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Has Ant Financial Entered Its Golden Age? | TMTpost
Ant Financial is currently in cooperation with over 200 banks and 60 insurance companies with 2000 insurance products available for consumers to choose from. Ant Financial is probably the first finance organization in the history of finance . What kind of changes will this monstrous company bring about exactly?
Recently, Alibaba's board chairman Jack Ma had an in-depth dialogue with China Business Network's former editor in chief Qin Shuo. When Qin mentioned that the fact that the once dominating Internet giants BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) had been replaced by the ATM (Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi), Jack Ma suddenly said without hesitation that the M in ATM should be Ant Financial (Ant is pronounced as Ma Yi in mandarin).
In Jack Ma's grand business plan, Taobao, which had already made a glorious business record, was the vanguard, and Ant Financial will be the next leading warrior in the field. During the Double Eleven Shopping Festival in 2015, Ant Financial's payment product Alipay had 85,900 transactions per second, breaking the record of 56,000 transactions per second set by VISA. Such unprecedented performance has no doubt made Alipay the strongest payment platform in the world.
As a matter of fact, Ant Financial has more than just Alipay: Ant Financial has 600 million users, through whom Ant Financial is able to collect useful big data and use it to create innovations that later had a profound impact on the Internet sector. Besides that, Ant Financial is also providing services ranging from underlying architectures to cloud computing for finance organizations.
At present, Ant Financial is in cooperation with over 200 banks and 60 insurance companies with 2000 insurance products available for consumers to choose from. Meanwhile, Ant Financial has also registered several licenses related to the finance sector, probably the company that has the most finance licenses in China: Third-party payment, fund sales, banking, insurance and the licenses for personal credit and securities that are still in process. What's more, 2015 had been a year of O2O, in which more scenarios had appeared in Ant Financial's product system: Dining, supermarket, KTV, cab-hailing etc. Furthermore, users who have a credit above 700 on Ant Financial can apply for a visa to visit Singapore more easily (in the future Luxembourg might be included).
At the end of 2015, Alipay turned 12 while Ant Financial had its first birthday. Before that, Ant Financial's valuation hit between USD 46 ~ 50 billion after going public. In contrast to that, JD only had a valuation of USD 24.6 billion after the IPO. In the history of business, there has never been any financial organization like Ant Financial that not only has capital, but also an enormous user base, thorough and detailed data on user behaviors, and advanced IT capability. So how will Ant Financial fit into the current financial system? And how will it transform the future financial system?
The most powerful payment platform
When we look back at the time when Ant Financial was still green, Alipay was its main product. A little known fact is that it wasn't until 5 years after Alipay was born and had accumulated nearly 500 million users that Ant Financial was then finally established. Alipay is a tool derived from the development of the e-commerce industry. In its early stage, Alibaba only had a small team with less than 20 people. "Alipay, like other products of Ant Financial, emerged for a certain demand," Ant Financial's president Jing Xiandong said in his interview with TMTpost. The issues occurred in the field of Internet credit sector at that time could be attributed to the immature credit environment in the real economy. And in order to insure the safety of the transactions, Alibaba designed and launched Alipay. Subsequently, the development of e-commerce business further boosted Alipay. It's fair to say that Alibaba's prosperous e-commerce business was mainly contributed by the emergence of Alipay.
Besides the influence of the e-commerce industry as a whole and Alibaba's own e-commerce business, Alipay was able to thrive thanks to the fact that Chinese banks back then didn't take e-payment seriously enough. In Japan, payment service is the main income source of banks while payment accounts for 25% of the income of western banks. Compared to that, for a long time Chinese banks relied mostly on margin interests for revenue, with payment accounting for less than 5% of the revenue.
On the other hand, the e-commerce industry in China has been developing at a rocket speed and has accumulated more than 40 million small and mid-sized businesses active online. And these business owners' financial needs had been neglected by traditional banks. Additionally, traditional banks didn't have the ability to make their services reach the users. The cost of operating one loan could be up to a couple thousand RMB for traditional banks, while Alipay was able to lower the cost to one RMB through technological innovations. The Alipay at that time, though young, already had some financial functions other than just payment.
According to an insider, when China's central bank gave Alipay the license for running third-party payment business, the media considered Alipay as the capillary while traditional banks were the arteries. Little did the media back then know that Ant Financial could have evolved to today's financial giant. Ant Financial is so powerful that this company's influence alone has made China the leading country globally in the field of e-payment. During the Double Eleven Shopping Festival in 2015, Alibaba made this made-in-China shopping festival international through AliExpress. And due to the sudden increase of online purchases, many foreign payment systems almost had a malfunction on that very day. Alibaba itself also needed to restrict traffic in order to stabilize the system. During the shopping festival, Alipay had 85,900 transactions per second, breaking the record set by VISA, which was 56,000 transactions per second. Such unprecedented performance made Alipay the strongest payment platform in the world.
In around September in 2015, Ant Financial's architect Hu Xi and his team visited several commercial banks to test their systems in order to insure they wouldn't have malfunction on the shopping festival. In addition to that, Alibaba also set up a 12–12–6 scenario in response to peak time in advance: the first 12 means that in every second 120,000 consumers would finish picking products and click Pay; the second 12 means that the same amount of consumers would be choosing payment channels within the same second; the final number 6 means that 60,000 consumers would be paying per second.
The 12–12–6 scenario setting was based on the data collect during the shopping festival in 2014. In 2014, the scenario setting was 8–8–3, which was based on the statistics from the previous year as well. The payment process on Tmall and Taobao is not only conducted by Alipay alone, but also over a hundred banks' services and fast-payment function. Aside from that, some businesses also had promotion strategies like coupons and lucky money, which were sent to consumers' accounts in advance, making the whole payment process even more complicated since it involved cooperation among the e-commerce platforms, business owners, banks and Alipay. Therefore, Hu Xi and his team had been visiting and helping banks run tests based on that scenario to find the most probable situation of traffic each bank might face.
Analysys International's statistics show that Alipay, as Ant Financial's key product, had a user base of 600 million in 2015 and by May 2015 the number of active mobile users had reached 270 million. The Alipay at present is not only the pillar product of Alibaba's e-commerce transaction business, but also a third-party payment tool that can offer payment service in regions that are covered by online business. Alipay didn't just stop there, it's expanding to offline scenarios as well.
Heavier and heavier
The picture on this slide went viral recently on the Internet: Alipay's entry into the Dong Dan market in Beijing. "It's hard to imagine in today's society, you don't' even have to carry any cash to shop in a 100-year-old market," Jing Xiandong said. "All you have to do is install Alipay on your phone through which you can pay everything." Almost every store near the 1933 Old Millfun located in Shanghai supports Alipay now as well.
In 2015, Alipay had entered restaurants, fresh good markets, supermarkets, and KTVs etc. In provinces like Zhejiang, you can see Alipay's logo in many stores, which suggests that you can pay the bill via the Alipay on your phone in that particular shop alongside with UnionPay and LAKALA. Yu Ying, CMO of Carrefour China, recalled that the first thing Carrefour discussed with Ant Financial earlier in 2015 was finding common grounds. From her perspective, Carrefour is a traditional supermarket brand while Ant Financial is an Internet enterprise, two very different companies at nature. However, they do have a very fundamental common ground, that is the consumers, which Carrefour prefers to call as customers and users for Ant Financial. So are there people who can both users and customers? Yu Ying was able to find the answer before long by profiling the consumers.
In China, Carrefour serves over 400 million customers annually. In cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the male/female ratio of the customers is 1:3 while the average age is 42. After Carrefour adopted Alipay's service and Alipay's penetration rate reached 8% (male/female ratio 5:5), which means 8 out of 100 customers would use Alipay for payment, the average age was 25–25. Yu Ying found this exciting, since old people's consuming power lags behind the young group. "Such consuming group is being guided to Carrefour by Alipay," Yu Ying stated, revealing that Alipay had helped Carrefour gain an 18% increase in customer flow.
Alipay is now evolving from online to offline, adding more offline services to its service system. In early June 2015, the catering association of Qingdao helped local restaurants install Alipay POS. Alipay lowered the service fee from the average 12.5 RMB per one thousand RMB of similar products to just 6 RMB through technological innovations. Ant Financial's tech frame has evolved to the stage of cloud computing, which is a sign of the centralization of distributed computing. According to Ant Financial, its clouds can lower the system cost from traditional frameworks' tens of cents to just one cent per transaction. What's more, the system cost of per loan is lowered to less than one RMB as well, which enables Alipay to provide users with free transaction services.
Through observation, Yu Ying found that after learning to use the new system, the cashiers can finish one purchase in 15 ~ 20 seconds. "The work efficiency is increased," Yu said.
Ma Tao, senior analyst at Analysys International, believed that the future mainstream payment wouldn't involved any bank cards, and that in an era where the mobile Internet has become more important than ever in the business world, Alipay has both the ability and the right time to go from online to offline. Alipay now has two kinds of target users: C and B. B is small-sized enterprises. If Ant Financial wants to increase the user retention rate of C, then it must integrate different scenarios and make them use Alipay more often. To achieve that, Ant Financial had launched many local services on Alipay. It's fair to say that Alipay has infiltrated every aspect of online and offline payment scenarios.
According to incomplete statistics, there are currently over 500,000 restaurants, 40,000 convenience stores and supermarkets, around 200 hospitals, and over one million cabs and private cabs are using Alipay's offline payment service. As the crucial part of the transaction, whether it's online or offline, Alipay has always been a frequently-used product with an extremely high user retention rate. When a third-party payment tool has penetrated everyday scenarios to a certain degree, it not only possesses a giant financial account system, but also the power of a very influential channel, for which Alipay became dominant. Additionally, such advantages paved the way for Alipay to become the largest Internet finance retail platform in China.
Channels are transforming products
When more and more people are questioning whether it's a good idea to make Alipay heavier or not, MingDao's vice president Xu Wei said: "Besides the payment and ineter-bank segments, other functions from Ant Financial can be all considered as Internet finance products." Payment service is the channel and inter-bank services are Zhima Credit and finance clouds. The rest of Ant Financial's products are foundation, financial management, insurance, banking, small loans, equity crowdfunding and P2P, all of which can be considered as Internet finance products like what has been mentioned above. Unlike Alibaba who sells physical products, Ant Financial is an e-commerce platform that sells Internet finance products.
