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Meet the protest profiteers
Across the vast exhibition hall, rows of stalls stand neatly arranged. People pace the aisles, peering keenly over displays. Suited salespeople sip champagne, chatting over bowls of free breath mints branded with their company logos. Glanced from afar, one could be at any expo. There is even a hot-dog vendor in the distance.
But, once past the extra security and on to the exhibition floor, a wall-mounted rack of machine guns suggests something more sinister. Along each side of the expo's alleyways are glass cases stocked full of colourful rows of teargas canisters, sound grenades and rubber bullets. Orange caps, blue caps, yellow caps, each signifying a different size and strength. Beside them stand life-sized mannequins, lips moulded into half smiles. Rather than donning the new season's fashion, however, these are draped in the latest line of body armour. Even the boudoir corset on display is made of heavy-duty rubber.
These expos take place all around the world, from Israel to India, Qatar to Canada. They form part of a rapidly growing internal security sector predicted to expand by 20 per cent by 2020
Welcome to Milipol, Europe's largest internal security expo. Operating since 1984 and now gearing up for its fourth decade, Milipol is one of the longest-running and most established security trade shows for military and policing. The 2013 event held in Paris featured over 900 exhibitors, drew 27,000 visitors and hosted 160 official delegations.
Exhibitions like these offer opportunities for government and corporate officials to peruse the latest in riot-control weapons and share strategies on surveillance and crowd control. These expos take place all around the world, from Israel to India, Qatar to Canada. They form part of a rapidly growing internal security sector predicted to expand by 20 per cent by 2020.
Corporate leaders in the 'less lethal' market include Combined Systems Inc and Non-Lethal Technologies, both based in the US, Israel's ISPRA and Brazil's Condor Non-Lethal Technologies. Southeast Asian suppliers are expanding and many of the components that go into making these weapons come from China and India, where exports are cheap.
In recent years, international companies have increasingly begun to partner up. This allows them broader global reach, enabling corporations like Condor, located outside the European Union (EU), to share tenders with smaller companies inside the EU, where trade regulations between member states are more lax.
A market opportunity
Since 2011, the sales of less lethal technologies for crowd control have been on the rise. From the perspective of security salespeople, protest is highly profitable. 'Civil unrest has become commonplace in many regions of the world, from protesters in Brazil to activists in the Middle East. Governments have responded by purchasing record amounts of non-lethal weapons,' reports marketwatch.com. 'The prevailing uncertain economic circumstances, the complex political situation, and the deteriorating security condition across the globe have given rise to popular unrest and protests,' explain investment researchers at Markets and Markets.
Corporate marketing materials have likewise embraced these uprisings as promotion opportunities. In a magazine advertising their services, leading global defence company TAR writes that 2012-13 saw over 60 large-scale riots triggered by 'poverty, oppression, hunger, race or religion'. To respond to these unstable environments, TAR encourages city and government leaders to turn to their 'ONE STOP SHOP that can deliver a full turnkey robust solution' for public safety.
ABACA ABACA PRESS/ABACA/Press Association Images
One such crowd-control solution prominently featured at Milipol 2013 was the Samson NL RW5 – a 360-degree rotating, modular, rapid-fire multi-lethal response system for what Israeli manufacturer Rafael calls 'low-intensity conflicts violence'. Not yet 'safety' approved for the commercial market, the modular system combines LRAD (long-range acoustic technology) with Combined Systems Inc's Venom grenade launcher for coloured smoke and flash bangs. With over 4,000 of their base systems already sold, Rafael's executives are expecting high demand for their product.
Multiple force response systems also come in small packages. Gracing the glass cabinets at Milipol 2013 were Condor's 'hyper triple' grenades, Combined Systems' 'multi-bangs' and ISPRA's 'double purpose rounds' and 'multi-effect' biodegradables that mix coloured smoke (CS) with flash bangs, causing distress to the eyes, ears, noise, skin and respiratory systems simultaneously.
'These grenades operate in two stages with three effects,' the ISPRA product catalogue explains. 'After throwing or launching, they emit a "High Flow" of CS Smoke. Few seconds later… surprisingly, the grenade explodes, creating a deterrent stunning noise by dispersion of either CS powder, rubber pellets, colouring agents, or sticky gel.'
Although manufacturers and governments claim that less lethals are safe, tasers and rubber bullets are often deadly. Teargas canisters and grenades get shot directly at people, causing great harm, and are fired into enclosed locations, resulting in suffocation and starting fires. These real-world practices are used to silence protest and deter dissent by policing the very air we breathe.
Anja Kanngeiser, a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths College in London, is an expert on sound technologies. 'One of the key things that makes "less lethal" weapons dangerous,' she says, 'is the presumption that there is a standard human body that gets affected in a standard set of ways – specifically in ways that are not as bad as those associated with conventional weaponry. The level of sound emitted by a flash-bang grenade, for instance, can cause permanent hearing damage.'
In addition to such risks, these new canisters are often designed to deal with what the industry terms the 'throw-back phenomenon'. Bouncing or dancing around once they hit the ground, they are engineered to make it difficult for protesters to protect themselves by throwing them out of the crowd or back at police lines. With protests on the up, these incendiary canisters have quite literally become hot commodities.
Selling less lethality
For nations like Brazil, host of the 2014 Football World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, maintaining a façade of public order is crucial for diplomatic relations and tourism revenue. But cuts to public services and transport infrastructure, combined with corporate cronyism and forced removals, are causing waves of dissent across the country.
Rio-based Condor has already secured a $22-million contract as part of the World Cup's security budget, providing teargas, rubber bullets, light and sound grenades, and tasers
For Rio-based Condor, all this protest means big profits. The company has already secured a $22-million contract as part of the World Cup's security budget, providing teargas, rubber bullets, light and sound grenades, and tasers. 'We always advise the right escalation of force,' promises Beni Iachan, a senior business analyst for Condor, as he points up at the company's giant new PR poster.
The looming print features a chart showing six levels of enforcement, each paired with Condor products. Like a lifestyle policing package, Condor offers a product for every riot control officer's needs to repress civil unrest. Supplying police with this full range of force provisions has helped Condor's business to grow by over 30 per cent in the past five years.
In an age of social media, less lethals are seen to decrease officer accountability. 'The police can no longer just go in and beat people,' an executive from Combined Systems Inc explains. The spread of mobile video and social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter means that acts of police violence can be recorded and rapidly disseminated. This has changed the stakes for police officers using physical force at protests.
To promote the use of less lethals, governments and manufacturers constantly make comparisons to greater forms of violence, acting as if coercive force is the only option for dealing with political dissent. This draws attention away from any deliberative or mediation-focused alternatives for protest policing. Instead, again and again we are offered a deadly ultimatum: 'Would you rather a real bullet or a rubber one?'
Campaigning for change
Even NATO admits we do not know enough about the real human impacts of using less lethals. Their 2006 report concluded that much existing data 'is unavailable due to proprietary or national security interests', and where data is available, it is often of 'very little relevant quality'.
While more long-term, comprehensive medical studies are needed, decades' worth of research on the harms caused by these weapons does exist. Medical association journals and NGO groups such as Physicians for Human Rights have been releasing findings on teargas effects for years, and continue to call on governments to stop their use. Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Omega, have published numerous reports on the abuse of such weapons by state forces.
Anja Kanngeiser
The export chains that enable the sale of less lethal weapons are also often the target of campaigns seeking to intervene in what Amnesty International calls the 'trade in torture'. Last year, the group Bahrain Watch launched a #stoptheshipment campaign targeting Korean manufacturer Dae Kwang Chemical Corporation, contracted to supply more than a million canisters of teargas to Bahrain – a country where over 40 people have died and thousands more have been injured as a result of teargas-related offences.
Also using transnational tactics to fight this transnational trade, the Facing Tear Gas campaign brings together organizations from the US, Bahrain, Egypt, Greece, Canada, Chile and Palestine 'to form a global initiative to ban teargas'. In October last year they held the first protest against Urban Shield, an annual SWAT team training session and security sales expo that promotes the use of military tactics for protest policing.
Whether or not a full ban is called for, there is a pressing need to refuse the sinister logic of selling less lethality as the solution for dealing with political protest. 'Confronting governments with the horrendous results of the sales they sanction is important,' says Ian Pocock of London Campaign Against Arms Trade. More pressure must be put on our officials to intervene in these practices of protest profiteering.
This article is from
the March 2014 issue
of New Internationalist.
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Why do we all seem to be begging to belong today?
Kids beg for iPhones. Connecting via text is still connecting. Just ask anyone.
Striking a balance between being alone and being part of a group—a team, a club, or an organization—seems to be the seesaw of life.
Rollo May once wrote, "Loneliness is such an omnipotent and painful threat to many persons that they have little conception of the positive values of solitude, and even at times are frightened by the prospect of being alone." So, we race to belong.
May began speaking of the paradoxes of being human nearly 60 years ago, yet his words seem to ring even more true today at a time when we need them most.
Just the other day I was speaking with a group of clients about cultural intelligence and its role in building collaborative and happy work places that house our true selves. After about five minutes, the chief executive officer and the vice president began arguing about what is better: a cubed off environment or an open workspace?
You see, the "air pollution" of open workspaces seems to create cultural conundrums: people oversee, overspeak and overhear, which leads to cultural misfiring much like a lawn mower engine with the wrong mix of gasoline and oil. "It just doesn't sound right," one of the executives said.
You see, we are all Abraham Maslow-ing these days. We yearn to belong and connect. Connecting with authenticity can be expressed in this emotional equation:
AUTHENTIC BELONGING= SELF-AWARENESS x COURAGE TO DISCONNECT
I have also witnessed client organizations hold onto people and people hold onto organizations with which they are not compatibly paired. Have you ever witnessed or been that employee that didn't "fit?" I think I have.
My point is that COURAGE MATTERS NOW more than ever. Knowing how to trust your gut and pulling yourself from the fray or faking it is a difference-maker for humans. Nobody said it was easy to do.
Courage is not really required for connecting. We nearly automatically do it. And today the means of connecting seem to have multiplied. But courage is required for disconnecting.
Disconnecting means you are choosing to be elsewhere, pushing against belonging to the now group because of the promise of more ease and grace in belonging to the new group.
Professional identity was a term coined in 1978 by Edgar H. Schein. He was a progressive thinker. But what we have not witnessed since is progressive thinking as to how humans can co-exist with so many required identities today.
I suspect the struggle to be "you" at work will not fade from the organizational science and systems literature anytime soon.
"Begging" may be a strong word, but it aptly describes what we are wishing for—authentic connections with other philosophically-charged folks. There is a worthwhile difference in what you are begging for so take note.
In the end, when our consciousness elevates, the begging fades and our alignment with work and home unfolds properly. It marks moments to come where worthwhile memories are bound to be made.
The next time you witness someone begging, slow that person down. With the consciousness button pressed, the knowing deepens and the courage connects to the right group, the proper placement of a person where he or she can light up their gifts rather than dim their chances in contributing.
Read other posts by Dennis Rebelo
Keep up with our community: Facebook | Twitter | Saybrook's Organizational Systems Program

