text:
Tune Protect Names AXA Affin Life's Ex-CEO, Rohit Nambiar As Their New Group CEO
by Fintech News Malaysia October 13, 2020 0 comments
Tune Protect Group Berhad today announced the appointment of Rohit Chandrasekharan Nambiar as its Group Chief Executive Officer effective 14 October 2020. Rohit takes over the helm from Khoo Ai Lin who resigned on 31 July 2020.
In his new role, Rohit will be responsible for steering Tune Protect on its continuing journey of growth and digital transformation.
Ng Siek Chuan
Chairman of Tune Protect Group Berhad, Ng Siek Chuan said,
"We are proud that Rohit has joined as Group Chief Executive Officer of the Company and to have him lead our operations across Malaysia, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates. With his track record of success spanning 17 years in the Insurance Industry, I am confident Rohit will help scale our business to a new level of growth and success. Rohit brings to the role not only invaluable insights, but a wealth of experience built up over an illustrious career."
Rohit's focus will be on strengthening the Company's reach in the retail consumer space – driving innovation in product ideas and digital solutions, enhancing customer experience by focusing on ease and convenience, and growing the affinity, B2C and B2B2C distribution platforms leveraging big data and technology.
Rohit is no stranger to the Insurance Industry and joins us from AXA Affin Life Insurance Berhad where he was the CEO and had the overall responsibility for the strategic direction, management, and growth operations throughout the organisation.
Rohit Chandrasekharan Nambiar
Commenting on his appointment, Rohit said,
"I am excited to be taking on the role of Group Chief Executive Officer for Tune Protect and I look forward to working with our board, employees and all stakeholders concerned in driving and positioning the Company's future as a preferred digital lifestyle insurer across South East Asian markets."
Rohit began his career as an Analyst with AXA in India. He has experience working across various departments and has held senior positions in both local and regional capacities within Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and India.
In the past, Rohit has shared his views on various topics including innovation and responding to the pandemic with Fintech News Malaysia.
Tune Protect
Related Insurtech Articles
Similar Posts From Insurtech Category
Tune Protect Gets Conditional Approval to Join BNM's Regulatory Sandbox
Malaysian Insurtech VSure Expands Its Footprint to the UK
UOB Malaysia Taps Prudential's Virtual Face-to-Face Feature to Offer Insurance


This post explains how to enable mod_wsgi using easyapache script.
You have to download and extract custom_opt_mod-mod_wsgi.tar.gz. From the link given below.
select mod_wsgi option while configuring profile.
And create one .htaccess file as follows.


text:
Windows / PC
FeaturesReviewsXbox One
Pumped BMX Pro review for Xbox One
By Steve Clist February 7, 2019 302 views
Oscar Wilde once said, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness." One of the things this means for computer games is that if you create something new, other people will copy your idea. They will often iterate on it and add new things. At the end of the day, though, a good idea is only your own for a short while. Of course, this is not always a bad thing. ID Software may well have been the first to create a first-person shooter, but it's not like Halo, Call of Duty, and Battlefield are a waste of time. Pumped BMX Pro may well have been influenced by the Trials franchise but is it still worth your time and money?
Pumped BMX Pro is a 2D racer. As you can probably tell from the title, you ride a bike. However, unlike Trials and other games in the genre, you can't pedal to gain speed. Instead, you have to 'pump' your bike to gain speed. This is done by pressing 'A' and then letting go as you jump and soar through the air. Once you're over the down-ramp, press 'A' again and your bike is forced to the ground, and you pick up some serious speed. Reaching the end of the level is all about momentum. This isn't like RedLynx's game where you have to figure out the correct level of power and balance to get over obstacles that look impossible at first glance. It's about maintaining your speed and pumping at the right time to increase your speed so you can make the larger jumps.
Another difference from the Trials franchise is that you are required to perform tricks. Each level has four skill challenges and two score challenges. The skill challenges range from something simple like complete the level to particularly tricky objectives like performing an opposite 360 double tailwhip followed by a toothpick grind into a manual and ending with a barspin. These challenges force you to try new things and look at levels in new ways. The score challenges are a more standard affair. Every level has an individual trick score challenge and a total score challenge. These are graded from bronze through to platinum. There are also leaderboards for each level so you can compete with your friends and other gamers around the world to see who can obtain the highest score on each level.
Visually, while the game is an improvement on Pumped BMX +, it's still a little rough. Character models are OK. They get away with quite a bit because of the stylised look, but it's not great. On the plus side, the backgrounds have been made far more interesting than the last game. There is a lot more detail there and some fun animations, like the animals. The trick animations are pretty good. The more basic tricks look particularly good. Some of the more outlandish tricks look less realistic. To be fair, though, if you were to pull some of the tricks possible here in real life, you would be wondering if they were helped by CG, wires, or something else.
While Pumped BMX Pro is not on the same level as the Trials games, it does still scratch the same kind of itch and does it at a budget price. The simplified control system (pumping, rather than accelerating and braking) doesn't necessarily mean that it's a simpler game. It may not reach the controller throwing rage that some Trials levels elicit, but it is still quite challenging at times. The visuals may have moved forward from Pumped BMX + but still fall a little short. I found the music to be quite irritating after a while and ended up turning it off. At the end of the day, though, this is a game that won't change the world, but if you fancy some more 2D racing action before Trials Rising arrives next month, this is worth your time and won't put too big a dent in your pocket.
Pumped BMX
Yeah us! 2D Racer
Steve Clist
Joint Editor-in-Chief at Xbox Enthusiast as well as a contributor for Nintendo Enthusiast and PlayStation Enthusiast. Steve is a musician and gamer who loves sharing his passion for each. You will normally find him at the front of the grid in racing games or on the other end of the kill cam when you've just been killed in a first-person shooter.
Assassin's Creed III Remastered hunts its way to Xbox One next month
Crackdown 3 campaign review for Xbox One
Ori and the Will of the Wisps has gone gold
By Steve Clist 16 hours ago 0
Dead or Alive 6 goes intergalactic with the Nova Sci-Fi Body Suit Set
Rebellion details post-launch support for Zombie Army 4: Dead War
More in Features
5 Predictions for Xbox in 2020
By John Hansen 4 days ago 0
Best Metroidvania's of the generation
By Chirag Pattni January 21, 2020 0
3 things that the new Xbox needs in order to win the next generation
By Steve Clist January 14, 2020 1
Fishing: Barents Sea – A review for Xbox One
AVICII Invector review for Xbox One
Indie Corner
Review: Wandersong Port for Xbox One
Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate II: a review for Xbox One
Review: Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale
PC Invasion
Daily Esports
PlayStation Enthusiast
Nintendo Enthusiast
Got news? Contact us

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Driftwood also helps naturally lower pH naturally while creating a safehaven for your discus fish to feels secure around… This brings up another aspect in keeping your Discus fish as healthy and happy as possible. Discus and other fish species do not like to be in an undecorated aquarium! They prefer to have hidding spots. Even in our breeding tanks we keep 2 clay bricks, for the adult breeder Discus to not only use as breeding locations, but to also use to hide behind if something spooks them or if they are fighting they can evade each other. Young Disus fish also prefer hiding spots… lots of them. Driftwood, aquatic plants, etc. will help them feel much more comfortable in there aquarium home.


text:
> Sports
> Water Sports
> Fresh Water Sports
Related topics: Marketing & Sponsorships
Fresh Water Sports
Power-Pole to Continue Partnership with ACA
As the season of the Bass Pro Shops Collegiate Bass Fishing Series continues on, the Association of Collegiate Anglers (ACA) is excited to announce that Power-Pole will continue its long standing support of the series, and continue to offer a rebate to all collegiate anglers.
"We at Power-Pole understand that not all sports at the college level receive the same level of financial support as a Division-I football program. That is why we are proud to financially support the Bass Pro Shops Collegiate Bass Fishing Series," said Curt Hill, Advertising Manager for Power-Pole Shallow Water Anchors, which is based in Tampa, Florida.
"These anglers represent the future of the sport and through our rebate program, these anglers are able to use the same innovative equipment that they will utilize as they continue their competitive fishing careers in the future while reducing the financial obligation for their respective clubs."
As Power-Pole remains committed to scholastic fishing and the Bass Pro Shops Collegiate Bass Fishing Series, many anglers will continue to rely on their shallow water anchors during the tournament season. Power-Pole has a variety of products that provide anglers out on the water total boat control with the addition of single or dual Power-Pole anchors. Additionally, Power-Pole will again be supporting anglers at ACA events throughout the season, and the National Championship event, by providing a Power-Pole Shallow Water Anchor as one of the many prizes. Representatives from Power-Pole will also be on-site at events, and throughout the 2021 Championship Week, to meet anglers, show off their products, and answer questions.
"As we continue our 16th season of collegiate bass fishing, we're excited and proud to continue this relationship with Power-Pole that dates back to the beginning of college bass fishing," said Wade Middleton, President of CarecoTV and Director of the Association of Collegiate Anglers.
?Along with the tournament sponsorship and rebate programs for collegiate anglers, all CBF Series events will also qualify for the Power-Pole Captains Cash Reward Club. Captains Cash members with registered Power-Pole products who finish first place overall in a sanctioned tournament will receive up to $1,000 in cash in addition to the individual event purse provided by the event's organizer.
For a complete list of sanctioned tournaments and events for 2021, click here: https://www.power-pole.com/media/wysiwyg/pdfs/captains-cash-sactioned-tournaments-2021.pdf


An amphora is a type of container with a characteristic size and shape. Amphorae first seem to have originated in the early Neolithic Period. Amphorae were used for many purposes like storage or transportation of many different products, both dry and liquid.
We all associate amphorae with wine and it is true, of the many products stored in them wine was the most common. Mostly, amphorae were ceramic but some examples have been found in metal or even in some other materials. It is calculated that amphorae, depending on their size, can have a capacity of up to half a ton (around 100 pounds). An amphora has two long handles that are joined to the body of the amphora at the shoulders and at the long neck. The neck of an amphora is narrow, so the person pouring from it has to hold it by its bottom and a handle. But the size is an important factor: bigger amphorae have been found with three or four handles so that they were easier to lift. Throughout history two types of amphorae have been detected. One find was a whole intact amphora, where the body and the neck form a continuous curve, and another was a one-neck amphora in which the body and neck meet at a sharp angle. Nowadays, amphorae are useful to maritime archaeologists. They can indicate the period of time in which they were made and also their geographic reference or origin. In some of them archaeologists found their contents still present and preserved. Such finds provide archaeologists with information on the mercantile system and foodstuffs.
One other interesting fact is that because amphorae were so cheap, when they reached their destination they were broken up. In Rome, Italy, there is a breakage site in Testaccio which, due to the amount of broken parts of amphorae through the time, became a hill. The fragments have become ground fertile with calcium hydroxide. The hill is named Monte Testaccio, and it is 45km high and 1km wide.


text:
Сіях-Естахр () — село в Ірані, у дегестані Сомам, у бахші Ранкух, шагрестані Амлаш остану Ґілян. За даними перепису 2006 року, його населення становило 55 осіб, що проживали у складі 16 сімей.

