Most bosses like seeing their workers happy. They like having a committed workforce as well as making them happy. This helps to improve the productivity of a business and also saving some money. It is not just the salary that counts when it comes to pleasing employees, other issues matter too. The things that make a lot of difference are the small ones that most employers overlook. Below are secrets to helping your employees become more productive.
To start with, it is advisable to give your employees medical benefits that they actually need. It is possible to think of something to add to their medical benefits although it can be quite costly. It is worthwhile to allow your employees the benefits that they do not enjoy currently.An example of what most employees would love to have in their medical cover is a dental plan. This is because dental cover is normally exempted from their insurance cover. hence, giving them dental medical benefit will be a great thing to do. Also, you can make a step of asking your employees what they want as additional benefits.
In addition, give employees access to payroll data. This does not happen in many companies.Thus, it would be a great benefit to them if you put up a way that they can access the info. An online platform can be created to facilitate this. The online portal will also be useful to the management. The HR department will be able to solve payroll matters quickly and easily.Also technology enables employees to have an electronic record of their salary. This is valuable when it comes to making tax returns.
Another important thing to do to make your employees work easier is to update the software and hardware that they use regularly. Breakdown of the system can be avoided by having regular checks. A lot of time is normally lost during system breakdown.Therefore, by ensuring that your software and hardware are maintained at regular intervals, employees will enjoy a smooth working condition. Therefore, keeping the systems running is an important aspect of any business.
Another important factor is to have employees with flexible working hours.This trend is becoming popular in many organizations and businesses.Most of these firms are the reputable ones that boast of best working practices. Flexible working solutions are a great issue to workers.Flexibility means allowing your workers to choose the hours that they are comfortable working. This is especially useful for working mothers who have young children.
Your business will be most productive if these changes take effect. To motivate your workers, ensure that they have job satisfaction.This will not only have a positive impact on them but also your business.


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Tag Archives: implications
Anglican leaders around globe decry ordination of lesbian bishop
Posted on May 26, 2010 by particularkev
In response to an openly gay woman being ordained a bishop in the Episcopal Church on Saturday, Anglican leaders from around the world decried the action as "gravely concerning and wrong," with some adding that the move has "hurt and alienated" many within the Episcopal community, reports Catholic News Agency.
Fifty-five year-old Mary Glasspool, an openly parterned lesbian, was ordained a bishop at Long Beach arena on May 15. Some 3,000 people attended the ceremony which featured a procession with liturgical dancers in bright colored outfits, costumed dragons and drums, according to Virtue Online.
This recent move by the Episcopal church in the U.S. has caused tremendous controversy within the global Anglican church, prompting Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to issue a statement of caution when the announcement of Glasspool's ordination was first made last year. He urged church leaders at the time to consider the "implications and consequences of this decision." Archbishop Williams wrote in March that the Episcopal leaders' later confirmation of Glasspool's election as bishop-suffragen was "regrettable."
Several world leaders within the Anglican community denounced Saturday's ordination.
"The decision of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America to consecrate as a bishop a woman in a sexually active lesbian relationship is gravely concerning and wrong," said Rev. Dr. H. William Godfrey, bishop of the the Anglican Church of Peru on May 15.
"It is impossible," he added, "to know by what authority the Episcopal Church is taking this action. It is disobedient to the Word of God, to the teaching of the Church, and deeply hurtful and damaging to their Christian brothers and sisters."
"It appears," the bishop observed, "that their decision is being taken in accord with their instincts and feelings, and the ways of the liberal society in which they live, and that they have forgotten the moral values and teachings of the Holy Scriptures and their Church."
A coalition of Evangelical Anglicans in Ireland issued a joint statement expressing support for those within the Episcopal community who feel "hurt and alienated" by Glasspool's ordination.
"Many Christians of all traditions and denominations will share our sorrow and see Mary Glasspool's consecration as a defiant rejection of pleas for restraint and, even more importantly, as a rejection of the pattern of holiness of life called for in Scripture and endorsed by believers over the centuries," they wrote on Sunday.
Rev. Robinson Cavalcanti, Bishop of the Diocese of Recife in Brazil, said in a statement on May 15 that the ordination was "lamentable" and that it has caused "a de facto rupture" within the Anglican community.
The bishop of the Diocese of Caledonia, Rev. William Anderson, added that he "can only hope that the Archbishop of Canterbury will finally accept that bishops and national churches who choose to willfully ignore the teaching of the Anglican Communion and Holy Scripture, ought to suffer the natural consequence of choosing to go their own way – which is to say, that they ought to be considered to have left the Anglican Communion."
Posted in Anglicans, Brazil, Christianity, Church of England, Episcopal Church of the U. S., Homosexuality, Pastoral Ministry, Peru, The Church, USA	| Tagged accept, accord, action, active, alienated, Anglican, announcement, appears, Archbishop of Canterbury, arena, around, attended, authority, believers, bishop, bishop-suffragen, Brazil, bright, brothers, Caledonia, called, caused, caution, centuries, ceremony, choose, choosing, church, churches, Coalition, colored, community, concerning, confirmation, consecrate, consequences, consider, considered, controversy, costumed, damaging, dancers, de facto, decision, decried, decry, deeply, defiant, denominations, denounced, diocese, disobedient, Dr, Dragons, drums, election, endorsed, episcopal, Episcopal Church, Episcopal Church of the United States of America, Evangelical, expressing, featured, feel, feelings, finally, forgotten, gay, global, globe, go, gravely, H. William Godfrey, holiness, Holy, hope, hurt, hurtful, ignore, implications, importantly, impossible, instincts, Ireland, issue, issued, joint, lamentable, leaders, left, lesbian, Liberal, life, liturgical, live, Long Beach, Mary Glasspool, moral, move, national, natural, observed, openly, ordained, ordination, ought, outfits, own, partnered, pattern, people, Peru, pleas, procession, recent, Recife, regrettable, rejection, relationship, response, restraint, Rev, Robinson Cavalcanti, Rowan Williams, rupture, Scriptures, sexually, share, sisters, Society, sorrow, statement, suffer, support, teaching, traditions, tremendous, urged, USA, values, way, ways, willfully, William Anderson, within, woman, Word of God, world, wrong | Leave a comment
European Court Rules Against Turkey's Religion ID
Designation on identification cards used to discriminate on basis of religion.
ISTANBUL, February 5 (CDN) — A European court on Tuesday (Feb. 2) ordered Turkey to remove the religious affiliation section from citizens' identification cards, calling the practice a violation of human rights.
Religious minorities and in particular Christian converts in Turkey have faced discrimination because of the mandatory religion declaration on their identification cards, which was enforced until 2006. Since then, citizens are allowed to leave the "Religion" section of their IDs blank.
The ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) "is a good thing," said Zekai Tanyar, president of the Turkish Protestant Alliance, citing prejudices against Christian converts.
"[Religion on the ID] can cost people their jobs," he said. "It has been known to affect whether they get a job or not, how people look at them, whether they are accepted for a post or an application of some sort. Therefore I think [the ruling] is a good and appropriate thing."
Tanyar said the same principles would apply in the case of Muslims living in a country that had prejudices against Muslims. For converts in Turkey having to state their religion on their ID cards, "in practice, and in people's experience, it has been negative."
The ECHR ruling came after a Turkish Muslim national filed a petition challenging that his identification card stated his religion as "Alevi" and not Muslim. Alevis practice a form of Shia Islam that is different from that of the Sunni Muslim majority.
The court found in a 6-to-1 vote that any mention of religion on an identity card violated human rights. The country was found to be in violation of the European Convention of Human Rights – to which Turkey is a signatory – specifically Article 9, which deals with freedom of religion and belief; Article 6, which is related to due process; and Article 12, which prohibits discrimination.
The presence of the "religion" box on the Turkish national identification card obliges individuals to disclose, against their will, information concerning an aspect of their personal convictions, the court ruled.
Although the government argued that indication of religion on identity cards did not compel Turks to disclose their religious convictions, the ECHR found that the state was making assessments of the applicant's faith, thus breaching its duty of neutrality and impartiality.
In a statement on the verdict this week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the ruling was in line with the government's intentions.
"I don't see the ECHR decision as abnormal," he said, according to Turkish daily Taraf. "It's not very important if it is removed."
The ECHR is independent of the European Union, which Turkey seeks to join. The rulings of the ECHR are binding for members of the Council of Europe, of which Turkey is a member, and must be implemented.
Human rights lawyers welcomed the decision of the ECHR, saying it is a small step in the direction of democracy and secularism in Turkey.
