Internet pop sensation Clara Bond

When I first clock eyes on Clara she is running down the stairs from London’s Embankment bridge to the South Bank, where we arranged to meet. “Sorry,” she says, her curly brown hair lashing out behind her. “Sorry I’m late, I got lost.”

Clara is only 10 minutes late. But this polite young girl from Devon feels the need to explain she’d forgotten which bridge she needed, as she hasn’t been to this part of town in a while. This British singer-songwriter is no pop diva.

She explains that her mum used to take her to the South Bank along the river once every summer when she was a kid – a long time ago now, she says – and would make a point of telling the Devonshire-lass that if she wanted to live in London,Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products.A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. she would have to work hard.

Those summer trips may be a distant memory now, but the feelings she had back then of standing by the river and overlooking the City wanting to 'make something' of herself, have stayed with her ever since. She is committed to making it in the Big Smoke.

At 19, Clara Bond is on the edge of something big. She is an up and coming pop singer about to release her first album, The Chase, all of the songs on which she has written and mean something to her.

She is one of those classic, modern-day pop junkies who has made a name for herself online, with more than 50,000 Twitter followers and a loyal You Tube fan base, but who is yet to be signed to a major recording label.

Until that day comes, Clara is submerged in the “hard graft” of writing songs, gigging and producing videos online with the simple dream that she wants to do this full-time, enough to make a living.

She claims she is not hampering after the dizzy heights of fame which artists like Adele or Rihanna have – but nor would she reject it if it came her way. “I didn’t want to go into this because of the fame, fame is more of a by-product of what you do. I’ve still got a long way to go but I feel like I’m on the right track,” she says.

We walk along the South Bank to get a cup of tea on a wet, cold morning. When we arrive at a small café, Clara orders a latte and helps herself to sprinkles of chocolate on top.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. She asks me where I'd like to sit. It feels as though I'm meeting up with an old friend.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles.

This is the girl who left school before finishing her A-levels to pursue singer-song writing full-time. She’d done a “gruelling” year of AS-levels in psychology, English, French and history at the respected Colyton Grammar School in Devon, but she knew her heart wasn’t in it.

“It was quite a shock to my parents when I said I want to do this and put uni to the side,” she says. However, she explains they were the ones who had pleaded with Clara to go and see a voice coach in her early teenage years, because she “irritated” them around the house with her singing (mainly Girls Aloud songs at that time). They were the ones who accompanied her to recordings and industry “showcases” of her singing when she was under 16. So in many ways, they must have known something like this was coming.

But Clara is definitely the odd one out in the family. Her three older brothers have all been to university, as have her parents, so the academic bar is “set quite high”, she explains. To give up A-levels half way through and pursue a pop career instead was not really the done thing in this household.

Two years later, here she is, about to release her first EP. Clara describes her music as “pretty much pop”. She writes a lot of upbeat, “dance-y” pop songs – her new video to her lead single Back to You features her singing and strutting some moves – as well as a few ballads.

“All my stuff is very lyrically based. When you’re happy, you listen to a melody. When you’re sad, you listen to the lyrics. I want my lyrics to stand for that.Our vinyl floor tiles is more stylish than ever!

Crimfotainment takes no prisoners

THE saturation of police procedures in popular culture has given rise to the well-documented ''CSI effect'', which sees the public harbour inflated expectations of criminal investigations, court processes, and an erroneous familiarity with forensics. Television has had a discernible impact on the justice system and the justice system is, in turn, having an impact on television. Australian screens are awash with observational series that follow police as they seek to expose and apprehend lawbreakers in a genre that I've taken the liberty of dubbing ''crimfotainment''.

Australian television is approaching terminal velocity as it zeroes in on the bottom of the cultural barrel. First, reality TV came for the actors and I did not speak out. Then it came for the writers and I did not speak out. Now it has come for the cameramen. Surveillance Oz is a remarkably popular show that has successfully done away with everything that makes TV special, right down to picture quality. The program's images depend heavily on CCTV footage obtained from a chain of parking garages, and are of such graininess that many faces featured don't even need to be pixilated.

The voice-over explains that parking operators in a central control room are on ''high alert for antisocial behaviour''. I'll tell you what I think is antisocial behaviour: a woman innocently patting her boyfriend's arse at a pay station while being spied on by a faceless drone in a remote location with cinnamon doughnut stains on his pants, who logs the footage later sold to a production company that broadcasts it across the country.

And where are we as a society when an inebriated woman can't straddle a boom gate for the edification of her friends without her impromptu burlesque show being set to music in prime time? Dance like no one's watching, indeed.

Lectures on decency are especially hard to stomach from a parking company that extorts customers to the tune of $80 for a five-hour stay. For that kind of dough, I want champagne on arrival and a bounce on the boom gate thrown in for free.

Border Security: Australia's Front Line is now in its 11th season and,The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. from what I understand, its motto is, ''We will decide which fruits come to this country and the circumstances in which they come''. Subjects can't help but know they are being filmed, and the dilemma for officials is that everybody looks dodgy after a 14-hour flight. As someone who suffers from an unfortunate condition where I appear to be lying even when telling the unvarnished truth, I admit to just a tinge of admiration for the American woman who flew to our shores with a kilo of cocaine stashed under her wig. Each episode contains three tales of intrigue, and is an invaluable document of what not to do. Budding drug-runners are advised to wash their hands and clothes, not bring in food along with drugs,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. and for god's sake rehearse your story. Border Security is the purest form of catharsis for lazy do-gooders who think they're doing their bit for national security by watching.Largest gemstone beads and jewelry making supplies at wholesale prices.

AFP: Australian Federal Police is another love letter to an organisation that,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. given controversies, could do with surveillance of its own. Each episode chronicles two cases and, judging by the vainglorious press conference of one story arc, the war on drugs is nearly over and troops will be home by Christmas.

Those who like their goodies and baddies without the grey can be further satisfied with a plethora of road-based cop-docs - effectively low-cost community service announcements for the police that invite us to keep calm and carry on. Highway Patrol is but one local version of,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china, literally, car-crash TV. Frenetic drums feed the voyeuristic adrenalin and the chases and prangs allow for rubbernecking without the traffic. Omnipresent police cameras catch the cretins and ensure the plods mind their manners for when mum plays the video to her bridge buddies.

The ubiquity of cameras means paranoia has never been so reasonable. Public transport tickets track our itinerary; government advertising encourages us to dob on neighbours; credit-card details are one slip from being public property; nightclub venues scan our ID; and open media alerts strangers to our whereabouts. I'd wear a hoodie to protect my innocence if I didn't think it made me look guilty.

''What have you got to hide?'' is the rhetorical question of the modern tyrant. Australians are increasingly comfortable jettisoning privacy for social convenience and specious feelings of safety. The electronic equivalent of peering through curtains is also a rich source of cheap and titillating TV.

Did global warming cause Hurricane Sandy?

Naturally, a warmer climate would affect how weather systems behave. The tricky question is how? Generally, a warmer climate would probably make storms more frequent and powerful and wetter than they’ve been in the past. But which storms would get worse, and when? Scientists are struggling to answer that question.

Andy Nash, the head meteorologist at the National Weather Service in South Burlington, suggests thinking about how climate change affects weather by imagining an unethical Major League Baseball home run slugger.

Bill already hits a ton of home runs each season, but he wants to hit even more. So he takes steroids and the number of home runs he hits increases as a result. Once Bill is on steroids, it’s impossible to tell how many of the home runs are because of the steroids, and how many would have happened anyway.

Nash said global warming is essentially weather on steroids. There’s more of it, and more extremes due to climate change, but it’s hard to tell which storms were made possible through global warming, and which storms would have happened regardless.

A lot of factors went into creating the monster that was Hurricane Sandy. Most of those factors are routine occurences that happen with weather systems all the time. It started with a hurricane forming south of Jamaica and moving north. The area south of Jamaica is a prime breeding ground for hurricanes in late October, so it wasn’t odd that one would form there.

Meanwhile,Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers, a winter like storm crossed from the Pacific and started heading eastward across the United States. Again, that’s not unusual. We often start getting that type of storm system this time of year.

Thirdly, a topsy-turvy weather pattern called a block in the Atlantic Ocean was preventing weather systems from moving generally east to west across the ocean like they usually do. The blocking weather pattern is somewhat unusual, but definitely not unheard of.

Hurricane Sandy, heading north from Jamaica, would have normally been steered northeastward, out to sea off the East Coast by the winter like storm coming in from the west. But Sandy couldn’t do that, thanks to the blocking weather pattern gumming up the works over the Atlantic.

