It’s a marriage that is mutually beneficial to both partners and has tremendous growth potential. In a burgeoning digital and mobile centric market, Telecom players and social media platforms have come together to benefit the user, expecting the partnership to be the next big revenue driver. Research shows that social media platforms, online advertising and increasing Internet access speed would be the key revenue generators for the telecom sector and sure enough, the Indian Telecom Sector has been seen engaging with the leading social media platforms.
For Twitter India, this is not the first time when they have been involved in such an association with a telecom company. Earlier this year, Twitter India tied up with Reliance Communications allowing the Reliance GSM prepaid users in the country to get a free Twitter access.
Airtel was the first in the country to directly associate with social media when it partnered with Facebook to offer its users free access to Facebook for two months. Later they joined hands with Google to launch ‘free zone’ allowing users to use various Google services like Google plus and Gmail for free. However, the first page which was available to the users featured advertisements. At the same time, Airtel’s data segment’s revenue generation rose up to 6.5 per cent from 5.7 per cent in Q4 FY13.
During the launch of ‘Freezone’, Rajan Anandan, VP and Managing Director, Google India said, “The mobile Internet user base is growing really fast in India. Working with Airtel on this exciting trial means that we can offer Internet services at no cost to anyone with rtls. This gives people easier access to information in a way that benefits everyone, whether it’s an individual or a small business that wants to reach more people on the web. We hope this initiative will encourage more Indians to experience the value of the Internet and gain from it.”
On being asked about the objectives of Vodafone behind this association with Twitter, Vivek Mathur, Chief Commercial Officer, Vodafone India said, “Vodafone India has always been at the forefront of providing innovative and user friendly mobile internet experience for its customers in India. Our partnership with Twitter and this offering is yet another step in our ongoing endeavour to make mobile internet more fun, smart, engaging and easy.”
Twitter India’s Market Director, Rishi Jaitly, said, “As a real-time information network full of links, media, and content, our platform offers the mobile ecosystem novel ways to introduce their subscribers to all that Internet has to offer. We are pleased to partner with Vodafone India to offer its subscribers a unique opportunity to use Twitter to follow the people and organizations they care about. Whether it’s hearing the latest news, connecting with cricket stars in real time, or laughing at the day’s best jokes, Twitter brings Indians together and closer to our interests.”
This attempt, however modest it may sound is far from just being a step to promote data usage. Mobile based data market is still in an evolution stage and it will take another two to three years before it could overtake the voice services offered by telecom service providers. As of now, social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook are reaching out to the Indian mobile user base only to lure the telecom brands and the end users, and using the association as a marketing tool.
According to the UN watchdog, Paulo Pinheiro, speaking in the General Assembly on 29 July, Syria is in free fall: 100,000 dead; refugees and displaced persons in the millions; atrocities of every kind; no end to the fighting in sight. Both Barack Obama and David Cameron have been under pressure to ‘do something’, and most media attention has focused on arming the rebels – as if they were short of arms. Both leaders were initially tempted but seem to have come off the boil.
In Washington, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote an open letter to Congress spelling out the costs and benefits of US military involvement in terms which seem to have succeeded in tilting the political debate against military action.
In London there was a debate in the House of Commons on 11 July on a motion put down by the Conservative backbencher John Baron, a former army officer, stipulating that no lethal support should be given to the rebels without the prior consent of Parliament. It was an encouraging occasion for those who believe in parliamentary democracy (not so encouraging for those who rely on our media, which largely ignored the debate). Speaker after speaker asked how arming the rebels could help bring an end to the fighting, and how we could be sure that the weapons would not end up in the wrong hands. The government had earlier been tempted by the argument that everybody in Syria has access to weapons except the good guys, and had expended a lot of effort trying to get the EU embargo on arms sales lifted; but Alistair Burt of the FCO, winding up the debate for the government, did not oppose the motion and it was passed with 114 votes in favour and 1 against.
One does not have to be a cynic to ask what on earth such a conference can be expected to achieve. The answer is that civil wars do come to an end, although it can be an agonisingly slow process, and outside assistance in finding a political solution has sometimes been effective. There are plenty of precedents (none of them perfect): the Taif Agreement which ended Lebanon’s civil war in 1989, the Dayton Agreement for peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Anglo-Irish Agreement between Margaret Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald. A political solution results from a process, not an event. A conference can be part of that process, indeed can start it. The Anglo-Irish Agreement was top-down, an agreement between London and Dublin not endorsed by anyone in Northern Ireland (and heartily loathed by the Unionists).
The process has to be organic, incremental, multi-dimensional. No superpower, no group of powers can predict let alone dictate its evolution and timing. But they can get it moving. In the Syria case it would not be possible to bring all the interested parties together now, but it would be possible, with political will, to bring together America, Russia, the other permanent members of the Security Council, the EU, the Arab League, the Islamic Conference and others with an interest and record in peacemaking such as Canada and Japan. Such a conference could not solve the problem but it could start the process.
Why doesn’t it happen? ‘Political will’ is a mysterious concept. To a retired diplomat like me it is obvious that Washington and Moscow, to say nothing of the others, both stand to gain from engaging in such an enterprise together. Perhaps the first step in creating the necessary political will would be for the media to abandon for a moment their obsession with guns, blood and spies, and succumb instead to the seductions of diplomacy. But that is like asking little boys to stop playing soldiers and start playing municipal waste recyclers.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Democratic candidates field queries
The Iranian regime has repeatedly shown its true colors by brutally oppressing its own people, threatening to wipe Israel off the map, denying the Holocaust happened, and funding terrorist groups such as Hizbullah, an organization that is committed to continuing its killing of Americans and to Israel’s extinction. Allowing such a regime to acquire a nuclear weapon is plainly unacceptable. A nuclear-armed Iran represents not only an existential threat to Israel but also a grave threat to the region, the United States, and to global stability. It could well ignite a dangerous regional arms race and heighten the prospects of a bomb falling into the hands of terrorists.
For these reasons, every option — including military action — must be on the table. I will always support ensuring that Israel has the necessary tools to protect itself from the Iranian threat while strengthening U.S. and multilateral sanctions on the indoor Tracking. That said, we must continue to vigorously pursue diplomatic and economic solutions because the cost of military action to substantially disrupt the Iranian nuclear program would be extraordinarily high for the U.S., Israel, and our other allies.
In an increasingly uncertain world, Israel continues to be an advocate for freedom, equality, and democracy in the Middle East. My focused study of Israel, its values, and its unique relationship with the United States began during my time at Oxford, where I was the president of the Chabad House’s L’Chaim Society and at Yale, where I founded the Eliezer Society. Since then, during my trips to the country, I have seen first-hand Israel’s dedication to its values and its friendship with the United States.
The United States must continue to support Israel as a secure homeland for the Jewish people. Where Israel’s security is at stake, America’s security is at stake. American support for Israel has been at the center of our Middle East policy for over six decades and must continue to be a central component of our foreign policy in the region.
Real security for Israel will only come with an enduring peace. Therefore, I strongly support a two-state solution with a Jewish state of Israel existing in peace alongside a sovereign Palestinian state. The United States should continue to facilitate direct negotiations that seek a two-state solution. However, it is the right of the Israeli government to make the tough decisions that are necessary to secure its future. The Palestinian People deserve a state that allows them to prosper and thrive, but that state must not be a vehicle for launching attacks against Israel. During any negotiation, certain things must remain non-negotiable, namely conditions that speak to Israel’s right to exist as a secure Jewish state.
These problems are not just concurrent — they are inextricably linked, and Congress has been responding in precisely the wrong way. A laser focus on immediate and extraordinary deficit reduction to help stabilize the debt at the expense of investing in putting Americans back to work has provided short-term deficit reduction, but has also extended the recession’s tragic impact on unemployment and has hampered our growth.
Our failure to prioritize unemployment reduction and economic growth does more than hurt American families today; it hurts our prospects of growing our way out of our debt challenges.
Make no mistake about it: We must be diligent about our debt, and it is currently too high. The president has already signed into law about $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction between 2013 and 2023. However, we will not be able to cut our way out of our problems, and the sequester remains a blunt instrument cutting in the wrong places. Furthermore, defeat of many aspects of President Obama’s American Jobs Act, on the basis that the country could not afford to invest in critical priorities to alleviate joblessness and strengthen our long-term competitiveness, is emblematic of Congress’s inability to understand the connection between smart spending and investment now and long-term debt reduction.
The U.S. must continue to promote democracy, freedom, and the rule of law in the Middle East. The Arab Spring will require our patience, and our understanding. The transition from oppression for tens of millions presents many opportunities as well as uncertainties for the U.S., Israel, and everyone in the region struggling for democracy. These efforts begin with protecting America’s special alliance with Israel, and include providing significant, targeted aid throughout the region.
The civil war in Syria is an unthinkable atrocity that has resulted in an estimated 100,000 deaths and has forced over 1.6 million Syrians to become refugees. The U.S. should take whatever steps it can to safely support moderate opposition fighters, aid refugees, and prevent the spillover of fighting into neighboring countries. Putting U.S. troops on the ground in Syria is not an option given the complexity of the situation and all we’ve learned from our past 12 years of war. Any military aid or support must be carefully targeted and measured against the risk of arms falling into the hands of extremist, rather than moderate, rebels.
As far as Egypt is concerned, we should continually review the extent and composition of the substantial aid we provide, keeping in mind that this aid is vital to the stability of the region and important to the well-being of the Egyptian people. Despite my deep displeasure with Egypt’s former regime, I have grave concerns about the Egyptian military’s forceful hand in removing a democratically elected government from power and feel that we should be abundantly clear with the Egyptian military that we expect the beginnings of a transition to a democratically elected civilian government immediately. America knows the difficulties of transitioning to democracy. It took us two wars — our revolution and the civil war — before we reached a point where our democratic evolution, which remains in process today, didn’t involve widespread armed conflict. Democracy — self-determination — is a fundamental human right, and we must support it the best we can, wherever we can.
The charitable contribution deduction rewards altruism and plays an important role in promoting philanthropy. Here in Newark, we’ve seen how philanthropy can help transform a city. For example, we have raised over $200 million from innovators to strengthen our schools. This has allowed Newark to create programs such as “My Very Own Library,” which has provided 120,000 books for nearly 12,000 low-income students to help build home libraries. Partnering with private foundations also allowed us to create immediate access to affordable medications for thousands of uninsured Newark residents through the Newark Rx program. Put simply, philanthropy has provided vital support to my community’s collective efforts to transform Newark and solve some of our most difficult problems.
There is plainly a need to clean up the tax code, and close inefficient loopholes that make our code far less progressive and add to our deficits. However, tax reform should not remove incentives to donate to charity. My experience as mayor of Newark will inform how I look at any proposals to change the tax status of charitable contributions, and I will work with members of both parties to ensure that we continue to promote philanthropy.
Medicaid provides millions of low-income and disabled Americans with essential healthcare services and has been one of the most important programs in U.S. history. I strongly oppose turning Medicaid into a block grant program or capping the amount of Medicaid funding provided to states based on a per capita rate. These changes would likely lead millions of Americans to lose access to healthcare insurance and significantly decrease the quality of care provided by Medicaid.
It is also deeply troubling that over a dozen states have rejected the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. Elected officials should not deny healthcare to millions of their constituents to advance a political agenda. Rejecting this expansion is the wrong decision from budget, healthcare system quality, and moral perspectives. The states that have turned down expanded coverage will lose $8.4 billion in federal funding and spend $1 billion more on uncompensated healthcare. Here in New Jersey, Medicaid expansion will provide healthcare coverage to more than 100,000 more New Jerseyans and save the state $227 million in one year.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
For these reasons, every option — including military action — must be on the table. I will always support ensuring that Israel has the necessary tools to protect itself from the Iranian threat while strengthening U.S. and multilateral sanctions on the indoor Tracking. That said, we must continue to vigorously pursue diplomatic and economic solutions because the cost of military action to substantially disrupt the Iranian nuclear program would be extraordinarily high for the U.S., Israel, and our other allies.
In an increasingly uncertain world, Israel continues to be an advocate for freedom, equality, and democracy in the Middle East. My focused study of Israel, its values, and its unique relationship with the United States began during my time at Oxford, where I was the president of the Chabad House’s L’Chaim Society and at Yale, where I founded the Eliezer Society. Since then, during my trips to the country, I have seen first-hand Israel’s dedication to its values and its friendship with the United States.
The United States must continue to support Israel as a secure homeland for the Jewish people. Where Israel’s security is at stake, America’s security is at stake. American support for Israel has been at the center of our Middle East policy for over six decades and must continue to be a central component of our foreign policy in the region.
Real security for Israel will only come with an enduring peace. Therefore, I strongly support a two-state solution with a Jewish state of Israel existing in peace alongside a sovereign Palestinian state. The United States should continue to facilitate direct negotiations that seek a two-state solution. However, it is the right of the Israeli government to make the tough decisions that are necessary to secure its future. The Palestinian People deserve a state that allows them to prosper and thrive, but that state must not be a vehicle for launching attacks against Israel. During any negotiation, certain things must remain non-negotiable, namely conditions that speak to Israel’s right to exist as a secure Jewish state.
These problems are not just concurrent — they are inextricably linked, and Congress has been responding in precisely the wrong way. A laser focus on immediate and extraordinary deficit reduction to help stabilize the debt at the expense of investing in putting Americans back to work has provided short-term deficit reduction, but has also extended the recession’s tragic impact on unemployment and has hampered our growth.
Our failure to prioritize unemployment reduction and economic growth does more than hurt American families today; it hurts our prospects of growing our way out of our debt challenges.
Make no mistake about it: We must be diligent about our debt, and it is currently too high. The president has already signed into law about $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction between 2013 and 2023. However, we will not be able to cut our way out of our problems, and the sequester remains a blunt instrument cutting in the wrong places. Furthermore, defeat of many aspects of President Obama’s American Jobs Act, on the basis that the country could not afford to invest in critical priorities to alleviate joblessness and strengthen our long-term competitiveness, is emblematic of Congress’s inability to understand the connection between smart spending and investment now and long-term debt reduction.
The U.S. must continue to promote democracy, freedom, and the rule of law in the Middle East. The Arab Spring will require our patience, and our understanding. The transition from oppression for tens of millions presents many opportunities as well as uncertainties for the U.S., Israel, and everyone in the region struggling for democracy. These efforts begin with protecting America’s special alliance with Israel, and include providing significant, targeted aid throughout the region.
The civil war in Syria is an unthinkable atrocity that has resulted in an estimated 100,000 deaths and has forced over 1.6 million Syrians to become refugees. The U.S. should take whatever steps it can to safely support moderate opposition fighters, aid refugees, and prevent the spillover of fighting into neighboring countries. Putting U.S. troops on the ground in Syria is not an option given the complexity of the situation and all we’ve learned from our past 12 years of war. Any military aid or support must be carefully targeted and measured against the risk of arms falling into the hands of extremist, rather than moderate, rebels.
As far as Egypt is concerned, we should continually review the extent and composition of the substantial aid we provide, keeping in mind that this aid is vital to the stability of the region and important to the well-being of the Egyptian people. Despite my deep displeasure with Egypt’s former regime, I have grave concerns about the Egyptian military’s forceful hand in removing a democratically elected government from power and feel that we should be abundantly clear with the Egyptian military that we expect the beginnings of a transition to a democratically elected civilian government immediately. America knows the difficulties of transitioning to democracy. It took us two wars — our revolution and the civil war — before we reached a point where our democratic evolution, which remains in process today, didn’t involve widespread armed conflict. Democracy — self-determination — is a fundamental human right, and we must support it the best we can, wherever we can.
The charitable contribution deduction rewards altruism and plays an important role in promoting philanthropy. Here in Newark, we’ve seen how philanthropy can help transform a city. For example, we have raised over $200 million from innovators to strengthen our schools. This has allowed Newark to create programs such as “My Very Own Library,” which has provided 120,000 books for nearly 12,000 low-income students to help build home libraries. Partnering with private foundations also allowed us to create immediate access to affordable medications for thousands of uninsured Newark residents through the Newark Rx program. Put simply, philanthropy has provided vital support to my community’s collective efforts to transform Newark and solve some of our most difficult problems.
There is plainly a need to clean up the tax code, and close inefficient loopholes that make our code far less progressive and add to our deficits. However, tax reform should not remove incentives to donate to charity. My experience as mayor of Newark will inform how I look at any proposals to change the tax status of charitable contributions, and I will work with members of both parties to ensure that we continue to promote philanthropy.
Medicaid provides millions of low-income and disabled Americans with essential healthcare services and has been one of the most important programs in U.S. history. I strongly oppose turning Medicaid into a block grant program or capping the amount of Medicaid funding provided to states based on a per capita rate. These changes would likely lead millions of Americans to lose access to healthcare insurance and significantly decrease the quality of care provided by Medicaid.
It is also deeply troubling that over a dozen states have rejected the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. Elected officials should not deny healthcare to millions of their constituents to advance a political agenda. Rejecting this expansion is the wrong decision from budget, healthcare system quality, and moral perspectives. The states that have turned down expanded coverage will lose $8.4 billion in federal funding and spend $1 billion more on uncompensated healthcare. Here in New Jersey, Medicaid expansion will provide healthcare coverage to more than 100,000 more New Jerseyans and save the state $227 million in one year.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Monday, July 29, 2013
The More Regulation, the Better
New survey research sponsored by the Drug Information Association indicates that a country with a strong regulatory commitment for advancing drugs for rare diseases does better in getting orphan drugs to patients than countries with lesser regulatory frameworks.
