text:
sponsored by Maple Ridge
Health & Fitness News Elsewhere [fresh daily from the Web]
Libyan with AIDS virus looks to post-Gadhafi era
[August 13, 2011] BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) -- Libya's uprising has given Wael Busnina, who for more than a decades has lived with the HIV virus, a bit of hope for an end to isolation.
Busnina, 27, was among 400 children infected with the virus that causes AIDS in 1998 while he was hospitalized at Benghazi's El-Fatih hospital. The regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi accused five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor of deliberately infecting the children.
The medics were arrested, tortured into confessions and eventually sentenced to death, though international experts blamed unhygienic conditions at the hospital for the infections. After years of wrangling with Europe, Libya released the six in 2007 and they flew to Bulgaria, retracting their confessions.
The children themselves were little heard from.
Busnina says he spent life as a pariah. When he tested positive for HIV, his uncle -- who had been living in the same home as his family -- moved away, and friends began to shun him. Kept in an isolated section of the hospital during his school years, he attempted suicide three times.
He got into university but was branded with the nickname "AIDS." There was harassment from the regime, as secret police kept a close eye on him and others with the virus and tried to pressure them to leave Libya.
[to top of second column]
The hold of Gadhafi's regime over Benghazi and much of eastern Libya ended with the start of the rebellion in February.
With the sign of Libyans demanding greater freedoms, Busnina says he realized "not all people are bad." So he has started a new association of those with HIV -- the "injected," they call themselves, rather than the "infected" -- to advocate society's acceptance and protection from discrimination.
[Associated Press; By SERGEY PONOMAREV]
< Recent articles


Victoria Holec is currently working on her PhD in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought in the departments of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Lethbridge (Canada). Her dissertation titled "Who are the Millennials? Exploring the constructions and performances of 'Millennial' as categories of analysis and practice" investigates Millennial identities as both other-constructed and self-performed through discourse and lived experience. Here, she examines the usefulness of the generation as category of analysis, theories of post-identity, and conceptualizations of youth. Her methodologies involve microblog discourse analysis and design studios (cf. Rabinow & Marcus, 2008). Currently, Victoria is developing a course on "Conceptualizing Youth," which reviews deterministic and constructivist conceptualizations of youth, major theories and methodologies used to study youth, and applies these to current issues and media representations concerning youth ranging from Neuroscience, Psychology, Anthropology, and History to Media and Cultural Studies.
We are excited to announce that we've recently launched a New YouTube Channel.
The channel includes content from our previous channel as well as new content more recently provided by our members.
We invite you to 1) subscribe to our channel and 2) share any relevant materials with us. What are some of the videos that you turn to when teaching about children and youth? Materials could include videos on: race, gender, sexuality, migration, education, development, cultural psychology, play, consumption, the state, globalization, you name it!
Suggestions can be sent via Facebook, Twitter, or E-mail. We look forward to collaborating with you to further the resources available to our ACYIG community!


text:
Rise and Shine
Ina R. & Howard J. Drew Conference Center
Director: Ben Dai
Writer: Andrew Robinson
Type: Shorts
Length: 10 min
Screening: Mar 3 12:00 PM
Waking up after years in a deep sleep, the last surviving scientist in Antarctica must use her ingenuity and science to survive.
Filmmaker Bio: Ben Dai is a Project Director for Blizzard Entertainment's Animation Department, driving the vision of the company's short films. He joined Blizzard in 2001 as an animator but quickly turned to his storytelling talents as the team's first storyboard artist. Later, as the team's supervisor, Ben ultimately created the storyboard department that exists today. His ambition toward story led him to direct several of Blizzard Animation's cutscenes. Currently, he focuses on directing various animated shorts for Blizzard's critically-acclaimed game, Overwatch™.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: How to update memcached in Django Rest API I have been setting up caching in Django using a database cache but problem is when changes in database using Rest API PUT method but cache data not change instantly, after some time value should be reflected.
using below code refer:
## setting.py

CACHES = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'django.core.cache.backends.memcached.MemcachedCache',
        'LOCATION': '127.0.0.1:11211',
    }
}

MIDDLEWARE = [
'django.middleware.cache.UpdateCacheMiddleware',
'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
'django.middleware.cache.FetchFromCacheMiddleware',
]

SESSION_ENGINE = "django.contrib.sessions.backends.cache"

Please help me out. I not saw Memcached Status and Memcached store Data.
Anyone to suggested how to do that?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Front Porch Decorating Ideas – Uncovered porches do not provide a cozy place to relax. When decorating a porch to create a cozy area, decorate it as a room in a house would. Soft furniture to relax, tables to hold drinks, and a place to sit in the afternoon turn into a boring porch in a cozy apartment; comfortable. You do not need any special skills to decorate a cozy porch. Painting a porch helps create a cozy atmosphere.
The fresh paint instantly updates the look of the porch and allows you to make any design you choose. Stripes of paint on the walls or the porch floor as a decorative touch. Select a light paint color to create an illusion of a wide open, front porch. The dark colors of paint make a fall porch decor look grim and small. Fix the furniture outdoors on a porch to make it cozy.
When considering the options of outdoor furniture for a porch consider the value of the front entryway decorating ideas, for example, read a book or enjoy a drink watching the sunrise. The incorporation of large, oversized furniture creates a comfortable living room in front of an unfilled wood rocking chair. The small tables provide a designated space to hold food or drinks. Installing a hammock on the front porch provides an option for a pleasant afternoon nap.


I recently tried sweet potato wraps by BFree foods which is probably what inspired this recipe experiment of mine.
6.Remove, spread on your tomato purée, add your toppings of choice then place back In the oven for a further 10 minutes until the edges are golden brown and crispy!
The beauty of this base is that you can make it as thick or thin as you want or even make multiple mini pizzas too!
Hope you have a lovely weekend & do let me know if you give it a go!
Aww thank you so so much Holly!
Will be trying these for sure!!
Honestly, I rarely like sweet potato (as a burger is sooo good!) but this recipe is making want to give it another shot!


text:
Wahrburg ist ein Ortsteil der gleichnamigen Ortschaft der Hansestadt Stendal im Landkreis Stendal in Sachsen-Anhalt, Deutschland.

Geografie
Wahrburg, ein Straßendorf mit Kirche, liegt südwestlich der Kernstadt Stendal in der Altmark. Südlich der Ortslage fließt die Uchte.

Geschichte
Ursprünglich war das Dorf in der Form eines Hufeisens angelegt. Die erste urkundliche Erwähnung stammt aus dem Jahr 1339 als villam dictam Warburg, als Markgraf Ludwig I. Rechte über Wahrburg an Stendaler Bürger namens Hoger (Hogen, Hoke) übertrug. Im Landbuch der Mark Brandenburg von 1375 werden das Dorf Warborch und eine Mühle aufgeführt. Es gehörte Barthold Hogen. Der Stendaler Bürger Benedict Calve erwarb 1466 eine Hälfte des Dorfes. Wahrburg war ein kleines Rittergut.