Statistics from Ebrun show that the B2C Chinese e-commerce platform JD has more than one hundred million registered users while VIP.com has 9.3 million. As for Alipay, the number of its user base is around 600 million, 270 million of which are active mobile Internet users. In this enormous account system even 1% of users could have made a decent transaction volume. The truth is, Tmall and Taobao have become so successful that there's no need to build another platform.
Therefore, looking from the perspective of e-commerce, a powerful channel is the core competitiveness for Ant Financial. Having only the Internet as the channel might lead to failures, which is proven by many cases in the business world. And only finance organizations that have products designed based on big data can make more innovations, or let's put it another way, more channels.
CPIC is the perfect example of that. In 2010, many consumers returned the products they bought on Taobao and there had been much of disputes about whom should be paying the logistics fee. To solve this problem, CPIC teamed up with Alipay and launched the insurance service for returns: If consumers are willing to pay an extra 50 cents, then in situation where they need to return the merchandise, either the consumers or business owners can get a refund in 3 days depending on who would pay the logistics fee. After that, CPIC and Alipay took it even further by launching insurance products on quality guarantee of cell phones and guarantee extension. Later the two companies even introduced similar products to appliances, providing guarantee insurance for electronic product buyers.
CPIC's director told our journalist at TMTpost in an interview that one of Ant Financial's advantages is that it can find insurance needs in different scenarios since it's small, fragmented, affordable, and useful, and it provides services based on users' needs. "This platform is the best place where we can explore the possibilities of Internet insurances," the director commented at last.
The reality there is the tendency that finance products are going online, and what Ant Financial is doing is merely follow the trend. According to CICC, from 2011 to now, the volume of Internet financial insurance had an increase above 100% each year. In 2014, the volume even reached 50.6 billion RMB. It's estimated that by 2020, the scale of the Internet insurance sector would hit 304.9 billion. From 2015 to 2020, the compound growth rate of property insurance will be around 35%. Meanwhile, Internet property insurance will account for more proportion of the total volume of the property insurance sector. In 2012, the property insurance sector only took up 1.83% of the total volume of the entire insurance industry. But in 2014, the number jumped from that to 6.7%. China International Capital Corporation also estimates that by 2020 the property insurance sector will be holding 20% of the entire insurance industry's volume.
In this case, there are three factors influencing the success of Internet insurance: tendency; the right product; and the right channel. Yu'E Bao had all of them, and it has been the most successful case so far.
Since 2003, money funds started to appear in the Chinese finance sector, which was seemed as the starting point of interest rate liberalization. However, the outcome disappointed a lot of industry insiders for the fact that after the emergence of money funds the industry tended to stay stable and nothing really happened. Yu'E Bao fundamentally uses Alipay's platform to sell money funds. In this case the nature of Yu'E Bao is T+0. T+0 means when users file redemption application, the fund will be sent back to their accounts within one day or immediately. This T+0 completely changed people's perception on money funds since they used to considered money funds as fixed deposit. Such innovation didn't bring up much of a stir before Alipay came along. Naturally, TianHong Fund, who was running Yu'E Bao, was not famous at all at that time.
In August, 2013, 10 days after Yu'E Bao's launch, its number of users skyrocketed to one million, far beyond TianHong Fund's expectation. But the following surge of user base surprised them even more. Very soon, Yu'E Bao became popular across the country, making the TianHong Fund jump from around 50th to the top three on the industry ranking chart. Up till March 2015, the number of Yu'E Bao's users had reached 200 million, with a transaction scale of 711.7 billion RMB, making Yu'E Bao the second largest financial management product in the world. According to TianHong Fund's operation director and technical director, Han Haichao, everyday Yueabao's system had to allocate revenue for 80 million users, and that the record was 5000 transactions per second. In general such complicated processing of data is completed in an hour.
After that, Zhou Xiaoming, the vice president of TianHong Fund, commented: "Yu'E Bao is not a mysterious product. Its core model is direct selling. That being said, Yu'E Bao installed the direct selling system from foundations on an e-commerce platform. In this case, Yu'E Bao acts just like an e-commerce platform where we buy merchandise. The difference here is that we are buying financial service on this platform." Zhou is the designer of Yu'E Bao's direct selling model.
Such design allows consumers to shop for financial services and pay for them easily just like transferring money with Alipay. When shopping on Taobao or Tmall, Yu'E Bao can be a payment tool just like Alipay. Since unlike putting money in Alipay balance, putting money in Yu'E Bao is no different from that except for the fact that users could earn a few bucks thanks to the interest rate. What's more, in the early phase of Yu'E Bao, the interest rate was pretty high, and it naturally drew tons of users to use it.
"Internet finance is a combination of the finance industry and Internet industry. It's a cross-industry business. Therefore it's not a line in which people just sell finance products on the Internet nor a new industry where Internet companies start getting involved in the finance sector. From our perspective, this newly-emerged sector should be a fusion of both industries." Zhou Xiaoming concluded.
"In terms of the transaction scale, Alibaba accounts for 80% of the total transaction volume in China," Chen Xinlei, professor at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business commented. "In some way it means Alibaba holds 80% of the Internet traffic in China. If this 80% of traffic were to be poured into the finance sector, there would be another Alibaba in that particular sector."
Chen was absolutely right about that.
From cooperation-competition to building an ecosystem
As a matter of fact, the rapid and large transfer of savings to Yu'E Bao shocked traditional banks, especially local banks. However, the fundamental reason for this shock lies in the overly slow marketization process of the interest rate of the Chinese banking sector and the lack of channels for resident investment. To maintain a higher margin, banks in China have been using low interest to attract clients. Even without Yu'E Bao, there would always be other similar products creating a stir within the industry. In contrast to the traditional Chinese finance industry that's slowly going online, Ant Financial as a third-party force provides the traditional finance industry with an Internet finance thinking and some solutions.
Lin Ronghui is the president assistant and vice president of Industrial Bank. In June 2015, Industrial Bank signed a comprehensive cooperation with Ant Financial. He stated that traditional major banks' advantages lied in the numerous branches they had, however mid-sized banks like Industrial Bank were not able to form competitive edge in promoting finance services geared to ordinary consumers. "If we mainly promote our services online, we would be able to reach more users and provide them with general and personalized services," he said. "If we can build such platform, success will surely follow."
At present, Industrial Bank is conducting most of its services online except for counter service etc. Lin Ronghui revealed that Industrial Bank focused on two main fields, which were services for ordinary consumers and the ones for enterprises. "Nowadays many enterprises' production models and operation models have been transformed by the Internet." Lin explained. "In the past the sales of financial services was complicated, and now we have direct channels." Enterprises connect finance services related to purchasing, sales, production, inventory, and logistics etc. through using Internet and Industrial Banks aims to connect its system with enterprises' production, logistics and sales systems.
Industrial Bank's overlaps on client source with Ant Financial are also a driving force of their cooperation. For traditional banks there are many restraints that have been holding them back, for which reason they had no choice but cooperated with third-party platforms. In most cases traditional banks start their process of going Internet by building their own websites first, making their services available online. Although such initiatives could attract a lot of registered users, the inconvenient truth is that these users are all vertical users. By vertical I mean these users can only enjoy services in the bank that offers them. And because of that users of Bank A face barriers when they need to use Bank B's services. Ant Financial's system is, in contrast to that, horizontal, which can better serve users in a society where time, content, and even users are fragmented and improve the efficiency of cash flow.
Additionally, traditional banks in the past didn't have the capacity to meet the demand of small-amount transaction and payment. To put it in perspective, traditional could lend one thousand RMB to one person in the past, but with Internet finance technologies they are able to lend one thousand RMB to one thousand people. And such function is based on third-party payment organizations like Alipay, which used to serve mainly e-commerce businesses. Today these third-party platforms even allow payment of a 50-cent insurance, showing that relevant technologies have evolved to the mature level.
Building online banks to attract users is a method similar to traditional enterprises' efforts of building B2C websites during their transition period. The harsh reality is that a lot of companies failed during this process and some traditional enterprises later just cooperated with third-party e-commerce platforms, which could also be an option for traditional banks.
This gives third-party organizations lie Ant Financial an opportunity. Ant Financial alone is in cooperation with over 200 banks and 60 insurance companies. And with this abundant resource, Ant Financial doesn't just simply sell finance products, but integrate all the resource. "From coopetition to integration, in the end an ecosystem will be built," Jing Xiandong concluded.
Zhao Cai Bao, launched in August 2014, is the perfect example of that. Zhao Cai Bao is a new finance product built upon the foundation of the 200 million users' finance demand. It's positioned as a B2C platform that sells regular financial products. In operation, Ant Financial fully exploits its advantages as a platform and introduces qualified regular financial products that have been filtered to Zhao Cai Bao's platform for sales. There are four main product sources: One is those banks with a scale of more than 200 billion RMB (there are less than 50 banks like that in China); one is the four assets management giants, AMC; one is property insurance companies that have a solvency of 150%; the other one is those top financial organizations in China.
Individual users could subscribe Zhao Cai Bao's service by authorizing the platform and simply inputting the service life of the product and the rate of return. Then the system would match services with the criteria set by the users and subscribe them automatically. What banks really do is giving the name of the client, the needed amount of financing, deadline, and the rate of return to Zhao Cai Bao. After that they would inform Zhao Cai Bao the collection account of the enterprises and the corporate code, then Zhao Cai Bao's clients would come and make investment. It's reported that some cooperating banks also help promote Zhao Cai Bao, some have even integrated Zhao Cai Bao into their direct banks or online banks in service of enterprise clients' financing needs. Favored by the users and banks, Zhao Cai Bao had no trouble accumulating a scale of 370 billion RMB in just one year after launch.