Клімат
Середня річна температура становить 9,77°C, середня максимальна – 25,02°C, а середня мінімальна – -6,79°C. Середня річна кількість опадів – 403 мм.

Примітки

Населені пункти шагрестану Амлаш

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
<!doctype html>

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.0.2/css/bootstrap.min.css">

Channel Subscriptions

<input type="checkbox" ng-model="subscriptions.channel1" ng-change="updateSubscription('channel1')" /> Channel 1

<input type="checkbox" ng-model="subscriptions.channel2" ng-change="updateSubscription('channel2')" /> Channel 2

Message History

<form>
  <input type="text" ng-model='newMessage' />
  <button ng-click="publish('channel1')">Send to Channel 1</button>
  <button ng-click="publish('channel2')">Send to Channel 2</button>
</form>

{{message}}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Each member of our team brings valuable skills and insights to our collective effort toward student and teacher empowerment. Every piece of instructional content is assembled with care and purpose, designed to be relevant, meaningful, and effective for student learning. To take you behind the scenes of our program development, we're going Behind the Cube, in reference to our logo, to meet some of the names and faces behind the programs in your classroom. Today we're taking a closer look at the photographs you might find in a McGraw-Hill textbook or online program.
Can you describe your role here at McGraw-Hill?
I am a Senior Photographer in the Media Production & Acquisition department. My job is to shoot clear, attention-grabbing photos and videos for our products. Whether it's studio set-ups or on-location shots, I do it all. I hear all the time that I have the coolest job — which, yeah, I really do! I'm always kept on my toes, because every day is something totally new. I could be in the studio photographing objects, or I could be out hiking seven miles in the rain to get that perfect shot — it is certainly never boring!
What's your favorite memory from your time at McGraw-Hill so far?
Perhaps the most memorable shoot was photographing and driving(!!) NASA's new lunar rover vehicle they were developing to send to the moon in the 2020's. Honestly, I am pretty sure my mouth was hanging open the entire time I was photographing at NASA. I was in awe while chatting with astronauts about their time on the International Space Station, and was fascinated to be able to see and photograph all the amazing things they are working on and learn more about the future of America's space exploration.
This fall I was on assignment in Alaska. There are just some trips that stick with me, and I think about my time there a lot. Each time I come back from a shoot, I can't wait to share the new things I learned with the folks here. I saw so many awe-inspiring scenes in Alaska, but one of the things I don't think I will ever forget was driving north toward the Arctic Circle and seeing swaths of dead trees as far as the eye could see. I asked a park ranger if they had a forest fire, but he told me all about how due to climate change, the permafrost is melting and literally drowning the trees, creating huge areas that can no longer sustain the plants that once grew there. I was grateful that I was able to capture that, as being there and seeing it firsthand was so eye-opening, and I hope that those photos will be just as impactful to the students who use our products.
I am a huge animal lover, and I always thought I wanted to be a vet when I was growing up. I had a shoot a couple years ago at a Zoo of an ultrasound on a snow leopard and abscess surgery on a kangaroo. I very quickly learned it's a good thing I went into photography and not veterinary medicine, as it took all the willpower I had (and several trips back to my camera bag to "change lenses" and take a breather) to not faint from seeing all the blood.
How do you see your work impacting student learning?
Growing up, I always thought that the photos in textbooks in school were stodgy and corny. I mean, nobody actually laughs while staring off into the distance and eating a salad. I hope to bring much more modern, inclusive, and realistic imagery to our students (no more laughing salad eaters!). Learning doesn't have to be stuffy and sterile, so you'll often see bright colors and dynamic lighting in the work I do. My hope is that the student can find at least one photo that grabs their attention and makes them want to learn more — or at least not draw mustaches on that photo.
What role can images play in culturally responsive content and representation?
We've all heard the old adage — a picture's worth a thousand words — and it's so true. I firmly believe that being exposed to new places and ideas has an incredible way of broadening your horizons and understanding of the world and its people. I also think it's vastly more impactful for a learner if they are able to picture themselves in the content. I am proud of the work McGraw-Hill is doing in working to be as representative as possible. Whenever I am out shooting, I want to make sure that we're showing everything in the most accurate and respectful way, and in a modern light. Instead of settling for a generic stock photo of a cultural event, we are striving to go to that place and shoot our own content so that we can capture all the details. By being able to connect directly to the people we are photographing, it adds another layer of authenticity and gives people who are more familiar with the subject matter a voice.
California middle school Science Phenom Feature about the water cycle (the water the girl is drinking could be the same water the dinosaurs behind her drank).


Midreshet celebrated Yom Ha'Atzmaut starting Wednesday evening at Nevei Daniel, where we participated in the yishuvs 'tekes ma'avar'. The ceremony included performances by the children of Nevei Daniel, singing, and dancing and was concluded by a joyous Tefillat Maariv together in Nevei Daniel's beautiful shul. Following Tefillah, the students headed to Rav Eitan's house, which is just down the road and had a festive dinner of traditional Israeli felafel and salad. After a night of dancing and eating felafel, an exhausted yet exhilarated Midreshet class returned to the dorms for the night.
The festivities continued the next morning as we headed to see an I.D.F. exhibition, and then continued on to Rabbi and Vicky Berglas's home in Neve Aliza, where Midreshet Moriah has traditionally celebrated Yom Ha'Atzmaut for many years. It was a beautiful afternoon of dancing in the streets, the annual Midmo baseball game, singing Israeli songs kumzits style, and of course a delicious BBQ catered by our very own Fagie Reves. Vicky shared with the students the truly inspirational story of the founding of Neve Aliza. It was a perfect way to celebrate the miracle of Israel's independence.


text:
Solidus Solutions.
A packaging firm with a base in Corby is under new ownership after being sold in a multi-million pound deal.
Solidus Solutions, which employs about 80 people in Arnsley Road, has been sold by Aurelius Equity Opportunities for 330 million Euros (£296 million).
The new owners of the company, which has factories across Europe, are US-based Centerbridge Partners.
Aurelius carved out Solidus from Smurfit Kappa four years ago and turned it into a standalone business.
It oversaw Solidus' expansion into new markets in France, Germany and Spain and carried out a range of improvements and investments, included a £1 million gluing machine at the Corby factorytwo years ago.
Dr Dirk Markus, chief executive, said: "Since our acquisition of Solidus, the Aurelius task force team has provided hands on operational and support to the company, transforming it from an unloved orphan business into an independent, pan-European operation and true market leader in its field, with significant growth potential.
"Congratulations to Solidus' management under the superb leadership of Richard Houben and the Aureliius task force that we placed into the business, all of whom did an outstanding job."
Hope for Kettering high street as council lines up another multi-million pound bid


text:
Goebbels: A Biography
Peter Longerich. Alan Bance, Jeremy Noakes, & Leslie Sharpe, trans.
In the final months of World War II, no one in the Berlin bunker was closer to Adolf Hitler than Joseph Goebbels, his devoted Reich minister for public enlightenment and propaganda. But how did this clubfooted son of a factory worker rise from obscurity to become the Führer's most trusted lieutenant and personally anointed successor? Sifting archival materials and Goebbels's voluminous diaries, Peter Longerich paints the portrait of a failed writer who became a gifted orator with dictatorial control over all of German's media. Goebbels' search for a father figure led him to Hitler, suggests Longerich in this biography—named a Book of the Year by London's Telegraph—and his desire for special recognition resulted in power struggles with Hermann Göring and Alfred Rosenberg.


text:
All the small things wrong with Blink 182 concert
Authors: Jeremy Anderson
Blink 182 is one of my favorite bands and has been for years.
Last Saturday I attended their concert in Denver at Coors
Amphitheatre, formally known as Fiddler's Green. It was certainly a
good time, but failed to register as an awesome concert-going
I had seen the band perform twice before and always at the same
venue. Though they put on a pretty good show each time, the sound
quality tended to leave something to be desired. I was hoping the
third time would be the charm as I entered their concert last
Saturday, but unfortunately, it wasn't.
After an unimpressive performance by a new band called Taking
Back Sunday, which was followed up by a set by the painfully
out-of-place group Cypress Hill, the boys of Blink finally took the
stage and attempted to revive the show.
What poured out of the sound system was a chaotic blend of
incoherent noise. Even with the trained ears of a loyal fan, I
frequently had to strain my ears to try and decipher what song was
being played. Typically the song in question was made known to me
by my fellow concertgoers who were singing along once they
themselves figured out what they were in fact listening to.
If you didn't know the words to the songs before the concert
started, you definitely weren't going to learn them by the time the
evening was over. When an audible lyric managed to clearly slip
through the overpowering bass, it provided an ironic if short-lived
feeling of excitement.
One frustrated concertgoer in front of me sat down in anger
before the band's opening song, "Feeling This," had even completed.
He began to immaturely, yet understandably, pout, while remarking
on the poor sound quality.
Despite the fact that Blink 182's most recent, 2003s self-titled
release, is far the most "grown up" of their repertoire, there
seemed to be more preteens and teen-agers at the concert than were
in attendance in years past. I overheard one such adolescent fan
talking on her cell phone to her mom on the way out exclaim, "It
was the coolest thing I've ever seen!"
Hopefully she will have her standards raised as she gets older,
however, if she was only referring to the visual portion of the
concert, then I can cut her some slack. In that department, the
concert was pretty impressive.
Blink 182 played against the backdrop of large shards of lighted
screens that alternated between glowing oranges and random video
clips. The visual highlight of the night, however, came when
drummer Travis Barker suddenly rose up from a concealed platform
among the crowd for an extended drum solo.
A fun, sign-of-the-times moment occurred when the band asked
everyone with cell phones to hold up their illuminated phones
instead of the traditional cigarette lighters. The sight of the
array of glowing screens across the crowd was pretty amazing to
However Coors Amphitheatre failed to wow in the visual
department itself. The large screens on the sides of the stage that
are intended to give a better view to fans farther out in the
stands were in no way effective. Their dark images provided a sub
par and useless view of the concert, no matter where you were
located at the venue.
I was willing to put all complaints aside if my multiple,
valiant attempts to get backstage to meet/interview the band paid
off, however protocol overruled and I ended up ultimately being
denied access. The reason given was that it was too last minute to
be arranged. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't bolster enough
sympathy from those who stood in my way.


