The
NCC's inaugural report, published on Monday, reiterated the scale of
the threat to the economy presented by the decline in environmental
services such as clean air, water and soil, and set out 13 key
recommendations the government should embrace in order to better measure
and price natural capital.When describing the location of the
problematic fridgemagnet.
If adopted,Large collection of quality chipcard at
discounted prices. the recommendations could have wide-ranging
repercussions for business leaders and policy-makers alike, particularly
given that the stated goal of the committee is to have full-scale green
national income accounts in place by 2020. Such accounts are expected
to be developed by the Office of National Statistics and would provide
government with frequent updates on the full economic impact of policy
decisions that serve to damage the UK's natural capital. It is easy to
conceive of a scenario where such accounts would lead to a rather
different cost-benefit analysis for a wide range of infrastructure
projects, such as the planned High Speed Rail link, George Osborne's
proposed fleet of gas-fired power stations, or the expansion of
Heathrow.
Specifically,
the report's recommendations focus on a series of steps designed to
make it easier for civil servants and businesses to measure and report
on the full natural capital impact of investments and policy decisions.
For
example, the NCC calls for better monitoring of changes in the UK's
natural capital base, and set out plans to this year develop a risk
register that would seek to highlight those natural assets that are
already under threat and being used in an unsustainable manner.
The
report also urges the government to review how natural capital is
considered when it undertakes cost benefit analysis of projects and
policies, and called for the creation of a new group of senior analysts
to find ways of measuring "inclusive wealth", which takes account of
natural capital when measuring the the UK's total capital stock.
In
addition, the report also warned that urgent steps should be taken to
give policy makers robust assessments of the economic value of current
changes in natural capital, such as the decline of bee populations or
fish stocks.
The
recommendations could have political repercussions given Friends of the
Earth is currently campaigning for the government to ban controversial
pesticides linked to bee population decline, on the grounds that
replacing the pollination service freely provided by bee numbers would
cost the UK economy ￡1.8bn.Learn how an embedded microprocessor in a buymosaic can authenticate your computer usage and data.
Writing
in the foreword to the report, Helm warned that the UK is consuming its
natural assets at an unprecedented rate, arguing that unless natural
capital is "hard wired" the country will face severe economic challenges
as a result.
"Too
often natural capital is an afterthought, left out of the core of
economic considerations," he said. "Without an economic price, it has
too often been assumed to be of zero value.
"[But]
our economic prosperity and the wise use of our natural resources are
not mutually exclusive. In fact, the latter is a precondition of the
former... Economic growth must be sustainable - otherwise it will not be
sustained."
The
practice remains controversial with critics arguing that it would make
it easier for degradation of the environment to take place in one area
as long as developers agreed to pay compensation. But supporters of the
approach maintain that the proper valuing of the economic contribution
made by forests,They manufacture custom rubber and parkingsensor and
bracelets. clean air, and other environmental services would provide a
huge incentive for corporations and governments to embrace more
sustainable businesses models.
All
of which makes the decision by the government not to promote the report
(it was not subject to a press release and Environment Secretary was in
Australia when it was released) even harder top understand. The soft
launch is particularly ironic given one of the NCC's key recomendations
is for government to fully support work to include natural capital fully
in the UK's Environmental Accounts.
BusinessGreen
understands the NCC made the decision to email the report to a select
number of contacts yesterday, as it wanted to "keep its powder dry" for
the wider promotion of its work at a later date.
But
Sandra Bell, nature campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said she was
surprised to see the report published this week as she had been told it
would be unveiled after Easter recess.
"This
report is addressing a critical issue and is clearly highlighting the
costs and benefits of properly valuing natural capital, so it's
confusing that it should be published with zero publicity," she said.
"Unless
the concept of embedding natural capital is championed by ministers it
really won't fly. This is an excellent opportunity for minsters to
entrench natural capital valuation across government,A solarstreetlight is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp. so we really hope they seize it."
The
subdued launch of the report will spark fresh speculation that
Environment Secretary Owen Paterson is less committed to the natural
capital agenda than his predecessor Caroline Spelman, who spent her last
few months in the cabinet championing the concept. It will also raise
questions over the extent to which the Treasury will embrace
recommendations that would force it to fundamentally reconfigure how it
measures economic success.
However,
a spokesman for the Treasury maintained that it was fully committed to
developing methods to value natural capital, and insisted that the
report was only subject to a soft launch as it was intended as a scene
setter for future work, rather than a detailed policy review.
"The
fact that there is a Natural Capital Committee, which reports to the
Economic Affairs Committee demonstrates that this issue is being looked
at by Defra ministers and the Treasury," he said, admitting however that
the Treasury is not currently considering this initial report, and that
Defra is still leading on the issue at this early stage.
2013年3月28日 星期四
Adam Lanza search warrants released
Police investigating the school massacre here seized a sizable
arsenal of firearms, knives and samurai swords along with medical
records and computer equipment from the 20-year-old gunman's home in the
days after the shootings, court documents released on Thursday reveal.
Also on Thursday, Connecticut State Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III,The Motorola drycabinets Engine is an embedded software-only component of the Motorola wireless switches. who's overseeing the case, said Adam Lanza killed 26 people within five minutes of storming into Sandy Hook Elementary School before turning a gun on himself.
The documents50 pages of affidavits and evidence logs that include a list of items seized from the car and Newtown home Lanza shared with his mother, Nancypaint a chilling picture of a killer who had been stockpiling weapons in the weeks and months leading up to the Dec. 14 massacre.
But they do little to establish a motive for Lanza, who shot and killed his mother at their home before driving to the school, where he forced his way in and opened fire.
"This is an active, ongoing investigation," Sedensky said in a statement.We have a wide selection of handsfreeaccess to choose from for your storage needs. "No conclusions have been reached, and no final determinations have been made."
Lanza killed all 26 school victims with a Bushmaster .223-caliber model XM15 rifle for which he had 10 magazines capable of carrying 30 rounds each. Sedensky's report says officers recovered 154 spent casings and 58 unfired rounds for the assault-style rifle from inside the school.
Lanza was also armed with a Glock 10 mm handgun, a 9 mm Sig Sauer P226 handgun and additional ammunition for both. Inside the car Lanza drove to the school, police found a 12-gauge shotgun and two magazines containing 70 rounds of ammunition. Lanza took his own life with the Glock as police were arriving at the school, the report states.
"There is no record of a member relationship between Newtown killer Adam Lanza, nor between Nancy Lanza ... with the National Rifle Association," spokesman Andrew Arulanandam wrote in a statement. "[Any] reporting to the contrary is reckless, false and defamatory."
Also according to the documents released on Thursday, FBI agents interviewed an unidentified resident who described Adam Lanza as a "shut in" and "avid gamer who plays Call of Duty" and rarely leaves the house. The witness said Lanza had a "gun safe containing at least four guns." Lanza had attended Sandy Hook Elementary School, the person told the FBI, and "that the school was Adam Lanza's 'life.'"
Superior Court Judge John Blawie ordered parts of the documents redacted after state prosecutors requested that the identity of a key witness not be revealed for another 90 days. The judge also approved blacking out some phone, credit card and serial numbers of some of the property confiscated from the Lanza home.
Connecticut State Police briefed family members of the Newtown shooting victims on Wednesday on what was recovered inside the Lanza home and car. About 50 family members attended the meeting, according to the Connecticut Post.
Thursday's release came after state lawmakers, media and Newtown residents criticized police officials for leaking details of their investigation at a convention of police chiefs in New Orleans in March. The details were then published by the New York Daily News.
"If state police officers can leak details of the Newtown investigation at conventions, surely that information can be shared with the Connecticut public," the Hartford Courant wrote in a recent editorial. "It has more of a right to know than out-of-state police chiefs do. ... This isn't information to be hoarded and shared only at the state police water cooler. The longer information is kept under wraps, the more questions there will be about why. Most important,Where you can create a custom rtls from our wide selection of styles and materials. the details will inform the debate about gun control, mental health and violence in society. There's no reason to fear an informed public."
Connecticut's General Assembly has been considering gun-control legislation in the wake of the Newtown shootings, including a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. State lawmakers said on Monday they would delay a vote on gun control until after search warrants related to the school shootings were unsealed.
Outside the Lanza home on Thursday morning, the police tape that once surrounded it for months was gone, but a Christmas wreath remained hung above the front door. A single news van was parked nearby.
Around 11 a.m., a bus carrying the Columbine (Colo.) High School boys lacrosse team arrived at the entrance to Sandy Hook Elementary School.We printers print with traceable indoortracking to optimize supply chain management. The driver explained that the teamwhich is competing at a tournament in southern New York state this weekwanted to pay its respects to the school shooting victims.
The first thing youll notice when you open up the Edge is that it comes with no keyboard or mouse or controlling device. In fact,A solarstreetlight is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp. the keyboard/laptop accessory doesnt even come out until later this year. That should tell you something: The keyboard mode is important, and it will be there, but its not how Razer sees you using the Edge. The gamepad case is the star here; everything else feels like well-oiled afterthoughts.
Thats a shame, actually, because the best use for the Edge should be as the most capable Swiss Army Knife of a computer on the planet. The single-minded, single-purposed, all-out gaming machine is actually the hybrid best suited for a lot of professional users. Its a Surface Pro.
But the Edge isnt the Surface, in basically every way but the most basic. Yes, its a slate that doubles as a Windows 8 PC. Thats more or less where the comparison ends. The Surface tries to be everything, to be equally awesome as a tablet and a laptop. The Edge is simply a highly specialised piece of mobile gaming overkill, with some other modes thrown in.
Also on Thursday, Connecticut State Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III,The Motorola drycabinets Engine is an embedded software-only component of the Motorola wireless switches. who's overseeing the case, said Adam Lanza killed 26 people within five minutes of storming into Sandy Hook Elementary School before turning a gun on himself.
The documents50 pages of affidavits and evidence logs that include a list of items seized from the car and Newtown home Lanza shared with his mother, Nancypaint a chilling picture of a killer who had been stockpiling weapons in the weeks and months leading up to the Dec. 14 massacre.
But they do little to establish a motive for Lanza, who shot and killed his mother at their home before driving to the school, where he forced his way in and opened fire.
"This is an active, ongoing investigation," Sedensky said in a statement.We have a wide selection of handsfreeaccess to choose from for your storage needs. "No conclusions have been reached, and no final determinations have been made."
Lanza killed all 26 school victims with a Bushmaster .223-caliber model XM15 rifle for which he had 10 magazines capable of carrying 30 rounds each. Sedensky's report says officers recovered 154 spent casings and 58 unfired rounds for the assault-style rifle from inside the school.
Lanza was also armed with a Glock 10 mm handgun, a 9 mm Sig Sauer P226 handgun and additional ammunition for both. Inside the car Lanza drove to the school, police found a 12-gauge shotgun and two magazines containing 70 rounds of ammunition. Lanza took his own life with the Glock as police were arriving at the school, the report states.
"There is no record of a member relationship between Newtown killer Adam Lanza, nor between Nancy Lanza ... with the National Rifle Association," spokesman Andrew Arulanandam wrote in a statement. "[Any] reporting to the contrary is reckless, false and defamatory."
Also according to the documents released on Thursday, FBI agents interviewed an unidentified resident who described Adam Lanza as a "shut in" and "avid gamer who plays Call of Duty" and rarely leaves the house. The witness said Lanza had a "gun safe containing at least four guns." Lanza had attended Sandy Hook Elementary School, the person told the FBI, and "that the school was Adam Lanza's 'life.'"
Superior Court Judge John Blawie ordered parts of the documents redacted after state prosecutors requested that the identity of a key witness not be revealed for another 90 days. The judge also approved blacking out some phone, credit card and serial numbers of some of the property confiscated from the Lanza home.
Connecticut State Police briefed family members of the Newtown shooting victims on Wednesday on what was recovered inside the Lanza home and car. About 50 family members attended the meeting, according to the Connecticut Post.
Thursday's release came after state lawmakers, media and Newtown residents criticized police officials for leaking details of their investigation at a convention of police chiefs in New Orleans in March. The details were then published by the New York Daily News.
"If state police officers can leak details of the Newtown investigation at conventions, surely that information can be shared with the Connecticut public," the Hartford Courant wrote in a recent editorial. "It has more of a right to know than out-of-state police chiefs do. ... This isn't information to be hoarded and shared only at the state police water cooler. The longer information is kept under wraps, the more questions there will be about why. Most important,Where you can create a custom rtls from our wide selection of styles and materials. the details will inform the debate about gun control, mental health and violence in society. There's no reason to fear an informed public."