Statistics from the Central Bank show that the summer in 2013, in which Yu'E Bao emerged, the total saving volume of banks hit 43 trillion RMB, among which 16 trillion RMB was current deposit. When some people say that Yu'E Bao is the cause of massive transfer of savings, some industry insiders point out that: "There have been little evidence that shows this is really connected to the emergence of Yu'E Bao. As long as China is still under the structure without interest rate liberalization and significant differences still exist between money market rate and deposit rate, the development of money funds is an inevitable tendency." The active private lending scene in some way shows that 20% of users of low net worth lacks financing channels. However there are a lot of risks in the private lending sector. News like some borrowers just disappeared with the money is not uncommon. Such phenomenon paved the way for Ant Financial to launch products like Zhao Cai Bao.
Data brings revolution
Up till now, Ant Financial has created an operation model different from the ones that traditional finance industry is using. The driving force of such transformation on business model was technological breakthroughs. The most apparent factor here many people could notice easily is that more than half of the Ant Financial's staff were technical staff, empowering the company's technological capability.
For example, MyBank can support small loan services 24/7 and 310. The 310 mentioned here mean users only need 3 minutes to register, one minute to pass the verification process, and then the money will be transferred to the user's account (0 minute). "In order to prepare for this year's Double Eleven festival, we now offer loans up to 9 billion RMB to business owners for stocking up," Zhao Weixing, the vice president of MyBank revealed. During the lending process, Ant Financial completely abandoned the mortgage model traditional banks adopt and relied entirely on credits.
Through years of accumulation, WeBank has established many risk control models based on the data it has gathered. The moment small and micro-sized companies file the application, WeBank's system will start to analyze the applicants' basic information, credit record and transaction history simultaneously. "As a matter of fact, the analysis process can be seen as users confirming their relevant information themselves," Zhao concluded. If a user has a suspiciously high transaction record, then the risk control system will search and cross-reference the user's logistics record and determine the authenticity of the transaction record.
As for new users, WeBank has another analysis method: their business license for example, logistics record, even their utilities payment record will be taken into consideration. Through this highly efficient system WeBank is able to control its bad debt rate below 2%.
The 9.0 version of Alipay canceled the login password and pattern password completely, and naturally users started to have questions and doubts. Ant Financial's senior risk control expert Feng Liguo revealed to TMTpost since 2007 Alibaba had been working on the Super Security Brain Plan, a plan dedicated to enhancing Alipay's safety level. The paying process has always been the center of this project and its development literally is based on the maturing technologies and the accumulation of data. By the time Alipay decided to get rid of pattern password, the asset loss rate of Alipay had already been lowered to the bottom.
In general, Alipay only has small amount transactions but with a high frequency. Alipay's risk control mechanism is the backbone of the payment process. The more data on payment Alipay has, the more secure the payment process would be. Besides that, the risk control center scans for abnormal activities 24/7, and if suspicious activities occur the system will make real-time response. For example, if a user login to his or her Alipay account in Beijing while another person in Hangzhou tries to login at the same time, the system will determine this situation as abnormal login activity if these two people are not linked as families accounts. The geographical environment, transaction preference, and interpersonal relationship are the fundamental factors Alipay's risk control system will analyze, and based on which more than 60 risk control models have been built, eventually giving Alipay the confidence to cancel password and pattern lock. Feng Liguo revealed that this technology alone is ways ahead of the world.
"Most banks' data are structured data," Gu Yong, consultant at Yong An insurance said. Gu believes Excel is already powerful enough when dealing with traditional banking businesses. "But big data mainly came from non-structured data," Yan Lixing, professor at Fudan University said, stating that the combination of structured and non-structured data is the foundation of Internet finance ecosystem.
Structured data include client relationship, accounting system, and relevant data base while non-structured data cover data collected from social media, e-mails, texts, audio, videos, photos, Internet logs etc. Therefore, today besides data gathered from Alibaba's other e-commerce platforms, data like user behavior, logistics history etc. are also part of Ant Financial's big data bank. From online to offline, Ant Financial is trying to build as many scenarios as possible as long there is payment process involved. Alipay took it even further by adding social function to the app. All these developments indicate that Ant Financial is still trying to refine its data structure in hopes of boosting its core competitiveness.
Providing technological services
In October 2015, Ant Financial's president Jing Xiandong announced the company's new project, Internet Thruster, which could help over one thousand finance organizations enter the area of new finance in the future. In Jing's opinion, the growth of the Chinese economy has slowed down from 7%~8% in the past to 7% and the economy has changed from investment-driven to consuming-driven, which is no doubt a sign of new economy. The thing is a new economy needs to be supported by new finance since one of the characteristics of the new economy is the application of internet technologies in the finance sector.
Ant Financial also learned a few lessons when exploring cloud architecture. Most problems occurred during the Double Eleven festival in 2011. The system was overwhelmed by the sudden surge of sales and had trouble connecting to banks' system due to the IOE architect. The front client was having trouble making quick payment and in the back people were trying everything they could to fix the system constantly.
After that incident, Alipay decided to upgrade the whole system architecture to the third generation: to the clouds, literally. "After the upgrade, Alipay's capacity went from a couple thousand payment transactions per second to 60,000 per second," Ant Financial's first architect Tong Ling said. "To put it in perspective, this amount of transactions is six times more than that of the largest bank in China."
In May this year, Ant Financial's WeBank was founded. It's a commercial bank that bases its core system on cloud computing infrastructure without any brick-and-motor branch and doesn't involve cash, which means no offline service staff. WeBank's target audience is the 20% users with low net worth.
Looking from the experience of traditional commercial banks, every year banks have to spend millions on purchasing both software and hardware for their IT system. "After we upgraded to the cloud, the system cost of WeBank has been significantly lowered," Tangjia, CIO of WeBank said. "And as our businesses expand, the cost advantage of finance clouds will continue to grow."
Let's take account maintenance for example. The cost of account maintenance for banks that adopt traditional IT system is 30 to 100 RMB each and the cost of payment is 6 to 7 cents per payment. Compared to that, Internet banks that adopt finance cloud only have a 50 cents cost of each account and 2 cents cost of each payment.
One of the main businesses of traditional banks is risk monitoring service on loaning. The operation model of this business is similar to what's been mentioned before. Relevant data will be collected manually and will be used to determine a target's credibility based on three factors: assets and liabilities, operating profit, and cash flow record. It should be notice that statistics on these three things might not be the original data. WeBank's operation model is based on big data, through which the system can profile the target's credibility.
Unlike in traditional banks, IT technologies have a much more profound impact on the Internet finance sector since this sector is based on literally technologies after all. Li Xiaofeng, director of the Internet Finance Research Center at People's Bank of China, believes that the centralized IT architectures that traditional banks adopt and distributed architectures all have their own advantages as well as disadvantages. Traditional IT architectures tend to be safer and more stable while distributed architectures have more advantages in small-amount transactions and high-frequent online transactions for its low cost and technical flexibility.
For that, Ant Financial's chief architect Tong Ling stated that the fundamental architecture of the future banks would be in a mixed mode. Tong's idea actually fits the Internet finance strategy released by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China recently. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's report recognizes the Yilian, Rongyg, and Rongyixing, the content of the Internet finance content, and that its IT architecture is the core banking system, a combination of peripheral distributed architecture, a central server and a shared data base. For that, she concluded that: We are in the first revolutionary Internet finance era in three decades.
Not long ago, IDC's report on the cloud market in China shows that in 2014 the scale of the cloud market in China was USD 903 million, which is around 5.73 billion RMB. Additionally, the scale of the finance cloud market was around 550 million RMB in China, which accounted for 1% of the finance sector's investment in IT. "IDC found that there's a huge market potential of the cloud industry since the total investment scale only accounts for 1% of the entire cloud market," Fang Zheng, chief researcher of the finance sector at IDC China. IDC found out through surveys that banks with a scale under 50 billion are having an increasingly demand for cloud services, and are more in favor of thirty-party services.
The opening of Ant Financial cloud and the launch of Internet Thruster will be a boost for SAAS companies to sell IT technologies to medium and big-sized finance organizations as well as providing small and mid-sized finance companies with services from IAAS to SAAS. This is not just another business of Internet finance platforms, but also an opportunity for Ant Financial to enter the traditional finance sector more easily and faster.
In August 2015, The List Company Report In the First Half Year revealed that 16 banks hadn't been performing well and that the year-on-year growth of the net profit was 2.4% while the growth in 2013 and 2014 was 12.8% and 7.7% respectively. The president of Pingan Bank Shao Ping commented that this plunge signified that the 10-year golden age during which the Chinese banking industry had a rapid growth was indeed over.
In the face of the enormous Chinese finance industry, Ant Financial is just like a little ant literately. But in an age where major transformations keep happening, Ant Financial's attempts in the industry might bring about a few changes:
When facing the challenges for traditional loan-focused models brought by the manufacturing, real estate sector, and government platforms, Ant Financial's light loan models and capacity might be an efficient supplement to that.
Could Alipay's downward penetration make cardless payment scenarios the mainstream in the future? What kind of changes will happen to the future landscape of the payment sector and the banking industry?
Finance services that are based on data and drip operation system and rely on Alipay and small-amount loan companies will bring miracles in finance that had happened in the past decade in China.
As Ant Financial fuses with the traditional finance sector, what kind of impact will be brought upon? Will small and micro-sized companies have less trouble finding the financing they need? Will this fusion help achieve the national plan of mass innovation and mass entrepreneurship? Will it really nurture small and mid-sized companies and truly transform the Chinese economy?
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[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Guo Juan, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]
Translated by Garrett Lee (Senior Translator at PAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.
Originally published at www.tmtpost.com.