Just like Ultima Online, EQ had a lengthy Beta. They ran their beta in a different way though. Theirs was run in 4 phases. Phase 1 was very small and it grew to Phase 4 that was open to the public. The Syndicates guildmaster Dragons, was one of the very first people let into Phase 1.
The early beta was much different than the game today. Entire zones where you were the only person in them. Monsters that fell from the skies. And GMs that would follow you around and hunt with you in order to get things tested from the game. Slowly the world filled up into what it is today. A web of servers with hundreds of people on each one at any given time. But those early days were special and alot of fun. You could explore the world unhindered and it was vast, open and unknown.
The beta ended and the final was released. A whole slew of servers went live and The Syndicate had to pick one to go to. It was really an irrelevant decision which to pick since all were located in the same spot in the U.S. and all went live at the same time. We chose Tarew Marr.
As with UO, guilds were not implemented at first. We had to do all of our coordinating via email and our chatzone. This made things difficult and it was nearly impossible to get together for things. So we instead focused on getting our chars worked up.
Verant soon implemented guilds and The Syndicate was right there at the beginning of the line. To get a guild you had to have 9 players, and the guildmaster mail Verant and the GM had to submit certain pieces of information. If approved you owned that name on ALL servers. You simply had to follow a schedule to meet the GM in charge of guilds at a certain time to get it setup.
We set ourselves up on Tarew Marr. Dragons, being a WoodElf, was located in Greater Feydark then as we all tried to level. The Syndicate used its squads concept in EQ and had squads based around races. This meant that most SLs were over on Antonica and far away. Since you cannot add members and officers unless you are in the same zone, and since you teleporters were non-existant at that time, it was a bear to get everyone added.
The end result was Dragons taking the boat to Freeport and camping there for several days while SLs took long and dangerous (for non teleporting lower level chars) across entire continents to get added into the guild. Soon we had all the SLs added and most members and we began to walk down our road to greatness in EQ.
Members gained levels, and we gained Teleporters. Once we had those (Landar and Ranco were the first 2), we could begin to do guild events since we could move members around easier. We began (and continue to this day) a series of guild events each month where we gather together for hours at a time.
The Plane of Fear and Hate opened offering challenges to higher level characters and Syndicate members became masters in smithing and jewelcraft and pottery and tailoring. Those trade skills enabled us to provide members items for cost and get the entire guild outfitted in decent armor and magical items.


Promasidor Food & Beverages company is currently accepting applications from the qualified and interested candidates for the position of Automation Engineer (Supervisor) and Sales Territory Coordinator in the company.
The Automation Engineer (Supervisor) will be responsible for the commissioning and Installation of electrical and electronics systems of machines and equipment.
He/ She will be responsible for the commissioning and installation of automation systems.
The position holder will be in-charge for implementation and design of manufacturing technology to automate production processes.
Modifications of electrical control systems of machinery for better operational performance.
Making sure that machine downtime is reduced to the minimum set level for good availability rate.
He ensures safety in machine modification/design.
Applicant must possess HND/BSc certification in any Engineering discipline.
Must have relevant experience of at least 5 years in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector.
Should possess advanced knowledge of PLC-Omron, Siemens, Allen Bradley etc.
– Follow the onsite guide to complete the application.


At Credit Suisse Asset Management, we can offer clients a broad exposure to different emerging market corporate bond strategies, with a focus on hard currencies. Focusing on global emerging markets, Asia and China, the strategies have strong track records against both the benchmark and peer group. Our 14–strong, highly experienced investment management team, based in Zurich, Singapore and Hong Kong, follows a disciplined investment process that combines top-down and bottom-up analysis to deliver portfolios that are well diversified across regions, countries and sectors.
The fund offers investors an attractive yield pickup compared to its developed market peers, by investing in a well-diversified global portfolio of USD-denominated investment grade and high yield emerging market corporate bonds.
The fund offers investors an above-average return through a well-diversified portfolio of USD-denominated investment grade corporate bonds from emerging market countries. It can also invest in developed market investment grade rated sovereign bonds and split-rated emerging market corporate bonds to increase diversification and capture interesting opportunities.
The fund offers investors a well-diversified portfolio of USD denominated Asian debt instruments, bonds, notes, and similar fixed interest or floating rate securities of issuers domiciled in Asia or conducting their main business activities in Asia.
The fund offers investors a well-diversified portfolio of fixed and floating rate debt securities and debt obligations of government, government-related issues and/or corporate entities located throughout Asia in local currencies.
The fund offers investors access to the fast-growing Chinese bond market, the third-largest in the world. It invests mainly in onshore RMB-denominated corporate and financial bonds on the interbank bond market.
The information provided herein constitutes marketing material. It is not investment advice or otherwise based on a consideration of the personal circumstances of the addressee nor is it the result of objective or independent research. The information provided herein is not legally binding and it does not constitute an offer or invitation to enter into any type of financial transaction. The information provided herein was produced by Credit Suisse Group AG and/or its affiliates (hereafter "CS") with the greatest of care and to the best of its knowledge and belief. The information and views expressed herein are those of CS at the time of writing and are subject to change at any time without notice. They are derived from sources believed to be reliable. CS provides no guarantee with regard to the content and completeness of the information and does not accept any liability for losses that might arise from making use of the information. If nothing is indicated to the contrary, all figures are unaudited. The information provided herein is for the exclusive use of the recipient. Neither this information nor any copy thereof may be sent, taken into or distributed in the United States or to any U. S. person (within the meaning of Regulation S under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended). It may not be reproduced, neither in part nor in full, without the written permission of CS. Investment principal on bonds can be eroded depending on sale price, market price or changes in redemption amounts. Care is required when investing in such instruments. Investments in foreign currencies involve the additional risk that the foreign currency might lose value against the investor's reference currency. Emerging market investments usually result in higher risks such as political, economic, credit, exchange rate, market liquidity, legal, settlement, market, shareholder and creditor risks. Emerging markets are located in countries that possess one or more of the following characteristics: a certain degree of political instability, relatively unpredictable financial markets and economic growth patterns, a financial market that is still at the development stage or a weak economy. CS (Lux) Funds are domiciled in Luxembourg. The representative in Switzerland is Credit Suisse Funds AG, Zurich. The paying agent in Switzerland is Credit Suisse AG, Zurich. The prospectus, the simplified prospectus and/or the Key Investor Information Document (KIID) and the annual and half-yearly reports may be obtained free of charge from the representative or from any branch of Credit Suisse AG in Switzerland.


In 2016 the Cochrane Heart Group embarked on a patient engagement exercise, with a focus on consumer needs. The aim was to get ideas for new review questions on the prevention and treatment of heart problems and to refine existing reviews to make them more relevant, by identifying patient-relevant outcomes. These ideas would come from a range of consumers; including patients, carers, interested members of the public, clinicians and researchers.
We decided that the World Heart Day, organized by the World Heart Federation (WHF), would be a fantastic, wide-reaching point to launch our campaign; Power your life - Ask questions. We approached the WHF with our ideas and found they were very supportive, allowing us to use their branding to help promote our campaign. Following the launch on World Heart Day, the campaign was re-branded to Your heart – Your questions and was open until the end of the year.
The campaign was based around one simple question which we asked through an online questionnaire; What do you want to know about preventing and treating heart problems? The aim was to keep the question jargon-free and although guidance was available on how to frame a question for those who wanted to go a little further, essentially respondents were free to ask their own questions about preventing and treating heart problems in their own words.
We disseminated our question through our website and through a Twitter campaign (#askcochraneheart) which was supported by multiple organizations including National Institute for Health Research (NIHR UK), UCL Institute of Health Informatics, the Farr Institute, British Heart Foundation, Pumping Marvellous - The heart failure charity, and of course the World Heart Federation.
We also received plenty of support from Cochrane groups both in the UK and internationally, with our campaign featuring on websites, Facebook pages, in newsletters and on Twitter feeds in various languages! The campaign was also featured on the Cochrane community blog.
By the end of the campaign, we have received 18 questions in total and thanks to the help of some international Cochrane groups translating the question, we have received questions in English, Japanese, German and Spanish.
We are grateful for all responses - eight were from patients, seven from clinicians, two from people with a general interest in cardiovascular disease and one from a guideline maker. Half of the questions provided or could easily be translated into a PICO format (Participants, Interventions, Comparator, Outcomes).


