text:
Changes in Payer Mix and Net Income for Detroit-Area Hospitals
Allan Baumgarten
Changes in Payer Mix and Net Income for Detroit-Area Hospitals Click to Download PDF
The Affordable Care Act expanded health insurance coverage in three significant ways: by increasing eligibility for Medicaid, mandating that individuals have insurance coverage, and providing subsidies to make insurance more affordable. In Michigan, data from the most recent Current Population Survey shows that the percentage of the population without insurance has dropped from 11% in 2013 to 6.1% in 2015. This is well below the national average, which dropped from 10.4% in 2013 to 9.1% in 2015.
One impact of the growth in coverage has been a shift in how inpatient hospital stays are paid for. In 2014, government programs, both Medicare and Medicaid, paid for 77% of inpatient hospital days at Detroit-area hospitals. The remaining 23% were covered by commercial insurers, both group and individual plans, and self-paying patients, which includes people without insurance.
This briefing paper analyzes trends in inpatient hospital days for Detroit-area hospitals, focusing on changes in the number of inpatient days covered by Medicaid and the share of Medicaid-covered days in the payer mix for each hospital and system. It also examines how the expansion of public insurance has affected the bottom lines of hospitals and systems in the Detroit area.
The data come from the annual Medicare facility cost reports that each hospital submits to its Medicare intermediary. The data file is available for download from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Note that each hospital reports based on its fiscal year and that many of the hospitals may have a June 30 fiscal year, for example. In that case, their inpatient days and net income in 2014 would only reflect the first three months of the Medicaid expansion.
Trends in Inpatient Days and Payer Mix
After reaching a peak of 2.5 million in 2007, the number of inpatient days provided by Detroit area hospitals has fallen every year but one since then. By 2015, the number of inpatient days had fallen to 2.261 million. Exhibit 1 shows that the total number of inpatient days for these hospitals increased very slightly in 2014 but then dropped by 51,000 in 2015. The decrease in inpatient care volume can be attributed to several causes. First, after the recession many people lost their health benefits or were moved into a high deductible health plan, causing many people to put off elective procedures for which they would have to pay a greater share. Second, there has been a general trend to move certain kinds of procedures out of inpatient settings and to ambulatory settings, both in hospitals and in physician offices and other facilities.
While overall inpatient days fell, those covered by Medicaid increased in 2014 and in 2015, growing by a total of 78,000 days or 16.5%. The number of Medicaid inpatient days increased at five of the six systems—only Trinity Health saw a decrease in the number of inpatient days provided to Medicaid recipients. (The decrease was at St. Joseph Mercy Port Huron, which was sold after the fiscal year to Prime Healthcare of California. It operated only about half of its beds in 2015.) Furthermore, virtually all the increase in inpatient days was for Medicaid recipients enrolled in HMOs.
The Beaumont Health hospitals showed the largest increase in Medicaid inpatient days, providing 31,000 (25.3%) more days in 2015 than in 2013. The Tenet Detroit Medical Center hospitals, which provided the most inpatient days covered by Medicaid of the six systems, 169,000 in 2015, showed an increase of 20.7%. The number of inpatient days covered by Medicare in 2015 was almost the same as in 2014. As Medicaid days increased, the number of days covered by other payers decreased. In 2013, other payers covered 27.8% of inpatient days. By 2015, that proportion had dropped to 20.7%. When using the Medicare cost reports, the other payers number is calculated as the residual of total inpatient days after subtracting inpatient days covered by Medicare and Medicaid, including HMO plans. In this analysis, we are unable to calculate what proportion of the other payers number is covered by commercial insurance and how much represents people without insurance. Still, it is reasonable to conclude that, in 2015, Medicaid covered a significant proportion of the inpatient hospital days provided to uninsured patients in previous years.
Trends in Hospital Operating Income and Net Income
Since posting losses in 2008 and 2009, Detroit-area hospitals have generally enjoyed increasing profitability. However, they have lost money on operations and were only able to report positive net income because of significant other revenues, mostly from (1) government grants, (2) investment revenues, and (3) philanthropy. For example, Detroit-area hospitals lost $134.6 million on operations in 2012, but had other revenues of $499.4 million, giving them net income of $367.9 million and an average margin of 3.4% of net patient revenues.
Exhibit 2 shows that Detroit-area hospitals had even deeper operating losses in 2013—$278.1 million. However, they had much better operating results in 2014, almost breaking even on operations. And in 2015, they posted operating income of $132.6 million. This is a remarkable swing in a two-year period, improving operating results by $410 million. Combined with other revenues, they had net income of $545.6 million in 2014 and $512.9 million in 2015. Note that other revenues decreased by about $108 million in 2015, from $514.9 million to $407.1 million.
It is important to recall that the cost report data don't specify how much hospitals spend each year on care for people without insurance. In addition, hospitals in Detroit and the rest of the state have been working diligently to improve revenues while reducing expenses. Still, it is reasonable to conclude that a portion of this significant improvement in hospital finances was due to a reduction in the number of people without insurance.
As in other metropolitan areas, hospitals in the Detroit region have seen a steady decline in inpatient hospital care utilization in the past five years. The enactment of the Affordable Care Act and the expansion of coverage to several hundred thousand residents of the state through Medicaid and subsidized individual insurance has not reversed or even stopped that overall trend. But it has resulted in an increase in the number of inpatient days provided by Detroit-area hospitals paid for by Medicaid.
Some portion of those new Medicaid days were provided to patients who were previously uninsured. This reduction in care provided to persons without insurance has occurred at the same time that hospitals have enjoyed improved profitability. Changes under the new administration that would reduce the number of persons with public or private health insurance would be potentially damaging to hospitals in the area.


text:
Primary Navigation Show menu Hide menu
Topics in News
Follow SBS News
A valid email address is required Please provide a valid email address
By subscribing, you agree to SBS's terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.
Please select the editions you would like to sign up to
Please select at least one edition
Sorry, it looks like an error occurred
Comment: What is 'drug checking' and why do we need it in Australia?
A supplied image of pills thought linked to the death of a man at the Stereosonic music festival in Adelaide. A man is dead and another is critically ill after suspected drug overdoses. (AAP Image/ SA Police) Source: AAP
Drug checking: what is it and where has it been already used? Also, has it worked, asks David Caldicott.
Updated Updated 07/12/2015
By David Caldicott
David Caldicott, Australian National University
Update: A 19-year-old man has become the second person recently to succumb to drugs at a music festival.
Last weekend saw the tragic death of a young woman after she took an unidentified tablet at the Stereosonic music festival. Drug-related deaths of this type are not uncommon in Australia, and this raises the question of whether our approach to harm minimisation needs reform.
Ten years ago the Australian Medical Association passed a resolution backing research on testing illicit drugs in Australia to see what they actually contained, in an attempt to reduce consumption, overdose and death.
Previously called "pill testing", "drug checking" gives a consumer the opportunity to know what is in their product prior to consuming it. It also allows alcohol and drug researchers to access what is largely an invisible cohort of functional consumers.
Drug tests wouldn't prevent deaths: expert
Its origins lie in the European dance music scene, with the emergence of counterfeit and contaminated pills. Consumers often feared something in the products they were consuming could be dangerous to them. But with no regulation, there was no way to find out.
A decade ago, when we conducted research at the Enchanted Forest "raves" in South Australia, that was what we were concerned with too. But a decade is a lifetime in drug-market years. We are now faced with the most dangerous drug market in years.
Novel compounds previously undescribed in human toxicology, and MDMA (methylenedioxy-methamphetamine, or, ecstasy) of a purity and dose never seen before, are all available through the internet and untraceable cryptocurrencies. From what I've observed as an emergency physician, this has been one of the worst starts to the music festival season ever, in terms of harm from overdoses.
Drug checking as process and intervention
One of the best examples of a drug-checking program is in Zurich, under the banner of "Saferparty". In conjunction with University of Bern, researchers bring a shipping container of state-of-the-art forensic equipment to one of the largest dance festivals in Europe, Street Parade.
Setting up in the early hours of the event, forensic chemists, doctors and teams of experts are ready to test drugs in their mobile laboratory. Chemists are looking for drugs they know to be particularly dangerous, or drugs in dangerous doses.
Patrons queue up from the time the doors open to submit a scraping of what they intend to consume during the day. Law enforcement are aware and tolerate the program, acknowledging its benefits to public, and the fact that they will also have access to a de-identified data source that would have otherwise been unavailable to them.
While many might think establishing the identity of the drugs is reason enough to conduct drug checking at music festivals, it is this opportunity for dialogue that presents one of the most compelling justifications for this sort of program on-site.
Festival-goers are provided with a unique code that corresponds to their submission, and then wait for their results. This can take 20 to 40 minutes, in which time there is ample opportunity for a dialogue between consumer and tester.
Attendees are frequently functional users, meaning their drug use is not problematic and does not prevent them from leading a normal life. This means they're otherwise invisible to routine survey techniques. While many might think establishing the identity of the drugs is reason enough to conduct drug checking at music festivals, it is this opportunity for dialogue that presents one of the most compelling justifications for this sort of program on-site.
At venues where drug checking occurs, we see patrons modify their behaviour, and mitigate potentially more dangerous behaviour that might result in harm. In our on-site labs from the early 2000s, as many as two-thirds of those surveyed wouldn't take their drugs if they found them to contain something other than what they were expecting. There are few other interventions that demonstrate this strength of effect in this environment.
This has now been rolled out across dozens of European countries, and has its own best-practice guidelines.
Why not in Australia?
There have been many opponents to drug checking in Australia over the last decade, largely from conservatives from the Howard-era "tough on drugs" movement.
Some arguments are philosophical, such as the charge that it sends "the wrong message" to users or wider society. This was articulated in the mid-2000s by then Minister for Ageing Christopher Pyne, who stated at the time that I, along with other supporters, were part of "a long line of medical people who treat drugs as a health issue, rather than the self-harm and criminal offences that they are", and that pill testing represented "dangerous views, which if allowed to become mainstream, would undermine the government's policy of being tough on drugs".
There are those who feel the process underscores some sort of capitulation in an already failed War On Drugs. On the contrary – by providing a medical and toxicological context, we can "nudge" the behaviour of consumers in a far more persuasive manner than by the mere threat of criminalisation. In their eyes, the law is something to be eluded; death and permanent impairment is a much more serious prospect.
In the mid-2000s by then Minister for Ageing Christopher Pyne, who stated at the time that I, along with other supporters, were part of 'a long line of medical people who treat drugs as a health issue, rather than the self-harm and criminal offences that they are'.
Against the charge that it might encourage drug consumption, we would agree – if it was our plan to deploy the intervention outside supermarkets, or primary schools. But the intervention deliberately targets the highest of the high risk, the venues where patrons have already chosen to consume illicit drugs. It's not possible to encourage them any more - only to persuade them to moderate their ways.
At no stage are users ever advised that what has been tested is "safe" – the only way to be completely safe from drug-related harm is to not take drugs.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has called for a "nimble", "imaginative" and "innovative" Australia. We applaud this, as it's precisely what we will need if we are to stop more avoidable deaths at dance festivals this season.
Bob Carr backs call for pill testing to tackle drug-related deaths
David Caldicott is a member of Harm Reduction Australia and ATODA, and has offered bipartisan academic advice in the development of medical cannabis legislation in Australia. He has no political affiliations or financial disclosures to make.
Source The Conversation
Stay up to date with SBS NEWS
SBS News App
Download our free app on the App Store or Google Play for the latest headlines and breaking news alerts.
We love feedback: help us improve by rating the app and sharing your suggestions at apps@sbs.com.au
Sign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.
SBS News on social
Follow SBS News to join in the conversation and never miss the latest live updates.
Latest News podcasts
Ask Amazon Alexa for the latest SBS News or listen to SBS Radio.
Watch SBS World News live daily at 6:30pm on TV and on our app. Catch up on SBS On Demand.
7 hours ago Australia
Son of NSW Police chief inspector and girlfriend found dead in Canada
14 hours ago Immigration
Papua New Guinea deports Australian senator after Manus Island visit
7 hours ago Europe
Strong earthquake shakes Athens
Bedford murders: Life sentence for WA man who killed wife, children and mother-in-law
14 hours ago Australia
Strip-search trauma at music festivals 'akin to sex assault'
Great Barrier Reef agency breaks government ties to warn of climate warning
Japan's Asahi to buy Carlton and United for $16 billion
Indigenous artist wins landscape art prize
Dutton rejects Ardern's call to stop 'corrosive' deportations to NZ
Explore SBS
The World Game
Contact SBS
1800 500 727 (toll free)
comments@sbs.com.au
Locked Bag 028, Crows Nest NSW 1585
Follow SBS
Follow SBS on Twitter
Follow SBS on Facebook

