A report released April 2, 2013 by the Center for American Progress found that states with the highest rates of gun violence have the weakest gun laws. The findings reinforce those of previous studies, said Deborah Azrael, director of research at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.Alaska ranked first in gun deaths — 20.28 deaths per 100,000 people in 2010, according to the report. That state, and seven others ranking highest in gun violence, were among those found to have the weakest state regulations on gun ownership. Hawaii has the lowest rates of gun violence in the nation, according to the report.While Azrael, in a New York Times article, called the report a “useful collection of data,” she said that different factors drive gun violence from state to state. Understanding “household decision making about guns and how people weigh the costs and benefits of guns” should be part of the conversation on regulating guns, she said.Read New York Times article Read Full Story read more
Amazing Grace Show Closed This production ended its run on Oct. 25, 2015 View Comments Age: “Old enough for a chocolate martini.”Hometown: Springfield, MACurrent Role: An emotional Broadway debut as Nanna, the nurturing servant of John Newton’s childhood friend (and later wife) Mary in Amazing Grace.Stage & Screen Cred: Michelle has been involved with Amazing Grace since its initial reading and has appeared in the national tour of The Book of Mormon. Her film and TV credits include Law & Order and All My Children.“The first play I ever saw was Romeo and Juliet. Romeo was an African-American man and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I did not know you could talk like that!’ I knew I wanted to be up there—that was the moment for me.”“My grandfather came from Jamaica on a boat. He had a third-grade education and opened up a barbershop, which was the first black business there. He had a strong work ethic that he passed along to me and my family.”“I wanted to go straight to New York after high school, but my mom was like, ‘No, you’re going to college.’ I was stubborn—I opened [the college guide] to the first page and Alabama State University was the first school that offered theater. I only applied there. I got accepted and it ended up being one of the best experiences of my life.”“Laiona means female lion, it’s a Spanish name—my aunt named me. I was going to be a Monique. Thank ye the Lord I’m not a Monique! I feel like I’m the only Laiona out there. When I Google the name, it’s just me!”“Playing Nanna is deeply draining. I feel scared and weighed down, but I tell God, ‘I believe I need to feel this for this role, so don’t let me get too comfortable.’ I gotta keep shaking it up. And I tell my dresser, ‘Tighten up that corset!’”“My mother showed me my childhood journal, and at 11 years old I had written, ‘I want to be in an important piece of art on Broadway.’ I’ve always wanted to be a part of something important and Amazing Grace is that show for me. Every single day I’m thanking God.” Related Shows read more
Sign up for our COVID-19 newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest coronavirus news throughout New York A homeless man has been arrested for allegedly killing another homeless man outside of a church and parochial school in Patchogue last month, Suffolk County police said.Thomas Lamartina was charged with second-degree murder.Police said the 30-year-old suspect killed Nicholas MacQueen, 65, outside the Emanuel Lutheran Church on East Main Street.The victim’s body was found on Saturday, June 28.Lamartina will be arraigned Tuesday at First District Court in Central Islip. read more
ShareShareSharePrintMailGooglePinterestDiggRedditStumbleuponDeliciousBufferTumblr by: Tom GroenfeldtLooking for some help with personal finances, such as finding a better credit card? Several online sites are waiting to help.The best-known is Credit Karma which ranks as a “unicorn” — i.e. worth over $1 billion — in a recent Fortune study. Pretty impressive for a company that Kenneth Lin founded in 2007 to offer free credit scores and other information to consumers. The widest range of products covered is NerdWallet which provides information and evaluations on credit cards, bank accounts, online investment brokers, insurance and mortgages. Magnify Money has the largest number of credit cards and the most detailed information on them, according to an evaluation on Reddit.“MagnifyMoney: It was pretty amazing how many cards are listed…The level of detail on each card is great.”NerdWallet’s founder Tim Chen said he was an analyst on Wall Street when he saw his parents in an investment that cost them 5 percent to leave. Then his sister couldn’t find a way to see which credit card was best, so he built a decision tree to help people choose financial providers. NerdWallet has grown from there.“We get paid for generating accounts for banks, for example if we referred someone to Chase for a Freedom card. We don’t get paid if they don’t have a marketing budget, and 90 percent of the cards on our site don’t pay us a referral fee.” Nor does the company get paid for people who do research there and then contact a card provider directly to open an account. continue reading » read more
