Washington’s invisible ‘broker king,’ finds outlet as an author

The three billion dollar man has something to say.When Marvin H. McIntyre III came back from Vietnam, tooling around in a convertible Corvette he won in a poker game, he tried to say it in song. He drove down to Nashville to become a star.

The radio DJs played anti-establishment anthems, screeds against the war, songs about love-ins and peace-ins and hippie picnics. But McIntyre was having none of that. He penned patriotic melodies, with titles such as “In the Face of a Child” and “A Soldier’s Story.” And he flopped.

The Corvette is long gone. It has been replaced by the sleek car-service sedans that collect McIntyre each weekday morning at his Potomac home and squire him to his downtown Washington brokerage office. There, he invests $3 billion for an astounding array of wealthy clients that has included best-selling authors and nearly 100 professional athletes, such as basketball stars Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing and Joakim Noah, and tennis legends Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith.

McIntyre’s friend and client Kitty Kelley, the celebrity biographer, calls him “Wizard.” Business types have called him the “Broker King.”

Yet in the back seat of those comfy sedans, a convenience that he’s enjoyed for the past three decades but is bashful about discussing, he’s still working through those same creative urges that drove him to Nashville. Scribbling in longhand on legal pads, he conjures thrillers set in the darker recesses of the financial and regulatory worlds, the latest of which, a page turner called “Inside Out,” came out in late January.

McIntyre embodies a kind of Washington archetype. In a town preternaturally attuned to the men and women who occupy a single building on Capitol Hill and another on Pennsylvania Avenue, he represents a sort of durable power impervious to the vagaries of election cycles. Inside all those shapeless downtown office buildings are masters of various universes,Want to find cableties? business powerhouses who make millions of dollars, discreetly control industries and move markets but hardly draw any notice.

“You can be a rock star in this industry and be unknown here except to your family and friends,” McIntyre says one afternoon in the conference room of his tastefully appointed suite of Pennsylvania Avenue offices, a short walk from the White House.

McIntyre, a ruddy 69-year-old with an informal manner and a master pitchman’s quick,We specialize in usbmemorydrive. rascally wit, springs from a family with Washington bona fides to spare. His grandfather Marvin H. McIntyre, a onetime newspaperman who did a stint as The Washington Post’s city editor in the early 1900s, served as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s personal secretary. The Navy named a World War II attack transport ship after him. McIntyre’s father, later an IBM executive, used to splash around in the White House pool.

As a young man, McIntyre thought it might be fun to go by his middle name, Hunter, but opted for his stodgier full name because he thought it would stand out more. He followed his father’s footsteps to the Citadel, a “brutal” place he despised but has come to appreciate now as a member of its business school advisory board. He became a first lieutenant in the 1st Infantry Division and ran night patrols in Vietnam, but he figures he never managed to hit anyone with the shots he fired. “My main goal was to hide,” he cracks.

Decades later, he’s fond of saying he has a PhD in BS. He can get away with a wisecrack (or a dozen) because he brings in the megabucks, routinely placing in the upper echelon of the Barron’s list of the nation’s biggest brokers. He is such a behemoth that a few years back his blessing was widely considered a key indicator of whether the corporate marriage of Legg Mason, where he was the star broker, and Citigroup would go through. In a now legendary dinner before the deal at Shula’s in Baltimore, Charlie Johnston, the head of Citigroup’s Smith Barney brokerage division, planted himself next to McIntyre all night.

“Charlie Johnston sure wasn’t going to leave until he had his blessing,” says Donald Metzger, a top financial adviser on McIntyre’s team.

For all his bonhomie, McIntyre, the broker king, sometimes has to watch what he says, lest the corporate compliance folks fuss and grumble. But his alter ego, McGregor, the hero of his novels, can blast away.

In McIntyre’s first novel, “Insiders,” published in 2011, McGregor channels McIntyre’s pique at largely unregulated corners of the markets that contributed to the financial apocalypse of 2008. The villain in “Insiders” and in McIntyre’s new book is a rogue billionaire hedge fund manipulator who taunts the hero/broker with pathological phone calls and holes up in a mansion in Cuba.

It helps to have uber-best-selling authors, such as David Baldacci, as clients. At his first-ever book party, Baldacci’s wife, Michelle, leaned over and whispered to him about which page he was supposed to sign, McIntyre recalls.

One recent afternoon at Equinox, the upscale downtown Washington power-lunch hub, celebrity chef Todd Gray comes out of the kitchen to greet McIntyre at his table, naturally.

“I thought I might get a free lunch since I mentioned the restaurant in my book,” McIntyre yuk-yuks to him.

Gray, whose cousin is on McIntyre’s brokerage team, just smiles.

Once he’s talking about his books, McIntyre allows himself a bit of latitude, complaining about the “misuse of power” he’s observed over the years in Washington.

“You see sort of the climbers that are seeking power,” he says. If you talked with almost any members of Congress, he says, they would be likely to vouch for entitlement reforms. But they worry and do little, he says, because they know “you’re going to have AARP on your back.”

What would grandpa, a right-hand man of the father of the New Deal, think about all this?

“Do you think he’s turning over in his grave?” McIntyre asks.

“Are we the 1 percent?” says McIntyre, who is donating proceeds from his new book to charity. “Sure we are. But if we are enhancing people’s lifestyles, enabling them to have a comfortable retirement, pay for their college education, and we’re getting reviled for that, it’s worth it.”

“You look around at all the horror stories,” says Donald Dell, the former Davis Cup captain, tennis TV commentator and renowned sports agent who is a McIntyre pal and neighbor. “They have not kept track of their money. The smart ones want to be stable and solid.”

Over the years, McIntyre says he has steered clients away from dubious investments in everything from thoroughbred racehorses to puppy farms.

“Money is the last taboo. They’d rather talk about their sex lives than money,Only those users who need plasticmould require hands free tokens.” McIntyre says. “Unsophisticated people are easier to deal with unless they think they’re sophisticated.”

McIntyre can ponder all of this on his choice of many,The lanyard series is a grand collection of coordinating Travertine mosaics and listellos. many fields of green. He is,We have many different types of earcap. after all, a member of three country clubs — Congressional, as well as clubs near his vacation homes in Naples, Fla., and Bethany Beach, Del. He jokes that he wants to be the worst golfer at three of the best clubs. But Dell — who has referred numerous athletes to his buddy — says McIntyre is actually one of the most competitive people he’s ever met, whether on the golf course or the tennis court, where McIntyre has won club championships.

Their golf matches got so intense that they had to cool things by not giving each other strokes. (They were arguing too much about how many.) Once, Dell says, he nipped McIntyre and collected a $5 bet by kicking his friend’s ball into a sand trap on the 18th hole when McIntyre wasn’t looking.

