Justia US Law US Codes and Statutes Oklahoma Statutes 2014 Oklahoma Statutes Title 85A. Administrative Workers' Compensation System §85A-110. Alternative dispute resolution program.
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2014 Oklahoma Statutes
Title 85A. Administrative Workers' Compensation System
§85A-110. Alternative dispute resolution program.
85A OK Stat § 85A-110 (2014) What's This?
A. The Workers' Compensation Commission shall develop an alternative dispute resolution program which affords an injured employee the opportunity to obtain benefits by request or informal procedure. The program shall include an increased emphasis on making mediation and other alternative dispute resolution programs affordable and convenient to an injured employee not represented by counsel.
B. Participation in an alternative dispute resolution program is not a prerequisite to the commencement of a claim for benefits under this act. A request for alternative dispute resolution or a consent to participate in such program does not invoke the jurisdiction of the Commission.
C. Mediation shall be voluntary, informal, and nonbinding in any claim arising pursuant to the provisions of this act, except for claims against the Multiple Injury Trust Fund and medical treatment issues subject to a certified workplace medical plan. Provided, however, the parties may waive mediation and proceed directly to an administrative hearing.
D. A Commission mediator, appointed by the Commission, shall conduct an informal mediation between the parties in regard to claims for a closed period of lost time where the employee has returned to work, for medical benefits only, for reimbursement of travel expenses and medical treatment, in cases in which the employee is not represented by an attorney, or there is no record of insurance coverage. Such mediation shall be conducted by the Commission mediator within thirty (30) days of the filing of a request for any such benefit.
E. Upon the filing of a request for an administrative hearing on issues not specifically listed in subsection D of this section, the Commission shall set the case for prehearing before the assigned judge within fifteen (15) days. At the prehearing, the administrative law judge shall accept a waiver of mediation by the parties or appoint a mediator and issue an order reflecting such appointment. The mediator shall contact the parties and schedule a mediation session within thirty (30) days of such order, unless otherwise agreed to by the parties.
F. Mediation is confidential and no part of the proceeding shall be considered a matter of public record. Recommendations of the mediator are not binding unless the parties enter into a settlement agreement. If an agreement is not reached, the results and statements made during the mediation are not admissible in any following proceeding.
G. The Commission shall be responsible for certifying those persons who are eligible and qualified to serve as mediators. An individual may be certified as a mediator if the applicant meets the qualifications as required by the Commission. A certified mediator may be an attorney or nonattorney who has worked in the area of Oklahoma workers’ compensation benefits for at least five (5) years. Mediators serving as Commission-certified mediators on the effective date of this section shall serve the remainder of their respective five-year certification periods and may reapply for successive certification periods.
H. Each certified mediator shall remain on the list for five (5) years, unless removed. Mediators shall be required to complete at least six (6) hours of continuing education per two-year period in the areas of mediation and workers' compensation. Proof of compliance with this requirement shall be submitted to the Commission. This continuing education requirement shall be in addition to any other such general requirement which may be required by the Oklahoma State Bar Association. Cost of continuing education is to be borne by the applicant.
I. Mediators shall be compensated at the rate or fee as determined by the mediator; provided, however, the rate or fee shall not exceed a maximum rate to be established by the Commission by rule. The cost of mediation shall be paid by the respondent or its insurance carrier. A mediator must schedule mediations for a minimum two-hour block of time, and may not schedule more than one mediation to take place at a time.
J. At the time of a mediation, the claimant shall be in attendance unless all parties agree, and all parties shall be represented during the entire mediation session by a person with full settlement authority to settle any issue of the claim. If a party does not have full settlement authority, or does not participate in good faith in the mediation process, the mediator shall report to the assigned administrative law judge of the Commission who may for good cause shown assess costs, attorney fees, and sanctions.
K. To encourage early resolution of claims, an injured employee may participate in mediation without counsel. Upon compromise settlement of the claim, the parties may submit the settlement agreement to any administrative law judge for final approval.
Added by Laws 2013, c. 208, § 153, eff. Feb. 1, 2014.
Disclaimer: These codes may not be the most recent version. Oklahoma may have more current or accurate information. We make no warranties or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained on this site or the information linked to on the state site. Please check official sources.


Blatter raises doubts about 2022 World Cup safety in Qatar
FIFA President Sepp Blatter has raised fresh doubts about the safety of playing the 2022 World Cup in Qatar during summer.
Blatter raises doubts about 2022 World Cup safety in Qatar FIFA President Sepp Blatter has raised fresh doubts about the safety of playing the 2022 World Cup in Qatar during summer. Check out this story on USATODAY.com: http://usat.ly/V1udvj
AP Published 7:08 a.m. ET Jan. 15, 2013 | Updated 7:10 a.m. ET Jan. 15, 2013
Sepp Blatter announces Qatar as the host of the 2022 World Cup at a ceremony in Dec. 2010.(Photo: Anja Niedringhaus, AP)
There have been calls to move the 2022 World Cup in Qatar from the summer to the winter
Blatter says a decision will be made after the 2014 World Cup whether to move 2022 to the winter
The FIFA president says he'll step down in 2015 and wants to become a radio commentator
LONDON (AP) — FIFA President Sepp Blatter has raised fresh doubts about the safety of playing the 2022 World Cup in Qatar during summer.
There have been growing calls to move the tournament to the winter to avoid the sweltering desert heat that is expected to exceed 104 degrees in June and July. UEFA President Michel Platini is one of those requesting the switch.
LA LIGA: Madrid under pressure to keep Ronaldo
Blatter says players and fans will be fine in the air-conditioned stadiums, but he adds that the World Cup is also an event outside the stadiums, "so it is a question mark." He said a decision would not be made until after the 2014 tournament in Brazil.
In an interview with Sky Sports News, Blatter addressed other matters. He reiterated his belief in deducting points from teams in cases of racial abuse — which he believes is the one of the biggest scourges in soccer, along with match-fixing.
"Our committee at FIFA has given a sentence to play without spectators — this is one of the solutions, (but) I think a more radical solution would be deduction of points," Blatter said. "Deduction of points would have a better impact on that than any other sanction.
"I think we can never do enough to eradicate all the racism in football," added Blatter, who said he was thinking of holding a summit "with all the actors concerning discrimination and racism."
Blatter also confirmed during the interview that in 2015 he'll be leaving his job as head of soccer's governing body. He says there is a "good possibility" Platini will be his successor but remains unconvinced that the former France midfielder is excited about the role.
"I am not so sure that he is willing to go into the position as the FIFA president," Blatter said. "He has not declared officially but he could, would, should be a good successor always and ever."
Blatter said he envisages becoming a radio commentator, providing analysis of matches, once his career with FIFA has finished.


Rural Divide: Mid-Missouri is 'leaking' sales tax revenue
By Brendan CrowleyGateHouse Missouri
Editor's note: This is the third article in a 10-part series. Part four will publish May 29.
In the Boonville Police Department, the longest-tenured patrol officer has been there since December 2015.
Of the 16 patrol officers, only two have more than two years of experience, and everyone else has been there less than a year, Boonville Police Chief Bobby Welliver said.
“If they stay here two or three years, we’re happy,” he said.
After Boonville hires a new officer, it takes about three months of training before they go out on their own, Welliver said. If an officer leaves after six months, the department loses the training and equipment they invested without much in return.
“We get a few months of work out of them, and then off they go,” he said.
For most of Welliver’s 33 years the department has never had a problem hiring people, he said. Now, finding new recruits is a struggle. The department can’t fill its staff, so it never has the four officers on duty at a time that it’s supposed to, Welliver said. The biggest problem is that there just aren’t as many people getting into law enforcement as there used to be, he said.
