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1 - 20 United States businesses Add Your Business and Get Found - Free!
Alpaca Your Bags Travel
Our name is funny, but our service is not: We plan amazing family vacations, honeymoons and destination weddings in the Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii.
Modern Romance Travel
Modern Romance Travel believes in creating memories that will last a lifetime. We guide our clients to help them make magical moments that will last forever.
Bliss Honeymoons is a boutique travel agency specializing in romance travel.
Opal Cruises LLC
Opal Cruises LLC is specialized in providing excellent service to its clients in the realms of business event planning, incentive travel, meetings Cruises and tours, showcasing the best of selected destinations worldwide.
Out of Box Marketing Solutions, LLC
Out of Box Events and Weddings is a full service wedding planning company that specializes in Destination weddings, to the Bahamas, and Special Events and Weddings in Miami FL.
Whether you are planning a destination wedding, honeymoon cruise or just a weekend getaway, we are the first choice for quality vacations.
Complete travel services for business and leisure travelers since 1984. High-touch service from seaoned professionals who are dedicated to planning and protecting successful travel experiences.
The Tropical Travelers
Your Tropical Paradise Does Exist and We Know Where to Find It! The Tropical Travelers is an award-winning travel concierge service specializing in luxury travel to tropical destinations. Visit http://thetropicaltravelers.com or call us at 800.479.0949.
Islandspree has been in business for 11 years, with over 20 years of industry experience.
We have successfully planned many large destination weddings with over 250 guests, as well as countless other vacations packages such as family reunions.
CruiseOne - Rosemary Danielsen, ACC
CruiseOne is a travel agency that specializes in hassle-free group travel across the globe. Whether it's a class reunion, a family get-together or a wedding at sea, we help you create vacation memories that last a lifetime.
Travel Leaders and Cruises
Travel Leaders is a full service travel agency with over 25 years of travel experience. We are certified in all types of travel including: Walt Disney vacations, cruises, group trips, mission trips, tours, destination weddings and honeymoons.
Luxe Travel Deals is a premiere luxury travel agency located in Milwaukee, WI. For over 27 years, Luxe Travel Deals has provided a rich depth of travel knowledge and exemplary customer relationship skills to our clients.
Kim Hope Smith travel
Wedding and Honeymoon Specialist! Full service website, take virtual tours, plan, compare prices and book your special trip from one easy to use web site. Sign up for your Free Honeymoon registry when you book your Honeymoon with Kim Hope Smith Travel
We are the experts in planning beach vacations, honeymoons and weddings to Cancun, Riviera Maya, and Cozumel. With over 20 years of travel industry expertise and know-how, we bring our clients the best selection of vacation deals and personalized care.
Travelwizard.com: The Sophisticated Traveler's Vacation Connection. Our Travel Advisors provide professional, person to person luxury service, saving you precious time and delivering true value.
A Girl's Gotta Go
A Girl's Gotta Go, LLC is an award-winning luxury full service travel agency with expert Travel Specialists available to help you plan your trip for that momentous occasion, destination wedding, honeymoon, the milestone birthday and more.
Love Life Designs LLC.
A romantic decorating and design firm helping busy couples keep the romance active and alive! We are committed to finding new ways to keep the romance alive and well within committed relationships. Celebrate your love with a Love Life Design.
Symphony Travel, Inc.
Symphony Travel, Inc. is a boutique travel consulting firm established in 2006 specializing in creating custom itineraries to Belize for honeymoons, destination weddings, small groups, adventure, and upscale adult travel.
Palm Springs Rendezvous
An incredible 1950's Bed & Breakfast that combines the character of the 1950's with the modern amenities travelers expect. For unparalleled service, amazing food, and nearly unlimited sunshine... Experience Rendezvous!
Black Bag Travel
Taking you to the world and more! We are your full service on-line travel agency with access to hundreds of vendors from budget to luxury. We search to find you the best options for your vacation and want to be sure you have a trip to remember.


This is a Whipple Intercooled Supercharger System with a W175FF 2.9L setup for the VE VF 6.0L & 6.2L LS & LSA which will get you a 220+ rear wheel horsepower gain! That is over 575 rwhp! This is the tuner kit which will require a custom tune done locally after you install the kit, and does not include a fuel system, programmer, or tuning.
Horsepower gain: 220+ rwhp
W175FF 2.9L supercharger head unit, 9-10 psi
Highly effective air-to-water intercooler
Fuel Pump Supplied: NONE Supplied
Fuel Injectors Supplied: NONE Supplied
Computer/Ignition Mods.: NONE Supplied
The most power per pound of boost on the market!
Easy and quick installation
Significantly outflows competitors 1.9L Roots-Type & 2.3L Twin-Screw; Most Efficient Twin-Screw Supercharger On The Market
All Necessary Parts & Hardware For Installation
No Internal Modifications Required
8 Rib Drive Upgrade with 10% OD Balancer
VCM Style OTR
Injectors to suit your build and boost level
KIT REQUIRES FUEL SYSTEM & TUNING.* VE series vehicles will require ECUWEST’s reduced height engine mounts to ensure sufficient bonnet clearance. Kits do not include injectors – we can supply injectors to suit your application. Kits work best with the relevant supporting modifications i.e. 2″ headers and full exhausts, fuel system upgrades, blower spec camshaft upgrades, forged rotating assemblies for high boost applications.


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Jazz Sabbath, Vol. 2
Reimaging catalogues from classic rock artists into the jazz context seems to be a growing trend of mixed results. The latest record to attempt this impressive feat is Jazz Sabbath, Vol. 2 the sophomore release from Jazz Sabbath, a Black Sabbath tribute jazz band. Their latest album includes seven tracks, ranging from absolute classics to deep cuts, all rearranged into jazz.
Opening with “Paranoid”, Jazz Sabbath sets the tone for the record with a piano-led jazz track that lends itself to a New Orleans ragtime flair. The band seamlessly injects solos in between passages that replicated Tony Iommi’s hard-hitting riffs and Ozzy Osbourne’s iconic melodies. In many ways, the arrangement of the classic Sabbath hit is sublime, organic, and, at times, brilliant. The same could be said about “Snowblind” – another riff-heavy song shifted into a melodic and softer jazz style. While both tracks are a great example of the strengths of Jazz Sabbath, both suffer from the same thing: they feel safe, without even a sense of minor risk. With such refined arrangements, there seems to be little improvisational energy to the songs. As a result, they almost drag on, feeling longer than they should.
This is not to discredit the songwriting or performance of the team behind Jazz Sabbath, Vol. 2. The record carries a cinematic feel to it, one which elevates Black Sabbath’s work into a sonic sphere that is equally influenced by both jazz and classical music. For this, “Behind The Wall Of Sleep” and “Symptom Of The Universe” shine as two of the strongest musical offerings on the album. Additionally, the up-tempo swing of “Sabbra Cadabra” proves to be yet another high point among Jazz Sabbath, Vol. 2.
With a distinctly compositional feel, Jazz Sabbath, Vol. 2 soars as a strong series of adaptations which see proto-metal and hard rock riffs transformed into expansive and melodic motifs. This very strength, at the core of the album, is also where its weakness lies. Due to its cinematic and composition-like approach to adaption and songwriting, many elements of jazz, such as improvisation, feels absent from the album. In this regard, Jazz Sabbath, Vol. 2 is a very sterile jazz record, yet it would not feel out of place on a film score. Regardless, the musicality that is found on this record – both among the songwriting/adaptations and performers – is very strong, making Jazz Sabbath’s latest release a unique musical experience.
SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: JAZZ SABBATH – JAZZ SABBATH, VOL. 2

domain: entertainment


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MUSHROOM and tarragon Penne
Free ham?! i’ll go for my twist on a carbonara; ham, mushrooms, garlic, onion and tarragon, sautéed with two tablespoons of crème fraîche stirred through before tossing in gloriously al dente penne. this makes enough for four servings, and all for under a fiver.
TOP TIP: For added depth of flavour I add a splash of white wine while sautéing the garlic and onions.

domain: food


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With another strong performance in the 100-yard breaststroke, Schaffer became the second swimmer in school history to reach the Division II state championships, which will be held on Thursday and Friday at the C.T. Branin Natatorium at McKinley High School in Canton.
At Friday’s district championship meet at the Samuel M. Cooper Natatorium in Bowling Green, Schaffer swam to his seed. With a time of 1:00.53, he finished second to earn one of two automatic spots in the 24-person state field in the event.
The time is a new school record and personal best for Schaffer, who joined Gabe Dauch (2014 graduate) as the only two swimmers from the school to reach state.
Schaffer will be joined in the event by Willard’s Nicholas Bauer, who a year ago became the first swimmer in Willard history to qualify for Canton.
Bauer finished fourth in the district race in 1:01.66, which was good for an at-large selection to state.
Schaffer was battling a shoulder issue on Friday and sat out the 200 IM so he could compete in the breaststroke. He also helped set yet another school record with the 200 medley relay team that finished ninth out of 24 teams.
The quartet of Andrew Schaffer, Jarret Schaffer, Patrick Matlack and Gavin Moffit swam to a school record time of 1:43.19.
“Overall, I am extremely pleased with the hard work and dedication that these athletes have given to this team,” St. Paul coach Stacy Stoll said. “I am proud of each of them in how far they have come and I’m very excited for what the future holds for St. Paul.
“It will be very exciting to watch Nicholas Bauer compete in the breaststroke with Jarret, too,” she added.
Preliminaries for the Division II boys swims are scheduled for 5 p.m. Thursday.