text:
Factors related to positive and negative outcomes in psychiatric inpatients in a General Hospital Psychiatric Unit: a proposal for an outcomes index
Hugo Karling Moreschi1, Gabriela Pavan1, Julia Almeida Godoy1, Rafael Mondrzak1, Mariana Ribeiro de Almeida2, Marco Antônio Pacheco1, Eduardo Lopes Nogueira1, Lucas Spanemberg1,2
1 Department of Psychiatry, Hospital São Lucas, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
2 Department of Psychiatry, Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (HCPA/UFRGS), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil.
Received: 11/29/2014 – Accepted: 2/23/2015
Address correspondence to: Lucas Spanemberg. Psychiatric Unit, 6º andar sul, Hospital São Lucas, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul – 90610-000 – Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. Phone: +55 (51) 3320-3041. Email: [email protected]
Background: General Hospital Psychiatric Units have a fundamental importance in the mental health care systems. However, there is a lack of studies regarding the level of improvement of patients in this type of facility. Objective: To assess factors related to good and poor outcomes in psychiatric inpatients using an index composed by clinical parameters easily measured. Methods: Length of stay (LOS), Global Assessment of Functioning (variation and at discharge) and Clinical Global Impression (severity and improvement) were used to build a ten-point improvement index (I-Index). Records of psychiatric inpatients of a general hospital during an 18-month period were analyzed. Three groups (poor, intermediate and good outcomes) were compared by univariate and multivariate models according to clinical and sociodemographic variables. Results: Two hundred and fifty patients were included, with a percentage in the groups with poor, regular and good outcomes of 16.4%, 59,6% and 24.0% respectively. Poor outcome at the discharge was associated mainly with lower education, transient disability, antipsychotics use, chief complaint "behavioral change/aggressiveness" and psychotic features. Multivariate analysis found a higher OR for diagnoses of "psychotic disorders" and "personality disorders" and others variables in relation to protective categories in the poor outcome group compared to the good outcome group. Discussion: Our I-Index proved to be an indicator of that allows an easy and more comprehensive evaluation to assess outcomes of inpatients than just LOS. Different interventions addressed to conditions such as psychotic disorders and disruptive chief complaints are necessary.
Moreschi HK et al. / Arch Clin Psychiatry. 2015;42(1):6-12
Keywords: Psychiatry unit, inpatients, length of stay, clinical impression, global functioning, psychiatric diagnosis, outcomes.
Since the late 1970s, a new proposal for the composition of mental health care system was progressively implemented in some European countries, based on deinstitutionalization and replacement of asylums for community-based psychiatric services and beds in general hospitals1-3. Influenced by the European movement, the process of reformation of the psychiatric care in Brazil has led to a significant decrease in psychiatric beds in the past twenty years, even though replacement services have not expanded at the same pace4,5. In this context, psychiatric wards within general hospitals became the main facilities for treatment of acute cases, increasing the importance of General Hospital Psychiatric Units (GHPU)6.
Although GHPU have a fundamental importance in this new model of care, there is a lack of studies regarding the level of improvement of patients in this type of facility. Therefore, it is also not well established what are the best general parameters for evaluating outcomes in patients admitted to general hospitals. Shorter psychiatric length of stay (LOS) has been considered a strong indicator of good outcomes both in specialty and general hospitals7-9. Although the LOS of psychiatric inpatients has decreased in recent decades (from months to days), it is still longer than for patients with physical illnesses, increasing expenditures on health, generating stigma and delaying social reintegration of the patient7. Functional ratings as the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF)10-12 and the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS)13 also have been used to measure outcomes in psychiatric inpatients acutely ill, as well as the Clinical Global Impression (CGI)14, a measure of disease severity.
In Brazil, only one study was conducted to assess outcomes of psychiatric inpatients in general hospitals. Dalgalarrondo et al.15 created a variable called "outcome of admission" on the basis of a combination of two other variables: LOS and condition at discharge, a non-standardized clinical assessment. These authors found three variables (poor social functioning before admission, advanced age and organic mental disorder) associated with the "worst outcomes". Despite the merits of this study, the measure constructed to assess these "worst outcomes" used an unusual and subjective criterion for evaluating the condition at discharge, making it difficult to be reproduced.
The use and development of assessment outcomes parameters as routine outcome measurements (ROM) is particularly important in mental health. In addition to recent changes in model of care mentioned above, the evaluation of outcomes has a dual role: evaluating clinical results and generating data for the construction of a care policy and financing model in mental health. While countries like England already possess broader and pragmatically built outcome measures as the Health of the Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS)16, the care reality in low- and middle-income countries is much more precarious. In Brazil, for example, the only variables available for assessing results in mental health public system are the psychiatric diagnosis and the LOS. The lack of funding and consequently the lack of professionals and technologies for the assessment of outcome parameters make it difficult to evaluate true reality of assistance. Thus, the proposal of measures of minimal clinical parameters of evaluation of outcomes in mental health is an urgent demand.
The present study aims: 1) to propose and test an index of evaluation outcomes for psychiatric inpatients, using usual and easily measured clinical variables to compose an outcome score; 2) to investigate clinical and sociodemographic factors related to positive and negative outcomes in psychiatric inpatients in a GHPU classified by this index.
Study design, data source and sampling design
All records of admission to a Psychiatric Unit of a General Hospital (Hospital São Lucas da PUCRS – HSL/PUCRS) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, were selected during 18 months (from February, 2013, to August, 2014). This unit has 18 psychiatric beds for public (six beds) and private (twelve beds) patients. We assessed data in two moments: 1) admission and; 2) discharge (last day of hospitalization). All patients admitted to the unit are evaluated on a routine protocol in the early hours of hospitalization. This protocol is part of routine care of the psychiatric unit and includes sociodemographic and clinical data, as well as tools to assess global functioning and severity of illness (described below). Some variables as "chief complaint" were categorized according to their distribution in the emergency room, in accordance with a classification already described in previous studies17. All patients who received medical discharge during these 18 months were included in the study. When the routine protocol is completed at discharge, some measures of improvement are collected to assess treatment response (as we describe below). Our initial sample consisted of 287 patients. We excluded from the analysis patients who did not have any data of the five outcome variables (CGI-I, CGI-S at discharge, GAF at discharge, Δ-GAF and LOS) and patients who discontinued treatment before medical discharge (n = 37). The final sample was composed of 250 patients.
Clinical Global Impression – Severity (CGI-S): this is one of the most widely used assessment tools in psychiatry, easy to apply and interpret, besides being in the public domain. The CGI is rated on a 7-point scale, with the severity of illness scale using a range of responses from 1 (normal) to 7 (amongst the most severely ill patients)18.
Clinical Global Impression – Improvement (CGI-I): as the instrument described above, the CGI-I is also in the public domain and assesses the degree of patient improvement or response to treatment. Scores range from 1 (very much improved) to 7 (very much worse)18.
Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF): This tool composes the so-called Axis V in the DSM-IV Multiaxial System19. It is used to report the clinician's judgment of the overall level of functioning of the patient, rating subjectively the social, occupational, and psychological functioning of adults. The scale ranges from 0 (inadequate information) to 100 (higher functioning), with ten categories of functioning. Within each category, there is a range of 10 points, describing and exemplifying patterns of functioning in various environments. A number should be chosen as the most descriptive of the overall functioning of the patient.
Box 1. Score Index-I according to the score of each variable
Index to assess outcomes
In order to construct a measure that could consider several parameters of improvement commonly used in the literature, inexpensive, and easily collected in Brazilian care reality, we propose an Improvement Index (I-Index) with a score ranging from 0 to 10 points. This index takes into account five variables: length of stay, CGI-S at discharge, CGI-I, GAF at discharge and GAF variation (GAF at discharge – GAF at admission or Δ-GAF). These instruments were chosen due to four pragmatic criteria: 1) they are readily applicable and information be easily collected; 2) their application does not burden the assistant psychiatrist or the patient, that is, the clinical care is not modified or interfered with; 3) measures are usually assessed in clinical outcome studies of psychiatric inpatients; and 4) the psychiatrists of our institution are acquainted with the measures. Each variable might score from 0 to 2 points, according to the guidelines in box 1. The final Index-I score can achieve 10 points, generating three groups with the following cutoffs: from 0 to 4 points = poor outcome; from 5 to 7 points = regular outcome; and from 8 to 10 points = good outcome. The scores of GAF, Δ-GAF and LOS were data-driven defined, according to their mean and standard deviations in our sample.
Data analyses
Descriptive analyses were presented by means and standard deviations (SD) for continuous variables, and by numbers and percentages (%) for categorical variables. The initial scores for each variable of the
I-Index were calculated according to the distribution of each variable as illustrated in the box 1. Differences between groups in sociodemographic and clinical continuous variables were analyzed with analysis of variance (ANOVA) test, with Tukey's multiple comparison test as post hoc analysis. Categorical variables were analyzed with Pearson chi-square tests and the analyses post hoc of the adjusted residuals were also performed to reveal the differences among the categories of each variable. In order to evaluate the correlations among variables used in I-Index, Pearson correlation was calculated, with the following parameters: very weak (from 0.00 to 0.19), weak (from 0.20 to 0.39), moderate (from 0.40 to 0.59), strong (0.60 to 0.79) and very strong (0.80 to 1.00) correlations20. To identify admission factors independently associated with discharge measurements, the polytomous multivariable logistic regression was used. The I-Index "good outcome" was chosen as a reference to estimate odds-ratios (OR) of "regular outcome" and "poor outcome". The variables included at the multivariate analysis were those with p < 0.20 at uncontrolled analysis. Since the variables "diagnosis" and "chief complaint" show covariance two independent final models were calculated. The final models were established excluding variables with less interference one-by-one.
The p value for significance was set at 0.05. The statistical analyses were performed using the software SPSS 18.0 (IBM SPSS, Inc., 2009, Chicago, IL, www.spss.com).
Ethics considerations
This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (protocol number: 565.190).
Table 1. Sociodemographic and clinical data of the total sample and univariate differences among groups according to type of outcome
Table 2. Clinical variables on admission and at discharge (n = 250)
Table 3. Polytomous logistic regression comparing different patterns of discharge outcomes
Table 1 lists the sociodemographic and clinical data of the total sample (n = 250). Most of the patients were female (65.2%), with an average age of 41 (SD = 17.6). The majority of them was either single or separated (58.7%) and nonsmokers (70.2%); 38.4% were employed or active. Most of the patients had previous psychiatric hospitalizations (50.6%) and 48.4% had clinical comorbidities. The most frequent specific chief complaint of evaluation was change in behavior/aggressiveness (21.5%), followed by suicidal ideation (19.4%), suicide attempt (19%), psychotic symptoms (14%) and substance abuse (7.9%).
Table 2 compares clinical variables on admission and at discharge. The length of stay had a mean of 27.12 (±15.04) days. During hospitalization, there was an increase in the use of antipsychotics (+23.2%), with discrete changes in other classes of medication, such as a decrease in the use of benzodiazepines (-4.8%). Patients had an average increase in GAF of 31.92 points from admission to discharge. The CGI-S decreased 2.06 points in mean and the average of CGI-I was 5.8 points.
Box 2. Data-driven Index-I scores according to the score of each variable
Box 3. Pearson correlations among the variables used in the I-Index
The box 2 presents the values used to generate the points of each variable according to the means and SD of the variables. Box 3 presents the results of correlations among variables of the Index-I. The LOS presented no significant (with CGI-I x Δ-GAF) or very weak (with CGI-S at discharge x GAF-D) correlations with others variables. The higher correlation was between GAF-D x Δ-GAF (strong) and GAF-D x CGI-S at discharge (moderate), while the other correlations were weak. In relation to the I-Index score, strong correlations with CGI-S (negative), GAF-D and Δ-GAF were found; moderate correlation with CGI-I; and weak correlation with LOS (negative).
In relation to the Index-I, 41 patients (16.4%) were classified in the poor outcome group, 140 (59.6%) in the regular outcome group and 60 (20%) in the good outcome group. The results of the univariate analyses comparing these groups are also presented in table 1.
The poor outcome group frequently had low education, higher percentage of transient disability and smaller percentage of active/employed in occupational status, more psychotic symptoms and change in behavior/aggressiveness and less suicidal ideations in chief complaints. This group also had more psychotic disorders and less depressive disorders as psychiatric diagnoses and more use of antipsychotics than the good outcome group (regular outcome group presented usually intermediate results).
The main results of the multivariate analyses (Table 3) show two different clinical admission factors related with a poorer outcome. Two regression models are present. With regards to diagnosis at admission, psychotic disorders (OR: 16.77; CI: 3.16 – 89.10), personality disorders (OR: 9.76; CI: 1.51 – 63.05) and "others" (OR: 8.19; CI: 1.52 – 44.15) were associated with poorer outcome at discharge compared with the reference variable depressive disorder. The admission chief complaints of "psychotic symptoms" (OR: 12.42; CI: 2.28 – 67.75) and "change in behavior/aggressiveness" (OR: 25.19; CI: 4.48 – 141.72) were also associated with poor outcome at discharge (in relation to suicide ideation). Transient disability was associated with poor outcome in both models.
This study proposed an index of evaluation of outcomes for psychiatric inpatients using variables easily measured and routinely collected in psychiatric units. Our strategy was able to identify clinical and sociodemographic risk factors associated with positive and negative outcomes regarding improvement at discharge. The results replicate and extend findings of the literature that used single variables as outcome, proposing more comprehensive and clinically useful criteria for evaluating results in psychiatric inpatients, what is particularly important for the mental care reality of low- and middle-income countries.
The first strategy of this study was composing an index of improvement that encompasses more than one dimension related to the outcome of inpatients. The most part of the literature has predominantly used isolated variables in this assessment, such as LOS10,12,21,22, as a single parameter of outcome. However, LOS might mistakenly evaluate a hospitalization for a long period as a poor outcome, despite a significant improvement in symptoms and functionality of a patient. Although LOS is recognized as an important parameter, it is often chosen because it relates directly to health expenditure7, underestimating clinical issues. Furthermore, LOS may even underestimate the degree of improvement. Prince et al. found very short admissions as predictors of readmission in patients with mood disorder in a US population-based study23, suggesting the insufficiency of this parameter. We found only a weak correlation between the I-index and the LOS. In addition, the weak correlation between LOS and other variables of the I-Index and the weak correlations of most variables with each other reinforce the independence and complementarity of them in our sample. Other authors have used subjective variables (such as "good clinical condition at discharge")15 or indices constructed from more complex methodologies24, complicating replicability or limiting its application. Thus, the variables and the method used to measure the I-Index can be considered simple and practical for treatment environments with limited resources.
The sociodemographic variables associated with poor outcomes were low education and patients with transient disability. While several other variables have been usually related with poor outcomes (such as unemployment, being unmarried and public insurance)10,21, no other studies have evaluated transient disability, a very common condition in inpatients in Brazil; our results show increased OR for transient disability in relation to employed/active status on the groups with intermediate (OR vary from 3.96 to 4.36) and poor (OR vary from 9.43 to 15.01) outcomes. Disability pension due to mental disorders has been associated with increased suicide risk25 and heavy use of psychiatric inpatients services26, while this outcomes have not yet been evaluated in transient disability. On the other hand, being employed/active in occupational status was associated with a good outcome, which has been extensively replicated in the literature10,15.
Psychotic symptoms and change in behavior/aggressiveness were the most prevalent chief complaints and were both independently associated with the poor outcome group, while suicidal ideation was the most prevalent one in the good outcome group. Concerning psychiatric diagnosis, psychotic disorders were related to poor outcome and unipolar depressive disorders to good outcome. Psychotic disorders were the diagnostic group most associated with poor outcome when compared with depressive disorders. These results also possibly explain respectively the highest prevalence of psychotic symptoms and change in behavior/aggressiveness in the poor outcome group (related to psychotic disorders and more severe cases) and a higher prevalence of suicidal ideation in the good outcome group (related to depressive disorders). The relation between psychotic disorders and bad outcomes, including readmissions ("revolving door phenomenon")27,28, longer hospitalizations7,10, 21 and higher mortality29, is well established. This association further explains the poor outcome for patients taking antipsychotics at admission. Psychotic disorders as schizophrenia are usually chronic disorders associated with long-lasting symptoms resistant or refractory to treatment30. It is also well established that patients with aggression issues are difficult to treat and keep in compliance on an outpatient basis and readmissions rates are high for them28; this corroborates that these patients have a poor outcome. On the other hand, unipolar depression was highly prevalent in those with good outcomes. While Masters et al.10 found depressive disorders with shorter LOS than schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, Green and Griffiths31 found a substantial decline in LOS over the last decades for patients with depressive disorders, with no changes in LOS for schizophrenia in England. Our results suggest that beyond the LOS, improving symptoms and level of functioning also differentiates these two diagnostic groups.
In the multivariate analysis, both models found high OR for specific variables associated with an increased risk for poor outcome in relation to those related to protective factors. Thus, in addition to psychotic disorders, transient disability and chief complaints of psychotic symptoms and change in behavior/aggressiveness, the poor outcome group presents a high chance (OR = 9.76) of having a diagnosis of personality disorder than the protective diagnosis of depressive disorder. Thus, although personality disorder showed shorter LOS, our more complex approach to examine outcomes could relativize the weight of this variable, valuing other clinical aspects. In this line, Leontieva and Gregory found shorter LOS in inpatients with borderline personality disorder compared with other diagnoses, but significantly more management problems, such as incidents of self-harm, episodes of restraint, stat administrations of medications and readmissions32. Thus, the chronic disruptive behavior of such patients can make the hospitalization insufficient to improve the functioning and the severity of their symptoms, regardless of LOS.
Although our index is composed of measures of easy extraction and availability, it is limited to assess other dimensions that are associated with hospitalization outcomes. Quality of care measures, satisfaction with care, quality of life, perception of improvement by the patients and their family and evaluation of specific symptoms of each diagnosis cluster (among others) can compose a more complex and dynamic evaluation of outcomes, but require the availability of human resources to conduct the process of applying them. Others more complex ROM approaches using broad standard instruments (as HoNOS) and more robust methodological designs (based on both anchor- or distribution-based approaches)33 must also be developed in more structured services. Thus, although limited, the measures of the I-Index can serve as an initial outcome indicator in mental health systems with limited resources and personnel.
This work has a number of limitations. First, we used data selected retrospectively from records, not being possible to test the inter-rater reliability of measuring instruments. Second, diagnoses were made by clinical evaluation without the use of standardized instruments and using only the primary diagnosis (comorbidities were not considered). Third, although our I-Index comprises five different parameters, we did not use any instrument evaluating different symptom dimensions. While we strongly suggest that LOS, CGI and GAF should be used, the BPRS may be another additional simple measure to be used in the evaluation of outcomes in clinical settings with limited time and personnel for the use of more complex tools. In addition, more complex parameters (such as evaluation of results by patients and use of more specific instruments assessing other dimensions of variable) can be useful, but require a more complex logistical organization that the current reality of mental health assistance in Brazil. The comparison of this index with other measures using more complex instruments can bring validation data for both. Forth, our sample size is limited and was selected in only one institution, limiting a generalization of the results and the interpretation of the regression analysis for some variables. Finally, shorter LOS is not necessary associated with a good outcome, just as the I-index indicates. However, as the LOS is easily measured and classically used as a measure of outcome, we prefer to ponder its weight and keep it in the index. The use of other parameters and the assignment of weights according to the specific objectives of each evaluation (measurement of clinical improvement or use of data to support the allocation of health funding) should be better tested in large clinical samples.
In conclusion, we suggest that an assessment composed of simple parameters can be useful for measuring outcomes in psychiatric inpatients. The identification of factors associated with poor outcomes may help build strategies to minimize or lessen the health, social and financial burden of mental disorders. Social support and health care programs directed to vulnerable groups can relieve the patients after hospitalization and prevent readmissions. The use of composed parameters to evaluate outcomes as the I-Index can be easily incorporated by managers of mental health policies in treatment environments to support funding of mental health service and evaluate its quality.
We thank our team at the Psychiatric Unit of Hospital São Lucas for their help in the development of this study.
The authors have no conflicts of interest.
1. Piccinelli M, Politi P, Barale F. Focus on psychiatry in Italy. Br J Psychiatry. 2002;181:538-44.
2. Sayers J. The world health report 2001 – Mental health: new understanding, new hope. Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 2001;79:1085.
3. Botega NJ. Prática Psiquiátrica no Hospital Geral: Interconsulta e Emergência: Artmed Editora; 2012.
4. Duarte SL, Garcia MLT. Psychiatric reform: the path of psychiatric beds reduction in Brazil. Emancipação. 2013;13(1):39-54.
5. Weber CAT. Direction of mental health in Brazil after 1980. Revista Debates em Psiquiatria. 2013;3:14-22.
6. Botega NJ. Psychiatric units in Brazilian general hospitals: a growing philanthropic field. Int J Soc Psychiatry. 2002;48(2):97-102.
7. Tulloch AD, Fearon P, David AS. Length of stay of general psychiatric inpatients in the United States: systematic review. Administration and policy in mental health. 2011;38(3):155-68.
8. Glick ID, Sharfstein SS, Schwartz HI. Inpatient psychiatric care in the 21st century: the need for reform. Psychiatr Serv. 2011;62(2):206-9.
9. Baruch Y, Kotler M, Lerner Y, Benatov J, Strous R. Psychiatric admissions and hospitalization in Israel: an epidemiologic study of where we stand today and where we are going. Isr Med Assoc J. 2005;7(12):803-7.
10. Masters GA, Baldessarini RJ, Ongur D, Centorrino F. Factors associated with length of psychiatric hospitalization. Compr Psychiatry. 2014;55(3):681-7.
11. Affairs DoV. Patient treatment file (PTF) coding instructions. Washington, DC: Department of Veterans Affairs, 2008 February 4, 2008. Report No.
12. Douzenis A, Seretis D, Nika S, Nikolaidou P, Papadopoulou A, Rizos EN, et al. Factors affecting hospital stay in psychiatric patients: the role of active comorbidity. BMC Health Serv Res. 2012;12:166.
13. Rocca P, Mingrone C, Mongini T, Montemagni C, Pulvirenti L, Rocca G, et al. Outcome and length of stay in psychiatric hospitalization, the experience of the University Clinic of Turin. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2010;45(6):603-10.
14. Warnke I, Rössler W, Herwig U. Does psychopathology at admission predict the length of inpatient stay in psychiatry? Implications for financing psychiatric services. BMC Psychiatry. 2011;11(120):1-10.
15. Dalgalarrondo P, Botega NJ, Banzato CE. [Patients who benefit from psychiatric admission in the general hospital]. Rev Saúde Pública. 2003;37(5):629-34.
16. Macdonald AJ, Elphick M. Combining routine outcomes measurement and "Payment by Results": will it work and is it worth it? Br J Psychiatry. 2011;199(3):178-9.
17. Spanemberg L, Nogueira EL, da Silva CT, Dargel AA, Menezes FS, Cataldo Neto A. High prevalence and prescription of benzodiazepines for elderly: data from psychiatric consultation to patients from an emergency room of a general hospital. Gen Hosp Psychiatry. 2011;33(1):45-50.
18. Guy W. Clinical Global Impression (CGI). In: Guy W, editor. ECDEU Assessment Manual for Psychopharmacology. Rockville: US Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare; 1976. p. 218-22.
19. American Psychiatric Association, American Psychiatric Association. Task Force on DSM-IV. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-IV-TR. 4th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association; 2000. xxxvii, 943 p.
20. Evans JD. Straightforward statistics for the behavioral sciences. Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole Pub. Co.; 1996. xxii, 600 p.
21. Warnke I, Rossler W, Herwig U. Does psychopathology at admission predict the length of inpatient stay in psychiatry? Implications for financing psychiatric services. BMC Psychiatry. 2011;11(1):120.
22. Zhang J, Harvey C, Andrew C. Factors associated with length of stay and the risk of readmission in an acute psychiatric inpatient facility: a retrospective study. Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2011;45(7):578-85.
23. Prince JD, Akincigil A, Kalay E, Walkup JT, Hoover DR, Lucas J, et al. Psychiatric rehospitalization among elderly persons in the United States. Psychiatric services. 2008;59(9):1038-45.
24. Barbato A, Parabiaghi A, Panicali F, Battino N, D'Avanzo B, de Girolamo G, et al. Do patients improve after short psychiatric admission?: a cohort study in Italy. Nord J Psychiatry. 2011;65(4):251-8.
25. Rahman S, Alexanderson K, Jokinen J, Mittendorfer-Rutz E. Risk factors for suicidal behaviour in individuals on disability pension due to common mental disorders – a nationwide register-based prospective cohort study in Sweden. PLoS One. 2014;9(5):e98497.
26. Morlino M, Calento A, Schiavone V, Santone G, Picardi A, de Girolamo G, et al. Use of psychiatric inpatient services by heavy users: findings from a national survey in Italy. Eur Psychiatry. 2011;26(4):252-9.
27. Gastal FL, Andreoli SB, Quintana MIS, Gameiro MA, Leite SO, McGrath J. Predicting the revolving door phenomenon among patients with schizophrenic, affective disorders and non-organic psychoses. Rev Saude Publica. 2000;34:280-5.
28. Nourse R, Reade C, Stoltzfus J, Mittal V. Demographics, clinical characteristics, and treatment of aggressive patients admitted to the acute behavioral unit of a community general hospital: a prospective observational study. Prim Care Companion CNS Disord. 2014;16(3).
29. Hoang U, Stewart R, Goldacre MJ. Mortality after hospital discharge for people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder: retrospective study of linked English hospital episode statistics, 1999-2006. BMJ. 2011;343:d5422.
30. Knapp M, Mangalore R, Simon J. The global costs of schizophrenia. Schizophr Bull. 2004;30(2):279-93.
31. Green BH, Griffiths EC. Hospital admission and community treatment of mental disorders in England from 1998 to 2012. Gen Hosp Psychiatry. 2014;36(4):442-8.
32. Leontieva L, Gregory R. Characteristics of patients with borderline personality disorder in a state psychiatric hospital. J Pers Disord. 2013;27(2):222-32.
33. Parabiaghi A, Kortrijk HE, Mulder CL. Defining multiple criteria for meaningful outcome in routine outcome measurement using the Health of the Nation Outcome Scales. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2014;49(2):291-305.


