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A totally new co-op based zombie mod. This mod will stand out from all the other zombie mods for several reasons, as most zombie mods focus on mindless shooting this zombie mod will be going deeper into the survival horror. If you attract too many zombies you will definitely not survive. This should prove a unique zombie experience like you have never seen before. Expect also features like movable barricades, uniquely designed maps and weapons from singleplayer. To summarize it, what you will get from this mod is thrilling gameplay with your friends against hordes of zombies.
hello again I bring my new map for this mod, is the largest I've done so far over 600 waypoints and only 5 spawnzombies were 3 weeks of hard work. and here it is. I hope you like it and enjoy it so. is already in rotation on the server of FNRP. 188.8.131.52:28959 visit us find the best maps and great people


One of the biggest challenges confronting electricians and installers when converting in-situ lighting to LED is that many recessed linear lights are plastered into the ceiling. Often, facilities managers are hesitant to replace these units due to concerns around the expense and disruption associated with installation. During work on an office re-fit in Greenwich, LED specialist Earlsmann developed a bespoke gear tray design that overcomes these issues.
|Before: with the old lighting, the lift lobby area was becoming underlit as tubes faded||After: the new lighting fits into existing housings while also providing CIBSE-compliant light levels|
Fresh thinking from Earlsmann enables seamless lighting replacement
While working in partnership with NCS Technology in Greenwich, LED specialist Earlsmann created a bespoke gear tray design which simply clips into the existing housing. This innovation avoids the need for costly re-wiring or remedial decoration work, and reduces waste by using the existing luminaire setting.
Earlsmann modelled each area with the new gear tray using Relux to ensure CIBSE LG7 light level requirements were met (spaces included offices, lift lobbies and corridors). Where required, the gear trays include an ‘emergency pack’ to provide emergency lighting capability.
Delivering cost and environmental benefits through bespoke product design
The gear tray is provided in short, easy to handle sections, each with its own power supply. This means it is able to use the existing luminaire wiring, supporting quick and easy installation. Each gear tray uses just 15W. In Greenwich, these were used as replacements for 28W T5 tubes, providing significant energy savings from day one.
The new gear trays are also a more environmentally-friendly option compared to replacing the complete luminaire, as less landfill waste is generated. Paul Tomsett, Senior Engineer at NCS Technology, congratulated Earlsmann on the success of the new product, saying: “the F type fittings are a dream to install and work very well”.
Earlsmann – creating innovative, inspirational LED solutions
Earlsmann is a UK-based LED lighting company with many years’ experience in the LED marketplace. Earlsmann’s multi-discipline team of commercial lighting consultants are experts in working with clients to create high-quality lighting solutions that optimise building performance and offer impressive, rapid returns on investment.
Find out more about Earlsmann’s commercial lighting consultancy services by calling us on 08456 434 740 or email firstname.lastname@example.org.
You might also want to browse our other office led lighting projects.


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Key Equity Release has rebranded to Key Later Life Finance, moving away from a term which historically has been associated with scandals and customer debt.
The lifetime mortgage provider said the decision reflected an evolution of its business, having expanded the number of later life lending options in its range over recent years.
Alongside equity release, these other products include retirement interest-only mortgages and later life mortgages, as well as services such as estate planning and lasting power of attorney.
"Through moving away from the language of equity release to looking at later life finances, Key believes it will help customers to see these products in a new light, helping more customers to consider later life lending options," the company said in a statement today.
“For some the term equity release may have been a barrier to exploring this option, by removing this barrier it opens the door to engage with more potential customers, who could benefit from later life products.”
The firm said it continued to “considerably invest” in marketing and advertising campaigns aimed at conveying the breadth of later life lending products available to over-55s. This has seen Key change its strapline to ‘For the life in later life’.
Will Hale, Key's chief executive, said the brand now better reflected “the vibrant, diverse and exciting market” that the company operated in, and the range of services it now offered.
“We have been supporting customers as they access their housing wealth for over twenty years and we are building on this heritage as we evolve our offering to meet their developing needs and wants,” said Hale.
“This new brand will also help to grow the wider understanding of this developing market and ensure that more people are aware of their options in later life.”
Key Later Life Finance was founded in 1998 as Home Income Gold until it rebranded to Key Retirement Solutions in 2001. It has been known as just Key since 2018.
In 1991 the Equity Release Council was launched to add a guarantee of no negative equity in order to legitimise the status of equity release providers.
The equity release industry has had to work to improve its reputation, which took a knock in the 1980s and 1990s amid a number of scandals leaving people with large amounts of debt.
Advisers have since suggested the Equity Release Council could do more to help the sector on its road to recovery.
“This is reflected in the apparent decline of referrals we receive via the ERC website directly from the public,” one adviser told FTAdviser last year.
But despite its reputation, in the past few years equity release sales have steadily climbed. Between 2013 and 2018, sales nearly doubled. This saw product options rise from 86 in January 2018 to 221 in January 2019, according to council’s data.
Then in June 2021, the number of equity release products hit a 15-year high.