The storm from the west was also pretty much stopped in its eastward march by the North Atlantic block. So it stalled, sort of tilted backwards, and drew Sandy northwestward into the East Coast.

So what does all that have to do with global warming? Well, we’re now back to Slugger Bill and his steroid addiction. Like Bill’s extra home runs, it’s hard to tell if Sandy would have happened anyway, or if global warming made the monster storm possible.

There are intriguing pieces of evidence and theory – call them steroid injections – that global climate change might have made Sandy more of a powerhouse than she otherwise might have been.

For one, let’s talk about that block over the Atlantic. The block is a natural occurence that would happen with or without climate change. However, as some climate scientists like Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University point out, Arctic sea ice due to global warming slows the jet stream, making Atlantic blocks more frequent and stronger.

The extent of Arctic sea ice near the North Pole hit a record low in September.

“While it’s impossible to say how this scenario might have unfolded if sea-ice had been as extensive as it was in the 1980s, the situation at hand is completely consistent with what I’d expect to see happen more often as a result of unabated warming and especially the amplification of that warming in the Arctic,” Francis wrote, as reported by Justin Gillis in the New York Times.

So it’s possible global warming might have influenced the formation of the block and steered Sandy. We’ll probably never know for sure.

Water temperatures off the U.S. East Coast were warmer than normal when Sandy entered the picture. The warmer the water, the more energy and strength a hurricane can draw from the ocean.

Water temperatures have been generally increasing off the East Coast over the years, many believe because of global warming.Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. So did the warm water strengthen Sandy beyond what it otherwise would have achieved? Again, possibly, but nobody can be sure.A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister.

Sea levels have risen a bit as ice from glaciers melted. That might have helped make the storm surges a little higher along the coast than they otherwise would have, but it probably only would have made a slight difference.

Some climate scientists are becoming more direct at linking storms like Sandy to climate change. Most of them agree storms and other extreme weather events like droughts and heat waves are becoming more frequent due to climate change. A lot of these scientists regard Sandy as a symptom.

For instance, Scientific American on Tuesday quoted this representative Tweet from Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota: “Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is [the] storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.”

The bottom line is global climate change might have been a factor in helping create Hurricane Sandy,We are pleased to offer the following list of professional mold maker and casters. and that we should generally expect more storms, and more weather extremes in the coming years.

Every time I mention climate change in this blog, I get a mini-storm of anger from some people saying that I’m lying, that global climate change does not exist,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. and I’m alarmist.

All I can do as a journalist who does not have a PhD in climatology is find the best information from the best sources, and pass it along.

What I’ve found so far is a remarkable consensus among climatologists that the world is warming, that there are compelling but not always proven theories as to the practical effects of this warming, and a strong desire among those scientists to better understand how climate change will affect us here in the real world.

No doubt some of these scientists will look at Hurricane Sandy and try to figure out whether tragedies such as this are part of our future with climate change, or just a terribly sad fluke that might never happen again.

Unprecedented ‘black mold’ meningitis outbreak strikes

The black mold creeping into the spines of hundreds of people who got tainted shots for back pain marks uncharted medical territory.

Never before has this particular fungus been found to cause meningitis. It’s incredibly hard to diagnose, and to kill — requiring at least three months of a treatment that can cause hallucinations. There’s no good way to predict survival, or when it’s safe to stop treating, or exactly how to monitor those who fear the fungus may be festering silently in their bodies.

“I don’t think there is a precedent for this kind of thing,” Dr. Arjun Srinivasan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Health officials and doctors have tracked down most of the 14,000 people potentially at risk for fungal meningitis, blamed for the deaths of 24 people and sickening more than 300.

“This is definitely new territory for us,” he said.

The fungus’ brown-black color signals an armor that — along with being injected near the spine — helped this mold sneak past the immune defenses of otherwise healthy people, said Dr. Arturo Casadevall, a fungal disease specialist at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

“What we’re dealing with here is fundamentally different” from a typical fungal infection, he said. “This is a bug that most of us don’t know much about.”

But they’re learning fast, piecing together clues that promise some hope.

Doctors are beginning to detail in medical journals the first deaths in this outbreak, and the grim autopsy findings make clear that treating early is crucial before the fungus becomes entrenched. In one case, a woman died in Maryland after the fungus pierced blood vessels in her brain, leading to severe damage.

People getting treated earlier “seem to be doing OK,” with fewer of the strokes that characterized the outbreak’s beginning, Dr. Carol Kauffman of the University of Michigan said. She has advised the CDC and co-authored advice in the New England Journal of Medicine on how to handle the complex medication used in treatment.

People who got contaminated steroid shots made by a Massachusetts pharmacy have been told to be on guard for months for meningitis symptoms. But the CDC said Oct. 24 that the biggest risk for getting sick seems to be within 42 days of receiving one of the implicated back injections.

With the tainted shots recalled in late September,Allows you to securely organize any group of cable ties or wires. that means the period of greatest risk is nearing an end. And it should help doctors bombarded with calls from the worried determine who most needs a spinal tap to look for the very earliest signs of infection.

The CDC said doctors have two valid options: To watch patients closely for symptoms or to consider a just-in-case spinal tap, possibly repeated weekly, for at-risk people still inside that 42-day window.If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. However, CDC officials note that spinal taps come with their own risks.

“We know the farther out you are from receiving an injection, the lower your risk becomes for developing meningitis or other infections. We want to emphasize that,” CDC’s Dr. Tom Chiller told a conference call for physicians on Sept. 25.

Still, public health officials recall a 2002 meningitis cluster linked to steroid injections contaminated with a different fungus; one of those victims got sick 152 days after the shot.

Fungal infections don’t get a lot of attention, but they afflict millions around the world, said David Perlin of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, who is studying better ways to diagnose them. Most are skin infections like athlete’s foot, but fungi also can cause pneumonia, sinusitis and other problems.

Serious infections tend to strike people with immune systems weakened because of cancer, AIDS or other problems. Fungus caused meningitis in particular is extremely rare — especially in otherwise healthy people like in this outbreak — and it’s “very bad news,” Kauffman said.

While the more common bacterial and viral forms of meningitis tend to strike quickly with obvious symptoms, fungal meningitis grows very slowly and is hard to diagnose. Few anti-fungal drugs are absorbed into the central nervous system, limiting treatment options. Plus, human cells and fungal cells have a lot of similarities, making it hard to attack the fungus without side effects, Kauffman explained.This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents.

The main culprit in this outbreak is a black mold called Exserohilum rostratum, common in dirt and grasses. Only 33 human infections previously had been reported, mostly eye or skin infections in people with weak immune systems,We specialize in howo concrete mixer, Casadevall said.Here’s how scientists think it’s sneaking into the well-guarded spinal cord and brain of a healthy person:

The steroid injected near the spine reduces inflammation, one of the immune system’s defenses against contamination.

The mold grows quietly until enough accumulates for it to burrow a tiny hole, or abscess, into the lining of the spinal canal, said Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University. Reaching the spinal fluid inside offers a direct pathway to the brain.

The fungus’ color signals how intractable it is. Brown-black molds produce melanin, the same chemical that helps human skin tan. It guards against the sun’s mold-killing ultraviolet rays — and inside people, it fends off both antifungal drugs and other immune-system attacks, Casadevall said.

The good news: Black mold is treatable with a drug named voriconazole, with far fewer side effects than the older treatment initially recommended when the outbreak began.

Still, Kauffman cautioned doctors to carefully monitor patients because differences in metabolism can make levels surge in the bloodstream, causing hallucinations, confusion, nausea and occasionally liver damage. On the flip side, their bodies may process the drug too quickly to battle the fungus. Plus, voriconazole can interact badly with a list of other common medications.A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls.

Waterfront ‘Le Sabot’ built a century ago

The exclusive 1.6-hectare Morgan Estate, located along the shores of Lake of Two Mountains in the West Island community of Senneville, is being offered for sale for $8.Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS.5 million. Built in 1912 and referred to as “Le Sabot” (the boot), this waterfront property is considered to be one of Canada’s finest examples of the Arts and Craft residential style of architecture.

It was built for cultural philanthropist and department store owner F. Cleveland Morgan, who was the great-nephew of the founder of the Henry Morgan and Co. department stores, locally referred to as Morgan’s.Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products.

David Shennan, a well-respected Scottish architect of the time, designed the Morgan estate and was also responsible for putting to paper the design for Manoir Richelieu, the Hotel Tadoussac and the Thousand Islands Club. He also had a hand in the design of the castle-like Chateau Laurier in Ottawa.