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Lithuania has witnessed a rise in ridesharing industry which spurred a great competition for taxi service providers. Ridesharing has become particularly attractive for passengers and increasingly more drivers engage in ridesharing as an extra source of income. Despite the rise in popularity, accusations of market anarchy prevail.
Myth no. 1. Drivers are not subject to any requirements. False. Requirements for drivers exist. The difference lies in that ridesharing app administrators, but not the government impose them. Cars have to be clean and tidy, relatively new and drivers themselves could not provide services if they were fined for speeding or convicted for a felony. Moreover, it is a feedback-based mechanism. If a car is not tidy enough or the driver is unpleasant or gets lost in the city, the passengers are free to give a poor rating. If a cumulative rating drops below the set minimum, the app administrator just throws the driver out of a system. Therefore, saying that there are no requirements for ridesharing drivers is an overstatement, to say the least.
On the other hand, taxi drivers have to pass an exam, medical examination and get a license from the municipality. Their cars have to go through a maintenance inspection more often, must have specific visual marking and certified taximeters. In fact, both taxi regulations and the requirements for ridesharing drivers share the same purpose that is passenger safety and accurate price calculation. The difference is that the same goals are achieved by either using a simple app or imposing complex regulations.
Myth no. 2. Cars are not marked in any way and cannot be inspected. True. There is no external visual marking. But is it really necessary when everything is tracked by an application? The marking requirements for taxi cars were introduced back in 1930s when fake taxi drivers called "nighthawks" used to take passengers outside of town and rob them. If people were not to comply, they would simply leave them outside of town in unfamiliar surroundings. The introduction of visual marking helped to solve the issue back then, but is it still relevant today? Nowadays, every trip is tracked by GPS and no one may use ridesharing apps without submitting their personal information. Marking the car for the sake of marking has become obsolete and so has this myth.
Myth no. 3. Municipalities cannot ensure high quality services. This is partially true. However, safety and quality are the specialist areas of app administrators while government institutions are clearly unable to solve quality and reliability issues. Numerous taxi passengers are driven around cities for 20 km when their actual trip should not exceed 2 km. This is simply not possible in the case of ridesharing. A simple solution of precise GPS tracking has successfully eliminated this fraud problem.
Myth no. 4. Uncontrollable ride prices. False. Even though prices grow as the demand for rides increases, surge pricing is key to ridesharing. Ridesharing platforms do not have a fixed number of participants; therefore, a temporary increase in prices helps to attract more drivers. In addition, the app always double checks if passengers are willing to pay more. This way ridesharing is able to meet the demand when, for example, it is minus 20 degrees outside and people are forced to wait for an hour for a cab to arrive. Can the prices get higher? Sure. But to say that it is uncontrollable is an exaggeration. Let us not forget that the taxi drivers themselves do not have a steady pricing and such an argument coming from their side sounds dubious, to say the least. Taxi prices differ on working days and weekends, while hailing a cab from Vilnius airport has been a debatable issue for years now.
Myth no. 5. Ridesharing drivers can avoid taxes and provide services illegally. False. Tax evasion is virtually impossible. To use the app, both the driver and the passenger have to connect their bank and app accounts. To be eligible drivers have to register their economic activity and pay taxes. When all bits and pieces are linked together, tax evasion is no longer a concern. In fact, ridesharing platforms simplify tax administration. That is why they are encouraged by the European Union.
Myth no. 6. Unfair competition will eliminate some of the market players. Sadly enough, this one is true. Businesses are regulated in a different manner. This creates different conditions for competition. But an important question to be asked when creating a level playing ground is not how to create a strict regulatory framework for ridesharing drivers, but which taxi regulations could be repealed to make this business sector similar to ridesharing. Why not start by evaluating if it is really necessary to have 80-year-old regulations? If these rules are not simplified and unified, some of the traditional taxis will be forced to go out of business.
Every time a new technological solution is disrupting a market, incumbent market players are shocked. Wire and mobile phones, printing machines and computers, telegraphs and the internet, etc. The important thing to do is not to give in to false information. Admitting that some regulations are outdated and obsolete is a difficult but right thing to do. Allowing taxi drivers to work in the same regulatory environment would be a right thing to do.
This entry was posted in Economy and tagged featured, myth, mythbusters, ridesharing, sharing economy, taxis. Bookmark the permalink.


