The University of Vermont Health Network will be moving its captive insurance company to Vermont from Bermuda.
The UVM Health Network website said, “The action comes as the result of a unanimous decision by the Board of Directors of VMC Indemnity Company, Ltd., the health network subsidiary that provides medical malpractice insurance coverage for its medical providers.
“Because of its reputation for offering a predictable and stable regulatory environment, Vermont has become a leading location for captive insurance companies, a standard self-insurance practice option for academic medical centers that can make malpractice insurance less expensive than what is available through commercial insurance companies.
“We had an analysis done comparing the two locations and it is clear we can continue to provide low-cost, predictable insurance coverage to our providers if the company is located in Vermont,” said John Brumsted, M.D., president and CEO of the UVM Health Network and VMCIC board member.
“Our captive insurance industry is a shining example of what can be accomplished when we work together to provide and grow good jobs here in Vermont,” said Governor Phil Scott.
“As a result of the decision, a non-profit corporation will be established to become the UVM Health Network’s captive insurer, and it will seek approval from the Internal Revenue Service to operate as a tax-exempt organization, a process that could take up to a year.
“This is great news for Vermont and validation of our incredibly strong captive insurance industry,” said David Provost, Deputy Commissioner, Vermont Department of Financial Regulation.
And so the exodus begins, one job at a time.
Vermont Insurance company relocates to Vermont. Not sure if this because of Trumps new tax plan or because it’s a morality reason.
Trumps plan may see more companies relocating to the States but at the same time other companies are still relocating to BDA.


Gathering in Washington called attempt to inject humour and tone down partisan division.
Barack Obama, the US president, was planning to attend three rallies on Saturday to support candidates from his Democratic Party, but one gathering he would not due to attend was held in Washington DC.
Thousands of people gathered in the US capital to watch two popular political satirists appeal for moderation and civility in polarised times, in the run-up to the congressional elections on November 2.
The alternative rally had generated extensive buzz on the internet, with more than 226,000 people on a Facebook page created for the event saying they would attend.
Organisers insisted the idea behind the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear hosted by Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's Daily Show and Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Show was not about politics.
Stewart and Colbert encouraged attendees to bring signs with slogans such as "Real patriots can handle a difference in opinion", "It could be worse but let's not make it that way", and "Death to Nobody".
Stewart said the day was about toning down anger and partisan division.
Al Jazeera's Nick Spicer reports from the rally.


The U.S. Senate confirmed Peter Selfridge as President Obama’s chief of protocol, a job that carries that carries the rank of U.S. ambassador and assistant secretary of state.
Selfridge will serve as the link between the White House and foreign ambassador and visiting dignitaries.
Selfridge will also manage Blair House, the official guesthouse of the President.
While on paper the job is part of the State Department, its primary focus is White House diplomacy.
Raised in Minnesota, the 1989 Minnetonka High grad landed his first job in the White House in 1995, sorting invitations in President Bill Clinton’s scheduling office.
With supports from Democratic U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, the Senate confirmed Selfridge’s nomination by voice vote Monday. He succeeds Capricia Marshall, who held the job from 2009 until her departure last summer.


WILMINGTON, Del., Feb. 01, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- InterDigital, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDCC), a mobile technology research and development company, today announced that the company will release its fourth quarter and full year 2015 financial results before market open on Thursday, February 18, 2016. InterDigital executives will host a conference call that same day at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time to discuss the company's financial performance and other company matters.
For a live Internet webcast of the conference call, visit www.interdigital.com and click on the link to the live webcast under the Events tab of the Investors section on the homepage. The company encourages participants to take advantage of the Internet option.
For telephone access to the conference, call 877-876-9175 within the U.S. or +1 785-424-1668 from outside the U.S. Please call by 9:50 a.m. ET on February 18 and give the operator Conference ID number 5332394.
An Internet replay of the conference call will be available on InterDigital's website in the Investors section. In addition, a telephone replay will be available from 1:00 p.m. ET February 18 through 1:00 p.m. ET February 23. To access the recorded replay, call 888-203-1112 or +1 719-457-0820 and use the replay code 5332394.
InterDigital develops mobile technologies that are at the core of devices, networks, and services worldwide. We solve many of the industry's most critical and complex technical challenges, inventing solutions for more efficient broadband networks and a richer multimedia experience years ahead of market deployment. InterDigital has licenses and strategic relationships with many of the world's leading wireless companies. Founded in 1972, InterDigital is listed on NASDAQ and is included in the S&P MidCap 400® index.
InterDigital is a registered trademark of InterDigital, Inc.
For more information, visit: www.interdigital.com.


A new video released compares the cinematic graphics from The Last of Us on the PlayStation 3 to The Last of Us on the PS4. The breakdown features 10 whole minutes of side-by-side comparisons between both versions of the game, and the differences may or may not be obvious to everyone.
The Last of Us: Remastered is dropping on the PlayStation 4 tomorrow. The new version includes increased visual fidelity, better graphics enhancements, as well as native 1920 x 1080p. Naughty Dog also took an opportunity to boost up the game's frame-rate from the barely-hitting-30 frames per second on the PlayStation 3 to 60 buttery frames per second on the PlayStation 4.
Naughty Dog decided to leverage the power of the PlayStation 4 to up the core specs of the award-winning 2013 outing from Sony.
The Last of Us Remastered includes all the previously released content for the game, including the DLC and add-ons that found a kind home on the PlayStation 3. Players will get the extra content for free, including the single-player and multiplayer content.
There have also been rumors that new DLC is being planned to release for both the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation 4 versions of the game at some point down the line. The DLC is supposed to be a brand new multiplayer map pack that will extend the replay for players who like to get competitive against one another in the online portion of the game.
For those of you who don't know what The Last of Us is about, the game follows Joel and Ellie as they trek across America to Baltimore. Joel is an older guy who suffered through some terrible tragedies 20 years prior to the game's time frame where the current events take place. After suffering the tragedy Joel takes to the bottle, becoming a husk of his former self. Ellie is an outgoing young teenager who has suffered through her own forms of tragedy and setback in a life riddled with a fungal infection that turns humans into ravenous zombie types.
Players will spend the majority of the game playing as Joel, looking to keep and eye out on Ellie and protecting her from harm's way as they venture through cities overrun with deadly bandits, as well as venture through cannibal infested areas.
The game has no shortage of hard-hitting, dramatic moments that will keep players on their toes while they fight off all manner of obstacles, whether it be in the form of the infected fungal monsters to fully armed raiders.
If the graphics comparison above proves to you that the game is worth owning on the PS4, then you can look for the game to arrive digitally and on retail shelves tomorrow for $49.99.
You can learn more about the game by paying a visit to the game's official website.


Let me guide you with this unique style of Yoga at my Studio in Pershore, Worcs, UK. It's pureness and authenticity focuses on your whole being; mind and body through a mental relaxation exercise, breathing techniques, physical postures and deep relaxation / meditation. I also offer private classes and one-to-one sessions at my Pranayama Yoga Studio or at a venue to suit you.


