For decades now Tanzania has been fighting against poachers to protect its endangered animal species such as rhinos and elephants. Several such operations have been conducted before in attempt to flush out poachers from national parks and game reserves.
The operations, to some extent, recorded considerable success though the situation worsened the moment such campaigns ended.
It may be recalled that in the late 1980s, the government carried out a special campaign codenamed 'Operesheni Uhai' in which members of the Tanzania People's Defence Forces (TPDF) under the late Major General John Walden were involved.
Operesheni Uhai was deliberately carried out after it was realized that the number of jumbos had tremendously decreased from 350,000 during independence to 55,000 in the 1980s.
The number of elephants in the country increased to 110,000 in 2009, thanks to the ban imposed on ivory trade in the world by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
However, government statistics released recently showed that between 2010 and September this year a total of 3,899 pieces of tusks, weighing 11,212 kilogrammes and another 22 pieces of processed elephant tusks, weighing 3,978 kilogrammes were impounded.
The same statistics showed a total of 4,692 pieces of trophies, weighing 17,797 kilogrammes that were seized abroad emanated from Tanzania. Still worse, data from researchers show Tanzania has been losing 30 elephants to poachers on daily basis.
Findings are yet to be made public on what could be the impact of the recent 'Operesheni Tokomeza Ujangili' (Eliminate Poaching) that ended up costing political lives of four ministers. Despite the determination to combat the problem more individuals are still being arrested in possession of the trophies.
While the war against poaching is being fought on all fronts, Tanzania in collaboration with other countries, must work hand in hand with world bodies such as CITES to convince Asian nations where ivory fetches good market to discourage the business.
The Mozambican police have arrested a Guinean citizen, named as Mussa Jane, in the northern province of Niassa, in possession of two elephant tusks, weighing 28.5 kilos, according to a report on the independent television station, STV.
The wholesale price of ivory rose from 100 US dollars a kilo in the 1990s to 850 dollars a kilo in 2007. Since then the prices have continued to rocket. This year, prices for mounted elephant tusks in Hong Kong reached the equivalent of 26,432 dollars a kilo. These tusks were supposedly "legal" - that is acquired from elephants shot before the international ban on the ivory trade.
If the tusks in the Guinean's possession were sold for a similar price, they would fetch over 753,000 dollars.
Jane was also found to be carrying precious stones, including tourmalines and amazonites, weighing a total of one and a half kilos. He was also in possession of 135,000 meticais (4,500 US dollars) in banknotes.
The police arrested Jane at a checkpoint in Chimbonila district. He had come from Majune district, and was on his way to the provincial capital, Lichinga. The tusks, stones and money were found inside a suitcase.
Jane claimed that the goods did not belong to him, and he was just carrying them for a friend.
"A friend asked me to take the suitcase to Lichinga. So I put it on the bus and I didn't know what was inside", he said.
Jane said he was "very surprised" when the police opened the suitcase and he saw what it contained.
"I was never involved in the ivory business", he said, "I just sell precious stones".
In Hong Kong, they call it "white gold." In much of the rest of the world, they just call it "illegal." But conservationists and animal advocates now fear that the Chinese city's booming trade in "legal" ivory is causing the blood-soaked illegal trade to surge as well, once again threatening the world's population of elephants.
Prices of ivory sold in Hong Kong shops have skyrocketed in the past decade, zooming up by a factor of 50, according to a report in the English-language South China Morning Post newspaper.
A pair of mounted elephant tusks recently sold for 15 million Hong Kong dollars at a store there. That's the equivalent of more than $1.9 million in American cash. The tusks weighed in at 65 kilograms, or 143 pounds, giving them a per-kilogram price of HK$230,000, approximately — or about $30,000 in U.S. money.
But the price that brings just one kilogram of ivory today purchased a 78 kilogram pair of tusks in 2002, in one reported sale.
So what makes an item of ivory "legal," despite a worldwide ban on harvesting the tusks of elephants? Simple. The ivory must have been taken before 1989, when the ban went into effect.
Oddly, ivory objects created from the tusks of extinct mammoths are also considered legal. But there isn't nearly enough legal ivory to meet the current demand, and verifying exactly when a piece of ivory was collected is difficult if not impossible.
The rising price of "legal" ivory has made it a status symbol in the increasingly prosperous city of Hong Kong.
The price of elephant tusks in Hong Kong has shot up by more than fiftyfold in the past decade, raising concerns that the legal trade is fuelling demand for poached ivory and driving some African elephant populations towards extinction.
A 65kg pair of mounted tusks is on sale for HK$15 million at Chinese Arts and Crafts in Wan Chai. A smaller pair weighing about 40kg is offered for HK$8.2 million. That is equivalent to a per-kilogram price of between HK$205,000 and HK$230,770. In 2002, a major report on the ivory trade found that a 78kg pair of elephant tusks could be bought in Hong Kong for just HK$250,000 - less than one fiftieth of the price of the smaller pair of tusks on sale at the mainland-owned Wan Chai store.
The sky-high ivory price compares with an average HK$1,220 per kilogram fetched when 102 tonnes of stockpiled ivory was controversially sold to China and Japan by four African countries in 2008. That sale - approved by CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) - was the last legal sale of an ivory stockpile globally after a worldwide ban was imposed in 1989.
Hong Kong shops need government-issued licences to sell certain types of ivory, including products carved before the 1989 ban, ivory from the tusks of extinct mammoths, and ivory bought from government stockpile sales in southern Africa.
Staff at branches of Chinese Arts and Crafts said buyers were snapping up ivory not only for display but as an investment, as its value was rising at a rate of 20 per cent a year. "There is no more ivory, so the price is going up and up," said a saleswoman at the Pacific Place branch of the chain, where a 116cm antique tusk is on sale for HK$1.9 million.
Grace Ge Gabriel, Asia regional director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said the legal ivory trade in Hong Kong was exacerbating the illegal trade in poached and smuggled ivory.
Chinese national Zhifei Li has pleaded guilty to orchestrating an illegal operation which smuggled 30 rhinoceros horns and numerous objects made from rhino horn and elephant ivory worth more than $4.5 million from the United States to China.
Two counts of making false wildlife documents.
Li purchased rhino horns in Florida, where he was attending the Original Miami Beach Antique Show. Not only did Li purchase two black rhino horns from an undercover USFWS agent, he asked the officer to procure additional rhino horns and mail them to Hong Kong. In 2011 and 2012, Li arranged the shipment of rhino horns to addresses in Hong Kong in order to facilitate the smuggling of horns to mainland China. The rhino horns were concealed with duct tape and hidden inside porcelain vases. Li also arranged the smuggling of ivory carvings to China, falsely labeled as "wood carvings" as well as two elephant tusks weighing more than 100 pounds, which were labeled as "automobile parts".
According to court documents, Li worked with at least three co-conspirators. He wired hundreds of thousands of dollars to one of them, while the other two co-conspirators purchased rhino horns from various sources, including an auction house in Missouri.
In December 2010, Li advised a co-conspirator to respond to an internet advertisement offering rhino horn for sale. The co-conspirator was subsequently provided with photos of rhino horns, as well as the rhino from which the horns were procured, from an individual in Cameroon.
Then in March 2011, Li's co-conspirator wired approximately $16,000 to Cameroon for the purpose of obtaining two rhino horns. The seller "promised" to bring additional horns into the United States.
In 2013, horrifying headlines about the voiceless victims of wildlife trafficking captured public attention around the world. Has a turning point in the war on wildlife crime finally arrived?
Make no mistake: This is not a fight that will one day be "won" so we can all go home. Rather, it is an ongoing state of vigilance for law enforcement, activists, NGOs, environmental journalists and concerned citizens. Nevertheless, we need to recognize — and celebrate — our progress.
I've been writing about wildlife trafficking for nearly five years and I think there is something different about 2013. World leaders have publicly committed to tackling the illegal wildlife trade and there seems to be a consensus that this scourge is nothing less than transnational organized crime which — and it should be dealt with accordingly. Wildlife trafficking breeds corruption in governments and encourages greed in the private sector. It threatens regional security and funds global terrorism.
So, what happened in 2013?
Experts agree that demand for wildlife products must be reduced. It can be said that from almost every corner of the world, demand reduction was a unifying battle cry for 2013.
John E. Scanlon, Secretary-General, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), writes that CoP16 was a "watershed moment" for combating wildlife crime.
The Clinton Global Initiative launched "Partnership to Save Africa's Elephants", a coalition of non-governmental organizations brought together to "directly target the chief drivers" of ivory trafficking.
This is one of the latest ways of smuggling wildlife products from South Africa to countries such as China and Taiwan.
Tom Milliken, leader of the global elephant and rhino programme for Traffic, an international organisation that monitors illegal trading in wildlife, said yesterday South Africa was a key transit point on the ivory smuggling route.
On Friday a 58-year-old Chinese woman was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport carrying 40kg of ivory wrapped in tin foil, brown paper and clothes.
She was in transit from Mozambique to Hong Kong.
Seven people were arrested in a "planned operation" at Hong Kong International Airport yesterday. About 160kg of tusks and worked ivory was found in the check-in baggage of 14 passengers.
According to Hong Kong authorities, the smugglers were on flights from Johannesburg and Dubai. The four men and three women appeared in court on Friday and yesterday.
One of them was sentenced to four months in prison. The rest were fined between $30000 and $80000 (R310000 to R828000) each.
The Chinese woman arrested in Johannesburg is expected to appear in the Kempton Park Magistrate's Court today.
Apprehending Ivory Traffickers: A Conservation Fairy Tale?
In December 2012, Malaysia announced the discovery and confiscation of the largest illegal ivory shipment ever—six tons of raw tusks hidden among teak planks in a shipping container from Togo (alternative news reports talked of 24 tons). In July of this year, another two ton shipment of tusks of baby and teenage elephants was intercepted in Hong Kong, also coming from Togo. In addition to this, there were recently a range of confiscations from Vietnamese air passengers who were transporting ivory pieces disguised as wooden ornaments while traveling from Lome, the capital of Togo, to Nairobi. We documented the same type of camouflaged pieces of ivory being sold by a dealer outside of Hanoi, and I'm pretty convinced that these items were from the same production facility as the items confiscated in Nairobi.
Bryan Christy, the author of the National Geographic magazine print feature on the ivory trade, in a subsequent blog entry on the subject pointed out that in the last 24 years not a single kingpin type of trafficker of ivory had ever been arrested and prosecuted—either at the production or consumer end of the supply chain. At about the same time as Bryan Christy's reporting of this fact, a producer for ABC's Nightline was putting out his feelers to do a story about the wildlife trade in Africa, approaching various NGOs and stakeholders with some background experience in these issues, including ourselves. It was clear that the main interest for ABC was ivory and maybe as a fallback position, the rhino horn trade. It would appear that Ofir Drori of LAGA, a Cameroon-based conservation NGO, then suggested the Togo ivory trail as a topic where relevant shooting sequences could be guaranteed and that the team, while en route, take in the arrest of a chimpanzee dealer that had some chimpanzee orphans on offer, which supposedly LAGA and its local counterpart in Guinea had lined up. This operation was delayed for several months after we reported—as part of another investigative documentary—the same dealer and the presence of two chimps to LAGA. By the time the operation was mounted to coincide with the arrival of the ABC team, the dealer and the two chimps had disappeared.
At the Togo end, a local dealer had been pinpointed as a kingpin ivory trafficker. A South African investigator visited him at his shop to ask about the availability of ivory and got him to mention that he had sent ivory to Pakistan, Hong Kong, and China. This was, he now claims, part of a typical sales pitch which was then used as an admission of guilt and evidence that he was a big shot international exporter. However, the shop door still today has a posted letter from the French army commander of the local military contingent based in Togo and going back to the 1990 CITES ban on cross border trade, stating that exports of large amounts of ivory was now illegal and that any souvenir item exported should not exceed the value of 1,000 French francs! So he says he knew and accepted these restrictions, but they did not apply to domestic trade.