KWI Cloud 9 Mobile Point-of-Sale Exceeds

There’s a revolution happening on the selling floor. It’s Mobile Point-of-Sale, and it’s changing the way brick-n-mortar retailers do business. Since announcing Cloud 9 Mobile POS in 2011, sales of Cloud 9 Mobile POS have been brisk, with over 25 retail brands implemented in over 500 retail stores, nearly $100 million dollars in sales, over 1.4 million transactions, and 6,000 transactions/day during December. This state-of-the-art retailing advancement costs far less than the cumbersome cash registers of traditional POS, and it meets many retailers’ go-forward strategy to increase customer-interaction and minimize and/or eliminate traditional POS from the store floor.

The demand has been overwhelming with Apple’s intuitive technology from industry leader VeriFone Global Bay and KWI’s advanced solution set on the iPod Touch. Totally unplugged and completely customer-centric, it transforms every sales associate into a full-service customer management expert and checkout station, allowing product and customer knowledge at their fingertips combined with uninterrupted transactions that deepen customer relationships.

There’s a revolution happening on the selling floor. It’s Mobile Point-of-Sale, and it’s changing the way brick-n-mortar retailers do business. Since announcing Cloud 9 Mobile POS in 2011,Do you know any howo spare parts wholesale supplier? sales of Cloud 9 Mobile POS have been brisk, with over 25 retail brands implemented in over 500 retail stores, nearly $100 million dollars in sales, over 1.4 million transactions, and 6,000 transactions/day during December. This state-of-the-art retailing advancement costs far less than the cumbersome cash registers of traditional POS, and it meets many retailers’ go-forward strategy to increase customer-interaction and minimize and/or eliminate traditional POS from the store floor.

The demand has been overwhelming with Apple’s intuitive technology from industry leader VeriFone Global Bay and KWI’s advanced solution set on the iPod Touch.Get the best deal on solar panel in the UK and use our free tools. Totally unplugged and completely customer-centric, it transforms every sales associate into a full-service customer management expert and checkout station, allowing product and customer knowledge at their fingertips combined with uninterrupted transactions that deepen customer relationships.

There are many reasons why you might want to take your teenage daughter for an afternoon at the spa – a bit of bonding time,Product information for Avery Dennison cable ties products. some specialised care for troubled teen skin, destressing before or after exams – but I hadn’t thought that ‘catching up on sleep’ might be one of them.

Yet when I took my girls Molly, 17, and Beth, 16, to the spa at the Runnymede-on-Thames hotel at Egham in Surrey, sleep was high on the agenda.

Given that I’m a beauty journalist, you might expect my daughters to be spa veterans, but somehow, even though they’ve each helped me write a book on teen beauty, Molly and Beth had never before seen the inside of a spa and, in their view,All our plastic moulds are vacuum formed using food safe plastic. that was a serious omission.

Not quite on a par with a restaurant critic who’d never taken her kids out for a meal, but you’ll see their point. Until recently, most spas wouldn’t accommodate under-18s.

But the Runnymede is a forward-looking place and its spa, which has been awarded the top ‘five bubbles’ rating by the Good Spa Guide, has recently added facials and massages for teen girls and boys to its menu of treatments.Do you know any howo spare parts wholesale supplier?

The idea is to give them a good grounding in skin care, with a bit of pampering thrown in. In contrast with its cutesy-sounding name and pretty, Thames-side location, the Runnymede is a large, Seventies brick-built creation within yards of the M25.

After an overhaul three years ago, it’s chic and slick inside and so is the spa, where the girls and I were taken to the private, underground Acquitaine Suite. The girls settled in on the huge, right-angled sofa and Molly, worn out by exams, rowing training and partying, fell asleep straight away.

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.

What's with the giant gorilla holding a Volkswagen?

As you drive south from Middlebury on Route 7, the vistas are all ramshackle farmhouses, dense forests and rolling fields — your average Vermont fare.

That is, until you hit Leicester, where one roadside attraction has been turning heads and distracting drivers for 25 years. Meet Queen Connie, the enormous concrete gorilla stationed along Route 7, where she proudly hoists a rusting Volkswagen Bug high above her head. Erected in 1987, Connie was the brainchild of sculptor T.J. Neil.An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a term used for a network of devices used to wirelessly locate objects or people inside a building. He pitched the gorilla as an advertising ploy to attract attention to Pioneer Auto Sales, the used-car lot over which Connie presides.Installers and distributors of solar panel, Neil promised “a sculpture that would get world recognition,” recalls Pioneer’s owner, Joan O’Neil-Gittens.

The stunt worked: Over the next two and a half decades, Connie lured in visitors by the busload. She presided over one wedding, and earned Car & Driver magazine’s kudos, in 1991, at the top of its “Carchitectural Wonders” list.

“I can’t say that it put money in our pockets,” O’Neil-Gittens says, but then again, “It’s served its purpose.” She contends Connie put the dealership on the map.

O’Neil-Gittens met the sculptor who would create Connie during a trip to Cape Cod, where Neil and his family were living at the time. Neil died in 2010, but his son, T.J. Neil Jr., says his father got his start as an artist after leaving the Marines in the late 1950s. He got a job plastering in Boston, repairing old walls, crown molding and eventually the ornate plasterwork on historic buildings. By the time the Neil family moved to Cape Cod, Neil Sr. was experimenting with concrete as a medium for sculpting — “no molds, all hand-sculpted,” his son says.

“I grew up with aliens in the yard, and dragons and whales,” Neil Jr. recalls. He eventually went into the family business, and the Neils created sculptures all over the United States as well as internationally. Among Neil’s favorites is the concrete dragon commissioned by a man in Webster, Mass., who plunked the large sculpture in the middle of a manmade lake on his property. Neil says that, after visitors are buzzed through the gates of the man’s home, they drive around the lake — and the dragon belches fire at just the right moment.

Leicester’s resident gorilla is no fire breather, but Neil remembers her all the same. When I called his studio in Florida to inquire about the sculpture, he responded immediately with “Oh, Queen Connie!”

In 1987, the Neil family had already made the move to Florida, but Neil Sr. was planning a trip to complete a series of commissioned sculptures in the Northeast. He put in a call to O’Neil-Gittens, the automobile dealer who’d purchased a few of his smaller sculptures, including a dolphin and lighthouse, for her property. They were “more or less lawn ornaments,” she says — albeit lawn ornaments that required transportation in a truck.

So Neil Sr. made the pitch: Would O’Neil-Gittens consider something bigger — a landmark?

The sculptor and his clients began tossing around ideas. At first O’Neil-Gittens considered a pioneer woman, the embodiment of Pioneer Auto Sales. (The first female car salesperson and dealership owner in Vermont,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. O’Neil-Gittens says she chose her business name because she felt like something of a pioneer back in 1969, when she set up shop.)

