UPDATED: American International Industries says it has a deal to create the nail polish as part of the film's upcoming promotional campaign but that Lionsgate has improperly terminated the contract.
Lionsgate, the studio behind the upcoming film version of The Hunger Games, has been sued for $10 million by a beauty products company that claims it is being jerked around over a deal to create special nail polish in connection with the movie's March release.
Los Angeles-based American International Industries, which says it is the country's largest privately-held manufacturer of personal care and beauty products, filed a lawsuit Wednesday in LA Superior Court. The company claims that it closed a deal in late October to create a Hunger Games-branded version of its "China Glaze" nail polish, as well as contribute to the promotional campaign for the adaptation of the popular Suzanne Collins novel that Lionsgate is hoping will be a mega-blockbuster movie series similar to Twilight.
But shortly after Lionsgate executives signed the contract, according to the complaint, the studio made statements to the press that the deal was "not happening," and asked American to say that the parties "were merely 'discussing' a 'possible' promotional deal." American says it refused to lie, prompting a Lionsgate attorney to send an email on Nov. 17 saying that the studio was "terminating" the contract.
"However, the contract does not permit Lionsgate to unilaterally terminate," argues the complaint, a copy of which was obtained by THR. "Lionsgate attempted to justify its actions by claiming that American had supposedly 'leaked' information about the contract to the press. The claim was and is completely untrue--American did not 'leak' any information, and so informed Lionsgate immediately."
American says it purchased millions of dollars in nail polish materials and expended substantial time and labor in reliance on the fully-executed contract, and it wants $10 million in damages.
We've reached out to Lionsgate for comment and will update with a response.
The suit, filed by Charles Harder and Michelle Goodman of LA's Wolf Rifkin Shapiro Schulman & Rabkin, alleges one cause of action for breach of contract.
Lionsgate declined to comment on the suit.


Nokia brings the Android X factor but will Microsoft be interested?
On Monday, Nokia unveiled three new phones at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The phones - the X, X+ and XL - run a "forked" version of Google's Android OS, similar to Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet which leverages the groundwork of Android, overlaying their own custom services on top.
The phones are priced conservatively, starting at €70 for the Nokia X and topping out at €109 for the 5-inch Nokia XL, the most high-end phone in the lineup. They are clearly aimed at emerging markets such as Eastern Europe, Asia and South America where Android, and Windows Phone to a lesser extent, are starting to find some commercial success.
Praise of Nokia's use of Android may be short lived, however, due to the $7.2 billion acquisition by Microsoft of Nokia's devices business, which will be finalised in the coming weeks. Google and Microsoft are not on the best terms, with Microsoft launching their 'Scroogled' adverts attacking Google services for alleged invasion of privacy, amongst other contentions.
Nokia launching a new range of Android phones that are aimed at the potentially profitable emerging markets is unlikely to fill Microsoft executives with joy. Joe Belifore, VP of the Windows Phone division at Microsoft, claimed the relationship between Nokia and Microsoft was "terrific" but added that Nokia will "[do] some things that we may be less excited about." A source who spoke to Business Insider called the phones "embarrassing".
At an event also held at MWC, Microsoft unveiled new features present in Windows Phone 8.1 specifically designed for low-end phones in order to make the OS more appealing to emerging markets, as well as dropping the price of Windows to OEMs who wish to incorporate the OS.
At first glance it would seem that Microsoft's most logical course of action is to simply kill off the 'X' line once the acquisition finalises. Nokia's engineers and designers can focus wholly on Windows Phone, adding services and features that are not currently available, creating a better experience for users, and by extension making the OS more attractive.
However, the 'X' line could potentially catch: Nokia's hardware is attractive and Android offers services and apps that are not available on Windows Phone currently. Nokia's Android "fork" even looks like Windows Phone, with a tile-based design as well as other nods to Microsoft's design vision. Those who have seen the Nokia X have said it is similar in almost every way to the Nokia Lumia 520, and it's unlikely the average consumer will look too closely when purchasing.
