text:
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Police have linked three July stabbings of homeless people in the Los Angeles area to one suspect who left typewritten "death warrant" notes at each crime scene.
The third signed letter was found at a stabbing early Thursday morning in Hollywood and was similar to letters found at two previous stabbings in downtown and Santa Monica, Police Cmdr. Andrew Smith said. Police are asking for the public's help in finding a person of interest.
All three victims are in their 50s and were stabbed in the back in the early morning hours as they slept, Smith said. The victims survived, though one remains hospitalized, police said.
Police are warning homeless people to seek shelter at night and avoid sleeping alone in the streets.
"Any homeless person sleeping anywhere outside is vulnerable tonight — more vulnerable than usual," Smith said.
The attacks targeting the homeless are reminiscent of a series of stabbings in Orange County several months ago in which four people died. A suspect was arrested in those cases.
The first stabbing came July 3 in downtown Los Angeles, and is the only stabbing where a witness saw a suspect fleeing the scene, Smith said.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the victim crawled 100 yards looking for help with a large hunting knife lodged between his shoulder blades.
The second stabbing came Tuesday, when a man was stabbed as he slept on a bench in Santa Monica. A passerby responded to the victim's cry for help and called police, Sgt. Richard Lewis said.
The most recent stabbing on Thursday targeted a woman who was sleeping in the Hollywood area.
The letters left with the victims were all signed "David Ben Keyes," who police have named as a person of interest in their investigation, Smith said.
Smith emphasized that police are still unclear if the name on the death warrants is the name of the actual suspect, and police only want to question Keyes at this point.
Keyes may be homeless and is believed to be from the Santa Barbara area, Smith said.
Homicide Division Capt. Billy Hayes —whose detectives took over the case Thursday— said it was too soon to know if the crimes could be linked to the series of gory stabbing deaths of four homeless people in Orange County between Dec. 2011 and January.
Itzcoatl Ocampo, a former Marine, was charged in those homeless murders, and also has been charged with killing the mother and brother of his friend. Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty in the ongoing case against Ocampo.