"The investors are fundamentally missing the change that’s happening at the company."
Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Welcome to Edition 1.44 of the Rocket Report! There remains no let-up in the world of lift, with lots of activity in the realm of smallsat launchers as well as some interesting speculation about the future of Aerojet's rocket engine business. Oh, and we think we know why SpaceX hasn't had too much to say yet about a Falcon Heavy Moon mission.
Relativity announces first launch contract. The California-based rocket company Relativity announced its first customer on Friday, the global satellite operator Telesat. The contract for flights on the Terran 1 rocket includes "multiple" launches, but in an interview with Ars Relativity CEO Tim Ellis said he could not provide additional details. Although this is the first contract the company has chosen to announce, he said, Relativity has signed other binding deals earlier.
Good company to be in ... Ellis said Telesat has been in discussions with Relativity for a while, so the satellite operator has had good access to Relativity's launch technology. After this due diligence, Telesat chose Relativity in addition to previous deals with SpaceX, Arianespace, and Blue Origin. Effectively, Telesat has decided that Relativity's Terran 1 booster, with a capacity of 1.25 tons to low Earth orbit, has the right stuff to help launch a major low Earth orbit satellite constellation that will provide global broadband connectivity.
Three companies chosen for DARPA challenge. Vector, Vox Space (a subsidiary of Virgin Orbit), and a stealth-mode company have qualified to participate in the DARPA Launch Challenge, the agency announced at the 35th Space Symposium. Industry sources believe that the stealth company is most likely Astra Space, a company developing a small launch vehicle, Space News reports.
Rocket Lab offering satellite service. The company that launches from New Zealand says it will offer an in-house satellite platform that can be launched from its Electron vehicle. According to the New Zealand Herald, the company believes this satellite "bus" could be even more disruptive to the aerospace industry than its Electron booster.
Virgin Orbit officially adds Guam launch site. Officials at US Pacific Air Forces have issued a letter of support for Andersen Air Force Base to host launches and other exercises with LauncherOne and its dedicated carrier aircraft, the company said Wednesday. A launch from the island could take place within as little as 12 months.
Two sounding rockets launch quite a show. Late Friday night, two sounding rockets launched from a small spaceport in northern Norway. The two skinny rockets soared to an altitude of 320km, and along the way each released a visible gas intended to disperse through and illuminate conditions inside the aurora borealis, Ars reports.
Old launch tech ... This NASA-funded AZURE mission, which stands for Auroral Zone Upwelling Rocket Experiment, is one of a series of sounding rocket missions launching over the next two years to study this and similar phenomena. Friday night's mission involved two Black Brant XI-A rockets, a three-stage sounding booster with a long heritage dating back to Canadian military research in the 1950s. The Black Brant rockets launched within two minutes of one another from the picturesque Andøya Space Center in Norway.
SpaceX drops protest of NASA contract. The rocket company has withdrawn its protest of a contract the space agency awarded to United Launch Alliance for the Lucy mission, which is slated for launch in October 2021, Space News reports. SpaceX had argued it could perform the same mission for a “dramatically lower” price than the $148.3 million price NASA said it would pay United Launch Alliance.
A relief to mission planners ... SpaceX did not say why it dropped the protest. But according to the publication, the decision alleviates the concerns mission planners had about additional costs had GAO upheld the protest and forced NASA to re-compete the contract. The time and cost of additional delays would likely have negated any cost savings from going to a less-expensive Falcon 9 rocket.
Falcon 9, Crew Dragon appear to be a winning combo. Although it was generally regarded as a more risky play than blue-blooded Boeing in NASA's commercial crew competition back in 2014, SpaceX now appears poised to win the honor of becoming the first private company to launch humans into orbit. A crewed Dragon flight could come as early as this fall, while Boeing will not fly its first uncrewed mission until at least August, and NASA has acknowledged that this date may well slip again, Ars reports.
Eye-opening seat costs ... The article also attempts to break down the per-site price that NASA will actually pay SpaceX and Boeing. NASA has only released a generic number, $58 million. According to the analysis, NASA will pay Boeing about $71.6 million per Starliner seat and SpaceX $44.4 million per Dragon seat. One lesson from commercial crew appears to be that healthy competition among providers is good, and commercial contracts can lead to lower prices.
GEM 63 motor completes second test fire. Northrop Grumman’s new 63-inch Graphite Epoxy Motor solid rocket booster completed another step in its progression toward flight, a static fire test under "hot" conditions. The booster's temperature was increased to 90 degrees Fahrenheit for the test, SpaceFlight Insider reports. The solid rocket motor was previously tested under "cold" conditions in September.
SpaceX sets launch date for first Starlink mission. SpaceX has announced a launch target of May, 2019, for the launch of its first batch of operational Starlink satellites, Teslarati reports. The publication says R&D will continue as engineers work to implement the true final design of the satellites, but a significant amount of the team’s work will now be centered on producing as many Starlink satellites as possible, as quickly as possible.
Short seller raises concerns about Aerojet. The activist hedge fund Spruce Point Capital Management, which last year raised questions about satellite maker Maxar Technologies before its stock price tumbled, said it also believes rocket engine maker Aerojet is overvalued. "We believe the loss to Blue Origin was the death blow to Aerojet by losing ULA, its only customer in space launch," a new report by the investment firm states.
Contract losses ... According to the fund's founder, Ben Axler, Aerojet's stock has risen based on earnings the last two years, but at the same time it has seen critical losses, with ULA dropping the AJ-60 motor, the looming end of the Delta rocket's use of RS-68 engines, and the aforementioned AR1 loss to Blue Origin's BE-4 engine. Axler also noted questions about the future of the Space Launch System rocket, and Aerojet's contract to provide RS-25 engines. The report raises issues about financial reporting and management, as short sellers typically do in order to profit from stock price declines. "The investors are fundamentally missing the change that’s happening at the company," Axler argues.
Omega rocket likely needs Air Force to survive. As the Air Force nears the issuance of a solicitation for military launches for 2022 to 2026, Northrop Grumman told Space News it is hopeful about receiving a contract. "If we don’t win (an award), we’re evaluating what we would do with Omega," Former NASA astronaut Kent Rominger, who is Northrop Grumman’s vice president for strategic programs, told the publication. "Depending on the outlook and other factors, we could easily decide to press on with Omega. But there is a chance, too, depending on what we see, that we would decide at the time to not continue, or maybe put it on the shelf."
Congress the key ... In the quest to institute changes needed to accelerate NASA's plans, Bridenstine will have to fight on multiple fronts. Large aerospace firms, with their influential lobbies, will want to protect existing contracts. NASA field centers will fiercely protect their turf. The White House Office of Management and Budget will be reticent to sign on to new, long-term costly programs. And there is simply the inertia of a large bureaucracy like NASA and managers who will resist change to their programs. However, Bridenstine's biggest hurdle will be Congress.


Welby: 'Islamic State is deeply evil' Jump to media player The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has spoken out against what he called ''atrocious pressure'' on Christians and other minority communities across the Middle East.
Search for migrant boat survivors Jump to media player Hundreds of people are feared to have drowned after a boat carrying up to 700 migrants capsized in the Mediterranean Sea, the Italian coastguard has said.
Welby's plea on migrant boat deaths Jump to media player As a boat carrying up to 700 migrants capsizes in the Mediterranean Sea, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, urges Europe to ''rise up, and seek to do what is right''.
Italian PM condemns 'new slave trade' Jump to media player Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi says the trafficking of migrants across the Med amounts to "a new slave trade".
'Migrants cross vast stretch of sea' Jump to media player Richard Bilton, on a boat south of the Italian island of Lampedusa, explains the scale of the journey that migrants face as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean.
Migrant tells of journey to Sicily Jump to media player Some of the many migrants who are arriving in Italy, having survived the risky journey from Africa and the Middle East, tell their stories.
The plight of migrants reaching Italy Jump to media player James Reynolds reports from Palermo on the plight of migrants making the hazardous journey.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has spoken out against what he called ''atrocious pressure'' on Christians and other minority communities across the Middle East.
He was speaking to the BBC during a visit to Egypt as an Islamic State video emerged, appearing to show the killing of 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya.
''I believe Islamic State is deeply evil - even to its own supporters,'' he said.
The BBC's Lyse Doucet reports.


Tue., Dec. 5, 2017, 5:24 p.m.
DURHAM, N.C. – A protester accused of helping tear down a North Carolina Confederate statue has struck a deal to avoid a felony charge, while other defendants had their cases continued.
Durham County Judge James T. Hill said Tuesday he would allow a deferred prosecution deal for Ngoc Loan Tran on several misdemeanor property damage counts. Defense attorney Scott Holmes said the misdemeanors will be dismissed after Tran pays $1,250 in restitution and completes 100 hours of community service.
Tran was among a dozen charged with felony and misdemeanor counts of tearing down the statue of an anonymous Confederate at a Durham government building August 14. One climbed up to attach a rope, then protesters yanked it down.
Eight demonstrators had cases continued until January 11. Charges were previously dropped against three others.
Published: Dec. 5, 2017, 5:24 p.m.


A Cambodian mother and her pregnant daughter sustained fatal injuries when their motorbike was hit by another as they were making a right turn at an intersection in Chon Buri’s Si Racha district late on Tuesday night.
The family of a four-year-old girl has been provided with initial funeral assistance by local authorities after a neighbour’s three dogs mauled her to death in Chaiyaphum's Ban Khwao district on Tuesday evening.
A mother in Nakhon Ratchasima broke down and collapsed after seeing her daughter hit and killed by a speeding pickup while crossing a road to catch a bus on Tuesday morning.
A Muslim father taking his five-year-old daughter to school in Narathiwat were killed along with her when Muslim insurgents detonated a homemade bomb hidden in a garbage bin in front of the school Tuesday morning.
The youngest daughter of a well-known actor sustained fatal injuries when her Mercedes Benz plunged from an elevated overpass in Bangkok Thursday morning. She died in hospital while her friend was killed instantly.


The where and when are still to be determined, but there’s no doubt that Parsons, the Kingston native who played at Archbishop Williams High School, will soon set the record for goals scored by a minor pro player. The 39-year-old winger netted No. 674 on Thanksgiving Night, leaving him just four from passing Kevin Kerr’s 677.
The funny thing is, there was every reason to doubt Parsons would ever be in such a position. He only scored 18 goals in 107 career NCAA games at UMass-Lowell, after all – but there was a reason.
It took famously hard-nosed former NHLer Nick Fotiu to put Parson’s soft hands to use. As a rookie head coach for the East Coast Hockey League’s Nashville Knights, Fotiu agreed to his first-year pro’s request to play forward in 1992-93, and Parsons scored 27 goals – amazingly, his career low for a season – as a third-line winger.
Parsons was soon on a tour of the ECHL, playing in Tallahassee, Fla.; Johnstown, Pa.; Lafayette and Baton Rouge, La., through 1998-99. The first of his six 50-goal seasons came in his only year in Johnstown (1995-96), and while it wasn’t his favorite stop, none was more important: He met his wife, Kristen, when he was a Chief.
“Definitely the silver lining to that year,” said Parsons, today the father of daughters Abby (8), Maggy (6) and Maddox (5).
The next season was big, too: In ’96-97, Parsons first played under well-traveled ex-NHLer Doug Shedden (Pittsburgh, Detroit, Quebec, Toronto) for the first time with the ECHL’s Louisiana IceGators. Shedden next brought Parsons with him to Flint, Mich., where they won the 1999-200 United Hockey League championship, and then to Memphis of the Central Hockey League, where they won back-to-back titles (2001-02 and ’02-03). Parsons scored at least 54 goals in his first three seasons with Memphis, and was twice named CHL Most Valuable Player.
The closest the ride came to ending was after 2006-2007, when Parsons’ Quad City Mallards moved to the American Hockey League, leading the UHL to morph into a “new,” scaled-down version of the IHL. (The “original” IHL, like the AHL a step below the NHL, folded after 2000-2001.) Bloomington claimed Parsons in a dispersal draft, and Parsons decided he could handle the two-hour drive from the Quad City region (on the Mississippi River, encompassing communities in Illinois and Iowa) to the U.S. Cellular Arena in Bloomington, home of the Prairie Thunder.
Despite the long drive, Parsons is never far from reminders of the record he’s pursuing.
A player-assistant to head coach Jarrod Skalde, Parsons is more concerned with the three-game losing streak Bloomington took into Friday night’s game at Muskegon, Mich. After that, the Prairie Thunder returned home to play the Kalamazoo Wings on Saturday night.
The goal-scoring record isn’t likely to be the last milestone of Parsons’ career. He’s only 30 games from 1,000, five points shy of 1,300. With a team-high 21 points in 14 games this year, he’s certainly not playing like a guy who’ll turn 40 next month.
“People ask all the time when I’m going to retire,” he said. “This could be my last year, and I could be talked into another. If I see I’m not physically able to play as well as I want, then I don’t want to do it.