domain: economics


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George & Amal Have a Date in Italy, Plus Jake Gyllenhaal, Lizzo & More
La Dolce Vita
George Clooney and wife Amal leave their hotel hand-in-hand and smiling as they head out for a helicopter ride over Venice, Italy, on Thursday.
Jake Gyllenhaal interacts with fans at the premiere of Spider-Man: Far From Home, presented in part by Audi, at the TCL Chinese Theatre on Wednesday in Hollywood.
Feels Like Home
Also at the Spider-Man premiere: Cobie Smulders and husband Taran Killam.
Finding Her 'Tempo'
Lizzo takes the stage in a sparkling ensemble during American Express’ N.Y.C. Pride Kickoff Event on Wednesday in N.Y.C.
Lea Michele headlines T.J. Maxx’s Changing Room Popup, as part of the Maxx You Project, on Tuesday in N.Y.C.
Director Lulu Wang, recipient of the Vanguard Award, and actress Awkwafina attend The Farewell L.A. premiere, presented by Sundance Institute and hosted by Acura, at the Theatre at Ace Hotel on Wednesday.
Under the Radar
Ryan Gosling is seen wearing a baseball cap while out and about in L.A. on Wednesday.
Chrissy Teigen and Amanda Seales share a laugh at NBC’s Bring the Funny premiere event at Rockwell Table & Stage in L.A. on Wednesday.
Back on Broadway
Costars Tracie Thoms and Helen Hunt attend the opening night performance afterparty for Encores! Off-Center production of Working: A Musical at New York City Center on Wednesday.
Bold & Beautiful
Dascha Polanco, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Stephanie Beatriz heat up the set of In the Heights in N.Y.C. on Wednesday.
Kerastase muse Emily Ratajkowski strikes a pose in front of the Eiffel Tower during the brand’s party at Port Debilly on Wednesday in Paris.
Loud & Proud
Whoopi Goldberg hits the stage during the opening ceremony of World Pride N.Y.C. 2019 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Wednesday.
Candice Swanepoel flashes a smile over her shoulder during Prabal Gurung’s #StrongerInColour Pride Month celebration with drinks at newly opened Lemon's Rooftop and dinner at the Wythe Hotel Garden Terrace in Brooklyn on Wednesday.
Brenda Song snaps a selfie at the friends and family screening of Netflix’s Secret Obsession at the Netflix offices on Wednesday in L.A.
Bill Murray snacks on potato latkes during an interview on the set of his new movie On the Rocks, written and directed by Sofia Coppola, on Wednesday in N.Y.C.
Big Apple Energy
Terry Crews visits the Mike Muse show at SiriusXM Studio in N.Y.C. on Wednesday.
Press Tour Trio
Costars Emma Greenwell, Joely Richardson and Olivia Munn reunite at Build Series in N.Y.C. on Wednesday to discuss their show The Rook at Build Studio.
Daisy Ridley walks the streets of N.Y.C. in a floral wrap dress on Wednesday.
Chris Pine goes book shopping on Wednesday in downtown N.Y.C.
Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson and Naturi Naughton attend a season 4 presentation of Power in Barcelona, Spain, on Wednesday.
Zendaya arrives at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to chat about Spider-Man: Far From Home and her new HBO series Euphoria on Tuesday in N.Y.C.
Culture & Commerce
Sarah Jessica Parker graces the stage during a Magical Summer Night at Hudson Yards to celebrate the arrival of 35 Hudson Yards on Tuesday in New York City.
There's Something About Mary
Mary J. Blige strikes a pose at the Love Ball III, benefitting programs that help those affected by HIV/AIDS, at N.Y.C.'s Gotham Hall on Tuesday.
Model & Muse
Billy Porter stuns at the Love Ball III in an incredible headpiece at Gotham Hall on Tuesday in N.Y.C.
Talented in Teal
America’s Got Talent host Terry Crews shows off his artistic side and dishes about his show on Today in N.Y.C. on Tuesday.
Nikki Bella jumps into boyfriend Artem Chigvintsev’s arms while out in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
Stranger Things producer Shawn Levy and actor Joe Keery hit the field at Fenway Park to deliver the game ball ahead of the first pitch between the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox on Tuesday.
Hole in One
Jesse Metcalfe putts around with fiancée Cara Santana at Meiomi Wines: Pinot Putt Off Celebration at Golf & Body on Tuesday in N.Y.C.
Emma Stone hosts her second annual Em & Friends Drag Queen Bingo charity event sponsored by Baileys Original Irish Cream Liqueur in West Hollywood on Monday.
Damian Lewis and wife Helen McCrory wear their summer best to The Summer Party, presented by Serpentine Galleries and Chanel and hosted by Michael R. Bloomberg, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Sir David Adjaye at The Serpentine Gallery on Tuesday in London.
Carey Mulligan exudes elegance in her all-black ensemble at BVLGARI: The Story, The Dream in Rome on Tuesday.
Shop & Stroll
Adam Sandler holds hands with his wife Jackie as they do some shopping out in N.Y.C. on Tuesday.
Present Laughter costars Sophie Thompson, Andrew Scott and Indira Varma celebrate their show’s opening night during their press night after party at Skylong on Tuesday in London.
Jenny Slate elevates her classic white T-shirt and jeans combination with a pair of metallic silver heels on Tuesday’s episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers in N.Y.C.
Daisy Ridley pairs colorful patterned pants with a black tank top and a fanny pack while chatting on the phone in N.Y.C. on Tuesday.
Chris Pine and girlfriend Annabelle Wallis cool down with iced coffees while out on a walk on Tuesday in N.Y.C.
Vanessa Williams (center) poses with her mom Helen Williams, Kathy Ireland and daughters Jillian Hervey of the band Lion Babe and Sasha Fox at the Los Angeles Zoo to celebrate Jillian’s 30th birthday on Friday.
Chris Hemsworth poses at the TAG Heuer Autavia Collection launch on Wednesday in Sydney.
Imaan Hammam and Ashley Graham pose together at the Revlon Steps Out of Line celebration of the brand’s video collaboration with A$AP Ferg at the historic Apollo Theater on Tuesday in N.Y.C.
Thumbs Way Up
Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn reunite on Tuesday near the Eiffel Tower in Paris to film their new fashion series for Amazon Prime Video.
Little Black Dress
Kim Kardashian West flaunts her curves on Tuesday while leaving her New York City hotel.
Tour de France
Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas continue their style tour through Paris, walking hand-in-hand on the Champs-Élysées on Tuesday ahead of brother Joe's upcoming wedding.
Olivia Munn wears all white for the second day in a row while out in N.Y.C. on Tuesday.
FKA Twigs attends The Summer Party 2019, presented by Serpentine Galleries and Chanel, at The Serpentine Gallery in London on Tuesday.
Bride-to-be Katharine McPhee leaves her London hotel in workout wear on Tuesday.
Hilary Swank takes to the tennis court on Tuesday, playing her husband Philip Schneider (not pictured) in Los Angeles.
Oprah Winfrey takes the stage to speak at Rogers Arena on Monday in Vancouver, Canada.
Lady Gaga wows the crowd with her performance presented by SiriusXM + Pandora at the historic Apollo Theater on Monday in N.Y.C.
Live in Concert
Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones head out for a date night in N.Y.C. on Monday to attend SiriusXM + Pandora presents Lady Gaga at the Apollo.
Rashida Jones goes for a spin with costar Bill Murray while filming their upcoming movie On the Rocks on Monday in N.Y.C.
Samuel L. Jackson and pal Robin Roberts smile at the 2019 NBA Awards presented by Kia at Barker Hangar on Monday in Santa Monica.
And ... Action
Pete Davidson shoots hoops while filming Judd Apatow’s upcoming film Staten Island on Monday in N.Y.C.
Naomi Campbell poses at a BFC Fashion Awards and Fashion for Relief special announcement at the Ritz Hotel on Monday in London.
Costars Anthony Alabi and Tia Mowry-Hardrict are all smiles at their Family Reunion L.A. screening at the Netflix offices on Monday.
Lead actor Himesh Patel speaks at the New York Times ScreenTimes: Yesterday screening at French Institute Alliance Française on Monday in N.Y.C.
Filled with Pride
Jim Parsons and Billy Eichner get together at the Variety and Mercedes-Benz Power of Pride issue and WorldPride N.Y.C. celebration at Mr. Purple in N.Y.C. on Monday.
Janelle Monáe strikes a pose at the launch of her “A Beautiful Future” limited edition bottle in collaboration with Belvedere Vodka at The Tisch Skylights at The Shed on Monday in N.Y.C.
Moment of Reflection
Michael Stipe and Jake Shears attend SAG-AFTRA’s dinner to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Stonewall at Club Cumming on Monday in N.Y.C.
Back in Action
Lana Condor is seen in full character out in N.Y.C. filming the upcoming To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before sequel on Monday.
Sam Smith stops by the Queer Britain x Levi’s “Chosen Family” photography exhibition launch celebrating Pride Month in London on Monday.
Riverdale’s cutest real-life couple Charles Melton and Camila Mendes hit the streets of N.Y.C. on Monday with iced coffees in hand.
Emily Ratajkowski poses in a stunning field of lavender at the Jacquemus Spring/Summer 2020 show on Monday in Valensole, France.
Costars William Jackson Harper, Jack Reynor and Will Poulter pose together at the afterparty of their film Midsommar on Monday in Hollywood.
Carrie Underwood surprises fans with tickets to her show during a special workout class hosted by CALIA by Carrie Underwood in Minneapolis on Friday.
Big Night Out
Ciara cohosts the official star-studded launch party for Mohegan Sun’s new luxury nightclub, novelle, on Saturday in Uncasville, Connecticut.
Olivia Munn makes her way to Good Morning America in N.Y.C. on Monday.
Liev Schreiber and girlfriend Taylor Neisen — plus a cute tag-along — ride bikes together in the Hamptons, New York, on Monday.
Light the Night
Tom Holland, Jacob Batalon and Zendaya of Spider-Man: Far from Home light New York City's Empire State Building on Monday.

domain: entertainment


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Daily creative writing isn’t about tapping genius every chance you get. It’s about preparing for the long haul. Building up your creative stamina. Finding the reasons, searching for the golden ticket, and grasping at the brass ring.
Read more "Cooing Angels and Rakish Devils"
(Sorry for the quick and dirty post. I’ve been felled by that master villan The Stomach Flu, and prolonged sessions at the keyboard are just not in my immediate future. I hope to be on the mend soon, in the meantime, I’ll be trying to keep up with short updates here when I can.) […]
Writing Prompts and Tiny Exercises By Elizabeth Cutright © 2012 The Daily Creative Writer Oh Monday, you cruel mistress. Is there anyone out there who’s every really happy to see you? We know you’re arrival is preordained, and we can’t dodge you no matter how hard we try. Even a spontaneous “sick day” is inadequate […]
Read more "Trying to get past Monday and on to the page."
Memory Triggers By Elizabeth Cutright © 2012 The Daily Creative Writer The scent of fallen pine needles cooking under a summer sun. Stretching my hands up over my head on a lazy Sunday morning. The guitar riff in Chris Isaak’s “Graduation Day.” These are some of my memory triggers – benign and, perhaps, banal little […]
Read more "Stealing Time and Mining Material"
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domain: literature


