If you are not familiar with the meaning of the term MOQ, you have come to the right place. In this article we will explain what MOQ is, what its definition is and what advantages and disadvantages it has for e-commerce owners.
(Plus, we'll give you some tips for negotiating it.
Ready? Ready? Let's get to it.
MOQ is an acronym for Mininum Order Quantity. This is a term often used when we are involved in Internet sales, as suppliers usually set a minimum number of quantities from which they agree to prepare an order.
The number of units can vary greatly from one to another, but it is not uncommon to encounter high MOQs of several thousand units. Sometimes, MOQs are set on a cost basis, such as €5,000 for an item.
Each provider calculates the MOQ independently, so you can find MOQs of all types, from 1 single unit (this is not normal) to several thousand. In the image above, this Alibaba supplier marks an MOQ of 500 units.
Of course, the MOQ is a minimum amount you should order, but you can exceed that amount and buy more.
With an MOQ, the supplier ensures that production costs are covered and that a minimum profit is made.
Asian suppliers do not usually have the products already manufactured, but make them at the request of their customers. And when they're manufacturing, they want to make it as profitable as possible.
It is sometimes uneconomical to start the machinery and purchase certain quantities of material if production is to be very small.
The main advantage of MOQs is that they give you access to the best price for each unit of product. Of course, the more product you order from the supplier, the cheaper the unit price will be.
Of course, there are also disadvantages. Sometimes we are selling €1 products, but we have to deal with an MOQ of €3,000 before we have sold a single unit. This, for businesses that are not too large, can be a very high entry barrier that makes it impossible to place an order. We'll give you some advice on how to deal with these minimum orders later, but it's important to keep in mind that this is a factor that exists and can make things difficult for us.
In many cases, facing an MOQ can be a headache for e-commerce owners. Even if the products we want to buy are inexpensive, buying several thousand at a time can make a break in our wallet (or simply be an unaffordable investment).
For this reason, many try to negotiate with the supplier as much as possible in order to be able to purchase the products. Here are some tips to help you get around this difficulty.
Ask the vendor if they have a material of lower quality that they can use in production. In this way, the cost of production would be better and the MOQ, therefore, would be better.
But be careful! The MOQs exist for a reason. If, in order to reduce the minimum quantity, they sacrifice quality, you may find yourself with a faulty or very questionable quality stock.
Try to locate other buyers who want to purchase the same item. You can split the acquisition costs and achieve the MOQ more easily.
Another option is to ask the supplier which products they manufacture most often. It will be much easier for us to access a reduced MOQ if the item we want to purchase is produced regularly. On the other hand, with products that only produce on time, the MOQs will be higher.
In case you don't need all the stock immediately, another idea that might work is the following: You can talk to your supplier about producing the quantity set out in the MOQ, but to give you half of the goods at first and half a few months later. That way, you could split the payment.
If you contact a supplier and none of these ideas work, don't despair. Come by and find another one that will give you options and with which you can make a deal. There are a lot of people willing to sell!
The minimum order quantity allows you to access much cheaper unit prices but, let's not kid ourselves, this can be a problem.
The manufacturers set an OQM for something. If you fight a lot of money, your profits will be reduced. This, which may be positive for you on a point level, will not be so in the long run. Suppliers prefer to work for profitable customers, and may in the future put other businesses ahead of you.
If you push too hard to reduce the MOQ, the quality of the product may well be reduced, too – be careful what you end up selling in your e-commerce!
If you can't reach a beneficial agreement with one provider, move on to the next. And if you've contacted many and don't get what you need, consider other strategies, such as dropshipping, that don't require investing in stock up front.


text:
CJEU - C-484/17, K v Staatssecretaris van Veiligheid en Justitie
ECLI:EU:C:2018:878
Court of Justice of the European Union (Third Chamber)
Member States may require individuals who have been residing in the country by virtue of family reunification to pass a civic integration examination on the language and society of the country in order to be granted an autonomous residence permit. However, the requirements for passing this test must not go beyond what is necessary to attain the objective of facilitating integration.
For ten years, the Applicant held a residence permit to reside in the Netherlands with her spouse, a third country national. In 2015, she lodged an application to change that permit into an extended residence permit.
The Dutch authorities rejected that application on the ground that K had not proved that she had passed, was not subject to, or had been exempted from, the civil integration requirement. The authorities also withdrew K's residence permit to reside with a spouse with retroactive effect to 19 August 2011 on the ground that, from that date, she was no longer living at the same address as her spouse.
The Dutch authorities asked the Court if Article 15(1) and (4) of Directive 2003/86 (Family Reunification) precludes national legislation, which permits an application for an autonomous residence permit, lodged by a third country national who has resided over five years in a Member State by virtue of family reunification, to be rejected on the ground that he has not shown that he has passed a civic integration test on the language and society of that Member State. The Court first sets out that it follows from a combined reading of those Article 15(1) and (4) that, although issuing an autonomous residence permit is, in principle, an entitlement arising from five years of residence in a Member State by virtue of family reunification, the EU legislature nevertheless authorised the Member States to subject the grant of such a permit to certain conditions, which it left to be defined by the Member States.
The Court referenced C and A (C‑257/17), noting that it cannot be ruled out that a Member State may subject the grant of an autonomous residence permit to passing a civic integration examination on the language and society of that Member State.
However, national authorities must ensure that the knowledge required to pass the civic integration examination is at a basic level, that the condition imposed by the national legislation does not lead to an autonomous residence permit not being granted to third country nationals who have demonstrated their willingness to pass the examination and have made every effort to achieve that objective, that due account is taken of specific individual circumstances and that the fees relating to that examination are not excessive.
Circumstances, (e.g. age, level of education, economic situation or health of a sponsor's relevant family members) must lead the competent authorities not to subject the grant of an autonomous residence permit to passing a civic integration examination, when, due to those circumstances, they are unable to take or pass that examination.
Article 15(1) and (4) of Council Directive 2003/86/EC of 22 September 2003 on the right to family reunification does not preclude national legislation, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, which permits an application for an autonomous residence permit, lodged by a third country national who has resided over five years in a Member State by virtue of family reunification, to be rejected on the ground that he has not shown that he has passed a civic integration test on the language and society of that Member State provided that the detailed rules for the requirement to pass that examination do not go beyond what is necessary to attain the objective of facilitating the integration of those third country nationals, which is for the referring court to ascertain.
CJEU - Judgement of 7 November 2018, C and A, C 257/17
CJEU - Judgment of 9 July 2015, K and A, C 153/14
C-484-17 7 November 2018.pdf
Vreemdelingenbesluit 2000 (Decree on foreign nationals 2000): Article 3.51
Article 3.80
Wet inburgering (Law on Civic Integration): Article 6(1)
Article 7 (1) and (2)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Penkridge is the largest village in St Mary's Parish. We celebrate Mass each Sunday at 9 a.m. at the Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels and are welcomed there by the Anglican Communion.
It is a well-attended Mass and has a Children's Liturgy that is led and supported by parents. After Mass as the people are going out we meet the Anglicans coming in for their 10.30 service. We spend as much time talking to them as we do mixing with each other! This is in keeping with the many things we do together. We have a number of religious events throughout the year, like the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the Women's World Day of Prayer and the afternoon of Prayer and Praise at Pentecost. And we are represented at the Churches Together Committee Meeting held usually at the Methodist Centre.
We also work together on a social level. People from both Churches help out on the Voluntary Car Scheme, others attend and help out at the "Drop In Centre" every Wednesday, and the musicians from both Churches get together from time to time to make music.
HCPT is a national organisation and registered charity. It has a local group, Group 16, which takes children with special needs to Lourdes for a week each year. It is led by Penkridge people and supported by our parish. We hold Car Boot and Table Top sales to raise money for the charity and people are very generous in their support. One stall holder on Penkridge Market has let us use his stall during the close season to sell donated goods.
The Helpers Group that meets six times a year consists of Catholics, but the people we help in a practical way can be from any Church, or none.
Our ministry is to serve the people of Penkridge as well as contributing to the parish life of St Mary's in Brewood.