subset: commoncrawl


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In part one, 38 Great Hearts in Nature, we saw that there are heart shapes all around us if only we take the time to notice. There are also hundreds of giant hearts all over the Earth's surface, but you must be looking down from above to see the heart shapes. This is a collection of giant heart-shaped nature-made and man-made lakes, woods, ponds as well as aerial and Bird's eye map views hovering over the Earth's hearts. [48 Photos]
Created by nature: Saxifrage Peak, BC. The photographer added, "The heart shaped 'Valentine Lake' in the foreground." Photo #1 by Tim Gage
More Photos
Zack 990 by Joshua Weinberg and Mignolo § Powered by


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Select a design, then select the device that you would like to style.
DJI Goggles Skins are decals that feature stunning, high-resolution graphics printed on premium grade adhesive-backed cast vinyl.
Each DJI Goggles Skin covers your DJI Goggles, provides low profile protection with no bulk and helps protect from scratches. The unique weaved adhesive allows for fast, easy and accurate application, and goo-free removal.
Wrap your DJI Goggles and make it uniquely yours.
Updated on 11 September 2023
Istyles permit me to custom my cell-phone as I wanted it to be. Moreover I was not expecting this quality : it is really easy to put on the phone-it takes me half an hour to obtain a perfect result. I enjoyed the wallpaper... my phone is now unic. the website is well designed, maybe the explanations are not clear for some french guys. But i am very satisfied. The idea of Istyles is awesomePaul Michelet, France


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For use in hwloc itself, a hwloc_cpuset_t represents a set of logical processors.
for (cpu = 0; cpu < HWLOC_NBMAXCPUS; cpu++) \
if (hwloc_cpuset_isset(set, cpu)) {
Loop macro iterating on CPU set set.
It yields on each cpu that is member of the set. It uses variables set (the cpu set) and cpu (the loop variable)
End of loop.
Set of CPUs represented as an opaque pointer to an internal bitmask.
Clear CPU set set and set all but the CPU cpu.
Allocate a new empty CPU set.
And set modifier_set into set set.
Stringify a cpuset into a newly allocated string.
Clear set modifier_set out of set set.
Remove CPU cpu from CPU set set.
Compar CPU sets set1 and set2 using their last bits.
Higher most significant bit is higher. The empty CPU set is considered lower than anything.
Compar CPU sets set1 and set2 using their first set bit.
Smaller least significant bit is smaller. The empty CPU set is considered higher than anything.
Copy the contents of CPU set src into the already allocated CPU set dst.
Clear CPU set set and set CPU cpu.
Duplicate CPU set set by allocating a new CPU set and copying its contents.
Fill CPU set set.
Compute the first CPU (least significant bit) in CPU set set.
Free CPU set set.
Setup CPU set set from unsigned long mask used as i -th subset.
Parse a cpuset string.
Must start and end with a digit.
Setup CPU set set from unsigned long mask.
Test whether sets set1 and set2 intersects.
Test whether set set1 is equal to set set2.
Test whether set set is full.
Test whether set sub_set is part of set super_set.
Test whether CPU cpu is part of set set.
Test whether set set is zero.
Compute the last CPU (most significant bit) in CPU set set.
Or set modifier_set into set set.
Add CPU cpu in CPU set set.
Add CPUs from begincpu to endcpu in CPU set set.
Keep a single CPU among those set in CPU set set.
Might be used before binding so that the process does not have a chance of migrating between multiple logical CPUs in the original mask.
Stringify a cpuset.
Up to buflen characters may be written in buffer buf.
Convert the i -th subset of CPU set set into unsigned long mask.
Convert the beginning part of CPU set set into unsigned long mask.
Compute the weight of CPU set set.
Xor set set with set modifier_set.
Primitives & macros for building, modifying and consulting "sets" of cpus.
Empty CPU set set


text:
Placental alkaline phosphatase immunoreactivity in testicular germ-cell neoplasms. Am J Surg Pathol. 1987;11(1):21-9.
Isolation and partial characterization of plasma membrane fatty acid binding proteins from myocardium and adipose tissue and their relationship to analogous proteins in liver and gut. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1987;148(3):1370-6.
Effect of ethanol on the arachidonic acid metabolism in mouse peritoneal macrophages. Prostaglandins. 1987;34(6):853-66.
Herpes simplex virus infection in human arterial cells. Implications in arteriosclerosis. J Clin Invest. 1987;80(5):1317-21.
Mutations in the first exon are associated with altered transcription of c-myc in Burkitt lymphoma. Science. 1987;238(4831):1272-5.
Mechanism of activation and biological role of the c-myc oncogene in B-cell lymphomagenesis. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1987;511:207-18.
Distribution of von Willebrand factor in porcine intima varies with blood vessel type and location. Arteriosclerosis. 1987;7(3):287-91.
Zymosan-induced release of inositol phosphates at resting cytosolic Ca2+ concentrations in macrophages. Biochem J. 1987;242(2):441-5.


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Given the dearth of dramas about real-life grown-up problems, especially in summertime, movies adapted from young-adult novels are about the best we can hope for. Even when they're not great, they fill a need, for teenagers and grown-ups alike. If you're in the mood for a story about humans who are a little less expendable, you could do worse than spend an air-conditioned afternoon watching If I Stay. Chloë Grace Moretz plays Mia, a teenage rebel, though not the sort you'd expect: She's a disciplined cellist with dreams of attending Juilliard.
The cutest and coolest guy in her school, an aspiring rock guitarist named Adam (Jamie Blackley), spies her practicing alone in a classroom one day, and zing go the strings of his heart. They begin dating, but tragedy strikes: Mia and her family suffer a serious car accident, one that puts Mia in a coma. While flesh-and-blood Mia lies in a hospital bed, right at the crossroads of life and death, out-of-body Mia drifts around listlessly, reflecting on her recent past and asking herself the same question the Clash once posited: Should I stay or should I go? It's the ultimate teenage fantasy, an extension of the "You'd be sorry if I died!" retort so beloved by melodramatic 15-year-olds everywhere. At a certain point, If I Stay takes a maudlin turn and just keeps going. But Moretz is strong enough to carry it. She makes out-of-body Mia's soul-searching wholly believable: There's a vulnerable softness to her eyes that suggests she really is thinking and feeling all the time, suspended in that gel of emotional turmoil we remember as teenagerhood.


