Weekly features updates and analysis on the latest developments in the covid-19 pandemic. Our podcast sees expert journalists from the magazine discuss the biggest science stories to hit the headlines each week – from technology and space, to health and the environment.
The Jump is a BBC Radio 4 series exploring how viruses can cross from animals into humans to cause pandemics. The first episode examines the origins of the covid-19 pandemic.
Why Is Covid Killing People of Colour? is a BBC documentary, which investigates what the high covid-19 death rates in ethnic minority patients reveal about health inequality in the UK.
Panorama: The Race for a Vaccine is a BBC documentary about the inside story of the development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine against covid-19.
Race Against the Virus: Hunt for a Vaccine is a Channel 4 documentary which tells the story of the coronavirus pandemic through the eyes of the scientists on the frontline.
The New York Times is assessing the progress in development of potential drug treatments for covid-19, and ranking them for effectiveness and safety.
Humans of COVID-19 is a project highlighting the experiences of key workers on the frontline in the fight against coronavirus in the UK, through social media.
Belly Mujinga: Searching for the Truth is a BBC Panorama investigation of the death of transport worker Belly Mujinga from covid-19, following reports she had been coughed and spat on by a customer at London’s Victoria Station.
Coronavirus, Explained on Netflix is a short documentary series examining the coronavirus pandemic, the efforts to fight it and ways to manage its mental health toll.
COVID-19: The Pandemic that Never Should Have Happened, and How to Stop the Next One by Debora Mackenzie is about how the pandemic happened and why it will happen again if we don’t do things differently in future.
The Rules of Contagion is about the new science of contagion and the surprising ways it shapes our lives and behaviour. The author, Adam Kucharski, is an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, and in the book he examines how diseases spread and why they stop.
Sajid Javid, health secretary, arrives at No.10 Downing Street, London, UK
James Veysey/Shutterstock
Isolation period shortened for people with covid-19 in England
People who test positive for covid-19 in England will be able to stop self-isolating after five days if they have two negative lateral flow test results, the UK health minister has announced.
Sajid Javid told MPs in the House of Commons that UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) data showed “that around two-thirds of positive cases are no longer infectious by the end of day five”.
From Monday, people will be able to finish isolation at the start of day six if they record two negative results on lateral flow tests on days five and six. The change is intended to maximise activity in the economy and education while minimising the risk of people passing on the virus, he said..
Previously, people with covid-19 had to self-isolate for a minimum of seven days. The move follows a similar policy change in the US.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “This is a pragmatic move which leaders will welcome if it can mean more health and care workers who are well enough can return to the frontline, providing it does not significantly add to the risk of the virus spreading.”
England’s deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam is to leave his role at the end of March. Van-Tam, whose appearances in televised covid-19 briefings have been widely praised, has been on secondment to the Department of Health from the University of Nottingham since 2017. He will return to the university to take up a new role as pro-vice chancellor for the faculty of medicine and health sciences. UK prime minister Boris Johnson thanked Van-Tam “for his extraordinary contribution to our country and his invaluable advice throughout the pandemic”.
It is too soon to say the coronavirus is moving into an endemic phase, a World Health Organization official has warned. “Endemicity assumes that there’s stable circulation of the virus, at predictable levels with predictable waves of transmission… that doesn’t rely on external forces being placed in order to maintain that stability,” Catherine Smallwood said at a press conference on Tuesday. “But what we’re seeing at the moment, coming into 2022, is nowhere near that. We can’t just sit back and see a stable rate of transmission.”
Measures to tackle covid-19 also led to a dramatic fall in hospital admissions for common childhood infections in England, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal. There were thousands fewer admissions for meningitis, flu, tonsillitis and pneumonia and other conditions as the nation went into lockdown, schools closed and children’s social contacts significantly reduced. Some children with pre-existing conditions such as asthma were also “substantially protected” from other infections that could have potentially been life-threatening, researchers reported. The study analysed data from 2017 to mid-2021.
Around three-quarters of teachers in France are expected to strike today in protest at the government’s handling of covid-19 measures. Since the start of January, a surge in cases caused by the omicron variant has led to major disruption, with about 10,000 classes closed due to infections among staff and pupils. Teaching unions are demanding better protections against the virus, including high-quality face masks for staff and carbon dioxide monitors.
Fans watch a football match in Seville, Spain
The coronavirus pandemic is rapidly moving toward becoming endemic, according to the European Medicines Agency
As cases of coronavirus continue to soar around the world, the status of the coronavirus outbreak is rapidly moving from pandemic to endemic, according to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
“Nobody knows exactly when we’ll be at the end of the tunnel, but we’ll [get] there,” EMA head of biological health threats and vaccine strategy Marco Cavaleri told journalists at a press briefing on 11 January. “What is important and what we’re seeing is that we are moving towards the virus being more endemic.”
Cavaleri didn’t define what he meant by endemic. The term technically means that infections are stable and predictable.
Cases continue to rise across Europe. Germany and Bulgaria both reported the highest daily rate of new cases since the start of the pandemic in the last 24 hours, for example, Al Jazeera reports.
“We should not forget that we are still in a pandemic,” Cavaleri said. “Nevertheless… with omicron there will be a lot of natural immunity taking place on top of vaccination, we will be [rapidly] moving towards a scenario that will be closer to endemicity.”
Cavaleri also warned that the repeated delivery of booster doses of covid-19 vaccines is not a sustainable strategy for managing outbreaks. “We are rather concerned about a strategy that entangles repeated vaccination within a short term,” he said. While booster doses might be necessary for those who are immunosuppressed or otherwise vulnerable to severe disease, “we cannot really continuously give a booster dose every three or four months”, he said.
However, Ugur Sahin, the head of BioNTech, yesterday told the JP Morgan Health Care Conference: “We do not know how much immunity is associated with an omicron infection.”
He said that the company will start a clinical trial of an omicron-specific Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine by the end of this month and that commercial-scale manufacturing of this vaccine has already begun. “We anticipate to be ready for market supply by March 2022, subject to regulatory approval.”
Asked if the vaccine will come too late to have a meaningful effect on the omicron surge, Sahin said “Because most of the infections are mild, it is quite possible that even an infection with omicron requires an additional booster to ensure prolonged protection.”
He also told the conference that three billion doses of the original Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine were made in 2021. The companies shipped 2.6 billion doses and more than a billion people in 162 countries or regions have been vaccinated with them, the head of BioNTech, Ugur Sahin, told the JP Morgan healthcare conference on 11 January.