With 27 rooms,HOWO trucks are widely used and howo spare parts for sale are also welcomed . including 12 bedrooms and nine bathrooms, the romantic, stone-turreted manor is having its 100th anniversary this year. Four generations of Morgans have lived in the home and still do.

This gated property is set back from Senneville Rd. by sweeping lawns, mature hardwood trees and formal English gardens — complete with a huge, rectangular lily pool. Le Sabot harkens back to a period in our history when architectural form was trying to break free from the bounds of Victorian-era stuffiness and conformity. It was a new age of opulence, opportunity and fodder for dreamers. The year the estate was built was also the year that the world’s fastest passenger liner, HMS Titanic, went down off the coast of Newfoundland on its maiden voyage, claiming 1,517 lives.

These were the times that Cleveland Morgan lived in, and this is why this estate was such a pleasure to visit — a pearl among the numerous rocks of the modernly mundane.

The exterior of the building was designed in a Georgian-Normandy-style, with its steep slate roof and two fieldstone turrets that face visitors as they first glimpse the manor. There is a circular stone dovecote (a structure for housing pigeons) on the grand lawn facing the home, a throwback to a time when many well-off country gentlemen bred the birds for racing and show.

The property at 264 Senneville Rd. encompasses two bedroom wings with six bedrooms, four bathrooms and three marble fireplaces in the main home. There is also a separate servants’ quarters and a large four-bedroom guest annex with a towering two-storey stone fireplace and two-car garage.

There is a very large heated outdoor swimming pool overlooking the Lake of Two Mountains and Oka Village in the distance, a private tennis court, a large and impressive 14-metre-long solarium and continual waterfront views along the length of the property.Our vinyl floor tiles is more stylish than ever!

Other features include rich oak panelling, balcony views, fieldstone walls, clay floor tiles that were made in Oka of local red clay, Brazilian flooring, a library, hand-painted motifs and a lived-in ambience that wraps you in its warm shroud as soon as you enter the home.

The front entranceway has that typical Georgian-style flavour, with a wide wooden door flanked by long, rectangular glass windows, greystone steps and trim, and topped with ornamental forged iron on its mantle.

You enter the home through the grand entrance hall with rich oak furnishings and panelling, and a beautiful antique spiral staircase leading to the second storey of the three-storey domicile. The staircase was originally found in the former governor’s residence at the Chateau de Ramezay, but after the building was partially gutted by fire, the staircase was acquired and restored by Morgan for his home. The red clay tiling is the main type of flooring found on the ground floor.

Corniced cove ceilings with fleur-de-lis and poisson motifs are found throughout the main floor. The home is built in the Central Cross-Hall plan, with living and dining rooms on each side.

The living room is well lit by numerous windows and French doors, most looking out over the lake. A handsome and classic open-hearth limestone fireplace seems to be an invitation to brew a pot of tea over its blaze. Incorporated into the space where the turret is situated is an alcove that uses the recess to show off the 19th-century grandfather clock that resides there and to let in natural sunlight from the long, rectangular windows that flank the alcove.

The dining area is a large room with a formal fireplace, panelled walls, built-in china cabinets and fine trim borders along the ceiling, doorways and baseboards.

Both the dining and living rooms open up into the northwest-facing solarium, which has incredible views of the lake and surrounding country. The solarium leads to a large terrace, English gardens and the heated in-ground pool — complete with diving board.Interlocking security cable tie with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals.

The land slopes downward to the shoreline of the lake and its menagerie of wildlife that find this location as attractive as Morgan would have when he first began laying out his country retreat. His principal residence was on Peel St., in the heart of downtown.

Wide oak plank floors are found throughout the two bedroom wings, on the second storey. The bedrooms are very well kept, original, and attractive and comfy. Canopied beds featuring hand-carved posts and frames blend well with the matching furnishings.

The third floor is largely occupied by Morgan’s collection of artifacts, ranging from a mummified cranium to sea shells, plant pressings and numerous other curiosities that he collected during his decades of world travelling.

For 46 years, F. Cleveland Morgan was the curator of decorative arts at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, a voluntary position he loved and dedicated his life to. He acquired thousands of specimens from around the world for the museum to demonstrate the history of art.

His Senneville home is full of many examples of art and artifacts, some dating back thousands of years. Some of the art work he collected was sold at Morgan’s.

There are also the hundreds of window panes that bear the names of visitors to the house — etched with a diamond-tipped pen, each made by the visitor. Some of the names include humorist Stephen Leacock, artist Clarence Gagnon and Sir John Abbott. It must have seen some great parties in its past.

In the 1960s, the Morgan family donated land to McGill University for the creation of the 240-hectare Morgan Arboretum.

With the sale of this estate, another window into the history of Montreal will be closed, but not locked to those who wish to seek it.

Cleveland Morgan’s legacy is still alive and well with every dog walker or bird watcher that visits the Arboretum, or every visitor to the fine arts museum, the McCord Museum or the Redpath, among others. His was a life well lived, and his beloved “Le Sabot” heralds this life.

Cost Burden? Or Not?

When the Massachusetts Division of Insurance denied the workers' compensation insurance industry an 18.8-percent rate increase in August, business owners across the state breathed a collective sigh of relief, knowing they had avoided larger payments for the time being.

But the last time there was a workers' compensation increase was 2001, when the division approved a more modest 1-percent jump. In each of the last 11 years,The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. statewide rates have either decreased or stayed the same, even as health care costs and wages — which determine the cost of paying injured workers — have climbed.

The result, according to industry officials, is an unstable workers' compensation market in Massachusetts. They say fewer insurance companies want to write policies here, driving up the size of the high-risk pool for workers' compensation. And business owners say they know a rate increase will hit them eventually — and after so many years without one, it could be sizeable.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte.

"Any time you have rate inadequacy in any line of insurance … what happens is, the pool grows," said Jim Harrington, executive director of the Massachusetts Insurance Federation, a Boston-based trade association for property and casualty insurers.

Becoming part of the workers' compensation pool is like becoming part of the high-risk car insurance pool after you've had one too many traffic incidents.

The difference, according to Harrington and others in the industry, is that some businesses have to join the high-risk pool without having particularly poor accident records, simply because insurance companies are reluctant to write policies here.

State officials and the Workers' Compensation Rating and Inspection Bureau (WCRIB), the licensed agency in Massachusetts that files for rate increases,Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. spar over the size of the high-risk pool.

The WCRIB reports about 25 percent of workers' compensation policies are being written from the pool today. But Massachusetts Commissioner of Insurance Joseph G.If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. Murphy said the number is lower — about 14.5 percent as of June 2012.

Murphy said that number fluctuates, but it doesn't approach the 25 percent the WCRIB cites. He argued that the Massachusetts market is healthy, with about 100 companies writing workers' compensation policies here. But he also said the size of the pool is edging upward.

"It's a concern. We want as much business as possible being written through the voluntary market," Murphy said.

Attorney General Martha Coakley's office actually recommended a decrease in the rates this year, and applauded the Division of Insurance's decision not to approve the 18.8-percent increase requested by the WCRIB, saying it would have been a hit to businesses struggling to stay afloat.

But Murphy said the division's decision doesn't mean an increase isn't warranted. He said there simply wasn't adequate justification for such a steep one. Murphy added that stagnant or decreasing rates are not sustainable.

Despite the possibility of higher workers' compensation costs in the future, the situation could be worse. Massachusetts has one of the lowest rates in the country, according to the 2012 Oregon Workers' Compensation Premium Rate Ranking Summary. The average rate here is $1.37 for every $100 of payroll — the eighth-lowest rate in the United States. The other New England states rank much higher, with rates of about $2 or more.

For businesses,Thank you for visiting! I have been cry stalmosaic since 1998. this seems advantageous. But what about the insurance companies that write workers' compensation? Aside from anecdotes provided by industry officials like Harrington and Pisciotta, it's difficult to gauge whether local insurance companies will likely drop workers' compensation coverage from their services due to flat rates.

Several Central Massachusetts insurance firms did not return phone calls seeking comment on the issue, while Michael F. Buckley, spokesman for Worcester-based Hanover Insurance Group, deferred to Harrington of the Massachusetts Insurance Federation.

The WCRIB had 30 days to appeal the Division of Insurance's decision to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, but did not. Pisciotta said the staff is still reviewing the decision and will likely refile for an increase at a later date.

A closer look at Assassin's Creed 3

This is likely because if you didn't play the whole thing to see how everything ties together into the overarching conspiracy, you might be led to believe that someone had an agenda.