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Five Connecticut towns will pay $3.5 million in a bizarre raid by heavily armed SWAT team members after a report of drugs in the house of a Norwalk man. The team hit the home with flash grenades while snipers and officers surrounded the property. The owner, Ronald Terebesi, was dragged from the home and another man, Gonzalo Guizan (right), shot and killed. Neither was armed and a small amount of recreational drugs were found. The towns however still fought the case for years until a court issued a key ruling against them. They still deny any negligence or fault and proceeded to give the officer leading the raid an award for his role in the disastrous raid. (Swat members shown here were not involved in this raid)
This is not the first time that police were given accommodations for negligent or mistaken raids.
This case however captures the problem of police departments that seem eager to use armored cars and SWAT teams funded after 9-11. Former Easton Police Chief John "Jack" Solomon insists that the raid was carried out according to a valid warrant. That warrant was based on a call from an exotic dancer who admitted that she had a dispute with Terebesi. Police (who have had complaints about Terebesi entertaining exotic dancers in the past) responded with a virtual invasion. The SWAT team covered in body armor drove into the neighborhood in SUVs and an large armored transport with SWAT team members standing on the running boards ready to assault the house. They also took a video of the assault as snipers deployed and the armored car charged the house.
Monroe Officer Michael Sweeney led the team into the house behind a large shield with Trumbull Officer Brian Weir behind him pointing a M4 assault rifle. The grenades exploded and and doors came off their hinges. Sweeney then screamed "I'm hit" and police let loose a torrent of bullets. Guizan was hit six times and died. Terresi was handcuffed and dragged out of the house. The plaintiffs say that the evidence showed both men were clearly cowering in a corner when the shooting occurred.
Sweeney was not shot and at most was hit by the debris from the flashbang grenades thrown by his own team. Weir later said that when he heard Sweeney say that he was hit, he fired at the men. Sweeney then says that he saw Terebesi and Guizan in the corner but that they charged him and Guizan tried to grab his gun. Sweeney said that he fired to keep control of his weapon. Weir however said that he saw no such struggle and the attorneys for the two men said that the evidence clearly shows that they were cowering in the corner. An autopsy showed that Sweeney was in a superior position consistent with his account on the shooting.
One would think that these towns would be outraged by the overkill shown in the assault and then the negligent actions taken in the house. If so, one would be wrong. The towns spent more money fighting the case despite clear evidence found by the courts to support a trial. Now, Easton First Selectman Thomas Herrmann insists that the settlement does not reflect any negligence by his officers or those of the other towns: "While the defendants, police departments and officers from Darien, Easton, Trumbull, Monroe and Wilton maintain they were not responsible for the unfortunate death of Mr. Guizan, the insurers for the defendants, who will bear the full cost of the settlement, believed that it was best to resolve the matter rather than incur further attorneys' fees, which were anticipated to be significant. The defendants concurred, further believing it was important to facilitate the Guizan family being relieved of the combined burden of litigation."
That seems a rather belated concern for the Guizan family since you first launched a virtual military assault on a drug allegation, then killed the unarmed Guizan, and then fought their claim for damages until you had little practical alternative but to settle.
Team members found only two crack pipes and a tin containing a small amount of cocaine, but no guns.
Sweeney was then honored for his role in the raid by the police department.
Source: CT Post


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By Tony Pugh, McClatchy Newspapers –
WASHINGTON — After a near collapse at the height of the Great Recession, the streamlined U.S. auto industry defied the odds and outperformed the greater economy this year with solid sales increases, job growth and product innovations that signal that a full industry recovery no longer is just possible, but probable.
Credit better quality and pent-up consumer demand for the industry's slow, steady improvement. Customers who were unwilling to gamble on automobile purchases during the recession are coming back to showrooms because the average age of vehicles on U.S. roads is more than 10 years — the highest ever.
U.S. car buyers also are getting comfortable with making large purchases in the volatile economy, experts say.
"And that's a big behavioral change from what we saw in '08 and '09. That's good for the industry," said Jesse Toprak, the chief industry analyst for TrueCar.com, an auto-pricing website.
After selling roughly 11.8 million cars and trucks last year, U.S. vehicle sales to businesses and consumers are expected to hit nearly 12.8 million in 2011, Toprak said. That's up from 10.6 million at the height of the Great Recession in 2009.
Through November, new-vehicle sales had logged six straight months of year-over-year gains. That should continue in December, when 1.2 million vehicles are likely to be sold, Toprak said.
Those numbers are well off their pre-recession levels, which topped 16 million vehicles a year. But the industry's plodding recovery in the past two years has helped stabilize the greater U.S. economy and power a regional recovery in the Great Lakes and Rust Belt regions, where auto production is king. Both manufacturing-rich areas have seen some of the sharpest declines in unemployment in the country in the past two years as automakers regain their financial footing.
U.S. and foreign automakers are poised to add nearly 167,000 U.S. jobs by the end of 2015, according to the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. That breaks down to 30,000 hourly and salaried workers at the Big Three U.S. automakers, 17,000 jobs at foreign automakers and about 120,000 auto-supply sector jobs.
"The industry has pretty much hired back just about everybody from the automotive side that had been laid off. And now they're hiring fresh, so they're actually adding to their rosters. And it's not just the Detroit automakers. It's everybody," said Aaron Bragman, senior analyst at IHS Automotive in Northville, Mich.
Most analysts say the industry's growing stability is sweet vindication for the federal government's $80 billion bailout, which allowed General Motors and Chrysler to reorganize. The Center for Automotive Research estimates that the bailouts saved more than 1.1 million jobs in 2009 and another 314,000 in 2010, while avoiding personal income losses of more than $96 billion.
Today, all three major U.S. automakers are on the comeback trail with increased investment in U.S. manufacturing plants, improved new models, greater profitability and thousands of new hires.
Chrysler's rebound has been dramatic. In its best November since 2007, the beleaguered automaker sold more than 107,000 vehicles in the U.S., up 45 percent from November 2010. It was the 20th consecutive month of year-over-year sales gains for Chrysler and the best November for Jeep brand sales since 2003.
Foreign automakers also are expanding their U.S. operations. In May, Volkswagen opened a new plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., that now employs 2,000 people. The Mercedes-Benz factory in Vance, Ala., will add 1,000 jobs when it begins producing the C-Class in 2014.
Toyota just opened a new $800 million plant outside Tupelo, Miss., where about 2,000 workers will assemble the popular Corolla. The plant is Toyota's 14th in North America.
Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia saw their U.S. vehicle sales explode this year. But U.S. sales of Japanese autos faltered after a tsunami in northern Japan disrupted production in March and caused worldwide inventory shortages during the summer months, when car sales are hottest.
"They didn't have full strength of inventory because they weren't able to make enough cars," Bragman said.
U.S. automakers were prepared to capitalize with new designs and models. Chevrolet's new Cruze became the second-best-selling car in its class this year, behind the traditional industry leader, Toyota's Corolla.
Improved quality among all automakers also helped drive sales.
"You've got to give the automakers some credit here," Toprak said. "The new products that have come out of virtually every single automaker in the last year or two have been the best that consumers were ever offered. When you have great product, it fuels buying."
Ford's redesigned Explorer has continued strong sales even as the U.S. market has moved away from SUVs. This year, the Explorer moved from a truck-style, body-on-frame design to a lighter, more fuel-efficient one-piece body architecture, which most cars have.
"It has been a big success and is selling very well," said Bernard Swiecki, senior project manager at the Center for Automotive Research.
After recently inking four-year agreements with the United Auto Workers union, Ford, Chrysler and General Motors plan to add more jobs. The UAW agreements call for 20,000 new jobs over the life of the contracts: 6,400 at GM, 2,100 at Chrysler and more than 12,000 with Ford.
The new pact reduces labor costs for the automakers because new workers will earn lower wages than longtime employees, who will get profit-sharing and inflation-adjustment payments rather than annual raises.
In exchange, the companies agreed to bring back more foreign manufacturing jobs to the U.S. Last month, General Motors said it would begin assembling its Chevrolet Equinox next year at the old Saturn assembly factory in Spring Hill, Tenn., along with a midsized vehicle for the 2015 model year.
Earlier this month, Ford announced that production of its F-650 and F-750 trucks will move from Mexico to its Avon Lake, Ohio, assembly plant in 2014. The move retains about 1,400 jobs at the plant, which is slated for a $128 million upgrade.
New labor agreements and cuts in retiree health benefits also have helped the automakers become more profitable. Before a 2007 UAW labor agreement, Ford and GM's wage and benefit costs were about $78 per hour. They're now $58 an hour for Ford and $56 for GM, said Kristin Dziczek, director of the labor and industry group at the automotive research center.
While Chrysler's sales have increased the most from last year, its per-vehicle profit margin is only $1,066, according to the center. General Motors clears an average of $3,327 per vehicle, while Ford earns $2,819.
Barring a European debt crisis next year or a double-dip domestic recession, most analysts think that 2012 will be another strong year, with vehicle sales approaching 13.8 million.
"The industry is ready, when the economy recovers, to make a lot of money," Dziczek said. "If we get back to moderate economic growth of about 3 percent a year, we could be talking about there not being enough (manufacturing) capacity" to keep up with demand. "That's a good problem to have."
The vast reach of the auto industry, through its parts and supply chain, helps drive the economy in times of expansion. The industry typically accounts for up to 3.5 percent of the gross domestic product and fuels about 10 percent of U.S. retail sales.
When automakers were cutting jobs in 2008 and 2009 at the height of the recession, the industry's economic ripple effect worked in reverse, causing millions of additional jobs to disappear.
"Now that huge economic multiplier is once again on our side. It's working as an engine of growth. But we paid a dear price in '08 and '09, when the hit was really enormous," Swiecki said.


text:
Business/Organization Type:
ICS Legal - Migration Service Provider - MSP
Getting the right Immigration advice when making a visa application is extremely important especially when the Immigration rules are constantly changing. ICS Legal is a UK Visa and Immigration service provider and has been in business for a number of years.
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text:
Grime ebook round-up: extracts, interviews, reviews, audio
My £1.99 ebook Stand Up Tall: Dizzee Rascal and the Birth of Grime came out as a Kindle Single on Amazon UK and Amazon US a month ago, and I've been overwhelmed by the response (thanks!). I'll remind everyone here that if you don't have a Kindle, there are free, easy-to-use Kindle Reader apps for PC/Mac/iPhone/Android/iPad at those links above.
Here's some of the coverage that followed:
*As a taster, an exclusive book excerpt in The Guardian.
*A thoroughly enjoyable round-table pub discussion I did with Mr Beatnick and Tom Lea for FACT Magazine about grime, Dizzee, and the legacy of 2003.
*An NME piece in which I was asked to tell the story of grime via 5 essential grime YouTube videos.
*A 10 minute interview for the BBC World Service in which I tried to explain grime and its unique London geography, sound and politics to the whole world:
There's also an interview I did with east London local newspaper The Wharf about what grime meant to the area; a decent-sized review in Dummy Mag; another review from the Grime Princess; a great US perspective on Dizzee in this review on Woke Up Late; and selected in Dazed and Confused's books of the week. Get the ebook and let me know what you think.


