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Professional & Community Involvement
•Board Member, Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale - Nova SouthEastern University, Board of Governors•Member, American Bar Association•Member, Business Law Section, Consumer Financial Services Committee•Board Member, Children's Home Society of Florida, Intercoastal Division•Vice-Chair, Crockett Foundation•Circuit Civil Mediator, Florida Supreme Court•Compliance Chair, American Collectors International, State of Florida, 2005-2010
Michele L. Stocker is a commercial litigator with a broad range of experience representing clients in the financial services industry including regional and national banks, loan servicers, consumer finance companies, mortgage bankers, credit card issuers, debt buyers and third-party debt collectors. She also regularly advises clients in employment-related matters involving discrimination, harassment, severance agreements, restrictive covenants, and wage and hour issues. Areas of Concentration•Telephone Consumer Protection Act•Contested mortgage foreclosures•Fair Credit Reporting Act•Fair Debt Collection Practices Act•Truth in Lending Act and Regulation Z•Mortgage loan origination and loan servicing issues•Unfair and deceptive trade practices•Consumer fraud•Identity theft•Predatory lending•Force-placed insurance•Employment discrimination•Sexual harassment/hostile work environment•Non-competition/restrictive covenant agreements•Wage and hour issues•Class action defense Awards & Recognition•Listed, South Florida Legal Guide, Top Lawyer, 2014-2015•Listed, The Best Lawyers in America, Commercial Litigation, 2013-2015•Honoree, 100 Outstanding Women of Broward County, Boys and Girls Clubs of Broward County, 2014•Recipient, 2013 Top Hat Salute to Women of Achievement Award' Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc, Zeta Rho Omega Chapter, Fort Lauderdale, FL, March 9, 2013•Team Member, a Law360 Employment Practice Group of the Year, 2011 and 2013•Featured, The Diversity Journal's 11th Annual Women Worth Watching Issue, 2013, September/October 2012•Listed, Florida Trend magazine, Legal Elite, Commercial Litigation, 2012•Recipient, 2012 Glass Ceiling Award, The Florida Women's Conference - National Diversity Council, March 2012•Recipient, Love For Literacy Gala Honoree, Love for Literacy Gala, Crockett Foundation Inc., March 2012•Listed, Business Leader magazine South Florida's Women Extraordinaire, 2011•Listed, South Florida's 100 Most Accomplished Black's in Law, ICABA, 2009•Profiled, Who's Who in Black South Florida, South Florida's Most Influential, 2007•Rated, AV Preeminent 5.0 out of 5 AV, BV, AV Preeminent and BV Distinguished are registered certification marks of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc., used under in accordance with the Martindale-Hubbell certification procedures, standards and policies. Articles, Publications, & LecturesPublications•Co-Author, What To Know About Fla.'s New Fast-Track Foreclosure Law, Law360, August 9, 2013•Co-Author, Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Renders Important Decision Holding That Consumers Must File Suit to Trigger Rescission Rights Under Truth in Lending Act, GT Alert, July 27, 2012•Author, "The Changing Landscape of the Business Records Exception under Florida Law and its Impact on Florida Foreclosures," GT Alert, 2011Speaking Engagements•Speaker, Managing Partners and Senior Partners, Women Leaders in the Law Series, Broward County Bar Association, October 8, 2014•Panelist, Servicing Litigation, Legal Issues and Regulatory Compliance Conference, Mortgage Bankers Association, San Diego, CA, May 4, 2014•Speaker, Perceptions of Assertive Women, Women for Excellence, Boca Raton, FL, April 3, 2014•Panelist, Defending Your Company Against Individual Cases, Mortgage Bankers Association Legal Issues and Regulatory Compliance Conference, Palm Springs, CA, May 20, 2012•Speaker, Perceptions of Assertive Women, South Florida Women in Leadership Symposium, Florida Diversity Council, October 7, 2011•Speaker, American Institute Residential Mortgage Litigation and Regulatory Enforcement Conference, Fall 2010, Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Spring 2012 Associated News & EventsPress Releases01.21.15 51 Greenberg Traurig Attorneys Recognized by South Florida Legal Guide08.20.14 24 Greenberg Traurig Fort Lauderdale Attorneys Listed In Best Lawyers In America 201508.19.14 129 Greenberg Traurig Florida Attorneys Listed In Best Lawyers In America 201505.12.14 Greenberg Traurig's Michele L. Stocker Selected as a '100 Outstanding Women of Broward County' Honoree by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Broward County08.16.13 24 Fort Lauderdale Attorneys from Greenberg Traurig Named Among 'Best Lawyers in America' 201403.05.13 Greenberg Traurig Shareholder Michele L. Stocker Appointed to Board of Governors of Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale09.19.12 Greenberg Traurig Shareholder Michele L. Stocker Named One Of Profiles in Diversity Journal's Women Worth Watching08.16.12 Greenberg Traurig Attorney Michele L. Stocker Speaks at The Links Inc. Women of Color Empowerment Conference07.20.12 Greenberg Traurig Attorneys Listed as Florida Legal Elite by Florida Trend magazine03.16.12 Greenberg Traurig Shareholder Michele Stocker Receives Glass Ceiling Award from the National Diversity CouncilPublished Articles04.25.14 A 1st for Florida Foreclosure Actions08.09.13 What To Know About Fla.'s New Fast-Track Foreclosure Law08.01.12 Takeaways From Rosenfield V. HSBC (subscription)Alerts01.06.15 Mortgage Foreclosure Action Barred by Statute of Limitations Based On Prior Involuntary Dismissal Without Prejudice12.10.14 Business Records Exception and the Admissibility of Prior Servicer Records - the Conflict Continues11.13.14 Florida Court Casts Doubt on Ability to Rely on Account Histories of Prior Note Holders and Servicers05.16.14 Statute of Limitations Update in Florida Foreclosure Actions: Fifth District Court of Appeals Holds that Each Default Creates a New Case of Action07.17.13 Florida's New Fast Track Foreclosure Law Creates Additional Requirements for Lenders and Mortgage Servicers08.31.12 Florida First District Court of Appeal Renders Important Decision Holding that Purchasers who Acquire Property with Knowledge of Contamination are Liable07.27.12 Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals Renders Important Decision Holding That Consumers Must File Suit to Trigger Rescission Rights Under Truth in Lending Act09.14.11 The Changing Landscape of the Business Records Exception under Florida Law and its Impact on Florida Foreclosures


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All that Rajesh Hebbar wanted to become in life was an actor. He is in a happy space now, dividing his time between television and movies. He is currently acting in the serials Akashadoothu (Surya TV) and Nirapakkittu (Media One). More from the actor, who is also an accomplished singer and dancer…
Passionate about acting
Although I am from a business family in Palakkad, I wanted to become an actor. My mother, Padmini, a trained dancer and singer, trained me for various competitions. Both my parents were avid movie-goers and that encouraged me to pursue my dream. While in Government Victoria College, Palakkad, I participated in drama competitions and was adjudged best actor many a time. I was a regular at university youth fetes, taking part in as many items as I could. We had a music band, Primitive Knights, which remained active for many years even after we finished college. But there came a point when I had to join my family business. However, even as a businessman, I used to work as a freelancer for a national daily, mostly covering cinema. I enjoyed doing location reporting and still remember reporting on the sets of Vanaprastham and Punaradhivasam.
In pursuit of the dream
The big moment came in 2001 when actor-director Shekhar Kapur's company Digital Talkies announced the Digital Talkies International Film Festival in New Delhi, which invited entries from aspiring filmmakers. When my father told me about it, I applied with a story idea based on a near death experience. They replied, suggesting that I could make a film based on that. Fortunately, I used to hang out with a group of people who were passionate about cinema. Amongst them were Shamdat and his brother Sadath, reputed cinematographers now. They gave me the confidence and support and we came up with a 11-minute short film, Mirage, in one-and-a-half days. It was shot at my home; me, my wife, Anitha, and my father, Ramesh Hebbar, acted in it. I was the producer and director too. It got selected in the showcase section of the film festival.
Big moment
Mirage was one among the two films selected from Kerala. It was this CD that I sent to all those directors whose address I could get hold of. Among those who responded was Babu Janardanan, who cast me as the second lead in the movie Chithrakoodam (2003). Then I did T.K. Rajeevkumar's Ivar and Sathyan Anthikad's Manassinakkare. An important work was Shyamaprasad's short film Ullurukkam, based on N.P. Mohammed's work for Doordarshan, in which he invited the whole team of Mirage.
