The administration will try to "hide their rear" during an upcoming hearing on the Ebola outbreak, Republican Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) said in an interview with Breitbart News Wednesday.
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations is scheduled to hold a hearing on the Ebola outbreak Thursday and a number of administration officials are set to testify, including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden.
He stressed that the Ebola outbreak needs to be treated as public health issue.
Barton, whose district buttresses Dallas where the domestic diagnoses of Ebola have so far occurred, said the administration needs to put travel restrictions on the hot-zone Ebola countries in West Africa.
And Barton's committee peers are not the only ones. Wednesday afternoon House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) and Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Ranking Member John Thune (R-SD) added their names to the growing list of lawmakers called for a temporary travel ban from West African countries dealing with Ebola.
Barton, who will not be at the hearing due to a recent gallbladder operation, said he will be watching from Texas and might even call in with his own questions.


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Library Director Gets Lifetime Achievement Award
CNM Director of Library and Educational Resources Ben Wakashige was recently awarded with a lifetime achievement award from the New Mexico Library Association.
The award was presented to him during the association's annual awards dinner in late April. According to the program for the event, the Honorary Lifetime Membership Award is the "NMLA's highest award and is given to an individual for outstanding contributions to the purposes of NMLA and/or libraries in New Mexico."
"I feel honored and humbled by the award," said Wakashige, who has been the Director of Library and Educational Resources at CNM since July 2010. He has directed a variety of libraries, including those at Zuni High School, the University of Albuquerque, Albuquerque Academy, Western New Mexico University, the New Mexico State Library and National American University, the program said.
"I've been a librarian for about 40 years, not all of it, but most of it in New Mexico," Wakashige said. "There are a lot of very deserving librarians (in New Mexico)."
Wakashige has served on boards for local public library and literacy programs and served on the Board of Amigos Library Services for six years both as vice chair and chair.
The NMLA called him "New Mexico's most influential and respected librarian," and the 2003 New Mexico Legislature, in appreciating his service as State Librarian, noted "his unique perspective, unwavering support for library issues" and that he's "a true and good public servant willing to address challenging and unpopular issues."
"It's a commitment to the profession," Wakashige said. "Those of us who choose librarianship see ourselves as being public servants. It's, in my mind, a calling."
The award symbolizing his lifetime membership in the NMLA is a beautiful, engraved platter with Native American Bear Symbols and inlaid turquoise stones.
Wakashige was grateful to receive the beautiful award and proudly displays it in his office.
The award is based upon a long-standing record of constructive accomplishments rather than longevity, according to the NMLA.
The emcee for the awards ceremony was NMLA President Barbara Lovato-Gassman, who happens to be Wakashige's predecessor as Director of the CNM Libraries.
Even with all the great things happening in libraries around the state and with the NMLA, he says he's most looking forward to what's next at CNM.
"There are some exciting things happening here (at CNM)," Wakashige said.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Approaches for defining thresholds and return periods for rainfall-triggered shallow landslides
Probabilistic thresholds for triggering shallow landslides by rainfall are developed using two approaches: a logistic regression model and Iverson's physically based model. Both approaches are applied to a 180 km2 area in northern Italy. For the physically based model a Monte Carlo approach is used to obtain probabilities of slope failure associated with differing combinations of rainfall intensity and duration as well as differing topographic settings. For the logistic regression model hourly and daily rainfall data and split-sample testing are used to explore the effect of antecedent rainfall on triggering thresholds. It is demonstrated that both the statistical and physically based models provide stochastic thresholds that express the probability of landslide triggering. The resulting thresholds are comparable, even though the two approaches are conceptually different. The physically based model also provides an estimate of the percentage of potentially unstable areas in which failure can be triggered with a certain probability. The return period of rainfall responsible for landslide triggering is studied by using a Gumbel scaling model of rainfall intensity-duration-frequency curves. It is demonstrated that antecedent rainfall must be taken into account in landslide forecasting, and a method is proposed to correct the rainfall return period by filtering the rainfall maxima with a fixed threshold of antecedent rainfall. This correction produces an increase of the return periods, especially for rainstorms of short duration.
Frattini, P., Crosta, G., & Sosio, R. (2009). Approaches for defining thresholds and return periods for rainfall-triggered shallow landslides. HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES, 23(10), 1444-1460 [10.1002/hyp.7269].
Citazione: Frattini, P., Crosta, G., & Sosio, R. (2009). Approaches for defining thresholds and return periods for rainfall-triggered shallow landslides. HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES, 23(10), 1444-1460 [10.1002/hyp.7269].
Titolo: Approaches for defining thresholds and return periods for rainfall-triggered shallow landslides
Autori: Frattini, P; Crosta, G; Sosio, R
FRATTINI, PAOLO
CROSTA, GIOVANNI
SOSIO, ROSANNA
Data di pubblicazione: 12-mar-2009
Rivista: HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES
Digital Object Identifier (DOI): http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hyp.7269


5 minutes, 5 ingredients, endlessly tasty!
Heat two large skillets over medium-high heat.
Season the chicken on both sides with Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. To a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat, add 3 tablespoons of the olive oil. Arrange the 3 pieces of chicken skin side-side down in the pan and cook until golden brown, about 3 minutes. Add the bacon pieces to the pan, around in the open spaces around the chicken. Flip the chicken and cook 2 minutes.
Add the Brussels sprouts and wine. Stir in the mustard and butter and allow to cook until the sauce reduces and thickens to a glaze like consistency, about 30 seconds. Season with Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Remove from the heat. Plate the chicken legs and top each piece with Brussels sprouts. Spoon sauce over and serve.


This season let yourself be seduced by this rising trend...: the embroidered swimsuit! A delicate embroidery added to a one piece or bikini gives you an original and unique look. An embroidered swimsuit is also a nod to the 70s and its bohemian looks. In 2019, embroidered patterns are ethnic or tropical inspired, in the form of flowers or lettering. They come in all styles and light up any figure. To add embroidery to your beach or pool look, wear it on a bikini top or bottom or on a one piece! Embroidered details beautify any swimsuit, no matter the cut you choose.


The concept of this art piece is based off one of Tokyo's busiest train lines called the Yamanote. Often the route is compared to a clock due to it's circular nature and it connects to most of Tokyo's key locations. I decided to illustrate this train line by choosing 12 major stops comparing it to the 12 numbers on a clock.
The 12 stops I chose were all famous districts, such as Harajuku, Akihabara, Shibuya, Shinjuku, and more. I connected each of these drawings so in the end to would create one giant illustration, but there would be 12 individual pieces.