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In offering up last week's "qualified endorsement" of Mitt Romney for president, the Log Cabin Republicans alleged that "as his record as Governor of Massachusetts suggests, [Romney] will not waste his precious time in office with legislative attacks on LGBT Americans." As soon as I read that, I knew I had to speak out. When Romney was governor, I headed up MassEquality, the campaign in Massachusetts to protect the nation's first freedom-to-marry court ruling. We then took on a broader portfolio, tackling LGBT equality issues across the board. The Log Cabin assertion is wildly incorrect.
For most of his four years, Mitt Romney was relentlessly focused on taking away freedoms and protections from, and attacking, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender residents of Massachusetts. He went after the freedom to marry, gay parenting and support for vulnerable LGBT young people, moving away from the supportive environment created by the three governors who preceded him, all Republicans. And it wasn't only his stance on the issues that was problematic. It was his hostile approach. In Massachusetts, when Romney needed an easy target to boost his socially conservative credentials, more often than not he turned first to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community and whacked away.
I will never forget the op-ed piece Romney wrote in The Wall Street Journal in February 2004. Titled "One Man, One Woman; A Citizen's Guide to Protecting Marriage," Romney likened the Goodridge marriage decision to the U.S. Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision. Here's what he wrote:
With the Dred Scott case, decided four years before he took office, President Lincoln faced a judicial decision that he believed was terribly wrong and badly misinterpreted the U.S. Constitution. Here is what Lincoln said: "If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." By its decision, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts circumvented the Legislature and the executive, and assumed to itself the power of legislating. That's wrong.
Romney could have chosen any example to highlight his concerns about judicial overreach, but the gall of using what is probably the most evil court decision in our country's history, the one that stated that blacks were property and were denied any protections by the Constitution, to decry a decision that freed gays and lesbians to pursue happiness and to have equal protection under the law is not just outrageous; it's despicable.
It was that awful comparison that finally spurred several of the plaintiffs in the Goodridge case to go in person to the governor's office to demand a meeting or, if they were denied, hold a press conference. They'd asked Romney time and again to get together with them and listen to them explain why marriage mattered so much to them, but he had ignored them. After staff told the plaintiffs that Romney was unavailable, they began the press conference, which drew attention from the State House press corps. Recognizing that Romney was about to be embarrassed, the staff changed course and invited the plaintiffs in to see the governor.
By now, you may have read some of the plaintiffs' accounts of that meeting. The attendees, several of whom are close friends and all colleagues in this struggle, told me how shocked they were by Romney's lack of any feeling, seriousness or empathy. They talked about the fact that they'd had many, many meetings with political leaders who didn't agree with them, but not a single one of them could remember a meeting with a political leader whose behavior was more dehumanizing or vacant.
For me, a particularly searing memory is of the time when Romney dusted off a shameful old law that hadn't been applied in decades, the so-called 1913 law, to keep out-of-state same-sex couples from getting married in Massachusetts. It was a law whose origins were rooted in efforts to keep interracial couples from the South from coming to Massachusetts to marry, banning marriages of those who couldn't marry in their home states. Romney not only grabbed hold of this law and applied it vigorously; he talked proudly and derisively of ensuring that Massachusetts didn't become "the Las Vegas of gay marriage," especially when he was on the road and boasting of what he was doing to stop same-sex couples from marrying.
I also recall well Romney's attacks on gay parenting, which The Boston Globe reported on last week. Gay parenting had been commonplace for many years in Massachusetts, and the state had had second-parent adoptions for partners of the birth parent since 1993. Yet Romney refused to allow birth certificates listing two people of the same sex as the parents they in fact were. He actually required his chief counsel to personally approve the events surrounding the birth of every child born to parents of the same sex and then give approval to hospital staff to scratch out "father" or "mother" and write in "second parent," even though he was told how problematic defacing birth certificates like that was.
Not content with bad policy, Romney also made his disdain political, traveling outside his state to trash his own constituents. In 2005, for instance, he went to South Carolina and told a Republican gathering:
Today same-sex couples are marrying under the law in Massachusetts. Some are actually having children born to them. We've been asked to change their birth certificates to remove the phrase "mother" and "father" and replace it with "parent A" and "parent B." It's not right on paper. It's not right in fact.
"Actually having children born to them"? Despicable.
I also remember May 11, 2006, when Romney decided, out of the blue, to shut down the Governor's Commission on Gay & Lesbian Youth, established by Republican Gov. Bill Weld a decade earlier to address LGBT youth suicide and strengthened by Weld's successor, Republican Gov. Paul Cellucci, to support a broad array of anti-violence and anti-bullying work. Beth Myers, Romney's chief of staff (and today a senior aide), called the chair of the commission, Kathleen Henry, and told her that Romney was issuing an executive order "revoking our existence" because he was offended by the use of the word "transgender" on letterhead where his name was on the sidebar. She told Henry that Romney would replace it with a commission focused on all the state's youth, and that they'd replace all the members of the commission.
Defenders of LGBT youth were horrified. My good friend Liz Malia, the openly lesbian state representative from Boston, marched down to the governor's office and told staff that she wouldn't leave until she could have a meeting. After several hours she finally met with Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney's spokesman (and today a senior strategist), who reiterated that Romney wanted a commission focused on all youth, not just gay and lesbian youth.
After much pressure, Romney relented, but only with restrictions on what the commission could do. The damage had already been done, however, and so our allies in the legislature wrested this commission away from Romney and set up an independent commission.
As best I could tell (given that I was only in the governor's suite of offices in the Massachusetts State House on a couple of occasions during Romney's term), his office was very welcoming to our opponents on the far right. I recall ducking into a press conference where Romney was arguing for a constitutional amendment to strip away the freedom to marry and seeing the director of the far-right Massachusetts Family Institute in the press office on the side, using the copy machine as though it were his own office. And on Romney's last day in office, one of the first people lined up to shake his hand on his ceremonial exit from the State House was Kris Mineau, the executive director of the Family Institute.
I have always placed a high degree of importance on building bipartisan support in the work to secure the freedom to marry and achieve full equality for LGBT people. I consistently make a point to highlight support from Republicans, because, let's face it, it is generally harder for them, politically, to back equality for LGBT people than it is for Democrats. In Massachusetts we had strong Republicans who fought with us all the way, including former Gov. Bill Weld and former Senate Minority Leader (and now candidate for Congress) Richard Tisei. But when it comes to LGBT equality, Romney is no Bill Weld. In fact, he's not even a Dick Cheney, who supports the freedom to marry, and not even a George W. Bush, who professed support for civil union.
I'm sad to say that Romney is someone whose track record is one of turning to LGBT people as an easy point of attack when the going gets tough, in order to burnish his socially conservative credentials, and someone whose personal interactions betray no genuine empathy for gay people, gay families or gay youth, not even when he has taken an oath (and made political promises) to stand up for them.
I won't speculate on what led the Log Cabin Republicans to put forward their "qualified endorsement," but I can say it takes no speculation to know what a Romney presidency would portend for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. The record is clear.