Dr Luke Rayner graduated from the University of Tasmania in 2002 and began surgical training in 2005.
After completing specialist training in General Surgery from 2008 to 2011 in the ACT and NSW, Luke worked as the inaugural 'General Surgery Fellow' at the Royal Hobart Hospital (RHH). He spent two years in Melbourne undertaking sub-specialty post-fellowship training in Endocrine Surgery and Breast Surgery (working at St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne and Eastern Health).
Since returning to his home town in 2016 he has established a busy private practice while working as a Staff Specialist at the RHH. He has also taken up the role of Head of Department for General Surgery at the RHH and is the Tasmanian Younger Fellow representative for the RACS.


text:
Let me briefly recite one story of a little girl called Beatrice. In the year I first saw her, her mother had just had a little baby. She also had an older sister and brother. The mother was HIV-positive, but they were all on antiretrovirals and all managing. The next year, the mother had died; the baby had died; the eldest girl, who was not HIV-positive, had been taken away by relatives up-country; and the boy, who was HIV-positive but quite well, had been taken into an orphanage. I saw the little girl in an emergency shelter
15 Nov 2007 : Column 918
in Nairobi, with no organisation that had funds to protect her. I visited the orphanage where the little boy was, and it did not even have the bed nets that DFID has sent all around Kenya. I know that the bed nets were delivered to that area, but they did not reach the orphanage. They had gone to the district commissioners, and goodness knows where after that. Unless we do careful work on tracking and have the determination to help those children, they will not be helped.
What is needed? I point my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to the excellent work coming from the working group on orphans and vulnerable children of the UK Consortium on Aids and International Development. Earmarked money for orphans and vulnerable children is needed—10 per cent. of the money spent on HIV/AIDS. More work on tracking is also needed. There have been difficulties, and while some of the money is starting to come through, unless the funding stream is maintained and given a bigger push, those children will suffer. More work is needed on prevention of mother-to-child transmission, on diagnostics and particularly on the infant formula.
We sometimes do not realise this, because perhaps we do not see people on ARVs, but they have a transformative effect. I remember going to Zimbabwe and seeing a little child who appeared to be at death's door. When I went back a year later I asked what had happened to her, expecting to be told when she had died. The man who ran the orphanage said "Blessing? There she is, over there"—and there was the little girl, running around. They had managed to put her on antiretrovirals, and although for some unknown reason she was left with some disability in her legs, she was healthy and, as long as she remained on antiretrovirals, would have a reasonable life. However, more infant formulas are needed so that people who have built up resistance to one can go on to another.
The money must go to where the children are. It needs to go to the organisations that are working with them most closely, especially the community-based organisations that provide networking and care in the community at the most basic level. I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Minister, when considering DFID's strategy for HIV and AIDS, to pay serious attention to the orphans and vulnerable children whom many describe as the "third wave" of the epidemic. The first wave is the infection, the second is death, and the third is those orphans and vulnerable children.
Even after the new infections stop—and in some countries, fortunately, the rate is falling—the people who are infected will die and the orphans and vulnerable children will remain. They will need protections and safeguards for generations to come, particularly in Zimbabwe and other countries that are emerging from collapse, conflict and chaos. Once the curtain has rolled back in Zimbabwe, we will see the terrible toll of HIV and AIDS. We will see a whole generation of children who have been voiceless in what has happened, who have suffered some of the cruellest losses, and whose shattered lives will need to be rebuilt—but we can only do that if we have the committed 10 per cent. of funds, along with tracking mechanisms to ensure that it reaches the children.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con): It is a huge privilege to wind up the debate for the Opposition. It has been a sober and highly constructive debate. I think it a great pity that the public do not see more such examples of the House's work, rather than the more flamboyant occasions.
We have heard 13 excellent speeches, and I hope that Members will show me some forbearance if I do not mention them all. The Secretary of State gave us two particularly good pieces of news in what was a very good speech. First, he confirmed that his Department was giving an extra £100 million to the United Nations Population Fund, which I am sure the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Chris McCafferty) was very pleased to hear. As the hon. Lady will know but others may not recall, I am going back to my roots: I used to be chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on population, development and reproductive health—a position in which she succeeded me. She mentioned her excellent report, and the devastating effect of problems of this kind on women in Africa, producing the horrific statistic that one woman in 20 dies from maternity-related problems. The group dealt with precisely the same issues when I was its chairman, and it is sad that there has been so little improvement in the intervening period.
The other good news in the Secretary of State's speech was the additional £20 million for the Governance and Transparency Fund. Many Members have mentioned the desperate need to find a way of improving governance, particularly in the countries of Africa. I shall return to that subject if I have time.
I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke)—if I do not mention all the people in his constituency, they will be upset—who always makes a very sound speech. He must be congratulated on producing what is now an Act. As he said, this should become an annual debate, and I hope that the Secretary of State has taken that on board. He also made the very good point that we need to encourage all other nations that signed up to Gleneagles commitments to meet the target of 0.7 per cent. of gross national income. It is now a widely accepted United Nations target, but in the last speech or two we heard that one or two countries are falling short, and we must do all that we can to encourage them to meet their commitments. As the right hon. Gentleman said, the 0.7 per cent target is not the end of the matter. We hope that our GNI will continue to grow considerably so the budget will not be set in absolute terms but will grow in real terms as well. We hope that other countries' budgets for international development will grow in the same way. I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman said about the relationship between aid, trade and debt. I will come back to that issue if I have time.
We heard an excellent speech from the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), the Chairman of the Select Committee; in fact we heard excellent speeches from several members of the Committee. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman and his staff on producing the report for the debate today. As he said, the report has added hugely to the quality of the debate. I congratulate him also on what his Committee is doing in going to some of the most difficult
troublespots in the world. I, too, have visited Afghanistan and it is a very difficult country to get around in. It is not safe and I congratulate the Committee on going there, as one of the biggest jobs in the world is in Afghanistan. Will the Secretary of State consider having a powerful international co-ordinator so that all agencies—including USAID, which has a tendency to go round the country doing its own thing—are tied in together, along with all military efforts from NATO and the Americans?
I shall give the House an example of where that is not happening at the moment. USAID suddenly announced that it wanted to spend many billions of dollars on the Kajaki dam project to produce hydroelectricity without first checking that the security situation would be good enough to get the heavy rotary pumps into place by road.
I commend the proposal in the globalisation and poverty report produced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) for demonstrating how keenly important trade is to ensuring that we sustainably lift out of poverty some of the countries of the world. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said that we needed to make sure that aid was seen as a tool for getting middle-income countries out of poverty and towards developed country status.
I have just come back from looking at economic partnership agreements in Uganda, as well as in the Caribbean and Pacific. Many of those Caribbean countries that are currently middle-income countries, with a little extra help, could be turned into developed countries and would not need any aid at all.
Will the Minister be very kind and answer one or two questions about one of the most pressing issues of the day, economic partnership agreements? There is an absolute deadline of 31 December because of the EU's requirement to be WTO-compatible. In view of the Cotonou agreement, will he let the House know the current progress? Are we likely to have any or all of the six agreements signed by 31 December? I know that there is a critical meeting of the Commission and Ministers next week, so it may be slightly premature to ask the question. However, when I was in the Caribbean last week, the issue was very much in the balance and I met several Trade Ministers who were very unhappy. I hope that an agreement can be made that is satisfactory to all parties.
The Cotonou agreement envisaged that if an EPA were signed, there would be a satisfactory package of development aid. The Trade Ministers were unhappy that at present—the Minister may be able to update us—no such package of aid has been agreed to help what in some of the smaller islands will be a difficult and painful transition.
Let me give an example of the sort of thing that could happen under these economic partnership agreements. I recently met some Seychelles MPs. The Seychelles has a population of about 88,000. One major industry is tuna canning, which employs several hundred people, and the MPs were fearful that if the EPA goes through in its current form that entire industry would go to Thailand as it would not be cost-competitive. That would be a difficult transition, and we must bear such situations in mind. Is the Minister satisfied that sufficient impact assessments
have been conducted in respect of such countries so that we know what effect the EPAs will have in the short to medium term?
My final question in terms of the EPAs is on the interpretation of the WTO rules. One important element is the interpretation of what counts as the substantial opening up of markets. It has in the past been perceived that that would mean that the EU would open up 100 per cent. of its markets to some of the smaller African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, but in return they would open up 80 per cent. of their markets. It seems, however, that the ground has shifted in the past week or two—that the 80 per cent. figure has increased to 90 per cent. That would make a huge difference, and if the ground has shifted we must look carefully at whether the EU is operating double standards. It was asking for at least 8 per cent. of sensitive industries, mainly agriculture, to be excluded from the WTO arrangements—which is one of the reasons why the Hong Kong round has so far not succeeded—but on the other hand it seems to be pushing the ACP countries down from 20 per cent. to below 8 per cent. That would have an even more difficult effect on such countries. The EU cannot have it both ways.
