Combine chili powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a large bowl. Rub spice mixture onto fish and shrimp.
Combine pasillas and enough hot water to cover in a bowl. Let stand 20 minutes. Remove chilies with a slotted spoon, reserving soaking water. Remove seeds and stems from chilies; puree in blender, adding enough reserved soaking water (about 1/4 cup) to make a thick paste.
Heat 2 teaspoons oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add fish and shrimp; cook 2 minutes per side, until lightly browned but not totally cooked through. Transfer to a plate. Cover and set aside.
Heat remaining 2 teaspoons oil in a Dutch oven. Add onions, corn and garlic; cook 3 minutes. Stir in tomatoes, clam juice, wine, 1 cup water, beans, pasilla paste and green chilies; bring to a boil. Reduce heat. Cover and simmer 20 minutes. Uncover; add seafood and remaining 1 teaspoon salt. Simmer 5 minutes more. Top with avocado and cilantro. Makes 6 servings.
A delicious coastal meal for these chilly seaside nights. warm up your coastal dining room with this yummy seafood chili recipe.


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Claire Denis in New York
By David Hudson
Claire Denis
Talking to Criterion's Peter Becker in a 2017 episode of Adventures in Moviegoing (good news: the series will return when the Criterion Channel launches on April 8), Barry Jenkins declared that "Claire Denis is the greatest filmmaker on the planet." The Brooklyn Academy of Music stops just short of complete agreement, hedging its bets a tad, by calling Denis one of "a handful of filmmakers who can credibly lay claim to the title" in its program notes for Strange Desire: The Films of Claire Denis. It's the largest U.S. retrospective yet, opening on Friday and running through April 9. While she's in New York, Denis will head to the Metrograph on April 2 to take part in a Q&A following a screening of one of her most challenging films, L'intrus (2004), before introducing her second feature, No Fear, No Die (1990). Then, on April 3, she'll return to BAM for a Q&A following a screening of her latest work, the confounding yet enthralling High Life (2018).
The title of BAM's series is well-chosen. Writing for the New York Review of Books last year about the men and women who move through the worlds that Denis conjures, Max Nelson observed: "Desire is both a source of momentum for these characters and a wellspring of confusion and instability . . . They smell one another, admire one another from afar, dance around one another, and in the process lose their footing in the worlds they occupy. To want to get close to another person, for Denis, is to venture into strange and unknown territory."
Even those who argue that a director's work should speak for itself will have to admit that an awareness of Denis's background is part and parcel of even the most basic understanding of her films. Shortly after her birth in Paris in 1946, Denis's family moved to Africa, where her father worked as a colonial administrator. He was, as Nelson points out, a supporter of the national independence movements "that swept the continent during his daughter's childhood." Every two years or so, he moved the family to a new country: Cameroon, Somalia, Djibouti, Burkina Faso. Denis's experience as a white girl in Africa before returning to France, practically a foreign country in her eyes, when she was fourteen informs her work as one of the great portraitists of marginal lives.
One of the best pieces on Denis's life and work before she made her first feature, Chocolat (1988), when she was forty-two is Leo Goldsmith's contribution to the 2009 symposium Claire Denis: The Art of Seduction at Reverse Shot. Goldsmith sketches the outlines of the political and economic conditions in France in the early and mid-1970s and their impact on the French film industry as a whole, and more specifically, on the atmosphere at the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies (IDHEC), where Denis began her studies in 1972. It was there that she met the likes of Philippe Garrel and Jacques Rivette, "the only one" of the French New Wave directors "who seemed absolutely incredible to me." In 1990, Denis and renowned critic Serge Daney profiled Rivette in an episode of the remarkable French television series Cinéma de notre temps.
Denis's appearance as an uncredited extra in Robert Bresson's Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971) led to a string of jobs as an assistant director. She worked with Dušan Makavejev on Sweet Movie (1974), with Costa-Gavras on Hanna K. (1983), and perhaps most crucially, with Wim Wenders on Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987) and with Jim Jarmusch on Down by Law (1986). Goldsmith admits that "while some influence from those filmmakers upon her later style and (especially) production model is all but inevitable, the act of tracing the impact of this period on Denis's films is a highly speculative exercise." But that doesn't keep him from connecting a few dots.
Which brings us to Chocolat, in which a woman named France (Mireille Perrier) returns to Cameroon, reflects on her childhood there, and realizes that the tension she sensed between her mother (Giulia Boschi) and the family's houseboy (Isaach De Bankolé) was charged with sexual attraction. "Like an Edith Wharton novel," wrote Darren Hughes in 2005, "Chocolat appropriates the conventions of a romance plot to comment on restrictive social structures, specifically the complexities of a colonial system that simultaneously dehumanizes and hypersexualizes the colonized, while also degrading the colonizer. It's brilliantly executed—a story told completely in small but significant gestures."
While cinematographer Robert Alazraki shot Chocolat and Pascal Marti would shoot No Fear, No Die, starring De Bankolé and Alex Descas as Africans staging illegal cock fights in France, the camera operator on both films was Agnès Godard, who would go on to work as Denis's cinematographer on every feature from the Rivette documentary through 2017's Let the Sunshine In. Denis tends to cultivate collaborations over a series of projects, turning, for example, to Tindersticks lead singer Stuart Staples eight times now for a film's score. Descas appears in I Can't Sleep (1994), a serial killer thriller set against the backdrop of Parisian nightlife, and Grégoire Colin and Alice Houri play siblings in both U.S. Go Home (1994) and Nénette et Boni (1996).
Colin also appears in Beau travail (1999), a loose adaptation of Herman Melville's Billy Budd and something of an international breakthrough for Denis. Denis Lavant plays a French Foreign Legion officer in Djibouti whose unwanted attraction to a young soldier (Colin) leads to an act of cruelty—and a court martial. "Aren't Denis's heroes among the most beautiful, complicated men cinema's offered since Nicholas Ray's heyday?" asked Reverse Shot editors Michael Koresky and Jeff Reichert in the introduction to their symposium. They suggest that "it's not hard to consider such actors as Alex Descas, Isaach de Bankolé, and Grégoire Colin the transplanted European heirs to James Dean, Farley Granger, Christopher Plummer—men without pasts, but on missions. Colin himself perhaps put it best: 'She films male bodies as if she were a homosexual man.'"
Strange Desire: The Films of Claire Denis
Opening up a conversation at Slant with Jason Bellamy in 2009, Ed Howard called Denis's Trouble Every Day (2001), in which Vincent Gallo and Béatrice Dalle are driven to cannibalism by their sexual desires, "quite possibly her most challenging and unsettling film, both utterly typical of her approach—quiet, patiently paced, enigmatic in its characterization and plotting—and yet also a true outlier in her career." Discussing Denis's work with Nicolas Rapold and Madeline Whittle on last week's Film Comment Podcast, Nick Pinkerton recalls seeing Trouble Every Day for the first time, hitting up a local bar for a double shot, and then heading straight back to the theater for a second viewing.
In Friday Night (2002), a woman (Valérie Lemercier) is ensnared in a traffic jam on her way across Paris to move in with her boyfriend when a stranger (Vincent Lindon) emerges and the two of them end up taking a room. Not only is there very little dialogue, but as Denis told Aimé Ancian in Senses of Cinema, she and her collaborator Emmanuèle Bernheim, who wrote the book, decided to do away with the voiceover they'd drafted as well. And "working without a safety net forced me to have absolute faith in the cinema." Introducing another interview with Denis for Senses in 2005, Damon Smith called L'intrus, in which a sixty-eight-year-old man (Michel Subor) travels the world in search of a heart transplant, Denis's "most mysterious, enthralling and strangely invigorating work since Beau travail" and "an allusive memory-puzzle of sorts, dreamlike, beguiling and visually poetic." Towards Mathilde (2005), focusing on choreographer Mathilde Monnier, followed, and writing for Slant, Travis Mackenzie Hoover found that "Denis manages to match her in a star directorial performance that expands the boundaries of what a documentary can be."
Three years passed before Denis returned with 35 Shots of Rum (2008), an homage to Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring (1949) centering on the relationship between a Parisian train driver (Alex Descas) and his daughter (Mati Diop) as she prepares to leave home. The film is "dear to me, maybe for its modesty," Denis told Kevin B. Lee in the Notebook. At the same time, though, "working on a project like this, about family rituals, maybe it's immodest in a sense, even pretentious, to believe that I can express something that other people can understand through those little rituals. Because it was clear to me watching Ozu. Each time it's clear to me that he has connected the industry of cinema with the private moment."
A year later in the Notebook, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky was calling White Material (2009), in which Isabelle Huppert plays a French woman fighting to hold onto her coffee plantation in Africa even as a civil war approaches, "an exploded chamber drama. A Haneke-style family unit (complete with a brutally bored son) holed up mentally, emotionally, economically and geographically encounters various interlopers while fighting to preserve a bourgeois sense of 'integrity.'"
With Bastards (2013), Denis reunited with Vincent Lindon, who plays a ship captain who returns to land to see to the aftermath of a terrible family tragedy. "Confusion is essential to this torrid atmosphere," writes Jesse Cataldo at Slant, "and the combination of bewildered characters and messy situations creates a feverish climate which recalls both the elliptical obliqueness of The Intruder and the dreamy tone of Friday Night."
In 2017, Denis worked for the first time with Juliette Binoche, who carries Let the Sunshine In as an artist juggling a good number of lovers and frustrated by the seeming futility of holding out hope for a future with any of them. "It's a film intelligently attuned both to the endless possibilities of what can happen when two people are in the same space together—a bed, a bar, a restaurant, a car—and to the ever expanding and contracting gulf between them," writes 4Columns film editor Melissa Anderson. "Let the Sunshine In is Denis's most voluble movie and, despite the emotional turmoil its heroine endures, among her gentlest."
In High Life, Binoche takes on a role originally slated for Patricia Arquette. The recasting is just one of the many stops and starts the project has gone through during the fifteen years that it's been on Denis's mind. In essence, it's a prison movie set on a spaceship hurtling toward a black hole on an ill-defined mission to find an alternative source of energy. Robert Pattinson plays the lone member of the crew allowed to refuse to participate in Dr. Dibs's (Binoche) mad-scientist sexual experiments—until she steals a sperm sample and leaves him, the sole adult survivor, with a baby daughter. High Life, "surely one of the most singular and uncompromising films of its kind," as Jordan Cronk puts it at Reverse Shot, begins rolling out into U.S. theaters on April 5.
For news and items of interest throughout the day, every day, follow @CriterionDaily.
More: The Daily
Berlinale 2022 Lineup
The competition will premiere new work from Hong Sangsoo, Claire Denis, Ursula Meier, Denis Côté, Ulrich Seidl, and Paolo Taviani.
On Film / The Daily — Jan 19, 2022
To Save and Project 2022
MoMA's festival of film preservation presents Beat poets, crown jewels, a lonely Hungarian, and a Senegalese bad boy.
What Happened Then . . . and Next?
This week we're watching and reading about Tom Noonan, Jean Vigo, Marie-Claude Treilhou, and Miklós Jancsó.
François Ozon Will Open Berlinale 2022
Berlin announces a "new concept" for this year's in-person edition, Sundance adds two films, and Slamdance will launch a Channel.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Salmon Arm meet-up aims to inspire teens to seek tech careers
By Megan Turcato	Global News
Posted February 20, 2018 9:23 pm
Updated February 21, 2018 8:57 pm
1:58 Shuswap tech companies inspire next generation
Hundreds of students packed a Salmon Arm high school to check out potential careers in the tech industry on Tuesday.
It's hoped that the annual meet-up will help local students and companies in the years ahead.
Around 25 Shuswap tech companies in fields such as 3D printing, program and robotics took part in the event, demonstrating their businesses to hundreds of students at Salmon Arm Secondary School.
READ MORE: B.C. construction jobs offer entry wages up to $27.31/hour, and they're growing: survey
"I think it is just to show that this kind of technology exists in Salmon Arm, this kind of job is here. You don't have to go all the way to Vancouver just to find that kind of stuff," said Paul Karding who works at Delta C Technologies, a company that produces monitors to measure how much water there is in an oil pipeline.
One goals of the event is to motivate young people to start thinking about careers in technology.
"I hope they come out of here with a great feeling today about jobs they can look at, careers they can go look at and the whole technology sector that is developing in our region," teacher John Quilty said.
There are actually more than 70 tech companies operating in the Shuswap.
One of those companies is Sky Crew Aerial Imagery, which specializes in drone photography and videography.
Owner Dakota Lalonde admitted hiring can be tricky.
"A lot of people have a hard time looking at our screen so they can actually see what the camera is seeing and also piloting at the same time," Lalonde said.
So attending the meetup and inspiring the students of today may mean more available workers in the field in the future.
"I didn't even know drones existed until several years ago so if there was a tech conference at my school that highlighted drones, I would have been ecstatic," Lalonde said.
"I really hope that there are some young pilots here that, down the road, we can end up working with."
READ MORE: 5 jobs expected to be 'vital' for Canada's economy in 2018
The school district and the local economic development society plan to keep running the event every year, potentially helping both young people and employers by building up a local workforce and giving young people new ideas for future careers.
OkanaganBusinessGlobal News At 6:30TechnologySalmon ArmGlobal News at 5 OkanaganGlobal News at 11 OkanaganGlobal News at 5:30 OkanaganSchool District 83News StorySalmon Army Secondary DPC Template: CHBC OkanaganTech Meet-Up
Unifor president Jerry Dias arrested as Co-op Refinery labour dispute escalates
Kingston mother warns about pressures to sign child's passport


