- We forecast real household spending in Argentina to grow by a further 3.3% y-o-y over 2022, reaching ARS1,115.6bn (USD286.3bn) and just 0.2% short of pre-Covid-19 levels. The deceleration in growth from last year’s 11.7% signals the wearing-off of favourable base effects.
- High frequency data indicate that improving employment prospects and healthy economic growth will support consumer spending in 2022. However, Argentinian household budgets will remain vulnerable to rising inflation, for which there is a heightened risk if the government fails to finalise the preliminary deal with the IMF or the presidential election results in excessive policy loosening.
- We highlight several risks to the outlook over 2022, including elevated inflation and the possibility of new Covid-19 variants, which could lead to the reimposition of Covid-related restrictions.
Outlook For 2022
Consumer spending in Argentina will post strong growth over 2022, with real household spending projected to grow by 3.3% y-o-y. This is lower than the 11.7% growth estimated for 2021, which represented expansion from a low base following a significant contraction in consumer spending during the Covid-19 health crisis in 2020. Despite the expected slower rate of growth, we highlight that real household spending levels are forecast to return close to pre-pandemic levels by the end of year. At ARS1,115.6bn (USD286.3bn) over 2022, real household spending will be just 0.2% lower than the ARS1,118.2bn (USD287.0bn) posted in 2019, the pre-Covid-19 environment.
High Frequency Data: Wary Consumers Drive Slowing Retail Sales Growth
In March 2022 (latest data available), the consumer confidence index for Argentina stood at 36.9, the lowest it had been in eight months. The downward trend in consumer confidence can be attributed to economic factors and the fact that the Covid-19 Omicron variant hit Argentina particularly hard through January 2022 and into February 2022. Latest high frequency data show that retail sales are continuing to slow, reaching 91.9% y-o-y growth as of January 2022 (latest data available). While the extremely high growth rates witnessed recently are largely due to base effects (as the country enacted strict lockdown measures in 2020), combined with high rates of inflation (latest reading recorded price increases of 52.3% y-o-y for February 2022), the continuing downward trend suggests that consumer retail spending is normalising.
Insight Into Consumer Spending Forecast
Our forecast for year-on-year growth in consumer spending in Argentina in 2022 is in line with our Country Risk team’s forecast that the Argentinian economy will grow by a real rate of 2.8% y-o-y over 2022, following an estimated 9.4% y-o-y growth in 2021. In 2022, unemployment (as a % of labour force) will decline to 9.3%, and the recovery in private consumption will be driven by a continued improvement in the labour market, which bodes well for the income outlook. With regard to Argentina’s recovery outlook, our Country Risk team maintains a slightly more upbeat view than consensus. We expect inflation to ease, thereby supporting private consumption. A combination of base effects, improved confidence and monetary policy tightening will cause Argentina’s inflation to peak in 2022 and ease the following year, supporting real private consumption. The government faces a significant challenge in getting the legislature to sign off on the IMF deal signed on March 3 2022, not least because it does not have a majority in congress and Argentina has a difficult history with the IMF. Nevertheless, we believe that the authorities will succeed in implementing the agreement. However, if the government fails to finalise the preliminary deal with the IMF or the presidential election results in excessive policy loosening, then another inflationary surge could disrupt the economy.
|Real GDP (% chg y-o-y)||2.8||2.2|
|Unemployment (% of total labour force)||9.3||9.1|
|Consumer price inflation (% y-o-y, ave)||52.0||35.0|
|Total tourist arrivals, '000 % y-o-y||357.8||217.9|
|f = Fitch Solutions forecast. Source: National Statistics, Fitch Solutions|
Since the start of 2021, inflationary pressures have been rising in many countries globally, as base effects, higher commodity prices and supply-chain challenges create localised shortages. The Ukraine-Russia conflict has also significantly impacted the global supply prices of key commodities, such as oil and gas, fertiliser, wheat, corn and barley. The commodity price increases are already feeding through into higher consumer prices and will continue to over the year. We believe that rising consumer price inflation is a key risk to consumer spending over 2022, as it has the potential to erode purchasing power and shift spending away from discretionary spending.
In Argentina, we note that inflation ticked up significantly in February 2022 (latest data available) delivering its steepest increase since September last year, to reach 52.3% y-o-y, up from 50.7% in January 2022. This was the ninth month in a row where inflation stood above 50% and placing it significantly higher than the government’s 38.0%-48.0% target, agreed in the economic plan it developed in support of its deal with the IMF. Food price inflation is following a similar trajectory, outpacing CPI in February 2022 when it reached 55.8%, its highest level since July 2021. However, our Country Risk team forecasts that inflation will peak in 2022, averaging 52.0% and only moderately higher than the estimated 48.5% average experienced in 2021.
Household Debt Outlook
Over the course of the pandemic, household debt as a percentage of GDP in Argentina increased slightly, although we believe that this presents very little risk to consumer spending over the medium-term. Household debt averaged 5.3% of GDP in the pre-pandemic environment of 2019, a low not seen for more than ten years previously and had reached a high of only 5.5% by the end of December 2020. Furthermore, household debt as a percentage of GDP was trending downwards again in 2021 recording a rate of just 4.5% in Q321 (latest data available). The Banco Central de República Argentina raised its benchmark monetary policy rate by 200bps on March 22 2022 to 44.5%, however, despite further hikes being likely in response to inflationary pressures, we forecast the policy rate standing at 44.0% by the end of 2022. Our forecast of inflation averaging 52.0% in 2022, is significantly above the upper limit of the government’s recently agreed target of 38.0%-48.0% inflation in support of its deal with the IMF and will increase the pressure to tighten monetary policy further in the short-term. Any increase in interest rates means that households will allocate a larger proportion of their disposable income towards servicing their debts but because household debt rates are not significantly high in Argentina, this is unlikely to weigh significantly on consumer spending.
Wider Economic Challenges
As economies began to reopen in 2021, consumers started demanding products that they had little access to over the previous year. However, manufacturers started facing several problems. Supply chain issues and bottlenecks resulted in consumer goods shortages, feeding through into supply-side inflation. Fitch Solutions believes the global semiconductor shortage will continue into 2022, putting pressure on the supply of several consumer goods. New, more transmissible variants can cause the closure of factory production or manufacturing across the world. This becomes a problem when one aspect of the supply chain opens up and another one is impacted by restrictions, especially in the East Asia region. Similarly, manufacturers are facing shortages of key components and higher raw materials costs. Finally, the Ukraine-Russia conflict is placing significant supply pressures on key commodities, pushing up final market prices across a spectrum of consumer categories. The graphic below highlights some of these risks to outlook.
Covid-19 Risk To Outlook
Our forecasts account for risks that are highly likely to play out in 2022, including the easing of government support. Over H122, the risks surrounding Covid-19 have moderated, as population immunity (from vaccines and prior infection) combined with less severe variants have meant that death rates have remain low through recent infection waves. This has seen many markets globally adopt a more "live with Covid-19" approach to movement and operating restrictions. However, this is not to say that the rapid spread of the virus cannot still upend global supply chains, as was seen in China over February and March 2022. The chart below highlights the risks that Covid-19 will continue to have for the consumer outlook in Argentina over the short term.
In order to track our analysis of consumer spending in Argentina during the Covid-19 pandemic and our recovery projections please see:
- Argentina 2022 Consumer Outlook: Base Effects Wear Off For Argentinean Household Spending
- Argentina Consumer Outlook: Challenging Recovery Amidst High Inflation
- Argentina Consumer Outlook: Consumer Spending Recovery From Covid-19 Will Spill Into 2022 And Onwards
Covid-19 2021 Impact Assessment
- Consumer Outlook 2021: Recovery In Argentina's Consumer Spending, But Risks Remain
- Argentinean Consumer Recovery Getting Underway In 2021
- 2021 Recovery Assessment: Argentinean Consumer Emerging From Covid-19
This report from Fitch Solutions Country Risk & Industry Research is a product of Fitch Solutions Group Ltd, UK Company registration number 08789939 ('FSG'). FSG is an affiliate of Fitch Ratings Inc. ('Fitch Ratings'). FSG is solely responsible for the content of this report, without any input from Fitch Ratings. Copyright © 2021 Fitch Solutions Group Limited. © Fitch Solutions Group Limited All rights reserved. 30 North Colonnade, London E14 5GN, UK.


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Currently I am working on ArcGIS pro 2.2. Update Subnetwork tool is not able to generate. Below is the issue:
ERROR 000732 Input Utility Network: Dataset https://hw377utl.test.com/server/rest/services/sample/FeatureServer/950 does not exist or is not supported
Please suggest me how to proceed further
I had this same error on my environments:
10.6.1 and Pro 2.2
I could solve this error when I published the UN with all UN layers present in the map. (In my case, transmission and distribution layers)
Check if when you published your map, the warning bellow appeared to you
"24099 The web layer being published cannot be consumed by ArcGIS Pro without all the Utility Network layers being present."
To a fast test, add the UN in the map (it will load all layers from UN in the map) and publish.
Hope it helps you!

domain: geography


Police, coastguards and lifeboat crews are searching for a person missing off Pwllheli, North Wales.
A spokeswoman for Holyhead Coastguard said the police first notified them of the search at 4am today and then went on to request assistance with the search at 8am.
Two coastguard units conducted a shoreline and coastal search, while RNLI lifeboats from Pwllheli and Criccieth were also launched.
The spokeswoman said Rescue 122, a Ministry of Defence search and rescue helicopter from RAF Valley, also joined the search.
No information on the missing person has yet been released. North Wales Police said it would release more details later.


