Through The Eyes Of The Farmer And The Agro-Dealer

The fertiliser distribution initiative code-named “Growth Enhancement Support Programme (GES)” developed by the Federal Government to enhance distribution of farm inputs to farmers at a subsidised rate, has been applauded by stakeholders both home and abroad. Even farmers lauded the programme, because for some of them, it is the first time that they have directly benefited from any government agriculture initiative.

With the GES programme, major agricultural inputs such as fertiliser and seeds, are distributed to the farmers through an electronic distribution channel known as the Electronic Wallet Scheme (e-wallet), thereby discontinuing direct procurement and distribution of farm inputs to farmers.High quality stone mosaic tiles.

The conditions of the e-wallet scheme stipulates that a farmer, registered under the GES, is expected to pay 50 per cent of the cost of farm inputs, while the Federal and state governments would pay 25 per cent each.

A 75-year old farmer from Ogun State, Alhaji Adio Kareem, who spoke to the media during a media tour to some states in the Southwest said that “Ever since I began farming, this is the first time I have benefited from the government’s fertiliser distribution programme: we only hear it on radio, but it never reaches us. This time, it is another story entirely.”

Kareem said the agro-dealer have been forthcoming as she always, as she has constantly come to their farms to encourage them to register for the GES programme, and also to come and redeem their fertiliser and seeds at the agro-dealer centres.
“We couldn’t have had a better programme than this,but what we want government to do for us is to provide us with the farm inputs on time and adequately”, another farmer from Ogun State noted.

For Osun state, it was a different story altogether. The GES coordinator in the state, Mr. Kamil Gbolagade noted that the programme was a partial success, being that they already had a programme going on in the state which has worked very well for the farmers.

Gbolagade noted that the former fertiliser programme embarked upon by the state government worked well for farmers, as they were able to buy fertiliser at a subsidised rate of N3,000, compared to the Federal Government programme wherein farmers could only buy two bags of fertiliser at a subsidised rate of N5,500.

Stakeholders are of the view that government should deal with each state as an entity by isolating their problems and solving them completely, rather than opting for a top-to-bottom approach.

Farmers in Kwara State complained of the hijacking of the scheme by non-farmers, as most of them were not aware of the programme at first. By the time they got to know about the programme, so many market women who were not farmers had been already registered.

A farmer, Mr Kamiu Kolapo, who spoke to LEADERSSHIP in the state advised government to always involve commodity associations whenever they have any programme.

He said “We are the ones who know who the real farmers are,This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. especially those who are in our association, and we can always ensure they benefit from whatever programme the Federal Government is having for farmers”.

The programme manager,Interlocking security cable tie with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. Ogun State Agriculture Development Programme (OSADEP), Mr. Ibikunle Onasanya, mentioned that in Ogun State about 40,000 farmers were registered, and the first roll out was in maize, followed by cassava and cocoa roll-outs, over 8,000 farmers benefitted from the programme, receiving inputs like fertilisers, agro chemicals and agrolisers.

He explained that the reason for the number of beneficiaries was due to the timing of the roll-out. For instance, maize and cassava roll-out was done on the June 21, and farmers had already started planting between March and May.

“At that time, we had to convince them, and give them reasons to key into the project. Though they had already planted, the fertilisers could still come in handy for the late season”, Onasanya said.

He further mentioned that farmers were already registering for the 2013 farming season, and a lot of awareness via both the radio and television.

According to Onasanya, fertiliser and seeds would be given to farmers in areas ravaged by the floods, to enable them engage in late-season planting. He also added that the input will cover those who have registered and are yet to register, so as to increase food production in the state in year 2012.

The Osun State director, Agriculture Development, mentioned that 35,390 farmers were registered for the 2012 farming season; of this number 2,365 farmers benefitted from the GES scheme, because of problems related to redeeming the e-wallet messages from the centres.

He explained that six agro centres – in Iwo, Ede, Irewole, Ilesha, Ife and Osogbo – were effective during the season, despite the problem of aligning the messages on the agro dealers and the farmers phone posed a great challenge for the farmers, explaining that messages were supposed to be sent to the agro-dealer and the farmer, and that if the agro-dealer does not get the message, the farmer will be unable to redeem both the fertiliser and the seeds.

He went ahead to suggest the need to commence early registration of farmers for the next farming season.
The GES coordinator mentioned that his assessment of the programme is below average in the state, because the company commissioned to deliver fertiliser in the state was not forthcoming on the exercise.

The agro dealers were supposed to approach the bank for loan and payment made to the company to supply the fertiliser to the centres. The banks did not provide the loans for the agro dealers, making them unable to provide input for the centres.
About 17 centres were identified, and only six of them were able to operate throughout the period, because there was no enough supply of fertiliser.

He mentioned that Golden fertiliser and Notore were commissioned to supply fertiliser to the state while WEMA Bank was to provide the loan.

He said the system of getting the message across to the farmers was not perfect, due to a network problem which forced many farmers to spend hours waiting to receive the GES text message. Also, many of the farmers did not have contact telephone lines.

“The few who benefitted are happy with the programme: We gave them two bags of fertilisers, 40kg of maize and 50kg of rice. The insufficiency of the rice and maize seeds is the fault of the supplier.

“The companies commissioned for the GES programme were identified by the Federal Government, not the ADP, I will suggest they redesign the programme in the future. Instead of the bank giving loan to agro dealers, the money should go, straight, to the agro dealers to supply the company. Most of the banks are still trying to wrap-up the documentation till today, talk more of extending the loans to the agro dealers.