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We are drowning in a sea of MMOs. This isn't a bad thing, but it can make it tough to decide which ones are worth getting excited about and which ones will quickly be forgotten. Well, NCsoft's Aion is definitely one of the ones worth following. From what we've seen so far, it looks great (for an MMO, of course) with the sort of crisp visuals NCsoft's been spoiling us with since Guild Wars, only better.
However, in terms of how it's being received so far, Aion seems to be in danger of being brushed off by some as "just another Korean MMO," and that's a real shame, because even though Aion isn't looking to radically reinvent the genre, we love the new direction it's taking with combat. In case you can't tell by the many winged warriors soaring about in the screenshots below, that new direction is up.
That's why we're excited to share some exclusive screenshots of Aion along with details about how air combat will work. The following was created just for you by the creative team at NCsoft. Makes you feel kind of special, doesn't it?
Given as a gift by the god Aion to aid them in their battles against the tyrannical Balaur, the wings of the Daeva are a symbol of great honor. Be it the graceful, white wings of the Elyos, or the powerful, ebony wings of the Asmodians, they carry the noble warriors over the lands of Atreia and into battle with their fearsome enemies. But make no mistake, the Daeva's wings are no mere means of transportation. The skies above are dangerous, and a true Daeva must be as adept at combat in the air as they are on solid ground.
The dynamic combat system in Aion rewards tactical movement. Charging an enemy will grant you bonuses to damage, but will leave you vulnerable to a counter attack. A strategic retreat will help protect you from further damage, while a well-timed dodge to the side will make you a much more elusive target. Fancy footwork can turn the tide of the battle for a skilled Daeva, both on the ground and in the sky.
Once a Daeva takes to the air, the battle can change dramatically. When in flight, a Daeva receives passive stat boosts specific to their particular class. The sturdy templar becomes even more durable in flight, gaining increased health and defense, while the crafty assassin will find their accuracy and critical strike chance improved. In addition, new "Flight Only" skills become available when the Daeva sprouts their wings. A sorcerer can unleash a barrage of meteors, raining destruction down upon their landlocked foes from the safety of the air, a Chanter can greatly increase the flight speed of his or her allies, and a Spiritmaster can weaken the wings of their enemies, reducing the amount of time they can remain airborne before they are forced to return to the ground.
However, a Daeva's power is not limitless; they must learn to manage their strength lest their wings fail them at a critical time. Flight speed and endurance can be improved like any other stat through the use of items and player abilities. Equipping your weapons and armor with manastones can increase your flight time, allowing you to remain in the air for longer durations without rest. Potions can be used to instantly recharge your stamina, or grant you a burst of speed. Keep a careful eye on your flight meter, or you may end up with an unexpected rendezvous with the ground.
Above: Want to see more of Aion?Click here for more screens andclick here for tons of tours through Aion's varied zones
When opposing Daevas meet in aerial combat, the sky itself turns into a ferocious battlefield where the combatants must use all their skills to gain the upper hand. A skilled Daeva will make use of movement bonuses and aerial skills while wearing down the enemy's strength. Once their foe is left broken and bleeding, deliver the final blow and swat them from the sky in the ultimate act of aerial superiority.
Jun 17, 2009


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Siteground is one of the most recommended WordPress hosting companies. They are known for their top-notch customer support, reliable, and fast hosting plans. Their WordPress optimized hosting includes everything you'll need to create and grow a successful website or blog. Read our complete SiteGround review to find out if SiteGround is the right host for you.
In this detailed SiteGround review, we'll put their promises to test. These are the areas we will look into:
- Performance: Speed is crucial for the success of any website. How fast will your website load with SiteGround?
- Reliability: Will your website be available 24/7/365 without facing any downtime?
- Customer Support: Can you count on their customer support?
- Features: Do they offer all the features and tools you'll need to build your website?
- Pricing: How much it would cost you? Are there any SiteGround deals that can save you money?
This is a comprehensive SiteGround review with a detailed analysis of SiteGround's hosting service. If you don't want to read the full hosting review, here is the quick scorecard with our verdict right below it.
|SiteGround Review Summary
|Performance grade
|Average load time
|491 ms
|Average response time
|137 ms
|Free domain
|Free SSL
|1-click WordPress
|Phone / Live Chat / Knowledge base
|Start with SiteGround
Bottom line: We found SiteGround to be noticeably faster and extremely reliable. Their hosting plans are flexible, and their customer support is one of the best in the industry.
That's why we've chosen to recommend SiteGround as one of the best WordPress hosting companies.
Now let's dive into our detailed SiteGround review so that you can see how we reached that conclusion and decide for yourself.
About SiteGround
Siteground was founded in 2004, and since then it has grown into one of the most well known hosting companies.
It is headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria with offices in 4 locations and data centers in three continents. Today, the company has more than 500 employees and hosts more than 2,000,000 domains.
Pros and Cons of SiteGround
Each hosting company has its own pros and cons. Some advantages can overshadow the disadvantages, but some cons can be a total deal-breaker for your individual needs.
Before making a decision, you may want to review these SiteGround pros and cons.
Here are some of the advantages that make SiteGround one of the top-rated hosting companies in the world.
- Super fast servers: All SiteGround servers are highly optimized for speed. They use Google Cloud platform for all new customers which is one of the fastest platforms on the market.
- Top Notch Customer Support: Their customer support is amazing to say the least. They offer 24/7 phone support, live chat, and ticket based support.
- Free CDN and SSL They offer instant setup of Cloudflare's free CDN and free SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt.
- Multiple Server Locations They have data centers in three continents. You can choose the location you prefer during signup.
As we mentioned earlier, there are some downsides to every hosting company. The following are some disadvantages of choosing SiteGround as your host.
- Limited Storage: Their plans come with fixed storage. However, this storage is quite large, and if you are just starting out, then you will most likely never need extra storage.
- Higher fee for monthly billing: The hosting service gets expensive if you choose monthly billing. But if you sign up for a longer billing period, then you'll get bigger discount and a lower rate. They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee anyway, so it's a good idea to choose a longer billing period when you sign up.
SiteGround Performance
While price often plays a significant role when choosing a web host, you cannot compromise on performance.
This is why we decided to run our own tests to thoroughly review SiteGround's performance.
SiteGround Speed Test Results
Speed is one of the most important performance metric that you should look for. A faster website offers good user experience and boosts your SEO at the same time.
In fact, a single second delay can cause a 7% decrease in conversions, 11% fewer page views, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.
We created a WordPress powered test site on SiteGround and filled it with dummy content for theme development with images.
After that, we used Pingdom's website speed test tool to run our tests. These were the results we got:
As you can see, our test site loaded in less than a second (491 ms to be precise) with a performance score of 94.
This is incredible, but this website had almost no traffic so the Pingdom test alone is not sufficient.
To test how SiteGround servers would respond to increased traffic, we used a tool called K6 (formerly LaodImpact).
This tool gradually sends up to 100 users to see how the server would respond to increased traffic from multiple connections.
You can see the results in the chart below:
The green line is the number of active virtual users on the site, and the blue line is the server response time. SiteGround performed consistently throughout the test without any hiccups.
This test shows that if you are looking for a really fast website, then SiteGround can be a perfect choice for you.
One of the reasons why SiteGround performed extremely well in these performance tests is because of the recent innovations they've added.
Almost all SiteGround servers are now hosted on the Google Cloud Platform. They've also added UltraFast PHP and created a custom WordPress plugin for optimization (SG Optimizer) which really puts them in a premium web hosting category.
Typically, websites hosted on shared hosting account slow down a bit during top traffic hours. That's because your site is sharing resources with other websites on that server.
Most shared hosting companies automatically kill the server process if your site is taking too many resources. This causes downtime on your website.
We tested our SiteGround site for the downtime and got 100% uptime result.
SiteGround Server Response Time
Your website's content has a huge impact on page load time. For example, if you have high-resolution images on a page, then it will significantly increase the overall page load time.
This means that speed test results may not accurately reflect how fast your hosting server really is.
Instead of analyzing page load time alone, we decided to test the actual server response time as well.
To do this we used a tool called Bitcatcha. It ignores page content, and only tests the response time of the server.
Bitcatcha also gives you average loading speed from different global locations. The speed for each location is measured three separate times, and then the results are averaged.
Take a look at the results in the screenshot below.
As you can see, SiteGround is a great choice if your target audience is mostly located in the United States. The server responded in a fraction of a second in the United States.
It responded within less than a second for all locations.
SiteGround also allows you to change your server location and you can choose a datacenter closer to your target audience for even better response times in that particular region.
SiteGround Hosting Plans and Features
SiteGround offers shared hosting, WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, and dedicated hosting plans. If you are just starting out, then their shared hosting plans would be a perfect fit for your needs. However, your site will eventually grow, and you want to make sure that they have other plans that you can upgrade to.
Let's check out SiteGround's hosting plans and their features.
- Shared hosting: Shared hosting is recommended for new websites, bloggers, small business website or a startup online store. It is suitable for low-traffic websites as you will be sharing resources with other websites hosted on the server.
- WordPress hosting: This plan is WordPress optimized version of their shared hosting plan. It comes with SiteGround's in-house WordPress optimizations to improve performance of your website. See SiteGround WordPress hosting.
- WooCommerce hosting: This plan is WooCommerce optimized version of their shared hosting plan. It includes SiteGround's optimizations which greatly improve the performance of your online store. See SiteGround WooCommerce hosting.
- Cloud hosting: Cloud hosting plans provide a flexible upgrade to shared hosting solution. It allows you to use resources of cloud architecture including multiple cores CPU and bandwidth . It is suitable for growing websites, popular blogs, or businesses. It can also be an upgrade over VPS and traditional dedicated servers. See SiteGround Cloud hosting.
WPBeginner website is hosted on SiteGround's Enterprise hosting infrastructure which is an enhanced version of their Cloud platform for large sites.
Breakdown of SiteGround's Shared Hosting Plans
SiteGround's shared hosting options are the best way to build a new website. Their shared hosting packages are available in three levels to match different budgets.
- Startup: This plan is limited to hosting one website. It includes 10 GB disk space and is suitable for hosting a website having 10,000 monthly visitors. You'll also get all essential features like 1-click WordPress install, free setup, website transfer, daily backups, built-in caching (SuperCacher), free CDN, free SSL, and more.
- GrowBig: The GrowBig plan lets you host unlimited websites. It comes with 20 GB disk space and is suitable for hosting websites having 25,000 monthly visits. You'll get all the features of the Startup plan, plus you'll get premium features like ultrafast PHP for even faster speed, on-demand backups, easy Staging tool, and option to add collaborators to your sites.
- GoGeek: GoGeek plan is suitable for eCommerce websites. It can handle websites having 100,000 monthly visitors. In addition to all GrowBig's features, you'll get access to priority support, more server resources, advanced features like one-click git repo creation, and option to manage white-label clients to your sites.
Each Siteground plan comes with faster disk storage, email accounts, support for Cloudflare free content delivery network, and Let's Encrypt free SSL certificate.
They also include several popular WordPress plugins like WPForms, OptinMonster, and All in One SEO to help you improve your website rankings.
SiteGround Support and Customer Service
You'll see high praise for SiteGround's customer support service everywhere. Their support team is remarkably good at offering quick, helpful, and knowledgeable support to their customers.
Their customer support includes 24/7 phone, live chat, and ticket-based email support. Their phone and live chat response times are almost instant. Email-based tickets get the first response within less than 10 minutes.
For users who prefer to fix things on their own, SiteGround offers a large collection of knowledge base articles with screenshots, videos, tutorials, and guides.
Since we use SiteGround to host several of our websites, we can say with confidence that their support staff is very knowledgeable.
Conclusion: Is SiteGround the Right Choice for You?
After reading our detailed SiteGround review, you might be wondering if SiteGround is the best web hosting company for your website?
If you want fast and reliable web hosting provider with great customer support, then SiteGround is perfect for you. They have hosting plans for every budget and each plan comes with great set of features.
All their shared hosting plans include SSD storage, site tools, easy setup of Let's Encrypt free SSL and Cloudflare CDN service, 1-click WordPress installer, and free migration. Built-in security features protect your website against malware and you can add additional protection by turning on Cloudflare CDN functionality.
If you are just starting a website for the first time, then you will certainly appreciate SiteGround's customer support.
Ready to get started with SiteGround? Click here to choose your hosting plan today.
SiteGround Coupon
WPBeginner users get an exclusive 70% off discount and free SSL with our SiteGround coupon code.
All you have to do is click on this link to purchase. The discount will be applied automatically.
Frequently Asked Questions about SiteGround Hosting
In this detailed SiteGround review we looked at all aspects of their hosting services. The following are some of the most frequently asked questions about SiteGround that we are asked by our users.
1. Where are SiteGround servers located?
SiteGround servers are located in the United States, Europe, and Singapore. You can choose the server location during sign up.
2. Why choose SiteGround for WordPress hosting?
SiteGround offers a highly optimized WordPress hosting platform. Each plan includes its own in-house security features and WordPress tweaks that boost your WordPress site speed and performance.
You can easily set up a WordPress website with their 1-click WordPress installation. You can also move existing WordPress websites using the SiteGround Migrator plugin.
This is why SiteGround is an officially recommended hosting provider for WordPress users.
3. Does SiteGround support WooCommerce?
SiteGround specializes in WordPress and WooCommerce hosting. If you are building a WooCommerce store then you can rely on SiteGround's optimizations for consistent performance and reliability.
They are one of the top WooCommerce hosting providers and make it super easy to start an online store without any special technical skills.
4. Does SiteGround offer a website builder?
No, SiteGround does not offer its own site builder. That's because they want users to have the option to pick the best website builder for their needs.
This is why they allow you to easily install WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, Weebly, and many other site builder platforms.
On the SiteGround platform, you can also create unlimited web pages without any restrictions.
5. Does SiteGround offer cPanel hosting?
No, SiteGround no longer offers cPanel hosting. Once cPanel raised their licensing fees, SiteGround decided to remove cPanel hosting and instead built a far superior web hosting control panel for both beginners and advanced users. This allows them to offer managed WordPress hosting-like features without the high costs.
6. Is SiteGround better than Bluehost?
SiteGround and Bluehost used to offer the same features, but with the recent innovations, SiteGround has significantly improved its hosting technology.
When it comes to overall performance, technology infrastructure, and support quality, SiteGround is better than Bluehost. However, with all this innovation, SiteGround pricing is significantly higher.
So when it comes to pricing, Bluehost is better than SiteGround because not only is it 50% cheaper, but they also offer a free domain name with each account.
For more details, see our honest comparison of SiteGround vs Bluehost vs WP Engine.
7. How does SiteGround compare with other hosting providers?
Readers often ask us how does SiteGround compares with GoDaddy, HostGator, GreenGeeks, DreamHost, A2 Hosting, and other web hosting services.
They all used to provide similar features and technology, but over the last year, SiteGround has really stepped up its innovation.
With all the managed WordPress hosting features, Google Cloud infrastructure, and custom performance optimization, SiteGround is now in a class of its own with their premium hosting.
8. Does SiteGround offer free domain name?
Yes, SiteGround offers a free domain name. You can register a new domain name during sign up or you can use a domain name you already own. You can also buy a domain name from another registrar and point it to your SiteGround account.
9. Can I cancel my SiteGround account and get a refund?
SiteGround offers a 30-day money-back guarantee with all their shared plans. You can try out their services during this period. You are eligible for a refund if you cancel your account during this period. However, domain name registrations are non-refundable.
10. Which SiteGround plan is best for me?
Each SiteGround plan has different server resources. However, if you are just starting out then their Startup plan would be perfect for that. You can upgrade at any time if you need more resources. Choose your SiteGround plan to get started.