The other problem is pay.
Bryan Schultz is the chief of police in Hallsville. For the last nine weeks, he’s also been the only full-time officer on duty, while filling in for the other full-time officer currently on paternity leave. That leaves Schultz to handle administrative tasks, writing tickets and responding to calls. It’s been hectic, he said.
“There’s no vacations for me, no taking my wife to dinner on a weekend,” he said. “I’ve gotta be back in uniform in a short period of time and respond to a call in the city.”
The difficulty smaller cities have maintaining their police departments illustrates a bigger issue for those communities. They are heavily reliant on sales taxes and must compete for retail dollars with Columbia’s big market and internet purchases.
Communities have struggled — many unsuccessfully — just to keep up with inflation.
Over the past nine months, GateHouse Media gathered statistics and conducted interviews about every aspect of life in eight counties of Central Missouri — Audrain, Boone, Callaway, Cole, Cooper, Howard, Moniteau and Randolph — and how things have changed over the past 20 to 50 years.
For cities, the story is similar whether they are large like Columbia or small like Boonville. Voters have been asked to approve higher sales taxes to compensate for a shrinking retail base.
Along with sales lost to the internet and larger communities, people also shop less than they used to, said Pat Curry, a University of Missouri economic development specialist.
In the 1980s, Missouri was one of the highest-income states in the U.S., but incomes in Missouri have been growing slower than the national average, he said. As costs like housing increase faster than income, people have less money to spend, he said.
“It used to be people would get in the car and go shop for fun, to spend a day out,” Curry said. “That just doesn’t happen with the frequency it used to.”
High turnover and short-staffing are systemic for small police departments around the U.S., but Schultz thinks it’s worse in the Midwest and southern United States. He retired from policing in California after 22 years, and he said the pay disparity between large and small departments is much larger in Missouri.
“When the tax base is low, departments can never get their foot up, and get solid, well-paid officers,” he said. “We’re just used as training grounds for larger departments.”
Smaller cities in mid-Missouri already have small tax bases relative to Columbia, and that gap has been widening for several communities. Taxable sales in Columbia have risen by over 20 percent over the last decade, while they’ve risen only 1.2 percent in Mexico, 5.1 percent in California, and have fallen 3 percent in Fayette, from $20.7 million in 2008 to $20.1 million in 2017.
When adjusted for inflation, sales are lower in Mexico, Fulton, Moberly, California and Fayette than they were in 2008.
Even Columbia’s sales tax revenue isn’t keeping up with its growing population. Per capita sales are down from 2014, falling from $19,832 to $19,439 in 2017.
There is also a shrinking pool of new officers graduating from training academies. Because of the shortage, officers can go where they get the best pay, Moberly Police Chief Troy Link said.
“It’s a competition to get them to even come to you to do an interview. It’s a competition to get them to accept your job,” Link said. “And it’s an ongoing competition to keep them. It all boils down to dollars.”
The Columbia Police Department pays for new recruits to go to an academy, so recruiting officers from other departments who have already been through an academy saves money, Sgt. Curtis Perkins wrote in an email. Along with the higher pay, there is more variety in the duties assigned to Columbia officers, from detectives to community outreach, he said.
The three largest departments in Boone County — Columbia, the Boone County Sheriff’s Department and the MU Police Department — all start officers at $42,000 or more. Most small towns can’t match that level of pay.
The starting salary in Boonville is $32,344 for a full-time officer. In Hallsville, it’s $28,000.
Moberly officers start at $32,490 and they’re not guaranteed a cost of living increase from the city. They didn’t get one last year, so Link gave officers a 1-percent raise after cutting two positions.
The Moberly Police Department budgets for 27 officers, with 16 patrol officers. The department has four vacancies, leaving only two officers each shift rather than the three officers Link wants to have on duty.
The 12 officers are spread thin answering calls, making it hard to find time to do proactive policing. Even things like writing reports take longer, slowing down the court process, Link said.
Turnover in Moberly isn’t as quick as in Boonville, but it’s become enough of an issue that Link asked the Moberly City Council to fit a pay raise and a housing stipend into the budget this year. Officers typically move on after two years, but some stay up to eight years, Link said.
“With more experience, you generally have officers who perform better in a lot of situations than if they’re brand new, straight out of the academy,” he said.
In Hallsville, Schultz has four part-time officers and one full-time officer aside from himself. Most of the part-time officers have different, full-time jobs and spotty availability, Schultz said. He needs more who can work weekends, and to reach his goal of a 24/7 department, he needs full-timers, he said.
“I need two more full-time guys who can work the graveyard positions, and then we’re going to be a lot more self-sustaining,” Schultz said. “But I think we’re a ways off from that.”
Hallsville is growing, giving officers more work to do. But it still has a small sales tax base, so the budget is staying the same, Schultz said.
It’s working toward putting a half-cent sales tax dedicated to public safety on the ballot, but first needs approval from the Missouri General Assembly, which it failed to get this session. The half-cent tax would amount to about $50,000 a year in revenue, enough to fund another officer or buy a patrol car for the Hallsville police, Schultz said. It could also let the city raise officer pay, which now starts at $13.50 an hour.
“That’s a big deal for a small town like this,” he said.
Sales migration
Trying to keep pay competitive is a universal struggle for small cities, especially as Missouri’s minimum wage starts to rise. Low pay causes high turnover and makes it difficult to recruit qualified police officers, and the same is true for other city employees.
Centralia used to have a four-person public works crew until one retired a few years ago. That position wasn’t filled, and the city hasn’t budgeted for it since, City Administrator Heather Russell said. With four people, the crew could split up and work on multiple projects. It’s hard for them to stay caught up with only three, she said.
Tight budgets have pushed cities to ask voters to pay higher sales tax rates to make up for the lower spending. Centralia voters approved a half-cent public safety sales tax in 2018.
The tax will let the city shift some of its police and fire costs out of the general fund, giving them room to budget another public works employee. That should help them keep up with fixing roads, Russell said.
Columbia once enjoyed substantial annual growth in revenues because of its position as the retail hub of the region. It remains the largest retail center between St. Louis and Kansas City but the growth has slowed as internet commerce grows at a rapid pace.
Online sales have more than doubled their share of all retail sales over the past decade. Nationwide, they accounted for over 10 percent of all retail sales in the first quarter of 2019, compared to less than 4 percent in the first quarter of 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s most recent e-commerce report.
That’s hurt municipalities, many of which have no way of collecting tax on those sales. The shift to online retail is a main factor behind declining sales tax revenues everywhere, said Missouri Municipal League Deputy Director Richard Sheets. Smaller municipalities are hit especially hard by online retail because they rely on small businesses for their tax base, he said.
“Their competitor now isn’t neighboring businesses, it’s the internet,” Sheets said.
Businesses popping up in smaller cities are usually specialty stores that don’t compete with big box stores, Sheets said. But coffee shops and restaurants don’t attract a lot of other business, or generate a lot of tax revenue compared to retail stores, he said.
The effect of online commerce is combining with the economic power of Columbia to strain the budgets of smaller communities. Boone County has added thousands of jobs in the last decade — including almost 1,000 retail jobs — while surrounding counties have lost employment.
In September, the federal Office of Management and Budget added Cooper County to the Columbia Metropolitan Statistical Area. That means 25 percent of Cooper County’s workforce commutes to Boone County for work.
Cooper County has lost nearly 800 manufacturing jobs in the past decade.
