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Avana Thornblade Make Ready/Maint. Tech
Job Profile Summary This position performs technical and mechanical work that ensures the physical aspects of the buildings, grounds, amenities, and common areas of the property meet the Company's standards for cleanliness, appearance, safety, and overall functionality. Job Description Completes assigned work orders generated from resident requests for service, as well as preventative maintenance on the property by diagnosing the source or cause of the defect or problem, and making repairs in accordance with established policies, procedures, safety standards, and code requirements. Completes the "make-ready" process to prepare vacant apartment homes for leasing and new move-ins by completing the pre-move-out inspection, creating a "punch" list of maintenance work needed, scheduling vendors and contractors as needed, obtaining needed supplies and materials, completing all maintenance tasks, and inspecting completed work. Follows procedures for accessing and obtaining materials, supplies, equipment, tools, and other items from the property's maintenance department by tracking inventory used, returning unused items to the established location, and notifying the maintenance supervisor about re-ordering needs. Completes documentation and other paperwork in a timely, accurate, and complete fashion so that service requests can be appropriately documented and tracked. Assists in maintaining the grounds, common areas, and amenities by picking up trash and debris, pressure-washing breezeways and pool areas, performing general cleaning, and painting curbs and signage as needed. Supports cost-cutting and expense control programs by fixing rather than replacing parts when possible, not being wasteful with materials and supplies, and practicing the correct use for tools and equipment. Additional Job Description $1000.00 Sign-On Bonus after 90 days of continuous employment with Greystar.

subset: commoncrawl


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Testimony on the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022
Testimony before the Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives
This statement summarizes CBO's new economic forecast and baseline budget projections, which cover fiscal years 2012 to 2022. Those estimates were released yesterday in the report titled The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022.
The federal budget deficit—although starting to shrink—remains very large by historical standards. How much and how quickly the deficit declines will depend in part on how well the economy does over the next few years. Probably more critical, though, will be the fiscal policy choices made by lawmakers as they face the substantial changes to tax and spending policies that are slated to take effect within the next year under current law.
The pace of the economic recovery has been slow since the recession ended in June 2009, and CBO expects that, under current laws governing taxes and spending, the economy will continue to grow at a sluggish pace over the next two years. That pace of growth partly reflects the dampening effect on economic activity from the higher tax rates and curbs on spending scheduled to occur this year and especially next. Although CBO projects that growth will pick up after 2013, the agency expects that the economy's output will remain below its potential until 2018 and that the unemployment rate will remain above 7 percent until 2015.
The Budget Outlook
As specified in law, and to provide a benchmark against which potential policy changes can be measured, CBO constructs its baseline estimates of federal revenues and spending under the assumption that current laws generally remain unchanged. On that basis, the federal budget will show a deficit of nearly $1.1 trillion in fiscal year 2012. Measured as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), that shortfall will be 7.0 percent, which is nearly 2 percentage points below the deficit recorded last year but still higher than any deficit between 1947 and 2008. Over the next few years, projected deficits in CBO's baseline drop markedly, averaging 1.5 percent of GDP over the 2013–2022 period. With deficits small relative to the size of the economy, debt held by the public drops—from about 75 percent of GDP in 2013 to 62 percent in 2022, which is still higher than in any year between 1952 and 2009.
Much of the projected decline in the deficit occurs because, under current law, revenues will rise considerably as a share of GDP—from 16.3 percent in 2012 to 20.0 percent in 2014 and 21.0 percent in 2022. In particular, between 2012 and 2014, revenues in CBO's baseline shoot up by more than 30 percent, mostly because of the recent or scheduled expirations of tax provisions, such as those that lower income tax rates and limit the reach of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and the imposition of new taxes, fees, and penalties that are scheduled to go into effect. Revenues continue to rise relative to GDP after 2014 largely because increases in taxpayers' real (inflation-adjusted) income are projected to push more of them into higher tax brackets and because more taxpayers become subject to the AMT.
As the economy expands in the next several years and as statutory caps constrain discretionary appropriations, federal spending in CBO's baseline projections declines modestly relative to GDP before turning up again because of increasing expenses generated by the aging of the population and rising costs for health care. Projected spending averages 21.9 percent of GDP over the 2013–2022 period, a percentage that is less than the 23.2 percent CBO estimates for 2012 but that is still elevated by historical standards. Spending resulting from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and outlays for unemployment compensation and other benefits that tend to increase during economic downturns will continue to ebb over the next few years. Caps on discretionary spending and other procedures established in the recently enacted Budget Control Act also will hold down growth in federal spending. In the baseline, discretionary spending is projected to decline to 5.6 percent of GDP in 2022—the lowest level in the past 50 years. Those constraining factors will be partially offset by increases in spending for mandatory programs, particularly Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs: Mandatory spending is projected to climb from 13.3 percent of GDP in 2013 to 14.3 percent in 2022.
Although the projected deficits under current law are much smaller than those of the past few years, in CBO's baseline debt, along with rising interest rates, drives up the cost of financing that debt; in CBO's projections, net interest costs grow significantly from 1.4 percent of GDP this year to 2.5 percent in 2022.
CBO's baseline projections are heavily influenced by changes in tax and spending policies that are embodied in current law—changes that in some cases represent a significant departure from recent policies. As a result, those projections show much higher revenues and lower outlays than would occur if the lower tax rates now in effect were extended and if provisions constraining future spending were not implemented. To illustrate the budgetary consequences of maintaining some tax and spending policies that have recently been in effect, CBO developed projections under an "alternative fiscal scenario." That scenario incorporates the following assumptions:
- Expiring tax provisions (other than the payroll tax reduction) are extended;
- The AMT is indexed for inflation after 2011;
- Medicare's payment rates for physicians' services are held constant at their current level (rather than dropping by 27 percent in March 2012 and more thereafter, as scheduled under current law); and
- The automatic spending reductions required by the Budget Control Act in the absence of legislation reported by the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction do not take effect (thereby leaving in place the discretionary caps established by the act, which would otherwise be subject to those reductions).
Under that alternative fiscal scenario, deficits over the 2013–2022 period would be much higher, averaging 5.4 percent of GDP, rather than the 1.5 percent reflected in CBO's baseline projections. Debt held by the public would climb to 94 percent of GDP in 2022, the highest figure since just after World War II.
Even if the fiscal policies specified by current law come to pass, budgetary challenges over the longer term remain—and the challenges will be much more acute if those policies do not remain in place. Under both CBO's baseline and its alternative fiscal scenario, the aging of the population and rising costs for health care will push spending for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs considerably higher as a percentage of GDP. If that rising level of spending is coupled with revenues that are held close to the average share of GDP that they have represented for the past 40 years (rather than being allowed to increase, as under current law), the resulting deficits will increase federal debt to unsupportable levels. To prevent that outcome, policymakers will have to substantially restrain the growth of spending for those programs, raise revenues above their historical share of GDP, or pursue some combination of those two approaches.
The Economic Outlook
The continued slow recovery that CBO projects for the next two years reflects the lingering effects of the financial crisis and the recession, as well as the fiscal restraint that will arise under current law. According to CBO's projections, real GDP will grow by 2.0 percent this year (as measured by the change from the fourth quarter of the previous calendar year) and by 1.1 percent next year. CBO expects economic activity to quicken after 2013 but real GDP to remain below the economy's potential until 2018. As of late 2011, according to the agency's projections, the economy was only about halfway through the cumulative shortfall in total output that will result from the recession and its aftermath.
Considerable slack remains in the labor market, mainly as a consequence of continued weakness in demand for goods and services. In CBO's forecast, the unemployment rate remains above 8 percent both this year and next. As economic growth picks up after 2013, the unemployment rate will gradually decline, but it will still be around 7 percent at the end of calendar year 2015, before dropping to near 5½ percent by the end of 2017 and 5¼ percent by the end of 2022.
While the economy continues to recover during the next few years, inflation and interest rates will remain low. In CBO's forecast, the price index for personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increases by just 1.2 percent in 2012 and 1.3 percent in 2013, and rates on 10-year Treasury notes average 2.3 percent in 2012 and 2.5 percent in 2013. As the economy's output approaches its potential later in the decade, inflation and interest rates will rise to more normal levels. In CBO's projections for the 2018–2022 period, the annual change in the PCE price index averages 2.0 percent per year, and interest rates on 10-year Treasury notes average 5.0 percent.
Many developments could cause economic outcomes to differ substantially, in one direction or another, from those that CBO has projected. For example, the economy could grow considerably faster than the agency has forecast if the forces that have restrained the recovery fade more rapidly than anticipated. Alternatively, a significant worsening of the banking and fiscal problems in Europe could lead to further turmoil in international financial markets that could spill over to those in the United States and greatly weaken the economy here.
Furthermore, changes in fiscal policy that diverge from the path assumed in CBO's baseline also could have a significant impact on economic growth. Under CBO's alternative fiscal scenario, real GDP would be noticeably higher in the next few years than it is in CBO's baseline economic forecast. Over time, however, real GDP under that scenario would fall increasingly below the level in CBO's baseline projections because the larger budget deficits would reduce private investment in productive capital.


