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Connecting Cuba
Cuba's evolving news agenda
At the Argos Theatre in Havana, Yenys Laura Prieto Velazco purchased a ticket for Diez Millones, a popular play about a Cuban family torn apart by the ideological fanaticism of the Cuban revolution and by the father's departure to the U.S. during the 1980 Mariel boatlift.
More in This Report
Video: Internet in Cuba
Video: Interview with Elaine Díaz Rodríguez
Graphic: Unpacking the Packet
Graphic: How Cubans Get Online
Prieto, 27, is a poet, freelance writer, and an anchor on "Buenos Días," a TV news magazine for the state broadcaster Televisión Cubana. Although she specializes in cultural reporting, Prieto said that she did not bother proposing a story about Diez Millones for her program. She said that the very title of the play, which means "10 million" in Spanish, would raise eyebrows among her editors. It refers to a disastrous campaign between 1964 and 1970 by Fidel Castro's government to mobilize the entire country to harvest 10 million tons of sugar.
As she sat on a bench outside the theater, next to the Plaza of the Revolution where huge crowds gather for speeches by Communist government leaders, Prieto said, "You know which stories will be accepted and which won't."
So why is Prieto shelling out her own money for a ticket and taking along a pen and notebook? It turns out that she now has many options to discuss the merits of the play by way of Cuba's booming independent media. She said she planned to pitch a review of Diez Millones to one of the many news websites that have sprung up over the past five years and provide lively alternatives to censored state-run TV, radio and newspapers that, aside from Catholic Church publications, had been the only local and national news media available in Cuba since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959.
These online ventures range from 14ymedio, the first Cuba-based independent news site co-founded by dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez, to La Joven Cuba, which publishes news and blogs that are critical of, yet continue to support, the Cuban state. In addition, throngs of bloggers who now use their own bylines rather than pseudonyms regularly post their thoughts to the web, and struggling young entrepreneurs are publishing sports, fashion and entertainment webzines.
Many of these journalists have taken to heart President Raúl Castro's December 2010 declaration that Cubans should be more critical of the government. The re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana in December 2014 also makes it harder for the Castro government to justify press censorship as a means to protect the nation from American aggression, said Harold Cárdenas Lema, who founded La Joven Cuba along with other professors from the University of Matanzas.
Cubans make use of a Wi-Fi access point in a square in Havana. Access to the internet costs $2 an hour. (Reuters/Ivan Alvarado)
Now, independent journalists are digging into issues that were long glossed over or ignored by the official media. At times, the blogs and articles directly criticize policies and members of the Cuban government. Their scoops, in turn, sometimes prompt official news sources, such as the newspapers Granma and Juventud Rebelde, to publish follow up stories, said Ted Henken, former president of the non-profit research group Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy.
"When the independent media cover a story, the official media the next day is forced to deal with those issues because everyone is already talking about them," said Henken, who is an associate professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Baruch College in New York.
For example, when 14ymedio broke a story last year about the killing of a transgender activist in the western city of Pinar del Río, state media wrote follow-up stories that prompted Castro's daughter, Mariela, who heads Cuba's National Center for Sex Education, to denounce the homicide as a hate crime.
The changes within the media represent an unprecedented loosening of press restrictions, Cuban bloggers and reporters told CPJ. Rather than leaving Cuba, many are now staying to explore these new possibilities, said Lázaro González, a 25-year-old blogger and documentary filmmaker. Journalism professors at the University of Havana—the country's most prestigious university—praise watchdog reporting as opposed to the kind of revolutionary journalism aimed at upholding socialist values and defending the Castro regime, said González, who studied there.
Few Cubans on the island read the online content. Broadband internet access is unavailable in most Cuban homes. There are about 330 internet cafés in Cuba and dozens of publicly accessible Wi-Fi points. But the fees, usually about $2 per hour, are exorbitant in a country where most formal workers are employed by the state and earn around $30 a month.
The analytics for OnCuba show that most readers of the independent news website come from the Cuban diaspora in the U.S. and Europe, said José Jasán Nieves, the website's associate editor. However, he and other journalists and academics contend that these stories do trickle down to readers in Cuba. They point out that many state employees have access to the internet at work and read news sites critical of the government. Mobile phone use is also widespread—the U.N.'s International Telecommunication Union figures estimate that 3.3 million Cubans have mobile phones—giving citizens access to email (though not the internet) via the standard cell signal provided by ETECSA, the state telecommunications monopoly, and the ability to read popular articles that make the rounds via email chains.
Another offline option is "The Packet," a weekly collection of TV programs, films, and stories from international news outlets and Cuba's independent press that are downloaded from the internet and sold to Cubans on USB sticks and DVDs for a dollar. It is estimated that half of Cuba's population accesses content through The Packet, which is run through a network of around 45,000 people, according to an article in The Nation by Sujatha Fernandes, a sociology professor at City University of New York.
But for all the changes around the edges of Cuban journalism, the status quo remains firmly in place, with bloggers, reporters and editors still facing major restrictions and official harassment.
"There is not enough confidence in the journalists to do that kind of criticism."
Laura Blanco Betancourt, Vanguardia
Access to the most critical independent news sites, such as 14ymedio, have been blocked for internet users in Cuba. Fears of similar action or arrest prompt many independent journalists to self-censor, according to the journalists CPJ interviewed. The government blocked access to 14ymedio just hours after it went live in May 2014 and has done the same with the Miami-based CubaNet among other critical news websites.
The Ministry of Communication did not respond to CPJ's request for comment about harassment, arbitrary detentions, surveillance, and restrictions that Cuba's journalists say they face.
Outside of the online journalism ventures, traditional media remain stagnant. All TV and radio stations continue to be controlled by the government and function as propaganda tools, while the distribution of independent printed newspapers and magazines, except for the Catholic Church publications, remains illegal. Or, as Sánchez told The New York Times in 2014, "In Cuba, printing presses are more guarded than military bases."
Laura Blanco Betancourt, a reporter for the state-owned daily Vanguardia, told CPJ she believes that Cuban state media—both national and provincial outlets—have "a huge debt with the Cuban people." Blanco Betancourt, who covers the economy and agricultural, said the media agenda is distant to the public. "Part of the responsibility relies on us, journalists, who became used to reporting on institutions rather than getting into the Cuban people's needs and problems," she said. Blanco Betancourt said that the directors of state media were also responsible because they "have not been able to interpret or manage the appeal of leaders of the Cuban revolution, who have clearly stated that the official press needs to get closer to the people, to report on their problems, to leave formalities behind and not to fear criticism."
Cuba has been under international scrutiny for such a long time that "officials feel they can hide information because it is a threat to national security or can be used by the enemies of the revolution," she said. The Vanguardia reporter added that having access to information "will help journalists to reveal corruption or official mismanagement in public services."
Part of the problem is the way journalism is done in Cuba, Blanco Betancourt said, adding that Vanguardia barely criticizes government policies. "There is not enough confidence in the journalists to do that kind of criticism." She admitted there should be "space" for incorporating critical views. "There has been a habit in the state media to care and protect the reputation of Communist party officials rather than criticize them," she said. "If we continue to be complacent by trying to avoid a scandal we will become even more distant from the public we need to inform."
Jose Ramón Vidal, a communications professor at the University of Havana and former director of the state-owned daily Juventud Rebelde, gave a similar view in an interview with a Mexican magazine. "Journalistic criticism only stays on the surface and, as a consequence, it creates false conclusions, false generalizations, which do not dig deep into the issues," said Vidal in an interview published in Razón y Palabra. Vidal, who proposed turning state-run radio outlets into community stations, said that the "model based on propaganda is facing a crisis and should be left behind. People do not pay attention to it; it is worn out."
Struggle for survival
Far more so than troubled media properties in the U.S. or Europe, Cuba's new media ventures are in a fierce struggle for survival. Although some receive donations, grants and advertising from foreign entities, there is little private advertising inside Cuba. Because this area is unregulated and informal, no one knows the rules. Elaine Díaz Rodríguez said that is why, just to be safe, she lists all the donors to Periodismo de Barrio on her website.
Then, there is Cuba's legal limbo. Most online news outlets are neither officially recognized nor prohibited, making it impossible to open corporate bank accounts or put together legal contracts in the name of these new ventures.
A webpage of 14ymedio, the first Cuba-based independent daily. A series of online news websites have been launched in recent years. (AFP/Panta Astiazaran)
Some of the bloggers with whom CPJ spoke said they would prefer if the government established a clear set of rules, or a new media law that includes online publications. This way, they would know the boundaries and no longer fear the threat of having their sites shut down, which has led them to self-censor. Others said blurred lines were preferable, allowing them to take bigger risks in their coverage because web publications are not explicitly prohibited. Some of the newer bloggers told CPJ they fear a press law that extends to web publications could lead to a clampdown.
"Space is opening up. Things are moving and the status quo is breaking," Miriam Celaya, one of the founders of 14ymedio, told CPJ. "But Cuba hasn't changed as much as we would like."
To further explore the state of journalism and free expression in Cuba, CPJ interviewed independent bloggers, reporters, editors, and online magazine publishers.
A former University of Havana journalism student, Carlos Alberto Pérez was stunned in 2014 when he found that answer sheets for the history, math and Spanish entrance exams for his alma mater were being sold on the street. For between $150 and $300, high school graduates, hoping for a coveted spot at the country's best university, could essentially pay their way in.
At the time, Pérez was an editor at Tino, a computer and technology magazine. But he had also started a blog called La Chiringa de Cuba. A chiringa is a homemade kite and Pérez said that he adopted the name because he wanted to put his ideas and reports up in the air so everyone could see them. Pérez said that although Cuba's public education system is held up as one of the triumphs of the revolution, he went after the story.
