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DEFINITION of 'Grant-In-Aid'
A transfer of money from the federal government to a state government, local government or individual person for the purposes of funding a specific project or program. The federal government gets this money from income tax revenues. Grant money is not a loan, and does not have to be repaid, but it does have to be spent according to the federal government's guidelines for that particular grant.
BREAKING DOWN 'Grant-In-Aid'
Grant-in-aid can be awarded to a university faculty member to pursue a particular line of research, but there will be restrictions, which will vary by grant, on how the money can be used. For example, a permitted use of the funds might be to pay undergraduate students to assist with the research; a non-permitted use might be the payment of university utility bills.
The recipient will also have to meet certain requirements to qualify for the aid. An individual recipient might be required to meet certain citizenship and/or residency requirements, for example.


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Ram Dass & Jack Kornfield Dharma Talk from the Love and Power Retreat
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In this deeply soulful talk, Ram Dass begins by reflecting upon his stroke as one of pure grace, and relates that profound shift toward inward tuning to his first mushroom trip. We hear of Ram Dass' experience regarding the administration of LSD to Maharaji. He and Jack touch on the sweet and essential nature of relating to our mothers and performing social action, and Jack recants a story of reaching sustained samadhi in the presence of Anandamayi Ma and Dipa Ma. Ram Dass concludes with a story that serves to close the gap between the audience and Maharaji, as all are ultimately souls unbound by time, space, and gender alike.
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With a Globe Focus signature series on hacking the brain leading the way, here are the most popular science stories of 2013.
Report Typo/Error
How poverty influences a child's brain development
Only 3 to 4 per cent of Canadian children are born with inherited differences that will limit their physical, emotional or intellectual growth, yet an average of 25 to 30 per cent exhibit some level of developmental vulnerability that could include a cognitive "deficit."
In some communities, the figure may reach 70 per cent, and by adolescence, the resulting deficits can translate into a range of mental-health issues, substance abuse and diminished opportunities for education and employment.
The Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences issued a report in November that surveys the new research on how socio-economic factors can affect someone's biological makeup – and warning of "dire consequences for the individual and society" if nothing is done. The report concludes by calling for a broad strategy of investment in early childhood.
High hopes: Why science is seeking a pardon for psychedelics
Forty-five years after LSD became the first of them to be prohibited, the psychedelics and their chemical cousins are making a comeback, launching what is being called a revolution in treating, and perhaps curing, some of the most refractory disorders of the human brain.
Are hallucinogenic drugs really of no value to medicine? In 2013 North America is awash in powerful pharmaceuticals that are perfectly legal, yet addictive and widely abused, some mental-health professionals are making a case for reviving banned mind-altering substances, arguing that they can enable insight, empathy and long-term recovery from trauma.
In New Zealand, the hallucinogenic African shrub iboga has been reclassified as a promising treatment for opiate addiction, and in England, a tidal wave of research, much of it using up-to-the-minute brain-scanning techniques, is showing how once-reviled street drugs can be used to treat everything from obsessive-compulsive disorder to chain smoking.
No honey, more problems: A 'catastrophic' year for bee colonies
Freezing temperatures, killer parasites, toxic chemicals: The plight of honey bees is getting worse in many parts of the world and no one seems to know precisely why.
This past winter was one of the worst on record for bees. In the U.S., beekeepers lost 31 per cent of their colonies, compared to a loss of 21 per cent the previous winter. In Canada, the Canadian Honey Council reports an annual loss of 35 per cent of honey bee colonies in the last three years. In Britain, the Bee Farmers' Association says its members lost roughly half their colonies over the winter.
"It has been absolutely catastrophic," said Margaret Ginman, who is general secretary of the Bee Farmers' Association. "This has been one of the worst years in living memory."
I wake up from a dream, but my body is paralyzed
I don't dare sleep on my back any more. In that position, I often wake up from dreams only halfway – that is, my mind wakes up, but my body remains immobile. I can still think, still sense sunlight trickling through the curtains, still hear passersby on the street below. But when I try to move, nothing happens. I can't even twiddle a toe or flex a nostril. It's what being reincarnated as a statue would feel like. It's the opposite of sleepwalking: It's sleep paralysis.
As bad as that sounds, many sleep paralytics have it worse. My episodes last a few minutes at most, but some people's drag on for hours. And while I can be shaken awake, some people can't. One poor woman in England has been declared dead three times, and once woke up in a morgue. Other people have out-of-body experiences, and the unluckiest ones of all feel an evil "presence" – a witch, demon, alien, or other monster – pressing down on their bodies, smothering them.
Sleep paralysis doesn't actually open a portal into the supernatural, of course. And it doesn't offer proof of dualism, either: The mind cannot function outside the body, independent of it. To the contrary, sleep paralysis is a natural byproduct of how our brains work.
Science world abuzz as virologist turns down Gairdner award
When the latest winners of Canada's most prestigious international science prize were named in Toronto, one question was buzzing in the background: Why would someone turn it down?
Michael Houghton, who holds a $10-million Canada Excellence Research Chair in virology at the University of Alberta, had apparently surprised the Gairdner Foundation by being the first person to decline the prize in its 54-year history.
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Re-creating the brain with a $1.6-billion supercomputer project


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Letter Size - 3" Slant Ring - 600 Sheet Capacity - Blue - View Complete Details
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Avery Durable Reference 3" 3-Ring Binder - Durable binder makes organizing your projects or reports quick and easy. EZD rings hold more paper than same-size round rings, and pages turn smoothly across rings. Back-mounted metal rings help pages lie flat. Two boosters on the rings allow even open and closing. 3 ring capacity accommodates approximately 600 sheets. You can also organize and secure loose and unpunched pages in the four interior pockets. Each pocket holds up to 20 sheets. Durable construction is ideal for frequent reference. Binder also features exposed rivets on the back and a sturdy chipboard core."
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Comments about Avery Durable Reference 3"" 3-Ring Binder:
I have been using Avery binders for years but now have difficulty finding them in Burgundy/Maroon. The #27252 binders are the only ones I can find in Burgundy in the desired size of 1". However the last 2 orders I have placed, the cover plastic is not smooth, it is textured. The Avery labels I normally use (#5161 & #6878) will not stick! I place them on the binders only to come back later and find that the labels have curled up and fallen off!
I like to use Avery products because of the quality, but I can't be continuously re-attaching the labels. It defeats the purpose of labels.
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Comments about Avery Durable Reference 3"" 3-Ring Binder:
I like the color and size originally. What I did not like was that it did not last a full semester. Had this less than 3 months and one side of arm just flopped over. Not broke per say but like it fell off whatever was holding it in place. The binder was not abused, it was not even near sheet capacity when this happened. So disappointed in this product.
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I use these to organize my recipes that I have printed. They work GREAT!
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Bay City Cub Scouts mix fun with learning
BAY CITY, Wis. -- Keeping a group of first-through-fifth graders entertained while educating them is a challenge being met by leaders of Cub Scout Pack 3 in Bay City.
The nine boys in the pack do a lot more than just get together for meetings on the third Monday of each month at Prairie View Elementary School, according to Committee Chair Kathy Huppert. Their activities are supported by their sponsor, Legion Post 357 of Bay City, which helps with charter fees, among other efforts, Huppert said Tuesday.
"We have fun and learn at the same time," she said, noting the group is always looking for more members. Interested area residents can contact Cubmaster Robert Falkner at 594-3897 or Huppert at 594-3020 for more information.
A wide range of events is attended by the boys plus the leaders and their families during the year, she said. They're planned with the Cubs' required books of accomplishments in mind. Some can count toward completing those books.
On Jan. 19, the pack went to a live performance of a Monster Truck Show at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, Huppert said. At a Blue and Gold Banquet, they ate pizza and applauded their fellow Webeloes, who advanced to Boy Scouts. Seven visitors representing the Ellsworth Boy Scout Troop welcomed the newcomers, putting on their bandanas.
A Pinewood Derby was conducted Jan. 28 at Prairie View Elementary School, she said, featuring a pot luck dinner and small wooden cars built by the Cubs and their parents, raced on a track owned by the pack. A district version is coming up in Prescott on Monday, April 28, when pack members are expected to participate.
Read more in the print version of the Pierce County Herald Feb. 27.


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Three Internet Cafes raided in Fremont
Sun, 08 Jan 2012 20:54:53 GMT —
The Fremont Police Department executed search warrants on three Internet Cafes suspected of illegal gambling. Police raided the Lot$ of Fun(1221 Oak Harbor Rd.), Lucky Dog(1800 West State St.) and Player's Club(121 S. Fifth St.) establishments on Saturday evening seizing computers and desks from each location. The execution of the search warrants came at the conclusion of a five week investigation. Confidential informants were sent in to all three locations and received cash payouts for winning games on each of the three establishment's computers during the five week investigation.
The search warrants were coordinated between the Fremont Police Department, the Ohio Investigative Unit and the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
This investigation is similar to previous investigations in which search warrants were executed on local businesses selling counterfeit clothing and counterfeit DVD's.
The search warrants executed on the Internet Cafes on Saturday involved those establishment's non-compliance with Ohio's gambling laws.