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Statement short necklace is embellished with ivory shell stones, kundan crystals, pearls and offset by champagne crystals and pearls. It is handmade on brass and plated in 18kt gold. This statement cocktail choker is a perfect accompaniment to an evening dress or even a sari. It's versatile and can be styled with various kinds of looks. Natural stones embellished with pearls and offset with shades of champagne crystals
Please note: The main stone used is a naturally occurring stone and will vary slightly in shape, size, texture and colour from piece to piece which further adds to the uniqueness of the design.
For returns & exchange, please read our policies here

domain: artistic


AUBURN, Ala. - City of Auburn Environmental Services makes it easy to dispose of all your recyclable items and help keep Auburn clean. Since 1999, the Recycling Drop-Off Center located at 365-A North Donahue Drive has been available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year.
“There has been definitely been an increase of people recycling in Auburn since I began working here 9 years ago,” Solid Waste Coordinator, Phillip Pollard, said. “The amount has almost doubled.”
Office hours for the Environmental Services are 7:30a.m. until 4:30p.m. on Monday through Friday and can be contacted by phone at (334)-501-3080. The City of Auburn and Auburn University are both associates with the East Alabama Recycling Partnership.
Bins are available at the Drop-Off Center for recyclable commodities including aluminum cans, glass bottles, magazines, newspapers, flattened cardboard, tin cans, and plastic bottles. Batteries, electronics, cell phones, and cooking grease are also accepted by the Environmental Services.
Auburn recycled 1,237 tons of recyclable cargos in 2013 and an estimated 7,858 tons of yard and wood remains. The average Alabama participation rate in recycling materials is less than 15 percent and the national average participation rate is 34 percent.
“Our city is a very educated place with educated people so it’s pretty easy to get people to recycle around here,” Pollard said. “The biggest problem we tend to run into is answering how and where people can recycle.”
Purchasing recyclable materials that can be reused multiple times before returning the item to recycle is a great way for customers to proactively contribute to benefiting the environment. Recycling can help reduce air pollution, preserve natural resources and conserve energy.
Auburn became the first municipality in Alabama to establish a curb-side recycling program for residential customers in 1987. Recyclables at curb-side can be collected weekly by subscribing to the City of Auburn Solid Waste Services. Forty percent of domestic customers in Auburn participated in the curb-side collection program in 2013.
“Having the center on Donahue makes it convenient to just drive to the parking lot on the way to class and place everything in the bins quickly,” Undergraduate student, Sam Belvin, said. “Mixed paper tends to be what we recycle the most.”
Plastic bags are not accepted because they are not compatible with the sorting machinery at the Drop-Off Center. Many grocery stores provide resources for customers so they can return used plastic bags to be recycled.
“I have been taking my recyclables to the Drop-Off Center since my first few years living in Auburn,” Auburn University Alumni, Emily Bowman, said.
Join the Auburn Family! Enroll at Auburn.


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Free Shipping Included
Estimated 2-15 Business Days
Credit Card, Check, Cash, PayPal, Apple Pay, Venmo
30 Days 100% Money Back Guarantee, Buyer Pays Return Shipping
This is a very nice piece of art painted by Cide Chavigny of Quebec Canada. It would go well in any room as it has great depth, texture and color.


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By guest blogger Kevin Connors
The list of public and private organizations pouring money into schools is long and diverse. The bulk of funding, of course, comes from state and local sources, and to a lesser extent, the federal government. But many nonprofits, businesses, and community organizations also contribute. And now, investment banks are starting to make their mark.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel recently announced that the city will use a $17 million social impact bond, partially financed by Goldman Sachs, to expand the city’s prekindergarten program.
Also known as pay-for-success loans, this form of financing shifts the risk from taxpayers to investors, as lenders are only repaid if students meet academic benchmarks. Specifically, the Chicago program aims to increase kindergarten readiness, improve third-grade literacy, and reduce the need for special education services for an additional 2,620 students over the next four years.
Assuming the benchmarks are met, the cost of future special education and intervention services decreases. The savings, which Emanuel’s office estimates to be up to $9,100 per student, would be used to repay the loan.
“Early childhood education helps create a strong foundation that benefits students throughout their entire education,” said Chicago public schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett in a statement. “By investing in the expansion of prekindergarten programs, we will set more students on the right educational path and eliminate the need and cost for additional educational supports.”
Chicago is the fifth social impact bond program to date in the U.S. Goldman and Chicago-based Northern Trust Corp. are the senior lenders on this project, and the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation is the subordinate lender, the Chicago Tribune first reported.
Goldman Sachs was also involved in a similar pay-for-success loan in 2013 for a 67,000-student Utah school district aiming to expand pre-K access, a deal worth about $7 million. Education Week examined that investment in a story last year.
For more news on mergers, acquisitions, and venture capital in education, follow Marketplace K-12’s “K-12 Dealmaking” series.

domain: finance


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TOP PHOTO: Taking extra precautions is important in keeping pets healthy especially during extremely hot weather.
LAFOLLETTE, TN. (WLAF)- As temperatures rise it is not only people that feel the heat. Pets can be susceptible to it as well. Taking extra precautions is important in keeping pets healthy. Some of those steps include:
- Never leave your animals alone in a parked vehicle. Not only can it lead to fatal heat stroke, it is illegal in several states.
- Pets can dehydrate quickly, so give them plenty of fresh, clean water when it’s hot or humid outdoors. Make sure your pets have a shady place to get out of the sun, be careful not to over exercise them, and keep them indoors when the weather is its hottest.
- Know the symptoms of overheating in pets. This includes excessive panting or difficulty breathing, increased heart and respiratory rate, drooling, mild weakness, stupor or even collapse. Symptoms can also include seizures, bloody diarrhea and vomit along with an elevated body temperature of over 104 degrees.
- Do not leave pets unsupervised around a pool. Introduce your pets to water gradually and make sure they wear flotation devices when on boats. Rinse your dog off after swimming to remove chlorine or salt from their fur, and try to keep your dog from drinking pool water, which contains chlorine and other chemicals.
- Trim longer hair on your dog, but never shave your dog: The layers of dogs’ coats protect them from overheating and sunburn. Brushing cats more often than usual can prevent problems caused by excessive heat. And be sure that any sunscreen or insect repellent product you use on your pets is labeled specifically for use on animals.
- When the temperature is very high, don’t let your dog linger on hot asphalt. Being so close to the ground, your dog’s body can heat up quickly, and sensitive paw pads can burn. Keep walks during these times to a minimum.
- Remember that food and drink commonly found at barbeques can be poisonous to pets. Keep alcoholic beverages away from pets, as they can cause intoxication, depression and comas. Similarly, remember the snacks enjoyed by humans should not be a treat for your pet. Avoid raisins, grapes, onions, chocolate and products with the sweetener xylitol.
- Leave pets at home when going to celebrations with fireworks. Exposure to lit fireworks can potentially result in severe burns or trauma, and even unused fireworks can contain hazardous materials. Many pets are also fearful of loud noises and can become lost, scared or disoriented. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED 08/23/2023- 6AM)

domain: health


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Hello, LFGSS. Long time no speak...
I purchased this Time Pulse on a complete whim, whilst I was on Facebook marketplace at the start of the 2020 lockdown. I've ridden it everyday since.
The bike was essentially NOS, it was (as you'd expect) immaculate. It's still in fantastic shape, but obviously no longer NOS.
Gotta say, I find this bike functional. It's carbon, lugged, dripping in Campagnolo, but it just doesn't 'do' anything for me. As a tool, I cannot fault it. I was thinking possibly of adding some all black wheels and gumwalls, and see how I feel then.
I think this is maybe because I don't really know that much about the Time brand. I understand they are French and create tour worthy bikes, but there's not that much info on the net, other than it being a 2009 bike.
I have just changed the pedals, saddle, seatpost, handlebars and bar tape. Oh, and tyres.
I still have my colnago, which I have stripped for parts and I plan to build again, this time with all the drool worth parts I wanted as a teenager + etap (maybe, possibly, probably)

domain: hobby


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ST. LOUIS — A $100 million settlement involving NuvaRing, a birth-control device linked to sometimes-fatal side effects, will stand now that the vast majority of claimants have chosen to opt into the agreement, those involved in the lawsuits said Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Rodney Sippel of St. Louis approved the settlement in February, but NuvaRing maker Merck had the right to abandon the deal if less than 95 percent of eligible claimants opted in.
The lead attorney for the claimants, St. Louis lawyer Roger Denton, said the 95 percent threshold has been reached, and the deal is final. Merck confirmed that the agreement is final.
Denton said about 3,800 claimants will share in the settlement.
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NuvaRing is a hormonal contraceptive inside a flexible ring that slowly releases two hormones. Severe side effects connected to NuvaRing include blood clots, strokes and heart attacks, high blood pressure and heart disease, and cancer of the reproductive organs and breast. Denton said 83 wrongful-death claims were part of the lawsuits.