Jim Barrett will be back at the SDBC in January. Jim will be styling a Robusta Green Juniper. A Robusta Green Juniper is one of the many varieties of Chinese Junipers (Juniperus chinensis).
Jim has been a featured speaker at many conventions and has worked for many bonsai associations. He is past president of Bonsai Clubs International, the first president of Golden State Bonsai Federation, the founding president of the Santa Anita Bonsai Society and currently serves on the American Bonsai Society's board of directors.
Jim never had formal bonsai lessons. He attributes his success to the Japanese bonsai experts in Southern California and credits them for the generous sharing of their knowledge and friendship.
Robusta Green Juniper is one of the many varieties of Chinese Junipers. This group of Junipers can grow as ground cover or to the size of a small tree or column type habit across many climates zones. More information about this variety can be found in the Monrovia plant catalog.


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Nessel History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms
The Nessel name is habitational, derived from any of several places called Nesse in Oldenburg and Friesland.
Early Origins of the Nessel family
The surname Nessel was first found in Holland, where the name became noted for its many branches in the region, each house acquiring a status and influence which was envied by the princes of the region. The name was first recorded in South Holland, a province of Holland, the most crowded province of the Netherlands. The principal cities are Rotterdam, Leyden and Shiedam. Noted is the famed castle of Teilengen where Jacqueline of Bavaria is buried. In their later history the surname became a power unto themselves and were elevated to the ranks of nobility as they grew into this most influential family.
Early History of the Nessel family
This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Nessel research. Another 106 words (8 lines of text) covering the years 1645, 1655, 1771, and 1841 are included under the topic Early Nessel History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
Nessel Spelling Variations
Spelling variations of this family name include: Ness, Nes, Nesser, Nesse, Nessen, Nessel, Nest, Nesh, Neste, Netz, Nas, Nass, Nos, Noss and many more.
Early Notables of the Nessel family (pre 1700)
More information is included under the topic Early Nessel Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
Nessel migration to the United States +
Some of the first settlers of this family name were:
Nessel Settlers in United States in the 18th Century
Martin Nessel, who settled in New York in 1762
Charlotte Nessel, aged 18, who arrived in New York in 1854 [1]
Contemporary Notables of the name Nessel (post 1700) +
A. Nessel, American politician, Member of Minnesota State House of Representatives 1st District, 1861 [2]
^ The Political Graveyard: Alphabetical Name Index. (Retrieved 2016, January 18) . Retrieved from http://politicalgraveyard.com/alpha/index.html
Nessel (German)


Clear synthetic covers the upper of the Nike React Element 87. This durable material brings a futuristic look whilst promising the best in comfort. As with previous styles in the collection, a unique lacing system is crafted from suede for that added touch of refinement.Clear synthetic covers the upper of the Nike React Element 87. This durable material brings a futuristic look whilst promising the best in comfort. As with previous styles in the collection, a unique lacing system is crafted from suede for that added touch of refinement.
This colourway sports a stealthy mix of black and greys alongside more vibrant hits of red. The dark yet colourful midsole puts even more emphasis on that sticky pod structure. To complete the look, a cut out tongue features and vibrant hits of blue are showcased to the ankle surround. Finally, a set of black speckled laces are included.


I know that running and/or volunteering for a road race is potentially hazardous activity, which could cause injury or death. I will not enter and participate unless I am medically able and properly trained, and by my signature, I certify that I am medically able to perform this event, and am in good health, and I am properly trained. I agree to abide by any decision of a race official relative to any aspect of my participation in this event, including the right of any official to deny or suspend my participation for any reason whatsoever. I attest that I have read the rules of the race and agree to abide by them. I assume all risks associated with running in this event, including but not limited to: falls, contact with other participants, the effects of the weather, including high heat and/or humidity, traffic and the conditions of the road, all such risks being known and appreciated by me. I understand that bicycles, skateboards, baby joggers, roller skates or roller blades, animals, and personal music players are not allowed in the race and I will abide by all race rules. Having read this waiver and knowing these facts and inconsideration of your accepting my entry, I, for myself and anyone entitled to act on my behalf, waive and release the (i) Harvard – Columbia – NYU 5K, (ii) Harvard Law School Association of NYC and any of its affiliates, (iii) Columbia Law School Association and any of its affiliates, (iv) NYU Law Alumni Association and any of its affiliates, (v) Harvard Business School Club of New York and any of its affiliates, (vi) Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York and any of its affiliates, (vii) NYU Stern Alumni Association and any of its affiliates, (viii) New York City, including any of New York City's departments, affiliates and units, and (ix) all event sponsors, their representatives and successors from all claims or liabilities of any kind arising out of my participation in this event, even though that liability may arise out of negligence or carelessness on the part of the persons named in this waiver. I grant permission to all of the foregoing to use my photographs, motion pictures, recordings or any other record of this event for any legitimate purpose.


The five-star El Palace (also known as the Hotel Palace GL or 'Grand Luxury') first opened in 1919, at the peak of Barcelona's cultural and financial renaissance. Catalan tycoons were building grand mansions paid for by booming industry and Antoni Gaudi was puzzling over archictectural conundrums in the crypt of La Sagrada Familia.
Nearly 100 years on and that exciting era of Barcelona's history lives on in the grand El Palace, which was tactfully refurbished in 2009. Soaring pillars, sweeping arches and mosaic-tiled floors all evoke the grandeur of bye-gone eras, whilst king-sized beds, DVD-players/TVs and soundproofed rooms mean that the lowliest of modern guest at El Palace lives like the richest industrialist from history.