text:
Giants quarterback Eli Manning is taking his two Super Bowl rings --and, hopefully, his sense of humor -- to the hallowed halls of Studio 8H.
The two-time Super Bowl MVP will host "Saturday Night Live" for the first time on May 5, the show announced on its Twitter page.
Rihanna will be the musical guest.
Rihanna will be the musical guest.
U.S. & World
Manning's older brother, Peyton, hosted "SNL" in 2007 after leading the Indianapolis Colts to Super Bowl victory. The younger Manning appeared briefly in the monologue.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
April 2013
Tale of Two Londons
Up until the 18th century, Knightsbridge, which borders genteel Kensington, was a lawless zone roamed by predatory monks and assorted cutthroats. It didn't come of age until the Victorian building boom, which left a charming legacy of mostly large and beautiful Victorian houses, with their trademark white or cream paint, black iron railings, high ceilings, and short, elegant stone steps up to the front door.
This will not be the impression a visitor now gets as he emerges from the Knightsbridge subway station's south exit. He will be met by four hulking joined-up towers of glass, metal, and concrete, sandwiched between the Victorian splendors of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, to the east, and a pretty five-story residential block, to the west. This is One Hyde Park, which its developers insist is the world's most exclusive address and the most expensive residential development ever built anywhere on earth. With apartments selling for up to $214 million, the building began to smash world per-square-foot price records when sales opened, in 2007. After quickly shrugging off the global financial crisis the complex has come to embody the central-London real-estate market, where, as high-end property consultant Charles McDowell put it, "prices have gone bonkers."
From the Hyde Park side, One Hyde Park protrudes aggressively into the skyline like a visiting spaceship, a head above its red-brick and gray-stone Victorian surroundings. Inside, on the ground floor, a large, glassy lobby offers what you'd expect from any luxury intercontinental hotel: gleaming steel statues, thick gray carpets, gray marble, and extravagant chandeliers with radiant sprays of glass. Not that the building's inhabitants need venture into any of these public spaces: they can drive their Maybachs into a glass-and-steel elevator that takes them down to the basement garage, from which they can zip up to their apartments.
The largest of the original 86 apartments (following some mergers, there are now around 80) are pierced by 213-foot-long mirrored corridors of glass, anodized aluminum, and padded silk. The living spaces feature dark European-oak floors, Wenge furniture, bronze and steel statues, ebony, and plenty more marble. For added privacy, slanted vertical slats on the windows prevent outsiders from peering into the apartments.
In fact, the emphasis everywhere is on secrecy and security, provided by advanced-technology panic rooms, bulletproof glass, and bowler-hatted guards trained by British Special Forces. Inhabitants' mail is X-rayed before being delivered.
The secrecy extends to the media, many of whose members, including myself and the London Sunday Times's and Vanity Fair's A. A. Gill, have tried but failed to gain entry to the building. "The vibe is junior Arab dictator," says Peter York, co-author of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, the riotous 1982 style guide documenting the shopping and mating rituals of a certain striving class of Brits, who claimed Knightsbridge's high-end shopping area, which stretches from Harrods to Sloane Square, as their urban heartland.
One Hyde Park was built by two British brothers, Nick and Christian Candy, together with Waterknights, the international property-development company owned by Qatar's prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani. Christian, 38, a lanky former commodities trader, is the duo's discreet number cruncher, while his stockier, tousled-haired brother, Nick, 40, is its flashy, name-dropping, celebrity-loving public face. The Candys don't go in for small gestures. In October, Nick married the Australian actress Holly Valance in Beverly Hills, after she had announced their engagement by tweeting a photo of Nick down on one knee proposing on a beach in the Maldives. In flaming torches behind the happy couple, will you marry me was written, without the usual question mark.
Designed by the architect Lord Richard Rogers, who also designed London's iconic Lloyd's building, One Hyde Park has divided Britain. Gary Hersham, managing director of the high-end real-estate agency Beauchamp Estates, says it is "the finest building in England, whether you like the style or you don't," while investment banker David Charters, who works in Mayfair, says, "One Hyde Park is a symbol of the times, a symbol of the disconnect. There is almost a sense of 'the Martians have landed.' Who are they? Where are they from? What are they doing?" Professor Gavin Stamp, of Cambridge University, an architectural historian, called it "a vulgar symbol of the hegemony of excessive wealth, an over-sized gated community for people with more money than sense, arrogantly plonked down in the heart of London."
The really curious aspect of One Hyde Park can be appreciated only at night. Walk past the complex then and you notice nearly every window is dark. As John Arlidge wrote in The Sunday Times, "It's dark. Not just a bit dark—darker, say, than the surrounding buildings—but black dark. Only the odd light is on. . . . Seems like nobody's home."
That's not because the apartments haven't sold. London land-registry records say that 76 had been by January 2013 for a total of $2.7 billion—but, of these, only 12 were registered in the names of warm-blooded humans, including Christian Candy, in a sixth-floor penthouse. The remaining 64 are held in the names of unfamiliar corporations: three based in London; one, called One Unique L.L.C., in California; and one, Smooth E Co., in Thailand. The other 59—with such names as Giant Bloom International Limited, Rose of Sharon 7 Limited, and Stag Holdings Limited—belong to corporations registered in well-known offshore tax havens, such as the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Liechtenstein, and the Isle of Man.
From this we can conclude at least two things with certainty about the tenants of One Hyde Park: they are extremely wealthy, and most of them don't want you to know who they are and how they got their money.
London Calling
Trevor Abrahmsohn, a U.K. real-estate agent, remembers London before the modern property boom began. "London was as Paris is today: an interesting, quirky souvenir town. We had the Tower of London, the Queen, the palace, and the Changing of the Guard," he says, adding Scotch whisky as an afterthought. "That is what we stood for. London was not a tax haven."
Starting in the 1960s, new buyers began to fire up the market: crises of the Greek monarchy brought a significant influx of Greeks, pockets of which endure today. Next came the first wave of Americans, a trickle of bankers lured by London's unregulated Euro-markets, and West Coast buyers, often from Hollywood. "They swarmed in," remembers veteran London real-estate agent Andrew Langton, of Aylesford International. "They turned Chester Square into Little L.A. and tidied up all these properties, at enormous expense, with American kitchens, bathrooms, and showers."
The OPEC oil crisis, of the 1970s, lit the big fire under this market. Arab money surged into the so-called golden triangle of Knightsbridge, Belgravia, and nearby Mayfair, to buy high-end properties. Real-estate agents remember it as a tidal wave: "They came as a force," says Hersham. "When they wanted to buy, there were no hysterics or reticence." The fall of the Shah of Iran brought a surge of Iranian money, followed by buyers from the biggest African ex-colony, newly oil-rich Nigeria.
The market paused for breath in the 1980s, with Britain's economy in the doldrums and as sagging world oil prices sapped wealthy foreign buyers' demand. But Margaret Thatcher's financial reforms, notably her "Big Bang" of Wild West financial deregulation, in 1986, caused the stream of bankers to turn into a river, then a deluge. "We would wait for those e-mails ending in 'gs.com' to come rolling in," remembers Jeremy Davidson, a Belgravia-based property consultant. "Goldman [Sachs] partners, Morgan [Stanley] partners: they were the top of the market, and we had lots of them."
The fall of the Soviet Union, in 1989, and the vast, corrupt post-Soviet privatizations, brought the biggest, most reckless wave of foreign buyers London had ever seen, with often questionable money sluicing in via the secretive British-linked stepping-stone tax havens of Cyprus and Gibraltar. "There is no real accountability of these guys coming in—the cops don't really investigate them," says Mark Hollingsworth, co-author of Londongrad, a 2009 book about the Russian invasion. "They see the capital as the most secure, fairest, most honest place to park their cash, and the judges here would never extradite them."
Nick Candy himself summarized the attractions neatly: "This is the top city in the world, and the best tax haven in the world for some."
'It seems to be that every big trading disaster happens in London," U.S. congresswoman Carolyn Maloney observed last June. "And I would like to know why." The disasters she was referring to were the ones that bankrupted Lehman Brothers and nearly bankrupted some other American firms, such as A.I.G. and MF Global, as well as causing JPMorgan Chase's $6 billion loss at the hands of the trader popularly known as "the London Whale"—all of these happened to a high degree in the London branches of those firms and have cost the American taxpayer billions of dollars.
To answer her question and to understand why so much of the world's money goes to London in the first place, you need to go back hundreds of years, to the emergence of what must be the most peculiar, the oldest, the least understood, and perhaps one of the most important institutions in the menagerie of global finance: the City of London Corporation. It is the local authority for "the Square Mile," the pocket of prime financial real estate centered on the Bank of England and located about three miles to the east of Knightsbridge, along the Thames River. But the corporation is also much more, its identity embedded in—and slightly apart from—the British nation-state. The corporation has its own constitution, "rooted in the ancient rights and privileges enjoyed by citizens before the Norman Conquest, in 1066," and its own lord mayor of London—not to be confused with the mayor of London, who runs the Greater London metropolis, with its eight million inhabitants. One sign of the City of London's distinct identity is the fact that the Queen, on official visits there, will stop at the boundary of the Square Mile, where she is met by the lord mayor, who engages her in a short, colorful ritual, before she may proceed. Most Brits see this merely as a relic from a bygone age, a show for the tourists. They are wrong.
The lord mayor's principal official role, his Web site says, is to be "ambassador for all UK-based financial and professional services." He lobbies far afield, with offices in Brussels, China, and India, among other places, the better to "expound the values of liberalization" far and wide. The City Corporation and closely linked think tanks issue streams of publications explaining why finance should be less tethered by taxes and regulation. The corporation also has its own official lobbyist, with the delightfully medieval-sounding name of The Remembrancer (currently one Paul Double), lodged permanently in Britain's Parliament. Local elections in the City are unlike any other in Britain: multi-national corporations vote alongside and vastly outnumber the tiny borough's 7,400 human residents.
Over the centuries the City has thrived, thanks to a simple advantage: it has had money to lend when governments or monarchs needed it. So the City has been granted special privileges, allowing it to remain a political fortress withstanding the tides of history that have transformed the rest of the British nation-state. It has nurtured a British tradition of welcoming foreign money, with few questions asked, and so has for centuries attracted the world's wealthiest citizens. "There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together," Voltaire wrote in 1733, "as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts."
When the British Empire crumbled in the mid-1950s, London replaced the cozy embrace of gunboats and imperial trading preferences with a new model: tempting the world's hot money through lax regulation and lax enforcement. There was always a subtle balance, involving dependable British legal bedrock fiercely upholding U.K. domestic rules and laws while turning a blind eye to foreign law-breaking. It was a classic offshore-tax-haven offering that tells foreign financiers, "We won't steal your money, but we won't make a fuss if you steal other people's."
The term "tax haven" is something of a misnomer, because tax havens offer escape routes not just from taxes but potentially from any of the rules, laws, and responsibilities of other jurisdictions—whether those be taxes, criminal laws, disclosure rules, or financial regulation. Tax havens are usually about parking your money "elsewhere," in jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands, beyond the reach of your home country's regulators and taxmen. Or you park it in London: which is why some investment bankers have called it the Guantánamo Bay of finance. "The British think they do finance well," says Lee Sheppard, a tax and banking specialist at the U.S. trade publication TaxAnalysts. "No. They do the legal stuff well. Most of the big investment banks there are branches of foreign operations. . . . They go there because there is no regulation whatsoever."
James Henry, a former McKinsey chief economist, watched at close quarters the recycling of petrodollar wealth into Third World loans via London's unregulated Euro-markets, which among other things enabled Wall Street to avoid New Deal-era banking regulations. Henry saw a global private-banking network emerge, following the money, "helping Third World elites abscond with hundreds of billions in diverted loans, illicit commissions, and corrupt privatizations, and park it in London and other tax havens."
The number beside each location provides its ranking on the Financial Secrecy Index, which is calculated based on an analysis of the area's role in global financial markets and a scoring of its laws and regulations that facilitate criminal activities carried out not within that area but elsewhere.
It comes as a surprise to most people that the most important player in the global offshore system of tax havens is not Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, but Britain, sitting at the center of a web of British-linked tax havens, the last remnants of empire. An inner ring consists of the British Crown Dependencies—Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man. Farther afield are Britain's 14 Overseas Territories, half of them tax havens, including such offshore giants as the Caymans, the British Virgin Islands (B.V.I.), and Bermuda. Still further out, numerous British Commonwealth countries and former colonies such as Hong Kong, with deep and old links to London, continue to feed vast financial flows—clean, questionable, and dirty—into the City. The half-in, half-out relationship provides the reassuring British legal bedrock while providing enough distance to let the U.K. say "There is nothing we can do" when scandal hits.
Data is scarce, but in the second quarter of 2009 the three Crown dependencies alone provided $332.5 billion in net financing to the City of London, much of it from tax-evading foreign money. Matters are so out of hand that in 2001 Britain's own tax authorities sold off 600 buildings to a company, Mapeley Steps Ltd., registered in the tax haven of Bermuda to avoid tax.
Britain could close down this tax-haven secrecy overnight if it wanted, but the City of London won't let it. "We have, to put it provocatively, a second British empire, which is at the very core of global financial markets today," explains Ronen Palan, professor of international political economy at City University in London. "And Britain is very good at not advertising its position."
Despite the British passion for historic preservation, the recent huge influx of foreign money is changing the capital, both physically and socially. "Our Georgian and Victorian stock is so inflexible, frozen in time," said Ademir Volic, of Volume 3 Architects. "We're selling this city as a forward-looking metropolis, yet we can't change a single window in a conservation area. Everything has to be hidden underground."
That's just what the plutocrats are doing: digging down. Maggie Smith, of the London Basement company, which carries out basement renovations, dates the craze to the early to mid-1990s, when she noticed increasing numbers of people wanting to renovate their musty old basements. "It started quite small, with people doing 30 to 40 square meters, generally under the front of a standard Victorian London house," she says. "Then they began digging out under parts of gardens, then entire gardens, installing light wells and glass bridges to bring in natural light."
Soon they built underground recreation centers, golf-simulation rooms, squash courts, bowling alleys, hair salons, ballrooms, and car elevators to the underground garages for their vintage Bentleys. The more adventurous installed climbing walls and indoor waterfalls.
"They would dig deep, have a media room and a funny sort of spring-loaded garage or a swimming pool," says Peter York. "And they would disturb the water table. You can imagine what old-fashioned British toffs thought of that." One Knightsbridge resident—and tension is such that he declines to identify himself or his street—says that on his short street of 15 or 20 properties he has recently suffered through nine simultaneous renovations.
Cable-TV mogul David Graham outraged his neighbors, near Lennox Gardens Mews, south of One Hyde Park, by seeking planning permission to excavate deeper than the height of neighboring homes, extending all the way under his house and garden. The Duchess of St. Albans, a neighbor, calls the plans "absolutely monstrous and unnecessary." So far, permission has not been granted.
As the renovations grew, so did the conflicts. "It may look village-y, but we live like sardines in tins," says Terence Bendixson, of the Chelsea Society, a residents' association. "A lot of people have been here quite a long time, who aren't rich, who aren't bankers, who are solid middle-class and upper-class people." Stroll through Knightsbridge today (or check Google Street View) and you will see so many conveyor belts bringing up soil from under houses that you can be forgiven for thinking that a new mining boom is under way.