Before posting anything, Pérez, who supports the revolution, said he tried to inform the Education Ministry. But, he said, officials ignored his attempts to warn them of potential fraud and the entrance examinations went ahead. After receiving no response from the authorities, Pérez published a copy of one of the answer sheets on his blog. It was a scoop that was picked up by other Cuban bloggers and media and finally forced a reaction from the government. Education officials acknowledged the problem in an official statement, announced that the examinations would be repeated, and launched an investigation that led to the arrests of eight people.
"Half of Cuba had the answers. It did not seem right," Pérez, 34, said while sitting on a park bench in historic Old Havana. "That was what drove me: the injustice, the corruption. And Raúl Castro said that we are supposed to denounce corruption at whatever cost."
Pérez and La Chiringa de Cuba exemplify both the promise and the perils of Cuba's blogosphere, which emerged in 2007 when the first blogs were written under pseudonyms and Sánchez launched her influential Generación Y blog. Sánchez, 40, and her husband Reinaldo Escobar, a journalist who had been fired from Juventud Rebelde in 1988 over a critical article on the Castro revolution, provided another boost by running a blogger academy for citizen journalists. During free workshops in their Havana apartment, Escobar taught journalism; Sánchez focused on technology and the internet; Miriam Celaya taught ethics, law and culture, while other volunteers taught photography.
Elizabeth Pérez, social media editor for OnCuba, works in the news website's Havana office. (Taken on behalf of CPJ)
"It was a very rich experience," Celaya said. "There was a feeling that, 'We are going to write and do big things.' "
Many of these online pioneers remain unapologetically critical of the government. Escobar described this posture as a necessary counterweight to official journalism, which he said sings the glories of the revolution while glossing over its problems.
"If we try to be balanced, to reflect the bad and the good, we wouldn't be doing our duty to balance national journalism," Escobar told the English language Havana Times in a 2013 interview. "… official journalism sweetens reality and the alternative exposes it."
Yet many of the new bloggers have veered away from this hypercritical stance. Today, about 3,000 blogs are based in Cuba and in Cuban communities around the world, Elaine Díaz Rodríguez, the founder of Periodismo de Barrio (News from the Neighborhood), wrote in Nieman Reports. These new blogs include a variety of styles and tones. Topics include gardening, cooking and sex. Some of the bloggers who focus on politics told CPJ that they try to pull off the delicate feat of analyzing and criticizing the government's policies without provoking its ire.
Official backlash can take many forms. News sites and blogs deemed counter-revolutionary are blocked on the island and several of the journalists and bloggers with whom CPJ spoke said they had experienced surveillance. CPJ was unable to independently verify the allegations.
Miriam Leiva, a former diplomat and independent journalist who co-founded the dissident group Ladies in White, said she is under constant surveillance at home and believes that state agents sometimes tail her when she travels abroad. In a March blog, Leiva warned that the Cuban government's biggest concern "is maintaining strict control on society with subtle methods that don't damage the international image that Raúl Castro has been able to create."
Leiva said that while surveillance is not at the level it was five years ago, she is still being watched and followed. The journalist said, "I have noticed people following me. I know that one of them is a neighbor who lives close by. I believe he acts as an informant for Cuban officials." She said that her blog had not been attacked by online trolls, and so far she has not been prevented from covering events. But when she meets other journalists or people who are considered dissidents, she sometimes notices people following her. "The faces have become familiar, and they want me to see them," she said. "It is a way to tell me that they know where I am going and that I am a subject of surveillance. They are trying to intimidate me."
Another method of backlash is short-term detentions that often last for hours or days. That's according to Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, a dissident-turned-journalist who founded the news website Hablemos Press in 2009. He said that so far this year, 30 writers for Hablemos Press, which is critical of the authorities' policies toward the press, have been detained for short periods by state agents. Guerra said the arrests lasted between three and 72 hours and that during that time, the journalists were threatened and sometimes beaten. He did not specify whether the reporters were questioned about their work, but he said that some were told that their children would lose university placements if they continued to criticize the government.
The Ministry of Communication did not respond to CPJ's request for comment.
To avoid such problems, Alejandro Rodríguez, a 29-year-old blogger from Camagüey, said that he uses satire and irony to discuss issues such as the deteriorating state healthcare system. He said he will sometimes address small injustices, such as bribe-taking by anonymous bureaucrats, but he stays away from addressing allegations of systemic government corruption.
Yet even mild criticism can ruffle feathers. La Joven Cuba, which publishes a collection of op-ed-like blogs, pushes for reform and often criticizes the Communist Party, government bureaucracy, and the official press. In 2012, its website was blocked without explanation by administrators at the state-run University of Matanzas. It reappeared the following year after Cuba's first vice president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, who supports greater openness, met with the blog's founders at the university and asked them what they needed to get back online, The New York Times reported.
"Space is opening up … the status quo is breaking. But Cuba hasn't changed as much as we would like."
Miriam Celaya, 14ymedio
"You have to learn to choose your battles, but I don't think there are taboo themes," Cárdenas, one of La Joven Cuba's founders, told CPJ.
Even when bloggers and journalists carefully select their topics and targets, they sometimes end up as casualties—as Pérez discovered with La Chiringa de Cuba. "I figured if I'm going to do a blog, why not do something different, something polemic that sparks debate," Pérez said. "But I'm not a dissident. The idea is to have a dissident voice within the revolution."
Pérez followed his "exam scam" exposé with exclusive stories about government plans to expand broadband access to the public and start selling home-based internet access. He said his reports generated massive interest among Cubans, who constantly complain about their lack of connectivity.
But Pérez's editors at the government-owned Tino magazine were less enthusiastic. Pérez said when he was fired last year, the editors told him they were uncomfortable with his blog. When CPJ contacted Tino for comment via the email address listed on its website, the message was returned as undeliverable.
Pérez now works as a government tour guide, showing tourists around Old Havana and other parts of the city. But he no longer has an office or regular access to the internet, which is key to researching material for La Chiringa de Cuba and interacting with his readers. In March he stopped blogging.
"To do a blog you need to be connected. You need feedback," Perez said. "I now get a lot of emails from people asking, 'Why aren't you writing anymore?' "
One reason is that he is a new father and needs a steady job. Pérez said he's keeping a low profile for now to avoid problems with his current employers. He insists that La Chiringa de Cuba will fly again, but he plans to proceed with caution.
Comparing government press controls to a road barrier, Pérez said, "There is a big wall out there. You can go 120km per hour and crash against that wall. And maybe you will break a hole in the wall. But you will not survive. So, in my view, it's better to go slower and try to move past the wall one day at time. That way you will survive."
News websites
Before transitioning to independent journalism, José Jasán Nieves said he spent several disheartening years trying to poke holes in government press restrictions from within state media.
A native of eastern Cienfuegos, Nieves, 28, worked as news editor and program host for Radio Ciudad del Mar, the city's main station. It allowed no room for even mild criticism of government policies. In reporting on cases of cholera, for instance, Nieves said that he was ordered to describe the illness as "acute diarrhea syndrome." That's because his editors feared that revealing a cholera outbreak would reflect poorly on the state-run health system, he said.
Frustrated by the dull format, Nieves in 2014 convinced the station to commission a poll on listener figures. The results were shocking. On average, only 16 percent of residents tuned in even though it was the city's biggest radio station. That provided an opening for Nieves to shake things up. On his own show, he began delivering commentaries that sometimes questioned the government. Listeners continued to call into the program. The journalist said calls were on a 10-second delay to allow for if anything controversial was said.
But the new format didn't last long. When Olympic hurdles champion Dayron Robles announced in 2013 that he would no longer compete with the national team due to disagreements with track officials, Nieves criticized the island's sports authorities. He also slammed the government's 2013 decision to close private movie theatres set up in homes, which had been among the few sources of entertainment in small towns and rural areas.
"I thought it was a step backwards that made no sense," Nieves said. "It was a close-minded attitude inherited from the Soviet period."
But in voicing his opinions Nieves violated an unwritten code of official journalism, one that is often summed up by the phrase, "Yank the chain but don't touch the monkey." In other words, mild criticism of the way the system functions is tolerated, but not direct attacks on the system itself.
Nieves said that his supervisors reminded him that his role was to generate consensus around government policies, not to criticize them. He said he was demoted and had his salary cut.
Radio Ciudad del Mar did not respond to CPJ's request for comment.
The problems with his editors coincided with an explosion of new media startups. In 2014 Nieves left the radio station to work for El Toque, a website with news reports and radio podcasts launched by Radio Netherlands Worldwide, a Dutch broadcaster turned nongovernmental organization that promotes free speech.
Nieves also began writing for OnCuba, which was founded in Miami in 2012 by Hugo Cancio, a prominent Cuban businessman living in exile, who had long called for an end to the U.S. embargo. OnCuba started as a glossy lifestyle publication distributed at U.S. bookstores and on charter flights to Cuba. It later added a daily news website with stories produced by a team of reporters and collaborators on both sides of the Florida straits.
Nieves, OnCuba's associate editor, said the website is in a privileged position. After the U.S. and Cuba restored diplomatic relations, Cancio received a license to open a newsroom in Havana. Aside from traditional news services such as Reuters and The Associated Press, the only other foreign news outlet besides OnCuba to receive an operating license is the Miami-based Progreso Semanal.
Located on the ninth-floor of a rundown building near the Malecón seafront, OnCuba has a staff of four editors and writers and receives stories from about 100 contributors. Rather than editorial meetings, Nieves communicates with his journalists via Facebook messenger and text messages. The newsroom also features a coveted internet connection—because it is registered as a foreign entity, OnCuba has the same right to a connection as foreign residents. Freelancers often wander in to log on, do research or write stories, he said.
The majority of OnCuba´s audience is among the Cuban diaspora. However, the site's social media editor, Elizabeth Pérez, said that readership is growing on the island thanks to email chains, The Packet, and Facebook recommendations. Facebook is more popular in internet-challenged Cuba than Twitter, she said, because tweets can seem old when users are offline most of the day.
As an example of the site's offline readership, Pérez mentioned a popular OnCuba story about new regulations for buying and selling used cars. "We published on Saturday and by Monday, my mother in Cienfuegos—who is the most disconnected person in the world—was reading a print-out copy of the story," Pérez said.