Kurfürst Joachim II. von Brandenburg (1505–1571) hatte seinen Kanzler Johann Weinleben († 1558) mit der Anwartschaft auf eine Hälfte des Dorfes Wahrburg, die die Brüder Andreas und Palm Rynow zu Lehen hatten, belehnt. Am 15. November 1547 belehnte er seinen Kanzler Johann Weinleben auch mit der Anwartschaft auf die andere Hälfte des Dorfes Wahrburg. Am 24. August 1569 verkauften die Brüder Johann und Joachim Weinleben zu Berlin das seinerzeit ihrem Vater, dem Kanzler Johann Weinleben, von Kurfürst Joachim verliehene Angefälle auf das Dorf Wahrburg – Lehnsbesitz der Brüder Andreas und Palm Rynow sowie des Hans Kolck zu Stendal – an Claus Goldbeck, Bürgermeister zu Stendal, und seine Brüder und Vettern Andres, Georg, Heinrich und Gregorius, die aus dem Werbener Zweig der Familie der Familie Goldbeck stammten, für 100 Gulden.

Im Jahre 1774 wurde ein Teilungsvertrag zwischen Johann Friedrich von Goldbeck zu Berlin, Samuel August von Goldbeck zu Magdeburg, Heinrich Julius von Goldbeck zu Berlin und Hans Christoph von Goldbeck zu Meurs über das Rittergut Wahrburg geschlossen.

Mit Wahrburg sind als Gutsbesitzer somit die Familien von Goldbeck und von Rynow verbunden.

Das Rittergut Wahrburg ist infolge der Nachlassregulierung nach dem Tode des Majors Carl Friedrich von Goldbeck zu Wahrburg (ca. 1848) auf die adelige Familie von Nordeck übergegangen.

Die 1871 entstandene Berlin-Lehrter Eisenbahn durchschneidet das Dorf in Ost-West-Richtung. Direkt an der Bahnlinie am heutigen Mühlenweg stand früher eine Windmühle.

In der Zeit nach der politischen Wende des Jahres 1989 entstanden neue Eigenheime. So entstanden westlich des Ortskerns ungefähr 15 Eigenheimbauten. Im Jahr 2000 wurden eine neue Kindertagesstätte fertiggestellt.

Burg
Dreihundert Meter südlich des Dorfes südlich der alten Uchte und nördlich der heutigen Uchte liegt ein ovaler Ringwall (wahrscheinlich wendisch), der durch die Anlage eines Weges in zwei Hälften geteilt und ziemlich eingeebnet ist. Die obertägig sichtbare Struktur der mittelalterliche Niederungsburg, die Wallburg "Alte Burg", ist heute als Bodendenkmal ausgewiesen. Die Burg diente dem Schutz der nach Tangermünde führenden Heerstraße. Der Bereich wird heute als Kleingartenanlage genutzt. Im Norden der Anlage gibt es die Flurbezeichnung "Der Burgwall".

Vorgeschichte
Im 20. Jahrhundert wurden Reste einer Siedlung aus spätrömischer Zeit bei Wahrburg gefunden. Geborgen wurden keramische Gefäße und Tierknochen, die im Altmärkischen Museum in Stendal aufbewahrt werden.

Herkunft des Ortsnamens
Heinrich Sültmann meint, der Name "warborch" von 1429 sei herzuleiten vom althochdeutschen "wari, weri" für "Wehr" und steht daher für "Burg zur Abwehr".

Eingemeindungen
Am 30. September 1928 wurde der Gutsbezirk Wahrburg mit der Landgemeinde Wahrburg vereinigt.

Am 20. Juli 1950 wurde die bis dahin eigenständige Gemeinde Wahrburg nach Stendal eingemeindet.

Einwohnerentwicklung

Quelle bis 1946, wenn nicht angegeben:

Religion
Die evangelische Kirchengemeinde Wahrburg, die früher zur Pfarrei Uenglingen bei Stendal gehörte, heißt heute Christusgemeinde Wahrburg und wird betreut vom Pfarrbereich Stendal, Süd-West im Kirchenkreis Stendal im Propstsprengel Stendal-Magdeburg der Evangelischen Kirche in Mitteldeutschland.

Die ältesten überlieferten Kirchenbucheinträge für Wahrburg stammen aus dem Jahre 1680.

Die katholischen Christen gehören zur Pfarrei St. Anna in Stendal im Dekanat Stendal im Bistum Magdeburg.

Politik

Bürgermeister
Die Ortsbürgermeisterin der Ortschaft Wahrburg ist Carola Radtke.

Ortschaftsrat
Bei der Ortschaftsratswahl am 26. Mai 2019 waren 7 Sitze zu vergeben. Gewählt wurden:
 Wahrburger Bürgerinitiative e. V. (5 Sitze)
 Förderverein "Wahrburger Lehmhaus" e. V. (1 Sitz)
 Alternative für Deutschland (1 Sitz)

Vier Ortschaftsräte sind Frauen. Ein Rat wurde Ortsbürgermeisterin. Von 965 Wahlberechtigten hatten 623 ihre Stimme abgegeben, die Wahlbeteiligung betrug damit 64,6 Prozent.

Kultur und Sehenswürdigkeiten

 Die evangelische Christuskirche Wahrburg ist ein verputzter Backsteinbau aus dem 13. Jahrhundert mit einem quadratischen Fachwerkturm.
 Das Versuchslehmhaus in der Straße "Braunland", ein Baudenkmal, wurde 1949 vor dem Hintergrund der Bodenreform in Lehmstampfbauweise errichtet.
 Der Park im Süden des Dorfes geht auf das ehemalige Rittergut zurück.
 Der Wahrburger Friedhof liegt im Norden des Dorfes.

Verkehr
Es verkehren Linienbusse und Rufbusse von stendalbus.

Persönlichkeiten
Der deutsche Fußballspieler und -trainer Fritz Wittenbecher (1910–?) begann seine Karriere beim Wahrburger Fußballverein dem heutigen TuS "Siegfried" 09 Wahrburg e. V.

Literatur

Weblinks

Einzelnachweise

Ortsteil von Stendal
Ort im Landkreis Stendal
Ersterwähnung 1339
Ehemalige Gemeinde (Landkreis Stendal)
Gemeindeauflösung 1950

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Access has this handy little thing called a HELP FILE. You can get there by hitting the F1 key in any color property in the property sheet of any Access object. The first paragraph of the help file gives the data type.
3/05/2013 · You can avoid the need to play around with the registry altogether if you wish. The problem arises because Access tries to keep two copies of the entire table - old and new - in memory at the same time when you change a field's datatype.
Top of Page. Specify a format for Number and Currency data types. If you don't specify a custom format for numeric and currency values, Access displays numbers in the General Number format and currencies in the Currency format.


text:
Mladen Kruljac, hrvaški general, * 1967.

