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Why invest in Dubai properties? Is it a 5-star real estate investment destination?
Posted Date : 25-06-2019
Dubai is home to over 100 nationalities. The diversified city has transformed into an ever-growing real estate market and is the 10thbest location for expats, sixth-best in salaries and fourth-best for economics. During the first six months, the Dubai Land Department revealed that there were 27, 642 real estate transactions averaging to AED 111 billion.
Additionally, Dubai has the second highest number of international brands, attracting 38 new global brands just before Shanghai and London with 55.3% and 51.7%, respectively.
The city continues to maintain its status as the ideal destination for foreigners and offers enticing investment opportunities. Here are the below reasons to shift towards the populous city of the UAE:
Higher Rental Yields
Dubai properties offer best long-term returns and a wide variety of options. While the Philippines is rated as the top country for buying investment property, GOBankingRates has revealed that UAE is the second best country to purchase rental property of the 25 countries surveyed, followed by Costa Rica and Panama.
Dubai has 5.19%, in rental yield, 5% in effect rental income tax and $3,070 in monthly rent. It can go up to 8% on average in several areas, depending on the type of community and location. Considering it tax-free, it's better as an investment among other top cities in the world. Communities in Dubai Sports City, Dubai Silicon Oasis, International City and Jumeirah Village Triangle are the top 4 which offer the best rental returns to investors.
The city is known for its luxury houses and upscale apartments but it also caters to budget conscious millennials and families wanting homes that suit their financial status. At least 40% of resident's income goes to rent.
Factors such as the rentals and earning levels are factors when seeking reasonable housing.
Dubai Sports City, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Jumeirah Village Circle and International City are good options as the prices are below AED 750,000. For instance, a studio unit in JVC costs AED 450,000 while a one-bedroom unit is around AED 720,000.
Areas that contain substantially high affordable housing units target low to middle-income households. Prices of studio rentals can range between AED 30,000 to AED 50,000 while for a one-bed it's between AED 40,000 to AED 70,000, taking into consideration that Dubai is among the top 10 cities with the highest salaries with an average salary of AED 151,932 annually. In return, an affordable cost of living for households.
Properties with options ranging from smaller units in high-end areas to larger residences in affordable housing areas and smaller town houses is also between AED 750,000 to AED 1.5 million.
Birthplace for Entrepreneurship
Dubai is an emerging market and is spawning a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem, making it an ideal place for savvy, thriving entrepreneurs, investors and specialists wanting to establish startups and build innovative homegrown businesses.
The city is working hard to promote an environment for highly innovative intellectuals by implementing a new visa regulation that has allowed any individual in the UAE to take 100% ownership without having a local partner and handing in 51% stake in the mainland.
Despite UAE's foreign direct investment has remained stagnant for several years, it recovered to $11 billion (AED 40 billion) last year and the new visa rule will positively help, as reported by the International Institute of Finance.
The 10-year residency visa, which is slated to be applied end of the year, is set to draw interest towards entrepreneurs, professionals and creatives while the 100% company foreign ownership will attract foreign direct investment and encourage global companies to open in the country.
Safety and Improved Infrastructure
Infrastructure and safety is important when choosing property, from residential to commercial. Dubai is arguably the top cities that provides exceptional infrastructure with high standards and continues to advance.
Safety is also a great advantage when it comes to investing. Considered a safe haven for end-users and investors, Dubai is one of the safest cities in the world. It has the low crime rate, proving that the importance of safe, good living conditions is one of the cores of the UAE.
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Q: System boots directly in to Windows I have installed Ubuntu on my HP Pavilion dv6 notebook but I am trying to dual-boot with Windows for the last couple of days without any success. The installation CD is ejected after installing Ubuntu and Windows is loaded after that.
How can I dual-boot Ubuntu with Windows?

A: It looks like the CD is mostly corrupted. Do you have VirtualBox or any other similar software to test the disc with? If not, install it and test the disc for DEFECTS.
Procedure to check the disc for defects:
1) Place the Ubuntu disc into the CD/DVD drive.
2) Wait for the Ubuntu boot screen and press ANY key (I use space though). It wil prompt you with keyboard layout option. By default, the keyboard layout is en-us (it is an international default unless you specifically purchased another variant).
3) Now, after that, you will see the "Check the media for defects" option with similar message.
4) Select it and sit back for a while. It will check the installation media to determine any defects.
The output from step 4 will give you a proper idea where the problem lies. If the outcomes positive, then make sure you have the minimum system requirements to install Ubuntu.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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A Good Game for Beauty Brands
By Karen Raugust on April 4, 2022 in Character/Entertainment, Health/beauty, Interactive gaming, Licensing
Beauty companies have been among the most active of corporate marketers when it comes to entering the virtual worlds of gaming and the metaverse. Many have been creating promotions and/or offering digital palettes to be used within the games, for example. Conversely, owners of video game properties have increasingly been dipping their toes into physical beauty collections, either as part of broader digital partnerships that include the beauty brand having a presence in one of their games, or as standalone collaborations.
Some examples of recent beauty ranges inspired by video games:
Last month, Microsoft's Xbox brand announced that it had partnered with OPI for a spring 2022 Xbox palette of 12 brightly colored mix-and-match nail shades with a variety of different finishes. U.S. customers making a qualifying purchase at Ulta Beauty also receive exclusive in-game content for Forza Horizon 5 and those doing so at Amazon secure the same for Halo Infinite. In another example last fall, Microsoft paired with MAC Cosmetics to create a makeup palette for Halloween looks inspired by the Xbox Game Pass titles Halo, Sea of Thieves, and Psychonauts.
The Tetris Company partnered with NYX Professional Makeup for a cosmetics collection, in a deal that was announced in March 2021 and debuted at Ulta on April 4 of that year. The packaging, the jumbo Tetris board of eyeshadow hues, the colors and design of the other products, and all the elements of the collection hewed closely to the blocky, retro look-and-feel of the brand. All told, the collection included five eye liners in bold colors, lip kits in two pink-neutral shades, and the 80 eyeshadow hues in the Tetris Jumbo Shadow Palette. Meanwhile, back in its 35th anniversary year of 2019, Tetris paired with Ipsy on a themed Glam Bag containing two eyeshadow palettes with six shades each—with some of the bold shades available as singles—plus three color-shifting lip balms, silver and gold lip glosses, a golden highlighter, and five makeup brushes.
In January 2021, Nintendo paired with Colourpop for an Animal Crossing collection of 11 pieces. They included four eyeshadow palettes, each inspired by a different character in the game; three lip sets; two powder blushes based on in-game flowers; a metallic Super Shock Shadow (the company's signature cream powder formula); and gold glitter gel. Fans could visit the Colourpop Island in the video game to celebrate the launch, or purchase from Colourpop's website or at Ulta stores.
Also in January 2021, EA partnered with MAC for a collaboration that included 12 new digital makeup looks to be used in The Sims 4, as well as a physical collection for U.S. consumers that included a palette of nine skin-color shades that were billed as being inspired by the game. The two partners had previously created a similar initiative in June 2020.
In March 2020, Nintendo partnered with Monosense's Lovisia brand for a Kirby collaboration available in Japan only. The pink-centric collection—inspired by the character's color—included three eyeshadow sets, three lipstick sets, and a mirror. The products were sold in shops across Japan, where both companies are headquartered. Lovisia is known for its products based on video game IP, including Pokémon and Detective Conan tie-ins as well as the Kirby range.
The rise of collections such as these makes sense, as beauty companies are increasingly collaborating with entertainment and character properties of all kinds to create innovative and colorful pairings for fans of dramatic beauty products and especially for aficionados of the collaborative IP. Partnering with a video game gives the beauty marketer the additional benefit of in-game promotional possibilities, as well as access to fun creative elements to help inspire products that stand out from the crowd.
Being innovative is certainly key to success in this sector, something MAC and EA found out with the Sims 4 partnership mentioned above. It immediately generated a backlash, with fans of both the game and the brand pointing out that the products had virtually no creative connection to the game's colors, look-and-feel, or branding, and noting that the collection was almost identical, except for a simple new box design, to one that was released in 2017.
The other pairings mentioned have received mostly rave reviews from lifestyle publications, beauty influencers, and gamers, all of whom cited the collections' creativity, wearability, and fit with the properties on which they were based.
Animal Crossing, ColourPop, Ipsy, Kirby, Lovisia, Nintendo, NYX Professional Makeup, OPI, Sims 4, Tetris, Xbox
The Next Stage of Plant-Based Growth
Wrestling Groups Pin Down New Deals

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


One bite of these cookies and you will know why they are scrumptious. My husband loves anything with orange in it. He loved these!
Whisk flour, salt and baking soda together in bowl.
Bring dates, butter, brown sugar, orange zest and orange juice to simmer in saucepan and cook until mixture has thickened slightly and measures 2 cups, about 5 minutes. Transfer mixture to large bowl and let cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes.
Whisk eggs into cooled date mixture, one at a time, until combined. Fold in flour mixture until just combined, then fold in butterscotch chips and pecans. Drop generous tablespoon-size portions of dough onto prepared baking sheets, spaced about 2 inches apart. Bake cookies until edges are set and beginning to brown but centers are still soft and puffy, about 8 to 10 minutes.
Let cookies cool on sheets for 10 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and let cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough using cooled baking sheet. Lightly dust cooled cookies with confectioners' sugar before serving, if desired.


