text:
Shadow and substance
As banks retreat in the wake of the financial crisis, "shadow banks" are taking on a growing share of their business, says Edward McBride. Will that make finance safer?
IT WOULD BE hard to find a company with a greater sense of tradition than Hall & Woodhouse brewery. Founded in 1777 in the English county of Dorset, it is still based just a few sheep-speckled hilltops from the village where it began. It is also still owned and run by descendants of its founder, Charles Hall (the Woodhouses married into the family in 1847). It has been brewing on the same site, using water from the same wells, since 1900.
The firm's grand Victorian brewery complex (pictured above), with its clock tower, turrets and red-brick smokestack, has been preserved with pride. A museum inside displays ancient brewing equipment, a stuffed badger and sepia-toned pictures of the Halls and Woodhouses of yore, alongside records from Hall & Woodhouse's earliest days. They show, for example, that on October 22nd 1779 the firm paid a Mr Snook 18 shillings for seven quarters (roughly 90kg) of barley. Even the names of the beers, such as "Fursty Ferret" and "Blandford Flyer" (said to help ward off the insects that plague local fly-fishermen) are steeped in rural nostalgia.
Until this year the firm's financial arrangements were equally traditional. It never listed its shares or issued a bond. Instead, whenever it needed to finance a big new project, such as the gleaming new brewing facilities that abut the Victorian ones (now converted to offices), it borrowed money from a bank. Given its steady income, its low level of debt and its pristine credit record, it never had any trouble getting a loan, says Martin Scott, the firm's finance director.
Hall & Woodhouse needed more reliable long-term creditors, so it reduced its bank borrowing and turned to a shadow bank
The financial crisis changed all that. When in 2010 Hall & Woodhouse asked its main bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), to renew its regular £50m ($84m) line of credit, it got a nasty surprise. The management of RBS had been far less prudent than that of Hall & Woodhouse, borrowing heavily over the preceding years to expand its business at breakneck speed. When its own credit dried up, it was forced to turn to British taxpayers for a £45 billion bail-out and began a frantic retrenchment, shedding £1 trillion in assets and cutting its staff by 40,000. The bank told Hall & Woodhouse that it would renew its line of credit for only three years instead of five, and at a sharply higher rate of interest.
Mr Scott balked at this and arranged a similar loan facility at another, less troubled bank, but the incident unsettled him and the owners. They decided they needed more reliable long-term creditors, so they reduced their bank borrowing and turned instead to a shadow bank—a financial firm that is not regulated as a bank but performs many of the same functions (see article). The one they picked was M&G (the asset-management arm of Prudential, a big insurance firm), which offered them £20m over ten years.
Shadow banking got itself a bad name during the financial crisis, chiefly in the form of off-balance-sheet vehicles that were notionally separate from banks but in practice dependent on them. Their assets were often securitised loans that turned out to be much riskier and less valuable than expected.
These vehicles were meant to expand credit, and thus bolster the economy, while spreading the risks involved; at least that was the justification for excluding them from the banks' liabilities and allowing them to hold relatively little capital to protect against potential losses. Yet when they got into trouble, the banks had to bail them out on such a scale that many of the banks themselves then needed bailing out. The vehicles turned out to be an accounting gimmick dressed up as a service to society.
Worse, they generally relied on short-term funding from money markets, another form of shadow banking. Money-market funds, in which businesses, institutions and individuals invest spare cash for short periods, involved a different sort of subterfuge. Although all lending is inherently risky, they presented themselves as risk-free. Their shares were supposed to retain a steady value of $1, so when one of the biggest funds announced at the peak of the crisis that it would have to "break the buck", panic ensued.
The flight from the money markets added to the troubles of banks and other financial institutions that relied on them for short-term borrowing. They had made big losses, were struggling to borrow and so found themselves unable to repay depositors, bondholders and other creditors. That left taxpayers on the hook, both because governments in most rich countries guarantee small bank deposits and because they were reluctant to let big banks fail, for fear that the financial system might fall apart altogether.
Banks have since had their room for manoeuvre severely restricted to make them safer. New accounting rules have made it much harder for them to park suspect assets in off-balance-sheet vehicles. In effect, lending by banks must be labelled as such. And they are now obliged to hold much more capital to help absorb losses in case another crisis strikes.
There are only three ways for them to increase capital relative to their loans and other assets: by raising more of it, by cutting costs or by trimming lending and investment. Banks around the world have been doing all three for several years, to the dismay of firms such as Hall & Woodhouse. They have an especially strong incentive to curb long-term loans to business, since regulators not only require them to hold more capital against them but also to fund long-term loans in part with long-term borrowing, which is more expensive than the fly-by-night sort.
As a result, bank lending to businesses in America is still 6% below its 2008 high. In the euro zone, where it peaked in 2009, it has declined by 11%. In Britain it has plummeted by almost 30%. Bank lending to consumers has shrunk by less, in part because most of it consists of mortgages, which take some time to unwind (see chart 1). But all in all, big Western banks have shrunk their balance-sheets by trillions of dollars.
This retreat of the banks has allowed the shadow banking system to fill the ensuing void. Mr Scott of Hall & Woodhouse, for one, is happy to be able to borrow from somewhere other than a bank. Although his arrangement with M&G is slightly more expensive and less flexible than the shorter-term credit he is still getting from the banks, he says it costs far less in terms of managers' time and allows the firm to plan for the longer term. British banks, he says, simply do not offer ten-year loans to firms like his any more because they cannot make a profit on them.
M&G has no such concerns because it is not considered a bank, nor regulated as such. The money it has doled out to Hall & Woodhouse comes directly from institutional investors, including Prudential and various pension funds, which have given M&G £500m to lend to mid-sized British businesses. All the proceeds from the loans go to the investors, who must also bear any losses; M&G simply administers the portfolio of loans on their behalf and charges them a fee. Whereas a bank intermediates between savers and borrowers by entering into separate transactions with each, with all the risk that entails, M&G is merely a matchmaker, with no "skin in the game".
For all their residual worries about shadow banking, regulators like this arrangement, because in some ways it makes the financial system safer. If the economy stumbles, causing corporate earnings to slide and thus increasing the number of defaults on loans such as Hall & Woodhouse's, any losses will fall squarely on the institutional investors who put up the money.
It is not just M&G that has benefited from the banks' retrenchment. The business of "direct lending" or "private debt" (by analogy with private equity) is booming. Investment funds that make loans of this sort raised $97 billion last year worldwide and hope to raise a further $105 billion this year, according to Private Debt Investor, a magazine. Another similar but exclusively American category, business development companies, grew tenfold between 2003 and 2013, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. At the end of last year they held assets—mainly loans to businesses—of roughly $63 billion.
Don't bank on it
And private debt is only one form of lending that takes place outside banks. Bond markets—by far the biggest source of non-bank financing—continue to grow even as bank lending shrinks. In 2007 the value of all outstanding corporate bonds issued by American firms was just under 29% of GDP; by last year it had risen to over 42%, according to McKinsey. In South Korea the figure rose even more dramatically, from 23% of GDP to 48%. Globally, corporate bond-issuance doubled between 2007 and 2012, to $1.7 trillion, as firms everywhere took advantage of extraordinarily low interest rates.
Money markets in the rich world seized up during the crisis and have not yet fully recovered, but in China and other emerging markets they are growing rapidly. A money-market fund launched last June by Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant, attracted 500 billion yuan ($81 billion) in its first nine months.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) lenders—websites that match savers with borrowers—are also growing like topsy, albeit from a tiny base. The value of loans chaperoned by Lending Club, the biggest such website, has doubled every year since its launch in 2007 and now totals over $4 billion. New firms are springing up the world over to cater to all manner of niches, from short-term loans for property developers to advances against unpaid corporate invoices.
The Financial Stability Board (FSB), a global financial watchdog, reckons that shadow lending in all its forms accounts for roughly a quarter of all financial assets, compared with about half in the banking system. But it excludes insurance and pension funds from its calculations; add those in, and shadow banking is almost on a par with the better-lit sort.
According to the FSB, shadow lending has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. The watchdog estimates that such loans in the 20 big economies that it tracks rose from $26 trillion in 2002 to $71 trillion in 2012 (see chart 1 above). The FSB's data show bank lending growing at much the same pace, but that is partly because, in the teeth of the crisis, regulators forced financiers trying to game the system to reclassify much shadow lending as bank lending. The FSB's data confirm that the sorts of shadow lending that worry regulators, particularly off-balance-sheet vehicles, have atrophied, whereas the sorts that please them, including direct lending, have rocketed.
The process of shifting lending out of the banks and into other financial institutions has long been underway in America, where bond and money markets are well-developed; banks there now account for only a quarter of loans. But it is also gathering pace in Europe, where banks have been especially hard hit by the crisis, and in other parts of the world.
And lending is just one area in which banks find themselves on the back foot. The same combination of stricter regulation and increased competition is hurting banks in other areas that used to be seen as an integral part of their business, such as payments, the mundane but important business of transferring money from one account to another.
The most common and lucrative way for payments to be made in the rich world is through credit or debit cards. Regulators in America and the European Union have been putting limits on the fees banks can charge for such transactions. At the same time all sorts of new payment technologies are springing up, from "virtual wallets" that claim to make the physical sort redundant to Bitcoin, a scandal-prone electronic currency that nonetheless has the potential to turn the business of sending money upside down, cutting banks out of the process altogether.
New ways to pay
The trading of bonds and other financial instruments—the mainstay of investment banking—is another area where banks are pulling back in the face of new technology, new rivals and new regulatory constraints. Rules that bar or deter banks from trading on their own account, and make it more costly to do it for others by increasing capital requirements, have already resulted in a big drop in the volume of bonds held by investment banks. Other regulations now being introduced are pushing the trading of derivatives onto public exchanges, greatly reducing banks' influence over the business and the profits they can make from it. Regulators are also discouraging banks from dealing in physical commodities in any form.
Other financial institutions are cheerfully abetting the regulators' drive to wrest a lot trading from banks. The banks' big customers—chiefly asset managers of various kinds—are trying to create systems to trade more among themselves, cutting out the middlemen. The shift away from fast-talking salesmen towards electronic trading is also bolstering exchanges, technology firms and data providers at the banks' expense.
Similarly, asset management (which this report will not cover in detail) has been growing much faster outside the banking system than within it in recent decades. The crisis accelerated the trend, as some banks sold their asset-management arms to raise money. Regulation designed to protect investors from conflicts of interest makes it hard for a big bank to do business with an in-house asset-manager, reducing the opportunities for savings or cross-selling. And new technology is making it easier for firms and individuals to find and invest in a range of financial instruments without the help of a bank. The world's biggest asset manager, BlackRock, with about $4 trillion under management, is now considerably larger than the biggest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, with assets of roughly $3 trillion. Before the crisis the reverse was true.
This does not mean that banks are about to fade away; only that their relative weight in the financial system is diminishing as other financial institutions proliferate and grow. Indeed, that is largely what regulators intend. They want to see banks shrink and welcome the transfer of risky assets to other parts of the financial system. This special report will chart some of that transition and consider the potential pitfalls.
Whatever the consequences, however, this new world is here to stay. As Mr Scott of Hall & Woodhouse says of shadow lenders like M&G: "The banks are going to have all their best customers taken by these people."
This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline "Shadow and substance"
From the May 10th 2014 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contentsExplore the edition


