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Tuesday, 30 June 2015
Chrononauts Review (Mark Millar, Sean Murphy)
Fear Agent, Volume 1: Re-Ignition Review (Rick Remender, Tony Moore)
Set in the pulpy future, Heath Huston is an alien exterminator, the last member of a group calling themselves the "Fear Agents", who gets paid to carry out genocide on "pests" - even though these pests are usually humanoid-like life-forms and makes Heath look like a one-man Nazi brigade! He discovers some evil aliens are planning on blowing up Earth and promptly sets off on a side-quest to fight some robot with a brain in a jar.
Three Twisted Stories by Karin Slaughter Review
I had Karin Slaughter pegged as one of those novelists who writes police procedurals with extremely detailed autopsy scenes that are inexplicably popular (Patricia Cornwell, Mo Hayder, that sort of thing). That's why I stayed away from her writing but on a whim decided to give her a shot with this collection of three short stories. I'm so glad I did because I was blown away! She is nothing like that (at least going by these stories)!
Batman & Robin, Volume 6: The Hunt for Robin Review (Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason)
Batman's given up his grief-driven quest to resurrect Damian and finally laid him and Damian's mother, Talia, to rest. But crazy old Ra's Al-Ghul has dug up their corpses and plans to bring them back to life himself! Ooo, Batman's so mad! He's gotta get Damian's corpse back from the demented bastard before that happens – but wait, even wackier hi-jinks ensue once visitors from another world arrive! What's a Dark Knight to do, eh?
Monday, 29 June 2015
Caliban Review (Garth Ennis, Facundo Percio)
Seen Alien? You've already read Caliban then!
The mining exploration vessel, Caliban, becomes fused with an alien ship while in warp space. The surviving crew begin exploring the alien ship's dark, empty corridors and discover something on board is picking them off one by one...
Sunday, 28 June 2015
Cunning Plans by Warren Ellis Review
Cunning Plans is a short collection of talks Warren Ellis gave between 2011 and 2015 at various conferences around the world.
Ellis is best known as a comics writer whose work includes Transmetropolitan, Planetary, The Authority, Freakangels, and numerous books at Marvel and DC. A lot of his best work concerns futurism, history and technology, all of which are themes covered in the talks and delivered in an intelligent but accessible, and funny, way.
Charlotte's Web by E. B. White Review
Wilbur is the runt of the litter and about to be put down - but Fern, the farmer's daughter, saves him from the axe and raises him herself. After he begins to grow, she has to give up Wilbur to her uncle to look after and at the uncle's farm the pig meets Charlotte, an intelligent and worldly spider, who takes it upon herself to save Wilbur's bacon again.
American Elf 2012 by James Kochalka Review
Alex + Ada, Volume 3 Review (Sarah Vaughn, Jonathan Luna)
It's the near future. Alex is a lonely human man. Ada is a human-like robot bought to keep Alex company. Ada becomes sentient after Alex gets some hackers to "unlock" her - but this is against the law. Alex + Ada must keep their taboo relationship a secret or Alex will go to jail and Ada will be… deleted.
Saturday, 27 June 2015
A Matter of Life by Jeffrey Brown Review
Though he does a lot of Darth Vader and Change Bot comics these days, Jeffrey Brown started his comics career doing autobiographical, introspective stories, a genre which he returns to in A Matter of Life.
Friday, 26 June 2015
Louise Brooks: Detective by Rick Geary Review
Rick Geary takes a break from his brilliant Treasury of Victorian/20th Century Murders series for a work of fiction starring the real-life Golden Age of Hollywood actress, Louise Brooks. Brooks was more famous for popularising the bob haircut than her acting though she had some movie success in the 1930s. However by 1940, when this comic begins, she'd done some European films and returned to find Hollywood was no longer interested in her.
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Volume 1: Conquest Review (Greg Pak, Mirko Colak)
Turok is a Native American living in an alternate Manhattan in 1210 AD. Shunned by his tribe for something to do with his dead parents, he hides out in the forest alone. Then one day English Crusaders arrive demanding gold - and they've brought a surprise weapon with them: dinosaurs, or "Thunder Lizards"!
Thursday, 25 June 2015
Bandette, Volume 2: Stealers, Keepers! Review (Paul Tobin, Colleen Coover)
The master thief Monsieur has a list of priceless objects belonging to the evil organisation, FINIS. He proposes a race to Bandette: whoever manages to nab the most items on the list will be the greatest thief in the world (with the added bonus of striking a blow against FINIS and its leader Absinthe)! But Absinthe has hired a dangerous new henchman to stop Bandette: Il Tredici, aka The Strangler. And so begins – The Great Thieving Race!
The Salinger Contract by Adam Langer Review
It was around the 25% mark (I read this on a Kindle) when any semblance of a premise appeared - up until then it was the mundane ramblings of an unemployed literary editor. A mysterious wealthy man called Dex Dunford approaches crime novelist Conner Joyce to write a novel for him – but only for him. Ok, I thought, where's this headed? Hopefully somewhere good!
Wednesday, 24 June 2015
The Legacy of Luther Strode #2 Review (Tradd Moore, Justin Jordan)
My latest review for Need to Consume was Justin Jordan and Tradd Moore's The Legacy of Luther Strode #2. Read the full piece here: http://www.needtoconsume.com/comics/legacy-luther-strode-2-review/
Butcher Baker, The Righteous Maker Review (Joe Casey, Mike Huddleston)
Butcher Baker's a retired superhero, spending his days in vapid debauchery until Jay Leno and Dick Cheney approach him for one last job: blow up the supervillain prison, "The Crazy Keep", killing all the bad guys he spent his career putting away. They're costing the government too much dang money to house! So begins a bizarre odyssey of superhero excess.
Tuesday, 23 June 2015
Deathstroke, Volume 1: Gods of Wars Review (Tony S. Daniel)
Tony Daniel wrote the first two volumes of New 52 Detective Comics and the first volume of New 52 The Savage Hawkman. If you read any of those books, that should be warning enough; if you haven't, that's shorthand for Tony Daniel can't write for (cleaning up the phrase) toffee. Or some other brown substance.
The Flash, Volume 6: Out of Time Review (Robert Venditti, Brett Booth)
The Speed Force has broken. Future Flash is lamenting the death of Wally West while Even More Future Flash decides to go back in time, fixing all the problems he couldn't before (mostly KILLING his rogues!), returning to the present – whenever that is! – and killing himself(!), thus fixing the Speed Force. Present Flash has to solve a murder mystery involving his rogues' weaponry that has nothing to do with anything and has FILLER written all over it. Also, Barry and Wally go to a ball game.
Monday, 22 June 2015
March: Book Two Review (John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell)
Congressman John Lewis continues his autobiography in March: Book Two which picks up in November 1960 as a 20 year-old Lewis' involvement in the growing student movement deepens.
The main focus in the second book is the Freedom Rides. Boynton v. Virginia (1960) outlawed segregation and racial discrimination on buses and in bus terminals so the idea behind the Freedom Riders was to test the decision by sending small groups of integrated students (black and white) on buses in the south. The results were horrifying.
Sunday, 21 June 2015
American Elf, Volume 4 by James Kochalka Review
This is the fourth (and, sadly, final) collection of James Kochalka's daily diary strip, American Elf (so-called because he draws him and his wife with elf ears!). The series began in 1998 and came to a close at the end of 2012. This awesome volume collects all the strips from January 1st, 2008 to December 31st, 2011 (the 2012 strips are available separately - try Comixology for a cheap digital edition).
Friday, 19 June 2015
The Sculptor by Scott McCloud Review
David Smith is a New York sculptor who's in a bad way: he's broke, and his patron's dropped him. He meets Death, in the form of his dead uncle Harry, and makes a deal: David's life in exchange for the ability to sculpt anything with his bare hands in any material for 200 days. David is literally giving his life to his art. Then David falls for Meg, an actor, and tries to undo his pledge.
Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs by Ben Mezrich Review
The fall of the USSR led to a rush to capitalise on the new state system as it rapidly became privatised. One such man, Boris Berezovsky, a former mathematician, became a billionaire buying state television on top of his car empire. He used the media to get Boris Yeltsin re-elected, giving him political leverage in the process. He took on an eager young protégé, Roman Abramovich, and together became even richer by controlling Russia's oil and aluminium markets. They were part of a small group called oligarchs, business magnates of enormous wealth, who also had political power. And they were responsible for giving the world the ruthless Vladimir Putin, a man they made president, believing they could control him and discovered too late that they couldn't.
Thursday, 18 June 2015
Road Rage Review (Stephen King, Joe Hill)
Stephen King and Joe Hill wrote Throttle, a short story homage to Duel by Richard Matheson, for He Is Legend, a collection celebrating Matheson's career. Chris Ryall adapts both Throttle and Duel into comics for this book, Road Rage.
Wednesday, 17 June 2015
The Quickening by Julie Myerson Review
Rachel gets knocked up by Dan who then proposes, they get married, and fly off to Antigua for their honeymoon. But a malevolent ghost from Dan's past threatens their wedded bliss – it's The Woman in Black: Haunted Holiday Edition!
The Wicked + The Divine, Volume 2: Fandemonium Review (Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie)
In this weak second volume of The Wicked + The Divine, superfan Laura and journalist Cassandra investigate Luci's would-be assassins and uncover the "dark heart of fandom"; Baphomet discovers that death gods can kill other gods and steal their life force, extending their own time beyond the 2 years they're given; and The Pantheon is complete as the final gods appear.
Tuesday, 16 June 2015
Black River by Josh Simmons Review
Batman: Arkham Knight, Volume 1 Review (Peter J. Tomasi, Viktor Bogdanovic)
I don't know how many non-gamers are likely to pick up this book as it's tied in to the hugely popular (with good reason) Arkham games, but let's just say spoilers anyway.
Monday, 15 June 2015
Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer Volume 1 Review (Van Jensen, Dusty Higgins)
Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer. Seriously? Is this trend still going – fairy tale characters turned "dark"? Even Jane Austen's been infected with zombies and a historical figure like Abraham Lincoln has been reimagined as a vampire hunter! Shrek, Fables, Manifest Destiny, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Snow White and the Huntsman, Red Riding Hood, Grimm, Wicked, and a zillion other movies/TV shows/books have done this idea to death. Guys: let it die!
Sunday, 14 June 2015
Death of Wolverine: The Weapon X Program Review (Charles Soule, Salvador Larroca)
Avengers World, Volume 1: A.I.M.pire Review (Jonathan Hickman, Nick Spencer)
Marvel Exec #1: "How many Avengers titles do we have at the moment?"
Marvel Exec #2: "14"
ME #1: "That's all?! Ok, let's crank out number 15. What do we call it?"
ME #2: "Avengers World, because they're Avengers in, like, the world."
ME #1: "Makes sense to me!"
Junior Marvel Exec: "But won't that be confusing? Jonathan Hickman's first Avengers book was subtitled Avengers World - and you've got him down as co-writing this one too."
ME #1: "Confusing? I don't even know where I am! Who are you? Hey, how many Avengers titles do we have at the moment?"
ME #1: "That's all? Ok, let's crank out number 36. I know just what to call it: Avengers World."
ME #2: "That's a great title."
ME #1: "It just came to me!"
JME: "What's it about?"
ME #1: "It's about the Avengers, stupid! This joker!"
JME: "But… what's the story?"
ME #2: "You don't need 'stories' when it comes to Avengers books - they write themselves! You show Cap and Hulk and Iron Man and whoever and that's all anyone wants."
ME #1: "Yup, this latest 57th Avengers title is really gonna wow everyone. We know exactly what we're doing! Come on, let's draw mustaches on all the Fantastic Four posters because we suddenly hate them for some petty reason!"
ME #2: "Yeaaaaaah, cocaine!!"
JME: "But I like the Fantastic Four…"
Justice League, Volume 5: Forever Heroes Review (Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis)
Like the last volume, Justice League, Volume 5: Forever Heroes is a collection of bad filler issues. You also have to have read Forever Evil to understand what's happening here as these issues are tie-ins to that event.
Deadly Class, Volume 2: Kids of the Black Hole Review (Rick Remender, Wes Craig)
Veerry minor spoilers ahead but sometimes if you don't say it, some baby will throw their toys out of the pram...
Marcus and his friends are back at Kings Dominion after their bonkers Vegas road trip but a villain from his past has reappeared with only vengeance in mind. As Saya tracks down the whereabouts of Fuckface, Marcus and Maria's relationship hits the rocks - who knew training to be an assassin could be so melodramatic?
Marvel Star Wars: Darth Vader, Volume 1 Review (Kieron Gillen, Salvador Larroca)
The second title in the 2015 Marvel Star Wars relaunch is Darth Vader, the most iconic character in the series and one of the best villains of all time. And the book is… just ok.
Saturday, 13 June 2015
The Shadow, Volume 1: The Fire of Creation Review (Garth Ennis, Aaron Campbell)
Garth Ennis attempts to revitalise the Golden Age superhero, The Shadow, in The Fires of Creation… and doesn't quite pull it off.
Moon Knight, Volume 2: Dead Will Rise Review (Brian Wood, Greg Smallwood)
After Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey departed Moon Knight, Marvel were determined to keep that readership with the new creative team of Brian Wood and Greg Smallwood. The cover to Volume 2: Dead Will Rise have two blurbs both reassuring readers that Moon Knight is still good and, given Wood's awful track record of Marvel work-for-hire, I was surprised that, yes, his Moon Knight is actually pretty awesome!
Friday, 12 June 2015
Batwoman, Volume 5: Webs Review (Marc Andreyko, Jeremy Haun)
In late 2013, JH Williams III and W. Haden Blackman, the writers of Batwoman since the New 52 began, announced their exit from the title after becoming frustrated with DC Editorial's last minute changes to planned storylines – which were approved by DC Editorial months in advance! The biggest change DC made was reversing their decision to allow Kate and Maggie to marry (DC however are not anti-gay marriage, they're just against marriage for their characters), as well as asking for a rewrite on the conclusion to Williams/Blackman's massive arc, This Blood is Thick.
Wednesday, 10 June 2015
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick Review
Nameless #4 Review (Grant Morrison, Chris Burnham)
My latest review for Need to Consume was Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham's Nameless #4. Read the full piece here: http://www.needtoconsume.com/comics/nameless-4-review/
Monday, 8 June 2015
Marvel Star Wars, Volume 1: Skywalker Strikes Review (Jason Aaron, John Cassaday)
A (not so very) long time ago (the start of 2015 in fact), when Disney refused to renew Dark Horse's Star Wars licence and gave it to their company, Marvel, instead…
Tomb Raider, Volume 1: Season of the Witch Review (Gail Simone, Nicolas Daniel Selma)
Spinning off from the enormously successful 2013 Tomb Raider reboot is a comic sequel of sorts, Season of the Witch, which is set after the events of the game. It also continues the trend of crap comics based on brilliant games!
Sunday, 7 June 2015
Infinite Crisis Review (Geoff Johns, Phil Jimenez)
Did someone say Sequel To Crisis On Infinite Earths? No? Well, Geoff Johns wrote one anyway - this is Infinite Convolution!
Batman Beyond: Industrial Revolution Review (Adam Beechen, Ryan Benjamin)
I want to like Batman Beyond - the character's a great design and it's Batman but in the future! So why is it seemingly so hard to write a good Batman Beyond comic?
Saturday, 6 June 2015
Postal, Volume 1 Review (Matt Hawkins, Bryan Hill, Isaac Goodhart)
Ever heard of a novel called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time? Came out about ten years or so ago and became a bestseller. It was about a kid with Asperger's Syndrome who sees his neighbour's dog dead and decides to figure out who killed it and why.
BPRD: Hell On Earth, Volume 10: The Devil's Wings Review (Mike Mignola, John Arcudi)
Hell on Earth's subtitle really does the comic justice: hell HAS come to Earth! Unfortunately we're 10 volumes(!) deep and I'm still struggling to even see any semblance of a plot. Monsters are roaming the Earth, destroying cities and the BPRD are failing to stop them. Ok... it's really more of a background detail than a storyline.
HHhH by Laurent Binet Review
This is the true story of one of the most evil men who ever lived, Reinhard Heydrich, and Operation Anthropoid (also the original title of the book), the successful plot to assassinate him by the heroic pair, Jan Kubis and Jozek Gabcik.
Thursday, 4 June 2015
FCBD 2015: Secret Wars #0 Review (Jonathan Hickman, Hajime Isayama)
What do you do when the ship starts sinking? Head to a life raft! And that's what Valeria Richards, Reed and Sue's pre-teen mega-genius daughter, builds, along with the rest of the Future Foundation. Why? The Marvel Universe - including the Ultimates Universe - is coming to an end in Secret Wars!
Secret Wars isn't so much a standalone event comic as it is the final chapter in Jonathan Hickman's years-long saga that began in the pages of his Fantastic Four run. He's built up to it in his Marvel NOW! Avengers and New Avengers titles and, finally, this is the end (my only friend the… HULK SMASH PUNY DOORS MUSIC!).
This Free Comic Book Day issue, Secret Wars #0, is basically Valeria recapping some of what's happened in Avengers and New Avengers, namely the Illuminati trying to save worlds and then resorting to blowing up worlds and… well, now doom. Thanks, eggheads!
I've only read the first two volumes of both Hickman's Avengers titles but even I could tell Valeria's monologue only scrapes the surface of this very complicated story. Hickman's Avengers books have been nothing if not DENSE so even though she tries, bless her, Valeria really didn't stand a chance of covering all the plot points in 9 pages!
The other story in this issue is Attack on Avengers, the crossover between the Avengers and Hajime Isayama's bestselling manga series, Attack on Titan. I say "story" but it's really just a few scenes of the Avengers punching the Titans - and that's it! Can't say I'm a fan of Attack on Titan, I read that first book and thought it was complete garbage, but it's a fun crossover and ends the comic on a light note.
I wouldn't say Secret Wars #0 is a great primer for the event but then no single issue was ever going to cover the kind of ground Hickman's been cultivating for the last few years! As a free comic though, it's fine for what it is.
If you missed this issue on Free Comic Book Day a month ago, it's available for free download over at Comixology here:https://www.comixology.com/FCBD-2015-...
Red Sonja, Volume 2: The Art of Blood and Fire Review (Gail Simone, Walter Geovani)
Gail Simone and Walter Geovani's Red Sonja run continues to impress with this second volume, The Art of Blood and Fire. This might be Dynamite's best series since The Boys (which happens to be, ironically, about a girl)!
Wednesday, 3 June 2015
Airboy #1 Review (James Robinson, Greg Hinkle)
My latest review for Need to Consume was James Robinson and Greg Hinkle's Airboy #1. Read the full piece here: http://www.needtoconsume.com/comics/airboy-1-review/
Monday, 1 June 2015
Monster & Madman Review (Steve Niles, Damien Worm)
Monster & Madman is one of the most straightforward comics I've ever read! Steve Niles imagines a meeting between Frankenstein's Monster and Jack the Ripper – and that's all there is to it! Even describing part of the story between the two characters is essentially a spoiler because if you knew the setup, it'd be so obvious to anyone what happens next!
Blue by Pat Grant Review
Pat Grant's Blue sees an Aussie man reminiscing on his adolescence – before THEY came. The aliens (a stand-in for immigrants) who took over the white population and brought their own culture with them – how this Aussie oik hates multi-culturalism and racial diversity! He also recounts the time he and his two friends "wagged" (skipped) school to go look at some poor bastard that got run over by a train. So it's basically Stephen King's The Body with a smattering of District 9.
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Magnolia - A View From Beneath
Black & White Photograph
Created by Joni Purk
"My travels have taken me into the deep South where magnolia blossoms are the size of large platters. The transparency of the petals offers the viewer a glimpse of an insect or the inner beauty of the flora." Archival Quality Professional Photographic Papers and Inks are used. A limited edition of 50, signed and numbered by the artist. Dimensions refer to image size. Acid-free white mat: 12" H x 16" W

