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2019 MLK Day of Service
We are always open on MLK Day.
All Volunteers must register. We have a morning "shift", 9-noon and an afternoon "shift", 1-4pm.
Resources for Educators
Children's March Teacher's Guide
General Service Learning Curriculum
Education and economic empowerment lesson
Birmingham – May 1963
VIDEO: From Teaching Tolerance – A project of the Southern Poverty Law Center


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Historical Living at Its Finest!
528 N. New Street
Bethlehem, PA 18018
Newly renovated historical building in trendy, downtown Bethlehem. The Dodson Building offers spacious apartment homes in the heart of historic Bethlehem.
Learn More About This Property
Listing Details
Floor Plans:
What's Available:
Call for availability
Resident Pays: Electric, Phone, Cable
Landlord Pays: Water, Sewer, Trash
Utilities, Schools, Area Activities:
- PPL Electric Utilities
- Service Electric Cable TV
- RCN Cable TV
- Bethlehem School District
- Lehigh University
- Moravian College
- Lanta Bus
- City of Bethlehem
- Visit PA
- Sands Casino
- Musikfest
- Christkindlmarkt
- Celtic Classic Highland Games and Festival
- The Banana Factory
- new wall-to-wall carpeting and hardwood flooring
- huge closets
- central air conditioning
- laundry
- off-street parking available
- convenient location
- storage units available
- granite countertops
- new appliances

subset: commoncrawl


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Make your own versions of classic stories, or combine them to create entirely new universes. Plotagon comes with 5 big city characters and 6 urban environments that let you get started quickly. But you can easily get more characters and environments in our store.
Presentation Next enables you to create lifelike, jaw dropping presentations, data visualizations and drawings that are identically viewable by your Windows, iPad, Android, Linux, and Mac friends. It is easily the world's most fun, yet professional HTML5 presentation maker. It is the world's most advanced HTML5 presentation builder now available at an unbelievable price.
Create videos together! Record, edit and publish videos right from your mobile device, then collaborate and remix videos uploaded by the MixBit community.
Perspective is a platform for exploring, creating, and sharing audiovisual stories. Today's storytelling involves a mishmash of apps, websites, blog tools, and technologies. Perspective simplifies all this by combining the essential elements of storytelling into a single iPad App.
"Winner at SXSWi 2012 BestEducational Resource" SXSWi is the most distinguished new technology and start-up event in the world with over 25,000 participants from 72 countries.- The SXSW Interactive Awards "AASL Best Website forTeaching and Learning 2012" The Best Websites for Teaching and Learning Award honors websites, tools, and resources of exceptional value to inquiry-based teaching and learning as embodied in the AASL's Standards for the 21st-Century Learner.
Better slides, faster
Betterific is your digital suggestion box.
Design shouldn't be hard but somewhere along the way we became bogged down with expensive, complicated software that put design out of reach for most people. Canva is here to change that, with a tool that makes design simple for everyone.
Build a custom website in less than a minute. Stays up to date automatically and includes a free domain name and email address!
Haiku Deck is a completely new kind of presentation software -- it's simple, beautiful, and fun.
Free social and collaborative online mind mapping software. Mind mapping can be free, fast and simple. Features import/export, mind map publishing and live collaboration.
Dropmark® allows you to drop files right from your computer, or the web, to create organized collections-bringing together information like never before.
Exposure enables photographers to easily tell vibrant stories with their photos. Assemble a more complete narrative than you could with a feed or lonely photo on a permalink page.
Pixiclip's web-based whiteboard makes it easy to create and share sketches online
Free digital magazine creation platform. Add images, photos, videos, animations and audio. Customize and publish for desktop and mobile devices.
A toolbox for modern educators. Create Learning Maps, Micro lectures, Quizzes or train with Online Courses, all that with Edynco educational software.
Creating digital learning content has never been easier. In these pages you'll find eleven tools that make it fun to bring together different types of digital media - text, images, audio, video - to "mash up" your own online learning materials. Most of these applications are free and not too challenging to learn.
Voir toutes les présentations de Eric Leist.


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Home › Forums › User Role Editor Pro › License deactivating mysteriously › Reply To: License deactivating mysteriously
Hi Jim,
There are only three reasons why it would deactivate.
1. Deactivated from Go Pro page.
2. Deactivated from wpfront.com purchase history.
3. Site home URL changed.
Is there any chance that one of these would have happened? How many times did this happen? Did you check your purchase history before activating again to see whether that site exists within the list?
I understand that how this will be an issue from a security stand point. I'll add email notification with grace period and audit trails in next version so that you will be notified on accidental deactivation with enough time to reactivate. Nothing changed in v2.10 on licensing functions, so I doubt it.


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Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. Naval intelligence analyst whose conviction of spying for Israel stoked fierce international passions, has been granted parole and will be released from prison in November after nearly 30 years.
The decision to free Pollard from his life sentence, announced Tuesday by his lawyers and then confirmed by the Justice Department, caps an extraordinary espionage case after decades of legal and diplomatic wrangling. Critics have condemned the American as a traitor who betrayed his country for money and disclosed damaging secrets, while supporters have argued that he was punished excessively given that he spied for a U.S. ally.Full Story
The White House is in the "final stages" of a plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday.
President Barack Obama made the closure of the controversial offshore prison a priority when he took office in 2009, but the plan has faced numerous setbacks, including Congress blocking the transfer of detainees to U.S. prisons.Full Story
The White House launched a new Twitter account Tuesday to defend the Iran nuclear deal, as U.S. lawmakers prepared to debate the long-negotiated agreement.
In its inaugural tweet, @TheIranDeal linked to a resource page about the agreement between Iran and world powers to curb its nuclear program.Full Story
President Barack Obama spoke by phone Wednesday with Vladimir Putin, thanking his Russian counterpart for his role in reaching a deal on Iran's nuclear program.
U.S. ties with Russia have been strained to breaking point over the war in Ukraine, but Russia was an "important" part of the group of nations that negotiated the deal with Tehran.Full Story
U.S. President Barack Obama and Saudi Arabia's King Salman on Tuesday discussed the "urgent" need to end fighting in Yemen, hours after Saudi-backed loyalists retook control of Aden airport.
After discussion about a recently inked nuclear deal with Iran, the White House said Obama and Salman "also spoke about the urgency of stopping the fighting in Yemen and the importance of ensuring that assistance can reach Yemenis on all sides of the conflict."Full Story
U.S. President Barack Obama and the leader of Vietnam's Communist Party on Tuesday held what both called "candid" discussions on human rights during a historic White House meeting as the onetime enemies seek to bolster ties.
Nguyen Phu Trong is the first general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party to visit the United States and the White House, and was given the rare honor of an Oval Office welcome, usually reserved for heads of state and government.Full Story
The White House urged Greece and EU leaders Monday to find a compromise to keep the cash-strapped country in the eurozone, after Greeks voted resoundingly to reject an austerity-based bailout.
"The referendum is over, but our view here at the White House remains the same," said spokesman Josh Earnest.Full Story
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist and 2016 candidate for president, has applauded Greece's rejection of a bailout referendum at the height of the country's standoff with European Union creditors.
"I applaud the people of Greece for saying 'No' to more austerity for the poor, the children, the sick and the elderly," Sanders said in a statement late Sunday.Full Story
The head of Vietnam's Communist Party will make a first-ever visit to the White House next week, meeting President Barack Obama on the 40th anniversary of the end of the war between the two nations.
The landmark trip underscores strengthening ties between the former wartime enemies amid regional maritime tensions involving China.Full Story
Hillary Clinton announced Wednesday she raised a record $45 million in the first quarter of her U..S presidential bid, putting the Democratic frontrunner in prime financial position in the opening months of her 2016 campaign.
"Here's what we know: In the first quarter of this campaign, supporters gave more than $45 million," Clinton wrote in a tweet.Full Story