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Jeff Robbins is something of a rock star — just not the kind who plays Super Bowl halftime shows or collects Grammys. But he appeared to be on his way to that kind of rock-stardom just a little over a decade ago, when the band he then fronted, the Boston trio Orbit, were riding high in the wake of their A&M debut, Libido Speedway.
"In 1997, I did the Lollapalooza tour, I played live on MTV, our album came out, and we had a Top 10 modern-rock single," he recalls with a laugh over beers at the Independent in Union Square. "Now I run a company — Lullabot — that basically creates free open-source software. We work with really large clients — companies like Sony/BMG. And we built the Web site for MTV UK. It's a different kind of rock star. I mean, the people in that world refer to me as being a rock star. And every once in a while, someone will make the Orbit connection. Like, I had one guy who'd been working for me for three or four months and then one day, out of the blue, I get the fan call from him. Like, 'Oh my God, I've got all your albums . . . ' "
Now, years (and many Web sites) later, Robbins, founding Orbit drummer Paul Buckley (who's also played with Kay Hanley and Dear Leader), and bassist Linda Pardee (a veteran of Ad Frank's many projects who joined Orbit after they'd been dropped by A&M in '99) are toying with reviving the band. They played two Sheila Divine reunion shows back in December, and they're gearing up to headline T.T. the Bear's this Friday.
"Most bands get together and say, 'We're going to pay our dues and it'll eventually pay off,' " Buckley explains. "But with Orbit it happened really quickly. I met Jeff in '93, we started the band in '94, and one year later we were signed. We were fortunate that some of the songs we had were timely, and we'd learned from the mistakes we'd made in previous bands."
"Yeah, it wasn't so much that we were good as that we avoided all of the things about our previous bands that had sucked," interjects Robbins.
But music-business bullshit eventually caught up with Orbit when, in 1999, the Seagram/Universal merger in effect made A&M part of Interscope, a move that left a lot of artists homeless.
"Pretty much, A&M was decimated, from the A&R people to the president, so there was nobody there to champion us," Buckley recalls. "The A&M people had told us that they felt really, really good about us; they wanted to keep the momentum going by sending us back to the studio to do another album. But by the time we delivered that second album, we were dealing with a totally different label. And they didn't want to keep us around. It's funny, we played 150 shows in 1997 and 700 shows all told when the band was together. But the last 300 of those were after we lost our deal. It was actually harder then because there's a stigma attached to you when you've been dropped. It's like, the window opens and shuts and then you have to figure out another way to open it. Every band has its own little story from that period. So we ended up paying our dues at the end."
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text:
Fox News' Graphics Department Run By Blind Monkeys
[There was a video here]
Fox News' orgy of on-screen error continues: On Tuesday, it confused Vermont with New Hampshire and Nevada with Utah. Yesterday it confused Barack Obama with Mitt Romney. And last night, as you see from the clip above, it couldn't figure out which number was bigger: 23 or 22.
The clip is from Hannity. If Ron Paul actually had rated 23% in the most recent Public Policy Polling survey, as the graphic suggests, that would make him, mathematically speaking, the winner, on account of New Gingrich getting only 22% which is, if you want to get technical about it, smaller than 23%. (In fact Gingrich was the actual winner of that poll; Paul actually got 21%.)
Anyway, that's how Fox News is doing in its new era of "zero tolerance for on-screen errors."


