The iPad is coming soon. The rumor that pre-orders would begin this past Thursday failed to materialize, and there are still a number of question marks--most notably "when will the FCC approve the iPad for sale in the United States?" But, one way or another, the iPad will arrive sooner or later.
If you believe Apple's hype about the "magic" of the device, soon millions of Americans will rely on the Apple iPad for all manner of media consumption--movies, books, TV shows, newspapers, etc. That means millions of Americans will spend even more time with their faces basked in the pale glow of a backlit screen, possibly doing damage to their vision.
According to Dr. Jeffrey Anshel, a noted optometrist and author of the upcoming book Smart Medicine for Your Eyes , is concerned that in today's world we spend more and more time staring at electronic screens. The problem is not unique to the iPad, but includes other devices like the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Kindle , or the armies of Xbox gamers spending hours (days?) in front of a screen playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that young Americans are spending almost every waking hour absorbed in some form of entertainment media: mobile phones, MP3 players, handheld gaming units, and soon the iPad as well.
The problem is not unique to America's youth, though. Business professionals may not be as invested in XBox games or MP3's (OK-maybe some are), but they do spend an increasingly greater amount of time staring into a desktop monitor, notebooks, netbooks, and smartphones.
All of that time engrossed in backlit liquid crystal displays of some type or another can put a tremendous strain on your vision, and have lasting consequences for your long-term eye health. Thankfully, you don't have to live a Luddite existence and simply abandon technology.
1. 3 B's: Blink, Breathe, and Break. When looking at a computer or handheld digital device you blink two to three times less than you normally would. This can often lead to "dry eye". That may seem like something inconsequential, but in reality--for power digital users--can lead to permanent vision damage.
2. The 20/20/20 Rule. While working on the computer, reading your iPad, Kindle, etc., every 20 minutes look 20 feet away for 20 seconds to allow your eyes to refocus.
3. Consult your Doctor. Let your eye doctor know if you are a "power user" of handheld devices. Your eye doctor may provide you with a separate lens prescription for digital devices, to lower eye strain and avoid permanent damage. One pair of glasses or one prescription may not fit all.
4. Get an annual eye exam. The only way to gauge the impact of using an iPad, iPod or other handheld device is to get a year-over-year look at your eye health.
5. Monitor Lighting. Make sure you are in a well lit room, or outside. Eye strain is often a function of lighting. Glare, and low light can really hurt your eyes, and when you are looking at a digital device the back-lighting of the device combined with the room's lighting could be very detrimental.
So, fear not. Pitch your tent outside of the Apple store and camp so you can be first in line for the iPad. Live it. Breathe it. Just make sure you look up every once in a while and follow these tips to make sure you don't hurt your eyes in the process.
Tony Bradley is co-author of Unified Communications for Dummies . He tweets as @Tony_BradleyPCW , and can be contacted at his Facebook page .


NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Wednesday refused bail to Unitech promoters Sanjay Chandra and Ajay Chandra in a case related to alleged siphoning of home-buyers’ money.
A bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta said they have not complied with its October 30, 2017 order which asked them to deposit Rs 750 crore with the apex court registry.
Lodged in Tihar jail for over one and half years, the two have sought bail on the ground that they are complying with the apex court order and have deposited over 400 crore.


Citigroup Inc reported a massive jump in quarterly profit as a sharp drop in legal costs and gains from the disposal of unwanted assets more than made up for weak revenue from its core business.
Chief Executive Michael Corbat has been looking to shrink Citi to a more profitable core, focus on more promising markets and return capital to shareholders.
The bank's legal and repositioning costs plunged to $724 million in the fourth quarter from $3.55 billion, a year earlier.
Adjusted revenue from its main Citicorp business declined 2 percent, but profit rose as expenses fell 24 percent in the unit.
"We have undoubtedly become a simpler, smaller, safer and stronger institution," Corbat said in a statement. "We have sharpened our focus on target clients, shedding over 20 consumer and institutional businesses in the process," he said.
Investors, however, have been skeptical of Corbat's story and are worried that the bank's results will be undermined by slowing growth in emerging markets, where Citi has more assets than other U.S. banks.
Citi shares fell 3.6 percent to $43.75 in premarket trading, way below the stock's tangible book value of $60.61 as of December end.
Citi's net profit rose to $3.34 billion, or $1.02 per share, in the quarter ended Dec. 31 from $344 million, or 6 cents per share, a year earlier.
Excluding items, the bank earned $1.06 per share, beating the average analyst estimate of $1.05, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Adjusted revenue rose 4.2 percent to $18.64 billion, but the increase came from gains on disposal of assets from Citi Holdings, which shrank 43 percent from a year earlier.
Total expenses fell 22.8 percent to $11.13 billion.
The lender set aside about $250 million to cover losses related to its energy portfolio as depressed crude prices pressure U.S. banks' loans to oil companies.
Citi shares have fallen about 12 percent so far this year, while the broader KBW bank index has declined about 10 percent.