Indeed, Microsoft could actually benefit from Nokia's experimentation with Android, especially as all profits from device sales of the 'X' range go to Microsoft without having to spend money on building the features Android has and Windows Phone lacks.
And there is the little fact that Microsoft actually makes money from Android due to patents, so in some ways the link up is beneficial to both companies.
The nice hardware and funky colours of the 'X' range combined with a distinctive operating system and low price could create a market winner, all without Microsoft writing a single additional line of code for Windows Phone. Jumping into bed with Google is unlikely to please Microsoft executives, but the deal benefits them more than it benefits Google.
Nokia described the 'X' range as a phone of "Android platform, Nokia experience and Microsoft services" and in a world where Microsoft's services are it's future, having hardware that supports that is no bad thing.


P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, and Z are traveling to 3 destinations Chennai, Delhi, and Hyderabad in 3 different vehicles – Honda City, Ford Ikon and Swift D’Zire. There are 3 females among them one in each car. There are at least 2 persons in each car. Person R is not traveling with Person Q and Person W. Person T, a male, is traveling with the only Person Z, and they are not traveling to Chennai. Person P is traveling in Honda City to Hyderabad. Person S is the sister of Person P and travels by Ford Ikon. V and R travel together. W does not travel to Chennai.
35. Members in which of the given car are traveling to Chennai?
36. In which car are four members traveling?
37. Which of the following given combinations represents the 3 female members?
38. Who is traveling with W?
39. Members in which of the given following combinations are traveling in Honda City?
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H are eight friends traveling 3 different cars, viz. X, Y and Z with at least 2 in one car to 3 different places, viz. Agra, Delhi, and Chandigarh. There is at least 1 female member in each car. Person D is traveling with Person G to Delhi but not in car Y. Person A is traveling with the only Person H in car Z but not to Chandigarh. Person C is not traveling with either Person D, or Person E. Person F and Person D are studying in the same only girls’ college. 3 Persons H, B, and G are studying in the same only boys’ college.
40. Which of the following group represents the group of females among them?
41. Which of the following combinations is correct?
42. In which car are four of them traveling?
43. In which of the following given cars is C traveling?
44. Passengers in which car are traveling to Chandigarh?
Seven people – A, B, C, D, E, F, and G – are having different hobbies, viz. traveling, reading, dancing, painting, sculpting, pottery making, and singing, but need not to be in the same order. Each of them belongs to a different State viz. Kerala, Punjab, Odisha, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Karnataka, but need not be in the same order. Person A belongs to Maharashtra. Person D likes pottery making. The person who likes sculpting is from the state of Odisha. The person who likes dancing is from the state of Gujarat. Person F does not belong to Gujarat, Odisha, Punjab or Rajasthan. Person F does not like singing, reading or painting. Person B does not belong to Kerala, Odisha, Punjab or Rajasthan. Person B does not like painting, traveling, reading or singing. Person C does not like sculpting, and he is not from Rajasthan or Punjab. Neither Person D nor Person G belongs to Punjab. Person A does not like reading. The person from Kerala likes singing.
45. Who among the following likes singing?
46. Which one of the following given combinations is true according to the given information?
47. Who among the following person belongs to the state of Karnataka?
48. Which of the following given combinations is true about G?


Can a Lender Legally Stop Loan Funding After Signing?
That question brought someone to the site. The answer is "Yes, they can". As a matter of fact, just because they have you sign those documents does not in any way obligate that lender to actually fund your loan.
There are two sections of conditions on every loan commitment. The loan commitment is what the underwriter writes up when the loan is approved. The first section is called "Prior to Docs", meaning before the final loan documents the customer signs at closing are generated. These should be all the stuff that's substantive in nature, that governs whether or not you qualify. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The second section is called "prior to funding," or "funding conditions." This should be limited to simple procedural stuff like a final updated payoff demand, final verification of employment (they call and make sure you still work there), etcetera. However, more and more, conditions that more properly belong in "prior to docs" section are being moved to "prior to funding."