But her son nixed the pioneer idea, so she put the question to Neil. If he could build anything, what would it be? He suggested a “King Kong”-type character — an enormous gorilla — and O’Neil-Gittens agreed. Her only stipulations were that the gorilla be female, in a nod to her trailblazing ways, and that the sculpture have some tie to the automobile industry. The dealership sponsored a contest for local schoolchildren to pick a name for the sculpture, and “Queen Connie” — so dubbed because of her concrete structure — earned a kid from Pittsford a bright-red bicycle.The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry,

Neil arrived on the Fourth of July in 1987 and spent the next several weeks constructing Connie on the small rise overlooking Route 7. He mixed his concrete in a wheelbarrow and applied layer upon layer atop a steel rebar armature. “I believe that gorilla’s got some serious steel in it,” Neil Jr. says. They hoisted Connie’s crowning glory,Trade platform for China crystal mosaic manufacturers an old VW bug, into place with a crane.

Connie’s seen better days — she needs a fresh paint job, O’Neil-Gittens concedes, and the VW has gone rusty with age. The dealership, too, has struggled in recent years. The family business once specialized in wholesale auto sales. In its heyday, the family stored as many as 100 cars on the lot and sold upwards of 1000 in a given year. Now just nine or 10 languish in front of the dealership, which is housed in an old West Salisbury railroad depot that was relocated to the roadside spot in the 1930s or ’40s. O’Neil-Gittens says that, though she and her son, general manager Michael Cameron, have dialed back operations in recent years, they’re hoping to jump-start the ailing business in the months ahead.

“It’s not easy,” he warns. “You’ve got to be a plasterer, an iron worker, an artist and an engineer to make these sculptures.” But the benefit, he says, is that he can create works of art that the public can touch and sit on.

Asked what he’s working on these days, he mentions a “cat-goyle” — think a mix of gargoyle and cat — and a few manatees and dolphins. Now firmly rooted in the Sunshine State, Neil is in manatee country.

Los Haitises is home to huge nature preserve

The water is indigo, then turquoise in the light of the rising sun. Behind, an emerald spit of land reaches for the sky, a green oasis,Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers, punctuated by a few villas with roofs made of orange, fish-scale-like tiles.

From my balcony at the Gran Bahia Principe Resort on Cayo Levantado, a tiny island in the lee of the Samana Peninsula in the Dominican Republic’s northeast corner, I watch a fishing boat floating lazily in the sheltered waters.

A Dominicano, in his brightly-painted wooden boat, is fishing for the catch-of-the-day.

When we embark on the water two hours later, our goal is neither snapper, nor grouper, but a two-hundred-plus-square-kilometre nature preserve. Los Haitises is a UNESCO-designated biosphere.

Our vessel, a sleek 28-ft. Scarab speedboat. A pair of 200-hp black Mercury outboar engines hangs off the stern. The motors roar, the boat smashes through the waves washing the Bahia de Samana. The shores ahead are devoid of human life. The water belongs to us.

In Januray, the bay will be crowded with tour boats whale-watching. But not today.

After a two-hour crossing, we approach the first of the Los Haitises islands and our skipper throttles back. The boat drifts lazily.

Los Haitises boasts some of the Caribbean’s most significant stands of mangrove and rainforest, seven hundred different plant species, an equal number of bird and animal species, and a collection of tall limestone islands that float above the water as though they are castles.

We glide into the shadow of a massive limestone cave, carved by wind and waves.

On board, two women have been showing off their Larimar and amber jewelry. I’ve been discussing the relative merits of Presidente beer and Brugal Rum with a Vancouverite named Frank. The boat clears a headland and the conversation dies.

Islands grow up almost straight out of the water. A surreal caravan of great camel humps of land plods toward the eastern horizon. They are clad in vegetation in many shades of green; liana vines hang down and sway in the wind from heights of 200 ft. The vegetation is so thick on shore, you feel like you’re in the middle of the Amazon.

Directly overhead nest a flock of frigate birds, throats red as Mcintosh apples. Off our beam, a hundred pelicans float on the water.

Our skipper guides the boat into a green tunnel, a mangrove swamp where the branches meet overhead, where the arching roots and glittering water make you feel as though you are entering the nave of a great cathedral. And we haven’t even seen the caves yet.

We head back to open water, turn toward unbroken forest fronted by a rickety dock, the lime-painted park office and a wooden boardwalk leading into the first cave.

Inside it is suddenly, wonderfully cool.

I scan the ceiling with my flashlight. A bat twitches and squeaks in complaint. A section of limestone roof has caved in ahead. Sun streams like a waterfall onto the cave floor, spotlighting stalagmites in the shape of sculptures in an art gallery. Dripping water sounds.

On one wall, we see our first cave painting: red and black, reminiscent of a kindergarten art project, but for the fact it’s graced this chamber since before Columbus got here. More than a thousand pictographs and more than two hundred petroglyphs have been located in the immediate area. Some seem downright innocent, some more ominous.

“El Brujo,” the sorcerer, is evocative of black nights when evil spirits roamed this dense jungle landscape. My imagination, coupled with my claustrophobia, overtakes me. I exit the caves at a quick-march and await my comrades on the dock.

Later, we make way on the boat for open waters. Winds blow at twenty knots. Waves roll and roil, flecked by white foam.A specialized manufacturer and supplier of dry cabinet, One of our party huddles in the stern,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. her face buried in a plastic bucket. Our skipper grins maniacally, showing off a gleaming gold tooth. He jams the throttle forward.

The boat smashes the waves. My drink, a sweating Presidente, spills all over me. The boat’s bow rises up impossibly, crashes onto the flat behind an oncoming wave with a spine-jarring thud.

In the course of this tooth-rattling passage, Los Haitises grows smaller off our stern while Samana looms dead ahead,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , and the beach of Cayo Levantado sun-bathes off our port bow.

A room with a view awaits me there with a hot tub next to a seaside infinity pool.

A playground called Samana lingers out there. It is less than a hundred kilometres from Punta Cana’s beaches as the frigate bird flies, but it is a thousand kilometres away in mood and atmosphere.

“They’re excited. They’re proud — as proud as Mennonite farmers can be,” Alderfer said, alluding to the Mennonite cultural and religious tradition of humility, rather than pride.

Drawings show the layout of the barns from the past — designed for a variety of animals on the bottom floor and grain storage on the upper floor. The grains were put there to be kept dry, Alderfer said. Threshing also took place on the upper floor, leading to that level being called the threshing floor, a term still used by some older people who grew up on farms, he said.

The video, “As the Land, So the People,” a part of the museum’s permanent exhibit, fits in well with the new exhibit, he said. Vintage pieces of small farm equipment are also included in the exhibit.

The Pennsylvania German Folk Art Sale and “Painting the Barn: Landscape Art Exhibit & Sale” also begin this weekend at the Mennonite Heritage Center.

“Painting the Barn” features paintings done by Perkiomen Valley Art Center and Mennonite Historians of Eastern Pennsylvania members or participants in this year’s traditional oil painting workshops at the Mennonite Heritage Center, Sarah Heffner, MHC and MHEP director, said.