Many other issues have been raised. I agreed so much with most of what my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) said that I was almost leaping up at every moment to intervene. He made some very important points. I know from a former role of mine how important it is for the different Departments to co-operate—for example, the Foreign Office, DFID, the Ministry of Defence and the new Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. That is especially the case in terms of some of the most difficult human rights issues in the world—those in Darfur and Zimbabwe, for example. The international community must try to put in place packages so that we can stop such countries collapsing into absolute chaos and causing extreme misery to their populations. Last week, I met Zimbabwean representatives of an excellent charity called ZANE. It is doing very good work in Zimbabwe, but it was harrowing to learn that because of the regime's measures forcing goods to be sold at the same price as two years ago there are no goods in most of the shops and children in particular are beginning to get into a very parlous state. We in the international community must find a mechanism whereby we can stop countries getting into such difficulties and causing such misery to their people.
In an intervention on my hon. Friend's speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) mentioned the Portland Trust and microfinance. I travelled to Nigeria last year and witnessed one of DFID's microfinance projects. It was wonderful to see how some of the poorest people in the world in Kano were being encouraged to make rugs and thereby provide a little bit of money for themselves and their children. It is amazing how very small sums of money—guaranteed loans or even grants from DFID—can make such a huge difference.
My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire was right to say that we need to look at some of the farming practices in the third world and the developed world—I say that coming from my
background as a farmer, which I declare now. My hon. Friend is right that we must make sure that the developed world is not adopting practices that put some of the poorest farmers on the planet out of business. That is, of course, one of the reasons why the WTO round has so far failed. He mentioned the US subsidy to cotton of $4 billion, which is one of the principal reasons why it has failed to date.
My hon. Friend was right about other things, too. I support the Fairtrade initiatives. While I was in the Caribbean I heard of the considerable effect in St. Lucia of the banana Fairtrade initiative. Sainsbury's now stocks only organic bananas, principally from St. Lucia, which has had a hugely beneficial effect on that country.
Ms Keeble: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Clifton-Brown: As the hon. Lady was one of the last to speak I might not quite get to her contribution, so I will happily give way when I have finished this point. The Fairtrade initiative's time is coming, and one or two of the supermarkets are beginning to adopt a fair trade regime for cotton, which is extremely welcome. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire referred to the 300,000 to 400,000 children who are seized and taken out of school to work in the cotton fields in Uzbekistan for a matter of 2p a kilogram. That is an absolute disgrace and as he said, the BBC did a fantastic job in exposing that under extremely dangerous conditions. I will now happily give way to the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble).
Ms Keeble: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. On farming, is he aware that our clampdown on tobacco products has resulted in a 15 per cent. drop in the tobacco harvest in Malawi? Does he think that wealthy countries such as ours that institute such bans should provide support for Malawian farmers and others, so that they can grow alternative crops and are not pitched into poverty?
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I entirely agree. We saw in Afghanistan the great difficulty in persuading farmers not to grow narcotics and to grow alternative crops. The hon. Lady is absolutely right: we should help farmers in Malawi and in many other countries to diversify into crops that are more environmentally friendly, or more human-friendly.
I have just two minutes left and in that time, I want again to congratulate the Government on moving towards the 2013 UN target of 0.7 per cent. of gross national income. However, in moving towards it they need to consider two critical things, the first of which is the level of staffing. If they reduce the staff dealing with such projects in-country, they will inevitably have to direct more of their budget to the direct budget funding of the individual country concerned, or through multilateral agencies. Those are both good things in themselves, but as the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Sharma) rightly said, DFID has the best reputation in the world as an aid and international development provider, and we want to make sure that that is maintained. We should bask in its glory and congratulate all its staff on what they do, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) rightly said, we need to ensure that that money is being spent wisely. I suspect that the Government's independent watchdog will become
merely a puppet of the Department, and I urge the Secretary of State to ensure that it is more independent. If it is critical in one or two areas, it is doing a thoroughly good job.
I come back to the theme that the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill started, and which the hon. Member for Northampton, North finished with. Many of our constituents might be critical of the huge amount of money going into international development. I say to them that if they had come with me to Haiti last week, they would have seen the abject squalor and filth, the absolute poverty and the number of children just wandering around the streets with no education, and no education available to them. There are many other countries like that. A country such as ours, which has so much, should be well and truly prepared to provide its full share to those who have so little, and it should expect other countries to live up to their Gleneagles commitments and do the same.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr. Gareth Thomas): I join the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) in welcoming this extremely interesting debate. As he rightly said, there have been some very thoughtful contributions from Members in all parts of the House. I echo the comments of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and of the shadow Secretary of State in paying tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) in taking the International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill through the House last year. As the Minister in the Department for International Development who had the pleasure of responding to debates on his Bill, I should tell the House that he was ferociously polite, always assiduous in pressing his case and extremely careful to take into account opinions from all parts of the House. I know that he consulted civil society thoroughly during the passage of the Bill, and its enactment continues to be a tribute to his skill in navigating the complexities of this House.
One area that my right hon. Friend particularly focused on throughout his contributions in the House, and in all the private discussions that we had, was his insistence that the Bill must ensure that there was year-on-year reporting on our progress to meet the UN goal of 0.7 per cent. of national income being spent on development assistance. I therefore welcome his comments about the outcome of the comprehensive spending review. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made clear, the Government will provide more than £9 billion of overseas aid a year by 2010, keeping us on track to meet the Prime Minister's commitment to achieve the 0.7 per cent. target by 2013.
The hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) made a number of comments and asked a series of questions, to which I shall return. I welcome his opening general praise, and the comments of several other hon. Members praising the Department and those who work outside it in the area of development. There are many highly committed people in civil society, in international institutions and in our Department, who often work in
very dangerous places, and I join the House in paying tribute to their courage and passion.
My hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow, North (Ann McKechin) and for Calder Valley (Chris McCafferty) asked a series of questions. Before I come to some of the specifics that they raised, may I take the opportunity to pay tribute to their work as the respective chairs of the all-party group on debt, aid and trade and the all-party group on population, development and reproductive health?
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North, asked, among other things, about the need for further innovative sources of finance to help tackle both international poverty and the adaptation needs flowing from the climate change challenges that we face. I reassure her that we are looking at exactly that issue, in part because of the run-up to the Bali considerations, and we will, of course, carefully examine what her all-party group has just published.
The all-party group that my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley chairs has been a bright and shining star in the fight to get safe abortion facilities and the access to the sexual and reproductive health commodities that women across the developing world deserve. I hope that she will recognise and continue to champion my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's announcement of £100 million of further assistance to the United Nations Population Fund as an example of this Government's continuing commitment in the area of interest to her all-party group.
I say gently to the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone) that I cannot echo such positive comments in respect of her speech. I thought that it was disappointing. If she mentioned the millennium development goals at all, I for one missed it. Her speech certainly did not dwell on the plight of the 1 billion people who live on less than $1 a day or on the possible solutions to help tackle that poverty.
Lynne Featherstone: I want to correct the hon. Gentleman. I mentioned three of the MDGs specifically: those on gender equality, climate change and poverty.
Mr. Thomas: I say to the hon. Lady that merely mentioning those MDGs is simply not good enough. Her speech seemed to be more about Saudi Arabia than about development. I suspect that that reflects, with some notable exceptions, the lack of priority that her party has given international development. In the time that I have been a Minister in the Department for International Development, the Liberal Democrats have changed their international development spokespeople on an almost annual basis.
Lynne Featherstone: The mention of Saudi Arabia was with regard to corruption and asking: how can we lecture the Africans? In fact, the hon. Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley) has just given me a very good report, "The Other Side of the Coin", which goes into how much corruption robs from development aid. That was the point that I was making. How can we lecture Africa?
Mr. Thomas: I am glad that the hon. Lady has been given help by others in the House: on the basis of her speech, I think that she needs it.