In his study, ‘The Effect of Market-Based Economic Factors on the Adoption of Orphan Drugs Across Multiple Countries,’ John Matthews, Associate Director of Project Management at Merck examined the relationship between how market-based a country is, and how many patients with rare disease actually receive approved treatments for their disorder. Contrary to the widely held belief that the more free-market a country is, the more likely drugs will be adopted, Matthews found that countries with more regulation actually did a better job of getting orphan drugs into the hands of patients. In other words, in examining data from 13 orphan drugs across US, Germany, UK, Spain, and France, the US was actually the least successful in providing access.
Using the Index of Economic Freedoms and the Economic Freedoms of the World Index, the study used business, labor, and trade restrictions; government spending; prevalence of corruption; taxation rates, and other economic factors to assess how free-market these countries were at the time of study. While Matthews initially hypothesized that ‘Countries with more market-based economies will be associated with a greater adoption of orphan drugs’, with adoption defined as ‘purchase of an orphan drug’, he noted that the exact opposite was true. “Based off of general economics, the literature out there suggests countries with greater economic freedoms are more efficient markets. But perhaps those mechanisms are not at work in the orphan drug market. No one has examined this issue from an orphan drug perspective, real time Location system,” he said.
Matthews looks to study this issue in greater detail, examining reimbursement systems across these different markets and how they affect orphan drug adoption. Additionally, his study points out the fact that there is no central organization that represents the views of patient groups, and thereby there is no hard data on how they affect access. “There are several organizations aspiring to this role, including the Genetic Alliance, and the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD), but I don’t think anyone’s assuming a coordination role. There’s a lot of anecdotal information on patient groups’ wielding their clout to increase drug adoption, but no empirical research discussing observable impacts a patient advocacy group can have on adoption,” he explained. The patient movement in the US has been more robust in its influence, with its close connection to the needs and actions of patients, contrasted with the EU’s more paternalistic approach, focused on governments’ invention to sponsor groups to suit patient needs. Clearly, while patients in the US have a particular flair for advocacy, the relationship between this effort and its ability to move the access needle warrants closer examination.
Matthews does not believe a study looking at newer datasets from a broader range of countries and orphan drugs will produce different results. At the end of the day, he explains, “The results of this study basically say that greater government regulations are able to support better delivery of these medicines. Intervention is an option that can work.”
“Our summits have a proven track record of turning handshakes into Montana jobs. The more we get focused on jobs and work together, the closer we can get to the day when no Montanan is forced to leave the state to find a good-paying job,” said Baucus. “The key to success is getting all hands on deck which is why I encourage Montanans to join us in September in Butte.”
The jobs summit will feature all-star keynote speakers including some of the most innovative business leaders of our time along with ambassadors from some of the world’s most dynamic economies. The summit will also feature more than 40 breakout panel sessions tailored to every aspect of business from writing a business plan to getting your business online, learning how to export and the best ways to access capital.
Montana Economic Development Summits have resulted in hundreds of new Montana jobs over the years by bringing new private investment to the state and helping elevate Montana’s top notch goods and services at the global level.
Keynote speakers this year will include Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, former Presidential candidate and international businessman Jon Huntsman, Jr., Alan Mulally of Ford Motor Company, Oracle’s Safra Catz, Boeing CEO Jim McNerney, founder of FedEx Fred Smith, Delta’s Richard Anderson and, Montana’s own, Ryan Lance, CEO of ConocoPhillips.
You also get a richly detailed, high-definition 3D cartoon world, compared to the standard-definition Skylanders: Giants from last year and Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure from the year before. Your characters can also jump. That’s right. Now they can jump around and get themselves out of nasty cul-de-sacs. The Skylanders can also fly, climb, and teleport to special areas in the environment. The level cap is now 20 for each character. That makes the title more difficult to master.
Players will have more than 100 forward-compatible toys available from the three games — including never-before seen non-swappable characters from the upcoming release. For some, that’s bound to get a little confusing. But the new Swap Force characters have symbols on the bases of their toy counterparts that tell you what type of Swap Force power they have. The marks indicate where you can best use those creatures in the Skylands.
As Portal Master, you will embark on a new adventure in the mysterious Cloudbreak Islands in the sky. They are the home to a mystical volcano that erupts every hundred years to replenish the magic in the Skylands. During an epic battle, the volcano’s eruption hit a group of Skylanders, blasting them apart and giving them the ability to swap halves. The evil leader Kaos has come back with a scheme to “evilize” characters using the power of petrified darkness. The Portal Master must buy as many Swap Force creatures as possible (are you listening parents?) and reassemble them into new forms to save the Skylands. Actually, that’s a joke. You can get through the whole experience with the three heroes in the $75 starter pack.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
In his study, ‘The Effect of Market-Based Economic Factors on the Adoption of Orphan Drugs Across Multiple Countries,’ John Matthews, Associate Director of Project Management at Merck examined the relationship between how market-based a country is, and how many patients with rare disease actually receive approved treatments for their disorder. Contrary to the widely held belief that the more free-market a country is, the more likely drugs will be adopted, Matthews found that countries with more regulation actually did a better job of getting orphan drugs into the hands of patients. In other words, in examining data from 13 orphan drugs across US, Germany, UK, Spain, and France, the US was actually the least successful in providing access.
Using the Index of Economic Freedoms and the Economic Freedoms of the World Index, the study used business, labor, and trade restrictions; government spending; prevalence of corruption; taxation rates, and other economic factors to assess how free-market these countries were at the time of study. While Matthews initially hypothesized that ‘Countries with more market-based economies will be associated with a greater adoption of orphan drugs’, with adoption defined as ‘purchase of an orphan drug’, he noted that the exact opposite was true. “Based off of general economics, the literature out there suggests countries with greater economic freedoms are more efficient markets. But perhaps those mechanisms are not at work in the orphan drug market. No one has examined this issue from an orphan drug perspective, real time Location system,” he said.
Matthews looks to study this issue in greater detail, examining reimbursement systems across these different markets and how they affect orphan drug adoption. Additionally, his study points out the fact that there is no central organization that represents the views of patient groups, and thereby there is no hard data on how they affect access. “There are several organizations aspiring to this role, including the Genetic Alliance, and the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD), but I don’t think anyone’s assuming a coordination role. There’s a lot of anecdotal information on patient groups’ wielding their clout to increase drug adoption, but no empirical research discussing observable impacts a patient advocacy group can have on adoption,” he explained. The patient movement in the US has been more robust in its influence, with its close connection to the needs and actions of patients, contrasted with the EU’s more paternalistic approach, focused on governments’ invention to sponsor groups to suit patient needs. Clearly, while patients in the US have a particular flair for advocacy, the relationship between this effort and its ability to move the access needle warrants closer examination.
Matthews does not believe a study looking at newer datasets from a broader range of countries and orphan drugs will produce different results. At the end of the day, he explains, “The results of this study basically say that greater government regulations are able to support better delivery of these medicines. Intervention is an option that can work.”
“Our summits have a proven track record of turning handshakes into Montana jobs. The more we get focused on jobs and work together, the closer we can get to the day when no Montanan is forced to leave the state to find a good-paying job,” said Baucus. “The key to success is getting all hands on deck which is why I encourage Montanans to join us in September in Butte.”
The jobs summit will feature all-star keynote speakers including some of the most innovative business leaders of our time along with ambassadors from some of the world’s most dynamic economies. The summit will also feature more than 40 breakout panel sessions tailored to every aspect of business from writing a business plan to getting your business online, learning how to export and the best ways to access capital.
Montana Economic Development Summits have resulted in hundreds of new Montana jobs over the years by bringing new private investment to the state and helping elevate Montana’s top notch goods and services at the global level.
Keynote speakers this year will include Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, former Presidential candidate and international businessman Jon Huntsman, Jr., Alan Mulally of Ford Motor Company, Oracle’s Safra Catz, Boeing CEO Jim McNerney, founder of FedEx Fred Smith, Delta’s Richard Anderson and, Montana’s own, Ryan Lance, CEO of ConocoPhillips.
You also get a richly detailed, high-definition 3D cartoon world, compared to the standard-definition Skylanders: Giants from last year and Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure from the year before. Your characters can also jump. That’s right. Now they can jump around and get themselves out of nasty cul-de-sacs. The Skylanders can also fly, climb, and teleport to special areas in the environment. The level cap is now 20 for each character. That makes the title more difficult to master.
Players will have more than 100 forward-compatible toys available from the three games — including never-before seen non-swappable characters from the upcoming release. For some, that’s bound to get a little confusing. But the new Swap Force characters have symbols on the bases of their toy counterparts that tell you what type of Swap Force power they have. The marks indicate where you can best use those creatures in the Skylands.
As Portal Master, you will embark on a new adventure in the mysterious Cloudbreak Islands in the sky. They are the home to a mystical volcano that erupts every hundred years to replenish the magic in the Skylands. During an epic battle, the volcano’s eruption hit a group of Skylanders, blasting them apart and giving them the ability to swap halves. The evil leader Kaos has come back with a scheme to “evilize” characters using the power of petrified darkness. The Portal Master must buy as many Swap Force creatures as possible (are you listening parents?) and reassemble them into new forms to save the Skylands. Actually, that’s a joke. You can get through the whole experience with the three heroes in the $75 starter pack.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Cambodia Opposition Rejects
Cambodia's main opposition party has rejected the results of a parliamentary election and has called for an investigation into allegations of widespread electoral fraud.Prime Minister Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party [CPP] claimed a narrow victory in Sunday's vote, admitting to its weakest showing since taking a dominant role in Cambodian politics almost three decades ago.Shortly after the polls closed, the CPP said it won 68 seats in the nation's 123-member parliament - a significant decline from the 90-seat majority it previously held. It said the opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party [CNRP] took the remaining 55 seats, almost doubling the 29 seats it held in the outgoing parliament.
The CPP appeared to base its claims on partial results released by the National Election Committee, which was not expected to disclose final election figures for several weeks.CNRP leader Sam Rainsy told reporters Monday the CNRP would not accept the results of the ballot because of what he characterized as widespread fraud.
"We ask local and international bodies to send experts now to be part of a joint committee to investigate all the Hands free access, and to assess the implications of those irregularities on the election results," said Rainsy.Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan told VOA the opposition's announcement was typical of its election behavior. "The opposition party uses this game after every election," he said.
"There were serious fraud allegations leading up to the elections," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch [HRW], who was in Cambodia observing the election campaign. "They included illegal behavior on behalf of government security authorities; things like 'ghost' voters, de-registration of opposition voters, biased behavior by the national election commission, unequal access to national media, the list goes on and on. It is a serious problem and it does deserve an independent investigation."
The non-profit Transparency International Cambodia echoed those concerns. The group, which sent 900 observers to about 400 of the nation's 19,000 polling stations, says it found a litany of breaches.
Chief among those was that in 60 percent of polling stations, some people who had the right identification papers could not find their names on the voting list. It also found that people who lacked the correct identification were allowed to vote in a quarter of the polling stations.
"The opposition does not have access to funds, weapons or patronage. So the financial power will continue to be in the hands of the CPP. Foreign aid will flow to the government, which is controlled by the CPP," he said. "I think politics will become more interesting and vibrant, but I do not think that will involve the transfer of power to any extent."
The CNRP appeared to get a boost in the election from the merger of two of its founding parties, who joined forces last year to challenge the long-ruling CPP. The united opposition party touted a populist platform calling for a sharp rise in civil servants' salaries, monthly payments to those over 65 years old, and an increase in the minimum wage. It also pledged to regulate government prices for agricultural products, lower gas costs and provide free health care for the poor.
Robertson of HRW said the promise of change made many voters more enthusiastic about participating in the election."It really propelled the opposition to make major gains. But, we should not confuse outcomes with processes and procedures," he said. "The processes and procedures of the election were not fair and favored one side. They were designed to deny the civil and political rights of the Cambodian people."
Last week a Kansas healthcare management company, Nueterra, cleared the first hurdle to open a privately-owned, third surgical hospital in Casper. What’s bothersome about the proposal is the possibility the project could jeopardize vital public health services while a few people get rich. But the company and their rumored local doctor investors aren’t talking about it. Period. No discussion. Their response was to file a site plan for the project with the city but without much comment. Apparently their strategy is to ram it down our throats, like it or not.
County government and others have expressed multiple reasons why added hospital capacity would be detrimental to nearly everyone in the county. As reported in the Casper Journal during the past month, at risk are trauma care and indigent care at Wyoming Medical Center. There’s been some talk of a possible new property tax to support the public hospital if necessary.
When the doctor-owned Mountain View Regional Hospital was opened, the reason was clear. A very public falling-out between the medical center and the doctors involved with the new hospital made it easy to understand. There have been ups and downs and good and bad with the competitive hospitals, but the competition has arguably been good in some respects. Both existing hospitals accept Medicare and Medicaid. WMC maintains the only full-service emergency room with trauma care and a cardiac catheterization lab, where doctors can open blocked arteries during a heart attack.
But Nueterra’s newly-proposed Summit Medical Center appears to be different. The public is only hearing from one side: basically the county and the operator of the county-owned hospital’s side. Nueterra and its rumored local doctor investors are mum. Sources have told the Casper Journal the company employs a comprehensive confidentiality agreement. It’s a private business, but its actions will likely impact delivery of other public health services and could cost every citizen in the county more money. No wonder they don’t want to talk!
By their silence, these doctors and their Kansas partner leave us to draw our own conclusions. They apparently aren’t interested in explaining who or how another hospital in Natrona County will benefit anyone. We’re left with the impression this project is just about the money, greed that would dilute the quality of healthcare for the common man to benefit a few.
A free enterprise argument may apply in some areas of the complicated world of healthcare, but not in emergency room, trauma or indigent care. When your loved one has a stroke or accident, there’s no thoughtful decision where to seek care; you go to the nearest, if not the only, emergency room. And if you need elective surgery, most often your doctor decides where that procedure will be performed. And if the doctor owns an interest in a hospital, where do you think they’ll believe is best for you to have the procedure? This isn’t free enterprise because the customer is most often not making the buying decision.
Dependable emergency care are services private hospitals shun because they are, by their comprehensive nature, expensive and must be supported by the more predictable procedures private hospitals siphon away from publicly-supported medical centers.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
The CPP appeared to base its claims on partial results released by the National Election Committee, which was not expected to disclose final election figures for several weeks.CNRP leader Sam Rainsy told reporters Monday the CNRP would not accept the results of the ballot because of what he characterized as widespread fraud.
"We ask local and international bodies to send experts now to be part of a joint committee to investigate all the Hands free access, and to assess the implications of those irregularities on the election results," said Rainsy.Cambodian government spokesman Phay Siphan told VOA the opposition's announcement was typical of its election behavior. "The opposition party uses this game after every election," he said.
"There were serious fraud allegations leading up to the elections," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch [HRW], who was in Cambodia observing the election campaign. "They included illegal behavior on behalf of government security authorities; things like 'ghost' voters, de-registration of opposition voters, biased behavior by the national election commission, unequal access to national media, the list goes on and on. It is a serious problem and it does deserve an independent investigation."
The non-profit Transparency International Cambodia echoed those concerns. The group, which sent 900 observers to about 400 of the nation's 19,000 polling stations, says it found a litany of breaches.
Chief among those was that in 60 percent of polling stations, some people who had the right identification papers could not find their names on the voting list. It also found that people who lacked the correct identification were allowed to vote in a quarter of the polling stations.
"The opposition does not have access to funds, weapons or patronage. So the financial power will continue to be in the hands of the CPP. Foreign aid will flow to the government, which is controlled by the CPP," he said. "I think politics will become more interesting and vibrant, but I do not think that will involve the transfer of power to any extent."
The CNRP appeared to get a boost in the election from the merger of two of its founding parties, who joined forces last year to challenge the long-ruling CPP. The united opposition party touted a populist platform calling for a sharp rise in civil servants' salaries, monthly payments to those over 65 years old, and an increase in the minimum wage. It also pledged to regulate government prices for agricultural products, lower gas costs and provide free health care for the poor.
Robertson of HRW said the promise of change made many voters more enthusiastic about participating in the election."It really propelled the opposition to make major gains. But, we should not confuse outcomes with processes and procedures," he said. "The processes and procedures of the election were not fair and favored one side. They were designed to deny the civil and political rights of the Cambodian people."
Last week a Kansas healthcare management company, Nueterra, cleared the first hurdle to open a privately-owned, third surgical hospital in Casper. What’s bothersome about the proposal is the possibility the project could jeopardize vital public health services while a few people get rich. But the company and their rumored local doctor investors aren’t talking about it. Period. No discussion. Their response was to file a site plan for the project with the city but without much comment. Apparently their strategy is to ram it down our throats, like it or not.
County government and others have expressed multiple reasons why added hospital capacity would be detrimental to nearly everyone in the county. As reported in the Casper Journal during the past month, at risk are trauma care and indigent care at Wyoming Medical Center. There’s been some talk of a possible new property tax to support the public hospital if necessary.
When the doctor-owned Mountain View Regional Hospital was opened, the reason was clear. A very public falling-out between the medical center and the doctors involved with the new hospital made it easy to understand. There have been ups and downs and good and bad with the competitive hospitals, but the competition has arguably been good in some respects. Both existing hospitals accept Medicare and Medicaid. WMC maintains the only full-service emergency room with trauma care and a cardiac catheterization lab, where doctors can open blocked arteries during a heart attack.
But Nueterra’s newly-proposed Summit Medical Center appears to be different. The public is only hearing from one side: basically the county and the operator of the county-owned hospital’s side. Nueterra and its rumored local doctor investors are mum. Sources have told the Casper Journal the company employs a comprehensive confidentiality agreement. It’s a private business, but its actions will likely impact delivery of other public health services and could cost every citizen in the county more money. No wonder they don’t want to talk!