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Very API
In my last post about extending autobox::Core, I touched on API choices. So let me expand on this a little bit here and in some more in posts to come.
In all bar one of my autobox examples I used $_[0] to pass the iterator object. For eg:
['a'..'z']->iterate( sub{ print $_[0]->currentIndex, ' => ', $_[0]->current; });
But in the last code example I went for $_[0] having the value and $_[1] the iterator object:
['a'..'z']->iterate( sub{ print $_[1]->currentIndex, ' => ', $_[0]; });
And to help avoid getting cross-eyed with $_[] then this is nicer on the eye if a tad longer:
['a'..'z']->iterate( sub{ my ($v, $iter) = @_; print $iter->currentIndex, ' => ', $v; });
But hold on, is there a preference to which way round these should be assigned to @_? Would it be better other way round because value can be got at from the iterator object anyway? (one shift and away!)
So perhaps using $_ is best?
['a'..'z']->iterate( sub{ print $_->currentIndex, ' => ', $_->current; });
I like this a lot. But it would be amiss not to take advantage of using $_ for the value and $_[0] for iterator so that we can write code like this:
['a'..'z']->iterate( sub{ print $_[0]->getNext if m/[aeiou]/; });
However note the
print $_[0]->getNext and not just plain
I don't think there is a canonical answer to this but my preference is to use $_ has the iterator object… but with probably value & the iterator (again!) passed through @_ (ie. the kitchen sink approach!).
sub autobox::Core::ARRAY::iterate { my ($array, $code) = @_; my $iter = Array::Iterator->new( $array ); while ($iter->hasNext) { local $_ = $iter; $code->( $iter->getNext, $iter ); } return wantarray ? @$array : $array; }
Note the
return wantarray ? @$array : $array; addition. This keeps the autobox chaining going and is good adherence to autobox API (though in this iterator context it probably isn't of much benefit).
PS. Let me just add "Perl" here because despite lots of perl code snippets I haven't mentioned Perl, CPAN or Ironman at all and I'm still wary whether ironman will pick up the perl tag.
August 1, 2010 8:55 am
I would like to exchange links with your site transfixedbutnotdead.com
Is this possible?

subset: commoncrawl


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The suspects had a machete and rope, which prosecutors believe would have been used to torture their victim had they not been caught.
Three Oroville teenagers accused of kidnapping a Marysville teen should be taken seriously, said Yuba County District Attorney Pat McGrath.
"I think what throws people off, when they read the story, is the ages of these young men," McGrath said. "You have to forget their chronological age when considering what they were planning to do."
The juveniles will be tried as adults because of the severity of the charges and their acts, he said. If convicted, they face sentences of life in prison with the possibility of parole.
"This was a carefully formulated plan to first kidnap, then torture, and then kill the victim, and it wasn"t just talk," McGrath said Tuesday.
Frank A. Oddo, 16, Jacob G. Cadena, 17, and Jessy J. Murray, 17, pleaded not guilty on Monday to felony charges of kidnapping, kidnapping to commit extortion, and kidnapping with the intent of sexual assault. They are being held at Yuba-Sutter Juvenile Hall without bail.
One of three had originally been reported to be from Redding; the District Attorney"s Office said Wednesday they all had Oroville addresses.
"It"s the real deal," McGrath said of the suspects and their plans. Personnel in his office are still piecing together information regarding the kidnapping and charges against the boys may change as more information comes to light.
"My understanding is this all flows back to the victim"s relationship with a girl," McGrath said.
The teens were arrested Saturday afternoon near Browns Valley as they were carrying out a plan to kidnap the victim and steal his cellphone. The plan then was that one of the three would pose as the victim and break up with the girlfriend, then call to console her and try to date her, according to Undersheriff Jerry Read.
McGrath said one of the boys spearheaded the plan and recruited the other boys. But, he said, it sounds like "they were all on board."
The boys created a fake Facebook profile and set up a meeting with the Marysville boy on Spring Valley Road for a supposed marijuana transaction, according to Read.
When they showed up, the front passenger pointed a handgun, later determined to be an Airsoft pistol, at the victim and ordered him into their vehicle.
After being apprehended by Yuba County sheriff"s deputies, the teenagers gave different accounts of what they intended to do to the victim, Read said.
The plans ranged from wanting to scare the victim, to breaking his ankles, slicing the bottoms of his feet with a razor blade, and cutting his Achilles tendon, to sexually assaulting him, hanging him upside down and slicing his throat — murdering him.
"Everything they were describing, they had the mechanical means to make happen," McGrath said.
The teens were in the process of carrying out the plan, forcing the victim into their vehicle, when "by the grace of god," according to McGrath, the boy"s aunt came on the scene and intervened.
She saw the boys, who were wearing bandanas, kidnapping her nephew, forcing him into a Chevy Blazer. She followed the Blazer and alerted dispatch of their location until a deputy was able to stop them and arrest them, according to Read.
"The real interesting question is, if the aunt hadn"t come on scene what ultimately would have happened with this young man?" McGrath said.