Thick clouds of fine, choking white dust fill the winter afternoon air as a giant rockcrushing machine rumbles on. Coughing and spluttering, I struggle to hold my gaze as the spectacle is lost behind swirling clouds.
A cascade of crushed ivory is spewed out by a giant blue machine used more often to crush stones to mix with bitumen than grind up parts of an endangered species from another continent.
Surrounded by conservationists and journalists looking on in deafened awe, wildlife officials in hard hats and highvisibility vests load an excavator with large pieces from a giant pile of elephant tusks and with carved ivory statuettes, trinkets and jewellery. The excavator shuttles back and forth, from tusk pile to rock crusher, feeding the metallic beast as it feasts upon what remains of countless herds of elephants.
This was the scene Hong Kong schoolgirls Lucy Skrine, 11, and Christina Seigrist, eight, hoped to witness in their hometown when they started a petition (bit.ly/BanHKIvoryTrade) through online activist network Avaaz in September to have the city's stockpile of more than 33 tonnes of confiscated ivory destroyed. It was the scenario they wanted to achieve with the 10,000 signatures they asked for.
But this is not Hong Kong. The rock crusher is at work in Denver, Colorado, where it is crushing the United States government's six-tonne stockpile of ivory seized from tourists and smugglers at the country's land borders and airports since the 1980s.
Wildlife officials say it is hard to estimate exactly, but they believe the total being crushed here amounts to the tusks of between 1,000 and 2,000 elephants – a fraction of the number of dead animals represented by Hong Kong's stockpile.
In June, the Philippine government crushed and burnt its five-tonne stockpile of confiscated ivory; and since 1992, three elephant range states in Africa – Zambia, Kenya and Gabon – have destroyed by incineration their seized ivory stockpiles. The five nations that have now destroyed their confiscated ivory stockpiles have (along with the Indian state of Maharashtra and France, which has just announced it is to follow suit) sent an unequivocal message to poachers in Africa, ivory dealers everywhere and consumers in China that the trade will not be tolerated by their governments.
The Georgia Aquarium on September 30, 2013 appealed an August 6, 2013 ruling by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration that it had not satisfied the requirements to import 18 beluga whales from Russia.
The appeal put the future of beluga whale exhibition before the U.S. District Court in Atlanta at the same time that the future of orca exhibition is before the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., as result of a SeaWorld appeal of an OSHA order.
But the cases differ in that the issue for SeaWorld is how orcas are exhibited, while the issue for the Georgia Aquarium is whether beluga whales may be imported for exhibition at all.
Captured in the Sea of Okhotsk in 2006, 2010 and 2011, the belugas have been held pending sale at the Utrish Marine Mammal Research Station in Russia, along with eight orcas captured in 2012 and 2013.
The Georgia Aquarium applied to import the belugas in June 2012, after investing about $2 million over five years to study the Sea of Okhotsk beluga population. Much of the research was produced by a consortium also including Sea World, the Mystic Aquarium, Kamogawa Sea World in Japan, and Ocean Park in Hong Kong. Four of the five partners already exhibited belugas. Ocean Park announced in 2010 that it would exhibit dolphins from the Sea of Okhotsk, but cancelled the plan under public pressure in August 2011. No belugas have been captured in the wild and brought to the U.S. for exhibition since 1992, when the John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago imported four from the vicinity of Churchill, Manitoba, Canada.
Five beluga subpopulations inhabit Alaskan waters. The best known group, at Cook Inlet, are protected from capture by the Endangered Species Act as well as the Marine Mammal Protection Act. As of May 2013, 284 belugas remained at Cook Inlet, down from an estimated peak population of about 1,300.
Hong Kong, this skyscraper-crowned metropolis of seven million, prides itself on its modernity. But on the third floor of Yue Hwa Chinese Products, a busy department store in Kowloon, the products for sale seem anything but modern. The glass display cases are full of Buddha figurines, lucky toad charms and dragon-shaped buttons, all carved from ivory, the tusks of dead elephants.
Ivory products are taboo in much of the world due to awareness of how poaching decimates elephant populations. But in a newly affluent China, owning ivory is seen by many as a sign of status. It's described as "white gold", both an object of desire and – increasingly – an investment vehicle.
As the commercial gateway to China, Hong Kong is the throbbing heart of the global ivory trade. The city's ceaselessly busy ports are a major point of entry for ivory smuggled from Africa to Asia. Customs officials have had to step up their detection game, uncovering larger and larger amounts of contraband ivory in recent years. In 2011, authorities seized 3,396kg of ivory. In 2012 they seized 5,596kg. This year, between January and October alone, they seized 7,230kg. Much more doubtless goes undiscovered, hidden inside shipping containers.
Murkier and more contentious is the issue of legal ivory. In Hong Kong, shops such as Yue Hwa have government-issued licences to sell certain types of ivory. These include ivory products carved before a 1989 ban on international ivory trade, ivory from the tusks of extinct mammoths, and ivory bought from government stockpile sales in Southern Africa. Licensed ivory stores are rife in Kowloon and along the Hollywood Road arts and antiques district on Hong Kong island. A 2011 survey counted 33,526 ivory items on display in 62 outlets.
But regulating the legal ivory market is complex and difficult. Despite certificates of origin, it is difficult to know whether supposedly legal ivory is genuinely pre-1989 or not, leaving the industry open to abuses. "These legal markets provide cover for illegal ivory to be laundered," Ms Gabriel says.
The adult African elephant has no natural predators, but trophy hunters and ivory traffickers are a threat to the survival of the species. Two recent developments should be good news for the largest living terrestrial animal, and hopefully bad news for its human predators. Hong Kong, one of the Asian transit points for the illegal trade in ivory tusks and rhino horns, has just shipped a record seizure of 33 rhino horns and hundreds of carved ivory items back to South Africa, where they can be used as forensic evidence in court against illegal hunters. And 30 African and Asian nations have agreed on measures to tackle the illegal ivory trade. They include countries of origin in Africa, Asian transit ports such as Hong Kong and consumer destinations, principally China and Thailand.
The African Elephant Summit in Botswana vowed a zero-tolerance approach, including tough sentences for wildlife crimes and boosting law enforcement against poaching syndicates. It also classified ivory trafficking as a serious crime to pave the way for more international co-operation, including seizure of assets and extradition to face justice.
Hong Kong's High Court granted an order for return of the ivory and rhino horn to South African under a mutual legal assistance agreement that came into effect two years ago.
The traditional demand for ivory in Asia, boosted by the nouveau riche in the mainland, is fuelling wholesale elephant slaughter in defiance of a ban on most trade in new ivory.
Hong Kong accounts for a significant proportion of the total amount of ivory seized globally each year. Because there has been no sustained increase in seizures in recent years, local officials are not convinced the city is becoming a regional hub for the illegal trade. But how much actually passes through Hong Kong can only be guessed at, since we only know of interceptions of shipments by increasingly resourceful syndicates. There may be a case for controlled culling of some elephant populations to maintain a balance of wildlife habitat, but that is best left to conservation authorities.
A Chinese antiques dealer who prosecutors say was a minor player in an international rhino horn smuggling ring was sentenced Thursday to 37 months in prison for his role in the illegal trade scheme.
Dressed in a black suede blazer, Qiang Wang, listened to Mandarin translations as U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest sentenced him for his role in trafficking artifacts crafted from the horns of endangered rhinos.
Though Forrest followed the minimum set out in sentencing guidelines, Wang's lawyer had asked for five years of probation and no prison time. Prosecutors had recommended a sentence of 12 months plus one day.
The 34-year-old Wang, who once worked in a Buddhist temple in China but currently lives in Flushing, New York, had pleaded guilty in August to illegally trading libation cups carved from rhino horn and ivory to smuggle to Hong Kong.
Wang purchased Asian antiques from U.S. auction houses on behalf of foreign clients in China, according to the government's 16-page sentencing memorandum. The sales of the artifacts were valued at over $1 million, but Wang only reported making an income of $8,000 to $8,500 a year on his tax returns, according to the memo.
The document states that Wang sought out new "bosses" and continued trading the illegal artifacts even after one of his bosses had been arrested and imprisoned in China for smuggling in 2011.
"That should have been a wake up call," said Forrest pointing to Wang's awareness that he was violating the law.
Proof of Poaching, Including in Maliau!
Illegal hunting is alleged to have taken place in several forest reserves and national parks in Sabah, including the Maliau Basin Conservation Area which is also known as The Lost World.
Also in Crocker Range National Park, Tawau Hills National Park, Tabin Wildlife Reserve, Malua Biobank and Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary.
This was exposed during the Fifth East and Southeast Asian Wild Animal Rescue Network (WARN) Conference held at Shangri-La's Rasa Ria Resort here on Nov 26-27.
The conference, which was the first to be held in Sabah, was co-organised by Sabah Wildlife Department and Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC) and sponsored by Malaysian Palm Oil Council, EcoOils, Sabah Tourism Board and Shangri-La's Tanjung Aru Resort.
"We also have evidence of illegal hunting in several forest reserves and national parks in Sabah, including iconic protected areas such as Crocker Range National Park, Tawau Hills National Park, Maliau Basin Conservation Area and Tabin Wildlife Reserve, but also Malua BioBank and Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary," said Dr Benoit Goossens, Director of DGFC, who was the co-organiser of the conference, during a discussion on wildlife trade and poaching in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Sabah. The discussion was also co-chaired by Dr Marc Ancrenaz from HUTAN.
"This (illegal hunting) is extremely serious and we-government, NGOs, research institutions-need to tackle this issue as quickly as possible if we don't want to see our wildlife ending in bowls and/or in medicine products," said Goossens.
"It is paramount that the millions recently invested in our protected forests are used for wildlife protection and wildlife trade and poaching enforcement. Shall we wait for another iconic species (such as the Sumatran rhino) to disappear in Sabah before reacting?" he asked.
Goossens said they also took the opportunity during the discussion to present some recent data from surveys carried out by TRAFFIC in Sabah (and other Malaysian states) on pangolin trade and sun bear bile trade.
Following the recent ivory stockpile crush in the United States, pressure is mounting on Hong Kong to do the same to its 30 tonnes.
At a February meeting of Hong Kong's Endangered Species Advisory Committee (ESAC), discussions will be held to decide whether to crush, crush and incinerate, or leave the stockpile. Hong Kong's harbour trade port is a veritable highway for illegal ivory shipments, many en route to China – where ivory items are prized, and in ever higher demand – as the wealth of the general population increases with economic development.
In the past five years, ivory shipment seizures have skyrocketed from a total of 837kg in 2009 to 7,230kg in 2013, according to Hong Kong's Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department, amounting to a total of over 30 tonnes.
Most is kept in a warehouse, and is currently being weighed for undisclosed reasons. A small amount is displayed in schools and at the airport for educational purposes, but NGO Hong Kong for Elephants has launched a campaign – Blood Ivory Out of HK Schools – involving local students, and is also petitioning the Hong Kong government to crush and incinerate its ivory stockpile. This would "send a strong message to the world that some of us prefer live elephants to dead art," says Sharon Kwok, spokesperson for Hong Kong for Elephants.
Moreover, it would eliminate the potential for any leakage of these items onto the black market – where it can be sold for up to $2,000 per kg – a problem that has been reported in China by the Environmental Investigation Agency ( EIA). This is also the reason why burning the ivory once it has been crushed is equally vital, says HK for Elephants spokesman Alex Hofford.
Numerous shops in Sabah were found selling bear products, which show wildlife poaching is rampant in the state, the 5th East and Southeast Asian Wild Animal Rescue Network (WARN) Conference was told.
The event, the first in Sabah, was organised by Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) and Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC) at Shangri-La's Rasa Ria Resort, Tuaran on Nov 26-27 and sponsored by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, EcoOils, Sabah Tourism Board and Shangri-La's Rasa Ria Resort..