In butter tarts, raisins or no raisins? "Yeah! Why not? I put raisins in everything."
Timothy Fu is a man with two passions: baking and the trombone.
"'The Great Canadian Tromboning Show' isn't likely to happen, so I thought I'd apply for the Great Canadian Baking Show," he says.
In fact, Timothy planned to apply last year. "I had my form filled out, I had my audition video and then I read the fine print," he says. "It said 'You have to be 19,' and I was like, 'Aw shucks, I'm only 18.'"
One year later, Timothy is finally old enough to be on the show.
"This is probably the most exciting thing that's happened to me in my life," he says. "I hate to think I've peaked at 19...but I might have."
Timothy is a self-taught baker. He likes to incorporate traditional Chinese flavours and spices into his baking, particularly ginger. He's been passionate about baking from the moment it was introduced to him in home economics class.
"My first exposure to baking was in...Grade 7," he says. "It was most students' favourite rotation: we got to eat the desserts we baked. It was a no-brainer to start baking desserts at home too. I spent a lot of my free time learning the basics of baking, trying new recipe after new recipe. In high school, I started our school's baking club."
When he's not baking, Timothy is a full-time student, studying biology at the University of Alberta. He's also the first chair trombonist in the school's orchestra and volunteers at the campus food bank. He says that balancing school and his passion for baking can take some creativity.
"I'll have a cake in the oven and my physiology notes on the counter," he says. "When I started university, baking began to fall more into the background of my life as I had less free time. The Great Canadian Baking Show is the perfect chance to bring baking back to the forefront of my life. It's a great opportunity to execute the flavour and design ideas that have been floating around in my head."


Less than a century since DDT was first sprayed, the spread of the Zika virus through mosquitoes has left some wondering whether regulators were too quick to move away from the chemical. But public health officials warn returning the controversial pesticide to use could do more harm than good in some places.
DDT, which first came into use as an insecticide in the 1930s, played a crucial role helping Allied forces protect themselves from mosquitoes carrying malaria in World World II and eventually helped eliminate the deadly disease from the U.S. But despite its successes, public opinion turned quickly in the 1960s as outrage grew over DDT’s potential risks to human health and animals and many countries joined the U.S. in ultimately banning its use.
Today, health officials caution that while the benefits of the pesticide can outweigh health concerns in some contexts, spraying DDT to combat Zika would be premature and potentially very misguided.
The first concern for public health officials when considering whether to use DDT is if the method of applying the pesticide will actually kill the targeted mosquitoes. Most applications of the pesticide today occur on the walls of indoor dwellings—targeting mosquitoes that prey on humans while they sleep at night. This tactic, frequently used in Africa, works in areas where mosquitoes carrying disease bite at night while people are asleep, according to Lynn Goldman, dean of the George Washington University School of Public Health. More research is needed to understand other mosquito populations and learn whether DDT use will be effective.
Policymakers also have to weigh the potential effects of DDT on human health. The impact of the chemical is not necessarily immediate, but can be devastating to those who ingest it. Research has suggested that DDT has the potential to disrupt the human nervous system in the same way it does to insects. That may mean cancer, infertility and other long-term health effects including developmental problems in young children. DDT remains in the environment where it’s sprayed for years, potentially affecting multiple generations.
Taking the risk of exposing people to DDT can make sense in areas at high risk for malaria—though the question remains a topic of debate for health officials. After all, that disease kills nearly 500,000 people each year. But it less makes sense, at least for now, when combatting a disease like Zika that doesn’t kill those it infects and has yet to spread as widely. Unnecessary use of DDT will also make it less effective going forward as mosquitoes grow resistant. The first round of spraying DDT will effectively kill a large share of the local mosquito population, but fewer and fewer of the insects will die with each consecutive spray, limiting its utility in a future crisis.
Instead of focusing on pesticides to address Zika, public health officials are now advocating a comprehensive approach to addressing the virus that includes studying the species of mosquito that spreads the virus, developing a Zika vaccine, eliminating places where mosquitoes can breed and potentially introducing genetically modified mosquitoes that will help reduce the population.


Project will pay growers to try methods to keep harmful carbon in the soil.
On 1,100 acres of farmland near Austin, Minn., 47-year-old Tom Cotter has embraced no-till planting and cover crops that keep carbon stored in his soil and out of the atmosphere. Cotter changed his farming methods for financial reasons, not just to fight climate change, and stuck with them long enough to see them pay off.
Cotter sees a new pilot program in the 2018 federal farm bill that pays farmers to experiment with the same growing style as a chance for others to enjoy the economic and environmental benefits he has.
The $25 million test project will measure how much additional carbon the agriculture sector can keep out of the atmosphere by leaving fields untilled or minimally tilled and covered with vegetation.
Farming techniques that fight climate change by increasing carbon stored in soil do not work everywhere, explained Tim Smith, a professor of bioproducts and biosystems engineering at the University of Minnesota. But where they do work, soil quality and productivity improves. They also reduce the need for fertilizers that contribute to carbon in the atmosphere.
The pilot program aims to “reward farmers for sequestering carbon in their soil, but we need to verify that they are doing that,” said David Kolsrud, who farmed in Luverne before starting a private funding group and working in the renewable-energy sector.
The carbon sequestration experiment in the farm bill was the brainchild of an unlikely coalition that includes the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) as well as the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the American Coalition for Ethanol. Those normally competing groups came together to persuade Congress to fund a model for encouraging farming that is simultaneously profitable and environmentally friendly.
The project will pay selected participants to revive old farming methods to draw more carbon from the atmosphere into the soil and keep it there.
“Ag [has] a major opportunity to protect the climate,” said Nicole Lederer of E-2, a group that advocates for policies that work economically as well as environmentally. Lederer helped broker the deal between the corn growers and the resource council that led to the pilot program.
Fundamentally, the program relies on disturbing the soil as little as possible to limit the release of carbon stored in the roots of plants and decomposing vegetation. It also emphasizes keeping ground covered with crops year-round to prevent the release of carbon from erosion by water or wind.
Cotter said the combination reduces the need for fertilizer. “Instead of spending 20 bucks an acre killing the ground, I want my soil livestock [worms and other organic creatures] doing my tillage,” he said.
That can mean planting cover crops rather than letting fields lie fallow. It especially means cutting down on or eliminating tillage, said Lara Bryant, NRDC’s deputy director of water and agriculture nature programs.
No-till or low-till farming requires some special equipment. Cotter grows no-till soybeans using an $1,800 adjustment to the closing mechanism on his planter. He grows low-till corn by planting seed in narrow bands about 10 inches wide. He bought a used vertical till machine for $8,000 at auction to help do that and shared the cost of the machine with a neighbor.
These sorts of techniques fell out of favor in the 1970s when plentiful land and expanding crop production led farmers to use “more extractive systems,” according to Bryant. Rewarding those who invest in equipment to return to the old practice is a necessary part of the pilot project.
The prospect of cap-and-trade payments for carbon reduction or the development of low-carbon fuel standards and products such as low-carbon feedstock can provide financial incentives, Lederer said.
The Minnesota Farmers Union offered its imprimatur to the pilot program as advocates made their case to members of Congress. Farmers union President Gary Wertish said details of how the program will work are still being developed. The basic concept includes paying farmers who undertake healthy soil practices, measuring their success and passing the data on to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to set up payment rates for various practices that could be funded under the agency’s environmental quality incentives program, which averages about $2 billion a year in the new five-year farm bill.
California already has a state program that rewards farmers for sequestering carbon in their soil, Kolsrud noted.
How well the program would work in Minnesota depends on where you farm. In Blue Earth County, Minnesota Farm Bureau President Kevin Paap said the short growing season and frozen ground can be obstacles to no-till and cover-crop strategies.