The E-mail message field is required. Regarding the action plan to address institutional and procedural deficiencies in the commercialization of oil, we intend to strengthen it further to bring it fully in line with international best practice. Social and political stability has improved in Congo, but the security situation is fragile. They are hosted in remote areas where communities already struggle to access water, food and healthcare. For 2019, the mission recommended adjustments to the draft budget, to incorporate the impact of lower economic activity on non-oil revenues, and the need to reduce non-priority spending. You can help correct errors and omissions. Inflation Developments, January 2005-December 2007; 3.
This program will need to be based on a scaling up of public investment, once the necessary conditions to ensure the effective and efficient use of these resources are in place. You can help adding them by using. The programme includes no concessional funding but can pave the way for future funding and debt relief. All alerts in affected areas, in other provinces, and in neighbouring countries continue to be monitored and investigated. Financial conditions remain very tight, and non-performing loans are rising.
Additionally, the security situation in North Kivu and Ituri at times limits the implementation of response activities. However, refugees continue to live in difficult conditions. At the same time, thanks to a substantial expansion in oil revenues, the overall fiscal balance is expected to shift into surplus in 2018. Travellers should seek medical advice before travel and should practice good hygiene. Selected Economic and Financial Indicators, 2006-10; 2. However, stronger than expected tax collections earlier this year should help offset these losses, leaving our projections for non-oil revenue unchanged for the full year.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. In particular, the program seeks to restore debt sustainability and targets a wide range of reforms to improve governance, reduce corruption, and achieve greater transparency and efficiency in the management of public resources, especially in the oil sector. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about. The continuous benchmark on the quarterly certification of oil revenue has not yet been observed because of technical difficulties on the part of the international auditor, but should be completed shortly. For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jim Beardow or Hassan Zaidi The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. We will continue to consult with Fund staff and our development partners on the details of these additional investment projects; and any disbursements for these investments will be offset by expenditure cuts elsewhere, to ensure there is no further widening of the non-oil primary deficit this year. We are deeply concerned about the sharp rise in world oil prices and fear the potential for social unrest and instability of passing through recent increases at this time.
The programme includes no concessional funding but can pave the way for future funding and debt relief. The conclusion of this agreement will also allow the Republic to benefit from other bilateral financing, as recently mentioned by the French Minister of the Economy by announcing a support of 135 million euros conditioned to the conclusion of a program. Medium Term Balance of Payments, 2006-10; 5. There is currently no licensed vaccine to protect people from the Ebola virus. These negotiations do not concern international bondholders. If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item.
The Journal Africa Research Bulletin: Economic, Financial and Technical Series — Wiley Published: Nov 1, 2007. Suggested Citation Corrections All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. This will require some adjustments to the 2019 Draft Budget, implementation of reforms to improve governance and transparency, and the provision of explicit assurances on financing from external official creditors, including debt relief, which is needed to restore debt sustainability. The reignited dispute is reported to have killed dozens, with around 150 injured arriving in Congo-Brazzaville. Contents: Cover; Contents; Executive Summary; I.
As the risk of national and regional spread is very high, it is important for neighbouring provinces and countries to enhance surveillance and preparedness activities. You can help adding them by using. The rainy season and floods in the area have left new arrivals exposed to malaria and water diseases. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about. The public finances deteriorated in 2002, reflecting a combination of expenditure overruns and a drop in non-oil revenue collection. Reforms are needed to reduce fuel subsidies and increase the efficiency of decentralized government units that continue to register operational deficits.
Concerned about the social consequences of such increases, we are taking short-term measures to reduce temporarily value-added taxes and tariffs on some food imports including wheat, rice, vegetable oil, and powdered milk and some other items consumed mainly by the poor for example, charcoal, corrugated tin. You can help correct errors and omissions. This will require more time than we envisaged earlier and technical assistance from the World Bank and our other development partners. As a result, overall growth is unlikely to exceed 1 percent in 2018 - one percentage point lower than earlier projections. A high number of cases are still being reported, most notably from the metropolitan areas of Katwa Health Zone during the past week. This allows to link your profile to this item. During the last 21 days 26 December 2018 through 15 January 2019 , 79 new cases have been reported from 11 health zones Figure 2 , including: Katwa 36 , Oicha 14 , Butembo 11 , Beni 4 , Mabalako 4 , Kalungata 3 , Kyondo 3 , Komanda 1 , Musienene 1 , Biena 1 and Manguredjipa 1.


Theres something special about eating fresh, local food. Whether its a juicy apple, a crisp salad, delicious potatoes or a flavoursome joint of Old Spot pork. Just knowing that the food comes from as little as 10 or 20 miles away makes us feel good about our diet and our attitude to the planet.
So just imagine what its like if the meat, fruit and vegetables travel not 10 miles but 10 yards. Thats the feeling being experienced by more and more people in the Cotswolds as they turn to growing and raising their own food. For some its a matter of choice whilst for others the economic downturn makes it a necessity. But either way, there are enormous benefits to the environment and our own health, lifestyle and wellbeing from this reconnection with the land. Of course theres nothing new about it.
Before, and especially during, the Second World War it was normal for people to provide their own food but by the 1970s wed become consumers rather than producers. Its worth remembering that in the brilliant TV comedy series The Good Life, Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal were figures of fun for their snooty neighbours rather than role models. Now, in the 21st century, weve come full circle and its considered good to grow once more.
Its a fact that across the country large farms are getting larger while middle-sized farms are being sold off and fragmented. It means that people who can afford it are now able to buy a house and a little piece of land to create their own corner of England and live their rural dream. There are great examples of these micro-farmers developing niche businesses by selling fruit and vegetables to their local shop, setting up a weekly stall at the farmers market or even just having some produce and an honesty box at the top of the lane.
As a livestock farmer and rare breeds enthusiastic, Im particularly encouraged by the number of people wanting to keep small numbers of chickens, sheep, pigs and even cows. Its a great education for those who have children for the youngsters to be collecting eggs, feeding the livestock and generally getting to grips with where their food originates. Its also enormously important to give little ones the responsibility of looking after a few animals. Apart from anything else it gets them out of the house and away from their computer games and electronic gizmos.
Taking the plunge and becoming a livestock owner isnt as daunting as it might at first appear. As long as youre open to taking advice then theres plenty of help and guidance available. Most breeders and experienced smallholders are happy to share their wisdom. You could turn to the various industry magazines and journals or one of the many books on animal husbandry which have become available since the pastime has become more popular.
My weekly appearances on Countryfile mean that lots of people turn to me for advice and I feel that I have a responsibility to give them as much of a helping hand as possible. So Ive brought out a range of DVDs in the Smallholder Series about looking after sheep including how to breed them, tips for lambing, the best way to promote their meat and most importantly how to keep them in tip top condition.
Ive always said that the key to good animal health is nutrition, so if you feed them well then theyll be in a better position to fight off illnesses and be far less prone to disease. But smallholders with perhaps half a dozen ewes have often complained that foodstuffs and supplements are only available in vast quantities for large, commercial farms with hundreds of animals. So Ive been working with a Herefordshire company called Zintec to produce minerals and vitamins in small tubs which are affordable and easy to manage. We launched Adam Hensons Smallholder Products at an agricultural festival near Builth Wells and it was obvious that visitors there were as interested in the welfare of their animals as I am.
But if keeping animals is still a step too far then there are lots of alternative ways of getting back to the land. Allotments have become a trendy must-have in the last few years and the waiting list for plots could rival the queue for tickets at a Take That concert. Another inspirational scheme is community farming. Theyre run as co-operatives with the farmers and their customers sharing the risks and the rewards of the farm. Stroud Community Agriculture runs a very successful scheme at Hawkwood and the idea is taking off in other places too. So if youre brave enough to go out and plough your own furrow, the good life awaits.