Why do they do this? Well, once you sign those documents you are more heavily committed to them. Once you sign, and the Right of Rescission (if any) expires, you are stuck with that lender. You no longer have the right to call it off. If you go elsewhere, to another lender, because they are taking too long, they can fund your loan and force you to live by the terms of the documents you signed. Bad business all around, and you're going to be dealing with two sets of high powered lawyers that the contracts you signed basically obligate you to pay for - but they work for the two different lenders!
One fact that many people don't understand is that it's a rare loan application which is rejected completely. I don't remember when I've ever had a loan application outright rejected. Of course, being a good loan officer, I'm going to be as careful as possible that the people will qualify before I submit their loan package, but this is far from universal. Many loan officers routinely tell people about loans and programs that they have no prayer of qualifying for, but there sure are some great rates attached, for all the good they will do you. Then the loan gets rejected but they sit on the rejection while they work the loan they had in mind for you all along, and come back and say, "This is the best I could do" at closing time, and an extremely high percentage of people will sign on the dotted line because they think they have no choice.
What happens much more frequently is that the loan gets approved, and the underwriter writes a loan commitment, but with conditions that cannot be met in this particular instance. The borrowers need to prove more income than they make is probably the classic example, but these "killer conditions" occur in every area of loan underwriting. More often than not, the loan officer is not really surprised by these, and most often, they won't ever tell you about them if they can avoid it. Why? Because that gives you a "heads up" that you're not going to get the loan you thought you were, and at a time when it's still very possible for you do go loan shopping elsewhere.
Now a good loan officer - both competent and ethical - will not tell you about a loan they don't think you're going to qualify for. My ambition is always to have the list of conditions, both "prior to docs" and "prior to funding", to be as short and unsurprising as I can possibly make it. This saves work and it saves time. Remember, every time that underwriter touches the file they can add more conditions, and they can also discover something that causes them to essentially reject the loan, by adding conditions the consumers in question cannot meet. If I can submit a file and the underwriter writes a commitment with only a few routine prior to funding conditions, I am much happier because now I can request documents, have them signed, and get this loan done. You get this kind of commitment by sending all of the documentation they need in every loan all at once, in the beginning, but only that documentation. It's not necessarily a sign of incompetence if the underwriter puts some other conditions on it - probably somewhere close to half of my commitments have some condition the underwriter took it into their heads to require in this instance. Like any good loan officer, I avoid arguments with an underwriter if I can, so when they give me a condition I didn't anticipate, I figure out what I need to satisfy it and whether I can get it. But you learn when extra documentation will be required.
Many loans, particularly sub-prime, are done completely in the reverse fashion. The loan officer submits a bare application, without supporting documentation, and waits for the conditions, and boy do they get a blortload of conditions. Not too long ago I helped an experienced real estate agent in my office with his first loan. He wanted to do it "the easy way," by which he thought he meant, "The lazy way," but he really meant, "The hard, stupid way." He submitted a bare application to the lender and got seven pages of conditions, which were added to as time went by and he submitted documentation piecemeal. Took him two months and four times the work of just taking another day and submitting a complete loan package in the first place. If he had done that, the loan probably would have been finished in two and a half weeks. Some of the conditions were for stuff I had never encountered before. What was going on, of course, was that the underwriter had gotten it into his head that this was probably a dangerous loan to approve, and he wanted to be extra careful on the approval.