The loss of manufacturing jobs has two effects on retail sales — people have less money to spend and they’re having to look outside Cooper County for work, Curry said.
Commuters tend to spend money where they work, he said. That’s especially true when commuting to a retail hub like Columbia, which has more options than smaller towns, both for shopping and for services like health care.
Curry studies sales patterns and calculates whether counties are “leaking” — meaning they have less in retail sales than their population and income would suggest.
Leakage rates for Audrain, Callaway, Howard and Moniteau counties are higher than three-quarters of all Missouri counties, and Callaway is the eighth-highest. Callaway lost $146.8 million in sales to leakage in 2017, according to Curry’s figures, equal to almost half of the $311.9 million in actual taxable sales that year.
Columbia had $250.8 million more in taxable sales than expected, and it’s been above expectations in all of Curry’s calculations, going back to 2001.
The only county where taxable sales have grown faster than in Boone County over the past two decades is Cooper County. Taxable sales in Boonville jumped after the Isle of Capri casino opened in 2001, increasing from $75 million to $135 million.
Downtown Boonville has many of the same issues as other small towns, said Chamber of Commerce President Laura Wax. Small shops and restaurants fill much of the historic downtown, but many storefronts are vacant. Small businesses are starting in Boonville, but most of them are small, employing two or three people, Wax said.
Along with the casino, expansion has helped maintain Boonville’s tax base. It has annexed along Highway B and Ashley Road to Interstate 70, gathering in the I-70 gas stations and truck stops as well as commercial corridors that include restaurants, services and big-ticket retailers like Black Rifle and retail giant Walmart, all of which draw shoppers into Boonville.
“One of the things we know is that almost every place that has a Walmart is doing much better in sales than places that don’t,” Curry said.
Cut services or hike taxes
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair last summer opened the door for states and municipalities to force out-of-state retailers to collect use tax like businesses within the state collect sales tax.
Businesses that make out-of-state purchases are already paying use tax. Individuals are technically required to pay a use tax on out-of-state purchases, but they’re not required to report those purchases to the state unless they spent over $2,000 in a year, effectively giving them an exemption, he said.
“We can’t capture all of them because (the retailers) don’t have businesses here who we can go to and say, ‘You owe this tax,’” Sheets said.
It’s an issue of fairness for Missouri businesses, whose online competitors have a tax advantage. Their customers are buying from out of state instead of from their stores, and it affects local economies, Sheets said.
Closing businesses mean fewer jobs for the community. It also means there could be fewer services in town, giving people another reason to go to Columbia, he said.
A bill in the Missouri House of Representatives would have required out-of-state vendors to collect tax if they had 200 sales or at least $100,000 worth of sales in Missouri in a year. The bill did not pass before the end of the legislative session, so its supporters will have to try again next year, Sheets said.
As municipalities wait for Wayfair to be implemented, they’re also facing rising costs. Things like rising asphalt expenses can strain a city’s budget, and so can personnel.
In Centralia, the major rising costs are in payroll. The city has to keep its pay competitive with the rising minimum wage to attract and keep good employees, Russell said.
Boonville and Moberly are also looking at increasing pay for police officers and other city employees. But raising pay increases other costs, too, like retirement funds, said Boonville Assistant City Administrator Kate Fjell. And unlike capital purchases, salaries are a recurring cost, and they get larger every year due to cost-of-living increases.
The city has to make sure decisions like that are sustainable over time, Fjell said.
“I think that’s why we’ve been hesitant, because we want to feel good about that if we do it,” she said.
The two main ways municipalities are trying to keep up with declining sales tax revenues are raising their sales tax rates and cutting services, Sheets said.
Since 2000, voters have approved sales tax increases in each of the eight counties studied for these reports as well as new sales taxes within the largest community in every county.
“People don’t like taxes, that’s the bottom line, but we understand that’s how we pay for services,” Sheets said.
The tax increases haven’t been enough to avoid cuts in payroll and services. In Fayette, taxable sales have increased 32 percent since 2001, adding about $56,000 in revenue annually to the city budget. But when the totals are adjusted for inflation, sales are actually down.
When city administrator and clerk Robin Triplett started working for Fayette 30 years ago, it had 32 employees. It’s now down to 20. She started as the city clerk and would fill in as city administrator when there wasn’t one.
Now the roles are combined into one position. The city’s public works director also serves as the building inspector, Triplett said. The city has also cut down the street, sewer and police departments.
“Sometimes I will say that the public works director and I feel rather overloaded with projects, and we try to do the best we can with the staff we have and the money we have to do it,” she said.
Voters like earmarked taxes, with the money dedicated for a specific purpose such as parks or public safety. That cannot be used for general operations. That can help in one area of need but shortchange other services.
Payroll is the biggest expense for most cities. The largest single cost in Moberly’s general fund is the police payroll and sales tax is the largest single source of funding. That pot of money isn’t growing, so fitting in a pay raise is a challenge.
Moberly relies on its general fund and half-cent capital improvements sales tax to fund major purchases and projects. This year, it couldn’t fund all the capital improvement requests sought by departments and had to cut from the fire department.
At some point, the city is still going to have to replace its 1984 ladder truck and 2002 pumper truck, according to Moberly City Manager Brian Crane’s budget message.
Whether it’s with a dedicated public safety sales tax like Hallsville is seeking, or making room somewhere else in the budget, Boonville’s police chief Welliver said his city is going to have to address pay, and not just for his officers.
“I personally don’t think anybody in the city is getting paid enough money,” he said. “I don’t think our street workers are getting paid enough.”
bcrowley@gatehousemedia.com
Part I: While Boone County booms, neighbors struggle with change
Part I Extra: Westmoreland: A journey together into 'Rural Divide'
Part II: Effects of factory closures continue to linger
Part II Extra: Some cities face uphill battle in tech-driven economy
Part III: Mid-Missouri is ‘leaking’ sales tax revenue
Part IV: Small schools see challenges, rewards
Part IV Extra: Small town, big field of dreams
Part V: Rural areas have limited health care, lower life expectancy
Part VI: Communities struggling to maintain basic infrastructure
Part VI Extra: Rocheport bridge rehab could be 'poison pill'
Part VII: Fewer Mid-Missouri farmers are tending bigger farms
Part VIII: Poverty a 'hidden epidemic' in mid-Missouri
Part IX: Few alternatives to prison exist in Mid-Missouri


Lake Kisale
lake, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Lake Kisale, expansion of the Lualaba River on the Katanga (Shaba) plateau of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lake Kisale, situated north of Lake Upemba, is 10 miles (16 km) long and 12 miles (19 km) wide and is swampy and overgrown with papyrus. The southern and southeastern shores are part of Upemba National Park.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Laura Etheredge, Associate Editor.
