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Microsoft and Chinese internet security firm Qihoo join hands to develop mobile internet and AI technology
Ron Email @ronwinbeta Jun 10th, 2014 in Latest news
Trying to improve its bitter relationship with Chinese government, Microsoft has signed an agreement with China’s leading security firm Qihoo for development of mobile internet and artificial intelligence technology, a report by state-owned media agency Xinhua said.
The two companies on Monday shook hands to “cooperate in mobile Internet products” and “technology exchanges in artificial intelligence.” This alliance comes a couple of weeks after China prohibited the use of Windows 8 in state government, citing security concerns.
Last month, China’s central government banned the use of Windows 8 from all its offices. However, the “surprised” Microsoft assured that it will keep working with the government. Later, the Chinese authority expressed its concern over Microsoft spying on them by collecting data. The government said that it is afraid that Windows 8 could be used to spy on them.
Microsoft isn’t the only company Chinese government is having trouble trusting, as it considers most of the US companies the same. After Edward Snowden’s infamous leak of classified documents about the existence of surveillance programs and their controversial activities, things only got worse.
Further reading: China, Windows 8
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Dominic Lalli’s Bluebird Quintet featuring Borahm Lee, Gabe Mervine, Obed Calvaire, Hunter Roberts
Tue, December 11, 2018
Dominic Lalli’s Bluebird Quintet
Big Gigantic’s Dominic Lalli Introduces, 'Dominic Lalli’s Bluebird Quintet’ Debut.
While most know Dominic Lalli from Big Gigantic, the pioneer in fusing live instruments into the electronic dance scene, Dominic's roots began very early on in Jazz music, at home and in High School. After high school, Dominic went to Northern Arizona University, where he began a more focused study of jazz and classical music. He also began to hone his skills playing weekly trio gigs with world renowned bassist Joel Dibartolo (Tonight Show Band, Buddy Rich, Carmen McCrae) and Chicago-based drummer Frank Rosaly, which helped him begin his further explorations into the jazz world. Dominic received a scholarship to study music at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music in New York City, where he completed his Masters degree in Music. There, Dominic studied with the likes of Dave Leibman, Bob Mintzer, Dick Oatts, Kenny Barron, Garry Dial and many other greats.
After graduating with a master's degree , Lalli relocated to Boulder where he continued to further his musical career and soon after created Big Gigantic. There is no stopping to Big Gigantic, as 2019 will be a big year with touring and much new music to be released, but today, he is very excited announce 'Dominic Lalli's Bluebird Quintet and their first performance which will take place in Denver at the very intimate room, Ophelia’s, on December 11th. Dominic Lalli's Bluebird Quintet will include long time friends ,
Obed Calvaire on Drums, Borahm Lee - Piano (Pretty Lights, Break Science) Gabe Mervine (Trumpet) and Hunter Roberts (Bass).
"Before I started Big Gigantic (in the same year), I recorded a jazz album of some original songs as well as a few jazz standards which are still left to be released. As Big G took off, my interest in writing songs and writing electronic music grew more and more and I’ve been happily diving in head first to that world ever since.
My love for creative music and improvisation will always run deep and I’m so happy to finally get a band of some incredible players together to play my Jazz Originals, get back to my roots, what I went to school for and truly dig into a sound I’ve been wanting to revisit for a while now"
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Economy|Judging Stimulus by Job Data Reveals Success
Judging Stimulus by Job Data Reveals Success
David Leonhardt
ECONOMIC SCENE FEB. 16, 2010
Imagine if, one year ago, Congress had passed a stimulus bill that really worked.
Let’s say this bill had started spending money within a matter of weeks and had rapidly helped the economy. Let’s also imagine it was large enough to have had a huge impact on jobs — employing something like two million people who would otherwise be unemployed right now.
If that had happened, what would the economy look like today?
Well, it would look almost exactly as it does now. Because those nice descriptions of the stimulus that I just gave aren’t hypothetical. They are descriptions of the actual bill.
Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.
Yet I’m guessing you don’t think of the stimulus bill as a big success. You’ve read columns (by me, for example) complaining that it should have spent money more quickly. Or you’ve heard about the phantom ZIP code scandal: the fact that a government Web site mistakenly reported money being spent in nonexistent ZIP codes.
And many of the criticisms are valid. The program has had its flaws. But the attention they have received is wildly disproportionate to their importance. To hark back to another big government program, it’s almost as if the lasting image of the lunar space program was Apollo 6, an unmanned 1968 mission that had engine problems, and not Apollo 11, the moon landing.
The reasons for the stimulus’s middling popularity aren’t a mystery. The unemployment rate remains near 10 percent, and many families are struggling. Saying that things could have been even worse doesn’t exactly inspire. Liberals don’t like the stimulus because they wish it were bigger. Republicans don’t like it because it’s a Democratic program. The Obama administration hurt the bill’s popularity by making too rosy an economic forecast upon taking office.
Moreover, the introduction of the most visible parts of the program — spending on roads, buildings and the like — has been a bit sluggish. Aid to states, unemployment benefits and some tax provisions have been more successful and account for far more of the bill. But their successes are not obvious.
Even if the conventional wisdom is understandable, however, it has consequences. Because the economy is still a long way from being healthy, members of Congress are now debating another, smaller stimulus bill. (They’re calling it a “jobs bill,” seeing stimulus as a dirty word.) The logical thing to do would be to examine what worked and what didn’t in last year’s bill.
But that’s not what is happening. Instead, the debate is largely disconnected from the huge stimulus experiment we just ran. Why? As Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the newest member of Congress, said, in a nice summary of the misperceptions, the stimulus might have saved some jobs, but it “didn’t create one new job.”
The case against the stimulus revolves around the idea that the economy would be no worse off without it. As a Wall Street Journal opinion piece put it last year, “The resilience of the private sector following the fall 2008 panic — not the fiscal stimulus program — deserves the lion’s share of the credit for the impressive growth improvement.” In a touch of unintended irony, two of article’s three authors were listed as working at a research institution named for Herbert Hoover.
Of course, no one can be certain about what would have happened in an alternate universe without a $787 billion stimulus. But there are two main reasons to think the hard-core skeptics are misguided — above and beyond those complicated, independent economic analyses.
President Obama, with Joseph Biden, after Mr. Obama signed the stimulus bill into law last year. Credit Matthew Staver/Bloomberg News
The first is the basic narrative that the data offer. Pick just about any area of the economy and you come across the stimulus bill’s footprints.
In the early months of last year, spending by state and local governments was falling rapidly, as was tax revenue. In the spring, tax revenue continued to drop, yet spending jumped — during the very time when state and local officials were finding out roughly how much stimulus money they would be receiving. This is the money that has kept teachers, police officers, health care workers and firefighters employed.
Then there is corporate spending. It surged in the final months of last year. Mark Zandi of Economy.com (who has advised the McCain campaign and Congressional Democrats) says that the Dec. 31 expiration of a tax credit for corporate investment, which was part of the stimulus, is a big reason.
The story isn’t quite as clear-cut with consumer spending, as skeptics note. Its sharp plunge stopped before President Obama signed the stimulus into law exactly one year ago. But the billions of dollars in tax cuts, food stamps and jobless benefits in the stimulus have still made a difference. Since February, aggregate wages and salaries have fallen, while consumer spending has risen. The difference between the two — some $100 billion — has essentially come from stimulus checks.
The second argument in the bill’s favor is the history of financial crises. They have wreaked terrible damage on economies. Indeed, the damage tended to be even worse than what we have suffered.
Around the world over the last century, the typical financial crisis caused the jobless rate to rise for almost five years, according to work by the economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. On that timeline, our rate would still be rising in early 2012. Even that may be optimistic, given that the recent crisis was so bad. As Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson (Republicans both) and many others warned in 2008, this recession had the potential to become a depression.
Yet the jobless rate is now expected to begin falling consistently by the end of this year.
For that, the stimulus package, flaws and all, deserves a big heaping of credit. “It prevented things from getting much worse than they otherwise would have been,” Nariman Behravesh, Global Insight’s chief economist, says. “I think everyone would have to acknowledge that’s a good thing.”
So what now?
The last year has shown — just as economists have long said — that aid to states and cities may be the single most effective form of stimulus. Unlike road- or bridge-building, it can happen in a matter of weeks. And unlike tax cuts, state and local aid never languishes in a household’s savings account.
The ideal follow-up stimulus would start with that aid. It would then add on extended jobless benefits, which also tend to be spent, as well as tax credits carefully drafted to get businesses to hire and households to spend, like the cash-for-clunkers program.
By this yardstick, the $154 billion bill that the House passed in December is decent. It includes $27 billion in state and local aid, $79 billion for jobless benefits and other safety nets, and $48 billion in infrastructure spending.
The smaller bills being considered by the Senate are worse. They may end up with no state aid at all, and their tax credits sound better — with promises to help the long-term unemployed and small businesses — than they are. “The economic impact of the Senate bill, at this point, is starting to look very small,” Mr. Behravesh says.
Given what people have been saying about a successful stimulus bill, just imagine what they’ll say about one that doesn’t accomplish much.
E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com
A version of this article appears in print on February 17, 2010, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Judging A Stimulus By the Jobs. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Signs of Improvement FEB. 17, 2010
A column by Eduardo Porter that explores the world’s most urgent economic challenges.
The Profound Social Cost of American Exceptionalism
Whites’ Unease Shadows the Politics of a More Diverse America
G.O.P. Insists Making Poor People Work Lifts Them Up. Where’s the Proof?
When All Else Fails, Tax Incentives Probably Will, Too
Lessons From Rust-Belt Cities That Kept Their Sheen
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Asia Pacific|In Rise and Fall of China’s Bo Xilai, an Arc of Ruthlessness
In Rise and Fall of China’s Bo Xilai, an Arc of Ruthlessness
By MICHAEL WINES MAY 6, 2012
CENTER OF ATTENTION Bo Xilai sought the spotlight and mounted anticorruption campaigns that threatened powerful figures. Credit Dennis M. Sabangan/European Pressphoto Agency
BEIJING — “News 1+1” is a sort of Chinese “60 Minutes,” a newsmagazine on state-run China Central Television that explores — as much as the censors permit — the more contentious corners of Chinese society. In December 2009, the program took aim at a much-publicized anticorruption campaign in the metropolis of Chongqing, a crusade that had grabbed national attention for its sweep, but raised deep concerns about its brutality and disregard for the law.
What followed was an object lesson in how Bo Xilai, the campaign’s architect and the secretary of Chongqing’s Communist Party at the time, dealt with those who stood in his way.
Mr. Bo called Jiao Li, a friend and colleague from the past who was president of China Central Television, or CCTV, at the time. In short order, the producer of “News 1+1” was transferred to another program. The show’s popular host was briefly banned from the airwaves.
“Poor CCTV,” said Li Zhuang, a lawyer who dared to defend one of Mr. Bo’s high-profile targets — and was sentenced to 30 months in prison for supposedly manufacturing false testimony in the case. “They can’t even protect their own children.”
As recently as January, Mr. Bo was aiming for the pinnacle of Chinese political power, a seat on the nine-member Politburo’s Standing Committee, when the Communist Party’s leadership begins a generational turnover this autumn. He was a fixation for the news media and foreign leaders, the handsome convention-flouter who was breaking the calcified mold of China’s leadership caste.
Today, Mr. Bo’s fall has transfixed the world. He is suspended from the Politburo, under investigation for “serious violations” of Communist Party rules and being held incommunicado at an unknown location. His wife, Gu Kailai, long known for her own zealous ambition, stands accused by party investigators of murdering a British family friend, Neil Heywood, in a dispute over money. Neither Mr. Bo nor Ms. Gu have been given an opportunity to defend themselves publicly.
For all his success, the seeds of Mr. Bo’s destruction were evident long ago to many of those who knew him. He was a man of prodigious charisma and deep intelligence, someone who not only possessed the family pedigree and network of allies that are crucial in Chinese politics, but who had also mastered the image-massaging and strategic use of public cash that fuel every Western politician’s rise.
But Mr. Bo’s undisputed talents were counterbalanced by what friends and critics alike say was an insatiable ambition and studied indifference to the wrecked lives that littered his path to power. Little is known about career maneuvers in China’s cloistered leadership elite, but those who study the topic say that Mr. Bo’s ruthlessness stood out, even in a system where the absence of formal rules ensures that only the strongest advance.
“Nobody really trusts him: a lot of people are scared of him, including several princelings who are supposed to be his power base,” said Cheng Li, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. The so-called princelings — like Mr. Bo, offspring of China’s first revolutionary leaders — remain a powerful, though fragmented, force in China’s internal politics.
“That’s just his character,” the son of one Communist Party elder, who knows Mr. Bo well, said in February. “From the county up to the Politburo, he’s a person who has to have it his way.”
Mr. Bo was said by employees to be a demanding and unforgiving boss, summoning underlings to middle-of-the-night meetings, throwing crockery and even hitting those who failed to deliver what he wanted. One such underling approached an associate of Mr. Bo shortly after a meeting in Dalian and begged the associate to give her a job. “She said to me, ‘He’s angry and abusive, verbally abusive. He’s a bad man and I want to change jobs,’ ” he recalled.
That penchant for power and glory earned him powerful enemies at virtually every step of his ascendance. His peers from Liaoning Province, where he was a prominent official for more than a decade, pointedly left him off the delegation to the 15th Congress of the Communist Party in 1997, even though he was by then both mayor and deputy party secretary in Dalian, the province’s second-largest city.
When Mr. Bo left his post as Liaoning Province governor in 2004 to become commerce minister in Beijing, the province’s party secretary, Wen Shizhen, famously gave a party to celebrate his exit.
Excesses Overlooked
Yet he continued upward anyway, the internal enmities papered over by a Communist Party obsessed with the appearance of unity, his excesses overlooked by the family and political allies whose own clout rose with his.
Mr. Bo got tough at an early age.
He was born with a pedigree — his father, Bo Yibo, was a war hero who was at Mao Zedong’s side during the revolution — and studied with other children of the elite at Beijing No. 4 High School, China’s best. But when Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the elder Bo became one of the first targets of the purges, relabeled a revisionist traitor and dragged from stadium to factory to government office for show trials and beatings.
At age 17, Mr. Bo seemed to embrace the purges, forming with other elites’ children a radical Red Guard faction later condemned by Chinese authorities for its brutality. Stories abound that young Bo denounced and even beat his father, who spent 12 years in prison. Other Red Guards kidnapped his mother, who was either murdered or died of illness in 1969.
The truth is murkier. Historians say Mr. Bo’s faction actually opposed violence and tried to defend its members’ elite parents against Mao’s excesses. Mao’s forces quickly turned on them, and in early 1967 Bo Xilai was shipped to a Beijing labor camp for five years. Working barefoot, often in deep mud, his feet became so rotted that chunks of flesh fell off, he later told friends.
But after Mao’s death, father and son emerged stronger than ever. The rehabilitated Bo Yibo became vice premier in 1979, under his wartime friend Deng Xiaoping. In the succeeding decade, he was Mr. Deng’s point man in the ouster of two successive Communist Party general secretaries, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, during China’s tumultuous and failed liberalization in the 1980s.
That earned him the gratitude of Mr. Zhao’s successor as Communist Party leader, Jiang Zemin. The elder Bo, who died in 2007, continued to help Mr. Jiang sideline rivals into his dotage. Mr. Jiang, who continues to wield backstage influence in China’s politics even now, is widely said to have given Bo Xilai’s political career a boost at crucial times.
Barely a decade after taking his first desk job at Communist Party headquarters in Beijing, Mr. Bo was named mayor of Dalian, a city of about six million on the north Pacific coast, in 1992. By then he had married Ms. Gu, whose family pedigree included a father who helped lead Communist resistance to the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s. Ms. Gu set about building a law practice and a public reputation, including an entire book on her exploits in a lawsuit she helped pursue in the United States.
DETERMINED FOE Wu Yi was angered by Mr. Bo’s publicity seeking and investigations. Credit Wong Maye-E/Associated Press
Mr. Bo, meanwhile, began to hone the political skills and a hunger for authority that would come to define his career.
The mayor’s job was a plum — the central government was pouring billions into reviving its coastal cities — and Mr. Bo oversaw a lavish effort to remake Dalian, a graceful but rundown seaport, in the image of Hong Kong. A building boom replaced empty factories with office and apartment towers; companies from nearby Japan made Dalian a beachhead for investment in China. Mr. Bo poured billions of renminbi into splashy ventures like annual international fashion shows and beer festivals, civic sculptures and a program that draped the city in seas of freshly planted grass.
Mr. Bo attended seven and eight events a day in the style of an American mayor in full re-election mode. He relentlessly hyped Dalian’s soccer team, China’s best, as an icon of civic pride.
“You could argue that none of these things are basic to the well-being of the people, but you had the sense it appealed,” said Stephen MacKinnon, an author and longtime scholar of China who knew Mr. Bo in the 1980s and early 1990s. “It was flashy.”
Mr. Bo’s self-promotion was equally splashy: by the mid-1990s, a celebrity chronicler had penned a fawning history of his Dalian accomplishments, and pro-Bo articles were being planted in major newspapers nationwide. Dalian gained an international buzz, and Mr. Bo vaulted to governor of surrounding Liaoning Province and a seat on the Central Committee, which includes about 370 of the party’s most powerful figures.
“He was accompanied wherever he went by a battalion of fabulous young women wearing Madonna headsets and sassy little sailor outfits,” The South China Morning Post gushed in 2004, recounting a dinner with the governor on a ship docked at Dalian port. “He circulated easily between tables, shaking hands with every man, woman and child on board, graciously accepting the many requests for photos and autographs that his celebrity status guaranteed. Later, when he spoke on stage, his enraptured audience seemed powerless to resist him.”
Known for Abrasiveness
Elsewhere, however, a different Mr. Bo was on display.
Jiang Weiping had pulled into the parking space outside his apartment building one December morning in 2000 when a half-dozen men threw open his car doors, forced him into the back seat and threw his jacket over his head.
Mr. Jiang, a journalist, had written repeatedly about government corruption in Dalian. He was taken, he said, to a military detention center where the Communist Party secretary of the city’s public security bureau, Che Keming, awaited him. Mr. Che had been Mr. Bo’s cook and driver before a meteoric rise through the city hierarchy.
“You are too bold,” Mr. Jiang said he recalled Mr. Che telling him. “Don’t you know that Mr. Bo is soon going to be the party chief of Liaoning Province, and after that he will be in the top leadership?” Mr. Jiang soon was detained and charged with subversion and stealing state secrets. He spent six years in prison before being freed and fleeing to Canada, where he now lives.
Mr. Jiang’s account is not easily verified, but such tales are not uncommon. Yang Rong, whose Brilliance China Automotive Holdings once was China’s largest automaker, found his stake of nearly $700 million in the company seized by Mr. Bo in 2002 after he proposed to build a new factory in Shanghai instead of in Liaoning. Mr. Yang, who now lives in the United States, later sued Mr. Bo and the government to no avail.
By then Mr. Bo had made several powerful enemies. His appointment in 2007, as party secretary of Chongqing, was in fact devised to move him out of Beijing and away from the seat of power. Two previous heads of China’s Trade Ministry, the Commerce Ministry’s predecessor, had gone on to become vice premier, a post Mr. Bo was said to crave. But one, Wu Yi, had come to dislike Mr. Bo’s abrasiveness and self-promotion; she sided with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and others in shunting him to a job in the hinterlands.
Two people who know Ms. Wu said she was miffed by his grandstanding at a 2005 Washington session of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, where she had led a delegation of senior leaders. She was further put off after he opened a police investigation into the Commerce Ministry’s international affairs office, where she maintained close ties. And in talks with friends, she cited his enthusiasm for the more radical Red Guards as an especially sore point. “Wu Yi got him,” one longtime associate of Mr. Bo said. “She was instrumental, saying, ‘I step down in March; the guy is gone before I step down.’ ”
Using Fear as a Tool
Yet any expectation that exile and a consolation-prize seat on the Politburo would bank Mr. Bo’s ambitions proved misplaced. Instead, he reprised his Dalian agenda, spending billions to plaster the city with ginkgo trees, luring foreign investment, publicizing his accomplishments — and spearheading an anticorruption drive that took on aspects of the Cultural Revolution purges that claimed his father.
Among the targets was Chongqing’s deputy police chief, Wen Qiang, whose 2010 execution on corruption charges prompted The Chongqing Economic Times to proclaim on its front page: “Wen Qiang is dead. The people rejoice. Chongqing is at peace.”
Though Mr. Wen was indisputably corrupt, many regarded execution as a draconian penalty, and some outsiders saw a veiled message from the ever-ambitious Mr. Bo. Mr. Wen had served under Mr. Bo’s two predecessors in Chongqing, Wang Yang and He Guoqiang. Mr. Wang was Mr. Bo’s rival for a spot on the Politburo’s elite Standing Committee. Mr. He already sits there — and he also runs the party machinery that investigates corruption and other violations of party rules.
Privately, the Wen execution was an implicit attack on their stewardship of Chongqing — “beating the dog while the master watches,” one person said.
Publicly, it was an excuse for a publicity campaign. The police chief at the time, Wang Lijun, summoned writers to produce a four-volume history of the corruption campaign, to be followed by a movie and television series.
Less than two years later — perhaps with Mr. Wen’s fate in mind — Mr. Wang fled to an American diplomatic outpost, begging for protection from Mr. Bo and setting off the events that produced his downfall. Among some, Mr. Wang was described at the time as unreasonably fearful, or even mentally unstable.
Now, his fears do not look so misplaced.
As Dalian’s mayor, Mr. Bo once became enraged after a Beijing businessman, Su Xinmin, traveled to Dalian to lobby on behalf of a Dalian businessman who was under investigation. One son of a Communist Party elder recalled a phone conversation in which an angry Mr. Bo declared that he would have Mr. Su arrested — and soon afterward, a corps of Dalian police officers went to Beijing, arrested Mr. Su and detained him in Dalian for nearly two months. .
It was a trademark Bo gambit, except that Mr. Su was no stranger: He and Mr. Bo had spent five years together in the same Cultural Revolution labor camp, two sons of party leaders cruelly singled out for retribution.
“He would act this way toward a fellow son of a high official with whom he’d been imprisoned,” the party figure said. “So what’s Wang Lijun to him?”
Reporting was contributed by Sharon LaFraniere, Jonathan Ansfield and Ian Johnson from Beijing, and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong. Edy Yin, Li Bibo, Mia Li and Shi Da contributed research.
A version of this article appears in print on May 7, 2012, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Rise And Fall Of Chinese Boss, A Ruthless Arc. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
In Old Tradition, China Races to Erase Bo Xilai’s Legacy MAY 5, 2012
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Environment|Shallow Waters and Unusual Path May Worsen the Surge
https://nyti.ms/TiEShl
Shallow Waters and Unusual Path May Worsen the Surge
By KENNETH CHANG and HENRY FOUNTAIN OCT. 28, 2012
See how this article appeared when it was originally published on NYTimes.com
Watching for the power of the storm yet to come in Long Beach, N.Y. Credit Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Like a hand pushing water in a bathtub, the winds of a hurricane push the water of the Atlantic Ocean. When the windblown water runs up against land, the water piles up and flows inland. That describes a storm surge.
“It’s almost a little bit like a tsunami,” said Klaus H. Jacob, a scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
When Hurricane Sandy makes landfall late Monday or early Tuesday, the pulse of windblown water will be “in a word, bad,” Dr. Jacob said. “It’s of course still somewhat uncertain. It all depends on the exact timing.”
Storm surges like those accompanying Hurricane Sandy as it churns north are, at their simplest, a function of strong winds driving too much water into too small a space. But other factors, some of which will come into play as this storm approaches the New York area, can combine to make surges higher and more destructive, experts said.
“A storm surge is really caused by one thing,” said Pat Fitzpatrick, an associate research professor at Mississippi State University who studies the phenomenon. “When a storm is approaching land, it starts to encounter shallow water. The water tends to pile up.”
The height of a surge depends to a great extent on how shallow the water is near the coast. “The shallower the water is, for longer distance, the more vulnerable an area is,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said.
The New York area has extensive shallow water offshore, and was expected to see some of the largest surges — National Weather Service computer models were predicting a storm surge of 6 to 11 feet at Battery Park at the lower end of Manhattan. The surge also could coincide with high tide at about 9 p.m. Monday, with tides even higher than usual because of the full moon.
“It’s kind of a worst-case scenario for the New York Harbor area,” said Alan Cope, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Mount Holly, N.J.
Hurricane Sandy is much larger, with greater surge potential, than the devastating Tropical Storm Irene last year, with winds already up to 60 miles an hour over an area more than 500 miles northeast of its center. Adding to the potential for damage was the hurricane’s unusual track. The expected path northwest will trap water against the shores of New York and New Jersey, Mr. Cope said.
“It’s going to blow the water from east to the west and pile it up in Raritan Bay and also pile it up in the western end of Long Island Sound,” he said.
Many Atlantic hurricanes move parallel to the coast for long distances and then, pushed by high-level winds, veer northeast, eventually “spinning out,” or losing their energy, over the North Atlantic. But by the time it nears New York on Monday, Hurricane Sandy will have traveled hundreds of miles from the coast for several days, picking up enormous amounts of water over the open ocean.
In preparation for landfall, sand was piled high at Coney Island beach. Credit Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
The storm’s winds, which are rotating in counterclockwise, are creating an area of strong ocean waves north and east of the storm’s center. “That amplifies the surge,” said Louis Uccellini, director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, part of the National Weather Service.
As Hurricane Sandy approaches New York, forecasters expect it to hit a roadblock. Instead of veering northeast and out to sea, the storm will be forced to move west by a strong and persistent region of high-pressure air over southeastern Canada and southern Greenland.
“It’s quite unusual to have this westward component of motion to a hurricane track,” said Jeff Masters, director of meteorology for the Web site Weather Underground.
As it moves west, the hurricane is expected to make landfall in New Jersey, perpendicular to the coast. Such a head-on hit can produce worse surges than a glancing blow because more water can be driven into estuaries and harbors.
“The bottom line for New York and New Jersey and Long Island Sound is that they are going to have the worst of the surge and coastal inundation,” Mr. Uccellini said.
But strong surges are only one aspect of this storm that makes it potentially deadly, he added.
Its highly unusual westward track will contribute to another feature — the transition to more of a winter storm that is expected to bring high winds and large amounts of rain and snow to parts of the mid-Atlantic states and into Appalachia and the Ohio Valley. Even Lake Michigan may see winds of 50 m.p.h., Mr. Masters said, before the storm finally dies out later in the week.
The storm gathered energy the way all tropical storms and hurricanes do — from convection that occurred as it passed over the relatively warm ocean water. But as it moves farther north and then west, the storm will gain less energy in this way.
Instead, it will encounter a trough of cold, high air that has dipped down from Canada. As this cold front meets the warm air of the storm, the cold air will sink, adding to the storm’s energy. This strengthening, caused by what is known as baroclinic forcing, will enable the storm to unleash more mayhem as it moves inland.
“The thermal gradient as this trough digs in is a very important part of energetics of this storm,” Mr. Uccellini said.
The shift to what forecasters call an extratropical storm will alter the structure of the air masses as they come together, Mr. Uccellini said. Instead of the colder air being to the north and west of the storm’s center, it will loop around to the south. That will contribute heavy rains across parts of Pennsylvania and Maryland, and perhaps up to two feet of snow in parts of western Virginia, eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and southeastern Ohio.
Dr. Jacob of Columbia University led a study last year looking at the potential impact of climate change and rising sea levels on the city, and the chances of a flood devastating the subway system. Such a storm, he said, happens once a century.
Hurricane Sandy, he added, could be “just at the tipping point” of causing a 100-year flood. The weather could still change. The storm could change direction. It could speed up or slow down, and miss high tide.
“If we’re lucky, it’s not as bad,” Dr. Jacob said. “That would be more luck than preparation. We will know on Tuesday morning.”
A version of this article appears in print on October 29, 2012, on Page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Shallow Waters and Unusual Path May Worsen the Surge. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Hurricane Sandy’s Path OCT. 26, 2012
Images From Hurricane Sandy
Preparing for Sandy OCT. 27, 2012
Hurricane Sandy Predicted to Bring ‘Life-Threatening’ Surge OCT. 28, 2012
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It's almost impossible to imagine the practice of dentistry without x-ray technology. Radiographs (x-ray pictures) allow dentists to diagnose and treat problems not yet visible to the naked eye, including early tooth decay, gum disease, abscesses and abnormal growths. There is no question that since x-rays first became available a century ago, this diagnostic tool has prevented untold suffering and saved countless teeth. Now, state-of-the-art digital x-rays have made the technology even safer and more beneficial.
Digital x-ray technology uses a small electronic sensor placed in the mouth to capture an image, which can be called up instantly on a computer screen. When digital x-rays first became available about 20 years ago, they immediately offered a host of advantages over traditional x-ray films, which require chemical processing. Most importantly, they cut the amount of radiation exposure to the dental patient by as much as 90%. While faster x-ray films have been developed over the years that require less exposure, making that difference less dramatic, a digital x-ray still offers the lowest radiation dose possible.
Advantages of Digital X-Rays
Besides minimizing radiation exposure, digital x-rays offer numerous advantages to dentists and patients alike. These include:
No chemical processing & no waiting. Because there is no film to process with digital x-rays, there is no waiting for pictures to develop — and no toxic chemicals to dispose of. Your dentist can immediately show you the pictures on a computer screen for easy viewing.
A clearer picture. It's possible to get more information from digital x-rays because they are sharper and can be enhanced in a number of ways. The contrast can be increased or decreased, and areas of concern can be magnified. It's even possible to compare them on-screen to your previous x-rays, making even the minutest changes to your tooth structure easier to detect.
Easy sharing and storage. Digital x-rays provide a better visual aide for you, the patient, to understand your diagnosis and treatment options. They can be e-mailed to different locations; they are also far less likely to be misplaced.
X-Rays and Your Safety
While digital technology has minimized the health risks of x-rays, it has not entirely eliminated it. X-rays are a type of radiation used to penetrate the tissues of the body to create an image. In doing so, there is always a slight possibility of causing changes at the cellular level that might lead to future disease. Of course, there are sources of radiation present in the daily environment — the sun, for example — that can also cause disease. It's important to note that the chance of this happening is thought to be cumulative and not based on a single exposure. Still, x-rays are not considered risk-free regardless of how technology reduces your exposure. That's why dentists will only use them when the benefit of obtaining better diagnostic information outweighs the procedure's small risk. This is particularly true of computed tomography or CT scans, which can raise the level of exposure, yet yield a tremendous amount of information per scan. No matter which technology is being used, each case is considered individually, and your safety is always paramount. If you have questions about why an x-ray is being recommended for you, please feel free to ask.
X-Ray Safety For Children Nearly every diagnostic testing procedure carries some risk, so it's always important for you and your healthcare provider to weigh the benefits against the risks. This is particularly true when it comes to children, who are more sensitive to x-rays than adults... Read Article
Getting The Full Picture With Cone Beam Dental Scans Dental imaging took a major leap forward at the beginning of the new millennium with a three-dimensional technology known as cone beam computed tomography (CBCT). The name comes from the cone-shaped beam of x-rays the CBCT machine projects as it rotates around a person's head, taking multiple images that are compiled into a 3-D picture by a computer. Find out what CBCT can reveal and how it helps a doctor to make a highly informed diagnosis and choice of treatment... Read Article
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I-Fen Lin
Taiwanese dancer Yi-Fen Lin completed her initial dance education in her home country at the Dance Department of the Chinese Culture University and was a member of with the university's Hwa-kang Dance Company until 1995. She choreographed "Blue Bird" for the Herry Yu Dance Company at the National Theatre Taipei in 1995 and a year later showed "Lost Memory" in the "Presentation of Choreography in Southern Taiwan". Yi-Fen Lin joined the Capital Ballet Company in Taipei in 1998. In 1999 she completed an intermediate diploma course at the Folkwang Academy in Essen. Since then her professional engagements in Germany include the productions "Freudentanz", choreography Rainer Behr, in 2000 and "The Thread" with rodolpho leoni dance in 2001/2002.
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Box Office Report: Dino of the Soldado
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | July 1, 2018 |
Remember how I said that Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is easily going to be one of the top 3 films of 2018? Yeah, I may have to up that to top 2. Avengers: Infinity War can probably rest easy, but in the space of less than a month, Universal’s reliable dino-frenzy has brought in $932m worldwide. Only 28% of that is from domestic grosses. That’s how much the rest of the world likes dinosaurs. Bow down to your new gods. That’s a mighty number considering that, in its second week of release in the USA, its gross fell by almost 60%, although that still gave it $60m nationwide, bringing it to $264m. Sorry Black Panther but I think you may have to sit comfortably at number 3 or 4 on the list by the time 2018 is over.
Meanwhile, Incredibles 2 looks like it could be joining the Raptors in the top ranks. With an extra $45.5m to its domestic total in week 3, Pixar’s latest has brought in $439m in its home country alone. The international numbers aren’t as forceful - $646m worldwide - but keep in mind this film hasn’t opened in a ton of the major markets yet. According to Box Office Mojo, it’s only opened in 51% of the international marketplace. Basically, most of the big places like the UK, South Korea and France have decided that the World Cup is too tough a competition for a film like this, so they’re waiting an extra couple of weeks. Germany won’t get it until late September. Insert joke here about them thinking they would last in the tournament longer than they did. Heh.
Sicario: Day of the Soldado did better for Sony than they expected, with $19m domestically from 3000 theatres. Audiences like it, especially white dudes, which isn’t surprising. Reviews have been more mixed and frankly, that synopsis makes my skin crawl.
Uncle Drew, a comedy from Lionsgate starring Nick Kroll and Tiffany Haddish, opened decently with $15.5m from 2742 locations. Given the competition, that’s nothing to write off, and audiences really seem to love it, with an A from CinemaScore.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? stays at number 10 with $2.29m, a 25% increase from last week thanks to an expansion into 300 extra theatres. Hey, it turns out that, in our current fascistic hellhole, people crave entertainment centred on decent people. Who knew?!
Hearts Beat Loud, an indie dramedy starring Toni Collette and Sasha Lane, has been slowly building up an audience since its release 4 weeks ago. It’s still got a while to go to break even but for a film with little promotion and a lot of competition, as well as a distributor I’d never heard of, it’s heartening to see it doing so well.
Documentaries have been doing really well at the box office lately, but the big ones have been centered on major cultural or historical figures. Three Identical Strangers follows a story that garnered a lot of headlines in its day, but it’s not the recognizable icon of something like RBG. But great reviews and an undeniable hook gave the film a $163k opening weekend from 5 theatres - that’s a $32.5k per screen average!
This coming week sees the release of the documentary Whitney, the Sundance hit Sorry to Bother You, Blumhouse’s latest addition to their popular The Purge franchise, and Marvel’s latest inevitable hit, Ant-Man and The Wasp.
You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.
What films did you watch this weekend? Let us know in the comments.
← Pajiba 10 For Your Consideration: Winston Duke
Pajiba 10 For Your Consideration: Lizzo →
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New Payments Canada discussion paper examines credit risk in the ACSS
Payments Canada has released a new discussion paper that promotes conversation about credit risk in the Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS), which isn’t widely understood.
The paper, A Primer on Credit Risk in Payments Canada’s Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS), examined the magnitude of credit exposure when a Direct Clearer defaults. It also demonstrated that credit risk exists in the ACSS – it‘s embedded directly into the rules of the system, Neville Arjani, the paper‘s author, explained.
“There seems to be a misconception that there’s no credit risk in the ACSS because it’s all being done via collateralized payment in the LVTS,” Neville said. “That doesn’t make the credit risk go away in the ACSS.”
The paper is a sophisticated analysis that demonstrates the deep knowledge Payments Canada holds, which can been seen in the work that goes on here every day.
“I am excited that we are doing research that will provide ACSS direct clearers with the information they need to manage their risks,” said Carol Ann Northcott, the Chief Risk Officer & Vice-President, Risk, Security & Research
By looking at the last 10 years of daily ACSS data and simulating tens of thousands of potential defaults, Neville found that the largest exposure was more than $500 million for one participant. For a large bank, that’s most likely manageable when the economy is stable. Trying to secure $500 million in a crisis like the one being contemplated in the paper may be more difficult.
“I think that’s a key takeaway from the paper,” Neville said.
In the wake of the Bank of Canada’s designation of ACSS as a prominent payments system and the more stringent risk-management criteria that came with it, the paper’s empirical analysis could help answer the question about how much collateral should be posted in order to meet the credit risk standard. Neville said he hopes his paper will be considered as Payments Canada develops approach, but says there’s more work to be done to pin down the risk framework.
“We are committed to meeting our designation requirements in the most efficient and effective way for our members,” Northcott said. “Understanding the risk that arises in the system is an important step and will inform our dialogue with our members.”
Read Arjani’s study: A Primer on Credit Risk in Payments Canada's Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS)
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Beyond three points, the next stage is about the volumes. Among these will be considered the simpler and more regular: the polyhedra of Archimedes. In the part of this article we will not retain than the first three.
The simplest is the tetrahedron. It includes four vertices. His rendered is shown in Figure 9.
The octahedron has six vertices. It is composed of eight triangles equilateral all identical. His rendering is presented figure 10.
The hexahedron, that is to say the cube, includes eight vertices. (Figure 11)
The cube can be broken down into two tetrahedra. In Figure 11a the group of four colors of left is the first tetrahedron and the right group the second. It can also be broken down into six squares corresponding to each of his faces. (Figure 1 2)
With examples such as the octahedron or cube and their multiple possible decompositions we understand the profound richness of a geometric approach to color in a three-dimensional space. The possibilities of composition and of arrangement are endless while keeping the rigorous coherence of the given theme.
The objects we saw in this first part constitute in effect, in our point of view, color themes in that they are independent of each other and intrinsically coherent.
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All posts tagged "Overcast"
2013 Gameday
Gameday: Phillies (71-83) vs. Marlins (57-99)
Philadelphia Phillies (71-84) vs. Miami Marlins (57-99) Roy Halladay (4-4, 6.71) vs. Nate Eovaldi (3-6, 3.79) Time: 7:10, Marlins Park TV: CSN Weather: Overcast, 84 Media: Twitter and Facebook Either tonight...
Gameday: Phillies (50-61) vs. Cubs (49-62)
Philadelphia Phillies (50-61) vs. Chicago Cubs (49-62) RHP Kyle Kendrick (9-8, 4.27 ERA) vs RHP Edwin Jackson (7-11, 4.65 ERA) TIME: 7:05 ET, Citizens Bank Park TV: Comcast...
Gameday: Phillies (16-18) vs. Giants (19-14)
Philadelphia Phillies (16-18) vs. San Francisco Giants (19-14) RHP Jonathan Pettibone (2-0, 3.24 ERA) v. LHP Barry Zito (3-1, 3.06 ERA) TIME: 3:45,...
Philadelphia Phillies (14-18) vs. San Francisco Giants (19-12) LHP Cliff Lee (2-2, 3.46 ERA) v. LHP Madison Bumgarner (3-0, 1.55 ERA) TIME: 10:15, AT&T Park TV: Comcast SportsNet Weather: 67,...
Gameday: Phillies (81-80) vs Nationals (97-64)
Philadelphia Phillies (81-80) at Washington Nationals (97-64) Cliff Lee vs Edwin Jackson Time: 1:05 PM, Nationals Park TV: CSN Weather: Overcast, 78...
Gameday: Phillies (74-74) vs. Mets (66-82)
Philadelphia Phillies (75-74) at New York Mets (66-82) Tyler Cloyd (1-1, 4.95) vs. Jeremy Hefner (2-6, 4.99) Time: 7:10 p.m, Citi Field...
Gameday: Phillies (55-63) at Brewers (53-65)
Philadelphia Phillies (55-63) at Milwaukee Brewers (53-65) Kyle Kendrick (5-9, 4.54) vs. Randy Wolf (3-9, 5.65) Time: 2:10, Miller Park TV: CSN...
Gameday: Nationals (25-17) vs. Phillies (21-22)
Washington Nationals (25-17) at Philadelphia Phillies (21-22) Jordan Zimmermann (2-4, 2.58) vs. Roy Halladay (4-3, 3.22) Time: 7:05, Citizens Bank Park TV:...
Gameday: Cubs (8-14) vs. Phillies (10-12)
Philadelphia Phillies (10-12) vs. Chicago Cubs (8-14) Chris Volstad (0-3, 6.14) vs. Vance Worley (2-1, 2.16) Time: 7:05 PM, Citizens Bank Park...
Gameday: Philadelphia Phillies (7-7) vs. San Diego Padres (3-12)
Philadelphia Phillies (7-7) vs. San Diego Padres (3-12) Roy Halladay (3-0, 1.17) v. Cory Luebke (1-1, 3.71) Time: 8:35 PM, Petco Park...
Gameday: Phillies (5-2) vs. Braves (4-4)
Philadelphia Phillies (5-2) at Atlanta Braves (4-4) Roy Oswalt (1-0, 3.00 ERA) vs. Brandon Beachy (0-0, 1.50 ERA) Time: 1:10 p.m at...
Gameday: Phillies (5-1) at Braves (3-4)
Philadelphia Phillies (5-1) at Atlanta Braves (3-4) Cliff Lee, LHP (1-0, 3.86 ERA) vs. Tim Hudson, RHP (1-0, 1.29 ERA) Time: 7:35...
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Underwater Seagrass: NC’s Best-Kept Secret for Protecting Shorelines
This Earth Day, Conservation Groups Decry Offshore-Drilling Expansion
East Coast Factory Ships Depleting Whale Food Stocks
Cleanup Gets Trash Before It Reaches the Oceans
Public Comment Open on Device to Save Millions of Fish
According to marine scientists, many fish could survive the catch-and-release process if they were quickly returned to their deep-water environment. (Pixabay)
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The public can weigh in on fishing boats using a device that could save millions of deep-water fish from dying of the bends during catch-and-release.
Fishermen often discard fish that aren't their target species, when they exceed catch limits or when the fish are too small. Federal research says of the six reef fish species caught most in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, about 11% that are thrown back die after release.
That's more than 7.5 million black sea bass in the South Atlantic from 2012 to 2016. Captain Jimmy Hull, a commercial fisherman in Ormond Beach, says those fish suffer a preventable fate similar to what can happen to scuba divers who ascend too quickly.
"When you bring them to the surface, all of the gases in their body and all of their organs expand and blow up,” says Hull. “And so the effects of this can be, it'll kill the animal – where they won't be able to swim back down when you release them. "
The fish can make their way back safely to deep water using a weighted clip called a descender. Hull thinks it should be a required device on anglers' boats, and the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council is taking public comments on that proposal through May 10.
In the past, the focus used to be on the mortality rate of harvested fish, but researchers now are zeroing in on the challenge of tracking discarded fish. Jeffrey Buckel, a professor at the Center for Marine Sciences at North Carolina State University, says the descender device – at an average cost of about $50 – has been working.
"We're interested in ways that you could try to increase the survival of those releases,” says Buckel. “And these descender devices are a tool that was developed to do that."
Buckel says expert anglers can also use venting tools, which pierce the abdomen of a fish to release expanded air without killing it. The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council "strongly encourages" anglers to use descending devices.
The proposed rule would only require fishermen to have them available for use on their vessels.
Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Trimmel Gomes, Public News Service - FL
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The Constitutional Convention Settled On What Form Of Legislature
IN CONVENTION OF THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THIS STATE OF NEW. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. the senate of the State of New York; who together shall form the legislature,
2 Compromises ♦ Debate over the various plans presented at the Constitutional Convention resulted in the Connecticut (Great) Compromise.This compromise settled the disputes between the states over the structure of the legislative branch.
It was the old system’s form of gravity. Labour is a party of traditional government and it wants to get back in to govern in a traditional way. A call for a constitutional convention along the.
Only four delegates from Virginia and four delegates from Pennsylvania present. This Second Monday in May was the day initiated by the Annapolis Convention and confirmed by the Co
Museum Of African American History Boston Massachusetts executive director of the Museum of African American History. Built in 1806 for $7,700, the meeting house sits on a quiet side street in Boston’s upscale Beacon Hill neighborhood, in the shadow of the. The institution was complicit even after slavery ended in Massachusetts. slavery.” Faust’s letter was noticed outside of academia, as well, including
The first constitution of the United States was the Articles of Confederation, In 1787 alarmed gentlemen gathered in Philadelphia for a constitutional convention meant to. northern states eliminated slavery gradually and by legislative enactment. The Northwest Ordinance of 1785 set up the ground rules for settling the.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more. of redesigning government. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention quickly began work on drafting a new Constitution for the.
I described the Smith Commission proposal that “UK legislation will state that the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government are permanent institutions” as being either meaningless fluff or a.
In Pennsylvania’s last legislative session. a mistake — a map-drawing error after the 1968 Constitutional Convention. What else? “Drafters simply didn’t fix the map and settled on 203; that sort of.
and they took this form in the successive drafts of the constitution. In the smoke-filled room: the drafting committee The final session of the constitutional convention was held in Melbourne early in.
If you support the direct democracy of a popular vote system, do you also reject republicanism as our form of government? Opponents of the. or perhaps convening a constitutional convention. If you.
Home of the first permanent settlement outside the original 13 colonies and the first. military officials, legislators, and members of the Constitutional Convention. the town did not have an organized form of government until the early years of.
upon exiting the 1787 Constitutional Convention, was asked what sort of government the delegates had created. His reply, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The founding fathers recognized religion and.
As James Madison observed during the Constitutional Convention, the political interests of the. in the people of this country and their president and in their form of government.” James Michener,
SNP MPs said the Sewel convention. the power grab" and "resolve this constitutional crisis". A UK government spokesman said Lord Sewel had confirmed that it was proceeding "entirely in line with.
Nov 16, 2018. A stealth right-wing campaign to call a constitutional convention is. and even ballot measures, but almost nothing about state legislatures. Imagine every form of legalized bribery dangled in front of hapless. than likely be settled by the Supreme Court, currently in the grip of a 5-4 conservative majority.
https://t.co/o06nZpGE3x Kimpson didn’t specify what form reparations should. last week calling for a new constitutional convention. They said they want to move more political power to the governor.
Mar 4, 2019. Allen West asked state legislators to do something Americans have not. for a convention of the states to amend the constitution. In the ruling, the court found that money is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment. Time to end this nonsense of "settled law" stupidity and taxpayer funding of.
Nullification, in United States constitutional history, is a legal theory that a state has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal law which that state has deemed unconstitutional with respect to the United States Constitution (as opposed to the state’s own constitution).The theory of nullification has never been legally upheld by federal courts.
The Three-Fifths Compromise was proposed by James Wilson and Roger Sherman, who were both delegates for the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
A stealth right-wing campaign to call a constitutional convention is perilously close to succeeding. if not impossible, for the federal government to spend more than it takes in. It’s not hard to.
Aug 24, 2017. Take Care is pleased to host a symposium on Congress's Constitution—an important new book by Josh Chafetz. Contributors will assess.
In brief, Schumacher is proposing that the Nebraska constitution be amended to grant “sovereignty” to thinly settled areas in the western. exemplified best by the campaign to call a constitutional.
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was a tacit admission of America's. reports of legislative excesses, particularly in the form of debtor-relief laws and new. wished to profit by settling the West and helped to secure a national domain.
The Call for a Grand Convention. On May 15, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, issued “A Resolve” to the thirteen colonies: “Adopt such a government as shall, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the safety and happiness of their constituents in particular and America in general.”
Constitutional law: Constitutional law, the body of rules, doctrines, and practices that govern the operation of political communities. In modern times the most important political community has been the state. Modern constitutional law is the offspring of nationalism as well.
Feb 27, 2008. The history of the United States Constitution is a long and interesting story that we have. Today w e continue with the convention in 1787 where it was written. The national legislature would have two houses. if the small states do not agree to a plan, the large states will form a union among themselves.
The new plan for drawing election boundaries looks a lot like the original plan settled on during a 1920 Nebraska Constitutional Convention, Sen. John Murante told the Government, Military and.
The Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws (ACSOL) is dedicated to protecting the Constitution by restoring the civil rights of registrants and their families.
And that there may be a due convention of senators on the [last Wednesday in. and settle the rules and orders of proceeding in their own house: They shall. met together as a Convention, and adopted a form of Constitution “for the.
Transfer Petition in India An Application for transfer of Suit under Section 25 of the Code of Civil Procedure Death of Democracy – How Democracy Devolves Into Dictatorship: As Churchill put it, Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others.It is a tried and tested path to ensure rights of the people and accountability of the people.
You don’t have to dig any deeper than the records of the Constitutional Convention to find Gouverneur Morris saying. In some ways, it was the crux of the whole settlement. So don’t be too quick to.
What will it take to create a genuinely citizen-led constitutional convention for the UK. decentred world. That the present government has an overall majority although it received the support of.
Ex post facto ex post facto adj. Formulated, enacted, or operating retroactively. [Med Lat., from what is done afterwards] Source: AHD In U.S. Constitutional Law, the definition of.
Thomas Jefferson Major Achievements Ellis Island Lesson Plans Seed 3: Gr. 5 Unit: Faces of Immigration. Essential Question: What is the immigrant experience? Lesson Calendar. Seed 1 – Ellis Island;. Students will compare the Vietnamese experiences to immigrants’ experiences of Ellis Island and Angel Island. Continue the unit of study with Lesson Plan. Lessons designed to highlight the ELA/literacy
The 2018 Hawaii State Legislative session ended on May 3. boards, commissions, and agencies for certain financial interests in their disclosure forms. The unknowns surrounding a constitutional convention pose an unacceptable risk, payment of an administrative fine or restitution pursuant to a settlement agreement.
The role of The Constitutional Convention in the history of the United States of America. The delegates considered whether the legislature should be elected directly by the. at times in his life to change what he had considered to be a settled opinion. I believe the British government forms the best model the world ever.
America was indebted to emigrations for her settlement & Prosperity. Three of her deputies to the Convention [Mr. R. Morris, Mr. Fitzimmons. Who are to form the New Constitution by which the condition of that class of citizens is to be. If the Senate can originate, they will in the recess of the Legislative Sessions, hatch.
This isn’t an isolated instance: There’s no legal remedy through court action available for a perceived violation of a number of constitutional provisions. For example, the Constitution’s Republican.
Life In The Great Depression The Great Depression and New Deal 739 Life During the Depression MAIN IDEA WHY IT MATTERS NOW TERMS & NAMES 3 ONE AMERICAN’S STORY Born to freed slaves, Mary McLeod Bethune founded Bethune-Cookman College. In 1936, FDR named her director of the Division of Negro Affairs at the National Youth Administration. Because of her health,
Ellis Island Lesson Plans Seed 3: Gr. 5 Unit: Faces of Immigration. Essential Question: What is the immigrant experience? Lesson Calendar. Seed 1 – Ellis Island;. Students will compare the Vietnamese experiences to immigrants’ experiences of Ellis Island and Angel Island. Continue the unit of study with Lesson Plan. Lessons designed to highlight the ELA/literacy Shifts and expectations of
John Tyler Home State THE STATE QUARTER: United States Mint Image Ship Replicas, Jamestown Settlement. Released on October 16, 2000, this is the 10th coin released in the 50 State ® Quarter Program and the fifth released in 2000. The Virginia quarter honors our nation’s oldest colony, Jamestown, Virginia.The three ships on the coin–Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery–brought the
Aug 21, 2018 · The Articles of Confederation was the first written constitution of the United States. Stemming from wartime urgency, its progress was slowed.
By the time the delegates at the Constitutional Convention. form, in effect enshrined the three-fifths clause in the selection of the president. Instead of election by direct popular vote, each.
2.1 Typeface Conventions for Citations. (a) Case. (iii) Cases superseded by statute or constitutional amendment. 13.8 Short Forms for Legislative Materials.
This map shows Systems of Government in the World. A systems of government or form of state governance, refers to the set of political institutions by which a government of a state is organized in order to exert its powers over a house in the congress body politic.
Treasury records, census schedules, tax lists, judicial actions, and legislative. an annual election, settling the necessary forms of government, and making laws and. The resulting constitutional convention convened on September 1, 1779,
. and Oliver Ellsworth, Connecticut's delegates to the Constitutional Convention, to the Constitutional Convention, established a two-house legislature.
Jul 27, 2011. during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the U.S. government has. however, were to be nominated by state legislatures and elected by.
Although framers did not use the word “slavery” in the document, everyone at the Constitutional Convention understood the ways in which the new form of government protected. or secession was.
The ordinance of the organic convention of the Commonwealth of Virginia, under. The statutes of the Virginia Legislature having authorized the governor of that. On original bill to settle the boundary line between the States of Virginia and. of this constitution, the said four counties shall be included in and form part of the.
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"I think that if people realize that with an mp3, you're only getting five percent of the sound that's there. But when you hear the entire thing... I think it would save the music business. It's such a drastic change."
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D-Link wanted to raise awareness about their new product, and position themselves as leaders of their field. They decided upon multiple routes to coverage, and were happy with the wide range of coverage and demographics that received their brand messages.
They also commissioned a motion graphic that allows them to better explain what they provide to consumers, and highlights their complete range of products.
The DEC worked with us to secure widespread Radio coverage for their charity campaign. Their fundraising appeal was perfectly suited to the medium, and enjoyed great success across the country, ensuring they were heard by as wide an audience as possible.
Confused.com worked with us on a Radio campaign which focused on the hugely relevant topic of holiday disruption caused by volcanic ash.
This achieved nationwide coverage, and helped many members of the public better understand what kind of compensation they were entitled to.
The NCFE wanted to raise their brand awareness, so came to us to build their credibility through radio PR campaigns. They were thrilled with the quality of stories we linked them to, and the level of coverage they received.
They also commissioned one of our infographics to help them illustrate their services.
Tree of Hope worked with us to raise awareness of what they do, and to educate the public about the options available to them.
They chose radio as their route to coverage to raise their profile and reach as many people as possible.
ALK wanted to grow their public awareness, and to educate the public on hay fever: something that effects millions of people every year.
So radio was the perfect medium for them, allowing them to utilise a credible spokesperson people would listen to.
Wizzcash wanted to grow their credibility and authenticity, and chose radio and digital coverage to achieve this thanks to the degree of precision they could guarentee while also generating mass interest.
They also commissioned an infographic that was used in that coverage, helping give their campaign a visual edge.
Care UK undertook a national campaign, which used both radio and video. The topic was emotive and powerful, one that helped the story get fantastic coverage.
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Science and Religion in Europe: A Historical Perspective
November 3, 2014 /0 Comments/in Podcasts /by Peter Harrison Jack Tsonis
The idea of long-running clash between the domains of “science” and “religion” has not only been central to western discourses on modernity, but has increasingly become a central supposition in the history of science itself – informing not just the rhetoric of the New Atheists, but also the broader public understanding of the issue. But is this historically accurate?