Healthy Sweets is social enterprise producing fair trade and certified organic coconut sugar, candies and teas. Located in Katipunan, Panabo City, Davao del Norte, Philippines. Healthy Sweets supports the efforts for the economic upliftment of the small coconut farmers in the communities.
Coconut sugar is the best, healthy, and natural sweetener. It enhances beauty and wellness and provides energy that our body needs daily. By using coconut sugar, you will not only enjoy a healthy lifestyle but will also contribute towards the greening of the earth and mitigating the effects of climate change. Coconut trees are alternative forest cover that last for many years.
Healthy Sweets coconut sugar, candies and teas are certified organic by Control Union, a Netherland based organic certifying body for EU, USDA amd JAS.
Nourish your body with our healthy and natural products. Make your life happier and longer!
Coconut sugar has Low Glycemic Index (35) , which is effective in weight control, managing sugar level of people with diabetes (types 1 and 2) and improving the lipid count.
This natural sweetener and whole food is made from 100% certified organic coconut sap. It is purely natural. No preservatives, no additives and anti-fermenting agent used in the production process.
This natural sweetener and whole food is produced in Davao Region, Southern Philippines.


Do NOT re-install Microsoft Office.
This error comes up every time Microsoft installs an update to Office.
The resolution is very simple.
Just right-click on the PropPack green tree icon and select 'Run as Administrator'.
if your green tree icon is only on the task-bar, first right click on that, then right-click again on the green tree icon that pops-up, and then select 'Run as Administrator'.
If your PC has been secured by your IT department then you may need to call them to enter the Administrator password.
Once this is done then there will be no need to do it again till the next time MS install an update to Office.


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America's "Days of Rage": The Extensive Left-Wing Bombings & Domestic Terrorism of the 1970s
July 21, 2020 Brian Miller
As the summer of 2020 dawned, left-wing radical groups began rioting and taking over parts of America's cities. While this specific form of left-wing violence is new, left-wing violence itself is far from new in the United States. Indeed, one of the most hidden and concealed parts of recent American history is the extensive left-wing violence that began in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s.
At first, one might think that these were isolated incidents of small-scale "protest" or even minor violence. However, upon even brief examination, we find out that the outpouring of leftist violence over this time period was anything but minor. The most likely explanation for why you have never heard of this until now is that the events of these years have been consciously buried by those who would prefer you not know about them.
As the left once again ratchets up both its rhetoric and its physical violence, it's time to re-explore this period of American history. What started as a non-violent student movement quickly escalated into a campaign of terrorism against the American people. And while the similarities may not be terribly striking yet, astute readers of this article will quickly see the world in which we live more and more closely resembling the Days of Rage.
The Days of Rage
The Days of Rage were in fact a short and discrete period of time – three days of demonstrations that took place on October 8 through 11, 1969. Throughout this article we will discuss events that took place both before and after the Days of Rage, but consider this period a sort of "coming out" party for the Weathermen, also known as the Weather Underground.
The Weathermen started out as a faction within Students for a Democratic Society. Without getting too much into the weeds, much of what happens during this period of leftist terrorism in the United States has its genesis in a faction fight between the Weathermen, who controlled the national SDS organization, and the rest of their faction (known as the Revolutionary Youth Movement II or RYM II), who were in opposition to the more classically Maoist Worker Student Alliance.
Tensions ran high because the stakes were high – nothing less than total control of the largest student radical organization in America and all of the spoils that came along with that. Many within the Weathermen faction of RYM II believed that they were fighting literal fascism coming to America in the form of President Richard Nixon.
Sound familiar yet? It's about to sound a lot more so.
On October 6, 1969, a statue memorializing a police officer killed during the 1886 Haymarket riots was blown up. No one ever figured out who committed this act of iconoclasm, but the tangible effect of the act of political terrorism was the final isolation of the Weather Underground from the rest of the SDS.
The Weathermen then shifted their activity to the Days of Rage, a protest rally with the slogans "Bring The War Home!" Many wielded lead pipes and were clad in football helmets, ready for a confrontation with the police.
Turnout was disappointing. The Weathermen expected a massive turnout, but only got about 800, who stared down 2,000 Chicago police likely itching for another fight after the 1968 Democratic Convention. By the first night, about 500 had deserted the protest, with about half of the remaining 300 being Weathermen from around the country.
Abbie Hoffman and John Froines, two members of the Chicago Seven, showed up, but declined to speak and left. The remaining hardcore of Weathermen and their supporters shifted the goalposts to simply fighting the police as constituting victory.
At 10:25 p.m., Jeff Jones, one of the leaders of the Weathermen, gave the signal and chaos erupted. The crowd moved through the city, smashing windows of ordinary cars and middle-class homes throughout Chicago, as well as small businesses such as barber shops.
The next day, October 9, a "Women's Militia" comprised of about 70 female Weathermen planned to attack a draft board office, but were prevented from doing so by the Chicago Police Department. The governor called up 2,500 National Guard members to protect Chicago, and protests for later in the day were canceled. The Black Panther Party's local leadership attempted to distance themselves from the Weathermen, describing the group as "anarchistic, opportunistic, adventuristic, and Custeristic."
The next day was the last day of the Days of Rage proper, centered around a march of 2,000 through a Spanish-speaking area of Chicago. The next day, October 11, the Weathermen attempted to reignite the protests, but were quickly sealed off by Chicago's finest. Approximately half of the crowd were arrested in 15 minutes.
It was after the events of the Days of Rage that the Weathermen became the Weather Underground and began moving underground as the name would imply. At a meeting known as the Flint War Council, which was attended by Barack Obama advisor William Ayers, taking place between December 27 and 31, 1969, the Weathermen dissolved their version of SDS, changed their name to the Weather Underground and declared that they would engage in guerilla warfare against the United States government.
Before continuing with the laundry list of terrorist actions carried out by the Weather Underground, it is worth briefly explaining their ideology. The Weather Underground was not a classically Marxist nor, strictly speaking, a Maoist group. Their cues came more from the American New Left. Thus, much like the radicals creating chaos in American cities in the 2020s, they were far more focused on opposition to the American state, "white privilege" and "white supremacy" than they were in creating bonds across the working class.
In this regard, they differed both from the Maoism of the Progressive Labor Party (made up of former members of the Communisty Party, USA, who supported Mao against Kruschev and thus had very real ties to the American labor movement) and the so-called "New Communist Movement" (comprised of younger student activists sympathetic toward Maoism and Third Worldism, but without organic ties to the existing Communist left and the labor movement). They did not, as some other groups in both Maoism proper and the New Communist Movement did, seek either ties with the American working class (which they largely considered "bought off by imperialism") or the official sanction of Beijing (a long-term goal of both Maoists and New Communists).
There are three important takeaways from all of this inside baseball:
The Weather Underground considered the American government to be fascist.
They believed that American military and civil government institutions should be treated in an identical manner to how the Viet Cong would treat the American military.
The American working class, in particular the white American working class, was considered apathetic and useless at best, but generally more considered an active opponent of revolution – thoroughly reactionary and thus, the enemy.
The Weathermen After the Days of Rage
In the first year after the Flint War Council, the Weather Underground engaged in a series of over a dozen bombings or attempted bombings throughout the United States. While supporters of the Weather Underground generally attempt to downplay the significance of the bombings, the group attacked courthouses, the New York Police Headquarters, the Pentagon and the headquarters of the National Guard. Additionally, police found multiple bomb factories designed to aid the guerilla efforts of the group. While 1970 was a highwater year for the group, there were other years of increased activity and the Weather Underground did not disband until 1977.
There were dozens of terrorist attacks carried out in the years between 1970 and 1977. It would be impossible to talk about them all in detail without writing an entire book on the subject. However, some of them are worth pulling out from the pack to discuss individually:
New York City Arson Attacks: The home of New York Supreme Court Justice John M. Murtagh was attacked with Molotov cocktails. Judge Murtagh was the presiding judge of pretrial hearings for 21 Black Panthers accused of planning a bombing campaign against the city. There were additional attacks against the Columbia University's International Law Library, Army and Navy recruiting booths and a parked police car in the city.
Timothy Leary Jailbreak: Acting as hired mercenaries for The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a psychedelic drug distribution enterprise, the Weather Underground broke Timothy Leary out of jail for $20,000.
United States Capitol Bombing: On March 1, 1971, the Weather Underground detonated a bomb at the United States Capitol.
Pentagon Bombing: On March 19, 1972, the Weather Underground blew up the women's bathroom of the Air Force wing of the Pentagon in commemoration of Ho Chi Minh's birthday and in retaliation for the bombing of Hanoi.
In October 1973, the federal government dropped most of the charges against the Weather Underground because new restrictions on electronic surveillance (without a court order handed down from the Supreme Court) meant that the charges likely would not stick. A more complete – and voluminous – list of Weather Underground terrorist attacks can be found here.
Black Liberation Army
The Black Liberation Army was formed in 1970, by members of the Black Panther Party who operated as members of both groups concurrently. Between 1970 and 1976, the group was involved in over 70 acts of violence, including the murders of 13 police officers. Some of their attacks included:
The bombing of the funeral of police officer Harold Hamilton.
The hijacking of Delta Air Lines Flight 841.
The robbery of a Brinks truck in 1981.
May 19th Communist Organization
The May 19th Communist Organization was a reorganized version of the Weather Underground that emerged after the latter began to fall apart. It included members of the Black Liberation Army, the Black Panthers and the Republic of New Afrika, as well as the Weather Underground.
The M19CO was more classically Marxist-Leninist, but no less eager to engage in terrorism. They broke Assata Shakur, convicted of the murder of a state trooper, out of prison and spirited her to Cuba. They were also involved in the robbery of a Brinks truck in 1981, along with the Black Liberation Army, as well as several bombings, including those of the National War College, the United States Senate, the Washington Navy Yard Computer Center, the South African consulate and the Policemen's Benevolent Association.
Symbionese Liberation Army
Most people know of the Symbionese Liberation Army, if at all, as the group who kidnapped and brainwashed Patty Hearst. Beyond this, they are an excellent example of how a small, but committed, cadre of left-wing activists can wreak havoc far and beyond their numbers, which never exceeded 22.
Their first major action was the assassination of Oakland, CA superintendent of schools Marcus Foster and badly wounding his deputy Robert Blackburn. The pair were attacked with cyanide-packed hollow point rounds as they left a school committee meeting. Foster, the first black superintendent of schools in Oakland, was assassinated because the SLA believed he was going to introduce identity cards in the school system, which they considered "fascist" and which he, in fact, opposed.
Their most famous action was the kidnapping of Hearst publishing heiress Patty Hearst in 1974. She was held by the group for 19 months before she was apprehended by authorities. At first, the SLA demanded the release of Foster's assassins, but when this proved impossible, they demanded the Hearst family distribute $70 worth of food to every needy person in California. The Hearst family took out a loan to do so, which would have cost $400 million, but the operation descended into chaos and the SLA refused to free her. The group sometimes restricted Hearst to a dark closet for weeks at a time. She was raped both by leader Donald DeFreeze ("Cinque") and Willie Wolfe ("Kahjoh").
When recovered, Hearst had an IQ of 112, as compared to 130 before her abduction. She chain smoked, had a flattened affect and had trouble remembering significant parts of her pre-SLA life. She weighed 87 pounds when apprehended.
The group committed a number of bank robberies both before and after Hearst's kidnapping.
The Lost History of American Leftist Terrorism
Most Americans have never heard of these acts of terrorism from leftist groups that were so numerous throughout the 1970s. But this is a prime example of "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it." The urban unrest, which has rocked America in the early 2020s, is nothing new. The 1960s saw both race riots and left-wing terrorist groups looking to exploit animosity between racial groups in America.
The question is what are we going to do about it? The answer so far from our elected officials is "not much." If leftist terrorist cells were willing to go this far when they had active opposition from government and corporate figures alike, what are they going to do when confronted with apathy or encouragement from elected officials and the business sector?
The answer remains to be seen, but will certainly be some variant of "nothing good."
America's "Days of Rage": The Extensive Left-Wing Bombings & Domestic Terrorism of the 1970s originally appeared in The Resistance Library at Ammo.com.
Domestic Analysisaction, america, business, change, class, control, evolution, family, fascism, government, history, identity, ideology, imperialism, justice, leftist, military, order, police, prison, privilege, protest, society, surveillance, war, women, world, writing
Written by Brian Miller
Brian Miller is the co-founder and publisher at Ammo.com. Work from Ammo.com's Resistance Library has been featured by USA Today, Reason, Bloomberg's Business Week, Zero Hedge, The Guardian, and National Review as well as many other prominent news and alt-news publications.
As publisher, Brian shares Ammo.com's belief that arming our fellow Americans – both physically and philosophically – helps them fulfill our Founding Fathers' intent with the Second Amendment: To serve as a check on state power. That the rights codified in our Bill of Rights were not given to us in a document, but by our Creator. That an unalienable right is God-given. It isn't granted by a president, a king, or any government – otherwise it can be taken away. Brian is a proud supporter of that mission, and shares the belief that our Second Amendment rights exist to preserve all our others.
To date, Ammo.com has voluntarily donated almost $100,000 to a variety of liberty-loving organizations including the Second Amendment Foundation, Mises Institute, the National Rifle Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Institute for Justice. Such donations would not have been possible without customers choosing the company for their ammunition needs.
Falsifying Liberty
COVID-19 10x Higher, Junk Food, Saudi Arabia Ruling, & Chinese Uighurs (42m) – Episode 333