Connecticut's General Assembly has been considering gun-control legislation in the wake of the Newtown shootings, including a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. State lawmakers said on Monday they would delay a vote on gun control until after search warrants related to the school shootings were unsealed.
Outside the Lanza home on Thursday morning, the police tape that once surrounded it for months was gone, but a Christmas wreath remained hung above the front door. A single news van was parked nearby.
Around 11 a.m., a bus carrying the Columbine (Colo.) High School boys lacrosse team arrived at the entrance to Sandy Hook Elementary School.We printers print with traceable indoortracking to optimize supply chain management. The driver explained that the teamwhich is competing at a tournament in southern New York state this weekwanted to pay its respects to the school shooting victims.
The first thing youll notice when you open up the Edge is that it comes with no keyboard or mouse or controlling device. In fact,A solarstreetlight is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp. the keyboard/laptop accessory doesnt even come out until later this year. That should tell you something: The keyboard mode is important, and it will be there, but its not how Razer sees you using the Edge. The gamepad case is the star here; everything else feels like well-oiled afterthoughts.
Thats a shame, actually, because the best use for the Edge should be as the most capable Swiss Army Knife of a computer on the planet. The single-minded, single-purposed, all-out gaming machine is actually the hybrid best suited for a lot of professional users. Its a Surface Pro.
But the Edge isnt the Surface, in basically every way but the most basic. Yes, its a slate that doubles as a Windows 8 PC. Thats more or less where the comparison ends. The Surface tries to be everything, to be equally awesome as a tablet and a laptop. The Edge is simply a highly specialised piece of mobile gaming overkill, with some other modes thrown in.
Newtown gunman had access to huge weapons cache
When Adam Lanza walked out of his house for the last time, he left
behind firearms and knives and more than 1,600 rounds of ammunition -
taking only four guns. They would suffice.
He loaded the weapons into his car, drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School, blasted his way into the building and within five minutes fired off 154 shots with a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle. Having slaughtered 20 first-graders and six educators, he killed himself with a shot from a Glock handgun. He still had more than 100 rifle bullets at hand.
Warrants released Thursday provide the most insight to date into the world of the 20-year-old gunman, a recluse who played violent video games in a house packed with weaponry that was all too real. The inventory of items found in the spacious, colonial-style home included books on autism, a vast array of weapon paraphernalia and images of what appears to be a dead person covered with plastic and blood.
The weapons used in the shooting had all apparently been purchased by Lanza's mother, Nancy, with whom he lived, said prosecutor Stephen J. Sedensky III, in a statement accompanying the warrants.
She was found dead in her bed; Adam Lanza had shot her the morning of the massacre, Dec. 14. Authorities also found a gun safe in his bedroom and a holiday card from Nancy Lanza containing a check made out to her son for the purchase of yet another firearm.
Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy expressed incredulity over the access that the troubled young man had to a cache of weapons.
"There are parts of this story that are unfathomable," he said. "How anyone would have maintained that household that way is difficult to understand."
Mark Barden,An experienced artist on what to consider before you buy chipcard. whose 7-year-old son, Daniel, was killed at Sandy Hook, said he was not surprised by anything revealed Thursday.
"Most of this is pretty high level stuff that we were aware of already and it just reminds me of what happened,The world with high-performance solar roadway and solarlampsolutions. that a gunman stormed his way into an elementary school and shot to death 26 people, 20 of which were first-grade boys and girls," Barden said.
The shooting elevated gun safety to the top of President Barack Obama's agenda; at an event in Washington on Thursday, joined by the families of four children killed at Sandy Hook, he urged lawmakers not to get "squishy" in the face of opposition to gun control.
"Shame on us if we've forgotten," Obama said. "I haven't forgotten those kids."
The debate has extended to Newtown, a rural community of 27,000 people in western Connecticut that is also home to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. A protest and counter-protest were held outside the foundation's offices Thursday.
If it's possible to determine a motive for the massacre, there may be clues in Adam Lanza's journals, which state police seized from the house and turned over to the FBI for analysis. But authorities say that so far no conclusions have been reached. Sedensky estimated that the investigation will be finished this summer.
At the Lanza house, investigators found books about autism and Asperger's syndrome, as well as one with tabbed pages titled "Train Your Brain to Get Happy." Adam Lanza was said to have been diagnosed with Asperger's, an autism-like disorder that is not associated with violence.
But the warrants also reveal an intense interest in weaponry and violence.
A gun locker in the house was open when police arrived in the aftermath of the shootings, and there was no sign it had been broken into.
Investigators found a 7-foot pole with a blade on one side and a spear on another, a metal bayonet, three samurai swords,You can order besthandsfreeaccess cheap inside your parents. a .323-caliber bolt-action rifle, a .22-caliber Savage Mark II rifle and a .22-caliber Volcanic starter pistol. There was a military-style uniform in Lanza's bedroom; literature seized from the house included a news article on a 2008 shooting at Northern Illinois University and a National Rifle Association guide to pistol shooting.
News outlets including The Associated Press reported previously that Lanza showed interest in other mass killings. Some, including The Hartford Courant, reported that he had a particular interest in Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in twin attacks in 2011 in Norway's worst peacetime massacre.
In a duffel bag, investigators found ear and eye protection, binoculars, numerous paper targets and an NRA certificate that belonged to Adam Lanza. The NRA said Lanza was not a member.
An unnamed person told investigators that Lanza was an avid gamer who played "Call of Duty" and rarely left his home. The affidavit, which is partially blacked out, also has that person saying that Sandy Hook, the school Lanza attended as a child, was his "life.Shop wholesale solarlight controller from cheap."
On the day of the massacre, Lanza took two loaded handguns to the school along with the Bushmaster rifle. A fourth gun, a loaded 12-gauge Saiga shotgun, was found in the passenger compartment of his Honda Civic, along with 70 shotgun rounds.
Lanza went through six 30-round magazines for the Bushmaster, although half of them were not completely empty, and police said he had three other 30-round magazines in addition to one that was in the rifle.We have a record for a owonsmart living at an address.
A judge's order to seal the warrants expired on Wednesday, and a Danbury Superior Court judge granted a request by Sedensky to withhold some details. Sedensky asked to redact the name of a witness, saying the person's safety might be jeopardized if the name were disclosed. He also asked that the release not include other information such as telephone numbers, serial numbers on items found and a few paragraphs of an affidavit.
Malloy, a Democrat in his first term as governor, said the fact that Lanza left smaller magazines at the house should boost support for a state ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
"That somebody could get 154 shots off in less than five minutes, kill 20 children and six adults, is disturbing," Malloy said.
Connecticut House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero Jr., a Republican, said he expects the General Assembly will be ready to vote next week, possibly Wednesday, on a package addressing gun control and other issues raised by the shooting.
He loaded the weapons into his car, drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School, blasted his way into the building and within five minutes fired off 154 shots with a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle. Having slaughtered 20 first-graders and six educators, he killed himself with a shot from a Glock handgun. He still had more than 100 rifle bullets at hand.
Warrants released Thursday provide the most insight to date into the world of the 20-year-old gunman, a recluse who played violent video games in a house packed with weaponry that was all too real. The inventory of items found in the spacious, colonial-style home included books on autism, a vast array of weapon paraphernalia and images of what appears to be a dead person covered with plastic and blood.
The weapons used in the shooting had all apparently been purchased by Lanza's mother, Nancy, with whom he lived, said prosecutor Stephen J. Sedensky III, in a statement accompanying the warrants.
She was found dead in her bed; Adam Lanza had shot her the morning of the massacre, Dec. 14. Authorities also found a gun safe in his bedroom and a holiday card from Nancy Lanza containing a check made out to her son for the purchase of yet another firearm.
Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy expressed incredulity over the access that the troubled young man had to a cache of weapons.
"There are parts of this story that are unfathomable," he said. "How anyone would have maintained that household that way is difficult to understand."
Mark Barden,An experienced artist on what to consider before you buy chipcard. whose 7-year-old son, Daniel, was killed at Sandy Hook, said he was not surprised by anything revealed Thursday.
"Most of this is pretty high level stuff that we were aware of already and it just reminds me of what happened,The world with high-performance solar roadway and solarlampsolutions. that a gunman stormed his way into an elementary school and shot to death 26 people, 20 of which were first-grade boys and girls," Barden said.
The shooting elevated gun safety to the top of President Barack Obama's agenda; at an event in Washington on Thursday, joined by the families of four children killed at Sandy Hook, he urged lawmakers not to get "squishy" in the face of opposition to gun control.
"Shame on us if we've forgotten," Obama said. "I haven't forgotten those kids."
The debate has extended to Newtown, a rural community of 27,000 people in western Connecticut that is also home to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. A protest and counter-protest were held outside the foundation's offices Thursday.
If it's possible to determine a motive for the massacre, there may be clues in Adam Lanza's journals, which state police seized from the house and turned over to the FBI for analysis. But authorities say that so far no conclusions have been reached. Sedensky estimated that the investigation will be finished this summer.
At the Lanza house, investigators found books about autism and Asperger's syndrome, as well as one with tabbed pages titled "Train Your Brain to Get Happy." Adam Lanza was said to have been diagnosed with Asperger's, an autism-like disorder that is not associated with violence.
But the warrants also reveal an intense interest in weaponry and violence.
A gun locker in the house was open when police arrived in the aftermath of the shootings, and there was no sign it had been broken into.
Investigators found a 7-foot pole with a blade on one side and a spear on another, a metal bayonet, three samurai swords,You can order besthandsfreeaccess cheap inside your parents. a .323-caliber bolt-action rifle, a .22-caliber Savage Mark II rifle and a .22-caliber Volcanic starter pistol. There was a military-style uniform in Lanza's bedroom; literature seized from the house included a news article on a 2008 shooting at Northern Illinois University and a National Rifle Association guide to pistol shooting.
News outlets including The Associated Press reported previously that Lanza showed interest in other mass killings. Some, including The Hartford Courant, reported that he had a particular interest in Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in twin attacks in 2011 in Norway's worst peacetime massacre.
In a duffel bag, investigators found ear and eye protection, binoculars, numerous paper targets and an NRA certificate that belonged to Adam Lanza. The NRA said Lanza was not a member.
An unnamed person told investigators that Lanza was an avid gamer who played "Call of Duty" and rarely left his home. The affidavit, which is partially blacked out, also has that person saying that Sandy Hook, the school Lanza attended as a child, was his "life.Shop wholesale solarlight controller from cheap."
On the day of the massacre, Lanza took two loaded handguns to the school along with the Bushmaster rifle. A fourth gun, a loaded 12-gauge Saiga shotgun, was found in the passenger compartment of his Honda Civic, along with 70 shotgun rounds.
Lanza went through six 30-round magazines for the Bushmaster, although half of them were not completely empty, and police said he had three other 30-round magazines in addition to one that was in the rifle.We have a record for a owonsmart living at an address.
A judge's order to seal the warrants expired on Wednesday, and a Danbury Superior Court judge granted a request by Sedensky to withhold some details. Sedensky asked to redact the name of a witness, saying the person's safety might be jeopardized if the name were disclosed. He also asked that the release not include other information such as telephone numbers, serial numbers on items found and a few paragraphs of an affidavit.
Malloy, a Democrat in his first term as governor, said the fact that Lanza left smaller magazines at the house should boost support for a state ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
"That somebody could get 154 shots off in less than five minutes, kill 20 children and six adults, is disturbing," Malloy said.
Connecticut House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero Jr., a Republican, said he expects the General Assembly will be ready to vote next week, possibly Wednesday, on a package addressing gun control and other issues raised by the shooting.
2013年3月6日 星期三
Robot Car UK set to rival Google's driverless-car project
Sitting in the passenger seat as your driver lifts his arms away from
the wheel and gleefully says "look, no hands" should be an unsettling
experience. My driver is Mark Sheehan, 26, but he isn't a reckless
hooligan or boy racer, and he assures me I'm safe. He's a researcher at
Robot Car UK and is demonstrating the latest in British driverless-car
technology. It has been developed by a 22-strong team from the
department of engineering science at Oxford University and I'm one of
the first people to get a ride in the country's first road-going
autonomous vehicles.
The search giant Google – and car manufacturers such as Audi, Toyota, GM, Ford, Mercedes and Volvo – has been experimenting with driverless-car technology since 2005,Site describes services including iphoneheadset. but Robot Car UK is the first tested in the UK.
Led by Professor Paul Newman and Dr Ingmar Posner and sponsored by the Government's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Nissan, the project aims to produce a "low-cost system" to take the "strain out of driving" with a system of lasers and small cameras to memorise regular journeys, such as the commute to work or the school run. Newman's team has only been working on its Nissan Leaf-based test car for four months but it has already travelled close to 100 miles under its own control on private roads at the group's Begbroke Science Park base just outside of Oxford.