In this interview, Professor Peter Harrison (formerly Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford) outlines the flaws in this supposition by providing a historical perspective on the categories “science” and “religion” and the way that they were formerly considered separate virtues (scientia and religio) instead of incompatible domains of knowledge. Far from the current narrative being correct – often focusing on episodes such as the Church’s response to the Galileo controversy – Professor Harrison explains that religious institutions were originally (and for a long time) key supporters of scientific activity, which was considered broadly as a theological attempt to unlock The Book of Nature. The middle section of the interview looks at the complex relationship between theological commitment and scientific activity from Newton to Darwin, and in the final section discusses continuing complexities of the relationship in the post-Darwinan western world, right down to problematic assumptions at play in contemporary New Atheism as well as debates about Islamic militancy.
https://media.blubrry.com/the_religious_studies_project/p/www.religiousstudiesproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/RSP118-Harrison-Mastered.mp3
This interview was recorded at the meeting of the Australian Religious History Association in July 2014. For those interested in the themes of the interview, the keynote talk of the RHA meeting was delivered by one of Professor Harrison’s key collaborators, Ronald Numbers (on a similar topic, focusing especially on the Galileo episode). A number of related talks and interviews can be found on the CHED website.
You can also download this interview, and subscribe to receive our weekly podcast, on iTunes. If you enjoyed it, please take a moment to rate us. And remember, you can use our Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, or Amazon.com links to support us at no additional cost when you have a purchase to make.
Tags: Atheism, europe, History, religion, science, Secularization
https://i1.wp.com/www.religiousstudiesproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/peter-harrison.jpg?fit=215%2C230&ssl=1 230 215 Jack Tsonis https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/logo.png Jack Tsonis2014-11-03 08:56:442018-08-21 08:50:20Science and Religion in Europe: A Historical Perspective
The lovely voices belong to…
Peter Harrison
Jack Tsonis
Historical Approaches to Studying Religion
The Contextuality of Naturalness: Science and Religion in Language and Life
Conference Report: Religious History Association Biennial Conference/Australian Historical Association Annual Conference 2014
Geographies of Religion and the Secular in Ireland Religion and Literature
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Visiting Lake Geneva
Snowmobiling Trails
Home » Blog » Hearthstone Historic House Museum
Hearthstone Historic House Museum
October 10, 2012 Eric Eickhoff
In this day and age, we tend to take for granted things like heating, lighting and indoor toilets. We sometimes forget that at one point in time these items were not the norm. To get the feel for a simpler time, take a break from a day on your ATV rental and visit the Hearthstone Historic House Museum, the country’s first hydroelectric central power station.
The Hearthstone Museum In Appleton, WI
The Hearthstone Historic House Museum is located at 625 W. Prospect Ave in Appleton, WI. Construction of this station, using the Edison central hydroelectric system, was started back on September 30, 1882, and today the original light wiring and fixtures are still in their original location. The generator was in the beater room of the Appleton Paper and Pulp Company in Wisconsin. At this time there were three different buildings lighted on this strip including the Appleton Paper and Pulp Company, Hearthstone, and Kimberly & Clark’s Vulcan Paper Mill.
The Hearthstone Historic House Museum Designer & Residents
William Waters, a man who gained national recognition for this act, designed the original Hearthstone house. Mr. and Mrs. Henry J. and Cremora Rogers and their daughter Kitty lived in this home for over 11 years before leaving in 1893. It changed hands many times and was even a public restaurant in the 1930s.
Visiting this Appleton, WI Museum
Hours Of Operation The Hearthstone Historic House Museum is open Tuesday – Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. It is closed on Mondays. Admission Adult’s admission is $6.00, children ages 5-17 are $3.00, and those under 5 are free. Tours Tours begin every half hour with the first tour starting when the place opens. Along with your tour of historic rooms, you can also learn about electricity while experimenting with hands-on activities. You can see how electricity is generated from a water wheel and how you can use electricity to power an electric trolley model. The Gift Shop Check out the Hearthstone gift shop for a chance to purchase Victorian-style merchandise like lamps, light bulbs, and jewelry. Your kids are sure to like their Victorian games, electricity experiment kits, and the creative light bulb pencil sharpener. After spending the day learning about early electrical options at the Hearthstone Historic House Museum, contact Power Sports Rental Network for a day of fun on an ATV rental. All of our ATV rentals have 4-wheel drive, automatic transmission, a 4-stroke rental, include a trailer if necessary, and are comparable to the Yamaha Grizzly ATV Rentals. Call 920-428-4111 and get out on the trails with an ATV rental today.
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Home › Obituaries › Robert “Bob” F. Valentine ›
Robert “Bob” F. Valentine
Submitted by Edgar on Wed, 01/29/2014 - 11:56am
Robert “Bob” F. Valentine, CDR USN (RET.) passed away on Jan. 9, 2014. He will be sorely missed. Bob was born in 1926 in Columbus, Ohio, the son of Oscar and Agnes Valentine. In Columbus, Bob attended Central High School. He attended University of Virginia, and Ohio State University, graduating in 1948 from OSU and its Naval ROTC Program with
a degree in Business Administration. Bob became a Naval Aviator, and loved to fly. He spent the next five years assigned to Fighter Squadron 173 flying the F4U Corsair fighter and the Douglas AD4 dive bomber off the decks of the carriers USS Wasp, USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, USS Midway, and the USS Coral Sea. In 1955, Bob was ordered to Naval Station Great Lakes, IL, where he met his future wife, Wilma C. Garcie. Throughout his Navy career Bob served in a number of different aviation roles including Catapult Officer on the USS Lexington, and Assistant Air Officer on the USS Yorktown, during combat operations in Vietnam. Bob retired in 1969 with the rank of Commander. His naval service was a great source of pride to Bob and his family. After his Navy career, Bob and his family moved to Arlington, Texas where he worked in a number of civilian positions, earning a Masters of Business Administration from Texas Christian University along the way. In 1990 he retired from the Arlington Independent School District as a Contract Administrator. Bob and Wilma moved to Louisville in 2005, and most recently celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary here. Bob was an avid reader, but his favorite hobby was genealogy through which he traced his ancestors to the American Colonial period and beyond. He was a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Military Officers Association of America, and the Louisville Genealogy Society. Bob is survived by his wife Wilma, formerly of Zwolle; his son Alan Valentine, MD of Houston, TX; son John Valentine, MD of Salt Lake City, Utah; daughter Diane Cook of Anchorage, KY; daughter Sharon Lovejoy of Kailua, HI; daughter Linda Salomon of Austin, TX; and 11 grandchildren. Other survivors include his sister Lois Hildebrand of Columbus, OH, a niece and nephew, and several cousins. A funeral Mass will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Saint Patrick Catholic Church, 1000 N Beckley Station Rd., Louisville, with burial to follow at a later date at Arlington National Cemetery. Memorial gifts may be sent to Saint Patrick Catholic Church, Louisville
Select ratingGive Robert “Bob” F. Valentine 1/5Give Robert “Bob” F. Valentine 2/5Give Robert “Bob” F. Valentine 3/5Give Robert “Bob” F. Valentine 4/5Give Robert “Bob” F. Valentine 5/5
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Supreme Court says no "complete ban" on protests at Jantar Mantar
Written by SabrangIndia Staff | Published on: July 23, 2018
Image Courtesy: Scroll.in
The Supreme Court, on Monday, July 24, 2018, ruled that there could not be a "complete ban" on protests at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, the Indian Express reported. A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and A. K. Sikri said, "There cannot be a complete ban on holding protests at places like Jantar Mantar and Boat Club (near India Gate)," and directed the Central Government to formulate guidelines regarding the issue.
The ruling came in the case of a petition filed by Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan, which challenged an order from the National Green Tribunal (NGT), which in October 2017 had asked the Delhi government to end all protests in the Jantar Mantar area, Scroll reported. The NGT said the protests breached environmental laws, and that it was the state’s duty to shield people from nois pollution, the Indian Express reported. The bench, led by Justice R. S. Rathore, had directed the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) to take down all temporary structures, loudspeakers, and other protest-related equipment on the road leading to Jantar Mantar. It had deemed the Ramlila Grounds in Ajmeri Gate as an alternative option for demonstrators, where, as per North body authorities, just one group can hold an event at a time.
It is Article 19(1) of the Constitution Of India that gives Indians the Right to Protest. Article 19 reads:
Article 19 (1) All citizens shall have the right
(a) to freedom of speech and expression;
(b) to assemble peaceably and without arms;
The petition challenging the NGT’s order argued, "….holding peaceful demonstrations in order to air grievances and to see that their voice is heard in the relevant quarters, is the right of the people. Such a right can be traced to the fundamental freedoms that are guaranteed under Articles 19 (1) (a) and 19 (1) (b) of the Constitution. Article 19(1)(b) specifically confers the right to assemble and thus guarantees that all citizens have the right to assemble peacefully and without arms," Bar and Bench reported. The petitioner had argued that authorities and the police had curbed protests by constantly imposing Section 144 of the CrPC. The petition had said that the Delhi Police had for multiple years been issuing such directives as soon as the previous order lapsed, which constituted an abuse of power and hampered citizens’ right to protest, violating Article 19. The petitioner also submitted that in other areas of New Delhi, protests were previously permitted but have been slowly curbed over time.
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President Barack Obama speaks to reporters as he meets with Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan at the G8 summit in Deauville, France, Thursday, May 26, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) (AP)
Obama, in Europe, signs Patriot Act extension
President uses autopen machine to authorize the bill remotely
Check out this article! https://www.salon.com/2011/05/27/us_patriot_act_3/
Jim Abrams
Congress on Thursday passed a four-year extension of post-Sept. 11 powers to search records and conduct roving wiretaps in pursuit of terrorists. Votes taken in rapid succession in the Senate and House came after lawmakers rejected attempts to temper the law enforcement powers to ensure that individual liberties are not abused.
Following the 250-153 evening vote in the House, the legislation to renew three terrorism-fighting authorities headed for the president's signature with only hours to go before the provisions expire at midnight.
With Obama currently in France, the White House said the president would use an autopen machine that holds a pen and signs his actual signature. It is only used with proper authorization of the president. Minutes before the midnight deadline, the White House said Obama had signed the bill.
Obama said he was pleased the act had been extended.
"It's an important tool for us to continue dealing with an ongoing terrorist threat," he said after a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
A short-term expiration would not interrupt ongoing operations but would bar the government from seeking warrants for new investigations.
Congress bumped up against the deadline mainly because of the stubborn resistance from a single senator, Republican freshman Rand Paul of Kentucky, who saw the terrorist-hunting powers as an abuse of privacy rights. Paul held up the final vote for several days while he demanded a chance to change the bill to diminish the government's ability to monitor individual actions. The bill passed the Senate 72-23.
The measure would add four years to the legal life of roving wiretaps -- those authorized for a person rather than a communications line or device -- of court-ordered searches of business records and of surveillance of non-American "lone wolf" suspects without confirmed ties to terrorist groups.
The roving wiretaps and access to business records are small parts of the USA Patriot Act enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But unlike most of the act, which is permanent law, those provisions must be renewed periodically because of concerns that they could be used to violate privacy rights. The same applies to the "lone wolf" provision, which was part of a 2004 intelligence law.
Paul argued that in the rush to meet the terrorist threat in 2001 Congress enacted a Patriot Act that tramples on individual liberties. He had some backing from liberal Democrats and civil liberties groups who have long contended the law gives the government authority to spy on innocent citizens.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he voted for the act when he was a House member in 2001 "while ground zero was still burning." But "I soon realized it gave too much power to government without enough judicial and congressional oversight."
Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said the provision on collecting business records can expose law-abiding citizens to government scrutiny. "If we cannot limit investigations to terrorism or other nefarious activities, where do they end?" he asked.
"The Patriot Act has been used improperly again and again by law enforcement to invade Americans' privacy and violate their constitutional rights," said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office.
Still, coming just a month after intelligence and military forces tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden, there was little appetite for tampering with the terrorism-fighting tools. These tools, said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, "have kept us safe for nearly a decade and Americans today should be relieved and reassured to know that these programs will continue."
Intelligence officials have denied improper use of surveillance tools, and this week both FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sent letters to congressional leaders warning of serious national security consequences if the provisions were allowed to lapse.
The Obama administration says that without the three authorities the FBI might not be able to obtain information on terrorist plotting inside the U.S. and that a terrorist who communicates using different cell phones and email accounts could escape timely surveillance.
"When the clock strikes midnight tomorrow, we would be giving terrorists the opportunity to plot attacks against our country, undetected," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the Senate floor Wednesday. In unusually personal criticism of a fellow senator, he warned that Paul, by blocking swift passage of the bill, "is threatening to take away the best tools we have for stopping them."
The nation itself is divided over the Patriot Act, as reflected in a Pew Research Center poll last February, before the killing of bin Laden, that found that 34 percent felt the law "goes too far and poses a threat to civil liberties. Some 42 percent considered it "a necessary tool that helps the government find terrorists." That was a slight turnaround from 2004 when 39 percent thought it went too far and 33 percent said it was necessary.
Paul, after complaining that Reid's remarks were "personally insulting," asked whether the nation "should have some rules that say before they come into your house, before they go into your banking records, that a judge should be asked for permission, that there should be judicial review? Do we want a lawless land?"
Paul agreed to let the bill go forward after he was given a vote on two amendments to rein in government surveillance powers. Both were soundly defeated. The more controversial, an amendment that would have restricted powers to obtain gun records in terrorist investigations, was defeated 85-10 after lawmakers received a letter from the National Rifle Association stating that it was not taking a position on the measure.
According to a senior Justice Department national security official testifying to Congress last March, the government has sought roving wiretap authority in about 20 cases a year between 2001 and 2010 and has sought warrants for business records less than 40 times a year, on average. The government has yet to use the lone wolf authority.
But the ACLU also points out that court approvals for business record access jumped from 21 in 2009 to 96 last year, and the organization contends the Patriot Act has blurred the line between investigations of actual terrorists and those not suspected of doing anything wrong.
Two Democratic critics of the Patriot Act, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Udall of Colorado, on Thursday extracted a promise from Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that she would hold hearings with intelligence and law enforcement officials on how the law is being carried out.
Wyden says that while there are numerous interpretations of how the Patriot Act works, the official government interpretation of the law remains classified. "A significant gap has developed now between what the public thinks the law says and what the government secretly claims it says," Wyden said.
Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman and Pete Yost contributed to this report.
MORE FROM Jim Abrams
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Mitch McConnell (Reuters/Jason Reed)
The tax fight Democrats might actually win
Mitch McConnell's surprise move suggests a potential GOP payroll tax retreat. But did he check with the Tea Party?
Check out this article! https://www.salon.com/2011/11/30/the_tax_fight_democrats_might_actually_win/
Steve Kornacki
November 30, 2011 5:43PM (UTC)
One of the guiding principles of Tea Party-era Republicanism -- if Barack Obama's for it, we're against it -- is on a collision course with a hard deadline, and GOP leaders are apparently getting nervous.
At issue is the expiration of payroll tax cuts that Obama insisted on when he cut a deal with congressional Republicans last year to extend the Bush tax cuts. The 4.2 percent rate that workers have been paying will revert to the old level of 6.2 percent unless Congress and the White House can reach a deal before the end of the year. For most of this year, Republicans have been signaling strong opposition to extending the cuts. Over the summer, Rep. Paul Ryan belittled the payroll tax cut as "sugar-high economics," while just this past Sunday Sen. Jon Kyl argued that it "has not stimulated job creation. We don’t think that is a good way to do it.”
This reflexive opposition seems to come from two places. One is philosophical: It's hard to argue at this point that today's conservatives aren't a lot more interested in lowering the tax burden on the wealthy -- "job-creators," in the right's parlance -- than on workers. The other is political: The payroll tax cut is essentially Obama's idea, and the conservative movement has shown a tendency since 2009 to turn against ideas it once embraced if Obama takes them up.
But with Democrats from Obama down loudly calling for the tax holiday to be extended, Republicans, if they dig their heels in, run the very real risk of being blamed for an election year tax squeeze that millions of voters will feel. If the cuts expire, the average family will face a tax increase of $1,000 in 2012.
So Democrats are turning up the heat. On the Senate side, they are set to force a vote this week on a plan that would further reduce the rate to 3.1 percent for 2012, paying for it by applying a 3.25 percent income surcharge on millionaires. The plan would also apply the 3.1 percent rate to employers for the first $5 million of their payrolls, and exempt them outright from the payroll tax for the first $50 million of their payroll for new new hires.
And Republicans are starting to sweat. On Tuesday, just 48 hours after Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, seemed to sniff at the idea of an extension, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sent a very different message, saying that there is now a "majority sentiment" within the GOP for an extension and vowing to present an alternative plan to achieve it. "In all likelihood we will agree to continue the current payroll tax relief for another year," McConnell said.
Clearly, McConnell recognizes that the political risk for the GOP in blocking an extension. His party's image has already suffered terribly this year, as Republican leaders have felt compelled by Tea Party pressure to use the new power they won in the 2010 midterms to pursue a confrontational and ideologically polarizing agenda, one that has forced congressional Republicans into a series of politically draining showdowns with the White House. This has helped bring the GOP's favorable rating to a modern low and created a potential opening for Obama to survive the '12 election simply by running against the Republican label -- and for Democrats to retain control of the Senate and maybe even win back the House by doing the same. Shouldering the blame for a sizable tax increase on the middle class won't help the GOP's problems at all.
The signals that some Republican senators are sending suggest a workable compromise could actually be possible. Both Sens. Susan Collins and Pat Roberts actually suggested on Tuesday that they might be OK with paying for a payroll tax extension with increased taxes on the wealthy if some kind of exemption could be included to protect small business owners from any hikes. According to Suzy Khimm, only two percent of small business owners would be affected by the plan that Democrats are now offering, so that demand may not be impossible for Democrats to accommodate, if other Republicans are willing to take the same posture.
But that would still leave a potential problem: the House, where Tea Party influence is much more pronounced and where Speaker John Boehner lived in fear of an intraparty mutiny since the 112th Congress began. Boehner has said he's ready to discuss an extension with the White House, but it remains to be seen what the majority of his members can live with. For instance, it's hard to see the House's true believer conservatives favoring any kind of a tax increase, even in the name of extending a tax cut that benefits millions of Americans.
And while modern conservative dogma generally holds that tax cuts pay for themselves by spurring growth and increasing revenue, that logic may not apply to the payroll tax situation -- which explains why Ryan, the face of Tea Party economics in the House, claimed over the summer that extending the holiday "would simply exacerbate our debt problems." In other words, the idea of simply extending the cuts without offsets -- something Sen. Scott Brown suggested on Tuesday -- may be a nonstarter too.
McConnell's sudden announcement on Tuesday suggests that Republican leaders are quickly waking up to the danger that this debate poses to their party's 2012 prospects. The question is whether the GOP's Tea Party wing will end up seeing things the same way.
Steve Kornacki is an MSNBC host and political correspondent. Previously, he hosted “Up with Steve Kornacki” on Saturday and Sunday 8-10 a.m. ET and was a co-host on MSNBC’s ensemble show “The Cycle.” He has written for the New York Observer, covered Congress for Roll Call, and was the politics editor for Salon. His book, which focuses on the political history of the 1990s, is due out in 2017.
MORE FROM Steve Kornacki • FOLLOW stevekornacki
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Lawrence Turman
Full Moon in Blue Water (1988) — Produced by
Running Scared (1986) (1986) — Produced by
Short Circuit (1986) — Produced by
The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971) — Produced and directed by
The Flim-Flam Man (1967) — production
Home Entertainment Consumer Guide: March 4, 2016
by Brian Tallerico | March 4, 2016 |
The latest and greatest on Blu-ray, DVD and streaming, including "Spotlight," "The Danish Girl," and "The Graduate."
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Jeff Daly/FX
Is Andrew Cunanan Still Alive? 'The Assassination of Gianni Versace' Tells His Story
It’s been about 20 years since designer Gianni Versace was shot and killed outside of his Miami mansion by Andrew Cunanan. But in the upcoming season of American Crime Story, titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the crime will be chronicled, and take viewers into the mind of a killer. But is Andrew Cunanan still alive today? The Assassination of Gianni Versace will delve into his story.
Just days after the shooting, Cunanan (played by Glee's Darren Criss) shot and killed himself aboard a houseboat not far from Versace’s home, meaning he was never formally convicted of the crime. However, authorities discovered that the gun he used to kill himself was the same one used to kill Versace, according to The Chicago Tribune. But with no note left behind, the motive behind Cunanan’s actions was never made clear. In a December screening for the new season of the miniseries, some of the cast attended, including Maureen Orth, who wrote the book Vulgar Favors: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which was where a lot of the inspiration and content for the season came from.
Orth gave some of her own personal insight into what she thinks drove Cunanan to commit such a heinous crime. "He was willing to kill for fame," she stated. "He wanted to be everything Versace was, but he wasn’t willing to work for it." However since Cunanan himself is no longer alive to voice his own remarks, there’s no way to know for sure what his motives were at the time.
Ryan Murphy added at the screening that in filming this story for Season 2, part of the goal for portraying Cunanan was to attempt to "understand the psychology of someone who would be driven to do those deeds." So while a good portion of The Assassination of Gianni Versace will focus on the fashion icon himself, the series will also showcase some of Cunanan’s own upbringing. "In Episode 8, you meet Andrew Cunanan as a child," Murphy revealed. "The final episode deals with his eventual demise."
Cunanan was 27 years old at the time of his own death and although no one knows for sure what made him into the man he became, it would appear that The Assassination of Gianni Versace will do its best to explore that very question. However, the Versace family recently released a statement, obtained by Entertainment Weekly, in which they call the miniseries a work of pure fiction:
The Versace family has neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming TV series about the death of Mr. Gianni Versace. Since Versace did not authorize the book on which it is partly based nor has it taken part in the writing of the screenplay, this TV series should only be considered as a work of fiction.
FX and 20th Century Fox responded to this by releasing their own statement, supporting the miniseries and its content this season:
Like the original American Crime Story series The People vs O.J. Simpson, which was based on Jeffrey Toobin’s non-fiction bestseller The Run of His Life, FX’s follow-up The Assassination of Gianni Versace is based on Maureen Orth’s heavily researched and authenticated non-fiction best-seller Vulgar Favors which examined the true-life crime spree of Andrew Cunanan. We stand by the meticulous reporting of Ms. Orth.
Since then, the Versace family released a second statement about the series, calling it "sad and reprehensible" while also claiming they "neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming TV series about the death of Mr. Gianni Versace, which should only be considered as a work of fiction."
So while the show will be based on true events, some of the details may be altered for the purpose of the show, or because the answer is unattainable due to Cunanan's death. Without him around to explain his actions, no one will ever really know the full story.
Check out Romper's new video series, Romper's Doula Diaries:
Watch full episodes of Romper's Doula Diaries on Facebook Watch.
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New facts in Litvinenko case
British police have concluded that former Russian security officer, Aleksandr Litvinenko, was poisoned by a dose of polonium added to his tea in London's Millenium hotel, according to media reports.
A contaminated teapot found at the hotel Litvinenko visited before his death in November, is said to have been in use there for several weeks, before it was tested.
ABC News claims the murder was deemed by UK authorities as a “state-sponsored” assassination, orchestrated by Russian security services.
Reports also say the UK may want the extradition of Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoy – one of the key witnesses in the case.
But the Russian constitution doesn't allow the country's citizens to be extradited.
Mr Lugovoi told the Associated Press news agency that reports about him by the British media are all “lies, provocation and government propaganda by the United Kingdom”.
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Philosophy & Identity
Scientex
Manual Wrap – Standard & Thin Series
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Machine Wrap – Super Power & HP, Thin & WFE
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Automotive Interior
PP Strapping Band
Raffia – HDPE & PP Tying Tape
Solar Encapsulant Film
PU Adhesives
FIBC Bag
– Pasir Gudang
– Kulai
– Skudai
– Senai
– Kulai 2
– E’Roca Hills
– Pulai
– Senai 2
– Amber Land
– Ayer Keroh
– Durian Tunggal
– Durian Tunggal 2
Perak, Ipoh
– Klebang
– Meru
– Meru 2
– Rawang
USA, Phoenix – Stretch Film
Selangor, Klang – Stretch Film
Selangor, Pulau Indah – Stretch Film
Perak, Sungai Siput – PE Film & Bag
Perak, Chemor – FFS Bag
Selangor, Rawang – PE Film & Bag
Selangor, Klang – PE Shrink Film
Selangor, Klang – Agricultural Film
Selangor, Pulau Indah – BOPP Film
Melaka, Tanjung Kling – CPP & MCPP Film
Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh – Woven Bag & Raffia
Selangor, Shah Alam – Automotive Interior
Selangor, Pulau Indah – PU Adhesives
Melaka, Bukit Rambai – Solar Encapsulant
Melaka, Tanjung Kling – PP Strapping Band
Perak – Klebang
Perak – Meru
Perak – Meru 2
Selangor – Rawang
Melaka – Ayer Keroh
Melaka – Durian Tunggal
Melaka – Durian Tunggal 2
Johor – E’Roca Hills
Johor – Kulai
Johor – Kulai 2
Johor – Senai
Johor – Senai 2
Johor – Pasir Gudang
Johor – Pulai
Johor – Amber Land
Johor – Skudai
Scientex in News
Latest News – 2016
Interim Dividend
By scientexJune 1, 2016 No Comments
Declared a single tier interim dividend of 24% in respect of FYE 31 July 2016
Entitlement Date: 18.7.2016
Payment Date: 5.8.2016
Acquisition of 121.2 acres of land in Senai- Kulai, Johor
Scientex celebrates achievement of RM 2 Billion Revenue
Scientex Launched its New Corporate Building
Acquisition of 197.4 acres of land in Durian Tunggal, Melaka
Scientex Phoenix, LLC – First stretch film plant in overseas
- Group Structure
- Company Information
- Philosophy & Identity
USA, Phoenix - Stretch Film
Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh - Woven Bag & Raffia
Perak, Sungai Siput - PE Film & Bag
Perak, Chemor - FFS Bag
Selangor, Rawang - PE Film & Bag
Selangor, Klang - Stretch Film
Selangor, Klang - PE Shrink Film
Selangor, Klang - Agricultural Film
Selangor, Pulau Indah - Stretch Film
Selangor, Pulau Indah - BOPP Film
Selangor, Pulau Indah - PU Adhesives
Selangor, Shah Alam - Automotive Interior
Melaka, Bukit Rambai - Solar Encapsulant Film
Melaka, Tanjung Kling - CPP & MCPP Film
Melaka, Tanjung Kling - PP Strapping Band
Perak - Klebang
Perak - Meru
Perak - Meru 2
Selangor - Rawang
Melaka - Durian Tunggal
Melaka - Durian Tunggal 2
Melaka - Ayer Keroh
Johor - E’Roca Hills
Johor - Kulai
Johor - Kulai 2
Johor - Senai
Johor - Senai 2
Johor - Pasir Gudang
Johor - Pulai
Johor - Amber Land
Johor - Skudai
© 2019 Scientex. All Rights Reserved.
Ng Boon Ngee joined Scientex Berhad in 2005 and was appointed Company Secretary on 30th September 2009. Subsequently, she heads the Corporate Secretarial Department of Scientex Group since 1st August 2011. She has more than two decade of experience in handling corporate secretarial matters in professional secretarial firms and the corporate sector. She is a Chartered Secretary (ICSA) and is a Fellow of the Malaysian Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators.
Phang Chi Ming graduated from the National University of Singapore in 1989 with a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) degree. He has been in legal practice since 1990 and obtained his Master of Laws from University of Malaya in 1996. He has various experience in commercial and corporate work as well as litigation. He was appointed as the Legal & Corporate Affairs Manager of Scientex Berhad since 14th January 2008
Goh Tian Chin joined Scientex Polymer Sdn Bhd in September 1995 as Assistant Production Manager. He was promoted to General Manager in February 2001 and since 1st July 2010, he has assumed the responsibilities of a Senior General Manager for the stretch film business. He is a graduate of University Science of Malaysia with a Bachelor’s Degree in Technology and has more than 10 years of experience in the polymer industry.
Choo Chee Meng joined Scientex’s property division in 2006 as an Assistant Finance Manager. He was promoted to Senior General Manager of Scientex’s property business on 1st August 2013. He graduated from University of South Australia, Adelaide with a Degree in Accounting and has more than 10 years’ experience in the field of accounting and property development.
Yau Kuan Yee joined Scientex in 1996 as a Division General Manager of stretch film business. He was appointed as the Senior Technical General Manager on 1st March 2015 and presently, is the Executive Director of Manufacturing Facilities since 1 August 2017. He has almost 30 years of experience in the plastics packaging industry and 25 years in stretch film segment. He graduated from Swinburne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia with a degree in Manufacturing Engineering.
Jesselyn Chang Siew Sian is an accountant by profession. She graduated from University of Malaya with a Bachelor Degree in Accounting. She is a member of the Malaysian Institute of Accountants and Malaysian Institute of Certified Public Accountants. She joined Scientex Berhad in 2002 as Corporate Finance Manager and subsequently promoted to Group Financial Controller on 15th May 2003. She was appointed as the Executive Director overseeing corporate planning of the Group since 2014. She completed the Advanced Management Program in Harvard Business School in 2015.
Alex Khaw Giet Thye joined Scientex’s property division in 1996. Starting off as a project manager in Scientex’s subsidiary, Scientex Quatari Sdn. Bhd., he was promoted to General Manager on 1st February 2004 and subsequently, as Executive Director of Scientex’s property business on 1st August 2013. He graduated from University Science of Malaysia with a Degree in Housing, Building & Planning and has over 20 years of experience in construction and property development.
Gan Kok Khye graduated from North East London Polytechnic, London in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Business Studies. He joined the Scientex Group in 1988 and since then, has held various management positions in the subsidiaries of the Company. He was appointed as an Executive Director of the Group’s subsidiary, Scientex Packaging Film Sdn Bhd in 2002. Subsequently, he was appointed as the Executive Director of Scientex’s manufacturing business on 1st April 2002.
Choo Seng Hong graduated with a Bachelor of Accountancy from Universiti Putra Malaysia in 1993 and is also a member of the Malaysian Institute of Accountants. He was formerly the Finance and Administration Manager of Scientex. Currently, he holds various senior positions in the Company’s subsidiaries. Prior to joining Scientex in 1997, he was attached to KPMG from 1993 to 1997 and has experience in the fields of banking, oil and gas, and manufacturing. He was appointed as the Executive Director of Scientex’s manufacturing business on 1st March 2003 and presently, is the Head of Manufacturing Division.
Koay Teik Chuan joined Scientex in 1997. During the early stages, he was involved in the construction and development of Scientex’s flagship development in Johor. Prior to joining Scientex, he was handling various construction projects in different parts of the country. He was appointed as the Executive Director of Scientex’s property business on 1st November 2009. He received his higher education from the Institut Teknoloji Butterworth in 1978 and has more than 25 years of experience in various aspects of construction and property development including township projects. Presently, he is also the Assistant to the Managing Director since 2001.
Lim Peng Jin is currently the Managing Director of the Company. He was appointed to the Board on 20th January 1995 as the Group Executive Director and was re-designated as Managing Director on 6th November 2001. He is also a member of the Board’s Risk Management Committee. A Bachelor of Science (Honours) graduate in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tokyo, he began his career in Japan’s chemical industry before joining Scientex in 1991. In 1998, he completed a Programme Management Development course at Harvard University, USA. He has local and international working experience in the fields of polymer and chemicals from the early years of his career. He has adopted a hands-on leadership style within the Scientex businesses over the past 20 years.
By any yardstick, a half century is a long time. To give this some perspective, it took 50 years for man to reach the summit from the time the first photographs set Mount Everest apart as the ultimate challenge. Likewise, it took almost 50 years for cancer research to yield such progress in prevention and treatment from the time US President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act as a challenge to find a cure.
These are challenges requiring courage and commitment, values that Scientex has embraced as its own. Similarly, the Scientex story is about taking up challenges and for this reason, the theme of our 50th Anniversary is ‘Challenge New Heights Together’.
Our story may have begun 50 years ago, but it is only just taking off. After our incorporation in 1968, we made steady progress during the first 40 years. However, our efforts then were fragmented and disconnected. We lacked structure and our operations were not consolidated or streamlined. In the immediate years before 2008, Scientex operated 10 business units with 10 different sets of people, all working in silos independent of each other. To use a tug-of-war analogy, we were pulling on our own, but not pulling together.
The last 10 years were a different story. In 2008, we merged our listed entities, bringing two companies together as one. The same year, Scientex celebrated its 40th Anniversary, giving the Board, management and staff a common goal for all to cooperate and collaborate. Looking back, this was a seminal moment. We discovered we could achieve much more in lesser time by working single-mindedly to navigate in one direction. As a result, we formed an executive committee or Exco in 2009 to coalesce our focus and drive the company towards a collective vision and aspiration.
It was during these last 10 years that Scientex came into its own. In that period, we leveraged on our strengths to build capacity. At the same time, we developed our resources in capital, talent and technology that enabled us to undertake more ambitious projects to grow faster and go further. Following this exceptional decade of exponential growth and extraordinary achievements, Scientex is today a RM2.6 billion company with thousands of employees and operations spread throughout Malaysia and beyond.
Based on how far we have come, the tendency is to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labour. Yet, it is not in our nature to rest on our laurels and let complacency creep in. Instead, we are ready to take on the next challenge, just as mountain climbers continue to attempt summiting Mount Everest and cancer researchers remain resolved in finding new pathways towards cures for different cancers.
In the next 10 years, we intend to push the boundaries and propel ourselves like never before. We have a new Vision 2028 to become a RM10 billion company with a production output of 1 million metric tonnes of flexible plastic packaging (FPP) and completion of 50,000 affordable homes.
This is an ambitious goal, one which is fraught with challenges, internal as well as external. In response, Scientex will remain nimble and responsive to the ever-changing market forces, avoiding the common trap of excessive bureaucracy which commonly afflicts companies as they grow in size. Our corporate philosophy of ‘management like water’ will continue to set us apart through lean management and our agility to navigate the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world ahead to seize opportunities wherever and whenever they appear.
Given this agility, we will intensify our investment to build capability and capacity. While we had RM620 million in assets and RM350 million in equity 10 years ago, we now have more than 5 times that amount with RM3.4 billion in assets and RM1.8 billion in equity, giving us the financial muscle for investment in new plants for manufacturing and acquisition of new land banks for property development whenever the need arises.
For our manufacturing division, we intend to drive annual capacity up from 450,000 metric tonnes to 1 million metric tonnes over the next 10 years. To reach this goal, we need to grow our market share by: capturing a slice of the rapid growth in demand for our existing products; securing new regional markets for our present offerings; and creating new solutions to penetrate different market segments. As we explore new frontiers to become a truly global player, our challenge is to learn and adapt to different market demands and conditions.
For our stretch film business segment, we will continue to tap our economies of scale to grow our volume-based model as we seek to venture into new markets. For this reason, we have invested in a new plant in the United States to expand our stretch film markets beyond Asia Pacific to the huge markets of the Americas.
In the case of our custom film segment, we first ventured into flexible plastic packaging for consumer-based products in 2013 following our acquisition of Great Wall companies. This opened the door to new opportunities for Scientex as our quality packaging products play an important role in enhancing packaging integrity to reduce food wastage and spoilage through better quality packaged products. We are now poised to tap into the fast-growing FPP market, which is expected to grow in excess of USD200 billion by 2020. The food and beverage (F&B) segment, which constitutes 70% of this market, will be a key focus for Scientex. By capitalising on our competencies, we will develop customised solutions for these specialised market needs in collaboration with our customers while also keeping pace with emerging trends such as e-commerce, convenience and sustainability. Our latest improvements through the adoption of digital printing technology in our production process are part of the continuous efforts to complement and supplement Scientex’s capabilities to meet changing customer requirements. Our specialty segment leverages on our joint ventures with international partners to produce specialty products such as adhesives and solar films. Through the transfer of skills and technology, we now have the competencies to move into high technology products that can respond to global market trends.
On the property front, Scientex has long been entrenched in the southern part of Peninsular Malaysia, providing affordable housing to the masses for the past 20 years. In line with our corporate philosophy, we continue to search for new ways to deliver affordable housing by tapping into our expertise and efficiencies in order to derive greater cost savings which are then passed on to our buyers. A decade ago, we were building at a rate of 500 units per annum. Today, Scientex is building 5 times the number of units at 2,500 per year. All in, we have delivered nearly 17,300 units of quality affordable homes, with high occupancy rates recorded for all our Johor and Melaka projects. To achieve our next 10-year aspiration, we need to look beyond our existing markets by crossing boundaries and extending our trademark of developing affordable housing in previously uncharted territories. Since last year, we have expanded from our traditional bases in Johor and Melaka northwards to Selangor and Perak as we strive to deliver 50,000 affordable homes by 2028.
As with both the manufacturing and property development divisions, going where we have never been before comes with a host of challenges. Here again, our people would need to push the envelope as they contend with new rules and regulations, different market sentiments as well as intense competition from established players with home ground advantage.
Central to these ambitions and aspirations is our embrace of sustainability as a catalyst to develop a company of the future and for the future. For many years, Scientex has been committed to driving sustainability across the economic, environment and social spheres.
Economically, Scientex’s robust business performance in recent years has significantly contributed to the financial growth and greatly improved the livelihoods of our stakeholders, from our shareholders, partners and associates to our employees and vendors. To reduce the impact of our operations on the environment, we have diligently adhered to the 3Rs programme of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in every aspect of our manufacturing and property development activities. In addition, our quality packaging solutions have gone a long way to reduce food wastage for our customers by extending the shelf life of packaged food products. In property development, Scientex’s commitment to providing affordable housing has helped to put a roof over the heads of tens of thousands of Malaysians.
At Scientex, we are firm in our belief that sustainability drives growth, by generating opportunities and optimising resources in capital, assets and people while also harmonising our activities with the communities and environment within our considerable sphere of influence. To us, sustainability is a business imperative with the potential to ensure we can meet all our aspirations and achieve all our goals on a continuous and consistent basis.
What I have outlined represents our concerted approach to our ambitious target. Some may say this is a bridge too far for Scientex. Yet, we can be successful, if only we are courageous and fully committed to take up the challenge.
Mankind is at its best when we come out of our comfort zone to test ourselves and push our limits. In this regard, this is what we will and must do at Scientex. It is together that we can challenge for new heights.
Wong Chin Mun, a Malaysian, male, aged 74, is an Independent Non-Executive Director of the Company. He was appointed to the Board as a Non-Executive Director on 6 October 2017. He is also the Chairman of the Board’s Audit Committee and a member of the Nomination and Remuneration Committee.
Wong Chin Mun received the Teacher’s Certificate from the Ministry of Education of Malaysia in 1966 and graduated with Bachelor of Business (Accounting) Degree and Bachelor of Business (Secretarial Administration) Degree from Curtin University, Western Australia in 1972 and 1974 respectively. He is a Fellow of Australian Society of Certified Practising Accountants as well as associate members of Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators, UK and Malaysian Institute of Accountants.
Wong Chin Mun worked as the Financial Controller/Company Secretary in Yeo Hiap Seng Bhd from 1974 to 1975. He then joined Nylex (Malaysia) Berhad (“Nylex”) as the Financial Controller/Company Secretary in 1976 and became the first local General Manager/Director of Nylex in 1980. He was promoted to the position of Managing Director in 1985 and left Nylex at the end of June 1994 to found TEC Asia Centre (now known as Vistage Malaysia Sdn Bhd), an international organisation which aims to help chief executive officers and entrepreneurs to manage change and grow their businesses. He had served on the National Export Council under the Ministry of International Trade & Industry (“MITI”) from 1989 to 1992 and was appointed to the National Branding Taskforce of MITI 2006 to 2009. He also served on the Board of Trustees of Malaysian Rubber Export Promotion Council from 2000 to 2002. Currently, Mr Wong is the Senior Independent Non-Executive Director of Sunway Berhad as well as the Independent Non-Executive Director of Khind Holdings Berhad. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Scientex Foundation since 2008. He is also the Chairman of the FMM-MIER Business Conditions Survey Committee and a Member of the FMM Strategic Policies Committee.
Dato’ Noorizah Binti Hj Abd Hamid, a Malaysian, female, aged 58, is an Independent Non-Executive Director of the Company. She was appointed to the Board as a Non-Executive Director on 7 November 2016. She is also the Chairperson of the Board’s Risk Management Committee and a member of the Board’s Audit Committee.
Dato’ Noorizah Binti Hj Abd Hamid graduated with a Diploma in Accountancy from MARA Institute of Technology in 1980, a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration (Finance) and a Master Degree in Business Administration (Finance and Management) from Central Michigan University, United States of America in 1982 and 1984 respectively.
She was the former Non-Executive Chairperson and Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of PLUS Expressways International Berhad (“PEIB”) and former Managing Director of PLUS Malaysia Berhad and PLUS Expressways Berhad. Presently, she sits on the Board of Directors of Mass Rapid Transit Corporation Sdn Bhd, which is wholly-owned by Minister of Finance Incorporated Malaysia, Amanah Mutual Berhad, PNB Merdeka Venture Sdn Bhd and various subsidiaries of PEIB.
Ang Kim Swee, a Malaysian, male, aged 60, is an Independent Non-Executive Director. He was appointed to the Board on 17 December 2014. He is also the Chairman of the Board’s Nomination and Remuneration Committee and a member of the Board’s Audit Committee and Risk Management Committee.
Ang Kim Swee graduated with Diploma in Accounting and Costing LCCI Higher. He is a Registered Financial Planner and a Chartered Financial Consultant registered with The Malaysian Insurance Institute. He is also an Audit Committee Member of The Institute of Internal Auditors Malaysia. He has attended Premier Business Management Program organised by Harvard Club of Malaysia in 2015. He has more than 30 years of working experience in various capacities including senior management roles in the areas of finance, costing, information technology systems and administration. Presently, he is the General Manager (Finance) of Meditop Corporation (M) Sdn Bhd, a well established Japanese corporation with international track records in manufacturing and sales of disposable medical devices and healthcare products. He is a pioneer since 1990 and is primarily responsible for the management of financial affairs of the company.
Lim Peng Cheong, a Malaysian, male, aged 56, is a Non-Independent Non-Executive Director of the Company. He was appointed to the Board as an Executive Director on 9 September 1988, and has held this position until 10 November 2003 when he was re-designated as Non-Executive Director. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Business Studies from the City University, London, UK in June 1984. He is currently the Managing Director of Malacca Securities Sdn Bhd.
Lim Peng Jin, a Malaysian, male, aged 51, is currently the Managing Director of the Company. He was appointed to the Board on 20 January 1995 as the Group Executive Director and was re-designated as Managing Director on 6 November 2001. He is also a member of the Board’s Risk Management Committee.
Lim Peng Jin graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan in 1990. He began his career in the chemical industry in Japan before joining the Company in 1991. He had also completed a course in Programme Management Development at Harvard University, USA in 1998. He has local and international working experience in the field of polymer and chemicals during the early years of his career and is very hands-on in the business of Scientex Group of Companies involving packaging, property, polymer and chemicals industries for the past 20 years. The success of the Group owes much to his extensive involvement in its operations and management.
Tan Sri Dato’ Mohd Sheriff Bin Mohd Kassim, a Malaysian, male, aged 79, is a Non-Independent Non-Executive Director and Chairman of the Company. He was appointed to the Board as Independent Non-Executive Chairman on 20 June 2003 and was re-designated as Non-Independent Non-Executive Chairman on 22 March 2018. He is also a member of the Board’s Nomination and Remuneration Committee.
Tan Sri Dato’ Mohd Sheriff graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Economics degree from University of Malaya in 1963 and a Diploma in Economic Development from Oxford University, United Kingdom in 1969. He graduated with a Master of Arts in Economics from Vanderbilt University, USA in 1974.
He served as the Secretary General of Treasury, Ministry of Finance for 3 years from 1991 to 1994 and as Managing Director of Khazanah Nasional Berhad for 9 years from 1994 to 2003. He was a former Director of United Engineers (Malaysia) Berhad, RHB Bank Berhad and former Chairman of Renong Berhad, Projek Penyelenggaraan Lebuhraya Berhad, PLUS Expressways Berhad, Malaysian Institute of Economic Research, Manulife Holdings Berhad, Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia Berhad and Standard Chartered Saadiq Berhad. He was also a former President of the Malaysian Economic Association.
He also sits on the Board of PLUS Malaysia Berhad as Non-Executive Director and Chairman; and Yayasan UEM as Non-Executive Director. He is also a Non-Executive Chairman of Warisan Pinang Sdn Bhd, a property development company.
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On 13 January 2007, thousands of Scientologists and guests from the United Nations, the United States Embassy and European news organizations attended the momentous celebration of the grand opening of the Church of Scientology Berlin.
Dr. Jürgen Redhardt, Professor Emeritus of Giessen University: “Applying Scientology in today’s Germany can mean to understand oneself better. It is my conviction that Dianetics and Scientology are able to assist in catapulting people’s awareness into new realms of understanding.”
Dr. Hubertus Mynarek, Theologian and Sociologist: “The enormous variety of new initiatives, which we are experiencing, needs a spiritual-cultural place of strength and rest—which produces unity. May this house be a true temple of this spirit!”
Scientologists and other public crossed the threshold to be among the first to tour the new Church of Scientology Berlin.
The Public Information Center in the Berlin Church is open to anyone and provides visitors with answers to their most pressing questions about Dianetics, Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard.
Wall to wall displays furnish in-depth and comprehensible information on key principles and tenets of the Church.
The Berlin chapel is the setting for Sunday Services, Weddings and Naming Ceremonies.
This Church of Scientology, 4,000 square-meters and six stories high, is now open seven days a week, offering the entire gamut of individual and social betterment programs as a true reflection of the world scope of Scientology.
Church of Scientology Berlin
TOUR INSIDE
A BEACON OF FREEDOM IN GERMANY’S CAPITAL CITY
Scientologists and guests from 31 nations gathered on January 13, 2007, to unveil the new spectacular home of the Church of Scientology Berlin. A recognized architectural landmark in the city’s Charlottenburg District at the corner of Otto-Suhr-Allee and Cauer Street, the six-story glass and steel structure includes an extensive audiovisual public information center on Scientology beliefs and practices, its Founder L. Ron Hubbard and the Church’s secular community outreach programs combating drug abuse, illiteracy, criminality, immorality and human rights violations.
Over 5,000 Scientologists and guests, as well as local officials attended the event. Honored speakers included foremost religious scholars Professor Jurgen Redhardt of Giessen University and Dr. Hubertus Mynarek, former dean of theology at the University of Vienna, and renowned proponent of religious rights, Mr. Almog Burstin, a founding member of the European Foundation for Human Rights and Tolerance.
When the ribbon came down, all united in proclaiming a new day for freedom in this former seat of intolerance.
David Miscavige Berlin, Germany Germany Church of Scientology Berlin Ideal Church Opening
Hamburg Dedicates a New Ideal Church of Scientology for Germany
Freedom Reigns as The Church of Scientology Stuttgart Kicks Into Gear
Winds of Change:
Scientology Headquarters for Africa Springs to Life at Majestic Castle Kyalami
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Black Panther adds American Horror Story star. Cast becomes even more amazing
Marvel’s Black Panther movie has recruited another top name
Not satisfied with the impressive array of acting talent that it has already assembled, Marvel’s Black Panther movie can now proudly boast the addition of another top name: step forward Angela Bassett.
Here, she will be playing the role of Ramonda, the mother of T’Challa, the Black Panther (played by Chadwick Boseman). In the comics she is the former queen and wife of T’Chala’s father T’Chaka (and current queen mother). As the wife of one Black Panther and the mother of another, she is as formidable as you might expect, so expect her to have a prominent role in proceedings.
Having been excellent recently in American Horror Story (every season she has been involved in, come to think of it), as well as having memorable roles in the likes of Malcolm X, Boyz In The Hood and Strange Days, we can safely say that we’re delighted with the prospect of Bassett’s involvement. The casting couldn’t be anymore perfect, and we’re looking forward to seeing how she gets on.
Angela Bassett (seen here in American Horror Story) has joined the cast of Black Panther.
In the meantime, here’s the current synopsis for Black Panther, as told at Comic-Con:
The story is that the Black Panther’s leadership is really threatened by two foes who come together, and so Black Panther gets the help of the C.I.A. and the Dora Milaje to try and defeat the enemy.
Bassett joins a cast that already includes Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong’o, Michael B Jordan, Danai Gurira, Forest Whitaker, Winston Duke, Daniel Kaluuya, Florence Kasumba and Letitia Wright, with Andy Serkis and Martin Freeman reportedly set to reprise their roles as Ulysses Klaue and Everett K Ross respectively. Ryan Coogler is directing from a script he co-penned with Joe Robert Cole.
Black Panther will be released in cinemas on 9 February 2018. For all the latest movie news, pick up the new issue of SciFiNow.
Tags: Black Panther
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UPDATE: Cyclist struck by car in South Bethany has died
Police say Kelly Scruggs had no helmet or lights after dark.
UPDATE: The cyclist struck in South Bethany Beach July 4, 27-year-old Kelly Scruggs, of Annapolis, Maryland, succumbed to her injuries July 6 at Christiana Hospital.
The South Bethany Police Department, with assistance from the Delaware State Police Collision Reconstruction Unit, is investigating a crash involving a bicyclist on Coastal Highway.
Around 10:15 p.m. on Thursday, July 4, a 2005 Toyota Sienna, operated by a 50-year-old Red Lion, Pennsylvania man, was southbound on Coastal Highway, approaching Evergreen Road. A bicycle, operated by a 27-year-old Annapolis, Maryland woman was westbound across the median of Coastal Highway and, according to police, proceeded directly into the path of the Toyota. She was struck and knocked to the pavement.
The cyclist was initially transported to Beebe Medical Center before being transferred to Christiana Hospital, where she remains in critical condition. According to police, she was not wearing a helmet and had no functioning lights on the bicycle. Impairment is undetermined at this time.
The driver of the Toyota was uninjured. Impairment is not considered a factor in the collision.
The investigation is ongoing and anyone with information is asked to contact Sgt. A. Mendez of the Troop 7 Collision Reconstruction Unit by calling 302-703-3269. Information may also be provided by calling Delaware Crime Stoppers at 1-800-TIP-3333 or via the internet at http://www.delaware.crimestoppersweb.com.
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Kane Brown: Deluxe Edition
CD | Country | 06 Oct 2017
Under $10 Music
Kane Brown Kane Brown CD
When Kane Brown's self-titled first album released December 2 last year, it became and remains US country’s best-selling new artist debut of the past two and a half years. Kane Brown entered at #1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart and Top 10 on the Billboard 200. The 23-year-old singer/songwriter's impressive first week showing was 2016's #4 all-genre best new artist debut, preceded only by Zayn, Jordan Smith and Charlie Puth.
Title: Kane Brown: Deluxe Edition
Artist: Kane Brown
Catalogue No: 88985470372
Category: Country
1. Hometown
2. What Ifs (Featuring Lauren Alaina)
3. Learning
4. Thunder in the Rain
5. Pull It Off
6. Cold Spot
7. Ain't No Stopping Us Now
8. Comeback
9. Rockstars
10. Better Place
11. Granddaddy's Chair
12. Setting the Night On Fire (Duet with Chris Young)*
13. What's Mine Is Yours*
14. Found You*
15. Heaven*
* Previously unreleased tracks
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Find Cyber Security Talent
Archive for category: Industry News
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The 10 highest-paying cybersecurity jobs
Demand for cybersecurity roles jumped over 7% in the last year, leading to increasing salaries, according to Indeed. In the wake of a number of high-profile breaches that leaked the personal information of millions, demand for…
https://www.secure-recruitment.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/STEREOTYPES-ARE-EXACERBATING-THE-UK-CYBER-SECURITY-SKILLS-SHORTAGE.-31.png 750 940 Secure Recruitment /wp-content/uploads/2017/12/SecureRecruitment_LogoMasterNew2-1030x311.png Secure Recruitment2019-05-02 13:30:222019-05-02 13:30:26The 10 highest-paying cybersecurity jobs
Big Tech can't be trusted. It's time for regulation
Big Tech is under the spotlight, and for good reason. In the past couple of years, an onslaught of incidents have shook public confidence in major technology firms. Facebook apologized for allowing Cambridge Analytica to harvest…
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Stereotypes are exacerbating the UK cyber security skills shortage.
Negative stereotypes about computer hackers are contributing to a skills shortage in the cyber security sector, according to industry experts. High-profile cyber specialists today warned the industry’s hackneyed reputation as a breeding ground…
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54% of companies plan to increase cyber security spending in 2019.
More than half (54%) of companies plan on increasing IT security spending in 2019, according to a report released on Wednesday, and 30% of companies aim to increase spending by 10-20%. Despite the flood of new funding, the report highlights…
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Which countries are performing best in relation to cyber security?
Ireland is in the top 10 in the world when it comes to cyber security, a report by a tech consumer website has found. The survey by British firm Comparitech examined a number of factors in 60 countries relating to keeping data secure, such…
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More businesses must reconsider cyber security as a business priority.
A PwC study last year revealed that about 62% of global CEO's worry cyber threats will affect their company’s growth prospects. As a result, it is not surprising that potential cyber security risks will pressure CIO's at companies to increase…
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Less than 30% of businesses are currently utilising encryption.
Despite a wealth of recent high profile data breaches, fewer than 30 percent of enterprises encrypt data across their on-premises data environments, within their cloud providers or on their mobile devices. That’s according to French aerospace…
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UK businesses more concerned about cyber attacks than a year ago.
Businesses in the UK are more concerned about cyber attacks now than they were a year ago, according to the latest Close Brothers Business Barometer research. Two thirds of SMEs (67 per cent) said they were more worried about cyber security threats…
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UK set to become a world leader in cyber security.
The UK is set to become a world leader in the race to eradicate some of the most damaging cyber security threats facing businesses and better protect consumers. Businesses and consumers will benefit from increased security and protections built…
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UK businesses are still failing to see the strategic value of cyber security.
UK businesses are failing to get value out of cyber security because they fail to see its strategic importance and often have a negative attitude towards security professionals, a study has revealed. The majority of UK IT security professionals…
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This is how Uber IPO will make directors uber-rich
The year's biggest initial public offering is making three of its directors uber-rich.
Uber Technologies co-founders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp as well as early employee Ryan Graves will own 10-figure stakes in the San Francisco-based ride-hailing company if it secures its expected valuation of roughly $100 billion, according to Bloomberg's analysis of a regulatory filing Thursday.
The firm is said to be seeking to raise about $10 billion, making the IPO one of the biggest in the history of Silicon Valley.
Kalanick, 42, and Camp, 40, already rank among the world's 500 richest people and previously sold some of their stakes, with the ex-CEO unloading about $1.4 billion of stock early last year to a group of new investors led by SoftBank Group.
A valuation of $100 billion would boost their fortunes even more, giving Kalanick a stake worth about $7 billion, Camp $6 billion and Graves $2.4 billion, according to Bloomberg's calculations.
That still pales into comparison to the largest shareholder, SoftBank, which spearheaded the largest-ever equity transaction in a VC-backed startup with a roughly $9 billion deal with Uber and its investors. SoftBank's stake would be worth $16 billion at the $100 billion valuation.
Uber will kick off a road show to market shares to potential investors this month and begin trading publicly in May, according to people familiar with the matter.
The offering is expected to be among the 10 largest of all time.