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The never ending settlement… because those in DC are doing their best to make sure their bankers are A-OK.
Mortgage-backed securities investors who are convinced that banks intend to shift the cost of the $25 billion national mortgage settlement onto their shoulders are "evaluating their legal options," according to Chris Katopis, executive director of the Association of Mortgage Investors (and a former clerk on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals). The private investors, as I've reported, are outraged at the terms of the settlement, which sets no limit on the percentage of securitized mortgages the settling banks — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Ally Financial — are permitted to modify to reach their $17 billion target for reducing the principal balance owed by struggling borrowers. Mortgage-backed noteholders believe the deal terms encourage banks to write down investor-owned first liens, rather than second lien mortgages in bank-owned portfolios. That incentive, they say, shifts the cost of the deal from the banks to mortgage-backed bondholders.
Their argument is gaining traction. The New York Times editorialized Sunday on the bank-friendly details of …

subset: commoncrawl


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By Thomas Maschler and Asa Strong
WATCH OUR WEBINAR to learn how to use GFW Map Builder
Open data enables communities and decisions makers around the world to engage in important societal and environmental issues. It increases transparency and informs actions that often affect livelihoods. But simply making data 'open' doesn't guarantee change. To drive action and empower people to make better decisions, the data must be packaged with the right tools. Global Forest Watch (GFW) makes it easy for anyone with internet access to view and analyze the most up-to-date global and national forest data to make better decisions about forests. Park rangers can track where forests were cut down as recently as a week ago, auditors can calculate countries' carbon emissions from forest conversion and companies can find and address points in their supply chains that contribute to deforestation. Imagine how a tool like Global Forest Watch can involve even more communities and stakeholders if it was customized with data that's important to their local cause and environment. A new tool called Map Builder lets users do just that—combine GFW's geospatial analysis features with their own data to create highly-customized tools to monitor forests in their own backyard.
Congo Basin countries improve decision-making with Forest Atlases
Congo Basin countries have already pioneered this work with the Congo Basin Forest Atlases. These country-specific platforms were built by WRI in partnership with the forest ministries of Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. The Atlases provide one easy-to-access portal where forest managers can visualize, analyze and even download official data, including forest concessions, protected areas and mining permits, to make better-informed decisions about national forest estates. One-stop access to these previously scattered data has helped ministries streamline and improve their processes for designating protected areas, establishing community forests and allotting land for commodity production. For example:
- The Democratic Republic of Congo's Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development used their Forest Atlas to evaluate forest concession contracts for renewal, and ultimately suspended 91 permits covering 12.7 million hectares (31.4 million acres) for violating legal requirements.
- Cameroon's Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF) used their Atlas to pinpoint potential illegal logging activity by overlaying maps of logging roads with logging and mining permit boundaries to reveal activity that extended beyond what was legally permitted.
- More recently, MINFOF established a community and council forest in central Cameroon based on forest loss detected using data and recommendations from GFW.
Scaling transparency beyond the Congo
Map Builder allows anyone, not just governments, to create their own customized monitoring platform. Users can:
- Use powerful GIS tools to run complex analyses such as land cover composition and above ground biomass as well as changes such as forest cover loss and gain and bushfires. Users can apply these features to their own data or data available on Global Forest Watch (via the Open Data Portal).
- Share analysis results using a static link or export them in any format, including CSV, JPG or PDF.
- Browse through tabular data attached to each geographic feature on the map. For example, every conservation area and logging and mining permit on the DRC Forest Atlas has data on when and how they were created and how and by whom they are managed.
- Customize and apply branding across different apps to create one comprehensive and cohesive atlas. Choose between more than 6 different languages for the interface including English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesian, and Mandarin.
- Deploy Map Builder in ArcGIS online using an organizational or free public account. Users can even deploy it securely behind their own firewall using ArcGIS Portal for Server. It is published under MIT license and any organizations can create their own forest monitoring platform with custom data, at any geographic scale free of charge.
The Congo Basin Forest Atlases built off the Global Forest Watch platform to promote radical transparency in national forest sectors. Now, Map Builder is taking the next step by making it easier for anyone in the world to create their own monitoring platform at any scale. So what's the wait? Get started building your own Forest Atlas today! LEARN MORE by joining the webinar or visiting the GFW How-To page.


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A small hamlet in Karnataka's Bagalkot district, Kamatagi is located 455 km away from its capital city, Bangalore. There are several places of attractions around Kamatagi that are worth visiting. Kudala Sangama (30 km) away has a number of places that one can explore. Some of its nearby cities include Badami (35 km), Bagalkot (33 km), and Talikoti (83 km).
Places to Stay
Kamatagi does not have any accommodation facilities for its tourists, but Badami (35 km) has a number of options, including Hotel Anand Deluxe (Tariff – Rs.883), Hotel Pearl (Tariff – Rs.853), Hotel Anugraha Deluxe (Tariff – Rs.609) and Hotel Akshay International (Tariff – Rs.715).
Kannada and Konkani are commonly spoken in the area.
Some of the major festivals celebrated here are Mahashivaratri in February, Ugadi and Holi in March-April, Dushera in September-October and Diwali in October-November.
Places of Interest
Most of the attractions lie in Kudala Sangama (30 km) away. Other places of interest are in Badami (35 km), and Bagalkot (33 km).
How to Get There
The nearest airport from the village is the Hubli Airport (146 km).
Bagalkot Railway Station (28 km) is the major railway station that connects this village to other towns and cities.
Buses are available from Bagalkot, Hubli and Badami. State-run buses cater to passengers travelling on this route. You need not worry about travelling to bus counters anymore, as you can book online bus tickets through TicketGoose.com.


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LOS ANGELES, Jan. 3 (UPI) — Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna reunited over the weekend to ring in the new year. The 29-year-old reality star and 28-year-old model spent New Year's Day with their infant daughter, Dream Renee, following their highly publicized split in December. Kardashian shared a photo on ...Read More »
A 'Dream' come true: Rob Kardashian, Blac Chyna welcome their first child together
Their dream has finally come true. On Thursday, Rob & Chyna stars Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna welcomed a daughter, Dream Renee Kardashian, according to E! News and People. Us Weekly! was the first to break the news. The reality TV personality/sock line designer and model-turned-cosmetics maven were first romantically linked ...Read More »
Adrienne Bailon Clears Up Past Rob Kardashian Rumors: "I Absolutely Never Cheated"
Adrienne Bailon is setting the record straight once and for all. The Real co-host opened up about ex-boyfriend Rob Kardashian Wednesday and cleared up any and all rumors surrounding infidelity in their former relationship. Rob, who is expecting his first child with fiancée Blac Chyna, admitted on a past episode ...Read More »
Is Rob Kardashian Ruining His Reality Show With Blac Chyna?
The 29-year-old Keeping Up With the Kardashians star reportedly cancelled filming opportunities with his pregnant fiancée, amid rumours their spin-off series is in crisis. Credit: Getty The future of the spin-off show titled Rob & Blac is looking bleak because the youngest Kardashian fears another reality series could ruin ...Read More »


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In the early 1900s, astronomers were debating the makeup of spiral nebulae — cloudy, spiral-shaped objects found throughout the night sky. Were they gas clouds located within our Milky Way galaxy, or were they vast groups of stars located far beyond our galaxy?
In 1919, American astronomer Edwin Hubble tackled the question. His keen astronomical knowledge was combined with a powerful tool – the Hooker telescope with its 100-inch mirror, on top of Mount Wilson in California. Hubble used the telescope's resolution and light-gathering power to take a series of photographs of the great nebula in Andromeda. For the first time, the images revealed faint stars in the nebula.
Hubble now knew the Andromeda nebula was a collection of stars, but how far away was it? To find out, he used a known method for calculating distance based on very bright variable stars.
In 1923, Hubble found dozens of these variable stars in Andromeda, and determined their distance. He calculated that Andromeda must be at least 10 times farther away than the farthest stars in the Milky Way. The Andromeda nebula was really the Andromeda galaxy. This discovery implied that the other, even fainter, spirals were probably also galaxies even farther away.
Hubble published his work in 1929 and changed forever our view of the universe. Astronomers no longer thought our galaxy was the entire universe. Now they knew that the universe was composed of many, many galaxies.
Seven decades later, a telescope named in Hubble's honor helped discover that the observable universe was truly vast, and contained nearly 100 billion galaxies.