“Barns are, I think, a beloved part of our local landscape, and, as you can see, our artists have certainly picked up on the theme,” Heffner said.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of artwork in “Painting the Barn” will go to the Nyce Barn Project, in which a barn built around 1850 and now owned by Franconia Township will be moved to the Mennonite Heritage Center next year and reconstructed, she said.

The total costs of the work are not to exceed $165,000, of which the Mennonite Heritage Center still has to raise $105,000, according to a pamphlet about the project.

The barns depicted in “Painting the Barn” don’t necessarily have to be ones from the local area, but many have names identifying the setting with a family or location, Heffner said.

“Remembering the Farm” will continue to be on exhibit until next summer or fall, but some of the photos in it will change, Alderfer said. Photos of barns received with contributions of $250 or more to the Nyce Barn Project are planned to be added to the display.

“Christmas Market: Treasures & Traditions Through Time” runs 9:30 a.m.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 1, and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 2, at the Mennonite Heritage Center, Goschenhoppen Historians museum on Route 29 in Green Lane and the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center on Seminary Street in Pennsburg. Admission is free at each of the three sites.

“We all plan our own exhibits and displays, but we coordinate to create a really nice Christmas tour,” Heffner said. “We encourage our visitors to go to all three sites. It just makes a wonderful display.”

Along with the “Over the River & Through the Woods” photo opportunity featuring the sleigh and Currier & Ives, which will be available throughout the weekend, the Mennonite Heritage Center will have scherenschnitte demonstrations by folk artist Pam Rankin Hults Saturday, Dec. 1.

The Goschenhoppen Historians display will include a themed Christmas tree exhibit, “Christmas Garden,” with standard gauge trains, vintage Christmas collectibles and a bake sale.

The Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center displays include the “2012 Christmas Putz,” “Evelyn Schule Paintings,” “Dutch Deco: Pennsylvania German Design in the 20th Century” and “Miniature Millinery from the collection of Joan Nichols.”

Brazilian grand prix

"I want to explore." Such was the sign-off from the previous Diary, as about half the Formula One paddock settled for a couple of days in Austin, Texas, the sport's new favourite city. I wrote that approximately 10 minutes before receiving an email containing more than 100 pages of Autocourse, for proof-reading purposes. There are some fantastic natural parks nearby – plus Texas State Zoo, and wildlife is always a handy complement for the photographically obsessed – but such things have to be ignored due to a familiar irritant known as deadlines.

We switch from our suburban hotel to a more central location, so I manage to see a little more of Austin, but the time passes quickly in an editorial haze and the voyage of discovery is limited mostly to Mexican restaurants.

Tony flies out on Tuesday evening, from Austin to Atlanta, thence Brasilia and S?o Paulo, which leaves him time to attend Jenson Button's annual media supper – a regular and generous fixture. Mark and I miss out by staying on for an extra day, but a direct flight from Houston simplifies our itinerary. We allow five hours for a drive that should take little more than two, but the extra time proves invaluable because most of America seems to be on Texas Highway 71.This is my favourite sites to purchase those special pieces of buy mosaic materials from. The journey's gentle pace allows time to contemplate more terrain I'd like to know better.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory.

It's almost lunchtime when we land and my case reaches the carousel with its security straps unravelled. Inside there's a charmless note from US Homeland Security, explaining that it was chosen for a random search and that they do not consider themselves liable for any damage done. Nothing is broken, but carefully packed contents have been thrown back in without a moment's thought and I'm lucky that some things – spare diabetic kit, for instance – have not been squashed.

For once we opt not to turn up at the circuit on a Thursday: most media briefings take place during the morning, to accommodate Europe, so our time can be spent just as profitably at hotel desk and keyboard. Tony is in the room when we arrive and it's a comfortably sized triple. Funny that: we used to book the same place through an agency and were told we could only choose the rather more expensive option of three singles, because twins and triples didn't exist. The internet betrays many a useful secret.

In terms of distance Interlagos should be about 25 minutes from our hotel, but the S?o Paulo rush hour (there are about 20 of these per weekday, on average) converts that to 75. It always feels nice to reach the circuit's inner hub, although the grubby perimeter ought to be safe enough as it's absolutely teeming with armed police. For the first practice day there are probably as many of them as there are paying spectators.

It might be my final weekend as a full-time grand prix correspondent, but it feels like any other and I spend the first day outside. Many parts of central S?o Paulo owe their architectural conception to the 21st century, but Interlagos is trapped in about 1974. It has less corporate fluff than other F1 hosts, its core components being cars and a damned fine circuit layout. Parts of it are a bit like a nature reserve, with a vivid array of birdlife flitting around even when engines scream past at 18,000rpm. The local burrowing owls sometimes even perch on the guardrail to watch. It lacks modern trappings such as access roads, so to obtain photographic vantage points you have to scale crumbling banks, clamber over (or duck beneath) scaffolding and avoid open sewage drains.Installers and distributors of solar panel, The paddock is an anachronism, too, a cramped hangover from the days when grand prix teams had a dozen employees rather than several hundred.

We leave fairly early, in order to hail a taxi while it's still light, the only drawback being that there aren't any. So we're standing there for 25 minutes,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , computer bags highly visible in a city where you're told not to wear watches or jewellery, before a Chevrolet Corsa finally rumbles into sight. It's never a particularly comfortable feeling, even with a phalanx of pistol-packing policemen across the road, but it's one to which we've become accustomed in time. And taxi supply usually improves during the weekend's course.

The same sinister ambience tends to restrict our eating habits. A mall close to the hotel contains an endless array of furniture shops and one spectacularly good Italian: it closes at 9pm, oddly, but there's ample time for spinach ravioli and a bottle of Argentinean white. When in Brazil...

The working week's bustle subsides. Our early cab ride lasts little more than 20 minutes and guides us to the hub of the police whistle philharmonic's aggressive symphony, part of the morning routine by Interlagos's main gate.

It's possible that the final practice session will be the last I spend trackside here: for all its good points, the Interlagos hassle factor means this isn't a race to which I'll necessarily return. You never know, though, because there aren't many better places to watch F1 cars. This includes the inside of Turn 15, the final kink onto the pit straight. There is no debris fencing and marshals allow you stand right behind a barrier, so you're a matter of inches from the cars as they zip by at 180-odd mph on the other side. Wonderful.

Lewis Hamilton takes pole position by half a tenth from Jenson Button, with the Red Bulls of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel third and fourth. If he finishes there, or better, the German will be world champion, irrespective of other results. Fernando Alonso is an in-touch seventh, but needs to finish in the top three (and hope Vettel is kidnapped by aliens) if he's to have any chance of the title – a tough assignment, but not insuperable.

During the afternoon, the media assembles in the Red Bull office – to await Vettel – when Webber strolls in. "Bloody hell," he says, "I come to get a quiet bite to eat and you lot are here." He then spots me and wanders over to ask how Mrs A's cancer treatment is progressing. When I later relay news of his touching enquiry, it creates an instant feelgood factor back home. The Australian could be forgiven for having other things on his mind,Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. but he's a class act: dealing with people like him on a fortnightly basis is something I'll miss.