text:
Proton pump inhibitor: The dual role in gastric cancer
Moon Kyung Joo, Jong Jae Park, Hoon-Jai Chun
Department of Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are one of the most frequently used medications for upper gastrointestinal diseases. However, a number of physicians have raised concern about the serious side effects of long-term use of PPIs, including the development of gastric cancer. Recent epidemiological studies have reported a significant association between long-term PPI intake and the risk of gastric cancer, even after successful Helicobacter pylori eradication. However, the effects of PPIs on the development of pre-malignant conditions such as atrophic gastritis or intestinal metaplasia are not fully known, suggesting the need for comprehensive and confirmative studies are needed in the future. Meanwhile, several experimental studies have demonstrated the effects of PPIs in reducing chemoresistance in gastric cancer cells by modulating the acidic microenvironment, cancer stemness and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) signaling pathway. The inhibitory effects of PPIs on STAT3 activity may overcome drug resistance and enhance the efficacy of conventional or targeted chemotherapeutic agents. Taken together, PPIs may "play dual role" in gastric carcinogenesis and treatment of gastric cancer.
World Journal of Gastroenterology
https://doi.org/10.3748/wjg.v25.i17.2058
STAT3 Transcription Factor
Atrophic Gastritis
Tumor Microenvironment
Astric cancer
Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3
Joo, M. K., Park, J. J., & Chun, H-J. (2019). Proton pump inhibitor: The dual role in gastric cancer. World Journal of Gastroenterology, 25(17), 2058-2070. https://doi.org/10.3748/wjg.v25.i17.2058
Proton pump inhibitor : The dual role in gastric cancer. / Joo, Moon Kyung; Park, Jong Jae; Chun, Hoon-Jai.
In: World Journal of Gastroenterology, Vol. 25, No. 17, 01.01.2019, p. 2058-2070.
Joo, MK, Park, JJ & Chun, H-J 2019, 'Proton pump inhibitor: The dual role in gastric cancer', World Journal of Gastroenterology, vol. 25, no. 17, pp. 2058-2070. https://doi.org/10.3748/wjg.v25.i17.2058
Joo MK, Park JJ, Chun H-J. Proton pump inhibitor: The dual role in gastric cancer. World Journal of Gastroenterology. 2019 Jan 1;25(17):2058-2070. https://doi.org/10.3748/wjg.v25.i17.2058
Joo, Moon Kyung ; Park, Jong Jae ; Chun, Hoon-Jai. / Proton pump inhibitor : The dual role in gastric cancer. In: World Journal of Gastroenterology. 2019 ; Vol. 25, No. 17. pp. 2058-2070.
@article{f85fd80d3c4e47adbf8455035881f70b,
title = "Proton pump inhibitor: The dual role in gastric cancer",
abstract = "Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are one of the most frequently used medications for upper gastrointestinal diseases. However, a number of physicians have raised concern about the serious side effects of long-term use of PPIs, including the development of gastric cancer. Recent epidemiological studies have reported a significant association between long-term PPI intake and the risk of gastric cancer, even after successful Helicobacter pylori eradication. However, the effects of PPIs on the development of pre-malignant conditions such as atrophic gastritis or intestinal metaplasia are not fully known, suggesting the need for comprehensive and confirmative studies are needed in the future. Meanwhile, several experimental studies have demonstrated the effects of PPIs in reducing chemoresistance in gastric cancer cells by modulating the acidic microenvironment, cancer stemness and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) signaling pathway. The inhibitory effects of PPIs on STAT3 activity may overcome drug resistance and enhance the efficacy of conventional or targeted chemotherapeutic agents. Taken together, PPIs may {"}play dual role{"} in gastric carcinogenesis and treatment of gastric cancer.",
keywords = "Astric cancer, Drug resistance, Proton pump inhibitor, Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3",
author = "Joo, {Moon Kyung} and Park, {Jong Jae} and Hoon-Jai Chun",
doi = "10.3748/wjg.v25.i17.2058",
journal = "World Journal of Gastroenterology",
publisher = "WJG Press",
T1 - Proton pump inhibitor
T2 - The dual role in gastric cancer
AU - Joo, Moon Kyung
AU - Park, Jong Jae
AU - Chun, Hoon-Jai
N2 - Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are one of the most frequently used medications for upper gastrointestinal diseases. However, a number of physicians have raised concern about the serious side effects of long-term use of PPIs, including the development of gastric cancer. Recent epidemiological studies have reported a significant association between long-term PPI intake and the risk of gastric cancer, even after successful Helicobacter pylori eradication. However, the effects of PPIs on the development of pre-malignant conditions such as atrophic gastritis or intestinal metaplasia are not fully known, suggesting the need for comprehensive and confirmative studies are needed in the future. Meanwhile, several experimental studies have demonstrated the effects of PPIs in reducing chemoresistance in gastric cancer cells by modulating the acidic microenvironment, cancer stemness and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) signaling pathway. The inhibitory effects of PPIs on STAT3 activity may overcome drug resistance and enhance the efficacy of conventional or targeted chemotherapeutic agents. Taken together, PPIs may "play dual role" in gastric carcinogenesis and treatment of gastric cancer.
AB - Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are one of the most frequently used medications for upper gastrointestinal diseases. However, a number of physicians have raised concern about the serious side effects of long-term use of PPIs, including the development of gastric cancer. Recent epidemiological studies have reported a significant association between long-term PPI intake and the risk of gastric cancer, even after successful Helicobacter pylori eradication. However, the effects of PPIs on the development of pre-malignant conditions such as atrophic gastritis or intestinal metaplasia are not fully known, suggesting the need for comprehensive and confirmative studies are needed in the future. Meanwhile, several experimental studies have demonstrated the effects of PPIs in reducing chemoresistance in gastric cancer cells by modulating the acidic microenvironment, cancer stemness and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) signaling pathway. The inhibitory effects of PPIs on STAT3 activity may overcome drug resistance and enhance the efficacy of conventional or targeted chemotherapeutic agents. Taken together, PPIs may "play dual role" in gastric carcinogenesis and treatment of gastric cancer.
KW - Astric cancer
KW - Drug resistance
KW - Proton pump inhibitor
KW - Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3
U2 - 10.3748/wjg.v25.i17.2058
DO - 10.3748/wjg.v25.i17.2058
JO - World Journal of Gastroenterology
JF - World Journal of Gastroenterology
10.3748/wjg.v25.i17.2058


Oral supplements are the first defense against malnutrition and decreased albumin (protein) levels. Ensuring adequate caloric and protein intake increases a patient's ability to fight infection, decreases hospitalization and speeds healing and recovery times. Carmichael's has experienced licensed pharmacists and technicians on staff working closely with the primary caregiver to provide the patient with proper nutritional intake.
At Carmichael's, patient involvement and feedback is encouraged and welcomed. Our oral supplements service line is accredited by The Joint Commission. In addition, our reputable customer service makes it easier for patients to obtain the nutritional supplements they need.
Carmichael's makes the prescribing process easy with customer friendly service and the knowledge base of our highly trained staff. We can verify and provide insurance coverage information. With a physician's qualifying referral, Carmichael's can bill Medicaid, Medicare and the majority of private insurance companies for a patient.
An individual may purchase oral nutritional supplements by contacting a Carmichael's representative. Generally, products will be shipped directly to your residence from our in-house UPS station within one to three days.
Please contact a Carmichael's representative to discuss any enteral and oral nutritional products needs or to request additional information.


