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Last week Packet Design announced an OEM partnership with Aria Networks, where we will resell their network planning and optimization software with our Explorer suite of network service assurance products. In this quick interview, Aria Networks' Chief Commercial Officer Wolrad Claudy discusses more about the partnership, how the two technologies are complementary, and the benefits for service providers.
Why did you decide to partner with Packet Design?
Aria Networks decided to further productize our professional services-heavy solution to better support OEM and reseller models as an extension to our direct sales efforts. Further, our clients are looking for more total solutions rather than dealing with the integration of many point solutions. Aria Networks tries to become part of several ecosystems to shorten time-to-market and to expand market reach. Packet Design and Aria Networks not only have complementary solutions, but also similar corporate profiles and go-to-market strategies as well as addressing the same target markets.
How are the two technology sets complementary?
Packet Design's network service assurance solutions visualize and analyze the network topology, traffic, performance and routing patterns as input for Aria Networks' optimization engine to make real-time decisions about what to do with the findings from the assurance part. This enables full loop backs without operator intervention.
What is unique about the combination of the technologies?
Aria Networks is a pioneer in taking AI with genetic algorithms into the TELCO/IP world. The solution was based on virtualization technology from day one and therefore is SDN/NFV-ready per design. A unique data representation of any physical or virtual resource allows us to optimize any vendor technology and any parameter/entity, holistically across multi-domains and layers relevant for any engineering, service or business constraint. Aria Networks and Packet Design are bridging the traditionally separated domains of monitoring/simulation and analytics on one side and the action-oriented planning and optimization on the other side. This is a unique step into the automation of OSS, with a clear objective of creating self-organizing/optimizing networks.
What challenges/opportunities are you seeing for your service provider customers worldwide?
As much as our customers' ROI of their services continue to become marginalized, there is an increasing need to automate the optimization of their infrastructure utilization to minimize CAPEX and OPEX costs. Time-to-market of new services becomes the key differentiator in our industry, shortening new service rollouts from months to days. The paradigm shift from user controlled to software-controlled networks is a decade-long process, which demands solutions that can support the transition by supporting physical and virtual resources in parallel.
What's next on the Aria Networks road map?
Aria Networks will continue to expand its suite of applications to support service providers on their path from an asset/network engineering approach, via a multi-layer end-to-end service-centric view all the way to business objective-driven optimization. At the same time, we will increase the level of automation by moving from an off-net operational support system towards an on-net real-time component of the SDN/NFV management and orchestration layer.


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Safety is the most important thing when it comes to aviation.
Some people may wonder why aeroplanes are equipped with two engines and two radios, but our geekiest readers know that some aeroplanes also have two (sometimes even three) FCS, which stands for Flight Control System, all the flight control instruments and systems.
Let's take a step back. In reliability engineering, redundancy is defined as the existence of more than one means for accomplishing a given task in order to ensure that the system remains complete in the event of a failure. Simply put, redundancy is not just replacing a flat tyre with a spare, but a spare tyre which fits itself should another tyre suffer any damage.
This principle is fundamental in order to maximise the reliability of a system, even if it does increase the complexity due to the superimposition of different tools performing the same function. To go back to our example, the benefit of having a spare tyre in the boot obviously far outweighs having extra room for our bags.
All critical systems need one or more back-up. RAT (Ram Air Turbine) is a good example of redundancy. In extremely rare instances when aeroplanes lose power, the RAT deploys from the aeroplane's wing or fuselage and rotates to extract sufficient power from the airstream to control and land the aircraft.
Regarding the two sets of control equipment, the presence of two pilots in the cockpit also begins to make sense now. Having a pilot and a co-pilot is similar to the concept of redundancy.
We can find redundancy in Plane Speaking too, a topic we'll talk about in one of our next posts. Magic words such as "Read Back" and "Say Again" are used to duplicate a message and, with that duplication, give operators the confidence that everything will go well.

subset: commoncrawl


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The concept of the buyer's journey seems to have lost some of its appeal. Some B2B pundits now contend that the journey is a convoluted route with many twists, turns and dead-ends instead of a neat, linear process. How can sellers nurture sales if they're not sure where buyers are in their process?
Given the complex nature of B2B decisions, these diverging viewpoints don't negate the fact that buyers go through three phases of their journey before they're ready to make a purchase decision. Keep in mind these phases may not be followed exactly in order, and buyers are likely to repeat them and change direction as needs and knowledge change.
Many buyers also don't want you to know they're in the market until they're closer to making a decision. You could say sellers are in the dark until the buyer is ready to engage. This makes it difficult to support buyers in a way that's comfortable to them. The good news is that by providing value at every point in the journey, you can identify buyers and nurture them along the way.
Is Your Buyer Ready to Buy?
The buyer's journey is more than just a cycle, process, or tasks on a checklist. We must consider the human factor that introduces doubt and bias into the journey. The first three phases (Awareness, Interest, and Belief) must be satisfied before buyers feel ready to move forward.
Help buyers start their journey by educating, informing, and answering their questions. This is not the time to rush into sales mode or try to close the deal. Your goal is to provide tools, information, and support to encourage confidence and further engagement.
The tools you provide will vary based on where the buyer is in their journey. How you deliver those tools will also vary based on whether they want personal assistance or prefer evaluating on their own.
In the end, buyers will only be ready to engage with your sales team if they are aware of their problem, interested in solving it, and confident you can solve it for them. All three phases must be addressed.
Gaining Awareness
Awareness is a buyer's first glimpse that they might have a problem and that there may be better ways to do what they're doing. Your primary goal at this phase is to initiate engagement.
It's unlikely they will want to engage with a salesperson, so offering self-service tools and information will have the greatest impact in establishing a connection. Consider using email campaigns, social media promotion, and different types of evaluation or assessment tools, such as a benchmark assessment.
These tools add value to the buyer's journey by helping them evaluate how their organization compares to others. The goal is to get them interested enough to sign up for more educational information... information that moves them to the point of actually considering solving the problem.
The goal at this point is not to capture a lead or have a salesperson call. It's for the buyer to gain awareness and understanding of their problem, and take their first steps toward finding a solution.
Creating Interest
How does a prospective buyer express interest in your offering? They sign up to receive some of your content: blog, newsletter, whitepaper, webinars, etc. Once they do, it's time to begin educating them.
Education should focus on how their problem impacts their business, less so on your product or solution. Now is the time to use a supportive and educational approach to getting sales engagement. It's not the time for a hard sell, but to ask if they have questions and provide any resources they need.
Even after you achieve sales engagement, it's best to focus on educating and supporting, not selling. Selling begins when the buyer wants to confirm that you can actually help them. You'll know for sure when they engage with a value calculator to estimate how much you can save them or download business value case studies that show how much other customers have saved.
Assuring Belief
To deliver value during the third phase of the buyer's journey, you must demonstrate two things: that you can actually deliver a solution that solves the customer's problem AND that doing so will deliver a tangible economic return.
Quite simply, the sale will not be approved if you cannot provide metrics that satisfy financial approvers within the buyer's organization. This often requires a cost-justified business case that includes financial metrics such as ROI, NPV, and/or payback period. It isn't enough to believe in the solution... you need to convince the organization that it's a good business decision.
No matter how simple or complex the purchase decision, buyers need to be aware of their problem, interested in solving it, and believe your solution will solve it for them. Buyers want to be helped and educated during the first three phases of the journey, and don't want to be sold to before they're ready. The best way to get them ready is to provide value at every phase.
Connect with Darrin Fleming on LinkedIn.
Join the Value Selling for B2B Marketing and Sales Leaders LinkedIn Group.
Visit the ROI Selling Resource Center.


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Here in central Florida, nearly everybody mulches grass clippings. With St. Augustine, Zoysia, and Bahiagrass dominating our landscapes, it simply grows so fast that bagging and side discharging are usually impractical. But for much of the country, mulching grass is an option rather than a necessity. To get the greatest benefits for your lawn, there's a right way to do it.
How to Set Up Your Lawn Mower for Mulching
Most walk-behind lawn mowers (push and self-propelled) come with a mulching option standard. To use it, start by taking the bagger and side discharge chute off if either one is installed.
At the back of the mower where the bagger was, lift up the rear guard (usually a plastic, spring-loaded door) and insert the mulching plug that came with your mower into the chute where grass normally travels into the bag.
Note: If your mower didn't come with a mulching plug, many brands make mulching kits you can buy separately.
The side discharge hole (not all mowers have one) should also have a spring-loaded door that closes it up. You shouldn't need to do anything else with it once the side discharge chute is off.
That's it—you're ready to mulch!
Preparing Your Lawn for Mulching Grass
Cut the Right Amount
Lawn mowers mulch grass by lifting the grass clippings into the deck and cutting them into fine pieces before they drop back into the ground. Because they need to be cut many more times than they do for bagging and side discharge, airflow is critical to the process. Airflow is created by the spinning blade, so keeping the RPMs high is important.
In general, try to mulch when you're taking off no more than 2 inches of grass for the best results. That lets the blade speed stay up on just about any gas or battery-powered mower and get those fine pieces that send nutrients back into your lawn.
During high growth seasons (~8 months out of the year in Florida), you might need to mow every 5 days instead of once a week.
But What if the Lawn is Already Too High?
There's ideal and then there's practical when it comes to mulching grass. Ideally, you can cut your grass in stages—cut at the tallest height for your mower first, then drop it down another inch or two and do it again.
That's a doable first step if you're going to keep the lawn under control from there.
If your reality is that you're just going to have to cut more than 2 inches at a time, you can still mulch. Be prepared to slow down or cut half-swaths in thicker sections. Remember, the goal is to keep your blade speed high, so whatever it takes to do that is key.
Cut When It's Dry
You'll typically get much better mulching results if you can cut when your grass is dry. That leaves the clippings lighter so they stay up in the deck longer and don't stick to the sides.
Sometimes you don't have a choice. During the summer, our grass takes forever to dry thanks to high humidity. And right about the time it does, sea breeze thunderstorms are about to unleash impressively high amounts of rain.
Mulching grass when it's wet means the blade can't cut the clippings as small before they drop out. And the wetter the grass, the more challenging it becomes, especially for battery-powered lawn mowers. If you have a choice between mowing wet grass and damp grass, go with damp.
Additional Tips for Mulching Grass
Sharpen Your Blade
Lawn mowers are powerful tools and they can still chop grass down with a dull blade. That doesn't mean it's doing a good job, though.
Keeping your blade sharp ensures that it slices the clippings better and keeps its RPMs as high as possible.
Change the Blade
Check to see what blade came on your mower. Often, you can replace the stock blade with a high-lift or mulching-specific blade to get even better results.
Mind Your Watering Schedule
During dry seasons when you water the lawn, try to cut the day before you water or the day of but before the sprinklers come on. You'll be cutting when the grass is dry and you'll immediately water in those nutrients the mulching process puts back in your lawn.
Like the mower we used in the photos? It's a 60V self-propelled mower from Greenworks that we highly recommend. Check out our review or pick one up for yourself at Home Depot!