domain: news


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Orchid Tattoo Designs : Butterfly Orchid Tattoo Design For Women On Back
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Refiner’s Fire brings restoration and healing to the spiritually broken, battered, and hopeless; a sanctum for Apostles, Prophets, Teachers, Pastors, Evangelists, and Bishops. A place where they can lay prostrate before the Lord and be transparent, allowing Him to wash, heal, renew, and restore them. This ministry is a "Filling Station" and people from all walks of life can come to be refilled, serviced, and sent back out to minister to others. Refiner’s Fire is a place where God's worship is restored, His Holiness is praised, and prophetic notes of music are released. It is also where God is feared and His Holiness reverenced, where God's people can "take off their masks" and "get real" with themselves, and experience true freedom and liberty in Him. We are a ministry where young people learn the meaning of true worship, an education center where men and women are trained in the articles of the Spirit and the natural, so that the "whole" man can be restored.
Getting to know the Pastor
Pastor Norman has been in ministry over 20 years and her kingdom mandate is to usher in the true spirit of prayer and worship. With a true heart for God’s people, and now playing the role of spiritual midwife herself, Pastor Norman has given her life to instructing and activating persons in the atomic power of intercession. She is passionate about equipping people to pursue destiny by the practical application of God’s word and being the men and women of purpose, God has called them to be. Her motto is: “Let what you do be enough to strengthen you in the time of trouble. Make every second count.” Pastor Norman is also an author of her brand new book entitled: " Shattered Pieces from BROKEN 2 BLESSED".


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You are here
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) published the Invite for Response to the Proposed Amendments to the Implementation Rules for the Regulation on the Administration of Chemicals Subject to Supervision and Control (公开征求对《中华人民共和国监控化学品管理条例》实施细则（修订征求意见稿）的意见) on 13 March 2018. The proposed amendments further detail the procedures and timelines for the authorities to issue administrative permits for the production and use of controlled chemicals. Additional record-keeping requirements will also be imposed on companies that manufacture controlled chemicals. A public consultation period on the proposed amendments is open until 13 April 2018.
Verisk 3E Review
Compared to the current version of the Implementation Rules for the Regulation on the Administration of Chemicals Subject to Supervision and Control (监控化学品管理条例实施细则) (the Rules), the proposed amendments introduce the following revisions:
- Manufacturers of Class II Controlled Chemicals would be specifically prohibited from selling these chemicals to companies or individuals that/who do not hold a license for the sale or use thereof.
- Additional record-keeping requirements would be imposed on activities involving Class II, III, and IV Controlled Chemicals. For instance, companies that manufacture or use Class II Controlled Chemicals would need to keep records of information on site for at least three years concerning the production, sales, and usage of these chemicals. These companies would also need to submit these records to the Commission of Economy and Information Technology at the municipal level, if they cease their business operations.
- Requirements for the storage and transport of controlled chemicals would be removed from the Rules, as similar requirements have been provided under other regulations, such as the Safety Management Regulation on Hazardous Chemicals (危险化学品安全管理条例).
In addition to the substantive revisions to the Rules, the amendments further clarify procedural aspects related to the supervision of controlled chemicals, specifically related to the administrative agencies that are responsible for supervising activities related to controlled chemicals. The proposed amendments also further detail the application procedures and timelines for the authorities to process and issue administrative permits for the production or use of controlled chemicals.
Interested parties may submit comments on the proposed amendments via one of the following methods by 13 April 2018:
- By fax: +8610-68205072;
- By email: email@example.com
As defined under the Regulation on the Administration of Chemicals Subject to Supervision and Control, controlled chemicals are divided into the following four classes:
- Class I: chemicals that can be used as chemical weapons;
- Class II: chemicals that can be used as precursors of chemical weapons;
- Class III: chemicals that can be used as the major raw materials for the production of chemical weapons;
- Class IV: specially designated organic chemicals other than explosives and pure hydrocarbons.
Detailed information on the designated controlled chemicals is provided under the Catalog of Controlled Chemicals (各类监控化学品名录).
Companies that manufacture or use controlled chemicals in China should note that the MIIT has proposed revisions to the Implementation Rules for the Regulation on the Administration of Chemicals Subject to Supervision and Control. Major proposed changes include additional record-keeping requirements and the removal of requirements for the storage and transport of controlled chemicals. Affected parties are recommended to review the proposed amendments and submit any comments that they might have to the MIIT by 13 April 2018.

domain: chemistry


Landmarks on the island include the Main Cellhouse, Dining Hall, Library, Lighthouse, the ruins of the Warden's House and Officers' Club, Parade Grounds, Building 64, Water Tower, New Industries Building, Model Industries Building, and the Recreation Yard.
The first Spaniard to document the island was Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, who charted San Francisco Bay and named one of the three islands he identified as the "La Isla de los Alcatraces," which translates as "The Island of the Pelicans," ("pelican").
I've listed some of the most smoking hot beauties in prison here, so feel free to vote for your personal favorites.
(And if you're really into prison / in prison, go vote for the best prison movies.)Some of the hot women in prison on this list are just looking for pen pals.
There are so many authentic women on your site otherwise.
I have never lost someone I cared about at the hands of another person.
My belief in redemption has never been tested, not truly.
Helen Ubiñas is an award-winning columnist at the Daily News.
She is a champion of the little guy (or gal), especially those Philly residents who go unseen and unheard, and a not-so-easily-plucked thorn in the side of city politicians and organizations who forget they serve the public. Their voices reach beyond the steel bars in a way most of them never will. It was performed by 10 lifers, half of whom are in the room when I visit.