Mark, Tony and I subsequently head back to town and the Italian: Tony is hoping to leave on Sunday evening – although he tried that once before in Brazil, in 2003, and remained trapped in S?o Paulo until Wednesday after missing his flight. This is the last evening meal we'll share as permanent travelling companions (for now, at least) and they kindly pick up my share of the tab.

Low-Rent Horror Wastes Time

The story is ... well, you tell me. Oh yeah, you didn't see it. Don't worry. I actually watched the darn thing and still can't tell exactly what it was about. There was a group of friends, a psychic, a horror house, a ghost hunter, some sort of demon and Cory Feldman smoking what I'm pretty sure was an electric cigarette. That's about as helpful as I can be. Sorry.

Speaking of Feldman, he seems to be one of the big selling points of this feature,High quality stone mosaic tiles. out this week on DVD, but he's in the movie for maybe 10 minutes. And I'm not saying anyone expects Feldman to make "Goodfellas," but even he should make better crap than this.

The rest of the cast is a bunch of unknowns who I don't think will be making names for themselves anytime soon. They're not terrible, but who could actually make this incomprehensible script work anyway? Why did this thing earn a green light?

I'll tell you why: Parts of "Hell" are shot on location at a real Halloween attraction in Pennsylvania called the Hotel of Horror, and the movie is an obvious selling pitch for the attraction. It's a pretty lame excuse to make a pretty lame movie.

The saddest part is, however, that the gimmick could've worked. The last third of the movie takes place in the Hotel of Horror and has people running around not knowing what's real and what's not. It provided laughs and actual scares.

And hence, the film's biggest mistake: "Hell" ends with Feldman's character ready to enter the hotel, and I kept wondering why this wasn't the opening to the film. With Feldman in the lead and the whole movie taking place inside the real attraction, we could've been up for some real scares and some tongue in cheek moments.

Although Google is known for being a search engine, it makes most of its money from selling advertising across all of its products.

In October it said that it had made $2.High quality stone mosaic tiles.18billion (1.36billion) in profits in the third quarter of the year.

But that was a drop of 20 per cent from the year before, so the ability to target adverts as precisely as possible at users is increasingly important.

Marketers know that recommendations from a real person, ideally a friend, is much more valuable than an advertisement or a recommendation from someone you don't know.

But anonymity and the right to use nicknames, or 'handles', is important to web users.

You can add a married name to your Google+ profile, or if you have a nickname that you are well known by and have a 'significant' online following, you can use that.

But you have to prove to Google that you are that person by providing scanned documents or links to your online persona.

Mobile data specialist Christian Payne said: 'This is just another data extraction technique. Google+, like Facebook, isn't free. You pay for it with your identity. And they sell it on.'

Payne was one of the early victims of Google's insistence that users of the social network use their real names.

Widely known on the web as Documentally, Payne was thrown off Google+ last year. He said at the time: 'It's not that I don't want to put my real name in. It's just that more people know me as Documentally than Christian Payne.'

The search giant relented and Payne returned to the network, where his profile is Christian 'Documentally' Payne.

"It's incredibly expensive to transport a person to or from the continent, and in the middle of winter, it's physically impossible to get people off of the South Pole," Dr. Scott Parazynski, director and chief medical officer of UTMB's Center for Polar Medical Operations, said in a statement. "So if you can remotely diagnose and treat the patient, and then supervise his or her care, you're much better off."

UTMB provides remote medical support to three U.S. research outposts in Antarctica, where temperatures reach 76 degrees below zero.

They include McMurdo Station, which houses more than 1,200 people. A hospital at that location employs physicians, nurses and staff aids.A specialized manufacturer and supplier of dry cabinet, UTMB also runs telemedicine sessions at Amundsen-Scott South Pole (ASP) station, Palmer Station and two Antarctic research vessels.

The remote consultations aid the work of on-site medical professionals, which are called "doctors on ice." Connecting to doctors that specialize in certain medical conditions is essential to ensuring the best health outcomes for patients in remote and harsh environments, Emerson suggested.

UTMB has directed cardiological ultrasounds and emergency appendectomies over the Polycom video system. Doctors can also use electronic stethoscopes to listen to heart and lung sounds, rely on handheld cameras to show lesions, and use ophthalmoscopes to provide a view of the eyes, said Emerson.

"Polycom's standards-based video technologies allow medical devices including
cardiac ultrasounds to be easily plugged into them so the images can be
transferred through the video feed from any location," he said.

A doctor in Galveston, Texas, could view a live stream of a patient's cardiac ultrasound taking place at the South Pole, Emerson explained.

In August a cardiologist was able to remotely direct a cardiac ultrasound to save a patient's life.

"We're not set up to do general anesthesia and surgery, but this was a notable exception," said Parazynski.High quality stone mosaic tiles. "We were lucky to have a surgeon there and to be able to direct the anesthesia over the Polycom video system; it was pretty remarkable."

President Morsi insists his powers are temporary, and his spokesmen have insisted he has had little choice but to work around judges who are holdovers from the Mubarak area that stood in the way of a new constitution. They say he won the presidency fair and square, and should be given time to lead Egypt in a new direction.

But human history has far more examples of extraordinary powers "briefly" assumed that stretched into various authoritarianisms than of those used to create democracies. And the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi are busy cutting deals with the institutions of Mubarak's state – his still politically powerful military and various ministries – to cement their power. Most of the so-called liberals who were in the constitutional assembly (the body that is supposed to draft a new constitution) walked off the job, claiming that Islamists were simply ignoring them.

Now, large swathes of Egyptian's judiciary are promising to go on strike in protest of Morsi's actions. The judges, like many appointed bureaucrats from the Mubarak era, have had far more input into politics lately than opposition politicians or the public, and so may get somewhere, though the battle lines are hardening.

The president was reacting to real problems when he immunized his decisions and the Constituent Assembly from judicial oversight. The Brotherhood had been heavy-handed in picking the Constituent Assembly, but it did so fully within the rules drafted last year. And it is not clear that the opposition would have been satisfied with any compromise over the composition of the body or its work. The Brotherhood’s complaint — that many critics were averse to allowing election results to have any impact on the document or its authors — is firmly grounded.

Morsy’s defense of his moves as designed to support democracy unfortunately recall the remark attributed to an American soldier during the Vietnam War: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”... But while the crisis is not fully a product of the actors’ intentions, Egyptians will not find a path forward unless their leaders find within themselves an intention to resolve their differences through compromise. The constitutional process is badly broken, but it can still be repaired.

Morsi has insisted, for now, that he's not going to change course. And that potentially puts Egypt on an even more dangerous path. While the Brotherhood told its supporters to stay off the streets during yesterday's big anti-Morsi protests, in order to avoid clashes, the group has called for mass demonstrations in support of Morsi on Saturday,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. which could lead to clashes.