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Looking back over my teaching career, I feel like the most successful experiences have been those in which friendship and fun were present in every lesson. These two elements are essential for developing the kind of healthy classroom environment which supports the learning process. In this post you'll find some ideas that you can use to create positive relationships between the students in your Young Learner classes.
Before I get started, take a look at these quotes which have come from real Young Learner teachers. Do any of these situations sound familiar? What do you think the consequences of these problems are?
While these situations may appear to be quite different from each other, they would all benefit from better student-student relationships. As a solution to any or all of these problems above, I would encourage teachers to being integrating activities into their lessons which have the aim of 'forming the group' and creating a sense of community between the learners. I first heard of 'group formation' in this book by David Vale.
If you've read the quote from David Vale on the right, you can probably already guess the characteristics that make group formation games different from the ice-breakers you might use at the start of a course or games you use in a regular class. Here are the guidelines that I use when selecting an appropriate activity:
Does is require the group to work cooperatively? Do they need to somehow act together? Do the need to support each other to play the game or complete the task successfully? Do they make physical contact with each other in a gentle way? Do they need to lend and receive trust? Does is create highly enjoyable and non-competitive situations?
To get an even better idea of what this looks like, you might like to download some of my favourite group formation games. I've been using them for so long that I can no longer remember where I learned them from. Some of them are traditional games which have been adapted and others are drama warmers. Give it a go and let me know how your students respond!


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(NECN: Tom Langford, Revere, Mass.) - Much of New England hit record high temps over the weekend, and the warm streak continued into Columbus Day.
With many enjoying the holiday out of work, NECN reporter Tom Langford went to Revere Beach to see how people were spending the sunny October day.
"Enjoy it... you won't see it for another six, seven months, you know? This is about as good as it's going to get," said one passerby.
It may not be the typical autumn weather, but it's making a lot of people smile on their day off.
"I think it's great, I wish it would last forever," said one woman.
On Sunday, beach officials said the beaches were packed with people taking advantage of the warm weather.
Copyright NECNMIGR - NECN


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Forget Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo: Carlos Tevez is set to become the highest paid player in the world on £615,000-A-WEEK with move to China all but done
The move back to Argentina to play for Boca Juniors was his last move before retiring but the lure of Chinese Super League has proven too much for Tevez
CARLOS Tevez is set to become the highest paid footballer in the world when joins the Chinese Super League revolution with an incredible £615,000 per week deal at Shanghai Shenhua.
The 32-year-old returned to his homeland to play for his boyhood side Boca Juniors, that was meant to be his final destination until retirement after nine years playing in Europe.
The lure of the vast riches on offer in the Far East have proved too much for the Argentine hitman who is expected to sign a two-year deal estimated to be worth a staggering £65million, more than £600,000 per week.
Tevez's dosh eclipses Cristiano Ronaldo's new deal at Real Madrid, the 2016 Ballon D'or winner signed a new deal at the Bernabeu worth a mere £365,0000 per week.
Carlos Tevez's incredible £615,000-a-week deal nets him £1 a second
CARLOS TEVEZ is set to become the world's highest paid player when he moves to the Chinese Super League. Here, his enormous £615,000-a-week pay packet is broken down to finer detail. Tevez will make £31,980,000 a year. That's £87,857 a day. In one hour he will earn £3,660.71. That works out to £61.01 every minute and £1 a SECOND. For a 30-game season, Tevez will make £11,581 for every minute on the pitch.
The former Manchester United and Manchester City striker may have signed off from Boca in the best possible style, he hit a double in the Superclasico win against fierce rivals River Plate.
Following the game Tevez revealed he would not be rushed into any rash decisions about his immediate future.
Tevez said: "I think it's time to think and it's only me to take the decision. I know that my team-mates want me to stay, that the coach wants me to stay, but the decision is mine and when I have a cool head I'm going to think.
"I know it's difficult and everyone expects an answer but I have to think well about it, the decision is more personal than something else and accepting the reality is difficult. Tevez added.
But Boca have all but confirmed Tevez's departure suggesting only the formalities of the mega deal are left to be tie up.
"He is going to go, all that remains is for it to be made official" a Boca Juniors director has revealed to Marca.
Shenhua President Wu Xiaohui has revealed the club are close to completing a deal for the Argentine striker.
"We have done a lot of work [on trying to sign Tevez], And it's safe to say that there has been a definite breakthrough in the negotiations.
"But for a variety of reasons, we have not nailed down the deal. Their club have problems that are still yet to be solved and I will spare you the details.
"We will continue to put greater effort into this and strive to give our supporters a pleasant surprise as early as possible."
Shenhua's move for Tevez is a clear statement of intent and shows they will not be outdone by rivals Shanghai SIPG, who are on the verge of completing a £52million deal for Chelsea attacking midfielder Oscar.
Tevez will link up with fellow South American Gus Poyet who is now in charge at Shenua who is also keen on tempting Chelsea skipper John Terry to the Far East if he leaves Chelsea at the end of the season.
Here are five crazy things Carlos Tevez could buy with his the money he will earn in the Chinese Super League
Tevez came to prominence when he and fellow Argentine Javier Mascherano joined West Ham in the summer of 2006 following their stand out performances in the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
Tevez moved to Manchester United on a two-year loan deal in 2007 and went on to win two Premier League titles, The Champions League and the FIFA World Club Cup.
The striker became frustrated towards the end of his time at Old Trafford when it became clear boss Sir Alex Ferguson would not extent his stay at the club.
Tevez'a representative Kia Joorabchian negotiated a controversial move across town to Manchester City for a fee of around £47million, he would go on to win the Premier League title again before falling out with City boss Roberto Mancini.
The Argentine was absent from the team for four months after refusing to back down from his spat with Mancini.
Juventus was the striker's next destination in 2013 for £12m, and after winning two league titles in Italy Tevez made an emotional return to Boca Juniors in Argentina where his career started.