The first game takes place in the classical era in a very Arab-centric series of locations with an Arabian protagonist fighting against the forces of The Crudsades and the Catholic Church. The game depicts the first major conflict between the Assassins and the Templars. with the later being a force who uses death-dealing to maintain peace and justice, while the former is a power-hungry group of megalomaniacs who will stop at nothing to enforce on the world their own vision of how it should be run and organized.

The game makes it clear that the modern incarnation of that organization has become seperate from the church, labeling itself the Abstergo Corporation. But through most of history it was essentially a secret arm of the Roman Catholic church, run from a post in the Vatican.

It's all rather abstract in that first game, with the most concrete connection being the need to kill a few actual Crusaders in some of the missions. The final villain turns out to have come from within the Assassin's organization,Load the precious minerals into your mining truck and be careful not to drive too fast with your heavy foot. corrupted by the power the Templars represent.Installers and distributors of solar panel,

The second through fourth games, known collectively as Assassin's Creed II, take a more direct approach, having moved the story ahead to a new world-center, Renaissance Italy, the protagonist fights directly against the forces of The Pope, and in Brotherhood, is even forced to directly confront Pope Alexander IV with intent to assassinate him after leaving him alive at the end of the previous story, though the pontiff's son, Cesare had already taken care of it.

In the upcoming sequel, Assassin's Creed III, time will jump again, this time to Colonial Era America. The player will take on Connor, a half-native man trained up by the Assassins. The time period and location means that, while the Pope may no longer be directly involved in Connor's plot, he will be surrounded by a conflict between American Colonials and British Imperials, violence toward Native Americans, and the beginnings of American slavery.

Potentially this will be the most controversial Assassin's Creed game yet, and thus Gamesindusty International magazine asked Assassin's Creed III creative director Alex Hutchinson and Assassin's Creed III: Liberation - the mobile platforms version of the game - scriptwriter Jill Murray about their philosophy toward designing a game that includes such potentially inflammatory topics.

"Usually we're trying to be truthful,Installers and distributors of solar panel," Hutchinson said. "And we like it--I should say we don't mind it--if the truth is uncomfortable, if we can back it up with facts. When we were dealing with the Borgias, we were saying the Pope is a really bad guy.Gecko could kickstart an indoor tracking mobile app explosion. But if you do any amount of research, it's pretty clear we didn't make this up and it's pretty well documented. And it's the same with the Founding Fathers. These are real people; they have their ups and downs, their opinions. And when we can find documented evidence of an opinion they had or something they asked for and it was just true, then we were happy to put that in the game.Thank you for visiting! I have been crystal mosaic since 1998. But we tried not to have our subjective layer come into it; we saved that for the fictional storyline and the fictional characters."

The Fictional storyline he's referring to is the planned DLC adventure for the game entitled The Tyranny of King George, which you can read more about here.

"As basically a bunch of often middle-aged white guys and girls working on a game, we knew we were not experts in Native American history," Hutchinson said of the upcoming game. "A lot of the things we thought we knew were wrong, or caricatures, or exaggerations of the truth."

This led to exhaustive research by the team, similar to how they handled previous incarnations; commendably, trying to be as well-informed as possible about the cultures and figures of the time they were writing about. The more controversial, the more careful they need to be about being accurate. They decided that they did need to draw a line this time however, and chose not to deal with the slavery of the era.

"We tried to present [slavery] objectively without crossing over into commenting on it," Hutchinson said. "We didn't want to take one step into that issue and then not deal with it, so really for us, it's not a topic we try to tackle in this game."

Murray, however wasn't able to take the same course, as the protagonist of Liberation is a freed slave, and completely skirting the issue would be poor characterization. "For me the importance of talking about things outweighs the fear," Murray said. "The fear you can deal with by doing your research, by talking to people, by really looking deeply into the character, understanding how they work, how they respond to their environment. To me, it's so much more important to talk about things, I'm willing to set the fear aside long enough to do my research and make sure I get it right."

Time-trip & shape-shift in ’Cloud Atlas’

David Mitchell’s book "Cloud Atlas" was considered unfilmable by many, including the author. But screenwriter/directors Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer thought of a way to make it work. In the past the trio have shown they have the cred to bring to film stories that push the cinematic envelope: the Waschowskis are responsible for "The Matrix," while Tykwer turned heads with his international hit "Run Lola Run;" films that dealt with alternate realities and time-tripping narratives.

Mitchell’s book contains six different narratives, each in a different time and written in a different literary style. The filmmakers chose to cast the same actors in each story (as with a theatrical repertory company) so viewers would start making connections between the characters in different eras. They then chose to tell the stories simultaneously to further underscore their connections.

Oscar winners Tom Hanks and Halle Berry each star as six different characters, sometimes playing different races and genders. They are joined in this casting coup by Hugo Weaving, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, Keith David, Doona Bae, Jim Sturgess, James D’Arcy and Ben Whishaw.

For Hanks, it was a challenge he was ready to take on, though when he first read the script, it seemed a daunting task.

"If you’re to read the screenplay, you would see that, just like in the film, someone walks out of the room in 1934 and walks into a room in the year 3000, and it’s all the same beat, it’s all the same emotion, it’s the same color," Hanks said. "So my fear was, ’I’ve got six characters. I’m going to choke on two of them, at least. I’m going to blow it.’ In baseball, you’re still batting four out of six. That’s pretty good. There were some of the one-offs, particularly, when you were just working for a day or two, that you say, ’Man, I hope the magic comes!’"

Berry relates that she got to play a Korean man (Dr.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. Ovid) and a Caucasian woman (Jacosta Ayrs) in two of the stories. "Had it not been for a movie like this that required each person to play all of these characters to fulfill the theme of the movie, nobody would have ever picked me to play an Asian man or a Jewish German woman, ever," Berry said. "There was a knowingness when this was happening that this was pretty special and, as artists, we should soak in every moment of what this process is. Every day that Ovid [makeup] was on, I enjoyed what that felt like and what that was about. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun on a movie.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale agate beads from china,"

In the simplest, terms, the six stories of "Cloud Atlas" are as follows. In the first,Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. set in 1849, An American slave trader (Sturgess) faces a critical illness while taking a ship home from the Pacific Islands with a slave stowed away in his cabin.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. The second, set in the 1930s, follows a gay music student (Whishaw) that comes to work for a legendary composer (Broadbent). He reinvigorates the composer and discovers his own genius, to tragic ends. A third story is set in 1973, and is a conspiratorial thriller in which a journalist (Berry) uncovers a scandal at a nuclear power plant.

The contemporary story is a comic episode in which a British publisher, named Timothy Cavendish (Broadbent), gets forcibly committed to a retirement home, run by Nurse Ratchet-like supervisor (Weaving). The fifth narrative is a sci-fi adventure set in a Seoul in 2144 in which a programmed young woman (called a "fabricant") escapes her controlled environment and ferments a revolution. The sixth story is set in post-apocalyptic Hawaii in which mankind has regressed to primitive behavior. In it a tribal leader (Hanks) assists a futuristic visitor (Berry) in a journey that could save mankind.


The repertory feel of the company of actors has some playing leads in one story, supporting roles in others. "We always knew who we were playing, the next day," Hanks said. "We’d read the call sheet at the end of the day, so we knew where we were going to have to be and how long it was going to take to do it.

"Sometimes you make films where you’re playing the same guy, but you go to six different locations. You shoot part of it in Iceland, you shoot part of it in the Sahara desert and you shoot part of it in L.A. This was like that, but squared or cubed. It was like an algorithm because the concentration and the output of each one of the characters was so completely different. They all required a different energy. They all required a different vibe that you carried around with you all day,The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. and they all felt different because the costume and the make-up literally changed the way you stood or sat or tried to take a nap, on occasion.

"It was almost like a huge amount of the ’work’ was done for us. So much of what we have to do is pretend it was happening for the first time. On this movie, every day you were doing something that would never, ever be repeated because that character would be going to go away in a day or two."

Phony certificates fool faulty crypto in apps from AIM

Researchers have uncovered defects in a wide range of applications running on computers, smartphones, and Web servers that could make them susceptible to attacks exposing passwords, credit card numbers, and other sensitive data.

The Trillian and AIM instant messaging apps and an Android app offered by Chase Bank are three apps identified as vulnerable to so-called man-in-the-middle attacks. Like the other dozen or so applications identified, the threat stemmed from weak implementations of the secure sockets layer and transport layer security protocols.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. Together, the technologies are designed to guarantee the confidentiality and authenticity of communications between end users and servers connected over the Internet.