By their silence, these doctors and their Kansas partner leave us to draw our own conclusions. They apparently aren’t interested in explaining who or how another hospital in Natrona County will benefit anyone. We’re left with the impression this project is just about the money, greed that would dilute the quality of healthcare for the common man to benefit a few.
A free enterprise argument may apply in some areas of the complicated world of healthcare, but not in emergency room, trauma or indigent care. When your loved one has a stroke or accident, there’s no thoughtful decision where to seek care; you go to the nearest, if not the only, emergency room. And if you need elective surgery, most often your doctor decides where that procedure will be performed. And if the doctor owns an interest in a hospital, where do you think they’ll believe is best for you to have the procedure? This isn’t free enterprise because the customer is most often not making the buying decision.
Dependable emergency care are services private hospitals shun because they are, by their comprehensive nature, expensive and must be supported by the more predictable procedures private hospitals siphon away from publicly-supported medical centers.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Navy's sex-assault prevention plan
What surprised the development team was that even though the PvP mode was the game's weakest link, it was also one of the most popular elements of the game. There was demand for a rock/paper/scissors-style multiplayer mode where players could jump in and have quick matches against opposing teams. Paradox North looked into what the community wanted, and the result is Magicka: Wizard Wars.
During a hands-on demo of the game, Hargelid explained that the original game's PvP mode was very unbalanced. The game had everyone starting on a level playing field, but it also gave everyone access to all the magicks. The problem with this was anyone could then endlessly spam the most powerful attacks, allowing them to either unfairly win using no skill at all, or causing a stalemate where both sides hide in corners of the map while they shower the game board with meteor strikes.
In Magicka: Wizard Wars, players have to fill a focus meter in order to access the more powerful magicks. One of the lower tiers is the power of haste, which allows a character to move quicker for a short burst of time. As players fill up their focus meter by killing enemies, they unlock the ability to summon Death — a NPC that will fight on the player's side for a short amount of time. The highest tier triggers a meteor shower, which can destroy almost everyone within the vicinity of a selected region, but it requires a full focus meter in order to be activated.
According to Hargelid, the development team has made the game more strategic by introducing capture points that also act as spawn points. In the demo Polygon played, we had to ensure we always held at least one capture point, because if we lost them all to the enemy then our team members would not be able to respawn. This led to an often frantic experience where remaining players would rush to try to capture a spawn point to ensure their survival, while the enemies ganged up on survivors to try to take them out.
"I like the tactical depth of the game — you always have to be on the lookout to understand if you have your spawn points secured or not," Hargelid said. "That means you can turn the tide at any point."During our time with the Hands free access, some matches were an on-going tug-of-war, with one side capturing all the spawn points, only to have the other side make a last-minute comeback. Other matches were over in less than five minutes when a team was wiped out and all its spawn points swiftly captured.
Magicka: Wizard Wars is due to launch this year on Windows PC and tablets. The game will be free-to-play, but the developers have not determined how players will be charged. Hargelid told Polygon that Paradox will talk to its community about what they're willing to pay for, but he assured us that the studio will not be pursuing a pay-to-win strategy.
“This department is committed to using all available resources to prevent this crime, aggressively investigate allegations and prosecute as appropriate,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a July 18 statement announcing the changes. “We will not hide from this challenge — we will be active, open and transparent.”The effort is the latest drive to show offenders will be punished, which victim advocates and officials believe is central to stemming the tide of sex assaults. But the push must contend with a stark reality: No one was punished in about three of every four Navy cases closed in the latest fiscal year.But some are skeptical that releasing court-martial verdicts will prove a deterrent without disclosing names. Officials say the main point is to have a more transparent naval justice system that sailors can trust to come forward.
“The goal here was to show that the judicial process works, that these cases are going to trial and they are being dealt with,” said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Navy’s chief of information. “We have heard, again anecdotally, that some victims express some concerns about the names being out there because they don’t want the offender to get any more attention.”
Investigations also may need work. Of a random sampling of 195 cases from 2010, NCIS mishandled 26 of them, or 13 percent, making serious mistakes like not completing a crime scene investigation, not collecting key evidence or not interviewing witnesses, according to a Pentagon Inspector General report issued July 15. NCIS reopened 14 of the cases, according to the report.“A lot of this is about education but it’s also about trying to change their personal behavior,” said Rear Adm. Ted Carter, who until recently was head of the 21st Century Sailor office that oversees the latest counter-sex assault initiative.
Carter said the rovers would be there to watch for “anything that would be unusual,” such as drunkenness, a passed-out sailor, or a large gathering. “Just having that security there will help keep everybody in line,” Carter explained in a recent interview.The Navy’s sexual assault experts are unsure exactly why the pilots worked, but they’ve decided the dramatic gains are important enough to try everywhere to stem the mounting toll of sexual assaults that concerns lawmakers and the public. Sailors reported 773 assaults during fiscal year 2012 — a 33 percent jump over the previous year.
Top personnel officials attribute the rise in incidents to sailors reporting assaults from fiscal 2012 and previous years, which they view as evidence that the Navy’s full-court press for prevention training is encouraging victims to come forward. Nonetheless, the brass is concerned.The “overwhelming majority of both victims and offenders are junior sailors, both male and female,” said Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mark Ferguson, in a July 9 message to all admirals and commanding officers. Most of the incidents occurred after the work day and involved alcohol; half take place on base or aboard ship.
“Sexual assault ruins lives, divides teams and erodes trust,” Ferguson said in his “personal for” message. “As leaders, we must provide our sailors a responsible, professional, and safe environment in which to work and live.”Similar to college dorms, barracks will be required to have resident advisers, or RAs, to mentor and keep the peace. RAs must be first classes or above and will be trained in preventing sex assaults.
As part of the San Diego pilot, chiefs and junior officers also patrolled on-base clubs, bowling alleys and theaters that off-duty sailors frequent. There was no mention of these patrols in NAVADMIN 181/13, released July 18, and Carter emphasized that there would be no shore patrol stood up.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
During a hands-on demo of the game, Hargelid explained that the original game's PvP mode was very unbalanced. The game had everyone starting on a level playing field, but it also gave everyone access to all the magicks. The problem with this was anyone could then endlessly spam the most powerful attacks, allowing them to either unfairly win using no skill at all, or causing a stalemate where both sides hide in corners of the map while they shower the game board with meteor strikes.
In Magicka: Wizard Wars, players have to fill a focus meter in order to access the more powerful magicks. One of the lower tiers is the power of haste, which allows a character to move quicker for a short burst of time. As players fill up their focus meter by killing enemies, they unlock the ability to summon Death — a NPC that will fight on the player's side for a short amount of time. The highest tier triggers a meteor shower, which can destroy almost everyone within the vicinity of a selected region, but it requires a full focus meter in order to be activated.
According to Hargelid, the development team has made the game more strategic by introducing capture points that also act as spawn points. In the demo Polygon played, we had to ensure we always held at least one capture point, because if we lost them all to the enemy then our team members would not be able to respawn. This led to an often frantic experience where remaining players would rush to try to capture a spawn point to ensure their survival, while the enemies ganged up on survivors to try to take them out.
"I like the tactical depth of the game — you always have to be on the lookout to understand if you have your spawn points secured or not," Hargelid said. "That means you can turn the tide at any point."During our time with the Hands free access, some matches were an on-going tug-of-war, with one side capturing all the spawn points, only to have the other side make a last-minute comeback. Other matches were over in less than five minutes when a team was wiped out and all its spawn points swiftly captured.
Magicka: Wizard Wars is due to launch this year on Windows PC and tablets. The game will be free-to-play, but the developers have not determined how players will be charged. Hargelid told Polygon that Paradox will talk to its community about what they're willing to pay for, but he assured us that the studio will not be pursuing a pay-to-win strategy.
“This department is committed to using all available resources to prevent this crime, aggressively investigate allegations and prosecute as appropriate,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a July 18 statement announcing the changes. “We will not hide from this challenge — we will be active, open and transparent.”The effort is the latest drive to show offenders will be punished, which victim advocates and officials believe is central to stemming the tide of sex assaults. But the push must contend with a stark reality: No one was punished in about three of every four Navy cases closed in the latest fiscal year.But some are skeptical that releasing court-martial verdicts will prove a deterrent without disclosing names. Officials say the main point is to have a more transparent naval justice system that sailors can trust to come forward.
“The goal here was to show that the judicial process works, that these cases are going to trial and they are being dealt with,” said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Navy’s chief of information. “We have heard, again anecdotally, that some victims express some concerns about the names being out there because they don’t want the offender to get any more attention.”
Investigations also may need work. Of a random sampling of 195 cases from 2010, NCIS mishandled 26 of them, or 13 percent, making serious mistakes like not completing a crime scene investigation, not collecting key evidence or not interviewing witnesses, according to a Pentagon Inspector General report issued July 15. NCIS reopened 14 of the cases, according to the report.“A lot of this is about education but it’s also about trying to change their personal behavior,” said Rear Adm. Ted Carter, who until recently was head of the 21st Century Sailor office that oversees the latest counter-sex assault initiative.
Carter said the rovers would be there to watch for “anything that would be unusual,” such as drunkenness, a passed-out sailor, or a large gathering. “Just having that security there will help keep everybody in line,” Carter explained in a recent interview.The Navy’s sexual assault experts are unsure exactly why the pilots worked, but they’ve decided the dramatic gains are important enough to try everywhere to stem the mounting toll of sexual assaults that concerns lawmakers and the public. Sailors reported 773 assaults during fiscal year 2012 — a 33 percent jump over the previous year.
Top personnel officials attribute the rise in incidents to sailors reporting assaults from fiscal 2012 and previous years, which they view as evidence that the Navy’s full-court press for prevention training is encouraging victims to come forward. Nonetheless, the brass is concerned.The “overwhelming majority of both victims and offenders are junior sailors, both male and female,” said Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mark Ferguson, in a July 9 message to all admirals and commanding officers. Most of the incidents occurred after the work day and involved alcohol; half take place on base or aboard ship.
“Sexual assault ruins lives, divides teams and erodes trust,” Ferguson said in his “personal for” message. “As leaders, we must provide our sailors a responsible, professional, and safe environment in which to work and live.”Similar to college dorms, barracks will be required to have resident advisers, or RAs, to mentor and keep the peace. RAs must be first classes or above and will be trained in preventing sex assaults.
As part of the San Diego pilot, chiefs and junior officers also patrolled on-base clubs, bowling alleys and theaters that off-duty sailors frequent. There was no mention of these patrols in NAVADMIN 181/13, released July 18, and Carter emphasized that there would be no shore patrol stood up.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
How the royal set do parenting
Passers-by may have been forgiven for thinking that the home of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall had been invaded by a rampaging mob. And they would have been right, although those responsible for the screaming and roaring were mostly under five, and no danger to the future of the realm.
After Trooping the Colour, the Duchess's daughter, Laura Lopes, a mother-of-three, invited friends and their children back to Clarence House for tea. By the end of the afternoon the children were, according to a friend of the Lopes family, "so scruffy it was hilarious. They looked like urchins. It was very sweet". At the centre of the maelstrom, twinkling with amusement, was the Prince of Wales.This scene illustrated two things. First, that the Prince has been warming up for his role as a grandfather by enjoying his wife's five grandchildren. "He loves having grandchildren by proxy and he has been looking forward to having his own even more," says the source.
Second, the exuberance of the guests at the tea party offered a glimpse of what growing up will be like for the new third-in-line to the rtls. Prince Charles's grandson will be raised in an atmosphere of informality that his grandfather did not experience.The royal baby will grow up in a palace and live a life of extraordinary privilege but the childcare model that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are preparing for their firstborn is not a million miles away from that of wealthy middle-class couples everywhere from ... well, everywhere from Kensington to Notting Hill in London.
This baby will be brought up by parents who work (part-time, in the Duchess's case, once her maternity leave is over and she is back on royal duty) and who inhabit a social circle that includes aristocrats and landowners as well as businessmen, sportsmen, media people and teachers.The FOCs (friends of the Cambridges) are busy breeding teams of little FOC-ers, so the couple have plenty of people to compare notes with as they enter parenthood. And the Cambridges will rely on their son's grandparents to help.
The Duchess of Cornwall is an extremely hands-on grandparent who never misses a Nativity play or a school concert if she can help it and likes to tell stories of grandmotherly life, such as reading Angelina and the Royal Wedding to her granddaughter, Eliza, before her role as a bridesmaid at William and Kate's wedding. Laura decided not to employ a nanny and when her twins, Louis and Gus, who are now three-and-a-half years old, were born in December 2009, she and the children virtually decamped to Ray Mill House, the Duchess's bolthole in Wiltshire, which she kept after her divorce and which she is said to prefer to the formality of Highgrove.
Rumours that the Duchess of Cambridge will retreat to her parents' home in Berkshire for the first few weeks after the birth may be wide of the mark but the grandparents, especially Carole Middleton, will be heavily involved.The Duchess has already been leaning heavily for advice on the inner circle of the FOCs.The birthing guru of West London poshies has long been Christine Hill, who runs an antenatal class in Chiswick. She is retiring this summer and into the breach (if you'll excuse the pun) comes Marina Fogle, the wife of the real time Location system, Ben. The Fogles are key FOCs, invited to the wedding and there in March this year cheering on the horses as guests of the Cambridges in their box at the Cheltenham Festival.
Marina and her sister, Chiara Hunt, a GP, have recently launched The Bump Class, their own course for pregnant women. Over eight weekly sessions at their South Kensington centre, women are guided through all aspects of the birth, from labour to recommendations of who to invite to the house to cut your hair when you can't face the salon afterwards.They offer private sessions "for people who for whatever reason don't feel that they want to take part in the class or can't". Would any of those people happen to live in Kensington Palace? Fogle laughs gaily at the other end of the phone. "That's an unfair question."
Fogle, who has two children, Ludo and Iona, "prepares you for every type of birth". She advises her clients not to become too attached to their ideal vision of what the perfect birth should be, especially if that vision includes an absence of pain relief or medical intervention.One of Fogle's team is Beverley Turner, a TV presenter and student of hypnosis who advises on deep relaxation techniques. Turner, who is the wife of James Cracknell, the Olympic rowing double-gold medallist and sometime Ben Fogle co-explorer, recently said she hoped the Duchess would breastfeed her baby because for the first time in ten years the number of mothers doing so has dropped. "As if there wasn't enough pressure on her already, what we really need is the Duchess of Cambridge to get her royal orbs out to feed our future monarch," she wrote.
Marina Fogle says a lot of mothers find it hard to breastfeed. "A lot of girls don't realise that problems can be sorted by someone who knows what they are talking about."Before the birth, The Bump Class's breastfeeding consultant gives advice on how to get the baby to latch on and afterwards she holds Skype tutorials and then visits in person, if needed. But Fogle's approach is to tell expectant mothers that "it is important that you are happy with your decision. You don't want a mother with postnatal depression because of guilt over not breastfeeding".
Sarah Dixon, who runs Sarah Dixon Maternity, has worked as a maternity nurse for foreign royals and friends of the young British royals. "Two or three years ago 90 per cent of my babies were bottle-fed but with the government initiative about breastfeeding and people realising the benefits of breastfeeding, that has changed. Obviously, if you have a fully staffed house it is much easier to breastfeed."In recent years, maternity nurses have become almost a standard feature among prosperous parents. Charging about 150 pounds ($250) a night, the maternity nurse will bring the baby to the mother to be fed, advise on technique and then take care of the often frustrating business of settling the baby back to sleep. "The majority of girls in our classes have maternity nurses, at least for a week or two," Fogle says.
She provides a class on how to interview a prospective maternity nurse to ensure that you make a good choice. One woman who employed a maternity nurse who had also worked for one of the Duke and Duchess's closest friends says the downside is that you are sharing your home and the intimate moments with your baby with a stranger. And in this case the stranger was preoccupied. "She was a nightmare. She just didn't shut up. I sat there breastfeeding with her prattling on about her husband's affair. And I ended up making dinner for her."
According to a source familiar with arrangements being made at Kensington Palace in recent weeks, the Cambridges were seeking to secure the services of a maternity nurse, at least for a few weeks. The couple will probably engage a nanny as the baby gets older.Another FOC who will be on hand to offer advice is Trini Foyle, one of Kate's friends from Marlborough College, who takes walks with the Duchess in Kensington Gardens, pushing her young son Alexander in his pram.More expert opinion will be forthcoming from Rose van Cutsem, who is married to Hugh, one of four brothers from a clan that has long been close to the Prince of Wales and his boys. The Duke was an usher at Hugh and Rose's wedding, and their daughter Grace, his goddaughter, was the scene-stealer at the royal wedding, clamping her hands over her ears on the balcony.
Rose is the co-founder of Maggie & Rose, the clubs for parents and young children in Kensington and Chiswick. She is the friend the Duchess should turn to when the baby has been puking all night, her husband is away and KP (Kensington Palace) feels like an HMP. She lives in the country and posts unvarnished Twitter updates on the apparent chaos of family life when her husband is at work in the City and she is at home with Grace, 5, Rafe, 4, and Charles, 18 months. Typical update: "I'm stuck home in the country in a f...ing rainstorm with only warm rose for a friend."
She tweets a picture of her au pair wearing a onesie, calls her children "maniacs" and observes that "having children and tattoos are exactly the same: you think it's a good idea then you have a wrong 'un".Rose takes an old-fashioned view of sleepless children, asking: "Did I dream that a nip of brandy helps growing pains? The said specimen is quiet now anyway..." In contrast to the usual ecstatic response to a baby's first steps, she admits: "My baby started walking today and I pushed him over as I'M NOT READY, is that wrong?"