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Home > Products > Home Heater > Gas Heater > APG Ocarina lpg gas Cooker Gas Heater
|Payment Type:
|Min. Order:
|2000 Piece/Pieces
|Delivery Time:
|40 Days
Basic Info
Model No.: APG-3000D
Material: Steel
Tip-over Switch: Yes
Additional Info
Packaging: 4 gift box/ctn
Productivity: 3000 pcs/day
Brand: APG or OEM
Transportation: Ocean,Air
Place of Origin: Ningbo, Zhejiang ,China
Supply Ability: 3000pcs/day
Certificate: SASO,CE,GS
Port: NINGBO
Product Description
Gas Heater &cooker with two functions
1Fast heating
2Energy and money saving
3Heath physiotherapy
4Safe and long life expectancy
5highquality motor
|Packaging Detail:
|1.Packing: 1pcs/Gift box 2.Gift box size :57.2*18.2*45.7cm 3.Quantity per container: 20'GP(pcs):640 40'GP(pcs):1280 40'HQ(pcs):1480 4.MIn order:1480 pcs
|Delivery Detail:
|30 days after deposit
APG advantages:
A.60 units metal stamping machines from 80tons to 5tons.
B. lower managing cost makes more lower price.
C. more than 100 products patents achieved.
D.18 years manufacturing history since 1994.
E. daily production capacity 5000pcs.
A new generation patent gas heater brings you a new different feelings. Multi -fumction heater makes you life more easier, more at ease and more happier. It has the following unique features
Unique features:
1 new FIX technology adopted to avoid heating wire loosing, effectively prolong product's life and makes it durable.
2 high-tech AT PTC adopted in furnace core, Compresion resistant, quench heat resistant, no crack, no weathering.
3 360° heat radiation, heating and cooking 2 in 1, whole unit life more than 10 years.
4 moderately dry your room, purifying the environment, effectively inhibit the growth of bacteria.
5 steel body, all steel thickness more than 0.6mm, sturdy and durable.
6 exquisite outline, easy handhold design, portable anywhere at your disposal.
7 bottom tip-over switch design, auto power off, 360° safety guard for your family.
8 steel surface treatment by ECO electroplating technique to avoid steel rust.
9 3m x 1mm2 ECO pure copper power cord, more safety.
10 2 heating power selection:1000w/2000w/off
11 unbreakable, shock-resistant, sturdy, durable package to ensure product transit safety
Product Categories : Home Heater > Gas Heater
Hot Products
Send Inquiry
Mr. Bank Wu
Mobile Phone:+8613023795398
Address:DongQiao industrial Zone,YinZhou District, Ningbo, Zhejiang
Related Products List
Mobile Site


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Day Charters
Private Day Charters
Join Fraser Island Boat Charters for a skippered, private yacht charter in the waters between Hervey Bay and Fraser Island. Our day charters are perfect for birthday parties, business functions, hens/bucks celebrations, a private experience for couples or just a fun day out with mates.
We offer both catered and BYO food and drink options and can take a maximum of 32 people for both half day and full day sailing charters.
Some of the locations we can travel to during our day charters include Round Island, Big Woody Island Lighthouse, Pelican Bank and views of Fraser Island.
Want to have some extended time out on the water? Check out our multi day skippered options.


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Face First Makeup Brush Guide
A good makeup bag begins with a good set of tools. And when it comes to cosmetics tools, brushes are on the top of our 'must-have' list.
Here we explain which brushes should be used for what and how to keep your brushes in tip-top shape so you get the most out of them.
For Compact Powder Application
The Powder brush should be fluffy as a brush with densely packed, stiff bristles used on a powder compact will lead to uneven application.
To use, swirl your powder brush over your compact then tap the excess powder back into to brush rather than off. Use the brush to apply your powder as needed.
TIP: Don't be tempted to use the same powder brush for foundation powder, blush and bronzer or you might end up looking a too bronzed or, even worse, red in the face.
The ELES Soultion: Our tapered powder brush is a plush, fluffy brush perfect for powder application.
For Loose Powder
The Kabuki Brush features tightly packed bristles and are perfect for loose powder. They allow you to buffer your powder.
To use, pick up loose powder with the brush and tap excess powder back into the bristles. Apply in circular motion and build as necessary.
The ELES Solution: Try our Mini Kabuki Brush. It's the perfect size to fit into your makeup bag.
Liquid Foundation
If you use a liquid foundation and you're not satisfied with using fingers or sponges, the foundation brush is for you. Brush application makes for the most flawless medium-coverage finish.
The ELES Solution: Our Foundation Brush features bristles made from taklon – a synthetic fiber ideally suited to the application of cream based products.
The blush brush is slimmer than a powder brush and generally has a dome shape. When using the blush brush, tap excess blush off the brush, not back into the bristles. Otherwise you run the risk of over-the-top red cheeks. Try an angled blush brush for perfect contouring.
The ELES Solution: Our Angled Blush Brush is perfect for applying blush that chisels your cheeks.
How to Clean Your Brushes:
Once a month to once every six weeks you should take the time to clean all your make-up brushes. You can do this using a brush cleaner and warm water or you can try baby shampoo.
Rinse with water and apply a little cleaner to your brush then turn it in a circular motion on the palm of your hand. Continue until the water runs clean then towel dry before leaving the brushes out overnight to dry completely.
All ELES brushes are designed by leading makeup artists and feature bristles made from plush natural hair. Check out the full collection here.


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Mount Washington is just south of Louisville. Not too far from JC's end of town. The land lines took a pretty good hit up here. When the electric companies trim the trees (during the non stormy seasons) away from their lines which are on the tops of the poles they do not trim them low enough to protect the phone lines which are on the bottom of the poles. Unfortuneatly their "rights war" is bad for all of us. The numbers that came out yesterday was that during the storm there was 730,000 customers without power just here in Kentucky alone. And it still up there around 200,000 now. I am sure that number is a lot higher for the phone service customers. It was 0 degrees here last night but its supposed to be in the 50s all weekend and that will help the clean up crews a lot.
I am sure JC (Eagle) will chime in here and give you a better account of how bad it is in his neck of the woods.
Louisville local news is WAVE 3 so you could google it and check out the conditions up there.
Keep trying and you will eventually get through.
............Kentucky Steve ................


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Pharma Stocks Based on Predictive Analytics: Returns up to 80.56% in 3 Months
Pharma Stocks
This stock forecast is designed for investors and analysts who need predictions of the best stocks for the whole Pharmaceutical sector (see Pharma Stocks Package). It includes 20 stocks with bullish and bearish signals and indicates the best pharmaceutical stocks to trade:
- Top 10 Pharmaceutical stocks for the long position
- Top 10 Pharmaceutical stocks for the short position
Package Name: Pharma Stocks Forecast
Recommended Positions: Long
Forecast Length: 3 Months (9/11/2019 – 12/11/2019)
I Know First Average: 24.0%
Several predictions in this 3 Months forecast saw significant returns. The algorithm had correctly predicted 8 out 10 stock movements. The greatest return came from MDCO at 80.56%. CTIC and ALNY followed with returns of 61.33% and 40.96% for the 3 Months period. The package itself saw an overall return of 24.0%, providing investors with a 18.55% premium above the S&P 500's return of 5.45% for the same time period.
The Medicines Company provides medicines for patients in acute and intensive care hospitals worldwide. The company markets Angiomax, an intravenous direct thrombin inhibitor used as an anticoagulant in combination with aspirin in patients with unstable angina undergoing percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty, and for patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention;
Algorithmic traders utilize these daily forecasts by the I Know First market prediction system as a tool to enhance portfolio performance, verify their own analysis and act on market opportunities faster. This forecast was sent to current I Know First subscribers.
How to interpret this diagram
Algorithmic Stock Forecast: The table on the left is a stock forecast produced by I Know First's algorithm. Each day, subscribers receive forecasts for six different time horizons. Note that the top 10 stocks in the 1-month forecast may be different than those in the 1-year forecast. In the included table, only the relevant stocks have been included. The boxes are arranged according to their respective signal and predictability values (see below for detailed definitions). A green box represents a positive forecast, suggesting a long position, while a red represents a negative forecast, suggesting a short position.
Please note-for trading decisions use the most recent forecast. Get today's forecast and Top stock picks.