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A selection of printed media that relate to Ernest Gimson.
Art work details
The main image is of the cover of the exhibition catalogue for the 1904 'Borough of Leicester Arts & Crafts Exhibition' at New Walk Museum. Images also include the poster and launch night invitation to the 1969 'Ernest Gimson 1864 - 1919' commemorative exhibition at New Walk Museum, a Gimson squirrel book-plate design and the logo for the Leicester Reasoner.


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Impressive New Church of Scientology of Manchester, England on the Way
One of the next Ideal Churches of Scientology to be readied for completion is the new Church of Scientology of Manchester, England. Located just down the street from Manchester United's … Continue reading
August 21, 2010 · Leave a comment
New L. Ron Hubbard Website Videos Highlight Historic Churches of Scientology
The Church of Scientology International just launched a fully-redesigned and video-packed, interactive website to educate the world on the life of the Founder of the Scientology Religion, L. Ron Hubbard. … Continue reading
July 2, 2010 · 1 Comment


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1320 Locust Street
|What the balls?
Yeah that's right, I'm talking about the Library Company of Philadelphia again. Around the 30's and 40's the Library Company was in financial ruin. It built a parking garage on it's old real estate and moved back into a corner of yesterday's Old-ass Building, letting the Free Library run it. They started making some good dough off their shit-ass parking garage and they re-catalogued their collection, finding all kinds of crazy artifacts they didn't even know they had. They decided to become a Research Library and move into a smaller building back in their old neighborhood.
The Company approached some dumbasses named Carroll, Grisdale, and van Allen and told them, "We, the Library Company, are sick of cool-ass buildings. Design us the worst piece of garbage you can think of. Shit, you could make the facade bare concrete for all we care. Make sure it will look dirty and dated in the shortest possible amount of time." The dumbasses came up with this:
If I saw a building like this being built today I would jump in front of the dozers and shit. Do you know what this building replaced? Just a bunch of custom-built Victorian-era homes representing a brief period in the city's history when the Nouveau riche lived on the 1200 and 1300 blocks of Locust:
|3 Houses on the Left = GONE in favor of the Concretewallodrome. The one all the way on the right mutilated beyond recognition. 2nd one from the right got attached and semi-restored.
Look at the pics in yesterday's article and look at the pics in this one. How can you call this building "Ridgeway" like it in any way honor's Rush's last wishes? That's like me naming my shoe the Barnes Foundation and throwing it out the window. I hope the corpse of James Rush and Pheobe Ann Ridgeway Rush rise from the grave and crumble this building.


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Tea 101 – Online Tea Training
Tea 101 is a course that teaches a solid foundation on tea. You can complete it online in your own time from anywhere in the world, and it particularly targets baristas and the hospitality sector.
This tea training provides a strong, basic foundation-level of tea knowledge, and helps you get one step closer to tea mastery.
During the course, you will be given a multiple-choice quiz at the end of each section, which you will be required to answer correctly before you move onto the next section. Once you have graduated from each lesson, you will be able to flick back to it at any time, including after you have finished the course.
Upon successful completion of training, you will receive a Certificate in Tea 101 from Australian Tea Masters.
Tea Sommelier Handbook
Begin your most in-depth journey into the world of tea.
The Australian Tea Masters Tea Sommelier Handbook is designed for all – students and enthusiasts alike – who wish to learn more about tea. It covers a wide breadth of topics from the history of tea to the cultivars of the plant, processing and tasting to ceremonies steeped in ancient culture.
This handbook will aid and enrich the studies of anyone interested in tea.


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Although Google's Project Loon – a novel idea to beam Internet access to remote areas via high-flying balloons – includes the altruistic aims of "connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters," it's not enough for Bill Gates.
Speaking to Bloomberg Businessweek, Gates said of the project, "When you're dying of malaria, I suppose you'll look up and see that balloon, and I'm not sure how it'll help you. When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there's no website that relieves that."
Gates is no stranger to the world of malaria and trying to cure it. Much in part due to the efforts of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he predicts that the tools to eradicate the deadly disease could be viable in a few decades. His work on behalf of polio is leading to its imminent eradication. The foundation is tackling tuberculosis as well.
"Certainly I'm a huge believer in the digital revolution. And connecting up primary health-care centers, connecting up schools, those are good things," he continued when asked if the Internet can solve problems. "But no, those are not, for the really low-income countries, unless you directly say we're going to do something about malaria."
The billionaire co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, have been known to focus their sights on more whimsical efforts, like self-driving cars and the Internet balloons. But even though they're a much younger company than Microsoft, they've still dedicated time and money to more traditional charitable aims as well. As CNET reports, "Brin and wife Anne Wojcicki started the Brin Wojcicki Foundation, and in 2012 donated more than $200 million to causes related to environmental issues, poverty prevention, and Parkinson's disease research. Brin also spent more than $300,000 to bankroll the first in-vitro burger, which could lead to a sustainable and cheap supply of protein." Brin is also one of the creators of the wildly generous Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that after Google has had its fun with some of the more fanciful efforts, that the founders will roll up their sleeves and start tackling more immediate world problems. After all, it took Gates a while to get where he is now — from high-tech guru to concerned, full-time philanthropist.
"You go out in the field, which I get to do two or three times a year, and talk to mothers who've had their children die." Gates said. "You're always reminded that the world you live in is not the average place."
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|Paseo de los Héroes 9111, Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico
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Many other town documents can be found on the Town's website. Also, several historical town records can be found by visiting our page on Andover's Digital Collections & Links.
Town Meeting Transcripts
Video recordings of Town Meetings can be found on the Andover TV website.
- 2014AnnualTownMeetingDay1.pdf
- 2014AnnualTownMeetingDay2.pdf
- 2014AnnualTownMeetingDay3.pdf
- 2014AnnualTownMeetingDay4.pdf


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All donations are secure and tax-deductible
According to the UN refugee agency reporting, for the first time since post-World War II, over 50 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide. This number reflects people who are refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced people. Make a difference by meeting a pressing need today.
Rana's parents, made homeless and impoverished by ISIS, cannot afford the formula needed to feed their malnourished child. For only $1,130 we can help provide an entire year's worth of formula, vitamins and other necessities to not only feed this infant but give her the nourishment needed to grow.
Imagine your town being invaded by gun-wielding terrorists who will show no mercy, not even to children. This experience is a reality for many in Syria, like one family who was forced to flee their Christian town with no resources, no supplies, no identification and not even the formula needed to provided nourishment for their infant daughter, Rana. Forced to live like refugees, this family of five considers itself fortunate just to have food to eat. But even when there is food, Rana's little body goes hungry, yearning for the milk her mother cannot provide due to her own lack of nourishment. To make matters worse, formula is practically unaffordable for those who have been forced by ISIS to leave everything behind. For only $1,130 we can help provide an entire year's worth of formula, vitamins and other necessities to satisfy the hunger and physical needs of this infant. This family has paid the ultimate price to follow Jesus. Through this gift, we can help carry their load.
Or, give through PayPal
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Becky Servant
Director, Refugee Ministry
Refugees are victims of war or persecution, and have lost their homes, their countries and, many times, members of their family. The refugee crisis today is overwhelming. But we still have the choice to help, one life and one need at a time. Your donation to meet this pressing need today will make a world of difference in this uncertain time.
Or, give through PayPal
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I love meeting these pressing needs! It is so amazing to feel like I actually know the people my gift is going to help. Without Heaven's Family, I would never have known these needs existed or had the ability to make a difference. And I love the reporting I get from the ministry directors to update me on the progress of those I invested in, reminding me that I am helping real people with real needs. I can't speak highly enough about Heaven's Family!
Phyllis Cunningham
It's so satisfying to know that when I give to Heaven's Family, specific needs of unique individuals all over the world are being met in real-time. And getting reports on how my gifts were used assures me that my money has been invested wisely. What a blessing to make such a difference in the lives of so many I wouldn't even know about if it wasn't for these pressing need alerts! I highly recommend giving to this ministry. You won't be disappointed!
Glyndon Greer


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Six-Figure Settlement For France Motorbike Death
07 December 2016
A six-figure settlement was awarded to the family of a holidaymaker who was tragically killed in a motorcycle road traffic accident in France.
Slater and Gordon Lawyer: Nicola Rostron is an associate, specialising in travel litigation at Slater and Gordon Lawyers in Manchester.
Settlement: Six-figure settlement.
What Happened: Our clients' father was on a motorbike in France when, in a momentary lapse of concentration, an elderly driver collided head on with him.
Impact: The emergency services attended, and he was airlifted to a local hospital but tragically all attempts to save him failed.
A French criminal hearing was held, and the driver was charged with manslaughter whilst driving their vehicle without due care and attention, given a suspended prison sentence for one year and fined 1,000 Euros.
How Slater and Gordon Helped: We liaised with the British Consular and obtained a copy of the French police report and hospital records.
We pursued a civil claim on behalf of our clients against the third party French insurer through the English Court. This was a particularly complex case as French law applied to the claims. It was therefore necessary to instruct a French law expert when all expert evidence had been collated.
Decision: The claims settled by way of a joint settlement meeting for a significant six-figure sum.
Related Practice Areas:
If you have any questions about the above case study or would like to speak with a holiday compensation lawyer, call us for a free consultation on 0800 916 9046 or contact us online. From outside the UK please call +44161 830 4446.
Related Case Studies
Wednesday 3rd January 2018
Timber worker receives compensation or amputation accident
Thursday 14th December 2017
Teenager paralysed in road traffic accident awarded compensation
Friday 17th November 2017
Diamond driller awarded compensation for vibration injuries