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I’m excited to share my first piece with The Marshall Project, called “No Country for Young Men.” It is a story about Junior Smith, a teenager in West Virginia who made a lot of mistakes, but who ultimately became ensnared in a tough, rural version of the school-to-prison pipeline. In Junior’s Appalachian county, strict policing of school-based and low-level juvenile offenses is entirely unmatched by any commitment to providing troubled kids with the social services they need to avoid crime and finish their educations (and which are cheaper than juvie, too).
The article was produced in partnership with Slate, which is also publishing the piece.
When CEO Tim Armstrong blamed “distressed babies” for proposed benefit cuts at AOL, here’s what he didn’t mention: While a sales executive at Google in 2005, he was the subject of a lawsuit by a former employee, Christina Elwell, who alleged he demoted and fired her because she could not travel during her high-risk pregnancy with quadruplets.
Elwell went to work for Google’s sales force in 2000, and in 2003 was promoted to national sales director, a position in which she managed the North American sales force. She worked from the company’s New York office. Her boss was Armstrong, then Google’s vice president for national sales. According to Elwell’s complaint, before her pregnancy, he praised her in a meeting as having made a “significant contribution” to Google’s preparations for its initial public offering.
In April 2004, four months before that IPO, Elwell told Armstrong she was pregnant with quadruplets and would not be able to travel by plane due to complications. He was concerned, but she reassured him she was eager to resume travel after giving birth. In May, Elwell miscarried two of her four fetuses. A few weeks later, Armstrong allegedly called her into his office and showed her an organizational chart in which her position would be eliminated and she would be demoted to the operations department, with no management responsibilities. He allegedly told colleagues he was moving Elwell because she could not travel.
Elwell proposed that she instead take a position as East Coast sales director, in which she would be able to travel by train and car. Armstrong rejected that idea and filled the job with a male employee whom Elwell had recently hired. Then, on June 4, 2004, Armstrong allegedly called Elwell into his office and told her she was a “HR nightmare” because she had talked with colleagues about her concerns regarding her pregnancy and employment status at Google. The following day, he called her at home and fired her, saying he had “a gut feeling” it was the right thing to do, in part because she had “spoken to others” about the situation. (Remember when Armstrong impulsively fired a guy in the midst of a conference call last year, with 1,000 employees listening in?)
Google determined Elwell had been improperly fired and rehired her in a low-level operations position, in which she claims she was given work comparable to that of a summer intern. She filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She subsequently lost a third quadruplet and delivered one baby. After her maternity leave, Elwell went back to Google in January 2005, but when she learned she would not be able to return to her former position on the sales force, she left the company.
It all sort of puts into perspective Sheryl Sandberg’s cheery anecdote about lobbying Google for “pregnancy parking” at its California headquarters, doesn’t it?
In 2006 a federal judge moved Elwell’s suit into arbitration. Her attorney met with Google’s lawyers in 2007 to discuss a possible settlement, but the company’s lawyer allegedly responded, “These people are not settlers.”
Sources with knowledge of the case say the parties did eventually reach a settlement via arbitration, which was fairly financially advantageous to Elwell, and which the parties are barred from discussing publicly. AOL senior vice president for corporate communications Peter Land says, "We can’t comment on the lawsuit because it had nothing to do with us." The company points out that Working Mother Magazine has named it a top 100 company for working moms.
A woman who answered the phone at Elwell’s Manhattan home told me she was not in and took a message. Leah Schloss, director of marketing at Elwell’s law firm, Sullivan & Worcester LLP, says, “We are not able to discuss this case.” I have also reached out to Google. I will update this piece when and if I hear from additional sources.
I spent a year editing a philanthropy section at The Daily Beast. During that time, I often felt frustrated that corporate and celebrity donors seemed to lack understanding of the systemic causes of the problems they wanted to solve. A good example is what goes on in the Congo. Philanthropic and foreign aid dollars stream in to efforts to provide medical and psychological services to the victims of mass rape, but Western governments and corporations have expended very little will to end the regional, mineral-fueled war that is the root cause of the sexual violence there. As a result, many rape victims return to their villages and are raped again. Another good example is female genital cutting. The most hyped anti-FGC effort is conducted by the non-profit Tostan, in Senegal. A new UNICEF report finds no significant decrease in cutting rates in that country. Meanwhile, in the Central African Republic, an anarchic nation with fewer philanthropic interventions, cutting rates have decreased by almost half. Why? Nobody really knows!
So I was gratified to read Peter Buffett's Sunday Times op-ed, which shines a powerful light on the problem of philanthropy disconnected from political and economic systems: "Because of who my father is, I’ve been able to occupy some seats I never expected to sit in. Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left."
Yes. Buffett doesn't explain how to solve this problem, but one place to start is with evidence. He complains that microfinance, for example, "feeds the beast" of the Western "system of debt and repayment with interest." This is a rather quixotic critique. The real problem with microfinance is that the most credible research finds that behind the heartwarming anecdotes of single moms who launch hatmaking businesses, these loans have no broad track record of success in lifting the poorest of the poor out of poverty, and in fact end up saddling many families with debt they cannot repay. A far better idea is for charities and governments to simply redistribute free money — no strings attached — to the poor.
Another solution is to ask where the non-profit sector is truly the most effective actor, and where less corrupt government–supported by progressive taxation–must step in to solve deep-seated social and economic problems. The Buffetts are liberals who support higher taxes on people like themselves, though for some reason Peter Buffett doesn't mention the word "taxes" in this op-ed. Nor does he mention government regulation of international corporate labor and manufacturing practices, which could help solve some of the most pressing problems of poverty in the developing world.
Dylan Matthews has an interesting report about a group of young American and British professionals with progressive social values and high-paying jobs in finance and tech. The subjects of the piece are unusual because they are giving away between a quarter and a half of their incomes each year, typically to health and anti-poverty charities operating in sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, inspired by the philosopher Peter Singer, they say they have chosen handsomely paid jobs, like high-frequency trading, because they aspire to give away as much money as they can.
I'm a fan of some of the organizations, like GiveDirectly and GiveWell, that are loosely part of this movement toward ethical, high-impact giving, with few or no requirements for the individual recipients of aid. Yet I worry about an ethical stance in which any career choice is socially responsible, as long as one pledges to give generously to charity. The fact is, the number of people who choose to make millions in order to give money away is infinitesimal; the ability to donate generously is usually cited as a guilty liberal's justification for richly rewarded work in fields, like finance, that can be defined by bad social values, such as lobbying for lower corporate tax rates, taking advantage of low-income consumers right here in the United States, and bad labor practices. That's not to say progressives should never work on Wall Street or for Big Food/Pharma/Tech; indeed, we need social justice-committed people within those fields to argue and work for ethical change. But the ethical behavior must go beyond individual philanthropy itself and toward efforts to make corporations better American and global citizens.
It turns out that the deliciously-named Jason Richwine, author of an anti-immigration reform paper from the Heritage Foundation, is also the author of a 2009 Harvard public policy dissertation called "IQ and Immigration Policy," which claims that because Latinos are genetically intellectually inferior to whites and Asians, their immigration to the U.S. should be tightly restricted. Richwine has also contributed to a white nationalist website called AlternativeRight.com.
The human brain remains, in many crucial aspects, a mystery to science. So what is IQ? It is a measure of the capacity to learn in the linear fashion prized by Western culture, and we know that it is partially determined by genetics. Yet in the life of the average, individual human, those "innate" genes are vastly, vastly overpowered by the effects of environment: decent nutrition; an emotionally stable, vocabulary-rich home life; physically and emotionally attentive parents; good schools and teachers. Those factors tend to be in shorter supply among high-poverty populations. Claiming that such populations are genetically inferior ignores about a century of research and writing on the malleability of IQ and the proper uses of intelligence assessments.
Alfred Binet, the French psychologist who invented IQ testing, made quite clear that his exams could not draw conclusions about the difference in innate ability between two individuals from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Little has changed. In 1995, after the tempest around Charles Murray's The Bell Curve, Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman summarized what is known about intelligence, race, class, and heritability. The consensus is that IQ can help distinguish between the capacities of "within-group" individuals–for example, two upper-middle class American Jewish girls who attended good public schools and then Brown University. However:
1. IQ supremacists claim IQ is a measure of innate ability. Yet IQ tests are actually achievement exams, which, in Heckman's words, can be "manipulated by educational interventions." If a child is asked during an IQ assessment to memorize and repeat a long string of numbers, she will do a better job if she has an excellent math teacher or if her dad helps her with her math homework at night — if, in other words, she has had the opportunity to gain confidence around numbers.
2. If two race-similar individuals are compared, the person with the higher IQ will often have superior social outcomes. He is more likely to graduate high school or get a high-paying job. Yet the evidence suggests that IQ itself–as opposed to all the other social factors correlated with IQ, like parental income–is responsible for only a small fraction of this difference in achievement. Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but correlation does not imply causation.
3. IQ is one predictor of success on the labor market, but it is not the only or even the most important factor. Social skills and work ethic are not measured by IQ, yet can be substantially improved through education and training, especially if that training is received in childhood.
4. We know socioeconomic factors influence intelligence, but our measures of those factors are crude. For example, a nutritious diet increases cognitive function, but we don't know by exactly how much. If we get better at isolating and measuring such effects, it might turn out that genetic intelligence is even less important than we assume.
One of the books I recommend most often is The Big Test by Nick Lemann. He shows how wave after wave of new immigrants, including white immigrants, were assumed to be innately stupid, in part because of their initial bad scores on IQ exams. This is true even of those groups, like Jews, whom we think of as "smart" today. Here Lemann writes about IQ tests given to World War I recruits, and the way the scores were intepreted by Carl Campbell Brigham, a Princeton psychologist who became an author of the SAT:
On the Army IQ tests, Nordics scored higher than Alpines, who scored higher than Mediterraneans. The test results as a whole were like a photograph of American culture, so faithfully did they reproduce the social order. Officers scored higher than enlisted men, the native-born scored higher than the foreign-born, less recent immigrants scored higher than more recent immigrants, and whites scored higher than Negroes. There were ironclad natural laws at work here, Brigham felt, and he warned that wishful thinkers who pretended otherwise were deluding themselves–writing, for example, "Our figures, then, would rather tend to disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent." Brigham's stern conclusion was this: "American intelligence is declining, and will proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial admixture becomes more and more extensive…These are the plain, if somewhat ugly, facts that our study shows."