Parked in the team's workshop, the Nissan Leaf looks similar to the standard production model and it is mechanically identical under the bonnet, but the team has fitted a small laser pod to its front bumper. On top it has fixed cameras inside a black cab roof light, which the team leader picked up on eBay. Powered by a standard-spec laptop in the boot, the system works by combining these tools to memorise regular journeys by recording its surroundings up to 500 times twice every second.
"The car is able to gain experiences of regular routes," Newman says. "And the brilliance of it is that it's actually the processing power of a human driver that first makes all the decisions and allows the car to build a 3D model of its environment. So once a journey has been experienced by our software the car will be able to take control from the driver via an iPad display on the dashboard when that trip is repeated.The term 'solarlamp control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag."
As The Independent's car reviewer I'm used to spending a lot of time behind the wheel and have become a nervous passenger at the best of times, so I'm uncomfortable in the passenger seat as Newman waves me off from the workshop for a lap of the test circuit. Sheehan, he assures me, "is just in the driver's seat to make sure we've got our health and safety covered".
The car does still need a driver. It's more of an advanced driver-assistance program than a truly driverless car but as we head off around the science park at 10mph Sheehan is able to tap the iPad and let the computer take control. The system isn't perfect and over three laps we brake suddenly several times for no reason. We make it around in one piece, though, and the car's navigation and control system even detects when Newman intentionally walks out in front of us. It stops in plenty of time before pulling away when he moves out of the way.
It's a disconcerting experience. Many drivers will be used to modern cruise control and parking-assistance features but seeing the steering wheel move and the car turn on its own takes some getting used to. Adding to the sci-fi feeling is Dr Benjamin Davis, another of the group's researchers, tapping away at a laptop in the rear. What looks like the code from The Matrix is buzzing across its screen and, sure enough, he cracks the "I've spotted the lady in the red dress" gag as soon as we set off.
Newman admits Google's fleet of 12 driverless vehicles in Nevada is far more advanced (it can handle traffic and roundabouts) and has covered nearly half a million autonomous miles without any major mishaps but it isn't yet destined for production and the Robot Car UK system aims to be far more affordable. "The sorts of sensors that Google uses are close to ￡100,000 per vehicle," Newman says. "Whereas the hardware that powers our system is bought off the shelf. All the hardware already exists so why would we develop our own car and sensors? Essentially what we've done is create a text file to control how all that technology interacts."
"We're using sensors that cost nearer ￡3,Capture the look and feel of real stone or indoortracking flooring with Alterna by Armstrong.000 so our project is much more affordable and out ultimate aim is to be able to fit the technology as a option on a new car – just like how you'd pick a new stereo or a reversing camera – for as little as ￡100," Posner adds.
But more work is needed to test the car on public roads and with traffic. One the biggest problems is something Posner calls "the plastic-bag problem". "Currently our sensors cannot tell how dense an object in the car's path is," he says. "They can only tell whether there will be a collision, so if faced with a floating carrier bag it will stop the car."
Unlike many other driverless cars the Robot Car UK system doesn't rely on peer-to-peer communication with other vehicles or GPS navigation. "Imagine the costs involved in putting several tons of satellite into space just to work out where you are," Newman says. "It's horrendously expensive and won't work in an underground car park or tunnel. What we're aiming for is infrastructure-free navigation."
Newman and Posner may have hit on a theme with more basic approach to navigation.Want to find chinamosaic?HOWO is a well-known tractor's brand and parkingsystem suppliers. Volvo trialled a self-driving convey of vehicles on a 200km dash across Spain with the chase cars programmed to follow the lead car driven by a professional driver, but car manufacturers are increasingly coming to realise that drivers want advanced assistance systems before they'll trust fully automated cars.
Issues such as insurance and liability – who pays if the software fails and an automated car has an accident – are often cited as factors making the roll-out of fully automated vehicles difficult. Instead, firms such as Mercedes, a company that led in safety with features like anti-locking brakes and electric stability control, are launching models with high levels of driver assistance. For example, the new S-Class from Mercedes, launching later this year, is the firm's flagship model and will feature Distronic, a cruise-control system with sensors for measuring and maintaining a safe distance from the car in front, and it will be able to steer itself, making the one of the first production cars to go so far down the path to automated driving.
And Audi, which has already trialled a fully automated car and is seen as the first manufacturer likely to produce a fully automated production car, is concentrating on assistance options rather than a fully autonomous Jetsons-like vehicle.
"Our vision of a piloted driving dream follows the motto: 'When it's fun to drive, I drive myself. When I no longer want to drive, I don't drive'. Like an aircraft that can fully operate on autopilot, the Audi of the future navigates through specific situations and performs driving manoeuvres on its own," the firm's spokesman Josef Schlossmacher says. While another source at the company confirms it doesn't believe "anyone is going to buy a fully driverless car at the moment".
The search giant Google – and car manufacturers such as Audi, Toyota, GM, Ford, Mercedes and Volvo – has been experimenting with driverless-car technology since 2005,Site describes services including iphoneheadset. but Robot Car UK is the first tested in the UK.
Led by Professor Paul Newman and Dr Ingmar Posner and sponsored by the Government's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Nissan, the project aims to produce a "low-cost system" to take the "strain out of driving" with a system of lasers and small cameras to memorise regular journeys, such as the commute to work or the school run. Newman's team has only been working on its Nissan Leaf-based test car for four months but it has already travelled close to 100 miles under its own control on private roads at the group's Begbroke Science Park base just outside of Oxford.
Parked in the team's workshop, the Nissan Leaf looks similar to the standard production model and it is mechanically identical under the bonnet, but the team has fitted a small laser pod to its front bumper. On top it has fixed cameras inside a black cab roof light, which the team leader picked up on eBay. Powered by a standard-spec laptop in the boot, the system works by combining these tools to memorise regular journeys by recording its surroundings up to 500 times twice every second.
"The car is able to gain experiences of regular routes," Newman says. "And the brilliance of it is that it's actually the processing power of a human driver that first makes all the decisions and allows the car to build a 3D model of its environment. So once a journey has been experienced by our software the car will be able to take control from the driver via an iPad display on the dashboard when that trip is repeated.The term 'solarlamp control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag."
As The Independent's car reviewer I'm used to spending a lot of time behind the wheel and have become a nervous passenger at the best of times, so I'm uncomfortable in the passenger seat as Newman waves me off from the workshop for a lap of the test circuit. Sheehan, he assures me, "is just in the driver's seat to make sure we've got our health and safety covered".
The car does still need a driver. It's more of an advanced driver-assistance program than a truly driverless car but as we head off around the science park at 10mph Sheehan is able to tap the iPad and let the computer take control. The system isn't perfect and over three laps we brake suddenly several times for no reason. We make it around in one piece, though, and the car's navigation and control system even detects when Newman intentionally walks out in front of us. It stops in plenty of time before pulling away when he moves out of the way.
It's a disconcerting experience. Many drivers will be used to modern cruise control and parking-assistance features but seeing the steering wheel move and the car turn on its own takes some getting used to. Adding to the sci-fi feeling is Dr Benjamin Davis, another of the group's researchers, tapping away at a laptop in the rear. What looks like the code from The Matrix is buzzing across its screen and, sure enough, he cracks the "I've spotted the lady in the red dress" gag as soon as we set off.
Newman admits Google's fleet of 12 driverless vehicles in Nevada is far more advanced (it can handle traffic and roundabouts) and has covered nearly half a million autonomous miles without any major mishaps but it isn't yet destined for production and the Robot Car UK system aims to be far more affordable. "The sorts of sensors that Google uses are close to ￡100,000 per vehicle," Newman says. "Whereas the hardware that powers our system is bought off the shelf. All the hardware already exists so why would we develop our own car and sensors? Essentially what we've done is create a text file to control how all that technology interacts."
"We're using sensors that cost nearer ￡3,Capture the look and feel of real stone or indoortracking flooring with Alterna by Armstrong.000 so our project is much more affordable and out ultimate aim is to be able to fit the technology as a option on a new car – just like how you'd pick a new stereo or a reversing camera – for as little as ￡100," Posner adds.
But more work is needed to test the car on public roads and with traffic. One the biggest problems is something Posner calls "the plastic-bag problem". "Currently our sensors cannot tell how dense an object in the car's path is," he says. "They can only tell whether there will be a collision, so if faced with a floating carrier bag it will stop the car."
Unlike many other driverless cars the Robot Car UK system doesn't rely on peer-to-peer communication with other vehicles or GPS navigation. "Imagine the costs involved in putting several tons of satellite into space just to work out where you are," Newman says. "It's horrendously expensive and won't work in an underground car park or tunnel. What we're aiming for is infrastructure-free navigation."
Newman and Posner may have hit on a theme with more basic approach to navigation.Want to find chinamosaic?HOWO is a well-known tractor's brand and parkingsystem suppliers. Volvo trialled a self-driving convey of vehicles on a 200km dash across Spain with the chase cars programmed to follow the lead car driven by a professional driver, but car manufacturers are increasingly coming to realise that drivers want advanced assistance systems before they'll trust fully automated cars.
Issues such as insurance and liability – who pays if the software fails and an automated car has an accident – are often cited as factors making the roll-out of fully automated vehicles difficult. Instead, firms such as Mercedes, a company that led in safety with features like anti-locking brakes and electric stability control, are launching models with high levels of driver assistance. For example, the new S-Class from Mercedes, launching later this year, is the firm's flagship model and will feature Distronic, a cruise-control system with sensors for measuring and maintaining a safe distance from the car in front, and it will be able to steer itself, making the one of the first production cars to go so far down the path to automated driving.
And Audi, which has already trialled a fully automated car and is seen as the first manufacturer likely to produce a fully automated production car, is concentrating on assistance options rather than a fully autonomous Jetsons-like vehicle.
"Our vision of a piloted driving dream follows the motto: 'When it's fun to drive, I drive myself. When I no longer want to drive, I don't drive'. Like an aircraft that can fully operate on autopilot, the Audi of the future navigates through specific situations and performs driving manoeuvres on its own," the firm's spokesman Josef Schlossmacher says. While another source at the company confirms it doesn't believe "anyone is going to buy a fully driverless car at the moment".
2013年3月4日 星期一
More service, fewer buses for ECO
ECO Transit is getting very serious about business-changing action
lately. Quite a few changes — some large, some small — will be launched
by Eagle County's bus system this year. The biggest change coming down
the road is a new “spine service” along the Interstate 70 corridor,
which will allow people to get up- and downvalley at a rate that
competes with personal vehicles.
The extra challenge facing the ECO Transit team is to implement the changes — essentially better service — with the same operating budget and resources. Put another way, Collier is heading an effort to turn one bus into two.
On the I-70 spine, buses will run from Vail to Eagle, stopping at Lionshead, Minturn, Avon and Edwards in between. Other buses will serve routes within those “hub” communities and along U.S. Highway 6. The idea is to provide fast transportation up and down the valley with hub service that takes people to their final destinations from the six stops along the spine.
From Eagle, buses will serve stops along Highway 6 and loop through Gypsum, much like they do now. Collier doesn't plan to change those stops much, if at all.
“The Eagle-Gypsum route had a 37 percent increase in passengers in 2012 over 2011,” she said. “Our aim is to fit the needs of the community, and we're just trying to be more efficient.”
Parks Department Director Paul Northam at a recent city parks authority meeting presented a financial report related to the Jeffersonville Ice Rink that was open from Nov. 23 through the last weekend in January. According to the report, expenses for the ice rink totaled $125,935 and revenue was $50,088, resulting in a loss of $75,847. The city posted a loss of $77,692 for operating the link last year.
Northam explained that while expenses were cut by about $20,000, revenues also dropped by about the same amount.Elpas Readers detect and forward 'Location' and 'State' data from Elpas Active RFID Tags to host molds platforms.
“A big part of that reason was we had three days that we had to close last year,” he said. “We closed 11 days this year and most of those 11 days were Saturdays and Sundays, which are our big days.”
“City services should not be in the business of making a profit,” said Jeffersonville Mayor Mike Moore.
He added that he thinks the ice rink is a great idea if managed properly and while there is no measurable impact, the ice rink is definitely an economic tool for the city and its businesses.
Moore’s comment about management of the rink related to a payment made to Walnut Ridge Nursery and Garden Center of $10,000.You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth Original ventilationsystem Descriptions.
“I’m not comfortable with a council member’s business being paid for work that affects a city project,” he said.
However, Councilman Dennis Julius, an owner of Walnut Ridge, said his business gave the city a cost break on landscaping at the ice rink. The company was hired by the city’s parks department for the work.