So what can the average person do to safeguard themselves against this happening. Well, you can't - not completely. The underwriter can always add conditions, and so can the funder. Even if the loan gets funded, they can pull the money back right up until the moment that trust deed gets recorded with the county. That's just the way it is. What you can do is ask for copies of the loan commitment, and of the outstanding conditions, those that have yet to be met. Refusal on the part of a loan officer to provide this is always a bad sign. Ditto the inability. I definitely wouldn't sign the loan papers without a copy of the outstanding conditions in my possession, and it may be smart to ask for copies of the conditions at several points in your loan. Yes, they can be faked, pretty easily, but then they are ammunition in your lawsuit if something goes wrong. Before you even apply, you can ask questions about necessary income, what the program guidelines for debt to income and loan to value ratio are, etcetera. Much of the stuff in my article Questions You Should Ask Prospective Loan Providers is aimed at defusing that kind of situation. Furthermore, you can and should apply for a back up loan if you can find someone willing. Remember, at sign up you have all the power, but at closing, the lender has all the power. They have the loan, and nobody else does. Many times, the loan they deliver at closing will have nothing in common with the loan that got you to sign up. If you don't want to find yourself completely at their mercy, the only way to reliably do so is apply for at least two loans. In the worst case scenario, it means that you get the least bad of these two loans, and in most circumstances, you can use the fact that there's another choice you can make to motivate them to deliver something that more closely resembles what they told you in order to get you to sign up. At the very least, get a written Loan Quote Guarantee.
Loan officers have people sign loan documents every day that there is no hope of actually funding a loan on. It doesn't make sense to me, but they do it, mostly because they are afraid if they break down and tell you they can't fund this loan, you will go elsewhere and they won't get paid. Signing loan documents more strongly commits borrowers to this loan, and as long as they keep trying, there's always the possibility that they will get paid. I have talked with people that were strung along for three months before they finally gave up and realized that this loan was not going to happen.
This page contains a single entry by Dan Melson published on May 4, 2008 7:00 AM.
From How Much You Make to A Payment You Can Afford was the previous entry in this blog.
Listing Agents Who Want Both Halves of The Commission is the next entry in this blog.


how would YOU do brick hatch on a round tower?
1) draw the u/s of each course 2) draw the round plan form above/below the elevation (make sure it is an "open" arc) 3) MEASURE the arc at the length of bricklength+joint 4) Using an extra fine pen draw lines from the points up/down to the horizontals, and trim them all to one course high 5) LENGTHEN>>DELTA all the verticals by a bed depth, shortening them from the top (using FENCE option) 6) array the verticals vertically to suit 7) trim the starting end of the original arc by 1/2*(bricklength+joint) 8) repeat above to another (alternating) course 9) array as required.
Use your judgment on how much to do. You have to balance the weight of the parts of an elevation to sell the design. This could look too heavy unless the entire thing is rendered to the same extent. You could also calculate the length of a brick and substitute appropriately broken lines for the continuous horizontals in 1) above to earn extra brownie points. To do this you could array alternating large an small circles around the arc for brick and joint lengths.
A looser approach is to do a bit of 1), all of 2) & 3), and only do a bit of 4, keeping it selective.
I am only serving a tightwad client, and working through another "firm" which has no intrest in me getting paid. find it hard to justify anything more than my own personal standards, as I have quite a bit of work I will get full price for.
wait a minute, instead of MEASURE maybe I DIVIDE, use a line, and DO NOT ROTATE. never tried that. hmm.
will let you know how it comes out. many thanks.
1) draw the u/s of each course 2) draw the round plan form above/below the elevation (make sure it is an "open" arc) 3) MEASURE the arc at the length of bricklength+joint 4) Using an extra fine pen draw lines from the points up/down to the horizontals, and trim them all to one course high 5) LENGTHEN>>DELTA all the verticals by a bed depth, shortening them from the top (using FENCE option) 6) array the verticals vertically to suit 7) trim the starting end of the original arc by 1/2*(bricklength+joint) 8) repeat above to another (alternating) course 9) array as required.
If they get really tall they just *have* to taper.
ARRAY is pretty powerful and quick. Did you know you can pick two points to enter the row height/column distance in that command? I do that to draw stairs in section...draw one, orient UCS to the "nosing line" and ARRAY.
DR. Fleau's suggestion is in synch with my other suggestion about keeping it loose. It really depends on the drawing.
I don't use ARRAY for all it will do. I do something similar with mulls in windows.
what I ended up doing was use the measure command and extending lines from the nodes. it worked. it was quite tedious trimming out from those archtop windows with the brick soldier. BUT IT SURE LOOKS GOOD.
however, the stone hatch on the same tower below the brick...... the "correct" 3d effect for the brick kind of highlights the fact that the stone hatching is VERY 2d. to my eye. the client will probably never notice either one.