Lualaba River
Lualaba River, headstream of the Congo River. Its 1,100-mile (1,800-kilometre) course lies entirely within Congo (Kinshasa), central Africa. It rises on the Katanga (Shaba) plateau at about 4,600 feet (1,400 m), near Musofi, Congo. Its upper course descends to the Manika Plateau and is marked by falls and rapids. Its…
Democratic Republic of the Congo, country located in central Africa. Officially known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the country has a 25-mile (40-km) coastline on the Atlantic Ocean but is otherwise landlocked. It is the second largest country on the continent; only Algeria is larger. The capital, Kinshasa,…
Upemba National Park, park in southeastern Congo (Kinshasa). It was created in 1939 and has an area of 4,529 square miles (11,730 square km). Its northern and western borders touch the Lualaba River and the surrounding lakes and marshlands of the Kamolondo plains. Lake Upemba, an expansion of the Lualaba…
Lake, any relatively large body of slowly moving or standing water that occupies an inland basin of appreciable size. Definitions that precisely distinguish lakes, ponds, swamps, and even rivers and other bodies of nonoceanic water are not well established. It may be said, however, that rivers and…
Africa, the second largest continent (after Asia), covering about one-fifth of the total land surface of Earth. The continent is bounded on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, on the north by the Mediterranean Sea, on the east by the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and on the south by the mingling waters…
Lake Victoria
East African lakes
Lake Tanganyika
Lake Nyasa
Lake Rudolf
Lake Kivu
Lake Tana
Hawaii, constituent state of the United States of America. Hawaii (Hawaiian: Hawai‘i) became the 50th…
Mount Everest, mountain on the crest of the Great Himalayas of southern Asia that lies on the border…


Main » 2018 » March » 7 » ACI World Announces the World's Top Airports for Customer Experience in 2017
ACI World Announces the World's Top Airports for Customer Experience in 2017
Wave of new award winners reflecting increased competition amongst airports
MONTREAL-Tuesday, March 6th 2018 [ AETOS Wire ]
(BUSINESS WIRE) -- Airports Council International (ACI) World announces the winners of the prestigious 2017 Airport Service Quality (ASQ) Awards.
This year an unprecedented sixteen airports are first time winners, challenging best- in-class airports in top-quality customer service. This phenomenon reflects the increasingly competitive air travel business, where continuous service improvement is a key ingredient to performance.
First-time winners this year are: Rome Fiumicino (FCO,) Newcastle (NCL), Athens (ATH), Zagreb (ZAG), Bandung (BDO), Indore (IDR), Ahmedabad (AMD), Casablanca (CMN), George (GRJ), Toronto Pearson (YYZ), San Jose (SJC), Cleveland (CLE), Los Cabos (SJD), Belo Horizonte (CNF) and Medina (MED).
Mumbai scoops first place for airports in Asia-Pacific serving over 40 million passengers a year. In North America, the top spot goes to Toronto Pearson and in Europe to Rome Fiumicino.
ASQ is the only worldwide programme to survey passengers on their day of travel, measuring passengers’ views of 34 key performance indicators. In 2017, over half of the world's 7.7 billion travelers passed through an ASQ airport. 74% of the world’s 100 busiest airports are part of the ASQ network which delivers 600,000 individual surveys per year in 42 languages across 84 countries. The programme served 343 airports in 2017.
“Objective measurement and benchmarking are critical in driving performance in any business especially in such a competitive and dynamic one as an airport,” said Angela Gittens, Director General, ACI World. “These winning airports have dedicated themselves to delivering a stellar customer experience. ACI World proudly recognizes the accomplishments of all airports in the global ASQ network. I look forward to celebrating with them in September.”
The ASQ Awards Ceremony will be held during the inaugural ACI Customer Excellence Global Summit, to be held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada from 10–13 September 2018, hosted by Halifax International Airport Authority.
View the 2017 ASQ Award Winners.
1. Airports Council International (ACI). As of January 2018, provisional figures show that ACI serves 641 members operating 1,953 airports in 176 countries.
2. Learn more about the global ACI ASQ Programme
View source version on businesswire.com:
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=51765572&lang=en
Hicham Ayoun
Manager, Communications
ACI World
mediarelations@aci.aero
Anita Berthier
Manager, External Relations and Special Events
Permalink : http://aetoswire.com/news/5776/en


Kansas woman crochets for fallen law enforcement officers’ loved ones
by: Krystle Sherrell
A Wichita woman who taught herself to crochet more than 30 years ago is using her skills to bring happiness to law enforcement officers and their families around the country.
Tammy Volbrecht has crocheted everything from baby hats and gloves to blankets and even a Christmas tree.
After being laid off by Sears years ago, she began using her free time to make things for others.
“I always just enjoy creating for others,” said Tammy.
After watching the news coverage of the death of Sedgwick County Deputy Robert Kunze, she felt the need to send something to his family. So, she crocheted a flag.
“Something, I did one day just to see if I could make a flag,” said Tammy. “Then, it kind of grew from there.”
It grew quite a bit. Tammy has sent out dozens of gifts to officers all over the country, pregnancy and crisis centers and family members.
She also made a flag for retired Wichita police officer Brian Arterburn, who is recovering from injuries after he was ran over in 2017.
“People need little bits of hope,” said Tammy. “It’s kind of mean out there right now, and people need that hope.”
She said she thinks about the families of the law enforcement officers as she’s crocheting.
“What’s her life like, what does she think about, what does she worry about every day?” said Tammy.
Another person who takes a lot of pride in his gift from Tammy is retired Wichita police officer Doug Nolte.
Nolte is now the chief executive officer for the Union Rescue Mission but has the flag Tammy made hanging high in his new office.
“I think it’s beautiful,” Nolte said. “In 26 years of law enforcement, now, there are a lot of things that are strained in terms of community and police relations and recognizing that someone cares enough to do a very nice gesture on behalf of law enforcement. When you think about the time that it takes to craft one of these flags, that’s no small task.”
The next project for Tammy is a gift for Wichita Police Chief Gordon Ramsay. It will include a star for every fallen Wichita officer, including K-9 Rooster, who was shot and killed in the line of duty in 2017.
She also plans to make one for Sedgwick County Sheriff Jeff Easter.
Tammy doesn’t do any of this for herself, though. Instead, she does it for everyone else.
“You make something to make somebody feel better,” Tammy said. “You don’t make something to get something from it.”


Tag Archives: global cooling
by Caroline Ailanthus	11 Comments
The Story of Global Cooling
I’ve been hearing climate deniers talking about a global cooling scare in the nineteen seventies for a while now, and I finally got curious about where this narrative had come from–I didn’t think it had been made up whole cloth, but I hadn’t heard word one about it from any credible source, either. You’d think that if climate scientists had thought an ice age was imminent as recently as the seventies, at least some of the scientists I know would mention it occasionally?
So, I looked into it. And I found not one but two explanations.
In one story, Peter Gwynne, a science writer for Newsweek, wrote a short article on an idea some scientists were kicking around at the time–that a thirty-year cooling trend might continue and develop into a real ice age. The article was published on April 28, 1975, and attracted enough attention that other publications picked up the story with their own articles. Books and TV shows followed.
Scientific American, my source for this particular story, explains that the cooling trend is
now believed to be a consequence of soot and aerosols that offered a partial shield to the earth as well as the gradual retreat of an abnormally warm interlude.
there also was a small but growing counter-theory that carbon dioxide and other pollutants accompanying the Industrial Age were creating a warming belt in the atmosphere, and by about 1980 it was clear that the earth’s average temperature was headed upward.
Scientific American acknowledges that the global cooling thing has no legitimate place in the climate discussion today, and reports that Mr. Gwynne himself is somewhat embarrassed by the anti-scientific uses to which his writing is being put. He does stand by what he wrote, given the limits of available knowledge at the time.
Ok, but there are a couple of problems with that story, starting with the fact that the greenhouse effect was not a “small but growing counter-theory” in the 1970’s–the effect of carbon dioxide on the climate has been known since 1859. The first calculations of the human role in climate change were made in 1896.
And it’s not like global warming was some far-out thing nobody was paying attention to back in the 1970’s, either. No less a person than the fiction writer, Ursula K. LeGuin had started making oblique references to climate change as early as 1969 (her novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, includes a flawless description of the natural greenhouse effect, as well as a reference to an alien planet that is hot because “an exploitive civilization wrecked its natural balances, burned up the forests for kindling, as it were.” Several of her later books also refer to the Earth itself getting warmer, too). Perhaps more starkly, the 1970’s were when Exxon was busy figuring out what it was going to do about global warming, of which its internal documents prove it was well aware.