text:
Story highlights
Turkey's Dalyan Delta was used as the backdrop for the 1951 film "The African Queen"
June Haimoff, who came to Dalyan in the 1970s, was instrumental in blocking plans to build a hotel complex
Haimoff, known as Kaptan June among locals, has dedicated her life to saving the local loggerhead turtles
"No turtle, no pay," says the boatman as we arrive at the Iztuzu jetty, where visitors are embarking on tours of the lagoon in search of loggerhead turtles.
Iztuzu lies on Turkey's Dalyan Delta, an almost-tropical maze of river channels, pools and reed beds that once doubled for east Africa in the 1951 film "The African Queen," starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.
Its beautiful stretches of unspoiled sand are as much a draw for tourists as, for the past 100,000 years, they have been for turtles.
That both tourists and turtles can still enjoy those beaches today is largely thanks the efforts of one remarkable woman: June Haimoff.
Royal backing
In the mid-1980s, plans were drawn up for an 1,800-bed hotel that would have wiped out the turtles.
But the developers hadn't reckoned on Haimoff.
MORE: 6 Turkish adventures beyond the beaches and bazaars
The English ballet dancer, painter and singer fell in love with Iztuzu during a sailing trip in 1975 and moved into a simple wooden hut here eight years later to live among fisherman, who nicknamed her "Kaptan June."
She also fell in love with the loggerheads, launching a campaign to save the beach that won global support – including the backing of Prince Philip, the husband of Britain's Queen Elizabeth and then president of the World Wide Fund for Nature.
The campaign led to the cancellation of the hotel project and what Haimoff praises as an "intelligent and courageous" decision by the Turkish government to make Iztuzu a specially protected area.
"I began it alone, but I didn't do it alone," she tells me.
Now 90, Haimoff no longer lives on the beach, but in nearby Dalyan town, with an extended family of cats and dogs.
She continues to campaign on behalf of the beach and its inhabitants through the Kaptan June Sea Turtle Conservation Foundation.
"The battle has not been won," she says.
Propeller threat
Today, Iztuzu's loggerheads are threatened by their own popularity.
More than 600 motor boats now ply the river, ferrying visitors hoping to glimpse them or to view Kaunos, a ruined city built 2,500 years ago by the Lycians, who also built rock tombs in the cliffs overhead.
MORE: 5 of the world's best kebab joints
But unless the boats are fitted with propeller guards – those that are carry the foundation's logo – the turtles are at risk of injury.
Cafe owners often toss leftovers into the water to attract them, but the food scraps can do more harm than good, making the turtles ill or deterring them from heading out to sea where they're at less risk of injury from boats or from hypothermia in winter.
Conservationists want to see turtle feeding banned before this year's season starts.
"The Dalyan Delta is not a zoo," says Haimoff, who is also campaigning against the construction of a giant metal turtle sculpture within a protected nesting area.
A visit to the Sea Turtle Research, Rescue and Rehabilitation Center, where injured turtles are cared for, is enough to convince most visitors.
Those hoping for a glimpse of the amphibians in the water are unlikely to be disappointed.
Luring loggerheads
Turtles are easy enough to spot if you come to Iztuzu – or other protected turtle beaches such as Patara or Cirali, on the surrounding coast – in early summer.
About 300 females still bury their eggs in the sand here in May.
The female hatchlings that scramble into the Aegean Sea around 80 days later spend 20 years at sea before returning to Iztuzu as mature adults, each up to a meter in length and weighing 135 kilograms, to lay their own eggs.
MORE: Best restaurants in Istanbul
The turtles have become a nice little earner for Dalyan, a fact celebrated in the town's center by a life-size sculpture of a loggerhead.
Among those benefiting are the boatmen.
It takes about 45 minutes to chug down to Iztuzu from Dalyan aboard one of the boats operated by the Dalyan Boatmens' Cooperative and costs 10 Turkish lire ($4.50).
At the Iztuzu jetty, where boatmen offer turtle spotting trips for an extra five lire, we putter over to where a couple of local fishermen are casting lines baited with crabs, hoping to lure a loggerhead.
The crabs have vivid red and turquoise claws and are a Dalyan delicacy.
Loggerheads like them too, and after 10 minutes we (and five other boatloads of sightseers) are rewarded by a glimpse of a massive, big-eyed turtle taking the bait in its beak.
Smartphones flash, and everyone goes home happy – especially the boatman, who pockets a 100 lire bonus.


text:
Researchers find new fertility drug to be more effective than one used for the past 40 years
In a study published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at seven different academic centers recruited 750 couples to compare the long-used fertility drug clomiphene citrate, commonly called clomid, to letrozole, a drug initially developed to prevent recurrence of breast cancer in women.
Of the 376 women who were given clomid, 72 became pregnant and gave birth. Of the 374 women who took letrozole, 103 gave birth.
"Letrozole works better, has about the same cost, has fewer side effects and has a slightly lower twin rate than clomid," said Gregory Christman, M.D., director of the division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at the University of Florida. "Clomid has been available for fertility treatment for more than 40 years, but with this new information, we may soon have to reconsider its role in the treatment of infertility due to anovulation in women with polycystic ovarian disorder."
Clomid is often prescribed to women with polycystic ovary syndrome as a first step in their treatment — and this population of women account for about a third of women who seek fertility treatment, Christman said. About 1 in 20 women of childbearing age have this disorder, according to the Office on Women's Health within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Women with this condition typically have fewer periods — seven cycles per year fewer than women without the condition — and therefore have fewer opportunities to become pregnant.
Christman oversaw one of the trial's sites as one of the principal investigators at the University of Michigan. There, he recruited 75 of the 750 couples for the study. Women in the study, who were an average of 29 years old, were randomly assigned to take either clomid or letrozole. Because the drugs were administered in the same way — both were given for a five-day period at the beginning of a woman's cycle — the study was double-blinded. Neither the doctor nor the patient knew which drug the patient was receiving.Clomid works by traveling to the brain, where it partially blocks estrogen receptors. This triggers the brain to send a signal to the ovaries to produce more estrogen, which causes ovulation. Letrozole is prescribed to prevent recurrence of breast cancer in women by shutting off an enzyme that converts circulating testosterone to estrogen. It works primarily in fat or adipose tissue throughout the body, causing estrogen levels in a woman's bloodstream to fall. The brain sees this drop in estrogen and tells the ovaries to make more estrogen, which triggers ovulation, Christman said.
The study also found that letrozole results in fewer twins. Approximately 10 percent of women who are treated with clomid give birth to twins. The rate drops to between 3 to 4 percent in women who take letrozole.
"It always makes you smile when you hear someone is expecting twins, but because of the increased risks of a multiple pregnancy it would be better and safer if people conceived one baby at a time." Christman said.
David S. Guzick, M.D., Ph.D., UF senior vice president for health affairs and president of UF Health, helped oversee the study, which was conducted through the Reproductive Medicine Trial Network, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development branch of the National Institutes of Health. The network is now in its fourth cycle, with each cycle consisting of five years. Guzick was involved in the network's first cycle, and now chairs the advisory board that oversees new reproductive medicine trials.
"This study indicates that there is a safe and effective medical treatment to help infertility patients with polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is one of the most common conditions causing infertility," Guzick said.
Generic versions of both medications are available, making treatment with either drug affordable.


