text:
The abrupt departure of SAP technology chief Vishal Sikka has prompted a number of questions about the vendor's strategy, particularly in regard to the HANA in-memory computing platform, and what it could mean for customers.
There's also some intrigue over what sort of boardroom machinations may have prompted the high profile and widely respected technologist to suddenly leave SAP.
[ Find out what topics and issues affect tech's biggest names and news makers in the IDGE Insider CEO interview series. | Read Bill Snyder's Tech's Bottom Line blog for what the key business trends mean to you. ]
Here's a look at both topics.
SAP needs a new visionary: Sikka is being replaced by Bernd Leukert, a 20-year veteran of SAP who oversaw the porting of SAP's Business Suite ERP (enterprise resource planning) software to HANA.
One of Sikka's roles at SAP was "to act as a C-level evangelist of the technical and business benefits of the technology," said independent enterprise software analyst China Martens via email. "He's fulfilled that role to SAP (and non-SAP) customers and partners as well as to Wall Street (participating in financial analyst calls). There's clearly a need for someone at SAP to continue that mission particularly as the vendor continues to acquire companies and through those purchases reach out to customers new to HANA."
"What SAP has yet to achieve is a successful weaving together of all the technology strands of its strategy -- so how HANA, cloud, mobile, analytics, and social -- all intermesh and where the technologies blur into each other," Martens added.
Leukert's role puts him in charge of the technical workload, but it remains to be seen whether he'll be given as much leeway as Sikka had to tell SAP's story publicly, or if he possesses Sikka's knack for expansive, thematic rhetoric and ability to communicate with the developer crowd.
One SAP user group leader praised Sikka but also hailed Leukert's appointment. "We have been working with [Leukert] a long time," said Marco Lenck, chairman of DSAG (German-speaking SAP User Group), via email. "He is familiar with the concerns of SAP Users. We are looking forward to tackle with him the challenges of the DSAG members and wish him great success in his new role."
No harm to HANA: Sikka's departure shouldn't have any ill effects on HANA from a development standpoint, said Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research. For one thing, "it will not be suffering from 'not invented here' syndrome," he said.
It would also be good if Leukert places more focus on applications that take advantage of HANA's capabilities rather than HANA as a set of platform technologies, as the former is more important to SAP customers, Mueller said.
Also, Sikka "was always pushing the envelope," said John Appleby, global head of SAP HANA at consulting firm Bluefin Solutions and an SAP Mentor, the name given to the most involved members of its user and partner communities.
"I think there will be more focus on stability and less focus on innovative things" under Leukert's leadership, he said. "There are pros and cons. SAP moves into a new phase now, where the focus is on execution."
But Leukert has a morale issue to deal with, at least for now.
Members of SAP's development organization "are devastated," Appleby said. "He was their spiritual leader and they are in mourning. That's the short-term impact."
A stain on Sapphire: SAP's flagship conference, Sapphire, is scheduled for just a few weeks from now in Orlando. Sapphire is the company's biggest opportunity each year to lay out its product plans and long-term vision for customers.
Sikka has played a prominent role at Sapphire, keynoting along with SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner, with whom he has a close relationship.
The timing of Sikka's departure "tells me that it wasn't something that he or SAP had planned in advance," said analyst Frank Scavo, managing partner of IT consulting firm Strativa.
Much speculation has centered on whether Sikka hoped to one day become CEO or co-CEO of SAP, but was recently rebuffed, prompting him to resign.
Under that scenario, SAP's board may have decided to show Sikka the door immediately in order to make replacement appointments and showcase them at Sapphire as part of soon-to-be sole CEO Bill McDermott's new management team.
Other factors could have been in play as well. For one thing, SAP has long held a reputation as a slow-moving company split by power centers in Germany and the U.S.
Based in Palo Alto, Sikka had grown weary of attempting to get all parts of the company to move with the same amount of velocity he preferred, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Sikka's frustrations over SAP's dense bureaucracy, coupled with sheer fatigue from heavy workloads over the past decade may have also played a role in his departure.
In any case, no matter what public relations measures SAP takes, it's hard to think the chatter over Sikka will have died down by Sapphire.
With Sapphire looming, "SAP will have a lot of hard work ahead of itself to show, not tell how innovation remains a priority and what business impact this will have on customers and partners," said analyst Ray Wang, chairman and founder of Constellation Research, in a blog post. "Customers, prospects, partners, and influencers will have to wait and see as much remains to be answered and those decisions may take the management team more time than customers have patience for."
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is email@example.com


text:
Happy Tuesday to you! This is one of my favorite crafts ever! I made Frog Lids and turned a handful of my Mason Jars into gorgeous Flower Vases to use around our home this summer. I seriously LOVE them! I am so excited to put flowers from my new Camelia and Gerber Daisy plants in them.
These little DIY mason jar flower lids lids were super easy and cheap to make. AND the best part is, they make a lovely handmade Mother's Day or wedding gift idea!
You can never go wrong with Mason Jars, right?! I love finding these gems at thrift stores. I've collected some vintage ones that are just divine. So being able to use them as flower holders totally makes me happy.
Want to know how to tint your Mason Jars?
What is a Flower Frog Mason Jar Lid?
Frog Lids help hold flowers in place so that you can arrange them how you want….and they'll stay put! The little openings in the wire help the flowers to stand up and make your bouquets look fabulous. You can reuse these handy devices for many
Oh and did I mention, you can make these for super cheap?! If you have a jar ring, you can turn a mason jar ring into a flower lid for about 5 cents each. no joke.
{if you don't have the rings, you can purchase them for about 75 cents to $1 each}
How to Make Mason Jar Flower Lids
- Turn your jars into flower vases! You can find Mason Jars at thrift stores, craft stores, grocery stores, and online. Try to get jars with the rings and if possible, the lids. {the lids aren't necessary, but helpful} If your jars do not have rings, you'll need to purchase them separately. They can usually be found in the canning section at your grocery store.
- Supplies needed: 1/2″ square Galvanized Hardware Cloth Mesh {I found this in the garden section by the fencing at my local hardware store for $10 for 10 feet or you can find it on Amazon}, jar rings, wire cutters, marker, super glue {I used E6000}, jar lids {optional}
- Place a jar lid on top of the Galvanized Mesh and with a marker, put dots on each wire around the lid. If you do not have a lid, you can use a jar ring, you'll just need to trim it a little bit in the next step.
- Using your wire cutters, carefully snip each wire along each dot. It might be a good idea to use leather gloves when doing this to protect yourself from the sharp wire edges. {i found it worked best to almost cut off the dots on the wire. That gave almost a perfect fit inside the lid each time.}
- This is your wire "circle" for your jar lid. Check to make sure it fits inside the lid. If it does not, use your wire cutters and trim it down as needed.
- Place your wire circle inside your jar lid and run a line of super glue all the way around the ring on top of the wire. Allow to dry. {depending on your glue and climate, it can take several hours}
Mason Jar Flower Frog Lids
So that's how you make those nifty little lids for your mason jars! pretty sweet, huh? Told you they were easy! Just make sure you do not put them in the dishwasher. Hand wash only!
These are perfect for weddings, parties, gifts {Mother's Day!!}, house warming, and just because. Pair the lids with a DIY Tinted Mason Jar and you have thoughtful gift!
Now who's ready to grab every Mason Jar in sight and make flower lids??
happy crafting! linda
For more Craft Ideas, follow along on Pinterest!
Latest posts by Linda (see all)
- Powder Room Makeover - Mar 25 2019
- Raspberry Sweet Rolls Recipe - Mar 12 2019
- Farmhouse Spring Wreath - Feb 19 2019