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Seth Mcfarlene is a genius. And he voices so many of the charecters!
Family Guy takes on star wars. And it's every bit of wonderful you would have though.
We are a community of shoppers sharing our best finds from across the web.
© 2017 ThisNext, Inc. ThisNext is a member of BUZZMEDIA Entertainment, a division of BUZZMEDIA.

domain: entertainment


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July 8, 2021 @ 8:00 pm$29.95+HST
Update May 11, 2021: Please note this event is being postponed, ticket holders will be contacted upon the confirmation of the new date.
Always entertaining and definitely unique, The Mudmen are a blast of Celtic energy whose members are known to be characters both on and off the stage. First discovered in 1993 as “The Campbell Brothers”, the band signed a deal with EMI Records and changed their name to “Mudmen” in 1998.
With over 3000 shows to date, The Mudmen Robby Campbell, Sandy Campbell, Jeremy Burton, Mike Meacher and Dan Westenenk believe that nice guys can finish first. While enjoying life & what you do translates to all audiences.
This is a pub-style event, tables of 8 can be reserved for your group of friends when all the tickets are purchased at once!
Tickets to this event go on sale to Stockey Centre Members on Wednesday November 27th at 10am and to the general public on Wednesday December 4th at 10am. Contact our Box Office at 877-746-4466 extension 205 on how to become a member!


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Baked Broccoli Penne. Check out this NO BOIL, Baked Broccoli Penne!!! The kids loved it and they actually ate the So good. Even the non broccoli eaters have a hard time resisting broccoli.
Cheesy Baked Penne with Chicken and Broccoli. When I spotted this baked penne with chicken, broccoli and smoked gouda on Mel's Kitchen (a fellow Wisconsin blogger) and read the ingredient list, I knew it would be something I enjoyed. Scrape the broccoli mixture and sauce into the baking dish with the penne. You can have Baked Broccoli Penne using 9 ingredients and 5 steps. Here is how you cook it.
Ingredients of Baked Broccoli Penne
- You need 12 oz of dried penne pasta.
- You need 12 oz of frozen broccoli florets.
- It’s 1 1/2 C of low fat shredded mozzarella cheese.
- Prepare 1/2 C of grated Parmesan cheese.
- Prepare 2 1/2 C of low fat milk.
- Prepare 1/2 C of water.
- You need 1/4 C of butter melted.
- Prepare 1/4 C of flour.
- You need of to taste salt and pepper.
Add the basil and half the cheese, stir to combine, and season generously with salt and pepper. Reviews for: Photos of Baked Penne. This is a pretty simple pasta bake with some broccoli added as a stealth vegetable! Super easy if you use leftover chicken.
Baked Broccoli Penne step by step
- To Assemble Add all ingredients (reserving 1/2 cup of mozzarella for topping) to a large bowl and mix well..
- Pour into 9×13 baking dish, sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese and cover with foil..
- To Cook Bake covered in a 350 degree oven for 35 – 45 minutes. Uncover last 5 – 10 minutes to brown cheese if desired. Serve with dinner rolls..
- On Cooking Day 6 C salad greens 1 package dinner rolls optional.
Drain, rinse with cold water and drain again. What wines go with Baked Penne with Ham and Broccoli? Get a recipe for Curried Chicken, Broccoli, and Penne Bake. Baked Cheesy Chicken Penne PastaBeyond The Chicken Coop. When the penne is cooked, tip it into the pan with the chorizo.

domain: food


Anabolism is the set of metabolic pathways that construct molecules from smaller
units. These reactions require energy. One way of categorizing metabolic ...
Anabolism definition, constructive metabolism; the synthesis in living organisms
of more complex substances from simpler ones (opposed to catabolism).
Metabolism breaks down large molecules like food into usable energy. This
energy drives bodily processes critical to survival. In this video...
What is the purpose of metabolism? Learn about the two major divisions in
metabolism: anabolism (building up) and catabolism (breaking down). By
Nov 27, 2015 ... This article provides an in depth description of what metabolism is and how
anabolism and catabolism can affect a person's body weight.
Feb 10, 2014 ... By Dr Ananya Mandal, MD. Anabolism is the process by which the body utilizes
the energy released by catabolism to synthesize complex ...
Anabolism can be thought of as a set of metabolic processes, in which the
synthesis of complex molecules is initiated by energy released through
Mar 15, 2016 ... Anabolism and catabolism are metabolic processes. Anabolism refers to the
process which builds molecules the body needs; it usually ...
Feb 12, 2007 ... Metabolism is a set of processes performed by the living beings that allow them
to interchange matter and energy with their environment.
The phase of metabolism in which simple substances are synthesized into the
complex materials of living tissue. [ana- + (meta)bolism.] an′a·bol′ic ...


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Twenty high quality picture prompts for mystery and horror stories great for halloween, back to school or just stimulating your student's imagination in writing classes can be used in a variety of ways as a mini lesson for essay or creative writing, esl. 21 clever writing prompts that will unleash your students' creativity posted on august 21, 2014, 14:11 gmt alanna okun buzzfeed staff share on facebook share share on vk share share on pinterest share on pinterest pin share on lineapp. 301 prompts for argumentative writing 58 should society support artists and others pursuing creative works gender and relationships gender issues. Creative writing exercises can help you to generate ideas, get started on a story, and practice your writing skills there are many ways you can practice creative writing one simple way is to choose an amount of time and just write, about anything set a timer for fifteen minutes and write, write, write, until it goes. Picture-based writing prompts that help kids create stories right now for each picture writing prompt, use the provided story idea, or encourage kids to create their own our super easy story writing formula along with these fun picture prompts gets kids' creative writing flowing. Pictures for writing prompts 362,424 views share like download beckerl1 follow could i have permission to use a couple of images in a creative writing kit, please, if i reference your site it would be a great way to let people know about this 2 years ago reply are you sure you want to yes no your message goes here maxine. Stuck for inspiration it happens to all writers here are ten of the best creative writing exercises to inspire you to start (and finish) that book.
This school year we added a new feature to our daily lineup of student activities called “picture prompts,” these short, accessible, image-driven posts feature photographs and illustrations from the times, and invite a variety of written or spoken responses — from creative storytelling to personal narrative to constructing an. 500+ free writing prompts for kids over 500 pages of writing prompts for kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, and 4th grade kids including monthly writing prompts, seasonal writing prompts,holiday writing prompts, and more i know i come out with a lot of freebies and not all of you have followed along since the beginning so here is a master list of all my free creative writing. Random image prompts to aid descriptive writing new image you can download any of these images and save them for your personal use. Have you been wanting to jazz up your class' writing activities try out these creative writing prompts in the form of pictures (with graphic organizers.
They say a picture is worth ten-thousand words in this digital age, students so easily can capture images digitally photos make fantastic writing prompts. Search by grade level: middle grades (grades 6-8) clicking on the picture will take you to the prompt eventually however, we're still putting this thing together. Creative writing prompts for kids in 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th grades mix and match funny creative writing prompts for kids to create countless story ideas printable and picture based creative writing prompts.
Third grade creative writing worksheets encourage your third-grade students to show their creative sides, with our most popular creative writing printables they'll be inspired by these poetry and story-writing activities and lessons we have holiday-themed worksheets, daily writing prompts, rubrics for grading work, literature guide. Short generalization washington is a subcomponent of picture creative writing prompts pinterest an adaptation or reinterpretation, to the most popular types of knowledge beyond the modules poorly specified design interfaces that allow students to change the meaning of the resume writing service memphis tn simplest way to put a little in your writing. Free, printable kindergarten writing prompts for your students in the classroom or at home fun, creative prompts to develop strong writing skills.
These were the two lecterns used by the republicans and democrats at their respective conventions. The time is now offers a weekly writing prompt (we’ll post a poetry prompt on tuesdays, a fiction prompt on wednesdays, and a creative nonfiction prompt on thursdays) to help you stay committed to your writing.
Write a diary entry every day for at least a week, or if you’ve ever kept a diary, look back on older entries turn diary entries into poems. The joys of nature can be used for writing with these free creative writing prompts try to write them outside. Kaboom these free creative writing prompts about the action genre can help you use your love of explosions to create some exciting writing.

domain: artistic


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FOXBORO, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2021 – A team of staff and volunteers from the South Shore YMCA gathered with fellow youth-focused charities to raise money for at-risk youth programs and services through the annual Rodman Ride for Kids in Foxboro.
The South Shore Y team raised $25,000 to date to support its continued programming for local kids in need.
“This event is so special to our Y because of our long history with the Rodman for Kids organization, who share our commitment to youth development,” said Patrick Murphy, Quincy YMCA Senior Executive Director, who led this year’s South Shore Y team efforts.
Rodman for Kids is a non-profit that raises funds for youth-focused social service organizations in Massachusetts. The Rodman Ride for Kids annual event offers organizations, such as the South Shore YMCA, a platform to raise money for their programs.
The Y team of cyclists joined other charities for the 25- or 50-mile bike ride in Foxboro as part of this annual event. This year’s ride was a COVID-safe in-person event with a virtual component for at-home riders to raise funds and ride anywhere.
Riders for the South Shore Y team included 50-mile riders Anand Merchant, HR Coordinator for South Shore YMCA, and Jorge Barrios of Spaulding Rehabilitation. Steve Briggs, Harold Gerbis, Steve Tower and Clark Owen, all friends from Quincy Mutual, also rode as part of the South Shore Y team, and a team from Acella Construction joined in to support the Y. A group of local teens, led by South Shore YMCA Development Director, Kathy Quigley, volunteered to help out at the event.
“Special thanks to all our riders, volunteers and supporters,” said South Shore YMCA President and CEO, Paul Gorman. “The Rodman Ride for Kids is about community engagement and teamwork for a cause that is close to all of our hearts – helping kids thrive. Now, more than ever, kids need the connection and support of the Y.”
About the South Shore YMCA
The South Shore YMCA is a leading non-profit charitable organization dedicated to strengthening community through programs that promote a healthy spirit, mind, and body. Serving the communities of Quincy, Randolph, Holbrook, Weymouth, Braintree, Milton, Hingham, Hull, Cohasset, Scituate, Norwell, Hanover, and beyond, the South Shore Y provides the opportunity to grow, learn, and thrive through its services and programs. Financial Assistance is a Y community benefit available to all families in need, applicable to all Y programs and services. To learn more about the South Shore YMCA, visit www.ssymca.org. The South Shore YMCA. The Better You Belongs Here.

domain: sociology


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The third season of 90210 will be premiering on Monday, September 13 and the CW has released a sneak peek from the premiere - a scene between Annie and Liam.
You can also view promo photos from the premiere episode and a promo we previously posted. Also, go read Markâs âPreviously Onâ¦90210â³ to catch up on last season of 90210 and learn whatâs in store for this season.
AN EARTHQUAKE CAUSES HAVOC AND DEATH IN BEVERLY HILLS.
To Read More Click Here.