And if the Duchess ever finds the in-laws too much, Rose will sympathise. She once tweeted: "Mother-in-law just asked if I deliberately made my son look like a girl with his long hair."Maggie & Rose is handily placed, a Bugaboo stroll from Kensington Palace. The club offers art, music, cooking and other creative activities but it has a rival for the cash of those wealthy enough to avoid the ordeal of hanging out in the germ-ridden hellhole that is your typical soft-play centre.
After Trooping the Colour, the Duchess's daughter, Laura Lopes, a mother-of-three, invited friends and their children back to Clarence House for tea. By the end of the afternoon the children were, according to a friend of the Lopes family, "so scruffy it was hilarious. They looked like urchins. It was very sweet". At the centre of the maelstrom, twinkling with amusement, was the Prince of Wales.This scene illustrated two things. First, that the Prince has been warming up for his role as a grandfather by enjoying his wife's five grandchildren. "He loves having grandchildren by proxy and he has been looking forward to having his own even more," says the source.
Second, the exuberance of the guests at the tea party offered a glimpse of what growing up will be like for the new third-in-line to the rtls. Prince Charles's grandson will be raised in an atmosphere of informality that his grandfather did not experience.The royal baby will grow up in a palace and live a life of extraordinary privilege but the childcare model that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are preparing for their firstborn is not a million miles away from that of wealthy middle-class couples everywhere from ... well, everywhere from Kensington to Notting Hill in London.
This baby will be brought up by parents who work (part-time, in the Duchess's case, once her maternity leave is over and she is back on royal duty) and who inhabit a social circle that includes aristocrats and landowners as well as businessmen, sportsmen, media people and teachers.The FOCs (friends of the Cambridges) are busy breeding teams of little FOC-ers, so the couple have plenty of people to compare notes with as they enter parenthood. And the Cambridges will rely on their son's grandparents to help.
The Duchess of Cornwall is an extremely hands-on grandparent who never misses a Nativity play or a school concert if she can help it and likes to tell stories of grandmotherly life, such as reading Angelina and the Royal Wedding to her granddaughter, Eliza, before her role as a bridesmaid at William and Kate's wedding. Laura decided not to employ a nanny and when her twins, Louis and Gus, who are now three-and-a-half years old, were born in December 2009, she and the children virtually decamped to Ray Mill House, the Duchess's bolthole in Wiltshire, which she kept after her divorce and which she is said to prefer to the formality of Highgrove.
Rumours that the Duchess of Cambridge will retreat to her parents' home in Berkshire for the first few weeks after the birth may be wide of the mark but the grandparents, especially Carole Middleton, will be heavily involved.The Duchess has already been leaning heavily for advice on the inner circle of the FOCs.The birthing guru of West London poshies has long been Christine Hill, who runs an antenatal class in Chiswick. She is retiring this summer and into the breach (if you'll excuse the pun) comes Marina Fogle, the wife of the real time Location system, Ben. The Fogles are key FOCs, invited to the wedding and there in March this year cheering on the horses as guests of the Cambridges in their box at the Cheltenham Festival.
Marina and her sister, Chiara Hunt, a GP, have recently launched The Bump Class, their own course for pregnant women. Over eight weekly sessions at their South Kensington centre, women are guided through all aspects of the birth, from labour to recommendations of who to invite to the house to cut your hair when you can't face the salon afterwards.They offer private sessions "for people who for whatever reason don't feel that they want to take part in the class or can't". Would any of those people happen to live in Kensington Palace? Fogle laughs gaily at the other end of the phone. "That's an unfair question."
Fogle, who has two children, Ludo and Iona, "prepares you for every type of birth". She advises her clients not to become too attached to their ideal vision of what the perfect birth should be, especially if that vision includes an absence of pain relief or medical intervention.One of Fogle's team is Beverley Turner, a TV presenter and student of hypnosis who advises on deep relaxation techniques. Turner, who is the wife of James Cracknell, the Olympic rowing double-gold medallist and sometime Ben Fogle co-explorer, recently said she hoped the Duchess would breastfeed her baby because for the first time in ten years the number of mothers doing so has dropped. "As if there wasn't enough pressure on her already, what we really need is the Duchess of Cambridge to get her royal orbs out to feed our future monarch," she wrote.
Marina Fogle says a lot of mothers find it hard to breastfeed. "A lot of girls don't realise that problems can be sorted by someone who knows what they are talking about."Before the birth, The Bump Class's breastfeeding consultant gives advice on how to get the baby to latch on and afterwards she holds Skype tutorials and then visits in person, if needed. But Fogle's approach is to tell expectant mothers that "it is important that you are happy with your decision. You don't want a mother with postnatal depression because of guilt over not breastfeeding".
Sarah Dixon, who runs Sarah Dixon Maternity, has worked as a maternity nurse for foreign royals and friends of the young British royals. "Two or three years ago 90 per cent of my babies were bottle-fed but with the government initiative about breastfeeding and people realising the benefits of breastfeeding, that has changed. Obviously, if you have a fully staffed house it is much easier to breastfeed."In recent years, maternity nurses have become almost a standard feature among prosperous parents. Charging about 150 pounds ($250) a night, the maternity nurse will bring the baby to the mother to be fed, advise on technique and then take care of the often frustrating business of settling the baby back to sleep. "The majority of girls in our classes have maternity nurses, at least for a week or two," Fogle says.
She provides a class on how to interview a prospective maternity nurse to ensure that you make a good choice. One woman who employed a maternity nurse who had also worked for one of the Duke and Duchess's closest friends says the downside is that you are sharing your home and the intimate moments with your baby with a stranger. And in this case the stranger was preoccupied. "She was a nightmare. She just didn't shut up. I sat there breastfeeding with her prattling on about her husband's affair. And I ended up making dinner for her."
According to a source familiar with arrangements being made at Kensington Palace in recent weeks, the Cambridges were seeking to secure the services of a maternity nurse, at least for a few weeks. The couple will probably engage a nanny as the baby gets older.Another FOC who will be on hand to offer advice is Trini Foyle, one of Kate's friends from Marlborough College, who takes walks with the Duchess in Kensington Gardens, pushing her young son Alexander in his pram.More expert opinion will be forthcoming from Rose van Cutsem, who is married to Hugh, one of four brothers from a clan that has long been close to the Prince of Wales and his boys. The Duke was an usher at Hugh and Rose's wedding, and their daughter Grace, his goddaughter, was the scene-stealer at the royal wedding, clamping her hands over her ears on the balcony.
Rose is the co-founder of Maggie & Rose, the clubs for parents and young children in Kensington and Chiswick. She is the friend the Duchess should turn to when the baby has been puking all night, her husband is away and KP (Kensington Palace) feels like an HMP. She lives in the country and posts unvarnished Twitter updates on the apparent chaos of family life when her husband is at work in the City and she is at home with Grace, 5, Rafe, 4, and Charles, 18 months. Typical update: "I'm stuck home in the country in a f...ing rainstorm with only warm rose for a friend."
She tweets a picture of her au pair wearing a onesie, calls her children "maniacs" and observes that "having children and tattoos are exactly the same: you think it's a good idea then you have a wrong 'un".Rose takes an old-fashioned view of sleepless children, asking: "Did I dream that a nip of brandy helps growing pains? The said specimen is quiet now anyway..." In contrast to the usual ecstatic response to a baby's first steps, she admits: "My baby started walking today and I pushed him over as I'M NOT READY, is that wrong?"
And if the Duchess ever finds the in-laws too much, Rose will sympathise. She once tweeted: "Mother-in-law just asked if I deliberately made my son look like a girl with his long hair."Maggie & Rose is handily placed, a Bugaboo stroll from Kensington Palace. The club offers art, music, cooking and other creative activities but it has a rival for the cash of those wealthy enough to avoid the ordeal of hanging out in the germ-ridden hellhole that is your typical soft-play centre.
Monday, July 22, 2013
What Hindus can & should be proud
A bhadralok friend of mine is of the view that the Government of India should celebrate every December 16 as Vijay Diwas, Victory Day, to mark the surrender in 1971 of the Pakistani forces in Dhaka to the advancing Indian Army. My friend argues that such a celebration would take Indians in general, and Hindus in particular, out of the pacifist, defeatist mindset that he claims has so crippled them. The triumph in Dhaka represents for him the finest moment in a millenia otherwise characterised by Indian (and more specifically Hindu) humiliation at the hands of foreigners.
I was reminded of my friend’s fond fantasy when reading about the posters in Mumbai recently put up by members of the Bharatiya Janata Party. These carry portraits of a prominent BJP leader, with two accompanying slogans: ‘I AM A HINDU NATIONALIST,’ in English, and ‘Garv sé Kaho Ham Hindu Hain’, in Hindi. The latter slogan needs perhaps to be translated for south Indian readers, and set in context for younger ones. ‘Proudly Proclaim Our Hindu-Ness’, would be a faithful rendition. The slogan originates in the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign of the 1980s and 1990s, when it was used by the VHP, RSS, BJP, and Bajrang Dal cadres to mobilise men and materials in the drive to demolish a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya believed by many to be sited on the birthplace of the (mythical) God Ram.
Should Hindus be proud of the Indian Army’s victory in Dhaka in 1971? Perhaps as Indians, but not specifically as Hindus. The war had its basis in the savage repression of Bengalis in East Pakistan by the West Pakistan Army. The refugees who came to India were both Hindus and Muslims. The help rendered to them by the Government of India did not discriminate according to their faith. As for the Indian military campaign, the chief commander in the field was a Jew, his immediate superior a Sikh. A Parsi served as Chief of Army Staff. His own superior, the Prime Minister of India, had notoriously been disallowed from entering the Jagannath temple in Puri because she had not married a Hindu.
To be sure, many soldiers and officers in the Indian Army were of Hindu origin. Yet they never saw themselves in narrowly communal terms. In our armed forces, then and Indoor Positioning System, Hindu and Muslim, Christian and Sikh, Parsi and Jew, lived, laboured and struggled together.
Unlike the military campaign in East Pakistan in 1971, the campaign to build a temple in Ayodha was unquestionably Hindu in intent and content. No Muslims or Sikhs or Parsis or Jews or Christians participated in it. But should Hindus have been proud of it? I rather think not. In a society where so many are without access to adequate education, health care and housing, where malnutrition is rife and where safety and environmental standards are violated every minute, to invest so much political energy and human capital in the demolition of a mosque and its replacement with a brand-new temple seemed wildly foolish, if not downright Machiavellian. As it turned out, the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign led to two decades of strife across northern and western India, with thousands of people losing their lives and hundreds of thousands their homes and livelihoods.
The war of 1971 was not a Hindu war, and the destruction of the Babri Masjid was not something that could fill Hindus with pride. What then, should Hindus be proud of? The answer is that rather than seek for one defining moment, one heroic triumph, Hindus who care for the fate and future of Hinduism should instead valorise the quiet, persistent work of reformers down the centuries to rid an ancient, ossified faith of its divisions, its prejudices, and its closed-mindedness.
The story of Hindu pride that I wish to tell also begins with Bengal, not with the surrender of the Pakistani Army in 1971, but with the work in the early 19th century of Rammohun Roy, who was unarguably the first great Indian modernist. Rammohun campaigned for the abolition of sati, for greater rights for women more generally, for the embrace of modern scientific education and for a liberal spirit of free enquiry and intellectual debate. His example was carried forward by other Bengali reformers, among them Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Swami Vivekananda, who focussed on, among other things, education for women and the abolition of indoor Tracking.
The torch first lit in Bengal was taken over, and made even brighter, in Maharashtra, which in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the epicentre of reformist and radical thinking in India. The pernicious practice of ‘untouchability’ was attacked from below by Jotirau Phule and from above by Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Maharashtra also gave birth to India’s first home-grown feminists, such as Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai, who wrote searing tracts against patriarchal practices and motivated young girls to emancipate themselves through modern education.
In 1915, Mohandas K. Gandhi came back to India after two decades in the diaspora. Living in South Africa, he had been seized of the need to build harmonious, mutually beneficial, relations between Hindus and Muslims. This commitment to religious pluralism he now renewed and reaffirmed. Meanwhile, he progressively became more critical of caste discrimination. To begin with, he attacked ‘untouchability’ while upholding the ancient ideal of varnashramadharma. Then he began advocating inter-mixing and inter-dining, and eventually, inter-marriage itself.
Gandhi was pushed to take more radical positions by B.R. Ambedkar, the outstanding lawyer-scholar who was of ‘Untouchable’ origins himself. A modernist and rationalist, Dr. Ambedkar believed that for Dalits to escape from oppression, they had to not look for favours from guilt-ridden reformers but themselves ‘educate, agitate and organise’ their way to emancipation. He remains an inspirational figure, whose work and legacy remain relevant for Dalit and Suvarna alike.
When India became independent in 1947, a central question the new nation faced was the relation of faith to state. There was a strong movement to create India as a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, a mirror-image of the Islamic nation that was Pakistan. The person who stood most firmly against this idea was the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. In a letter written to Chief Ministers on October 15, 1947, he reminded them that “we have a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want to, go anywhere else. They have got to live in India. This is a basic fact about which there can be no argument. Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilised manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State.”
I was reminded of my friend’s fond fantasy when reading about the posters in Mumbai recently put up by members of the Bharatiya Janata Party. These carry portraits of a prominent BJP leader, with two accompanying slogans: ‘I AM A HINDU NATIONALIST,’ in English, and ‘Garv sé Kaho Ham Hindu Hain’, in Hindi. The latter slogan needs perhaps to be translated for south Indian readers, and set in context for younger ones. ‘Proudly Proclaim Our Hindu-Ness’, would be a faithful rendition. The slogan originates in the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign of the 1980s and 1990s, when it was used by the VHP, RSS, BJP, and Bajrang Dal cadres to mobilise men and materials in the drive to demolish a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya believed by many to be sited on the birthplace of the (mythical) God Ram.
Should Hindus be proud of the Indian Army’s victory in Dhaka in 1971? Perhaps as Indians, but not specifically as Hindus. The war had its basis in the savage repression of Bengalis in East Pakistan by the West Pakistan Army. The refugees who came to India were both Hindus and Muslims. The help rendered to them by the Government of India did not discriminate according to their faith. As for the Indian military campaign, the chief commander in the field was a Jew, his immediate superior a Sikh. A Parsi served as Chief of Army Staff. His own superior, the Prime Minister of India, had notoriously been disallowed from entering the Jagannath temple in Puri because she had not married a Hindu.
To be sure, many soldiers and officers in the Indian Army were of Hindu origin. Yet they never saw themselves in narrowly communal terms. In our armed forces, then and Indoor Positioning System, Hindu and Muslim, Christian and Sikh, Parsi and Jew, lived, laboured and struggled together.
Unlike the military campaign in East Pakistan in 1971, the campaign to build a temple in Ayodha was unquestionably Hindu in intent and content. No Muslims or Sikhs or Parsis or Jews or Christians participated in it. But should Hindus have been proud of it? I rather think not. In a society where so many are without access to adequate education, health care and housing, where malnutrition is rife and where safety and environmental standards are violated every minute, to invest so much political energy and human capital in the demolition of a mosque and its replacement with a brand-new temple seemed wildly foolish, if not downright Machiavellian. As it turned out, the Ram Janmabhoomi campaign led to two decades of strife across northern and western India, with thousands of people losing their lives and hundreds of thousands their homes and livelihoods.
The war of 1971 was not a Hindu war, and the destruction of the Babri Masjid was not something that could fill Hindus with pride. What then, should Hindus be proud of? The answer is that rather than seek for one defining moment, one heroic triumph, Hindus who care for the fate and future of Hinduism should instead valorise the quiet, persistent work of reformers down the centuries to rid an ancient, ossified faith of its divisions, its prejudices, and its closed-mindedness.
The story of Hindu pride that I wish to tell also begins with Bengal, not with the surrender of the Pakistani Army in 1971, but with the work in the early 19th century of Rammohun Roy, who was unarguably the first great Indian modernist. Rammohun campaigned for the abolition of sati, for greater rights for women more generally, for the embrace of modern scientific education and for a liberal spirit of free enquiry and intellectual debate. His example was carried forward by other Bengali reformers, among them Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Swami Vivekananda, who focussed on, among other things, education for women and the abolition of indoor Tracking.
The torch first lit in Bengal was taken over, and made even brighter, in Maharashtra, which in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the epicentre of reformist and radical thinking in India. The pernicious practice of ‘untouchability’ was attacked from below by Jotirau Phule and from above by Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Maharashtra also gave birth to India’s first home-grown feminists, such as Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai, who wrote searing tracts against patriarchal practices and motivated young girls to emancipate themselves through modern education.
In 1915, Mohandas K. Gandhi came back to India after two decades in the diaspora. Living in South Africa, he had been seized of the need to build harmonious, mutually beneficial, relations between Hindus and Muslims. This commitment to religious pluralism he now renewed and reaffirmed. Meanwhile, he progressively became more critical of caste discrimination. To begin with, he attacked ‘untouchability’ while upholding the ancient ideal of varnashramadharma. Then he began advocating inter-mixing and inter-dining, and eventually, inter-marriage itself.
Gandhi was pushed to take more radical positions by B.R. Ambedkar, the outstanding lawyer-scholar who was of ‘Untouchable’ origins himself. A modernist and rationalist, Dr. Ambedkar believed that for Dalits to escape from oppression, they had to not look for favours from guilt-ridden reformers but themselves ‘educate, agitate and organise’ their way to emancipation. He remains an inspirational figure, whose work and legacy remain relevant for Dalit and Suvarna alike.