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Scantily clad woman shuts down South Carolina airport
FLORENCE (AP) — Authorities in South Carolina say a scantily clad woman shut down a regional airport for hours, resulting in flight cancellations.
Maj. Mike Nunn with the Florence County Sheriff's Office says the woman was spotted on the grounds of the Florence Regional Airport on Sunday. Nunn says she ran through the tarmac and into a nearby wooded area. Dogs with the sheriff's canine unit found her in a storm ditch.
Airport public safety officer Lee Marsh says she was only wearing underwear. He says the airport was closed for more than 2 hours during the search. An American Airlines flight from Charlotte was sent back and canceled, along with a flight headed to Charlotte.
Nunn says the woman was taken to a hospital for evaluation, and isn't expected to be charged.
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It's better than "Shinny Pants"!
Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict
Sonic Co.
Strategy RPG, overhead tactical battles
Shining Force Gaiden Final Conflict
Although Final Conflict was released after Shining Force II, it's actually set between Shining Force and Shining Force II. There are a number of cross-overs in the characters (which I won't spoil for you here!) and the plot is fantastic. I guess most of you will be somewhat disappointed to hear that it's only available in Japanese.
Rather like the first two Gaiden games, Final Conflict also lacks towns to roam around. The graphics, however, are significantly better than the previous Game Gear Shinings, and the music is a trimmed down version of that from Shining Force II.
Attempts have been made to translate the ROM (even I started work on it), but an odd form of compression has been used in the game, and so it's nigh-on impossible to translate anything more than the items/spells/characters names. I have, however, managed to translate the game's script, and it is available here at SFC, click here to view it.
The game itself is very hard to find - especially in good condition, so the chances are you'll have to play it as a ROM. A copy sometimes crops up on Ebay in the region of US$100, or you could try asking a friend in Japan to track one down for you, probably for significantly less.
Shining Force CD Price: US$31.99
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Iron Maiden return with brilliant computer game video
Everyone needs a bit of Maiden in their life - and they're back with an absolutely banging new song.
Speed of Light is the first track to be released from the forthcoming double album The Book Of Souls and it's the best track they've done in years.
It's particularly excellent as it's the first song to emerge since frontman, pilot and all-round legend Bruce Dickenson announced his recovery from cancer earlier this year.
And if that wasn't enough, the video is a fantastic 8-bit/16-bit computer game-style romp, featuring their mascot Eddie, and includes a section where he fights the devil. Of course.
Get watching below.
The Book of Souls is released 4 September
Related: Discover 40 Pieces of Wisdom From Iron Maiden Lyrics
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While some can make the claim that Ole Miss Football runs in their very DNA, for Matt Luke (Mississippi) that statement seems as close to being literally true as possible. His father, Tommy Luke, played defensive back at Ole Miss in the 1960s and his brother, Tom Luke, played quarterback there from 1989 to 1991. Although he was small for an offensive lineman, he and his brother had spent their summers working for their father in the construction business. Those sweltering summers in Gulfport, Mississippi helped give Luke two things: an appreciate for hard work and the physical stature to compete at the collegiate level. “We got our passion and emotions from our mom and we got our work ethic from our dad,” Luke describes. His parents also instilled in him an idea that service was important. “Our mom was always involved. I think she was always the President of the boosters in High School. Our mom and dad always reminded us to work hard for what you believe in and are passionate about.”
Despite being a standout athlete, if Luke wanted to follow in his family’s footsteps at Vaught- Hemingway Stadium it would be in a much different state than his predecessors.
In the fall of 1995, The University of Mississippi’s football program was coming into the season marred by NCAA sanctions following a significant investigation into athletes receiving impermissible benefits. Those sanctions limited the number of scholarships available to incoming players. Regardless, Matt Luke joined the team as a walk-on Center. At the helm of the program was Head Coach Tommy Tuberville. Tuberville had no prior head coaching experience but was considered one of the nation’s best recruiters and assistant coaches.
Those first two seasons weren’t disastrous by any means, but they weren’t spectacular either. The rea l turning point came in 1997 when the Ole Miss Rebels finished the season at 8-4, including an upset win over #8 LSU and then a capstone Egg Bowl win over #22 Mississippi State. That final Egg Bowl win meant the Rebels were bowl eligible, and with NCAA restrictions on post-season play lifted they would be contending against Marshall University in the 1997 Motor City Bowl. “It was a good experience with a bunch of guys that had gone through some tough times but stuck together,” Luke recalls of that season. “To go on and play against Randy Moss and Chad Pennington in that Motor City Bowl and to be a part of a group of men who kept fighting and scratching to put the program on its feet … that was something very special.” That bowl game saw the Ole Miss Rebels defeat Marshall 34-31, the programs first bowl appearance since 1992, and finish the season in the national rankings at #22.
Amidst his on-field accomplishments he also found a home at Epsilon Xi (Mississippi) Chapter. “I had several close friends and an Uncle that were Sigma Nus. It was a great outlet for me. It was a way for me to get away from football for a little while and spend time with some guys I’m very close with.” His time as a collegian helped him develop some skills he would find use in down the road in his coaching career. “Learning how to deal with people was one of things I took away. The experience of dealing with different personalities and in different environments. As a coach you find that you’re doing much of the same thing.”
In the span of a few years Matt Luke had given blood, sweat, and tears to the Ole Miss Rebels through a commitment and belief in not just what they were, but what they could and should be.
Luke’s eligibility expired in 1999 but he stayed at Ole Miss, joining the coaching staff as a graduate assistant until 2000 when he took a job at Murray State University. From there his coaching resume reads like a “Who’s Who” of college football coaches. He came back to Ole Miss to serve under head coach David Cutliffe who was coaching another Ole Miss and Sigma Nu family legacy, Eli Manning (Mississippi). When Cutliffe was fired from Ole Miss, Luke stayed on for a few years as a part of Ed Orgeron’s staff. He eventually followed Cutliffe to Tennessee and worked alongside head coach Phillip Fulmer. He was then brought to Duke University with Cutliffe and took on co-offensive coordinator responsibilities while also coaching the offensive line. He wouldn’t return to Ole Miss until 2011 when he was hired by then head coach Hugh Freeze.
“I’ve done every job in the building after being an assistant coach for 17 years and I think that’s helped make me a better leader,” Luke likes to say of his long coaching track record. He also credits his success with something Sigma Nu has encouraged through the past two years: Mentorship. “Mentorship is critically important. When I stand in front of the team and talk I hear a lot of David Cutliffe coming out,” Luke shares. “Part of who you are is who you’re around. Being around Coach Cutliffe and Coach Fulmer made me who I am. You add those experiences up and combine them with your own personal experiences. The more you surround yourself with the right people, the better the odds that you’ll be successful.”
Along his journey, Matt Luke picked up several sound pieces of advice for chapter leaders.
First and foremost is to always stay true to yourself. “Too many times these days people act like they think they’re supposed to act,” Luke shares. “In the long run, people are going to respect you when you’re true to yourself.”
Second, know who you are and what your values are. “Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. You have to play to your strengths and hire to your weaknesses.” Additionally, sometimes being a leader means choosing the hard right over the easy wrong. “You’ve got to tell the truth even sometimes when it hurts. You can’t mollycoddle problems. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is make tough decisions with your peers. But, the strongest leaders are those who are willing to step out and confront the tough decisions and call someone out when it’s needed.”
Lastly, what about the chapter officer who takes over a position that hasn’t been done right or a chapter that is heading down the wrong path? “My advice to them is good. Through every tough situation, something good comes from it. Don’t view it as a problem, view it as an opportunity.”
“This group right here … we’ve been through a lot … ,” University of Mississippi Athletic Director Ross Bjork says as he stands in front of the 2017 Ole Miss Rebels football team. He’s not stretching the truth either. In a story that will sound eerily familiar to readers, the 2017 Ole Miss Rebels had just finished their season with a 6-6 record. In February of 2017 the team had announced a self-imposed bowl ban with a final report of NCAA sanctions forthcoming. Previous Head Coach Hugh Freeze had also abruptly resigned in July of 2017 amid allegations of a failure to monitor and promote an atmosphere of compliance.
Bjork paces in front of the group and outlines his commitment to find the team a new head coach to replace the current interim head coach, Matt Luke. Bjork talks about the desire to find someone who can bring a level of excellence back to a program that deserves it. “I know you love Coach Luke and you know what? So do I. He did a hell of a job. He got you guys to believe when maybe others didn’t believe in you. That’s coaching.”
The players wait in anticipation.
Bjork closes by asking the team to welcome to the new Head Coach of the Ole Miss Rebels, his arm sweeping out and pointing to a set of double doors cracked ever so slightly.
And the man who walks through those doors is Head Coach Matt Luke. The room erupts in applause and cheers. Several players leave their seats to embrace their coach, their emotions getting the best of them as evidenced by a few glassy eyes in the room. Several players boom out “Luuuuuke” in the same way a Springsteen fan would draw out a “Bruuuuuce.”
At the podium Coach Luke addresses his team, his own emotions gripping his voice. It’s been a long time coming. “It’s because of y’all I’m standing here,” Luke says. “Ya’ll know this is a dream of mine. Mississippi is not a stepping stone. I’ll be here until they run me out of here.”
With anyone else, it would sound like standard coach-talk. But with Luke, you know he’s following his own advice and being true to himself.
“I’ve been a part of a lot of good football teams but you know what? This past year has been one of my most rewarding years even though it wasn’t my best record,” Coach Luke shares on reflecting on the past season and the tumultuous set of events that launched him into a position as head of one of the Southeastern Conference’s most storied programs.
After 22 years he’s at Ole Miss to do what he originally came to do as a walk-on in 1995. Not because of the title, paycheck, facilities, or prestige. But because of something much more simple and fundamental. It’s in his DNA.
Ole Miss,
Mississippi,
The Delta Fall 2017,
Matt Luke
Current & Past Issues >
2018 College of Chapters
Don't Call it a Comeback!
Family Man. Family Advocate.
Aloha for People
Why We Serve
History of The Delta
Sigma Nu on Social Media
Updates from Lexington
SNEF Scholarships Recipients
Sigma Nu Launches New Mental Health Education Program
Chapter & Alumni News
Riding with the Cajun Navy
Iota Pi Brother Graduates Top of Class at USMC Officer Candidate School
The History of 3819 Walnut
Lost History
Perspectives on Our Past
Brothers and Shipmates Forever
The War Memorial & Remembrance Album
Steps in the Right Direction
Hodgkin Lymphoma Survivor Steve Sears (Kansas)
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Woman Suing Trump on Rape Charges a No-Show at Press Conference
The plaintiff, who has only gone by "Jane Doe" in court documents, did not appear at a scheduled press conference due to purported threats.
Bethania Palma
Published 2 November 2016
A California woman who has accused Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of raping her when she was just thirteen years old was set to break her silence in Los Angeles today, but was a no-show in a hastily scheduled press conference.
The woman, who has only gone by “Jane Doe” in court documents,was set to appear at the office of Los Angeles-area attorney Lisa Bloom, who said that the accuser was set to speak but backed out at the last minute because of threats to her safety:
I apologize. Jane Doe was here. She was prepared to go forward. She received terrible threats, as have all the Trump accusers I have been representing for several months. She is in great fear and she was unable to do this.
According to the complaint, re-filed on 30 September 2016, the assaults took place over the course of several parties thrown by billionaire Jeffrey Epstein during the summer of 1994:
Plaintiff was enticed by promises of money and a modeling career to attend a series of parties, with other similarly situated minor females, held at a New York City residence that was being used by Defendant Jeffrey Epstein. At least four of the parties were attended by Defendant Trump. Exhs. A and B. On information and belief, by this time in 1994, DefendantTrump had known Defendant Epstein for seven years (New York, 10/28/02, “’I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,’ Trump booms from a speakerphone.’ He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.'”), and knew that Plaintiff was then just 13 years old.
Both Trump and Epstein are named as defendants in the lawsuit. According to the court documents, Doe she never spoke out because she was threatened by both men:
Both Defendants let Plaintiff know that each was a very wealthy, powerful man and indicated that they had the power, ability and means to carry out their threats. Indeed, Defendant Trump stated that Plaintiff shouldn’t ever say anything if she didn’t want to disappear like Maria, a 12-year-old female that was forced to be involved in the third incident with Defendant Trump and that Plaintiff had not seen since that third incident, and that he was capable of having her whole family killed.
Epstein has been repeatedly accused of soliciting sex from underaged girls, and was convicted once, in 2008. According to court documents, Trump not only raped the plaintiff but struck her and threatened her:
On the fourth and final sexual encounter with Defendant Trump, Defendant Trump tied Plaintiff to a bed, exposed himself to Plaintiff, and then proceeded to forcibly rape Plaintiff. During the course of this savage sexual attack, Plaintiff loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop but with no effect. Defendant Trump responded to Plaintiff’s pleas by violently striking Plaintiff in the face with his open hand and screaming that he would do whatever he wanted…
Defendant Epstein forced himself upon Plaintiff and proceeded to rape her anally and vaginally despite her loud pleas to stop. Defendant Epstein then attempted to strike Plaintiff about the head with his closed fists while he angrily screamed at Plaintiff that he, Defendant Epstein, rather than Defendant Trump, should have been the one who took Plaintiff’s virginity, before Plaintiff finally managed to break away from Defendant Epstein.
The accuser has never publicly come forward.
Bloom did not respond to repeated requests for comments or clarification after the press conference.
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Soccer made in Germany and the reality
by Ahmet Guvener , Jul 11, 2017
Could the recent FIFA Confederations Cup championship coupled with UEFA U-21 championship be a coincidence for German MNTs? I personally believe in luck and coincidences in soccer results, but they are usually limited to a game or two.
How come the German MNT won the 2014 World Cup so convincingly and three years later won both the Confederations Cup and the UEFA U-21 championships, while also playing the semifinal in Euro 2016? Well, the story starts in 2002 with the DFB (German soccer federation) starting to implement its Talent Development Program. It was initiated due to the pathetic results by the German MNT in 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000. The "master plan” -- as the Germans like to call it -- is still dynamic and active today.
In the modern day and age, you have to rely on planning for a sustainable success. Not only you have to rely on planned development, you also have to modify your plans using the current trends and technology to keep up with the modern game. So the planning process has to be a dynamic one.
For example, Greece won the Euro 2004 as a result of the new development program it started in the 1990s. The Greeks did not maintain and update the program and now the Greek soccer is at second tier in Europe. That definitely was not a sustainable success story.
If you look at the results of the last 15 years of German MNTs (2002-2017), you will realize a couple of things.
German National Teams (2002-17):
WC (32)
EC (24)
EU21 (8)
WU20 (24)
2 DQ DQ
GS DQ DQ (16) DQ
GS (16) GS GS DQ
3 QF SF DQ (16) DQ
3 GS DQ 4
DQ DQ SF 3 5
2 (16) 1 DQ
DQ 1 QF DQ
3 DQ
DQ DQ DQ
SF (16) DQ
DQ GS DQ
1 1 GS
SF QF DQ
SF 5 SF
1 1 R16 SF
DQ: Did not qualify.
GS: Group stage.
QF: Quarterfinals.
SF: Semifinals.
R16:Round of 16.
Note: In parentheses is the number of teams in the tournament.
Successful periods in the early years -- like third place at the 2006 World Cup Germany hosted -- cannot be attributed to the “master plan." It must be cyclical and circumstantial. The last three years, though, is definitely attributable to the “master plan."
For many years, the German U-17 and U-19 MNTs did not even qualify for the annual European Championships. That is, they were not one of the best eight teams in Europe in their age categories during those years. How come the products of these years later on became members of the most successful MNT on the planet? The answer is simple: Like the goal of developmental academies of professional clubs, the youth national teams’ goal is not to win the European or world championship but rather develop talented players for the "A" team. Even at the highest level, development comes before winning.
The lesson to be learned from this table is very simple but also very painful. Patience is a major factor in developing a world-quality team, whether it is a professional team or a national team.
Well, you might wonder what this “master plan” is. It is only a click away from you. If you are a youth development enthusiast or a coach, you can download the file and look at the details. But the bottom line is that the “master plan” is a program implemented and mandated by DFB.
-- Every professional team (Bundesliga 1 and 2) must have youth development centers from U-13 to U-19. There are some standards for these centers. If the club doesn’t’ meet these standards, it either gets relegated or is not allowed to participate in the professional leagues
-- DFB initiated the Local Player Rule, which stated that in your pro-team a minimum of eight players need to have been educated locally. That must be a minimum of four by the club and the rest can be from any club within the DFB.
-- The DFB has 45 centers of excellence and 350 regional centers with 200 full-time and 1000 part time coaches for youth players
-- They work closely with regional associations.
Definitely, it is an expensive program. Since the launch of the performance center system, clubs and the DFB invested more than 700 million euros ($800 million). In the 2013-14 season alone, the 18 clubs of the Bundesliga 1 invested 90 million euros in their youth, whereas the Bundesliga 2 still invested 30 million euros.
DFB needed to convince the professional clubs to implement it. Like the EPL, the Bundesliga is not run by the DFB. At the end of the day, DFB is the boss of soccer in Germany and they used their status to convince the professional clubs for the implementation of the master plan.
For professional clubs, especially for those with owners, the success of the MNT is of minimal interest to them. As long as their team wins, they do not care much for the MNT. Hence, it is more difficult for the English and Italian FAs to convince clubs for radical changes in youth development. This is a fact that hurts both England and Italy. In both countries, most of the clubs if not all, have owners. In Germany, the owner cannot have the majority share of the club. In Spain, most clubs are non-profit associations. Needless to say the German and Spanish MNTs do better than English and Italian MNTs since the German and Spanish FAs can be more convincing over the clubs.
What can we learn from the German “master plan”? We tried to learn from it by appointing Jurgen Klinsmann as both the technical director of U.S. Soccer and the head coach of the USMNT. Well the first position requires and tolerates patience but the second doesn’t. Klinsmann should have seen this fact, but instead asked for both and lost both after a few bad results.
There are a number of similarities in the German and the USA soccer landscapes. They are both big and wealthy countries with millions of registered players. Both have no infrastructure problem. Demography of both nations is very diverse. For example, when Germany won the U-21 European Championship in 2009 against England, it had a very cosmopolitan background: Russian (Andreas Beck), Polish (Sebastian Boenisch), Ghanaian (Jerome Boateng), Nigerian (Dennis Aogo, Chinedu Ede), American (Fabian Johnson), Spanish (Gonzalo Castro), Tunisian (Sami Khedira, Anis Ben-Hatira), Iranian (Ashkan Dejagah) and Turkish (Mesut Ozil). One can say the same for the USMNT. Diversity is a fortune for soccer.
But the similarities end there. Soccer is the number of sport in Germany; at best it is the fourth sport for USA. Hence, there is no real soccer culture in our country yet. Although U.S. Soccer is the governing body of soccer in the USA, it is not the unique, ubiquitous and powerful boss of soccer like elsewhere. It does not enforce any youth development standards to professional leagues. It looks like it does not have real enforcement power over the state associations. There is more than one youth soccer league structure in the country. The list goes on… I know and understand that there are historical, legal and political reasons for this lack of exertion of authority.
U.S. Soccer introduced the Development Academies (DAs) to the soccer landscape, which was a correct move. They even hired Double Pass to “audit” the DAs, the same company that audits German Bundesliga’s academies. The difference is that their audit in Germany counts with carrots and sticks, but here it is just a recommendation to the DAs.
Just ask yourself of the four points of the DFB’s master plan I have summarized above, how many of those can be implemented by U.S. Soccer? Be sincere.
As I said earlier, I know and understand the historical, legal and political challenges for U.S. Soccer. On the other hand, U.S. Soccer should realize the immense powers of FIFA has bestowed on them as a member federation.
Every country needs its own master plan. As USYSA, says think globally and act locally. Do not copy the German “master plan.” Use it as a guide along with other master plans. Once you have your master plan developed, you only need two things: Exertion of authority and patience. There is no good reason why the USMNT cannot be a world soccer power like Germany in 10-15 years. It takes time and perseverance. Anything earlier is just a dream.
Ahmet Guvener (ahmet@ahmetguvener.com) is the former Secretary General and the Technical Director of the Turkish FA. He was also the Head of Refereeing for the Turkish FA. He served as Panel member for the FIFA Panel of Referee Instructors and UEFA Referee Convention. He now lives and works as a soccer consultant in Austin, Texas.
confederations cup, germany, u.s. soccer, world cup 2014
26 comments about "Soccer made in Germany and the reality".
Ben Myers, July 11, 2017 at 7:46 p.m.
US Soccer still needs a well-documented and organized Talent Development Program, followed by all coaches starting at the lowest level. Right now, the US has a crazy quilt of club soccer, high school soccer, college soccer, lower tier semi-professional and professional leagues with MLS allegedly at the top of the heap. There are tons of unlicensed and under-licensed coaches in the wild. This is not an organized approach to the development of elite players. It is chaos, and strictly random if a player becomes good enough to be considered for USMNT duty. Shame, Sunil! Shame, Garber!
Kris Spyrka replied, July 11, 2017 at 10:16 p.m.
Ben Myers, you are on point. The Leistungszentren (performance centers) are the key to producing players. But, coaching/managing/training, this is a cultural difference between Germany and the rest of the world. Football is your job, you are not a part timer! You go to school for it, you earn a degree for it Fussballlehrer. There is a structure here like every profession in Germany. The butcher, the baker, the auto mechanic, everyone is educated in a system and has to pass a Meister exam before they are released on the public. You can't just wing it like here in the USA. It's the wild west here, always has been, always will be. If you have the foundation, at least you can adjust if things go wrong, here we just jump to the next new gimmick, we have no patience for LT development. and that's everyone in the US Soccer food chain.
Ironically, Klinsmann (the guy we hired, did not have this education)I just finished an article (retrospective) on Klinsmann that Der Spiegel released today. He lent some important accents to their program that made them successful, but the Germans view him with mixed emotions, there were the successes but also the failures.
Fire Paul Gardner Now replied, July 12, 2017 at 9:37 a.m.
Come down Ben. A country like Germany, where football is far and away the #1 sport just implemented this system within the past 15 years or so. The US was basically starting from scratch in the 1990s. It takes time to build a development infrastructure. But I guess it's easier to blame the people in charge. By the way, according the article the 1. and 2. Bundesliga teams speng 120 million Euros (about $150m) just in 2013-14 on development. Where is that type of money coming from in the US?
uffe gustafsson, July 11, 2017 at 8:59 p.m.
This a huge country how could they possibly see all the talent? Yes MLS have finally started academy teams, but how about the vast geographic in between the proffectinal team cities.
I think you asking for a impossible task.
We live in Bay Area and as good of a soccer community we are don't think the US soccer have the ability to see all the players unless u are in one of the clubs that gets their attention.
So lots of players never get seen.
And the clubs that do have their attention only a few can be part of that club, traveling to one of those clubs are impossible for most families.
And how about the clubs in the areas that don't get have MLS academies or just to remote.
They have great players but it's just to diffecult to get seen by anyone that have input on any national team whatever age group you looking at.
And not to talk about the money it cost to play club soccer.
I think you all not realizing what kind of task this is. Do our club have relationship with any national trainers, doubt it as in most clubs in this country
So in the end it's players that can get those relationships thru their national recognize clubs or if you lucky to get into like a ODP or similar events.
It's not impossible, it just takes time. We are far ahead of where we were 20 years ago but still have a long way to go. We are still building the infrastructure.
Ben Myers, July 12, 2017 at 10:01 a.m.
@ "Fire Paul Gardner Now" The lack of a cohesive soccer infrastructure in the US is the same today as it was after the 1994 World Cup. So here we are, 23 years later, with essentially small incremental changes and some improvements in player development. The current members and candidates for the USMNT try hard and give their best, but they are products of a deeply flawed system, and a system to which the pooh-bahs of US Soccer pay scant attention. Competent leadership comes from the top. So does incompetent leadership. The US is currently incapable of producing world-class players deserving of consideration for a hypothetical place on the national team of any of the top eight FIFA-ranked national squads. USMNT candidates who have played extensively in western Europe are, on the average, more advanced technically and tactically then their counterparts who play in MLS, the home of brutally ugly and chaotic soccer.
Fire Paul Gardner Now replied, July 12, 2017 at 12:40 p.m.
Really? In 1994 we had MLS and DA? MLS is 21 years old and improving. Give it some time, these things don't happen overnight.
R2 Dad replied, July 15, 2017 at 9:15 p.m.
FPGN, Kris and Ben are correct. Waiting for things to improve is a wish rather than an expectation. There is an appearance of a foundation because the DA exists, but it's a house of cards waiting for the next "big thing" to come along to further confuse/mix/disrupt the status quo. See ECNL vs DA as an example. There is a perception that if just have the right market-based approach all things are possible. But MLS has thrown sand in the gears and US Soccer doesn't seem to have an independent opinion. How many more generations of players are YOU willing to bypass before we get the structure our country deserves? If you want to know when we're making progress, wait until the heads of US Soccer/MLS start talking about soccer IQ as the most important topic INSTEAD of facilities, grit & resolve, and cardio. Until that day, forget about "progress".
Kent James, July 12, 2017 at 10:21 a.m.
Another insightful article by AG on development. The German system has clearly become dominant, though it seems to me that the Germans are building on their historic tendencies (exceptionally good technically and tactically, athletic with good team defense), which may leave less room for creativity (the system doesn't seem to produce the creative stars like Messi and Ronaldo, which may be impossible for any system to create). I think the US has made a lot of progress, though we do have a ways to go. But I think aspect of the German system we need to import is the system of teaching centers, where licensed coaches help spread best practices broadly (and they should also be able to identify talent that come to these centers).
Kent James, exactly right. It's not the material, it's the methodology and practice of how to apply that material in training sessions; systematically, age appropriate, and periodized, from Babini to International Pro level.
I've had knowledge exchanges with some Bundesliga and English FA coaches and trainers and recently asked one of them for some advice on a GK session. What came back was material authored here in the USA (I had seen it before), and available to everyone on the internet, if you know where to look. My point is, the world is flat, and we all share the same public information, so how do we disseminate and train the content correctly?
The progression of a serious German soccer coach looks something like this: Player (optional), Sporthochschule (there's a famous one in Cologne), club apprenticeship with ongoing education from DFB (federation) and UEFA (UEFA Pro License being highest level), and then work a top level club or Bundesleistungszentrum (performance center) at one of the top tier clubs spread out geographically. Our facsimile of the performance center is the DA now, some DA's forming around MLS clubs, like here with the SJ Earthquakes. But, I can tell you having audited both the MLS version and some of the local DA training sessions for both boys and girls, this is where the gap is the widest when comparing to Germany.
Nick Daverese, July 12, 2017 at 10:38 a.m.
When the kids are not in school in Germany there playing football. In ever playground there is a caged in small football area. I heard there digging up the graves of people buried in cemeteries in Berlin. Because now people are being cremated left and right. In their place they are constructing more soccer fields. Funny I know someone when he dies in his well he will be buried just outside his soccer field under a shade tree. So he will not have to miss any games just because he is dead.
Kris Spyrka, July 12, 2017 at 11:32 a.m.
"Fire Paul Gardner Now" we've been sorting things out since much longer, from where I start keeping track is 1972, when I started playing. And as far as the USMNT, it doesn't seem to matter what pro league is established (MLS, NASL, USL, PDL, NPSL and whatever else was around) or what infrastructure happens to be in vogue, the USMNT seems to always be on it's own satellitic trajectory, floating around out there in space, on a four year cycle that leaves us wanting after ever WC so it seems.
Next threat China: The German Federation DFB and China have agreed to a deal that four Chinese teams play in the Regional Liga this next season. I believe they will each get four fixtures on the Germans season calendar. Four German clubs opposed the deal including Waldhof Mannheim (my old club), but in the opinion of the opposing clubs, the DFB Mafia rammed this down their throats (there must have been money involved). This is happening folks. Maybe why Merkel and Xi Jinping were sitting next to each other all G20 long.
FWIW: Totally agree with Ben Myers last statement.
We didn't qualify for a world cup from 1950-1990. Now getting out of the group stage in the minimum expectation (which we have done in three of the last four world cups). And that's not improvement? LOL. Give me a break. I get the frustration that we are not a footballing superpower yet but to act like we are in the same spot we were back in the dark ages is willfully ignoring reality.
Kris Spyrka, July 12, 2017 at 1:01 p.m.
No, we were better in the dark ages (3rd, 1930 WC), won our first international against Sweden 1916. Definition of insanity, doing the same thing every four years and expecting different results. Even the superpower's retool when needed.
don Lamb replied, July 12, 2017 at 1:09 p.m.
Bringing up results from 85-100 years ago as if they were somehow relevant now would probably be a better definition of insanity. Above, you said that it doesn't matter which American pro league we are talking about, but the fact is only MLS has really prioritized youth development. The growth of a second and third division will be huge parts of the infrastructure that will work in concert with MLS' efforts at the top. Finally, worrying about China because they are playing a handful of way lower division games in Germany has to be at least close to the pinnacle of American soccer paranoia/inferiority complex.
Fire Paul Gardner Now replied, July 12, 2017 at 3:34 p.m.
Seriously? 1930? If that's the best you can do that should make you reexamine the validity of your arguments.
beautiful game, July 12, 2017 at 1:12 p.m.
IMHO, U.S. development lacks the proper criteria to evaluate a player and than a process to hone that talent. I.E.,there are too many foreign players in MLS that don't belong and the clubs keep playing them even if they bring little to the table; instead of playing inexperienced Americans who have potential.
Don Lamb. Just bringing up the history, since we are a results driven society. Yes please, bring on the growth of second and third division leagues. I played for a top US Amateur Club, and had there been a viable progression path in this country back then many of us would not have ventured abroad.
As far as China, not paranoid, just pointing out that they are making strides, throwing resources at the problem, and fast tracking with nations that have best practices in place. So they are starting at the top. But is it a paranoia/inferiority complex when you lose in major tournaments in the U's (women's) to countries like N. Korea, or your U23 don't qualify for an Olympic Games?
I w Nowozeniuk, agreed, too many foreign players come here to retire, home grown younger players do need the touches. On another subject, how about the youth going to develop over the pond? We've got Bayern, Real Madrid, Tottenham, Liverpool, Arsenal, and, and, and, all camped out here on the West Coast from Seattle to San Diego affiliating with youth club soccer to grab prospects. How does MLS evolve, if talent goes the other direction?
MLS has its share of youth prospects. It's a great thing that American prospects have opportunities domestically and abroad. Some will do better by staying closer to home, while others will do better by moving abroad. Still, most of these prospects will not pan out. The women's side certainly has its issues with player development. The men's side does too, but it is evolving and growing rapidly. There will be plenty of bumps in the road with things like the two Olympic failures, but the overall progress is there and will pay off over the next 5-10 years. If it keeps going at the current pace, there could be a much bigger payoff just a little bit further down the line.
Agree Don, it's never been 'this' good domestically. We just need to keep improving, one club at a time.
See - now that makes sense.
Amen, Kris. There are four or five that are doing a really good job, and a bunch that have a lot of catching up to do. BTW - I was at Waldhof Mannheim a few months ago -- great little club. Very cool that you played there. cheers
Bob Ashpole, July 13, 2017 at 1:32 a.m.
I am sorry, but I believe that as long as the focus is on developing elite clubs and teams rather than developing elite players the US will reach the top of the men's game. We also won't stay at the top of the women's game that way. I agree that we should look at what works for other countries, but time and time again I see people taking away the look of another person's good ideas but not the substance of the ideas. For example the USSF started technical centers but staffed them with club coaches unlike Germany who uses full time FA coaches to train and evaluate the top teen players at the technical centers. No dual allegiances (club and country), so no conflicts of interest. The group of coaches share what works and doesn't work and adapts best practices. So the peer group of professional coaches are developing the process, not a manager at headquarters who is not actually training and evaluating players.
Bob Ashpole replied, July 13, 2017 at 1:34 a.m.
"... the US won't reach..." rather than "will" My apologies for any confusion.
ROBERT BOND, July 13, 2017 at 10:19 a.m.
Mannschaft zuerst, nicht jeder Spieler fuer selbst.....
Bob Ashpole replied, July 13, 2017 at 11:28 a.m.
Developmental coaching has a different focus, even in Germany.
Read more comments >
Ahmet Guvener is the former Secretary General and Technical Director of Turkish FA. He was also the Head of Refereeing for the Turkish FA. He served as Panel member for the FIFA Panel of Referee Instructors and UEFA Referee Convention. He now lives in Austin, Texas.
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Dr. Baker, SCPS Superintendent, 2019 Regional Superintendent of the Year
Dr. Scott Baker, Superintendent of Spotsylvania County Public Schools, has been named Region III Superintendent of the Year by his colleagues who are the chief education leaders of the 17 school divisions located in north-central and the northern neck of Virginia. Dr. Baker was selected for his inspirational service and leadership on behalf of Region III and the many accomplishments of the Spotsylvania County Public School division.
“This recognition by other division superintendents validates what we have known all along…Dr. Baker is an exceptional leader,” shared Spotsylvania County School Board Chair Baron Braswell. “We are honored that he is our superintendent. Our County benefits considerably from his exceptional leadership.” continued Braswell.
Dr. Baker has served as Spotsylvania County Public Schools superintendent for the past seven years. Under his visionary leadership, a division strategic plan was adopted in 2013 and has been the driving force behind the school system’s numerous continuous improvement processes and achievements.
“I sincerely appreciate and am humbled by this recognition; especially given the tremendous respect I have for my colleagues in Region III and throughout the Commonwealth. Any positive recognition I receive, though, should be attributed to the entire school division. To reach and sustain higher levels of success involves the outstanding and dedicated SCPS team of school board members, staff, students, parents and community partners. I am proud to serve the great Spotsylvania school community,” said Dr. Baker.
Dr. Baker is also the Chairman of the Region III Superintendents Group, a member of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents Board of Directors, and a member of the State Superintendent’s Leadership Council. Ben Kiser, the Virginia Association of School Superintendents Executive Director, regards Dr. Baker as one of the outstanding education leaders in the state. Kiser stated that, “Dr. Baker’s keen insight into education issues affecting our school divisions around the state has allowed him to become one of our most articulate advocates for the needs of Virginia’s public-school students.”
Dr. Baker will compete against other Regional Superintendents of the Year representing each of the eight regions in Virginia. The winner will be announced as the Virginia Superintendent of the Year on Monday, May 6, 2019 at the Annual Awards Luncheon of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents in Roanoke.
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Tip: Dividend Dates. There are four important dates for dividends:
Declaration Date: The company announces when it will pay a dividend and how much the dividend will be worth.
Ex-Dividend Date: Shareholders of record before this date are entitled to receive the next dividend payment.
Record Date: On this date, the list of stockholders is finalized.
Payable Date: On this date, the taxable dividend is paid to shareholders.
When interest rates reach historic lows, some investors in search of income-generating investments turn to dividend-yielding stocks.
Dividends are taxable payments made by a company to its shareholders. When a company makes a profit, that money can be put to two uses—it can be reinvested in the business or it can be paid out to the company’s shareholders in the form of a dividend. Some dividends are paid quarterly and others are paid monthly.
Dividend Ratios
Investors track dividend-yielding stocks by examining a pair of ratios.
Dividend per share measures how much cash an investor is scheduled to receive for each share of dividend-yielding stock. It is calculated by adding up the total dividends paid out over a year (not including special dividends) and dividing by the number of shares of stock that are outstanding.
Dividend yield measures how much cash an investor is scheduled to receive for each dollar invested in a dividend-yielding stock. It is calculated by dividing the dividends per share by the share price.
Other Dividend Considerations
Investing in dividend-paying stocks can create a stream of taxable income. But the fact that a company is paying dividends is only one factor to consider when choosing a stock investment.
Dividends can be stopped, increased, or decreased at any time. Unlike interest from a corporate bond, which is normally a set amount determined and approved by a company’s board of directors. If a company is experiencing financial difficulties, its board may reduce or eliminate its dividend for a period of time. If a company is outperforming expectations, it may boost its dividend or pay shareholders a special one-time payout.
When considering a dividend-yielding stock, focus first on the company’s cash position. Companies with a strong cash position may be able to pay their scheduled dividend without interruption. Many mature, profitable companies are in a position to offer regular dividends to shareholders as a way to attract investors to the stock.
Dividend income is currently taxed at a maximum rate of 20%.
Be cautious when considering investments that pay a high dividend. While past history cannot predict future performance, companies with established histories of consistent dividend payment may be more likely to continue that performance in the future.
In a period of low interest rates, investors who want income may want to consider all their options. Dividend-yielding stocks can generate taxable income but, like most investments, they should be carefully reviewed before you commit any dollars.
The information in this article is not intended as tax or legal advice. It may not be used for the purpose of avoiding any federal tax penalties. Please consult legal or tax professionals for specific information regarding your individual situation.
Dividends Can Make a Difference
This chart shows the role dividends have played in stock market performance during the past 35 years ended December 31, 2017. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Thomson Reuters, 2018. The S&P 500 Composite Index and S&P 500 Composite Index (Total Return) are unmanaged indices that are generally considered representative of the U.S. stock market. Index performance is not indicative of the past performance of a particular investment. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Individuals cannot invest directly in an index.
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Home / Farms Land / Property / Clifford, Clifford, Nr Hay-on-Wye, Herefordshire
Clifford, Clifford, Nr Hay-on-Wye, Herefordshire
Farm - residential
£1,000,000Guide price
HarryAldrich-Blake
Floorplan 1.jpg
For sale by Formal Tender, tenders to be received by 2pm Wednesday 31st July 2019.
A substantial six-bedroom Grade II * Listed period stone rural residence. Significant range of traditional and modern farm buildings with further grounds and paddocks extending to approximately 11.19 acres.
The Farmhouse & Traditional Barns
The property comprises Lower Court Farmhouse and an impressive range of traditional buildings and modern agricultural buildings with further grounds and paddocks extending to approximately 11.19 acres.
The farmhouse is Grade II* Listed and has origins going back to the 14th century with additions being made in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries to create the delightful and extensive property which exists today.
The farmhouse and buildings are a few miles east of the popular and busy market town of Hay-on-Wye which offers a wide range of services and facilities, including independent boutique shops, cafes, restaurants, doctors' surgery, dental surgeries, library, post office, cinema and primary school. Hay-on-Wye is also well known for its annual literary festival held each Spring.
The Brecon Beacons National Park is nearby offering a further range of recreational activities and the River Wye is highly regarded for its salmon fishing. There are local racecourses at Hereford, Ludlow, Chepstow and Cheltenham. There is also a wide selection of well-regarded independent and state schools in the area. Access to the motorway network is at Ross-on-Wye providing links to the M50, M5 and the M4 at Bristol.
The accommodation is well proportioned and many of the original and period features have been retained, however there is still further potential for enhancement. The residence enjoys beautiful views, towards Clifford Castle, from the surrounding gardens and also the woodlands beyond.
The property is accessed through the front door into a small hallway with a cloakroom and cupboard storage. The kitchen is characterful with extensive exposed beams and timber with a fitted solid wood kitchen, integral appliances and a four oven Aga with an electric hob.
A door leads to the pantry area with a back staircase leading to the first-floor landing. A further door leads from the kitchen into the dog room and further on into a washroom with access to the offices. Off the kitchen a door leads into the larder and utility rooms with a side door to the back yard.
The dining room, being one of the older parts of the house, has beautiful exposed beams and timber sections with loop windows. The dining room opens out, through a set of double doors, into the conservatory which enjoys a delightful southerly aspect with an outlook over the garden. A further set of double doors lead to the large garden room with a fireplace and patio doors.
The sitting room has an Inglenook fireplace, Clearview stove, bay window and a door leading to the garden. From the sitting room there is a library with a fireplace, bay window and fitted shelving. The sitting room also has a door back into the kitchen and stairs to the spacious landing.
On the first floor there are six bedrooms, the main bedroom has fitted wardrobes, drawer units and a dressing area which opens into an en-suite bathroom with a power shower cabinet, close coupled w.c. And bath.
The family bathroom has a power shower, bath and a separate w.c. Through the attic area a door leads into the snooker room which also adjoins the traditional farm buildings.
1. Traditional Listed former granary, converted to a workshop of timber frame and stone construction. 2.6m x 6.9m (8'6 x 22'8).
2. Roadside traditional barn with a stone roof 15.8m x 6.2m (51'10 x 20'4).
3. Listed traditional timber frame barn with three framed bays 31.5m x 7.1m
(103'4 x 23'4) and 6.8m x 11.5m
(22'4 x 37'9).
4. Attached timber clad lean-to triple garage.
5. Four bay open frame span shed with curved tin roof and a concrete floor 15.7m x 13m (51'6 x 42'8).
6. Three bay steel portal frame barn 12.3m x 15.5m (40'4 x 50'10).
7. Traditional stone barn.
Buildings Cont'd
8. Timber frame lean-to barn with side manger 19m x 6.9m (62'4 x 22'8).
9. Pole barn 13.4m x 7.7m (44'0 x 25'3).
10. Large detached timber clad garage with concrete block rear extension offering further potential 15.3m x 7.6m (50'2 x 24'11).
These buildings may have potential for a development scheme, subject to the necessary planning consents.
The property is accessed from the village road into the yard with ample parking areas and a door into the integral garage. Immediately to the front of the house there is a delightful garden leading to the side and rear with well stocked borders.
To the west is a covered swimming pool with heating and filtration system. Next to the garden there is a hard tennis court. There is also a productive vegetable garden with raised beds, fruit trees, soft fruit cages and a greenhouse measuring 5m x 2.5m.
Paddock and Stables
The two paddocks extend to approximately 5.28 acres and gently rises to the southern boundary formed by the former railway line.
This property is ideal for equestrian use when combined with the existing stable yard and further outbuildings.
The stable yard to the south of the house, of mixed stone and timber construction, has seven loose boxes and storage with water and power. The stable yard can also be separately accessed through a vehicular gateway from the Church Road and via the farmyard.
These are located next to the traditional buildings and have their own separate access onto the B4350. The site is approximately 3 acres. With its location near the centre of the village the site may have potential for alternative uses subject to planning and other statutory requirements.
The buildings were formerly used as part of a dairy enterprise and have been adapted for mixed farming purposes. The principal buildings including approximate external dimensions are:-
11. Six bay Dutch barn with grain pit (27.4m x 9.1m) (89'11 x 29'10)
with attached steel frame lean-to. (27.4m x 9.1m) (89'11 x 29'10)
12. Steel portal frame shed with concrete floor and part concrete panel retaining walls. (45.75m x 20m) (150'1 x 65'7)
13. Former dairy buildings of metal frame and concrete block construction. (29.1m x 7.6m) (95'6 x 24'11)
14. Site of two former railway sleeper silage pits.
Method of Sale
Lower Court is being offered for sale by formal tender. A copy of the sale contract and legal documentation will be available from the Vendors solicitors. Prospective purchasers should carry out their own enquiries before submitting any tender for the property. The Tender is legally binding. The Vendors reserve the right not to accept the highest bid or indeed any offer and they reserve the right to accept an offer before the tender date. The completed tender pack and contract must be received at the Sunderlands Hay-on-Wye office by 2pm on Wednesday 31st July 2019, the address is 3 Pavement House, The Pavement, Hay-on-Wye, Herefordshire HR3 5BU. Envelopes must be marked LOWER COURT TENDER accompanied by a cheque made out to LAMBE CORNER SOLICITORS for 10% of the purchase price. Completion will be set for 15th November 2019.
We understand the property is offered as freehold. Vacant possession will be available for the house and paddocks. The vendors reserve the right to retain a licence on the modern buildings fixed until Monday 2nd March 2020.
Planning for Development
The property is within the local authority of Herefordshire Council and the parish of Clifford. A scoping report for Clifford Neighbourhood Area dated August 2017 is available on the Herefordshire Council website.
This states that, in the Clifford NDP area there is call for 30 new dwellings up to 2031.
THERE WILL BE NO UPLIFT CLAUSE ON ANY OF THE LAND OR BUILDINGS.
Timber, Sporting & Mineral Rights
So far as they are owned these are included within the freehold sale
Wayleaves, Easements & Rights of Way
The property is sold subject to and with the benefit of all easements, quasi easements, wayleaves and rights of way both declared and undeclared.
At present there is a single mains supply serving the property. Mains water, mains electricity and 3 phase. Private drainage to a septic tank.
Farmhouse Herefordshire Tax Band "G".
The Agents are advised that the property is connected to mains water and electricity, private drainage and oil central heating. Please note the services are not tested.
The purchaser(s) shall be deemed to have full knowledge of the boundaries and neither the vendor nor the vendor's agents will be responsible for defining the boundaries or ownership thereof.
The vendors and their agents accept no liability for any asbestos on the property. It is in the nature of farm buildings in particular that asbestos is likely to be present on the farm.
Health & Safety Notice
Prospective purchasers should take all necessary care when making an inspection of a property as it is a working farm. Viewings are taken solely at the risk of those who view and neither the agents nor the owners of the property take responsibility for any injury however caused.
Inconsistency
In the event that there is any variance between these sale particulars and the contract of sale then the latter shall apply.
These particulars are set out as a guide only. They are intended to give a fair description of the property but may not be
relied up as a statement or representation of facts. These particulars are produced in good faith and inevitably subjective and do not form part of any contract. No persons within Sunderlands have any authority to make or give any representation or warranty whatsoever in relation to the property.
From Hay-on-Wye take the B4350 and continue to Clifford. In the village look for the first small lane to the right and the entrance to Lower Court is immediately after on the right.
Viewing and Contact Details
All viewing must be arranged through the sole selling agents Sunderlands:
Contact tel: 01497 822522. Office opening hours: Mon-Fri 9.00-5pm Sat 9.00-12.00pm
Out of hours contact:Harry Aldrich-Blake 07717 410757
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From: US $168
Delve into the wildlife-rich Cerro Blanco, a pristine dry forest just 10 miles from Guayaquil with a landscape dominated by towering ceiba trees that shelter an array of birds. The area is one of the top places to go bird-watching in Ecuado...
Highlights: Guayaquil, Cerro Blanco, dry forest, bird-watching, 211 bird species, Jaguar, Ocelot, Saltwater Crocodiles, Pelicans, Herons and Frigate birds
Cerro Blanco Protected Forest & Manglares de Puerto Hondo
Delve into the wildlife-rich Cerro Blanco, a pristine dry forest just 10 miles from Guayaquil with a landscape dominated by towering ceiba and pigio trees that shelter an array of birds. The area is one of the top places to go bird-watching...
Highlights: Guayaquil, Cerro Blanco, dry forest, bird-watching, 211 bird species, Jaguar, Ocelot, Saltwater Crocodiles, Pelicans, Herons and Frigate birds, Manglar Puerto Hondo, Saltwater Crocodiles, Pelicans, Herons and Frigate birds.
Churute Mangroves Ecological Reserve
The Churute Ecological Reserve lies just 45 minutes from Guayaquil, and is ideal for exploring by canoe, through twisting mangroves that shelter an array of wildlife including Howler Monkeys, Bottlenose Dolphins, Parakeets, Egrets, Herons a...
Highlights: Guayaquil, Churute Mangroves Ecological Reserve, Howler Monkeys, Bottlenose Dolphins, Parakeets, Egrets, Herons
Guayaquil City Tour
Guayaquil, the gateway to the Galapagos, has been transformed over recent years with its newly restored historic district characterized by centuries-old houses and narrow lanes. Las Peñas is the city’s oldest district, and once...
Highlights: Guayaquil, City Tour, historic district, Las Peñas, Cerro Santa Ana, cathedral, Iguana Park, Malecon 2000
Guayaquil City Tour & Parque Historico
Guayaquil, the gateway to the Galapagos, has been transformed over recent years with its newly restored historic district characterised by centuries-old houses and narrow lanes. Las Peñas is the city’s oldest district, and once...
Highlights: Guayaquil, City Tour, historic district, Las Peñas, Cerro Santa Ana, cathedral, Iguana Park, Malecon 2000, Guayaquil Historical Park, species of bird, mammals, reptiles, plants and insects, Urban Architecture Zone
Guayaquil City Tour & Rio Guayas
Highlights: Guayaquil, City Tour, historic district, Las Peñas, Cerro Santa Ana, cathedral, Iguana Park, Malecon 2000, Guayas River
Hacienda Bananera
This tour gives you a fascinating insight into the all-important banana production in Ecuador, by exploring the Hacienda Banana Skipper in Los Rios, around 90km from Guayaquil. Sprawled over 100 hectares, the estate produces an average of 2...
Highlights: Guayaquil, Hacienda Banana, labourers work the plantation, the process of banana production
Hacienda La Danesa - Tour Day
From: US $93
Hacienda La Danesa — a traditional 500-hectar dairy and cacao farm with over 145 years of rich heritage and history — is located about an hour’s drive from Guayaquil, Ecuador. Family-owned and managed, the farm offers a...
Highlights: Coast Region, Horseback Riding, Cacao Plantation, Tubing
Salinas and Whale Watching
Known to many as the Miami Beach of Ecuador, Salinas is a bustling stretch of sand where you can enjoy a host of water sports and swim in the warm sea, or simply lay back and relax. Salinas is on the Santa Elena Peninsula, approximately 140...
Highlights: Guayaquil, Salinas, Beach, water sports, swim, you can go whale watching
Tour of Salinas
Known to many as the "Miami Beach of Ecuador," Salinas is a bustling stretch of sand where you can enjoy a host of water sports,swim in the warm ocean, or simply lay back and relax. Salinas is on the Santa Elena Peninsula, approxi...
Highlights: Guayaquil, Salinas, Beach, water sports, swim
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You are here: Home Government helps tech innovation within Switzerland’s finance sector
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Technology continues to disrupt industries across the world in numerous ways; for example, the mobile phone changed the way we communicate. Then came cross-platform messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp, which nearly killed SMS. But disruptive technology doesn’t just involve replacing existing technologies; it also creates new marketplaces in itself, like Apple’s App Store and ss technology has continued to disrupt modern society, countries have been racing to keep up.
Switzerland is rated the world’s most innovative country, and is leading the way with blockchain and fintech. But why Switzerland? Heinz Tännler, President of the Swiss Blockchain Federation offers the suggestion that start-ups are attracted to Switzerland due to its legal security, world-class infrastructure and the “Crypto Valley’s” strong ecosystem.
What also makes Switzerland stand out is the government’s willingness to adopt and adapt to these industry-disrupting technologies as they emerge.
It’s important to consider what’s happening in three key industries in Switzerland including fintech, cryptocurrency and blockchain, what led to their rise and the future of these industries within Switzerland.
The popularity of fintech in Switzerland is no surprise. The nation is a world leader in financial services, featuring an array of financial institutions and a corresponding rise in innovative banking software. In addition, huge tech corporations such as Google and IBM have set up base in Switzerland.
A lot of the fresh talent can be accounted for by Zurich and Lausanne’s first-class international universities for technology and engineering – a promising factor which may lead to the rise of innovation in the future of technology in Switzerland. This talent surplus is aided by the country’s high quality of life and salaries, attracting international talent and retaining more Swiss grads.
Fintech’s current state in Switzerland sees it act as a home to 10% of all global European fintech enterprises with 46% of those in Zurich and 30% of these offering financial services. This can be explained by the fact that Switzerland supports fintech innovation through its financial market laws and the attractively low tax model for start-ups — leaving innovators feeling supported and encouraged.
So what has the Swiss government been doing to aid the growth on fintech in the country? Thanks to The Federal Council’s sandbox exemption the start-up process is becoming more streamlined in Switzerland compared to other European countries. This means that under the Banking Act, public deposits that equal CHF 1 million or less won’t require a license requirement, and as of April 1st, 2019 this law has been extended for crowdlending business models as part of the Consumer Credits Act. The new fintech licence also became active as of the 1 st of January, 2019 which saw more lenient requirements when compared to fully-fledged banking licences — for instance, no interest needs to be paid on deposits and there are additional safeguards for customers.
Government interest in the continued growth of fintech with these new laws and the rise of new talent, means it’s no surprise that investors are biting — in particular, venture capital giants such as Index Ventures and Google Ventures.
Because of the focus on expanding this sector of finance Investments in Swiss start-ups hit the billion mark in 2018, with fintech accounting for CHF 685 million of this, making it Switzerland’s largest venture capital sector. These investments are only likely to increase, and with it, further advancements in fintech thanks to exaggerated buoyancy of government interests.
Zug, Switzerland’s fastest-growing cryptocurrency hotspot, nicknamed “Crypto valley” has seen billions invested in the sector in just the last few years. Cryptocurrency has revolutionised financial services with its game-changing potential to increase efficiencies and decentralise services.
Zug hosts low tax rates — the entire canton charges 14% corporation tax, making it an ideal spot to build a business. Innovators seem to agree as Zug had over 750 companies with over 3,300 employees registered in it by the end of 2018.
To keep Switzerland at the forefront of finance innovation the government ensures the crypto-movement in Zurich, and other leading cities in Switzerland, thrives doing so with its’ advantageous elements of digital privacy, a stable economy and supportive IT laws, when compared to other European countries. In addition, companies have begun to form clusters to innovate their services to offer unique expertise in cryptographic and security issues.
The Swiss government is clear in its stance to embrace all forms of technical innovations, shown through the way cryptocurrencies are treated as foreign currency, meaning there is no special law based around them. In fact, Zug became the first region in the world to accept bitcoin as a form of payment for a range of governmental services and in politics, and has just successfully completed a trial of blockchain-based voting. Furthermore, it established a digital identity system built on Ethereum as part of the new “e-government” initiative which offered blockchain-based digital IDs for the 30,000 employees working in the Swiss Federal Railway.
Switzerland continues to integrate cryptocurrency into businesses, and even into government, due to its low security risk and high accessibility.
The biggest stakeholder in blockchain development is Switzerland’s affluent financial sector, one of the largest and most diverse in the world. SIX Group, which owns Switzerland’s Stock Exchange, is at present building a trading infrastructure for digital assets using blockchain technology.
The government is also updating financial and corporate regulations to support blockchain advancements. Oliver Bussmann, president of the Crypto Valley Association has said that Switzerland is “a global leading ecosystem for blockchain technology. To establish that, you have to work on all dimensions: start-ups, investors, governments, corporations, R&D etc. You have to bring them together.”
These factors are exactly what Switzerland’s government has considered and incorporated with the introduction of ICOs, which allow start-ups to sell digital crypto tokens to investors globally online and have accounted for over $9 billion in assets last year.
Financial security is of utmost importance in fintech, and blockchain technology provides this along with five other sources of value. These include:
1. Simplification of internal operating procedures
2. Time-saving financial transactions
3. Optimised use of a company’s liquid assets
4. Reduced risk of fraud and efficient regulator
5. Supervised financial firm interactions
Blockchain technology is still being developed and refined every day. It has countless possibilities for growth within the fintech industry and Switzerland’s governing parties are keen to play a leading role in cultivating innovation within its businesses.
Disruptive industries still require established recruitment
Swisslinx are market leaders in recruiting for the technology sector and financial services. We have been an established part of the recruitment landscape since 1999 and have successfully placed thousands of candidates in technology and finance roles, winning countless awards while doing so.
We also have offices internationally and a home office in the heart of innovation capital, Zurich. Our expert consultants on hand are equipped to hire the best financial services and technology candidates for your company while being trained and steered by industry-leading experts so you can recruit reliably with Swisslinx.
