text:
Per capita (age 15+) cigarette consumption fell by 7% in 2003. By 2004, prevalence had reached an all time low of 20%. The percentage of Canadians aged 40-54 who smoked had declined from 24% in 2001 to 21% in 2004.*
This effective smoking cessation campaign used eight television ads based on Prochaska's theory of behavioural change, to move smokers along from the pre-contemplation to the maintenance stage of smoking cessation. The ads featured an average male smoker moving through the stages of smoking cessation.
To minimize site maintenance costs, all case studies on this site are written in the past tense, even if they are ongoing.
Approaching the new millennium, smoking was the leading cause of preventable death and illness in Canada, and the most pressing public health concern in the country. Many smokers were young adults, blue-collar workers or Canadians living on a low income. A significant number were First Nations or Inuit people.
In April 2001, the Federal Tobacco Control Strategy (FTCS) launched a five-year strategy to reduce disease and death caused by the use of tobacco through the following approaches:
A national cessation campaign for mainstream Canadians was launched in January, 2003.
Health Canada had established five overarching objectives:
The program's primary three year objectives for the target audience (adults 40-54) were:
The secondary three-year objectives were:
An Ipsos-Reid survey conducted in December 2003, indicated that:
Environics concluded that smokers aged 40 to 54 were the most likely to consider quitting smoking "given their past history of trying to quit, the resonance of this goal with their own needs to stay either healthy or avoid illness, and concerns about the impact of their smoking on loved ones, and others."
An earlier survey (the 2001 Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey - CTUMS) had found that:
The 2003 CTUMS had similar findings.
Qualitative Research of Smokers Aged 40-54 had shown that:
Health Canada also conducted a best practices review, and found a successful cessation campaign developed by the Arizona Department of Health Services, called the "Chuck" campaign. It had been successful at encouraging smokers to consider quitting and call local quit line services.
The Chuck campaign featured a series of ads based on the Prochaska model of staged change. Viewers followed an average male smoker from the pre-contemplation stage, through the contemplation, preparation, and action stages, to the maintenance stage. Health Canada tested this campaign, which used a new positive approach, along with several others that used scare tactics with gruesome visuals.
It was clear the Arizona concept tested well with the target audience. It received positive responses during focus group testing across Canada - equally by men and women, and in rural and urban regions. "Chuck" left focus participants feeling empowered regarding their ability to quit (which as mentioned earlier, was a problem with this group).
This was largely due to how well they related to the character - they saw themselves, a brother or an uncle in Chuck. He was believable to the smokers and therefore, they listened to him. Secondly, they could also relate to the experiences he faced as he quit smoking, and watching him go through the stages provided them with encouragement. He could sympathize with the difficulties of quitting. This approach also helped them better understand the quitting process and the importance of getting help to assist them in changing their behaviour.
Thirdly, the concept was positive and motivational in nature, therefore, was empathetic and focused more on helping smokers achieve success rather than scaring or further making them feel like pariahs. It opened their eyes to the idea of focusing on one stage at a time, therefore, making it seem more do-able. This in turn helped them with their confidence in taking the first step. They also appreciated the humour in the "Chuck" ads.
Health Canada continued its research as it developed a Canadianized version of the Chuck campaign. They consulted with related NGOs and the provinces in order to get input on the approach, and to understand and support their priorities. This helped gain support for the resulting campaign.
Health Canada held a day-long consultation session with key stakeholders where they helped identify:
Targeting the Audience
Primary Audience:
Secondary Audience:
The cessation campaign used an engaging, everyday Canadian character, "Bob" (Martin in French). The campaign followed him through the stages involved in the quitting process (Vivid, Credible Communication). The central messages were that, quitting smoking may be difficult but it is possible, and it is worth it. The campaign also focused on the importance of developing a quit plan.
Eight TV ads were produced, each covering a stage of change (2 contemplation, 2 preparation, 2 action and 2 maintenance ads, one of which focused on the issue of relapse which occurs in the maintenance phase). Ads were aired during key periods for quit attempts as identified through consultations with the NGOs. They were aired sequentially over a 14-month period (Mass Media; Building Motivation Over Time).
The ads had a call-to-action asking the viewer to call 1 800 O-Canada (the federal government's central 1 800 number for all of its services and resources) or to visit Health Canada's website to get help on how to quit smoking.
Health Canada worked with the provinces, not only to consult on tactics that would increase reach most effectively in their regions, but also to offer Canadians an additional cessation resource - provincial quitlines. In Atlantic Canada, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the call to action on the TV ads asked viewers to call the helpline number in their province (Overcoming Specific Barriers, Building Motivation Over Time).
Key Messages:
Based on the research, Health Canada decided on the following key messages:
For maximum visibility, the campaign was launched in January 2003, during national non-smoking week.
A "Bob" and "Martin" micro-website, residing off Health Canada's www.gosmokefree.ca, was developed to complement the campaign and provide targeted information to the target audience. It included Bob's journal (Martin in French) (a section that included entries describing what he went through at each stage of quitting), and quit tips (a section where Bob (and Martin in French) listed his most effective quit tips and enabled visitors to share their most helpful tips) (Overcoming Specific Barriers).
The website also enabled users to sign up for a series of e-Quit Messages - daily e-mail messages for one month to support them through the quitting process (Building Motivation Over Time; Prompts; See sample in the Notes section, below). In addition, the website enabled users to recognize their friends' successes by registering them to receive e-mailed Certificates of Accomplishment (Norm Appeals).
Other communication channels included:
In addition, based on research indicating that the target market perceived pharmacists as a top source of credible information on cessation, Health Canada collaborated with Wal-Mart Canada. This initiative was launched during National Non-Smoking Week (January 16-22, 2005.)At all 242 Wal-Mart stores across Canada, Wal-Mart did the following: (Prompts)
This agreement provided Health Canada with a great high-reach, low-cost opportunity to support the Tobacco Control Program cessation objectives, strengthen its brand and credibility, reinforce campaign messages, and promote and distribute its cessation resources.
Tobacco use was monitored through the Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey (CTUMS). Health Canada also evaluated program activities, outputs and results following each "burst" of promotion - through tracking of calls to 1 800 O-Canada, calls to the help-lines, visits to the Website and campaign microsite, booklet orders and ad recall testing following the airing of each ad.
Per capita (age 15+) cigarette consumption fell by 7% in 2003. By 2004, prevalence had reached an all time low of 20%. The percentage of Canadians aged 40-54 who smoked had declined from 24% in 2001 to 21% in 2004. *
The Bob/Martin campaign proved to be one of Health Canada's most successful social marketing campaigns. From the launch in January 2003 to March 2005, the campaign drove over 30,000 calls to the 1 800 O-Canada toll free line. There was a strong correlation between having the TV ads on air and calls to the toll free line and web activity. Since the beginning of the campaign, over 180,000 copies of "On the Road to Quitting" were distributed. There were close to 240,000 visits to the Bob and Martin microsite, where almost 90,000 users created profiles to receive support through an electronic version of "On the Road to Quitting". In addition, there were over 33,000 registrations for e-quit (daily quitting messages).
When the campaign aired in 2003/4, ad recall for the Bob/Martin ads was extremely high. Aided re-call for the "Plan" ad was highest at 60%. The "Blip" ad was considered by the greatest proportion of those surveyed to be effective (74%) and believable (86%). Thoughts about quitting increased throughout the campaign by almost 10%. The later ads benefited from the audience's exposure to the characters of the earlier ads; recognition of Bob/Martin did not have to be built as it in the earlier ads.
Five of the ads were re-aired from January to March 2005. While recall for each individual ads was lower than for the previous year, seven out of ten adult smokers still saw one or more of these campaign ads.
Twenty three percent of those that saw the ads said that they did something as a result of seeing the ads and a further 20% said that they planned on doing something because of the ads. Sixty eight percent of those that saw one or more of the Bob/Martin campaign ads said they were now seriously thinking of quitting smoking, versus 55% who did not see any of the ads.
Janice Keenan
Acting Director, Marketing Communications and Corporate Communications Services
Health Canada
Tunney's Pasture
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada K1A 0K9
Tel: (613) 954-8839
E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
Lessons Learned
* It is important to note that these changes cannot be solely attributed solely to the Cessation campaign.
The following is an example of a support e-mail from e-Quit:
"What makes you reach for a cigarette?
In addition to physical cravings, many people smoke in response to certain emotions....
We all feel these things, but we can choose how we respond. What else could you do with your emotions instead of smoking? What else could you do to feel pleasure when you quit? Just think about it for now and we'll talk more about this in future messages."
The following is the text from the TV ads:
Bob thinks about quitting
"I know. It's tough to be a smoker these days...
I'm outside and it's minus 20. No problem - I like winter.
My breath stinks? I've got mouthwash.
Food's got no taste? No problem - I use salt.
I'm getting sick of this. That's the problem."
Bob gets ready
"Oh ya, I tried to quit. Lasted two hours. Then I got a phone call. I always have a cigarette when I'm talking on the phone... and when I have a coffee... go for a drive...
In fact, the only time I'm not lighting up is when I'm asleep or on the toilet. Can't spend my whole day there...
Can I?"
Bob is getting tired of this
"This is it... my last cigarette. Cause I'm gonna quit smoking. I mean I can't even laugh anymore without coughing.
I hear a really funny joke and I'm doubled over in two... my sides are aching...
But not in a good way. This time the joke's on you... I quit."
Bob makes a plan
"I tried to quit cold turkey but... I found out it's better if you have a plan.
Any time I have a craving, I drink water, breathe deep, go for a walk...
Anything... but give in to the craving. It only lasts for a couple of minutes and then it's gone.
Just one puff, one little puff. You know you really want it. A puff... puff... puff...
Bob makes the attempt
"You're quitting too? Let me tell ya, the 1st week isn't bad, but the 2nd and 3rd week... man!
Lucky, I have a plan to quit and a wife who reminds me I''m doing the right thing.
She tells me the change is amazing...
I feel like a new man."
Bob Makes a Life Plan
"I just quit smoking and there are three things that keep me going.
My plan to quit...
And my two kids.
I want to be around to see them graduate...get married, have kids of their own.
So, it started as a quit smoking plan, and now...it's a life plan."
Bob gets the hang of it
"I quit smoking here and it was supposed to last the rest of my life.
"Turned out I gave in to a craving blip and blip.
"Blip. Blip. Blip.
"Yup I blew it. But I quit again. This time for a day. No blip, and another and another.
"Now I'm getting the hang of it... it's blipping amazing.
"You too can quit for good... especially with a plan.