"Our writers don't do it for the money. They do it for the freedom. It is a way to rebel against the status quo."
José Jasán Nieves, OnCuba
The emergence of OnCuba, 14ymedio, El Toque and other news operations represents a significant leap forward from Cuba's initial wave of independent bloggers, according to Henken, the Cuba expert at Baruch College. He said that these organizations go "beyond the blog" to produce news in a more professional, systematic and entrepreneurial way.
OnCuba, for example, sustains itself by selling advertising in Miami and pays its writers between $10 and $20 per article. "We pay late and we pay badly," Nieves said. "But our writers don't do it for the money. They do it for the freedom. It is a way to rebel against the status quo."
14ymedio, the first independent news website in Cuba, began operating in 2014 out of Sánchez's 14th floor apartment with 12 staffers. The site launched with the help of $150,000 from private donors. Although Sánchez and many of her writers hail from human rights and dissident communities, 14ymedio strives for balance and its stories often have the down-the-middle tone of wire-service dispatches, Henken said.
"The site that is most like a professional news gathering organization is 14ymedio," Henken said. "They have made an intense effort to up their game."
Another fledgling online news venture is Periodismo de Barrio, founded by Díaz, with the help of foundation grants, when she returned to Cuba after spending a year at Harvard University to explore online news organizations. In 2015, Díaz became the first Cuban awarded a prestigious Nieman Journalism Fellowship at Harvard. The reports in Periodismo de Barrio focus on how climate change and natural disasters impact local communities. The concept allows journalists to dig into issues without seeming to directly attack the Castro government.
Instead, Díaz's team of four staffers and dozens of freelancers tries to hold local government officials accountable. A former Havana city council member, Díaz told CPJ that local officials are directly elected, have more accountability among the people, and have often provided her with interviews and information. The aim, she said, is to identify and resolve specific problems, such as inadequate public housing or contaminated water.
"I do not consider myself a dissident," Díaz said. "I recognize positive aspects of socialism. What we have to do is improve things."
So far, the Castro government has tolerated Díaz's project. But when she launched the website last year, she said that several officials informally accused her of collaborating with the CIA and human rights groups. International human rights groups have long been perceived by Cuban officials as being aligned with the interests of foreign powers. Díaz responded by publishing an 86-point ethics code on her website, which details the origin of the site's funding. She said such accusations were designed to stigmatize the independent press and convince young reporters to seek jobs in the official media.
"But that no longer works," Díaz said. "When journalists see new projects that are better than the state-run media, it becomes harder for the government to convince them."
Other ambitious news sites include Diario de Cuba, which is based in Madrid but posts stories written by Cubans on the island, and CubaNet, based in Coral Gables, Florida, and founded in 1994. Both are highly critical of the Castro government, which at times has blocked access to both sites on the island.
To avoid a similar fate, OnCuba's Nieves said he must constantly decide whether to push the envelope or pull back—a concern that he said worries him more than the risk of online surveillance. Recent examples of the former include a warts-and-all profile of Che Guevara, a story about a woman with a rare skin disease struggling to get treatment under the state health system, and articles about Cuban doctors who were infected with Ebola while treating the deadly virus in Africa.
"We are trying to show that you can do good journalism here, without leaving the country," Nieves said.
However, OnCuba must stay in the government's good graces. Otherwise, it risks having its Havana office shut down. Nieves said that nearly happened this year when hardliners inside the government complained about coverage and tried to convince officials to close OnCuba. The result is self-censorship, Nieves said. Many OnCuba stories are soft features that avoid controversy. Nieves readily admits that he's intrigued by many issues— such as the growing economic power of the Cuban armed forces—but doesn't dare write about them.
Still, he is optimistic because the government is gradually losing control over the flow of news and information.
"We want a society in which power and knowledge is in the hands of the people, not the vanguard of the Communist party," Nieves said. "That is what the people are demanding. They want to know what is really happening in this country."
Webzines
Pedro Enrique Rodriguez, editor of sports magazine Play-Off, is in a fight for editorial freedom and economic survival. (Taken on behalf of CPJ)
The OnCuba newsroom, with its coffee machine, conference room and reliable internet connection, seems like CNN world headquarters compared to the tumbledown operations of the monthly sports webzine Play-Off.
To upload stories and administer its website, Play-Off's founder and editor Pedro Enrique Rodríguez sits at a bench in a public park in Havana that doubles as a Wi-Fi access point. He edits the magazine from the cramped basement apartment in Havana that he shares with his father and grandfather. On a spring afternoon, his cat darted through a window and settled on his lap while he worked at a computer that sits atop a stack of books, including one called The Great Battles of History.
Like many of Cuba's nascent webzine founders, Rodríguez is engaged in his own great battle for editorial freedom and economic survival.
Rodríguez, 30, comes off as a kind of Cuban Bill Simmons, one of the first prominent internet sportswriters in the U.S. who is famed for his cantankerous, yet literate, opinions. Like Simmons, Rodríguez holds passionate views about players, coaches and athletic controversies but found no place for them within traditional media. He said he dreamed up Play-Off last year while watching a baseball game with his girlfriend and complaining about boring sports coverage in official media.
Play-Off looks like a Cuban version of Sports Illustrated, with page after page of lush photography and insightful essays. As he scrolled through the fifteenth edition on his computer, Rodríguez called Play-Off "my child."
But like health and education, sports is one of the proud pillars of the Cuban revolution. Thus, coverage of baseball, soccer, track and field and other sports can be controversial.
One essay lamented the poor quality of Cuba's Olympic athletes and pinned part of the blame on the island's economic problems. Another article looked at proposed reforms to Cuba's Baseball Hall of Fame and how those plans were shot down by sports officials who refused to consider including Cuban exile greats—like four-time World Series champion pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernández.
"These are absurd positions that make no sense," Rodríguez says.
Rodríguez calls Play-Off "a sports magazine that's not just about sports." But for this reason he must proceed with caution. He said his aim is to publish a magazine that challenges conventional wisdom and government policies while staying within the boundaries of the government's playing field for independent journalism.
For example, he said he is itching to publish an analysis of whether the quality of Cuban baseball is declining, in part, because so many top players are leaving to sign lucrative contracts overseas. Meanwhile, soccer is gaining ground with many youth now more interested in what the Brazilians call "the beautiful game" than "pelota," Cuban slang for baseball. But Rodríguez said he has balked at assigning the story because he fears the government could retaliate by blocking his website in Cuba.
"We write from a critical viewpoint. But we can't be as critical as we want to be," he said.
So far, Rodríguez said, he has not had any reprisals for his work but, if Play-Off was closed he would give up hope of reforms in Cuba.
Play-Off is one of many new independent webzines that are testing the boundaries. They include the literary magazine El Estornudo, fashion and lifestyle publications Garbos and Venus, N1CKS for electronic games aficionados, and Vistar, an entertainment publication. Printing independent magazines is illegal, punishable by three months to one year in prison; however, these digital magazines can be read online or via PDF downloads and the law currently does not extend to web-based publications. Some webzines are available via The Packet. Influenced by a posse of young writers, Cuba's new magazine journalism is "defining cultural tastes and aesthetics," Cecilia Campos, of the Cuban non-governmental organization Asociación Pro Libertad de Prensa, wrote on the free-speech website Cuba Prensa Libre.
One of the most ambitious is El Estornudo, or "the sneeze," a name that alludes to the chronic allergies or irritations of daily life in Cuba. El Estornudo publishes literary journalism and aims to be Cuba's answer to Vanity Fair, Mexico's Gatopardo or Colombia's El Malpensante. Stories have included a profile of an impoverished Havana neighborhood, a piece slamming the lack of reforms at the Cuban Communist Party's VII Congress in April following Obama's visit to Havana, and an essay questioning whether there's reason for optimism given the slow pace of change.
"We are exhausted, but we are enjoying this … The reason we exist is due to all the changes in Cuba."
Abraham Jiménez Enoa, El Estornudo
It is rich fare—and a radical shift for Abraham Jiménez Enoa, a 28-year-old who studied journalism at the University of Havana and is El Estornudo's founder and editor. After graduating, he monitored foreign press coverage of Cuba for the Interior Ministry. He said he hated the job but the university was churning out too many journalists for the ranks of Granma, Juventud Rebelde, and other traditional state media. After a few years at the ministry, Cuba's independent press began to grow and Jiménez quit to freelance for OnCuba and El Toque. He launched El Estornudo in March.
Rather than directly criticizing government policies, El Estornudo often addresses them in a roundabout way through lengthy profiles. To discuss official corruption, for example, Jiménez spent days with a street vendor in Old Havana and recounted how the vendor was hit for bribes by policemen to continue operating. His writers have tackled subjects ranging from underground sex shops to the government's apparent lack of concern for Cuban migrants who get stuck in transit countries such as Ecuador and Colombia while trying to reach the U.S. So far, Jiménez said, there has been no response from government officials, but he points out that his magazine is only a few months old.
Like Play-Off, El Estornudo is an austere undertaking with no office, no staff and no internet connection. Jiménez puts it together with the help of a group of literary-minded friends who write for free, and uploads stories and photos from Wi-Fi points. Although available on the web, Jiménez lacks the $15 weekly fee to place El Estornudo in The Packet. He said he has no idea how to turn his project into a sustainable business. But for now, he is simply thrilled by the challenge and the adrenaline rush of putting out his own magazine.
"We are exhausted, but we are enjoying this," Jiménez said. "I am optimistic. The reason we exist is due to all the changes in Cuba."
Except for a sex column, the fashion magazine Garbos mostly steers clear of controversial issues, including politics. But like Play-Off and El Estornudo, its editors, Rebeca Alderete, 35, and Gabriela Domenech, 26, face challenges in putting out Cuba's answer to Vogue. For starters, they say Cuba isn't much for haute couture.