The rhetoric of various officials around Morsi has also grown more heated. A spokesman for the Brother's Freedom and Justice Party wrote today that it's "Very sad to see 'genuine opposition' allied with 'corrupt Mubarak cronies.'" One of the Brotherhood's official Twitter account wrote yesterday that if the "opposition thinks the significance of today is # of Tahrir protestors... they should brace for millions in support of the elected" Morsi while dismissing the Tahrir protests as composed partly of "pro-Mubarak felols".

With the "process" gummed up, the opposition interested only, it seems, in using street power to prevent Morsi's agenda from moving forward, and Morsi currently the only official in Egypt with any democratic legitimacy, the stage looks set for a showdown. And what then? Sufficient rioting might bring the military back into the political forefront again.

New assistance systems

Avoid accidents and mitigate their consequences – this is the integrated approach adopted by Mercedes-Benz Accident Research under the heading “Real Life Safety”. Mercedes-Benz is systematically pursuing this strategy with numerous new assistance systems and greatly enhanced functions. The new functions all rely on the same sensor system, comprising a new stereo camera together with multistage radar sensors.

The support functions range from relieving the burden on the driver and therefore increasing comfort, to issuing visual, acoustic and/or haptic warning signals, to enhancing the driver’s reactions. Some systems are even able to take corrective action in an emergency, such as autonomous applications of the brakes to prevent an accident or reduce its severity.

The DISTRONIC PLUS adaptive control system is a driver aid designed to keep the vehicle at the desired distance from another vehicle in front that is travelling slower than the selected cruising speed. This radar-based function has now been enhanced by the addition of Steering Assist, which helps drivers to stay centred in their lane by generating the appropriate steering torque when travelling on a straight road and even in gentle bends.

The stereo camera recognises lane markings as well as vehicles driving ahead together with their three-dimensional positioning, and relays this information to the electric steering assistance system. When driving at slow speeds,A specialized manufacturer and supplier of dry cabinet,Interlocking security cable tie with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. e.g. in congested traffic, Steering Assist can use the vehicle ahead as a means of orientation, enabling semi-autonomous following even when there are no clear lane markings visible. As a result, the system is able to further enhance driving comfort and substantially ease the driver’s workload in many traffic situations.

The new Steering Assist function integrated into the DISTRONIC PLUS system is predominantly based on the new stereo camera (see previous section). At the same time,A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. the area in front of the vehicle continues to be monitored by two short-range radar sensors and a long-range radar sensor with medium-range detection. The system fuses the data gleaned from both technologies, calculates any reactions required, and then regulates the vehicle’s speed as requirements dictate by controlling engine power, transmission and brakes, as well as actuating the electric steering for lateral vehicle guidance.

DISTRONIC PLUS with Steering Assist can be activated as before with a lever on the steering column in a speed range from 0 – 200 km/h. Any speed between 30 km/h and 200 km/h can be selected as the desired cruising speed. A green steering wheel symbol appears in the instrument cluster to indicate when Steering Assist is operating while DISTRONIC PLUS is activated. Meanwhile, longitudinal information (cruise control function) is still visualised in the speed display by means of circular segments and the speedometer needle.

Drivers must keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times even when Steering Assist is activated, as the function only works in bends above a certain, speed-dependent radius. Legal considerations also mean there are no plans to introduce hands-free driving. The system’s design is so refined that the sensors can detect whether the driver’s hands are actually on the steering wheel. If they are not, a visual warning is issued first. Should the driver fail to react to this prompt, a warning signal sounds and lateral lane guidance is deactivated. This does not affect the cruise control function, however, which continues to be operative. Needless to say, the driver is able to override the Steering Assist at any time. If the driver signals to change lane, for instance, the lateral guidance function will switch into passive mode for the duration of the lane change.

The longitudinal performance capabilities of DISTRONIC PLUS have been further refined. Now, the system is able to brake at a rate of up to 5 m/s without any intervention from the driver. If the “S” drive mode button is pressed,Find a great buy mosaic Art deals on eBay! the rate of acceleration increases, too.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. Vehicle acceleration is also more dynamic if the driver signals a wish to overtake by switching on the indicators, assuming the road is clear.

By combining radar and camera data, DISTRONIC PLUS is also able to detect both vehicles cutting in and vehicles ahead in adjacent lanes and take necessary action promptly. This can prevent illegal undertaking on motorways and multi-lane highways, for example, by adapting the speed to that of vehicles in the outside lanes.

Apart from material damage, accidents at junctions often result in serious personal injuries, too. The new Brake Assist BAS PLUS from Mercedes-Benz is therefore capable of more than just helping the driver to avoid collisions with vehicles ahead or lessen their consequences in a purely longitudinal direction: the new Cross-Traffic Assist function can also come to the driver’s aid when there is a risk of a collision with cross traffic at junctions.

If this anticipatory system detects a hazardous situation of this type, it prompts the driver to start emergency braking by activating visual and acoustic warnings. If the driver presses the brake pedal too tentatively, BAS PLUS will step in by automatically boosting brake pressure for effective emergency braking, even applying the brakes at full power if necessary. Applying just the right amount of braking power for the situation at hand maximises the available braking distance for traffic behind.

Pilot scheme for elderly residents to be extended

Nearly 7,800 blocks have benefited from the Government's Barrier-Free Accessibility programme, as ramps and handrails brought convenience to the elderly and physically disabled, allowing them to move around their neighbourhoods with ease.

The programme, which cost S$23 million and took five years to fully implement, is key as Singapore prepares for an ageing population, said National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan in his latest blog post.

Further improvements could be under way, as the National Development Ministry plans to extend the Enhancement for Active Seniors programme to more towns.

Under the scheme, which was launched earlier this year, elderly residents can opt for ramps within their flats, and grab bars or slip-resistant treatment to their bathroom floor tiles. The programme, currently piloted at Bukit Merah and Kallang-Whampoa, has received positive feedback, said Mr Khaw. "Importantly, they help prevent falls," he added.

Moments after Xi, pictured below, was unveiled, the European Commission imposed anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese imports of ceramic tableware and kitchenware – including porcelain, earthenware, and stoneware.

With Chinese exports of ceramics being valued by the EU at some 728 million euros, this is big news for Stoke-on-Trent's pottery industry.

Tariffs are charged to the producer of the imported goods.

Every manufacturer must assign a 'declared value' to their products and tariffs are levied as a percentage of this value.

Their goal is to protect domestic markets from products being unfairly undercut by foreign competitors. It is this notion of 'protection' that gives its name to an economic philosophy advocating tariffs and strong regulation of global trade: protectionism.

But while protectionism can help to boost domestic production it is often bad news for the consumer.

Because protectionism is about controlling and maintaining prices, it means the price of goods can be more expensive than might be the case in a 'free trade' system.