Dr Benoit Goossens, Director of DGFC and co-organiser of the conference, said a discussion on wildlife trade and poaching in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Sabah, was co-chaired by him and Dr Marc Ancrenaz from HUTAN.
"We took the opportunity to present some recent data from surveys carried out by TRAFFIC in Sabah (and other Malaysian states) on pangolin trade and sun bear bile trade," said Goossens.
"The results were astonishing, out of 21 shops visited in December 2010 in Kota Kinabalu, eight were selling bear bile products. Moreover, in a survey carried out in our State in 2012, 10 out of 24 shops surveyed were selling sun bear products. More astonishingly, a TRAFFIC report published in 2010 on pangolin trade in Sabah, including analysis of trade syndicate's logbooks seized by SWD in 2009, showed that 22,200 pangolins were traded by the syndicate in 13 months," added Goossens.
"We also have evidence of illegal hunting in several forest reserves and national parks in Sabah not only at iconic protected areas such as Crocker Range National Park, Tawau Hills National Park, Maliau Basin Conservation Area and Tabin Wildlife Reserve, but also Malua BioBank and Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary. This is extremely serious and we – government, NGOs, research institutions – need to tackle this issue as quickly as possible if we don't want to see our wildlife ending in bowls and/or in medicine products," said Goossens.
"It is paramount that the millions recently invested in our protected forests are used for wildlife protection and wildlife trade and poaching enforcement. Shall we wait for another iconic species (such as the Sumatran rhino) to disappear in Sabah before reacting?" concluded Goossens.
"WARN is a network of wild animal rescue centers, wildlife law enforcement groups and officials and animal protection groups in East and Southeast Asia," said Professor Kurtis Pei, Interim Board Chair of WARN and professor at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan.
A New York City antiques dealer learned Thursday that if you mess with the rhino, you get the horns.
The dealer who pleaded guilty to conspiracy for smuggling artifacts made from rhinoceros horns from the U.S. to China was sentenced to three years in prison.
U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest also sentenced Qiang Wang, known as Jeffrey Wang, to three years of supervised release in Manhattan federal court Thursday.
Wang pleaded guilty in August to smuggling Asian artifacts made from rhino horns and ivory from New York to Hong Kong and China in violation of wildlife trafficking laws. Rhinos are an endangered species.
Authorities said the 34-year-old Queens man faked U.S. Customs documents on packages containing the artifacts. They said they also seized ivory carvings from his apartment.
An attorney for Wang didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nearly 1 500 rhinos have been killed for their horns in the Kruger National Park in the past five years, according to recent stats.
Addressing delegates during a two-day anti-poaching workshop, which started in the Skukuza on Monday, Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa said more than half the total number of rhino poached in South Africa since 2008 were in the Kruger.
"The [Kruger\ continues to bear the brunt of rhino poaching, having lost more than 550 of these iconic animals to unscrupulous poachers during the past 11 months. In the past five years, more than 1 457 rhino have been killed for their horns in South Africa's most well-known state-owned conservation region and wildlife tourist attraction," said Molewa.
The minister said the number of rhino poached in South Africa this year was 891, the highest figure in the history of the country.
She said the total of number of rhino poached in 2012 was 668, while 448 were killed in 2011.
"I am deeply concerned and affected by the magnitude of rhino poaching in South Africa and elsewhere in the world, especially since this iconic species, known as one of the Big Five, has become the focus of international poaching syndicates.
"Despite limited funds, the government has made R75 million available to SANParks to combat rhino poaching until 2016 for the employment and training of additional rangers," the minister said.
Molewa said over the coming days, government will announce more initiatives undertaken by the government to deal decisively with the rhino poaching problem.
"It is, however, important to remind you that the government declared the illegal killing and trade of rhinos and rhino horn a national security threat in 2011," Molewa said.
As the African Elephant Summit open in Botswana today, conservationists released a new estimate of the number of African elephants lost to the guns of poachers last year: 22,000. Some 15,000 elephants killed in 42 sites across 27 countries on the continent, according to newly released data from the CITES program, Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE). But conservationists estimate another 7,000 went unreported. The number killed is a slight decrease over 2011 numbers of 25,000.
"We continue to face a critical situation. Current elephant poaching in Africa remains far too high, and could soon lead to local extinctions if the present killing rates continue," said John E. Scanlon, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) Secretary-General. "The situation is particularly acute in Central Africa—where the estimated poaching rate is twice the continental average,"
In fact conservation groups said that if such rates continued, Africa could lose a fifth of its elephants in the next ten years.
"The estimated poaching rate of 7.4 percent in 2012 remains at an unsustainably high level, as it exceeds natural population growth rates (usually no more than 5 percent)," reads a report on the data compiled by CITES, International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and anti-wildlife trading group, TRAFFIC. Currently, Africa is home to around half a million elephants.
While the numbers represent a massive bloodbath, the new estimate is actually around a third less than a previous one made by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) of 35,000 elephants killed.
Data on this year's death toll hasn't come out yet. But preliminary figures on ivory trafficking from the the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS) database suggest 2013 may be ahead of both 2011 and 2012 for elephant poaching.
"From 2000 through 2013, the number of large-scale ivory movements has steadily grown in terms of the number of such shipments and the quantity of ivory illegally traded. 2013 already represents a 20% increase over the previous peak year in 2011; we're hugely concerned," said Tom Milliken, ivory trade expert with TRAFFIC, which manages the ETIS database.
New Figures Reveal Poaching For The Illegal Ivory Trade Could Wipe Out A Fifth Of Africa's Elephants Over Next Decade.
As delegates gather to discuss the plight of the African Elephant at a summit convened by the Government of Botswana and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) new analyses released today find that if poaching rates are sustained at current levels, Africa is likely to lose a fifth of its elephants in the next ten years.The latest analysis of poaching data estimates that in 2012 some 15,000 elephants were illegally killed at 42 sites across 27 African countries participating in Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE), a programme of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), with funding from the European Union.
Few sights are as repulsive as that of a poached elephant or rhinoceros carcass rotting in the African bush. Their heads have been hacked with axes to remove the tusks or horns. Their eye sockets are empty. Their bodies, or what remains of them after the vultures, jackals and hyenas have eaten their fill, seethe with maggots and flies.
The beasts' bodily fluids have turned the ground to mud, and the stench is appalling. The contrast with the majesty of those animals, and with the natural beauty all around, can easily overwhelm you.
That is what happened to Prince William who, while preparing for a television interview in September, was shown a video of a rhino bleeding to death. His eyes brimmed with tears.
Now he has thrown himself into the fight for their protection from an illicit trade that not only leaves a trail of heartbreaking destruction but which increasingly is being used to fund a deadly assortment of terror groups.
In a statement to The Mail on Sunday, William said: 'In the face of the threat to these species it is natural to feel powerless, but I have seen the extraordinary impact of advances in protection on the ground and the power of some media in reducing demand for these products.
Last week William joined Prince Charles – who initiated their concern – at Clarence House to unveil their most ambitious venture yet: a government-sponsored London summit in February.
After years making documentary films to educate the West about the need to preserve African wildlife, Beverly and Dereck Joubert are turning their sights on a new target.
The South African couple's 22 previous films have raised awareness throughout much of the world about the dwindling numbers of lions and other "big cats" in their natural habitats.
Now they believe they need to broaden their audience to include China.
Leaning over the dashboard of their custom-modified Land Cruiser, Dereck 57, keeps a watchful eye on the six lions in the grass a few feet in front of him.
"We've made a mess of Africa's wildlife population. Colonialism brought trophy hunting and today we're losing five lions a day to poaching and hunting," he says.
Their work has focused on the steady decline of big cats across the globe. The most recent documentary premiers Dec. 1 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on the cable channel NatGeo Wild.Game of Lions tells the story of a group of young males and the dangers they face as they seek to become the one battle-scarred warrior who will lead the pride. It's part of NatGeo's popular Big Cat Week.
The Jouberts have been National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence since 1999. They worry that a rising hunger in China for lion bone wine and exotic animal pelts is adding to the dangers faced by lions.
Africa's lion population is already down to 20,000 to 30,000, from as many as a million originally, says Luke Hunter, president of Panthera, a global wild cat conservation organization based in New York.
Eight Chinese citizens have recently been convicted and sentenced to 3 to 15 years imprisonment in east China's Anhui Province for smuggling a total of 3.2 tonnes of ivory between 2010 and 2012, according to a media release of the CITES Management Authority of China. All the ivory was bought on an auction website and sent to China via courier, falsely declared as calligraphy brush canisters or sewage pipes. The items were then offered for sale online to potential buyers in China. In addition to 15 years behind bars, the principal perpetrator was also ordered to surrender his 3 million Yuan (approximately USD 500,000) in cash.
In a very similar case in the neighbouring Zhejiang Province, involving the same means and smuggling route, 10 individuals were sentenced to serve jail sentences of 6.5 to 15 years. Earlier this year, three Chinese citizens in Fujian Province were sentenced to periods of 7 to 15 years imprisonment for smuggling 7.7 tonnes of ivory from Africa. More recently, on 8 November, 2013, the Supreme Court of southern China's Guangdong Province upheld the judgment of the "court of first instance" in an ivory smuggling case, as a result of which two ivory smugglers will be jailed for 12 and 14 years for smuggling 1.04 tonnes of ivory.
Those prosecuted and convicted for ivory-related offences were not necessarily involved directly in smuggling, but in some cases for their involvement in illegal ivory trade within China.
Earlier this month, a Chinese citizen was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in Beijing for ordering two whole ivory tusks and 168 small ivory carvings in Guangdong Province, although he claimed that they were for his own collection.
Reports from the Supreme Court of China reveal that many other examples of individuals buying, selling or transporting ivory without proper documentation issued by wildlife authorities are being sentenced to imprisonment, although the quantities of ivory involved can often be relatively small. These prosecutions send a message that the risk of facing severe penalties does not stop at the border.
Does the Solution to Elephant Poaching Lie in Small-Town Connecticut?
Wildlife products are big business in China. And to outsiders concerned about dwindling numbers of species, the rabid desire for these products can be shocking. Running down the list of species they are eating, or otherwise consuming, to the brink of extinction, it's easy to get the impression that China's newly rich are utterly depraved. Shameless. Inhuman, even.
In fact, though, their appetite for wildlife products—from shark fin soup and pangolin stew to ivory trinkets—in some ways echoes our own 19th-century rise to wealth. We are the ones, for instance, who brought off the great slaughter of American bison, from 60 million animals down to about 700 in 1902. We alone are to blame for the mindless killing of billions of passenger pigeons, down to the death of Martha, the sole surviving female, in 1914. But those sad stories are already well known. I'm going to tell a hometown story instead, one that resonates with what China is doing to elephants in Africa today.
For many years, I lived in a Connecticut River Valley community that rose up entirely on the strength of the ivory trade. The rival companies at the heart of Deep River and neighboring Ivoryton, Conn., were makers of piano keyboards covered with ivory, and they dominated the ivory market in the Western Hemisphere. The river landing just below my house was an unloading point for ivory tusks. And at the beginning of the 20th century, the factory at the other end of my street was cutting the ivory of a thousand elephants a year.