Right - that’s all from me folks.
Any serious accidents will be reported on our news feed.
But until then, stay safe!
B1044 The Avenue in Godmanchester in both directions is partially blocked. So there’s stop-start traffic due to an accident involving three vehicles involved between Park Lane and B1514 Riverside Road.
Both directions are closed on the A1123 Rectory Road in Bluntisham. A car is in a ditch between Holliday’s Road and B1050 Chapel Lane.
There’s queuing traffic on the A10 Royston Road in both directions at Station Road (Foxton Level Crossing).
There’s very slow traffic on the A428 Cambridge Road in both directions at A1198 Ermine Street South.
There’s queuing traffic on the A141 Spittals Way around B1044 Stukeley Road / B1044 Stukeley Road.
There’s slow traffic due to an accident, after a car into a ditch involved on A1123 Rectory Road near Holliday’s Road.
The avenue in both directions on the B1044 due to an accident, three vehicles involved between Park Lane and B1514 Riverside Road.
There’s queuing traffic due to an accident involving EIGHT VEHICLES on the A1139 Fletton Parkway Eastbound between J2 Goldhay Way / Malborne Way / Hargate way and J3 A1260 The Serpentine / A1260 Nene Parkway (Hampton Roundabout), congestion to A1(M) J17.
Check out Jeremy Clarkson explaining how Amazon drone works in a video, after the company announced the launch of a private customer trial in the UK today (December 14).
There’s queuing traffic on the A1134 Newmarket Road in both directions around Colham’s Lane (The Retail Park).
Norfolk Police have been called to an incident on Trinity Road near Mill Bank in Norfolk where there is apparently a van that’s ended up in a ditch.
Officers are on their way to confirm what’s happened.
There’s been an accident on Trinity Road near Mill Bank in Norfolk. Norfolk Police are on its way to the accident as we speak.
More updates as I have them.
Bad news and good news!
There’s been an accident in Barton Mills, Suffolk on the A1101 Bury Road. Heavy traffic is on the McDonald’s side of the roundabout.
The B1103 Burwell Road near Iceni Way in Exning, Suffolk has been cleared however, as the obstruction we previously reported has been moved.
Lanes on the A1139 Frank Perkins Parkway (Southbound) in Peterborough has also been re-opened, after an accident was cleared.
It's all kicking off on the Cambridgeshire roads and beyond.
There’s queuing traffic on the A47 in both directions at the A1101 Elm High Road in Norfolk.
There’s slow traffic on the A1307 Hills Road between A603 Gonville Place / Regent Street and Fendon Road (Addenbrooke’s Hospital roundabout).
One lane has been blocked due to an accident on the A1139 Frank Perkins Parkway in Peterborough, southbound, at J7 Oxney Road / Eastfield Road.
There are reports of an obstruction on the road B1103 Burwell Road near Iceni Way.
There’s slow traffic on the A47 Soke Parkway Eastbound at J20 A15 Paston Parkway / A1139 Paston Parkway, in the roadworks area.
There’s slow traffic on A1 Great North Road Northbound at B661 Perry Road / High Street (Buckden Roundabout).
I’ll have more updates on the accident in Peterborough shortly.
There’s going to be an emergency road closure on Water Lane in Histon from 7pm tonight.
Rush hour motorists travelling through Histon are being advised to expect days from tomorrow morning until Friday night.
More to come in an article that’ll be posted shortly.
There are reports of an obstruction on the A47 at Kings Lynn in Norfolk at the A17 Pullover Roundabout.
The A421 Great Barford Bypass, Eastbound, in Roxton (Bedfordshire) has slow traffic.
The A1134 Newmarket Road in Chesterton, BOTH DIRECTIONS around Coldham’s Lane, has heavy traffic.
That’s all traffic updates for now. I’m sure it’ll pick up at some point.
Some positive travel updates today.
An earlier accident that occured on the A1 Southbound in Wittering at Barnack Drift (Barnack Turn Off) has been cleared, and all lanes are free to travel through.
The A10 Main Road at West Winch in Norfolk is now clear.
Traffic has returned to normal on the A1302 Parkway in both directions around Risbygate Street in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
Greetings! Thanks for joining me for this afternoon’s updates. I’m sure you’re all gearing up with great anticipation on how the rest of the day will turn out.
I’m sure it’ll be sensational.


Well, let me say right off the bat, I've never done this before so please forgive my stupidity.
Your temperature is not an issue, but your motherboard is if it doesn't allow for changes to be made to core voltages and the FSB. You can try using a software utility (like SoftFSB or the like) but they depend on motherboard support so you may or may not have any real luck. Also, the software methods of overclocking are generally not nearly as effective as making direct changes to the CMOS. If you decide to scrap the mainboard and get something more friendly to the enthusiast, give a shout and you'll have a LOT of help in getting the most out of it as you can.
Good luck. I haven't kept up with the overclocking utilities, but some have had luck with them.


Home News Opinion: Can Newsom Housing Campaign Succeed?
Opinion: Can Newsom Housing Campaign Succeed?
“Every time we build new units and move people in, at least the same number of homeless people move into whatever cities do the building...With our climate and our policies, we are attracting homeless people from all over America.” Photo: Sam Catanzaro.
It turns out Gov. Gavin Newsom was deadly serious when he insisted as a candidate last year that California needs to build 3.5 million new housing units over the next ten years in order to solve its affordable housing crisis. That’s a total of 3.5 million, more than double what builders around the state have put up in any of the last few decades.
Newsome resent that message a few weeks into his new job, when he successfully urged Attorney General Xavier Becerra to sue the Orange County city of Huntington Beach for allegedly failing to allow enough new housing to handle its population growth.


Japan is less than two years away from making a fundamental change in its legal system, by allowing jury trials. Under the new system, average citizens will work alongside judges to issue verdicts in many criminal cases. As Yuriko Nagano reports from Tokyo, the greatest hurdle to the experiment is expected to be persuading Japanese citizens to participate.
In Japan, as in most Asian countries, judges alone make decisions in trials. But starting in 2009, juries will be participating in Japanese courts, under what is called a "saibanin" system.
The new system has not yet been confirmed. At first, it will be tested for three years. And it will be limited in scope. Juries will only be used in certain criminal cases, involving serious crimes such as murder.
Robert Precht, a U.S. defense lawyer and legal scholar at the University of Montana, is helping Japanese judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers and citizens to implement the change. He spoke to journalists in Tokyo on Thursday.
"The saibanin system and these other reforms are intended to transform Japanese citizens from viewing themselves as governed objects into governing objects," Precht says.
For each trial, there will be a panel of three judges and six jurors, who will be citizens selected at random.
The jury panel will sit in the same room with the judges to deliberate on the evidence and reach a verdict. If the verdict is guilty, the jurors will also vote on the sentence, and their votes will be equal to those of the judges.
The aim, Precht says, is to bring more transparency to the legal process.
Japan is already testing a pre-trial system, which determines which evidence can be admitted in a trial. The new system was used in the highly publicized recent trial of Horie Takafumi, former chief executive officer of the Internet company Livedoor. Judges issued a conviction in Takafumi's stock manipulation trial in about a year.
Typically, Japanese trials can take years. Experts hope the new reforms will speed them up.
Another change to the system will have witnesses take the stand in trials, where attorneys can question them in front of the jury. Currently, all testimony is written, and then given to the judges.
Japan did use a jury system between 1928 and 1943, but switched to the judges-only process after that.
The greatest hurdle, experts say, will be persuading jurors to express their opinions, and even argue with judges. In Japanese culture, ordinary citizens are generally reluctant to directly question or challenge professionals, such as judges or doctors.


Walani Ndhlovu's journey from a dirt-floored hut in the African country of Malawi to Union College included a stop last week on stage with Tom Brokaw at Lincoln Center in New York City.
Brokaw interviewed Ndhlovu at a gala for Maloto, a not-for-profit organization based in Nyack, Rockland County. The group helps educate orphaned and impoverished children in Malawi, one of the smallest and poorest countries in Africa. Brokaw's wife, Meredith Brokaw, is a former board member of the group.
In 2015, Maloto helped Ndhlovu attend Taft School, a prep school in Watertown, Conn. After graduating, he chose Union because of its engineering program and picturesque campus. He was the first Malawian student at both Taft and Union. A Maloto donor covered his tuition at both schools.
He offers a saying about his improbable path in his native Chichewa language: Dziliko nkulinga utatosako. "It's there if you try to look for it."
Ndhlovu, 21, is a sophomore majoring in mechanical engineering at Union. His father, Herbert Ndhlovu, died of an undiagnosed disease when the boy was 3 years old. His mother raised seven children by selling snack foods along the roadside. They settled in Mzuzu, a city of 130,000, and squatted in the shell of a home before a relative gave them a small parcel of land. They built a two-room, mud-brick hut by hand. Their mother cooks meals over an open fire. They roll out thin sleeping mats on the dirt floor at night. Their small hut has no electricity or indoor plumbing.
When it rains, the thatched roof leaks and wind drives rainwater through open windows, covered only with curtains.
The kids fetched water from a well and collected sticks for firewood. They washed clothes in a nearby river. When he turned 12, Walani joined his older brothers picking corn, known as maize. They toiled for 12-hour shifts under a broiling sun for the equivalent of $2 or $3. It was a hard life with few opportunities.
But Ndhlovu was exceptionally smart, especially in math and science. Local educators noticed his brilliant mind and tapped him for enrollment at the private Mzuzu International Academy, funded by Maloto — which means "dream" in Chichewa. He made the most of his chance.
"I was top of my class every year," he said.
Maloto also provides meals to children orphaned by Malawi's high rate of HIV/AIDS, which has driven life expectancy below 60 years old. An estimated 1 million of the country's 18 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. Malawi had the lowest gross national income per capita, about $250, according to a 2015 World Bank report.
At Union, Ndhlovu spends eight hours a week as a work-study student, doing computer work in the facilities department. He earns $9.50 per hour and sends the money home to his mother. It is enough for the family to live on and she was able to stop selling roadside snacks. His pay is more than his two sisters earn as school teachers in Mzuzu.
He calls his mother each Sunday on her solar-powered cellphone. "She misses me a lot," he said. With his first paycheck, he bought corrugated tin sheets to cover the thatched roof. He next plans to purchase windows for his family's hut.
"I try to make my family proud," he said.
More than a decade ago, photographer Steve Jacobs and I traveled to Malawi for a special report covering the impact of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, published in the Times Union in 2003. We saw many youths playing soccer with balls fashioned with tightly wound rags, of the sort Ndhlovu described from his childhood. We spoke with teens sitting on overturned soda cases. They opened bottles of orange soda and cola with their teeth because they didn't own a bottle opener. "I can open bottles with my teeth, too," Ndhlovu said.
His keen intellect and ambition forged a path out of Malawi's poverty. He plans to go back home after graduating from Union. His dream is to construct and operate a renewable energy power plant in Malawi. "My country has been struggling for a long time," he said. "I want to make it better. A lot of people have helped me along the way. I feel obligated to give back."
Paul Grondahl is the director of the New York State Writers Institute and a former Times Union reporter. He can be reached at grondahlpaul@gmail.com.