LAS VEGAS -- For more than 34 years, the Las Vegan Hilton has been a Las Vegas landmark and an important part of the history of the casino capital of the world.
When it opened, it was ranked among the finest resorts in the world, hosting the world's top entertainers and attracting some of the richest high rollers.
"It was the first casino on our road to megaproperties to put us in the world's sights and we've continued from there," said University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor and casino industry expert Bill Thompson.
By the time the Mirage opened 20 years later, the casino-resort had lost its luster, featuring less-renowned entertainers and banking on a convention clientele.
In recent years, it has struggled to compete with its more glamorous neighbors and has failed to produce the profits owners and investors have expected.
"It's been a major player, but it's been in decline for the past 15 years, in the class of the Riviera and the Sahara while it was once first in its class," Thompson said.
Kirk Kerkorian originally built what some called his "mini-dream" on 64.5 acres of land on Paradise Road, next to the Las Vegas Convention Center. When it opened on July 5, 1969, the $60 million, 30-story, 1,519-room International was the largest resort in the world.
The hotel immediately earned its place as the home of legendary entertainment. Barbra Streisand was the featured performer at the opening gala and Elvis Presley made his famous Las Vegas comeback at the hotel during its opening month.
In 1970, Kerkorian sold the International, as well as the Flamingo on the Strip, to the Hilton Corp., using the money he made from the deal to build the MGM Grand.
This was Hilton's first venture into Nevada's gambling and resort business. It agreed to handle rooms, food and bar management at both resorts.
On Feb. 11, 1981, just 90 days after the devastating MGM Grand fire, a blaze started at the Las Vegas Hilton while it was being retrofitted with more modern fire safety equipment. Firefighters, using the knowledge they had learned from the MGM fire, used local television networks to notify people to stay in their rooms and not go out to the halls and stairwells. Because of the lessons learned, only eight people died in this fire compared with the 85 people who died in the MGM Grand fire.
In 1983, Hilton announced the building of the $15 million race and sports book which opened in the fall of 1986.
In 1988, the Hilton's showroom showcased "Elvis: An American Musical" starring Johnny Seaton, Julian Whitaker and Terry Mike Jeffrey. The musical was three years in the making and featured 48 of Presley's most remembered songs.
Following a long line of illustrious entertainers, Wayne Newton was the last entertainer to perform at the Hilton showroom, which closed in 1993 to become the home of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Starlight Express."
The new Hilton Theatre was built specifically for the "Starlight Express." Hotel officials closed the showroom for more than two months, and after gutting it, spent $12 million to create a 1,600-seat oval room with ramps, raceways, embankments and a balcony.
In 1995, Hilton finished spending $30 million to create new "sky villa" suites on top of the 3,200-room hotel. The villas range in size from the 12,600-square-foot Villa Conrad to the 15,400-square-foot Villa Verona, which is described as "reminiscent of the Palaces of Venice."
In early 1997, in a move to attract more customers to the struggling off-Strip property, Hilton in conjunction with Paramount Parks opened the $70 million "Star Trek: The Experience" attraction.
In 1998, Hilton hosted "Wheel of Fortune." About 3,000 people watched each of the tapings at the resort. The backstage support was staggering including five 48-foot semitrailers of equipment, dozens of video and sound technicians, as well as dozens of security personnel and Hilton foot caterers. It costs $1 million to put the show on the road.
In December 1998, Park Place Entertainment Corp. became a separate and independent public company as a result of the split of the lodging and gaming operations of Hilton Hotels Corp.
The Flamingo Hilton, Bally's and the Las Vegas Hilton became the property of Park Place. Hilton shareholders were given one share of Park Place for each share of Hilton they owned. Park Place retained use of the Hilton name for three years with the exception of the Las Vegas Hilton.
On July 11, 2000, it was announced that Edward Roski purchased the Las Vegas Hilton for $365 million. But the deal later fell through following lengthy litigation.
And in 2001, a campaign to unionize Las Vegas dealers failed after dealers at the Las Vegas Hilton voted against organization by nearly a 2-to-1 margin. Some 158 dealers at the Hilton voted against representation by the Transport Workers Union, while just 87 voted in favor; 263 dealers were eligible to vote.
The hotel is adjacent to the 3.2 million-square-foot Las Vegas Convention Center. It now features three distinct casinos, nearly 3,000 guest rooms and suites, 13 restaurants, a pool, spa and fitness centers and more than 200,000 square feet of conference space.


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The Orangutan Tropical Peatland Trust
The Orangutan Tropical Peatland Trust is a registered UK charity - charity number 1142870.
The Orangutan Tropical Peatland Trust has several objectives to help the work of the Orangutan Tropical Peatland Project. Further details can be found on the official Charity Commission Website.
1. To promote for the benefit of the public the conservation protection and improvement of the physical
and natural environment by promoting biological diversity in indonesian borneo.
2. To advance the education of the public regarding tropical biodiversity conservation in indonesian borneo and to promote the study and research of the same provided that the results of such research are disseminated to the public at large.
3. To promote sustainable development for the benefit of the public by:
(a) the preservation, conservation and the protection of the environment and the prudent use of resources;
(b) the relief of poverty and the improvement of the conditions of life in socially and economically disadvantaged communities;
(c) the promotion of sustainable means of achieving economic growth and regeneration.
Sustainable development means "development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
4. Maintain and enhance the research infrastructure to support on-going research success and enable enhanced research capabilities at all outrop research sites.
OuTrop is a registered charity...
This makes it even easier for you to donate to help out our research efforts in the Sabangau forest.
Meet the Trustees of the Orangutan Tropical
Peatland Trust...
We are delighted to introduce the five trustees of the Trust who will support, advise and lead the direction of the charity and the best ways to support the on-going work of the Orangutan Tropical Peatland Project in Indonesia. Please read on to find out about the accomplished and dedicated individuals who are giving up their time to help...
Dr Susan Page: is Head of Department, Department of Geography, University of Leicester. Her research addresses land use and management in the humid tropics, with a focus on tropical peatland ecosystems, and she was instrumental, along with other UK and Indonesian partners, in establishing the Natural Laboratory for the study of peat swamp forest in Central Kalimantan. She has been a partner in several multinational research programmes focusing on ecology, wise use and restoration of tropical peatlands in Southeast Asia and their sustainable management. More recently she has collaborated with on ecological description of S. American peatlands (with University of Turku) and is currently co-supervising a PhD student investigating the little-known peatlands of the Congo Basin in Africa (with University of Leeds). Under the EU-funded STRAPEAT and RESTORPEAT programmes she quantified the role played by tropical peatlands in the global carbon cycle, both in terms of long-term carbon storage and contemporary emissions from deforestation, fire and land-use change. She established the role of forest disturbance and fire in tropical land use dynamics, by applying earth observation techniques to quantify forest degradation and model post-fire vegetation recovery. She led the EU-funded CARBOPEAT project which addressed carbon-climate-human interactions in tropical peatlands: vulnerabilities, risks and mitigation measures, and is PI/Co-PI for NERC-funded projects investigating peat swamp forest degradation under the NCEO carbon cycle theme (with University of Sheffield), millennial-scale peatland carbon dynamics (with University of Exeter) and greenhouse gas fluxes in Amazonian peatlands (with University of St Andrews), as well as being involved in a DEFRA-funded consortium project on greenhouse gas emissions from lowland peatlands in England and Wales. She has advised on science-based management to a large plantation company in Indonesia; worked with a hydrological consultants to better quantify and manage carbon emissions from drained tropical peatlands; advised on a management plan for lowland peatland in Indonesia and methodologies for carbon emissions trading from tropical peatlands. She advises the Australian government through their Kalimantan Carbon and Forests Partnership on methodologies for carbon emissions reductions under REDD. She has written numerous papers and book contributions, mainly on tropical peatlands, including a key Nature paper that first drew attention to the scale of carbon emissions arising from tropical peatland fires.
Dr David John Chivers, MA, PhD, ScD, FLS, FZS: I was born in April 1944, and from Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, I came up to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1963, to read veterinary medicine. Reading Physical Anthropology in my third year, showed me that I could combine my boyhood interest in natural history with a growing interest in our relatives, so I registered for a Ph.D. and went off to the Malay Peninsula for two years to study the ecology and behaviour of the siamang (the large black gibbon, one of the small apes). Returning to Cambridge I was appointed University Demonstrator in Veterinary Anatomy in 1970, upgraded to Lecturer in 1975; I completed my Ph.D. in 1972. I combined teaching anatomy to veterinary students with organising research on primates and other wildlife in Malaysia (West and East) and nearby countries, including India, Bangladesh and Vietnam. I collaborated with Marcel Hladik for many years investigating the relationship between gut morphology and diet in mammals, especially primates We had US funding for a programme of research on wild and captive primates in Malaysia from 1978-81, and in 1985 shifted our attention to the expanses of Indonesian Kalimantan, to the centre of Borneo. With the Ministry of Forestry, we have been investigating, to the present day, the role of fruit-eating animals in seed dispersal, in the natural regeneration of forest. From the early 1980s, I had a succession of research students from Brazil, from Amazonia and the Atlantic Forest, and more recently two from Venezuela. Students also came from India and Bangladesh and, more recently, from Vietnam. I was active in the Primate Society of Great Britain, rising to President, and in the International Primatological Society as the Vice-President for Conservation. In 1989 I was elected a Fellow and Tutor of Selwyn College, having been appointed Director of Studies in Veterinary Medicine from 1981. I served as Gardens Steward for 13 years, and am now Praelector. From 1985 to 2006 I was very active with Fauna and Flora International (founded in 1903), being Vice-Chairman of Council for 16 years, having been Chairman of the Conservation Committee. I became involved in the quest for 'orang-pendek', a bipedal ground-dwelling ape in the depths of the forest of west-central Sumatra; it was well known by the locals but we still have not got proof of its identity – a large gibbon come to the ground, or a relative of the orang-utan. I was appointed a Reader in Primate Biology and Conservation in 2000 and approved for the degree of Doctor of Science in 2001. I served as Senior Proctor for the University from 2000-2003. I am a Fellow of the Linnean Society and the Zoological Society of London. I serve on several editorial boards, have edited several books and published over 100 papers. I have made 55 visits overseas, to nine countries, for fieldwork, totalling nearly 7 years. I have attended nearly 80 conferences around the world. I am a Trustee of Twycross Zoo the Orangutan Land Trust, the Orangutan Tropical Peatland Trust and St.Helen's School Northwood (and, formerly, Fauna and Flora International and Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation UK).
Claire McLardy came to Sabangau in 1999 to carry out research on orangutan distribution for her masters degree at the University of Nottingham. Claire was instrumental in setting up the OuTrop volunteer program in 2001, and worked with us until 2003 carrying out research on a wide range of projects. Claire has stayed in the conservation fold, currently working for UNEP-WCMC.
Victoria Smith spent time in Sabangau in 2002 completing a research study for her master's degree in Primate Conservation at Oxford Brookes University. The project focused on investigating the human communities of the Sabangau forests, their demography, attitudes and impacts. After completing her MSc Victoria worked as a member of the Primate Care team at Monkey World, Ape Rescue Centre in Dorset and then as Project Co-ordinator for the Orangutan Foundation UK. Since 2006 Victoria has been Buildings and Office Manager at The Linnean Society of London. Other interests include book conservation and travel.
Ellie Monks graduated from Cambridge University in 2005 with a degree in Zoology, specialising in great apes. In the summer of 2004 she volunteered for OuTrop, undertaking behavioural and phenology studies in the Sabangau National Park. Ellie returned to Indonesia in 2005/6 where she volunteered in the Education Department of UNPAR (University of Palangka Raya) promoting orang-utan conservation. She went on to work as a Research Assistant for Dr Mark Harrison, conducting behavioural studies on the feeding behaviour of orang-utans in the Sebangau. Ellie then went on to work at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) where she worked on EDGE (Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered) birds. She then moved to Mongolia to manage the Steppe Forward Programme, ZSL's conservation programme in Mongolia. One of the main outputs of the programme was a series of Regional Red Lists, which Ellie co-authored for birds, reptiles and amphibians. She then returned to the UK to manage a series of environmental regeneration projects across Hampshire. Ellie is currently based at the University of Southampton where she plays an integral part in the commissioning of medical research on behalf of the National Institute for Health Research.