domain: sports


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Demi’s dynamic stage hair and makeup shows off her thick brunette strands and ability to carry a statement lip look like a pro!
At the 2012 People’s Choice Awards Demi Lovato went from red carpet sleek to on-stage sassy. Her voluminous cascade of hair turned up the volume and her red lipstick and full false lashes completed her look. Do you like Demi’s performance beauty look? Vote!
To get Demi’s matte red lips, try L’Oreal Infallible Le Rouge Lipcolor in Ravishing Red. The classic red shade is timeless and the long-lasting formula will take you from the office to evening without reapplying! For Demi’s lashes, go big or go home. This is definitely the time for falsies. Try our recent Editor’s Picks — Sonia Kashuk Full Glam Eyelashes.
Do you think Demi looks best with her hair and makeup styled to show off her big, bold personality or does a soft and sweet look suit her better?
More People’s Choice:

domain: artistic


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Maria Bittner, Pattern Paradise called from New York as part of the Yarn Thing Podcast by Marly Bird’s focus on crochet bloggers.
Maria remembers when she was very young always wanting to craft, playing with a friend who’s aunt brought home scraps from her job in the garment industry and dressing their Barbies. A friend of her mother’s often came to chat and always brought her handwork. When she noticed Maria trying to imitate her, she taught her a few stitches, and later Maria would borrow books from the library or purchase when she could from the local Five & Dime store.
She knew she wanted a business of her own but never found the right fit. Maria’s tradition was always to welcome new babies in the community around her with a blanket and other goodies. A woman who owned a vintage linen shop asked her to create products for sale in her shop. Later, with her son’s encouragement, she sold items online in an Etsy Shop. She was often approached for the patterns to her products and that evolved into her website: https://pattern-paradise.com/
One of the things that Maria’s challenged herself to do with her website was to create a series for her community to participate in. Last year she created the Chameleon Hat and with it she changed the style every month to fit the seasons. This year she is working on a series of patterns using X-stitches.
Maria patterns include tips and tricks, rather than strictly ‘publisher’ written. She finds for herself that she needs a little variety in her written directions.
If you missed hearing the podcast live, it’s archived at it’s original location: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/yarnthing/2015/03/03/maria-bittner-pattern-paradise or in iTunes.


Tennessee House passes bill to ban local, state governments from requiring COVID-19 vaccine
The Tennessee House of Representatives passed a bill banning state and local governments from requiring COVID-19 vaccines.
The legislation, House Bill 13, states that “a law enforcement agency or governmental entity of this state or a local government, or the governor or chief executive of a local government by executive order, shall not force, require, or coerce a person to receive an immunization or vaccination for COVID-19 against the person’s will,” according to the bill’s text.
The bill was passed by a 72-19 vote, and it now heads to the Senate.
The measure would take effect immediately upon the governor’s signing.
The bill comes after the Tennessee Senate passed legislation last week banning “vaccine passports” requiring someone to show proof that they have received the COVID-19 vaccine.
Gov. Bill Lee (R) has said he opposed vaccine passports, and supported the legislation banning them. However, it’s unclear if Lee would sign H.B. 13.
According to WZTV in Nashville, the governor has stressed that getting the vaccine is a personal choice.
Lee was vaccinated in late March, according to The Tennessean.
Tennessee ranks 47th in the nation for the percentage of adults that have received at least one vaccine dose, according to WJHL 11. Only 40.8 percent of the state’s adult population has received at least one dose, compared to 50.4 percent of American adults total.
The Hill has removed its comment section, as there are many other forums for readers to participate in the conversation. We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter.


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The FBI is on the hunt for the so-called “Foothills Bandit.”
School shootings, like the tragedy at Sandy Hook, have had parents and students on edge.
Redondo Beach Police Department Sgt. Michael Martinez said Emma Carter left her home in the 2700 block of 182nd Street Tuesday afternoon following an argument with her mother.
Revelers beware – law enforcement officers will be out in force over the long holiday weekend, on the lookout for impaired drivers.
Law enforcement is working to make sure holiday history does not repeat itself in Hermosa.
The victim, Dalayshia Miles, is described as a black female, approximately 5’7″ and 150 pounds.
Investigators say a suspect is wanted in connection to the burglaries of several homes around Promenade Avenue between Buchanan and McKinley avenues in the past two days.
In a Supreme Court decision Monday, the nation’s highest court ruled it constitutional for law enforcement to take DNA from suspects under arrest without a warrant, a practice legal in California since 2004.
A suspect was fatally injured and a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy sustained a non-life threatening injury during a shooting Thursday night.
Forty-five-year-old Kirk Robert Lotzgesell faced up to three years in prison after pleading guilty in December to a felony count of grand theft.
The robbery occurred at 1:47 p.m. Thursday at Rush A Fix Jewelry-N-Watch Repairs, located just a few blocks from the 710 Freeway on the 400 block of West Willow Street.
RIVERSIDE (CBSLA.com) — Police today arrested a man suspected of robbing two people at gunpoint in Riverside, leading officials at a local high school to put the facility on lockdown. Local law enforcement received a […]
Police have arrested suspects in connection to an armed robbery that occurred at a Home Depot in Alhambra Thursday morning.
A federal jury in Los Angeles has convicted a former South Korean law enforcement officer for trying to smuggle nearly 40,000 phony erectile dysfunction pills into the U.S.
The popular deal-of-the-day website, LivingSocial, was hacked into affecting up to 50 million customers, the company said Friday.

domain: law


Ahh! the dance floor awaits you!
Here is the July dance schedule for Anita's Studio in SW Portland:
9 am- 10:15 am
Come and join the DANCE there is plenty of room on the dance floor.
I look forward to dancing with you in July. I will send out the August schedule towards the end of the month.
See you on the dance floor!


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The ongoing 2017 Latin American Cultural Festival features eight cultural activities and aims to raise the public’s awareness on the region’s overlooked Latin American roots.
Organized by the Macau Association for the Promotion of Exchange between Asia-Pacific and Latin America (MAPEAL), a series of Peruvian cultural activities took place on Tuesday for students, residents and visitors in Macau so that they could learn more about Peruvian culture.
The activities included the Latin American Cultural Seminar and the Latin American Film Shows held at the University of Macau, while a Photo Exhibition titled “Peru’s Memory: 1890 – 1950” and cooking demonstration were held at the Macau Tower.
Gary Ngai, president of the Executive Board of MAPEAL, and Sergio Manuel Avila, Consul General of Peru in Hong Kong and Macau, both stressed that the city should not forget the roots of Macau, and that Portugal and China are not the only counties that should be recognized as important to Macau history.
He argued that as Macau is promoting its links between Portuguese-speaking countries, it should also do the same with Latin American countries.
Speaking to the press, Ngai recalled that culture flowed between Macau and Latin America back in the 16th century through the Maritime Silk Route.
“That makes us now, after 400 years, look back at our history,” he said.
According to Ngai, Macau has a long way to go in acknowledging the influence of the Spanish- speaking countries of the world.
“Here in Macau, they only have contacts with 12 to 14 Latin American countries [in terms of] culture and business. It’s not enough. It’s just a starting point but we have been doing it for 10 years already,” Ngai pointed out.
He added that Macau is the only Chinese city which has these sorts of roots and additionally suggested that it should not disregard its links with Spanish-speaking countries.
“The Latin culture in Macau is deeply rooted but if you don’t show it to the people, they’ll forget,” he noted.
With the wide array of gastronomic offers in Macau, both Ngai and Avila revealed that a Peruvian restaurant will be opened at MGM Cotai, a move that will allow residents to become more aware of Peruvian cuisine.
However, they also expressed the opinion that much support from the government is still needed to open Latin American restaurants in Macau, as it is an initiative that “will take time and will cost money.”
Ngai pointed out that Macau has positioned itself as an international city and expressed hopes that the government would support further cultural initiatives such as the Latin American Cultural Festival. “They should not forget that one of roots here in Macau is the Latin American culture,” Ngai reiterated.
With the festival’s aim of raising the public’s awareness of Macau’s Latin roots, Ngai stressed that if the region forgets certain cultural roots, Macau will only be a part of its neighboring regions.
“If you try to forget this, you make Macau just a small part of Hong Kong or Guangzhou,” Ngai warned.
Avila noted that Spanish- speaking countries have cultural similarities and influence on Macau, even with their different cuisine.
The diplomat stressed that the festival is an opportunity for the younger generations to be aware of the regions’ historical similarities, citing similarities of some churches and residential demographics.
During the festival’s cooking demonstration on Tuesday, the diplomat demonstrated how to prepare traditional Peruvian dishes such as Aji de Gallina and Mazamorra.
Avila also prepared a typical Peruvian dessert Arroz con Leche with quinoa from Peru.
“I was missing Peruvian food during my first diplomat post abroad […] so I started learning how to cook. I wanted to share with the public a little bit of what I’ve learned during the years,” said the diplomat.
For next year’s edition of the festival, Avila hoped that they would be able to create a whole week offering Peruvian cuisines as part of the festival’s gastronomic highlights.
The 2017 Latin American Cultural Festival will run until November 5.

domain: news


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Jake Adam York
POETRY AFTERWORD: THE PLAIN LANGUAGE THESIS
As a participant in, and as a leader of, poetry workshops, over the last decade, I have struggled constantly with what might be called the plain language thesis. In its simplest form, this thesis states that the best poetry is made of the plainest language. It is ramified throughout the communities of discussion: students suggest that their peers tone it down; poets ask their fellows to reconsider a passages artificiality; editors (myself included) return poems, thinking them overwrought; and critics complain of stiffness in a certain book. Each seems to desire something more natural.
The writer who receives any of these comments may feel that her music, his argument or feeling the art the writer has made has been wholly misunderstood. After all, making a new poem means making new choices, working hard toward distinction from other poems. When the writer focuses on his or her effort to mix a new color, any comment that seems to ask for a plainer tone may seem to work against the drive toward the unique. Indeed, such complaint may seem like an attack on poetry itself.
One of the species of this perception is, I think, the discussion of the workshop poem a type of poem lacking in imagination of concept and of language, produced in response to an assignment and finished in the workshop. A casual perusal of a recent Poets Market will uncover a number of directives against submission of workshop poems. An open ear at a writers conference will catch more than one suggestion that the traditional workshop is not the ideal format for encouraging poetic excellence. The idea is that the workshop, by asking students to identify aberrance, actually encourages them to work against any distinct feature of a poem, therefore combating its drive toward uniqueness.
If this were the case, wed all be in a bad place, because the workshop is the dominant feature of creative writing pedagogy. But it seems that poetry in English is as rich today as ever. It is hard to imagine that any era of English literature since the early seventeenth century has known so many distinct styles of poetic achievement. And I believe that the plain language thesis has played an important part in this flowering.
Since the early years of the last century, when Ezra Pound railed against dead Victorian convention and William Carlos Williams adopted the spoken word of his fellows as the basis for his poetic language, the idea of plain language has been particularly important, influencing major developments and redevelopments in the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Adrienne Rich, Seamus Heaney, and so many others. Some poets, like Mary Oliver or Ted Kooser, have embraced plainness, working toward the sparest language possible, while others, like Reginald Shepherd or Maurice Manning, have reveled in abundances rarely heard in the university hallway. Most of our most well-known poets have struck a balance between artifice and plainness, but it seems that every poet has struggled with the issue at one time or other.
The poets included in this number of storySouth exemplify degrees of the struggle. To some Forrest Ganders work may seem very artificial until the spiders egg sack breaks or the moon begins to look like a sphincter, at which points the poetry seems highly natural, the product of an extreme attention. Similarly, the Anglo-Saxon form of Scott Wards Shine may seem to some like an overly self-conscious grafting, but the speakers voice naturalizes the form to its scene as skillfully as Fred Chappells work in Midquest. John Crutchfields songs have a different accent from Peter Hugginss poems, but each of the poems makes its accent clear.
The degree to which each of these poems addresses a question of Southern culture and consciousness while also achieving its distinction from the other poems is remarkable and, certainly, cause for celebration for the richness of our time and place.
We hope you will feel the same.
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Jake Adam York is the poetry editor of storySouth.