If you’re interested in working in these booming industries, we have exciting roles available in key tech hotspots in Switzerland, Germany and Dubai. Apply for a role with us today.
Doing business in Zurich: Trends to watch out for
Doing business in Zurich: Trends to watch out for Since being named as the world’s most sustainable city in 2016, Zurich hasn’t rested on its laurels, continuing to flourish as a place to both live and work. The social, environmental, and economic factors that led to the award are things that the city has long been revered for, but it’s not something that’s happened by accident. With a desire to maintain its reputation as a “centre of economic life and education” (a line coined by the official tourist site myswitzerland.com), investment in Zurich’s local infrastructure continues at pace, while being conscious of its environmental impact; the city is one of the lowest generators of emissions and consumers of water in Europe. Why Zurich attracts businesses and people While it’s regularly ranked as the second-most competitive financial centre in Europe behind London, uncertainties around the future of the UK could well play into Zurich’s hands. Already home to 10 of the world’s largest financial firms, the engineering hubs of tech giants and a giant data centre industry, a local startup scene has emerged attracting talent from amongst the 60,000 students who call the city home. While some will naturally be keen to move into an established household name business when they come out of education, the chance to be a part of something new and exciting is just as attractive to the modern workforce. Zurich offers the best of both worlds. Zurich’s low rate of 3.0% unemployment is on a par with the national average, below that of Basel (3.6%) and Geneva (4.9%) and far better than the European average of 6.8%. The business setup is there to cope, no matter how many people want to call the city home! Sensible city planning Of the 425k people who currently call Zurich home, 68% of them are of working age. That’s 2% above the national average in Switzerland and 3% above European averages. Those may sound like small margins, but in a city that’s seen annual population increases of 1.8% over the past decade, it may look from the outside to be a growing city with limited space to expand. In other regions that could create some serious logistical nightmare — over-urbanisation has a habit of pushing the cost of living way up — however, Zurich isn’t just any other city. The planning department at the City of Zurich recognised this trend well before it became a problem, implementing an active policy to make better use of abandoned industrial sites to provide affordable studio spaces and rehearsal rooms. This has seen great redevelopment in Zurich-West, where the former derelict buildings are becoming lively spaces full of contemporary art. Refurbished shipping containers have become pop-up retail spaces and dingy back streets and railway arches now house some of the most desirable restaurants and cafes in the city. Providing a launchpad While Zurich is home to many large corporate financial services organisations, such as UBS, Credit Suisse, Swiss Re and Zurich Insurance, it’s increasingly becoming known for its positive startup environment. Areas like Kreis 5 provide the perfect spot for coworking, and the many meetups, tech conferences and incubator schemes have helped fuel the thriving startup scene. With the close proximity to those making financial decisions, some for these companies can be expected to break out of startup mode in the coming years. Exactly who it will be is a matter for debate, but there are some strong contenders. Of course, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, and within the financial sector companies such as Advanon and Wefox are attempting to challenge the traditional norms of the industry. The medical folk are arguably even more active when it comes to innovation, with Ava becoming a vital service for women across the world, and Versantis, Xeltis and Cutiss showing strength in the pharma and medical devices field. Whether it’s Selfnation in fashion, ComfyLight in home security, Nezasa in travel or Beekeeper in employee communication, every corner of the city has a potential ‘next big thing’ on its hands. For any company considering where to base their HQ, Zurich surely must close to the top of the list. Make your business move with Swisslinx As a specialist recruitment company providing talent solutions across Switzerland and internationally, we’re proud to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to technology and recruitment trends. With a Zurich base, we are active partners to new startups and larger organisations emerging in the city, and have a thriving network of skilled, vetted candidates ready to make their mark in this market. Find out more about what we offer here.
Since being named as the world’s most sustainable city in 2016, Zurich hasn’t rested on its laurels, continuing...
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See some serious armor in the Ringling Museum’s ‘Knights’ exhibition
It features more than one hundred items: armor, shields, swords, daggers, helmets, pikes and more dating from the sixteenth century and later.
Suit of armor from Brescia, circa 1560-1565 made of steel, mail, bronze, leather, fabric. A chanfron (horse head armor) from Europe circa 1550. The horse?s armor is partly a 19th century reproduction. On loan from Museo Stibbert, Firenze. Courtesy of The Ringling
Suit of armor, Italian, circa 1540-1550 made of steel, leather, fabric and wood. On loan from Museo Stibbert, Firenze. Courtesy of The Ringling
Portrait of Frederick Stibbert, who collected the arms and armor seen in the exhibit. Courtesy of Archivio Museum Stibbert.
Chanfron (horse?s head armor) from Europe circa 1550, made of steel and leather. Courtesy of The Ringling.
A suit of armor from Milan circa 1560-1565 made of steel and leather and a chanfron (horse head armor) circa mid 16th century. The horse?s armor is partly a 19th century reproduction On loan from Museo Stibbert, Firenze. Courtesy of the Ringling Museum.
By JOANNE MILANI
Times Correspondent
Published March 7
If you’ve never met a knight in shining armor, this is your chance to go face to face — or face to helmet — with an army of them. After all, from fairy tales to the legend of King Arthur, the image of a knight in shining armor has been the stuff of youthful fantasies as well as fodder for military buffs.
Thanks to a beautiful and informative exhibition at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, serious warfare historians and folks still harboring childhood dreams can see up close those knights in their bright armor, their prancing horses, their elegant accessories and their really mean weapons.
“Knights,” on view through April 21, features more than one hundred items: armor, shields, swords, daggers, helmets, pikes and more dating from the sixteenth century and later.
The source of all these treasures is the Museo Stibbert in Florence, Italy.
The museum was founded by Frederick Stibbert (1838-1906), a wealthy collector of arms and armor. The son of a British father and Italian mother, Stibbert spent a lifetime gathering the finest works from the medieval and Renaissance periods. He even collected works from the nineteenth century Gothic Revival period when folks looked back with nostalgia at the Middle Ages.
Thanks to Stibbert, you can see warfare as it once was waged.
In the first gallery, two life-size knights wear elegantly engraved armor, mounted on horses also protected by armor. While a few pieces in these two ensembles are nineteenth century reproductions, most of the items here were made in the sixteenth century in northern Italy, mainly in the cities of Milan and Brescia.
From Roman times, this region of Italy near the Alps was considered the arsenal of Europe because of its manufacture of weapons and armor. It helped that high-quality iron ore deposits were close by. Indeed, Brescia is known today for its Beretta pistols and other firearms.
Even though much of the arms and armor were made with deadly serious purpose, that didn’t stop craftsmen from embellishing their work with elegant decorations.
Ringling curator Sarah Cartwright admires the sculptural qualities of some suits of armor.
“We can relate to it because it replicates the contours of the human body,” she said.
After all, their customers were the nobility and royalty of the times, and the armor became the prized possessions of wealthy families. Artists were often enlisted to engrave the armor and shields with images of musical instruments, mythological characters and even grotesque faces.
Even young boys were outfitted with small suits of armor because they were trained to fight from a young age.
The years 1450 to 1525 are considered the golden age of plate armor, with nobles wearing beautiful armor and the everyday solders wearing simpler versions. Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands also produced armor and weapons during this time because wars raged continuously throughout Europe.
What finally blew apart the armor industry was high technology in the form of firearms. On view is a steel breastplate made around 1600. In it you will find the holes made by two bullets.
“Of course, my fine armor failed,” once complained the armorer Colombo of Brescia in 1574,” when my patron used an inch charge of powder!”
Gun power eventually spelled the end for armor in wartime even through suits of armor were used in jousts and tournaments. Stibbert’s elegant swords and daggers, weapons used as status symbols in later years, could still be beautiful and deadly.
By the seventeenth century, the practical need for such arms and armor was fading fast. In the exhibition, you will find a lovely dagger used by Venetian artillery gunners. The carefully calibrated length of its hilt was used as a measuring stick to pour out the correct amount of gunpowder to be loaded into a cannon.
This exhibition is embellished by paintings of the era showing fierce battles and proud nobles in armor. The fun continues in a separate gallery filled with family activities. Children can try on plastic helmets, breastplates and shields, invent their own coats of arms or put on a puppet show. They can even complete a quiz about how they might have lived in the Middle Ages.
The ArtsXchange project in St. Petersburg continues to grow
Gallery space, a member lounge and new visibility are among the improvements.
What’s happening in Tampa Bay art: Chihuly anniversary, ice cream at Mize Gallery
Plus, a perfect pairing of artists at the Creative Pinellas gallery and the Cool Art Show returns to the Coliseum.
James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art director Bernice Chu is leaving
She heads to the International African American Museum in Charleston, S.C.
Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement now scheduled to open by year’s end
Expansion, better amenities and search for perfectionism contributed to delays
What’s happening in Tampa Bay art: Gulfport gets a new gallery, contemporary quilts in Dunedin
There are surprisingly few art galleries in Gulfport. Brenda McMahon aims to help.
Colorful, wonderful and meaningful: Self-taught art at the Museum of Fine Arts
“Straighten Up the World,” drawn from the donation of self-taught art from Jim and Martha Sweeny, adds more diversity to the St. Petersburg museum’s permanent collection.
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The "Lover" Era
Taylor's 2019 album "Lover" is the follow up to "reputation", which was released in 2017 and gained a GRAMMY nomination for "Best Pop Vocal Album".
Taylor first acknowledged the end of the "reputation" era when accepting the award for "Best Pop/Rock Album" at the 2018 American Music Awards:
"I always look at albums as chapters in my life, and to the fans, I'm so glad you liked this one [reputation]. But I have to be really honest with you about something: I'm even more excited about the next chapter." -- Taylor Swift
In November 2018, Taylor signed a new multi-album deal with Universal Music Group; in the United States, her future releases will be promoted under the Republic Records imprint. Taylor stated that the contract included provisions for her to maintain ownership of her master recordings. In addition, UMG agreed to, in the event that it sells portions of its stake in Spotify, distribute proceeds among its artists and make them non-recoupable. Taylor's first release with Republic Records was the lead single from her seventh studio album, "ME!" featuring Brendon Urie of Panic! At The Disco, in April 2019.
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Astroglial 'support cells' in brain play important role in Down syndrome
New research also suggests common antibiotic might help treat the genetic defect
Researchers from UC Davis School of Medicine and Shriners Hospitals for Children -- Northern California have identified a group of cells in the brain that they say plays an important role in the abnormal neuron development in Down syndrome. After developing a new model for studying the syndrome using patient-derived stem cells, the scientists also found that applying an inexpensive antibiotic to the cells appears to correct many abnormalities in the interaction between the cells and developing neurons.
The findings, which focused on support cells in the brain called astroglial cells, appear online today in Nature Communications.
"We have developed a human cellular model for studying brain development in Down syndrome that allows us to carry out detailed physiological studies and screen possible new therapies," said Wenbin Deng, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular medicine and principal investigator of the study. "This model is more realistic than traditional animal models because it is derived from a patient's own cells."
Down syndrome is the most common chromosomal cause of mild to moderate intellectual disabilities in the United States, where it occurs in one in every 691 live births. It develops when a person has three copies of the 21st chromosome instead of the normal two. While mouse models have traditionally been used in studying the genetic disorder, Deng said the animal model is inadequate because the human brain is more complicated, and much of that complexity arises from astroglia cells, the star-shaped cells that play an important role in the physical structure of the brain as well as in the transmission of nerve impulses.
"Although neurons are regarded as our 'thinking cells,' the astroglia have an extremely important supportive role," said Deng. "Astroglial function is increasingly recognized as a critical factor in neuronal dysfunction in the brain, and this is the first study to show its importance in Down syndrome."
Creating a unique human cellular model
To investigate the role of astroglia in Down syndrome, the research team took skin cells from individuals with Down syndrome and transformed them into stem cells, which are known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). The cells possess the same genetic make-up as the donor and an ability to grow into different cell types. Deng and his colleagues next induced the stem cells to develop into separate pure populations of astroglial cells and neurons. This allowed them to systematically analyze factors expressed by the astroglia and then study their effects on neuron development.
They found that a certain protein, known as S100B, is markedly increased in astroglial cells from patients with Down syndrome compared with those from healthy controls. S100B released by astroglial cells promotes harmful astroglial activation (astrogliosis) and adversely affects neurons, causing them to die at increased rates or develop in multiple dysfunctional ways.
The investigators obtained further evidence of the critical role of astroglial cells in Down syndrome by implanting the skin-cell derived astroglial cells from Down syndrome patients into mice. Those mice then developed the neuropathological phenotypes of Down syndrome, while mice implanted with Down syndrome neurons did not.
Neuroprotective effects of antibiotics
The research team also screened candidate drugs using a 'disease-in-a-dish' model. When they administered minocycline -- a tetracycline antibiotic with anti-inflammatory properties commonly used to treat bacterial infections, acne and arthritis -- many of the abnormalities in the astroglial cells were corrected and there were more healthy interactions between the astroglia and neurons compared to the control cells without the defect.
"The advent of induced pluripotent stem cell technology has created exciting new approaches to model neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases for the study of pathogenesis and for drug screening," said David Pleasure, professor of neurology and pediatrics and a co-author of the study. "Using this technology, the study is the first to discover the critical role of astroglial cells in Down syndrome as well as identify a promising pathway for exploring how a drug such as minocycline may offer an effective way to help treat it."
Pleasure, who is research director at Shriner's Hospital for Children Northern California and also directs the Institute for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine, noted that considerable research interest has arisen about the use of minocycline for diseases of the central nervous system because of the increasing evidence about its neuroprotective effects. Unlike many drugs, minocycline can cross from the bloodstream into the brain so that it can act on the astroglial cells. The drug has never been tested as a treatment for Down syndrome, and both Pleasure and Deng cautioned that its safety and efficacy will require clinical trials in people with Down syndrome.
Currently, Deng's laboratory is conducting additional preclinical studies using the human-derived stem cells from Down syndrome patients and mouse models to determine whether cellular and behavioral abnormalities can be improved with minocycline therapy and other candidate drugs.
"The abnormalities we identified occur in the early stages of Down syndrome," said Deng. "While much more research is needed, it is exciting to consider that pharmacological intervention in these cellular processes might help slow or even prevent disease progression."
Note: Material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.
University of California - Davis Health System press release
Chen Chen, Peng Jiang, Haipeng Xue, Suzanne E. Peterson, Ha T. Tran, Anna E. McCann, Mana M. Parast, Shenglan Li, David E. Pleasure, Louise C. Laurent, Jeanne F. Loring, Ying Liu, Wenbin Deng. Role of astroglia in Down’s syndrome revealed by patient-derived human-induced pluripotent stem cells. Nature Communications, Published July 18 2014. doi: 10.1038/ncomms5430
Put Down That Flyswatter: Insects Feel Pain Too
Scientists have known insects experience something like pain since 2003, but new research published today from Associate Professor Greg Neely and colleagues at the University of Sydney proves for the first time that insects also experience chronic pain that lasts long after an initial injury has healed.
Lifestyle Changes Can Offset Genetic Dementia Risk
New research suggests that changes to lifestyle may be able to hugely offset genetic risk of developing dementia.
The Neuroscience Roundup - 07/12/19
Hunger Games With Lora Heisler at BNA 2019
Sections of Primate Brain
A Cell Atlas of the Mouse Brain: A Step Towards Brain Simulation?
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Dave Lee Travis assault interrupted by Chuckle Brothers, court told
A female stagehand who claims she was assaulted by former BBC presenter Dave Lee Travis told a court she was able to escape his advances thanks to the arrival of the Chuckle Brothers
Children's entertainers the Chuckle Brothers Photo: ALAMY
A female stagehand who was allegedly groped by veteran DJ Dave Lee Travis told a court she was able to escape him thanks to the arrival of children’s entertainers the Chuckle Brothers.
The woman was working on a pantomime production of Aladdin starring the former Radio 1 presenter as the “evil uncle” Abanazar when he allegedly assaulted her in his dressing room.
Travis put his hand down the front of her trousers and tried to block her exit but she was saved when his pantomime co-stars the Chuckle Brothers, Barry and Paul Elliott, called his named from the corridor outside, the court heard.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was one of three of Travis’ alleged victims to give evidence at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday.
Former BBC star Travis, who is on trial under his real name, David Patrick Griffin, denies 13 indecent assaults and one sexual assault, dating back to 1976 and the height of his fame.
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A second woman, who was allegedly groped by Travis while filming Top of the Pops, said she did not complain to her BBC bosses because “it would have fallen on deaf ears”.
The former camerawoman said she was “startled” when the presenter placed his hand on her and "squeezed my bottom".
But she had gone to them about sexual harassment she had suffered at the corporation previously and nothing had happened, the court heard.
The woman, who said she was 21 or 22 at the time of the incident in the early 1980s, said she was concentrating on operating the camera and connected to around two metres of cable so was trapped and unable to move when Travis, now 68, suddenly appeared next to her.
Giving evidence from behind a screen, the woman said: "What I remember was I was kind of startled because I felt something on my bottom. My right buttock.
"And then I realised that there was someone next to me, because he was a lot bigger than me, talking into his mic.
"I can't remember what he was saying into the mic. I don't remember whether he was talking generally, it wouldn't have been a recording. He was just possibly talking to the audience who were in the studio at that time."
A third woman told the jury she had been through “40 years of hell” after being assaulted by the former Top of the Pops host when she was a 19-year-old deputy carnival princess.
The woman claimed Travis put his hand up her skirt and touched her breast while they were alone at the opening of a hospital radio station in 1973.
The witness, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said Travis had a "haunting look" on his face as he touched her and she felt "frightened" and "ashamed" so avoided watching him on the TV again.
Breaking down in tears, she said her ordeal had an effect on her love life with her late husband, who would never know why.
"When he put his arms around me, I'd freeze," she said.
Prosecutor Miranda Moore QC told jurors that the woman's evidence did not relate to any specific charge.
The former stagehand said she did not report Travis’ dressing room assault because she was scared of losing her job.
Describing her ordeal, she said: “I was about to go and he was suddenly behind me.
"He's a big chap and he engulfed me and he had his hand on the door above me.
"He put his other hand down the front of my jogging bottoms.
"He was touching me from top to bottom."
Asked by prosecutor Ms Moore where his hand went, the woman said: "I believe it was over my genitalia. I don't think it went inside my pants."
Dave Lee Travis arriving at Southwark Crown Court today (STEFAN ROUSSEAU/PA)
The witness said that getting out of the door became her "complete focus" as she struggled to escape.
She went on: "It felt like a long time but I think it was only a matter of moments before I managed to get the door open.
"He was pushing it over the top of my head. He was a lot stronger than I am."
She said that after opening the door slightly: "I heard someone say 'alright Dave', at which point he released me."
The woman said she was then aware the voice belonged to one of the Chuckle Brothers who were walking along the corridor towards the dressing room.
The woman, who was aged 21 at the time of the alleged incident in the early 1990s, said she rushed away and told a supervisor about what had happened.
She said: "I was really obviously shaken up. Confused and scared and just in a bit of a state really."
She said her colleague agreed that she would not have to go into Travis's dressing room again for the rest of the show's run and they discussed whether to take the issue further.
She told jurors: "We decided that because it was my first job in theatre it wouldn't be me who was going to be believed.
"I think I felt that even if someone believed me, which I didn't, it still wouldn't be me that kept my job."
The theatre later decided that female workers should not be left alone with Travis during the show's run, the court heard.
In Law and Order
Operation Strong Tower
Hatton Garden heist
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Carol, The Revenant and real-to-reel drama Spotlight top list of Golden Globe nominees
Cinema still: Carol starring Cate Blanchette. PHOTO: SHAW ORGANISATION
Jan 8, 2016, 10:07 am SGT
http://str.sg/ZHqa
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The field is wide open this year as to who will walk away with a Golden Globe, awarded by members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association at a gala dinner in Beverly Hills on Jan 10.
"Some years there are movies like Titanic that just seem to have a momentum and everybody seems to like them," said Timothy Gray, awards editor for trade magazine Variety. "But this year there is genuine suspense."
Leading the pack of films vying for top honors is Spotlight, which tells the story of Boston Globe journalists who uncovered sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Pundits see the movie as front-runner for best drama but it faces strong competition from Carol, a lesbian romance starring Cate Blanchett as a housewife who falls for a store clerk played by Rooney Mara.
Other top contending dramas are the epic survival thriller The Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio, the harrowing kidnap tale Room and Mad Max: Fury Road.
Many see the Globes as a strong indicator of films and actors destined for an Academy Award on Feb 28.
The front-runner for best comedy is The Big Short, based on a book about the financial crisis of 2007-2008.
Also running in that category are the dramedy Joy, space blockbuster The Martian, zany caper Spy and Amy Shumer's breakout film Trainwreck.
In the race for best actor in a drama, DiCaprio appears well ahead for his strong performance as legendary fur trapper Hugh Glass in The Revenant. Critics are widely predicting the 41-year-old actor will take home his first Oscar for the role.
"There is a feeling that it's his year," said Tom O'Neil, founder of awards tracker GoldDerby.com. "All 17 GoldDerby experts have him unanimously out front to win."
Also nominated for best actor in a drama are Bryan Cranston who plays a blacklisted 1940s screenwriter in Trumbo, Eddie Redmayne for the transgender tale The Danish Girl and Will Smith for the hard-hitting sports drama Concussion. For best actress in a drama the nominees are Blanchett and Mara for Carol, Brie Larson for Room, and Alicia Vikander who plays alongside Redmayne in The Danish Girl.
On the television front, two series nominated for a Golden Globe are creating a buzz - Mr Robot, about a computer programmer and vigilante hacker, and Narcos, Netflix's take on the infamous Medellin drug cartel.
Movies aside, all eyes will be on the host, British comedian Ricky Gervais, who has used previous appearances on the show to dish out politically-incorrect and stinging jokes. He hosted the show for three years starting in 2010 and this year takes over from co-hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.
Gervais comes with a reputation of poking fun at everyone from Mel Gibson to Angelina Jolie, as well as the Hollywood Foreign Press, and this year he is not expected to hold back. He has made his apologies in advance for what he will say.
"Because I can see the future, I'd like to apologize now for the things I said at next week's Golden Globes," he tweeted on Jan 1.
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Professor and the Dean Rusk Chair in International Affairs
Kenneth Flamm
Dr. Kenneth Flamm is a Professor and the Dean Rusk Chair in International Affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT-Austin. He is a 1973 honors graduate of Stanford University and received a Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T. in 1979.
From 1993 to 1995, Dr. Flamm served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Economic Security and Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Dual Use Technology Policy. He was awarded the Distinguished Public Service Medal by the Secretary of Defense for his work at DoD. Prior to, and after his service at the Defense Department, he spent eleven years as a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Flamm has been a professor of economics at the Instituto Tecnológico A. de México in Mexico City, the University of Massachusetts, and George Washington University.
Over the last decade, Flamm has served as PI for research grants on “Economic Implications of Fair Use,” “Determinants of Internet Use in U.S. Households,” “Internet Use in the Americas,” “Regional Differences in Patterns of Internet Use in the United States,” “Internet Use in Developing and Industrializing Countries,” “Determinants of Broadband Competition,” “Broadband Policy in Comparative International Perspective,” “Changing Modes of Defense Procurement: Implications for Pricing and Innovation in the US Defense Industry,” “Semiconductor Industry Economics,” “Winning the Globalization Game: How Countries Compete in the 21st Century,” ”Modeling Innovation Chains Using Case-Based Econometrics: Nano-electronics and Biotechnology Applications,” “Modeling Pharmaceutical Innovation Pipelines,” and “Digital Inclusion,” and has worked with industry research consortium SEMATECH in building economic models of the semiconductor industry.
Flamm has served as vice-chair of the National Research Council’s Panel on Comparative Innovation Policy, and as a member of its Science, Technology, and Economic Policy Board, its Committee on Assessing the Need for a Defense Stockpile, its assessment panel on the Small Business Innovation Research Program, its Committee on the Rationale and Goals of the U.S. Civil Space Program, its Committee on the Future of Supercomputing, and its Steering Group on Measuring and Sustaining the New Economy. He has served as member and Chair of the NATO Science Committee’s Panel for Science and Technology Policy and Organization, and as a member of the Federal Networking Council Advisory Committee, the OECD’s Expert Working Party on High Performance Computers and Communications, various advisory committees and study groups of the National Science Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Defense Science Board, and the U.S. Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment, and as a consultant to various government agencies, international organizations, and private corporations.
Dr. Flamm is the author of numerous articles and books on the dynamics of international competition in high technology industries, and studies of the computer, semiconductor, Internet, and telecommunications industries.
Distinguished Scholars
Program Teams
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July 31, 2018 Arts & Events » Music
An Encore for Robbin Thompson: New double album features tributes to one of Richmond’s most celebrated musicians of yesteryear
By Peter McElhinney
Erin Thomas Foley and the kids from SPARC pay tribute to Robbin Thompson during the February 2016 multiartist concert, saying "he will always be an inspiration."
The album "Final Encore: a Live Tribute to Robbin Thompson" is a labor of love. The two-CD set documents the February 2016 multiartist concert for the late Richmond singer and songwriter, who died of complications from cancer in October 2015.
Artists start their sections with affectionate, anecdotal introductions, thoughtfully programmed as individual tracks, given that a few are roughly half as long as the songs they precede. It's a deep dive into the songbook and history of arguably the area's hottest contender in the golden age of rock and roll, who mellowed into a burnished area presence.
Thompson never became a breakout rock god like his onetime bandmate Bruce Springsteen, but he was a solid local hero. He wrote a lot of songs, but is best known for his collaboration with Steve Bassett, "Sweet Virginia Breeze," which became the official popular state song of Virginia in 2015. You could hear his songs on the radio in the car on the way to the grocery store, and then run into him in the produce section. That may or may not have been the world's loss, but it was Richmond's gain.
He left behind friends dedicated to keeping his memory alive. Interviewed together at a West End Starbucks, drummer Robert "Rico" Antonelli and guitarist Velpo Robertson had been with Thompson for most of his long career, a collaboration that stretched a full four decades. It started in the '70s, after Thompson's big label debut smoldered, but failed to catch fire in the wake of Springsteen's blazing "Born to Run."
The Robbin Thompson Band's 1980 record "Two Bs Please" was as close as the singer came to the big time, with popularity reaching far outside his Southeastern base, powered by singles that got significant airplay. "Pulling into Chicago, we cut on the radio, and our song 'Brite Eyes' was playing," Roberson recalls. "Coming into an unfamiliar city, hearing your music, is a feeling you just can't describe," completes Antonelli. It's popularity crested near the top half of the Billboard top 100 rock album charts.
"We banged our heads against the wall," Robertson says. "Caught in the middle of record label power struggles, we came out on the losing end. We were on our own path, and they didn't know what to call us. Country? Hard rock? This was before Garth Brooks started to rock out in country shows, and they didn't know how to deal." It is the familiar music business story, except that was the beginning, not the end.
The band stayed together, playing concerts for longtime fans over the years. In 1990, with Carlos Chafin, Thompson founded In Your Ear, a jewel of a studio in Shockoe Bottom. "There were two Robbins," Robertson says. "Before he was a parent, he put on the whole rock star thing. Afterward, it was different. He got involved in the community, started doing things around town. Like all people, he evolved over the years."
The day Thompson died, Antonelli says, he got a call from Bill Reid, the area promoter behind the National who'd previously been the driving force behind the band's 30th anniversary live record and DVD, "The Robbin Thompson Band Live at the National."
"He said 'just bring some instruments to the stage and play,'" Antonelli says. "But we were still pretty knocked out at the time, but that was the start of this tribute."
Rather than the traditional approach of getting 15 bands to each record a song, they invited a tight group of singers with close ties to Thompson to perform with the band. "Everyone was a volunteer," Robertson says. "By the time it was over it was close to 200 people and nobody thought twice. One of the singers from Chicago offered to pay her own expenses. Studios gave us space to practice. The National went dark the Saturday night before for the singers to rehearse. The show was on Sunday night."
The recording captures the full concert, along with the last cut, the titular "Final Encore." It's a solid, midtempo country ballad about searching for solid ground, a place to build a life. There is an elegiac shadow cast by Thompson's long fight with a ceaselessly undercutting disease. The singer's voice and guitar, recorded as a demo, are stark and plaintive, the posthumous production rich and supportive. In a way, it is the tribute concert in miniature, a community of longtime collaborators coming together for a whistful, hard-rocking goodbye to an artist they all loved.
There is no ground more solid than that. S
From press release: To purchase the album online or learn more about the endowment, visit robbinthompson.com. The CD will be also be available at Plan9 Music and BK Music.
The Fresh Prince
Gimme Indie Rock
Flying Saucer Attack
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« One of Richmond’s more eclectic rock acts, Spooky Cool, drops a new EP | Harrisonburg’s Illiterate Light discovers the pull of Montrose Recording »
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A Big Voice
Rising local vocalist and actress Jessi Johnson talks about her role as Glinda in “The Wiz” and the importance of her family.
by Kate Andrews
Lora Beldon, founder of the Military Kid Art Project
by Amanda Dalla Villa Adams
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sarah moyer
Known for her "purity and flawless range" (South Florida Classical Review), soprano Sarah Moyer was exclusively featured in the 2014 the Boston Globe Magazine for her work as a professional singing artist and deemed her “the kind of church singer who will rock your sacred-music world”. As a soloist, her recent repertoire includes Handel’s Messiah with Variant Six and Bourbon Baroque, Handel’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day with Emmanuel Music, Haydn's Salve Regina with Masterworks Chorale, Vivaldi's All'ombra di sospetto and Handel's Nel dolce dell'oblio with Les Bostonades, American premieres of Melani's Regina Coeli a5 and Teodora with Reed College Collegium, world premieres of Kallembach's Easter Oratorio and Theofanidis' Four Levertov Settings (performed a second time at the Aspen Music Festival) with Seraphic Fire, American premieres of Nørgård's Nova Genitura and Seadrift with Lost Dog New Music Ensemble, Foss' The Prairie with Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri; she also "beautifully executed" (Miami Herald) the world premiere of Runestad's The Hope of Loving with Seraphic Fire in the Fall of 2015, and was described as "perfect for Baroque works... one wants to hear more from this obviously gifted singer" (South Florida Classical Review) for her brief performance in Handel's My Heart is Inditing. A frequent interpreter of Bach, her most recent engagements include O heilges Geist – und Wasserbad, Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, and Süsser Trost, mein Jesus kömmt with Emmanuel Music, Wedding Cantata with Kaleidoscope Chamber Ensemble, Mass in B Minor, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, and Gott ist mein König (Ripieni) with Music at Marsh Chapel, Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht, Es ist nichts gesundes an meinem Leibe, and Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen (at the Boston Early Music Festival Fringe Series) with New England Conservatory’s Carr Collegium.
Ms. Moyer is simultaneously active as a choral artist. Nationally she appears frequently with Skylark (New England), GRAMMY® nominated Seraphic Fire (Miami, FL), Santa Fe Desert Chorale (Santa Fe, NM), GRAMMY® nominated True Concord (Tucson, AZ), Lorelei Ensemble (Boston, MA), The Thirteen (D.C.), Ensemble Origo (New England), and Spire (Kansas City, MO). She is a founding member of Illumine, a trio devoted creating arrangements and recordings for soprano, trumpet, and harp. Locally, Moyer sings regularly with Boston’s various religious institutions such as Emmanuel Music, Church of the Advent (Beacon Hill), Trinity Church (Copley Square), and Boston University’s Marsh Chapel where she is a former Choral Scholar, among others. She has also supported music education by presenting masterclasses and workshops with Skylark, and through performing with the Handel and Haydn Society Outreach Vocal Quartet from 2014-2016. She is a recipient of the 2015 St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award.
Not a stranger to pop and rock music, Ms. Moyer recently sang with the Rolling Stones on their “50 and Counting/Grr! Live” tour, and made her Symphony Hall debut with the Video Game Orchestra Live!.
Moyer received her Bachelor's degree in Vocal Performance from Oklahoma State University (2009) where she studied with Anne-Marie Condacse and gained the bulk of her choral training under conductors Dirk Garner, Mark Lawlor, and Natasa Kaurin-Karaca. She completed a Master's degree in Vocal Performance at New England Conservatory (2011) in the studio of Carole Haber, with whom she still studies.
www.sopranosarahmoyer.com
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Showing posts with label PoV. Show all posts
Lee Child's Personal
by David Edgerley Gates
PERSONAL is the nineteenth Jack Reacher book in the series, and Lee Child doesn't need my help to sell it. It opened at #1 on most national lists the first week it was out, and week two, it's still there.
This post isn't about promoting the book, which happens to be a knockout - Lee certainly hasn't lost his chops, and Jack keeps getting deeper as a character - but about P.O.V.
PERSONAL is told, appropriately, in first-person. This isn't a departure for the Reacher books, but more commonly, they've been told in the third. In other words, Jack is observed, and doesn't share his confidences. This is true of thirteen books, so far. It's interesting to me why you'd decide to shift gears. Lee uses the first-person in KILLING FLOOR, PERSUADER, THE ENEMY, GONE TOMORROW, THE AFFAIR, and this book. Oh, you might think, work with the change-up pitch to keep yourself on your toes and avoid getting stale, or to keep your readers invested, over the course of a long and successful run of novels, but it seems to me there's a more calculated narrative choice involved.
Reacher's never been entirely generic - unlike, say, Travis McGee. John MacDonald, famously, never wanted to do a series character, but he got talked into it. McGee has his quirks, but he remains a flat character, until you get to THE GREEN RIPPER, and he steps outside of himself, the formula no longer able to contain him. The dynamic for Reacher, even at the beginning, allows for more expansion and contraction. Lee Child himself has said that he meant from the get-go to write books that would be accessible, and commercial, and that Reacher was a conscious construct, designed - not market-researched, but a means to an end.
He turns out to be more. This is something that happens, and not always by accident. There are other examples. We might start out to write one story, and then find it gets away from us, or a walk-on part suddenly takes center stage, and completely unexpected. But in Reacher's case, Lee Child might have intended a sort of empty vessel, a hero you could inhabit with your own devices and desires, and what he wound up with was somebody whose own devices and desires overtook the original template.
Which brings us back to choosing a voice. In each of the books where Jack himself is speaking, he invites our confidence, and we become complicit. This is, I think, most true of THE ENEMY and THE AFFAIR, which take place in the past, when Jack is still active military. One of my favorite lines, in all of the books, is a throwaway, from THE ENEMY, a seemingly casual remark. Reacher's gone to Germany, and they're outside some big U.S. Army armor base, Baumholder or the like. In the early morning fog, they hear the tanks coming back from a live-fire exercise. The sound of tank treads on pavement, the sound of the 20th century, Reacher thinks to himself, the Wehrmacht, the Soviets putting down the Budapest revolt. One of the rare instances where Reacher is reflective. It's a very telling detail. Jack's not your average lifer.
Also, in THE ENEMY, we get to meet not just Jack's brother Joe, but their mom, with her own past history in the French resistance, something neither of the boys know about. Lee revisits this in PERSONAL. The real zinger in the book, for my money, isn't ninety pages in, with the Russian (no spoilers), but a hundred pages in, the scene afterwards, at Pere Lachaise cemetery, where Jack visits his mother's grave. This is the entire argument for using first-person. We hear Jack's thoughts. We see him revealed.
Vulnerability isn't the first word that comes to mind, with Reacher. Far from it. He's kind of a force of nature, a guy without visible weakness. Big, and certain. Nobody you want to mess with. People do, and live to regret it - or don't. Live, anyway. A hard guy, and unsentimental. A guy you believe in. A guy you want on your side.
I don't think, though, that you believe in Jack Reacher simply because he's an unstoppable force. I think what Lee Child has done, in the course of the books, is to pull off a real hat-trick. You get used to Reacher in some diner by the side of the highway, hoping he's going to get a decent cup of java, or head-butting some asshole cop who gets in his face, just being Jack. What takes you off-guard is the occasional, and sudden, moment of clarity. He assesses the background, his immediate environment, the threat potential, how not? What makes Jack different, what gives him depth, isn't that he examines himself. He doesn't. But he knows who he is.
You could say this is one in a long line. Spade, or Marlowe, Lew Archer. Spenser, and Travis McGee. Kinsey Milhone, for that matter. Lone wolves, who stake out their turf, and make it their own. I beg to differ. Reacher is somehow on another plane. I don't know how to explain it to myself. Not even Bob Lee Swagger - and I bow to none in my admiration for Steve Hunter - but Lee's done something else. He's reinvented the character, he owns Jack Reacher. he speaks with his voice.
We identify with our characters. I do with mine. Lee seems to have actually inhabited Jack. This is a gift, or a kind of magic. I think it's astonishing. We don't all manage it. Not even. Lee got a gift. It wasn't handed to him, by any means, but we take it when the tray is passed.
Posted by David Edgerley Gates at 01:00 7 comments
Labels: author's voice, David Edgerley Gates, Jack Reacher, John D. MacDonald, Lee Child, personal, PoV, Travis McGee
Stranded Again
by John M. Floyd
As I was trying to decide what to write for today, it dawned on me that some of the columns I have enjoyed the most by my fellow Sayers of Sleuth were those that revealed the "story behind the story" for certain pieces of their fiction. In fact I've always been interested in behind-the-scenes, how-I-do-it peeks into the processes writers use to come up with their creations. So, to make a long story short (pun intended), I'm going to try to do some of that today.
First, a little background . . .
In November 2011, not long after SleuthSayers began, I posted a column called "Stranded." In it I mentioned one of my short mystery stories, "Turnabout," that had recently been published in The Strand Magazine. Since then, I've been fortunate enough to have five more stories in The Strand; the latest, called "Molly's Plan," appears in the current issue (June - September 2014). Down here in the Southern hinterlands, I saw a copy of this issue for the first time at our local Barnes & Noble this past weekend, and bought one for me and one for my mother (my Biggest Fan).
The glimmer of an idea for "Molly's Plan" began long ago, when I worked for IBM. My job title for many years was Finance Industry Specialist, which sounds more important than it really was; what I did was work with IBM banking software applications, like teller networks, ATMs, check processing systems, etc., which required me to spend most of my time with clients at their business sites. For me, those sites--or work locations, if you want to call them that--were banks.
One of the zillions of financial institutions I visited in the course of my career was a big gray lump of a building with white columns along the front, at the end of a narrow street that was always jammed with traffic. It was a branch of a regional bank, but it looked more like the fusion of a plantation home and a medieval prison. Even its layout was strange: it offered very few parking spaces, no drive-up windows, and limited access in just about every way. Simply stated, it was hard to get to and hard to leave. Because of this--and because my devious mind leaned toward deviousness even back then--it occurred to me that this bank would be extremely difficult to rob. Or at least difficult to escape from, after being robbed. I mentioned that to the branch manager one day, who confirmed my observation. He told me there had never ever been a robbery there, not even so much as an attempt, and probably never would be. As I later noted in the short story that resulted from all this, "Smart rustlers tend to avoid box canyons." The manager was so confident he didn't even bother to have a rent-a-cop on guard duty.
Bottom line is, my impressions and memories of that real-life location formed, years later, the setting for my story. As you might suspect by now, the plan in "Molly's Plan" was to steal a fortune in cash from the vault of this bank, and get away with it.
In the eye of the beer holder
The only other thing I might mention about the story is that, unlike most of my mysteries, this one includes a lot of different points of view. One scene is from the POV of an unnamed narrator, several are from the bank robber, others are from his wife, from a police officer, from a teller, etc. That's a lot of POV switches, for a story of around 5000 words. Most of my short mystery stories, certainly most of the ten that have so far appeared in The Strand, have only one POV--that of the main character.
So why are there so many points of view, in this story? The answer is simple: I felt it would take that many to properly tell the tale. In this case, I wanted to introduce suspense on several levels, and even though I understand the advantages and intimacy of the first-person and third-person-limited points of view, the one big advantage of third-person-multiple POV is that it allows the writer to build suspense and misdirection in ways that are not possible otherwise. Handled correctly, it can be a win/win situation: the writer can conceal certain facts from the reader by revealing only what a particular character sees and knows at a particular time--and the reader, by seeing the action through the eyes of several different characters over the course of the story, can know things about the plotline that the other characters might not yet know. Maybe there's a burglar hiding in Jane's basement, or the money John found under the park bench belongs to the mafia, or the friendly neighborhood cop is actually one of the killers. Or--as Alfred Hitchcock once said in an interview--oh my God, there's a bomb under the table!
Does that approach work, in this instance? I hope so. All a writer can do is try to sell the editor or publisher on his story, and then trust that if it's accepted the reader will enjoy it as well.
Do you, as writers, find yourselves calling on personal experiences to come up with most of your fictional settings? If so, how close do you come to the real thing? Do you think that kind of familiarity is necessary, or do you let your imagination supply most of what you need? How much detail do you include?
What type of POV do you use most, in your fiction? Does it depend on the form--flash, short, novella-length, novel-length? Or does it depend mostly (as in my case) on the plot? I once heard someone say that your choice of POV should be dictated by how much you want your reader to know and how soon you want your reader to know it.
Have any of you tried submitting to The Strand? If you've not sent them something, I hope you will. They publish three issues a year with four or five stories in each, and their guidelines say they prefer hardcopy submissions of 2000 to 6000 words. (All of mine so far, I think, have been between 4000 and 5000.) Contact information: Andrew Gulli, The Strand Magazine, P.O. Box 1418, Birmingham, MI 48012-1418. And here's a link to their web site.
Try them out--it's a darn good publication, with a great editor.
As for me, I hope to be Stranded again someday. One never knows.
Posted by John Floyd at 00:01 35 comments
Labels: Floyd, PoV, setting, story behind the story, Strand Magazine
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Tess Gerritsen: What Makes Books Fail?
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Privy Council gives seal of approval for merger
When the Privy Council met on the week commencing 6 June 2010, the Queen in Council allowed amendments to be made to the Charter of the Institute of Actuaries, allowing the creation of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.
The Charter was put before the Privy Council following the vote on 25 May 2010 when voting members of the Faculty of Actuaries in Scotland and the Institute of Actuaries voted in favour of resolutions to merge the two organisations and form the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.
Of those Faculty members who voted, 82.9% voted in favour of the resolution to merge and 82.5% of Institute members who voted voted in favour of the resolution to merge. The votes took place at separate general meetings in Edinburgh and London.
Members will be kept up to date with the merger process and timetable and will shortly be receiving a letter outlining the practical implications of the merger.
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Four Movements in Time: An Experience in Synaesthesia, 7pm - March 28th, Chicago
March 17, 2015 johnkcoyle
A week from Saturday we are aiming to confuse the senses and hijack your perception of time through an experimental fusion of art, music, poetry, talk and dance. I hope you will consider joining us. Tickets are available here: Four Movements in Time
Here is the the Program, Music, and Performers:
Four Movements in Time: Syncopated sharing of Poetry, Dance, Music, and Talk centered around the non-linear nature of experiential time
Why is time accelerating? Why did summers as children seem so much longer than they do as adults? Is there any way to design our lives to reverse these trends and instead slow and expand time?
Through a syncopated intersection of art, music, poetry, dance, and a TED talk on the cognitive biases that result in the non-linear processing of time, Ani Gogova (concert pianist), Tess Collins (modern dancer), and John K. Coyle (TED speaker, lyricist) will touch the audience’s senses to demonstrate the three rules that govern "experiential time" and share ways to slow the ticking of the clock to bring back summers as expansive as those when we were children so we can "really live" longer. Art in the room by Karolina Kowalczyk reflects this nostalgia and loss of childhood.
John K. Coyle (talk/poetry) is an horologist, Stanford d.school grad, SVP and Professor of Innovation, Olympic Silver Medalist, NBC commentator/analyst, writer and speaker. As a TEDx presenter and founder of The Art of Really Living movement, John has received rave reviews for his presentations. His passions lie in the areas of innovation, strengths development, and an obsession with the cognitive bias on how we as humans experience time.
Ani Gogova (piano) is an award-winning Bulgarian-American pianist who appears in over 40 performances each season throughout Europe and North America, including broadcasts on NPR, WBEZ, TEDx Talks, and WFMT Chicago. Her work has gathered critical acclaim around the globe and been selected as a top recommendation by Time Out Chicago Magazine and the Chicago Tribune. Gogova holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and she served as a Professor at the world-renowned Music Conservatory of the Chicago College of Performing Arts, Roosevelt University.
Tess Colli ns (dance) graduated from Columbia with a degree in dance, then traveled overseas to further study and receive her yoga teacher training. She's continually creating and performing movement-based work in collaboration with other artists, and as an instructor of various styles. Her curiosity and playfulness on the mind/body/spirit continuum form the base of her movement exploration in choreographic choices and teaching.
Karolina Kowalczyk (art) was born in Raba Wyzna, Poland and has lived in Chicago for the past 20 years. She received a BFA in Illustration from the American Academy of Art and currently works at The Art Institute of Chicago. Her meticulous way of working with paper cut-outs is inspired by her childhood love of stickers and wycinanki (Polish paper art). The pieces are created from many independently drawn elements on paper that are carefully arranged and built up in layers.
Her work is inspired by nostalgia, trauma, loss and childhood and has been featured in shows in Chicago, Michigan and Minnesota. Sample art:
In Time and Temporal Dynamics Tags ani gogova, how to really live longer, john k coyle, karolina kowalczyk, maximizing the non linear nature of experiential time, pianoforte, strengths, synaesthesia, synesthesia, the art of really living
Do Your Strengths Have a Color? Synaesthesia and Talents
December 22, 2014 johnkcoyle
Synaesthesia is one of my new favorite words and concepts. As Wickipedia defines it, synaesthesia (or synesthesia) "is a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes."
Synesthetes often experience this phenomenon in the course of every day life - vowels, for example for many synesthetes have colors where as consonants don't. But I'm particularly interested in the intersection of synaethesia and strengths and talents. What if your strengths and areas of talent have a color or a sound, or both?
For years I've been describing my feelings when in a state of "flow" or deeply immersed in an area of strength as having a color - often a vibrant blue or yellow or orange and conversely moments of weakness as colorless, black or red. What I never talked about and never knew how to articulate is that in these "photisms" or "chromesthesia" episodes I actually SAW these colors, tasted and heard these colors. In fact, my personal form of synaethesia involves color and sound - a hum, or thrumming permeates my brain and I see what I'm doing tinged with vibrant colors of orange, yellow and violet blue that has a fractal nature about it. Examples:
"The pixels of light and darkness captured in the mind’s eye are filled with the pallet of color of the results – hence the memories of winning somehow pull from the yellows, blues and golds, success and color implying a relatively easier effort, while the losses are inevitably painted with the charcoals of those chiaroscuro efforts – blackened, brutish, pain and disappointment closely linked."
"I choose to repaint this race differently. And in so doing what I did accomplish was a unique mastery of the instrument of my body. For over two hours, I played it like the first violinist – drawing out of it with every lash of the straight bow every possible note, every emotion, every tremble of resonance the space of ribs and air and bones was capable of producing."
Conversely when I'm suffering or pursuing a weakness, color and sound disappears... an example:
"The halls of pain echo for an experienced athlete. The suffering is nothing and yet is everything. The pain is white. It is black. It lacks color or sibilant sound – just reverberations reflecting off the porcelain tiles of the stony discipline of the psyche. But blood, glittering red-black blood, pulses through hidden rivulets in the gutters of the mind."
As a kid when I would ride my bike - whenever there was a sprint or an acceleration I would hum inside my head. In the early days it was sort of a motorcycle sound and I assumed it was an artifact not dissimilar to putting a playing card in the spokes to sound like a motor, but over time I just realized I did the same thing when skating or when painting or when working certain subjects in school. Now I get it when I'm writing, riding, racing or traveling.
So an oft repeated question is, "how do I know if something I'm doing is a strength?" "How do I know if something I'm doing is a weakness, or just a skills gap?"
Perhaps one way to know might to be to simply ask, "what color is it? what does it sound like?"
I close every speech on finding your strengths with the following advice: When seeking your strengths, "pay attention to your internal hum: you'll know it when you see it, feel it, hear it."
PS: this whole post was a medium blue, tinged with some yellow.
In Stories of Really Living Tags art of really living, finding strengths, john coyle, john k coyle, strengths, synaesthesia, synesthesia
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The Midi Skirt, Divider of Nations
The demure look returning to runways this year once sparked a cultural uprising as it edged out the mini and angered feminists.
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
Mini-skirted women protest the midi in Miami in 1970 Jim Kerlin/AP
When it made its first blushing appearance in the Spring 2014 collections, the midi skirt brought all the trappings of retro girlishness: flowers, gingham, eyelet, chiffon, pleats, and polka dots. Evoking the demure, ultra-feminine look of the 1950s, it came as a wholesome change after a long winter of dressing for the polar vortex, and it’s back for fall in more iterations than ever.
But few followers of fashion realize that, far from being a ‘50s flashback, the midi is actually a revival of a style that was launched in the late ‘60s and flamed out—spectacularly—in the early ‘70s. The original midi heralded a political and aesthetic revolution in womenswear, and a turning point in American consumer culture.
Richard Chambury/AP
In length and name, the midi of the late 1960s was a direct riposte to the mini, which had arrived in the U.S. from London in 1964 and quickly spread from nightclubs to college campuses and office buildings. Cynics predicted that the shocking style wouldn’t outlast its first summer, but, as temperatures dropped, hemlines stayed put. Women determined to brave the cold in miniskirts simply added thick, colorful tights and boots. The mini endured for years, getting shorter and shorter along the way; first it bared the knees, then the lower thigh, then the entire leg. By 1967, it had no place to go but down.
On June 10, 1968, Women’s Wear Daily banned miniskirts from the office, explaining in a memo: “We all know minis are dead.” Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland immediately countered: “Vogue has made it quite clear that we believe in any length skirt that is becoming to the wearer. The miniskirt looks delicious in the summer with the right legs and the right girl.” This heavily qualified endorsement failed to convince readers. It was the beginning of a slow but inexorable backlash against the mini, which Women’s Wear dubbed the “hemline war.”
As the decade spiraled into social and political chaos, hemlines careened from thigh-high to floor-length. Designers (and customers) reluctant to commit to one length experimented with asymmetrical hemlines, handkerchief hemlines, and long coats paired with short skirts. Some found fashion’s infinite variety freeing; others were frustrated by the constantly changing rules. But the confusion reflected the turbulent, uncertain times—times not unlike our own.
Amid this hemline hemming and hawing, the midi emerged as a chic and cerebral compromise. Today, the term “midi” is applied to knee-length skirts as often as tea-length skirts, and pencil skirts as well as flowing A-lines. But it originally denoted a specific, unforgiving shape: not mid-leg, but mid-calf, widening from the waist to four inches below the knee. It was (and is) a tricky silhouette to pull off without looking stumpy or frumpy. With the wrong shoes, it was a disaster. While not as obviously youthful as the mini, it looked best on young, tall, slim women with the confidence to cover up. Like so many fashion trends, it won style points for degree of difficulty as well as for execution.
A midi from the Italian house Heinz-Riva in 1970 (Torrisi/AP)
Many in the American media blamed the midi on the French, who had championed the “longuette” look in the Fall 1969 Paris collections. But a more likely source of inspiration could be found closer to home, in Theadora Van Runkle’s costumes for the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, set in Depression-era Texas. Faye Dunaway’s instantly iconic berets, clinging sweaters, and calf-length skirts in earthy shades and textures proved an irresistible alternative to micro-minis in synthetic fabrics and day-glo colors. In 1970, Show magazine reflected: “Probably no one imagined at the time that the most far-reaching contribution Bonnie and Clyde would leave to our acid-rock-pop generation was its influence on fashion. Nor that Theadora Van Runkle ... would become responsible for the midis and braless bosoms that are the trademark of the early seventies. But that’s just what happened.”
Far from saccharine nostalgia, then, the midi represented gritty glamour for fashion outlaws. According to designer Chester Weinberg, who made the midi his signature, it was “almost as a direct reflection of the women’s moment. It’s for those who don’t particularly care about what men think about the way they dress.” By 1970, the midi had replaced the mini in fashion magazines and boutiques, if not necessarily in the hearts of consumers.
While some praised the midi’s intellectual or feminist qualities, Time magazine condemned it as “ungainly, unflattering and unwarranted.” Coco Chanel called it “awkward” (though she reserved her strongest vitriol for the mini). For many men newly accustomed to seeing the female leg on full display for the first time in history, it was an unwelcome step backwards.
Midis in The Australian Women's Weekly, 20 September 1978 (Bess Georgette/Flickr)
More offensive than the midi’s appearance was the marketing juggernaut behind it, which seemed oblivious to public opinion. On October 2, 1970, the Wall Street Journal summarized the “much-scorned but also much-promoted” style in a damning headline: “Women Call it Sleazy, Dowdy, Depressing; but Designers Say It Will Catch On Yet.” Indeed, the New Yorker warned that “no amount of protest will stem the tide of the longer skirt”—the fashion industry had too much invested in it. Shoppers looking for miniskirts found racks stuffed with midis, with a few maxis, pantsuits, and gaucho pants (whose full, calf-length silhouette mimicked the midi) thrown in for variety. Bonwit Teller even banned its saleswomen from wearing minis on the shop floor.
Ironically, feminism became the midi’s worst enemy; liberated women refused to purchase whole new wardrobes just because fashion magazines told them to. In an October 1970 article titled “Fashion Fascism: The Politics of Midi,” the San Francisco counterculture fashion magazine Rags decried the midi as a capitalist “conspiracy”; in addition to being “cumbersome and matronly” it had “built-in obsolescence.” (How this differentiated it from any other fashion trend, the magazine did not specify.) With inflation on the rise, the midi was an economic encumbrance, too; the longer length required a higher price point.
The warring interests of consumers, retailers, and the fashion press culminated in what Newsweek called “the midi-skirt debacle of 1970.” One midwestern shopkeeper complained in a letter to Women’s Wear Daily in mid-August: “You are doing quite a disservice to the manufacturers and retailers by trying to promote a fashion that the customers are not ready for.” Vogue suffered a 38 percent drop in ad revenue in the first three months of 1971; many of its advertisers had been burned by the backlash. Vreeland was unceremoniously demoted to consulting editor in May, but the damage was done: Consumer confidence in fashion magazines—and the fashion industry in general—was replaced by a rebellious cynicism.
Richard Garlinghouse protests the midi in a billboard in San Francisco in 1970 (Sal Veder/AP)
In spite of resistance to the midi, the fashion for miniskirts did wane, if only because it was virtually impossible to buy one. For many women, pants provided an attractive and suitably feminist alternative to the much-maligned midi. As Halston told the New York Times in 1971: “It’s all part of women’s liberation. Pants give women the freedom to move around they’ve never had before. They don’t have to worry about getting into low furniture or low sportscars. Pants will be with us for many years to come—probably forever if you can make that statement in fashion.” His words proved to be prophetic. However, at a time when women in pants were banned from many restaurants and offices, they were not quite the practical solution he described. The midi still had its uses.