Do you have an empty space in your trophy cabinet? Then, why not try to fill it by entering for an Insurance Times award?
The Insurance Times Awards is one of the best events in the industry calendar. At last year's gala black tie dinner, comedian Dara Ó Briain (pictured) had more than 1,200 of the best and brightest in insurance in stitches.
Winning an award is not just a huge achievement, it also highlights the great work that the industry is doing. There have been some fabulous achievements this year – truly inspiring stories of individual heroism and team working; new digital innovations; new highs in customer service and professionalism. The Insurance Times Awards is proud to celebrate your achievements on a wonderful night.
The deadline for entries is looming! You have until 27 July to submit your bid for glory and the approbation of your peers. For further information on the award categories and how to submit your application, click here. It's quick, easy and free to submit entries via an online entry system.
If you have any queries re how to enter, email events@insurancetimes.co.uk.
This year's Insurance Times Awards will once again be held at the stunning new InterContinental O2, Greenwich, London, on 7 December. It's the best networking opportunity in insurance. And if you book your table for the awards night celebration before 31 August, you can save 10%.
Here, some of last year's award winners recount what winning meant for them.
How good did it feel for you and your colleagues, having your achievements recognised in such an industry forum?
What sense of pride did you take from the fact that your industry had highlighted the work you had done?
Has winning the award made any difference to your business internally: in terms of morale, motivation, colleagues taking pride in their work?
And has that spirit brought any dividends in terms of business with clients, others in the industry?
It felt really good, not least because it was due recognition of the outstanding commitment and innovative endeavour shown by my colleagues in helping to design and develop a genuine solution that works for the benefit of the whole motor claims industry. For me personally as CEO, it was also recognition that the decision to make a significant financial investment in developing our solution in the way we did was the correct one.
I felt immense pride on behalf of the company. The fact that so many of our clients called pesonally to congratulate us is proof that winning the award was actually a very meaningful achievement.
We have around 200 employees and the announcement was met with a hugely positive response. So yes, I believe winning the award has galvanised our workforce and enhanced their belief that they are working for a good company with very credible products.
Yes, our profile has certainly benefitted from winning the award, particularly in the overseas market.
The team was overwhelmed to have won this award. To have been nominated to begin with but then actually win the award gave everyone a great sense of pride and accomplishment – just a really nice vindication of all the hard work everyone in the company puts in every day.
There aren't enough words to express the pride we feel in the recognition bestowed on our business by our peers and colleagues in the insurance industry.
We're passionate about insurance and the award certainly played a role in spurring the team on to push the boundaries further as we seek to drive innovation in the market.
Winning such a highly sought-after industry award certainly does help raise our profile among peers, and that in turn helps cement our position in the market, absolutely.


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Black Box Showed What, but Not Why, for the New Jersey Transit Crash
The National Transportation Safety Board has determined that the minute before the Sept. 29 crash, the engineer suddenly accelerated, hurling the train into the wall of Hoboken Terminal, killing one person. They will work to find out why.
October 10, 2016, 10am PDT | Irvin Dawid
"In the minute before the crash, the train had been moving toward the platform at just eight miles per hour, the National Transportation Safety Board said," reports Emma G. Fitzsimmons, transit correspondent for The New York Times. The event recorder shows that the engineer then accelerated "to about 21 miles per hour...The speed limit for trains entering the busy station is 10 m.p.h."
Investigators have interviewed the train's engineer, Thomas Gallagher, 48, who told them he did not remember the accident and woke up on the floor of the cab after the train had stopped.
While train safety experts urged for "automatic braking system" in the form of positive train control, Fitzsimmons writes, "Investigators said they did not know whether the technology would have prevented the crash in Hoboken."
One safeguard New Jersey Transit implemented on Oct. 5 for Hoboken and Atlantic City train terminals is to require "a second crew member to join the train engineer in the operating cab," adds Fitzsimmons. "The measure was aimed at providing a second set of eyes and ears during the final segment of trips into those stations."
On Oct. 1, Fitzsimmons reported that the Federal Railroad Administration "began an audit in June of New Jersey Transit...after noticing an increase in safety violations and a leadership vacuum at the top of the agency...After completing the audit, the federal agency issued a series of violations to the railroad, the official said."
A prescient Planetizen post appeared two days before the fatal crash noting that the NJ Transit's board of directors had not held a public meeting in 109 days.
"Without public meetings, [legislators, transit riders and advocates] say, it's impossible to know whether the political fight over state transportation funding is hurting NJ Transit's ability to operate trains and buses safely."
Good news for NJ Transit commuters: The transit agency will "reopen a portion of Hoboken Terminal to commuter rail service for the start of service on Monday, October 10, 2016," according to a service alert.
Train Was Traveling at Twice the Speed Limit Just Before Hoboken Crash
Published on Thursday, October 6, 2016 in The New York Times
Hoboken Terminal
Emma G. Fitzsimmons