The weak implementations caused the programs to initiate encrypted communications without first assessing the validity of the digital certificates on the other end. As a result, one of the fundamental guarantees of the SSL—that the computer on the other end of the connection belongs to the party claiming ownership—was fundamentally compromised. Instead, the apps will trust imposter certificates that are signed by attackers or fail established validity tests for a variety of other reasons.

"Our main conclusion is that SSL certificate validation is completely broken in many critical software applications and libraries," a team of researchers wrote in a paper titled The Most Dangerous Code in the World: Validating SSL Certificates in Non-Browser Software. "When presented with self-signed and third-party certificates—including a certificate issued by a legitimate authority to a domain called AllYourSSLAreBelongTo.us—they establish SSL connections and send their secrets to a man-in-the-middle attacker."

The scenario described by the researchers is precisely the attack SSL is intended to protect against. The research paper, presented last week's Computer and Communications Security conference, came in addition to separate work presented that demonstrated how holes in apps downloaded as many as 185 million times from Google's official Android market left passwords, e-mail, and instant messaging contents vulnerable to theft.

Instant messaging clients Trillian and AIM are among the apps that fail to properly validate SSL certificates before establishing a secure connection, according to the researchers. Man-in-the-middle attacks on Trillian,Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. depending on the specific setup, can yield login credentials for a variety of third-party services (including Google Talk, AIM, Yahoo!, and Windows Live services). The AIM client version 1.0.An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a term used for a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building.1.2 on Windows also accepts certificates signed by untrusted parties and also fails to verify if the host name on the certificate conforms to the Internet address the app is connected to.

Similar weaknesses in the Chase mobile banking app for Google's Android operating system also puts users at risk, the researchers said. "Even a primitive network attacker—for example, someone in control of a malicious Wi-Fi access point—can exploit this vulnerability to harvest the login credentials of Chase mobile banking customers," the paper warned.

The researchers attributed weaknesses to the "terrible design" of the programming interfaces provided in widely used code libraries that implement SSL. In some cases, the libraries leave it up to individual apps to validate the certificates presented when they connect to a server. In other cases, options chosen by app developers inadvertently turn off validation routines that by default are supposed to run.

"These APIs are extremely confusing," said Moxie Marlinspike, the pseudonymous researcher who has repeatedly exposed vulnerabilities in SSL. "They're very easy to get wrong and people do get them wrong all the time. But some of the cases that [the researchers] outline don't spell certain death."

One such case, Marlinspike said, was a weakness described in the code libraries for the Amazon Flexible Payments Service used to process online payments. Invoking the library using the PHP language turns off domain-name checking in FPS, allowing the server running the program to accept connections to non-authorized servers, the paper said. Marlinspike didn't dispute that finding but said that FPS provides its own signature-based authentication protocol and doesn't transmit client credentials, credit card numbers, or bank account information. Under those circumstances,The oreck XL professional air purifier, the lack of SSL validation doesn't necessarily indicate a significant loss of security, he said.

Marlinspike made a similar observation about a finding involving TextSecure, an Android app he developed to encrypt cellphone messages that use the SMS and MMS protocols. The carrier servers that phones connect to don't present SSL certificates that conform to Internet standards, so TextSecure wouldn't work correctly if it ran validation routines. More importantly, messages are encrypted using the Off-the-record protocol, so SSL is never relied on to keep the content private.

Nonetheless, the paper cites a litany of widely used apps and code libraries that fail to properly vet servers before establishing connections that are supposed to be secure. This authentication is supposed to take place during a "handshake" mandated by the SSL protocol, when a server presents its public-key certificate to the end-user computer. For the connection to be considered secure, the client must first confirm the certificate has been issued by a valid certificate authority,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , has not expired or been revoked, and carries the domain name(s) the client is connecting to.

Other apps and libraries mentioned in the paper include Amazon’s EC2 Java library and all cloud clients based on it; Amazon’s and PayPal’s merchant SDKs responsible for transmitting payment details from e-commerce sites to payment gateways; integrated shopping carts such as osCommerce, ZenCart, Ubercart, and PrestaShop; AdMob code used by mobile websites; and Java Web-services middleware—including Apache Axis, Axis 2, Codehaus XFire, and Pusher library for Android—plus all applications employing this middleware.

The researchers said they uncovered the faulty validation by running the programs on a network that used DNS cache poisoning and a real-time certificate impersonator to simulate a real-world man-in-the-middle environment. They called on developers to subject their apps to similar tests.

When It Comes to Government Subsidies

The Oct. 16 presidential town hall debate featured Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama facing off on who was really Mr. Oil or Mr. Gas or Mr. Coal. Neither candidate even mentioned climate change. And while President Obama did refer to renewable production, solar got short shrift—doubtless because of the fracas over now-bankrupt thin-film solar manufacturer Solyndra, which had received loan guarantees as part of the stimulus bill.

That’s a shame, because the reason panel production has moved from such countries as America and Germany to China is because prices have dropped and production has become a commoditized, high-volume enterprise. That may be bad news for Western manufacturing jobs, but it’s great news for the global environment, consumers, and even American energy security. In fact, if we had a level playing field, where neither fossil fuels nor renewable energy received favorable regulatory or subsidy treatment, solar would be increasingly competitive. Mr. Coal would be going home,Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. and Mr. Sun would be coming out to play.

Global subsidies for oil, gas, and coal amounted to $409 billion in 2010—compared with $60 billion for renewable energy that year. Cutting those subsidies would be economically efficient, reduce overall energy consumption, and level the playing field with renewable power. The International Energy Agency suggests that removing fossil fuel subsidies would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 2.6 gigatonnes a year by 2035. That’s half of what’s required to prevent the planet’s average temperature from increasing by two degrees centigrade or more per year.

It’s true that rich countries have removed most direct subsidies on fossil fuels (Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Iran are the biggest offenders), but indirect subsidies, such as tax breaks and favorable access to land, are still worth $45 billion to $70 billion in the OECD club of rich countries—or about the same as the global total for renewables subsidies. For example, noncompetitive auctions of coal mining rights in Montana and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin alone may have cost taxpayers up to $30 billion over the past 30 years (about 60-fold the cost of loan guarantees to Solyndra).

Meanwhile, a recent report from the U.N. Industrial Development Organization notes that photovoltaic module prices have been falling at a rate of 15 percent to 24 percent a year for some time. In 2011, factory gate prices for crystalline-silicon photovoltaic modules fell below the $1-per-watt mark,We are pleased to offer the following list of professional mold maker and casters. often regarded as the point of “grid parity” for solar power. Earlier this year, they reached 85.

The “levelized cost of electricity” for solar, a measure of the average price of power over the lifetime of a power project, has fallen from 32 per kilowatt hour in 2009 to 17 in early 2012. These declining costs are a major factor behind an explosion in use. A report by the Natural Resources Defense Council calculates that from 2006 to 2011, wind, solar, geothermal, tidal, and wave electricity production increased from 1 percent to 2.7 percent of total US production, from 0.1 percent to 1.5 percent in China, and from 5.3 percent to 10.7 percent in Germany. One sunny Saturday in May 2012 saw Germany produce nearly half of its electricity from solar. Given the long life of power plants—often measured in decades—this rate of change is phenomenal.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. Again, five years ago,Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. total global photovoltaic capacity was just 16 gigawatts. In 2011, the world added nearly twice that—29 gigawatts—of new capacity.Gardner Bender offers a broad range of cableties,

Interconnected web of trails offers great view of fall foliage

The air is crisp and cool, and even if fall colors are fading the time is right for bikers, walkers and skaters to come an explore all that West County trails have to offer.

On a recent cloudy afternoon,Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, John Pyle, of Maryland Heights, pedaled his bicycle into the Sailboat Cove parking lot at Creve Coeur Park and rolled to a stop by his car.

Although the sunlight was mostly thwarted in its path toward earth, Pyle appeared to be having a great day. A post-renal transplant survivor who also suffered a heart attack in 2008, Pyle rides the trail system accessible from the park every day, following doctors’ orders to get lots of exercise and control his glucose level.

“The park has been fabulous for helping me keep that down,” Pyle said.

Pyle, 60, rides two-plus hours a day on various routes. He likes the interconnected trails provided by Great Rivers Greenway, including a 2.8-mile stretch from Creve Coeur Park to the Katy Trail in St. Charles. The trails are safe, easy to access and well-maintained, he said.Find turquoise beads from a vast selection of Jewelry & Watches.

“I’m pretty pleased about what I’ve seen. … The trails are good – they’re not rough or washed out or anything like that,” he said. “The traffic is reasonably under control. They’ve got lots of nice parking areas.”