text:
Mayor angry about postponment of zoning vote for new outlet mall
Commissioners postpone vote after concern about company's commitment to hiring local workers
West Palm Beach is not ready to roll out the red carpet for an outlet mall just yet.
City commissioners Monday postponed a vote to change the zoning for the planned Palm Beach Fashion Outlets at the old Palm Beach Mall site on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard.
Commissioner Kimberly Mitchell pushed for the measure to be postponed because she expressed concern that the Tennessee-based EMJ Construction, which is overseeing the $200 million project, isn't hiring local workers.
"We want to put locals back to work," EMJ Construction Vice President Ken Colgate told WPBF 25 News. "We want to work with the community. We want to be part of the community, and we want people to go back to work because it's good for everybody. It's good for the locals."
Mayor Jeri Muoio said the city has no place in deciding who the company should hire.
"They were treading on thin ice last night when they were doing that," Muoio said. "Approval of zoning and land-use change cannot be contingent on who they hire. This is private money. They have the right to hire whomever they please."
Muoio said it delays the progress of the mall and the estimated 2,500 jobs that come with it.
Mitchell, though, said she's just fighting for local workers in a tough economy.
"We're talking about the local businesses that are hurting, that have borrowed against their retirement to keep their lights on and their secretary paid," Mitchell said. "That's what we're talking about."
More From WPBF: Email alerts | Mobile | Social


text:
Marriage announcement for Holoway Lightcap, son of John and Mary Lightcap, and Ellen Miriam Westgate, daughter of Mose Weld Westgate and Alice Brooks, in the Seneca Advertiser on August 10, 1849, Seneca Co, Ohio.
Holoway was the brother of my ggg-grandfather, Levi Lightcap.
Transcription of marriage announcement:
At Republic, on yesterday, by the Rev. Mr. Ransom, Mr. Holloway W. Lightcap, of Findlay, (formerly of this city.) to Miss Ellen M. Westgate, of Republic.


text:
Washington landslide: 14 dead, 108 missing
Death toll remains at 14
A list of those reported missing following a landslide in rural Washington state includes 108 names, emergency officials said Monday.
But that doesn't mean all of them were killed in Saturday's disaster north of Seattle, Snohomish County Emergency Management Director John Pennington said.
The official death toll sits at 14.
So far, no search-and-rescue teams from Northern California have been asked to help in the search. However, the Sacramento Fire Department's assistant chief, Niko King, said his crew has been put on alert -- meaning, the group will be ready to deploy within four hours if the activation order arrives.
The landslide covered about a square mile and was caused by groundwater saturation tied to heavy rain in the area over the past month. It affected the towns of Oso, a remote community of about 180, and Darrington, a town of about 1,350.
Pennington said the slide over a weekend made it more of a challenge for rescuers since more people were apt to be home than on a weekday.
The affected area includes 35 traditionally built houses, 13 manufactured homes and RVs, and a cabin, Pennington said at a news conference. About half were occupied full time, while some others were vacation homes.
Victims could also include "contractors and other workers" in the neighborhood as well as others who were "driving by," he said.
Authorities have worked feverishly to find survivors.
"Total devastation. I mean, it's just unbelievable. It reminds me of what a tornado looks like when it's touched the ground," Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary said.
At one point, he pointed at a pile of muddy rubble.
"You can tell from the debris this appears to be part of somebody's kitchen, the inside of the house," he said.
Trenary said rescue crews worked both sides of the slide. Authorities also used helicopters to try to identify heat signatures, or people who may have been able to get free, he said.
But such work is complicated.
While there's a tremendous effort to rescue people who may be trapped, Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots said Sunday that the rescue operation must be focused on keeping responders safe because the area is highly unstable.
The mud flow is like quicksand, he said. The landslide is 15 feet deep in some places.
Hots described the ongoing operation as an "active rescue," not a recovery effort.
Caroline Neal hopes her missing father, Steven, 52, will still be rescued. He's a plumber who was on a service call when the land gave way.
"My dad is a quick thinker, and he is someone who takes action in an emergency," Neal told CNN affiliate KING. "If he had any warning at all, we just have to think he is somewhere and he's safe and they just can't reach him right now.
On Saturday, rescuers dug through the rubble while survivors cried for help underneath debris.
Rescuers heard voices around 11:30 p.m. and considered trying to reach the possible survivor or survivors, but "the mud was too thick and deep," Hots told reporters, and rescuers had to back off.
"Mother Nature holds the cards here on the ability of ground personnel to enter the slide area. It is essentially a slurry," Washington Gov. Jay Inslee told reporters Sunday.
He called the rescue operation "aggressive."
"Every human endeavor ... is being explored here to rescue and find their loved ones," the governor said.
Inslee added that some rescuers had gotten "caught ... up to their armpits" in the slide and "had to be dragged out by ropes."
John Lovick, a county executive, addressed a reporter's question about whether voices were still being heard.
"We were told that there were noises in that area," Lovick said, stressing that fire chief Hots had decided that it was "too risky" to place rescuers in that area. "We are not hearing any reports of people hearing voices today or after last night."
Inslee said he received assurance from Federal Emergency Management Agency officials Monday morning that assistance is on the way.
FEMA Regional Administrator Kenneth Murphy told the governor in a phone call that he was providing a "verbal emergency declaration" that will allow for immediate federal assistance, the governor's office said in a news release.
As of Sunday evening, Harborview Medical Center spokeswoman Susan Gregg told CNN the hospital was treating four patients in the intensive care unit -- a 6-month-old boy, and three men, 37, 58, and 81. A 25-year-old woman was also reported in satisfactory condition at the hospital.
The landslide cut off State Road 530 to Darrington. Part of the Stillaguamish River also was blocked, and residents were warned of possible flooding both upstream and downstream of the collapse.
The Washington State Patrol provided photos that showed floodwaters and sprawling debris covering a rural patch of the road, framed by woodlands and snow-capped mountains.
The first reports of the landslide came in around 10:45 a.m. Saturday (1:45 p.m. ET), the sheriff's office said.


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Private Equity and Venture Capital in the MENA Region 2016 report has been saved
Private Equity and Venture Capital in the MENA Region 2016 report
Deloitte partnered with the MENA Private Equity Association and released the Private Equity and Venture Capital in the MENA Region 2016 report.
The report focused on an analysis performance (including investments, divestments, and fund raising activities in 2016) and in surveying fund managers to gauge their outlook for the industry going forward in a continuation of our regular Deloitte Private Equity confidence survey.
Key findings
The overall upsurge trend in investment activity continued in 2016, which was largely driven by the continued development of the venture capital industry in the region. Disclosed transactions reached 244, recording the highest since 2008.
The report states that 2016 marked divergence between trends in private equity and venture capital compared to previous years. The overall number of deals increased as venture capital investment levels continued to grow. The decline in the number of disclosed higher value private equity transactions led to a decline in the total value of investments made.
New money raised by private equity and venture capital funds in the MENA region dropped by 41 per cent last year– the lowest figure since 2011.
The UAE attracted 62% of MENA investment activity by value in 2016, a substantial increase from 2015. This is due to stability and availability of large and quality assets. The uncertain market conditions in the region attracted fund managers towards investing more in the UAE.
The UAE was the largest market in 2016 in terms of volume of deals, accounting for 34%.
Total divestment value stood at USD 462 million. The volume of divestments decreased to 14 in 2016 from 21 in 2015 with market conditions making target returns from exits more challenging.
While investments in the oil and gas industry continue to decline, consumer related business continued to be the main target sector for private equity investors.


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by ARHuelsenbeck
From some of the greatest minds of literature:
Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. ~Ken Kesey
It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it. ~Terry Pratchett
Never ask whether you can do something. Say instead that you are going to do it, then fasten your seat belt. ~Julia Cameron
Everything you look at can become a fairy tale, and you can get a story from everything you touch. ~Hans Christian Andersen
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" ("I found it!") but rather "Hmm, that's funny…" ~Isaac Asimov
None of us suddenly becomes something overnight. The preparations have been in the making for a lifetime. ~Gail Godwin
If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. ~Rudyard Kipling
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. ~Maya Angelou
You go to bed every night thinking that you've written the most brilliant passage ever done, which somehow the next day you realize is sheer drivel. ~Tom Wolfe
The more you reason the less you create. ~Raymond Chandler
I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose. ~Stephen King
It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly. ~ C.J. Cherryh
In general, there's no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we're going to die; what's important is what kind of men and women we are in the face of this. ~Anne Lamott
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any. ~Orson Scott Card
Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up. ~Jane Yolen
If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor. ~Edgar Rice Burroughs
I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for? ~Alice Walker
The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. ~Albert Camus
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. ~John Steinbeck
Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing. ~Norman Mailer
The secret of it all is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood of the moment—to put things down without deliberation—without worrying about their style, without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote—wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught. ~Walt Whitman
What I love about these quotes is they give me a little glimpse of each author's motivation. When I think of the books I've read by these authors, I see how well each quote fits their work. How honest they are with their words.
Guest post contributed by ARHuelsenbeck. Former elementary general music teacher ARHuelsenbeck blogs about the arts and the creative process at ARHtistic License. She is currently writing a YA mystical fantasy and a Bible study guide, and submitting a poetry chapbook, with mystery and MG drafts waiting in the wings. You can see some of her artwork, photography, and quilts on Instagram.