Bob, the ex-smoker
"Look at me... Bob the ex-smoker...
"I'm playing more basketball with my kids.
"I feel great, my cough is gone, I hardly ever run out of breath...
"I think I finally won the battle.
"Now if I can just figure out how to win this game.
Search the Case Studies
Click for Advanced Search »
This site is brought to you through
the vision and generosity of:
Primary Sponsors
Supporting Sponsors
© 1996-2019 Copyright Jay Kassirer. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any means without prior permission of the author. Please contact me. I will usually give permission for credited uses with links


text:
On April 30, Nikil Joarder, a Hindu tailor, was hacked to death while sitting outside his shop in central Bangladesh. Joarder, who was in his early 50s, had been arrested in 2012 for allegedly making derogatory remarks against Islam though he was later released after spending weeks in jail. Just days earlier, Xulhaz Mannan, a prominent LGBT activist and editor of Bangladesh's only LGBT magazine was hacked to death along with another man in his Dhaka flat. These two killings, along with the brutal hacking murder of a university teacher were all believed to be the work of extremists. While Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility, government sources dispute this stating that the Islamic terrorist group is not operating in Bangladesh. Still, the presence of numerous other extremist organizations means that finding those responsible may not be possible.
In the past few years, many attacks believed to be the work of Islamic extremists have also been carried out. The victims include secular bloggers, academics, gay rights activists, and members of different religious minorities including Shia, Sufi and Ahmadi Muslims, Christians and Hindus. Many of the victims were hacked to death by machetes and few of these murders have been solved by police. There have also been allegations that police are complicit in the killings by not arriving until after the attackers have fled.
One disturbing similarity among the victims is that they were targeted on social media shortly before their deaths. Violent extremist groups are openly using Facebook and Twitter to threaten likely victims as well as claim responsibility after the killings occur. Media critics are also warning about the growing role of social media in identifying potential targets as well as allowing extremists to spread dangerous misinformation that makes violence more likely. A September 2012 campaign of attacks directed against Buddhist monasteries, temples, and private homes occurred following the publication of an image of a Quran being desecrated. The image appeared on a Facebook account under a Buddhist male name that later proved to be fake. Using bogus accounts like this allows for extremists to promote hatred and violence against minority religious groups.
Extremists are also using information published in mainstream media stories to track secular bloggers, gay activists, and other potential targets and openly inciting violence against them. They also invite other netizens to provide information to aid in identifying even anonymous bloggers and celebrating their deaths afterward. One recent documentary, titled "The Razor's Edge" which was produced by anonymous blogger "Nastiker Dhormokotha" (religious talk of an atheist), describes the often harrowing danger faced by secular bloggers in Bangladesh today. The documentary has since won in the Citizen Journalism category at the Deutsche Welle BOBs awards in 2016.
While Bangladeshi government authorities have regularly come down on Facebook for various "threats to public security," they represent only a fraction of the cases in which social media has been used by extremists. Mainstream media publications are also being encouraged to provide better privacy for individuals who risk being targeted and to avoid inflammatory rhetoric that might lead to violence.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
John Gebbie
Systems Business Development Manager
New York
Prior to joining Barbizon Systems Division in 1997, Mr. Gebbie received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. While there, he worked on several Academy Award-winning films, gained valuable and diverse experience working for HBO Downtown Productions, Lighting Dimensions International, and the New York Yankees. He also worked on a freelance basis for the CBS Soap Opera Guiding Light.
John went on to work for Strand Lighting as Technical Specialist on several projects, including the Broadway musical Ragtime, the Philadelphia Academy of Music and Bally\'s Wild, Wild West Casino in Atlantic City. As Lead Project Manager for Barbizon New York, John brought a strong technical background to the New York installation business. Some of his projects included the large new construction project at the American Museum of Natural History\'s Rose Center for Earth and Space, and Broadway\'s newest renovation project for the Roundabout Theatre Company\'s American Airlines Theater. Also, he acted as Field Project Coordinator for the Universal Studios\' City Walk Theme park in Orlando, Florida.
In 2000 John was promoted to the Manager of the Systems Division. With diverse knowledge in film, television, and theatrical production, Mr. Gebbie provides a wide range of experience in the integration of complex lighting systems. Throughout his tenure as the Systems Manager, John had much involvement with various high profile projects such as Fox News Studios, Hugo Boss Retail stores nationwide, David H. Koch Theatre renovation and most recently the King Saud University Theatre upgrade located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
In September 2010, John has expanded his role to include Domestic and International Business Development. Recently Barbizon opened up a Systems office in Bangalore, India. He assists with the development and growth of this new location as well as identifying new business locally and abroad for Barbizon.


text:
Despite repeatedly touting their gay-friendly credentials, many in the sports world reacted to Mike Sam's surprising pre-draft coming out like the clueless parents of a flamboyant child. After Sam's announcement on Sunday, sources in and around the NFL fell back on an attitude all too familiar to many in the LGBTQ community: We love you, but you just don't understand what the real world is like. But unlike an overprotective mom or dad telling their scrawny 12-year-old kid that he should've kept quiet for his own good, they instead find themselves patronizingly coddling a 6-foot-2, 255-pound All-American defensive linebacker. They say that the real world—or in this case, the locker room—is just too harsh, too painful, and too dangerous for an out gay man.
An anonymous NFL personnel assistant said on Sunday that Sam would "chemically imbalance" the locker room. New York Giants cornerback Terrell Thomas echoed that sentiment, reiterating "in the locker room, it's different." It's Don't Ask, Don't Tell all over again. While many seem willing to accept that there are already dozens of gay players in locker rooms across every American professional league, others do not. A handful of NFLers continue to issue anonymous statements about the impact on team morale and the impending locker-room drama (as if NFL locker rooms weren't dramatic already). They don't have a problem with an openly gay player, though. It's others who might.
For many in the NFL, this is merely the professional equivalent of the completely obtuse parent: perfectly fine with gay people, as long as it isn't their child. It's time to stop hiding behind the curtain of protective homophobia. Suggesting that the most challenging struggles of an openly gay life are not worth its triumphs reveals startling ignorance. It not only perpetuates the misery of the closet, but also preserves the homophobic status quo. Any attempt to cover this ignorance with the gauze of protection is a sham. As Deadspin's Barry Petchesky observed, it is textbook concern trolling.
For all of the awful responses, NFL Players Association President Domonique Foxworth effortlessly dismissed the locker room panic, stating that "some NFL locker rooms need disrupting, to be frank." The American Prospect's Scott Lemieux found a great parallel in the 1970s Supreme Court (members who threatened to leave if a woman was appointed weren't taking their jobs seriously). Career NFL wide receiver Donté Stallworth added to the chorus, saying any team that couldn't handle the media attention brought upon them by drafting Sam "will suck on the field anyway"
Those "concerns" with Sam's future NFL career seem to rest on the assumption that he will immediately run to the press or his lawyers when someone uses a gay slur. It's almost as if Sam had never been gay until Sunday. As if he never faced an anti-gay comment in the locker room or on the field and wasn't capable of dealing with it privately. The real world, of course, is a very harsh and painful place. Perhaps nobody understands that more than Sam himself. Yesterday, his father readily denounced homosexual relationships during an interview with the New York Times. His mother, a devout Jehovah's Witness, won't even return his calls.
While Sam's place in the public eye is unique, the perils of coming out are not. And while Mike Sam's own parents have reacted with blatant homophobia, others in the NFL community are sending Sam a signal that the world just isn't ready for you yet. By that logic, the world isn't ready for anything. As selfish as it is well-meaning, protective homophobia is alive and well. Mike Sam is capable of taking care of himself. Just as he let go of his concerns about his peers, his parents, and the public, it's time to drop our concerns for him.


text:
One way links is an crucial method to raise your building links. This approach concerning bettering search engine ranking positions is typically employed right now as becoming a type of site advertising, which will not just create on the web rankings but additionally yields earnings. Using link building tips has its advantages.
free backlinks
One way links are usually in essence outside links that one on one visitors to your web web site coming from a web host site. Applying this potent application in advertising and marketing your internet site, it can be likely that individuals clicking on these type of links is higher, which in turn normally raises the building backlinks. This kind of turn into a substantial factor in creating your website useful given that engines like google such as Search engines locations importance in building backlinks whenever indexing or rating web sites. Listed here are a couple techniques upon how to become able to get one way links aimed at your web.
Maybe one inside the well-liked tactics about how to get one way links is truly write-up promoting. A regular development advertising on the internet at this time, this type of workout to getting one way links meets the stress of several website owners that are brief of funds to get much more written content or articles because of their web sites. This is swiftly shipped to by write-up marketing and also distributing these to various web-sites, articles directories and Ezines. In turn, you can post a description regarding oneself or your company employing a hyperlink for your web site immediately after the content. Utilizing this strategy will guarantee a high quantity of one way links. Utilise link building tips to increase your website profile via the internet.
Hosting internet sites would be the one other profitable strategy on how in order to get one way links. The truth is, you will discover a number of procedures by which blogs enables you to increase your link reputation which consists of preserving your web site on the web web-site. As the articles from the weblog is continually acquiring up-to-date, lots a lot more people today are likely to connect to internet sites. One more way upon how to be able to get one way links is typically to distribute your site to become in a position to blog sites. You will find several regarding weblog directories on-line, a lot of of which are completely no cost.
Producing the info of an web-site beneficial and also meaningful for you to readers is an extra way about how to become able to get one way links aimed at your internet site. Searching for reputable particulars, various website owners will most likely then spot links aimed at your web that will consequently present you with required one way links. This technique concerning how to become able to get one way links to your web page is really one from the most effective approaches to raise your ranking. The actual addition of impartial, opinionated content on the world wide web website which typically cope with several matters along with supplying suggestions to get over certain concerns are believed great content material material and can undoubtedly push quality guests to your world-wide-web web-site.
Which incorporate testimonials to web sites has grown to be some factor of an craze in recent times and is particularly actually an effective way in how for you to get one way links. These kinds of testimonials typically range from buyers with the web sites along with company customers whom make the most of the services with the website by itself. To acquire this kind of testimonials, you will be given a link for your site. So spending some time to write down a positive assessment once you discover a wonderful world wide web internet site together with get superb service won't be squandered.
link building tips
If you're nonetheless interested on how to get one way links to your web site, the approach of posting so as to internet sites and setting up a submitted article service on your own website alone possibly the way to appear. These kind of helpful tactics about how so that you can get one way links to your site will guarantee a rise in site visitors as well as a surge in search engine rank although escalating your revenue.