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The Hip Hop Nutcracker re-imagines Tchaikovsky's classic score, swapping out pas de duex and relevé for head-spins and windmills. Instead of pointe shoes, these Sugarplums are lacing up their high-top sneakers and they'll be poppin' and lockin' their way into New Orleans. A dozen all-star dancers, an on-stage DJ and an electric violinist bring the traditional Nutcracker story to life in a modern-day New York City setting. In addition to some explosive hip hop choreography bounding across the Saenger Theatre stage, this merry mash-up also features an appearance by one of hip hop's pillars: Kurtis Blow. The rap icon's early-'80s hit "Christmas Rappin'" took caroling to the club, so he's the perfect guest star to tie a bow around this holiday hybrid.
You'd be surprised at how far you can get in life if you just know how to "talk the talk." Whether you simply have a pleasant-sounding voice or excel at communication in the office, this workshop will show you how others bank on their vocal skills. From audio books to cartoons and commercials, learn how to use your voice to your advantage and turn it into a fulfilling career. Pros will tell you what others look for in the business, how to avoid common mistakes, where to look for opportunities and more at the Holiday Inn in New Orleans.


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Before Fate released, Eric and his friends played other games. They were actually fairly well known in their area, but it was one tournament that really caused them to gain the confidence to attempt to go pro. This is the story of a tournament that went down in local gaming legend, and the individuals who made it happen.
This is a prequel to my work, eFate: An MMO Story. It contains the same characters, only in an esports setting without VR. The game used is a traditional moba similar to League of Legends and Dota 2. I hope you can support this fledgling author in his attempt to step outside his boundaries ^.^

domain: hobby


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Heat oven to 325 degrees F. Place butter in an 11 x 7-inch baking dish.
Heat in the oven until melted, tilting to coat the dish. Remove the dish from
the oven; spread the croutons over the melted butter. Top with the cheese and
Combine milk, eggs, mustard, Old Bay seasoning, salt and black pepper; mix
well. Pour the egg mixture over the cheese in the dish and sprinkle the crabmeat
on top. Bake for about 50 minutes or until the mixture is set.
Remove from the oven and let stand for about 10 minutes.


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The simulations show that the proposed design method provides better disturbance rejection than the standard direct synthesis and internal model control methods when the controllers are tuned to have the same degree of robustness. Search Citation Subject Search in:
Korean Journal procews Chemical Engineering 21JulienBrian. Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering 21JulienBrian. Mayank ChaturvediPradeep Juneja. Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering 21JulienBrian terms and conditions. Mayank ChaturvediPradeep Juneja. Use of this web site 21JulienBrian terms and conditions. PathiranJagadeesan Prakash. Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering signifies your agreement to the terms and conditions. Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering signifies your agreement to the terms and conditions. Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering.Direct synthesis controller design A design method for PID controllers based on the direct synthesis design method results in very good control for a wide variety of processes. Direct synthesis methods are based upon prescribing a desired form for the . Let's look at the Direct Synthesis controller strategy for a first order process: = τ +1. Tuning of PID controllers for integrating systems using direct synthesis method. A PID controller is designed for various forms of integrating systems with Tuning rules in terms of process parameters are given for various.

domain: literature


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6.5 million-year-old footprints found on Crete
In 2002, researchers who had discovered hominid footprints on the Greek island of Crete discovered they were made an incredible 5.7 million years ago. Now, they say, they are pushing back the date even further, making it almost certain that they are much older.
Back in 2017, Dr. Per Ahlberg from Uppsala University and his colleagues determined that the footprints that had become fossilized in a rock on Crete were 5.7 million years old and made by a human ancestor.
This was a revolutionary finding, indicating it was possible that humans evolved in Europe —launching a curveball into African-origin evolutionary theory. But the newest research, just announced this week, shows that the fifty footprints are more than three hundred thousand years older than previously thought, according to a scientific paper published in Scientific Reports.
The hominid, who had earlier been thought to belong to the group of proto-humans called Graecopithecus freybergi, had been classified as such in 1944. Remains from this individual, affectionately named “El Graeco,” were found outside Athens.
Study co-author Uwe Kirscher, an expert on paleogeography at the University of Tübingen, said in a statement “The tracks are almost 2.5 million years older than the tracks attributed to Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) from Laetoli in Tanzania.”

domain: biology


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WTD If Mortgage App Denied
If you were recently denied for a mortgage application, it doesn’t mean you can’t get approved somewhere else. There are some application issues that are fixable. The first thing you’ll want to know is why you were denied. We can take a look and shop for other loans options. Credit issues are a common reason for getting denied. The first thing to do is to examine your credit report to see if there are any errors that can be fixed. There are also other loan programs if your score doesn’t fit conventional loans. Debt to income ration or DTI that is too high is another common reason to be denied. The first thing if possible, would be to pay down debt. Another common source of debt is student loans - you may want to look into applying for the new student loan forgiveness program. Simply being denied once does not mean the end of the road, we can consider multiple loan options. A co-signer is another option to consider, although this will make the application process less streamlined. Complete our quick qualifier and we can schedule a consultation to see what you can qualify for and for how much.

domain: economics


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"The hotel has old world charm and attentive staff. The rooms are expensive and small for my taste, but elegant. The restaurant has delicious food served by a ..."
"I apology for report like this, i don't feel comfortable to write on this. and I need to tell you honest.This hotel manager or floor supervise is not ..."
"My husband and I stayed here a couple months ago and we were sad to leave! The room was so nicely done and very comfortable and relaxing. The ..."
"Visitors can't ask for a more convenient location, but you need to realize this area can be noisey. I have friends who rave about the property. It's nice, ..."
"The Paramount Hotel is a friendly and modern hotel in Seattle. The employees are always nice and helpful. The rooms are spacious with very comfortable beds and a ..."
"Beautiful hotel in perfect location for enjoying all Downtown Seattle has to offer. Amazing beds, gorgeous bathrooms, and helpful employees made our stay relaxing and restful. Definitely a ..."
"I stayed at this bed and breakfast in October 2004 for my honeymoon. From our suite, we could look out the large windows and gaze at Elliot Bay. ..."
"There is nothing special about this hotel. It is clean, affordable, and in a good location. The staff was helpful when we needed it, and the hotel was ..."
"I have always had a good time while booking clients at Hotel Nexus, one time I got a not so nice employee on the line, but that has ..."
"The Ace, in the heart of belltown is the hotel for Scenesters on a budget (who isn't really?). Each room is unique in decor, and designed with cutting ..."

domain: travel


A vulture carcass hangs from a radio beacon on the runway at the Gainesville Regional Airport. It serves as a warning; birds beware.
There were 26 reports of animals being hit by planes at Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV) in 2018, the most recent complete year of data in the Federal Aviation Administration Wildlife Strike Database.
The database is where all of the reported strike data can be found for instances of animals being hit by planes in the United States.
While 26 was far less in 2018 than other airports like Tampa International Airport with 149 and Orlando International Airport with 151, when that number is compared to the number of operations — total flights in and out — more animals are reported to have been hit at GNV per operation than eight of the 14 other airports in Florida that provided operation data to WUFT.
An important caveat: The database does note that it can be misleading to compare airports because the data depends on the honesty of the reporting airport.
Airports are not required to report animal strikes, said Shaun Blevins, airport operations manager at GNV. Airport staff say they are diligent about reporting every strike.
Caveats notwithstanding, the Gainesville Regional Airport is in a prime location for planes coming and going to hit animals. On any given day, dozens of wild turkey, deer and other animals can be seen lurking throughout the woods near the runway.
There is a fence that completely encloses the runway area to keep out large animals, but it’s ineffective when it comes to flying birds, Blevins said.
It takes a multifaceted approach to try to keep birds out of harm’s way.
Airport workers inspect the runway for safety issues at least three times a day, Blevins said. They look for cracks, pebbles, and any other safety issue on the runway.
That includes birds.
They deal with birds on the runway in a few different ways, Blevins said. They collect the blood, snarge and carcasses from dead birds and bury them. Live birds are dealt with by means of starter pistol or propane cannon, as the noise typically scares them away.
Blevins said there was an issue a decade ago with vultures — high-ranking birds as far as damage goes — hanging out on the VHF Omnidirectional Range radio beacon, a building-like structure that pilots use to help them navigate to the airport.
The airport in 2011 purchased a vulture carcass from the FAA, had it stuffed and hung it on the beacon. They replace the carcass once a year.
The vultures haven’t been back since that practice began, Blevins said.
There are other preventative measures in place, too.
The airport keeps the grass around the runway between six and 12 inches, he said. Let it grow too long, and rodents will seek refuge and attract birds of prey. Too short, and small birds feel comfortable landing on it because they can see each other.
Airport management also got rid of abandoned pavement on either side of the runway. Mourning doves eat pebbles to help with their digestion and were gathering on the extra runway space for that reason. The mourning doves left, Blevins said, when the concrete did.
He said the efforts have been effective, and the FAA database supports his assertion. The number of animal strikes at GNV has been trending downward over the past five years, even as total number of flights into and out of the airport has trended upward since 2014.