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Installing a sound bar speaker is a very simple procedure, but a few hand tools are required and most of all, some construction and installation experience. We are home theater integrators and contractors and have plenty of experience in building construction and electronics, which allows us to provide you with superior audio and video integration services. Our low pricing and excellent customer service will definitely assure your complete satisfaction. If you live in Mission Hills, California call today for a free quote on that sound bar mounting you've been planning.
Experienced home theater systems installer, sound bar wiring with surface or in wall mounting installer and technicians for home and commercial, retail and office spaces, we service, move, set up and install new sound bar systems and audio wiring systems, components and equipment from all major brands. We service the City of Mission Hills, California since 1998.
There is an ever growing variety of speaker systems and accessories in the market. We install and service systems from most major manufacturers and perform replacement of broken units.
A few suggestions when installing or wiring speaker and sound bar systems in a residential or commercial facility follows
Sound bar installation
Mount sound bar below TV in living room and run wires within wall.
Andrew T.
Home theater integration
Add Samsung sound bar to existing home theater for independent use.
Jerry F.
Pre wire for speakers
Remodeling family room and need speaker pre wire above fireplace.
Denise T.
Sub woofer and sound bar
Run wiring in wall for new Philips sound bar and a wireless sub woofer under TV.
Mark T..
Set up sound bar
Bought new TV and need sound bar to connect and integrate installed onto wall.
Margaret L.
Mount sound bar
Install above the fireplace right under the already hung TV and set up sub woofer.
Jenny C.


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How is our drinking water system positively affected by water movement? Water in streams and rivers travels great distances from the headwaters to the ocean. The water cycle provides a continual change in water quantities that the river basin has to manage. However, as the water flows through the river system structure it balances volumes, adds oxygen for the organisms, and cleanses impurities from the water. All of these functions keep the habitats healthy for the organisms throughout the river basin.
North Carolina Essential Science Standards - Comprehensive Glossary
5.L.2 Understand the interdependence of plants and animals with their ecosystem.
5.L.2.1 Compare the characteristics of several common ecosystems, including estuaries and salt marshes, oceans, lakes and ponds, forests, and grasslands in terms of their ability to support a variety of populations.
5.L.2.2 Classify the organisms within an ecosystem according to the function they serve, producers, consumers, or decomposers (biotic factors).
6.L.2 Understand the flow of energy through ecosystems and the responses of populations to the biotic and abiotic factors in their environment.
6.L.2.1 Summarize how energy derived from the sun is used by plants to produce sugars (photosynthesis) and is transferred within food chains and food webs (terrestrial and aquatic) from producers to consumers to decomposers.
6.L.2.3 Summarize how the abiotic factors (such as temperature, water, sunlight and soil quality) of biomes (freshwater, marine, forest, grassland, desert, tundra) affect the ability of organisms to grow, survive and/or create their own food through photosynthesis.
8.E.1 Understand the hydrosphere and the impact of humans on local systems and the effects of the hydrosphere on humans.
8.E.1.1 Explain the structure of the hydrosphere including:
• Water distribution on earth
• Local river basins and water availability
8.E.1.3 Predict the safety and potability of water supplies in North Carolina based on physical and biological factors, including:
• Temperature
• Dissolved oxygen
• pH
• Nitrates and phosphates
• Turbidity
• Bioindicators
8.E.1.4 Conclude that the good health of humans requires:
• Monitoring of the hydrosphere
• Water quality standards
• Methods of water treatment
• Maintaining safe water quality
• Stewardship
8.L.3 Understand how organisms interact with and respond to the biotic and abiotic components of their environment.
8.L.3.1 Explain how factors such as food, water, shelter and space affect populations in an ecosystem.
8.L.3.2 Summarize the relationships among producers, consumers, and decomposers including the positive and negative consequences of such interactions including:
• Coexistence and cooperation
• Competition (predator/prey)
• Parasitism
• Mutualism
8.L.3.3 Explain how the flow of energy within food webs is interconnected with the cycling of matter (including water, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and oxygen).
EEn.2.3 Explain the structure and processes within the hydrosphere.
EEn2.3.2 Explain how ground water and surface water interact.
EEn.2.4 Evaluate how humans use water.
EEn.2.4.1 Evaluate human influences on freshwater availability.
EEn.2.4.2 Evaluate human influences on water quality in North Carolina's river basins, wetlands, and tidal environments.
EEn.2.7 Explain how the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere individually and collectively affect the biosphere.
EEn.2.7.1 Explain how abiotic and biotic factors interact to create the various biomes in North Carolina
EEn.2.7.2 Explain why biodiversity is important to the biosphere.
EEn.2.7.3 Explain how human activities impact the biosphere.
Bio.2.1 Analyze the independence of living organism within their environments.
Bio.2.1.1 Analyze the flow of energy and cycling of matter (water, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen) through ecosystems relating the significance of each to maintaining the health and sustainability of an ecosystem.
Bio 2.1.3 Explain various ways organisms interact with each other (including predation, competition, parasitism, mutualism) and with their environments resulting in stability within ecosystems.
Bio.2.2 Understand the impact of human activities on the environment (one generation affects the next).
Bio.2.2.1 Infer how human activities (including population growth, pollution, global warming, burning of fossil fuels, habitat destruction and introduction of nonnative species) may impact the environment.
Bio.2.2.2 Explain how the use, protection and conservation of natural resources by humans impact the environment from one generation to the next.
Comprehensive Glossary - North Carolina Essential Science Standards
Adhesion = When water clings to another surface due to the surface tension of the molecules. In the water cycle, rain clings to the surface of leaves, branches, and grass.
Biome = A large naturally occurring community of flora and fauna occupying a major habitat
Bioremediation = The use of living organisms, such as bacteria, fungi, or green plant to break down or remove pollutants from a contaminated site.
Biosphere = The regions of the surface, atmosphere, and hydrosphere of the earth occupied by living organisms.
Community = A group of organisms living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.
Condensation = The process when water vapor as a gas cools and changes to the liquid state.
Consumer - Single-celled organisms obtain energy by eating the producers, tiny particles of leaves, or even each other.
Culverts = A tunnel carrying a stream or open drain under a road, sidewalk, or other paved surface.
Detritus = Waste or debris of any kind such as gravel, sand, silt, or other material produced by erosion or organic matter produced by the decomposition of organisms.
Ecosystem = A group of interacting organisms and their physical environment.
Estuaries = The wide lower course of a river where it flows into the ocean. The water in estuaries is a mixture of fresh water and salt water.
Evaporation = The process when liquid water warms and changes to the gaseous state
Filterers = Benthic macroinvertebrates that strain very small food particles suspended in the water.
Food web = a system of interlocking and interdependent food chains where a hierarchical series of organisms each dependent on the next as a source of food.
Gatherers = Benthic macroinvertebrates that use mouths or forelegs to pick up organic matter off the bottom of a river or stream.
Headwaters = A tributary stream of a river that is narrow and shallow located the furthest from the mouth of the river.
Ions = Atoms or molecules with a net electric charge due to the loss or gain of one or more electrons.
Microscopic Organisms = Tiny life forms, often consisting of a single cell, that can only be seen using a microscopic and very sensitive to change.
Mid-reach Streams = A tributary stream of a river that are slightly larger and connect headwaters to the main river.
Pool = A deeper portion of the river created when water in a river hits an obstacle and slows down to make.
Population = All of the inhabitants of an area.
Precipitation = Any form of water (rain, snow, sleet, or hail) that falls to the ground.
Producer = Single-celled organisms that obtain energy by converting carbon dioxide, water, and the sun's energy into sugars through the process of photosynthesis. They also provide food for the non-photosynthetic members (consumers) in the community.
Resilience = The capacity of a system to absorb distress or disturbance and recover quickly.
Retention Pond = A low lying area that is designed to temporarily hold a set amount of water while slowly draining to another location.
River = A large natural stream of water flowing in a channel to the sea, a lake, or another such stream.
River Basin = The land that water flows across or under on its way to a river. It is usually the lowest point in the landscape
Run = Created when water in a river or stream moves quickly downhill in basically a straight line.
Scrapers = Benthic macroinvertebrates that have mouths adapted for rasping or raking algae off of rock and wood debris.
Shredders = Benthic macroinvertebrates that have mouths adapted for ripping and tearing leafy material.
Stomata = The small pores or openings on the underside of the leaf or stem of a plant that allows movement of gases in and out.
Surface Run-off = Used to describe when soil is infiltrated to full capacity and excess water, from rain, snowmelt, or other sources flow over the land.
Transpiration = The process carried out by plants that releases water vapor into the atmosphere.
Undercut = The process to cut or wear away the part below or under the bank of a river or stream.
Water Cycle = the cycle of processes by which water circulates between the earth's oceans, atmosphere, and land, involving precipitation as rain and snow, drainage in streams and rivers, and return to the atmosphere by evaporation and transpiration.