34SHARESShareShareSharePrintMailGooglePinterestDiggRedditStumbleuponDeliciousBufferTumblr Often when people set New Year’s resolutions, they’re ambitious but vague. For instance, a Fidelity survey found that the most common financial resolution Americans have this year is to save more, followed by the desire to spend less and pay off debt.Clearly, these are great goals. However, if you’re serious about results, it’s imperative to go one step further and scope out your plan of attack. You already know this, of course, but actually sticking to it is a different story.“Know thyself, so you don’t bite off more than you can chew,” says behavioral economist Hersh Shefrin. “Figure out where you want to go and structure the path in steps that are doable, so that you get where you want to go one doable step at a time.”Often times you need to repeat these steps over and over, until they become powerful financial habits that help you achieve your financial goals. continue reading » read more
He said Bpf Tex’s social partners would be able to change the accrual rate if the price of a pension were to change in future.According to Borm, the textile industry’s social partners had accepted a possible rights cut of 2%.He added that the scheme’s 140 pensioners would be exempt from a rights discount, as this would have little impact on its coverage ratio.Henk van der Kolk, chairman at Detailhandel, told IPE sister publication Pensioen Pro that providing flexibility during the merger process was of particular importance to his scheme, and that maintaining many different pensions plans was not its primary goal.Traditionally, the €21bn pension fund PGB has been seen as the scheme offering differentiated pensions accrual and contributions for each sector it serves.Borm acknowledged that PGB had been shortlisted as a potential merger partner but said its use of the market interest rate as a merger criterion would have been very disadvantageous for Bpf Tex’s predominantly young participants.Bpf Tex has 18,400 participants and deferred members, compared with Detailhandel’s 1m participants.The former spent €373 per participant on administration and 0.26% on asset management, while the latter spent €50 and 0.22%, respectively.Bpf Tex’s funding stood at 100.5% as of the end of August, while coverage at Detailhandel stood at 105.8%. Bpf Tex, the €260m pension fund for the wholesale textile industry in the Netherlands, is looking to join Detailhandel, the €18bn scheme for the retail industry.It said merging with Detailhandel would increase its flexibility on pensions accrual and contribution levels, thereby improving the scheme’s chances of bridging a 5-percentage-point funding gap.Bpf Tex is the first pension fund to join Detailhandel since the retail scheme fashioned itself as a “magnet fund”, seeking to attract other funds in the retail and wholesale – both food and non-food – sectors.Joost Borm, chairman at Bpf Tex, said his pension fund would seek to exploit the flexibility afforded by the merger to bridge the funding gap between his scheme and Detailhandel through reduced pensions accrual relative to Detailhandel’s arrangements over the first year. read more
Inadequate greenhouse gas emission disclosures could mislead investors and undermine initiatives aiming to address climate change, according to a new project aiming to tackle the problem.Launched in Dublin yesterday, the 100% Club is a joint academic and industry initiative attempting to challenge companies around the world to take responsibility for disclosing all of their annual Scope 1 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by companies – as opposed to indirect emissions, such as those stemming from the use of a company’s products.According to the 100% Club, out of thousands of listed companies that report a number for their Scope 1 emissions, in 2016 only 20 disclosed all such emissions. Beni StabiliNorthern Trust AvivaNorske Skog Companies invited to join 100% Club AbbvieKGHM IRPCVerisk Analytics AdidasMicrosoft CofinimmoRoyal Dutch Shell Fiat ChryslerTokio Marine Charles Donovan, director of Centre for Climate Finance and Investment, Imperial College Business School“We are in a confusing position, where you have all this information but people are still saying they can’t make decisions based upon it,” he said.He added that he had yet to see a commercial index that, in his opinion, “represents what we understand to be the real financial risks associated with climate change and accurately ranks companies accordingly”.Andreas Hoepner, professor in operational risk, banking and finance at University College Dublin and working with Donovan on the 100% Club, also highlighted the implications of inadequacies in GHG reporting for climate change-related efforts being undertaken by asset owners.