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You are at:Home»News»Top market may lose some sparkle
Top market may lose some sparkle
By Bonny Fourie	 19 January 2018 No Comments
Cape Towns house price growth is predicted to slow during 2018, bringing it more in line with the national market. Picture: David Ritchie/ANA
Densification will be an ongoing trend this year. Picture: Pexels
Swimming pools will increasingly be seen as liabilities. Picture: Pexels
Experts predict 2018 may be a year of ups and downs for Cape Town and national property sales
This year may be tougher than last for the Western Cape property market as house-price growth subsides and the province grapples with the ongoing drought.
And just like the national picture, struggles associated with affordability and the unstable economy look set to continue into 2018.
House-price growth in the Western Cape, and in Cape Town particularly, has significantly outperformed the rest of the country in recent years, but FNB's household and property sector strategist John Loos believes this year it will "slow, back into line" with the national market. The province has also seen "significant home affordability deterioration" which has made it especially tough for new entrants into the market. These affordability challenges will "curb demand".
"On top of that, the Western Cape could experience economic challenges brought on by its ongoing drought (although) much will depend on 2018 winter rain. A weakened economy would further constrain housing demand. In a nutshell, I don't expect superior house price growth performance in the Western Cape this year, although the province should still remain significantly more expensive than its nearest 'rival', Gauteng."
The key to 2018 for Cape Town will be economic stability, believes Knight Frank residential chairman Anne Porter, and the extent to which the city's residential market grows will be largely dependent on the degree of volatility relating to key macro-economic drivers.
"Interest rates in particular will affect prices and affordability, but Cape Town will remain the premier market for residential property, although growth will probably be slower in 2018."
Properties with smart technology in place will attract buyers. Picture: Pexels
Agreeing that the Cape Town market will still perform better than the national average, Kevin Jacobs, broker/owner at Remax Premier, says there will, however, be a "slight slowdown" by up-country buyers due to the drought. But he believes this reduction will be minimal.
As the City Bowl and surrounds become increasingly unaffordable to the average South African buyer, Jacobs believes demand for property in the southern suburbs and the south peninsula will increase. For first-time buyers, properties in the lower southern suburbs, along with the south peninsula, will be sought after.
"There will also be an increase in demand for smaller properties with small or no gardens. Pools are a liability. Properties with reliable boreholes and wellpoint water access will attract higher prices."
Urban densification will also be a major movement, meeting the housing needs of a growing consumer base, says Francois Venter, director at Jawitz Properties.
Smaller spaces that are close to work and boast top "green" and "smart" technology features will also attract buyers.
"In the Western Cape particularly, water-saving features will continue to be a necessity in keeping up with both water restrictions and consumer preferences."
Mixed-use developments are already a trend, but Porter predicts 2018 will see the uptake of homesresidential options in "urban villages increase exponentially". Urban villages are also an attractive and affordable option for those wishing to get their foot on the property ladder.
"Millennials are drawn towards this live-work-play lifestyle which offers a valuable long-term asset, vibrant quality of life, and reduces commuting time to virtually zero in many cases," Porter says.
Regarded as blue chip investment areas, the Atlantic Seaboard and City Bowl remain popular and will continue to attract buyers and investors from across the country, says Billy Rautenbach, sales director for Seeff Atlantic Seaboard, V&A Waterfront & City Bowl. The first part of the year is expected to be busier as this is usually when more buyers and tenants enter the market, she says.
This year is also expected to be "business as usual" for the southern suburbs, says James Lewis, managing director for Seeff Southern Suburbs, Hout Bay, and Llandudno.
"The excellent schools and proximity to UCT mean the early part of the year tends to be a little busier as people start looking to get into property, either trading up or down. The rental market also tends to be a bit busier."
Cape Town's mid-market – below R2 million – is traditionally the most active segment and is likely to continue to flourish and be the most well-performing in the market, believes Greeff Properties chief executive Mike Greeff. The trend of investing in real estate as a stable method of wealth generation will also continue.
"Densification, which first became prominent after sweeping the southern suburbs, is likely to increase as a trend throughout the province, as people look to own great property with secure lock and go convenience," Greeff predicts.
He says the environmentally friendly trend will continue to gain popularity this year.
"Additionally, homeowners and investors are increasingly settling on purchasing homes in secure living estates and this trend is expected to expand in the coming year.
"Across the Cape Peninsula, the southern suburbs, the City Bowl and Atlantic Seaboard will always be some of the best areas in South Africa," he says.
There will also be a constant demand for apartments close to the Cape Town CBD.
House-price inflation in the sectional title housing segment is still outperforming full title with the gap between the two widening, says Pam Golding Property Group's chief executive Andrew Golding.
Developers are responding to this growing demand with an increasing portion of all building plans being passed for apartments.
Echoing his fellow property professionals, Golding says other trends set to continue this year include densification, multi-generational living, live-work-play precinctsand green homes.
"We also anticipate a growing demand for secure estate living, both freehold and sectional title, as well as homes catering for the ever-growing retirement market with those wishing to retain an active lifestyle with access to amenities.
"Sectional title apartments also have high appeal for those downscaling due to changing lifestyle requirements."
Porter says: "Cape Town boasts an extremely diverse and innovative environment with a global, cosmopolitan mindset. While it is difficult to predict new trends, one can be certain the city will be the pacesetter with respect to dynamic new ideas in 2018."
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Q: XLS => nested JSON I'm using the handing xlsx-to-json npm package, and it's quite fine. There is an option to target an individual sheet, but no quick way to nest objects. I know this is because the nature of spreadsheets is A:1, limited to 1 data level.
I've established that we could have multiple sheets and stitch them into a 2 level deep object {a:{1:x},b:{2:z}} --- but anything deep than that, in this approach, would require an additional sheet. This would get out of hand, fast.
Likely there is no way around limitation and I am barking up the wrong tree, however, it's worth asking the brilliant folks here if there is a method to use XSL to output nested objects?

A: While it is very tedious and probably not worth it, it is theoretically possible to simulate any relational database in xls. And relational databases can be transformed to deeply nested objects.
So yes, it is certainly possible, but it's probably a road you don't want to go down.
As an example: you could have 1 sheet with customers, 1 sheet with orders, and 1 sheet with order lines. Using id's to uniquely reference certain customers, orders and order lines, you can have them refer to eachother and create different kinds of nested json objects. For example, Customers with multiple orders, with multiple order lines. Or orders with a customer and multiple order lines.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Week Ending September 23, 2019
Bria Stanley (13)
Senior
The West Haven volleyball team posted a pair of victories in three contests this week. Senior Bria Stanley helped lead the way. In a stretch of those three games, Stanley finished with a total of 26 kills, 22 aces, and eight digs.
The senior had 11 aces and eight kills in a win over Bassick, added 12 kills, five aces, three digs, and two blocks in a loss to Mercy, and finished with six aces, six kills, five digs, and three blocks in a victory over Hillhouse.
Mackenzie Gardner(19)
After a slow start, the West Haven girls soccer team is starting to heat up. One of the main reasons has been Mackenzie Gardner. The junior goalkeeper has raised her level of play and has helped the Westies post three consecutive shutouts in a 1-0-2 stretch.
Gardner made nine saves in a 1-0 victory over Sheehan, made another seven saves in a scoreless draw with Hand and added one save in another scoreless draw with East Haven.
Giliana Santaniello (15)
The West Haven volleyball team is making its move towards a postseason berth. One of the key reasons is Giliana Santaniello. The senior had a stellar three-game stretch where she ran the offense with 39 assists, and added 15 digs, six kills, and five aces.
Santaniello had 18 assists and 11 digs to go along with three aces and three kills in a win over Lyman Hall, and added 15 assists, two digs, two kills and two aces in a win over Foran.
Week Ending October 7, 2019
Aldo Barragan (10)
In a week which saw the Westies post a pair of victories and improved to 5-3-1, junior Aldo Barragan was one of the key contributors. Barragan finished the week with four goals and three assists as the Westies inched closer to a playoff spot.In a loss to Coginchaug to open the week, Barragan scored West Haven's lone goal. The junior added a pair of goals in a 3-0 win over Jonathan Law, before scoring a goal and adding three assists in a 7-0 victory over East Haven.
Week Ending October 14, 2019
Julia Tsakonas (32)
In a season in which the Westies are looking to run deep into the postseason, coach Pete Trenchard has received contributions from the entire team. Julia Tsakonas has made an immediate impact.
The freshman continued her stellar start to the season with another fine effort in West Haven's win over Career/Hillhouse. Scoring three times and adding an assist, Tsakonas led the Westies to a 7-1 victory.Tsakonas has seven goals and three assists in 11 games played thus far for the Westies.
Jaden Grant (6)
As the West Haven football team is looking to rebound from three losses against tough opponents to start the season, the Westies have turned to some core players. The result has been a pair of victories, including a 27-13 victory over Norwich Free Academy Friday evening.
One of those key players is Jaden Grant. The junior was all over the field on Friday, rushing for 97 yards on 25 carries. With the increased workload came more opportunities to score, and Grant capitalized with touchdown runs of 6, 11, and 3 yards.
Noelle Noble (7)
As the postseason approaches, the West Haven volleyball team is heating up, winning four of its last five matches. Leading the way in this run has been Noelle Noble.
The senior's steady play has been a big part of the run. In a pair of contests last week, Noble had 17 digs, eight kills, and three aces.West Haven opened the week with a 3-1 win over Hamden. Noble played a key role in the road victory with 11 digs and six kills. In a 3-1 win over North Haven, Noble again came up big with six digs, three aces, and two kills.
Week Ending November 18, 2019
Andre Rentas (2)
A battle between city rivals always brings out the best in players. Andre Rentas did not disappoint in a thriller against Notre Dame.
Despite losing 41-35, Rentas was tough to contain for the Green Knights as he ran for three touchdowns and threw another. Rentas scored on runs of 1, 53, and 56 yards, while he threw a touchdown pass of 33 yards.
Week Ending January 7, 2020
Amani Abuhatab (21)
The West Haven girls basketball team is off to a 4-1 start with a complete team effort through five games. One of the key components to the quick start has been the play of freshman Amani Abuhatab.
Scoring in double digits in each of the team's first five games, Abuhatab continued her hot start in victories over Amistad and Cheshire.
In a win over Amistad, the freshman scored 19 points, including a pair of 3-pointers, then followed up with 22 points in another victory over Cheshire.
Week Ending January 14, 2020
Taylor Nowak (11)
In three games, the West Haven senior scored nine goals and added two assists as the Westie Sharks opened the season with an 8-0 record.
Nowak opened with two goals and an assist against Fairfield Warde/Ludlowe, had three goals and an assist against Hamden, and finished with four goals against Notre Dame-Fairfield.
Nowak is closing in on 100 career goals.
Jianna Cohrs (5)
As the West Haven/Sacred Heart Academy girls hockey cruises to a 9-0 start, senior Jianna Cohrs continues to be one of its top players. Cohrs did not disappoint this week.
In a pair of WH/SHA victories, Cohrs recorded four goals and added two assists as WH/SHA defeated Masuk and Branford.
Cohrs had identical stats in each game as she posted two goals and one assist in an 8-2 win over Masuk, and two more goals and an assist in a 6-2 win over Branford.
Week Ending, January 28, 2020
Malcolm Duncanson (0)
The West Haven boys basketball team is looking to make a run deep in the state tournament. One of the key reasons this may happen is the play of junior Malcolm Duncanson.
In two games this week, Duncanson scored 46 points. The junior opened the week with 17 points in a win over Jonathan Law, then scored 29 points in a loss against rival Notre Dame.
Week Ending February 11, 2020
Megan Froehlich (32)
With a few short weeks left in a storybook career, WH/SHA senior Megan Froehlich is enjoying every minute of it. As one of the team's top players, Froehlich joined elite company this past week when she scored her 100th career point in an 8-3 win over Hamden/Lyman Hall/Wilbur Cross.
Froehlich had two goals in the milestone contest, then followed up with two assists against Darien and one assist against Simsbury.
Kevin Moriarty (14)
As the regular season comes to a close, the West Haven hockey team is looking to get on a hot streak.
Senior Kevin Moriarty is starting to heat up. In three games this past week, Moriarty recorded nine points.
Moriarty opened the week with one goal and three assists in a win over Simsbury, then closed the week with three goals and two assists in a victory over Glastonbury.
Week Ending March 2, 2020
Jared Pliszka (35)
Jared Pliszka is the Vio's Sports Plus/Westie Blue Player of the Week. The West Haven senior goaltender has been tremendous all season, and was nothing short of sensational in a 1-1 tie with Xavier. Pliszka finished with 50 saves in the contest, including numerous saves in the third period and overtime, giving the Westies a chance to earn a possible victory.