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Even at a distance, it was obvious that there was something odd about the compost pile behind one of Brad Moline's long white barns. Moline, 37, tops six feet, but the pile towered above him. It was 30 feet wide and 100 feet long, and the compost was crumbly and rich. But its sloping sides were studded with bones.
There were seven other piles like this on the Moline family farm, in northwest Iowa, enough to fill three football fields up to the first row of seats. Bleached pelvic crests and the knobby ends of shins poked up from the humus alongside an unbroken wishbone. They were all that was left of the 56,000 turkeys that Moline and his older brother, Grant, and their father, John, were raising last May, when avian influenza arrived on their farm. When they went to bed one night, their turkeys were healthy; the next morning, almost 100 were dead and hundreds more were gasping for breath. Thousands of birds died in days.
"I'd never seen anything like it before," Moline said when I visited him last October. "My father, who is 70 years old, he'd never seen anything like it before, and some older relatives that have been around this area for a long time, they'd never seen anything like it. It rolled through the farm like a runaway train."
The Molines had been dreading the flu for months, watching it advance across the state and hoping their isolated location, outside a small town called Manson, would keep the disease away. Instead, following orders from the United States Department of Agriculture, the family was required to kill all their birds, even those that were not showing symptoms, sacrificing them as a firebreak to keep the disease from spreading. They stacked the thousands of carcasses in 200-foot windrows of wood shavings and straw so the heat of decay would burn the virus away. They turned the piles with tractors, scrubbed and fogged and aired their barns, turned the piles again, swabbed the empty buildings to check for infection and waited out weeks of quarantine to earn an all-clear from the U.S.D.A. and the state's Agriculture Department.
Iowa was the worst-hit state in the outbreak, and the Molines' farm was the first allowed to restock once it was over. When I visited, there were 28,800 turkeys in four of their barns — 11-week-old birds, reedy and at the midpoint of their lives — and another 28,000 new arrivals cheeping in the brooder barn, where they spend their first few weeks. It seemed as if the devastating flu had never been there — except for the extra compost, as much as they would have accumulated in 10 years of normal farming.
It has been a year since the bird flu tore through the Midwest: enough time for decimated farms to cash their indemnity checks and begin buying replacement birds; for the wholesale price of eggs, which doubled, to slide back to normal; for national awareness of the outbreak, the worst animal-disease epidemic in United States history, to dissipate. But among the poultry farmers who endured the flu, and others watching elsewhere in the country, there is a pervasive uneasiness, because after a year of scrutiny, federal and academic scientists still cannot say for sure how their properties became infected. Despite their own efforts to harden their defenses, and new federal plans to help them, it is possible that poultry farmers are not equipped for the flu to return among the United States' billions of chickens; and that ranchers and pork producers might be equally unprepared if an unfamiliar disease detonated among the country's 92 million beef and dairy cattle or 68 million pigs. Planning for epidemics, animal or human, is to a large extent based on what a disease did the last time. It is much more difficult to predict what a disease will do next.
It was reasonable to expect the United States to be prepared for avian flu. Big, unpredictable epidemics were a part of American life for as long as America existed, going back to Philadelphia's yellow-fever epidemic in 1793. But in 2001, mere weeks after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and elsewhere, members of Congress and the media received letters laced with powdered anthrax. Five people died, 17 more were made gravely ill, thousands were put on preventive antibiotics and policy makers confronted, as they never had before, that the country needed to be protected against deliberately caused diseases. That recognition was followed by two more: Naturally occurring epidemics might be as dangerous as maliciously introduced ones; and diseases in plants and animals could undermine national security as seriously as human epidemics would.
The Department of Homeland Security was set up in 2003, and one of its first responsibilities, set by presidential directive the following January, was to protect "the agriculture and food system against terrorist attacks, major disasters and other emergencies." The president asked Congress for billions to finance the new task of defending the country, including more than $1 billion for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or Aphis, the U.S.D.A. division that tracks diseases. But the funding was used for federal structures that would research and detect agricultural diseases; little reached down the production chain to strengthen what farmers were doing on their own properties. Dr. Carol Cardona, a professor of avian health at the University of Minnesota who studies poultry disease, explains that the thinking was that farms, deep in thinly populated rural areas, would not be a danger to one another: "The food system responded to 9/11 with changes further up the food chain."
Those structures worked as they were supposed to when the avian flu arrived in December 2014. The virus was detected as it jumped the Canadian border from small farms in British Columbia and landed in wild birds in Washington State before spreading through poultry farms on the West Coast. Avian flu usually comes from wild birds: mostly ducks, geese and shorebirds, which shed the virus in their bodily waste and secretions as they migrate. To watch for its arrival, federal and state agencies collaborate on surveillance systems, taking samples of lakes where birds roost, wild birds when they are banded and wild turkeys and ducks that are shot by hunters. But those systems cannot test every one of the millions of birds that cross the United States every season. The first signal of the flu's arrival can be when domesticated birds die.
And that was what happened next. The flu changed course, zigzagging across the map instead of down: On March 4, 2015, it struck Minnesota, the No. 1 turkey producer in the United States; Missouri was next, on March 9; then Arkansas on March 11, Kansas on March 13, South Dakota on April 1. The pattern did not match wild migration patterns, and scientists watching its spread were baffled as they tried to find the source. On April 2, it struck Minnesota yet again, and within two weeks, the flu hit 23 farms holding 1.5 million turkeys. It descended on Iowa on April 13, invading first a turkey farm and then a giant property holding more than 4.1 million egg-laying hens.
The U.S.D.A. had written plans anticipating the arrival of avian flu, but there was no way to test how effective they would be: There had not been a multistate epidemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza — fast-moving, virulent and very infectious — in the United States for more than 30 years. The main effort against avian influenza has been geared toward detecting and controlling an epidemic in people. A strain known as H5N1 emerged in Hong Kong in 1997, and since then it has infected 846 people in 16 countries and killed more than half of them — a small number of victims, but an enormous mortality rate. So far almost all the victims have been farmers or people who live in proximity to chickens, but virologists fear its spreading to the global population. The United States has a National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, created to counter that threat, that focuses on how the disease would affect humans. Farmers have built their barns and established their routines around the more common diseases of turkeys and chickens — Marek's disease, infectious bronchitis, fowl cholera — which can be prevented with vaccinations and good hygiene. But those protections weren't adequate against this flu.
Turkeys in the United States are raised in solid-walled barns for their first few weeks, and after that in open-sided buildings, hundreds of feet long and faced with a few feet of plywood topped by walls of mesh. Panels that resemble upside-down roller blinds slide up when conditions are cold or blustery and down again when the wind drops or temperatures warm. The design is industry-standard, as were the procedures the Molines followed to protect their birds. They swapped their outdoor boots for indoor ones before they walked into the barns that housed the adult birds. They also dipped their outdoor boots in disinfectant before entering the brooder barn and pulled on coveralls and fresh boots once they were inside. As the flu drew near, they added extra precautions, like extra boot dips and parking cars farther away from the barns.
The Molines' property is small and relatively low-tech, but even huge farms, where advanced biosecurity is routine, had no better luck. Rembrandt Foods, about 100 miles northwest of the Molines, is the third-largest egg producer in the country; before the flu arrived, it owned 15 million hens on its farms. The birds live in sealed solid-walled sheds, hundreds of thousands per building, under computerized lights and climate-controlled ventilation. Workers shower and change into uniforms when they arrive for work, step through disinfectant before they enter a barn and shower and change again on the way out. The parking lots are cement instead of gravel to reduce the omnipresent Iowa dust and any organisms that might hitch a ride on it, and the company commissions outside audits of its biosecurity. It passed one just before the epidemic started. The flu got in anyway. More than eight million birds had to be destroyed.
"Fifteen years of work," says Dave Rettig, Rembrandt Foods' president, who began his career with a farm of just 25,000 birds. "Gone in a week."
A study done in July estimated that the flu cost the United States $2.6 billion in lost sales, almost $400 million in forgone taxes and 15,693 jobs. But as devastating as the losses were to Iowa, Minnesota and other states, their 50 million turkeys and hens represented a small portion of the poultry industry. The largest concentrations of chickens in the United States — Georgia, which raises 1.3 billion broilers a year, and the Delmarva Peninsula, where the broiler business began in the 1920s — lie under another migration route that ducks take over the Americas. If the flu were to land in those areas and spread the way it did in the Midwest, much of the United States poultry industry would be in jeopardy: almost nine billion birds, 90 billion eggs, more than $40 billion in earnings, 1.3 million jobs.
The 2015 avian flu emphasizes the vulnerability of farms to outbreaks — leaving the United States open to an economic catastrophe, or possibly even a human one. "If you look back to the anthrax attacks and 9/11, the investment was in surveillance for bioterrorism pathogens," says Dr. James Roth, who directs the Center for Food Security and Public Health at Iowa State University's College of Veterinary Medicine and is helping to develop a new national poultry-protection plan. "There was almost no federal money invested in biosecurity for livestock. Basically, it is the responsibility of the producer." And what little funding there was has been diminishing. The appropriation for Aphis's emergency-response unit, which led the federal reaction to the Midwestern epidemic, was one-fourth less in 2015 than it was as recently as 2010. Last month, Kevin Shea, Aphis's administrator, told the House Committee on Agriculture: "Our current funding level for animal-health activities is below levels that were available to us 10 years ago." He added, "Aphis has seen a reduction of more than 200 animal-health professionals in that time. The need to rebuild our capacity is critical."
Last year's flu was not the first livestock outbreak that took the nation by surprise in recent years. In 2002, exotic Newcastle disease spread into commercial poultry in California. It took 11 months, and the slaughter of more than three million birds, to end the outbreak. In 2003, a cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, mad cow disease, was found in the western United States. Fears of the brain-destroying human disease that it causes, which killed at least 122 people in Britain between 1995 and 2013 and forced the destruction of 1.3 million cows, cost the United States some $6 billion in forgone export sales. In 2013, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus entered the country — no one is yet sure how, though the cause may have been contamination of the bags that hold bulk feed — and killed at least seven million piglets, spiking pork prices by almost 10 percent. The animal disease that planners fear the most is foot-and-mouth disease, which has not been seen in the United States since 1929. It hadn't been seen in Britain since 1968, but then in 2001, it descended upon the country's cattle herds, forcing the destruction of more than six million cows, pigs and sheep. That epidemic cost Britain about $11 billion. If the disease returned to the United States, the U.S.D.A. estimates that the price tag could be anywhere between $15 billion and $100 billion.
Months after the avian-flu outbreak, virologists at the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory, a division of the U.S.D.A., examined virus samples from infected farms. When it reproduces, flu makes infinitesimal copying errors, so viruses dropped by different ducks, or the same duck at different times, show tiny variations. The samples recovered from the first farms were different; the ones recovered later were identical or nearly so, which suggested they had to have been transferred mechanically — on a piece of equipment, or a tire, or a boot. The farms of the Midwest were infecting one another.
Federal epidemiologists documented afterward that farms might have caught the flu when a feed truck made deliveries; when equipment technicians visited; when rendering trucks picked up birds that died in the normal course of farm business. No one could say for sure how those visitors acquired the virus. It might have been by driving onto another farm that was not yet quarantined. It could have been contamination by feathers or scraps of barn litter blowing off a disposal truck. In the small towns among northwest Iowa's large farms, people who work for one farm business are often roommates — or parents or children or spouses — of people who work for another. If one resident carried the virus home on his boots, another might take it unknowingly to work the next day. Most farmers still haven't been able to determine exactly how their properties were infected.
The U.S.D.A. and trade associations have since commissioned much more detailed plans that, if carried out, could better protect farms from the flu and from one another, drawing quarantine zones among properties and prescribing what farmers should do inside their own fences. The agency also ramped up federal procedures to detect the virus earlier and cull chickens faster. In January, farmers got a preview of how that would work: A turkey farm in Indiana fell to a different flu variant.
Within a few days, a much shorter response than last year's, all the commercial and backyard flocks within 12 miles were tested, and all the birds on 10 farms were killed. The new plans worked, but the episode confirmed poultry producers' fears that the flu would come back. "All the industry in all the states, and I have talked to a lot of them," says Dr. T.J. Myers, who oversees the Aphis unit that led the response to the Midwestern outbreak, "are scared to death." The obvious protection, an influenza vaccine, cannot be used until after flu arrives, partly because it masks birds' symptoms. Last fall the U.S.D.A. approved a vaccine for the new strain, but it is keeping it held on the shelf. If it is given in advance, other countries could buy poultry with live infections, and human health experts fear it could conceal a pandemic's start.
Avian flu surprised everyone last year, and the farmers who lived through it wonder whether they will be surprised again. At Rembrandt, Rettig has reassigned employees to make sure that those sharing a household work at the same site, and he bought the company more of its own delivery equipment. The Molines, smaller and less capitalized, are not sure what else they can do. "The most frustrating part" of the outbreak "is there's nothing that says, This is how we got it; this is how we can stop it," Brad Moline told me.
He was walking me to a barn where he had rigged a new invention he was proud of. Turkey houses have vents along the roof ridge that open and close when the panels move. Investigators had warned the brothers that sparrows and barn swallows might transmit the virus. Moline had seen the birds fly in through the vents, and so he designed a chicken-wire tunnel that ran all along the roof ridge.
"We think that might keep them out," he said. We looked up at the new tunnel. A sparrow had already found its way inside. It flew along the roof line, looking for a way to escape: back and forth, back and forth, trapped.