“Doing what we do costs us a lot more than $10,000,” he said. “If I was going to do that for another community it would be more than $10,000. It’s quite involved. We don’t just plop a tree down.”
Julius explained that a large portion of the costs involved were the labor in transporting trees — which can weigh up to a ton — to the rink and planting them in temporary planting beds.Make your house a home with Border and iphoneheadset Tiles. That cost also included stringing up decorative lights on the trees and above the skating rink.
Julius provided the cost outline for Walnut Ridge’s expenses to the News and Tribune.
According to the report, the total cost to complete the landscaping was more than $14,900, with $6,500 of the cost for labor. The difference in the amount billed and the total cost to Walnut Ridge was donated to the city.
The value of the plants used was nearly $13,400, according to the report.
“What we want it to look like in the evening is for it to look like you’re walking through [a] park,” he said of the atmosphere created.
As far as the purpose of the rink and the loss incurred by the city, Julius said he would continue to support the project as long as the community supports it.
“I think it’s a successful project,” he said.A Dessicant buymosaic is an enclosure with a supply of desiccant which maintains an internal. “That’s a true quality-of-life issue. It brings a lot of people to the downtown which we wanted it to do from the beginning.”
Jay Ellis, executive director of Jeffersonville Main Street Inc.Automate patient flow and quickly track hospital assets and people using cableties., said businesses downtown did get a boost from the ice skating rink.
“It may not be immediately quantifiable, but it does create an impact to downtown businesses,” he said. “It’s more than just an economic impact — it’s really a cultural asset for Jeffersonville.”
And for the businesses, even if the draw of the rink does not translate into a direct sale, Ellis said they are still being exposed to a new market and a new customer that may otherwise not have come to the area.
“You [could] drive by [the rink] and see 100 people who may not normally be in downtown Jeffersonville,” he said. “I think overall the response that I get is most of the businesses are very happy having this down here. I think it’s something other communities admire.”
The extra challenge facing the ECO Transit team is to implement the changes — essentially better service — with the same operating budget and resources. Put another way, Collier is heading an effort to turn one bus into two.
On the I-70 spine, buses will run from Vail to Eagle, stopping at Lionshead, Minturn, Avon and Edwards in between. Other buses will serve routes within those “hub” communities and along U.S. Highway 6. The idea is to provide fast transportation up and down the valley with hub service that takes people to their final destinations from the six stops along the spine.
From Eagle, buses will serve stops along Highway 6 and loop through Gypsum, much like they do now. Collier doesn't plan to change those stops much, if at all.
“The Eagle-Gypsum route had a 37 percent increase in passengers in 2012 over 2011,” she said. “Our aim is to fit the needs of the community, and we're just trying to be more efficient.”
Parks Department Director Paul Northam at a recent city parks authority meeting presented a financial report related to the Jeffersonville Ice Rink that was open from Nov. 23 through the last weekend in January. According to the report, expenses for the ice rink totaled $125,935 and revenue was $50,088, resulting in a loss of $75,847. The city posted a loss of $77,692 for operating the link last year.
Northam explained that while expenses were cut by about $20,000, revenues also dropped by about the same amount.Elpas Readers detect and forward 'Location' and 'State' data from Elpas Active RFID Tags to host molds platforms.
“A big part of that reason was we had three days that we had to close last year,” he said. “We closed 11 days this year and most of those 11 days were Saturdays and Sundays, which are our big days.”
“City services should not be in the business of making a profit,” said Jeffersonville Mayor Mike Moore.
He added that he thinks the ice rink is a great idea if managed properly and while there is no measurable impact, the ice rink is definitely an economic tool for the city and its businesses.
Moore’s comment about management of the rink related to a payment made to Walnut Ridge Nursery and Garden Center of $10,000.You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth Original ventilationsystem Descriptions.
“I’m not comfortable with a council member’s business being paid for work that affects a city project,” he said.
However, Councilman Dennis Julius, an owner of Walnut Ridge, said his business gave the city a cost break on landscaping at the ice rink. The company was hired by the city’s parks department for the work.
“Doing what we do costs us a lot more than $10,000,” he said. “If I was going to do that for another community it would be more than $10,000. It’s quite involved. We don’t just plop a tree down.”
Julius explained that a large portion of the costs involved were the labor in transporting trees — which can weigh up to a ton — to the rink and planting them in temporary planting beds.Make your house a home with Border and iphoneheadset Tiles. That cost also included stringing up decorative lights on the trees and above the skating rink.
Julius provided the cost outline for Walnut Ridge’s expenses to the News and Tribune.
According to the report, the total cost to complete the landscaping was more than $14,900, with $6,500 of the cost for labor. The difference in the amount billed and the total cost to Walnut Ridge was donated to the city.
The value of the plants used was nearly $13,400, according to the report.
“What we want it to look like in the evening is for it to look like you’re walking through [a] park,” he said of the atmosphere created.
As far as the purpose of the rink and the loss incurred by the city, Julius said he would continue to support the project as long as the community supports it.
“I think it’s a successful project,” he said.A Dessicant buymosaic is an enclosure with a supply of desiccant which maintains an internal. “That’s a true quality-of-life issue. It brings a lot of people to the downtown which we wanted it to do from the beginning.”
Jay Ellis, executive director of Jeffersonville Main Street Inc.Automate patient flow and quickly track hospital assets and people using cableties., said businesses downtown did get a boost from the ice skating rink.
“It may not be immediately quantifiable, but it does create an impact to downtown businesses,” he said. “It’s more than just an economic impact — it’s really a cultural asset for Jeffersonville.”
And for the businesses, even if the draw of the rink does not translate into a direct sale, Ellis said they are still being exposed to a new market and a new customer that may otherwise not have come to the area.
“You [could] drive by [the rink] and see 100 people who may not normally be in downtown Jeffersonville,” he said. “I think overall the response that I get is most of the businesses are very happy having this down here. I think it’s something other communities admire.”
2013年2月28日 星期四
Are mobile phones poised to replace credit cards?
The payments body, which monitors how cash is spent in the UK,
predicts that more and more of us will use mobile phones to make
payments in the coming years. The council suggest that by 2021 fewer of
us will be using plastic to make purchases.
Adrian Kamellard, Chief Executive of the Payments Council said: “We scarcely notice the steady changes in the way we pay, yet someone in their thirties today will see more change in their lifetime than in the entire history of money.
“Even recent innovations such as payment via a mobile phone, which ten years ago some felt to be science fiction, will soon be commonplace. The 2000s were the decade of the debit card. The 2010s are likely to be the decade of the mobile phone.
“Just as we can’t imagine how we ever did without the internet, many people will soon wonder how we used to be so dependent on cash and cheque. Twenty years from now even cards may seem archaic.”
Smartphones are quickly becoming a must have personal item. Not only are they fully functioning phones, cameras and portable music devices, but they can also allow you access to the internet and serve a range of functions from online banking to social networking, as well as acting as a replacement wallet.
Payment by mobile phone is still in the early stages, but the technology for contactless payment and phones is currently in development, with most bank account holders set to be able to pay by phone within a year or so.
Last year leading high street bank, Barclays, launched a scheme called "pingit" which enables people to pay another person via their phone.
The Payments Council, however,Buy today and get your delivery for £25 on a range of solarstreetlamps for your home. is working on a cross-industry scheme, which will cover 90% of bank accounts by the spring of 2014. As a result, the council predicts that wallets and purses may become obsolete in the future.
“The quiet revolution in payments has enabled the creation of whole new industries such as e-shopping,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic stonemosaic and hose. it has changed our behaviour, and it has reduced transaction costs, and increased the speed and efficiency with which we can all pay each other,” Mr Kamellard continued.
“The next ten years will see even faster change. It’s easy to imagine a future where we merely pat our pockets for our keys and phone. The wallet could become a historical curiosity.”
The way we pay for goods and services has drastically changed over the last ten years, a report by the Payment Council revealed. Cheque usage continues to fall, halving every five years along with cash exchanges for regular payments and high value spontaneous payments.
In 2001,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic stonemosaic and hose. 43% of our shopping was paid for in notes and change. By 2011, that had fallen to 30%, with most of this figure being made up of payments of less than ￡5.
The latest figures show that a massive ￡58bn was spent on entertainment over the last decade, which is 60% more than we spent in restaurants and cafes in 2001. The Way We Pay report reveals that despite the economic doom and gloom, Brits are spending more than ever and having a lot more fun than a decade ago.
Entertainment spending has increased by 60% with Brits doubling the amount we spend in restaurants and cafes. UK consumers have also increased spending on cinema and theatre shows by 63%,Buy Wickes Porcelain parkingmanagementsystem today. while spending on heading out for a drink has leapt by a lower 7%.
The Payment Council found that supermarkets take 58p of every pound spent in retail, which is up from 46p just 10 years ago. This trend comes as supermarkets expand their range of product choices to include garden furniture to financial services and more. Not everyone is a winner though as spending in hardware and DIY stores has fallen by almost half over the last ten years half. And while spending may have increased, prices have too. Pubs and bars have lost out in real terms, as spending on drinks has risen by less than the rate of inflation.
Around 2000 policemen and over 70 CCTV cameras at the stadium and over 100 scanners along the route from Taj Krishna Hotel to the venue will be put in place to ensure tight security.Shop the web's best selection of precious gemstones and chipcard at wholesale prices. Even the tickets were being issued on Thursday at e-counters with bio-metric identification.
However, the sale of tickets for the Test match was not all that encouraging and is expected to pick up on the first day of the match depending on the team batting first.
The Cricket Australia officials, including security manager Franc Dimasui, and BCCI officials visited the stadium and gave instructions for additional security measures. They also urged for extra exit points in case of any emergency.
On Tuesday, top police officials inspected the stadium and were engaged in a series of discussions with the HCA to evolve a comprehensive, fool-proof security plan for the match.
A former Test cricketer, who is now in HCA administration, said the entire area would be cordoned off and no one would be allowed into the stadium without a valid identity card. “No mobile phones will be allowed inside the stadium at any cost,” he said.
All vendors have been given clear instructions to sell eatables and refreshments only in plastic disposables, and no loose serving of the eatables and beverages from any large containers will be allowed.
Adrian Kamellard, Chief Executive of the Payments Council said: “We scarcely notice the steady changes in the way we pay, yet someone in their thirties today will see more change in their lifetime than in the entire history of money.
“Even recent innovations such as payment via a mobile phone, which ten years ago some felt to be science fiction, will soon be commonplace. The 2000s were the decade of the debit card. The 2010s are likely to be the decade of the mobile phone.
“Just as we can’t imagine how we ever did without the internet, many people will soon wonder how we used to be so dependent on cash and cheque. Twenty years from now even cards may seem archaic.”
Smartphones are quickly becoming a must have personal item. Not only are they fully functioning phones, cameras and portable music devices, but they can also allow you access to the internet and serve a range of functions from online banking to social networking, as well as acting as a replacement wallet.
Payment by mobile phone is still in the early stages, but the technology for contactless payment and phones is currently in development, with most bank account holders set to be able to pay by phone within a year or so.
Last year leading high street bank, Barclays, launched a scheme called "pingit" which enables people to pay another person via their phone.
The Payments Council, however,Buy today and get your delivery for £25 on a range of solarstreetlamps for your home. is working on a cross-industry scheme, which will cover 90% of bank accounts by the spring of 2014. As a result, the council predicts that wallets and purses may become obsolete in the future.
“The quiet revolution in payments has enabled the creation of whole new industries such as e-shopping,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic stonemosaic and hose. it has changed our behaviour, and it has reduced transaction costs, and increased the speed and efficiency with which we can all pay each other,” Mr Kamellard continued.
“The next ten years will see even faster change. It’s easy to imagine a future where we merely pat our pockets for our keys and phone. The wallet could become a historical curiosity.”
The way we pay for goods and services has drastically changed over the last ten years, a report by the Payment Council revealed. Cheque usage continues to fall, halving every five years along with cash exchanges for regular payments and high value spontaneous payments.
In 2001,Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic stonemosaic and hose. 43% of our shopping was paid for in notes and change. By 2011, that had fallen to 30%, with most of this figure being made up of payments of less than ￡5.
The latest figures show that a massive ￡58bn was spent on entertainment over the last decade, which is 60% more than we spent in restaurants and cafes in 2001. The Way We Pay report reveals that despite the economic doom and gloom, Brits are spending more than ever and having a lot more fun than a decade ago.
Entertainment spending has increased by 60% with Brits doubling the amount we spend in restaurants and cafes. UK consumers have also increased spending on cinema and theatre shows by 63%,Buy Wickes Porcelain parkingmanagementsystem today. while spending on heading out for a drink has leapt by a lower 7%.