In Osun State, only Wema Bank agreed to work with us and it has not been a success story.
The field officers who were stationed at the redemption centres were poorly remunerated by Cellulant company for the three weeks that they were stationed at the centres and they are troubling us in the office to pay them their money”, said Onasanya noted.

“A farmer, registered for the programme at the OSADEP office, and when the programme commenced he was able to get alert on his phone, after which they ordered us to come with the messages, for collection of the fertilisers.

“I paid N5500 for the fertiliser, while they gave me seeds for free. The fertiliser was good but the grain did not germinate at all; it really disappointed me. The maize I was supposed to plant earlier so that it will mature, was a disappointment, because a week after then I realised that the maize did not germinate at all. I had to buy another seed for cultivation.

A lot of farmers who got the seeds from the same source also had the same problem, because I know some of my friends who also complained about the seed,” a farmer complained.

Another farmer, Mr. Oyedotun Oyewole, complained that the seeds and fertilisers were insufficient: “I have a large farm so, sometimes, I used up to 15 bags of fertiliser, and I will suggest that the government increase the number of fertiliser they are giving us”.

The managing director, Jordadar Farms, who is an agro-dealer at Ede local government area, stated that poor network coverage was one of the hitches. “Sometimes, the farmers get message, while the agro dealers did not get the message, yet it was supposed to correspond for them to collect the fertiliser and the grain.”

In Kogi State, the Kogi State agro input chairman, Mr. Oyeniyi Badejo,The oreck XL professional air purifier, complained that farmers were bitter that almost 10 per cent of them were unregistered, citing poor media awareness for the non-registration of the other 90 per cent.

“But we had problem with the banks”, Badejo began, “the Federal Government asked them to finance us, but later on the system changed, as they did not give us the loan. We had to seek for loans on personal grounds, with about 25 per cent interest rate”.
According to Stephen Ayaba, an agro input dealer, “we keyed into this programme and were trained by the International Fertiliser Development Commission. After the training, we were short-listed and some of us are beneficiaries.

“During the training it was a dream come through. With their entire requirement, I was able to meet up with the all the numerous and tasking requirements, which my bank manager also affirmed to. I was asked to pay 30 per cent counterpart fund which I did, after which I was given a loan offer from Zenith Bank, I spent over 1million to ensure I meet up with the requirement only for me to be told that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) did not provide the fund,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. and I was so frustrated.

“I had to go and source for fund, to ensure I get fertiliser for the farmers, because it had been widely broadcasted on radio and television that farmers should got to agro centres to collect their inputs. The farmers, on the other hand, started receiving alert for them to come and collect their inputs; the pressure was so much on us that we had to cover up. Despite our efforts, not up to 10 per cent of the farmers were informed about the programme for them to register. Till today we could not meet up to two per cent of those who were registered.

Online Retailers Vary PricesBased on a User's Location

"How can they get away with that?" said Ms. Frizzell, who works in Bergheim, Texas.

In what appears to be an unintended side effect of Staples' pricing methods—likely a function of retail competition with its rivals—the Journal's testing also showed that areas that tended to see the discounted prices had a higher average income than areas that tended to see higher prices.

Presented with the Journal's findings, Staples acknowledged that it varies its online and in-store prices by geography because of "a variety of factors" including "costs of doing business."

For years, the Internet, with its promise of quick comparison shopping, has granted people a certain power over retailers. At the click of a button, shoppers could find a better deal elsewhere, no travel required.

But the idea of an unbiased, impersonal Internet is fast giving way to an online world that, in reality, is increasingly tailored and targeted. Websites are adopting techniques to glean information about visitors to their sites, in real time, and then deliver different versions of the Web to different people. Prices change, products get swapped out, wording is modified, and there is little way for the typical website user to spot it when it happens.

The Journal identified several companies, including Staples, Discover Financial Services, Rosetta Stone Inc. and Home Depot Inc., that were consistently adjusting prices and displaying different product offers based on a range of characteristics that could be discovered about the user. Office Depot, for example, told the Journal that it uses "customers' browsing history and geolocation" to vary the offers and products it displays to a visitor to its site.

Offering different prices to different people is legal, with a few exceptions for race-based discrimination and other sensitive situations. Several companies pointed out that their online price-tweaking simply mirrors the real world. Regular shops routinely adjust their prices to account for local demand, competition, store location and so on. Nobody is surprised if,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. say, a gallon of gas is cheaper at the same chain, one town over.

But price-changing online isn't popular among shoppers. Some 76% of American adults have said it would bother them to find out that other people paid a lower price for the same product, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

"I think it's very discriminatory," said Ms. Wamble, an insurance account manager in Boerne, Texas, who priced the Swingline stapler for the Journal this month. She was just 10 miles or so down the road from Ms. Frizzell, but she saw higher prices on the Staples website than Ms. Frizzell did for all five products tested. Items tested included a pack of Bic pens, a case of orange masking tape, a set of crimped-end mailing tubes and a big safe.

It remains unclear precisely what formula Staples used to set online prices. Staples declined to answer detailed questions about the findings. It told the Journal that "in-store and online prices do vary by geography due to a variety of factors, including rent, labor, distribution and other costs of doing business."

It is possible that Staples' online-pricing formula uses other factors that the Journal didn't identify. The Journal tested to see whether price was tied to different characteristics including population, local income,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. proximity to a Staples store, race and other demographic factors. Statistically speaking, by far the strongest correlation involved the distance to a rival's store from the center of a ZIP Code. That single factor appeared to explain upward of 90% of the pricing pattern.

What economists call price discrimination—when companies offer different prices to different people based on their perceived willingness to pay—is commonplace and can be beneficial. Movie theaters give senior-citizen discounts. One traveler's willingness to pay top dollar for an airplane seat might mean other people will pay less.