Beyond all that, there wasn’t a 30-year cooling trend, except perhaps in a mathematical sense. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the period from the mid-1940’s to the mid-1970’s was cooler than previous years had been, but there was a lot of minor temperature fluctuation, not a consistent cooling. A cool period of relative stability is not the same thing as an oncoming ice age.
So, I did some more poking and found the second story.
Apparently, in the 1970’s, the greenhouse effect was well-known, but the cooling effect of sulfate emissions (“aerosols”) had just been discovered and it wasn’t clear yet which would prove dominant. A few climate scientists thought the aerosols might win out–between 1965 and 1979, 10% of the scientific papers on the subject predicted cooling, but 28% could make no prediction and 62% predicted warming. In other words, the coming ice age was a legitimate scientific idea for a while, but only a small minority of studies ever supported it.
I’m not actually sure, based on what I’ve read, whether anybody ever proved that sulfate emissions couldn’t have counteracted carbon emissions under some scenarios that were plausible back then. As history has actually played out, sulfate emissions have been dramatically reduced (they also cause acid rain), while carbon emissions have continued to climb. Aerosols still complicate climate predictions, but no one thinks they’re going to cause an ice age anymore.
There’s no cooling trend mentioned in there.
The way I see these two stories blending, I suspect that what really happened was that the end of the warming trend of the first third of the 20th century was taken (maybe correctly) as evidence of the cooling power of aerosols. Some climate scientists thought the aerosols could go on to trigger a cooling trend, but most did not. Peter Gwynne, being a writer who cared about science and about getting his writing published, chose to focus on the minority opinion, since that seemed more sensational at the time. He has admitted that the story “pushed the envelope a little bit,” in deference to Newsweek’s penchant for what Scientific American called an “over-ventilated style.”
The ventilation would have seemed harmless at the time, if the article was fundamentally accurate, as I’m willing to buy that it was. Nobody can represent the entire breadth of the scientific conversation on any one topic in just nine paragraphs. You have to choose which of all possible stories you’re going to tell, in order to tell any story at all.
That deniers have since pounced on his article for political and anti-scientific purposes is not Mr. Gwynne’s doing. Being co-opted is a risk all published writers run–it’s the Scylla to the charybdis of being utterly ignored.
Curiously, the one detail I thought would enter the discussion apparently didn’t, except as a note of context written long after the fact by one or another of my sources–astronomically speaking, we’re supposed to be in an ice age already.
The primary factor that dictated the glacial/interglacial cycle through recent geological history was the Milankovitch Cycle, an interaction between three separate variations in Earth’s orbit that together dramatically how much solar radiation we get at different times of the year. We’re at a point in the cycle where we should be heading into a new ice age, but aren’t because our carbon dioxide levels are too high.
The connection between that cycle and climate was confirmed in 1976, so it may be another thread of the “global cooling” story that none of my sources happened to tease out–but if not, there may have been good reason to ignore it.
The onset of ice ages is very slow. I have to cite one of my grad school classes here (Tom Wessels was the teacher–I’ve cited him as a source here before) as I haven’t been able to lay my hands on an appropriate link, but ice ages melt quickly (as in many hundreds of years) and grow slowly (as in many thousands of years). In fact, the warmest point of our current interglacial (before now, anyway) was thousands of years ago. No, the cooling was never enough to initiate continental glaciation on North America or Asia, but cooling was in progress.There is an excellent illustration of this cooling, and how long and consistent it was, here (yes, that is a web comic, but this one’s not a joke).
Sliding towards an ice age doesn’t look like anything special, it turns out. More or less, it looks like all of human history.
Categories: Climate Science | Tags: Arrhenius, carbon emissions, climate change, global cooling, global warming, greenhouse effect, history, Milankovitch Cycles, Peter Gwynne, sulfate emissions, the greenhouse effect, Ursula K. LeGuin, xkcd | Permalink.


Clive Evans
Clive received training in imagery analysis at various stages of his military career in the Royal Air Force between 1987 and 2010.
He spent his early years as an Imagery Analyst at the Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre (JARIC), RAF Brampton, which involved comparison and contrast of various objects utilising optical, electro-optical, infrared and radar imagery.
In addition to serving operational tours of duty in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, Clive also completed two tours as an instructor at the UK Imagery Analysis School. As a senior instructor he was responsible for the training of UK Tri-Service personnel, International students, reservists, civilians and trainees in the field of Imagery Analysis. His primary role included the design, development and delivery of the Sensor Studies training module and he was the Infrared and Radar imagery analysis specialist for the UK MOD.
In 2010, whilst still in RAF service, Clive was headhunted by a London based forensic company and spent the following four years as a forensic expert witness in the city. In May 2014 he was headhunted by LGC, now Eurofins Forensic Services, where he is employed as the Lead Imagery Investigator within the Forensic Imagery team at Fordham in Cambridgeshire.
Clive has produced an average of over 50 reports per year for the prosecution and defence, and has given expert evidence at the Central Criminal Court, other Crown Courts and was also engaged as an imagery analysis expert witness for the Al Sweady Inquiry.
FIAD Committee


What is competitiveness? #1 – Robert Reich
March 24, 2015 by Nick Shaxson Leave a Comment
From the Fools’ Gold blog, an article that speaks for itself
What is Competitiveness? #1 Robert Reich
This is the first in an ongoing series of articles we are planning, to explore what competitiveness is, from the perspective of particular public figures or intellectuals. For the first in this series we’ve chosen Robert Reich, a former U.S. Labor Secretary. He’s written an article in plain English that makes a number of clear and important points, which are still fully valid even though it was written in 2011.
It begins with an excellent summary:
“Whenever you hear a business executive or politician use the term “American competitiveness,” watch your wallet. Few terms in public discourse have gone so directly from obscurity to meaninglessness without any intervening period of coherence.”
(We’ll add that to our new quotations page when it’s up and running.)
As we write this, the BBC has just published a pre-election article about UK politicians, reminding us that this lack of coherence on ‘competitiveness’ doesn’t only plague U.S. politics. In different guises, it’s global. The BBC quote is from UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who said:
“The real common ground, the real centre-ground of British politics right now, is who has got the answers to making sure Britain competes and succeeds in the global race? That’s the question which wasn’t answered by Labour, which is being answered by us.”
This wasn’t an off-the-cuff mistake: Cameron has a record of using the fatuous Twitter hashtag #globalrace, and other nonsenses. We aren’t convinced that Cameron’s predecessors in the Labour Party would necessarily have said anything more sensible, but it would be fascinating if a television interviewer who understands the issues were to confront a politican who has said something like this and then proceeded to ask ‘exactly what do you mean by ‘compete,’ Prime Minister / President / esteemed CEO? And not give up probing this question until the politician has fallen off his or her chair or done something like this.
Back to Robert Reich. We’ve copied plenty of his text but have internationalised it because his points are all quite generic.
What is American “competitiveness” and how do you measure it? Here are some different definitions:
1. It’s exports. Okay, but the easiest way for companies to increase their exports from this country is for locally-made products to become cheaper internationally. To do that, companies have to cut production costs here. Their biggest cost is their payrolls. So the simplest way for them to become more “competitive” is to cut their payrolls — either by replacing local workers with machines, or cutting their wages and benefits. How is this a good thing for the country?