"Economically, culturally, and socially, London has now left Britain behind, blasting off from the rest of the nation like some vast U.F.O.," says Neil O'Brien, director of the think tank Policy Exchange. "The politicians, civil servants, and journalists who make up Britain's governing class run one country, but effectively live in another." As Abrahmsohn sees it, London could "easily declare independence. A lot of these wealthy people don't even know these outlying regions exist. They don't care."
In fact, the chasm is sharpest inside London itself: a report for the British government in January 2010 estimated that the richest 10 percent of Londoners own well over 270 times the wealth of the poorest 10 percent.
"Knightsbridge is an un-English activity," says York. "The former gratin [upper crust], a combination of old toffs, Knightsbridge Americans who wanted to be old toffs, plutocrats who wanted to know The Form, people who weren't here for funny-money reasons: all those things have been completely obliterated by a mad kind of very, very gauche overseas money. It's absentee money: the kind of money that has bodyguards. It is the world of Maybachs and absurd-looking Ferraris in absurd colors, and kids who buy them straight out of the shopwindow. These people have no substantive relationship with anything British at all. It's everywhere: I can't emphasize enough how everywhere-ish it is."
Many in London are uncomfortable not just with the flagrant display of super-wealth but also with the rising number of absentee residents who are based in foreign countries. "Those people who do buy these houses, particularly the bigger ones, in many cases don't buy them to live in permanently: they are part of a portfolio," said Bendixson. "That doesn't add much jollity to your street: houses with the shutters down and nobody there." Edward Davies-Gilbert, of the Knightsbridge Association, sees the area gaining the flavor of "a ghost town, peopled by ghost blocks."
Thus One Hyde Park, where only 17 apartments of the 76 sold are registered as primary residences, has become a totem for the gaping chasm between the powerful rootless plutocrats in London and the rest.
The Candy Men Can
Nick and Christian Candy, the two British brothers who put together the One Hyde Park project, built their fortunes on the post-Soviet privatization real-estate boom in London. They started out with a $9,300 loan from their grandmother, buying a one-bedroom apartment in semi-fashionable Earl's Court for $190,000 in 1995, then renovating and selling it for a profit the following year. They repeated the trick and soon discovered a new niche at the very top of the market, above traditional luxury. In 1999 they set up Candy & Candy, an interior-design company, honing their skills on yachts, private aircraft, and private members' clubs, with walls in hand-painted silk and cushions that cost $3,200 apiece.
Thanks to an aggressive, hyperactive business strategy (not to mention a soaring market), the brothers climbed very high, very fast. "The Candy brothers are two young zealots who were quite fearless as to how they approached people and where they found money," says Andrew Langton. "They realized that the bling was what was wanted, whether it's a yacht or plane or an expensive apartment. There is a culture of decoration, a culture of security, of privacy, that they had understood."
Shabby English chic was out, and luxury concierge services, eelskin walls, and bulletproof glass were in. It is a hard market to get right, and Abrahmsohn notes the huge diversity in taste it encompasses. "The Greeks are the most understated of all the buyers, including the British," he says. "The Nigerians are very flamboyant. They like lots of very bright colors, glitz and glitter. They are not shy. The Russians are fairly easygoing, but they do like their glitz." Indians decorate their houses in super-lavish style, he continues. "Lots of detail, lots of colors, extremely ornate, a lot of gilt: Louis XIV would be far too understated for them."
Somehow, the Candys found their way through this maze, and in 2001 they sold a $6.2 million apartment in Belgrave Square to the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who had fled to the refuge of London after being accused of fraud and embezzlement. As described in Londongrad, it had "bullet-proof CCTV cameras, a fingerprint entry system that can remember 100 fingerprints, remote-controlled cinema and television screens in the bathroom walls, laser-beam alarms, and smoke bombs. An electronic system recognized the residents' favorite music and TV programs and followed him or her from one room to another."
"The Russians are creatures of habit," explains Hollingsworth. "When Berezovsky bought in Belgrave Square, [Russian oligarch Roman] Abramovich bought around the corner in Lowndes Square, next to Harvey Nichols, and then Chester Square. They are like heads of gangs in a schoolyard and love to show off: 'My house is bigger than yours.' " In the wake of the Berezovsky sale, an aura developed around the brothers as Russian newcomers demanded to buy Candy & Candy properties.
In 2004, Christian Candy set up the CPC Group, registered in the tax haven of Guernsey, to tackle bigger projects, including, eventually, One Hyde Park. In a fast-rising market, as more and more buyers from more and more parts of the world crammed in, the Candys knew they could ask for the moon and get it. When they launched sales of apartments for One Hyde Park, in 2007, typical London prime prices were $2,900 per square foot, with peaks at $4,500. In One Hyde Park's first year, the rate was $8,800, and $10,900 the following year, ultimately rising last year to almost $12,000. Prices in New York have occasionally matched these levels: recently a Russian oligarch bought Sanford I. Weill's penthouse at 15 Central Park West for just over $13,000 per square foot—but that was considered an anomaly. According to Susan Greenfield, senior V.P. at the real-estate brokers Brown Harris Stevens in New York, sales in that building in 2012 have averaged $6,100 per square foot. "One Hyde Park changed the map," says property consultant Davidson. "The prices were off the scale—I was astonished. It created a market of its own."
Living in an elite bubble, the brothers appear to have a tin ear for the public mood. In late 2010, amid national austerity, tax protests erupted in more than 50 towns and cities across Britain, led by a movement called Uncut. They were protesting against tax avoidance by large corporations and by prominent figures such as the British retail billionaire Philip Green. In December of that year, the Candy brothers played a game of the British version of Monopoly with a Financial Times reporter in Christian's apartment in One Hyde Park. Christian landed on the "super tax" square. "What!" he reportedly cried. "I don't pay tax. I am a tax exile." (A spokesperson for the Candys denied that Christian, who is a resident of Monaco and Guernsey, said this.)
Subsequent revelations by the London Sunday Times and others about the extent of offshore ownership of the apartments in One Hyde Park stoked new outrage in Britain, and the government came under intense pressure to crack down. Chancellor George Osborne, noting that the zero-tax treatment on the sale of properties owned through offshore companies "rouses the anger of many of our citizens," introduced new legislative proposals, now coming into effect, to, among other things, levy a sales-transaction tax of up to 15 percent on properties bought through offshore companies and levy an annual charge of up to $221,000 on expensive properties owned offshore. Many austerity-parched Britons welcomed the moves. An outraged Nick Candy called them "absolutely disgraceful."
Who are the owners in One Hyde Park? One $39.5 million apartment is registered openly in the name of Anar Aitzhanova: this may be a Kazakh singer, who did not respond to Vanity Fair's queries. Another two, for a combined $49.8 million, are held jointly by Irina Viktorovna Kharitonina and Viktor Kharitonin. The latter is likely to be a co-owner of Russia's largest domestic drugmaker, though the couple's representatives also failed to reply. Another apartment is registered to Rory Carvill, a British insurance broker; another is held in the name of Bassim Haidar, who appears to be the founder and C.E.O. for Channel IT, a Nigeria-based telecommunications company, and who also did not respond to queries. A $35.5 million apartment is registered in the name of Karmen Pretel-Martines, who could not be further identified, as is the case with a Beijing-registered buyer named Kin Hung Kei, who paid $11.6 million.
Nick Candy himself owns an 11th-floor duplex penthouse, and seven other apartments are believed to be owned by members of the Project Grande consortium, which is behind One Hyde Park. (The Candys will not confirm or deny this.) The best apartment of all—a triplex on Floors 11, 12, and 13 of Tower C—is owned (via a Cayman company) by Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, of Qatar, Project Grande's partner.
Another buyer, who bought and merged two apartments for a total of $215.9 million, is Rinat Akhmetov, the Ukraine's richest man, with an estimated personal net worth of $16 billion. He has interests in coal, mining, power generation, banking, insurance, telecoms, and media, and has been a big beneficiary of privatization auctions in his native country. A spokeswoman for Akhmetov's holding company, System Capital Management, said last year that the purchase was a "portfolio investment"; U.K. land-registry documents say it is held through a B.V.I. company, Water Property Holdings Ltd.
Another owner is Vladimir Kim, who chairs the London-listed Kazakh copper giant Kazakhmys P.L.C. Kim was once a top official in the political party behind Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has often been accused of sanctioning severe abuses of human rights and media freedom. Sheikh Mohammed Saud Sultan Al Qasimi, head of finance for the government of Sharjah, bought an $18.1 million apartment, while at least one more belongs to the Russian real-estate magnate Vladislav Doronin, who is dating model Naomi Campbell.
An $11.7 million second-floor apartment is owned by Galina Weber, a significant shareholder in the Russian gas giant Itera. Two apartments, worth a combined $43.7 million, are owned by Professor Wong Wen Young, with London and Taipei addresses. This is presumably the billionaire Taiwan-born entrepreneur Winston Wong Wen Young, who has enjoyed a close business relationship with Jiang Mianheng, the son of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin. A $12 million apartment is held jointly by Desmond Lim Siew Choon and Tan Kewi Yong, a billionaire Malaysian couple with a big property empire. Last September the real-estate company Jones Lang LaSalle estimated that nearly a sixth of all recent buyers of new central-London property were Malaysian—and only 19 percent British. Wealth is currently pouring out of Malaysia ahead of imminent elections, which could see the scandal-ridden ruling coalition ousted for the first time since independence.
Less is known about others, but clues can be found. Land-registry documents for four apartments provide contact details for Alastair Tulloch, a British lawyer who Hollingsworth said is known in Russian-oligarch circles as "the new Stephen Curtis"—a reference to the Russians' go-to London lawyer, who died in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2004. Tulloch has represented the interests of Alexander Lebedev, a banking oligarch who owns London's Evening Standard and a sizable piece of the Russian airline Aeroflot, among other holdings, and has worked closely with the jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Apartments bought by corporations with particularly flamboyant names such as Shoolin Investments Ltd., Wondrous Holding and Finance Inc., and Smooth E Co. Ltd. hint at possible Asian ownership, the last registered in Bangkok, Thailand. Other corporate names are more impenetrable. One is the Caymans-based Knightsbridge Holdings Ltd., registered in Ugland House—a modest building where some 20,000 companies are registered and which President Obama in a 2009 speech said was "either the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam in the world." (What Obama was getting at was that no real economic activity happens there: it is merely an entry in accountants' workbooks.)
Trying to penetrate the corporate veils thrown over these apartments is a thankless task. Of the tax havens used, the Isle of Man is probably the most forthcoming: you can easily download company reports online for under $2 apiece. But even here, you will not get far. Take Rose of Sharon 4, which owns a $10.2 million, fifth-floor apartment. Rose 4 was set up in 2010 with five company directors from the Isle of Man, and its shares were held by two almost identical-sounding entities: Barclaytrust International Nominees (Isle of Man) Ltd. and Barclaytrust (Nominees) Isle of Man Ltd. In April 2012, the shares were transferred to a B.V.I. entity listed as "Prospect Nominees (BVI) Ltd," and the five Isle of Man directors were replaced by two new ones: Craig Williams, a B.V.I. insolvency practitioner, and Kenneth Morgan, who works for HSBC in the B.V.I. Both declined requests for further information.
Such structures typically straddle several jurisdictions: an Isle of Man company may be owned by a B.V.I. company, which could be held by a Bahamas trust, with trustees somewhere else; either structure might own a Swiss bank account, and so on. At each step of this global dance of ownership, fees are skimmed off, and the secrecy deepens.
In fact, land-registry documents show that five apartments, for a combined $123 million, are owned by companies under the Rose of Sharon name, all based in the Isle of Man. These have been widely reported to be owned by Folorunsho Alakija, a Nigerian billionaire who is a part-owner of Famfa Oil Ltd. (Efforts to contact her were unsuccessful.) According to an industry risk profile of the company, Famfa received 600,000 barrels of oil per month from the giant Nigerian deepwater Agbami oil field in the first four months of 2010, in partnership with the U.S. oil company Chevron, in a longer-term agreement. The report cites a Nigerian Department for Petroleum Resources source as saying that Alakija was "one of the [Nigerian] First Lady's favorite dress designers" and that Alakija's stake in Famfa was "a reward to a loyal friend." Forbes ranked Alakija's net worth at $600 million, but last year Ventures Africa, a business magazine, recalculated it based on public information at $3.3 billion, making her richer than Oprah Winfrey.
All of this raises the question of why so many of One Hyde Park's apartments are owned offshore.
In fact, this is not unusual in England. According to The Guardian, some 95,000 offshore entities have been set up in Britain (or the U.K.) since 1999 purely to hold U.K. property: a hefty portion of the national prime stock. These buyers use offshore companies for three big and related reasons: tax, secrecy, and "asset protection." A property owned outright becomes subject to various British taxes, particularly capital-gains and taxes on transfers of ownership. But properties held through offshore companies can often avoid these taxes. According to London lawyers, the big reason for using these structures has been to avoid inheritance taxes—something that the government's recent limited crackdown did not address. And of course City of London lawyers and accountants are currently scurrying to find ways around the new rules.
But secrecy, for many, is at least as important: once a foreign investor has avoided British taxes, then offshore secrecy gives him the opportunity to avoid scrutiny from his own country's tax—or criminal—authorities too. Others use offshore structures for "asset protection"—frequently, to avoid angry creditors. That seems to be the case with a company called Postlake Ltd.—registered on the Isle of Man—which owns a $5.6 million apartment on the fourth floor. Postlake is in turn registered as owned by Purcey Ltd., a B.V.I. entity, which is registered as held on behalf of an Isle of Man trust set up by the bankrupt Irish property developer Ray Grehan, who has been pursued by Ireland's National Asset Management Agency to recover more than $350 million it says it is owed. Grehan had argued that the apartment is not really his but belongs to a family trust. Martin Kenney, a B.V.I. lawyer, says B.V.I. companies are frequently owned by foreign trusts from more outlandish jurisdictions, such as Nevis or the Cook Islands, deepening the secrecy. These structures are "debtor-friendly and creditor-unfriendly," he says, so in cases of fraud it can be very hard to recover assets.
Perhaps the most striking fact about One Hyde Park and the London super-prime property market is what it tells us about who the world's richest people are. Many people think the greatest winners of globalization today are financiers. A decade or so ago, that may have been true. But today another class sits above even them—the global commodity plutocrats: owners of mineral rights, or dominant players in mineral-rich countries in sectors such as construction and finance that benefit from commodity booms. Hollingsworth notes in Londongrad that the oligarchs he studies became rich "not by creating new wealth but rather by insider political intrigue and exploiting the weakness of the rule of law." Arkady Gaydamak, a Russian-Israeli oilman and financier, explained his elite view of accumulating wealth to me in 2005. "With all the regulations, the taxation, the legislation about working conditions, there is no way to make money," he said. "It is only in countries like Russia, during the period of redistribution of wealth—and it is not yet finished—when you can get a result. . . . How can you make $50 million in France today? How?"
Russia's former privatization czar Anatoly Chubais put it less delicately: "They steal and steal. They are stealing absolutely everything."
London real-estate agents confirm that these commodity plutocrats dethroned the financiers some time before the financial crisis hit. "I can't remember the last time I sold a property to a banker," says Stephen Lindsay, of the real-estate agency Savills. "It's been hard for anyone to compete with the Russians, the Kazakhs. They are all in oil, gas—that is what they do. Construction—all that kind of stuff."
Even the Arab money has taken a backseat to the new buyers, says Hersham. "The wealth of the ex-Soviets is incredible," he says. "Unless you are talking about [Goldman Sachs C.E.O. Lloyd] Blankfein or [Stephen Schwarzman], the head of Blackstone, or the head of one of the very big banks, there is no driver from the City of London at these levels anymore."