Basing online prices on geography can make sense for various reasons, from shipping costs to local popularity of a particular item. Some retailers might naturally cluster in specific areas as well—a prosperous suburb, say—boosting the competitive pressure to discount.

But using geography as a pricing tool can also reinforce patterns that e-commerce had promised to erase: prices that are higher in areas with less competition, including rural or poor areas. It diminishes the Internet's role as an equalizer.

In the Journal's examination of Staples' online pricing, the weighted average income among ZIP Codes that mostly received discount prices was roughly $59,900, based on Internal Revenue Service data. ZIP Codes that saw generally high prices had a lower weighted average income, $48,700.

Staples didn't comment on the income split beyond saying that the company offers a low-price guarantee.

Online businesses have experimented with tailored offers since the dawn of the Internet era. In 1997, a startup called Personify sold software that tried to personalize Web pages for shoppers. For example, people taking a certain path through a site could be tagged as price-conscious and be shown low-end items, said Eileen Gittins, Personify's former chief executive.

To find differences that weren't purely the result of dynamic pricing or randomized tests, the Journal conducted preliminary scans by simulating visits from different computers to a variety of e-commerce sites. If a website showed different prices or offers, the Journal then analyzed the site's computer code and conducted follow-up testing.

The Journal's tests, which were conducted in phases between August and December, indicated that some big-name retailers are experimenting with offering different prices and products to different users.

Some sites, for example, gave discounts based on whether or not a person was using a mobile device. A person searching for hotels from the Web browser of an iPhone or Android phone on travel sites Orbitz and CheapTickets would see discounts of as much as 50% off the list price, Orbitz said.

Both sites are run by Orbitz Worldwide Inc., which in fact markets the differences as "mobile steals." Orbitz says the deals are also available on the iPad if a person installs the Orbitz app.

"Many hotels have proven willing to provide discounts for mobile sites," said Chris Chiames, Orbitz's vice president of corporate affairs.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , Hotels on Orbitz mobile sites also offer discounts "that might target shoppers in a specific geographic region," as determined by the physical location of the user, as well as "other factors."

Often, sites tailored results by geography. In the tests, Discover, for instance, showed a prominent offer for the company's new "it" card to computers connecting from cities including Denver, Kansas City, Mo., and Dallas, Texas. Computers connecting from Scranton, Penn.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory., Kingsport, Tenn., and Los Angeles didn't see the same offer.

A Discover spokeswoman said that the company was testing the card, but that for competitive reasons, it wouldn't comment further on its "acquisition strategy" for new customers.Load the precious minerals into your mining truck and be careful not to drive too fast with your heavy foot.

At home-improvement site Lowe's Cos., prices depend on location. For example, a refrigerator in the Journal's tests cost $449 in Chicago, Los Angeles and Ashburn, Va., but $499 in seven other test cities. Lowe's said online shoppers receive the lower of the online store price or the price at their local Lowe's store as indicated by their ZIP Code.

Homeless code-compliant housing issues remain in Casper

People still face waiting lists at shelters and low-income housing units in Casper, but code enforcement has made some progress with safety inspections over the past year.

Casper’s McKenzie Apartments and the House of Hope transitional shelter closed in 2012, while the Sunshine Apartments opened.Purelink's real time location system protect healthcare workers in their daily practices and OMEGA interventions. The new multiplex sits on the former site of the KC Apartments, which were closed in 2009 for code violations and demolished in 2011.

The city also rejected a low-income complex in Paradise Valley and ordered updates for a number of housing facilities, including Skyline Towers — a low-income senior housing center.

Meanwhile, federal numbers suggest homelessness in Wyoming increased by 75 percent between 2011 and 2012, according to an annual “point-in-time” count. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reported in December that Wyoming’s total homeless population jumped from 1,038 to 1,813,Best howo concrete mixer manufacturer in China. although national homelessness numbers declined slightly overall.

“The needs haven’t really changed,” said Lu Ann Allhusen, executive director of the Casper Housing Authority. “What’s tough is when people are in crisis, they need housing then, and not always do they get the housing through the different agencies.”

The housing authority owns 75 housing units and operates assistance programs, serving more than 600 families each month. Allhusen said the waiting list for HUD vouchers has continued to grow, and the list for public housing is equally long. The voucher program had nearly 100 people on the waiting list in June, a number that ballooned to 1,200 by December.

Marilyn Dymond Wagner, executive director at Interfaith of Natrona County,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. said she has also noticed a steady need for housing. She estimated her number of clients increased by 10 percent between 2011 and 2012. Aside from the general surge brought on by winter, Wagner said Interfaith had an extraordinary amount of visitors in July.

“The influx of people from out of state that were here looking for jobs in oil and gas certainly attributed to that number,” she said. “Then just an influx of folks from out of state, period, [who] think that Wyoming’s economy is so much better than elsewhere.”

Administrators at LifeSteps Transitional Housing and the Wyoming Rescue Mission reported full shelters in December, a trend consistent for most of 2012.

Brandon Espinoza, program manager at LifeSteps and former coordinator of an annual homeless count, said the family housing works off a constant waiting list. The agency attempts to refer people when possible.

This year’s annual “point-in-time” homeless count, required by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for areas that receive federal funding, is being coordinated by social workers at Interfaith.High quality stone mosaic tiles. Plans are underway for the one-day tally done by communities across the nation to estimate the homeless population.

“It’s going to be very well orchestrated in terms of logistics this year,” Wagner said.

The 2012 count had plenty of volunteers, but social services reported a difficult time mobilizing them. To combat that problem, Wagner said the Casper Area Transportation Coalition will provide two buses for use.