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Green Chicken Masala
I've managed to amass a stack of chicken recipes, most of which are from Food and Wine's last several issues, and I decided to start working through them last night. Up first was this green chicken masala which was one of their simplified versions of a chef's dish. It comes from Chef Vikram Sunderam of Rasika in Washington, DC. Apparently, the only simplification was to add the spices all at once rather than a little at a time as the dish cooks. Chicken breasts or thighs would work, but I had boneless breasts in the freezer so they won.
The first ingredient in the list is two cups of cilantro leaves. I have to beam with pride for just a moment because my cantankerous, little herb garden had actually produced enough cilantro for this use. The winter herbs like parsley and cilantro do perform better for me than their summer counterparts, but they're not all that prolific in my garden. However, we'd just had some rain this week, so the resulting explosion of cilantro leaves was a surprising sight. There's a strange sense of luxury about clipping rain-washed and sun-dried, fresh herbs because since I don't use any sprays or chemicals, they didn't require any rinsing once I got them inside. They were already clean and dry and easier to handle that way. Odd things like that do make me happy. Mint, on the other hand, I don't seem able to grow despite the fact that it's treated as an almost invasive species in most gardens.
Along with the big mound of cilantro leaves, store-bought mint, jalapeno, garlic, lemon, and water were pureed until smooth. Meanwhile, chopped onion was sauteed before turmeric and chicken were added. Cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves joined the mixture in the pan, and then the cilantro puree and coconut milk were added. The bright green color faded a bit as the sauce reduced and thickened, but the many delicious flavors got better and better. Next time, I may use a hotter chile, like serrano, instead of jalapeno, but that's a very minor grievance. I have to explain that I'm not at all an experienced cook of Indian cuisine, so the melding of all of these spices and herbs into the finished sauce was kind of like a magic trick that I just happened to perform. It all came together wonderfully, and this one is going in the permanent file.
Posted by lisa is cooking at Thursday, February 12, 2009
14 comments:
- AnonymousFebruary 12, 2009 at 4:02 PM
Looks great! I will have to check this restaurant Rasika - we have been looking for a really good Indian restaurant in DC area. Thanks!ReplyDelete
Looks like a combi of Thai and Indian. It looks like Thai Dark Green Chicken Curry. Or maybe it looks like Pesto Chicken....ReplyDelete
I am trying too hard. Oops.
- AnonymousFebruary 12, 2009 at 6:23 PM
I have had good luck with mint in a pot, not even in a south-facing window. It gets root-bound pretty quickly, but that's kind of nice since it is mint, after all, and grows like crazy. That said, I do understand all too well the problem of things mysteriously not growing when they do for everyone else :)ReplyDelete
I wonder if you could substitute parsley for cilantro. I got parsley and a few other herbs in pots in the balcony. Not as good as your garden, but every once in a while they'll give me something. Your herbs look really fresh. I've had difficulty growing mint too. The chicken masala sounds easy to make.ReplyDelete
This looks so delicious! And what a lot of home grown cilantro u have! I tried growing coriander but their growth is slow :PReplyDelete
That chicken looks good! I like the vibrant green sauce!ReplyDelete
That dish looks so appetizing,MMMmmmmm.... That is something for me, healthy & delicious!!ReplyDelete
This dish sounds and looks amazing! Must be bursting with flavours of herbs and spices!ReplyDelete
natasha-- I'd love to hear about the restaurant if you try it.ReplyDelete
tigerfish-- The coconut milk does make it kind of Thai. I was delighted that all the flavors came together so well.
laura-- I grow basil in containers, and it does much better that way than in the ground. So, I should probably try mint in pots too.
nihal-- You could sub some parsley for cilantro, but I think it needs some cilantro flavor in the mix. It was so easy and so good.
noob-- Cilantro can take some time when grown from seed, but it likes cooler weather too.
kevin-- Thanks! The sauce tasted as vibrant as it looks.
sophie-- With light coconut milk, it is pretty healthy. I served it with sauteed, chopped cabbage with cumin and coriander.
pippig-- The flavor did burst! I was very happy.
Sounds really fresh and creamy at the same time. The green is great!ReplyDelete
looks deliciously green , it would not put me off at all...i'd love to try it.cheersReplyDelete
anything that starts off with two cups of cilantro is welcome in my kitchen and on my table and in my belly. :)ReplyDelete
A friend was asking about this, so I am sending her your link, this looks wonderful!ReplyDelete
that looks so good! I've been to Rasika several times and really like it!ReplyDelete


text:
Some Help
NC_011992:3752867 Acidovorax ebreus TPSY, complete genome
Host Lineage: Acidovorax ebreus; Acidovorax; Comamonadaceae; Burkholderiales; Proteobacteria; Bacteria
General Information: Acidovorax ebreus is able to anaerobically oxidize iron and uranium when coupled with the reduction of nitrate. Acidovorax ebreus sp. TPSY may be important for the remediation of uranium in contaminated environments. Isolated from groundwater collected from the U.S. Department of Energy Integrated Field Research Challenge site at Oak Ridge, TN, USA.


text:
In the words of Atsu Tagaya from Stevenson Overall Company... The concept of the Stevenson Overall Co. is to make very high quality clothing to be optionally worn at work (by types that are lucky enough to be able to wear what they want to work) or casually after work and on the weekends. This is true American Casual Style.
Inspired by Zip Stevenson's garment collection and vintage garment knowledge Stevenson Overall Company produces their collections by examining early functional clothing (workwear, military, & outdoor) from the late 1800's to the 1960's and takes the best ideas in them and mixes them with their own to make garments that can be worn today with a nod to yesterday. Stevenson produces the garments from the best materials available in Japan in collaboration with the best factories in the business.
If one wears a pair of SOC jeans for several months in a row, like we do, then they will be awarded with a beautiful worn in pair of jeans.
Not everyone approaches their wardrobe that way and that's fine -- Stevenson is not for everybody.


text:
There are currently no items in your cart.
Sheet Music For Composers Whose Last Name Starts With X
Browse the music of thousands of classical composers using the easy links below. If a composer isn't included, use the search box above to find sheet music for all composers in our catalog.


text:
« Game Face | Main | Reading: Future Tense »
Yet another meme makes the rounds, via Dodd Harris.
While some of the listed books I haven't read are on my to-read-eventually list, many are on my avoid-like-the-plague list. Some are on my never-heard-of-it-or-maybe-I-did-I-just-don't-care-to-make-the-mental-effort-to-remember-them list.
Books I've read are bolded.
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22 [Hated it.]
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis [If this book is the reason for the word "kafkaesque", I'm not interested]
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass [The Clintonian overtones leave me unwilling to touch thiis one]
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son
41 out of 101, by my count. There's a lot of overrated garbage on that list, and a number of books that ought to be in the top 101 that aren't listed.
Where's the Tom Clancy?!?!? </sarcasm>
Posted by Russ at 03:34 PM, May 9, 2004 in Miscellany


text:
Straw-bale Building United Kingdom
Posted on January 11, 2022 by Cypren Edmunds
Leave a Comment
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Comment *
Name *
Email *
Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
Notify me of new posts by email.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Privacy Policy
Straw-bale Building UK is a Community Benefit Society registered with the UK Financial Conduct Authority – Registration Number 7370
Proud to be a member of Co-operatives UK – Membership No.: M046016
Copyright © 2023 · All Rights Reserved · SBUK
Theme: Natural Lite by Organic Themes · RSS Feed


text:
In the interest of immersing myself in the Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture for the 21st Century exhibition (and fulfilling my goal of becoming a tourist in my home state), I have been visiting Wright-designed buildings in Wisconsin over the past few months.
First I went to nearby Racine to tour Wright's 1939 "Wingspread" House built for Herbert Fisk Johnson, Jr. and the 1936 administration building for the S. C. Johnson Company. The Museum's Chief Curator Brady Roberts pointed out to us on an exhibition tour that Santiago Calatrava visited the Johnson administration building seeking local inspiration when designing the Milwaukee Art Museum expansion—you can see a similar effect of the Johnson building's cathedral-like glass ceiling interpreted in Windhover Hall.
I think that the building model on view in the Museum exhibition beautifully captures the effect of the sky-lighting in the "great workroom" at the Johnson Administration Building. Of course, it was great to be able to verify this personally.
Last fall, I spent an afternoon at Wright's famous Wisconsin home, Taliesin, in Spring Green. I can easily understand why Wright would choose that location over any other in the country, aside from (or in spite of) proximity to his extended family. The leafy rolling hills, the peaceful waters, the great open skies—the verdant valley is a Midwestern paradise!
The first moment I became convinced of Wright's genius, I was sitting on the sofa at Taliesin, gazing over the Wisconsin panorama, beautifully framed by the windows, which were at the perfect height for soaking up the landscape while seated cozily. The architecture, the furniture, the view and myself were all in perfect harmony with one another. The multi-media aspect of the exhibition really draws upon that truth—being in a Wright-designed building is something to be experienced first hand.
Most recently, I visited the American System Built Homes on Burnham Street, right here in Milwaukee. The Model B-1 home at 2714 W. Burnham Street has been beautifully restored, thanks in part to a Save America's Treasures Grant.
The Burnham Street properties perfect illustration of the exhibition's focus on Wright's contemporary relevance: the "System" involved cutting the lumber and other materials off-site, thereby saving material waste (hello, Green Architecture!) and the cost of skilled on-site labor (hello, Recession!). The homes are early examples of modern "pre-fab" homes, but fitted more naturally to their landscape. The feature that was most compelling to me was the window treatments: there are windows nearly all the way around the home, including absolutely charming corner windows, but they are shorter and higher up, so the light comes in but privacy on an urban street is maintained.
For the duration of the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition at the Museum, Wright's American System Built Model B-1 on 27th and Burnham Street is open for tours every Saturday, with extended hours on June 11, 2011 for the Wright in Wisconsin group's "Wright and Like Tour" held in Milwaukee.
With such an extraordinary opportunity to bring an Art Museum exhibition into my life, where do you think I should visit next?
Donele Pettit-Mieding was Museum Store Marketing Manager. She organized Museum Store events, promotions, and communications and introduced visitors to art and design objects to enjoy in their daily lives.


text:
Our Verdict
For years, consumers have turned to the familiar red covers of the Zagat family of books for honest, practical reviews of local restaurants, nightlife hot spots, shops and hotels. Zagat To Go '09 for the iPhone updates the familiar Zagat reviews for the iPhone generation. You'll feel like a local with trustworthy reviews at the ready in your pocket.
The reviews in Zagat To Go '09 are familiar to anyone that has opened a Zagat review book. Reviews feature the famous Zagat 30 point rating system and a paragraph description of the establishment that often includes several short quotes in an easy-to-read style. Most reviews also include a phone number, street address, hours and the names of all lists ("Best Buys" or "Outdoor Dining" for example) upon which the establishment appears in the directory.
Developed by Handmark, Zagat To Go '09 includes reviews of restaurants, hotels, and more for most major metropolitan areas and even some "getaway" destinations like Martha's Vineyard and Palm Beach. A full list of included metropolitan and getaway areas may be found on the Zagat Website or on the Zagat To Go '09 page at the iTunes app store. Note that the cost of a paperback guide for just one city exceeds the $10 cost of the multi-city iPhone guide.
Let's say you're traveling up the East Coast this fall with stops in New York City; Mystic, Conn., and Boston. You've done a bit of preliminary research on restaurants in each area but are still unsure where you want to go until you get there. As you leave, you install Zagat To Go '09 on your iPhone. One of the best features about the app is how it uses your iPhone's location awareness feature. You can access reviews for eateries in your current location or some faraway location with a simple tap of a button on an options screen. As you grow closer to New York, you can read reviews on restaurants and shops in each neighborhood in the Big Apple. If you want to change the location to Mystic for a quick peek at restaurants along the Connecticut shoreline, you can do that, too.
To increase or decrease the number of reviews you see, you can change the "radius" from 1/2 of a mile to 50 miles from your current location. You can also filter reviews by a number of different criteria including food, decor and cost for restaurants and rooms, service and facilities for hotels. You can also filter reviews with keyword searches, type of establishment or by overall rating.
Zagat To Go '09 is a must-own application for any traveler or anyone interested in finding the top rated restaurants and shops in their area or any area. If you're looking for a great out of the way place or the hottest new spot in town, Zagat To Go '09 makes finding that information both easy and enjoyable.
[Brendan Wilhide is a frequent contributor to Macworld. He covers athletes and the sports industry on Twitter at Sportsin140.com.]