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Nirnimesh Kumar
Assistant Professor
Civil & Environmental Engineering
- email@example.com
- (206) 221-3861
Nirnimesh (Nirni) Kumar is a coastal physical oceanographer with research interests in wind, wave, buoyancy and tidal forcing driven circulation from the outer-shelf to the surf zone. He uses a combination of in-situ observations and numerical ocean-models to study these processes. His primary focus is on development and application of coupled ocean circulation and wave-propagation models to study nearshore circulation and sediment transport. In addition, he extensively works with field observations from variety of acoustic, conductivity and temperature sensors, and HF Radars.
Nirni's present research focus is on multiple themes like: (I) quantification of surface wave driven tracer exchange (pollutants/contaminants/ sediment/heat) mechanisms from the surf zone to the outer-shelf, (II) use of field measurements and regional numerical model simulations to identify the role of internal waves in modifying inner-shelf stratification and cross-shelf exchange; and (III) continued development of wave-averaged circulation and wave-resolving numerical models for nearshore applications. He has been involved in multiple multi-institutional projects like the Office of Naval Research funded inner-shelf DRI focused at Point Sal, California, and the National Science Foundation funded CSIDE experiment studying circulation in the San Diego Bight region. Nirni joined the Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty at the University of Washington in Fall 2016.
- Ph.D. in Marine Science, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 2013
- M.S. in Geological Sciences, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 2010
- B.S. in Ocean Engineering and Naval Architecture, Ocean Engineering and Naval Architecture, 2007
Previous appointments
- Postdoctoral Scholar, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 2013-2016
Making waves with Arctic research
Information about the role that waves play in the changing Arctic's coastline is rolling in after UW CEE researchers...
Alaska research cruise explores Arctic
A UW research team including CEE faculty Jim Thomson and Nirnimesh Kumar departs aboard a research vessel from...
NSF funds wave-ice-ocean research
With Arctic coastlines quickly eroding, CEE faculty researchers have received $1 million from NSF's Office of Polar...