The Payment Council found that supermarkets take 58p of every pound spent in retail, which is up from 46p just 10 years ago. This trend comes as supermarkets expand their range of product choices to include garden furniture to financial services and more. Not everyone is a winner though as spending in hardware and DIY stores has fallen by almost half over the last ten years half. And while spending may have increased, prices have too. Pubs and bars have lost out in real terms, as spending on drinks has risen by less than the rate of inflation.
Around 2000 policemen and over 70 CCTV cameras at the stadium and over 100 scanners along the route from Taj Krishna Hotel to the venue will be put in place to ensure tight security.Shop the web's best selection of precious gemstones and chipcard at wholesale prices. Even the tickets were being issued on Thursday at e-counters with bio-metric identification.
However, the sale of tickets for the Test match was not all that encouraging and is expected to pick up on the first day of the match depending on the team batting first.
The Cricket Australia officials, including security manager Franc Dimasui, and BCCI officials visited the stadium and gave instructions for additional security measures. They also urged for extra exit points in case of any emergency.
On Tuesday, top police officials inspected the stadium and were engaged in a series of discussions with the HCA to evolve a comprehensive, fool-proof security plan for the match.
A former Test cricketer, who is now in HCA administration, said the entire area would be cordoned off and no one would be allowed into the stadium without a valid identity card. “No mobile phones will be allowed inside the stadium at any cost,” he said.
All vendors have been given clear instructions to sell eatables and refreshments only in plastic disposables, and no loose serving of the eatables and beverages from any large containers will be allowed.
Is education policy increasing inequality?
In the tiny, one-room shanty that she shares with her father, mother,
brother and sister when she is home for the holidays, 11-year-old Babli
answers questions about the private boarding school where she lives and
studies for nine months of the year.
“In my school, they teach English and different-different subjects,” Babli says. “We have more activities, games, football, table tennis, dancing, singing, yoga, musical instruments. There are also lots of cultural programs. My favorite subject is English.Creative glass tile and lanyard for your distinctive kitchen and bath.”
Typical of the makeshift homes of New Delhi's hundreds of “jhuggi (hut) clusters,” Babli’s house is an eight- by ten-foot cell, with a corrugated aluminum roof and concrete walls.Looking for the Best solarpanel? There is no window. The ceiling is low enough to force an average-sized American to stoop.
Against the back wall, a cot stretches from corner to corner, where Babli's elderly father is sleeping off a bender. There's a desert cooler for the hot summer and a single, bare fluorescent bulb for light. A 21-inch television, bought on an installment plan, enjoys a place of pride atop the family's only other piece of furniture — a battered wooden cabinet.
The family's clothes — half a dozen faded outfits — hang from a steel pipe overhead that doubles as the center roof beam. Next to the front door, which leads to the gutter, a shower caddy nailed to the concrete holds four toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste. In another corner, plastic jars hold a dusting of flour and foodstuffs next to a two-burner stove.
“I'm a casual worker at a thread factory nearby,” says Babli's mother, Santosha, the family breadwinner. She has been forced to stay home today, without pay, because the factory where she works in violation of India's labor laws is undergoing a government inspection. “I make 150 rupees ($3) a day,” she says, “working seven days a week, from nine in the morning to nine, ten, or sometimes eleven at night.”
Santosha, the family, and everybody crowded into the tiny room hope that Babli will fight her way out of this place to a better life.
As part of an experiment conceived by activist-educator Anouradha Bakshi, who runs a non-profit called Project Why, Babli attends an elite, English-language boarding school on the outskirts of the city instead of her area's government-run, Hindi-language school. By every available measure, that gives her a much better chance at breaking out of the slum. And it makes her a kind of advanced case study for a potentially revolutionary Indian government program designed to offer millions of poor families the chance to send their kids to private schools. For the lucky ones, it's like winning the lottery.
But even Bakshi herself, who fought school authorities and dipped into her own pocket to get eight slum kids into posh boarding schools, remains deeply worried that for the majority of the population the creeping privatization of India's education system will only increase inequality further.
“The government schools today, especially the primary schools, have mostly illiterate parents,Automate patient flow and quickly track hospital assets and people using plasticcard.” Bakshi said. “Ten years ago, 20 years ago, you had a better social mix in government schools. Because privatization hadn't really happened then.”
“What happened is the middle class moved out,” she said. “Unless you have a school system where several social strata learn together, you're not going to be able to rise. It's not by buying a mobile phone or getting a TV in your house that things are going to change.”
In 2009, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's United Progressive Alliance government pushed through a new law enshrining education as a fundamental right and guaranteeing free, compulsory education for every Indian up to age 14. The law sets requirements for schools — many of which lack basic facilities such as toilets. It prohibits schools from holding back or expelling students.The term 'streetlight control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. It requires that surveys be conducted periodically to measure the school-age population of every neighborhood and make sure every child has a school to attend. It calls for the setup of school management committees — where 50 percent of the members are parents — to ensure schools are performing.
By the Gini coefficient that economists use to measure inequality, India is a more egalitarian society than China, Mexico, Thailand or the US. But a walk through New Delhi is proof enough that where the gap lies is at least as important as how wide it is.
Some 400 million Indians like Babli's family are fighting to survive on less than $1.25 a day, and despite the government's good intentions, they can't count on the state for low-cost housing, clean water, reliable public transport or much of anything at all.
Meanwhile, across town from Babli's slum, at the DLF Emporio luxury mall, every minute or so a Mercedes-Benz E-class sedan glides to a stop in front of the massive hoardings for Louis Vuitton and Dior. Valet parking runs 200 rupees ($4, a third more than Babli's mother, Santosha, earns in a day). At the busy atrium cafe inside, a cappuccino costs 310 rupees ($6). In the Gucci store, one of Delhi's top earners picks up a belt for 16,000 rupees ($300).
“Our constitution says that the income gap should be reduced, but it has not happened and it is not happening,” said Delhi High Court advocate Ashok Agarwal, whose organization, Social Jurists,Researchers at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have developed an buymosaic. has fought harder than anybody to get poor children into the country's private schools.
On the contrary, the gulf between rich and poor is getting wider. The gap between the incomes of the top and bottom tenths of India's population has doubled over the past 20 years, since India liberalized its economy in 1991. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) 2011 study, “Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising,” India's top 10 percent of wage earners now make 12 times more than the bottom 10 percent, up from a ratio of six in the 1990s.
“In my school, they teach English and different-different subjects,” Babli says. “We have more activities, games, football, table tennis, dancing, singing, yoga, musical instruments. There are also lots of cultural programs. My favorite subject is English.Creative glass tile and lanyard for your distinctive kitchen and bath.”
Typical of the makeshift homes of New Delhi's hundreds of “jhuggi (hut) clusters,” Babli’s house is an eight- by ten-foot cell, with a corrugated aluminum roof and concrete walls.Looking for the Best solarpanel? There is no window. The ceiling is low enough to force an average-sized American to stoop.
Against the back wall, a cot stretches from corner to corner, where Babli's elderly father is sleeping off a bender. There's a desert cooler for the hot summer and a single, bare fluorescent bulb for light. A 21-inch television, bought on an installment plan, enjoys a place of pride atop the family's only other piece of furniture — a battered wooden cabinet.
The family's clothes — half a dozen faded outfits — hang from a steel pipe overhead that doubles as the center roof beam. Next to the front door, which leads to the gutter, a shower caddy nailed to the concrete holds four toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste. In another corner, plastic jars hold a dusting of flour and foodstuffs next to a two-burner stove.
“I'm a casual worker at a thread factory nearby,” says Babli's mother, Santosha, the family breadwinner. She has been forced to stay home today, without pay, because the factory where she works in violation of India's labor laws is undergoing a government inspection. “I make 150 rupees ($3) a day,” she says, “working seven days a week, from nine in the morning to nine, ten, or sometimes eleven at night.”
Santosha, the family, and everybody crowded into the tiny room hope that Babli will fight her way out of this place to a better life.
As part of an experiment conceived by activist-educator Anouradha Bakshi, who runs a non-profit called Project Why, Babli attends an elite, English-language boarding school on the outskirts of the city instead of her area's government-run, Hindi-language school. By every available measure, that gives her a much better chance at breaking out of the slum. And it makes her a kind of advanced case study for a potentially revolutionary Indian government program designed to offer millions of poor families the chance to send their kids to private schools. For the lucky ones, it's like winning the lottery.
But even Bakshi herself, who fought school authorities and dipped into her own pocket to get eight slum kids into posh boarding schools, remains deeply worried that for the majority of the population the creeping privatization of India's education system will only increase inequality further.
“The government schools today, especially the primary schools, have mostly illiterate parents,Automate patient flow and quickly track hospital assets and people using plasticcard.” Bakshi said. “Ten years ago, 20 years ago, you had a better social mix in government schools. Because privatization hadn't really happened then.”
“What happened is the middle class moved out,” she said. “Unless you have a school system where several social strata learn together, you're not going to be able to rise. It's not by buying a mobile phone or getting a TV in your house that things are going to change.”
In 2009, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's United Progressive Alliance government pushed through a new law enshrining education as a fundamental right and guaranteeing free, compulsory education for every Indian up to age 14. The law sets requirements for schools — many of which lack basic facilities such as toilets. It prohibits schools from holding back or expelling students.The term 'streetlight control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. It requires that surveys be conducted periodically to measure the school-age population of every neighborhood and make sure every child has a school to attend. It calls for the setup of school management committees — where 50 percent of the members are parents — to ensure schools are performing.
By the Gini coefficient that economists use to measure inequality, India is a more egalitarian society than China, Mexico, Thailand or the US. But a walk through New Delhi is proof enough that where the gap lies is at least as important as how wide it is.
Some 400 million Indians like Babli's family are fighting to survive on less than $1.25 a day, and despite the government's good intentions, they can't count on the state for low-cost housing, clean water, reliable public transport or much of anything at all.
Meanwhile, across town from Babli's slum, at the DLF Emporio luxury mall, every minute or so a Mercedes-Benz E-class sedan glides to a stop in front of the massive hoardings for Louis Vuitton and Dior. Valet parking runs 200 rupees ($4, a third more than Babli's mother, Santosha, earns in a day). At the busy atrium cafe inside, a cappuccino costs 310 rupees ($6). In the Gucci store, one of Delhi's top earners picks up a belt for 16,000 rupees ($300).
“Our constitution says that the income gap should be reduced, but it has not happened and it is not happening,” said Delhi High Court advocate Ashok Agarwal, whose organization, Social Jurists,Researchers at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have developed an buymosaic. has fought harder than anybody to get poor children into the country's private schools.
On the contrary, the gulf between rich and poor is getting wider. The gap between the incomes of the top and bottom tenths of India's population has doubled over the past 20 years, since India liberalized its economy in 1991. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) 2011 study, “Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising,” India's top 10 percent of wage earners now make 12 times more than the bottom 10 percent, up from a ratio of six in the 1990s.
2013年2月24日 星期日
Parental nightwatch
The glowing green numbers tell me it is 2:11 a.m. I close my
eyes but cannot sleep. My ears strain to absorb the night sounds. I can hear the
husband snoring. From the dog comes the muffled sound of his dream barking.
I will them to be quiet. Try to hear around and between them. I open my eyes again and turn my head back to the clock. The bright green 2:13 glows. I close my eyes but the 2:13 burns behind the closed lids. I listen. Nothing.
I am warm and comfortable in my bed. The house is quiet. But it's no good. I know I won't sleep until I see for myself. Slowly, to be quiet,Make your house a home with Border and carparkmanagementsystem Tiles. I ease off my covers and swing my legs over the side of the bed.
Glasses on,Looking for the Best iphoneheadset? using my phone for light, I slip from the room, across the hall and into my daughter's bedroom. Inside the door I stop and listen. All is quiet.Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic chipcard and hose. Telling myself I'm being silly, I nevertheless walk up to her bed, bend over her silent form and watch.
It's too dark. I lean closer and shine my cell phone light on her. Finally, I see her take a breath. Her chest, under her pink and blue quilt, moves slowly up and then down. Realizing that I have been holding my breath, I join her in her next breath. Air in, and then out.
For another minute or so I just watch and breathe. Then I turn around and as quietly as I can walk back to my room, take off my glasses, set down my phone, slide off my slippers and gingerly slide back under the covers. The husband is still snoring, the dog is still dreaming (he's moved from dream barking to dream running), the clock glows 2:21. I know that I can close my eyes and sleep now.
My daughter is a newly minted teenager and she has a cold. She's been coughing all night. At 10 p.m. I took her hot tea with honey. At 12:30 a.m. I took her cold medicine.High quality chinamosaic tiles. Then I sat up in bed, reading a book, and listening to her ragged cough.