Perhaps more than any country in the world, Britain has tended to come down on the side of free trade. Ever since Robert Peel repealed the protectionist Corn Laws in 1846, Britain has been an aggressive advocate for free trade.

With the 'Common Market' as its founding principle, free trade is hardwired into the ethos of the EU too.

Therefore the decision to impose tariffs, which ranged between 17.6 per cent and 31.2 per cent for goods from Chinese companies that co-operated with the Commission's prior investigation (58.8 per cent for those which did not), will not have been taken lightly.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles.

Indeed, 14 of the 27 member states, including the UK, voted against the planned measures at a meeting of trade specialists in October.

Yet the Commission decided to press ahead. Come 15 May, 2013, they could even become permanent.A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. Flying in the face of member state opinion is a highly unusual move. But for the strength of our ceramics industry, it is the right one.

This will not please everyone. One problem with protectionism is that it often sparks 'trade wars' as countries impose retaliating tit-for-tat tariffs. Whoever casts the first stone is usually irrelevant in such races to the bottom, because everybody loses.

Furthermore, blank imports from China make up a significant amount of produce for some of our leading ceramics firms – which decorate the ware in Stoke.

While we obviously want to prioritise goods manufactured in Stoke-on-Trent – those that can faithfully bear the 'Made in Staffordshire' backstamp – we do have to be careful about threatening the competitiveness of firms that operate here.

And there is nothing intrinsically wrong with Chinese goods making up part of our ceramics supply.

Yet there does seem to be incontrovertible evidence that China is engaging in what is called 'dumping' – a practice which involves flooding competitors' markets with subsidised products at prices less than would be charged to domestic markets.

The idea is that by weakening the competitiveness of your competitors' industries, you strengthen the comparative advantage of your own in the long-term.

The European Commission is convinced China is doing this for tableware and kitchenware.

Stories abound of Chinese plants not having to pay for energy, land or machinery costs.

In truth they do have form. Tariffs of up to 77 per cent have been in place since March for Chinese imports in ceramic floor-tiles.

In September, Barack Obama accused China of fixing the price of its car exports – usually by subsiding energy or plant costs – to weaken U.S. manufacturers.We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china,

And countries such as Columbia, Indonesia and Egypt have already imposed anti-dumping measures for Chinese ceramics, at far higher rates than the EU.Interlocking security cable ties with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals.

Clearly 'dumping' is unfair to Staffordshire-based ceramic manufacturers. And if European rules prevent states from subsidising firms in the Common Market,Argo Mold limited specialize in Plastic injection mould manufacture, why should they not try to protect our competitiveness?

It is this sentiment that supports the Commission's argument that far from acting against Common Market principles, they are actually trying to preserve them.

It is bad enough trying to compete with Chinese labour and energy costs as it is, without various Chinese regions further skewing the playing field. We should both welcome the elevation of Xi Jinping and support the Commission's interim decision. A harmonious relationship with the incoming Chinese leadership should be firm but respectful – and should begin with truly fair trade.

The disabled acting community works to end of decades of 'invisibility'

As Michael J Fox embraces his Parkinson's for a comedic return to television, the disabled acting community works towards the end of decades of 'invisibility.'

Television drama is all about make-believe - but the days of making us believe that people with disabilities are invisible or don't exist may soon be winding down.

Grass-roots activism by Hollywood unions to write more disabled roles and open up the audition process, a growing awareness that real-life people with disabilities give such characters greater authenticity, plus the electrifying recent news that the beloved actor Michael J Fox is returning to the small screen despite his Parkinson's disease - have re-energised both the debate and thespian hopes.

"I am so thrilled about Fox," says RJ Mitte, 20, the disabled advocate and charismatic rising star of the award-winning AMC series Breaking Bad. Born with cerebral palsy, he typifies the drive and desire it takes to break in to show business if you're not Fox with a platinum CV. "I think he will open tremendous doors for the disabled acting community."

But for lesser lights and emerging acting talent with disabilities, there are some daunting statistics to overcome to gain a toehold in the television arena.

The United Nations estimates there are 650 million people in the world living with a disability. In the US alone, there are 56 million Americans with disabilities who remain virtually invisible in media.

To put this into perspective, the 20 per cent of Americans between the ages of 5 and 64 who live with a disability are represented by fewer than two per cent of characters on television. Even more dispiriting, only one-half of one per cent of words spoken on TV are spoken by a person with a disability.

Making a living doing so can be impossible. Screen Actors Guild (SAG) research also indicates that 56 per cent of background performers with disabilities earn less than US$1,000 (Dh3,670) each year in film and TV.

Despite existing producer/union policies of non-discrimination, more than one-third of people with disability say they encountered discrimination - not being cast for a role or being refused an audition due to their disabilities.

The problem is hardly unique to North American television. In the UK, the disabled performer Lisa Hammond (Grange Hill, Psychoville) said "put 'crips' in your scripts" in an open letter she wrote to the UK industry in August.

"The best representation is a hands-off one," she wrote. "The character with the disability does not have to have a story written around that disability. It is their human stories/problems that are the juicy and dramatic parts of their lives."

What appears to be turning the tide - or at least making transformative waves in favour of access, inclusion and accuracy for the disabled - is the ambitious I AM PWD (Inclusion in the Arts & Media of People with Disabilities) campaign launched three years ago by the Performers with Disabilities Tri-Union Committee of the Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Actors' Equity Association.The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry,

"In the 21st century, media is the world's common cultural environment. Society's values and priorities are expressed and reflected in film, television, theatre, news and music. If you aren't seen and heard, you are invisible,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china," says the actor and tri-union committee chairman Robert David Hall (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation), the only disabled actor on primetime network TV. "I AM PWD will awaken the general public to the lack of inclusion and universal access for people with disabilities by uniting with a network of industry, labour,The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry, community and government allies."

Adam Moore,A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. the Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity Director of SAG-AFTRA, adds: "If you don't see your family or what you look like or your experience reflected in the fictional environments - and more increasingly the real environments in reality television - if you don't see yourself reflected there, it reinforces this idea that you may not have the same place at the table of society that other people do.Find a great buy mosaic Art deals on eBay!"

Council parking fees set to soar

Motorists will no longer be able to park all day on city streets for a flat fee as council rolls out a new parking scheme set to generate an extra $860,000 in revenue each year.

The scheme, to be implemented by Easter, will limit parking times at CBD spaces to either one hour or three, as compared to the 12 hours at a $10 capped rate currently available during the week.

Brisbane City Council will also add metered hours to 1255 on-street bays across the CBD, Fortitude Valley and South Brisbane that currently charge between 7am-7pm, Monday to Friday.

Under the new scheme, motorists will pay for parking between 7am and 10pm, though hours at the weekend remain unchanged at 7am to 7pm.
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Weekend parking at Roma Street Parklands, which is currently free, will also be metered for four hours on Saturday and Sundays.