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Project Censored's Top 10 Censored Stories
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
Illustrations by Anson Stevens-Bollen, Santa Fe Reporter
Fake news is not a new thing. With the return of its annual list of censored stories in Censored 2019: Fighting the Fake News Invasion, Project Censored's vivid cover art recalls H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.
The situation today may feel as desolate as the cover art suggests.
"But Censored 2019 is a book about fighting fake news," editors Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff observed in the book's introduction.
In the end, they argued that "critical media education — rather than censorship, blacklists, privatized fact-checkers, or legislative bans — is the best weapon for fighting the ongoing fake news invasion."
Project Censored's annual list of 25 censored stories, which makes up the books lengthy first chapter, is one of the best resources one can have for such education.
Censorship and fake news are "intertwined issues" they write.
Project Censored has long been engaged in much more than just uncovering and
publicizing stories kept down and out of the corporate media. Over the years its added new analytical categories: sensationalist and titillating Junk Food News stories.
Through it all, the list of censored stories remains central to Project Censored's mission, which, the editors point out, can be read in two different ways, "as a critique of the shortcomings of U.S. corporate news media for their failure to adequately cover these stories, or as a celebration of independent news media, without which we would remain either uninformed or misinformed about these crucial stories and issues."
The cover art theme works at two levels, as the editors explain, which makes things more complex than might appear at first glance. First, the famous Orson Wells radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds on Oct. 30, 1938, used a number of dramatic devices to present the drama as though it were an actual crisis in progress. It became an example of the potential power of fake news in the radio media era.
"The broadcast became legendary for allegedly leading to widespread panic throughout the United States," the editors of Project Censored noted.
That narrative about widespread panic is actually a more long-term form of fake news, as Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Socolow have documented in a series of articles over the past decade. Both the audience size and degree of panic have been significantly inflated, they explained. They cited two main factors: newspaper editors, who saw radio as challenging their media dominance, and an influential media study, whose topline conclusions were at odds with some of its data.
Global Decline in Rule of Law as Basic Human Rights Diminish
The World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2017-2018, released in January 2018, a striking worldwide decline in basic human rights has driven an overall decline in the rule of law since, October 2016, the month before Trump's election. Fundamental rights — one of eight categories measured — declined in 71 out of 113 nations surveyed. Overall, 34 percent of countries' scores declined, while just 29 percent improved. The United States ranked 19th, down one from 2016, with declines in checks on government powers and deepening discrimination.
Fundamental rights include absence of discrimination, right to life and security, due process, freedom of expression and religion, right to privacy, freedom of association and labor rights.
"All signs point to a crisis not just for human rights, but for the human rights movement," Yale professor of history and law Samuel Moyn told The Guardian the day the index was released. "Within many nations, these fundamental rights are falling prey to the backlash against a globalising economy in which the rich are winning. But human rights movements have not historically set out to name or shame inequality."
This reflects the thesis of Moyn's most recent book, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World.
Constraints on government powers, which measures the extent to which those who govern are bound by law, saw the second greatest declines (64 countries out of 113 dropped). This is where the United States saw the greatest deterioration, World Justice Project stated in a press release. The United States also scored notably poorly on several measurements of discrimination.
"With scores of .50 for equal treatment and absence of discrimination (on a scale of 0 to 1), .48 for discrimination in the civil justice system, and .37 for discrimination in the criminal justice system, the U.S. finds itself ranked 78 out of 113 countries on all three subfactors," World Justice Project stated.
The four Nordic countries — Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden — remained in the top four positions. New Zealand, Canada and Australia were the only top 10 countries outside of Europe.
"The WJP's 2017–2018 Rule of Law Index received scant attention from U.S. corporate media," Project Censored noted.
The only coverage they found was a Newsweek article drawing on The Guardian's coverage. This pattern of ignoring international comparisons, across all subject matter, is pervasive in the corporate media. It severely cripples our capacity for objective self-reflection and self-improvement as a nation.
"Open-Source" Intelligence Secrets Sold to Highest Bidders
In March 2017, WikiLeaks released Vault 7, a trove of 8,761 leaked confidential CIA files about its global hacking programs, which WikiLeaks described as the "largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency." It drew significant media attention. But almost no one noticed what George Eliason of OpEdNews pointed out.
"Sure, the CIA has all these tools available," Eliason pointed out. "Yes, they are used on the public. The important part is [that] it's not the CIA that's using them. That's the part that needs to frighten you."
As Eliason went on to explain, the CIA's mission prevents it from using the tools, especially on Americans.
"All the tools are unclassified, open-source, and can be used by anyone," Eliason explained. "It makes them not exactly usable for secret agent work. That's what makes it impossible for them to use Vault 7 tools directly."
Drawing heavily on more than a decade of reporting by Tim Shorrock for Mother Jones and The Nation, Eliason's OpEdNews series reported on the explosive growth of private contractors in the intelligence community, which allows the CIA and other agencies to gain access to intelligence gathered by methods they're prohibited from using.
In a 2016, report for The Nation, Shorrock estimated that 80 percent of an estimated 58,000 private intelligence contractors worked for the five largest companies. He concluded that "not only has intelligence been privatized to an unimaginable degree, but an unprecedented consolidation of corporate power inside U.S. intelligence has left the country dangerously dependent on a handful of companies for its spying and surveillance needs."
Eliason reported how private contractors pioneered open-source intelligence by circulating or selling the information they gathered before the agency employing them had reviewed and classified it, therefore, "no one broke any laws." As a result, according to Eliason's second article, "People with no security clearances and radical political agendas have state sized cyber tools at their disposal, [which they can use] for their own political agendas, private business, and personal vendettas."
Corporate media reporting on Vault 7 sometimes noted, but failed to focus on dangerous role of private contractors, Project Censored pointed out. This came with the notable exception of a The Washington Post op-ed in which Shorrock reviewed his previous reporting and concluded that overreliance on private intelligence contractors was "a liability built into our system that intelligence officials have long known about and done nothing to correct."
World's Richest One Percent Continue to Become Wealthier
In November 2017, Credit Suisse released its 8th Annual Global Wealth Report which The Guardian reported on under the headline, Richest 1 Percent Own Half the World's Wealth, study finds.
The wealth share of the world's richest people increased "from 42.5 percent at the height of the 2008 financial crisis to 50.1 percent in 2017, or $140tn (£106tn)," The Guardian reported, adding that "The biggest losers … are young people who should not expect to become as rich as their parents."
"No other part of the wealth pyramid has been transformed as much since 2000 as the millionaire and ultra-high net worth individual (known as UHNWI) segments," the report said. "The number of millionaires has increased by 170 percent, while the number of UHNWIs (individuals with net worth of USD 50 million or more) has risen five-fold, making them by far the fastest-growing group of wealth holders."
There were of 2.3 million new dollar millionaires this year, taking the total to 36 million.
"At the other end of the spectrum, the world's 3.5 billion poorest adults each have assets of less than $10,000," The Guardian reported. "Collectively these people, who account for 70 percent of the world's working age population, account for just 2.7 percent of global wealth."
"Tremendous concentration of wealth and the extreme poverty that results from it are problems that affect everyone in the world, but wealth inequalities do not receive nearly as much attention as they should in the establishment press," Project Censored noted. "The few corporate news reports that have addressed this issue — including an August 2017 Bloomberg article and a July 2016 report for CBS's MoneyWatch — focused exclusively on wealth inequality within the United States. As Project Censored has previously reported, corporate news consistently covers the world's billionaires while ignoring millions of humans who live in poverty."
How Big Wireless Convinced Us Cell Phones and Wi-Fi are Safe
Cell phones and other wireless devices may not be as safe as we've been led to believe. In a March 2018 investigation on decades of buried research, for [The Nation], Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie reported "the wireless industry not only made the same moral choices that the tobacco and fossil-fuel industries did, it also borrowed from the same public relations playbook those industries pioneered."
"Like their tobacco and fossil-fuel brethren, wireless executives have chosen not to publicize what their own scientists have said about the risks of their products…. On the contrary, the industry — in America, Europe, and Asia — has spent untold millions of dollars in the past 25 years proclaiming that science is on its side, that the critics are quack, and that consumers have nothing to fear."
Their report comes at the same time as several new developments are bringing the issue to the fore, including a Kaiser Permanente study (published December 2017 in Scientific Reports) finding much higher risks of miscarriage, a study in the October 2017 American Journal of Epidemiology, finding increased risk for glioma (a type of brain tumor), and a disclosure by the National Frequency Agency of France that nine out of ten cell phones exceed government radiation safety limits when tested in the way they are actually used, next to the human body.
As the The Nation reported, George Carlo was a scientist hired by the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association in 1993 to research cell-phone safety and allay public fears, heading up the industry-financed Wireless Technology Research project. But he was unceremoniously fired and publicly attacked by the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association in 1999, after uncovering disturbing evidence of danger:
Carlo urged the CEOs to do the right thing and give consumers the information they need to make an informed judgment about how much of this unknown risk they wish to assume, especially since some in the industry had repeatedly and falsely claimed that wireless phones are safe for all consumers "including children."
"The wireless industry has 'war-gamed' science by playing offense as well as defense, actively sponsoring studies that result in published findings supportive of the industry, while aiming to discredit competing research that raises questions about the safety of cellular devices and other wireless technologies," Project Censored summarized. "When studies have linked wireless radiation to cancer or genetic damage, industry spokespeople have pointed out that the findings are disputed by other researchers."
While some local media have covered the findings of a few selected studies, Project Censored noted, "the norm for corporate media is to report the telecom industry line — that is, that evidence linking Wi-Fi and cell phone radiation to health issues, including cancer and other medical problems, is either inconclusive or disputed."
Washington Post Bans Employees from Using Social Media to Criticize Sponsors
On May 1, 2017, The Washington Post introduced a policy prohibiting its employees from criticizing its advertisers and business partners, and encouraging them to snitch on one another.
"A new social-media policy at The Washington Post prohibits conduct on social media that 'adversely affects the Post's customers, advertisers, subscribers, vendors, suppliers or partners," Andrew Beaujon reported in The Washingtonian the next month. "In such cases, Post management reserves the right to take disciplinary action 'up to and including termination of employment.'" Beaujon also cited "A clause that encourages employees to snitch on one another: 'If you have any reason to believe that an employee may be in violation of the Post's Social Media Policy … you should contact the Post's Human Resources Department.'"
At the time, the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which represents the Post's employees, was protesting the policy and was seeking removal of the controversial parts in a new labor agreement.
A follow-up report by Whitney Webb for MintPress News highlighted the broader possible censorship effects, as prohibiting social media criticism could spill over into reporting as well.
"Among The Washington Post's advertisers are corporate giants like GlaxoSmithKline, Bank of America and Koch Industries," Webb wrote. "With the new policy, social media posts criticizing GlaxoSmithKline's habit of making false and misleading claims about its products, inflating prices and withholding crucial drug safety information from the government will no longer be made by Post employees."
Beyond that, Webb suggested it could protect the CIA, which has $600 million contract with Amazon Web Services. Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, purchased the Post four months after that contract was signed.
"While criticism of the CIA is not technically prohibited by the new policy, former Post reporters have suggested that making such criticisms could endanger one's career," Webb noted.
Jeremy Iggers' 1998 book, Good News, Bad News: Journalism Ethics and the Public Interest. Iggers argued that journalism ethics focused on individual reporters completely missed the larger issue of corporate conflicts whose systemic effects fundamentally undermined journalism's role in a democracy.
Russiagate: Two-Headed Monster of Propaganda and Censorship
Is Russiagate a censored story? This entry seems to reflect a well-intentioned effort to critically examine fake news-related issues within a "censored story" framework. It's important that these issues be raised — which is one reason why I suggested above that Project Censored add "fake news" as a new analytical category to examine annually along with its censored stories list, "junk food news," and "news abuse." What Project Censored calls attention to is important: "Corporate media coverage of Russiagate has created a two-headed monster of propaganda and censorship. By saturating news coverage with a sensationalized narrative, Russiagate has superseded other important, newsworthy stories." As a frustrated journalist with omnivorous interests, I heartily concur — but what's involved is too complex to simply be labelled "propaganda." On the other hand, the censorship of alternative journalistic voices is a classic, well-defined Project Censored story, which suffers from the attempt to fit both together.
In April 2017, Aaron Maté reported for The Intercept on a quantitative study of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show from February 20 to March 31, 2017 which found that "Russia-focused segments accounted for 53 percent of these broadcasts." Maté wrote:
"Maddow's Russia coverage has dwarfed the time devoted to other top issues, including Trump's escalating crackdown on undocumented immigrants (1.3 percent of coverage); Obamacare repeal (3.8 percent); the legal battle over Trump's Muslim ban (5.6 percent), a surge of anti-GOP activism and town halls since Trump took office (5.8 percent), and Trump administration scandals and stumbles (11 percent)."
Well and good. But is this propaganda?
At Truthdig, Norman Solomon wrote:
"As the cable news network most trusted by Democrats as a liberal beacon, MSNBC plays a special role in fueling rage among progressive-minded viewers toward Russia's 'attack on our democracy' that is somehow deemed more sinister and newsworthy than corporate dominance of American politics (including Democrats), racist voter suppression, gerrymandering and many other U.S. electoral defects all put together."
On the other hand, the censorship of alternative journalistic voices is far more clearcut and straightforward.
In a report for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, Robin Andersen examined Russiagate-inspired censorship moves by Twitter, Google and others. A key initial target was Russia Today.
"RT's reporting bears striking similarities to alternative and independent media content, and that is why letting the charges against RT stand unexamined is so dangerous," Andersen noted.
In fact, the government's intelligence report on RT included its reporting on the dangers of fracking as part of its suspect activity. Beyond that, the spill-over suppression was dramatic:
"Yet in the battle against fake news, much of the best, most accurate independent reporting is disappearing from Google searches," Anderson said. "The World Socialist Web Site (8/2/17) reported that Google's new search protocol is restricting access to leading independent, left-wing, progressive, anti-war and democratic rights websites. The estimated declines in traffic generated by Google searches for news sites are striking."
Further, in Rolling Stone Matt Taibbi pointed to much broader stifling of alternative views: "We've jumped straight past debating the efficacy of democracy to just reflexively identifying most anti-establishment sentiment as illegitimate, treasonous and foreign in nature."
"Many people suffer when lies are reported as facts, but it seems that corporate media are the only ones that profit when they reinforce blind hostility—against not only Russia but also legitimate domestic dissent," Project Censored noted.
Regenerative Agriculture as "Next Stage" of Civilization
The world's agricultural and degraded soils have the capacity to recover 50 to 66 percent of the historic carbon loss to the atmosphere, according to a 2004 paper in Science, actually reversing the processes driving global warming. A set of practices known as "regenerative agriculture" could play a major role in accomplishing that, while substantially increasing crop yields as well, according to information compiled and published by Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association in May 2017.
"We can't really solve the climate crisis (and the related soil, environmental, and public health crisis) without simultaneously solving the food and farming crisis," Cummings wrote. "We need to stop putting greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere (by moving to 100 percent renewable energy), but we also need to move away from chemical-intensive, energy-intensive food, factory farming and land use, as soon as possible."
In addition to global warming, there are profound economic and social justice concerns involved.
"Out-of-touch and out-of-control governments of the world now take our tax money and spend $500 billion … a year mainly subsidizing 50 million industrial farmers to do the wrong thing," Cummins wrote. "Meanwhile, 700 million small family farms and herders, comprising the 3 billion people who produce 70 percent of the world's food on just 25 percent of the world's acreage, struggle to make ends meet…. The basic menu for a Regeneration Revolution is to unite the world's 3 billion rural farmers, ranchers and herders with several billion health, environmental and justice-minded consumers to overturn 'business as usual' and embark on a global campaign of cooperation, solidarity and regeneration."
If you've never heard of it before, don't be surprised.
"Regenerative agriculture has received limited attention in the establishment press, highlighted by only two recent, substantive reports in the New York Times Magazine and Salon," Project Censored wrote.
Congress Passes Intrusive Data Sharing Law Under Cover of Spending Bill
On March 21, House Republicans released a 2,232-page omnibus spending bill. It passed both houses and was signed into law in two days. Attached to the spending provisions that made it urgent "must-pass" legislation was the completely unrelated Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act of 2018, also known as the CLOUD Act.
"The CLOUD Act enables the U.S. government to acquire data across international borders regardless of other nations' data privacy laws and without the need for warrants," Project Censored summarized.
It also significantly weakens protections against foreign government actions.
"It was never reviewed or marked up by any committee in either the House or the Senate," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's David Ruiz wrote. "It never received a hearing…. It was robbed of a stand-alone floor vote because Congressional leadership decided, behind closed doors, to attach this unvetted, unrelated data bill to the $1.3 trillion government spending bill." Congressional leadership failed to listen to citizen concerns, Ruiz wrote, with devastating consequences."
"Because of this failure, U.S. and foreign police will have new mechanisms to seize data across the globe. Because of this failure, your private emails, your online chats, your Facebook, Google, Flickr photos, your Snapchat videos, your private lives online, your moments shared digitally between only those you trust, will be open to foreign law enforcement without a warrant and with few restrictions on using and sharing your information, privacy and human rights," concluded Robyn Greene, who reported for Just Security.