Torion Technologies (USA) has appointed Milton Keynes based Quantitech to distribute a unique portable gas chromatograph toroidal ion trap mass spectrometer (GC-TMS), in the UK and Ireland.
The TRIDION�-9 is the world�s fastest and most portable GC-MS. Combining a high speed GC with a miniaturised TMS in a lightweight, field-portable instrument, the TRIDION�-9 is designed to rapidly detect an enormous variety of chemical compounds in the field.
The agreement provides Quantitech with exclusive rights to all non-security markets, which MD Keith Golding believes will provide opportunities in a wide variety of sectors: �The collection and distribution of environmental samples for laboratory analysis is an expensive, time-consuming activity which can incur substantial delays. So, the ability to conduct fast laboratory-grade analysis on-site, is a tremendous advantage and one which features highly in many of the new technologies that we are bringing to the market.
The TRIDION�-9 is able to analyse gaseous, liquid or solid samples, and a range of CUSTODION� solid phase microextraction (SPME) syringes have been developed to provide this flexibility.
Simple to operate and able to produce results in under 3 minutes, the TRIDION�-9 can be operated with the unit�s touchscreen display, and CHROMION� operating software facilitates configuration, data display and processing.


This revolution in the composition of the American dream produced some unpleasant byproducts. Since systematic forms of employment demand that employees specialize their efforts in one or another function of systematic production, then clear thinking warns us that incomplete people make the best corporate and government employees.
Beware of this point, anyone interested in integrated civilizations.
This page was last edited on 28 February 2010, at 20:26.


The trolley is intended for indoor use, and is designed to carry light loads in a domestic environment, whilst providing limited support. It should not be used by any individuals with balance issues of any kind.
Warning: This trolley is not designed to be fully load bearing, and should not be used as a substitute for a walking frame, as it lacks any form of braking mechanism.