In the 1950s, a more stylish era, the island was home to cabarets and casinos frequented by European celebrities and U.S. film stars. But Cubans began dressing down in the 1960s when the Castro revolution stressed equality and took some of its fashion cues from the Soviet Union. Foreign clothes brands weren't sold on the island until the 1990s. That, combined with economic problems and Cuba's tropical heat, discourage the wearing of fancy jackets, vests, scarves and other staples of high-end fashion.
"Cuba used to be more elegant," Domenech said. "My grandmother always wore high heels."
But with Cuba slowly opening up to the world, people now have more fashion choices, the editors said. In addition, the island is home to a handful of professional and would-be models as well as houses and buildings in Old Havana that provide elegant settings for photo shoots. Anxious to build up their portfolios with the glossy PDF pages of Garbos, actors, singers, models and photographers often pose and work for free.
Chanel teamed up with the editors of Garbos to produce a special edition of the magazine when it held its first fashion show in Havana. (Garbos)
Despite relatively low production costs, Alderete, a self-employed sound engineer, and Domenech, who works at the Culture Ministry, said they are struggling to stay afloat. Their business model is based on advertising. But because Cuba's economy was totally controlled by the state for so long, they say there is little knowledge of advertising and its benefits.
As an example Alderete pointed to Cuba's two main beers: Bucanero and Cristal. "Both are owned by the same state company," she said. "There's no competition, so why would they advertise?"
Managers of many state companies, in turn, often balk at buying advertising from Garbos and other webzines because they are not licensed. Due to the peculiarities of Cuba's legal system, the only way to secure official recognition would be to first establish overseas offices, like OnCuba has, then register as a foreign entity on the island. And, while the lack of regulations means no formal punishment has been laid out, the recognized boundaries mean that state companies tend to err on the conservative side.
There is a small but growing private sector. Recent issues of Garbos included advertisements for family-run restaurants called paladares, bars, a tattoo parlor, candy stores, and a photocopying shop. The income is just enough to scrape by.
In May, Garbos scored a coup when the French fashion house Chanel staged its first Latin American catwalk show in Havana. To mark the occasion, Chanel personnel spent three months collaborating with Garbos on a special issue, providing clothes, technical assistance on shoots, equipment, and advice. But because Chanel's luxury goods and fashion accessories are not sold in Cuba, the company did not purchase any advertisements, the editors said.
Rodríguez faces similar challenges in financing Play-Off. His monthly production costs of about $350 include fees for stories, for the layout artist and for inclusion in The Packet. He describes his freelancers as being among the best sports reporters working in government media. But, he said, they jump at the chance to write for Play-Off because he pays $10 per article compared to about $3 for state-run newspapers and magazines. In another sign of loosening media restrictions, the freelancers write under the same bylines they use in state media, Rodríguez said.
To cover these costs, Rodríguez said he makes the rounds at the beginning of each month to peddle advertisements to paladares, bars and privately owned bed-and-breakfast ventures that have sprung up in recent years. But he's often shut out because owners spend most of their money on the nuts-and-bolts aspects of their businesses, such as food and alcohol.
"Publicity is the hardest part," Rodríguez said. "Owners of paladares don't believe in digital media. They don't think it will help their businesses. I have to go to 20 paladares for one to say 'yes.' "
As an informal business, Rodríguez cannot sign contracts with advertisers in the name of Play-Off or open a bank account. Deals are done verbally. He said he has yet to be let down by advertisers, but they sometimes pay several months late. He said that one solution—if the U.S. trade embargo was lifted—would be for a big American firm, like Nike, to step in and sponsor his magazine in exchange for exclusive publicity. But he has no contacts with the sportswear giant.
As he hammers on his keyboard and sips coffee, Rodríguez admits that he has moments of both ecstasy and despair.
On good days, he said he feels like a publishing pioneer pushing the boundaries. He got another boost in March when President Obama's motorcade sped right past him through the streets of Havana. He said the improved ties between Havana and Washington send a strong signal that the Castro government is capable of reforms.
On bad days, he frets that these changes will come too slow for many of Cuba's new media ventures—including his own.
"Play-Off is my offspring," he says. "To see it die would be terrible."
EDITOR'S NOTE: The third paragraph in the section on "News Websites" has been corrected to reflect that a survey conducted by Radio Ciudad del Mar did not affect call-in comments from listeners. In the 16th paragraph, the text has been corrected to reflect José Jasán Nieves's statement that journalists working for OnCuba are rebelling against the status quo.
@tabs
Abraham Jiménez Enoa
Alejandro Rodríguez
Carlos Alberto Pérez
Detained
El Estornudo
El Toque
Elaine Díaz Rodríguez
ETECSA
Gabriela Domenech
Garbos
Hablemos Press
Harassed
Harold Cárdenas Lema
José Jasán Nieves
La Chiringa de Cuba
Laura Blanco Betancourt
Lázaro González
Miriam Celaya
Miriam Leiva
Nieman Reports
On Cuba
Pedro Enrique Rodríguez
Periodismo de Barrio
Radio Ciudad del Mar
Rebeca Alderete
Reinaldo Escobar
Ted Henken
Televisión Cubana
The Packet
Yenys Laura Prieto Velazco
yoanísánchez


In order to prove the bio-barrier performance of the proprietary ROOTX barrier system a laboratory test has recently been undertaken by REC Ltd and Amenity Contract Services Ltd. The test was performed on a mixture of plant species including mustard, docks, meadow grass and Japanese Knotweed within a peat and compost based soil matrix.
The trial was monitored over the duration of six months, over which period it was evident that the rhizome fragments of Japanese Knotweed were actively growing even beneath the ROOTX barrier. The field trial was conducted within a climate controlled environment (20°c) with daily addition of moisture to the surface of the soil.
Upon careful exhumation of the ROOTX barrier, which includes a copper foil insert sandwiched between a non-woven and woven geotextile, it was evident that none of the plants were able to grow through the bio-barrier. Typically the roots made their way down to the copper foil, where they either stopped or took a lateral route. None of the rootlets penetrated any of the needle punched holes, demonstrating the growth inhibition effect caused by the chemical properties of the copper foil insert.
It should be noted that the ROOTX barrier is a permeable system capable of transferring moisture through the geotextile sandwich and copper foil insert and therefore is not prone to water logging in field conditions. The laboratory trial proved that there was no water logging of the soil above the ROOTX barrier.
Visual examination of the ROOTX barrier showed the early formation of copper carbonate deposits (verdigris) which has been proved within earlier German based laboratory trials.
Further field trial and laboratory trials are to be conducted by REC Ltd and Amenity Contract Services Ltd and are expected to corroborate the existing research information on the ROOTX barrier.
For further information on the existing research information, applicability and cost for design, build and installation please contact us.


I took a walk in search of a food called Achoma, and found the sister food called Barfroat. Yesterday, Sunday, there was a line of people waiting for Dora the woman to finish cooking the first batch. I decided to sit down and wait in the shade while they finished the cooking. I like them well done, so wanted to be last in line.
I decided, this looks like a good video, so I started a small clip, it was funny, I did not notice until I was filming, however there are a couple of girls that were fully aware as I was photographing their dip shower area. The camera was not able to catch them, however as I was filming the would occasionally pop their heads above the side and see what I was up too.
Notice at the end of the Video, a girl in a black dress, who has now on two days tried to repeatedly to teach me Ashanti words. Her name is Dorcas and the sister of the women cooking the Barfroat.
Barfroat is more or less an extra large Donut Hole, without them making the donut. I do not know presently the type of flour used.
After this part of various videos was done, I proceeded to eat one of the Barfroat; a man came up and spoke some English. He invited me into the home where I met his wife, and realized that Dorcas and Dora were his daughters. His name was Joseph; I took a video of the inside of the compound area, and the family welcoming to their house.
It was great day, then after that Joseph, took me across the road and I made a video of them making Fufu. To explain each of these situations I need to collect some words and a couple of extra videos so the stories are complete. I guess there is a need to return to see the future stories or videos.
One video would be of the inside of a compound home and the other explaining how they make Fufu, in Ghana.


text:
Fournier RF4D DIY rebuild: Part Four
Time to wing it… Part 4: re-covering the wing | Words and photos: Bob Grimstead
After re-covering Wagon's fuselage, I set about the wing. My good friend John and I had dissolved off the excess old Super Seam Cement with MEK, so it only remained to sand it all over, paint on two coats of varnish, let it dry fully, and then scuff it with fine Scotchbrite pads to provide a good key. I decided to start with what seemed the most difficult and complicated areas−the concave aileron cut-outs.
The work was fiddly and time consuming but I felt the Oratex went on pretty well, adhering nicely with my small modeller's iron, despite being on a multi-faceted and uneven concave surface. I added a second patch of fabric around each of the aileron hinge arms, for extra protection.
Anticipating the second most difficult bit would be fitting fabric around the compound-curved wingtips, I decided to tackle them next, before starting on the larger, more straightforward areas; I could always remove that wingtip fabric and start again if it didn't work out well. I wasn't too concerned about getting a superb finish because they would eventually be covered by my smoke pods.
I understood that the Oratex adhesive becomes tacky when heated with the hot air gun to about 80°C, and the fabric can be pulled around on it. Once pressure is applied (three kilos or seven pounds of pressure) together with more heat above 90°C by an iron, I presume the little microballoons filled with hardener in suspension in the glue get popped, hardening the glue and making it impossible to shift thereafter.
For my first attempt, I painted glue on two large squares of fabric (with adequate excess) and the varnished-balsa-and-ply left wingtip as far as the inboard edge of the first rib. Then I tacked down the central upper three square inches around the outer edge of the wingtip to give me some purchase to pull against.
After allowing that area of glue to cool and set, I used the heat gun to stretch it out from there. I wish I had a picture, but with the heat gun in one hand, the fabric in the other and the felt smoothing pad in my teeth, I had no way of taking a photo!