How the U.S. must respond to the North Korean nuclear threat.
China Won't Stop Kim Jong-un. The U.S. Must Stand Up to Both of Them.
Sanctions won't work. We can't destroy his nukes. We can rattle a few sabers, however.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, above in Pyongyang in 2012, may be overplaying his hand.
What to do with the pygmy of Pyongyang, the mad marshal of the Hermit Kingdom, by which I mean Kim Jong-un, the thirtysomething tyrant of North Korea?
On Sept. 9, his scientists set off their country's fifth nuclear test, but there were two differences this time. First, the explosion was considerably larger (10 to 20 kilotons, roughly the size of the Hiroshima blast). Second, and more concerning, the bomb was described not as a "nuclear device" but a "nuclear warhead"—suggesting that they're now able to miniaturize a weapon, so it can be placed in the nose cone of a missile.
If this is true, North Korea can claim to be very close to what President Obama said he would never allow it to become—a nuclear-weapons state. It wouldn't be a very powerful one, possessing the materials for maybe a dozen small A-bombs (even the recent test released one-tenth the blast of the smallest U.S. warhead), but any nuclear weapon holds the stuff of enormous terror, especially in the hands of such a cloistered regime and such an unpredictable leader.
So what to do? The temptation, of course, is to blow it all up—but Kim's scientists have learned the lessons of previous preemptive strikes and dispersed their facilities, some of them deep underground. Another possibility is to tighten sanctions—but North Korea is already so isolated, further strictures aren't likely to affect Kim's behavior, at least as long as oil, gas, and the elite's luxury goods are let in through the Chinese border. How about coaxing China to do something? Four American presidents have tried, to little avail (for reasons to be elaborated below). Reopening nuclear arms talks? This approach worked for a while in the 1990s with Kim's father and grandfather, Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung. Shrewd U.S. diplomats figured out the formula for dealing with the "Dear Leader" and "Great Leader," as they were called. But the new, much younger Kim is a very different, more brutal figure who doesn't play by his elders'—or, it seems, anyone else's—rulebook.
But Bush had no ideas for how to defeat this particular evil (it turned out that brandishing some bombers and scowling had no effect), so the North Koreans continued to enrich uranium, resumed their plutonium program, and, in July 2003, announced that they'd reprocessed all 8,000 fuel rods, enough to build a half-dozen bombs. At that point, Bush tried to get talks going on again, but it was too late. In 2006, the North Koreans set off their first atomic explosion, figuring if they couldn't bargain away their nuclear materials, they might as well go ahead and build some weapons.
North Korea wants a nuclear arsenal for the same reason some other countries, especially smaller countries, would like to have one—to deter an attack by enemies. North Korea genuinely fears an American invasion and always has. The Kim dynasty has amassed its power, and oppressed its own people, by hyping this fear. From the regime's beginnings just after World War II, its leaders have regarded their nation as a "shrimp among whales" whose survival relies on playing the bigger powers off one another. The first two Kims played this game very shrewdly.
The latest scion, Kim Jong-un, may be overplaying his hand—but his comeuppance may take a while to materialize. Chinese President Xi Jinping is clearly annoyed with the whippersnapper—he has pointedly never met with him (despite their nations' status as allies), though he's held many substantive sessions with Park Gyen-hye, the U.S.-allied South Korean president (and thus the devil incarnate in Kim's mind). Xi has also voted in favor of U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning North Korea's nuclear tests and has even condoned multinational maritime raids on ships carrying nuclear materials in and out of North Korean harbors.
But, much as Presidents Park and Obama have urged Xi to take real action against North Korea, this isn't likely to happen anytime soon. If Xi did take action, that would be the end of the crisis. Nearly all of North Korea's imports come through China's borders, and Chinese banks handle financial transactions of the country's elite. If Xi shut down the traffic until Kim dismantled his nuclear program, Kim would have to comply.
Xi leaves Kim alone on this score for three reasons. First, this sort of pressure would cripple and possibly implode Kim's regime, siring chaos, prompting tens of millions of North Koreans to flee across China's remote northeastern border, creating a humanitarian disaster that Beijing couldn't readily solve.
Second, an allied North Korea serves as an impassible buffer to the U.S. military. If Kim's regime fell, the entire Korean peninsula would come under South Korean control, and the buffer would be erased; the U.S. military would straddle China's border. Or, another possibility: With the vanishing of a threat from Pyongyang, the U.S. military in Asia could redeploy to strengthen defenses in the Taiwan straits and the South China Sea, obstructing Beijing's expansionist interests there.
And so, as much as Xi regards North Korea's fledgling nuclear capability as a danger to the region's stability, it's not a threat to China directly, and the alternatives—all of which lead to the crumbling of the North Korean state—are seen as more damaging still to his own strategic interests.
In a statement on Monday, China's foreign ministry said that the United States would have to take responsibility for the North Korean crisis. This evasive stance is precisely what President Obama (or, given the short time left in his term, his successor) has to change. The North Korea nuclear problem is China's problem: China alone is enabling it by keeping Kim's regime well-stocked and thus protecting it from economic catastrophe; China alone could solve it by threatening to withdraw support.
So the United States should rally the same sort of campaign that revved up the pressure against Iran before those nuclear talks got underway. In other words, the international community should apply sanctions not only against North Korea but also against all institutions that do business with North Korea—an action that would affect some major Chinese banks, which provide it with energy supplies, other goods, and hard currency.
Washington could also play carrots and sticks with its military deployments. In the past several months, the United States has sent massive reinforcements of its air and naval power to the region. It has also agreed to install the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system in South Korea, to loud protests from Beijing and Pyongyang. Some analysts believe that North Korea stepped up its nuclear program in response to THAAD. This may be true. Chinese officials believe that THAAD is aimed at their missiles. This isn't true, but as long as they think it's true (despite U.S. assurances, which they have no reason to believe), we might as well exploit that perception for leverage: Tell Xi that we'll dismantle THAAD if North Korea gets rid of its nuclear program; the offer might give him one more reason to turn up the heat on Kim.
Nor would the South Koreans mind if that's how things worked out. President Park requested the THAAD system reluctantly, only after repeated provocations from the North (increasing her sense of danger) and repeated pressure from Beijing not to install it (stiffening her sense of national pride and independence).
The THAAD debate illustrates that missile-defense alone is not a sustainable defense strategy, in any case. The system may work well against one incoming missile, but it's never been tested against two or more, so the North Koreans (or some other adversary) may calculate that the way to overwhelm the defense is to build—and potentially fire—twice as many offensive missiles as planned.
Which leads to the second part of a rational policy toward North Korea: classical nuclear deterrence. The next president should take steps, especially with China, to prevent Pyongyang from deploying a nuclear missile; but if that proves fruitless, he or she should make very clear that North Korea's use of nuclear weapons—or even a conventional invasion of South Korea (which might be accompanied by a brandishing of nukes to deter anyone from coming to Seoul's aid)—will be regarded as an attack on the United States and will be dealt with accordingly. There should be no ambiguity about this. Kim Jong-un may be crazy, but his eccentricities have always been in the service of his survival—and he should understand that he's putting his survival on the line. Daniel Sneider, associate director of Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, thinks we should deploy more nuclear-capable aircraft on U.S. bases in Asia to drive this point home fiercely.
Finally, an American president should be on the lookout for all genuine diplomatic overtures and take advantage of them. This is what the United States did with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, and North Korea is a far less formidable threat than the Soviet Union; it's not even worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence, except to draw contrasts.
After these statements are made and actions taken, the president should move along to other, more important matters. To do otherwise plays into Kim's game. He wants to set off alarm bells so as to be treated as a major power; that's the only chip he's got. It does us no good to play his game; the chip should be assessed for what it's worth. China is Asia's genuinely aspiring global power; it needs encouragement, and pressure, to be a responsible one, and its deed to that claim should begin with solving its Kim Jong-un problem.


text:
home | metro silicon valley index | columns | silicon alleys
Dance on My Grave
By Gary Singh
SINCE THERE already exist Kafka walking tours of Prague and Dashiell Hammett tours of San Francisco, I decided to get narcissistic and fantasize about what would constitute a morbid Gary Singh walking tour of San Jose later on in the future.
The year would be 2020, and tourists would come to San Jose and embark on a tour of homogeneous condominiums and despicable chain establishments that have long since replaced all the locales that I used to hang out at. The San Jose Convention & Visitors Bureau will sponsor the tour, and it will be called, "A Literary Bus Tour of Gary Singh's Former Haunts That Aren't Here Anymore."
All vain presumptuousness aside, I can see it now:
We will see a Gray Line Tour bus stop at 69 E. San Fernando St., site of the column about the taxi driver who tried to extort money from a young woman. Unfortunately, the tour-bus driver will have to explain that the famous neighborhood watering hole that used to be there for 80 years is now, in 2020, a repulsive T.G.I. Friday's franchise because the Redevelopment Agency wanted something that looked more like P.F. Chang's next door.
Continuing around downtown San Jose in 2020, the Gray Line bus driver will point out all the high-rise housing that has been erected in the last 12 years, along with all the empty street-level establishments that used to be live music clubs where Gary Singh would sit around and jot down story ideas on cocktail napkins. A tourist passenger from Norman, Okla., then asks the driver what happened to all these live music clubs that Singh used to hang out at. The driver tells her that as soon as all the yuppies moved into the high-rises, they immediately complained about the noise, so they insisted that all the clubs get shut down, and the mayor went right along with it because he didn't know any better.
Then she asks: "But didn't the people who bought these condos realize that they were moving into an urban nightlife neighborhood?"
"Doesn't matter," the driver tells her. "The mayor and the police decided that all nighttime establishments were the same and they needed to take back San Jose and get rid of it all. So that's what happened. They spent a decade repeatedly nailing the clubs for every idiotic farmer's town technicality until everyone finally gave up and left."
"So the police had an 'us against them' mentality," she said.
Then another passenger, Mr. Addison Gentry, 75, a retired pigeon farmer from Firebaugh, chimes in with a question: "So what are the actual boundaries of downtown?"
"Downtown is San Jose now," the driver tells him. "You see, San Jose broke up into 40 different cities a long time ago. What used to be called 'Downtown' is now the actual city of San Jose and the rest is different cities, Berryessa, Silver Creek, Cambrian and so on. It's all divided up now."
"Really?"
"Well, it always was 40 different towns duct-taped together anyway," the driver explained.
"You mean, like what happened to the Soviet Union happened to San Jose?"
"Exactly."
"Do the Sharks still play here?"
"No, they moved to San Francisco in 2015."
"Damn," Gentry said. "Did Singh ever write about all this?"
"He often joked about it."
"Wow. I'm going to go out and buy his books as soon as I get back to Firebaugh."
The driver then tells him: "You used to be able to get 'em here, but there's no bookstores left anymore."
The bus tour then ends at a brand new Applebee's franchise, which used to be Original Joe's on First Street.
Contact Gary Singh or send a letter to the editor about this story.