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Grinderman 'When My Baby Comes' SixToes remix video
aaamusic | On 13, Mar 2012
Grinderman will release 'Grinderman 2 RMX' via Mute Records on March 26th. The record is a collection of remixes, reinterpretations and collaborations based on songs from Grinderman's 2010 critically celebrated album 'Grinderman 2'. One of the tracks, 'When My Baby Comes', has been remixed by the London based sextet SixToes and ahead of this album release, SixToes have unveiled an animated video to accompany their remix.
The animated video is now available on YouTube:
The video was animated by Julie Garrod who specialises in creating tactile, macabre and unsettling puppet stop motion animated films. Garrod has worked with SixToes in the past, back in 2009 she was commissioned to create 'Murderer' – a puppet stop motion which was used to accompany SixToes' performance at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill.
Alongside SixToes, 'Grinderman 2 RMX' also features re-workings from Cat's Eyes, UNKLE, Factory Floor, Josh Homme and Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs). The video for Nick Zinner's remix of 'Bellringer Blues' is available on YOUTUBE HERE as well.
Grinderman 2 RMX tracklisting:
Grinderman / Fripp – "Super Heathen Child"
A Place to Bury Strangers – "Worm Tamer"
Nick Zinner – "Bellringer Blues" (exclusive)
UNKLE – "Hyper Worm Tamer"
Joshua Homme – "Mickey Bloody Mouse"
Cat's Eyes with Luke Tristram – "When My Baby Comes"
Barry Adamson – "Palaces Of Montezuma"
Silver Alert (featuring Matt Berninger) – "Evil"
SixToes – "When My Baby Comes" (exclusive)
Andy Weatherall – "Heathen Child"
Factory Floor – "Evil"
Grinderman – "First Evil"
grinderman nick cave
Maps & Atlases Single 'Fever'
Miles Kane to release new EP on Record Store Day in April
Grinderman – Grinderman 2 15 September 2010 | aaamusic
GRINDERMAN New Single out 11 July 2011 + Live at Alexandra Palace... 7 July 2011 | aaamusic


Riverdale, N.Y. – While service is an essential component of the College's mission, Mount students continually go above and beyond to respond to the immediate needs of the disenfranchised and most vulnerable. This commitment to service exemplifies Mount Saint Vincent's most fundamental values. It has also earned the College recognition by the Office of the Mayor in the 2017 NYC Volunteers Count report.
The recently published report highlights the number of students attending the City's colleges and universities who volunteered in 2017. Of the 48 colleges and universities throughout NYC, the College of Mount Saint Vincent has ranked in the top five for most student volunteers.
These 1,020 Mount volunteers—or as we call them at the College, Leaders in Service—earned recognition for their outstanding efforts during a convening of college and university partners in April 2018. The event served as a forum to discuss service opportunities across the five boroughs and focused on the value of tracking student volunteerism on- and off-campus, which allowed the City's partners to share their volunteer successes.
Every incoming Mount Saint Vincent student is encouraged to participate in the College's rich tradition of service, inspired by the Sisters of Charity of New York. Through an integrated and broad range of programs, the College inspires its students to be Leaders in Service—individuals who respect the dignity of every person, freely share the benefits of their experiences and education, and who understand that true charity is an act of love and respect between equals.
The Mount community continues to meet these obligations. Students are dedicated to making a difference in New York, across the country, and abroad. Volunteers frequently coordinate ongoing service projects with on-campus organizations and through local social service agencies to serve meals, care for the environment, tutor and mentor students, visit with those in need, and help the homeless.
Be You Stay True hosts free camps for children, encouraging and supporting youth basketball participation. A Moment of Magic Foundation invites volunteers to dress as popular princesses and superheroes to visit children hospitalized over long periods of time. Grand Central Outreach, a weekly student-led outreach program, allows students to prepare and share meals with the homeless in Grand Central Station. Part of the Solution (POTS), welcomes Mount students to serve in their soup kitchen on Sundays. MASA (the Mexican American Students' Alliance) partners Mount students with Mexican and Latino children, youth, and families to provide tutoring and mentoring. And the Midnight Run enables student volunteers to travel to midtown Manhattan to hand out food, clothing, and engage in conversation with the homeless.
At the Mount, students engage in service to pursue knowledge, develop an understanding and appreciation for individuals from diverse backgrounds, and prepare themselves to address the challenges facing our communities, both locally and globally.
This sentiment is true for freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior students. Each class is just as eager to give back, and the graduating Class of 2018 has been particularly helpful in leading the College's effort of service and outreach throughout NYC.
View more information about our volunteer opportunities and read the 2017 NYC Volunteers Count report.
Founded in 1847 by the Sisters of Charity, the College of Mount Saint Vincent offers nationally recognized liberal arts education and a select array of professional fields of study on a landmark campus overlooking the Hudson River. Committed to the education of the whole person, and enriched by the unparalleled cultural, educational and career opportunities of New York City, the College equips students with the knowledge, skills and experiences necessary for lives of achievement, professional accomplishment and leadership in the 21st century.


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Q: System becomes unusable due to hard disk 100% usage with AVG, WhatsApp, Chrome, and System at various times I have a Lenovo IdeaPad 2017 model with Windows 10 OS and SATA hard disk, with 12 GB RAM and i5 processor.
Last many months, I have been facing 100% disk usage at various times, and it is different applications at different times.
Sometimes it is AVG which causes 100% disk usage, sometimes it is Google Chrome, sometimes it is WhatsApp desktop version, and sometimes it is just the System process.
I have searched many articles and tried many steps:

*

*Windows 10 is updated, as it has auto-updates

*I have disabled SuperFetch

*I have scanned the system for viruses

*Turned off Windows search indexing

*Disabled all unnecessary startup applications

*Deleted temporary files and folders.

But nothing seems to provide a permanent solution.
How can I provide you more information, as the problem does not happen ALL the time, but happens very very frequently. If you want me to upload any logs from any diagnostic utilities, please let me know.
Request moderators not to remove this question as duplicate. Yes it is duplicate but none of the other provided solutions is working.
Let me know what additional details you need.
EDIT 1:
Below is a screenshot of hard disk status from the CrystalDiskInfo utility. It shows the Health Status as Good.

EDIT 2:
Below is the result of running the Check button from the C and D drives properties window:


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Matt Damon battles Chinese monsters in newest trailer for The Great Wall
Nathalie Caron
Tag: The Great Wall
Tag: Matt Damon
Tag: Legendary
Tag: New York Comic Con 2016
Tag: NYCC 2016
Tag: movie Trailers
An exciting new trailer for visionary director Zhang Yimou's (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) upcoming Hollywood monster movie, The Great Wall, was unleashed earlier today during the film's panel at New York Comic Con.
The Great Wall is Yimou's first English language movie (Yimou told the assembled audience at the panel that it took him 3 years to make the film because of the language barrier) and is the largest cinematic production ever to film in China. The screenplay for the high-flying historical/fantasy movie is based on a story treatment written in part by Max Brooks (World War Z).
More Matt Damon
Downsizing originally had an even wilder (and far more disturbing) premise
Matt Damon regrets passing on Avatar, and the unobtanium payout James Cameron was offering
Along with Matt Damon — who's suiting up here as a skillful warrior hell-bent on kicking some monster @s$ (Hawkeye and Green Arrow have nothing on him) — The Great Wall also stars Jing Tian (Kong: Skull Island), Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones), Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man 2), pop music icon Lu Han and Andy Lau (Infernal Affairs).
Video of avF6GHyyk5c
Since they couldn't shoot the movie on the Great Wall itself, the production built 3 small scale replicas of the historical landmark. The Great Wall "tells the story of an elite force making a valiant stand for humanity on the world's most iconic structure." FYI, the kickass, fearless women warriors in blue? They're called the Crane Corps. And they're just all kinds of awesome.
The Great Wall will open in movie theaters on Feb 17, 2017.