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In what must surely be the most fascinating article published so far this year, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones takes a long look at the relationship between lead — aka Pb(CH2CH3)4 — and crime.
Much of Drum's article is centered around the work of Kevin Nevin, a consultant working for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, who uncovered an important link between leaded gasoline and violent crime in 1994, shortly after a link between lead and childhood delinquency had been uncovered.
Drum describes Nevin's work:
[If] you chart the rise and fall of atmospheric lead caused by the rise and fall of leaded gasoline consumption, you get a pretty simple upside-down U: Lead emissions from tailpipes rose steadily from the early '40s through the early '70s, nearly quadrupling over that period. Then, as unleaded gasoline began to replace leaded gasoline, emissions plummeted.
Intriguingly, violent crime rates followed the same upside-down U pattern. The only thing different was the time period: Crime rates rose dramatically in the '60s through the '80s, and then began dropping steadily starting in the early '90s. The two curves looked eerily identical, but were offset by about 20 years.
In a later paper Nevin was able to find a lag time of 23 years between exposure and crime, explaining the tetraethyl lead used by General Motors in the '40s and '50s had led to the '60s, '70s and '80s. Nevin and other researchers were even able to find a correlation between the differing lead levels and different crime rates in different states and countries.
Scientific studies have also found a link, with Drum writing that one expert's summary of research showing that "even moderately high levels of lead exposure are associated with aggressivity, impulsivity, ADHD, and lower IQ. And right there, you've practically defined the profile of a violent young offender."
There are two big reasons why this is all so important.
First, it would turn everything we know about what ended the '80s crime wave in cities like New York on its head: Suddenly Rudy Giuliani's championing of the "broken windows" theory doesn't appear so impressive. Drum even posits that a belief in social-based theories of crime fighting may be why the lead theory isn't more widely known at present:
Political conservatives want to blame the social upheaval of the '60s for the rise in crime that followed. Police unions have reasons for crediting its decline to an increase in the number of cops. Prison guards like the idea that increased incarceration is the answer. Drug warriors want the story to be about drug policy. If the actual answer turns out to be lead poisoning, they all lose a big pillar of support for their pet issue.
There's another big reason though. While lead from cars may not be the huge issue it was before, lead in other forms is still around, and presumably still having a negative impact.
Drum writes that for around $20 billion a year for two decades we could clean up all the lead that is still around, and could be rewarded by a 10 percent drop in crime that could be worth up to $150 billion per year.
Seems like a good deal.
To fully understand the theory, go read Drum's article in full over at Mother Jones >


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New Delhi, Nov 23 (IANS) The BJP Friday sought to kick up a row over the appointment of Ranjit Sinha as the new director of CBI by asking Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to keep it in abeyance and follow the method of appointment through a collegium.
The government, however, maintained that a fair process had been followed in Sinha's appointment.
BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley wrote a letter to the prime minister and said the government had chosen to appoint a new chief of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) hours before the select committee on Lokpal tabled its report in the Rajya Sabha.
The select committee on Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill 2011 tabled its report in the Rajya Sabha Friday. Sinha was Thursday appointed as the next director of the CBI for a two-year term.
The two BJP leaders expressed their disapproval over the move and said the manner in which the government had made the appointment "hours before the tabling of this recommendation" led them to conclude that it wanted to pre-empt the possibility of appointment through the collegium.
According to the select committee report, the collegium for appointment of the CBI chief includes the prime minister, leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha and the chief justice of India.
"We must record our strong disappointment and disapproval of this act of the government. We would request you to revisit this matter and keep this appointment in abeyance till such time this recommendation (of appointment through collegium) becomes a law of the land. Hopefully, this can happen in the next few days," the letter, signed by the two leaders, said.
Jaitley is the leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha and Sushma Swaraj his counterpart in the Lok Sabha.
Minister of State for Personnel V. Narayanasamy defended the government's move and said the selection of CBI chief had been done in a fair manner following due process.
He said Sinha was the senior-most officer among the three names suggested by the central vigilance commissioner to the Prime Minister.
He said the BJP was not behaving as a responsible opposition and believed in "my way or no way."
Congress spokesman Sandeep Dikshit said the select committee report had just been tabled in Rajya Sabha but there was no certainty about the timing of passage of Lokpal bill considering the present stalemate in parliament over foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail.
He said the bill's passage might even take three months and the post of CBI chief could not remain vacant for that long a period.
Ranjit Sinha is a 1974 batch Indian Police Service officer of the Bihar cadre and is director general of Indo-Tibetan Border Force at present.
In their letter, the BJP leaders said the recommendation for the appointment of the CBI director through collegium had been made unanimously.
"This unanimous recommendation indicates that political and national opinion has now converged in the direction of taking the power away from the government of the day alone to appoint the CBI director since empirical evidence shows that these appointments were motivated by collateral considerations," the letter said.


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NetZero To Launch Free Wireless Broadband Service
NEW YORK (AP) — It's like the '90s never left: Billy Crystal hosted the Oscars. Internet IPOs are back. And NetZero is returning with free Internet service —only this time it's wireless.
United Online Inc. announced Monday that it will offer free wireless Internet service under its NetZero brand, the one that started the free dial-up phenomenon in 1998. The company is backing up the plan with TV, print and online advertisements.
There are plenty of catches with the free plan. United Online isn't offsetting its costs by making users look at advertising, as it did with its original offer of free dial-up Internet access. The "free" users will be money-losers for the company, United Online Chairman and CEO Mark Goldston said. That means United Online is using the free plan as a way to lure customers with the hope of upselling them to paying plans, which start at $9.95 per month.
To take advantage of the offer, consumers will need to buy a $50 antenna stick that plugs into a laptop, or a $100 "mobile hotspot" that allows any Wi-Fi equipped device to connect to the Internet. United Online will be selling the devices on the NetZero website.
The free accounts are limited to 200 megabytes of data per month— enough for some email and Web surfing, but little else. Half an hour of full-screen streamed video will eat up the whole month's allotment. By comparison, AT&T Inc.'s cheapest wireless data plan costs $14.95 per month for slightly more data — 250 megabytes per month — but that plan is only available for tablets with built-in cellular modems.
When the monthly traffic allotment is exhausted, NetZero cuts off Internet access until the start of the next month, and users are prompted to upgrade to the paid plan.
NetZero will only let users ride free for a year. If they switch to a paid plan, they won't be able switch back to the free one.
The $9.95 plan will provide 500 megabytes of traffic for a month. For $50 per month, subscribers get 4 gigabytes of data per month. That's enough for some video watching, but not enough to replace a household's cable or DSL modem. A Verizon Wireless plan that's contract-free, like NetZero's, provides 1 gigabyte for the same price.
United Online doesn't have a wireless broadband network of its own. Instead, it's renting capacity on Clearwire Corp.'s network. It's the same network used by Sprint Nextel Corp. to provide "Sprint 4G" data service. Several cable companies, including Comcast Corp., also resold access to Clearwire's network under their own brand. However, they've pulled out of that deal to focus on a partnership with Verizon Wireless.
Clearwire's network has a few problems: it's based on a broadband technology that the rest of the industry has bypassed, which means the selection of compatible devices is limited. Because of the frequency it uses, the signal has difficulty penetrating into buildings. Both Sprint and the cable companies used Sprint's slower cellular data network as a fallback option, but NetZero's devices rely only on Clearwire, which means coverage at decent signal strength may be spotty.
Clearwire has stopped investing in this network and is instead raising money for a new network that uses the industry-standard "LTE" technology.
According to Clearwire's financial statements, it received an average of $6.34 per month in the fourth quarter for each wholesale subscriber, most of whom are "Sprint 4G" smartphone users.
United Online, which is based in Woodland Hills, Calif., has about 750,000 dial-up subscribers left, Goldston said. Internet service is a minor part of its overall business: it makes more from owning flower-delivery service FTD and "online nostalgia services" like Classmates.com.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.