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Price: €250.00 inc. VAT
The DeWALT DCP580 is the world's first 18 volt brushless, cordless planer. It's a compact and well balanced machine for both horizontal and vertical planing with twin 82 mm reversible blades and the power to plane up to 2.0 mm in soft wood or 1.0 mm in hard wood. There's two 82 mm tungsten carbide tipped reversible blades already attached and it has a discreet on-board blade storage area, with integrated torx key for quicker blade changes. It has a DeWALT XR brushless motor which eliminates wasted energy, maximising the runtime and life of the tool. This innovative new technology pairs a highly efficient brushless motor with a high capacity XR battery, working in tandem to provide maximum output and best-in-class runtime. The DCP580 has enough runtime for a typical day's work from just one charge of a DeWALT 18 volt XR Lithium-ion battery, significantly reducing costly downtime and providing end-users with market-leading efficiency.
This is a body only tool. No batteries, charger or case supplied.


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Fabulous tri-colored Neapolitan Kasutera (Neapolitan Castella) with chocolate, honey, and strawberry flavored cakes baked in a single pan.
Single flavored kasutera, check! Double-flavored marbled kasutera, check! I did not make this one but it is out there. And now I present to you the triple-flavored Neapolitan Kasutera (Neapolitan Castella)! Achoo…talk about a persistent bug! This one shows no sign of abating. Have no fear though as this bug should not harm you unless you over-indulge. In fact, you may actually hope to catch it. 🙂
Inspiration from Neapolitan Ice Cream
Neapolitan ice cream is a tri-colored combination of flavors, usually consisting of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream in a single block. Adapting it to a cake baked in a single pan was quite a challenge but the result was pleasing to the eye and the taste combination delightful. The three separate flavors of different consistencies can be placed side by side into a single cake pan without them mixing together. Though not perfect, the tri-colored effect can definitely be achieved…YAY!
The Divider Method
So, how did I prevent the three layers from mixing together? I used the Divider Method as described here. Making two flavors in a wide pan would be a lot easier. I wasn't sure if three narrow strips would work as there was very little room for the batter to spread before it all got "messed" up. There was only one way to find out. I cut out two cardboard dividers and covered them with aluminum foil. Since I did not have a helper to hold up the dividers, I had to make sure they fitted snugly in the pan so that they could stand on their own.
After removing the dividers, the pan should be placed immediately into preheated oven. Needless to say I was frantic having to pause for pictures. As you can see, the different layers of batter were already starting to spread.
The Three Different Flavors in This Neapolitan Kasutera
To make the three different flavors, I divided the base batter (after addition of mirin) into three equal portions of 4½oz (130g) each. Then I stirred in a little over a tablespoon cocoa mixture into one portion and honey mixture into another portion. The strawberry flavor was tricky. I felt that a tablespoon of strawberry would not be sufficient. Hence, I added all three tablespoons yielded from cooking down the sauce plus two drops of red food coloring to intensify the color.
However, this meant that the strawberry batter would have a little more volume because of the additional liquid. Misjudging the appearance of the strawberry layer, I made the mistake of removing two tablespoons of the batter out of the pan resulting in the "wave" you see on the strawberry portion of the cake after baking. It was as if there was insufficient batter there. The top was smooth with very little to no shrinkage.
Great Flavor and Texture in This Neapolitan Kasutera
Apart from its wavy appearance, I must say this cake had the best flavor and texture compared to the Honey Kasutera and Matcha Kasutera I had made previously. The texture was very fine and a little more dense than the previous two cakes. This cake was moist and the mirin was definitely discernible. The strawberry flavor had a very mild tartness to it and combined well with the cocoa and honey flavors. I was more than happy.
The Drop Treatment
For a kasutera that is even more Drop-Dead-Delicious, it must be given the customary "drop treatment"! I found this interesting study paper, Prevention of Shrinkage After Baking by H. Ohtsubo, T. Kanbe, Y. Kaneko, and S. Nomura explaining the physics of the "drop treatment". In essence, baking causes expansion of cell walls in the cake until it hardens into rigid cells. As the cake cools, the pressure drops and no longer supports those walls causing shrinkage. A mechanical shock treatment applied to the cake immediately after baking cracks the cell walls relieving the pressure instantaneously to pre-empt the effects of shrinkage. Brilliant!
When dropping the cake, the traditional accompanying martial art's cry kiai (気合) is highly optional but recommended as it may instantaneously release the pent up pressure within YOU! 😉
Similar Tools Used in Making This Neapolitan Kasutera (Neapolitan Castella)
This post contains affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy here.
KitchenAid Professional 5 Plus Series Stand Mixers – Metallic Chrome
Loaf Pan 8.5 x 4.5 x 3-Inch Small, Silver
Nonstick Bread Pan, 8″
Neapolitan Kasutera (Neapolitan Castella)
- 2/3 cup bread flour (sifted) (100g)
- 4 egg whites at room temperature
- 4 egg yolks at room temperature
- ½ cup sugar (110g)
- 2 tbsp mirin
- 1 tbsp cocoa powder
- 1 tsp honey
Strawberry Sauce
- 5 oz strawberries (hulled and quartered) (150g)
- 1 tsp sugar
- 3 tbsp water
- 2 drops red food coloring
- Line an 8¾in x 3¼in (22½cm x 8cm) loaf pan with aluminum foil. Cut two pieces of cardboard the width and height of the loaf pan to act as separators. Wrap cardboard separators with aluminum foil and place them equally spaced in the pan.
- Place strawberries, sugar, and water in a small saucepan over medium heat. Mash strawberries with spatula and cook till thick and syrupy, about 8 minutes. Strain mixture, pressing with spatula to extract the juice. Discard pulp.
- Stir cocoa powder with 1 tablespoon hot water in a small bowl till well combined. In another small bowl, combine honey with 1 tablespoon hot water.
- Preheat oven to 325°F (165°C).
- Place egg whites in mixing bowl and beat at high speed (speed 10*) for 30 seconds until slightly foamy. Add sugar in 2 to 3 increments until firm peaks form, about 4 minutes.
- Add yolks one at a time at medium low speed (speed 4*) until well combined, about 1 minute. Add sifted bread flour and beat until just combined. Add mirin and continue to beat for another minute.
- Pour batter through a sieve into a large bowl. Press with a spatula to help batter go through sieve.
- Divide batter equally into 3 portions of 4½ oz (130g) each into 3 separate bowls. Add strawberry sauce (about 3 tablespoons) and 2 drops of red food coloring to one of the bowls and gently stir with a spatula till well combined. Repeat with cocoa mixture and honey mixture.
- Pour each of the flavored batter into each section of the prepared loaf pan. Tap pan on the counter to remove air bubbles. Pull out both cardboard separators and immediately place into preheated oven.
- Bake for 45 minutes or until top is evenly browned. Toothpick inserted into cake should come out clean.
- Remove pan from oven and drop it from a one foot height onto the counter to prevent shrinkage. Place a piece of parchment paper on a large piece of shrink wrap. When cake is cool enough to handle, lift cake up by holding the edge of aluminum foil. Turn cake upside down onto parchment paper. Peel off aluminum foil. Wrap shrink wrap over cake and leave overnight in the refrigerator (right side up) to preserve moisture in the cake and for flavor to develop. Alternatively, warm cake can put into a Ziploc bag with the foil and left in the refrigerator (right side up) overnight.
- To serve, cut off edges on all sides except the top and bottom with a very sharp knife. Then cut into thick slices using a sawing motion.
Feedback and Recipe Adjustments
Feedback from the field indicates that the previous two recipes were too sweet for some and too light for others. Can't please everyone but glad to hear many LOVED it and have made it successfully! A few even made it repeatedly. 🙂 This Neapolitan Kasutera is the culmination of my three attempts and I think it has the best texture and flavor. I would highly recommend adding the mirin. It wasn't in my Honey Castella because I was distracted with taking the step-by-step pictures and only realized the omission after the batter was in the pan. Below is the summary of my adjusted recipes for the different pan sizes. Use only one flavoring for each of the cakes. Please adjust the measurements of the flavorings accordingly if you intend to split the batter into two or three flavors.
The other two cakes… Please click on the picture to get to the post.
Patience is Key
Finally, the key to a successful kasutera is patience. I know it is hard to refrain from eating the cake when it is fresh out of the oven but you will be glad you did. Wrap up the cake while still slightly warm and keep it in the refrigerator overnight. This finishing touch improves its moistness. Some have placed it upside down with no adverse effects while others placed it right side up in the fridge. I had the problem of the top of the cake sticking to the parchment paper and so I prefer to place it right side up with the parchment paper loosely covering the top.
I would like to mention here that my recipes are based on the original from
who adapted and simplified the steps from another recipe found on this Japanese
I also implemented some tips from
For the most beautiful Matcha Marble Castella Cake ever, please check out my friend's blog
Achoo… I hope you catch the bug! 😉 Happy Baking!
Enjoy…..and have a wonderful day! 😎