"The little corporate news coverage that the CLOUD Act received tended to put a positive spin on it," Project Censored noted. "[A glowing Washington Post op-ed] made no mention of potential risks to the privacy of citizens' personal data, [and a CNET report that] highlighted the liberties that the CLOUD Act would provide corporations by simplifying legal issues concerning overseas servers."
Because of this failure, U.S. laws will be bypassed on U.S. soil. Greene noted that the CLOUD Act negates protections of two interrelated existing laws. It creates an exception to the Stored Communications Act that allows certified foreign governments to request personal data directly from U.S. companies.
"This exception enables those countries to bypass the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty process, which protects human rights by requiring foreign governments to work with the Department of Justice to obtain warrants from U.S. judges before they can access that data for their criminal investigations," Greene explained. "The version of the bill that was included in the omnibus does include some improvements over the earlier version to help to mitigate the risks of bypassing the MLAT process … two changes [that] are important improvements … many of the other changes to the bill are only partial or ineffective fixes to problems privacy advocates, human rights advocates, and even a former high-ranking official at the U.S. State Department have raised…. Several other concerns have been left entirely unaddressed."
"While the bill's sponsors did try to address some of the concerns that have been raised, the improvements are not enough to shift the balance so that the CLOUD Act will be a boon, rather than a threat, to privacy and human rights," Greene concluded.
Indigenous Communities Around World Helping to Win Legal Rights of Nature
In March 2017, the government of New Zealand ended a 140-year dispute with an indigenous Maori tribe by enacting a law that officially recognized the Whanganui River, which the tribe considers their ancestor, as a living entity with rights. The Guardian reported it as "a world-first," although the surrounding Te Urewera National Park had been similarly recognized in a 2014 law, and the U.S. Supreme Court came within one vote of potentially recognizing such a right in the 1972 case Sierra Club v. Morton, expressed in a dissent by Justice William O. Douglas. In addition, the broader idea of 'rights of nature' has been adopted in Ecuador, Bolivia and by some American communities, noted Mihnea Tanasescu, writing for The Conversation.
The tribe's perspective was explained to The Guardian by its lead negotiator, Gerrard Albert.
"We consider the river an ancestor and always have," Albert said. "We have fought to find an approximation in law so that all others can understand that from our perspective treating the river as a living entity is the correct way to approach it, as in indivisible whole, instead of the traditional model for the last 100 years of treating it from a perspective of ownership and management."
But that could be just the beginning. "It is a critical precedent for acknowledging the Rights of Nature in legal systems around the world," Kayla DeVault reported for YES! Magazine. Others are advancing this perspective, DeVault wrote:
"In response to the Standing Rock Sioux battle against the Dakota Access pipeline, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin amended its constitution to include the Rights of Nature. This is the first time a North American tribe has used a Western legal framework to adopt such laws. Some American municipalities have protected their watersheds against fracking by invoking Rights of Nature."
"[If the New Zealand Whanganui River settlement] was able to correct the gap in Western and indigenous paradigms in New Zealand, surely a similar effort to protect the Missouri River could be produced for the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Nations by the American government," DeVault wrote.
The same could be done with a wide range of other environmental justice disputes involving Native American tribes.
Tanasescu described the broader sweep of recent developments in the "rights of nature," noting that significant problems have resulted from the lack of specific guardianship provisions, which are integral to the Whanganui River law.
"By granting natural entities personhood one by one and assigning them specific guardians, over time New Zealand could drastically change an ossified legal system that still sees oceans, mountains and forests primarily as property, guaranteeing nature its day in court," Tanasescu concluded.
"A few corporate media outlets have covered the New Zealand case and subsequent decisions in India," Project Censored noted. "However, these reports have not provided the depth of coverage found in the independent press or addressed how legal decisions in other countries might provide models for the United States."
FBI Racially Profiling "Black Identity Extremists"
At the same time that white supremacists were preparing for the "Unite the Right" demonstration in Charlottesville, which resulted in the murder of Heather Heyer in August 2017. The FBI's counterterrorism division produced an intelligence assessment warning of a very different — though actually non-existent threat: "Black Identity Extremists." The report appeared to be the first time the term had been used to identify a movement, according to Foreign Policy magazine, which broke the story.
"But former government officials and legal experts said no such movement exists, and some expressed concern that the term is part of a politically motivated effort to find an equivalent threat to white supremacists," Foreign Policy reported.
"The use of terms like 'black identity extremists' is part of a long-standing FBI attempt to define a movement where none exists," said former FBI agent Mike German, who now works for the Brennan Center for Justice. "Basically, it's black people who scare them."
"It's classic Hoover-style labeling with little bit of maliciousness and euphemism wrapped up together," said William Maxwell, a Washington University professor working on a book about FBI monitoring of black writers. "The language — black identity extremist — strikes me as weird and really a continuation of the worst of Hoover's past."
"There is a long tradition of the FBI targeting black activists and this is not surprising," Black Lives Matter activist, DeRay McKesson, told Foreign Policy.
A former homeland security official said that carelessly connecting unrelated groups will make it harder for law enforcement to identify real threats. "It's so convoluted — it's compromising officer safety," the former official said.
"The corporate media [has] covered the FBI report on 'black identity extremists' in narrow or misleading ways," Project Censored noted, citing examples from the New York Times, Fox News and NBC News. "Coverage like this both draws focus away from the active white supremacist movement and feeds the hate and fear on which such a movement thrives."
1 Global Decline in Rule of Law as Basic Human Rights Diminish
Will Bordell and Jon Robins, "'A Crisis for Human Rights': New Index Reveals Global Fall in BasicJustice," The Guardian, January 31, 2018.
2 "Open-Source" Intelligence Secrets Sold to Highest Bidders
George Eliason, "The Private Contractors Using Vault 7 Tools for US Gov: Testimony Shows US Intel Needs a Ground-Up Rebuild Part 1," OpEdNews, March 31, 2017.
George Eliason, "How Intel for Hire is Making US Intelligence a Threat to the World Part 2," OpEdNews, February 14, 2018.
3 World's Richest One Percent Continue to Become Wealthier
Rupert Neate, "Richest 1% Own Half the World's Wealth, Study Finds," The Guardian, November 14, 2017.
4 How Big Wireless Convinced Us Cell Phones and Wi-Fi are Safe
Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie, "How Big Wireless Made Us Think that Cell Phones are Safe: A Special Investigation," The Nation, March 29, 2018.
"Phonegate: French Government Data Indicates Cell Phones Expose Consumers to Radiation
Levels Higher Than Manufacturers Claim," Environmental Health Trust, June 2, 2017, updated June 2018.
Marc Arazi, "Cell Phone Radiation Scandal: French Government Data Indicates Cell Phones Expose Consumers to Radiation Levels Higher Than Manufacturers Claim," Dr. Marc Arazi blog, June 3, 2017.
Marc Arazi, "Phonegate: New Legal Proceedings against ANFR and Initial Reaction to the Communiqué of Nicolas Hulot," Dr. Marc Arazi blog, December 2, 2017.
5 Washington Post Bans Employees from Using Social Media to Criticize Sponsors
Andrew Beaujon, "The Washington Post's New Social Media Policy Forbids Disparaging Advertisers," Washingtonian, June 27, 2017.
Josh Delk, "Washington Post Prohibits Social Media Criticism of Advertisers," The Hill, June 28, 2017.
Whitney Webb, "Bezos Bans WaPo Staff from Criticizing Corporate Advertisers on Social Media," MintPress News, July 17, 2017.
6 Russiagate: Two-Headed Monster of Propaganda and Censorship
Aaron Maté, "MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Sees a 'Russia Connection' Lurking Around Every Corner," The Intercept, April 12, 2017.
Norman Solomon, "Is MSNBC Now the Most Dangerous Warmonger Network?" Truthdig, March 1, 2018.
Robin Andersen, "Backlash Against Russian 'Fake News' is Shutting Down Debate for Real," Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), November 29, 2017.
Matt Taibbi, "The New Blacklist," Rolling Stone, March 5, 2018.
7 Regenerative Agriculture as "Next Stage" of Civilization
Ronnie Cummins, "Regeneration: The Next Stage of Organic Food and Farming—and Civilization,"Organic Consumers Association, May 28, 2017.
8 Congress Passes Intrusive Data Sharing Law under Cover of Spending Bill
Robyn Greene, "Somewhat Improved, the CLOUD Act Still Poses a Threat to Privacy and Human Rights," Just Security, March 23, 2018.
David Ruiz, "Responsibility Deflected, the CLOUD Act Passes," Electronic Frontier Foundation,
March 22, 2018.
9 Indigenous Communities around World Helping to Win Legal Rights of Nature
Kayla DeVault, "What Legal Personhood for U.S. Rivers Would Do," YES! Magazine, September 12, 2017.
Eleanor Ainge Roy, "New Zealand River Granted Same Legal Rights as Human Being," The Guardian, March 16, 2017.
Mihnea Tanasescu, "When a River is a Person: From Ecuador to New Zealand, Nature Gets Its Day in Court," The Conversation, June 19, 2017.
10 FBI Racially Profiling "Black Identity Extremists"
Jana Winter and Sharon Weinberger, "The FBI's New U.S. Terrorist Threat: 'Black Identity Extremists,'" Foreign Policy, October 6, 2017.
Hatewatch Staff, "FBI 'Black Identity Extremists' Report Stirs Controversy," Southern Poverty Law Center, October 25, 2017.
Amy Goodman, interview with Christian Picciolini, "Life After Hate: Trump Admin Stops Funding Former Neo-Nazis Who Now Fight White Supremacy," Democracy Now!, August 17, 2017.
Brandon E. Patterson, "Police Spied on New York Black Lives Matter Group, Internal Police Documents Show," Mother Jones, October 19, 2017.
More in RLn
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Dear Tries Comeback
McCain's Funeral was a Ritual Salute to the One Not Invited
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text:
- Year-to-date 2016 Directional[1] revenue in line with Management expectations at US$442 million
- Cidade de Maricá first oil achieved and on hire
- FPSOs Cidade de Saquarema and Turritella on target for mid-year delivery
- Reiterating 2016 Directional[1] revenue and EBITDA guidance of at least US$2.0 billion and around US$750 million, respectively
Bruno Chabas, CEO of SBM Offshore commented:
"I'm pleased to see Lease and Operate cash flows continuing to grow with the delivery of Cidade de Maricá in the first quarter and the expected delivery of FPSOs Cidade de Saquarema and Turritella around mid-year, all contributing to our strong liquidity position. Delivery of these vessels combined with fleet operational reliability and focused cost management remain areas of attention while new business in the offshore deepwater segment is not expected to return to pre-downturn levels."
Financial Highlights
Year-to-date 2016 Directional[1] revenue came in at US$442 million versus US$601 million in the year-ago period. This decrease was entirely driven by lower Turnkey activity levels on remaining projects under construction and low order intake in 2015 and 2016. Directional[1] Turnkey segment revenue was down 55% year-on-year at US$148 million, while Lease and Operate segment revenue increased 7% from the year-ago period to US$293 million. The growth in Lease and Operate revenue is mostly attributable to the first quarter 2016 start-up of FPSO Cidade de Maricá and the fourth quarter 2015 new field start-up under the Thunder Hawk DeepDraft™ Semi Production Handling Agreement in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.
Directional[1] Backlog as of March 31, 2016 stood at US$18.5 billion. The Company added US$55 million in new orders related to FEED and offshore installation contracts. Although SBM Offshore is actively involved in several tenders for FEED studies and final awards, it remains cautious on order intake in view of the continuing downturn in the oil and gas industry.
Proportional net debt as of March 31, 2016 amounted to US$3.1 billion, unchanged compared to the end of December 2015 as investments in new projects are offset by cash generation from the Lease and Operate portfolio and cash received from joint venture partners for the Turritella project.
Gross Directional[1] capital expenditure through the first three months of 2016 amounted to US$63 million, before the deduction of roughly US$78 million of upfront client payments. This reflects the advanced construction progress of the Company's main projects nearing completion in the first half of 2016. These amounts correspond to the SBM Offshore share in SBM Inc. (the Company's construction subsidiary) costs as well as costs directly incurred at the joint venture level, excluding changes in net working capital.
Post period, the Cidade de Maricá joint venture received the US$140 million contractual start-up payment from the client, of which US$78 million is booked against SBM Offshore's Directional[1] capital expenditure on the project.
Project Review
FPSO Cidade de Maricá (Brazil)
On February 16, 2016 SBM Offshore announced that Cidade de Maricá was formally on hire as of February 7, 2016 after achieving first oil and the completion of the 72-hour continuous production test leading to final acceptance.
FPSO Cidade de Saquarema (Brazil)
Construction is ongoing for the finance leased vessel. Cidade de Saquarema is nearing completion of topside commissioning at the joint venture Brasa yard outside of Rio de Janeiro. The charter contract for the vessel includes an initial period of 20 years. Delivery is scheduled for mid-2016.
FPSO Turritella (US Gulf of Mexico)
The vessel is on location in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Start-up of the facility is expected in mid-2016. The charter contract includes an initial period of 10 years with extension options up to a total of 20 years.
Browse FLNG FEED
On March 23, 2016, participants in the Browse Floating Liquified Natural Gas (FLNG) project in Australia decided not to proceed with the development. As a result, SBM Offshore's FEED activites related to the project have ceased.
Deep Panuke (Canada)
The Company's Deep Panuke production facility experienced a malfunctioning of its flarestack on March 20, 2016. The facility is shutdown for repairs which are expected to be completed within a 120 day shutdown allowance, during which time there are no consequences to dayrate income.
Discussions with the Brazilian authorities and Petrobras regarding a settlement agreement are progressing. Timing and size of any potential settlement remain to be confirmed. The Company took a US$245 million provision in the 2015 accounts.
The Company is cooperating with the US Department of Justice in its enquiries following the reopening of its case in January 2016.
Sea Lion FPSO FEED
On January 13, 2016 SBM Offshore announced that Premier Oil plc awarded the Company the Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) contract for an FPSO for Phase 1 of its Sea Lion development in the North Falkland Basin.
Revolving Credit Facility
SBM Offshore, together with its core relationship banks, have agreed to an amendment of its Revolving Credit Facility (RCF), providing headroom improvements to the leverage and interest coverage ratios.
The interest coverage ratio threshold has been lowered from 5.0x to 4.0x from December 31, 2016 through to maturity of the RCF at the end of 2019. The leverage covenant is temporarily being adjusted upwards to 4.25x in December 2016, 4.50x in June 2017 and 4.25x in December 2017 before reverting back to the originally agreed upon level of 3.75x through to maturity of the facility.
The agreed upon amendments, combined with a strong cash position, provide the Company will a larger degree of flexibility given the current industry downturn.
Post-Period Events
On April 6, 2016, the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders voted in favor of the proposed US$0.21 per ordinary share dividend distribution. Dividends were paid in Euros using an exchange rate of 1.1368, which equates to €0.1847 per ordinary share. The cash dividend was paid on May 3, 2016 to all shareholders of record as of April 11, 2016.
FPSO Marlim Sul (Brazil)
Decommissioning activities were completed in April 2016. The vessel received a decommissioning dayrate through the end of the first quarter of 2016. The vessel will be marketed for future conversion opportunities.
Outlook and Guidance
As the downturn persists and client investment decisions continue to be postponed, Management expects immaterial order intake in 2016 and 2017 while maintaining its positive medium to long-term outlook. The Company considers offshore development to be a crucial component of the overall energy mix to meet future demand.
The Company is reiterating its 2016 Directional[1] revenue guidance of at least US$2.0 billion, of which US$0.6-0.7 billion is expected in the Turnkey segment and US$1.3-1.4 billion in the Lease and Operate segment. The Company also reconfirms the 2016 Directional[1] EBITDA guidance of around US$750 million.
Directional[1] capital expenditure guidance for the remaining three finance lease vessels under construction is expected to be approximately US$90 million. Directional[1] capital expenditure excludes changes in net working capital and is presented net of SBM Offshore's share of upfront client payments for FPSOs Cidade de Maricá and Cidade de Saquarema.
Conference Call
SBM Offshore has scheduled a conference call followed by a Q&A session at 09:00 Central European Summer Time on Wednesday, May 11, 2016.
The call will be hosted by Bruno Chabas (CEO), Peter van Rossum (CFO), Philippe Barril (COO) and Erik Lagendijk (CGCO). Interested parties are invited to listen to the call by dialing +31 (0) 800 26 58 619 in the Netherlands, +44 (0) 80 82 37 00 30 in the UK or +1 866 928 7517 in the US and using access ID 44586863#.
A replay will be available shortly after the end of the conference call. Interested parties can listen to the replay by dialing +31 (0) 20 716 84 20 and using access code 671939# until June 11, 2016.
Corporate Profile
SBM Offshore N.V. is a listed holding company that is headquartered in Amsterdam. It holds direct and indirect interests in other companies that collectively with SBM Offshore N.V. form the SBM Offshore group ("the Company").
SBM Offshore provides floating production solutions to the offshore energy industry, over the full product life-cycle. The Company is market leading in leased floating production systems with multiple units currently in operation and has unrivalled operational experience in this field. The Company's main activities are the design, supply, installation, operation and the life extension of Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels. These are either owned and operated by SBM Offshore and leased to its clients or supplied on a turnkey sale basis.
Group companies employ approximately 7,000 people worldwide. Full time company employees totaling 4,900 are spread over five regional centres, eleven operational shore bases and the offshore fleet of vessels. A further 2,100 are working for the joint ventures with several construction yards. Please visit our website at www.sbmoffshore.com.
The companies in which SBM Offshore N.V. directly and indirectly owns investments are separate entities. In this communication "SBM Offshore" is sometimes used for convenience where references are made to SBM Offshore N.V. and its subsidiaries in general, or where no useful purpose is served by identifying the particular company or companies.
The Management Board
Amsterdam, the Netherlands, May 11, 2016
|Financial Calendar
|Half-Year 2016 Earnings – Press Release
|August 10
|Trading Update 3Q 2016 – Press Release
|November 9
|Full-Year 2016 Earnings – Press Release
|February 8
|Annual General Meeting of Shareholders
|April 13
|Trading Update 1Q 2017 – Press Release
|May 10
For further information, please contact:
Investor Relations
Nicolas D. Robert
Head of Investor Relations
|+31 (0) 20 2363 126
|+31 (0) 6 5461 2410
|[email protected]
Media Relations
Vincent Kempkes
Head of Communications
|+31 (0) 20 2363 170
|+31 (0) 6 25 68 71 67
|[email protected]
Some of the statements contained in this release that are not historical facts are statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements based on management's current views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance, or events to differ materially from those in such statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results and performance of the Company's business to differ materially and adversely from the forward-looking statements. Certain such forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "believes", "may", "will", "should", "would be", "expects" or "anticipates" or similar expressions, or the negative thereof, or other variations thereof, or comparable terminology, or by discussions of strategy, plans, or intentions. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in this release as anticipated, believed, or expected. SBM Offshore NV does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update any industry information or forward-looking statements set forth in this release to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.
[1] Directional view is a non-IFRS disclosure, which assumes all lease contracts are classified as operating leases and all vessel joint ventures are proportionally consolidated.