When India became independent in 1947, a central question the new nation faced was the relation of faith to state. There was a strong movement to create India as a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, a mirror-image of the Islamic nation that was Pakistan. The person who stood most firmly against this idea was the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. In a letter written to Chief Ministers on October 15, 1947, he reminded them that “we have a Muslim minority who are so large in numbers that they cannot, even if they want to, go anywhere else. They have got to live in India. This is a basic fact about which there can be no argument. Whatever the provocation from Pakistan and whatever the indignities and horrors inflicted on non-Muslims there, we have got to deal with this minority in a civilised manner. We must give them security and the rights of citizens in a democratic State.”
Facts finally collide with ideology on Europe
There have been some glum faces around David Cameron’s cabinet table of late. To the chagrin of some eurosceptic colleagues, the government’s much-heralded audit of Britain’s relations with the EU is coming up with the wrong answers. Brussels is neither sucking the lifeblood from British democracy nor stifling its economy with unnecessary regulation. For all its inevitable irritations, the Union seems to be serving the national interest.
The government has published the first tranche of reports in a comprehensive review of Britain’s EU membership. This first batch includes studies of the “balance of competences” in the single market, tax policy, foreign policy and defence, food safety and animal welfare, health and development. Given the political sensitivities within the coalition – Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats do not share widespread Tory hostility to most things European – the task in large part has been in the hands of neutral civil servants.
The result is a series of reports that tell the story as it is, shorn of ideology and political judgments. This is what persuaded the prime minister to defer publication until backbench Tory MPs hostile to the EU had safely departed Westminster for the parliamentary recess. Mr Clegg wanted the reports released at a ministerial press conference. Mr Cameron’s office insisted there should be no fanfare.
Pro-Europeans seeking a knockout blow in favour of the EU status quo will be disappointed. Though the reports say the single market has provided significant advantages for the British economy, they also acknowledge the difficulty of quantifying the gain. And while business backs the level-playing field legislation needed to make the single market work, there is less of a consensus around environmental and real time Location system.
What is most striking, however, is the distance the conclusions stand from the original intent of the review. The exercise was to have provided a springboard for the large-scale repatriation of EU powers sought by hardline eurosceptics as a minimum requirement for continued membership. Iain Duncan Smith, Owen Paterson and Philip Hammond were among cabinet ministers who protested at the even-handed approach of officials. During one Whitehall exchange, an adviser to Mr Hammond complained the foreign policy and defence report was unduly weighted towards the evidence.
Three broad conclusions arise from the reports. The first is that the single market holds up a mirror to the close integration of modern economies. Companies depend on the “four freedoms” of goods, services, persons and capital. Cross-border supply chains, common standards, mobile workforces and multicentre manufacturing are the stuff of today’s business. These processes depend on common standards and regulation.
Japan has voiced publicly what many third countries have said privately. Foreign investment (and the jobs that go with it) in the UK is vitally dependent on access to other EU markets. At a more mundane level, Britain’s food processing industry could not work if its complex cross-border production chains did not all operate under uniform regulation. The same applies across other industries and many services. The implication is that if Britain were to leave the EU, it would be obliged by economic realities to opt back into the panoply of regulation – only this time without any say in shaping the rules.
The second conclusion is that Europe and the rest of the world are complementary markets for British business. The evidence submitted by Vodafone tells the story. The advent of EU telecommunications regulation gave the company a chance to scale up from a national to a European provider; once established in Europe it could realise its global ambitions. Looking through the other end of the telescope, overseas companies such as BMW use their British operations to sell cars to emerging markets – a practice made possible only because of EU trade agreements with third countries.
Third, whatever their rhetoric, British governments often choose to operate through Brussels even when there is no obligation so to do. Thus in foreign policy and rtls, where the institutions of the Union are relatively weak, more often than not Britain seeks to co-ordinate with its EU partners. Elsewhere, it wants to extend Union competences: animal welfare would seem a natural province for decision-making at national level, but Britain is vociferous in pressing for EU-wide rules.
All in all, the reports throw up plenty of instances when the EU needs reform or where European rules should be dropped in favour of national choices. They underline, however, how difficult and costly it would be for Britain to unravel the facts of interdependence. The ideology of the eurosceptics has collided with the evidence. No wonder Mr Cameron waited for the safety of the summer parliamentary recess.
The issue is coming to a head this week as parliament votes on plans to unclog the civil lawsuit system put forward by Annamaria Cancellieri, justice minister, and history suggests she has a fight on her hands. Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi often used immovable vested interests as an excuse for the policy paralysis that characterised his nine years in office. Mario Monti, his sober technocrat successor, ran into the same wall. Now it is the turn of Enrico Letta at the head of his fragile and febrile left-right coalition.“The lawyers, the major lobbies – they block our country from becoming normal,” an exasperated Ms Cancellieri fumed at a recent conference.
The law would extend the use of mandatory alternative dispute procedures, or mediation, to try to cut a backlog of civil lawsuits running at some 5m cases and increasing by 10 per cent a year. Lawyers went on strike for a week in protest.The slowness of Italy’s civil justice system – it takes an average of 1,210 days to resolve a commercial dispute – is often cited as the most potent deterrent to foreign investors. In the World Bank’s 2013 global ease of doing business survey, Italy ranked 160th out of 185 countries in terms of enforcing contracts.
Italy abounds with lawyers – more than 240,000, compared with 54,000 in similarly sized France. They also make up more than 10 per cent of parliament, including Mr Berlusconi’s two personal lawyers, who were heavily engaged in tackling his raft of trials and investigations when not involved in tabling legislation to give him immunity.
The government has published the first tranche of reports in a comprehensive review of Britain’s EU membership. This first batch includes studies of the “balance of competences” in the single market, tax policy, foreign policy and defence, food safety and animal welfare, health and development. Given the political sensitivities within the coalition – Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats do not share widespread Tory hostility to most things European – the task in large part has been in the hands of neutral civil servants.
The result is a series of reports that tell the story as it is, shorn of ideology and political judgments. This is what persuaded the prime minister to defer publication until backbench Tory MPs hostile to the EU had safely departed Westminster for the parliamentary recess. Mr Clegg wanted the reports released at a ministerial press conference. Mr Cameron’s office insisted there should be no fanfare.
Pro-Europeans seeking a knockout blow in favour of the EU status quo will be disappointed. Though the reports say the single market has provided significant advantages for the British economy, they also acknowledge the difficulty of quantifying the gain. And while business backs the level-playing field legislation needed to make the single market work, there is less of a consensus around environmental and real time Location system.
What is most striking, however, is the distance the conclusions stand from the original intent of the review. The exercise was to have provided a springboard for the large-scale repatriation of EU powers sought by hardline eurosceptics as a minimum requirement for continued membership. Iain Duncan Smith, Owen Paterson and Philip Hammond were among cabinet ministers who protested at the even-handed approach of officials. During one Whitehall exchange, an adviser to Mr Hammond complained the foreign policy and defence report was unduly weighted towards the evidence.
Three broad conclusions arise from the reports. The first is that the single market holds up a mirror to the close integration of modern economies. Companies depend on the “four freedoms” of goods, services, persons and capital. Cross-border supply chains, common standards, mobile workforces and multicentre manufacturing are the stuff of today’s business. These processes depend on common standards and regulation.
Japan has voiced publicly what many third countries have said privately. Foreign investment (and the jobs that go with it) in the UK is vitally dependent on access to other EU markets. At a more mundane level, Britain’s food processing industry could not work if its complex cross-border production chains did not all operate under uniform regulation. The same applies across other industries and many services. The implication is that if Britain were to leave the EU, it would be obliged by economic realities to opt back into the panoply of regulation – only this time without any say in shaping the rules.
The second conclusion is that Europe and the rest of the world are complementary markets for British business. The evidence submitted by Vodafone tells the story. The advent of EU telecommunications regulation gave the company a chance to scale up from a national to a European provider; once established in Europe it could realise its global ambitions. Looking through the other end of the telescope, overseas companies such as BMW use their British operations to sell cars to emerging markets – a practice made possible only because of EU trade agreements with third countries.
Third, whatever their rhetoric, British governments often choose to operate through Brussels even when there is no obligation so to do. Thus in foreign policy and rtls, where the institutions of the Union are relatively weak, more often than not Britain seeks to co-ordinate with its EU partners. Elsewhere, it wants to extend Union competences: animal welfare would seem a natural province for decision-making at national level, but Britain is vociferous in pressing for EU-wide rules.
All in all, the reports throw up plenty of instances when the EU needs reform or where European rules should be dropped in favour of national choices. They underline, however, how difficult and costly it would be for Britain to unravel the facts of interdependence. The ideology of the eurosceptics has collided with the evidence. No wonder Mr Cameron waited for the safety of the summer parliamentary recess.
The issue is coming to a head this week as parliament votes on plans to unclog the civil lawsuit system put forward by Annamaria Cancellieri, justice minister, and history suggests she has a fight on her hands. Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi often used immovable vested interests as an excuse for the policy paralysis that characterised his nine years in office. Mario Monti, his sober technocrat successor, ran into the same wall. Now it is the turn of Enrico Letta at the head of his fragile and febrile left-right coalition.“The lawyers, the major lobbies – they block our country from becoming normal,” an exasperated Ms Cancellieri fumed at a recent conference.
The law would extend the use of mandatory alternative dispute procedures, or mediation, to try to cut a backlog of civil lawsuits running at some 5m cases and increasing by 10 per cent a year. Lawyers went on strike for a week in protest.The slowness of Italy’s civil justice system – it takes an average of 1,210 days to resolve a commercial dispute – is often cited as the most potent deterrent to foreign investors. In the World Bank’s 2013 global ease of doing business survey, Italy ranked 160th out of 185 countries in terms of enforcing contracts.
Italy abounds with lawyers – more than 240,000, compared with 54,000 in similarly sized France. They also make up more than 10 per cent of parliament, including Mr Berlusconi’s two personal lawyers, who were heavily engaged in tackling his raft of trials and investigations when not involved in tabling legislation to give him immunity.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
For Heroin Users Who Overdose
A drug called naloxone can bring heroin users who overdose back from the brink of death.But naloxone is not always available, especially in rural areas. One nonprofit — the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin (ARCW) — is working to change that.If you're an injection drug user in south-central Wisconsin, you may know or have heard of a guy named Jimi, also known as James Reinke. Reinke works for ARCW’s Lifepoint Needle Exchange program, which tries to prevent the spread of AIDS and hepatitis C through shared needles.
Reinke drives a van around all day, meeting users at their preferred location where they swap out their dirty needles for free clean needles and other supplies.Reinke also carries Narcan, a form of naloxone. He hands it out, along with a prescription, and provides training.“Really, the naloxone is just a muscle shot,” says Reinke. “You hit ’em in the shoulder, you hit ’em in the thigh, in the top of the butt. So you can't miss.”
In the event of an overdose naloxone reverses the effects of opiates, like heroin and OxyCodone. At one of Reinke's regular stops, he provides a refill to a woman in her 40s who doesn't want to share her hands free access. But says she's used the drug many times on others — and recently it was used on her.
“I said to my friend ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ and that's all I remember,” she says. “And I guess I turned purple. Narcan saved my life this last week, and I've had five saves in the last year-and-a-half myself.”ARCW started providing naloxone to users in 2005 at its nine locations across the state after a rise in overdoses. Scott Stokes, the group’s prevention services director, says since then thousands of lives have been saved. But the program has its critics.
“A lot of people feel that if [others] are going to use drugs, then they need to suffer the consequences that go along with it,” says Stokes. His response to the critics: “This isn't alcohol, where if you're drinking and driving you lose your license. If you overdose, you die.”
He says they are currently the only source in the state where users can get naloxone — physicians could prescribe it, but they don't. He says without a Good Samaritan Law which would provide immunity to users, many won't call 911 because they're afraid they could face criminal charges.Stokes also says there's another reason for the need for wider distribution: Many ambulances don't carry naloxone. In Wisconsin, only Advanced Life Support level services — those that can start IVs — can legally carry the drug. Madison Fire Department Paramedic Paul Poker says that's a real issue in the suburbs and rural communities with basic level EMTs.
“If you have to wait 15, 20, 25 minutes to get that drug, or wait for them to transport you to the hospital, the chances of long-term affects, whether it's brain damage or something like that, can go up significantly,” says Poker.There is an inhaled version of Narcan that many basic level providers across the country are carrying. The state Department of Health Services — which licenses EMS providers — says that would require additional training and a change in law but that it is under consideration.
After an American Civil Liberties Union report found police increasingly can track law-abiding drivers’ whereabouts with few restrictions, the group’s Massachusetts branch renewed its calls for lawmakers to impose limits and said the state already may collect such information.
The national report raises concerns about cameras mounted on patrol cars, street signs and overpasses that automatically scan license plates on passing vehicles and check them against databases of stolen cars or people wanted on arrest warrants, among other things.
In the report, the ACLU does not question the use of plate scanners for these purposes, but warned that the devices retain images and details on the time and location of every passing vehicle – including a vast majority of motorists who have done nothing wrong.
Police agencies vary widely in how long they keep such information – anywhere from two days to years or even indefinitely – and in some cases feed it into larger law enforcement databases, according to the report, based on 26,000 pages of documents obtained through public records requests in 38 states and Washington, D.C.
During my five months in Syria, there's one remark I keep hearing from the rebels: we need ammunition and we need heavy weapons. The makeshift army fighting Bashar al-Assad's troops may be armed with plenty of ancient Kalashnikovs, a steady stream of young men ready to fight and die, and an unshakeable belief that Allah is on their side. But they're facing a regime equipped with Russian-made tanks and fighter jets, a regime that's apparently happy to unleash huge scud missiles and chemical weapons on its own population to keep itself in power.
The rebels and Assad's forces are locked in a particularly sticky, horrendously bloody stalemate; the rebels can hold the front lines but find it almost impossible to advance because they don't have the weapons and ammunition to make a push. The regime is able to fire heavy artillery at the residential neighborhoods held by the rebels, occasionally picking off fighters while simultaneously destroying the homes of ordinary citizens.
Away from the front lines I found a slightly more professional operation. Three months ago, a local Free Syrian Army commander named Abu Firas realized that his fighters were missing a trick by attacking the regime’s tanks with explosives and leaving them burnt out on the side of the road. Now when the rebels attack a regime checkpoint they try to leave the tanks in one piece so they can bring them over to the other side.
“Now that we are capturing heavy weapons, our fortunes will change,” Abu told me. He explained that some particularly fearless jihadist fighters from Yemen leap onto the regime’s tanks as they're still moving, rip open the doors, and unload their weapons upon the soldiers inside. Brutal and foolhardy, perhaps, but definitely effective, and a method that results in only superficial damage inflicted on the tank.
The rebels bring their prizes to a mechanic’s workshop opposite Abu Firas’s office, where they're soon fixed up and real time Location system; a bit of welding and a new rebel logo to replace the regime’s and they’re good to go. It was Ramadan when I visited so the mechanic isn't working. As Abu swung the garage doors open open—we're met with the bizarre sight of two camouflaged tanks parked up next to a Toyota pickup truck—he told me he used to work on bulldozers and trucks and was able to teach himself how tanks operate pretty quickly.
After my visit to the war workshop, I heard about another rebel-run battle studio, a factory where fighters are turning out hundreds of weapons every day. The commander in charge is named Ahmad Afesh and he's the leader of Aleppo’s Free Syria Brigade. He got nervous when I first spoke to him—he’d never let a journalist anywhere near the factory before and he was unsure about letting me in, never mind allowing me to take photographs inside.
After two days of negotiations via Skype and over the phone, he came back with his answer: he'd granting me access on the condition that I don't photograph the outside of the factory or reveal its location. That's a compromise I was perfectly happy to make, so the next day we drove to the factory with the commander.
It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but when they did I found myself in front of a scene resembling a cross between Santa's workshop and a Industrial Revolution–era Britain. Only instead of gift-wrapped toys or steam engine parts, the factory is cluttered with mortar casings and rockets—a Christmas grotto fit for the most battle-ready child you know.
Reinke drives a van around all day, meeting users at their preferred location where they swap out their dirty needles for free clean needles and other supplies.Reinke also carries Narcan, a form of naloxone. He hands it out, along with a prescription, and provides training.“Really, the naloxone is just a muscle shot,” says Reinke. “You hit ’em in the shoulder, you hit ’em in the thigh, in the top of the butt. So you can't miss.”
In the event of an overdose naloxone reverses the effects of opiates, like heroin and OxyCodone. At one of Reinke's regular stops, he provides a refill to a woman in her 40s who doesn't want to share her hands free access. But says she's used the drug many times on others — and recently it was used on her.
“I said to my friend ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ and that's all I remember,” she says. “And I guess I turned purple. Narcan saved my life this last week, and I've had five saves in the last year-and-a-half myself.”ARCW started providing naloxone to users in 2005 at its nine locations across the state after a rise in overdoses. Scott Stokes, the group’s prevention services director, says since then thousands of lives have been saved. But the program has its critics.
“A lot of people feel that if [others] are going to use drugs, then they need to suffer the consequences that go along with it,” says Stokes. His response to the critics: “This isn't alcohol, where if you're drinking and driving you lose your license. If you overdose, you die.”
He says they are currently the only source in the state where users can get naloxone — physicians could prescribe it, but they don't. He says without a Good Samaritan Law which would provide immunity to users, many won't call 911 because they're afraid they could face criminal charges.Stokes also says there's another reason for the need for wider distribution: Many ambulances don't carry naloxone. In Wisconsin, only Advanced Life Support level services — those that can start IVs — can legally carry the drug. Madison Fire Department Paramedic Paul Poker says that's a real issue in the suburbs and rural communities with basic level EMTs.