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Are you able and planning to plan some projects?
Just be with colors. It turns out that the impact of our choices on our ways has been determined and how they can produce an effect. So whether it's a new thing or just to refresh and refresh Make sure your kitchen is current, say, decide what you want and avoid poor color choices in the kitchen.
Imagine how different the environment will be with the right game. Start by determining the colors that you want to use on the walls and flowers of your kitchen. So you may find that you can make up your mind with splashing verse that uses vivid, colored colors, or talking a little about the old-fashioned scheme.
This will allow you to make decisions about your choices, devices and other devices. The creative work with the colors adds a special touch to your daily life.
Most of the colors do very well in modern and ultra-modern colors, but in this day and age one has to take the time to make the right choice. Some would use neutral colors on the whales and flowers and add the drama to choosing the right ones, textured and in their closets and appliances.
Better selection and use of colors that are typically used will help determine the color scheme that can be attractive and attractive. In today's modern way it looks, black has been a favorite for urban elegance and sophistication. It looks like you are doing something and doing something to do something and do something. Some choose to use high quality cosmetic paints, flower fibers and ceramics, which are considered candy.
Necessary customers are usually clear. It would go a long way if you want to sell like any potential buyer who isn't sure if they're good or orange. Lots of people will choose to search, and perhaps with the use of slats and fashions, find and find the right colors and creams and colors.
The attempt is to add and create a larger area by using neutral tones and using the right space. While you can be very knowledgeable and excited about the choice of colors to use, you never find out if the function that is important is the most important and important.
Some important guidelines for using different color labels:
- A monochrome takes a color and combines it with different colors, tones, and tones of that color.
- Proper schema brings deep, confident, and confident understanding with the use of two of them.
- The analog color consists of the hot or cold color that is included in the mix.
- It is necessary that most are very good and can be combined with almost anyone to accent and add well.
Good lighting also provides an emphasis on creating a specific color scheme. With the right lighting, you can find or reduce the features as you need them. The best colors, as it would be best, are the colors of nature and Avoid poor color choices in the kitchen. Whatever you decide and decide whether to go with your design, make sure that it is safe and that it will not be compromised.


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Tobacco manufacturers are continuing to invest in smaller pack sizes despite the looming threat of a ban on packs of 10 cigarettes and roll your own (RYO) in packs of less than 20g.
Plans to ban small packs are contained in the EU Tobacco Products Directive (EUTPD) which is now approaching the end of its lengthy progress through the EU parliament, with an announcement expected imminently.
Despite the threat, Imperial Tobacco has just invested in the launch of a new 9g pack format of its Gold Leaf RYO brand.
Complete with papers, Gold Leaf 9g enables adult smokers to make 22 hand-rolled cigarettes for less than £3, a move which Imperial claims could help to counter the growing illicit tobacco trade.
According to Imperial, sales of sub 12.5g pack sizes of RYO tobacco have more than doubled over the past year as increasing numbers of tobacco shoppers buy smaller formats as a way of managing their budgets.
"Of course we have EUTPD at the back of our minds but for now it's business as usual as there is huge demand amongst adult smokers for smaller pack sizes," Imperial's UK communications manager Gayatri Barua-Howe said.
JTI also launched new three-in-one packs of Amber Leaf, which contain 10g of rolling tobacco plus medium-weight papers and filters, this autumn.
According to the Tobacco Manufacturers Association (TMA) a third of the UK cigarette market is currently sold in packs of less than 20 cigarettes, and 77% of the UK hand-rolling tobacco market is sold in quantities of less than 40g.
A ban on these smaller packs would "limit consumer choice and devastate thousands of hardworking shopkeepers," MP and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Small Shops Group Priti Patel said.
"This Directive will push prices up and will benefit criminals and smugglers at the expense of small and independent retailers," she added.


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It's been another week and the weather has remained dry, if not sunny. That means I've been able to have an increasingly tiring, unbroken run of days out in the garden finishing the final border and doing a few other odd-jobs.
Last time around, I'd just finished sculpting the final border surface into a lovely smooth shape, perfectly ready for planting.
Only that it's not quite yet.
The border is missing a few accessories that I've spent this week putting in. First is a curving access path that allows me (and guests) to reach most parts of the border without having to step into the middle of it. It's a civilised way of being among the plants. As is usually the case with me, instead of going for just some easy stepping stones or a rough trampled path, I've gone for an industrial grade, metal-edged, felt-lined, wood-chip path.
The wood chips are yet to arrive but when they do, I'll be filling what currently looks to be a water feature or log flume with wood chips to complete it. It's basically the same as the path I put in the Willow border, just this one has curves, not corners.
The second accessory is a watering system with a soaker (leaky) hose. We have this system in two other borders and it is fantastic. To be able to spend a few minutes connecting the hose and then just leave the tap on for a few hours as the border gets a gentle and through soak with almost no effort is a godsend. I initially wasn't going to put a soaker system in but the soil level ended up much higher than I originally expected and the higher the level the drier the soil.
In the end, it was just less work and headache to put a watering system in now rather than have to worry about thirsty and wilting plants in subsequent years. It certainly beats watering such a large area by hand – it's simply not possible to do it effectively and would waste a huge amount of water.
I also took the opportunity to sort out the very corner of the garden right at the back behind the shed, which has just been a bare patch of soil for a few years. It is one of the most challenging areas of the garden and the local supermarket recently came up with the answer: cyclamen. Lots of them. At less than £1 each, we almost cleared the shelves of these cyclamen, took them home and planted them out in this area. Now every time we look through the arch by the shed, there are a mass of vibrant pink and red cyclamen flowers to look at. I'm hoping they'll establish well and gradually knit together. I'm also hoping to introduce some epimediums and the ubiquitous ferns as well for a bit more interest.
This dark, dry area of the garden is never going to be able to support a show-stopper specimen plant, I'll just have to be more creative with tougher plants instead.
With the corner of the garden planted and out of the way, my attention turned back to the pergola base that runs along the fence, which was just left rough, for the grass to grow back and we might have popped in some Stipa Tenuissima (Mexican Feather Grass), which seems to do very well from seed.
I wasn't satisfied with the messy look so decided to formally split the grass and "border" (it's not big enough to be called a border, really) with some metal edging that runs the whole length of the pergola. Some weeding later and we now have a neat edge which I can back-fill and try planting tough annuals like Cerinthe, Calendula or Bidens. This long and narrow spot is very sunny but also very dry and plants will have to complete with the rhododendron hedge behind the wooden fence. There'll be no watering system going in here.
So with that area neatened up, I'm now starting to really run down the list of those "5 minute" jobs that don't come under the "routine maintenance" category. There's the compost heap posts to repair, the rectangular patch of soil in the patio that is full of weeds (again), some garden rubbish to clear away and then I'm all out of ideas.
The dry weather is continuing this coming week so I'm hoping I can get on with the exciting job of planting the final border with all those small plants on the patio staging that I grew from seed way back earlier in the year. They'll be going in just in the nick of time too, I'm already noticing the days getting shorter and the sun isn't as high as it used to be. We're starting to get that mellow yellow light and it won't be long before the leaves start to turn.


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Real Marin Group Campaign
Real Marin Group, Compass
Real Marin Group is a collective of five Compass real agents who work in Marin County. The agents previously worked independently of one another, so this campaign elevated awareness of their new collaboration. I focused my attention on conveying how approachable the agents are as well as how their combined talents and efforts facilitate a smooth, efficient home buying/selling process.
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What Are Carpenter Ants?
Carpenter ants are not termites, but they have a shared love for wood. Unlike termites, they prefer their wood wet. Their favorite time of operation is during the spring when it is wet, this is Carpenter ants best time for reproduction and nesting. Moreover, it is quite unlikely to see them during the winter. Unfortunately, if you do see a Carpenter ant inside your home, it could be a sign of a nest nearby. There is a chance you could have an ant infestation. And, like a normal community, they have other satellite nests nearby, so if you see one, expect to see many more in your Utah home.
What Do Carpenter Ants Do?
As previously stated, Carpenter ants are not termites, so they do not eat wood. Their attraction to damp wood is because it serves as the perfect nest for them to create their colonies. Outdoors, the usual woods of choice are tree stumps, rotten logs, and other decaying wet wood, while indoors they target damp basements, attics, and other woods prone to liquid damage like those of barns. What they do to this wood is that they burrow into it so deeply and intricately until they weaken the entire structural integrity of the wood. In other words, when Carpenter ants build their nest in your house, they are doing it at the expense of your house's structural strength and inadvertently, your own safety.
How To Prevent Their Nesting
The first thing to do is to make sure you do not provide an infestation ground for Carpenter ants in your house. Every wood or wooden structure should be kept dry at all times; keep water away from them and check every water source to make sure there are not any leaks, dripping spouts, and any other water build-up. Emphasize your check on the basement and the attic; for these are some of the common places they build their nests which metastasizes into colonies. Do not limit your investigation indoors; clear your backyard of any possible wet wood like firewood piles, rotten trees, old storage, wooden debris, and other possible infestation grounds. This practice will prevent Carpenter ants from settling in your vicinity.
You may do your best, but sometimes you need the help of an expert. This is why it is wise to invest in knowledgeable and experienced Pest control experts. Choose Pest control experts who can perform routine checks to prevent infestation and where necessary, eliminate the problem. They have good detection skills and can give the best solution to an infestation problem.
Carpenter ants work secretly, that is why by the time they are found, chances are that it is usually too late. With these little facts and recommendations, make a habit of noticing the signs and take proactive measures against these pests and their possible settlement. Protect your property and most importantly, protect yourself.
Rely On The Ant Pest Control Experts
No one wants Ants to take over their home. When you realize you have carpenter ants in your home, rely on the experts at Beeline Pest Control Utah. Give us a call today for all your ant control needs at (801) 544-9200.