“Millions of cases of severe illness or death [were] likely averted,” he said.
Commuters wait on the platform at Auber RER train station in Paris, France
Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images
More than 50 per cent of people in Europe will be infected by the omicron variant within the next 6 to 8 weeks, warns WHO
Most people in Europe will become infected with the omicron variant in the next 6 to 8 weeks if the trend in case rates continues, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned.
The region saw 7 million new cases of covid-19 in the first week of 2022 – a figure that had more than doubled over a two-week period, WHO regional director for Europe Hans Kluge told journalists at a press briefing on Tuesday.
“As of 10 January, 26 countries reported over 1 per cent of their population is catching covid-19 each week,” Kluge said. “At this rate, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation forecasts that more than 50 per cent of the population in the region will be infected with omicron in the next 6 to 8 weeks.”
Over 176,000 people in the UK have had covid-19 mentioned on their death certificate since the start of pandemic, according to the nation’s Office for National Statistics, The Guardian reports.
The 176,035 figure is higher than the UK government’s official count, which currently stands at 173,509. The figure for deaths within 28 days of a positive test currently stands at 150,230.
Cases remain high in the UK. Over 1.2 million cases have been recorded in the last seven days, and 142,224 cases were reported yesterday alone.
The US recorded 1.35 million cases of coronavirus infections on Monday – the highest daily total for any country in the world since the pandemic began, according to a tally by news agency Reuters.
The previous record for the US was 1.03 million cases, which was reported on 3 January, Reuters reports.
The entire US is currently experiencing high levels of community transmission, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Covid Data Tracker. Over the last seven days, over 4.1 million cases have been recorded in the US, according to the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). The figure represents an 86 per cent increase on the previous week.
The number of people hospitalised with a coronavirus infection also continues to rise in the country. As of Sunday, 142,388 people with the virus were hospitalised – a record-breaking figure that surpasses the peak of 142,315 reported on 14 January last year, reports the New York Times.
In the last seven days, 8,720 people in the US have died with a coronavirus infection, according to the HHS. So far, around 838,000 people in the US have lost their lives to the virus.
Shoppers walk along Oxford Street on December 27, 2021 in London, England
Hollie Adams/Getty Images
UK Prime Minister expected to announce plans for ‘living with covid’ in coming weeks
UK government ministers are hinting at plans for the nation to “live with covid”. “I hope we will be one of the first major economies to demonstrate to the world how you transition from pandemic to endemic,” Nadhim Zahawi, former minister for covid vaccine deployment, told Sky News on Sunday.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to announce details of such a plan within the coming weeks.
“We are moving to a situation where it is possible to say that we can live with covid and that the pressure on the NHS and on vital public services is abating,” senior minister Michael Gove told Sky News. “But it’s absolutely vital to recognise that we are not there yet.”
To be considered endemic, a disease outbreak would be consistently present in a region, with predictable spread and infection rates. The spread and rates of the disease would be predictable. This is currently far from the case in the UK, where over 150,000 deaths have been reported so far, and 141,472 new cases were reported on Sunday.
Scientists have expressed concern. Devi Sridhar at the University of Edinburgh points out that no country has learned to live with covid without “crashing health services, social life, the economy or having widespread disruption” in one way or another.
“They say that we have to learn to live with it, but we’re not learning,” Christina Pagel at University College London told Times Radio. “We’re just pretending it’s not happening.”
Maria Van Kerkhove, the technical lead on covid-19 at the World Health Organization (WHO), previously told New Scientist that she dislikes the phrase “learning to live with the virus”, saying: “I don’t think we should learn to live with it. There are lots of things we can be doing to stop the virus from spreading. No level of death from covid-19 is acceptable to me.”
Tennis player Novak Djokovic has been released from detention in Australia after winning a legal battle with the country’s government over his vaccination status. Djokovic had been granted an exemption from Australia’s visa vaccination requirements, but had been held by border forces. Immigration minister Alex Hawke could still move to cancel Djokovic’s visa.
UK ministers have denied reports that rapid-acting lateral flow tests will cease to be offered on a free-of-charge basis in England, at least for the time being. Zahawi told Sky News on Sunday that there were “absolutely not” any plans to stop such free testing. Gove didn’t deny the reports, and separately told Sky News that it was “impossible to predict” how long free lateral flow testing would be necessary.
Latest on coronavirus from New Scientist
Testing and omicron: Everything you need to know about testing in the time of omicron
A disused granite quarry repurposed to cremate the dead due to covid-19 in Bengaluru, India
Abhishek Chinnappa/Getty Images
The potentially massive scale of unrecorded covid-19 deaths in India’s second wave means the official world death toll may be a significant underestimate
India’s death toll from covid-19 may be six to seven times greater than that officially recorded. The country’s records say that nearly half a million people have died from coronavirus infections so far, but the latest study estimates the real figure is 3.2 million deaths up to July last year.
If correct, this means the worldwide death toll from the coronavirus would be pushed up from 5.4 to 8.1 million – although other countries may also have underestimated their death rates. “This may require substantial upward revision of the World Health Organization’s estimates of cumulative global covid mortality,” Prabhat Jha at the University of Toronto and colleagues say in their paper.
India experienced a huge second wave of coronavirus infections in the first half of 2021, leaving hospitals overwhelmed and a national shortage of oxygen supplies. In common with many other low and middle-income countries, India does not have good systemic methods for recording causes of death, especially those that occur in rural areas. For instance, Jha’s team say that in 2020, an estimated eight in ten deaths did not involve medical certification, which is standard procedure in richer countries.
Jha’s team reached the figure of 3.2 million by using government data on all-cause mortality and an ongoing telephone survey of 140,000 adults across the country, which asked people about covid-19 symptoms and deaths in their households.
The military is being deployed to help in London hospitals due to staff shortages caused by covid-19 infections and people self-isolating. The two hundred members of the armed forces will include doctors, nurses and other personnel for general assistance. London was the first part of England to experience the latest covid-19 surge caused by the omicron variant.
People may need a fourth dose of a covid-19 vaccine by autumn in the northern hemisphere, Stephane Bancel of vaccine manufacturer Moderna has said. Israel has approved giving fourth shots to healthcare workers and people over the age of 60.
Free covid-19 rapid lateral flow test kits are handed out in Walthamstow, north London, England
TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images
Omicron continues to surge in the UK and other European countries
More than 24 NHS trusts have declared critical incidents in England after being overwhelmed by omicron patients. It means priority services may currently be under threat at one in six trusts in England.