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Pharma's Efforts in Hurricane Aid
Stephanie Sutton
The end of October saw chaos in the Caribbean and then on the east coast of the US.
The end of October saw chaos in the Caribbean and then on the east coast of the US, particularly in New York and New Jersey (the location of some of PharmTech's offices) after hurricane Sandy hit.
The pharmaceutical industry has also been affected by the storm, with several big companies delaying the announcements of their third-quarter financial results. On a consumer and patient-level, medicinal supplies have been affected in the US by looting and power outages affecting the filling of prescriptions.
The pharmaceutical industry has been quick off the mark to lend a helping hand to relief efforts.
Amgen and its Amgen Foundation are contributing $250 000 to support relief efforts, including $100 000 to Direct Relief International, a nonprofit support agency that provides medical assistance to people affected by poverty, disaster, and civil unrest. The remainder of the funding will mainly be disbursed to organizations that specifically support dialysis patients, who require timely treatment.
Eli Lilly's Lilly Foundation has donated $200 000 to the American Red Cross. In addition, the foundation is also contributing one dollar for every dollar donated by Eli Lilly employees to the American Red Cross or Salvation Army .
Abbott is donating $1 million in funding and product donations to support relief efforts. Grants will be awarded to the American Red Cross, AmeriCares, Direct Relief International and World Vets, and product donations have also been made to Direct Relief International and Feeding America. Product donations have also been supplied to food banks and free clinics in states along the east coast of the US, including New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
Abbott was actually already preparing for a potential disaster before Sandy struck. Earlier this year, the company worked with Feeding America and Direct Relief International to strategically preposition disaster relief packs containing nutritional and medical products in coastal communities that were seen to be at high risk of hurricanes. Abbott donated adult and paediatric nutritional products and rehydration solutions to the packs, as well as nutritional products, medicine and diabetes care products to free clinics via Direct Relief International. Food banks and free clinics can access the packs as needed to quickly respond to local needs.
Although it's great to see the pharmaceutical industry offering a helping hand - and even preempting disasters with prepared packs - I was a little disappointed to see that little media attention, both inside and outside of the pharmaceutical industry, has been directed at the Caribbean countries hit by the storm, some of which were hit by Sandy when it was in its Category 2 state. None of the press statements from the above companies mentioned humanitarian aid in the Caribbean, although perhaps efforts are being pursued in a quieter fashion. As more pharmaceutical companies no doubt come forward with donations and aid offering, I hope greater attention is spread across the damage caused by Sandy on a global basis.
PharmTech Talk
FDA Seeks to Simplify COVID-19 Vaccination Program
FDA Policy Change Heightens Debate Over Medicated Abortion
FDA User Fees Reauthorized


Vitamin D supplements - healthy or harmful?
Vitamin D supplements are so powerless that the benefits of supplements can only be seen at the extremes of need, such as with institutionalized elderly women (and even then the benefits are with a combination of vitamin D and calcium, not vitamin D alone). In other words, if grandma can soak up some sunshine on the outdoor patio several times a week, she will reduce her risk of fractures far beyond any benefits hoped for by adding pills or injections of vitamin D.
Two large randomized controlled trials have shown an increased risk of fractures with annual high-dose vitamin D supplementation.
1) In the British "Wessex" study, 9,440 community-dwelling participants, aged 75–100 years, were randomly allocated to receive an annual injection of 300,000 IU vitamin D2 or matching placebo every autumn over three years. The vitamin D group showed an almost 50% increased risk of hip and leg (femur) fractures.
2) In the Australian study 2,256 community-dwelling women aged 70–92 years were randomly allocated to receive an annual oral dose of 500,000 IU vitamin D3 or placebo. Those on the supplement had a 15% increased rate of falls and a 26% increased rate of fractures.
The mechanism for these adverse turns of event is unknown, but supplementation may cause muscle weakness and nervous system imbalances that result in more falls and fractures. Scientific research has shown that vitamin D supplements can also increase "bad" LDL-cholesterol (heart disease), prostate cancer, immune system suppression, autoimmune diseases, gastrointestinal symptoms, kidney disease, and calcium kidney stones.
The medical and pharmaceutical industries' infatuation with vitamin D began when researchers correctly observed that the incidence of common chronic diseases, such as obesity, heart disease, type-2 diabetes, and multiple sclerosis was more common in populations of people living further from the equator and closer to the North and South Poles. Since even a school-aged child knows that the sun is hotter near the equator, the investigative spotlight looking for the cause of epidemic diseases became exposure to sunshine. Well, not exactly sunshine, but rather a metabolic product of sunshine: serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D in the blood. Rather than recommend the obvious—more sunshine—the remedy of traditional medicine was manufactured pharmaceuticals in the forms of oral and injectable vitamin D. In the US between 2002 and 2011, the sales of vitamin D supplements increased by more than 10 times, from $42 million to $605 million.
More than 100 years of laboratory and clinical research has established the causal relationship between the rich Western diet (heavy in animal foods and vegetable oils) and common chronic diseases. The geographic changes seen with vitamin D and, more accurately, the amount of sunshine, also conform to this incriminating research. The real reason for this correlation is that as populations migrate from the equator to more temperate climates, their food supply naturally changes.
The seasons of fall, winter, and spring are times of low food productivity by plants: Fruits from trees and bushes have ripened by summer's end; the wheat and corn crops have all been harvested by fall. To survive, people living farther from the equator have relied more on meat, poultry, fish, and dairy foods for calories. Concentration of human financial wealth in the northern and southern latitudes today has perpetuated this inequality in food distribution. Rich people consume richer foods. Poorer countries have traditionally been equatorial, and their foods have been beans, corn, potatoes, rice, and other starches.
The amount of sunshine is incidental and the blood levels of vitamin D are irrelevant. The food is the cause of the most common chronic diseases: obesity, heart disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and cancer.
Studies show, in addition to the healing processes, that even our basic food choices lead to inflammation. Consuming meat and other animal foods increase inflammation while grains and vegetables decrease inflammation. Thus, low vitamin D levels do not cause obesity, heart disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and cancer, but rather result from the illnesses (and the very foods that caused these chronic conditions).
The epidemic of obesity has added to the epidemic of vitamin D deficiency. Because vitamin D is fat-soluble, excess body fat will pull vitamin D out of circulation, thus contributing to lower levels.
For excellent health, people must get sunshine; there is no substitute. The amount of sun required depends on one's skin pigmentation. For a light-skinned person, exposing the face, arms, and hands to five minutes of sun at noon two to three times a week at a latitude of Boston, MA in the spring, summer, or fall will cause the body to produce sufficient vitamin D to meet all of its needs. Asian-Indians may require three times as much exposure, and dark-skinned people may require 10 times as much exposure under the same sunlight conditions. During wintertime, this fat-soluble vitamin is stored for long periods of time, mainly in the liver and the fatty tissues.
Commonly people claim that they live in a part of the world where the sun does not shine. This is, of course, not true; there has always been enough sunshine to promote good health. Consider that people have lived in high northern and southern latitudes from Canada to New Zealand for more than 15,000 years, without taking any vitamin D supplements. And many of these people have had darker skin pigmentation than the typical very-white-skinned northern European Caucasian.
High-tech environmental studies on the penetration of sunlight all over the globe confirm the abundance of ultraviolet radiation available to produce vitamin D in people, even for those living in higher latitudes. Stop for a minute and consider that there is sufficient energy from the sun to grow huge rainforests, such as the Great Bear Rainforest, which extends from Vancouver, Canada to the border of Alaska. The energy is available, but people must take advantage of it.
I encourage people to avoid routine examinations of their blood for vitamin D levels (25-hydroxy vitamin D). There is nothing to be gained; adequate sunshine and eating well are "givens," regardless of blood test results. Various experts consider wide ranges of test values, between 12 and 100 ng/ml, sufficient. People with and without adequate sunshine exposure are commonly found to be deficient based on these blood results. Finally, and most importantly, treating abnormal blood tests with vitamin D supplements hurts people, at least by causing more fractures. Thus, there is no level of vitamin D discovered by a blood test that would cause me as a medical doctor to prescribe vitamin D supplements to one of my patients.
I recommend people expose themselves to as much sun as tolerated. That may mean to let their skin become slightly reddish at times. Skin damage, however, must be avoided because serious precancerous conditions (actinic keratosis), skin cancers, and accelerated aging come from over exposure.
Refocused physicians, dietitians, and other healthcare providers will resolve their clients' health problems by feeding them a starch-based diet. Inflammatory foods will thus be avoided and chronic diseases will be improved or cured. And, as a side benefit, 25-hydroxyvitamin D may naturally rise to numbers considered to be "normal" by meddling medical and pharmaceutical businesses.