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It's been a little hard of late to find references to SOA (service-oriented architecture), the buzz-phrase that once saturated the IT industry but in recent years has succumbed to "cloud computing." But SOA remains alive and relevant, according to a new Forrester Research report.
SOA refers to a software design approach where systems are composed of various and sometimes shared "services." The point is better interoperability and the ability to save time and money through the reuse of code.
[ Discover what's new in business applications with InfoWorld's Technology: Applications newsletter. | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. ]
Seventy-one percent of enterprises that responded to a recent Forrester survey said they are already using SOA or will be by the end of 2011, the report by analyst Randy Heffner and others states. Nearly half of small and medium-sized companies said the same. That is "a respectable number considering that SMBs tend to be slower in adopting major technology directions," the analysts wrote.
Moreover, companies are happy with how their SOA efforts have turned out. "Forrester measures SOA satisfaction by whether it has provided enough benefit that an organization will be expanding its use of SOA. By this measure, 77 percent of enterprise respondents and 81 percent of SMB respondents are satisfied," the report states.
Telecoms, utilities, financial institutions, and insurance companies are using SOA the most, with about 80 percent penetration in enterprises and 60 percent in SMBs across those categories, it adds.
North America and Europe have about the same level of SOA penetration, at roughly 60 percent. But 81 percent of North American companies expressed satisfaction with their efforts, compared to 73 percent of European ones.
Ultimately, the data shows that companies that haven't considered SOA should do so, according to the analysts.
"Many well-meaning people in the industry cast SOA as simply a way to do application integration, thus making it seem irrelevant to anyone whose integration problems seem to be under control," they wrote. "Others make it sound like SOA takes a huge investment to get started. Neither of these perspectives is true."
Companies should treat SOA as a "strategic business investment in industry best practices for software design, and you can start small and evolve toward SOA maturity."
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris's e-mail address is firstname.lastname@example.com


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In my humble opinion, there's cooking and there's cooking. (I know, I'll just give you a minute for the staggering profundity of that sentence to kick in.) What I mean is, it's one thing to turn banana bread into a crepe, that crepe into a cake, that cake into a vehicle for walnut butterscotch, drooling, diet-postponing, and seconds, and it's an entirely other thing to find yourself at the playground at 5:15 p.m. and realize a) you don't actually have anything in the fridge that you can turn into dinner, b) you, in fact, barely feel like cooking, in fact, your interest in cooking is only a single degree stronger than your desire to order in, so this better be easy, and c) the adjacent farmers market which you have heard from others boasts ramps and asparagus and spinach and other new! spring! delights! in fact, at the tail end of the day, boasts few things aside from a straggler of a single bundle of broccoli rabe. And you like broccoli rabe, you've warmed to it quite a bit since you've accepted it into your life, but you hardly excel in turning it into a lightning-quick, lazy, and completely satisfying dinner (or LQLACSD for short).
Or, I didn't before last Wednesday afternoon. This thing where you can grab anything at random without a shopping list in hand or recipe in mind and transform it effortlessly into a LQLACSD, this is real cooking. This is what separates those grandmothers that cranked out dinner like clockwork every night for 60 years, that didn't throw in the towel because they only had canned peas and stale rice in the pantry, from the dilettantes. And people? Over 750 recipes into this site, I'm still getting there. Sometimes a simple recipe, one that you make once and instantly memorize and throw into the dinner rotation, helps.
And this is how by 6 p.m. I had I turned that bundle of broccoli rabe — a vegetable I love but don't have a sixth sense for, at least not yet — into my new favorite pasta dish. I found inspiration in a 2006 recipe from Gourmet, showered it with punchy romano cheese, and retired for the evening with happy bellies and only a few dishes to wash. It is dinner, salad and a vegetable dish in one. It is quick. It could be dolled up in any number of ways — toasted breadcrumbs, minced capers or green olives, some ricotta — but it needs none of these to delight. To be dinner tonight, but 20 minutes after you bring home the groceries on a day too lovely to be fiddling over the stove. Hallelujah.
One year ago: Heavenly Chocolate Cake Roll
Two years ago: Classic Cobb Salad and Lime Yogurt Cake with Blackberry Sauce
Three years ago: Pickled Grapes with Cinnamon and Black Pepper and Pasta with Favas, Tomatoes and Sausage
Four years ago: Caramelized Shallots and Peanut Sesame Noodles
Pasta with Garlicky Broccoli Rabe
Adapted, just a smidge, from Gourmet, September 2006
The original recipe calls for spaghetti, but I prefer short, chunky pastas that are spear-able by toddler forks. I fell for a "toscani" shape, though it also looks like campanelle, "little bells." I think it looks like pretty, pretty locks of hair.
So, unless I think the texture of a salt really makes a difference in a dish, I usually default to table salt in my recipes, because it's cheap and everyone keeps it around (and, better that someone uses a coarse salt for a table salt volume and undersalts a dish than the other, irreversible, way around). But! Not here. Please don't use table salt. Most table salt is iodized and that iodine can turn your garlic a weird bright blue/green color. It will still be safe to eat but look… disturbing. Trust me, I learned the hard way.
1 pound pasta, whatever shape you like (but chunky ones will match up better with the rabe)
1 pound broccoli rabe, heavy stems removed, remaining stems and leaves cut into 1- to 2-inch sections (I attempt to match my pasta in length)
1/2 cup olive oil
5 garlic cloves, peeled and minced or pressed
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or more or less to taste
About 1 heaping teaspoon Kosher salt (or more to taste)
To serve: Grated Parmesan or Romano cheese (omit, of course, if keeping the dish vegan)
Bring a huge pot of salted water to a boil. Add pasta and five minutes before its cooking time is up, add the broccoli rabe. It will seem like too much for the water, but with a stir or two, the rabe should wilt and cook alongside the pasta. Drain rabe and pasta together and pour into serving bowl. In the same pot or a tiny one, heat the olive oil with the garlic, pepper flakes and Kosher salt over moderate heat, stirring frequently for 3 to 4 minutes, or until the garlic becomes lightly golden. Pour mixture over pasta and toss to evenly coat. Shower with freshly grated cheese and eat at once.


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- Home
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City Clerk's Office
The City Clerk's Office conducts the functions and duties prescribed by state law for general law cities and set forth by the Brea Municipal Code. Major functions and duties of this office include:
- Provide City Council support, including compilation and distribution of council agenda packets, public records requests, administration, and records management
- Conduct regular and special municipal elections
- Record, preserve, research, and provide for public access to Brea's historical records
- Process applications for voluntary service and maintains rosters for city boards, commissions, and committees
- Receive claims and service of other legal documents
- Maintain and publish the Brea Municipal Code
- Act as filing officer for conflict of interest statements filed by city elected and appointed officials and candidate and officeholder campaign filings
- Administer oaths and affirmations, including oath of office for the Mayor and City Council
- Certify copies of official records
- Act as the custodian of the official seal of the City of Brea
2021 List of Local Appointments
The 2021 list of local appointments contains the names of all incumbents with terms expiring during the calendar year, appointment dates, and term expiration dates as well as a listing of all boards, commissions, and committees whose members serve at the pleasure of the legislative body.
Block Party Guidelines Offered
Brea residents are encouraged to get acquainted with their neighbors. One way to do this is by cooperating on a block party that brings everyone out for some casual interactions. View a brochure that includes several guidelines if you plan to do this.


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We're nearing the still unknown release date for the Palm Pre, and new details are slowly surfacing. Sprint demoed the Pre's WebOS apps at CTIA, including PalmOS Emulator, Google Maps and Pandora. These look fantastic.
Like the iPhone, Palm gives developers a set of recommended UI design elements in the SDK, to promote a cohesive look in WebOS. While use of these buttons and menus aren't mandatory, these early developers have embraced them. I also happen to think the design DNA of WebOS looks better than any platform on the market, even Mobile OSX.
Google Maps
Google Maps is tightly integrated with the Pre's universal search function, so when you start typing something in search, you can launch straight to Maps, and it will zero-in on the points of interest. You can pan and zoom around the app using your fingers, and pretty much behaves like any other touch-enabled version of Google Maps.
Pandora's integration with WebOS will make it the best available mobile version of this music service. When you start Pandora and exit to another app a little Pandora logo remains in the bottom right corner of the screen. When you tap it, a quick launch UI pops up that lets you control the app without exiting whatever else you were doing. Serious, serious multitasking. And in general, the UI seems much more intuitive and usable than most the other versions of Pandora, with plenty of UI navigation options that make it less labyrinth, more music app.
PalmOS Emulator
PalmOS Emulator lets the phone UI look and act like the Garnet OS, and even has virtual, on screen buttons to give you full functionality. If you have old PalmOS apps you can't bear to part with, or just really hate WebOS (but love the Pre?), you can go back in time 10 years. Also worth noting is that Palm says they will roll out a solution for migrating data from old PalmOS phones to new WebOS ones, including support at the Sprint store. But Palm says they'll divulge details closer to release.
TeleNav GPS
The TeleNav demo wasn't fully up and running, since the demo was indoors, but it essentially looks like the version available on the T-Mobile G1. Not much else unique going on there, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, either.
Sprint TV
Sprint TV was probably the least spectacular of the bunch, but even that looked like a pretty nice app. There's a main menu for Viewing options (Live, Premium, On Demand TV), and then secondary menus that let you choose channels or content. Once you hit that, it launches into the TV service, which pulls up video. Video quality wasn't that great, and there was some artifacting/glitching going on, but it was certainly viewable. And there didn't seem to be any sort of on-screen guide or controls for Sprint TV. Not a dealbreaker, but it would sweeten the package.
There were also other apps, like FlightView, which lets you track planes and schedules in real time, among other things, and a NASCAR app, which will let you appreciate America's fastest growing sport (which is heavily sponsored by Sprint!). But if this is what we have to expect for future Pre Apps, I'm pretty excited.