The FDA will hold a 2-day public meeting in April to learn more about the dangers of exploding lithium-ion batteries in e-cigarettes, following dozens of reports of people who were seriously injured or burned.
Last month, the Associated Press reported that 66 e-cigarette explosions were received by the FDA in 2015 and 2016.
However, that number represents just a fraction of the total number of e-cigarette batteries that have overheated or caught fire.
A comprehensive list by eCigOne details 204 e-cigarette explosions, resulting in 130 injuries or deaths, that were reported in the news between August 2009 and November 2016.
Just days ago, this vape explosion on a bus in Fresno, California left a man with 3rd-degree burns:
E-cigarettes or “vapes” are handheld devices that vaporize liquid nicotine. They are widely marketed as healthier alternatives to traditional cigarettes, with all the nicotine and none of the tar, and a good way to help people quit smoking.
However, they may still pose health hazards, as studies have raised concerns about lung disease from formaldehyde and flavoring chemicals.
The FDA announced last year that it would begin regulating e-cigarettes, ban sales to minors under 18, and require manufacturers to get approval to sell e-liquids.
The cost of getting approval for an e-liquid — estimated at $1 million per flavor — threatens to wipe out most of the home-grown industry and hand over a big advantage to the “Big Three” tobacco companies.
Critics have questioned if e-cigarettes should even fall under FDA jurisdiction, seeing as they do not necessarily contain tobacco products. Synthetic nicotine, for example, is not derived from tobacco, and some e-liquids contain no nicotine at all to help smokers quit.
Source: Associated Press


One Hot Minute: Our Favourite Salesforce LIVE ANZ Moments
From hours of insights, experience and expertise shared by Trailblazers at Salesforce LIVE ANZ, here’s our six favourite moments.
From hours upon hours of insights, experience and expertise from Trailblazers at Salesforce LIVE Australia and New Zealand last week, we’ve picked our six favourite 10-second moments – just one minute of goodness.
Pip Marlow and Managing Director New Zealand Craig Skinner discuss the most difficult business environment Marlow has experienced to date, the importance of workplace diversity as an indicator of societal equality, and more. Watch the full session.
Xero Executive GM, Customer Experience Nigel Piper on customers’ changing expectations, and how Xero is meeting them with personalised interactions, tailored advice and real-time insights. Watch the full session.
True Alliance CFO Roni Perlov takes Tina Rozul behind the scenes of the retail organisation’s digital transformation, headless commerce site launches and the development of Trailblazers across the team. Watch the full session.
Josh Tabor explains how his non-profit tossed a three-year waterfall out the window to bring the core of Scouting – face to face interactions – to an asynchronous environment and a safe online community for kids. Watch the full session.
Sweezey discusses major changes in the digital landscape and how they will change customer engagement – sales cycles condense to just moments, 50% of app dev becomes bot dev, and one in five purchases happens at the edge. Watch the full session.
Peter Schwartz speaks with NSW Minister of Customer Service Victor Dominello about the state’s data-driven response to COVID-19, and the importance of trust in enabling that data-driven response. Watch the full session.