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First organized lobbying for geosynthetics
October 1st, 2006 / By: IFAI / Updates
GMA members meet with lobbyist partners, congressional reps in D.C.
By Andrew Aho
For the first time in its short history, the Geosynthetic Materials Association (GMA) has a professional lobbying program. The impetus for the program is a strategic plan written by the GMA Executive Council in 2004 that identified government relations as a priority for the association.
In 2005, GMA developed an official request to identify a firm that could evaluate the government marketplace for geosynthetics. In early 2006, GMA engaged Whitmer & Worrall/Kemp Partners to compile a comprehensive review of government relations opportunities for GMA. In June of this year, GMA contracted with the same group to begin the implementation of a lobbying program.
The lobbying program immediately targeted the rebuilding of the U.S. Gulf coast as an opportunity for the use of geosynthetics in new construction. Leading the charge for GMA is former congressman and vice presidential candidate, Jack Kemp. When he addressed the GMA Executive Council last July, he pointed out his strong relationships with state governors and mayors who could initiate GMA relationships in the Gulf region and ultimately have geosynthetic materials used in the recovery efforts there and in building projects across the country. Kemp also offered an overview of those efforts and updated the EC members on the Katrina rebuilding and the expectation to lead a GMA delegation to meet with officials from Louisiana and Mississippi.
Meetings have been held with state officials from Louisiana and Mississippi as well as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin discussions about involving geosynthetics in rebuilding projects.
Water Resources Development Act
The Water Resources Development Act 2005 (WRDA) is a comprehensive congressional act that will fund water-related projects and studies. This broad legislation contains hundreds of projects that have the potential for geosynthetic products, applications, and services. The projects include: flood damage reduction, stream and riverbank protection, shoreline protection, dredging, and sediment removal. Harbor construction and restoration, flood control, beach restoration, and environmental protection sections of this legislation also could encompass the use of geosynthetics.
GMA and its Washington, D.C. lobbying team targeted WRDA as a vehicle to expand the marketplace for geosynthetics. The House and Senate passed separate versions of WRDA and will reconcile differences in conference committee later this year. GMA is attempting to have favorable language inserted in the compromise bill that would direct federal agencies to collaborate with the leading geosynthetic companies to aggressively pursue geosynthetic technologies and applications.
Meetings and presentations in D.C.
Kemp, a former congressman and Secretary of HUD, briefly addressed GMA Executive Council chair Ernie English and GMA managing director Andrew Aho last July, and then he welcomed the GMA Executive Council to the Kemp Partners/Whitmer-Worrall offices in Washington, D.C.
Kemp expressed to the Executive Council (EC) members that their coming to D.C. to meet with their congressional representatives is a necessary step for them to lay the groundwork for their association to educate Capitol Hill, and ultimately the appropriate federal agencies, on the benefits of using geosynthetic materials. Kemp championed the theme of GMA having a "great story" and that GMA and his lobbying team could work hand in hand to tell that story to the right people.
He also went on to point out his strong relationships with state governors and mayors who could initiate GMA relationships in the Gulf region and ultimately have geosynthetic materials used in the recovery efforts there, and in building projects across the country. Kemp also offered a general overview of the relationship and updated the EC members on the Katrina rebuilding in the Gulf coast and the expectation to lead a delegation to meet with officials from Louisiana and Mississippi.
Overall, Kemp stressed the importance of building high-level relationships and emphasized his ability, along with Kemp Partners and Whitmer & Worrall, to accomplish that goal.
Army Corps
Steve Stockton, Deputy Director-Civil Engineering, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also addressed EC meeting. He gave a briefing on the process to provide information and influence on design decisions in the rebuilding of the levees around New Orleans.
He also spoke about a technology transfer defiance that needs to be breached at the Corps. Stockton said he would provide opportunities for GMA to address the geotechnical engineers at the Corps. (See the related article in the box at the top of the page for more information on Stockton's presentation.)
Promoting geosynthetics
Following Stockton's comments, Martin Whitmer and Tom Worrall briefed the EC on lobbying activities and plans going forward. A portion of the discussion included GMA language that is intended for insertion into the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) that will go to conference committee.
Other topics included initiatives to seek funding of GMA projects through the congressional appropriations process. GMA is targeting several areas that will benefit many GMA members, including government funding for transportation, water resources, defense, and the environment.
GMA later hosted a reception at the Metropolitan Club for congressional and administration staffers.
Congressional meetings
GMA Executive Council chair, Ernie English, and Martin Whitmer met with Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.) to discuss the GMA language for the WRDA bill. Rep. Duncan will chair the conference committee on the bill.
Additional congressional meetings were held while EC members were in Washington. The sessions included one or two GMA members along with Martin Whitmer or Tom Worrall.
All told, GMA members met with: Krister Holladay, chief of staff for Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.), Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), and Bill Sullivan, projects director for Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.)
The GMA lobbying program is off to an exceptionally strong start. It will take a sustained effort to achieve the goals of expanding the marketplace for GMA members and for all of the geosynthetic industry.
Andrew Aho is the managing director of the Geosynthetic Materials Association (GMA). Rudy Barry of Whitmer & Worrall and Ron Bygness, editor of Geosynthetics, also contributed to this article.
Methods to estimate pressures and strains in pond geomembrane bubbles
A guide for specifying drainage geocomposites
Recovery of rare earth elements from acid mine drainage using geotextile tubes
Impact of geogrids on concrete highway pavement performance
The 2019 state of the geosynthetics industry