The hatch will "recede" along the skewed face. If you really want the hatches to line up as you go around the faces of the building,you can make a 'necklace' of plines representing the adjacent planes of the elevation to be hatched, differentially scaling the skewed ones as above, and hatch them all while adjacent. Make blocks of the skewed ones as above, and move the orthogonal hatches to where they belong. Insert the skewed ones as above, and the hatch will appear to bend around the corners and "stack up" or "recede" along the skewed faces.
On a 2D dwg, I would typically create an irregular closed polyline, Hatch it, erase the polyline and copy resulting "naked" hatch a few times along the tower. The eye makes up for what's missing. I am a stickler for things well done, but I hate nitpicking over tidbits and such.
If I HAD to hatch a circular section, length-wise, I would use the sheet-metal technique of a semi-circle separated in equal parts (using rays) and bringing down vertical lines alongside the cylinder. Draw 2 full sections, copy the rest as a block. Change the block, the whole tower changes.
just for fun, same job has chevrons in random placement. I kind of hate it when I am commisioned to do "art" because they never tell me enough detail to get it right the first time. I have to guess, have them tell me it's horrid, and start over.
suddenly, when they can see my first guess, they know just exactly where the random placements should have been - exactly.
made a chevron from 8 "bricks" , made regions out of them, and made it a block. then I give the block a positive elevation and copy it around "artfully". I hideplot when printing and never edit the brick hatching behind it. when the ladies don't like where "the draftsman" put the chevrons, all I need do is move them around.
back to the slave mines. don't work too hard guys.
Is my tower dead or just resting ?


I want to decompose a Toffoli gate into CNOTs and arbitrary single-qubit gates. I want to minimize the number of CNOTs. I have a locality constraint: because the Toffoli is occurring in a linear array, the two controls are not adjacent to each other (so no CNOTs directly between the controls).
What is the minimum number of CNOTs required to perform this task? What is an example of a circuit which achieves this minimum?
Each control is adjacent to the target, but the controls are not adjacent to each other.
What I did was I used a set of three cNots in the place of Swap to move the two controls next to each other to achieve the last part of the standard Toffoli circuit (see here). This used 12 cNots.
However, the final $T$ and $H$ gates on the target qubit I propagated through one of these swaps. This let me cancel two controlled-Nots.
Then, in the final SWAP, I chose the first of the controlled-nots to be controlled from the middle qubit. I replaced it with a controlled-phase and two Hadamards. The leading Hadamard cancelled. The controlled-phase gate commutes with the preceding controlled gates controlled off the middle qubit, and phase gates on the middle qubit and bottom qubits. These operations bring that controlled phase up to a controlled-not from the first inserted swap. Hence, we can combine these two gates as a controlled-$iY$, controlled off the bottom qubit. But this can be written as a single cNot with some $S$ gates.
I've made no attempt at an optimality proof, but I'm already pretty pleased to have got it this small.
Here is the best construction I've found. It uses 8 CNOTs.
I verified this circuit in Quirk using the channel-state duality and a known-good inverse.
The target is the middle qubit. None of the CNOTs go directly from top to bottom or bottom to top. You can switch which qubit is the the target by simply switching which line the Hadamards are on.
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged circuit-construction gate-synthesis optimization or ask your own question.


I have melanoma, are my children at increased risk?
The majority of melanomas occur without any family history of it.
It is very rare for there to be a strong family history. This is when three or more first degree relatives (parent, brother/sister or offspring) are affected and then it can be linked with one specific 'gene'. A gene is a part of each one of your body's cells. It contains all the 'information' about your body, like a set of instructions.
If you have had three or more primary melanomas, or have had three or more first degree relatives affected by melanoma you will be referred to the genetics clinic at St. Mary's Hospital, Manchester.