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Age of Empires: Castle Siege beefs up Henry V with update
Age of Empires: Castle Siege is making some changes to its version of Henry V, so he is a bigger threat in the action-strategy game. It's part of the 1.10 update that's now available for Windows Phone and Windows 8.1. gamers.
Microsoft explains the changes to Henry V in its latest Age of Empires blog post, stating. "Henry's new theme is wreaking chaos from distance. We're going to give him some basic stat increases so he is more of a threat on his own (i.e. harassing resources, taking out enemy troops, and staying out of the line of fire). We're going to add more utility to his Ability by having a lasting effect on any structures that have been targeted. Lastly, he should be easier to use, as we are doubling the casting range of his ability."
- Henry's Disable casting range increased by 100%
- After the duration of Disable expires, the targeted tower's attack rate is reduced by half for the rest of the battle
- Henry's attack range increased by 12.5%
- Increased Henry's damage by 25%
- Henry will prioritize wall troops over other targets that are within his attack range
Here's what else is included with the 1.10 update:
- Relief Force Donations tab added to Alliance Messaging
- Peace Treaties now also protect from revenge attacks
- Rurik has developed Sword Mastery which dispatches any wall troop in a single blow
- The duration of the Terrorize ability has increased
- Winrich will deal bonus damage against Grenadiers
- Defensive Grenadiers speed has been reduced and they no longer deal bonus damage against Teutonic Knights
- Engineers are now easier to select
- Laddermen will go over walls more quickly and take less damage while doing so
- Laddermen will dispatch ranged wall units in a single blow
- Crossbowmen and catapults now deal bonus damage against Grenadiers
- Defensive units will use breaches and gates more often
- Muted alliance members will stay muted until the next launch of the app
- Rurik now prioritize towers over non-threatening structures
- Guard House troops that have been Converted by Joan no longer prevent further troop deployment
Thanks to Cleon for the tip!
Download Age of Empires: Castle Siege for Windows Phone (Free/In-app purchases)
Download Age of Empires: Castle Siege for Windows 8.1 (Free/In-app purchases)
Source: Microsoft
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How to Get Customer Email Addresses
There may be a time when you'd like to contact your online customers and sending an email may be the way to go. Customer email addresses are stored in the Biller Portal and can be obtained from the Active Customers report, under Custom Reporting. Here's how to get your customers' email addresses:
- Login to the Biller Portal and then select Reports > Custom Reporting > Scheduled
- Click on "NEW SCHEDULED REPORT"
- In the New Scheduled Report window:
Select the Active Customers report from the dropdown list
Name your report
Select the day of the month to receive the report
Add the email address where the report should be sent
Keep the "Active" checkbox checked to ensure only active customers are included
Tip: Select a "Day Of Month" that is after the current date unless you'd like to receive the report in the following month.


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COVID-19 Laws and Legal Resources
When thought of as to their period, legal guidelines are immutable and arbitrary or constructive; when as their effect, they're prospective and retrospective. In its most general and complete sense, legislation signifies a rule of action; and this term is applied indiscriminately to all types of action; whether or not animate or inanimate, rational or irrational. In its more confined sense, legislation denotes the rule, not of actions normally, however of human action or conduct. In the civil code of Louisiana, artwork. 1, it's outlined to be "a solemn expression of the legislative will." Vide Toull.
A group of various professionals work with students in the classroom and one-on-one to teach them to think, learn, research, write, converse, and drawback remedy like a lawyer. Indeed, as a result of the Congress can not enforce and administer each legislation it enacts, it must depend on the agencies to administer, interpret, enforce, and in any other case regulate varied federal laws the Congress has enacted. These businesses have enormous energy to interpret the broad congressional legal guidelines to enact various rules defining and interpreting the related statutes, and to implement those rules, and adjudicate issues in accordance with those rules. Recognize the legal issue(s) and possible public policy points in the hypotheticals presented to them. The specialization is designed for UCLA Philosophy Graduate college students who need to supplement their authorized research by exploring the philosophical foundations of legislation.
Ms. Perez is an legal professional and consultant whose hybrid follow focuses on all features of the employment relationship. In addition, she conducts legal, management and leadership training on matters corresponding to anti-harassment, range and inclusion, implicit bias, and generational and alter management. At her prior firm, she was active on the Women"™s Initiative Leadership staff as its nationwide Programming Co-Chair and New Orleans Committee Chair and in the firm-broad Diversity Committee as a D&I and implicit bias mitigation coach.
Since 2012, Professor Miyazawa has organized an annual UC Hastings symposium on regulation and society in Japan. Another pillar of the program is Professor Keith Hand, a authorized scholar and former business lawyer who has suggested the U.S.
The CRN seeks to attach these within the Law and Society/Sociolegal Studies community with the segment of the growing Empirical Legal Studies group that focuses on civil justice points. The criminalization of the intercourse business and the marginalization of people working therein is a timely and pressing public problem. With this CRN we hope to collaboratively work towards discovering progressive solutions to the problems that these workers face, at the similar time contributing to the scholarly group by filling a niche within the Law and Society community.
You are responsible for reading, understanding and agreeing to the National Law Review's (NLR"™s) and the National Law Forum LLC'sTerms of Use and Privacy Policy earlier than utilizing the National Law Review website. The National Law Review is a free to make use of, no-log in database of legal and business articles. Any authorized analysis, legislative updates or different content material and links should not be construed as legal or professional recommendation or an alternative to such advice. No legal professional-shopper or confidential relationship is fashioned by the transmission of data between you and the National Law Review web site or any of the law firms, attorneys or different professionals or organizations who embrace content on the National Law Review web site.


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When booking your vehicle rental online, either directly through Green Motion or through one of its broker partners, you are presented with a choice of card payment options. The payment options are generally quite flexible and as a customer you have a wide choice of card types that you can utilise for this.
However, when collecting your vehicle from the rental location, a pre-authorisation is required at the time of hire to secure the standard excess applicable to the vehicle that you are hiring. As this is taken as a pre-authorisation, and monies are not physically deducted from your account, only a valid master or visa credit card can be accepted in most instances. This means that the payment card utilised when placing your booking may not be accepted for the preauthorisation at the time of hire.
Green Motion clearly states what cards are accepted under their Terms & Conditions of hire which are available both at the time of booking and online.
For further information on the cards that are accepted at the rental station you are interested in hiring from, please visit https://greenmotion.com/terms and click on the flag of the country you with to visit.
See also 'Can I use my debit card'


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Celebs by profession: Reality-TV Participant
A reality-TV participant is a person who acts or participates in a reality-TV show. As the name says, a reality show usually illustrates the reality. Known TV formats are Reality-Soaps or Reality gaming shows.
In reality soaps people are filmed in everyday situations. A popular example is the TV show The Osbournes. In this show a camera team was documenting the everyday life of rock legend Ozzy Osbourne's family. There are also reality shows which focus on documenting the everyday work of people in various professions.
They mostly focus on professions which are dangerous or social jobs which deal with everyday problems. A popular example is the British TV show "Supernanny".
Well known reality-tv shows
Reality-TV game shows participants are filmed day and night and have to win the viewers favor. Games and competitions are mostly added to raise the entertainment factor and put the candidates in challenging or embarrassing situations. Big Brother, I'm a Celebrity...Get Me out of Here! and The Bachelor are a few of many examples.
Producers of those TV shows always try to introduce interesting characters. That's why a lot of celebrities or former celebrities are also seen in this kind of shows.


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Kevin Hymel, the historian who leads our In Patton's Footsteps Tour, has been busy keeping history alive. His new book on General George S. Patton comes out in November; his latest article is now available in WWII History Magazine; and he made yet another appearance on WW2TV to discuss the Battle of Mayenne, a stop on the Patton tour.
Patton's War
During his life, George S. Patton Jr. starred as an Olympic athlete in the 1912 Stockholm games, chased down Mexican bandits, and led tanks into battle in World War I. But he is best remembered for his exploits on the field of battle in World War II. Patton's War, the first of three volumes, follows the general from the beaches of Morocco to the fields of France, right before the birth of Third Army on the continent.
In his highly engaging new book, Patton's War: An American General's Combat Leadership, Volume I: November 1942 – July 1944, Kevin Hymel uncovers new facts and challenges long-held beliefs about the mercurial Patton, not only examining his relationships with his superiors and fellow generals and colonels, but also with the soldiers of all ranks whom he led. Through extensive research of soldiers' memoirs and interviews, Hymel adds a new dimension to the telling of Patton's WWII story.
Preorder Patton's War: An American General's Combat Leadership >
Patton: From Gafsa to El Guettar
WWII History Magazine has published Kevin's latest article, "Patton: From Gafsa to El Guettar." It covers General George S. Patton's first week commanding the II Corps in combat in Tunisia in the winter of 1942. The article is an adaptation from his new book, Patton's War, Volume 1. Now available online and on newsstands!
WW2TV: The Battle for Mayenne
Kevin recently appeared on the WW2TV episode: The Battle for Mayenne.
The Battle of Mayenne occurred on 5th August 1944 when Patton's US Third Army advanced towards the Mayenne River in the town of Mayenne in Normandy. The Third Army had to secure the vital bridges to push their armour on towards Laval and Paris and at the same time hope the Germans did not destroy them.
Kevin and host Paul Woodadge talk about a bold decoy column deployed to lure some of the German defenders away and the story of James McRacken, known as the "The Savior of Mayenne," who was mortally wounded in an attempt to disarm explosives set by Germans to destroy one of the bridges.
In case you missed it, check out Kevin's last appearance on WW2TV, Patton's War.
About Historian Kevin Hymel
Kevin Hymel is a Historian for the U.S. Army and lives in Arlington, Virginia. He is the author of Patton's Photographs: War as He Saw It and has served as a historian at the U.S. Army Combat Studies Institute at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. He was also the Research Director for WWII History and Military Heritage magazines and has written numerous articles for each. Kevin has been a popular historian with Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours for more than 15 years, and has appeared in numerous documentaries on the History Channel and American Heroes Channel. He received his Bachelor's Degree from LaSalle University and Master's Degree from Villanova University, both in History.