text:
Sesame Workshop and IBM Watson Team Up to Advance Early Childhood Education
Plan to develop adaptive learning products and platform for use at home and in schools
New York, NY and Armonk, NY – April 27, 2016: Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization that produces Sesame Street, and IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced a collaboration to use IBM Watson's cognitive computing technology and Sesame's early childhood expertise to help advance preschool education around the world.
As part of a three-year agreement, Sesame Workshop and IBM will collaborate to develop educational platforms and products that will be designed to adapt to the learning preferences and aptitude levels of individual preschoolers. Research shows that a significant extent of brain development occurs in the first five years of a child's life1, making this window critical for learning and development.
The alliance will draw from Sesame Workshop's deep educational content expertise garnered from over 45 years of research, and more than 1,000 studies on how young children learn best. This expertise will combine with Watson's natural language processing, pattern recognition, and other cognitive computing technologies to create highly personalized learning experiences intended to complement the roles that parents and teachers play in early development. Watson will continuously hone and improve educational activities by studying and adapting to the aggregate experiences of anonymized groups of students.
"We believe that bringing education together with technology is a key to improving early learning in this country and around the world," said Jeffrey D. Dunn, CEO of Sesame Workshop. "A generation ago, Sesame Street used the ubiquitous presence of television to reach vulnerable children who did not have access to the learning opportunities that affluent and middle-class kids did. It worked very well. Now, through this collaboration with IBM and Watson, we expect to develop the next generation of tailored learning tools. Ultimately, the goal is to provide children from all socio-economic backgrounds with the opportunity for meaningful, personalized education in their most formative years."
Echoing the late 1960s, when Sesame Street's founders convened diverse experts to help conceive the show, the Sesame-IBM team will gather leading teachers, academics, researchers, technologists, gamers, performers, and media executives to brainstorm ways in which cognitive computing can best help preschoolers learn.
Sesame Workshop and IBM are currently exploring and iterating on a wide variety of interactive platforms and interfaces for use in homes and schools. The two companies plan to test and share prototypes with leaders in the education and technology community to allow continued refinement based on feedback and domain expertise.
"Watson is uniquely suited to tackling one of society's most pressing and important challenges — the ways in which our young children learn," said Harriet Green, IBM's General Manager for Watson IoT, Commerce and Education. "The potential for Watson to absorb, correlate, and learn from huge amounts of unstructured data and then deliver very personalized educational experiences is unprecedented. Working together with Sesame Workshop, we aim to transform the way in which children learn and teachers teach, and envision having an impact on the lives and education of millions of children."
"Because the foundation of children's intellect, personality, and skills are formed in the first few years of their lives, ages zero to five are the most critical," said Todd Rose, one of the project's independent advisors and Director of Mind, Brain, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "There are huge opportunities in early childhood education, but we need to recognize that preschoolers do not all learn in the same way. This partnership has the potential to meet the unique educational needs of every child, whether it's through customized content or kid-friendly tools that empower each child to find his or her own path to learning. Simply put, personalized educational experiences will enhance learning for every child."
Join the conversation on Twitter: #IBMandSesame
Visit the following link for more information, as well as to download assets, on the Sesame Workshop and IBM collaboration:
Read a blog post by Sesame Workshop CEO Jeffrey Dunn exploring the importance of early childhood learning: http://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/2016/04/27/harnessing-technology-to-level-the-educational-playing-field/
About Sesame Workshop:
For more information, please visit Sesame Street at www.sesamestreet.org, Sesame Street on Facebook, Sesame Street on Twitter, and the Sesame Street YouTube Channel.
About IBM:
For more information, please visit www.ibm.com/watson and follow @IBMWatson and @IBMEducation on Twitter.
(1) Shonkoff, J. P., Phillips, D. A., & National Research Council (U.S.). (2000). From neurons to neighborhoods: The science of early child development. Washington, D.C: National Academy Press
Press Contacts
Elizabeth Fishman, Sesame Workshop
(212) 875-6618
Kaveri Camire, IBM Communications
(914) 625-6395
Hanna Smigala, IBM Media Relations
(203) 512-5497


text:
Although Sarenrae is seen mainly as a goddess of healing and redemption in most parts of the Inner Sea, her stern, evil-smiting element is more common in areas like Qadira, Osirion, and Katapesh. Many of the Dawnflower's disciples from these lands become Dawnflower dervishes, religious mystics who use a spinning dance as part of their worship. Many bards of her faith hone their skills with dance and scimitar to become dervish dancers, but some tread a similar path focused more on magic and healing than swordplay. These are the Dawnflower dervishes.
A Dawnflower dervish has the following class features.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency
Dawnflower dervishes gain weapon proficiency with the scimitar. This ability replaces their proficiency with the rapier and whip.
A Dawnflower dervish must be a worshiper of Sarenrae. A dervish who abandons or betrays this faith reverts to a standard bard.
Battle Dance
A Dawnflower dervish is trained in the use of the Perform skill, especially dance, to create magical effects on himself. This works like bardic performance, except that the Dawnflower dervish's performances grant double their normal bonuses, but these bonuses only affect him. He does not need to be able to see or hear his own performance. Battle dancing is treated as bardic performance for the purposes of feats, abilities, and effects that affect bardic performance, except that battle dancing does not benefit from the Lingering Performance feat or any other ability that allows a bardic performance to grant bonuses after it has ended. The benefits of battle dancing apply only when the bard is wearing light or no armor. Like bardic performance, battle dancing cannot be maintained at the same time as other performance abilities.
Starting a battle dance is a move action, but it can be maintained each round as a free action. Changing a battle dance from one effect to another requires the Dawnflower dervish to stop the previous performance and start the new one as a move action. Like a bard, a Dawnflower dervish's performance ends immediately if he is killed, paralyzed, stunned, knocked unconscious, or otherwise prevented from taking a free action each round. A Dawnflower dervish cannot perform more than one battle dance at a time. At 10th level, a Dawnflower dervish can start a battle dance as a swift action instead of a move action.
When the Dawnflower dervish uses the inspire courage, inspire greatness, or inspire heroics bardic performance types as battle dances, these performance types only provide benefit to the Dawnflower dervish himself. All other types of bardic performance work normally (affecting the bard and his allies, or the bard's enemies, as appropriate).
This ability alters the standard bardic performance ability.
Dervish Dance (Ex)
A Dawnflower dervish gains the Dervish Dance feat as a bonus feat.
This ability replaces bardic knowledge.
Spinning Spellcaster (Ex)
At 5th level, a Dawnflower dervish gains a +4 bonus on concentration checks to cast spells defensively.
This ability replaces lore master.
Meditative Whirl (Ex)
At 8th level, when using battle dance, the Dawnflower dervish can enter a trance-like state where his spinning motion represents the movement of the planets around the sun, and his spirit is attuned to the healing aspects of Sarenrae. By spending a move action focusing on his whirling, the dervish can apply the Quicken Spell feat to any cure spell he is about to cast (effectively spending a move action and swift action to cast the spell). This does not alter the level of the spell or the casting time. The dervish can use this ability once per day at 8th level and one additional time per day for every two dervish levels he has beyond 8th.
This ability replaces the dirge of doom bardic performance.


text:
Click on Carbide Tip Drills Metric to buy all sizes from 3mm to 16mm. But for larger sizes view our CarbideTip MTS Morse Taper Shank range.Used for drilling high tensile materials, castings, cast iron, bronze and bearing metal, used with rigid efficient machines. Made to BS338 and uses K20 tips British made excellent quality. HSS body. All Right hand
- View what customers say about Us Satisfied customers include Rolls Royce, British Petroleum, Exxon Mobil Chemical, British Airways Avionics, Scottish Power Energy, etc


text:
Baby Sirius Black needs a home! Berry, the German Shepherd dog who played the pup version of the animagus Sirius Black, is up for adoption. Hurry now to save Padfoot!
Famous for his role in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Berry is up for adoption because his owner, stuntman and trainer Paul Thompson, could no longer afford him. (Along with his other dog, Porridge — and yes the dogs must be adopted as a pair.)
According to Berry's profile on German Shepherd Rescue:
My Dad contacted German Shepherd Dog Rescue because he realized he didn't have the time to look after us properly anymore. His work takes him away from home an awful lot and whilst his friends and family tried to help look after us, we weren't getting the walks or brushes we were used to.
If you meet the criteria for adoption (which is a long list when adopting a slightly older UK dog like Berry (live in the UK, no children under 7, no apartments, can't be left for more then four hours on their own, etc.) then head to the German Shepherd Rescue and adopt Padfoot now!