"It is related to the general freedom of religion in our country," said human rights lawyer Orhan Kemal Cengiz. "They assume everyone is Muslim and automatically write this on your ID card, so this is a good reminder that, first of all, everyone is not Muslim in this country, and second, that being a Muslim is not an indispensible part of being Turkish."
The lawyer said the judgment would have positive implications for religious minorities in Turkey who are subject to intolerance from the majority Muslim population.
In 2000 Turkey's neighbor Greece, a majority Christian Orthodox country, lifted the religion section from national IDs in order to adhere to European human rights standards and conventions, causing tumult among nationals.
"In Turkey, Greece or whatever European country, racism or intolerance or xenophobia are not rare occurrences if [religion] is written on your card, and if you are a minority group it makes you open to racist, xenophobic or other intolerant behaviors," said Cengiz. "There might be times that the [religious] declaration might be very dangerous."
International Implications
It is not yet known what, if any, effect the ECHR decision could have on the rest of the Middle East.
Because of its history, economic power and strategic location, Turkey is seen as a leader in the region. Like Turkey, many Middle Eastern countries have a place for religious affiliation on their identification cards. Unlike Turkey, listing religious affiliation is mandatory in most of these countries and almost impossible to change, even under court order.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), religious identification is used as a tool to deny jobs and even basic rights or services to religious minorities in many Middle Eastern countries.
"It's a serious problem from a human rights point of view," said Joe Stork, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa for HRW, an international human rights organization. "It's especially problematic when that requirement becomes a basis for discrimination."
Stork said the identification cards shouldn't have a listing for religion at all. He said the European decision may eventually be used in legal arguments in Middle Eastern courts, but it will be a long time before change is realized.
"It's not like the Egyptian government is going to wake up in the morning and say, 'Gee, let's do that,'" Stork said.
Egypt in particular is notorious for using religion on IDs to systematically discriminate against Coptic Christians and converts to Christianity. While it takes a day to change one's religion from Christianity to Islam on their ID, the reverse is virtually impossible.
Posted in Christianity, Egypt, European Union, Greece, Islam, Orthodox, Turkey	| Tagged 2006, abnormal, accepted, adhere, affiliation, against, Alevi, allowed, application, article 12, article 9, assessments, basic, basis, behaviors, binding, blank, box, breaching, calling, challenging, Christian, Christianity, Christians, citizens, converts, convictions, Copt, Coptic, Copts, cost, Council of Europe, countries, country, court, daily, dangerous, decision, declaration, democracy, deny, deputy director, designation, different, direction, disclose, discriminate, Discrimination, duty, ECHR, economic, Egypt, Egyptian, enforced, European Convention of Human Rights, European Court, European Court of Human Rights, European Union, faced, faith, filed, form, freedom, general, government, Greece, History, HRW, human rights, Human Rights Watch, ID, identification card, impartiality, implemented, implications, indication, information, international, intolerance, intolerant, Islam, Istanbul, jobs, Joe Stork, join, judgment, lawyers, leader, leave, location, mandatory, members, Middle East, Middle Eastern, minorities, Muslim, muslims, national, nationals, neighbor, neutrality, North Africa, occurrences, ordered, Orhan Kemal Cengiz, Orthodox, people, Persecution, personal, petition, positive, post, power, practice, prejudices, President, principles, racism, racist, rare, region, religion, religious, remove, reverse, rules, ruling, section, secularism, Shia, signatory, standards, strategic, Sunni, Taraf, tool, tumult, Turkey, Turkish, Turkish Protestant Alliance, Turks, used, violation, will, xenophobia, xenophobic, Zekai Tanyar | Leave a comment
Turkey: Religious freedom survey, November 2009
Ahead of the UN Human Rights Council May 2010 Universal Periodic Review of Turkey, Forum 18 News Service has found that the country continues to see serious violations of international human rights standards on freedom of religion or belief.
A long-standing crucially important issue, with many implications, is that Turkey has not legally recognised religious communities in their own right as independent communities with full legal status – such as the right to own places of worship and the legal protection religious communities normally have in states under the rule of law.
Additionally, the most dangerous threat to individuals exercising freedom of religion or belief has been a series of violent attacks and murders on those perceived as threats; in recent years the victims have been Christians.
Turkish citizens have argued to Forum 18 that the protection of the right of all to freedom of religion or belief, as laid down in the international human rights standards which Turkey is party to, should be the standard used by the authorities in all affected fields. They also argue that the authorities act against the intolerance fuelling violent attacks and murders.
Posted in Christianity, Islam, Turkey, United Nations	| Tagged 2009, 2010, act, affected, argue, argued, attacks, authorities, belief, Christian, Christianity, Christians, citizens, communities, continues, country, dangerous, exercising, fields, found, freedom of religion, fuelling, human rights, Human Rights Council, implications, important, independent, individuals, international, intolerance, Islam, issue, legal, legally, murders, Muslim, muslims, own, party, perceived, Persecution, places, protection, recognised, religious, religious freedom, right, rule of law, series, serious, standard, standards, states, status, survey, threat, threats, Turkey, Turkish, UN, United Nations, Universal Periodic Review, used, victims, violations, violent, worship | Leave a comment
EGYPT: LAW GRANTING TWINS TO MUSLIM TO BE REVIEWED
Christian mother wins right to high court appeal regarding ruling that favored Muslim father.
ISTANBUL, February 20 (Compass Direct News) – Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud last week granted the mother of 14-year-old twins Andrew and Mario Medhat Ramses the right to appeal a custody decision awarding her sons to their Muslim father.
Muslim convert Medhat Ramses Labib gained custody of the boys last September, contrary to Article 20 of Egypt's Personal Status Law, which states children should remain with their mother until age 15. The boys' mother, Kamilia Lotfy Gaballah, won the right to appeal on Feb. 11.
"We all have a little bit of hope, new hope," said George Ramses, the twins' older brother. "Of course, they are a little afraid about everything, but generally they are excited."
With support from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), Gaballah will appeal the Family Court's decision awarding custody to the father before the Court of Cassation. Family Court decisions are not usually given recourse to the Court of Cassation, one of Egypt's highest courts, and require special referral from a public prosecutor.
EIPR Director Hossam Bahgat stressed that the Court of Cassation will be examining the law on which the decision was based, not the decision itself.
"The Court of Cassation will pronounce a decision on the legal rule that Christian children, when one of their parents converts to Islam, should be automatically moved to the Muslim parent's custody," he said. "So it is very important in terms of changing the legal rule, but according to the law it will not have a direct impact on Andrew and Mario themselves."
Preliminary hearings are scheduled to begin on March 2.
The twins will celebrate their 15th birthday in June of this year. At 15, Egyptian children of divorcees have the legal right to choose which parent they want to live with. Ramses told Compass that he is skeptical about whether his brothers will be given this right.
"The whole law is that kids should spend the first 15 years with their mum, and then they get to choose who they want to live with," Ramses said. "[Choosing] is the second part of the rule that was not applied to us, so we don't know actually what will be the case."
The boys' father, Labib, converted to Islam in 1999 after divorcing Gaballah to marry another woman. In 2006 Labib altered the official religious status of the boys and later applied for custody.
Covenant Breaches
The boys are now at the center of two separate disputes, both of which have roots in the complex interaction between Islamic and secular law in Egypt: whether children should be automatically awarded to the Muslim parent, and whether they therefore should automatically convert to Islam.
Custody battles between Muslim fathers and Christian mothers have typically been instances where Islamic law has predominated over secular legislation. Sharia (Islamic law), which the Egyptian constitution declares as being the source of law, states that a non-Muslim should not have authority over a Muslim.
In the case of Andrew and Mario, this sharia provision meant that they should not be left under the jurisdiction of their non-Muslim mother. The automatic and compulsory conversion of the twins, following their father's decision to become Muslim, is the second area of contention EIPR is working on behalf of Gaballah to resolve.
The issue once again shows the contradictory stances of Egyptian civil law, which reflects both freedom of religion and Islamic thought. A fatwa (religious edict) issued by Egypt's Grand Mufti, Ali Gomaa, regarding the case of Andrew and Mario states, "The religion of the two children should follow their Muslim father's, unless they change their religion with full will after puberty."
Although this statement allows Andrew and Mario the right to choose their religion "after puberty," conversion from Islam is not only extremely difficult in Egypt but also dangerous.
Egypt has ratified a number of human rights treaties allowing advocacy groups like EIPR recourse to international watchdogs and advisory bodies. One of these, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR), has agreed to examine the case. The commission has asked both parties to submit written statements by March in preparation for an initial hearing in May.