text:
REELDC/REVIEWS
All contents © 2008
by Mark Jenkins,
unless otherwise noted.
Design by Smallpark
Web www.reeldc.com
Repertory Film
MAX OPHULS IN HOLLYWOOD Born in Germany but raised in France, Max Ophuls covered a lot of territory. He landed in Hollywood in 1941, where he worked until returning to Europe in 1950. This series presents his four most successful American pictures. See Repertory, April 19 & 20.
TO APRIL 18
ANN-MARGRET Hollywood's original sex kitten flashes her claws in this mini-retrospective. Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress. SeeRepertory, April 23.
TO MAY 4
HIROSHI TESHIGAHARA Four films by the Japanese director who was both avant-garde and grounded in tradition, mostly from the 1960s and including his best-known, Woman in the Dunes. Alas, his little-seen 1989 masterpiece, Rikyu, is not included. American Film Institute Silver Theater. SeeRepertory, April 18.
TO MAY 18
KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL DC 2008 This annual survey of mostly recent films includes a new romance by Park (Oldboy) Chan-wook, appearances by director Lee Chang-dong, and a Korean War movie from 1962. At the Freer/Sackler Galleries and American Film Institute Silver Theater. SeeRepertory, April 18, 20, and 24.
BETTE DAVIS CENTENNIAL This survey of the imperious actress's work stretches from 1932 to 1962. American Film Institute Silver Theater. See Repertory,April 19 & 20.
INGMAR BERGMAN REMEMBERED, PART I Ten films by the exemplary arthouse director, who died last year. American Film Institute Silver Theater SeeRepertory, April 19 & 20.
JAZZ FILM SERIES
The Pickford's annual retrospective, mostly documentaries but including one fiction feature. Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress. SeeRepertory, April 25.
ROBERT MITCHUM RETROSPECTIVE Twelve films that feature the classic Hollywood tough guy, from the 1940s to the '70s. American Film Institute Silver Theater SeeRepertory, April 18.
ANN-MARGRET Hollywood's original sex kitten flashes her claws in this mini-retrospective. Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress. See Repertory, April 15 & 17.
HIROSHI TESHIGAHARA Four films by the Japanese director who was both avant-garde and grounded in tradition, mostly from the 1960s and including his best-known, Woman in the Dunes. (Alas, his little-seen 1989 masterpiece, Rikyu, is not included.) American Film Institute Silver Theater. See Repertory, April 12.
APRIL 4-MAY 18
KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL DC 2008 This annual survey of mostly recent films includes a new romance by Park (Oldboy) Chan-wook, appearances by director Lee Chang-dong, and a Korean War movie from 1962. At the Freer/Sackler Galleries and American Film Institute Silver Theater. See Repertory, April 11 & 13.
BETTE DAVIS CENTENNIAL This survey of the imperious actress's work stretches from 1932 to 1962. American Film Institute Silver Theater. See Repertory, April 12 & 13.
JEAN EUSTACHE: FILM AS LIFE, LIFE AS FILM Primarily a survey of the French filmmaker's short documentaries, this series also includes his best-known movie, The Mother and the Whore. See Repertory, April 12 & 13. National Gallery of Art.
2008 FRANCOPHONIE FILM FEST. Three films from the French-speaking world and one from Romania, whose recent cinematic renaissance has been boosted at Cannes. Smithsonian Resident Associates. See Repertory, April 15.
The Pickford's annual retrospective, mostly documentaries but including one fiction feature. Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress. See Repertory, April 16.
ROBERT MITCHUM RETROSPECTIVE Twelve films that feature the classic Hollywood tough guy, from the 1940s to the '70s. American Film Institute Silver Theater See Repertory, April 11.
ALICE'S HOUSE
THE BAND'S VISIT
BODY OF WAR
THE COUNTERFEITERS
FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON
MY BROTHER IS AN ONLY CHILD
Interviews, Profiles,
& Essays
Music director BOB CILMAN and the singers of Young@Heart
Girls Rock co-director ARNE JOHNSON
The Hirshhorn Museum's CINEMA EFFECT: DREAMS
Asian film programmer and author TOM VICK
The Band's Visit director
ERAN KOLIRIN
TADANOBU ASANO, Japan's
star rebel, on screen and in Washington.
Red, White, and Blueberry
Reviewed: The Flight of the Red Balloon,
By Mark Jenkins
The West is Red: The Red Balloon follows Simon Iteanu. (IFC)
Also this week: reviews of THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM,
THE VISITOR, WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN?,
and THE SINGING REVOLUTION and interviews with the director and musicians of YOUNG@HEART
A FILM THAT CAN BE READ as either enchanted or ominous, Albert Lamorisse's 1956 The Red Balloon is unquestionably a tale of childhood. A Parisian boy bonds with a balloon, which ultimately rescues (or abducts) him. Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's visually exquisite homage to Lamorisse's fable features a boy and a balloon, yet is hardly a kids' movie. While mop-topped, 7-year-old Simon (Simon Iteanu) is present throughout THE FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON, he's upstaged by his frantic, bleached-blonde mom Suzanne (Juliette Binoche) and other highstrung adults. He's also less prominent than his Chinese nanny, a puppet troupe, and — this being a Hou movie — some thrillingly graceful long takes.
Simon goes to school, plays games, and remembers summer visits from his teenage "pretend sister" (actually his half-sister). In one poignant (and seamless) transition, Louise (Louise Margolin) emerges from the boy's memories and into a flashback. Simon loves and misses Louise, as does her mother. Suzanne hopes to evict her downstairs tenant, a onetime friend who's stopped paying rent, to make room for her daughter. But Louise may not relocate from Brussels to Paris, just as Suzanne's writer boyfriend may not return from Montreal.
Meanwhile, Suzanne has hired a new nanny, Chinese film student Song (Song Fang, effectively playing herself). Song supervises and escorts Simon, and also helps his mother with her work. A voice actress for a puppet theater, Suzanne is devoted to Chinese puppetry and its stories. (Among Hou's previous films is 1993's The Puppetmaster, which surveyed Taiwan's history under Japanese colonization through the career of its title character.) Song is making her own version of The Red Balloon, using up-to-date video trickery. A red balloon appears in the opening scene, then vanishes for almost an hour. When it reappears, it comes not to save Simon but just to observe him. It even watches as he, on a class trip, contemplates Felix Vallotton's painting of a child and a red ball at the Musee d'Orsay, Paris's storehouse of Impressionist canvases (which commissioned this film).
One of Hou's trademarks — borrowed by the chameleon-like Ang Lee for Lust, Caution — is the contrast between stately compositions and eruptions of messy violence. There are no fistfights or knifings in The Flight of the Red Balloon, whose characters are mostly artists, craftsmen, or children. But there is anger and chaos, especially in Binoche's semi-improvised dialogue. After the scenario was conceived by Hou (who's not fluent in French) and co-producer Francois Margolin, the lines were invented by the actors during rehearsals. (Binoche even takes two "solos": one-sided telephone conversations that are virtuoso performances.) The result seems naturalistic, yet the action is precisely choreographed. Several scenes conveying the emotional clamor of life in a cramped Parisian apartment, full of family and visitors, proceed from character to character, situation to situation, without a single edit.
Aside from Binoche's expansive character and captivating performance, what carries the film is its visual style. The color and motion are extraordinary. There are many inserts of trains — a Hou obsession that he shares with Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, the inspiration for his previous film, Cafe Lumiere — and a sequence in which Simon's ride on a carousel becomes nearly abstract. Hou and longtime cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bing (who also shot much of Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love) include a lot of rich reds and oranges, but the family's kitchen is a shade of aqua that they seem to have retained from Hou's films set in Taiwan, notably Millennium Mambo.
With its Satie-like score and use of Paris's iconic skyline, the film has a strong sense of place. Yet it also keeps some distance from its setting. Unlike Wong's My Blueberry Nights, which attempts to be all-American, The Flight of the Red Balloon acknowledges that it's about Western life, but not of it. If Suzanne is the central character, Song is the director's on-screen surrogate, as much the bemused observer as is the camera. Inevitably, the result is a movie that lacks the passionate engagement of Hou's films inspired by Taiwan's history or his own life story. Still, there are moments that are as moving as the images are lovely. Hou may be an out-of-towner, but he quickly finds his place, crafting a film that elegantly balances local color, universal emotions, and subjective viewpoint. (2008, 113 min; at Landmark E Street).
WONG KAR-WAI HAS BEEN LOOKING for an escape route for years. With Hong Kong's independence scheduled to end in 2046 — thus the title of his previous feature — the director has lugged his camera to Argentina, Taiwan, Thailand, Cambodia, and even mainland China. (That last trip didn't work out.) Now he's made an American movie, a scenic ramble from east coast to west with occasional layovers at diners, bars, and heartbreak motels. With its vivid colors, cluttered foregrounds, and drowsy tracking shots, MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS sure looks like a Wong Kar-wai picture. Yet it's mostly veneer, without the feeling of the director's best films.
Wong is known for fetishizing songs, both as movie titles — In the Mood for Love, Happy Together, As Tears Go By — and as fragmented, recurrent motifs. So it's no surprise that he recruited a singer, Norah Jones, as the native guide for his first English-language film. (Chan Marshall, aka Cat Power, also has a small role.) Jones plays a woman whose nickname changes at each stop on her westward odyssey. She's Elizabeth in New York, where she learns that her boyfriend is cheating on her, and consoles herself with blueberry pie at an improbable diner with a Russian name and a solicitous British proprietor, Jeremy (Jude Law). Elizabeth becomes Lizzie in Memphis, where she watches the marriage of Arnie (David Strathairn) and Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz) move from estrangement to catastrophe. Then she switches to Betty in Nevada, where she meets Leslie (Natalie Portman), a cocky gambler whose central screwed-up relationship is with her (unseen) father. Meanwhile in Manhattan, lovelorn Jeremy tries to contact Elizabeth, and has a brief, bittersweet visit from his ex (Marshall).
Wong, who co-scripted with crime novelist Lawrence Block, doesn't seem especially interested in the U.S., and he and cinematographer Darius Khondji appear unmoved by the sweep of the American West. (The big skies barrel by in fast-mo.) The biggest problem, however, is casting: Jones is amiable but one-ply, and too much dialogue is invested in explaining why the pie man is from Manchester, or how the improbable couple of Arnie and Sue Lynne came to be. (At least the filmmaker is having a little fun with these two: Arnie is a amorously fixated cop, a trademark Wong type, and Sue Lynne's name could be spelled Su-Lin.) Portman's Leslie is the most robust character, but her principal foil is the bland Jones.
Perhaps this is too wide-open a country for Wong, who in the past has rarely moved beyond the range of neon illumination. Or maybe commercial considerations forced him into alien emotional territory. Still, solutions to all the movie's dilemmas can be found in the filmmaker's previous work. My Blueberry Nights is set in the wrong time, and outfitted with the wrong sensibility.
Most of Wong's best films evoke the early '60s, a time when Hong Kong crackled with the tension between sensuality and propriety. Much the same was true of the U.S., and there are elements in this movie — which abounds with convertibles, sunglasses, and old-fashioned hangouts — that are deliciously retro. Yet the story is clearly set in the anything-goes '00s, an age of serial monogamy rather than unrequited love. It's a world in which people are more likely to shrug than smolder, which undermines the director's obsessive style.
With rare exceptions — such as the frothy second half of Chungking Express — Wong's movies assume the viewpoint of male romantics, soft on the inside no matter how rugged their exteriors. My Blueberry Nights doesn't know what to make of Elizabeth, and there are moments in the film — notably one in which a fetchingly unkempt Sue Lynne slinks through the joint where Lizzie tends bar — that don't even attempt to represent her outlook. Lizzie stares at Sue Lynne, but the eye behind the camera is clearly masculine.
This is not Wong's first film set in the Americas. The bulk of Happy Together transpires in Argentina, although the story returns to Asia for its coda. But the protagonists of that tale were from Hong Kong, and thus viewed their new locale from the same perspective as the director. In interviews Wong has said he could make a film anywhere, so long as he took the vantage point of an outsider. Yet this movie attempts to get inside Elizabeth's America, land of such museum-piece attractions as pie a la mode, mom-and-pop casinos, and automotive tail fins. It looks great, but a lot less real than the director's impressionistic Hong Kong. If Wong's gift is to show how glimmering surfaces reveal emotional depths, My Blueberry Nights reveals that this formula succeeds only when the lovingly photographed facades have personal meaning. (2008, 90 min; at Landmark E Street).