Kruljac je bivši poveljnik Hrvaške kopenske vojske in trenutni predsednik Hrvaške boksarske zveze.

Življenje
 Šolanje
Diplomiral je na Prometni fakulteti v Zagrebu in opravil šolanje na Hrvaškem vojaškem učilišču ter na Vojaški akademiji vojnega letalstva in protizračnene obrambe Hrvaške.

 Vojaška kariera
Sprva je bil poveljnik voda (1991), poveljnik čete (1991), poveljnik bataljona (1991-94), načelnik štaba (1994-98) in poveljnik 3. gardne brigade (1998-2000). Potem je bil poveljnik 6. zbornega področja Varaždin (2000-01) in namestnik poveljnika Hrvaške kopenske vojske (2002-07), je leta 2007 bil imenovan na položaj poveljnika Hrvaške kopenske vojske.

Kruljac je poznan kot kontraverzna oseba zaradi svojih povezav z gospodarstvom in izpadov v javnosti, pri čemer pa njegovi nadrejeni in politiki niso ukrepali. Avgusta 2005 je bil proti njemu vložena kazenska prijava zaradi suma storitve vojnega zločina v času operacije Blisk leta 1995 (enemu iz svojih vojakov naj bi ukazal ubiti srbskega civilista); prijava je bila kot neutemeljena (na podlagi predloženih in zbranih dokazov) zavrnjena junija 2006. 8. julija 2011 je bil eden izmed skupine 10 ljudi, ki so jih aretirali zaradi suma korupcije pri poslih z zemljišči v lasti hrvaškega obrambnega ministrstva. S tem je postal najvišji častnik Hrvaške vojske, ki je bil aretiran. Na predlog načelnika Generalštaba OSRH Draga Lovrića in s soglasjem obrambnega ministra Davorja Božinovića je 10. julija istega leta predsednik Republike Hrvaške, Ivo Josipović, razrešil Kruljca s položaja poveljnika Hrvaške kopenske vojske.

Napredovanja
 Generalpolkovnik: 2005

Odlikovanja
 Spomenica domovinske vojne
 Red kneza Domagoja z ogrlicom
 Red bana Jelačića
 Red hrvatskog križa
 Red Nikole Šubića Zrinskega
 Red hrvatskog pletera
 Spomenica domovinske zahvalnosti za 5 let
 Red hrvatskog trolista
 Spomenica domovinske zahvalnosti za 10 let

Viri in opombe

Glej tudi

 seznam generalov Oboroženih sil Republike Hrvaške

Rojeni leta 1967
Živeči ljudje
Hrvaški generali
Častniki Jugoslovanske ljudske armade
Generali Oboroženih sil Republike Hrvaške
Veterani vojn v bivši Jugoslaviji
Diplomiranci Univerze v Zagrebu
Poveljniki Hrvaške kopenske vojske
Nosilci spomenice domovinskog rata
Nosilci reda kneza Domagoja
Nosilci reda bana Jelačića
Nosilci reda hrvatskog križa
Nosilci reda Nikole Šubića Zrinskega
Nosilci reda hrvatskog pletera
Nosilci spomenice domovinske zahvalnosti
Nosilci reda hrvatskog trolista