text:
See also: IRC log
<scribe> scribe: Jan
Jan's start on comments: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-au/2012AprJun/0000.html
JT: 1- This would be useful and should contain a quick reference checklist (should be a living document)
2- Some aspects of this (good standing, heartbeats) could benefit from some flexibility.
3- Only those things worth enforcing in all instances should be process rules. The rest might inform best practices.
GP: Brings up issue of charter...seemed to take time away from standards authoring
JT: More general point about sparing members of group from the bureaucratic side of things.
3A- Charter administration should fall less on members of group trying to work
3B- Charter should be more of a living document with respect to work being done
JS: Sometimes that's our protection.
Process Implementation: Do the roles & responsibilities of identified people need updating
4- This wouldn't hurt.
5- But the most important issue is that Groups and Editors should never contravene the consensus of the group (especially when votes have actually been taken)
Process clarity: Process clarity: Going to Last Call (LC) is misleading for Candidate Recommendation (CR) changes
6- Agree. Perhaps circling at CR should be possible.
JS: Tricky issue is that Last Call is patent exclusion opportunity.
6- Agree. Perhaps circling at CR should be possible as long a spatent exclusion issues are handle.
6- Agree. Perhaps circling at CR should be possible as long a spatent exclusion issues are handled.
TB: Perception that many stakeholders dont pay attention till last call...so perception is actually the First Look
6- Agree. Perhaps circling at CR should be possible as long a spatent exclusion issues are handled. It is a cyclical process, so better terms probably exist.
6- Agree. Perhaps circling at CR should be possible as long as patent exclusion issues are handled. It is a cyclical process, so better terms probably exist.
GP: ISO has different terms
Process clarity: How should implementation integrate into process
7- Agree that waiting till CR is too late. Instead, there should be talk about implementation throughout with clear disclaimers that prior to CR, things can change so early implementers need to understand that.
Complexity of Process Document
8- Agree with all. See my comment #3
8- Hearbeat requirements much less important for public groups like AUWG
Speed of document production
9- These delays can be frustrating but not sure how to get around them. One possibility that could also help implementers could be the ability to lock certain parts of the document that the group feels is done. And to ensure this, the pub rules checker might be able to detect if there have been changes to locked areas.
Contextual/Social Framework: Desire for stable reference
10- Stable references are very important. It is very useful for an email in the list to be able to point to a stable section of a stable document.
11- On the other hand, if the area of a recommendation continues to evolve quickly, why should a document ever be "done"?
10- Stable references are very important. It is very useful for an email in the list to be able to point to a stable section of a stable document. Also required for reference from legislation and policy
Can we improve input from 'horizontal' groups (WAI, I18N, ...).
12- It is tricky to balance the need of WGs to move forward on specs with accessibility (I18N, security?) review, especially when it is well known that accessibility is easier when built in from the beginning. First public draft seems too late for the first review. Perhaps a review should occur on the requirements or similar document at the outset? And perhaps WGs could receive a checklist...
scribe: of type of things that, when added to spec, will trigger accessibility issues so they will be less surprised when things are flagged later and perhaps be more likely to proactively seek accessibility input?
JS: Like waht
JT: Independece across
... etc
... Everyone fairly satisfied with this as a set of commetns from AUWG?
GP: Great
JS: Yes
CE: Deadline?
JS: This friday?
JS: No new news...I continue to push towards publishing, waiting for approvals.
JR: Re 3 nothing done yet
JS: Nothing new since last
... We have a new tool in W3C that is continuing to evolve. Takes our tests and provides a place to store them....people can query etc
... People can run test on their own tools
... THats the plan. It is still publically availalble.
... Key thing is that we have test cases to write...hundreds of them.
... For each we need a basic test, a failure test and then edge cases.
JR: Hopefully some of TIm's past testing suite work can be re-used
TB: I'd like to see what can be reused
JS: TPAC will be in France in
... Last week we wanted to find out if our European partners would be able to attend.
... I will put up a survey for the TPAC F2F
JT: Coleman insistute meeting is
at the same time
... 1-2 of Nov
... Also we are co-hosting something in Colombia lat Oct
JR: Sounds like it won't work
JS: What a number of groups do is meet the following week
JT: We may have a host in
... No call on April 9
This is scribe.perl Revision: 1.136 of Date: 2011/05/12 12:01:43 Check for newer version at http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2002/scribe/ Guessing input format: RRSAgent_Text_Format (score 1.00) Found Scribe: Jan Inferring ScribeNick: Jan Default Present: Jeanne, Jan, Jutta, Greg, CherieE, Tim_Boland, Sueann Present: Jeanne Jan Jutta Greg CherieE Tim_Boland Sueann Agenda: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-au/2012AprJun/0001.html Got date from IRC log name: 02 Apr 2012 Guessing minutes URL: http://www.w3.org/2012/04/02-au-minutes.html People with action items: WARNING: Input appears to use implicit continuation lines. You may need the "-implicitContinuations" option.[End of scribe.perl diagnostic output]


text:
Gary LeVox Says He Did Not Co-Write Caylie Anthony Tribute [Video]
Adding another dose of mystery into the Casey Anthony turmoil, for several days many radio stations have reported that Rascal Flatts' Gary LeVox had co-written a song , She's Going Places along with Cledus T. Judd in tribute to Caylie Anthony. Now, it appears that is not entirely true.
You may recall we also told you that Caylie's grandparents, George and Cindy Anthony wanted to meet Rascal Flatts and to thank Gary for the tribute. All sources seem to indicate the group and/or Gary was hesitant to do that.
Gary, through a spokesperson, says that he did co-write a song with Cledus and another writer, Jimmy Yeary, more than a year ago. It now appears Judd and Yeary rewrote the song as a tribute. Gary's spoksperson even says Gary is not credited as a co-writer nor is he receiving any publishing funds.
Shane Hines is the vocalist.
Oy -- it is so confusing. And tributes using the tune are all over You Tube.


text:
Man Against Horse Race
Please note: There will not be a 2018 race.
See the results of previous races!
Click here for pictures of the 2017 race.
Start Location & Course Information:
Base Camp-Mingus Mountain, Prescott, AZ
Course Map
Elevation Information
Start Times Saturday October 7th, 2017:
50 Mile Run and Trail Ride 6:30 A.M.
25 Mile Run and Trail Ride 7:30 A.M.
12 Mile Run 7:45 A.M.
12 Mile Trail Ride 9:00AM - Check in prior to start
Ride Registration and vet exams (25&50 mile only): Friday October 6th, 3-6PM at Base Camp.
Run Registration Entry Due: October 2nd.
Run Registration and packet pick-up: Friday October 6th, 3-6PM or Saturday 5AM at Base Camp.
Pre-race Briefing Friday at 7:00PM at Base Camp.
|Registration Run Costs:
|Registration Ride Costs:
|50 Mile - $100.00
|50 Mile - $110.00
|25 Mile - $75.00
|25 Mile - $90.00
|12 Mile - $35.00
|12 Mile - $35.00
Race Headquarters:
Base Camp at Fain Rd and Hwy 89A
Hotels: Arizona Inn (928)772-8600 Motel 6 (928)772-2200
Bar-B-Que: Saturday, October 7,1 2016 at Base Camp, 4:30-6:00 P.M. $12.00
(Meal included 25/50 milers)
Amenities: Multi-Colored T-Shirts to all entrants. Buckles for 50 mile finishers.
Aid stations approx. every five miles; NO AGE CATEGORIES.
Ceremonies: 12 Miles at 12:00 P.M. 25/50 Miles at 6:00 P.M.
Information: Call Ron Barrett (928)925-1930 (rbarrett @ interior-logic.com) OR Ned Leigh (928)-636-7041
1. The race is a loop course and will start and finish from the base camp windmill, located on Old Fain Rd., Approx. 7 miles north of HWY 69 and 3 miles east on HWY 89A and 1 mile south on Old Fain Rd
2. Runners run concurrently with horses. This is not a ride & tie. The 25 & 50 mile courses are moderately difficult; the 12 mile is a rolling course. The 25 & 50 mile distances should not be undertaken without significant preparation. Runners should be in shape for travel over rough country, including steep and rocky terrain. Most of the course is on mountainous trails and back roads through the tall pines of Mingus Mountain. Elevation at base camp is Approx. 5000 feet with 50 mile course climbing to an approx. elevation of 7600 feet.
3. Weather conditions are highly unpredictable, with snow and hail are as possible as sun shine and clear skies.
4. Base camp can accommodate over-night campers, and RV's. No parking or camping will be allowed outside base camp boundaries. NO CAMPFIRES WILL BE PERMITTED! On the 25 & 50 mile courses, pit crews will have access to aid stations. Only a few aid stations.


text:
Every year, tens of thousands of people in the United States contract influenza, a highly contagious respiratory tract disease. New influenza vaccines are created to protect and prevent influenza A and B strains expected to cause infections during upcoming winter months. It is the single best way to prevent flu and potentially serious complications.
Download the Influenza Office Tools
All New 2015-2016 Influenza Toolkit
Your Best Shot for the Flu Season Video
Introduction, acknowledgements, and protecting all from flu campaign
What is influenza? How is influenza spread? When does Influenza occur? What causes influenza? What causes the influenza virus to change?
Influenza symptoms, complications and severity
Differences between the flu and the common cold; Testing for influenza; Treating and preventing influenza; "Take 3" from the CDC
Protecting against influenza
Establishing an influenza vaccination campaign in the office
Disparities among minorities and seniors
Tips for successful campaigns, prior year presentations and influenza related links


text:
- Commentary
- Open Access
Battling the malaria iceberg with chloroquine in India
- Vinod P Sharma1Email author
© Sharma; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2007
- Received: 16 November 2006
- Accepted: 07 August 2007
- Published: 07 August 2007
The National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP) of the Ministry of Health, Government of India is reporting about 2 million parasite positive cases each year, although case incidence is 30-fold or more under-estimated. Forty five to fifty percent of Plasmodium infections are caused by Plasmodium falciparum, the killer parasite. Anti-malaria drug policy (2007) of the NVBDC recommends chloroquine (CQ) as the first line of drug for the treatment of all malarias. In a Primary Health Centre (PHC) reporting 10% or more cases of CQ resistance in P. falciparum, ACT blister pack is recommended and, so far, the policy has been adopted in 261 PHCs of 71 districts. The NVBDCP still depends on CQ to combat malaria and, as a result, P. falciparum has taken deep roots in malaria-endemic regions, causing unacceptable levels of morbidity and mortality. This policy was a subject of criticism in recent Nature and Lancet articles questioning the World Bank's decision to supply CQ to the NVBDCP. Continuation of an outdated drug in the treatment of P. falciparum is counterproductive in fighting drug resistant malaria and in the containment of P. falciparum. Switchover to Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) in the treatment of all P. falciparum cases, ban on artemisinin monotherapy and effective vector control (treated nets/efficient insecticide spraying) would be a rational approach to malaria control in India.