Computers and their associated equipment are NOT WHITE GOODS. People need a willingness to accept that a degree of competence and learning is required at least equivalent to that for driving and routinely maintaining a car.
Almost NONE of my friends have ever changed the password or updated the firmware on their routers because "they didn't know you were supposed to". And most of them have degrees.
and how exactly does user with ISP supplied router update their firmware?
How often do you check the seal on the filler cap?
Check all the warning lights come on when you turn the ignition key?
It's very patronising of IT people to go they should do this or that, when lets face it, they should these days be as easy to use as white goods....which reminds me, did you also check the lint filter in the tumble drier (major fire risk), the drain filter in the washing machine and the drip tray on the fridge recently?
Yes to all the above. My wife claimed her car was on the way out because it was making odd noises. I drove her to the airport and noted I could hear the tappets. I checked the oil and it was undetectable. So I put what I had in, went to an appropriate emporium and bought some more and topped it up and the 'odd noises' disappeared. 'but the oil warning light didn't come on' she complained. There isn't an oil warning light, that is just what she calls the engine warning light.
Cars are increasingly not user maintainable. I went to check the plugs recently and found my plug spanner didn't fit. They are recessed and it is too fat. So I can't clean and gap the plugs any more unless I spend to get an appropriate tool. I was talking to the mechanic about it and he agreed, he has to remember to bring his tools home to work on his cars there.
If the engine warning light comes on you have to connect an iDevice running the necessary software and with the right cables to it and be able to interpret the information it gives.
BTW you missed the dishwasher drip tray and the toaster crumb tray. :).
"and how exactly does user with ISP supplied router update their firmware?"
Lint filter yes...ever since, of all things, an early episode of The Big Bang Theory when they talked about it.
As for the drain filter - monthly, since having an engineer out who removed what appeared to be half a sodding tree...nope, no idea either.
Analogy police: Your car having a flat tire is much more potentially likely to kill someone compared against your router having default credentials.
Your car handling unpredictably can kill someone important.
Your router being hacked is likely to screw you, mostly. Arguably it could be used in a DDoS someplace, but that's less likely than various other devices (baby monitor cameras for example), and it's unlikely anyone could die.
I change my passwords (sometimes not very well, depending on how important it actually is... often a stickynote on the bottom has the non-default password sharpie'd into it) on everything. But when it comes to my car, my wife's car, or my motorbikes? I make quite sure that I'm not likely to go out and commit suicide or manslaughter.
If dying is anything like being injured, it hurts, and that isn't any fun. Don't like that much.
The day when we accept driving badly maintained cars because we'd only risk killing unimportant people is the day "society" is effectively finished.
Computers are like clotheswashers; you need to be able to figure out what you need to have happen, read a basic bit of information off a clothes tag or manual page, and make some decisions about putting in the correct settings. A mistake will cost a lot of money at worst but generally not death like can happen with cars.
OK, lets poll my laptop's saved Wi-Fi credentials. Parent's WiFi? Verizon default. Work network? Unchanged since 2012. Friend's house? Another ISP default. Yep.
Edit: wow the guy above me posted about washing machines a few minutes before I wrote this.
Although I have some sympathy with this view, you have to accept the general public don't and aren't likely to change their minds. In which case I would suggest it might make more sense to design routers such that they're forced to change from the default password the first time they use it. And frankly the things are already connected to the internet so they may as well do automatic firmware updates. Like an Amazon Fire or Win 10.
In short it's easier to avoid accidents if you design systems that work with human behaviour rather than hoping humans will change.
I think it's worth stopping and thinking how bad a situation this is. Because 'computers and their associated equipment' now means things like radios (I've inherited two fancy internetty radios which have firmware that needs to be updated and probably have security vulnerabilities), TVs and, in fact, white goods.
So what this means is that things that used to essentially maintenance-free and safe (which radios have been really since valves went away, so say 50 years or so) are suddenly things that require maintenance at the level of a car and are also, increasingly, not safe. This is not an entirely positive development for most people.
And the cars that these things are as hard to look after as are not the cars we drive around in: they're cars made in some Kafkaesque parody of 1925. Lets say you want to upgrade your router. the first thing you find is that you can't because its at least a year old and no-longer appears in the support pages of its vendor; eventually you find some copy of firmware for it which you fetch by bittorrent; this needs Windows and you're a Mac person; so you borrow a Windows machine from work only to discover that 'Windows' means 'Windows XP'.
"find some copy of firmware for it which you fetch by bittorrent"
Exactly! Doing the equivalent of maintaining your 1925 car turns out to involve dousing yourself in petrol while mucking around with the magneto and hoping nothing bad will happen.
Do they get free fries after they finish Work for the day?
I think the router manufacturers might be on to something good IF they use a username and password that's randomly generated and put a tag on the front of the device. Maybe computer makers and other home IT type equipment should do the same.
The problem here is the mindset that started with "Plug and Play". Users are accustomed to "just plug it in" and no config necessary. The computer and tech equipment has been dumbed down for the target markets and there it will stay.
The recent Livebox models have the user name as "admin" (always has been) but now the password is the final eight digits of the MAC address.
Similar to my router. However there is one mitigating factor - to even attempt login as administrator on the router, I need to connect to it.
This requires either plugging into the box, or a WiFi connection. If some achieves this, they are already able to do a great deal of damage.
I think the router manufacturers might be on to something good IF they use a username and password that's randomly generated and put a tag on the front of the device.
No matter how many preachy articles tech journalists write, 99% of consumers are _never_ going to change admin/wifi passwords. That's not going to change. Ever. So the endless harping on this is pointless.
I think all of the new routers and APs I've seen in the last 7-8 years (even low-end consumer units) came with random admin passwords and random Wifi keys. However, the tag is always on the bottom or back not on the front. This is the only practical solution.
Most people get their router from their ISP and their ISP will either update the firmware automatically or not give out firmware for manual upgrades.
I'm surprised to learn that the random looking keys aren't random though.
Andy Patel, security expert at F-secure, agreed that newer routers tend to come with a randomised Wi-Fi Protected Access passwords.
Which makes the whole premise of the article (that people are doing something wrong by not changing the password) false. In fact if they did change it they would almost certainly make it worse.
BT routers come with randomised passwords and I see no reason to change them to something user-selected and likely less random. That must make up a large fraction of the 82%.
At least they looked random.
My one kids apartment complex rolled out free internet and installed WiFi routers in each apartment. And apparently to make it easier for the ISP to administer it all, they assigned passwords that varied only by the apartment building addresses and room numbers. Except for my kids. I was there at the time and made the installers change it. And they had to call the ISP to do that because the ISP was the only one that could change anything in the routers.
I didn't write down the original password so I can't test if that's still what the other 200+ apartments have.
"BT routers come with randomised passwords and I see no reason to change them to something user-selected and likely less random. That must make up a large fraction of the 82%."
But my (non-BT) router has the random looking Wifi passwords printed on a label on it. As does the router supplied to a mate by his ISP, Liberty Global (the owners of Virgin Media).
And how complex are these? My ISP-provided router came with a default WiFi password of 8 chars, only lowercase and numbers. I guess it would only take a few minutes to brute-force it.
to change the admin password of the router you typically need to be on the consumer side of the device. if you've done that already you've either been given the wifi password or have compromised a machine already on the network. The admin password of the router is a much less concern at that point.
Are there a bunch of security bods in need of work or something and pushing out lame stories of late?
* This bit would be beyond me personally, but I suspect a fake site with a LetsEncrypt cert, would be sufficient to fool the aforementioned 82%. The firmware upload might be hard on recent ISP routers also but maybe just changing the nameservers would be enough to redirect certain traffic.
My point is, I don't think this should be written off a FUD.
As others have pointed out the passwords to Virgin routers on a label underneath them. As is the IP# web address. If I were to start typing an IP address in this browser it would autofill to our router's address. I have changed the admin pword. It is recorded in munged form only I can interpret.
The instructions are there on how to do it and there is a both an easy, friendly front end and and advanced one for us braver sorts. I have screen grabbed the settings in case I have to set it up again. Our WiFI pword is both alphanumerical, easy to remember and able to turned easily into Hex. You have to know where we were married (ownership and name changed more than once since then) to have any chance at it. I doubt anyone else there remembers and it was in Southern NZ. The router is in Dundee.
>As others have pointed out the passwords to Virgin routers on a label underneath them.
Which largely make it pointless just changing the password! Because of the reset button!
You can change the password, however, if you haven't changed anything else significant, like the WiFi SSID and/or key, I can reset your router to factory defaults and you will be none the wiser.
Our WiFI pword is both alphanumerical, easy to remember and able to turned easily into Hex. You have to know where we were married (ownership and name changed more than once since then) to have any chance at it. I doubt anyone else there remembers and it was in Southern NZ. The router is in Dundee.
I jokingly tell people the passcode for my tablet is my phone number from the mid-60's. There's all of four people besides myself who might still remember it (and it wasn't under my name). Any malevolent party trying to access it would have to do WAY more research than it would be worth to find that.
"...or have compromised a machine already on the network."
You are uninformed. Oh, strange, that's the topic, isn't it?
...(barring a short experiment on a disposable netgear to install openwrt) in at least a decade.
Not that the firmware hasn't been updated - Virgin Media push updates from their end. As a service they provide, it makes a lot of sense that they keep it updated (especially as it is technically their device - it is provided as part of the service). It means Joe Bloggs is freed from needing to keep track of router firmware updates and so on.
I do make sure that the passwords are all set by me, and stored in my password manager, and make sure my father at least has done the same.
OTOH, my sister's boyfriend "doesn't do updates" because they "are annoying, take time, and introduce changes" - this is on his mac, which is, as far as I can tell, running without updates from 4 years ago.
He was espousing the "if it ain't broke" idea, to which my "but it is broken, hence the fixes" fell on deaf ears.
At least my sister is a bit better at this sort of thing.
Nothing wrong with not updating, Macs don't get viruses!
>Not that the firmware hasn't been updated - Virgin Media push updates from their end.
Not sure if there should be a joke icon on there.
Is that the same VM that can't / wont tell me all the IPs/Ports/services their TiVo connects to, in order to whitelist them in my non VM routers's firewall? I'm not talking the TiVo .com settings, I have these, I'm talking the IP's they use to get what channels I'm subscribed to.
When I asked there stock replay is you need to use the Superhub 3 as a router as that's what TiVo works with.
Yes I can try and track them and I'm doing so but if they supplied a list its easier than me trying to do it all myself especially as the Tivo may use the same IP for a while until that IP has an issue and it moves on to a new one if there load balanced scheme.
Not to mention is it the same VM who took so long to get the fixes out for the latency issues (1 year and still an issue to some people) on the SH3?
There must be many, many talented people who work at VM, but its a real battle to get to anyone who can offer good IT troubleshooting and support, Any request for help through either the phone lines or the community site and you get a scripted reply.
Since Virgin provide the router free, it is pretty fast AND it is fully user configurable (provided you get one that works) why would you use your own? You could always slave your router of it for the LAN and plug the TiVO into the Superhub. My wife's PS4, 360 and PS2 all plug in via enet without needing to set anything. It just works.
My wife plays online with the youngest and her beau in NZ at the weekends and it also just works. I can surf from up here at my standing desk while she's doing it no problem. My network only slows down if Time Machine is backing up and I'm running a third party script to keep those down to a more sensible schedule than the Mac default. They really should add that as standard, not everyone is happy using the terminal.
Re: "why would you use your own?"
Dozens of reasons: your own control of firmware, no back-doors, ability to set up different wifi networks for guest and own use, custom firewall rules, maybe running a VPN end point in it, etc, etc.
Don't forget "pre-assigned IP numbers" (every router calls it something different). Yes, the Arris routers that Crapcast provides have the ability, but the interface is crap, and the router wants to reset itself for each and every number you put in. A decent DD-WRT or OpenWRT capable router has a CLI (SSH, telnet disabled) which can let you do this with batch commands.
If Virgin installed the Tivo box, they will have configured it to use the default WiFi SSID etc. - just a word of warning when you decide to personalise your WiFi.
" although for reason unknown my son experiences connectivity problems if he's been on the Xbox too long... "
Sounds like a peculiar RF phenomenon called Dad Induced Signal Fade. I hear that good grades in school, clean rooms, and general good attitude can actually improve signal strength and reliability.
Did that last night for my Father. Installing the box was easy.
Activating the box should have been easy, but the automated activation failed. Then spent 45 minutes on the phone with someone who... lets say her foreign accent overpowered her english.
It's particularly frustrating as they used to have really good service. - or rather, not terrible service.
Not really following you there. My TiVo runs a network link straight up the coax and out of the house which is used for TiVo-to-VM interactions. The network link to the router is entirely separate and optional. It appears the TiVo accesses account and subscription data via the cable modem not through the router.
If Mac is anything like iOS then he's forced into such silliness because the ability to roll back is taken away very quickly after installing the update.
Not naming any names but my ISP just needed to update some settings to solve a query I had open with them, and they asked me to make a new admin account on my router with ... slightly more obscure credentials than admin:admin, but not much. It was blatantly obvious that this was the standard username and password combo they used for all such enquiries.
I replied that I wouldn't use those credentials, but offered them an alternative with the username 'securitymatters' and a proper password. They accepted it.
You can always create their standard account then delete the entire account when the work is finished.
You did delete your suggested account once the issue was resolved, didn’t you?
If somebody hasn't written a script to check for routers with that username and password combo every five minutes I'd be surprised.
I did indeed delete my suggested account mere minutes after getting home once the work was done. So about a minute ago. They were kind enough to shut off remote access before they logged out anyway.
In parts of Latam, ISP gives Zero / NO access to Router!
Just wondering if this happens elsewhere or if its unique to the region....?
Re: In parts of Latam, ISP gives Zero / NO access to Router!
Unfortunately here (UK), some major ISPs, such as Sky, bake the account details for the *DSL side into the router itself, with no direct access to it, and won't provide the user/pass to the user on request (against their Ts&Cs. So using 3rd party routers can be difficult.
(There are ways to get the user/pass, but it can be convoluted depending on the router model you have).
And if you try to replace it you'll never get the SIP configuration out of them so you'll lose your phone line.
It's all about knowing your place in the hierarchy.
82% of users includes home users AND business users?
Because i bet that if you took the home users out, the number would drop to 2% or something.
After all its only the American Government and .Govt.uk who leave router passwords as default.
Home users on the other hand run the risk of not getting support, or worse charged for damage, if they play with settings on the hardware they are supplied.
Half the time it turns out that the small print means you are only loaned the equipment that you paid so much for and the rest of the time that equipment may as well be black box for all the changes that a home user can make to it.
Cough. If you take the home users out, you are still left with reams of small businesses, many of whom will have neither the time nor the expertise to fiddle about with router settings.
Although I've updated the network name, passcode and admin password, I've never updated the firmware on any router. My reasoning is a case of balancing risk of two different events.
Possible event the second - I update the firmware in good faith, only to have the router suffer because of some bug in the firmware. When I eventually get back online I read an El Reg article about how the latest firmware from <x> is bricking routers up and down the country.
On balance, I fear well-intentioned vendors more than I fear ill-intentioned hackers.
When we upgraded our TV Box, Virgin included a slightly upgraded router and I therefore installed it. But it would not remember when I changed the login password or anything else. I repeatedly had to reset it to get back in only for the same things to happen. I rang their tech line and the Indian grunt had no idea why I should want to or what to do about it. I was fortunately escalated up the chain to a most helpful and very knowledgeable English guy who sensibly suggested I simply reinstall the old one and facilitated that.
My experience with the grunt though strongly backs this up. I expect I was the only person he had ever dealt with who did anything of the sort. Our router is renamed, has a custom pword, does not broadcast (you have to know it's there AND the correct name) AND there is MAC address filtering so your device needs added unless I tell you the name of the Guest mode and pword (of course it has a pword).
I'm not even a techie, I'm a bioscientist. I've just informed myself over time. At one time I ran Mac support for our large lab because IT didn't have a Mac specialist. Instead of waiting for them when new kit arrived I would note the MAC, inform them and it was on the network by the time I got it fully out of the box.
My wife does have a CompSci degree but I still run IT support in the home, including on her Windoze laptops. Turning the wifi on and off is a difficult thing apparently. Though to be fair it's harder than on the Mac (click symbol on menu bar, choose turn off, turn back on).
I have a Sky Q router which does some really counter-intuitive things in order to support its wireless mesh for delivering TV all over your house. If I did change its default passwords and something weirdly unexpected happened then I could be forced to spend all afternoon getting the answer out of their call-centre, and frankly I'd rather not.
While I'm here, if anyone knows how to configure a Sky Q router to allow its wirelessly-connected devices to talk to ethernet-connected devices please kindly let me in on the secret.
Reset/Disable Wifi then Connect Main box to internet (wired of course)/Connect Mini Box to Main Box disable wifi.
Contact sky to replace mini boxes because it doesn't work.
Rinse and repeat. It's pot luck. Alternatively you can use your own wireless network instead of it creating its own, that works.
When I get a new ISP supplied router I put it into modem mode and use my own router.
I was staying in a hotel in Vietnam a couple of years ago and the WiFi had become a bit crappy. I only had a tablet with me, but I logged onto the gateway, guessed they hadn't changed the password, and wham, in I am to the config pages.
I did something similar a couple of years back. My old neighbor was stepping on the same WiFi channels as my router. I helpfully set them to a different channel. i don't remember what brand of router they had, but it seemed to want to keep going back to "my" channel.
US ISP-provided routers are uniformly garbage.
At least on the wifi side. So..I picked up my own wireless, and made it the only device on the provider router. I changed providers last month--the devices in my house never lost the connection to my wireless. As soon as it got the new lease, we were back on.
The author of this site did a section on Asus routers which helped me FINALLY figure out why I kept seeing Affirmtrust certs on devices.
TrendMicro partnered with Asus and TrendMicro uses AffirmTrust certificates.
Another group of people who cannot pass the turing test.
No one really makes an effort to educate consumers on digital security so it's no surprise that so many entities are easily hacked by not changing the most basic router security settings. What's worse is that the bad guys are years ahead of the public hacking disclosures. There are so many infected systems being used to attack enterprise, compromised systems that expose so much personal data, etc. that it's almost incomprehensible. The FARCEbook debacle isn't even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to personal data being stolen / misused.
"Including changing the thermostats and lighting, or getting the smart TV to control the home's audio."
Do I get a lollypop?
I use BT for broadband and Sky for TV.
Last week Sky engineer installed Sky Q.
1. Went straight to my router and pulled out the card to connect his iPad to my Wi-Fi. Was most upset when I told him I had changed SID and password. Connected him via WPS...not sharing my password with a stranger (yes, I know it's not the admin one).
2. When connecting the Sky Q - I asked him to used the Ethernet cable that was sitting there waiting for him. He's been told he should use Wi-Fi and has never plugged an Ethernet cable into a Q box; and said I might even have to revert to Wi-Fi if I have support problems.
Duh? Why else would they have an Ethernet port or configuration options in the software?
1x whatever their key is usually their key in maths. I dont really care if their using WPA or WPA2 or what the router is. The only ones i find difficult are ones secured by an authentication server.