text:
Waterford Bay – Twin Cities Pioneer Press
Apartment proposal at former Island Station power plant promises Mississippi River access
Twin Cities Pioneer Press | Frederick Melo | May 26, 2019
Ryan Swingruber said he has big plans for the former Island Station site in St. Paul, but not too big.
The 10-acre parcel of land bordering the Mississippi River near Shepard Road and Randolph Avenue has sat vacant since 2014, and previously was home to a coal-fired power plant decommissioned in the 1970s.
By September, he hopes to break ground on three and four stories of rental housing — a mix of micro, studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments.
Working with a series of environmental consultants and architects, the Chicago-area developer drew up plans for 250 market-rate apartments, stepped back from the river.
Swingruber's vision, set within a federal "Opportunity Zone," calls for a multi-family housing complex that he said will increase rather than block river access.
Those plans include paved walking and biking paths to an inlet, a proposed public kayak launch and connections from the regional trail system along Randolph Avenue.
"From there, they'll be able to traverse the peninsula," said Swingruber, who has been meeting with Xcel Energy, which owns land on either side of the future development. "We want to make it public, with defined access and signage."
The West 7th/Fort Road Federation voted to support the project's conditional-use permit in March, but also included a letter to the city's zoning committee raising two concerns. The federation sought deeper assurances the project would include improved public access to the river, and raised questions about the lack of affordable units.
"The Federation Board is being asked, once again, to support a market-rate housing project in our district," said the letter, signed by board president Dana DeMaster. "We have a need for affordable housing, especially for families and for elderly persons, and this project proposal will not meet that need."
She noted that the West Seventh neighborhood has among the highest average rents in St. Paul, and experienced a 17 percent increase in rental costs since 2010.
Swingruber said he's also met with the Friends of the Mississippi River and, in response to their concerns, the building height will drop from four to three stories nearest the riverfront.
"We've seen some past development proposals that haven't gone anywhere," said Colleen O'Connor Toberman, river corridor program director with Friends of the Mississippi River. "From what we've seen of the developer's plans, there are some nice components of community access to the riverfront, and we do appreciate that aspect of the plan."
ISLAND STATION BLOWN APART
The site was once home to the Island Station coal-based power plant, an unofficial St. Paul landmark that drew its share of cheers and jeers before it was blown to smithereens.
At St. Paul City Hall, efforts to declare the decommissioned 1920s-era power plant a local historic site deadlocked with a tie vote before the city council in 2013, sealing its fate. Developers literally exploded the iconic but decrepit structure the following March.
As the 280-feet-tall metal smokestack collapsed into debris, hopes for new residences, retailers and other fresh real estate gained some ground.
Fast forward five years, and no one has built anything. After nearly 45 years in limbo, however, the Island Station property has once again caught the eye of a prospective buyer.
Swingruber, a vice president with the Stoneleigh Cos. of Barrington, Ill., hopes to add housing to the site under the title Waterford Bay. This will be the first Twin Cities development for the company, which has apartment properties throughout Texas.
On Thursday, the St. Paul Planning Commission's zoning committee reviewed a request from the Stoneleigh Cos. to construct the 45-feet-tall apartment complex. Anything above 35 feet triggers the need for a conditional-use permit.
In addition, the main entrance would be situated facing the river on the east side of the property, rather than in the third of the building closest to Randolph Avenue, as currently required.
The developer has also proposed a fire access road and storm sewers in the floodway plain, as well as variances for a front yard setback.
Swingruber said the building will be set back 100 feet from the river, rather than 50, as presently required, in respect for the proposed river setbacks in the city's draft 2040 Comprehensive Plan. It will be three stories tall closest to the river, and four stories closer to Randolph Avenue, creating a stepped-back approach from the waterfront.
The "Traditional Neighborhood" or "T2" zoning would allow a maximum of 375 housing units, but Swingruber plans to build two-thirds as many units so as not to overwhelm the site.
Given the site's history as a coal-fired plant, the project will require carefully addressing contaminated soils. Swingruber said he's worked closely with environmental consultants Braun Intertec, design engineering consultants Kimley-Horn and architects with the BKV Group.
The site sits within a federally designated "Opportunity Zone," which allows certain tax benefits for investors who hold onto properties for at least 10 years.
In an interview, city council member Rebecca Noecker said she looked forward to a briefing from St. Paul Planning and Economic Development.
FALSE STARTS
A previous developer, T.J. Hammerstrom, once planned 240 units of townhomes and condominiums on the site and in an adjoining eight-story building, which were never constructed.
In late 2014, after the power plant was demolished, Breckner River Development of Burnsville sold the site to Riverwalk of Scottsdale, Ariz., for $4.5 million.
The plot of land at 380 Randolph Ave. generates about $70,000 to $75,000 in property tax and special assessments annually. The listed property owner, St. Paul Riverwalk LLC, owes $343,000 in back taxes, according to Ramsey County property records.
According to the county, the land has an estimated market value of roughly $2 million.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: Post drop down value of selected checkboxes I have an html table created dynmically  in PHP.The table has checkbox,Name Price and quantity.The quantity is dropdown list.I want to know how to post all these values depending on selected checkbox.Here is small snipet.What I want is the user will select
checkbox and i want to post name,price and selected quantity to another page cart.php.
What i am having working right now is i am only able  to post selected checkbox value by doing $_POST["checkboxes"].But i dont know to post value for those selected checkboxes.Please help..I am trying to learn PHP.
<form action="cart.php" name="myform" id="menuform" method="post" >
echo ""."Appetizers"."";
echo "";
echo "
";
echo "
";
echo "
";
echo "";
echo "Select";
echo "	";
echo "";
echo "Name";
echo "	";
echo "";
echo "Price";
echo "	";
echo "";
echo "quantity";
echo "	";
echo "
";
echo "
";
echo "
";