The European Union of Coptic Organisations for Human Rights (EUCOHR) has also weighed in, petitioning the European Parliament for help.
"We have gone to the European Parliament with a legal document detailing about 30 to 40 breaches of international covenants like the International Declaration of Human Rights," said Ibrahim Habib, vice-chairman of EUCOHR.
Habib said he hopes involving international bodies such as these will raise the profile of the case and put pressure on the Egyptian judiciary to rule impartially. Such attention could also have positive implications for the much harassed Coptic community at large.
The report filed by EUCOHR and the U. S. Coptic Foundation for Legal Assistance, which explores violations of such pacts as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ends with this statement:
"This is a call for justice and to save the two children from the coercion, persecution and injustice with which they are overburdened and, it is respectfully requested that a prompt action be taken to save those children and their future. Also, the annulment of the judgements against the two children is promptly requested."
Posted in Christianity, Egypt, Islam, Orthodox	| Tagged Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, according, ACHPR, action, advocacy, afraid, African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, agreed, Ali Gomaa, allowing, allows, altered, Andrew Medhat Ramses, annulment, appeal, applied, asked, attention, authority, automatic, automatically, awarding, battles, birthday, bodies, boys, breaches, brother, case, celebrate, center, changing, children, choose, Christian, Christianity, Christians, civil, coercion, commission, community, complex, compulsory, constitution, contention, contradictory, contrary, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, convert, Coptic, Court of Cassation, covenant, coversion, custody, dangerous, decision, declares, detailing, difficult, direct, director, disputes, divorcees, divorcing, document, edict, Egyptian Intiative for Personal Rights, Egyt, EIPR, EUCOHR, European, European Union of Coptic Organisations for Human Rights, examine, examining, excited, explores, Family Court, Father, fatwa, favored, filed, freedom of religion, future, gained, George Ramses, Grand Mufti, granted, granting, groups, harassed, hearing, hearings, help, high court, hope, Hossam Bahgat, human rights, Ibrahim Habib, impact, impartially, implications, important, initial, injustice, instances, interaction, international, International Covenant on Civil and political Rights, International Declaration of Human Rights, involving, Islam, Islamic, issue, issued, judgements, judiciary, jurisdiction, justice, Kamilia Lotfy Gaballah, large, law, legal, legislation, live, Mario Medhat Ramses, marry, Medhat Ramses Labib, mother, moved, mum, Muslim, muslims, new, non-Muslim, official, overburdened, pacts, Parliament, parties, Persecution, Personal Status Law, petitioning, positive, predominated, preliminary, preparation, pressure, profile, prompt, pronounce, Prosecutor-General, provision, puberty, raise, ratified, recourse, referral, reflects, regarding, religious, remain, requested, resolve, respectfully, right, roots, rule, ruling, save, secular, separate, Sharia, shows, skeptical, sons, source, special, stances, statement, states, status, stressed, submit, support, terms, thought, treaties, twins, U. S. Coptic Foundation for Legal Assistance, vice chairman, violations, watchdogs, weighed, will, wins, woman, written | Leave a comment
TURKEY: MALATYA MURDER CASE AIDS PROBE OF 'DEEP STATE' CRIMINALS
Video testimony, reenactment of crime scene hints at hearts of killers, martyrs.
ISTANBUL, November 25 (Compass Direct News) – Last week's court hearing on the bloody murder of three Christians in Turkey's southeastern city of Malatya paved the way for further investigations into the connection between the five defendants and shadowy elements of the Turkish state linked to criminal activities.
The 13th hearing at Malatya's Third Criminal Court on Friday (Nov. 21) in the murders of Turkish Christians Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and German Christian Tilmann Geske presented little new evidence. No witnesses were called to testify.
The court prosecutor and plaintiff lawyers, however, are pursuing proof that there are links between the murderers and Ergenekon, an ultranationalist cabal of retired generals, politicians, journalists and mafia members under investigation for conspiracy in recent murders.
A separate criminal investigation has linked the cabal to high-profile attacks, murders and plans to engineer domestic chaos and ultimately overthrow the government. Evidence in the Malatya case indicates that a local journalist, Varol Bulent Aral, acted as a bridge between the five murder suspects and Ergenekon.
Plaintiff attorneys also believe that Aral incited the suspected ringleader of the attack, Emre Gunaydin, to murder by convincing him foreign missionaries were connected to the Kurdistan Worker's Party, a domestic outlawed terrorist organization.
According to a Nov. 14 statement, Gunaydin testified that Aral promised him state immunity for the planned attacks. In court last week, however, he refuted the claim and said he hadn't met with Aral.
On April 18, 2007 the three Christians were tied up, stabbed and tortured for several hours before their throats were slit in what Turkish media have dubbed "the Malatya massacre" at the Zirve Publishing Co. office in Malatya.
Gunaydin along with Salih Gurler, Cuma Ozdemir, Hamit Ceker and Abuzer Yildirim, who have been in jail for the past 19 months, are accused of the murder. They are all between 19 and 21 years old.
Per their request, plaintiff attorneys have received the Ergenekon file from the 13th High Criminal Court of Istanbul and have reviewed it for connections with the Malatya murders. It is now under investigation by the court prosecutors and judges.
"We are talking about a room with five guys and three men," said Orhan Kemal Cengiz, who leads the team of plaintiff lawyers. "There is no doubt this is first degree murder; a barbaric act. These things will increase their term of punishment to three counts of murder and three life imprisonment terms each, as well as other crimes such as preventing freedom, stealing and others. We don't have a question about this."
The question that remains, according to the plaintiff attorneys, is the identity of the real powers behind the bloody attack. Cengiz said he and the court now have no doubt there were greater forces behind the Malatya murders.
"I am 100 percent sure – it is the impression of the prosecutor and no one has doubts – there are sources behind these young men, but we can't identify them," Cengiz told Compass.
The plaintiff team hopes to bring up to 21 witnesses to the stand in subsequent hearings in order to make connections between Ergenekon and the Malatya murders clear.
"We believe all of them are somehow connected and have relevant information to this case," he said.
If the list is accepted, he said the trial may go on for another year. "But if nothing comes out last minute, it may be over in three or four months," he said.
Missionary Activities on Trial, Again
At Friday's hearing, defense lawyers reiterated their position that the five young men acted in response to missionary efforts, suggesting that such activities were sufficiently nefarious to incite the violent murders.
The prosecution team rebutted the statement, saying that according to constitutional Articles 9 and 24, people have the right to share their faith, and no person or authority can follow and record those activities. They pointed out that the five defendants had been collecting data and planning the murders at least eight months before they carried them out.
Defense lawyers also requested that the prison where the defendants are held conduct a psychological exam of the defendants – especially Gurler – because they were all under stress due to suspected ringleader Gunaydin's threats.
Revisiting Crime Scene
Those present in the courtroom on Friday viewed year-old video footage of defendants Ozdemir, Ceker and Gunaydin each walking through the crime scene shortly after their arrest, describing how they attacked, stabbed and sliced the throats of Aydin, Geske and finally Yuksel.
A sobering silence prevailed in the courtroom as judges, lawyers, local press, Turkish Protestant observers and others watched Ozdemir and later Ceker walk through the Zirve publishing house and re-enact the murders over the dried blood pools of the three martyrs. In their accounts, they implicated Gunaydin and Salih as the main aggressors, although all accuse the others of participating in the murders.
During the video presentation, judges and lawyers noticed suspect Gurler laughing at the witnesses' testimonies at the crime scene. In the video, Ozdemir and Ceker testified that they had told Gurler and Gunaydin they couldn't take the violence.
In the video testimony, Ozdemir said he told Gurler while he was stabbing Aydin, the first to be killed, "That's enough, I can't do this." Ozdemir looked down during his video testimony, forlorn and unable to watch.
Gurler later told angry judges that he was laughing because all the witnesses' statements in the video were false.
"They're lying against me," he said.
In his video account of the murder scene, Ceker described how the five young men and the three Zirve staff members talked "a lot" about religion before the suspects attacked Aydin, tying him and lying him on the floor face down.
Gunaydin confronted Aydin about his missionary activities and asked him why he was acting "against Turks" before Gurler sliced his throat, according to Ceker's original statement.
In Gunaydin's video testimony, profusely sweating, he described the repeated stabbings of the victims, re-enacting his arm movements and describing how Ozdemir held a gun at the victims, threatening them.
"I didn't look," Gunaydin said after describing one of the violent stabbing scenes. "I'm weak about these things … I can't even cut chicken."