- Malaria
- Chloroquine
- Artesunate
- Drug Policy
- Passive Case Detection
The National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP) is reporting about 2 million parasite positive cases a year, 50% of these Plasmodium falciparum. The WHO estimates 100 million cases in the South East Asian Region, 70% of these occur in India [1, 2]. Independent studies by the Indian Council of Medical Research have unequivocally established that malaria incidence is hugely under-estimated [3–6]. Health is the state's responsibility, therefore, malaria control is carried out by the states, under the overall guidance of the NVBDCP. To monitor the impact of interventions surveillance is organized to detect malaria cases by examining fever cases in the entire country. In rural areas, blood smears are collected at fortnightly intervals by multi-purpose workers i.e. through Active Case Detection (ACD) and also collected at the Primary Health Centres (PHCs) i.e. Passive Case Detection (PCD). In urban areas, PCD is carried out at the malaria clinics. The blood smears are examined in the laboratory for parasite identification and results are used for follow-up action. Cases found positive are given radical treatment, as per the policy of the NVBDCP. This data is used in calculating epidemiological indices at the various levels of health services. PHCs reporting cases of drug failure are referred to the drug monitoring teams for further investigation on drug sensitivity in P. falciparum. If 25% (now reduced to 10%) of the cases tested show resistance to CQ, the drug policy is changed for the second line of drug. Thirteen NVBDCP teams routinely monitor P. falciparum drug sensitivity in the country. These teams are located in various regions so as to cover the entire country. P. falciparum monitoring for drug sensitivity is done using the World Health Organization (WHO) methodology of in vivo (28-day) test procedure for determining the status of resistance to CQ and other antimalarial drugs in P. falciparum. Malaria Drug Policy (2007) of the NVBDCP provides inter alia the following treatment guidelines countrywide [7].
1. All fever cases should preferably be investigated for malaria by microscopy or Rapid Detection Test (RDT).
2. The first line of treatment is chloroquine and the second line is ACT (artesunate+sulphadoxine/pyrimethamine) combination in case resistant to these formulations and to treat severe and complicated malaria, quinine will be the drug of choice.
3. Microscopically positive P. falciparum cases should be treated with chloroquine in therapeutic dose of 25 mg/kg body weight over three days and a single dose of primaquine 0,75 mg/kg body weight on the first day. The practice is to be followed at all levels including Voluntary Health Workers (VHWs) like Drug Distribution Centres (DDCs)/Fever Treatment Depots(FTDs)/Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) as well.
The antimalarial drug policy states that all Plasmodium vivax cases, undiagnosed fever cases, and clinical malaria cases should be treated with chloroquine in full therapeutic doses. ACT (artesunate+sulphadoxine/pyrimethamine) is the first line of antimalarial drug for treatment of P. falciparum in chloroquine resistant areas. Chloroquine, therefore, remains the main drug for the treatment of all malarias in India except in PHCs with 10% or more cases found resistant to it. The objective of this paper is to highlight the realistic and evidence-based malaria situation in the country, and how the changes in drug policy and efficient vector control can wipe out malaria, thus bringing out the importance of the WHO recommendation of a switch over to artemisinin-based fixed-dose combination therapy (ACT) to treat all P. falciparum cases (sensitive or resistant to CQ/SP).
Studies on re-emergence of malaria revealed countrywide presence and spread of P. falciparum e.g. P. falciparum is found in all states and union territories except Lakshadweep Island (Malaria situation 2002–2006, NVBDCP). It may be noted that P. falciparum occurrence is highly uneven in time and space [8, 9]. Furthermore, the NVBDCP is reporting malaria epidemics in five or six states each year, and frequent focal outbreaks [10]. In some parts of the country, malaria epidemics cover two or more districts, dominated by P. falciparum [11–14]. Currently an epidemic of malaria is raging in Assam, a region more frequently visited by annual exacerbations [15, 16]. The country-wide presence of P. falciparum is facilitated by inter- and intra-state population movement, particularly for civil works, agriculture, rail road construction, rural urban migration; thus providing opportunities for the mutant strains to disseminate across district and state boundaries [17–19].
Malaria epidemiology and its control are complicated by poverty as it is a dominant disease in poverty stricken societies. For example, Indian states with population exceeding the national average of 26.1% population below poverty line (BPL) contributed 88% P. falciparum in 2000 [25]. Addressing the plenary session of United Nations Conference on Human Environment at Stockholm,14 June 1972, the former Prime Minister of India Smt. Indira Gandhi said "Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters? [26] Poverty alleviation is on the national and United Nations agenda. How to fight poverty which is at the roots of all ills? Certainly malaria control is an important tool to alleviate human suffering caused by poverty and ill health. Therefore, priorities in malaria control should remain high, national and international bodies should work in tandem to eradicate this age old "King of all Diseases".
Plasmodium falciparum monitoring for drug sensitivity is conducted by thirteen NVBDCP teams. Monitoring is done on the line of WHO methodology of in vivo (28-day) standard techniques for determination of resistance in P falciparum to CQ and other antimalarials. India is a vast country, so it is difficult to generalize. However, between 1978 and June 2001, a total of 15,069 P. falciparum cases in 178 districts of 28 states and union territories have been completed. Of these 3,965 (26.3%) were sensitive to CQ; 7,661 (50.8) were S/RI; 2,142 RI resistant; 752 RII resistant (5%) and 549 (3.6%) RIII resistant to CQ [27]. In 2004, the P. falciparum monitoring teams collected 45,966 blood smears, of which 4,756 were positive for malaria and 3,850 for P. falciparum (80.95%). Results based on CQ sensitivity of 209 samples, showed Adequate Clinical and Parasitological Response (ACPR) 98 (47.9%), Early Treatment Failure (ETF) 27 (12.9%) and Late Treatment Failure (LTF) 84 (40.2%). Drug resistance to CQ is presenting countrywide, although proportion of resistant strains varies greatly [28–33]. Already the Pfcrt K76T mutation, an important determinant of CQ resistance, is present in >95% of P. falciparum isolates [34]. In addition to these clear indicators of resistance in the parasite populations, there are important changes in disease outcomes. For example, in patients with P. falciparum infections, acute renal and multi-organ failures have almost doubled in the last 5–7 years. Although it is not possible to attribute this directly to the decreasing efficacy of CQ, but it may be an important factor, as it has been in malaria-related deaths in African children [35]. The deteriorating trends in P. falciparum demands urgent radical changes in antimalarial drug policy. ACT is currently used in 261 PHCs (71 districts) as against approximately 14,000 malaria endemic PHCs. The process of adoption to ACT is painfully slow and may take a long time, until then CQ remains the first line drug in India. In 2006 a series of articles in The Lancet [36–38] and Nature [39] concerned funding of antimalaria drugs by the World Bank. The Lancet paper criticized the World Bank for funding the purchase of CQ by the Indian government. There is substantial evidence that CQ is no longer effective against P. falciparum in many areas of India, and under those circumstances the purchase of CQ supports a dangerous public health practice. One response to the criticism was that CQ is used in India only to combat P. vivax, a species against which it is mostly still effective. This statement contradicts the drug policy of the NVBDCP which recommends the use of CQ to treat all malaria cases, including P. falciparum, the more lethal pathogen.
Malaria in Betul District, Madhya Pradesh, India
DDT (50% WP) sprayed
in mt against 200 mt required
Synthetic Pyrethroid sprayed in mt
CQ Tablets (150 mg base)
Fansidar Tablets
Total malaria cases
P. falciparum cases
The WHO recommends fixed dose artemisinin combination therapy for P. falciparum [43]. In light of the clear evidence for CQ-resistance in P. falciparum, and the recommendation for using CQ as the treatment for all malaria, not just P. vivax, the NVBDCP should respond to the recommendation of the Lancet Viewpoint and abandon CQ, in favour of ACT. Indian states with high prevalence of P. falciparum have the problem of CQ resistance, although the proportion remains undetermined. CQ and sulphadoxine/pyrimethanine (SP) resistance is more pronounced in the north-eastern states and Orissa. Multidrug-resistant strains abound on the international borders with the Indian NE states [44–46]. Artesunate with SP combination (blister pack) is now recommended in drug resistant areas. In seven states in the northeastern region of the country, ACT is being introduced in one district in each state in the pilot phase. Further expansion would depend on the experience gained in the districts in north-eastern region. This switch over to ACT would take place in 71 districts in the country (261 PHCs, but there are approximately 14,000 high risk PHCs requiring ACT to treat P. falciparum), with provision to expand this coverage to adjacent PHCs reporting >10% CQ resistant P. falciparum. States have been advised to monitor the status of drug resistance in the adjacent PHCs for the expansion of ACT. PHCs lacking microscopic facility would be supplied with rapid diagnostic test kits to detect P. falciparum. Furthermore, artemisinin drugs are frequently used as monotherapy in the private sector, the racket of substandard and fake drugs [47], private sector working in isolation, government support to herbal drugs failing in scientific scrutiny [48] and indiscretion in the use of artemisinin are dangerous signals, and failure to address these problems may endanger life of patients and accelerate resistance. Thus the inertia may open the possibility of an epicenter of drug resistant malaria in South East Asia. Finally, withholding correct malaria treatment for unfounded reasons, lacking sound scientific basis and wise clinical judgment, is both unethical and discriminatory. Malaria is predominantly the disease of the poor lacking health equity. This inequity should be leveled by following correct drugs and drug schedule to the needy and unprotected for a relentless war against malaria. Setting the house in order is a formidable challenge. Therefore, inter alia policy issues must be addressed by the NVBDCP first and the foremost.
We are grateful to Dr Neeru Singh, Sr Dy Director, Regional Medical Research Centre for Tribals, Jabalpur, M.P. for providing useful inputs in the preparation of this manuscript.