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Would you sacrifice your life so that others may live free? Would you give up everything to ensure the safety of others?
During World War II, the ten Boom family answered yes to these questions, secretly sheltering Jewish refugees in their small home in Holland until they were discovered and arrested. "The Hiding Place," presented by One Way Productions, shares the dramatic, yet uplifting, story of Corrie and her sister Betsie ten Boom, who endure life in a concentration camp but don't let that horror squash their spirit.
"Joy runs deeper than despair," said Director Ingrid Laurentiis-Wilson, quoting a character in the play. The John McGrath Theatre Arts Scholarship recipient and SARTA Elly Award winning playwright wrote the play, with permission, based on the book "The Hiding Place," written by Corrie ten Boom with John and Elizabeth Sherrill.
"There is so much in the script that teaches us to look up and not worry so much about what's happening to me, but how to make the most out of what's given to me," Laurentiis-Wilson explained. "Corrie and Betsie ten Boom do not appear to ask why this happens to them. Instead they focus on what could be achieved in the midst of the evil they experience."
Good does triumph over evil in "The Hiding Place" and also teaches everyone that they shouldn't stand aside and let evil happen. Laurentiis-Wilson said she hopes people use this play as a base to talk with their children about the Holocaust. The play is not graphic in any way but does address the atrocities. It's recommended for children 11 and older.
Though a heavy subject to handle, Laurentiis-Wilson said the audience should feel uplifted and empowered after watching "The Hiding Place." "I'm encouraging them to stand up for what's right," she explained.
"It was hard; it was awful but (Corrie and Betsie) survived and became bright lights," Laurentiis-Wilson continued. "Once Corrie ten Boom is released from the concentration camp, she opens up a rehabilitation home to hundreds of Holocaust survivors. She even expands her rehabilation work to include the people in Germany."
Thousands travel each year to Corrie's home in the Netherlands, touring the Ten Boom Museum and seeing the famous, hidden room built behind a false wall.
"The Hiding Place" comes to Three Stages at Folsom Lake College at 7 p.m. Friday, May 31, and Saturday, June 1, in the City Studio Theater. The Sunday show is already sold out, according to Three Stages' website. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased by calling (916) 608-6888, stopping by the Three Stages ticket office at 10 College Parkway in Folsom from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and two hours before each scheduled event or by visiting threestages.net.
At Three Stages, One Way Productions will honor 87-year-old Holocaust survivor Renee Tully.
The play will also be performed the weekend of June 13 at the Veterans Memorial Theatre in Davis. To purchase tickets for this venue visit 1wayproductions.org.
Young Betsie (Stephani Balmet); Karel, Fred Koornstra, Gestapo agent, Nazi and doctor (John Beach); Young Nollie (Rebecca Cataldo); Peter (Gabe Cox); Mrs. Hein (Hayley Cox); Mr. Smit/radio clerk (Michael Cox); Otto, Pickwick, prisoner/foreman and Nazi (Dyson Hanson); Bestie (Krista Mackin); Young Willem (Connor Means); Katrien/woman in black (Danielle Means); Prime Minister and radio announcer, Meyer Mossel and Lt. Rahms (Bob Nathan); Miss Smit #2/factory prisoner (Rikki Pratt); Catharina (Calista Roberts); Father (Jim Shuler); Mother (Jodie Stevens); Miss Smit #1/ factory prisoner (Audra Tucker); Corrie (Talia Vlaovich); Nollie (Claire Wheeler); Kik (Caleb Wilson) and Young Corrie (Corrie Wilson).


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With a mighty collection of home wins, road wins, comeback wins and blowout wins, the London Knights have proved much with their victory variety this season. But the one question all those wins has yet to sort out is the same that has dogged Canada's top-rated junior hockey team for the better part of two years.
Who's the go-to goalie?
Is it Adam Dennis, whom the Knights made a deadline-beating trade with Guelph to get in January?
Or is it mainstay Gerald Coleman, who has had to battle for his fair share of crease time ever since he showed up from the mean streets of urban Illinois?
Most in hockey will tell you that playing musical chairs with your goalies rarely leads to championships.
That's a big reason why the Knights are taking a day-to-day approach on goaltending and won't commit to constantly alternating Dennis and Coleman the rest of the way.
"I don't know what we'll do yet," head coach Dale Hunter said yesterday. "We just have to wait and see how it goes. It can change at any time.
"Most goalies you see play better when they're at home but we've been pleased with both of our guys so far."
The Knights alternated goaltenders during their first-round, four-game sweep of Guelph, which meant Dennis didn't get a chance to play in his old stomping grounds and Coleman didn't get to play a game in front of the green-clad fans at the friendly confines of the John Labatt Centre.
"I started the season playing four straight road games when I was alternating with Ryan (ex-Knight goalie Ryan MacDonald)," said Coleman, who turns 20 tomorrow.
"I don't mind playing on the road. In a way, there's less pressure. You don't feel everyone critiquing the way you play. A lot of the people, when you're on the road, listen to the radio so they don't always see the games."
He smiled at that last thought, thinking back to his behind-the-net puck-handling gaffe that led to a Guelph goal in Game 4.
Coleman has been solid during the bus trips this season and nearly ended the regular season undefeated away from the JLC.
"I didn't have a road loss until the last game of the season (a 4-2 defeat in Sault Ste. Marie)," he said, "so I'm comfortable there."
The Knights didn't dress many of their regular players for that final tilt so you can make the case it didn't hold a lot of weight.
Dennis, who would start Game 1 of the Knights' second-round series if the alternating system continues, said he isn't used to the back-and-forth system, but he's in favour of whatever keeps the Knights winning.
"Last year in Guelph, (Storm goalie Danny Taylor) played a first-round game, but then I pretty much went the rest of the way," said the 20-year-old, who led Guelph to the OHL title and Memorial Cup tournament. "We don't make those decisions. All I can do is play well when I get the chance and support Gerald when he's in there. For me, I don't care if we play Erie, Kitchener or Windsor if they make a big comeback. Home or road, it doesn't matter, but it's always nice to have people cheering you."
Both goalies are eager to get back into game action, although they realize that won't happen until Wednesday night (the OHL-approved starting date for second-round series) or possibly Friday because of JLC bookings.
If the Kitchener-Erie first-round series goes to a Game 7 on Monday, the Knights will likely opt to drop the puck on Wednesday to give their opponent little recovery time.
"As long as the other teams keep beating each other up while we're practising and staying healthy, we're all for that," Dennis said.
The battle in the Knights crease, however, still shows no signs of being resolved.
Tickets to the Western Conference final and OHL championship series go on sale Monday at 10 a.m. Tickets will be available at the Knights box office at the John Labatt Centre, the London Knights souvenir store on Talbot St., by calling 681-0800, through Ticketmaster outlets or online at www.ticketmaster.ca.
Prices: Third round $19 (adult), $17.50 (student/senior), $16.50 (kids); fourth round $22 (adult), $20.50 (student/senior), $19.50 (kids).


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Judges vote initially for the car of their choice in six different categories. The Jaguar F-PACE won the SUV/Crossover category from six other contenders. Judges then voted again from the list of six category winners in Women's World Car of the Year to choose the Supreme Winner.
"We are delighted that the F-PACE has been voted not only Best SUV/ Crossover but also Supreme Winner in the 2016 Women's Car of the Year awards," said Fiona Pargeter, Head of Global PR Communications at Jaguar Land Rover.
"This prestigious title is a true highlight in the continuing F-PACE success story. The combination of beautiful design, everyday usability and unrivalled driving experience set the F-PACE apart from the competition, and is attracting new customers to the Jaguar brand worldwide."
The Jaguar F-PACE was the first model to be built by Jaguar in the compact luxury crossover SUV class. It was formally announced at the 2015 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
Managing Director of Women's World Car of the Year, Sandy Myhre, said winning a category is not easy, let alone winning the Supreme Award.
"From the early lists the judges send in there were some strong contenders in one or two categories but mostly only a few percentage points separate the top three cars in each segment. Honda must be congratulated for winning two categories – the Family Car Award for the Honda Civic and the Budget Car Award for the Honda Jazz."
The voting process is rigorous. Judges submit their personal short list and this year 294 cars were nominated by 17 judges from 14 countries. A master list is drawn from these choices and judges vote for their preference from the 32 cars in six categories that made the grade. Judges vote again from the list of six category winners to determine the Supreme Winner.
Women's World Car of the Year is the only car award in the world voted for entirely by women and voting is by secret ballot. The final votes are audited by international accountancy company, Grant Thornton, from their Auckland (New Zealand) office. The company has been associated with Women's World car since its inception seven years ago and Partner, Paul Kane, said it's a tight competition.
"Reaching a final decision for each category and choosing an overall winner is difficult. Voting was very close this year and could have swung either way for the Supreme Winner.
"The Performance category was particularly hard-fought between two Fords – the Mustang and the Focus RS – with only one vote separating them. The stand out was the Toyota Prius with the biggest margin in the Green Car category," he said.


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Pacific Southwest, Region 9: Superfund
Serving Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, the Pacific Islands, and Tribal Nations
Naval Air Station Moffett Field
Superfund Site
Technical Document
You will need Adobe Reader to view some of the files on this page. See EPA's PDF page to learn more.
|Title / pdf File
|Navy Response to EPA July 7, 2010 letter on Navy's protectiveness statement for Site 28 WATS Area in Final Five-Year Review Report
|Navy 5yr review response ltr - 072010.pdf


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Please remember to follow the manual of style and code of conduct at all times.
Check BNN and Bulbanews for up-to-date Pokémon news and discuss it on the forums or in the Bulbagarden Discord server.
| September 22, 1955 (as ITV)/
August 11, 2001 (as ITV1)
|Owned By
|ITV plc
ITV1 is a public service network station that broadcasts in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is currently owned by ITV, formerly Carlton Communications and Granada plc, and some of its branding is also used by Channel Television.
ITV is the only company that has broadcast the anime on UK terrestrial television.
Currently, episodes do not air on ITV1. However, sister channel CITV continues to show episodes, originally simulcast upon ITV4 until June 2010, when the GMTV2 block on ITV4 was removed.
GMTV is an early-morning programming block on ITV1. Episodes of Pokémon used to air every Saturday beginning at 8:50 and ending by 9:25. It was shown in this time slot from September 1999 until sometime after the Generation I games were released in the United Kingdom.
SM:TV Live
SM:TV Live was a live Saturday morning entertainment show that started at 9:25. It would replace the Who's That Pokémon? segment with small sketches that featured the hosts, Ant & Dec, having their own "PokéFight". Some later episodes featured the duo performing their own Kanto Pokérap.
Missing episodes of shows
ITV1 has, on more than one occasion, skipped episodes or canceled television shows mid-series. These are planned as the TV guides published over a week before date of transmission reflect this. This has happened to ReBoot and Cardcaptors before the Pokémon series aired, and Digimon following the cancellation of Pokémon. This is not limited to children's animation, with the initial run of Season 1 of Pushing Daisies being the most prominent example of a non-children's program.
Pokémon has been stopped twice; once during the Orange Islands saga and once just after Pokémon: Advanced started. Neither series has been seen on ITV1 since.
External links
- ITV1 on Wikipedia
- Official site