Lina Alvarez has received harsh criticism for lying about her age and for becoming a mother in her 60s.
A mum who gave birth aged 62 has admitted telling doctors she was 12 years younger so they would not deny her fertility treatment.
Lina Alvarez told doctors she was 50 and says they only found out after reading about her in the press.
Lina, from the city of Lugo in north-western Spain, said: "The gynaecologists found out through the press but they could not deny us the right to become parents.
"I was searching for ten years for someone who would make it possible for me to have more children and I didn't find anyone until I lied about my age."
The mum already has a 29-year-old son named Exiquito who has cerebral palsy, and a 10-year-old named Samuel who was also born after artificial insemination.
Now she also has a two-year-old daughter, Linita, who she declares has given her "the best two years of my life".
Lina sees herself as a spokesperson for many older women who wish to become mothers.
She said: "We are pioneers. We are going to cease to become news. Many women want to become mothers and they don't let them."
Lina's case has already generated considerable controversy.
She is still engaged in a legal battle with the Spanish medical authorities over her eldest child which she blames on a faulty test procedure 29 years ago.
She has also received harsh criticism for lying about her age and for becoming a mother in her 60s.
There have even been calls to remove two-year-old Linita from her care.
There are no legal limits on the age for artificial insemination in Spain although the Spanish Fertility Society recommends 50 to be the advisable limit.
Lina points out that her daughter Linita is a happy, healthy child who is receiving all the love and care she needs.
Lina continues to combine childcare in the mornings with her own role at an insemination clinic in the afternoons.
She continues to advise and offer encouragement to women like herself who do not see age as an impediment to motherhood.


Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed?
The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith.
They ignored his anti-white writings in his books. They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright.
They ignored his refusal to explain years at a time of his life as a student. They ignored his ultra-left record as a “community organizer,” Illinois state legislator, and Senator.
The American people ignored his total zero of an academic record as a student and teacher, his complete lack of scholarship when he was being touted as a scholar.
Now, the American people are starting to wake up to the truth. Barack Obama is a super likeable super leftist, not a fan of this country, way, way too cozy with the terrorist leaders in the Middle East, way beyond naïveté, all the way into active destruction of our interests and our allies and our future.
The American people have already awakened to the truth that the stimulus bill — a great idea in theory — was really an immense bribe to Democrat interest groups, and in no way an effort to help all Americans.
Now, Americans are waking up to the truth that ObamaCare basically means that every time you are sick or injured, you will have a clerk from the Department of Motor Vehicles telling your doctor what he can and cannot do.
The American people already know that Mr. Obama’s plan to lower health costs while expanding coverage and bureaucracy is a myth, a promise of something that never was and never will be — a bureaucracy lowering costs in a free society. Either the costs go up or the free society goes away.
These are perilous times. Mrs. Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, has given Iran the go-ahead to have nuclear weapons, an unqualified betrayal of the nation. Now, we face a devastating loss of freedom at home in health care. It will be joined by controls on our lives to “protect us” from global warming, itself largely a fraud if believed to be caused by man.
Mr. Obama knows Americans are getting wise and will stop him if he delays at all in taking away our freedoms.
There is his urgency and our opportunity. Once freedom is lost, America is lost. Wake up, beloved America.


From left: Susan Oliver as Vina, Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike and Meg Wyllie as The Keeper in "The Cage."
Though Star Trek celebrates its 50th anniversary on Thursday—the first episode to air on TV ran on Sept. 8, 1966—the show's actual first episode is a bit older than that. The original pilot episode of Star Trek, titled "The Cage," was completed in early 1965. As these stills from the episode show, it exhibits both striking similarities with and a number of differences from the series that ended up on television.
Most noticeably, the Captain of the USS Enterprise was Christopher Pike, portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter, instead of James Kirk. Hunter backed out of the show to pursue acting in films and passed away in 1969. And, though Mr. Spock was still portrayed by Leonard Nimoy in the pilot, he was not the First Officer—that title went to a character known as Number One, portrayed by Majel Barrett. Concerning props, weapons in the pilot were referred to as "lasers," and not "phasers."
"The Cage" was finally released on VHS in 1986 and aired on television in color in November 1988, with an introduction by Gene Roddenberry, as part of a two-hour Star Trek retrospective special hosted by Patrick Stewart.