I must have dozed off at some point only to wake to silence. Silence, soothing her cough so she could sleep, had of course been the goal. But her silence woke me. What if she can't breathe? What if I gave her the wrong dose of cold medicine? What if? What if?
Thirteen years later, and I still get up in the night to watch her breathe. As an infant, she was healthy and slept well, but in the middle of so many quiet nights, like tonight, I had to go see for myself. I'd go into her room, stand over her crib, and watch her breathe. In and out. In and out.
Her younger brother was not healthy and did not sleep well as an infant. For the first 17 months of his life he didn't sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time. Finally, his illness was diagnosed and medicine prescribed. A week later, I woke in the middle of the night in a panic.
I practically jumped out of bed and ran to his room, switching on lights as I went. There he was, so small and vulnerable and asleep. He had been asleep for four hours. Crying, I turned the lights back off and went back to bed. Over the next four hours, I got up four more times to check on him. He was still asleep. Still breathing.
I don't want my children to know that I still, occasionally, watch them as they sleep, my heart full to bursting with every soft breath they take. They are not, as I know they would scold me, babies. They are practically, in their minds,Creative glass tile and solarlamp tile for your distinctive kitchen and bath. at 8 and 13, grown up. I wonder what I will do when they are really are grown and gone. And as tired as I sometimes am, I treasure these quiet, sweet moments in the night as we breathe together, in and out, in and out.
Started as a joint venture with his dad, a 30-year veteran in the tire business, Bates opened Used Tire Warehouse to sell tires and offer customers full service replacement and repair.
But as the business grew, Bates found he was hampered by the amount of space he had available to work on customers' cars.
"Our biggest issue, that I saw, was the way customers would have to wait, because we had a limited space to work on vehicles," he said.
So, in 2012, Bates made the decision to invest more heavily in his operation and, in January of this year, he purchased an industrial building that offers triple the space he had on County Road.
Area brokers say businesses like Used Tire Warehouse that are taking the step to become building owners are a bright spot in the local commercial real estate market. Like residential real estate, commercial conditions slowly improved in 2012, a trend, many say, appears to be continuing into 2013.
"The primary driver right now is owner-user kinds of people," said John Shields, principal at Cape Cod-based Realty Advisory Inc. about market conditions. "They can own things for cheaper than they can lease it."
Commercial sales were up in 2012 and expected to continue to improve in 2013, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Nationally, sales hit $283 billion in 2012, the highest amount since 2008, said George Ratiu, NAR manager of quantitative and commercial research. And much of that activity, $98 billion worth, happened in the final quarter of the year.
Overall, just about every measure has increased, said Ratiu. Prices are up, rents are up, and absorption rates for office space, industrial, retail and multi-family properties are up.
But while national markets are seeing a rebound, secondary and tertiary markets haven't necessarily been having the same experience. Secondary real estate markets include metro areas such as Atlanta and Baltimore, according to Real Capital Analytics, a global research and consulting firm with an office in New York City. All other states, not included in major metro areas or secondary markets, are considered tertiary markets.
Ratiu said real estate data is typically tracked for property sales of $2.5 million and above. But most NAR members, about 60 to 70 percent of sales agents, sell properties that fall below the $2 million mark. And many of them are reporting that conditions are improving much more slowly.
I will them to be quiet. Try to hear around and between them. I open my eyes again and turn my head back to the clock. The bright green 2:13 glows. I close my eyes but the 2:13 burns behind the closed lids. I listen. Nothing.
I am warm and comfortable in my bed. The house is quiet. But it's no good. I know I won't sleep until I see for myself. Slowly, to be quiet,Make your house a home with Border and carparkmanagementsystem Tiles. I ease off my covers and swing my legs over the side of the bed.
Glasses on,Looking for the Best iphoneheadset? using my phone for light, I slip from the room, across the hall and into my daughter's bedroom. Inside the door I stop and listen. All is quiet.Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic chipcard and hose. Telling myself I'm being silly, I nevertheless walk up to her bed, bend over her silent form and watch.
It's too dark. I lean closer and shine my cell phone light on her. Finally, I see her take a breath. Her chest, under her pink and blue quilt, moves slowly up and then down. Realizing that I have been holding my breath, I join her in her next breath. Air in, and then out.
For another minute or so I just watch and breathe. Then I turn around and as quietly as I can walk back to my room, take off my glasses, set down my phone, slide off my slippers and gingerly slide back under the covers. The husband is still snoring, the dog is still dreaming (he's moved from dream barking to dream running), the clock glows 2:21. I know that I can close my eyes and sleep now.
My daughter is a newly minted teenager and she has a cold. She's been coughing all night. At 10 p.m. I took her hot tea with honey. At 12:30 a.m. I took her cold medicine.High quality chinamosaic tiles. Then I sat up in bed, reading a book, and listening to her ragged cough.
I must have dozed off at some point only to wake to silence. Silence, soothing her cough so she could sleep, had of course been the goal. But her silence woke me. What if she can't breathe? What if I gave her the wrong dose of cold medicine? What if? What if?
Thirteen years later, and I still get up in the night to watch her breathe. As an infant, she was healthy and slept well, but in the middle of so many quiet nights, like tonight, I had to go see for myself. I'd go into her room, stand over her crib, and watch her breathe. In and out. In and out.
Her younger brother was not healthy and did not sleep well as an infant. For the first 17 months of his life he didn't sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time. Finally, his illness was diagnosed and medicine prescribed. A week later, I woke in the middle of the night in a panic.
I practically jumped out of bed and ran to his room, switching on lights as I went. There he was, so small and vulnerable and asleep. He had been asleep for four hours. Crying, I turned the lights back off and went back to bed. Over the next four hours, I got up four more times to check on him. He was still asleep. Still breathing.
I don't want my children to know that I still, occasionally, watch them as they sleep, my heart full to bursting with every soft breath they take. They are not, as I know they would scold me, babies. They are practically, in their minds,Creative glass tile and solarlamp tile for your distinctive kitchen and bath. at 8 and 13, grown up. I wonder what I will do when they are really are grown and gone. And as tired as I sometimes am, I treasure these quiet, sweet moments in the night as we breathe together, in and out, in and out.
Started as a joint venture with his dad, a 30-year veteran in the tire business, Bates opened Used Tire Warehouse to sell tires and offer customers full service replacement and repair.
But as the business grew, Bates found he was hampered by the amount of space he had available to work on customers' cars.
"Our biggest issue, that I saw, was the way customers would have to wait, because we had a limited space to work on vehicles," he said.
So, in 2012, Bates made the decision to invest more heavily in his operation and, in January of this year, he purchased an industrial building that offers triple the space he had on County Road.
Area brokers say businesses like Used Tire Warehouse that are taking the step to become building owners are a bright spot in the local commercial real estate market. Like residential real estate, commercial conditions slowly improved in 2012, a trend, many say, appears to be continuing into 2013.
"The primary driver right now is owner-user kinds of people," said John Shields, principal at Cape Cod-based Realty Advisory Inc. about market conditions. "They can own things for cheaper than they can lease it."
Commercial sales were up in 2012 and expected to continue to improve in 2013, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Nationally, sales hit $283 billion in 2012, the highest amount since 2008, said George Ratiu, NAR manager of quantitative and commercial research. And much of that activity, $98 billion worth, happened in the final quarter of the year.
Overall, just about every measure has increased, said Ratiu. Prices are up, rents are up, and absorption rates for office space, industrial, retail and multi-family properties are up.
But while national markets are seeing a rebound, secondary and tertiary markets haven't necessarily been having the same experience. Secondary real estate markets include metro areas such as Atlanta and Baltimore, according to Real Capital Analytics, a global research and consulting firm with an office in New York City. All other states, not included in major metro areas or secondary markets, are considered tertiary markets.
Ratiu said real estate data is typically tracked for property sales of $2.5 million and above. But most NAR members, about 60 to 70 percent of sales agents, sell properties that fall below the $2 million mark. And many of them are reporting that conditions are improving much more slowly.
2013年2月20日 星期三
Haiflow SAL trains more professionals
Haiflow SAL, a privately owned high quality sanitary ware
distributing firm, held a one-day training seminar for its contractors,
tillers and plumbers in Accra.
The training was aimed at educating the artisans to acquire the appropriate technical knowledge on how to install, repair and use their new products in accordance with international best practices.
Haiflow represents world famous brands such as Grohe, Villeroy and Boch, Pavigres, Tredex and Gardenia Orchedia.
Speaking at the training, Mr. Karim Ghazale, General Manager of Haiflow SAL, disclosed that the training will offer a high level of pre and post-sale services, as well as technical support to customers in the West African market.
“This training will be of much benefit to the end users of our products and also become very familiar with it and at the long run benefit highly as partners,” he said.
Mr. Ghazale further stated that, to ensure the company's client service was performing at the highest levels while maintaining quality brand and standards, “we undertake continuous testing to improve our products.”
Mr.New Ground-Based parkingassistsystem Tech Is Accurate Down To Just A Few Inches. Ghazale stressed that this kind of training programs will create a friendly environment and partnership where all stakeholders will keep communicating to get the best.
“Haiflow SAL is a fashion leader when it comes to the latest innovative designs in our industry. We offer our clients a variety of products that cater not only to their individual needs, but also their budgets” he added.
Mohammed Akanbi, training and after sales coordinator of GROHE, West Africa, lauded the initiative of the company for the added value through processing of designs, among others.
“Our company grows with its customers in mind, and this makes us one of the environmentally friendly company in sanitary wears, ceramic tile, bathroom accessories, shower enclosures, bathroom cabinetry and Jacuzzis through the designs of our product”,Cheaper For bulk buying drycabinet prices.Cheaper For bulk buying drycabinet prices. he said.
Michel Accad, Regional trainer and Sales Manager of GROHE, Egypt said, “As part of a large group of companies that specializes in the building materials market, we have the knowledge and expertise to serve the African Market.Shop the web's best selection of precious gemstones and bobbleheads at wholesale prices.
“Our dedicated team of sales professionals is well trained in both the technical and design aspects of our industry which enables them to provide our clients with the quality customer service they deserve.
"Our exclusive programmes offer our clients the ability to exceed their clients’ expectations,” he added.
Participants of the training included construction professionals and representatives from various local and international construction firms across the country.
But the order also did not hide its intention to protect the car companies here. They were all foreign companies, by the way, claiming to employ thousands of Filipino workers.
Let me quote the order: “to accelerate the sound development of the motor vehicle industry in the Philippines, the government has declared (as a policy) … to ban the importation of all types of used motor vehicles and parts and components, except those that may be allowed under certain conditions.”
There—the government simply wanted to protect the motor industry against competition from cheaper second-hand cars from abroad. It so happened, at that time, the car companies were claiming massive smuggling of used vehicles into the country. They claimed that the importation of used vehicles—second-hand cars, in particular—could kill them.
In this country, smuggling already killed several industries—textile, tire manufacturing and shoe making. Fighting for dear life at the moment, in the face of onslaught from smuggling, are several other manufacturing industries such as the ceramic tile and steel manufacturing sectors.When I first started creating broken howospareparts.
Based on official figures, for instance, the total value of our “declared” importation from China, year in and year out, was only less than half of what China reports as its exports to the Philippines.
The training was aimed at educating the artisans to acquire the appropriate technical knowledge on how to install, repair and use their new products in accordance with international best practices.
Haiflow represents world famous brands such as Grohe, Villeroy and Boch, Pavigres, Tredex and Gardenia Orchedia.
Speaking at the training, Mr. Karim Ghazale, General Manager of Haiflow SAL, disclosed that the training will offer a high level of pre and post-sale services, as well as technical support to customers in the West African market.
“This training will be of much benefit to the end users of our products and also become very familiar with it and at the long run benefit highly as partners,” he said.
Mr. Ghazale further stated that, to ensure the company's client service was performing at the highest levels while maintaining quality brand and standards, “we undertake continuous testing to improve our products.”
Mr.New Ground-Based parkingassistsystem Tech Is Accurate Down To Just A Few Inches. Ghazale stressed that this kind of training programs will create a friendly environment and partnership where all stakeholders will keep communicating to get the best.
“Haiflow SAL is a fashion leader when it comes to the latest innovative designs in our industry. We offer our clients a variety of products that cater not only to their individual needs, but also their budgets” he added.
Mohammed Akanbi, training and after sales coordinator of GROHE, West Africa, lauded the initiative of the company for the added value through processing of designs, among others.