domain: literature


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Posts Tagged ‘Credit Card Processing Fees’« Older Entries |
Tuesday, December 31st, 2013
Square, the little white box that made life easier for small businesses and start-ups, allowing them to take credit cards without any real hassle has made a change to their fee schedule that has many business owners upset. The company has decided to end its flat fee rate for small firms, instead switching them to the pay by transaction model that everyone else is subjected to.
Beginning on February 1st the flat rate monthly fee that many smaller businesses opted into saved thousands of dollars per year in credit card processing fees. Instead of paying on every transaction, business owners who had $21,000 or less in credit or debit transactions a month were given the option to play a flat monthly fee of $275 for use of the service. There is a huge net of business who use the service as opposed to more traditional credit card processing options.
With the loss of this service, business can be expected to pay thousands of dollars more a year for credit card processing fees, an expense that will cripple many entrepreneurs. Small business owners who paid for the service felt betrayed after learning that it is being discontinued and are considering a switch to other payment processing options.
The fee will go up to 2.75% for every credit card that is swiped through a reader and 3.5% plus an additional 15 cents for every transaction that is manually entered, This is a massive difference between the flat rate fee of $275 a month. For any company that is working in the lower bracket, this clearly means substantial fees for them.
Square has stood by this policy change despite their customers’ objections and will put it into effect on February 1st, 2014.
Wednesday, November 20th, 2013
Mobile payment solutions, which let you accept credit cards using your cell phone, are a welcome innovation for many small businesses. Square is one such solution, and for some circumstances it’s a perfect one: It plugs into a variety of mobile devices and uses a simple, attractive interface to allow you to accept credit card payments.
Square Reader, launched nearly two years ago, was a huge hit among Square’s merchant customers. But a few things have always bugged Square about Reader’s design. Now it’s fixed them.
Square has just released a new version of the Square Reader, which has both a sleeker, thinner design and a completely overhauled electronic interior.
Square has basically replaced the off-the-shelf components in the card reader with its own custom-designed parts.
In previous generations of the Reader, Square was using the same magnetic read head – the sensor that grabs data from a credit card’s magnetic strip – that you would find in any tape deck built since the 1980s. Square felt it could do better, so it redesigned the read head. The new read head and a redesigned card-gripping spring allowed Square to make this new Reader 45 percent thinner than its predecessor.
Monday, April 1st, 2013
Hello to our loyal blog readers. We have a link to a great post from Forbes in regard to some of the happenings in the credit card processing industry. This article briefly talks about: Internet Sales Tax Gaining Support in the Senate and how fees are growing higher…
Thursday, January 12th, 2012
Happy New Year!
This article came across the wire a couple days ago and we think there are some important lessons to be learned from this article:
1.) Keep your data safe: Though the merchant has been able to prove that a data breach did not occur at their restaurant, many merchants aren’t so lucky. This article shows power that VI/MC and the processor has over the merchant.
2.) Hidden Fees Add Up: “In September 2008, the McCombs found that US Bancorp was taking money from its account, they said, with deductions eventually reaching $10,172. To prevent further seizures, they closed the account and found a new bank and processor, they said.” This is the exact reason why the Processing Brokerage was founded, to fight against the rise of hidden fees.
Check out the article and let us know what you think…
Tags: Credit Card Processing, Credit Card Processing Fees, Credit Card Processing Fees Legislation, Merchant Account Services, Processing Brokerage
Posted in Credit Card Processing Legislation | No Comments »
Thursday, December 8th, 2011
Happy Holidays, the following is an article from the Wall Street Journal discussing the after effects of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Bill and the recently enacted Durbin Amendment. The article talks about merchants who have an average ticket at or below $10.00 and have now seen their debit card rates increase. Let us know what you think…
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
As many of you know, the Durbin Amendment went into effect on October 1, 2011. The following is an article from Fox Business News that explains what this means for merchants…
Tags: Credit Card Processing, Credit Card Processing Fees, Credit Card Processing Fees Legislation, Durbin Amendment, Interchange Fees
Posted in Credit Card Processing Legislation, Durbin Amendment, Industry News | No Comments »
Thursday, June 30th, 2011
Hopefully our loyal blog readers are enjoying their summer and keeping cool. The following is an interesting article in regard to the new changes that have been imposed on debit card fees. According to investors, these changes make Visa/MasterCard more profitable…
Monday, February 15th, 2010
Every couple of weeks, I like to browse the most recent payments industry articles that have been published online to see what people are saying. For the most part, I very rarely read anything that is not published by a reputable site. With that being said, I was shocked to read this weekend an article posted online by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) titled “For Businesses That Accept Cards, Tips for Cutting Fees“. The following is how this article started:
“When it comes to credit-card fees, bigger companies have more clout with issuers than small ones. But there are ways to minimize costly processing fees, from negotiating to shopping around. Here are eight tips.” – At this point, I am very intrigued! The author is right, bigger companies will always have more clout but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a low rate.
“Negotiate processing fees – To negotiate the interchange rate, which is set by Visa and MasterCard accounts for about three-quarters of merchants’ card acceptance fees, business owners should contact Visa and MasterCard directly, says Trish Wexler, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Payments Coalition, a group representing banks and credit-card networks.” - This statement is incorrect and it is articles like these that confuse merchants on what they should do. Unfortunately, you cannot call Visa and MasterCard directly to negotiate interchange rate as this rate is un-negotiable. There are over 300 interchange rates and though you may not be able to negotiate for a better rate, there are steps that you can take to make sure you process at the most optimal rate. If you would like more information on if you are processing at an optimal rate, contact your processor or us at The Processing Brokerage and we would be more than happy to point you in the right direction.
- The Processing Brokerage
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
We recently helped a Non Profit client who had not looked at their credit card processing rate since 1999. As it has now been a decade since their last reduction, they thought it was time to see if the market had changed and if they could reduce their fees. Needless to say, once we provided our analysis and showed them what they should be paying annually, they were shocked! The Processing Brokerage significantly reduced their fees and there are lessons that Non Profits, Associations, and Charities can learn from this case.
What happened to our client is very common for nonprofits as they are naturally focused on their cause and as long as they can accept credit cards, that is good enough for them. If you are a Non Profit reading this right now, this probably sounds very familiar: The last time you looked at your credit card processing was when you decided to take donations online or needed a new merchant account. Since that time, your organization has experienced great growth and success. With everyone being so busy, consistently meeting fundraising goals, and dealing with a scope that has probably broadened; who has the time to look at their credit card processing? Maybe that was you about a year ago and now with a changed economy, your organization needs to change as well. Either way, it behooves you to look into reducing your credit card processing fees further.
There are typically three options that you can take when attempting to reduce your credit card processing fees:


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Evie Dolan , Rebecca Brown - The cast of the Broadway musical School of Rock met some of their film counterparts backstage at the Winter Garden Theatre. at Winter Garden Theatre, - New York City, New York, United States - Tuesday 10th November 2015 (1 Picture)
Evie Dolan and Rebecca Brown
Photo credit: Joseph Marzullo
View All: School of Rock Broadway Meets Film Cast
Foo Fighters collect ''weird'' fan art. The 'Run' hitmakers are particularly fond of the pieces they are sent which are a ''little off'' and put them...
The film looks to be getting a reboot in a straight-to-TV Disney movie.