Obama’s place in history.
Will history declare Barack Obama a great, good, adequate, or poor president? Obama has three years left in office, and we can’t know what those years will bring. But the five years he’s already served in the White House offer ample material for assessing his presidency in the larger context of history. In fact, considering a president’s legacy while he is still in office is an essential means of preparing the foundation for historical judgment—the first draft of the first draft, so to speak. Time adds perspective but also haze, and examining Obama’s presidency in real time provides the sharpest focus on his basic choices and their effects.
A president’s historical reputation is a function of the promises he kept and abandoned, the domestic and international conditions he faced, and the decisions he made in response. Barack Obama’s pattern of leadership and the foundations of his legacy are to be found in these choices and their impact on the life of the country.
One distinction that places great, good, and adequate presidents on one side and poor ones on the other is that the first group addresses and effectively deals with the major problems they face on entering office. What were these major domestic problems for President Obama? Two stand out. First, he inherited an economy that had barely survived a liquidity crisis at the end of the Bush presidency. George W. Bush’s resolute and controversial economic decision to initiate a massive federal intervention (TARP) stabilized, but did not heal, the post-crisis economy. The healing was President Obama’s responsibility.
The second major problem that Obama faced was the relentless and precipitous decline of the American public’s trust in political leaders and political institutions, especially at the federal level. In 1958, a Gallup poll found that 73 percent of the public believed you could trust the federal government to do what’s right “most” or “all of the time”; by 2006, that figure had fallen to 28 percent. This decline in public trust has been accompanied by an increasing degree of partisan sorting that has widened the political and policy differences between Democrats and Republicans and raised the level of rancor in public discourse.
How did President Obama respond to the strong and repeated public plea to focus on the economy? Chiefly with rhetoric. Aside from countless declared pivots back to the issue, the president focused on his larger personal ambitions. These included monumental and legacy-building legislative efforts such as overhauling health care, passing cap-and-trade legislation, and signing an $800-billion-plus stimulus bill whose major purpose was to expand federal programs and lock in their new levels of funding for the future. As a result, what economic recovery we’ve seen since 2008 has been the slowest in America’s history. What’s more, in April the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that a record 92,594,000 Americans were not in the workforce. This matched a 36-year labor-participation-rate low of 62.8 percent.
As for public distrust of Washington, did the president govern as the pragmatic centrist he claimed to be and thus restore faith in American governance? In a word, no. At nearly every critical point that Obama could have made a choice to turn toward the center—after his initial election, just before and after the 2010 off-year election in which Republicans took control of the House, and after his reelection in 2012—he failed to do so. Obama’s version of bipartisanship can be glimpsed in a comment he made in a 2006 interview: “You can have the best agenda in the world, but if you don’t control the gavel, you cannot move an agenda forward.” He continued: “And, when you do control the gavel…you have to be the one who’s dictating how the compromises work.”
As president, he acted on that view. Obama told Representative Eric Cantor, then the House Republican Whip, during a negotiating session over the size of the 2009 stimulus package, “I won,” effectively ending the discussion over any balance of tax breaks and public spending. When Republican Senator John McCain raised objections to the secretive and exclusionary way Democrats were developing the president’s health-care legislation, the president bluntly replied: “We’re not campaigning anymore. The election’s over.” In “dictating how the compromises work” and thus stymieing progress, Obama contributed to still greater decline in the public’s trust of Washington. Add to this a string of unresolved scandals including the IRS’s political targeting and the broad and secret surveillance of private data, and it’s no wonder that a 2013 Gallup poll shows that Americans who trusted the government to do what’s right “most” or “all of the time” had fallen to 19 percent.
In Obama’s failure to meet the two great challenges he faced upon taking office lies the “basic fault” of his presidency and the reason that he has received anemic grades and is likely to do so after he leaves office. The term “basic fault” comes from the Hungarian psychoanalyst Michael Balint. His insight was that the real roots of peoples’ troubles lay in a primary mismatch between their desires and their circumstances. A poor economy and widespread public distrust constitute the circumstances in which President Obama was placed. An examination of his desires will illuminate the gulf between man and moment.
An ambition for “greatness” establishes the psychological foundation for this president’s “basic fault.” In his single-minded quest for greatness through big transformative legislation, Obama ignored the ailing American economy and sacrificed the bipartisan opportunities he might have had or created, had he opted simply to be a good president. Of course, almost every modern president reaches that office on the wings of his ambitions, but even at this level, presidents differ. President Obama wanted to be, in his own frequently repeated formulations, “great” and “transformational.” Announcing his 2008 candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, he said, “let us transform this nation.” Campaigning in Iowa, he said directly, “I want to transform this country.” In his first inaugural address, he called on his fellow citizens to help “remake America”—not change it, mind you, but remake it. Asked on Meet the Press about his wanting to be a great president, Obama replied, “When I think about great presidents, I think about those who transform how we think about ourselves as a country in fundamental ways so that, that, at the end of their tenure, we have looked and said to ours—that’s who we are.” He went on: “They transformed the culture and not simply promoted one or two particular issues.”
The president sees himself as a philosopher-king whose greatness and transformational leadership reflect the importance of his political ideas and his status as a national moral compass and avatar. Others would be tasked with developing and putting his vision into effect as they did with the administration’s stimulus proposals, Dodd-Frank financial reform, the Senate’s version of immigration reform, and his health-care legislation.
That same iconic self-image is at the root of the president’s disinterest in his own administration and the governing responsibilities that come with being president—the botched health-care rollout and its random implementation, the ignored warnings about Benghazi, the IRS’s targeting of conservative organizations, and now the Veteran’s Administration sad fiasco.
It’s not that the president doesn’t care; he’s just had his attention focused on what really matters: his legacy.
Obama’s transformational ambitions for greatness were aided and abetted by a senior staff that reinforced his enormous self-confidence and his view of himself as a historic figure. One of the president’s senior aides told a reporter for the Washington Post, “He’s playing chess in a town full of checkers players.” Another, Valerie Jarrett, said, “He knows exactly how smart he is…He knows how perceptive he is,” and what’s more, “I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually.” During Obama’s first campaign some of his aides referred to him as the “Black Jesus.”
Once Obama was elected, this idealization extended into the very highest levels of his senior staff. His chief political adviser David Axelrod said of working with Obama: “It’s like you are carrying this priceless porcelain vase through a crowd of people and you don’t want to be the guy who drops it and breaks it.” Having advisers think of you in terms that parallel God’s son or as a rare and priceless piece of porcelain has its problems, especially if you’re charged with making momentous decisions. After all, who would dare to tell even a symbolic reincarnation of Jesus that he shouldn’t do something?
Obama’s ability to get honest advice has been made harder still by his own self-regard. It is not hyperbole to say that he considers himself his own best, most knowledgeable adviser. At one point during his first presidential campaign, Obama asserted that in picking a vice-presidential nominee, he didn’t have to worry about foreign-policy experience because “foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain.” Asked after the presidential campaign about the best advice he had received while running, he replied, “Well, I have to say it was the advice that I gave to myself.” In July of 2007, he told a group of fundraisers, “I’m the best retail politician in America.” In early 2007, when Obama interviewed his campaign’s future political director, Patrick Gaspard, he told him: “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.” Obama’s presidential ambition for greatness, coupled with his view that he alone has the skills to achieve it, is a recipe for political self-sabotage, and it has cost him dearly in terms of achievement.
Before placing Barack Obama on the poor-to-great continuum, we must come to a clear understanding of the terms of assessment. Great presidents successfully face nation-defining circumstances. This can mean guiding a new country into existence (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson), fighting a major world war after overcoming an economic depression (Franklin Roosevelt), or keeping the Union intact (Abraham Lincoln). Their mistakes and excesses (Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, Roosevelt’s internment of the Japanese) are weighed against the enormity of the problems they successfully faced, and the balance still tilts toward an exceptional record.
Good presidents successfully face major problems of a slightly smaller magnitude. This covers managing the Cold War (Dwight D. Eisenhower), or rekindling public confidence in a leadership and governing paradigm that works (Ronald Reagan), as well as successfully dealing with ordinary presidential problems such as economic downturns and non-catastrophic foreign-policy crises. Good presidents lead by forging common ground, and they govern by trying to build on it.
Even so-called adequate presidents often do their jobs well. Like every other president, they sign numerous bills into law, respond to the ordinary issues that arise during their time in office, and sometimes successfully initiate or manage important policy issues. This was done regarding welfare reform (Bill Clinton) and handling the demise of the Soviet Union (George H.W. Bush).
Poor presidents do not lack accomplishments so much as they are historically haunted by gross errors of judgment or leadership (Jimmy Carter, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon). Yet even these “failed” presidents can have truly significant accomplishments on their record. Carter engineered a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel that has stood the test of time. Johnson’s failed Great Society efforts must be balanced against a truly important Civil Rights Act. And while Nixon resigned his office rather than be legally removed from it, his “Nixon goes to China moment” was a strategic tour de force.
Using these criteria, what can we say about the prospects of Obama’s place in history? First, we can rule him out as a great president. He did not face nation-defining circumstances, let alone rise to them.
Nor can we accurately say that Obama has been a good president. His quest for greatness and for transforming the country led him to govern from his left-of-center convictions in a nation desperately in need of common ground. This in turn has further stimulated political divisions and opposition to his plans. He now faces diminished opportunities for accomplishments in his last two and a half years in office.
The top two tiers are out. This leaves the question of whether Obama will be seen as an adequate president or a poor one. On this, it is still too soon to make a call with confidence. As things stand, there is an unresolved domestic-policy consideration and an unresolved foreign-policy consideration, each with the potential to define Obama’s place in history. If the president’s signature heath-care plan ultimately fails to accomplish its stated purpose of substantially lowering costs and reducing the number of uninsured, Obama will be judged a poor president. The same fate awaits him if his diplomatic approach to Iran’s nuclear aspirations results in an Iranian bomb.
Presidents, especially controversial ones, look to “history” for vindication, and Obama is no exception. He, like other presidents, can count on time to grant him at least a small measure of forgiveness. Historical perspective tends to flatten out the leadership and policy complexities of most presidencies, and to extract one or a few essentials. Today we remember Harry Truman for his “buck stops here” decisiveness, for example. We don’t hear much about the phase “to err is Truman” or his failed seizure of the nation’s steel mills during the Korean War.
Obama can also count on a legion of admirers in academia and elsewhere to argue in favor of his transcendent qualities. These cheerleaders were there before he was president, and they will continue to promote their investment after he has left the White House. And posterity will rightfully note Obama’s historic stature as America’s first African-American president. But it’s unlikely that these considerations will push the Obama presidency from one historical category to another. And Barack Obama seems to know this. If he believed that fawning supporters and historic firsts were enough to ensure his legacy, he wouldn’t be straining so hard through executive actions to recapture some of his lost opportunities.
It is theoretically possible that Obama will choose to change his governing pattern. He might, for example, prove willing to work with Republicans on big economic issues like reforming the tax code, assuming Republicans trust him enough to work with him. But this seems highly unlikely. Greatness fervently sought but denied is not a psychological recipe for compromise, and besides, we know how he understands that word.
Before the president’s most recent State of the Union speech, one report noted that with only two such addresses to go, the president’s target “is increasingly history.” This misses the point. Obama has always been running for history. The irony of his presidency is that it could have been rated very good if the president had not tried so hard to be “great.” Had Obama really attempted to work with Republicans and find common ground, he might have found achieving sound health-care legislation, tax and entitlement reform, immigration reform, and the expansion of preschool education entirely possible, maybe even likely. That would have been quite a record.
It is likely that after the midterm elections, the driving force of Obama’s presidency—his search for greatness—will have reached its poignant conclusion in the checkmate of his ambitions. Ironically, the checkmate will have been set in motion by his ambition to escape the confines of the governing realities of the country he wished to transform.
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In Search of Greatness
Must-Reads from Magazine
The Elon Musk problem.
No one has ever mistaken me for a business writer. Show me a balance sheet or quarterly report, and my eyes will glaze over. Bring up “chasing alpha” at the bar, and I’ll ask for the check and give you the old Irish goodbye. Business chatter—the kind you can’t help but overhear from young stockjobbers at the gym and bloaty middle managers on the Acela—bores me to tears. I’m especially allergic to the idea of “The Market” as an autonomous, anthropomorphic entity with a unitary will and mind of its own.
But even I can tell you that Elon Musk is imploding.
The latest omen came Friday when footage of the South African-born magnate smoking a fat marijuana blunt dropped online. The video is worth watching; the Guardian has the key bits from the 150-minute interview (do people really watch interviews this long?).
Rogan, whose fame has been a mystery to many yet is an inescapable fact of our online lives, offers the joint to Musk but is quick to add: “You probably can’t [smoke it] because of stockholders, right?” (On second thought, I think I know why Rogan is famous—because he knows how to push his subjects’ buttons.)
“I mean it’s legal, right?” Musk replies.
And so Elon Musk—the founder of an electric-car company worth $50 billion and a rocket company worth $20 billion—presses the blunt between his lips and takes a drag. He washes it down with a sip of whiskey on the rocks.
“I’m not a regular smoker of weed,” Musk says a few minutes later. “I almost never [smoke it]. I mean, it’s it’s—I don’t actually notice any effect.” His speech by now is noticeably more halting than it has been earlier in the interview. “I know a lot of people like weed, and that’s fine. But I don’t find that it is very good for productivity.”
The Market was not amused. News of two senior Tesla executives quitting their jobs broke soon after the interview appeared. Tesla shares slid 8 percent. On Twitter, where he competes with President Trump for the World Megalomaniac Award, Musk tweeted out his Rogan interview, adding: “I am a business magnet.” Perhaps he was still coming down.
These disasters follow the summer’s going-private fiasco. In early August, Musk claimed he had secured the vast funding needed to take his company private and then did a switcheroo. Tesla short-sellers, whom Musk constantly tries to show up, were vindicated. The Market got angry; shares slid.
“Moving forward, we will continue to focus on what matters most,” Musk wrote in a statement to investors two weeks later, “building products that people love and that make a difference to the shared future of life on Earth. We’ve shown that we can make great sustainable energy products, and we now need to show that we can be sustainably profitable.”
That apparently entails shooting the THC-laden breeze with Joe Rogan for two and a half hours.
The question now is: How did Musk ever get so big in the first place? There were many Tesla-skeptics, of course, chief among them those very short-sellers. They were onto something, perhaps because they sensed that a sound inventor-investor-executive would be more concerned with producing a reliable, profitable, non-subsidized automobile than with . . . showing up short-sellers. Even so, Tesla shares climbed and climbed. Even now, after Friday’s Harold and Kumar routine, the stock is trading north of $260.
Two explanations come to mind. The first is that, after Steve Jobs’s death, Wall Street and Silicon Valley types were seeking the next Eccentric Visionary to whom they could hitch their dreams. And Musk was straight out of central casting for Eccentric Visionary. Ending climate change. Colonizing Mars. Super-trains linking cities across vast distances. Everything seemed possible with him. Who knows, maybe the hopes were well-placed at one point, and the adulation went to the man’s head?
The second explanation, which needn’t be mutually exclusive with the first, is ideology. So much of Musk’s business reputation rested on his claims of solving climate change and other planetary crises that loom large in the minds of the Davos crowd. Musk embodied the ideological proposition that no modern problem eludes solution by noble-minded technocratic elites. The Market, it turns out, was as prone to magical thinking as any of the rest of us.
Clarification: News of the Tesla executives’ departure broke following Musk’s pot-smoking interview, but at least one of the departures had been finalized earlier this week.
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The course the West followed has been a disaster.
The West has squandered the last, best opportunity to rid the world of the criminal regime in Syria.
Damascus was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1979, and it has lived up to that title every year since. Syria’s descent into civil war presented several opportunities to dispense with the despot in Damascus and avert a crisis in the process, but they were all ignored. As I wrote for National Review, Syria is a case study in the perils of ideological non-interventionism. The results of the West’s over-reliance on covert action, outsourcing, and diplomacy in Syria is arguably the worst-case scenario.
Had Barack Obama not abandoned his infamous “red line” in 2013, the U.S. might have preserved the 100-year prohibition on the battlefield use of chemical weapons. The collapse of that taboo has been rapid and terrifying. In the years that followed, chemical arms have been regularly deployed in Syria, and rogue powers have been using complex nerve agents on foreign (even allied) soil in reckless state-sponsored assassination campaigns.
Ideological adherence to non-interventionism well after it had proven an untenable course of action allowed the flourishing of terrorist organizations. Some parties in the West with a political interest in isolationism deliberately confused these terrorist groups with secularist movements led by Assad regime defectors. In the years that followed, those moderate rebel factions were crushed or corrupted while Islamist terror networks, which provided a politically valuable contrast to the “civilized” regime in Damascus, were patronized and nurtured by Assad.
The incubation of terrorist organizations eventually necessitated the kind of American military intervention Obama had so desperately sought to avoid, but at a time and place not of America’s choosing and with a footprint too small to achieve any permanent solution to the crisis. All the while, a great human tide poured out from Syria in all directions, but especially into Europe. There, an influx of unassimilated migrants eroded the continent’s post-War political consensus and catalyzed the rise of illiberal populist factions.
Even as late as the summer of 2015, there was still time for the West to summon the courage to do what was necessary. In a stunning speech that summer, Assad himself admitted that Syrian forces suffered from “a lack of human resources” amid Western estimates that nearly half the 300,000-strong Syrian army had been killed, captured, or deserted. “Based on current trend lines, it is time to start thinking about a post-Assad Syria,” an intelligence source told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius. But Obama dithered still. Just a few short weeks later, Vladimir Putin, upon whom Obama relied to help him weasel out of his pledge to punish Assad for his crimes, intervened in Syria on Damascus’s behalf. That was when the greatest crimes began.
Russian intervention in Syria began not with attacks on “terrorists,” as Moscow claimed, but with attacks on covert CIA installations and arms depots; a dangerous campaign that continued well into the Trump era. The Syrian regime and its Iranian and Russian allies then embarked on a scorched-earth campaign. They bombed civilian neighborhoods and hospitals and maternity wards. They surrounded the liberated cities of Homs and Aleppo, barraging and starving their people into submission. They even targeted and destroyed a United Nations aid convey before it could relieve the famine imposed by Damascus. All the while, Moscow’s propagandists mocked reports of these atrocities, and the children who stumbled bloodied and ashen from the ruins of their homes were deemed crisis actors by Russian officials and their Western mouthpieces.
America’s strategic obligations in Syria did not diminish with Russian intervention. They increased, but so too did the danger. Early on, Russian forces concentrated not just on attacking Assad’s Western-backed enemies but on harassing NATO-aligned forces that were already operating in the Syrian theater. Russian warplanes harassed U.S. drones, painted allied assets with radar, conducted near-miss fly-bys of U.S. warships and airplanes in the region, and repeatedly violated Turkish airspace. This conduct was so reckless that, in November of 2015, NATO-allied Turkish anti-aircraft fire downed a Russian jet. On the ground, Moscow and Washington engaged in the kind of proxy fighting unseen since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as U.S.-manufactured armaments were routinely featured in rebel-made films of successful attacks on Russian tanks and APCs.
In the years that followed this intensely dangerous period, the Syrian state did not recover. Instead, Syrian forces withdrew to a narrow area along the coast and around the capital and left behind a vacuum that has been filled by competing great powers. Iran, Russia, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, and the United States, to say nothing of their proxy forces, are all competing to control and pacify portions of the country. Even if the terrorist threat is one day permanently neutralized in Syria—a prospect that today seems far off, considering these nations’ conflicting definition of what constitutes a terrorist—the state of competition among these powers ensures that the occupation of Syrian territory will continue for the foreseeable future.
And now, the final battle is upon the rebels. On Friday, hundreds of Syrians waving the “independence flag” poured into the streets of Idlib, the last of the country’s free cities, begging the international community to spare them from the onslaught that has already begun. The United Nations has warned that up to 800,000 people could be displaced in Damascus’s efforts to retake the rebel-held enclave, and the worst of the seven-year war’s humanitarian disasters may be yet to come.
Over the last two weeks, the United States has issued some ominous warnings. Senior American officials have begun telling reporters that the evidence is increasing of Damascus’s moving chemical munitions near the frontlines with the intent of using them on civilians. Trump administration officials announced in no uncertain terms that they would respond to another chemical attack with disproportionate force.
In response to these threats, Moscow deployed the biggest Russian naval taskforce on the Syrian coast since 2015. Simultaneously, Russia has warned of its intent to strike “militant” positions in the country’s Southwest, where U.S. soldiers routinely patrol. American forces are holding firm, for now, and the Pentagon insists that uniformed personnel are at liberty to defend themselves if they come under assault. If there is a conflict, it wouldn’t be the first time Americans and Russians have engaged in combat in Syria.
In February, Russian mercenaries and Syrian soldiers reinforcing columns of T-72 tanks and APCs armed with 125-millimeter guns engaged a position just east of the Euphrates River held by American Green Berets and Marines. The four-hour battle that ensued resulted in hundreds of Russian fatalities, but it may only have been a terrible sign of things to come.
Of course, a Western-led intervention in the Syrian conflict would have been accompanied by its own set of setbacks. What’s more, the political backlash and dysfunction that would have accompanied another difficult occupation in the Middle East perhaps presented policymakers with insurmountable obstacles. But the course the West followed instead has been a disaster.
The lessons of the Syrian civil war are clear: The U.S. cannot stay out of destabilizing conflicts in strategically valuable parts of the world, no matter how hard it tries. The humanitarian and political disasters that resulted from Western indifference to the Syrian plight is a grotesque crime that posterity will look upon with contempt. Finally, the failure to enforce prohibitions against chemical-weapons use on the battlefield has emboldened those who would use them recklessly. American soldiers will suffer the most in a world in which chemical warfare is the status quo of the battlefield of the future.
American interventionists are often asked by their opponents to reckon with the bloodshed and geopolitical instability their policies encourage. If only non-interventionists would do the same.
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And the demands of realpolitik.
Earlier this week, my housekeeper, Mary, arrived to work decked out in a bright red T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who came to Israel last Sunday for a three-day official visit.
Mary was at the Knesset on Monday, one of several hundred Filipino workers among approximately 28,000 in Israel, enthusiastically cheering her strongman president.
I asked her what she thought of Duterte–a leader who makes President Trump seem eloquent and measured, by comparison–and I was taken aback by her effusive, unhesitating endorsement: “Oh,” she enthused, “he is a very good president! The best!”
“But,” I suggested, carefully, “he says and does some pretty extreme, crazy things. Does that concern you at all?”
“Oh, no!” she collapsed in laughter. “He doesn’t mean that. It’s just his style.”
Indeed, Duterte has “style.” Bragging of his intent to kill millions of Filipino drug addicts, and invoking Hitler and his genocidal rampage, approvingly, in this context; referring to President Obama as a “son of a whore”; boasting of his parsimony in keeping multiple mistresses available in low-end hotels; approving of sexually assaulting women, particularly attractive ones. And then there was the outburst during the Pope’s visit to the very Catholic Philippines in 2015 when Duterte called him a “son of a bitch” for causing a traffic jam while in Manila.
Mary is not a simple woman. She is university educated, hard-working, pleasant, and respectful. And whatever makes her overlook Duterte’s thuggish tendencies should interest us all, because there are many Marys the world over supporting populist leaders and governments. Mary admires Duterte’s strength of conviction in dealing with drug dealers, addicts, corruption and Islamic extremists.
Human rights activists and journalists, of course, see only a brute who visited Israel to shop for weapons and defense capabilities, which would be put to questionable use. Then again, Duterte is hardly the first and far from the only unsavory ruler to come shopping in Israel, America, or elsewhere, for arms.
Israel deftly managed the visit and optics. Whereas many were disgusted that the PM and President Rivlin gave Duterte an audience, according him a legitimacy and respect that is undeserved, their meetings were brief and remarks carefully calibrated.
In addition to acknowledging his personal gratitude to the Filipino caregiver who was a companion to his father in his final years, Bibi reminded us all of the enduring friendship the Philippines has shown Israel, and Jews, for decades. Prior to WWII, then president Manuel Quezon made available 10,000 visas as part of an “open door” policy to accommodate European Jewish refugees. Only 1,300 were used, ultimately, due to the Japanese invasion which closed off escape routes.
In 1947, the Philippines was the only Asian country to vote in support of the 1947 UN Partition Plan, providing critical support for the momentum building towards the creation and international acceptance of the Jewish state one year later. These are important, historical events about which Bibi, quite rightly, chose to remind us all.
I am no cheerleader of dictators and thugs, but I do wonder why the morality of many objectors to the Duterte visit is so selective. Israel (and all western nations) has relations and ties with many countries led by dictators and rulers far more brutal than the democratically elected Duterte.
Much ado has been made in recent months of Bibi’s meetings with a number of right-wing populists and, worse. Some link it to what they see as disturbing, anti-democratic tendencies in his own leadership of late. Others, myself included, would read it as a careful effort to maintain and cultivate as many international relationships as possible that may enhance Israel’s strategic and economic interests, particularly in this period of extreme global political, economic and institutional instability.
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The paradox of success.
The monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Friday morning shows that the economy continues to flourish. 201,000 new jobs were added last month, while the unemployment rate stayed steady at a very low 3.9 percent.
Unemployment rates for African-Americans and teenagers continued their decline to historic lows, while US factory activity was at a 14-year high and new unemployment claims at their lowest point since the 1960s. The long-term unemployed (those out of work for 27 weeks or longer) has fallen by 24 percent in the last year. The number of part-time workers who want full-time work has gone down by 16 percent over the last 12 months. Wages are rising at a faster pace than they have, a sign of a tightening jobs market.
Corporate profits are robust (thanks partly to the cut in the corporate income tax) and consumer spending has been rising. The GDP has been growing at a more than 4 percent rate in recent months. In short, the American economy has rarely been this good and certainly wasn’t during the long, sluggish recovery from the 2008-2009 recession under the Obama administration.
In an ordinary year, one would expect that with economic numbers this good, the party controlling both houses of Congress and the White House would be looking forward to doing well in the upcoming midterm election, even though the party holding the White House usually loses seats in midterms. But, of course, no year is an ordinary political year with Donald Trump in the White House and the Democratic Party moving ever more to the left.
November 6 will be an interesting night.
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We deserve better.
You could be forgiven for thinking that everyone active in American politics has lost their minds.
What we’re witnessing is not, however, collective madness. The political class in the United States has adapted to a constant atmosphere of high drama, and they’ve adopted the most theatrical poses possible if only to maintain the attention of their fickle audiences. What might look to dispassionate observers like mass hysteria is just overwrought performance art.
This week was a case study in our national insanity, which began aptly enough on Capitol Hill. There, confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh got underway, but Judge Kavanaugh’s presence was barely noticed. The hearings soon became a platform for some familiar grandstanding by members of the opposition party, but the over-acting to which the nation was privy was uniquely embarrassing.
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker chewed the scenery, as is his habit, by declaring himself Spartacus and demanding that he be made a “martyr” via expulsion from the Senate for releasing one of Kavanaugh’s emails to the public, supposedly in violation of Senate confidentiality rules. But there was no violation, said Bill Bruck, the private attorney who led the review of Kavanaugh’s former White House records in the Senate. “We cleared the documents last night shortly after Senator Booker’s staff asked us to,” he said in a statement. Perhaps by engaging in what he called “an act civil disobedience,” Booker was only following the lead of his colleague, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who declared the committee’s process illegitimate, thereby supposedly rendering the rules of the United States Senate unworthy of recognition.
Outside another congressional committee’s chamber, the crazy really ramped up to absurd proportions. Following a hearing on alleged bias in Silicon Valley, Senator Marco Rubio was confronted by the rabble-rousing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, which rapidly devolved to the point that both Senator and agitator were soon threatening to fight one another. “I know you’ve got to cover them, but you give these guys way too much attention,” Rubio later told reporters. “We’re making crazy people superstars. So, we going to get crazier people.” He’s right.
The Trump era has provided the press with fertile soil in which a thousand manic flowers have bloomed.
Amplified by the president himself, Jones has become one of the right’s favorite grifters. Unfortunately, he’s in plentiful company. The press has discovered a sudden interest in conspiracy theorists like Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich, and Laura Loomer partly because they make for such compelling television but also because they’re willing to confirm the pro-Trump right’s most paranoid suspicions.
The “Resistance” has been a valuable vehicle for the unscrupulous and under-medicated. Congresswoman Maxine Waters has been feted in the press and in apolitical venues such as the MTV Movie Awards not despite but because of her penchant for radicalizing the left and feeding them fantasies about a coming anti-Trump putsch. Former British MP Louise Mensch, “D.C. technocrat” Eric Garland, and Teen Vogue columnist Lauren Duca spent most of 2017 basking in attention and praise from respectable quarters of the Washington political and media class. Their manifest unfitness for such elevated status somehow evaded drama addicts in mainstream political and media quarters.
And whether you’re pandering to the pro-Trump right or the anti-Trump left, there’s plenty of cash to go around for those who are willing to indoctrinate children or undermine the integrity of apolitical American institutions.
The week’s most hysterical moment belongs to the president and his aides—specifically, their reaction to an anonymous op-ed published by the New York Times purportedly revealing the existence of a cabal in the administration dedicated to thwarting the president’s worst impulses. Now, some have expressed perfectly reasonable reservations about the Times’s decision to publish an anonymous op-ed. Others have fretted about the pernicious effects this disclosure might have on the already mercurial president’s approach to governance. But lost in the over-the-top reactions this piece inspired among political observers is the hackneyed nature of the revelations it contained.
In sum, the author disclosed that many members of this Republican administration are movement conservatives dedicated to conservative policy prescriptions that are antithetical to the policies on which Trump campaigned. As such, they have often successfully lobbied the president to adopt their positions over his own preferences.
The admittedly dangerous “two-track presidency” has been observable for some time, and is the frequent subject of reporting and opinion. For example, the op-ed highlighted the discrepancy between Trump’s conciliatory rhetoric toward Russia and his administration’s admirably hawkish posture, which has become such a glaringly conspicuous feature of his presidency that Trump has recently begun trumpeting his contradictory record as though it was a unique species of competence. There’s nothing wrong with taking issue with the way in which the obvious was stated in this op-ed, but the statement of the obvious should not itself be a source of special consternation.
But was it ever. The Drudge Report dubbed the author a “saboteur,” despite the op-ed failing to describe even one action that was taken on the part of this so-called “resistance” against the president’s expressed wishes. “Sedition,” former White House Aide Sebastian Gorka echoed. Sarah Huckabee Sanders attacked the anonymous columnist as a “coward.” The president himself pondered whether the op-ed constituted “treason” against the United States and demanded the Times “turn over” this “gutless” columnist to the proper authorities, whoever they are. This is certainly one way to refute the charge that Trump’s “impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions,” but it’s not a good one.
It’s hard to fault politicians and the press for selling drama. Banality doesn’t push papers, drive up advertising rates, or turn out the vote. At a time without an urgent crisis, when the economy is strong, and the fires abroad are relatively well-contained, it serves the political and media classes to turn up the temperature on mundanities and declare all precedents portentous. But radicalizing voters for such purposes is both trite and irresponsible. In America, healthy and productive politics is boring politics. And who would tune in for that?