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In a comment to yesterday's entry about my incident in the State Library of Ohio, Hiker White asked about whether a liability waiver might work. Additionally, Beach Bum wondered if a young barefoot woman would have been treated the same way.
I think the answers to those two comments are actually pretty closely related, so I'll address them together.
First, let me talk a bit about liability waivers.
In the case of the library (actually any library in Ohio, and many libraries in other states), they don't mean anything. To explain that, I need to talk about tort law for a bit.
If you are injured on somebody else's premises, the first thing the law asks is what the "duty of care" was that the owner owed to you. For general negligence, that's usually what is called a "duty to exercise ordinary care for the person's safety and protection." But that really depends upon your status. For instance, if you trespass on somebody's property and injure yourself, there is a different duty of care since the owner had no way of knowing you'd be there.
So, there are three levels of status: invitee (also called business invitee), licensee, and trespasser. According to the Ohio Supreme Court: "Invitees are persons who rightfully come upon the premises of another by invitation, express or implied, for some purpose which is beneficial to the owner." (I've added the emphasis.) A licensee "is a person who enters the premises of another by permission or acquiescence, for the entrant's own pleasure or benefit." Finally, a trespasser is one who enters without permission.
If you think about it, a library patron is a licensee, not a business invitee, since there is no financial benefit to the library the way there is for a business. Ohio case law backs this up (and I argued it in my library lawsuits—Souther v. Preble County District Library (Ohio App. Dist.12, 2006), 2006-Ohio-1893). The duty of care owed a licensee, as opposed to that owed an invitee, is to "refrain from willfully and wantonly causing injury."
That goes way beyond negligence. And that means that any lawsuit for an injury would get tossed almost immediately, unless the library did something like deliberately seed the floor with razor blades. It also means that, for a library, any sort of standard liability waiver means nothing. (The only sort of liability waiver that would mean anything would have to say that you are allowing them to be willful and wanton, and you've have to be a real idiot to sign one of those, and they'd have to be real idiots to accept one. Oh, and courts won't enforce such a wanton and willful liability waiver.)
So, bottom line: offering the library a liability waiver is a null act.
What about liability waivers in general, for regular businesses? I don't like them, and I think they hurt barefooting as a whole. Yes, that might allow me individual access, but what they do is reinforce the mistaken belief in the business owner's mind that barefooting is dangerous. And that hurts the cause.
But going barefoot is no more dangerous than all the other ways people get hurt in stores, and those injuries are quite often shoe-related. I even collected a huge list of various injury lawsuits (both barefoot and shod), and high heels are particularly danger. That's here: Footwear (or lack thereof) Injury Cases. Daniel Howell included this list (abbreviated a bit) in Appendix A of his The Barefoot Book.
Based on all those injuries, it would make more sense for a store to require a liability waiver for high heels or flip-flops, but you never see them suggesting one for that. It is only for bare feet. When we acquiesce to a liability waiver for bare feet, we are standing right out there and saying to the store owner: "You're right. Bare feet are so dangerous that I need a special exemption to use your store that way." That's false, and we oughtn't encourage such thinking. I'd rather never return to such a store than present such a waiver (and that's exactly what I do, or I should say, don't do).
Going on to Beach Bum's question, would a younger barefoot woman have gotten away with it?
She might have gotten away with it longer, but I think eventually she would have also been stopped. After all, I've had my library card for a could of years and used the library successfully over that entire time period.
I think the problem is the mythos attached to bare feet. People just know in their heart-of-hearts that bare feet are not allowed. Librarians in particular seemed to have been trained in this, and as we have seen, references to "no bare feet" rules appear in their textbooks.
So, without even thinking about whether such a rule makes the least bit of sense, they just automatically accept such a ban as the way things are and ought to be. It's the mythos. It's the "pattern of basic values and attitudes of a people, characteristically transmitted through myths and the arts," or the "complex of beliefs, values, attitudes, etc., characteristic of a specific group or society." That applies to the perception that women are more "allowed" to go barefoot than men; that applies to the idea that bare feet indoors are inherently unsafe (think about how illogical that is for a moment!) or a health risk, unless it's your own house.
The trouble with a mythos is that it is very hard to knock somebody out of the comfort zone it provides. But that's the battle we barefooters have to deal with so often. Liability waivers reinforce the current mythos, instead of breaking through them.