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With Bulaga out, youngsters up next
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Right tackle Bryan Bulaga's season is over, and the Green Bay Packers are one more offensive line injury away from having to play an undrafted rookie free agent.
Bulaga became on Monday the Packers' fifth significant contributor to land on season-ending injured reserve this year, joining inside linebackers Desmond Bishop (hamstring) and D.J. Smith (knee), outside linebacker Nick Perry (wrist) and running back Brandon Saine (knee). Running back Cedric Benson is on IR but has been designated for potential return next month.
Bulaga suffered a dislocated hip against Arizona on Nov. 4, and the team's medical staff – in conjunction with specialists – determined it was too risky for Bulaga to return. According to coach Mike McCarthy, who called the injury "significant," Bulaga was less than thrilled with the team's decision.
"It's something that there's a lot of conversation about the timeline of a possible return. The more people we talked to, we felt it was best obviously to put him on IR. His long-term health is always at the forefront of these decisions," McCarthy said.
"If you ask Bryan … you walk in there Monday morning, he's out there working out, no crutches, not saying nice things about the doctors, which is nice to hear. (He's saying) he wants to play and he's going to be fine. He did some things in the SwimEx (therapy pool) as far as the rehab. But you can't deny what's on the scan. This is in his best interest to go this path. We feel confident about his future."
McCarthy said the early diagnosis is that Bulaga will not need surgery, although he'll have a checkup in four weeks, which is when a final decision on surgery will be made.
When Bulaga went out early in the second quarter against the Cardinals, the Packers shifted left guard T.J. Lang to right tackle and brought Evan Dietrich-Smith in off the bench to replace Lang at left guard. Dietrich-Smith had been viewed since training camp as the offensive line of an NBA sixth man, set to be first off the bench regardless of position.
With Dietrich-Smith now in the starting lineup, the only backup offensive linemen currently on the Packers' 53-man roster are undrafted rookie free agents Don Barclay and Greg Van Roten.
The team's 2011 first-round draft pick, Derek Sherrod, is on the physically unable to perform list because of the broken leg he suffered last December and practiced on Monday for the first time in almost a year. McCarthy said all Sherrod did Monday was some individual drill work.
The Packers opened Sherrod's practice window before last Wednesday's deadline, starting a three-week clock on his practice time. They must decide whether to activate him or place him on season-ending injured reserve by Nov. 28.
In the meantime, if something happens to another starter, Barclay or Van Roten would be pressed into service.
"Green Bay always seems to find one or two of those free-agent guys that maybe played tackle in college, they move them around, put them at center or guard or whatever. These guys have come in and done a nice job of fitting in with us and playing different positions," right guard Josh Sitton said Monday. "They've grown over the course of the year.
"I knew right away (that) Donny was going to be that guy, that free-agent guy that makes the team. I kind of saw that right away in training camp. And with Van Roten, it kind of came on as the weeks progressed. They're both good players, both real smart. We would feel confident having them out there."
Barclay was a three-year starter at left tackle at West Virginia and played in a school record-tying 52 games in four years for the Mountaineers. He moved around in training camp along the line but is now the top backup at right tackle, according to Dietrich-Smith. Barclay said he's been taking snaps at right tackle and both guard spots over the past six weeks, with a few additional snaps at right tackle on Monday.
"You've always got to be ready, and that's kind of the position I've been in the first nine weeks. You're just waiting on a chance," Barclay said. "It's sad to hear that about Bryan. He's a close friend of mine; we've gotten close as the time's gone on. But he understands stuff like that happens and I've just got to be ready.
"With nine weeks gone by, every day you start learning a little bit more about the offense. Now I feel like I know a lot and I'm real confident and feel like I could step in and play a couple of positions."
Van Roten, who was a two-time first-team all-Ivy League selection at the University of Pennsylvania, was cut on the final roster reduction at the end of training camp but was re-signed to the practice squad. He was promoted to the 53-man roster last month. He would seem to be the primary backup at the center and guard spots at this point.
"You're always kind of on call and ready to go. When Bryan went down, it was like, 'The good life's over. You're going to have to get ready to play,'" Van Roten said. "I don't think it changes as far as preparation. You always have to be ready to go.
"I've been at center mostly, so I'm going to stay there, and I'll be both guard spots and we'll kind of see. Wherever they need to plug me in, I'm sure I can perform."
That's apparently how the team feels about both youngsters, too. There were no indications Monday evening that the team, which kept only seven linemen on the 53-man roster coming out of training camp, intended to add a veteran free agent off the street.
"I know one thing: They've gotten a lot of better just practicing," veteran defensive tackle Ryan Pickett said of Barclay and Van Roten. "From when they first got here to now, it's a big difference. The guys can play. Either one of them can go out there on Sunday and compete at a high level and be productive. They're good linemen. When their number's called, I'm sure they'll be able to answer the bell."
Listen to Jason Wilde every weekday from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. on 540 ESPN on "Green & Gold Today," and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/jasonjwilde.