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A lot of wives will complain about their marriage or more importantly their husbands not realizing that they might be the reason their marriage is not happy or why their husbands have started to stray.
You do not spend time on personal grooming-
Many wives get comfortable after marriage do not become one of them. Do not throw away your sexy lingerie for those ghastly pajamas, still wear sexy but modest clothing, pay attention to your weight (go to the gym if you have to), do not use having children as an excuse for that extra weight, still wax or shave and take care of your body. Be the person he fell in love with, do not give him a reason to look at another woman because you are not keeping it together.
You complain of a headache or another ache or pain most nights
– Headaches are cured with a good orgasm so it should never be your excuse for having sex. Instead of complaining how hectic your day was and how you're tired and in pain, allow him to massage you, build the sexual tension and satisfy your husband. If you don't then someone else will eventually.
He feels like he is at the bottom of the pecking order–
Do you put everything before your husband from the kids, parents to even church? Then you are setting yourself up for failure. Allow your husband to feel important and take care of his needs. Shower him with love and affection when necessary and show him that he is important too.
You are more enthusiastic to see a stranger at the door than to see him–
How to react when a friend or even stranger knocks on your door compared to when your husband comes home. If you realize that you are not the type to greet your husband with a smile, hug and or kiss then it's time to start doing that. Do not start arguments the minute he walks in (you should never let your husband dread coming home), instead ask him about his day, allow him to help you prepare dinner (as that is a great bonding time) laugh and talk together and if there are children around involve them in your conversation.
You are boring in bed-you simply lay down and take it-
It is okay to be spontaneous and to still flirt even though you are married. Take charge once in a while and surprise your husband. You have made the vow to de with him till "death do us part" so fulfill both of your sexual fantasies. Talk to your partner about it and see what you both would be comfortable with and go ahead and try them out. If you are fulfilling all of his then he won't have a reason to go somewhere else and if you are being spontaneous he won't have the time to think about somebody else.
He feels constantly criticized–
Do not be the type of wife that finds a fault in everything her husband does or constantly make him feel less of a man as that will make it easier for him to cheat when other women put him on a pedestal. When your husband needs to be praised go ahead and do it. Also compromise, you do not have to nag him about everything and never criticize your husband in front of his friends or in a public forum, one thing that most men hate is drama. Wait until you are alone and calmly talk about the issue and find a way to peacefully deal with it.
You don't spend quality time together–
Having children or a nine to five job does not give you the right to neglect your marriage. To keep the connection you both need quality time together. Make a schedule and try to have a date night at least once a week, program your free time to ensure that you can be able to spend time with your husband, send the kids to relatives or get a sitter if you have to and do something romantic.
He is not feeling respected or appreciated-
Many times as a wife we forget to remind our husbands how much we appreciate the little things they do and how happy we are to have them in our life because we never think it I important, while we want our husbands to continuously woo and praise us we almost never reciprocate. Surprise your husband when he least expects it, it doesn't have to be extravagant, it can be a note on the fridge reminding him how much you love him or have a best husband/father ceremony at home and award him. If he loves sports surprise him with front row seats and let him go and have fun. Whatever you do try your best to remind your husband how much you appreciate him.
He feels like all you do is argue when you are together–
Poor communication skills- Good communication is the main foundation of any successful relationship. If you realize that each time you should be having a conversation it turns into an argument then stop, start over and look at where the conversation took a turn for the worst and ensure it doesn't not happen again. Do not shut out your husband or become defensive when he tries to address his concerns but listen or he might not want to communicate again and then the problems will start and he may be pushed to cheat with someone who listens to him.
Not feeling supported while going through a crisis-
Men are emotional creatures just like us, yes they may keep their emotions hiding but that does not mean they are not affected by whatever is happening. If your husband has lost his job and things start to get hard instead of nagging him each day stick by him, motivate him and find ways to work around the hardship. Always be there to stand up for your husband, comfort him and remind him of his good qualities and how together you both can get through whatever is happening
The key is to realize the problems in your marriage, the root of the problem and to address them. Burying your head in the sand won't help and if you realize that most of the problems and issues are caused by you as the wife then do not let your ego get the best of you, see in what way you can improve and work on improving.


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I have always been intrigued by the fact that, in Compressed Sensing (CS), beyond Gaussian random matrices, a couple of other unstructured random matrices respecting, with high probability (whp), the Restricted Isometry Property (RIP) look like "quantized" version of the Gaussian case, i.e., their discrete entries have a probability density function (pdf) that seems induced by a discretized version of the Gaussian pdf.
For instance, two random constructions that are known to allow CS of sparse signals by respecting the RIP, namely the Bernoulli random matrix, with entries identically and independently distributed (iid) as a rv taking with equal probability, and the ternary matrix with iid random entries selected within with probability and [3], respectively, look like a certain "quantization" of a Gaussian pdf.
This short post aims simply to show that this fact can be easily understood thanks to known results showing that sub-Gaussian random matrices respect the RIP [3]. Certain of the relations described below are probably very well known in the statistical literature but, as we are always re-inventing the wheel (at least me ;-)), I found anyway interesting to share this through this blog post.
Let's first recall what a sub-Gaussian random variable (rv) is. For this, I'm following [1]. A random variable is sub-Gaussian if its sub-Gaussian norm
is finite. In particular, any rv with such a finite norm has a tail bound that decays as fast as the one of a Gaussian rv, i.e., for some independent of , if , then
The set of sub-Gaussian random variables includes for instance the Gaussian, the Bernoulli and the bounded rv's, as .
In CS theory, it is now well known that if a random matrix is generated randomly with iid entries drawn as a sub-Gaussian rv with zero mean and unit variance, then, with high probability and provided ,the matrix respects the RIP of order and constant , i.e.,
In fact, if has the RIP, any -sparse signal (with ) can be stably estimated (e.g., using Basis Pursuit or greedy algorithms) from , possibly with some moderate noise [2].
The simple point I'd like to show here is that a large class of RIP matrices can be generated by quantizing (elementwise) Gaussian and sub-Gaussian random matrices. I'm going to show this by proving that (i) quantizing a Gaussian rv leads to a sub-Gaussian rv, (ii) its sub-Gaussian norm can be easily upper bounded.
But what do I mean by "quantizing"?
This operation is actually defined here through a partition of , i.e., if and .
Given a rv , this partition determines a set of countable levels (or codebook) such that
The quantized version of is then defined as
with and . Note that we follow above a definition of levels that are known to lead (with an additional optimization of the partition ) to an optimal quantizer of the rv , as induced by the Lloyd-Max condition for minimizing the distortion of a rv [5].
We can thus deduce that, thanks to the definition of the levels ,
and , this last equality actually justifying the specific normalization in of the levels.Therefore, induces that .
Moreover, for any , using Jensen inequality and the definition of the ,
Therefore, by definition of the sub-Gaussian norm above, we find
which shows that is also sub-Gaussian!
For instance, for a Gaussian rv , taking , leads to and , since and . We recover then, by quantization, a Bernoulli rv!
In consequence, a matrix obtained by quantizing the entries of a random Gaussian matrix will satisfy, whp, the RIP of order (as for ) provided , where the hidden constant depends only on (and implicitly on the quantizing partition ).
From what is described above, it is clear that the entries of are iid as with . Then, as explained in [1, 4, 3], it remains to show that the rows of are isotropic, i.e., that for any row of , for any vector . This trivially holds as is composed of entries iid as that has unit variance.
Note that nowhere above we have used the Gaussianity of . Therefore the whole development still holds if we quantify a random matrix whose entries are generated by a sub-Gaussian distribution, possibility already discrete or quantized. In other words, the class of sub-Gaussian random matrices (with iid entries) that are RIP with high probability is somehow closed under entrywise quantization.
Open question:
- What will happen if we quantize a structured random matrix, such as a random Fourier ensemble [2], a spreadspectrum sensing matrix [7] or a random convolution [6]? Or more simply random matrices were only the rows (or the columns) are guaranteed to be independent [1]? Do we recover (almost) known random matrix construction such as random partial Hadamard ensembles ?
[1] R. Vershynin, "Introduction to the non-asymptotic analysis of random matrices", http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3027
[2] S. Foucart, H. Rauhut. A mathematical introduction to compressive sensing. Vol. 1. No. 3. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2013.
[3] R. Baraniuk, M. Davenport, R. DeVore, M. Wakin, "A simple proof of the restricted isometry property for random matrices". Constructive Approximation, 28(3), 253-263, 2008.
[4] S. Mendelson, A. Pajor, N. Tomczak-Jaegermann, "Uniform uncertainty principle for bernoulli and subgaussian ensembles. Constructive Approximation, 28(3):277-289, 2008.
[5] R. M. Gray, D. L. Neuhoff, "Quantization", IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 44(6), 2325-2383, 1998.