text:
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← A Patchy Tale says an Aussie Reporter reviewing the New Sri Lankan Government's Performance
Gota grounded because of Avant Garde Weaponry & Circuit of Rumours →
March 8, 2015 · 12:56 pm
Reshaping Sri Lanka's Foreign Policy after Mahinda's Fall
Rajan Philips, courtesy of The Island, 8 March 2015, where the title is "The fall of Mahinda and the remaking of Sri Lanka's foreign policy"
The more egregious of the blunders of the Rajapaksa regime were in the area of foreign policy. Without doubt Sri Lanka's global reputation suffered badly under the former president. It might be an exaggeration to say that Sri Lanka's stock has started rising after the fall of Mahinda Rajapakksa, but it is fair to say that after the change in government the slide in reputation has been stemmed and the trend is being reversed. To wit, the six-month deferral of the UNHRC report that was due this month, the speeches by Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister and the US Secretary of State at the 28th UNHRC Sessions now underway in Geneva, and the statement in Colombo by the UN Under Secretary General for Political Affairs following his recent visit to the island and the Northern Province. These developments are a sea change from the foreign policy confusions, tantrums and setbacks that Sri Lanka suffered under Mahinda Rajapaksa every year, during the UNHRC sessions in Geneva, over the last three years. It is not difficult to imagine the diplomatic meltdown Sri Lanka would be having in Geneva at this very present time, if Rajapaksa had won the January 8 election and the UNHRC report on Sri Lanka was also released in March as originally scheduled.
In addition to UNHRC and Geneva, President Maithripala Sirisena has moved quickly to mend fences with India. New Delhi was the new President's first port of call and the visit was remarkable both for its diplomatic success and President Sirisena's modest mode of travel. Gone are the long retinue and the vulgar fanfare of his predecessor's overseas travels. Prime Minister Modi is due in Colombo, next week, and is billed to address Sri Lanka's Parliament on 13 March, perhaps the first address by an Indian Prime Minister in over thirty five years after Morarji Desai was given that honour when he visited Sri Lanka after the 1977 election. Tamil Nadu has gone relatively quiet and the new Sri Lankan government must endeavour to keep it that way. While mending fences with India, the new government is not intending to sour Sri Lanka's relationship with China, although hiccups will invariably arise as details emerge about the way the Rajapaksa government compromised Sri Lanka's financial interests, development potential, natural heritage and social priorities in its multifaceted transactions with China. The point here is not to rile against China, but to expose how the previous government used commercial deals to corrupt foreign policy and how it used foreign policy to feed corruption at home.
Fusion of corruption and foreign policy: In an earlier article I have called the Rajapaksa foreign policy orientation as 'China mania and Anglo-India phobia', modifying Dr NM Perera's characterization of Prime Minister DS Senanayake's foreign policy as "Anglo mania and India phobia." I was writing during the Colombo Commonwealth summit in November 2013, and went on to describe Mahinda Rajapaksa's personal style in foreign policy as being 'gregarious' – he wanted to deal with everyone in the world but more with native cunning than principled consistency. To be native and cunning is to overestimate one's own strengths and underestimate the strengths of others. The UNHRC resolutions against Sri Lanka are among the results of this approach. What is becoming clear now is that foreign policy under the Rajapaksas was also suffused with corruption. Recent statements by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and other government spokesmen indicate that it was not only in dealing with China that the Rajapaksas extended their corrupt tentacles into foreign policy, but also with other countries, such as in the case of Australia (using human smuggling as a foreign policy lever); the Maldives (road construction); the US (plain cash payments, amounting to US$1,285,000, ostensibly to Public Relations firms but suspiciously to others as well); and in hiring foreign experts who did nothing but were paid huge fees by the Central Bank, solely to create the impression that the Rajapaksa government was striving to conform with international standards in investigating human rights violations.
The Port City project is a telling example of the previous government's fusion of internal corruption and external relationships. It is encouraging that the government has finally decided to suspend the project based on the recommendation of its Experts Committee. There was some concern about the Committee's objectivity given the known association of quite a few members of the Committee with the project process under the previous government. To their credit the Committee members have collectively reconsidered the project notwithstanding the previous involvement of some of them and recommended its suspension. The Port City saga needs a separate article, but suffice it to note here the following: Port City is a private development project and not a public infrastructure project. There are fundamental differences between the two categories in regard to their processes and priorities. No one but the Rajapaksas could have blurred these differences and amalgamated the public and the private spheres so seamlessly.
Add to all of this the way the Ministry of External Affairs was run – as a department for employing otherwise unemployable political friends and family members; and run as well by an uncouth political thug with the then Minister reduced from his academic eminence to being a powerless mouthpiece. "Corruption is everywhere" is the refrain of those who cannot get over the fall of Mahinda Rajapaksa. True, corruption is everywhere, and corruption, nepotism and family bandyism have been in Sri Lankan state and politics long before the Rajapaksa brothers arrived in Colombo. But I cannot think of a time under any previous Prime Minister or President when the tentacles of corruption extended so systemically into every nook and cranny of the government machinery; and certainly not into the affairs of the Ministry of External Affairs. There is much consternation among concerned citizens that the new government is being slow and tardy, if not doing anything at all, to investigate and indict those responsible for corruption and abuse of power under the previous government. One can understand the consternation, but what is hilarious is the attitude of some commentators to summarily absolve the Rajapaksas because the new government has not been able to prosecute them in the two months it has been in office. To them all the allegations against the old regime were the opposition's imagination during the election to dupe the public. And the Rajapaksas were no more, or no less, corrupt than any other previous government, and whatever they did is par for the Sri Lankan political course. But a good majority of Sri Lankans do not see politics that way, inasmuch as they do not like to live their lives that way.
Foreign policy and domestic politics: While the new government has started on the right track by avoiding everything that the Rajapaksas did, it cannot go far enough on that road without taking positive actions on its own. In the current context, new foreign policy making will have to be supplemented by internal initiatives in regard to national reconciliation. What are the short term expectations that would satisfactorily distinguish the new government from the old? After his recent visit to the country and meeting with government and Tamil political leaders in Colombo and Jaffna, Jeffrey Feltman, the UN Under-Secretary General for Political Affairs, identified the four areas where earnest and immediate actions are expected: land, detentions, disappearances, and the military posture in civilian areas.
The government has taken some steps in regard to these matters, but the baffling question is: who is in charge of national reconciliation? Is it the President, the Prime Minister, or any other senior Minister? There has to be some correspondence between the grand speeches that the Minister of Foreign Affairs is making overseas and the allocation of reconciliation responsibilities at home. Rajiva Wijesinha had a point in calling the allocation of functions under the Prime Minister's portfolio "absolute crackers!" Not just the Prime Minister, even other ministers have strange pairing of functions, such as highways and higher education under one minister, investments and irrigation under another, and so on. I am not at all suggesting that foreign policy and national reconciliation should be under one minister, and that would be an absolute disaster. To the extent the President is being insisted upon to be in charge of devolution and national security, he should also spearhead the more immediate task of national reconciliation – focusing on the four areas that the UN Under-Secretary General outlined in Colombo. Equally, while the government must demonstrate greater effort in its commitment to achieve the four minimum expectations, the Tamil political forces must direct their energies to the same minimum expectations without dissipating them in rhetorical politics. There is a long way to go, but there is no time to lose in starting the journey.
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, authoritarian regimes, democratic measures, governance, Indian Ocean politics, island economy, military expenditure, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, Rajapaksa regime, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, world events & processes
thuppahi
Investment in Sri Lanka Today: Questionable Steps and Looming Influences
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Overseeing Cricket: Galle Fort and Its Charm
Galle Cricket Grounds: Tsunamied……. !!!
Galle Fort and Cricket Grounds: Overviews and 'Ancient' Views
Atherton on Testing Times Ahead under the Fort in Galle
Market Engines and Corporate America Cancel Trump
Galle Fort built on the Backs of African Slave Labour
When A Whale Shark 'Bites' A Helicopter
Mannar and Its Surrounds: Stunning Wild Life and Landscapes
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Thuppahi's Blog · This web site presents the interventions of MICHAEL ROBERTS in the public realm with reference to Sri Lankan political affairs. It will embrace the politics of cricket as well. ROBERTS was educated at St. Aloysius College in Galle and the universities of Peradeniya and Oxford. He taught History at Peradeniya University and Anthropology at Adelaide university. He is now retired and lives in Adelaide.


Clearly, the owners of that nail factory had no idea what they were up against online. If they came to me and asked me to tell them why they weren't ranking higher than their industry competitors even though their websites stunk, I would tell them that their competitor for that term is really EZNails Beauty Supply. After they finished laughing at me, I would try to explain that it's true because — wait for it — online competitors are not always industry competitors!
There are other less hilarious instances of industries competing with sites that do not belong to industry competitors. It happens in the medical industry all the time. In a search for "Pediatricians, PA" there is not a single actual pediatric practice until the very bottom of the page.
Pediatricians are competing with these directories for the attention of potential patients. Several of these directories have paid ads so they even make money off the leads.
Now that I know who my online competitors are, what do I do?
Beat these sites at their own game. Now that you know what you're up against, it might be the time for that redesign, or forking over the money for SEO.
The other, less costly, less time intensive solution is to redefine your online competitive space. Remember that contractor who sighed in disgust and searched for a more industry-specific term? Find those long-tail terms and optimize for them instead of bashing your head against a wall of acrylic nail-selling beauty supply stores.
Both of these solutions involve redefining your web presence to a certain extent. Look at it this way. If you were a mom and pop cake bakery in Pittsburgh and there was another cake bakery across the street, wouldn't you constantly strive to outstrip them by making sure your window display was better, more artistic, and with more icing in hopes of catching that fickle bridezilla's attention? Though you're competing for (and with) words in the online arena, the idea is the same.
Polish your content the way you would polish the glass windows of your store front, since it's through these portals that your potential customers see who you really are and what you have to offer.


text:
Die Liste der Biografien führt alle Personen auf, die in der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia einen Artikel haben. Dieses ist eine Teilliste mit einem Eintrag einer Person, deren Namen mit den Buchstaben "Fre" beginnt.

Fre

 Fré, Pedro (1924–2014), brasilianischer Ordensgeistlicher, römisch-katholischer Bischof


text:
Q: Cordova Facebook plugin : missing variables APP_ID, APP_NAME When I do :
cordova plugin add https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-facebook-plugin.git

I get the error :
Error: Variable(s) missing: APP_ID, APP_NAME

Where do I have to configure these variables ?