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Religion plays a prominent role in the public and spiritual life of today's Russia. The majority of believers belong to the Orthodox Christian denomination.
Russia adopted Christianity under Prince Vladimir of Kiev in 988, in a ceremony patterned on Byzantine rites. Russia's baptism laid the foundations for the rise of the Russian Orthodox Church.
In 1448, the Council of the Russian higher clergy elevated Bishop Iona of Ryazan to the cathedra of the Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia, independently of Constantinople, making the Russian Orthodox Church autocephalous.
A patriarchal throne in Moscow was instituted in 1589, with the first Russian patriarch, Tova, enthroned on January 26. Nikon, the Patriarch of Moscow and Russia (1652-1658), stands out among the hierarchs of the patriarchal period for his vigorous attempts to modify church rites and amend the church service books in line with the service practised in Greek churches. His reforms led to a religious split and emergence of the so-called Old Belief.
The patriarchate survived in Russia until the early 18th century. In 1718, Peter the Great introduced collective control in the Russian Church. This innovation worked until 1721 only, when the Ecclesiastical College was transformed into a ruling Holy Synod, instituted as an administrative body of church power of the Russian Orthodox Church.
In 1917, the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church adopted a resolution that restored patriarchal rule. After the 1917 upheavals, the Russian Orthodox Church has traversed a hard and tragic road. The early years of the Soviet regime were particularly trying for it. The Land Decree of October 26, 1917, deprived the Church of the bulk of its lands. The worst hits were the monasteries. In its another decree, made public on January 26, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars (the government) separated the church from the state and school. As a result, all church organizations lost the powers of legal entity and the right to own property. To have the decree put into effect, a special liquidation committee was set up to evict the monks from their monasteries, many of which were destroyed, not without acts of vandalism, in which church utensils and bells were melted down and shrines containing relics were broken open.
In the late 1980s, with attempts launched to restructure the country's economic and political system, major changes were made in the relationship between the state and the Church in the hope of revival. The millennium of Christianity in Russia in 1988 was celebrated on a grand scale. In that year, 1,610 new religious communities, most of them of the Orthodox belief, were registered in the country.
In 1990, a series of laws were passed on the freedom of religion, under which many of the existing restrictions were removed from religious communities, allowing them to step up their activities.
Religion in Russia Today
With nearly 5,000 religious associations the Russian Orthodox Church accounts for over a half of the total number registered in Russia. Next in numbers come Moslem associations, about 3,000, Baptists, 450, Seventh Day Adventists, 120, Evangelicals, 120, Old Believers, over 200, Roman Catholics, 200, Krishnaites, 68, Buddhists, 80, Judaists, 50, and Unified Evangelical Lutherans, 39.
Many churches and monasteries have been returned to the Church, including the St. Daniel Monastery, the current seat of the Moscow Patriarchate, the spiritual and administrative centre of the Russian Orthodox Church. Some statisticians estimate the percentage of believers at 40 per cent of the entire Russian Federation. Close to 9,000 communities belonging to over forty confessions had been officially registered in the country. The majority of religious Russians are Christians. The country has over 5,000 Russian Orthodox churches. Many are built anew or under repair on parish and local budgets money.
Among the several more ambitious projects is the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, erected in Red Square to commemorate the liberation of Moscow by Minin and Pozharsky's militia, pulled down in 1936, and recently rebuilt from scratch. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, demolished in 1931, is restored. Patriarch Aiexis II described its rebirth as "a sublime act of piety and penitence."
Russia had 150 Roman Catholic parishes, two theological seminaries and an academy before the revolution of 1917. All were suppressed in the Soviet years, and the believers -- ethnic Lithuanians, Poles and Gennans -- were banished and shattered about Siberia and Central Asia. 83 communities have reappeared by now, and Apostolic Administrations linked to the Vatican have been established in Moscow for European Russia, and in Novosibirsk for Siberia. There are four bishops and 165 priests working among the approximately 1,300,000 Catholics in the country. The theological seminary, Mary Queen of the Apostles, opened in Moscow in 1993 and was transferred to St. Petersburg in 1995.
The two million Protestants have 1,150 communities. The nineteen million Muslims, the second largest religious community in Russia, have over 800 parishes and mosques, mostly in Bashkortostan, Daghestan, Kabarda- Balkaria, North Ossetia, Tatarstan, Ingushetia, and Chechnya. The Muslim Board for Central European region has been re-established. The Moscow Muftiyat, an independent ecclesiastical body, is responsible for the Moscow, Vladimir, Ivanovo, Kostroma, Tula, Tver, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaluga, Yaroslavl and Kaliningrad regions, and Sochi, the renowned seaside resort in the Krasnodar Territory.
Buddhism is widespread in Buryatia, Kalmykia, Tuva, and the Irkutsk and Chits regions. The Russian Federation currently has ten datsan monasteries, with the total monastic body approaching 200. Another ten monasteries are under construction.
The Russian Federation has 42 Jewish communities. Moscow accounts for over 10 per cent of Russian Jews, and has three synagogues, one of which is Hasidic.
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The Lowlights of 2011's 'War on Women'
With a new Congress in office, battles over reproductive healthcare access came back with a vengeance.
Jude Ellison Sady Doyle
The latest issue of In These Times is a special, extra-length issue devoted entirely to the subject of socialism in America today. This special issue is available now. Order your copy today.
Early this year, in response to a wave of anti-choice and anti-reproductive health legislation, pro-choice advocates began talking about a new War On Women. In fact, it was a war on many people, and many things: Choice, contraceptive access, dignity, and common sense all ranked high on the list of targets. But as the year draws to a close, it's worth considering a few of the most notable battles waged in the name of restricting people's access to reproductive justice, and where we stand today.
The battle of rape redefinition
In January, John Boehner's Congress indicated its highly practical, jobs-focused priorities by almost immediately introducing a bill to restrict abortion access: HR 3, the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." This bill was related to jobs primarily in that it denied tax credits to businesses that provided insurance plans that covered abortions, and in fact, taxpayer funding for abortions was already restricted under the Hyde Amendment. HR3 would have narrowed the rape and incest exemptions within Hyde, applying them only to victims who had been "forcibly raped." Nick Baumann at Mother Jones broke the news of the "forcible rape" language, and a wave of protest followed.
NICK BAUMANN, Mother Jones: What we saw in early 2011 was some of the same people who fought the culture war battles of the early 1990s refighting them on a new stage. Remember, the rape and incest exceptions to the Hyde Amendment were pushed through with social conservative support as part of their successful effort to avert a total repeal of the Hyde Amendment… Ever since then, social conservatives have been trying to narrow those exceptions. The "redefining rape" measure was part of that effort.
OUTCOME: The "forcible rape" language was removed, but HR3 itself passed the House. There was good news this week related to how the government defines rape, however: After pressure from feminist activists, the FBI is changing its own definition of rape, which was narrow, relied uncomfortably on the idea of force, and hadn't been updated since 1929.
The battle of Planned Parenthood
In early February, anti-choice activist and "aspiring actress" Lila Rose arranged a hidden-camera "sting" of Planned Parenthood. Her organization, Live Action, apparently doctored the resulting audio; the results sounded incriminating. Meanwhile, in accordance with the highly theatrical whims of Rose, the right wing mobilized to defund Planned Parenthood, because all legislative priorities should be influenced by people who do odd, unpleasant street theater. Next up: A bill on campaign finance reform, sponsored by that guy who used to dance with a mannequin in the subway.
STEPH HEROLD, @iamdrtiller: "These politicians want to re-criminalize abortion, and if they think taking away access to birth control, pap smears, pre-natal care, and Well Woman exams is the way to do it, they'll go for it. This also puts Planned Parenthood in the awkward position of having to defend themselves for providing basic healthcare and distance themselves from abortion, which is really unfortunate, and re-stigmatizes abortion."
OUTCOME: A bill to defund Planned Parenthood was rejected by the Senate in March, but the fight continues at the state level. Six states defunded Planned Parenthood in 2011.
The battles for blatant ridiculousness
Aside from these nationwide battles, there have been several fights at the state level which deserve your time, attention, and incredulous laughter: In Georgia, Representative Bobby Franklin introduced a bill that would classify abortion as "prenatal murder" and investigate any miscarriage for evidence of "human involvement," which led to his office receiving unsolicited photos of tampons and used menstrual pads.
In Mississippi, anti-choice advocates introduced a "personhood amendment" that would give fertilized ova the status of "persons" and thereby potentially ban birth control and (again) criminalize miscarriages; this was defeated. In Ohio, anti-choice advocates moved to ban abortion after the point at which a fetal heartbeat could be detected – sometimes as little as four weeks into the pregnancy – and called actual fetuses to "testify" (read: to have heartbeats).
That fight, despite all reason, is still ongoing.
OUTCOME: When fetuses are allowed to testify, everyone loses. Unfortunately, we were unable to interview any fetuses for this section of the article.
The battle for the future
And so that, in part, was 2011: A few wins, and a lot of stalemates. And, recently, one important loss: The loss of the right to provide emergency contraception over the counter, regardless of the purchaser's age.
To end the year on such a loss does not seem to bode well for 2012, where many of these fights will no doubt continue, and new battles will have to be fought. So I asked some pro-choice advocates and journalists for their thoughts on the future. Look away now if you want a happy ending.
Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon: "[The] war on contraception is probably the most significant development. This is the year that anti-choicers really took it to the next level. They mostly lost this year. They didn't get Planned Parenthood's contraception subsidies cut. They lost the fight to keep contraception off the list of preventive services. But they did win the fight to keep Plan B from being sold over-the-counter with no age restrictions. My concern is that their steady drumbeat of anti-contraception freakouts will eventually make contraception 'controversial' in the way that abortion is, justifying 'compromises' that restrict access."
Eesha Pandit, advocate and blogger: "The bans on race and sex selective abortion have been particularly insidious. They came during a year in which billboards have gone up all over the country, in Illinois, Missouri, Florida, Texas, California, Tennessee and many other states, attacking Black and Latina women who choose to have abortions… [The] Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2009, reintroduced a couple of weeks ago by Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, is a perfect example of the kinds of things we'll see next year. Anti-choice activists and legislators think they've hit on a winning formula of divisive identity politics."
Nick Baumann: "One really interesting thing about this year was that most of the anti-abortion rights measures that passed or were considered in the House had no chance of becoming law… there's certainly a case to be made that social conservatives overreached – their legislative push certainly got reproductive rights groups and their allies fired up."
OUTCOME: See you next year.
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Jude Ellison Sady Doyle is an In These Times contributing writer. They are the author of Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear… and Why (Melville House, 2016) and was the founder of the blog Tiger Beatdown. You can follow them on Twitter at @sadydoyle.


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Welcome to Dragon Cave! Dragon Cave is an online adoptables game. Collect eggs, raise them to adulthood, and then breed them to create interesting lineages. New dragons are added regularly!
Khusa dragons thrive in dry, desolate, and rocky areas. Though they can fly, Khusa enjoy honing their climbing skills on foot. Shortly after they hatch, parents are already teaching their young how to pick their way across cliff faces, escarpments, and thin ridges. The young are well cared for by their parents, but other Khusa in the area also look out for the young—despite not forming close-knit groups, these dragons form loose alliances with their closest neighbors. If a threat is spotted, they will attack from above and drive it to the ground where Khusa have an advantage.
Dragons are highly-intelligent reptilian creatures that—from a human perspective, at least—appear to live forever. Many different varieties of dragon exist, each with their own unique qualities, habitats, and behavior. Adolescence in dragons is usually marked by the growth of a hatchling's wings, although not all breeds of dragons grow wings and some breeds have other traits that indicate the beginning of maturation. In Galsreim, dragons and humans coexist peacefully.