The 680 (sometimes written as "Sixeighty") Hotel by Sentrim Hotels, offers accommodations in the heart of Nairobi. The 10-storey hotel houses 253 standard, deluxe and budget rooms. All rooms include private bathrooms and some feature private balconies with a panoramic view of downtown. The 10th floor is reserved especially for non-smoking rooms. Onsite dining facilities include the Simba restaurant which seats up to 250 people, a terrace for snacks and luncheons, a residents lounge, and 24 hour room service. Due to its central location and proximity to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (15 kms), the hotel caters to business clientele with a Mezzanine floor containing 6 conference rooms capable of accommodating up to 250 people. Security guards are assigned to all floors.


The Sippino™ 328 is an Arduino clone which you can plug right into your solderless breadboard. This Sippino 328 version comes with the ATmega328 chip w/ bootloader.
Designed to used with your breadboard, this easy to build kit may be configured a few different ways; as a SIP, DIP, Stand-alone, or free style.
The Sippino™ is programmed using the regular Arduino software. Your sketches can easily be loaded using the Micro USB FTDI Buddy (not included), or a standard FTDI cable (not included), see the web page for more techniques.
Optional female pin headers can be found here.
Small size: 2.35" x 0.95"
Find lots more info and build instructions at the Sippino™ web page.


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ProWein, Drinks+ & Wine Travel Awards: stable cooperation for high level results
Drinks+ & Wine Travel Awards continue their fruitful cooperation in the field of information partnership with the world's leading trade fair for wine and spirits ProWein 2023, which opens its doors in Dusseldorf again to thousands of wine professionals from all over the world from 19 to 21 March 2023.
At the ProWein international trade press stand, the Wine Travel Awards Guide. Special Edition will tell the world about the most proactive and innovative wine & spirit businesses, brands, personalities and projects that joined the WTA second edition. In addition to the print version, the Guide will be presented at the newly online trade press stand: a new digital platform of Messe Düsseldorf with extending the presence using the ProWein Portal. Our readers can get acquainted with the WTA Guide. Special Edition two weeks before the trade fair and also three months after the end of ProWein. The catalog is going to be presented on ProWein' website at Exhibitor, Visitor and Press pages.
The Wine Travel Awards (WTA) Guide is a special advertising edition that is published by Drinks+ Communication Media Group in English (print and digital), and read by over 150,000 members of the wine community globally. Wine enthusiasts and professionals read the WTA Guide for keeping abreast of trends, established and growing producers and regions, brands, as well as wine tourism offers around the world.
The WTA Guide will be issued twice a year: in March 2023 in the format of a Special Edition and in June 2023 as a final catalog of the WTA 2022-2023 community members.
We invite innovative companies to become part of these issues as a participant or sponsor in order to promote your business initiatives, brands, products, services and regions.
For more details, contact us via partnership@winetravelawards.com
The very first issue of the WTA Guide 2021-2022 experienced a similar path at the ProWein Dusseldorf 2022 where the public awareness was raised about many talented personalities and progressive businesses operating in the wine & spirit tourism field. In 2023, WTA is ready to share a new portion of authentic experiences in its special edition.
The ProWein 2023 will follow on from the success story of the past 28 years and confirm its leading role as the world's biggest and most relevant trade fair for wines and spirits once again.
Communication Media Group Drinks+ has been operating within the Eastern and Southern Europe markets since 1993, and have been successfully working as a media partner with the ProWein exhibition for 15 years.


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Now Blaze and his crew must find the missing pieces so they can sail back home. 23m. WATCH. 8. Team Truck Challenge ... Blaze and his driver AJ are introduced to a world of racing Monster Machines. But when a truck named Crusher uses dirty tricks to try and win the Championship Race, Blaze will do everything he can to help his friends. 26m.
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BONIFAY � The year was 1892, and W.D. Williams established the Holmes County Advertiser at old Cerro Gordo, which was then the county seat.
According to an article published in the Advertiser on Oct. 8, 1921, and cited in the �Heritage of Holmes County,� Cerro Gordo was then the county seat.
The Holmes County Advertiser was founded, owned and operated by four generations of the Williams family.
�The exact spot where the building stood in which the first edition was printed is marked by the channel of the Choctawhatchee River, and all that is left of old Cerro Gordo is the memory and the little wooden jail, which is now less than twenty feet of the rapidly caving banks of the river, soon to be washed in and leaving nothing save the giant oaks to mark the spot where once was enacted the stirring scenes of those pioneer days,� the article stated.
The newspaper was burned out twice, with no insurance. It was forced to temporarily suspend publication twice, was published in Cerro Gordo, Westville and Bonifay, and had been printed in a dozen or more towns and cities � all in the first 29 years of the newspaper�s existence, according to the article.
W.D. Williams served as editor except for the year 1908, when W. D. Brett Jr. took control of the newspaper. However the Williams family resumed control in 1909, when Edward Arthur Williams Sr. became editor and publisher of the Advertiser.
Edward Williams guided the newspaper as well as provided leadership to the county through some of the nation�s most trying times � World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II.
Edward was the youngest son of founder W.D. Williams, and he began learning the newspaper business at an early age. By the time he was 15 he had already assumed a leading role in the publication of the newspaper. Before taking over from his father in 1909, Edward worked briefly for the Carrabelle Advertiser. He also worked briefly for the Marianna Times, only to return to Holmes County when his father called him back to take over after the county seat was moved from Westville to Bonifay � and the newspaper also moved to Bonifay.
In 1949, Nolan DeVane Williams took his father�s place as editor and publisher, and ran the newspaper until he encountered health problems, at which time his son-in-law Orren Smith purchased the newspaper and became editor and publisher. Orren and his wife Dianne ran of the newspaper until its sale in 1981 to Larry and Merle Woodham, newspaper publishers in DeFuniak Springs and Florala, Ala.
The Holmes County Advertiser remained within the Williams family for 89 years.
The Woodhams took possession of the Advertiser in 1981 from Williams relatives, Orren and Dianne Williams Smith. Woodham was the fourth generation in a family of newspaper publishers. His two great-uncles started in the newspaper business in 1917, followed by his grandfather, then his father and mother, according to an article published in the Wednesday, March 11, 1992 issue of the Advertiser.
The Woodhams were natives of Alabama and owned four other newspapers � The DeFuniak Springs Herald-Breeze, The Beach-Breeze in South Walton County, The Beach Bay News in Panama City and The Florala News.
In 2003, the Woodhams sold the Holmes County Advertiser and the Washington County Post to Chipley Newspapers Inc. According to CNI President Maurice Pujol, CNI published the Washington County News and the Holmes County Times, along with the Weekly Advertiser, a free shoppers� guide which was distributed in both counties.
Pujol founded the Holmes County Times in 1989. The late Jack Davis, retired educator and coach, served as the Times� first managing editor until his death in 1992.
Davis was a retired principal, coach and teacher and one of the founders of the Northwest Florida Football Conference. He not only served as managing editor of the Holmes County Times, but he was known as an exciting radio color commentator for HCHS football games.
Upon his death in 1992 in an automobile accident, the Times began the tradition of awarding Jack Davis Memorial Award to the outstanding boy and girl athletes of Holmes County each year, a tradition that still continues.
According to Pujol, the Times continued to gain popularity with readers and advertisers throughout the 1990s. It became the county�s first full-color newspaper as the decade ended and a new millennium dawned.
Pujol came to the News in 1974 after a stint as a reporter for the Panama City News-Herald and was named publisher in 1979. CNI was established in 1983.
Cameron Everett, a Holmes County native, was on hand for the transition to CNI in 2003, and he still works for the newspaper today as production supervisor.
�Cameron even worked part-time for the News while he was still attending Holmes County High School and also helped out at the Advertiser under Orren Smith at the time,� Pujol said.
In January 2007, Freedom Communications purchased the Washington County News and the Holmes County Times-Advertiser, along with the Crestview News Bulletin in Crestview and the Santa Rosa Press Gazette in Milton.
Nicole Barefield became the publisher of the Holmes and Washington County newspapers.
�When I came to the Times-Advertiser in 2007 I was surprised to learn how distinct and close-knit the county communities were, and how everyone had a story to tell,� Barefield said.
In June of this year, Halifax Media took ownership of the Holmes County Times-Advertiser and the Washington County News when the company purchased the Panama City News-Herald and the rest of Freedom�s Newspapers in Florida and North Carolina.
Other Florida newspapers involved in the transaction were The Star in Port St. Joe, The Walton Sun in Santa Rosa Beach, The Crestview News Bulletin, The Destin Log, Northwest Florida Daily News in Fort Walton Beach, The Santa Rosa Press Gazette and the Santa Rosa Free Press in Milton.