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WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 (UPI) -- A senior Democratic lawmaker said Sunday continuing to collect metadata was not the best way for the U.S. intelligence community to regain the public trust.
Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., a ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the National Security Agency needed to quickly adopt some meaningful reforms to their metadata programs, especially in light of a recent court ruling in Washington questioning the program's constitutionality.
"The arguments for the status quo fell apart [last] week in Washington," Udall said on ABC's "This Week."
"We have got to rebuild the American people's trust in our intelligence committee so we can meet the threats that are all over the world," said Udall. "But we don't do that by bulk data collection that violates the privacy of Americans, that's unconstitutional, and has shown to not be effective."
Udall said he was still studying 46 reforms recommended by a presidential panel studying the NSA in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks and predicted the issue would soon wind up in court. In the meantime, he said, it would be prudent to take steps to remedy parts of the metadata program that would likely be found to be unconstitutional.
Rep. Mike Roger, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said last week's court ruling was only one of several that have addressed the NSA surveillance program. "Sixteen federal judges, 36 different opinions all have had a different opinion that it is not [unconstitutional]," he said.
Rogers said the legal debate had shifted to whether the NSA should store the collected records or if the phone carriers should maintain custody of them and allow the NSA to have access to them.
Rogers maintained that phone records were legally defined as business records and not the personal property of the customers. "There have been hundreds of appellate decisions reaffirming the government's right to get business records in the course of terror investigations or in this case determining if a terrorist from overseas is calling into the United States," he said.


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Two sons of a famous playwright - both accomplished theater artists themselves - will play enemies from warring factions in Herbert Siguenza's "El Henry," the latest show in La Jolla Playhouse's "Without Walls" series.
The just-announced cast for the site-specific show, produced in association with San Diego Rep, includes Lakin Valdez as the title character and Kinan Valdez as El Bravo. Both are sons of Luis Valdez, the pioneering Latino playwright whose credits include "Zoot Suit" and the screenplay for the film "La Bamba."
Both actors are also writers and directors who came up through El Teatro Campesino, the farmworkers theater their father founded in tandem with Cesar Chavez's labor movement of the 1960s.
Culture Clash co-founder Siguenza, who wrote this fresh take on Shakespeare's "Henry IV, Part One," will play the role of the troublemaking Fausto - the corollary to Falstaff from the Bard original. El Henry is a variation of Shakespeare's title character, while El Bravo is Siguenza's answer to Hotspur, whom Henry eventually engages in battle.
Also cast in the show, which runs June 14-29 at SILO in the East Village neighborhood of Makers Quarter: Parnia Ayari as "Mayan/Smokie," Leandro Cano as "Sir Blunt," Roxanne Carrasco as "Chiqui/Mayor Villa Allegre," Victor Contreras as "Thomas/Police Chief," William Thomas Hodgson as "Johnny," Jyl Haruye Kaneshiro as "Lil Gus/Reporter", Salomon Maya as "Navarro/El Mago," Robert Milz as "Tixoc/Locos R Us/City Suit/Mexiclop," John Padilla as "El Hank," Dave Rivas as "Duke of Earl/Ojo," Jorge Rodgriguez as "Soto Boy/Mexiclop/Mr. V/Wizard" and Bianca Sanchez as "Preciosa/La Gata."
Rep artistic chief Sam Woodhouse is directing "El Henry."
"I am thrilled to be able to work with some of the very best Latino actors in California," Woodhouse said in a statement. "Herbert Siguenza will be a memorable Fausto, and what a treat to be able cast the brothers Lakin Valdez and Kinan Valdez as the rival warriors, who have a spectacular one-on-one battle at the climax of the story."
Playhouse artistic chief Christopher Ashley added: "Sam has assembled an astounding cast and creative team for El Henry, many of whom hail from San Diego – demonstrating the true community spirit of this latest Without Walls production. Partnering with the REP and Makers Quarter on this project has been extremely rewarding and we can't wait to see the show come to life at SILO in the East Village next month."
And here's the official plot wrap from the Playhouse: "It's the year 2045 in a huge, run-down metropolis called Aztlan City (formerly San Diego), where political apathy and corruption run the city while violent barrio families run the streets. It's a harsh new world where Hispanics, Mexicans and Chicanos rule as the majority in this new society abandoned by Anglo America.
"When El Hank, the ambitious leader of all the barrios, finds his street kingdom threatened by El Tomas and his hot-headed son El Bravo, he seeks the help of his brave and charismatic son El Henry. But El Hank finds his son wrapped up with a bunch of low-life thieves and drunkards headed by the lazy Fausto.
"Written in a unique poetic cadence called Calό, which mixes urban Spanish and English slang, this world-premiere adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part One explores the universal themes of this classic through the lens of Mexican-American machismo."
Tickets and information: (858) 550-1010 or online at LaJollaPlayhouse.org.


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Transitions are those small but oh-so-important words or phrases that help guide your reader across these story gaps smoothly and while still remaining grounded in your story. There are several techniques or devices that you can utilize to do this effectively. Some of them are:
The Direct Method or 'Clean Break'- Simply tell the reader what change has taken place:
Early the following Monday, Michael.... (Time change)
Once he reached the parking garage.... (Location change)
Mood - Use feelings, emotions, atmosphere to help convey the change:
As Stan pulled out of the company garage onto the congested highway, his hands clutched the wheel in a death grip and the cords in his neck tightened. It would take forever to get out of this tangle of traffic...
Once the city was behind him, however, the tension drained away and he breezed down the open road that led to his summer cabin. (Time and Location change)
The Five Senses - Use sound, sight, touch, taste and smell to bridge a story gap:
Margie hummed as she applied an extra spray of her favorite cologne, enjoying the light floral scent.
Andy's nose started to twitch before Margie even entered the room. Why did she insist on using that nasty flowery perfume that always made him sneeze? (POV change)
Cassie heard a distant grumble of thunder off to the east as she closed her book. Maybe Allan was finally getting some of that rain he'd been hoping for.
Allan squinted through the windshield, looking for a safe place to pull over and wait out the violent storm. This wasn't what he'd had in mind when he'd prayed for a 'bit of rain'. (POV and location change)
An Event - Use an ongoing, recent or anticipated event to unify your scenes:
Hesitating for only a heartbeat, Lynda dropped the letter into the mail slot, determined to make the first move toward reconciliation. When a week passed without a response, however, she began to wonder if contacting her grandfather had been such a wise move after all. (Time change)
The near-crash triggered a memory, one she'd rather not dwell on. But there it was, full blown and swooshing in like an avalanche. That other crash had happened six years ago. Her mom was driving her and her friends to the airport... (Time change - flashback)
A Character (whether human or otherwise) - Use the mention of a character to guide us through a story shift:
Stacey pulled into her driveway on Friday afternoon, wondering how she'd let her sister talk her into dog-sitting their troublesome mutt for the weekend. She really wasn't big into the whole pet scene.
But by Sunday evening,, Rufus had wormed his shaggy way right into her heart. (Time change)
An Object - Use an object or activity to move from one scene to another without jarring the reader:
Roger halted mid-sentence as a baseball came crashing through the window. Blast it all, he'd told Jimmy not to play ball in the yard.
He picked up the ball and marched to the door . Jimmy was going to pay to fix this, even if it meant he had to mow every yard in town to do it. (Change in scene focus)
The Environment- Use weather, terrain, scenery, seasons to depict change:
The autumn seemed long that year. Perhaps it was because she was so homesick for the Ozarks, where nature painted the mountainsides with magnificent blazes of color. Winter was easier, and by spring, the Texas gulf coast was beginning to feel, if not like home, at least less alien to her.
(Time change - extended period)
These are just a sampling. There are, of course, other ways to handle transitions. Just keep in mind - your main goal in using transitions is to keep your reader grounded and oriented in the who, what, where, and when of your story without their having to reread passages to figure it out.