However, melanoma can occur in families but not be related to a single faulty gene. It is perhaps more likely to be several unusual genes which you inherit. But they may not always result in melanoma. This is the same for other cancers such as lung cancer and colorectal cancers.
So, most cases of melanoma are occasional. The number of people with inherited risk is unknown, but thought to be very low. Only about 1 - 2% of people (one or two out of 100) with melanoma have more than one close relative with it.
I have already had a melanoma, should I avoid the sun?
We recommend safe sun exposure to make sure you do not tan or burn. This way you can lower the risk of a second new melanoma rather than a recurrence of the previously removed melanoma. As you have had a melanoma you do have the type of skin that could produce another.
Some melanomas are related to sun exposure, especially tanning or burning. The risk does change with skin type.
If the melanoma is found early, surgical removal can cure the disease in most cases (80%). In the case of metastatic disease (when the melanoma has spread to other parts of the body) melanoma cannot be cured. However with the current treatments the disease can be controlled and in some cases managed for a reasonably longer period of time.
Not all melanomas can be prevented but some of them can (by noticing unusual moles, limiting UV exposure, etc).
Melanoma, What it is and how to reduce your risk'.
I am having trouble coming to terms with my diagnosis, where can I get help?
It is usual for patients to feel many different emotions after a diagnosis of cancer, even if your melanoma has been removed and prognosis is good.
There are many ways to get help.
The Psycho-Oncology department provide counselling and a range of ways to help you.
A Complementary Therapy Service is also available here, offering massage, reflexology, acupuncture and other services to support you and your carers.
The Maggie's Centre team offer practical, emotional and social support. Please call them or visit the website to see their wide range of services. Their beautiful building is at the bottom of Kinnaird Road off Wilmslow Road on the opposite side to the main hospital building of The Christie.
Your local hospice usually offers many of these services as well. Ask your health care professional in the clinic about your nearest hospice.
I'm not coping very well, I'm on follow up care, I thought I'd be feeling more positive than this now.
I am concerned about being in a clinical trial. I do not want to be a 'guinea pig'.
Clinical trials are the only way that we can make advances in the treatment of melanoma. There are advantages and disadvantages to all clinical trials. We try our best to explain these when we talk to you. We also give you written information that has been approved by an independent research ethics committee.
Trials increase the treatment options available for patients and improve our understanding of how best to manage melanoma. We fully understand that not every patient wants to be in a trial. In fact we learn valuable lessons from hearing the reasons why patients do not want to be involved.
Your safety and welfare are always our main concern and guide our decision making, whether you are in a trial or not.
Here is a link to a YouTube video 'Taking part in a clinical trial' explaining clearly what is involved.
My melanoma is stage three (or four etc), what does it mean?
Melanoma is 'staged' as one, two, three or four. You may see this written down as I, II, III or IV. The number depends on how far the melanoma cells have spread. Stage I (one) means the cancer cells are present at the first site of the melanoma. Stage IV (four) means the cancer cells have spread to other parts of the body. Stage IV disease is more serious than Stage I.
How will I know if the melanoma comes back?
If the melanoma comes back in your skin or superficial glands (near to the skin surface) it can be noticed with self examination or routine examination in clinic. If it comes back to the large internal organs an early diagnosis can be more difficult. This is because in most cases of early metastatic disease (when the melanoma has spread to other parts of the body) you may not have any symptoms. But it can be identified with an 'imaging' procedure such as a CT or ultrasound scan and blood tests.
Not all patients with melanoma need a scan. It depends on the 'stage' of your melanoma and other symptoms you might have.
The Doctor or Nurse Clinician will ask you about your general health. They will then examine the area around the original melanoma scar for any signs of melanoma recurrence. The lymph nodes will also be examined to see if any are enlarged or swollen. If any changes are felt or seen you may have some further investigations such as scans and blood tests. These are often just precautionary and shouldn't cause you any initial concern.
Why do I need to have a second operation when my melanoma has already been completely excised (removed)?
Re-excision of your melanoma scar is necessary to try to prevent melanoma returning to that area.
How often should I examine myself for lumps?