text:
+30 24210 36850 info@patsianta.gr
Ευρωπαϊκό Δικαστήριο Δικαιωμάτων του Ανθρώπου
Πολιτική επιχειρήσεων αναφορικά με τα δικαιώματα του ανθρώπου
Επιμόρφωση στα δικαιώματα του παιδιού
Πρώιμη Παιδική Ηλικία
Παιδιά που μετακινούνται
Δίκαιο του Παιδιού
Διεθνή και ευρωπαϊκά κείμενα σχετικά με την προστασία των δικαιωμάτων των παιδιών
Προστασία των δικαιωμάτων του παιδιού στην πράξη
Η Επιτροπή Δικαιωμάτων του Παιδιού
Τα δικαιώματα των παιδιών και το Ευρωπαϊκό Δικαστήριο Δικαιωμάτων του Ανθρώπου
Το ΕΔΔΑ στηρίζει τους ομοφυλόφιλους γονείς
Το συγκεκριμένο post δημοσιεύθηκε για πρώτη φορά στο blog Strasbourg Observers στις 30/11/2021
X v. Poland: A victory, yet not a triumph for homosexual parents in Strasbourg
By Dr Kyriaki Patsianta
In the case of X v. Poland, the ECtHR found that there had been a violation of articles 14 and 8 of the Convention in respect of a homosexual mother, who alleged that the removal of her youngest child from her custody, after her former husband obtained a change in the custody arrangements ordered in the divorce judgment, was primarily based on her relationship with her girlfriend. Additionally, the Court declared the applicant's claim under article 6§1 ECHR (alleged lack of impartiality of a specific judge) inadmissible, as it had been lodged out of time (article 35 §§ 1 and 4 ECHR).
In this post, I argue that, even though the Court followed the reasoning initially established in the Hoffmann case and repeatedly confirmed in many of its judgments relating to allegations of discriminatory treatment against divorced parents, it missed a great opportunity to make explicit that parents' sexual orientation per se does not affect their parental capability.
The claim was brought by a Polish national, X. In 1993 she married Y and had four children: two girls, A and B, and two boys, C and D.
In 2005 X became involved in a relationship with another woman, Z, and applied for a divorce. In June 2005 the Regional court pronounced a no-fault divorce and granted the applicant full parental rights and custody of her four children.
In October 2006 Y applied to change this custody arrangement. In that respect, two expert opinions were issued after assessment of the parents' respective parenting abilities, during which one of the experts directly asked the applicant whether she was homosexual. In October 2007 the District court granted full parental rights to the father and restricted those of the applicant. The court, inter alia, considered that the mother wasn't willing to abandon her excessive intimacy with Z in order to improve her relationship with the children.
X appealed; her appeal was unsuccessful, even though Y proposed that she retain custody of D, acknowledging that he had a stronger bond with her.
The three older children moved to live with Y, while the applicant refused to return D to his father and, in April 2008, she requested that the custody order be revised in respect of him.
On 8 May 2008 the District court dismissed the applicant's application for an interim measure by allowing her to retain custody of D for the duration of the proceedings. The court notably held that the father was more able to care for D and that the applicant had focused excessively on herself and her relationship with her girlfriend.
On 27 May 2008 the District court ordered that the child be forcefully removed from his mother's care; a few days later, the court guardian handed D over to his father.
In June 2009 the District court dismissed the applicant's application for amendment of the custody order over D. It considered that the seven-year-old boy should continue living with his siblings and father and stated that leaving D to live with Y was also justified by the current stage of his development and the father's larger role in creating the child's male role model.
The applicant appealed, arguing, inter alia, that the court, when assessing D's best interests, had failed to take into consideration Y's homophobic opinions. She also submitted that the main grounds for the court's decision had been her sexual preferences.
In September 2009 the Regional court dismissed the appeal and found that the applicant's sexual orientation was not the reason for the dismissal of her application. It reiterated the importance of the male role model for the boy and of all the siblings staying together.
Firstly, it is important to understand the reasoning the ECtHR follows in cases relating to allegations of discriminatory treatment against divorced parents, on the basis of sexual orientation, transsexualism and religion. In the case of Hoffmann v. Austria, where the applicant complained under articles 8 and 14 ECHR that the Austrian courts had awarded parental rights over her children to their father rather than to her because she was a Jehovah's Witness, the Court found a violation of the Convention and established a specific reasoning (Sudre et al, 2019), which has been repeatedly confirmed in similar discrimination cases (Salgueiro Da Silva Mouta v. Portugal, Palau-Martinez v. France, Ismailova v. Russia, P.V. v. Spain, Vojnity v. Hungary, A.M. and others v. Russia).
Indeed, the Strasbourg Court considers that issues related to custody and access rights attribution fall within the ambit of article 8 and, thus, the application of article 14 is ensured. Subsequently, it examines whether there is a difference in treatment suffered by the parent-applicant, based on an identifiable characteristic or status within the meaning of article 14 ECHR. If that is the case, the ECtHR examines whether the difference in treatment is discriminatory. It is so if it has no objective and reasonable justification: more specifically, if it does not pursue a legitimate aim or if there is not a reasonable relationship of proportionality between the means employed and the aim pursued.
The Court accepts that the domestic decisions pursue a legitimate aim, namely the child's best interests. Nevertheless, it is the "proportionality control" that obtains specificity in these cases and determines the ruling of the Court (Patsianta 2017). The Court disapproves of the fact that a domestic decision is not based on the specific circumstances of the case, but on the applicant's status in the abstract. More precisely, it sanctions a determination in abstracto of the child's best interests based on possible negative consequences of the parents' status over their children. When the ECtHR concludes that a reasonable relationship of proportionality does not exist between the means employed and the aim pursued, it objects to the domestic courts' a priori criticism of the parents' status (Hoffmann, Salgueiro Da Silva Mouta, Palau-Martinez, Vojnity, A.M. and others). On the contrary, the Court considers that a reasonable relationship of proportionality is attained, when the domestic decisions are based on precise and concrete factors demonstrating the negative influence of this status (Ismailova, P.V.).
The present case is in line with this case law. After reiterating that differences based solely or decisively on sexual orientation, which is a ground covered by "other status" within the meaning of article 14 ECHR, are unacceptable under the Convention, the Court delves into the implementation of its well-established reasoning in the present case.
The ECtHR confirms that the facts of the case fall within the ambit of article 8 ECHR and refers in a detailed way to the experts' opinions issued during the first set of proceedings and to the Polish courts' decisions. Subsequently, it reaches the 'inescapable conclusion' (§79) that the sexual orientation of the applicant was omnipresent at every stage of the judicial proceedings and, therefore, there was a difference in treatment between the applicant and any other parent wishing to have full custody of her or his children, on the basis of her sexual orientation.
The ECtHR accepts that the Polish courts' decisions pursue a legitimate aim, the best interests of the child, and examines, in particular, whether the two main arguments on which the decisions of the Polish courts were based in respect of D, namely the advantages of all the siblings living together and the importance of a male role model for the boy's upbringing, were appropriate to protect his best interests. Its conclusion is that they were not. More specifically, the Court considers that the domestic courts failed to assess the child's best interests on the basis of all relevant and important aspects of the case, such as the strong bond between mother and son, the fact that the experts' reports did not find anything of concern about the child's well-being when he was under his mother's care and the fact that the applicant was the child's primary carer before his forced removal from her. Moreover, it notes that the reference to the male role model was repeated at every stage of the final set of proceedings as an essential consideration in the assessment of the child's best interests; as it stresses, this was a stereotypical view that was not supported by expert reports and its reference was discriminatory.
Regarding the applicant's relationship with her girlfriend, the ECtHR notes that the Polish authorities never examined Z's attitudes and her relationship with D, while no suggestion had been made that the child had been adversely affected by her presence.
The Court considers that the Polish authorities' decision made a distinction based solely or decisively on the applicant's sexual orientation. It notably observes that the discriminatory reference to the importance of a male role model was a decisive factor in the dismissal of the applicant's request. Furthermore, it underlines that a positive evaluation of the applicant's role as a primary carer for her children depended on her ending her relationship with Z.
Despite the fact that the ECtHR sides with the claims of a homosexual mother, it misses a great opportunity to go a step further. More specifically, in the case of Vojnity v. Hungary, where the applicant complained that the absolute ban on his access rights in respect of his son had been based on his religious beliefs, the ECtHR followed the Hoffmann approach but also took a bold step. More precisely, on the basis of articles 8 and 9 ECHR together with article 2 Protocol N°1, the Court confirmed the right of married, and separated or divorced parents who do not have custody of their children to communicate and promote their religious convictions to them, even in an insistent or overbearing manner, unless this exposes the children to dangerous practices or to physical or psychological harm (§37). In other words, the Court made clear that parents' religious beliefs per se cannot influence their capacity to raise their children.
The Court could have taken a similar step and could have explicitly stated that parents' sexual orientation per se does not affect their parental capability. Indeed, the opportunity was ideal, as under the title 'International Material' a reference is made to the Explanatory Memorandum of the Resolution 2239 (2018) issued by PACE, 'Private and family life: achieving equality regardless of sexual orientation'. In this Memorandum, Mr Jonas Gunnarsson, rapporteur, states, inter alia, that 'as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has made clear, and as was already implicit in the reasoning applied by the European Court of Human Rights nearly 20 years ago, a parent's sexual orientation has no bearing on their capacity to raise and provide for a child.' (§44). Moreover, under the same title, reference is also made to the case of Atala Riffo and daughters v. Chile, where the Inter-American Court found that the decision of the Chilean courts to remove three children from the custody of their homosexual mother was discriminatory on the basis of her sexual orientation, emphasizing that 'an abstract reference to the child's best interest ... without specific proof of the risks or damage to children that could result from the mother's sexual orientation' is not acceptable (§45).
The dissenting opinion of Judge Wojtyczek reflects the fragile position of homosexual parents, especially in Poland. As the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, a third party intervener, points out, in this country, there are many inequalities in legal and practical matters directly affecting same-sex families, professionals who are in contact with these families often show prejudice towards them, while public attitude towards the LGBT community is negative and homophobic.
The Polish Judge disagrees with the majority on the violation found of articles 8 and 14 and raises three types of objections, which refer to the proceedings before the Court, the factual findings made by it and the legal assessment of the merits of the case.
Firstly, Judge Wojtyczek finds problematic the fact that the father, the children and the parents' new partners have not been heard by the Court or invited to present observations, and that the Court's ruling was based mainly on X's submissions. According to article 36§2 ECHR, the President of the Court may, in the interest of the proper administration of justice, invite any person concerned to submit written comments or take part in hearings. For example, in the case Anagnostakis and others v. Greece regarding the visitation rights of a father in respect of his child born out of wedlock, the President of the Section allowed the child's mother to submit a third-party intervener contribution. Judge Wojtyczek raises an interesting point; however, it is a decision to be taken in the context of each case. Indeed, a systematic implementation of this procedure in custody and access rights cases could be complex and ineffective, as the individuals concerned might not wish to get involved in the proceedings before the ECtHR or their contribution may not be necessary. In the present case, the implementation of this procedure would have been unlikely to change the Court's ruling. Indeed, the applicant's submissions and the third party interveners' contributions have been solid enough to lead the Court to sanction Poland, while the involvement of other family members in the proceedings would have failed to offer crucial input.
Secondly, Judge Wojtyczek highlights the difficulty of establishing facts in international human rights proceedings and observes that the factual findings made by the Court omit some relevant circumstances of the case. In that respect, he provides certain examples, which mostly imply that, on certain occasions, the applicant may not have exercised correctly her parental responsibilities, but do not necessarily prove that the majority's view is incorrect.
Thirdly, the Judge focuses on the question of discrimination; notably, he tries to minimize the emphasis given to the applicant's sexual orientation (§3.2.1.) and the importance of the male role model by the national authorities (§ 3.2.2.). And as a last attempt to object to the majority's opinion, he erroneously observes that the majority's approach transformed the Court into an appeal body which reassessed the factual findings of the domestic courts and the application of the domestic law (§ 3.4.). This assessment has not been proven by his analysis; it rather reflects his strong intention to defend Polish authorities' decisions at all costs.
In spite of considering that the rights of a homosexual mother have been infringed due to discriminatory treatment suffered by her as a result of her sexual orientation during parental and custody rights proceedings, the European Court failed to go a step further and make explicit that parents' sexual orientation per se does not affect their parental capability.
Such a step would have greatly empowered rainbow families who, according to a third-party intervener, ILGA-Europe, have been already thriving throughout Europe, yet still face discrimination both in law and in practice. Nonetheless, even if this step is yet to be taken, the ECtHR once more stands up for the rights of homosexual parents on the basis of a determination in concreto of the child's best interests.
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Q: Equilibrium point stability given the derivative Given a system described by the following equation:
$$y'' + y'^4 + y'^2*u + y^3 = 0 $$
where $y(0) = 0$ and $ y'(0) \neq 0 $ ,
what is the stability of the equilibrium point? The eq. point is $0$ and $y$ is the output while $u$ is the input.