text:
Andhra Pradesh
THE DRIVER REFUSED to take him any farther.
A mile back, right after they passed the abandoned Octagon chemical
plant, the pavement had given way to an overgrown dirt road. Now
the driver complained that his car was getting scraped by
underbrush, and with the recent rains, there were muddy spots where
their tires could get mired. And where would that leave them?
Stranded, 150 kilometers from Hyderabad. Howard Red- field listened
to the long litany of objections, and knew they were merely a
pretext for the real reason the driver did not wish to proceed. No
man easily admits that he is afraid.
Redfield had no choice; from here, he would have to walk. He leaned
forward to speak in the driver's ear, and caught a gamey whiff of
the man's sweat. In the rearview mirror, where rattling beads
dangled, he saw the driver's dark eyes staring at him. "You'll wait
here for me, won't you?" Redfield asked. "Stay right here, on the
"How long?"
"An hour, maybe. As long as it takes."
"I tell you, there is nothing to see. No one is there
"Just wait here, okay? Wait. I'll pay you double when we get back
to the city."
Redfield grabbed his knapsack, stepped out of the air-conditioned
car, and was instantly swimming in a sea of humidity. He hadn't
worn a knapsack since he was a college kid, wandering through
Europe on a shoestring, and it felt a little would-be, at age
fifty-one, to be slinging one over his flabby shoulders. But he was
damned if he went anywhere in this steamhouse of a country without
his bottle of purified drinking water and his insect repellant and
his sunscreen and diarrhea medicine. And his camera; he could not
leave behind the camera.
He stood sweating in the late afternoon heat, looked up at the sky,
and thought: Great, the sun is going down, and all the mosquitoes
come out at dusk. Here comes dinner, you little buggers.
He set off down the road. Tall grass obscured the path, and he
stumbled into a rut, his walking shoes sinking ankle-deep in mud.
Clearly no vehicle had come this way in months, and Mother Nature
had quickly moved in to reclaim her territory. He paused, panting
and swatting at insects. Glancing back, he saw that the car was no
longer in sight, and that made him uneasy. Could he trust the
driver to wait for him? The man had been reluctant to bring him
this far, and had grown more and more nervous as they'd bounced
along the increasingly rough road. Bad people were out here, the
driver had said, and terrible things happened in this area. They
could both disappear, and who would bother to come looking for
Redfield pressed onward.
The humid air seemed to close in around him. He could hear the
water bottle sloshing in his knapsack, and already he was thirsty,
but he did not stop to drink. With only an hour or so left of
daylight, he had to keep moving. Insects hummed in the grass, and
he heard what he thought must be birds calling in the canopy of
trees all around him, but it was unlike any birdsong he'd ever
heard before. Everything about this country felt strange and
surreal, and he trudged in a dreamlike trance, sweat trickling down
his chest. The rhythm of his own breathing accelerated with each
step. It should be only a mile and a half, according to the map,
but he seemed to walk forever, and even a fresh application of
insect repellant did not discourage the mosquitoes. His ears were
filled with their buzzing, and his face was an itching mask of
He stumbled into another deep rut and landed on his knees in tall
grass. Spat out a mouthful of vegetation as he crouched there,
catching his breath, so discouraged and exhausted that he decided
it was time to turn around. To get back on that plane to Cincinnati
with his tail tucked between his legs. Cowardice, after all, was
far safer. And more comfortable.
He heaved a sigh, planted his hand on the ground to push himself to
his feet, and went very still, staring down at the grass. Something
gleamed there among the green blades, something metallic. It was
only a cheap tin button, but at that moment, it struck him as a
sign. A talisman. He slipped it in his pocket, rose to his feet,
and kept walking.
Only a few hundred feet farther, the road suddenly opened up into a
large clearing, encircled by tall trees. A lone structure stood at
the far edge, a squat cinder block building with a rusting tin
roof. Branches clattered and grass waved in the gentle wind. This
is the place, he thought. This is where it happened.
His breathing suddenly seemed too loud. Heart pounding, he slipped
off his knapsack, unzipped it, and pulled out his camera.
Document everything, he thought. Octagon will try to make you out
as a liar. They will do everything they can to discredit you, so
you have to be ready to defend yourself. You have to prove that you
are telling the truth.
He moved into the clearing, toward a heap of blackened
branches. Nudging the twigs with his shoe, he stirred up the stench
of charred wood. He backed away, a chill crawling up his
It was the remains of a funeral pyre.
With sweating hands, he took off his lens cap and began to shoot
photos. Eye pressed to the viewfinder, he snapped image after
image. The burned remains of a hut. A child's sandal, lying in the
grass. A bright fragment of cloth, torn from a sari. Everywhere he
looked, he saw Death.
He swung to the right, a tapestry of green sweeping past his
viewfinder, and was about to click off another photo when his
finger froze on the button.
A figure skittered past the edge of the frame.
He lowered the camera from his eye and straightened, staring at the
trees. He saw nothing now, only the sway of branches.
There --- was that a flash of movement, at the very periphery of
his vision? He'd caught only a glimpse of something dark, bobbing
among the trees. A monkey?
He had to keep shooting. The daylight was going fast. He walked
past a stone well and crossed toward the tin-roofed building, his
pants swishing through grass, glancing left and right as he moved.
The trees seemed to have eyes, and they were watching him. As he
drew near the building, he saw that the walls were scorched by
fire. In front of the doorway was a mound of ashes and blackened
branches. Another funeral pyre.
He stepped around it, and looked into the doorway.
At first, he could make out very little in that gloomy
Daylight was rapidly fading, and inside, it was even darker, a
palette of blacks and grays. He paused for a moment as his eyes
adjusted. With growing bewilderment, he registered the glint of
fresh water in an earthenware jar. The scent of spices. How could
this be?
Behind him, a twig snapped.
He spun around.
A lone figure was standing in the clearing. All around them, the
trees had gone still, and even the birds were silent. The figure
came toward him, moving with a strange and jerky gait, until it
stood only a few feet away.
The camera tumbled from Redfield's hands. He backed away, staring
in horror.
It was a woman. And she had no face.
THEY CALLED HER the Queen of the Dead.
Though no one ever said it to her face, Dr. Maura Isles sometimes
heard the nickname murmured in her wake as she traveled the grim
triangle of her job between courtroom and death scene and morgue.
Sometimes she would detect a note of dark sarcasm: Ha ha, there
she goes, our Goth goddess, out to collect fresh subjects.
Sometimes the whispers held a tremolo of disquiet, like the murmurs
of the pious as an unholy stranger passes among them. It was the
disquiet of those who could not understand why she chose to walk in
Death's footsteps. Does she enjoy it, they wonder? Does the touch
of cold flesh, the stench of decay, hold such allure for her that
she has turned her back on the living? They think this cannot be
normal, and they cast uneasy glances her way, noting details that
only reinforce their beliefs that she is an odd duck. The ivory
skin, the black hair with its blunt Cleopatra cut. The red slash of
lipstick. Who else wears lipstick to a death scene? Most of all,
it's her calm- ness that disturbs them, her coolly regal gaze as
she surveys the horrors that they themselves can barely stomach.
Unlike them, she does not avert her gaze. Instead she bends close
and stares, touches. She sniffs.
And later, under bright lights in her autopsy lab, she cuts.
She was cutting now, her scalpel slicing through chilled skin,
through subcutaneous fat that gleamed a greasy yellow. A man who
liked his hamburgers and fries, she thought as she used pruning
shears to cut through the ribs and lifted the triangular shield of
breastbone the way one opens a cupboard door, to reveal its
treasured contents.
The heart lay cradled in its spongey bed of lungs. For fifty-nine
years, it had pumped blood through the body of Mr. Samuel Knight.
It had grown with him, aged with him, transforming, as he had, from
the lean muscle of youth to this well-larded flesh. All pumps
eventually fail, and so had Mr. Knight's as he'd sat in his Boston
hotel room with the TV turned on and a glass of whiskey from the
minibar sitting beside him on the nightstand.
She did not pause to wonder what his final thoughts might have
been, or whether he had felt pain or fear. Though she explored his
most intimate recesses, though she flayed open his skin and held
his heart in her hands, Mr. Samuel Knight remained a stranger to
her, a silent and undemanding one, willingly offering up his
secrets. The dead are patient. They do not complain, nor threaten,
nor cajole.
The dead do not hurt you; only the living do.
She worked with serene efficiency, resecting the thoracic viscera,
laying the freed heart on the cutting board. Outside, the first
snow of December swirled, white flakes whispering against windows
and slithering down alleys. But here in the lab, the only sounds
were of running water and the hiss of the ventilator fan.
Her assistant Yoshima moved in uncanny silence, anticipating her
requests, materializing wherever she needed him. They had worked
together only a year and a half, yet already they functioned like a
single organism, linked by the telepathy of two logical minds. She
did not need to ask him to redirect the lamp; it was already done,
the light shining down on the dripping heart, a pair of scissors
held out and waiting for her to take them.
The darkly mottled wall of the right ventricle, and the white
apical scar, told her this heart's sad story. An old myocardial
infarction, months or even years old, had already destroyed part of
the left ventricular wall. Then, sometime in the last twenty-four
hours, a fresh infarction had occurred. A thrombus had blocked off
the right coronary artery, strangling the flow of blood to the
muscle of the right ventricle.
She resected tissue for histology, already knowing what she would
see under the microscope. Coagulation and necrosis. The invasion of
white cells, moving in like a defending army. Perhaps Mr. Samuel
Knight thought the discomfort in his chest was just a bout of
indigestion. Too much lunch, shouldn't have eaten all those onions.
Maybe Pepto-Bismol would do the trick. Or perhaps there'd been more
ominous signs which he chose to ignore: the weight on his chest,
the shortness of breath. Surely it did not occur to him that he was
having a heart attack.
That, a day later, he would be dead of an arrhythmia.
The heart now lay open and sectioned on the board. She looked at
the torso, missing all its organs. So ends your business trip to
Boston, she thought. No surprises here. No foul play, except for
the abuse you heaped on your own body, Mr. Knight.
The intercom buzzed. "Dr. Isles?" It was Louise, her
"Detective Rizzoli's on line two for you. Can you take the
"I'll pick up."
Maura peeled off her gloves and crossed to the wall phone. Yoshima,
who'd been rinsing instruments in the sink, shut off the faucet. He
turned to watch her with his silent tiger eyes, already knowing
what a call from Rizzoli signified.
When at last Maura hung up, she saw the question in his gaze.
"It's starting early today," she said. Then she stripped off her
gown and left the morgue, to usher another subject into her
The morning's snowfall had turned into a treacherous mix of
both snow and sleet, and the city plows were nowhere in sight. She
drove cautiously along Jamaica Riverway, tires swishing through
deep slush, windshield wipers scraping at hoar-frosted glass. This
was the first winter storm of the season, and drivers had yet to
adjust to the conditions. Already, several casualties had slid off
the road, and she passed a parked police cruiser, its lights
flashing, the patrolman standing beside a tow truck driver as they
both gazed at a car that had tipped into a ditch.
The tires of her Lexus began to slide sideways, the front bumper
veering toward oncoming traffic. Panicking, she hit the brakes and
felt the vehicle's automatic skid control kick into action. She
pulled the car back into her lane. Screw this, she thought, her
heart thudding. I'm moving back to California. She slowed to a
timid crawl, not caring who honked at her or how much traffic she
held up. Go ahead and pass me, idiots. I've met too many drivers
like you on my slab.
The road took her into Jamaica Plain, a west Boston neighborhood of
stately old mansions and broad lawns, of serene parks and river
walks. In the summertime, this would be a leafy retreat from the
noise and heat of urban Boston, but today, under bleak skies, with
winds sweeping across barren lawns, it was a desolate
The address she sought seemed the most forbidding of all, the
building set back behind a high stone wall over which a smothering
tangle of ivy had scrambled. A barricade to keep out the world, she
thought. From the street, all she could see were the gothic peaks
of a slate roof and one towering gable window which peered back at
her like a dark eye. A patrol car parked near the front gate
confirmed that she had found the correct address. Only a few other
vehicles had arrived so far --- the shock troops before the larger
army of crime-scene techs arrived.
She parked across the street and braced herself against the first
blast of wind. When she stepped out of the car, her shoe skidded
right out from under her, and she barely caught herself, hanging
onto the vehicle door. Dragging herself back to her feet, she felt
icy water trickle down her calves from the soaked hem of her coat,
which had fallen into the slush. For a few seconds she just stood
there, sleet stinging her face, shocked by how quickly it had all
She glanced across the street at the patrolman sitting in his
cruiser, and saw that he was watching her, and had surely seen her
slip. Her pride stung, she grabbed her kit from the front seat,
swung the door shut, and made her way, with as much dignity as she
could muster, across the rime-slicked road.
"You okay, Doc?" the patrolman called out through his car window, a
concerned inquiry she really did not welcome.
"I'm fine."
"Watch yourself in those shoes. It's even more slippery in the
"Where's Detective Rizzoli?"
"They're in the chapel."
"And where's that?"
"Can't miss it. It's the door with the big cross on it."
She continued to the front gate, but found it locked. An iron bell
hung on the wall; she tugged on the pull rope, and the medieval
clang slowly faded into the softer tick, tick of falling sleet.
Just beneath the bell was a bronze plaque, its inscription
partially obscured by a strand of brown ivy.
The Sisters of Our Lady of Divine Light
"The harvest is indeed great, but the laborers are few.
Pray, therefore, to send laborers
Into the harvest."
THEY EMERGED from the chapel, stepping over the strand of police
tape which by now had fallen from the doorway and lay encased in
ice. The wind flapped their coats and whipped their faces as they
headed beneath the walkway, their eyes narrowed against rebel gusts
of snowflakes. As they stepped into a gloomy entranceway, Maura
registered barely a whisper of warmth against her numb face. She
smelled eggs and old paint and the mustiness of an ancient heating
system, radiating dust.
The clatter of chinaware drew them down a dim hallway, into a room
awash in fluorescent light, a disconcertingly modern detail. It
glared down, stark and unflattering, on the deeply lined faces of
the nuns seated around a battered rectory table. Thirteen of them
--- an unlucky number. Their attention was focused on squares of
bright floral cloth and silk ribbons and trays of dried lavender
and rose petals. Craft time, thought Maura, watching as arthritic
hands scooped up herbs and wound ribbon around sachets. One of the
nuns sat slumped in a wheelchair. She was tilted to the side, her
left hand curled into a claw on the armrest, her face sagging like
a partly melted mask. The cruel aftermath of a stroke. Yet she was
the first to notice the two intruders, and she gave a moan. The
other sisters looked up, turning toward Maura and Rizzoli.
Gazing into those wizened faces, Maura was startled by the frailty
she saw there. These were not the stern images of authority she
remembered from her girlhood, but the gazes of the bewildered,
looking to her for answers to this tragedy. She was uneasy with her
new status, the way a grown child is uneasy when he first realizes
that he and his parents have reversed roles.
Rizzoli asked, "Can someone tell me where Detective Frost
The question was answered by a harried-looking woman who had just
come out of the adjoining kitchen, carrying a tray of clean coffee
cups and saucers. She was dressed in a faded blue jumper stained
with grease, and a tiny diamond glinted through the bubbles of
dishwater on her left hand. Not a nun, thought Maura, but the
rectory employee, tending to this ever more infirm community.
"He's still talking to the Abbess," the woman said. She cocked her
head toward the doorway, and a strand of brown hair came loose,
curling over her frown-etched forehead. "Her office is down the
Rizzoli nodded. "I know the way."
They left the harsh light of that room and continued down the
hallway. Maura felt a draft here, a whisper of chill air, as though
a ghost had just slipped past her. She did not believe in the
afterlife, but when walking in the footsteps of those who had
recently died, she sometimes wondered if their passing did not
leave behind some imprint, some faint disturbance of energy that
could be sensed by those who followed.
Rizzoli knocked on the Abbess's door, and a tremulous voice said:
"Come in."
Stepping into the room, Maura smelled the aroma of coffee, as
delicious as perfume. She saw dark wood paneling and a simple
crucifix mounted on the wall above an oak desk. Behind that desk
sat a stooped nun whose eyes were magnified to enormous blue pools
by her glasses. She appeared every bit as old as her frail sisters