The social and cognitive science has improved since then. But somehow, Richwine didn't get the memo, so we keep rehashing these noxious old arguments.
Update: Via Twitter, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross points out that in his dissertation, Richwine does discuss the Brigham research. He concludes that Brigham unfairly discriminated against certain white immigrant groups, since those groups, like Italians, now perform equally to Northern European Americans on today's more sophisticated IQ tests. This is from page 20:
Richwine recognizes Brigham's bias toward certain white people. Yet he assumes that innate genetic traits are responsible for Latino's lower IQ scores over the past several decades, as opposed to the many socioeconomic realities described above and acknowledged as far-greater predictors of IQ. Richwine writes that since Asians are both poor and do well on IQ tests, this destroys the argument that poverty accounts for Latino's lower scores. Yet poverty is not a monolithic phenomenon. It differs culturally, across the globe, in terms of how much emphasis is put on academic learning. Ex; Until Reconstruction, it was illegal in the American south to teach black people to read. Chinese culture has emphasized success on written civil service examinations for over a millenium. Some Latino teenagers arrive in American public schools nearly illiterate in Spanish; they come from agricultural communities in countries where anything beyond an elementary education is off-limits to the very poor. Comparing Asians to Latinos is thus exactly the sort of "out-group" analysis that Heckman and Binet warned about.
I've worked in offices for small magazines, large media companies, and think tanks. So I know there's a lot about office culture that sucks: useless meetings, crackberries that ruin your precious out-of-the-office hours, and sometimes an assumption that whoever stays latest or arrives earliest is working hardest. In New York, there's competitive dressing. In DC, there are old-school dress codes, as if everyone were about to meet with a senator, any minute now! A lot of this is absurd. I'm a huge believer in flex time for office workers. There's nothing about the hours 9-7 that make them especially productive; a lot of us get more done in the evenings, or while fighting insomnia, or at sunrise. And the occasional guilt-free day of working from home is priceless: the quiet, the pajamas, the home-cooked lunch. For new parents, people with chronic health conditions, or people who serve as caretakers for sick or elderly relatives, having the ability to work from home at least some of the time can mean the difference between being able to hold down a job and being forced to quit.
So I sympathize with those who are outraged over Marissa Mayer's decision to put the kibosh on work-from-home arrangements at Yahoo. It's insulting to employees to suggest that the only legitimate reason to stay home is "for the cable guy," and Mayer does sound like kind of a nightmare boss, counting the cars in the corporate parking lot at 5 pm. Because women tend to disproportionately handle child care and other domestic responsibilities, it is very likely that female employees will be especially affected by Yahoo's policy change.
All that said, I'm not sure working from home is feminist nirvana.
I'm a freelance writer — a really lucky one, with a book project, an interesting editorial consulting gig, and frequent magazine assignments. I love what I do. But working from home is by far the hardest and least enjoyable part of my professional life. For one thing, it's lonely, isolating, and, at least in my case, challenging for my physical and emotional health. I often get so caught up in my indoor responsibilities that I forget to get fresh air, put on real clothing, take a walk, or talk to other human beings. At The Awl, Ken Layne pretty much nails what this can feel like.
And here's the thing. For a woman, being stuck inside "the home" all day–a space traditionally coded as female, one that many women hold themselves to high standards to care for–can be especially stultifying. Here are some of the things I can do, in my home, when I'm supposed to be writing my book: Laundry. Emptying the dishwasher. Booking a hotel reservation for a friend's wedding. Cleaning the toilet. Shopping for and preparing a healthy, low-carb, high-protein dinner for my boyfriend and me. (This morning, I've already done several of these chores, and it's only 11 am.)
No one is forcing me to take sole responsibility for these tasks. If I don't do them when I'm "working from home," they will still get done. My boyfriend and I will split them up, or do them together. But here's the thing: It's really hard for me to be at home and ignore my domestic to-do list. I have a voice in my head telling me that until my apartment is neat, clean, and stocked with fresh food, it's perfectly okay to procrastinate on my real jobs, the ones for which I get paid: reporting, writing, and editing. After nearly three years of freelancing, I've learned that I shouldn't work from home more than one or two days per week. I now commute from Brooklyn into "the city" almost every morning, to work at the New York Public Library on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. Yes: I voluntarily spend my days in midtown Manhattan, eat lunch at the ubiquitous Hale & Hearty Soups, and dodge tourists in the subway.
Granted, I don't have children yet. And if I'm still freelancing when I do, I know my flexible schedule will make parenthood much easier. Yet I have many freelancer female colleagues, a few years older than me, who admit that a big professional challenge is learning to turn off their mom selves and simply get to work (luckily, work they love). They are some of the people who helped me realize that even if you "work from home," you have to work outside your home often, and if that means scrimping for a babysitter, a coworking space, or a $104 monthy Metrocard, it's totally worth it, if you're privileged enough to be able to afford it.
So here's my tentative conclusion. Flex-time is a feminist issue. Working from home full time? Maybe not so much. And here are some very definite feminist issues: Access to high-quality, affordable childcare. Paid sick leave, maternity leave, and paternity leave. Male partners who pull their weight at home.
Yesterday I got to meet and interview Bill Gates, along with five other writers and reporters. We sat around a conference table at a midtown Manhattan hotel. Gates, wearing a totally unassuming gray suit and sipping Diet Coke out of a glass bottle, was business like and to the point. His passion flared up a few times during the hour-long conversation. He vehemently pushed back against economist and blogger Tyler Cowen's suggestion that macroeconomic and population growth, as well as better roads and other infrastructure, could bring faster humanitarian relief to Africa than more direct health interventions like vaccinations or contraceptives, which the Gates Foundation funds. Discussing the bleak living conditions in the Central African Republic and Yemen, Gates said, "If you don't invest in health there, you're a cold-hearted bastard." In a rare personal comment, he discussed how one of his daugthers was moved by video footage of a child survivor of polio limping down a dirt road. "What did you do to help her?" she asked her dad — an insightful comment, since Gates said he feels growing concern about the survivors of once-deadly childhood diseases like malaria and polio, who often arrive at school with cognitive delays that make it difficult to learn.
On education, I think a few of Gates' comments broke news. He hinted that his foundation may soon invest resources in alternate rankings of American colleges, saying the true metric for success in higher education should be whether a school accepts a student "with a combined SAT score of 600, and they got $100,000 jobs, and they're super happy." In response to several questions from yours truly, he also discussed standardized testing and teacher evaluation at length, particulary in non-traditional subjects such as art and music. Gates said he isn't sure if good tests can be created in the arts, and he called Florida's plan to move forward quickly with such non-traditional testing "crazy," as well as something that could create a popular backlash against education reform.
In response to Jason Kottke, Gates briefly addressed his reputation as one of the world's most celebrated college drop-outs, and I thought his comments were interesting considering the backlash against college coming from Peter Thiel and some other Silicon Valley luminaries, who tend to imagine upper middle class kids and the Ivy League when they hear the words "higher education." First, Gates correctly pointed out that community colleges and four-year public universities make up "the heart and soul of education in America," and that those schools are currently operating under severe budget constraints, which hinder their ability to move the working poor into the middle class. Second, he said the number of successful tech entrepreneurs or programmers without a college degree is "a rounding error, that's why it's so mythic," and added that he had enjoyed college and "I'm just about as fake a drop out as you can get," since he loves lectures and left Harvard only to pursue the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to launch Microsoft.
Lastly, in response to Jacob Weisberg, Gates addressed the potential of MOOCs–massive online open courses–to transform higher education, saying such classes would not live up to their full potential unless they enroll more low-income students and provide some sort of counseling or support to guide students through completing the MOOC and ultimately attaining some sort of credential. Currently, most MOOCs are seeing drop-out rates of up to 80 percent, and are reaching a fairly privileged audience.
Head on over to The Atlantic to read my full report.
This morning I told you about my new Atlantic article about GiveDirectly, a charity that distributes cash to poor families in Kenya, and allows them to spend the money on whatever they want. The recipients are chosen not because they have demonstrated any kind of favored behavior, like enrolling their children in school, but simply because they are among the poorest people in their rural villages, living in homes made of mud or thatch and frequently going without enough food. They are generally spending their new income on worthwhile causes, like food and weatherproof roofs.
Yet conditional cash transfer programs are more politcally palatable across the world than unconditional ones like GiveDirectly, whether they are pursued by philanthropies or governments. Why? Because, as this beautiful Reuters piece demonstrates, much public policy rests on the assumption that there are two kinds of poor people: the deserving poor and the undeserving. Deserving poor people work, even if the wages they earn are less than the costs of child or health care. They endure cumbersome bureaucratic processes to seek child support from the absent fathers of their children, even if those fathers are in jail, drug addicted, or otherwise unable to provide for their kids. They open college savings accounts, even if they need 100 percent of their monthly income just to cover the costs of housing and food. They attend classes on why it's important to get married.
In the United States, government tells a small group of poor people — typically mothers of young children — that if they fulfill such requirements, they can receive, for a discrete period of time, a small amount of supplemental monthly income. Childless adults and the longterm non-working, non-disabled poor are almost completely excluded from social welfare efforts in many states.
No matter how much economic research we cite showing that unconditional cash income and savings improve the lives of poor people and their children, it will remain politically difficult to tell taxpayers that we aren't going to require anything from the recipients of social welfare. That's because most of us assume poor people need to learn how to best help themselves. The radical premise of GiveDirectly is that poor people already know, much better than their governments or a charity director, what they need.
Which assumption is true? Should governments and non-profits use the promise of cash to attempt to train or educate the poor out of poverty? Or should a basic income be understood as a matter of human dignity?
It's holiday giving season. Would you donate cash to a poor family, and let them spend it on whatever they wish? That's the radically simple premise of the new philanthropy GiveDirectly, which I report on today at The Atlantic:
GiveDirectly remains an outlier in the development arena, perhaps the only organization that distributes private donations, made online, directly to the poor with no strings attached–no requirement to launch a business or to immunize one's child; no distribution of bed nets, solar lanterns, orgoats.
The economics might be sound. But the politics within the non-profit world are more complicated. Niehaus, now a professor at the University of San Diego, says other development experts who have tested unconditional cash transfers are enthusiastic about the approach. The trouble is convincing NGOs to invest in such programs beyond the pilot stages.
"We had conversations with people [in the non-profit sector] who said there was a lot of internal resistance to unconditional transfers," Niehaus told me. "If this works, what are we all here for? Why do we have jobs? There's an industry that exists that tries to make decisions for poor people and determine what's best for them. In some ways, that's the industry I came from. But the value of that hasn't been proven."