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Activation Details
NOTICE: Steam account required for game activation and installation About the Game:OVERKILL's The Walking Dead is an action-filled four-player co-op multiplayer first-person shooter set in Washington, D.C. after an outbreak brought the dead back to life. In this test of skill, strategy and teamwork players will band together with up to three friends on a variety of missions, securing supplies as well as survivors to strengthen their camp against the threat of both the dead and the living - by any means necessary.A New Story Within the World of The Walking Dead. In OVERKILL's The Walking Dead, players are introduced to Aidan, Maya, Grant, and Heather; four people brought together by necessity and the willingness to do whatever it takes to stay alive in a post-apocalyptic world. Inspired by the rich story universe of Robert Kirkman's original graphic novels, OVERKILL's The Walking Dead sheds light on some of the events that take place in Washington D.C.Welcome to the Wasteland of Washington D.C. Explore the capital after the outbreak, and discover what happened. Journey through the districts of the desolate city, and search lost neighborhoods such as Georgetown for loot, supplies and other survivors. Tread lightly, as any noise can be heard by both the dead and the living, and any mistake runs the risk of attracting a horde of walkers.Improvise, Adapt, Overcome. In a world where everything has stopped working, players will have to make do with what they find. The post-apocalyptic world of The Walking Dead is a harsh place to live in, let alone find things that work. As players loot the city for supplies, they will come to understand that weapons and ammunition are scarce and their condition varies. If not maintained, guns will jam as you pull the trigger, silencers will break, and old sights will challenge your skills as you take aim.Home Is Where Your Camp Is. You won't always have to go looking for trouble, it will also find you. Defend your camp against roaming hordes of walkers when they lock on to your camp. Strengthen your defenses, and take on waves of walkers while keeping the other camp members safe.Think. Fight. Live. Each playable character comes with a unique skill tree, squad role, play style and background story. They all share a common objective, where survival and teamwork is paramount. The action is up-close and intense: take out enemies carefully with silent melee attacks, or go in guns blazing. You need to be able to improvise, as nothing is certain and a horde of walkers will always be right around the corner.The Story Continues. Development on OVERKILL's The Walking Dead will continue after release, offering players new storylines to experience, new places to explore, new weapons to use, and much more. The post-launch campaign is built around OVERKILL Software's philosophy of constantly evolving a game together with the community. Powered by Unreal Technology. Capturing the dark and moody universe of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead in stunning detail, the Unreal Engine offers players the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in a highly-detailed rendition of The Walking Dead universe. Experience hundreds of horrifying walkers on-screen in a way that will get your heart pounding. From The Makers of PAYDAY. OVERKILL's The Walking Dead is made by OVERKILL Software, the developers of PAYDAY: The Heist and PAYDAY 2. OVERKILL is a blend of industry veterans, freshly graduated specialists and great partners. Our passion is to create kick-ass cooperative action games together with our community. We set our own deadlines, production rules, and design our own pipeline – a truly inspired gameplay machine. We live and die by our gameplay.
PC System RequirementsMINIMUM:Requires a 64-bit processor and operating systemOS: Windows 10 (64-bit version)Processor: Intel Core i5-4460Memory: 6 GB RAMGraphics: GeForce GTX 750 TiNetwork: Broadband Internet connectionStorage: 60 GB available spaceRECOMMENDED:Requires a 64-bit processor and operating systemOS: Windows 10 (64-bit version)Processor: Intel Core i7-4770KMemory: 8 GB RAMGraphics: Nvidia GTX 1060 or betterNetwork: Broadband Internet connectionStorage: 60 GB available spaceMATURE CONTENT DESCRIPTIONThe developers describe the content like this:Blood and GoreIntense ViolenceStrong Language
You can create a Steam Account HERE .
Click HERE to download Steam to
your PC/Laptop.
You can activate Steam key by:
Open the Steam client.
Create/Sign in to your Steam account.
Click "ADD A GAME" button in the bottom corner of the
Select "Activate a product on Steam...".
Paste in the activation key you received from Voidu.
Click on "Library" to find your game.
Click on your game and select "install" to start your download.


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Zagreb, 31.3.2007.
On 31st of March, in hotel International, will be first Ubuntu conference in Croatia. Find out everything you wanted to know about Ubuntu Linux. Discover business possibilities in talks with representatives from Canonical and Croatian companies which deal with Ubuntu.
Due to the limited number of seats, it is necessary to apply in order to participate in the conference. You can apply here. Unregistered visitors will not be able to participate.
- 10:00-10:45 Mario Splivalo, Ubuntu-hr
- 11:00-11:45 Filip Skoblar, Ubuntu-hr
- 12:00-12:45 Anthony Mercatante, Kubuntu developer
- 14:00-14:45 Senko Rašić, Rei, Ubuntu-hr
- 15:00-15:45 Christopher Kenyon, Canonical, business development manager
- 16:00-16:45 Ante Karamatić, Init, Ubuntu-hr
Update: Video archives
If you didn't make it to the conference, but you'd like to see what were the talks about, you can browse the conference video archives.


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Every year, hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs are captured and bled for the biomedical industry. This is due to the presence of limulus amebocyte lysate, or LAL, in their blood which is used to immobilize and trap bacterial endotoxins – a compound which can cause toxic haemorrhagic shock and severe diarrhoea to those who ingest it. Currently every drug certified by the FDA has to be tested using LAL, as do any surgical implants.
Now there appears to be a viable alternative. Biologist Jeak Ling Ding, and her husband Bow Ho, came up with an alternative known as recombinant factor C, based on the specific molecule in LAL that detects the toxins. Though a recombinant factor C test kit has been available since 2003, pharmaceuticals showed limited interest in it as it was only produced by a single supplier, Lonza, and they were wary of depending on one company for such a large part of their manufacturing.
However as of 2013 there is an additional supplier, Hyglos, which has helped peak the interest of notable pharmaceutical companies including Eli Lilly. Additionally, The European Pharmacopoeia added recombinant factor C as an accepted bacterial-toxin test in 2016, and lobbying has begun to encourage the U.S. Pharmacopeia to do the same.
So what?
Given the heavy dependency of the US pharmaceutics industry on LAL and horseshoe crabs, the production of a viable synthetic alternative is a huge step forward. Not only will this provide a more secure supply chain for the testing of bacterial endotoxins, it will also help with the conservation of the horseshoe crab, which is a pressing concern as large numbers of them die either during blood harvesting or after being returned to the ocean.


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The Human Element to support check-in features
July 6, 2012 Leave a comment
It appears that the zombie game, The Human Element, will support check-in features relatively similar to those found in FourSquare to enhance the game experience. Details after the jump.
The Human Element is an open world zombie game that will feature cross-play with mobile devices, specifically utilizing their GPS features. Players will be able to visit numerous areas in the real world to gather supplies by "checking in". For example, a player can check in at a pharmacy in the real world, gather virtual medical supplies as a result, then transfer them to the console for use. The feature, of course, will be optional, but will give an advantage to players in tight situations in the actual game.
The Human Element is still a far ways off, with a release target being set in 2015, for next generation consoles.
[Source: Eurogamer]


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Welcome back to the modern day glory days of Britpop...Kula Shaker! Everyone's favorite famous kid's son has gotten the group back together for a few gigs in the UK.
Here are the dates:
12 Manchester Academy 3
13 London Hoxton Bar & Grill
15 London Bush Hall
16 Bristol Thekla
17 Nottingham Rescue Rooms
New album pleeeease!
NY Broad x
import/export...and everything in between
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Kula Shaker Reunite!
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OTTAWA, ON – The Carleton Ravens (CIS No. 10) football team soared to a #3Peat victory in the 48th Panda Game match-up, putting a stop the Ottawa Gee-Gees' (CIS No. 7) perfect season in a 43-23 final. The game took place at the TD Stadium in Ottawa on Saturday in front of 23,329 fans, the highest CIS regular season attendance on record in the past two decades.
"It truly is the biggest game that these guys play in the regular season," said Ravens head coach Steve Sumarah. "You say 'Panda' and the antennas go up. They are ready to go!"
The Gee-Gees were first to get on the board early in the first quarter with a field goal. Ottawa's defence shut down the Ravens offence on the first drive, however, Jay Dearborne (Yarker, ON) set Carleton up in great field position with an interception. Jesse Mills (Halifax, ON) threw to Nate Behar (London, ON) for a first down, then handed off to Jayde Rowe (Scarborough, ON) for another six yards. The next play, Mills found Behar in the end zone to give the Ravens the lead, 7-3.
Ravens kicker Mike Domagala (St. Catharines, ON) booted a 32-yard field-goal to bring their lead up to 10-3. However, the Gee-Gees ended the first quarter by driving down the field and scoring a touchdown to tie the game at ten.
The Gee-Gees regained their lead for the first time since the start of the first quarter with a field goal, 13-10. The Ravens responded by driving downfield with a couple of big runs by Jayde Rowe. With 5:45 left in the first half, Rowe plowed his way into the end zone for another Ravens touchdown. This allowed Carleton to take back the lead, 17-13.
Ravens kickers Mike Domagala secured the Ravens lead going into half with another field-goal, pushing the advantage to 21-13 in favour of Carleton.
On Carleton's first drive of the third quarter, Ottawa forced a third down. The Ravens special teams unit responded with a play that would confuse the Gee-Gees and allow them to gain a fresh set of downs. Only the three players directly involved in the play knew the plan. Domagala faked the punt and passed to receiver Wilson Birch (Niagara Falls, ON) for 33 yards. The following play, Mills found Nate Behar once again for the duo's second touchdown of the game. Carleton began to pull away, and a safety brought the Ravens lead to 30-13.
The third quarter came to an end after a field goal by Ottawa, and another Ravens field goal by Domagala. Going into the fourth and final quarter, the score was 33-16 in favour of Carleton.
"We took the wind for the fourth quarter, and we were really concerned what would happen in the third," explained Sumarah. "We made a couple big plays, and I think that changed the momentum in the game."
Midway through the final frame, the Gee-Gees went for a 37-yard field goal, but Ottawa's Lewis Ward kicked wide left where the ball landed in the arms of Tunde Adeleke (Ottawa, ON) in the end zone. Carleton fans were brought to their feet as Adeleke – the most dangerous return man in Canada – sprinted past the Gee-Gees and ran back the missed attempt 120-yards for a touchdown.
"When [Adeleke] gets the ball, and he gets space, he is pretty impressive," said Sumarah. "The guys on the field know he can score at any second."
The Ravens ruled the field in the fourth quarter, and Domagala nailed his fourth field goal of the game. Carleton remained in the lead, 43-16.
Ottawa answered with a touchdown in the final two minutes of regulation, but it was not enough, and they watched as the Ravens fans stormed the field to celebrate a third consecutive victory over the Gee-Gees and another year with Pedro.
"We can calmly go into the victory with a little bit of excitement, rather than having to hold our breath until the end," said Behar, reminiscing on the last two Panda Games which the Ravens won on the last play of the game. "The big thing about this is we have to keep working every week. We know what the conference is like this year, so any team you are going to play in the first round of the playoffs is going be able to knock you off […] You can't just sit back and coast on [the win]."
The Ravens win over the Gee-Gees had big playoff implications as well
"For us to now be at four and two, as opposed to being at three and three this week, is big," said coach Sumarah. "We have two more [games] to close out and it could be the difference between travelling for a first round playoff game or hosting, and I'll tell you, you would much rather be hosting."
Linebacker Kene Onyeka (Brampton, ON), who recorded a team-high 9.5 tackles (7 solo, 5 assisted) against the Gee-Gees, added, "The difference between this game and the ones we lost is the week of practice prior to the game. Now that we can see the results, I doubt we are going to have a lacklustre week of practice no matter who the opponent."
Carleton (4-2) looks to build off of this week's win as they face the Windsor Lancers in the team's regular season home finale on October 7.