I heated and pulled, heated and pulled until the fabric was nice and smooth on the wing's upper surface (which was actually underneath my inverted wing on its stand). It was a bit of a struggle but I did get the material fairly flat there.
But I could not stretch the fabric enough to remove lots of wrinkles on the very visible compound-curved lower surface. So I increased the heat gun's temperature in an attempt to shrink the residual wrinkles.
I texted a couple of photos to Paul Hendry-Smith at TLAC and asked his advice. He said, "Start on the top, heat it and stretch it and pull it down over the tip, and then shrink the wrinkles out of that. Use the silicone-coated paper to prevent it sticking to the glue until you want it to."
That was easier said than done! Holding the heat gun in one hand, the fabric in another, the felt smoothing pad in my 'third' hand and the silicone paper in my teeth, I knelt on one knee while bracing the wing from sliding across the floor with the other.
Luckily there was nobody within earshot, and swearing through silicone paper does rather muffle the sound! Eventually I got it all nicely smoothed out on the top surface and curved over three-quarters of one tip. Then, pulling from the mid-chord forwards and rearwards, I managed to get rid of most of the wrinkles, but was still stuck with one fairly big crease in mid-chord, a thin, wide one around the trailing-edge, and a right bunch of glued-together rubbish under the leading-edge. More photos to Paul and another phone call.
"Ah, no. If you're going to try to cover the whole tip with a single piece, you need to shape it first over the dry tip before applying glue. You have to heat it and stretch it into a sort of bucket shape around the wing-tip before painting on the glue and ironing," says Paul.
"I know the manual says it shrinks by up to eighteen per cent, but how much does it stretch?" I ask.
"Oh heaps. Maybe 25 per cent."
"What temperature do I use?"
"As much as you need."
My buddy John and I heaved and sweated, with me pulling the fabric using the best grip I could muster, and John running the heat gun back and forth around the tip, being careful because the manual cautions not to exceed 180°C over a wooden surface.
All we achieved was pushing the wing along the floor on its integral stand again, plus a slightly wrinkled sheet of Oratex! I gave up and took home the heat gun, a couple of fabric panels and some off-cut strips for experimentation.
I clamped a two-foot, one-inch wide strip in the vice, heated it and pulled. I held the heat gun against the fabric and ran it back and forth, starting at 100°C, increasing in 20°C increments, pulling hard. It remained static. I pulled harder and increased the heat.
The manual says Oratex's strength is degraded above 200°C, but it still wasn't stretching. At 350°C I finally smelled burning and it snapped in two. So now I know that, like most other fabrics, Oratex only stretches on the bias.
I realised I was being too ambitious for a novice. Next day I neatened up the right tip, trimmed the excess fabric around its edges, and covered the left tip using two pieces of fabric. This worked better and, after gluing down the folds and cleaning up the area, it looked more or less acceptable after final trimming.
I am neither artist nor artisan, simply a pilot who wanted to fly my Fourniers, something I had been unable to do for more than two years. My priority was to get Wagon flying again as soon as possible. Making it lighter was of secondary importance, and 'prettiness' was way down the list.
However, what I learned was: you can have the same difficulties with any make of fabric; proper tuition and more experience would have enabled me to do a much better job (I've seen examples of wingtips that have been perfectly covered with a single Oratex panel by more expert fabric workers); and I should have left the most challenging areas to the end.
Also, the silicone paper was only used to protect the fabric's painted surface from discolouration, so I knocked up covers for both my irons from offcuts of an old flannelette cotton bed sheet.
With both wingtips now adequately, if not beautifully, completed, I moved on to the much easier stage: covering the large, flat areas of wing between tip and root. I started with the underside again, as its appearance wasn't as important as the upper surface, which needed cut-outs for the spoilers and might be tricky.
The Oratex application manual says to drape a sheet of fabric over the area it is going onto, peg or clip it into place, and then go around the other side to mark with a soft pencil where the solid parts of the airframe will attach to the fabric, so you can apply the adhesive there and only there, to avoid both waste and unsightly areas of excess adhesive through the thin, semi-translucent material.
Working alone, I found this too easier said than done in Dunsfold's big, airy and well-lit Hangar 57, which is also pretty breezy when someone opens one of the doors.
I had intended using one large, un-seamed sheet per wing panel with the weave parallel to the chord line for neatness−making four big sheets of the sheer, glossy, slippery fine-weave Oratex. Unfortunately, I found that however carefully I secured the sail-like eighteen-feet by five-feet sheet to the wing's undersurface it would try to slip off all the time I was securing it, and then flap in the breeze even once pegged into place.
Fitting the sheet around the necessary cut-outs for the aileron pushrods, pitot tube and outrigger legs, and then shrinking it without these holes shifting relative to one another, as well as accurately joining it with the existing wingtips, would be beyond my ability.
Taking a break, I realised that, with my Fournier's efficient tapered wing, it was going to be very difficult to ensure the weave was always aligned spanwise. But, except up close, it wouldn't be possible to tell in which direction that weave actually ran, so I reassessed my use of this big roll of fabric.
Rather than try to cover a whole upper or lower wing panel at once with one eighteen-foot sheet, I decided to use several smaller pieces that would be easier to handle solo, joining them chord-wise with the recommended minimum two-inch overlap.
There would now be four pairs of symmetrical components: the tips, the aileron area between ribs one and nine, the central spoiler and outrigger area, and the inner wing panels, plus a single underside centre-section piece, making nine much smaller sheets in all.
This used the expensive fabric more efficiently. The total length for both the wing and the fuselage (excluding all tail units and ailerons which had recently been re-covered) was 52 feet of the six-foot wide fabric.
Per Oratex's instructions, I wrapped these panels from the trailing edge all the way under and over the wing via the leading edge and back to the trailing edge again, with at least a two inch overlap underneath, where it shouldn't be too obvious. This left me with a twenty-foot roll of spare fabric. Was I dismayed at this waste of money? Well, being me, yes at first I was. But then I had a brainwave: it was more than enough to re-cover the old, cracked and unsightly paint on the fuselage of my Australian RF4D!
The routine for applying these sheets was much more straightforward than the difficult areas I had tackled first. Mark on the underside of the fabric the areas on which the adhesive will be painted; paint a couple of coats of adhesive on to both the marked areas and the corresponding wing framework; allow them to dry. In very low ambient temperatures this drying can be slow.
Heat doesn't help, but airflow does, so a fan or fan-heater set to 'cold' or 'cool' can greatly assist. Mine took half-an-hour to dry with a cool (50°C) heat-gun in an ambient temp of about 8°C. Then, holding the fabric carefully in place and using a small modeller's iron set to 50°C, press down briefly in a few spots along one edge to tack it in place while pulling it as taut as possible.
Oratex doesn't shrink very much, so the tighter you get it initially the better the eventual finish. Once everything is square and true, and wrinkle-free, you can run the bigger Toko iron set to 100°C slowly all around the remaining edges, again pulling the fabric lengthwise and working along carefully to get out any bubbles, while ensuring the iron is over every bit of structure for the required ten seconds, and pressing down firmly to pop all the little hardener microballoons in the adhesive. It took me about forty minutes for the first piece, but less than thirty for the second and subsequent panels.
Once the glue has gone off trim away the surplus. That's it−no painting of any sort is required and the website suggests waiting a day before going flying. Go home and drink copious volumes of good Australian Shiraz to celebrate a job well done!
Where panels required holes for the pitot probe, outrigger legs, stall warner, air vents, aileron hinges and operating arms, I found it best to melt the hole first with a soldering iron and then position the panel correctly over the projection before tacking down that area and ironing outwards from it.
Melting the hole rather than cutting it seals the edges so the fabric doesn't subsequently rip along the warp or weft. Trailing edge drain holes, plus those under the spoiler boxes were easily burned this way. For the larger holes, like those for the inspection panels, I made a series of radial cuts with my tiny soldering iron.
For the larger apertures for the spoiler boxes, I tucked tongues of the fabric down into the cut-outs and glued them down with my small, modeller's iron. Where there wasn't even enough space for that, I used my Dad's big, old wartime soldering iron.
On some fabric-covered types, chord-wise reinforcing tapes are often installed over the ribs to cover and smooth the stitching or lacing, but because Fourniers have no lacing, they don't need these tapes.
In the end it took me a couple of weeks of part-time working to cover my Fournier's wing, generally completing one bay per day. Some days it was simply too cold to work; either below Oratex's minimum OAT of five degrees Celsius or their recommended fifteen degree minimum because 'of the difficulty of working with cold hands and fingers'. Amen to that brother! If the weather hadn't been so cold, damp and depressing I could definitely have covered the whole wing in a week.
With the wing completely covered from tip to tip with the white Oratex, now came the quick, fun and rewarding bit: shrinking it. I insulated the glued-down areas with strips of corrugated cardboard, cut from old boxes and held in place with masking tape, so that this new heat didn't adversely affect the adhesive.
Then, heat gun set between 120°C and 150°C, I made a succession of slow passes left and right and then up and down across each unsupported panel to ensure as much as possible that all threads were equally shrunk. Finally I ran the iron over everything at a slightly higher temperature, but not applying any pressure.
To ensure the fabric was at the correct tension, I bounced a ten pence coin over every piece of tautened fabric. Allowing for the diminution of bay size towards the wingtips and consequent increase in pitch of the drum-like sound thus generated, I tried to ensure that all panels were similarly tensioned by this simple audio test, slightly tightening by further heating any area that sounded 'flat'.
Evelyn Glennie might not have approved of the timpani-like scales I eventually achieved, but they were music to my ears.
Finally, following Oratex's instructions, I pushed a carefully calibrated finger into the centre of each panel with three kilogrammes of force (tested on my kitchen scales). If the consequent dent recovers to a smooth, drum-taut surface within four seconds the fabric tension is correct. This confirmed my earlier 'musical' assessment, and so suddenly the job was done.
Re-fitting the ailerons is much easier with the wing inverted, so we turned it over again and I fiddled around all day in the very tight gaps for the pivot bolts and their nuts.