text:
Crocheting is fun. Ok, no, we lied. It's not. At least it doesn't look like fun. It looks like something only our grandmas should do. So we're going to spend $7, get our hands on the PDF file with the pattern for the above Panzer slippers, and find a grandma willing to make us some. We suggest you go grandma hunting as well, because to be honest, these are some swell slippers.
Don't believe us? Hit the jump and check them out from many angles.


text:
Choosing a college is one of those monumental life decisions that will determine your future in a variety of ways. Today there are numerous academic options available, and whether it be traditional colleges, online colleges, or a hybrid of both, College Choice offers numerous free online resources to help you in your college search, including our unique student-centered college rankings, admissions advice, scholarship and financial aid information, and much much more. Here you will find the information you need to find, get into, pay for, and thrive in the best college for you.
Popular College Rankings
Degree Program Pages
College Resources
Using College Rankings to Choose the Best Colleges
Figuring out what college to attend can be a bit like taking a drink from a fire hose, so we've assembled a comprehensive guide to selecting the top colleges that are right for you. Using this College Choice Rankings Guide will help you quickly understand the basics of getting into college or university, what to expect once you're there, some of the ins and outs of good colleges, and the usefulness of college rankings systems in helping you make an informed decision.
College Resources for LGBT Students
Those colleges and universities that strive to not only welcome a diverse population, but create a campus environment that reflects and nourishes that community, can be difficult to find through word searches and hopeful clicks alone. Which is why we've done all that work for you. In this guide you'll find absolutely everything you need to know about applying to and succeeding in college as a LGBT identified person. We have the definitive list on the friendliest LGBT schools, which scholarships you should apply for, a trans chapter, and many more resources for you.
Colleges Resources for Women Students
Women are not only more likely to attend college, but they are also more likely to go on to attend graduate school. Of course, many colleges and universities strive to make their campuses safe, inclusive, and supportive of women, and so we've listed fifty of those schools below. We have included everything else students and parents need to know about succeeding in higher education. Scholarships, advice on choosing schools, sexual assault awareness, trans women rights, studying in the STEM fields, single mothering while in college—we've got it all covered.


text:
Canon's entry-level digital camcorders are designed to deliver the latest in style, features and advanced technology at a most affordable price. Starting with Canon's exclusive Genuine Canon 48x Advanced Zoom, which combines the legendary Canon lens optics with the market-leading DIGIC DV image processor to deliver a fuller range of image quality and more flexibility when you're shooting. The ZR930 is specifically designed to make it easier to capture great video, including a 1.07 Megapixel CCD image sensor, 2.7" Widescreen LCD with a Soft LCD video light, Multi-Angle Remote, Quick Start, Joystick control, Level and Grid Markers and more.
The microphone terminal on the ZR930 makes it especially useful for educators and trainers to carefully capture the audio they need to make most effective use of the video they shoot. It's also handy when you want to more easily record a live narration for your footage. All this comes together to deliver brilliant video that you can easily share with family and friends. Easy to use, great looking and terrific value- it's the perfect choice for capturing all of life's precious memories.
Main Features:


text:
lgro wrote: Hi,
I'm trying to build OpenMW on Windows (since past week) without success. I have already installed
CMake (2.8.4) - path: "c:\Program Files\CMake", Ogre3D (OgreSDK_vc10_v1-7-3) - path: "e:\ogre3d\OgreSDK_vc10_v1-7-3\",
OIS (1.3) - path: "e:\ois-v1-3" and boost (1.46.1 vc10 / mingw) - path: "e:\boost_1_46_1\".
Wiki is down and I don't know what should I do to make boost (and OIS) visible for CMake scripts:
Is there anybody who succesfuly build OpenMW on Windows and can giveE:\openmw\openmw>cmake .
-- OpenMW pre-built binaries not found. Using standard locations.
-- Looking for OGRE
-- libraries : debug;OgreMain_d;optimized;OgreMain from "E:/ogre3d"/lib
-- includes : "E:/ogre3d"/include
-- plugins :
-- Boost system library was not found.
-- Boost filesystem library was not found.
-- Boost program_options library was not found.
-- Boost thread library was not found.
-- Looking for OIS...
-- Could not locate OIS
CMake Error at cmake/FindPkgMacros.cmake:112 (message):
Required library OIS not found! Install the library (including dev
packages) and try again. If the library is already installed, set the
missing variables manually in cmake.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
cmake/FindOIS.cmake:81 (findpkg_finish)
CMakeLists.txt:312 (find_package)
step-by-step instructions what should be done to compile OpenMW on Windows?
Zini wrote: There was a precompiled dependency package floating around and I think the cmake scripts have some support for it. But I don't know any details, sorry.
sir_herrbatka wrote: I would send PM to star-demon. He will be very happy to help with windows building.
Star-Demon wrote: PM me and I'll go over it with you - after work I'll hop in IRC, too.
sir_herrbatka wrote: See?
lgro wrote: Thanks!