A: First of all, as this system is time-invariant, the stability of an equilibrium point does depend on time, and hence on the initial condition. So, what I think you mean with $y(0)=0, \dot{y}(0)\neq 0$ is that for which initial condition $(y^* ,\dot{y}^* )=(y(0),\dot{y}(0)) $ am I converging to a stable equilibrium point...?
You can approach this question in multiple manners. For me the most systematic way is to transform the system into a state space system, with $x_1=y$ and $x_2=\dot{y} $. This yields
$$\begin{align} \dot{x}_1 &= x_2 \\\  \dot{x}_2 &= -x_1^3 - x_2^4 - x_2^2u \end{align} \qquad \to \ \dot{x}=f(x,u)$$
Locally linearize at the point $(x_1^* , x_2^* ) = ( y^* , \dot{y}^* )=(0 , x_2^* )$ gives
$$\left.\frac{\partial f}{\partial x}\right|_{x^*} = \begin{pmatrix} 0 & 1 \\\ -3x_1^2 & -4x_2^3-2x_2u \end{pmatrix}$$
The eigenvalues of this matrix are for the equilibrium point equal to $\lambda_1=0$ and $\lambda_2=-4(x_2^* )^3-2x_2^* u^* $. So, with linearisation you cannot say anything about the stability. If you also analyse the phase plane of the DE, you can conclude that no point is stable, as any small pertubation away from $x_1=0$, gives that the velocity vectors point away from the equilibrium point.