Eventually they were mounted and I could connect their operating pushrods and ensure they could move fully and freely. One final inversion of the wing to upright on my trailer and we were able to tow it back to my hangar.
Now all I had to do was finish off a few minor ten-minute jobs and reassemble my aeroplane. That shouldn't take long...

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Contents Pages by Subject
Pages and Listings are in reverse chronological order: Page 15 of 24
News Link • Global
Going off grid? Here's a look at 9 solar lanterns
01-22-2018 • https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Editor/Add-Edit-In
(Natural News) Are you planning on shopping for a solar lantern for your upcoming camping trip? Here are some tips to help you decide what you ought to buy without having to test every single one of the displays in your favorite outdoorsman store.
Surviving a Mad Max World: How To Avoid Marauders and Looters After the Collapse
[Editor's Note: A mad max scenario is one of the worst-case scenarios one can prepare for. The adage "if you can't protect you don't own it" rings true in this case. Long-term survival plans that reflect this type of disaster suggest preppe
Selco: Who Survives and Who Dies When the SHTF?
01-18-2018 • https://www.theorganicprepper.com
Did you ever wonder about the differences in how people behave in a crisis? Why some people survive and some people die? Are there characteristics that we can nurture now in good times that could help see us through bad times?
Three life-changing lessons to learn from Hawaii's false ballistic missile warning...
01-15-2018 • http://www.dcclothesline.com
(that sent unprepared citizens into a total panic)...(Natural News) As you're probably aware by now, the government of Hawaii texted out an emergency ballistic missile warning over the weekend, terrifying its citizens with the following text: EME
44 Fantastic Uses of Paracord for Prepping and Survival
01-12-2018 • https://www.lewrockwell.com, By Gaye Levy
My love affair with paracord continues. Not only is it strong and useful for a myriad of tasks, it is colorful and fun to work with while making bracelets, key fobs, belts and other goodies. I am not the only one that feels this way.
Reported By Freedomsphoenix Readerfour
Radio/TV • Prepping
Declare Your Independence with Ernest Hancock - Radio
Host: Ernest Hancock
01-12-18 -- Jay Noon (Freedom Activist; Survivalist) (Video and MP3)
Program Date: 01-12-2018
Jay Noon (Freedom Activist; Survivalist) comes on the show to talk about a variety of liberty issues, prepping, cryptocurrencies, predictions for 2018, and more
Make a Comment • Email Link • Send Letter to Editor • View for Print
7 Super Cheap Foods To Stockpile That People Usually Throw Away
12-26-2017 • http://www.askaprepper.com, By Ashley Hetrick
If your great-grandmother saw half the things you just throw away, I'm sure she'd have some stern words for you. These days, food comes pre-packaged, prepared, trimmed, peeled and neat.
Amazon Top Prepper Items
Periodically, I visit a number of Amazon lists to get a bead on both best selling and most wished for items. In the past I would look at lists related to outdoor recreation (which can be found in the second half of this article) but this time around
Cash After the Collapse: 6 Multi-Purpose Preps You Need in Emergency Supplies
12-07-2017 • https://www.lewrockwell.com, By Jeremiah Johnson
Hopefully, our readers will not suffer indigestion of their holiday meals or have a damper placed upon the holiday largesse of gift-giving and happy moments.
When SHTF or in an emergency , says Gaye Levy.
12-06-2017 • lewrockwell.com by Gaye Levy
100 Items Likely to Disappear First when the SHTF and During Emergencies
Reported By Robert Lee
In Just 5 Days Without Trucks, Chaos Would Erupt in America
11-09-2017 • http://www.theorganicprepper.ca
Have you ever thought about how fast things could go sideways in America? What if we went 5 days without trucks moving supplies across the country? Have you considered how JUST ONE THING could change the world as we know it?
What Ever Happened to Amy of The Tightwad Gazette?
It's no secret to anyone who has read my website for a while that The Tightwad Gazette books changed my life. If you don't know the story, here's the CliffsNotes version.
What to Do If All Hell Breaks Loose on Nov. 4th
11-04-2017 • http://www.theorganicprepper.ca,
Tomorrow is November 4th, the date that has been bandied about by wannabe Communists and people who hate the President since last summer as the starting date of their uprising.
11-03-2017 • http://www.theorganicprepper.ca, Daisy Luther
News Link • Global • Top Tech
Meet The Tiny Mobile Home That Comes Equipped With A Tiny Greenhouse
11-02-2017 • http://www.trueactivist.com
This tiny greenhouse is going to change the lives of future residents.
When There is No Doctor:
10-30-2017 • survivaldan101.com
11 Medicinal Herbs To Help You Ease Pain Naturally
Peter Schiff Warns Of "Calm Before The Storm"
10-20-2017 • Zero Hedge
In light of the 30-year anniversary of the Black Monday Crash in 1987 (when the Dow lost more than 20% in "one day", we should be reminded that investor anxiety usually increases when markets get to extremes. If stock prices fall steeply, people fret
Reported By Donna Hancock
How to Survive a Sniper Attack
Of a tragic necessity, we've all read articles and watched videos about surviving an active shooter terror situation. But an entirely different set of rules apply when it comes to surviving a sniper attack.
California Is Already Preparing for a North Korean Nuclear Attack
09-26-2017 • http://foreignpolicy.com
Beware of radioactive pets, and don't expect the feds to show up anytime soon.
"A Lot of People Will Be Killed": California Officials Preparing for Nuclear Attack
09-18-2017 • http://thefreethoughtproject.com
A group of California public health officials and emergency responders gathered for a strategy session on the growing possibility of a nuclear attack.
What Is Coming Is No Longer Coming, It Is Already Here
09-15-2017 • http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com
There is a reality coming to America, and to some degree we have already seen it during Hurricanes Harvey and Irmageddon. The fundamental that can be drawn from the recent calamties is you are either prepping or you are preparing to become a statisti
South Korean Preppers: Government Instructs Citizens How to Get Ready for War
The government of South Korea is making every effort to turn its citizens into a country of survivalists. With the ever-increasing threats from the North, South Korean preppers are becoming mainstream, instead of a quirky fringe element.
Survivor Stories: All Hell Has Broken Loose in the Caribbean After Hurricane Irma
Preppers often wonder what it would be like if everything was destroyed in a disaster. After Hurricane Irma devastated the Caribbean, it didn't take long before society began to devolve. The stories of survivors tell us that here's no food, no wa
Bugging Out:
09-08-2017 • LewRockwell.com By Jeremiah Johnson
Preparing Multiple Escape Routes and Vehicles for a Major Emergency
Panic Buying of Gasoline in Florida, 40% of Miami Stations Out of Gas:
09-07-2017 • mishtalk.com by Mish
Blame Anti-Gouging Laws for Shortages
FEMA Chief, Miami Beach Mayor Warn: "Get Out Now, This Is A Devastating, Nuclear Hurricane**QQ*
09-07-2017 • http://www.zerohedge.com, by Tyler Durden
After laying waste to the Northern Caribbean and leaving most of bankrupt Puerto Rico without power - perhaps for months - Hurricane Irma, still a category five storm, is expected to make landfall near Miami this weekend.
Miami Residents Scramble To Evacuate As Hurricane Irma Approaches
After laying waste to much of the Leeward Islands and leaving most of Puerto Rico without power, Hurricane Irma is continuing its destructive march through the Caribbean which is expected to culminate with landfall in Miami sometime this weekend.
Billionaires preparing for doomsday with huge purchases of land in Texas, Wyoming...
09-07-2017 • http://www.naturalnews.com
Montana and Colorado...(Natural News) Millions of people across the country and throughout the world believe that there will come a day when man will be forced to return to his primal state to survive.
The Essential Guide to Preparing for a Hurricane
09-06-2017 • The Organic Prepper
When a disaster draws near, suddenly, preppers don't seem quite so crazy anymore. Right now, with Irma heading our way so closely on the heels of Harvey, a lot of people on the Southeast Coast are feverishly preparing for a hurricane.
What You Need to Know About North Korea's Hydrogen Bomb and EMP Capabilities
This weekend, North Korea conducted their most powerful nuclear test ever, with what was believed to be a hydrogen bomb in the northern part of their country. The explosion was so massive that it triggered a man-made earthquake measuring 6.3 on the R


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'Best Picture' Oscar Winners List Of All Time
Based on the life of John Forbes Nash Jr. and the biography of the same name, A Beautiful Mind, which like Gladiator stars Russell Crow, tells the story of a brilliant but asocial mathematician and his battle with psychological illness. A soldier who is within the West after combating in the Civil War types a relationship with a band of Lakota Indians and leaves his former life to be with them. He is welcomed as a member of the tribe, however tragedy unfolds when Union solders arrive with plans for the land on which they stay.
The Brits discovered glory when Chariots of Fire received Best Picture and three different awards. On the flip-side, Midnight Cowboy turned the first and final X-rated movie to win Best Picture (the classification no longer exists). Eight-time Oscar successful My Fair Lady is considered one of the greatest musicals to this day. The adaptation of Jules Verne's basic novel received 5 Oscars, beat out a particularly powerful class that included epics The Ten Commandments, Giant and The King and I.
Interestingly, only one horror movie has ever gained the highest prize and, in 2017, the incorrect winner (La La Land) was announced. Many thought The Social Network may reign supreme over The King's Speech, but they were wrong – Tom Hooper's historic drama won 4 Oscars. This Best Picture winner scored Clint Eastwood his second directing Oscar after Unforgiven.
The Silence of the Lambs is considered to be the one horror film that has ever won Best Picture – and is also the third of three movies to take residence trophies in the five main classes. Kevin Costner's movie became the first Western to win Best Picture since Cimarron in 1931. Yet another Best Picture winner that was the very best-grossing film of that 12 months.