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Restoring Montana's Clark Fork River
ONE HOT DAY last July, a group of us drove to the town of Turah, Montana—two bars, one camp-supply store—and dropped two rafts into the loveliest Superfund site in America, the Clark Fork River. My companions were four scientists and a schoolteacher, and we were there to see the remnants of a dirtier era.
We floated until we passed a kid flying a kite onshore. Soon after, I heard a low growling. The rumble amplified until we rounded a bend and came upon the source of the noise—trucks—at the confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers. Where the Milltown dam had sat for the past century, plugging up the Clark Fork and serving as a catchment for tailings from an upstream copper mine, the riverbed was now dry. Dump trucks and backhoes crawled between blackened tree stumps, removing arsenic-laden sludge. What the river ran through here, at the point where it met the Blackfoot—the waterway that famously haunted Norman Maclean—was a concrete gutter, a diversion skirting the old dam site.
Our party was the second group to float to the dam site since the removal. (Montana governor Brian Schweitzer had floated through to the cheers of a waiting crowd one week earlier.) Still, we had the privilege of seeing a river in a state of remedial distress. I turned to one of my rafting partners, Matt Daniels, a hydraulic engineer hired by the state of Montana to rebuild the Clark Fork's natural channel through the old dam site, and asked what his plan was. He shrugged.
"The goal is to rebuild a natural floodplain," he said. "We have an idea of where the river used to flow, but it's going to go where it wants to go."
THESE DAYS, Montana's fastest-growing industry is restoration, and ground zero for the boom is the Clark Fork. The cleanup of the 120-mile upper river will create some 3,500 jobs over the next decade. Much of the money funding the new "restoration economy"—Schweitzer's favorite buzz phrase—comes from the energy company ARCO, which has owned the mine responsible for the Clark Fork's degradation since 1977.
To call this comeback unexpected would be like calling the 2004 Red Sox World Series victory a nice little turnaround. For most of the 20th century, the state's economic policy went like this: Ranch, log, and mine—quickly. Those industries created jobs and forged a defiant spirit in many Montanans, but recently the zeitgeist has shifted.
"Part of it was miners and loggers saying, We need extraction, but we also need to value the environment," says Jim Kuipers, a former mining engineer who now advises government officials cleaning up the Clark Fork. "But one of the biggest things was that the Superfund designation brought jobs."
The Clark Fork flows 320 miles through the western part of the state and into Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho. The river's tributaries include the Flathead, the Bitterroot, Rock Creek, and the Blackfoot— geologic stars of Montana's $240 million-per-year angling industry—so the fact that the Clark Fork is the most polluted waterway in the state is ironic. The river is hemmed in by train tracks on one side and I-90 on the other, hard lines of transportation that have cut off the floodplain and shortened the river by 13 miles over the past century. The headwaters? Silver Bow Creek, a stream in Butte that's been catching runoff contaminated by the tailings of a massive copper mine since the 1880s.
In 1905, the copper baron William A. Clark began building the Milltown Dam at the town of Bonner, and over the next century the dam was transferred among energy companies. By 2000, it produced one-tenth of 1 percent of the state's power while employing precisely two dam operators. Milltown did, however, function as an effective holding tank for Butte's mine tailings. The upper river has been designated a Superfund site—a toxic-waste source the federal government helps clean—since the early eighties, when Bonner residents discovered arsenic in their drinking water.
Since obtaining the Superfund designation, Montana has received some $300 million in federal money and won some $200 million in lawsuits from ARCO, which was bought out by the much-maligned oil giant BP in 2000. Now, after a couple of decades during which grassroots organizations pushed for dam removal, that money is putting people to work. Timber companies bid for contracts to rebuild riverbanks; engineers like Daniels redesign river channels; former miners dredge Silver Bow Creek.
The work won't dry up anytime soon. The removal of the dam was crucial, but the Clark Fork's headwaters still need cleaning, and conservationists point out the necessity of rewatering the river's smaller, lesser-known tributaries, which have long been siphoned off for agriculture.
"There's simply more business in restoration," says Karen Knudsen, executive director of the local Clark Fork Coalition, a nonprofit that led the push for dam removal. "We want this to be a global example of how a damaged watershed can be fixed."
DURING THE SAME TRIP to Montana, I also floated the Blackfoot. This was partly out of professional interest and partly because it was the peak of fishing season. Ponderosas lined the banks, trout slapped the surface, a flotilla of rafts full of undergrads passed.
Today, the Blackfoot is about as pristine a river as you'll find in the lower 48, but not so long ago it was a mess, too. The Blackfoot fishery nearly crashed in the seventies and eighties, courtesy of a dam made of gold-mine tailings that blew out near the river's headwaters in 1975. Until recently, logging was ubiquitous here. (When Robert Redford shot the film version of Maclean's A River Runs Through It, in 1991, he headed a couple of hundred miles east, to the Gallatin. Missoula rumor has it that Redford chose the Gallatin because the Blackfoot's banks were too chopped up.) In the early nineties, concerned locals started cleaning the river and buying up nearby land to donate to the Forest Service. This year, the Nature Conservancy will complete the purchase of 170,000 acres in the river valley from a former timber giant.
I floated an eight-mile section of the upper river with M. Sanjayan, lead scientist for the Nature Conservancy, and Grant Kier, executive director of the Five Valleys Land Trust, a partner in the Conservancy deal. We were supposed to be working, but the cutthroat trout distracted us.
Eventually, I asked a question, something related to the land grab. Happy to relay the company line, Sanjayan began to reply, but his rod bent to the water, then sprang back, whiplike. The line dangled broken and limp.
"Oooh, oooh, it was as big as my arm!" he yelled. "Dude, you're making me miss fish!"
So we shut up and fished until we came to our take-out, a bridge preceded by a small rapid occupied by a canoe that appeared to be stuck. The paddlers, who were profoundly drunk, had attempted to run the rapid, a Class II, backwards. They had failed. One waved to us: "Hey, maaaan, can we get a lift?"
Now that, I thought, is what a river's supposed to look like.

domain: economics


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The world today is integral and global. Hence, connections between us must become integral and global as well. Such a change is feasible only by educating to globality. Every person in the world must realize that in the new world, we are all interconnected, and hence must be mutually considerate.
An educational-academic institution must be set up in the spirit of mutual understanding and collaboration as promoted by UNESCO, to qualify youths to serve as a�?Global Educators.a�? To establish the institution, the best human minds that care for education must be gathered, aiming to build the required curriculum.
Philanthropists should be approached with requests for support in:
Upon conclusion of the construction of the institution, a worldwide launch of the a�?Global Educatorsa�? program should be held. Graduates of the program will be incorporated in existing establishments in their countries, leading to a revolution in education.
Integrating Youths in Creating a Balanced, Considerate, Initiating, and Integral Society
Recognizing the imperative role of youth in shaping the world in the global age has led the UN to declare this year (August 12, 2010 a�� August 12, 2011), a�?International Year of Youth.a�? In a document written for the conference, a�?Youth Participation in Social Transformations: Initiatives and Participation,a�? to be held on March 2-3 in Moscow, organized by the UNESCO Office in Moscow and the Federation for Peace and Conciliation, we will strive to offer a new perspective on youthsa�� contribution to life in the global era, as well as to draft a concrete proposal for coping with the challenges that youths currently face the world over.
The Laws of the New World
To help youths find their way in the global era, we must first understand the new laws of life in such a world, and the transformations that have led to them:
From all the above said, it is evident that the world in the 21st century does not need material, economic, or political solutions only. Rather, first and foremost, todaya��s world needs an educational solution. And youths, who sense the gap between the old world and the new one more intensely than anyone, should be at the forefront of this education.

domain: sociology


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PHILADELPHIA - Pittsburgh Penguins forward Gary Roberts sat out Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals on Tuesday night because he was sick.
Roberts came to the arena Tuesday when the Penguins held their morning skate, but didn't take part.
Pittsburgh coach Michel Therrien said the 41-year-old left winger would be a game-time decision. Roberts wasn't with his teammates for the pre-game warmup and was later announced among the scratched players.
Adam Hall, who didn't play in Pittsburgh's Game 2 victory over Philadelphia, went back into the Penguins lineup.
Roberts has played in only six of Pittsburgh's 12 post-season games. He was sidelined by a groin injury earlier in the playoffs and was out of the lineup for five games. Roberts didn't come back to active duty until Game 4 of the second round against the New York Rangers when Maxime Talbot was forced out with an injured foot.
Talbot returned Sunday, following a three-game absence, and scored the winning goal when the Penguins took a 2-0 series lead over the Flyers.

domain: game


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Read Kansas! Middle School - M-27 Votes for Women!
This lesson is designed to introduce students to historic primary sources created during the fight for women's suffrage. Students analyze a primary source about women's suffrage in Kansas and the United States and complete a reading worksheet to explain it to the class. The lesson is designed to take one day.
To view a PDF of the front and back, click on the card.
Kansas History Standards:
- Benchmark 4, Indicator 1: The student describes the movement for women's suffrage and its effect on Kansas politics (e.g., the fight for universal suffrage, impact of women on local elections).
Kansas College and Career Ready Standards:
- RH.6-8.1: The student will cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.
- RH.6-8.6: The student will identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).

domain: history


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Put all your chips in this weekend with the big-screen adaptation of “CHiPs” starring Dax Shepard and Michael Pena as Jon and Ponch, the roles that were originated by Larry Wlicox and Erik Estrada four decades ago on NBC.
Airing from 1977 to 1983, you can say that “CHiPs” was like an urban Western that followed the adventures of Jon Baker (Wilcox) and Frank ‘Ponch’ Poncherello (Estrada): handsome and heroic crime-fighting partners and best friends, riding their wheels of justice in keeping law and order on the road as motorcycle officers of the California Highway Patrol. For five out of those six seasons, all-American and straight-laced Jon was the Lone Ranger, whereas the suave, dashing, fun-loving daredevil Ponch was a cross between Zorro and the Cisco Kid – with a little bit of the Lone Ranger in him.
Tackling everything from drunk driving to cattle rustling to repo men to organized crime, Jon and Ponch will stop at nothing in keeping the highways and byways safe for every man, woman and child, which includes a moral lesson that comes with the job of solving crimes week after week.
After forty years, “CHiPs” remains a guilty pleasure thanks to reruns in syndication, so catch Jon and Ponch if you can weekdays on cable network Me-TV (www.metv.com).