In the UK there are currently 17,276 patients in hospital with the virus, according to the latest daily figures – the highest figure since last February. Yesterday close to 200,000 people tested positive for coronavirus.
“The sheer volume of covid cases, rising hospital admissions that have increased to over 15,000 and widespread staff absences that are as high as 10 per cent in some trusts are all combining to place front-line NHS services under enormous strain,” said Matthew Taylor, the head of the NHS Confederation.
Other countries in Europe are also facing unprecedented numbers of daily coronavirus cases. In France, 332,252 coronavirus cases were recorded yesterday. There were also over 20,000 covid-19 patients in hospital yesterday – the country’s highest figure since late May.
Italy also reported a record number of new coronavirus cases for the second day in a row. The latest total was 189,109. Meanwhile, Turkey hit a record high of 66,467 cases yesterday.
Booster jabs for 12 to 15-year-olds have been approved in the US by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Children will be offered a Pfizer/BioNTech booster jab. It follows the approval of boosters in the US for 16 to 17-year-olds in December.
Tennis star Novak Djokovic is being detained in a hotel in Australia after he failed to provide adequate evidence of his vaccination status on entry to the country.
People wearing masks in the streets of Lyon, France.
KONRAD K/SIPA/Shutterstock
SARS-CoV-2 variant found in France was identified in November
A coronavirus variant first discovered in France in late 2021 has had a lot of chances to spread but did not, according to an official from the World Health Organization (WHO).
The variant has been on the intergovernmental body’s radar since November, Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager said at a press briefing yesterday according to Bloomberg.
The variant was discovered around the same time as omicron.
Known as the B.1.640.2 variant, it caused at least 12 people to fall ill in Marseilles in November. “[It is] too early to speculate on virological, epidemiological or clinical features of this… variant based on these 12 cases,” say researchers in a preliminary analysis of the variant’s genome. The variant has 46 mutations and 13 deletions in its genome, say the team.
“This virus has had a decent chance to cause trouble but never really materialised as far as we can tell”, tweeted Tom Peacock, at Imperial College London, who was not involved in the analysis.
Multiple variants of the virus have evolved since the pandemic began but only a handful have gone on to spread widely. The highly-infectious omicron variant is currently sweeping through Europe, and France yesterday recorded 271,686 covid-19 infections, a national record.
Normal life will be made harder for unvaccinated people in France, French president Emmanuel Macron told Le Parisien yesterday.
“We need to tell them, from 15 January, you will no longer be able to go to the restaurant. You will no longer be able to go for a coffee, you will no longer be able to go to the theatre. You will no longer be able to go to the cinema.”
The tennis player Novak Djokovic has faced backlash after yesterday saying on Instagram that he had received a medical exemption to take part in the Australian Open. Only people who are fully vaccinated can currently visit Australia. Djokovic has not spoken about his vaccination status, but has previously expressed anti-vaccination sentiments.
The organisers of the tournament, which starts on 17 January, say the athlete has not been given special treatment. Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison said the Serbian player would need to show a genuine medical exemption to enter the country unvaccinated.
Delhi will impose a weekend curfew to curb soaring omicron cases in the Indian city. All non-essential activity will be banned from Friday night (7 January) to Monday morning (10 January). The curbs are in addition to a nighttime curfew that has been in place since late December from 11pm and 5am. Cinemas and gyms have also been closed since last week.
The year ahead: What can we expect from the pandemic in 2022?
WHO’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: How to alter the course of the pandemic
A man passes a temporary ‘Nightingale’ field hospital constructed in south London, England, 3 January 2022.
NEIL HALL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Staff shortages force health service providers to enact emergency measures
At least six National Health Service trusts in England have declared critical incidents as a result of staff shortages caused by covid-19.
A critical incident means that the healthcare providers believe they may no longer be able to provide a range of critical services, and the status enables them to call for help from staff and other organisations. University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay and United Lincolnshire Hospitals are among the trusts implementing emergency measures.
The chief executive of the NHS Confederation, Matthew Taylor, wrote in a blogpost that many parts of the health service are currently in “a state of crisis”, while community and social care services are at “breaking point”.
On a visit to a vaccination centre in Buckinghamshire yesterday, Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, said: “I think we’ve got to recognise that the pressure on our NHS, on our hospitals, is going to be considerable in the course of the next couple of weeks, and maybe more.”
Meanwhile, as children return to schools today, the government has recommended the wearing of face masks in secondary classrooms in England, as is already advised in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Head teachers have warned that high levels of staff absences could lead to children being sent home to learn remotely.
Covid-19 cases may have plateaued in London and could start to fall in other parts of the UK within 3 weeks, an epidemiologist and government adviser has said. Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that infection rates in the capital appear to be stabilising in the 18 to 50 age group, which has been driving the omicron epidemic.
“With an epidemic which has been spreading so quickly and reaching such high numbers, it can’t sustain those numbers forever, so we would expect to see case numbers start to come down in the next week; [they] may be already coming down in London, but in other regions a week to 3 weeks,” he said.
“Whether they then drop precipitously, or we see a pattern a bit like we saw with delta back in July of an initial drop and then quite a high plateau, remains to be seen. It’s just too difficult to interpret current mixing trends and what the effect of opening schools again will be.”
In the US, thousands of schools have delayed the start of term or switched to remote learning amid surging cases caused by the omicron variant. New York City’s mayor has vowed to keep schools open despite soaring infection rates, in contrast to cities such as Milwaukee, Cleveland and Detroit. Nationwide, the number of patients in hospital with covid-19 increased by 40 per cent in the past week, according to Reuters.
The US Food and Drug Administration has authorised a third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to be given to children aged 12 to 15. A panel advising the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will now decide whether to recommend booster shots in this age group.
Two years of covid-19: What we’ve learned during the pandemic so far
A soldier administers a vaccination at the Army Reserve Centre in Poole, England.
Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images
Our daily covid-19 update will resume on 4 January
Immunity offered by vaccines wanes more quickly with omicron, finds UK study
The protection conferred by booster vaccines against the omicron variant begins to wane within 10 weeks, according to a briefing released by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
Based on an analysis of 147,597 delta and 68,489 omicron cases, the agency found that the Oxford/AstraZeneca, Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are less effective against omicron than delta. For people who had two initial doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, the UKHSA estimates that Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna boosters are around 60 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic infections from omicron 2 to 4 weeks after the third dose, but this falls to 35 to 45 per cent by 10 weeks. For those who had two initial doses of Pfizer/BioNTech, protection falls from 70 per cent at 2 to 4 weeks to 45 per cent at 10 weeks after a Pfizer booster, but stays around 70 to 75 per cent up to 9 weeks after a Moderna booster.