text:
TUNISIA: 'Civil society is not yet under direct threat, but we believe that our turn is coming'
Interviews 20 January 2022
CIVICUS speaks about the prospects for democracy in Tunisia following the president's July 2021 power grab with Amine Ghali, director of Al Kawakibi Democracy Transition Center (KADEM). KADEM is a civil society organisation (CSO) aimed at promoting civil society's contribution to democracy and transitional justice in Tunisia and the wider region, through awareness-raising, capacity-strengthening and documentation.
What has been the position of Tunisian civil society regarding President Kais Saied's power grab?
Last July, President Saied dismissed the prime minister and suspended parliament, while promising a constitutional review process. Since then, he has granted himself extensive powers and erased checks on that power.
Reactions to this varied, because Tunisian civil society has been always very diverse. One part supported Saied's moves, or at least viewed them in a positive light, while another completely opposed them, and others were more selective about what they oppose: maybe they were not happy with the previous political arrangement or even the current one, but still thought that Saied's moves would open bigger opportunities for change and reform.
A similar kind of diversity has been visible in society at large, but we haven't experienced unhealthy polarisation because people have not split between positions at the two ends of the spectrum.
And although I have no real numbers or statistics, I have recently noticed growing opposition from civil society to the July events. At the beginning there was a kind of euphoria, but now civil society is more critical of what happened, possibly because people have started to notice that Saied has not yet fulfilled his promises.
What caused civil society positions to shift?
One of Saied's early promises was to fight corruption and bad governance, none of which has yet happened. In addition, he has taken actions and decisions that he did not announce on 25 July. His actions – mainly against the Ennahda party and other leading political parties – initially abided by the constitution, but then he started acting against the constitution and reversing milestones of our democratic transition.
According to the official discourse, echoed by some political actors, our current constitution is so bad that we need a new one. But in my opinion – and civil society's – it is not that bad. More importantly, the constitution-drafting process following the 2010 uprisings had broad consensus, and the new constitution was approved by a lot more than the required two-third majority of the National Constituent Assembly – it received the votes of 200 out of 217 deputies. But now we seem to be moving from a participatory process to a restrictive one.
In terms of electoral management, it is not clear whether the upcoming elections and referendum will be organised by an independent body. On top of this, Saied has questioned another major democratic gain, the independence of the judiciary.
How has civil society reacted to the roadmap that President Saied revealed in December 2021?
I think it was the pressure exercised by civil society, political parties and the international community that pushed the president to spell out a roadmap in mid-December. For the first three or four months after he suspended parliament, he had been against it.
At least a part of civil society will continue to advocate for more and better steps to be included into the roadmap, including a presidential election, which we may need to hold since the roadmap included the drafting of a new constitution, which will result in a new distribution of powers between the president and the head of government. We will also push for a more participatory approach, because holding a referendum on the constitution is not enough, as it will only allow people to respond to a yes/no question.
These are points that will probably be raised in the next few weeks or months. We have strong CSOs working on elections, which are already meeting to discuss how to maintain the elections commission as the main actor and how to address the shift from voting for lists to voting for individuals, as announced by presidential supporters.
I expect we will soon see the formation of new coalitions to act on the new political agenda. In fact, some such coalitions have already formed, including elements of both civil and political society, such as Citizens against the Coup. Other civil society coalitions are working on enhancing human rights protection mechanisms. In my opinion, these new dynamics will grow over the next few months.
Are there any opportunities for civil society engagement around the upcoming constitutional referendum?
Unfortunately, one of the main features of this new governance system is lack of consultation, not only with civil society but also with political parties. So far, the space for the consultation process has not been wide enough. One of its features is online consultations, which are not the kind of consultation we have become used to over the past 10 years.
Even if there were many things that didn't function as they were supposed to, there was at least some form of consultation, a form of give and take, between politicians and civil society, experts and the international community. That ecosystem we once had does not exist anymore. CSOs will push for better forms of cooperation between decision-makers and civil society.
How much pressure is civic space in Tunisia under?
Civic space is shrinking. Although civil society is not yet under direct threat, we believe that our turn is coming. We have noticed that Tunisian decision-makers hate intermediary bodies, so they have shut down parliament, attacked the judiciary and boycotted the media. We are probably next on their list, so we need to be very alert. There are rumours that politicians will introduce legal changes that will affect CSOs, which we won't accept. We must defend civic space while we still have some space to interact with decision-makers in the absence of parliament, the traditional intermediary body.
Are recent arrests of political opponents part of a worrying trend?
We haven't experienced massive arrests of political opponents – in fact, there have been very few. As far as we know, they have not been based on political reasons, but rather on illegal activities committed by politicians while in office. We have condemned the procedures and circumstance of the arrests, which were not appropriate, but no one is above the law, so if there is sufficient evidence against these people, let's arrest them and bring them to trial according to judicial procedures and not through executive decisions.
What are the prospects for democratic consolidation in Tunisia, and how can the international community contribute to it?
I think if we leave it to its own devices, the fate of democracy in Tunisia will be rather negative. So civil society, political society, the international community and Tunisia's friends will need to step up their advocacy efforts, not to restore democracy but to maintain it. We need the efforts of all actors to keep up the pressure to make sure that Tunisia is on the path to democracy. If we didn't engage and just watched the show, it would probably not lead us to more and better democracy, but rather in the opposite direction.
As long as international actors acknowledge that there is a threat to democracy and engage, it will help us. The international community shouldn't deal with us as it did with Egypt in 2013 – that is, it shouldn't prioritise security and stability over democracy. We need the international community to maintain the pressure on decision-makers in Tunisia to make sure that completing the democratic transition is our shared aim. That way, Tunisia will become a major example of a successful democratic transition in the Arab region.
Civic space in Tunisia is rated 'obstructed' by the CIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with KADEM through its website or its Facebook page.
presidential coup
democratic transition
constitutional change
BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS: 'This treaty should not be negotiated behind closed doors'
CIVICUS speaks about the process to develop an international treaty on business and human rights and...
ZAMBIA: 'The abolition of the death penalty is a victory for civil society calling for respect of the right to life'
CIVICUS speaks about Zambia's recent abolition of the death penalty and the role played by civil...
PHILIPPINES: 'This victory belongs to everyone who supported and fought with us'
WOMEN'S RIGHTS: 'Violence against women is a global crisis that needs urgent attention'


text:
Q: component url shows is the home page with any url address in the app I have two components app.component.html and app-success-component,in my routing i have :
        import { NgModule } from '@angular/core';
    import { RouterModule, Routes } from '@angular/router';
    import { SuccessComponenetComponent } from './success-componenet/success-componenet.component';

    const routes: Routes = [{ path:'success-componenet', component: SuccessComponenetComponent
    }];

    @NgModule({
      imports: [RouterModule.forRoot(routes)],
      exports: [RouterModule]
    })
    export class AppRoutingModule { }

the problem is when i browse :
http://localhost:4200/success-componenet

the url is http://localhost:4200/success-componenet but it shows also my homepage,i need this page to be empty,it does not contain anything in its html but why its showing my http://localhost:4200/ page even though the url is http://localhost:4200/success-componenet,any idea?

A: Angular app are SPAs (Single Page Apps). All routes e.g. /fred OR /success-component serve up index.html
index.html serves up app.component.html
In app.component.html you should have:

header here

<router-outlet></router-outlet>

footer here

And router-outlet serves up the correct component from routes based on the URL. So your routes should be:
const routes: Routes = [
  { path: 'success-componenet', component: SuccessComponenetComponent },
  { path: 'home', component: HomeComponent }
];

And home-component.html should be your index page.
All the best.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Most documentaries about figures form cinema history are strangely boring, a lot of murmuring talk with clips to represent a medium that lives on its image engaging audience. That's why I was excited to see the Mark Cousins was helming this study of Orson Welles. Cousins, who made the mesmerising Story of Film a few years back, knows how to make a talk fest engaging: making the talk essential to a parade of images both on point and peculiar.
With a trove of Welles's own art from travel sketches, home made Christmas cards, film and stage production ideas, personal caricatures, and so much more, Cousins traces Welles's career by timelines as they loosely fit into chapters with the names of chess pieces, pawn, knight and king, and then a coda with a quote from Kenneth Tynan. As we see the development of the artist from his early travels, through his precocious radio and theatre production to Citizen Kane and beyond on film we are given Cousins' insights into the man and his art. From the grandeur of Kane's set pieces to the intimacy of his changing Santas on cards a Welles emerges that we might well have imagined but is here more fully realised than I've seen before.
Cousins, of course, knows his cinema and his use of motif is astute, if sometimes imposing. We return persistently to the photo I've included here; a young man thinking, head resting in a hand, accepting the projection of whatever conceit the filmmaker using the image wants. It's a touchpoint and we see it variously in detail in full, reminding us that we are being presented with an image and an idea as Cousins' narration in the second person addresses Welles himself.
More than any figure in 20th century cinema, Welles demands a broader canvas in his biography or critical appreciation if only to emphasise that this flawed master of the form considered it only one of the things he did and wrote in the 1960s that he thought film was a "dying, dying art". Cousins is determined to show us the need for examining the Welleses of the world and bids us in his gentle Ulsterman lilt to explore for ourselves. So, if you see this one don't go getting the blu-ray of Citizen Kane until you go foraging for something old and forgotten (there are many starting points in this film) and something new and unknown. You are part of the art you witness. So, if you smoke have a cigar and if you drink have a sip of cognac. You are you're own movie and should seek the company of others.
Screening notes: My first session at the Forum. It was packed at 1.30 pm on a week day! I sauntered in and my jaw dropped at the sight of the first two rows almost completely filled. I found a seat third from and had a fine old time. I like to exit left at the Forum as it allows a quick flyover of the lovely interior but even though the doors opened I was told by a teenaged vollie that they were um only letting people out the other door today. Miffed but philosophical I did as bade and filed out with the rest to the footpath on Russell where the wind was biting and the sky was grey. I got over my privation on the walk. There was a lot to ponder.


text:
Best Roofing Successfully Replaces Roof for Industrial Company
Best Roofing in Fort Lauderdale has been providing the South Florida community with top quality service in the roofing industry for decades. Over the years, Best Roofing has successfully completed many difficult restoration and replacement projects, none more notoriously tricky than those for industrial buildings. Commercial industrial roofing issues can put a wrench in and negatively affect day-to-day business operations. However, repairing the roof can come with its own set of problems. Due to their reputation, Barfield Inc. contacted Best Roofing to replace the roof with minimal disruption.
Barfield Inc. is a component repair company that has been in business for over 62 years, servicing Boeing and other regional aircraft carriers. With production to uphold at their Miami service location, it was important to undergo a relatively quiet installation as to not to disturb activity. Barfield received a 3-ply Modified Built-Up Roof System that took 60 days to install, with a 20-year warranty. The challenge with this building was the 5 different roof levels, structures and decks. The building was uniquely shaped, a challenge that Best Roofing experts are more than familiar with and attuned to. Workers designed and successfully installed the new system working both with and around the intricacies of the building's design. When it comes to industrial buildings, Best Roofing's main objective is to provide quality service without disrupting daily operations.
Since 1978, Best Roofing of Fort Lauderdale has delivered on their promises, while upholding their core values and beliefs. The Best Roofing reputation in South Florida speaks for itself, with a customer service philosophy that rises above the rest. A full roof replacement can help save your company thousands of dollars. Contact a Best Roofing technician today for more information at 888-723-BEST.
BLOG, Our Work
Best Roofing, commercial industrial roofing, modified built up roof system, roof replacement
Top 4 Don'ts When Making Your Roof Decisions
El Niño Causing Havoc
Breakfast of Champions
Turnberry Isle South Roof Replacement Project Profile