This drama, based mostly on the life of Nobel Laureate John Nash (Russell Crowe), was a surprise winner at this yr's ceremony. Sam Mendes's drama may have not been thought-about an immediate favorite, but one tactical DreamWorks marketing campaign later and it went home with 4 5 Oscars. Tom Hanks's first Oscar win got here with Robert Zemeckis's Best Picture winner.
Finally, the Academy has taken concrete motion in opposition to the systemic issues that have led to obtrusive racial inequities in Hollywood's tales and storytellers. Five years after #OscarsSoWhitecrystallized these inadequacies with an all-white slate of appearing nominees, and in a year marked by racial protest following the death of George Floyd, there are clear steps to deal with the problems head-on. The Academy's historic new inclusion necessities for Oscar finest-image contenders are wise and will have a strong impression in Hollywood. Former Oscars hosts Steve Martin and Chris Rock were the first presenters of the night time as they joked in regards to the definition of a 'demotion'. 1917 was the betting favorite to win Best Picture and Director, nonetheless, it didn't earn both – however instead tallied three wins within the Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, and Best Cinematography classes.
Another historic moment got here when Hilda Gudnadóttir turned the primary woman ever to win Best Original Score for Joker. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood tells the story of TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad), who make their method round an industry they hardly acknowledge anymore.
Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favorite, Green Book, Roma, A Star is Born or Vice for the Best Picture?
By the way, for individuals who got this flick on DVD and need to rip Life of Pi DVD for playback on cell gadgets, you can head over to this Life of Pi DVD backup tutorial.
There's no denying that Life of Pi is a dazzlingly beautiful and enchanting movie that is just as prone to make you suppose as it is to make you shed a tear or cheer in triumph.
It's no shock Ang Lee has been named the winner of the Best Director award on the 2013 Academy Awards.
In fact, one thing which will factor into why the scares don't quite work as well as they used to is the truth that the film's been remade so many times. Audiences can solely deal with a lot of one thing before it starts to wear out its welcome.
The person with probably the most nominations for performing is Meryl Streep, who has received 21 nods over the course of her profession. She has gained thrice for Kramer vs. Kramer , Sophie's Choice and The Iron Lady . Watch The Oscars 2020 at no cost with a seven day Now TV trial or sign up for a one month Now TV Entertainment & Sky Cinema Pass for £four.ninety nine. The Oscars had been first held in 1929, and since then there have been a complete heap of victories celebrating the entertainment trade's very best on-display and behind-the-scenes expertise. The Phantom of the Opera isn't quite as horrific nowadays because it may need appeared again in the day, however it's nonetheless horror all the same.
Film Terbaik (Academy Awards)
Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron lead this musical version of George Gershwin's orchestral composition that won six Oscars in all. This lavish and extremely prolonged MGM manufacturing stays a regular in musical filmmaking, even when critics have fallen out of affection with it through the years. This film presents a view of English life through the first quarter of the 20th century from New Year's Eve 1899 to New Year's Day 1933, from the perspective of properly-to-do London residents Jane and Robert Marryot (Diana Wynward and Clive Brook). Grand Hotel, starring Joan Crawford and John Barrymore, is the only Best Picture winner that received no nominations in another category. One of essentially the most harrowing accounts of WWI, All Quiet on the Western Front was the first Best Picture winner to win Best Director too (Lewis Milestone accepted the trophy).
During her massive moment, Renee took time in her acceptance speech to honor 'icons' together with Judy Garland whom she portrayed in the movie. That can be Daniel Day Lewis together with his three wins for My Left Foot, There Will Be Blood and Lincoln.
It's an unique membership that just 90 films belong to and one which up to 10 new releases battle to be part of every year. A true-life account of a rescue mission to avoid wasting American hostages in Tehran. After Iranian militants storm the U.S. embassy, six Americans escape and handle to find refuge within the Canadian embassy, but with time working out, the U.S. authorities calls on an an extractor to rescue them. He makes an attempt to do so by posing as a movie producer scouting places in the country.
If you did not know any higher back in 1981, you might have assumed thatAn American Werewolf in London was a sequel toAnimal House. It's the observe-up film from the identical director, it mentions a creature within the title, and it is about faculty college students backpacking through Europe. Thing is, though, despite the sprinkled in bits of comedy, it by no means even exists in the same universe asAnimal House.
Tags: oscar, picture, winners
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Can Big Retailers Be Saved?
Innovative store concepts are buying some time, but brands like Macy's and J.C. Penney need a lot more to reverse the falloff in sales.
By Russ Banham
Five of Canada Goose's 11 stores feature a "cold room," where the temperature is -27 degrees Fahrenheit. Inside, walls look and feel like icy rock formations. The floor simulates the sound of cracking ice, and holograms and laser projections reproduce frigid 3-D environments like the Arctic, replete with falling snow.
Menswear clothing company Todd Snyder just opened a store in a landmark 1809 building in New York. The store hosts member events such as curated art exhibits and rare wine and whiskey tastings. So-called "private client style advisers" are available to provide personalized shopping experiences and bespoke suiting. "It's part clubhouse and part clothing store, offering customers the opportunity to immerse themselves into what we're all about," says Alejandro Rhett, vice president of merchandising at Todd Snyder.
These two retailers are not alone in trying to turn the conventional notion of a store upside-down. "Almost every retail client in our portfolio is trying something unusual," says Rod Sides, vice chair of Deloitte and leader of the firm's retail and distribution consulting. "The old growth trajectory called for opening more stores. Today, growth is about opening an innovative store concept and seeing if it will scale."
The risk of failure is not dampening the wildest imaginings of today's chief merchandising officers (CMOs), who are determined to "wow" customers. "Merchandising and marketing keep coming up with ever-more outlandish experiments to entice customers in the door," says Craig Rowley, a senior partner in Korn Ferry's retail practice.
Customer experiences, however, are costly, says Antony Karabus, CEO of retail consulting firm HRC Advisory. "The CMO needs a robust business case before rolling out a concept. Finance has to hold the executive team accountable for the investments they're promoting."
Indeed, the survival of traditional brick-and-mortar retailers that are ailing financially will require a lot more than attractive stores: these companies have to reverse falling sales while cutting expenses ruthlessly. That will be tricky. Only the most exceptional of the 90 or so CFOs Karabus has worked with can counterbalance the wishes of a CMO, holding their feet to the fire "before rolling out every wild idea. It's a very delicate balance."
Precarious might be a better word than delicate. The long-predicted retail apocalypse has dawned. A record 9,300-plus retail stores closed in the United States in 2019, a near-60% jump from the year before. Shoe store Payless, in liquidation, is shutting thousands of locations. Luxury retailer Barney's New York has said goodbye to all but its outlet stores, while Gap is bringing down the curtain on 230 stores. Forever 21 is closing 111 stores, Dress Barn 650, Shopko 371, and Gymboree more than 800. Bankrupt Sears closed 96 stores in 2019, leaving 182 in a portfolio that once boasted 3,500. In total, nearly 5,000 more retail stores closed than opened in 2019.
Saddled with debt and plagued by shrinking margins, many of these companies displaced by the online retail explosion are exiting once-core product and lowering capital expenditures to right-size their businesses.
J.C. Penney, for example, is $4 billion in debt and had a debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 8.3x as of last November; it projects same-store sales to drop 7% to 8% in 2020.
CFO Bill Wafford says the retailer is taking "positive and proactive" measures to improve the long-term health of its balance sheet. That means closing six more stores this year and mothballing a 234-employee call center in Lenexa, Kansas. Near-term debt maturities, fortunately, are low—$105 million in unsecured debt comes due in June.
Once-venerable Macy's is in even hotter water. Net decreases in cash and operating cash flow are an ominous sign, as is management's decision to stop paying down its long-term $5 billion debt, according to Kenra Investors. While Macy's stock nearly halved in mid-2019, it kept paying its $465 million in dividends to shareholders. It desperately needs its multi-year productivity program, "Funding Our Future," to lift operating margins. As part of the program, Macy's is cutting and reallocating marketing resources. In the supply chain, it's building a third-party vendor base to outsource product packaging and shipments. The company is also testing in-store self-service solutions.
Sliver of Hope
For a model of how to run an oldline retailer in the web era, CFOs could do worse than look to Nordstrom. The 119-year-old upscale department store has closed some 140,000-square-foot retail spaces, but it is opening smaller, more focused locations. For example, Nordstrom has been launching "off-price," or discount stores. Sales at the those stores grew 1.2% in the third quarter, while full-line store sales fell 4.1%. Nordstrom is also opening small-footprint full-price stores in high-priced locales like Manhattan and Beverly Hills. These boutique shops are 2,000 to 3,000 square feet. Personal fashion stylists greet shoppers with a free glass of wine, espresso, or a cold-pressed juice, then sit down for a consultation. Sales associates suggest clothing based on the customer's interests. A tailor measures for fit, and since there is little in the way of inventory to take home, the item is shipped for same-day delivery.
"People don't want to spend time going through racks and racks of clothes," says Deloitte's Sides. "Stores trade in the cost of holding inventory for personal stylists that help customers find what they need and then ship it. This high-touch customer experience burgeons into a relationship that increases the shopper's loyalty, sort of like the way retail was 50 years ago when it was local."
These local Nordstrom's also serve as service hubs for shoppers to return items, pick up merchandise, and request alterations. In-store order pickups from transactions online drove two-thirds of the company's digital sales growth in the third quarter of 2019, according to CEO Erik B. Nordstrom. (Digital sales represent 34% of Nordstrom's business, far ahead of some competitors.)
Digital Invasion
Clues to how brick-and-mortar retailers will adapt are also visible in the way digital-only brands are popping up on Main Street. Digital natives Bonobos, Wayfair, Warby Parker, Alibaba, and Casper and others will open 850 stores in the next five years, mostly in the largest cities, experts predict.
Digital brands see a physical store as a place to reinforce the online brand, says Will Decker, vice president, brand and retail innovation, at investment firm Plug and Play. "They already have mindshare; now they can give their customers a space to meet, share stories, and post about their experiences online. The physical stores become a massive discovery vehicle for reaching new customers with a low capital investment."