Authors' Affiliations
- WHO: First meeting of the Regional Technical Advisory Group on Malaria, Manesar, Haryana, India 15–17. 2004, World Health Organization, Regional Office for South-East Asia, New Delhi SEA-MAL-239, 1-38. DecemberGoogle Scholar
- WHO: Strategic Plan to Roll Back Malaria in the South-East Asia Region. World Health Organization, Regional Office for South-East Asia, New Delhi SEA-MAL- 237, 1-25.Google Scholar
- Snow RW, Guerra CA, Noor AM, Myint HY, Hay SI: The global distribution of clinical episodes of Plasmodium falciparum malaria. Nature. 2005, 434: 214-217. 10.1038/nature03342.PubMed CentralView ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Choudhury DS, Malhotra MS, Shukla RP, Ghosh SK, Sharma VP: Resurgence of malaria in Gadarpur PHC district Nainital, Uttar Pradesh. Indian J Malariol. 1983, 20: 49-58.Google Scholar
- Yadav RS, Bhatt RM, Kohli VK, Sharma VP: The burden of malaria in Ahmedabad city, India – a retrospective analysis of reported cases and deaths. Ann Trop Med Parasit. 2003, 97: 793-802. 10.1179/000349803225002642.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Sharma VP, Choudhury DS, Ansari MA, Malhotra MS, Menon PKB, Razdan RK, Batra CP: Studies on the true incidence of malaria in Kharkhoda (Distt. Sonepat, Haryana) and Kichha (distt. Nainital, U.P.) Primary Health Centers. Indian J Malariol. 1983, 20: 21-34.Google Scholar
- NVBDCP: Malaria Drug Policy. 2007, [http://www.nvdcp.gov.in/Doc/Revised %20 drug%20 policy.pdf]Google Scholar
- Sharma VP, Mehrotra KN: Malaria resurgence in India : A critical study. Soc Sci Med. 1986, 22: 835-845. 10.1016/0277-9536(86)90238-8.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Sharma VP: Re-emergence of malaria in India. Indian J Med Res. 1996, 103: 26-45.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Malaria epidemics/outbreaks. [http://www.searo.who.int/EN/Section10/Section21/Section1987.htm]
- Raghavendra K, Subbarao SK, Sharma VP: An investigation in to the recent malaria outbreak of malaria in district Gurgaon, Haryana state. Curr Sci. 1997, 73: 766-770.Google Scholar
- Neeru Singh, Shukla MM, Chand SK, Sharma VP: Outbreak of falciparum malaria in submerged villages of Narayanganj PHC district Mandla due to Narmada irrigation project, Central India, Madhya Pradesh. Curr Sci. 1997, 73: 686-691.Google Scholar
- Neeru Singh , Sharma VP, Shukla MM, Gyan Chand: Malaria outbreak in Kundam block, district Jabalpur, M.P. Indian J Malariol. 1988, 25: 41-49.Google Scholar
- Singh Neeru , Shukla MM, Sharma VP, Saxena BN: A focus of high degree chloroquine resistant P falciparum in Mandla District (M.P.). Indian J Malariol. 1989, 26: 45-51.Google Scholar
- Malaria epidemic kills 50 in Assam. [http://in.news.yahoo.com/060418/43/63m3w.html]
- Dev V, Sharma VP: Persistent transmission of malaria in Sonapur PHC Kamrup district Assam. J Parasitol Dis. 1995, 19: 65-68.Google Scholar
- Kumar A, Sharma VP, Thavaselvam D: Malaria related to constructions in Panaji, Goa. Indian J Malariol. 1991, 28: 219-226.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Adak T, Batra CP, Mittal PK, Sharma VP: Malaria outbreak in a hotel construction site in South Delhi. Indian J Malariol. 1994, 31: 126-131.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Sharma RC, Sharma VP: Epidemiological implications of population migration: Part II Evidence of chloroquine resistant Plasmodium falciparum malaria in Kheda district Gujarat. Indian J Malariol. 1988, 25: 17-118.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Sharma VP: Current scenario of malaria in India. Parassitologia. 1999, 41: 349-353.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Sehgal PN, Sharma MID, Gogai S: Resistance to chloroquine in falciparum malaria in Assam State, India. J Comm Dis. 1973, 5: 175-180.Google Scholar
- Ray AP, Narasimham MVVL, Kondrashin AV, Anna-Kari Bill: P. falciparum containment programme. Ten years of operation in India (1978–1988). 1998, PfCP/Directorate of NMEP/WHO/SIDA, DelhiGoogle Scholar
- Singh Neeru , Nagpal AC, Saxena Ajay, Singh MP: Changing scenario of malaria in central India, the replacement of Plasmodium vivax by Plasmodium falciparum(1986–2000). Trop Med Int Health. 2004, 9: 364-371. 10.1046/j.1365-3156.2003.01181.x.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- India Malaria Profile . [http://www.searo.who.int/LinkFiles/Malaria_Profile_India.pdf]
- Sharma VP: Malaria and poverty in India. Curr Sci. 2003, 84: 513-515.Google Scholar
- Department of Environment, Government of India: Indira Gandhi on Environment. 1984, 1-123.Google Scholar
- Malaria Drug Policy. Unpublished document . NVBDCP, 22-Sham Nath Marg Delhi-110054Google Scholar
- Singh N, Tyagi AK, Sharma VP: Drug resistant Plasmodium falciparum in Mandla district, Madhya Pradesh. Indian J Malariol. 1995, 32: 174-177.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Ghosh SK, Choudhury DS, Chandrahas RK, Singh Neeru , Ramanaiah TV, Sharma VP: Drug resistant P. falciparum in Madras (Tamil Nadu) and District Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh). Indian J Malariol. 1989, 26: 87-90.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Sinha S, Dua VK, Sharma VP: Chloroquine resistant imported P. falciparum in an industrial complex at Hardwar. Indian J Malariol. 1989, 26: 123-125.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Dua VK, Kar PK, Gupta NC, Kar I, Sharma VP: In vivo and in vitro sensitivity of Plasmodium falciparum to chloroquine in Chennai (Tamil Nadu), India. Indian J Malariol. 1997, 34: 1-7.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Ghosh SK, Yadav RS, Sharma VP: Sensitivity status of Plasmodium falciparum to chloroquine, amodiaquine, quinine, mefloquine and sulfadoxine/pyrimethamine in a tribal population of district Sundergarh, Orissa. Indian J Malariol. 1992, 29: 211-218.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Sinha S, Choudhury DS, Ghosh SK, Usha Devi C, Sharma VP: In vitro Chloroquine resistant Plasmodium falciparum in Calcutta and its sensitivity in Qinghaosu (Artemisinin). Indian J Malariol. 1987, 24: 107-110.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Vathsala PG, Pramanik A, Dhanasekaran S, UshaDevi C, Pillai CR, Subbarao SK, Ghosh SK, Tiwari SN, Sathyanarayan TS, Deshpande PR, Mishra GC, Ranjit MR, Dash AP, Rangarajan PN, Padmanaban G: Widespread occurrence of the Plasmodium falciparum chloroquine resistance transporter (Pfcrt) gene haplotype SVMNT in P falciparum malaria in India. Am J Trop Med Hyg. 2004, 70: 256-259.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Snow RW, Trape JF, Marsh K: The past, present and future of childhood malaria mortality in Africa. Trends Parasitol. 2001, 17: 593-597. 10.1016/S1471-4922(01)02031-1.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Time for the World Bank to act on malaria. The Lancet. 2006, 367: 1372-Google Scholar
- Attaran A, Barnes K, Bate R, Binka F, d'Allessandro U, Fanello C, Garrett Cl, Mutabingwa L, Roberts TK, D Sibley CH, Talisuna A, van Geertruyden JP, Watkins WM: The World Bank: fake financial and statistical accounts and medical malpractice in malaria treatment. The Lancet. 2006, 368: 247-252. 10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68545-0.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Sarbib JL, Nankarni G, Patel P: The booster program for malaria control: putting knowledge and money to work. The Lancet. 2006, 368: 253-257. 10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68437-7.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- World Bank defends efforts to curb malaria. Nature. 2006, 440: 1096-1097. 10.1038/4401096b.Google Scholar
- Sharma VP: DDT: The fallen angel. Curr Sci. 2003, 85: 1532-1537.Google Scholar
- Sharma VP: Artemisinin drugs in the treatment of P. falciparum malaria in India. Curr Sci. 90: 1323-1324.Google Scholar
- Sharma VP: Malaria in Betul submitted to the Government of Madhya Pradesh, (Unpublished work). Tour report. 2006Google Scholar
- World Health Organization: FACTS and ACTS (Artemisinin based combination therapies). FACTS ON ACTS (Artemisinin-based combination therapies), Geneva. January 2006 update, [http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=WHO+FACTS+and+ACTs&btnG=Google+Search&meta]
- Mohapatra PK, Prakash A, Bhattacharya DR, Goswami BK, Mahanata J: Concurrent multidrug resistant Plasmodium falciparum from northeast India. J Assoc Phys India. 1999, 47 (8): 823-824.Google Scholar
- Mohapatra PK, Prakash A, Taison K, Negmu K, Gohain AC, Namchoom NS, Wange D, Bhattacharya DR, Goswami BK, Borgohain BK, Mahanata J: Evaluation of chloroquine (CQ) and sulphadoxine pyrimethamine (SP) therapy in uncomplicated falciparum malaria in Indo-Myanmar border areas. Trop Med Int Health. 2005, 10: 478-483. 10.1111/j.1365-3156.2005.01401.x.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Mohapatra PK, Namchoom NS, Prakash A, Bhattacharya DR, Goswami BK, Mahanata J: Therapeutic efficacy of anti-malarials in Plasmodium falciparum malaria in an Indo-Myanmar border area of Arunachal Pradesh. Indian J Med Res. 2003, 118: 71-76.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- South-east Asia awash with fake drugs. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2018238,00.html]
- Valecha N, Usha Devi C, Joshi Hema , Sahi VK, Sharma VP, Lal Shiv : Comparative efficacy of Ayush-64 vs. chloroquine in vivax malaria. Curr Sci. 2000, 78: 1120-1122.Google Scholar
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate. Please note that comments may be removed without notice if they are flagged by another user or do not comply with our community guidelines.


text:
Well, this ought to be interesting - not for what might be revealed, but for what will likely remain in the shadows.
One of the weakest, least effective regulatory bodies around, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), is now saying they want to shed some light on "dark pools."
FINRA is the self-regulatory body, backed and stacked by the broker-dealers and brokerages that channel your trades from your desktops and through brokers, whom FINRA is responsible for registering and regulating, to various exchanges for execution.
They're going to be looking into dark pools, which are off-exchange trading venues where stocks are traded "blindly." That's supposed to mean buyers and sellers don't know who's who.
But the truth is, even dark pool customers are blind to how these shadow operators really operate.
Here's the deal...