domain: sociology


In the week when SA learnt that 2.2-million jobs were lost in the second quarter, one could easily have written it off as another of a long list of similarly depressing weeks.
But President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government, under mounting pressure to make public a post-lockdown economic revival plan, managed to pull off a hat-trick of wins.
On Wednesday, the day after Stats SA data laid bare the lockdown jobs catastrophe, the Hawks began swooping on alleged masterminds behind a scheme to siphon more than R250m from the state through a corrupt tender to audit and remove lung cancer-causing asbestos roofing on homes in the Free State.
Senior government officials and business people were taken into custody during an operation over the 2014 tender, and are facing 60 charges covering corruption, fraud and money laundering.
At more or less the same time, former senior MP Vincent Smith was arrested to face charges that he looked the other way when Bosasa, now African Global, ripped off nearly R50m from SA Police Service tenders in exchange for R800,000 in kickbacks.
It’s good to see suspects such as Smith and Edwin Sodi, an ANC funder known for flaunting his allegedly ill-gotten wealth with flashy cars and expensive properties, are facing charges. But importantly, it has given us hope that the Hawks and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) are making progress in rebuilding the agencies, which were almost hollowed out by the corruption cancer that corroded almost every layer of the government under the despicable state-capture project.
Credit to Ramaphosa for amending regulations that barred law-enforcement agencies from working with the Zondo commission, which has heard testimony from dozens of witnesses about how government officials conspired with the private sector to engage in widespread corruption.
Until July 2020, commission staff were bound to secrecy and prohibited from sharing information they obtained in the course of their work, even with law-enforcement agencies.
It’s unclear if the NPA contacted the commission's investigators to obtain information, records or documents related to the Free State asbestos project, but one would imagine it would have been prudent to do so, considering its limited resources and mounting frustration that Shamila Batohi, appointed head of the NPA late in 2018, has not yet conducted high-profile prosecutions.
Ramaphosa also gave us a reason to tip our hats on Wednesday when the telecoms regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of SA, finally outlined plans to auction R8bn worth of broadband spectrum-invisible radio frequencies on which wireless signals travel.
The release of the spectrum, which essentially means better-quality service with fewer dropped calls and faster download speeds, will free up much-needed airwaves and lower the cost of internet connectivity, which is among the most expensive in the world and has been blamed partly for SA’s sluggish economic growth over the last decade.
It’s been low-hanging fruit unpicked for too long in promised structural reforms. The cost of kicking the can down the road on issuing spectrum and other reforms has given Ramaphosa an unwelcome record of presiding over an economy that shrunk in seven out of 10 quarters since he took over in 2018.
Also encouraging was an announcement by agriculture, land reform & rural development minister Thoko Didiza that the government plans to lease 700,000ha of farmland to black farmers. This is a significant acceleration of its land-reform programme, something that should have happened years ago and would have helped avoid the harm caused by the debate on constitutional amendments to facilitate expropriation without compensation.
As we wait for the president to make a post-lockdown economic recovery plan public, it was good to see the Hawks swinging into action, Icasa stepping up to remove the long-standing economic impediment and Didiza advancing plans to reverse some of the deep inequalities plaguing SA.
Let’s hope this is just the start.
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A man allegedly found with 17 grammes of cannabis in his possession after being searched by police at roadblock on the Linden/ Soesdyke High-way, was yesterday remanded by a city court.
It was yesterday alleged that on November 10, 2018, on the Linden/ Soesdyke Highway, Peter Patterson had in his possession 17 grammes of cannabis for the purpose of trafficking.
Patterson pleaded not guilty to the offence, which was read to him in the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court before Principal Magistrate Judy Latchman.
The police prosecutor objected to bail based on the seriousness of the offence.
The facts in relation to the matter stated that on the said date, at about 14:15 hrs, the vehicle in which Patterson was travelling was stopped at a roadblock which had been set up by police. During the exercise, a search was reportedly conducted on Patterson and the substance, suspected to be cannabis, was found in his right pocket.
Patterson was remanded to prison and was told to report to the Linden Magistrate’s Court for his next hearing on November 21.


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Dec 21, 2012, 1:46 PM EDT
In this edition of the podcast, Kurt Helin and I sit down to discuss the state of the Heat after their blowout win in Dallas on Thursday, as well as the Thunder and their 12-game winning streak coming to an end at the hands of the Timberwolves.
We then talk about the Finals rematch between those two teams that’ll take place on Christmas Day, along with a look ahead to Lakers-Knicks and Clippers-Nuggets, who will also match up as part of the holiday’s slate of games.
All that, plus a conversation with Jared Dudley of the Phoenix Suns, whose recent play has helped his team string together four straight victories.
Click the link below to listen in your browser, or right-click to download to listen at your convenience.
- Should NBA coaches get NFL style challenge flags? 11
- Report: Suns discussing trade possibilities for Eric Bledsoe 16
- Report: Sixers may look to trade for Amar’e Stoudemire at this season’s deadline 29
- Kevin Durant reiterates that rest was his reason for withdrawing from Team USA 9
- Kobe Bryant says he will not be same player as before, says he’s evolved into something equally good 20
- Report: Agent for Greg Monroe pursued sign-and-trade deals with five teams, including Thunder and Blazers 25
- Derrick Rose sits out another Team USA practice, not likely to start Wednesday 23
- DeMarcus Cousins practices with team USA Tuesday, says he’s 50-50 for Wednesday game 2

domain: sports


Brazil trip 2010 —The slaty bristlefront is a member of the tapaculos, the Neotropical bird family Rhinocryptidae. It inhabits the forests of south-east Brazil. It is currently becoming rare due to habitat loss, especially to the lowland forests.
The puna tapaculo is a species of bird in the Rhinocryptidae family. It is found in Bolivia and Peru. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist montane forests and subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland. Numerous species in the Rhinocryptidae (TAPACULO) family
Chucao Tapaculo (Scelorchilus rubecula) formerly placed in the Rhinocryptidae family, but recent research indicates they may be better merged into the Formicariidae as tribe Rhinocryptini (closer to the antthrushes than either is to the true antpittas). It's found in Argentina & Chile- Its natural habitat is temperate forests -diet of the dominated by invertebrates & fruits-shows a pattern of aggressiveness & territoriality towards the other species of tapaculos in the forest of southern…
Perija Tapaculo (Scytalopus perijanus) is a newly identified species found in the humid mountains and elfin forests of northwestern Venezuela & northern Colombia.