The UKHSA report also estimates that someone infected with omicron is 50 to 70 per cent less likely to be admitted to hospital, compared with delta. This is based on a preliminary analysis of 114,144 omicron cases and 461,772 delta cases occurring between 22 November and 19 December. The difference is somewhat larger than suggested by a study published by Imperial College London on Wednesday, which reported a 15 to 20 per cent lower risk.
However, modelling suggests that the severity of omicron would need to be around 90 per cent lower to avoid similar levels of hospital admissions to previous waves, according to minutes from a meeting of the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies on Monday.
“What we have got now is a really fine balance between something that looks like a lower risk of hospitalisation – which is great news – but equally a highly transmissible variant and one that we know evades some of our immune defences, so it is a very balanced position,” Jenny Harris, chief executive of UKHSA, told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.
The UK recorded 119,789 new cases of covid-19 yesterday, setting another record. The Office for National Statistics estimates that 1.4 million people in the UK had the virus in the week ending 16 December, the highest number since comparable figures began in autumn 2020.
Healthcare workers in the US who have tested positive for covid-19 but do not have symptoms can stop isolating after seven days instead of 10, if they test negative for the virus, under new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Italy has banned public new year’s eve celebrations as well as all concerts and open air events until 31 January, aiming to curb a rise in infections driven by the omicron variant. Mask wearing will also be compulsory in outdoor public places under new rules.
Australia will cut the interval between second doses and booster shots from 5 months to 4 from 4 January, and then to 3 months on 31 January.
The year of coronavirus variants: How alpha, delta and omicron brought new waves of disease across the world in 2021.
Cuba’s homegrown vaccines: Four months ago, hospitals in Cuba collapsed because of skyrocketing covid-19, but locally made vaccines have succeeded in bringing the outbreak under control.
Vaccine hesitancy: It is more important than ever for the UK to reach out to communities where concerns over vaccination are more common, such as pregnant women and some ethnic groups, reports Jason Arunn Murugesu.
See previous updates from November to December 2021, September to October 2021, July to September 2021, June to July 2021, May 2021, April-March 2021, February 2021, January 2021, November/December 2020, and March to November 2020.
Watch two black holes merge and zoom across galaxy
Strongest evidence yet that MS is caused by Epstein-Barr virus
We now have the technology to develop vaccines that spread themselves
Hybrid animal in 4500-year-old tomb is earliest known bred by humans
How Minecraft is helping children with autism make new friends
Help discover the origins of meteor showers by spotting shooting stars
Advances in physics may seem abstract at first but tech often follows
Goliath review: Tourism to a ruined Earth explores the idea of home
Flu vaccines during pregnancy protect babies for 6 months after birth
Watch as a pig heart is transplanted into a human for the first time
Watch the best ever simulation of stars being born in a cosmic cloud
Beth Singler: Don't fear AI itself, but corporations using algorithms
Meet Rollin' Justin, the future of humanoid exploration on Mars
Why can’t I judge the temperature of bathwater with my left hand?
UK energy crisis: Why renewable subsidies will help avoid price shocks
Why omicron isn't more severe in kids despite rise in hospitalisations
Magazine issue 3358 , published 30 October 2021
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Why we need to get serious about solving the space junk problem
Covid-19 news archive: September to October 2021
MORE FROM NEW SCIENTIST
What endemic means - and why covid-19 is nowhere near it yet
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Despite Heavy Fighting, Experts Finally Reach Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 Crash Site
By Reuters On 8/1/14 at 11:04 AM EDT
Members of a group of international experts inspect wreckage at the site where the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed, near the village of Hrabove (Grabovo) in Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine August 1, 2014. Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters
KIEV (Reuters) - International experts started recovery work at the wreckage site of a downed Malaysian airliner in east Ukraine on Friday despite clashes nearby between government forces and pro-Russian rebels.
The group was the largest to reach the site since flight MH17 was shot down over rebel-held territory on July 17, killing all 298 people on board.
Roads had for days been too dangerous to use because of heavy fighting, frustrating efforts to recover all the victims' remains and push ahead with an investigation.
In the latest clashes, the rebels killed at least 10 Ukrainian paratroopers in an ambush after midnight near Shakhtarsk, one of the closest towns to the wreckage site, the Ukrainian military said.
The rebels said they had pushed back government forces around Shakhtarsk, where fighting has raged for several days. A Ukrainian military official said a further 13 troops were wounded and 11 unaccounted for.
The recovery mission included 70 experts from Australia and the Netherlands, whose countries suffered a big loss of life in the shoot-down, as well as representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
"Recovery work starts immediately," the OSCE said on Twitter.
An advance team drove to the site from the nearest big city, Donetsk, on Thursday but only stayed only for about an hour after the sides halted fighting along the route.
Agreement was later reached to extend the limited ceasefire around the route, making it a safe corridor, at talks in Belarus involving Russia, Ukraine, the rebels and the OSCE.
Kiev has accused the rebels of planting mines in the region near the site, suggesting they want to hamper the investigation and hide evidence, but an OSCE official said no evidence had been found to back up the allegations.
Ukrainian officials say about 80 bodies have not been recovered from the wreckage of the Boeing 777. The 298 victims included 193 Dutch and 27 Australians, as well as 43 Malaysians.
The United States says the separatists probably shot down the plane by mistake with a Russian-made missile but the rebels and Moscow deny the accusation and blame the downing on Kiev's military campaign to quell the uprising.
BESEIGED STRONGHOLDS
In other violence, city authorities said five civilians had been killed and nine wounded in the past 24 hours in Luhansk, which, with, Donetsk, is the last big rebel stronghold.
Government forces have intensified their offensive in mainly Russian-speaking east Ukraine since the airliner came down.
The separatists have been pushed out of other towns they held in the rebellion, mounted against rule by Kiev's pro-Western leaders and inspired by Russia's annexation of Crimea after a pro-Moscow president was ousted in Kiev in February.
Luhansk, the smaller of the two main rebel strongholds, is now almost completely surrounded by government troops. It has been cut of from food supplies and left with no electricity or running water, authorities say.