I have listed a new property at 63 1188 MAIN ST in Squamish.
Beautiful location at Soleil at Coastal Village. This 3 bedroom, 2 storey stacked townhome has great value with large open living spaces, stainless appliances, maple kitchen cabinets and designer bathroom tile as well as spacious balcony, 2 underground parking stalls and storage locker. Located in the beautiful Soleil site surrounded by trails and estuary - truly a pristine location!


text:
Hawaii (US State) (5)
American Samoa (US) (1)
French Polynesia (France) (1)
Easter Island (Chile) (1)
Israel Kamakawiwo (2)
Folk-Rock (2)
Hula Ku'i (1)
Electronic Music (1)
Exotica (1)
Tin Pan Alley (1)
Protest Songs (1)
Shape-Note Hymnody (1)
String Band Music (1)
Swing Music And Big-Band Jazz (1)
Religious Music (1)
Music Publishing (1)
Performance Techniques (1)
Audiences (1)
Artist Pages (1)
33 1/3 Books (1)
Hawaii (US State)
Israel Kamakawiwo
...Though best known for his medley cover of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World," Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's focus on preserving and innovating Hawaiian traditional music made him the island's most popular entertainer. Born...
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's Facing Future
Dan Kois
Dan Kois is a contributing writer to New York magazine and a film critic for the Washington Post. He was the founding editor of New York's culture blog, Vulture, and has written for the New York Times, Slate, the Oxford American, Television Without Pity, and Honolulu Magazine. He lives in Arlington, Virginia. Author affiliation details are correct at time of print publication.
Bloomsbury Academic, 2009
33 1/3 Books
...Even at four in the morning, the strip clubs and watering holes surrounding the Honolulu studio were still hopping. The recording engineer heard a car pull into the lot, and soon the biggest man he had ever seen walked in. When he stepped...
Francesco Adinolfi
Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Volume VIII : Genres: North America
The Continuum International, 2012
...During the 1950s a musical genre referred to as exotica came to prominence in the United States, marking an unprecedented wave of musical and cultural exoticisms in popular music. Overnight, composers such as Les Baxter, Martin Denny...
David Goldsworthy
...Population: American Samoa: 70,260 (2003); Cook Islands: 21,008 (2003); Fiji: 868,531 (2003); French Polynesia: 262,125 (2003); Niue: 2,145 (2002); Pitcairn Island: 47 (2003); Samoa: 178,173 (2003); Tokelau: 1,418 (2003); Tonga: 108,141...
Hawai'i (Hawaii)
Amy Ku'uleialoha Stillman
...Population: 1,200,000 (2000) Located at a latitude of between 19 and 22 degrees north, Hawai'i consists physically of an archipelago of high volcanic islands and coral atolls spanning some 200 miles (322 km...


text:
Dementia study links your risk with your fitness level
Your stamina -- or the time it takes for you to reach peak exhaustion during exercise -- can be tied to your dementia...
Your stamina -- or the time it takes for you to reach peak exhaustion during exercise -- can be tied to your dementia risk, and a new study reveals how.
The study, published Wednesday in the medical journal Neurology, found that women with high cardiovascular fitness, or high stamina, had an 88% lower risk of dementia than women who were moderately fit.
A study suggests that high stamina, compared with medium, can decrease dementia risk by 88%
Fitness in midlife, not just old age, can protect your brain health, one expert says
"I was not surprised that there was an association, but I was surprised that it was such a strong association between the group with highest fitness and decreased dementia risk," said Helena H-rder, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, who was first author on the study.
Dementia is the name for a group of symptoms caused by disorders that affect the brain, often leading to memory loss or other problems with brain function. Alzheimer's disease, an irreversible and progressive brain disease, is the most common type of dementia.
About 5.4 million people in the United States are estimated to be living with Alzheimer's disease, and it is the sixth leading cause of death among all adults, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 850,000 people in the United Kingdom have dementia as a whole, according to the UK's National Health Service.
Worldwide, about 50 million people have dementia, and there are nearly 10 million new cases every year, according to the World Health Organization.
The new study involved 191 women in Sweden, 38 to 60 years old, who completed an ergometer cycling test to evaluate their cardiovascular fitness.
During the test, the women's workload was measured, based on how much weight or resistance could be added to the bicycle before they became fatigued.
"The level that you are so exhausted that you have to interrupt the test is a measure, in watts, of your work capacity," H-rder said. "Cardiovascular fitness or endurance can also be tested in a submaximal test where you don't push the person to maximal capacity."
Some of the women had to interrupt their cycling test at submaximal workload, before being pushed to maximal capacity, mainly due to changes seen on an electrocardiograph or due to high blood pressure.
Based on their crude peak workload, the women were separated into three groups: Fifty-nine were in the "low fitness" group, 92 were "medium fitness," and 40 were "high fitness."
Those cycling tests were conducted in 1968, and the women were followed over a 44-year period until 2012. During that time, the researchers tracked the women's health, taking a close look at who was diagnosed with dementia and who was not.
The researchers found that among all of the women, 44 of them (or 23%) developed dementia from 1968 to 2012. Yet among those who interrupted their cycling test at submaximal workload, that percentage jumped to 45%.
"Many of those who interrupted the test at submax, very low watt level, probably had indications for a poor cardiovascular health status," H-rder said. "This might indicate that processes in the cardiovascular system might be ongoing many decades before onset of dementia diagnosis."
The researchers also found that the average age at dementia onset was 11 years older in the "high fitness" group than in the "medium fitness" group, and the most pronounced risk reduction was seen among those with the highest fitness: "High compared to medium fitness decreased the risk of dementia by 88%," the researchers wrote.
The study had some limitations, including that it involved a small sample of women in Sweden. More research is needed to determine whether similar findings would occur in a larger, more diverse group.
Also, the findings were not causal. So more research is also needed to determine whether improved fitness could have positive effects on dementia risk and when in life a high fitness level is most important.
For instance, other factors could have influenced the findings to help lower dementia risk, regardless of physical activity habits. Genetics or the cognitive stimulation of fitness could have influenced dementia risk, as well as the social aspects of fitness, as loneliness has been linked to dementia.
"One of the missing pieces of a study like this -- and really the weakness in the literature to date -- is that the kinds of studies that we have mostly seen are association studies. These are studies of correlations, and they can't necessarily talk about causality," said Keith Fargo, director of scientific programs and outreach for the Alzheimer's Association in Chicago, who was not involved in the new study.
Still, he said, "the picture that is really emerging from the literature is a picture about the importance of fitness in midlife, not just old age, when it comes to protecting your brain health and preventing or delaying Alzheimer's disease and other dementias."
The new study adds to that overall growing body of evidence turning a spotlight on dementia and modifiable risk factors, such as poor cardiovascular health, a sedentary lifestyle, poor diet, smoking or excessive alcohol consumption.
So people could try to reduce their risk of cognitive decline by engaging in regular cardiovascular exercise, stopping smoking, eating a healthy diet, getting enough sleep, staying socially engaged, challenging their minds by reading or playing games and of course taking care of their heart health, according to the Alzheimer's Association.
"There's a very strong connection between cardiovascular health -- so the health of your heart and your circulatory system -- and the health of your brain," Fargo said.
"The reason for that is because the brain actually is what we would call a highly vascularized organ, meaning that your brain has many blood vessels," he said. "The demand for nutrient-, oxygen-rich blood in the brain is very high compared to other organs, and so anything a person can do to increase their cardiovascular fitness level is likely to have positive benefits on brain health."
Excessive alcohol use linked to early-onset dementia risk
Is air pollution tied to higher dementia risk?
Body fat levels linked to breast cancer risk in post-menopausal women
Ibuprofen linked to male infertility, study says
Studies link weed legalization, car crashes
Obesity, low BMI linked to increased risk of death, study reveals
Prenatal exposure to air pollution linked to autism risk, study says
Too much sleep linked to a greater risk of disease and death, study finds


Skelton, S., & Hagopian, A. (2014). Using randomized variable practice in the treatment of childhood apraxia of speech. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. 23(4), 599-611.
Skelton, S. (2010). Learning theory. Mosby's review questions for the speech-language pathology Praxis examination. Maryland Heights, Mo.: Mosby/Elsevier.
Skelton, S. (2004). Concurrent task sequencing in single-phoneme phonologic treatment and generalization. Journal of Communication Disorders. 37(2).
Skelton, S., & Funk, T. (2004). Teaching speech sounds to young children using randomly ordered, variably complex task sequences. Perceptual and Motor Skills. 99(2), 602-4.