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West Town Farm Community Trust
West Town Farm Community Trust is being constituted as a Charitable Community Benefit Society.
1. To conserve, protect and improve the environment of West Town Farm for public benefit and access by:
– Maintaining and developing West Town Farm as a working organic farm including food production and animal husbandry
– Prudent management and use of resources, economic viability, protection of wildlife, sustainable development and land management, diversification and holding of property for a resilient future
2. To advance the education of the public in the subjects of organic sustainable farming and horticulture, conservation, biodiversity, health, food, access, heritage, the environment, wildlife and related subject
3. To advance the education and training of a future generation of farmers including tenancy and management opportunities for new entrants
4. To Promote for the benefit of the inhabitants of Exeter, Teignbridge and the surrounding areas the provision of facilities for recreation or other leisure time occupation of individuals who have need of such facilities by reason of their youth, age, infirmity or disablement, financial hardship or social and economic circumstances or for the public at large in the interests of social welfare and with the object of improving the health and condition of life of the said inhabitants.
How it works
More information to come


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Get three different venues for ski jumps: Giants Hill, Innsbruck and Bad Mitterndorf * Compare with all other online ranking jump. * Qualification jump distance and participate in an exciting game. * 4 Championship mode hopping (the worst of 4 results is always deleted). The results of your game is a combination of jump distance and performance points.
Championship Jet Ski FREE is an new fun addictive game in Android. With this game, you can see a lot of wonderful Championship Jet Ski FREE picture. This Championship Jet Ski FREE game consist of 3 games: 1) Championship Jet Ski FREE memory game 2) Championship Jet Ski FREE Puzzle game 3) Championship Jet Ski FREE block game
Find your way in the waters of the ocean. Let us have a joy ride on an awesome Jet Ski and feel the rush of the cool sea breeze on your skin. Driving Jet Ski is always super fun and thrilling. Navigate your jet ski between the isles and donate hit anything wrong. This game will give you the real experience of driving and controlling a Jet Ski. Our new jetski game gives you an exciting experience of fast water racing. Try to steer the jetski to collect clock icons it gives you more points. Jet Ski Racing game has infinite playing time. The Jet Ski and objects can keep on generating as long as you like them to. Pause Feature Player can pause game during game play. The Jet Ski Racing game saves the top 10 High Scores on the users Device. The device inbuilt accelerator is used to detect tilting and move the plane. A calibrate allows your users to calibrate the flat position according to their device. The Jet Ski Racing Game comes with music and Audio features. Player can choose to turn off all sound.
Lets have a joy ride on an awesome Jet Ski and feel the rush of the cool sea breeze on your skin. Driving Jet Ski is always super fun and thrilling.Navigate your jet ski between the isles and don't hit anything wrong. This game will give you the real experience of driving and controlling a Jet Ski. Love the high speed boating? Become a jet ski driver this time. Our new jetski game gives you an exciting experience of fast water racing. Try to steer the jet ski to collect clock icons it gives you more points. Features of Jet Ski Crazy Racer, Infinite Playing time The Jet Ski and objects can keep on generating as long as you like them to. Pause Feature Player can pause game during game play. Top 10 High Scores The Jet Ski Crazy Racer game saves the top 10 High Scores on the users Device. Uses Accelerator The device inbuilt accelerator is used to detect tilting and move the plane. Calibrate feature A calibrate allows your users to calibrate the flat position according to their device. Music and sound The Jet Ski Crazy Racer Game comes with music and Audio features. Player can choose to turn off all sound.
Play the best Jet Ski Racing game with this application! Show your skills and drive your jet ski to win the race. Do not forget to collect extra points. How many points can you get? It is an easy and fun game to play. Just tilt the the Jet ski to control left or right. If you love jet skiing, you need to download Jet Ski Racing games now! It's free for all.
King of Jet ski thrill ride experience! Play the most addictive moto racing water sport that will actually make you feel like a real pilot Jet Ski, dive, drive, sail, dodge over the obstacles that you find in all of the race track circuit. Do you have a craving for water sports, Are you tired of parking games? Enjoy the coolest scooter game in the market, with three brand new amazing ski to opt.
Blocky Car Parking is a 3D car simulator game in Blocky Style. This game simulates various parking skill. Blocky Car Parking, you can get an overall view of the cars' position in a 3D optic angle outside the car. Control your car with an steering wheel, acceleration and brake pedals.
Skiing is always fun and adventurous. Well, if you found that interesting then we have one such hot game for all the gamers in the world. Winter ski and Bikini: The Sexy Sunny day Race Slide is a race game where you can enjoy intrepid skiing along with sexy bikini. It`s time to attire yourself with sexy bikini and race for skiing. Here one needs idea of skiing too. Your skiing skills will lead you to finish the race without any hindrance. Albeit the race is held on snow, you can show your sexy boarding moves in bikini. Finish the game before time runs out. Be quick and smart. Play safely. There are trees, avoid hitting them or you may lose game hugging them. Avoid rock as well. Collect red flags and snow bumps so you can unlock new characters. Play this amazing game imbued with never ending thrill and fun.
Welcome to Ski Adventure, You will LOVE this game is AMAZING. The best gameplay experience. Jump and PowerUp with your skies and void all the different obstacles on the different and awesome maps. Enjoy playing with leaderboards and show your friend from facebook and all social networks this game and challenge them to beat your score.
Fantastic game of skill and a fun way to play. Ant Clash you can try to clash as many ants as you can. Increase the level of complexity the more crush ants. Ant Clash offers excellent graphics, sound and gameplay. Ant Clash also wants the older house can have fun and is also designed for them.
Take your skis and race down the beautiful mountains and experience the amazing feeling of flow and control in Ski Race. Ski Race is Fun and Highly addictive adrenaline skiing game. Ski Race is about the exciting feeling of flow and control. Skiing down the beautiful mountain slopes requires rhythm as well as razor sharp reflexes. There are plenty of skiing challenges and achivements that you need to complete to win the coveted title of ultimate skier in Ski Race Slalom. Share your skiing achivements with friends on facebook and earn coins to buy slalom track powerups. Experience the realistic Skiing Physics as you race past gates and dodge pine trees in this skiing endurance race. Pick up the magnet power up to attract coins your way, or use the energy drink to give you an energy boost that lets you destroy trees. Progress through the skiing ranks to earn more coins and buy cool upgrades from the mountain cabin skiing shop.
Super Ski Race is about the exciting feeling of flow and control. Take your skis to the most beautiful and most dangerous mountains and experience the amazing feeling of Ski Racer .Perform insane jumps and stunts while rushing down the hills trying to avoid deadly avalanches, rusty weak bridges or profound abysses and other obstacles. Super Ski Race is Free, Fun and Highly addictive adrenaline skiing game!!! Download now and enjoy a fantastic game for FREE
Try our jet ski power race - the uncanny waves of freedom game. This game can really get on your nerves! Control the jet ski and drive as fast as you can. It sounds easy and fun, but the level is challenging. Jet ski power race offers extreme action and power packed game play!
When these 4 hero not have mission of protecting the world. So they invited to sports competition and that is skiing. Ski Hero is a freestyle skiing game and in the game you will control your hero. the first hero that is Captain America you will play your hero ski down the hill for collect coins. but you have to beware of obstacles of many trees to be obstacles in your coin collection. And beware the angry bear! because when you accidentally It's will into attacking your hero immediately. You have to use speed boost to escape the bear and collect coins to complete as indicated and change the next hero player to get through each next stage.


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As a child of the seventies and early eighties, the Teen Titans cartoon is not something that I am familiar with. I had heard of it but never watched it. A quick Google and Wiki peruse of the Teen Titans, shows a history of the characters going back to the mid-sixties.
Led by the Dick Grayson incarnation of Robin, the Titans are made up of various teenage superheroes. As a person who was never a massive fan of DC comics – I collected X-Men, Daredevil, Spiderman, and Elektra, with the only DC exception being the Frank Miller run of Dark Knight. My knowledge of their comic properties is patchy at best.
With Marvel taking over the film world, one could be forgiven for thinking that their comic characters were always the best known or most prominent. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman would probably have something to say about that.
Because of the enduring nature of some of the DC characters and their longevity, they were very rarely viewed as teenagers. All three of DC’s biggest characters had either a sidekick, Robin and Wonder Girl, or a mini ‘me’, Super Boy. Marvel, on the other hand, tended to have younger more youth appealing characters; X-Men began as teenagers as did Spiderman.
Netflix’s Titans explores the younger characters of DC. Where Marvel dominates the multiplexes and blockbusters, DC are the kings of the small screen. Where Marvel has Kevin Feige, DC have Greg Berlanti.
Berlanti is the producer behind Arrow, Supergirl, The Flash, Legends Of Tomorrow, Black Lightning as well as many other non-superhero shows. He is also the producer behind Titans. Seeing his name lets one know that the show is in good hands.
Following the format of most series on the streaming platform, Titans eleven episode, season one series, dropped in its entirety in January. The opening episode introduces us to Dick Grayson/Robin (Brenton Thwaites) who has left Gotham City and the shadow of Batman and moved to Detroit, Michigan and become a police detective.
Years of being a masked vigilante have, however, left a mark on Grayson and he is a brooding, cynical presence, still given to dressing as Robin and dishing out a more direct type of justice. His presence in the city is not appreciated by the police department.
Elsewhere, Reagan Roth (Teagan Croft) is being pursued by unknown parties, whilst simultaneously battling an internal struggle against a dark power that dwells within her. The people after her, seem determined to get her regardless of the cost to themselves or others around her. After the woman she thinks is her mother is killed in front of her, Roth kills the killer and ends up in police custody. There she meets Grayson.
Kory Anders (Anna Diop) wakes up in a crashed car next to a dead man, on an empty road in Austria with no recollection as to how she got there or who she is. She is dressed like a lady of the night. She is being pursued by Russian mobsters. In her quest to discover who she is, she finds that she is a being of considerable, deadly, power. She also believes that she has a mission to protect Roth.
The show is constructed around the Titans being a core group of four members, going by the pictorial media, and the fourth member of the team, Garfield Logan (Ryan Potter) a shapeshifter who can become a green striped tiger, is not introduced to proceedings properly until episode four. He is seen briefly at the end of episode one, stealing a DVD.
Titans is a strong show that builds slowly and gets better as it goes along. Strangely, the weakest episode is the opening one. It is not bad by any means, but there are some elements that irritate and make little sense.
There is also a worrying aspect of ‘save-the-cheerleader-save-the-world’ whiff about it. We know how that ended! Thankfully, this does not prove to be the case with this show. What saves it is the compelling characters, especially Kory and, surprisingly, the level of violence.
This version of Titans could not have aired on the CW. As violent as Arrow was in the first season, Titans takes it to another level. It is not only that it has graphically depicted violence. It is also the grey area in which the violence occurs.
The Punisher, another excellent series on Netflix, is an inherently violent show, with gunplay and knives, not to mention the bludgeonings routinely handed out by the titular lead, it is a show of relentless violence. What makes Titans violence different is that so many of the deaths, very gruesome deaths, happen to characters who seem wholly undeserving of such treatment.
It is an aspect of the show that is unexpected, a little disconcerting, but welcome in that it forces one to consider the effects of brute force as a method of meting out justice and even the entertainment value of killing.
The acting is universally excellent and the story strong enough, even if it is the usual prevention of the end of the world trope, to keep one engaged. Thankfully, not being a Marvel show, it is not about to be pulled from Netflix and has already got a green light for the second season. I for one am looking forward to the continuing adventures of the Titans. Definitely worth watching.