text:
Carson City Sheriff's Log: Man, 18, arrested on suspicion of battery
Carson City
The following people were booked into the Carson City Jail. All suspects are innocent until proved guilty in court:
• 11:38 p.m.: A 25-year-old Reno man was arrested at Carson Street and Hot Springs Road on failure-to-comply and failure-to-pay warrants. According to his arrest report, he was pulled over for failing to maintain a lane. He reportedly told the deputy he couldn't see the lines in the road because of rain. Bail was set at $1,876.
• 8:15 p.m.: An 18-year-old Carson City man was arrested in the 600 block of Hot Springs Road on suspicion of battery. Bail was set at $1,000.
• 8:27 p.m.: Drake Vancleave, 49, of Carson City was arrested in the 1500 block of North Carson Street on a felony parole-and-probation violation hold and a grand-larceny warrant, as well as on suspicion of no front license plate, no valid insurance, fictitious registration and no valid driver's license. According to Vancleave's arrest report, a deputy pulled him over after noticing that his vehicle didn't have a front license plate. A records check revealed the hold, which barred Vancleave from driving, as well as the warrant. It also revealed that Vancleave's passenger, a 49-year-old Carson City woman, had a failure-to-appear traffic warrant. No bail was set for Vancleave. Bail was set at $187 for his passenger.
The Nevada Appeal only names people arrested on suspicion of felonies, violent crimes and DUIs. Carson City Secret Witness will pay up to $2,500 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of people committing crimes. Anyone with information is asked to call 775-322-4900. The School Secret Witness number is 775-283-1799. Callers remain anonymous.


text:
The Mississippi Legislature is set to adjourn April 7 with no deal in sight on a federal offer to expand Medicaid.
The ticking clock has executives of hospitals around the state worried that time will expire and hospitals and the entire health care sector will suffer the consequences, putting about 9,000 jobs at risk.
Ahead are "devastating" cuts in the federal money hospitals receive for treating the uninsured if the state does not come up with "some offsetting solutions" to which federal officials can agree, said Chris Anderson, CEO of Singing River Health System and main speaker at a Mississippi Hospital Association press conference last Monday.
Part of the solution Anderson and his fellow health care executives want would maintain about $152 million in Disproportionate Share Hospital, or DSH, payments from the federal government scheduled to be eliminated with implementation of the Affordable Care Act provision for expanding Medicaid to the state's working poor.
The other part of the solution would involve accommodating the flat refusal of Gov. Phil Bryant, Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and the Republican leadership of both houses of the Legislature to take Washington up on an offer to cover the full cost of expanding Medicaid to the state's working poor. Full funding of the expansion would occur for three years and be reduced in annual increments until the percentage of the federal expansion funded would level off to 90 percent by 2020.
Medicaid, which covers about 700,000 Mississippians, is today limited to very low-income women and children and low-income disabled seniors. Under the Affordable Care Act, an additional 300,000 or so of the state's uninsured with incomes within 138 percent of the federal poverty level would be added to Medicaid rolls. The expansion would take in individuals making up to $9,000 annually and households with total incomes of about $14,000.
Going forward, hospital executives should assume Bryant and others will not have a change of mind on growing Medicaid, Anderson said. "The governor is not going to support Medicaid expansion – that is going to be a dead-end."
The solution then, is to agree on an approach that preserves the money for treating the uninsured and expands health care to more uninsured, he added.
"I know that we cannot solve it if we don't get in a room with a lot of smart people and talk," Anderson said.
Discussions could include plans proposed by the governors of other states such as Florida and Arkansas.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott is trying to persuade the Legislature to accept a plan that would allow private health management organizations to treat new patients added to Medicaid. Further, Scott persuaded the Department of Health and Human Services to let the state back out of its Medicaid expansion commitment after three years.
In Arkansas, Gov. Mike Beebe has gained a tentative nod from Washington to allow the Medicaid expansion money to be used by eligible uninsured Arkansans to buy private health insurance on the state's health care exchange. Analysts say the Arkansas plan could be more costly than Medicaid expansion and end up covering fewer of that state's uninsured.
Anderson said he was encouraged by a joint statement from Bryant and Mississippi Hospital Association chair Claude Harbarger in which they pledged to seek a solution satisfactory to the various interests involved.
Bryant's comments noted his opposition to expanding Medicaid, but emphasized: "I recognize the situation facing our hospitals and my administration is committed to helping to resolve those issues."
Harbarger noted a fight against time is underway. "We must arrive at solutions in this calendar year or face significant reductions in health care services in the state of Mississippi," he said.
Anderson's press conference comments detailed the challenges facing Singing River Health System, which includes clinics in the coastal Mississippi region as well as Ocean Springs Hospital and Signing River Hospital in Pascagoula. Noting his challenges appear similar to hospital systems of like size throughout Mississippi, he said the Singing River Health System has laid off a couple hundred workers in the past two years in addition to cut backs in employee benefits.
Singing River Health System expects to lose $11.7 million in federal dollars by 2016 and up to $30 million in the years that follow. A portion of the $11.7 million is in federal Medicare reimbursements that Obamacare eliminates regardless of what occurs with federal money to cover hospitals' costs for treating the indigent and uninsured, Anderson explained.
"Some of the reductions have taken place and will accelerate in coming years," he said.
Ultimately, the "size of the fund cut is so large it is going to have a large impact on how we provide care in our communities," he said, though he noted that cuts so far have not led to diminished services.
"I contend that 9,000 jobs in our state are at risk," the CEO said.
Bryant, meanwhile, says Mississippi will sue the Obama administration if it withdraws the $152 million in annual payments that go to offset the cost of treating the uninsured in the state. He said he will rest his claim on the U.S. Supreme Court's prohibition against the federal government taking punitive actions to force states into expanding Medicaid.
However, the Supreme Court did not directly address the portion of the law that specified replacing Disproportionate Share Hospital payments with Medicaid expansion dollars.
… we'd like to ask for your support. More people are reading the Mississippi Business Journal than ever before, but advertising revenues for all conventional media are falling fast. Unlike many, we do not use a pay wall, because we want to continue providing Mississippi's most comprehensive business news each and every day. But that takes time, money and hard work. We do it because it is important to us … and equally important to you, if you value the flow of trustworthy news and information which have always kept America strong and free for more than 200 years.
If those who read our content will help fund it, we can continue to bring you the very best in news and information. Please consider joining us as a valued member, or if you prefer, make a one-time contribution.Click for more info


text:
Military life is like civilian life in many ways: for the most part, you work a regular job, have to keep your life, bills, housing, car and other things in order. You will work with other people, have a boss, and have to exhibit initiative if you want to get ahead.
On the other hand, the military lifestyle carries much more responsibility. There is always threat of heading to a combat zone, risking your life. You must be on time to work - there are no "getting stuck in traffic" excuses - or face punishment. You must consistently be well-groomed, live up to working and presentation standards, and talk to others according to specific rules. You usually do not have the option of saying "no" and just quitting when you feel like it. After all, you are charged with protecting the United States. If you fail, the security of the country is at stake. Here is a table of some common aspects of life that would be important no matter what you choose to do. In general, civilian life offers more money. But there is a catch: you must first spend more to get yourself educated. You must spend more to travel, stay in hotels, find a place to live, move your things, and pay for health care. The responsibility for you is held entirely by you, whereas in the military, many things are taken care of: for example, health care, insurance, and housing. Many things are either substantially cheaper or free in the military: look at travel and education. Finally, the pride that you will have by serving your country is a tremendous feeling that can matched by few jobs elsewhere. Let's have a look at some military-civilian comparisons:
|Basic pay, special pay. With tax advantages, pay is comparable to civilian sector pay.
|Usually higher than military pay. However, there are usually no tax advantages.
|Health Care
|Several options, including full coverage that you do not pay for.
|Depends on employer. Often you must pay your own, or pay partial amounts & co-pays.
|Provided by military. If you live off base, the military provides a Basic Allowance for Housing, tax free.
|Your responsibility. Usually you cover all costs.
|Comprehensive life insurance, all free.
|Employers may or may not have insurance plans.
|G.I. Bill, branch college programs, graduate education for officers... there are endless possibilities
|Your responsibility. You pay for all of it.
|Most likely you will travel to several spots through deployment. In your spare time there is also Space A travel (links), as well as great deals for military members.
|Many choices, but you pay out of pocket for all of it.
|30 days guaranteed vacation per year.
|Varies. Most employers start you at 10-14 vacation days per year, with little increase until you have worked several years.
|Work hours
|Vary. Occasionally work weekends. You are on call 24 hours, 7 days a week.
|Full-time jobs are usually 35-50 hours per week.
|Opportunities for advancement
|Excellent! You are challenged by your leaders and peers. The choice is yours if you would like to advance or not.
|Vary widely. In small companies you may not have much opportunity. In larger companies, you may have opportunities, but often have to work much longer hours.
|Most can retire after 20 years of active duty service. In some cases, you may retire after just 15 years in service.
|Varies. Most employers will require you to work 35 or more years before retirement.


text:
- This event has passed.
Coffee Talk at Ikea
February 16, 2019 @ 10:30 am - 12:00 pm
An event every week that begins at 10:30 am on Saturday, repeating until December 28, 2019
If you're looking to expand your social network, Coffee Talk is the action you can take to help you feel like you are doing something to help yourself achieve this goal.
Coffee Talk is very informal. Roll out of bed, brush your teeth, put on some deodorant and a hat as you grab the car keys on your way out the door. Once you arrive at IKEA, look for the longest table in the second floor cafeteria and join us bears for conversation. If no one is seated at that longest table, do sit down so you can save it for the rest of us. Some of us run a bit tardy – most notably, my other half.
Breakfast is CHEAP. The chocolate cake is like an orgasm in your mouth, and lunch starts at 11:00. Once you sit down, you need to be prepared to spill the beans on all the latest. We want to hear it!
There is only one rule for Coffee Talk with Sean. KEEP YOUR PHONE IN YOUR POCKET. How can you expect to converse with others if you're distracted by your phone?
You are invited to join us. COME, bitch. COME!