text:
JENNINGS, MILTON ROBBINS, newspaperman; b. 4 March 1874 in Warsaw, N.Y., son of Edward M. Jennings and Mary Eliza Robbins; m. 1905 Carolyn Louise Sheldon of Buffalo, N.Y.; they had no children; d. 16 Feb. 1921 in Victoria.
The son of a prominent businessman and Civil War veteran, Milton R. (Bob) Jennings began his career as a reporter in Rochester and Buffalo between 1890 and 1894, while he was at the University of Rochester taking his ab. He worked for the Montreal Herald in 1894-95, then operated an advertising agency, and returned to the United States in 1896 as advertising manager of the Washington Times. From May 1897 he and a partner ran the Merchants' Cut Service. In July 1898, during the Spanish-American War, he enlisted with the 202nd New York Volunteers and later he served in Cuba, where he also acted as a correspondent. He joined the Daily Mail and Empire in Toronto as circulation manager in 1899 and the advertising department of the Evening Telegram in 1903. For a time in 1905-9 he participated in contracting and mining ventures in Nevada and the Cobalt region of northern Ontario.
A former Toronto acquaintance, James Hossack Woods of the Calgary Herald, which was owned by William Southam*, secured an option on the Edmonton Evening Journal in 1909 and brought Jennings west as its editor and managing director. Acting on changes recommended by management consultant Albert Haynes, the Southams reorganized the Journal Company in 1911 and absorbed it the following year. From the time Jennings's name had first appeared in the Conservative paper's masthead, on 17 June 1909, he demonstrated a pro-business tone. In addition to joining the Rotary Club and St George's Society, he served on Edmonton's Board of Trade in various offices, including president (1918). In the municipal election of 1917, in a bid to sustain the city's finances, he helped loosen the Southams' preference for limited taxation and backed a new levy on business. Quick to understand the promotional value of aviation, in June 1919 he hired the firm of Elgin Court May and Wilfrid Reid (Wop) May* to fly bundles of the Journal to Wetaskiwin on the first commercial flight from Edmonton. Recognition came too from his keen sponsorship of the Edmonton Newsboys' Band, organized in 1913 by news-stand owner John (Mike) Michaels.
In the field of journalism, in 1913 Jennings was involved in the reorganization of the Canadian Press Association and served as president of the Alberta and Eastern British Columbia Press Association. Five years later, during World War I, he toured the western front with other Canadian Press members. In 1919-20 he was first president of the Canadian Daily Newspapers Association. When delegates to the Imperial Press Conference of 1920 crossed Canada, he helped organize their visit to Edmonton and Jasper. Other wartime activities included his recruitment for the navy of men from Alberta's rivers, participation in the Red Cross and Canadian Patriotic funds, and chairmanship of the Belgian Relief Committee of Northern Alberta and the local hospital committee for returned soldiers. Subsequently he served as president of the Navy League's Edmonton branch.
Jennings died in February 1921 in Victoria, where he was recuperating after treatment in Portland, Oreg., for an illness of several months' duration. He was buried in Edmonton Cemetery, and the Alberta legislature closed on 22 February in his honour. William Southam called him "a Canadian newspaperman of outstanding ability, vision, humanity and idealism who can ill be spared in these troublous times." Journalists from around the world sent condolences and contributed to a fund for a memorial window in Christ Church (Anglican), which Jennings had attended.
City of Edmonton Arch., ms 324 (Edmonton Newsboys' Band fonds), Class 1, Scrapbook: 36, 43, 52. Univ. of Rochester, Rush Rhees Library, Dept. of Rare Books and Special Coll. (Rochester, N.Y.), Alumni files, M. R. Jennings. Edmonton Journal, 16-17 Feb. 1921. Charles Bruce, News and the Southams (Toronto, 1968). Canadian annual rev., 1919-21. Directory, Toronto, 1901-6. History of Wyoming County, N.Y., with illustrations, biographical sketches and portraits of some pioneers and prominent residents (New York, 1880). Dennis Person and Carin Routledge, Edmonton: portrait of a city (Edmonton, 1981). Minko Sotiron, From politics to profit: the commercialization of Canadian daily newspapers, 1890-1920 (Montreal and Kingston, Ont., 1997). G. M. Strathern, Alberta newspapers, 1880-1982 (Edmonton, 1988). Who's who and why, 1919/20.
© 2005–2023 University of Toronto/Université Laval
Cite This Article
Kathryn Ivany, "JENNINGS, MILTON ROBBINS," in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed September 25, 2023, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/jennings_milton_robbins_15E.html.
The citation above shows the format for footnotes and endnotes according to the Chicago manual of style (16th edition). Information to be used in other citation formats:
|Author of Article:
|Kathryn Ivany
|Title of Article:
|Publication Name:
|Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15
|University of Toronto/Université Laval
|Year of publication:
|Year of revision:
|Access Date:
|September 25, 2023


text:
From time to time I hear from someone who is so fed up with their car they've decided to stop making payments and "walk away from it." I always tell them, DO NOT EVER do that voluntarily. It is always the worst option available.
Here's the setup: You take out a loan to buy a car. The lender has a lien on the car as you make payments. If you want to sell the car, you have to pay off the lien to get a clear title. Sometimes, people get in situations where they decide to simply walk away from the car and the loan and just let whatever happens happen. The lender considers this a default.
To most rational people this seems completely insane, but it's often the result of several scenarios. I've seen people who had a defective car and felt it was "unfair" to be paying the bank for a car that didn't run. Or the buyer ran into financial trouble — lost a job, costly divorce, etc. — and decided they could not afford to make the payments anymore. I have even seen cases where a co-signer who was not in possession found out that the other signer had stopped paying, and the co-signer thought it was "unfair" that they had to make the payments for a car that someone else was driving. Unfair as it may be, they're still on the hook.
Here is what happens when you stop paying: The bank hires a company to go snag your car. This is the actual repossession. A tow truck shows up and drags the car away, often with your belongings in it. The car is taken to a yard where it is held because there is usually a right of redemption period where you could recover the car (if you pay a bunch of fees and get the loan caught up). The car sits in the lot and gets covered with grime. Your belongings vanish.
The car is then sent to an auction where it is presented as a bank repo. The buyers at these auctions know that this is a crapshoot. So, the car sells for pennies on the dollar. The bank then sends you an accounting. What they received for the car, minus the auction fees, minus the legal fees, minus the cost of the repo and the storage, and minus the other sundry fees from the loan contract and you end up with a "net." That net is applied to your outstanding loan.
The outstanding loan less this net will almost always leave you with a balance. In fact, the balance might not be reduced much, if at all, depending on how well your car did at auction.
So, now you owe a balance and you have a bank repossession on your credit history. What happens next? The bank sues you when you don't immediately pay the balance and they get a judgment against you. That judgment includes the amount of the balance, plus attorney's fees and court costs, plus interest. And this judgment also goes on your credit report. Hey, the hits just keep on coming!
What should you have done?
Well, just about anything but this. You could have sold the car yourself and gotten much more than the car will realize at a bank auction. Then you wouldn't have had any of the fees tacked on (or the repo and judgment on your credit).
I know that if you are upside down on your loan, this might be a problem. But you need to think long and hard about this. Is there any way you can scrape up the money necessary to get yourself out from under the loan? Can you borrow it from friends or relatives? I'd even consider putting a few thousand on a credit card if it will keep you from going the voluntary repo route, which will tank your credit even worse and expose you to legal problems.
If — and I still say you need to do what you can to avoid this — If the repossession really is unavoidable, then cooperate with the bank. Don't make them chase you for the car. Bring it to them and keep it clean. Anything you can do to keep their costs and fees down will benefit you when they calculate the net to you after the auction.
Follow me on Twitter: @stevelehto
Hear my podcast on iTunes: Lehto's Law
Steve Lehto has been practicing law for 23 years, almost exclusively in consumer protection and Michigan lemon law. He wrote The Lemon Law Bible and Chrysler's Turbine Car: The Rise and Fall of Detroit's Coolest Creation.
This website may supply general information about the law but it is for informational purposes only. This does not create an attorney-client relationship and is not meant to constitute legal advice, so the good news is we're not billing you by the hour for reading this. The bad news is that you shouldn't act upon any of the information without consulting a qualified professional attorney who will, probably, bill you by the hour.


text:
Valentine's Day Nectar Kiss Contest
Do you like to kiss? Do you love wine? I would presume the answer to both is a hearty YES! Nectar Tasting Room would like to reward you for both this Valentine's Day. We are giving you multiple opportunities to win and all you have to do is KISS, enjoy WINE and SHARE it.
Qualify (details below) up to four ways (use all four for multiple chances) and you would win this great "Wine is For Lovers" package that includes
- An overnight stay of your choice at the Red Lion Hotel at the Park
- A couples massage from Brick House Massage and Coffee Bar
- Two bottles of wine provided by Nectar Tasting Room
- Local artisan chocolates from Pixie Dust Chocolates
It's easy to qualify. Join us at Nectar Tasting Room February 15 or 16 for 'date night,' take a picture of your kiss and share it socially on the following networks.
- TWEET your kiss on TWITTER with the hashtag #nectarkiss
- INSTAGRAM your kiss on INSTAGRAM with the hashtag #nectarkiss
- FACEBOOK your kiss by tagging Nectar Tasting Room on Facebook
You can also qualify to win by repinning either of the pictures from this post to PINTEREST with the hashtag #nectarkiss
Wanna see all the Instagram #nectarkiss pictures? Check out our InstaKiss page here.