while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($appetizers)) {
echo "
";
echo "" ."<input type='checkbox' name ='checkboxes[]'  value=".$row['id'].">".
             "	";
echo "" ."". $row['name']."" . "	";
echo "" ."". $row['price']."" . "	";
echo ""."<select id='quantity[] name='quantity[]'>".
"<option value='1'>1</option>".
"<option value='1'>2</option>".
"</select>".
"	";
echo "
";

}
echo "
";
echo "
";
echo "";

A: You won't need to send the name and price values as you can always retrieve those from the database by knowing the id of that item when sending the form data. So we will be focusing on just the quantities and the id of the items checked.
The main problem with what you are trying to do is that the quantity[] form data and the checkboxes[] form data wont have the same amount of items in the array when the form is sent....unless you check off every item. What happens is checkboxes only gets data sent when the box is checked while quantity[] gets data sent when a select option is selected and by default one is always selected. So basically every quantity select data will get sent whether its checked or not. So it will be hard to determine which quantity array items belong to the checkboxes array items. But there is a solution....a complicated one but still a solution with just php.
Here is the new HTML
I cleaned it up a bit for readability
<form action="cart.php" name="myform" id="menuform" method="post" >
    Appetizers

                Select
                Name
                Price
                quantity

            <?php while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($appetizers)) : ?>

                        <input type="checkbox" name ="checkboxes[]"  value="<?php echo $row['id'] ?>">

                        <?php echo $row['name']; ?>

                        <?php echo $row['price']; ?>

                        <select id="quantity[]" name="quantity[]">
                            <option value="<?php echo '1-' . $row['id']; ?>">1</option>
                            <option value="<?php echo '2-' . $row['id']; ?>">2</option>
                        </select>

            <?php endwhile; ?>

</form>

Ok so what changed...well take a look at the new quantity[] values. I have appended a dash followed by the row id. Now each value has a unique value and we have a way to associate the quantity value with the check box value. We will figure this out on the cart.php file next. Here is how to do that:
cart.php
<?php

if(isset($_POST['checkboxes']) && isset($_POST['quantity']) ) {
    $checkboxes = $_POST['checkboxes'];
    $quantities_unfiltered = $_POST['quantity'];

    $quantities = array();

    foreach($quantities_unfiltered as $unfiltered) {

        $filtered = explode('-', $unfiltered);
        // $filtered now equals a 2 item array
        // $flitered[0] = the quantity value
        // $filtered[1] = the id

        // create an associative array for easy access to the quantity by using the id as the array key

        $quantities[ $filtered[1] ] = $filtered[0];

    }

    // now we can figure out the quantity values for each checkbox checked
    // test it out by echoing the values

    foreach($checkboxes as $id) {
        echo 'Item with id of ' . $id . ' was selected with a quantity of ' . $quantities[$id] . '
';
    }
}
?>

Hope that helps you out a bit.
UPDATE
I added an if statement in the cart.php example and removed the foodprice[] and foodname[] from the name attributes as they don't send as POST data anyways as the html is not a form element. I got a little picky about that.

A: you can use the jquery to submit form when change on dropdown value

<select name="" id="" onchange="this.form.submit()">
  ..........
  .........
  </select>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


In a food processor, combine the flour with the sugar, salt and butter and process for about 5 seconds. Sprinkle the ice water over the flour mixture and process until the pastry just begins to come together, 10-15 seconds- you should still be able to see small pieces of butter in it. Transfer the pastry to a work surface, gather it together and pat into a disk. Wrap the pastry in plastic or wax paper and refrigerate until chilled.
Peel, halve, and core the apples and slice them crosswise 1/4 inch thick. Set aside the larger center slices and coarsely chop the end slices and any broken ones; about half of the slices should be chopped. In a small bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon.
On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the pastry to a 12-by-14-inch rectangle and transfer to a large rimmed baking sheet. Spread the chopped apples over the pastry to within 1 inch of the edge. Drizzle the honey over the chopped apples. Decoratively arrange the apple slices on top in concentric circles or in slightly overlapping rows. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar evenly over the apples and dot with the pieces of butter. Fold the pastry edge up and over the apples to create a 1-inch border, shaped circular.
Bake the galette for about 1 hour, until the pastry is nicely browned and crisp and all of the apples are tender. Transfer the pan to a rack and let the galette cool. Serve warm or at room temperature with some ice cream!


From smartphones to refrigerators and everything in between, a gas-free generator for any situation. Whether you're working and playing off-grid or experiencing a power outage, the Goal Zero Yeti 1250 Solar Generator Kit offers the power to get the job done. Silent, safe, and easy to use indoors or out. Clean self-sustaining power generation from wall, car, or sun. Solar panels not included.
Dimensions: 16 x 11.5 x 14.5 in.


We are an academic residential college primarily made up of undergraduate students, scholars, old collegians and staff members. Our rich history is the foundation for our values. We are diverse, welcoming, accepting and passionate about being the best we can be. Join us to make your college experience unforgettable.
Stay updated on what's happening around Wesley and tell us what you've been up to.
Old Col Philip Zhu (fr 2014), participated in an intensive program that focused on innovation and entrepreneurship at Cambridge University.
Nominations are now being sought for the 2019 election of College Councillors.
Jaime Ford (fr 17), competed in the The Australian Boat Race and was in the winning crew from Sydney University.


A delicious side dish that needs three ingredients and five minutes to cook. A great way to add vegetables to a weeknights dinner.
Sesame Beef Squash Noodle Bowl - A paleo-friendly one-bowl feast that is perfect for your weekday dinner. Quick to cook and can be prepared ahead of time.


The gadget could be a device that is able to perform numerous functions. Gadgets frequently occasions have funky designs but have helpful functions too. It's also being referred as gizmos. Past gadgets may be tracked for the first 1800s. There's numerous gadget including Gps navigation navigation navigation system, USB toys, smartphone and etc. The first appearance within the term "gadget" exist in 1985. Amiga OS uses the word to explain the Graphical user interface widget within the gui.
Gadgets offer benefits for that users. It always includes a small size so that you can go along with you for the place. Spy gadgets provide a recording player and camcorder. For instance, a spy pen gadget will have a camera. It genuinely works just like a pen and allows you to write words. Nobody knows when the camera is recording scane because it is hidden inside the pen. Furthermore, you will find gadgets that design to help individuals with physical impairment. For instance, the electronic eyes gadget enables the blind person to mix the street.
You can look for technology gadgets from your store or online store. The net store usually provides more volume of technology gadgets rival the region store. We've got we have got we've got the technology gadget is often less than $1 according to the kind of function it provides. If you purchase we've got we have got we've got the technology gadget online, you will save money by using coupons.
Prior to you buying gadget online, you have to do some analysis by studying we've got we have got we've got the technology reviews. We've got we have got we've got the technology reviews can be found in we've got we have got we've got the technology news site. We've got we have got we've got the technology news site offers reviews across the latest gadgets.
To look online, you just enter the kind of gadget within the internet internet internet search engine. For instance, if you wish to purchase a spy gadget, you need to type in the keyword "spy gadget" to the web internet internet search engine. Once you have printed the query, you will see all of the gadget stores that sell spy gadgets. Each store offers a different choice of the gadgets. You need to browse every gadget store so guess what happens the choices are.
To create internet shopping simpler, you should utilize the shopping internet internet internet search engine. The shopping internet internet internet search engine for example Google Products can put a number of gadgets along with the prices. You are able to consider the expense within the different gadget stores. You should employ shopping internet internet internet search engine that's located in what your location is. For instance, if you're inside the Uk, you should employ United kingdom shopping internet internet internet search engine. In this manner, you can purchase the gadget from our online store minimizing the shipping charges.