“Our company grows with its customers in mind, and this makes us one of the environmentally friendly company in sanitary wears, ceramic tile, bathroom accessories, shower enclosures, bathroom cabinetry and Jacuzzis through the designs of our product”,Cheaper For bulk buying drycabinet prices.Cheaper For bulk buying drycabinet prices. he said.
Michel Accad, Regional trainer and Sales Manager of GROHE, Egypt said, “As part of a large group of companies that specializes in the building materials market, we have the knowledge and expertise to serve the African Market.Shop the web's best selection of precious gemstones and bobbleheads at wholesale prices.
“Our dedicated team of sales professionals is well trained in both the technical and design aspects of our industry which enables them to provide our clients with the quality customer service they deserve.
"Our exclusive programmes offer our clients the ability to exceed their clients’ expectations,” he added.
Participants of the training included construction professionals and representatives from various local and international construction firms across the country.
But the order also did not hide its intention to protect the car companies here. They were all foreign companies, by the way, claiming to employ thousands of Filipino workers.
Let me quote the order: “to accelerate the sound development of the motor vehicle industry in the Philippines, the government has declared (as a policy) … to ban the importation of all types of used motor vehicles and parts and components, except those that may be allowed under certain conditions.”
There—the government simply wanted to protect the motor industry against competition from cheaper second-hand cars from abroad. It so happened, at that time, the car companies were claiming massive smuggling of used vehicles into the country. They claimed that the importation of used vehicles—second-hand cars, in particular—could kill them.
In this country, smuggling already killed several industries—textile, tire manufacturing and shoe making. Fighting for dear life at the moment, in the face of onslaught from smuggling, are several other manufacturing industries such as the ceramic tile and steel manufacturing sectors.When I first started creating broken howospareparts.
Based on official figures, for instance, the total value of our “declared” importation from China, year in and year out, was only less than half of what China reports as its exports to the Philippines.
2013年2月18日 星期一
Tiepolo and the Art of Perfection
On the eve of his departure from Venice for the royal court in Spain
in 1762, at the age of 66, Giambattista Tiepolo told a reporter from a
local newspaper, the Nuova Veneta Gazzetta: “Painters should strive to
succeed in creating great works, that is those that can please noble
lords and the rich — because these make the fortunes of masters — and
not other people, who cannot buy pictures of great value. So the
painter’s mind must always aim at the sublime, the heroic and for
perfection.”
This was a rare spoken record of Tiepolo’s artistic credo, but it was one that had guided his whole life and made it possible for him to realize masterpieces on a stupendous scale.
Much earlier in his long and amazingly industrious career, he had given visual expression to his grand ambitions — and not without a disarming dash of wit and self-deprecation — in a memorable painting: In “Alexander and Campaspe in the Studio of Apelles” of 1725-27, Tiepolo cast himself as the most famous artist in antiquity in the act of painting the portrait of Alexander’s mistress, the beautiful Campaspe.
According to the story, so pleased was the world-conquering hero with the painted nude that he rewarded the artist with the gift of the model, with whom Apelles had fallen in love. In his playful illustration of the legend, Tiepolo’s young wife, Cecilia Guardi, posed as Campaspe (Apelles-Tiepolo gazing on her with mesmerized, pop-eyed concentration), while placed behind Apelles’s easel for good measure, advertising his wares, are two of Tiepolo’s own canvases, one on a classical and another on a religious theme. Thus did the artist declare his abiding intention to emulate the most famous painters of the past and to find patrons among the great.
“Alexander and Campaspe,” on loan from Montreal, is the first painting in a remarkable gathering at Villa Manin in Passariano of 125 paintings, drawings and prints from more than 40 collections — the works span the artist’s production from his first commissions to his last canvases in Spain — for “Giambattista Tiepolo,” curated by Giuseppe Bergamini, Alberto Craievich and Filippo Pedrocco.
Villa Manin is near Udine, where Tiepolo found the noble patron for his first great cycle of frescoes in the Patriarch’s (now Archbishop’s) Palazzo and today home of the Diocesan Museum. Udine is also the venue for a second, smaller but revealing study exhibition, “Giambattista Tiepolo and Paolo Veronese,” at the city’s Castello.
Tiepolo was born in Venice in 1696 and studied under Gregorio Lazzarini, the most respected teacher of the day. He was accepted into the confraternity of artists in 1717 and rapidly made a name for himself. His early works manifest the influence of the dark “tenebrist” chiaroscuros of the older local artists Piazzetta, Bencovich, Pittoni and Giulia Lama,Cheaper For bulk buying drycabinet prices. and of a common inspiration to them all, Tintoretto.
But by the time Tiepolo went to Udine in 1725, he had fallen under the spell of another 16th-century Venetian artist, Paolo Veronese. The noble, colorful, luminous world of Veronese, with its dramatic illusionistic effects, was the ideal model for Tiepolo’s frescoes, commissioned by the Venetian patriarch Dionisio Dolfin for his official residence. The reputation of Veronese was probably higher among Venetian connoisseurs than that even of Titian, and Tiepolo’s references to this earlier master would have been appreciated by Dolfin. The evocation of Veronese’s paintings also pleasingly conjured up images of the era when Venice was at the height of its power and glory.
The principal figures of these frescoes are the Old Testament patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the divinely appointed forerunners of Dolfin, whose appointment as patriarch was under attack, so their depiction, affirming his credentials as it were, carried aAll smartcardfactory comes with 5 Years Local Agent Warranty ! strong political message of topical relevance. But in the long term, the most striking aspect of the cycle was that it contained all the fertile imagination, mastery of light and color,Researchers at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have developed an buymosaic. theatrical panache and bravura skill in composition and execution that was to characterize Tiepolo’s subsequent oeuvre.
Tiepolo was not the only artist at this time to return to Veronese as a source of inspiration, but while others imitated, Tiepolo absorbed his lessons, integrating them into his own artistic vision.
Despite the importance of the earlier master in Tiepolo’s development, “Giambattista Tiepolo and Paolo Veronese,” curated by Linda Borean and William L. Barcham at Udine’s Castello, is the first exhibition to investigate this fascinating and complex relationship, brought alive by an absorbing line-up of 40 paintings, drawings and engravings by the two artists. The centerpiece of the show is Tiepolo’s “Finding of Moses,” from Edinburgh, temporarily reunited with a sizable section of the picture sliced off nearly two centuries ago and now in Turin, shown here together with Veronese’s version of the subject, from Dijon.
In the Villa Manin exhibition, after the first room on an upper floor displaying “Alexander and Campaspe,” six rooms are devoted to a number of oil sketches and a wide and varied selection — from figures, drapery and portraits to vases, trees and farm buildings — of the some 2,000 surviving drawings by Tiepolo’s virtuoso hand.
The spacious,Product information for Avery Dennison smartcard products. high-ceilinged rooms on Villa Manin’s ground floor provide an ideal setting for the canvases, some of large proportions, and many of them treasured masterpieces, loaned from both sides of the Atlantic.
In 1715-16, the artist received his first significant commission to paint a series of apostles and prophets on canvases to be placed over the high arches within the Ospedaletto Church in Venice. All but one were saved from a fire in 2010 with only superficial damage and were then removed for cleaning. In their usual position at a height of around eight meters,Looking for the Best iphoneheadset? or more than 25 feet, above the ground, they are hard to see in detail, so this temporary showing offers a welcome opportunity to study at close quarters these images justly praised at the time for being “all spirit and fire.”
The artist’s glorious airborne allegories are represented by such compositions as “Time Discovers Truth” from Vicenza and “Zephyr and Flora” from Venice. But here are also some of his most serious and powerful religious works, such as “The Communion of St. Lucy” and “Agar and Ishmael,” with its pathetic depiction of the seemingly dead child Ishmael.
One of most entertaining pieces is “Danae,” taken to Stockholm by Carl Gustaf Tessin in 1736 after he had failed to persuade Tiepolo to travel to Sweden to work for his royal master. In this irreverent version, Danae is depicted as a sleepy, overweight courtesan, being pimped by Cupid, who lifts her dress to display “the goods,” as her minuscule lap dog rushes yapping at Zeus’s eagle.
In the Villa’s ballroom is the gigantic canvas of “St. Tecla Liberates Este from the Plague” (along with the original oil sketch for it from New York), temporarily removed for conservation work while building repairs are carried out on Este’s duomo. This astonishing late work, completed in 1759, depicts a moving scene of devastation on the ground with an exhilarating vision of God descending with angels from the heavens to banish the pestilence at the entreaty of the kneeling saint.
This was a rare spoken record of Tiepolo’s artistic credo, but it was one that had guided his whole life and made it possible for him to realize masterpieces on a stupendous scale.
Much earlier in his long and amazingly industrious career, he had given visual expression to his grand ambitions — and not without a disarming dash of wit and self-deprecation — in a memorable painting: In “Alexander and Campaspe in the Studio of Apelles” of 1725-27, Tiepolo cast himself as the most famous artist in antiquity in the act of painting the portrait of Alexander’s mistress, the beautiful Campaspe.
According to the story, so pleased was the world-conquering hero with the painted nude that he rewarded the artist with the gift of the model, with whom Apelles had fallen in love. In his playful illustration of the legend, Tiepolo’s young wife, Cecilia Guardi, posed as Campaspe (Apelles-Tiepolo gazing on her with mesmerized, pop-eyed concentration), while placed behind Apelles’s easel for good measure, advertising his wares, are two of Tiepolo’s own canvases, one on a classical and another on a religious theme. Thus did the artist declare his abiding intention to emulate the most famous painters of the past and to find patrons among the great.
“Alexander and Campaspe,” on loan from Montreal, is the first painting in a remarkable gathering at Villa Manin in Passariano of 125 paintings, drawings and prints from more than 40 collections — the works span the artist’s production from his first commissions to his last canvases in Spain — for “Giambattista Tiepolo,” curated by Giuseppe Bergamini, Alberto Craievich and Filippo Pedrocco.
Villa Manin is near Udine, where Tiepolo found the noble patron for his first great cycle of frescoes in the Patriarch’s (now Archbishop’s) Palazzo and today home of the Diocesan Museum. Udine is also the venue for a second, smaller but revealing study exhibition, “Giambattista Tiepolo and Paolo Veronese,” at the city’s Castello.
Tiepolo was born in Venice in 1696 and studied under Gregorio Lazzarini, the most respected teacher of the day. He was accepted into the confraternity of artists in 1717 and rapidly made a name for himself. His early works manifest the influence of the dark “tenebrist” chiaroscuros of the older local artists Piazzetta, Bencovich, Pittoni and Giulia Lama,Cheaper For bulk buying drycabinet prices. and of a common inspiration to them all, Tintoretto.
But by the time Tiepolo went to Udine in 1725, he had fallen under the spell of another 16th-century Venetian artist, Paolo Veronese. The noble, colorful, luminous world of Veronese, with its dramatic illusionistic effects, was the ideal model for Tiepolo’s frescoes, commissioned by the Venetian patriarch Dionisio Dolfin for his official residence. The reputation of Veronese was probably higher among Venetian connoisseurs than that even of Titian, and Tiepolo’s references to this earlier master would have been appreciated by Dolfin. The evocation of Veronese’s paintings also pleasingly conjured up images of the era when Venice was at the height of its power and glory.
The principal figures of these frescoes are the Old Testament patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the divinely appointed forerunners of Dolfin, whose appointment as patriarch was under attack, so their depiction, affirming his credentials as it were, carried aAll smartcardfactory comes with 5 Years Local Agent Warranty ! strong political message of topical relevance. But in the long term, the most striking aspect of the cycle was that it contained all the fertile imagination, mastery of light and color,Researchers at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have developed an buymosaic. theatrical panache and bravura skill in composition and execution that was to characterize Tiepolo’s subsequent oeuvre.
Tiepolo was not the only artist at this time to return to Veronese as a source of inspiration, but while others imitated, Tiepolo absorbed his lessons, integrating them into his own artistic vision.
Despite the importance of the earlier master in Tiepolo’s development, “Giambattista Tiepolo and Paolo Veronese,” curated by Linda Borean and William L. Barcham at Udine’s Castello, is the first exhibition to investigate this fascinating and complex relationship, brought alive by an absorbing line-up of 40 paintings, drawings and engravings by the two artists. The centerpiece of the show is Tiepolo’s “Finding of Moses,” from Edinburgh, temporarily reunited with a sizable section of the picture sliced off nearly two centuries ago and now in Turin, shown here together with Veronese’s version of the subject, from Dijon.
In the Villa Manin exhibition, after the first room on an upper floor displaying “Alexander and Campaspe,” six rooms are devoted to a number of oil sketches and a wide and varied selection — from figures, drapery and portraits to vases, trees and farm buildings — of the some 2,000 surviving drawings by Tiepolo’s virtuoso hand.