Wagner also said La Cocina has offered to serve free tacos to the homeless, Little Caesars will provide pizza, and the Wyoming Food Bank of the Rockies will give out boxes of food at Set Free Ministries during the event.

HUD has also changed the rules this year regarding people who are doubled up, or staying with others because they don’t have a home of their own. They will not be counted as homeless in 2013.

Administrators of the transitional housing facility moved to Green River in late 2012 and are attempting to reopen. Bishop Charles Trimm, founder of the House of Hope, said he has identified two potential locations that would require a special use permit. The nonprofit expects to present their plans to City Council sometime in January.

Until then, Trimm said the agency will continue a partnership with Southwest Wyoming Recovery Access Programs to place people in hotels.

“I know it’s a Band-Aid, but that’s the best we can do until we get a permanent facility,” he said.

In addition to the House of Hope, the city of Casper closed the McKenzie Apartments for code violations in March. Code Enforcement Manager Doug Barrett said the building on Grant Street is now under new ownership and in the process of being remodeled by Trinity Builders.

A North Lincoln Street multifamily unit with prior reported problems that caught fire earlier this year is also being remodeled. Barrett said the city has worked with “several other units” to bring them to code in the past year.

A priority list of housing inspections created after code violations closed the KC Apartments in 2009 is still being addressed. Barrett said the city is currently focusing on high- and medium-risk locations but notes updates made to “problem properties” as proof the program is working.

"Our experience has shown that 57 percent to the players is too much," Daly said. "Particularly in an economic environment that's changed significantly in a situation where Canadian currency and the value of Canadian currency has changed dramatically, in an environment where generating revenues and the cost of generating revenues has become more significant.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. And the bottom line is, 54 percent where we started with going to 57 percent where we currently are, is just too much."

2. Fehr on the resolve of the players with the lockout on the horizon:

"I've been involved in a lot of disputes before 1996, none since then until now," said Fehr, the former longtime baseball union head. "But there was a constant underestimation of the players' resolve. I don't know what to do about that but I just wish it wouldn't happen. It would make things easier."

The lockout commenced Sept. 15, followed by a few fruitless meetings in late September and early October.

Finally, there was a shot of adrenaline to the process on Oct. 16. The NHL came to Toronto and tabled a new proposal that called for a 50-50 split of HRR and an 82-game season beginning Nov. 2. But the deal was contingent on the players accepting it by Oct. 25.

The NHL also took the unusual step of releasing the entire proposal in detail on its website the next day, Oct. 17, in a clear attempt to make sure all 700-plus players got a direct read of it and not just the version that they would get from Fehr. This would once again illustrate the incredible distrust between the two sides in these negotiations.

Hockey fans, meanwhile, were swept up in a wave of hope, many of them believing this NHL offer could actually end the lockout.

Instead, on Oct. 18 at the NHLPA offices in Toronto, the players responded with three counteroffers, which were quickly rejected by the NHL.

Bettman told reporters after the short meeting that he was "thoroughly disappointed."

"I am concerned based on the proposal that was made today that things are not progressing," he said. "To the contrary, I view the proposal made by the players' association in many ways a step backward."

Bmore gets braggy

If we weren't opening a Ripley's "Odditorium," we were putting historic landmarks up for sale. When we weren't helping John Waters hitchhike across the country, we were hoarding Twinkies. We enjoyed watching the mids' "Gangnam Style" more than we'll admit, and we held our breath as Nik Wallenda tightroped the Inner Harbor.

The Ravens were in the Super Bowl!! OK, technically, not exactly. But you should have seen it,This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. our faces all but reflecting in the Vince Lombardi trophy, and perhaps also a few flecks of our saliva. Then there was the tiny, hardly noticeable matter of a missed kick. ... Did we mention that Billy moved away? Bless his heart.

Buck, Adam, Matt, Manny and the gang did us proud, reminding us of what a winning season feels like and also how to get to Camden Yards. Orioles magic! And the hot dog race? It had nothing on the park's newest attraction: streaker races!

Over the summer we hosted a smashing event — we're pretty sure we saw you there. The Star-Spangled Sailabration. Tall ships! Blue Angels! Thousands of visitors! Oh, and we also had that Grand Prix again. Yup.

We had the best time toying with the national media this spring after news broke that one of three winning tickets in that massive, unbelievable, record-setting Mega Millions drawing was bought right here. They said the real winners were three teachers who aren't giving up their names. We still think it's that McDonald's lady.

Speaking of betting, we got a casino upgrade! Instead of a Harrah's, we're now getting a Horseshoe. That's kind of like getting a Gap instead of an Old Navy. In any case, we'll soon be playing poker and blackjack — what happens in Baltimore stays in Baltimore! Woo hoo!

Our hearts swelled to watch our homegrown Aquaman, Michael Phelps, become the most decorated Olympian of all time. We were especially proud that unlike that other one, he wasn't wearing a grill.

Archaeological opportunity abounded as sinkholes cracked one city street open after another. Light Street. Fleet Street. A monster on Monument nearly swallowed Johns Hopkins Hospital. What lies beneath? Dirt, rotting pipes and sometimes stinky gas. Excavation revelation!

When Hollywood went looking for the nation's capital, we continued to be the location of choice — certainly at least the second choice. "VEEP" smartly opted for our Washington Monument instead of that over-exposed one down the street. And when "House of Cards" wanted political intrigue, where better, where cheaper, than Bolton Hill? #winning

Everyone sends their best from City Hall. Our top officials have worked hard this year to turn yawner Board of Estimates meetings into must-see TV. Madam Mayor. Mr. Vice President. The honorable comptroller. Barely speaking, shooting disdainful glances at one another and booting one another from the city's Ravens game skybox. Watch out, HBO — we're on cable now too!