On the mini-screen
Since movies were few and far between, I decided to try my luck on television. I sent my CD to K.K.Rajeev, the only name familiar to me then. He gave me a role in Orma, a turning point for me. Since then I've not looked back. The icing on the cake has been awards for my roles in Thaniye, Alavuddinum Atbhutha Vilakkum, Tik Tik and Ammakkili. The best part is that I have never been typecast on television. Also, I have no complaints about compromises one has to be make while acting in a daily soap. This is my bread and butter.
Looking back…
I'm happy, though I've a long way to go. There is work on television and I've done over 25 movies, including works in Tamil such as Oru Ponnu, Oru Payyan, Anubhav and Free Kick in Hindi and The Nail and Tantrik Journal in English. I have a couple of movies lined up for release as well. Also, after winning Asianet's Sundari Neeyum Sundaran Njaanum, a reality show for television celebrities, people know that I can dance, sing and do martial arts. So more stage shows are coming my way. My looks, especially my bald head and serious demeanour, give an impression that I'm good for negative roles. But now I'm getting comedy roles as well. I'm proud that I've made it on my own without a godfather.
Keywords: Rajesh Hebbar

subset: commoncrawl


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Rabbi Daniel Gordis, a popular, American-born voice of Israel's center-right, writes in Bloomberg View that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reelection campaign, deemed a sure thing just days ago, has run into a "perfect storm" from which it may not recover.
"It has been a steep and precipitous fall since those glory moments on the podium before the U.S. Congress," Gordis wrote. "Netanyahu is clearly in trouble."
In-depth polling conducted internally in recent days by the Likud as well as its Labor-led "Zionist Camp" opposition shows the same thing. Likud's own poll analysts are predicting as few as 18 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Zionist Camp internal polling shows it leading Likud 27-21.
Gordis cites three major crises that have suddenly hammered the campaign in the last few days. One is a series of slashing attacks on Netanyahu's leadership by the widely admired former Mossad director Meir Dagan, culminating in an emotional speech by Dagan before a massive anti-Netanyahu rally Saturday night in Tel Aviv.
Second is a hotly protested Likud television commercial that was released March 4 and quickly withdrawn the next day, but not before causing enormous damage. The ad depicted a mock therapy group of public nuisances hurt by Netanyahu's policies, including civil servants no longer able to ignore the public and a Hamas terrorist unable to carry out attacks. Airport and port workers, traditionally Likud voters, complained that the ad likened them to Hamas terrorists and vowed not to vote for the party. Gordis notes that while Netanyahu apologized for the ad, his close ally, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, claimed Netanyahu hadn't known about the ad — despite the fact that the prime minister appeared on camera to deliver the closing pitch on the same set where the therapy group was meeting. (Watch the ad here.)
The third crisis is the publication last Friday of a leaked document apparently indicating that Netanyahu had secretly agreed to peace negotiations based on the 1967 lines, along with a return of some refugees and a Palestinian foothold in Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley, all positions the prime minister has repeatedly rejected in public. Compounding the damage caused by the document itself among Likud supporters on the right was the inept, panicky response of Netanyahu's campaign, which first called the document fake, then denied he had agreed to the positions in the document, then claimed he now repudiated his endorsement of the two-state solution in his famous 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech. Finally, late Sunday night, he repudiated the repudiation of two states.
"Whatever the outcome," Gordis writes,
More mystery and intrigue in the senior ranks of the Israel Defense Forces: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reported (Maariv, Haaretz) to be stalling the nomination of Israel's next military chief of staff. His reasons are a topic of hot speculation, though the facts seem to speak for themselves.
By law the nomination of a new chief of staff is the job of the defense minister. He's supposed to present his choice to the cabinet for approval three months before the incumbent's term ends. That deadline was November 15. Since then, though, Netanyahu has twice asked for delays so he could interview the candidates, most recently last Friday. He's now asked to meet with the defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, before a name is presented to the cabinet.
Yaalon has stated publicly that his preference is the current deputy chief of staff, Gadi Eizenkot, who is also the unanimous choice of the top generals who make up the General Staff. The other nominee is Yair Naveh, a former deputy chief of staff who retired two years ago.
Suspicions are running high within the senior military command, according reporter Noam Amir in the right-wing Maariv, that Netanyahu is deliberately trying to sideline Eizenkot despite his support from the IDF and the defense minister. Officers tell Amir that if Eizenkot isn't appointed there will be an "earthquake." Cohen in Haaretz reports speculation that Netanyahu is weighing in to avoid accusations later that he failed to pay attention, as some accused him of doing in 2010 and in a previous round in 1998.
Eizenkot is identified with the mainstream IDF defense doctrine that favors minimum necessary use of force and activist pursuit of diplomacy to settle disputes. Naveh is an Orthodox Jew and identified with the political right, though he's clashed with the settler movement in the past over his refusal to disobey orders involving dismantling settlements, including the 2005 disengagement from Gaza.
Israelis last week watched their defense establishment undergo its nastiest and arguably most dangerous meltdown in decades as the heads of two main branches, Benny Gantz of the Israel Defense Forces and Yoram Cohen of the Shin Bet security service, publicly traded insults and questioned each other's integrity and professional competence.
The public dispute erupted last Tuesday, November 11. That evening the popular television newsmagazine Uvdah ("Fact") aired a report in which senior Shin Bet officials, their faces and identities obscured, claimed the military had mishandled critical intelligence before last summer's Gaza war. The officials said the Shin Bet had warned the army last January that Hamas was planning a July war, but the army failed to act. A military officer appeared on camera to deny that any such warning had been received.
The broadcast sparked a furious war of words between IDF chief of staff Gantz and Shin Bet director Cohen. On Wednesday morning Gantz wrote a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Hebrew text here) charging that officials of the secretive security service had "crossed all moral and ethical lines" by appearing in public and portraying the IDF as incompetent. He categorically denied that the military had received any warning of a planned war, whether in January or later. He also charged that the Shin Bet, "as an intelligence agency," had set a "dangerous precedent" in permitting its personnel to appear and expose classified information and methods of operation.
After a three-way make-up meeting late Wednesday between Netanyahu, Gantz and Cohen, the Shin Bet Thursday morning issued a public "clarification," itself a rare act, saying its agents had not really claimed to have warned of a July war (despite the fact that they'd been shown on camera saying just that). Later that day, however, Cohen backtracked and counterattacked (Isn't that an Elton John song?). In an open letter to Shin Bet retirees (here) he said he stood by everything the agents had said on television and blamed the feud on Gantz. He claimed he'd "decided to cooperate" with the newsmagazine to "show the Shin Bet as a professional, relevant organization that made important contributions to the success of Operation Protective Edge."
Superficially, the dispute centers on the mutual accusations themselves: On one hand, the Shin Bet's claim that it warned the IDF of Hamas' July war plan, but that the IDF mishandled or ignored it. On the other hand, IDF's counter-claim that there was no such warning.
On a deeper level, the incident represents an escalation of a serious debate that's been going on since August, over whether or not Hamas actually intended to launch a war. The IDF and its intelligence directorate continue to maintain, as they have since the war began (and as I reported in mid-July), that Hamas didn't plan the war but stumbled into it through a jumble of miscalculations and miscommunication.
The policies of Israel's longest-serving prime minister are starting to bear an eerie resemblance to climate change: The critics all look like a bunch of whining scaremongers prophesying an implausibly apocalyptic ruination that's sure to come in some fuzzily distant end-time. Even if it's true, it's too far away to worry about. That is, until one day the oceans overflow, and here we are.
Not that the arrival of payday alters anyone's behavior.
In the case of Israel, the past week brought three headline events that look like important turning points in Israel's growing international isolation. Two were genuine canaries in the coal mine, signals that we're entering a new and sharply more perilous period for the Jewish state. The third was a farcical episode that doesn't signal much of anything, except as an anecdotal mile-marker of how far we've slid down the slippery slope.
So which one made us sit up and take notice? Why, the third one, of course. The farce.
That would be ChickenshitGate, the international furor over an unnamed U.S. government official's description of Benjamin Netanyahu as a bit of poultry-poop. It erupted Tuesday night, when the quote appeared online in an essay by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, "The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here." Goldberg followed the "chickenshit" quote with a list he's kept of other insults Washington officialdom has directed at Netanyahu in recent years ("recalcitrant," "myopic," reactionary," "obtuse," "blustering," "pompous," "Aspergery") before proceeding to explain how and why relations between the two allies have gotten worse than ever.
When you think about it, "chickenshit" wasn't really the worst insult on the list. Most of the others describe worse qualities than timidity. What caused the uproar over this latest entry was the locker room language. Apparently Israel's leading defenders were, to quote from "Casablanca," "shocked! — shocked!" — to find that Washington bureaucrats use dirty words when the microphones are off.