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Microsoft has jumped into the free, self-service data analysis space with Power BI.
Power BI offers basic data wrangling capabilities similar to Excel's Power Query. It also lets you create interactive visualizations, reports and dashboards with a few clicks or drag-and-drops; type natural-language questions about your data on a dashboard; and handle files that are too large for Excel.
It can work with dozens of data types -- not only Excel, Access and CSV files, but also Salesforce, Google Analytics, MailChimp, GitHub, QuickBooks Online and dozens of others. And, it will run R scripts -- meaning that any data you can pull in and massage via R you can import into Power BI.
A guide to Power BI
In this article, I've put together a step-by-step guide to starting with Power BI, along with a number of other resources to help you along:
- Data files
- Power BI Desktop vs. cloud service
- Personal vs. Enterprise gateways
- 12 important Power BI visualization concepts
- Data cleaning via scripts
What is Power BI exactly?
Power BI includes both a downloadable desktop program and a cloud service, each of which offers different but overlapping capabilities. Data wrangling is desktop-only; visualizations and reports can be created in either; dashboards and report sharing are cloud-only. In addition, there are mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows that let you view your Power BI or SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports and dashboards.
At least for now, you can take advantage of most Power BI capabilities without paying -- although Microsoft is clearly betting that you'll like the basic cloud service enough to spring for a $9.99/month paid account. Chief benefits of the paid account are increased data storage (10GB vs. 1GB), more timely automated data refreshes, the ability to create enterprise "content packs" and higher streaming capacity.
Be advised, though, that Microsoft wants a business email address when you sign up for Power BI cloud service -- while it can't screen out all non-commercial addresses, it won't accept known free consumer addresses like Gmail.com. Accounts from .gov and .mil addresses aren't supported for direct sign-up at powerbi.com either, although addresses at .edu and .org are.
And if you'd like to use any of Power BI's free mobile apps, you'll need a Power BI cloud account or access to your organization's SQL Server.
On the other hand, Power BI Desktop (at least for now) is not only free but doesn't require an account, an email address or a credit card -- just a Windows PC.
If you'd like to learn how to use this new, still-evolving tool to create reports and dashboards, read on.
Importing data into Power BI
Power BI Desktop is the better place to begin, unless you're sure that your data is already in the format you need for visualization. (Which may be the case if, like me, you prefer to do your data wrangling with a scripting language like R or Python.)
If you're used to Excel, you might think that selecting File > Open is the way to start analyzing your data in Power BI. But you'd be wrong -- File > Open is only for an already existing Power BI project.
Instead, to import new data, click the Get Data button on the Home tab, choose your data source type and click Connect.
This will bring up a familiar Windows file-selection dialog. Choose your file and you'll see a preview of your data. If it looks okay and there's nothing more you want to do to the data before starting to graph and chart, hit Load. Otherwise, click Edit, which brings up the Power BI Query Editor.
In this article, I'm going to use monthly files of airline flight-delay information from last summer that I downloaded from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) website. I know -- especially where airlines are concerned, past performance is no guarantee of future results. But if you're going to book a flight this summer, it might be fun (if not necessarily predictive) to answer questions such as: Which airlines had the best and worst delays last summer? Are there any specific flights that do especially poorly or well? These Power BI charts can help you easily answer these questions.
If you want to follow along, you can download your own data files from the Department of Transportation website. Or if you want, you can download the same files I'm using here -- the file download is available to all members of the Computerworld Insider program; registration is free, so if you're not already an Insider, it's easy enough to sign up. Files include data for domestic flights in the U.S. by month (so if you want to check flights to Paris, this won't help). There are separate files for June, July, August and September.
Start by loading in the June file (2015_06_ONTIME.csv): Go to Get Data > CSV in Power BI. Select and open your file, and you'll see a preview of your data. Then click Edit (not Load) to bring up the Query Editor. Now we can do some data wrangling.
One thing that can be useful to check at this point is whether number columns are loading in as numeric (aligned to the right) or text (aligned to the left). In other words, if you see numbers that are flush left in your data preview, they're not importing correctly -- which is one reason to choose Edit and bring up the Query Editor window even if you don't think you need to make changes in your data's structure.
Once in the Query Editor, you can right-click on a column header and select "Change Type" in order to manually select a data type such as whole number, decimal number, date, date/time, etc. But there's plenty more we can do with this data besides checking column types.
Note: If you're not interested in data wrangling and want to get started with charts and graphs, load the summer15delays.csv file instead and skip ahead to the Easy visualizations section -- but do make sure that the flight number is changed from numeric to text when you import the file.
[Continues on next page]
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A once in a lifetime event took place on January 14th, when original Broadway cast members and creators from the landmark musicals GREASE, NINE and GRAND HOTEL reunited to help one of their own in Kathi Moss' RAMA-LAMA-DING DONG REUNION! The Actor's Fund Benefit was held at The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street.
BroadwayWorld brings you exclusive highlights from the special concert below!
The gala three-show reunion raised money for the continued healthcare of ailing fellow cast member Kathi Moss, who originated the roles of Cha-Cha Di Gregorio in GREASE, Saragina in NINE [in which she introduced the show-stopping "Be Italian"], and Mme. PeePee in GRAND HOTEL. In 2011 Ms. Moss was diagnosed with the rare disease cardiac amyloidosis.
Participants included: Karen Akers, Mark Baker, Tony Award nominee and Emmy Award winning choreographer Pat Birch, Jeanie Bowers, Shelly Burch. Andrew Casses, Carole Demas. International Ballroom Champions Pierre Dulaine and Yvonne Marceau, Taina Elg, Josh Franklin, Julie Hafner, David Jackson, Ken Jennings, Laura Kenyon, Dorothy Kiara, Tony Award and Olivier Award winner, Golden Globe and Emmy nominee Jane Krakowski, Ilene Kristen. Nancy McCall, Tony Award winner Liliane Montevecchi, Rita Rehn, Ken Leigh Rogers, Steve Ross, Camille Saviola, Tony Award nominee Bob Stillman, Patrick Wilcox, Tony Award nominee and Theatre World Award winner Walter Willison, Penny Worth, Alaina Warren Zachery, Tony Award winning songwriterMaury Yeston.
Directed and written by Laura Kenyon and Walter Willison, with Musical Supervision by Steve Ross, Musical Direction by Greg Jarrett & Daniel Sefik, the event was produced by Paul F. Burchett. Ted Seifman and Nick Padgettfor The Actors Fund of America.
Those wanting to make a contribution to the Kathi Moss event can visit The Actors Fund website: www.actorsfund.org and for more information on Kathi Moss, visit her website www.kathimoss.com.
Shot/Edited by Jonathan Frank www.reeltimevideoproduction.com
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Story highlights
Lily is a pink muppet with long pigtails, resembling a 7-year-old girl
Sesame Street portrays Lily and her family dealing with food insecurity
Nationwide, more families visited food pantries during the recession, USDA says
Move over, Cookie Monster. And pipe down, Oscar the Grouch.
There's a new muppet in town, and she's hungry.
Her name is Lily, and the newest member of the muppet pantheon symbolizes a serious social condition in today's recessionary era: nationwide hunger.
Colored pink and sporting long pigtails, Lily has been designed by Sesame Street to look like a 7-year-old girl.
Her character confronts a growing national struggle – food insecurity. Her story offers an optimistic scenario of how the community at large is supporting her and her family.
Sesame Street and the Jim Henson Co. are introducing this new muppet in an hour-long special, "Growing Hope Against Hunger," Sunday on PBS.
In the special, Lily is prompted to make a revelation when one of the more popular muppets – Elmo – remarks that he "didn't know there were so many people who didn't have the food they needed."
Lily then confesses to him that she doesn't know where her next meal is coming from and that times can be difficult.
Food insecurity is defined as the lack of a consistent access to food for active, healthy lives, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The USDA says 14.5% of households were food insecure at least some time during 2010 and that 5.4% of households experienced very low food security the same year.
"Numerous studies suggest that children in food-insecure households have higher risks of health and development problem than children in otherwise similar food-secure households," the USDA says.
The Great Recession, which set off a wave of layoffs and plummeting home values, left many families without access to adequate food.
Since 2001, the number of households receiving emergency food has grown steadily, according to the USDA. The most significant increase took place between 2007 and 2009 – during the recession – when the number of households making use of food pantries rose from 3.9 million to 5.6 million, an increase of 44%, according to the USDA.
Sesame Street really wanted to convey the scope of the problem, a spokeswoman said.
Many children whose families suffer food insecurity are part of the program's target audience, said Rocio Galarza, senior director for content and outreach at the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street.
"We made very specific choices for this characters so it conveyed the message that anyone could be going through this," Galarza said. "It could be your neighbor, could be part of your family sometimes. The character is going through this with her family but is benefiting from the support of her entire community."
This isn't the first Sesame Street muppet with a social message: The show has previously featured Jesse, whose father passed away, as a character dealing with the issue of grief. Sesame Street in South Africa also has an HIV-positive muppet named Tammy.