text:
Home » Workers World Editorials » Stop Israeli assault!
Stop Israeli assault!
By Editor posted on July 2, 2014
July 1 — Early this morning, the Israeli authorities used the death of three Israeli teenagers as the pretext to begin a major assault on Palestinian organizations and civilians in the West Bank and Gaza. Every voice should be raised against this assault.
This is already the largest Israeli military operation against Palestinians in the West Bank since the second Intifada, or uprising, ended in 2005. It is reported that in just one day, Israel has arrested more than 400 Palestinians, raided thousands of homes and shot five people dead. It has brought back the punitive demolition of Palestinian homes, a practice mostly discontinued in 2005.
While the youths' deaths are still under investigation, Tel Aviv loudly blamed the Palestinian organization Hamas and then bombed Gaza 34 times. Hamas, elected to govern Gaza, denies any responsibility in the deaths. Israel's last attempt to unseat Hamas, a massive bombing in 2008-09, resulted in the deaths of 1,417 Palestinians and nine Israelis. (Palestinian Centre for Human Rights)
This murderous assault has much in common with Kristallnacht, a Nazi attack on Jewish people 76 years ago.
Kristallnacht, Nov. 9-10, 1938, was massive, coordinated aggression on Jewish people living under the German Reich. The excuse was the assassination of a German ambassador by a Jewish teenager in Poland.
In the two-day rampage, 91 Jews were killed and 30,000 arrested and sent to concentration camps. Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked, synagogues were burned (95 in Vienna alone) and Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged. It was the beginning of the Holocaust.
What do today's Israeli government attacks on Palestinians have in common with Kristallnacht?
Both used sensationalized events as pretexts to implement extermination plans already in place. Both used the media to whip up panic to justify their genocidal attacks. Both murderous assaults were against oppressed people and benefited only the ruling classes — German capitalists in 1938, Israeli and U.S. capitalists today.
The U.S. bankrolls and arms Israel to protect Washington's and Wall Street's interests in the Middle East. The current assault seeks to destroy the struggle of the Palestinian people to return to their homeland and regain their national rights.
Certainly the deaths of the three Israeli teens are tragic. However, the social and political context must be understood. The three teenagers disappeared on the West Bank on June 12 while hitchhiking home from a religious school in Kfar Etzion, between Bethlehem and Hebron.
Kfar Etzion is one of many illegal settlements populated by right-wing Israelis who serve as the flying wedge for Tel Aviv's West Bank land confiscation. These settlers are extremely racist and talk about Palestinians in much the way Nazis described Jewish people.
The settlers take over Palestinian resources, harass the population and then claim they are in danger. Next, the Israeli military builds an outpost to protect them. Before you know it, the Palestinians are limited in where they can go, and more and more land is confiscated for an Israeli military zone to protect the settlers.
Often, these settlers are armed by the Israeli state. They are notorious for assaulting Palestinians of all ages: slapping children's faces in the street and firing on farmers trying to gather their olive harvest in order to render them destitute and force them off their land. Settlers desecrate and set fire to mosques or declare them Jewish religious sites off-limits to Palestinians. For decades, the bodies of West Bank Palestinian youths have been discovered who were believed killed by settlers.
In truth, the "violence problem" on the West Bank comes from the settlers. And settler violence is increasing.
Settler violence more than tripled in the three years up to 2011. (Guardian, March 21, 2012) The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs reported that settler attacks had almost quadrupled between 2006 and 2014. Meanwhile, Israel bars Palestinian police from defending their people from settler harassment and violence.
Let's work together to expose Israeli hypocrisy and build support for the Palestinians' right to return to their land, be free from attack, and exercise all their national rights.
Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of Clay


Use this endpoint to retrieve the status of one or more files uploaded to the Library using the Add File Multipart POST endpoint.
Retrieve the upload status for one or more MyLibrary files using the fileId path parameter; separate multiple fileId's with a comma. If the fileId provided does not match any files in the MyLibrary account, the call returns a null set.


This charming Victorian 1-inch scale cottage kit features two floors with two spacious rooms on each. It has an open back and convenient moveable partitions that let you determine the size of each room, or leave them out to create one large space.
Elegant, traditional details look just like the authentic period homes. The model is made from quality, unfinished wood and features simple assembly that requires nothing but glue--no nails or screws are needed.
Feel free to paint, wallpaper, and finish the project using your own colors and supplies to suit your own personal tastes. The kit does not come with paint, furnishings, or other decorations. Age recommendations: Assembly - 12 and up. Assembly with parent - 7 and up. Finished houses are not recommended for children under 3.
SORRY NO AK, HI, PR, PO BOXES OR APOS. CLASSIC WOOD GINGERBREAD 4 ROOM FLOORS PORCH GIRLS DOLLHOUSE WOOD KIT -NEW" is in sale since Friday, November 14, 2014. This item is in the category "Dolls & Bears\Dollhouse Miniatures\Doll Houses".direct" and is located in UPS Ground.


A level 2 was issued for Cyprus, S Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria mainly for excessive precipitation, large hail, severe wind gusts, and tornadoes.
A level 1 was issued for parts of Italy, Malta, Greece, S Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, and Syria for excessive precipitation and large hail or large amounts of small hail. Waterspouts are expected to form especially in S Italy and Malta.
A level 1 was issued for parts of NE Germany, N Poland, Lithuania and Latvia for severe convective wind gusts.
Europe is divided into two main regions: the western parts are under the influence of a strong high-pressure system and the eastern parts are affected by several troughs. A cut-off low over Italy has produced severe thunderstorms the past two days and it is heading south, dissipating, but it can still pose a threat due to the QG lift that it is still producing over the unstable air masses of Mediterranean. Low geopotentials can also be found over N Balkans but the low moisture content and the absence of strong forcing, keep conditions rather stable. This is not the case in East Mediterranean where a strong WAA is taking place, and models show that storms may become severe in Cyprus and probably at the coasts of S Turkey. Finally, in N Europe, a vigorous low is about to form inside a strong PV envelope north of the polar front. Severe weather is expected in the Baltic Sea and the surroundings but mostly non-convective wind gusts will pose a serious threat to Poland, NE Germany, Baltic States and maybe more to the south. Finally, south parts of Portugal and Spain are under the influence of a trough with meager PVA, but steep lapse rates and high LL moisture will provide the ingredients for diurnally driven storms.
A large level-1 area is drawn in S-E Mediterranean, mostly for excessive precipitation as saturated vertical profiles in numerical outputs suggest that slow-moving or stationary storms will be able to produce flash floods. A secondary threat of large amounts of large hail is still on for S Italy as the cold drop is slowly moving south and near its core, steep lapse rates create about 1000 J/kg CAPE.
More to the east, WAA creates large amounts of CAPE in the order of 2-3 kJ/kg according to the GFS solution, overlapping with 15-20 m/s DLS. Due to the absence of strong lift and convergence zones, we expect storms to develop on the island of Cyprus, producing large hail, severe wind gusts, and tornadoes. A level-2 was issued also for parts of S Turkey and the Middle East because storms will develop as well in the early morning of Wednesday, into a favorable environment for severe weather. A very moist and warm plume will extend from the coasts of Egypt towards the Middle East with very steep lapse rates and flash floods cannot also be ruled out in Lebanon and S Turkey.


Don't get me wrong, I think that DITA is a great standard for writing technical documentation, it has lots of reuse possibilities and linking potential, and in general, it's well thought out and comprehensive.
When I create a DITA specialization, to add a new attribute according to the specification I need to add that attribute to all DITA elements. I think the main idea was that the new attribute is a profiling attribute so it makes sense to be added to all elements, but sometimes you need to funnel this behavior and make the attribute available only on a certain element and still consider the specialization as a valid DITA specialization.
The existing xml:lang attribute cannot be used to profile and filter out content. In the past, we had users somehow mixing languages in the same DITA Map and expecting to create output for one language or the other by filtering based on the xml:lang attribute.
You cannot easily profile/filter out an entire column from a CALS table. For example, you cannot add a profiling attribute directly to the DITA colspec element to remove entire table columns when publishing. So the alternative is to use a DITA simple table and define the profiling attribute on each of the cells in the column or to perform some kind of output customization based on a magic outputclass attribute set on a certain element in the table.
With most of the material being published for web and with the need to dynamically include media resources (video, audio) in the published HTML content, it's a pity that the DITA standard does not yet have specialized <audio> and <video> elements. Again, we need to rely on the magic outputclass attribute to give semantic to the generic DITA <object> element.
Sometimes there are two or more ways of doing something. For example, choosing between using a CALS table or a simple table or choosing between using conkeyref, keyref, or conref to reuse small pieces of text. Why even have the <simpletable> element in the DITA standard at all, since a CALS table without cells spanning is simple enough? The LightWeight DITA Project is an alternative to DITA and it tries to simplify the standard and eliminate such problems: http://dita.xml.org/blog/lightweight-dita.
and have all the required table elements and tgroup elements (plus required attributes) filled out even if the expanded conref will replace the entire original element.
as the visual editing tool cannot, by default, impose an editing constraint if the standard does not. Usually, for such cases additional Schematron checks can be handy.
The DITA content is not automatically profiled based on the new DITA 1.3 deliveryTarget attribute. So setting deliveryTarget="pdf" on a DITA element will not automatically filter it out of the HTML based outputs, the attribute is treated just like another profiling attribute, and it can be filtered out from the DITAVAL file.
This concludes my complaint list. Anything else you encountered in the DITA standard that bothers you?