text:
Tootsie Roll Industries Never Gave Away a Prize if the Wrapper of a Tootsie Pop Had a Native American Boy Shooting a Star
January 2, 2012 Samantha	11 comments
Myth: Tootsie Roll Industries used to give away prizes if the wrapper of a tootsie roll pop had a Native American boy shooting a star.
Children all over the world have whipped wrappers off of the beloved Tootsie Pop lollipop searching for an Indian boy shooting a star in hopes of obtaining a free Tootsie Pop. Turns out, even though this rumor has been around for over sixty years, Tootsie Roll Industries never endorsed such a prize or contest. Tootsie Roll Industries themselves have the following to say about this rumor: "Many years ago, a rumor surfaced that said if the wrapper of a Tootsie Pop with a star was found and returned to the company, a free Tootsie Pop, or any number of things would be sent to the lucky person. We truly don't know why or where this rumor started, as our records do not indicate that our company ever sponsored any type of promotion surrounding images on the wrapper."
Due to the fact that that the Native American boy shooting the star appears on about 1/3 of the wrappers, it would significantly cut into their profits if they decided to do this. Although Tootsie Roll Industries doesn't endorse this, some individual stores have occasionally honored the infamous rumor and awarded children with a free Tootsie Pop if they brought in a star-imprinted wrapper. This is thought to have been largely why the rumor has continued to be perpetuated, even to this day. It also may be how the rumor got started in the first place with some single store starting this promotion on their own, with people thinking it was Tootsie Roll Industries doing it, meaning you could trade in the wrappers at any store.
Many have researched exactly how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, including reserchers at Cambridge and Purdue. The results obviously vary significantly based on age of the individual and whether one licks just one side continually or both. That being said, their results show that for an adult it takes around 250-ish licks to get to the center of a tootsie roll tootsie pop if only licking from one side and about twice that when licking both sides evenly.
Tootsie Pop suckers were introduced into the world in 1931.
Tootsie Pops were the first lollipops to embed a candy "prize" in its center.
The original five flavors of Tootsie Pops include Chocolate, Cherry, Orange, Grape, and Raspberry. Over the years, Tootsie Pop flavors expanded to include a sixth flavor that alternates between Pomegranate, Banana, and Green Apple.
Tootsie Rolls were named after creator Leo Hirshfield's five year old daughter whose nickname was "Tootsie" (her real name was Clara Hirshfield). Hirshfield set out to create a chocolate that wouldn't melt easily and eventually came up with the artificial "chocolate" candy the tootsie roll. This ability to not melt easily and to use artificial ingredients that weren't being rationed during war times proved a huge boon for the company as it eventually began being included in all soldier's rations during WWII. The low price of the artificial ingredients also made it a popular treat during the depression along with the tootsie pop.
The tootsie pop was created in 1930 by Brandon Perry who was working for The Sweets Company of America who also made tootsie rolls.
About 64 million tootsie rolls are produced every day along with twenty million tootsie pops.
Whenever someone mails in a letter to Tootsie Roll Industries stating how many licks it took to get to the center of a tootsie pop, they are sent a certificate called a "Clean Stick Award".
In response to the overwhelming inquiries of free Tootsie Rolls for wrappers featuring the Indian boy and his star, a story was developed as a sort of consolation prize. The Legend of the Indian Wrapper tells the story of one man's mission to make a one-of-a-kind lollipop that the world had never seen. His plan was to insert a chewy candy into the center of his lollipop, but no matter how hard he tried, he always failed. One night a grand Indian chief appeared and offered to help him as long as he promised to never stop making the lollipops with the chewy center for people. Of course, the man agreed. As the legend has it, every so often the grand Indian chief visits the man's factory to check and make sure he keeps his promise. The Indian boy wrapper with the star is a sign that the grand chief personally checked that particular lollipop for its chewy center and gave it his sign of approval.
How Many Licks Does it Take to Get to the Center of a Tootsie Pop
Indian on the Tootsie Pop Wrapper
Tootsie Pops
www.tootsie.com
tagged with tootsie roll facts, tootsie roll myths, tootsie roll wrapper prize
Myths and Misconceptions
Some guy
January 6, 2012	9:18 am
When I was a kid there was a candy store (Sarah-Dippity Chocolates in Encinitas, California) that honored this rumor, whether tootsie pop did or not. You had to have the whole image though, if it was cut off at all it was worthless.
April 10, 2013	9:53 am
Me and my siblings believed it because we always did get a free one at the corner candy store. Now I read that the promotion isn't from Tootsie so I guess we had a very nice store owner who gave out of the kindness of his heart.
The bank where my folks did business when I was a kid had a Tootsie Pop Tree in it and kids got a free one if you came in with your folks when they did business. One day I got a wrapper with an indian chief on it and was quick to point this out to a teller and wanted my free tootsie pop. She said she had never heard of any such thing and gave me this "get lost" look. My dad and the bank president were fishing buddies, so I went over to his desk and pointed out my wrapper had an indian chief on it. He told me by all means to go over to the Tootsie Pop Tree and collect my free tootsie pop. Being the little snot I was as a kid, I walked over to the tree, took the "prize" off the tree with a flourish and shot the teller a snarky smirk as I walked out the door.
When I was a kid I remember stores in my location that honored this so this is not correct.
Daven Hiskey
September 6, 2013	10:46 am
@Dan: True, there were stores that sometimes honored this, but those stores were not Tootsie Roll Industries.
October 8, 2013	5:35 pm
Helps if you read the whole article.
Tonya pelayo
when I was a kid I always wondered if we got a free Tootsie Roll for the Indian on the wrapping paper.I couldn't wait to find out when I got my first one when I brought it into the store I got shot down. Rude.
We bought eight large bags of tootsie roll pops for Halloween and we're not able to give them out that evening.
I would like to preserve them for next year by freeze
Ingrid, refrigeration, plastic bags, etc. what is your suggestion?. Thanks for any help you can supply.