For the fourth time in the preseason, the Flyers went to overtime. The team dropped to 1-1-3 on the exhibition slate with a 3-2 OT loss to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Monday night. The teams will rematch at the Wells Fargo Center on Tuesday night.
After a few ups and downs in the Rookie Game and the opening game of the preseason, Flyers 2014 first-round pick settled down after a strong practice (his lone session with the "Group 2" squad) last Tuesday. He has played better and better on both sides of the puck in each of the last three preseason games.
On Monday night in New York, he was downright dominant. In the first period, the second-year pro took a nice saucer pass from Nolan Patrick and rocketed a perfect shot from the left circle past Henrik Lundqvist under the long-side crossbar with the teams playing four-on-four. In the waning seconds of the second period, Sanheim pinched in deep, corralled a loose puck near the crease and slid the puck into the net for a 2-1 Flyers lead.
Sanheim was also quite strong on the defensive side of the puck. Twice, he was isolated in one-on-one situations on Rangers rushes and stopped the play cold. In the third period, the 6-foot-4 defenseman used his reach to knock a dangerous rebound to safety.
Twice in the game, Jakub Voracek set up team captain Claude Giroux for prime scoring chances. The first time, Giroux tucked the puck just wide. The second, after Shayne Gostisbehere sprung Voracek and Giroux on a 2-on-0 from the blueline in, Giroux appeared to attempt a return feed to Voracek from a severe angle and the extra feed missed connections.
Late in the third period, Voracek powered his way down low in the offensive zone and swung around the net. Lundqvist denied him in tight. In all, Lundqvist stopped 37 of 39 Flyers shots.
After seven years of exclusively playing center and previously entering the NHL from the junior ranks as a right winger, Giroux played his first-ever game at left wing in Monday's tilt. Not surprisingly, there were times where the wheels were turning in Giroux's head as worked on making the adjustment.
Michal Neuvirth had a strong first preseason outing last Wednesday in Allentown. He was also quite solid in Monday's game at MSG, authoring numerous clutch saves. Overall, Neuvirth stopped 28 of 31 shots.
He had no chance on either of the Rangers' first two goals. In the first period, a power play deflection in front by Rick Nash gave Neuvirth no time to react to the change-of-angle as the Rangers took a 1-0 lead. In the third period, Neuvirth knocked aside a Mika Zibanejad shot from atop the right circle but the puck then pinballed into the net off the leg of Flyers' defenseman Robert Hagg.
The overtime winner by Ryan McDonagh was scored off the rebound of his own initial shot. Neuvirth made a skate save on the first shot but the rebound went right back to the shooter and he tucked in the net before Neuvirth was able to get over to make a second save.
For a preseason tilt, significant portions of the game were placed at a very brisk tempo.
Overall, the Flyers were the team that was dictating the pace during many of the junctures or at least matching the Rangers' effort. This was especially true in the first and third periods.
In a game that saw 11 combined power plays (five for the Flyers, six for the Rangers), there was still pretty good flow at five-on-five. There were some sloppy plays on both sides but the Flyers also did a good job at triggering the transition game and applying forechecking pressure.
The Flyers' power play was sporadic in going 0-for-5 (four full two-minute 5-on-4 advantages and a very brief one). While there were some instances of generating good puck movement and periodic scoring chances, there were also significant portions where Philly struggled to get organized. After a couple days of practice, it was modest progress from a lackluster 0-for-9 in Boston last Thursday but an area that will need more work in the second half of training camp.


Frank Wenzel, a sixth-grade math teacher at Tamaqua Area Middle School and head of the teacher's union, opposes arming teachers and school employees. Tamaqua Area School District in Schuylkill County has become the first in the state to pass a policy providing for teachers and other school employees to carry firearms.
Throughout our region, Jewish communities spent Monday honoring those lost in this weekend's mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Today, President Trump is set to visit the city and, for many, the grieving process is just beginning, so there is much more to come as Squirrel Hill looks for ways to move forward. Meanwhile, this morning we have an all-too-timely report on a Pennsylvania school district that's reacting to mass shootings by allowing teachers to carry guns. The school board may have passed the landmark policy, but the debate is far from over in Schuylkill County.
By the way, if you're a smart speaker fan and want to listen to your morning news, I'm happy to report that you can now hear the Philadelphia Inquirer on Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and your favorite podcast apps.
Last month, the school board for Tamaqua Area School District in Schuylkill County, Pa., passed a landmark policy allowing teachers and employees to carry firearms.
Guns are a way of life in rural Schuylkill County, but this reaction to national school shootings has highlighted the region's sharp disagreements about how to prevent them.
Where some see teachers saving lives in the event of a tragedy, others see more opportunities for things to go dangerously wrong.
Students at Jewish schools and academies throughout the region began their week memorializing the 11 people killed at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue Saturday. They sang songs of solidarity, recited psalms, or wrote prayers while teachers tried to answer their tough questions.
Residents of the Squirrel Hill neighborhood where the anti-Semitic attack took place continue to grieve. One friend has found comfort hearing the voice of one of the victims in an old voicemail.
President Trump will travel to Pittsburgh today but so far leaders at Tree of Life have been split on whether they'd welcome his visit. Meanwhile, a preliminary hearing for the accused mass shooter is set for Thursday morning.
This election season the Philadelphia region has been dominated by House races which, across the country, show a path to a potential Democratic majority.
But those campaigns have found their polar opposite in key Senate races where Republicans are hopeful of keeping their stronghold and are embracing Trump's agenda.
Looking for more information ahead of next week's elections? Don't miss our voters guide and check out Clout, a weekly newsletter from our politics team.
The Florida man accused of mailing bombs to prominent critics of President Trump attended a court hearing Monday just as another suspicious package sent to CNN was intercepted in Atlanta.
An outburst from the widow of late Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner got her ejected from the courtroom Monday after a Common Pleas Court judge extended the appeal hearing of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Sean Kratz, charged with helping Cosmo DiNardo kill and bury three young men on a Bucks County farm last year, will now be represented by high-profile criminal defense attorney Chuck Peruto. The move further delays his case, which was expected to go to trial early next year.
A ninth patient has died after receiving treatment in the pediatric unit of a New Jersey nursing center. Eight of the nine were confirmed to have been infected with an adenovirus.
An alarming new report released by the World Wildlife Fund Monday says they've found a 60 percent decline in wildlife populations around the world in just the last 40 years.
After surviving the threat of closure and a merger, the future of the beloved St. Cyril's Roman Catholic Church in Delaware County is uncertain again thanks to much-needed building repairs.
Those light trails give the Society Hill Towers a fresh look, @datleib.
After 100 regular-season games, Joel Embiid's stats put him in line with some of basketball's top athletes. But it was Ben Simmons who brought the Sixers to victory over the Hawks last night.
If your street sign is faded or missing, it might take a while to have it replaced. In Philadelphia, just three people are responsible for over 100,000 signs. Yikes.
Buckle your seatbelts: the NFL trade deadline is today at 4 p.m. and yesterday Eagles coach Doug Pederson basically said anything is possible.
Should you keep your employer-sponsored health insurance or switch to Medicare once you're eligible? Even for those well-versed in the insurance world, the choice can be daunting.
Halloween isn't until tomorrow, but thanks to local shopping habits we can already tell what costumes we'll see in Philly: teeny outfits for dogs and lots of Gritty.
To commemorate yesterday's 10th anniversary of the Phillies' World Series win, we asked readers to share their memories of the historic day and they did not disappoint.
"We can give people a chance at a better life, whether they are born in Philly or Aleppo or Tegucigalpa, in Keren or Kuringu or Khartoum. America is a place that people go when they have nowhere else. That cannot be erased by a bloody morning in Pittsburgh."
Following this weekend's shooting in Pittsburgh, Shira Goodman of gun violence prevention organization CeaseFirePA has compiled a list of questions those tired of gun violence should be asking their elected officials.
Cartoonists around the country have captured America's fear following last week's pipe bomb mailings and the Pittsburgh shooting.
As we remember those lost in Saturday's shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, BuzzFeed has a touching story about one of the victims, a doctor remembered as a hero during the AIDS crisis.
Technical.ly Philly traveled all the way to New Mexico for their latest story and found a lot Philly might learn from Albuquerque's approach to workforce development.
Another place Philly might look for solutions it can use? Stanwood, Wash., where, NPR reports, they're treating the opioid crisis like a natural disaster.
Advocates for historic preservation will want to read Billy Penn's latest on an Underground Railroad stop in Spring Garden that's on the verge of collapsing.
Development along the Schuylkill River has moved so rapidly it's hard to keep up. Curbed Philly's interactive map on recent projects is like a time capsule of its growth.
Couture dresses from the “James Galanos: Design Integrity” an exhibit at Drexel University’s Pearlstein Gallery.
Philadelphia's own James Galanos may be America's most unsung fashion designer, columnist Elizabeth Wellington writes. Now Drexel University is showing off his glamorous garments.


Bedford Lodge Hotel & Spa’s luxurious new afternoon tea experience is only available from April 19 to 22, with the kitchen team pulling out all the stops to put a smile on customers’ faces. To begin, there are delicate finger sandwiches of local smoked salmon on horseradish and wholewheat bread, cucumber and cream cheese on white bread, poached Norfolk chicken and grain mustard mayonnaise on tarragon bread, and egg mayonnaise and sakura cress on tomato bread. That’s followed by freshly made warm fruit and plain scones with clotted cream, jam and homemade lemon curd.
But the pieces de resistance is set to be the feast of chocolate creations from Bedford Lodge’s pastry chef Jenny Beamish-Young, who has combined decadence with playfulness to craft cakes and sweet treats she hopes will stir up a bit of nostalgia in diners. Her selection includes shortbread chicks, chocolate nests with mini eggs, chocolate ganache delice layered with salted caramel cream, banana and chocolate macaron, spiced Newmarket Cake with mascarpone cream, triple chocolate layered brownie, and white chocolate and strawberry eclairs. If you still have room, there’s a glass of Moet & Chandon Champagne on the side too.
And if that’s not quite enough chocolate for you, the hotel has created a Chocolate Lover’s Easter Escape. The deal (£205 based on two sharing) includes the afternoon tea above, an overnight stay for two in a King bedroom, a Hotel Chocolat Easter egg filled with truffles in your room, and a full English breakfast in the award-winning Squires restaurant. Bookings are being taken for dates from April 6 to 22.
The chocolate afternoon tea is priced at just under £30 per person and must be booked in advance by calling the hotel.