The most recent experience and what may be termed ‘a Sri Lankan success story’ is what took place in the aftermath of the biggest operation launched by the Sri Lanka Security Forces in May 2009 that ended the near thirty years armed conflict in the country involving a group – the LTTE. The first step was the establishment and handling of reception centres which received the displaced civilians, administration of those who arrived at the reception centres, the establishment and management of secure relief villages for the internally displaced persons followed by the implementation of a master plan for the reconstruction of the Northern Province and the return and resettlement of the IDPs to their own homes is an experience Sri Lanka can be proud of.Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers,

The immediate challenge for the government of Sri Lanka was to look after the displaced civilians numbering over 250,000. The territory had been in the control of LTTE for nearly a quarter of a century and had to be made secure to ensure safety.If you have a fondness for china mosaic brimming with romantic roses, It was also necessary to be alert to the probability of LTTE cadres attempting to evade capture by posing as IDPs. The identification of such persons became complicated since they were mingling with the IDPs.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. Quick action was required to put in place necessary arrangements to care for the displaced. Considering the very real security threat, accommodating the IDPs in the relief villages was the most efficient and safe option.

From mid 2008 civilians from LTTE controlled areas were entering government controlled areas. The government anticipated large exodus of people from the LTTE controlled areas when it defeats the LTTE and was preparing to locate them in suitable areas. The idea of keeping IDPs in one area with all necessary facilities was conceptualized as the number of people fleeing out of LTTE controlled areas had increased since 2008. By the end of 2008 there were nearly 48,000 IDPs accommodated in several welfare centres in Jaffna, Mannar and Vavuniya districts. It was decided that the location chosen should be in an area which could provide basic facilities and not far from a township, so that anyone could get there within a short space of time. Facilities considered necessary included sufficient accommodation, food, health services, water, transport,Thank you for visiting! I have been cry stalmosaic since 1998. and most importantly protection of IDPs from any probability of threat.

Having taken all those necessities into consideration, the area known as ‘Menik Farm’ was selected as the suitable location to accommodate IDPs. It is only 22Km away from Vavuniya town and accessible from Vavuniya in 30-40 minutes. The large extent of land in Menik Farm avoided congestion and in turn was conducive to prevent communicable diseases. By the time the mass exodus of displaced civilians commenced 85-100 acres of land in Menik Farm had been cleared and semi permanent shelters had been constructed and further 900 acres had been identified for clearance to establish sufficient number of relief villages. The Sri Lanka Armed Forces, particularly the Sri Lanka Army took the lead role, in this emergency humanitarian effort.

The influx of IDPs was about 80,000 per day towards the last stages of the operation. Sri Lanka was able to cope with the arrival of 80,000 people on the first day and another 100,000 in the week that followed. Immediately upon arrival in the government controlled areas the civilians had to be provided with food and shelter and if required medical attention.

Thereafter they had to be provided transportation to safe areas. This, invariably, took a day or two. However, within 5-7 days time, IDPs were processed and accommodated. Family members being accommodated together as far as possible. Until sufficient accommodation was made available, the government took all government schools and institutions in Vavuniya District with large buildings and accommodated IDPs in the 28 centres and thereafter transferred them to the relief villages set up in Menik Farm.

Administrative arrangements – The government took over the responsibility for the management of the welfare villages and took full control over all activities and its efforts were adequately supported by UN agencies and INGOs. The contribution of the Sri Lanka Army in overall management, supervision and maintenance of security has been a major contributory factor for the efficient and successful management of the relief villages.

United States Attorneys Standardize

Panzura, a leading provider of global cloud storage solutions, today announced that the Executive Office for United States Attorneys has awarded a contract to standardize globally on Panzura for its next-generation Storage-as-a-Service platform serving all United States Attorneys' Office locations nationwide. The solution will consolidate storage from approximately 265 USAOs, across all U.S. judicial districts, to an internal storage cloud. The Panzura Global Cloud Storage System will replace some legacy distributed storage infrastructure with a centralized repository to improve data access, meet stringent security and performance standards and dramatically increase operational efficiency.

The Panzura Global Cloud Storage System provides globally-distributed organizations with a consolidated storage infrastructure that offers cross-site LAN access to all files, integrated file locking, global deduplication, military-grade encryption, continuous snapshots, fast replication and DR, advanced access management and massive scalability in capacity. In addition, Panzura meets critical federal compliance requirements for FIPS 140-2, FISMA Moderate and USGCB certifications.

Government agencies and commercial organizations commonly store data on their own filers, incurring large costs associated with their purchase and maintenance and those for upgrades, facilities and personnel.

With electronic discovery pushing decades-old storage architectures and capacity to their limits, the widespread adoption of cloud computing amongst all U.S. federal agencies is an ongoing initiative by the U.S. General Services Administration to streamline the creation of sustainable, cost-effective IT services for the federal government. Addressing increasing storage costs and sprawl is one goal of this initiative.

The use of Panzura by EOUSA exemplifies the push to move mission-critical applications and data to the cloud to avoid spiraling CapEx, manual IT intervention and data retrieval delays,This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. while providing encryption features to support a public cloud option with all necessary security compliance.

With approximately 265 geographically dispersed USAOs and two existing data centers, United States Attorney locations share common characteristics, yet each district also features unique business mandates and varied storage footprints. The amount of storage ranges from approximately 3TB for smaller offices and up to 17TB for larger offices. Panzura storage replaces a siloed, dispersed infrastructure with a seamless, fast and centralized storage platform that is interconnected by a global file system and drastically reduces system-wide duplication of data.