text:
It appears you are blocking scripts.
User's browsing experience may vary drastically without enabling Javascript!
Part #: CF280X
In stock: Yes
Continue »
Contact one of our team members today for help finding the right product.
Please fill out this form, and one of our sales reps will be in touch with you shortly.


text:
Korean XTAG is an on-going project to develop a wide-coverage grammar
for Korean using Feature-Based Lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar (LTAG)
formalism. For grammar development system, it uses the XTAG system which
we have customized for Korean TAG development. The XTAG system was originally
developed for English TAG and it consists of a parser, an X-windows grammar
development interface and a POS tagger. We have modified the
original XTAG system and incorporated a Korean morphological analyzer to
handle rich inflectional morphology in Korean and facilitate lexicon
development and parsing. More on the Korean XTAG system description can be
found in our TAG+5 workshop paper.
LTAG is based on the Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) formalism developed by
Joshi, Levy and Takahashi (1975). The TAG formalism in general, and
lexicalized TAG in particular, are well-suited for linguistic applications.
An LTAG consists of a finite set of elementary trees anchoring lexical
items and composition operations of substitution and adjunction. The
elementary trees represent extended projections of lexical items and
encapsulate syntactic/semantic arguments of the lexical anchor. In the
last decade, the LTAG approach has been applied to various NLP tasks such
as parsing, machine translation, information retrieval, generation and
summarization applications. More on the introduction to LTAG and the
current status of our Korean LTAG grammar is documented in our technical report.


text:
Welcome to Nomad.NET homepage
This site is official homepage of Nomad.NET - a powerful file manager written using .NET technology. For more information about program go to About page. If you want to see the roots of the project visit Old Nomad page. Roadmap page provides detailed information about past and future of this program. And of course you can always take a latest version from the downloads page.
Any news or other information directly or indirectly related to the project will be posted on the news page.
If you want report a bug, request a feature, translate Nomad.NET to your own language, write plug-in or help me some other way, feel free to contact me. So conclusion is: any help is appreciated.


text:
Busy, busy couple of weeks. So, I'll let others do the writing. Here's a large load of links:
David Oderberg on the current state of bioethics: Interview at BioEdge (reprinted at MercatorNet).
Neo-Aristotelian meta-metaphysician Tuomas Tahko is interviewed at 3:AM Magazine. He also has recently published An Introduction to Metametaphysics.
Michael Novak revisits the topic of Catholicism and social justice in a new book co-written with Paul Adams. Interview at National Review Online, commentary at First Things, the Law and Liberty blog, and The Catholic Thing.


text:
Last week our pre-print on nanopore sequencing came online at bioRxiv. Nanopore sequencing is a relatively new sequencing technology that is starting to come of age. As part of this process we last year started playing with the ONT MinION sequencer. This post summarizes a bit of the background behind the pre-print.
Previously I covered the London Calling 2015 event where a lot of progress on the development of the MinION was showcased. We were keen to find out how the MinION could contribute to our daily lab work, but also to see what new ground can be covered with this new sequencing technology.
One of the aspects colleagues in the lab are working on is the dissemination of antibiotic resistance genes, as a major healthcare challenge is the emergence of pathogens that are resistant against antibiotics. Therefor we thought of combining the MinION with antibiotic resistance gene profiling. More specifically; coupling functional metagenomic selections with nanopore sequencing.
Previous work in this field, for example by Justin O'Grady and colleagues, showed the use of the MinION [$] to identify the structure and chromosomal insertion site of a bacterial antibiotic resistance island in Salmonella Typhi.
Instead of going after single isolates, we set out the map the antibiotic resistance genes that are present in the gut (resistome) of a hospitalized patient. The resistome can influence the outcome of antibiotic treatment and it is therefor highly interesting to get insights in this complex network. Through a collaboration under the EvoTAR programma with Willem van Schaik of the University of Utrecht we had a clinical fecal sample available of an ICU patient, which we used in the experiments.
Key in the whole experimental setup to capture the resistome is the use of functional metagenomic selections. In contrast to culturing individual microorganisms directly from a fecal sample, metagenomic DNA is extracted from the sample. This metagenomic DNA is subsequently sheared, ligated and transformed in E. coli and finally plated out on solid agar containing various antibiotics. Only E. coli cells that harbor a metagenomic DNA fragment that encodes for an antibiotic resistant phenotype can survive. With these functional metagenomic selections in hand, the complexity of the resistome can be rapidly mapped.
And this is were the MinION comes in. Although other sequencing technologies, such as the Illumina and the PacBio platform, are available, they do not provide both long reads and low capital requirements.
@kaiblin @moasommer will we reach the 100.000 reads tonight? pic.twitter.com/QMx1l8EJAp
— Eric van der Helm (@EricvdHelm) February 3, 2016
After some initial failed attempts to get the MinION sequencer running in our lab, we started to see >100 Mbase runs in October last year. Also PoreCamp last December in Birmingham provided, on top of a great experience and nice people, some useful data (next week a new round of PoreCamp takes place).
In order to analyze the sequencing data that Metrichor generates we developed the poreFUME pipeline, which automates the process of barcode demultiplexing, error correction (using nanocorrect) and antibiotic resistance gene annotation (using CARD). The poreFUMe software is available on Github as a python script. The subsequent analysis is as well available on Github in a Jupyter notebook.
In order to benchmark the nanopore sequencing data we also Sanger and PacBio sequenced the sample. From these results we could achieve a >97% sequence accuracy and we were able to identify all the 26 antibiotic resistance genes in both the Pacbio and nanopore set.
Since the whole workflow can be performed relatively quickly, it would be really interesting to move these techniques to the next stage and do in-situ resistome profiling. Especially integrating Matt Loose's read-until functionally could open up new avenues. Furthermore these experiments were done with the R7 chemistry, however it seems that the new R9 chemistry is able to deliver even higher accuracies and faster turn-around.
The fasta files and poreFUME output used in the analysis are already online, the raw PacBio and MinION data is available at ENA
Update 2016-11-01: Added the ENA link to the raw data


text:
This is just a quick note to remind everyone I'll be presenting tomorrow, Tuesday October 26th 2010 for the PragmaticWorks Free Monthly Webinar Series. The topic (big surprise here) is Policy-Based Management!
The webinar runs from 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT and you can register for free here. Hope to see you all there!


text:
Fringe Benefits!
The 'fringe' routinely has its moments as a style statement… I guess, it's enjoying that moment now.Especially in Bollywood. The only actress who had dared to sport a fringe in the old days was Sadhana ( recently embroiled in an ugly property dispute). I recall taking a scissor to my own hair after watching one of her films and cutting an uneven, untidy fringe. It looked awful! And my parents were exceedingly cross with me.Perhaps Sadhana herself was taking a cue from the gamine Audrey Hepburn, who wore her fringe most elegantly. It kissed her forehead and high-lighted her expressive eyes perfectly. All these images flashed past me as I greeted Urmilla Matondkar at Nari Hira's lively party to mark 40 years of the iconic film magazine he started ( a game changer that altered not just film journalism, but mainstream journalism as well). It took me a minute to recognize the super svelte Urmilla who'd just done it – cut a lush fringe! As she put it, " I was tired of people obsessing over my hair. Bored with the look… and ready to move on." I have always believed Urmilla has not received due acknowledgment as an actress – she is not just good, she is very good! And smart! Years ago, both of us were speakers at a hard core Maharashtrian rally, and I recall being struck by how articulately and intelligently she expressed her thoughts. She reached out effortlessly to a huge gathering and pressed all the right buttons when she made an impromptu speech that reflected her concerns. Urmilla would make an effective parliamentarian if she ever decides to take the plunge into politics. Till then , we can watch her fringed avatar as a judge on a reality show. The girl can walk the talk, and shake a leg with the best of them. What more does the audience want??
Today is D-Day… or rather, B-Day. And Nana Chudasama will be hosting an adda as usual at his Marine Drive office. Attendance at his Budget adda is by invitation only, and it sees an interesting gathering of 'men with opinions'. Women are not welcome! Well, they are not exactly barred from this elite club, but the macho men prefer to crunch numbers and analyse the budget over beer, bhel puri and bawdy jokes. Mumbaikars of a certain vintage will remember the scintillating deconstruction of the blessed Budget by the legendary Nani Palkhiwalla ( the grounds of the CCI Club overflowed with his fans seeking instant gyaan). Believe me, such was the power and prestige value of Nani's extempore and erudite analysis ( strictly no notes ), that Mumbai's best and brightest would start arriving hours in advance to grab vantage seats on the lawns. From Nani's address to Nana's adda – Mumbai has its own unique way of reacting to the annual trauma also known as the Budget.
Mamatadi's railway budget made sense – literally and otherwise – only to co-Bongs. The rest of us needed translators and interpreters, or at any rate, a ticker or sub-titles would have made it possible to understand what the lady was saying with such josh. Experts on television made it easier for the aam aadmi by providing highlights and bullets. In short, Mamatadi used the opportunity to spell out her own agenda. By all means, go ahead and become the next C.M. of West Bengal….but, don't shortchange the rest of India for your personal ambitions!