Bad news for Tapjoy, Flurry, and numerous other mobile advertising platforms that cater to iOS developers: Apple is clamping down on incentivized downloads. In other words, it’s now much harder to buy yourself popularity on the App Store. Developers who submit applications with these offer walls are having their applications rejected, on the grounds that they are violating section 3.10 of the developer guidelines (printed below).
If you’ve used many iPhone apps, there’s a good chance you’ve come across an incentivized download offer. These usually say something like “Install one of these apps, and you’ll get ten free gold coins!”, giving you a chance to acquire whatever virtual goods or currency you’re after without having to shell over real cash. And the process is as easy as they come: tap on one of the promoted applications, download and install it, then open it once, and you’re ten gold coins richer.
It’s a win-win situation for developers. The application that’s being promoted pays a fee to Tapjoy or one of its competitors, and the application that features the offer gets a cut. But these offers have apparently caused headaches for Apple .
Incentivized app installs are used on such a large scale that they are likely impacting the coveted Top Apps listings — pay a lot of money for a bunch of promotions, and you may be able to get your app in the top 10 on launch day. Hitting those lists leads to a huge surge in downloads that can make the initial promotional investment well worth it. In other words, they give well-funded developers a way to nearly guarantee traction (at a cost).
Apple also probably doesn’t like these systems because it doesn’t get a cut. Unlike in-app purchases, for which Apple gets 30% of every transaction, all of the money in these systems changes hands behind the scenes, between the developers and offer distributors.
Apple’s clampdown is a big deal because incentivized downloads have become a big business, and plenty of big-name iOS developers have integrated incentivized downloads into their applications, including Tapulous (maker of Tap Tap Revenge), Groupon, Playdom, and Pinger (which has a massively successful free texting/voice app). Tapjoy just raised $21 million, and there’s little doubt the success of their system played a big part in that.
It’s no coincidence that the news comes just a day after reports that Apple is now using different algorithms to decide how applications are ranked (and is presumably placing a higher emphasis on metrics other than downloads).
It isn’t particularly surprising that Apple is shutting this down, but the fact that it’s happening now, as opposed to months ago when these offers first took off, must be infuriating to developers and advertising platforms alike. Apple has to approve every application on the App Store, so it’s been aware of these offers from day one. And it’s not like Tapjoy and its ilk have been keeping them a secret, either.
Tapjoy says it was given no advance notice about the apparent shutdown.
As you may have heard, a number of applications submitted for update have very recently been rejected from the Apple App Store based on the fact that they were running incentivized app installs within their apps. This is something new from Apple and we, along with every partner we’ve talked to, were unaware of this prior to these notices of rejection. Like many application developers, we have reached out directly to Apple and look forward to clarification.
Unfortunately, we believe much of this is caused by misconceptions around pay-per-install, the free-to-play model, cross-app promotion and their collective value to the ecosystem. We believe there are significant benefits to the advertiser (only pay for what you get), the publisher (monetize users who otherwise wouldn’t pay), and perhaps most importantly to the users, who not only get to discover new, exciting applications, but receive what is essentially a coupon for ad-funded virtual currency inside one of their favorite apps. All of this, of course, adds up to value for Apple as well, by creating a viable and thriving ecosystem.
Tapjoy has been and continues to be very supportive of the Apple app ecosystem, and we were not surprised about the Top Free & Paid rankings algorithm changes – we’re all for incremental changes that add to the user experience and keep the environment dynamic. But banning the largest and most effective channel for application distribution, engagement and monetization has a significant and long-term negative impact on the user experience, developer innovation and advertiser utility.
As the market leader in application distribution and monetization of free-to-play games, Tapjoy is currently coordinating with a number of our developer partners, as well as others in the market, to get a clear understanding of the issues and to continue to partner with Apple to meet their needs, along with those of app advertisers, developers and users.


The band’s sparkling songs range from peppy dance grooves to fuzzy faux psychedelia.
For more than two decades, Scotland’s Belle and Sebastian has championed the virtues of old-fashioned pop music, crafting gorgeous, compassionate tunes that balance heartbreak and hope without descending to sentimental mush. Echoing a trio of their releases from the ’90s, How to Solve Our Human Problems is a series of three five-song EPs the group began issuing on a monthly basis starting in December, with all 15 tracks to be compiled for a proper album this February. As always, leader Stuart Murdoch and company incorporate a deceptively wide range of sounds into their sparkling songs, from peppy dance grooves to fuzzy faux psychedelia to embellishments like brass and pedal steel. Every track features memorable touches: “Poor Boy,” for example, deftly draws on the interplay between the vocals of Murdoch and Sarah Martin in an intriguing vignette about the clash between romantic fantasy and cold reality. A balm for the daily blahs, How to Solve Our Human Problems feels both timeless and remarkably fresh.


Local organisation based in Mildenhall are seeking a temporary Assistant Management Accountant to join their team.
Reporting in to the Financial Controller, you will contribute to the preparation of timely monthly management accounts and provide general accounts support to the team.
To be successful in your application, you will have previous experience of the above duties and be immediately available for work. You will have strong Excel skills to include pivot tables and Vlookup and ideally Sage 200 experience.
You will be proactive with a can-do attitude and a strong eye for detail and accuracy along with good communication skills. You will have the ability to manage and prioritise effectively, completing tasks efficiently with a positive and enthusiastic attitude.


New Delhi: Financial services firm Religare Enterprises today said Saurabh Nanavati will head its asset management business, following its acquisition of Lotus India AMC last month.
“The appointment shall formally come into effect within the next few days," Religare said in a statement.
Besides, Ajay Bagga would resign as the CEO of Lotus India Asset Management Company. “Bagga, the incumbent CEO of Lotus India AMC, has decided to step down and will pursue other career opportunities," the statement added.
“Saurabh is familiar with the Religare culture and ethos and has been involved with our AMC plans for over a year now. We have global ambitions for our asset management business and we are committed to take this business to a leadership position," Religare Enterprises CEO and managing director Sunil Godhwani said.
Prior to this assignment, Nanavati was the chief investment officer for HDFC Standard Life in India.
Last month, market regulator SEBI had approved the acquisition of Lotus India AMC, by Religare Securities, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Religare Enterprises. After the acquisition, Lotus AMC would be renamed as Religare AMC, which would be a 100% arm of Religare Securities Ltd.


North Tahoe’s Maddie Roberts won a pair of races this season. Roberts and the Lady Lakers will look to defend last year’s sweep of the state slalom and giant slalom events.
Skiers from North Tahoe and Truckee have put on a dominant display during the 2018-19 season, landing dozens of racers on the podium during the year’s seven events en route to qualifying athletes and teams to next week’s Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association Tahoe Basin League Alpine State Championships.
The North Tahoe boys were unbeatable this year as a team with first-place finishes in each race on the season; while on the girls’ side, the Lady Lakers won five races and Truckee won the other two.
Since the league uses the top five results during the season to determine a league champion, the Lakers boys and girls finished the year with the maximum number of team points possible. The Tahoe Basin Ski League also combines boys and girls’ scores during each event for an overall winner, and Lakers combined to go unbeaten on the year as a team.
Individually, the girls from North Tahoe captured first place in every race except the season opener, which was won by Truckee’s Monique Fellows. The Lakers’ Aliza Neu and Maddie Roberts each raced to a pair of wins on the season. North Tahoe’s Eva Turk and Kacey Benjaminson won the other two races this year.
Neu, a junior, will enter next week’s state championship races as the defending giant slalom and combined state champion. As a team, the North Tahoe girls are the two-time defending combined state championship. The girls have also joined to win the past two team state titles in giant slalom.
This season, the North Tahoe boys didn’t find the same individual success as the girls, but still flooded the top 10 with skiers on a regular basis to take team wins in each event. The boys’ undefeated campaign marks the second consecutive season the Lakers have gone unbeaten in alpine racing as a team.
North Tahoe’s Max Kelly led the team with wins in each of the three races to open the season. From there, Whittell’s Gunnar Barnwell entered the fray and picked up wins in three of the four races to close the year. South Tahoe’s Luke Allen also picked up a win this season.
As a team, the North Tahoe boys are the three-time defending state champions in giant slalom and two-time defending state champions in slalom. North Tahoe has also won the past two state titles in combined.
Notably, North Tahoe will be without two of their fastest girls, Jillian Ferre and Maya Wong, due to the skiers not being able to participate in the minimum number of races needed to qualify for state. Similarly, the Lakers will also be without one of their best on the boys’ side, Guthrie Goss, who recently picked up an International Ski Federation win at Schweitzer, Idaho. Goss took first place and third place in downhill events on Jan. 31, and also skied to a pair of third-place finishes to open February.
This year’s state championships will get underway next Tuesday, beginning with slalom racing at Sierra-at-Tahoe. The season will conclude the following day at Kirkwood Mountain Resort with giant slalom.