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In 2006, New Horizons became the fastest object that humanity has ever sent away from the Earth, and it has only picked up speed since. Destined for a rendezvous with Pluto next summer, the spacecraft will provide the first ever close-up look at one of the icy bodies that orbit in the outer Solar System.
But the visit to Pluto won't be an extended one. Provided that New Horizons can avoid the dwarf planet's five moons and any associated debris, it will shoot right past Pluto, travelling deeper into the outer Solar System. In an effort to extract more scientific value from the hardware, researchers are hoping to make sure the probe's trajectory will send it past a Kuiper Belt object. The only problem? We don't know of any in the right neighborhood.
In an attempt to rectify that situation, the committee that allocates observation time on the Hubble Space Telescope has agreed to let the Hubble search for new Kuiper Belt objects in the right neighborhood. The plan will start with a set of test observations where the Hubble will rotate to track a patch of space in the Kuiper Belt region. Due to its rotation, any background stars will appear as streaks in the exposure; Kuiper Belt Objects, in contrast, will show as distinct spots. If this succeeds in identifying some Kuiper Belt Objects, then the Hubble will be turned loose on the area along the future path of New Horizons.
In many ways, Pluto and its moons are likely to be typical residents of the Kuiper Belt; its special status as a dwarf planet is more of a historical accident. However, the known Kuiper Belt Objects have a variety of shapes and properties, so the more of them we can observe up close, the better understanding we'll gain of this distant collection of bodies.


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Hannah Fairfield, attempting to explain the wage gender gap for the New York Times, places the blame squarely on "women's choices." Oh, and discrimination might have a little something to do with it.
Fairfield writes:
Economists believe that discrimination as well as personal choices within occupations are two major factors. They also attribute part of the gap to men having more experience and logging more hours.
If you're not catching it, "personal choices" is code for "entering and leaving the work force for children" and "logging more hours" isn't the same as having more experience, it's "not taking time off for your kids." Of course, those of us who have actually — as single, childless women — logged more hours, had more experience and never left the work force and yet still somehow magically experienced pay discrimination, well, we're obvious outliers.
That is, unless you account for those things.
"There's no measurable way to explain the gaps within occupations," said Barry T. Hirsh, a labor economist at Georgia State University. "Other wage gaps, like racial gaps, can be almost fully explained by factoring in the differences in education, geography and age."
What Hirsch is saying, despite Fairfield's careful wording, is that it's because of discrimination, not "women's choices."
Fairfield does get one economist on the record blaming the wage gap — that is, the overall wage gap, not the one that exists within occupations when accounting for experience, hours, education, geography and age — on women's choices.
"Desire for a certain flexibility or a certain lifestyle drives career choices," said Stephanie Boraas, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Women often choose jobs that have more flexible hours, which can work well with child care."
Fairfield additionally posits that the wage gap in the medical field is due to women "picking" — as opposed to, say, being "encouraged" into — lower paying fields like general medicine rather than taking up surgery, not that she does the research to see if women in surgery or general medicine still make less than their male counterparts. Of course, despite the fact that the federal government has statistics breaking down wages in medical specialties (and 800 total occupations), they only release data on the wage gap for 200 occupations and lump all doctors in together — but when the statistics show that male registered nurses do better than their female colleagues in a completely female-dominated occupation, you'd better have some hard numbers to show me that women have wage equality in female dominated medical specialties, and the government and thus Fairfield don't.
Fairfield then asks:
But why do men who are bus drivers or insurance agents, jobs with similar numbers of men and women, earn more money than their female counterparts?
Umm, discrimination? Like, maybe it's a bigger factor than "women's choices" despite what she posits throughout her entire piece? Yes, women that choose family practice over neurosurgery or, um, perhaps blogging over lobbying can expect to make less money than neurosurgeons or lobbyists. We're not bitching about that. We're bitching about the fact that female bloggers probably make less than their comparable male counterparts, and that female lobbyists definitely make less than their comparable male counterparts, and female family practitioners probably make less than their male counterparts and female neurosurgeons probably make less than their male counterparts. That is the point of pay discrimination laws, and Ledbetter v. Goodyear and the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. It is not that if I choose a lower-paying field I make less money than men (or women) who choose a higher-paying field — and to suggest so lends credence to the argument made by plenty of discrimination-apologists that we're all just looking for special treatment when we're really just asking for equality.
Why Is Her Paycheck Smaller? [New York Times]
Related: National Employment And Wage Data From The Occupational Employment Statistics Survey By Occupation, May 2007 [Bureau of Labor Statistics]
Median Weekly Earnings Of Full-Time Wage And Salary Workers By Detailed Occupation And Sex [Bureau of Labor Statistics]


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On the Road Again
Posted by Montana Weatherization Training Center on October 20, 2010
The Montana Weatherization Training Center would like to inform you of this week's episodes of WxTV, online and ready for viewing.
We have another segment of our 'On The Road Series'. We're also introducing a new mini-series, "Blower Door Basics".
This week's episodes:
On The Road Series: Weatherization in the Navajo Nation
WxTV is back on the road again, this time to Window Rock, AZ, where we'll take a look at some of the similar and unique challenges that this new weatherization program faces.
running length: 13:36
Blower Door Basics: Part 1 - Prep & Setup
WxTV will take a look at the ins and outs of blower door testing. To make things even more interesting we'll be testing the tightness of a strawbale house. In this first part, Ben will walk us through the pre-test inspection, prep of the home and setup of the blower door.
running length: 14:58
Click here to see them at: http://weatherization.org/wxtv
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I've found a new addiction.....this message board! Anyway, I thought I'd throw out some pics of a small welding trailer I built a few years ago (paints a little faded, but hey, I never claimed to be a painter!) It's a basic 5'X8' frame. Rails/tounge are built from 2"X4" tubing, crossmembers/ladder rack are 2"X2". You can see from the pics that the work table folds up for transport. I wanted something that I didn't have to spend an hour setting up and worry about it sinking into the ground if I put something up on it. Notice the tubing is up when in working position. I did this so small parts wouldn't fall to the ground as easy (ever try to find that last bolt that rolled off into the sand??) The tool box is a home depot special. Make sure you drill weep holes in those boxes!! The bottle rack is just a piece of 8" C channel that was radiused to cradle the cylinders with loops for a strap to hold them snug. It was built with a MM 210, Spectrum 375 Plasma, and a basic abbrasive chop saw. You may notice the lack of welding accessories. It's main use in life is as a job site generator, but I wanted the option to use it as a mobile welding platform as well. Enjoy! SSS
No announcement yet.
small welding trailer project
new posts