Bill Gates may have proved himself a winner, (grammatically correct, although clumsy) but is he a proven winner?
Use of proved shows past tense, proven is a past state that is still extant, ie of NOW. Proved is of the past.
So lets accept PC Kids usage and say goodbye to Bill, who is of the past, and say Hello to Steve Jobs who is of the NOW!


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Abilene High School student dies in hotel room while on field trip in Grapevine | KTXS
Abilene High School student dies in hotel room while on field trip in Grapevine
by Nicholas Teresky
Friday, November 16th 2018
ABILENE, Texas — A student at Abilene High School who was on a field trip with a group of other students from Abilene High School was found dead in a hotel room in Grapevine on Friday morning.
The student, who has not been named but was reported to be a 15-year-old male, was found dead in his hotel room on Friday morning in Grapevine.
The student was part of a group of students from Abilene High School that was on a theater-related field trip.
The Grapevine Police Department said that there were no signs of foul play or any signs that the student was trying to harm himself.
The other students who were on the field trip are now on their way back to Abilene.
Abilene ISD Director of Communications Phil Ashby said that it has been a tough day at Abilene High School.
Abilene ISD Superintendent Dr. David Young issued a statement on the passing of the Abilene High School student, which can be read in full below:
A 15-year-old 9th grade student at Abilene High School was found deceased in his hotel room Friday morning while on a school trip in Grapevine. Communication with the Grapevine Police Department indicates that there is no evidence of foul play or that the student had any intention of harming himself. Official information related to the cause of death will not be available until an investigation is completed by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner.
The Abilene Independent School District would like to thank the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District for immediately providing counseling and support services to our students and staff while they were travelling in another city. Administrative and counseling personnel from Abilene High School traveled to Grapevine to support our students on their journey home to Abilene. Our staff at AHS have been in the process of communicating with their parents and students, and we have made counselors available for students on campus who are in need of support.
Our prayers go out the family, to his friends and fellow students and to the entire AHS Eagle community. We ask you please respect the family's privacy as they deal with this tragic loss.
News In Photos: "Abilene"


Work bench My work bench is a work in progress. Making it from two 5 foot pieces of laminated tops. One section is on wheels so I can use it as an L shaped or one 10 foot straight away. In the process of putting shelves underneath. Also photo of tool bench.
My work bench is a work in progress. Making it from two 5 foot pieces of laminated tops. One section is on wheels so I can use it as an L shaped or one 10 foot straight away. In the process of putting shelves underneath. Also photo of tool bench.
Jack, I like the angle/straight combo.
Nice peg board tool organizer !!
Great for assembly. Big, customizable and super flat. That would have been great for my door projects.
You got a lot of space Jack, no to mention the tools:). A lot of assembly surface.
Thank you guys, it's amazing how much "stuff" you can accumulate in a short time.
Big is good and bigger is even better. Looks great.


Hi there! If you've always wondered what a structurer in investment banking does, you're certainly not alone! The term "structurer" gives a connotation that something is being built – and in the context of investment banking, that is certainly the case.
I think the trouble is, what exactly is a structurer, or more precisely, a product structurer trying to build?
Well, they're trying to build structured products for the investment bank.
I know, I know – that still doesn't help a whole lot.
Financial institutions are famous for wrapping up their products in vague terminology that confuses and confounds the layman.
Now, to be honest, when I was writing this article, I thought of different angles and perspectives for bringing this information to you.
I could, for example, give you a pretty exhaustive list of structured products like structured deposits, structured investments, capital protected and non-capital protected, with and without barriers and caps, etc.
But I'll leave that for another article (it's just too much to talk about).
I also thought of giving you some idea of what an actual structured product looks like on paper, i.e. the term sheets distributed by banks will give you some idea what a structured product is.
Otherwise – and I always have this feeling – that you don't actually understand or appreciate what something is until you've really seen and felt it.
But again, it's a topic for another article!
So for this article, we'll just get started without further ado.
1. How Does Product Structuring Fit Within The Financial Ecosystem?
First up, let's look at how product structuring fits within the financial services industry.
I've laid out a very simple framework as you can see in the figure below.
I'll explain the diagram a little.
Product Manufacturers. Now, we first need to talk about Product Manufacturers.
Product Manufacturers are financial institutions (such as investment banks) which "create" or "manufacture" products.
In our case, they manufacture structured products.
Think of it this way – Apple creates iPhones, right?
In the same way, an investment bank like Deutsche Investment Bank or UBS Investment Bank will manufacture structured products.
Now, within the investment bank, there are "product structurers", who, with their toolbox of financial engineering concepts and rules, develop structured products.
We'll talk a bit more about structured products themselves a bit later.
For now, just try to understand that Product Manufacturers are generally investment banks who have product structurers who design and develop structured products.
"Product structurers who design and develop structured products." (what a tongue twister).
Product Distributor. Next up, once the Product Manufacturer develops the products, you need to sell them to clients, don't you?
Just like how Apple will have a sales team to sell its iPhones to distributors around the world.
For example, here in Singapore, we have local distributorships (e.g. Telecommunication shops) which carry the Apple iPhone brand and sell them to retail customers.
Now, this layer – the distributors – is what I term the "Product Distributor".
In banking parlance, a Product Distributor could be a Private Bank.
The investment bank would be super interested and will sell the structured product to the Private Bank at a certain "mark up".
The product structurers in the Investment Bank would sell the structured product to the Sales Team in the bank (with a mark up).
The sale team then sells it on to the Private Bank in the Production Distribution layer (with another mark up).
The Private Bank will then sell the structured product to the end client (with yet another mark up).
So you can see that in the value chain, the end client has to pay for quite a lot of "mark ups".
So let's now turn to the client layer.
Client. The client here can refer to High-Net-Worth individuals or Institutional clients.
These folks are the big money – and have a LOT of cash to invest.
But these days, it's getting tough for the Private Banks.
I know, because in my day job, I service a lot of the Private Banks.
A lot of clients are actually asking why they need Private Banks at all.
This is particularly true in Asia, where clients tend to like more control over their finances and choose to do hands-on investing – through trading platforms or trying to go through other alternative investment routes such as hedge funds.
The rich millennials these days are very investment and technology savvy.
They have access to a lot of information and it's really hard for Private Bankers to put up smoke screens and try to "bluff" their way through.
Ok, now that we understand a little bit more about how product structuring fits into the financial landscape, let's look at another variant.
In the diagram below, you see that we have a "Universal Bank ABC".
Now, the way this value chain works is exactly the same as what we described for the Investment Bank and Private Bank earlier.
Yes, that "Universal Bank ABC" bit in the diagram.
Now, a Universal Bank is one which is a super large global bank, which typically offers retail, commercial, investment and private banking services to its clients.
Some examples include: Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, UBS and other big name banks.
Now, the key thing to note about product structuring in Universal Banks is that they have dedicated Investment Banking divisions and Private Banking divisions.
So, in our discussion, the product structurer sits in the Investment Bank and manufactures structured products.
The manner in which the structured products are sold on to the Private Banking (in this case the Private Banking "division" in the Universal Bank) – very much remains the same as per our earlier example where Private Bank B was a distinct, separate bank from Investment Bank A.
Case Study. Now, you may think why am I qualified to talk about structured products. I'm an engineer by training and don't have a background in finance.
So how did I learn so much about financial instruments and structures?
For me, it was a very strong desire to learn more about the banking industry.
When I was young, in my work as a Business Analyst, I was skilled in this like Business Process Re-Engineering, use cases, functional requirements, etc.
But what I REALLY want to learn was the industry domain.
So I went off to do a Masters in Financial Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
That made me a lot more qualified to talk about banking products and structures – and to be honest, it helps me till this day.
When I talk to traders or Bank Relationship Managers, they are very impressed that I understand what calls, puts, ELNs, warrants, accumulators and decummulators are, etc.
Ok, in this section, we move on to the topic of what a Product Structurer does in an Investment Bank.
Recall that I mentioned a structured in an Investment Bank manufactures structured products.
Structured products are financial instruments which are comprised of derivatives.
Now, in financial terms, a "derivative" is a contract that derives its value from the performance of an underlying asset.
This underlying "asset" could be e.g. your traditional stocks, indices (e.g. the S&P 500), FX rates and others (commodities, baskets of securities and even things like the weather).
Now, the derivatives themselves take four common forms: options (calls and puts), futures, forwards and swaps.
These derivatives are then combined like Lego bricks to form a structured product.
What the product structurer in the Investment Bank does is to simulate these derivatives in a software tool, typically showing the derivative "payoff diagram" (also known as a "profit & loss diagram".
If he or she combines derivatives (e.g. various calls and put options), the ultimate combined payoff diagram will change, until it ultimately becomes the structured product payoff diagram that the bank wants.
Here's an example of a payoff diagram for an Equity-Linked Note (ELN) with a S&P 500 index (SPX) underlying.
As you can see, the SPX starts at a level of 2,600 at the time when you buy the structured product.
Now, when the ELN hits the maturity date, e.g. say 3 months down the road, we look at the SPX level again.
If the SPX at maturity is less than 2,600, we get back our principal.
If the SPX at maturity is more than 2,600, we get back our principal PLUS an equity upside.
The way that product structurers in an investment bank create this kind of payoff diagram is by using special derivatives as building blocks.
And to be specific, for an ELN, it can be broken down into a zero coupon bond and a call option (but that's the topic of another article, coz I could go on for days about that).
Now, as you can imagine, most structured products are customized and one Investment Bank may produce one special kind of structure based on e.g. the Dow Jones Industrial Average index, another may create one based on a group of technology stocks.
Structured products are mostly "Over-The-Counter" (OTC) products.
This means they aren't listed on an exchange and you need to go to an Investment Bank to buy them.
You talk to the Sales Team in the Investment Bank and they'll tell you how much, what the structured product is like, how it works, etc.
Which typically is what we deem a "term sheet" for a structured product.
Make sure you read that term sheet very carefully before you buy the structure!
3. What Is A Structured Product?
Ok, we've discussed an Equity-Linked Note earlier.
But there are a LOT more structured products out there in the market – and they will confuse and confound you.
Structured products can be classified broadly into four categories, as shown in the figure below.
Now, obviously, these products are MUCH more complex than what I explain below – the idea is to just give you an overall feel of what the products are so you can learn more on your own, if you so wish.
Capital Protection Products. These products, well, protect your capital. Remember the ELN we looked at earlier? That's an example of a capital protection product.
If the market swings downwards, you still get to keep your principal.
If the market swings upwards, you still get to keep your principal plus an equity upside.
Some folks may think, wow – great. I'll pump ALL my money into these.
Now, stop for a moment. Hold your horses.
You must remember that the payoff here only happens at EXPIRATION. You have to hold you capital in the product until e.g. five or six years later.
Also, your original principal invested would NOT be the same value six years later. It would have depreciated due to inflation.
These factors need to be considered before you run off to buy a Capital Protection Product.
Definition. Structured products can be broadly classified into Capital Protection, Yield Enhancement, Participation and Leverage Products, each with varying levels of risk and return for investors.
Yield Enhancement Products. Now, yield enhancement products are designed to let investors profit when the market moves sideways or within a range.
That's an interesting proposition but you should remember one important thing.
Yield Enhancement Products are typically NOT capital protected.
So do watch out for that clause when you're considering whether to buy one.
Moreover, the "upside" that you get with a Yield Enhancement Product is usually capped.
Participation Products. Next up, we have participation products. These products are quite similar to yield enhancement products, except that they typically do not have caps to the upside.
Now, if you are not capped in terms of upside profit, you'd definitely expect to suffer more losses if the market moves against you.
Remember the golden rule of investing: more profits means you need to take more risk.
Leverage Products. Finally, we have leverage products. Leverage products allow investors to achieve an large gain with low capital.
But this leverage cuts both ways.
Investors can lose big time if the market moves against them.
There's a reason why this kind of product is on the upper right side of my graph above – high risk, high return.
You'd want to be very careful and know what you're getting into before buying such structured products.
If you really want to delve deeper into structured products, be sure to check out this link and this reference.
You'll learn a TON of stuff there.
I hope the above has given you some great insights into what a product structurer in investment banking does.
We've looked at how investment banks manufacture structured products and sell them at a mark up to Private Banks (or other financial institutions), who then sell them onward to their own individual or institutional clients.
We also covered some points about using derivatives to construct structures and how e.g. an Equity-Linked Note might give either the principal or principal + equity upside, depending on where the underlying asset is at expiration date.
Finally, we covered the four main categories of structured products out there, and how these give various risk and return profiles.
Until next time, have fun learning about structured products!
P.S. I'm sure you realize that structured products are but one part of the banking industry.
If you wish to learn more about the banking industry in general, I encourage you to check out this article or my guide book over here. They contain a lot of information on how you can pick up banking domain knowledge, which will help you in your career as a Project Manager or Business Analyst.