A: To use this plugin you will need to make sure you've registered your Facebook app with Facebook and have an APP_ID (https://developers.facebook.com/apps).
If you plan on rolling this out on iOS, please note that you will need to ensure that you have properly set up your Native iOS App settings on the Facebook App Dashboard. Please see the Getting Started with the Facebook SDK: Create a Facebook App section, for more details on this.
If you plan on rolling this out on Android, please note that you will need to generate a hash of your Android key(s) and submit those to the Developers page on Facebook to get it working. Furthermore, if you are generating this hash on Windows (specifically 64 bit versions), please use version 0.9.8e or 0.9.8d of OpenSSL for Windows and not 0.9.8k. Big ups to fernandomatos for pointing this out!

A: Look at the bottom of the README.md file on that github repository. You'll see it gives you instructions for installing the plugin and including the variables:
plugman install --platform [PLATFORM] --project [TARGET-PATH] --plugin [PLUGIN-PATH] --variable APP_ID="[APP_ID]" --variable APP_NAME="[APP_NAME]"

where
    [PLATFORM] = ios or android
    [TARGET-PATH] = path to folder containing your phonegap project
    [PLUGIN-PATH] = path to folder containing this plugin
    [APP_ID] = Your APP_ID as registered on Facebook

The Cordova CLI uses Plugman behind the scenes, so you can use it to inject variable names like this:
cordova plugin add https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-facebook-plugin.git --variable APP_ID="my-app-id" --variable APP_NAME="my-app-name"

A: Edit the following lines in plugins\com.phonegap.plugins.facebookconnect\plugins.xml:
<preference name="APP_ID" />
<preference name="APP_NAME" />

To:
<param name="APP_ID" value="123456789" />
<param name="APP_NAME" value="Cordova" />

A:
I am using DevExtreme - maybe it run in anothers plataforms - and I
  had the same problem. I late to resolve because when I changed my
  config.xml to set APP_ID and APP_NAME and after create .zip to use
  phonegap's build, this params(APP_ID and APP_NAME) disappeared of
  config.xml. The solution was edit config.xml after create .zip, not
  before like I did.
Obs: While I was researching about this, I saw many developers having
  the same problem. To resolve it, they fixed your .xml with this test
  http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_validator.asp
I hope this help.


text:
Aston Martin Unveils Its First-Ever SUV
The all-new DBX features a twin-turbocharged engine that accelerates the vehicle from zero to 60 m.p.h. in 4.3 seconds
By Brett Berk
Photography by Aston Martin
Aston Martin's all-new vehicle, the DBX.
Aston Martin just unveiled its first-ever SUV. This all-new vehicle, the DBX, enters an increasingly crowded field of ultra-luxurious six-figure sport utility vehicles that includes the Lamborghini Urus, the Bentley Bentayga, and the forthcoming Ferrari Purosange. Yet the Aston stands out for its beauty, a commodity that is surprisingly rare in this exclusive category.
The DBX is, in fact, a quite lovely interpretation of the sport utility concept, with a shape that is sharply raked and flowing, yet still muscular and purposeful. We are especially drawn to its aggressive front end, featuring the brand's signature "waterfall" grille, as well as its pronounced and sports car–like spoiler lip at the rear. The long hood, blacked-out rear glass, and steeply swept rear hatch help contribute to this sporty profile and stance.
The Aston Martin DBX is set to enter an increasingly crowded field of luxe six-figure SUVs that includes the Lamborghini Urus, the Bentley Bentayga, and the forthcoming Ferrari Purosange.
And yet, the most surprising thing about the DBX is its interior. Clever packaging, a giant panoramic glass roof, and the use of a dedicated platform (instead of one engineered for another application and then converted to this use) allow for the allotment of room on the inside that feels much more spacious than the exterior footprint of the vehicle would suggest.
The DBX features a twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 engine, accelerating the car from zero to 60 m.p.h. in 4.3 seconds.
Of course, the DBX interior also features all the proper Aston Martin heritage luxury signatures: Bridge of Weir leathers, woolen carpets, and real wood veneer trim. But it also offers an assortment of intriguing new material options. This includes solid wood, bronze mesh, a flax-derived composite trim (linen is another flax derivative), and a naturally water-resistant fabric made mainly from wool—useful in an all-weather, go-anywhere vehicle. And in a market segment where Fibonacci-patterned perforated metal speaker grilles have become de rigueur interior jewelry, the DBX stands out by blanketing its tweeters in pierced cowhide.
Discover AD PRO
The ultimate resource for design industry professionals, brought to you by the editors of Architectural Digest
For those rugged types who want to add personalization and cost to the $189,000 base price of this SUV, a myriad of lifestyle options are available. A pet package offers a cozy dog bed, water bowls, a protector for the rear hatch sill to avoid scampering scratches, and a power washer to rinse the polo field muck from the retriever. The snow package has a roof rack that can latch up to six pairs of skis, as well as interior boot warmers to make the run down the first triple diamond a bit less frosty. The touring pack comes with four or six pieces of custom luggage, special interior saddlebags, and a first aid kit (if medical attention is required, remind us not to go on this tour). The event pack features picnic blankets and baskets, special collapsible seats, and, this being a pointedly British vehicle, umbrellas.
The DBX interior features Bridge of Weir leathers, woolen carpets, and real wood veneer trim.
Being an Aston Martin, the DBX also includes a honking twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 engine (developed in partnership with Mercedes go-fast subsidiary AMG) putting out 542 horsepower and capable of hustling this two-and-a-half-ton truck from zero to 60 m.p.h. in 4.3 seconds. The rapidity of this acceleration is aided by the fact that the DBX is the first Aston to feature four-wheel drive, enhancing traction and helping put all that power through the giant 22-inch wheels.
The interior of the car has ample natural light thanks to an expansive sunroof.
Aston Martin suspects that the DBX will help double its annual sales, and in preparation has constructed a new factory in Wales to build the SUV. The first deliveries to the U.S. will occur in the second half of 2020.
Exploremotoring