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Extensive Damage across Missouri due to Violent Tornados
Central United States has been erupted due to a new round of damaging thunderstorm. A violent tornado tore through the capital city of Missouri at Wednesday night. The National Weather Service issued emergency in St. Louis. Many buildings collapsed leaving injuries in Jefferson City, capital of Missouri.
Jefferson City Police confirmed that more than 20 people were brought to the hospitals after the tornado. Jefferson City Fore Department and the Missouri State Highway Patrol Troop F assisted in the cleanup operation. On Wednesday evening, tornado reached the Golden City. 3 people got killed in Golden city due to the severity of the weather. The tornado thunderstorm tracked from Ottawa County. It entered into Kansas, Oronogo, and ended up into Missouri.
Sergeant John Lueckenhoff, spokesman of Missouri Highway Patrol, said, "Kenneth Harris and her wife, Opal, killed in the storm and their bodies were found at some distance from their home". Betty Burg was also killed in the storm and her husband got seriously injured.
Golden City and Jefferson City are three hours apart from each other and struck badly with the tornado thunderstorm. Mike Parson, Missouri Governor, confirmed the damage to the state buildings and power cut in several areas. Parson has already declared the emergency in the state due to the periods of bad weather and flood threats.
Parson visited the damaged areas due to the flood and thunderstorm and he called it as a devastating weather for the state. Jefferson citizen said, "The tornado seemed like the earthquake". Thunderstorms also tracked near Joplin, Missouri but they did not leave any extensive damage there. More than 100 tornadoes reported since Monday in the central states. The overall death toll due to the severe weather reached seven in the state.
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New leader of Detroit Pistons' G League team Rob Murphy is ready for tip-off
June 5, 2021 June 7, 2021 by admin 0 Comments
Carol Cain | Free Press Business Columnist
Rob Murphy has never backed down from a challenge. Not in life and not in his chosen profession of basketball.
Raised a good portion of his early years by a single mother, he embraced and defeated the challenge of growing up on the hard scrabble streets of Detroit to become a student athlete at Central State University in Ohio where, as a member of the basketball program, he began his leadership skills as a two-time team captain.
Professionally, he took the challenge of starting at the ground floor of the basketball industry as a high school coach at Detroit Crockett (where he won a state championship). Then, from being a D-1 assistant at the Mid Major Conference level to successfully navigating that challenge to become a top assistant to legendary Coach Jim Boeheim at the perennial national power that is Syracuse Basketball, Murphy could have enjoyed a long and lucrative career as an assistant.
Yet, always looking for the next challenge, in April 2011 and against the advice of many of his mentors in the industry, he took the head coaching job at under-resourced Eastern Michigan University, taking the reins of a program in the dumpster fire subsequent to the university firing Head Coach Charles Ramsey at the end of the 2010-11 season.
Ten years later, he became the second winningest coach in the program's history.
That is why it shouldn't have surprised anyone that at the end of EMU's season in April, he decided to tackle a new frontier as president and general manager of the Motor City Cruise, the Detroit Pistons Minor League affiliate (called in NBA circles, the G League) that will begin play this upcoming season in Detroit, just a few miles away from the Pistons' home court at Little Caesars Arena and only minutes away from where he grew up as a young child.
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Murphy is well-versed and respected in the game of basketball and had turned down multiple NBA front office and assistant coaching positions over the years. But this opportunity was different. Like all head coaches at the collegiate level, he had cultivated sponsors, donors and season ticket holders and also dealt with his program's overall budget.
But, now, he was getting immersed in the business of basketball. From human resources, sales and marketing to the off-the-floor functions handled by EMU's Athletic Administration, plus standing up a basketball organization from scratch, he jumped on this new dynamic with his typical "let's get it done yesterday" approach.
After arriving in Detroit in 2015, Pistons Vice Chairman Arn Tellem met Murphy and knew he was extremely close to (and highly thought of) by his new General Manager Troy Weaver. But Tellem has been stunned at how seamlessly and successfully Murphy has embraced the business side of his responsibilities.
"Rob is the perfect person to lead the Motor City Cruise. His basketball knowledge was well-documented. But his experience at Eastern, especially centered around revenue development and fundraising off the court, coupled with the fact he was born and raised in Detroit, has proven to be an asset for us as we build this new franchise. His relationships throughout the city and region are driving business and growth opportunities," Tellem said.
Indeed, Murphy and his team have come out of the gate red hot. He said the Cruise has raised nearly $1 million in sponsorships and ticket sales even before the first game has been played.
The team is expected to debut this fall.
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The Cruise will play in a new, $30-million, 3,000-seat arena being built on the campus of Wayne State University (which will also be home to the university's men's and women's programs, concerts and other events).
When Murphy came on board, and as the Pistons wrapped up their season, he dove in head first on the business side, accumulating a staff and actively getting involved in sponsorship presentations, ticket sales, and sales and marketing efforts.
"I talk with Troy daily and attended every home game at night and some road trips but, with the Pistons season now over, Coach (Dwayne) Casey, Troy and I are just getting started in putting together the basketball operation and I am helping them prepare for the NBA Draft. But I have been extremely involved in the business side since my first day."
Starting a new professional sports offering emerging from a pandemic, even in a sports-crazy town like Detroit, has not been easy, but Murphy says the Cruise will be ready and is planning on building a product spectators will enjoy. Further, it is not lost on him the G League team will be priced in a manner that will allow a different demographic of basketball fan to enjoy an evening out.
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"We're looking to create an exciting game atmosphere and experience that families in our community can enjoy while watching future Pistons stars of tomorrow," Murphy said.
Under the leadership of Weaver and Casey, the Pistons are already on their way to reshaping their roster for the future. Now, with Murphy as their top lieutenant of the minor league operation, they look forward to him installing a winning culture within his organization for their future stars, while concurrently developing a new base of fans that will be ready to one day celebrate the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy returning to the Motor City for the first time since 2004.
Contact Carol Cain: 313-222-6732 or clcain@cbs.com. She is senior producer/host of "Michigan Matters," which airs 7:30 a.m. Sundays on CBS 62. See Detroit Tigers great Kirk Gibson, Penske Corp. President Bud Denker and Rinus Veekay (Indy Car 2020 Rookie of the Year) talk about Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear.
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Turin book fair boycott row over Salvini's far-right publisher
Publishers are boycotting the famous Turin book fair over the presence of the neo-fascist publisher of Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini's new book.
Published: 7 May 2019 17:46 CEST
Books for sale at last year's Turin fair. Photo: AFP
Several participants have already pulled out of the festival, and the director of the Auschwitz museum is leading calls for the Turin Book Fair to rescind the invitation to the event, which opens on Thursday.
League leader Salvini caused controversy when he chose Altaforte, a publishing house with close links to neo-fascist CasaPound, to publish his new book "Io Sono Matteo Salvini, intervista allo specchio" ("I am Matteo Salvini, interview with the mirror.")
The book is set for publication on the day the Turin book fair opens.
League leader Matteo Salvini's book will be published on the opening day of the festival. Photo: AFP
The Altaforte publishing house's output includes books on fascism, including one cowritten by Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist dictator.
Francesco Polacchi, the director of the Altaforte publishing house, is a member of the neo-fascist CasaPound party.
Polacchi told the Ansa news agency on Monday: "I'm a Fascist. Antifascism is the real ill of this country.
in a letter to the organising committee, Piotr Cywinski, director of the museum at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death. appealed to the organisers to withdraw the invitation to Altaforte.
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"We cannot ask the survivors to share the space with those who question the historical facts that led to the Holocaust, with those who re-propose a fascist idea of society." wrote Cywinski, himself a Holocaust survivor.
While several writers and publishers have protested the decision to invite Altaforte, not all of them agree with a boycott.
Publisher Stefano Mauri said he "preferred to fight ignorance with good books".
Turin's mayor Chiara Appendino, a member of the Five Star Movement which forms the ruling coalition government along with Salvini's party, also opposed a boycott.
"We will certainly not abandon the field, because ideas are fought with stronger ideas," she said in a Facebook post.
However, the city government of Turin and the regional government of Piedmont issued a complaint to police on Tuesday asking prosecutors to weigh whether Altaforte was guilty of apology of Fascism, a crime in postwar Italy.
Asked about the affair on Tuesday, Salvini said "culture comes from everywhere".
Salvini previously published an autobiograpy in 2016, copies of which were destroyed by protestors when he visited the city of Bologna to campaign for his party, then known as The Northern League.
The Turin book fair is one of the biggest events in the Italian publishing calendar.
The Local/AFP [email protected] @thelocalitaly
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Weather will be wetter, warmer – welcome or not
SEYMOUR – Expect the weather in Wisconsin and adjacent states to continue being wetter and warmer than the official recorded averages compiled since the late 1800s and to have more of the extreme events that have been more frequent in the past 10 years.
That was the gist of a message from Roy Eckberg, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service (NWS) at Green Bay, to attendees at the Outagamie County Forage Council's 2020 annual meeting and educational program. That office, which is one of five in the state, covers 22 northeast and north central counties along with adjacent bodies of water up to five miles from the shore.
While the data for past years and decades is accurate, there's no guarantee on the forecasts for weeks and months ahead, Eckberg acknowledged. He noted that the NWS issues forecasts for only the following seven days.
Eckberg pointed out that the weather forecasts for Wisconsin in January of 2020 did not prove to be accurate. Expectations that temperatures would average below normal turned out to be wrong because the jet streams that would otherwise have brought in cold air stayed more to the north, resulting in an average temperature of more than 8F degrees above normal for Green Bay.
Asked why weather forecasters on television stations in the same market predict somewhat different daily high and low temperatures and precipitation probabilities and outlooks, Eckberg said it's their choice after getting input from the NWS and other sources. In some cases, he suggested, it's a competitive tactic on the part of the stations.
Recent weather records
What's not in doubt, Eckberg continued, is that the 2010s decade was the wettest on record for both Wisconsin and the United States. Only 2011 and 2012 were drier than normal while three of the top five wettest years have occurred since 2016 and 2015 respectively in Wisconsin and the country, he pointed out.
What Eckberg described as "more typical of Florida" was the 67 inches of precipitation recorded at Mauston in the southwest quadrant of Wisconsin in 2019. Despite the current precipitation trend, he doesn't rule the possibility of one year of drought in the next five years.
In northeast Wisconsin during 2019, some locations had 150 percent of their normal precipitation, Eckberg reported. "That's pretty incredible." At the Green Bay site, where the records date to 1887, the 48.63 inches of precipitation in 2019 broke the previous record set in 2018 by 9.42 inches.
The heavy precipitation is also directly linked to higher average temperatures, Eckberg remarked. That's due to how cloudiness keeps nighttime temperatures warmer, especially during the winter, he explained.
To a question about the several on-farm weather stations established in recent years, Eckberg said the NWS would welcome working with them. He noted that the Green Bay office is not collecting data from the city east to Kewaunee.
Upcoming runoff concerns
The combination of saturated soil, snow depth, and high stream and river flow is creating a concern for flooding at many places in Wisconsin, Eckberg stated. The worst scenario would be to have a rapid snow melt along with heavy rain, he observed.
Outlooks for nearby months are for somewhat lower than normal temperature and higher precipitation through the spring of 2020 while the summer and autumn months are still an unknown, Eckberg indicated. To a question about folklore beliefs on upcoming weather, he said some of them tend to be valid.
There's no long term indicator because the Pacific Ocean patterns referred to as El Nino and La Nina are neutral at the moment, Eckberg noted. El Nino supports a west to east jet stream resulting in higher temperatures in the United States while La Nina brings a more north to south jet stream and colder temperatures, he explained.
The local weather in northeast Wisconsin, especially for temperatures during May in recent years, has affected by winds from Lake Michigan, Eckberg observed. In addition, high pressure systems coming from the northeast at Hudson Bay in Canada have affected snowfall locations and volumes in Wisconsin, he added.
Regarding the extreme weather events in the state — all of them within the past decade, Eckberg reminded the attendees of the long run of temperatures in the 80s during March in 2012, the heavy mid-April snowfall in 2018, the increase in tornadoes in the past two years, and the several episodes of very high rain volumes and rainfall rates across southern Wisconsin in recent years.
In less that seven years, the Great Lakes, including Lake Michigan went from record low levels in 2013 after the drought in 2012 to record high levels in 2019, Eckberg noted. "That's unprecedented."
Eckberg also cited the increase in the number of days in the growing season at Green Bay during the past 30 to 40 years and particularly in the past decade. Outagamie County's Extension Service crops, soils, and horticulture agent Kevin Jarek chimed in on that phenomenon.
"We're seeing things that we've never seen before," Jarek commented. He saw live alfalfa plant shoots — not the normal state of plant dormancy during winter — under the snow during January in at least one field where the crop was seeded in 2019. Earlier, he saw snow covered forages being raked and baled.


An eight-year-old boy has been seriously injured by a falling tree branch at Erskine Falls in Lorne, southwest of Melbourne.
Paramedics were called to Erskine Falls Road just after 11am after the young boy was struck to the back of the head.
He suffered serious head injuries and has been taken to Lorne Hospital in a stable condition.
He will be transferred to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne by helicopter later today.