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[ bad ]
/ bæd /
adjective, worse, worst; (Slang) bad·der, bad·dest for 36.
not good in any manner or degree.
having a wicked or evil character; morally reprehensible: There is no such thing as a bad boy.
of poor or inferior quality; defective; deficient: a bad diamond; a bad spark plug.
inadequate or below standard; not satisfactory for use: bad heating; Living conditions in some areas are very bad.
inaccurate, incorrect, or faulty: a bad guess.
invalid, unsound, or false: a bad insurance claim; bad judgment.
causing or liable to cause sickness or ill health; injurious or harmful: Too much sugar is bad for your teeth.
suffering from sickness, ill health, pain, or injury; sick; ill: He felt bad from eating the green apples.
not healthy or in good physical condition; diseased, decayed, or physically weakened: A bad heart kept him out of the army.
tainted, spoiled, or rotten, especially to the point of being inedible: The meat is bad because you left it out of the refrigerator too long.
having a disastrous or detrimental effect, result, or tendency; unfavorable: The drought is bad for the farmers. His sloppy appearance made a bad impression.
causing or characterized by discomfort, inconvenience, uneasiness, or annoyance; disagreeable; unpleasant: I had a bad flight to Chicago.
easily provoked to anger; irascible: a bad temper.
cross, irritable, or surly: If I don't have my morning coffee, I'm in a bad mood all day.
more uncomfortable, persistent, painful, or dangerous than usual; severe: a bad attack of asthma.
causing or resulting in disaster or severe damage or destruction: a bad flood.
regretful, contrite, dejected, or upset: He felt bad about having to leave the children all alone.
disobedient, naughty, or misbehaving: If you're bad at school, you'll go to bed without supper.
disreputable or dishonorable: He's getting a bad name from changing jobs so often.
displaying a lack of skill, talent, proficiency, or judgment: a bad painting; Bad drivers cause most of the accidents.
causing distress; unfortunate or unfavorable: I'm afraid I have bad news for you.
not suitable or appropriate; disadvantageous or dangerous: It was a bad day for fishing.
inclement; considered too stormy, hot, cold, etc.: We had a bad winter with a lot of snow.
disagreeable or offensive to the senses: a bad odor.
exhibiting a lack of artistic sensitivity: The room was decorated in bad taste.
not in keeping with a standard of behavior or conduct; coarse: bad manners.
(of a word, speech, or writing)
- vulgar, obscene, or blasphemous: bad language.
- not properly observing rules or customs of grammar, usage, spelling, etc.; incorrect: He speaks bad English.
unattractive, especially because of a lack of pleasing proportions: She has a bad figure.
(of the complexion) marred by defects; pockmarked or pimply; blemished: bad skin.
not profitable or worth the price paid: The land was a bad buy.
Commerce. deemed uncollectible or irrecoverable and treated as a loss: a bad debt.
ill-spent; wasted: Don't throw good money after bad money.
counterfeit; not genuine: There was a bad ten-dollar bill in with the change.
having the character of a villain; villainous: In the movies the good guys always beat the bad guys.
Sports. failing to land within the in-bounds limits of a court or section of a court; missing the mark; not well aimed.
Slang. outstandingly excellent; first-rate: He's a bad man on drums, and the fans love him.
that which is bad: You have to take the bad with the good.
a bad condition, character, or quality: His health seemed to go from bad to worse.
(used with a plural verb) evil persons collectively (usually preceded by the): The bad are always stirring up trouble.
adverb Informal.
badly: He wanted it bad enough to steal it.
"Little Women" may be a classic, but that doesn't mean we all know the meanings of the vocab words from the book. Can you define these words correctly and make Jo proud?
Question 1 of 10
Idioms for bad
bad off, in poor or distressed condition or circumstances; destitute: His family has been pretty bad off since he lost his job.Also badly off.Compare well-off.
go to the bad, to deteriorate physically or morally; go to ruin: She wept at seeing her son go to the bad.
- in trouble or distress.
- in disfavor: He's in bad with his father-in-law.
- tolerably good; not without merit: The dinner wasn't bad, but I've had better.
- not difficult: Once you know geometry, trigonometry isn't bad.
in a bad way, in severe trouble or distress.
in bad, Informal.
my bad, Slang. my fault! my mistake!
not bad,
too bad, unfortunate or disappointing: It's too bad that he didn't go to college.
to the bad, in arrears: He's $100 to the bad on his debt.
Origin of bad1
1250–1300; Middle English badde, perhaps akin to Old English bæddel hermaphrodite, bædling womanish man
synonym study for bad
2. Bad, evil, ill, wicked are closest in meaning in reference to that which is lacking in moral qualities or is actually vicious and reprehensible. Bad is the broadest and simplest term: a bad man; bad habits. Evil applies to that which violates or leads to the violation of moral law: evil practices. Ill now appears mainly in certain fixed expressions, with a milder implication than that in evil: ill will; ill-natured. Wicked implies willful and determined doing of what is very wrong: a wicked plan.
usage note for bad
The adjective bad meaning "unpleasant, unattractive, unfavorable, spoiled, etc.," is the usual form to follow such copulative verbs as sound, smell, look, and taste: After the rainstorm the water tasted bad. The coach says the locker room smells bad. After the copulative verb feel, the adjective badly in reference to physical or emotional states is also used and is standard, although bad is more common in formal writing: I feel bad from overeating. She felt badly about her friend's misfortune.
When the adverbial use is required, badly is standard with all verbs: She reacted badly to the criticism. Bad as an adverb appears mainly in informal contexts: I didn't do too bad on the tests. He wants money so bad it hurts. See also badly, good.
When the adverbial use is required, badly is standard with all verbs: She reacted badly to the criticism. Bad as an adverb appears mainly in informal contexts: I didn't do too bad on the tests. He wants money so bad it hurts. See also badly, good.
OTHER WORDS FROM badbad·ness, noun
Words nearby bad
baculiform, baculine, baculite, baculum, bacău, bad, bad actor, bad apple, bad bank, bad blood, bad breath
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2020
British Dictionary definitions for my bad (1 of 2)
/ (bæd) /
adjective worse or worst
not good; of poor quality; inadequate; inferiorbad workmanship; bad soil; bad light for reading
(often foll by at) lacking skill or talent; incompetenta bad painter; bad at sports
(often foll by for) harmfulbad air; smoking is bad for you
immoral; evila bad life
naughty; mischievous; disobedienta bad child
rotten; decayed; spoileda bad egg
severe; intensea bad headache
incorrect; wrong; faultybad pronunciation
ill or in pain (esp in the phrase feel bad)
regretful, sorry, or upset (esp in the phrase feel bad about)
unfavourable; distressingbad news; a bad business
offensive; unpleasant; disagreeablebad language; bad temper
not valid or sound; voida bad cheque
not recoverablea bad debt
badder or baddest slang good; excellent
go from bad to worse to deteriorate even more
go bad to putrefy; spoil
in a bad way informal
- seriously ill, through sickness or injury
- in trouble of any kind
in someone's bad books See book (def. 21)
make the best of a bad job to manage as well as possible in unfavourable circumstances
not bad or not so bad informal passable; fair; fairly good
not half bad informal very good
too bad informal (often used dismissively) regrettable
unfortunate or unpleasant events collectively (often in the phrase take the bad with the good)
an immoral or degenerate state (often in the phrase go to the bad)
the debit side of an account£200 to the bad
my bad US and Canadian informal my fault or mistake
not standard badlyto want something bad
Derived forms of badbaddish, adjectivebadness, noun
Word Origin for bad
C13: probably from bæd-, as the first element of Old English bǣddel hermaphrodite, bǣdling sodomite
British Dictionary definitions for my bad (2 of 2)
/ (bæd) /
a variant of bade
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Idioms and Phrases with my bad
In addition to the idioms beginning with bad
- bad blood
- bad egg
- bad hair day
- bad luck
- badly off
- bad mouth
- bad name
- bad news
- bad off
- bad sort, a
- bad taste
- bad time
- bad trip
also see:
- come to an end (bad end)
- feel bad
- from bad to worse
- get off on the wrong foot (to a bad start)
- give a bad name
- give bad marks to
- go bad
- in a bad mood
- in a bad way
- in bad faith
- in bad with someone
- in someone's bad graces
- leave a bad taste in one's mouth
- make the best of (a bad bargain)
- not a bad sort
- not bad
- poor (bad) taste
- run of (bad) luck
- too bad
- turn up (like a bad penny)
- with bad grace
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.


text:
Sending Office: Honorable Juan Vargas
Sent By:
Norway, Russia and Security in the Arctic
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
1310 Longworth HOB
*Lunch will be provided*
Click Here to RSVP
Please join the Foreign Affairs Congressional Staff Association (FACSA) and the Embassy of Norway for an informational briefing on Norway, Russia and security in the Artic. How do we deal with an increasingly assertive Russia along NATO's Northern flank?
As Russia's neighbor and NATO's eyes and ears in the North, Norway has a unique perspective on security in the Arctic and the North Atlantic. Join us for a discussion with Norway's incoming Ambassadors to Moscow and NATO about Russia, NATO and transatlantic
Mr. Rune Resaland is Director General in the Department for Security Policy and the High North in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In this capacity, he is lead adviser to the Norwegian Foreign Minister on transatlantic relations
and Norway's relations to Russia. As of August, Mr. Resaland will be Norway's Ambassador to Moscow. Mr. Resaland has previously been Deputy Chief of Mission at the Norwegian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and Head of the International Department at the Storting
(Norwegian Parliament).
Mr. Øystein Bø served as Norway's Deputy Minister of Defence from 2013 to 2017. In August, he will take up his duties as Norway's Ambassador to NATO in Brussels. Mr. Bø was Head of the International Department at the Storting from 2010 to
2013. He has previously served as Deputy Chief of Mission in the Norwegian NATO delegation in Brussels, and Director General in the Secretariat of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
FACSA is an officially recognized, bipartisan and bicameral organization tasked with providing networking opportunities, career guidance, briefings on key topics and other engagements for staffers to learn and grow as foreign
policy professionals.
e-Dear Colleague version 2.0


text:
Opposition Motion (CPC) Israel - Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement
We are fortunate to live in a country where we do not face discrimination on the basis of things like religion, sex, age or ethnic or national origin. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms entrenches this fact, that everyone is equal under Canadian law. This section of the charter reflects our deepest held values. People should not face discrimination again on the basis of religion or of ethnic or national origin.
The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, advocates for actions that run entirely contrary to these Canadians values. They advocate discrimination against individuals and businesses on the basis of national origin. BDS openly calls for discrimination against and boycotts of Israeli individuals, artists, companies, organizations, academics, universities, research institutions, hospitals and technology and development projects, again, simply because they are Israelis.
BDS advocates for discrimination against those who happen to be Israelis, and also against Canadians who hold dual Canada-Israeli citizenship. BDS seeks to discriminate against individuals for no reason other than the passport that they hold.
George Santayana said "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Boycotts against Jews have occurred throughout history, based on lies and misinformation and on prejudicial assumptions, and we are now seeing boycotts against the world's only Jewish state, and against all citizens of that Jewish state. Is it plausible that this is really simply about a political statement, or is it not obvious that this is something much darker than political disagreement?
BDS does not advocate peace between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. On this side of the house we support negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and we support a two state solution.
However, instead of trying to bring people together and support meaningful collaboration, BDS seeks to silence dialogue and once again single out Jews and Israelis for ill treatment. These actions do not contribute to peace, they only drive people further apart.
Now this motion is one that I would have hoped would receive unanimous support from the House, and frankly, I am perplexed that some members are opposing it. The best that we hear from those who are disinclined to support the motion is reference to freedom of speech.
It certainly does not restrict anyone's freedoms for this House to express its support for our collective values of tolerance and inclusion, and to express our opposition to discrimination on the basis of national origin.
In 2010, Maclean's Magazine ran a cover story calling Quebec Canada's most corrupt province. This House responded by unanimously passing a motion which expressed "its profound sadness at the prejudice displayed and the stereotypes employed by Macleon's Magazine to denigrate the Quebec nation, its history and its institutions".
Earlier, in 2006, the Globe and Mail published a story about the shooting at Montreal's Dawson College, in which the author suggested that the province's history of linguistic strife contributed to the incident. Following that, the House unanimously passed a motion: "That, in the opinion of the House, an apology be given to the people of Quebec for the offensive remarks of Ms. Jan Wong in a Globe and Mail article regarding the recent Dawson College tragedy."
In these instances, members of all parties did not have a problem understanding that the House can express its opinion without limiting free and robust debate. As we must always ask in these cases, why treat Israel differently?
The collaboration between Canada and Israel benefits all of us. Just this past week, my daughter Gianna and I assembled our new SodaStream machine. SodaStream has a plant in Israel, which provides good well-paying jobs to both Israelis and Palestinians. So let us stand today against racism and anti-Semitism. Let us stand in support of tolerance and inclusion, and also in support of delicious fizzing drinks.