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Book Review: GILDED SERPENT by Danielle L. Jensen
Sifa Elizabeth 4.5 stars, Classic Fantasy, Fantasy, Other Universe, YA June 13, 2021 November 24, 2021 3 Minutes
*SPOILER ALERT: contains SPOILERS for TARNISHED EMPIRE, DARK SHORES, and DARK SKIES*
THEIR BATTLES ENDED IN VICTORY
Lydia returns to Mudaire to enter training at the healing temple. But instead of fighting to save lives, she's convinced she is doing more harm than good. She delves into the history of the gods only to discover a truth that will change her life forever.
His birthright as commander of the Royal Army is finally in his grasp, but Killian feels anything but victorious. Burdened by his past, he embraces the darker side of his mark—and in doing so, risks starting a war.
BUT THE WAR HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN
Having defeated the tyrant Urcon, Marcus struggles to form a lasting alliance with the Arinoquians. But he is plagued by the knowledge that there is a traitor among his friends, and it could cost him everything that he's fought for.
Torn between her growing allegiance to the Thirty-Seventh legion and her need to liberate her people, Teriana finds herself mired in a web of secrets. She embarks upon a path that will either save everyone she loves—or put them all in their graves.
GILDED SERPENT is a chonky book. Over 550 pages looks thick enough before you realise the font and spacing in this book is much smaller than the other entries. That's because this book is about 190k, which is about twice the average length of a YA SFF (and significantly longer than your average adult SFF.)
I'm glad I'd known from some of the promo that Teriana, Marcus, Killian, and Lydia don't meet up in this book. If I hadn't, I would have been very disappointed that they didn't meet up in this book. I'm not typically a big fan of multi-POVs where the characters aren't deeply linked, but here the characters are linked by circumstances at the start of the first two books and the knowledge that they're fighting different wars that will collide badly.
GILDED SERPENT is deep into the series (where the rules are different vs a first book), so I already know the characters. Which is essential given its size – and the main reason the book works. Lydia and Killian's story is very separate to Marcus and Teriana's – no overlap at all. They could have been separate books, like DARK SHORES and DARK SKIES are, with no loss of comprehension.
However, after a book dedicated to each set of characters, it would have been rather frustrating to not see both, and it helps with balance when characters drop out as there's less happening for them. For example, Killian is hardly in the first 30 chapters.
Despite it being an absolute brick of a book, the pacing is brilliant. Lots of short chapters (looking even shorter thanks to the formatting) propel the book through the two storylines. Marcus and Teriana's situation was particularly gripping, and made me want to know what was happening elsewhere – how much chaos and violence was unfolding behind them. At first, I thought it was odd not having a POV following those they'd left behind, but then I realised the mystery and unease was very powerful (not to mention how much bigger the book would have been!)
The prequel, TARNISHED EMPIRE, is a self-published book, but absolutely does need to be read before this. Yes, there are some occasional lines explaining X or Y, but there's so much missing, and it will mean so much less to you as a reader when Agrippa turns up (yay! But also not where I was expecting him to and it makes me want the next book even more to see him meet Marcus again after all these years.)
There is no word for the ending but cruel. Such a cliffhanger to leave with as we head into the final book – characters separated, captured, or deeply wounded. Roll on the next (and final, no!) instalment.
Read my reviews of other books by Danielle L. Jensen:
Young Adult:
Dark Shores (this series):
TARNISHED EMPIRE (#0)
DARK SHORES (#1)
DARK SKIES (#2)
The Malediction Trilogy:
THE BROKEN ONES (#0)
STOLEN SONGBIRD (#1)
HIDDEN HUNTRESS (#2)
WARRIOR WITCH (#3)
The Bridge Kingdom:
THE BRIDGE KINGDOM (#1)
THE TRAITOR QUEEN (#2)
THE INADEQUATE HEIR (#3)
Published June 13, 2021 November 24, 2021
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Q: Android Jsoup.connect().get() takes very long time in android 4.4 versions When working with jsoup the get() method takes extremly long time when working with android 4.4 versions
a simple http read on android 4.1 takes about 5-10 sec anf on android 4.4 takes about 100 sec
any has an idea how to solve this ?
here a sample code:

Document doc = Jsoup.connect("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II")
               .userAgent("Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/35.0.1916.114 Safari/537.36")
               .referrer("http://www.google.com")
               .get();

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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A wave of good news for Biden wrecks media's doomsday narrative
Still obsessing over Va.
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Less than 48 hours after the political press unleashed collective convulsions about the apocalyptic prospects facing the Democratic Party in the wake of two statewide elections last week, a wave of good news has scrambled the media's preferred storyline.
Addicted to "Biden crisis" reporting since August, and often bending common sense in order to adhere to the Dems in Disarray narrative, the Beltway media now face a conundrum. Do they stick with their GOP-friendly script about an ineffectual president in free fall? Or do they follow the facts and report on Biden's increasingly impressive list of accomplishments and a runaway U.S. economy that's flourishing?
Three events unraveled the Biden Doomsday narrative on Friday. A white-hot jobs report not only counted more than 530,000 new jobs created in the month of October, but the Labor Department revised its estimates for September and August and confirmed an additional 235,000 positions were created — or 766,000 U.S. jobs we didn't know about until Friday. That shocker naturally sent to the Dow Jones upward, ending the day at yet another all-time high under Biden, 36,327. Since he was elected last year, the stock market is up a jaw-dropping 40 percent, and has created $14 trillion in new wealth.
Then as the clock ticked down Friday night, Democrats passed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, the largest transportation package in U.S. history. The sprawling and historic legislation will produce hundreds of thousands of union jobs, transform the nation's transportation system and represents the largest passenger rail, roads and bridges investment in 70 years.
All of this while the number of U.S. Covid deaths continue to plummet, the vaccination rate climbs, including among children, and Pfizer just announced a new pill — Paxlovid — that cuts the risk of hospitalization or death for Covid patients by nearly 90 percent. "The end of the pandemic is now in clear view, and secure," says Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner.
Combined, the three Friday wins produced the type of day most sitting presidents dream about. They also came amidst a premature funeral procession, eagerly sponsored by the media, which featured an avalanche of doomsday pronouncements following disappointing Democratic election showings in Virginia and New Jersey on Tuesday. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
How reluctant was the press to sing Biden's praise on Friday? Both "ABC World News Tonight" and "NBC Nightly News" ignored the stunning October jobs report. "Nightly News" though, did find time to report on Biden's "plummeting" approval rating Friday night.
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In the middle of the afternoon on Friday, news consumers visiting WashingtonPost.com had to scroll down past 75 different stories and links before they found the first mention of the blockbuster jobs report. Ironically, at the top of the Post site Friday afternoon was a column about how the White House is having trouble spreading good news about the economy. Over at CNN.com, readers at the "US" homepage had to scroll past 70 stories before seeing the first jobs headline.
Saturday's front page of the New York Times announced the passage of the infrastructure bill, but stressed in the headline that Democrats were still "haggling" over the Build Back Better social spending bill. Just in case readers didn't pick up on the pessimistic framing, the Times ran an accompanying report about how America feels "gloomy" under Biden.
Sunday's Washington Post reported on how Biden "finally" had some good news to tout. But most of the Post article retraced how difficult it had been for Biden to get the infrastructure bill passed, while detailing Biden's "yelling has become more frequent and directed at a wider audience of staff." Imagine what the Post coverage would have looked like if the infrastructure bill had been voted down.
This is what happens when the press becomes wed to a gotcha storyline. The doomsday narrative took hold in August when the U.S. troop pullout in Afghanistan exploded into a weeks-long story, and was covered almost universally as a cataclysmic failure, even though the Biden administration not only ended the Forever War for America, but oversaw the largest, most efficient wartime evacuation in history, spiriting 120,000 Afghans out of the country. Nonetheless, the press was sure it was the White House's "summer from hell" and that Biden was in a political "free fall."
The media's obsession with dinging Biden has produced some truly regrettable journalism. CNN's infamous milk report last week was among the worst.
Shining a light on the legitimate topic of inflation and how it's hurting families at the grocery checkout, CNN for some reason decided to feature a very large family with seven children that buys an astonishing 12 gallons of milk a week to highlight how inflation hits the pocketbook. The piece was clearly framed as a Biden hit job and felt more like GOP propaganda than straight news reporting. When critics pointed out the absurdity of the premise (each family member drinks 1.5 gallons of milk each week?), the CNN reporter who did the piece went on Twitter to denounce "assholes" who questioned it.
Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) noted that if the family has seven children that means they're likely receiving $2,100 per-month in child tax credits, which is helping with the milk purchases. CNN anchor Brianna Keilar confirmed that the family receives generous support from the government. Yet for some reason that information, which reflected well on the Biden administration, wasn't included in the CNN report, which reflected poorly on the Biden administration.
The media love their Biden Doomsday narrative. But the facts on the ground are changing and the press needs to catch up.
🗞 GOOD STUFF:
This definitely isn't "good," but I want to highlight nonetheless, because it dovetails so closely with the oversized role the press plays in portraying Biden as a failure.
This was a Times front-page piece from yesterday about how the economy is by all accounts on fire, but consumers and voters think it's floundering. What's so astonishing is nowhere in the piece does the Times hint that the media's misleading, doomsday coverage of the economy might be one reason why Americans have a skewed vision of the economy under Biden.
From "Americans Are Flush With Cash and Jobs. They Also Think the Economy Is Awful":
The reasons seem to be tied to the psychology of inflation and the ways people assess their economic well-being — as well as the uneven effects that rising prices and shortages have on different families. It may well be shaped by the psychological scars of the pandemic, one manifestation of this being an era of exhaustion.
Regardless of the exact causes, after decades in which the availability of jobs (or lack thereof) drove economic sentiment, inflation now appears to have become the more powerful force.
⚖ FUN STUFF — BECAUSE WE ALL NEED A BREAK
Willie Nile, "The Justice Bell (For John Lewis)"
It's a beautiful new hymn and remembrance of a civil rights icon, from New York City troubadour Willie Nile.
He recently recalled the time he got to meet his hero, Lewis: "We had a moment together, I got to thank him in all sincerity for all that he's done for this country and for justice and for people, and he was very kind in response. Then, I got to see him speak for about 10 minutes and I was about five feet away. It was a mountain top of my life."
🎙 Click here to listen to the music that's been featured on PRESS RUN, via a Spotify playlist.
Click here to listen via Apple Music.