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4. Reimagining the future of healthcare
5. Company profile: IDEA Pharma
6. Innovating clinical trial recruitment
7. AstraZeneca and precision medicine
8. Subscribe to future Deep Dive issues
9. Wearable tech in clinical studies
10. Alexion on blazing a trail in rare diseases
11. Living with a rare sight-loss condition
12. Sign-up for pharma news alerts
13. Pharma support in rare diseases
14. The patient perspective on advocacy
15. Having a rare disease isn't rare
Company profile: IDEA Pharma
Path-to-market access strategy company IDEA has worked on eight of the 15 biggest drug launches of the last three years
CEO Mike Rea and CMO Alexander Gray tell us how they want to address the biggest problems in R&D today
The inspiration and goals behind the Pharmaceutical Innovation Index
We are in the most competitive period ever for the pharmaceutical industry, characterised by incremental innovation and looming patent cliffs – and path-to-market strategy firm IDEA Pharma believes the solution lies in the decisions companies make about an asset right from the very beginning of development.
Though IDEA began as a broader consultancy firm for the life sciences industry, it has sharpened its focus in recent years.
"That focus came about because when we took a look at where we are absolutely the best and what work we enjoy doing the most, it has been where we've helped people influence how they get to market successfully," says the company's CEO Mike Rea.
The company's core work is in positioning products in their early phase so that they can do as well as possible in the market, and consulting on innovation in that space. IDEA has been involved with eight of the 15 biggest drug launches of the last three years – including Opdivo, the most successful oncology launch ever, and Ocrevus, which Roche claim as their best-ever launch.
"Our footprint is pretty significant for a company of our size," says Rea. "It's not that we claim credit for those eight drugs – rather I think people who want to launch great drugs, and who want that degree of challenge, will often come to us."
"The key question behind the Pharmaceutical Innovation Index was a simple one: if you gave the same product to two different companies, would they be equally successful?"
Dr Alexander Gray, the company's chief medical officer, adds: "Very early on we realised there are a lot of companies in our space who made money out of largely re-purposing what a company has already done and telling them what they already knew.
"It's very evident that the old model of just being able to heavily market something when you've got a label died years ago. These days, you're going to have to get a lot more creative developmentally. Things like beyond the pill strategies are becoming increasingly important. Companies need the ability to look at a range of options at the right point in the life cycle, and make decisions based on a range of criteria."
IDEA have become advocates of making the right decisions and looking at the asset as broadly as possible in the early stages of development, as it is often difficult to make directional changes from phase 2b onwards.
"We realised that a long time ago, and that's why we focused our activity there in early phase," says Gray. "If you can bring the right people together with the right thinking at that point, that's when you're going to make the difference. Anything later than that, you're going to make a single digit percentage point difference, not double-digit."
IDEA is now moving to a model where they will be paid in royalties rather than just get fees for their advice.
"Lots of companies have problems because they get paid more for the amount of work they do," Rea explains. "We want to align ourselves with value rather than the amount of work we do, and also give the industry some tools to be better at doing this work."
The Innovation Index
One of those tools is IDEA's Pharmaceutical Innovation Index – a yearly report that ranks companies in their ability to bring products from phase 2 to market and commercialise them successfully, utilising a range of clinical, regulatory and commercial metrics to do this, ranging from the corporate level down to individual products.
"We started the Index as a way of learning what tends to lead to success and make companies more innovative," says Rea. "It began as an internal exercise but it has become a useful external exercise."
"Everyone knew that the answer to that was no, but we wanted to know why," says Rea. "The Pharmaceutical Innovation Index is a rearview look at the last five years, but it's meaningful. We picked up AstraZeneca's growth as an innovator. We noticed that J&J were successful a while back and that some of the innovation ecosystems they had were going beyond the usual big pharma philosophy of, 'We're going to stay as a monolithic pharma company and do things the way we always used to and hope, somehow, we're going to do it better with different managers in charge of the team'. We're now talking to them about how to adapt to those changes."
Gray says that adapting company culture in this way is often just as important as changing R&D processes.
"There's often a siloed culture between clinical, commercial and R&D," he says. "We've seen companies with archaic decision-making systems where they just bring forth their ideas to the CMO who then passes judgement on them.
"Culturally they are not set up in a way to innovate. They rely on just a few individuals to make very big decisions. The crossover between clinical, commercial and R&D is poor, and the full story of what is possible never gets presented to decision makers. They're incentivised to go along and try to tell the best story possible about what they've done rather than consider wider options and examine their pros and cons in detail. Then, it is either thumbed up or thumbed down, almost like Emperor Nero at the gladiators' arena!
"You can have all the best intentions in the world but if you don't have the right culture it isn't going to happen. This is one of the reasons some biotechs have been so successful: their structure allows much better communication between key internal stakeholders, and a more open discussion of possibilities."
"Putting a drug into the right indication instead of the wrong indication early on might help it survive"
Mike Rea
A new process
Though the Pharmaceutical Innovation Index has become a key barometer for companies and the media, it has also proved helpful in shaping IDEA's own tools that they are bringing into their work with the industry.
"We've long hated some of the processes that pharma find themselves bound to, like the target product profile (TPP)," explains Rea. "We're launching an alternative process to help companies do more useful designs for their path-to-market in the early phases."
The 'FIVE-X' Process is about having five competing paths to market rather than the current standard of one.
"FIVE-X is built to capitalise on what we call 'asymmetric learning.' Given that it would be impossible to know in early phase whether your asset is better than someone else's, your main task is to learn better than the other guys about where and how your asset can win. That might be getting it to market faster, or into a different set of indications, or finding a sweet spot within an indication faster or more cost-effectively than the competition. That kind of diversity of approach is built into FIVE-X.
"Some of this is about not making decisions too early when you don't know enough, and making very good decisions when you do," Rea adds. "It's about looking where the drug works and killing more drugs early on so you clear the pipeline of 'zombies'. Then you have more great drugs coming through that will make a difference."
This approach could also help companies be more successful in actually launching drugs.
"There's no molecule less useful than one that you don't launch," says Mike. "It makes no difference to anybody, and it's just a waste of time if you don't launch it. There are good drugs that will never make it to market because companies don't have that kind of persistence, or the resources are constrained. They're being put on the scrapheap when better planning could have got them to market.
"Putting a drug into the right indication instead of the wrong indication early on might help it survive. Often this is binary – you might kill a good drug that could have succeeded in a different environment. That's not the right kind of thinking."
He adds: "When IDEA defines innovation, we say that innovation should be a product you launch that is something that people want and can use. It has approval, it has reimbursement, and people want it. Something that you launch and no one wants is not an innovation – it's an invention."
This was the hypothesis that the Pharmaceutical Innovation Index was built on – that innovation should be measurable. "You should know that you've done it. You can't game the system, you can't talk about smart contact lenses and your next big cure for cancer if you don't launch it," adds Rea.
"I think the important thing is to focus on the things that you can fix," adds Gray. "Go back and look at where the attrition occurs, where the successes occur and understand the links in the chain that you can fix.
"You're never going to get the attrition rate in CNS from 85% to 20%, for example. That would require such a seismic shift in our ability to test assets pre-clinically and weed out the ones that work: the translation science just isn't good enough, and is not improving that rapidly. I'm sure we won't get to that attrition rate within my lifetime. But there's a lot you can do when you've got a viable asset in early phase to understand how you can maximise where it could go. We're talking about taking things that work and making sure you're maximising the approach. That's a very different question from 'does it work?'"
IDEA's view of the world, therefore, is that phase 3 shouldn't be about finding out if your drug works, it should be about proving it, moving from exploration to exploitation.
"That's the core of how IDEA succeeds," says Rea. "We're not a development organisation, we're a company that advises people on development and how to move it back and add more discipline. We make a difference to the way people choose to do phase 2 trials as an exploratory phase rather than a kind of mini phase 3. That's important because when a lot of people hear feedback from the market they take a pretty boring market position and then design a pretty boring phase 3 to get there. Then they design the phase 2 just to give them enough of a signal to go to phase 3.
"They're not using this stage to ask if it could work in other areas or in places no one else is going. You end up making a decision to go to phase 3 based on only a limited set of knowledge in one area without knowing anything about whether it would work in any other areas. Of course, you can't take a decision to go into those areas in phase 3 because you've got no evidence."
He says that the industry also needs to see innovation in the commercial model. "Take Novartis and their CAR-T therapy Kymriah – in 2018 worldwide less than 100 patients were treated with that medicine, but they are still expecting it to become a blockbuster. Part of the problem they've got is that their commercial model is still pretty old. A lot of the products that they're hoping will somehow become blockbusters, Kymriah, Entresto, even Cosentyx, they've probably damaged with the very old fashioned commercial models."
A product, not a molecule
Rea uses BMS's cancer immunotherapy Opdivo, which IDEA worked on, as an example of how this kind of thinking can be applied successfully.
"Opdivo has had huge success and generated $6 billion more than Keytruda did in the first three years. But on paper you would regard them as two largely interchangeable molecules – and certainly at the time the decisions were being made, you couldn't have predicted one would be better than the other.
"$6 billion is a big difference and some of that was down to BMS understanding the way the market actually works versus listening to market research. One of the biggest things that made a difference to Opdivo, we would say, would be the positioning towards what people wanted it to be, not just laying out data, as well as other small things like not launching with the biomarkered population."
He explains: "If you ask physicians whether they want a biomarker for their oncology drugs, of course they'll say yes, but in reality a better question is 'Would you be prepared to wait two weeks for the test to come back and understand that that test might not be specific enough to tell you whether this patient should be on the drug'? Of course, when you ask that question you get a very different answer.
"None of that's about the molecules, it's about the product you choose to launch. Part of our philosophy is that the idea is not in the molecule, it's in the products. The product is a bunch of decisions that you took next to the indication, next to the claims that you want to make for it, next to the formulation of dose and the patient population within the indication. It's a result of hundreds of different decisions, any one of which could be enough to give you success or make you an also-ran in the marketplace."
Rea says that this is where IDEA is really seeing companies that are doing better – by understanding that you can't just look at molecules on paper and hope yours is better than everyone else's. "If you draw them into the same studies you've got to make a meaningful difference in your process as a decision maker," he says. "That's the only way your team wins on the day."
"Things will change. Things have to change to reflect the system that we are in these days. We're seeing lots of exciting products going through. We're seeing lots of new players. Good things will happen."
It's clear that pharma companies can often be too close to their own, well-established processes to see the wider picture of what might be going wrong, so fresh perspectives like IDEA's are always welcome in an industry in need of change – even if it doesn't realise it.
Geographic reach
IDEA locations in Cranfield, UK, New York, San Francisco, Cambridge/ Boston, Basel
Core areas of expertise
Industry leaders in early phase positioning and path-to-market strategy. The Pharmaceutical Innovation Index is the industry-standard ranking of innovation
IDEA positioned 8 of the 15 biggest launches of the past 3 years, and 25% of the 50 fastest-growing new medicines in the last 5 years
To help more great medicines reach patients
Motto/Ideology
We work with clients early in life cycle, crafting best-in-class strategy that helps every molecule reach its potential. It's what we do best. And there's nobody that does it quite like us. Key to our ideology is that 'innovation' is about return on invention – that strategy needs creativity and rigour
About the Interviewees
Mike Rea is CEO of IDEA Pharma and an industry expert in Positioning. He was voted one of the Top 10 Innovators in Pharma (pharmaphorum), 100 Most Inspiring People in Healthcare in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2016 (PharmaVoice, lifetime Red Jacket winner), Global Power List 100 (Medicine Maker, the 100 most influential people in healthcare, 2017, 2018).
Outside work, Mike owns an independent record label, Medical Records, enjoys advanced and track driving, listens to too much music and plays the guitar badly. His only citation on Wikipedia, however, is for establishing the UK college American Football league.
Dr Alexander Gray is IDEA Pharma's chief medical officer. He trained as a physician, specialising in immunology, and previously worked in the NHS while co-writing books on immunology in his spare time. Prior to IDEA, he worked as a senior medical projects manager at Medical Action Communications and a medical director at Choice Medical Communications.
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To borrow a line in a popular song, let`s sing "finally oo, it`s about to go down". Yes, the first ever official video of highlife artiste Kumi Guitar will be premiered tomorrow on one of the flagship programmes of GhOne TV Rhythms hosted by Berla Mundi.
The video is for his latest single Brown Sugar released under Zylofon Media which features Obibinii and produced by Kin Dee.
Though Kumi Guitar has been around the music scene for so many years with hit singles, he never got a video in his name. Right after signing a record deal with Zylofon Media, his new management firm has shot his first ever video for him which will be released tomorrow 6th April 2017.
The video directed by Zylofon in house director Abass alongside production manager Enoch Atakorah was shot in a location here in Accra. It can be watched on youtube from 12 mid day tomorrow after the premiere on GhOne TV.
Kumi Guitar Puts His Manager On Blast, Says He's Trying To Destroy His.