seated around the rectory table, and her glasses looked so heavy
they might pitch her face-forward onto her desk. But the eyes
gazing through those thick lenses were alert and bright with
Rizzoli's partner, Barry Frost, at once set down his coffee cup and
rose to his feet out of politeness. Frost was the equivalent of
everybody's kid brother, the one cop in the homicide unit who could
walk into an interrogation room and make a suspect believe Frost
was his best friend. He was also the one cop in the unit who never
seemed to mind working with the mercurial Rizzoli, who even now was
scowling at his cup of coffee, no doubt registering the fact that
while she had been shivering in the chapel, her partner was sitting
comfortably in this heated room.
"Reverend Mother," said Frost, "This is Dr. Isles, from the Medical
Examiner's office. Doc, this is Mother Mary Clement."
Maura reached for the Abbess's hand. It was gnarled, the skin like
dry paper over bones. As she shook it, Maura spotted a beige cuff
peeking out from under the black sleeve. So this was how the nuns
tolerated such a cold building. Beneath her woollen habit, the
Abbess was wearing long underwear.
Distorted blue eyes gazed at her through thick lenses. "The Medical
Examiner's office? Does that mean you're a physician?"
"Yes. A pathologist."
"You study causes of death?"
"That's right."
The Abbess paused, as though gathering the courage to ask the next
question. "Have you already been inside the chapel? Have you seen .
. ."
Maura nodded. She wanted to cut off the question she knew was
coming, but she was incapable of rudeness to a nun. Even at the age
of forty, she was still unnerved by the sight of a black
"Did she . . ." Mary Clement's voice slipped to a whisper. "Did
Sister Camille suffer greatly?"
"I'm afraid I have no answers yet. Not until I complete the . . .
examination." Autopsy was what she meant, but the word
seemed too cold, too clinical, for Mary Clement's sheltered ears.
Nor did she want to reveal the terrible truth: That in fact, she
had a very good idea of what had happened to Camille. Someone had
confronted the young woman in the chapel. Someone had pursued her
as she fled in terror up the aisle, wrenching off her white
novice's veil. As his blows avulsed her scalp, her blood had
splashed the pews, yet she had staggered onward, until at last she
stumbled to her knees, conquered at his feet. Even then her
attacker did not stop. Even then, he had kept swinging, crushing
her skull like an egg.
Avoiding Mary Clement's eyes, Maura briefly lifted her gaze to the
wooden cross mounted on the wall behind the desk, but that imposing
symbol was no more comfortable for her to confront.
Rizzoli cut in, "We haven't seen their bedrooms yet." As usual, she
was all business, focusing only on what needed to be done
Mary Clement blinked back tears. "Yes. I was about to take
Detective Frost upstairs to their chambers."
Rizzoli nodded. "We're ready when you are."
The Abbess led the way up a stairway illuminated only by the glow
of daylight through a stained glass window. On bright days, the sun
would have painted the walls with a rich palette of colors, but on
this wintry morning, the walls were murky with shades of
"The upstairs rooms are mostly empty now. Over the years, we've had
to move the sisters downstairs, one by one," said Mary Clement,
climbing slowly, grasping the handrail as though hauling herself
up, step by step. Maura half expected her to tumble backwards, and
she stayed right behind her, tensing every time the Abbess paused,
wobbling. "Sister Jacinta's knee is bothering her these days, so
she'll take a room downstairs, too. And now Sister Helen has
trouble catching her breath. There are so few of us left. . .
"It's quite a large building to maintain," said Maura.
"And old." The Abbess paused to catch her breath. She added, with a
sad laugh, "Old like us. And so expensive to keep up. We thought we
might have to sell, but God found a way for us to hold onto
"A donor came forward last year. Now we've started renovations. The
slates on the roof are new, and we now have insulation in the
attic. We plan to replace the furnace, next." She glanced back at
Maura. "Believe it or not, this building feels quite cozy, compared
to a year ago."
The Abbess took a deep breath and resumed climbing the stairs, her
rosary beads clattering. "There used to be forty-five of us here.
When I first came to Graystones, we filled all these rooms. Both
wings. But now we're a maturing community."
"When did you come, Reverend Mother?" asked Maura.
"I entered as a postulant when I was eighteen years old. I had a
young gentleman who wanted to marry me. I'm afraid his pride was
quite wounded when I turned him down for God." She paused on the
step and looked back. For the first time, Maura noticed the bulge
of a hearing aid beneath her wimple. "You probably can't imagine
that, can you, Dr. Isles? That I was ever that young?"
No, Maura couldn't. She couldn't imagine Mary Clement as anything
but the wobbly relic she was now. Certainly never a desirable
woman, pursued by men.
They reached the top of the stairs, and a long hallway stretched
before them. It was warmer up here, almost pleasant, the heat
trapped by low dark ceilings. The exposed beams looked at least a
century old. The Abbess moved to the second door and hesitated, her
hand on the knob. At last she turned it, and the door swung open,
gray light from within spilling onto her face. "This is Sister
Ursula's room," she said softly.
The room was scarcely large enough to fit all of them at once.
Frost and Rizzoli stepped in, but Maura remained by the door, her
gaze drifting past shelves lined with books, past flowerpots
containing thriving African violets. With its mullioned window and
low-beamed ceiling, the room looked medieval. A scholar's tidy
garret, furnished with a simple bed and dresser, a desk and
"Her bed's been made," said Rizzoli, looking down at the neatly
tucked sheets.
"That's the way we found it this morning," said Mary Clement.
"Didn't she go to sleep last night?"
"It's more likely she rose early. She usually does."
"How early?"
"She's often up hours before Lauds."
"Lauds?" asked Frost.
"Our morning prayers, at seven. This past summer, she was always
out early, in the garden. She loves to work in the garden."
"And in the winter?" asked Rizzoli. "What does she do so early in
the morning?"
"Whatever the season, there's always work to be done, for those of
us who can still manage it. But so many of the sisters are frail
now. This year, we had to hire Mrs. Otis to help us prepare meals.
Even with her help, we can scarcely keep up with the chores."
Rizzoli opened the closet door. Inside hung an austere collection
of blacks and browns. Not a hint of color nor embellishment. It was
the wardrobe of a woman for whom the Lord's work was allimportant,
for whom the design of clothing was only in His service.
"These are the only clothes she has? What I see in this closet?"
asked Rizzoli.
"We take a vow of poverty when we join the order."
"Does that mean you give up everything you own?"
Mary Clement responded with the patient smile one gives to a child
who has just asked an absurd question. "It's not such a hardship,
Detective. We keep our books, a few personal mementoes. As you can
see, Sister Ursula enjoys her African violets. But yes, we leave
almost everything behind when we come here. This is a contemplative
order, and we don't welcome the distractions of the outside
"Excuse me, Reverend Mother," said Frost. "I'm not Catholic, so I
don't understand what that word means. What's a contemplative
His question had been quietly respectful, and Mary Clement favored
him with a warmer smile than she had given Rizzoli. "A
contemplative leads a reflective life. A life of prayer and private
devotion and meditation. That's why we retreat behind walls. Why we
turn away visitors. Seclusion is a comfort to us."
"What if someone breaks the rules?" asked Rizzoli. "Do you kick her
Maura saw Frost wince at his partner's bluntly worded
"Our rules are voluntary," said Mary Clement. "We abide by them
because we wish to."
"But every so often, there's got to be some nun who wakes up one
morning and says, 'I feel like going to the beach.' "
"It doesn't happen."
"It must happen. They're human beings."
"It doesn't happen."
"No one breaks the rules? No one jumps the wall?"
"We have no need to leave the abbey. Mrs. Otis buys our groceries.
Father Brophy attends to our spiritual needs."
"What about letters? Phone calls? Even in high security prisons,
you get to make a phone call every so often." Frost was shaking his
head, his expression pained.
"We have a telephone here, for emergencies," said Mary
"And anyone can use it?"
"Why would they wish to?"
"How about mail? Can you get letters?"
"Some of us choose not to accept any mail."
"And if you want to send a letter?"
"To whom?"
"Does it matter?"
Mary Clement's face had frozen into a tight, lord-give-mepatience
smile. "I can only repeat myself, Detective. We are not prisoners.
We choose to live this way. Those who don't agree with these rules
may choose to leave."
"And what would they do, in the outside world?"
"You seem to think we have no knowledge of that world. But some of
the sisters have served in schools or in hospitals."
"I thought being cloistered meant you couldn't leave the
"Sometimes, God calls us to tasks outside the walls. A few years
ago, Sister Ursula felt His call to serve abroad, and she was
granted exclaustration --- permission to live outside while keeping
her vows."
"But she came back."
"Last year."
"She didn't like it out there, in the world?"
"Her mission in India wasn't an easy one. And there was violence
--- a terrorist attack on her village. That's when she returned to
us. Here, she could feel safe again."
"She didn't have family to go home to?"
"Her closest relative was a brother, who died two years ago.
We're her family now, and Graystones is her home. When you're tired
of the world and in need of comfort, Detective," the Abbess asked
gently, "don't you go home?"
The answer seemed to unsettle Rizzoli. Her gaze shifted to the
wall, where the crucifix hung. Just as quickly, it caromed
"Reverend Mother?"
The woman in the grease-stained blue jumper was standing in the
hall, looking in at them with flat, incurious eyes. A few more
strands of brown hair had come loose from her ponytail and hung
limp about her bony face. "Father Brophy says he's on his way over
to deal with the reporters. But there are so many of them calling
now that Sister Isabel's just taken the phone off the hook. She
doesn't know what to tell them."
"I'll be right there, Mrs. Otis." The Abbess turned to
"As you can see, we're overwhelmed. Please take as much time as you
need here. I'll be downstairs."
"Before you go," said Rizzoli, "which room is Sister
"It's the fourth door."
"And it's not locked?"
"There are no locks on these doors," said Mary Clement.
"There never have been."
* *
The smell of bleach and Murphy's Oil Soap was the first thing Maura
registered as she stepped into Sister Camille's room. Like Sister
Ursula's, this room had a mullioned window facing the courtyard and
the same low, wood-beamed ceiling. But while Ursula's room felt
lived-in, Camille's room had been so thoroughly scrubbed and
sanitized it felt sterilized. The whitewashed walls were bare
except for a wooden crucifix hanging opposite the bed. It would
have been the first object Camille's gaze would fix upon when she
awakened each morning, a symbol of her focused existence. This was
a chamber for a penitent.
Maura gazed down at the floor and saw where areas of fierce
scrubbing had worn down the finish, leaving patches of lighter
wood. She pictured fragile young Camille down on her knees,
clutching steel wool, trying to sand away . . . what? A century's
worth of stains? All traces of the women who had lived here before
"Geez," said Rizzoli. "If cleanliness is next to Godliness, this
woman was a saint."
Maura crossed to the desk by the window, where a book lay open.
Saint Brigid of Ireland: A Biography. She imagined Camille
reading at this pristine desk, the window light playing on her
delicate features. She wondered if, on warm days, Camille ever
removed her novice's white veil and sat bareheaded, letting the
breeze through the window blow across her cropped blond hair.
"There's blood here," said Frost.
Maura turned and saw that he was standing by the bed, staring down
at the rumpled sheets.
Rizzoli peeled back the covers, revealing bright red stains on the
bottom sheet.
"Menstrual blood," said Maura, and saw Frost flush and turn away.
Even married men were squeamish when it came to intimate details of
women's bodily functions.
The clang of the bell drew Maura's gaze back to the window. She
watched as a nun emerged from the building to open the gate. Four
visitors wearing yellow slickers entered the courtyard.
"CSU's arrived," said Maura.
"I'll go down and meet them," said Frost, and he left the
Sleet was still falling, ticking against the glass, and a layer of
rime distorted her view of the courtyard below. Maura caught a
watery view of Frost stepping out to greet the crime-scene techs.
Fresh invaders, violating the sanctity of the abbey. And beyond the
wall, others were waiting to invade as well. She saw a TV news van
creep past the gate, cameras no doubt rolling. How did they find
their way here so quickly? Was the scent of death so powerful? She
turned to look at Rizzoli. "You're Catholic, Jane. Aren't
Rizzoli snorted as she picked through Camille's closet. "Me?
Catechism dropout."
"When did you stop believing?"
"About the same time I stopped believing in Santa Claus. Never did
make it to my confirmation, which to this day still pisses off my
dad. Jesus, what a boring closet. Let's see, shall I wear the
black or the brown habit today? Why would any girl in her right
mind want to be a nun?"
"Not all nuns wear habits. Not since Vatican II."
"Yeah, but that chastity thing, that hasn't changed. Imagine no sex
for the rest of your life."
"I don't know," said Maura. "It might be a relief to stop thinking
about men."
"I'm not sure that's possible." She shut the closet door and slowly
scanned the room, looking for . . . what? Maura wondered.
The key to Camille's personality? The explanation for why her life
had ended so young, so brutally? But there were no clues here that
Maura could see. This was a room swept clean of all traces of its
occupant. That, perhaps, was the most telling clue of all to
Camille's personality. A young woman scrubbing, always scrubbing
away at dirt. At sin.
Rizzoli crossed to the bed and dropped down to her hands and knees
to look underneath. "Geez, it's so clean under here you can eat off
the goddamn floor."
Wind shook the window and sleet clattered against the glass. Maura
turned and watched Frost and the CSTs cross toward the chapel. One
of the techs suddenly slid across the stones, arms flung out like a
skater as he struggled to stay upright. We're all struggling to
stay upright, Maura thought. Resisting the pull of temptation, just
as we fight the pull of gravity. And when we fi- nally fall, it's
always such a surprise.
The team stepped into the chapel, and she imagined them standing in
a silent circle, staring down at Sister Ursula's blood, their
breaths marked by puffs of steam.
Behind her there was a thud.
She turned and was alarmed to see Rizzoli sitting on the floor next
to the toppled chair. She had her head hanging between her
"Jane." Maura knelt beside her. "Jane?"
Rizzoli waved her away. "I'm okay. I'm okay. . . ."
"What happened?"
"I just . . . I think I got up too fast. I'm just a little dizzy. .
. ." Rizzoli tried to straighten, then quickly dropped her head
"You should lie down."
"I don't need to lie down. Just give me a minute to clear my
Maura remembered that Rizzoli had not looked well in the chapel,
her face too pale, her lips dusky. At the time she'd assumed it was
because the detective was chilled. Now they were in a warm room,
and Rizzoli looked just as drained.
"Did you eat breakfast this morning?" Maura asked.
"Uh . . ."
"Don't you remember?"
"Yeah, I guess I ate. Sort of."
"What does that mean?"
"A piece of toast, okay?" Rizzoli shook off Maura's hand, an
impatient rejection of any help. It was that fierce pride that
sometimes made her so difficult to work with. "I think I'm coming
down with the flu."
"You're sure that's all it is?"
Rizzoli shoved her hair off her face and slowly sat up
"Yeah. And I shouldn't have had all that coffee this
"How much?"
"Three --- maybe four cups."
"Isn't that overdoing it?"
"I needed the caffeine. But now it's eating a hole in my
I feel like puking."
"I'll walk you to the bathroom."
"No." Rizzoli waved her away. "I can make it, okay?" Slowly she
rose to her feet and just stood for a moment, as though not quite
confident of her footing. Then she squared her shoulders, and with
a hint of the old Rizzoli swagger, walked out of the room.
The clang of the gate bell drew Maura's gaze back to the window.
She watched as the elderly nun once again emerged from the building
and shuffled across the cobblestones to answer the call. This new
visitor did not need to plead his case; the nun at once opened the
gate. A man dressed in a long black coat stepped into the courtyard
and laid his hand on the nun's shoulder. It was a gesture of
comfort and familiarity. Together they walked toward the building,
the man moving slowly to match her arthritic gait, his head bent
toward her as though he did not want to miss hearing a single word
she said.
Halfway across the courtyard, he suddenly stopped and looked up, as
though he sensed that Maura was watching him.
For an instant, their gazes met through the window. She saw a lean
and striking face, a head of black hair, ruffled by the wind. And
she caught a glimpse of white, tucked beneath the raised collar of
his black coat.
A priest.
When Mrs. Otis had announced that Father Brophy was on his way to
the abbey, Maura had imagined him to be an elderly, gray-haired
man. But the man gazing up at her now was young --- no older than
He and the nun continued toward the building, and Maura lost sight
of them. The courtyard was once again deserted, but the trampled
snow bore a record of all who had walked across it that morning.
The morgue transport team would soon arrive with their stretcher
and add yet more footprints to the snow.
She took a deep breath, dreading the return to the cold chapel, to
the grim task that still lay before her. She left the room and went
down to await her team.
Excerpted from THE SINNER © Copyright 2003 by Tess
Gerritsen. Reprinted with permission by Ballantine Books. All
rights reserved.