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With national attention riveted over the weekend on two major stories — the frantic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan amid its fall to the Taliban and category 4 Hurricane Ida slamming into the Louisiana coast — Big Tech and woke finance dramatically extended the reach of cancel culture with brazen moves to silence and harass three high-profile voices of political and scientific dissent: independent journalist Alex Berenson, popular conservative news and opinion website The Gateway Pundit, and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
On Saturday, Twitter permanently banned Alex Berenson, who has built a large social media following challenging public health establishment orthodoxy on COVID issues ranging from lockdown to vaccine mandates.
"The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules," a Twitter spokesperson responded to an inquiry from Fox News.
"Goodbye Twitter," Berenson headlined the announcement of his banning on his Substack page.
"This was the tweet that did it," he wrote above a screen capture of the post that apparently triggered his purge from the dominant microblogging platform. "Entirely accurate. I can't wait to hear what a jury will make of this."
In his original offending tweet on the the COVID vaccine, Berenson wrote: "It doesn't stop infection. Or transmission. Don't think of it as a vaccine. Think of it — at best — as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity."
Twitter has been criticized for anti-conservative viewpoint bias and censorship, including permanently banning former President Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, citing the platform's policies on incitement to violence.
Twitter has consistently denied charges of ideologically selective censorship of user content.
Meanwhile, on Thursday search and online advertising giant Google took aim at The Gateway Pundit, a conservative online news and opinion site that is ranked in the top 200 of U.S. websites according to Alexa and in the top 50 of English language news websites, according to a study prepared for media industry news site PressGazette.
"Google demonetized the Gateway Pundit from their ad network," the site's founder and editor Jim Hoft reported on Saturday.
"We're emailing you to let you know that we've repeatedly found content on one of your sites that violates our Google Publisher Policies," the search giant notified Gateway Pundit's legal department. "As a result we'll be disabling ad serving on the site … in 4 business days, on 09/012021."
In explaining its move, Google cited two categories of violations: "Dangerous or derogatory content" and "Misreprentative — Unreliable and harmful claims."
"The Gateway Pundit has an outstanding record of accurately reporting the top news stories of the day," Hoft shot back. "Because of our continued success and our honest conservative bent we are regularly censored."
Loss of revenue from Google Ads can be a severe blow to a digital news site, given the platform's commanding position within the online advertising marketplace.
"For the record," wrote Hoft, "the Google advertising platform is one of the largest ad networks on the internet. So now Google is not only censoring and shadowbanning conservatives, they are taking away their ad money.
"Google is truly one of the most dangerous companies in the world today."
The third victim of the weekend purge was former Trump National Security Adviser and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration Michael Flynn, who posted to his Telegram account a notice from Chase Bank notifying him of the cancellation his credit cards.
"After careful consideration, we decided to close your credit cards on September 18, 2021 because continuing the relationship creates possible reputational risk to our company," read the terse update from the Cardmember Services division of Chase, the banking subsidiary of financial services behemoth JPMorgan Chase.
"Chase Bank has gone full blown woke!" Flynn posted in reply.
"They need to deal with their own reputation instead of persecuting my family and I," Flynn said, alluding to JPMorgan's agreement to pay $920 million to resolve federal wire fraud charges against the company for its role in separate criminal schemes to defraud the precious metals and U.S. Treasuries markets.
"DOJ dropped my case for their own egregious government misconduct, appears you weren't that lucky with the DOJ," Flynn chided. "I guess my America First political views don't align with yours."
More at: https://justthenews.com/accountability/cancel-culture/cancel-culture-chooses-news-filled-weekend-unleash-its-power


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Hudson Valley Based Distillery Pivots To Sanitizer Production
The Vale Fox Distillery in Lagrange is making the switch from alcohol production to hand sanitizer as the country faces off with COVID-19. In a social media post from Tuesday, they announced they'd be offering it up at cost meaning they will make no profit off of the much-needed product. They are currently offering the hand sanitizer to local hospitals and first responders but hope to have some available to the general public by next week.
Vale Fox Distillery is known for its Tod & Vixen's Dry Gin 1651 and will be releasing a Whisky sometime in the future. You can sign up at their website for more info on when that will be released.
How did Vale Fox Distillery get its name? Found Eral Gokgol-Kline searched for more than a year to find the right location. When he found the site in Lagrange and was surveying the land he saw a group of foxes running towards the woods. He chose to name the distillery after them adding Vale which is the old English name for a fox.
Listen to the Boris & Robyn Show weekday mornings from 6AM to 10AM through your WPDH mobile app. Connect with WPDH on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Read more:
- This Restaurant's Tipping Policy Left Me Speechless
- Idiot Crashes Car Attempting to 'Drift' on Route 44 in New Paltz
- We Tour 21 Abandoned Businesses on Route 9
- Hudson Valley Waitress Brought to Tears Over Surprise Tip
- New York Lake Named Most Beautiful in America
- Top 6 Hudson Valley Restaurants Featured on Food Network
- Enormous Fish Live in Hidden Cave Under City of Poughkeepsie


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Earlier this year Microsoft Learning released exam 70-345 for Exchange 2016. Unlike previous versions of Exchange which had multiple certification exams, Exchange 2016 will only have the single exam 70-345 for IT pros to pass as credit towards their MCSE certification.
The value of Microsoft certifications is often debated. Some people like them, some people think they're worthless. Personally, I think most Microsoft certifications have value, in that they provide a good baseline of knowledge that a person can then build on with further research and real world experience. Of course, that also depends on the individual. Some people are willing to fly through the certification process, doing the least possible amount of work to get the minimum pass mark on the exam. Others take the more sensible approach of treating certifications as a good learning opportunity, and focus on gaining knowledge and understanding which, unsurprisingly, often results in them passing the exams with near-perfect scores.
Exchange 2016 in particular has some questions around the value of its certification. With the growth of Office 365 and the trend towards cloud services, certifying for on-premises Exchange might not seem worthwhile. My view is that certifying for Exchange 2016 (or 2013, but that's two exams) is still very much worthwhile. The Office 365 certification exams are very light on Exchange coverage, and leave out many key Exchange Online features. Fortunately, you'll learn a lot from Exchange 2016 training that directly applies to Exchange Online. And all of the topics that are specific to on-premises are still very useful for Hybrid deployments, which are quite common right now.
As you might already know, I'm a co-author for the Exam Ref 70-345 book from Microsoft Press. The chapter drafts are already submitted and going through the technical review process, and the book is scheduled for publication in mid-September. For those of you who can't wait until then to start your Exchange 2016 certification journey, or who prefer to learn from training videos instead of books, I've also been working on producing a series of exam 70-345 training courses for Pluralsight. And this week I'm pleased to announce that the first of the six-part series is now available.
The course, titled Designing/Deploying Exchange 2016 (70-345): Mailbox Databases, runs for just under 4 hours and contains the following modules:
- Module 1 – Introduction
- Module 2 – Plan, Deploy and Manage Mailbox Databases
- Module 3 – High Availability Solutions for Mailbox Databases
- Module 4 – Site -resilient Database Availability Groups
- Module 5 – Monitor and Troubleshoot Mailbox Databases
- Module 6 – Backup and Recovery Solutions for Mailbox Databases
Although the modules align closely with the official exam objectives, it's not a course that just rolls through the topics in a generic way. Instead, a scenario-based approach is used to demonstrate how the concepts can be applied in real world situations. Based on my own experience of the Exchange 2016 beta exam, I think you'll learn more from this particular course than you'll need to know for that portion of the exam itself, which is clearly a good thing.
If you're an existing Pluralsight subscriber you can check out the course right now.
If you're not a Pluralsight subscriber, sign up to a free trial to watch this course and others.


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Managing Director, Co-Head of APAC and Deputy Global Head of Government Affairs, AIMA
Kher Sheng leads AIMA's policy and regulatory initiatives in the APAC region and also operates as a senior ambassador for AIMA and the industry it represents. In his role, he works closely together with Michael Bugel (his Co-Head of APAC) to shape and deliver AIMA's strategy for the APAC region. He is commended by the Financial Times in the FT Asia-Pacific Innovative Lawyers which observed he "has played an important role developing asset management standards in Hong Kong". He has been named to the Corporate Counsel 100: Asia Pacific by the global legal rankings publication Legal 500 which identifies "an array of the most influential and innovative in-house lawyers in Asia".
Mr. Lee received his LL.B (Hons) degree from the National University of Singapore law school, and is admitted to practise law in Singapore (Advocate & Solicitor), Hong Kong (Solicitor) and England & Wales (Solicitor-Advocate with full rights of audience in all criminal and civil proceedings in the higher courts). He is appointed a Notary Public by the Chief Judge of the High Court of Hong Kong. He is a Fellow of The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCIArb) and a Fellow of the Singapore Institute of Arbitrators (FSIArb). He is an accredited mediator with the Singapore Mediation Centre, and UK CEDR (for both commercial and workplace mediation). He is trained in negotiation and mediation with the Harvard Law School's Program on Negotiation. Kher Sheng has lived and worked in Singapore, London and Hong Kong. He is a CFA and CAIA charter holder.