“If you have to wait 15, 20, 25 minutes to get that drug, or wait for them to transport you to the hospital, the chances of long-term affects, whether it's brain damage or something like that, can go up significantly,” says Poker.There is an inhaled version of Narcan that many basic level providers across the country are carrying. The state Department of Health Services — which licenses EMS providers — says that would require additional training and a change in law but that it is under consideration.
After an American Civil Liberties Union report found police increasingly can track law-abiding drivers’ whereabouts with few restrictions, the group’s Massachusetts branch renewed its calls for lawmakers to impose limits and said the state already may collect such information.
The national report raises concerns about cameras mounted on patrol cars, street signs and overpasses that automatically scan license plates on passing vehicles and check them against databases of stolen cars or people wanted on arrest warrants, among other things.
In the report, the ACLU does not question the use of plate scanners for these purposes, but warned that the devices retain images and details on the time and location of every passing vehicle – including a vast majority of motorists who have done nothing wrong.
Police agencies vary widely in how long they keep such information – anywhere from two days to years or even indefinitely – and in some cases feed it into larger law enforcement databases, according to the report, based on 26,000 pages of documents obtained through public records requests in 38 states and Washington, D.C.
During my five months in Syria, there's one remark I keep hearing from the rebels: we need ammunition and we need heavy weapons. The makeshift army fighting Bashar al-Assad's troops may be armed with plenty of ancient Kalashnikovs, a steady stream of young men ready to fight and die, and an unshakeable belief that Allah is on their side. But they're facing a regime equipped with Russian-made tanks and fighter jets, a regime that's apparently happy to unleash huge scud missiles and chemical weapons on its own population to keep itself in power.
The rebels and Assad's forces are locked in a particularly sticky, horrendously bloody stalemate; the rebels can hold the front lines but find it almost impossible to advance because they don't have the weapons and ammunition to make a push. The regime is able to fire heavy artillery at the residential neighborhoods held by the rebels, occasionally picking off fighters while simultaneously destroying the homes of ordinary citizens.
Away from the front lines I found a slightly more professional operation. Three months ago, a local Free Syrian Army commander named Abu Firas realized that his fighters were missing a trick by attacking the regime’s tanks with explosives and leaving them burnt out on the side of the road. Now when the rebels attack a regime checkpoint they try to leave the tanks in one piece so they can bring them over to the other side.
“Now that we are capturing heavy weapons, our fortunes will change,” Abu told me. He explained that some particularly fearless jihadist fighters from Yemen leap onto the regime’s tanks as they're still moving, rip open the doors, and unload their weapons upon the soldiers inside. Brutal and foolhardy, perhaps, but definitely effective, and a method that results in only superficial damage inflicted on the tank.
The rebels bring their prizes to a mechanic’s workshop opposite Abu Firas’s office, where they're soon fixed up and real time Location system; a bit of welding and a new rebel logo to replace the regime’s and they’re good to go. It was Ramadan when I visited so the mechanic isn't working. As Abu swung the garage doors open open—we're met with the bizarre sight of two camouflaged tanks parked up next to a Toyota pickup truck—he told me he used to work on bulldozers and trucks and was able to teach himself how tanks operate pretty quickly.
After my visit to the war workshop, I heard about another rebel-run battle studio, a factory where fighters are turning out hundreds of weapons every day. The commander in charge is named Ahmad Afesh and he's the leader of Aleppo’s Free Syria Brigade. He got nervous when I first spoke to him—he’d never let a journalist anywhere near the factory before and he was unsure about letting me in, never mind allowing me to take photographs inside.
After two days of negotiations via Skype and over the phone, he came back with his answer: he'd granting me access on the condition that I don't photograph the outside of the factory or reveal its location. That's a compromise I was perfectly happy to make, so the next day we drove to the factory with the commander.
It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but when they did I found myself in front of a scene resembling a cross between Santa's workshop and a Industrial Revolution–era Britain. Only instead of gift-wrapped toys or steam engine parts, the factory is cluttered with mortar casings and rockets—a Christmas grotto fit for the most battle-ready child you know.
Perry signs sweeping Texas abortion restrictions
Rick Perry signed sweeping new abortion restrictions on Thursday that could shutter most of the state's clinics that provide the procedure, a final step for the Republican-backed measure after weeks of sometimes raucous protests at the state Capitol.
Supporters credited God's will and prayer as the governor signed the legislation, with protesters' chants of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" echoing from the hallway. Opponents have vowed to fight the law, though no court challenges were immediately filed.
"Today, we celebrate the further cementing of the foundation on which the culture of life in Texas is built upon," Perry told an auditorium full of beaming GOP lawmakers and anti-abortion activists. "It is our responsibility and duty to give voice to the unborn individuals."
The law restricts abortions to surgical centers and requires doctors who work at abortion clinics to have hospital admitting privileges. Only five of the 42 abortion clinics in Texas - the nation's second-largest state - currently meet those new requirements. Clinics will have a year to either upgrade their facilities or shut down after the law takes effect in October.
The law also bans abortions after the 20th week of indoor positioning system, based on the disputed notion that fetuses can feel pain at that point of development, and dictates when abortion-inducing drugs can be taken.
Supporters argue the new law will ensure high-quality health care for women, but opponents view it as over-regulation intended to make abortions harder to obtain.Similar measures in other states have been blocked by federal judges, and opponents in Texas said they'll pursue a similar course."The fight over this law will move to the courts, while the bigger fight for women's access to health care in Texas gains steam," Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement.
The action fund is the political arm of Planned Parenthood, which announced later Thursday that it would close its clinics in Bryan, Huntsville and Lufkin by the end of August. The group cited years of state budget cuts to women's health programs, not the new law. Only the Bryan facility offers abortions."In recent years, Texas politicians have created an increasingly hostile environment for providers of reproductive health care in underserved communities," said Melaney A. Linton, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.
Perry and other top Republican leaders made passing the law a top priority, in part to please the most conservative wing of the party before the primary election in March. But it touched off weeks of protests that saw thousands of activists on both sides of the issue descend on the Texas Capitol in an outpouring of activism unseen in at least 20 years.
After the regular legislative session ended May 27, Perry added passing the abortion measure to lawmakers' agenda for a 30-day special session. But on the last day to rtls , Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis staged a more than 12-hour, one-woman filibuster hoping to talk past a midnight deadline and kill the legislation.
Republicans used parliamentary objections to silence Davis, but just before midnight hundreds of bill opponents in the Senate gallery screamed and cheered so loudly that all work stopped on the Senate floor below until it was too late. It launched Davis into an overnight political sensation.But Perry called lawmakers back for a second special session - setting up the bill's final approval last week.
"When Governor Perry signed the bill, he signaled a clear break with Texas families," Davis said in a statement Thursday. She said Perry and his party's elected officials "have now taken sides and chosen narrow partisan special interests over mothers, daughters, sisters and every Texan who puts the health of their family, the well-being of their neighbors, and the future of Texas ahead of politics and personal ambitions."
The signing ceremony was moved from Perry's office on the second floor of the Capitol to a basement auditorium, surrounded by dozens of state troopers who tightly controlled who entered and braced for potentially hundreds of activists. Instead, only about two dozen showed up, clutching coat-hangers and signs that read "My Body, My Choice" and "Shame!"
Perry drew applause for warmly greeting and shaking hands with Dem. Sen. Eddie Lucio of Brownsville, the only Senate Democrat who supported the bill.As the governor and other lawmakers spoke, protesters repeatedly chanted "shame!" loud enough to be heard. Once the bill was signed, they hooted and then sang Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It!"David Dewhurst, who oversees the state Senate, blamed "intentional chaos created by the radical left" for the bill not passing sooner.
That was a common sentiment among supporters. The Catholic Association said in a statement: "Rick Perry is a brave man for standing up to the mob tactics of the abortion lobby and has earned the respect of pro-life women and men across the country."
Republican Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, who sponsored the bill in the Texas House and mistakenly suggested during debate that emergency room rape kits could be used to terminate pregnancies, said: "It really was the hand of God" and prayer that helped make the signing possible. Laubenberg told Perry, who announced last week that he wouldn't seek a fourth full term as governor next year, that: "Your eternal legacy will be as a defender of life."
Supporters credited God's will and prayer as the governor signed the legislation, with protesters' chants of "Shame! Shame! Shame!" echoing from the hallway. Opponents have vowed to fight the law, though no court challenges were immediately filed.
"Today, we celebrate the further cementing of the foundation on which the culture of life in Texas is built upon," Perry told an auditorium full of beaming GOP lawmakers and anti-abortion activists. "It is our responsibility and duty to give voice to the unborn individuals."
The law restricts abortions to surgical centers and requires doctors who work at abortion clinics to have hospital admitting privileges. Only five of the 42 abortion clinics in Texas - the nation's second-largest state - currently meet those new requirements. Clinics will have a year to either upgrade their facilities or shut down after the law takes effect in October.
The law also bans abortions after the 20th week of indoor positioning system, based on the disputed notion that fetuses can feel pain at that point of development, and dictates when abortion-inducing drugs can be taken.
Supporters argue the new law will ensure high-quality health care for women, but opponents view it as over-regulation intended to make abortions harder to obtain.Similar measures in other states have been blocked by federal judges, and opponents in Texas said they'll pursue a similar course."The fight over this law will move to the courts, while the bigger fight for women's access to health care in Texas gains steam," Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement.
The action fund is the political arm of Planned Parenthood, which announced later Thursday that it would close its clinics in Bryan, Huntsville and Lufkin by the end of August. The group cited years of state budget cuts to women's health programs, not the new law. Only the Bryan facility offers abortions."In recent years, Texas politicians have created an increasingly hostile environment for providers of reproductive health care in underserved communities," said Melaney A. Linton, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.
Perry and other top Republican leaders made passing the law a top priority, in part to please the most conservative wing of the party before the primary election in March. But it touched off weeks of protests that saw thousands of activists on both sides of the issue descend on the Texas Capitol in an outpouring of activism unseen in at least 20 years.
After the regular legislative session ended May 27, Perry added passing the abortion measure to lawmakers' agenda for a 30-day special session. But on the last day to rtls , Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis staged a more than 12-hour, one-woman filibuster hoping to talk past a midnight deadline and kill the legislation.
Republicans used parliamentary objections to silence Davis, but just before midnight hundreds of bill opponents in the Senate gallery screamed and cheered so loudly that all work stopped on the Senate floor below until it was too late. It launched Davis into an overnight political sensation.But Perry called lawmakers back for a second special session - setting up the bill's final approval last week.
"When Governor Perry signed the bill, he signaled a clear break with Texas families," Davis said in a statement Thursday. She said Perry and his party's elected officials "have now taken sides and chosen narrow partisan special interests over mothers, daughters, sisters and every Texan who puts the health of their family, the well-being of their neighbors, and the future of Texas ahead of politics and personal ambitions."
The signing ceremony was moved from Perry's office on the second floor of the Capitol to a basement auditorium, surrounded by dozens of state troopers who tightly controlled who entered and braced for potentially hundreds of activists. Instead, only about two dozen showed up, clutching coat-hangers and signs that read "My Body, My Choice" and "Shame!"
Perry drew applause for warmly greeting and shaking hands with Dem. Sen. Eddie Lucio of Brownsville, the only Senate Democrat who supported the bill.As the governor and other lawmakers spoke, protesters repeatedly chanted "shame!" loud enough to be heard. Once the bill was signed, they hooted and then sang Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It!"David Dewhurst, who oversees the state Senate, blamed "intentional chaos created by the radical left" for the bill not passing sooner.
That was a common sentiment among supporters. The Catholic Association said in a statement: "Rick Perry is a brave man for standing up to the mob tactics of the abortion lobby and has earned the respect of pro-life women and men across the country."
Republican Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, who sponsored the bill in the Texas House and mistakenly suggested during debate that emergency room rape kits could be used to terminate pregnancies, said: "It really was the hand of God" and prayer that helped make the signing possible. Laubenberg told Perry, who announced last week that he wouldn't seek a fourth full term as governor next year, that: "Your eternal legacy will be as a defender of life."
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Indoor Location Highlighted at Famous
Used to be that changes to equipment in and on cars took decades to enter production — as an example just how long did it take to get head-rests/restraints into most vehicles? Head restraint patents were originally filed in 1921, and people started to get interested in putting them in cars in the 1950s, but they didn’t start to show up in vehicles until the 1960s and weren’t mandated until 1969 in the US. Since then the rate of technology adoption by the auto-makers has accelerated.
Now, it seems that almost every new car has Internet, Bluetooth phone, GPS navigation, rain-sensing wipers, touch screen, automatic foot sensing/hand waving/ touch sensitive lift-gate/door-locks/touch screens and even massaging seats and automatic seat positioning… And safety devices galore — including multiple air-bags and anti-lock braking systems, indoor positioning system, intelligent speed adaptation and now even lane-departure and forward collision mitigation/collision avoidance systems.
Safety has finally become a major selling feature on almost every make and every model, thanks in large part to organizations like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the Vehicle Research Center (VRC) near Washington, D.C. The VRC is the principle location for U.S. vehicle crash testing that we see regularly on TV and YouTube videos with crash-test dummies being bashed around in all sorts of simulated vehicle accidents. These tests have lead to significantly enhanced safety features in today’s vehicles.
Automation in vehicles, particularly automation of safety devices, is seen as the next most promising phase of vehicle safety improvement. And as these safety devices become more complex, they need to be verified in realistic conditions. Hence, the VRC is now undertaking a major expansion of its testing capabilities with the addition of a continuous vehicle test track that transverses not only open-air roadway areas, but also includes a 300-foot by 700-foot fully covered testing area.
The $30 million upgrade will include a Locata supplied ‘LocataNet’ which will provide the VRC with high-precision positioning to enable rigorous, consistent and repeatable scientific evaluation of new vehicle crash avoidance systems. Along with the cm level positioning provided by the Locata network, VRC is also working on state-of-the-art robotics to enable the required level of testing precision. The LocataNet will furnish the IIHS with a locally controlled positioning system that is seamless over all the VRC test areas, including extremely accurate and consistent automated positioning of vehicles.
In the covered enclosure VRC intends to set up collision avoidance testing for areas such as parking garages and urban canyons — areas where GPS is either not available, or is degraded to a level where positioning is intermittent or isn’t available. Locata will provide a consistent level of accuracy and reliability that the VRC requires for these GPS-degraded scenarios.
The VRC site currently looks very much like a construction site with the track extensions under way and the under-cover area just starting to be built. The VRC facility will come online in two stages — the outdoor track before the end of the year and the indoor around early Q2 next year. Locata engineers have been working with Perrone Robotics on very early integration testing. Perrone is contracted to deliver a system for testing vehicle safety systems in the test vehicles that IIHS is testing. For the first phase, the system includes a robot target vehicle with the footprint of a car, but only 4 inches high and 1 inch of ground clearance. If the vehicle being tested fails to prevent a collision with the robot target vehicle, the test vehicle runs over the robot target vehicle, dislodging a soft target, but avoiding damage to the test vehicle, robot target vehicle, or soft target.
To ensure that the test vehicle drives repeatedly, the system also includes a drop-in actuator kit that can be installed into any test vehicle in 30 minutes or less. The system is designed to allow a human driver to sit comfortably in the vehicle and drive, but is also capable of controlling the throttle, brake and steering to drive test profiles. Perrone is using Locata as the positioning system. In addition to alleviating concerns about GPS outages or dead/weak signal spots, it also allows the system to be operated on the new covered IIHS test track currently under construction.
Locata’s autonomous positioning technology uses terrestrial networks that function as a “local ground-based replica” of GPS-style positioning. Locata works with GPS, but can also operate independently when GPS is not robust or is completely unavailable. Instead of orbiting satellites, Locata utilizes a network of small, ground-based transmitters that blanket a chosen area with strong radio-positioning signals. Because it is terrestrially based and provides relatively high power signals, Locata works in any internal or external environment.
A fundamental requirement for radio-positioning systems is nano-second level synchronization of all transmitters in the positioning network. In the past multiple atomic clocks were used to achieve this level of synchronization. Instead, Locata’s technology relies on a patented synchronization method called TimeLoc which allows Locata to replicate GPS in a ground network.
Locata’s technology encompasses both transmit and receive sides of the positioning network, allowing the system to be configured to meet specific, localized demand for availability, accuracy, and reliability. This flexibility ensures that signal integrity can be guaranteed in even the most demanding environments — especially indoors, like the covered test track section of the expanded VRC.
Locata has also made significant progress in North America with the recent award of a contract to instrument the White Sands missile range to Locata’s partner TMC Design. The 746th Test Squadron’s new Non-GPS Based Positioning System is expected to be operational by Q3 2013, with a network that covers 2,500 sq miles (6,500 square kilometers). Locata technology will provide the USAF’s “gold standard GPS truth system,” supplying continuous centimeter-level, independent positioning when GPS is completely jammed. This award followed several months of USAF testing and evaluation of an initial LocataNet installation at the White Sands facility.
So following the recent IIHS endorsement of the Locata technology for use at the VRC, Locata appears to be well on the way to acceptance as a reliable truth system for use alongside GPS. Along with other mining related installations elsewhere in the world, it would seem that we are no longer in evaluation mode; rather we should anticipate other future Locata production installations.
Click on their website www.ecived.com/en/.
Now, it seems that almost every new car has Internet, Bluetooth phone, GPS navigation, rain-sensing wipers, touch screen, automatic foot sensing/hand waving/ touch sensitive lift-gate/door-locks/touch screens and even massaging seats and automatic seat positioning… And safety devices galore — including multiple air-bags and anti-lock braking systems, indoor positioning system, intelligent speed adaptation and now even lane-departure and forward collision mitigation/collision avoidance systems.