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Craig Sports Briefs for Jan. 17, 2014: Water aerobics available at the high school
January 16, 2014
Registration for water aerobics during the winter is now open through Craig Parks and Recreation.
Water aerobics offer a low-resistance method of exercise and can improve fitness and flexibility. The classes for the most recent session ended Wednesday, but the next session is available starting Jan. 27. Classes are 7 to 8 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays through March 26.
Signing up for the entire session costs $45, or those interested can attend individual classes for $4. For more information, call Craig Parks and Recreation at 970-826-2017.
Open gym basketball at CMS
Craig Parks and Recreation hosts open gym basketball during the winter at Craig Middle School.
Pick-up games and shoot-arounds are from 7 to 9 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays. They run through Feb. 13. Anyone 15 years and older is welcome to attend. Those interested can purchase a punch pass or pay a gym fee of $2.50 to supervisors each night they attend.
For more information, call Parks and Rec at 970-826-2004.
Recommended Stories For You
Stagecoach State Park hosts ice tourney
Steamboat Great Outdoors will host the third annual Steamboat Great Outdoors Ice Fishing Tournament from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday at Stagecoach State Park.
The tournament is limited to trout species only. Cash prizes will be awarded, and a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Oak Creek Fire Corps. For tournament rules and registration forms visit http://www.steam
boatgreatoutdoors.com or call 970-819-4525.
The tournament is limited to 200 adult entries. Youths can participate for free and are eligible for non-cash prizes. Adult advance registration is $25, and the day of the event is $35. Early registration and payments will be accepted until 3 p.m. today at Spiros's in Oak Creek, Elk River Snack Shack in Steamboat Springs, or by mail to Steamboat Great Outdoors, P.O. Box 770184, Steamboat Springs, CO 80477.
The 2014 Colorado Parks and Wildlife regulations apply to all participants. A valid park pass is required, and carpooling is highly recommended, as parking may be limited. OHVs and snowmobiles are permitted at your own risk, for fishing access only on the lake surface.
Adult indoor soccer at the Boys and Girls Club
Bill Sawer is hosting coed indoor soccer for adults at the Boys & Girls Club of Craig.
The five-on-five games are for players of all skill levels and cost $2 per player, per night. Those coming should wear tennis shoes. Games take place from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Sunday nights through March.
For more information, call Bill Sawer at 970-824-0116.