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Remarks by President Obama and President Medvedev of Russia After Bilateral Meeting
Millennium Seoul Hilton Hotel
Seoul, Republic of Korea
PRESIDENT MEDVEDEV: (As interpreted.) So I would like to start by saying, once again, that together with my friend and colleague Barack Obama, we had a very substantial discussion of different issues of our agenda of bilateral cooperation between the United States and Russia.
I told Barack that despite the fact that reset that has been largely debated over the past three years get different assessments, I still believe that it was an extremely useful exercise, and we probably enjoyed the best level of relations between the United States and Russia during those three years than ever during the previous decades. And we managed to achieve a lot in various areas. First and foremost, that was the New START Treaty that was signed. And we also managed to establish close cooperation on the most sensitive international issues.
And I would like to especially thank the U.S. President for his huge work and huge support in Russia's accession to the WTO. In my view, that was an extremely important topic, and I hope that we will be able to achieve similar successes in resolving remaining issues, such as the revoke of Jackson-Vanik amendment.
Lots remains to be done, of course, in terms of trade and economic relations. We need to bring them to the new level through increasing the volume of trade and raising the general level and pace of cooperation. And I believe that it would serve the interests of the U.S. companies and the U.S. citizens, especially now that the global economy is experiencing the turbulent times.
We, of course, as usual, discussed various international issues, including the most difficult ones, such as Syria. Yesterday, I had a very good meeting with the special envoy of the U.N. Secretary General, Mr. Annan, and like I told the U.S. President, we believe that his mission is very good and we hope that he will be able to reach good results, and to somewhat appease, at least initially, the situation, and would help to establish communication between various public groups and forces that exist in Syria. And yesterday, I expressed my every support to Mr. Annan.
Anyways, we need to make sure that we not end up in greater problems than we already have, and that the threat of the civil war is averted, that it does not become reality, and that this mission would lead to dialogue between all the groups that exist in the country and government authorities.
Of course, we also spoke about the situation in the Middle East. We touched upon the Iranian nuclear program, the North Korean nuclear program, other sensitive issues -- Afghanistan cooperation. So I guess we touched upon all main issues and gave all main positions.
Of course, we also spoke about the missile defense. I believe we still have time; time hasn't run out. And now we need to discuss and cooperate on various aspects on European missile defense. I believe such discussion could be more active. Now, in my view, time has come for discussions between technical aspects and, of course, we remain at our own positions, both the United States and Russian Federation. But I believe we still have time to agree on a balanced solution, and I believe that the good experience Barack and myself have gained while working on the START Treaty will help us and be very useful when finding solution to this very difficult problem.
And of course, Barack, I would like to take the opportunity to say how much I enjoyed the cooperation we had with you. And I believe that it really was the highlight of the previous years. And due to the high level of cooperation, we managed to resolve various complicated issues bilaterally -- national agenda. And I hope that the same high level of our relations will remain between the United States of America and the Russian Federation when the new President steps in office.
And I would like to -- I already invited you to visit Russia. I understand that this year will be difficult for you, since it's an election year. But still, I hope that you will be able to come. I already invited you to my hometown, St. Petersburg, so I would like to take the occasion to reiterate my invitation on behalf of myself and President-elect Vladimir Putin.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. Well, first of all, let me just say that the last three years of my work with President Medvedev has been extremely productive. And he listed some of the achievements that has resulted from this work -- the New START Treaty reduces our nuclear stockpiles in ways that can help create greater peace and security not just for our countries but for the world, and is consistent with our obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Russia's ascension into the WTO can open up trade and commerce between our two countries that can create jobs and economic growth for both Russians and Americans. And as Dmitry mentioned, we think it's going to be very important for us to address Jackson-Vanik so that American businesses can fully take advantage of an open and liberalized Russian market.
It is true that there have been times where we have had to manage tensions between our countries, and that's to be expected. Obviously, there are always tensions between countries, and that's certainly true given the long history of the Cold War between our two countries. But what I think we've been able to do is to ensure that rather than look backwards, we've been looking forwards.
Sorry, translator, I forgot you were there. (Laughter.) I got on a roll.
Moving forward, we've got more work to do between our two countries. Dmitry identified some areas of continued friction
-- missile defense being an example. And what we've agreed to is to make sure that our teams, at a technical level, are in discussions about how some of these issues can be resolved.
The bilateral presidential commission that was chaired by Foreign Minister Lavrov and Secretary of State Clinton, will be working actively around a number of the trade and commercial issues, not only with respect to WTO but how we can more vigorously expand the kind of investment and the kind of cooperation on the economic front that can benefit both Russia and the United States.
On the international front, we agreed that, as two of the world's leading powers, it's absolutely critical that we communicate effectively and coordinate effectively in responding to a wide range of situations that threaten world peace and security.
So on Syria, although there had been some differences over the last several months, we both agree that we should be supportive of Kofi Annan's efforts to try to end some of the bloodshed that's taking place within Syria and move towards a mechanism that would allow for the Syrian people ultimately to have a representative and legitimate government that serves their interest.
On Iran, we agree that the P5-plus-1 talks with Iran that should be announced soon offer us an opportunity to resolve diplomatically the critical issue of ensuring that Iran is abiding by its international obligations, that will allow it to rejoin the community of nations, and have peaceful uses of nuclear energy while not developing nuclear weapons.
And with respect to North Korea, we are going to be both sending messages to North Korea that they should not go forward with this missile launch, which would violate existing U.N. Security Council resolutions. And our hope is, is that we can resolve these issues diplomatically.
So let me just say that at a time of great challenges around the world, cooperation between the United States and Russia is absolutely critical to world peace and stability. And I have to say that I could not have asked for a better partner in forging that strong relationship than Dmitry. I am confident that in his new role he is going to continue to have an outstanding influence in world affairs and help to continue to deepen and improve the relationship between our two countries.
I wish him all the best. And I would love to visit St. Petersburg. He is absolutely right that my next visit to Russia will undoubtedly be after my election. (Laughter.)
Good luck, my friend.
January 18, 2017
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High-flying bantamweight Kal Yafai meets the Spanish champion Jorge Perez in Betfair's 'Christmas Cracker' at the London Olympia live on Sky Sports on Saturday (December 8) and he has fired a warning to his domestic rivals – I'm coming for you in 2013.
Yafai has raced to 5-0 in his first six months in the pro ranks and has earned rave reviews with four stoppage wins from his first five clashes, the last one coming in just 52 seconds live on Sky Sports against rated Italian Pio Nettuno on the Carl Froch vs. Yusaf Mack undercard.
Promoter Eddie Hearn has spoken of the difficulties in matching the Birmingham talent and steps him up in class again on Saturday against Perez – but Yafai is adamant he can live up to expectations.
"That is the thing; everyone is expecting me to get people out of there early now," said Yafai. "I just get on and do what I do, think about winning round by round and if the knockout comes it comes.
"I have surprised myself a little bit. I thought it would be a lot tougher, a lot harder to adapt to the pro ranks. But I have taken to it really well and I am really enjoying it and I think that is one of the most important things because when you enjoy it you perform.
"It was an early finish in Nottingham but it was another win, another knockout and it came with a good body shot.
"I didn't expect it to finish so early. I had watched him on YouTube and things like that and I expected it to go a bit longer than it did. It was a perfectly-placed body shot that got him out of there.
"I would like to get some more rounds in and hopefully I will get some more in on Saturday. It isn't a big problem that I am not getting lots of rounds in because I train really hard, I spar with top-class fighters up to lightweights and light welterweights, so I am sparring big fighters, strong fighters and technically very sound fighters. Two weeks before the fight I was training Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday eight rounds each day and it has been great."
Perez won the Spanish title in October against Ivan Pozo, who lost to Jamie McDonnell for the European title in March, and with a WBO European title loss against Ali Hallab in May also on his record from his 16 fights, the 28 year old represents another step up for Yafai.
"I said to Eddie that I will fight anybody, I think that is the way fighters are," said Yafai. "If he gives me a name I will jump at it. If he gave me a British or European champion now I would jump at the chance. Eddie knows what he is doing with me and I leave it down to him. I just do the training and get in there and deliver the goods on the night.
"I watched him fight against a guy I know called Ali Hallab. He looked good, he put Hallab down early in the fight which shows he can hit a bit but he ended up being knocked out with a left to the body and when I saw that I thought 'well that's an opening there'."
After turning pro in stellar amateur career that took in the 2008 Beijing Olympics among multiple titles wearing head guard and vest, Yafai believes he has mixed with top class opposition already is targeting title shots next year.
"I am not here to mess about and wait around," said Yafai. "I have the pedigree, I am fighting these fighters and getting them out really quickly so the quicker I can step up the better. The better the opponent, the better performance people will see out of me because I get to show people a lot more of what I am capable of doing.
"Hopefully there will be some sort of title fight early next year. Whether it is an Area or an English title, I will take anything that comes my way."
If Yafai can move to 6-0 with another stoppage win on Saturday he will end a topsy-turvy year on a real high. He was tipped to succeed at the 2012 Olympic Games in London but lost out on a place in the squad in a box-off against Andrew Selby. That disappointment gave way to excitement at turning pro, and with a headline-fight lined up in Wolverhampton in January, 2013 promises to be a huge year for Yafai.
"Last November I was in a bad way because I had missed out on the Olympics which I had spent four years training hard for," said Yafai. "I managed to pick myself up and turned over and I have had a really good start and now I am just really excited about the future. From when I turned pro to now has been brilliant. It has been a lot of hard work but I have got out what I have put in and I want to continue that into next year now."
Yafai's fight with Perez is part of a fantastic line-up of British talent in London with Darren Barker's return to action against fellow former European middleweight champion Kerry Hope topping the bill. John Ryder faces a crunch middleweight test against fellow unbeaten fighter Eamonn O'Kane in an eliminator for the British title whole Erick Ochieng defends his English light middleweight title against British title challenger Max Maxwell, and unbeaten cruiserweight Wadi Camacho faces Toks Owoh for the vacant Southern Area strap. American welterweight star Carson Jones faces Dean Byrne in an eight rounder and impressive young former Team GB stars Martin J. Ward and Callum Smith continue their pro education.
Tickets for Betfair's 'Christmas Cracker' are on sale now priced £40 unreserved, £60 corner ringside, £80 ringside and £150 VIP. Tickets are available from Matchroom Sport on 01277 359900 and at www.matchroomboxing.com