He described how while Yildirim and Gurler were repeatedly stabbing Geske, the victim lifted his hands up in a gesture of prayer. Gunaydin also described how Yuksel, injured by the stabbing while tied and on the floor, cried out in Turkish, "Mesih, Mesih [Messiah]," between moans before they stuffed a towel in his mouth to silence him.
After the court showed his video testimony, Gunaydin stood up and told the court he had just gotten out of the hospital at that time, and that that account was not how he now remembered the events of April 18, 2007.
In their video testimony, the young men described how the phone and doorbell were ringing while they were torturing the Christians. Before coming out the door with their hands in the air, they showed police interviewing them in the video how they had disposed of their guns and bloodied knives in the Zirve office.
Gunaydin escaped through a window, fell and was severely injured. On Friday plaintiff lawyers requested from the court an investigation into who entered the crime scene while Gunaydin was in the hospital.
When the defendants were asked whether they knew of Aral's alleged offer of state protection to Gunaydin or a monetary award for the murders, they claimed to have no information.
"I never saw a check in the course of these events, nor did I hear anything about it," said Gurler. "I only knew that Emre had a bank statement."
Yildirim also claimed ignorance: "I don't remember anything about a check. If Emre had one, it would have stayed in his pocket; he wouldn't have showed it to us."
When asked about meetings between Gunaydin and Aral, the defendants said they hadn't witnessed any between the two. They did admit to having spoken to Aral at a sports complex about a different matter, but they knew him as "Mehmet."
Foreign Press, Organizations Negligent
Twelve of the nearly 20 private and human rights lawyers from around Turkey that compose the plaintiff team attended the court hearing last week. Cengiz said the primary purpose of the plaintiff lawyers, who are working pro bono, was to create a legal "common eye" that is watching all related cases such as Ergenekon and the murder of Hrant Dink, editor of Armenian newspaper Agos, who was murdered months before the three Christians in Malatya.
But the plaintiff lawyers pointed out that very few international bodies and foreign press members are actively monitoring the case, even though in their estimation the Malatya murders are directly linked to uncovering deep elements of Turkish corruption.
"This case has tremendous implications for democracy and deep-state elements in Turkey," said Cengiz, who has received numerous threats since the beginning of the trial and lives under 24-hour protection.
"What we have here is a concrete act of the Ergenekon gang and it's interesting."
Posted in Christianity, crime, Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Politics, Turkey	| Tagged 13th High Criminal Court, 24-hour protection, Abuzer Yildirim, accepted, accused, acted, activities, aggressors, Agos, AIDS, alleged, angry, arm movements, Armenian, arrest, attack, attacked, attacks, attorneys, authority, bank statement, barbaric act, believe, bloodied, bloody, bodies, bridge, cabal, called, case, chaos, chicken, Christian, Christianity, Christians, city, claim, collecting, common eye, compose, concrete, conduct, confronted, connected, connection, conspiracy, constitutional, convincing, corruption, counts, court, courtroom, create, crime scene, criminals, Cuma Ozdemir, data, deep, defendants, defense, democracy, described, disposed, domestic, door, doorbell, doubt, dried blood, dubbed, editor, efforts, elements, Emre Gunaydin, engineer, Ergenekon, escaped, estimation, events, evidence, exam, face down, faith, false, file, first degree murder, floor, foreign, forlorn, freedom, generals, German, gesture, government, gun, guns, Hamit Ceker, hands, hearing, hearts, high-profile, hints, hospital, Hrant Dink, human rights, ignorance, immunity, implicated, implications, impression, incite, incited, increase, indicates, information, injured, interesting, international, interviewing, investigation, investigations, Istanbul, jail, journalist, journalists, judges, killed, killers, knives, Kurdistan Worker's Party, laughing, lawyers, leads, legal, life imprisonment, linked, Links, local, lying, mafia, Malatya, Martyrs, massacre, matter, media, meetings, Mehmet, members, missionaries, moans, monetary award, mouth, murder, murderers, murders, Necati Aydin, nefarious, new, newspaper, observors, office, organization, Orhan Kemal Cengiz, original, outlawed, overthrow, participating, paved, Persecution, phone, PKK, Plaintiff, planned, plans, pocket, police, politicians, position, powers, ppols, prayer, presented, press, prevailed, preventing, primary, private, pro bono, probe, promised, proof, prosecutor, Protestant, psychological, publishing house, punishment, pursuing, question, rebutted, received, recent, record, reenactment, refuted, related, relevant, religion, remembered, repeated, request, retired, reviewed, ringing, ringleader, Salih Gurler, separate, shadowy, share, silence, sliced, slit, sobering, sources, southeastern, sports complex, stabbed, state, state protection, statement, stealing, stuffed, subsequent, suggesting, suspected, suspects, sweating, talking, team, term, terrorist, testified, testify, testimonies, testimony, Third Criminal Court, threatening, threats, throats, tied up, Tilmann Geske, tortured, torturing, towel, tremendous, trial, Turkey, Turkish, Turks, Ugur Yuksel, ultimately, ultranationalist, uncovering, Varol Bulent Aral, victims, video, video footage, video presentation, violence, violent, walking, watch, way, weak, window, witnessed, witnesses, Zirve Publishing Co. | Leave a comment

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year-end stories
[ANALYSIS] Asia's good news to bad: A final look back at 2021
Curtis S. Chin and Jose B. Collazo
In our annual look back at Asia's winners and losers, we find even the good news was bad in the year that was
With the year-end devastation of Typhoon Odette and the COVID-19 pandemic still in our midst, there can be little surprise that like tens of millions of Filipinos, we are more than happy to bid a final farewell to 2021. The year ahead promises no doubt more hope, challenge, and opportunity – if not necessarily more fun – in the Philippines, what with a presidential election approaching.
Yet, whether the Philippines or the United States, it might well seem like it is always a matter of two steps forward and one step back as the coronavirus continues to evolve and so too the responses to it.
In our annual look back at Asia's winners and losers, we find even the good news was bad in the year that was.
Worst year: Afghan women, girls
The chaotic US withdrawal in August 2021 brought to an end an era of advancements in Afghanistan, and hunger and misery are on the rise again in one of Asia's poorest nations. Still, even amid the "worse off" some are even more "worse off." Sadly we give "worst year' in Asia to Afghanistan's beleaguered and increasingly-at-risk women and girls.
The US presence in Afghanistan – the "graveyard of empires" – was doomed in part by hubris and denial. But a bright spot of the last 20 years was the dramatic improvement in the lives and opportunities for Afghanistan's women and girls.
A record number of Afghan girls went to school. Women ascended in public life, taking on roles as ambassadors, parliamentarians and civil society leaders. The "Afghan Dreamers" – an all-female, high school robotics team – won acclaim in international competitions.
Now, under a back-in-power Taliban, the worst may still be to come for Afghan's women and girls as the world looks away.
Bad year: Aung San Suu Kyi
One-time de facto leader of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi found herself at year-end 2021 back where she has spent so many years – under detention by a military government – and takes the prize for "bad year" in Asia.
After a military coup, the Nobel laureate was detained, tried, and found guilty on charges of incitement and breaking COVID-19 rules. Stalled democratic reforms and the persecution of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority, which she did little to stop, had already dimmed the democracy icon's prospects of instituting lasting change in her country.
She is not alone though as the pandemic provided added cover for governments in Asia to restrict civil liberties and clamp down on protests. The awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize to Rappler's own Maria Ressa and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov underscored the challenges to free press and democracy worldwide.
With her future now looking very much like her past, Suu Kyi offers up a case study of just how difficult it is for democracy to take root and thrive not only in Myanmar but in all of Southeast Asia.
Mixed year: Olympic movement in Asia
With the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics ultimately held in 2021 shining bright, and Beijing's 2022 winter counterpart facing hurdles even before the games begin, the international Olympics sporting movement in Asia has had a decidedly mixed year.
Despite concerns over budgets and COVID-19, the delayed Tokyo Olympics provided a much needed distraction from the pandemic. American gold medalist gymnast Sunisa Lee dazzled the world. And athletes from host nation Japan won the third most gold medals, after athletes from the US and China.
Now in the countdown to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada have announced a diplomatic boycott of the games over China's treatment of its Uyghur minority and other human rights concerns. A now vanished social media post by Chinese star tennis player Peng Shuai that was interpreted as alleging sexual misconduct by a former communist party leader had many posting #WhereIsPengShuai? – and raising prospects of more protests to come.
These developments have many questioning whether the International Olympic Committee had put profits over principle, and whether the organization can live up to its charter of "promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity."