“To provide asset owners any chance of aligning their portfolios with climate goals scenarios and responding thoroughly to [the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures], it is paramount that the vast majority of corporations listed on equity or bond markets take complete and public accountability of their Scope 1 GHG emissions,” he said in a statement.How does it work?The 100% Club aims to promote complete GHG emissions disclosure by recognising and “celebrating” those companies that meet its criteria.To get onto the organisation’s list of complete reporters, any company that reports 100% of its Scope 1 GHG emissions according to Bloomberg is invited to submit a statement of completeness to the 100% Club.The 20 companies that have been invited as “member companies” so far are from a range of sectors, including pharmaceuticals, banking, and oil and gas.Donovan said the initiative was focusing on Scope 1 emissions as a first step because it wanted to be “patient”. EquinorSaipem Some companies that were not quite able to capture all of their Scope 1 emissions for technical reasons were admitted to the organisation’s list, provided they made a “quantitative statement of completeness”. According to the 100% Club’s criteria, at least 95% of emissions must be measurable.Charles Donovan, director of the Centre for Climate Finance and Investment at Imperial College Business School, one of the founding institutions, said incomplete emissions reporting data prevented investors from being able to properly manage the financial risks associated with climate change.“Completeness matters because investors are seeking to understand how companies within a sector are adapting and changing, or not” Charles Donovan, Imperial College Business SchoolUnless a company captures 100% of their emissions, investors cannot monitor the rate of change over time, he said, “and our belief is that it’s the rate of change that signals to investors what their strategies are”.“This is why [completeness] matters, because investors are seeking to understand how companies within a sector are adapting and changing, or not,” he told IPE. Deutsche BankSafestore Holdings HenkelUnibail-Rodamco Westfield “If you can get to 100% on the easier stuff then you can build a stronger foundation to get to 100% on the slightly trickier stuff,” he added.The initiative was not about adding to companies’ reporting burden, he emphasised, but about asking them to check the emissions information they do report for completeness.In some cases it transpired that all companies would need to do is self-certify the completeness of their data, just as they would with respect to financial statements.“We will probably find some companies that have to spend about five seconds to get onto our list, but it’s a crucial threshold to pass,” said Donovan.This article was updated to correct Andreas Hoepner’s title read more
Al Shamal; Image courtesy of TeekayThe South Hook LNG terminal on the shores of UK’s Milford Haven waterway is scheduled to receive three cargo deliveries in the coming days.The first of the three cargoes is being transported onboard the 217,000 cbm LNG carrier Al Shamal from Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex. The vessel is scheduled to dock at South Hook’s jetty on Wednesday, November 6.The second cargo is scheduled to arrive only a couple of days later on November 9. The cargo will arrive onboard the Seri Balqis 157,000 LNG carrier from the Corpus Christi LNG terminal in the United States.The third and final is also arriving from the U.S. but from the Sabine Pass LNG terminal in Louisiana. It will arrive via the GasLog Skagen LNG carrier which has a capacity of 155,000 cbm.The South Hook LNG terminal, owned by Qatar Petroleum, ExxonMobil, and Total, can provide around 20 percent of Britain’s natural gas requirements. read more
Empty stands in Moenchengladbach before Borussia hosted Cologne in a Bundesliga derby behind closed doors on March 10 In France, several clubs, including Marseille and Lyon, have put their players on partial unemployment to save money. It means clubs pay staff 70 percent of their salaries. The state pays the rest, albeit limited to 4,850 euros per employee, a drop in the ocean for most footballers. In Germany, players at Borussia Moenchengladbach were the first in the Bundesliga to propose pay cuts, followed by others at Werder Bremen, Schalke and Borussia Dortmund. Bild reported that Bayern players accepted a 20 percent pay cut. – Collapse of the system – The Spanish Football Federation has announced plans for a 500 million-euro package allowing clubs in the top two divisions to receive loans of up to 20 million euros “and pay it back in five or six years”, according to president Luis Rubiales. Barcelona have the biggest revenue in world football according to the most recent Deloitte Football Money League, but they are reportedly in discussions to bring in pay cuts for all players of up to 70 percent. La Liga is considering reducing players’ salaries on the whole by 20 percent if the season is not completed. Similar measures could be taken in Italy. In England, the Premier League is understood to have been in discussions with the Professional Footballers’ Association about deferring wage payments. Everywhere authorities are working to stop the whole system from collapsing. Read Also: COVID-19: Ronaldo donates medical equipments In Italy the possibility of taxing betting companies to help subsidise clubs has been considered, while in Germany rules on how licenses are awarded to professional clubs could be relaxed. The biggest uncertainty, though, surrounds when matches might be played again. If a way is found to finish the season before the summer, then the damage will be limited. However, if the shutdown continues until August or later, the financial impact could mean the footballing landscape across the continent is changed forever. FacebookTwitterWhatsAppEmail分享 Promoted Content7 Mind-Boggling Facts About Black HolesThe Most Exciting Cities In The World To Visit7 Netflix Shows Cancelled Because They Don’t Get The RatingsThe Best Tarantino Movie Yet10 Extremely Dirty Seas In The WorldTop 7 Best Car Manufacturers Of All TimeTop 10 Most Costly Liquids In The World10 Hyper-Realistic 3D Street Art By OdeithWho’s The Best Car Manufacturer Of All Time?Which Country Is The Most Romantic In The World?Best & Worst Celebrity Endorsed Games Ever Made28 Awesome Shower Curtains To Make Your Bathroom Less Boring Europe may be the financial powerhouse of global football, but the economic impact from the coronavirus pandemic is already beginning to hit and the consequences could be disastrous for clubs across the continent. The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in north London, where Spurs were due to host Manchester United on March 15 before the season was suspended When players at Bayern Munich, one of the world’s richest clubs, have reportedly agreed to take pay cuts, it is not difficult to imagine the troubles in store for the sport as a whole. Many clubs lack sufficient cash reserves to get them through a sustained period without revenue coming in. For example in Scotland, where clubs rely heavily on gate receipts, the situation is “clearly unsustainable”. That is the view of Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack, who forecasts facing five million pounds ($5.9m) of costs without any money coming in over the next few months. “No club, whatever their size, scale or level of investment, can withstand a total lack of income over a period of anything between three to six months,” Cormack said. Even the German league (DFL) – which runs the Bundesliga and has annual turnover of more than four billion euros ($4.3 billion) – fears a catastrophe. “If we don’t play games behind closed doors as soon as possible, there is no point wondering if we should have a league of 18 or 20 teams,” said DFL chief executive Christian Seifert. “We won’t even have 20 professional clubs anymore.” – Eye-watering losses – It is almost two weeks since leading leagues across Europe stopped. No matches means no money from gate receipts, and before long payments from broadcasters may stop too. The sums set to be lost everywhere are eye-watering. In England, according to reports, the Premier League faces losing 762 million pounds from domestic broadcast deals with Sky Sports and BT Sport. Analysis by accounting firm KPMG suggests cancelling the rest of the season would cost the ‘Big Five’ leagues of England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France a combined total of over four billion euros. It is therefore not difficult to see why leagues will consider restarting behind closed doors, to at least guarantee revenue from broadcasters. After all, clubs must continue during the pandemic to pay hefty player salaries. Loading… read more
PRINCETON, Minn. – Three IMCA divisions will have another regular weekly home in central Minnesota, when Princeton Speedway opens for the season on May 1.IMCA Xtreme Motor Sports Modifieds, Karl Chevrolet Northern SportMods and Mach-1 Sport Compacts run on Fridays on the quarter-mile Mille Lacs County Fairgrounds dirt venue.IMCA Eagle Motor Sports Sprint Cars join May 15, June 26, July 24 and Sept. 18 shows at Princeton. The IMCA Speedway Motors Weekly Racing point season concludes with the Sept. 25 and 26 P-Town Showdown special.“I really like the way IMCA programs are run,” said promoter and general manager Mary Beth Cripe. “IMCA puts the drivers first. Other sanctioning bodies don’t always do that.”“The IMCA divisions are also very competitive,” she added. “You don’t have the same guy winning week after week.”Like IMCA, NAPA Auto Parts will have a prominent role at Princeton Speedway this season.In addition to taking over title sponsorship of victory lane, NAPA will give $25 gift cards to hard chargers in main events for each division every Friday night.Modified points earned at Princeton figure toward IMCA’s Belleville Motorsports North Central Region standings. Modified, SportMod and Sport Compact track champions all earn bonus points; no bonus points will be awarded but a track champion will also be crowned in the Sprint Car division.Other weekly classes include the Mod-4s, street stocks and super stocks.Pit gates open at noon for the 1-5 p.m. Saturday, April 25 test and tune session. Car and driver is $30 while pit passes for crew members are $10.Main grandstand admission for spectators is free. read more