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Winter wearing you down? Need to get outside and sweep out the cobwebs? Join us on a staff-guided hike this afternoon to get rid of your cabin fever.
This hike will be of moderate difficulty; participants must have appropriate footgear, water and snacks. Reservations are requested; fee: $5 per person.


Basic services are funded at adequate levels.
Revenue has been estimated at realistic levels.
Reserves that afford protection for the future are funded.
Productivity improvement programs are continued.
Employee compensation levels are based upon realistic employment market considerations and within the county's ability to pay.
TABOR Amendment limits are adhered to in the budget.
Legislative and regulatory changes are accommodated.
GIS, e-government, and other technologies are employed in a cost effective manner in the county.
Population growth and development are planned and accommodated.
Resources to improve roads impacted by the new oil and gas development have been funded.
Weld County must continue the initiatives required to foster area economic development and to improve the quality of life.
Resources were all allocated by focusing on programs, priorities, goals, and performance measures consistent with the Strategic Plan.
Copies of the complete county Final Budget may be obtained by contacting the Clerk to the Board's Office at 970-400-4226 or email Esther Gesick, Clerk to the Board, at egesick@co.weld.co.us.


(Matt. 6:11-13 ESV) 11 Give us this day our daily bread,12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
(Matt. 6:9-10 ESV) 9 Pray then like this: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
(Matt. 6:7-8 ESV) 7 "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.