The shock was strangely lacking in self-awareness, given the fact that Israeli cabinet ministers had been directing an open stream of personal invective at Secretary of State John Kerry since January. It began with Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon calling Kerry "obsessive" and "messianic." Yaalon got paid back in October with humiliating rejections of his requests for meetings during a Washington visit with Kerry, Vice President Joe Biden and National Security Adviser Susan Rice. And yet he still managed to find time while he was in Washington for one more insult, telling the Washington Post's Lally Weymouth in an interview that the Obama administration's Middle East policies were based on "ignorance" and "naivete."
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning a massive new wave of construction in the West Bank, according to a report Sunday night on Israel's Channel 2 News. It's part of a deal to calm his restive allies in the settler-backed Jewish Home party. The Channel 2 report has since been confirmed independently by Haaretz, Walla News and other news outlets.
The plans reportedly include some 2,000 new homes, mostly but not all in the so-called settlement blocs that Israel expects to keep permanently. Also included are 12 new roads, infrastructure projects, a park, student housing and the legalization of several illegal settlement outposts. The deal also includes a renovation of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a plan that's likely to cause new flare-ups at the site, a constant flashpoint that's holy to both Jews and Muslims.
The plans are to be finalized at a meeting Wednesday between Netanyahu, economics minister Naftali Bennett and housing minister Uri Ariel, both of Jewish Home, transportation minister Yisrael Katz of Likud and finance minister Yair Lapid. Haaretz reported that Netanyahu had not yet approved the 2,000 housing units, which he fears will increase tensions with Washington and Europe, and is trying to appease the rightists with the transportation and infrastructure projects. Lapid issued a statement following the Channel 2 report that he opposed construction outside the settlement blocs, and that the timing of the overall deal "will cause harm to Israel." He said the plan "will lead to a serious crisis in Israel-U.S. relations and will harm Israel's standing in the world."
The decision comes at an explosive moment in U.S.-Israel relations. Just this past Friday analysts across the Israeli political spectrum were describing the relationship as having plunged to a historic low point in the wake of defense minister Moshe Yaalon's visit to Washington last week. Shortly after departing Washington, Yaalon was dealt a humiliating slap when unnamed administration officials told Yediot Ahronot that the minister had been refused permission to meet with senior administration officials including Vice President Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and national security adviser Susan Rice.
The refusals come in apparent retaliation for a series of recent incidents in which Yaalon attacked administration policy and personally insulted Kerry.
One of these things is just like the other: A strange new flareup in U.S.-Israeli relations erupted on Friday, after a speech by Secretary of State John Kerry drew furious objections from pair of ranking Israeli cabinet ministers.
Kerry was discussing the ISIS threat before a Muslim audience in Washington. He spoke of the need to address a string of Middle East problems that he said frustrated and angered Arab youth and thus helped ISIS's "recruitment." One item on his list was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Israeli ministers charged that Kerry was blaming Israel for the rise of ISIS. One, economics minister Naftali Bennett of the settler-backed Jewish Home party, stopped just short of charging Kerry with anti-Semitism. "It turns out that even when a British Muslim decapitates a British Christian, there will always be someone to blame the Jew," Bennett said.
The other, information minister Gilad Erdan, a rising Likud star and a member of the elite Security Cabinet, piped in later, declaring that Kerry was "breaking records" in misunderstanding the region. Both claimed Kerry's words would encourage terrorism.
Their remarks prompted an angry retort that afternoon from State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf. She said the Israeli critics — "especially one particular minister," apparently Bennett — had "trie[d] to distort" Kerry's words "for their political purposes."
In a sign of how seriously Jerusalem took the American anger, Prime Minister Netanyahu's two top lieutenants, foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman and defense minister Moshe Yaalon, jumped in on Saturday with strong rebukes of Bennett for undermining Israel's relations with its closest ally.
Here's the strange part: Kerry's comment on Israel echoed — closely, though in milder tone — a fire-breathing speech by Netanyahu himself before the United Nations just two and a half weeks earlier. Netanyahu had said that Israel's conflict with Hamas is part and parcel of the larger struggle against ISIS. "Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas," he said. He went on to elaborate:
Fresh from the long war with Hamas in Gaza, tensely facing down simmering unrest in the West Bank and chaos on the Syrian border, Israel's defense establishment is now bracing for what's shaping up to be the most bruising confrontation of all: the choosing of the next chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces.
The process looks to be a replay of the last race, an ugly slugfest in late 2010 and early 2011 that resulted in the selection of the current chief, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz. That got so nasty that the lead candidates fought each other to a draw amid mudslinging and dirty tricks that ended up in criminal investigations and indictments. Weirdly enough, the lead candidates are back again.
The lead candidates that fall were Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, chief of the Northern Command, who was favored by then-chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi and most of his colleagues at General Staff HQ; and the chief of the Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant, favored by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-defense minister Ehud Barak, but fiercely opposed by the army brass. The mudslinging exploded into a scandal that effectively sidelined Eizenkot, though he wasn't directly involved. Barak went on to nominate Galant, as expected, and the cabinet duly approved him. Days before Galant was to take over in February, however, he was suddenly charged with real estate fraud and disqualified. In the end the job was handed to everyone's second choice, the inoffensive Gantz.
Everything fell apart so suddenly that an interim chief of staff had to be appointed, the newly installed deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh. That prompted yet another eruption when Israel's Supreme Court sharply criticized Naveh as unfit to lead the army even temporarily.
This year all the old ghosts are returning, along with some new ones. The lead candidates are, once again, Eizenkot and Galant. Eizenkot is currently deputy chief of staff, and was thought until recently to be the heir apparent. Galant, meanwhile, cleared up his real estate mess last year and recently nominated himself for the post, announcing on television that he'd be available if "called to the flag," as he grandly put it. He's reportedly still backed by Netanyahu, though not by the new defense minister, Moshe Yaalon.
If past were prologue, Galant would now reclaim the job dangled by the prime minister but snatched from him at the last minute in 2011. But under Israeli law, nominating the chief of staff is the sole prerogative of the defense minister. And Yaalon shares the generals' dislike of Galant and respect for Eizenkot.
Indications are mounting that the indirect Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire talks in Cairo could be heading for failure, possibly resulting in renewed fighting when the current 5-day truce expires Monday night.
Early reports were that the two sides were close to agreement on an Egyptian compromise proposal for a long-term cease-fire. On Friday and Saturday, however, declarations on both sides indicated that positions were hardening as fierce internal divisions emerged, pulling the leaderships on both sides away from the center. The Palestinian side appears to be stymied by the refusal of the organization's Qatar-based political secretary, Khaled Meshaal, and the head of its military wing, Mohammed Deif, to go along with the compromise proposals laid out by the Egyptians and mostly accepted by both delegations.
On the Israeli side, meanwhile, chaos appears to be reigning. Prime Minister Netanyahu, who rode a wave of popularity during the military operation, has been facing a tsunami of criticism over the past week from the left, the right, the residents of Gaza-adjacent communities and his top coalition ministers. Two of his senior coalition partners, foreign minister Avigdor Liberman of the Yisrael Beiteinu party and economics minister Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home party, have repeatedly attacked the prime minister's management of the Gaza conflict from the right, demanding a continuing assault until Gaza has been taken over and Hamas disarmed or dismantled. Broad circles on the right accuse him of giving away the store (i.e. lifting the blockade) in return for "nothing" (i.e. Hamas-Jihad agreement not to shoot, bombard or tunnel).
The other coalition partners, justice minister Tzipi Livni of Hatnuah and finance minister Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid, have been pressing Netanyahu from the left, demanding that he seek to end the fighting by convening an international Middle East peace conference in cooperation with the Arab League. The goal of the conference would be to negotiate an agreement for an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Netanyahu hasn't said no to either minister, by some accounts because he'll need their votes in the cabinet for the limited cease-fire he's aiming to obtain in Cairo.
Livni and Bennett have also attacked the Cairo cease-fire negotiations on principle, saying the process amounts to Israel negotiating with Hamas despite its international status as a terrorist organization and effectively gives the Islamist group diplomatic legitimacy. Both also complain that the Egyptian proposal for a long-term cease-fire, by guaranteeing Gaza's border, would constrain Israel's ability to reply to terrorist actions from Gaza while failing to prevent Hamas and other terrorist groups from rearming and mounting attacks.
Under the Egyptian proposal, the Palestinian factions in Gaza, principally Hamas and Islamic Jihad, would agree to refrain from all attacks on Israel by land, air and sea, and to refrain from digging tunnels into Israeli territory.