In August 1974, the New York Times sounded the death knell for the midi, reporting that “women stayed away in droves, forcing several couture houses and small manufacturers into bankruptcy and the apparel industry into a tailspin.” Weinberg’s label was one of the casualties. Other retailers reportedly chopped off their unsold midis and marketed them as minis. The Fresno Bee even printed an obituary: “DEAD: THE MIDI DRESS, FROM ACUTE REJECTION BY THE AMERICAN WOMAN.”
This fall, the ladylike midi of the spring collections takes a more sophisticated, streetwise turn, in tweeds, tartans, and jewel-toned satins paired with tall boots and turtlenecks, perhaps with a sliver of skin showing at the waist. Gone are the flowers and polka dots; the new midis are darker, weightier, with a look that is more feminist ‘70s than feminine ‘50s. And the fashion industry has learned its lesson; midis are just one of many fall silhouettes. Whether to scare us or reassure us, gaucho pants are back.
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell is a fashion historian based in Los Angeles and the author of Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.
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Home More Sparks Between Catholics and Evangelicals
More Sparks Between Catholics and Evangelicals
Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from the Ventura County Star, March 1, 2003, with the headline: “Catholic-Turned-Evangelical Sparks Controversy at Church Gathering—Mike Gendron explains that he says the things he does are out of love and kindness. ‘The only reason I do it is out of compassion for Roman Catholics, who believe a different gospel,’ he said, from the headquarters of his Proclaiming the Gospel Ministries in Plano, Texas. ‘The Bible says there is only one way to heaven.’
“A week ago Thursday night, the Catholic-turned-evangelical Christian delivered a presentation on his former faith that caused the senior pastor of a Simi Valley church to say it was a mistake to host the event. It also prompted offended Catholics to challenge the practice of people of one faith passing judgment on another.
“Before an audience of about 200 people at Cornerstone Community Church, Gendron contended evangelical Christianity is based on the Bible’s gospel and the belief Jesus is the only way to salvation. He said scriptures do not support many Catholic teachings, including the road to heaven, purgatory, views of Mary, and the role of the Eucharist.
“‘It’s more than wrong,’ said Janice Daurio, a church-trained instructor of Catholicism, as well as a Moorpark college professor of philosophy and religion. She contends one-perspective teachings on religious differences only pull people apart. ‘I think it’s harmful,’ said Daurio, who complained about Cornerstone’s previous presentations on Catholic beliefs and asked church leaders to cancel Gendron’s event. ‘I think Jesus would look in the eyes of someone of a different tradition and say, ‘How happy am I that God made you!’
“Daurio’s husband, Paul Ford, is a Catholic theologian who earned his doctorate at evangelical Fuller Seminary in Pasadena and now teaches at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo. They challenged many of Gendron’s claims. ‘Catholicism teaches that Jesus and not Mary is the only mediator between people and God,’ they said. ‘People’s good deeds don’t earn them salvation but can be used to measure the strength of their faith. The Eucharist is complicated, but suggesting as Gendron does, that Catholics believe Jesus returns to church altars around the world many thousands of times every day in the form of a wafer is offensive,’ they said. ‘Each Eucharist ceremony is a reminder of Christ’s sacrifice. It’s not that they read the Bible and we read something else, but that we don’t agree on certain interpretations,’ said Daurio, calling some scriptures ‘vague’ and ‘ambiguous.’
“But Gendron sees the Bible’s gospel as black and white, just like his obligation to show people what he believes is absolute truth. He left the Catholic Church in favor of evangelical Christianity 19 years ago. He says his teachings are based on formal Catholic resources, including the Church Catechism.
“A Catholic from a Westlake Village Church hid his name but stayed long after the lecture to vent frustration. ‘I felt bad for the other 200 people in there,’ he said. ‘They went away with the impression that this is the way Catholics believe.’
“The Reverend Francis Chan, senior pastor of Cornerstone Community Church, said he agreed with what some of what Gendron presented but was worried because parts felt cold and sarcastic. He heard from Catholics who agreed with Gendron, Chan said, but he worried others felt belittled. ‘We thought by bringing in a guy who had been part of the Catholic Church that long, it would give us a different perspective,’ he said. ‘In hindsight, I wish I had one of my pastors do the seminar.’
“Chan is considering a follow-up forum dealing with Catholicism to ‘sort of set the record straight.’ Chan said, ‘People can’t use a broad brush to characterize the way all Catholics believe.’ He said, ‘Some are certainly Christians and some probably aren’t, the same as with any church that builds itself as Christian. And virtually every doctrine that can be found in evangelical Christianity is also reflected in Catholicism.’ But Chan believes Catholics have padded their Bible teachings with other traditions and lessons. ‘At some point, if you keep adding it’s no longer the same,’ he said.”
Tom: Dave, earlier I mentioned that…you’re pulling your hair out…this article really upsets me, not just because I’m a former Catholic and that I know Mike, but there are issues here: Mike was invited to this church to present the differences between Roman Catholicism and what the Bible teaches and so on. We’ve seen his presentation many times—I have, especially—and he’s laying it out.
They have some Catholics here who are being interviewed, and they are presenting a view of Roman Catholicism that is not true to the Catechism, to any of the teachings of the Church that I know. Then the pastor is upset because they’re upset. Now, this relates to what we were talking about earlier, that Mike is presenting the truth—he knew he was going to meet opposition prior to coming to the church, and he was very sensitive to that. So he wanted to lay out as objective a presentation as he could. But 40 Catholics that were involved in this—they didn’t want to hear it.
Dave: But the problem, Tom, is in this article we don’t get his objective presentation. All we get are the criticisms of other people, and reading it, you would have to sympathize with them, unless you know the facts. They say, “Well, one philosophy is as good as another.” Well, that’s not true. “Jesus would look in the eyes of somebody from another faith and say, ‘I’m glad that God made you.’” No, Jesus would present the truth to them.
Tom: What about the Eucharist? Their presentation of the Eucharist as it is thought by the Roman Catholic Church is so far removed from any of the official teachings to be ludicrous. And this man—well, he studied…got his degree at Fuller Seminary—there’s an interesting deal. And now he’s teaching in a Catholic seminary.
Dave: But Tom, the problem with this article is it doesn’t give the real Catholic teaching on the Eucharist. So all you can do is say, “Well, I guess these guys are telling us the truth because they’re Catholics.” That’s the same thing we have with Muslims today saying Islam is peace. You never get the other side in a newspaper article. Mike is not given a fair shake in this article. He has laid out the evidence that the Catholic gospel is a false gospel. It adds works and rituals, sacraments, and so forth, but you wouldn’t get that. I don’t see that Mike has been able to respond at all in this article.
Tom: No, not at all, but nevertheless he had this experience of going to this church and then, he was about to give a Q and A, and say, “All right, now let’s have an interaction.” The pastor stood up and said, “No!” He was offended by what Mike had to say, and he began ten minutes of apology to the audience! Wow!
Dave: It’s sad that political correctness seems to rule the day. When it comes to Islam, we must be politically correct; when it comes to Catholicism, we must be politically correct. Rather let someone go to hell than offend their feelings. There is something really sad out there, Tom. Christians don’t think—we don’t recognize that truth is truth. It is black and white; you can’t compromise, you don’t dialogue with God, you don’t re-negotiate with God. The Bible has made it very clear exactly what the gospel is. It’s a matter of justice. God is the one who makes the rules. He created this universe; He created us. We’re going to have to go His way, and Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man comes to the Father but by me.” But these people think that’s too narrow minded.
The Catholic Church is not true to the gospel of Jesus Christ, as you know, but we don’t want to point that out because that might offend someone. Let’s let them go to hell.
Tom: See, Dave, there’s another point here. First of all, the pastor is right. You don’t want to present something in such an offensive way that you’re taking away from the truth that you are presenting. But then he says, “And virtually every doctrine that can be found in evangelical Christianity is also reflected in Catholicism.”
Dave: That’s simply not true. They have different meanings for words. They can use the same words—like a Mormon can talk about God, but God for him is a man who was redeemed by another Jesus on another planet. They talk about “God,” but they all hope to become gods. So Catholicism can talk about Jesus Christ, but He didn’t pay the full penalty for our sins. They deny what the Bible says that the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ was sufficient, and they are re-offering Christ, re-presenting Him—Christ is being sacrificed on their altars over and over and over. It’s exactly true what Mike says….
Tom: According to their teachings.
Dave: Exactly, but sadly, this article doesn’t give you the true perspective.
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Adeboye promises manifestation of God’s grace as RCCG convention kicks off
by Bisi Daniels 1 Comment
Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), has promised “great manifestations of God’s power and grace” upon the lives of participants at the church’s 66th annual convention.
The convention, which began on Thursday with a ministers conference, formally starts on today and runs till Sunday. The theme is ‘Dominion’.
Already, streams of participants from around the world have been pouring into the Redemption Camp, which according to the estimation of Pastor Adeboye, during the monthly Thanksgiving Service of the church on Sunday, was almost half full.
He advised participants not to miss it because it will be one of a kind. Giving a background of the theme, he said, “Dominion was God’s original mandate for mankind at creation: for man to dominate, to rule, to control, to subdue; to be fruitful and to exercise authority on earth.
“However,” he said, “man lost the authority to rule and dominate when Adam and Eve fell; and became subject to all manner of failures, sickness and oppression.
“But thanks be to God, who made a way for us to regain lost power and authority through Jesus Christ, who became for us the Author of Salvation.”
Recalling God’s mandate to mankind to be “fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it,” he said God wants us to be successful, prosperous, abundant, rewarding, productive.
Adeboye charged that if we want the reward that God desires, then we have to operate the way God operates.
He reiterated this at the Thanksgiving Service on Sunday, when he showed from the Lord’s Prayer that all power belongs to God – “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever”.
Then he said that to dominate in all areas of life – spiritually, financially, socially and politically – we have to tap into that source of power, which is Jesus Christ.
According to a statement from the church, the weeklong convention that will attract millions of worshipers from across the world will hold for the first three days at the Old Auditorium within the Redemption Camp, and move to The Arena, the new auditorium at Simawa, for the remaining three days.
Events for this year’s convention will include the ordination of deacons/deaconesses, assistant pastors and pastors as well as the graduation of newly trained officers from the mission’s Bible College to assist the nurturing the growing number of entrants to the church. There will also be group and special seminars.
Each day, the convention will start at 8am and end with a plenary session of sermons late into the night, sometimes spilling over into the next morning
Apart from the millions of people at the Redemption Camp, thousands more will participate through viewing centres across the world. The church has a strong presence in over 195 countries.
The 66-year-old church, which was founded in 1952 by Pastor Josiah Akindayomi, started at 9 Willoughby Street and remained there until they were able to acquire a piece of land at the present site of the Headquarters of the church at 1-5 Redemption Way, Ebute-Metta, Lagos (formerly 1a, Cemetery Street).
In the early 1970s, Pastor Akindayomi, who Pastor Adeboye calls my Father-in-the-Lord, started to look for an educated successor, who had been spiritually revealed to him, but who was not a member of the church yet.
He eventually found Pastor Adeboye, a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Lagos, who joined the church in 1973.
From 40 parishes, including the headquarters parish, in 1981, RCCG has spread to over 195 countries. There are at least 732 branches in the UK and Ireland.
chioma August 06, 13:11
Glory to GOD.Thank God am alive to witness another RCCG convention……am already dominating. Hallelluyah
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From the Record Crate: Whitney Houston – “Whitney” (1987)
Katie Gill June 2, 2017 0 0
When it was released on June 2, 1987, Whitney wasn’t exactly praised by the press. The album, the second album from singer Whitney Houston, received a lot of comparisons to her first album, Whitney Houston. Whitney was seen as Houston bringing nothing new to the table, staying within the range established by her first album. Critics from The Associated Press and The Los Angeles Times criticized the lack of depth in the songs and in Houston’s vocals. And honestly? I can see some of that. Songs like “You’re Still My Man,” “Where You Are,” and “Love Will Save the Day” are 1980s album filler that doesn’t really bring much to the table. But where Whitney excels, it excels.
The album’s best known for its first single “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” arguably one of Houston’s most famous songs. It’s pop perfection. “Dance” is five minutes of bubbly fun, a beautifully bright song that does exactly what it needs to do. Houston wants to dance with somebody and the song is just so infectious that it makes you feel like you want to dance as well. It’s such a well-crafted song: each second of those five minutes is perfectly crafted so that despite the fact that the song is kind of long, it doesn’t feel it in the slightest. That key change around the three minute mark and Houston giving it all on the final “don’t you want to dance” is just a cherry on top. The video is likewise pop perfection: it’s bright and neon, with day-glo eyeshadow and neon backgrounds, visuals that perfectly match the feel of the song. Both song and video are veeeeery much products of the time, but that doesn’t make them any less amazing and any less catchy.
Whitney also lets Houston embrace a stronger side. While “Dance” is undoubtedly the most famous song off the album, there are two other contenders for the Houston greatest hits collection: “Didn’t We Almost Have It All” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go.” Both are wonderfully dramatic power ballads, with key changes every minute or so and the opportunity for Houston to inject so much pathos and melodrama in every word.
Whitney Houston goes peak Whitney Houston in both ballads, showing off her range and her voice as she belts the final choruses with technical precision, effortlessly hitting those high notes and proving her status in the pantheon of pop divas. This is Houston bringing the power, showing off just how powerful and amazing her voice is, despite the fact that the songs themselves are kind of cheesy: most notably “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” a cornball Frank Wildhorn penned song that Houston herself initially didn’t want to record. Still, she sells it, pouring emotion, technique, and sheer POWER into the song, propelling it all the way to the top of the charts. It wasn’t the song itself that helped get it that far–it was Houston’s delivery that made people stand up and take notice.
Perhaps the song that best sums up my response the album is “I Know Him So Well.” It needs to be stated again that Houston was just a SINGER, not a singer-songwriter. Her job is to take previously written material and sell it, making the song a Whitney Houston song instead of a whoever-wrote-it song. Here we have her and her mother Cissy Houston covering an already-established song: “I Know Him So Well” is from the musical Chess, written by Tim Rice and Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of Abba fame, originally sung by Elaine Page and Barbara Dickson. The technical precision on “why am I falling apart” and the last chorus is downright astonishing. Both Houstons effortlessly make the song their own, adding in a few typical Whitney Houston flourishes while staying true to the original spirit of the song.
That’s why Whitney still remains essential listening for any fans of Houston or any fans of 1980s pop music in general. Yes, the album is uneven as hell. But thanks to Houston’s technical prowess, amazing voice, and ability to downright sell a song, when Whitney is good, it’s absolutely amazing.
Tags from the record crate Whitney whitney houston
Katie Gill
Katie Gill is a pop culture writer who enjoys girl groups, C-list superheroes, and country ballads about being a hot mess. When she's not writing, she's exceedingly mediocre at a wide assortment of arts and crafts and spends way too much time talking about her dog.
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Survey: 45% Of U.S. Adults Not Familiar With Annuities
NU Online News Service, Sept. 9, 2003, 6:03 p.m. EDT -- Sixty-eight percent of U.S. adults interviewed said they believed they would need at ...
By Staff Writer | September 09, 2003 at 08:00 PM | Originally published on Lifehealthpro
NU Online News Service, Sept. 9, 2003, 6:03 p.m. EDT – Sixty-eight percent of U.S. adults interviewed said they believed they would need at least 75% of today’s income when they retire, but fewer than one in four participants between the ages of 40 and 59 reported having more than $100,000 in retirement savings, according to retirement readiness income survey results released by GE Financial, Richmond, Va.
Researchers from Opinion Research Corp., Princeton, N.J., polled 1,010 U.S. adults for GE Financial in March. Forty-one percent of the participants were unfamiliar with the concept of retirement planning, and only 24% of the participants who were familiar with the concept were using the services of professional financial advisors, GE Financial says.
Forty-five percent of the participants did not know what an annuity is.
GE Financial is a unit of General Electric Company, Fairfield, Conn.
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Progress for Pension Reform
Members of Congress and the Department of Labor (DOL) are moving full steam ahead with their plans to reform the pension system. In late April, Reps....
By Melanie Waddell | June 01, 2005 at 04:00 AM | Originally published on Investment Advisor
Members of Congress and the Department of Labor (DOL) are moving full steam ahead with their plans to reform the pension system.
In late April, Reps. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) introduced their pension reform bills. At press time, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, was gearing up to introduce his bill designed to fix the ailing defined benefit system. Boehner’s bill will also include a provision on investment advisors providing advice to plan participants. Rick Lawson, VP of federal government relations for The Principal Financial Group, says he’s confident that Boehner’s bill “will allow advisors to give investment advice to plan participants.” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) reintroduced his reform bill, the National Employee Savings and Trust Equity Guarantee Act (NESTEG), in February. Grassley, along with Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, the ranking member who co-sponsored NESTEG, are planning more changes to the bill this summer, including a provision addressing the investment advice issue. Grassley also plans to introduce his Social Security bill this summer. Meanwhile, the DOL is mulling a number of regulatory initiatives, including providing guidance on fee disclosure and on what types of information plan sponsors should report to DOL.
Portman’s bill, The Individual and Workplace Retirement Savings Promotion Act of 2005, HR 1960, and Cardin’s bill, the Pension Preservation and Savings Expansion Act, HR 1961, are virtually the same. Both would create Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs), which mirror Roth IRAs but would be made available to Americans of all income levels. Each bill would also allow tax refunds to be directly deposited into retirement accounts. Both bills also promote automatic enrollment and automatic increases in retirement plans. With automatic enrollment, employees automatically participate in their employer’s plan unless they opt out. With automatic increases, also known as auto acceleration, employee contribution levels increase automatically each year unless the plan participant opts out. Both bills would also make all of the retirement savings and pension reform initiatives that were contained in the 2001 tax relief act–catch-up provisions, contributions to small-business pension incentives, expanded IRAs and 401(k)s–permanent.
Another provision contained in both bills would ensure that workers moving between tax-exempt and for-profit employers can roll over their after-tax contributions and would permit direct rollovers from employer retirement plans to Roth IRAs. The Roth 401(k)–which is not yet effective–would be “repealed” under both bills. Portman and Cardin argue that Roth 401(k)s only further convolute the crowded retirement marketplace and that the plans would “lose significant amounts of revenue over time,” according to summaries of the bills.
The Portman and Cardin bills would also reform the minimum required distribution rules, which force folks to begin taking their retirement plan distributions by age 70, by indexing this age to future increases in life expectancy. In addition, those individuals with less than $100,000 in their combined IRA and 403(b) accounts would be exempt from the rules.
Rep. Boehner laid out some of the specifics of his bill during a conference held by the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries (ASPPA) in Washington last month. He said his bill, which has yet to be named, differs from the Bush Administration’s proposal on how to fix the DB system. “The Administration’s proposal includes a yield curve, which is controversial,” Boehner said. “We need to look at the DB rules or more people will be driven out of them.”
Lawson of The Principal says Boehner “wants a permanent interest rate fix as opposed to a permanent interest rate. He is going to introduce some type of modified yield curve, unlike the Administration’s.” Lawson says Boehner’s bill will likely include interest rate assumptions for “three buckets” of employees and participants–young, middle-aged, and older. “We also think that there will be more interest rate smoothing allowed under [Boehner's] approach,” Lawson says. “Rather than using today’s interest rate, you smooth [the interest rate] out over a period of time so that it more accurately reflects what you expect to happen.” The current law is that you smooth the rate out over a four-year period, he explains. “The Administration is cutting that back to 90 days, which would make it very volatile. We’re thinking Boehner wants two years, but we haven’t seen that in writing.”
Adds Lawson: “I think what Congress is trying to do is enact permanent rules that will lead to more stability in the [DB] system. Right now with the corporate bond interest rate expiring at the end of the year, there is a lack of stability.”
Indeed, in reintroducing their NESTEG bill–which was introduced last year but didn’t go anywhere–Grassley said it’s “critically important to remove the uncertainty in our pension system by enacting a permanent replacement to the 30-year Treasury rate for pension funding.” Last year, Congress approved a temporary replacement of the 30-year Treasury rate with a long-term corporate bond rate for pension funding purposes. NESTEG, Grassley said, “includes a permanent replacement of the 30-year Treasury rate with a yield curve based on corporate bond rates.”
Boehner also said his bill will “ensure that cash balance plans remain a viable part of DB plans.” The fight in saving cash balance plans will center on how conversions will occur, he said. Lawson points out that some in the industry argue that some of the past cash balance plan conversions were illegal because they discriminated against older workers. The argument being used “is that if you believe that some of the past conversions have been discriminatory, and you grandfather them, then you’d be grandfathering practices that you don’t like,” Lawson says. “Boehner’s approach, which is correct, is that pension plans are voluntary, so we shouldn’t be putting mandates on them. Therein lies the rub with making past conversions legal.”
Some seven million workers participate in cash balance plans, which are not covered under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). According to The Principal, in a traditional defined benefit plan, employees earn most of their benefits after 20 to 30 years of employment, and DB plans often encourage early retirement. Cash balance plans, on the other hand, deliver benefits throughout a person’s career and offer portability for mobile workers–those who interrupt their careers to raise a family, as well as those who work into their retirement years.
Boehner also said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that giving advisors the authority to offer investment advice to plan participants “will be finished this year.” Don Trone, president of the Center for Fiduciary Studies in Pittsburgh, says that Boehner’s bill will also state that the advice must meet a fiduciary standard of care. “The Department of Labor has never provided a safe harbor that defines what a fiduciary is,” he says. “The Boehner bill will.”
Boehner also said the Bush Admin- istration’s proposal needs modifications in some areas. “Multi-employer plans must be addressed,” he said in his speech before ASPPA. Moreover, Boehner argues that ERISA’s 30-year-old framework needs to be modernized, and promises, “We are going to look at this.”
Two Forms of Reform
Michele Varnhagen, minority labor counsel for the House Education and the Workforce Committee, also spoke at the ASPPA conference. She said pension reform will come in two forms. The first will be legislation introduced by Boehner, Grassley, and Baucus; the second will come from the FY 2006 budget. The budget includes funding for The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), which faces a $23.3 billion deficit. The Administration plans to raise PBGC premiums paid by the companies sponsoring the plans to $30 from the current $19 to help shrink the shortfall.
Robert Doyle, director of regulations and interpretations at DOL, told conference goers that DOL is attempting to “provide certainty to employers on when to put money into their DB plans.” DOL “is struggling to define what that period is,” he said. DOL hopes to have a proposal out this summer, he said, which will include a voluntary safe harbor. The Principal’s Lawson says, however, that since modifications are being planned for DB funding rules, “it’s more difficult to look at some of the changes in regulation when the whole underlying law might be changed.”
Another issue that DOL is looking at is fee disclosure, according to Doyle. “We have an imperative to provide guidance on fee disclosure,” he said. “Plan participants should be able to evaluate fees,” pointing to the SEC’s simultaneous probe of investment advisors providing advice to pension consultants having to disclose conflicts of interest. Doyle said a DOL working group is addressing the issue on two levels. “A plan fiduciary needs to know how to evaluate the reasonableness of compensation, and what their fiduciary duties are under the plan,” he said. Plus, “employers must assess if there are conflicts of interest and ask themselves whether the fees are reasonable.” Doyle said there could be “room for improvement” to a model fee disclosure rule that was drafted in the 1990s, but said he’s not sure if changes should come in the form of regulation. Doyle did note that DOL has “heard there are a lot of efforts by mutual funds to provide more information to plan sponsors.”
Another item on DOL’s regulatory agenda is deciding on the types of information plan sponsors should report to DOL, Doyle said. “We are adding a new project to our regulatory agenda–40AB2, reasonable compensation and reasonable arrangements.” The proposal will go out for public comment. “We are working through how to make this new rule require the service provider to disclose information as opposed to putting the onus on the fiduciary.”
DOL is also looking at the content of the annual reporting form, 5500, and the way it should be filed. Only 7% of the forms are filed electronically, he said, which means there is a huge paper trail. “We have to move to an electronically filed system,” Doyle said.
Washington Bureau Chief Melanie Waddell can be reached at mwaddell@investmentadvisor.com.
Melanie Waddell
Melanie is Washington Bureau Chief, Investment Advisory Group. She also covers regulatory and compliance issues and writes The Playing Field column and Human Capital briefing. Reach her at mwaddell@alm.com. On twitter: @Think_MelanieW
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Fire damages New Philadelphia rental property
Jon Baker TimesReporter.com staff writer @jbakerTRStaff Reporter
NEW PHILADELPHIA A fire Sunday morning caused $50,000 in damage to the structure and $12,000 to the contents of a two-story wood frame house at 630 Blake Ave. SW.
Firefighters were called to the scene at 9:49 a.m.
"When we arrived on the scene, we found fire and smoke showing from the rear of the house on the second floor," said New Philadelphia Fire Capt. Wes Tucke. "Crews made entry and found heavy fire on the second floor in the bedroom and bathroom area."
They had the fire under control in 20 minutes. The fire was contained to the second floor, but there was some water damage to the first floor kitchen area.
Three people were home at the time of the fire - two adults and a child. Tucke said a neighbor saw the fire and notified the residents, who were unaware of the blaze.
No one was injured.
Tucke said the fire started in the ceiling in the bathroom. The cause is being listed as accidental undetermined.
New Philadelphia was assisted by firefighters from Dover and Uhrichsville.
The family who was renting the house has been put up in a hotel by the Red Cross.
According to the Tuscarawas County Auditor's Office, the structure was built in 1900.
Reach Jon at 330-364-8415
or at jon.baker@timesreporter.com.
On Twitter: @jbakerTR
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The Football Association and Wembley Stadium
UCFB has enjoyed a strong and mutually beneficial relationship with Wembley Stadium connected by EE – operated by Wembley National Stadium Limited (WNSL), a subsidiary of The Football Association – since first agreeing to join forces in February 2013 and in doing so creating the UCFB Wembley campus.
The long-term partnership with WNSL saw the institution take over 60,000 square feet of existing space on the first four floors of the stadium’s south west quadrant, including four lecture theatres, 16 seminar rooms, social learning space, a large 350-seated refectory area, library and media suite. UCFB also hosts its own entrance to the stadium.
Understanding the football industry and where those transferable skills might be applied is of great benefit. For a UCFB student to have that broader knowledge also gives them more ideas of where they might find their mark in the football industry.
Jane BatemanHead of International Relations at The Football Association
Upon first announcing the partnership, UCFB Chairman & Chief Executive Brendan Flood, spoke highly of Wembley Stadium and the natural expansion from UCFB’s roots in Burnley to the home of football.
He said: “We have attracted professional and student interest from across the world and it was always apparent that from our relatively small beginnings at Turf Moor, our institution would quickly develop. Wembley Stadium is the natural – and in some respects only – choice for expansion. It is a global brand in its own right and the spiritual home, in many ways, of the global game.”
Football and sport is a global industry which impacts on the lives of millions. UCFB is about ensuring we are equipping the future leaders of the game with the right skills to manage it in the best interests of everyone.
Brendan Flood UCFB Chairman and Chief Executive
UCFB graduate and Event Manager at The Football Association Ben Friend
Wembley Stadium is a busy place these days, just ask UCFB graduate Ben Friend. If it isn’t England internationals, it’s FA Cup matches. Then there’s the numerous games around the country with the Women’s team and the Under-21 side.
Find out more about The Football Association
As a multi-purpose venue, Wembley Stadium hosts some of the biggest sporting events outside football including boxing and NFL matches
With a capacity of 90,000, it is the largest stadium in the UK and the second-largest stadium in Europe
The distinctive Wembley Arch is 440 feet high, and has a span of just over 1,000 feet, making it the world's longest single span roof
The iconic Wembley Stadium is at the heart of the UCFB Wembley campus and provides a unique, immersive experience for students
Built on the site of the original Wembley Stadium, the new arena was opened in 2007
The unique opportunities available at UCFB to undertake work placements within the football and sports industry will enable you to develop your skills and knowledge further, while experiencing first-hand what it’s like to work in this fast-paced and exciting environment.
With the iconic Wembley Stadium at its heart, our UCFB Wembley campus provides a truly inspiring learning environment with world-class facilities in one of the most exciting cities in the world.
Open days and events Book onto an open day
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Menu Inside UEFA
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nav_insideuefa - UEFA's commitment to developing women's football - News
UEFA's commitment to developing women's football
With seven of the eight quarter-finalists at the FIFA Women's World Cup having come from Europe, the solid development foundations laid by UEFA, its national associations and clubs seem to be bearing fruit.
England are one of several European teams to shine at the FIFA Women's World Cup ©Getty Images
Women's football in Europe is flourishing. With the FIFA Women's World Cup semi-finals due to get under way on Tuesday, the continent boasts three teams in the last four, having also provided seven of the eight quarter-finalists.
UEFA HatTrick funding helped to build the Swiss Women's Football Academy in Biel/Bienne©UEFA.com
UEFA has been doing its part by actively promoting the development of women's football. The UEFA Women's Football Development Programme (WFDP) has been running since 2012, with each association receiving €100,000 every year specifically for growing the women's game. From 2020, this figure will rise by 50%, with each association set to benefit from an annual €150,000.
HatTrick is funded from revenues from the UEFA European Championship and by 2020 will have invested more than €1.8bn back into the game since its introduction following UEFA EURO 2004. The scheme has helped UEFA member associations build or renovate football infrastructure and invest in projects to develop football at all levels, including grassroots football, women's football and elite youth player development.
The current HatTrick cycle, which runs until 2020, will lead to a total of €610.5m being distributed among UEFA's 55 member associations over a four-year period. For each previous cycle, more than 70% of the funding has been invested in order to upgrade football infrastructure, such as pitches, stadiums and national training centres, in order to ensure that everyone has access to football.
UEFA has invested millions of euros into women's football development projects across Europe©LFF
"The potential for women's football is limitless and, with this in mind, UEFA has taken the step of increasing the funding available to the national associations to help improve the women's game across the continent," said UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin. "Increasing the participation and the role of women in football has been one of my main objectives, both before and after I became UEFA president."
Increased funding
The guidance, expertise, advice and resources synonymous with the WFDP are intended to give UEFA and its member associations the chance to put ambitious visions into practice, as well as allowing associations to advance in accordance with their respective needs.
So far, the WFDP has funded 459 applications to the tune of €82.2m across all 55 UEFA associations, with regional stakeholders also becoming inspired to invest further in order to develop women's football at a local level.
Nadine Kessler visits a UEFA Women's Football Development Programme project in Poland©UEFA
Over 50% of these applications, and around €31m in funding, have centred on grassroots projects, creating opportunities for girls and women to play the game. Meanwhile, a total of €12m has been invested into 94 club and league development projects, aimed at boosting both professionalism and administrative capabilities; additionally, 78 projects, representing €13.5m of funding, have helped FAs to enhance their elite youth pathways, coaching and development, resulting in a higher level of elite player and higher standards at the very top of the women's game.
"It's just great to see that football has become a more natural choice for girls – which means we are on the right track of changing perceptions around the world – and that efforts to make the sport more accessible are paying off," said UEFA head of women's football Nadine Kessler, a three-time UEFA Women's Champions League winner.
"All I ever wanted was to be a footballer, so it fills me with pride that more and more girls feel the same. There's no real reason why girls shouldn't fall in love with the game the same way boys do."
Changing perceptions
Fans from across Europe have flocked to watch the tournament©Getty Images
Certainly, women's football has never been in a stronger position. UEFA Women's EURO 2017 in the Netherlands attracted a global cumulative live audience of 178 million viewers for the tournament, while its aggregate of 240,045 spectators beat the previous record of 216,888 set at the 2013 finals in Sweden. Meanwhile, fans from across Europe have flocked to France this summer to watch the Women's World Cup, while supporters have been watching in record numbers at home, which bodes well for the next UEFA Women's Euro in England in 2021.
Players such as Lucy Bronze and Lieke Martens, both stars of the current tournament in France, have become global names in their own right and role models to young girls around Europe and beyond.
It was to help ensure that young girls have the opportunity to emulate their favourites that, back in June 2017, UEFA launched the Together #WePlayStrong campaign. This initiative strives to transform perceptions of women's football and encourage girls to take up and continue playing the game.
A crucial goal of Together #WePlayStrong is to make teenage girls aware that football is also a game for girls, while highlighting the benefits of playing the sport and pointing the way to grassroots possibilities in each area.
Olympique Lyonnais won the UEFA Women's Champions League final in Budapest©Sportsfile
Though currently some 1.3 million girls and women play for clubs throughout Europe, the target is to extend this number to 2.5 million by 2024, in line with the UEFA Women's Football Strategy unveiled on the eve of May's UEFA Women's Champions League final in Budapest.
'Time for Action: UEFA Women's Football Strategy 2019–24' will focus on building the foundations within UEFA and its associations to guarantee European women's football the best platform to thrive. UEFA will invest in programmes and initiatives to support a balanced delivery of this plan from grassroots to elite levels.
"Women's football is the football of today; it is not the football of tomorrow. It is UEFA's duty as European governing body to empower the women's game," said Aleksander Čeferin.
"UEFA will put significant financial investment into the sport, underlining that it dares to aim high and make European football as great as it can be. The actions we propose and commit to in 2019 will lead to a greater, more professional and more prosperous game by 2024. Time for action!"
Players like Lucy Bronze and Lieke Martens are adored by fans across Europe©AFP/Getty Images
Aside from raising the numbers of girls and women playing the sport, UEFA also seeks to change Europe-wide perceptions of women's football; double the reach and value of the UEFA Women's EURO and UEFA Women's Champions League; improve player standards by reaching standard agreements for national team players and putting safeguarding policies in place in all 55 countries; and double female representation on all UEFA bodies.
Records being broken
European clubs and FAs are also doing their bit to spur interest in women's football. In recent years, the sport has experienced unprecedented growth at every level around the continent, while the public and media have also helped bring the female game into the spotlight.
Five countries broke domestic club attendance records in 2018/19. In March, a world-record club attendance watched Atlético play Barcelona in the Spanish Women's Primera División. Almost every European nation has a domestic league, with a 50% hike too in the number of active professional players in Europe compared with 2017. What's more, national associations have invested a total of €123m, which is a 10% increase from 2017.
"It's fantastic to see such high attendances, and exhilarating for the players to play in front of such big crowds," said Nadine Kessler. "It shows us that women's football really is reaching new heights and there is an appetite for the game like never before."
© 1998-2019 UEFA. All rights reserved. Last updated: Monday 1 July 2019
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Today, October 7th, the free West celebrates and remembers that on this date in 1571 the last great naval battle of oared ships took place in the Gulf of Corinth (Greece). Known as the Battle of Lepanto – where the Muslims had their fleet – this was the first defeat of the Muslim Turks at sea by Christian forces.
In the 16th century, the Islamic Caliphate – the Ottoman Empire – was continuing it’s incursion and expansion into Western lands, including the Mediterranean and more of Europe.
Caliph Suleiman ruled the Caliphate from 1520 to 1566, and was followed by Selim II who ruled until 1574.
In May 1565, the Ottomans laid siege to the island of Malta (due south of Sicily) with 250 ships carrying 40,000 Muslim fighters. Malta was defended by 700 Knights of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem (Knights Hospitallers) and approximately 8,000 Maltese troops. For four months the Christian forces defended Malta and inflicted large casualties on the Ottoman Turks, who finally fled when reinforcements arrived. Thereafter, the Knights carried the title the “Knights of Malta.”
The Battle of Cyprus
In the spring of 1570, the 4th Ottoman-Venetian war began when the Muslim Turks attacked Cyprus with 70,000 men. The Venetians appealed to Pope Pius V to come to their defense.
The Christian defenders of Cyprus were outnumbered by a margin of almost 7 to 1. The city of Nicosia held for nearly two months but, having been reduced to 500 soldiers, surrendered.
Venetian soldiers in Famagusta fought on for nearly a year, but on August 5, 1571, Cyprus fell.
The Venetians agreed to surrender terms offered by the Turkish commander, Lala Mustafa, who agreed to give them safe passage to Crete on Turkish ships. Instead, the Venetians were stripped of their clothes, chained to the oars of the Turkish ships, and forced to row.
The Muslims beheaded the Venetian commanders and hung their heads on the mast of their ships.
On August 17, 1571, The Venetian governor/commander, Marco Antonio Bragadin, was humiliated, tortured, and flayed alive. Mustafa had Bragadin’s body stuffed with hay and hung on the mast of his ship.
On May 25, 1571, while these battles were raging in Cyprus, Pope Pius V formed the Holy League with forces from the Papal States, the Habsburg States in Italy and Spain, monarchies of Tuscany, Savoy and elsewhere, the Knights of Malta, and others, in order to defend Cyprus and push back the Islamic forces.
The Battle of Lepanto
In September 1571, the Holy League’s fleet assembled at Messina, Sicily with 206 galleys and 6 smaller ships, manned by 40,000 sailors carrying approximately 27,000 soldiers. The Holy League sailed for Corfu on September 16th with John of Austria commanding (in the center), Agostino Barbarigo on the left, Italy’s Admiral Giovanni Andrea Doria on the right, and, from Spain, Álvaro de Bazán in reserve.
The Muslim fleet was commanded by Ali Pasha (center), Alexandria’s governor, Mohammed Saulak (right), and the Pasha of Algiers Uluch Ali on the left. The Turkish fleet flew the green standard with the word “Allah” embroidered over 29,000 times on it.
The Holy League’s Battle Standard was given to them by Pope Pius V and carried the image of the crucified Jesus on the Cross on it.
On the eve of battle – October 6th – Priests on the Holy League’s vessels held Mass, heard confessions, and prayed with the men. Knowing the Turks had never been defeated on the sea, the men of the Holy League prayed the Rosary and asked Mary, the Mother of God, to pray for them.
Across Europe, people had been praying for months, and the Pope called for all Christians to pray the Rosary for victory.
It is said that on the day of battle, John of Austria went from ship to ship with a crucifix encouraging the men to keep their faith strong in the face of this impending engagement.
The tactics of the day were to engage the enemy ship to ship, lash them together, and fight close hand to hand combat.
On October 7, 1571, the Battle of Lepanto began with the Holy League’s guns ripping down the masts of Turkish ships and doing great damage before the fleets came in close range.
John of Austria’s Real and Ali Pasha’s Sultana – the flagships for each force – collided together. Fierce fighting ensued and finally subsided when Ali Pasha was shot dead and the Holy League standard was raised over the Sultana. Even though the Muslim center was collapsing, the battle raged on.
In the end, the Christians were victorious. The Holy league captured 117 galleys and thousands of men, liberated over 12,000 enslaved Christians, and sank or burned about four dozen enemy galleys.
Across Europe celebrations ensued as news of the victory spread throughout the land. Great works of art were commissioned to memorialize the victory at Lepanto.
The Church declared October 7th the Feast Day of Our Lady of Victory, which today is also called the Feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, to honor what many believe were the prayers of Mary interceding on behalf of the Holy League and the forces of Liberty.
Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, was wounded in the battle. He wrote the Battle of Lepanto was “the most noble and memorable event that past centuries have seen.”
While Venice later surrendered to the Islamic fleet in 1573, the victory at the Battle of Lepanto ensured the Islamic domination of the Mediterranean was over for the time being. It also gave Europe a much needed boost in morale after centuries of war with the invading Muslims.
Since Mohammed first launched jihad in the early 7th century, the free Christian West has been at war with the Islamic forces who continue to kill and impose slavery on Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Were it not for key victories against the Islamic armies over the last 1400 years, the lamp of freedom would be dim today.
The first war America fought after our Revolution was against the Muslim (Barbary) states, when Thomas Jefferson ordered the Marines to deal with the Islamic forces which were capturing American vessels on the seas and taking Americans prisoner. America defeated the Muslims in these now-famous engagements. But we have forgotten our history.
Today, the world watches the continued incursion by Muslim forces into sovereign nations where tens of thousands are murdered in gruesome deaths. Women are systematically raped and disfigured. Homosexuals are thrown from buildings to their deaths. Nations are being overthrown. From Central and East Africa to the Philippines to Thailand, across Europe and throughout the Middle East and Asia. The armies of Mohammed are again marching to conquer the globe.
Their stated goal: to re-establish the Caliphate and impose Sharia (Islamic Law) on the world.
In Europe and America, we are told – especially by political and religious leaders – that we should be more tolerant of the Muslim faith which, they say, is a “religion of peace.”
Today, October 7th, we remember and honor all of those who fought for liberty against the forces of evil and slavery. We remember the prayers that delivered the Holy League a great victory over the Ottoman Turks.
And we pray that Liberty will go back on the offensive where it belongs.
JG UTT
Our Lady of Victory | The Counter Jihad Report October 7, 2015 at 6:06 pm Reply
[…] UTT, by John Guandolo, Oct. 7, 2015: […]
Conservative Women's Forum :: Chapel Hill, NC » Blog Archive October 8, 2015 at 8:30 pm Reply
[…] Our Lady of Victory http://www.understandingthethreat.com/our-lady-of-victory/ […]
AZ October 9, 2015 at 1:59 am Reply
THANK YOU! Awesome article. I’m learning to love our Christian Heritage more and more…the fullness of the truth is truly beautiful.
The Battlefield, October 9, 2015 | The Hayride October 9, 2015 at 12:14 pm Reply
[…] this week marked the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, one of the most important historical events in world history. It was at Lepanto where Christians […]
Harley Ruth October 9, 2015 at 4:53 pm Reply
We may be needing another Thomas Jefferson, before this is all over.
Muslims and the West – October 17th, 2015 | jeff-goodall October 17, 2015 at 4:38 pm Reply
[…] The Battle of Lepanto (1571): “Today, October 7th, we remember and honor all of those who fought for liberty against the forces of evil and slavery. We remember the prayers that delivered the Holy League a great victory over the Ottoman Turks” […]
CK October 19, 2015 at 7:50 am Reply
Thanks for teaching me about the namesake of my church.
Lepanto, Columbus, Tours, Tripoli, and Vetting in the U.S. Government – Understanding the Threat October 8, 2018 at 10:15 pm Reply
[…] Read a more detailed account of the Battle of Lepanto by UTT here. […]
Lepanto, Tours, Columbus, and Vetting in the U.S. Government – Understanding the Threat October 8, 2018 at 10:40 pm Reply
Leave a Reply to Harley Ruth Cancel reply
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Go back Our strategy
About our strategy
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Our operating model is designed to deliver faster decisions. Learn more about our Directors, Senior Corporate Officers and the Unilever Leadership Executive.
Unilever Leadership Executive (ULE)
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Alan Jope Chief Executive Officer
Alan Jope, Chief Executive Officer, was appointed an Executive Director to the Boards of Unilever N.V. and Unilever PLC in May 2019
Graeme Pitkethly Chief Financial Officer
Graeme Pitkethly, Chief Financial Officer, was appointed an Executive Director to the Boards of Unilever N.V. and Unilever PLC in April 2016.
Dr Marijn Dekkers Chairman, Unilever N.V. and PLC
Dr Marijn Dekkers was appointed Chairman of Unilever in April 2016. He is the Chair of Unilever’s Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee and is also a member of Unilever’s Compensation Committee.
Professor Youngme Moon Vice-Chair and Senior Independent Director
Professor Youngme Moon was appointed a Non-Executive Director of Unilever in April 2016. She is Vice-Chair and Senior Independent Director of Unilever and a member of Unilever’s Corporate Responsibility Committee.
Nils Andersen Non-Executive Director
Nils Andersen was appointed a Non-Executive Director of Unilever in April 2015. He is a member of Unilever's Audit Committee.
Laura Cha Non-Executive Director
Laura Cha was appointed a Non-Executive Director of Unilever in May 2013. She is a member of Unilever’s Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee.
Vittorio Colao Non-Executive Director
Vittorio Colao was appointed a Non-Executive Director of Unilever in July 2015. He is Chair of Unilever's Compensation Committee.
Marc Engel Chief Supply Chain Officer
Marc was appointed Chief Supply Chain Officer and a member of the Unilever Leadership Executive in January 2016.
Hanneke Faber President, Foods & Refreshment
Hanneke was appointed President, Foods & Refreshment on 1 May 2019. In this role she is responsible for Unilever’s ice cream, tea and Foods categories globally, including Unilever Food Solutions. She remains a member of the Unilever Executive.
Sunny Jain President, Beauty & Personal Care
Sunny Jain was appointed President, Beauty & Personal Care in June 2019 and is part of the Unilever Leadership Executive (ULE).
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Chat Now Chat Call Us: (212) 645-4200 Call
Dr. Drew Pinsky
Doctor of Internal and Addiction Medicine & Host of KABC's Dr. Drew Midday Live
A keen observer of popular cultures, Dr. Drew gives audiences valuable insights into the human experience. A trusted voice on relationships, sex, and drugs, Dr. Drew informs and inspires audiences everywhere. He addresses some of the most pressing topics of our time—the pressures of dealing with addiction (prescription, drug, or alcohol) and the devastating effect it can have on families, bullying and cyberbullying among teens, our narcissistic, celebrity-driven culture, the effects of childhood trauma on individuals and society, the impact the loss of intimacy has on our society, and much more. Dr. Drew is recognized as a trusted source of information by teens, as well as men and women of all ages.
Dr. Drew Pinsky is a practicing physician, Board Certified in Internal Medicine, and Board Certified in Addiction Medicine. Pinsky starred in the hit reality series Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew which chronicled the struggle for sobriety and the cycle of addictive disorders of a group of celebrities. The sixth installment of the series Rehab with Dr. Drew followed the real-life experiences of everyday people who are struggling with addiction as they undergo detoxification and treatment.
In December 2010, Dr. Drew Pinsky joined HLN as the host of his own nightly show, Dr. Drew On Call, where his exploration of what makes people do what they do attracted a devoted audience. In April 2016, Pinsky said a final goodnight to the audience of the nationally-syndicated Loveline radio show, which had been a source of no-nonsense advice for more than 30 years. Over the life of the show, Dr. Drew reached millions of listeners, helping them deal with a wide range of issues.
Today, Dr. Drew continues to deliver his wisdom on a variety of programming including the iTunes top-rated Dr. Drew Podcast, The Adam and Drew Show co-hosted by Adam Carolla, This Life with co-host Bob Forrest, Weekly Infusion with Dr. Bruce, and KABC’s Dr. Drew Midday Live with Mike Catherwood.
Dr. Drew is the author of 5 books, including the New York Times best-sellers The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism is Seducing America, Cracked: Life on the Edge in a Rehab Clinic, and Restoring Intimacy: The Patient’s Guide to Maintaining Relationships During Depression. Dr. Drew co-authored the first academic study on celebrities and narcissism. The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Elsevier) and received worldwide press coverage.
Dr. Pinsky received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and his M.D. from the University of Southern California School of Medicine, where he remained for his residency. Pinsky then became chief resident at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. He is a diplomat of the American Board of Addiction Medicine and the American Board of Internal Medicine. He has been appointed to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society and is a Fellow with the American College of Physicians (FACP). Dr. Drew is also a member of the board for the Prostate Cancer Foundation.
Dr. Pinsky lives in Pasadena, California with his wife Susan and has triplets, who attend various universities.
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TalTech in brief
TalTech Story
Main Page of TTÜ
Self-driving car first time in public
Last changed: Renna Tõniste, 27.09.2018 14:03
E-mail to author
The cooperation between Tallinn University of Technology and Silberauto, which started a year ago, has reached an important milestone in the development of Estonia's first self-driving car.
For the first time, the self-driving car, called Iseauto, in a full glory is showcased on Friday, August 10 at the Opinion Festival in Paide.
The self-driving car, completed for the Tallinn University of Technology (TTÜ) 100th anniversary, is a fully self-propelled vehicle that can accommodate four to six people, if necessary. The car’s body was developed and manufactured by Silberauto. Technical solutions such as electronics, sensory and control software have been developed in co-operation with TTÜ students supervised by robotics, IT and Engineering scientists.
According to Raivo Sell, project manager of Iseauto and the research group of self-driving vehicles of the Tallinn University of Technology, the self-driving car project is a very important milestone for both the university and the company. "In a short time the company and the university have solved complex engineering problems and have gained a very valuable experience in the technology of self-driving vehicles and its implementation," he explained. According to him, the project has so far offered a major and interesting challenge for students who have participated in the development of advanced technology and gained practical experience. "The natural continuation of the project is the further development of the prototype, the creation of smart urban space in TTÜ campus and the development of a test environment for self-driving at TTÜ," he added.
According to Väino Kaldoja, Chairman of the Management Board of Silberauto, one of the aims of the project is to set an example to the young and intrigue them in contemporary and future-oriented solutions and learning. "The Iseauto project is a great way to show young people that if there is a vision and will, the realisation is possible; especially due to high-level studies and tangible practice," explained Kaldoja. "I have a great appreciation for all the participants of the project so far, because to achieve such a result in such a short time is a masterpiece!" he added.
In the future, the self-driving car will start driving in the TTÜ campus in Mustamäe, with 72 buildings in 50 hectares, which is really a model of real city space. The campus will also have a smart city test solution with an autonomous charging station, barriers, lighting and an open service platform.
The self-driving car is a development platform for students, researchers and technology companies. Several large companies, such as Telia and ABB, have become interested in the project. Telia is willing to test the power of 5G technology on the vehicle, and ABB wants to test new battery-charging technologies.
The vehicle can be viewed on August 10-11 throughout the day at Estonian Media Display Area in Paide at the Opinion Festival.
For more information, visit the Iseauto website.
TalTech and Florida Poly launch partnership to research autonomous vehicles
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TalTech civil engineers have developed a theoretical design method that allows more secure and cost-efficient construction of timber structures
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Professor Anu Masso: e-residency contributes to the reproduction of digital inequalities
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Does Turlock need a new tax?
Kristina Hacker
Updated: June 25, 2019, 10:09 p.m.
No politician wants to ask his or her constituents to support more taxes, just as no citizen wants to pay more taxes. But as the City of Turlock is set to implement the most penny-pinching budget since the Great Recession, when 23 employees lost their jobs, the dreaded three-letter word has been mentioned as a possible funding source for the City’s depleted coffers.
In order to have a balanced budget for FY 2019-20, 16 currently vacant or soon to be vacant positions were defunded and there will be significant cuts in public safety overtime budgets that will see fewer police officers and firefighters on duty and a reduction in parks maintenance, among other money-saving tactics.
City Manager Robert Lawton said during a special budget workshop meeting that local governments in California are limited in how they can raise revenue to pay for the many services the City provides.
“I’m from New York myself, and back there we can raise taxes just as high as the Board thinks the public will accept…We didn’t have those types of limits that we do here in California. So, our ability to raise revenue is constrained very strictly here in California. We’re limited essentially to the actual growth that takes place. And that growth in revenues will consistently lag the necessary growth in the cost of doing business,” said Lawton.
While Mayor Amy Bublak has said that tax “is a bad word to me,” others are looking to a possible new local tax as a way to fund much-needed services such as police and fire.
“We are consciously lowering the standard of our city to a standard that we can afford right now. This budget should be the catalyst that strongly encourages us to seriously consider revenue increases — even if those sources of revenues make some of the people up here uncomfortable, including me. We are experiencing growing pains by our city simply out-growing our current budget. Even the past Councils that were approving deficit spending budgets, we were below standards in a lot of departments and understaffed. I think that to be fiscally responsible, it’s not only approving a budget where the zeros on one side equal the zeros on the other side, it also means we need to start talking about increasing revenue,” said Council member Nicole Larson at the June 11 meeting.
City employee unions are also behind the push for more stable revenue solutions, including taxes.
“We need a fixed tax base to deal with this budget, whether it’s a utility tax or increasing business licensing fees or whatever. For goodness sakes, will you please ask for our help and let us get started on this. We have the community’s support and we will attain that goal, but the time is running out,” said Turlock Associated Police Officers President Brandon Bertram during the June 11 City Council meeting.
Kellie Jacobs-Hunter, Turlock’s Administrative Services director, said that there’s a common misconception in the public about where their tax dollars go.
“The average citizen believes out of all the taxes they pay that the local agency receives the lion’s share and that’s just not true,” she said.
Out of all the sales tax collected in Turlock stores, only 1 percent goes to the City. With property tax, the City of Turlock receives between 8 and 10 percent.
Most cities across the state have local taxes, used to supplement their general fund budgets or to pay specifically for public safety.
The cities of Ceres, Merced and Manteca all have half-cent sales taxes to bolster public safety services.
Manteca’s special sales tax (Measure M) generates between $5 and $6 million annually. In 2018, 24.6 percent or 17 of the Manteca’s 69 police officers were paid using Measure M receipts. Fifteen of the city’s 37 frontline firefighters — or 40.5 percent — were covered by the half cent sales tax.
Modesto has a Utility Users’ Tax (UUT) that is imposed on consumers of electric, gas, water, telecommunication and cable services. This tax is based on a percentage of the amount billed to each consumer for such services. The tax rate is set by the City Council. Modesto has brought in between $19 and $20 million annually since its adoption in 2013.
Not all local city tax campaigns have been successful, however. The Ripon Consolidated Fire District’s plan to impose a $125 parcel tax to pay for staffing a new fire station wasn’t supported at the ballot box in June 2018.
Jacobs-Hunter gave a revenue generating presentation to the City Council in May, outlining different options, including taxes and the amount of revenue each could potentially generate. Council member Larson recently requested another presentation on potential taxes, with actionable items on an agenda, which was postponed until after the FY 2019-20 budget was adopted.
If the Council chose to move forward with getting a tax on the November 2020 ballot for voters to consider, they would need to start soon on polling the community for interest and developing a strategy. Putting a measure on the ballot would also be a cost the City.
Money flowing into District 10 race — again
Tent village for homeless a possibility in Turlock
Water wasting and excessive water use penalties
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Designs unveiled for consolidated middle school in Groton
This rendering of the proposed consolidated middle school shows the bus entry at second floor level, with one story of the building above ground. The library media center is in the foreground. (Courtesy of The S/L/A/M Collaborative)
This rendering of the proposed consolidated middle school from the northeast shows the gymnasium in the foreground and the academic wing in the background. It also shows the bus loop and main entrance at second-floor level for events. (Courtesy of The S/L/A/M Collaborative)
This rendering of the proposed consolidated middle school shows the main entry at the first floor. This view shows the windows to the science rooms on the second, third and fourth floors. (Courtesy of The S/L/A/M Collaborative)
This rendering of the proposed consolidated middle school from the southwest shows the academic wing, the main entrance, and the maker space and art rooms, according to The S/L/A/M Collaborative. The sawtooth structure on the cafeteria roof will allow light into the cafeteria. (Courtesy of The S/L/A/M Collaborative)
Published December 12. 2018 6:03PM | Updated December 12. 2018 6:57PM
By Kimberly Drelich Day staff writer
k.drelich@theday.com KimberlyDrelich
Groton — Architects this week unveiled design plans for the approximately 155,000-square-foot new consolidated middle school proposed at the former Merritt Farm property near Fitch High School.
Superintendent Michael Graner said the Permanent School Building Committee and a group of educators, from teachers to administrators of both middle schools, worked hard with the architects to ensure the design for the new middle school meets the needs of both the arts and humanities program currently at Cutler Arts and Humanities Magnet Middle School and the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math program at West Side STEM Magnet Middle School.
At a Board of Education Committee of the Whole special meeting Monday, also attended by members of the Town Council and the Permanent School Building Committee, representatives from The S/L/A/M Collaborative, the architecture firm, and Arcadis, a design and consultancy firm which is assisting the town with the school projects, gave a presentation on the plans that the Board of Education is slated to vote on next month.