Rebel commander Igor Girkin declared a state of siege in the rebel-held territory in and around Donetsk, saying this allowed his fighters to confiscate cars, construction materials, food, medical equipment and phones.
More than 1,100 people had been killed and nearly 3,500 wounded between mid-April and July 26, the United Nations said.
'Massive Explosive Decompression' Brought Down MH17, Ukraine Says
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Above-Average Hurricane Season Could Further Challenge Government's Pandemic Response
Jeremy Warner/Shutterstock.com
By Brandi Vincent,
Defense Technology Correspondent
By Brandi Vincent
| April 28, 2020
Technology may be key in ensuring the government responds to disasters on multiple fronts, a retired U.S. Army General said.
Citing cutting-edge computer model forecasts, America’s weather predictors recently projected the 2020 hurricane season may usher in more storm activity than usual due to warmer-than-average waters in the Atlantic Ocean and other factors.
On top of the possible increase in storms, the hurricane season that begins June 1 also presents a deeper threat on the horizon: The potential intersection of catastrophic weather with a global pandemic.
“So we really haven't had this happen before—certainly at the scale that it is happening,” Lt. Gen. Jeff Talley, IBM vice president of Global Public Sector and global fellow with the company’s Center for the Business of Government, told Nextgov in a recent conversation.
Representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the armed services, industry and federal and state governments frequently conduct scenario planning and leverage advanced simulations to prepare for natural disasters, chemical or biological activities and threats that might occur simultaneously. “But I don't think when we get right down to the practice and implementation, I think it's fair to say those disaster management organizations haven't really thought about ‘what if we were to have a pandemic’ like we currently have with COVID and we have the weather-related disasters that we tend to see as seasonal, such as hurricanes,” he said.
The retired Army officer explained that disaster management—particularly now when hurricane response might need to converge with pandemic response—poses a “big data problem that requires a public-private partnership solution.”
Forecasting an Unparalleled Threat
Harnessing IBM data and assets, the Weather Channel’s official hurricane forecast expects 18 named storms, nine hurricanes and four major hurricanes during this year’s season. That’s significantly above the 30-year normalized average, which is 13 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.
“In hurricane season, ... we normally have a pretty good idea of when and where the weather event is going to occur, the impact of it, and we have normally put some sort of preparation in place, or have a plan—state, local and federal—on how we're going to respond to it at different parts depending where the weather crisis is. There are solutions sent off … and you take people and you concentrate them in a certain area, so we can provide medical, food, water, etc,” Talley explained. “Now, the problem is obviously you can't take that same way of delivering a solution for say, evacuation, if you're in the impact zone of a hurricane because of COVID-19.”
Several states are currently confronting how they might evacuate people while complying with social distancing guidance to slow the spread COVID-19. An emergency management director for Florida, for example, recently noted that the state’s plans will ultimately depend on whether storms occur early in the season or after the number of coronavirus cases across the state drops. Insiders are examining whether they’ll divert people who show symptoms to potential COVID-19-only shelters, how they’ll shuttle them and if they should use hotels instead of other types of mass shelters.
A FEMA spokesperson told Nextgov that even as the agency responds to COVID-19, officials “are also preparing and maintaining readiness for other disasters to include spring flooding, severe weather and the upcoming hurricane season.” The official said the agency currently has more than 3,035 employees supporting the COVID-19 pandemic response, out of more than 20,443 personnel “who are prepared to respond to other emergencies should they occur.”
“FEMA considers every employee an emergency manager, and each employee has regular and recurring emergency management responsibilities. The agency has developed a series of online trainings to expand the cross-training of its workforce and build additional capacity,” the spokesperson said. “Should additional support be needed, FEMA is able to activate the [Homeland Security Department’s] surge capacity force composed of federal employees from DHS and other agencies.”
That ongoing preparation could prove critical. But According to Talley, disaster response officials aren’t able to access and harness all the pertinent data that exists in real-time once an incident happens.
Technological tools to support disaster management efforts already exist, but the retired general sees a deeper need for one streamlined and distributed, data-driven response solution that would enable all necessary government officials and private-sector entities to “visualize a common operating picture” firsthand.
“I don't want to give you the impression that we don't have the visualization capability of FEMA or other organizations. We do,” Talley explained. “But we don't have the ability yet to have a common platform where that is shared amongst national, state and local governments, as well as say, the private sector, the nonprofits, and don't forget the for-profit private sector. They're critical.”
But ‘Who Owns the Battlespace?’
After Hurricane Harvey decimated parts of the nation in 2017, IBM sent Talley to Texas to help lead the company’s response efforts on the ground, assist the state's task force and support the governor and his team’s work to help Texans bounce back. During those recovery initiatives, the Cajun Navy—a sort of ad-hoc cadre of volunteers who use their private boats to assist in post-hurricane search and rescue—offered their services to help out. Following guidance from the state’s emergency operation center and others, the volunteer responders went out by boat to help rescue someone who was on top of a house that was underwater.
“So the Cajun Navy or others would go out to help as volunteers. We, the [emergency operation center], would not know that the waters were electrified because the electrical lines are down. The utility company may not know they’re down, may not know that they're hot,” Talley explained. “And so then [the volunteers] would get out of the boat to search and rescue—and they would be electrocuted. That happened.”
With that unfortunate event and the current national scenario in mind, Talley said a proper streamlined technological product that incorporated already existing information from the electrical grid, as well as information about specific geographic locations, roads, medical supplies, details from social media and other helpful data—and that also unleashes artificial intelligence to support response—could alleviate some of those risks.
IBM is taking a stab at developing such a platform and though he couldn’t offer many details, the retired general said experts inside the tech company are currently taking existing technologies they’ve already built with others, mainly for defense intelligence and commercial clients, and through a series of sprints, working to “demonstrate the capability and try to address the requirements of as many end-users that you would have,” across multiple local, state and national organizations during a response. The work is being done in collaboration with the Defense Department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.
But even as new response solutions are being considered, Talley noted that there is still a major challenge at the forefront of the nation’s disaster management that boils down to one question: “Who owns the battlespace?”