We’ve recently added two videos to our Youtube collection. These videos go over a couple of popular medical device testing standards, ASTM F1717 and F2077.
ASTM F1717 is a standard designed to test spinal implants. This video includes demonstrations of the axial torsion and compression fatigue sections of the standard performed by our eXpert 9900 and eXpert 5955 test frames, respectively. Also included are the live test outputs from ADMET’s MTESTQuattro controller software. F1717 also includes a static compression bending and static tension bending component not shown in this video.
The F2077 standard is for testing body fusion devices. This video features the ACDF dynamic torsion test and ACDF static torsion performed by an eXpert 9900 as well as the dynamic compression testing component on an eXpert 5955. The live MTESQuattro screens are also shown. F2077 also has a static compression testing component not featured in this video.


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The Asia-Pacific region has the largest number of cases of colorectal cancer (CRC) and one of the highest levels of mortality due to this condition in the world. Since the publishing of two consensus recommendations in 2008 and 2015, significant advancements have been made in our knowledge of epidemiology, pathology and the natural history of the adenoma-carcinoma progression. Based on the most updated epidemiological and clinical studies in this region, considering literature from international studies, and adopting the modified Delphi process, the Asia-Pacific Working Group on Colorectal Cancer Screening has updated and revised their recommendations on (1) screening methods and preferred strategies; (2) age for starting and terminating screening for CRC; (3) screening for individuals with a family history of CRC or advanced adenoma; (4) surveillance for those with adenomas; (5) screening and surveillance for sessile serrated lesions and (6) quality assurance of screening programmes. Thirteen countries/regions in the Asia-Pacific region were represented in this exercise. International advisors from North America and Europe were invited to participate.
Bibliographical notePublisher Copyright:
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

domain: medical


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Completed the tileset system a couple weeks ago. I now have all glossy, matte, glass, shallow and steep versions of all tiles for all variations.
One of the many sheets from the tileset system.
There were still some minor additions I want to complete (loose versions of tiles, test tiles for debug purposes, extra slope shapes), but they’re trivial and fully clear on how I’ll build them, so I’m satisfied for now.
I’ve been now been doing some R&D on special effects animations to figure out the best way to create them and how should the final result work.
After downloading about 10.000 files of the internet of various existing spritesheets with effects on them from many sources, I had fun time enjoying information overload a couple times (sarcasm), such as trying to see what makes them tick, why were they made how they were, what would be the most cleanest, most appealing, performance friendly, easy to build, which were important, what scenarios could they be used in and how….
…basically a giant mountain of questions needed to be asked, found and answered. Not particularly fun and very exhausting mentally, but without proper design any actual drawing I do will go to waste, so I wanted to avoid that.
Especially so since I’m looking at drawing over the better side of 1000 more sprites, which is no small feat at all.
I previously had actually drawn special effect sprites while I was modding cortex command and I pretty much winged it back then, without much regard of studying how fire works, how smoke works, how to best shape it for gameplay or really doing any sort of design at all. This is how they looked like:
Super old SFX used in cortex command mods years ago.
The way I drew them was very reckless; I’d start with a square 20×20 image, draw a frame, save the image, then draw on top of that image the next frame, save that seperate as the next frame, paint the next frame, save it seperately and so on until I had a complete animation from start to end.
The results were surprisingly good, especially ingame, but I think its rather difficult to edit them once they’re done, since they were never designed for maintenance. More over, the amount of frames might sometimes be a bit overkill and I could possibly save on some performance and disk space by having less frames.
They also were rather limited in their usage, as they were directly colored as I was drawing them, where as if I’d drawn them in greyscale, I could repurpose some of the effects for multiple purposes simply by applying color later, especially if the game adds color to the sprites through code.
Meanwhile, I also noticed that if drawn with the right intent, you could yield 3 different uses out of a single animation by having the first few frames dedicated to the start of the animation, the middle frames drawn so that if used on their own, could actually work on their own as an endlessly looping animation, while the last part of the animation could also operate on their own as a dissipating animation.
Finally I also thought about the direction of sprites. If you could imagine the hadouken moving fireball that Ryu or Dhalsim can fire, then those are direction sprites. Similarly, explosions in Metal Slug are firmly planted to the ground and you can see the smoke after the explosion rise upwards.
Now heres the thing; what if the game features zero gravity or the animation can rotate to be on a slope?
Suddenly SFX animations that are connected to a floor or are directional will look out of place and uncanny, making them ugly and unusable. Meanwhile, omnidirectional effects, like the blood splats in my old animation sheet pictured above could work perfectly even on the ground or in zero gravity.
With all that figured out, which took some time, perceptiveness and hard design thinking effort, I came up with some rules with which to base all the animation sprites I’ll be doing:
- Each animation segment is 4 frames long
- An animation set follows the structure of 3 segments: Start/Loop/End
- The animation is gravityless, omnidirectional and uses standard ambient shading
- For surface effects like water, lava, acid and similar, create seamlessly tiling animated texture with 16×16 and 32×32 sizes
- All sprites must be greyscale
- All sprites must blend well with one another (no hard outlines)
- Avoid blockyness when drawing sprites on a grid
I think I may be still may be missing a few critical points, like some animations may work with only 2 frames (impacts, flashes and other fast things), but these will generally set up nice guidelines to help draw sprites easily and maintain good quality.
The big thing I’m currently trying to figure out is how to style them if I should make variants and alternatives, since stylistically, a LOT can be done in regards to SFX animations for many purposes and aesthetic styles, so that requires some time to figure it all out, but atleast its all doable and I’m making progress. It is hard though, so its not too fast, sadly.
Hopefully I can get to mass production very soon.


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Milan aims to make cycling a more prominent form of transportation. This investigation was undertaken to better understand the state of cycling in Milan, analyzing the current and planned cycling infrastructure against vehicular and cycling flows and accidents.
Cycling is one of the main forms of sustainable and active transportation that provides health, environmental, and socio-economic benefits. It is a cost-efficient, low cost and low carbon form of transportation that is key to mitigating climate change, reducing traffic congestion, and improving urban accessibility (Adriazola-Steil et al., 2021; Yanocha and Mawdsley, 2022). Cycling also promotes active lifestyles that can reduce the risk of noncommunicable diseases and overall mortality (WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic spurred a renewed interest in cycling across Europe and Milan, Italy, was no exception. In Milan, 86 km of new cycle lanes were built between 2020 and 2022 (Agenzia Mobilità Ambiente Territorio, 2023; Christidis et al., 2023). New cycling infrastructure has been accompanied by an increase in cyclists around the city and a subsequent increase in accidents, sparking debates and citizen protests around safety issues for cyclists (see Figure 1).
Milan has committed to further expanding and improving the quality of the cycle lane network, increasing the number of trips taken by bicycle, and to make cycling safer to promote more “livable and sustainable” neighborhoods (Agenzia Mobilità Ambiente Territorio, 2023). This aligns with the broader EU commitments to promote cycling as a main form of transportation, as highlighted by the recent adoption of the EU Declaration on Cycling (European Commission, 2023), which declares “improving the quality, quantity, continuity and attractiveness of cycling infrastructure is essential to promote greater cycling use.”
In this framework, the aim of this investigation is to support the transformation of Milan into a cycling city, help residents achieve their Right to Cycle and to promote an evidence-based approach for the urban development of the city. The research was undertaken to better understand where people cycle the most, where it is dangerous to cycle, and which streets have the greatest conflict between cars and bicycles.
Enabling Data and Methodology
This study relies on five key geo-spatial and statistical datasets (see Table 1).
Cycle counts are collected through Strava Metro, a GPS dataset of the cycle trajectories of its users, that quantifies yearly cycle volumes on street segments (see Figure 2). Vehicular counts are obtained from a proprietary traffic model of Systematica (2019) that estimates the peak hourly flows of cars and heavy vehicles on street segments. Geo-localized bicycle crashes are sourced from the AREU-Agenzia Regionale Emergenza Urgenza, and include all accidents that involved a cyclist between 2019 and 2022, classified by crash outcome severity.
The methodology for this research is structured in three phases. A first diagnostic phase explores the changes in cycling volumes and accidents between 2019 and 2022; both showed a constant increase. Then, the study aims to locate which streets have the greatest concurrent cars and bicycles flows, calculating a Conflict Index that compares Strava Metro cycle counts with vehicular flows. The goal is to identify critical areas for cyclists’ safety. Milan is first divided into hexagonal areas and the highest cycle counts and vehicular flows spatially intersecting each area are associated to it. Then, a bivariate index is built on the quantiles of the two datasets, identifying co-presence intensity between the two modes in Milan. Then, the Conflict Index is compared with AREU’s cycling accidents that occurred in Milan in the same timeframe. Last, the validated Conflict Index is analyzed with respect to the state of the existing cycle infrastructure and the planned infrastructure, to define the relation between the safety and infrastructure in Milan.
Where do people cycle in Milan
Milan’s current cycle lane network covers 11% of the total road network, which includes 108.5 km of dedicated cycle lanes. The Strava Metro data indicates that the greatest levels of cycling occur on the cycle paths alongside the Alzaia Naviglio Grande, the Alzaia Naviglio Pavese, and the Naviglio Martesana. Among urban corridors, the outer ring road of Milan (including Viale Murillo, Viale Cassala and Viale Toscana) and Corso Buenos Aires stand out for the high cycling volumes.
Bicycle crashes in Milan
There were 6449 bicycle crashes in Milan between 2019 and 2022, that involved 6795 people, although this is likely an underestimation as the data only includes crashes for which the emergency services were called. Most crashes (67%) did not result in a severe injury (green hospitalization code) and less than 1 percent (0.7%) of crashes led to a severe injury. Chart 1 shows the increase of accidents involving cyclists between 2019 and 2022, divided by accident typology (i.e., cyclist fallen from bicycle and traffic accident involving a cyclist).
The Conflict Index map locates streets that have the greatest concurrent car and bicycle flows, comparing Strava Metro cycle counts with vehicular flows. The map identifies areas with high co-presence of cyclists and vehicles, which revolves around the south-west stretch of the outer ring road of Milan (e.g., Viale Murillo, Viale Misurata, Viale Cassala, Viale Toscana, etc,) and the main axes entering the city center (e.g., Viale Zara, Corso Buenos Aires, Viale Argonne, etc.). This high-conflict area covers roughly 30% of the municipality of Milan (see Figure 3).
The Conflict Index map is intersected with the geo-referenced accidents dataset. It highlights that roughly 54% (80% percentile) of all accidents involving at least one cyclist and one vehicle took place in a high-conflict area in 2022 (see Figure 4).
Among these accidents, only 24% occur in the proximity of a cycle lane (defined as a distance <15m), while 76% of all vehicle-cyclists accidents occurred outside of the existing cycling infrastructure. This calls attention to the need for continued development of the cycling infrastructure to improve cyclists’ safety (see Figure 5).
The PGT-Piano di Governo del Territorio 2030 developed by the Municipality of Milan envisages a great increase in the cycle infrastructure in 2030 that covers most of the core road network of the city and connects today’s often fragmented cycle lanes. However, a more capillary development of the cycle infrastructure should be considered as the Conflict Map shows that many cyclist-vehicle accidents occurred on roads outside the planned cycling infrastructure changes (see Figure 6).
Conclusions and Future Works
In October of 2023, the European Commission adopted the EU Declaration on Cycling. One of its guiding principles is “improving the quality, quantity, continuity and attractiveness of cycling infrastructure is essential to promote greater cycling use”. Milan is moving towards this through policy instruments and programs, such as its 2018 Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, the 2020 Open Streets Strategy for the COVID-19 emergency, and the “Cambio” Bicycle Plan of the Metropolitan City of Milan. Moreover, in 2023, Milan was one of ten cities worldwide selected for the BICI program launched by the GDCI-Global Designing Cities Initiative to implement innovative projects for cycling infrastructure. Milan’s winning bid is a project to connect 40 schools via a cycle route/ network. Milan can expand on this momentum and helps its residents achieve their Right to Cycle by continuing to build and connect its cycling network.
We thank Simone Fukuda for her contribution to this research. We thank AREU (Agenzia Regionale Emergenza Urgenza) for their fruitful collaboration and for sharing data. The analyzed data were treated according to the GDPR-General Data Protection Regulation (EU, 2016/679). This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Adriazola-Steil, C., Ohlund, H., El-Samra, S., Targa, F., & Zayas, G. (2021). Investing for Momentum in Active Mobility. In Transportation Decarbonization Investment Series (Issue October). https://doi.org/10.1596/36617
Agenzia Mobilità Ambiente Territorio (2023). Report della mobilità Milano 2022. https://datashare.amat-mi.it/index.php/s/PgnBD2Kw2zJBK97
Christidis, P., Vega Gonzalo, M., Ulpiani, G., & Vetters, N. (2023). Post-pandemic trends in urban mobility (Issue KJ-NA-31-551-EN-N). Publications Office of the European Union. https://doi.org/10.2760/627403
European Commission (2023). European Declaration on Cycling. https://transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download/60033b3b-0652-495c-add3-ffea2388ff81_en?filename=European_Declaration_on_Cycling_text.pdf
Yanocha, D. and Mawdsley, S. (2022). Making the Economic Case for Cycling. Institute for Transportation & Development Policy. https://www.itdp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Making-the-Economic-Case-for-Cycling_6-13-22.pdf
WHO Regional Office for Europe. (2022). Walking and cycling: latest evidence to support policy-making and practice. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/europe/publications/i/item/9789289057882