(Worthy News) - Russia has deployed a suspicious satellite the United States says is part of Moscow's plans to attack orbiting satellites in a future conflict, a State Department official revealed in Geneva on Tuesday.
There are approximately 60 platforms in space with some kind of nuclear weapons on them. So why is this news?
if that is so...can the satitilte mysteriously have a problem completing this goal?


Like many large organizations today, BHP Billiton faces the familiar conundrum of how to keep its diverse employees informed, inspired, and connected across oceans, time zones, and cultures.
Operating in a sea of rapidly evolving global conditions, employees juggle more responsibilities than ever before and shift their energies between projects more quickly. They must discover ways to coordinate seamlessly with one another, as well as synchronize their efforts with distant counterparts whom they most likely have never met, and might barely know.
Teams work long hours under perpetually changing circumstances, while striving to find a common rhythm and forge a deeper sense of camaraderie. Without a strong underpinning of mutual understanding, exceptional team communication, and a compelling feeling of shared purpose, many find themselves increasingly challenged to achieve the organization's goals.
The Reina Trust Building® Institute stepped in and proposed a solution that entailed rolling out a comprehensive trust-building engagement to maximize team cohesion. To help mitigate the all-too-real obstacles — including distance, cultural divides, and staggered schedules — our online-learning production team developed a new Trust Building® Online platform for BHP Billiton's teams, based on the proprietary Trust Building® material.
When it launched, we enrolled the individual teams in their own private, online enclaves. We designed these spaces as customized, group-themed venues. The settings were meant to carry forward, and enable participants to build upon, the results of their team experiences from the face-to-face workshops they engaged in at the start of the Trust Building® process.
Through the online platform, the members pursued their team trust work using a tailor-made curriculum. The courseware embodied custom-blended rich media, including audio and video in multimedia interactions; real-world, "What Would You Do," scenarios; discussion forums built around core trust topics; private journaling capabilities; and more.
In addition to the rich content, teams received just-in-time, online guidance from trained facilitators. These coaches used the platform's built-in coaching features to communicate with the group as a whole, establish group norms and expectations, manage assignments, moderate discussions, encourage individual participation, and monitor progress.
Team members proceeded to create indelible bonds with their local and remote colleagues, many of whom may have seemed like impersonal contacts before the process began. Through the Trust Building® Online platform, they engaged in far deeper participation with the content and with each other than would have been possible via the status quo, or even with conventional e-learning.
The combination of asynchronous collaboration, structured exercises, group discussions, and personalized attention helped foster highly adaptable, mutually beneficial, and sustainable trust communities that fully supported BHP Billiton's personnel-development goals.


A study published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology suggests that losing weight can reduce the risk of endometrial cancer, the most common type of uterine cancer, by 29% to 56% in women who have gone through menopause. Uterine cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women in the United States, and the majority of diagnoses are in women older than 50.
In this study, researchers evaluated data from more than 35,000 women aged 50 to 79 who were enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) Observational Study. Each person's weight was taken at the beginning of the study and again 3 years later to figure out how participants' weight had changed. The women were also asked if they had chosen to lose weight. Researchers then tracked the participants for an average of 10 years to see who was diagnosed with endometrial cancer.
The study results showed that women who actively worked to lose weight decreased their risk of endometrial cancer, compared to women who did not lose weight.
For women who lost 5% or more of their body weight after they turned 50, their risk of endometrial cancer was lowered by 29%, regardless of their age or how much weight they lost.
Obese women who chose to lose weight and lost 5% or more of their body weight had a 56% reduced risk of endometrial cancer.
Women who were overweight or obese who achieved a normal body mass index (BMI) after choosing to lose weight had the same risk as women who had stayed at a normal BMI.
Women who gained more than 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) had a 26% higher risk of endometrial cancer.
What does this mean for patients? Women who have gone through menopause and are obese or overweight should consider losing weight to reduce their risk of endometrial cancer. Many other studies have shown that obesity increases the risk of endometrial cancer. However, according to the authors, this is one of the first studies to look at what effects weight loss has on cancer risk and that measures actual change in weight rather than relying on weight data provided by patients.


Samuel Moore has just returned to the UK following a stunning trip to Granada (Spain) with Michael Christian Durrant! Over the past week Samuel and Michael have been performing together and refining there duet material in preparation for there forthcoming album 'Guitar, The Heart of Spain'.
Spending time in the beautiful city of Granada was truly inspirational for both Samuel and Michael. They would both like to express there heartfelt thanks to all the wonderful people they met whilst in Spain, particularly Cristina Ruiz and Tess Vonmur for making time to do a stunning photo shoot with them in front of the historic Alhambra Palace! More photos to follow soon.