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, "In 2011, the SEC fined Pipeline Trading Systems LLC, a now-defunct New York dark-pool operator, $1 million for allegedly failing to disclose that a secretive trading unit interacted with the vast majority of client orders. Pipeline didn't admit or deny wrongdoing. Last October, a dark pool operated by several large Wall Street banks, LeveL ATS, settled SEC allegations, without admitting or denying wrongdoing, that it improperly shared confidential client trading information with a unit of Citigroup Inc., one of its investors."
So the first question I have, and you might want to ask, is this:
How come the SEC, which oversees FINRA and is infinitely more powerful than FINRA (though that's a relative thing considering how spineless the SEC is), isn't itself peering deeper into dark pools?
I think we'll find the answer to that in a moment.
Anyway, FINRA just sent "examination letters" (polite letters asking polite questions, on account of the fact that the self-regulatory regulator is looking into some of their own here) to 15 dark pool operators.
Three of the biggest operators are Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse Group AG, and Barclays Plc. Collectively, as calculated by market research firm Tabb Group, about 13% of daily trading volume happens in dark pools.
So FINRA figures it looks good if it asks what really goes on in the depths of dark pools.
Do dark pool customers know how operators may be operating on them, without them knowing? Are dark pool operators playing their customers by manipulating prices at public exchanges to influence trading orders and execution prices in their dark pools?
Are dark pool operators who act as market-makers - meaning they trade for themselves based on where the orders they are "seeing" are coming from to buy and sell and how big those orders are - using the "order flow" their big customers believe is "blind" to their inside advantage?
I'll save FINRA some time, and the lapdogs at the SEC who let this happen under their watchful eye (they only have one, the other is a marble).
The answer is, of course, "yes."
Dark pool operators are employing high-frequency trading computer technology to read incoming quotes and orders going to the public exchanges so they can do what HFT operators do, manipulate quotes and orders, including in their dark pools, where they have captive customers trading blocks. Customers who don't know that, most of the time, the trader on the other side isn't another institution, it's the house in whose basement without windows they expect to be treated fairly.
But it's okay.
FINRA will ask polite questions and turn over some of the answers they get to the SEC. And the SEC will tell them to bury the bad news and write a report that promises to ask non-offending offenders to incorporate more safeguards to make sure what's happening isn't ever fully disclosed.
Why? Because the SEC, who let all this happen, can't let the world know that the markets they are supposed to ensure are fair and orderly are actually a casino rigged by the house, for the house.
End of story.


text:
Dead Sea, Jordan 7th November, 2017
Over 2,500 Science Leaders from over 120 Countries Gather at the World Science Forum 2017 Jordan Calling for a More Responsible and Ethical Use of Innovation to Address the Social & Economic Relevance, Influence & Responsibilities of Science Arab Region To Explore Establishing A Regular Open Science Forum. Budapest, Hungary to Host WSF 2019
Who? Royal Scientific Society of Jordan (RSS); United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA); American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); World Academy of Sciences (TWAS); European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC); International Council for Science (ICSU); Inter-Academy Partnership (IAP); International Social Science Council (ISSC) + Science Counsellor representatives of the G77.
What? World Science Forum, King Hussein Bin Talal Convention Centre, Dead Sea, Jordan, 7-10 Nov.
Dead Sea, Jordan 7th November, 2017
North America is facing an epidemic of opioid addiction and opioid overdose with an unprecedented level of mortality. The crisis was spurred by a broad expansion of medical use of opioids, which began in the 1990s as a legitimate response to the under-treatment of pain, but which was soon exploited by the unethical behavior of pharmaceutical companies eager to increase their revenue. The rise in supply fed high levels of diversion among an economically stressed and vulnerable population.
14h45 – 15h15, Sierra C, Fifth Floor
You are kindly invited to attend a press info point with three of WCSJ 2017's leading lights in promoting women in STEM leadership, while equally championing the creation of new and dynamic science & society conferences acting as dynamic hubs of expertise with tremendous carrier-wave effects nationally, regionally and globally.
Her Royal Highness Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan, President of the Royal Scientific Society of Jordan and UNESCO's Special Envoy for Science for Peace is here to talk to you about what the World Science Forum 2017 has to offer from 7 – 10 November at the lowest point on earth, the Dead Sea, where Palestine, Israel and Jordan meet.
An international trio of women dignitaries—all high-ranking leaders in their nations' science research, education and policy enterprises—have been confirmed as featured speakers at a special luncheon Friday, October 27, during the upcoming 10th World Conference of Science Journalists in San Francisco.
PRESS RELEASE: Paris- 2/10/17
Her Royal Highness Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan was today officially designated as UNESCO's Special Envoy for Science for Peace at a ceremony at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. The honour was bestowed by Mme Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, in recognition of HRH's tireless advocacy for Science as a catalyst for change in Jordan and the wider Middle East. In honouring Princess Sumaya, Mme Bokova emphasised the Princess's commitment to promoting science among young people in the region.
The World Science Forum's Delivery Team were thrilled to receive an unprecedented 450 applications from over 95 countries for the 25 media grants being offered!
Each and every one of you shall receive a follow-up 'thank you' email and be kept abreast of the WSF's media programme in the weeks ahead.
8th World Science Forum Jordan, 7 - 11 November, 2017
1. – Purpose
After the highly successful 2015 World Science Forum held in Budapest, Hungary, the Royal Scientific Society of Jordan will host the 2017 biennial event themed 'Science for Peace'. Organising partners include the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA); the United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organisation (UNESCO); the International Council for Science (ICSU); the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS); the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC); the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and the Inter-Academy Partnership (IAP).
Cape Town is the chosen venue for the launch of an annual consultative process looking at the true robustness of science and society-led policy-making inside the Africa 54. The common goal is to arrive at a Cape Town Declaration on Ethics & Principles of Science & Society Policy-Making for Africa in time for the World Science Forum 2021. This indaba is Co-Chaired by Prof. Roseanne Diab, Executive Officer of the Academy of Science of SA (ASSAf) and Prof. Julian Kinderlerer, Emeritus Professor Cape Town University and Member, European Group on Ethics.
UNESCO appoints SciCom as International Adviser for the 1st Latin American & Caribbean Open Science Forum (CILAC), 6 – 9 September, Montevideo, Uruguay
"As an ambitious start-up aiming to colour-in Latin America and the Caribbean on the global science conferencing map, CILAC 2016 is delighted to receive so many pledges of help and encouragement."
A five-year-long, bottom-up initiative scrutinising the way in which we 'make policy' and allow scientific evidence and stakeholder opinion to influence it ends in Manchester in the margins of ESOF 2016. Involving over 250 groups and networks worldwide, the outcome is a draft text proposing 20 principles that will be finalised in time for the launch of a Brussels Declaration on 28th September, 2016 (see annex). This text then forms an important blueprint for the recently formed International Network of Government Science Advice (INGSA) to work from, as it engages more broadly during four consultation events held on four continents. The final step will be the announcement of Universal Ethics & Principles during the World Science Forum being held in Jordan in 2017.
Just as a pile of bricks is not a house, science without proper public engagement remains incomplete. This talk brings together key personalities behind 6 prominent science conference start-ups, mostly female. It spotlights new voices at the nexus of science and society from 5 continents.
Science speaks to politics, policy and power precisely because it has evidence. But it must do so using ever-more complex, contingent and contested knowledge. Claim and counter-claim of 'evidence-based policy versus policy-biased evidence' are indistinguishable. The practice of science has been re-shaped by endogenous and exogenous forces in recent decades. Public policy-making, too, has changed in a number of ways.
The Program Committee for the 2017 AAAS Annual Meeting, to be held February 16-20 in Boston, have just informed SciCom & Partners of the following scientific proposal successes.
15h45 – 16h15, Monday 25th July, ESOF Press Room
The science conferencing circuit is getting more exciting and diversified by the day as new national and regional groupings enter the fray. This press point brings together the 'talking heads' of five such events taking place in the next nine months where media presence is both encouraged and facilitated.
Media Consultation Event: Refining the 2016 Brussels Declaration Towards New Ethics & Principles of Science & Society Policy-Making
12h50 – 13h20, Tuesday 26th July, ESOF Press Room
Science speaks to politics, policy and power precisely because it has evidence. But it must do so using ever more complex, contingent and contested knowledge. The views of media are central to this. Claim and counter-claim of 'evidence-based policy versus policy-biased evidence' are hardly distinguishable.
UNESCO appoints SciCom as International Adviser for the 1st Latin American & Caribbean Open Science Forum (CILAC)
6 – 9 September, Montevideo, Uruguay
"As an ambitious start-up aiming to colour-in Latin America and the Caribbean on the global science conferencing map, CILAC 2016 is delighted to receive so many pledges of help and encouragement."
Five hundred research institutes, both within and outside of the EU scooped 60 per cent of the EU's €55 billion Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) budget, according to an independent review just carried out by 12 academies. In total, 139,000 proposals were received of which 25,000 or just fewer than 18% were successful.
Forum of Global Fora 2016 Washington D.C. to Announce Landmark 'Mini-Brain' & 'Chemical Mapping' Research
This year's thematic guest lecture will include first insights into ground-breaking research conducted by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The creation of 'mini brains' in a JHU lab could prove instrumental in our efforts to study neurological diseases. By using human derived structures, scientists hope for better research and reduced animal testing.
SciCom is happy to announce that we will partner with the world's largest science conference organisers in Washington D.C. on Friday 12th February to ignite conversations about science in the public interest. A VIP networking reception for 150 leading science diplomats, Chief Science Advisers and Ministers is being held in the Omni Shoreham Hotel's Blue Room where legends from Frank Sinatra to Lisa Minelli have performed.
Prof. Michel Kazatchkine, Member of the Global Commission on Drugs Policy headed by Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, Ban-ki Moon's Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Former Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis & Malaria is teaming up with SciCom at the AAAS Annual Meeting being held in Washington D.C. from 11 – 15 February next.


text:
In this category, you will get introduced to fashion trends 2018. Fashion 2018 is rich in its diversity and interesting features. If you choose this as a guiding help, it will satisfy you and everything will match your needs. Moreover, 2018 characterizes by many trends. Some of them we know from the previous years. The rest are new. Here we should also take into consideration some facts. First of all layering. By combining several trends and modes you will get a new modish feature.This is one of the principles of fashion 2018. Secondly the main colors and styles. Finally, you will have a great look.
Fashion trends 2018
One of the important facts is that the category includes information about all ages. Let it be for a kid or an adult, you will find your option. Furthermore, casual and formal dresses are important parts and you will get many details that will help you. In various situations, you know what to wear and how to combine adornments.