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Big Brother 2014 Spoilers: Live Feeds Recap – 7/19/2014
|We had our normal Saturday in the Big Brother 2014 house, as the HGs made their way through picking the Power of Veto players and then the Veto Competition taking place on Big Brother 16. It was do-or-die time for Brittany, who was the main target for the power alliance of eight. Check out some highlights from Saturday below in our Big Brother 2014 spoilers!
>>>Click here for tonight's Live Recap of Big Brother 2014!!!
Photo Credit: BigBrotherUpdates.com
Before the players were picked, we saw Brittany and Amber talking about working together and they want Zach gone. They really have no idea how the game works, as they want to try and get Cody to pick Zach as the host and then he won't be able to compete. Yeah, that's how it works! With that logic, shouldn't Devin had hosted the week before??? Either way, they want to work together to keep Brittany safe. Then the players are picked and Brittany gets the HG Choice chip and asks for volunteers and Caleb volunteers! Brittany did not want to pick Amber because she didn't want people to see they are working together (smart girl)!
Try It Free! Subscribe now to the official BB16 Live Feeds
The Veto Competition was held and it was the trade-up competition and they all get a "prize" and can trade for something better. The true winner of the competition was Caleb, but he took $5,000 over the veto and Victoria ended up winning veto and will be safe for the week. Other prizes: Zach won a trip to Germany, Cody won kicking his own butt (using a machine that kicks him and he has to do it ten times when the whistle blows), Nicole won wearing a German-inspired unitard for a week and Brittany won kicking 2,400 soccer goals in a 24-hour period!
With Victoria winning, it was time to figure out who to put next to Brittany on the block. There was mention of Zach or Caleb, but Derrick put those ideas to rest and has everyone focused on putting up Donny, but knowing that Brittany is the target. They think Zach or Caleb could go home over Brittany, but no one would vote for Donny. However, Cody is worried about upsetting Donny and then becoming a target for him next week (why is everyone afraid of upsetting people in this game)?
Brittany and Zach got into a couple heated discussions and they just don't like each other, which would make it interesting if Zach went up as a renom. Caleb and Amber talked and for some reason, Caleb got the idea that Amber would go to Germany with him if he won that trip. He decides to talk to Zach and they trade prizes, so now Caleb thinks he is going on a trip with Amber. She never agreed to it and she shot him down on his idea of going on a cruise together. The man is nuts and has someone in his head telling him things that don't actually happen on Big Brother 2014! Anyway, production nixed the trade idea and they both have their original prizes.
Brittany has a little over 1,000 goals kicked, so more power to her! They got alcohol, but it did no good. Frankie talked with Amber and made it sound like it was Cody wanting her on the block and not him, which Cody heard about and is pissed. He smooths it out later and Amber seems to be the target for next week. When will they focus on Frankie and how no one trusts him? When will Nicole get to wear her regular clothes? What will Sunday bring to the Big Brother 16 house?
Join us on Big Big Brother for all your Big Brother 2014 spoilers, news, recaps, previews, pictures and much more! Find us on Twitter and keep up with us on Facebook. Don't forget Big Brother 16 live feeds for even more Big Brother fun, but uncensored! Every sign up helps support this site to keep bringing you Big Brother 16 spoilers, news and gossip all season long.
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17 Responses to "Big Brother 2014 Spoilers: Live Feeds Recap – 7/19/2014"
All I can say is that 2400 goals in 24 hours is one heck of a punishment!! She was working solid last night and was doing between 50-100 an hour. At 650 goals, she was already sore and her foot hurt (she was trying to kick with her left foot, but was obviously more accurate with her right). At that rate, it may take 12 hours or more to complete the task. She had a pretty good attitude on BBAD but I would be getting grumpy by then!!
Yeah, that is a huge punishment and I almost feel bad for her. To sleep, she would have to be working double time at points!
Yea, she really needs to kick it harder so she doesn't have to walk all the way in to the net to retrieve the ball!
I don't think she is tough enough, but she doesn't "deserve" this!
Totally agree.
Like many people on here, my annoyance with Brittany and the women in this house is growing more and more each day. I am praying for a Donny victory in the HoH competition next week just to spice things up a little….we need some of these guys on the block and paranoid to start cutting their own throats!
Derrick was talking last night in a way that explained his thought process to me. He is staying loyal to his original alliance until they get to evictees being on the jury. After that, his loyalties are less clear (though I'm pretty sure Frankie, Caleb and maybe Zach are his first targets). Until then, he's just staying focused on what seems to be the task of getting to jury – because apparently they earn a certain amount of money by doing so – and targeting anyone not in that group.
The problem for those outside the house who hate to see the majority rule (and for we who love Donny) is that the rest of the house can't get anything together. BB did it up good this time: Most of the BB game smarts appears to be on the same side as the brawn – which is unusual. Sure, Christine and Nicole are game savvy, but they aren't going to be brave enough to organize anything (to be fair, even THEY see that there isn't enough smarts in the rest of the house) until that brawny side votes them out too. CBS saddled the female side of the house with only two BB brains, a princess, a model, a DJ who couldn't win a comp to save her life, and a bunch of other women who have no idea how to play BB!!
Our best hope for a certain shake-up is Donny as HoH (as long as he doesn't target Derrick, which would not make me happy). Though honestly, he's smart enough to know Derrick is really the brains – and the glue – of that side of the house.
Yeah, Donny knows Derrick is the brains and he could go after him lol
I was all on the Derrick train. In fact i was the conductor. But i've retreated into the caboose. In the sense of being fair, i was down on Brittanys case for using the "deserve" word. But Derrick uttered something that makes no sense to me either. Last night he told Caleb he doesn't want Brittany in the game because she would target the guys and she wants to take the food out of my kids mouth. What?? No ones there to make sure your kid eats! That was the first time i've heard Derrick take his game play down to Britt level. Stop that Derrick….it looks bad on you.
Concerning the TA situation. Frankie and Derrick have talked about cutting Donny. Not this time but for the near future. Seems they still get the $5000 for each accomplished mission even if one of them is evicted. But they both agree when jury starts it's time to make it happen. So there it is….Donny is only safe until Derrick or Frankie decide it's time for him to go. Or he wins HOH and gets rid of them first. Donny is about the only one that knows Derrick is running the show.
i'm rapidly losing patience with these hgs. The level of strategy is low and the stupidity high. Even the so called "super fans" have laid down like a rug and let the others walk all over their game.
Question Cat: Do you think you generally root for the underdogs in the house? I mean, of course, they have to have intelligence and game play and some decency. I know that much. But (other than Dr. Will), what scenario would you NOT be craving an underdog revolt (assuming the hgs were worth rooting for)? Because as a superfan of BB, you just admire people having to work hard to get the money.
I ask because I find myself on the opposite side. I'm in the very unusual position this season of being happy with the majority rule because I like the person in charge: Derrick (and don't mind the others he's working with, generally speaking). Every other season where the house (or the tribe, on Survivor) voted together, I was frustrated – with the possible exception of Boston Rob's manipulation the season he won, which was quite masterful. I am always looking for someone to beat the odds, turn the house upside down, swim upstream – generally make things more interesting for us outside.
Now, you know my question isn't judgmental. I am just puzzled at my own reaction this season. With the exception of Donny not being in the alliance, I'm enjoying this season and watching to see if Derrick's manipulations will work.I heard his comments last night (I think it was the same ones). But it wasn't the whiney, "I deserve the money because I'm a husband and daddy" argument. He was saying, I'm here for my family, and anyone who gets in the way of that is toast – nothing personal, just that my family is all that matters to me in this game.
Again, I'm not trying to change your mind. You know I respect your opinion. And I'm willing to admit my opinions of the hgs could change in the coming weeks. I'm still admiring Derrick's game (with the exception that as soon as he specifically targets Donny, I'll start chewing my nails), with its imperfections. I like him as a person, and I want him to win (and Donny to get a bunch of TA $5000, plus fan fav).
Sorry for the treatise…..!
Yes i suppose i do root for the underdog. Assuming, as you say, they are intelligent and have a strategy. A HG doesn't get my loyalty just because they're the underdog if they don't even TRY. This is where i'm at odds with Donny. He's the obvious underdog. And i think he's an intelligent and decent person. And watching him i can almost see the wheels turning in his head. He's thinking it over….deciding what his best options are. Trouble is…..he thinks his best option is to do nothing. Yeah, i know he got burned before. He told someone…they told someone…and it got him into hot water. That doesn't mean you stop talking game. You just become more selective about who and what you say. That's all part of the game. From a fans standpoint of view, he's a disappointment in the strategy department. As a person…one of the best. I guess i keep hoping against hope that he will increase his capital in the game by making a move instead of being led to slaughter.
I like Derricks gameplay but i want someone to step up and challenge it. Having one person run rough shod over the whole house (even if they do it masterfully) gets predictable. It's easy to manipulate those that are malleable. But can you do it with the enemy? The only person at this point that's onto him is Donny. Although Donny is not Derricks enemy at this point….it's headed in that direction. Majority rules scenario = house votes together. Not inspiring and also predictable.
As for what Derrick said last night – I read quite a few blogs and articles this morning and more than a few mentioned his statement being Brittany-like. Even if he meant it in an innocent way, another hg might not take it that way. I obviously didn't. Leave family at the door. But if you must talk about them do so in a way that doesn't imply that their well being depends on you bringing home the check.
I'm very analytical, as I suspect you are. I like to study people – which makes BB a fascinating exercise for me! If Derrick's manipulation starts getting easy for him (because there isn't an independent thinker in the house), I will tire of it too. At this point, though, nothing is guaranteed. The fact that he has orchestrated so much without anyone but Donny noticing he is a controlling factor is admirable to me (plus the fact that he seems to be a good guy in real life). Yet, I worry every week that someone will wake up and target him. So that makes it interesting to me. I enjoy your perspective and am truly interested to see how this season plays out!!
I would think it is easy for Derrick…being a police officer I am sure he has seen a lot and can manipulate pretty good…but hopefully someone else has some smarts…I know it isn't Caleb…he is too busy having a GinaMarie meltdown.
Donny is gona win Fan Favorite anyways so just let him for sure make it to jury. Get the floaters gone before Jury, then mouthy Zach.
What is the count for Jury?-
It was nine last season, I believe
Thanks Todd