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Filmmaker Jen Brea gets a Sundance fellowship, Pamela Ronald makes the case for engineered rice, and more
Behold, your recap of TED-related news: A new Sundance grant helps indie films get seen. Making a film is hard enough — but getting the film seen by an audience can be just as difficult, especially in this era of non-stop media shifts. To help, Sundance just launched the Creative Distribution Fellowship — and among […]Continue reading


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QuickTun is probably the simplest VPN tunnel software ever, yet it's very secure. It relies on the NaCl encryption library by D. J. Bernstein.
QuickTun uses the curve25519xsalsa20poly1305 crypto-box functionality of the NaCl library for secure public-key encryption.
And that's about all QuickTun does; encrypting and sending data. No fancy features which would only lead to bloating the binary. In fact, QuickTun itself has only a few hundred lines of pure C code, making it dead simple to maintain, analyze, debug and fix.
Installing QuickTun on Debian/Ubuntu Linux
A precompiled package is available in the UCIS.nl apt repository:
wget -q http://apt.ucis.nl/IvoSmits.asc -O- | apt-key add - echo "deb http://apt.ucis.nl/ current ucis" >> /etc/apt/sources.list apt-get update apt-get install quicktun
If you prefer to compile QuickTun yourself, or if your platform is not covered in our repository, you can follow the steps below (Installing QuickTun on Linux), and either manually copy the files (from out/ and debian/static/etc/) to their destination, or install the generated debian package (dpkg -i out/quicktun*.deb).
The tunnel can then be configured in the /etc/network/interfaces file:
auto tun0 iface tun0 inet static address 192.168.77.1 pointopoint 192.168.77.2 netmask 255.255.255.255 qt_tun_mode 1 qt_protocol nacltai qt_remote_address 184.108.40.206 qt_local_address 22.214.171.124 qt_private_key_file <LOCAL-SECRET-KEY-FILE> qt_public_key <REMOTE-PUBLIC-KEY>
See below for supported configuration options. Please note that all options are written in lower case and are prefixed with qt_. The interface name is taken from the 'iface' entry.
Installing QuickTun on Linux or BSD
Building QuickTun is very simple. Just run the following commands:
wget http://oss.ucis.nl/quicktun/src/quicktun.tgz -O- | tar -xvz cd quicktun* ./build.sh
This command will first download and build the NaCl cryptography engine - this will take some time. When done, the out/ directory will contain a few binaries:
- libquicktun.raw - dynamically loadable library which implements the 'raw' unencrypted quicktun protocol
- quicktun.combined - the one you'll probably want to use, has all supported protocols and can be used 'stand alone'
- quicktun.debian - a binary targeting Debian based systems, for optimal integration with Debian's network configuration files
- quicktun.keypair - can be used to generate a public/secret key pair
- quicktun.nacl0 - stand alone binary implementing the nacl0 protocol (NaCl encryption without nonce)
- quicktun.nacltai - stand alone binary implementing the nacltai protocol (NaCl encryption with nonce)
- quicktun.raw - stand alone binary implementing the 'raw' unencrypted protocol
- quicktun-*.tgz - compressed tarball containing the sourcecode and build scripts, for distribution
- quicktun-*.deb - a Debian binary package, only generated on Debian based systems
You'll most likely want to use the out/quicktun.combined and out/quicktun.keypair executables. You may want to copy them to /usr/sbin.
Configuring QuickTun on Linux (non Debian/Ubuntu)
QuickTun configuration is usually stored in a shell script like this:
#!/bin/sh export TUN_MODE=1 export PROTOCOL=nacltai export REMOTE_ADDRESS=ipaddress-of-remote-end export LOCAL_ADDRESS=ipaddress-of-local-end export PRIVATE_KEY=private-key-of-local-end export PUBLIC_KEY=public-key-of-remote-end /usr/sbin/quicktun
Make sure that the script is not publicly readable because it contains the secret key: chmod 700 will do! To start the VPN tunnel, simply run the shellscript. You can also run the script using some service supervisor (daemon tools, supervisord).
Alternatively all configuration can be specified on the command line like this:
/usr/sbin/quicktun -c PROTOCOL nacltai -c TUN_MODE 1 -c PRIVATE_KEY_FILE secret.key -c PUBLIC_KEY public-key-of-remote-end
QuickTun configuration options
- INTERFACE - interface name (non-debian systems only)
- TUN_MODE - set to 1 to operate in tun (IP), unset or 0 (recent versions only) for tap (Ethernet) mode
- USE_PI - set to 1 to include packet information header in wire packets, must be set on both sides if used; set to 2 to automatically add the packet information header for cross-platform compatibility (also compatible with USE_PI=0), some (BSD) kernels need USE_PI to be enabled for IPv6 support
- REMOTE_ADDRESS - IP address or hostname of the remote end (use 0.0.0.0 for a floating/dynamic remote endpoint)
- LOCAL_ADDRESS - IP address or hostname of the local end, optional
- LOCAL_PORT - local UDP port, optional, defaults to 2998
- REMOTE_PORT - remote UDP port, optional, defaults to LOCAL_PORT
- REMOTE_FLOAT - allows the remote address and port to change when properly encrypted packets are received
- TUN_UP_SCRIPT - run specified command or script after the tunnel device has been opened
- SETUID - drop privileges and change user and group IDs to specified username after setting up the tunnel
- nacl0, nacltai and salty (encrypted) protocols only:
- PRIVATE_KEY - local secret key in hexadecimal form (not needed for raw protocol)
- PUBLIC_KEY - remote public key in hexadecimal form (not needed for raw protocol)
- PRIVATE_KEY_FILE - file containing local secret key in binary or hexadecimal form (not needed for raw protocol)
- nacltai (encrypted) protocol only:
- TIME_WINDOW - allowed time window for first received packet in seconds (positive number allows packets from history)
- Combined binary only (quicktun.debian and quicktun.combined executables, Debian based systems):
- PROTOCOL - the protocol to use, one of "raw", "nacl0" and "nacltai"
- Debian /etc/network/interfaces only:
- NO_PRECREATE - set to 1 to run QuickTun as root and not use a persistent tunnel device, unset otherwise
QuickTun on Windows
A pure C# implementation of QuickTun and the required cryptography code is included in the Virtual Network Environment. This code can run on both, Windows and Linux systems, and provide full VPN functionality, in addition to many other features. The DNRouter software uses this library to provide QuickTun support.
A stand-alone tunnel application is also available on http://oss.ucis.nl/vne/quicktun/. Download all files, rename example.xml to quicktun.xml and edit it according to your needs. Then run UCIS.QuickTun.exe. Note that you will have to create/install a tun/tap device before running the software. You can do this either by installing OpenVPN or tinc, or by downloading all files from http://oss.ucis.nl/vne/tuntapwin/ and running addtap.bat.
The configuration file has the following elements:
- <tunnel> - the document root element
- <tuntap> - this element defines the tun/tap interface to connect to the host
- @ifname - this attribute specifies the interface name (it works for both Windows and Linux!)
- @type - either "tap" or "tun", on Windows only tap is supported
- @dhcpserver - (windows only, optional) enables automatic host IP configuration, this specifies the address of the virtual DHCP server
- @hostip - (windows only, optional) specifies the IP address to configure on the host (requires @dhcpserver to be set)
- @netmask - (windows only, optional) the network mask for host IP configuration (requires @dhcpserver and @hostip to be set)
- <quicktun> - defines the QuickTun VPN tunnel
- @local - (optional) specifies the local tunnel in IP:PORT format, eg 10.0.0.1:2997
- @remote - (optional) specifies the remote tunnel in IP:PORT format, eg 10.0.0.2:2997
- Note that at least one of local and remote must be specified!
- @protocol - specifies the QuickTun cryptographic protocol to use (currently supported are "raw", "nacl0", "nacltai" and "salty")
- <secretkey> - (nacl0, nacltai and salty protocols only) this element contains the secret key of the local end (eg <secretkey>THE_KEY_GOES_HERE_IN_HEXADECIMAL</secretkey>)
- <publickey> - (nacl0, nacltai and salty protocols only) this element contains the public key of the remote end
- <tuntap> - this element defines the tun/tap interface to connect to the host
Note that <xxx> indicates an XML element. @xxx indicates an attribute to the XML element. See also the example configuration file.
QuickTun supports four different protocols:
|Protocol name
|0 bytes
|Compatible with VirtualBox UDPTunnel
|The IP or ethernet packet as it was read from the device is sent directly in an UDP packet
|Very weak
|16 bytes
|The IP or ethernet packet is encrypted using the curve25519xsalsa20poly1305_box function, with the nonce set to all zero, the first 16 all-zero bytes of the result are stripped off, the rest is sent in an UDP packet
|32 bytes
|The IP or ethernet packet is encrypted using the curve25519xsalsa20poly1305_box function, with the nonce being <7bytes=0><1byte=local_pub_key>remote_pub_key?1:0><16bytes:tai64an_packed_timestamp>, the tai64an_packed_timestamp is copied to the beginning of the encrypted buffer (to the area that is normally all zero), the entire buffer is sent (crypto adds 32 bytes of overhead)
|Secure with PFS
|20 bytes + control packets
|Requires at least one endpoint to have a fixed address
|The IP or ethernet packet is encrypted using the curve25519xsalsa20poly1305_box function, with temporary keys and nonces which are periodically regenerated and exchanged; this protocol provides Perfect Forward Secrecy and does not depend on clock synchronization for replay protection; the current implementation does not work well if both endpoints are floating
QuickTun Linux kernel module
Matthias is working on a Linux kernel module providing QuickTun functionality: http://git.universe-factory.net/modquicktun/
- Mercurial repository: http://oss.ucis.nl/hg/quicktun/
- GitHub project: https://github.com/UCIS/QuickTun (git repository: https://github.com/UCIS/QuickTun.git)
- BitBucket project: https://bitbucket.org/IvoSmits/quicktun
- Debian/Ubuntu packages: http://apt.ucis.nl/packages/
- Sourcecode archives: http://oss.ucis.nl/quicktun/src/ (latest: http://oss.ucis.nl/quicktun/src/quicktun.tgz)
Third party packages
- ArchLinux: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=44278
- FreeBSD (beta): http://hg.dereckson.be/freebsd-ports/src/tip/net/quicktun/
- OpenWRT: https://dev.openwrt.org/browser/packages/net/quicktun
Thanks to...
- somerandomnick, some anonymous person who introduced me to the NaCl cryptography library and encouraged me to extend TunTapIO
- Daniel Dickinson <firstname.lastname@example.com>, who contributed some fixes
- Everyone who uses QuickTun and has suggested improvements, reported bugs, supported me while fixing them, etc.
Support QuickTun
You can support QuickTun by spreading the word, reporting bugs, suggesting fixes, porting it to other platforms, packaging it for other distributions, and more. If you would like to make a financial donation, you may send some money to my PayPal account firstname.lastname@example.com, via bitcoin to 13LJt54w2VD9WZQgBG6hGdmny26wg4jqEH or ask me for my address (cash) or bank account (IBAN, send me an e-mail).