Received on August 09, 2018. Subject to change.
You can hear it the second you ascend the dark internal staircase; Lesa isn't the same restaurant as Embla, its bubbly downstairs counterpart. Actually, it doesn't sound (or act) like most contemporary restaurants in Melbourne.
The room is relatively quiet and the playlist is more likely to be inoffensive jazz than Notorious B.I.G. The menu is fixed: four courses, with three choices at each step. Apart from bread and salad, nothing is shared.
Lesa – "to gather" in Old Norse – is more than just a pretty name. This reserved but unstuffy room is a place to slow down with the important people in your life, aided by chef and co-owner Dave Verheul's beautiful food and a truly idiosyncratic wine list.
If you're open-minded, leave the wine up to the staff. Verhuel's business partner Christian McCabe runs the floor, and keeps staff tasting the stock constantly. As at the Town Mouse (another McCabe restaurant; now closed) this is evident in the service. Every waiter has real, informed opinions about the list.
In another dish, the kitchen smokes leeks for two hours over the fire. The collapsing rings show up in a deep earthenware bowl, with slow-cooked sunflower seeds and a flyaway halo of herbs. Just before you dig in, your server drizzles four-week-old fermented goat's milk over the lot.


text:
Debating Obama's 2012 Run: Bin Laden's Killing Shows Leadership
By Matthew Clair
Immediately following President Barack Obama's announcement of the killing of Osama bin Laden, his poll numbers bounced and many political commentators and pundits suggested that this raid would all but ensure Obama's reelection in 2012. But now, two weeks after the announcement, his poll numbers are back down. Was the speculation surrounding his certain re-election in 2012 premature?
Yes, and no.
While it is by definition premature to predict the outcome of an election that is more than a year away, the question isn't really about a prediction of the outcome of the election but more so about whether or not the killing of bin Laden would help or hurt Obama in the general election. And no, it is not premature to assert that this operation will certainly help Obama.
Politics is about narratives and images, and the killing of bin Laden has provided a powerful set of both that will strengthen Obama's national security credentials in the upcoming election. The photograph from the situation room during the operation coupled with details that reveal Obama as the mastermind behind the operation (a point even conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh concedes) serve to create a narrative of a president who not only takes America's security seriously but also has a rare capability to make reasoned decisions under pressure. This is a president who can crack jokes at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner one moment and lead a team of national security advisors moments later. This is a president in full command – even while playing nine holes of golf.
Despite this national security narrative, some have argued that this credibility will not help Obama in 2012 because of the dismal state of the U.S. economy.
While the economy will most likely be the major issue in the 2012 presidential election, Obama's newfound national security credibility will silence his rivals in debates over national security and terror – an area in which Obama was often attacked during the 2008 presidential election. Further, the killing of bin Laden will help to solidify a narrative on the economy that the Obama administration has been trying to push – that the problems of the economy are resultant from the Bush era and it will take time to fix them. Obama's leadership in finding and killing bin Laden in just two years shows that although he inherited many problems that were left unsolved by the Bush administration, his administration can and will solve them. Finally, despite Obama's weak job numbers, Republicans have yet to provide any legitimate plans on the economy that would sway an Independent voter. Proposing to alter Medicare and to decrease taxes for those in the highest income earners is not a winning solution.
Although it is impossible to predict the future, it is clear that Obama's successful raid on Al Qaeda's leader has strengthened his chances in 2012.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons


(2) Briquetting Press complete system - RUF - Model 1100 with each: - Complete Hydraulic Systems. - 75 HP Main drive motor 575 V, 60 cycles, three-phase. - With additional Cooling (3 HP) and fine Filter return. - Programmable Controller Logic SIEMENS S7-200. - With Siemens TP 177B Control Panel and Display. - Pumps with Gear Motors and thermal Contacts. - 5.3 Cu.Ft Feed Hopper with 15" x 32" opening. - Agitator with 1 HP motor to prevent arching. - Feed Screw with 2 HP Motor. - Feed time regulated automatically by PLC. - Switch box according to DIN EN EN60204-VDE 0113 Safety class IP 54. - Vertical arranged Pre-charger, hydraulic driven.
1)Verville Hopper, 16 cubic yards , (4) 14"x16' Augers, (4)7.5 hp motors, Dump bed tarp 2) 14"x24' auger to hammer mill with 5 hp mptor 3)Yulong GXP-130x100 Hammer Mill, 1020x700mm 250 hp motor 4 tons/hr capacity, soft start 4)48" fan with 50 hp motor 5)Bruning Federle humpback magnet 6)Webster vibrating screen, model FSM, 24"x12' 7)18"x11' conveyor belt, 3 hp motor 8)24"x60' conveyor belt with cover, 10 hp motor 9)45 cubic yard bin with live bottom, cyclone, airlock, (4) 6"x8' unloading screws, 5 hp motor 10)14"x16' auger 5 hp motor 11)Radar airlock 25"x30" 7.5 hp motor 12)Webb burner 10-12mm btu 13)Fuel bin, 16 cubic yards, (2) 6"x5' augers, 5 hp motor 14)Heil 8'x35' drum dryer with blower, 100 hp motor, cyclone, Rotary airlock 15)14"x24' auger 16)Yulong GXP-130x100 hammer mill, 1020x700mm, 250 hp motor, 4 tons/hr capacity, soft start 17)New York blower series 20GI fan, 25 hp motor 18)Bruning Federle hump back magnet 19) 45 cubic yard bin with live bottom, cyclone, airlock, (4) 6"x8' unloading screws, 5 hp motor This mill is available for imediate removal.


text:
Seven new brands at home with Shop Direct
Shop Direct, the UK's largest integrated digital retailer and financial services provider, has added seven big name home and furniture brands to its portfolio of more than 150 over the last six weeks.
The move supports the company's plans to drive sales within its home category by complementing a strong own-brand offer with a greater proportion of branded products. It will also increase the frequency with which Shop Direct can release new home and furniture products to its customers.
Design-led furniture brand Swoon has launched a collection of 80 product lines on Very.co.uk, encompassing sofas, tables, chairs, TV stands and bookshelves. This will be complemented by more than 135 new product lines from Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Content by Terence Conran, Accessorize, Karen Millen and East End Prints available on both Very and Littlewoods.com. The collections will span a mix of bed linen, bath linen, bedroom accessories and graphic art prints.
Several brands already available on Very and Littlewoods have also expanded their home ranges. Ted Baker has launched a home fragrance collection, Sass & Belle has added storage and decorative accessories and Scion has added bath linen. Silentnight, which has sold more than a million individual products via Very to date, has also launched an exclusive range of upholstered bedframes.
Mike Wheeler, home category director at Shop Direct, said: "This is an important step forward in our plans to fuel growth by complementing the strong own brand offer on Very and Littlewoods with an enhanced range of leading home and furniture brands.
"We know our customers love the mix of brands and flexible ways to pay that we offer when it comes to updating their homes, and look forward to announcing the launch of several more big brands in the near future."


We found more records about Suelite Maria Westphal.
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Suelite Maria Westphal was 6 years old when Thirty-five hundred United States Marines are the first American land combat forces committed during the Vietnam War. The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting amphibious operations with the United States Navy. The U.S. Marine Corps is one of the four armed service branches in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States.


text:
NEWARK WATER AND SEWER WORKERS BECOME TEACHERS: CLASS SHOWS THEM HOW TO HELP HOMEOWNERS INSTALL WATER FILTERS
There were few smiles in the room on the faces of the eight Department of Water and Sewer Utilities workers, as their faces bore expressions of intense concentration on the presentation before them, on an item that is small enough to fit in a good-size back pack, costs about $24 at Home Depot, and is changing the lives of thousands of Newark residents on a daily basis.
Three representatives of PUR, the Massachusetts-based water consumer water filtration products brand that is providing the City of Newark with the filters it is giving out for free to homeowners and tenants in every ward, were explaining how the filters are installed and operated to the city employees. The Water and Sewer Utilities employees are going into the community to both install the filters and teach residents to help others do the same.
The training was conducted in early October by three representatives of PUR in the Department of Water and Sewer Utilities' building's conference room at 269 Central Avenue. Both teams wore blue: collared blue shirts and jeans for the PUR trainers and blue uniforms with official patches for the city workers. The only real difference was that the city team also wore their yellow safety vests over their uniforms.
Paula Lopes, the PUR marketing director, led the session, but the other two members of the team, Nicole Stevens-Murphy and Meredith Jarvis, provided a great deal of the training, too, breaking out the actual filters in display kits, taking the workers through the installation and maintenance procedures.
The filters hook up directly to faucet spouts. They allow residents to filter as much as 100 gallons of water before their cartridges require replacement, and come in two types: faucet filtration systems that are placed directly on the faucet, and pitcher filtration systems, which are used when the faucet cannot be connected to the filter.
"The mineral clear filter will remove lead," Ms. Lopes said. "The filters are attached to the faucet's aerator, by twisting it into place. You can flow water with or without the filter.
"The first time you use the filter in the day, or when you come home at night, you should flush the water through the filter for five minutes before using it," Ms. Lopes continued. "That helps flush out lead in the pipes that might have sat there for a long time.
"Above all, never run hot water through a lead filter," she said. She also noted that boiling water does not remove lead from water, either. The filter comes with a switch, so a user can run water without the filter – including hot water.
The other type of filter is a pitcher, to be used for faucets whose aerator cannot connect to attachable filters. These devices resemble pitchers, with the actual filter inside of the pitcher structure. "You put the filter into the pitcher with a good twist and whack, to ensure that it's a tight fit and doesn't fall out," Ms. Lopes said. "Then you run cold water through the drain before filling up the filter. Once that's done, you can put it in the refrigerator and drink from it."
The filters, however, do not have an unlimited life. They can handle about 100 gallons of water, which averages about three months. Both tell users when they're done in similar ways: the filters attached to faucets have lights that turn red when the filter cartridge is exhausted, while the pitcher-style filters have three lights: green to say the filter is working, yellow that the cartridge is low, red that it's time to replace the cartridge.
And there's more – the aerators in filters and faucets – that little ring-like thing that holds a metal net – should be rinsed out before you put in the filter and periodically.
"We have to remind residents that they have to avoid using hot water in the filters and change the cartridges when the light turns red," Ms. Lopes said.
She also told the workers to remind residents to clean the aerators on their faucets and the filters on their devices. "Lead particles can get trapped in these aerators and the O-rings in these devices," she said. "make sure residents are diligent about cleaning them every two weeks."
After the PUR team finished their presentation, they quizzed the Water and Sewer team about what they'd learned, and being professionals, they had the right answers.
Now, they started asking the right questions. Were these filters going to work? Yes, but Ms. Lopes stressed that residents should follow procedure to use them and flush out their pipes before doing so, particularly if they haven't used their pipes for a large length of time.
Alric Jessamy, an inspector who has been with the Department for three years, and an electrician for 30, had some more probing questions for Ms. Lopes. What kind of testing and certification had been done on these filters? As an electrician, he knew the importance of having his equipment certified.
Ms. Lopes had the right answer: the filters are certified by the Water Quality Association and the federal Environmental Protection Administration.
What about the dates printed on the sides of the boxes the filters came in? Were they expiration dates? No, just the dates the filters were made. The filters had no expiration date, only the cartridges.
Ms. Lopes had an additional comment on the filters, the training, and her experience on working with Newark's residents: "They're very open. They're super," she said. "They like to see their options with the filters."
Now the staff had a chance to handle the actual filters and look at demonstration versions of the filters, which were cut in half to show their features.
After doing so, Mr. Jessamy gave his assessment of the new filters. "They're a great product," said the London-born inspector, who grew up in Grenada in the West Indies. "They will alleviate the lead issue, especially the elderly, and people with kids."
Mr. Jessamy has already gone into the communities he serves, to inspect lines and provide filters. "Most people are happy to see me and explain how they're used and how quickly you can install them," he said. "I've spoken to many people who understand what we're doing and how we've taken the initiative," he said.
A newer addition to the Water and Sewer Utilities Department, Laborer Shari Amenhotep, was also impressed with the filters. Despite being on the job for only two weeks, he was attentive during the training and took it seriously.
"I've been distributing water and senior citizens for the past two weeks in on-the-job training," Mr. Amenhotep said. "Now I'm confident I'll be able to install these filters and teach others to do so." The 42-year-old South Ward native added that the training would make his work of installing these filters more effective, as he could do it properly. "In the short term, these filters will protect our residents until all the lead lines are replaced. The plan is going in the right direction."
He also talked about his commitment to community service. Before joining the Water and Sewer Utilities Department, he was a member of the Mayor's Street Academy and Street Team, working with youth at risk. "I'm excited to be here," Mr. Amenhotep said. "We have a wonderful leader in Mayor Ras Baraka, and I want to help him in getting the job done."
City of Newark