Mark your calendars: It was on Sunday, July 20, that the momentum turned against Israel. Sometime around noon the wind shifted and the tide began to roll out, and Israel started to lose international sympathy for its Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.
Up until Sunday morning Israel had a pretty clear field, owing to a combination of factors. For one thing, the optics. As long as Israel was responding to Hamas rockets with air strikes against Hamas targets, it looked to most observers like a fair fight. Israel's opponents claimed there was no equivalence given the lopsided death toll. Israel's supporters claimed the opposite: there was no equivalence because Hamas was aiming at civilians, while Israel was just trying to stop the rockets. In practice, it was a wash.
Even after Israel's ground troops entered Gaza on Thursday night, July 17, the action looked reasonably measured to most outsiders. Hamas' network of cross-border tunnels had ceased to be a theoretical problem that morning, when a squad of terrorists emerged on the Israeli side, prepared to attack a kibbutz. Israel sent in troops for what was announced as a limited operation along the border fence to destroy the tunnels. There were no international complaints. Lots of noisy street demonstrations, but hardly a peep from the world's governments.
It didn't hurt Israel's case that the same Thursday saw 298 passengers killed when a Malaysian Airlines passenger was jet shot down over Ukraine, apparently by pro-Russian rebels, and 270 Syrians — soldiers, security guards and civilians — murdered execution-style by ISIS militants who had taken over a natural gas field. Gaza was just one of the world's killing fields as the weekend approached.
Most important, Israel was facing an enemy, Hamas, that was almost universally despised. Egypt, always central to Israel-Hamas mediation, had been pouring contempt on Hamas throughout the crisis. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had loudly condemned attacks on Israel during the crisis, once at a June 18 meeting of Islamic foreign ministers in Saudi Arabia and again when Hamas started bombarding Israel. When Egypt's July 14 cease-fire proposal was accepted by Israel and rejected by Hamas, the Islamist organization's support was reduced to rogue-state Iran, Islamist Turkey and the emirate of Qatar.
Qatar launched its own cease-fire initiative, which included the preconditions Hamas had demanded — freeing prisoners, opening borders, putting the Gaza-Egypt border under international supervision — but nobody endorsed it. The Arab League, led by Saudi Arabia, lined up formally behind Egypt — and by implication, Israel. The Jewish state had never had more sympathy in the Arab world for its defense needs.
What happened next was something that's happened over and over in Israel's military operations in recent years: The government overestimated the depth of its international support and decided to broaden the scope of the operation. On Saturday night the ground campaign was expanded beyond the surgical operation that had been promised against tunnels near the fence. It became a major assault on a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza City, Sheja'iya. The neighborhood houses some of Hamas' tunnel entries and rocket launchers. It also houses tens of thousands of civilian families.
By evening the shelling and ground fighting had killed more than 80 Palestinians, including an estimated 60 civilians. The expanded fighting also began taking a serious toll on the Israeli side: 13 soldiers killed.
Las Vegas, March 29: Chris Christie addresses Republican Jewish Coalition. Sheldon Adelson listens. / Getty Images
With all the apologies flying back and forth these days, you might almost think Yom Kippur came early this year. In fact, tradition teaches that there's a deep spiritual bond between Yom Kippur, which is six months from now, and Purim, which just passed on March 16. So it shouldn't surprise to see mockery and farce flying back and forth across the Atlantic, masquerading as regret and atonement.
In Las Vegas on Saturday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie apologizes to Sheldon Adelson for thoughtlessly referring to Israel's military rule in Judea and Samaria as an occupation. In Jerusalem on Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon meets Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey and apologizes, yet again, for trashing Washington's efforts to end, in the words of the Bush roadmap that Israel signed in 2003, "the occupation that began in 1967." And in Washington, Secretary of State Kerry receives a letter from a deniable Netanyahu cutout, former ambassador Alan Baker, rephrasing the insults in only slightly more decorous terms.
Christie's apology to Sheldon Adelson was for referring to Judea and Samaria, a.k.a. the West Bank, as "the occupied territories" during his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition. He made the reference in the context of acknowledging how vulnerable Israel would be without them, but still. Sheldon and Co. hate to hear the territories under Israeli military rule referred to as "occupied" (you known, those "territories occupied in the recent conflict," in the words of U.N. Security Resolution 242, which Israel continuously refers to as the legal basis for negotiations).
Over in Jerusalem, meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe "Bogey" Yaalon continued his grand apology-and-groveling tour today with an elaborately florid embrace of General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom he thanked for being a "true friend of the state of Israel and the IDF." Yaalon is still trying to clean up the mess he's created with his serial insults of Secretary of State John Kerry in January and the entire Obama foreign policy in March, both of which prompted furious protests from Washington, including a personal phone call from Kerry to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Yaalon semi-apologized in January with a Defense Ministry press release saying the minister "had no intention to cause any offense" (by calling Kerry "obsessive" and "messianic"). Then on March 20 he semi-apologized in a phone call to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, saying there was "no antagonism or criticism or intent to harm the United States" (when he said the administration was broadcasting weakness throughout the world and got bamboozled by Iran).
This time Yaalon went all out, delivering his message in person to Dempsey, out loud, in front the media. Here's how the Jerusalem Post reported it:
Hamas police on the Gaza-Egypt border, September 2013 / Getty Images
Ideology continues to trump security in the Netanyahu government's approach to combating terrorism. As Hamas struggles to maintain its November 2012 cease-fire with Israel in the face of increasing rocket fire, mostly by al Qaeda-linked Salafi jihad factions, Israel responds by bombing Hamas facilities.
In addition to jihadis, the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has been responsible for a small proportion of the rocket fire. The front fired several rockets at the Negev from Gaza earlier in January, including two fired toward Ariel Sharon's funeral January 13. Israel retaliated January 22 by assassinating a PFLP leader identified as responsible for the rockets, Ahmed Al-Za'anin.
The latest incident began late Thursday, when an unknown group fired a rocket that landed in field outside the Negev town of Netivot. Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon declared Friday morning, as he has done repeatedly over the past year, that Israel considers Hamas responsible for all such attacks. The Israeli military retaliated later on Friday by bombing two terrorist installations, a rocket factory in the northern Gaza Strip and a weapons storage facility in the southern strip, that the army later confirmed were both Hamas facilities.
Hamas responded Saturday by withdrawing its rocket prevention units from the field. Initial Israeli responses interpreted the action as Hamas "giving a green light" to stepped up rocket attacks. But by Saturday night, as there had been no further rocket fire, Israeli sources began suggesting that the Hamas troop withdrawal was intended as a message to Israel to direct its fire toward those responsible, rather than punishing Hamas for actions it has been trying to prevent.
During the month of January some 20 rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza, equal the total for the entire preceding 11 months.
The developments come on the heels of a disturbing January 26 report that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been shaking up the hiring and promoting practices at the Shin Bet internal security service in order to create an agency that produces the intelligence he wants. The report, by Haaretz military analyst Amir Oren, says that as a result of the effort, the Shin Bet now has "three out of its four senior officials coming from a religious background and radiating sympathy for a worldview that opposes diplomatic compromise that would involve the evacuation of settlements."
Oren claims that the shakeup follows Netanyahu's frustration that he can't get the IDF's Military Intelligence Directorate (or MI) to produce the intelligence he needs to fend off Secretary of State John Kerry and justify an attack on Iran. Military Intelligence, like the rest of the military, insists on strict professionalism both in its assessments and in its personnel decisions, unlike the Shin Bet, which is under the prime minister's personal supervision. Oren writes:
Hamas fighters testing a Gaza-made M-75 long-range missile, November 2013 / Getty Images
Maariv's Eli Bardenstein offered a stunningly clear and disturbing report (in Hebrew, my translation below) on Friday that illustrates the vexing complications introduced into the triangular Jerusalem-Cairo-Gaza relationship by political turmoil in all three places. It makes a very useful companion piece to today's front-page New York Times report by Jodi Rudoren on Israeli jitters over instability on its eastern front.
In both cases, as Bardenstein notes and Rudoren sort of hints, the Netanyahu government is ignoring the intelligence supplied by its own security establishment, which shows jihadi organizations making life difficult for both Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south. The jihadis are creating turmoil, launching pinprick attacks on Israel that violate cease-fire agreements between Israel and Hezbollah and Hamas respectively. Hamas and Hezbollah are both besieged — Hamas by the new, anti-Islamist Egyptian military government, Hezbollah by jihadi spillover from the Syrian civil war (as well as political blowback from the Rafiq Hariri murder trial now underway in The Hague) — and are finding it increasingly difficult to enforce their respective cease-fires with Israel. Israel — meaning principally defense minister Moshe Yaalon — chooses to ignore the intelligence, blame Hamas and Hezbollah and launch military responses that only further weaken Hamas and Hezbollah and strengthen the jihadis.