• Nuns: Broken top of a tree crashed into power lines.
• Norrbom: Tree fell onto power lines.
• Adobe: Tree fell into PG&E power line.
• Partrick: Oak tree fell into PG&E power lines.
• Pythian: The fire started with a downed power line caused after PG&E tried to re-energize the line.
Atlas fire (Napa County): 783 structures burned, 51,624 acres burned, 6 deaths; referred to the District Attorney. The fire started Oct. 8 in two locations when a large limb broke from a tree and came into contact with PG&E power lines and a tree fell onto the same line.
Blue fire (Humboldt County): 20 acres burned; referred to the District Attorney. A PG&E power line conductor separated from a connector, causing the conductor to fall to the ground and start a fire.
Cherokee fire (Butte County): 6 structures destroyed, 8,417 acres burned. Fire started when tree limbs made contact with PG&E power lines.
La Porte fire (Butte County): 6,151 acres burned and 74 structures destroyed. Fire started early Oct. 9 when tree branches fell into PG&E power lines. Investigators found no state law violations.
McCourtney fire (Nevada County): 76 acres burned; 13 structures destroyed; referred to the District Attorney. Fire started Oct. 8 when tree fell into PG&E power lines. Investigators determined PG&E failed to remove a tree too close to a power line.
Lobo fire (Nevada County): 821 acres burned; 47 structures destroyed; referred to the District Attorney. Fire started Oct. 8, caused by a tree contacting PG&E power lines. Investigators found PG&E failed to ensure adequate clearance between trees and power lines.
Honey fire (Butte County): 76 acres burned; referred to the District Attorney. Fire started Oct. 9 when an oak branch contacted PG&E power lines. Investigators found PG&E failed to ensure adequate clearance between trees and power lines.
*Those cases referred to the District Attorney indicate Cal Fire determined PG&E was in violation of state codes, most related to clearing tress and other vegetation from power lines.
It’s a question worth billions of dollars: How did California’s most destructive wildfire start?
One year after the Tubbs fire burst from a spark and became a wind-driven inferno, thousands of people who lost homes as well as relatives of the 22 people killed are still waiting to learn what caused the wildfire that upended their lives.
Cal Fire has concluded PG&E power lines and equipment sparked 16 of the 18 fires that broke out Oct. 8 and 9 across Northern California. Investigators handed reports for 11 of those fires — including the Atlas fire that killed six people in Napa County — to local prosecutors, who will review evidence asserting the utility company hadn’t followed safety laws and was criminally negligent.
But the agency has not yet revealed the results of its investigation into the Tubbs fire, which burned 36,807 acres from Calistoga west over the Mayacamas Mountains, destroying entire Santa Rosa neighborhoods and causing nearly $8 billion in insured losses in Sonoma County.
The only other pending fire investigation from October 2017 is for the 10,000-acre Cascade fire in Yuba County, and that report is expected to be announced within the next week, according to Cal Fire spokesman Scott McLean.
The high-stakes investigation into the Tubbs fire has no timeline, McLean said.
Its conclusions have major consequences for PG&E, which is already anticipating up to $17 billion in potential liabilities from the 2017 fires. The investigation will impact hundreds of people who are suing the San Francisco-based utility in anticipation that its power equipment led to the initial spark.
When the first firefighters raced toward the wind-whipped fires that broke out a year ago across the North Bay, an army of state fire investigators also fanned out, identifying early on the suspected origins of the blazes.
Working parallel to fire crews, inspectors recorded clues from the way the fires burned and the scorched evidence was left behind — the first phase of what became monthslong examinations into the deadliest and most destructive siege of wildfire ever in California.
The Tubbs fire ignited about 9:45 p.m. Oct. 8 at rural residential property on Bennett Lane north of Calistoga in the northern end of Napa Valley. It quickly spread west, raging in hot and dry conditions, driven by fierce winds.
Cal Fire investigators seized as evidence damaged power equipment from a property near the fire’s origin, according to state regulators. For weeks after the Tubbs fire started, private security guards and yellow crime scene tape barred entry to two Bennett Lane driveways leading up to the side of a wooded hill overlooking vineyards.
PG&E has asserted it may have been a private power line “owned, installed and maintained by a third party,” and not the utility’s equipment that started the Tubbs fire, according to court documents filed by lawyers representing the utility giant against a mounting number of civil lawsuits alleging the company was negligent in its care of the power grid.
In response to questions about the Tubbs fire investigation, PG&E spokeswoman Deanna Contreras issued a statement that the utility is “focused on doing everything possible to help further reduce the wildfire risk” by boosting safety measures. That includes its new protocol for de-energizing the power grid when the risk of fire is high and opening a 24/7 wildfire operations center to anticipate and respond quickly to fires.
Contreras said the company is “further cutting back vegetation and expanding safety clearance around power lines in neighborhoods and communities that face the greatest wildfire risk.” PG&E will “do everything we can to address this growing risk and help keep our customers and communities safe,” she said.
Geisha Williams, chief executive officer for PG&E — California’s largest utility, providing gas and electric service to 16 customers people across 70,000 square miles — has said climate change is fueling the hot and dry conditions making way for mega-fires.
But John Fiske, an attorney representing Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties in their litigation against PG&E, said private investigators hired by his firm long ago concluded the North Bay fires were started by PG&E equipment.
Fiske said investigations completed by Cal Fire show a clear pattern of failures on the part of the company: Not keeping power lines clear of trees and other vegetation and not implementing fire-prevention measures for high-wind conditions, such as deactivating devices known as reclosers that send bursts of electricity when power is lost in an attempt to restart service.
Fiske said he would be surprised if Cal Fire finds another cause of the fire, and that his firm’s experts would scrutinize the state’s findings.
“The first 16 reports confirm what our experts have already known about the cause and origin of the North Bay fires, which is a systemic failure at PG&E to maintain its lines and equipment properly,” Fiske said.
The only natural cause of a wildfire is lightning. The vast majority of fires start with human factors, such as the 2015 Valley fire in Lake County that ignited with a spark from faulty hot tub wiring, according to the state. The Valley fire investigation took nearly a year.
Most Cal Fire investigations are conducted by about 90 specially trained fire prevention personnel with both fire expertise and peace officer authority, according to McLean. Of those, 26 were assigned to investigate the October 2017 North Bay fires.
McLean couldn’t provide a cost estimate for these investigations because it is wrapped into the overall cost of the fire response. The state spent $384.8 million to battle and recover from wildfires statewide in 2017, according to the 2018-2019 budget report.
Fire investigations all start the same way: Examine fire behavior, burn scars and ash marks; interview witnesses; review 911 calls; record and collect evidence that might point to an ignition source. From there, investigators might consult with arborists, forest specialists, metallurgists and other experts to further analyze what story the evidence tells about the fire’s start.
The more complex a blaze, the longer it takes to analyze all factors contributing to its cause, said White, who oversees a group of lead investigators.
And the fires keep coming, forcing inspectors to juggle new and existing cases.
California nearly exhausted its current annual wildfire budget in July and August alone. On July 23, the Carr fire in Shasta County ignited with a spark from a flat tire, burning nearly 230,000 acres, destroying 1,079 homes and killing eight people, including three workers engaged in the fire response. Four days later, the largest wildfire in California history — the Ranch fire — started near Potter Valley and scorched 410,203 acres in Mendocino, Lake, Colusa and Glenn counties. Its cause remains under investigation.


Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is Professor of Law at the UDC David A. Clarke School of Law and author of the book The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement (NYU Press 2017). This article is excerpted with permission of NYU Press from the book.
A towering wall of computer screens blinks alive with crisis. A digital map of Los Angeles alerts to 911 calls. Television screens track breaking news stories.
Surveillance cameras monitor the streets. Rows of networked computers link analysts and police officers to a wealth of law enforcement intelligence.
Real-time crime data comes in. Real-time police deployments go out. This high-tech command center in downtown Los Angeles forecasts the future of policing in America.
Welcome to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Real-Time Analysis Critical Response (RACR) Division. The RACR Division, in partnership with Palantir—a private technology company that began developing social network software to track terrorists—has jumped head first into the big data age of policing.
Just as in the hunt for international terror networks, Palantir’s software system integrates, analyzes, and shares otherwise-hidden clues from a multitude of ordinary law enforcement data sources. A detective investigating a robbery suspect types a first name and a physical description into the computer—two fragmented clues that would have remained paper scraps of unusable data in an earlier era. The database searches for possible suspects.
the location of every vehicle. Detectives follow up with a witness to identify the car used in the robbery. A match leads to an arrest and a closed case.
Roll call. Monday morning. Patrol officers receive digital maps of today’s “crime forecast.” Small red boxes signify areas of predicted crime. These boxes represent algorithmic forecasts of heightened criminal activity: years of accumulated crime data crunched by powerful computers to target precise city blocks. Informed by the data, “predictive policing” patrols will give additional attention to these “hot” areas during the shift.
Every day, police wait in the predicted locations looking for the forecast crime. The theory: put police in the box at the right time and stop a crime. The goal: to deter the criminal actors from victimizing that location.
Soon, real-time facial-recognition software will link existing video surveillance cameras and massive biometric databases to automatically identify people with open warrants. Soon, social media feeds will alert police to imminent violence from rival gangs.
Soon, data-matching technologies will find suspicious activity from billions of otherwise-anonymous consumer transactions and personal communications. By digitizing faces, communications, and patterns, police will instantly and accurately be able to investigate billions of all-too-human clues.
This is the future. This is the present. This is the beginning of big data policing.
At the center of policing’s future is data: crime data, personal data, gang data, associational data, locational data, environmental data, and a growing web of sensor and surveillance sources. This big data arises from the expanded ability to collect, store, sort, and analyze digital clues about crime.
Crime statistics are mined for patterns, and victims of violence are mapped in social networks. While video cameras watch our movements, private consumer data brokers map our interests and sell that information to law enforcement.
Phone numbers, emails, and finances can all be studied for suspicious links. Government agencies collect health, educational, and criminal records. Detectives monitor public Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter feeds. Aggregating data centers sort and study the accumulated information in local and federally funded fusion centers.
This is the big data world of law enforcement—still largely in its infancy but offering vastly more incriminating bits of data to use and study.
Behind the data is technology: algorithms, network analysis, data mining, machine learning, and a host of computer technologies being refined and improved every day. Police can identify the street corner most likely to see the next car theft or the people most likely to be shot.
Prosecutors can target the crime networks most likely to destabilize communities, while analysts can link suspicious behaviors for further investigation. The decisional work of identifying criminal actors, networks, and patterns now starts with powerful computers crunching large data sets almost instantaneously. Math provides the muscle to prevent and prosecute crime.
Underneath the data and technology are people—individuals living their lives. Some of these people engage in crime, some not. Some live in poverty, some not. But all now find themselves encircled by big data’s reach. The math behind big data policing targets crime, but in many cities, crime suppression targets communities of color.
Data-driven policing means aggressive police presence, surveillance, and perceived harassment in those communities. Each data point translates to real human experience, and many times those experiences remain fraught with all-too-human bias, fear, distrust, and racial tension. For those communities, especially poor communities of color, these data-collection efforts cast a dark shadow on the future.
The promise of “smarter” law enforcement is unquestionably real, but so is the fear of totalizing surveillance. Growing “law and order” rhetoric can lead to surveillance overreach. Police administrators, advocates, communities, and governments must confront those concerns before — not after — the technology’s implementation.
And society must confront those challenges informed by an understanding of how race has fractured and delegitimized the criminal justice system for many citizens. … People of color, immigrants, religious minorities, the poor, protesters, government critics, and many others who encounter aggressive police surveillance are at increased risk.
The big data policing revolution has arrived. The singular insight of this innovation is that data-driven predictive technologies can identify and forecast risk for the future. Risk identification is also the goal of this book — to forecast the potential problems of big data policing as it reshapes law enforcement.
Long-standing tensions surrounding race, secrecy, privacy, power, and freedom are given new life in digital form with the advent of big data analytics. New technologies will open up new opportunities for investigation and surveillance. The technological environment is rich with possibility but also danger.
This book seeks to initiate a conversation on the growth of these innovations, with the hope that by exposing and explaining the distorting effects of data-driven policing, society can plan for its big data future.