Firefighters quickly extinguished a fire that started in the basement of an Indian Lake Parkway home.
District Chief Geoffrey Gardell said the Fire Investigation Unit remained at the scene this afternoon, but added the one-alarm fire appeared to have started after a refrigerator caught fire in the basement of a single-family home at 34 Indian Lake Parkway.
Firefighters went to the area about 4:15 p.m. to find heavy smoke throughout the first floor of the home. Chief Gardell said the refrigerator fire extended a small way into the first floor.
Firefighters broke through windows in the house to vent the smoke, but otherwise the house appeared to have suffered minor damage.
A woman who did not want to give her name said she was home when she smelled smoke.
The smoke alarms started going off, and when she looked in the basement, she said she saw the refrigerator on fire. She said she called 911 and got out of the house with her dog.
Indian Lake Parkway, off Grove Street, was blocked off as firefighters ran hoses into the house. Most firefighters started leaving the area around 5 p.m.
According to the city assessor's office, 34 Indian Lake Parkway is owned by William E. Donahue Jr. and Deborah Donahue of Paxton.


During my short career as a music journalist I have struggled with a condition that very few have heard about but poses a significant barrier to my much-loved hobby. Time and time again it destroys my enjoyment of important musical solos, crucial moments in performances and can even ruin the crescendos of otherwise incredible songs which are often the highlights of a set.
Autosomal Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst syndrome is a reaction caused by bright and flashing lights and affects as many as 35% of people in the United States, however it's exact mechanism of action is still unknown. The disease is thought to be autosomal dominant and therefore if you are a sufferer you also have a 50% chance of passing down the disease to your children. It manifests as uncontrollable sternutation and researches have found it is most likely to be due to changes in light intensity (flashing or pulsating) rather than a specific wavelength.
This is where the problem lies for me, an incredibly serious writer. Flashing and pulsating lights are essential building blocks when it comes to artists building their awe-inspiring shows. Lights add depth and energy to a show especially during a climaxing grand finale, and as a sufferer of Autosomal Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst syndrome, I often miss these crucial final moments.
The majority of suffers are female (67%) and Caucasian (94%) and it has significant correlations with a deviated nasal septum which also affects 80% of the population. There are many theories as to what leads to the uncontrollable sternutation which include the same mechanism that develops photophobia in migraines, the parasympathetic nervous system misinterpreting signals, and increased light sensitivity in the optic nerve.
This isn't just a problem solely relevant to modern day society and flashing disco lights. The Greek philosopher Aristotle first recognised the phenomenon back in 350BC and Francis Bacon in the 17th Century also had theories on the causation of the syndrome. However, today's research is focused on the work by Henry Everett in 1964 who linked the syndrome to the human nervous system.
For now, I continue to work and to write, filling in the gaps of sections of shows that I have missed due to being struck down unexpectedly. Others with Autosomal Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst syndrome will appreciate that this is no joke and will hopefully stand by me in saying that this is definitely nose laughing matter.


Below you will find a list of frequently asked questions. You can click on any of these and get some help with anything you might be having a problem with. If you know of anything else that should be addressed on this page please Contact Us.
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One of the key benefits of the discussion board format is that it enables commonly asked questions to be answered once, for the benefit of all. Before posting your question, it is always worth checking to see if it has already been asked - and answered! You can do this via the Search link on the Menubar. Various options are available, both for how the search term is specified and for controlling how much of the Forums database you want to search. This is where the specificity of topic subjects is important, making it much easier to locate precisely what it is you're after from a list of search results.
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text:
You've Been Genetically Engineered To Fall In Love With Peter Kavinsky
We're in deep.
Aug 28, 2018 7:53am
By Katie Stow
Falling for fictional characters was the bread and butter of our childhood. We were essentially betrothed to Chad Michael Murray while having a semi-serious fling with Matthew McConaughhey for the majority of our teenage years. And while we thought we were over these helpless love affairs with on-screen dreamboats, one recent movie knocked us right back into yet another fantasy relationship.
If you've been on Netflix in the last fortnight (because, who hasn't?) then you will have spotted a new rom-com named, To All The Boys I've Loved Before. The movie's premise is that Lara Jean, the female lead and hopeless romantic, writes letters to her five crushes that she keeps in her wardrobe. Lara Jean's little sister then steals the letters and sends them out to the boys.
This leads us to Peter Kavinsky—one of the lucky lads to receive a letter. Kavinsky is a regulation hot high school boy. He plays on the lacrosse team, he has great hair, a car, and eyes you could very easily get lost in.
You would think that the fact he's a high school boy would be enough for us to turn our crush off, but yet as the movie plays out in front of us, we get more and more obsessed with Peter Kavinsky. (FYI, the actor who plays him is 22 years-old).
But why is this? Other than his dashing good looks, the reason why we can't help but fall for Kavinsky is because we've essentially been genetically engineered to do so.
Okay, maybe it's not that scientific, but our up-bringing and mass exposure to American rom-coms has had a long-lasting effect on the way we look at men. The Ashton Kutchers and Ryan Reynolds of the world have trained us to expect a certain level of romance, spontaneity and passion in our relationships—as well as an odd desire for a larger-than-life romantic gesture after a fight.
Peter Kavinsky, played by Noah Centineo, brings us all the classic goods of a rom-com lead—meaning we're already hook, line and sinker—but he also tops it off by being genuinely woke.
Unlike the hot men of rom-coms past, Peter Kavinsky has a 2018-realness that gets us seriously excited. Sure, he's smart, attractive and brooding, but he's also tuned into current issues and doesn't make any racist/sexist/insensitive comments that we're so used to seeing in '90s classics.
It helps as well that he literally does nothing wrong—which means he has transformed into our an actual angel in our eyes.
Oh, and he also has magical powers to clear his throat in the sexiest way possible, which really seals the deal for us.
So don't feel weird if you have a serious attraction to Peter Kavinsky, because it's only natural. You'd literally be going against human biology if you didn't. But if you're really concerned about your crush, perhaps you should write it down in a letter addressed to him. That won't end badly at all…
Celebrity5 Times Lana Condor And Noah Centineo From 'To All the Boys I've Loved Before' Flirted On Camera
undefined: Katie Stow


Returned Serviceman's League, Social & General Clubs, listed under "Social & General Clubs" category, is located at Banna Ave Griffith NSW, 2680, Australia and can be reached by 0269623460 phone number. Returned Serviceman's League has currently 0 reviews.
Browse all Social & General Clubs in Griffith NSW.