Pyle’s comments should be music to the ears of Susan Trautman, executive director of Great Rivers Greenway, the organization responsible for establishing many of the trails and greenways in the St. Louis and St. Charles areas.

“Our goal is to make St. Louis a better place to live,” Trautman said during the September meeting of civic organization Progress 64 West. “We’re really focused on getting people out and involved in the outdoors.”

GRG (grgstl.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck.org) was created as a result of Proposition C, the “Clean Waters, Safe Parks and Community Trails” initiative passed in 2000. The ultimate goal of GRG is “The River Ring,” an interconnected system of trails in greenways, on-street bicycle routes and parks that will circle the St. Louis region and encompass a 600-mile web of more than 45 greenways.

Currently, GRG has 17 greenways in various stages of development and use. Each year since 2007, Trautman said, the organization has monitored usage on seven of those greenways, rotating which greenways are checked.

“Annually we’ve had more than one million visitors on each of those seven trails. … Extrapolate that to the 17 different greenways we’re working with and that’s a lot of use, a lot of people outside,” Trautman said.

“The improvements have been much appreciated,” said Barry Rinderknecht, of Wildwood, who frequently rides on local trails, both those that are part of GRG and those designed and maintained by local communities.

“I would hope that community planners would always be thinking about trails,” Rinderknecht said.

Trail users will be pleased to learn that in addition to more miles of greenways, GRG also has a plan in place to maintain its system.

“The model in recent years has been to build it and then turn it over,” Trautman said. “Chesterfield is a great example of a terrific partner – and Wildwood. In fact, all of the western municipalities in St. Louis County and St.Allows you to securely organize any group of cable ties or wires.Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. Charles County are great partners. We build the facility and then turn it over to them.”

Some partners don’t have the same ability to maintain trails, so GRG is prepared to stay involved if necessary.

“What we’re looking at right now is developing a Greenway Conservation Corps, where we would work year-round with volunteers,” Trautman said. “We’d have sort of a small maintenance team and we would go out and shore (that) up. We might help with bush honeysuckle out here (in Chesterfield), but then on the riverfront trail or some other places where we’ve got some issues, we’d be doing a lot more significant work.”

Trautman said, as GRG was going through its update to its regional plan last year, “we really heard loud and clear – we can’t just build, we must also promote and sustain what we’re building.”

FAAN Official Arrested With U.S.Manufactures

FAAN Official Arrested With U.S.Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing,$1.4 Million

The arrest of a security official of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), Akinyele Adetule, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos when he attempted to launder $1.4 million (N218m), has confirmed long-held belief that those who know the inner working of the airport are among members of syndicates operating at the airport.

The arrest of Adetule took place less than a month after the EFCC arrested a 24-year-old man, Mr. Abubakar Sheriff, at the same airport with $7 million (N1.1 billion).A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls.

The Head of Operations, EFCC, Mr. Iliyasu Kwarbai,Our vinyl floor tiles is more stylish than ever! said the suspect was able to pass through Nigeria Customs Service and National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) security checks because he was wearing his identity card and therefore did not draw any suspicion.

"The suspect is a FAAN security guard. He wore his tag and was thus able to move freely in the airport without drawing suspicion. He was carrying a bag and it went through the scanner. It is curious that such a huge sum went through the scanner undetected. Or was it a case of conspiracy and collusion?

"The suspect passed through NDLEA and Customs and he went to the waiting area; but he started making phone calls instead of proceeding to board his flight. We accosted him and noticed that his bag was heavy.

"When we searched him,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. we saw the large sum of money, which he said did not belong to him and that he was only trying to telephone the owner who never showed up," EFCC said in a statement.

Adetula said he had worked for FAAN for over five years and he was promised N10, 000 if he could successfully get past security with the money.

Reacting to the incident, FAAN in a statement admitted that Adetula was a staff member of the organisation, stressing that he was not on duty when he was caught with the money.

"The suspect, who is an employee of the security directorate, was neither on duty nor on an official assignment. He was consequently accosted by security personnel at the Customs Currency Declaration Desk and has since been handed over to the EFCC custody for investigation," the statement, which was signed by FAAN's Head of Corporate Communication, Yakubu Dati, said.Largest gemstone beads and jewelry making supplies at wholesale prices.

The agency also commended the joint efforts of the EFCC, Customs, Police and other security personnel who aided his arrest, and assured them of its unalloyed assistance in unravelling the crime, "particularly as the staffer was acting on his own accord".

According to aviation security experts, for years, currency smugglers have been using security operatives at the Lagos airport to facilitate the nefarious activity through which over N3 trillion has been smuggled out of the country since the past 13 years of democratic governance.

Together with drugs, there have been syndicates that facilitate the movement of couriers out of the country through the airports and there also have not been effective efforts to stamp out the security operatives that aide these smugglers.

A former FAAN Managing Director, Mr. Richard Aisuebeogun, said that insider threat, which is the violation of security policy using legitimate access or obtaining unauthorised access, was the major challenge of aviation security at the Lagos airport.

Airport security officials are said to collude with passengers to smuggle banned materials, including hard objects to the aircraft by being compromised and allowing them to board with carry-ons (hand luggage) containing the illegal objects.

NDLEA once made a damning report about the nefarious

activities of aviation security officials on how they aid and abet drug trafficking.

In a report titled "Investigation Activities: Request for the Release of Aviation Security Officials", dated March 29, 2006, the agency said that it carried out hard drug investigation that involved conspiracy and abetting.

"On Monday 27th March, 2006 during the outward clearance of KLM flight to Amsterdam, two hard drug couriers were intercepted by the officers of the NDLEA at the KLM boarding gate at 2140 hours. The two couriers did not pass through the normal security check as they were carried through the tarmac gate one, in a station wagon car to the E wing of the MMIA and subsequently aided to the boarding gate.

Arne Vodder, Eames, and Evans at Clarke Auction's

Midcentury Modern furniture has been recently challenging the idea that only fine art is art. The combination of functionality,Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. design foresight, elegance, and edginess has made the midcentury modern market bring fine art numbers at auction over the last several months.

Clarke Auction in Larchmont, NY, Westchester's Premier Auction House, has successfully navigated the rough economy of late by providing its bidders with exceptional midcentury selections in its last several sales.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china, The upcoming Sunday, October 21st sale at Clarke Auction will maintain the reputation for spectacular midThe oreck XL professional air purifier,century pieces, as well as elevating midcentury art, African American art, and fine art to the top of the sale.

Last sale, the Paul Evans cityscape console was described as "disco design", and the October 21st sale proves, by comparison, why this is so. Featured at Clarke this month are both the cityscape designs of Paul Evans, in the form of a dining table and coffee table, as well as the brutalist designs of Paul Evans, in the form of a mirror and hanging console to be sold in one lot,Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. as well as a fantastic Paul Evans sculptured dining table. Paul Evans absolutely covers both elegance and edginess in each of these differing designs.

The sculptured dining table, console, and mirror are on the completely opposite end of the design spectrum from the Paul Evans' cityscape design. The brutalist sculptured table is one of the largest available, with a two part sculpted base with glass top measuring 11 feet long.

The discovery of the Paul Evans table is a rare pleasure, but not quite as rare as the collection of Arne Vodder Dining Chairs to be offered October 21st. The set of ten upholstered midcentury chairs designed by Arne Vodder for Sibast are made with beautifully cut rosewood and black leather upholstered seats on a raised T back. These important chairs are very hard to find and are all in remarkable condition.

The importance and recognition of midcentury design is not only prevalent in the auction and design industries, but the entertainment industry as well. A perfect example featured on October 21st at Clarke Auction is a midcentury Danish design bassinet that was prominently featured on the popular television show Dexter. After its cameo in the show, it now plays a role in the midcentury selection at Clarke Auction.

No midcentury selection would be truly complete without perhaps the best known name, Charles and Ray Eames. The lot of five Eames Shell Back Chairs completes with Eiffel tower bases, in three separate colors, adding style to practicality and functionality.

The fine art selection keeps to its name with many fine lots, especially from African American artists. Two of the most important pieces in this selection include two separate oils on canvas by A.C Hollingsworth. The Hollingsworth oils are of magnificent imagery and execution. One Hollingsworth is an early figural painting that is atypical of Hollingsworth's signature style. The other Hollingsworth, a Modernist Oil on Canvas is wrought with symbolism, imagery, and vivid beauty.

Other African American works include such names as Bob Thompson, Walter Sanford, and Samuel Middleton. An exquisite marble relief of an African American girl entitled "Little Ida" by Charles Calverley also tops the African American selection.