Kidscreen » Archive » What makes the perfect children's online video service?
What is it going to take to win the battle of streaming services? What features will score subscribers and glue those eyeballs to the screen? This week, Dr. Carla Fisher performed an informal review of 13 children's on-demand video streaming services and shares her thoughts on stand-out features.
While most people know me as a children's game designer, I also frequently have to consider the bigger picture of a brand's entire interactive strategy, which means my days are increasingly filled with conversations about video streaming services. The market already has a significant number of players — Netflix and Amazon are already deep into their family streaming services as are the networks, including PBS KIDS, Sprout, and Nickelodeon. Viacom also recently announced a Pandora-like service called My Nick Jr. Then there's numerous start-ups, like Hopster*, Famigo, and Viddiverse, which has yet to launch but has impressive team credentials.
So with Kidscreen Summit fast approaching, it seems a good time to consider what is it going to take to win the battle of streaming services? What features will score subscribers and glue those eyeballs to the screen? I played 13 services** and here are my thoughts on features that make child- and family-friendly streaming services stand out.
Because this is one of my longest posts, I'll summarize the entire post first and then go into detail.
While reviewing the services, I was generally thinking about a family with kids age four, seven and 10. The parents want their children to be entertained with high-quality programming. Despite this, they are still likely to feel guilty about letting their children watch "television," whether it's via cable or a streaming service.
Meanwhile, kids have different motivations and behaviors in selecting television content depending on their age. When younger children watch television, they are really interested in using television as a way to connect with their "friends." (Developmentally, they still believe in magic and think the characters are real.) Older kids, however, begin to transition into family programming and prefer to make their own decisions about what and when they watch. They are increasingly socializing with their friends, and so television content becomes a way to connect with their friends.
Has a very clear value proposition of how the product fits into the family's life. Does it solve a problem for parents or add to a child's education?
Provides a walled-garden of content for the child to roam freely.
Offers personalization and child profiles (if the service serves a wide range of ages).
Provides basic parental control tools.
Onboards (or signs-up) users in a elegant and simple experience.
Sports a kid-friendly interface (including character-driven navigation, child-relevant categories, limited words, large hotspots, and limited customization).
Features well-designed games (but only if the company has the capacity to produce at a competitive level).
Hosts trusted, desired, and high-quality programming (though exactly how much content is up for debate).
Has the potential and capacity to grow with the child over time.
Offers content to watch on the go, without an Internet connection.
Carefully collects user data and systematically leverages it to improve the product.
And now, those points are discussed in detail.
Whether you call it a value proposition, elevator pitch, or some other trendy term, you have to be able to clearly express why your service is important to the user. How does it fit into your customer's life?
One exercise is to try answering the question, is your service a vitamin or a pain reliever? Does your product ease a particular problem people encounter (the pain pill) or does it enhance the person's overall well being (a vitamin)? If you think about the average family, what are the pain points they encounter or enhancements that they want?
For example, parents want their children to be entertained (possibly quieted) when they are waiting in line or other places where kids can become unruly. They also want their children to be educated, especially when they're preschoolers and early elementary age. Finally, they want their kids to view good content in a trusted space.
Children want to see the shows and characters they enjoy most. They also want to play games and interact with the content. They also form affinity groups around the content they view and talk about it offline or in other online forums.
These are examples from a few app-based services.
Marketing copy is a customer-friendly version of the value proposition, so I also look at advertising materials to see how these statements take shape. Amazon's Kindle marketing for parents is pictured below.
Netflix hosts a small area of content for families that is available for free. It's a marketing site aimed at converting parents into subscribers. What I find interesting is the categories of content, particularly "Are We There Yet? Great Titles to Take on Vacation" or "Get Ready for Preschool." They're value propositions cleverly disguised as categories of movies.
Forbes has a recent article on crafting value propositions that I really liked.
Creating an area that is just for kids that is only populated with kid-friendly content is referred to as building a walled garden. The purpose is to restrict access to specific content, so kids can't navigate to inappropriate material.
Netflix created a walled garden in the Netflix for Kids area, however all content for kids under 12 is in the same area. Some parents might take issue with this as it means a preschooler has easy access to programming for older children. In my own account, Adventure Time shows up very near to Curious George. In services that reach a broad age range, additional divisions may be necessary.
But after thinking about it a bit more, I appreciate Amazon's decision to focus on a tool like FreeTime — focusing on tools that make their devices stand out is critical. I'd still like to see a Web interface that's kid friendly, but the Kindle experience should be priority number 1, whether making games, videos, or other content. If a parent is a Kindle user, spending a few dollars more a month for unlimited books, videos, and apps is enticing.
FirstVideo provides a tool to turn YouTube into a walled garden by allowing the parent to select videos to play and removing all the ads and cross-links. (It also links into Netflix.) With all the content available on YouTube these days, it's a smart play. It also is a key differentiator from a lot of the other services. It's a filtering tool, not necessarily a streaming tool in the sense of all the other services.
Clearly there are a lot of paths that can be taken in creating the walled garden for kids. Which one is right for your product goes back to the value proposition. Are you solving the problem of kids wandering around YouTube, curating the best preschool shows in a safe environment, or giving fans another way to consume your content?
Building a secure, walled-garden for kids also brings up the question of child profiles – are they needed? It really depends on the age range of your target audience and whether you are offering a personalization or progress reporting service that requires individualized tracking. Netflix is a wide range of content. A child profile is pretty much required in order to allow kids to stay on their content. PBS KIDS is focused on preschool, so a profile isn't needed. If they added a personalized recommendation service based on what the child is watching, then they'd arguably need a profile service; a two-year old has different viewing needs than a five-year-old.
Setting up a Netflix Child Profile is probably the easiest experience I've seen.
Of course, this all assumes people actually use the profiles. Whether people use your beautiful tools can be a real challenge, which brings me to parent tools.
A lot of services and games offer tools for parent monitoring, not just streaming services. Some offer tracking of child's progress on games (including right and wrong answers and time on task). Others allow parents to create playlists of approved content. Other tools include content filters or tools to restrict the amount of time a child spends streaming videos.
When asked if parents want tools to manage their child's experience, parents will overwhelmingly say yes. (Let's face it, it's kind of irresponsible to say that you don't want monitoring tools.) But the rub is that they don't really use them. Sometimes the tool is simply, hidden in an obscure place, too complicated, and/or over-designed, but most of the time, the parent isn't quite motivated enough to use it or the tool missed the mark in solving a parent's problem.
That said, if you're creating a service and you said that you weren't creating parent tools to control the child's experience, you might look a bit odd and irresponsible, too. Some tools or options for parents to control the experience are great for improving the brand's trustworthiness, but be smart about which ones you pick. Make sure they best serve your audience.
Onboarding is interface-design-speak for how you sign-up users to your service. A complicated onboarding process is a death sentence. The helpful Web site User Onboarding is systematically breaking down how a wide variety of sites sign-up users. The teardowns are largely focused on service sites, like Tumblr and Trello, but they have done a teardown of Netflix, which is beautifully designed to onboard subscribers. We can all learn a lot from this site.
While companies like Amazon and Netflix are on nearly every device you could imagine, far more kid-focused services are app-based, which can complicate onboarding. The user first has to find the app in the depths of the app store. (By now you should know that I regularly detail how crowded the app marketplaces are – the latest metrics from 148Apps.biz indicate there's nearly 108,500 apps in the Education category of the Apple App Store alone…).
With all that competition, your onboarding process has to be dead simple, uncluttered, and focused on helping the user sign up, especially if your product relies on subscriptions or in-app purchase. The elegance and simplicity of this experience will largely determine the success of your ability to convert users to paid subscribers or to even adopt your tools into their busy lives.
Anyone familiar with my blog posts and conference talks knows that I champion understanding the developmental needs and preferences of children as it always varies from adults. They are not just little adults, but have unique cognitive and physical needs. When designing for kids, a one-size-fits-all interface will usually lead to confusion, frustration, and negative feelings toward the interface.
Briefly, what does it mean to be kid-friendly in the interface?
Kids should be able to navigate the service on their own, even preschoolers. They may need help, but they are motivated by repetition and mastery and will inevitably want to do it on their own. The user interface should be designed with kids in mind, meaning large hotspots and minimal words (if for the learning-to-read crowd). It also means clearly organizing the site with minimal choices and limited hierarchical menus. For example, while as adults we're generally familiar with how to navigate Amazon's site, it's organized for adults, who think logically and hierarchically. Kids will get lost or overwhelmed by the choices.
Allow kids to navigate by character. Providing a character bar for navigation is one of the oldest children's user interface conventions around. It's simply the best way to provide a highly visual way for children who are learning to read to select their programming.
If you are aggregating content by categories or making recommendations, make categories that are relevant to kids (or their parents, if that's a decision you make). Traditionally adult categories based on genres, like Comedy, Action Adventure, or Drama, are generally meaningless to children. Dinosaurs, Snow Day, or Trains are far more likely to resonate with them, especially if you label the category with an image (to help those who can't read!).
Allow the child to customize the interface. Kids are highly motivated by a sense of ownership and will spend an amazing amount of time playing with online decorating tools. (Think back to how much kids loved their Club Penguin igloos…) It might be as simple as allowing the child to pick interface colors or characters. Or you might allow the child to create their own personalized avatar and host. Customization, however, is a double-edged sword. Too much customization and you may take away from the time children spend actually viewing content. If that's a metric that matters most to you, then you have to find the balance between just enough customization and a distracting amount of customization.
Age-appropriate interface: If the service spans multiple developmental age groups, the interface and viewing recommendations also have to evolve with the child. While a preschooler is very character driven and requires super simple interface design, older kids want more control and are more likely to use search tools. A one-size-fits-all interface will not work when reaching kids.
Games are a powerful draw for kids. Services looking to be a complete experience for kids should put considerable thought into creating game content. Those who own original content, such as PBS KIDS or Nickelodeon, generally make games to expand the marketing power and reach of the brand. But even those relying on other properties, like Hopster or Playrific, can still make games with their own characters and content.
That said, if you have limited resources, streaming services should not spread their resources too thin. (Go back to your key metrics, which I recently discussed in the app apocalypse post, and focus on what matters. Will games lead to positive change in the metrics?) Games have to be produced at the same quality as the other sites. Kids have high standards these days! Bad games just reflect poorly on the service in general.
I'd also put interactive television and second-screen content into this category. Interactive television services, such as PlaySquare, Kidaptive, or StoryBots, have the potential to expand the time families spend with your product, but they are also really expensive to produce and relatively unproven in the market. The quality bar for producing that kind of content is also very high, making it a difficult market to enter.
It's a no-brainer that you have to have the best content your service can afford. But does a service have to have ALL of the popular preschool shows? No. And it's unreasonable to expect that a single service will be able to truly have something for everyone. But it has to have enough to satisfy their audience and maintain (or increase) their audience.
The strategies vary on how to address programming. Hopster has a small catalog of popular shows. PBS KIDS streams their shows. Amazon and Netflix both have big catalogs and are producing original content to help expand.
For the most part, these services emphasize what content they have. But you also have to think about the people who don't find what they're looking for. Can you convert them to another program?
Netflix doesn't have Viacom shows anymore, which no doubt upset a lot of parents of preschoolers who depended on it to stream the same episode over and over and over. (Managing expectations of fans when rights expire is another point to consider.) Today, if you search Yo Gabba Gabba on Netflix, they smartly redirect you to what other people view after searching for the show. They're trying to convert those viewers to another show.
Another interesting product is Pikotoons, which is a DHX product. Pikotoons is basically a streaming service for the DHX library of content, including Yo Gabba Gabba. Companies who have a large catalog and want to provide access (or test which IP are in demand) might create a simple video player service and then grow from there.
Content to watch on the go, without a wireless connection.
If you think about the pain points for parents, the moments when they are likely to turn to media to soothe or distract a child, they largely happen on the go — when parents are waiting in lines, at a restaurant, in a car, on a plane. They are also less likely to have an Internet connection at these times or to have the cellular bandwidth to stream videos.
One of Amazon's smartest moves was making some of their content available for offline viewing. While you still have to plan ahead to download the content and the ability to stream the content will expire after a period of time (ranging between 2 to 30 days), it provides an incredibly useful service to parents.
Collecting data is not a simple task in this day and age of COPPA regulations, which is a U.S. law governing what and how data can be collected from children. But user data is critical to understanding how your audience uses the product as well as how to improve the product.
For example, we all know that preschoolers watch the same thing over and over again. But where do they go after they finally tire of that episode? Do they go to another episode of the same show or to a related show? With user data, you can understand what's happening and improve the product accordingly.
Many tech companies use the data to define product improvement opportunities and structure A/B tests. In A/B testing, two (or more) product options are built and tested against each other. The winner is implemented or iterated on to continue improving the experience. Smashing Magazine has a great article on A/B testing.
What data you collect, however, goes back to understanding what metrics matter most to you and your brand. This requires laser-focus and discipline to trust and interpret the data accordingly. Think of it as using the data to identify opportunities and then using the design tests to confirm your suspicions.
At the same time, several services are clearly leading the pack and certainly have the potential (and abundant resources) to achieve an ideal family-streaming service (*cough Netflix cough Amazon cough cough*). I'm also really curious to see how Hopster evolves and scales. It could be the next Cinderella story.
Thanks for hanging for this epic post. See you around Kidscreen and iKids, where I'll be presenting on opportunities and challenges in the digital market.
Dr. Carla Engelbrecht Fisher is an internationally recognized expert on creating interactive products for children, particularly educational games. She shares industry resources via the No Crusts Interactive newsletter and curates games, articles, and videos for parents via A Gamer's Guide to Parenting newsletter. For more information, visit No Crusts Interactive, email KidsGotGame@NoCrusts.com, or follow @NoCrusts on Twitter.
* Hopster is UK only, which would normally be a problem since I'm based in the US. Not one to be deterred, I was able to play with the service. I used a VPN (virtual private network) to access a server in the UK, which allowed me to stream the content. I also had to change my iTunes Store location to the in order to download the app.
** I spent time exploring 13 services: Amazon (including Kindle FreeTime), Netflix for Kids, Hopster (iPad), Playrific (iOS),Famigo (iOS), PBS KIDS Video (iOS), Nick by Nickelodeon (iOS), Pikotoons, Kidobi, Sprout Games & Videos (iOS), FirstVideo (iOS), PlayKidsTV (iOS), Learning Videos by Storybots (iOS).


A new EU-wide test by consumer organisations has highlighted that consumers – especially the youngest – must be better protected from cancer-causing acrylamide in their food. To do so, BEUC calls on the European Commission to lower the current indicative benchmarks1 for this contaminant and make them binding on food producers.
Today, the European Parliament and the Council reached a provisional agreement on the European Commission's proposal for a Regulation on the transparency and sustainability of the EU risk assessment in the food chain.


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