Good year: Southeast Asia's fintech
Amid the gloom and doom of 2021, Southeast Asia's fintech firms benefited from changing consumer habits and growing investor interest. Lockdowns throughout Southeast Asia forced many indoors and increasingly online, accelerating a trend that was already gaining steam in Thailand and elsewhere before the pandemic hit.
In the first nine months of 2021, Southeast Asia saw a record 80 fintech deals worth US$3 billion, exceeding what was invested in 2019 and 2020 combined and making it a very good year for the sector. A one-time unicorn that has integrated itself into the lives of Southeast Asia's citizens is Grab – the "Everyday Everything App" – which evolved from a ride hailing app to a digital platform and superapp that offers financial services, deliveries and much more throughout the region. In the largest SPAC merger and public listing deal of its kind, Grab went public at a nearly $40 billion valuation in December.
Southeast Asia's fintech players are also benefiting from venture capital shifting away from China as Beijing puts the brakes on the sector's development and reins in one-time high-flying success stories, including Alibaba Group's affiliate company Ant Group and founder Jack Ma.
It now seems we will need to look also to Southeast Asia, rather than Northeast Asia, for digital trends that will shape our future.
Best year: Cold war rhetoric in Asia
Hard-pressed to find anyone having had a great 2021, we give the dubious distinction of "best year" in Asia to the region's new Cold War warriors. Year 2021 sadly proved to be a banner year for a return to Cold War rhetoric.
The election of US President Biden proved to be no panacea for troubled superpower relations as China's President Xi Jinping stayed home, and Chinese nationalists and state-owned media including now "retired" Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin sought to push back against leaders from Australia, Canada and other nations whose views and values clashed with those of China.
Social media in 2021 amplified the nationalistic rhetoric of China's "wolf warrior" diplomats, and bots and trolls made matters worse. The spread of COVID-19, China's rapid military buildup and development of hypersonic missiles, militarization of the South China Sea and crackdowns in Hong Kong and China's Xinjiang region as well as threats to Taiwan all heightened tensions.
Is the United States in a Cold War with China? The answer could be "yes," "no," or "maybe" depending on the day of the week. The answer not only has deep implications for China and the United States, but for the Philippines, ASEAN and the world as nations navigate the US-China relationship and look to a better 2022. – Rappler.com
Curtis S. Chin, a former US ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, is managing director of advisory firm RiverPeak Group, LLC. Jose B. Collazo, is a Southeast Asia analyst and project consultant at RiverPeak Group. Follow them on Twitter at @curtisschin and @josebcollazo.
LIST: Food trends we loved in 2021
Disbandments, 2nd Gen reunions, and solo debuts: The K-pop newsmakers of 2021
Kapamilya or Kapuso: PH stars who switched networks in 2021
Boy bands, Olympic medalists, and chefs: The best of 'So Jannelle' in 2021
More on year-end stories
Aung San Suu Kyi
Philippines says 'indispensable' Suu Kyi must be involved in Myanmar peace process
Myanmar's Suu Kyi faces 6 years in jail after new sentences – source
Myanmar's ousted leader Suu Kyi appears in prison uniform in court
Myanmar junta official visits Cambodia after Suu Kyi sentencing
More on Aung San Suu Kyi
UK, Canada join diplomatic boycott of Beijing Winter Games
Australia joins diplomatic boycott of Beijing Winter Games
More on Beijing Olympics
More bodies found in search for survivors of boat accident off Malaysia
Indonesia starts COVID-19 vaccinations for young children
More on Southeast Asia
US criticizes China over canceled flights
US at risk of paying 'unbearable price' over Taiwan – senior Chinese diplomat
More on US-China relations


According to "Back to the Future II," flying cars were supposed to be commonplace by 2015. Seeing how it's already 2018 and cars fly about as well as penguins, it's fair to say that prediction did not come to true.
But just because cars do not fly now does not mean they never will, and you better believe people are trying to make the technology happen. One of them is Google cofounder Larry Page, whose flying-car startup "Kitty Hawk" unveiled an aerial vehicle last year.
Though it didn't look like much of a car, it did fly and since that's the point, could be considered a success. But that was not the end of the road for the idea that would, in theory, not need any roads.
New, improved and ready for you?
While we probably should not expect the updated version to be on (above?) the roads anytime soon, the newest version of the Flyer certainly seems like a giant step in that direction. Still helicopter-like but looking more like a car than the initial model, it is now open for test flights for prospective customers.
That's right -- if you want to give it a whirl, you can. It can only be tested above the waters at a Las Vegas facility, but it is said that with just an hour of training you will be ready to hit the skies.
Though not particularly comfortable to sit in, the lithium-polymer battery-powered car is guided by two control sticks, which are pretty easy to get the hang of.
As of now, the Flyer will only hover above water. The battery lasts for about 20 minutes, which is also a drawback. Eventually, the hope is that the Flyer will last much longer, reach speeds of over 100 mph and fly over populated areas.
Interested in flying one yourself?
Still more of a gimmick than a new mode of transportation, the Kitty Hawk Flyer is available to be tested by more than just the elite. It has already gone through about 1,500 test flights with social influencers and business people, with the hope that people will learn to accept it.
It may be difficult at first for people to truly feel safe in a flying car, but the more rides it gives without incident, the greater the chance of that happening.
And if you're ready to buy?
You can't get one yet, but you are able to place an order. Kitty Hawk is accepting pre-sales for the Flyer, with the form asking things like your name and address as well as your age, how you heard about the company and where you would like to use the Flyer.
A fleet of Flyers is also an option, so long as you provide information about your company as well as what kind of partnership you are looking to form with Kitty Hawk.
Riding in a flying car is an experience many would not believe, so naturally you would want to record what you saw. The Dash Cam Pro with Night Vision by Komando would be great for documenting flight.
It's also a great fit for land-based cars, catching all the funny moments you see while driving or the evidence you need for an accident.
TIME's June issue is dedicated to exploring unmanned aerial vehicles, better known as drones. It was with that in mind that their cover involved taking to the skies and producing something really, really cool. Click here to learn more about it.


KIDS DANCE is back! Ballet Tech's remarkably poised, scrupulously schooled and impeccably rehearsed whiz-kid dancers are busting at the seams to dance for you. Eliot Feld's A Yankee Doodle comes to town, with a feather in its cap.Dotty Polkas bounces off the walls and across the stage, and both Quickstep and UPSIDE D∀N?E return to the repertory, June 9-12 at the Joyce Theater.
More exciting news? There will be brand new dances by guest choreographers Brian Brooks and Julia Eichten. Eliot Feld has long been committed to building a repertory of original dances created especially for youngsters, dances that Feld says are "dreamed up and composed by boffo dance makers, for fledgling dancers to hone their skills and whet their imaginations. And, of course, they will delight the eye and enchant the fancy of audiences of all ages."
The first contributions to Ballet Tech's library are in the works. The wonderful dance maker Brian Brooks is creating a new work - called "Panorama" - for a cast of 35, ages 12-15, to music by Michael Gordon. Julia Eichten, a recent graduate of Juilliard and gifted young choreographer with a gloriously antic bent, is staging her solo "Monsieur," music by Jacques Brel, for Kids Dance.


The women's lacrosse team set a season goal to beat Catholic University. Unfortunately, this was not the year for it to happen.
Scranton lost 10-18 to the Cardinals, ending its season Wednesday evening in Washington, D.C.
The fourth-place Royals met first-place Catholic in the Landmark Conference semifinals. After losing 18-6 to the Cardinals during the regular season, Scranton had a challenge ahead of it.
The team had aspirations of making the Landmark Conference playoffs, which it did, but fell short in achieving its second goal to beat Catholic University.
Entering the game with a Landmark Conference record of 6-0, the top-seeded Cardinals of Catholic were too much for the Royals. The game went back and forth throughout the first 10 minutes. Catholic eventually pulled ahead to put the game out of reach.
Senior attacker Kerry Sullivan led the Royals with five goals and an assist. All but one of her goals came in the first 22 minutes of play.
Catholic opened the scoring just four minutes in. Scranton responded two minutes later when Sullivan scored off a pass from senior defender Erin Green. Catholic then scored again to take a 2-1 lead, but Sullivan and Green continued on as scoring threats, each recording a goal in the next three minutes to put the Royals up 3-2.
Catholic then scored two of its own goals before Sullivan responded with her third goal of the game to tie it 4-4. Scoring went back and forth from Catholic to Scranton for the next three goals, making the score 6-5 in Catholic's favor. The Cardinals then went on to score six of the next seven total goals.
The Cardinals outshot the Royals 38-20 and put 27 of their 38 shots on goal. Catholic also held the edge in ground balls 34-21.