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Story highlights
Beijing loses "dirty crown" as major city with worst air pollution
At worst, pollutants in New Delhi air are 60 times higher than safe
Would smog stop you traveling to a city?
It may seem an academic argument when you're wiping sulphate-saturated tears from your eyes or coughing up a lung while sightseeing at the Forbidden City or the Red Fort, but a new study says New Delhi has outstripped Beijing and gained the inglorious title of the world's most polluted major city.
At its worst, air pollution in New Delhi this winter was 60 times higher than the level considered safe, the research from India's Center for Science and Environment (CSE) reveals.
The most harmful airborne pollutants, categorized innocuously enough as PM2.5, averaged 575 micrograms per cubic meter in the Indian capital from November to January.
That compared with a – still dangerous – concentration of 400 micrograms at peak levels in Beijing over the same period.
Airborne danger
PM2.5 refers to the diameter in microns of nasties such as ammonia, carbon, nitrates and sulfate – particulates small enough to pass into the bloodstream and cause diseases such as emphysema and cancer.
A city such as London has an average PM2.5 level of 20 micrograms, which is considered safe.
Beijing looks as though it could permanently lose lose its mantle as the world's smoggiest big city if it keeps up the good work the CSE report describes.
MORE: London beats Paris as top tourist city. Really?
The Chinese capital has made "consistent and aggressive efforts" to improve air quality, the CSE says, including limiting annual car sales, banning odd or even number-plated vehicles during "red alert" pollution periods and fining local governments for failing to curb smog.
New Delhi, by contrast, is marked by "weak … stringency … and enforcement" of pollution controls.
Killer cities
"Originally designed as compact entities to reduce the length of travel … [Indian cities] are becoming victims of killer pollution, congestion … and a crippling car-dependent infrastructure," the CSE says.
It's a quote New Delhi worthies must hope doesn't make it into the next Lonely Planet.
It is, however, a decent snapshot of the aghast impression your average neophyte India traveler receives after stepping out of Indira Gandhi International Airport when she thought she'd come to the land of peace, love and really full-on yoga.
READ: Friendliest European city?
The number of cars on New Delhi streets grows by 1,400 a day, with Indian manufacturers obliged to fit only basic emission-cutting apparatus to their vehicles.
Smoke from the burning of rubbish, industrial emissions and pollutants from the country's predominantly coal-fired power stations add to the dangerous and noisome atmosphere, the Times reports.
Delhi's report card
New Delhi buses and some taxis might be running on natural gas, and 15-year-old commercial vehicles have been taken off the road (although that must in some cases include India's ubiquitous, hallucinogenically decorated trucks – a bitter-sweet result) but such measures aren't enough to stop many of the city's inhabitants – and the odd tourist – from becoming seriously ill, the CSE report says.
Medical studies point to the toxic risk of smog in the wide prevalence of acute lung diseases, eye disorders and Vitamin D deficiency leading to rickets among new Delhi inhabitants.
Of particular concern to tourists, a University of California, Berkeley, study cited in the CSE report showed that pollution levels inside vehicles traveling in the Indian capital could be eight times worse than outside.
MORE: World's 10 most hated cities
As if riding in a New Delhi rickshaw wasn't stressful enough.
And, just to divine the origin of that metallic taste you can't rid from your mouth when sightseeing in Delhi, the CSE study notes that "exposure to vehicular fume in [the Indian capital] is among the highest in the world."
Would you still go?
Forewarned is forearmed.
It's up to the individual traveler whether Delhi's world-beating air pollution is enough reason not to see world-beating sights such as the Red Fort or chaotically creative – and quintessentially Indian – Chandni Chowk street market.
On the other hand, it seems, you now have more reasons not to be afraid of trying Beijing roast duck on location or venturing into the Forbidden City.
READ: World's 10 most loved cities
The 'dirty 10'
And the dirtiest cities of all in the world, not just the big metropolises?
New Delhi – and Beijing – were missing from such a list published in 2013 by the online business publication Quartz.
With almost one-third more toxic airborne particulates than the next most polluted city, Ahwaz, pop. 3 million – capital of Iran's main oil producing province – was the dirtiest city on the planet.
Other smog-bound centers in the ranking of 10 were Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; Ludhiana, India; Peshawar, Pakistan and Gaborone, Botswana.
Intrepid travelers: watch out.
Would air pollution put you off visiting New Delhi, Beijing or Ahwaz, for that matter? Tell us in the comments field below.


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He was the Rev. Ernie Royle to thousands in his lifetime but he was Uncle Ernie to me. Kind, warm, quick with a smile, it was easy to see why he would be so widely respected in his United Church of Canada community and in the broader communities he called home.
Ernest Royle was born in 1935 and following graduation from divinity school, he was ordained in May 1959. It was a big year for Ernie as he also married Carol Hadden, my father's 'baby' sister. Children would come later – first Heather, then Doug, and last but not least, Janet.
The big city life never seemed to be an attraction for Uncle Ernie, in fact, with his easy going, good natured personality, he enjoyed the teasing of being accused of living in hamlets and villages where the big local festival was to celebrate the arrival of the first stop sign and the dilemma was determining where to put it as they had no intersections. I can recall, when Uncle Ernie was the minister at a church in Freelton, Ontario, teasing him about ministering to a flock that swelled one weekend per year when the Miss Nude Universe pageant was held at a local nudist colony.
He could also give as good as he took, on occasion winking at me and suggesting that we share a good Irish Catholic adult beverage because he was feeling particularly ecumenical. And it was show business that brought out his passion. The quiet man I had always known would explain in great detail his thematic plans for his latest production to be presented annually at his church. Each year's successful large scale production meant only one thing to him – an opportunity to begin planning an even bigger and more elaborate production for the next year.
Try as I might though, I couldn't picture Uncle Ernie as Rev. Ernie. I couldn't picture him leading a service and preaching, this quiet mannered man who was husband to my aunt and father to my cousins. This changed in the summer of 2004 when tragedy struck and my cousin, Doug died suddenly in his Montreal, Quebec apartment. Uncle Ernie conducted a memorial service at his church in Brantford, Ontario. For the first time, I saw the power of his ministerial gift – an eloquent orator who exuded compassion to those mourners present in spite on his own grief. A true demonstration of the greatness of this small town minister who will be forever and always, Uncle Ernie.
Uncle Ernie passed away after a brief illness in Brantford, Ontario on January 23, 2008. Broadway lost a great producer, Brantford lost a compassionate religious leader, his family lost a caring husband and father, and I lost a terrific uncle!


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Home > Divisions & Offices > Codes & Standards > Codes & Regulations > Emergency Rule Adoption and Concurrent Proposal
Emergency Rule Adoption and Concurrent Proposal
If the department finds that an imminent peril to the public health, safety or welfare requires adoption of a rule upon fewer than 30 days' notice and states in writing its reasons for that finding, and the Governor concurs in writing that an imminent peril exists, the department may proceed without prior notice or hearing, or upon any abbreviated notice and hearing the department finds practicable, to adopt the rule.
Emergency rules are effective for not more than 120 days and require repromulgation in accordance with normal rule-making procedures. See NJSA 52:14B-4(c).
In these instances, the department allows a minimum period of 30 days for comments on the concurrent rule proposal. At the close of the period for comments, the department may thereafter adopt the proposal without change, or with changes not in violation of the rulemaking procedures at N.J.A.C. 1:30-4.3.
Interested persons may submit comments or information concerning any of the rule proposals in the New Jersey Register until the date indicated in the proposal. Submissions and any inquires about submission should be addressed to the agenc
Posted in NJ Register
Submit comments by:
|No emergency adoptions at this time


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Different foods require different amounts of energy to produce. Meat is four times as demanding as grains are. If consumers would gravitate toward less intensive foods, energy use would drop. Reducing the enormous amount of food that is wasted would save energy as well. Check out the data and commentary below, expanding on "More Food, Less Energy" in the January 2012 issue of Scientific American.
Credit: Jen Christiansen, Source: University of Texas at Austin


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|Linux Standard Base Core Specification, Generic Part
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|Chapter 14. Base Libraries
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The interfaces defined on the following pages are included in libgcc_s and are defined by this specification. Unless otherwise noted, these interfaces shall be included in the source standard.
Other interfaces listed in Section 14.12 shall behave as described in the referenced base document.
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|Data Definitions for libgcc_s


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Vine Drop
Our Daily Wear Collection made with our Zero Emission Coating and Alternate Sustainable Metals . The perfect combination to quench your FOMO Feels and Wallet Friendly :)
Shipping and Returns
At Kreshya, no dream is too big, and no place is too far. Customers can now purchase Kreshya merchandise internationally and locally. Shipping charges will be applicable for international purchases. Pan India customers can avail of the one-time free shipping/return policy on orders above INR 2000/- .
Each product made at Kreshya comes with an individual storage box which comprises a small polishing cloth for personalised care of your jewellery. Additionally, kindly refrain from exposing the product to alcohol or any chemical that can cause the jewellery to tarnish.


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Dear James Blake,
Why dont you try complaining about the ATP World Tour calendar when you're winning and having to play a lot more (instead of when you're losing)? It shouldn't matter now that you have two weeks off! When was the last time you sucked at your job and were given two weeks paid vacay? Maybe you could use the time off editing all the spelling errors in your book!
Scoreline: The Fila-clad 17th-seed lost to Andreas Seppi 5-7, 4-6, 6-7 (5) in the first round of Wimbledon singles, 2009.
Buy: Fila Essenza Crew Neck Top, $45, fila.com. (C'mon, James — you looked so crisp and clean in that Nike polo you wore to Wimbledon last year. I'm sure you can drum up the same look with Fila!)