text:
Breath Buddy
Breath Buddy 901 Replacement Cartridges | Pack of 4 | Organic Vapor A1 Protection
Breath Buddy replacement cartridges. Comes in pack of 4.
Protects against organic gases and vapors.
Also fits with 6500 3M respirators.
CE Certified
Free Shipping on All Orders from North America & Europe.
As Seen On
All our Breath Buddy models are either certified by the European (CE), the Australian (AS/NZS) or the American standards (NIOSH). It depends on the model. You can check on the respective product listing to see which certification the product has.
So don't worry, you're buying tested & certified products by regulated laboratories.
We are so confident in the quality of our product that we will back it up for a lifetime warranty!
You can check the warranty policy here.
A respirator and its cartridges must be selected for protection against a specific hazard. The cautions, limitations and restriction of use provided with the respirator must be strictly followed. If your mask does not make a tight seal all the way around your face when you inhale, you may breathe contaminated air that leaks around the edges of the face seal.
Anything that prevents the face mask from fitting tightly against your face, such as a beard or long sideburns, may cause leakage. Some respirators come in different styles and sizes, and fit different people differently because people's faces have different shapes.
You also need training to know how to correctly put the mask on and wear it correctly. But don't worry, this information will be provided in our instruction guides.
We offer Free Shipping on all orders from North America & Europe.
If you ship to another country, shipping costs will apply and will be added at checkout.
Yes, we ship all over the world. Free Shipping on all orders from North America & Europe! Shipping costs will apply for the other countries, and will be added at checkout.
Depending in which country you are, our products usually (key word usually) ship within 2-4 BUSINESS days + shipping time is usually between 4-8 days (total 6-12 days for standard shipping).
However, if we have some crazy promotion or a new launch, orders may take a bit longer to process. Once your order has shipped, you will receive a shipping confirmation via email with a tracking number.


text:
Connect with leisure & business interpreters in Daocheng.
Your reliable guide and driver!
Tours and events, Interpreting across China starting from USD120
Experienced interpreter in China. Sourcing agent, Tour Guide
Tailor-make your Yunnan holiday! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Try to pick an interpreter that is active on Synotrip, friendly and responsive. As you browse through their profiles, here are some questions you might ask yourself:
Feel free to contact more than one interpreter if you like. See if they respond quickly and if you enjoy communicating with them.