With ubiquitous real-time access to all data globally, the Panzura solution allows EOUSA to leverage efficient cloud object storage to reduce CapEx significantly, while making users much more self-sufficient in finding and obtaining data whenever and wherever needed. Panzura's award-winning Global Cloud Storage System leverages cloud storage at the back end and presents a seamless NAS-like interface at the front end, which, along with all standard NAS features and controls, makes data feel local regardless of location. Data is securely accessed on a need-to-see basis, and chargeback capability allows IT to allocate internal costs according to usage.

"Panzura is proud to play a central role in the efforts of EOUSA to centralize data access across all United States Attorneys Offices, reduce costs, and meet stringent security requirements,The oreck XL professional air purifier," said Randy Chou, CEO of Panzura. "EOUSA is leading the way to tap into the benefits of the cloud for a globally-distributed organization while meeting compliance and SLA requirements. Panzura will fill a vital need for highly-secure access to the efficiencies of the cloud with a tightly-integrated NAS solution to meet these aggressive storage goals of EOUSA, all while reducing costs across the board."

You might not think the state’s most powerful politician would take the time to show up for Town Meeting, but John Lynch isn’t your ordinary Governor.

People in town say it’s not unusual to see Lynch show up to the annual session wearing blue jeans a sweatshirt. And you won’t hear any long-winded speeches in front of the other residents in town, they say. Lynch keeps to himself and leaves the town’s business to selectmen.

“It’s kind of nice to see him at Town Meeting, everybody just lets him be a citizen,Installers and distributors of solar panel,” said Hopkinton resident Sharon Rivard. “He’s just like everybody else when he’s there.”

Similar to his approval record, residents of the 5,500-person town smile and speak fondly about their popular leader and neighbor.

Lynch drives himself to the Colonial Village Pharmacy-Supermarket to shop for groceries, and is an active athlete, playing in neighborhood hockey games at Kimball Pond in the winter and cycling Hopkinton’s hilly landscape in warmer months.

“Sometimes you’ll see him out with his wife, walking his dog,” said Susan Hencke, a potter and Gould Hill neighbor of Lynch’s who has lived in Hopkinton for 18 years. “He’s just a regular guy in the community.”

Still, for other Hopkinton residents, Lynch’s iconic house on Gould Hill is the first thing that comes to mind when asked about their neighbor.

Lynch built his 11,000 square foot home atop Gould Hill, which sits 850 feet above sea level and offers the best views in town, some say one of the best views in the Granite State.

“Nobody here has a more beautiful view of the mountains,” said one resident who declined to give his name at Everyday Cafe in Contoocook on Saturday.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. “And he enjoys it. That’s all I know.”

The multi-million-dollar home was built with a 20-by-40-foot swimming pool, a tennis court, a cabana, and a detached three car garage, among other luxuries.

People in town took notice of the construction in part because of the owner, and also because of its location on the former Gould Hill apple orchard.

Some neighbors recall the troop of trucks that rumbled through Hopkinton to build on the magnificent, nearly eighty-acre property, with breathtaking views of Mount Washington.

Others bemoaned the loss of a small section of the orchard – which dates back to the 1700s – when the Lynches started construction back in 2006.

“It’s a big house, but there’s a lot of those around this state,” said Erick Leadbeater,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. who owned and operated the orchard and sold the land to the Lynches through a revocable trust called “Gould Hill ‘B’” when Leadbeater planned to retire. “Some people criticized him for that.

“I think it was more the other party, the typical political sniping. But it’s a well thought-out place and can be very entertaining.”

Lynch built on a part of the Gould Hill Orchards that produced Macintosh apples, Leadbeater said, which were losing favor at the time.

Symform Forecasts Top 6 Cloud and Storage Predictions for 2013

The combined forces of digital data growth and the consumerization of IT will come to a head in 2013, and create a wave of increased investment and moves by IT to take back control of corporate data. Symform predicts companies of all sizes will demand that vendors and service providers improve on-ramps to the cloud and service level agreements (SLAs) around cloud services. The company expects larger investments in data management, big data, and distributed systems, and believes the use of rogue cloud services in the enterprise will come under increased governance. Based on conversations with customers, partners and industry experts from around the globe, these predictions will impact both large enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) as well as the IT service providers who deliver solutions to them.

"As we enter 2013, the massive growth of digital data and the challenges around how to secure, manage and store that data is only increasing -- in spite of the many technologies and cloud solutions aimed at alleviating these issues," said Matthew J. Schiltz, CEO of Symform. "Last year, we correctly predicted the continued disparity between local and remote storage costs, along with an increased concern over the high cost and environmental impact of a record build out of datacenters to support centralized cloud platforms. This year, we will see even greater awareness of the wasted, unused capacity in our existing infrastructure investments and the need to embrace distributed, decentralized systems. This will enable IT's efforts to gain back control of rogue devices and cloud applications."

According to IDC, we are creating 58 terabytes of digital data every second, a number which is expected to increase to 35 zettabytes stored by 2020. Much of this data is a result of what Gartner calls the "Nexus of Forces," or the convergence of social, mobile and cloud information, which makes the upward trajectory of data volumes unstoppable. Similarly, the "Always-On Generation" -- pegged as the most insatiable group of digital media consumers in the world -- is contributing to the influx of data in droves. Given all of these factors, the reality of improved data management is settling in, and Symform predicts that 2013 will be the year that businesses invest more heavily to protect, manage and store that data. The heightened sensitivity around data accessibility and compliance requirements will motivate companies to better understand their data types and how to categorize, secure, and gain business intelligence from the data -- such as mission-critical, business-critical, sensitive or archival data.