text:
Emily Hawkins-Longley
Head of People
Dazed Media
HR strategies and guidance for 2021
Geber86/iStock
Supporting working parents and carers through tougher Covid-19 restrictions
Working mum and Group People Director at M&C Saatchi, Emily Hawkins-Longley, urges us not to forget about the challenges faced by working parents now that children have gone back to school.
21st Oct 2020
Don't go to the office, work from home, go to the office, now work from home, keep children at home, send children back to school.
We have seen significant shifts in advice and guidance over the past few months, with no experience of having been through something like this before, I'm sure many people feel anxious.
For working parents and those with caring responsibilities, decisions on how to behave have had to take into account the effects they will have on those they are responsible for. As we see cases rising and more measures being put in place to try and reduce the spread of Covid-19 (and as a working parent myself!), I thought it would be worth exploring how we can better support employees with caring responsibilities on an ongoing basis.
Many working parents have seen themselves back where they were at the height of the original lockdown, and it is important for businesses to recognise that these are ongoing issues.
Creating a working parents policy
In the midst of lockdown, I produced a working parents policy at M&C Saatchi which addressed two very broad categories: children with a significant need for care such as younger children, and those children who are a little older who still need supervision. I didn't feel I could put ages on these groups as every family situation is different.
The main purpose of the policy was to acknowledge these extra pressures on parents during such a stressful time and allow parents to support whatever needs their children may have. We acknowledged that there may be times that children require the emotional support of their parents and that parents should be able to shut their laptops and simply be with their children.
We also advised meetings to be no longer than 45 minutes to allow time to check in with children and that manager support was crucial in understanding how employees might manage their workload and parenting at the same time.
I had my own experience to draw on in developing a working parents policy as I have one child of my own and three step children – all of school age. Home schooling had its ups and downs, but we found a rhythm and routine which we all found comfortable.
I, like many I'm sure, was apprehensive but also relieved when the children went back to school. The first school drop off felt similar to before lockdown, apart from a one-way system and an initial slight feeling of caution in the air. The children enjoyed seeing their friends again and this new normal felt ok.
However we are now facing more restrictions. A lot of schools have had suspected and confirmed cases, meaning children have had to isolate at home. Many working parents have seen themselves back where they were at the height of the original lockdown, and it is important for businesses to recognise that these are ongoing issues that can strike at any time.
Children in our working lives – it's not over yet!
Children being present during some of the working day may continue to be the norm, and so employees would benefit from guidance on how to deal with these situations. You may have seen the footage of news reporters being interrupted by children joining an interview on live TV, but how are these scenarios being managed in other workplaces?
I have been interrupted by my daughter declaring there is a spider in the living room, prompting me to add a line in our working parents guidance on acknowledging children should they spontaneously join your zoom meeting!
Employee-led networks can be a great way of discussing common issues through the lens of a working parent.
Working parents will have future demands
We also need to understand that having spent so much time with children, parents may wish to continue some aspects of their routine. For example, having dinner as a family is now something many parents do not wish to have to give up again.
Although we are currently being urged to work from home, once offices are encouraging people back in again, many employees will expect there to be flexibility for them to manage their home and work life. Many will now also have the confidence to demand it and if their current employer doesn't give it to them, there will no doubt be many companies that will.
Working parents and carers will be looking for support from their employers during these difficult times. I therefore urge all HR teams to think about the requirements of this group of people, carry out listening exercises, raise awareness of the issues and provide support for managers.
Employee-led networks can be a great way of discussing common issues through the lens of a working parent. At M&C Saatchi we have a family network who I work with on initiatives to keep the conversation moving – and practical solutions are more likely to come to fruition as there is a group of people driving them.
Get the latest insights, advice and opinion on the world of work from HRZone
Enter your email address to receive our twice-weekly newsletter.
Beyond working parents….
Alongside the issues faced by working parents and carers, it is important to recognise that there are many other reasons why employees need support during this time. Those who live alone, in house shares or with their parents have other pressures that need to be recognised.
As our home lives and work lives have become so interlinked, the businesses that recognise this and actively support employees with both will no doubt be the ones to come through the pandemic with a happy and engaged workforce.
1st Aug 2017
How to make your workplace trans inclusive
Emma Cusdin
Emily is an award winning People Director with a career spanning 15 years within the media, retail and advertising industries.
She has implemented & overhauled polices, covering topics such as Domestic Abuse, Addiction and Menopause.
Her philosophy is that if you support people through their own circumstances, goals and...
Read more from Emily Hawkins-Longley