text:
We have updated our Privacy Policy and encourage you to read it by clicking here.
The JDE XML API is a wonderfully flexible thing. However, it can sometimes act in unexpected ways. One way is in how it handles dates that are not in a format that it expects. When using the API, dates must be formatted as yyyy/mm/dd. If you try to use yyyy-mm-dd, you may get an error, or, insidiously, the date will be completely ignored!
Here is the template for a function to get the fiscal century, year, and period, given a company and a date:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<jdeRequest pwd='' role='*ALL' type='callmethod' user='' comment=''
session='' environment='' sessionidle=''>
<callMethod app='AwiIntegrations' name='GetAuditInfo'>
<returnCode code='0'/>
<param name='szUserName'></param>
<param name='jdDate'></param>
<param name='mnTime'>0</param>
<param name='szWorkstation_UserId'></param>
<param name='szMachineKey'></param>
You feed in szCompany and jdTransactionDate, pass it to JDE, which then fills in the other values using the specific company calendar set up in JDE.
Here is what it returns for a given value of szCompany, but varying values of the transaction date:
This case is pretty benign, because it tells you directly that your date is bad.
If you feed in 2007-11-01 to the function F0911FSBeginDoc, paramter jdGLDate, then you might think that it would respond with an error stating that the date is invalid. Instead, something insidious happens. For example, you post the following request:
<callMethod name='F0911FSBeginDoc' runOnError='no' returnNullData='no'>
<param name='cDocAction'>A</param>
<param name='mnJobNumber' id='jobNumber'></param>
<param name='szCompanyKey' id='companyKey'>00100</param>
<param name='jdGLDate'>2007-11-01</param>
<param name='szExplanation'>this is a test</param>
<param name='szDocumentType' id='szDocumentType'>JH</param>
<param name='szLedgerType'>JA</param>
<param name='mnBatchNumber' idref='batchNumber'></param>
<param name='szBatchType' idref='batchType'></param>
<param name='jdBatchDate' idref='batchDate'></param>
<onError abort = 'yes'></onError>
The response you get is this:
<callMethod name="F0911FSBeginDoc" runOnError="no" returnNullData="no">
<returnCode code="0" />
<param id="jobNumber" name="mnJobNumber">5</param>
<param name="cDocAction">A</param>
<param id="companyKey" name="szCompanyKey">00100</param>
<param id="szDocumentType" name="szDocumentType">JH</param>
<param name="szLedgerType">JA</param>
<param name="mnBatchNumber" idref="batchNumber">2220848</param>
<param name="szBatchType" idref="batchType">G</param>
<param name="jdBatchDate" idref="batchDate">2007/12/03</param>
<param name="jdBatchSystemDate">2007/12/03</param>
<param name="mnBatchTime">194953</param>
<param name="szExplanation">this is a test</param>
<param name="cMultiCurrencyInterco">N</param>
<param name="cCurrencyFlag">N</param>
<param name="szJEVersion">ZJDE0001</param>
Notice that the jdGLDate does not even show up here. When the API sees data that it does not like, sometimes it just pretends that the data was never there in the first place! The Journal Entry is created, but if you look in the database, you will see that the general ledger date, F0911.glDGL is zero. Subsequently, you'll have a hard time finding this in the Journal Entry Review application if you try to filter by date.
So this is a precautionary tale to make sure that you feed in dates in the correct format. The API may give a warning if it tries to use a date in what it considers the "wrong" format, as in the ReturnFYPN case above. Or it just use a "bad" default value as in F0911FSBeginDoc, in which case your data is basically polluted and you'll need an expert to come in and clean it up.