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NOTE: We know people like to hear about beaches and travel and dogs etc. but we have to pay for all that somehow. This is the last one! of a mini-series of posts on the financial side of retirement. Like many bloggers and most people, I'm not going to share our actual numbers because it's pretty personal, and it may not be safe in the modern world. But I will give you what I think are important foundational points. I also want to say I'm not your financial advisor! I'm our financial advisor, and I'm only that until I tire of it and hire a professional. So if you're taking financial advice from me, well I really urge you to hire a professional!
In previous posts, we talked about setting yourself up for success with pre-planning, how to get to a spending number, and all the possible sources of retirement income. In this post, we'll be closing the loop, connecting spending with the funding, the tools you can use to help with it all, the order of spending your retirement funds, tax strategies, etc. It's a lot, but I think it's worth it to go through all this.
Before we dig in, I offer my apologies to our readers outside of the United States. I know this is all very USA specific, but retiring in the USA is my experience - I don't think it would be fair to be blogging about that which I don't know! But those of you in the 31 other countries that are reading this blog (Yay, I love this, and thank you for following us!) have probably realized by now that most of these concepts are universal, and the topics that are USA-centric may be extrapolated to your country and your situation. I certainly hope that is the case.
We're attempting to figure out how much money is "enough" in order to retire. Now that you've figured out your spending needs & determined where the funds are coming from, it's time to close the loop on this admittedly basic retirement planning process. There are layers upon layers to retirement planning, but you have to start somewhere and this is a pretty good somewhere, so let's forge ahead. We're going to talk about what you have and what you need, making adjustments, making new plans, and coming back periodically to see how you're doing.
Any age – you can withdraw your Roth IRA contributions, but not any earnings or interest. I recommend this only in an emergency, because you are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Roth money has already been taxed, and will never be taxed again, so it should really be spent last in your retirement, not first.
55 – you can withdraw tax-advantaged money, without penalty, from your current 401K, but only your current 401K.
From this point forward you can withdraw, without penalty, from your Traditional 401Ks and IRAs.
Roth accounts all have a 5-year-rule, but the IRA and 401K versions of this rule are slightly different.
With a Roth IRA, you must have an account, any Roth IRA account, for 5 tax years prior to the withdrawal.
With a Roth 401K, it is per account, so that each account on it's own must have been around for 5 years prior to taking money from it.
62 – This is the first year that Social Security is available to you as a retiree, but at a reduced payment vs. the benefit you would receive at your full retirement age. It's all explained in more detail in this blog post.
70 – this is the age when you will get the maximum Social Security benefit. After age 70, you are giving money away to the US Government. In other words, file for SS benefits by this age!
Required Minimum Distributions start for Traditional IRA, 401K, 403B, etc. accounts. This is the government's way of finally getting some taxes on those dollars you've been accumulating, tax advantaged, your whole life.
Roth accounts do NOT have an RMD requirement, so let them grow.
Disclaimer: this is not legal or financial advice, this is only my personal understanding and opinions on what to do at these ages. Please discuss with your spouse/partner, do your own research, and/or ask your financial planner about these things.
We started this process by determining how much money we would need to spend in retirement. We followed that by going through our funding sources. Now, we need to compare the two and see where we are in terms of retirement readiness. Because I'm a fan, and because it's valuable, I'm going to borrow a few terms from Jim Otar. When you compare your money to your spending plan, you will fall into one of three zones: red, gray, or green.
The first possibility, the Red Zone is pretty obvious. It sounds pretty ominous but it's not the end of the world. It does mean your money isn't likely to stand the test of time, you are quite likely to outlive the money if you retire today. In this case, it's back to work, but with a renewed focus on earning more, spending less, saving more, and investing better. Map out a plan and work to make it happen. This is not a terrible thing, it's a challenge to overcome and when you do it, the feeling is indescribable!
The other obvious scenario is called The Green Zone. If you do the math, and you know you can be happy with a spending level that allows for significant monies to be passed on to your heirs (this extra money is also your backup plan if all things financial go bonkers), then you are done. If you look at it carefully, considering all the downside risks to the portfolio, and you determine that you should have retired 5 years ago, well this is easy. Go talk to your boss on Monday morning and give her the good news!
It's the middle zone, the Gray Zone of "I'm still not sure" where things get interesting, and a bit more difficult. The contingency options are many, from working longer, working part-time during retirement, finding ways to spend less in retirement, or possibly annuitizing a portion of the portfolio. I'm far from an expert with annuities but they are an option for creating a steady income stream in retirement, and can be used to create an "income floor" where you know you'll always have a certain number of dollars the rest of your life. If you think about it, Social Security is an annuity – you pay in (it's not as if you have a choice) early on, and draw a guaranteed income stream later.
With this knowledge and a good plan, you can play "what-if" scenarios and start to converge on the best one for you. Maybe the answer is simply to delay retirement while you continue to grow your portfolio, etc. But during this time, I urge you to revisit the planning steps every six months to a year. This does two things: it helps you become more comfortable with the idea of retiring (this is no small thing!), while you refine your estimates and watch your plan take shape.
Now I will say that I couldn't have gotten comfortable with the plan to retire without looking at multiple retirement calculators. This link from Darrow Kirkpatrick (another engineer who retired early) lays out a nice list of them. It's a great place to start even though it is a few years old, he does update it from time to time. He presents a lot of information in a nice easy table, showing the types of calculators and how much detail (his word "fidelity") goes into them. I started out with Vanguard's Retirement Nest Egg calculator, a dead simple (really, overly simple) retirement calculator. But that's a start, and that's important. I graduated to FireCalc, which is less simple, but much more useful. This is always the case BTW, you get out of these calculators what you put into them. Finally I ended up with Laurence Kotlikoff's ESPlanner and Jim Otar's Retirement Calculator.
I have a few thoughts about how these retirement calculators operate. There are three common methods for calculating your future money: Average, Monte Carlo, and Historical.
Average calculators do a disservice in my opinion, because they literally assume average numbers forever. But reality is not average! Jim Otar, among others, has proven that the order of investment returns is critical to the outcome. It's absolutely critical! Two portfolios with the same annual % returns on the money will give dramatically different results, if one got the higher returns early vs. the other one with the lower returns early. So those average calculators IMO are well below average! Monte Carlo simulators throw a distribution of numbers at the problem, a range of values for each variable, and calculate the likely results repeatedly, coming up with best/worst/typical numbers. This is better, and many tools use this method.
Historical calculators use past history to find the best, worst, and typical retirement years over the last 100 years or so. They scale everything to today's dollars but use historical real-world values in their calculations. We've been told our entire financial lives that past history doesn't guarantee future results, but honestly, nothing guarantees future results, and I do mean nothing. So my primary tool is Otar's history-based calculator with Kotlikoff's Monte Carlo simulator as a sanity check.
Regarding the Otar Retirement Calculator – I do use it religiously in my planning, because his approach to the problem and his presentation style really suit me. It provides for inputting income needs and adjusting them for the future, all sorts of assets and income sources, and then uses what he calls "aft-casting" to see how the portfolio would have done had you retired at any point in the last 100 years. This covered the Great Depression, two World Wars and several smaller ones, Presidential assassinations, dozens of bull/bear market swings, countries leaving the gold standard, all sorts of big events that would affect the markets. Nothing says this will predict the future, but it gives me the feeling that I'm not too far off what might actually affect my money in the future.
What I learned from Jim Otar is that spending is the number one killer of portfolios, the most important factor as to how long the portfolio will last. It's obvious, if you spend too much, especially early on in retirement, the portfolio will die an early death. The second most important factor is the sequence of returns (what Otar simply calls "luck"). As mentioned above, this is the idea that if your portfolio takes a big hit early on, it is very difficult to recover (really bad luck). If the same drop happens later in retirement, the impact is not nearly as bad (not nearly as bad luck). The flip side is that if the markets go big early on, then you may be set up for a long and prosperous retirement (good luck!).
I always have to say that if you feel you're not up to the task of doing your own planning, you should definitely go to a professional. Some people aren't interested in this stuff, or don't have the skills or the time to do it themselves (Remember Know Yourself?). Or maybe there is just enough uncertainty considering the high stakes that you just don't want to go it alone. Or maybe, like us, you want to do this for a while and take it to a professional later, that's fine too. I will say I don't think you should ever pay more than 1% of your portfolio as a fee to a professional, and even 1% is a lot! In retirement you may only average 4% on the money. So that 1% is one-quarter of your income, and in a bad year when you lose money, guess what? The professional stills gets 1%, driving your losses lower. So keep an eye on the fees, for your own sake.
Regarding spending, some people (like us) expect the spending to be all over the spreadsheet, which is OK as long as it is all accounted for. This is intertwined with the contingency/risk planning that we do. For example, we plan to spend much less in our early years, based on the idea that the Caribbean adventure is the fun part. We don't have to hang out in resorts with swimming pools and fancy restaurants. We don't need a big boat, because then we'd need something to pull it, and stuff to put in it! We're living island life on island time, and we think that is fun in itself, and it's somewhat inexpensive as long as we're careful.
We also expect to adjust our spending based on investment market conditions - in the next crash, and we all know there's another "next crash", we'll cut our spending plans and just play it safe for a while. Will that be easy? Nope. It's just another challenge for us, different from the day to day challenges of the working life, but we're up for it and we'll try to make it fun.
When it comes to withdrawing money to live on, there are myriad ways to do this. The sources of possible income were discussed in detail in the previous post, but I'm focusing here on our situation which involves mostly a portfolio of stock and bond investments (in mutual funds & ETFs). I'm sure many others have similar situations with some other sources likely as well. Some people set themselves up with stocks and bonds that pay dividends and try to live off those dividends as much as possible. But usually you have to sell some securities over time, drawing down your portfolio, in order to live your retirement life.
But spending is still the key, which brings me to the "4% Rule". Four Percent is your limit on spending. That's what they all say, that's what they've said for many years. The "4% Rule" is based on historical research done by some university professors many years back now. It says for a 30 year retirement (we're planning ours for ~35 years), you can withdraw no more than 4% from your portfolio in the first year (and adjust it for inflation every year after that). If you exceed this amount, you run a higher risk of running out of money before you run out of time. It's a "rule of thumb" and you know by now I'm not a big fan of those, but think of it more as a starting point. Smart investors and advisors don't always use this figure, but they almost always use it as a starting point. Engineers are big on changing the numbers to make the math easy, so let's say you have a $1 Million nest egg; you can spend $40,000 the first year and adjust it for inflation in the subsequent years.
Our personal plan is more variable than a rigid 4%, as we are currently trying to keep our spending very low early on while we still have our fun and adventures. There'll be more spending later as we get less mobile, maybe want a bit more luxury, and probably have more medical costs, etc. For example, we'll have bicycles and an "island beater" car for now, but maybe one day we'd like a vehicle with air conditioning! 🙂 We ride bikes from our small house to the beach now, but later on maybe we want a condo instead, with a water view of course.
Bank Accounts (partial). Right now we are living off part of the proceeds of the home we sold in Colorado, which is in an online bank account that pays decent interest. This does two things: first it keeps us from worrying about the market swings, we don't have to sell stocks during a down market just to pay the rent. It also bridges us to the age of 59 ½ (see magic ages above). The drawback is that this money only made us 1.4% in the last year (and this was a good rate!) when the markets were up over 25%.
Taxable Accounts. We will sell these next because the gains on these are fully taxable. Our tax bracket is low too, so it won't hurt much.
Roth IRAs. These are last because they are funded with after tax money, and will never be taxed again (just ignore the fact that Congress can change the laws whenever they want!). So we will let these grow as long as we can.
Finally, I will say that without a daily job I have time to do these things, including reading and learning. Much of that learning lately is around managing (minimizing) my taxes, especially now as Tax Day approaches. Once you're not earning money, I think the best thing you can do is to work on not giving too much of it away in taxes. So for example, I try to keep only stocks in our taxable accounts because long term capital gains typically are taxed lower (they are more tax efficient) than bonds. Bonds are in my IRAs because their dividends would be taxed at the higher ordinary income rate (if they weren't in a tax-advantaged account). And I plan to convert as much money as I can from traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs while my tax bracket is so low. We can literally move thousands into a "never taxed again" Roth account for only a 10-12% tax burden. And this also reduces our RMDs as mentioned above. My future self will thank me!
So that's it for this mini-series of basic retirement planning. We've laid the foundation starting with preparing yourselves emotionally and with the knowledge you need. We talked about the spending part of retirement and how to figure out how much you will need and want. Then we discussed the possible forms of income, how to pay for it all. And in this post, we tried to pull it all together and close the loop. And if all this financial business is not interesting to you, we've suggested the professional advisor approach. I also know much of this is very basic for many of you, but I hope it has been somewhat useful. Even if only one little nugget was golden for you, I consider it worthwhile.
I'd love to hear about your retirement planning in the comments below, or to be more private, from the Contact Us page. I will also add some of our favorite retirement planning sites to the Fave Links page. Our wish for you all is a great plan that you can take into retirement happy and relaxed. Stick with us, the next post will be about beaches and travel and dogs, or uh, something like that - I promise!
TODAY'S SPECIAL: "Taxman", by the Beatles. "If you drive a car, I'll tax the street...If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet."
What bank do you use? That is a pretty good interest rate! Do you have to keep a certain balance to get that rate?
It is American Express Bank online. The rate is variable but is currently 1.45%. I think Ally Bank actually has a higher rate. Minimum balance? I'm not sure on that one, if there is one I know I'm way above it!
How does one "adjust for inflation" after the first year of withdrawing 4%.
You can find inflation tables online. One of them is here: http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ . An inflation rate of 2.1% (2017's rate) becomes a multiplier of 1.021, so if you were spending $100,000 the first year (round number to make the math easy), then the next year would be $102,100.