I've translated Bardenstein's piece below, but here's the gist: Israel is alarmed at the unraveling of the November 2012 Pillar of Defense cease-fire "understandings" and the increasing rocket fire from Gaza — 17 rockets fired in January alone as of Friday (and more since then). It wants Egypt, which acts as mediator between Israel and Hamas, to pressure Hamas to stop the rocket fire. But Egypt has lost influence over Hamas since the military deposed the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi last July. The military government's approach is not to work with Hamas as Morsi did but to crack down on it.
Hamas, in turn, complains that the Egyptian crackdown — particularly the mass destruction of smuggling tunnels, which squeezes the Gaza economy — weakens Hamas rule and reduces its ability to control the jihadi organizations that are doing the firing. And both Cairo and Hamas complain that Israel has been making the situation worse by Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon's insistence on responding to every single rocket launching, no matter how ineffectual, with aerial bombardment.
Israel's peace-pact rejectionists, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon (Wikimedia Commons)
Benjamin Netanyahu is looking more and more these days like he's preparing to take on the pessimists and nay-sayers and prove them wrong.
For most of the past year the cynics have been insisting that neither Netanyahu nor Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas believes anything will come of Secretary of State John Kerry's peace initiative — but that they're both playing along with Kerry in hopes of avoiding be blamed when the whole thing collapses. It's sort of like musical chairs — whoever ends up looking worse when the music stops will bear the brunt of very considerable European economic anger, and likely U.S. anger as well.
Lately, though, it looks like Bibi has given up trying and is now opting for Plan B: telling Europe, America and the rest of the world to go to hell. On a practical level, he seems to be doing everything he can to short-circuit the talks, blame or no blame. Most blatantly, he's reported by aides to be planning an announcement of new housing construction in West Bank settlements, up to 2,000 units worth, in conjunction with this week's Palestinian prisoner release. This despite Palestinian threats to walk and European threats to blame Israel and retaliate if that happens. Bibi spends a good deal of time and effort decrying those international moves to delegitimize Israel, which include some highly alarming European sanctions, but he shows little interest in blunting international delegitimization by nodding toward norms the rest of the world considers legitimate.
From the Palestinian viewpoint, the prisoner release was intended as a way for Israel to demonstrate a good faith commitment to mutual recognition — effectively acknowledging the other side's fighters as combatants — but the new construction cancels it out by implying an unwillingness to end the occupation. Those close to Netanyahu say the new construction announcements accompanying each prisoner release — this week's is the third since the peace talks began — are necessary to keep his right flank on board while he moves forward.
If construction were Bibi's only negative signal, the sop-to-the-right argument might make sense. But it's just one in a series. There is, to begin with, the fact that his two most senior ministers, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, have both stated repeatedly, in the most public manner imaginable, that they believe the peace talks have no chance of success and that Abbas is the problem and is no partner for peace. One of the main Israeli criticisms of Abbas, ironically, is that he frequently and his aides regularly accuse the Netanyahu government of actions that sabotage peace.
Three weeks after Israeli finance minister Yair Lapid stunned his liberal base by staking out a hardline stance on peace issues, his disappointed lieutenants are coming out in open rebellion.
Lapid, the journalist-turned-politician who scored big in January elections as the champion of the center-left, told New York Times correspondent Jodi Rudoren in an interview published May 19 that he opposed freezing settlement construction, wanted Jerusalem entirely under Israeli sovereignty and—feinting to the right of Bibi Netanyahu—doubted that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas was a partner for peace.
The first sign of trouble came 12 days later, in a May 31 Yediot Ahronot interview with science minister Yaakov Peri, the former Shin Bet chief who was Lapid's first pick for his party slate last October. A longtime dove, Peri said he had been "saddened" that Yesh Atid hadn't raised the peace process in its fall campaign, saying it was an electoral strategy recommended by Washington consultant Mark Mellman. Acknowledging that he didn't agree with Lapid on the peace process, Peri called Abbas a "partner for talks" and endorsed a two-state peace pact based on "a return to the 1967 borders, with minor adjustments and retaining three settlement blocs." He said he would "be making my voice heard soon on this matter."
Last week the gloves came off. Another Lapid ally, fellow journalist Ofer Shelah, Yesh Atid's Knesset whip, declared at a high-profile June 11 conference in Jerusalem that "the occupation is corrupting Israeli society, the Israel Defense Forces, Israeli justice, Israeli media, Israeli psyche and Israeli discourse." He said Israel was growing increasingly isolated, facing a serious threat of international trade boycotts and "approaching the status of South Africa."
Shelah was responding to an argument made moments earlier at the same conference by deputy transportation minister Tzipi Hotovely, a Likud hardliner. She claimed that the "entire coalition agrees that the settlements are not an obstacle to peace," recalling Lapid's New York Times interviews. Both lawmakers were participating in a panel discussion on the Arab Peace Initiative, sponsored by the Molad Center for Renewal of Israeli Democracy, together with the Likud and Labor student clubs at Hebrew University.
The guessing game continues: Will he or won't he? Will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agree to open peace negotiations with the Palestinians on the basis of the Arab Peace Initiative — meaning, in effect, agreeing to start from the pre-1967 armistice lines as the basis for negotiating future borders?
Netanyahu is under pressure. He very much wants to sit down to negotiate with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas — or, at least, to be seen as very much wanting to. He hasn't accepted the Arab League plan, but he hasn't explicitly rejected it. Most of those around him suspect that he's leaning toward accepting some watered down version as he sees the odds of a binational state growing and the opening for a two-state solution slipping away — not to mention the international legitimacy he needs in the face of Iran.
He was seriously embarrassed last week when his deputy defense minister, rising Likud star Danny Danon, told The Times of Israel in a bombshell interview that neither the ruling Likud party nor the government as a whole would ratify a pact based on two states for two peoples. Danon said the Likud was "legally" opposed to the principle of two states for two peoples, because of formal resolutions adopted by the party about a decade ago and never rescinded. Indeed, Danon said,
there was never a government discussion, resolution or vote about the two-state solution. If you will bring it to a vote in the government — nobody will bring it to a vote, it's not smart to do it — but if you bring it to a vote, you will see the majority of Likud ministers, along with the Jewish Home [party], will be against it."
It gets worse. Coalition whip Yariv Levin of Likud — he's the guy in charge of rounding up Knesset votes whenever a bill comes to the floor — announced Wednesday that he would be assuming co-chairmanship of a new Lobby for the Land of Israel caucus within the Knesset to oppose any territorial concessions in the West Bank. The caucus is to be rolled out at a "celebratory" meeting of coalition hawks gathering in Tel Aviv tomorrow (June 11) to flex muscles against Netanyahu's reputed peace plans.
Initial caucus membership is 35 lawmakers (out of 120 total), including two Yesh Atid lawmakers, Dov Lipman and Pnina Tamnu-Shata (other Yesh Atid members have joined a rival two-states caucus, initial membership 40). The Land of Israel caucus has outside support from several cabinet ministers who aren't allowed to join caucuses, reportedly including defense minister Moshe Yaalon of Likud and Jewish Home's economics minister Naftali Bennett and housing minister Uri Ariel. If I'm not mistaken, that comes to a majority of the 68-member coalition.
Coming to Bibi's defense on the diplomatic front, former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, currently chair of the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee, acknowledged today that a construction freeze is in effect in the Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem across the pre-1967 Green Line, according to Galei Tzahal Radio.


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Philips Healthcare Administrative Assistant IV Interview Questions
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2 people found this helpful
Administrative Assistant IV Interview
I applied online. The process took a week – interviewed at Philips Healthcare in January 2013.
I was contacted by the recruiter within hours of applying for this position online. The initial phone screen went well, and she contacted me the following week to set up a face-to-face interview. I received an email confirmation from HR with a detailed agenda of who I would be speaking with (2 department managers, an HR manager and 2 administrative assistants) and when, which was helpful. I was escorted to a small conference room and met with the first interviewer. She was very friendly and nice, and asked basic interview questions regarding the position. After that, things got odd. One of the department managers arrived, and admitted to me that he hadn't looked at my resume, which I thought was strange. Seconds after he sat down, we were interrupted by another interviewer, who said that the times had been switched, and that she was scheduled to interview me during this time. This was done in front of me, which seemed unprofessional. I found out later that another candidate signed in 15 minutes after I did, and they were conducting simultaneous interviews with us in separate rooms (I overheard her name being mentioned by one of the interviewers). The overall experience left a negative impression on me because there was an obvious lack of communication within this group. A panel interview would have been more efficient, as well as spending more time working out scheduling issues.