text:
Rafael Benítez learns true scale of task at Chelsea
Chelsea may benefit in long run from the Club World Cup
The view from Chelsea's team room on the 70th floor of the Royal Park Hotel in Yokohama offered stunning sightlines of a snow-capped Mount Fuji, but Rafael Benítez is not the type of manager to be seduced by such stirring visions. Benítez is a nuts and bolts man, who subscribes to the theories of Dave Brailsford that have become the sporting philosophy of the year, based on the aggregation of marginal gains.
Chelsea failed in their primary objective of being crowned world champions in Japan, but may have inched forward in some areas. Benítez spent nine days in close proximity to his players and senior executives, building up a detailed picture of how the club operate at every level. The lessons learnt, summarised below, will…


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Christmas is behind us, the new year is upon us and new leadership has taken the helm here in China, so it seems to be a good time to take a look at what the foreign firms in China may have on their regulatory wish-list for the coming year.
Spoiler alert: the wish list has remained unchanged for the last decade or so, and the prospect of major change in the regulatory environment applicable to foreign law firms in China has not improved dramatically over that period. Still, it is useful to review again what items are on the list and assess the medium-term prospects for future changes.
A couple of months back I was invited to a roundtable discussion at the UK ambassador's residence here in Beijing. It is not entirely clear why I was on the invite list since the topic of discussion was efforts to open up the China legal services market more for UK law firms, and I obviously am no longer a partner in a UK firm, having crossed to the 'other side' more than two years earlier. Perhaps my well-documented reputation as a contrarian on all matters relating to regulation of foreign law firms in China merited the invite, just to spice up the conversation perhaps.
All of the top London law firms were represented at the meeting, but no one could come up with any burning regulatory issues that required immediate redress by the UK trade officials present. There are probably a couple of reasons for the relatively contented attitudes of the UK lawyers in attendance:
- By and large, the top UK firms have a pretty strong market position vis-à-vis other foreign law firms in China. About five years ago, when I was still with Lovells, I did a cumulative ranking of foreign law firms in China using a combination of the main directory rankings and found that six of the top seven foreign firms in China were all UK-headquartered (the other was Baker & McKenzie, which arguably is not really a US firm any more). Things may have shifted a bit around the margins, but I suspect that this overall market positioning remains largely unchanged today. So while the UK firms have for the most part had to retrench in China somewhat in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, they are still in a leading market position, so there is no real reason to agitate for change.
- To be perfectly frank, foreign firms have it pretty good as a regulatory matter in China, with a fairly wide scope of permitted services and lax enforcement around the very fuzzy regulatory edges. I will hit on some of the high points of the regulatory scheme below and in my next blog, but suffice it to say that overall it is a reasonably friendly environment for foreign law firms, all things considered. In contrast with their US cousins, UK law firms tend to see the regulatory glass as more than half-full (which is probably explained in part by point 1 above), so (again in contrast with the typical US approach) historically have not aggressively complained about the remaining unresolved issues on the basis that if one complains too much it may invite actual enforcement of some of the existing regulatory restrictions, which would be seriously counter-productive. (Actually, this is the view I championed while at Lovells, and so it is possible that I have simply projected my biases on the other representatives of UK firms in attendance.)
- Finally, there is probably little point to complaining about the remaining regulatory constraints under the present circumstances. The Chinese government appears to be unmoved by lobbying efforts on the part of the foreign bar here (in no small part because they apparently are of the view that they are already giving the foreign firms more than a fair shake), and even if they flung the door wide open, foreign law firms could only take advantage of any new regulatory opening if they could make a compelling business case to the home office. And there's the rub; it was already difficult to make the business case for dramatic expansion in China when conditions were much better five-plus years ago, but it is even more difficult given current economic conditions. There is no compelling reason to clamor for big changes that the Chinese side is not eager to give if one cannot take full immediate advantage of the changes demanded.
Here's an example. A foreign law firm can apply to open a second office in mainland China only after its first office has been set up for at least three years, and can apply for a third office only after three years following establishment of the second office, and so on. The application process is cumbersome and slow, and approval may be subject to the MoJ's unfettered discretion in that it can take into account vague considerations such as the 'development needs' of the local legal services market. It is not the most open, transparent or efficiently administered process, but it also does not appear that this has been a significant impediment to the establishment of foreign law firm offices in China. There are now nearly 220 foreign law firms that have registered offices in China (double the number of 10 years ago), with another 60-plus China offices of Hong Kong law firms. Of these, more than 50 foreign and Hong Kong firms have multiple offices, almost without exception in Beijing and Shanghai (in most cases in addition to Hong Kong, which is under separate regulatory supervision and control by the Hong Kong Law Society).
But the key point to keep in mind is that although almost all of the top international law firms have two offices in mainland China, and it has been more than three years since the establishment of the second office, none of the top foreign firms have applied to open a third office (DS Law Firm from France is the exception, with offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou). If the MoJ allowed foreign firms to open as many offices as they wished, with no time or other restrictions, we would still not see a flood – or even a trickle – of applications for third, fourth or fifth offices in China for one very good reason: you can't make a solid business case for offices outside of Beijing and Shanghai.
The first threshold issue is that most China offices of foreign firms already are not profitable, so there is no appetite for further expansion for these firms. If you ask partners in most foreign firms whether they are profitable, you will likely get one of the following responses:
- No (meaning they do not cover even local costs), but with a quick defence that no foreign firm is profitable in China (rationalisation in numbers).
- Yes (with fingers crossed, meaning they cover local costs but not partner drawings or profit shares).
- Yes (with no qualification, meaning they achieve PPP at roughly the firm average).
In some recent conversations with legal market professionals who have done a fairly comprehensive survey of the financial results of the China offices of foreign firms, I ventured an estimate that the breakdown of foreign firms in China among the above three categories was 50 per cent not covering even local costs, 30 per cent covering local costs but not partner drawings or profit shares, and 20 per cent profitable in line with global firm averages. Both thought I was overly optimistic and that the actual breakdown was more in the range of 70/20/10. Whatever the actual figures, 80-90 per cent of foreign firms' offices in China are still in the dreaded 'investment' mode. If you already have one or two loss-making offices in China, there is little hope to push through a proposal for a third one.
But even if you are in the profitable 10-20 per cent of foreign firms here, there is no reason to venture beyond Beijing and Shanghai because the economics make no sense in the second- and third-tier cities. Even for local Chinese firms there is a substantial drop-off in fee rates and revenues outside of Beijing and Shanghai. Tianjin lawyers can charge only about half of what local Beijing lawyers can, while (at least as of a few years ago) the total revenue of the third largest firm in Chongqing was about half of what a top local partner in a leading Beijing or Shanghai firm could earn on his or her own. At Zhong Lun we have six domestic offices – the standard big three offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen (home to the second domestic stock exchange) and then Guangzhou, Chengdu and Wuhan, but our offices in these latter three regional cities are still relatively small, and there is no immediate appetite to open any other regional offices. It is hard to imagine that a leading foreign firm, with their higher rates and higher cost bases, will want to rush out to open a third office in any of these regional cities any time soon. The one or two foreign law firm offices in cities such as Qingdao, Guangzhou or Tianjin have been notable for their complete absence of profile in the broader market.
Even with all of the practical constraints described above, complaints about the regulatory limitations on the opening of additional China offices continue to be highlighted in white papers drafted by the US law firms in China. I always found it hard to feel much sympathy for this position even while at Lovells, and it seems that the representatives of the top UK law firms who attended the event at the UK ambassador's residence a couple of months ago felt much the same way.
Another regulatory issue regularly raised by the US (and perhaps also the UK) law firms in China relates to the preferential tax treatment afforded to local law firms. There is some merit to this complaint, but there is no realistic expectation that the tax situation for the foreign law firms can be changed for the better; the only thing that can happen (and many in the market expect this to happen in the medium term) is for the preferential tax treatment currently afforded to local law firms to be discontinued and brought into line with the more standard tax treatment applied to the foreign firms.
The basic facts are not in dispute. China offices of foreign law firms pay tax on profits at a rate of 25 per cent and then distributions of profits out of China are subject to withholding tax of 5-10 per cent. This, of course, assumes that the China office is profitable from an actual operating perspective (see above) as well as a tax-reporting perspective (as there should be ways to pay at least some part of partner compensation locally to be claimed as a deduction, although this has to be balanced out against the fact that this exposes all such locally paid partner compensation to local individual income tax, which is not terribly favourable for the particular partner).
By contrast, local firms pay a flat 8.75 per cent tax on total revenue as opposed to net profits. But this is not all good news for the local firms as expenses are not deductible from taxable income, which creates problems when collecting fees as lead counsel for work done by a separate firm on a coordinated cross-firm basis. This tax scheme essentially treats the big Chinese law firms as a collection of sole practitioners, which in reality all but the top several Chinese law firms are, and it is clearly advantageous for partners in local law firms (not applicable to yours truly since I cannot be registered as a partner in a local Chinese firm, at least at this stage), but it is not a great way to run a big law firm, and I know senior partners in various top Chinese law firms who will be just as happy to see this regularised and brought in line with the standard tax treatment applied to foreign firms' China offices.
Once that happens – and I share the assumption that it will happen at some point – the playing field will not immediately shift in a manner that is dramatically more favourable to the foreign law firms solely as a result of such a change. Yes, the local firms that are profitable will have to pay tax at a higher rate, but they will also have more tools available to them to manage taxable income when calculated on a net profit basis. In any event, many of the top Chinese firms run pretty tight ships in terms of expense management and can achieve gross profit margins of well over than 60 per cent. In sum, local Chinese firms will always enjoy a substantial cost advantage over their foreign law firm counterparts in Chinese independents of the applicable tax scheme, while the foreign firms have no obvious upside potential on the tax side and continuing challenges on the costs side. Evening out the tax rates will have an impact, but it will not be a panacea for the unprofitable China offices of the majority of the foreign firms if their business models remain unchanged.
There are a number of smaller administrative quibbles that foreign law firms have with respect to registrations of foreign lawyers, work visas and the like, but these are not so different from what I encounter now at a Chinese law firm, so these are equal opportunity irritants.
The big regulatory issues for the foreign law firms, which I will address in my next blog posting, relate to limitations on the permitted scope of legal practice, the rights to hire Chinese lawyers to provide Chinese legal services, and the rights to appear before various government agencies. One of these issues is a legitimate complaint, another is a red herring, and the last is a bit of wishful thinking, at least in the near term. In my next blog I will identify which description applies to which issue. Another spoiler alert: more than one description may apply to each issue listed above.
In any event, none of these issues affects the real market opportunities that are available for foreign law firms in China. Again, that probably explains the apparent level of contentment of the representatives of the top UK firms who participated in the meeting at the UK ambassador's residence a few months back – they have a workable business model. Somehow, it seems that those who complain the most about an allegedly uneven playing field are those whose real problem is not the regulatory environment but their business plan. More in the next instalment.
Robert Lewis is international managing partner at Zhong Lun Law Firm. He is based in Beijing


text:
Emergency response authorities are urging Californians to take earthquake preparedness seriously and plan on having to take care of themselves for up to two weeks in a disaster.
Experts gathered Thursday at a Los Angeles County Fire Department training facility drew attention to the issue of personal readiness in advance of the Oct. 21 "Great California ShakeOut."
The annual statewide earthquake drill will see millions of people dive under desks and tables at the same time to practice the drop, cover and hold technique for surviving a temblor.
Friday is the 23rd anniversary of the magnitude-5.9 Whittier Narrows earthquake, which killed eight people and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in eastern Los Angeles County.


text:
Item # :PRR12309SP
Retail Value: 425.00
Price: $275.00
There are some styles that are always in good taste, no matter what's
trending at any given time. This Sapphire Diamond Halo Ring in 10K White
Gold beautifully displays one of those styles. The halo ring, which
magnifies the sparkle of a center stone with a frame of smaller gems, first
came into vogue in the 1920s. Although it's peaked in popularity several
times, it's never fallen out of style, and this sapphire and diamond ring is
a prime example of this design's enduring appeal.
A rich blue 0.60-carat sapphire sparkles as the centerpiece of this simply
sophisticated halo ring. This 6" x 4" oval-shaped gem has a saturated indigo
hue that instantly communicates sophistication and that is gorgeously
contrasted by the 0.18 carats of diamonds that accent it. Forming a frame
around the center gem are 18 of these small round colorless gems, while
additional diamonds glitter from the slender, shining band. These dazzling
accents make the color of the center sapphire pop while allowing this ring
to sparkle from many sides.
Cool 10K white gold provides a gleaming and affordable foundation for this
classy piece. This halo ring's perpetual class ensures that this style will
retain its glamour for years to come.
Gemstone Information
Diamond Information