text:
Just so I'm clear from the get go…..this post is a pep talk. For me. And anyone else who has ever taken their child to a well visit at the pediatrician's office.
The scheduled milestone checkups should be called "scheduled panic attacks for everyone involved". I have never seen my son in such a frenzy as he was this morning. He was basically planking in my arms the entire time while doing the demon scream. Super fun. Here's a little play-by-play of how it went down…….
Phase 1: Things to be accomplished while holding planking/screaming child:
1. Strip child down to just a diaper for weight, height, & head size measurements (aka wrestle a bag of cats).
2. Try to finish filling out clipboard with approx 927 child development questions while holding planking/screaming child. Questions may include…
"Can your child put more than two words together at a time? If so please give an example of each phrase and a definition of each word from the dictionary while you hold a planking/screaming child."
3. Answer an additional 532 questions from the nurse about family history, diseases, current medicines, eating habits, vegetable/fruit/milk intake, sleep patterns, potty training (hahaha) & daily activities while holding planking/screaming child.
4. Wrestle child into "straight-jacket" position so the nurse can do a finger-prick and squeeze out blood and the rest of my sanity into a vile for testing.
5. Force child to leave on bandaid that he is convinced is eating his finger off while he continues planking/screaming in your arms.
6. Wipe blood, tears, snot and despair off yours and child's face while you wait for the doctor to come in……
Phase 2: Doctor enters the room:
Did I mention that I've never actually met the real doctor at this office? You know how it goes. They are always too busy to actually see you, so you end up seeing the Nurse Practitioner or PA or whatever. Well I was in for a treat this time.
I won't go into all the details, but let's just say after a few sentences that went like this…..
"You really should be more consistent."
"Your son clearly isn't ready for that yet"
"You need to work on his words more"
"You're not helping the situation"
……I pretty much felt like a total failure as a parent. Never mind the fact that this doctor knew nothing about me or my son. Never mind that Maddox didn't say A WORD while she interrogated both of us because he was terrified. And so was I. In real life Maddox can say his own name at this point so I'm pretty sure we're "working on his words" enough. It took me a while to work through my thoughts (rage) on this one and I came to a conclusion I think we all need to hear…..
Failure is a dirty word. Don't say it to yourself. Don't say it to others. And don't accept it when someone tries to convince you that you are a failure. My son is a vibrant, healthy, social, happy kid with a fantastic personality (obv i'm biased) and I AM NOT A FAILURE.
And neither are you.
You've got this.
real stories | real life