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Insto roundup: Indonesia's SWF plans; GPIF suspends vote lending
China's insurance regulator lets foreign firms take 51% of local JVs; AustralianSuper partners with Canada's CPDQ for infrastructure deal investing; CPPIB to invest $600m in India's NIIF infrastructure fund; Indonesia plans sovereign wealth fund; GPIF of Japan suspends stock lending to short sellers; Korea's KFCC to allocate $6bn to alternative funds, and more.
AustralianSuper, the nation's largest superannuation fund, has formed a partnership with Canadian pension giant Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ), targeting infrastructure deals spanning Australia and overseas, as they look to use their combined investment clout against a backdrop of ultra-low interest rates.
The $180 billion AustralianSuper and $350 billion CPDQ recently formed the alliance and will consider a range of opportunities from direct equity stakes to financing opportunities.
Source: Australian Business Review
Superannuation funds Hesta and First State Super partnered with independent infrastructure manager Palisade Investment Partners to acquire South Australian wind farm Snowtown 2, which is capable of generating enough power for 140,000 homes.
Palisade purchased the asset on behalf of investors in its Renewable Energy Fund (PREF) and Hesta, which is one of the firm's direct investment clients. First State Super acted as a co-investor in what amounts to its first direct investment in renewable energy in Australia.
According to Palisade managing director and chief executive Roger Lloyd, the asset would provide the funds with exposure to "long-term, high-quality contracted cashflows and increased diversification".
Source: Financial Standard
The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) revised a regulation on December 6 to allow foreign entities to own 51% in life insurance joint ventures. This move is in preparation for the scrapping of the foreign ownership limit next year. It is part of Beijing's thrust to further open up China's finance industries to foreign investment.
The revised version also eliminated requirements on foreign insurance firms to have set up representative offices for two years in China and have stayed in operation in insurance for 30 years before they enter the Chinese market.
This means that branches of foreign-invested insurance firms are now subject to the same set of regulations as fully Chinese-owned ones, the report said.
Source: Xinhuanet, Insurance Business Mag
India's sovereign wealth fund, National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) have announced an agreement in which CPPIB can invest up to $600 million through NIIF Master Fund. It comprises a $150 commitment in the master fund and co-investment rights of up to $450 million.
The master fund invests equity capital in India's core infrastructure sectors, including transportation and energy assets.
CPPIB has joined a consortium of investors in the master fund, such as Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, AustralianSuper, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Temasek, Axis Bank, HDFC Group, ICICI Bank and Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance.
Source: Swarajya
Indonesia is planning to set up a sovereign wealth fund to support local start-ups and boost economic growth. It is also expected to help overly indebted small and medium enterprises.
The government has yet to finalise the size of the fund, according to people familiar with the matter, but the authority's previous statements on the potential size of any sovereign wealth fund suggested a size of up to $10 billion.
The proposal is backed by three ministries: the ministry of finance, the investment ministry and the ministry in charged of state-owned enterprises.
The Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) has decided to suspend share lending its foreign equity assets to short sellers, as it considers the practice to be too opaque and incompatible with its responsibilities as a long-term investor.
In a statement on the decision, GPIF said that the fact that securities lending includes a title transfer element effectively creates a gap in the period in which the stock is held by GPIF, which can be considered to be inconsistent with the fulfilment of the stewardship responsibilities of a long-term investor.
The fund expressed concerns that its programme lacked the transparency required to know who the ultimate borrower was what they were doing with the assets. GPIF had $381 billion invested in foreign equities as of March 2019, making it the world's largest pension fund. The fund will continue to lend its government debt assets.
Source: GPIF
A combination of ever lower bond yields and elevated costs have seen Japanese life insurers cut their hedges on dollar investments to the lowest in at least 10 years, according to calculations by Bloomberg. Despite holding $354 billion in dollar-denominated assets, nine of the biggest insurers had hedged just $164 billion of them against a decline in the greenback, the data as of the end of September showed.
The steady reduction of protective bets against adverse dollar moves comes as elevated hedging costs turned Treasuries into negative-yielding debt for Japanese investors. While the carry-trade like strategy adopted by life insurers will boost returns, a sudden surge in the yen will leave them with big capital losses.
MG Korean Federation of Community Credit Cooperatives (KFCC) will allocate a total of W7 trillion ($6 billion) to alternative investment blind-pool funds for the next three years, with 75% of its committed capital likely to be funneled into global assets, its credit business head Kwang-Seok Kwon said on December 4.
The planned allocation represents 10% of assets under management at the community bank and a significant step forward to diversify its fixed income-heavy portfolio of which global investments account for only 5%.
KFCC has been banned from contributing to blind-pool funds since 2012 by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) which oversees the community bank, after it incurred valuation losses from a domestic real estate fund in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis.
Source: Korean Investors
The National Pension Service (NPS) said on December 4 it had picked five investment houses and earmarked some W200 billion ($167.6 million) for its investment in startups, in a move to increase exposure to alternative assets.
Knet Investment Partners, Premier Partners, IMM Investment, K2 Investment and SV Investment will become general partners for the venture fund. The result came three months after the public notice calling for request for proposals, mainly to domestic venture capital firms.
In the meantime, NPS this month will also announce a partner for W100 billion co-investment funds to invest in real estate assets in Korea.
Source: The Korea Herald
Korea's Public Officials Benefit Association (Poba) earmarked W1.2 billion ($100.8 million) to invest in three local private equity funds, according to an announcement.
Poba has opened the request for proposal to domestic blind-pool funds, seeking to invest in up to three managers. Eligible fund managers must have a fund size of at least W200 billion and a minimum of five years of operation in the private equity industry.
Poba said it will not consider venture capital funds investing in start-ups. The Korean pension fund will conduct a second evaluation in January 2020 and announce its decision in the following month.
Source: Deal Street Asia
Korea Development Bank (KDB) originally planned to complete the sale of KDB Life Insurance within this year, but the plan has been delayed to early 2020 as a result of other attractive companies such as Prudential Life being put up for sale.
KDB has promoted the sale of KDB Life since early this year. Originally, the bank planned to invite tenders in November and select a preferred bidder and finalise the sale process in December. But now it will select a preferred bidder this month and finish negotiations with it by early next year.
Source: Business Korea
Loans by insurance companies in South Korea rose 4.6% in September this year from a year earlier, data showed on December 3. Outstanding lending by insurance firms totaled 229.3 trillion won ($193 billion) as of Sept. 30, compared with 219.1 trillion won during the same period of last year, according to the data released by the Financial Supervisory Service.
Non-performing loans amounted to 445.9 billion won at the end of September, down 175.9 billion won from the end of June.
Source: Yonhap News Agency
AIA Korea has appointed Peter Chung, director of regional business development covering Thailand and Korea, as its new chief executive officer, the company said on December 6. Chung, who will replace outgoing CEO Cha Tae-jin, will take office on January 1 2019.
The company said that Chung has a good understanding of the Korea insurance market, an expertise gained after having served as the chief strategy and marketing officer at AIA Korea from April 2016 to November 2017.
Source: Korea Times
Hanwha Life Vice president and CEO Cha Nam-gyu tendered his resignation, citing the need for a generational shift. The local insurer announced Monday via DART – the Financial Supervisory Service's electronic disclosure board – that he has stepped down after nearly nine years of overseeing the management.
Following his resignation, Hanwha Life will drop its co-CEO system. Co-CEO Yeo Seung-joo will lead the company, while Cha will remain as an adviser. He previously served as CEO of Hanwha Investment & Securities in 2016 and was. appointed as an executive of strategic planning at Hanwha Life last year. He was named co-CEO in March this year.
The Philippines' state pension fund, Social Security System (SSS), has announced that more than 60,000 Filipinos in South Korea will be eligible for the benefits of social security coverage and protection from both their host and mother countries after the two countries signed a bilateral agreement.
"After almost 15 years, we are very glad that we have finally secured an agreement with South Korea that will ensure the protection of social security rights for the benefit and welfare of the respective nationals of both countries," SSS president and chief executive Aurora Ignacio said.
The Social Security Agreement that will address social security coverage of Filipinos in South Korea and Koreans in the Philippines was signed on the sideline of President Duterte's visit to South Korea, along with four other agreements.
Source: Business Mirror
Canada's biggest pension fund manager Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) could put substantial chunk of its funds earmarked for emerging markets in China, India and Brazil in the next five years.
CPPIB plans to put 33% of its funds in emerging markets by 2025. India, China, and Brazil are big emerging markets for the fund manager, said Mark Machin, president and chief executive officer at the Canadian pension fund. Currently, about 23% of its total assets $410 billion) are in Asia, but it plans to take its total assets to $545 billion by 2025.
Source: Business Standard
CPPIB is also looking to launch a private debt investment platform along with an Indian partner in next few weeks, said a senior executive of the firm. "We have made the decision that we will allocate capital in the private debt market (in India) and that analysis is over," said Vikram Gandhi, senior advisor for the pension fund.
The private debt platform will include investment in stressed assets, but rather than coming in as an equity player it will look at investing in these assets as part of its debt strategy.
Till date, CPPIB has invested CA$10.6 billion in India in sectors such as renewable, infrastructure, real estate and recently, in technology. Over the past year, theit invested in technology companies such as ed-tech firm Byju's and logistics service provider Delhivery.
Source: Forbes India
Employees System of Texas committed $100 million to a new Asia-focused private equity fund by KKR. It revealed on December 3 that it had invested in the KKR Asia Pacific Infrastructure Investors fund, the first infrastructure-focused fund from the US private equity company.
Source: Infrastructure Investor
China-based asset owners lagging in ESG stewardship
Investors are actively driving sustainable practices in China through voting and engagement, but asset owners still lag asset managers in ESG practices.
Andrew Crooke
AsianInvestor survey: Defining asset owners' 2021 investing priorities
Insurers, pension funds and other regional investors are taking a pragmatic approach to investing, striving to add more risk, diversify and award mandates virtually.
Richard Morrow
Asset owners face sustainable investing 2.0
The increasing urgency of climate change will cause more scrutiny on asset owners and fund managers, while also leading to better and more universal standards for investment.
Megatrends: Asset owners seek to elevate their investing
The coming decade will cause many new challenges for asset owners. They need to develop their skills to compensate and ensure decent annual returns.