text:
Choi leads U.S. Women's Open after 3 rounds
South Korean star has one of the best rounds in tournament's history
KOHLER, Wis. — Na Yeon Choi had one of the best rounds in U.S. Women's Open history, taking control of the tournament with a 7-under 65 in the third round at Blackwolf Run on Saturday.
The fifth-ranked South Korean star's remarkable round put her at 8 under for the tournament, giving her a six-stroke lead over Amy Yang. Only four players ever have posted a lower round in the Open, and the 65 tied the lowest third-round score in the event's history.
Michelle Wie faded, shooting a 6-over 78 to fall to 2 over. Wie shot a 66 on Friday, putting her a stroke behind leader Suzann Pettersen. Pettersen also shot a 78 and slid to 1 over.
Yang had a 69. Choi and Yang were the only players to break 70 in the round.
Lexi Thompson, Mika Miyazato, and Sandra Gal were tied for third at 1 under.


text:
Katherine Heigl "never intended to be difficult" to work with, but she also admits, "I'm fully aware I'm a neurotic actor," and that she's matured quite a bit in recent years.
"I'm less afraid of what everyone thinks of me," she tells us.
E! News chatted with the 35-year-old mother of two on Sunday night at the NBC Press Tour party in Hollywood, and she not only went into detail about her relationship with her momager Nancy Heigl (who is an executive producer on her show, "State of Affairs" in which Heigl plays a "briefer" to the president played by Alfre Woodard), but also opened up about how adulthood has changed her--and made her a bit less "atwitter."
U.S. & World
The day's top national and international news.
READ: Katherine Heigl asked if she's difficult to work with...and it's just as awkward as it sounds
What was it about this role that spoke to you?
Something about her feels like an adult to me in ways that other roles haven't. I don't know if it's because I feel like an adult. I feel like I'm finally like a legitimate grown-up with two children and a husband of almost seven years. I feel like a grown-up who has taken on a grown-up role.
What are you loving most now about being an adult?
I feel more of a sense of peace. I definitely get...I'm a neurotic actor, I'm not gonna lie. I'm absolutely a neurotic actor and we all kind of are, but I'm less atwitter and I'm less defensive and I'm less afraid of what everybody thinks of me. I get my feelings hurt, and I certainly get frustrated because I want to prove I'm something, or prove to people that I'm more than they think, but I don't get quite as aflutter about it as I did in my youth. And I have a deeper understanding of what really matters, and who really matters. Whose opinion really matters. And I'll just look at my husband sometimes and I'll go, 'You know what, I'm doing alright. Because if I were this big of an a--hole, he would not still be here.' He is way too cool to put up with that!
MORE: Katherine Heigl talks career
How is it being a mom and being an actress?
There was a time when this [Hollywood] was everything. This was my whole life. I had relationships. I had my family and stuff but this was my priority first and foremost. Having children has made all of this take a bit of a back seat, which I think helped me and has been good for me. And something that I innately wanted and didn't know that I needed. And the children have been this phenomenal blessing. Because they sort of have put my life in perspective.
What's the thing that has surprised you most about being a mom that you didn't expect?
I didn't think I was going to be one of those moms who think that their kids are the GREATEST. You listen to your friends, and your parents' friends, and you think, 'Oh my god, do none of you realize that you all think your kid is the best?!' And then I had kids and I was like, alright, my kids truly are the best kids.
READ: Cristin Millioti learned of The Mother's fate on Christmas: "I was sobbing!"
Your mother is an executive producer on your show. If most people worked with their mother, they would be screaming at each other by the end of the day. What is it about your partnership with your mom that works?
My mom and I always have gotten along really well. I don't know why except I think that we're sort of like-minded. I've always had a lot of respect and faith in my mother, and I find her to be one of the most remarkable women I've ever met. She's been through quite a bit in her life that I was witness to, that I saw her not only survive, but survive with a sense of joy and gratitude of being alive. And that's so remarkable. I absolutely get mad at my mother and we fight. She's hung up on me once or twice and I wanted to kill her.
But we have this short hand with each other, and a lot of mutual respect, and my mom has always treated me like my opinion and my ideas and my thoughts matter. So it was never like a dictatorship, or even like how I am with my kids. Because, when they're little, you have to tell them what to do. And I've seen a lot of parents have a hard time outgrowing that as their children grow up. But my mother, she absolutely bosses me around, but it's not about business. We've just always had a really remarkably great partnership. And I trust her so implicitly. She's always been a sounding board for me.
PHOTOS: 18 of the Most Horrible TV Weddings of All Time
Can you imagine any scenario in which you would go back to 'Grey's Anatomy'? Maybe for the series finale someday?
That's not up to me. That's not my decision. But I think the show is fantastic. I have so many wonderful memories. I had so many wonderful experiences. I have some really phenomenal friends and people like TR Knight who is like a brother to me, that I can't even imagine my life without. And I can't believe it's been this long. That we've been friends this long. I was 25 when we started. He was 30. Like, what happened? It feels like it was only a couple years ago, It's so weird.
It doesn't seem that long ago at all. I'm still not over Denny dying.
Me neither. If I could only lure Jeffrey Dean to this show...!
What did you love best about working with James Marsden on "27 Dresses"?
Everything. That kid is hilarious. Like literally spit my food out hliarious. So charming and so talented. I love him. I love love love Jimmy Marsden. We need to do a sequel to that.
VIDEO: Is Katherine Heigl difficult on set?
Having an executive producer role on 'State,' what kind of freedom does that give you?
A lot more creative freedom. It's not like I can go into the writers' room and say, 'Today I've decided that Charleston will be...' I can have input and I can have ideas and the beauty is that people listen to me now, and they consider what I have to say. And it doesn't always work, and often I'm wrong but it's really nice to able to have the opportunity to go into the writers room and throw some ideas around and develop a backstory for my character.
That balance of work and personal life is everything when you are a working mother. So it seems like an ideal situation that you are a producer on this show. Have you put some thought into how to keep your own hours manageable in order to see your little girls?
I would love to say that I have that kind of control over my schedule, and I don't. Because I made a promise when I committed to do this show that I would do it, and that I would give it my all and I understand that it centers around my character. So for me to say, Hey guys I want every Friday and Monday off, it's not going to serve the show well. And ultimately, then, not me. So at this point, the things I did have control over was how many episodes a season we would do, and I minimized that, so i can have half a year at least of doing nothing if I choose to, with my kids. ...
And I am in the very fortunate position of getting to choose to go back to work or choose to not to work. I know it's a great priviledge and I know like my sister doesn't get to choose. You know. I have a passion for my career, and that is something that I sort of want to inspire my own daughters with in some weird way. It's either that or I keep joking, this job will simply help pay for their therapy. I'm not sure which will happen.


text: Picture may not represent actual vehicle. Price varies based on Trim Levels and Options. Please confirm all terms and requirements with a dealership sales professional before making a purchase.All prices are special internet prices only. All financing is subject to approved credit. All prices exclude freight. All prices exclude tax, tags, and dealer processing fee of $500. Fees will be for the state in which the vehicle will be registered, any dealer-installed options (if applicable), . Every Internet Price is subject to change, and prior sales are excluded from these offers. While every reasonable effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this information, we are not responsible for any errors or omissions contained on these pages. Please verify any information in question with the dealer. Tax, title, license (unless itemized above) are extra. Not available with special finance, lease and some other offers.


text:
A few months ago, I came across an article in the NY Times' Dine In/Dine Out section about a new trend that's taken off called Flavor Tripping Parties (The Miracle Fruit, a Tease for the Taste Buds – NYTimes May 28, 2008). Needless to say, it caught my attention.What's a flavor tripping party? And better yet, why is the New York Times discussing drugs in the food section? The article continues to discuss a berry that is native to West Africa. According to wikipedia, it was originally discovered by the explorer Chevalier des Marchais during a 1725 excursion. The plant, known in some circles also as Magic Berry, Flavor Berry, and Sideroxylon dulcificum/Synsepalum dulcificum has the interesting property of interacting with our sense of taste in interesting ways.
When consumed, it's effects are only useful on the tongue. It must coat the taste buds on your tongue and binds with them so that when you consume food, it changes how you taste them! The Chevalier first noticed its usage when observing tribes chewing on the berries before consuming their meals.
Further study into the plant uncovered that the fleshy part of the berry contains a chemical called miraculin – an active glycoprotein molecule – which when bound to our taste buds transforms bitter and sour foods to taste sweet! What a novelty! Apparently, effects can last anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours.
First of all, I'm truly fascinated by this berry and find that it's not a psychological "tripping." It's a purely temporary effect, and it would be very interesting to experience the transformation of foods, especially when you are expecting to taste one flavor, and you experience a different one altogether.
Apparently, the berry is very difficult to procure in the United States – although one may order them online from countries abroad. There also seems to be a freeze-dried version available, which has a longer shelf-life, but more chewing and longer contact with the tongue is required since the substance doesn't work when consumed (the effect is on the tongue, not the brain – unlike a psychedelic drug the affects your perception by messing with your brain chemistry).
There are a number of online vendors who sell either tablets of freeze dried Miracle Berry – the integrity of which I cannot attest to. However, should anyone come across this berry, or be brave enough to order some, I would LOVE to hear about your experience. Regarding the hechsher/kashrut of these products, short of procuring the actual berry, you would have to consult with your local rabbi.
For those of you with a green thumb, and the energy to care for the plant, it seems that there is a reliable supplier of this plant at Pine Island Nursery.
Just think about some of the uses:
- Another boring wedding/bar mitzvah/sheva berachot – just pop the berry/tablet in your mouth, and seconds later all that boring food becomes a lot more interesting!
- Hosting another shabbat meal? Offer these to your guests and REALLY get the party started!
The list goes one….but I hope I got your creative juices flowing!


text:
Welcome to the game of Survivor! Battle for immunity to save yourself from the infamous Tribal Council where someone is voted off each round. Winning will require you to outwit, outplay, and outlast all other players and eliminate any threats standing in your way. Do you have what it takes to beat the odds and become the Sole Survivor? Make sure to hit that thumbs up button if you like it! Follow us on Twitter! @Repotted_ @GodzGalaxy_ Logo made by @_Younite / @theloudscreams & renders by @ID0ntHaveAUse / @PumpedRobloxian
Private Servers
There are currently no running games.