EPA waits for court decision on agency's request for more time to develop regulations for perchlorate in drinking water. President Trump signs a big water infrastructure bill. The USGS coordinates groundwater mapping in the Mississippi alluvial aquifer, important for farm irrigation. The Defense Department's environmental research program announces funding for PFAS remediation. And lastly, the USGS investigates manure pollution in Washington state and whether a cemetery in Michigan pollutes groundwater.
"Well, I know California well. And I see houses, beautiful houses — people are very proud of their house. Their lawn is brown. It's dead. It's dying. It's dead. And they end up taking it out and just have sand in front of their houses. And they have so much water, they don't know what to do with it. It's so crazy." — President Trump gives his opinion on water-conserving landscaping at a White House leadership conference for state officials from Alaska, California, and Hawaii. Xeriscaped lawns, as they are called, are a mix of native grasses and drought-tolerant plants, not sand.
President Trump signed America's Water Infrastructure Act, a broad bill that authorizes billions of dollars of water projects. The bill garnered near-unanimous support in Congress.
See here for some of the bill's provisions.
Starting the first week of November, a federal contractor will begin aerial mapping of one of the nation's most important aquifers for agriculture.
The Mississippi alluvial aquifer covers parts of seven states. Groundwater in the region, particularly in Arkansas, has declined in recent decades because of intensive farming.
The first two weeks of flights in November will center on southern Arkansas and western Mississippi. Instruments dangled from a helicopter will map the aquifer to a depth of 1,000 feet — data that will be turned into a three-dimensional model.
The mapping project is being coordinated by the U.S. Geological Survey, in partnership with state agencies.
Do Manure Application Methods to Reduce Nitrate Pollution of Groundwater Work?
The U.S. Geological Survey sought to answer that question in Whatcom County, in northwest Washington state.
To help farmers apply manure in appropriate quantities, Whatcom has guidance that takes into account weather, soil, and crop conditions. The USGS paired a field that used that guidance with one in which manure was spread at fixed times. Nitrate and chloride concentrations in groundwater beneath the fields were measured for three years.
The results for nitrate were inconclusive. Fields using the manure guidance had higher nitrate levels in some cases, and lower levels in others.
There was a clear seasonal trend in all fields: nitrate concentrations rising at the onset of the autumn rains.
The U.S. Geological Survey investigated shallow groundwater at a cemetery located in the groundwater protection zone for Lansing, Michigan.
Findings of higher levels of bacteria, metals, and nutrients were similar to studies in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom that cemeteries affect groundwater quality.
The Defense Department's environmental research program held a conference in July to discuss research into one of the military most persistent groundwater contamination problems: chlorinated solvents.
Chlorinated solvents clean grease from airplanes and other equipment. The conference report, released in October, identifies critical research needs for groundwater: understanding natural processes that degrade the chemicals, analyzing data from existing pump-and-treat systems to learn their effectiveness, and characterizing the movement of pollutants underground.
The EPA is still waiting to hear if its motion to extend the deadline for issuing a rule limiting a rocket fuel chemical in drinking water will be granted.
In late August the agency petitioned the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to extend by six months the October 31, 2018, deadline that the court set for regulating perchlorate in drinking water.
As of Friday afternoon, the court had yet to rule on the motion.
The standard has been in the works for years. The agency determined in 2011 that it should regulate perchlorate, which affects the drinking water of 5 million to 17 million Americans.
The court order came out of a lawsuit brought in 2016 by the Natural Resources Defense Council, which argued that the EPA had missed legally required deadlines for proposing a perchlorate standard.
The Defense Department's environmental research program is soliciting proposals to study PFAS chemicals in water and soil.
Four areas of need relate to PFAS chemicals: biodegradation in firefighting foams, analytical methods, sampling methods, and methods to identify if PFAS in a contamination plume came from Defense Department sources.
Proposals, due January 8, 2019, should be submitted online.


Constructed of machined stainless steel and aircraft grade 6061-T6 aluminum, the LX800 mount presents a rock-solid platform with precision roller bearings on both axes and a 1.75 inch stainless steel R.A. shaft. Its .68 inch diameter brass worms and 5.8 inch diameter, 225-tooth aluminum gears deliver smooth, precise movement with up to a 90 pound instrument load. Add to this internal cabling and the AutoStar II fully-computerized GoTo system with GPS, with a database of over 144,000 objects. All this sets atop a new ultra-stable tripod.
StarLock — the heart of the LX800 — is the revolutionary new technology that makes target acquisition on your imaging sensor and accurate guiding during exposures completely automatic. With Meade's exclusive LightSwitch technology at its core, StarLock uses a 80mm f/5 optic and a super wideangle lens in a two camera system that automatically finds your target in high-precision, immediately captures a field star as dim as 11th magnitude and then guides to an incredible accuracy of one arcsecond. StarLock achieves this amazing accuracy because, unlike add-on guiders, StarLock is integrated into the telescope control system and communicates directly with the motor controllers in real time with a maximum precision of 0.01 arcseconds. There's no need for a separate guider or computer and the StarLock requires no calibration, no user focusing or guide star selection. StarLock even automatically programs periodic error correction and then corrects for any other errors down to virtually zero. StarLock also provides computer-assisted polar alignment using the drift method for extreme precision. No expensive shaft encoders or add-on guiding systems can provide this level of performance.
Includes single 26 lbs. stainless steel counterweight. Heaviest sub-assembly is 26lbs.
26 lbs. single stainless steel.
25mm x 26mm f/1.04 optic with 1/2 inch format CMOS sensor gives field of 14.72 x 11.78 degrees.
High Precision Guiding +/- 1 arcsecond RMS (with good seeing. 1-4 second crrection update rate depending on star magnitude. Faintest guide star 11th mag.


I haven't had a toy train of any type since I was a very young kid and I don't even remember anything about it at this point. However, the memories of being held hypnotized by the high-end train sets click-clacking through elaborately detailed miniature towns and mountainscapes at department stores during the holidays, or even some random shops year round, have never really left me and I've always retained the idea of revisiting the hobby on my to-do list, even if a dead last item much of the time.
So, seemingly out of nowhere, I recently got the bug to get a train set to have on hand this Christmas. I figured a train that would fit the part for the holiday season would be a good start, but it quickly became clear I didn't want just a toy, full of plastic gaudy greens and reds and necessitating a pallet of D cell batteries. No, I decided I wanted something of decent quality that would be a good platform to expand upon beyond Christmas.
Right now I'm in full-on research mode, weighing the pros and cons between the various scales and/or gauges available. So far the O gauge seems to be most ideal for what I'm looking for. G is too big, N a bit too small. HO seems cool and practical space-wise, but I'm liking how O affords more detail and features.
I haven't even seen The Polar Express movie — yet — but the Lionel Polar Express O gauge set seems like it might be a good starter set. I don't know why, but I've always really liked the passenger trains, especially the streamliner types from the '30s through '50s. The Polar Express train, of course, has a more traditional-looking Berkshire type steam engine, but it looks cool, too (although I see the Lionel website does have a streamliner version!).
Ultimately, I don't know how sophisticated I want to get or how much I want to invest — this could be a quick phase — but any thoughts, photos, links, and suggestions are welcome. I am not in too much of a rush here, particularly as I can see how easily expensive of a hobby this can be, but I am kinda looking forward to the calming effect of a nice little train set chuffing around a little track, even if I have to be my own Santa.
"You meant to blow them up?"
"Of course, why else would a grown man play with trains?"
ETA: I'm going with the Lionel Polar Express set.


text:
Q: How do I validate the same variable multiple times? Imagine that I want to validate if the object is null and I have 3 methods that will help me, such:

*

*GetCompanyBySystemId();

*GetCompanyById();

*GetCompanyByName();

So, first I'll try to get the Company by system Id, if it's null I'll try to get it by Id, and, last but not least, I'll try to get it by Name.
My question is, what is the best practice to validate the company without doing this:
var company = GetCompanyBySystemId(string);

if (company == null)
{
  company = GetCompanyById(string);
}

if (company == null)
{
  company = GetCompanyByName(string);
}
...

A: You may use the null-coalescing-operator:
var company = GetCompanyBySystemId(@string) ??
              GetCompanyById(@string) ??
              GetCompanyByName(@string) ??
              throw new InvalidOperatonException($"No company found for { @string }");

Also notice I added @ as string is a reserved keyword and therefor not allowed as variable-name.

A: I always like the Try* paradigm (like int.TryParse) when you are stating that something may or may not be available, and you won't know at runtime:
public static void Main()
{
    string id = "test";
    object company = null;

    if(!TryGetCompanyBySystemId(id, out company)
        && !TryGetCompanyById(id, out company)
        && !TryGetCompanyByName(id, out company))
    {
        //we've failed entirely
    }
    else
    {
        //we got a company
    }
}

public static bool TryGetCompanyBySystemId(string id, out object company)
{
    company = null;

    //locate company and return true if found

    return false;
}

public static bool TryGetCompanyById(string id, out object company)
{
    company = null;

    //locate company and return true if found

    return false;
}

public static bool TryGetCompanyByName(string id, out object company)
{
    company = null;

    //locate company and return true if found

    return false;
}

A: If you often have to seach for Company in such a way, I suggest  extrcating a method in which we can hide all the details:
public static Company GetCompany(string idOrName) {
  if (value is null)
    throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(idOrName));

  var result = GetCompanyBySystemId(idOrName) ??
               GetCompanyById(idOrName) ??
               GetCompanyByName(idOrName);

  return result != null
    ? result
    : throw new ArgumentException($"Company with id or name {idOrName} is not found.",
                                    nameof(idOrName));
}

Then whenever you want a company just get it:
// Just find me the company by string and don't make we think
// names, ids etc. things
Company company = GetCompany(@string);

In case not finding company is normal situation, you can implement TryGetCompany:
public static bool TryGetCompany(string idOrName, Company company) {
  // Still exceptional situaltion
  if (value == null)
    throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(idOrName));

  company = GetCompanyBySystemId(idOrName) ??
            GetCompanyById(idOrName) ??
            GetCompanyByName(idOrName);

  return company != null;
}

usage
if (TryGetCompany(@string, out var company)) {
  // company with id or name string has been found and put into company
}
else {
  // company with id or name string has not been found
}