A salesperson orientation checklist ensures a smoother onboarding process.
Sales prospecting involves identifying potential customers and generating new leads. Training for these activities prepares participants to develop a systematic plan to fill their sales pipelines. Typically, training courses define prospecting, describe why it is important to a business, show how lead-generation systems work, and describe how to evaluate sales leads. You can develop your own workshops, typically as part of a larger sales-training curriculum, or purchase materials from training providers or consultants. Choose the format and scope based on your needs and budget.
Sales-prospecting training prepares participants to establish a sound approach to making calls. For example, a salesperson should develop a script for leaving voice-mail messages. These messages should clearly communicate the features and benefits of a product or service and give a compelling reason for people to contact the seller for more information. Training also provides tips and techniques for getting referrals and networking with other business professionals to sell collaboratively. Sales-prospecting training also provides participants with resources, such as videos and podcasts that provide advice from industry leaders. These resources typically cover topics such as finding new customers, promoting your business during the holidays, using email and video and selling overseas.
To generate new leads, salespeople need to communicate effectively. This includes utilizing social-media technology, such as wikis, blogs and forums, to garner interest in products or services. Salespeople must be able to start and carry a conversation, handle objections, ask questions and promote their company effectively. Training prepares personnel to manage time well, plan effectively and follow established procedures to succeed at sales prospecting.
A mentoring program connects novice salespeople with more-experienced personnel who provide coaching and guidance. For example, a seasoned expert can show a new salesperson how to develop a prospect list by paying attention to each customer's problems and finding ways to solve them using the company's product or service.
Professional organizations provide tips and techniques for conducting sales-prospecting activities and also certify sales professionals in various industries. For example, the Manufacturers' Representatives Educational Research Foundation offers the Certified Sales Professional credential training, which provides instruction, interactivity and role-playing to improve productivity and profitability. This training provides an overview of consultative selling, time management and goal setting for prospecting. Getting certified helps a salesperson prove his expertise.
Duggan, Tara. "Sales Prospecting Training." Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/sales-prospecting-training-52272.html. Accessed 19 April 2019.


The Morgan County Economic Roundtable provides residents an opportunity to ask questions and offer suggestions on matters related to Morgan County's economic development.
For those who have never attended before, it is a great opportunity to meet community leaders, business owners and residents. At the roundtable, you can take part in open discussions, ideas and questions about what is happening in the area. Morgan County Economic Development Corp. Executive Director Greg Thomason will host the roundtable, which is held monthly at rotating sites in Wiggins, Brush and Fort Morgan. The public is invited to attend. No need to RSVP.


(Harrisburg) - An early-morning state House committee meeting Wednesday drew an unusual number of protesters to the state Capitol--many of them unusually dressed.
The reason for their discontent was the meeting's featured testifier, a geologist who rejects mainstream climate science, and who has spent most of his career working and consulting for natural gas companies.
The demonstrators were from the Better Path Coalition and other groups, and came dressed as mythical creatures like unicorns and leprechauns in an effort, they said, to show that while the creatures are imaginary, climate change is real.
The geologist, Gregory Wrightstone, was tapped to testify by Daryl Metcalfe, one of the most conservative members of the House and chair of the Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, who said he invited Wrightstone to debunk "myths."
Wrightstone doesn't deny the earth is warming, or that CO2 has increased rapidly since industrialization. But he told assembled lawmakers that based on his study of geologic records, he believes warming started significantly before industrialization, in the 17th century.
He said the warming the warming since then is natural, and he argued that it's actually a positive thing.
"This cold period was marked by crop failure, famine, and mass-depopulation because of naturally-occurring global cooling," he said. "Earth and humanity have benefited greatly from what's been called the long, slow thaw."
Most scientists don't dispute that there was some natural warming after the cold snap of the 17th century.
But Wrightstone's broader conclusion, that current warming trends are natural and untethered to CO2 emissions, is directly contrary to the scientific consensus.
Richard Alley, a geosciences professor at Penn State who specializes in ice core testing, said he doesn't believe there is any natural explanation for the rapid warming that has been measured since the 20th century.
"We see the warming," he said. "And then we ask, well is it the sun? No, the sun, if anything is going the other way. Is it the oceans? Well, heat's going into the oceans, it's not coming out. Well, is it anything else we can find? No, it isn't. The CO2 explains what's happening and nothing else does."
Michael Mann, an atmospheric science and geoscience professor, also of Penn State, agreed.
"While climate does change naturally, we are warming the planet at an unprecedented rate, putting carbon into the atmosphere a million times faster than the natural geological increases in carbon dioxide that were responsible for e.g. the warmth of the early Cretaceous period," he wrote in an email.
Citing information gathered by the National Research Council, NASA estimates the earth has warmed by approximately 0.7 percent over the last century, which it says represents a rate of warming roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of ice-age recovery.
Climate change is already harming both human and natural systems.
Wrightstone, who has a master's degree in geology, told the committee that while he has published papers on paleo-climatology, he hasn't written any on contemporary climate science.
He has self-published a book on his theories.
Wrightstone spent most of his career in the natural gas industry.
After his testimony, he confirmed he worked as a geologist for the Pittsburgh-based gas company Texas Keystone for 20-odd years, but said the experience doesn't influence his current work.
"If I was still receiving payment or being influenced by them, yes," he said, his gas industry work might be a factor. "But that has no influence on me. That was in a past life."
However, Wrightstone remains involved, in various capacities, with the industry.
After working for Texas Keystone, Wrightstone started his own business, Wrightstone Energy Consulting. He has frequently written and been quoted as a natural gas consultant in articles and videos for Hart Energy, a Houston-based energy industry publisher, and in ones written for or aggregated by similar industry publishers.
Asked when he had stopped consulting for gas companies, Wrightstone said he still does "a little bit when I can, but I've been so busy I turn down almost all my work."
"I've got to make some money," he added.
He is also on the advisory board at conservative think tank The Heartland Institute--a position for which he said he accepts no money. The organization has been known to accept considerable funding from the oil and gas industry, and has worked to sow doubt in climate science.


Fifteen past winners of the Nobel Peace Prize have issued a letter to Chinese president Hu Jintao, asking that the newest winner, Liu Xiaobo, be released from his 11-year prison sentence, and that his wife, Liu Xia, be freed from de-facto house arrest. Announcement of the appeal, from the Freedom Now organization, here; PDF of the letter here.
One interesting aspect of the effort, which according to Freedom Now was organized by Desmond Tutu, is its "catch more flies with honey" approach. For instance, it says: "The Chinese government's release of Dr. Liu would be an extraordinary recognition of the remarkable transformation China has undergone in recent decades."
Another interesting aspect is the list of signatories, below. Notably absent is a 2007 winner. I would love to have heard whatever discussion occurred between Desmond Tutu and that Laureate (OK, I'm talking about Al Gore) leading to the latter's decision not to become the 16th signer.
Let us hope that the overall "correlation of forces," foreign and domestic, convinces the Chinese leadership that they are better off letting Liu and his wife go rather than keeping them locked up.
UPDATE: An alert reader writes to ask, "Given that Desmond Tutu organized this, isn't Nelson Mandela an even more glaring absence?" Fair question. (Health? Not working it out by the deadline?) Still, it is an impressive group, and it would be great if the Chinese government could respond to their high-road pitch to think of clemency toward the Lius as a sign of strength and success rather than weakness.