Snowman author says: "I hate Christmas"
The creator of The Snowman has said he hates Christmas.
Illustrator and author Raymond Briggs, who also created the grumpy Father Christmas, who boasted of hating his job, has said he does not like the snow, has never built a snowman and runs from shops when he hears Walking in the Air.
Mr Briggs, of Underhill Lane, Westmeston, near Ditchling, said: “I don't like the season and I make a point of grumping about it."
The 76-year-old's picture book of The Snowman was published in 1978.
In 1982 it was made into the iconic 26 minute film, now shown on television every Christmas Day.
Mr Briggs said he was hoping to avoid a white Christmas.
But despite claiming to hate Christmas the illustrator added that he had bought a friend a pair of boxer shorts featuring The Snowman on them.


The future of Canada is at stake, invaders have crossed the border and the boss is passed out in a hotel room surrounded by empty bottles.
That story about the time John A. Macdonald went on a bender, when he was supposed to be dealing with an invasion, is one of the surprising tidbits spectators will hear during The Road to Confederation.
From storyteller and historian Doug Robinson, it’s a “tongue-in-cheek” look at the lesser-known and “deeply personal” tales of the main players involved in making Canada a country.
The Essex Municipal Heritage Committee and the Harrow Early Immigrant Research Society are presenting the night of storytelling. It’s part of celebrations for Canada’s 150th anniversary and Colchester’s 225th.
Robinson promises scandals, romance and drunks in the legislature.
“This is definitely not a lecture,” he said.
One story he’ll tell concerns the Fenian Raids, when Irish-born veterans of the U.S. Civil War started launching attacks in Canada. Macdonald — who was the minister of the United Province of Canada and the defence minister, as well as a drunk — went to Niagara to deal with it. He wasn’t heard from for weeks.
“Here’s the leader of the province, there’s a chance of a war coming, we’ve got these foreign nationals trying to shoot up our shores, and our boss is gone,” said Robinson.
A messenger was dispatched and found him in a hotel room.
Along with getting stinking drunk, Robinson said Macdonald had also been working on proposals to push through Confederation. He seemed unconcerned about the invasions.
Robinson will spin his historical yarns starting at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 26 at the Harrow and Colchester South Community Centre at 243 McAffee Street in Harrow. Admission is free.


These boxes are giant tuning forks meant to vibrate the west coast Tsunami and drop the Cascadian Shelf. They are embedded deep into the ground and can only be dug out with a back hoe. If someone can, please place Orgonite Generators (Muffins) in the and around these boxes to disable them.
My number is 541-547-4073 please show me this box.
Perhaps this is a bug hunt.
I think everyone should use absolute careful foresight in approaching such a box. Use common sense & feel out the vibes you get from it. I have read about the reverse engineering of the Rosswell crash materials & it blew me away how strange & super high tech those items unfolded, more than spooky, quite a few highly qualified specialists died in fact . There are only 2 ways to look at it, either good or bad, about the boxes.
It's a metal box, someone needs to go open the thing and end all this speculation. It's not a meteorite or a brick, it's a box ! What's the deal, open it. Anyone have a portable acetylene torch, jack hammer, can opener ??? Just seems even weirder to me that this thing is sitting out on a public beach and no one seems the least bit interested in seeing what's inside. Lets just sit around and talk about it ????
Look, DO NOT call in the gubment. You will never hear another thing. They are as contemptible and untrustworthy as anything from off the planet.
Hey Lame-o How about some Video, oh and stop useing the Led Zeppelin referances.


I'm not sure if it's because we just came off of an underutilized fifth week, or because it's December, but I'm bumming right now.
Next to no DC Comics out this past week? No problem. LOTS of good stuff came out from across the industry.
Thor Spoilers: Who Is Tanarus?
So who is this new God of Thunder?
Fear Itself Spoilers: Who Is Tanarus, God Of Thunder, And What Does It Mean For Thor?
Who is this new Thunder God?
Thor might be dead, but the story goes on.
What new title does Ed launch out of the event?
It had to be done, two guys are back to take on Marvel's recently concluded event!
How does the Fear Itself fall out rate compared to the event?
Fear Itself Spoilers: What Happens To Captain America’s Shield?
What do they do with the shattered shield?
Fear Itself Spoilers: Who Dies?
A few casualties to round it all out.
Fear Itself Spoilers: Who Gets The Biggest Weapon?
For all these fancy new weapons, whose is the best?
Spoiler Warnings: Who Quits The Team In Avengers Academy #19?
Which student calls it quits?


Bobbi Kristina Brown was cited by police after being involved in a car accident Wednesday in which the vehicle left the road and traveled down an embankment.
Police in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta confirmed to ET that a passerby called 911 just before noon to report that the black Chevrolet Camaro had veered off the road and traveled through a wooded area striking trees before eventually coming to a stop.
"The investigation revealed the driver lost control and the vehicle left Beaver Creek Road on the east side and traveled down an embankment," a police statement said. Damage to the vehicle was described in the statement as "moderate."
Upon the initial arrival, officers say they found Bobbi Kristina standing beside the vehicle and she was uninjured. "Our officer completed an official accident report and issued a traffic citation to Ms. Brown for the offense of failure to maintain lane," the police statement said.
Bobbi Kristina appeared to address the accident Wednesday on Twitter. "My#PersonalGuardianAngel•• thankumom•miss&loveumre u'lleverkno. NotAScratch&ok ••• Wow,PraiseGod. @nickdgordon ••• #SeriousChangeswithinME, " she wrote.
She also tweeted: "#LETMELIVE without YOUppl crucifying me?! OH, yes now I remember .. YOUppl did the SAME DAMN THING2 JESUS.& he overcame you ALL. #NOWWATCH."


Reps for about 500 casting directors and casting associates have reached a tentative deal on a three-year successor agreement to its master contract with studios and network.
Teamsters Local 399 in Hollywood and Local 817 in New York set a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Local 399 secretary-treasurer Steve Dayan announced the news on the local’s website, but did not disclose details.
“We will be holding a Ratification Meeting on the same day that Teamsters Local 817 will be holding a Contract Ratification Meeting in New York,” he added.
The casting directors did not begin negotiations with the AMPTP until November, well after the Sept. 30 contract expiration, due to the extended negotiations this summer for a successor deal for the West Coast master contract for about 40,000 members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. The casting directors agreed to extend their current contract from Sept. 30 until Jan. 11.
SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America obtained three-year successor deals in 2017, and the Directors Guild of America reached its deal in late 2016. The casting directors were able to obtain their first union contract in 2005 following an organizing campaign that lasted three years.


The D3100 has a very good noise profile; it matches (and perhaps bests) the current leader in the budget dSLR category, the Pentax K-x. It produces exceptionally clean JPEGs up through ISO 800 and very usable ones through ISO 3200. (Adobe Camera Raw doesn't yet support the D3100 and Nikon Capture NX 2 doesn't provide sufficiently granular noise reduction for me to do raw versus JPEG comparisons).
Normally, ISO 800 images of cat fur are useless because the fine, dark fur is highly susceptible to color noise. But these are very clean, and I'll probably be able to work with the exposure and sharpness once I have raw software support.
You can start to see some color noise in this shot, but it's still quite usable.
The D3100 has excellent color reproduction in its default SD mode.
For a relatively inexpensive lens, the 35mm f1.8 fares pretty well overall. There's a little bit of asymmetrical distortion on the right, however.
At its widest, 18mm, the 18-55mm lens tends to crush towards the right side of the photo. This was taken with the automatic distortion control off, the default.
As you'd expect, there's very little distortion at the wide end of the 55-300mm lens.
Although it has a 7-bladed aperture, the bokeh on the 35mm lens still strikes me as overly polygonal.


Sun-Wed 10 a.m.-midnight | Thurs-Sat 10 a.m.-2 a.m.
Mercado San Miguel, a market built of beautifully ornate glass and cast iron, is a popular stop for tourists to Madrid, especially since it is located right outside of Plaza Mayor. Here, visitors can purchase some wine, grab a cocktail, juice or coffee, snack on a variety of ready-to-eat tapas, or pick up some ingredients for lunch or dinner from the fruit, seafood and meat stalls.
Recent visitors loved the vast selection of food offered, as well as the fun, vibrant atmosphere and described the market as a "must-see," especially for foodies. Some travelers, however, felt the market was too expensive and too touristy, lacking the character found at other markets, such as Mercado San Anton in Chueca. Others warned of pickpockets and reminded future visitors that you'll need to present a receipt from a vendor to use any of the restrooms free of charge.
Travelers will find Mercado San Miguel in a square by the same name, adjacent to Plaza Mayor. The market is open 10 a.m. to 12 a.m. Sunday through Wednesday and 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday to Saturday. For more information, visit the Mercado de San Miguel's website.
To the east of central Madrid, Parque del Buen Retiro(Retiro Park) can be translated as "Park of the Pleasant Retreat," and that's what it is – a sprawling swath of lush greenery filled with formal gardens, lakes, cafes, playgrounds and more. This 300-some-acre park previously housed Felipe IV's palace and gardens, and didn't become open to the public until the late 19th century.