But Deputy Mayor Adrian Schrinner defended the plan on the grounds it would improve turn-over and drive the economies of Brisbane's central commercial and lifestyle precincts.

Cr Schrinner said motorists would be charged at less than half the normal hourly rate for the extra off-peak meter hours, depending on the zone in which they park.

The city parking zones affected by the scheme are one and two where the hourly rate respectively stands at $4.20 and $2.60 Monday to Friday, and $2 and $1.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability.50 at weekends.

Under the new scheme, Cr Schrinner said the additional hours would be charged at $2 or $1 each.

He said the scheme was about encouraging turn-over across Brisbane's central entertainment and retail precincts.

“Extending the metered hours to evenings and weekends will create a greater turn-over of vehicles for each metered spot, providing a better chance of finding on-street parking spaces,” Cr Schrinner said.

“This means people wanting to park for a couple of hours to do some shopping have an increased chance of finding an on-street park and will pay only a few dollars, rather than $15 to $20 in an off-street parking station.”

The plan has the support of Queen Street Mall Advisory Committee chairman Phil di Bella, who said the current parking system clogged up the city.

“In the past, many sections of our CBD were like a ghost town at night and on the weekends, but this has now changed as our city has become more vibrant and sophisticated,” Mr di Bella said in a written statement issued from the Lord Mayor's office.

When Ashlyn was 3 months old, the Blockers moved from Northern Virginia to Patterson, Ga., where Tara has family. At 6 months, Ashlyn’s left eye was swollen and bloodshot. The doctor suspected pink eye, but Ashlyn didn’t respond to the treatment, so they went to an ophthalmologist, who found a massive corneal abrasion. “And Ashlyn is just sitting there, happy as can be,” Tara recalled. The ophthalmologist assumed she had no corneal sensation in her eyes, and referred them to the Nemours Children’s Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. It took a while to get an appointment, and before they made it to Jacksonville, Ashlyn rubbed big red splotches on her nose and almost chewed off part of her tongue with her emerging teeth.The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry,

At the clinic, they drew Ashlyn’s blood and took scans of her brain and her spine, but the tests were inconclusive.Interlocking security cable tie with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. Over the next 18 months, there were more tests. A nerve biopsy from the back of her leg left stitches that ripped when she was running. When the doctor finally gave his diagnosis, Tara was afraid she would forget the words, so she asked him to write them down. The doctor took out a business card and wrote on the back: “Congenital insensitivity to pain.”

“The doctor told us we were the only ones out there,” Tara said. “That it was so rare. He said to keep an eye on her and that they didn’t know much about it and couldn’t really be of any help. It was kinda like, ‘Good luck!’ ”

At home,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? Tara typed the words “congenital insensitivity to pain” into a search engine and started reading the results. There weren’t many, and the few there told of mutilations and early death. There was no comforting advice to be found.

“John and I had never heard of this condition,” she said. “It was mind-boggling. It was so frightening.” They received help from the people around them in Patterson, a community of fewer than 700 people. When Ashlyn started school, teachers watched her on the playground; one person was assigned to make sure she was O.K.Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. at all times. The nurse washed her eyes and checked her shoes each time she came in from recess — what she called her “Nascar pit stop” — to make sure there was no sand that might cause another corneal abrasion or scratches on her feet. “It really sharpened our observation skills,” Tara said. “I learned to see something happen before it happened.”

Retail: Harvey Norman Joins The Restructuring Push

Electrical retailer Harvey Norman yesterday joined rival JB Hi-Fi, Colorado, Borders/Angus and Robertson and the Premier Retail group of chains in restructuring operations to meet the challenge of weak sales, cautious consumers who are saving madly and the strong Australian dollar.

The company said in its long delayed 2011 sales update, that it was closing the Clive Peeters and Rick Hart chains due to falling sales and losses.

Some of the stores would be shut, others would be rebranded.

JB Hi-Fi is in the process of closing its underperforming Clive Anthonys chain of outlets: some will be rebranded, others will be closed.

Premier revealed that around 50 stores across its various chains face closure, especially if rents aren't cut by landlords. Other stores will open in the next couple of years in two of its chains and Premier Retail will be playing hardball with landlords to cut costs.

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And 140 stores are being closed in the Colorado group, with losses concentrated in the Colorado chain (100 stores). 40 others in allied chains in the collapsed retailer in Australia and New Zealand are closing and Red Group, owners of Borders and Angus and Robertson, closed all Borders outlets and sold or closed the A&R outlets.

Harvey Norman's decision came 13 months after the company paid $55 million to the receiver managers of Clive Peeters in July of last year, for most of the stores in the failed chain, a move chairman Gerry Harvey said yesterday was a "mistake".

While Harvey Norman lifted global sales by 1.7% in the year to June to $6.18 billion, like-for-like (same store or comparable store sales) fell 3.6% over the year.

"Global sales were negatively affected by currency depreciation, including a 3.8 per cent fall in the New Zealand dollar, a 12.3 per cent slump in the euro and a 10.0 per cent deterioration in the UK pound," the company said.

Despite the news of the cutbacks and the weak sales figures, Harvey Norman shares jumped 16c yesterday, or 8.9%, to $1.95, after hitting multi-year low of $1.765 on Tuesday.

Harvey Norman said in the statement:

"The Clive Peeters and Rick Hart brand formats have not achieved the requirement for ongoing investment by the Company.

  "Given this, 16 of the 25 Clive Peeters and Rick Hart stores will be converted to Harvey Norman complexes, 2 will be converted to Joyce Mayne complexes, 4 Clive Peeters stores will be closed and 3 Rick Hart stores will be closed.

"The closure of the 4 Clive Peeters and 3 Rick Hart stores will result in a charge against the pre-tax profit of the consolidated entity of an amount presently estimated to be approximately $10M in respect of the financial year ending 30 June 2012."

Total sales in Australia, the company's biggest market, rose by 3.3%, but like for like sales in Australia fell by 2.8%.

Elsewhere total sales and like for like sales rose at Harvey Norman stores in Slovenia and Northern Ireland, but fell in Ireland and New Zealand.

The company said that in 2010-11 "Furniture and bedding franchisees continue to grow revenue and market share despite continued slowdown in the industry".

"We expect that our brands will again outperform the market in FY12.

"Electrical franchisees are operating in an extremely challenging environment accentuated by the strength of the Australian dollar.

"Price deflation in the television category has continued and has resulted in reduced revenues, however transactions continue to grow.

"The franchisees' continued focus on white goods, cooking, home appliances and floor care has resulted in growth in these categories.

"Deflation will continue to dampen revenue growth in the coming year.

"Computer franchisee sales continue to be affected by a cautious consumer and intense competition, however "Tablets", "Smart Phones", "Ultrabooks", "All in One Computers" and new generation DSLR cameras will offer positive opportunities for growth in the year ahead.

"Harvey Norman franchisees are well positioned to continue to lead and maximise the opportunities in this market," Harvey Norman said.