- All the questions were pretty basic - nothing unusual. Answer Question


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All Schools
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There are 7 private schools located in District of Columbia that offer Swimming as an interscholastic sport.
Swimming Private Schools
- School Location Students Grades
WashingtonBritish School Of Washington
2001 Wisconsin Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20007
(202)829-3700(Non-sectarian)n/a students | Gr. NS-12
WashingtonEdmund Burke School
4101 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20008
(202)362-8882310 students | Gr. 6-12
WashingtonGonzaga College High School
19 Eye Street NW
Washington, DC 20001
(202)336-7100958 students | Gr. 9-12
All-boys (Roman Catholic)
WashingtonHoly Trinity School
1325 36th St Nw
Washington, DC 20007
(202)337-2339(Roman Catholic)328 students | Gr. K-8
WashingtonLowell School
1640 Kalmia Road NW
Washington, DC 20012
(202)577-2000329 students | Gr. PK-8
WashingtonMaret School
3000 Cathedral Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20008
(202)939-8814635 students | Gr. K-12
WashingtonThe Field School
2301 Foxhall Road NW
Washington, DC 20007
(202)295-5839331 students | Gr. 6-12
State Statistics
|About This State (DC)
|(DC) State Statistics
|Nationwide Statistics
|Population (Approximate)
|593,506 people
|304,788,332 people
|Age 25+ w/College Degree
|Median Household Income
Recent Articles
Updated March 26, 2015
Small private schools often feel that they cannot afford to market their schools. Facebook is free. Here is how to use it effectively.
What are the attributes which make 21st century military schools so special? We find out in this article.
Getting into a private school is a time-consuming process. We look at the various deadlines involved.


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Michael Hutchinson, Nick Bull and Sophie Hurcom talk over the big points of Tour de France stage five as Chris Froome crashes out
Tour de France
Richie Porte facing first day as Team Sky's Tour de France leader
Tasmanian Richie Porte says he will "take this chance to prove that I can be up there" after Chris Froome crashes out of Tour de France
Tour de France stage five analysis: Boom! Boom shakes the Froome
This was bike racing of old: gritty and lacking in calculated control, says Ed Pickering
Chris Froome's exit from the Tour de France "devastating"
Team Sky boss speaks after defending champion Chris Froome crashes out of stage five and abandons the race
Vincenzo Nibali's great day on the Tour de France cobbles
Tour de France race leader Vincenzo Nibali strengthened position at top of general classification after a tough day
Lars Boom wins Tour de France cobbles stage
Chris Froome crashes out as Vincenzo Nibali places third to distance overall rivals and increase race lead
Tour de France 2014 stage five gallery
Graham Watson's images from stage five of the 2014 Tour de France, won by Lars Boom
Chris Froome abandons Tour de France
Chris Froome (Sky) abandoned the Tour de France today after crashing twice in the wet cobble stage to Arenberg. The defending champion fell the second time with 67.7 kilometres to…
Tour de France 2014: Stage five live coverage
Live and interactive text commentary on Wednesday July 9 starting from 2pm for Tour de France stage 5
Yorkshire's Tour of beauty
God's own county hosts a Tour de France Grand Départ to remember


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Selected Community Events for Benefits
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http://www.witn.com/community/events/296887251.html | 296887251
Featured Event
Easter Festival to benefit the Crystal Coast Autism Center
Date(s): 4/4/2015
Garner Farms, HWY 70 W, Newport
The Plant Stand & Garner Farms presents the First Annual Easter Festival to benefit the Crystal Coast Autism Center. April is Autism Awareness month, so come out & help us raise funds for this great cause!
The event will feature a visit from the Easter Bunny along with an Easter egg hunt, hay rides, bounce house, food & more!
The event is free to the public, however we will have suggested donation amounts for all events. All donations go directly to the Crystal Coast Autism Center.
Katie Smalley - 252.241.1184
http://www.witn.com/community/events/290703221.html | 290703221
Featured Event
Run the Bridge 10K 5K One Mile Fun Run to benefit the Semper Fi Fund
Date(s): 4/11/2015
New Bridge Middle School, Jacksonville, NC
A road race to benefit the Semper Fi Fund. Hand-cycle, Wheelchair, and runner/walker divisions
Christine Ingraham
http://www.witn.com/community/events/268925001.html | 268925001
Featured Event
Indoor Yard Sale at Westside Church
Date(s): 8/2/2014
7am to noon
1205 Lynn Drive in Kinston (Off of Roseanne Dr., behind Bill Fay Park)
Join Westside FWB Church for an indoor yard sale Saturday, August 2nd from 7am to noon, rain or shine! Stop by to see what hidden treasures you may find!
There will be children's clothes and toys, books, movies, electronics, plants, sports items, skin care products, furniture, home decorations, holiday decorations, pet toys, and much more!
OR, take the opportunity to make room for new things in your home, and sell some of your items with us! Rent a 12x12 space with table and chairs for only $10. Contact Sandy Tilghman at (252) 522-5729 to reserve your space today.
Spread the word! Hope to see you there!
Follow Westside FWB Church on Facebook for event updates!
http://www.witn.com/community/events/296624381.html | 296624381
Paddle, Pedal, and Plod
Date(s): 5/16/2015
Edenton, NC
This is the second annual Edenton Optimist Sprint Triathlon. This race benefits the Devine Intervention Cancer Fund. One hundred percent of the proceeds benefit the patients and families of cancer victims. This race is unique in the that it is a Kayak, Bike and Run event. The first leg begins at the Edenton Harbour entrance next to the historic Roanoke River Light House. The shotgun start is at 8:30 am. The first leg leaves the break water and proceeds across Edenton harbor where an historic Civil War battle was fought. Coast Guard and Sherriffs rescue response teams as well as a pace boat will ensure a safe passage. The distance is 2 K and finishes at the Pembroke Marina where you transition to your bikes. There will be monitors (7am to Noon) on site to care for your bikes and kayaks. The bike ride will be around 21 k mostly on flat terrain through beautiful farm country, leading into historic downtown Edenton. The course will be marked and maps are available. The end of the bike portion will be at Queen Annes Park(211 E. Water St) The run portion (5 K) will leave Queen Annes Park and will cross over the creek and procede through Historic Hayes Plantation and return the same way to the finish line at Queen Annes Park. Helmets are required for the bike portion and approved floatation device for the kayak portion.
Registration on line or email email@example.com. Pre registration and check in May 15th at Watermans Restaurant on Broad street. Registration the Day of the event will be at the light house.
This race will be a hand timed, best overall time, individual legs will not be timed. There will be live music!!!
Ashley Kent, 843-758-0933
http://www.witn.com/community/events/252506671.html | 252506671
Helping Hands Boutique Yard Sale
Date(s): 4/5/2014
2715 Hwy 70 E James City,NC
Yard sale to benefit the Coastal Women's Shelter
Helping Hands Boutique
http://www.witn.com/community/events/246585201.html | 246585201
Swansboro Rotary Oyster Roast
Date(s): 3/15/2014
5-8 p.m.
Rotary Civic Center in Swansboro
Swansboro Rotary Club's 35th annual Oyster Roast and Pig-Out will be March 15, 5-8 p.m.
Tickets purchased in advance are $45. They allow entry to one of the club's most popular fundraisers, an all-you-can-eat extravaganza that takes place indoors at the Rotary Civic Center in Swansboro.
Machine Gun, a popular and well-known variety band from Wilmington, will provide musical entertainment.
Diners are reminded to bring an oyster knife and a glove. In addition to oysters, the menu includes roasted pig, fried fish, clam chowder, hot dogs with chili, cole slaw, hush puppies, condiments and a variety of beverages.
The civic center, which is on West Main Street Extension off NC 24 behind Family Care Pharmacy, provides a spacious indoor area for diners. It will be equipped with several large screen televisions tuned to the NCAA basketball tournament.
Tickets purchased at the door will cost $50. Tickets for children 15 and younger are $20, available only at the door.
Proceeds from the event are used to benefit youth scholarships and projects in Onslow and Carteret counties.
Tickets can be purchased from any member of the Swansboro Rotary Club or at the Civic Center. Tickets can also be purchased at Darden Insurance and Century 21 Waterway Realty in Swansboro and at Eastern Mortgage in Emerald Isle.
For more information, call (910) 326-6175.
http://www.witn.com/community/events/246382601.html | 246382601
Great Glow Run benefitting Easter Seals UCP
Date(s): 5/3/2014
8:00 p.m.