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Our Political Homelife
183cm x 123cm, Acrylic over 9 canvases
The idea for this new series of paintings was from me feeling increasingly offended and amused by the reasoning against allowing LGBT people the same marital rights as heterosexuals. It felt so invasive, however well wrapped in reasonable language; at the more tolerant end of the scale it was simply not an institution for us to enter into through to LGBT people controlling the weather.
The images in this series come from the question “What on earth do they think we get up to at home?!” and I found it funny trying to combine hugely mundane / boring daily domestic tasks and making them odd by throwing sex or horror into the action.
‘Washing Up’ shows a self portrait washing up a ladle spoon but in his constant sexual state the simple task becomes an orgasmic frenzy ejaculating soap suds all over the nice clean counter. ‘Ja’ in Germany is a budget range of grocery items.
‘Sit Down Wee’ shows a self-portrait having a sit down wee. Domesticity is so deranged by this perversion of the norm that it is difficult to clarify whether that is his fiancée simply having a shower in the background or whether it is a threatening intruder.
‘Midnight Feast’ shows a self portrait getting a midnight snack meanwhile even the vegetables are at it with the peppers and the artichoke gang banging half an onion.


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"Current and delivering an important message, Last Pick is a must-read. Highly recommended." — CM: Canadian Review of Materials
Last Pick shows how determination can help overcome obstacles — even bullying. Growing up with a developmental condition that left her clumsy in both movement and speech, Jazz was teased and never had the chance to play team sports. Now rid of her symptoms, Jazz is ready to play basketball at her Vancouver junior high, but the reappearance of an old bully makes her question herself and tempts her to let down the team that is counting on her. With a focus on ability and team loyalty, Last Pick emphasizes teamwork and countering bullying with fairness and forgiveness.
About the author
David Starr is a prize-winning author of five previous books. In The Nor’Wester, he told Duncan’s story of fleeing Scotland to Canada, where he joins Simon Fraser on his epic 1808 voyage by canoe down the Fraser. Bombs to Books chronicles the stories of refugee children and their families coming to B.C. Golden Goal and Golden Game are young adult soccer-themed books for reluctant readers. The Insider’s Guide to K–12 Education in B.C. is a resource guide for parents about the B.C. school system. David grew up in Fort St. James in northern British Columbia, and he now lives in Greater Vancouver with his wife, four children and a dog named Buster. He is one of the UBC Faculty of Education’s Top 100 Graduates and a school administrator in Metro Vancouver. For further information and readings availability, visit www.davidstarr.org.
"Current and delivering an important message, Last Pick is a must-read. Highly recommended."
CM: Canadian Review of Materials


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What a beautiful day Sunday was. We decided to take a drive, and as we made our way East along the Columbia river, John casually suggested that we stop somewhere along the way and take a short hike.
My goodness. We chose a whopper of a place to walk. Take a look:
Unbelievably, yes. I hiked high enough to take these pictures myself.
Even though I went farther than I thought possible, I didn't make it to the top. Ah, well. Perhaps next time.
Going down was much easier than hiking up.

domain: geography


David Haye has insisted that he isn't angered by Tony Bellew's jibes about the injury he sustained in defeat to Wladimir Klitschko.
Haye removed his boot after being out-pointed in 2011 in pursuit of Klitschko's world heavyweight championships, revealing a toe injury which has frequently been mocked by his upcoming Sky Sports Box Office opponent, Bellew.
Bellew exclusively told Sky Sports before filming a must-watch The Gloves Are Off: "'Sore toe' is his favourite thing to say, isn't it? If you can lose a fight and blame your little toe afterwards then you've got a serious, serious problem."
Haye was unmoved, responding later: "He can bring it up if he wants, it doesn't bother me. He can replay the interview after the fight on loop as he sleeps."
Bellew had previously teased that Haye has no "true friends", and that his trainer Shane McGuigan is "in awe" of the former heavyweight champion. McGuigan bit back, suggesting Bellew "might run" in the early rounds to avoid the dangerous Haye.


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Two Frosties agreed to share the warming strategies they successfully used in coping with their Raynaud's for our Fall 2021 Member Tips post.
This November our Sponsor at G-Tech Apparel is offering X of its heated products in the G-Tech November 2021 Hand Warmer Giveaway.
Our theme for this October's Raynaud's Awareness Month campaign is "Raynaud's is Far From Rare." It's one of the most common medical disorders, yet most people don't even know their pain has a name.
Announcing the October 2021 CosySoles Giveaway Contest. Enter to be one of the lucky Frosties to win these toasty slippers!
The COVID-19 pandemic can be more problematic to those who suffer from Raynaud’s phenomenon, as COVID stress can boost Raynaud’s attacks.


150 State St., Albany,
NY, USA, 12207
Heat pump water heaters also referred to as ‘air-source heat pumps’ use electricity to transfer heat from one place to another instead of generating heat directly. This is achieved by drawing heat from surrounding air and draining it into a tank to heat water at a higher temperature. It works like a refrigerator in reverse and the concept is called vapor compression cycle. This leads to consumption of 60-70% lesser energy than conventional electric resistance water heaters which make heat pump heaters more efficient by saving energy, saving money and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Also, in wringing the heat from air, HPWHs are known to both cool and dehumidify the air that passes through them which helps in meeting space-conditioning needs during cooling seasons.
The global heat pump water heater market is expected to grow at an exponential CAGR in the years to come.
The growth of this market is attributed towards major relying factors including; the rising global energy consumption coupled with the recovery in housing sector, the increasing supportive regulations and grants for using renewable sources of energy in different applications, the shifting focus towards usage of renewable energy in order to minimize climatic changes and environmental degradation etc.
Moreover, heat pump water heaters can be used as part of demand response programs as they provide similar load control options as resistance water heaters, but offer permanent reductions in energy consumption and far better recovery after a peak power reducing event. This makes them highly desirable among different types of users worldwide and thereby contributes in enhancing the market growth.
Additionally, the rising environmental awareness since last few years has led to the spread of highly energy-efficient space and hot water heaters. Consequently, an ongoing shift from traditional combustion-heat source equipment to heat-pump heating that emits less CO2 can be witnessed globally, which in turn promotes the growth of the HPWHs on a larger scale.
Furthermore, factors such as energy efficient technology along with the usage of non conventional sources of energy to heat the water, the widespread adoption and acceptance of geothermal heat pumps owing to their environmental and cost saving benefits coupled with the increasing initiatives from the governments of various countries leading to the growing demand for geothermal heat pumps, the introduction of new and advanced products and services and the increasing integration of Iot with heat pump water heaters are all projected to further fuel the growth of this market.
However, high costs and lack of awareness regarding benefits offered by HPWHs in the developing and underdeveloped economies is projected to restrain the growth of the worldwide heat pump water heater market. These restraints are however expected to be overcome sooner or later by the market players existing in the market with the advent of new advanced technologies and modified versions of the product.
HEAT PUMP WATER HEATER MARKET SEGMENTATION:
By Rated Capacity:
By Storage Tank Capacity:
By End Use Vertical:
The Asia Pacific region is the fastest and the largest regional market for HPWHs and is anticipated to witness massive growth in the forthcoming years. The growth in this region can be attributed to factors such as the increasing use of renewable energy and energy efficient products, the presence of key market players along with their huge bases in the major economies of the region, the growing number of initiatives to enhance the installation of HPWH in order to increase energy efficiency and reduce environmental pollution etc. The major contributors in the region are India and China with Thailand and Malaysia also contributing significantly along with other countries.
FEW KEY PLAYERS IN HEAT PUMP WATER HEATER MARKET:
Timeline Considered for Analysis:
- 2019: Base Year
- 2020 to 2025: Forecast Period
Research Scope and Deliverables
Overview & Executive Summary
Market Drivers, Trends, Challenges and Opportunities
Market Size and Forecast Projections
Macroeconomic Indicators of Various Countries Impacting the Growth of the Market
Extensive Coverage of Industry Players including Recent Product Launches and Market Activities
Porter’s Five Force Analysis
Market Segmentation Analysis:
Industry report analyzes the global heat pump water heater market by the following segments:
Customization: We also offers customization’s in the industry report as per the company’s specific needs.
Key Questions Answered in the Global Heat Pump Water Heater Industry Report
The report offers a comprehensive insight on the Heat Pump Water Heaters Market share, competitor landscape, market trends, growth, revenue, and key driver’s analysis with coverage of key players, top geographies, product types and end user.
Exhaustive secondary research and in-depth primary interviews with industry experts has been conducted to present qualitative and quantitative insights in the report.
We offer customizations as per client’s specific needs.