Safety has finally become a major selling feature on almost every make and every model, thanks in large part to organizations like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the Vehicle Research Center (VRC) near Washington, D.C. The VRC is the principle location for U.S. vehicle crash testing that we see regularly on TV and YouTube videos with crash-test dummies being bashed around in all sorts of simulated vehicle accidents. These tests have lead to significantly enhanced safety features in today’s vehicles.
Automation in vehicles, particularly automation of safety devices, is seen as the next most promising phase of vehicle safety improvement. And as these safety devices become more complex, they need to be verified in realistic conditions. Hence, the VRC is now undertaking a major expansion of its testing capabilities with the addition of a continuous vehicle test track that transverses not only open-air roadway areas, but also includes a 300-foot by 700-foot fully covered testing area.
The $30 million upgrade will include a Locata supplied ‘LocataNet’ which will provide the VRC with high-precision positioning to enable rigorous, consistent and repeatable scientific evaluation of new vehicle crash avoidance systems. Along with the cm level positioning provided by the Locata network, VRC is also working on state-of-the-art robotics to enable the required level of testing precision. The LocataNet will furnish the IIHS with a locally controlled positioning system that is seamless over all the VRC test areas, including extremely accurate and consistent automated positioning of vehicles.
In the covered enclosure VRC intends to set up collision avoidance testing for areas such as parking garages and urban canyons — areas where GPS is either not available, or is degraded to a level where positioning is intermittent or isn’t available. Locata will provide a consistent level of accuracy and reliability that the VRC requires for these GPS-degraded scenarios.
The VRC site currently looks very much like a construction site with the track extensions under way and the under-cover area just starting to be built. The VRC facility will come online in two stages — the outdoor track before the end of the year and the indoor around early Q2 next year. Locata engineers have been working with Perrone Robotics on very early integration testing. Perrone is contracted to deliver a system for testing vehicle safety systems in the test vehicles that IIHS is testing. For the first phase, the system includes a robot target vehicle with the footprint of a car, but only 4 inches high and 1 inch of ground clearance. If the vehicle being tested fails to prevent a collision with the robot target vehicle, the test vehicle runs over the robot target vehicle, dislodging a soft target, but avoiding damage to the test vehicle, robot target vehicle, or soft target.
To ensure that the test vehicle drives repeatedly, the system also includes a drop-in actuator kit that can be installed into any test vehicle in 30 minutes or less. The system is designed to allow a human driver to sit comfortably in the vehicle and drive, but is also capable of controlling the throttle, brake and steering to drive test profiles. Perrone is using Locata as the positioning system. In addition to alleviating concerns about GPS outages or dead/weak signal spots, it also allows the system to be operated on the new covered IIHS test track currently under construction.
Locata’s autonomous positioning technology uses terrestrial networks that function as a “local ground-based replica” of GPS-style positioning. Locata works with GPS, but can also operate independently when GPS is not robust or is completely unavailable. Instead of orbiting satellites, Locata utilizes a network of small, ground-based transmitters that blanket a chosen area with strong radio-positioning signals. Because it is terrestrially based and provides relatively high power signals, Locata works in any internal or external environment.
A fundamental requirement for radio-positioning systems is nano-second level synchronization of all transmitters in the positioning network. In the past multiple atomic clocks were used to achieve this level of synchronization. Instead, Locata’s technology relies on a patented synchronization method called TimeLoc which allows Locata to replicate GPS in a ground network.
Locata’s technology encompasses both transmit and receive sides of the positioning network, allowing the system to be configured to meet specific, localized demand for availability, accuracy, and reliability. This flexibility ensures that signal integrity can be guaranteed in even the most demanding environments — especially indoors, like the covered test track section of the expanded VRC.
Locata has also made significant progress in North America with the recent award of a contract to instrument the White Sands missile range to Locata’s partner TMC Design. The 746th Test Squadron’s new Non-GPS Based Positioning System is expected to be operational by Q3 2013, with a network that covers 2,500 sq miles (6,500 square kilometers). Locata technology will provide the USAF’s “gold standard GPS truth system,” supplying continuous centimeter-level, independent positioning when GPS is completely jammed. This award followed several months of USAF testing and evaluation of an initial LocataNet installation at the White Sands facility.
So following the recent IIHS endorsement of the Locata technology for use at the VRC, Locata appears to be well on the way to acceptance as a reliable truth system for use alongside GPS. Along with other mining related installations elsewhere in the world, it would seem that we are no longer in evaluation mode; rather we should anticipate other future Locata production installations.
Click on their website www.ecived.com/en/.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
It's College Students vs. the Corporate Machine
Once this nation saw higher education as a citadel of learning, growth and opportunity. Now student debt is being used as a cash cow to subsidize corporate tax breaks, while universities become incubators for corporate employees and cheap laboratories for private-sector patents.
The new student loan deal being cooked up in Washington is part of a larger picture. The forces of technology, globalization and wealth are calling the shots in government nowadays, and they've got higher education in their sights. Corporations want colleges and universities to serve them, not students.
In the dystopian future unfolding before our eyes, whole segments of the population are being offered up to the Corporate Machine. And unless we reject the corporate commodification of our common humanity, there's no end in sight.
As Andrew Leonard notes in Salon, the Internet is creating new and unjust markets for piece work. Online workers provide temporary "assistant" tasks for the well-to-do, competing for the jobs based on who's the most eager to please -and who's cheapest."Fancy Hands, "Mechanical Turk," "Task Rabbit": As the website names make clear, we're not talking about the dignity of labor here. And it's a buyer's rtls. The consulting group Deloitte waxes rhapsodic in a report for its corporate clients.
Then there's automation, often described (or mis-described) nowadays as "artificial intelligence" or "AI." A PBS program quotes Prof. Gary Marcus of NYU as saying, "Once somebody develops a good AI program it doesn't just replace one worker. It might replace millions of workers."
As Deloitte's consultants breathlessly put it: "Talent clouds make it possible to engage individuals anywhere in the world. AI and other technologies make it possible to automate knowledge work ... These trends are anticipated to shape the future of knowledge work."
"Knowledge work" is what we typically acquired a college education to perform. Think it'll be worth taking on a six-figure student loan debt to become a "Task Rabbit"?Colleges and universities have traditionally taught critical thinking, offered a breadth of social and human knowledge, and sought to provide students with the insight, skills, and courage to become the leaders of the future.
Not anymore. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, corporations want to turn college education into an employee training program. "To expect business to bring graduates up to speed," says an executive for Boeing, is "too much to ask." ("Too much to ask"? Boeing receives billions each year in government contracts and corporate profits are at record highs.)
"Once upon a time, 'trainee' used to be a common job title," says Philip D. Gardner of Michigan State University. "Now companies expect everyone, recent graduates included, to be ready to go on Day One. The mantle of preparing the work force has been passed to higher ed."
But students, not corporations, will be expected to pay for these 'trainee' programs -- along with whatever government subsidies can be extracted from taxpayers.Two-year colleges were created, in part, to meld workforce needs with educational resources. But the Corporate State sees no need for any other form of education. The university lecture halls of the past are becoming incubator pods for the disposable corporate employees of the future.
This corporatization of education is reflected in the appointment of Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Secretary and former Governor of Arizona, to head the statewide University of California system. As the Los Angeles Times reports this week, it was "an unusual choice ... (for) a position usually held by an academic." The Times reports that unnamed officials felt Napolitano's Cabinet background "will help UC administer its federal energy and nuclear weapons labs and aid its federally funded research in medicine and other areas."
Energy and nuclear weapons research helps fund university budgets. It also leads to lucrative government contracts for corporations. Medical research leads to lucrative drug patents for Big Pharma.That's how the Corporate Machine works. Colleges and universities are there to generate its "inputs," intellectual and human, not to advance our collective understanding and knowledge.
It's all part of a decades-long pattern. Once we had a thriving middle class. Then the ability of working Americans to earn a living wage was systematically destroyed by a series of deliberate policy decisions.The minimum wage was frozen, driving ever-greater numbers of working people into poverty. The rights of employees to organize and negotiate were eroded, driving down wages even more. Elected leaders looked the other way as corporations gutted pension plans. NAFTA and other trade deals drove working wages down even further.
As middle-class Americans plunged further behind, their families and their communities fell with them. That's when the Corporate Machine learned something very important: It didn't need them. Business leaders discovered the Workerless Economy.There was good money to be made by using cheaper workers overseas and temporary and unskilled employees at home. The U.S. job market increasingly swung toward unskilled jobs, a trend that's been accelerated by the current "recovery" -- which is really a radical economic shift toward a corporate boom for the few, and away from prosperity for the many.
As the collapsing middle class lost much of its buying power, Corporate America discovered another way to make money: Why pay you to buy their goods when they can lend you the money instead?Americans plunged into ever-increasing cesspools of debt, fueled first by the Clinton stock market bubble and then by the bank-designed (and fraud driven) mortgage bubble. Deregulation meant that anybody with a large enough corporate presence could get in on the bank boom.
But what goes up must come down -- and you can be sure the Corporate State didn't plan to pick up the tab. Once they had been rescued -- by the same taxpayers they'd been exploiting -- financial executives went back to profiting from the declining wage base of the middle class.Building and selling things takes a lot of work. You have to hire and pay people, both to produce and ship your goods and so they can buy the goods you produce. It's easier to financialize your corporation and capitalize on government's extraordinary generosity to bankers.
To squeeze out even more profit, they learned how to charge more for holding and managing money. Thomas Philippon of the New York Federal Reserve found that the cost of "intermediation" (banking services) was 2 percent in 1870, rose to 6 percent by Depression-era 1930, and fell below 4 percent in 1950.These banking charges rose slowly to 5 percent in 1980 -- and then shot up to almost 9 percent by 2010. They become banks for the same reason Willie Sutton allegedly robbed them: That's where the money is.
Click on their website http://www.ecived.com/en/.
The new student loan deal being cooked up in Washington is part of a larger picture. The forces of technology, globalization and wealth are calling the shots in government nowadays, and they've got higher education in their sights. Corporations want colleges and universities to serve them, not students.
In the dystopian future unfolding before our eyes, whole segments of the population are being offered up to the Corporate Machine. And unless we reject the corporate commodification of our common humanity, there's no end in sight.
As Andrew Leonard notes in Salon, the Internet is creating new and unjust markets for piece work. Online workers provide temporary "assistant" tasks for the well-to-do, competing for the jobs based on who's the most eager to please -and who's cheapest."Fancy Hands, "Mechanical Turk," "Task Rabbit": As the website names make clear, we're not talking about the dignity of labor here. And it's a buyer's rtls. The consulting group Deloitte waxes rhapsodic in a report for its corporate clients.
Then there's automation, often described (or mis-described) nowadays as "artificial intelligence" or "AI." A PBS program quotes Prof. Gary Marcus of NYU as saying, "Once somebody develops a good AI program it doesn't just replace one worker. It might replace millions of workers."
As Deloitte's consultants breathlessly put it: "Talent clouds make it possible to engage individuals anywhere in the world. AI and other technologies make it possible to automate knowledge work ... These trends are anticipated to shape the future of knowledge work."
"Knowledge work" is what we typically acquired a college education to perform. Think it'll be worth taking on a six-figure student loan debt to become a "Task Rabbit"?Colleges and universities have traditionally taught critical thinking, offered a breadth of social and human knowledge, and sought to provide students with the insight, skills, and courage to become the leaders of the future.
Not anymore. As the Chronicle of Higher Education reports, corporations want to turn college education into an employee training program. "To expect business to bring graduates up to speed," says an executive for Boeing, is "too much to ask." ("Too much to ask"? Boeing receives billions each year in government contracts and corporate profits are at record highs.)
"Once upon a time, 'trainee' used to be a common job title," says Philip D. Gardner of Michigan State University. "Now companies expect everyone, recent graduates included, to be ready to go on Day One. The mantle of preparing the work force has been passed to higher ed."
But students, not corporations, will be expected to pay for these 'trainee' programs -- along with whatever government subsidies can be extracted from taxpayers.Two-year colleges were created, in part, to meld workforce needs with educational resources. But the Corporate State sees no need for any other form of education. The university lecture halls of the past are becoming incubator pods for the disposable corporate employees of the future.
This corporatization of education is reflected in the appointment of Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Secretary and former Governor of Arizona, to head the statewide University of California system. As the Los Angeles Times reports this week, it was "an unusual choice ... (for) a position usually held by an academic." The Times reports that unnamed officials felt Napolitano's Cabinet background "will help UC administer its federal energy and nuclear weapons labs and aid its federally funded research in medicine and other areas."
Energy and nuclear weapons research helps fund university budgets. It also leads to lucrative government contracts for corporations. Medical research leads to lucrative drug patents for Big Pharma.That's how the Corporate Machine works. Colleges and universities are there to generate its "inputs," intellectual and human, not to advance our collective understanding and knowledge.
It's all part of a decades-long pattern. Once we had a thriving middle class. Then the ability of working Americans to earn a living wage was systematically destroyed by a series of deliberate policy decisions.The minimum wage was frozen, driving ever-greater numbers of working people into poverty. The rights of employees to organize and negotiate were eroded, driving down wages even more. Elected leaders looked the other way as corporations gutted pension plans. NAFTA and other trade deals drove working wages down even further.
As middle-class Americans plunged further behind, their families and their communities fell with them. That's when the Corporate Machine learned something very important: It didn't need them. Business leaders discovered the Workerless Economy.There was good money to be made by using cheaper workers overseas and temporary and unskilled employees at home. The U.S. job market increasingly swung toward unskilled jobs, a trend that's been accelerated by the current "recovery" -- which is really a radical economic shift toward a corporate boom for the few, and away from prosperity for the many.
As the collapsing middle class lost much of its buying power, Corporate America discovered another way to make money: Why pay you to buy their goods when they can lend you the money instead?Americans plunged into ever-increasing cesspools of debt, fueled first by the Clinton stock market bubble and then by the bank-designed (and fraud driven) mortgage bubble. Deregulation meant that anybody with a large enough corporate presence could get in on the bank boom.
But what goes up must come down -- and you can be sure the Corporate State didn't plan to pick up the tab. Once they had been rescued -- by the same taxpayers they'd been exploiting -- financial executives went back to profiting from the declining wage base of the middle class.Building and selling things takes a lot of work. You have to hire and pay people, both to produce and ship your goods and so they can buy the goods you produce. It's easier to financialize your corporation and capitalize on government's extraordinary generosity to bankers.
To squeeze out even more profit, they learned how to charge more for holding and managing money. Thomas Philippon of the New York Federal Reserve found that the cost of "intermediation" (banking services) was 2 percent in 1870, rose to 6 percent by Depression-era 1930, and fell below 4 percent in 1950.These banking charges rose slowly to 5 percent in 1980 -- and then shot up to almost 9 percent by 2010. They become banks for the same reason Willie Sutton allegedly robbed them: That's where the money is.
Click on their website http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Redesigned summer school is acquiring buzz in Minneapolis
With its deadly dull remedial drills and endless study-hall flavor, summer school is essentially punishment for a lackluster performance during the regular year, right?Wrong. Forget everything you think you know about it.At a time when Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) is struggling to figure out how to lengthen the school year for its most needy kids, summer school is quietly acquiring something of a buzz. Students are enrolling themselves in record numbers — and happily.
On a recent muggy Monday, a group of teens was holed up in a classroom on the third floor of South High School waiting for their teacher to come take a look at robots they’d designed using Lego Mindstorms software.“Academics?” quipped one, a young man with a blue-and-white faux-hawk and a bodacious supply of moxie. “I come here for the people, for my friends.”
And at first he might have been more interested in the free Go To bus pass that comes with enrollment in MPS’ relatively new middle-school to high-school transition program, called Fast Track. But the bottom line is he’s there.“Before Fast Track, getting ninth-graders to come to summer school and stay was impossible,” said MPS’ Director of Extended Learning, Jan Braaten. “Now they all come and Indoor Positioning System.”
Three years ago the district launched an ambitious overhaul of its summer offerings with the goal of creating more — and better — “seat time” for at-risk students. A growing body of research shows that longer school days and years are crucial to positioning struggling kids for success.At the same time, other studies have found low-income students risk losing up to two months of math and as much as three months’ gains in reading during the summer. By ninth grade, in fact, two-thirds of the gap in literacy between affluent and impoverished students can be traced to summer.
By contrast, the handful of Twin Cities schools getting terrific academic results within challenged populations virtually all enjoy school days and years that average 40 percent more "time on task." Summer school clearly has always meant added hours, but it was a snore, with 16 four-hour days devoted entirely to reading and math. Kids didn't want to go. If a program site signed up 200 kids and 100 showed up, it was considered a success.
Contrast that with the need. The Minnesota Department of Education, which reimburses districts for summer school, has spelled out 13 qualifying factors for students who need the extra time.English-language learners are eligible, as are homeless and highly mobile kids, students who are significantly below grade level in reading and math, and so on.MPS serves its own students and those attending charter schools within the districts boundaries. City residents who attend school elsewhere are served by the districts that operate their schools.
There’s plenty of academic support, but the lineup of activities sounds a lot more like the activity-filled summers enjoyed by middle- and upper-class children, who are far less likely to lose ground over the break.Today, summer school consists of 23 six-hour days and offerings that extend far beyond reading and math. There’s art and music and lots of opportunities to be outdoors.A long list of community partners comes into the schools; the Bakken Museum works with three grades. All classes are taught by licensed teachers. (MPS teachers have first dibs on the jobs, but the district usually ends up hiring a small number of external candidates.)