"We’re really happy this middle school will become a part of the Fitch campus and really allow you to share resources between those two very important schools in your district," said Amy Samuelson, senior associate at The S/L/A/M Collaborative, as she pointed out the site of the future middle school on the corner of Fort Hill and Groton Long Point Roads.
The proposed middle school building nestles down into the hillside, so the second floor serves as the building entrance on the east side, while the lower level floor is the building entrance from the west side, she said. They are connected by a main concourse.
Samuelson said two entrances are proposed for the site. One will be through the Fitch High School parking lot, a configuration that allows for the potential sharing of buses. Buses will enter through the high school driveway and proceed to the middle school site and pull up at the entrance at the second floor of the middle school building.
For the second entrance to the site, drivers will proceed a little way up through the shared driveway with Ella T. Grasso Technical High School and then take a route up to the new middle school site, she said. Parents will be directed from the Fort Hill Road entrance and will drop off at the lower level entrance to the school.
The site will include a full-size field for athletic events, a smaller field and a softball field, Samuelson said.
The building calls for an academic wing, along with features such as makerspace and engineering labs for STEM programs, spaces for art, graphic arts and A/V production, a black-box theater that can be configured in different ways to accommodate performance and seating needs, a cafeteria space developed "as the heart of the building," a library/media center with flexible furniture and acoustic ceiling clouds, and a physical education department that includes a movement studio, fitness room and full-size gymnasium, according to the presentation.
Superintendent Michael Graner said Fitch students will be able to use the black-box theater, while middle school students may want to use the high school's theater.
Samuelson said the interior of the building will be set up with a warm wood tone and neutral colors for the floors and walls of the building, with splashes of color. Each floor will have a representative color that will make it easy for people getting on and off the elevator or the stairs to identify the floor.
Assistant Superintendent Susan Austin said students from West Side STEM Magnet Middle School are working on designing a STEM outdoor classroom space.
After the presentation, architects provided answers to questions they were asked, including explaining the building's security features and that there is room for expansion if the town's middle school student population increases in the future.
The Board of Education is anticipated to continue discussions on the plans on Dec. 17 and vote on them on Jan. 7.
Permanent School Building Committee Chairman Bob Austin-LaFrance said the project is within budget and on schedule. After the Board of Education approves the plans, the committee then would certify to the town that the plans meet the educational specifications no later than Jan. 10. A meeting with the state for final plan review is slated for Jan. 15.
"We expect to hear back from the state no later than the 25th of January, and if that’s the case, then we’ll be able to go out to bid as soon as we get that word from the state," Austin-LaFrance said. He added that the building was designed to be as flexible and usable as possible within budget.
The initial work with site preparation is slated to begin in mid-March, and the school is anticipated to be completed by July of 2020 for opening in the fall of 2020, Graner said.
k.drelich@theday.com
Kentucky Derby defendants ask judge to dismiss charges
The five defendants charged in federal indictments with conspiracy and theft in connection with lavish trips to the Kentucky Derby argued that the entire criminal case should be dismissed.
SCRRRA looking at feasibility of regional composting facility
The Southeastern Connecticut Regional Resource Recovery Authority is studying the feasibility of a regional composting operation and looking for a suitable site.
American Chestnut Foundation works to preserve species in Connecticut
A pair of trees found last year in a wooded field near the Waterford-Montville border could play a role in reviving the American chestnut, a once-dominant species all but wiped out by a blight introduced to the U.S. more than a century ago.
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East Lyme proposes almost $6 million public safety complex
Published November 18. 2018 8:40PM | Updated November 19. 2018 9:12PM
By Mary Biekert Day staff writer
m.biekert@theday.com _marybiekert
East Lyme — In what First Selectman Mark Nickerson has called a "now or never opportunity," town officials have worked out a deal to purchase an office building and create an almost $6 million public safety complex, as long as residents approve the plan.
Nickerson said last week the deal will provide the town’s newly independent police force with “an adequate building of its own” after 14 years in a “cramped,” temporary Main Street location.
The town, he said, has 120 days to approve the purchase of a $2,775,000 office building at 277 West Main St. — a location that borders Old Lyme and sits near the Interstate 95 Rocky Neck connector. Honeywell Corp. owns the building.
Town officials estimate an additional $3.2 million would be required to renovate the building into a police station that would include jail space, an evidence room, an arms lockup room and storage, among other features. It would cost taxpayers a little more $5.9 million, which would be bonded over 20 years. Nickerson said the finance department soon would provide numbers detailing how such bonding could affect taxpayers over coming years.
The proposal, however, must first be approved by the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance before moving on to a referendum. Nickerson said several public hearings detailing the proposal will be scheduled, the first of which is likely to be held in December.
Nickerson said if the town does not agree to purchase the building within 120 days, Honeywell will place it on the market. If approved, the renovation work will be completed in two years, he said.
“Our police force is working in deplorable conditions,” Nickerson said Tuesday. “We won’t get another deal like this again. It’s time to come up with a professional building project that will allow us to be efficient, and to live up to professional standards which are required for policing these days.”
As outlined, the deal would allow the town to purchase a 30,000-square-foot office building sitting on 17 acres of land. The building would consolidate the town’s dispatch center, fire marshal’s office and emergency operations center — which currently are housed on one site in Flanders — with the police station and jail facilities, which are now leased in Waterford.
“This is the most economically feasible solution to this issue,” Nickerson said, explaining that the price of this facility is relatively low compared to similar facilities across the state. Montville approved $6.84 million for a 17,000-square-foot facility in 2013, while Ledyard recently opened its $6.75 million, 11,300-square-foot facility in 2016. Those facilities are smaller than the one planned for East Lyme, and Ledyard's was constructed on land already owned by that town.
For finance board Vice Chairwoman Lisa Picarazzi, the proposal to bond an additional $6.5 million just 18 months after residents passed a $37.5 million school renovation project is “poorly timed.” Though she acknowledges a $6 million plan for the facility has been outlined in the town's Capital Improvement Plan, she said she would prefer to see the project postponed.
“There are a lot of people on fixed incomes and people on assistance that really can’t take another tax increase,” Picarazzi said. "I'm looking at it from the taxpayer viewpoint."
The proposed plan follows two unsuccessful attempts to establish a public safety complex. In 2004, the Board of Finance shot down a $6.5 million proposal to build a facility at Camp Niantic, and in 2007 a $14 million complex was rejected by voters at referendum.
The Board of Selectmen approved an independent police force in 2016 after participating in the state's resident trooper program for several decades. The department was established in 2017.
East Lyme's police force, with 23 full-time police officers and one part-time officer, serves the town's 19,000 year-round residents, as well as a surge of seasonal visitors and residents in the summer.
Presently, the force functions out of a small facility owned by Dominion Energy on Main Street, which the town has been leasing for the last 13 years for $1 a year. The town also pays Waterford approximately $50,000 annually to use its jailing facilities, evidence lockup and vehicle storage, among other uses — another point that Nickerson and police Chief Mike Finkelstein argue decreases the overall efficiency of the department.
The building "is almost like a mouse trap. It’s really built like a maze. There is no flow to it, nothing connects it,” Finkelstein said, while explaining that the Main Street building constantly floods and leaks during rain storms.
A recent flood in the building’s armory damaged $5,000 worth of equipment, Finkelstein said.
“We have a building that leaks from the ceiling, wall and floor. We have HVAC systems that are constantly failing. We had a generator failure during a power outage, because that is also old and obsolete,” Finkelstein said. “The current facility is insufficient both structurally and operationally.”
Finkelstein acknowledged that the proposed facility’s location, though on the edge of town, would not diminish emergency response time. He argued that several officers are patrolling East Lyme at any given moment and respond to emergencies as needed.
“When police respond to a call, they are already out in the field. It’s not like the fire department, where trucks are sitting in the station waiting for the call. Our police are out in the field already,” Finkelstein said.
He said that the building’s proximity to Interstate 95 also would allow officers to reach Flanders, as well as Niantic by way of Route 156, quickly.
“There is certainly a charm to having our temporary police headquarters on Main Street, but there’s a negative with that because we have a busy Main Street with a lot of pedestrians and a lot of traffic. When the police have to come out hot with a call, it can be difficult getting down Main Street,” Nickerson said.
The announcement also raised questions as to whether the proposed building’s location would aid in potentially combining the Old Lyme and East Lyme police departments. Nickerson said that such a possibility is being discussed with Old Lyme First Selectwoman Bonnie Reemsnyder.
“The station being there certainly doesn’t take away from that situation,” Nickerson said. “We’d encourage it and we don’t think regionalization in this state is happening fast enough. It would only be to the benefit of the citizens.”
Reemsnyder said that she and the town’s Police Services Options Committee, established earlier this year, are still in discussions.
“We are looking at things cautiously and carefully. A decision hasn’t been made,” Reemsnyder said.
Nickerson said he hopes if Old Lyme were to join forces with East Lyme, it would cover a portion of the building's costs.
"We are coming in now with a plan that we feel very comfortable with. It will suit our needs today and will give us room to grow in the future," Nickerson said. "This building will last us 50 years. It isn't just a temporary situation, it is a permanent solution."
m.biekert@theday.com
Slot-machine revenue at the Connecticut casinos continued to slide in June, the first month in which a new competitor, Encore Boston Harbor, was open.
A paradise for butterflies
A painted lady butterfly alights on a buttonbush along the edge of the pond in the Connecticut College Arboretum on Monday.
Norwich Public Utilities provides hospital with $46,635 rebate after it completes energy efficiency project.
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Medicare, Social Security face shaky fiscal futures
In this April 10, 2019, file photo, a sign is shown during a news conference to reintroduce 'Medicare for All' legislation, on Capitol Hill in Washington. The financial condition of the government’s bedrock retirement programs for middle- and working-class Americans remains shaky, with Medicare pointed toward insolvency by 2026. That’s the word from the latest report by the government’s overseers of Medicare and Social Security, which paints a sobering picture of the programs, though it’s relatively unchanged from last year’s update. Social Security would become insolvent in 2035, one year later than previously estimated. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Published April 23. 2019 1:12AM
By ANDREW TAYLOR
WASHINGTON (AP) — The financial condition of the government's bedrock retirement programs for middle- and working-class Americans remains shaky, with Medicare pointed toward insolvency by 2026, according to a report Monday by the government's overseers of Medicare and Social Security.
It paints a sobering picture of the programs, though it's relatively unchanged from last year's update. Social Security would become insolvent in 2035, one year later than previously estimated.
Both programs will need to eventually be addressed to avert automatic cuts should their trust funds run dry. Neither President Donald Trump nor Capitol Hill's warring factions has put political perilous cost curbs on their to-do list.
The report is the latest update of the government's troubled fiscal picture. It lands in a capital that has proven chronically unable to address it. Trump has declared benefit cuts to the nation's signature retirement programs off limits and many Democratic presidential candidates are calling for expanding Medicare benefits rather than addressing the program's worsening finances.
Many on both sides actually agree that it would be better for Washington to act sooner rather than later to shore up the programs rather than wait until they are on the brink of insolvency and have to weigh more drastic steps.
"The programs that millions of Americans pay into and expect to have in the future are going broke — driving up federal spending, growing our deficits, and crowding out other priorities in the process. We cannot afford to ignore this reality any longer," said Arkansas Rep. Steve Womack, ranking Republican on the Budget Committee.
But potential cuts such as curbing inflationary increases for Social Security, hiking payroll taxes, or raising the Medicare retirement age are so politically freighted and toxic that Washington's power players are mostly ignoring the problem.
Later this year, Social Security is expected to declare a 1.8 percent cost-of-living increase for 2020 based on current trends, program officials say.
Monday's report by three Cabinet heads and Social Security's acting commissioner, urges lawmakers to "take action sooner rather than later to address these shortfalls, so that a broader range of solutions can be considered and more time will be available to phase in changes while giving the public adequate time to prepare."
If Congress doesn't act, both programs would eventually be unable to cover the full cost of promised benefits. With Social Security that could mean automatic benefit cuts for most retirees, many of whom depend on the program to cover basic living costs.
For Medicare, it could mean that hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical providers would be paid only part of their agreed-upon fees.
In a glimmer of good news, Social Security's disability program is now estimated to remain solvent for an additional 20 years, through 2052. Overall, however, Social Security would run out of reserves by 2035, one year later than projected in last year's report.
"We remain committed to further bolstering the programs' finances, which will benefit from the long-term growth we will see as a result of the Administration's economic policies," said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
As an indication of Medicare's woes, it would take a payroll tax increase of 0.91 percentage points to fully address its shortfall or a 19 percent cut in spending. Medicare's problems are considered more difficult to solve, as health care costs regularly outpace inflation and economic growth.
Social Security is the government's largest program, costing $853 billion last year, with another $147 billion for disability benefits. Medicare's hospital, outpatient care, and prescription drug benefits totaled about $740 billion.
Taken together, the two programs combined for 45 percent of the federal budget, excluding interest payments on the national debt.
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The death of a great humanitarian
historyalbert schweitzertheologyphilosophystrasbourglambarenechristianitythis week in history
Schweitzer spent most of his later years at Lambaréné. Photo: DPA
On September 4th 1965, the world lost one of its most dedicated and tireless humanitarians, as Albert Schweitzer died in the African hospital he had created and cherished for over 50 years. A hospital that continues to save lives today.
"Grow into your ideals, so that life can never rob you of them."
The words are attributed to Albert Schweitzer: German-born theologian, musician, writer, preacher and Nobel Prize-winning humanitarian.
One example of a man who did everything he could to grow into his ideals – and encapsulate them in a legacy which continues to save lives and inspire minds today.
From music to medicine
Albert Schweitzer was born in 1875 in Alsace-Lorraine, then part of the German Empire.
Son of a Lutheran pastor, he was born into a world of music, religion and academia - and for the first 30 years of his life, he stuck to family tradition.
Following in the footsteps of both grandfathers, he began playing the piano and organ at a young age, and when he was nine he performed in his father's church for the first time.
As well as music, young Schweitzer was passionate about religion and academia – and in 1893, he began studying theology at the University of Strasbourg.
Six years later he emerged with a doctorate in philosophy, having written his dissertation on the religious philosophy of Kant. The same year, he began preaching at St Nicholas Church in Strasbourg.
By 1905, he was already a celebrated concert organist, preacher and theologian.
But Schweitzer's course in life was about to change – because it was in this year that he began studying medicine at the University of Strasbourg.
Hopes for Africa
Schweitzer had a definite goal in mind when he embarked on his medicine studies.
He wanted to travel to Africa. But not as a pastor: he wanted to go as a medical missionary.
Seven years later, with an M.D under his belt, Schweitzer founded a hospital in Lambaréné, in French Equatorial Africa. The institution offered general medical and healthcare support to residents of the town.
But the First World War broke out soon afterwards – and in 1917, he and his wife Helene were sent to a French internment camp as prisoners of war.
When the war ended in 1918, the pair were released. Schweitzer then spent the next few years in Europe, preaching, taking medical courses - and writing.
Writing was a passion throughout Schweitzer's life. Earlier, while studying medicine, he'd penned a biography of Bach, a book on organ playing and building, and - most famously - his work: The Quest of the Historical Jesus.
Now, Schweitzer put pen to paper once again – and by the time he returned to Lambaréné in 1924, he'd produced On the Edge of the Primeval Forest, The Decay and Restoration of Civilization, Civilization and Ethics, and Christianity and the Religions of the World.
Helene was not well enough to travel, and stayed in Europe with the couple's daughter Rhena. The couple stayed in close contact, and Helene travelled back out to Africa in 1941 to assist her husband during the difficult war years.
But the tropical climate was too much for her. Her health had already been weakened by overworking, previous travels and her long internment during the First World War. Helene died in Zurich in 1957, after flying back to Europe for medical reasons.
Her ashes were buried in Lambaréné.
Life at Lambaréné
From 1924 Lambaréné was Schweitzer's home.
The money he earned from book royalties and public appearances was poured into the young hospital – and by the early 1960s, it could treat over 500 patients in residence at any one time.
Schweitzer worked tirelessly to keep Lambaréné afloat.
At the hospital itself, he contributed as doctor and surgeon, and was also superintendent of the buildings and grounds.
A full-time occupation in itself, perhaps. But Schweitzer was also pastor to the local congregation, and village administrator. He wrote, he carried on playing music, and played host to numerous visitors to Lambaréné.
In 1952 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace - and his $33,000 prize money went straight back into Lambaréné, to develop a leprosarium.
Death and legacy
By 1965, Albert Schweizer had earned widespread fame and respect.
On August 28th 1965, he fell ill from exhaustion. His condition worsened over the coming days, and at 11:30pm on September 4th, he passed away.
His death was kept a secret throughout the night, to allow daughter Rhena to send telegrams to relatives.
Schweitzer was buried on September 5th on the bank of the Ogooue River, next to the ashes of late wife Helen.
Fifty years on, his hospital's Medical Research Unit is one of Africa's leading scientific institutions battling the spread of malaria.
It is the primary healthcare provider for the town of Lambaréné and the surrounding region in eastern Gabon, and each year receives over 35,000 outpatient visits. Surgeons carry out over 2,000 operations every year, and the hospital has the lowest mortality rate on the continent for treating children with severe malaria.
"With a little reason and much heart, one can change many things, or move mountains," Schweizer reportedly once said.
Add to this his remarkable talent, work ethic, love for others and devotion to his cause, and it's perhaps little wonder that Schweitzer's Lambaréné legacy flourished into the success it is today.
By Hannah Butler
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A Nation of Laws? Nay, We Are a Nation of Kingdoms and Kings
Pem Schaeffer
Recently I attended the MHPC luncheon at which Tom Fitton, Head of Judicial Watch, was the guest. As he spoke, it occurred to me that saying we are ‘a nation of laws’ needs a modifier, and that would be ‘from time to time.’ Or if you prefer, ‘when we feel like it.’
Having laws on the books is one thing; administering them, obeying them, and enforcing them is an entirely different concern. And these are the things that matter; not having the laws on the books.
It became apparent as Tom spoke that when it comes to the latter aspects, we are anything but a nation of laws. In fact we are just the opposite.
You may recall that the President, who would be King currently reigning over the United States, came into office on the heels of an unusual public statement by his Senior Advisor, Valerie Jarrett. Most prior presidents said they were ready to lead, serve or govern. But in the climate of today’s imperial ‘administration,’ such old-fashioned ideas are passé.
“Given the daunting challenges that we face, it is important that President-elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one,” Jarrett, then Co-Chair of the Obama Transition Team told Tom Brokaw.
My understanding of how America came to be is that colonists from England who arrived on these shores grew tired of the heavy-handed rule imposed on them from afar by King George III. The King was the ruler in all things, and the colonists were ‘subjects’ or commoners, which is to say an underclass in the broadest sense. The only privileges and ‘rights’ they enjoyed were those ‘granted’ to them by the Crown, and they could be revoked on a whim. To those who angered or displeased the King, or those in his court, ‘justice’, such as it was, was meted out by decree.
The worst part is that the King was not elected, and so did not ‘represent’ the subjects. He ascended to the throne through the rules of Royal lineage, and reigned for life. (To say he ‘served’ for life would be an outrageous abuse of that concept.) His authority included presiding over the Church of England, in addition to all his other powers.
So the colonists, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, envisioned a new nation that would be governed according to a set of laws enacted by the people, through their elected representatives, who would serve at the pleasure of the people. As they saw it, they would be ruled by laws that everyone would be able to see, rather than ruled by a man…the King…who could simply make up things as he went along to suit his fancy. There was no authority that could challenge the Crown’s decisions or rules.
So ‘came the revolution,’ to make a long story short, followed by the development of a Constitution of the new United States. Both embody the principles that we are ‘self-governing,’ and that elected officials serve at the pleasure of the free and equal people. We were to become a nation ruled by laws, not Kings, which is to say ‘man.’ And each of us was to be ‘equal before the law.’
Yet, here we are hundreds of years later, and we have more laws than any one person can get their arms around, along with innumerable regulations that derive from these laws.
We hear frequently from the political class that we are, in fact, ‘a nation of laws, and not of men.’ Our elected ruling class reminds us of this, most often when it serves their specific purpose, and hardly ever otherwise. One could easily argue that we are anything but a nation of laws.
Why? Because taking care that the laws be faithfully executed as the oaths of office require involves judgment at every step. For example:
Does the alleged violation of law warrant further investigation?
If so, what resources should be applied, and to what end?
Once the investigation is complete, does it portray a violation worthy of indictment?
If so, should a grand jury be impaneled?
If a grand jury is impaneled, do their findings warrant the proposed indictment?
If indictment is warranted, is it worthy of prosecution?
If so, who should prosecution be directed at, and what charges and penalties should be involved?
Should plea bargaining or other special considerations be invoked?
Etc, etc, etc…..
There is much here to hold the interest of legal scholars, academics, intellectuals and the commentariat. You might be reminded of something I heard years ago: lawyers are in the business of prolonging conflict for fun and profit.
As I thought about this, I realized that every time judgment is involved, character comes into play, along with moral relativism. And when character comes into play, compromise of principles does as well; influence, peddling and corruption are all but unavoidable. And the weaker and more self-interested those involved are, the worse it becomes, until the concept no longer holds.
Which is to say that we are not, strictly speaking, ruled by law, but by men.
Fitton talked about the power residing in Congressional Committee chairmanships. I perceived that we are not ruled by a single King, but by hundreds of Kings ruling over a hierarchical mesh of nested Kingdoms. The Cabinet Secretaries; major quasi-governmental entities (FHA, FNMA, etc); Congressional Committees and Sub-committees; and the innumerable politically appointed second, third and fourth tier organizational heads all have Kingdoms where they rule with essential autonomy, largely unaccountable to the public or anyone else.
Think the IRS, TSA, the VHA, the GSA and many others in the news in recent years. The glut of those who ‘reign’ with arrogance and impunity should strike fear into the hearts of all who believe in the founding fathers and the principles they espoused as they framed the basis of our new nation.
When there was only one King, the problem was pretty easy to identify, characterize and strategize against.
But what do you do when there are hundreds of kings and kingdoms reigning over us simultaneously? How do you conduct a revolution against that?
Is it any wonder that Donald Trump has become a phenomenon? And that the terms ‘rule of law’ and ‘public servant’ are fighting over their rightful place on the ash-heap of history?
Related ItemsfittonJudicial WatchlawsOpinionU.S. Constitution
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About Pem Schaeffer
Pem Schaeffer is a retired engineer who progressed to a position in business development leadership in defense electronics. He lives and writes in Brunswick, Maine, and blogs at: http://othersideofbrunswick.blogspot.com/ He can be reached at pemster4062@yahoo.com or you can always buy him lunch at an MHPC luncheon. He's easy that way, and he'll still respect you if you do.
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Yes, Virginia, there is a mob
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Record Firms Sue Social Network VK for Piracy
A girl looking at her page on VK, whose 143 million users have long been able to freely upload and share music.
Three of the world's largest record companies filed cases against leading Russian social media site VK on Thursday, accusing the Internet giant of profiting off the free and illegal distribution of copyrighted content.
"It is very, very clear that this is deliberately designed piracy on a massive scale," Frances Moore, CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or IFPI, said by phone Thursday.
With more than 88 million registered users in Russia and 143 million users worldwide, VK, formerly named Vkontakte, has exploded to popularity as an open platform on which any registered user can upload and share their favorite content with the entire VK population.
The record companies –— Sony Music Russia, Universal Russia and Warner Music U.K. — have filed three separate cases simultaneously in the St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region Arbitration Court, supported by IFPI and Russia's National Federation of the Music Industry.
They are claiming 50 million rubles ($1.4 million) in compensation for the infringements and demanding a court order requiring VK to remove copyrighted tracks and implement technical measures, such as audio fingerprinting, to prevent users from re-uploading protected content.
"We consider these complaints unsubstantiated, since we have cooperated with copyright holders in regard to the protection of their rights for a long time," a spokesman for VK said Thursday.
VK quickly deletes all tracks against which there are "valid claims," and has already introduced technical measures, including acoustic fingerprinting, to protect copyright, he said.
This is not the first time that VK has ended up in court. In October, classic Russian record label Soyuz sued VK's administration for copyright infringement, seeking 4.6 million rubles ($129,000) in damages, RIA Novosti reported.
The judge threw out the case, saying that the administration could not be held liable for content uploaded by users.
While the music distributed on VK is user-generated, the site creates "a whole organizational system" that facilitates content-sharing: it is searchable, streamable and explicitly promotes popular music, said Dan Pickard, acting general counsel to IFPI.
The 50-million ruble sum the companies are seeking does not reflect the full damage to the music industry: it is based on a small collection of tracks, and is primarily meant to demonstrate the industry's seriousness in pursuing this issue, Moore said.
"We would hope that this would encourage VK to become a licensed service. If we do not see action, then we do not rule out that there could be other cases to follow … we are not backing away," she said.
While it is difficult to estimate the total loss to the record industry from VK's activities, the site generated $172 million in revenues in 2012.
IFPI have been in contact with VK several times since 2010, when VK responded to their first complaint by removing a "negligible handful" of unlicensed tracks and links, Moore said. The federation's second complaint was ignored.
Russia is the 23rd-largest music market in the world, with revenues of $69.4 billion in 2013. But given the size of the population and prevalence of broadband Internet, "it should be in the top ten markets," Moore said.
As for where to place the blame, as far as IFPI is concerned, there is no question.
"The scale is so massive that VK alone is responsible for the situation in Russia," Moore said.
The Russian music industry is already seeing positive developments, however, particularly in the growing presence of legal music streaming sites such as domestic free-to-user streamer Yandex and international subscription service Deezer. Spotify, which has contracts with Sony, Universal and Warner, is also expected to launch operations in Russia within the year.
Even with VK as an immediate competitor, these authorized digital distributors helped bump overall recorded music revenues in Russia up 12.5 percent in 2013, according to IFPI.
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Community Roundup
Community Roundup Community Roundup Check out this story on thenews-messenger.com: https://ohne.ws/2MBVk0X
Staff Reports Published 11:37 a.m. ET June 18, 2018 | Updated 11:38 a.m. ET June 18, 2018
GroveFest at Spiegel Grove in Fremont includes Back to the Wild, which gives live demonstrations.(Photo: Submitted)
GroveFest to feature animals, activities
FREMONT - Experience nature with hands-on activities, live animal presentations, wagon rides and more during the annual "GroveFest: Nature at the Grove" on Saturday at Spiegel Grove, the estate of President Rutherford and First Lady Lucy Hayes.
The event, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., highlights Spiegel Grove, a 25-acre wooded state park and the grounds of the Hayes Presidential Library and Museums. The Hayeses loved the outdoors. They tended to their gardens and raised cows and chickens on the property.
Nature-related organizations will have crafts and other activities for kids, and the Toledo Zoo and Back to the Wild Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Castalia will give live animal presentations.
Admission is free. Food will be available for a donation or purchase.
The schedule of events include:
• 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. – Booths with activities and food open
• 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. - South Creek Clydesdales will offer horse-drawn wagon rides through Spiegel Grove with guides sharing points of interest on the property. Wagon rides are $3 for adults, $1 for children 6-12 and free for kids 5 and younger.
• 11 a.m. – Back to the Wild Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Castalia will give a live animal presentation.
• 11:30 a.m. – Walking tour of Spiegel Grove
• 1 p.m. – Toledo Zoo will give a live animal presentation
Visitor parking is off-site only with the exception of vehicles with handicapped tags. Parking is available on the street and in ProMedica Memorial Hospital’s parking lots at Buildings A and B, located at 605 Third Ave. Spiegel Grove is a short walk to the east of the hospital parking lots.
For more information, call 419-332-2081.
Ottawa County foundation awards scholarships
PORT CLINTON - Each year, the Ottawa County Community Foundation awards scholarships to graduating seniors from Ottawa County’s six high schools. This year Ottawa County students received over $100,000 in scholarship support.
The James W. Longe Scholarship provides renewable postsecondary scholarships for graduates of Port Clinton High School. This year, Emma Eickert, Kyle Fitzpatrick, Lauren Shaw, and Lauren Steyer each received a $3,000 scholarship from the Longe Scholarship Fund.
Also, because this scholarship is renewable, past graduates Hannah Roberts, Joseph Brenner, Ellis Adolph, Katelynn Koebel, Alyssa Araguz, and Allison Gilliland will receive the scholarship in the fall as they continue their college education. For information on the scholarships go to ottawaccf.org.
Ensign Nathan Brown (Photo: Submitted)
Navy commissions PCHS grad Brown
NORFOLK, Virginia - Ensign Nathan M. Brown, a Port Clinton High School alumni, was commissioned on May 1 at Commander, Operational Test and Evaluation Force in Norfolk, Virginia. He will be serving aboard the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), stationed in Norfolk.
A 2004 PCHS graduate, Brown enlisted in the Navy in 2007. After completing basic training, he graduated from Information Systems Technician A school as an honors graduate. He furthered his education and attained the rank of Information Systems Technician First Class before being selected to commission under the Limited Duty Officer Program in March 2017. He holds degrees in A.A.S. in Computer Science and Security, B.S in Cyber Security with a minor in Political Science, and a M.S. in Cyber Security Management and Policy.
At sea, he has served in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Kabul, Afghanistan, aboard the USS Stethem (DDG 63) in Yokosuka, Japan. He was awarded Junior Sailor of the Year 2012 and promoted to Petty Officer First Class. IT1 Brown then reported to Naval Special Warfare Group Two Mobile Communications Team. During his assignment, he was deployed as the lead communicator for the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit and selected as Senior Sailor of the year 2016 and NSW Special Operations Communicator of the year 2016.
Ashore he has served at the Office of Naval Intelligence where he was a Public Key Infrastructure Trusted Agent and 2009 Junior Sailor of the Year.
He is married to Kelley (Flenner) from Toledo and they have three children.
Read or Share this story: https://ohne.ws/2MBVk0X
Sheriff rules missing man's death a homicide
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William McDonough podcast
William McDonough Podcast (11 MB)
William McDonough Partners
MBDC
William McDonough: Design for Living (BusinessWeek)
Fast Company: Resources: The Revolution Begins
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Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (Amazon Lilnk)
(Link to Amazon.com)
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Podcast with world-renowned architect and environmental visionary, William McDounough.
Published on July 04 2007
William McDonough<
"Reflect on this: It took us 5,000 years to put wheels on our luggage. How smart are humans?" - William McDonough
"My goal is very simple. It's to help create "a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world, with clean air, soil, water, and power -- economically, equitably, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed, period. What's not to like?"
William McDonough is the winner of three U.S. presidential awards: the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development (1996), the National Design Award (2004); and the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2003). Time magazine recognized him as a "Hero for the Planet" in 1999, stating that "his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that, in demonstrable and practical ways, is changing the design of the world."
His Book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, (North Point Press). was not printed on conventional paper, but in Durabook, a synthetic "paper" made from plastic resins and inorganic fillers, materials that can be reutilized again and again in industrial processes, what the book calls a "technical nutrient." Be sure to click the "read more" link for lots more info (including pictures and resource links.)
Mr. McDonough has been a leader in the sustainable development movement since its inception. He designed and built the first solar-heated house in Ireland in 1977 while still a student at Yale University and designed the first "green office" in the U.S. for the Environmental Defense Fund in 1985. Mr. McDonough was commissioned in 1991 by the City of Hannover to write The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability, the official design guidelines for the 2000 World's Fair, which the City presented to the 1992 U.N. Earth Summit in Brazil. He and German chemist Dr. Michael Braungart co-authored Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (North Point Press, 2002), which has now been published in German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Korean translations. The two were also the subject of a 2001 documentary video, The Next Industrial Revolution, from Earthome Productions.
Mr McDonough is founder and principal of two design firms. William McDonough + Partners, Architecture and Community Design, has created numerous landmarks of the sustainability movement since 1981, designing homes, offices, corporate campuses, academic buildings, communities, and cities. McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) employs a comprehensive Cradle to Cradle design protocol to chemical benchmarking, supply-chain integration, energy and materials assessment, clean-production qualification, and sustainability issue management and optimization. Mr. McDonough and his firms have received numerous national and international architectural, environmental, industrial and design awards for their work.
A recognized leader in sustainable design and development, Mr. McDonough writes and speaks extensively on his design philosophy and practice. His vision of the hopeful, positive, and inspiring possibilities of an environmentally and economically intelligent future by design has made him a highly sought-after speaker for a wide range of audiences both internationally and in the U.S.
Mr. McDonough is Consulting Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, U.S. Chair of the Board of Councilors of the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development, and Chair of the Board of Overseers for the Center for Eco-Intelligent Management at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid. He is a board member for The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, as well as the Management Committee of HRH The Prince of Wales's Business & The Environment Programme at Cambridge University. Mr McDonough is a venture partner with VantagePoint Venture Partners, a $2.8 billion global technology venture capital firm with a dedicated CleanTech practice group. From 1994-1999, Mr. McDonough was the Edward E. Elson Professor of Architecture and Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia.
Ford Rouge Dearborn Truck Plant
Source:William McDonough Partners
Lying at the center of the Ford Rouge revitalization project, this new assembly plant represents the client's bold efforts to rethink the ecological footprint of a large manufacturing facility. The design synthesizes an emphasis on a safe and healthy workplace with an approach that optimizes the impact of industrial activity on the external environment.
The keystone of the site stormwater management system is the plant's 10-acre (454,000 sf) "living" roof --- the largest in the world. This green roof is expected to retain half the annual rainfall that falls on its surface. The roof will also provide habitat, decrease the building's energy costs, and protect the roof membrane from thermal shock and UV degradation, thereby extending its life.
Worker amenities inside the plant include light monitors and skylights that ensure abundant daylight on the factory floor. Above the activity of the main work areas, mezzanine-level walkways house team rooms and a cafeteria.
An innovative air delivery system, in which the building serves as a giant pressurized duct, produces breakthroughs in energy use, operational flexibility, and worker comfort.
With the sound of nesting songbirds chirping over factory workers' heads, the new Dearborn Truck Plant offers a glimpse of the transformative possibilities suggested by this new model for sustaining industry.
This concept master plan aspires to indicate, through design strategies, a future that is positive and hopeful in all aspects.
The plan represents a departure from much of contemporary Chinese city planning by seeking to establish a walkable, transit-oriented mixed-use community. The community is structured around a "Jade Necklace" of parks that accentuate an extraordinary landscape of karst formations. The plan also pays considerable attention to "social infrastructure". Every workplace and residence will be within a five-minute walk of a transportation hub and primary school and within 500 meters of an interlinked network of habitats. The plan further supports neighborhoods with community centers and intergenerational transportation within the park oval.
The plan preserves existing stream and wetland communities and calls for the new town to return clean, healthy water to the ecosystem at equal rates and in the same patterns of the undeveleped site through the use of integrated strategies. The overall goal is to make Liuzhou's water cleaner, its air fresher, and its people happier.
About William McDonough + Partners
Source: Company Web site
William McDonough + Partners is a design firm of 46 architects, planners, designers, and support staff. Our work is based on a philosophical foundation rooted in the Cradle to Cradle thinking developed by William McDonough and Dr. Michael Braungart. We serve clients worldwide from our offices in Charlottesville, Virginia and San Francisco, California.
To provide our clients with the best service, the firm uses an open design team approach to optimize project delivery across all types and scales. William McDonough + Partners also hosts a research department that supports design efforts on issues of environmental concern. The department assesses projects' impact on community and regional environmental quality and provides careful consideration of design strategies and material selection, frequently in close collaboration with MBDC.
About MBDC
MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry) is a consultancy founded in 1995 by the world-renowned architect William McDonough and innovative chemist Dr. Michael Braungart to reorient the design of products, processes and systems to provide environmental, societal and financial benefits. MBDC and its co-founders developed and are implementing the innovative Cradle to Cradle℠ paradigm, a unique vision and leadership strategy for industry to realize practical, profitable ecologically-intelligent product design and expand the definition of quality. For more information on MBDC and Cradle to Cradle℠ Certification, please visit mbdc.com or c2ccertified.com.
https://www.totalpicture.com/career-podcast-interview-channels/big-picture-interviews/481-big-picture-podcast-william-mcdonough.html
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Author: Alessandro Furlotti
RAMADAM KAREEM
by Alessandro Furlotti Marocco
Ramadan corresponds to the 9th month of the Islamic calendar and its frequency varies from year to year as the calendar is based on the phases of the moon. And it is the month dedicated to “fasting” (sawan), one of the five pillars of Islam
This year, in Morocco, Ramadan starts on May 5th and ends on June 4th
It is a very significant moment: from dawn to sunset all adult Muslims are required to observe abstinence (or fasting) from food, drink, tobacco, sexual activities to focus on their spiritual renewal.
And life transforms and runs in “slow motion”, since fasting is not easy for anyone to bear …
At sunset, after the fourth prayer of the day, we all gather for the iftar, the meal that is consumed to break the fast and which consists of dates, vegetable soup (harira), and chebakia (typical sweets), milk and water at will.
Public services and often even shops apply a reduced time to adapt to these new habits
And the evening becomes the most lively and folkloric moment of the day, when the streets are filled with life, lights, music and sweet temptations at every corner. After an iftar with dates and other tasty foods, people of all ages indulge in some sweet comfort and often party until late.
No foreigners of other religions are required to observe fasting (on the other hand even Muslims on the go are not obliged to do so), but it is good to avoid, out of respect and solidarity, to eat and drink in public in front of other people who practice ‘abstinence.
And it is important to respect the moment of Islamic prayer and of the “breaking of the fast” and to be understanding when guides and drivers, waiters or shopkeepers are absent from their jobs …
This is a particular condition that could cause minor inconvenience to the traveler but can be just as interesting from a sociological point of view. It could also happen, if you enter in particular friendships with a local person who will offer sweets or invite you to a family party. And accepting the invitation honors his home and the spirit of Ramadan, as well as living a new and different experience.
The festival that marks the end of Ramadan is the Eid – in the Fitr and is the second most important festival of the Muslim religion.
Monday May 6th, 2019 Monday May 6th, 2019
Fresh News from The Residence by Cenizaro:
by Alessandro Furlotti Senza categoria
The new The Residence Dhigurah by Cenizaro will open in June 2019, located on one of the most beautiful atolls of the Maldivian Archipelago – of Gaafu Alifu- adjacent to the first The Residence Falhumaafushi property opened in 2012. These two Resorts will be connected by a long wooden bridge going to create one of the most extensive resorts in the Maldives. The Gaafu Alifu atoll is located in the southern part and can be reached by seaplane or domestic flights in about 50 minutes from the international airport of Male. 173 spacious Beach and Water Villas overlook the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean, all with private pools. The rooms are designed to accommodate natural light and built with the best local materials, combining the beauty of traditional Maldivian architecture with contemporary elegance. Ideal for families, Dhigurah has introduced 12 Beach and Water Villas with more land space options, perfect for younger children. The meals formulas include “the all-day dining” at The Dining Room, the seafront restaurant and Li Bai, a characteristic Cantonese restaurant twinned with Singapore’s renowned Li Bai, which offers refined classic Chinese dishes. Among other proposals, guests can choose the evocative oceanfront Long Island to enjoy dishes, light tastings, champagne cocktails and admire breathtaking sunsets. For tapas or light snacks, the Cafe del Sol, at The Beach Club, is available to guests for poolside lunches and sunset cocktails. Alternatively, for a more intimate experience, guests can choose from a series of “private dining experiences” that include a dinner served under a starry sky on a private island, up to the beach barbecue for families and friends. The Dhigurah Spa by Clarins is located on 10 pavilions covered by thatched roofs, each of which is located within lush tropical gardens overlooking the ocean. The Spa is a true oasis of holistic tranquility to heal body, mind and soul and also includes a barber, beauty salon, a garden terrace with wonderful ocean view where you can practice yoga. Additional highlights of the Resort include an “infinity pool” of 42 meters, Dive & Watersports Center, reading and relaxation room, equipped gym, free use of bicycles per room and a wide range of water sports and experiences on land. The Turtle Kids Club (open from 9am to 7pm) dedicated to guests from 3 to 12 years, allows the freedom to explore and discover the magic of the island under the eyes of a properly trained team. The Kids Club’s vast playground extends throughout the island and invites little guests to explore and discover the local fauna and flora. Other activities include yoga for children, snorkeling, kayaking, Dhivehi language learning, arts and crafts, beach games, cooking, treasure hunts and more. Babysitting service is also available. Surrounded by a beautiful coral reef and located on one of the deepest and pristine atolls, with more than 250 species of corals and 1200 marine species, including manta rays, dolphins and turtles, Dhigurah is a must to visit for snorkeling and diving enthusiasts. The opening of The Residence Maldives in Dhigurah will bring the portfolio of The Residence by Cenizaro to six hotels – Tunis, Zanzibar, Mauritius, Bintan and Maldives. A further expansion is expected in the next two years with three hotels in Tunisia – Douz, the Medina of Tunis and the island of Djerba. Gary Xie, Director for Cenizaro Hotels & Resorts said: “With The Residence Maldives at Dhigurah we are creating a new offering for our guests. The hotel will – as always – be an authentic expression of The Residence philosophy; with its own story to tell and a combination of both Maldivian and global influences to give it a unique sense of place. With The Residence Maldives at Dhigurah, we want to create a hotel that is both the perfect place to relax and an ideal spot for families to let loose and have fun.” He adds, “This is a really exciting time for The Residence by Cenizaro as we look to expand the portfolio and we are absolutely thrilled with this new opening.”
For more information, please visit: www.cenizaro.com/theresidence
Monday April 8th, 2019
The Residence Zanzibar, among the best resorts in Tanzania
by Alessandro Furlotti Zanzibar
Zanzibar is an ideal destination for many reasons, such as the warm welcome, hypnotist mysticism and its rich history.
The Residence Zanzibar has a special bond with the land and strives to give guests the opportunity to venture into the authentic style of Zanzibar life.
The fact that search engine users have voted for the Resort among the best hotels in Tanzania is explained.
Since The Residence Zanzibar is in first position in the Top 10 of the best hotels in Tanzania; It ranks second in the Top of the 10 best luxury hotels in the region, as well as third place in the Top of the 10 best hotels with more customer focus.
On the other hand, the resort occupies the fourth place among the top 25 best hotels in Africa and seventh place in the top 25 best luxury hotels in the area.
A milestone that highlights the exquisite service and hospitality with which the resort welcomes all guests, the attention to detail and how The Residence Zanzibar is fully integrated into this beautiful Indian Ocean region.
For more info: https://www.cenizaro.com/theresidence/zanzibar
The agenda of international Itinerary of Pope Francesco in 2019 is enriched by a new stage: Morocco
On 30 and 31 March, Pope Francesco visited the city of Rabat, where the Apostolic Nunciature has been located since 1976. This is the second time of a Pontiff in Morocco, after 33 years of John Paul II’s journey in August 1985, at the invitation of the then King Hassan II, with whom he had held in December two years earlier (1983) an exchange of letters on the legal situation of the Catholic Church in Morocco. It is also the second time for a visit by Jorge Mario Bergoglio to a predominantly North African country, after the one in Egypt in April 2017, the result of the “thaw” between the Vatican and the prestigious Sunni Al-Azhar university. the March 2019 trip – not linked, therefore, to a specific event – therefore represents a new opportunity to strengthen the dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam and to encourage the small Catholic community: just over 27 thousand faithful, according to statistics, on a population of 34 million inhabitants (about 0.08%). The only stop in Rabat is the royal residence of King Mohammed VI. With the occasion, we want to deepen the peculiarity of Rabat, the amber capital, as a stage of the countless tours that our valid TRANSATOUR correspondent includes in every fascinating tour proposal.
Capital of Morocco,Rabat is considered the symbol of the Country’s immortality. Embraced by miles of amber-colored walls scented with pink and orange hibiscus, the city – elegant and refined – mixes history and modernity. The genesis of the name is linked to the construction in 1150 by the sultan Abd al-Mumin of the fortress on the top of the cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, a mosque and residence which in Arabic is called Ribat. Home to the Royal Palace of His Majesty Mohammed VI, which houses the Government of Morocco, Rabat also has the largest university in the country and is full of shops, cinemas, theaters and bookstores. Try to be in Rabat on Thursday and enter the Rue des Consuls where the characteristic and folkloristic carpet auction is held and where you can buy splendid local handicrafts. Then book a visit to the Caffè Maure, a delicious local inside a kashba, to sip between the benches and the blue tables overlooking the sea the typical mint tea and the typical Moroccan sweets made with honey and almonds.
Click to see a nice video on YouTube about the trip of Pope Francesco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AxZefaecx8.
Ladakh, Indian Tibet celebrating Padmasambhava
by Alessandro Furlotti India Ladakh
The concept of experiential tourism is becoming more and more common: it is a unique and original way of traveling, as it stimulates the heart, mind and soul simply by savoring the destination in an authentic way, taking part in moments of everyday life for you with the locals. All this is a dream when the chosen destination is India, a land of a thousand colors, scents and knowledge that captivates the visitor by involving him in a profound spiritual journey.The beautiful season invites you to discover the wonders of the upper Indus Valley, surrounded by the Buddhist spirituality of its countless monasteries and the colors of the Hemis Festival.
This Festival is celebrated every year on the tenth day of Tsechu, the lunar month of the Tibetan calendar.This colorful show commemorates the birth of Guru Padmasambhava, the founder of Tantric Buddhism in Tibet. It is held in Hemis Gompa, an incredible Buddhist monastery founded in 1672 AD by King Senge Nampar Gyalva. The ceremonies begin with a morning ritual on top of the Gompa where, to the rhythm of the drums and the clamorous clash of cymbals together with the spiritual lament of pipe, the portrait of “Dadmokarpo” or “Rygyalsras Rinpoche” is ceremonially put on display for everyone admire and adore. Dressed in brightly colored tunics, adorned with colorful masks the monks perform a religious dance on melodies exploded by large horns, which makes the Hemis Festival an incredible extravagance, a feast for the eyes and the joy of everyone.The historical correspondent Cox and Kings for this extraordinary occasion recommends a trip of 6 days and 5 nights with departures on 11 July for a complete immersion in this magical, unforgettable festival.
Sunday April 7th, 2019 Monday April 8th, 2019
Sri Lanka where Extreme Sport & Unique Experiences Win
by Alessandro Furlotti Sri Lanka
Not only relaxation: there are those who, on vacation, are looking for strong emotions.
Until a few years ago, extreme sports were not practiced by many people, there were only a few daredevils who, to repeatedly experience the excitement of risk, danger and the adrenaline rush that is felt at the time of the action, challenged the fear and courageously threw himself out of a 40-meter bridge or climbed a vertical wall with bare hands. In recent years, however, extreme sport has become a real discipline, followed by many enthusiasts. The equipment has improved, the preparation of the athlete, the research and the areas have multiplied, the areas where to go to try again to feel that adrenaline rush that has not changed over time, strong was and remained strong.
So for those who want to discover this wonderful country from a different angle, our correspondent Jetwing Italia, proposes Ella, a small village in Hill Country, one of the most scenic places in all of Sri Lanka. The landscape that is in this place is totally different from the idea of this island. Here, nature is predominant, green fills the eyes of travelers who get lost among mountain peaks, tea plantations and waterfalls where for those in search of new emotions, a viable option is the Zip Line. The two-wire Zip line extends for over half a kilometer and offers a bird’s eye view of the beautiful hills of the island. https://www.flyingravana.com/
A world without dolphins and whales is nothing but a world “- said Ric O ‘Barry. Those who share the same thought as the man who spoke to dolphins in Mirissa, off the southern coast of Sri Lanka, can devote themselves to this evocative and exciting practice. – Observation of whales in Sri Lanka is an incredible activity to consider, and it is even more breathtaking if carried out by an aircraft flying over the unforgettable spectacle of the passage of cetaceans, since it does not disturb their natural habitat. Observing the majestic nature of the largest mammal in the world, the Blue Whale, from an aerial point of view, leaves passengers with an incomparable experience and an understanding of the true greatness of beauty and grace of the species. https://f-air.lk/whale-watching/
Sunday April 7th, 2019 Tuesday April 9th, 2019
Abu Dhabi, is not just sea and endless luxury: the capital of the Emirates, in fact, aims to establish itself as a destination to be preferred when it is intended to give a cultural turn to the holiday. And, given its rich heritage, it is not difficult to find interesting ideas
by Alessandro Furlotti Abu Dhabi
From fortress to center of culture: the evolution for those who want to immerse themselves in the history of Abu Dhabi, recently opening the doors to the public was the Qasr Al Hosn, a true icon of local culture. We are talking about a structure originally built in 1760 as a watchtower and first transformed into a fortress and then into a splendid palace, becoming the home of the Al Nahyan family who once governed the city.
Today, at the behest of the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan (founding father of the United Arab Emirates), this monument, from the residence of the rulers, has been transformed into a center of culture and education of great depth.
Today it hosts a permanent and free exhibition that illustrates the rich heritage of the region and the history of the capital of the United Arab Emirates. There are also galleries, museums, countless intellectual activities, artistic and cultural events ready to tell the other side of the emirate demonstrating on the one hand a strong identity and, on the other, a great opening to the international scene.
Wednesday December 12th, 2018
Madagascar with a thousand facets, discovering the Panganales canal
by Alessandro Furlotti Madagascar
As in many stretches of the Indian Ocean, just behind the beach, where the accumulation of sand has made it rich and full-bodied, almost a line of dunes has formed that becomes a barrier to protect the territory behind, as if to divide two kingdoms, that of the ocean without borders and a system of pools of water, of canals and inlets, those that elsewhere are called backwaters, fed in turn by the watercourses that come from the inside, which constitute an ecosystem to itself, calm and quiet, marked by expanses of mangroves, swamps and muddy stretches, delimited by a whole series of embankments and passages that the work of man has done to shape for its use.
This was followed by a complex design hand that over time created a sort of artificial canal that runs just inside the sea line, even for more than 600 kilometers. One of these channels was built at the beginning of the colonial era by the French governor in Madagascar, used as an efficient system for the movement of vehicles, goods and people in a very difficult area without other means of communication. The Panganales canal has thus become a place of great interest. Now visitors can enjoy a boat cruise along this canal from Toamasina to the village of Ankanin’y Nofy. Along the way, you can discover the lifestyle of the villagers, the fishermen and once in Ankanin’ny Nofy visit the Palmarium reserve to admire various species of lemurs. And of course do not miss the chance to see the Aye-aye, a kind of nocturnal lemur, known for its long fingernails and fluffy hairs on its head.
And right in Toamasina, the largest port of Madagascar and second city in the country after Antananarivo, inaugurates The Streamliner Hotel Apartment, an elegant complex that redefines the concept of luxury offering guests 36 fully equipped apartments with a living area, kitchenette and balcony , to feel at home at ease.
Wednesday December 12th, 2018 Wednesday December 12th, 2018
Meknès in the top 10 cities in the world to visit in 2019 according to Lonely Planet
by Alessandro Furlotti Lonely Planet Marocco Meknes
The famous tourist guide Lonely Planet has just published the ranking of the ten cities to visit in 2019, and the imperial city of Meknès is in 10th place.
The warrior sultan who in 1672 moved the capital of Morocco to Meknès would turn in his grave if he knew that today the city receives few visitors compared to Fès and Marrakech. Moulay Ismail sacked the palaces of Marrakech and the Roman ruins of Volubilis to obtain the stone and the marble with which to build the massive fortifications that still enclose the city, the underground warehouses for food supplies and a magnificent bab (door) to even eclipse the Blue Door of Fès. In the heart of the city, the elaborate mausoleum of Ismail is a national treasure, released in 2018 by a two-year restoration, which offers travelers one more reason to visit this underrated city.
Christmas in Hanoi, the most evocative and enchanting city in Vietnam, illuminated by colorful lanterns.
by Alessandro Furlotti Hanoi Vietnam
Christmas, in Vietnam, is an imported festive day, a bit like Halloween with us, as the majority of the population is Buddhist. Despite this, Christmas attracts more and more curiosity and appreciation from the new generations, enchanted and enchanted by the atmosphere full of joy that accompanies it.
The site does not have the white snow and the reindeer, but Santa Claus does not miss to visit the lively tourist town and the inhabitants celebrate with fervor. In all streets and shops you can admire the traditional Christmas trees decorated with lights and colors, Christmas packages with the most extravagant shapes, handcrafted products made of wood, ceramic or glass, figurines for the nativity scene.
At this time of year, it is common to see people dressed as Santa and reindeer antlers. The sound of merry Christmas carols is everywhere and Vietnamese residents exchange greetings and presents. In short, everything makes this unmissable stop even more beautiful and characteristic during the Christmas period
Crociere Fluviali
Mar Nero
Festival & Eventi
TTG Incontri
Tourism Connection
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Who Was Mary Ann Schillaci, Serial Killer Andrew Cunanan's Mother?
This week's episode of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace will explore murderer Andrew Cunanan's childhood.
By Leah Silverman
Andrew Cunanan, who murdered four individuals before gunning down Gianni Versace in 1997, has been described as a pathological liar with a genius IQ by friends, acquaintances, and investigators. But Cunanan's mother, Mary Ann Schillaci, described him as a "a high-class male prostitute."
This week on American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, we're given a glimpse into Cunanan's childhood, with Joanna Adler starring as his mother, Mary Ann Schillaci Cunanan. Here's everything we know about her.
Cunanan told friends his mother was Jewish and his father was Filipino royalty.
But in reality, Mary Ann was a devout Catholic and his father Modesto "Pete" Cunanan was a Navy veteran-turned-stockbroker. His mother was also an Italian immigrant, according to Vanity Fair. In the show, Cunanan uses his mother's heritage to his advantage while trying to connect with Versace, however it is unclear whether or not the two actually met in real life.
She suffered postpartum depression following Andrew's birth.
In the book Vulgar Favors, on which the series is based, Andrew's godfather shared details of Mary Ann's difficult pregnancy, explaining that after giving birth to Andrew, she struggled with postpartum depression and had to be hospitalized for three months.
Cunanan's siblings admit that his mother spoiled him.
Andrew, the youngest child, was given preferential treatment among his siblings. He reportedly had the master bedroom in the family home, was given his own car, and was the only one of his siblings enrolled in an elite private school.
Her husband fled the country in 1988, leaving the family behind.
Mary Ann told Vulgar Favors author Maureen Orth that she never divorced her husband, even though they were leading separate lives. In 1988, when Andrew was 19, his father Modesto fled to the Philippines to avoid being arrested for "misappropriating $106,000 from his stock-brokerage business." (According to Time, San Diego police have no record of charges against Andrew's father.)
After her husband fled, Mary Ann was destitute.
Andrew went to live with his father for a time in the Philippines, but ultimately returned because he said his father was living in "squalor." His mother was in a small apartment when he came back, living off her husband's Navy pension for a time. Eventually she moved to Illinois, where her son Christopher was based, to receive public assistance like food stamps and public housing.
Mary Ann and Andrew had a close yet complicated relationship.
"Andrew was my marriage counselor. We would take walks around the block together and he would explain things to me," Mary Ann told Orth in Vulgar Favors. In an interview on Larry King Live, Mary Ann said that Andrew was "beautiful, intelligent, handsome, bright... gifted... I just want to remember the good things."