text:
The bride spoke of her happiness, the groom of his good fortune, but as royal weddings go, the October 28 marriage of Japan's Princess Ayako to businessman Kei Moriya was clearly short on ceremony.
No carriages, no bands, no crowds, and – from the Imperial family – no compromises.
When Ayako, 28, performed the traditional exchange of rings with her 32-year-old groom, she was also exchanging her royal life for one as a commoner.
Princesses in the world's oldest monarchy are not allowed to marry outside the royal ranks, so having arrived at the Meiji Shrine in central Tokyo as "Her Imperial Highness", she left it as plain Mrs Moriya. Her "dowry" was a one-off, tax-free payment of $1.25million from the royal coffers.
Yet there is more to Ayako's demotion than a touching tale of a woman sacrificing all for love. It arises from what is becoming the biggest crisis in the Japanese monarchy's 2500-year-old history.
While other royal families around the world have shaken off the dynastic cobwebs, refreshed their bloodlines and adapted to social change, the Imperial household clings jealously to its ancient ways.
Secrecy, tradition and obeisance remain its keywords, and while the nothing-newfangled approach may have helped maintain the monarchy's mystique, it has also created a problem that no one foresaw or can currently find an answer to.
Essentially, the royal family is running out of royals – and most conspicuously out of marriageable men. In the four decades from 1965 to 2006 not a single male baby was born into the ranks.
As a consequence, Japan's young princesses – currently seven of them – have been left with no chance of finding husbands, unless, like Ayako, they venture beyond the royal confines.
"It is a bizarre situation," says Professor Jeffrey Kingston of Tokyo's Temple University, "and not really sustainable. Everyone accepts that, but the hard part is agreeing how to change things."
Ayako isn't the first princess to jump ship.
Four years ago, her older sister, Princess Noriko, married Kunimaro Senge, the curator of a historic Japanese shrine.
Although the groom came from an aristocratic family, and was a second cousin of the reigning Emperor Akihito, he was deemed insufficiently "royal" to make the cut as a husband, and Noriko was forced to renounce her title and privileges and also accepted a pay-off.
A third princess, Mako, aged 27, and the Emperor's oldest granddaughter, is currently threatening to marry a Tokyo trainee lawyer, despite her family's objections.
"All this gets handled in an outwardly polite and civilised way," says Hinota Matsuda, editor of a London-based Japanese newsletter, "but in reality it's an insurrection. The women of the Imperial family are saying they have had enough."
The princesses' mutiny has come at a particularly awkward time for the Imperial family.
After 30 years on the Chrysanthemum Throne, Akihito, 84, is scheduled to abdicate on April 30, 2019 in favour of his mild-mannered son, Crown Prince Naruhito, and his trusted courtiers are desperate for a smooth handover.
But a rival faction of modernisers – in and outside court – sees a rare chance to overhaul some of the rigid codes and protocols that shape every aspect of the monarchy, and the two sides are squaring off.
Among those demanding change, the plight of the princesses has become a rallying cry.
Ayako – highly-educated, well-travelled, attractive and popular with the public – would appear to be exactly the kind of asset any switched-on royal family would cherish.
The daughter of the late Prince Norihito, she was working as a researcher at a top university when she met Kei, a rising young executive with a Japanese shipping firm.
"My mother is a friend of his mother," she later explained, "and they introduced us, and all I remember is that our conversation was so lively, and the time went by so fast it didn't seem that we hardly knew each other."
Soon enough they were in love, and alarm bells were ringing at the palace, where Ayako was left in little doubt of the consequences of taking the relationship forward.
"It isn't that the Imperial family would actually try to stop anyone marrying," says Hinota. "They understand the problem, and in a way they sympathise, but they really don't want to change the rules."
A week before her wedding, Ayako was granted a final audience with the Emperor, at which she made her formal farewells, and pledged continuing allegiance as a private citizen. Along with the right to vote, she may now speak in a personal capacity, and many Japanese are wondering what she might say.
Only around 30 invited guests and 800 well-wishers gathered at the Shinto shrine, set in velvety Tokyo parkland, for her wedding.
Ayako wore a traditional silk uchiki kimono of yellow silk, embroidered with pink flowers and fern motifs, while Kei was in Western-style morning dress with a top hat. After ritual prayers and a sip of sake, the pair exchanged their rings, and emerged into the sunshine as man, wife, and – in the eyes of many – victims of a needlessly intransigent system.
Like the court itself, the public is deeply divided about the need for change.
In May, millions of Japanese tuned in to watch the spectacular wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle, an American, bi-racial divorcee, but almost none of them could imagine such a union in Japan.
"It's impossible," says Hideya Kawanishi, a history professor at Kobe University. "It's not written in the Imperial Household Law, but no divorcee would be considered. There would be a thorough check on her background, and a woman like Meghan would definitely be excluded."
Other experts say merely being a foreigner would disqualify any potential royal bride. The last recorded marriage of a senior royal to a non-Japanese bride was in the 8th century – and even that is disputed!
Upholding tradition is of critical importance to the Japanese court. It could hardly be otherwise. Emperor Akihito can trace his family line back through an astonishing 126 generations – "almost literally," writes Frank Gibney, an American professor of Japanese studies, "into the mists of time."
No other monarchy comes close in terms of endurance, with the lineage of Britain's royal family, for example, stretching a mere 950 years from the Norman conquest, and even in this time period the crown has passed through several different families.
"The concept of the continuous, undiluted bloodline is absolutely central to how Japanese nationalists see their identity," says US Professor Ken Rouff, author of several books on the Japanese monarchy. "They believe that if it is broken, Japan will cease to exist."
Although the Imperial family was slimmed down and stripped of some privileges after Japan's defeat in World War Two, Naruhito, 58, will inherit an institution that is essentially unchanged since the medieval Shogun era.
The throne, along with all major positions of power, is reserved for men, and the main role of women remains raising heirs and offering occasional decorative reminders of their existence on special occasions.
So little official information is released about them that when Empress Nagako, widow of the late Hirohito, died aged 97 in 2000, millions of Japanese were unaware that she had still been alive.
The prohibition against marrying commoners only applies to female royals; men can – within reason – marry who they like, and Naruhito's own wife, the Oxford-educated soon-to-be Empress Masako, is the commoner daughter of a diplomat.
According to Masako's biographer, Australian journalist Ben Hill, she arrived determined to introduce changes, but was ruthlessly crushed by the system, and today – reportedly suffering from depression – rarely leaves her rooms in the Togu Palace.
According to court etiquette, she must walk three steps behind her husband with her eyes lowered, and even to travel into Tokyo she must request permission 14 days in advance. She has no money of her own, or even a private telephone. When, early in her marriage, she gave a joint press conference with Naruhito, she was admonished by courtiers for speaking for nine seconds longer than her husband.
As Masako discovered – perhaps too late – the real power at Court belongs to the Imperial Household Agency (IHA), a secretive 1200-strong secretariat, dedicated to maintaining the Emperor's near-god-like standing in national life, and ferociously resistant to reform.
Despite pleas from politicians and cautious criticism from a usually-compliant media, the agency has fought off all attempts to liberalise the rules.
In a sense, the IHA is engaged in an elaborate conjuring trick. With relatively few resources and a low-wattage royal line-up, it must convince the public that the Imperial family is the indispensable essence of all that has made Japan one of the world's most successful, stable and culturally distinctive countries.
"Our real problem," wrote an anonymous contributor to the Ashai Shimbun newspaper recently, "is that our monarchy is under no threat from anyone except itself. Like all living organisms, it must evolve or die."
Europe's royal houses found themselves in the same fix 50 years ago.
The old system of using marriage to build dynastic alliances had fallen out of favour and the supply of "traditional" princes and princesses was drying up. The monarchies saw little option but to re-invent themselves, embracing more open lifestyles, mingling with the masses, and, occasionally, marrying into them.
Royal-to-commoner marriages now barely raise an eyebrow in Europe. Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark met his bride-to-be, Australian Mary Donaldson, in a Sydney pub. "Hello," he said, "I'm Fred. What's your phone number?" Today, they have four children and are wildly popular.
Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria married her personal trainer, a bespectacled fellow Swede who now styles himself the Duke of Vastergötland. King Felipe of Spain is married to Letizia Ortiz, a TV presenter whose father was a proofreader on a provincial newspaper.
After decades of failed relationships, Prince Albert of Monaco wed Charlene Wittstock, a blonde, South African swimming champion.
Everything suggests that the public approves of these unions, and the fresh blood has helped revive many of the moribund royal families that might otherwise have quietly faded away.
Ayako professed herself happy with her lot, and no one suggests that she will be shunned by the court. The couple's wedding banquet was attended by Naruhito and Masako along with Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and a host of big-name politicians, business figures and celebrities.
Yet for all the power on display, the event, at Tokyo's Otano Hotel, symbolised the country's helplessness to make adjustments to the old order.
After 25 centuries, the clock on the Imperial mantelpiece is ticking more loudly: Ayako has gone, others are likely to follow, and one day there may be no one left to re-wind it.