text:
Create an easy, organizational system with this decorative photo storage box. The 7.5 x 4 x 11-inch box has a metal label frame on the front for clear identification, and includes 10 index cards to help you chronicle the photos by date, event, or adventure. Acid free.
This photo storage box displays nicely out in the open thanks to its coral floral pattern and solid coral lid.


text:
SAN DIEGO — Gun owners had a chance to exchange weapons for Friday morning.
The San Diego County Sheriff's Department and the United African American Ministerial Action Council held another installment of their "Guns for Gift Cards" program from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Tubman/Chavez Multicultural Center in Valencia Park.
The program allows people to turn in working-condition guns, no questions asked, in exchange for monetary vouchers redeemable at area grocery stores. Shotguns and rifles bring $50 credit each, while pistols and assault-type weapons fetch $100 apiece.
Participants must place the weapons, unloaded, in the trunk of their cars before arriving at the event, where uniformed officers will provide further instructions. All collected guns will be destroyed.
Since the program began four years ago, a total of 851 firearms have been impounded, officials said.
An outlay of $10,000 in asset-forfeiture funds paid for the gift cards that will go to those discarding their guns Friday, according to the sheriff's department.


text:
Null Hypothesis
Definition: a Null Hypothesis or H0 is a theory in hypothesis testing that has been put forward, either because it is believed to be true or because it is to be used as a basis for argument, but has not been proved.
More on null hypothesiss. More on problem solving: Catch-22, Evaporating Cloud, Heuristics, Hypothesis Testing, Intuition, more...
© 2020 MBA Brief - Last updated: 26-5-2020 - Privacy | Terms


text:
A couple of years ago, tired of endemic printer problems, I splurged on a big Hewlett Packard Color Laser 2600n. It uses four huge ink cartidges, the black costing $85 and the three color ones $95 each, but I was assured that they held so much ink that they'd last forever and I'd save money in the long run. Now – I print thousands of black-and-white pages a year, and maybe three or four color pages, when I need a Google map. But when the black cartridge runs out on this machine, it seems that I automatically get a message to replace the other ones too, and the machine stops working. So I finally called technical support and got a very nice lady who directed me how to put the machine on "Cartridge Out Override," or something, though she says it will only work for a couple of weeks. And she explained to me that this machine uses a special "in-line technology," by which, whenever a page is counted for the black cartridge, one is similarly counted for the cyan, yellow, and magenta cartridges as well. And so it's built in to the machine, that every time I finish off my black cartridge (or merely every time it clicks off an HP-determined number of allowed pages), I have to go out and pay $370 for four new cartridges. I turned on the "Cartridge Out Override" as she directed, and printed a page in glorious full color: there's plenty of ink left in those color cartridges that the machine is demanding I replace. I don't know what's going to happen after I use the override for two weeks, whether it's going to turn into a pumpkin or something, but I do know that for $370 every few months I could get a pretty damn nice new printer and treat 'em like disposables.
get yourself a little Brother laser for the b/w stuff. you can find them for less than $100 at Staples, etc. solid little printer with excellent quality.
KG replies: I'll do it. But for color, I'm reading around the web that the HP cartridges expire whether you use them or not.
This story has an interesting twist related to music and composing.
Time was you could buy re-filled or new cartridges from third party vendors. But HP put a chip into each cartridge so that the printer would only recognize a genuine HP cartridge. HP then used the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to keep anyone else from making replacement cartridges for their printers.
So what started out as a way to help poor writers and composers keep control of their art has morphed into the reason you gotta buy $400 worth of ink cartridges every few months.
On my Brother printer I can override this by putting black tape over the clear sensors on both sides of the cartridge; thus, it always thinks that it is full of ink.
Kyle, I have the same printer and problem and will try this too. More anon…
KG replies: Suggestions I've been finding on the internet include removing the battery from inside the printer, which runs the timer (doesn't seem to affect anything else, apparently), and setting the date on your computer back a couple of years to make the printer think it's before the expiration date. Sitting in London Gatwick airport at the moment, can't really try them at the moment.
This doesn't surprise me. Check out this article which describes a similar problem in inkjet printers:
This kind of crap is endemic in the printer market, because most of the profit is made in selling toner cartridges. (Toner for laser printers, ink for inkjets.) It is part of the reason I still have a B&W printer at home and print at a copy shop the couple of times a year I need color printing.
I'll second the nomination of Brother printers as workhorses; the same is true of HP B&W printers. I think there are undoubtedly LaserJet II printers from the late 80s and early 90s that are still going strong.
Your best bet for occasional color printing might be an inexpensive inkjet, but, again, the cartridges are the big ongoing expense. I'd check one of the various review sites to see which makers rip off their customers the least. If you're reasonably close to a copy shop, that might be a better option still.
I have a Brother HL2040 (from Amazon) that works well, and when it demands new toner, you can just put a piece of black tape over the little hole in the side of the cartridge and print a bunch more pages before it finally really runs out of toner.
That is a horrible scam…but I think I can beat it.
I have a Brother All-in-One printer, and when ANY one of the inks run out (black or colors), the machine is useless. If I run out of Magenta, for example, I cannot just print in B/W. The machine will not copy (obviously), or even SCAN(!?) when any if the cartridges are empty. And you have to buy the cartridges in PACKS. If your Cyan runs out, you have to by a $58 pack of all THREE colors.
Hmm, sorry to hear about the printer woes. I have a basic HP F2180, cost £30, new black and white cartridges are about £15 and when they run out I get them refilled at a print shop round the corner, £5 a time (HP21 is the cartridge model.)
They can be refilled about 5 times before you have to buy a new one. Not had a problem with chips or anything telling the printer the cartridge is empty or not legit or whatever, it all works fine. I don't use colour but the same rules apply, just that the cartridges are a bit more expensive.
A satisfied HP customer, perhaps look for something similar?.
Some 8 or 9 years ago, when laser printer prices first started really falling, I got a B&W HP laser printer (model 1200 I think), for like $300…and have only replaced the toner cartridge once. I print way less than you, probably, but still.
I have an extra ink jet I keep around for color, but to be honest I've never needed it. If you get a laser printer as someone suggested for $100, and a GPS for $150 so you no longer need to print out your Google maps, you've already beat your startup price for your current setup.
Anyway, sorry you have to deal with that. Frustrating.
I wanted to buy a color laser printer, to replace my color HP Deskjet. For two projects. I wanted to re-print my 550 page "book" created from the American Mavericks project from Minnesota Public Radio. I saved all of Kyle's essays and all of the text interviews as .html pages. They have color photos. I also wanted to print my "book" created from the collected criticism of Greg Sandow, which also has some color.
The printer was $299.00. But the five cartridges necessary were like US$85 each. Forget it. I did the work painfully slowly on the Deskjet.
Man, i have the same problem with my expensive new Canon. Ran out of black ink so tried to print the same document in red – nothing. Blue – nothing. Brown – nothing. Can't print at all!!!
Maybe it's just that my printer is a few years old, but I have a Samsung ML-1210, and it never tells me anything, it just starts printing lighter and lighter and then runs out of ink after a while; that's when I know it's time to replace the toner cartridge! When that times does come, however, I use http://www.ldproducts.com, who refill old cartridges; I've never had a problem with their products and it's cheaper than buying new ones.
Wow! Total scam! That stuff drives me crazy. I bet you want to track down the MBA characters at HP that made that decision and strangle them. In which case, that is a reasonable reaction.