2. It’s net exports. The balance of trade: how much we import from abroad, versus how much they import from us. The easiest and most direct way to improve the trade balance is to devalue the currency, to make locally produced goods cheaper in world markets. But this creates two problems: first, everything we buy from overseas becomes more expensive; and second, this could lead to currency wars. How is this good for the country?
3. It’s the profits of ‘our’ companies. In case you haven’t noticed, the profits of multinational corporations are soaring as sales from their foreign-based operations boom, and because they cut local production costs (see the first item above). “Our” multinationals have become increasingly global, so their profitability has relatively little to do with the number and quality of jobs here. “In fact, it may be inversely related,” Reich adds.
Source: Fools’ Gold, derived from Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, FRED database.
(FG: His article was written in 2011 but the basic point remains valid. Corporate profits in many countries have been soaring for decades, in large part because corporations have been winning political battles with workers and paying them lower wages and benefits, figuring out better ways to dodge taxes, and so on. Here’s a graph we created recently showing how U.S. corporate profits rose from a low point of under 4 percent of GDP in the mid 1980s to nearly 12 percent by 2013. Click to enlarge.)
4. It’s the number and quality of local jobs created. This is Reich’s preferred definition. But the only sure way to improve the quality of jobs over the long term is to build the productivity of workers and the economy overall, which means major investments in education, infrastructure, and basic R&D. Which requires at least two big things: tax, and giving the middle and working classes sufficient purchasing power to get the economy going again, such as by getting corporations to pay their workers more. But this is kind of the opposite of what politicians tend to mean when they say ‘competitive economy’.
Reich summarises, briefly, by saying that it’s politically important for politicians, as for any president, to avoid being seen as “anti-business” — but that people must not be seduced into believing that the well-being of ‘our’ businesses is synonymous with the well-being of our country. If their wealth is substantially extracted from the rest of the economy, it’s not obvious how the country as a whole is any better off.
All these brief comments by Reich seem to make eminent sense. In fact, who could argue?
On his last point, “anti-business” is one of those code words, very much like ‘uncompetitive’, that is used to bludgeon opposition to policies that involve taking wealth from one part of the economy and giving it to wealthier people and multinational corporations. (See more code words here.) Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair highlighted the political effects that such use of language can have:
“If… chief executives say it is Labour that will put the economy at risk, who does the voter believe? Answer: the chief executives. Once you lose them, you lose more than a few votes. You lose your economic credibility.”
So this is the first in our “What is competitiveness?” series.
Next up, we may perhaps look at the work of Mariana Mazzucato, or visit a classic 1994 essay in Foreign Affairs by Paul Krugman entitled “Competitiveness: a Dangerous Obsession.” We will also visit a particular form of the ‘competitiveness’ obsession, called ‘tax competitiveness.’ Any other suggestions, of course, are welcome.
Filed Under: Blog, Finance Curse, Tax Wars, Taxing corporations
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Abass Abdoul Aziz on trial
About Abass Abdoul AzizTake Action. Support Abass Abdoul Aziz.Take action for Abass Abdoul Aziz
On the evening of 24 November 2017, following the judgment to drop all charges by Niamey High Court, Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa were released from detention.
About Abass Abdoul Aziz
Abass Abdoul Aziz is a human rights defender and president of the Association de Défense des Droits Consommateurs des Technologies de l'Information, de la Communication et de l'Énergie – ACTICE (Association for the Defence of the Rights of Consumers to Information Technology, Communication and Energy), a non-governmental organisation based in Niamey, Niger. ACTICE has been advocating against corruption and the Finance Bill which is to be approved by the National Assembly in 2018. ACTICE and a number of other civil society organisations have raised concerns regarding the Finance Bill, primarily that the measures included in it will drastically increase the cost of living for many of those who are already living in poverty. ACTICE argues that the source of the current economic situation in Niger is poor management and corruption by the government and that the bill does not address this.
Meet Abass Abdoul Aziz
24 November 2017 : Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa found not guilty
21 November 2017 : Human rights defenders Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa on trial
Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa found not guilty
On 24 November 2017, Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa were found not guilty on all charges by Niamey High Court. They are due to be imminently released from custody following nearly a month in detention.
Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa are human rights defenders, and president and members respectively of the Association de Défense des Droits des Consommateurs des Technologies de l'Information, de la Communication et de l'Énergie – ACTICE (Association for the Defence of the Rights of Consumers to Information Technology, Communication and Energy), a non-governmental organisation based in Niamey, Niger. ACTICE has most recently been advocating against corruption in Niger’s government. ACTICE and a number of other civil society organisations have raised concerns regarding the Finance Bill, which is to be approved by the National Assembly in 2018; primarily that the measures included in it will drastically increase the cost of living for many of those already living in poverty. ACTICE argues that the source of the current economic situation in Niger is corruption and poor management by the government and that the bill does not address this.
On 24 November 2017, the Niamey High Court found that the protest in which Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa participated was not illegal and that they were innocent of all four charges of “participation in an unauthorised protest”, “armed gathering”, “theft” and “complicity in theft”. The human rights defenders were arrested and detained on 30 October 2017 following a protest which took place on 29 October 2017. The protest had received prior authorisation from the authorities and was organised to challenge corruption and the adoption of the 2018 Finance Bill. The Prosecutor had presented the case against the human rights defenders on 17 November 2017 and requested a sentence of 5 years in prison and a fine of 100,000 FCFA (around 840 EUR) for each. On 30 October 2017, the Minister of the Interior issued a decree banning ACTICE from operating throughout the national territory.
Front Line Defenders welcomes the decision by the Court in finding the human rights defenders not guilty of all charges. However, Front Line Defenders expresses concern that the ministerial decree banning ACTICE is still in place, and by consequence, prevents Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa from continuing their legitimate and peaceful activities in defending human rights and tackling corruption in Niger.
Human rights defenders Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa on trial
On 17 November 2017, Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa were charged with “participation in an unauthorised protest”, “armed gathering”, “theft” and “complicity in theft”.
Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa are human rights defenders, and president and members respectively of the Association de Défense des Droits des Consommateurs des Technologies de l'Information, de la Communication et de l'Énergie – ACTICE (Association for the Defence of the Rights of Consumers to Information Technology, Communication and Energy), a non-governmental organisation based in Niamey, Niger. ACTICE has most recently been advocating against corruption in Niger’s government. ACTICE and a number of other civil society organisations have raised concerns regarding the Finance Bill, which is to be approved by the National Assembly in 2018; primarily that the measures included in it will drastically increase the cost of living for many of those already living in poverty. ACTICE argues that the source of the current economic situation in Niger is poor management and corruption by the government and that the bill does not address this.
On 17 November 2017, the Prosecutor presented the case against Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa and requested a sentence of 5 years in prison and a fine of 100,000 FCFA (around €840) for each. On 30 October 2017, Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa were arrested by local police officers on charges relating to a protest which took place on 29 October 2017. They have been detained ever since. The protest had received prior authorisation from the authorities and was organised to challenge corruption and the adoption of the 2018 Finance Bill. On the day of the protest, a group of protesters strayed from the authorised route and began marching towards “Place de la Concertation” near the National Assembly. The protest was then repressed by police using tear gas.
On 30 October 2017, the Minister of the Interior issued a decree banning the organisation ACTICE from operating throughout the national territory. The decision by the judge in the human rights defenders’ trial will be released on 24 November 2017.
Front Line Defenders expresses serious concern over the charges against human rights defenders Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa along with their continued detention which it believes is solely as a result of their legitimate and peaceful work in defending human rights and tackling corruption in Niger.