Hello there, this picture is about Half X Sliding Barn Door By PlankandChisel On Etsy Https://www.etsy ( Barn Door For Interior #1). This attachment is a image/jpeg and the resolution of this picture is 505 x 897. This image's file size is only 54 KB. If You want to download This picture to Your PC, you could Click here. You may too see more photos by clicking the following photo or see more at this article: Barn Door For Interior.
the newly married couple to complete the house has chosen Half X Sliding Barn Door By PlankandChisel On Etsy Https://www.etsy ( Barn Door For Interior #1). As well as its contemporary design but nonetheless easy, this table been because of many advantages such as may be used as a way of gathering a young child's learning, your family together, a location so forth and to place the kitchen gear.
This desk is usually coupled with a mini home but can also be positioned on another bedroom. Pricing table can be cheaper than other table due to the size that is small. There's no injury in hearing some style multifunctional pub table below for motivation if you'd like to purchase this table.
The Barn Door For Interior suited to the present day type of kitchen room. This mini-table comes with a streamlined rectangular shape to produce it seem more presentable for an active young pair. So did not invest enough time a young pair who are very active, contemporary tables will also be easier handled and washed.


text:
December 27, 2006 About Salmonellaadmin
For over two decades, the Law Firm of Eric H. Weinberg has provided outstanding legal services for our clients.
We know that each case we take on is about an injured person or his or her family in need of legal counsel. That's why we are committed to each client and to keeping him or her in the know regarding the specifics and the status of the case.
We place our extensive legal knowledge; our working relationships with top-notch medical and scientific experts; and our thorough investigative and research skills at the service of every client.
We hope that you will learn more about the Law Firm of Eric H. Weinberg in these pages. Please do not hesitate to Contact Us with your questions or concerns. We look forward to placing our experience and knowledge at your service.
Eric H. Weinberg, Esq.
Eric H. Weinberg is the principal of the Weinberg Law Firm, which has been based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, since1984. Mr. Weinberg is also "Of Counsel" to the firm of Cohen, Placitella and Roth in Philadephia, Pennsylvania, and Red Bank, New Jersey.
Mr. Weinberg has twenty two years of experience in the prosecution of civil cases including pharmaceutical drug and device litigation matters. He has longstanding experience in the prosecution of negligence, product liability, and medical malpractice matters. He has both prosecuted and defended criminal cases.
Mr. Weinberg currently represents hundreds of individuals, or their survivors, who suffered serious personal injuries or died as a consequence of taking the prescription drug Vioxx. The firm has filed over 300 cases in Atlantic County, New Jersey, on behalf of victims of the drug Vioxx, and represents other clients whose cases are under investigation.
Mr. Weinberg played a leading role in the consolidated discovery and expert development areas in consolidated litigation in Philadelphia involving the statin drug, Baycol. In 2003, Mr. Weinberg successfully negotiated a $68.5 million settlement of a significant number of cases on behalf of injured victims of Baycol.
Mr. Weinberg was instrumental in obtaining a $670 million dollar class action settlement for individuals with hemophilia who were injured by defective pharmaceutical blood products. He obtained settlements in cases of individuals in New Jersey and New York who suffered HIV infection for an additional amount of over $30 million.
In connection with his representation of individuals with hemophilia and HIV, Mr. Weinberg was involved in the organization, funding and direction of legislative strategies in New Jersey and New York that led to changes in the statutes of limitations in both jurisdictions, permitting injured persons to bring claims that might otherwise have been time-barred. Mr. Weinberg authored the law that is currently on the books in New York State giving injured persons their rights to the court system.
Mr. Weinberg currently serves as a Trustee of the Hemophilia Association of New Jersey. In 1995, the Association presented him with its President's Award, given in recognition of extraordinary service to the Hemophilia Community.
Mr. Weinberg currently is engaged in the litigation of matters in civil and criminal courts in the States of New Jersey and New York. His experience as a trial lawyer began in 1980, when he was employed by the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office. He was appointed as Chief of Juvenile Prosecutions in 1981. He also handled adult prosecutions and supervised detective staff in major crime investigations.
Mr. Weinberg left the Prosecutor's Office in 1983, and was employed at the law firm of Franchino, Lenahan & Cross until late 1984. He served as an associate of the firm, whose primary clients were insurance companies, and was involved as a defense lawyer in the trial of numerous civil matters involving personal injury and other claims.
In the years since Mr. Weinberg established his own firm, he has obtained significant verdicts and settlements in his clients' favor. In addition to the settlement in the Baycol and Hemophilia/HIV litigations, which were resolved for an aggregate sum in excess of $750 million, he has had several recoveries in negligence and product liability matters in state and federal courts in excess of a million dollars. To date, Mr. Weinberg has tried over two hundred cases to conclusion. (Please see Our Successful Cases for more information.)
Mr. Weinberg is a member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the New Jersey State Bar Association, and the Middlesex County Bar Association.
He has served as a Visiting Lecturer at Cook College, Rutgers University, where he has taught a Senior Honors Colloquium entitled, "AIDS, Blood and Litigation." The course examined issues that may arise beginning with the discovery of a compound and continuing through pharmaceutical research and development, licensure, marketing, and post marketing, as well as the impact of defective drugs and devices on public health and the legal infrastructure.
Mr. Weinberg has been an invited speaker for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education, the Defense Research Institute, Mealey's, and Mass Torts Made Perfect on topics relating to the prosecution and settlement of serious injury cases, including mass torts and catastrophic injury cases.
Mr. Weinberg graduated from Rutgers College, New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1977, and from Boston University School of Law in 1980. He is admitted to the Bar of the States of New Jersey and New York, as well as numerous federal courts. He was appointed as a member of the Steering Committee of Multi-District Litigation 986, In Re Factor VIII and Factor IX Blood Products, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and served on the Executive Committee of the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee in that litigation.
If you or a family member has suffered from food poisoning, and you have a question about your legal rights, you can request a free case evaluation from our firm by clicking on free case evaluation. You may also contact us toll free at 1-877-934-6274.


text:
Neighborhood News in Greenpoint and Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Art Show Opening This Friday (4/14) Explores Connections Between Celtic and Indian Goddesses
by Geoff Cobb	 April 13, 2017 April 11, 2017
"Hekate," Susan Pullman Brooks. Private commission, found objects. Wood, metal, bone, glass, leather.
Creative minds make connections that most of us never make, and this is never truer than with sculptor Susan Pullman Brooks' show, Sacred Luminosity, which opens this Friday, April 14th at Gallery AWA (61 Greenpoint Ave. #306). The exhibit explores the connections between the goddesses of Vedic Pantheon of India and Celtic deities. Brooks has a keen artistic vision, creating art that reflect the cycles of life and death and in forgotten remnants of culture. Brooks is extremely familiar with Indian culture not only because she has spent a lot of time in India, but also because her husband Douglas Brooks, a professor of religion at Rochester University, has devoted decades of his life studying Sanskrit and the Hindu faith.
Sculpture by Susan Pullman Brooks
In the early 90s Susan, who had studied painting, developed an interest in yoga and Hindu mythology, which led to many pilgrimage trips to the temples of South India. The influence of Hindu myths combined with the physicality of yoga reignited her artistic desire—but her medium changed from painting to sculpture when in 2012 she had an epiphany, realizing that she wanted to create art that translated mental narratives into three dimensions.
Brooks eventually became fascinated by the similarities in the narratives of Celtic goddesses and female Hindu deities and she began an intense study of the Celtic pantheon. She was struck by the uncanny similarities between the two seemingly disparate cultures. Not only were the stories and symbols the same, but sometimes even the very names were the same. Brigit and Tara of Irish mythology also appear amongst Vedic Goddesses. She even noticed similarities in the weaponry brandished by the goddesses of both cultures, and the many commonalities inspired her to create the series of sculptures in the Sacred Luminosity Show.
"Durga," Susan Pullman Brooks. Private commission. Wood, metal, horn, seed.
The material that Brooks creates with is often found on her rambles in nature. She works with bone, but also in scrap metal and even uses plants like thistles. If she combines disparate materials, then her artistic vision is also one not of harmony, but of asymmetry and unbalance. There are few straight lines in her work; there are a number of bent or twisted shapes that are tied to the ancient Hindu idea of Zirkuti, which says that our karma is not linear, but rather twisted and broken much like the vision of the fragmenting gyre described in the poetry of Irishman William Butler Yeats. Through it all Brooks manages to create sculptures that are energetic, capturing the feminine energy of the goddesses of both cultures. The pieces are paradoxical, simultaneously somehow exotic and familiar, but well worth seeing for yourself.
RSVP to Sacred Luminosity's opening reception on Friday April 14th at 6pm.
The exhibit runs through June 16. Follow Susan Pullman Brooks on Instagram.
Gallery AWA | 61 Greenpoint Ave. #306
Tagged: art, artist, gallery awa, Greenpoint, nature, sacred luminosity, sculpture, susan pullman brooks
Greenpointers Local News Fund
Do you think hyperlocal, trusted news is critical to North Brooklyn? Help us keep our lights on, pay our staff, and hire more reporters!
Stay up to date with the latest news in Greenpoint and Williamsburg!
News, Events, Exclusive Offers, and Giveaways
NORTH BROOKLYN COVID-19 LOCAL BUSINESS IMPACT PROJECT
Are you a business that is currently located (or was before the March 20,2020 shutdown) in Williamsburg or Greenpoint, Brooklyn? Did you recently close, temporarily close, pivot your services, or relocate? Are you fundraising or applying for PPP? We want to hear from you!
ABOUT GREENPOINTERS
Since 2007, Greenpointers has been a neighborhood connector and hyperlocal resource for all things North Brooklyn covering the latest news, happenings, events, food and culture.
© 2021 Greenpointers. All rights reserved. Terms & Conditions	Community Standards