Sophomore Erin Allen scored a goal off a pass from first-year midfielder Meghan Kerr in the midst of the six Catholic goals. Junior goalkeeper Emily Towey had four saves for the Royals.
The teams only played seven minutes into the second half before they were required to leave the field for more than two hours because of lightning in the area.
Once play resumed, Kerr scored a goal and added her second assist. Junior Emily Goss also scored a goal and Green added her second goal.
With the loss, Scranton ended its season at 6-12 overall. Catholic advances to its seventh straight Landmark Conference championship game and will play the second seed Susquehanna University at home at 1 p.m. Saturday.
Scranton is graduating seven seniors from this year's team. Scranton will lose captains Mary Armstrong, Shannon Ginty, Green and Sullivan.


Whilst cars are essential for a lot of families, they unfortunately decline in value when not kept in top condition. Car models that come from manufacturers like Mitsubishi, Nissan and Toyota, all Japanese companies, have parts that are both expensive and difficult to find.
You'll know that it's time to take your car to a mechanic when things start going south with it. The first is obviously the way your car is handling on the road. If you start to experience a shaky or bumpy ride or have a stiff or poor steering response accompanied by a screeching noise. Then you know you're in trouble. Also it might be time to start replacing parts in your vehicle after you reach 100,000 kms.
The first thing you should do is perform a visual inspection. So pop that hood of your car and take a look at the shocks, struts and mounts. Do they look dented or damaged? Also check for any kind of fluid leak either above or under the car. While you're at it, take a look at your tires and check for signs of odd looking wear patterns, which may indicate a bigger problem. Check the brakes as well. Sometimes, the brake pads may need replacing. These usually aren't as expensive as having to replace the entire brake system. When would this occur? If you've been riding around with the brake pads practically spent for a while. You could end up damaging the entire brake and steering system in the process. If you've noticed a lot of swaying or leaning while turning or changing lanes, you'll probably need new shock absorbers and struts.
When you take a vehicle to a mechanic, chances are that the spare parts you'll need won't be there. So they'll have to order it from an auto repair store, which may either not have the spare part or have them but at a high price. In most cases you can opt to search for the piece at a junkyard or salvage depot with abandoned parts. You do not need to do that any more, Daks toyota Uganda can supply you with genuine toyota spareparts and are also authorised dealers of Toyota spare parts in Uganda. At Daks Toyota, we also do vehicle servicing.
Once you've bought the piece needed from Daks Toyota Limited, you can replace that damaged, corroded or worn out part with the new part. Now unless you have the expertise to understand the inner workings of a car, it's best to leave it to a professional mechanic, here at Daks toyota, we have one of the best and most qualified certified toyota mechanics in Uganda. It's important not to go at it alone because in many cases, we think that replacing one part will fix the problem. But often enough, one refurbished spare part may not work well with the rest of the pre-existing parts in the car's engine. So you could ultimately do more harm than good. Leave that work to your personal mechanic if you trust him enough. You could as well leave it with the daks Toyota Specialists at an affordable fee.
It's important to identify what parts need replacement and finding a genuine company that can get you the right parts for the particular model of your car. After all, you wouldn't put a part that's meant for a Nissan inside a Mitsubishi engine, would you?
For better quality services and genuine toyota parts, visit daks toyota limited or leave us a message on our contact us form.
I like what this article mentions about doing a visual inspection. I think this could be an easy way of spotting what might be causing my car to make this noise. Each morning when I start my car when it has been sitting, it will make a slapping noise as if one of the belts is torn. I'll definitely have to look at it and have it fixed if it looks bad. Thanks for sharing!
You are welcome, thanks for appreciating the article.
I have been driving a toyota matrix since 2006. It has been a very reliable car for all these years. Just recently, I have noticed some weird shaking going on with the steering wheel. I will try to do a visual inspection like you said, and hopefully the problem is easily fixed. Thanks for the ideas.
These are some great tips, and I appreciate your advice to start with a visual inspection to make sure your car is in good condition. It's been a while since I've looked closely at my car to see if there are any visual problems, but I think something is leaking now. I'll definitely look and see if I can determine what the problem is, then I'll take it in to a shop to have it repaired. Thanks for the great post!
Thanks too Lillian for the appreciation.
So you mentioned we should do a visual inspection of our car to see if it needs any spare parts. I don't think I'm experienced enough to look and actually know. I'm a little worried to take it into a dealer and ask because they might say it needs more then it does. That is probably the only thing I can do because when I open the hood of my car it looks great! I'll take it to a shop to see what it needs, thanks.


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« The Future of Digital Begins With Print: The ACT 5 Experience
Chilled Magazine Is Raising Spirits With A 360° Degree Approach To Publishing – The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Publisher Jeff Greif »
The Overlooked Piece Of The "Puzzle"…The Print Product That Has Always Been Interactive – Puzzle Magazines…The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Bruce Sherbow, Senior Vice President, Penny Publications
"I don't think digital will be the demise of print at all, in fact, I don't know why we keep talking about the death of print because I don't think it's happening." Bruce Sherbow
Often when the world thinks of successful magazines its first mental vision are of titles such as Cosmopolitan, People or Better Homes & Gardens. Granted, those are all very prestigious and popular magazines and certainly can be described as successful.
But there is an entire category of print publications that is often overlooked by the industry and the consumer when it comes to thinking about profitability and being extremely lucrative. The puzzle category is one that has been an audience favorite for many, many years and in actuality has seen more interaction with the consumer than any digital site or app ever created.
Bruce Sherbow is Senior Vice President of Penny Publications, the reigning queen of all things "puzzling." I reached out to Bruce recently to find out more about the category and all its retail and distributive proponents. The conversation was both interesting and very informative.
From discussing the future of Penny print to the digital realms of puzzle mania, Bruce remains focused on one thing: providing the best in puzzle entertainment to the consumer and making it as comfortable and easy as possible to implement that goal for the buying public.
So sit back, grab a pencil and your favorite Penny Publications Crossword and follow the clues as you solve any questions you might have about the puzzle category with the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Bruce Sherbow, Senior Vice President, Penny Publications.
But first the sound-bites…
On the well-kept secret of the puzzle category: It is an interesting category and I think generally speaking, people who are not intimately involved with puzzle magazines, in one way or another, think of them as interchangeable; crosswords is a big melting pot term that's used.
On Penny Publications being the major player on the puzzle field: In 1996 we purchased Dell Magazines and we combined those lines and now we have about 62% of the North American retail market in puzzle magazines.
On why Penny Publications brought Sunshine School to the print marketplace: This particular line, Sunshine School, was formed in a conversation with Wal-Mart. They were looking for something in the way of a periodical-type of magazine that had a lot of worksheets that you find in books that maybe change once or twice a year.
On the impact, or lack of, that digital has had on their print products: It's not very easy to measure that. We think that our print customer is a little bit of a different person.
On his biggest stumbling block: Our biggest stumbling block is probably along the same lines as every publisher on the newsstands today and that's just the disruptions that are going on in the marketplace and in our channel and the difficulty in getting copies where they need to be.
On his most pleasant surprise: It's a great business. The newsstand business and I'm not just talking puzzles now, I've been in puzzles for the last 15 years, but the newsstand business is tremendous.
On what publishers can do to help retailers: I think that we need a continual education program in this business with retailers and I think at the highest levels we can and down from there.
On what keeps him up at night: I think a lot about some of the things we've talked about, especially educating the retailer about the category and also about trying to work with wholesalers on merchandising aspects at the fixture to make sure the products are displayed correctly.
And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Bruce Sherbow, Senior Vice President, Penny Publications…
Samir Husni: The whole puzzle category has been almost like the little secret of the industry, nobody really talks about it, yet it takes up a big chunk of the newsstands with so many titles. Tell me a little bit more about the category.
Bruce Sherbow: It is an interesting category and I think generally speaking, people who are not intimately involved with puzzle magazines, in one way or another, think of them as interchangeable; crosswords is a big melting pot term that's used.
In fact, there are really six different categories within the actual puzzle magazine publishing industry. The largest segment on the newsstands today is Word Seeks and Word Searches and that's about 40% of the category. And then Crosswords follow that with about 22%. Of course, a phenomenon that everyone is aware of is Sudoku, which came into real mass awareness about six years ago and had a zero part of the category then and now has settled in at about 11 or 12% and at its heyday probably got up to about 20%. So there is a lot of variance there.
And Sudoku is also interesting because where most of the other categories within puzzles show the demographics to be older and female; Sudoku is all over the board: young, old, male and female. Everybody likes Sudoku.