The new year is a great time to take a step back and review your campaigns to see where you can make improvements. Columnist Casie Gillette shares her ideas for starting off 2018 right with SEO.
It’s that time of year where we make our resolutions, promise to be better people and try to start the year fresh. It’s also the time of year where people like me put out “ways to make 2018 better” posts and everyone’s eyes roll into the back of their head. But bear with me!
See, every December, as we pull together reports and commence planning for the new year, we spend an enormous amount of time thinking about all the new things we can do come January. We come to the table with fresh ideas and the “next big thing” to keep our clients or bosses excited.
That’s great! We want and need new ideas, but they often come at the expense of our old ideas — which, given the cyclical nature of SEO, shouldn’t be forgotten.
I’ll be the first to admit that it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day. Between the daily tasks at hand, the pressure to hit goals and the ongoing updates from search engines making life difficult, it can be hard to step back and get a holistic view of your site and how it’s performing.
At KoMarketing, we start every new program with a full-scale technical audit, followed by a keyword roadmap and content audit. It ensures we not only understand the landscape but also get our clients’ sites in the best shape possible, as soon as possible.
But what happens when you’ve been working with a client for two or three years? What happens when hundreds of changes have been made, messaging has shifted and company goals have evolved?
While we try to perform quarterly technical audits, they aren’t always as in-depth as that first time. In addition, after a few years of writing and adding new content to the site, that initial content audit likely no longer applies.
Start your year off right by giving your site a full audit, evaluating everything from technical issues to content to competitor performance.
Were new features added in the past year? Were brand guidelines put into place? Did the competitive landscape change a bit? Whatever the case may be, it’s important to revisit your overall messaging to ensure your target keywords still make sense and you aren’t missing any major opportunities.
Take for example this scenario: A few years ago, I had a client in the logistics space who was targeting “shipping” terms. Our content was geared toward shipping, our SEO efforts were geared toward shipping, and overall, performance on the terms was pretty great.
Fast-forward to the following year, when those terms started driving much less traffic and leads. Why? The landscape had shifted toward “transportation.” Searches were up, the types of results had changed, and more competitors had started using the term.
By revisiting our keywords and content, we were able to make some updates to existing content, shift the focus a bit and adapt to the changing landscape. The client now targets both to ensure we are capturing the variety of searches.
Here’s another example: Mid-year, a different client in the technology space launched a feature dedicated to improving customer engagement. While the initial messaging, and in turn, keyword targets, were closely tied to engagement, it turned out the search intent didn’t match. After revisiting the messaging, the keywords and the search results themselves, we shifted the focus toward CRM and saw an immediate jump in time on page and form inquiries.
It’s no secret search results and business landscapes frequently change. As search marketers, it’s our job to make sure we are on top of both. Now is the time.
I am a huge fan of content repurposing. I’ve talked about it, written about it, and I’m pretty sure the people I work with are tired of me pushing it on them.
Look, we spend a ton of time coming up with new ideas — and frankly, it’s hard. Plus, you just did a content audit (right?), so you should have a pretty good idea of what content is working, what content isn’t working and what content you need to create.
Have older evergreen pieces that could be spruced up? Have timely pieces that can be updated to the current year? Either way, start identifying older pieces that have potential to drive traffic and new eyes to the site. A tweak here and a new sentence there might be all the changes needed.
Assets like videos, infographics, e-books, webinars and product guides are huge undertakings which are often promoted once and left for dead. Take a look through these assets and figure out how you can better utilize them. For example, e-books can be turned into blog posts, webinars into sales landing pages and infographics into social content.
Is there a theme on your site that performs really well? Is there an idea that you love and think deserves more than one chance? While I am not advocating you simply go out and republish old content, I am suggesting you go find the things that work and figure out a way to take advantage of it.
As you dive into 2018, focus on your resolutions and work to build successful programs, remember that sometimes looking back can help you move forward, especially in the world of SEO. Cheers!


Bikram is all about concentration and focus, but it can be difficult to stay in the zone when your feet start cramping up. Bikram -- also called "hot" -- yoga is fairly intense, so some muscle soreness and cramping is to be expected. By ensuring that you're properly hydrated and checking your posture and technique, you should be able to keep cramping at bay. If not, a quick break and a soothing massage can get you back in the game.
Check your posture and alignment. When your posture is off, it can create excess pressure in the feet. For instance, when you're in Balancing Stick pose, leaning too far forward could put excess pressure on the balls of your feet, when the weight should be evenly spread through the feet instead.
Spread your toes and ensure that when you are in poses that require foot balance, your weight is evenly distributed along all four corners of the feet. Rolling to your instep can also cause cramping along the inside of your foot, so keep your feet flat on the floor and avoid rolling inward. This is especially important during challenging poses, like Standing Head to Knee.
Modify poses that feel too intense on your feet or if your feet begin to cramp. For instance, Awkward pose requires you to balance your full body weight onto the balls of your feet, which can cause pain. Use flat feet in that pose until you gain the strength and balance to distribute the weight more efficiently and can maintain the pose without cramping.
Massage your feet with a yoga strap during seated poses. Cramped muscles can contract and affect your ability to stretch. When in Corpse or Separate Leg Stretching pose, wrap a strap around the balls of your feet and tug upward with your hands to stretch out and massage your cramped feet before going into the second set of poses.
Swap your usual bottle of water for an electrolyte drink. Water is typically fine for moderate exercise under 60 minutes, but since a hot yoga class typically lasts for 90 minutes, you may need to replace the potassium and sodium lost through sweat, as well as the water. A salty sports drink can ward off muscle cramps related to a potassium deficiency, allowing you to finish class in comfort.


It was the sort of story that made Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) look so awful, he managed to even surprise his critics. In mid-April, the far-right governor vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have allowed pharmacists to dispense an effective anti-overdose drug without a prescription. But it was LePage’s explanation that added insult to injury.
“A junior at Deering High School had three Narcan shots in one week. And after the third one, he got up and went to class. He didn’t go to the hospital. He didn’t get checked out. He was so used to it. He just came out of it and went to class,” LePage said.
That’s quite an anecdote, which the Republican governor appears to have completely made up.
The Huffington Post reported yesterday that the principal at Deering High School described LePage’s story as “absolutely not true,” adding that the anecdote doesn’t even make sense – because Narcan isn’t available at the school.
On Monday, the governor again insisted the story was accurate, and pointed to Portland Police Chief Michael Sauschuck as someone who could verify the incident.
Soon after, Sauschuck also said every relevant detail of LePage’s story is wrong.
Circling back to our previous coverage, Naloxone – sometimes known by its brand name, Narcan – is a safe and effective life-saving treatment that counteracts overdoses. The point is not to cure someone of an addiction, but rather, to prevent them from dying.
And if defending this posture lead Maine’s Tea Party governor to share anecdotes with made-up details, apparently that’s all right, too.
Update: LePage has now admitted he was wrong about the story.


MIAMI, March 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- In anticipation of the newest cruise ship joining its fleet, Regent Seven Seas Cruises [®] announced in January details of the Regent Suite on Seven Seas Splendor™, the largest and most elegant suite ever built on a luxury ship. The lavish Regent Suite sets the tone for all 14 other suite categories on Seven Seas Splendor. Today, Regent reveals additional details of all guest suite categories, further establishing Seven Seas Splendor as the ship that will perfect luxury when she debuts in February 2020. Images are available here.
Luxury is found in intricate details, exquisite finishings and enormous balcony space. More than 46,000 square-feet of Italian marble will adorn Seven Seas Splendor -- more than an acre of marble -- including the marble-detailed bathrooms in each ofher 375 guest suites. Nearly 52,000 square-feet of balcony space is found on the all-balcony vessel -- larger than the size of an American football field and averaging 138 square feet of balcony space per suite. Approximately 500 crystal chandeliers will illuminate the ship's interior.
"Perfecting luxury is about obsessing over large and small details," explains Regent Seven Seas Cruises President and CEO Jason Montague. "From specially commissioned one-of-a-kind artwork to visually stimulating touches throughout the ship, each space on Seven Seas Splendor will display finely tailored designs that offer a comfortable and stylish experience for luxury travelers. With an expansive passenger-to-space ratio and an exceptionally low guest-to-crew ratio, Seven Seas Splendor will be one of the world's most spacious, intimate and beautiful ships ever to sail the globe."
Distinctive Suites The Master, Grand, Splendor and Seven Seas suite categories represent the 32 Distinctive Suites on board Seven Seas Splendor. Guests in Distinctive Suites enjoy personalized butler service, guaranteed dining reservations and customized pillows and bath products, among other amenities. These suites are designed to blend comfort and luxury, focusing on impeccable details, exquisite high-contrast materials and lush jewel-toned accents. The suites are designed by Studio Dado, Tillberg Design, and Total Solution Interiors.
Master Suite. This two-bedroom oasis is styled like an elegant Park Avenue palace, replete with rich woods and highlighted by touches of aubergine. Located at the aft of the ship on decks eight and nine allowing for unobstructed views of the horizon, the four Master Suites measure between 1,895 and 2,108 square-feet and boast an expansive living area, exquisite bar for entertaining, spacious balconies up to 994 square-feet, and two full ornate marble and stone bathrooms.
Grand Suite. The Grand Suite features striking emerald design accents perfected by rich grey, brown, and cream tones. Ranging from 1,277 to 1,836 square-feet, the Grand Suite features an expansive private balcony, two majestic baths, and living areas with rich stone mosaics, exotic woods and curated furniture based on haute couture fashion. Craftsmanship is foremost on display with bespoke detailing, and an upholstered leather wall in an intricate stitch pattern serves as the backdrop for the bedroom. With ample space, the suite features a living room with a wrapped-leather floor-to-ceiling bar -- ideal for entertaining.
Splendor Suite. Ranging in size from 821 to 918 square-feet, the one bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom Splendor Suites are designed with calming hues of cream, grey and brown, and plush furniture. It features a dining table for in-room service, spacious closet, and an elegant marble and stone-detailed bath.
Seven Seas Suite. This sanctuary offers more than 800 square-feet of exquisite space, and exudes a cosmopolitan apartment feel with a soothing color palette complemented by plush furnishings. The suite flows effortlessly from living room to dining area to bedroom, with sliding glass doorways leading to a spacious private balcony. A magnificent marble bathroom sits adjacent to the oversized bedroom and large walk-in closet.
Spacious Suites The Penthouse, Concierge, Superior, Deluxe Veranda and Veranda suite categories are purposefully designed to maximize ocean views that can be enjoyed from the solace of a large private balcony. Along with the heavenly comfort of Elite Slumber beds, guests enjoy spacious closets, plush bathrobes and slippers, an included mini-bar stocked daily, and many other prime amenities.
Penthouse Suite. Conjuring elegance from floor to ceiling and complete with personalized butler service, the 55 sapphire-inspired Penthouse Suites come in three categories that range up to 642 square-feet, with an entertainment center that separates the living room and bedroom. Sleek sliding glass doorways in both the bedroom and living room lead to an oversized balcony with comfortable outdoor furnishings. Even the smallest of luxury details are included such as lined jewelry drawers to designated spaces for designer handbags. A perfected luxury from Seven Seas Explorer, Seven Seas Splendor's sister ship, can be found in the closets. Penthouse Suites on Seven Seas Splendor will include larger expansive walk-in closets designed with two entries from the bathroom and living room. In addition, bathrooms have been designed for additional storage and counter space.
Concierge Suites. Concierge Suites are highlighted by a soothing color palette of creams and blushes that inspire serenity and comfort. This 464 square-foot suite aboard Seven Seas Splendor comes in two categories and is purposefully designed to maximize ocean views, with the custom-crafted Elite Slumber™ Beds facing the private balcony, allowing guests front row access to stunning ocean scenery. Skilled master craftsmen adorn headboards with the finest shagreen leather, and furniture is upholstered with the most elegant Italian fabrics. Guests who stay in a Concierge Suite or a higher category suite enjoy a free one-night pre-cruise hotel package.
Superior Suite. Spacious and chic, the 464 square-foot Superior Suite is filled with light and peaceful serenity that comes with expansive ocean views. Its two categories feature a grand balcony, spacious sitting area and residential-like walk-in closet.
Deluxe Veranda and Veranda Suites. The two-category Deluxe Veranda and Veranda suites on Seven Seas Splendor are up to 361 and 307 square feet respectively, placing them among the most spacious entry-level suites at sea. They feature a warm island manor feel and boast curtains that separate the bedroom, with vanity and sitting area outfitted with a plush sofa, a coffee table large enough for in-suite dining, and a large desk space.
Observation Lounge In addition to suite designs, Regent today announced the interior design of the Observation Lounge on board Seven Seas Splendor. The Observation Lounge, designed by Studio DADO, inspires the feeling of an enchanting English garden. Incorporating a light and airy color palette, the Observation Lounge's centerpiece is a unique and stunning whimsical chandelier comprised of hand-painted porcelain flowers, peonies and roses. Traditional English architectural molding adorn the walls and are colored in neutral hues to create a contemporary, elegant setting. The furniture adds to the tranquil nature of the space through its soft curved forms and lush upholsteries inspired by the fluid forms of flower petals. Specially commissioned art by Gorman Studios incorporates hand-painted English roses and flowers on glass screens to reflect the look of porcelain chandeliers.
A limited number of suites are available for sailings during Seven Seas Splendor's inaugural season. To learn more, please visit www.RSSC.com, call 1-844-4REGENT (1-844-473-4368) or contact a professional travel advisor to inquire about specific Regent Seven Seas Cruises voyages, including Seven Seas Splendor sailings.
Regent Seven Seas Cruises Regent Seven Seas Cruises offers an unrivaled experience to luxury travelers. The cruise line's modern four-ship fleet visits more than 450 iconic and immersive destinations around the world, and will add Seven Seas Splendor in 2020 as the fleet's fifth ship and then grow by a sixth ship in 2023. All luxuries are included in Regent Seven Seas Cruises voyages, such as all-suite accommodations, round-trip business-class air on intercontinental flights from the U.S. and Canada, the largest collection of unlimited shore excursions, unlimited internet access, highly personalized service, exquisite cuisine, fine wines and spirits, gratuities, ground transfers and one-night, pre-cruise hotel packages for guests staying in Concierge-level suites and higher. In 2018 the cruise line concluded a $125 million refurbishment program of Seven Seas Mariner, Seven Seas Voyager and Seven Seas Navigator to elevate the fleet's elegance to the benchmark set by Seven Seas Explorer.