An emphasis on data classification and management will help businesses match the appropriate storage requirements, including primary or secondary backup, archiving, and disaster recovery. This, in turn, will drive increased demand and market penetration of the currently burgeoning cloud storage on-ramp or gateway market. Movements toward this include Microsoft's acquisition of StorSimple in 2012, and actions by major traditional hardware vendors such as HP, Citrix, Dell, and major network attach storage (NAS) vendors, to embrace the cloud and extend their on-premise devices to cloud services. Customers, especially SMBs, will increase investment in local storage solutions that include a cloud storage or online backup component. This hybrid cloud storage strategy will prove itself in 2013 and start to move beyond the SMB to the enterprise segment, although large companies will still prefer a private over public cloud implementation. Capabilities such as single-sign-on (SSO), strong data encryption, and overall storage management will become more critical with this trend. Further details can be found in The 451 Group's report on the Cloud Storage On-Ramp Market.

A recent Symform survey found that 65 percent of companies "not in the cloud" still allow employees or teams to use cloud services, while 35 percent allow employees to put company data in cloud applications and on mobile devices. This lack of awareness, coupled with the sheer volume of mobile and cloud data, will fuel a renewed focus on protecting and securing that data. In 2013,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. Symform anticipates IT will regain control by implementing stringent security policies and access control rules for cloud services and employee-liable mobile devices. In many cases, especially among SMBs, third-party consultants or channel partners will be called in to determine whether the proper security policies are in place and being enforced.Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. Symform expects this shake up to result in the decline of popular unsanctioned cloud collaboration or file sharing services that threaten a company's ability to maintain regulatory compliance and adhere to their own internal security requirements.This is my favourite sites to purchase those special pieces of buy mosaic materials from.

With pricing wars amid big players in the cloud storage market, including Amazon and Google, a low-cost value proposition alone will no longer be enough to gain market share. Customers are looking beyond initial costs to consider the total cost of ownership as well as other intrinsic values of cloud services. These additional values include storage, a better leverage of existing infrastructure, extension of on-premise devices to the cloud, pricing flexibility based on SLAs, data recovery, access control rules, and other capabilities or features. With the improved focus on data classification, companies will look for cheaper alternatives to store inactive or archival data, while being willing to pay premiums for highly reliable, scalable and secure cloud storage for active data. This trend will move beyond early adopters of cloud storage,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. such as consumer-facing Web 2.0 and eCommerce companies, to the overall business-to-business market.

In 2012, customers bore the brunt of outages from cloud vendors including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apple iCloud, GoDaddy, Rackspace, Google, Microsoft and Twitter. It wasn't cheap. According to Ponemon Institute, the average cost of datacenter downtime across all industries was approximately $5,600 per minute. Similarly, the average reported incident length was 90 minutes, resulting in a cost per incident of approximately $505,500. In 2013,High quality stone mosaic tiles. Symform believes more companies will adopt the adage of "fool me once, shame on you -- fool me twice, shame on me" by demanding greater assurances from cloud providers around SLAs and uptime. In an effort to avoid escalating concerns and a potential head-on collision with the government, cloud providers will step up assurances or face the alternative of tighter regulations and increased taxation. Companies will also get smarter about how they architect their infrastructure as a service on cloud provider platforms, building in greater failover and redundancy. As noted above, companies will be willing to pay more for a higher SLA.

Last year, Symform correctly predicted the myth of the "green" datacenter for cloud computing would be debunked. Indeed, the "greenwashing" of infrastructure supporting cloud computing is ending with the move toward more transparent reporting and the utilization of alternatives such as co-location datacenters and distributed architectures. In 2012, both a comprehensive report released by Greenpeace and the New York Times' article "Power, Pollution and the Internet" validated that prediction. The Greenpeace report suggested that cloud computing datacenters account for about two percent of the world's carbon footprint, while the NYT article claimed datacenters worldwide use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants. In 2013, Symform expects that even as large vendors such as Google and Amazon undoubtedly continue rampant datacenter build outs, many businesses will look beyond traditional computing approaches for alternative solutions and architectures. Specifically, both vendors and companies will accept distributed and decentralized approaches to data management, not only for the green benefits, but for the improved utilization of existing infrastructure, increased performance, and global resiliency.

Amsterdam's Cultural Renaissance

We moved to Holland and I launched my short-lived career as a runaway. Every morning around eight o’clock, my dad would drop me off at kindergarten, and every morning around 8:03, depending on how quickly his Volks-wagen bumped down the road, I’d make a break for it, shooting out the school door, sprinting over the cobbled streets, racing back home.

I’m not sure why I developed that early taste for delinquency. I think it was the wall of Dutch enveloping me. Children are supposed to pick up second languages quickly, but I was still considering my first one, mulling over English, and the lowlands kids surrounding me were all guttural noise. It didn’t really matter, though, because the women of our Amsterdam suburb would mobilize the second I settled on my escape route and phone my mom with updates.

“He’s rounding the corner of Dorpsstraat and Kerkstraat,If you have a fondness for china mosaic brimming with romantic roses,” Mrs. Yspeert would call, watching me race by. “He’s turning onto Vondelstraat,” Mrs. Van der Waal would dial in.

After a while even my own mom grew blasé. “What took you so long?” she’d ask as I panted into our little front garden.

And when I finally calmed down enough to stop running, by our second month in Holland, before we moved north to Groningen, I understood what my parents always said. The neighborhood cocooned us with the kind of communal spirit that isn’t afraid of much, even outsiders.