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Nutrition X sports nutritionist Danny Webber has created this delicious Chocolate Gateaux Smoothie to help curb those sweet tooth cravings, easy to make and perfect for post training recovery with a good hit of protein and carbohydrates, follow these simple steps to curb those cravings!
All you need it…
- Semi-skinned milk 300ml
- Mixed berries 140g
- Big Whey chocolate 30g
- Add all the ingredients into a blender and blitz until smooth.
kcal – 304
Carbs – 25.4g
Protein – 31.7g
Fat – 7.6g
Want to share your smoothie creations with us? Tag us in your posts –Instagram @nutrition.x ¦ Twitter @Nutrition_X
Recipe by Danny Webber – @WebberNutrition Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Website: http://www.webber-nutrition.co.uk/


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Whether a few subtle tweaks or a 600hp monster, this is the place for it
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Website ~ Blog ~ Twitter ~ Facebook ~ Pinterest ~ Tumblr ~ YouTube
Published: July 24, 2012
Publisher: HarperTeen
Genres: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance
Pages: 388
Format: ebook
Source: OverDrive
Read December 6, 2013
GoodReads ~ Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble
Philadelphia 1876. The Dead are rising. A zombie delivers a letter to Eleanor Fitt. Whoever controls the Dead Army has her brother. She avoids her mother's choice of husband for the lab of Spirit Hunters, including the maddeningly stubborn yet handsome Daniel. The situation threatens her reputation, and the lives of everyone in the city.
I had REALLY high hopes for this book. It's steampunk, historical, and has zombies. That HAS to be a winning combination. Plus, the cover is super pretty and I feel like this cover won't lie to me. And I was right! This book was amazing and suspenseful and I got really emotional!!
Eleanor's father is dead and her brother is away traveling and can't be found. Because of this, her mother is determined to marry her off to a young, rich man. When Eleanor meets a boy that meets the criteria, her mother is dead-set on them getting married. Sure, Clarence is nice, but he has a lot of secrets he won't tell Eleanor.
She decides to get help finding her brother and meets Daniel, Joseph, and Jie. She soon falls in love with Daniel, and after lots of bantering and some flirting, he tells her that he doesn't feel the same way. That part made me really emotional. Joseph is the leader of the group that has to power to control the zombies and Jie is a Chinese girl, pretending to be a boy, and Joseph's assistant.
Eleanor gets in contact with her brother and when he comes back, he tells her that he is the Necromancer and is the one controlling the zombies. He kills Clarence and his friends because they made fun of Elijah in school. The power consumes him and he eventually dies. Eleanor, Joseph, Daniel, and Jie have to clean up his mess and stop the zombies. They fix everything, but Eleanor loses her hand in the process. The trio leaves while Eleanor is recovering in the hospital.
I thought she was a great character and I just wanted her to be happy, but sad stuff just keeps happening. Her mother is trying to marry her off, she meets a guy and she thinks he likes her but then he dies, her brother comes back but then he dies too, the guy she likes tells her he doesn't feel the same way, and the guy she likes and her friends leave soon after she gets close with them. I wanted to hug her.
I was hoping that when he came back that everything would be good, but then he messed everything up by raising zombies, killing a bunch of people, and then dies.
I liked him at first, but then he breaks Eleanor's heart. What a jerk. I bet Eleanor could do better anyway.
I kinda had a bad feeling about him, and I had a love-hate relationship with him. Sometimes I liked him, cause he really seemed to like Eleanor, but then I didn't because he kept so many secrets and bullied her brother.
I thought that he was a great guy and I really hope that Eleanor meets him again so she can learn more about zombies and find out what she can do, if she can become a necromancer like her brother.
I thought she was so cool! She chooses to dress up and cut her hair like a boy so that she can have more freedom. I'm not sure if I would be able to shave part of my head like her though.
Overall, I thought this book was amazing and I can't wait to read the next book! I have high hopes for the sequel, so it better not let me down!!


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Christina Château de Beauté is an active spa facial
What do women want? Well one answer is to have a spa facial that shows amazing results when the treatment is finished. Enter Christina Zehavi who since 1982 as the founder of the Christina Company has been developing specialized skincare products for healthier and younger looking skin. From what I know of Christina herself, she is a woman who challenges the status quo, to bring to her global clients the skincare solutions they are told do not exist, her latest skin care solution, Christina Château de Beauté is an active spa facial.
Christina Château de Beauté is an active spa facial
A recent stay a Cramim Resort and Spa, one of the newest hotels in the Isrotel Hotel group, is where you can experience this new milestone in the field of professional cosmetics. My therapist Eti Nhmias was brilliant, a therapist who has a unique facial massage technique that incorporated the Château de Beauté Vino Elixir with the Vino Glory Mask, so that as the mask took effect she continued to massage the elixir into the décolleté, arms and down to the finger tips. Finally massaging the mask lightly into the face – just wonderful effective results when you look in the mirror.Christina Château de Beauté
The extensive market research that has gone into Château de Beauté to provide a complete and healthy response to the needs of spa clients. The pure active ingredients of the wine and its extremely full-bodied by-products are combined in this innovative series.Christina Château de Beauté is an active spa facial
The concept for Christina Château de Beauté in a spa environment particularly, was to address the needs of the international traveler who may use an active range of products in their normal routine. Here is an international spa protocol that defies aging, prevents visible and invisible signs of aging one that uses unique and progressive ingredients and technologies. Taking into account the overall condition of the skin, the Château de Beauté product line is the perfect line for women over 30.Christina Château de Beauté is an active spa facial
Christina Château de Beauté is an active spa facial
Château de Beauté is for clients 30 and older, who need an efficient revitalization, rejuvenation and anti – aging treatment. A protocol that uses cutting-edge science for perfect results, with silky smooth skin in 28 days, a six step facial treatment Vino Pure Cleanser, Vino Peel or Vino Forte Peel, Wine Elixir, Vino Eye Mask, Vino Glory Mask, Vino Sheen Serum and Château de Beauté Shielding Cream SPF 20
Château de Beauté Home Care Range
The best results are achieved when a spa client has a good daily skin care regime after a spa or salon treatment. Starting with Vino Pure Cleanser, Château de Beauté Absolute Perfect, Vino Sheen Fusion, Vino Sheen Restoring Cream, Château de Beauté Shielding Cream SPF 35, Château de Beauté Rejuvenating Eye Vineyard Cream, Vino Glory Mask, Château de Beauté Deep Beauty Night Cream.
To experience Christina Château de Beauté visit the Christina web site to find your nearest Christina salon or spa and visit the Cremim Resort and Spa to experience this and other Christina treatments.Christina Château de Beauté at Cremim Spa & Resort


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Click here for more detailed pictures.
We are the originators of the romantic destination and beach wedding package in Florida. We did not invent weddings, however, we were the first to package beach wedding services that meet the needs of couples wishing to have a romantic destination beach wedding. Our beach wedding packages are all priced up front with each vendor providing the same quality of product or service resulting in no surprises or hidden costs for your wedding dream in paradise.
Once you get started with one of our beach wedding packages, as part of the consulting included, we will be emailing to you specific information for the area(s) you are interested in. This helpful information includes: Fantastic beachfront resorts and hotels, restaurants and other reception options all with websites and phone numbers, along with hair & make-up options, marriage license information, flower websites and much more to assist you. We have done all the research to make the planning process easy and enjoyable for you!
To book your destination beach wedding, fill out the online contract and submit with deposit payment. This deposit is non-refundable. However, it is transferable to another date or location should the need arise. The deposit is not transferable to a smaller package and may not be used towards Ala Carte items. Once we receive your contract, we will reserve your desired date on our calendar and will email to you a receipt showing you have paid your deposit.
There is no limit to the number of guests attending with any of the Beach wedding packages.
All you have left to do, is decide which package is right for you!
Don't see a package that fits all of your needs? Contact us to create a Custom Package that is right for you.