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Hubble sees cosmic "flying V" of merging galaxies
This large "flying V" is actually two distinct objects—a pair of interacting galaxies known as IC 2184. Both the galaxies are seen almost edge-on in the large, faint northern constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe), and can be seen as bright streaks of light surrounded by the ghostly shapes of their tidal tails.
These tidal tails are thin, elongated streams of gas, dust and stars that extend away from a galaxy into space. They occur when galaxies gravitationally interact with one another, and material is sheared from the outer edges of each body and flung out into space in opposite directions, forming two tails. They almost always appear curved, so when they are seen to be relatively straight, as in this image, it is clear that we are viewing the galaxies side-on.
Also visible in this image are bursts of bright blue, pinpointing hot regions where the colliding gas clouds stir up vigorous star formation. The image consists of visible and infrared observations from Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.
Provided by NASA


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Attorney: Girl in stabbing deserves juvenile court
MILWAUKEE – Wisconsin's tough laws requiring children be charged as adults in homicide cases could mean a 12-year-old girl accused of stabbing a friend won't get help she needs, her attorney said Tuesday.
Waukesha County prosecutors have charged two 12-year-old girls in adult court with stabbing a friend the same age nearly to death in the woods. The girls told detectives they conspired for months to kill the other girl in hopes of pleasing Slenderman, a bogeyman character they read about online. Each girl faces one count of first-degree attempted homicide with a knife enhancer and could get up to 65 years in the state prison system.
In Wisconsin, anyone 10 or older charged with homicide is automatically considered an adult. Four states have the next youngest threshold for that, at 13.
Anthony Cotton, an attorney for one of the girls, said he believed the two may be the youngest ever charged as adults in the county. He said he plans to push to get his client transferred to juvenile court, where he said she can get help. The state's juvenile system is geared toward rehabilitation rather than punishment; offenders can be held only until they're 25 years old.
"She's 12 and she has mental health issues," Cotton said of his client. "There's no question that she needs to go to the hospital."
Waukesha County District Attorney Brad Schimel called adult court a starting point for the case and noted that the allegations haven't been proven. But he added that one could argue the girls deserve a harsher punishment than confinement until age 25.
"I realize they're only 12," said Schimel, who is running for attorney general. "But so is the victim and she came very close to not seeing her 13th birthday."
According to court documents, the girls invited the victim to a sleepover Friday. They planned to stab her while she slept to become Slenderman's "proxies," Cotton's client told investigators. They planned to run off to Slenderman's forest mansion after the victim was dead.
They decided to kill her on Saturday instead. They went into the woods, where one girl pushed the victim down and sat on her. The girls then traded the knife back and forth between them before one of them finally tackled the victim again and began stabbing her, according to the complaint.
The girls left the victim lying in the woods. She crawled to a road where a bicyclist found her lying on the sidewalk. Police arrived and she gave them the name of one of the girls who attacked her.
Cotton said he didn't know if the allegations were true but if they were his client would have started plotting the attack when she was only 11. She needs help, not prison, he said.
Juvenile arrests for homicide are relatively rare. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, of about 9.3 million juvenile arrests between 2007 and 2011, some 5,640 — less than half a percent — were for homicide or manslaughter. Forty-one of those homicide or manslaughter arrests were females.
Wisconsin is one of 29 states that automatically place juveniles of certain ages in adult court, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The statutes require that anyone 10 or older charged with attempted or committed homicide is an adult; lawmakers created the provision in 1996 to counter a rise in youths involved with gangs, drugs and guns. Georgia, Illinois, New York and Oklahoma set the age for some automatic adult charges at 13.
Cotton said he plans to have a doctor evaluate the girl and present the findings to prosecutors in hopes they wouldn't oppose moving her into juvenile court. He then plans to present those findings to a judge, although he said it could be months before a decision comes.
His client told a detective she regretted the incident. The other girl told detectives they both stabbed the victim. At one point that girl said she was sorry.
The other girl's attorney, public defender Joseph Smith, Jr., didn't return a telephone message.
The Associated Press isn't naming either girl since their cases could end up in juvenile court where proceedings are closed to the public. Court documents don't list the victim's name.


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Has anyone recently traveled in the eastern DRC, the Democratic Republic of the Congo? I'm considering moving south to north, from, roughly, Lubumbashi to the border with Uganda. However, it currently ain't all peaches in this region.
So, for simplicity's sake, how to travel from Kitwe to Kabale, through the DRC, using public transport? Or, perhaps more sensibly, anyone has any personal experience traveling around in this region?


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Actress Jennifer Hudson cried softly as her former brother-in-law was convicted today of murdering her mother, brother and 7-year-old nephew.
Hudson bowed her head as jurors entered the courtroom around 4:40 p.m. The Academy Award-winning actress, who attended each day of the trial, leaned forward when the verdict was read and softly wept as her fiancé comforted her and family members squeezed her shoulders.
When jurors walked out of the courtroom, Hudson stood on tiptoe to watch them.
William Balfour was found guilty on all counts of murder, home invasion, armed robbery and kidnapping and faces mandatory life in prison. He showed no emotion when the verdict was announced, but his family cried.
While jurors were split 9-3 on a verdict just hours before it was announced, they said afterward that deliberations were cordial and some of them simply wanted more information before deciding on conviction.
"Some people were able to piece it together faster than others," said juror Paula Halcomb.
Jacinta Gholston, who was one of those not convinced of guilt, said there were many "holes" in the timeline that she wanted to see filled before she would vote to convict.
"There were three of us who just needed to see the picture a little clearer," she said.
Jurors said Balfour's cellphone records were a key piece of evidence, allowing the jury to piece the timeline together and, in Halcomb's words, figure out that "he could not be in two places at once."
Several of the jurors said Hudson's celebrity didn't influence their deliberations.
"She was a celebrity, we understood that. But it wasn't about her," said Gholston. "This was not for us the Jennifer Hudson Case. It was the People of Illinois vs. William Balfour."
Juror Tracie Austin said Hudson's testimony didn't play a big part in her decision because Hudson "didn't say anything" that was crucial to the case.
Balfour's attorney, Amy Thompson, said she would file a motion for a new trial on June 8 and would be preparing an appeal as well. "There are very strong issues of law," she said. "We do have hope. . .It has always been our position and it still is that William Balfour is innocent of these murders."
But Thompson said she also didn't think Hudson's celebrity had any impact on verdict. "I think the jury was paying attention. They didn't seem too interested in the coming and goings of people in the courtroom, including Miss Hudson," she said.
Jennifer Hudson and her sister Julia Hudson released a statement Friday night thanking the police, prosecutors and witnesses, along with everyone who offered support.
"We have felt the love and support from people all over the world and we're very grateful," according to the statement.
"We want to extend a prayer from the Hudson family to the Balfour family. We have all suffered terrible loss in this tragedy," they said. "It is our prayer that the Lord will forgive Mr. Balfour of these heinous acts and bring his heart into repentance someday."
State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said the evidence in the case, though largely circumstantial, was "overwhelmingly." She noted that there were 80 prosecution witnesses and more than 500 pieces of evidence entered.
"There was never a rush to judgment," Alvarez said. "We are very, very happy with the verdict in this case."
Alvarez said the Hudson family "are relieved. . .This verdict cannot bring back their loved ones but we hope this brings them some justice.
"I talked to Jennifer Hudson before this trial," Alvarez continued. "She said, 'This was my mother. If it were me (who was killed), my mother would be here every day. So I'm gonna be every day.'"
The verdict came less than three hours after jurors sent out a note telling the judge they were split but still trying to reach a decision. A second note, issued at the same time, asked for all available evidence about the "cell phone tower coverage."
The note concluded by saying "we are trying," an apparent reference to their continued talks.
The judge agreed to send back a transcript of the testimony of FBI Special Agent Nikki Skovran, who performed a forensic analysis of Balfour's cell phone from the day of the murders that placed him near the Hudson home around the time the victims were shot.
"With regard to the first question, please continue to deliberate," Judge Charles Burns wrote.
The notes were sent out hours after jurors requested two videos: One from a high school showing the time Balfour's car was left parked on the street, and the other a video showing the police interrogation of Balfour claiming he left it there about 8:30 a.m. on the day of the murders.
Prosecutors have argued that the time stamp on the school security video proved Balfour was lying about his whereabouts that morning.
The jury of six men and six women began deliberations late Wednesday and have been sequestered for two nights at a hotel. They resumed deliberations today at 10:10 a.m.
Balfour, who turned 31 on Thursday, was convicted of fatally shooting the singer's mother, Darnell Donerson, 57; her brother, Jason Hudson, 29, and her 7-year-old nephew Julian King in October 2008.
Prosecutors said he was upset that his estranged wife, Hudson's sister, Julia, had begun seeing another man and wanted a divorce.
The largely circumstantial case has no DNA or fingerprints tying Balfour to the crime. But prosecutors say witness testimony, firearms evidence and cell phone technology presented during 11 days of testimony all pointed toward Balfour.
The defense argued that Chicago police did not properly investigate the crime and rushed to apprehend a suspect amid all the media attention stemming from Jennifer Hudson's celebrity.