text:
TODAY'S S&P 500 SET-UP – February 5, 2013
As we look at today's setup for the S&P 500, the range is 24 points or 0.45% downside to 1489 and 1.16% upside to 1513.
- YIELD CURVE: 1.74 from 1.71
- VIX closed at 14.67 1 day percent change of 13.72%
MACRO DATA POINTS (Bloomberg Estimates):
- 6:30am: ESM to sell as much as EUR2b 91D bills
- 7:45am/8:55am: ICSC/Redbook weekly retail sales
- 8:30am: Fed's Duke speaks on community banks in Duluth, Ga.
- 10am: ISM Non-Manf. Composite, Jan., est. 55.0 (prior 55.7)
- 10am: IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism, Feb. est. 47 (prior 46.5)
- 11am: Fed to purchase $1.25b-$1.75b debt in 2036-2042 sector
- 11:30am: U.S. Treasury to sell 4W bills, $25b in 1Y bills
- CBO releases federal budget projections, economic outlook
- Yahoo's Mayer, Goldman's Blankfein in Obama immigration session
- CFTC holds public roundtable to discuss agency's proposed rulemaking, "Enhancing Protections Afforded Customers and Customer Funds Held by Futures Commission Merchants and Derivatives Clearing Organizations," 9:30am
- SEC holds a roundtable discussion on decimal-based trading, tick sizes for small, medium sized companies, 10am
- CFPB Director Richard Cordray, National Credit Union Administration Board Chairman Debbie Matz hold "town hall webinar" on "Ability-to-Repay" rule, 3pm
- HHS, FDA discuss creation of alternative pathway for expediting approval of drugs needed for unmet medical needs, 9am
- FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski holds field hearings on Hurricane Sandy to consider how nation's communications networks work during crises, 9am, 2pm.
- FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell and David Gross, former U.S. ambassador for international communications and information policy, testify at hearing on Internet freedom before 3 House subcmtes, 10:30am
- Dell board said to meet to vote on $24b leveraged buyout
- Virgin Media in talks with Liberty Global on possible transaction
- Hartford announces buyback, debt repayment plan after Sandy
- Goldman hired by Russia as corporate broker to boost image
- U.K. economy faces risk of a prolonged stagnation, NIESR says
- German push to speed bank bondholder-loss plan gains momentum
- Wells Fargo to target sovereign wealth funds in Dubai expansion
- Buffett gets $1.8b in investment assets from Cigna deal
- Fidelity said to press Endo Health to consider selling itself
- Facebook said to develop location-tracker app for smartphones
- Homes sell in 2 weeks as U.S. spring buyers face low inventory
- MF Global customer funds rules will get another hearing at CFTC
- UBS 4Q loss narrower than est. after Libor fine, job cuts
- Hemispherx fails to win U.S. approval for chronic fatigue drug
- IBM adds cheaper power servers to expand in emerging markets
- Boeing asks U.S. FAA to permit test flights with Dreamliner
- J.C. Penney asks judge to bar claim retailer defaulted on bonds
- Consumer Reports says Ford, GM turbo engine benefits overstated
- Shirakawa plans to exit as Bank of Japan governor on March 19
- Becton Dickinson (BDX) 6am, $1.23
- Diamond Offshore Drilling (DO) 6am, $1.09
- Centene (CNC) 6am, $0.36
- Emerson Electric (EMR) 6:30am, $0.62
- Spectra Energy (SE) 6:30am, $0.31
- Eaton (ETN) 6:30am, $0.93
- Littelfuse (LFUS) 6:30am, $0.84
- Church & Dwight (CHD) 7am, $0.57
- Cardinal Health (CAH) 7am, $0.86
- Sirius XM Radio (SIRI) 7am, $0.02
- Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) 7am, $0.59
- Delphi Automotive (DLPH) 7am, $0.87
- OneBeacon Insurance Group (OB) 7am, $0.12
- Techne (TECH) 7am, $0.77
- Aecom Technology (ACM) 7am, $0.30
- HCA Holdings (HCA) 7:03am, $0.83
- Alliant Techsystems (ATK) 7:30am, $1.71
- Teco Energy (TE) 7:30am, $0.21
- Estee Lauder (EL) 7:30am, $1.05
- Automatic Data Processing (ADP) 7:30am, $0.71
- Vishay (VSH) 7:30am, $0.08
- Arch Coal (ACI) 7:45am, $(0.15)
- Inergy Midstream (NRGM) 7:45am, $0.16
- Inergy (NRGY) 7:46am, $0.08
- SunCoke Energy (SXC) 7:59am, $0.34
- Magellan Midstream (MMP) 8am, $0.65
- Spectra Energy (SEP) 8am, $0.37
- Computer Sciences (CSC) 8am, $0.65
- Kellogg Co (K) 8am, $0.66 - Preview
- UDR (UDR) 8am, $0.34
- Agco (AGCO) 8am, $0.98
- Liberty Property Trust (LRY) 8am, $0.63
- Lennox International (LII) 8am, $0.55
- Allergan (AGN) 9am, $1.18 - Preview
- Bell Aliant (BA CN) Pre-Mkt, C$0.41
- Unum Group (UNM) 4pm, $0.77
- Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) 4pm, $1.95
- Expedia (EXPE) 4pm, $0.65
- Ultimate Software (ULTI) 4pm, $0.39
- Universal (UVV) 4pm, NA
- Panera Bread Co (PNRA) 4pm, $1.74
- CBL & Associates Properties (CBL) 4pm, $0.57
- Kimco Realty (KIM) 4:01pm, $0.31
- Cerner (CERN) 4:01pm, $0.64
- Fiserv (FISV) 4:01pm, $1.40
- CME Group (CME) 4:01pm, $0.64
- NeuStar (NSR) 4:01pm, $0.72
- Hanesbrands (HBI) 4:01pm, $1.04
- Team Health (TMH) 4:01pm, $0.35
- Shutterfly (SFLY) 4:02pm, $1.39
- Thoratec (THOR) 4:02pm, $0.37
- Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) 4:05pm, $0.55
- Zynga (ZNGA) 4:05pm, $(0.03)
- Jack Henry & Associates (JKHY) 4:05pm, $0.50
- Myriad Genetics (MYGN) 4:05pm, $0.38
- Alterra Capital Holdings (ALTE) 4:05pm, $(0.44)
- Trimble Navigation (TRMB) 4:05pm, $0.55
- Aflac (AFL) 4:07pm, $1.48
- Hain Celestial Group (HAIN) 4:10pm, $0.69
- Genworth Financial (GNW) 4:10pm, $0.27
- KKR Financial Holdings (KFN) 4:12pm, $0.39
- Walt Disney (DIS) 4:15pm, $0.77
- CH Robinson Worldwide (CHRW) 4:15pm, $0.70
- Equity Residential (EQR) 4:25pm, $0.76
- Genworth MI Canada (MIC CN) 4:30pm, C$0.78
- Acadia Realty Trust (AKR) 5pm, $0.28
- HNI (HNI) 5:30pm, $0.43
- Suncor Energy (SU CN) 10pm, C$0.74
- BioMed Realty Trust (BMR) Post-Mkt, $0.34
- MDU Resources Group (MDU) Post-Mkt, $0.39
CRB Index – Commodities failing at our long-term TAIL risk line for the CRB Index (306) was a big reason why we got longer of Asian/US stocks into yesterday's close; CRB Index (peaked in 2011) = long-term bubble that is popping as the US Dollar continues to make a series of long-term higher lows; Oil is overbought up here, but we need to see that drop back below $113 (Brent).
- Iron Ore Seen Poised for Bear Market by Smirk as Supply Expands
- Platinum Supply Falls to 13-Year Low as Mines Close: Commodities
- Oil Rises From One-Week Low as Recovery Signs Counter Supplies
- Platinum Trades Near 17-Week High on Concern Supplies Will Fall
- Nickel Drops Most in Three Weeks as Investors Seek to Curb Risk
- Soybeans Rise for Third Session as Brazil Rain May Slow Harvest
- Coffee Gains as Vietnam Growers Hold Supplies; Sugar Advances
- Oil Supplies Rise in Survey on Seaway Disruption: Energy Markets
- Gasoline at U.S. Pumps Jumps Most in Two Years on Crude Rally
- Mongolia Should Get More Control of Rio Mine, President Says
- ADM Profit Beats Estimates After Soybean-Processing Margins Gain
- Niger in Talks With Areva for Uranium Mines to Give More Funds
- Record China Flour Cost Spurring Wheat Imports: Chart of the Day
- Anglo American CEO Carroll Says Platinum Industry Is 'in Crisis'
EUROPE – didn't take much to freak people out in European Equities – Socialist Quote of The Day "the Euro shouldn't fluctuate as the market sees fit" (Hollande), as France reports a bomb of a Services PMI print for JAN at 43.6 (vs 45.2 last month); UK and Germany both had very solid PMI reports – both equity markets look very bullish compared to France, Italy, and Spain.
KOSPI – continues to be a stealth leading indicator (broke TRADE and TREND supports in the last 3 weeks) and confirmed that bearish TREND overnight, down another -0.8% to 1938 (TREND resistance = 1959); China, Singapore, and Hong Kong look nothing like the KOSPI (so buy those); Shanghai Comp closed up +0.2% last night, despite the European freak-out.
The Hedgeye Macro Team


text:
A country in south-central South Dakota.
(APA-174: dp. 6,873; 1. 455'; b. 62'; dr. 24'; s. 17 k.; cpl. 536; a. 1 5", 12 40mm., 10 20mm.; cl. Haskell; T. VC2-S-AP5)
Jerauld (APA-174) was launched under Maritime Commission contract by Oregon Shipbuilding Co.. Portland, Oreg., 3 November 1944; sponsored by Mrs. Gloria Dahlberg; acquired and commissioned at Astoria, Oreg., 28 November 1944, Comdr R. E. Perry in command.
After undergoing shakedown off California, Jerauld sailed from Seattle 5 February 1945 carrying Army flyers and civilian workers to Pearl Harbor. She -arrived 16 February and began 4 weeks of amphibious exercises in the Hawaiian Islands.
The new attack transport sailed from Pearl Harbor 15 March with marines destined for Okinawa. En route she touched at the great American bases at Eniwetok and Ulithi, arriving Okinawa 17 April. She remained off the bitterly-contested island for 5 days debarking a Marine antiaircraft battalion and undergoing frequent air attacks before sailing for Saipan 22 April.
Jerauld next steamed to Guadalcanal; and, after her arrival 10 May, she embarked troop units for redeployment to Guam and Saipan. The ship departed Saipan 23 June for her second voyage to Okinawa, this time with Army Engineers needed for the construction of all-important airfields on the island. She remained off Okinawa from 27 June until 6 July when she sailed with more than 250 battle casualties destined for hospitals on Saipan. Jerauld then proceeded to San Francisco, where she arrived 26 July.
The battle-tried transport remained in the United States until after Japan's surrender, Sailing 16 August for the Philippines, she arrived Manila 6 September and embarked occupation troops. After stopping at Lingayen Gulf for additional units she steamed to Wakayama 7 October to land occupation soldiers. The ship visited several Japanese ports in support of the operation and made another voyage to the Philippines for troops. She sailed from Nagoya 26 October, embarked returnees; in the Philippines, and steamed by way of Pearl Harbor for San Diego.
Jerauld made one additional voyage to the Philippines as part of Operation "Magic-Carpet", bringing many combat troops back to the United States. She then sailed from San Francisco 20 February 1946 via the Canal Zone for Norfolk. Arriving 11 March, she decommissioned 6 May, was returned to the Maritime Commission, and was placed in the Maritime Commission's National Defense Reserve Fleet in the James River, where she remains.
Jerauld received one battle star for World War II service.