The Professional Guide
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Infrared Visualizes Gas Leaks The Mid Wave Gas Detection Camera The Long Wave Gas Detection Camera Application Stories The Gas Detection Camera – Why It Is Different? Techniques to Maximise Gas Detection Safety
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This booklet is produced in close cooperation with the Infrared Training Centre (ITC).SPECIFICATIONS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE © Copyright 2009, FLIR Systems AB. All other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
Over the decades infrared cameras have revolutionized maintenance in many industries, proving to be the most superior technology for finding electrical and mechanical hidden faults – even before they occur. The clearbenefit has been substantial cost savings, increased worker safety and enhanced product/ process quality. Infrared cameras can also play a major role in helping to decrease environmental damage. They are successfully used for detecting insufficient insulation in buildings, identified as one of the highest opportunity areas for decreasing the greenhouse effect, as well as detecting environmentallydangerous gas leaks. Not only do some of the gases harm the environment but the leaks also cost companies substantial amounts of money. Against this background FLIR has introduced a range of gas detection cameras capable of detecting many gases including SF6 - a gas 24,000 times more environmentally dangerous than CO2.
1. INfRaReD VIsUalIzes Gas leaks
Many chemical compounds andgases are invisible to the naked eye. Yet many companies work intensively with these substances before, during and after their production processes. Strict regulations govern how companies are to trace, document, rectify and report any leaks of volatile gaseous compounds, and how often these procedures are to be carried out. Earlier methods of gas detection required close or near contact using“sniffer” technology and probes. The limitations of these methods are that they are time consuming and run a risk of missing gas leaks. They may expose inspectors to invisible and potentially harmful chemicals, and do not allow for wind and weather factors that can produce inaccurate measurements. In addition, they can only tell us something about the test points that have been identified beforehandand only give readings within the immediate vicinity of the inspector. The FLIR Gas Detection cameras are infrared cameras which are able to visualize gas by utilising the physics of fugitive gas leaks. The camera produces a full picture of the scanned area and leaks appear as smoke on the camera’s viewfinder or LCD, allowing the user to see fugitive gas emissions. The image is viewed in real timeand can be recorded in the camera for easy archiving. The key success factors for businesses today are safety, efficiency and profitability. When carrying out maintenance, it is of vital importance that maintenance engineers are able to obtain as complete a picture as possible of the condition of the plant. An infrared camera is an extremely important tool for tracing potential faults. The examplesbelow demonstrate a wide range of applications that can be served with IR cameras. Potential applications are limited only by the imagination of the system designer.
Greatly Improved Efficiency Experience shows that up to 84 percent of leaks occur in less than 1 percent of the plant. This means that 99 percent of what are expensive, time-consuming inspection tools are being used to scan safe,leak-free components. Using a Gas Detection camera you get a complete picture and can immediately exclude areas that do not need any action. This means you can achieve enormous savings in terms of time and personnel. Another advantage is that systems do not have to be shut down during the inspection, measurements can be carried out remotely and rapidly and – most important of all – problems...