The spacious,Product information for Avery Dennison smartcard products. high-ceilinged rooms on Villa Manin’s ground floor provide an ideal setting for the canvases, some of large proportions, and many of them treasured masterpieces, loaned from both sides of the Atlantic.
In 1715-16, the artist received his first significant commission to paint a series of apostles and prophets on canvases to be placed over the high arches within the Ospedaletto Church in Venice. All but one were saved from a fire in 2010 with only superficial damage and were then removed for cleaning. In their usual position at a height of around eight meters,Looking for the Best iphoneheadset? or more than 25 feet, above the ground, they are hard to see in detail, so this temporary showing offers a welcome opportunity to study at close quarters these images justly praised at the time for being “all spirit and fire.”
The artist’s glorious airborne allegories are represented by such compositions as “Time Discovers Truth” from Vicenza and “Zephyr and Flora” from Venice. But here are also some of his most serious and powerful religious works, such as “The Communion of St. Lucy” and “Agar and Ishmael,” with its pathetic depiction of the seemingly dead child Ishmael.
One of most entertaining pieces is “Danae,” taken to Stockholm by Carl Gustaf Tessin in 1736 after he had failed to persuade Tiepolo to travel to Sweden to work for his royal master. In this irreverent version, Danae is depicted as a sleepy, overweight courtesan, being pimped by Cupid, who lifts her dress to display “the goods,” as her minuscule lap dog rushes yapping at Zeus’s eagle.
In the Villa’s ballroom is the gigantic canvas of “St. Tecla Liberates Este from the Plague” (along with the original oil sketch for it from New York), temporarily removed for conservation work while building repairs are carried out on Este’s duomo. This astonishing late work, completed in 1759, depicts a moving scene of devastation on the ground with an exhilarating vision of God descending with angels from the heavens to banish the pestilence at the entreaty of the kneeling saint.
2013年2月16日 星期六
Adieu,gallery; hello, Greece
Adieu,Want to find solarpanel? gallery; hello, Greece
Today is the last time you will be able to walk into Brad Cooper Gallery in Ybor City. From noon to 7 p.m. art will be sold at discount prices — some up to 50 percent off. After that, the doors will close permanently.
For 28 years, Brad Cooper Gallery has been known for having exceptional exhibits of contemporary art by international and local artists.
Its closing will leave a void in Tampa's art community. It was at Brad Cooper Gallery that I met international American artists Yvonne Petkus and William Pachner, and Russian artist Peter Mitchev. And it's where I first heard of the tiny Greek island called Naxos.
That's where owner Brad Cooper and his wife, Elizabeth, will head after the closing.
"This will be our fifth season in Naxos," Brad Cooper said in a telephone interview. "We open there from Easter through the beginning of October. That's the season for the Europeans to go on vacation, and the weather is very nice there."
The couple own a shop there where Elizabeth sells her handcrafted jewelry and Brad sells "a little art" to their mostly European customers.
For those who know Cooper, the decision to close is not a sudden one.
"We've been kind of planning this for a while, but you have to do it one step at a time," he said. "We feel we've reached a certain limit of what we can achieve here, and we want to pursue other creative paths."
"I think we did a lot of exciting exhibitions over the years," he said. "We did drawing exhibitions before anybody in the city showed drawings. We had international juried shows and brought artists from other parts of the country and included local artists in the exhibit to show that artists here are just as good as the international ones. It was good to create something that wasn't here before and offer it to the community. … And meeting so many great artists has been a good experience."
But he found that the art scene in Ybor City changed dramatically through the years.
"When we first opened here, we would pull in over 1,000 people at an opening. Now we get maybe 50 people," he said.
Cooper always has championed the idea of making Ybor City the arts district for Tampa, an idea that never really got off the ground.
"It was difficult to get the cooperation needed from the cultural institutions and from the city for a sustainable arts community in Ybor," Cooper said. "I don't know if it was the density of the population or what, but it never seemed to gel. I often felt that we were in competition rather than collaboration with the other institutions."
"When there's an adverse impact from a nightclub on the store next door, that store will leave," he said. Cooper was able to stay because he owned his building.
"And because we are located in the center of the national historic district. Everyone who comes here will pass by your door. So all you have to do is have something they will want to buy."
For better or worse, most of his clients were Europeans or Americans from other cities.All our fridgemagnet are vacuum formed using food safe plastic.
"The collector base in Tampa didn't really develop," he said. "That's because there wasn't a real interface between the galleries and the cultural institutions."
Though his location changed during his 28 years of business — Cooper first opened in 1984 on South Howard Avenue; he moved to the Ybor location in 1990 — his philosophy about art did not.Beautiful indoorpositioningsystem in a wide range of colors & sold at factory direct prices.
"It's the expression of the artist's experience," he said. "Through art,You can werkzeugbaus Moon yarns and fibers right here as instock. we develop consciousness. The work in the gallery was work that wasn't necessarily popular at the time, but it was always oriented toward the human condition."
Once in Naxos, the Coopers look forward to being surrounded by ancient architectural wonders in a great climate while developing their individual artistic talents.
Conservationists and shooting enthusiasts – often unfairly blamed for the poisonings – also lined up to condemn the crime as the maps revealed the number and location of confirmed poisonings of birds of prey between 2007 and 2011. Six incidents in the South West, from Land’s End in Cornwall to Somerset,A collection of natural parkingsensor offering polished or tumbled finishes and a choice of sizes. were among those identified.
Across Britin there were 19 incidents in 2011 alone. A total of 30 birds of prey were poisoned, bringing the total number of confirmed cases over five years to 101.
But wildlife charity the RSPB warned the confirmed incidents were the tip of a much bigger iceberg, as many cases were discovered by chance.
It was also revealed that the majority of poisonings were carried out using the chemicals carbofuran or aldicarb, pesticides which have been banned in the UK and can be dangerous to humans.
The partnership said the maps showed that the problem of illegal poisoning continued to be a real threat to wildlife, particularly birds of prey.
It also said there was no reason of anyone to have chemicals such as carbofuran, which were not approved for use in England and Wales, and putting substances dangerous to both animals and humans into the environment was totally irresponsible.
It alleged birds of prey continue to be persecuted because they are predators of game birds, with some species such as hen harriers teetering on the brink of extinction.
Bob Elliot, RSPB head of investigations, said the maps illustrated the problems faced by birds of prey.
“We need to remember, however, that these dots represent the tip of a much bigger iceberg as these criminal offences are often discovered by pure chance.”
“These aren’t just points on a map. Each dot represents a crime where a bird of prey has been killed in a calculated way.
“Birds of prey have suffered centuries of persecution, and these maps prove those attitudes still prevail today,” he said, adding the RSPB would work in partnership to bear down on the acceptable crimes.
Glynn Evans, head of game and gamekeeping at the UK’s largest shooting organisation, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC), said: “The use of illegal poisons to kill birds of prey has no place in modern land and wildlife management.
“BASC welcomes the publication of these incident maps which will be valuable tools in combating those who persist with this unacceptable practice.”
Last October, the Environmental Audit Committee said hundreds of birds of prey had been killed because the Government had failed to fully implement laws designed to protect them.
Rules brought in in 2006 made it an offence to possess poisons used to kill birds of prey, but an order listing which poisons it was illegal to have was not introduced.
The Government should criminalise possession of carbofuran and other similar substances which have no legal use in the UK, the EAC urged.
Today is the last time you will be able to walk into Brad Cooper Gallery in Ybor City. From noon to 7 p.m. art will be sold at discount prices — some up to 50 percent off. After that, the doors will close permanently.
For 28 years, Brad Cooper Gallery has been known for having exceptional exhibits of contemporary art by international and local artists.
Its closing will leave a void in Tampa's art community. It was at Brad Cooper Gallery that I met international American artists Yvonne Petkus and William Pachner, and Russian artist Peter Mitchev. And it's where I first heard of the tiny Greek island called Naxos.
That's where owner Brad Cooper and his wife, Elizabeth, will head after the closing.
"This will be our fifth season in Naxos," Brad Cooper said in a telephone interview. "We open there from Easter through the beginning of October. That's the season for the Europeans to go on vacation, and the weather is very nice there."
The couple own a shop there where Elizabeth sells her handcrafted jewelry and Brad sells "a little art" to their mostly European customers.
For those who know Cooper, the decision to close is not a sudden one.
"We've been kind of planning this for a while, but you have to do it one step at a time," he said. "We feel we've reached a certain limit of what we can achieve here, and we want to pursue other creative paths."
"I think we did a lot of exciting exhibitions over the years," he said. "We did drawing exhibitions before anybody in the city showed drawings. We had international juried shows and brought artists from other parts of the country and included local artists in the exhibit to show that artists here are just as good as the international ones. It was good to create something that wasn't here before and offer it to the community. … And meeting so many great artists has been a good experience."
But he found that the art scene in Ybor City changed dramatically through the years.
"When we first opened here, we would pull in over 1,000 people at an opening. Now we get maybe 50 people," he said.
Cooper always has championed the idea of making Ybor City the arts district for Tampa, an idea that never really got off the ground.
"It was difficult to get the cooperation needed from the cultural institutions and from the city for a sustainable arts community in Ybor," Cooper said. "I don't know if it was the density of the population or what, but it never seemed to gel. I often felt that we were in competition rather than collaboration with the other institutions."
"When there's an adverse impact from a nightclub on the store next door, that store will leave," he said. Cooper was able to stay because he owned his building.
"And because we are located in the center of the national historic district. Everyone who comes here will pass by your door. So all you have to do is have something they will want to buy."
For better or worse, most of his clients were Europeans or Americans from other cities.All our fridgemagnet are vacuum formed using food safe plastic.
"The collector base in Tampa didn't really develop," he said. "That's because there wasn't a real interface between the galleries and the cultural institutions."
Though his location changed during his 28 years of business — Cooper first opened in 1984 on South Howard Avenue; he moved to the Ybor location in 1990 — his philosophy about art did not.Beautiful indoorpositioningsystem in a wide range of colors & sold at factory direct prices.
"It's the expression of the artist's experience," he said. "Through art,You can werkzeugbaus Moon yarns and fibers right here as instock. we develop consciousness. The work in the gallery was work that wasn't necessarily popular at the time, but it was always oriented toward the human condition."
Once in Naxos, the Coopers look forward to being surrounded by ancient architectural wonders in a great climate while developing their individual artistic talents.
Conservationists and shooting enthusiasts – often unfairly blamed for the poisonings – also lined up to condemn the crime as the maps revealed the number and location of confirmed poisonings of birds of prey between 2007 and 2011. Six incidents in the South West, from Land’s End in Cornwall to Somerset,A collection of natural parkingsensor offering polished or tumbled finishes and a choice of sizes. were among those identified.
Across Britin there were 19 incidents in 2011 alone. A total of 30 birds of prey were poisoned, bringing the total number of confirmed cases over five years to 101.
But wildlife charity the RSPB warned the confirmed incidents were the tip of a much bigger iceberg, as many cases were discovered by chance.
It was also revealed that the majority of poisonings were carried out using the chemicals carbofuran or aldicarb, pesticides which have been banned in the UK and can be dangerous to humans.
The partnership said the maps showed that the problem of illegal poisoning continued to be a real threat to wildlife, particularly birds of prey.
It also said there was no reason of anyone to have chemicals such as carbofuran, which were not approved for use in England and Wales, and putting substances dangerous to both animals and humans into the environment was totally irresponsible.
It alleged birds of prey continue to be persecuted because they are predators of game birds, with some species such as hen harriers teetering on the brink of extinction.
Bob Elliot, RSPB head of investigations, said the maps illustrated the problems faced by birds of prey.
“We need to remember, however, that these dots represent the tip of a much bigger iceberg as these criminal offences are often discovered by pure chance.”
“These aren’t just points on a map. Each dot represents a crime where a bird of prey has been killed in a calculated way.
“Birds of prey have suffered centuries of persecution, and these maps prove those attitudes still prevail today,” he said, adding the RSPB would work in partnership to bear down on the acceptable crimes.
Glynn Evans, head of game and gamekeeping at the UK’s largest shooting organisation, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC), said: “The use of illegal poisons to kill birds of prey has no place in modern land and wildlife management.
“BASC welcomes the publication of these incident maps which will be valuable tools in combating those who persist with this unacceptable practice.”
Last October, the Environmental Audit Committee said hundreds of birds of prey had been killed because the Government had failed to fully implement laws designed to protect them.
Rules brought in in 2006 made it an offence to possess poisons used to kill birds of prey, but an order listing which poisons it was illegal to have was not introduced.
The Government should criminalise possession of carbofuran and other similar substances which have no legal use in the UK, the EAC urged.
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