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text: ICTY Press Briefing - 8 March 2000 Please note that this is not a verbatim transcript of the Press Briefing. It is merely a summary. ICTY Weekly Press Briefing Date: 8 March 2000 Time: 11:30 a.m. REGISTRY AND CHAMBERS Jim Landale, Spokesman for Registry and Chambers made the following statement: As you should have seen from our press advisory, the initial appearance for Dragoljub Prcac, will take place on Friday at 3 p.m. in Courtroom III. On 7 March 2000, Trial Chamber III (Judges Robinson (Presiding), Hunt and Bennouna) ordered that the Prosecution disclose certain specified documents in connection with SFOR, or other military and security forces operating on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to counsel for Todorovic by 4 April 2000 and that Todorovic shall by 18 April 2000, inform the Trial Chamber of the steps taken to obtain any such documents or information not provided by the Prosecutor. The Prosecution has been ordered to indicate to the Trial Chamber and Defence by 4 April if such information is not in their custody or control. The order is available for those who are interested. On 3 March, Anto Nobilo filed his submission with regard to his appeal against the contempt of court judgement. We have copies of that if you are interested. The Prosecution case is due to end in Kordic and Cerkez trial on Friday. There will then be an adjournment until 10 April, when the defence will begin their case-in-chief. On 7 March, a scheduling order was issued in the Jelisic case ordering that the appellants' briefs should be filed by 15 May. By the appellants, I mean the Prosecution, appealing against Jelisic's acquittal on the charge of genocide and the defence appealing on the sentence of 40 years. The Prosecution filed on 2 March, a second amended indictment in the Krnojelac case after the Trial Chamber on 11 February ruled that certain parts of the original indictment were too vague and sought further clarification. I would finally like to clarify something I mentioned last week. That is that, as far as the ICTY is concerned, Judge Pocar has been appointed to the Appeals Chamber just to sit on the Furundzija appeal. OFFICE OF THE PROSECUTOR Paul Risley, Spokesman for the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), made the following statement: The Prosecutor and the Deputy Prosecutor are midway through a working trip this week to Turkey, Hungary and Germany. At each stop the Prosecutor is meeting with officials of each government, including the Foreign and Defence Ministers. The Prosecutor and Deputy Prosecutor will complete this trip by the weekend. QUESTIONS: Asked whether there were any legal impediments to arresting Mladic and Karadic, Landale replied that there were no legal impediments. He added that the authorities in the Republika Srpska had failed completely in a number of cases to live up to their obligations under international law to detain those people indicted by the Tribunal. Because of this they had been reported to the Security Council for non-compliance. This was something that the Tribunal continually reminded them of, he concluded. Asked whether the court order in Todorovic was in connection with his alleged kidnapping in FRY, Landale replied that it was and that copies of the order would be distributed after the briefing. Asked for a response concerning the announcement by Croatian authorities that they were in possession of documents that could shed light on Blaskic's role, Risley replied that there were outstanding orders for the production of documents by the Government of Croatia before the Tribunal at the request of the Prosecutor. Any documents that had recently been discovered had to be reviewed with those orders in mind by the government. Asked for information concerning the meeting between the Croatian Ambassador and President Jorda, Landale replied that a meeting was held yesterday during which the Croatian Ambassador raised his Governments' reaction to the Blaskic decision. President Jorda noted this, however, in keeping with his policy not to comment on a judgment once it had been handed down, only noted that, although the judgement might have been taken badly by certain parties in Zagreb, cooperation with the Tribunal should continue. This cooperation was not dependent upon Decisions or Judgements handed down by an independent Trial Chamber. The Croatian authorities were obliged to continue cooperation with the Trial Chamber and the Tribunal, he concluded. Asked why the Prosecutor was visiting Turkey, Risley replied that it was an ordinary working meeting similar to visits to the United Kingdom and France. Turkey was a member of NATO and had troops on the ground in Bosnia and was very much part of the international community's response to the situation in the former Yugoslavia. Asked whether the Prosecutor and Deputy Prosecutor would be travelling together, Risley replied that they were. Asked whether it was known yet where Tadic would serve his sentence, Landale replied that no formal decision had been made. In addition, there were still outstanding matters to deal with such as the Vujin contempt case, he added. Asked for information on the surrender of "Tuta" by the Croatian Authorities to the Tribunal, Landale replied that the Croatian Ambassador had visited the Tribunal yesterday and had discussions with the Registry. Essentially, discussions and arrangements were being put in place for "Tuta's" possible transfer to the Tribunal and his upcoming initial appearance, he concluded. Asked for more details of the arrangements being put in place, Landale replied that, once the medical report had been given to the Tribunal indicating that "Tuta" was well enough to travel under certain specific medical conditions and with the appropriate medical supervision that would not put unnecessary stress on his condition, discussions on how to organise those arrangements had started and were continuing. Risley noted the Prosecutor's appreciation for the US Government's announcement this week that they had printed up of posters giving a reward for the apprehension of Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic. The posters send a clear message that there would be no deals considered for these three individuals and that the safest thing for them to do was to surrender themselves to the safety and security of the Tribunal. He added that the poster would have a very important effect specifically inside the former Yugoslavia but also within Europe for galvanizing world opinion that there would be no separate deals for any of the senior most persons responsible for crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia. Asked whether the Blaskic Judgement had been translated yet, Landale replied that it had not, but that work to translate it was underway. *****


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Nighthawk RC Quadcopter Introduction
The Nighthawk DM007 SPY is earning its spot as one of the best small RC quads in 2015. With sleek, dynamic-looking, it is capable of high-flying HD recording, good for both beginner and experienced pilots.
The Nighthawk DM007 SPY is earning its spot as one of the best small RC quads in 2015. With sleek, dynamic-looking, it is capable of high-flying HD recording, good for both beginner and experienced pilots.
After achieving a great success of the JJRC H8 in 2014, this year the JJRC is trying for another win. This newly-released JJRC H22 is born at the right moment. Does this thing have any particular strengths?
As advertised, the H22 is mainly characterized by its inverted flights, which means it can fly up side down, thus easily getting you excited and capturing the attention of the crowd. Just awesome once you made it!! Of course, other normal movements such as: up/down, forward/ backward, turn left/ right, 3D flip, hovering etc., are simply a piece of cake. Another great feature is its extremely attractive lower price around $20.
Also, like other quality quads of its kind, it's worth mentioning that it features headless mode , one key to return, and dual flight speed mode (Low 40% and High 100%). Needless to say, this will make it much easier to control and hard to lose for beginners.
As installed with four guard circles around the blades to avoid crashing, it enables you to just fly boldly. Additionally, the motors are fully wrapped, well stabilized and produces fast rotation, thus providing strong power for flying.
Meanwhile, the H22 comes with a 220mAh battery which offers about 7 minutes of flight time after charging 45 mins, not long enough but still acceptable and good to have fun. Considering its small size(16.8×16.8×9.6cm), it's more suitable for flying indoors. Theoretically, you can also take it outside under the mild weather.
In simple terms, although not the best in its class, this JJRC H22 still excites my feeling for its novel design and inverted flight. And honest speaking, you just can not beat it for the price. Actually, you get the best bang for the buck here since it really is a good choice among small to mini-sized quads.
After flying this Syma S107G heli indoors for about one month, I have to say that this thing is one of the most under-rated RC heli out there. I got a red(+blue, yellow) one, and find it great fun to fly. It has only 3-way controls, but competes surprisingly well with the likes of the Blade MCX2 with 4-way controls , anyone can hover it easily.
I am very pleased with the quality, with Double-deck propeller, alloy fuselage, vernier adjustment, knob design and gyro, which help it stay steady and flexible during flight. The trim metal body and snug plastic hood fit well. Made of alloy fuselage, it is very light weight and almost indestructible in any crash, perfect for very first time beginners. After many trial, I am literally surprised that I haven't broken it yet.
Also, Helicopter Syma is fairly easy to control. The controller has two different joy sticks: One is for throttle, the other for control. It can fly in 6 directions: Rotate Clockwsie / Anti-Clockwise, Move Forward / Backward, Move Up / Down.
That blinking navigational light in the Syma S107G Helicopter Syma nose makes it look positively sentient when it is hovering in front of you. Really a great night flyer!
Meanwhile, the included USB cable allows the Helicopter Syma to be recharged in just around 30 mins or less, when you plug it into a PC/Tablet. You can also charge it direct from the remote. Well, I've got about 7 minutes of flight time after charging it every 30-40 minutes. The Syma S107G has a built in rechargeable battery. The remote control itself takes 6 AA batteries, so you may need to buy some when giving it as a gift to someone else.
You'll find this little guy a big fun!!
This JJRC F180 is a great copter to practice your aerobatic skills or if your on your journey to becoming an accomplished multi rotor pilot. It can take all the tumbles and rolls of aggressive flying over grass. It looks small but it's OK with blades protection.
According to my experince, the Syma X5SW is more powerful than Syma Quadcopter X5C. Though not a high end photography platform that costs real money, it is a great entry to learn how to fly and position the camera, and an excellent second-step quadcopter to learn how to pilot one.
After flying the Syma helicopter indoors for about one month, I have to say that it is one of the most under-rated Syma helicopter out there. I got a yellow one, and find it great fun to fly. The Syma helicopter has only 3-way controls, but competes surprisingly well with the likes of the Blade MCX2 with 4-way controls. Actually, a lot of action can be achieved: up & down, forward & backward, left & right, hover nicely. Take quite the beating!
I have played with this Syma X5SC-1 several days and find it very easy to fly and get it to do what you want. As a matter of fact, I was able to get the hang of Syma Quadcopter camera pretty quick as it is very stable as well, no need to trim them out at all. In my point of view, this thing is pretty easy for beginners to learn with and enjoy. Cool little drone!!