text:
Alexander Comstock Kirk
Alexander Comstock Kirk
|March 23, 1979 (aged 90)
|United States
Alexander Comstock Kirk (November 26, 1888 – March 23, 1979) was a United States diplomat.
Early years[edit]
Alexander Comstock Kirk was born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 26, 1888, the son of James Alexander Kirk (1840–1907)[1] and Clara Comstock (1851–1936). His family lived in Hartland, Wisconsin.[2] Their wealth derived from one of America's largest soap manufacturing concerns,[1] which was founded by Kirk's grandfather in Utica, New York, in 1839, relocated to Chicago in 1860, and capitalized as James S. Kirk & Co. in 1900. James Alexander Kirk was a director of the company.[3] Its 2 national brands were "American Family" for laundry and "Juvenile" for the bath.[2][4]
Kirk was "fat" and "unhappy" in childhood and enjoyed drawing. At age 9, he attended the Art Institute of Chicago until his family decided he was too young to be drawing nude models. He was then sent to work incognito in a soap factory until his identity was discovered. He was then tutored at home for half the year by Hughell Fosbroke, future head of the General Theological Seminary of New York, spending the other half traveling in Europe with his mother and sister.[2]
Kirk attended the University of Chicago for one year and then Yale University, where he excelled in physics[2] and graduated in 1909.[5] He appeared with the Yale University Dramatic Association in 1908–1909.[6] Kirk's father died of a heart attack in 1907.[1]
He next spent 2 years at the School of Political Sciences in Paris.[2] In order to fulfill his mother's promise to his late father, he earned his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1914.[7] He was admitted to the Illinois bar. He joined the board of the family business at a salary of $10,000 a year.[2]
Kirk had two sisters, Gertrude 24 years his senior and Margaret his near contemporary. His sister Margaret married Albert Billings Ruddock in New York's Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in March 1912. The couple left for Berlin following the ceremony. Ruddock was Third Secretary of the American Embassy in Berlin in 1913, when Mrs. Kirk visited the couple there.[8] In 1954 Ruddock became Chairman of the Board of Trustees of California Institute of Technology, where an undergraduate residence hall was named for him in 1960.[9]
Diplomatic career[edit]
Kirk joined the American Diplomatic Service on March 6, 1915.[10]
In 1916, he was transferred from his post as Secretary of the Embassy in Berlin to a position in Constantinople.[11]
Kirk served as private secretary to the Secretary of State during World War I and accompanied him in that position to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. He then lived in "a commodious old house in Georgetown with his mother to act as hostess on the occasion of his entertainments," until posted to Peking as Secretary of the Embassy.[12]
He managed the State Department budget for a time in the 1920s, and later said he thought it "an obligation" to spend the entire amount in order to support the argument for additional appropriations.[2]
Kirk was Counselor of the U.S. Embassy in Rome in 1932. His mother was presented to Queen Elena of Italy on March 9, 1932.[13] She lived in Rome during his service there, and Kirk entertained important guests at her home, the Villa Spada on the Janiculum.[14] Even in 1930, long before rising to ambassadorial rank, he entertained lavishly. He hosted an opera party for Mrs. William Randolph Hearst on her 1930 tour of Europe.[15]
Kirk was assigned to Moscow as Embassy Counselor and consul general effective March 18, 1938,[16] where he was the senior official in the 9-month interim between the service of Ambassadors Davies and Steinhardt.[2][17]
He served as Chargé d'affaires in Berlin beginning in May 1939 and became the senior officer when the American ambassador, Hugh R. Wilson, was recalled to protest the anti-Jewish attacks of Kristallnacht.[18] Though his status was too low to allow access to important officials in the German government, he communicated with them by staging conversations close to a device the Germans used to eavesdrop on his conversations.[2] Time called him "adroit" in his "uncomfortable post."[19] He developed contacts with Germans who opposed the Nazi regime and became convinced, in spite of Germany's early victories, that the war would end badly for Germany. Discussing with noted dissident Helmuth James von Moltke the need for Germany to suffer complete defeat with no one to blame but its Nazi leaders, he said: "Do you want to know my solution? It's a flood without an ark."[20] During the war, in 1943, Moltke twice tried without success to contact Kirk, whom he trusted as an intermediary between the German opposition and the Allies.[21]
Kirk served briefly as Embassy Counselor in Rome before becoming Minister to Egypt in 1941,[22] when Time magazine described him as "smooth, spare."[23]
From March 29, 1941, to March 29, 1944, Kirk served as Ambassador to Egypt, first as head of the U.S. Legation and then of the Embassy. He advised the State Department in 1941 that a Jewish state "is incapable of realization in the future unless imposed by force on an unwilling native population." Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles did not share his assessment and did not forward Kirk's views to the White House.[24] Drawing on his experience with Nazi propaganda and antisemitism in Germany, Kirk expanded the embassy's coverage of Arabic-language broadcasts, providing complete translations of what came to be known as the "Axis Broadcasts in Arabic" along with his weekly analysis from 1941 to 1944, which Hull circulated widely. He dissected the Nazi's manipulation of anti-colonial, anti-Jewish, and anti-Bolshevik sentiment and their charges that Roosevelt and Churchill were being manipulated by their Jewish supporters.[25] At the beginning of his Cairo tenure, Kirk focused on the strategic necessity of Allied victory in the Middle East because it would be impossible to counter the Nazi's exploitation of an Axis victory in its propaganda. Once the Allies won control of the region, he stressed political analysis and repeatedly underscored the critical role of the Egyptian capital in Arab nationalism.[26] As Kirk looked to the end of the war, he anticipated a post-colonial world in which nations operated freely in a free enterprise environment, unlike Secretary of State Cordell Hull who expected the persistence of traditional spheres of influence, notably that of Great Britain in Egypt.[27] While posted to Cairo, Kirk kept one house in the city for lunch, another near the pyramids for dinner and sleeping, and a houseboat on the Nile. He hosted FDR, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek at the second house for the November 1943 Cairo Conference.[2] He has been described as "an archeological dilettante" who liked to lecture his guests as they gazed at the pyramids. Clare Boothe Luce claimed to have flummoxed him by pre-empting his performance by asking: "Mr. Ambassador, what are those strange-looking objects?"[28]
Along with several military men Kirk devised the successful plan to attack Rommel's communications instead of his ground forces.[2] He later received the United States of America Typhus Commission Medal for his support of the Commission's work during his time in Egypt.[29]
While resident in Cairo, Kirk was also accredited to the government-in-exile of Greece until November 13, 1941, and to Saudi Arabia until July 18, 1943.
Kirk was appointed U.S. representative on the Allied Advisory Council for Italy, with the rank of ambassador, on April 4, 1944.[30] He was appointed Ambassador to Italy on November 30, 1944,[31] and in January 1945 became the first ambassador of any country to present his credentials to the new Italian government.[32] Upon his appointment, Time gave him the title "suave Career Man."[33] He resigned in 1946. When the American Office of War Information produced an Italian-language publication, Kirk insisted it be labeled propaganda to maintain a clear distinction between what Italians were accomplishing for themselves or not.[2]
In August 1945, he received petitions from Russian prisoners of war, taken by the Germans and liberated by Allied forces. They wrote to him in his role as Political Advisor to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) and claimed the status of "political refugees" and asked "in the name of humanity" not to be repatriated to the Soviet Union. Kirk wrote to Secretary of State Byrnes seeking guidance, a diplomatic way of expressing his reservations about the repatriation policy. He was instructed to make certain none of the prisoners was actually from Poland or the Baltic States and to proceed with the repatriations.[34]
Kirk was long famous for entertaining and continued even when forced to operate in Rome "under a wartime minimum." Six or eight guests joined him for lunch or dinner, often many more. One Friday lunch he hosted about 20 enlisted men. Though some involved in recruiting the guests worried that a Negro corporal might not be well received, Kirk gave him the place of honor on his right.[2]
Life described him near the end of his career: "To call Kirk an ornament of the State Department is almost a libelous understatement....Kirk's true value resides in the fact that he is an American who, far from being an innocent abroad, knows Europe infinitely better than most Europeans. This makes him almost unique in the current roster of U.S. foreign representatives in the diplomatic, charitable, or didactic spheres. Kirk's career should be studied in detail, like The Education of Henry Adams."[2] Fortune in July 1946 called him "foppish, intelligent, and very rich."[35]
Kirk predicted in 1945 that future diplomats should be technical experts "chosen for the ability not only to diagnose economic, industrial and political trends, but also to adjust their dislocations before they can start wars." He lamented the willingness of governments to spend on wars far more than on the diplomacy that might prevent them.[2]
A few years after Kirk's retirement, as Senator Joseph McCarthy launched a campaign against suspected homosexuals in government, one investigator's 1948 report charged that State Department employees Carmel Offie and Charles W. Thayer "were very close personal friends of former Ambassador Alexander Kirk who is not now in the service but who had a very bad reputation of being a homosexual and certainly protected a lot of homosexual people."[36]
Personal life[edit]
In the 1920s, when he was Counselor to the American Embassy in Rome, Kirk remodeled a significant building in Georgetown, the Robinson house, at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and R Street and "filled it with furniture, rugs, hangings and objects of art brought from the Orient."[37] In 1942 he sold this estate, including its "elaborate formal gardens, outsize ballroom, marble-floored billiard room, and swimming pool," to Evalyn Walsh McLean, mining heiress and owner of the Hope Diamond.[38]
While posted to Berlin, he lived in an "enormous mansion" in the "swank" Grunewald neighborhood.[39] One German who visited described it as "one vast hall after another, and he quiet alone in the midst of it. Very funny; a little like the theatre." His staff of servants spoke only Italian.[40] He held "a large buffet luncheon every Sunday noon, as a means of revenging himself for such hospitality as his position required him to accept."[39]
While Ambassador in Rome, Kirk lived in the Barberini palace, which he redecorated. He filled a large enclosure the size of a tennis court with "Renaissance tables and settees covered in ivory silk," according to Life magazine, to create what he termed "a sort of cozy sitting room."[2] When Life profiled him in 1945, it reported that he had always established fine residences wherever he was posted: "The Ambassador is fond of houses, and especially big ones. Equipped with ample private funds and the courage of his complexes, Kirk sees no reason why he should not capitalize the chance his profession gives him to indulge this fondness, all the more since such indulgence usually works out to the benefit of the State Department in one way or another."[2] His nickname around this time was "Buffy."[41]
In 1945 he attributed "his excellent health to the fact that he has never worn himself down by any form of exercise more violent than scratching, which he only does when suffering from insomnia at 6 a.m."[2]
He planned to retire to Arizona and bought a piece of land in the White Mountains at the end of World War II. He joked that he would live there not in a house but in a cave.[2] Another diplomat reported that he retired to the mountains of Colorado and "amused himself operating a ranch and raising cattle" for a few years before relocating to Texas.[17]
His sister Gertrude Kirk Metzeroff died in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1948 at the age of 84. According to her obituary, her brother Alexander was then living in Washington, D.C., and Santa Barbara, California, while her sister Margaret was living in Santa Barbara.[42]
Kirk died in Tucson, Arizona, on March 23, 1979. He is buried with his mother in Rome's Protestant Cemetery (Cimitero Acattolico).[43]
In his 1967 memoirs, George F. Kennan sketched an affectionate portrait of Kirk, as he knew him in Berlin before America entered World War II: "a confirmed bachelor, profoundly saddened by the recent death of an adored mother who, while she was alive, had preempted much of both his companionship and his emotional life, Kirk drowned the inner emptiness in the performance of his arduous official duties," sleeping in an office alcove while working 16 to 18 hours daily.[44] He continued:[45]
He was a carryover from an older day when to be rich entitled you to be eccentric, and he made the most of the privilege....