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A New Meaning Behind Christmas Music
Filed under Student Life, Top Stories
As Christmas approaches, all I can hear are Christmas classics: but now, these songs seem to be changing. Not because people are making new versions, but because people seem to be changing the meanings.
So, let's talk about one of my favorites, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." You probably think this song is just a carol you hear at children's Christmas concerts or on a kids movie. But, it has recently been involved in a new uproar of how this song is completely inappropriate for young children's ears.
Most everyone knows that in this song Rudolph is being bullied for his deformity, his bright red nose. Then on December 24, Christmas Eve, Santa "came to say" that he needed Rudolph and his nose to help guide the sleigh through the fog. This excites Rudolph and he helps Santa and the other reindeer, and in the end the other reindeer love Rudolph.
When you really look into this song it seems to be recreating a harsh vision of society: If you want to be accepted, you have to prove your economic utility. No one really cared about Rudolph until they needed to use him. In the end of the song they sing about how Rudolph will "go down in history," and how they absolutely love him. But, in reality, they just want to be able to say that they knew him, because when you think of reindeer you probably automatically think of Rudolph and then all of the others and sometimes you don't even remember their names.
Tabi Stanec, a junior, mentions how "The music was made in the past, the world is more sensitive now and you can't compare the standards from then to the ones now. Little kids listen to songs like this and they don't automatically think about bullying."
I never really thought this song promoted bullying, but as I take a deeper look I can see what the uproar is about. There are also many other controversial Christmas songs that have people upset. Even "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is getting some controversy. This song is now being seen as sexist, manipulative and even goes so far as to say that it eludes to rape and date rape drugs. Radios all over the country have even stopped letting it play on their stations because it has started such a controversy.
Christmas is one of the biggest and happiest holidays out of the whole year, so the music we listen to has a big impact. But, these songs were produced in the 1940s, so it seems a little unfair to be saying that these songs are completely horrible because they were made in a different time when things were thought of different.
Summer Athletics
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He forgot to do his homework.
He DIDN'T FORGET to do his homework.
I brought some souvenirs back from London.
I DIDN'T BRING some souvenirs back from London.
She DIDN'T FALL off her bike.
We thought the dish was delicious.
We DIDN'T THINK the dish was delicious.
Last night he felt awful after eating 3 burgers.
Last night he DIDN'T FEEL awful after eating 3 burgers.
Last month they put on their summer clothes.
Last month they DIDN'T PUT on their summer clothes.
We drank champagne to celebrate.
We DIDN'T DRINK champagne to celebrate.
Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.
Da Vinci DIDN'T PAINT the Mona Lisa.
I went to the dentist yesterday.
I DON'T GO to the dentist yesterday.
We came home at 10pm.
They DIDN'T COME home at 10pm.
We did a lot of sports at the weekend.
We DIDN'T DO any sports at the weekend.


text:
Spotlight on grievance
17/03/08 - The Guardian
Events in Tibet expose China's achilles heel: its inability to recognise and respect ethnic difference
The Beijing Olympics are a huge occasion for China. Ever since the opium wars, the country has experienced what it describes as a "century of humiliation". Extraordinarily, the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 was its first major foreign policy success since the early 19th century.
Western countries are thoroughly accustomed to being the centre of global attention, which they have come to regard as their natural birthright. Not so China. It was thwarted in its attempt to hold the 2000 Olympics, which, as a result of American-led pressure, was awarded to Sydney. For China, therefore, the 2008 Olympics assume a huge importance as its first opportunity to command the global stage. The fact that the games also coincide with China's emergence as a global power only serves to enhance their significance. These Olympics, not surprisingly, have been long in the planning, with nothing left to chance.
But the global spotlight not only provides the Chinese government with an opportunity to show its wares to the world: it also offers those with a grievance against the government to do exactly the same. The fact that the games symbolically mark China's global "coming out" only serves to make them even more of a target for opposition causes.
The unrest in Tibet, then, is hardly unexpected. It would appear to have been sparked by a march of Buddhist monks to coincide with the 49th anniversary of China's military intervention in the autonomous region. With significant numbers dead – reports vary from the official Chinese version of 10 to as many as 100 or more – this is exactly the kind of event that the Chinese authorities have been dreading.
The other main attack on China in recent months has been for its policy on Darfur. Whatever the criticisms on this score, and whatever the future may hold, Chinese policy in Africa is certainly no worse than that of the west, and, historically speaking, is hugely better than the latter's miserable legacy. Tibet, on the other hand, raises much more troubling issues for China's standing in the world and how it is perceived by others.
The question is not whether Tibet should be independent but the extent of the autonomy that it is allowed. Tibet has been firmly ensconced as part of the Chinese empire since the Qing dynasty's military intervention in Tibet in the early 18th century. The Qing was responsible for a huge westward expansion of Chinese territory, adding lands populated by peoples, albeit relatively small in number, who had no natural affinity with the Chinese. One of the unique features of China is that, notwithstanding the fact that it has a population of 1.3 billion, around 92% regard themselves as Han Chinese. This is quite different from the world's other most populous countries, such as India, the US and Indonesia, which are ethnically diverse. China, of course, was once the same, but because it is at least two millennia old, it has experienced a remarkably long period of assimilation, melding and mixing.
The result is that China has little conception of difference. The Chinese think of themselves as one race. Their historical experience is one of slow and steady assimilation and absorption, with population settlement often a crucial instrument in pacification. In this light, the Han Chinese migration to Tibet and Xinjiang province in northwest China is nothing new: on the contrary it has been an age-old characteristic of Chinese expansion (a large majority of those who now live in Mongolia and Manchuria, for instance, are Han).
Tibet and Xinjiang, however, are distinguished by two important differences from other Chinese regions and provinces. First, in both cases their populations are ethnically very distinct from the Han Chinese. And second, their effective incorporation into China is relatively recent (though still more than two centuries ago). What is clear from the demonstrations and clashes in Lhasa and elsewhere is that the traditional Chinese policies of absorption have singularly failed to suppress the Tibetan sense of identity and desire for autonomy. Even though Tibetans have experienced major improvements in their living standards, this has not diminished their desire for religious and cultural freedom. It would seem, furthermore, that the huge wave of Han Chinese settlement has only served to heighten their sense of resentment and fear of loss.
Tibet and Xinjiang aside, it is unlikely that China will face anything like this kind of unrest in the next few months leading up to the Olympics. But events in Tibet have served to expose the achilles heel of modern China: its inability to recognise and respect ethnic difference within its own borders. As it emerges as a major global player in a world characterised by exactly such ethnic diversity, this seems destined to cast China in a rather more negative light, not least in the developing world.


Meet the beautiful Cori and Justin… These two adorable humans were recently married at the stunning Rancho Las Lomas Estate and Wildlife Preserve in beautiful Trabbuco Canyon CA. From the moment I met these cuties I knew their wedding would be one to remember… And let's just say it did NOT disappoint!
From the beginning Cori and Justin always stated that they were not the "marrying kind"… and after nine years long together they decided they actually were and started planning the most sweet, family centered, and personal wedding ever. If they were going to tie the knot, it was going to be their way or no way!
From the gorgeous rustic backdrop of their venue, to the "surprise" Batman groom's cake, to the super cool bride tribe and their sassy jean jackets, to the insanely delicious dessert buffet handmade to perfection by the couples own family, this wedding, this couple, and their off the charts fabulous family and friends, were one of my all time favorite weddings ever and I just feel so lucky they chose me to capture every last fabulous moment!
Soon to be featured on the FAB Wedding Chicks Blog SOON….