Those first months of our Dutch lives are something I think about now when I return to Amsterdam, partly because I can finally hear the poetry in the language and partly because Amsterdam doesn’t look that different. It still seems comforting and fearless at the same time. And its beauty has, if anything, just built up more of a patina in the twenty-first century; the streets paved in brick that I saw as I barreled over them are still a study in austere elegance.

And yet mention Amsterdam to most people and too many insist on dusting off bachelor party clichés. The whole place gets reduced to the whiff of dope trailing through the air; the women pacing in red-lit windows; the hash cakes and bongs; the paper cones filled with soggy fries floating down the canals after the bars close. Once a myth takes hold it hangs on tight. Even the locals have sometimes seemed resigned to Amsterdam’s reputation as the global theme park of sleaze. If any city needed rebranding, despite an ingrained Dutch resistance to hype, it was this one.

Recently, though, I’d heard that things were shifting, that Amsterdammers were taking back their city from outsiders’ projections. The trigger for the surge in pride was UNESCO’s 2010 crowning of Amsterdam’s central Canal District as a World Heritage Site. Helping draw the gaze away from the red lights and the smoke houses, the recognition focused attention on the city’s truer core: the loop of concentric canals that the burghers dug up, largely in the seventeenth century, as Amsterdam morphed into a muscular mercantile power and one of Europe’s most gorgeous cultural epicenters. With the city suddenly dubbed a world wonder, friends told me, residents weren’t afraid to sound a little immodest, for once.

In fact, the Amsterdam I discovered when I returned last spring wasn’t just retrieving its own narrative, it was spawning a fresh kind of renaissance. The city has been renovating virtually all of its major museums, initiating a gentrification of the Red Light District, and reshaping the slumped East Harbor into a primer of twenty-first-century architecture. Yanking even more of itself out of the sea, replicating its original wonder,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. it is ready to claim its second Golden Age.

The new mood was obvious the minute I dropped my bags. I was staying in a top-floor room at the Ambassade. The hotel, a row of ten restored seventeenth- and eighteenth-century canal houses, is the refuge where Salman Rushdie once hid out, and its library is jammed with signed editions by all the writers, from Isabel Allende to Michael Chabon, Paul Auster to Umberto Eco, who have passed through on book tours. Even better: From the canalside rooms you can see all the way down the Herengracht, the first of the city’s three major canals, to the spire of the Westerkirk, the largest church in Amsterdam, poking up through the trees, its little crown looking like a tipsy sailor’s cap.

Just one bridge east along the canal sits The Grachtenhuis museum, where its director, Piet van Winden, was waiting to give me a tour after I’d fought jet-lag with the Ambassade’s big buffet breakfast, featuring wheels of cheese that mapped the Dutch countryside (Edam, Gouda). Opened in 2011 in a restored double-wide seventeenth-century canal house, The Grachtenhuis may be the best expression of the city’s epiphany: You can’t reclaim history without starting at the beginning and telling your own story well. Projected along the restored walls are ghostly life-size silhouettes of Golden Age dairy maids, fishermen, traders, and what I first took to be an oddly misplaced sword swallower. Just as dramatic were the miniature models of an expanding city whose population more than quadrupled during the first half of the seventeenth century, as Holland’s burghers came to dominate global trade routes. Growing in size, each slightly larger than the last, the shrunken Amsterdams showcase the canal ring as an example of conscious urban planning—a crescent anchored by three grand canals, or grachten built for transportation, defense,We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. and residential development and linked by a delicate web of side canals and bridges. For the team of Golden Age civic leaders, merchants, architects, painters, stonemasons, and landscapers who created the cityscape, it was nothing less than the new promised land.

“You can say it was a grand experiment in urban planning and living,” said Van Winden. “What can Dutch people do? They can organize things, find a solution that fits everyone. And Amsterdammers in particular had a genius for constructing a utopia that was as pragmatic and functional as it was idealistic, so traders lived next to carpenters and textile workers. Cities don’t work unless everyone collaborates.”

When I left The Grachtenhuis, I did what I always do on my first day back in Amsterdam, which is pretty much nothing except walk the city’s liquid heart—Europe’s largest historic center, with seven thousand standing landmarks. I moved from the Herengracht to the one block that epitomizes the city’s grace. This is the Leidsegracht, connecting the Herengracht and the Keizersgracht. Turning onto the tranquil side canal is like diving into the quietude of a Vermeer canvas. At first you see the clean, straight lines of the canal houses, their brick facades shooting straight up in slightly tilting rows, looking blank-faced. But bell gables and humpbacked bridges slowly emerge, and then you see, floating above you, a whole universe of operatic whimsy.We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. There are white urns and ropey garlands of flowers strewn across brick fronts, and sculptures of cresting waves painted white as a lick of whipped cream, riding along the tops of the roofs, crashing against the gables as though the dikes had given way. There are curling vines carved into old metal lampposts, and door plaques of half moons and mulberry trees sprouting red fruit.

And then, if you’re lucky, there is the famous lowlands sun. The Dutch masters weren’t inventing that golden dome; they were painting from life. When the clouds finally part and the North Sea sun makes its entrance, everything becomes luminous; the radiating glow turns whole stretches of the canal molten; the cobbled side streets are a tunnel of light, and the canal house fronts are suddenly articulated and stippled, so each brick, a slightly different shade of brown or red, seems to pop and the stony facades become almost furry. The sun followed me back to the Nine Streets neighborhood. Hardly a local secret, the gentrified district of cafés and shops has always drawn Amsterdammers. But the one-theme mom-and-pop (really more pop-and-pop) boutiques were now bumping up against a fresh wave of restaurants and galleries, and the crowds were thicker,Whether you are installing a floor tiles or a shower wall, filled out by visitors looking for a more authentic, soulful city.