“Is there one person, or one organization that clearly owns all the battlespace and everybody in that battlespace knows who it is and is going to listen to and comply with their authority and their responsibilities to do whatever needs to be done in the battlespace—and the answer's no. Often what we see in a traditional hurricane or traditional disaster management, is you have lots of resources coming in, but you can't get them to where they're needed the most, because there isn't an ability to coordinate and integrate all the players that are in the impacted area and on the fringe of the impacted area because there's no single organization that has that authority, they don't own the battlespace,” Talley said. “And so the problem is, there isn’t one single owner—it truly has to be a public-private partnership.”
FEMA did not weigh in on whether its own officials see a need for a technological integrated response tool as hurricane season approaches during a pandemic. But the agency’s spokesperson did highlight that officials are working directly with states and other partners to prepare for the issues that may arise, and address how COVID-19 might “change sheltering or other more traditional resources provided during emergency response.”
“We have some great partnerships. And in the current COVID-19 response, every level of government, the private sector, nonprofits and faith-based organizations are all involved, so all possible resources are being put to use,” the official said. “And in any future response, those will be valuable resources that can be brought to the table.”
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Starting with
Alpert, Herb
Terence J. O’Grady
revised by Bryan Proksch
Publication History:
(b Los Angeles, CA, March 31, 1935). American trumpeter, composer, bandleader, and record company executive. He studied trumpet as a child and left college to play in the army for a two-year period. After three years of producing records on his own, he launched A&M Records with Jerry Moss in 1962. A&M’s first issue was also Alpert’s first recording as a trumpeter and bandleader, The Lonely Bull (A&M, 1962). The title track included sounds from the bullring in Tijuana, Mexico, so Alpert dubbed his band the Tijuana Brass. His music exploited a distinctive combination of Mexican mariachi-style brass with jazz rhythms, which was dubbed Ameriachi. A string of hits including “Mexican Shuffle” (A&M, 1964) and “Tijuana Taxi” (A&M, 1965) followed. In 1966 Alpert had five recordings simultaneously listed on the Billboard Top 20. His cover of “This guy’s in love with you” reached no.1 in ...
Atkins, Chet
Bill C. Malone
revised by Barry Mazor
[Chester Burton ]
(b nr Luttrell, TN, June 20, 1924, d Nashville, TN, June 30, 2001). American country-music guitarist and recording company executive. Although the first instrument he played professionally was the fiddle, he became internationally famous as a guitarist. Developed while he was in high school, his guitar style was influenced by Merle Travis, Les Paul, Django Reinhardt, and George Barnes and was characterized by the use of the thumb to establish a rhythm on the lower strings and multiple fingers to play melodic or improvisational passages on the higher strings, sometimes with complex voicings. In the early 1940s Atkins toured with Archie Campbell and Bill Carlisle playing both fiddle and guitar, and appeared with them on WNOX radio in Knoxville. He then toured with the second generation Carter Family as a sideman and in 1946 joined Red Foley. After beginning his association with the “Grand Ole Opry” he settled in Nashville in ...
Clement, Cowboy Jack
Roben Jones
[John Henderson ]
(b Whitehaven, TN, April 8, 1931). American singer-songwriter, producer, publisher, and entrepreneur. He began playing bluegrass while in the military and after his discharge in 1952, played at radio stations in Wheeling, West Virginia, and Boston. While enrolled in Memphis State University (from 1954), he worked nights and weekends at the Eagle’s Nest club. After working briefly for Fernwood Records, he was hired by Sun Records, where he recorded Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash, among others. He wrote hits for several of Sun’s artists, including Johnny Cash’s singles “Ballad of a Teenage Queen” and “Guess things happen that way” (both Sun, 1958).
Clement left Sun in 1960 to became a staff producer for RCA in Nashville. In 1963 he moved to Texas, started a publishing company, and produced Dickey Lee’s hit “Patches” (Smash, 1963). After returning to Nashville in 1965, he discovered and produced Charlie Pride and wrote songs for a variety of country artists, including Pride (“Just between you and me,” RCA Victor, ...
Denny, Jim
David Sanjek
[James Rae ]
(b Buffalo Valley, TN, Feb 28, 1911; d Nashville, TN, Aug 27, 1963). American country music agent, publisher, and Grand Ole Opry manager. One of the most influential and powerful figures in the country music business, Jim Denny followed the path of the classic American success story. He left his home in Buffalo Valley, Tennessee, at age 16 with purportedly no more than 40 cents in his pocket. He moved to Nashville and joined the mailroom staff at WSM radio (home of the Grand Ole Opry). He completed his college degree by mail and worked his way up the corporate ladder, becoming the manager of concessions at the Opry during World War II. In 1951 Denny was promoted to manager of the Opry, an appointment that granted him to programming privileges and thus put him in the position to make or break performers’ careers. Additionally, he headed the ...
Foglesong, Jim
[James Staton ]
(b Lundale, WV, July 26, 1922). American record label executive. Over the course of more than 50 years, Jim Foglesong has played an influential role in the administration of country music. He initially aimed to be a vocalist, performing on a local radio station as a teenager and receiving a degree as a vocal major from the Eastman School of Music in 1950. He subsequently moved to New York City, where he was hired by Columbia Records shortly thereafter. He was appointed the head of their Epic subsidiary in 1953 and held that position for the next ten years. He moved to RCA Victor in 1964 as the executive director of their pop acts. In 1970 Fogelsong moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and joined the Dot Record label as head of their Artist and Repertoire Department. In 1973 he became president of Dot Records. In 1979 he became president of MCA Records Nashville and was named the president of Capitol Records Nashville in ...
Gaither, Bill
Darlene Graves and Michael Graves
[William J. ]
(b Alexandria, IN, March 28, 1936). American gospel songwriter, performer, producer, and publisher. He grew up on a small farm in Indiana and graduated from Anderson College with a major in English and a minor in music. He went on to receive a master’s degree in guidance and counseling and met his future wife and song-producing partner, Gloria Sickal, while both were teaching high school. Gaither started singing gospel music as a child and in 1956 formed the Bill Gaither Trio with his brother Danny and his sister Mary Ann. He started his own publishing company in 1959. He continued to perform and compose while a teacher at Alexandria High School and in 1961 formed the Gaither Music Company to publish his works. After their marriage in 1962, Gaither and his wife wrote their first major song, “He touched me,” which was a significant hit by 1963. He re-formed the Bill Gaither Trio with Gloria and Danny, and in ...