Never forget an important item at the grocery store again when you use our convenient and practical Shopping List! Simply stick it to your fridge and grab on your way out the door.
Our Shopping List comes in three sizes and is customisable to include your family name and more. Separate sections indicate items that you need from various parts of the store, including produce, pantry, freezer, and more.
Get 20% off stationery when you buy 3 or more items from our stationery collection!
Our shopping list is guaranteed to keep you organised, which in turn will save time during your busy day. Keep this convenient list on your fridge where you can easily write down necessities. Tear off the sheet on your way to the store and a blank sheet will be ready for your next shopping list.
This Shopping List will be custom printed especially for you in a A6 (10.5 cm x 14.8cm), A5 (14.8 cm x 21cm) or A4 (21cm x 29.7cm) portrait layout size.
I love these Shopping Lists. Makes shopping so much easier with an organised list!
Would love to get another one of these, I like having my list in categories and this just makes it easier to follow!
The sub headings on this shopping list makes it easy to ensure you remember everything you need. Great help to get organised.
Love how simple and easy it is to use! When writing a shopping list I would write mine out with all these categories, now I just fill out the sections and rip it off on the way out the front door.
If you are like me and prefer to have your shopping list organised, then this list will be perfect for you. Easy headings make it simple to identify what section of the supermarket you need and there is plenty of space on the A5 to write everything without being too large.
Most personalised orders are printed within 2 business days.
Each Shopping List will be custom printed for you on quality 100gsm uncoated paper stock, along with your chosen design, colour and personalisation details.
Does the Shopping List come bound?
Sure does! The Shopping List is securely bound together with glue, making it super easy to store. This also allows you to easily tear off a page for a fresh start.
Can I stick it on my fridge?
Yes! The Shopping Lists come with a strong magnetic backing, which allows you to easily pop it on the fridge.