text:
This pledge closed over 6 years ago
Get involved in the statewide runaway production awareness campaign being led by the Bring Hollywood Home Foundation. Our leadership supports independent film, TV, commercial, and music production in California. Let our elected officials and business leaders know that outsourcing the future of our children is an outrage. www.bringhollywoodhome.org


text:
The Ronix Eight.3 Telescoping bags are the fastest ballast system in the world. Fits in most V-drive lockers, with enough room left over to put your gear on top. 26 guage heavy duty PVC materials. High strength welded seams. 1" diameter fill/drain ports. High velocity port. Telescoping dry chamer. Trapezoid shape to reduce bag rolling. For use with the new Ronix Eight.3 Telescoping pumps.
Buy the Ronix - Eight.3 Telescoping Bag 800lbs Now At Boardstop


text:
MarineBlue in Review – You'll Feel Like You're Drowning
MarineBlue is essentially a shoot-em-up game by developer IndieAn (makers of the hit game Heavy Mach 2 (TMA Review)). Your character is some kind of sea creature (your guess is as good as mine), and the idea is to tap the screen to shoot at other underwater beasties to stop them from reaching the bottom of the screen. When they do, they'll start eating away at the time you've got to play the level, which is 180 seconds. The idea is to get the best score you can in the time you have.
It may sound fun, but it isn't, not really. The game is simplistic to the point of being boring. You'll very quickly suss out that constantly tapping different areas of the screen will shoot your enemies into smithereens and get you lots of points. You don't have to plan any kind of strategy, or be very careful about what you're doing. There's no limit on your ammunition, so randomly tapping works just fine.
Blasting entire schools of fish will give you bonus items. These appear in your armoury, and you tap them when you want to use them and then deploy as normal. These different types of bullets and bombs don't make the game any more interesting, I'm afraid.
It's a shame the gameplay is such a let down, because the graphics and sound on this game are really nice, funky and fun. The developers have even gone so far as to make MarineBlue work on OpenFeint, so there are various achievements you can hit during gameplay. However, I think most people will probably play the game a couple of times and realise how little else there is to do gameplay wise and not care whether their high score is better than anyone else's or not.
Yes, it's cheap. Yes, it's cute. But sadly, it's still incredibly dull and won't keep the average adult entertained for very long. Maybe kids will like it, but if they're old enough to have an iPod Touch, they're probably old enough to realise this game is snooze-worthy. Now if you're a fan of the blow-em-up genre and still care to check it out, IndieAn have also released a free version dubbed MarineBlue Lite for the iPhone/iPod Touch and MarineBlueHD Lite for the iPad.
|App Summary
|해준 Byun
|Reviewed Ver:
|Min OS Req:
|App Size:


text:
Chocolate Confectionery in Ireland
More information from http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/446989/
Chocolate Confectionery in Ireland
Description: Chocolate Confectionery in Ireland industry profile is an essential resource for top-level data and analysis covering the Chocolate Confectionery industry. It includes detailed data on market size and segmentation, plus textual and graphical analysis of the key trends and competitive landscape, leading companies and demographic information. Scope - Contains an executive summary and data on value, volume and/or segmentation - Provides textual analysis of the industry's recent performance and future prospects - Incorporates in-depth five forces competitive environment analysis and scorecards - Includes a five-year forecast of the industry - The leading companies are profiled with supporting key financial metrics - Supported by the key macroeconomic and demographic data affecting the market Highlights - Detailed information is included on market size, measured by both value and volume - Five forces scorecards provide an accessible yet in depth view of the market's competitive landscape - Market shares are covered by manufacturer and/or brand - Also features market breakdown by distribution channel Why you should buy this report - Spot future trends and developments - Inform your business decisions - Add weight to presentations and marketing materials - Save time carrying out entry-level research Market Definition The chocolate market consists of boxed chocolate, chocolate countlines, chocolate straightlines, molded bars, novelties and other chocolate. The market is valued according to retail selling price (RSP) and includes any applicable taxes. Any currency conversions used in the creation of this report have been calculated using constant annual average exchange rates.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY CHAPTER 1 Market Overview 1.1 Market Definition 1.2 Research Highlights 1.3 Market Analysis
CHAPTER 2 Market Value CHAPTER 3...
Please join StudyMode to read the full document


text:
Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.
The e-mail messages, attributed to prominent American and British climate researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments in some cases derisive about specific people known for their skeptical views. Drafts of scientific papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years.
In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical "trick" in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as "idiots."
Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. "This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud," said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.
Some of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics' camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them.
The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument. However, the documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists.
In several e-mail exchanges, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and other scientists discuss gaps in understanding of recent variations in temperature. Skeptic Web sites pointed out one line in particular: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't," Dr. Trenberth wrote.
The cache of e-mail messages also includes references to journalists, including this reporter, and queries from journalists related to articles they were reporting.
Officials at the University of East Anglia confirmed in a statement on Friday that files had been stolen from a university server and that the police had been brought in to investigate the breach. They added, however, that they could not confirm that all the material circulating on the Internet was authentic.
But several scientists and others contacted by The New York Times confirmed that they were the authors or recipients of specific e-mail messages included in the file. The revelations are bound to inflame the public debate as hundreds of negotiators prepare to negotiate an international climate accord at meetings in Copenhagen next month, and at least one scientist speculated that the timing was not coincidental.
Dr. Trenberth said Friday that he was appalled at the release of the e-mail messages.
But he added that he thought the revelations might backfire against climate skeptics. He said that he thought that the messages showed "the integrity of scientists." Still, some of the comments might lend themselves to being interpreted as sinister.
In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing climate patterns over the last two millenniums, Phil Jones, a longtime climate researcher at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, said he had used a "trick" employed by another scientist, Michael Mann, to "hide the decline" in temperatures.
Dr. Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, confirmed in an interview that the e-mail message was real. He said the choice of words by his colleague was poor but noted that scientists often used the word "trick" to refer to a good way to solve a problem, "and not something secret."
At issue were sets of data, both employed in two studies. One data set showed long-term temperature effects on tree rings; the other, thermometer readings for the past 100 years.
Through the last century, tree rings and thermometers show a consistent rise in temperature until 1960, when some tree rings, for unknown reasons, no longer show that rise, while the thermometers continue to do so until the present.
Dr. Mann explained that the reliability of the tree-ring data was called into question, so they were no longer used to track temperature fluctuations. But he said dropping the use of the tree rings was never something that was hidden, and had been in the scientific literature for more than a decade. "It sounds incriminating, but when you look at what you're talking about, there's nothing there," Dr. Mann said.
In addition, other independent but indirect measurements of temperature fluctuations in the studies broadly agreed with the thermometer data showing rising temperatures.
Dr. Jones, writing in an e-mail message, declined to be interviewed.
Stephen McIntyre, a blogger who on his Web site, climateaudit.org, has for years been challenging data used to chart climate patterns, and who came in for heated criticism in some e-mail messages, called the revelations "quite breathtaking."
But several scientists whose names appear in the e-mail messages said they merely revealed that scientists were human, and did nothing to undercut the body of research on global warming. "Science doesn't work because we're all nice," said Gavin A. Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA whose e-mail exchanges with colleagues over a variety of climate studies were in the cache. "Newton may have been an ass, but the theory of gravity still works."
He said the breach at the University of East Anglia was discovered after hackers who had gained access to the correspondence sought Tuesday to hack into a different server supporting realclimate.org, a blog unrelated to NASA that he runs with several other scientists pressing the case that global warming is true.
The intruders sought to create a mock blog post there and to upload the full batch of files from Britain. That effort was thwarted, Dr. Schmidt said, and scientists immediately notified colleagues at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. The first posts that revealed details from the files appeared Thursday at The Air Vent, a Web site devoted to skeptics' arguments.
At first, said Dr. Michaels, the climatologist who has faulted some of the science of the global warming consensus, his instinct was to ignore the correspondence as "just the way scientists talk."
But on Friday, he said that after reading more deeply, he felt that some exchanges reflected an effort to block the release of data for independent review.
He said some messages mused about discrediting him by challenging the veracity of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin by claiming he knew his research was wrong. "This shows these are people willing to bend rules and go after other people's reputations in very serious ways," he said.
Spencer R. Weart, a physicist and historian who is charting the course of research on global warming, said the hacked material would serve as "great material for historians."


text:
Ohio State upsets No. 17 Iowa 76-69
Hawkeyes lose second straight at home
IOWA CITY, Iowa — Aaron Craft had 17 points with six assists and six steals to help Ohio State upset 17th-ranked Iowa 76-69 on Tuesday night for its third win in four games.
LaQuinton Ross added 13 points for the Buckeyes (18-5, 5-5 Big Ten), who moved back to .500 in the league after starting a surprising 2-4.
Craft's first points of the second half came on a three-point play that put Ohio State ahead 66-59 with 1:17 left. That sealed back-to-back road wins for the surging Buckeyes, who beat Wisconsin 59-58 on Saturday.
Mike Gesell had 16 points for lead Iowa (17-6, 6-4), which shot just 3 of 20 from 3-point range and lost its second straight at home.
Hawkeyes stars Devyn Marble and Aaron White combined for just 18 points.


text:
- Research
- Find
- AV & Multimedia Materials
- Articles, Journals & more
- Books
- Notable Collections
- Services
- Borrowing
- Online Services
- Information Services
- Library Liaison Programme
- Facilities
- About
- Overview
- Vision, Mission & Strategic Plan
- Naming of the Fong Sum Wood Library
- Contact Us
- Organisation Chart
- Opening Hours
- Library Location
- Floor Plans
- Library Brochure & Guidebook
- Library Matters
- Renovation Project
- Information Commons
- Rules, Regulations & Policies
- Lost and Found (Personal Belongings)
- Library Statistics and Surveys
- Online Exhibitions
- Library Projects
- Site Search
- Web Accessibility Statement
- What's New
- Home
- Find
- AV & Multimedia Materials
- A Week In Politics
Local TV Programmes
Displaying 1 - 10 of 95
A Week In Politics
A Week In Politics
The government wins its first real test as functional legislators use split voting system to block two cross-party social welfare/livlihood motions which were approved by directly elected legislato
A Week In Politics
A Week In Politics
Tonight's programme examines the results of Sunday's Legco elections -- which had some measure of cheer for both sides of the political divide.
A Week In Politics
With Hong Kong set to go to the polls in the 2004 Legislative Council election, tonight's programme has all the latest news and views on the campaign.
A Week In Politics
Tonight's programme focuses on the three-way fight for the medical functional constituency seat in the Legco election.
A Week In Politics
Legco elections: the legal hotseat; democrats cry foul; Demg Xioping centenary exhibition (27 Aug 2004)
Tonight's programme reports on the latest developments in the run up to the 2004 election, with the media reporting more stories embarrassing for the Democratic Party.
A Week In Politics
Tonight's programme follows the case of Alex Ho, the Democratic Party Legco election candidate arrested by mainland police who accuse him of hiring a prostitute.
A Week In Politics
Tonight's programme focuses on the Hong Kong Island constituency, as the September 12 Legco elections approach.
A Week In Politics
With the close of the nomination period on Wednesday, tonight's programme examines the line-up for next month's Legco elections.
Filter by program:
- (-) Remove A Week In Politics filter A Week In Politics
Filter by station:
Filter by publish date:
Quick Links
Lingnan University Fong Sum Wood Library
8 Castle Peak Road, Tuen Mun, N.T., Hong Kong. General Enquiries: (+852) 2616 8586
8 Castle Peak Road, Tuen Mun, N.T., Hong Kong. General Enquiries: (+852) 2616 8586


text:
Oven-baked risotto
Cook this simple storecupboard risotto in the oven while you get on with something else – the result is still wonderfully creamy
Nutrition and extra info
Nutrition: per serving
- kcal517
- fat20g
- saturates10g
- carbs63g
- sugars0g
- fibre2g
- protein22g
- salt3.38g
- 250g pack smoked bacon, chopped into small pieces
- 1 onion, chopped
Onions are endlessly versatile and an essential ingredient in countless recipes. Native to Asia…
- 25g butter
Butter is a dairy product made from separating whole milk or cream into fat and…
- 300g risotto rice
Risotto rice
To create an authentic creamy Italian risotto, the use of specialist rice is imperative. It…
- half a glass of white wine (optional)
- 150g pack cherry tomatoes, halved
- 700ml hot chicken stock (from a cube is fine)
- 50g parmesan, grated
Parmesan is a straw-coloured hard cheese with a natural yellow rind and rich, fruity flavour. It…
Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Fry the bacon pieces in an ovenproof pan or casserole dish for 3-5 mins until golden and crisp. Stir in the onion and butter and cook for 3-4 mins until soft. Tip in the rice and mix well until coated. Pour over the wine if using and cook for 2 mins until absorbed.
Add the cherry tomatoes and the hot stock, then give the rice a quick stir. Cover with a tightly fitting lid and bake for 18 mins until just cooked. Stir through most of the parmesan and serve sprinkled with the remainder.
Recipe Tip
Need more inspiration?Visit our storecupboard recipe collection for other ideas when raiding the fridge, freezer and cupboards.


text:
As a Skype-branded WiFi phone, the Edge-core certainly looks like another PC-tethered offering. The base unit cradles the phone nicely, which connects via a wireless dongle to your PC, and the design is clean if a little uncomfortable on the ear.
Although it ships with WMM (Wireless Multi Media), the phone's network settings are only reachable through its PC-enabled interface. So while SkypeOut and SkypeIn are each supported without the aid of a PC to dial into your account, it's redundant.
Network scanning actions constantly update your connection preventing dropped calls mid-conversation. And although it can pick out hotspots relatively effectively, it remains a house-or-office-bound wireless Skype option rather than a true WiFi phone. Tom Dennis


text:
Europe seemed to make the right moves towards solving the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis this week, and with the political stalemate in Greece and Italy finally broken, Europe's leaders were hoping for a bit of breathing space.
Yet markets instead have responded negatively as an increasingly fierce EU debate over the role of the European Central Bank (ECB) undermines investors' trust that the eurozone will recover. Many experts believe that the attempts of Europe's southern countries to reform are coming too late.
"All forecasts indicate that European economies are either already in recession or only a step away," says Sebastian Dullien, an economist at Berlin's HTW University. "Austerity will put additional pressure on these economies. They will need help from outside to sort their debts and get back to growth."
Greek, Italian moves fail to soothe markets
Greece's new prime minister Lucas Papademos, who heads an emergency cabinet that is supposed to keep the country from defaulting, won a vote of confidence this week with a comfortable majority. That victory allows him to now embark on reforms Greece needs to implement before it gets fresh money from the EU and the International Monetary Fund. Today Greece submitted a draft budget ahead of meetings today and tomorrow with the EU, the IMF, and the ECB.
In Rome, Italy's new prime minister Mario Monti, the ex-central banker who succeeded Silvio Berlusconi, presented a cabinet consisting exclusively of technocrats instead of career politicians. The cabinet also presented an austerity program that, Mr. Monti said, was vital for the survival of the eurozone.
"We must make sure Italy is no longer perceived as Europe's weakest link," he said.
But the markets didn't buy it. Sovereign bond yields for Italy remained high, while yields for Spanish and French 10-year bonds rose – close to the critical 7 percent mark in Spain. At that level, borrowing gets prohibitively expensive. When countries like Ireland and Portugal crossed that threshold, they were forced to ask for help from the EU.
Should the European Central Bank intervene?
Spain's Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero launched a dramatic appeal to his eurozone partners. "We need a European Central Bank that does justice to its name and defends the common currency," he said on Thursday, suggesting that the ECB should on a large scale buy bonds of countries under pressure. This appeal was mainly directed at German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Germany is strictly opposed to the ECB intervening on behalf of struggling economies. Wolfgang Franz, who heads the German government's council of economic advisers, calls it "a deadly sin."
"There's a deeply engrained fear of inflation in the German collective consciousness," says Mr. Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, an economic historian at Berlin's Free University. "Germans living in the first half of the twentieth century saw their savings wiped out twice when the central bank started the printing press. The memory is still alive."
Germany proposes strict measures
Chancellor Merkel has made it clear that she wants the European Treaties to be changed. Those members of the eurozone who don't stick to the rules and overspend should be taken to the European Court of Justice, she demands.
Germany is also supporting the idea of levying a tax on financial trading, an idea very much opposed by the US and especially Britain – the latter worried about preserving London's status as an international hub of finance.
It is doubtful though that Germany is going to use all these bargaining chips, says Mr. Dullien. "If the choice is survival of the euro or the ECB turning into the lender of last resort, Germany is not going to walk away from the euro. And chances are, this decision has to be made soon."


text:
Robert Frost – The Witch Of Coös
Download Robert Frost Reads His Poetry
The master himself reading his own poetry, recorded in the comfort of his home in Cambridge the Spring of '56. A fantastic choice of poems, most poignantly philosophical, read in the bleak & honest manner that only comes from living eighty years. I've posted "The Witch Of Coös" for streaming/download on its own because 1: it's fucking awesome and 2: it's Halloween times. Also, once I realized Frost sounds like Ice King, I fell head over heals.
Robert Frost Reads His Poetry (Caedmon, 1957)October 25, 2012
- Categories: oops


text:
The San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency will vote on Tuesday on how it should share its bus stops with Google shuttles and Google plans to have its employees there with talking points, according to a report.
The Google bus controversy stems from an idea that the tech boom has led to inequality in San Francisco and an elitist mentality where tech workers are separate from the city's other populations. Apparently aware of the importance of the meeting, Google sent out an email to its employees who use the shuttles last week and urged them to attend the public hearing and gave six talking points to use during public comments, according to TechCrunch. From the piece:
Transportation Team firstname.lastname@example.com Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 11:35 AM Bcc: firstname.lastname@example.com YOU DON'T RIDE THE SHUTTLE TO/FROM SF, YOU CAN STOP READING NOW. Dear Shuttle Riders,This Tuesday (1/21), the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Board will meet to vote on the proposed shuttle regulations we told you about last week. The hearing will take place on January 21 at 1pm PT at San Francisco City Hall (room 400). While we recognized that many of you won't be able to make it during the workday, we encourage any interested Googlers who live in San Francisco to speak in favor of the proposal (please RSVP here if you are planning to attend). While you are not required to state where you work, you may confirm that Google is your employer if you are so inclined.If you do choose to speak in favor of the proposal we thought you might appreciate some guidance on what to say. Feel free to add your own style and opinion.*I am so proud to live in San Francisco and be a part of this community*I support local and small businesses in my neighborhood on a regular basis*My shuttle empowers my colleagues and I to reduce our carbon emissions by removing cars from the road*If the shuttle program didn't exist, I would continue to live in San Francisco and drive to work on the peninsula*I am a shuttle rider, SF resident, and I volunteer at…..*Because of the above, I urge the Board to adopt this pilot as a reasonable step in the right directionYou can read the full press release announcing the proposal here, and we'll keep you updated in the coming weeks as the proposal moves towards approval. Feel free to email us at email@example.com with any questions.Thanks, XXXX, on behalf of the Transportation Team