Small Formats, Big Data
The value in these new retailing concepts is twofold: one, small-format physical stores at 1,000 to 2,000 square feet do not require the supply chain infrastructure that large format locations do. At the same time, they allow for a higher-touch experience, which can mean a better opportunity to harvest information: in-store experiences are a subtle way to capture digital knowledge about a customer.
Service-oriented interactions can collect data on shopper needs, questions, and concerns. Some retailers track in-store customer behaviors using object tracking, emotion recognition, pressure sensitive floors, RFID tags, and gaze tracking software. The tools suggest a customer's singular shopping interests, much like the movements of a mouse cursor on a website.
"Many in-store merchandising models are extremely innovative, but they're designed in part to acquire data about the customer experience," says Joanne Joliet, a Gartner senior research director.
At Ulta Beauty, for instance, associates are trained to respond to sensitive customer questions about personal appearances, such as thinning hair or skin blotches. The associates use hand-held mobile devices to search for products addressing the problem. The same tool captures these interactions as data. "This is all about customer touchpoints," says Scott Settersten, CFO of the 1,100-store chain. "Our associates are trained to read customer body language to know when to engage with the guest."
The information collected may include the person's name, email address, phone number, and a physical address to ship the product for home delivery. "In-store technologies are generating a sea of customer data and analytics, offering up insights that help retailers become more preemptive and prescriptive in their customer approaches," says Joliet.
Falling Farther Behind?
Tweaking store concepts, closing large sites, and redesigning supply chains will, of course, take a lot of time. While traditional retailers attempt their pivots and rebuild their balance sheets, though, they may be losing more ground to Amazon, the company that created more efficient and cost-effective ways for people to buy pretty much anything.
Consumers spent $517 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2018, up 15% from $450 billion spent the year prior, and about 40% of that spending was on Amazon. The 2019 holiday season was a bust for many brick-and-mortar retailers, but overall digital sales globally rose to $723 billion.
"Both online and offline, every company must prepare for Amazon's next moves," says Paul Prendergast, a managing director at Accenture.
Each move Amazon makes forces traditional retailers to ponder following suit—which is what happened with e-commerce fulfillment centers. "Longtime retailers that started selling online built these large and expensive fulfillment centers to move goods because that's what Amazon did," says Rowley. "Once Amazon started offering next-day and same-day deliveries, they couldn't keep up."
Even when they partner with digital natives like Amazon, traditional retailers don't seem to win. In 2017, Kohl's and Best Buy signed a deal to allow Amazon customers to return products to their stores. The idea was Amazon could reduce shipping costs related to returns, and Kohl's and Best Buy would generate foot traffic that could convert into a product sale. However, at least for Kohl's, the partnership has yet to bear fruit. Comparable sales at Kohl's slipped 0.2% year over year in 2019, and in the third quarter Kohl's CEO Michelle Gass admitted that the labor-intensive Amazon returns program added to operating costs.
Wowing customers with unique experiences might draw shoppers back to physical stores, but the formula for retail sales growth will be more about technology and data analytics. Traditional retailers, unfortunately, often have "five or six legacy systems that don't interact," Accenture's Prendergast says. "That creates substantial challenges to collect and analyze customer, supplier, and distributor data to make more informed and accurate decisions."
If they get their hands on the right data, retailing CFOs might be able to predict customer behavior better and "be more in tune with how sales originate today to inform their capital allocation decisions," says Dave Richards, principal and America's retail leader at EY.
That's a big "if." Traditional retailers might run out of time and capital before they can make that happen.
Russ Banham is a Pulitzer-nominated financial journalist and best-selling author.
Sidebar: Costco Stays the Course
Costco remains true to its philosophy, which has worked no matter what the competition does.
Longtime Costco CFO Richard Galanti remembers the last reinvention of brick-and-mortar retail, not surprising since Costco lead it. The membership-only chain of warehouse-sized stores opened its first location in Seattle under the Costco name in 1983, one year before Galanti was hired on as vice president of finance (he became CFO in 1985). With its heavily discounted consumer goods and grocery items, Costco hit the ground running, changing the retail landscape.
Through it all, Costco, which tallies 98.5 million members at 776 stores worldwide (up from 592 in 2011), has stuck to its knitting. From the outset, the company has prized the idea of customer experience, well before other retailers gave it much thought. Galanti defines the Costco experience as a "treasure hunt" through the stores' extra-wide aisles. "Very few product signs are visible—on purpose," he said. "We want people to take their time browsing each aisle, turning a corner to find something they didn't expect, like scuba gear or wedding dresses or ski wear in the middle of August. You walk around and go 'Wow!'"
As other retailers copied its ideas and Amazon sought to dislocate it altogether, Costco remained true to its philosophy, which worked no matter what the competition did. "Six years ago, a survey came out indicating 25% of Costco members had become Amazon Prime members. The next year it was 38%, and the year after that, it was 52%," Galanti recalled. "One of the company's analysts asked me how we could compete against Amazon. I told him my family also has Prime."
His point? "We're steady as she goes," he said. "Our quarterly revenues might kick down a tenth of a percent here and there, but—knock on wood—we continue to drive value in what we provide. Our last two quarters produced our highest member renewal rates ever, at 90% or more. We're in the enviable position of generating more cash to spend in growing the business and trying new things."
Non-members often think Costco sells everything, which is far from the case. "A supermarket has about 40,000 active items; we have about 3,800," Galanti said. "We pre-select good merchandise that's popular, taking our buying power and putting it into fewer items, passing down the cost efficiencies as lower prices."
Costco's prices are hard to beat, but they often require buying products in bulk—enough paper towels to last months or a giant tub of ketchup to garnish a million burgers. Vast quantities don't seem to bother Costco members heaping goods in carts the size of Jeeps.
Recent innovations at Costco are predicated on lowering prices further while improving quality. "We're investing capital into becoming more vertically integrated," Galanti said. "For instance, we're experimenting with owning chicken farms [it recently opened a $400 million poultry complex in Nebraska]. If we can save ten cents per bird for members by doing it ourselves, we'll do it."
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Poecilanthrax macquarti är en tvåvingeart som beskrevs av Neal L. Evenhuis och Greathead 1999. Poecilanthrax macquarti ingår i släktet Poecilanthrax och familjen svävflugor. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

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macquarti

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


It's been awhile since the idea of College Football Playoff expansion was last discussed. But when Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez hosted a question-and-answer session with Badgers fans over the weekend, he couldn't help but talk about the subject.
Alvarez has said before that he's in favor of expanding the playoff from four teams to eight teams, and B1G commissioner Jim Delany has also talked about have a conversation about expansion. On Saturday, Alvarez backed up his statements, saying that the committee hasn't done its job appropriately recently.
Mainly, Alvarez is upset that the B1G has been left out each of the last two years and the B1G champion has been omitted the past three seasons.
The topic of expansion was never quite as heated as last December, when Oklahoma, Ohio State and Georgia all made legitimate arguments to compete for a national championship, but only one spot remained available.
Ultimately, the Sooners got the bid and the B1G was left out of the conversation again. Since then, Alvarez, Delany and Nebraska's Bill Moos have talked about the possibility of expansion.
Expanding the playoff probably wouldn't be quite as easy as Alvarez says, but it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility. If there's another controversial situation at the end of next season, the discussion could continue to pick up steam.


Then what needs to happen?
Once your offer has been accepted, the seller should agree that the estate agent can take the property off the market – a key way to protect you from your offer being 'gazumped' and bettered by another bid. Research from Which? Mortgages surveyed 2,000 recent homebuyers in February 2016 and discovered that 28% had made an offer only for the purchase to fall through – with more than a fifth of those being down to gazumping.
There are often more negotiations to happen, including how long to wait between exchange and completion (typically this is around a week after the exchange of contracts but it can be as long as four weeks), whether fixtures and fittings are being included or if there's an additional price to be paid, and whether you can arrange a discount if the survey shows that there's work needed.
It can easily take several working days to negotiate this contract. You will need to process your mortgage application (the main legwork should have been done if you already had a mortgage in principle but the formal application can still take some time), instruct a solicitor, and carry out any surveys and checks required.
All this does take time and, while it has sometimes been achieved within less than 3 weeks, it is much more normal for the various admin, arrangements, searches and mortgage application to take around 6-8 weeks. That's assuming there are no delays or issues – buying and selling property can be a difficult business and sometimes there are delays which are simply beyond your control.


A more comprehensive FAQ/help center so you can get answers fast on your most pressing questions. This help center is now live here.
It's easier than ever to submit questions, feature requests, and bug reports here.
Smoother connection of home buyers and agents directly to you (more to come on this).
We look forward to making your home selling and buying easier than ever!


Does Toronto feel like New York?
View Poll Results: Does Toronto have the big city New York vibe?
Toronto and Chicago are the same size. Downtown Chicago may seem bigger in terms of the density of tall buildings, but outside of the downtown core, Toronto has a much more vibrant neighbourhood scene than Chicago.
The Chicago Metropolitan area is much bigger then Toronto. And what does having a more vibrant neighborhood scene mean? Im not saying your wrong, but what exactly does that mean?
Toronto and Chicago are similar in that they are both on a lake, the lay out of the city is somewhat similar. aside from that they are not that much alike, Again different demographics give the city different vibes.
The Greater Golden Horseshoe should be used as the proper comparison to Chicagoland, and the difference between the two is only about a million people right now, with Toronto rapidly gaining.
What I mean by "neighbourhood scene" is the vibrant commercial strips outside the downtown core, such as Little Italy, Queen West/Parkdale, The Annex, Roncesvalles, The Beach, The Junction, Bloor West Village, The Danforth, Corso Italia, Chinatown East, Little India, etc. All these areas are safe and bustling and filled with interesting businesses of all sorts.
Multiple posts on a never-ending debate like "is this city better than that city" is bad enough, but now that we've strayed off the original topic, it's time to move on.