Front Line Defenders urges the authorities in Niger to:
1. Drop all charges against Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa as Front Line Defenders believes that they are being held solely as a result of their legitimate and peaceful work in the defence of human rights;
2. Immediately release Abass Abdoul Aziz, Abdoulaye Harouna and Djibo Issa pending their trial result;
3. Cease targeting all human rights defenders in Niger and guarantee in all circumstances that they are able to carry out their legitimate human rights activities without fear of reprisals and free of all restrictions including judicial harassment.
Violations #Judicial Harassment


Interactive Data Names Alex Goor Chief Information Officer
Accomplished Executive Focused on Developing Innovative Technology to Support Company’s Growth Objectives
September 20, 2010 09:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Interactive Data Corporation, a leading provider of financial market data, analytics and related solutions, today announced that Alex Goor has been appointed chief information officer, effective immediately.
Mr. Goor, 38, is responsible for development and operations across Interactive Data globally. He is based in New York and reports to Mason Slaine, Interactive Data’s chairman, president and chief executive officer.
“Alex is an accomplished executive, and we are very pleased that he has joined Interactive Data,” said Mason Slaine. “We believe that his insight and expertise will help Interactive Data enhance all aspects of our technology infrastructure that supports the reliable delivery of our services, including our award-winning* evaluated pricing and reference data offerings. Alex will also lead efforts to continue our focus on creating increasingly sophisticated, yet easy-to-use applications that can help our clients make informed financial decisions. With Alex’s leadership, I am confident that Interactive Data will be able to advance our efforts to develop cutting-edge technology that supports our long-term growth objectives.”
Mr. Goor is a member of the Board of Directors of BondDesk Group LLC. From April 2005 to June 2007, he was Co-CEO and CIO of Instinet, Inc. Previously, he was president of Inet ATS, Inc., Instinet Group’s electronic marketplace subsidiary established in November 2003, and also supervised the merger between Instinet, LLC and Island Holding Company.
Before joining Instinet, Mr. Goor was the chief strategy officer of Datek Online Holdings Corporation (DOHC), where he supervised all corporate finance and business development efforts. He was also president of Watcher Technologies, a DOHC technology development and licensing subsidiary catering to professional traders and before that was president of Datek Online Brokerage Services, the firm's online brokerage subsidiary.
Mr. Goor currently serves on the technology committee of New York Presbyterian Hospital and is a graduate of Columbia University.
*Interactive Data was recognized by Inside Market Data and Inside Reference Data as “Best Evaluated Prices Services Provider” in 2009 and 2010, “Best Reference Data Provider” in 2010 and for the “Best Reference Data Initiative” in 2010.
About Interactive Data Corporation
Interactive Data Corporation is a trusted leader in financial information. Thousands of financial institutions and active traders, as well as hundreds of software and service providers, subscribe to our fixed income evaluations, reference data, real-time market data, trading infrastructure services, fixed income analytics, desktop solutions and web-based solutions. Interactive Data's offerings support clients around the world with mission-critical functions, including portfolio valuation, regulatory compliance, risk management, electronic trading and wealth management. Interactive Data is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts and has over 2,400 employees in offices worldwide.
For more information, please visit http://www.interactivedata.com.
Interactive Data Corporation
Brian Willinsky (US media)
brian.willinsky@interactivedata.com
Eoin Bedford (European/Asia-Pacific media)
eoin.bedford@interactivedata.com
Alex Goor has been appointed chief information officer for Interactive Data.


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A Short Guide to Hampstead Heath
June 6, 2016 7:03 pm / Leave a comment
Hampstead Heath is one of London’s largest and most popular open spaces, over time the area of the park has grown to cover 790 acres. The Heath is located in North London on a high ridge between Hampstead and Highgate, it is an area of great diversity with hills, large ponds, modern and ancient woodlands and features the stately home of Kenwood House and its grounds. One of the most popular parts of the Heath is Parliament Hill , from where you can enjoy panoramic views over London.
The Heath was first recorded in 13th century and was generally known as Hampstead Heath from the 16th century. A number of hollows were excavated to extract sand and gravel that gradually became ponds throughout the park. From the 18th century, the Heath became a popular place for Londoners to frequent including poets such as Shelley and painters, Constable made a series of paintings of the area. The quiet rural idyll was changed by the arrival of the railways in the late 19th century when thousands of Londoners made their way to the area to enjoy the country air.
Hampstead Heath John Constable 1820 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge)
The Heath gradually became a recognized beauty spot away from the grime and dirt of industrial London. However its popularity amongst the young workers from the city led to accusations of rowdiness and violence especially on Bank Holidays and Bonfire nights. These concerns began to reduce at the start of the 20th century when the large crowds of visitors began to behave in a more respectable manner.
The Heath was bought under public ownership in the late 19th century and various additions of land made throughout the 20th century, most notably Kenwood House and its grounds to the north of the heath. Other developments have included turning some of the ponds into swimming areas and the creation of a number of havens for wildlife.
In the 21st century, Hampstead Heath probably does not attract the thousands of visitors from all over London, but as the north suburbs have grown considerably, the heath has become an important open space in an increasingly developed North London. The Heath is very popular with walkers, joggers, cyclists, swimmers and those who enjoy the wide open spaces.
Public transport near the Heath includes the London Overground railway stations of Hampstead Heath and Gospel Oak, Underground stations Hampstead, Belsize Park, Golders Green, Highgate and Archway. A number of bus routes serve the various parts of the Heath.
If you would like further information, visit the City of London website here
Since our launch in January 2014, we have attracted thousands of readers each month, the site is constantly updated.


Home Resources Statement by the Delegation of the United States of America on the ongoing aggression against Ukraine and violations of OSCE principles and commitments by the Russian Federation
Statement / speech
Statement by the Delegation of the United States of America on the ongoing aggression against Ukraine and violations of OSCE principles and commitments by the Russian Federation
1089th Plenary Meeting of the Permanent Council
Address by the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, H.E. Araz Azimov. Presentations by the Chairpersons of the Security Committee, the Economic and Environmental Committee, and the Human Dimension Committee. Ongoing aggression against Ukraine and violations of OSCE principles and commitments by the Russian Federation. Situation in Ukraine and the need to implement the Minsk agreements. Freedom of expression in the OSCE area. The death penalty in the United States of America. Reports of threats against members of the political opposition by the Head of the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation. Report on the activities of the Chairperson-in-Office. Farewell to the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the OSCE, Ambassador T. İldem. Launch of a ballistic missile in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on 7 February 2016. Parliamentary elections in Ireland, to be held on 26 February 2016.


Sen. Bye Decries Today’s Controversial FCC Vote to Reverse Net Neutrality Rules
Nearly two years after attending a historic Federal Communications Commission event to adopt strong, open Internet rules, State Beth Bye (D-West Hartford) today lashed out at today’s FCC decision – made by appointees of Republican President Donald Trump – to scrap existing net neutrality rules and replace them with controversial, anti-democracy, anti-consumer, anti-business Internet regulations instead.
Today’s FCC action has been widely criticized by various consumer, democracy, and small business advocates. According to an analysis by The Washington Post, Republican regulators voted today to allow Internet providers to speed up service for some apps and websites, and block or slow down others, despite a recent survey showing that 83 percent of Americans oppose the plan.
“Today’s reversal by the FCC of America’s net neutrality law is a huge win for already profitable business monopolies and a huge loss for consumers and business start-ups,” Sen. Bye said. “Fair and equal access to the Internet is vital to our democracy. Today’s action by the FCC threatens our democracy and threatens our rights as citizens, as consumers, and as business owners. The dismantling of net neutrality only caters to and lines the pockets of massive communications companies like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and others.”