NBN Co may have under-reported levels of congestion on its fixed wireless network after revealing one in ten - or 250 - microwave and fibre transmission links suffer unacceptable levels of packet loss, and that this isn't captured in publicly-reported numbers.
The network builder said today it is performing a fast-tracked piece of work to add capacity to the 250 impacted links, with improvements expected before the federal election.
Exactly how much the level of fixed wireless congestion has been under-reported was still being investigated, NBN Co CEO Stephen Rue told a senate estimates hearing on Tuesday.
“That’s being determined,” Rue said.
To date, NBN Co has said the proportion of congested cells on its network peaked at between six and seven percent; it aims to reduce that to under one percent by September this year.
NBN Co considers a cell to be officially congested when its “30 day … average busy hour download throughput [falls] below ... 6Mbps" per user.
The first clue that these numbers did not capture all congestion occurring on the fixed wireless network came on NBN Co’s latest monthly progress report.
“The calculation of busy hour cell performance accounts for throughput at the radio interface, which is one segment of the fixed wireless access network, and does not account for impacts on throughput in other parts of the NBN fixed wireless network,” according to the note.
Labor Senator Anne Urquhart latched onto the note and extracted confirmation from NBN Co that the congestion figures reported to date are likely to be understated.
“In effect, congestion on the fixed wireless network can occur in several places,” Rue said.
“It can occur, as we’ve been reporting, on the cells. It can also occur in the transmission network … and in the transit network.
Chief network engineering officer Peter Ryan said NBN Co measured packet loss at various points in the end-to-end fixed wireless network.
“We watch that and as it triggers through certain thresholds we trigger work to deploy more capacity to uplift the performance to make sure we don’t get that congestion,” he said.
Ryan said that congestion on the microwave or fibre backhaul transmission links would be noticed as slow speeds by end users.
“It impacts the customer at an application level, therefore the impact of congestion is very much dependent on the application the end user is using,” Ryan said.
“User applications that are in need of very low latency like gaming or very high data throughput would be impacted by packet drops, which they would see as a slowing down of their speed.
“We’re working extremely hard at the moment to accelerate the activity to alleviate that congestion by deploying more capacity,” he said.
The company had successfully added capacity to around 13 links as of today.
Of the outstanding congested links, NBN Co said there are 66 in NSW, 65 in Victoria, 58 in Queensland, 20 in South Australia, 16 in Tasmania and 13 in Western Australia.
Ryan said that engineering and deployment resources were being tipped into the upgrades as a matter of priority.
He said the upgrades could take a number of different forms.
“A lot of them are being fixed by some remote configuration changes we can make, which changes the modulation used across that microwave link,” Ryan said.


Patients over 50 with ulcerative colitis (UC), a chronic disease of the colon, who undergo surgery to treat their condition live longer than those who are treated with medications, according to a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The results are published this week in Annals of Internal Medicine.
"Ulcerative colitis is a chronic disease that most physicians opt to treat with medications, as opposed to surgery," said the study's lead author Meenakshi Bewtra, MD, PhD, MPH, assistant professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Penn. "This new finding highlights a potential unrecognized advantage of a surgical approach to the disease."
Ulcerative colitis is a type of inflammatory bowel disease characterized by inflammation in the colon, or the large intestine. The inflammation can cause abdominal discomfort, bleeding, and diarrhea. It affects as many as 700,000 Americans, according to the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America. Men and women are equally affected, with most patients diagnosed by their mid-30s.
The convention in treatment of UC is that surgery is considered a treatment of last resort. However, medical treatments, involving immunosuppressant and steroid drugs, come with significant side effects, and can increase the risk of infection and some cancers. These medications effectively control the disease in less than 50 percent of patients.
In a retrospective study, Bewtra and colleagues analyzed data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to examine whether patients with advanced UC pursuing elective colectomy - in which surgeons remove the patient's colon -- had improved survival compared to similar patients pursuing chronic drug therapy. The researchers defined advanced UC as those patients who had had at least one hospitalization for UC, had two or more corticosteroid prescriptions within a 90-day period, or had any prescription for immunosuppressant therapy.
The study identified 32,833 UC patients 18 years of age and older who had at least six months of Medicare/Medicaid eligibility and who fit the inclusion criteria. Of these, 830 underwent elective colectomy and the remaining 32,003 were managed on drug therapies.
Mortality rates associated with elective colectomy and medical therapy were 34 and 54 per 1,000 person-years, respectively, thus showing that elective colectomy was associated with an improved survival rate. A person-year is a measure of survival that is equivalent to the number of years a person is followed multiplied by the number of subjects in the study. In further analysis, the survival benefit seemed greatest in patients age 50 and over. The findings also suggested a benefit for surgery in those patients who could not sustain a disease remission - defined as stable disease without the need for hospitalization or changes to drug therapy -- on immunosuppressant therapy, but further work is needed to confirm these results.
"With this new knowledge, physicians should be empowered to begin a dialogue about surgery earlier in their patients' course of treatment," Bewtra said. "Many patients are afraid of surgical therapy for UC. This study should help them to understand that the benefits of surgery may extend beyond just reducing the symptoms of uncontrolled UC."
University of Pennsylvania School of Med. "Elective surgery is associated with lower risk of death than drugs for ulcerative colitis ." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 14 Jul. 2015. Web.


Which Accounts Are Generally Included in the Revenue Cycle of a Company?
While small businesses sell many different products and services, the accounting cycles within these businesses are generally the same. For many companies, the revenue cycle is one of the most important, as it provides the revenue that keeps the company in business. Understanding the accounts that are generally included in the revenue cycle can help you learn about how revenue flows throughout your company's accounting system.
As expected, the main account in the revenue cycle is the revenue, or sales, account. Generally accepted accounting principles have set strict criteria for the recognition of revenue. While some types of transactions have even more rules, all transactions require four characteristics to be met before revenue can be booked. First, the price must be fixed or determinable. Second, delivery of the product must be assured or services must have been rendered. Third, there must be persuasive evidence that a sales arrangement exists. Finally, collectibility must be reasonably assured. If any one of these qualities does not exist for the transaction, revenue may not be booked.
Accounts receivable are claims that the company has against other entities for the delivery of assets at a future date. For most small businesses, accounts receivable mostly consist of sales to customers on credit. Small-business owners should be cautious when making credit sales. While it would be wonderful if every customer paid his bills on time, that isn't always the case. If credit sales are the norm in your industry, you should have a rigorous process in place to determine who is granted credit. In addition, the credit check that you make of a customer when making an initial credit decision should not be your last. Accounts receivable personnel should be watching for signs of impending insolvency. Slow payment, not taking trade discounts and smaller new orders could all be signs that your customer is not as creditworthy as he used to be.
Generally accepted accounting principles require that the financial statements may only show the amount of accounts receivable that the company will be able to eventually collect. While this number is unknown, it can be estimated. The allowance for doubtful accounts is a company's best guess of the amount of the accounts receivable balance that will not be collected. Most companies apply a two-pronged approach to the allowance. First, the company identifies balances that it believes are not going to be collected on. This may include companies that have filed for bankruptcy or haven't paid in a while. Then, the company usually reserves an additional percentage of the account based on the age of the receivable. For example, a company may determine that, historically, it is only able to collect on 10 percent of receivables more than 120 days past due. As such, it would add 90 percent of the value of 120 days past due receivables to the allowance account.
For companies that sell goods and services on a cash basis, the cash account is part of the revenue cycle. Small-business owners should recognize that just because cash is received, that doesn't mean revenue is earned. For example, a magazine publishing company often will receive funds for an annual subscription up front. However, the company is only allowed to recognize revenue on that subscription as the magazines are delivered. As such, if the subscription is for 12 monthly issues, 1/12th of the revenue would be recognized each month, even though all of the cash is recorded upon receipt. The amount of cash received representing revenue that has not been earned is known as deferred revenue.
Intermediate Accounting: Donald E. Kieso, et al.


JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon regrets having called bitcoin a “fraud” but would still not be interested in the cryptocurrency, he said in an interview on Fox Business on Tuesday.
Mr Dimon, known for his candid comments, slammed the viability of bitcoin in September. His comments were followed by a more tempered view from chief financial officer Marianne Lake, who said the bank was “very open minded to the potential use cases in future for digital currencies that are properly controlled and regulated”.
On Tuesday, bitcoin was down nearly 5 per cent at $14,202 in early trading. It traded at $909 a year ago and breached $19,000 in December.
Mr Dimon and Ms Lake, however, have commended blockchain – the technology used by bitcoin and other digital currencies – a view echoed by Citigroup chief financial office John Gerspach and many others across the industry.
“Blockchain is real. You can have crypto yen and dollars and stuff like that,” Mr Dimon told Fox.


South African music lovers can now enjoy listening to their favourite songs on YouTube Music without being interrupted by adverts.
This is because Google has announced the launch of YouTube Music locally.
Brendyn Lotz, a journalist with HTXT, says the new music streaming service offers fans music videos, official albums, singles, live performances, and covers from YouTube.
“I was telling some friends that I don’t know where to go to get live music concerts anymore, so YouTube Music and YouTube Premium gives you a way to get that content once again., says Lotz.
Lotz says YouTube Music is available for free but YouTube Premium will cost you R59 a month and it allows you to download as well as removing ads.
What Makes Will Smith Happy?


HENRY COUNTY, Ind. – Authorities in New Castle arrested a 51-year-old man Saturday after he allegedly stabbed another man to death.
At around 12:15 p.m., officers responded to the area of Ross and Parkview on the report of a person stabbed. When they arrived, they located 63-year-old Barry Keith suffering from multiple stab wounds.
Keith was transported to the hospital where he later died.
As police were investigating, they discovered a man, later identified as 51-year-old Robert Dunn, nearby with blood on his hands and clothing. Dunn was detained by authorities and was later arrested on the charge of murder.