(ANSA) - Rome, April 4 - Alitalia President and former Ferrari chief Luca Cordero di Montezemolo and Italian banks UBI Banca and Unicredit were among the subjects to be named in the so-called 'Panama Papers' case over offshore accounts and companies.
The leaking of around eleven million documents held by the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca to German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung has created a worldwide scandals after many world leaders and famous personalities, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and soccer player Leo Messi, were named.
Holding offshore accounts is not illegal.
But such accounts are often linked to tax evasion and other illegal activity.
Suddeutsche Zeitung shared the documents with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, with news weekly L'Espresso getting access in Italy. L'Espresso said it had found about 1,000 Italian clients in its analysis of the documents.
These included former Formula One driver Jarno Trulli and the businessman Giuseppe Donaldo Nicosia, a fugitive of Italian justice after being implicated in a fraud case with jailed ex Senator Marcello dell'Utri. Dell'Utri, who used to be one of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's closest aides, is currently serving a seven-year jail term for mafia links. L'Espresso said Montezemolo's name appeared in the documents after he was named as an agent for a company called Lenville in a series of contracts signed early in 2007. "The manager, who at the time was president of Fiat and Ferrari, allegedly received a mandate to use an account at Bim Suisse, the Swiss branch of the Italian Banca Intermobiliare," L'Espresso said.
Sources close to Montezemolo said Monday that the Alitalia president, who is also head of Rome's bid committee for the 2024 Olympics, does not own any offshore companies. "Neither Montezemolo, nor his family, possess any offshore companies," the sources said.
UniCredit said that "Mossack Fonseca is not a tax consultant for the parent group".
UBI Banca said "we do not have subsidiary companies in those locations" referring to Panama and the Seychelles.


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An F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jet assigned to the 64th Aggressor Squadron taxis on the flight line during a U.S. Air Force Weapons School integration exercise at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, June 2, 2021. The USAFWS teaches graduate-level instructor courses that provide advanced training in weapons and tactics employment to officers and enlisted specialists of the combat and mobility air forces. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Dwane R. Young.
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Weapons School Holds First In-Person Graduation in 18 Months
June 14, 2021 | By Tobias Naegele
Air Force Weapons School Class 21A celebrated almost six months of intense training at a June 12 graduation dinner attended by more than 1,000 graduates, faculty, staff, and family members. Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, dean of AFA's Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and a Weapons School graduate himself 40 years ago, gave the keynote address.
Deptula recalled his AFWS experience as among the hardest things he did in 35 years in the Air Force. "Relative to all that's been added to the course since, what you all have accomplished is certainly much more than what I experienced," he said, adding that he relished the chance to address an audience that is surely the future leadership of the force.
"The Department of the Air Force has become the Department of Defense's only indispensable military arm," he said. "There is absolutely no joint force operation that can be conducted without some element of the Department of the Air Force being involved. … That cannot be said of the Army or the Department of the Navy."
Graduates should ponder, he said, what that means as they carry newfound knowledge back to their squadrons and progress in rank and responsibility as leaders in the Air Force and Space Force.
"My bottom line up front is for you to remember, plan for, and preach the critical importance of integration of the multitude of force elements resident in our air and space forces that's absolutely required for operational success," Deptula said. "While we now have a separate service dedicated to organize, train, and equip for operations in space, when it comes to force application, success can only be achieved through the indivisible application of aerospace power."
Times do change, he continued. "When I went through what is now the Air Force Weapons School, it was known as the Fighter Weapons School because only fighters were involved in the program," Deptula said. "Today the Air Force Weapons School now comprises 21 squadrons, 31 Weapon Instructor Courses, nine Advanced Instructor Courses, and represents Air Combat Command, Global Strike Command, Air Mobility Command, Air Force Special Ops Command, PACAF, USAFE, AFCENT, and the Space Force. I'm here to tell you: No one in class 81DIN was exposed to orbital warfare."
Deptula said expansion of the Weapons School has been critical to advance understanding of integrated operations since then. "Think about your participation in the integration phase of the course," he told graduates. "Do you now have a greater appreciation of what's involved in planning, executing, and flexing for the inevitable changes that occur in a campaign-level aerospace operation than you did before you came here? I think the answer is yes. During Desert Storm, the vast majority of the captains out there didn't have that kind of perspective. I'd also tell you that neither did a lot of colonels or generals.
"The point is that your particular weapon system or specialty is just one part of what is a much larger enterprise," Deptula explained. "And for that enterprise to succeed, it takes optimization of all the parts. Learning that as a captain yields enormous benefits when faced with the real-world cudgel of combat. And when you advance in rank and responsibility, you'll have the insights required to succeed at the operational and strategic levels of command."
One of the most significant changes in the evolution of modern warfare is the result of the combination of three technological changes:
Persistent intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance
Improved survivability thanks to stealth
This combination reverses the traditional paradigm for how air and surface forces can be used to defeat adversaries. Traditionally, surface forces led the fight supported by air forces; but now, air forces can be supported by surface forces and be more responsive, effective, efficient, and less costly in lives and dollars.
Deptula quoted a Marine platoon leader writing about Operation Iraqi Freedom: "For the next hundred miles, all the way to the gates of Baghdad, every palm grove hid Iraqi armor, every field an artillery battery, and every alley an antiaircraft gun or surface-to-air missile launcher. But we never fired a shot. We saw the full effect of air power. Every one of those fearsome weapons was a blackened hulk."
That's important, Deptula said, because military "capabilities change over time and those fundamental changes should be exploited, … particularly in an era of great power competition."
To defeat future peer adversaries, U.S. forces must fully exploit modern ISR, precision strike, stealth, and maneuver, Deptula said. It must increase integration of service components, increase seamless information sharing across systems in every domain, and leverage advances in computing and network capabilities to turn information into a dominant factor in warfare.
"The outcome [of future conflicts] will increasingly be determined by which side is better equipped and organized to collect, process, disseminate, understand, and control information," Deptula concluded. "Joint all-domain command and control, the Advanced Battle Management System, and Agile Combat Employment … will remain just concepts without the integration" that Weapons School graduates will bring to the fight.
"We need the suppression of enemy air defense expert, the command and control guru, the air dominance subject matter expert, ISR specialists, and dynamite strike leads to turn these concepts into tactics, techniques, and procedures, to experiment and fail as much as succeed, and to lead the way in making the hard decisions … required to make these information age concepts reality," Deptula continued. "Modern sensor-shooter-effector air and spacecraft are the key elements and will become the nucleus of the combat cloud because of their rapid reach and global perspective."
Then he quoted President George W. Bush as saying the best way to keep the peace is to redefine war on America's terms. "You just mastered how to do that," he told the graduates. "As you return to your units, teach your brothers and sisters in arms to do the same."
Joint All-Domain Command and Control
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AI, Networks, Hypersonics Are the Pentagon's Top Research Priorities
A new list of Pentagon research and engineering priorities is coming soon, and highly placed on the list will be artificial intelligence, integrated networks, hypersonics, and microelectronics, said Heidi Shyu, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. Shyu also said a major exercise will take place in February showcasing progress…


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Hayden Panettiere Has Entered Treatment for Postpartum Depression
"It's really painful and it's really scary."
By Samantha Leal
Update, 10/14: Following the news that Panettiere was dealing with postpartum depression, the actress has entered a treatment facility, reports Us Weekly.
"Hayden Panettiere is voluntarily seeking professional help at a treatment center as she is currently battling postpartum depression. She asks that the media respect her privacy during this time," her rep told Us Weekly in a statement.
Thanks again, Hayden, for spreading awareness—here's hoping you get the help you need.
Original story, 9/29: Hayden Panettiere is, like any relatively new mom, learning more about her baby and her body every day. But the one thing she didn't expect? Dealing with depression.
The Nashville star, while appearing on Live! with Kelly and Michael, talked frankly about her postpartum experience and how she related to her character Juliette, who goes through her own very serious bout of postpartum depression, People reports.
"I can very much relate. It's something a lot of women experience. When [you're told] about postpartum depression you think it's 'I feel negative feelings towards my child, I want to injure or hurt my child'—I've never, ever had those feelings. Some women do. But you don't realize how broad of a spectrum you can really experience that on. It's something that needs to be talked about. Women need to know that they're not alone, and that it does heal," she said. "You're not alone or crazy, ladies!"
"There's a lot of misunderstanding—there's a lot of people out there that think that it's not real, that it's not true, that it's something that's made up in their minds, that 'Oh, it's hormones.' They brush it off. It's something that's completely uncontrollable," she continued. "It's really painful and it's really scary and women need a lot of support."
According to the American Psychological Association, 9 - 16% of women who give birth will experience postpartum. The mom, who gave birth in December of 2014 to baby daughter Kaya Evdokia, wants to help remove the stigma so women understand just how powerful they are—even if they're dealing with depression. "Women are amazing. We do something that no man can do on this planet. I mean, we grow a human being in our body!"
Amen, girl.
Follow Marie Claire on Instagram for the latest celeb news, pretty pics, funny stuff, and an insider POV.
Samantha Leal Senior Web Editor I'm Sam, the senior editor at MarieClaire.com.
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