Lean Six Sigma is a set of techniques intended to improve processes by greatly reducing the probability that errors will occur. The Lean Six Sigma approach was used to engage staff and clinicians in standardizing the assessment of patient health literacy in an academic safety net clinic.
Clinicians were surveyed, and a chart review was conducted to attain baseline information regarding the uniformity of health literacy assessment and documentation in the clinic. A workgroup used the survey data and Lean Six Sigma quality improvement tools to determine the root cause, which was the lack of standardization.
To address this root cause, a standardized process for health literacy assessment in the clinic was developed; an assessment tool was selected, support staff were trained, and the new process was initiated. A support staff focus group was conducted, and a second clinician survey was disseminated to gauge perception of the new health literacy assessment and documentation processes. Quantitative data were collected to assess the coverage achieved by the new processes. Monthly reporting and staff feedback sessions were conducted to ensure continued efficacy of the protocol.
Standardized assessment and documentation processes were effectively implemented using the Lean Six Sigma approach in an academic safety net clinic. Providers and rooming staff were satisfied with the new processes. Rooming staff input and buy-in were critical to successful implementation.
A growing body of evidence supports the role of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) tools and processes for the assessment, design, and implementation of the quality improvement in the health care industry. This study explored the use of LSS on the standardization and documentation of health literacy assessment of patients in an academic safety net clinic. Findings suggest that LSS is an appropriate method of standardizing assessment and documentation of health literacy in this clinical setting.
Health literacy is the degree to which people have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions (Sørensen et al., 2012), and it is directly correlated with health outcomes (DeWalt et al., 2004).
The Internal Medicine Center is an academic urban outpatient facility that averages 16,000 adult patient appointments per year (Table 1). The clinic is part of an Accountable Care Organization and is a Level 3-Certified "Patient Centered Medical Home" (PCMH), meaning that the health care organization is structured to coordinate patient care through a variety of clinicians across the continuum of care (Longworth, 2011).
The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) is a top health care accreditation organization. To achieve accreditation as a PCMH, organizations must demonstrate that they have met NCQA standards and guidelines, which includes the assessment of patient health literacy. Through research of the staff chart review for the Internal Medicine Center accreditation application, it was discovered that clinicians were not assessing patient health literacy in a standard fashion. This was brought to the attention of faculty clinicians during a monthly faculty meeting, and the faculty decided that improving health literacy assessment (HLA) and documentation was a priority. Faculty clinicians, resident clinicians, rooming staff, and research staff volunteers formed a health literacy workgroup with two Process Engineers from the Quality Improvement Department to guide the group effort. The Process Engineers had achieved Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certification. Because this is a Quality Improvement initiative, no institutional review board approval was needed for this initiative.
Lean Six Sigma methods and tools are the standard system-wide approach to process improvement and were selected to address these issues (Orr & Powers, 2016).
Lean Six Sigma is a performance improvement methodology that incorporates effectiveness to reduce variation in an existing process. The health literacy workgroup aimed to develop and test methods to standardize HLA and identify patients with low health literacy. The focus of this report is to describe Lean Six Sigma methods that may be used to implement HLA in similar settings.
The project was organized, and a project team was assembled. The customer and business objectives (goals) were defined and validated by all "customers" of the process. The customers in this case were the clinicians and clinical staff, specifically medical assistants and nurses responsible for rooming patients in the clinic. This phase began in December 2016.
All clinicians were surveyed about HLA use (Table A) via email and about one-half of those responded. Responses indicated that 8% of clinicians were assessing patient health literacy. From 1 month's completed office visits, a sample of patient charts were selected at random and a review was conducted by the health literacy work-group research staff. The chart review found that only 3 of 50 (8%) clinicians documented an HLA and that a variety of tools designed by the clinicians themselves were being used. The health literacy workgroup determined that the electronic medical record's (EMR) built-in HLA tool was not a validated instrument and that it was too time consuming to be practical in a clinical setting. Also, due to an internal technical issue, not all clinicians had access to this tool in the EMR. The group decided to select a different tool.
The SIPOC (suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, customers; Figure A), a visual tool for documenting business process from beginning to end, was used by the workgroup. Although the existing process involved clinicians conducting the HLA, the group determined that it would be more appropriate for rooming staff to be responsible for patient HLA.
Schematic of SIPOC (supplier, input, process, output, customer) analysis.
A tool called the voice of the customer (VOC; Table B) is intended to clarify what the customers of the process value and then translate the information into quantifiable metrics. The VOC included the clinician survey data and rooming staff input collected at workgroup meetings. During the development of the VOC table, the workgroup concluded that the HLA was valuable to clinicians, should not offend patients, and should not be an imposition to rooming staff work flow. Goals for the project based on the VOC were (1) complete HLAs for 80% of new patients, (2) ensure the HLA took less than 5 minutes to complete, and (3) develop an accessible standardized process for documentation of results.
Baseline (current state) data were collected to validate the problem's existence. The aforementioned survey indicated that a small percentage, approximately 8%, of clinicians stated that they were consistently conducting HLAs. To further validate the problem's existence, two additional research staff used the same measurement system and sampling approach as the earlier chart review. They verified baseline findings that only 3 of 50 (6%) charts contained documentation of an HLA and that the HLA tools and documentation were inconsistent. The measure phase was completed in February 2017.
In February 2017 the workgroup invited clinicians from the Family Medicine Center, a similar residency clinic to discuss their experiences with their prior temporary HLA implementation. The Family Medicine Center clinic is located on the same campus as the Internal Medicine Center clinic but serves children as well as adults. Data and process information were examined during a brainstorming session to determine the critical root causes of the problem, which included a lack of access to a standardized tool and a lack of accessibility of patient HL scores. Root causes were validated through observations of rooming procedure by health literacy workgroup members and became the basis for which solutions were developed.
Solutions were implemented to specifically address the critical root causes. Potential risks included the possibility that patients would react poorly to the HLA questions. Rooming staff felt that patients would be receptive but were empowered to skip the HLA if it seemed that administration would negatively affect patient satisfaction.
Another potential risk included rooming staff neglecting to perform an HLA due to time constraints. To address the root causes, the workgroup (including rooming staff) selected a validated HLA instrument called the Brief Health Literacy Assessment (BRIEF) (Louis, Arora, & Press, 2014). The BRIEF takes less than 2 minutes to administer verbally. A fillable version of the BRIEF was programmed into the clinic's EMR. When rooming a patient, rooming staff could verbally administer and document patients' responses along with the total score. There is a total of 25 points available, and 9 or fewer points indicated low health literacy (Table C). Clinical staff and physicians were given an educational manual about administering the BRIEF, which included information such as standardizing methods of questioning patients, how to respond if the patient declined, and how to score the assessment. Rooming staff were trained in interactive group sessions by research staff on the use of this tool.
A 2-month long pilot commenced in March 2017 to validate that the solution had the desired effect on the process. The pilot phase focused on assessing and documenting HLA scores for patients "new to the practice." During the pilot, the rooming staff (three medical assistants and two nurses) conducted HLAs while rooming the patient and would alert physicians of the low assessment results by entering low health literacy scores in the "chief complaint" of the patient's chart. Physicians would then document low health literacy in the patient chart by adding an International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th revision code (World Health Organization, 1992) for low literacy to the patient problem list.
Two weeks into the pilot, a focus group moderated by research staff was conducted to gauge perceptions of the HLA process and tool among the rooming staff (nurses and medical assistants). Thematic analysis was used to analyze responses. Nurses and medical assistants (the clinic's rooming staff) perceived the process and the administration of the patient HLA positively. The group's opinion was that patients also received the assessment favorably.
Three weeks into the pilot phase, a second email survey was disseminated to clinicians (Table D). About 40% of clinicians responded, and 64% of those that had seen patients indicated that their awareness of the patient's health literacy score altered the way in which they interacted with the patient.
Internal Medicine Center's Information Technology and Analytics Reporting division constructed a report that tracked HLA smart phrase use in the clinic. This report is provided monthly to the health literacy workgroup research staff for evaluation. In month 1 of the pilot, 85% of patients were properly assessed, and 81% of the patients had the score documented properly. In month 2 of data collection, 91% of patients were properly assessed, and 63% of the patients had the score documented properly. Approximately 24% of assessed Internal Medicine Center patients were found to have low health literacy. The HLA completion and documentation rates exceeded project goals, implying that the pilot process properly addressed the critical root causes, and the health literacy workgroup determined to continue with this process.
A training plan was developed to address each functional group: rooming staff, residents, and faculty. The plan included "new knowledge and skill requirement," "estimated length/format," "owner," "start date," and "completion date." Once all functional groups received training, the process was implemented permanently.
Along with the roll out, controls were put into place to ensure the new process is maintained and to protect against backsliding. Health literacy workgroup research staff receives monthly reports documenting completed HLA surveys for the practice. The new HLA process will be revisited via faculty meetings if less than 80% of appropriate patients are being screened. The control phase was implemented immediately with the roll out of the pilot and is ongoing.
The Lean Six Sigma data-driven, process-improvement methodology provides meaningful results and customer satisfaction. This project aimed to explore methods to overcome barriers to the implementation of a standardized HLA practice. Clinician and clinical staff engagement throughout the planning and pilot project was a key factor in successfully implementing an HLA protocol. It is important to involve the customers of the process and also those who work most closely within the process to ensure sustainability. The Internal Medicine Center's HLA process and HLA documentation process was designed using qualitative analysis, survey, and focus group assessments. Lean Six Sigma methodology was instrumental in the successful roll out, assessment of, and sustainability of this project.
Although the implications for health literacy screening scores are dependent on how they are used in the clinical setting, the use of Six Sigma methodology and the inclusion of "customers" in the design and implementation of a standardized HLA process and a standardized HLA documentation process were found by this assessment to be valuable. Further research should be conducted on the use of Lean Six Sigma tools in standardizing processes associated with patient HLA and health literacy documentation.
Orr, D. J. & Powers, C. (2016). Lean-Six Sigma Green Belt Class: Lean Six Sigma development program [PowerPoint presentation]. Data available only to Summa Health employees.
World Health Organization. (1992). International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems (10th rev.). Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization.
Do you perform a health literacy assessment?
Do you assess all of your patients?
Do you use a validated instrument?
Where do you document the results?
Is there some way that we can make the process easier or more accessible to you?
Rose Penix, MPH, is a Program Coordinator II, Clinical Quality Improvement, Department of Medicine. James Kish, BSE, is a Senior Process Engineer, Performance Solutions. Matthew Gustovich, MBA, BSE, is a Senior Process Engineer, Performance Solutions. Michelle Cudnik, PharmD, BCACP, is the Clinical Lead Ambulatory Care Pharmacist and the Postgraduate Year-2 Ambulatory Care Residency Program Director. All authors are affiliated with Summa Health.
Address correspondence to Rose Penix, MPH, Department of Medicine, Summa Health, 55 Arch Street, Suite 1A, Akron, OH 44304; email: Penixt@summahealth.org.
© 2019 Summa Health; licensee SLACK Incorporated.


BEIJING (AP) — China says U.S. trade negotiators will arrive in Beijing late Thursday afternoon and start the new round of talks with a working dinner.
Chinese commerce ministry spokesman Gao Feng said the discussions are expected to last for a full day Friday.
The talks are aimed at ending a tariff war over Beijing's technology ambitions amid official suggestions they might be making progress.
Thursday's meeting is the latest in a rapid-fire series of exchanges seeking to end a conflict that is disrupting trade in goods from soybeans to medical equipment.
The dispute erupted after Trump raised duties last year on Chinese imports in response to complaints Beijing steals or pressures companies to hand over technology.


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