There is a lot of education that we have tried to do over the years with retailers and wholesalers about the category, so that there is some distinction between the different kinds of products and how they should be displayed.
For instance, generally speaking, puzzles are displayed on the lower tier of a magazine fixture around comics or teen titles, when really they should be displayed more in the middle so that some of the demographic, our older customers, don't have to bend down to the ground and try and get what they're looking for. These are just some things that we try and educate people on.
Samir Husni: We used to have so many different publishing groups that published the puzzle magazines and now technically we have one major player in the field: Penny Publications.
Bruce Sherbow: Yes, we had Harris Publications and Dell Magazines at one time. Dell was our largest competitor when we were Penny Press. And in 1996 we purchased Dell Magazines and we combined those lines and now we have about 62% of the North American retail market in puzzle magazines.
Samir Husni: And you keep on expanding. Late last year and early this year you launched a new line: the Sunshine School aimed at children – Kindergarten and First Grade. So in the midst of this entire digital environment; why are you bringing more print titles to the marketplace and specifically for children?
Bruce Sherbow: This particular line, Sunshine School, was formed in a conversation with Wal-Mart. They were looking for something in the way of a periodical-type of magazine that had a lot of worksheets that you find in books that maybe change once or twice a year. Wal-Mart was looking for something a little fresher, such as each month or with a higher frequency so that's why we started this line.
We've also had in the past a license with Nickelodeon where for a number of years we had a children's magazine, so this was an opportunity for us to really provide a high-quality, four-color type of product to compete with the book-type of worksheets. And you know puzzles are more black and white, so it's easier for consumers to work on a pulp-type of stock page, but with this we wanted something that certainly competed with some of the higher-quality color products.
It's just launching; we're now quarterly. And we're looking forward to some good returns on it.
Samir Husni: What was the impact of digital on your products? Have you seen your sales in the majority of the puzzle magazines plummet or you're keeping your status quo in the marketplace? I do hear people saying: let's do some Sudoku on my tablet or my iPad; did you see any tangible impact on your print puzzle magazines?
Bruce Sherbow: It's not very easy to measure that. We think that our print customer is a little bit of a different person. We actually launched a website about a year ago called Puzzle Nation and it was an online place to go and do different types of puzzle magazines and do them interactively. And we distribute millions and millions of copies at newsstands of puzzle magazines and we did a lot of advertising within those magazines about the site. And frankly, the bad news is that the website didn't do very well, but the good news is we don't think there was any major conversion from our print people flocking to an online site. (Laughs)
Now you're talking more specifically about mobile. We just haven't seen a measurable move from print over to mobile. We do know that there are lots of people playing those kinds of games and perhaps they're skewing a little younger than our print customer, but we actually have Crossword, Word Seek and Sudoku apps in the marketplace and in the app stores, such as Amazon. But we're not seeing a lot of crossover there.
Samir Husni: One of the most unadvertised features of the industry is the fact that puzzle magazines have always been an interactive publication; you don't just buy it to look at the pictures. And yet we surrendered those terms like "interactive" to the new technology; you rarely hear anyone in the magazine media industry describing a print magazine as being interactive with the audience. Yet puzzle magazines have always been the leaders of that interactivity; why do you think that the magazine media business has surrendered a lot of the great characteristics of print to digital technology?
Bruce Sherbow: I think that it's certainly a lot easier for a consumer to get in their mindset a celebrity-type of information or fashion information, cooking information, which is also a hot print category now too: food and cooking, but it's also easy for the consumer to pull up a recipe online or put it on their tablet while they're in the kitchen cooking. A lot of people find it convenient to go online daily and see what the celebrities are up to as well.
But I think that the real impact with the printed material is that the magazines, for example with the untimely deaths of Robin Williams and Joan Rivers, the print magazines showed what they really could do within a matter of days when it came to getting information out in a printed format to the streets.
But on a regular basis I think people might be tending to gravitate toward the Internet for current information whereas with puzzles we're really finding that people like to carry them around and have that piece of paper with them and work on it when they can.
Of course, we're not blind to the fact that the app side of it is a growing side of the business. And we're certainly there to try and capture what we can. But right now it's a little bit different customer, we think. That could change as some of our older print customers die off, quite frankly, and a younger generation that's now maybe teenaged and has grown up with interactivity and all the technology, who might discover puzzles and find them attractive, that demographic could gravitate more toward online.
Samir Husni: What has been your biggest stumbling block when it comes to all the titles that you have?
Bruce Sherbow: Our biggest stumbling block is probably along the same lines as every publisher on the newsstands today and that's just the disruptions that are going on in the marketplace and in our channel and the difficulty in getting copies where they need to be, when they need to be there and on a regular continuing basis.
I've been in this business for over forty years and 28 or 30 of those years has been as a wholesaler, so I understand certainly the other side, but hopefully when the dust settles on some of the disruption, we'll be able to really, and when I say "we" I mean the channel or the industry, we'll be able to focus on getting back to basics, because to me that's the biggest stumbling block right now. I mean, we can print the copies and we can ship the copies, but with what the wholesalers are going through right now and the infrastructures that have to be created for all this new business, the key is to get it merchandised well.
And I think too that a lot of retailers have over the years, because of the DSD (Direct Store Delivery) nature of our business, not taken enough responsibility once the product enters their store and certainly with SBT (Scanned-Based Trading) they take even less responsibility. It would be great if we could as an industry educate retailers about how important it is to check their check-outs, to check their mainlines and make sure at the end of the day, when it's all a mess, it gets straightened. It's just like bottles of shampoo or cans of beans; they have got to be visible in order to be sold. I believe that's a big stumbling block right now for our business.
Samir Husni: And what has been the most pleasant surprise that you've experienced in your 40+ years in the business?
Bruce Sherbow: It's a great business. The newsstand business and I'm not just talking puzzles now, I've been in puzzles for the last 15 years, but the newsstand business is tremendous. We get a lot of information out to people on a very timely basis and there are not a lot of other industries and I'm not talking on the technology side, but on the bricks and mortar side, that can move that quickly and be that nimble. And I think that that is really key for us when it comes to maintaining a growing business, as long as we educate our retailers about that. But I think it's a great channel.
Samir Husni: And now in your responsibility also with the Periodical and Book Association of America; do you think that we can do anything as magazine publishers to help retailers? And do you think retailers understand the value of the printed magazines today or are we devaluing our own publications?
Bruce Sherbow: I think that we need a continual education program in this business with retailers and I think at the highest levels we can and down from there. Jerry Lynch just gave a great little summary of the Willard Bishop latest study, I won't go into those details, but magazines are very, very important to retailers. The magazine-buyer within a location represents 32% of sales in that store. So the magazine-buyer is very important. It's a very profitable picture for the retailers, but because we as a channel do so much work for that retailer that they don't have to do anything, it's kind of an unknown, invisible little area, I think that is the cause of some of the troubles this industry has had in terms of declining sales and weakening infrastructure. I think retailers tend to get tired of hearing some of the negativity and I think that we need to educate them.
But what can we do and what can PBAA do? I'm hopeful that as an industry group perhaps that we can come together as a group and speak with one voice to retailers and let them know how important it is in real numbers and what it does for their sales of other products in their stores.
And also I'd like to be able to see a group work with the wholesale magazine distributors on merchandising concepts. I'm not talking about fancy new racks and those types of things; I'm talking about the basics. How can we as an industry create a check-list or something so that we all know what's expected when that merchandiser gets in the store; what are they going to do and how are they going to do it? And there are a lot of people who are in retail stores every day who are in our industry and if they had a check-list that they could look at a magazine fixture as they're working in that store and then give feedback, I think that we could correct a lot of the problems, because again, we have got to have that merchandising correct so that it can be seen by consumers.
Samir Husni: Some retailers that I have spoken with have told me that the magazine industry is one that is digging its own grave. Every time I pick up a newspaper or read an interview with an industry leader all they ever say is that the future is digital. Why should we help? If they don't believe in their own futures, why should we be involved?
Bruce Sherbow: I can understand that feeling because there has been a lot of doom and gloom being professed by trade publications. There is no question that sales have been on a downward trend for lots of reasons and I think some of those reasons have nothing to do with our business, it has to do with the economy and other things in general, but we also have titles that we publish digitally. When we bought Dell Magazines we acquired Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock, Asimov's, Analog and Horoscope Magazine and those are titles that are a heavy subscription base, not really a newsstand base except in bookstores. And then about five years ago we started digital publishing these and it was a great business for those titles. But it's also now plateaued out.