Deliberately, I think, as a gesture of defiance and self-protection, and in the indulgence of a fine sense of the theatrical, Kirk worked at giving himself the aspect of exactly that sort of American career diplomat of which the American philistine has always been the most suspicious: elegant, overrefined, haughty, and remote. It was a manner of enlivening life by playing the buffoon....His understanding was intuitive rather than analytical. His conversation consisted largely of weary, allusive quips. His posing sometimes went so far as to raise doubts whether he was serious.
But behind this facade of urbane and even exaggerated sophistication there lay a great intuitive shrewdness and a devastating critical sense of humor, directed to himself as well as others. No one impressed him....He despised the Nazis and held them at arm's length with barbed irony....
The only thing worth living for, he once told me, was good form. He himself had little to live for; there were moments when he would have liked to leave this life; but suicide would be an abrupt act, and abruptness was the height of bad form....He disclaimed all further interest in the Foreign Service, since his mother's death. He had entered it, he solemnly maintained, only to spare her having her bags inspected at frontiers. But he could not just resign, especially in wartime; that would have been abrupt....
After service as Ambassador in Egypt and Italy, he sidled, quietly and unobserved, out of all of our lives.
Kirk claimed he escaped from diplomatic functions by whatever ruse the situation required. At one embassy in Rome he found it necessary to leave by a door he could only reach by going under a grand piano. "In a case of this sort, Kirk recommends slow motion, which, he says, often prevents witnesses from even noticing a maneuver which, if executed fast, might horrify them."[2]
He insisted his favorite color was gray. He never had fresh flowers, rather he collected artificial ones in his favorite color. His wardrobe and household were maintained by a servant named Mario, who joined the Kirk household in Mexico early in Kirk's career and continued through his stint as ambassador in Rome.[2]
- ^ a b c Chicago Historical Society, Charter, Constitution, By-laws, Membership List, Annual Report (1903), 286, available online, accessed January 25, 2011. James Alexander Kirk was a Chicago Alderman in 1876-7 and influential in the creation of the city's paid Fire Department following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Life: Noel F. Busch, "Alexander Kirk," August 13, 1945, accessed January 23, 2011
- ^ Chicago Securities (Chicago Directory Company, 1903), 234-5, available online, accessed January 25, 2011
- ^ Kennan, 113-4, asked rhetorically in 1967: "who of my age could forget the 'Kirk's soap' of the advertisements of our boyhood?"
- ^ Yale University: Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of Yale University in New Haven, 1701-1910 (New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1910), 236, accessed January 23, 2011
- ^ Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic or A Tragedy Rehearsed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Dramatic Association, 1908), xix-xx; New York Times: "Yale Men Score in Old Comedies," January 5, 1909, accessed January 23, 2011
- ^ Harvard University: Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates, 1636-1915 (Harvard University Press, 1915), 785, accessed January 23, 2011
- ^ New York Times: "City Social Notes," March 17, 1912, accessed January 25, 2011; New York Times: "American Tourists Still Crowd Berlin," July 27, 1913, accessed January 25, 2011, where the relationship is mistaken called daughter-in-law rather than daughter; New York Times: "Germany Holds American Crowds," August 3, 1913, accessed January 25, 2011. On Ruddock see also Frederic William Wile, The Assault: Germany before the Outbreak and England in War-time; A Personal Narrative (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1916), 107, available online, accessed January 25, 2011
- ^ The California Tech: "Tech trustees pick Ruddock," November 4, 1954, accessed January 28, 2011. Ruddock;s State Department service lasted until 1923. He joined the Board of Trustees in 1938.
- ^ Foreign Service List, 1939, 65. The Diplomatic Service later became the Foreign Service.
- ^ New York Times: Berlin Post for Harriman," March 2, 1916, accessed January 24, 2011
- ^ New York Times: "Social Notes," April 1, 1920, accessed January 24, 2011
- ^ New York Times: "Queen Sees Ten Americans," March 10, 1932, accessed January 25, 2011
- ^ Henry Rushton Fairclough, Warming Both Hands: The Autobiography of Henry Rushton Fairclough (Stanford University Press, 1941), 506. Kirk was First Secretary at the time of Fairclough's visit.
- ^ TIME: Italy: Publisher's Wife Abroad," March 17, 1930, accessed January 23, 2011
- ^ New York Times: Alexander Kirk Named Counselor at Moscow," March 29, 1938, accessed January 23, 2011; Foreign Service List, 1939, 28
- ^ a b George W. Baer, A Question of Trust, The Origins of U.S.-Soviet Diplomatic Relations: The Memoirs of Loy. W, Henderson (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1986), 313. "In my opinion," wrote Loy W. Henderson, "the embassy never functioned better than it did during the nine months that he was in charge of it."
- ^ "Kirk, Home, Silent on Rome Mission" (PDF). New York Times. October 19, 1940. Retrieved May 8, 2013. The appointment was effective April 13, 1939, Foreign Service List, 1940, 75; Baer, 313
- ^ TIME: Foreign Relations: Leg-Men," July 1, 1940, accessed January 23, 2011
- ^ Helmuth James von Moltke, Letters to Freya (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 14-5, 70, 82, 111, 115n. Moltke was a civilian legal aide to the German general staff.
- ^ Motlke, 317n, 372n
- ^ New York Times: "Nelson and Landis Reach Cairo by Air," October 6, 1943, accessed January 23, 2011; Foreign Service List, 1942, 10
- ^ TIME: Foreign Relations: Winant to London," February 17, 1941, accessed January 23, 2011
- ^ Lawrence Davidson, "Review: Sympathy for Jewish Statehood," in Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, Autumn 1985, 134
- ^ Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 10–1, 72–3, 86, 97–9, 101–2, 106, 217
- ^ Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, 70–1, 127, 140–1
- ^ Nancy E. Gallagher, "Anglo-American Rivalry and the Establishment of a Medical Research Institute in Egypt, 1942-1948," in International History Review, vol. 9, no. 2, May 1987, 292; Barry Rubin, "Anglo-American Relations in Saudi Arabia, 1941-45," in Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 14, no. 2, April 1979, 255
- ^ Stephen Shadegg, Claire Boothe Luce (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1970), 149
- ^ "Ambassadors Helped in Fight to Check Typhus," in The Science News-Letter, vol. 47, no. 6, February 10, 1945, 85
- ^ "Chronology," in Bulletin of International News, vol. 21, no. 8, April 15, 1944, 328; the appointment was effective March 30, 1944, Foreign Service List, 1945, 53
- ^ "Chronology", in Bulletin of International News, vol. 21, no. 25, December 9, 1944, 1081-2; the effective date of the appointment was December 8, 1944, Foreign Service List, 1945, 27
- ^ New York Times: "Kirk Offers Credentials," January 9, 1945, accessed January 23, 2011
- ^ TIME: "U.S. at War: Work Done," December 18, 1944, accessed January 23, 2011
- ^ Cathal J. Nolan, "Americans in the Gulag: Detention of US Citizens by Russia and the Onset of the Cold War, 1944-49," in Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 25, no. 4, October 1990, 532-3
- ^ John Lamberton Harper, America and the Reconstruction of Italy, 1945-1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 17, 171n33, available online, accessed August 29, 2014
- ^ Robert D. Dean, Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 106
- ^ New York Times: Richard V. Oulahan, "Georgetown Holds Old-Time Prestige," December 25, 1927, accessed January 24, 2011; New York Times: Richard V. Oulahan, "Georgetown House of History Bought," May 19, 1929, accessed January 24, 2011
- ^ TIME: "People, Jan. 26, 1942", accessed January 23, 2011. For a brief history of the property, see Grace Dunlop Peter, A Portrait of Old George Town (Richmond, Dietz Press, 1951), 298-9, available online[permanent dead link], accessed January 25, 2011
- ^ a b George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), 113
- ^ Moltke, 29n
- ^ Robert P. Newman, The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby (University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 77
- ^ St. Petersburg Times: "Mrs. Metzeroff, Here 12 Years, Dies at Age 84," August 5, 1948, accessed January 26, 2011
- ^ Academia di Danimarca: Stone 1450, accessed March 24, 2012
- ^ Kennan, 112
- ^ Kennan, 113-5
|Diplomatic posts
|Preceded by
Hugh R. Wilson
| United States Chargé d'affaires to Germany
May, 1939 – October, 1940
|Succeeded by
Leland B. Morris
|Preceded by
Bert Fish
| United States Ambassador to Egypt
February 11, 1941 - April 29, 1944
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary
|Succeeded by
Somerville Pinkney Tuck
|Preceded by
A. J. Drexel Biddle Jr.
| United States Ambassador to Greece
|Succeeded by
Lincoln MacVeagh
|Preceded by
George Wadsworth
Chargé d'affaires ad interim
| United States Ambassador to Italy
1944 - 1946
|Succeeded by
James Clement Dunn
- Ambassadors of the United States to Greece
- Ambassadors of the United States to Italy
- Ambassadors of the United States to Saudi Arabia
- Ambassadors of the United States to Germany
- Yale University alumni
- Harvard Law School alumni
- Illinois lawyers
- University of Chicago alumni
- Lawyers from Chicago
- Art Institute of Chicago
- People from Hartland, Wisconsin
- 1888 births
- 1979 deaths
- Ambassadors of the United States to Egypt
- Burials in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome