Can Australian businesspeople save the Great Barrier Reef?
For an investment banker, Stephen Fitzgerald knows a lot about how climate change is damaging the Great Barrier Reef. During his 20-year career with Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong and Tokyo, Fitzgerald's Australian base was his family's holiday house at Kewarra Beach, nestled between Cairns and Port Douglas in Far North Queensland.
"We took the kids to the reef and realised how iconic it was to the brand of Australia," Fitzgerald tells The Australian Financial Review Magazine. "People think of the reef, the rock [Uluru] and the [Opera] House."
In 2009 he was invited to join the chairman's panel of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF), then a little-known charity that raised money for scientific research and innovative endeavours to save coral from bleaching and other effects of climate change. Membership of the chairman's panel, which costs $20,000 a year, is a way to help charm donors to dig deep. Private briefings by scientists about the threats to the reef encourage them to dig deeper still.
As he learnt more, Fitzgerald – who is now based in London and runs an investment firm that focuses on businesses with green credentials – and his wife decided to give a further $1 million. In 2010 he joined the foundation's board and agreed to head its investment committee, which invests funds until they are allocated to specific projects. It's a role that in April last year became a lot more interesting when the Turnbull government granted $443 million to the foundation. Before that, it had raised just $90 million over 18 years.
The grant, announced a week before the May budget, initially won applause. "For once we need to pat the government on the back instead of kicking them in the arse," the chief of a reef tourism operators' lobby group told The Sydney Morning Herald. But within weeks, commentators began picking apart how an organisation with six full-time and seven part-time staff and a focus on raising donations had come to win such a large bundle of money from the government.
Labor went on the attack. "I am trying to understand", Senator Kristina Keneally asked federal Environment Department secretary Finn Pratt in a budget estimates hearing, "how the greatest single contribution from the government to the Great Barrier Reef in Australian history went to one foundation without a tender process, without advertising, without a competitive process and, it would seem, without an invitation from the government to the foundation to apply". Environmental activists pointed to the A-list executives sitting around the foundation's board table, and queried their links to Malcolm Turnbull.
Now the knives are fully out. Last month the Auditor-General declared that the grant was given without clear targets of what was to be achieved and the Environment Department's assessment criteria was insufficient. A Senate committee is holding an inquiry; as at the date of publication Turnbull has been asked to give evidence in person (although a close associate says he is almost certain to decline, saying it's akin to a circus).
The Senate report is likely to lob in February, as the election campaign hits full gear. Labor is promising to revoke the funding should it win office – a move that is popular in inner-city electorates that are at risk of falling to the Greens. Shadow environment minister Tony Burke tells AFR Magazine he is even prepared to claw back money already spent.
"The money should be returned and if they have committed more than is reasonable for the short period of time it's been with them, then we would seek the full amount back," he says. "And for everything they claim they couldn't return we would seek legal advice to how we could return the maximum amount to the taxpayer."
And so the GBRF is seemingly in an impossible bind, ensnared by the shortcomings of how the money was rushed into its hands. With a change of government likely, it has just months to reverse Labor's scepticism. Yet that scepticism is undermining its ability to raise more money from the private sector; a key reason it was given the government money in the first place.
The foundation is moving carefully, and has so far spent just $25 million of the funds with the rest not due to be allocated until June. But if Labor wins government before then, the lack of funding tied to specific projects will make it easier to demand back the money as one of its first acts of office. Turnbull, according to close friends, is annoyed that a grant that should have been a game-changer for saving the reef has been dragged into partisan politics.
Fitzgerald worked with Turnbull at Goldman Sachs – although never closely, he says. Asked about the controversy, Fitzgerald vainly attempts to keep the focus on the main game. "The politics can operate on its own. It's not something I signed up for. I signed up to focus on the reef," he says. "Our reef is in a wealthy country and it's incumbent upon us as Australians to do everything we can to protect it … If Australia doesn't do all it can to protect the Great Barrier Reef, we as a nation will be held accountable."
But that's not the type of accountability that everyone is talking about now.
Great Barrier Reef Foundation chairman John Schubert admits he was blindsided by the grant announcement. The former Commonwealth Bank of Australia chairman and Esso Australia managing director was involved in the foundation's creation in 1999 and had spent almost two decades raising funds from the private sector, as well as state and federal governments. Schubert was alone in the meeting last April with Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg (the then- minister for the environment) when the grant was first discussed. He demurs when asked who had the original idea, a matter of fervent speculation by critics.
It may have been a surprise, but Schubert was never going to turn his back on a grant which he believes can make a transformative step in building the resilience of the Great Barrier Reef. "It's a huge scale-up for the organisation. It's massive," he says from the foundation's new office in Brisbane's CBD. "When I was first told about it, my first thought was, 'Can we handle it?' I thought of the capabilities of our partners and I thought, 'Yes we can scale up and do this successfully'."
It is thanks to Schubert's networking that the GBRF has so many heavy hitters on its board. Around the directors' table is decades of corporate experience: there's former long-serving Origin Energy managing director and current Business Council of Australia president Grant King, Suncorp chief executive Michael Cameron, Qantas executive Olivia Wirth, Rio Tinto veteran Phillip Strachan, Deloitte Asia Pacific chief Cindy Hook and the former CEO of GE Mining Steven Sargent.
There are also scientists, including Dr Russell Reichelt (the former chief executive of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority) and former chief executive of the Australian Institute of Marine Science John Gunn. The chairman's panel is a who's who of corporate Australia and includes Jac Nasser, the former chairman of BHP Billiton and an assiduous networker who has led fundraising efforts in New York.
Schubert says the foundation's unique structure – combining corporate nous and scientific expertise – made it the perfect candidate for the record Commonwealth grant. "The money is for us to distribute and others to spend. We don't spend it," he says. "We distribute it optimally and for the benefit of the reef."
A 92-page agreement between the federal Department of Environment and the GBRF outlines where the $443 million can be spent. This includes $200.65 million on water quality improvements, $100 million on reef restoration and science activities, $57.8 million on crown-of-thorn starfish control, $40 million on reef monitoring activities and $22 million for Indigenous and community reef protection activities.
Representatives of the federal government and Queensland government's environmental departments sit on the committee that recommends to the foundation's board which projects to fund. Also on that committee are scientists such as Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a professor of marine science at the University of Queensland, and former Queensland chief scientist Dr Geoff Garrett.
Despite all this, the Auditor-General said there was insufficient transparency over how the reef foundation will allocate grants, and recommended performance targets to ensure the government gets value for money. It also recommended clearer guidelines be added to the agreement between the department and the foundation.
Faced with accusations the grant was given without a tender process, both Turnbull and Frydenberg publicly – and privately – insist that the idea was recommended by the Department of the Environment and Energy. Multiple sources have confirmed to AFR Magazine that the idea for the grant indeed "percolated" from the Environment Department before landing on the desk of Frydenberg, who took it to the expenditure review committee.
Turnbull has told friends the suggestion he was giving money to his corporate friends was "rubbish", saying he had nothing to do with the foundation, nor its directors. He was asked along to the April meeting with Frydenberg and Schubert as a formality. But his mere presence at that meeting has fuelled conspiracy theories. Labor's Burke is one of many to accuse the government of "giving away money to their corporate friends."
The conspiracy theories have been fuelled by how the grant has been funded. The agreement between the department and the foundation runs for six years, yet the full $443 million was rolled into the 2017-18 year and paid in a single, gigantic, lump sum. Geoff Cousins, the former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, opined to The Saturday Paper last August that the upfront grant was a way to alleviate pressure from UNESCO which has threatened to put the reef on the endangered list. Labor thinks that this is a furphy. Still, many wonder why the money was rushed out the door.
The answer was given by Turnbull in a letter sent to the Senate committee in October. More regular funding options were initially considered, the former PM wrote, including one larger payment over six years and another smaller payment over two years. Then-treasurer Scott Morrison jumped at the larger grant but wanted it allocated entirely in the 2017-18 financial year because the funds were available. According to well-placed sources, moving the funds to a charity, and off the government's books, meant they could be accounted for on the debt ledger rather than on the deficit, making it easier to balance the budget in future years. Because the money was fully paid in one go, it does not appear in the budget forward estimates.
While insisting that the grant idea came from the bureaucracy, Turnbull has defended the decision to choose the GBRF because it would use the money to leverage more funding from the private sector. "It was plainly a reputable organisation with a track record in reef research and support, with whom the department had previously worked and in which it had confidence," he said in his letter to the Senate committee.
Which gets to the heart of the foundation's mission: it is networked into corporate Australia and philanthropists here and overseas to raise funds for innovative ideas to save the reef. And saving the reef, it argues, will need more money than governments alone can give. As part of its investment strategy for the $443 million, the foundation has committed to raise a further $300 million to $400 million from the private sector over six years. GBRF chief executive Anna Marsden, who joined three years ago and who previously ran fundraising for the Queensland Art Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art, acknowledges it will be a challenge to hit that target.
"The bottom line is, $400 million is a lot and so we are turning on all our engines to raise that money," she says. "There is a lot of talk about why us and why this model. There is a lot of expectation on us to leverage that money and that's what we're going to do."
Marsden says she doesn't know about the origins of the grant to the foundation. "It's really funny. I've never asked and have never been told," she says. "It could just be the simplest answer. We have just lost half the reef and we needed a big investment. Who knows?"
Lady Elliot Island is the southern-most island in the Great Barrier Reef. Eighty kilometres north-east of Bundaberg, it looks from the air like a coral atoll, but on closer inspection there is a grass air-strip running down the middle where small aircraft deliver guests to the eco-resort, or day-trippers from the mainland. Accessibility by boat is limited.
The distinctive lagoon around the island is home to some of the healthiest coral in the Great Barrier Reef and the island itself is a crucial breeding ground for turtles and a nesting site for seabirds. When it was discovered in 1863, it was mined extensively for guano, the nutrient-rich fertiliser derived from accumulated bird excrement which, until World War I, was a crucial ingredient for gunpowder.
Three metres of surface soil and the bulk of the vegetation were stripped from the island, leaving only eight pisonia trees and the distinctive white lighthouse which was built in 1866. Lady Elliot Island was colloquially known as "the Rock" until the 1960s. Over the decades, subsequent owners, including current owner Peter Gash, have tried to rebuild the native vegetation on the island, which has been taken over by invasive species such as lantana. Ever since Sir David Attenborough paid homage to the place in his 2015 series, The Great Barrier Reef, the phone at Lady Elliot Island Eco Resort hasn't stopped ringing. It now takes bookings a year in advance.
The island was chosen by the GBRF as the first recipient of its $14 million "islands initiative", focused on restoring reef islands which, in turn, helps the underwater eco-system. The initiative is not paid for out of the $443 million grant but is instead funded by a separate $5 million grant from the federal government, $5 million from Lend Lease, $3 million from the Queensland government and $1 million from the Fitzgerald Family Foundation.
That money has paid for a dedicated team, including Jim Buck, a retired engineer, and his wife, a nursery expert, to remove introduced species and replace them with natives while at the same time trying not to disturb nesting seabirds. Buck has been able to hire subcontractors from the mainland so that a decade's work will be done in six years. "You can do a lot of damage if you do things too quickly," Buck tells AFR Magazine on a tour of the restorative projects on the island. "In many ways this is like a recovering mining site."
Also on the island tour is GBRF chief scientist Professor Peter Mumby, a marine biologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. Among his strategies to rebuild coral after bleaching events is identifying key "hubs" that connect the reef, and helping larvae migrate between these hubs during spawning season. "In theory if you are able to target those interventions at the right locations, you could be building significant resilience into the system," Mumby says.
Projects funded by the GBRF show plenty of blue-sky ambition. "RangerBot" is an underwater autonomous vehicle that monitors the health of coral while killing crown-of-thorn starfish. It's been developed by Queensland University of Technology researchers and is co-funded by GBRF and Google. Another project stems from research by Southern Cross University Professor Peter Harrison into "seeding" coral larvae that thrive at higher temperatures directly onto damaged reefs. In 2016, GBRF brought in a philanthropist to fund a pilot of Harrison's work.
In an example of how the foundation fosters collaboration, the QUT and Southern Cross teams have started working together. A trial has begun of the RangerBot to also disperse baby corals, paid for with money from Tiffany & Co. Foundation. Says Harrison: "One of the GBRF's unique attributes is its willingness and ability to explore research ideas that are not yet mainstream, yet that have the potential to deliver high impact results for the reef."
The GBRF's John Schubert and Anna Marsden defending the foundation during a public hearing on the partnership program in Canberra.
Perhaps the most ambitious idea of all is research into the application of an artificial film on the water's surface to help protect the coral from the harmful effects of UV rays and higher water temperatures. The "sun shield" is 50,000 times thinner than a human hair and completely biodegradable. It contains the same ingredient corals use to make their hard skeletons – calcium carbonate. It was also piloted through money from GBRF and Tiffany & Co. and early trials have proven successful enough that in June last year it won additional funding from the Queensland government.
Mumby admits some scientists are a bit uneasy over corporate involvement in reef funding but he believes their concerns are naive. "A lot of scientists have had no exposure to industry. So there is some level of misunderstanding of what industry does and its motivations," he says. But, he adds, business has enormous potential to provide solutions. "The vast majority of scientists I interact with are of the view we have to work together."
For Mumby, who was appointed to the GBRF in July, the federal government grant will better enable the foundation to bring researchers together. "People in the science community have been calling for more money, not just for science but for management, for a long time," he says. "But it's previously been reactionary after a bleaching event. This new money has been really welcomed by the broader community because it allows [scientists] to do specific research over a specific period of time, five years or so. It's a significant enough investment that we can achieve things."
On a snorkelling trip during the tour of Lady Elliot Island, the group witnesses an amazing array of coral, reef fish and the cay's famous green and loggerhead turtles, as well as a tiger shark. Despite the doom and gloom predictions, Mumby is confident answers to the decline of the Great Barrier Reef will be found, saying he and other scientists are continually surprised by its resilience.
"In my career, I've certainly had a number of occasions where I thought this reef is toast, only to discover it come back in a way we never thought possible," he says. "We've certainly seen evidence of some coral reefs that can withstand significant impact and regrow in a way which is quite surprising."
GBRF chief Anna Marsden is also adamant there is still time to act, but believes it is this generation's responsibility to find the answers. "The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] says we have 30 years and it's very clear it's on our watch. The window is our generation."
The unusual make-up of the GBRF – a charity led by scientists and business people – reflects its origins which stretch back to 1999 when three unlikely environmental saviours gathered in an airport lounge to discuss how to fund research to save the reef. The three were long-standing senior Queensland public servant Sir Sydney Schubert (no relation to John), who had run the Department of Premier during the Bjelke-Petersen conservative government; oil shale pioneer Sir Ian McFarlane and former James Hardie chairman John B. Reid.
The meeting took place a year after the first major coral bleaching event on the reef in 1998 when 50 per cent of the 3000 individual reefs suffered damage. "They believed there were a number of threats to the reef and they thought there wasn't anywhere near enough communication and collaboration between the research institutions. They talked about it and wondered what they could do about it," John Schubert recalls.
Among the foundation's critics are those who question whether a charity run by business leaders should take a front-line position in saving the Great Barrier Reef. Australian Conservation Foundation chief executive Kelly O'Shanassy doubts the GBRF's capability and expertise to deliver viable projects to invest in. She says governments are better placed to directly deliver funding and argues that the Auditor-General had found the existing government department was doing a good job of allocating those funds. O'Shanassy backs Labor's pledge to recoup the money from the foundation and re-divert it to government agencies.
The ACF chief also argues that the money would have been better off spent on Australia dealing directly with climate change. Tackling this, instead of funding research into ways to mitigate its effects on the reef, is an underlying ideological stoush. "Unless you deal with climate change, it's a knock-out punch for the reef. It doesn't matter what you do in other areas," O'Shanassy says.
The origins of the foundation – especially the motives of Sir Sydney, with his links to Joh Bjelke-Petersen who was famously intolerant of environmental groups – have also been questioned by critics. But John Schubert, who was on the CBA board when he attended his first meeting in 2000, says the environmental concerns of the trio were genuine. "We came to the conclusion that what they were proposing was a very good idea," he recalls. "There was a feeling there wasn't enough money going into research on the reef. Of what was being done, there wasn't enough aimed at the threats and practical outcomes in relation to those threats."
Scientists were asked by the foundation to compile a list of threats. They came back with 42 items and were then asked to whittle the list down to the five biggest problems. These were climate change, water quality, overfishing, unco-ordinated coastal development and crown-of-thorn starfish (which feeds on the coral).
Schubert, who had joined the board of the GBRF by the end of 2000 and has been chairman since 2004, admits it was a hard grind in the early years with only a few million dollars raised. "Fundraising is both a science and an art form," he says. "The foundation is unique, especially in the use of the corporate sector. That's been criticised lately but it's a real strength of the foundation because it's allowed our resources and thinking to be much broader."
The foundation openly acknowledges climate change is the biggest threat to the reef, but believes practical work on projects can occur hand-in-hand with international action on global warming. Schubert is particularly enthusiastic about research into the genetic make-up of coral species. Scientists are looking at how some types of coral closer to the surface can survive in water temperatures up to two degrees warmer than others further under water.
So far two coral species have had their genomes partly sequenced in a project that is bringing medical researchers together with agricultural researchers and marine biologists. "Our real advantage comes from innovation," says Schubert. "It's collaboration and bringing the best people together to address a real problem, no matter where they are from. It's become one of the hallmarks of where we have made an impact."
For Marsden, the past six months have felt more like two years. Sitting in a meeting room in the Great Barrier Reef Foundation office just a few weeks before Christmas, the 43-year-old is the first to admit the process of scaling up her small foundation (it aims to have 39 staff by July) while being threatened with the grant's reversal has been a challenge.
As new staff scurry around the office, which is adorned with picture-perfect postcards of the reef and a large chunk of dead coral in the foyer, the affable Marsden – with her distinctive blonde bob and dark-rimmed glasses – tries to remain upbeat. She's most enthusiastic when talking about the growing awareness of the plight of the reef and what's needed to save it.
The foundation chief admits that not every project it invests in will come to fruition, either in the laboratory or applied to a living organism that is the size of Italy. "There are no guarantees. It is a quest, there's no silver bullet here," says Marsden. But if her organisation is to succeed, it needs a risk appetite to take on innovations that others might not back. "We bring people together and we broker, so there is something about us with collective impact."
Marsden is well versed in the cut and thrust of politics – her husband Ben Myers was chief of staff to former Liberal National Party premier of Queensland Campbell Newman. But the former arts administrator is no politician.
Her statement to the Senate committee that receiving a half-billion dollar grant was "like winning the lottery", has been repeatedly quoted by critics. The revelation in August that the chairman's panel met at the luxurious Qualia resort on Hamilton Island in March also fuelled the narrative about business elites enjoying largesse. (The trip was funded out of their donations.) The national spotlight has added more pressure, and Marsden spent a lot of the past year on crisis management, which diverted her from delivering the framework for spending the grant and raising funds from the private sector.
Schubert, who exudes the confidence of someone who has been at the top of the corporate ladder for decades, seems nonplussed by the attention the foundation is receiving. But he admits the spotlight on the record-breaking grant hasn't helped encourage donors to open their wallets. "It increases the uncertainty and anything uncertain makes it more difficult," he says. "But by far and away it's a huge advantage because it allows us to go to a philanthropist, corporate or individual and say we can match their funding.
"This is one of the real advantages of the money going through the foundation. If it goes to a government department or a government institution, philanthropists, corporates or individuals are not going to be in there funding."
And herein lies one key problem in the grant: it threatens to make it harder, not easier, for the GBRF to raise private sector funds. Usually governments promise to match money that's already been raised by the private sector. For example, in 2008 the then prime minister Kevin Rudd promised to give $20 million to the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation if it raised the same amount by 2028.
The GBRF won't reveal how much private money it has raised since it was awarded the grant. But the more money it can raise between now and the next election, the better are its chances of turning Labor around.
Hence the foundation needs more people like Lend Lease chief executive Steve McCann. In April last year the construction company announced a $5 million contribution over 10 years to help fund the reef islands initiative, which includes Lady Elliot Island.
"Fundamentally, it's hard to argue against the fact the Great Barrier Reef is one of the world's greatest wonders," says McCann. "Preserving that, to me, is a fairly obvious thing that we, as a private sector, need to work with government to try and achieve. It would be a devastating outcome to think that we can't preserve the reef and there is a lot of work to do it. There is an urgent need."
Burke, who dealt with the foundation when he was the environment minister in the Gillard and Rudd governments, says while it has previously had success with raising private funds for smaller projects, it is now in uncharted territory.
"When I was minister we were highly reluctant to give money to the foundation. The department's view was the principal role of the foundation was private funding, not public funding," he says. "It's just not their expertise. They are not a government department. They are a small group of well-meaning people who are good at leveraging for small projects. They have never shown any evidence of becoming a proxy department."
Meanwhile, time is ticking. The foundation has promised that the allocation of the full $443 million in funds will be announced in June, with the money to start flowing in July.With an election expected in May, a Shorten Labor government would be able to reverse the grant without having to rip up commitments to fund specific projects. Waiting for June could be a strategic misstep, yet both Schubert and Marsden are sticking to their promise to not "shovel money out the door" before the federal election. To do so, they both say, would not be a good look. Nor would it help the foundation's long-term cause to save the reef.
"We want them [the Environment Department] to trust us; we trust them," says Marsden. "We are not here to game the system. There is no benefit for us to do that and we're not benefiting the reef by doing that."
Marsden is well aware the foundation has a small window to convince Labor and the rest of Australia about what it can do. The science that underpins its headline-grabbing projects – the RangerBot, the sun shield – offers hope, but is yet to be proven it can work at scale. Research and trials take time, and that's the one thing the $443 million cannot buy.
"If, at the next federal election, there is a change in government then we will work with that government's wishes. But at the moment, the current department has told us this agreement continues, so that's what we're doing," says Marsden.
"I wish I had a year before I had to audition for a new government. Of course, you want to show your best light. That's human. I really hope we can just finish the job."
The Innovation issue of AFR Magazine is out on Friday February 1 inside The Australian Financial Review.


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Q: Add images to deck of cards - JAVA im quite new to this site xD
Im trying to create a cards game in Java but im having some problems to create a deck with cards images. I created 2 classes: Deck and Card. In the Card class i put the following code
public static final int SPADE   = 4;
public static final int HEART   = 3;
public static final int CLUB    = 2;
public static final int DIAMOND = 1;

private static final String[] Suit = { "*", "d", "c", "h", "s"};
private static final String[] Rank = { "*", "A", "2", "3", "4",
           "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "10", "J", "Q", "K", "A"};

private int cardValue;

public Card( int suit, int rank)
{
 if ( rank == 1 )
    cardValue = 14*10 + suit;      // Give Ace the rank 14
 else
    cardValue = rank*10 + suit;
}

In the Deck class i put the constructor to create the deck of 52 cards:
           private Card[] deckOfCards;
       public static final int NCARDS = 52;

      public Deck( )
      {
         deckOfCards = new Card[NCARDS];

         int i=0;
         for ( int suit = Card.DIAMOND; suit <= Card.SPADE; suit++ )       {
            for ( int rank = 1; rank <= 13; rank++,i++ ){
            deckOfCards[i] = new Card(suit, rank);
            }
          }

      }

I also created the methods to shuffle and deal cards but i can't manage to associate to deckOfCards the relative images of each card. Could someone please help me? :)
Thanks in advance!

A: Another option is to use Unicode characters depicting playing cards. That way you could just use a string to store the character representing the card, and display it, as long as you use a font that supports it.

A: There are many ways to add image in Java. This is just one of the way (may not be the best), but it gives you an idea how to associate images to your objects.
//Create Objects
CardClass[] cardObj = new CardClass[52];

//Interface definition
String path = "your path name";
ImageIcon image = new ImageIcon();
JLabel label = new JLabel();
JPanel card = new JPanel();

image = new ImageIcon (path + cardObj[0].strImage);   //where strImage is attribute of CardClass
label = new JLabel (image);
card.add(label);

Note: you can't paste all my codes and expect it to work magically. Here I am trying to explain how you could associate object's attribute and use it when inserting an image.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Helen Worman, 82, of Colonia died June 22, 2012. She was born in Trenton.
Mrs. Worman graduated from Trenton High School and attended New Jersey College for Women, now Rutgers University.
She is survived by her husband, Louis; two daughters, Dee Worman and Robin Freeman; a brother, Robert Katin; and two grandchildren.
Services were held June 24 with arrangements by The Lehrer-Gibilisco Funeral Home, Rahway.


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One of the promises made by the leaders of the world's seven richest nations when they met at Schloss Elmau in Germany earlier this week was an energy transition over the next decades, aiming to gradually phase out fossil fuel emissions this century to avoid the worst of climate change.
Opinion: Immigration, Myths and the Irresponsibility of Europe
With little fanfare, the German IFO Institute for Economic Research recently published a report on population projections for Germany which states simply that the country's population is shrinking fast.
Opinion: Why the US-Iran Nuclear Deal May Still Fail
By Prem Shankar Jha
The euphoria that spread though the world after the Iran nuclear agreement reached in Lausanne in April this year with the United States, Russia, China, France, United Kingdom and Germany, plus the European Union, is proving short-lived.
Corporate Tax Dodging Cheats Africa Out of 6 Billion Dollars, Says Oxfam
By Sean Buchanan
G7-based companies and investors cheated Africa out of an estimated six billion dollars in a year through just one form of tax dodging, according to a new Oxfam report 'Money talks: Africa at the G7', released Jun. 2.
Opinion: Edinburgh University Bows to Fossil Fuel Industry
By Kirsty Haigh, Eric Lai, and Ellen Young
The University of Edinburgh has taken the decision to not divest from fossil fuels, bowing to the short-term economic interests of departments funded by the fossil fuel industry, with little to no acknowledgement of the long-term repercussions of these investments.
The U.N. at 70: Is It Still Fit for the Purpose?
By Julia Rainer
Events are being organised around the world to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, but a recent seminar held in the Austrian capital was not held to applaud the body's past contributions.
Prepaid Meters Scupper Gains Made in Accessing Water in Africa
By Jeffrey Moyo
While many countries appear to have met the U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, rights activists say that African countries which have taken to installing prepaid water meters have rendered a blow to many poor people, making it hard for them to access water.
Opinion: The West and Its Self-Assumed Right to Intervene
The 'West' is a concept that flourished during the Cold War. Then it was West against East in the form of the Soviet empire. The East was evil against which all democratic countries – read West – were called on to fight.
Opinion: Pillar of Neoliberal Thinking is Vacillating
This month's World Economic Outlook released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) only confirms that consequences of the collapse of the financial system, which started six years ago, are serious. And they are accentuated by the aging of the population, not only in Europe but also in Asia, the slowing of productivity and weak private investment.
Opinion: Shared Action for a Nuclear Weapon Free World
By Daisaku Ikeda
From the end of April, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference will be held in New York. In this year that marks the seventieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I add my voice to those urging substantial commitments and real progress toward the realisation of a world without nuclear weapons.
Opinion: Where Does Nigeria Go From Here?
By Lisa Vives
After several tension-filled months, a majority of Nigerians swept in an opposition leader and former military man, Muhammadu Buhari, to succeed incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan, whose failure to contain a terrorist wave in the northern states doomed his re-election chances.
Agribusiness, Research and Rural Economies
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Purnaka L. de Silva | Global
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Emilio Godoy | Energy | Latin America & the Caribbean
The Value of Insects: Why We Must Act Now to Protect Them
Esther Ngumbi | Environment
We Want to Be Legal; We're Not 'Zama Zama' Criminals Say South African Artisanal Miners
Fawzia Moodley | Labour | Africa
Erdogan's Desperate Bid to Become the New Atatürk
Alon Ben-Meir | Global
"I Was Blind, But Now I See" – Celebrating Malawi's Progress on World NTD Day
Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera | Health | Africa
ASEAN Parliamentarians Cannot Escape 'Lawfare' or Violations of their Human Rights
Jan Servaes | Global
Destruction of Ukraine's Healthcare Facilities Violates International Humanitarian Law – Report
Ed Holt | Armed Conflicts | Europe
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The medical tradition that developed in the lands of Islam during the medieval period (c. 650-1500) has, like few others, influenced the fates and fortunes of countless human beings. It is a story of contact and cultural exchange across countries and creeds, affecting many people from kings to the common crowd. This tradition formed the roots from which modern Western medicine arose. Contrary to the stereotypical picture, medieval Islamic medicine was not simply a conduit for Greek ideas, but a venue for innovation and change.
Medieval Islamic Medicine is organized around five topics: the emergence of medieval Islamic medicine and its intense crosspollination with other cultures; the theoretical medical framework; the function of physicians within the larger society; medical care as seen through preserved case histories; and the role of magic and devout religious invocations in scholarly as well as everyday medicine. A concluding chapter on the "afterlife" concerns the impact of this tradition on modern European medical practices, and its continued practice today. The book includes an index of persons and their books; a timeline of developments in East and West; and a section on further reading.
Peter E. Pormann is a Wellcome Trust Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick. He is the author of The Oriental Tradition of Paul of Aegina's 'Pragmateia' and Al-Kindi's Philosophical Works.
Emilie Savage-Smith is professor of the History of Islamic Science at the Oriental Institute and a senior research fellow of St. Cross College, both at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Magic and Divination in Early Islam and Science, Tools, and Magic.


This parcel consists of over an acre in town and features a flat building site. Located just a half mile from Main Street makes it a short walking distance to school, town, trails, fields and more. From the property you get nice Western views and a good bit of privacy. Build your dream home today and enjoy the ease of utilities already in place.


Ladies & Gentleman ... wanna win a copy of Ant-Man & The Wasp on Blu-ray?!
Of course you do, so take a minute out of your day and check out how to do just that!
Moviegoers are still buzzing about Marvel Studios' 'Ant-Man and The Wasp,' the follow-up to 2015's 'Ant-Man' and the 20th consecutive Marvel Cinematic Universe film to debut at No. 1 opening weekend and ranked in the box office top 10 for six consecutive weeks this summer.
On Oct. 2, fans can instantly watch the laugh-out-loud super hero adventure Digitally in HD and 4K Ultra HD™, and on Movies Anywhere; and on Oct. 16, take it home on Blu-ray™ and Blu-ray 4K Ultra HD™.
Featurette's spotlight Paul Rudd, who returns as good-hearted thief turned hero, Scott Lang, and delivers big laughs both on set and in theaters; Evangeline Lilly, who transforms into The Wasp, the first female character to be featured in the title treatment of a Marvel Studios film; and iconic actors Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer as super couple Hank and Janet Van Dyne.
Viewers can explore more about the visual development artists and effects used to bring the characters to life and drastically alter the size of the Super Heroes and their surroundings.
Additional extras include deleted scenes, bloopers, outtakes, and audio commentary by 'Ant-Man' franchise director Peyton Reed.
Enter today to win a Ant-Man & The Wasp on Blu-ray by simply answering the following question about one of the stars, Paul Rudd: Rudd spent three months studying Jacobean drama at the British American Drama Academy based in Oxford, England and whilst there attending acting school, he worked as a ... what?!
Just fill out the form below and if you're one of the lucky ones chosen with the correct answer by January 15th, 2019, you'll win yourself a Ant-Man & The Wasp on Blu-ray!
If YOU could change anything about ExclusiveMagazine.com, what would it be?!
If you have something nice to say about Exclusive Magazine please do so and we'll print it (along with your name) on one of our pages!


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How to Transfer a Trade
Release #242, on June 23, 2022, introduced the ability to easily transfer a trade, or portion of a trade, to a separate trade with updated attributes, i.e. transferring a portion of a trade to a different FCM. Follow these instructions to transfer a trade.
On the TRADES screen, find the trade you wish to transfer. Click the three dots on the left-hand side and select TRANSFER from the drop-down menu.
The resulting modal window provides a form where you can choose attributes to update on the trade to be transferred. It should look like this:
To add an attribute to change, click + EDIT for a new attribute row to appear. Your screen should look like this:
You can scroll down, select the attribute you wish to change, and enter the value. Once completed, change the attributes, click SAVE, and the trade will be transferred.
The result of the transfer is two new trades, one in the opposite direction of the original trade and one in the same direction as the original trade, but with updated attributes. Your screen may look something like this:
This is very similar to the existing transfer functionality found on the TRANSFER tab of the TRADE EDIT screen, but with the ability to change any trade attribute necessary.
Transferring Grouped Trades
To transfer a group of trades, check out our How to Group Trades article. Then, hover your mouse over the trades you'd like to group and transfer and check the boxes accordingly. Your grouped trades should look like this:
Then, just follow the steps above to transfer your grouped trades.
Like existing transfer functionality, the tags @transfer-from and @transfer-to will be appended to the trades' tags to identify whether they were generated via transfer.
That's it! We hope this will save you some time. If you have any questions, please let us know at support@molecule.io
How to Clone a Trade
How to Split a Trade
How to Group Trades


In her new body of work, Victoria Martinez reflects on romance and relationships granted from her childhood neighborhood, Pilsen. Martinez explores pattern energy, transparent fabric, and found objects such as papel picado that relate to her memories of love, lust, and play.
Yvette Mayorga uses confections and industrial materials to conceptualize the American board game Candy Land as a metaphor for the culture and geography of the borderlands of the U.S. and Mexico.
Victoria Martinez is a transdisciplinary artist and educator. Her current work incorporates painting, collage, and fiber. Upcoming projects include the 30th anniversary exhibition at the National Museum of Mexican Art and presentations at the Logan Center for the Arts, the Block Museum of Art, and the Open Engagement Conference this spring.
Yvette Mayorga is an interdisciplinary artist and educator. She has presented her work at The Vincent Price Art Museum, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, EXPO, The National Museum of Mexican Art, Grand Valley State University, and forthcoming at Gallery 400, and the The Arts Incubator. Mayorga received her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.


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Home › About Wharton › Plan Your Stay › San Francisco › Staying at Wharton in San Francisco
Wharton | San Francisco is in a prime location conveniently located at 2 Harrison Street in San Francisco. Fees for most Wharton Executive Education programs in San Francisco do not include hotel accommodations. Participants are responsible for reservations and charges related to their hotel stay.
Do you need to contact someone attending a program? Send a package? Have questions about accommodations? Find answers to your logistical questions below.
Meals During Your Stay
Travel and Hotels
Our San Francisco campus offers Executive Education programs in a state-of-the-art facility located in the historic Hills Brothers Plaza at 2 Harrison Street, at the corner of Harrison and Spear streets. Our facility is a classroom-only space and does not include hotel accommodations. The convenient location provides a dynamic venue for a wide range of entrepreneurial events and programs for Wharton alumni and the wider Bay Area business community.
All meals, unless otherwise noted, will be served in the dining room of Wharton | San Francisco's Hills Brothers Plaza location. Meals are served buffet style. Please contact your program coordinator if you have any special dietary needs. With advance notice, we are able to provide vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, kosher, and halal menus.
Traveling to San Francisco
About 20 miles to Hills Plaza, Le Méridien Hotel, and Omni Hotel; estimated driving time 30 to 35 minutes. Visit the San Francisco International Airport website and click on "Parking and Ground Transportation Guide" for a list of transportation modes and providers. You may also call the SFO transportation hotline at +1.800.SFO.2008 to speak with helpful information agents.
San Jose International Airport
About 48 miles to Hills Plaza, Le Méridien Hotel, and Omni Hotel; estimated driving time 45 to 60 minutes. Visit the San Jose International Airport website, and click on "Ground Transportation" for information on rental cars, taxis, commercial shuttles, hotel shuttles, limousines, busses, rail services, and inter-terminal shuttles. The administrative offices at the SJ Airport can be reached at +1.408.501.7600 between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. PST.
About 20 miles to Hills Plaza, Le Méridien Hotel, and Omni Hotel; estimated driving time 30 to 35 minutes. Visit the Oakland International Airport website, and click on "Ground Transportation" for information on BART, bus, train, rental cars, shuttles, limos, taxis, and driving directions. The administrative offices of OIA can be reached at +1.510.577.4000 between 8:00 a.m. and midnight PST.
Preferred Hotels
Harbor Court Hotel
165 Steuart Street
Reservations: (877) 989-5861
Le Méridien San Francisco
333 Battery Street
Visit the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau website.
Transportation and Guides
Bus, streetcar, and cable car service in the City of San Francisco are available. For more information, visit:
San Francisco Transportation
San Francisco Transit System Map
San Francisco Gate
Access the online Google map to locate attractions and more.
EXPLORE OUR SAN FRANCISCO CAMPUS
Take a look at the benefits of our location.
Check out the frequently asked questions section. »
Contact our Client Relations Team to schedule a personalized consultation.
execed@wharton.upenn.edu


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New Grass – "Scordatura_Perforations"
By GaryJanuary 18, 2022 No Comments
Lucio Oquendo returns with a fresh New Grass release in the form of a double EP. Straight to the point, Scordatura_Perforations showcases Oquendo's love of aggression through eight relentless tracks (with some final quiet moments of reflection).
Release date: December 13, 2021 | Zegema Beach Records/The Ghost Is Clear Records | Facebook | Bandcamp
New Grass is the one-man post-hardcore/screamo project of Illinois' Lucio Oquendo. Having been sporadic in releases and next to non-existent on social media, it has been interesting to see releases from New Grass increase over the past year or so (as with many artists in the pandemic era). December 2021 saw the release of Scordatura_Perforations – a split EP from New Grass, with a mix of older recordings, crafted at some point between 2012 and 2017, and a handful of newer additions prepared in early 2021.
Scordatura_Perforations opens with "dip loop/the light", allowing the listener no time to prepare themselves for the oncoming onslaught of noise. It's takes a mere 8 seconds for the opening feedback to merge into a mesh of strained screaming and aggressive guitars. Setting the tone for the rest of the record, the vocals are buried in the mix, melting into the unabating rhythm section. 'All at once we rushed in', screams Oquendo, which this record certainly succeeds in doing so. The track closes with a couple of minutes of quietly picked guitar, allowing the listener to catch their breath before delving into the world of New Grass.
"grayland pack" picks up the pace again immediately, crashing cymbals and repeated chords leading into a pounding verse. This track in particular highlights the oxymoronic nature of New Grass, somehow managing to sound both brutally heavy and melodic all at once. This is again apparent on "k-14_1.13" and "op/we're so fucked", with the higher register of the guitar providing the melodic complement to the heaviness sitting underneath. These opening four tracks are possibly the strongest of Scordatura_Perforations, showing the full suite of strengths of the New Grass project.
Following the final notes of "op/we're so fucked", we transition into three previously released tracks (off the Fake Drums EP from back in 2015). It is here that it becomes apparent that Scordatura_Perforations is a collection of releases, with simple issues like a drop in volume interrupting the overall flow. Interestingly, this seemed to be less of an issue when listening on the Bandcamp app as opposed to other popular streaming services. As far as the music itself, "Moshka", "Vidya", and "Kama" again highlight the excellent writing abilities of New Grass. The bass playing comes alive in these tracks, with some wonderfully dirty-sounding lines really accentuating the noise around it. "Caskette", recorded a few years earlier, slots in well with the previously released trio of tracks and provides a final torrent of noise before the quieter, reflective "organ solo" takes the listener home.
There's a lot to love in Scordatura_Perforations, and even the complaints are simply solved by a simple volume slider (even easier solved if you pick up the physical version). From the outset, New Grass aim to keep things exciting by mixing the furious with the calm, with enough of each to make the 30-minute release go by in a flash. Oquendo, quiet on the release front for so long, appears to be upping his output, mixing the old with the new. If this release is anything to go by, both vault and new recordings will be something to look forward to.
Fake DrumsIllinoisLucio OquendoNew Grasspost-hardcoreScordatura_PerforationsscreamoskramzThe Ghost Is Clear Recordszegema beach records
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This sweet red wine is sweet but not too sweet. Complex but not too complex. Easy to drink but, wait yes it is really easy to drink.
Our newest and one of our fastest wine to gain fans. Disheveled is a mix of Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Zinfandel. We used a little sweet Zinfandel to bring up the sweet factor and came up with a wine that is perfect for a patio, brunch or a summer night of music in a Vineyard Park.
This is NOT A PORT. This is just a sweet wine to have fun with. We like to serve it cold just like a white or rose but you can drink it however you like.