text:
MiGs, Stars & Magic Books: A Brief History of Trespassing in Moscow
An illustrated guide to urban exploration in the Russian capital.
20 October 2013
Stretching to an estimated total length of 2,500km, the Odessa Catacombs are perhaps the largest network of tunnels anywhere in the world. They're significantly longer – and more complex – than the famous catacombs found beneath Rome (300km) and Paris (500km)… in fact, if these Ukrainian tunnels were stretched out to full length, they'd reach further than the distance between Odessa and Paris.
I decided to shun the official tour of the catacombs, which is strictly limited to a kilometre-or-so of safe, well-lit tunnels. Instead I found myself an unofficial guide, and made arrangements to be led on an extended trek into one of the deepest, darkest places on earth.
I arrived at Odessa by train; crossing into Ukraine after my week in the unrecognised socialist republic of Transnistria.
I knew I wouldn't have long in Odessa, as I was preparing to travel the length of Ukraine in search of its darker, more infamous attractions – from Object 221 and the Balaklava submarine base in the Crimea, all the way up to Chernobyl and the abandoned city of Pripyat in the far north.
Before any of that though, I was dying for a chance to look at the Odessa Catacombs.
The oldest tunnels here are believed to date back as early as the 17th century, if not before. Created as an extension to natural cavities beneath the ground, the first man-made passages were used by smugglers, as well as being a source for construction materials. The city of Odessa grew rapidly throughout the 19th century, and the catacombs were widened and extended as they became a key source for the limestone used in so much of the city's iconic architecture.
Odessa's intensive multilevel mining operation accelerated during the second half of the 19th century. Limestone was cut using saws, before being carted along narrow passages by oxen and mules. Many of these creatures were said to be almost (if not completely) blind, often living their whole lives in darkness.
By this time the mines spread across three distinct levels, at their lowest points reaching a depth of 60m below sea level.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 the operation was suspended… and the abandoned mines were reclaimed by the criminal classes. They remained the province of outlaws and vagabonds up until WWII: when the Nazis arrived in Odessa, and Soviet troops were forced to retreat towards Moscow.
Unbeknownst to German and Romanian invaders however, the Soviets left key strategic units positioned beneath the city. These Ukrainian partisan groups hid deep within the catacombs, from where they continued to launch surprise attacks on the fascist forces.
Much of the modern-day interest in the Odessa Catacombs is related to the daring exploits of the city's Soviet partisans… there are even official tours that one can sign up to. Many tourists visit the 'Museum of Partisan Glory' at nearby Nerubayskoye, where there's a kilometre-long section of catacomb neatly arranged with period-costume dummies and rusty WWII weapons. According to reports the guided tour takes a couple of hours, with either end of the museum section sealed off to prevent tourists gaining access to the endless, twisting network of tunnels beyond.
However, the museum segment represents just 0.04% of the total catacomb network – and I was intent on seeing the real deal.
Back in Tiraspol, hours of trawling through blogs and forums – most of them written in Russian – had rewarded me with the name and email address for an unofficial tour guide. As we negotiated the terms of the expedition, I explained to Egor that I wasn't interested in his usual tours: where small groups of tourists are taken into the catacombs through a hidden entrance, to spend two to three hours walking safe and familiar paths.
I wanted to get a real sense of the length and depth of these catacombs – this wasn't my first underground expedition, and the Odessa Catacombs are no ordinary tunnels. I wanted to understand what it meant to feel lost, hungry and afraid, crawling through the sandy darkness in some deep corner of the world's largest network of underground passages.
"Ok," replied Egor. His simple response did little to prepare me for what I was getting myself into.
Just one hour after arriving in Odessa I had met up with Egor, and he led me through the wide cobbled streets of Odessa; through crowded markets and past secluded courtyards where old men gathered to play chess, towards our bus pick-up point.
Squeezing onboard the over-filled marshrutka we met Vanya: Egor's friend, and another committed cataphile. The bus journey took us around half an hour, heading north out of the city towards the village of Nerubayskoye. It was here that our expedition would begin, not far from the entrance to the Museum of Partisan Glory.
We stopped off at the village shop, stocking up on snacks: freshly baked pastries and a hefty knot of Georgian cheese strings. I wasn't hungry, but I had a feeling I'd need the energy later on.
Minutes later, we stood beside an overgrown path on the edge of a rolling valley. This uneven terrain was not what I had been expecting, but nevertheless, before us opened the low entrance to a mineshaft – one of more than a thousand such entrances which have been documented in the region surrounding Odessa. We donned headlamps, and headed down.
The ceiling inside was low, forcing me to duck as anaemic roots brushed my face; thin tentacles fanning out from cracks in the rock above. While the tunnels were bathed in perfect darkness, each camera flash lit up the walls in brilliant shades of orange and yellow stone.
As we walked Egor pointed out some of the scars left on these tunnels by the intensive mining operations.
Some of the larger passages were as much as 3m in height, with distinct lines on the walls which showed were first one level and then another of limestone had been harvested from the ceiling.
Some of the sharper corners bore deep grooves at around chest height, formed over many years as the oxen and mules would drag their harnesses against the wall.
We passed by cryptic markings, scrawled on walls and prominent corners using chalk. Egor and Vanya were eager to teach me the code, showing me how to deduce the direction of the nearest exit from each cluster of lines and circles.
"Diggers don't make maps," Egor was telling me. "It's against the rules."
There seems to be a strong code of conduct amongst those who chart the depths of the catacombs – or 'diggers,' as they often refer to themselves. Mapping the tunnels is forbidden, a tradition which seems to stem from the philosophy of the partisan rebellion. What was true then, during the war against fascism, appears to hold true today: these catacombs belong to Ukraine, to Odessa and her children. Their secrets are not for sharing [1].
From time to time we would stop and rest; using spaces carved out by the countless cataphiles who had been before.
Square slabs had been dragged into place to form low tables and stools and while most of these spaces were litter free, the bountiful graffiti gave away the location of popular hangouts.
While the Odessa catacombs are apparently a popular spot for parties, such revelry is not without risks.
On the eve of 2005, a group of local teens decided to spend the New Year getting drunk in the tunnels… and by the time they left, had managed to lose count of the group. One girl, named Masha, had wandered off at some point in the night. Her body wasn't found until 2007, when coroners estimated that she had spent three days lost in the cold, dark tunnels before finally dying of dehydration. This photograph was taken by one of the explorers who found her body, though it's not recommended for the faint-hearted.
Other bodies are discovered in the tunnels from time to time, many of them dating back much further. Some of the older corpses are mummified by the cold, dry air, perfectly preserving the remains of partisans and smugglers. Other recent discoveries in the Odessa catacombs have included weapons caches, items such as WWII-era rifles and grenades.
Of course, such findings tend to be well removed from the more commonly-travelled routes through the catacombs. We were heading straight for those depths, though – both Egor and Vanya were keen to explore new, unfamiliar territories, and what started out as a tour was fast becoming an expedition into the unknown.
"You see this wall?" Vanya asked me, pointing towards a modern barrier blocking the passage to our right. "Behind this is the museum. Now we're in the real catacombs."
The deeper into the catacombs we went, the harder the going became.
Sometimes we'd be forced to squeeze through narrow cracks in the rock, or climb the debris left in the wake of a rockfall, before finding ourselves back on track.
On a few occasions we found our path blocked altogether; where brittle layers of sandy rock had collapsed to form impenetrable walls ahead.
I was alarmed to discover that even some paths once familiar to my guides were now impassable – these cave-ins were both recent and regular. I asked about the chance of a cave-in occurring, to be told:
"Don't worry – there's always another way."
The occasional litter we found gave away the timelessness of these tunnels. Faded chocolate wrappers dated back a decade, while in other places I found VHS and cassette tapes strewn on the ground. These had been smashed apart, their tape spools removed to be used as navigational aids… the story of Theseus and the minotaur, reimagined for the 1980s.
In another passage my boots hit soft, mushy ground – and, shining my torch across the tunnel I found we were walking through a tar-like black sludge.
"You don't want to step in that," Egor warned me. He told me that many people used the catacombs as sewers, pumping their waste out of sight and into the forgotten tunnels below. Here and there he showed me dark liquid flowing in rivulets down the walls, from fissures in the rock above.
Sometimes the locals find an entrance to the tunnels, and use it for landfill – dumping mountains of household or industrial waste into the hole. In other places plumbers have been known to bore waste pipes through the crust, pumping sewage and other dregs straight into the catacombs. It's quicker than installing real drains, Egor told me, and saves the customer the ongoing cost of sewerage charges.
Turning the next corner my torch beam disturbed a pair of rats, busily feasting on the filth. I suspected I'd see plenty more before I breathed fresh air again.
By this point we had been underground for around three hours, and were just reaching the deeper levels of the catacombs. Our journey was broken up with stops at regular rest points, many of them bearing the signs of recent activity; candle wax, cigarette butts and graffiti scratched into the stone walls. Other graffiti seemed much older, as well it might have – these very same base camps were once the domain of Odessa's 6000 or so Soviet partisans, who hid themselves in the catacombs for as long as 13 months after the Nazi invasion.
In 1941 Odessa was invaded, as Germany and its allies swept east across Europe. Following the siege came the massacre of well over 100,000 Ukrainian Jews, while the city of Odessa was made a part of Transnistria; and thus fell under Romanian authority.
Equipped with radios, the rebels would relay information to the Soviets; as well as launching strikes on their unsuspecting foes, springing out of secret entrances hidden right across the city – before disappearing back beneath the earth.
In response to this invisible terror, the German and Romanian armies began sealing entrances to the catacombs, hoping to entomb the Ukrainian rebels. Sometimes they would drop canisters of poison gas down shafts, in an attempt to smoke them out. Either they underestimated the rebels, however, or they had underestimated the extent of the catacombs. By the time the Red Army returned to liberate Odessa in April 1944, still some partisan forces remained in the tunnels – surviving malaria and malnourishment, and in spite of the Nazi invasion.
This deep in the catacombs, the terrain itself showed telltale signs of military occupation. Several corridors we passed had been blocked with rough stone walls, built with slots to allow for defensive fire. A little later Vanya showed me a well shaft. I looked onto the shaft from an opening around halfway up – still water below me, the night sky far above. He told me that we were currently beneath a small settlement, where villagers had secretly supported the Soviet rebels. While pretending to fetch buckets of water from the village well, they had actually been lowering down baskets of food to the partisans in whose bootprints I now stood.
The passages in this region were far more complex than the wide, square shafts we'd been following several hours earlier. Natural rock contours surrounded us on all sides, winding from side to side, undulating over mounds and rises. We approached a wide chasm in the ground, and Egor invited me to climb down first.
I left my bag and camera with my guides, as I lowered myself into the darkness – joking, as I did, that it would be the perfect opportunity for them to kill me and take my stuff.
Vanya smiled.
"If we wanted to kill you, we'd have done it a long time ago," he said. And it was true, of course. I had well and truly succeeded in my first mission: to get lost in the catacombs of Odessa. By now I could safely say that my life was resting in the hands of two young Ukrainians I had only known since lunchtime.
There's no way any one person could ever witness the true scale of the Odessa Catacombs; explore all 2,500km of tunnel. The longest single expedition to date was just 40km, completed over a 27-hour period in 1995. Many regions (such as the notorious 'K-29' network) remain largely unexplored to this day.
For that reason, I knew I wouldn't be content simply following a safe path, and knowing that I was in one small corner of the world's largest catacombs; I needed to feel it, to experience exactly what that meant.
By the time we had been walking through tunnels for six straight hours, I was beginning to reach that awareness. My feet were sore, and my neck hurt from long periods of stooping beneath low-hanging ceilings. I still had plenty of food, water and batteries for my headlamp, but these items were weighing me down more with every step. On top of that, my internal navigation system had now completely given up on me.
For the first few hours underground, I had felt as though I still had a pretty good idea which way the exit was. With every twist and turn in the path my mental compass adjusted, and I was making note of prominent landmarks along the way. Towards the end though, my brain was overloading – I would have struggled to retrace the last few minutes, let alone navigate my way back to the surface.
There were times when Egor and Vanya were both likewise out of their depth. They hadn't known what to expect when a foreigner had contacted them for such an extreme tour. By now though, it was clear that the three of us shared a very similar appreciation for the underground; the peaceful silence, the timelessness of the catacombs. The two of them led me to some of their favourite spots – many of which took some agility to reach. We climbed crumbling rock walls to reach higher levels, tip-toed across narrow ledges that hung above deep chasms, squeezed through narrow fissures into hidden passages below. One moment they'd be gleefully leading the way… the next we'd be exploring somewhere new, scouting passages that neither Egor nor Vanya had seen before.
As we made our way through the darkness, my guides told me some of the stories associated with the catacombs.
Perhaps the best known myth tells of a wealthy aristocrat, rescued from the sinking Titanic. He was picked up from the wreckage by a brigantine vessel, eventually ending up in Odessa. To honour his rescuers, the man had a ship forged from solid gold. Some say it was a model of the brigantine that saved him, others say the Titanic itself. Either way, the Bolsheviks took control of Ukraine just six years after the Titanic sank – and fearful of having his precious golden ship confiscated by the communists, the man hid his treasure deep inside the catacombs.
Despite the countless expeditions which have been launched to find the golden ship, many claim it's still down there somewhere: lost in the deep tunnels.
Other tales tell of a spirit – or even a god – that watches over the catacombs. Sometimes known as 'Bout,' this vengeful deity protects the treasures hidden therein. It is said that if anyone were to try stealing the precious things away from the Odessa catacombs, that Bout will imprison them in the cold darkness.
Coming around another corner, we entered a large, vaulted chamber – supported by a pillar of bricks at its centre. Vanya was leading the way, heading in the direction of our intended exit. In the next chamber the ceiling had collapsed, layers of brittle limestone forming a mound in the centre. We climbed carefully over the debris. In the tunnel beyond, the ceiling was marked by a deep crack running above the centre of the passage, the two sides rubbing together as they were pressed down by the weight of rock above. It looked about ready to collapse any moment. Vanya told me to duck low, and be careful not to knock it.
Soon enough we reached the exit: the stone tunnel gave way to an earthen burrow, where chiselled steps led up towards the night sky above. I confess to feeling a rush of elation, as I breathed the cold air: I wasn't going to die down here after all.
My guides warned me that the exit opened onto private property – that we'd have to go carefully, to avoid getting in trouble. Switching off my torch, I led the way out of the tunnel. It opened onto what appeared to be a farmyard, beyond which I could see a gate onto a public road. The problem was, between us and the gate a dark figure stood burning something on a fire. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I also spotted a guard dog, chained up not far from the tunnel mouth. I reported back – and, returning to the catacombs, my guides decided to look for a different exit.
Back in the tunnels beneath, we followed a series of winding passages that seemed to lead us back towards the depths. I had been invigorated by my brief taste of freedom though, and just the sight of the night sky had given me a new lease of energy.
En route to our next exit, we passed by rocks inscribed with lines of handwritten Cyrillic script.
It was Russian poetry, Egor told me, much of it believed to be the work of 19th century miners. One of the faded verses offered praise to the Tsar; another spoke of lost love.
One stanza, initialled 'OG TS,' went something like this:
"No treasure, no happiness, you will not find here,
Though forehead knock the wall behind the wall.
Go to the left, go to the right,
You'll only meet the darkness of the night…"
As we neared the next opening to the surface, we passed a crude shrine – a cross raised to a lost spirit of the catacombs, known as the 'White Hunter.' According to my guides, this was the ghost of a hunter who perished in these passages many years ago… and still stalks the tunnel to this day.
And then, finally, we made it to our destination. Much like the last exit, here the limestone passage opened onto a wide crater in the earth. Moving quietly up the steps we crossed the rim, and out into an open field – from where we soon made it back to the main road.
I was exhausted – we had been in the catacombs for around seven hours by this point, most of that time spent walking, crawling or climbing over difficult terrain.
While we'd seen around ten times as much as is included in the official tour (and authentic, unmanicured tunnels at that), it was still a tiny fraction of the network… perhaps 0.5% of the catacombs at most. But I had seen enough; enough to know how little anyone could ever know of these seemingly endless tunnels: the nebulous, uncharted depths of the Odessa Catacombs.
[1] That's not to say that maps don't exist, created by various explorers over the years. There are different schools of thought amongst those who explore the Odessa Catacombs, and plenty of enthusiasts have attempted to map these tunnels – such as the 'Poisk' club, founded in 1961. For more information, there's a great article about mapping the Odessa Catacombs over at Atlas Obscura.
Comments are closed.
Jesus "All shall seek shelter under rocks or in caves." From Lot's Fire/Lightning, 100 LB Talent sized hail.
We are not God's. We are not causing climate change. The Precession of the equinoxes, eclipsing the nucleus of the galaxies magnetosphere every 12,000 years at the vernal autumnal equinoxes for a 1,ooo years is.
These are just he birhting pains as Jesus put it. Mother Earth's WATER won't break with Noah's floods being pulled around the planet east to west by the MOON until the conjunction of Galactic nucleus-Mercury-Venus-Full MOON-Earth in 2033.
Derenkuyu, Capadoccia, Barbara, Longyou underground cities caves.
Jesus spoke the TRUTH, lived our LIFE & showed us the WAY to survive & thrive in these the climate change END TIMES.
Success is to simplify complex problems and then do it.
Hi, I've been thinking about visiting the Catacombs when I visit Odessa at the end of the month. I've come across your blog – do you have the name of the company that you went on a tour with? I would like to get of the well beaten tourist path that most others provide and you seem to have a chance to see the tunnels and history properly.
thanks in advance and good work on the blog – quality posts!
I throughly enjoyed reading about the tour that you tok, if I were much younger, I would love to take this journey.
the oldest person visited our tour was 80 years old person, it was not easy for him, but still possible. Activity we do at the tour depends on our guests.
Looking forward to more magnificent urban exploration posts and pics! Was a hobby of mine.
Amazing, thanks for sharing.
Interesting read! I would've been consumed by my paranoia if that was me.
Simply incredible story and photos
Hey, I'll be in Odessa this month and you really inspired me to see the undergrounds! Would you mind giving me a contact to your guides?
Hey I have the same idea of seeing the catacombs. I would be interested in your guides info also if you don't mind. Thank you in advance!
This sounds amazing! Would you give me the contact information of Egor? As well as any other points of interest you had in the Ukraine. I will be visiting in the beginning of July and would love to do a trip like this.
Great article, love the history you've included! Any chance you could provide details of your guide I'm planning a trip to Odessa next week with the aim of exploring the catacombs. Thanks!
Hi, I'll be in Odessa soon. Are your guides open to more business?
Hi, I'm in Odessa today and tomorrow. I was wondering if I could get the contact details for your guide?
Hey, I'm a french (Paris) catalover. Do you have some relationship to share for enjoying a subtrip in Odessa? Thx for your blog, it's amazing!
Fascinating article 🙂 thanks for sharing
I have actually been in the "Museum of Partisan Glory" and have taken the catacomb tour twice. Very interesting place.
Love!!!!! Stumbled into your journey here as I was researching Ukrainian news.
I look forward to reading about your other adventures. You travel as I dream I could!!!!
Thanks so much! Really glad you enjoyed this – and the blog in general.
My Ukrainian articles certainly seem to be generating more interest than usual at the moment, given current events.
amazing place, never heard about that. Know some large mines in luxembourg, but these are much larger, wow. really interessting.
I still struggle to understand how big this place is… to be able to spend a whole day walking underground, and still see such a small fraction.
Never heard about mines in Luxembourg before though – I'm adding that to my list!
Totally awesome, featuring it in my blog! And added your blog as one of the "Blogs I like", check "Blog Reviews" tab.
Thanks a lot – both for the kind words, and the generous feature. 🙂
Not a man for package holiday deals, are you? Excellent stuff.
Well, I do try to keep things interesting. Glad you liked this one!
Sounds a fascinating place, although not for the nervous or the foolish.
Kinda sad how people literally treat it like a sewer though.
Yeah, I found that really quite sad… still, it's their life, their country, and it only detracts from a few small corners of this otherwise vast and magnificent place.
See all 51 comments on "A Tour of the World's Largest Labyrinth: The Odessa Catacombs"
An illustrated guide to urban exploration in the Russian capital.
Poltergeists, ritual murder & a live-in succubus – the 1000-year-old pub with a ghostly reputation
A month-long monument hunt, and what I learned along the way.