Gay, Connie B(arriot)
Charles K. Wolfe
revised by Diane Pecknold
(b Lizard Lick, nr Knightdale, NC, Aug 22, 1914; d Falls Church, VA, Dec 4, 1989). American country music radio announcer, station owner, television producer, and concert promoter. He studied agriculture at North Carolina State University (BS 1935) and then joined the US Department of Agriculture. From 1935 to 1945 he produced the department’s network radio program, The National Farm and Home Hour. After World War II he launched a number of country music enterprises around Washington, DC, using the moniker Town and Country Time as a unifying brand. His activities included a concert series in Constitution Hall, a morning radio program on WARL (Arlington, VA) called Let’s be gay, and an afternoon program called Town and Country Time, which was later syndicated on radio and television. Gay owned radio stations throughout the upper southeast, and his were among the first to experiment with full-time country music broadcasting. He was also a pioneer in television. In the mid-1950s he produced a three-hour NBC network television show, ...
Halpern, Steven
Jonas Westover
(b United States). American new Age pianist and producer. He played jazz trumpet and guitar during the 1960s in New York, and has credited John Coltrane as an early influence. He became interested in sonic healing and Eastern religions, both of which became fundamental to the transformation of his musical style. After undergoing a spiritual awakening in 1969 in the Santa Cruz mountains, Halpern developed what he called “anti-frantic alternative” music, releasing his first album, Spectrum Suite, in 1975. It became one of the foundational, and most influential, albums of New Age music. To create what was labeled music for “meditation and inner peace,” Halpern performed slowly unfolding, almost arrhythmic melodies on keyboards and synthesizers. Often using choral backdrops for his minimalist, meandering, and warm sonic environments, he weaves together spiritual growth and musical freedom with the goal of bringing self-actualization and wellness to the listener. He has released over 70 recordings featuring instrumental music as well as guided meditation. These include recordings targeted for specific purposes, such as ...
Huff, Leon
Kelly, R(obert Sylvester)
Mark Anthony Neal
(b Chicago, IL, Jan 8, 1967). American R&B singer, writer, producer, and arranger. Kelly was born on the South side of Chicago. Raised, with his three siblings, by a single mother, he was encouraged to pursue a musical career by his high school music teacher and mentor, Lena McLin, who was the chair of the music department at the Kenwood Academy and the niece of the legendary gospel music composer Thomas Dorsey. In high school Kelly formed the group MGM (Musically Gifted Men), which won a $100,000 grand prize on the television talent show Big Break, hosted by Natalie Cole. The group eventually signed with Jive Records, though after creative and financial tensions, three of the members were replaced and the group renamed R. Kelly and Public Announcement. After a moderately successful debut that produced the hit singles “She’s Got That Vibe” and “Honey Love,” Kelly left the group in early ...
Lair, John Lee
Michael Ann Williams
(b Livingston, KY, July 1, 1894, d Lexington, KY, Nov 12, 1985). American country music entrepreneur. He grew up in Rockcastle County, Kentucky, near the Renfro Creek, which gave its name to the mythical community which Lair would make famous. Lair pursued a career in insurance in Chicago, where he became familiar with radio station WLS and its pioneering National barn dance. By the late 1920s, Lair began seeking out talent for WLS. His first success came with the Cumberland Ridge Runners, a group that eventually included Red Foley, who went on to country music stardom. During his WLS years, Lair also created acts for three of the most popular female country music radio stars of the era: Linda Parker, LuLu Belle, and Lily May Ledford. As music librarian for WLS, Lair was instrumental in helping to promote barn dance entertainment as “folk” rather than “hillbilly” music. An avid collector of music, Lair copyrighted a number of variants of traditional pieces, but also composed original music, including his best known “Take me back to Renfro Valley.”...
Landau, Jon(athan)
John Rockwell
revised by Andrea F. Bohlman
(b Brooklyn, NY, May 14, 1947). American rock critic, record producer, and manager. While a history student at Brandeis University (BA 1969) he was the main critic for Crawdaddy! (1966–7) and contributed a regular full-page column to Rolling Stone (1967–9). After graduating, he made his first attempts at record production with the MC5 and Livingston Taylor. In 1970 he returned to criticism, first for the Boston Phoenix (1970–2) and then the Real Paper (1972–5). From 1971 he was recordings editor for Rolling Stone, leaving rock criticism in 1975. In 1972 he had already published a collection of his writings. Landau’s authoritative style is direct in its assessment. His knowledge of rock history and his penchant for technical explanation contributed to his tremendous influence on rock’s development. Landau’s longtime association with Bruce Springsteen began in 1974 when he notably described the artist’s “rock and roll future” in the ...
Light, Enoch
Daniele Buccio
(Henry )
(b Canton, OH, Aug 18, 1905; d West Redding, CT, July 31, 1978). American composer, violinist, bandleader, recording engineer, and producer. After graduating from Johns Hopkins University, he performed as a light classical violinist in the United States and Europe. During the 1930s he studied conducting with Maurice Frigara in Paris. After a near-fatal car accident in 1940, he organized his own dance band, the Light Brigade, which recorded for RCA and Columbia. After he disbanded it at the turn of the decade, Light devoted himself to management, working for several record companies before becoming president of Waldorf Music Hall Records in 1954. He founded his own label, Grand Award, in 1956 and had success with Dixieland and honky-tonk piano albums. In 1959, he founded Command Records on which he released Persuasive Percussion, the first in a successful series of high-fidelity albums that used stereo technology to great advantage. Over the next two decades, he continued to produce hit albums drawing on the latest technological savvy and packaged with covers usually designed by Josef Albers. Musicians who appeared on Light’s albums include the Free Design, Doc Severinsen, Dick Hyman, Bobby Byrne, and Bobby Hackett. In ...
Ryan R. McNutt
[Gottwald, Lukasz ]
(b Westerly, RI, Sept 26, 1973). American songwriter and record producer. One of the most sought-after collaborators for popular singers in the 2000s, he helped reshape the sound of radio pop for the MP3 age. His hits include Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U been Gone,” Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl,” and Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok.” As of January 2011, he had collaborated on 21 Top 40 Billboard Hot 100 singles.
Following two years at the Manhattan School of Music, he was hired as the lead guitarist for the Saturday Night Live house band in 1997. While working with the show, he began DJing throughout New York, producing or remixing tracks for artists including Mos Def and Black Star. After he met Swedish producer Max Martin at a house party, the duo collaborated on two songs for American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson’s second album, after which Dr. Luke soon wrote hits for Pink, Avril Lavigne, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, and others. Noted for his loud, polished sound and the adoption of electronic and indie rock tropes in his work, he claimed credits on nine separate top ten singles in ...