text:
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text:
Crafting new event gear
The pictures of the new event gear is not coming up is just boxes
1 yorum
I'm so sorry you're having problems seeing the new event gear - have you already sent in a message about this to Customer Service? If not, please do so here: https://hbogamessupport.wbgames.com/hc/en-us/requests/new and we'll see what we can do to help with troubleshooting, looking into the situation further for you.
Thank you so much,
Yorum yazmak için lütfen oturum açın.


text:
"a letter you never wrote"
(Philadelphia, PA, 2/15)
a letter you never wrote
to a person who never
was / could it be
that you're random splintered
pavement squares
and if the manufactured gravel
comes apart can you feel it
in any time period?
give me a color
and I will
paint her imaginary
coffin with it
in time you'll
still abide by
these arbitrary
since then
the poison
has changed
but not the pain
this is no code –
"spontaneous memory"
I am not the one
to tell you how long
I've had to let
the water simmer
even though I've put
the pot
on I don't know
how long it takes
for everything that ever
happened and never happened
which is most significant
who says it would be worse?
and yet that's all meaningless
now what isn't can't
be symbolized
and yet we try
these words are only
morsels of what could be
if only we could properly
listen to our minds
it's like the wind
and it isn't
this book is a vessel
like ourselves
the temperature
is a sign like language
on her shoes lie
rain drops and
my eyes are anchors
no longer tethered
and so they wait
at the bottom
of her heart
but only for a moment
as I see the sky
I can't see the sky
and so we sit
with iron / sideways blushing
you've gotten too good
at saying what you
never mean and
the letters look tangled
yes there are so many
trees around us
that no longer exist
and did you know
we twitch while
shifting thru time
so that our ancestors
wouldn't break their
sturdy bones?
how fragile we are now
and yet we destroy
everything we touch
so says the dirt under our feet
so say sorry to the dirt underneath
your nails
why do we love
the color blue anyway?
amorphous furniture
for the blind
pipes crafted for human
"the mutations within these words"
I'm sure this will be
rewritten the mutations
within these words
when programmers
delete forms
we poets need
is when we will
"humanity within" [first draft]
(Camden, NJ, 2/15)
how do you find hope
for humanity within
just one man seen
from a distance
passing at 60mph
a black man holding the hand
of his son no more than three years old
among the decaying
ruins of a city
how if it was just him alone
would deem him
a criminal of some kind
but no
the child may have been
a figment
of my imagination
I see myself standing there
holding the hand
of an invisible no imaginary
boy my own and I die
"philadelphia psychosis"
the story
of pedophiles descending
upon the working class
of old men following
backpacked children down
neglected sidewalks
"isn't worth"
I don't want to hear my own heart beat
by the time I find a pen
this isn't worth writing
"in 2011"
I sat in a dark room
in the suburbs
w/ the weather channel
on 24 hours a day
spent wasting


text:
Article by George Yiend
No doubt following Tuesday night's defeat at Bristol City, there was an air of frustration from the fans, players and coaching staff.
Other results meant Blues could have taken a strong grip on survival.
However, it wasn't to be.
With teams around us not gaining any points, Blues remain three points clear of third-bottom Barnsley.
The performance was decent again, there's no doubting that. Yes, sloppy goals were conceded but Blues are creating chances and looking threatening which they haven't always managed to do consistently this season.
Had we taken our chances in the last two games, we may have been safe by now.
Facing Wolves earlier in the season, Blues were outclassed. There was a huge gulf in quality and confidence between the two sides and Blues didn't cause Wolves too many problems.
Even though it was only a 1-0, it ought to have been more.
Blues are a very different prospect for Wolves now, however. A win for Wolves on Sunday secures their promotion to Premier League and Blues certainly aren't going to roll over for them.
The confidence around the place, the level of performance and the creativity that is flowing throughout the side will most definitely give Wolves something to think about. Blues are a different side to when they last met. Wolves will know that.
With Barnsley facing Bolton on Saturday, Blues can't possibly be in the relegation zone come Sunday but we could be much closer to it.
However, there is a strange sense of calm heading into this game. Blues have nothing to lose so why not go have a go?
Garry Monk will have the team up for it and an upset isn't beyond the realms of possibility.
Think back to this fixture last season. Somehow, Gianfranco Zola's side pulled a win out of the bag.
Sam Gallagher and Craig Gardner returning to fitness will provide a huge boost to Blues for the run-in.
These remaining four games are by no means easy and results are needed. What a perfect way it would be to do that against your local rivals and delay their promotion party for another week.
A win on Sunday would be huge. Here's hoping.