text:
Canada has recalled over 21,900 Galaxy Note7 smartphones after receiving a report of the overheating of the battery of one phone.
The Samsung Note7 smartphone battery has the potential to overheat and burn, posing a potential fire hazard, Health Canada, a Canadian federal government department said Monday.
The problem with the lithium-ion batteries may, however, turn out to be more serious in the U.S. where already reports of over 70 cases have been received by Samsung, according to the Canadian agency. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is charged with protecting the public from the risk of injury or death linked with certain consumer products, said Friday it was working on an official recall with Samsung but there has been no formal announcement yet of the move.
An official recall will make it illegal to sell the phone, lead to government oversight of the replacement program and provide clear guidance to consumers, said Consumer Reports, a consumer advocacy group.
CPSC has advised all users of the Note7 to power down the phones and stop charging or using the device. Samsung, which reported a battery cell issue on Sept. 2, has also advised people to power down their Note7 phones and exchange them.
There have been accidents that reports said could be traced to exploding Note7 devices. The New York Post reported Sunday that a 6-year-old boy in Brooklyn suffered burns after a Galaxy Note7 smartphone blew up in his hands, while he was watching videos.
Samsung, while announcing the problem with the Note7, said there had been 35 reports worldwide as of Sept. 1.
"Consumers should immediately power down the recalled Samsung Note7 smartphone and register as soon as possible for the Canadian Product Exchange," Health Canada said in its statement. It said the recalled phones were sold in the country from Aug. 19 to Sept. 1 this year.
Samsung has confirmed working with Health Canada and said the terms of the recall will be announced as soon as they become available. The company could not immediately be reached for confirmation of the over 70 incidents in the U.S. reported by Health Canada.
The company has offered to replace the phones with newer ones, but there is uncertainty in the U.S. as to when users will get a new Galaxy Note7, as Samsung said this part of the exchange program will depend on when the CPSC process will be completed. CPSC is meanwhile looking into whether a replacement Note7 is an acceptable remedy for Samsung and phone carriers to provide to consumers.
Samsung has offered to exchange the Note7 with the Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge smartphones and to replace any Note7 specific accessories, with a refund of the price difference. It also offered loaner phones to those wanting to wait for new Note7 devices.


text:
craigslist has implemented 2-way email relay to help stop spam and scams.
When replying to a post you'll see an address like:
When answering an email you'll see an address like:
Use your email program as you normally would.
PLEASE NOTE: The "real name" field (e.g. Jane Doe) in your email program is passed through to the recipient. Any contact information in the body of your message will pass through unaltered.
Q: I would like to stop a particular user from contacting me.
A: Click the flagging link at the bottom of the message.
Q: I accidentally flagged a message, how can I undo it?
A: At this time it cannot be undone.
Q: Which flagging link should I use if there are a bunch of nested replies in the message?
A: Use the most recent link.
Q: Can I continue to communicate with respondents after my ad has been removed?
A: Yes, existing reply email communication threads can continue for up to 4 months.
Q: How did the poster find out my real name?
A: The "real name" field your email program provides is passed through to the recipient.
Q: Where can I get more help?
A: https://forums.craigslist.org/?forumID=9


text:
Senior Palestinian Authority official Hassan Abu Libda said Saturday that the construction of a new PA Arab city will make the PA's goal of boycotting Jews in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem possible. Thousands of PA Arabs currently employed by Israelis could be employed in building the new city of Rawabi instead, he said.
Several months ago the PA announced a boycott of goods produced in Israeli cities in Judea and Samaria. PA leaders hope to force PA Arabs to leave their jobs with Israeli employers as well, but have met with opposition as Arabs in Judea and Samaria fear adding thousands more people to the unemployment rolls.
Abu Libda initially expressed little concern over the fact that the roughly 10,000 PA Arabs who currently work for Judea and Samaria Jews could wind up unemployed. "They should stop [work] as they are not any different from 200,000 other unemployed workers," he said in May.
This weekend Abu Libda took a more pacifying tone, releasing a statement in which he said that up to 10,000 workers currently employed by Israelis could work building Rawabi instead. Up to 3,000 could continue working in the city after it is built, he continued.
The PA has asked for control of some Israeli land to build a highway near Rawabi. Israelis living in the region have expressed concern that the new city will put the PA in charge of security near a major highway, and could create other problems as well. Minister Moshe Kachlon termed the location of the city "scary" during an August tour.
Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan has called to halt the project for environmental reasons, warning that if construction continues as is, unregulated, it could cause irreversible damage that will affect the entire area.
Abu Libda dismissed Erdan's concerns, accusing the minister of trying to "weaken our national economy."


text:
International business matchmaking
This is how IBI works
These are the IBI additional services
These are the countries IBI focuses on
This is why IBI is special
This is the latest IBI news
These are the IBI business opportunities
This is your question or remark
These are IBI clients
This is how you contact IBI
Did you know that Romania has been Europe's greatest grain producer and granary in the mid - 20th century?
With large surface of good agricultural land, with the right climate conditions and with a predominant agrarian economy, Romania attracted the international attention and it was the main supplier of grains for the most developed West-European countries. In almost half of century of communistic industrialization, this sector turned into the "economy's Cinderella". Sadly, 18 years of freedom have not helped it recovering and regaining its rightful top place.
Although the Romanian government and other public and private bodies support the agriculture development by creating the necessary legal frame and by offering access to national and European funding programmes, the present small farming groups and individual farmers do not have (yet) the power or the know how of medium and large organisations to receive funds and plan the agricultural activity in a profitable way. Nevertheless, Romania still has large surface of good agricultural land and the right climate conditions, opening challenging opportunities to inventive entrepreneurs that understand and choose to use them.
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS INTERMEDIATES (IBI) invites all the interested parties in the opportunities offered by the Romanian agriculture to contact us either in the Dutch office (in Weert) or directly in one of the Romanian office (in Timisoara) and to play an active role in this emerging market. If you are a specialist in this field, do not hesitate to make profit!
This is how you contact IBI
IBI is present in every country of activity. All offices can be reached by phone, fax, mail and public transport.
more > > >
IBI`s Terms and conditions
IBI specialist in international business matchmaking.We bring you international contacts with profitable contracts business matchmaking,debt collection, assistance, lawyers, law firm, legal services, legal advice, legal help, legal form, legal finance, legal information, legal arbitration, business services, international trade, law