Town Commons
The Easter Seals UCP Great Glow Run will light up Greenville in support of individuals and families managing disabilities and mental health challenges. The illuminated 5K evening race will be held Saturday, May 3, 2014 at Town Common. Check-in begins at 6:00 p.m. and the race starts at 8:00 p.m. Participants will don glow and LED gear as they join other enthused runners on an eye-catching, glimmering course.
Register by April 18 at GreatGlowRun.com for just $35. Unless sold out, day of event registration is $50. Active duty military are eligible for a special $25 registration; team discounts also available. Entry fee includes bib, timing chip, race t-shirt, bib, glow decoration and entrance to the post-race Afterglow party.
Patrick Curran (919) 783-8898 x8907
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Colin Faulkner
Colin Faulkner joined the Scotland Office in April 2012 as Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State.
He joined the then Scottish Executive in 2002, working in a wide range of policy areas including European fisheries negotiations, Crown Estate policy, mental health legislation and Ministerial Private Office.
In 2010, he joined the Economic and Domestic Secretariat of the Cabinet Office, where he focussed on devolution policy.


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Hey, Democrats – nominate faster
The August convention should be moved up to June.
The Democratic Party should bring the presidential nomination battle to a conclusion as soon as possible. The fairest, most decisive way to do that is to move its convention from the end of August to the end of June.
Why? Although Sen. Barack Obama won impressively in North Carolina and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton just managed to hang on in Indiana, the back and forth between them could last through the final primary on June 3. Unless Senator Obama reaches the 2,025 delegates needed to win outright, the bitter campaign just might continue into the summer, with deleterious results for the eventual nominee. It is far better for the party to end with finality the potential for mischief and dirty tricks in this nominating contest, from both within and outside the party.
Arithmetic is against her, but Senator Clinton so far shows no inclination to bow out. As she said when claiming victory in Indiana Tuesday night, "it's full speed on to the White House." While that may be hyperbole, there is a plausible rationale for her to soldier on. She has strong grass-roots support, isn't that far behind in delegates, and can still try to lay moral and procedural claim to those unseated delegates in Michigan and Florida.
Moving the convention to June 28-July 1 allows each candidate to compete in remaining primaries yet avoids self-destructively extending the battle. It also allows the Democrats to end with a patriotic flourish, as the convention concludes just before July 4.
Instead, some are now urging uncommitted superdelegates to settle the matter. Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen has suggested that a conclave of superdelegates convene. However, the best way to heal wounds would be for the party as a whole to decide and force the losing candidate into an early call for unity. This would give the loser's supporters time to recuperate and be brought on board. And it would avoid the appearance that a cabal of party leaders illegitimately decided the issue through backroom deals.


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On November 10, 2014 the Financial Stability Board (FSB) issued a long-awaited Consultative Document "Adequacy of loss-absorbing capacity of global systemically important banks in resolution" that defined a global standard for minimum amounts of Total Loss Absorbing Capacity (TLAC) to be held by Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs). TLAC is meant to ensure that G-SIBs have the loss absorbing and recapitalization capacity so that, in and immediately following resolution, critical functions can continue without requiring taxpayer support or threatening financial stability.
The TLAC proposal is one of the final components of a long-standing reform effort laid out in 2010 by the FSB to limit the probability and impact of the failure of large global systemically important financial institutions, i.e., ending the too-big-to-fail (TBTF) phenomenon. At its core, TLAC bolsters capital and leverage ratios, thereby creating a greater capital cushion intended to further pre-empt any need for a taxpayer-funded bail-out.
At the global level, the G20 have agreed to a proposal that G-SIBs will have to fulfill in future regarding their capital structure. In particular, these banks will need to ensure a minimum amount of TLAC, which may be as high as 20 percent including the minimum capital requirements and the G-SIB buffer. This will make global banks more resilient, and it will allow for their orderly resolution.
TLAC will apply in addition to the capital requirements set out in the Basel III framework, including the countercyclical, G-SIB and other capital buffers. The measure appears challenging but manageable for most G-SIBs who will have until 2019 to meet the minimum Pillar 1 requirements.
As per the Consultative Document, the minimum TLAC requirement will be within the range of 16-20 percent of the group's risk-weighted assets (RWA) and at least twice the fully loaded Basel III leverage ratio requirement. This is considered the "Pillar 1" requirement according to the FSB. Regulatory authorities may set additional requirements above their so-called minima, also known as the "Pillar 2" component of TLAC.
The interest at this stage from traditional consumers of bank paper, such as pension funds and insurers, is lukewarm at best. While the securities, designed to be written down in a crisis, would offer higher yields than senior debt, the risk of bail-in may be more than some buyers can tolerate. That could leave the banks struggling to meet regulatory requirements.
Banks already issue dated subordinated debt with mandatory coupons that banks can count toward some existing loss-absorbency requirements. Those notes, which have an established investor base, potentially could also be used to meet TLAC. That would be expensive: average yields on Tier 2 debt are 1.53 percent, more than double the 0.70 percent yield on banks' senior bonds in euros, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data.
On February 2, 2015 the Institute of International Finance (IIF) and the Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA) jointly submitted a letter to FSB on the Consultative Document. In general, the industry supports the concept that the FSB has developed. Assuring that loss-absorbing capacity is available if a G-SIB needs to be resolved is something the industry agrees to be essential. Nevertheless, a reform of this magnitude naturally raises many practical issues that have to be considered during the implementation of the new TLAC concept. Thematically, the most important areas include:
- Historical evidence suggests that 16% of risk-weighted assets will be a sufficient level of TLAC to absorb potential losses for G-SIBs in the future.
- The current drafting of TLAC subordination requirements raises important implementation difficulties, both for groups funded via holding company structures and for groups funded at the operating parent company or bank level.
- The disposition of Internal TLAC will involve a delicate balancing of home and host regulatory interests, ideally aligning these interests to support cross-border cooperation.
- Upon implementation, it's estimated that the new framework would govern about US$4 trillion in TLAC-eligible securities. For issuance at this scale to be effective, it will need to be supported by broad, deep, liquid and diverse markets.
Last month a slew of European banks issued 10-year bullet maturity Basel III-compliant, tier-2 (B3T2) subordinated bond deals, as they sought to grow a new market for these lower cost TLAC-eligible instruments. Deutsche Bank attracted a €4.4 billion order book for its €1.25 billion deal priced at 210 basis points over mid-swaps. BNP Paribas drew €5.5 billion of demand for its €1.5 billion offering at 170 basis points over, while Société Générale took €3.8 billion of orders for a €1.25 billion transaction at 190 basis points over.


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Date: date unknown
Description: Colorized postcard of a combat drill. The scene includes soldiers, horses, wagons, cannons, tents, buildings and trees. Text above reads, "'Preparing for A...
Date: 1928
Description: George Fortune of River Falls sitting in his new car, with his dog in the back seat.
Date: 1964-08-22 ca.
Description: A close view of Jack Myers' log cabin on Washington Island. The cabin is surrounded by thick woods.
Date: 1921
Description: A view of the central business district. A creamery on the left. A house on the right with a woman in a rocking chair and two children in front. Some men s...
Description: Overnight camping for automobile travelers.
Date: 1964-08-23 ca.
Description: Lloyd Lehman stands in the open doorway of his small cabin on Washington Island. This cabin is one of a number of former summer camp buildings.
Date: 1939 ca.
Description: View down row of back of houses. The backyards have gardens, and on the far left is a row of trees.
Date: 1927
Description: View down slop of hill towards the side of the Ravenswood Hotel among the pines. There is a porch and balcony along the side and front of the hotel, and ha...
Date: 1924-07-26
Description: Ferdinand L. (Fedy) Hotz steers the powerboat "Oweene" with 6 women passengers. His mother, Clothilde, sits closest to him. Door Bluff is in the backgroun...
Date: 1959
Description: Illustration of children disembarking an International Metro school bus with a suburban house in the background.
Date: 1911
Description: View across dirt road of the asylum and grounds. A large three-story building is spread out over several acres. Stairs are leading up to entrances on the s...
Date: 1933
Description: Willard Nuss, holding a small dog on a chain leash, poses near Peace Evangelical and Reformed Church in Potter. He was the "leader of the highest class in...
Description: A colorized postcard of soldiers in uniform arriving at camp, marching in a column. They have bedrolls and weapons over their shoulders. Trees and tents ar...
Description: A woman demonstrates the use of a homemade bee catcher on a tree in her yard.
Description: Texaco station, with an automobile parked next to the a stone building which has two pumps, at Restwood Cabins. Cabins surround the station, and there is a...