“I have spent the last few years fighting these types of giant communications monopolies in my quest to bring high speed, affordable gigabit Internet service to Connecticut,” Sen. Bye said. “Now, with today’s action by the FCC, I will be working ever harder to restore net neutrality right here in Connecticut. It will be a difficult task, given that some of the companies that stand to benefit the most from today’s misguided FCC decision operate right here in our state. But we have to ensure an even playing field on the Internet for start-ups and small businesses We also need to ensure that all students, regardless of income, have access to the technology they need to innovate and succeed.”
In March 2015, at the invitation of former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, Sen. Bye attended a historic FCC vote on net neutrality in Washington, D.C. Then, the FCC voted to adopt strong, open Internet rules to ensure that Americans reap the economic, social and civic benefits of an open Internet today and into the future, including the preservation of so-called “net neutrality.”
Sen. Bye attended that 2015 announcement in her role as a strong advocate for the “CT Gig Project” to help create local gigabit Internet networks across Connecticut that would deliver Internet speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second (1,000 megabits per second), which is 100 times faster than the average home Internet speed.


Todd Gurley-led Rams beat Lions 30-16, clinch NFC West title
(AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
By LARRY LAGE
DETROIT (AP) The Los Angeles Rams returned to their lockers in the Motor City, where NFC West championship shirts and hats were waiting to be worn.
The victors, though, refuse to be spoiled by this accomplishment.
Todd Gurley ran for 132 yards and two touchdowns to help the Rams overcome a sputtering start to beat the Detroit Lions 30-16 Sunday and clinch the division title for a second straight season.
"We're not satisfied yet," said defensive tackle Aaron Donald, who had two sacks and forced a fumble. "But we're headed in the right direction."
The Rams (11-1) moved a step closer to earning home-field advantage in the NFC playoffs, taking a one-game lead over New Orleans after it lost to Dallas on Thursday night. It is a cushion Los Angeles needs because its only loss was against the Saints last month.
"We're in a position right now that we feel good about," coach Sean McVay said. "If we take care of our business, all the rest of that stuff takes care of itself."
The Lions (4-8) have lost five of six since a surge of success gave them a winning record in late October.
"I'm extremely tired of losing," center Graham Glasgow said.
Detroit's defense held Los Angeles' high-powered offense in check for three quarters, giving the slumping team a shot to potentially pull off a stunning upset. The Lions, though, failed to make the most of the opportunity because their offense struggled to move the ball and score.
Donald helped seal the win by forcing Matthew Stafford to fumble midway through the fourth quarter. The star defensive tackle had two strip-sacks in his last game on Nov. 19, a 54-51 win over Kansas City.
"He held the ball and was loose with it," Donald said. "I just took advantage."
Donald has an NFL-high 16 1/2 sacks this season, and the Rams say he should be an MVP candidate.
"He's unlike anything I've ever seen," quarterback Jared Goff said of the 2017 Defensive Player of the Year.
Linebacker Samson Ebukam recovered Stafford's fumble at the Detroit 24 and Gurley scored on a 13-yard run three snaps later, giving the Rams a 23-13 lead.
Goff, perhaps rusty coming off a bye week, was off the mark on many passes and lost a fumble to help keep the game close. His lackluster performance led to Los Angeles settling for Greg Zuerlein kicking three field goals. Goff was 17 of 33 for 207 yards with a tiebreaking, 8-yard touchdown pass to Robert Woods late in the second quarter. Goff also threw an interception on an overthrown pass in the second quarter and lost a fumble in the third quarter.
The Rams were able to lean on Gurley, who has a single-season franchise record with 15 rushing touchdowns. The star running back also caught three passes for 33 yards.
Stafford was 20 of 33 yards for 245 yards with an 11-yard touchdown pass to tackle Taylor Decker, who faked the Rams out by blocking for a moment before releasing into the flat where he was left wide open. Decker's touchdown pulled Detroit within three points late in the third quarter.
The Lions had a chance to cut its deficit to three again late in the game, but Kenny Golladay couldn't get both feet in the end zone on a pass from Stafford and they had settle for Matt Prater's third field goal.
SAVVY MOVE
Gurley converted a third down late in the game, and after breaking free, he chose not to score to run more time off the clock and force Detroit to take timeouts. It proved a good move because Gurley ran for a 2-yard score with 1:54 left and the Lions were left with no timeouts on their final drive. That ended with Troy Hill intercepting a pass in the end zone with 12 seconds left.
"I wanted to waste some time," Gurley said.
SUH OR BOO?
Rams defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh played against Detroit for the first time and made six tackles.
"I got a warm welcome back," he said.
Detroit drafted Suh No. 2 overall eight years ago and he left for Miami as a free agent in 2015. After the Dolphins cut him earlier this year, he signed a one-year deal with the Rams.
When he played for the Lions, the fans would say his last name after he made a play. When his name was announced after his first tackle Sunday, the crowd seemed to jeer him.
"I don't believe it was a boo," Suh said.
STILL COOKING
Los Angeles receiver Brandin Cooks, who had four receptions for 62 yards, became the first player in NFL history with 1,000 yards receiving in three straight years with three different franchises. He helped set up a field goal that gave the Rams a 13-3 halftime lead.
Cooks surpassed 1,000 last year with New England and in 2016 with New Orleans. Cooks also had a 1,000-yard season with the Saints in 2015.
Rams: RB Malcom Brown left the game with a shoulder injury. CB Aqib Talib played for the first time since going down with an ankle injury in Week 3.
Lions: LB Devon Kennard went out with a hip injury.
Rams: Play at Chicago on Sunday night.
Lions: Play at Arizona on Sunday.
More AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL and https://twitter.com/AP-NFL
Updated December 2, 2018


Editor’s Note: Additional letters penned by Henry D. Wharton during his time with Company C and the central command staff of the 47th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry are available, and will be added to this section as time permits. Selected letters which Henry wrote while serving with the 11th Pennsylvania Volunteers are also available on this site.
Please enjoy these samples of his letters, and check back frequently for updates.
Note: The letters shown below were written by Henry Wharton during 1865, the fifth year of America’s Civil War. For letters penned by Henry during prior years, click on the year you are researching:
12 and 24 April 1865
Henry D. Wharton provided key details about the 47th Pennsylvania’s defense of Washington, D.C. immediately prior to and after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in two letters penned in April 1865 (written on 12 and 24 April, respectively), including the regiment’s reaction to the “unconditional surrender” of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, the enlisted men’s presentation of a “splendid sword” to regimental 2nd Lieutenant Christian S. Beard to “show their appreciation of him as an officer and gentleman,” the impact made on members of the 47th Pennsylvania by President Abraham Lincoln’s murder and witnessing the passage of Lincoln’s funeral train, and the wisdom of America’s procedures for a smooth transfer of power. Published in the Sunbury American, 29 April 1865. (Click on images for enlarged views of letter excerpts. Click HERE for full transcripts of Henry’s two letters.)
In this letter home – penned while his regiment was stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, Henry D. Wharton briefly alluded to the feelings of his fellow 47th Pennsylvanians upon learning of the resignation of Union Brigadier-General William Dwight, Jr., commanding officer of the division to which they were attached at that time (and under whom many members of the regiment had served earlier). In addition to this commentary, he also provided the text of Dwight’s 20 July 1865 farewell letter to his troops from his headquarters at Savannah, Georgia. Published in the Sunbury American, 19 August 1865. (Click on images for enlarged views of letter excerpts. Click HERE for full transcript.)