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LEEK will host visitors from Este and Bad Windsheim for the Remembrance weekend from November 7 to 12.
Around 35 Italians and 15 Germans are expected, including seven German students and three Italian students.
All visitors will take part in Leek’s Remembrance services on Sunday, November 10, including a service at St Edward’s Church and a parade through town to the Nicholson War Memorial, then to Ball Haye Green in the afternoon.
The foreign students have been invited to Leek to take part in a joint debate with a small number of students from Westwood College and Leek High School.
They will meet each other at Westwood on Friday, November 8, in the morning to work together to decide a list of issues important to them as youngsters.
European elections are due to take place in May 2014 and the students want to select the issues they would like MEP candidates to address.
After lunch these Leek, Este and Bad Winsheim students will go to Staffordshire Moorlands District Council’s base in Stockwell Street.
They will use the council chamber to make a presentation, currently scheduled to start at 2pm, to an audience of their peers from the two Leek high schools.
They will present their top five issues and then ask the audience to vote on the two or three most important ones.
On November 22, two MEPs will come to Leek to take part in a session at Westwood College.
The two MEPs who have agreed to come are Philip Bradbourn and Nicki Sinclaire.
They will be arriving at Westwood at 10.30am to take part in a question and answer session at 11am with the core students from the November 8 session, who will lobby them on the issues they voted for two weeks previously.
In addition, the German and Italian students will be returning to their home countries and meeting their local MEPs to do the same thing in late November.