Description: View of the Wisconsin River, seen through trees over a low stone wall, from the grounds of the Ravenswood Hotel. There are benches along the stone-lined wa...
Date: 1931-05-15
Description: Composite of two negatives of Breese Stevens Athletic Field with lights on tall poles. On the left, view is of the Simon Brothers Wholesale Grocery Warehou...
Date: 1895-09-05
Description: View across road of the log buildings and farm home of August Krueger. Two women and three men stand near the fence along the road. One of the men holds a...
Date: ca.
Description: Mrs. Sterling, an instructor in German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, rides horseback in a neighborhood. In the background are several residences,...
Date: 1923
Description: The hotel is set in a grove of trees against a backdrop of rolling hills. There are two chimneys and a belvedere. There is a barn behind with a supply of f...
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Our new devotional "If God Loves Me, Why Did I Lose My Job?" explores the struggle of unemployment. Sign up here.
16:23 Paul may have been residing with Gaius at the time of writing. He is presumably to be identified with the Gaius of 1 Cor. 1:14, and may be the (Gaius?) Titius Justus of Acts 18:7. An Erastus is mentioned in Acts 19:22 and 2 Tim. 4:20. We do not know whether this is the same man. Of greater interest is that a Christian held such a responsible post in the local government of Corinth. Of Quartus nothing is known.


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Maurkice Pouncey not ruled out yet
FORT WORTH, Texas -- Maurkice Pouncey still has a shot at playing in the Super Bowl.
Steelers coach Mike Tomlin would not rule out his Pro Bowl rookie center Monday, despite Pouncey having a high left ankle sprain. Pouncey needed crutches to walk down the steps from the team's charter flight in Dallas, and wore a bulky walking boot on his left foot.
Super Bowl XLV
Get all the news and commentary on the Steelers-Packers matchup at ESPN.com's Super Bowl Central.
• Clayton: Super Bowl questions
• Blog: Road to the Super Bowl
• Playoffs schedule | New OT rules
• More: ESPNDallas.com
• Blog network: AFC North | NFC North
"We've been very aggressive in terms of treating it," Tomlin said. "We've even been putting it in hard casts and so forth. Just trying to do everything in our power to give him the best opportunity to participate. I don't know what his chances are at this point."
A league source has told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter that Pouncey will not play against the Green Bay Packers.
Pouncey injured his ankle in Pittsburgh's 24-19 victory over the New York Jets in the AFC championship last Sunday. He did not practice at all last week, and Tomlin said Pouncey is "not on a running clock" until Wednesday -- the team's first practice before the Super Bowl.
"We will remain hopeful," Tomlin said.
According to media reports, Pouncey also has a broken bone in the ankle -- a report Tomlin would neither confirm nor deny.
"I'm sure it could be characterized as that," Tomlin said vaguely. "I'm sure I've got something floating around in my ankle. The issue that's keeping him from participating is the high ankle sprain."
Backup Doug Legursky, who lost out to Pouncey for the job in training camp, would fill in if necessary. Legursky is a former undrafted free agent from Marshall who was on the Steelers' practice squad during their last Super Bowl win two years ago.
"I don't think it's going to affect us at all personally because we have a lot of guys on this team, let alone the offensive line, that can come up and step up if one of the starters come down," offensive tackle Flozell Adams said. "So I have no shadow of a doubt that Doug will do just as good a job -- if not better than Pouncey -- being in there for this Super Bowl. And I mean that."
Legursky came in for Pouncey after the first-round pick out of Florida went down early in the game against the Jets, and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger fumbled an exchange that resulted in a safety. Still, Tomlin echoed Adams' confidence in Legursky, who started four games at right guard earlier this season when starter Trai Essex went down with an injury.
"We're comfortable if we have to go in that direction," Tomlin said.
Information from ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter and The Associated Press was used in this report.
Super Bowl Central | Super Bowl blog
- Schedule | Cowboys Stadium info
- Results: Super Bowl | AFC | NFC
- History: Game | Packers | Steelers
- Super Bowl info | Playoff OT rules
- ESPN Passport | About Passport
- Wojciechowski: And the answer is
- Picks: Packers are the big favorites
- Celebs: Maya Angelou to Yogi Berra
- Sunday Countdown | NFL experts
- Madden simulation | AccuScore
- Mike & Mike: Lead Pipe Locks
- Millman: Steelers have rings and more
- Wojciechowski: G.B. has history on its side
- MacMahon: Cowboys capture our fascination
- Vote: What team is "America's Team"?
- Seven include Sharpe, Dent
- Sando: Inside the voting process
- ESPN Dallas: Deion Sanders Gallery
- Blog: Analysis of voting, inductees, more
- Walker: Are the Steelers a dynasty?
- Merrill: The elusive Mike Tomlin
- Archer: Flozell Adams left false impression
- Walker: Is Roethlisberger Hall worthy?
- Wilbon: Big Ben's synchronicity
- Clayton: Steelers defense aging well
- Clayton: Miller is Steelers' secret weapon
- Walker: Woodley's historic streak
- Fleming: Top moments covering Steelers
- Walker: Steelers' O-line staying the course
- Joyner: The Steelers' biggest weakness
- Fleming: Skeletons in Steelers' closet
- Seifert: Coaxing leadership out of Packers
- Seifert: LeBeau, Capers low-tech geniuses
- Woj.: Time for Favre, Pack to heal wounds
- Joyner: Can Bulaga stop Woodley?
- Reilly: Packers need this one
- Merrill: Rodgers knows how to unwind
- Outsiders: Nelson could be big
- Hruby: Packers are model for sports
- Seifert: Packers love playing indoors
- Drehs: What motivates Donald Driver
- Chadiha: Woodson relishes SB chance
- Seifert: The value of the Starks Express
- Outsiders: Analyzing Packers' losses
- Kreidler: How Rodgers won waiting game
- Seifert: GB's Raji dancing way to stardom
- Chadiha: Rodgers leaves questions in dust
- Garber: Nothing quite like the first time
- Merrill: Athletes, Twitter rocky marriage
- Clayton: Five insights from Goodell's speech
- Reilly: The dumbest things said
- Kiper: What SB teams need in draft
- Millman: Analyzing the line
- Sunday Countdown: Picks, analysis, more
- Schefter's 10 Spot: Trade aided Packers
- Fleming: Favorite Super Bowl moments
- Clayton's 1st and Goal: Clues from 2009
- Mosley: 'Cowboy Way' has become a failure
- Outsiders: How Packers can win
- Wojciechowski: Predictions in review
- Bryant: Legacy franchises tribute to parity
- Thompson: Vince Lombardi slept here
- Clayton mailbag: More playoff teams?
- Outsiders: The hidden key to SB XLV
- TMQ: Why the mystery helmet, Packers?
- Wojciechowski: No SB? Say it ain't so
- Payne: Classics scholar on SB meaning
- Tucker: Great position coaches super assets
- Lukas: Football factory overtime
- Player X: Problem with 'paycheck players'
- ESPN Texas: Road to Super Bowl blog
- Four key matchups
- Film Notes: The passing game
- Tale Of Tape: Coaches
- Film notes: Beware the blitz
- Tale Of Tape: Linebackers
- Steelers' Miller among X factors
- Film notes: These QBs can move
- Tale Of Tape: Wide receivers
- Tale Of Tape: Nose tackles
- Film notes: Offensive philosophies
- Film notes: 3-4 defense differences
- Tale of the Tape: Quarterbacks
- Super Bowl XLV preview
- Ranking the rosters 1-48 | 49-106
- ESPN TV: Wingo | Mort | Schefter | NFL
- AFC bloggers: East | South | North | West
- NFC bloggers: East | South | North | West
- Sando: Free-agency grades for all 32 teams
- Kiper: Perfect prospect-team draft fits
- Williamson: Top 10 impact signings, trades
- McShay: Winston's edge over Mariota | Top 10s
- Muench: Top draft targets for the 49ers


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Well, it seems we are close to exhausting our backlog of poetry. With that in mind, I'd like to announce we are going to reopen for submissions of poems on April 1, 2015. Please Like our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter for any updates/reminders.
We're not quite ready to reopen for fiction just yet, but I envision doing so this year, likely during the summer months. Please check back here, the Facebook page, or Twitter for further updates.


text:
Six Nations 2015: Slammin' Sam Burgess faces battle to break code
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No more than the viewers, down under and up above, Miles Harrison could hardly breathe, the tension of it all very nearly rendering Stuart Barnes inau(...)
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The meeting of Leinster and Wasps this evening has the feel of two struggling squads more interested in their domestic competitions. Victory wi(...)