Alternative reality and virtual reality are gaining traction, and some of the early adopters are already trying to figure out what it means to their businesses. The use cases vary from industry to industry, but the idea is to leverage virtual assets (AR) or create a completely virtual environment (VR) that provide low-cost, yet effective means of accomplishing what is otherwise expensive and difficult in the real world.
The possibilities seem only limited by the imagination; however, adoption numbers underscore the early nature of the products and related analytics among businesses. For example, a recent survey by IT trade association CompTIA shows that about 21% of the responding organizations had some kind of AR or VR initiative in place.
"Most organizations realize there's some potential because they saw what happened with Pokémon Go last year, but it's going to take some time to happen," said Tim Herbert, senior VP of research and market Intelligence at CompTIA.
Right now, people are focused on the visualization aspects and what that means. Interest in analytics will come later as it becomes clear that what happens in an AR or VR environment needs to be monitored, analyzed and optimized. Right now, most are more focused on the technology aspect and the talent needed.
"VR analytics can empower organizations to better understand and connect with their audiences. It's about knowing exactly how your audience interacted with your content and, on a psychological level, how emotionally salient they found it," said Joshua Setzer, CEO of VR/AR solutions provider Lucid Dream. How you look at it depends upon your own job function and the objectives behind your project. A marketer may want to [understand] which parts of a message resonates with an audience and which don’t. A trainer may wish to tease out the psychophysical signatures of learning to understand which elements of content are being imprinted in memory and which are more likely to be forgotten."
Companies in different industries are exploring AR/VR technologies to see what impact they have on sales, marketing, HR, product development and more.
"If you think through some of those use cases, you can see how having some of the new streams of data would be valuable to an organization," said Herbert.
Following are a few things your organization can start thinking about today.


GUWAHATI: The Assam government has provided Rs 1 crore financial assistance for the promotion of 'Village Rockstars' which has been selected as India's official entry to the Oscars for the best foreign language film.
On Friday, chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal announced to give Rs 50 lakh for the film's promotion. Earlier, the state government had announced Rs 50 lakh just after the official declaration.
Expressing her happiness, director Rima Das thanked the state government and people of Assam for the tremendous support when she called on the chief minister on Friday at his office in the assembly. Sonowal extended his best wishes to the filmmaker for the incredible success of the film and hoped that 'Village Rockstars' would be able to win the coveted Oscars.
Rima had said she would need at least Rs 3 crore for the promotion of the film to get it going in the run for the nominations. More than 70 countries have sent their entries, out of which only five films will be nominated.


CALGARY—The year was 1984, the place an industrial city in the north of England and to Vancouver’s Jon Kimura Parker fell the honour of winning one of the most prestigious piano competitions in Europe.
“I was incredibly lucky,” the goateed pianist smiled modestly over breakfast last week, just before the finals of Canada’s most esteemed and the world’s richest piano competition, the Esther Honens International.
Now a professor at Houston’s Rice University and midway through a successful international career, Parker had come to Calgary as the Honens’ new artistic director to preside over the awarding of a $100,000 prize to the 26-year-old Georgian pianist Nicolas Namoradze.
The cash wasn’t Namoradze’s only benefit. Perhaps even more important was a three-year career development package valued at $500,000, including concert engagements, a recording, a Banff Centre residency, mentoring and management.
Winning a major competition opens doors. It does not guarantee a career. Parker recalls that his victory at the Leeds International Piano Competition sent him all over England and Canada, but years passed before he developed much of a career in the United States.
Namoradze has already played in Georgia, Hungary, Spain and the U.S. (he is currently pursing a doctorate at City University of New York), but the next few years may prove critical in securing a foothold in an overpopulated profession.
Yi Wu, winner of the first Honens piano competition in 1992, has since disappeared from the North American scene and is back in his native China, reportedly a successful piano teacher. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, who did not win, has since become an established soloist on the international circuit.
And so it goes. A great talent can have an off night at a competition. A merely very good talent can be at his or her very best. Identifying talent can be very subjective in any case. I was present for only the last few days of the Honens this time and a colleague who attended from the beginning insisted that the obvious winner didn’t even make the finals.
Three pianists from a total of 10 who were invited to participate in Calgary (selected from a much larger number who had submitted audition tapes) made it to the finals, which involved playing a chamber program with the Azahar Ensemble and a concerto with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karina Canellakis.
Namoradze’s concerto choice was the magisterial Brahms No. 2 in B-flat major. His competitors (each of whom walked away with $10,000) chose flashier pieces: 26-year-old Han Chen of Taiwan the Prokofiev No. 2 in G minor and 21-year-old Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner of the U.S. the Prokofiev No. 3 in C major.
As it happens, Sanchez-Werner also won the $5,000 audience prize, awarded for the first time this year, demonstrating how the public and the “experts” do not always agree.
Back in 1958, when Van Cliburn, at the height of the Cold War, won the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, the tall Texan was the audience favourite virtually from the beginning. But it reportedly was not until competition organizers secured Nikita Khrushchev’s acquiescence that they felt safe in awarding Cliburn the prize.
Then there was the case of Ivo Pogorelic, the Yugoslav pianist who was eliminated from the finals of the 1980 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, prompting the resignation from the jury of the famous Argentinian pianist Martha Argerich. The resulting scandal launched Pogorelic’s career.
Winning or losing doesn’t always matter. The experience of making music at a high level does. That helps explain why the Honens competition strives to identify “the complete artist,” not just the outstanding virtuoso.
To do this, it requires competitors not only to play solo recitals but to collaborate in performances with other musicians — this year with baritone Phillip Addis and violinist (and concertmaster of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra) Jonathan Crow. They also have to participate in individual filmed interviews, talking about their approach to music-making. Having agile fingers is not enough. They need to project a personality.
Each year (the event is triennial), the competition also invites a distinguished concert artist to listen to and interview each of the semifinalists, offering advice based on personal experience.
This year, the distinguished American pianist Garrick Ohlsson was the mentor and he also presented a solo recital of his own, culminating in one of the most revelatory performances of Chopin’s G minor Ballade that I have ever heard. Talk about a complete artist!