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03.11.2015 - 06.11.2015
Ahoy-weg 10
3008 AC Rotterdam Rotterdam
010 293 32 50
From 3 - 6 November 2015 Europort, organised in the world port city of Rotterdam, will be the international maritime meeting place for innovative technology and complex shipbuilding.
Europort has a strong focus on special purpose ships including offshore vessels, dredging vessels, construction vessels, naval vessels, workboats, inland vessels, fishery vessels and super yachts. With almost 30,000 professional visitors and 1100 exhibiting companies Europort belongs to the world's leading maritime meeting places.


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Now they give the nod to their life insurance companies and pension funds to back off?
Aso: Yen Has Weakened More Than Intended
Feb 8 (Reuters) — Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Friday that the yen has weakened more than intended during its recent decline to around 90 per dollar from around 78 yen a few months ago.
The dollar fell about 1 percent versus the yen shortly after Aso comments, as traders pared bets on further declines in the Japanese currency.
Since November, the yen has fallen around 16 percent versus the dollar in anticipation that new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will push his agenda of aggressive monetary policy easing to weaken the currency.
The finance minister's comments indicate some surprise within the government at how quickly those expectations among traders translated into declines in the yen.
"It seems that the government's policies have fueled expectations and the yen weakened more than we intended in the move to around 90 from 78," Aso told lawmakers in the lower house budget committee.
Recently, Aso has reacted strongly to criticism from German and other European officials that Japan is intentionally trying to weaken its currency with monetary easing, so his comments on Friday could cause some confusion about Japan's currency policy.
The dollar fell 1.3 percent on the day to 92.29 yen. The dollar hit an almost 3-year high of 94.075 yen earlier in the week on expectations the Bank of Japan will pursue aggressive monetary easing to shore up the economy.
Abe, while campaigning for an election last year, repeatedly said his economic policy had three arrows: monetary policy easing, fiscal spending and structural reforms to increase competitiveness.
Abe, since taking office in December, has put the central bank under relentless pressure to do more to lift the economy and made it clear he wants someone in the job who will be bolder than the outgoing BOJ chief in loosening monetary policy.
Current BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa will leave his post on March 19.
Last month,the BOJ signed a joint statement with the government adopting a new 2 percent inflation target as a sign of its commitment to fighting deflation. It also announced a shift to "open-ended" asset buying.
Officials from the Group of 20 economic powers say that although top economic policymakers are likely to discuss how Japan's new monetary stance is weakening the yen when they meet next month, they will stop short of calling it a competitive devaluation.


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Added some new Add On Instructions under the RSLogix 5000 section. Also available for custom Add On Instruction development for manufacturing facilities and OEMs.
A very important topic these days. The US Governmental has a Control Systems Security Program that posts vulnerabilities to software and hardware typically used in industrial automation. These usually include general descriptions of the security issue and links to the vendor for more detailed information on how to implement workarounds of patches for the problem.
Very good website.
Then for people in the utilities industry the DOE also has some specific information for your industry.
Have started some general information posts on different topics. These typically include general solutions to common issues across several industries Odesta is involved in. The technologies involved include (at this point); VMWare, SQL Server and I/Gear. Check the posts out under the General Information section. Hope you find something useful.
If you have any questions or comments you are welcome to contact us at firstname.lastname@example.com
The requirements and capabilities of safety systems have drastically changed over the past several years. This has come to the forefront of several projects the past couple of years. The new programmable safety systems offer much better functional safety than in the past, better capabilities to integrate with existing or new control systems, lower wiring requirements, complete diagnostics and can increase the uptime of your equipment in complex systems.
Below is a simple look at the different systems for programming a simple E-Stop with manual reset and dual monitored output contacts.
In case you have not been keeping up with the security issues with HMI, SCADA and DCS systems over the past year and a half with the issue with the STUXNET worm that attacked Seimens systems. Here are a couple of links to look at that has some good information papers and potential solutions to the security issues.
Tofino is a dedicated security appliance that has specific filters for typical industrial communications (OPC, Modbus TCP , etc) and they have some good general information. http://www.tofinosecurity.com/
SCADAhacker is a general blog dedicated to SCADA security issues and of course the author is available for training and consulting. http://scadahacker.com/index.html
Of course some basic help from internal IT departments can help quite a bit by implementing VLANs and VPN access to your control networks.
Check out this very cost effective network time server that uses GPS from NetBurner. You will also need to purchase the external antenna. See this link for details.
Found a great open source version of a Network Time server (NTP - Network Time Protocol). A customer used this to set the time on his Cognex cameras so that if there was a power cycle the cameras would still report the correct date and time through the Cognex Software. The Cognex cameras use the simpler form, SNTP (Simple Network Time Protocol) and this works great as a basic time server.
You can find it here http://www.meinberg.de/english/sw/ntp.htm
Of course they also have some high end hardware based solutions for network time servers that use GPS or other precision time sources.
Web Based Report of Equipment Process Data
Data can be exported to PDF, Excel or Word. With the full version of SQL Server scheduled reports can be run and emailed to required personnel based on default report parameters. Reports can also include drill down data as shown with the data summarized by a daily average.
This makes your process data easily accessible to your engineers with a basic web browser. Yet they still have the option of importing the data into Excel for additional analysis.
Report Designer
The report designer is included with the web based reporting system for installation on multiple customer machines. The reporting tool is comparable to many that are used by IT departments (Crystal Reports, MS Access, etc). Since the data is in SQL Server, it is also possible to create queries / reports from within Excel if that is more familiar.
Looking at moving to a total opensource solution in the Investment Casting Shell Management System for the reporting and the database storage by moving to MySQL and JasperReports. To check out the opensource project view these links:
This seems to be the best way to provide the most cost effective solution that has the most active online communities for end user support beyond what Odesta is able to provide. Our goal still remains to provide a solution that the customer can extend on their own if they want to.
Check out the latest version of SQL Server Express 2008 R2. Microsoft has bumped up the database size limit for the free version from 4GB to 10GB. Now quite a few of the applications for historical logging that used to require the full version of SQL Server can use the Express Version.
- Investment Casting Shell Management System
Completing work on a shell management system for the Investment Casting industry that has a few different ideas than other systems you may have seen in the past.
For a more technical description of features look on this PAGE.
If you are unfamiliar with this term then let's describe what a Shell Management System consists of:
Contact us today if you would be interested in upgrading from your existing shell management system to one with unlimited possibilities. Call us if you would like to see a demonstration of the system,