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Jan’s Truckstop, near Northallerton
Jan’s Truckstop on the A19 southbound has a hint of European-ness to it, it’s a café tagged onto a petrol station with a sizeable parking area for trucks, adjacent to a busy dual carriageway, so very similar to the type of establishments you see a lot in Germany and other European countries.
It’s a handy place to stop overnight at, or just break for a meal, if you are on the busy trucking route from the industrial heartlands of Teesside heading back south.
The biggest breakfast on offer is the Full English – and that comes with two sausages, two rashers of bacon, two eggs plus black pudding, a hash brown, mushrooms, beans and fried bread and is priced at £6.50.
Two slightly smaller breakfast options are also available. Breakfast No. 1 also has two sausages, and two rashers of bacon, but has just one fried egg, black pudding, a choice of beans or tomatoes and fried bread and costs £5.50. Breakfast No. 2 is two sausages, two rashers of bacon, a fried egg, and either beans or tomatoes and is priced at £5.20. All breakfasts come with a choice of a mug of tea or coffee, and also a round of bread and butter.
Then there is a wide range of breakfast buns. These start with the basic fried egg at £1.90 while bacon or sausage on its own is £2.40. Sausage or bacon with tomato is priced at £2.50.
Sausage or bacon with a choice of egg, black pudding, mushrooms or hash brown are all on the menu at £3.10. Bacon and sausage together is charged at £3.35 while bacon, sausage and egg all together is £3.80.
For lighter bites, two poached or fried eggs on toast is £3 as is beans on toast or mushrooms and tomatoes on toast. Scrambled eggs on toast is £3.25 – with three eggs used. A toasted teacake is £1.30 while two slices of toast comes in at £1.20.
The soup of the day is priced at £3 but if you want a bigger main meal then there is plenty of choice. Two fried eggs, chips and beans is priced at £4.95 while sausage, egg and chips is £5.50 – as is ham, egg and chips and corned beef, egg and chips.
Bacon, sausage, egg and chips comes in at £5.80 which is the same price as burger, egg, chips and beans or homemade quiche, chips and salad.
Fish and chips will set you back £6 while gammon, with egg, chips and peas is available at £6.50 and a mixed grill will cost £6.75. All main meals come with a coffee or tea, and bread and butter.
Homemade specials are £6 and on the day of our visit the options were bangers and mash or mince and dumplings served with a choice of potatoes, chips and vegetables.
There are also paninis at £3.75, with the choice being cheese and tomato, ham and cheese, cheese and onion or corned beef and onion – and all are served with a salad.
Jacket potatoes are also on the menu, a simple plain spud with butter is £3 while adding a filling – either cheese and coleslaw or tuna mayo ups that to £3.50. Cheese and beans together in your potato will be £3.75.
A plain beef burger is £2.90 and a cheeseburger is £3.10. A bacon, cheese and onion burger is £3.80 and all burgers are served with a salad – and you can add a portion of chips to them for £2. A chip butty on its own is £2.50.
Salads – either ham, corned beef, cheese or homemade quiche, are all priced at £5.75, and all are served with coffee or tea and a round of bread and butter.
Jan’s truckstop also offers a number of ‘Deals of the month’ – for example when we visited they included a bacon or sausage bap with tea or coffee for £3, soup and bread roll £1.95 and with a sandwich £3.50, cheeseburger and chips for £5 with free tea or coffee with an optional salad or coffee and cake for £3.50. There is also a sandwich meal deal where for £3.50 you get a sandwich, a can of pop or tea/coffee and a bag of crisps.
As well as trucks, the site welcomes passing trade from cars and accordingly there is also a kid’s menu. All meals are £3.50 and include bacon, sausage or beans all with egg and chips, cheeseburger, beef burger or chicken nuggets with chips, the kid’s breakfast and bangers and mash. All are served with a drink and an ice lolly.
There is a range of hot drinks available, including coffees – Americana, espresso, café latte, cappuccino, latte macchiato, mochaccino – as well as hot chocolate or tea. There are also ice cream milkshakes – chocolate, strawberry, banana – on offer at £1.95.
All desserts are £3.80 and include apple pie with custard or cream, jam sponge with custard, hot chocolate fudge cake with ice cream or cream, spotted dick and custard, sticky toffee pudding with custard or ice cream or a bowl of mixed ice cream.
The site is slap bang next to a petrol station – which also has a shop for sweets, drinks and the like. There is a 24/7 shower and toilet block as well.
The café is opened Mondays to Thursdays from 0630-1930 and 0630 to 1600 on Fridays but is closed on Saturdays and Sundays.
There is parking for up to 50 trucks and it costs £12 to park, but that gives you a £4 meal or shop voucher. It is £10.50 if you don’t want the voucher or are paying on a SNAP account. Trailer changeovers are £6. There is also a cash machine at the site.
Jan’s Truckstop
A19 Southbound, Ingleby Arncliffe, Northallerton, DL6 3JX
Rugby Truckstop
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Marvel and Miss Jones
- by Leo Stableford, 13 January 2016
It's been a couple of months since Netflix released their second Marvel TV Series Jessica Jones. The series was met with generally positive reviews and well and truly overhauled the mental image many cherish of the 11th Doctor. People are divided as to whether they prefer Daredevil or Jessica Jones, but that's not really a surprise. It could be seen as something of a surprise that Jessica Jones even offered The Man Without Fear a run for his money... or maybe it isn't.
To a lesser or greater degree Jessica Jones played to its strengths and made strengths out of its perceived cultural weaknesses, like the titular heroine it gave every appearance of having nothing to lose. Let's face it folks Daredevil did have a harder time in terms of fan expectation and apprehension at past mis-handling (although I like the Director's Cut of the 2003 Affleck movie, I do agree the theatrical cut had a lot of problems).
The reason for this is that more people actually know who Daredevil is, hell the character Jessica Jones has even made a feature out of not knowing who she is herself. All I knew going in was what I'd read in my Marvel Encyclopaedia and the bits and pieces of her part in the Secret Invasion storyline, where she's pretty much Mrs. Luke Cage. If you were Marvel and you wanted to put out a pioneering first female superhero property, then JJ doesn't really look all that inspiring on paper.
In a way, it remains disappointing that Marvel's first contemporary leading lady has been shunted into the "edgy" Netflix TV Universe. On the surface, it's a bit of an insult not to have female superheroes in the lead role debut on the big screen. On the other hand, more people watch Netflix than watch any individual movie, in the main. It's easier to put a show on at home than it is to organise a trip to an event movie.
Ludicrous as it might seem to view a female starring superhero franchise as "a risk" at this stage in history, the insanely conservative entertainment industry views it as such. In a world with Black Widow/Mockingbird action figure supply and demand issues, putting such an obscure heroine in the limelight seems like an odd move. Then again, I'm not sure that a JJ action figure would really be age appropriate. (Now Available! PTSD JJ in down-at-heel gumshoe outfit. Includes bottle of whisky and despair drinking action arm!) For that reason alone, it could be seen as a shrewd manoeuvre to make the first leading lady a character you won't want little girls to emulate. Or even be able to watch. After all, with the wealth of strong female role models provided in the comic book world, what's one less? Oh, no, wait.
Ever the detective!
Still, this cultural artifact is what it is and for its failings, it is still one of the most important superhero products ever produced. For a start, Jessica Jones, superhero origins and powers aside, seems like a real person. The whole gumshoe angle on the show is fully exploited, the show comments upon hardboiled detective fiction even as it explores the tropes.
At the same time, the show actively comments upon gender stereotyping, simply reversing those hidden rules of thumb so rife in narrative construction for popular media. The unwritten rule that random characters should be written as men by default is switched here. I wasn't keeping track, but I did feel that where random characters came in, they were female more often than not.
This simple reversal gives the women in JJ a greater degree of agency. Simultaneously, it highlights how such a provisioning of dialogue and action really changes the view of men in the story. With the arguable exception of David Tennant's Kilgrave, the men in Jessica Jones tend to come off as accessories to the story, even superpowered cross-over-tastic Luke Cage fits into roles as "Assistant" and "slightly dopey love interest". He is never allowed to dominate the episodes where he appears, even though he can play a pretty major role in the unfolding events.
At one point, in a perfect microcosm of the series' attitude, someone's mother organises a revenge plot. When JJ springs the trap, both the woman and her husband are there. What dramatic lines there are to deliver are delivered by the woman plotter, whilst the husband stands by, the weaker partner by virtue of his silence.
What's really clever about these conceits is that they dance the line of narrative satire without slipping into some weird social justice pastiche of hero fiction. Every narrative decision has been made for sound dramatic reasons. I am very used to the features of the story being told here, but I am not so familiar with the players or the shape of their relationships to one another. As I have noted before, if you have a character written as male, or performing gender in a way that is stereotypically male, then, if they are female, it leads to some pretty weird motivational back story.
There are worse ways to spend a day at work
In other words, when a male gumshoe hits the whiskey pretty hard in their squalid office, it's a familiar trope. When the gumshoe is female, you begin to ask "Why is she in this terrible position? Why is she hurting herself this way?" In actual fact, you should ask that question in either case, and when the gumshoe trope was young, that was the point of it, but we've all been desensitised to it in the intervening years. This is one of the things that makes JJ such a refreshing watch.
It comes to a point where the play between the quality of the series, it's story and it's cultural context make JJ the perfect flagship for female superheroes in our culture. It is a challenge to the prevailing Neanderthal attitude that superheroes are for boys and deal with boy-issues in a way that a Black Widow movie or a Mockingbird series simply can't.
There was a time before Milla Jovovich, Buffy and JJ Abrams when the kick ass female was a surprise and a revelation, a bold new direction in mass media storytelling. It's only the fact that male archetypes have continued to dominate that allows the room for Natasha Romanov and Bobbi Morse to exist without feeling tired and worn out. Even so, you could bemoan the lack of variety in heroic female archetypes.
In comes JJ, who defies expectations in just about every way. She has all the features of a generic male hero (her main "ability" is enhanced strength), but as a woman she uses what she has in a completely new way, because a woman gifted with super strength will need to exploit her advantages both in physical capability and the performance of gender.
Strange kind of woman
To add into that the storyline about the dangers of such an individual being exploited by a more powerful corrupting influence and that's the icing on the cake. The series plays with audience expectations about gender roles and relationships and simultaneously comments on an industry viewed as being behind the times in its own attitudes towards what people will watch men and women do on screen.
JJ may not be the hero we were expecting. She may not even be the one we necessarily wanted. Despite this, she is most definitely the female Marvel superhero that we all needed. Long may she be a jewel in the Marvel/Netflix crown.
Have you seen Marvel's Jessica Jones? Have anything to add? Let us know below!
Tagged: movies & TV.
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Saturday, December 29, 2001, Chandigarh, India
LUDHIANA INDEX
L U D H I A N A S T O R I E S
Burglary bid in bank
Police caught napping
Ludhiana December 28
Sheer luck prevented a major burglary in the New Shiv Puri branch of the Punjab National Bank after midnight last night. Outsmarting the police and putting a question mark on its claim of taking adequate security measures in the city, a gang of unidentified thieves broke into the bank through the back door but could not succeed in opening the strong room.
Armed with a welding gun to cut open the steel gates of the strong room, the thieves had managed to cut only half the door as either they had run out of time or out of gas to finish the job.
The thieves, using the welding gun, easily managed entry into the bank. They had broken the door lock by melting it. Once inside the bank, the thieves ransacked the place in search of keys but could not find them. After failing to open the strong room door, the thieves left on their own.
Surprisingly, despite the recent spurt in incidents of robbery in the city, the bank had not stepped up security. The bank had no alarm system and it did not post a security guard for night duty. The thieves succeeded in breaking inside from the back door. Incidentally, some unidentified persons had attempted a similar burglary bid in the bank in February early this year but had failed to break into the strong room. No lessons seem to had been learnt from that incident.
While there was no loss, the daring attempt of theft had spread panic among the bank managers in the city. This was third crime incident in a row. The latest incident had once again put a question mark on the efficiency and the capability of the police in controlling crime in the city.
Most disturbing aspect behind this incident was that the police had already been observing a maximum red alert for the past two days. Though unprecedented security measures had been taken in the city but still the criminals seemed to be striking at will.
The Basti Jodhewal police has registered a case under Sections 380, 457 and 511, IPC, against unidentified persons. The police suspects the involvement of some migrant labourers in the entire episode as some biri stubs were found in the bank. Though no concrete evidence has been found so far, but the police was also suspecting the involvement of some present or former employee.
Mr Ashok Arora, Manager of the bank, said the attempted burglary came to light at about 9 am today, when a sweeper Rajinder pal Singh, came to the bank, who then informed the police. A dog squad was pressed into service but it failed to provide any lead.
Fingerprint experts, who could be arranged in the late afternoon only, also could not find many fingerprints from the place as no one had directed the employees or the visitors to keep away from select places.
It may be mentioned here that the police had began a special night-patrolling in the region in the wake of a robbery incident outside a LIC branch office in Sham Nagar on Wednesday and a snatching incident at a petrol station near Khanpur village yesterday. Senior police officers could not be contacted since last evening onwards as the officials were busy in meetings called to discuss security measures to be adopted in the city.
The bank has, meanwhile, began taking preventive measures in order to avoid any further robbery attempt in future. When a Ludhiana Tribune visited the bank, labourers were seen constructing a wall over the back door so that the entry was closed permanently. The bank staff said that a meeting of the senior officers was likely to be organised shortly to beef up security arrangements.
Clouds of war cause tension in city
In the wake of tension on the Indo-Pak border, the railway authorities have pressed into service Punjab commando battalions for the security of vital installations like bridges, oil tanks, railway workshops and other sensitive places. The commando battalions have been called as the Railways Department could not provide security at all these places due to shortage of staff.
The tension at the border is quite visible at the railway station where the convoys of the armed forces can be seen heading towards the border. The Army authorities today also posted a Movement Control Officer at the local railway station. The officer is always appointed when the clouds of war are hovering around.
Sources said that the commando battalions were deployed at the various railway bridges on the prominent rivers (names undisclosed due to security reasons).
Sources disclosed to Ludhiana Tribune that to take stock of the situation, meetings of various officials of Railway Police Force were being held frequently.
Convoys of the Army passing through Ludhiana railway station have become a source of attraction for people. Children were seen waving at the soldiers who were heading towards the Indo-Pak border.
The national spirit is ruling the minds of people in the city as the tension prevails among the two countries. The passing of various convoys through the city roads as well as the rail lines has made the city residents tense.
Thief dies while fleeing
An alleged thief died while fleeing from a four-wheeler body building unit near Kangowal village after the owners and workers of the unit foiled the burglary attempt early this morning. The workers, showing courage, succeeded in nabbing another member of the suspected five-member gang.
On the basis of information provided by the nabbed thief, a team of the Dhandari police led by Inspector Mukhwinder Singh and ASI Malkit Singh succeeded in arresting three more alleged members of the gang from various hideouts in the evening. The identity of the dead or arrested gang members could not be established.
The incident took place at about 4 am. The Mansarovar Body Builders unit was lying closed for quite some time. Its owner, Charanjit Singh, has settled in Delhi. A gang of thieves had committed theft of machines and iron at the unit recently. The factory owners were staying in the unit for the past few days in connection with the earlier theft case when the alleged gang attempted another strike.
According to police sources, the gang members managed to broke into the unit by making a big hole in a wall. They had come with candles and torches. However, the workers and unit owners hearing the noise challenged them at which the thieves turned back to run away. One of the gang members collided with a pointed machine and died on the spot. He suffered injuries in the lower abdomen area.
Another gang member was nabbed by the workers. Unconfirmed reports said some labourers living close by had helped in nabbing the thieves but the police denies this.
Country boy on national radar
Vimal Sumbly
Ravinder Singh Grewal, a Class X student of Government Senior Secondary School at Thereekey, a village on the outskirts of Ludhiana, may look like any other country boy, but he possesses uncommon creativity. His intellect may not be matched even by the most brilliant students of the elite public schools of India.
Ravinder has designed a working model of a radar that was adjudged the best at the annual State Science Exhibition at Fatehgarh Sahib in the last week of November. He will now display this model at the North Zone Science Exhibition that is to be held in New Delhi from February 5 to 7. He has also qualified for the National Science Exhibition to be held next year.
Ravinder owes his success to his mathematics teacher, Mr Sanjeev Kumar Taneja, who helped him make the model. It took at least a month for the teacher and his student to develop the model that caught the attention of everyone at the science exhibition. According to Ravinder, the model shows the working of the radar using simple light-detecting-radiation (LDR) circuit. It comprises a control board, computerised display board, antenna with receiver and a transmitter to receive and echo radio waves. It also contains the height, direction and speed monitors to detect these movements of flying objects, besides an emergency signal.
Mr Taneja said, “The transmitter in the radar sends a beam of electromagnetic waves by means of an antenna, when these waves strike an object in the path of the beam, some are reflected from the object, forming an echo signal. The antenna collects the energy contained in the echo signal and delivers it to the receiver. Through amplification and computer processing, the radar receiver produces a visual signal on the screen which is a computer display monitor.
Given the resources available to the school, that does not even have a computer so far and where education is imparted in Punjabi medium only, Ravinder’s achievement is big indeed. Ms Kamaljeet Kaur, Principal of the school, said, “This creation has made the 450 students of the school interested in science.” Some students brought a generator set to the school from their home to operate the working model.
Ravinder’s father is a farmer and his family is not educated enough. He wants to settle abroad, as three of his five uncles have already migrated to Canada. Scientific innovations fascinate him, which prompted him to develop this model. Ravinder said, “Mr Taneja continued to motivate me and helped me maintain my interest in the project during those days of hard work.”
Begging racket busted
The worst fears of the Ludhianvis about the possibility of a well-organised gang of beggars in the city, which was contributing in the sudden increase of beggars, have finally come true with the busting of a gang of criminals indulging in kidnapping of children from different parts of the country and then forcing them to beg.
While the children brought the day’s earnings for the alleged masters, they were fed poorly and were living in filth. The activity came to light when some relatives of a handicapped boy, Navin, missing from Agra nine months ago, found the child begging in New Madhopuri Colony yesterday. After the emotional reunion, the child was taken to Kotwali police station where a case was registered against the alleged master, Lal Singh.
The police said here today that it had succeeded in arresting Lal Singh from Karimpura Bazar today and the hunt to arrest four more persons was on. The child narrated a chilling story to the police in which he told them that there were several other children forced to beg in the city. They were beaten by the masters and given Rs 5 or a little more to feed themselves.
Badal pledges steps for uplift of Dalits
The Punjab Chief Minister, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, announced that the government was committed for emancipation and empowerment of Dalit communities and it was in this context that several welfare schemes were launched for the uplift of weaker sections in general and the Dalit community in particular.
Mr Badal was addressing an impressive gathering of the members of the Valmiki community at his residence in Chandigarh last evening, which was taken in a big convoy of vehicles from Ludhiana under the leadership of Mr Vijay Danav, national joint secretary of the Bharatiya Valmiki Dharam Samaj (BVDS).
The Chief Minister recounted the significant role played by the members of Valmiki community during the freedom struggle and later in the task of nation building. He said it was unfortunate that the community was more or less a neglected lot even after 55 years of independence and attributed the phenomenon to discrimination and exploitation by the successive Congress governments, who considered the weaker sections nothing but a big chunk of vote bank.
Speaking at the occasion, Mr Danav, who is also a member of the working committee of ruling SAD-B, assured that members of Valmiki community would stand solidly behind the ruling combine candidates in the coming elections and would ensure yet another victory for the coalition.
He urged Mr Badal to provide due representation to members of the community in allocation of party tickets.
Earlier, addressing the BVDS activists here, before leaving for Chandigarh, Mr Danav and other speakers outlined the objectives of the BVDS like putting an end to discrimination against Dalits and necessary social, religious and political measures for emancipation and empowerment of the Dalit community.
Left parties to oppose Cong, BJP
Various Left parties in the state have decided to oppose both the Akali-BJP alliance as well as the Congress, which they described were communal and corrupt, respectively.
The decision was taken at a meeting held here today and was attended among others by Mr Jagjit Singh Lyallpuri, Mr Mangat Ram Pasla, Mr Harkanwal Singh, Mr Kulwant Singh Sandhu and Mr Tarsem Jodhan of Punjab CPM, Pasla group, Mr Prem Singh Bhangoo, Mr Kuldip Singh, Mr Lakhwin Singh Buani and Mr Jagjit Singh Lyallpuri of Marxist Communist Party of India and Dr Maninder Singh Randhawa and Mr Sudarshan Natt of CPI-ML (Liberation).
It was decided to forge and consolidate the Left movement in the state. Participant parties in the meeting decided to play a positive role during the ensuing Assembly elections for defeating the Akali Dal Badal-BJP, ‘a communal, corrupt and anti-people combine’ ruling in the state. At the same time it has decided to reject the ‘bourgeois-landlord, Congress party’, that initiated the new economic policy, opening the door for ‘imperialist globalisation in India’. While carrying out the programme, these parties would have no truck with the ‘fundamentalist communal elements of Panthic Morcha’ or any other communal elements.
This meeting decried the ‘unprincipled approach’ of Mr Harkrishan Singh Surjeet and CPI leadership, who were ‘shamelessly hankering’ for adjustment and alliance with the Congress. In this context, the meeting greeted the ‘overwhelming majority of CPM membership, who have rejected the unprincipled, revisionist policies and revolted against the leadership of CPM led by Harkrishan Singh Surjit’.
It claimed, it was a very positive development for forging a consolidated Communist movement in the state. With a view to forge and advance a Left democratic alliance in the state, this meeting set up a committee consisting of Mr Jagjit Singh Lyallpuri, Mr Mangat Ram Pasla and Dr Maninder Singh Randhawa, to identify the Assembly seats to be jointly contested and evolving adjustment within the Left democratic forces in the state.
Rajajung joins Congress
Dr Gurcharan Singh Rajajung, who recently resigned from the post of Chief Agricultural Officer, has joined the Congress party. He is welcomed by Capt Amarinder Singh, Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee chief and Mr H.S.Hanspal, Chairman, Disciplinary Committee, and senior leaders of the party.
According to a press release, Capt Amarinder Singh appreciated the decision taken by Dr Rajajung who came forward to fight the injustice and excesses. He added that inclusion of such intellectual, educated and experienced persons will be given due place in the party who were in touch with the problems of 80 per cent of farming community. The PPCC chief further added that Dr Rajajung had sacrificed his job to serve the people and his entry will benefit the Congress in framing the policies, particularly in agriculture.
Lots of ups and downs for MC
Kuldip Bhatia
The year 2001 had many an upheavals in store for the local Municipal Corporation. The civic body in the industrial hub of Punjab was embroiled in quite a few administrative and political controversies, witnessing many ups and downs in the process.
The major events, that affected the city or the MC in one way or the other, were clearance of elevated road, administrative changes at the top level, abolition of octroi, ‘war of wits’ between the City Mayor, Mr Apinder Singh Grewal and the BJP councillors, extended boycott of MC works by contractors and demolition of a part of a temple, which led to exit of the then MC Commissioner ,Dr S.S. Sandhu, who had won the hearts of city residents for being a visionary and adept administrator.
A 2.5-km elevated road, claimed to be first of its kind in the region, proposed to be built over the existing Old GT Road from Jagraon Bridge to Chand Cinema in the old city area ultimately went on stream after a lot of political hassles and stiff opposition from a section of shopkeepers, whosw shops are located along the stretch of road which was to come under the proposed flyover. The clearance of the project in a dramatic manner in the General House saw the Congress councillors coming to the rescue of City Mayor while the Akali Dal suffered a vertical split and the BJP, opposed to the project on several grounds, was marginalised and went to the extent of withdrawing the support from the Mayor.
The issue of abolition of octroi, which came into effect on December 1, remained a hot topic of debate for the later part of the year and provided a forum to the MC employees for a protracted agitation. The apprehension that the loss of revenue from octroi, the biggest source of income, might adversely affect the financial health of the civic body.
It also forced the MC contractors to boycott both the new and ongoing development works. Even though the state government had fulfilled its commitment of making good the loss, so far that was, the contractors were still reluctant to take in hand new works on the ground that their old outstanding dues were yet to be cleared.
At the fag end of the year, inapt handling of demolition of an outer wall of Durga Mata Mandir, snowballed into a major controversy with the BJP, already nursing a grouse against the then MC Commissioner, got an opportunity to settle scores and on the pretext that the communal tension might take a turn for the worse, forced the government to transfer Dr Sandhu. The cloud, however, had a silver lining since Mr R.L. Kalsia, who replaced Dr Sandhu, too proved to be an upright, clear headed and a no-nonsense man, focussed on development and bringing a qualitative change in the civic life.
The focus of the MC administration remained on development works with a little over Rs 1 crore being provided to each of the 70 wards in the city. In addition, the MC spent a sizeable amount for creation of new infrastructure and renovation and repair of the existing sports facilities in the city for the National Games, which turned out to be the biggest sports extravaganza of the year.
With the octroi scrapped, there were a large number of changes at middle and lower level to adjust the octroi staff in other departments of the MC and there was a clamour by many of those being shifted to secure plum postings.
The horticulture wing of the MC remained in the eye of the storm, facing allegations in purchase of plants, irregularities in maintenance of parks and lax control over contractors, in particular context to a tragic accident in a park in Model Town locality, which took the life of a small girl. The spate of allegations was not confined to newspaper reports alone and the Vigilance Bureau did take notice and conducted raids on the office of horticulture wing.
Although, no formal report has been made public, but prima facie, several charges were established, according to reliable sources in the MC.
Mystery over child’s disappearance
The mystery over the disappearance of a child from a market near Do Moria Bridge and the subsequent recovery four hours later from a far-off place continues as neither the police nor the victim family has any clue to the incident.
Different theories were doing rounds in the absence of any concrete or exact information provided by the child, Jatin. The two-and-a-half-year-old boy of a hosiery factory owner, Mr Rajiv Kalia, had disappeared from a bakery shop in the afternoon and was found in a restaurant near Agar Nagar, 12 km away. No one knows how the child managed to reach there.
The restaurant owners had seen the child and informed the police. They had not seen anybody dropping the child there.
The police was working on two theories — one was that the child boarded some other car by mistake and the other was that the child was kidnapped by some persons. The police suspects that the kidnappers could have dropped the child in the restaurant as due to a robbery incident, special nakas were put up in the city, especially on the exit routes.
The family had, however, received no ransom call.
Complaint against cable operators
The Rajguru Nagar Welfare Association has condemned the cable operators of Rajguru Nagar for being “indifferent and callous”.
Mr Jasdeep Maan, a member of the association, said that the cable operators of Rajguru Nagar had increased the monthly rent from Rs 150 to Rs 180 last month, but at the same time had failed to provide satisfactory services. Mr Maan said, "They have increased the rent suddenly. While other cable operators in the city have been offering 60 to 65 channels to the subscribers, the cable operators of our area are giving just 30 to 40 channels and also the service, the sound and picture quality are really poor”. Most of the residents of the area complained that the operators do not provide proper service also. Another person on condition of anonymity said that the servicemen always demanded “extra money” for the services.
Mr Maan said that he had approached the operators many times but they did not give any satisfactory answer.
The area residents also complained that the cable operators had threatened that they would not provide their services to the residents if they made any union and discontinued their services.
Eyes of father, son donated
The eyes of both seven-year-old Mukul Verma and his father Sukhwinder Pal Verma, who died in a road accident recently, were donated to the Eye Bank Mansuran by their family.
Dr Ramesh, managing director of the eye bank, in a press statement said today that the father and son were the residents of Rampur village near Doraha. “The family showed a lot of courage and decided to donate the eyes of father and son and served for humanity,” added Dr Ramesh.
Dr Ramesh said that the eyes were transplanted, free of cost, to four persons, including a six-year-old child from Delhi and three other persons from different parts of the state.
Textile sector suffers due to lack of official survey
The potential of the knitting and other garment manufacturing units here, which are the hub of the Ludhiana and the state’s industrial sector, has not been fully explored due to lack of any comprehensive survey in the sector.
In fact the lack of detailed information about the production of different products often results in over or under supply, resulting in heavy losses to small units. The Federation of Knitwear, Textile and Allied Industries Association (FEKTAA), which is the coordinating body of a number of small organisations, represents just a minuscule part of about 6,000 units. These units are spread over hundreds of small streets in the old city as well as in the industrial area.
The management of the FEKTAA laments that they have no exact information about total production, turnover or the number of workers engaged in this sector, which has an predominance in the national market and has a significant share in the total knitting garment exports from the country. The officials said they had recently decided to engage an agency to conduct a survey of the industry, but had to cancel the decision due to lack of its credibility. The members had feared that the information about production, profits or other factors might be disclosed to their competitors or even to the income tax authorities.
Incidentally, the state government, which earns crores of rupees annually from this sector in the form of sale tax, has also not conducted any comprehensive survey or study of the about 70-year-old industry. The officials in the Industry Department said, “We have limited information about the registered units, however, the majority of the units are not registered. The lack of staff and cooperation from the units have furthered blunted our efforts to collect data. Though the number of units are closed every year, or others expand their production, it is not mandatory for them to provide us information.”
Recently, the Textile Committee, a government body formed under the Union Ministry of Textiles, had decided to conduct an exhaustive survey of all the knitting and other garment manufacturing units in the city. The survey had been planned in December. However, it is now expected to be launched in the next few days. It would provide extensive and complete information about the number of units, total production capacity, workers, marketing, export and on other indicators.
This was disclosed by Mr B.S. Pal, Additional Textile Commissioner, Mumbai, to a delegation of the FEKTAA. The meeting was organised in connection with Mini-Mission II on wool under the wool technology mission regarding development of wool and woollen industry, that is spinning, weaving, knitting and processing.
Among others, Mr J.S. Rawat, Deputy Director, regional office of the Textile Commissioner, Amritsar, Mr Sanjay Goyal, AGM SIDBI, Mr Harbans Singh, GM, DIC (Ludhiana), Mr Deepak Nayyar from Textiles Committee, Mr K.K. Sharma, Mr M.L. Paul from regional office of the Textile Commissioner, Amritsar, and Nitra, representative were present at the meeting.
ICICI organises safety yatra
ICICI Capital Services Limited (ICICI Caps), a wholly owned subsidiary of the ICICI, today announced here the launch of the “ICICI Safety Yatra” — a mobile investor awareness campaign, in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and the Union Territory of Chandigarh.
Starting on December 18, the 15-day campaign has been designed to increase awareness amongst the urban and semi-urban investors about various investment options, including bonds, fixed deposits and mutual funds. During the campaign, ICICI Capital officials and agents will traverse 45 districts on a decorated float and will organise investors’ meets at several places.
“As a responsible retail financial intermediary, ICICI Capital has time and again made endeavours to educate and inform investors about safe investment avenues. We hope to provide relevant investment information and help to thousands of investors during this Yatra,” said Amitabh Chaturvedi, Executive Director and CEO, ICICI Capital, while conveying best wishes to his team from Head Office, Mumbai at Chandigarh.
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Arizona Says That Farm Animals Aren’t Animals
Arizona has a pretty abysmal track record when it comes to its treatment of humans, and some lawmakers are trying to push a bill that would make the state a pretty uncomfortable place for livestock, too.
by Lauren Rothman
Mar 30 2015, 6:38pm
Photo via Flickr user Jelle
Arizona has a pretty abysmal track record when it comes to its treatment of humans, having created, over the past few years, what some have called a "climate of intimidation" for undocumented immigrants in the state. Now, some Arizona lawmakers are trying to push a bill that would make the Grand Canyon State a pretty uncomfortable place for livestock, too.
Last Monday, Arizona's Senate advanced a bill, authored by Republican Brenda Barton of Payson, that proposes treating livestock differently than from house pets when it comes to animal cruelty. Under the bill, abandonment of animals would be considered abusive if the animal is a cat, dog, or other cuddly pet, but would not be applied to livestock such as cows and chickens. On the other hand, the bill would mandate increased protections for pets, such as harsher penalties for those found guilty of pet-hoarding.
Barton has defended the bill by saying that pets are most often the victims of cruelty towards animals, and that by separating livestock out from that category, Arizona pets will more easily receive the full protection of the law.
"Eighty-two percent of animal cruelty involves cats and dogs," Barton said during a committee hearing earlier in the month. House Bill 2150 "allows livestock to move out of the way so that law enforcement and appropriate agencies can deal with the animal abuse," she said.
But animal rights groups in the state beg to differ with Barton, arguing that exempting farm animals from the anti-cruelty code places them in separate, weaker statute, and claiming that the bill is a giveaway to the state's agribusiness giants, who don't want to be slowed down by—or have to pay for—the illnesses or injuries that livestock might suffer as a result of being raised and slaughtered within the factory farming system. Organizations such as the regional branch of the Humane Society of the United States are urging Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, who will review the measure after it returns to the House for final approval, to veto it.
"While factory farms may not think of chickens, pigs, and horses as animals, it's clear that Arizonans, including our governor, do," the Humane Society's Arizona director, Kari Nienstedt, told MUNCHIES in a statement sent via email. "During his campaign, Governor Ducey pledged that he opposed removing categories of animals from our state's anti-cruelty code. This bill does exactly that, relegating them to a statute with less protections. It's time for him to keep his pledge by vetoing HB 2150."
According to Chris Green, director of legislative affairs at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Barton has tried to pass such legislation before. He told AZ Central that last year, she introduced a bill that would have reduced charges for farmers convicted of animal cruelty from a felony to a misdemeanor, and allowed the state's Department of Agriculture—which has close ties to big factory farms—to investigate such charges in the place of local law enforcement. While the current bill doesn't include those clauses, Green worries that if passed, it could easily be altered to reflect those changes.
"If you're not going to change anything, then why go through all the trouble to pass the law?" he asked.
The fact that farming groups are supporting HB 2150 lends credence animal rights groups' assertions that the bill has been designed by special interest groups to shield factory farms from accusations of animal abuse. The Arizona Farm Bureau, as well as the state's Cattle Growers' Association, have both come out in support of the bill.
But Senator Steve Farley, a Democrat from Tucson, told the Senate last Monday that the bill is harming the agriculture industry's image, and that creating separate legislation for livestock definitely looks shifty even if the laws are well-intentioned.
"If we make everyone who has animals play by the same rules, then no one's going to be questioning agriculture," he said.
factory farms
Brenda Barton
Doug Ducey
Steve Farley
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BLACKkKLANSMAN, CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?, ROMA Among Nominees for AARP The Magazine 18th Movies for Grownups Awards
AARP The Magazine today announced the nominees for the 18th Movies for Grownups Awards, with A Star Is Born, BlacKkKlansman, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Green Book and Roma competing in the Best Picture/Best Movie for Grownups category.
THE FAVOURITE, BLACKkKLANSMAN, EIGHTH GRADE Among Nominees for 2018 Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society Honors
The Favourite and Black Panther top the 2018 Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society (LAOFCS) nominations list with ten nominations each, followed by A Star is Born with nine and BlacKkKlansman with eight.
WE THE ANIMALS, EIGHTH GRADE, FIRST REFORMED Lead Nominations for 2019 Film Independent Spirit Awards
We the Animals leads the nominations for the 2019 Film Independent Spirit Awards with 5 nods including Best First Feature, but missed out on a nomination for Best Feature.
Funny and Moving PRIVATE LIFE Opens in Theaters + Netflix on October 5 [Trailer]
Private Life, the new film from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Tamara Jenkins that had its world premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival will be heading to theaters on Friday.
Hamptons International Film Festival Announces Full 2018 Slate + Jury
The 26th Hamptons International Film Festival which will take place over the upcoming Columbus Day Weekend, October 4 to 8, 2018, unveiled the full slate of films.
Films From Barry Jenkins, Alex Ross Perry, Claire Denis among Main Slate of 56th NY Film Festival
The Film Society of Lincoln Center today announced the 30 films for the Main Slate of the 56th New York Film Festival taking place September 28 to October 14, 2018.
HEARTS BEAT LOUD is Closing Night Film + New Films and More Added to 2018 Sundance Film Festival
Eight feature films, a VR experience, the NEXT Innovator’s Award juror and hosted retrospectives were added today to the lineup for 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
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June 18, 2019 / 1:37 AM
Trump: ICE to deport 'millions' of migrants starting next week
Darryl Coote
June 18 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump said starting next week U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will begin deporting millions of immigrants who entered the United States illegally.
"Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States," he said Monday on Twitter. "They will be removed as fast as they come in."
....long before they get to our Southern Border. Guatemala is getting ready to sign a Safe-Third Agreement. The only ones who won't do anything are the Democrats in Congress. They must vote to get rid of the loopholes, and fix asylum! If so, Border Crisis will end quickly!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2019
While Trump did not give specifics, ICE operations are usually kept secret until they are underway in order to prevent alerting those targeted, the Washington Post reported.
RELATED McConnell vows to force Democrats on border vote next week
The announcement follows Mexico having signed an agreement with the United States on June 7 to beef up measures to stop Central American migrants before they get to the U.S.-Mexico border in return for the Trump administration not following through on tariff increase threats.
In the agreement, Mexico said it would increase National Guard deployment throughout the country and the United States said it would "rapidly" return migrants seeking asylum in the states to Mexico.
In the two-tweet thread Monday, Trump applauded Mexico for "doing a very good job stopping people long before they get to our southern border."
RELATED Trump targets Hispanic vote in Florida battleground for re-election kickoff
He also said that Guatemala was "getting ready" to sign a safe third country agreement with the United States, which means that both countries would view each other as "safe" for asylum seekers and prevent migrants from applying for refugee status in one country after having traveled through the other.
The only safe third country agreement the United States has is with Canada, which the two countries signed in December 2002.
Last week, Vice President Mike Pence said a safe third country agreement between Guatemala and America was close to being finalized and was met with swift condemnation from human rights groups.
RELATED U.S. cuts $185M in aid to Central America over immigration
Human Rights First said it was "simply ludicrous" for the United States to say that Guatemala was safe for those seeking refuge.
"Guatemala is not a safe country for refugees," the organization said in a statement. "It is a country that refugees are fleeing."
Immigration & Border Security
Notable deaths of 2019
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Topic: Chris DeWolfe
Chris DeWolfe News
Entertainment News // 1 year ago
Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon join 'Harry Potter' mobile game
"Harry Potter" film stars Maggie Smith and Michael Gambon will be providing voicework for upcoming mobile game, "Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery."
'Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery' mobile game comes alive in first trailer
"Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery" gives glimpses of Hagrid and professors McGonagall and Snape in a preview for the role-playing game.
'Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery' role-playing game announced for mobile
A new mobile game based on author J.K. Rowling's wizarding world of "Harry Potter" has been announced that will allow players to create their own character.
Entertainment News // 1 decade ago
MySpace may release own MP3 player
There is a possibility the social networking Web site MySpace may one day have its own MP3 player, a top executive with the company said in San Francisco.
MySpace, Universal, Warner join forces
MySpace, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group announced the formation of MySpace Music, a company that will have its headquarters in Los Angeles.
Edwards to take part in MTV, MySpace chat
MySpace and MTV are set to kick off their series of presidential candidate dialogues designed to get young people to participate in the 2008 U.S. election.
Business News // 1 decade ago
Report: MySpace may end commerce ban
Rupert Murdoch's MySpace.com social-networking Web site may lift its ban on commerce between its members, a U.S. published report said Monday.
Myspace and Sony launch Minisode Network
Myspace and Sony Pictures Television have teamed up to the launch The Minisode Network.
MySpace launches elections portal
MySpace users who want to register to vote or learn the latest on the 2008 U.S. elections can visit Impact Channel, a political community on the network.
Myspace introduces copyright protection
MySpace.com is adding technology from Gracenote that will allow the Web site to block unauthorized copyrighted music from being posted on its site.
MySpace announces 'Rock for Darfur'
The networking site MySpace announced that it is sponsoring "Rock for Darfur," a fundraising project including concerts across the United States. At least 20 concerts are scheduled on Oct. 21.
MySpace set to tackle voter registration
MySpace is set to include U.S. voter registration information on its Web site as part of a deal signed this week with the campaign Declare Yourself.
Science News // 1 decade ago
Webbys signal changes in Internet
You know you're at the Webby Awards, when winners and nominees armed with their digital camera, camera phone, Palm Pilot camera, and other electronic recording device are crowded around the stage trying to take a photo of Prince.
MySpace, Google among '06 Webby winners
The winners of the 10th Annual Webby Awards were announced Tuesday; among them were Myspace.com, The Onion, Google, and the BBC.
Top News // 1 decade ago
Web site fights predators, sexual content
The highly popular but often criticized youth Web site MySpace.com has hired a former federal prosecutor to oversee content, the Los Angeles Times reported.
This synergy with Fox News reinforces what MySpace is all about -- providing users the ability to share, explore, connect and consume
Fox News opens door for 'uReporters' Apr 20, 2009
Today represents the beginning of a new chapter in the story of modern music -- we're proud to announce the marriage of the world's biggest collection of music content to the world's most popular music community
MySpace, Universal, Warner join forces Apr 03, 2008
We don't want users' pages to start looking like NASCAR
Report: MySpace may end commerce ban Aug 27, 2007
Now MySpace users can discover classic TV shows in a stylized, modern format
Myspace and Sony launch Minisode Network Jun 19, 2007
By empowering our users with easy-to-find information, offered in a way they can relate to it, Impact will ignite their involvement in the political process
MySpace launches elections portal Mar 19, 2007
Chris DeWolfe (born 1966) is one of the creators of MySpace (along with Tom Anderson). He is the former CEO of MySpace. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1988, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity, and the University of Southern California in 1997. He has the sixth account ever made on the website.
On April 22, 2009, News Corp. announced DeWolfe will be stepping down as CEO and will be a strategic adviser to MySpace and serve on the board of MySpace China. Ex Facebook Vet Owen Van Natta will be replacing him.
Chris Dewolfe has been profiled in many major publications such as Fortune and Businessweek.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Chris DeWolfe."
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Who will be in Trump's Cabinet? A few possibilities
President-elect Donald Trump and his top advisers now must put together a White House staff and Cabinet.
Who will be in Trump's Cabinet? A few possibilities President-elect Donald Trump and his top advisers now must put together a White House staff and Cabinet. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: http://usat.ly/2ffJjA6
David M Jackson, USA TODAY Published 3:18 p.m. ET Nov. 9, 2016 | Updated 6:17 p.m. ET Nov. 9, 2016
Several big names are in the running. Time
After a stunning win that upended the American political landscape, President-elect Donald Trump and his top advisers now must put together a White House staff and Cabinet — a group that may well include some of those same advisers.
Here are a few possibilities for some of the most powerful roles in a new Trump administration:
The ex-New York City mayor became one of Trump's highest-profile surrogates. The former prosecutor could now be in line for attorney general.
The ex-House speaker became a top adviser and television spokesperson for Trump during the campaign and was even among the real estate mogul's finalists for running mate. He is said to be interested in becoming secretary of State.
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee could also be a possibility to lead the State Department.
A onetime Trump rival, Carson emerged as one of Trump's most steadfast surrogates. The renowned physician would be an obvious candidate to be surgeon general.
The retired general emerged as Trump's most visible military adviser. He could be in line for Defense secretary or some other national security position.
During the primary campaign, Sessions became the first sitting member of the U.S. Senate to endorse Trump's campaign. Now, the Alabama senator could be another possibility to lead the Pentagon.
The chairman of the Republican National Committee — which ran the Trump campaign's get-out-the-vote operation — could wind up as Trump's White House chief of staff.
Trump's finance chairman, formerly of Goldman Sachs, is in line to possibly become Treasury secretary.
Though shadowed by the recent Bridgegate trial, the New Jersey governor has been a fixture at Trump's side since endorsing him in February and will likely have his eye on a spot in the new administration at the Justice Department or in the White House.
The Breitbart News executive became Trump's campaign CEO in August. He could be in line for a spot as a White House adviser.
While his job is already known — vice president — the Indiana governor and former congressman is expected to play a large role in the Trump administration as a partner to the new president, who lacks any experience serving in government.
Let the Trump Cabinet speculation begin
Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani — a potential candidate for attorney general— addresses a gathering at a Trump rally on the day before the election. Mel Evans, AP
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, pictured at a September Trump rally, may have his eye on being secretary of State. Evan Vucci, AP
Trump and Sen. Bob Corker —a possible candidate for secretary of State — attend a campaign event on July 5, 2016, in North Carolina. Sara D. Davis, Getty Images
Ben Carson, pictured during a rally for Donald Trump, was mentioned as a surgeon general candidate. Christian Murdock, AP
Retired Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn introduces Trump at a September event in Philadelphia. He may be eyeing a role Defense secretary or another national security position. Mark Makela, Getty Images
Sen. Jeff Sessions, a possible candidate to lead the Pentagon, speaks to the media at Trump's election night event in New York. Shawn Thew, European Pressphoto Agency
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus — a possibility for Trump's chief of staff? — celebrates with Donald Trump and Mike Pence on election night. John Locher, AP
Steven Mnuchin, center, could be a candidate for Trump's Treasury secretary. Powers Imagery/Invision/AP
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie comes out of the voting booth after casting his ballot on Election Day. He may be eyeing a DOJ or White House role. Bob Karp, AP
Interpretive park ranger Caitlin Kostic, center, gives a tour in Gettysburg, Pa., to Donald Trump, left, and Steve Bannon. Bannon could end up as a White House adviser. Evan Vucci, AP
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2ffJjA6
Donald Trump slams Paul Ryan in late-night Twitter rant: 'Couldn’t get him out of Congress fast enough!'
Trump's Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta resigns amid Epstein plea fallout
Trump tells congresswomen to 'go back' to the 'crime infested places from which they came'
Mike Pence got a first-hand look at border detention facilities in McAllen and Donna, Texas. What he saw
'The crisis is real': Mike Pence sees 'tough stuff' and 'compassionate work' at Texas border facilities
5 things to know about the upcoming immigration raids in major U.S. cities
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Warwick Uni spin-out launching open source scientific equipment
Pictured (left to right): Dirk Schaefer, Dr Kalesh Sasidharan, Professor Orkun Soyer
Two Warwick Science Park based scientists have launched an open source scientific instrument to bring biology to a whole new audience.
Professor Orkun Soyer and Dr Kalesh Sasidharan are on a mission to make biosciences research more affordable for schools, professionals and would-be scientists.
Their University of Warwick spinout business Humane Technologies is based at Warwick Science Park’s Ignite incubator, receiving support from the Park’s Business Ready support team.
Their first product is an open source MicrobeMeter, an innovative device that allows users to continuously analyse the cultivation and growth of microbes.
Its parts-cost is around £150, compared to devices used for a similar task that are available for around £1,000.
The pair has received a £10,000 proof of concept grant to fund further development and proof of market investigations for their first piece of equipment.
This is only the beginning of their ambitious plans, which is to design a range of affordable open source devices that are essential for conducting bioscience research.
Professor Soyer said: “Biology is an area of science that is not as greatly understood as say chemistry or physics, yet it is crucial to everyday life.
“There is a barrier restricting experimentation and discovery within this field and that is the cost of scientific research.
“The technology used by biologists is expensive and hasn’t really moved with the times, so we are offering a product here that is cheaper and more modern.”
The MicrobeMeter will be available to buy as a ready-to-use device or a do-it-yourself kit, which the user can easily put together.
Another exciting feature of Humane Technologies’ work is that the company is taking an open-source approach to developing its products, which means that users can alter the software and hardware easily for their own individual purpose.
Dr Sasidharan said: “We are committed to keeping the cost of our products down to make science accessible and affordable.
“We are also excited to be using open-source materials, which means there is huge potential for Humane Technologies items to be at the heart of massive discoveries for years to come.
“As communities of students and scientists use our equipment for their own purpose, we will be able to grow our collective understanding of biology and improve the world around us.”
Humane Technologies is based at the University of Warwick Science Park, whose Business Ready scheme is part of the Coventry and Warwickshire Business Support Programme, which is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund and Warwickshire County Council.
It has allowed Professor Soyer and Dr Sasidharan to gain crucial access to marketing advice, workshops and financial guidance.
Dirk Schafer, business mentor at the University of Warwick Science Park, said: “We are pleased to be assisting Humane Technologies, who I believe has the potential to positively impact on the world of microbiology.
“Do-It-Yourself Biohacking is one of the emerging technology trends to watch in the years to come and Orkun and Kalesh are hoping to play a big role in that by opening up the market, making it more accessible and influencing the next generation of scientists.
Business Ready is delivered by the University of Warwick Science Park and is part of the Coventry and Warwickshire Business Support Programme, which is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund and Warwickshire County Council.
For more information on the Business Ready programme and how to apply, please contact us at:
☎ Phone: 024 7632 3121
✉ Email: businessready@uwsp.co.uk
🔗 Website: www.business-ready.co.uk
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Teaching our children can be a profession: column
Self-discipline and high standards can secure the future of public schools.
Teaching our children can be a profession: column Self-discipline and high standards can secure the future of public schools. Check out this story on wausaudailyherald.com: http://wdhne.ws/1qZavii
Joel Klein Published 11:00 p.m. CT Nov. 19, 2014 | Updated 11:08 p.m. CT Nov. 19, 2014
Shanker proposed ways to transform teaching 30 years ago. (Photo: 1995 AP photo )
Having run New York City's public school system foreight years under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, I am often asked, "If you could wave a wand and change one thing, what would it be?"
This isn't an easy question. Lots of things need changing. For example, giving far more school choices to families, using technology to improve teaching and learning, adopting a knowledge-based curriculum and starting education before a child is 5 years old.
But if I had to choose one, it would be to professionalize teaching, making it like other well-respected professions, such as law and medicine.
Pick from the best
This kind of change would require several things, beginning with better academic training for prospective teachers. A recent report from the National Center on Teacher Quality found that "23 states cannot boast a single (teacher education) program that provides solid math preparation resembling the practices of high-performing nations." The report also found that fewer than 20% of training programs equip candidates in the basics of reading instruction.
Next, we need a new approach to recruiting teachers. For decades, we've let virtually anyone with a college degree become a teacher. According to Sandra Feldman, then-head of a national teachers union, this approach is "disastrous." We need instead to do what successful countries do: Recruit from the top third of our graduates.
Finally, we must change how we reward teachers. The current approach essentially assumes that all teachers are interchangeable, and, therefore, the only fair way to make distinctions is based on seniority. But anyone who's been in a classroom knows that teachers vary enormously in their performance.
Seniority distraction
We completely ignore this crucial distinction. Job security and seniority dictate the way our schools operate. In most states, it's almost impossible to remove an incompetent teacher, and teachers are paid the same regardless of performance or assignment. As a result, high-quality, experienced teachers end up at schools in middle-class communities, while poor kids get lots of inexperienced teachers along with some experienced, but not always very effective, teachers. If you have layoffs, often you must terminate the most recently hired, not the least effective one.
Professionalizing teaching means that excellence would be the guiding hallmark. Everything from education-school admissions, to course work, to compensation and other employment rules, to self-policing would have to be realigned to this core principle. Such a radical transformation would not only benefit students, it would also benefit teachers, who would be more successful and command greater public trust.
Notably, the late Albert Shanker, who was the most influential teachers-union leader ever, articulated this view 30 years ago: In "The Making of a Profession," he wrote: "Unless we go beyond collective bargaining to the achievement of true teacher professionalism, we will fail ... to preserve public education in the United States and to improve the status of teachers economically, socially and politically."
He recommended doing several things to create a profession, including attracting our best students, developing a demanding "knowledge base" along with a "formal set of … peer relationships." Shanker also called for a "national teacher examination" that tests mastery of pedagogy and content knowledge, akin to the entry exams now required for lawyers and doctors. In addition, Shanker would require a "supervised internship of from one to three years" to evaluate the performance of prospective teachers.
Radical change
Shanker went even further in defining this transformation. He proposed that teachers establish their own board to police the profession, establishing standards and providing mechanisms for removing incompetent teachers. Teachers would also be subjected to merit-based career ladders and would be promoted based on specialty exams.
Even more radically, there would be fewer teachers who, having demonstrated true mastery, would be aided by college graduates serving as teaching assistants. Lastly, teachers would abandon their support for mandatory assignment of kids to neighborhood schools in favor of "the greatest possible choice among public schools."
That's an ambitious agenda. But Shanker recognized that public education would not be sustainable if "teachers continue to be treated ... as workers in an old-fashioned factory." For the sake of our students and teachers alike, it's time to return to the future Shanker envisioned.
Joel Klein, CEO of Amplify and chancellor of the New York City public schools from 2002-2010, is the author of Lessons of Hope: How to Fix Our Schools.
Read or Share this story: http://wdhne.ws/1qZavii
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Knollenberg's Building
The George H. Knollenberg Co. building is still standing in Uptown Richmond at 809 East Main Street. It formerly housed a family-owned department store, once the center of retailing in Richmond.
George H. Knollenberg was born on December 7, 1847 and began working in the dry-goods business when he was only 16. He began his own enterprise 3 years later in 1866. The firm doubled in capacity during the first 5 years.
In 1877, before he was 30, George had purchased the site and built his own building (the tower section on the left). In 1888 the building was expanded to the west (the section with the Knollenberg's sign). In 1896, the company expanded further with another addition to the rear of the current building. This Annex, with frontage on South 8th Street, formerly housed a Chinese restaurant.
Photo taken April 6, 2001
After 130 years as a family-owned business, the Geo. H. Knollenberg Co. closed its doors in 1996. The building was purchased, remodeled and found new life, hosting a variety of businesses.
West End Bank
Richmond is home to TWO Egyptian mummies. One is located at the Wayne County Historical Museum and one is located at the Joseph Moore Museum on the Earlham College campus.
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Friends remember Hunter Michael Kinard, who died in a crash Saturday
'He'd always make me laugh,' said one friend of Hunter Michael Kinard People who worked with Hunter Michael Kinard...
Friends remember Hunter Michael Kinard, who died in a crash Saturday 'He'd always make me laugh,' said one friend of Hunter Michael Kinard People who worked with Hunter Michael Kinard... Check out this story on ydr.com: https://www.ydr.com/story/news/local/2015/10/18/friends-remember-hunter-michael-kinard-who-died-crash/74214192/
Ed Mahon, YorkDailyRecord Published 9:52 p.m. ET Oct. 18, 2015
Ed Mahon — Daily Record/Sunday News A memorial stands along the road for 18-year-old Hunter Michael Kinard who died Saturday in a single-vehicle crash in Chanceford Towsnhip.(Photo: )
'He'd always make me laugh,' said one friend of Hunter Michael Kinard
People who worked with Hunter Michael Kinard said he could make anyone smile, whether it was by putting on a cowboy hat and talking with a country accent or making a race out of folding pizza boxes.
"He'd always make me laugh no matter what, even if I was having a bad day," said 19-year-old Tanner Frey, who worked with Kinard at Roma's Delight in Chanceford Township.
Kinard, 18, died in a single-vehicle crash Saturday when the Hyundai he was driving crashed head-on into a tree in Chanceford Township, according to the York County Coroner's Office.
The office said Kinard, of the 100 block of Good Road, in the Airville area, was not wearing a seat belt and speed is believed to be a factor in the crash.
Crews were dispatched to the scene at Furnace Road, near Shenks Ferry Road, in Chanceford Township, at about 1:55 p.m.