Let’s face it, not even the most advanced programming in the world can save your Facebook News Feed. The goal of the feature is to display the stories that matter most to you, and although the social network continues to tweak the formulas powering its recommendation engine, it’s not always the best at ranking posts based on your interests and interaction. Fortunately, Facebook is finally giving you some granular control over what shows up in your feed, essentially allowing you to quickly prioritize posts from specified friends and Pages so you never miss a beat when browsing.
The newly minted feature — known as “See First” — pins stories that are important to you, to the top of your News Feed. It will still let you view the rest of your News Feed as you normally would, once you scroll beyond the highlights at the top. Currently exclusive to iOS devices, it’s quick and painless to set up. Follow the directions below for all the details, so you can keep up on the people and pages you actually care about.
Step 1: Launch the Facebook app on your iOS device and tap the More button located in the bottom-right corner. Afterward, scroll to the bottom of the resulting menu and select News Feed Preferences near the bottom of the list.
Step 2: Tap Prioritize who to see first at the top of the resulting page and choose whose posts you don’t want to miss, whether talking pages, friends, or figures. Tap Done in the upper-left corner when finished to implement the changes.


In Nigeria, one anti-corruption campaigner fears that if the era of U.S.-led transparency initiatives is over, the relapse will be stark.
In February, in one of its first acts of lawmaking, the Trump Administration, with the Republican-controlled Congress, rescinded a pending Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would have required oil companies to disclose details of their payments to international governments in connection with oil and gas production.
The rule, which was mandated by a law co-sponsored by former Republican Senator Richard Lugar, of Indiana, and Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, of Maryland, was designed to combat bribery and corruption, especially in poor countries governed by kleptocrats. Thirty other countries, including Canada and the members of the European Union, had already adopted similar requirements. Yet the American Petroleum Institute and companies such as ExxonMobil, at the time when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was still its C.E.O., had lobbied against the rule. They said that it was costly to implement and gave unfair advantage to overseas competitors to which it did not apply. When Trump took power, the lobbyists got their way.
A month later, Trump’s Interior Department signalled that the Administration would also withdraw from a certification process of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. The E.I.T.I. is another corruption-fighting effort in the oil and mining sectors that involves governments, corporations, and civil-society groups. The United States officially endorsed the initiative, in 2004, because the George W. Bush Administration believed that it could promote better governance worldwide. The E.I.T.I. standards for transparency in oil finance were initially imposed mainly on poor countries, but, under the Obama Administration, the U.S. agreed, along with other wealthy countries, to adopt the standards. Trump apparently intends to reverse that decision. This is one more area, among many, where the U.S. no longer leads by example.
President Trump frequently talks about repudiating Obama Administration regulations and “bad deals,” but in some fields of international policy he is moving with equal conviction to tear up programs promoting democracy and human rights that were embraced by the Bush Administration and congressional Republican internationalists such as Lugar. In effect, Trump’s nationalism and the example of his own indifference to ethics and financial disclosure risk incentivizing corruption abroad.
The problem is not just Trump’s indifference to promoting clean government and the democratic rule of law but the persistent and determined lobbying influence that the American Petroleum Institute and other arms of the fossil-fuel industry wield in Congress. “We won the argument about revenue transparency in 2003,” when Bush, no enemy of big oil, was President, Simon Taylor, a co-founder of the investigative and advocacy group Global Witness, said. “So what are we doing still talking about it? It’s because of the capture of politics by industry.” The American oil industry promoted transparency initiatives when participation was voluntary, and the numbers to be reported were more generalized, but it has balked at the kind of specific, mandatory reporting that Lugar and Cardin urged.
It’s not as if oil-fuelled bribery or its corrosive effects on the citizens of poor nations were diminishing. In April, Global Witness published e-mails documenting the case of a payment of more than a billion dollars that Royal Dutch Shell and the Italian oil company Eni made to Nigeria through unusual channels. According to Global Witness, Shell “knew it was party to a vast bribery scheme,” and international investigations are under way. Shell has said that the payments were proper. In June, Human Rights Watch published an extensive report documenting how Equatorial Guinea, a small and impoverished oil kleptocracy in West Africa where ExxonMobil operates, has diverted national wealth away from investment in health and education, partly because of a lack of financial transparency. (ExxonMobil says on its Web site that its local affiliate has “dedicated considerable resources” to programs aimed at “improving education and health,” providing drinking water, and empowering women.) In July, the Justice Department announced civil-forfeiture proceedings to recover more than a hundred million dollars from two Nigerian businessmen whom the department accused of paying bribes to a former oil minister in order to win favorable oil deals. (The former minister has denied the charges.) The prosecutors are hoping to recover a fifty-million-dollar condominium at 157 West Fifty-seventh Street, in Manhattan, and an eighty-million-dollar yacht, the Galactica Star, which were among the men’s purchases.
There is something about oil production that fosters baroque corruption. Oil cargoes trade in a liquid global market in which it is relatively easy to mask ownership of an oil shipment or convert a stolen batch of oil to cash. In many low-income countries, oil theft presents a unique opportunity to obtain sudden transformational wealth, akin to drug trafficking.
In 2014, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released a study of more than four hundred international bribery cases, dating back to 1999. The O.E.C.D. monitors a convention against bribery signed by forty-three countries, and the study sought to identify patterns in public corruption. It found that almost two-thirds of all foreign-bribery cases involved just four industries: resource extraction, construction, transportation and storage, and communication—all fields in which government contracts or licenses are often required. The schemes reviewed were often high-level conspiracies; in more than four out of ten cases, a management-level employee paid or authorized the bribe, and in twelve per cent of the cases a chief executive was directly involved. The Trump Administration, which celebrates chief executives as fresh and effective leaders of government, inherited imperfect but useful policies to combat this scourge. It evidently isn’t interested.
Francisco Rodriguez’s case unfolded in a hotbed of liberal activism, but it still constitutes a difficult struggle with uncertain results.
How Can the Qatar Crisis Be Resolved?
Qatar is one of those small, oil-rich countries that looks like a bank waiting to be robbed by invaders or coup makers.


Why the country's media missed its 'Harvey Weinstein moment'.
Last October, the Harvey Weinstein scandal shook the US media industry into a moment of reckoning. Outlets that had previously shied away from, and in some cases covered up, abuses by the Hollywood producer began harassment investigations that saw a host of household media names pushed from their pedestals.
Italy, home to two of Harvey Weinstein's accusers, also felt the shockwaves. But Italians hoping for a similar impact on their fourth estate, where victim-blaming and objectification are notoriously common - were to be disappointed.
Instead, two features marked the fallout: the near absence of names named, and the ferocious reaction faced not by the accused, but the accusers.
Italy, it would seem, had missed its "Weinstein moment".
The problem is, it's difficult to expose such cases, especially when they happen in the industry that is supposed to be doing the exposing! And that's an industry whose leaders tend to be, on the whole, men.
Six months on from the scandal, The Listening Post went to Rome and Milan to ask journalists and media experts why the scandal played out so differently in Italy, and to discuss the problematic representation of women in Italy's media more generally.
One of Weinstein's Italian accusers is the actress Asia Argento, whose testimony of sexual assault met a media response that - with some exceptions - ranged from scepticism to open abuse.
"First they go along with it, then they whine and pretend to repent", goaded a headline in the conservative newspaper, Libero. Libero's editor, Vittorio Feltri, was one of several prominent journalists to label Argento's story as one of "prostitution" - comments that his deputy, Pietro Senaldi, happily defended in his interview with us.
"You have to know the man," Senaldi insisted. "It is well known that his journalistic career and his reputation are based on how direct and how blunt he his …"
For Elisa Giomi, a sociologist specialising in gender and media at Rome Three University, it was a feature she told us, that is typical of media coverage of such cases in Italy: "a tendency to split the victims of sexual harassment into two categories: the innocent ones and the women who asked for it."
We asked all our contributors why so few cases of harassment, including in the media industry itself, had been uncovered by Italian journalists. Pietro Senaldi's explanation was simple: "What I think is that in Italy, this phenomenon has not exploded because it is less dramatic than it is in the States. Definitely less dramatic."
It's a notion each of our female interviewees strongly disputed, pointing out that such cases are not hard to find - if you are looking for them.
"Just because there have been no denunciations to date doesn't mean it isn't happening in the media as well," said Claudia Torrisi, a contributor to VICE Italy.
"The problem is, it's difficult to expose such cases, especially when they happen in the industry that is supposed to be doing the exposing! And that's an industry whose leaders tend to be, on the whole, men."
The predominance of men in the upper echelons of Italian media is something many believe bears a significant responsibility for another persistent feature of Italian media: the objectification of women on Italian television.
Since the advent of Silvio Berlusconi's MediaSet network in the 1980s, scantily-clad showgirls - known as "veline" - have become an almost standard fixture across the TV landscape.
For Gianmaria Tammaro, a journalist and TV critic for a number of publications including La Stampa newspaper, it's a concept that belongs in another era. "It was a particular idea of what the average Italian viewer wants - a viewer that paradoxically is always assumed to be male."
Pietro Senaldi apart, on the whole, the people we spoke with viewed the Weinstein scandal as a missed opportunity for Italy's media to re-examine how it treats and portrays women.
However, they also felt the industry was moving, slowly, in the right direction. It's a trend they saw as being largely driven from below - by a new generation of readers and viewers increasingly unwilling to tolerate the ways of old.
In the wake of the global #metoo movement, sexism in Italian politics is still alive and well.


This is a fantastic opportunity to own 9+ acres! There are 30 lots total! Each lot has it's own parcel number. The lots sit at the end of Edgewood Dr. This was going to be a new development at one time as there are two other street names that the lots sit on. One of the names is Susan Trail and other is Beckett Drive. Why not be the builder to start a new development with all ranch style homes for the baby boomers! Buyers are always looking for that ranch style home with first floor living!