Aimed at incoming ninth-graders, Fast Track is a good example of summer school’s gap-closing potential. This year 2,100 qualifying eighth-graders were invited and an eye-popping 531 enrolled. Bringing them all together allows Program Facilitator Elizabeth Fortke and the rest of the staff to offer a wider variety of programming, including things like guitar, ceramics and theater. South was chosen because it is the easiest facility for kids from all parts of the city to get to on public buses.
The academics were chosen strategically. Nationwide, 90 percent of dropouts occur before, during or after the freshman year of high school, according to Fortke. Fast Track aims to head that off in part by giving students an extra term, in essence.For many, high school presents a quantum leap forward in terms of expectations. If students know what a GPA is, they may not understand its importance or the potential impact of their permanent record.
“It’s a chance to get them thinking about how high school does mean something,” said Fortke. “And to start talking about college and work-force readiness.”It’s also a no-harm, no-foul opportunity to try more rigorous coursework. Failing grades do not go on student’s record, but passing Fast Track grades do earn high-school credit. Geography is the most failed ninth-grade class, for instance. Fast Track students who take it and don’t do well have another chance in the fall. Also new: physics, engineering and physical sciences.
More rigorous state math standards instituted three years ago mean students now must take algebra in the eighth grade, not the ninth like before. Those who didn’t master it in middle school are taught in a different, project-based style over the summer.
Is it working? District leaders are in the process of designing a system for measuring summer school’s impact on student success. In addition to traditional outcomes like graduation and proficiency rates, they’re hoping to measure things like participants’ attitudes about school.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com.
On a recent muggy Monday, a group of teens was holed up in a classroom on the third floor of South High School waiting for their teacher to come take a look at robots they’d designed using Lego Mindstorms software.“Academics?” quipped one, a young man with a blue-and-white faux-hawk and a bodacious supply of moxie. “I come here for the people, for my friends.”
And at first he might have been more interested in the free Go To bus pass that comes with enrollment in MPS’ relatively new middle-school to high-school transition program, called Fast Track. But the bottom line is he’s there.“Before Fast Track, getting ninth-graders to come to summer school and stay was impossible,” said MPS’ Director of Extended Learning, Jan Braaten. “Now they all come and Indoor Positioning System.”
Three years ago the district launched an ambitious overhaul of its summer offerings with the goal of creating more — and better — “seat time” for at-risk students. A growing body of research shows that longer school days and years are crucial to positioning struggling kids for success.At the same time, other studies have found low-income students risk losing up to two months of math and as much as three months’ gains in reading during the summer. By ninth grade, in fact, two-thirds of the gap in literacy between affluent and impoverished students can be traced to summer.
By contrast, the handful of Twin Cities schools getting terrific academic results within challenged populations virtually all enjoy school days and years that average 40 percent more "time on task." Summer school clearly has always meant added hours, but it was a snore, with 16 four-hour days devoted entirely to reading and math. Kids didn't want to go. If a program site signed up 200 kids and 100 showed up, it was considered a success.
Contrast that with the need. The Minnesota Department of Education, which reimburses districts for summer school, has spelled out 13 qualifying factors for students who need the extra time.English-language learners are eligible, as are homeless and highly mobile kids, students who are significantly below grade level in reading and math, and so on.MPS serves its own students and those attending charter schools within the districts boundaries. City residents who attend school elsewhere are served by the districts that operate their schools.
There’s plenty of academic support, but the lineup of activities sounds a lot more like the activity-filled summers enjoyed by middle- and upper-class children, who are far less likely to lose ground over the break.Today, summer school consists of 23 six-hour days and offerings that extend far beyond reading and math. There’s art and music and lots of opportunities to be outdoors.A long list of community partners comes into the schools; the Bakken Museum works with three grades. All classes are taught by licensed teachers. (MPS teachers have first dibs on the jobs, but the district usually ends up hiring a small number of external candidates.)
Aimed at incoming ninth-graders, Fast Track is a good example of summer school’s gap-closing potential. This year 2,100 qualifying eighth-graders were invited and an eye-popping 531 enrolled. Bringing them all together allows Program Facilitator Elizabeth Fortke and the rest of the staff to offer a wider variety of programming, including things like guitar, ceramics and theater. South was chosen because it is the easiest facility for kids from all parts of the city to get to on public buses.
The academics were chosen strategically. Nationwide, 90 percent of dropouts occur before, during or after the freshman year of high school, according to Fortke. Fast Track aims to head that off in part by giving students an extra term, in essence.For many, high school presents a quantum leap forward in terms of expectations. If students know what a GPA is, they may not understand its importance or the potential impact of their permanent record.
“It’s a chance to get them thinking about how high school does mean something,” said Fortke. “And to start talking about college and work-force readiness.”It’s also a no-harm, no-foul opportunity to try more rigorous coursework. Failing grades do not go on student’s record, but passing Fast Track grades do earn high-school credit. Geography is the most failed ninth-grade class, for instance. Fast Track students who take it and don’t do well have another chance in the fall. Also new: physics, engineering and physical sciences.
More rigorous state math standards instituted three years ago mean students now must take algebra in the eighth grade, not the ninth like before. Those who didn’t master it in middle school are taught in a different, project-based style over the summer.
Is it working? District leaders are in the process of designing a system for measuring summer school’s impact on student success. In addition to traditional outcomes like graduation and proficiency rates, they’re hoping to measure things like participants’ attitudes about school.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
A Fan’s History of Sub Pop
It was fine; it happens to a lot of kids. For the most part, they kept it civil and everything was totally OK. They are both wonderful parents. I would visit my dad in Seattle on the weekends and spend the rest of the time with my mom back in Maple Valley, which is two towns over from where that guy died from having sex with that horse, just so you know.
One morning when I was 15, I came out of the shower and found my mom and dad in a shouting match at the door. I don’t remember why it started, but I remember thinking I’d never seen my parents shout at each other like that. I watched the whole thing unfold with only a towel on from upstairs, just standing there, frozen. I felt betrayed, and naked.
“If I could take the fire out from the wire, I’d take you where noooobody knows you, and nobody gives a damn anyway,” Spencer Krug warbled in my ears. I played that song on repeat until I felt like I actually went to that place. That place where nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn. Any place but where I was sounded really good.
The title of this piece may sound dramatic, but over the course of this project, I’ve found that it’s not that far from the truth. To help celebrate the 25th anniversary of Seattle’s biggest record label, we went out and collected your stories. We asked for your memories of the impact that Sub Pop songs or albums have had on your indoor positioning system. I was surprised by how much common fabric these stories share.
When I interviewed Dick Dawson, he talked about cathartically crushing cans in his parent’s garage, listening to “Shadows” by Sunny Day Real Estate. I thought back to that moment with my parents and “I’ll Believe in Anything,” and instantly understood where he was coming from. When I talked to Natalie Walker about how Sleater-Kinney very directly informed her professional career as director of the Rain City Rock Camp for Girls, I could relate. After seeing Chad VanGaalen’s video for “Molten Light,” I immediately downloaded the animation program he uses. I use that program at work all the time.
It’s funny how a record label can shape someone’s entire career. In the case of Brian Albright, who now works for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, the stakes are even higher. If it weren’t for an obscure Sub Pop split single in 1992, he might never have met his wife.
Only a quarter-century later has it become clear what Sub Pop really is. On the surface it’s just a record label, but in reality it’s the sum of all these stories. From the first Green River EP in 1986 to this month’s release of Rose Window’s The Sun Dogs, the label’s 1,053rd record, Sub Pop has managed to put out landmark rock, folk, hip-hop, and electronica albums while simultaneously defining new genres unto themselves. But among all those records also lies a lot of humanity that isn’t listed in Sub Pop’s catalogue.
My guitar teacher told me about this movie called Hype, about the early-’90s grunge scene and how Sub Pop rose to power and all that. I think the first song we ever played [in Hearabout Nancy] was “Touch Me I’m Sick” by Mudhoney. We played a ton of Mudhoney covers. We would go into our garage and we would plug a microphone into a guitar amp and we would just scream those songs. When we were warming up, we would play the entire Bleach album and [trade] off our instruments and stuff. That was so fun. We used to rock, like, “Floyd the Barber” and “Blew.” Uh, “Paper Cuts” and “Big Cheese” and “Swap Meet.” We played Mudhoney a lot too. We played shit like “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More” and “Hate the Police” and “Flat Out Fucked.” Oh damn, it was good stuff.Oh my God, I can’t even remember all of them. All those songs, that was our stuff.
First song I ever learned to play on guitar was “Polly” by Nirvana. I learned all the early Nirvana riffs. I still to this day can play Bleach from the top to bottom, and I can play a highly butchered version of every single solo. I would sit in my room late at night, and me and my friend Mark would listen to Bleach. We’d play it for five seconds, then pause it. Then we’d sit down and play that five seconds on guitar. It was the same thing over and over until we could play the entire album. We’d take Adderall. Like, speed. A couple days of doing that, and then we came out of my room being able to play the entire album.
When we did start writing our own songs it was very Bleach-esque. Raunchy lyrics, tuned-down drop-D guitars. It was more about the aggression of it, not so much the musicality. You could just write about anything and then scream a loud chorus.
It was June 1989 in Denver, Colo., when I bought Roadmouth by local heroes The Fluid. It was a fateful day in which I bought that album, Steel Pole Bathtub’s Butterfly Love (themselves a former Denver band, now making an impact nationwide), and Dinosaur Jr.’s Bug. I’d seen The Fluid live, and their MC5-infused retro-garage punk seemed nothing like what I’d heard in Mudhoney’s sludgy “Touch Me I’m Sick” single. But it wasn’t until hearing The Fluid’s second Sub Pop album paired with the noisier works of STB and Dinosaur Jr. that it all seemed to make sense in a way that things were all headed in a really exciting new direction of beautiful noise. And it meant that if The Fluid could get out of Denver and become pioneers, then I should dare to give it a try as well.
Years later my own band, Pleasure Forever, signed to Sub Pop. I had a very fancy job working for a fancy record label, with expense accounts, living bicoastally between San Francisco and New York City, etc. I gave it all up just to make a record for Sub Pop. And though very little came of it, I don’t regret it in the slightest. I made some great lifelong friends at the label, toured like crazy, and had some incredible experiences, all due to that lone, crazy record label that changed my life back in 1989.
Leavenworth was an odd town to grow up in. You knew everyone, it was pretty secluded. This was pre-Internet, so I didn’t have access to the wider music scene. I used to drive down to Wenatchee and pick up Alternative Press or some other cool magazine like that. And I think I first heard about Mudhoney from a Sub Pop comp, The Grunge Years. There was a Mudhoney track on there, and I went out and bought their most recent record. There was nobody playing stuff like that on the radio out there, and they weren’t on the air on MTV or anything yet.
When I liked a band a lot, I would write them a letter or fan mail or something. I wrote Mudhoney a letter. I knew they were a pretty shocking band, so I tried to write them a pretty shocking, out-there letter to grab their attention. They actually wrote me back and thanked me for being a fan. I don’t even remember what I wrote the letter about . . . some crazy thing. I was just trying to be cool to the rock stars.Interacting with a band back then, pre-Internet, was a big deal. It gave me more confidence in who I was and what I wanted to do, and what I do today.
They also sent me a sticker . . . it was an orange sticker that said the band name on it, so I slapped it on the bumper of my car. I was driving a ’67 Ford Falcon; it was awesome. I’d be driving around this small town. I’m a pretty quiet kid, everyone knew who I was, and all of a sudden I’ve got this Mudhoney sticker on my car and I’m blaring Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. That album meant a lot to me. I got a lot of strange looks, and some ribbing from my family at my attempts to “go grunge.” That band was exactly what I needed at that time in my life. They will always be my favorite band of the era.
Read the full story at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
One morning when I was 15, I came out of the shower and found my mom and dad in a shouting match at the door. I don’t remember why it started, but I remember thinking I’d never seen my parents shout at each other like that. I watched the whole thing unfold with only a towel on from upstairs, just standing there, frozen. I felt betrayed, and naked.
“If I could take the fire out from the wire, I’d take you where noooobody knows you, and nobody gives a damn anyway,” Spencer Krug warbled in my ears. I played that song on repeat until I felt like I actually went to that place. That place where nobody knows you and nobody gives a damn. Any place but where I was sounded really good.
The title of this piece may sound dramatic, but over the course of this project, I’ve found that it’s not that far from the truth. To help celebrate the 25th anniversary of Seattle’s biggest record label, we went out and collected your stories. We asked for your memories of the impact that Sub Pop songs or albums have had on your indoor positioning system. I was surprised by how much common fabric these stories share.
When I interviewed Dick Dawson, he talked about cathartically crushing cans in his parent’s garage, listening to “Shadows” by Sunny Day Real Estate. I thought back to that moment with my parents and “I’ll Believe in Anything,” and instantly understood where he was coming from. When I talked to Natalie Walker about how Sleater-Kinney very directly informed her professional career as director of the Rain City Rock Camp for Girls, I could relate. After seeing Chad VanGaalen’s video for “Molten Light,” I immediately downloaded the animation program he uses. I use that program at work all the time.
It’s funny how a record label can shape someone’s entire career. In the case of Brian Albright, who now works for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, the stakes are even higher. If it weren’t for an obscure Sub Pop split single in 1992, he might never have met his wife.
Only a quarter-century later has it become clear what Sub Pop really is. On the surface it’s just a record label, but in reality it’s the sum of all these stories. From the first Green River EP in 1986 to this month’s release of Rose Window’s The Sun Dogs, the label’s 1,053rd record, Sub Pop has managed to put out landmark rock, folk, hip-hop, and electronica albums while simultaneously defining new genres unto themselves. But among all those records also lies a lot of humanity that isn’t listed in Sub Pop’s catalogue.
My guitar teacher told me about this movie called Hype, about the early-’90s grunge scene and how Sub Pop rose to power and all that. I think the first song we ever played [in Hearabout Nancy] was “Touch Me I’m Sick” by Mudhoney. We played a ton of Mudhoney covers. We would go into our garage and we would plug a microphone into a guitar amp and we would just scream those songs. When we were warming up, we would play the entire Bleach album and [trade] off our instruments and stuff. That was so fun. We used to rock, like, “Floyd the Barber” and “Blew.” Uh, “Paper Cuts” and “Big Cheese” and “Swap Meet.” We played Mudhoney a lot too. We played shit like “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More” and “Hate the Police” and “Flat Out Fucked.” Oh damn, it was good stuff.Oh my God, I can’t even remember all of them. All those songs, that was our stuff.
First song I ever learned to play on guitar was “Polly” by Nirvana. I learned all the early Nirvana riffs. I still to this day can play Bleach from the top to bottom, and I can play a highly butchered version of every single solo. I would sit in my room late at night, and me and my friend Mark would listen to Bleach. We’d play it for five seconds, then pause it. Then we’d sit down and play that five seconds on guitar. It was the same thing over and over until we could play the entire album. We’d take Adderall. Like, speed. A couple days of doing that, and then we came out of my room being able to play the entire album.
When we did start writing our own songs it was very Bleach-esque. Raunchy lyrics, tuned-down drop-D guitars. It was more about the aggression of it, not so much the musicality. You could just write about anything and then scream a loud chorus.
It was June 1989 in Denver, Colo., when I bought Roadmouth by local heroes The Fluid. It was a fateful day in which I bought that album, Steel Pole Bathtub’s Butterfly Love (themselves a former Denver band, now making an impact nationwide), and Dinosaur Jr.’s Bug. I’d seen The Fluid live, and their MC5-infused retro-garage punk seemed nothing like what I’d heard in Mudhoney’s sludgy “Touch Me I’m Sick” single. But it wasn’t until hearing The Fluid’s second Sub Pop album paired with the noisier works of STB and Dinosaur Jr. that it all seemed to make sense in a way that things were all headed in a really exciting new direction of beautiful noise. And it meant that if The Fluid could get out of Denver and become pioneers, then I should dare to give it a try as well.
Years later my own band, Pleasure Forever, signed to Sub Pop. I had a very fancy job working for a fancy record label, with expense accounts, living bicoastally between San Francisco and New York City, etc. I gave it all up just to make a record for Sub Pop. And though very little came of it, I don’t regret it in the slightest. I made some great lifelong friends at the label, toured like crazy, and had some incredible experiences, all due to that lone, crazy record label that changed my life back in 1989.
Leavenworth was an odd town to grow up in. You knew everyone, it was pretty secluded. This was pre-Internet, so I didn’t have access to the wider music scene. I used to drive down to Wenatchee and pick up Alternative Press or some other cool magazine like that. And I think I first heard about Mudhoney from a Sub Pop comp, The Grunge Years. There was a Mudhoney track on there, and I went out and bought their most recent record. There was nobody playing stuff like that on the radio out there, and they weren’t on the air on MTV or anything yet.
When I liked a band a lot, I would write them a letter or fan mail or something. I wrote Mudhoney a letter. I knew they were a pretty shocking band, so I tried to write them a pretty shocking, out-there letter to grab their attention. They actually wrote me back and thanked me for being a fan. I don’t even remember what I wrote the letter about . . . some crazy thing. I was just trying to be cool to the rock stars.Interacting with a band back then, pre-Internet, was a big deal. It gave me more confidence in who I was and what I wanted to do, and what I do today.
They also sent me a sticker . . . it was an orange sticker that said the band name on it, so I slapped it on the bumper of my car. I was driving a ’67 Ford Falcon; it was awesome. I’d be driving around this small town. I’m a pretty quiet kid, everyone knew who I was, and all of a sudden I’ve got this Mudhoney sticker on my car and I’m blaring Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. That album meant a lot to me. I got a lot of strange looks, and some ribbing from my family at my attempts to “go grunge.” That band was exactly what I needed at that time in my life. They will always be my favorite band of the era.
Read the full story at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)