text:
2019 Clinical Chemistry Audio Summaries
Detection of Neprilysin Derived BNP Fragments in the Circulation
AACC.org // ... // Clinical Chemistry Journal // Clinical Chemistry Podcasts // Privacy in Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing
Privacy in Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing
Author: Jason Park // Date: MAY.2.2019 // Source: Clinical Chemistry
Universal Lab Issues,
Jason Y. Park, et al. Q&A: Privacy in Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing. Clin Chem 2019;65:612-17.
Dr. Jason Park is Associate Professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He is also the Medical Director of the Advanced Diagnostics Laboratory at the Children's Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.
For about the past 15 years, the public has become aware that genetic testing can provide medical diagnosis and inform specific medical therapies. In addition to being used for medical purposes, genetics has also become a popular recreational tool for genealogy and general wellness. The number of customers for direct-to-consumer genetic testing has now grown to greater than 12 million and continues to rise. In the May 2019 issue of Clinical Chemistry, a Q&A feature titled "Privacy in Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing" asked four experts with different roles in this field to discuss the current state of genomics and privacy.
The moderator for this Q&A feature was Dr. Jason Park, Associate Professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in the Department of Pathology, and the Eugene McDermott Center for Human Growth & Development. He is also the Medical Director of the Advanced Diagnostics Laboratory at the Children's Medical Center in Dallas, Texas and he is our guest in this podcast. So, Dr. Park, overall, what are the risks to privacy from genomic data?
Jason Park:
Genomic data contains the personal privacy risk of traditional medical information such as diagnosis and test results. In addition, genomic data creates unique vulnerabilities since it contains information which is relevant to biologic family members. For example, if I have a positive cancer genetic test result, then my biologic family members have a substantially increased risk of having the same positive cancer genetic test result. In the genomic era, we are entering a period where families have shared responsibility for confidentiality.
Is such genomic data protected by current U.S. law?
A patient's genomic data is protected under the U.S. HIPAA Privacy Rule, but only when the data is considered individually identifiable. Once the genomic data is stripped of the traditional identifiers such as the patient's name, date of birth and discharge date, the data is then considered de-identified and not subject to the HIPAA Privacy Rule. What is unique about genomic data is that it can be re-identified back to the patient. Although this is difficult, several studies have shown that using a combination of public databases, genomic data which has been de-identified, can be re-identified back to an individual.
So, are there legal protections for patients with positive genomic test results?
Yes, and the most important U.S. law is GINA, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008. This law prohibits discrimination based on genetic information for employment and health insurance. In addition, GINA extends protection to biologically related family members. Importantly, GINA does not provide protection for life insurance, disability insurance, or long-term care insurance. For example, a life insurance company could use an individual's genomic test result to decide insurance premiums or general insurability. Again, the risk applies not only to the individual with the original test result, but all biologic relatives.
Are there efforts to create centralized human genomic databases?
I'm not aware of coordinated efforts by insurance companies to use genomic data to decide insurance premiums. However, the U.S. has had a long history of using genetic data for law enforcement. There are over 15 million DNA profiles in government databases in the form of STR profiles. STR profiles are the type of DNA data we hear of most commonly in criminal cases and identification of human remains.
In addition to this traditional type of law enforcement DNA database, there are multiple research efforts to do genomic sequencing of individuals and retain this data in centralized databases. One project generating information is the NIH All of Us Research Program which will characterize health and genomics of up to one million Americans. International efforts for genomic databases include the UK 100,000 Genomes Project which has completed the profiles of 85,000 individuals. There is also a planned Chinese Precision Medicine initiative which seeks to sequence 100 million individuals by 2030.
What are some of the uses of genomic databases?
The main historic use of genomic databases, such as STR profiles, has been in law enforcement identification of individuals. This activity of identification has expanded to international intelligence activities with the gathering of the genomic data of enemy combatants in war theaters. The past 20 years have seen genomic data used to identify new pharmaceutical targets for diseases such as cancer. What is clear is that genomic data in any form is financially useful information. As an example, in 2018, the pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline invested $300 million with the consumer genetics company, 23andMe, to gain exclusive rights to the genetic data of 23andMe customers.
What are some of the new developments in genomic privacy and consumer genetics?
The most remarkable recent development has been the use of consumer genetic databases for criminal law enforcement. Traditionally, only one type of genetic data, the STR profile, was used for criminal law enforcement. However, over the past five years, SNP profiles, which are the commonly used genetic test in consumer tests have been repurposed to solve criminal cases.
So, how are SNP data used? Is it similar to Short Tandem Repeat profiles?
SNP data is different and not interchangeable with the STR profiles. However, SNP data can be as powerful as STR profile data in identifying individuals. As a prominent example, last year, a suspect was identified in the 40-year-old cold case of the so-called Golden State killer. Crime scene DNA had previously been run through traditional STR databases and had been negative. The investigators of that crime recently took the novel approach of using crime scene DNA to generate a SNP profile compatible with consumer genetic databases.
They entered this profile into a recreational genealogy database to identify partial matches. They found over a dozen partial matches that are best described as third cousins to the killer. The investigators then used geneologic data such as newspaper clippings, birth announcements, marriage records, to then reconstruct the history of the family tree from these third cousins to identify a common ancestor. Once they had the common ancestor, they then attempted to identify all living descendants. This massive project created a family tree of 1,000 individuals dating back to the early 1800s.
Based on this family tree, they then applied their existing criminal profile of a white male, 60 to 75 years old with a military interest or background. They identified two suspects, one of which they confirmed using traditional STR profiling and subsequently arrested. Since this SNP consumer genetic search technique debuted in 2018, over 30 suspects have been positively identified from previously so-called cold cases.
Well, finally Dr. Park, what do you recommend for maintaining genomic privacy?
A simple recommendation would be to not participate in consumer genomics. However, this becomes unrealistic because it requires a coordinated effort of all biologic relatives not participating. This might be feasible for your core family, but becomes impossible when you think of all the second and third cousins you do and do not know of. In addition, there have been recent population-based family trees that have been created which contain greater than 10 million individuals in a single family tree going back hundreds of years. Right now, 60% of Americans of European ancestry are believed to already be partially identifiable using SNP data in consumer genetic databases. I personally believe that the future of genomic privacy will not be in the protection of the data; rather, genomic data protections will have to be implemented in the control of how the data is used.
That was Dr. Jason Park, from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the Children's Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. He has been our guest in this podcast from Clinical Chemistry on privacy in direct-to-consumer genetic testing. That Q&A feature appears in the May 2019 issue of Clinical Chemistry. I'm Bob Barrett. Thanks for listening!