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Home Training Articles Punch • Kick • Block • Break Young Bo Kong Taekwondo Counters
Young Bo Kong Taekwondo Counters
USAdojo
Take Kwon Do Grand Master Young Bo Kong as spent a lifetime perfecting his skills in the ancient art of Korean hand and foot fighting. In his youth, Kong's peers called him the fastest kicker in the world. Decades later he still delivers his techniques with blinding speed and devastating power. However, he is the first to admit that speed and power are only part of what it takes to become a solid black belt. Grand Master Kong believes that a well-rounded martial artist must also be able to effectively block an opponent with the intent of setting them or up for a powerful counter attack while taking away their ability to do the same.
"It is very important to understand the mechanics of the human body," says Grand Master Kong. "To begin with you must be able to observe what you're opponent is doing from head to toe. When you look at the person you are fighting don't just look at their eyes or their hands or feet. You must watch the whole body and learn how not to be fooled by a faint or fake move."
One of the basic principals this 2-time world champion fighter teaches his students is how to evade the power of an advasary's attack. One method to accomplish this against a punch is to "back off" the attack, thus avoiding being drawn into a "sucker punch."
"When someone punches don't move forward into their attack," says Grand Master Kong. "Avoid the maximum velocity of the attack by moving away from it. Never go forward. If you do move into block and they're setting you up with a fake, you will run right into the power of their attack. Instead, lean back avoiding the punch. That way your opponent must commit with their next move and you can then counter, or if they hesitate, then you may move in with an attack of your own. Remember there is a big difference between leaning away from the attack and stepping backwards in a straight line. If you do step straight back it's important to guide the blow down or block the attack to take your opponent off balance."
Knowing how to use an opponents power in your favor is a tactic as old as the martial art itself. This maxim is the foundation for one of Grand Master Kong's basic strategies when countering a power punch.
"In Tae Kwon Do we use the Ying and Yang principal," says Grand Master Kong. "Never go against the power of an attackers punch or kick. You always block or move in the direction of your opponent's flow of power. With this accomplished you have moved your attacker off center subsequently causing him or her to be off balance. Now the flow of power is now in your favor and you are also in a much stronger position to attack with a kick or punch."
Sidestepping an attack is another basic but very important way to avoid a punch or kick. However, to maintain an effective striking distance to counter such an attack Grand Master Kong stress the importance of how to use angles.
"You don't want to move back on a straight line," says Grand Master Kong. "Going straight back without doing anything to change the direction of your opponents attack could set you up for a second technique. For example they may throw a front kick to move you backwards, in reality they have lined you up for a spinning back kick. Moving to the side will off set the power of your opponent's attack and causes him to miss his target. It also gives you a good angle to counter attack from, and it's also a good position in case you miss your block. In that case your opponent will generally be forced to back off and use a different attack."
When defending against a sidekick Grand Master Kong says it is a mistake to block it by pushing the kick down. Because of the kicker's momentum it is very easy for him to land the sidekick even if it has been pushed down. Another problem to be aware of is when you push the kick or punch down, your head may drop or you might look down making you vulnerable to a head attack. Grand Master Kong teaches this offensive maneuver as well.
"When I kick and only use my leg to generate power and distance it can fall short of the target," says Grand Master Kong. "To get the most power and distance out of your kick you must use your hips. If you swing your hips into the kick you will have much more power. It is similar to Bruce Lee's one-inch punch. The popping action of the hip will generate at least 30% more power."
In addition, by merely extending or turning the hip into the kick you will get an extra inch or two of distance. This is more than enough extension for the edge of the foot or heel to drive into an opponent's rib cage, even if they've "slapped" your initial kick.
Grand Master Kong went on to explain that by using the hip in this manner explains how someone who weighs 135 pounds can smash through 7-inches of boards. Conversely, this hip-generated power can be diminished if properly redirected.
"If the sidekick is pushed away, it will be ineffective," says Grand Master Kong. "By brushing the kick to the outside or inside I am redirecting it, and I can also grab the ankle using a hooking grip, pull him off balance and counter with a punch or kick."
According to Grand Master Kong, it is important to remember to "suck in" your body as you catch the kick. The sucking action goes in the direction of the kick's flow of power while giving the defender an extra couple of inches of avoidance space.
"Once you've hooked the kick with your hand, pull your opponent toward you and attack with a backfist, a punch or a ridgehand strike," explains Grand Master Kong. "Remember once you've pushed the kick away you must do one of two things immediately. Either rush inside the kick and attack, or grip and lock the leg so they cannot come up with a round house kick, then attack."
Another effective way to redirect a punch or kick is to "slap" it down. This block must be done quickly and with sufficient power and follow through to force the attacking limb downward pulling the attacker's balance forward. This action drags the attacker's force directly into the path of the defender's attack. The result can be devastating as the two human power plants collide with the force of one blow.
"Always go in the direction of the power," says Grand Master Kong. "When you slap the punch or kick down attack quickly in the direction of their power because by pulling them forward, they're energy will be used against them. So when you punch or kick them, the force will be twice as great."
As Taekwon do stylists are known for their powerful arsenal of kicks, it's important to know how to defend against them. Grand Master Kong likes to teach his students how to be in the proper position so that if they do miss the block, the attacker's kick will at least be ineffective.
"If you block at kick and miss, it's important to be in a position that makes the kick ineffective," says Grand Master Kong. "In addition to using angles as I mentioned earlier, it's also important to be able to avoid the kick completely. The round kick is executed with the same principle as the roundhouse punch so use the same concept to block it. I like to avoid, then catch it under the leg, push on the shoulders, block his other leg with my foot, and sweep him to the ground."
Grand Master Kong went on to demonstrate how easy it is to take away a kickers balance by lifting the opponents leg enough to bring him or her onto the tip of their toes. With that accomplished taking them to the ground or countering with a kick can be done with relative ease.
"When you grab an opponents leg they will try to punch you," says Grand Master Kong. "To avoid this merely lift the leg and that takes away their leverage so they cannot throw a punch."
Another powerful kick to avoid is the back kick. Whether executed as a thrust kick or spinning, this lethal technique can easily injure, even kill. However like all techniques it has it weak points too. The Ying and Yang philosophy is a two way street, and if you know how to avoid this kick you're walking on the Yang side of the avenue.
"The back kick is very powerful if done properly," says Grand Master Kong. "It is most effective to stop someone who is charging you. The spinning back kick is often against someone who is backing up. However to avoid this kick merely use the same technique that you would to stop a sidekick. The "push away" method is very good. So is stepping off at an angle. However "jamming" this kick is not a good idea, nor is "slapping it down" a good idea. It's best to step off to the outside of a back kick. You may move to the inside of the kick, but the timing must be perfect."
Of all the techniques use in Taekwondo the hooking kick may be the most deadly and the most difficult to block. The whipping action of the foot can easily slip inside most high blocks, and to merely step away from the kick allows the attacker to change up to a round kick. To effectively stop the power of a hooking kick, the defender must first take away its momentum.
"The hook kick is very difficult to block," says Grand Master Kong. "It is better to dodge it. If it comes through deeper than you expected, back off and wait for the next opportunity. Knowing how to judge the effective distance of a hook kick is very important. One way to counter it is to keep your feet stationary while leaning your body away from the kick. That way when the kick misses you are still in position to lunge forward and attack. The other way is to move into the kick and "jam" it before it reaches maximum velocity. This way you will take the power away from the kick before it has a chance to reach maximum force. When doing this, a counter leg sweep is a very effective technique."
Working under the premise that the best offense is a good defense, Grand Master Kong explains the Ying and Yang of the roundhouse kick when used in a defensive posture.
"When you do the round house kick properly it can serve as both an offensive weapon and a defensive tool," Grand Master Kong explained during a black belt training session. "If you bring your leg up straight and someone is moving in, the knee will block the attacker's advance. Next you punch the attacker to set up your next attack.Then you execute a roundhouse kick or an ax or a hooking kick by simply twisting the hips. Instantly it goes from a blocking tool and it becomes a very powerful offensive weapon. It is important to remember however, if you do not assume a correct starting position the kick will fail in both regards."
In addition to turning the blocking knee into a roundhouse kick, it can also be turned into a powerful sidekick, and hook kick. Grand Master Kong emphasis that proper positioning is imperative to get the maximum amount of speed out of your technique.
According to the faster kicker alive speed equals power and the foundation for this formula is based on a student's ability to execute his or her techniques with surgical like precision. In other words, "practice makes perfect."
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