text:
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Project: Iraq Under US OccupationOpen-Content project managed by AJB, KJF, mtuck
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The US Army Corps of Engineers awards Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), a sole-source monopoly contract to repair and operate Iraq's oil infrastructure. The contract is awarded in secrecy without any competing bids from other qualified companies. Halliburton will eventually charge the government $2.4 billion for its work. The Defense Contract Audit Agency will find that about $263 million of these costs are either questionable or unsupported. Despite this, the US Army will pay Halliburton all but $10.1 million, or 3.8 percent, of the disputed costs. [New York Times, 2/27/2006; US Congress, 3/28/2006, pp. 3-4 ]
Entity Tags: Defense Contract Audit Agency, Halliburton, Inc., US Army Corps of Engineers
Category Tags: Economic Reconstruction, Halliburton
Halliburton issues a press release declaring that it has won a contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers to extinguish oil well fires and do emergency repairs to Iraq's oil infrastructure in post-invasion Iraq. The firefighting work will be subcontracted to Houston-based companies Boots & Coots International Well Control, Inc. and Wild Well Control, Inc. [Halliburton, 3/24/2003]
Entity Tags: Halliburton, Inc.
Halliburton is paid $304,486,577 to import 191,965,150 gallons of gasoline into Iraq at an average price of $1.59 per gallon. This does not include the two to seven percent bonus the company will receive as part of its cost-plus contract, which will bring the total cost to between $1.62 and $1.70 per gallon. The Congressional Research Center will later report that during this time the wholesale cost of gas in the Middle East was only 71 cents per gallon, meaning that Halliburton was charging the government 91 to 99 cents for transporting a single gallon of gas to Iraq. Later, an expert interviewed by the staff of Congressman Henry A. Waxman will claim that the gas could have easily been transported into Iraq for 20 to 25 cents per gallon. Another will claim that it could have been done for as little as 10 cents per gallon. [US Congress, 10/15/2003, pp. 3-4 ]
Category Tags: Halliburton
The Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency sends a draft audit report to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, & Root (KBR) claiming that the firm overcharged the US military as much as $61 million for fuel deliveries into Iraq. The report says that KBR charged an average of $2.64 per gallon, more than twice the price others were paying. The DCAA also says the company has been slow to provide cost estimates for its projects in Iraq. KBR has given the US government estimates for only 12 orders. As of this date, 69 are overdue. [New York Times, 12/12/2003]
Entity Tags: Defense Contract Audit Agency, Halliburton, Inc.
Category Tags: Economic Reconstruction, Oversight and Transparency, Halliburton
The US Army Corps of Engineers (US ACE) issues a waiver relieving Halliburton of the obligation to provide the government with "cost and pricing data" for the fuel it sells to the US military. The company was recently accused of overcharging the military as much as $61 million for fuel deliveries into Iraq (see December 5, 2003). The waiver will make it difficult for auditors to determine whether Halliburton or its Kuwaiti subcontractor overcharged the US government. [US Congress, 1/6/2004 ]
Entity Tags: Halliburton, Inc., US Army Corps of Engineers
Compounding effect of multiple tiers of subcontractors [Source: News Observer] (click image to enlarge)Despite the fact that the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) contract explicitly prohibits Halliburton and its subcontractors from subcontracting security services, Halliburton subcontractor ESS hires the firm Blackwater USA to provide security through Regency Hotel, another subcontractor. Each of the subcontractors involved in this arrangement will charge a substantial mark-up for the security personnel. Blackwater pays its security guards $600 per day and charges Regency $815 per day plus overhead costs, while Regency charges ESS between $1200 and $1500 per day for each security guard. It is not known what ESS charges Halliburton or what the final bill is for the taxpayer. Halliburton refuses to disclose this information to Congress. Congressman Henry Waxman, in a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, will suggest that Halliburton's invoice to the US government for these services was not legal and should not have been paid. [Regency Hotel & Hospital Company, 3/12/2004 ; News & Observer, 10/24/2004; News & Observer, 10/28/2006; US Congress, 12/7/2006 ]
Entity Tags: Regency Hotel, Halliburton, Inc., Blackwater USA, ESS
Category Tags: Security, Blackwater USA, Halliburton
The head of the International Advisory and Monitoring Board, Jean-Pierre Halbwachs, says the Bush administration is withholding information regarding the more than $1 billion in contracts awarded to Halliburton and other companies in Iraq. This information is believed by UN-sanctioned auditors to confirm that these contracts were won without competitive bidding. The White House has rejected requests for this information since March, and will not produce a list of other companies that have obtained such contracts. [The Moscow Times, 7/19/2004] The IAMB, a multi-agency organization in place to oversee the Coalition Provisional Authority's disbursements from the Development Fund for Iraq, later discovers that over a hundred contracts involving billions of dollars were in need of investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They also discover that $8.8 billion that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries under CPA control is unaccounted for, while an additional $3.4 billion appropriated by Congress for development eventually became earmarked to fund "security." The IAMB, once established, was forced to spend months finding auditors acceptable to US authorities. These auditors, appointed in April 2004, are then stonewalled. It is believed that the Bush administration wished to stall until the end of June 2004, at which time the CPA would no longer be extant and Paul Bremer, the pro consul and head of the CPA, would not be answerable to the press. The auditors' report reveals that the CPA hadn't kept accounts of the hundreds of millions of dollars of cash in its vault, had awarded contracts worth billions of dollars to American firms without tender, and had no idea what was happening to the money from the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which was being spent by the interim Iraqi government ministries. [Guardian, 7/7/2005]
Entity Tags: International Advisory and Monitoring Board, Halliburton, Inc., Coalition Provisional Authority, Jean-Pierre Halbwachs, L. Paul Bremer, George W. Bush
Category Tags: Halliburton, Economic Reconstruction
Ben Carter, an employee for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, & Root (KBR), serves as the foreman of the water purification unit at Camp Ar Ramadi, a US military base also known as "Junction City." At the base, both potable and non-potable water is supplied for different purposes. Non-potable water, despite not being used for drinking, is expected to meet certain safety standards so that US troops can use it for bathing, showering, shaving, laundry, and cleaning. After another KBR employee discovers larvae swimming in a toilet bowl, Carter does a test and discovers that there is no chlorine present in the non-potable water. When he tests the non-potable water tank, he is shocked to find out that "the water in the tank tested negative for chlorine; that the access lid of the tank was not in place, let alone secure, and the air vents to the tank were turned upward and left unscreened; leaving the water supply vulnerable to contamination from dust, insects, rodents or even enemy attack." He reports his findings and urges the military to chlorinate their water tanks. But he is told by the KBR site commander that the water is not his concern. Carter is frequently hindered by higher-ups in his attempts to make sure that the water is properly purified and eventually leaves Iraq in frustration. [Democratic Policy Committee, 1/23/2006, pp. 6-8 ]
Entity Tags: Halliburton, Inc., Ben Carter
Category Tags: Military Privatization, Halliburton
Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, the highest ranking contracting official at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), testifies before the Democratic Policy Committee. She criticizes how the Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO) contract was awarded to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Browning, & Root (KBR). "I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career." She notes that there were several irregularities in the USACE's contract with KBR to restore Iraqi oil: The independence of the USACE contracting process was severely compromised. The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) controlled "every aspect of the RIO contract," even after responsibility for the contract was delegated to the US Army. She questioned why the Defense Department had delegated executive agency authority for the RIO contract to the Corps when it has no competencies related to oil production. Such work was outside the scope of its congressionally-mandated mission. The Defense Department paid KBR to prepare for oil production restoration work before the RIO contract was even awarded. The payments were made under the already operational Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), the scope of which did not include such work. Greenhouse said that the US government should have signed a new contract with KBR for this work. When she questioned the legality of these payments, she was incorrectly told that a new contract was being issued. [Democratic Policy Committee, 6/27/2005 ]
Entity Tags: Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, Democratic Policy Committee, US Army Corps of Engineers, Halliburton, Inc.
Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, who earlier criticized the US Army Corps of Engineers' sole-source contract with Halliburton at a public hearing (see June 27, 2005), is demoted from her position as Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting (PARC). Greenhouse, who was known for her steadfast adherence to regulations enforcing fair competition, received high performance ratings at the beginning of her tenure, which began in 1997. But after she began objecting to the contracts being awarded to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, & Root (KBR), her reviews became negative. [New York Times, 8/29/2005; Democratic Policy Committee, 9/16/2005, pp. 8-9 ]
Entity Tags: US Army Corps of Engineers, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, Halliburton, Inc.
After reviewing $57 billion worth of Iraq reconstruction and troop support contracts through September 2006, auditors from the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) inform the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that contractors in Iraq submitted about $5.1 billion in unsupported costs ("unreasonably high") and $4.9 billion in questionable costs (for which contractors lack proper documentation). About $2.7 billion of these unsupported or questionable billings are from Halliburton alone. [US Congress, 2/15/2007 ]
Entity Tags: Defense Contract Audit Agency, House Committee on Government Reform, Halliburton, Inc.
It is reported that over 1,000 civilian private contractors have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since the start of hostilities in those countries. An additional 13,000 have been wounded. The casualty figures come from the Department of Labor. Civilians work in a number of areas in Iraq, from providing security and servicing weapons systems, to more mundane tasks such as logistics, construction, truck driving, and maintenance (see April 4, 2007). [Reuters, 3/7/2004] Roughly one contractor dies for every four members of the armed forces. But despite the risks, Americans are lining up for jobs in the two war zones, lured by the prospects of high pay and, for some, adventure. As of the end of April 2007, 224 of the killed contractors were US citizens. [Reuters, 3/7/2004]
Entity Tags: Blackwater USA, Aegis Defence Services, Vinnell Corporation, US Department of Labor
Category Tags: Bechtel, Blackwater USA, Custer Battles, Halliburton, Military Privatization
Halliburton Co agrees to pay a $559 million fine to end an investigation of its former KBR subsidiary if the US government approves the settlement. KBR, formerly Kellogg Brown & Root, has long been accused of violating anti-bribery laws by paying kickbacks to Nigerian officials in return for "sweetheart deals" involving Nigeria's oil and natural gas fields. The fine, if paid, will be the largest penalty in history against a US company for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA); the settlement would allow Halliburton to avoid having a government monitor put in place, but would require the company to hire an independent consultant to assess its compliance with anti-bribery laws. Halliburton would pay $382 million to the Department of Justice and $177 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission in "disgorgement." KBR, which has become independent of Halliburton since the incidents in question, refuses to comment on the settlement. The government's probe of Halliburton/KBR goes back over 20 years, to the construction and expansion of a gas liquefaction facility at Bonny Island, Nigeria. Halliburton has admitted that its agents probably bribed Nigerian officials, and former KBR CEO Albert Stanley has already pled guilty to charges stemming from the Bonny Island bribery scheme. Former Vice President Dick Cheney was Stanley's immediate supervisor when Cheney was CEO of Halliburton. [Reuters, 1/26/2009]
Entity Tags: Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, US Department of Justice, Kellogg, Brown and Root, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, US Securities and Exchange Commission, Albert Stanley, Halliburton, Inc.
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