domain: geography


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ROYAL Bafokeng Platinum (RBPlat) nudged down the top end of its full-year platinum group metal (PGM) production for its 2018 financial year to no more than 280,000 ounces with the low end of guidance staying at 370,000 oz.
Commenting in its third quarter production update – in which the company produced 102,400 oz of PGMs (4E) – it said total milled ore would be between 3.35 million tonnes (Mt) and 3.45Mt at a 4E built-up head grade of between 3.95 grams/tonne to 4g/t.
However, operating costs would be kept at below inflation rates, it said. This was despite having to absorb above inflation wage increases, some of which was offset by cost-saving initiatives.
During the period, the company also said it had commissioned the Maseve concentrator, process facilities purchased in a $70m deal from Platinum Group Metals earlier this year. A total of 141,000 tonnes of ore from Styldrift was treated through Maseve in the third quarter, RBPlat said. “The concentrator is operating well and achieving designed throughput and recovery efficiencies,” it said.
RBPlat produces PGM from its Bafokeng Rasimone Platinum Mine (BRPM) but it is also close to commissioning of the Styldrift expansion. Capital expenditure on Styldrift in the three month period totalled R877m taking total project capital expenditure for the company to date of R10.6bn. Styldrift is expected to absorb a total of R11.6bn in total capex.
Although it made no mention of the markets, RBPlat is expected to be in a better place owing to the deterioration of the rand against the dollar. Commenting earlier today on its third quarter numbers, Lonmin said the rand price for the basket of PGMs was 25.5% higher in the quarter year-on-year.
RBPlat has been busy shoring up its balance sheet this year. On September 27, it raised about R240m following a sale of approximately 9.79 million shares through a book-build programme. The completion of the book-build follows an earlier announcement that it had secured a R1bn increase in its lending facilities, taking credit to R3bn.
“Total capital expenditure for the year is estimated to be R3.1bn with stay in business expenditure forecast to remain at 4% to 5% of operating cost,” the company said in its quarterly update.
Shares in the company edged down just under a percent on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, but the firm’s refinancing efforts, and the fact its restructuring of the last 12 months was at an end has seen a revival in its valuation. On a year-to-date basis, the company’s share price is roughly flat after falling to an all-time low in June.
“When people are losing their jobs it is a big problem,” said Steve Phiri, CEO of RBPlat when the company reported interim numbers in August “But we don’t have any plans for any more retrenchments. I’d never say never, but there’s no Section 189 (Labour Relations Act provision that allows for consultations ahead of restructuring) planned. So we are not worried, but we are not complacent either,” he said.


text: Enjoying a convenient location in the village of Newport within walking distance of the local shop and pub. The charming market towns of Howden (7mls) and Beverley (15mls) are nearby where you can walk the cobbled streets and explore historic sites such as Beverley Minster. The ancient walled city of York is under 30 miles away where you can indulge in a spot of retail therapy and browse the abundance of quaint shops and eateries. Children and adults alike will love investigating the popular Jorvik Viking Centre and the National Railway Museum here. For a day at the beach explore the wonderful Yorkshire coast or for keen walkers and cyclists head up into the Howardian Hills AONB and North York Moors all within an approximate hours drive. You will feel instantly at home as you step through the door of this delightful bungalow into an entrance hall that is ideal for leaving coats and muddy boots. The cosy lounge is adorned with a spacious corner sofa and smart TV and provides the ideal space to relax after a day of exploring. Moving through to a conservatory that boasts a dining table and chairs and doors on either side that open out to the front of the property. The kitchen is stylish and equipped with everything you could need including an electric oven and hob microwave fridge/freezer and dishwasher. Along the corridor you will find two appealing bedrooms; one king-size with patio doors out to the garden and one twin room with 2 6 zip-and-link beds (which can be made into a king-size on request). To complete the interior of this wonderful home is a bathroom with shower-over-bath and WC. At the rear of the property is a pretty enclosed garden with a lawn and patio area with furniture. Enjoy a glass of wine in the evening whilst taking a dip in the hot tub or delight in a BBQ in the summer sun. There is ample off-road parking and a garage with a washing machine that can be used as well as secure bicycle storage on request. Need to know: 2 bedrooms 1 king size and 1 2 6 twin zip and links (which can be made into a king size on request). 1 bathroom with shower over bath and WC. Electric oven and hob, microwave, fridge/freezer, dishwasher. Travel cot and highchair available on request. Underfloor heating throughout. Smart TV in lounge and king size bedroom. Enclosed rear garden with patio area, furniture, and charcoal BBQ. Hot tub. Garage available on request with washing machine and space for secure bicycle storage. Ample off road parking. Shop, pub, and restaurant within walking distance.