Other predominant and important pieces include several large and unique paintings by Jonah Kinigstein, an oil landscape by French artist Albert Charles Lebourg, a gouache of a seated woman by Iosif Iser, and two gouaches by Carlos Merida. The oil landscape by Charles Lebourg is a beautiful work by this artist because of its timeless style and use of color.Argo Mold limited specialize in Plastic injection mould manufacture,

The oils on canvas may steal the eye but the print selection at Clarke Auction supports many world renowned names as well. The "Pyramids" lithograph by Alexander Calder is one highly sought after example, but the selection features prints by the likes of George Bellows, Reginald Marsh, Paul Cadmus, and Albrecht Durer.

NASCAR’s also-rans work the system

Those terms, as well as wheel bearing, transmission and engine are code for NASCAR’s hidden secret: the drivers who start and park.

The start-and-parkers have enough talent to wheel a race car 185 mph but not enough sponsorship money to keep it on the track for 400 miles. Or sometimes, even 40.

But they keep coming to the track, hoping to qualify for races like Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400 at Kansas Speedway even though they realize their chances of finishing, not to mention winning, is remote.

“I love racin,” said Nemechek, who won both the 2004 Nationwide and Sprint Cup races at Kansas Speedway. “Now some of the time, it makes you think twice. Why the heck am I still doing this? But I love it.”

So while most of the attention at NASCAR races focuses on the race leaders and contenders for the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship, there is just as much drama at the rear of the pack. That’s where the drivers for the low-budget teams try to squeeze in as many laps as they can without damaging their race car and hope to pick up enough cash to make it to next week.

“Once in a while, we find some extra funds which allow us to go out there and run more, but it’s so hard, if you don’t have that, you’re going to be broke pretty quick, said Nemechek, who owns NEMCO Motorsports with his wife, Andrea. “It’s a very expensive sport, which everybody knows, and we’re trying to do the best we can.Largest gemstone beads and jewelry making supplies at wholesale prices.”

Blaney, driving for upstart Tommy Baldwin Racing, nearly caught the break of his career at this year’s Daytona 500 when he was the leader on lap 164 of 202 when the race was red flagged after Juan Pablo Montoya crashed into a jet dryer in a rain delay.

“I was thinking, ‘We might get lucky,’?” Blaney said of winning the Great American Race and its $1,588,887 purse had the race not resumed.

Instead, he managed to finish 15th and pocketed $296,513 for his team to race another day.

“You’re trying to race, trying to raise a little money,” said Blaney, 50. “Maybe the sponsor arena gets a little more friendly and you get enough money to race all day instead of having to stop early. A lot of guys are quality race car drivers who don’t have much to drive, and in this day and age, there’s no making up for lack of equipment.”

This week, NASCAR tried to level the field a bit when it announced a change in qualifying procedures. Instead of the top 35 in owners points automatically qualifying for a race, the fastest 36 would automatically qualify for the 43-car field, regardless of position in the standings.We specialize in howo concrete mixer,

That would seem to give someone like Nemechek, nicknamed “Front Row Joe” for his qualifying prowess, a chance to start further up in the field rather than struggle for one of the last eight spots.

“They’re trying to add some excitement to qualifying,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. so it means something,” said Nemechek, 49. “There are a few teams that have taken advantage of being locked in. Now, everybody has to put a valiant effort forward and see what it takes to get in.”

Qualifying to make the show is so important for the field fillers that they consider qualifying day more important than race day.

“I’m a product of that,” said Landon Cassill, the 2008 Nationwide Series Rookie of the Year who drives for another fledgling Sprint Cup team,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. BK Racing. “I spent a year driving for teams that couldn’t even run 20 laps. We had to make the race,Purelink's real time location system protect healthcare workers in their daily practices and OMEGA interventions. and once we made the race, that was the end of our weekend.

“We achieved our goal, and I acquired many meetings with big(-money) team owners based on how I qualified a car. I qualified 20th at Indianapolis, and the very next week, I was sitting at a desk of big-time team owners who wanted to know who I was.”

The logical question for those teams struggling to keep up with the $20 million a year budgets of the powerhouse Cup teams is: Why don’t they race at the second-tier Nationwide level?

That answer is that takes millions of dollars as well to haul cars and crews to the track.

“Three years ago, Tommy Baldwin was a start-and-park team,” said Cassill, who is from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “You would have said, ‘Tommy why don’t you run Nationwide?’ But last fall, Dave Blaney finished third in (Baldwin’s) car at Talladega. Tommy built it from ground up. He built a team that generated enough money starting and parking in order to race a couple of races, and through their success in those races found some sponsorship to race a full season for a couple of years.

NextGxDx Launches Physician Portal to Streamline Genetic

Healthcare information technology startup NextGxDx has released a free, online platform for physicians through which they can search for genetic tests, compare tests offered between different labs,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , order a test, and receive results.

As molecular diagnostics become more integral to the delivery of personalized care, privately held NextGxDx launched this platform in an effort to streamline the workflow for busy physicians who need to order genetic tests for their patients. The platform lists more than 10,000 genetic tests, including those that are approved or cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration as well as those that are offered through CLIA-certified labs.

In a white paper that was released in conjunction with the physician platform, NextGxDx pointed out that although there are 10,000 genetic tests on the market, nearly 22 percent of molecular targets are available for testing through only one lab. "Integrating the rapidly growing world of genetic diagnostics with the day-to-day operations of a busy clinic is one of the most pressing challenges in medicine today," NextGxDx states in the white paper. "Despite the powerful information provided by genetic testing, and the perceived clinical benefits, barriers still remain for full adoption into clinical practice."

In a recent report, seven genetic counselors from ARUP Labs reviewed test orders for complex biochemical, cytogenetic, and molecular genetic tests between February 2010 and December 2010, and found that one-third of the cancelled tests were due to the physician ordering the wrong test.

NextGxDx is hoping to provide doctors with the necessary information and tools about genetic tests to avoid such errors. "One of our primary goals is to simplify the workflow and make genetic testing simpler for community doctors to use,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory." Judsen Schneider, NextGxDx's scientific director, told PGx Reporter. "By supplying decision support tools to complement these genetic tests, we hope to increase the likelihood that community physicians will find them more useful in their practice."

Once physicians order tests through the web-based platform, NextGxDx generates a requisition form and processes the order. Then the order form is sent out of the lab for analysis. Test results are reported back to the physicians through the platform website.

Although there is no cost to physicians for accessing the NextGxDx genetic testing platform, labs pay a fee to include their test information in the service.Gardner Bender offers a broad range of cableties, According to Schneider,Allows you to securely organize any group of cable ties or wires. labs are motivated to submit their tests to the service because they recognize the opportunity to provide physicians with information about their tests and their labs.

"We charge our partner laboratories a small implementation fee and ongoing maintenance fee to cover the costs involved with linking their test catalog up to our database," Schneider said. "Labs also pay a service fee to NextGxDx for tests ordered through the NextGxDx platform." The test information included in the platform comes from the labs and diagnostics providers.

The company is planning to market the platform at medical conferences, where healthcare providers can test out the system. For example, it will be demonstrating the platform at the annual education meeting of the National Society of Genetic Counselors in Boston and at the Child Neurology Society Annual Meeting later this month, as well as at the American Society of Human Genetics Annual Meeting in November.

It took NextGxDx more than a year to develop the physician platform, which it beta-tested within large physician groups,Quickparts builds injection molds using aluminum or steel to meet your program. labs, and among researchers to ensure that the user interface fit the healthcare professional's workflow.

"Much of our early work was spent with the neurology and medical genetics communities, due to the fact that they see by far the greatest number of rare genetic disorders," Schneider said. "Since then, our catalog has expanded to cover genetic tests throughout all of medicine."

In surveying the barriers physicians face in performing genetic testing, NextGxDx identified inefficiencies in reporting test results as one of the major roadblocks. Despite advances in digital technologies, most labs still use direct mail and faxes to report test results so the company believes that it can make the delivery of test results more efficient through its platform.

"One of NextGxDx’s services is to provide test results back to physicians through our portal. We have seen many systems that can take upwards of a week to get results from a reference laboratory into the [electronic medical record], and into the hands of a clinician," Schneider said. "Our process is significantly faster. Upon completion of a test, laboratories upload the results to our site, and those results are then immediately available to the clinician."

The NextGxDx platform is encrypted to protect the privacy of patients, and test results are stored in compliance with HIPAA regulations. Although test results are reported electronically, currently they aren't incorporated into patients' EMRs.