domain: news


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Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the progressive loss of midbrain dopaminergic (mDA) neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta, and it involves oxidative stress. Our goal was to evaluate the neuroprotective effect of Vitis vinifera red grape seed and skin extract (GSSE) in a model of Parkinson's disease. GSSE is very rich in phenolic compounds, such as flavonoids, anthocyanins, catechins and stilbenes, which are present in the pulp, seeds, and leaves of the fruit. GSSE is known for its antioxidant properties and has shown beneficial effects against oxidative injury in different organs, such as the kidneys, liver, heart and brain. In this study, we revealed the neuroprotective effect of GSSE on midbrain dopaminergic neurons both in vitro and in vivo. We used the neurotoxin 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA), which induces oxidative damage and mimics the degeneration of dopaminergic neurons observed in Parkinson's disease. We found that GSSE was effective in protecting dopamine neurons from 6-OHDA toxicity by reducing apoptosis, the level of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and inflammation. Furthermore, we found that GSSE treatment efficiently protected against neuronal loss and improved motor function in an in vivo 6-OHDA model of Parkinson's disease (PD). Altogether, our results show that GSSE acts at multiple levels to protect dopamine neurons from degeneration in a model of PD.
Keywords: GSSE; Parkinson’s disease; dopamine neurons; neuroprotection; polyphenols.


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If you are a nature lover who is also interested in a cultural experience, this is for you! The setting offers close contact with both forest and life in a rural area, as well as close access to town and tourist attractions. We strive to offer true hospitality to all of our guests and authentic human interaction to those who are interested. Ask about our nearby organic garden project!
If you are a nature lover who is also interested in a cultural experience, this is for you! Ask about our new organic garden project!
1:30hr from SJO airport, A/C & Wifi, private equipped Bungalow, swimming pool, located at the 1st entrance of Jaco,1 km from the beach. Peaceful, quiet, away from noisy and crowd, but 5 min driving to main town where have all the facilities. Restaurants,shops,souvenirs,pharmacy,etc. Surf lessons and therapy massage available every day by David. We have 1 Double bed and 1 Single bed, 3 people maximum.


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“The Surfer & The Seal” Children’s Book now on Amazon
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Glossary of Ketosis
Other Decks By This User
- The hydrolysis (or breaking down invilving the splitting of an attractive force holding molecules together with the adition of an element of water.) of fat.
- glycerine--a sugar alchohol
- A protien hormone that is produced especially by the pancreatic islets pf Lagerhans and that promote an increase in the sugar content of the blood by increasing the breakdown of glycogen in the liver
- The production of ketone bodies.
- situated or originating outside the liver
- part of cell outside of nucleus-- produces energy for cell
- to combine with oxygen
- to make up for a loss
- to remove carboxyl from
- Free Fatty Acid
- an uncombined fatty acid they may come from the breakdown of a triglyceride into its components (fatty Acids and glycerol)
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domain: chemistry


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My book, Citizenship and the Diaspora in the Digital Age: Farooq Kperogi and the Virtual Community, received its first attention on June 15, 2023, at a conference woven around it that attracted about sixty presentations. This book, which will be the first of two books on the art of social media use, social commentary, and political analysis by Dr. Farooq Kperogi and others, has created comments, debates, and reviews from within and outside the global academic community. The complementary conference on June 15, 2023, provided the best platform for the earliest thoughts on the subject matter and related themes. Citizen engagement, citizen journalism, misinformation and fake news, new media, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and virtual community building were some of the themes the scholars presented in direct or indirect relationship to the case study.
The complementary conference, hosted by the African Center for the Study of the United States at the University of Pretoria, was centred on Kperogi as a point of call for the digital age and US-Africa Diaspora Diplomacy. In what was a marathon event, we had Dr. Dannica Fleuss’s brilliant review of the book, which sparked some questions for me. Professor Christopher Isike also had enlightening insights to share about the US-Africa relationship and the role the African diaspora plays in all of this, especially seeing as there is an economic tussle between the US and China, the latter proving to be the latest widely acceptable suitor of African states.
I enjoyed the new ideas, and I consider both the book and the conference a success. I have chosen to define the conference and book as already successful in the context of the chain of conversations the book has birthed. Every author — whether a scholarly writer, a literary legend, or an up-and-coming biographer — aspires to that level where their book does not only see the light of eventual publication but also draws enough relevance such that it sparks conversations and debates, thereby birthing new commentaries, perspectives, and arguments that could well lead to the writing of new books.
Since officially announcing this book, I have received mixed responses from people, including bewilderment from some quarters that I chose to make Prof. Kperogi — someone younger than I am — the book’s subject. Kperogi echoed this during our conference, expressing shocking gratitude for his work to have been found worthy of study. I have personally responded to some of those emanating from bewilderment; this will also be a joint response and an academic beckoning to reshape how we view and interact with knowledge and information.
Academic spaces — and I am more convinced of this being the Nigerian reality, as I worked as a lecturer at the Obafemi Awolowo University — are rife with ageistic and hierarchy-based ego. It is a case of the most senior academics — most senior here defining both age and rank — considering themselves out of bounds for collaboration with younger academics, not to talk of making someone younger and rank a focus of study. Our focus has been to pay more attention to the older ones, write more festschriften in their honour, organize more conferences, and write more books. And in most cases, this is often based on the fact that older academics have had more years to work, research, make contributions, and make impacts. Therefore, according to them, respect and making them the focus of such attention is not out of place. At a celebration to mark Professor Nimi Wariboko’s essay on Professor Adeshina Afolayan, I remarked that we canonize too early, saying that canonization closes the spaces for successive generations. I have a date with Babarere Baba Ke but won’t buy the roses.
Gerontocracy is a different matter. However, when it becomes a case where we would rather not interact with a useful body of knowledge because of its source, it has become problematic; this is one of the problems that has rocked academia, which we need to address. Many researchers and scholars cannot bring themselves to interact with, engage, or explore knowledge sources in people or places they consider academically inferior to them. It is why many would ask who exactly Kperogi is that he should be worthy of being a subject of discourse. Aside from Kperogi being indeed worthy of being a subject of discourse, many fail to understand that what is more important is his work with new media and within the virtual space — especially in building virtual communities, amassing followers, and engaging citizens — is a repertoire replete with knowledge and information; a new portal of study that needs to be explored, not necessarily because it is Kperogi, but because of the work Kperogi has done and how significant it is.
Thus, there is a need for academia to revise its approach to study and research; we need to revisit and reawaken our curiosity, so much so that we pursue knowledge for what it is and devoid of debilitating personal bias. We must re-ignite our spirit of inquiry to engage new bodies of knowledge, not forgetting that knowledge is knowledge, and information is information, regardless of the source. What matters is to gauge if such knowledge or information is useful.
This first output of mine on the significance of social media work is an elaborate consideration of several interwoven themes — the Nigerian diaspora, the Nigerian diaspora’s influence on the Nigerian polity, virtual community building, social media usage, social media, and social-political issues in Nigeria. Citizenship and the Diaspora in the Digital Age is divided into three parts. These are interwoven in that they make a single Nigerian spatial entity, which has mostly been the subject of discourse and criticism in Kperogi’s decade-long commentary. The book is an all-encompassing profile that covers the breadth of Kperogi’s work, from contextualizing his influence by establishing philosophical foundations for his views and perspectives to extrapolating his commentaries on black cultures and Africans in the diaspora to examining his socio-political commentary and academic writings as unified contributions to discourses and debates on several topical issues within and about Nigeria and Nigerians.
The most significant part of the conference yet was its ability to generate ideas along similar but not exact topics and concepts, so much so that we had participants who spoke on fake news, traditional media, deliberative democracy, conflict and peace-building, youth sexual awareness, diasporic soft power, and digital governance, among other topics and issues. This ties back to the initial reason I claimed that the book is already successful — its ability to spark issues and open doors for related analyses and newer perspectives.
The papers presented at the conference have confirmed the eagerness of the academia to explore and be curious yet again — hopefully, the perceived eagerness is not a result of responses to explore because it was a university-related conference. There is now the need to sustain the eagerness so that it births new papers, publications, books, reviews, and bodies of work to keep the flame burning for long enough to make this a self-sustaining attraction.
Although it might not have received as much attention in the past, new media, social media, and African and African diaspora relations are critical aspects of discourse for Africa’s overall development. For Professor Kperogi, the praises and the celebratory criticisms energize him to renew his commitment to his passion.
I am grateful to the University of Pretoria, the African Center for the Study of the United States at the University of Pretoria, the conference’s organizing team, the presenters, members of the audience, the eminent Professor Kperogi, and everyone who participated. Professor Christopher Isike, thank you, thank you, thank you.

domain: library