Topics Covered: Territorial (Personal) Jurisdiction (including Venue and Forum Non Conveniens); Subject Matter Jurisdiction (covering Diversity Jurisdiction, Federal Question Jurisdiction); Erie Doctrine and Federal Common Law; Pleadings (including Counterclaims, Cross-Claims, Supplemental Pleadings); Parties (including Joinder and Class Actions); Discovery (including Devices, Scope, Sanctions and Discovery Conferences); Summary Judgment; Pretrial Conference and Settlements; Trial (including Right to Jury Trial, Motions, Jury Instruction and Arguments, and Post-Verdict Motions); Appeals; Claim Preclusion (Legal research and legal writing Judicata) and Issue Preclusion (Collateral Estoppel). Includes 1999 Supplement. The casebook correlation chart includes the following casebooks: Civil Procedure: Cases and Materials by Cound, Friedenthal, Miller and Sexton; Materials for a Basic Course in Civil Procedure by Field, Kaplan and Clermont; Pleading and Procedure Cases and Materials by Hazard, Tait and Fletcher; Civil Procedure: A Modern Approach by Marcus, Redish and Sherman; Elements of Civil Procedure Cases and Materials by Rosenberg, Smit and Dreyfus; and Civil Procedure by Yeazell, Landers and Martin.


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