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Marriage Matters: Ultimate transformational process
Did you know that you and your spouse are engaging in transformational processes? Yep, that's right.
You might even be transformational process experts and not know it.
Family scholars define transformational process as the ability to change a relationship from within, that a marriage can self-regulate without needing external assistance such as marriage education or therapy.
Change is always occurring; it is just that sometimes it is hard to see because the pace is so slow. For example, the amount of growth in a baby's first year of life is astonishing, yet from one day to another it is difficult to judge that much has changed. However, when you flip through pictures from that first year, it is like time-lapse photography that punctuates the growth that was before you every day.
Change in marriage may be quite similar. Although much remains the same over time, slight adaptations are always occurring as we respond to our own development as well as the world around us.
Our column is often about change and developing healthier marriages, but we must admit that our base personalities are the type that prefer stability and consistency. How else to explain why our closet is full of clothes that date back to the previous decade.
Yet after Audora's stroke we became a single-earner family and made adjustments. When baby Paul was born and we became parents of an infant (again), our lives changed. When Jim was assigned to a role at work that required more time away from family, we adapted.
While it may seem that change brings chaos, the opposite is also true. To not change when life requires it brings a level of rigidity that can yield dysfunction. But how does a couple engage in change without losing who they are?
In a recent article in the scholarly journal Family Relations, researchers looked at the role that religion plays for some couples as they transform. In particular, the authors looked at how religion impacts commitment and coping skills – that is, how they handle conflict.
For example, pertaining to how couples cope with life's many issues, the researchers found themes such as the importance of having shared beliefs, keeping a long-term perspective, that challenges are needed in life, and that challenges brought them closer to God.
So through the lens of their religion, the couples' change was filtered though a sense of long-term commitment and that challenges are not only normal, but that challenges can have positive benefits.
The couples felt that participation with their faith was part of what made their relationships stronger; it was not just the belief system of their religion, but living the life of their religion that continued to transform their relationship into something stronger.
The ultimate transformational process—that through marriage, two become one.


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Max Fisher / The Atlantic – 2012-12-15 01:27:18
(July 23, 2012) — I've heard it said that, if you take a walk around Waikiki, it's only a matter of time until someone hands you a flyer of scantily clad women clutching handguns, overlaid with English and maybe Japanese text advertising one of the many local shooting ranges.
The city's largest, the Royal Hawaiian Shooting Club, advertises instructors fluent in Japanese, which is also the default language of its website. For years, this peculiar Hawaiian industry has explicitly targeted Japanese tourists, drawing them away from beaches and resorts into shopping malls, to do things that are forbidden in their own country.
Waikiki's Japanese-filled ranges are the sort of quirk you might find in any major tourist town, but they're also an intersection of two societies with wildly different approaches to guns and their role in society. Friday's horrific shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater has been a reminder that America's gun control laws are the loosest in the developed world and its rate of gun-related homicide is the highest.
Of the world's 23 "rich" countries, the US gun-related murder rate is almost 20 times that of the other 22. With almost one privately owned firearm per person, America's ownership rate is the highest in the world; tribal-conflict-torn Yemen is ranked second, with a rate about half of America's.
But what about the country at the other end of the spectrum? What is the role of guns in Japan, the developed world's least firearm-filled nation and perhaps its strictest controller? In 2008, the US had over 12 thousand firearm-related homicides. All of Japan experienced only 11, fewer than were killed at the Aurora shooting alone. And that was a big year: 2006 saw an astounding two, and when that number jumped to 22 in 2007, it became a national scandal. By comparison, also in 2008, 587 Americans were killed just by guns that had discharged accidentally.
Almost no one in Japan owns a gun. Most kinds are illegal, with onerous restrictions on buying and maintaining the few that are allowed. Even the country's infamous, mafia-like Yakuza tend to forgo guns; the few exceptions tend to become big national news stories.
Japanese tourists who fire off a few rounds at the Royal Hawaiian Shooting Club would be breaking three separate laws back in Japan — one for holding a handgun, one for possessing unlicensed bullets, and another violation for firing them — the first of which alone is punishable by one to ten years in jail.
Handguns are forbidden absolutely. Small-caliber rifles have been illegal to buy, sell, or transfer since 1971. Anyone who owned a rifle before then is allowed to keep it, but their heirs are required to turn it over to the police once the owner dies.
The only guns that Japanese citizens can legally buy and use are shotguns and air rifles, and it's not easy to do. The process is detailed in David Kopel's landmark study on Japanese gun control, published in the 1993 Asia Pacific Law Review, still cited as current. (Kopel, no left-wing loony, is a member of the National Rifle Association and once wrote in National Review that looser gun control laws could have stopped Adolf Hitler.)
To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. Then, head over to a hospital for a mental test and drug test (Japan is unusual in that potential gun owners must affirmatively prove their mental fitness), which you'll file with the police.
Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. Just don't forget to provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. And remember to have the police inspect the gun once per year and to re-take the class and exam every three years.
Even the most basic framework of Japan's approach to gun ownership is almost the polar opposite of America's. US gun law begins with the second amendment's affirmation of the "right of the people to keep and bear arms" and narrows it down from there.
Japanese law, however, starts with the 1958 act stating that "No person shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords," later adding a few exceptions. In other words, American law is designed to enshrine access to guns, while Japan starts with the premise of forbidding it.
The history of that is complicated, but it's worth noting that US gun law has its roots in resistance to British gun restrictions, whereas some academic literature links the Japanese law to the national campaign to forcibly disarm the samurai, which may partially explain why the 1958 mentions firearms and swords side-by-side.
Of course, Japan and the US are separated by a number of cultural and historical difference much wider than their gun policies. Kopel explains that, for whatever reason, Japanese tend to be more tolerant of the broad search and seizure police powers necessary to enforce the ban. "Japanese, both criminals and ordinary citizens, are much more willing than their American counterparts to consent to searches and to answer questions from the police," he writes.
But even the police did not carry firearms themselves until, in 1946, the American occupation authority ordered them to. Now, Japanese police receive more hours of training than their American counterparts, are forbidden from carrying off-duty, and invest hours in studying martial arts in part because they "are expected to use [firearms] in only the rarest of circumstances," according to Kopel.
The Japanese and American ways of thinking about crime, privacy, and police powers are so different — and Japan is such a generally peaceful country — that it's functionally impossible to fully isolate and compare the two gun control regiments.
It's not much easier to balance the costs and benefits of Japan's unusual approach, which helps keep its murder rate at the second-lowest in the world, though at the cost of restrictions that Kopel calls a "police state," a worrying suggestion that it hands the government too much power over its citizens.
After all, the US constitution's second amendment is intended in part to maintain "the security of a free State" by ensuring that the government doesn't have a monopoly on force. Though it's worth considering another police state here: Tunisia, which had the lowest firearm ownership rate in the world (one gun per thousand citizens, compared to America's 890) when its people toppled a brutal, 24-year dictatorship and sparked the Arab Spring.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.