Besides NextGxDx's platform, there are a number of other genetic testing-focused repositories that allow healthcare providers to find out about available tests. GeneTests is a catalog of tests operated by the University of Washington, while the National Center for Biotechnology Information has recently launched the Genetic Testing Registry. The University of Utah offers the Genetics Home Reference, a curated educational website about genetic tests and conditions for a general audience.

Former O.C. star combines movie magic

McDaniel, now 39, is still shooting – movies, that is, for the big screen as a sports coordinator with 25 film and TV credits since 2002. She supervised the hockey in "Miracle," the rugby in "Invictus," the football in the remake of "The Longest Yard" and the basketball in the comedy "Semi-Pro" and the drama "Coach Carter."

She casts athletes as extras,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. coaches actors to pass for seasoned players,Allows you to securely organize any group of cable ties or wires. sets the playbook for the game sequences and provides notes on the sports banter. She's clutch at keeping sports fans from calling the Implausibility Police in an entertainment age when moviegoers demand authenticity from their based-on-a-true-story cinematic diversions.

She's a sucker for all live sports – "You got tickets, I'm there," she says – but loves her hometown Angels the most. She appreciates art-house cinema but has a sweet spot for "Caddyshack" and "Bull Durham."

Her last project, "Trouble With the Curve," a Warner Brothers release starring Clint Eastwood as an aging Atlanta Braves scout and Amy Adams as his baseball-savvy attorney daughter who comes to his rescue, is out in theaters.

But McDaniel, who lives in Thousand Oaks when she isn't on location, hasn't had time to sit still in a theater, watch and wait for the credits to roll to her name, which can be found below "Picture Car Captain" and beside "Baseball Coordinator" 1 hour, 50 minutes into "Trouble With the Curve."

She's already on location in Dallas for her next project, "One Heart," a movie about Texas high school football that began shooting Friday.

She held an open casting call for football players at a Dallas-area hotel two weeks ago. She selected 225 players from the 350 applicants to suit up in pads for a two-day tryout.

For three hours in stagnant, barbecue-sauce-thick, 80-degree Texas heat, McDaniel had the players-turned-actors step, sprint, juke and jump. She told them where to hit, tackle and take down each other for football action that is choreographed like a brutal, skeleton-jarring ballet.

"The players who make the cut aren't necessarily the All-Americans but the ones who take direction, are hungry and just have so much passion because they're excited for another chance to put on the pads and play football," she said by phone. "Their passion gets me going."

McDaniel has established herself as a Hollywood player who, these days, looks more like a coach. She clutches a clipboard and wears a visor, workout clothes and sneakers, her long blonde hair tied up in the same ponytail that used to whip and wag furiously when she ran around the courts for the Ladycats and the Pepperdine Waves.

"I'm still on the move, running around," she said. "A friend of mine joked around the other day that I dressed up because I wore a new pullover."

McDaniel last week started her own sports consulting firm, Game Changing Films, after working the past five years as an independent contractor for her mentor, Mark Robert Ellis, and his Culver City-based company, Sports Studio.

"Why not be my own boss?" said McDaniel,Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. one of the few women in the male-dominated industry. "This is the coolest job in the world."

Born in Downey,Allows you to securely organize any group of cable ties or wires. she grew up in Brea and Fullerton, playing football with the neighborhood boys,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. never backing down from the smash-mouth talk or the cheap shots.

Her mother, Janice McDaniel, took her to nearby Angel Stadium to see many games where marveled at all-out-effort style of All-Stars Brian Downing and Bobby Grich in the 1980s. They also watched Dodgers games on TV, hanging on every colorful syllable from broadcaster Vin Scully.

Branching out from forestry brings rewards

Each division now has its own innovation board and we have established a simple online system for staff to input their ideas. We try to encourage the generation of as many ideas by individuals, teams and groups. We take these ideas and select the best ones using a fairly informal and loose process and progress them onwards.

He believes this proactive stance sets Coillte apart from many other companies.

We don t just wait for ideas we go out and look for them. If you look at most companies, innovation is always happening in them but we have formalised it and made out a structure on it. We have set targets for our innovation boards and we have also set targets for revenue we want to achieve from products and services which didn t exist before now.

This may not sound particularly impressive if you think of Coillte as purely a forestry company but it is far more than that as head of corporate communications Tom Byrne explains.

Coillte is a commercial semi-state company and our mission is to pursue the full commercial development of the company. Our core purpose is to enrich lives locally, nationally and globally through the innovative and sustainable management of natural resources.

We used to be almost 100 per cent reliant on log sales to a variety of customers,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. he adds. But there are now four distinct strands to the company panel products, forestry, land-based businesses, and renewable energy.

The Coillte Panel Products (CPP) division consists of SmartPly Europe in Waterford which produces oriented strand board (OSB) and Medite Europe in Tipperary which produces medium density fibreboard (MDF).

Medite is the market leader in its area and its brand has become a bit like Hoover and Biro in terms of its association with the product, says Byrne. It is mainly used for things like kitchens and building fit-outs and so on. OSB is more of a structural construction product and is used a lot in prefab buildings. Interestingly, it is now being used as a finished product as well as in a range of commercial applications.

The forestry businesses include log sales, forestry services, plant sales and laboratory services.

In terms of land management,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , Coillte owns some 445,000 hectares 7 per cent of the country s land area.

Land management encompasses everything we do as managers of the estate, Byrne points out. This can be planting trees or there are some areas which are not suitable for trees and we look for other things to do there.Gecko could kickstart an indoor tracking mobile app explosion. In other cases we might sell off some of the land for infrastructural development. Overall, we manage it in a commercial way.

Coillte is also a significant player in Ireland s renewable energy sector.

We are involved in wind energy and biomass, says Byrne. Almost 20 per cent of Ireland s installed wind generating capacity is on Coillte land. But we can add more value for our shareholder, the taxpayer, by becoming part of the development process. We are directly involved in 10 separate wind energy projects in nine counties at the moment and we are looking at the optimal way to manage those projects. We have now added expertise in wind energy to the company.

The company s traditional skill sets are being brought to bear in the biomass area. One of the challenges in biomass is getting the material to where it s needed, he notes. Every year, 100,000 truckloads of logs move around Ireland as a result of Coillte activity. We have the logistical expertise to get the material in the right quantities when required by customers with the combined heat and power plants which are most suited to its use.

He also points out that Coillte is responsible for 100 truckloads of timber and timber products being exported from Ireland every day.

Telecommunications is another strand which has been added to the company s increasingly diverse portfolio of businesses. We have an awful lot of sites around the country which are suitable for telecommunications masts and we have leased out a large number of them and we are now building our own masts. We were part of the Next Generation Broadband scheme and we have 100 masts in that. In total we have around 400 masts on our land. We are now looking at enabling some of these for 4G by connecting them with fibre to the backhaul networks required for that service.

Innovation and modern telecommunications technology also plays a key role in how the company has been developing and improving its internal operations. We partner with companies like Vodafone in utilising telecommunications to enhance our efficiency in terms of how we manage our activities, says Black.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , For example, we use tablet PCs out in the forest and our staff can connect back to the office over the 3G network. We collect a lot of data out in the forests and this is proving extremely helpful in that regard. The efficiency in terms of the amount of ground a forester can cover has improved greatly. They don t have to go back to base any more to download their data, they can just move from one site to another collecting and recording data. Also, the data is instantly available to other people in the company who may not be able to access it on their tablets. The technology also enables our staff to move around easily and seamlessly across our 19 offices or anywhere out in the field.

Safety has also been enhanced by the Vodafone technology. Forestry can be a dangerous business, Black points out. We have introduced GPS-enabled working alone technology over the 3G network. Staff can use their hand-held devices not only to alert us if there is a problem but also to pinpoint their exact location. This could be critically important if someone gets injured.

The technology also has a significant role to play in the wind energy business. Each wind turbine is fitted with its own mobile SIM card which enables communication with Eirgrid s National Control Centre passing through data about wind speeds and power generated. This allows the NCC to maximise the potential of each site and look for alternative power sources for the grid should the turbine cease generating for any reason.

We are also looking at other applications such as the development of mobile apps to deliver real-time location-based information to people making use of the various forest walks and trails we have around the country, Black adds. This is what makes innovation at Coillte so exciting; the scope is so wide and diverse. Our staff and our customers are benefiting from the advances we have made in terms of telecommunications. Having a single vendor for all our telecommunications in Vodafone is very important as this facilitates continuity, simplified management and helps us to maximise cost savings.