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Thriller Dance Class Hen Party in Bath
- Learn the iconic and spooky routine to Thriller!
- Nice fun warm up to MJ’s other hits
- Trained dance instructor for the session
- Practice the infamous moves before the finale
- Your group will do their best zombie impression for the final performance to Thriller!
- Includes private space in central venue
- Spectators are free of charge
- Have your own Hen House or Venue? No problem! We can bring the dance class to you – just ask.
What to Look Forward to on a Bath Thriller Dance Hen Party?
With the spooky Bath Thriller dance hen party, you and the girls can look forward to learning how to dance like MJ himself. Your experience will take place inside of a mirrored dance studio or function room, and you will have a dance instructor who will run through everything with you. After a warm-up, you can start learning some moves that will go together with the iconic Thriller song. And then, at the end of the session, you can perform the whole routine together as a group.
What Do You Wear?
Make sure to bring comfortable clothing, gym wear & trainers. For effect, go the whole hog and dress like a zombie with face paint, fake blood and ripped clothes – or the classic MJ look with red jacket and single white glove.
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A Russian military helicopter is shot down by ground forces, killing five people over Idlib.
The money will come from a special budget reserve kept for just these kinds of miscellaneous items.
Between the release of this issue of Dabiq and the next slaughter to be executed against them by the hidden soldiers of the Caliphate... the Crusaders can read into why Muslims hate and fight them.
10 more people were arrested in connection to the deadly terror attack near Otniel.
The highway was closed while sappers neutralized the bombs.
Egyptian Air Force fighter pilots struck an ISIS terrorist installation in northern Sinai, killing 46 people.
A live rocket from a past war is found in an open field near a kibbutz in the Gaza Belt.
Two Arab terrorists were arrested for attacks in Jerusalem after a weeks-long investigation by police.
The Palestinian Authority is trying to convince FIFA to ban Israel from the international football league, again.
US Secy of State John Kerry tries to keep the dying embers of talks alive with the PA in Paris.
IDF soldiers foil another terrorist attack on the checkpoint outside the entrance to the PA Arab city of Shechem.
"A terrible poison is spreading," the French PM cautions. "Slowly, insidiously, against the background of influences from abroad ... developed against a model of society which contradicts the Republic and its values."
One entire battalion, according to reports, took on the role of the local civilian Arab population, in an attempt to isolate them from the fighting.
The suspect had 2 knives, two hatchets, and 9mm bullets.
Abu Mohammad al-Julani is the nom de guerre of this mysterious man, whose real name is only known to the Al Qaeda leadership.
France declares a bloodthirsty terrorist to be 'honorary citizen' 48 hours after a priest is slaughtered by ISIS in Normandy.
A boy saw what he believed was a suspicious-looking character, and yelled, "Terrorist!"
Israeli and American military forces drilled together on urban warfare and counter terrorism methods in 'Noble Shirley 2016.'
Residents of Sderot marked the completion of a project to fortify their homes against rocket attacks.
“Taboos of civilization are being broken," Merkel said. “These acts happened in places where any of us could have been."
Rajoub condemned a successful peacebuilding event between Israeli and Arab youth sponsored by the Peres Center for Peace as a "crime against humanity."
Six Israeli archaeologists visiting the Temple Mount compound were attacked by employees of the Jordanian Waqf.
The Hamas terror cell was made up of family members, friends and a Palestinian Authority policeman.
PM Netanyahu is faced with accusations that Israel was not adequately prepared for the war with Hamas in 2014.
The terrorist opened fire on the force as it drew near, and in response the force shot several anti-tank rockets at the structure where he was hiding.


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Supporting, Enhancing and Promoting Disc Sports Throughout Colorado.
Chris Garrow has announced the details for the 14th annual Choice City Challenge. The date is set for Sunday, October 16th, with registration between 9:00 and 9:30 at the new Edora #1 (near horseshoe pits). The first round will be the full 18 at Edora, followed by lunch, and then afternoon rounds at Boltz JHS and a temp course at Greenbriar Park. Awards will follow the final round. Entry fees are as follows:
Don't miss this classic Fort Collins event. The emphasis is always on fun instead of competition, and the temp holes have always kept things interesting. More details will be posted here as the date nears.


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Pending-home sales drop 13% from a year ago as rates stay high: Redfin | SkipLeadPro
Soaring mortgage rates and home prices are continuing to dampen affordability for homebuyers. Pending-home sales fell 13% from a year ago for the four weeks ending Sept. 17, according to a new report from Redfin.
Combined with elevated mortgage rates, monthly housing payments are at an all-time high. This is pushing many prospective homebuyers to the sidelines until the market becomes healthier.
Adding to buyers’ affordability pain, median home prices rose 3.4% year over year to $374,975 during the same four-week time period, Redfin found.
Meanwhile, available inventory continues to dwindle as many homeowners stay put to keep their relatively low mortgage rates. For the four weeks ending Sept. 17, total active listings were at 806,701, down 16.2% compared to a year ago.
However, new listings have stabilized, ticking up slightly since the beginning of September. HousingWire analyst Logan Mohtashami said the last four weeks ending Sept. 17 have been the most volatile since mortgage rates breached 6% in 2022.
“In one week, we had the biggest decline in new listings data all year, which might indicate Americans are giving up on listing their homes. But the next week, we had the biggest increase of the year, which might show that people are rushing to list their homes,” Mohtashami said on HousingWire.
New listings are down 6.7% from a year earlier but posted the smallest decline since July 2022. It’s still worth noting that new listings were falling rapidly at this time last year, the Redfin report underlined.
Meanwhile, mortgage rates are not expected to cool anytime soon as the Fed announced on Wednesday that interest rates were likely to remain higher than anticipated heading into 2024 and 2025.
The Fed’s decision to halt interest-rate hikes this week is unlikely to bring solace to homebuyers as borrowing costs and mortgage rates stay elevated. Buyers who can afford to jump into the market now might see the incentive to do so before home prices and/or interest rates go up even more.

domain: finance


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Mancubus tries to enjoy a quiet breakfast...4.43 / 5.00 8,862 Views
Brisket's appetite for trash comes back to haunt him.4.30 / 5.00 7,767 Views
A dark comedy about a spare tire who struggles to find his true purpose.4.43 / 5.00 4,405 Views
submission: Breathe With Me
date: October 16, 2010
"I thought of a misty forest in the morning."
"Hey man, you should totally make your next spam with this like you did with my other ambient song haha."
Me to myself: "That is a good idea."
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|Name:||RV Gear Reducer||Feature:||High Precision Large Transmission|
|Torque:||High Torque||Accuracy:||Backlash < 1 Arc.min|
High Rigidity Cycloidal RV Gear Reducer,
Dual Support Mechanism Cycloidal Reducer,
Robotics Cycloidal Reducer
The precision cycloidal pinwheel RV gear reducer series is in a very leading position in the application of the robot industry.
The RD series developed in the later stage is improved on the basis of the RV series reducer.
The installation is very simple and the use is more convenient and easy.
Genius Robotics Zhenkang and Japan’s Nabtesco RV RD RA series cycloid gear reducers have the characteristics of high reliability, high rigidity, high precision, large torque, large axial size, etc. In order to directly support large loads, large angular contact ball bearings are installed inside. With dual support mechanism and pin wheel mechanism, the product will not be damaged even when up to five times the rated torque is applied. Genius Robotics Zhenkang and Nabtesco RV RD RA series reducers are particularly suitable for industries that require frequent forward and reverse rotation, high accuracy and rigidity, and short axial dimensions.
Industrial transmission basic components, reducers are widely used
The reducer is an independent component composed of gear transmission, worm transmission, and gear-worm transmission enclosed in a rigid shell. It is often used as a reduction transmission device between the original moving part and the working machine. It plays a role in matching the speed and transmitting torque between the prime mover and the working machine.
The world's industrial robot body manufacturers are accelerating the expansion of production, and the demand for precision cycloidal pinwheel RV gear reducers has increased.
Industrial robots mainly include three parts: control system, power system and main mechanical structure. The reducer is the core component of the sub-structure transmission device of the power system. Its main function is to achieve the effect of deceleration and torque increase. The reducer accounts for more than 30% of the manufacturing cost of the robot body.
The earliest and most professional manufacturer of China's precision cycloid RV gear reducer is Genius Robotics Zhenkang
Genius Robotics Zhenkang was founded in 1993. The comprehensive performance of its CO2/MAG wire feeding device and submerged arc welding wire feeding trolley has been at the leading level in the industry. Focusing on the welding industry for 20 years, the products once occupied more than 80% of the Chinese market. Printed motor products have filled the gap of high-sensitivity wire feed motors in China's welding industry, making a qualitative leap in gas shielded welding technology. It can meet the requirements of various welding wire feeders in different countries, different manufacturers, and different welding fields, with an annual output of 500,000 wire feeders. It is currently one of the largest manufacturers of wire feeders in the world's electric welding machine industry.
"Technological innovation is the core competitiveness of an enterprise, and is the core purpose of Genius Robotics Zhenkang. For 20 years, the robot "RV precision reducer" has been monopolized by Japanese companies. Genius Robotics Zhenkang independently developed and produced similar products, with performance reaching the international advanced level. .
Precision cycloid RV gear reducer, commonly known as the "joint" of the robot, is "one of the three core technologies in robot manufacturing.
In 2010, Genius Robotics Zhenkang developed the core component of the robot-the joint (RV reducer) and the servo motor, the power component that activates the joint. In the same year, the company introduced advanced German automation equipment, and developed the first and second generation joints with the help of research institutes and other universities and research institutes. The precision servo motors were also developed simultaneously. "RV precision cycloid gear reducer" has very strict technical requirements. In RV cycloid gear manufacturing technology, Genius Robotics Zhenkang has reached one thousandth of a millimeter. Two years later, a series of engineering technical problems such as the design, processing, and assembly of robot joints have been solved.
Since January 2012, after 4 months of testing and experimentation, all data of "RV precision reducer" is equal to or surpassing the standards of similar products in Japan. The technology has also obtained 4 national invention patents and 4 authorized utility model patents, which passed in one fell swoop Appraisal of scientific and technological achievements in the industry.
At present, 80,000 units of "RV precision cycloid gear reducer" have been put on the market, becoming a partner of many robot manufacturers.
If you need to purchase or consult, learn more about the precision cycloidal pinwheel RV gear reducer, please feel free to consult and contact
Contact Person: Daisy He


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This beautiful sip is not pink champagne, it’s an herbal tea! A refreshing blend called Limonada Rosa provided by @tielkatea infused in sparkling water. Amazing, right? When I first tried this lively blend of lemon myrtle, lemongrass, hibiscus, and rose petals, the color reminded me of rosé wine. The tangy citrus flavors are great for summer and I wanted to try cold brewing it. But instead I was inspired to pop a few teaspoons into sparkling water, wait a couple hours, and see what happened. The result felt like magic! Want to try it? You’ll need either a small bottle of seltzer or sparkling water, I prefer the finer bubbles of sparkling water. Add 2-3 teaspoons of tea (depending on how much water you’ve got) put the cap back on, and let sit 2-3 hours in the fridge. You can go much longer but this tea was perfect at 2 hours, and I didn’t want to lose too much carbonation since I had already opened the bottle. The sparkling Limonada Rosa is bubbly, tangy, and sweet without adding any sweeteners. And it looks like pink champagne!! Don’t want to steep in carbonated water? Do a double strength hot brew, cool to room temp, and add a few splashes of bubbly water and ice. I’d love to try this method with other herbals and also teas. What should I try next?

domain: hobby