Matassa, Cosimo
Jesse Jarnow
(b New Orleans, LA, April 13, 1926). American label owner, producer, and engineer. The owner of Cosimo Recording Studios and Rex Records, he was one of the most important recording producers in the fertile New Orleans scene between 1945 and 1972. Matassa’s family, Sicilian immigrants, owned grocery and appliance stores in New Orleans, the latter of which sold radios as well as jukeboxes. As a teenager, Matassa was a field service representative for the family business, J & M Amusement Services. After Matassa began making money selling used records from the jukeboxes, he purchased a Duo Press disc cutter, installed it in the rear of the family store, hired out the space to outside producers, and began recording exclusive sides for the company to distribute. One such artist was Fats Domino, who cut his first single there in 1949. Relocating to a larger space in the French Quarter in ...
Mercado, Ralph
Marisol Negrón
(b Brooklyn, NY, Sept 29, 1941; d Hackensack, NJ, March 10, 2009). American promoter, manager, and record label owner. The premiere promoter of “tropical” Latin music, Mercado was a teenager when he began organizing “waistline parties” that admitted women free of charge while men paid according to the size of their date’s waist. These parties soon led to the 3 & 1 club in Brooklyn, where he featured established and up-and-coming Latin music musicians. Mercado established himself in the Manhattan music scene by promoting live performances, such as the Latin jazz series at the Red Garter; dances at the Cheetah Lounge, including the legendary Fania All-Stars concert in 1971; and, in the early 1980s, the Salsa Meets Jazz series at the Village Gate with promoter Jack Hooke.
Mercado created RMM Management in 1972, eventually signing most of the artists under Fania Records. In 1987 he launched RMM Records, filling the void left by the demise of Fania in the early 1980s. Mercado quickly emerged as a leader in the industry and the shift toward ...
Moman, Chips
[Lincoln Wayne]
(b LaGrange, GA, June 12, 1936; d LaGrange, June 13, 2016). American guitarist, songwriter, producer, and entrepreneur. At age 14 he arrived in Memphis and soon worked with Johnny and Dorsey Burnette. His song “This Time” became a hit for Troy Shondell (1961, Liberty). He then worked for Stax Records, overseeing their first three hits. Ousted in 1962, he founded American Studios and assembled a house band, the Memphis Boys. With Dan Penn, he wrote “Dark End of the Street” for James Carr (1966, Goldwax) and “Do Right Woman” for Aretha Franklin (1967, Atl.). He produced works by Elvis Presley, the Gentrys, Dionne Warwick, B.J. Thomas, and many others. In 1972 he moved to Atlanta and then Nashville, where he became prominent in the Outlaw movement, producing Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson and cowriting “Lukenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)” (1977, RCA) with Bobby Emmons. In ...
Nelson, Ken
(b Caledonia, MN, Jan 19, 1911; d Somis, CA, Jan 6, 2008). American country music record producer. One of the most prolific, influential, and successful record producers in the country arena, Ken Nelson was raised in a Chicago orphanage and struck out on his own at the age of 14. He had a brief performing career as a member of the Campus Kids but soon thereafter achieved more success on Chicago radio. His promotion of country music received the attention of Los Angeles-based Capitol Records, which hired him as producer in 1947. Nelson was appointed head of the country division in 1951 and remained in the post until 1971. Over that period he produced thousands of sessions and achieved more than 100 number-one hits. The roster of artists with whom he was associated is astounding: Ferlin Husky, Red Simpson, Faron Young, Jean Shepard, Tommy Collins, Merle Travis, Wynn Stewart, Rose Maddox, the Farmer Boys, Hank Thompson, and Sonny James. Nelson also helped establish the commercial and aesthetic preeminence of the Bakersfield Sound by producing the career-establishing recordings of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. He made his mark in other genres as well by signing humorist Stan Freberg to the label, recording rock and roll pioneers Wanda Jackson and Gene Vincent, promoting session musician Glen Campbell into a pop star, and bringing the Beach Boys to the attention of the company. Nelson retired from Capitol in ...
Norman, Jim Ed
Don Cusic
(b Fort Myers, FL, Oct 16, 1948). American Producer, arranger, and record executive. Norman met Don Henley when both were students at North Texas State University and formed the group Shiloh, which recorded a self-titled album (Amos, 1970), produced by Kenny Rogers, before disbanding in 1971. Norman, a keyboard player, began arranging for Henley’s new group, the Eagles, as well as Linda Ronstadt, Kim Carnes, Bob Seger, and America. Between 1977 and 1983 he achieved great success as a record producer, working with Crystal Gayle, Hank Williams, Jr., Johnny Lee, Mickey Gilley, and Anne Murray, with whom he produced nine albums, received four Grammy Awards, and earned the Country Music Association’s Single and Album of the Year awards for “A Little Good News” (Capitol, 1983).
In 1983 Norman joined Warner/Reprise as Vice-President of Artists & Repertoire, was named as Executive Vice President in 1984, and became President in ...
Owens, Buck
Olivia Carter Mather
[Alvis Edgar ]
(b Sherman, TX, Aug 12, 1929; d Bakersfield, CA, March 25, 2006). American country musician and businessman. He is widely considered the central figure of the Bakersfield sound, and his dominance of the country charts in the 1960s challenged Nashville’s hegemony and bolstered the West Coast country scene in Bakersfield and Los Angeles. During the 1950s he worked as a guitarist and session player for several Bakersfield artists before signing with Capitol Records in 1957. In 1963 he began a streak of 14 consecutive number-one country hits with “Act Naturally,” which was later covered by the Beatles. Other hits included “Together Again” (1964), “I’ve got a tiger by the tail” (1965), and a cover of “Johnny B. Goode” (1969).
Owens’s songs eschewed themes of hard living and rambling for a portrayal of the male subject as a lonely victim of romance. With his backing band, the Buckaroos, he developed a bright, driving sound which he described as a freight train feel: heavy bass and drums accompanying two Fender Telecaster electric guitars played by Owens and the guitarist Don Rich. The twangy Telecaster sound and high, close harmony of Owens and Rich characterized many of his recordings. The Buckaroos both toured and recorded with Owens, a contrast to country norms. Owens thus established an alternative to the popular “countrypolitan” sound produced in Nashville (he also never joined the “Grand Ole Opry”); in doing so he inspired such country-rock musicians as Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers. He also marketed himself as a hard-country artist free of pop influence; in ...
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