Part of that reason, and I was in a meeting recently in New York where this suggestion was made as to the reason why they plateaued, five or six years ago the digital publishing was a kind of new concept and a lot of people wanted to try it out, tablets and readers were a bit newer, people would move over from the printed side to digital. But now it's plateauing and people who have decided that they'd rather have digital are already there, people who have tried it but don't like it are back to print and are staying there and there is not a lot of excitement anymore about the hardware or software that is associated right now with digital publishing.
So I don't think that digital publishing is in fact going to take away or be the demise of all print, but I'm also not blind, because I know certainly there are advantages to some degree of interactivity, we talked about that a little bit. If you're online reading a fashion magazine you can click a link and go see a video of someone wearing the fashion or something like that. But there are also some interesting things happening in print which are more interactive, but we're not a magazine that engages in a lot of the new technology with advertising, so I can't comment fully on that, but there is some happening. But I don't think digital will be the demise of print at all, in fact, I don't know why we keep talking about the death of print because I don't think it's happening.
Bruce Sherbow: That's a good question. There is no single thing that keeps me up; this has been a great business the entire time I've been in it. We're going through some challenges; there is no question about that.
But at certain times things keep me awake, like in March and April with the confusion about Source Interlink. Things like that keep me awake. And I think a lot about some of the things we've talked about, especially educating the retailer about the category and also about trying to work with wholesalers on merchandising aspects at the fixture to make sure the products are displayed correctly. Those are the things that I think about a lot and certainly wanting to stay engaged with our audience.
Posted in News and Views, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview |


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10 Things You Might Not Know About Sigmund Freud
Psychiatry Psychology Sigmund Freud
1. As a child, Sigmund Freud was a good student who, aside from his native German, was also proficient in French, Italian, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. He loved to read, especially works by William Shakespeare, which helped him understand human psychology.
2. While commonly known as one of history's most famous psychiatrists, Freud was first and foremost a neurologist.
3. At the University of Vienna, he also studied philosophy as well as zoology.
4. Freud opened his first private practice specializing in nervous and brain disorders in 1886. He charged an astronomical fee of $25 an hour, which would today be equivalent to nearly $4,000.
5. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938, the Nazis burned many of Freud's books, prompting him to note, "In the Middle Ages they would have burnt me; nowadays they are content with burning my books."
6. Harassed by the Nazis because he was Jewish, Freud fled from Vienna to London in 1938; his four sisters, however, stayed behind and eventually died in concentration camps.
7. Freud was a scientist and atheist, but that didn't prevent him from being extremely superstitious. Based on his belief in the properties of certain numbers, he even predicted that he'd die at the age of 51. However, he lived until 83.
8. He started to use cocaine as an experiment to see whether it could cure his friend, Dr. Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow's dependence on morphine. Freud reportedly stopped talking cocaine after 12 years, while his friend became addicted to it.
9. He immortalized the phrase "Freudian slip," which he described as "a single unconscious thought, which comes to light through the special blunder."
10. Since Freud's death in September 1939, his ashes have been kept in London's Golders Green Crematorium, in an ancient Greek urn gifted to him by a friend. After his wife Martha died in 1951, her ashes were also placed there. In 2014, the 2,300-year-old urn was severely damaged when thieves tried—but failed—to steal it.
Tags: Psychiatry, Psychology, Sigmund Freud


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businessReal Estate
Developers hit the ground with new D-FW office building projects
More than 5 million square feet of office space is being built in the Dallas area.
11:00 AM on Jul 12, 2019
Dallas-area office developers are shrugging off worries about the economy and higher construction costs.
A new round of construction projects stretches from downtown Dallas to Frisco and everywhere in between.
Developers are currently building almost two dozen buildings with more than 5 million square feet in the area — an increase of more than 30% from what was being built at the end of 2018.
The construction is in a combination of speculative and fully leased corporate projects.
And most of the building is in the 'burbs.
"It's a pretty good-sized number of projects, but our demand for office space has been really solid in Dallas," said Greg Biggs, managing director of JLL. "Dallas is continuing to attract business."
"Developers feel good about where they are in the economic cycle and the product that they are building," Biggs said. "They also have lenders that are willing to lend them the money."
Construction continues at Headquarters 2 office building in Plano, one of the largest office projects in the Dallas area..(Vernon Bryant / Staff Photographer)
Even more office projects are gearing up to start before the end of the year.
Just this week, developer Hillwood Urban and USAA Real Estate started work on one of the largest new office projects in the area. The 15-story, 365,000-square-foot Victory Commons building is going on the northwest corner of downtown Dallas in Victory Park.
Just a few blocks away on North Akard Street, another firm — Kaizen Development Partners — has begun site work for a 300,000-square-foot office high-rise called The Link.
Both of those buildings are starting without major tenants, but about 40% of the office space under construction in the D-FW area is already spoken for.
And property brokers are betting that not every building being talked about will actually be built.
"I think the ones that carry a brand-name developer and sponsor and capital will start," said CBRE's Fletcher Cordell. "It's a fairly limited group of developers that have that credibility.
"The ones that don't have that history in many projects won't start unless they have a tenant."
Most of the Dallas area's new office buildings are along the Dallas North Tollway in Plano and Frisco. About 1.2 million square feet of offices are being built in those two markets alone, according to data from CBRE.
The other building hot spot is in the Cypress Waters development northwest of Dallas, where almost 900,000 square feet of projects are on the way.
The single largest office development underway in the Dallas area is Pioneer Natural Resources' new headquarters in Las Colinas. The more than 1 million-square-foot Irving project will be finished later this year.
Along with the new construction, another big block of vacant office space is on the market in older buildings that are being left behind when companies move to newer projects.
"The space that needs to be released now that tenants have moved out won't be sitting around forever," Cordell said.
So far, North Texas' economic growth has created enough demand to fill the new buildings.
But 10 years into the longest economic cycle in U.S. history, real estate analysts are worried about flagging office demand.
Ken McCarthy, chief economist for commercial property firm Cushman & Wakefield, said that nationwide growth of office space using companies has slowed significantly in 2019.
"At the same time job growth, which is demand, is slowing, supply is ramping up," McCarthy said. "We are tracking more than 100 million square feet of office development nationwide — the highest in more than a decade."
Most of the new buildings are going up to meet business appetites for more up-to-date space.
"Companies love new buildings," McCarthy said. "Places like New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Dallas — that's where a lot of the new construction is."
Steve Brown, Real Estate Editor. Steve covers commercial and residential real estate in Dallas-Fort Worth.
stevebrown@dallasnews.com @SteveBrownDMN
Get D-FW real estate news
Get the latest real estate news from Steve Brown and the business staff at The Dallas Morning News.


Can you lift the Wrench?
Seek me out in southprontera fields if you would like to test you're metal.
As those worthy are found the weight will increase.
It will be worth you're while if you do infact lift.
I can lift, 1 v 1 lets do this.
Let's meet. I will try my best.
I guess this was finished already?


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text:
Hourly Data Report for October 28, 2016
CARBERRY CS
WZE
Almanac Averages & Extremes (October 28) Daily Data (October 2016)
Nearby Stations with Data Historical Data Search for October 28,2016
Hourly Data (October 2016)
Time LST UTC Year 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 Month January February March April May June July August September October November December Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
9.9 8.7 92 0.0 17 14 LegendMM
9.6 8.5 93 0.0 0 1 LegendMM
9.0 8.2 95 0.0 7 11 LegendMM
8.4 7.8 96 0.0 0 LegendMM
7.6 7.1 97 0.0 36 9 LegendMM


This cruise line's brand identity is elegant and understated, yet they needed to promote special offers, and create a sense of urgency to help book undersold sailings. The promotion must stay true to Regent's brand standards and deliver a targeted message to entice a discerning sector.
The line's guests are affluent and savvy travelers who respond well to elegant magazine-style communications, yet they also appreciate receiving a special value. We developed a program of direct mail to past guests and online banners for new prospects. The brochure mailer, entitled "Last Call" was created utilizing variable data printing for personalized information tailored to each guest. This worked in conjunction with an online campaign linked directly to the line's booking engine.
Consistently chosen as the world's top-rated cruise line by the readers of Condé Nast Traveler and Travel + Leisure, Regent Seven Seas Cruises offers voyages to all corners of the globe aboard modern, six-star rated, luxury vessels including the all-suite, all-balcony, 700-guest Seven Seas Voyager and Seven Seas Mariner, and the 490-guest Seven Seas Navigator, with 90 percent balcony suites. DCA won the account in 2008 by focusing on strategy and fresh, inventive creative.