Later on Saturday, a message was posted on Roma's Delight Facebook page about Kinard's death.
"It is with an extremely heavy heart that we have to announce the passing of an amazing friend and colleague today," the message said, which also called him "a bright young man. ...We have closed early tonight to grieve our friend, and new angel."
Kinard worked at Roma's Delight for about a year, said restaurant manager Alora Girken. Like Frey, Girken described Kinard as someone who could make you smile even on your worst day. She said he was the first to offer help to someone who needed it.
After news spread of Kinard's death, Frey and some others gathered at Roma's Delight on Saturday. Then they headed to Kinard's home to pay their respects to his family.
After that, Frey and some others headed to the crash site. Frey said they attached a Roma's T-shirt into the tree and said a prayer for Kinard.
Kinard's family could not be reached for comment.
Also of interest18-year-old dies following crash in Chanceford Township
Community mourns, remembers Red Lion football players killed in crash
Read or Share this story: https://www.ydr.com/story/news/local/2015/10/18/friends-remember-hunter-michael-kinard-who-died-crash/74214192/
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Extraordinary Care
These are informational sites only and not intended to diagnose, treat a health problem or replace a doctor’s judgement.
HEALTH INFORMATION AND HEALTHY LIVING TOOLS
http://www.webmd.com/
Current health news and information.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/
Medical information and tools for healthy living.
http://www.medlineplus.gov/
Health information from the National Library of Medicine.
http://www.yourdiseaserisk.wustl.edu./
The source on disease prevention.
http://www.cdc.gov/
Good information about disease states, vaccination information, and public health issues.
www.revolutionhealth.com
Revolution Health
www.niddk.nih.gov
The NIDDK conducts and supports basic and clinical research on many of the most serious diseases affecting public health.
www.cancer.gov
www.mohscollege.org
A video is available near the bottom of the page to review how Mohs surgery is generally performed.
www.acor.org
The Official site for the Association of Online Cancer Resources
www.preventcancer.org
The Prevent Cancer Foundation site for prevention and early detection.
www.screen4coloncancer.org
Colon cancer prevention, screening and treatments.
http://www.mesoltheiomaguide.com/
Mesothelioma Guide
www.pancan.org
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network site.
DIABETES INFORMATION (Adults & Kids)
http://www.diabetes.org/
Diabetes news, research and nutritional recipes.
http://www.joslin.org/
News and information from the Joslin Diabetes Center.
http://www.jdrf.org/
Juvenile diabetes research foundation news and information.
http://www.childrenwithdiabetes.com/
Online community for kids, families and adults with diabetes.
DRUG INFORMATION WEBSITES
http://www.nccam.nih.gov/
Common herbal products and dietary supplements.
www.remicade.com
REMICADE is a treatment for patients with inflammatory disorders involving the immune system.
WHAT’S GOOD TO EAT?
www.fnic.nal.usda.gov
Dietary guidelines and details about the food pyramid. The “Food Composition” link leads you to a searchable database for the nutrient content of a large variety of foods.
www.foodfit.com
Healthy lowfat recipies,diet plans.
http://gi.org/media/colonoscopy
What to expect during a colonoscopy.
http://ccfa.org
The Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America is a non-profit organization.
http://www.aboutgerd.org
Information about the causes and treatment of GERD from the nonprofit IFFGD.
http://www.aboutibs.org
Information about Irritable Bowel Syndrome or IBS.
http://www.ata.org
Good information from a reliable source about ringing (and other sounds) in the ears.
http://www.healthyhearing.com
Resources about living with hearing loss, hearing aids, etc.
http://www.asha.org
Information about many topics related to speech/language and hearing.
http://www.dangerousdecibels.org
Dedicated to prevention of hearing loss from loud noise exposure.
Check out the sections titled “Heart Profilers” and “Health Tools” where you’ll find information sheets and interactive pages.
http://www.aap.org/
This website is a great starting point when you want information on children’s health and disease.
http://www.sesamestreet.com/
This is a fun site for the whole family.
http://www.drgreene.com/
Medical topics about children’s health.
MONTANA LINKS (These are some of our favorites)
Art Museum of Missoula
Big Sky Ski Resort
Elk Foundation
Kenter Photography
Missoula Children’s Theater
Missoula County Association of Realtors
Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks
Montana’s Glacier Country
Montana Historical Society
Montana Magazine
St. Patrick Hospital
Visit Montana
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Obligations for approved persons don’t stop at the office door
Harvey Knight
Partner | UK
On 15 December 2014, the Financial Conduct Authority (‘FCA’) banned Jonathan Burrows, a former Managing Director at Blackrock Asset Management Investor Services Limited, from working in the financial services industry. This is a timely reminder that individuals who work in the financial services industry must demonstrate honesty and integrity in their personal, as well as their professional life.
The FCA has been placing an increasing emphasis on the importance of holding individuals to account for their behaviour as part of their objective of changing the culture within firms. The FCA wants senior individuals to set the culture of their firms by demonstrating ethical behaviour. Central to this approach, is the requirement that these individuals should act with honesty and integrity, including in their private lives. Tracey McDermott, the FCA’s director of enforcement, summarised the FCA’s approach as follows: ‘Approved persons must act with honesty and integrity at all times and, where they do not, we will take action’. Mr Burrows’ ban serves as a reminder that approved persons must be able to demonstrate honesty and integrity in both their professional and personal lives, and failure to do so may have severe consequences.
There had been public outcry when it was revealed in the press earlier in the year that an unnamed “fund manager” was Britain’s biggest rail-fare dodger. Anxious to avoid criminal prosecution and to keep his identity secret, the individual (later revealed by the press to be Mr Burrows) reached an out of court settlement with rail operator Southeastern and paid, within three days, the £42,550 of rail fares he had illegally avoided together with £450 of Southeastern’s legal costs. At the time, the existence of the settlement caused widespread fury that poorer rail fare dodgers were being prosecuted for theft, leaving them with a criminal record, whereas a wealthy fund manager had escaped prosecution with his identity protected and reputation intact.
Upon learning of the case and the settlement, the press, British Transport Police and the FCA began investigating to discover the identity of the fare dodger – the FCA’s interest driven by the revelation that the individual worked in the financial services industry as an “approved person” (someone who performs a controlled function for an authorised firm).
In order to become an approved person, the firm and the FCA must be satisfied that the candidate is “fit and proper”. The “fit and proper” test comprises three elements:
the individual must be of good reputation, and have honesty and integrity;
he or she must be financially sound (bankrupts and those on the verge of bankruptcy cannot be approved persons); and
he or she must be competent and capable of performing the controlled function (in certain cases individuals will need to have completed courses of training, or demonstrate a certain amount of experience or qualifications before being able to take up their role).
Importantly for the first test – honesty, integrity and reputation – this is not confined solely to an individual’s professional life. If an individual is shown to have acted dishonestly or disreputably in their personal life (such as Mr Burrows’ fare-dodging), the FCA will take that into account as demonstrating that the individual is not fit and proper to be an approved person. When an individual becomes an approved person, they take on personal responsibilities to the regulator – if they are found to have breached the FCA’s statement of principles for approved persons the FCA may take enforcement action against them. Penalties may include a fine, public censure or a prohibition. Mr Burrows was no longer an approved person when the FCA decided to ban him from working in the financial services sector. Having informed his employer that it was likely to be contacted by the FCA in connection with his rail-fare dodging, he was suspended from Blackrock, and later left or was dismissed in July 2014 (reportedly without any pay-off). Blackrock has publically deplored Mr Burrows’s conduct.
Withers’ financial services regulatory team advises individuals and firms on compliance with financial services regulatory requirements, including the requirements for approved persons.
Sexual harassment: is it fit and proper?
Preparing for an internal investigation or regulators' interview
Confidential data and cyber security
Harvey Knight Partner | London
+44 20 7597 6199 Email Harvey LinkedIn View profile
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New Mishawaka superintendent outlines 90-day plan
By NewsCenter 16 |
Posted: Wed 11:49 PM, Jul 10, 2019
MISHAWAKA, Ind. (WNDU) - The new superintendent for the School City of Mishawaka outlined plans for his first 90 days on the job Wednesday evening.
Superintendent Wayne Barker plans to break up the 90 days into three sections of 30 days. The first 30 days, he plans to talk with people individually to get to know them better.
The second 30 days, Barker will be looking into the district's culture and evaluating where they stand as an organization.
And the last 30 days will be spent working with the board of trustees and developing goals for this school year so they can continue to improve.
"I realize that it's going to be very important for me to have long-term success, so to be able to do that best, I need to have a good start," Barker said. "So, I'm looking at the first 90 days. I realize those are going to be very important to me, I need to get on to a good start."
He also said he believes that Mishawaka schools have a culture of excellence, and he said that excellence means a willingness to improve.
Middlebury Community Schools to break ground on new athletics complex
Benton Harbor School Board rejects tentative agreement with state
Tentative agreement between Michigan, Benton Harbor Schools revealed
New superintendent for South Bend School Corp. talks about future, focus
Video: People impacted by the blistering temperatures
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Gadsby’s Questions About the Law
William Gadsby was the pastor of the Strict Baptist church in Manchester, England, for 38 years. Today, he is best known for his hymnbook, A Selection of Hymns for Public Worship (better known as Gadsby's Hymns ), which he describes as a "selection of hymns [written by Gadsby, Hart, and others] free from Arminianism and sound in the faith." In my opinion, it remains the best collection of sovereign grace hymns ever compiled. In his day, he was also known for his preaching. He preached nearly 12,000 sermons. He also traveled over 60,000 miles, often by foot and helped start forty congregations. The following article is excerpted from his work, The Present State of Religion . I think that anyone might profit from it, but if you happen to think that the Ten Commandments are the believer’s rule of life, you might try answering Gadsby’s questions. Can you?
Dear Sir, Friend G. informs me you wish me to write to you, and inform you what law it is that I say the believer is in no sense under. I therefore write to say (though I cannot help thinking you must know) that it is the law given to Moses on Mount Sinai, commonly called the moral law, or ten commandments, recorded in Exod 20, and hinted at, with its curses annexed to it, in Deut 27. This is the law I intend, and do venture to say that the believer in Christ is in no sense whatever under it; so that it is not a rule of life to that man who is led by the Spirit. As you promised to answer me if I should write to you, I will propose to you a few questions, and I hope I shall do it in the fear of God, and shall expect you to answer them in plainness of speech; and,
1st. If the law is the believer’s rule of life, I shall thank you to tell me what is intended by the letter written by the apostles and elders, and sent to the believing Gentiles, as recorded in Acts 15, and shall expect you to explain the chapter.
2ndly. I hope you will tell me what the apostle means in the first six verses of Romans 7, where he says that the believer is dead to the law, and free from the law; and let me know how that law can be his rule, when he is as dead to it, and as free from it, as a woman is from her husband when she has buried him. Should you be disposed to say that the believer is dead to it as a covenant, not as a rule of life; you will, no doubt, point to those scriptures which make a distinction between the law as a covenant and as a rule of life; for unless you do this, you will not move me.
3rdly. You will have the goodness to inform me what is intended by the first four verses of Romans 8; and let me know how it comes to pass that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has made me free from the law of death, and yet that the law of death (called in another place the killing letter) is my rule of life; and how is it that it is my rule of life after it has killed me, and I am made free from it?
4thly. You will read 2 Corinthians 3, and let me know how it is that the administration of death, written and engraven on stones, is the living man’s rule of life, and how this can be consistent with what he observes in verse 11, where he says “it is done away,” and in verse 13, where he says “It is abolished.” Now, my dear son, you are to tell me how that law which is done away and abolished still remains the believer’s perfect rule of life.
5thly. You will also show me how it is that the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that when faith is come we are no longer under a schoolmaster, and yet that this schoolmaster is our rule of life after faith is come (Gal 3:24,25).
6thly. You will inform me how it is that if we be led by the Spirit we are not under the law, and yet that the law is a perfect rule of life to that man who is led by the Spirit (Gal 5:18). There are many things in the Epistle to the Galatians which you will find worthy of your attention in this business. I hope you will read the whole.
7thly. I shall expect you to tell me how it is that the hand-writing which was against us, and contrary to us, is taken out of the way, and nailed to the cross (as Col 2:14) and yet remains a perfect rule of life. Should you be disposed to say that the ceremonial law is here intended, you will tell me how that law, which was the gospel in its day, came to be against the believer, and what there was in it contrary to him.
8thly. You will be sure to inform me how it is that that law which is not made for a righteous man is the righteous man’s rule of life (I Tim 1:9).
9thly. As Christ was made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law (as Gal 4:4,5) you will say how it comes to pass that they still remain under it in any sense that Christ was made under it, seeing he was made under it to redeem them from under it.
10thly. But as whatsoever the law says, it says to them who are under the law (as Rom 3:19) and as the believer is not under the law (as Rom 6:14; Gal 5:18) you will inform me what the law says to them who are not under it.
11thly. If the law contains the whole revealed will of God, as to matter of obedience, as Fuller and others have said, you will let me know upon what ground you prove that unbelievers have no right to be baptized, and partake of the Lord’s supper, seeing that what the law says it says to them that are under it; and if it contains the whole of obedience it must require unbelievers to be baptized. You will be sure to reconcile this, if you can.
12thly. You will inform me how it is that while men contend for the law being a perfect rule of life to believers, and call those ill names who do not, they can and do, openly, knowingly, and designedly, break the fourth commandment every week. You will inform me whether doing every sort of work on the seventh day is walking according to that rule which says, Thou shalt not do any work, no, not so much as kindle a fire (Exod 35:3).
13thly, and lastly. You will inform me how it is that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth (Rom 10.4) and yet that the believer, who is got to the end of the law at once, namely, by faith in Christ, must come back again, and begin at the beginning, by taking it for a perfect rule of life.
It does appear that most teachers think there should be a distinction made between the sheep and goats, but does it not appear that the greatest part of preachers, in this day, are attempting to give to the goats what belongs to the sheep, and to the sheep what belongs to the goats? For when on the one hand they address the unconverted, they tell them that it is their duty to look to Christ, and believe in him, and that they are warranted to offer them all the blessings of the gospel, thus making the gospel the unconverted man’s rule of faith and practice; they, on the other hand, send the sheep to the law of works, and tell them that their comfort depends upon their walking according thereunto. And when any poor soul is in darkness, through the power of the world, the flesh, or the devil, instead of pointing them to Christ, and telling them that it has pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell, they tell them to “remove the cause, and the effect will cease”; and thus the goats are sent to the law of life, and the sheep to the killing letter. But there will be a reckoning day by and by; and a thousand to one but some of these men will be proved to have got over the wall. Thus, my dear Sir, I have proposed a few plain, simple questions, and shall expect you to come to the point in your answers, and it shall be my prayer to the great Head of the church that God will be with you. Waiting your answer, I remain,
Yours, tried, and condemned, upon the evidence of Diotrephes, by the Associated Ministers,
LOVE-TRUTH
Manchester, Aug. 8, 1806
It has been 200 years, and I know of no one who has been able to best Gadsby on these questions.
Peter Ditzel
2017-02-22 William Gadsby
law, moral law, Mosaic law, Old Covenant law, ten commandments, William Gadsby
How Christians Should Regard Moses → ← New Wine
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PRESS RELEASE May 14, 2019
New US$400 Million Grant for Yemen to Address Food Security and Sustain Health, Water and Sanitation Services
The 2020-2021 Yemen Country Engagement Note sets out the strategy for the next two years for how the World Bank Group will deliver effective support to Yemen in the midst of ongoing conflict. Priorities will be preserving institutional capacity, improving service delivery resilience, and providing support to conflict-affected poor and vulnerable Yemenis.
New grants accompany announcement of new World Bank Group engagement strategy for Yemen
WASHINGTON, May 14, 2019 — The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today approved US$400 million in grants for Yemen to address rising rates of malnutrition and to contribute towards maintaining basic health, water and sanitation services for the Yemeni population. Along with the new funding, the Board of Directors also discussed the World Bank Group’s new engagement strategy for Yemen which will remain focused on preserving basic services and the institutions that deliver them, while also supporting livelihoods and economic recovery in preparation for an eventual peace.
The 2020-2021 Yemen Country Engagement Note sets out the strategy for the next two years for how the World Bank Group will deliver effective support to Yemen in the midst of ongoing conflict. Priorities will be preserving institutional capacity, improving service delivery resilience, and providing support to conflict-affected poor and vulnerable Yemenis. The new strategy will also focus on encouraging immediate economic growth by creating temporary jobs and supporting the private sector.
“The World Bank has focused on preserving Yemen’s development gains along with the critical service delivery institutions that Yemenis depend on. This has involved vaccinating 6 million children to ensure that polio which was eradicated does not reappear, and channeling cash transfers though community networks to provide hope and services to millions of Yemenis,” said Marina Wes, World Bank Country Director for Egypt, Yemen and Djibouti. “Working in active conflict poses many risks but the risks associated with inaction are far greater. We will not turn our back on our development mission now when it is most needed, and we will continue working with our partners to preserve the human capital and the critical Yemeni institutions that help people now and will be vital for future recovery”
The new funding announced today includes two new grants provided by the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank Group’s fund for poorest countries:
A $200 million grant will support the ongoing Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project, to strengthen the enabling environment for medium-term economic opportunities in Yemen and to address the potential risk of famine and increasing rates of malnutrition; the project operates through supporting well-established national programs. The grant includes $100 million to maintain the delivery of emergency cash transfers to the most vulnerable Yemeni households. Under the program, cash transfers have so far been provided to people across Yemen’s 333 districts, reaching, on average, 1.45 million poor households (about 9 million people).
A $200 million grant will support the ongoing Yemen Emergency Health and Nutrition Project to help scale up activities to respond to short term health needs, prevention of chronic malnutrition and disease, including cholera and preserve local health systems and staff capacities.
With the newly approved funds, the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank Group’s fund for the poorest countries, has provided a total of US$1.7 billion in grants to Yemen since 2016. The IDA grants have been able to save lives, in part through the Emergency Health and Nutrition Project, which has reached more than 14.6 million people in all districts of all Yemen’s governorates, and through the Emergency Cash Transfer Program, which aims to ensure vulnerable Yemenis have money to buy food and basic necessities. Under the latter Program, cash transfers have so far been provided to people across Yemen’s 333 districts, reaching, on average, 1.45 million poor households (about 9 million people).
The Bank has built successful partnerships with the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations Office for Project Services relying on their extensive field presence in Yemen for the management of the projects. The Bank’s technical experts have worked with these organizations—and with local institutions—to design these projects. The Bank will continue to provide technical expertise to guide the implementation of the projects and ensure they remain responsive to evolving challenges.
William Stebbins
wstebbins@worldbank.org
Ebrahim Al-Harazi
ealharazi@worldbank.org
Yemen Country Engagement Note (2020-2021)
Yemen Country Engagement Note (CEN) FY20-21- Brief
Yemen Emergency Health and Nutrition Project Additional Financing
Yemen Emergency Health and Nutrition Project- Factsheet
Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project - Fourth Additional Financing
Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project - Fourth Additional Financing- Factsheet
International Development Association (IDA)
The World Bank in Yemen
The World Bank in the Middle East and North Africa
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Anniversary of the Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1826; Happy Independence Day!
In addition to being Independence Day, this is the day that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died within hours of each other on July 4, 1826.
On this day in 1826, former Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who were once fellow Patriots and then adversaries, die on the same day within five hours of each other.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were friends who together served on the committee that constructed the Declaration of Independence, but later became political rivals during the 1800 election. Jefferson felt Adams had made serious blunders during his term and Jefferson ran against Adams in a bitter campaign. Two men stopped communicating and Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush wanted to encourage them to reconcile. Rush was on good terms with both Adams and Jefferson and set about to help them mend the distance. In his letter to Adams on October 17, 1809, Rush used the device of a dream to express his wish that Adams and Jefferson would again resume communications. This letter is part of a remarkable sequence of letters which can be read here. In this portion, Rush suggests his “dream” of a Jefferson-Adams reunion.
“What book is that in your hands?” said I to my son Richard a few nights ago in a dream. “It is the history of the United States,” said he. “Shall I read a page of it to you?” “No, no,” said I. “I believe in the truth of no history but in that which is contained in the Old and New Testaments.” “But, sir,” said my son, “this page relates to your friend Mr. Adams.” “Let me see it then,” said I. I read it with great pleasure and herewith send you a copy of it.
“1809. Among the most extraordinary events of this year was the renewal of the friendship and intercourse between Mr. John Adams and Mr. Jefferson, the two ex-Presidents of the United States. They met for the first time in the Congress of 1775. Their principles of liberty, their ardent attachment to their country, and their views of the importance and probable issue of the struggle with Great Britain in which they were engaged being exactly the same, they were strongly attracted to each other and became personal as well as political friends. They met in England during the war while each of them held commissions of honor and trust at two of the first courts of Europe, and spent many happy hours together in reviewing the difficulties and success of their respective negotiations. A difference of opinion upon the objects and issue of the French Revolution separated them during the years in which that great event interested and divided the American people. The predominance of the party which favored the French cause threw Mr. Adams out of the Chair of the United States in the year 1800 and placed Mr. Jefferson there in his stead. The former retired with resignation and dignity to his seat at Quincy, where he spent the evening of his life in literary and philosophical pursuits, surrounded by an amiable family and a few old and affectionate friends. The latter resigned the Chair of the United States in the year 1808, sick of the cares and disgusted with the intrigues of public life, and retired to his seat at Monticello, in Virginia, where he spent the remainder of his days in the cultivation of a large farm agreeably to the new system of husbandry. In the month of November 1809, Mr. Adams addressed a short letter to his friend Mr. Jefferson in which he congratulated him upon his escape to the shades of retirement and domestic happiness, and concluded it with assurances of his regard and good wishes for his welfare. This letter did great honor to Mr. Adams. It discovered a magnanimity known only to great minds. Mr. Jefferson replied to this letter and reciprocated expressions of regard and esteem. These letters were followed by a correspondence of several years in which they mutually reviewed the scenes of business in which they had been engaged, and candidly acknowledged to each other all the errors of opinion and conduct into which they had fallen during the time they filled the same station in the service of their country. Many precious aphorisms, the result of observation, experience, and profound reflection, it is said, are contained in these letters. It is to be hoped the world will be favored with a sight of them. These gentlemen sunk into the grave nearly at the same time, full of years and rich in the gratitude and praises of their country (for they outlived the heterogeneous parties that were opposed to them), and to their numerous merits and honors posterity has added that they were rival friends.
With affectionate regard to your fireside, in which all my family join, I am, dear sir, your sincere old friend,
BENJN: RUSH
It is not clear to me that Rush had an actual dream. He may have used the device of a dream to prod his friend into reconciliation with Jefferson. On more than one prior occasion, Rush communicated his views via writing about them as dreams. For instance, Rush responded to a political question from Adams in a February 20, 1809 letter via a dream narrative. Adams responded on March 4, 1809 praising Rush’s wit and asked for a dream about Jefferson:
Rush,—If I could dream as much wit as you, I think I should wish to go to sleep for the rest of my Life, retaining however one of Swifts Flappers to awake me once in 24 hours to dinner, for you know without a dinner one can neither dream nor sleep. Your Dreams descend from Jove, according to Homer.
Though I enjoy your sleeping wit and acknowledge your unequalled Ingenuity in your dreams, I can not agree to your Moral. I will not yet allow that the Cause of “Wisdom, Justice, order and stability in human Governments” is quite desperate. The old Maxim Nil desperandum de Republica is founded in eternal Truth and indispensable obligation.
Jefferson expired and Madison came to Life, last night at twelve o’clock. Will you be so good as to take a Nap, and dream for my Instruction and edification a Character of Jefferson and his Administration?
Another reason that I question whether it was an actual dream is because a draft of this letter demonstrates that Rush considered another literary device for his prophecy. A footnote in Lyman Butterfield’s compilation of Rush’s letter reads:
In the passage that follows, BR [Benjamin Rush] made his principal plea to Adams to make an effort toward reconciliation with Jefferson. That pains were taken in composing the plea is shown by an autograph draft of the letter, dated 16 Oct. in Hist. Soc. Penna., Gratz Coll. In the draft BR originally wrote, and then crossed out, the following introduction to his dream history: “What would [you omitted] think of some future historian of the United States concluding one of his chapters with the following paragraph?” The greater verisimilitude of the revision adds much to the effectiveness of this remarkable letter. (Butterfield, L.H., The Letters of Benjamin Rush, Vol. II, 1793-1813, Princeton Univ. Press, 1951, p. 1023)
Apparently, Rush wanted to get this message to Adams and chose to use a device already requested by Adams, instead of an appeal to legacy via the reference to the history books.
In any case, real dream or not, Adams liked the proposition and replied to Rush on October 25, 1809, about the “dream” saying,
A Dream again! I wish you would dream all day and all Night, for one of your Dreams puts me in spirits for a Month. I have no other objection to your Dream, but that it is not History. It may be Prophecy. There has never been the smallest Interruption of the Personal Friendship between me and Mr. Jefferson that I know of. You should remember that Jefferson was but a Boy to me. I was at least ten years older than him in age and more than twenty years older than him in Politicks. I am bold to say I was his Preceptor in Politicks and taught him every Thing that has been good and solid in his whole Political Conduct. I served with him on many Committees in Congress in which we established some of the most important Regulations of the Army &c, &c, &c
Jefferson and Franklin were united with me in a Commission to the King of France and fifteen other Commissions to treat with all the Powers of Europe and Africa. I resided with him in France above a year in 1784 and 1785 and met him every day at my House in Auteuil at Franklins House at Passy or at his House in Paris. In short we lived together in the most perfect Friendship and Harmony.
Although in a less poetic manner, Rush also wrote Jefferson to suggest a resumption of friendship. Although it took awhile (1812), Adams and Jefferson did resume correspondence. As predicted by Rush, they carried on a vigorous correspondence until late in their lives regarding their personal and political lives. Then 50 years after July 4, 1776, Jefferson and Adams “sunk into the grave nearly at the same time, full of years and rich in the gratitude and praises of their country…”*
Much of this post was adapted from a prior post on John Adams and the Holy Ghost letter and published on this blog May 31, 2011.
Author Warren ThrockmortonPosted on July 4, 2014 Categories history, HolidaysTags Benjamin Rush, independence day, john adams, July 4, thomas jefferson
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Articles - History of Yoga
Timeline of Yoga
Vedas (8,000 – 3,000 BC)
The first written copies of the Vedas (meaning knowledge) were found around 5000 years ago however, it is believed they were there orally transmitted before this for up to 10 000yrs. The Vedas are a collection of sacred songs, mantras and rituals to be used by Vedic priests known as Brahmans. There are four Vedas: Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda. These compilations come from many different people who wanted to put their best ideas together. They talk on nature as God or universal energy. People say that all human knowledge, known and yet to be known, is hidden in the Vedas. The Rigveda the oldest and most important Veda including Vedic history and hymns. The Sama Veda is the second most important Veda and is known for its musical and lyrical quality. The Yajur Veda is known as the book for formulas and the Atharva Veda, the most recent of the four, describes spells to protect one from death, lure a lover or prevent harm.
Ramayana (5,000 BC)
The Ramayana consists of 24,000 verses and tells the story of Rama, whose wife Sita is abducted by Ravana, the king of Lanka. It explores human values and the concept of dharma. In the Story, Rama goes to the forest, accompanied by his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana, and they live as recluses among the hermits. After Sita is kidnapped, Rama goes to rescue her, aided by Lakshmana and the mighty monkey-general Hanuman. Sita is held captive as Ravana tries to persuade her to marry him. Rama assembles an army of allies comprising mainly of monkeys under the rule of Hanuman. They attack Ravana’s army, and after a fierce battle, succeed in killing the demon king and freeing Sita, reuniting her with Rama.
Jesus (4,000 BC)
Jesus is a religious leader whose life and teachings are recorded in the Bible’s New Testament. He is a central figure in Christianity and is emulated as the incarnation of God by many Christians all over the world.
Upanishads (3,000 BC)
In the later writings of the Vedas, known as the Upanishads, the first explicit references to yoga appear. There are 108 Upanishads with about ten being known as the principle Upanishads.The Upanishads took the idea of ritual sacrifice from the Vedas and internalized it, teaching the sacrifice of the ego through self-knowledge, action (karma yoga) and wisdom (jnana yoga). Concepts of asana, pranayam and meditation, withdrawing the senses, controlling the mind, and attaining liberation are mentioned.
Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita (3,000 BC)
The Mahabharata was written by the Sage Vyasa. It contains the Bhagavad Gita, story of Damayanti, an abbreviated version of the Ramayana, and the Rishyasringa. It is the longest known epic poem which consists of over 200,000 individual verse lines and explains the four "goals of life" or purusharthas.
The Bhagavad Gita is a very important text, known as “Indian psychology.” It contains solutions to the problems of human life and has inspired generations of people who have followed its teachings. Bhagavad Gita is a dialogue between Lord Krishna who symbolises supreme consciousness and Prince Arjuna who represents human consciousness. Prince Arjuna asks questions to Lord Krishna about his problems. Arjuna is in a state of depression, and despondency and Lord Krishna helps him realise the purpose of life and inspires Prince Arjuna to live his life in contentment and peace. Krishna explains the concepts of dharma, karma yoga, bhakti yoga and jnana yoga.
Archaeological remains of Yoga date back to 3,000 BC
Archaeological remains reveal the earliest verifiable traces of yoga dating back over 5,000 years to the Aryan civilization in the Indus Valley. Archaeological excavations from the region uncovered numerous seals depicting a human figure sitting in a meditative position.
Buddha (563 – 483 BC)
Siddhartha Gautama was born in Lumbini (Rummin-dei), near Kapilavastu (Kapilbastu) on the northern edge of the Ganges River basin, an area on the periphery of the civilization of North India, in what is today southern Nepal. It was told to his father that he would either be a great king or he would be a great spiritual leader. To keep his son from witnessing the miseries and suffering of the world, Siddhartha's father raised him in opulence in a palace built just for the boy and sheltered him from knowledge of religion and human hardship. However, one day, he ventured out beyond the palace walls and was quickly confronted with the realities of human frailty. Siddhartha was overcome by these sights, and the next day, at age 29, he left his kingdom, wife and son to lead an ascetic life and to determine a way to relieve the universal suffering that he now understood to be one of the defining traits of humanity.
Siddhartha sat under the Bodhi tree, vowing to not get up until the truths he sought came to him, and he meditated until the sun came up the next day. Siddhartha finally saw the answer to the questions of suffering that he had been seeking for so many years. In that moment of pure enlightenment, Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha ("he who is awake"). He went on to preach his first sermon, in which he explained the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, which became the pillars of Buddhism.
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (500 BC)
The Yoga Sutras, written by sage Patanjali, are a guidebook of classical, raja yoga. They are made up of 195 aphorisms (sutras), or words of wisdom and were written to explain the process and systematic analysis of practical methods for awakening and expanding the higher faculties of mind, intellect, and quality of consciousness.
Patanjali divides his 196 aphorisms (sutras) into four chapters discussing various practices on Yoga. The first chapter titled ‘Samadhi Pada’ is for the ‘samahita-citta,’ those of a composed mind that are receptive to the subtle practices of yoga which requires high levels of concentration. In the second chapter, titled ‘Sadhana Pada,’ are practices for the ‘vyutthita citta,’ those of a distracted mind that stand in needs of more radical practices to pierce the distractive layers of physical and mental ignorance that covers the inner soul of man. Here is also found the traditional eightfold path to Yoga, including Yamas, Niyamas, Asanas, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi. . The third chapter discuss the various Siddhis or perfections one may achieve from the practice of Yoga and the final chapter investigates the state of liberation.
Post- Classical Yoga 600 – 1,500 AD
Hatha Yoga – focus on purification, away from mind focus but to prepare for working on the mind once the body was purified. Focus on asana, cleansing, pranayam, mudras, bandhas.
Matsyendranath 900 AD
Matsyendranath is traditionally considered the founder of Haṭha yoga as well as the author of some of its earliest texts. He is also seen as the founder of the natha sampradaya (Nath tradition), having received teachings from Shiva. He is the guru of Gorakshanath, another important figure in early hatha yoga. He is revered by both Hindus and Buddhists, and is sometimes regarded as an incarnation of Avalokiteśvara.
Gorakshanath (1,000 AD)
The Natha tradition underwent its greatest expansion during the time of Gorakshanath. He produced a number of writings and even today is considered the greatest and the most influential of the Naths. He is also reputed to have written the first books dealing with Laya yoga (or Kundalini yoga) and the raising of the Kundalini-shakti. There are several sites, ashrams and temples in India dedicated to Gorakshanatha.
Shiva Samhita (1,200 AD)
Shiva Samhita is a Sanskrit text on yoga, written by an unknown author. In the text Shiva speaks to Parvati on various methods of liberation and philosophical standpoints. It is one of three major surviving classical treatises on hatha yoga, the other two being Gheranda Samhita and Hatha Yoga Pradipika. The Shiva Samhita is considered the most comprehensive texts on hatha yoga. There are 84 asanas decribed in this text.
Hatha Yoga Pradipika (1,100 AD)
The Hatha Yoga Pradīpikā is a classic Sanskrit manual on hatha yoga, written by Swami Swatmaram, a disciple of Swami Gorakhnath. It is among the most influential surviving texts on the hatha yoga, and is one of the three classic texts of hatha yoga, the other two being the Gheranda Samhita and the Shiva Samhita. consists of four chapters which include information about asanas, pranayama, chakras, kundalini, bandhas, kriyas, naḍis and mudras among other topics. Only a total of 16 asanas are described in this text.
Gherand Samhita
Gheranda Samhita is a classical text describing seven limbs of yoga. Sage Gheranda taught this to his disciple, King Chandakapali. Sage Gheranda outlines a system which can take the serious aspirant from purification of the body to the highest states of samadhi and knowledge of the soul.
Distinguishing it from other hatha yoga systems, Sage Gheranda’s seven limbs includes the tattwa dharanas (concentrations on the elements) and the seamless merging of hatha yoga and tantra by combining mudras, bandhas and pranayamas with mantra, yantra and mandala. There is a total of 32 asanas described in this text.
Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati 800-900 AD
This Sanskrit text, attributed to Siddha Gorakhnath, is divided into six chapters called Upadeshas.
Adi shankaracharya (788 – 820 AD)
Adi Shankaracharya spread advaita vedanta and brought together the different cults and sects, removing conflicts. His philosophy spoke of how you are not your thoughts, you are the awareness behind the thoughts and only the present moment exists, so we should accept that. His reinterpretations of Hindu scriptures, especially on Upanishads or Vedanta, had a profound influence on the growth of Hinduism.
Swami Vivekananda 1863 – 1902
Swami Vivekananda was a key figure in the introduction of the Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world and is credited with raising interfaith awareness, bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion during the late 19th century. He gave a famous lecture in 1883 In Chicago and wowed those in attendance. He spoke on unity, one world, Bhagavad Gita and new perspectives for the West. Vivekananda was one of the main representatives of Neo-Vedanta, a modern interpretation of selected aspects of Hinduism in line with western esoteric traditions.
Paramahamsa Yogananda 1893 – 1952
Paramahamsa Yogananda came to America in 1920 from India, and was the first great master of yoga to live and teach in the West for an extended period (more than 30 years). He is now widely recognized as the Father of Yoga in the West. He founded Self-Realization Fellowship in1920 and Yogoda Satsanga Society of India in 1917. He is well known for the spiritual classic, “Autobiography of a Yogi.” Paramahansa Yogananda has profoundly impacted the lives of millions with his comprehensive teachings on:
the science of Kriya Yoga meditation,
the underlying unity of all true religions,
the art of balanced health and well-being in body, mind, and soul.
Swami Kuvalayananda 1883 – 1966
Swami Kuvalayanada was a researcher and educator who is primarily known for his pioneering research into the scientific foundations of yoga. He started scientific research on yoga in 1920 and published the first scientific journal specifically devoted to studying yoga, Yoga Mimamsa. He also started the Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center, founded in 1924 and dedicated to yogic research.
Krishnamacharya 1888 – 1989
He is mostly known for his contribution to the revival of the more physically oriented disciplines and practices of hatha yoga. While under the patronage of the King of Mysore, Krishnamacharya traveled around India giving lectures and demonstrations to promote yoga, including such feats as stopping his heartbeat. He is widely considered as the architect of vinyasa, in the sense of combining the breath with movement. Underlying all of Krishnamacharya’s teachings was the principle “Teach what is appropriate for an individual.” In India Krishnamacharya is mainly known as a healer who drew from both ayurvedic and yogic traditions to restore health and well-being to those he treated. In 1923 Krisnamacharya opened the first Hatha Yoga School in Mysore, South India. Among his students were BKS Iyengar (born 1918-2014), Patthabi Jois (1915-2009) and T.K.V. Desikachar (son born 1938).
Swami Sivananda Saraswati (1887-1963)
In 1936 he founded the Divine Life Society in Rishikesh on the banks of the Ganges River. He is the author of over 200 books on yoga, Vedanta and a variety of subjects. He established Sivananda Ashram, the headquarters of the DLS, on the bank of the Ganges, 3 kilometres from Rishikesh. Sivananda Yoga, the yoga form propagated by his disciple Vishnudevananda, is now spread in many parts of the world through Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres.
Swami Chidananda & Swami Krishnananda – Divine Life Society
Swami Satyananda – Bihar School
Swami Satchidananda – Integral Yoga
Swami Vishnudevananda – Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres
Swami Satyananda Saraswati
Swami Satyanananda was born at Almora, Uttar Pradesh in 1923. In 1943 he met Swami Sivananda in Rishikesh and adopted Dashnami Sannyasa way of life. In 1955 he left his guru’s ashram to live as a wandering mendicant and later founded the International Yoga Fellowship in 1956 and the Bihar School of Yoga in 1963. Over the next 20 years Swami Satyananada toured internationally and authored over 80 books. In 1984 he founded Sivananda Math, a charitable institution for aiding rural development and the Yoga Reasearch Foundation. In 1988 he renounced his mission, adopting kshetra sannyasa, and lived as a paramahamsa sannyasin. On the 5th of December 2009 his body found Samadhi.
Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati
Swami Niranjananda was born in Madhya Pradesh in 1960. At the age of four he joined the Bihar School of Yoga and was initiated into Dashnami Sannyasa at the age of ten. From 1971 he travelled overseas and toured many countries for the next 11 years. In 1983 he was recalled to India and appointed Preseident of the Bihar School of Yoga. Since then he has guided the development of Ganga Darshan, Sivananda Math, Yoga Publication Trust, and yoga research foundation. His successor was Swami Satyanananda.
Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950)
In Pondicherry, Aurobindo developed a method he termed Integral Yoga. The central theme of his vision was the evolution of human life into a life divine. He believed in a spiritual realization that would not only liberate man but transform his nature, enabling a divine life on earth. In 1926, with the help of his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa ("The Mother"), he founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. His ideals are also the foundation of Auroville, a collaboration of people living together in the vison of Sri Aurobindo. His main literary works include The Life Divine, which deals with theoretical aspects of Integral Yoga as well as Synthesis of Yoga, which discusses practical guidance to Integral Yoga.
Ramana Maharishi 1879-1950
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi was attraction to the holy hill Arunachala in 1895. In 1896, at the age of 16, he had a "death-experience" in which he became aware of a "current" or "force" which he recognised as his true "I" or Self, and which he later identified with Ishvara. This resulted in a state which he later described as "the state of mind of Iswara or the jnani." Six weeks later he journeyed to the holy mountain Arunachala, Tiruvannamalai, where he took on the role of a sannyasin and remained for the rest of his life. He attracted many devotees. He recommended self-enquiry as the principal means to remove ignorance and abide in Self-awareness, together with bhakti or surrender to the Self.
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Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
Posted: August 22, 2012 | Author: brucem | Filed under: Measurement and Analytics | Tags: bisphenol-A, Black Belts, cancer, health canada study, Lean Six Sigma, lung cancer cases, lung cancer deaths, probability, radon, risk management, risk perception, statistical thinking | Leave a comment
Surprise house guest
As human beings our perception of risk is shaky and often runs counter to the actual real risks and expected values. Phenomena such as the recency effect, in which more recent events are often given greater weighting by people for things such as risk, distort decisions, actions and public policy.
An example is the relatively unknown risk posed by radon gas as compared to the hue and cry over water bottles made from bisphenol-A. Even normally rational Black Belts often forget their training and fall prey to uncritical weighing of risks as reported by a 30-second news item. Radon gas is the second highest cause of lung cancer after smoking, yet when was the last time you heard about it? As Tom Blackwell posted last week in an article for The National Post:
Radon seeping invisibly into some Canadian homes causes hundreds more lung-cancer deaths a year than previously thought, a Health Canada study based on a recent testing blitz has concluded.
The department has almost doubled the estimated risk posed by the radioactive gas, saying it likely accounts for 16% of lung cancer cases, up from the 10% estimate that had been accepted for decades.
About 3,200 Canadians a year likely die because of exposure to radon, produced naturally when uranium in the soil degrades, say the study authors. Efforts to reduce radon levels need to be stepped up, they urge in a paper appearing in the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry.
Health Canada is working hard to raise awareness, but it is an “uphill battle,” said Kelly Bush, the department’s spokeswoman on the issue.
People sometimes respond strongly to relatively minor risks posed by man-made substances, while all but ignoring the much more significant, yet natural threat of radon, she said.
“I think they need to take it very seriously,” said Ms. Bush. “It’s much more significant than a lot of other environmental health risks that people react to, for example [plastics ingredient] bisphenol-A and throwing out all the plastic baby bottles, when the risk is quite a bit smaller than radon,” she said.
“The problem is that that risk is tangible and you can blame someone: the people who made those bottles. With radon, you can’t blame anyone, because it’s naturally occurring. You can’t smell it, see it or taste it. And it’s not immediate, it’s long term.” Ms. Bush said she has no problem grasping the human aspect of the problem, however, given that she frequently hears from people who have been directly affected.
“I get the calls from the 40 or 50-year-old Canadians with lung cancer who have never smoked and say, ‘I wish I had known’ or ‘I wish I had tested.’ And that’s what keeps me going.” She recommended that Canadians everywhere test their homes for radon levels, either with do-it-yourself kits sold at hardware stores or by hiring professionals, and take corrective action if needed.
Homes in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick are more likely than others to have high levels.
The study has produced some “important findings,” more accurately defining the scope of a problem that is overlooked by many Canadians, said Prithwish De, an epidemiologist at the Canadian Cancer Society.
“It gives us more reason to push for radon testing,” he said.
Radon is produced by the decay of uranium in rocks and soil throughout the Earth’s crust. In the enclosed spaces of a house, it can accumulate to levels that are dangerous for people exposed to the gas over long periods.
Though most of the 25,000 new lung cancer cases and 20,000 lung-cancer deaths a year result from smoking, radon is the next biggest cause of the most deadly type of malignancy. The previous estimate of radon’s role in the disease was based on testing of homes conducted in the 1970s.
The just-published study on cancer risk stemmed from a new radon survey of 14,000 residences carried out by Health Canada from 2009 to 2011, using techniques designed to capture a more exact picture of the phenomenon.
Officials found that 7% of houses nationally have levels of radon above 200 becquerels per cubic metre of air (Bqm³) – considered the point where corrective action should be taken – up from 3% to 5% in the older survey.
The risk seems much more widespread in certain provinces, with one in five Manitoba and New Brunswick homes, for instance, registering above the limit.
The recent study by Jing Chen and other scientists at Health Canada’s radiation protection bureau used those new radon figures – and recognized formulas for translating radiation exposure into cancer risk – to estimate the percentage of the country’s lung cancer cases triggered by radon.
The estimate of radon-linked deaths climbed to 3,200 annually from about 2,000. By comparison, it is estimated that exposure to asbestos triggers 1,500 new cancer cases a year in Canada.
Ms. Bush said testing can be done for as little as $50 using a home kit. If radon levels are above 200 Bqm³, the most effective way to fix the problem is so-called “active soil depressurization,” where a pipe is installed into the earth below the foundation, then fed outside the house, a method that draws over 90% of contaminated air away from the home. The cost is $1,000 to $3,000, she said.
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Kei Maejima
Four students starting a business in Izu City, Shizuoka Prefecture
Creating a way of life through "toiz" Inc.
The headline of a national paper said, "Students move to Izu, and start a business." It was about "toiz" Inc. started up by university students in Tokyo, targeting invigorating the community. For one of the students, Kei Maejima, it was a way of life he finally found after a search of himself.
In elementary school in Kumamoto, he was a truant. Kei who says that he has little memory about school where he didn't study much entered an integrated junior and senior high school with the educational ideal of "not letting children grow under the principle of competition." The school culture even without regular tests gave him a comfortable place to be, but he couldn't face study that he kept on turning his back on.
Students from Tokyo get together in Izu and have a study session
"I just assumed I was poor at studying," Kei recalls. "When I graduated from high school, I decided then it was time to change." Once he made up his mind, Kei started studying the elementary school curriculum from scratch and gained enough learning to enter university after two years. He finally became a WASEDA student but was not satisfied. "Music, movies, internships or whatever I develop an interest in, I devote myself to it. In my life, I think I was desperately looking for what I should do." Just before he became a 3rd year student, he met Kensuke Sakurada who would later give him a chance to start a business.
Mr. Sakurada, a managing director of an IT company, was planning and hosting a business contest, "Izucon," with a theme of invigorating Izu City. Kei participated in the contest as part of the audience. The winner Takumi Shiomi (then 2nd year, School of Political Science and Economics), another WASEDA student had a plan to start up a student organization to vitalize the community. At the reception following the event, Takumi and Kei had a conversation for the first time and decided to start a club authorized by Izu City, "Sizu," with their friends. "To liven up Izu, we invited students to local festivals, held seminars and I devoted myself to the activity. But one year later, I had some doubts, "Is this really right?" I started to feel that as long as I stayed in Tokyo and worked in the framework of 'the vitalization part and the vitalized,' I wouldn't be able to reach a real solution." Supported by Mr. Sakurada, four Sizu members including Kei and Takumi started the community-based company, toiz, Inc. and started to live together in a guest house/shared house in Izu City, Shizuoka Prefecture.
Currently, based in Izu, toiz operates by planning and operating tours and management of the guesthouse as its main line of business. "From our viewpoint, the invigorated condition of a community means those who leave it can return. They go to bigger cities and don't return to their hometowns because in addition to life infrastructure issues such as "no jobs available," there is a sense that "rural areas are tough to live in." He hopes the way of life of toiz members will become a model, be extended to different regions, and invigorate Japan as a whole. "I want to destroy such values through my way of life and make Japan a place where more people can have pride in their way of life."
The business card I received comes with a line, "Making a way of life." These words represented the answer to his question about the ideal way of life he searched for.
Crops produced in the garden of the shared house. They can be eaten uncooked
The members of toiz enjoying some fishing in Izu. The catch will be prepared for dinner. Kei is second from the rear
Having a meeting in a relaxed manner, while taking a footbath near Shuzenji. Kei is third from right
Born in Kumamoto Prefecture. Graduated from Jiyunomori Gakuen High School. 4th Year, School of Human Sciences. His hobby is cooking. "I make dishes with local ingredients from Izu that I receive from people in the community." He currently commutes to university from Izu and is striving to enter Graduate School to make management of his business and study compatible. "I'll take you to nice quiets places, so please come and enjoy Izu!"
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Uchiha Sasuke
Naruto: New Era
October 1, 2014 September 27, 2014 / hoshiko / 2 Comments
I’m a long-time follower of Naruto series. So it’s a special moment to see validation of how the characters have grown over the years. Trust me, it’s been a looooong time.
What I like most in episodes 373 & 374 is how they welcome the new era. The latest war that’s been going since forever and those two episodes welcome a new phase. It’s time for the younger generation to shine. I mean, they are comparing the new Three-Way Deadlock Summoning with the old. The students of The Legendary Sannin and the three top ninjas themselves. I suppose, it’s a proud moment for fans of Team 7 and their peers.
Below is some of the most exciting moments (a.k.a screenshots) in Naruto Shippuuden episodes 373 & 374.
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Award-Winning Actress Chrissy Metz Shines in Breakthrough Movie
New Movie Breakthrough Provides Miraculous Glimpse of Prayer’s Power
"Breakthrough": Official Trailer Released for New Faith-Based Film
Trapped in Icy Waters
facebook.com/BreakthroughMovie
Chris Carpenter - Director of Internet Programming
Chrissy Metz has had a fair amount of success in Hollywood since breaking onto the scene in 2016. Best known for her role as Kate in the hit NBC series This is Us, the Gainesville, Florida native is far from an overnight sensation. In fact, Metz earned her first onscreen credit in 2005 but struggled to gain a foothold in television for the better part of a decade.
On This is Us, Metz plays a woman struggling with her weight, eating habits, and self body image. Her work has not gone unnoticed, as she has earned several accolades including two Golden Globe nominations and an Emmy Award nod.
Now comes her first starring role in the new movie, Breakthrough. Based on the amazing true story of a mother refusing to give up on her son despite seemingly insurmountable medical odds, Metz shines as Joyce Smith, a woman who serves as an incredible reminder that all things are possible through faith in God.
I recently spoke to the humble, sweet-spirited Metz about what drew her to the role in Breakthrough, the significance of being willing to forgive, and why it is important to remember that everyone has a purpose in life.
You are currently a highly sought after actress in Hollywood due to your success with This is Us. What attracted you the role of playing Joyce Smith in the new faith-based movie Breakthrough?
I want to keep a personal connection with my mother who went through a medical emergency in her life. This was happening prior to even knowing I was going to be in the movie. The words I said to my mother were almost verbatim to what Joyce said to John’s (Smith) doctors. We realized that in a meeting. I didn't know I was having a meeting for the movie. I thought it was just a general meeting with the executives. We all sort of just sat there for a second and they looked at each other and I was like, “No, no, it’s okay.” Something sort of connected in that moment. Then, when I was having a chance to read the script, I was wondering if it was already written when we met? He’s like, ‘You're doing a great read.’ I thought, “Okay, this is crazy.” I sent this (the script) to my own mother's doctor. But the message of the movie, this unconditional love, the sense of community, the hope, the inspiration and learning how to just live on life's terms is really tricky. It just made sense for me. It’s something I wanted to do, which is a big key for me in the movies.
I’m glad you mentioned that. For me, there is one major theme in the movie that seems to come up over and over again with several of the characters. What are your thoughts on forgiveness in the movie?
There is so much forgiveness on so many different levels, for Joyce, for John, for Brian (Smith), and everyone. I've had to do a lot of forgiveness myself in my own life. I had a pretty tumultuous childhood with my biological father and my stepfather. I realized that holding onto resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to be sick. And I realized that it's not serving me. I think that's what John and Joyce and everyone in this film particularly knew. There's no point in holding onto a grudge or resentment because most of it is probably just a misunderstanding. Some people do treat you poorly but I believe that if you accept responsibility for your actions, if people knew better, they would do better. That's what mercy is for, right? It’s for the people who don't really deserve it or we don't think they deserve it. They are the ones who need it the most. That's such a beautiful thought.
There's such a difference between your character on This is Us and Joyce Smith. But I think you did such a good job in this movie of separating yourself from the role people know you for. Was that a hard transition for you in the acting process?
What a nice, incredible compliment that I would never have expected. My hope for this role is that people would ultimately see the joy in Joyce. Luckily I've had a chance to play Kate for three seasons now, so hopefully she's different. I'm so happy that our director Roxanne Dawson observed that. How do you make that difference? How do you define the difference between one role and another? Of course it’s what's on the page, but there are so many similarities, but there also are so many differences. I prepared very differently. I think it's very distinct. It's not that I prepare in a different way as much as I think about the motivation of each character and their intentions, who they are, who they want to be, all of those things.
A lot of that is on the page in the script. With mannerisms, obviously I tried to capture Joyce's essence. With Kate I got to create her, so that's kind of helpful sometimes. I think every character is so distinct that I try to separate them. While you're playing the role you become this person and then you can switch it. I think that comes with preparation of course, to know the intention of the scene, it’s where you need to really break it down. For me, that is a process that sometimes happens line per line. Otherwise it can seem insurmountable. You sometimes think, “Oh, I'm never going to get it right.” So much of it is just being present. Each of these characters have different journeys so that helps.
I've always wanted to tell so many different stories because there's so much we can learn from them. I'm just so grateful that I've had the chance to. I'm still learning how to because I definitely don't have it figured out, that's for sure.
You have a remarkable story of how you got the part for This is Us. Could you share it with our audience?
I’m from a small town. My sister heard about an open casting call on the radio and she asked me to take her and her best friend. It was an open call and this woman sitting across from me had his weird hat on. She said to me, ‘You know I taught at your high school.’ I'm like, ‘Who is this crazy lady?’ I was filling out the information for my sister. And she says, ‘You're not auditioning?’ And I said, “No.” And she's asked, ‘Why? You're here for a reason.’ And I'm like, “Okay. Whatever.” And I remember going in with my sister to audition and then we came out of the room. We were about to go and I looked for the lady. She was gone. Gone. And I was like, “Where's the lady in the hat?” Everyone's responding and saying, ‘What hat?’ And I'm like, “You guys are playing with me. Don't play with me.” And they're like, ‘No.’ And so then the talent scout comes out and says, ‘Oh, I met your sister. Are you the guardian?’ I said, “Yeah, I'm just her older sister.” She said, ‘So, you don't act or sing?’ And I said, “No.” And she's like, ‘Really? You don't want audition?’ And I'm like, “Look, I don't sing.’ My sister all the sudden says, ‘Yes you do. Yes you do.’
And in my heart I always wanted to do it. But I was so afraid of my own shadow, I couldn't even think about that. So, to make a long story short, she ended up signing me. We ended up preparing for a showcase and I found an agent. Then moved to Los Angeles. I don't know how to explain that. How does someone go from an open call in Gainesville, Florida at Holiday Inn to all of this? These types of things are not lost on me.
Breakthrough seems to have so many positive messages. What are some of the leading themes that people will be able to take away with them through the viewing experience?
It’s definitely that we all are purposeful. Anyone who is born has a purpose. To be born is an absolute miracle that we sort of take for granted. We're like, ‘Oh, we had a baby. How cute. We had a baby shower.’ But for everything to happen, for the parents to have been born where they're born, to have met, to actually conceiving, to actually carrying the baby and then having the baby … I can't even wrap my head around that.
It's an absolute miracle. If there's a reason that all of those things have to happen for you to be on this planet of existence, there's a reason for that. You have a purpose and you are loved so much. And that to me is like, “Whoa.” You could talk about that for hours. I hope that's what people take away from this movie. We're stronger together than we are apart. There are all of these people on this planet to learn from, to teach, to grow and to evolve with each other. Otherwise, there would be one person on the planet. There's a reason why we all look different and come from different backgrounds. We're all here to teach each other and whether it's empathy, tolerance, or self-love. But we need to impart that on other people.
Breakthrough opens in theaters nationwide on April 17th.
Watch a trailer for Chrissy Metz's new motion picture Breakthrough:
New Pilgrim’s Progress Movie a Time-Tested Classic with a Missions Mindset
Breakthrough: Official Trailer Released for New Faith-Based Film
Entertainment Weekly Wrap-Up
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