In between your follow up appointments, every four weeks you can examine yourself (certainly not more often than every fortnight). Ask the Doctor, Nurse Clinician or Nurse Specialist to show you how to do this.
Self-examination involves feeling and looking. Begin around your original melanoma scar, you are looking for any new pigmented lesions (areas of skin that are a different colour to your normal skin) and feeling for any new lumps.
Also examine your lymph nodes. It may be easier for you to do this in the bath or shower using your soapy hand. You are feeling for any new lumps or swellings. Remember that your lymph nodes can be swollen for other reasons too such as infection, or a cut on your skin. However if you find a new lump or swelling please contact your key worker/ Nurse Specialist. They will advise you what to do next.
I can't work at the moment, how will I manage financially?
I am worried about my family, I don't know if they are coping.
Some organisations are just for carers - they offer both emotional support and practical help. The services vary depending on where you live but if you contact the Cancer Information Centre they will be able to advise you.
Our Psycho-Oncology department also offer help to family and carers. Ask a member of the clinical team if you need a referral.
Am I able to travel?
Your health care professional can discuss with you whether it is safe to travel. This depends on the treatment you are receiving and whether it is a good idea to alter it.
If you are going abroad, sometimes it is difficult to get Travel Insurance. The Macmillan website details companies who are more willing to offer insurance.
Are there better treatments if I can pay or go abroad?
Usually there are more treatment options available through clinical trials in the NHS. Often patients with private healthcare insurance will be treated on the NHS for this reason. At The Christie we almost certainly have the biggest trial portfolio of any hospital in the UK. This includes groundbreaking immunotherapy treatments - we are only one of three centres in Europe to offer this.
However there are sometimes trials available in other hospitals that we are not involved with, we would always tell you about this if we felt this was relevant to you.
New drugs are often licensed in the USA six to 12 months before they are licensed in Europe. Also, new drugs may not be immediately approved in the UK, so there can sometimes be a difference between what is available in the USA, in Europe and in Manchester.
I have read some information on the internet which has made me worry.
When you see your health care professional make sure you discuss your concerns with them. There is some very good information available on the internet; however there is also some misleading and confusing information.
Useful links has some recommended websites.


Will new Freedom Union leader help to strengthen party?
"Mr Mares is a well educated person. He was a university professor working in the fields of politics and history, so from this point of view he is a quite good professional. As far as the disadvantage is concerned, I would say that he lacks charisma. He is not really a leader who can have a strong impact on the broader public."
Over the weekend it was clearly visible that the Freedom Union's differing ideology and the compromises it has had to make in the cabinet have made some members unhappy with its partnership in the ruling coalition. There is one stream which believes that a better future would be if the Freedom Union were to join the opposition and use its independence to define its policy against that of the Social Democrats. An idea, however, that was ruled out at the party conference, after discussions resulted in an overwhelming majority of delegates voting to stay in the coalition.
"If there is any possibility for the Freedom Union to survive in the next several years and get into parliament in the next elections, the better chance for the Freedom Union is to be a member of the cabinet. It would be a totally unimportant member of the opposition there are stronger opposition parties in parliament. There is the ODS (Civic Democrats) which represents the right-wing stream and the Communists as the opposition to the cabinet from the left point of view."
"I'm not sure whether they have the chance to really put their own opinions through but I think they do have the chance to influence the final results, mainly in discussion on public financing. It's clear that it is necessary for something to be done with that and I think their opinion will somehow be considered. With some other opinions, such as paying university fees, I don't think they will be accepted by the Social Democrats. In the question of deregulation, it is also not so easy to do it although something will be done to enable a step-by-step rent deregulation".
Only three of the seventeen ministers, six of the eighty-one Senators, and ten of the 200 deputies are members of the Freedom Union. With such low representation, Mr Mares does not expect a miracle in his party's future. With the right leadership, however, meeting the party's goals could be possible. And if things should not work out, according to Mr Mares it will never be too late to leave the coalition.


Given a list of numbers, the task is to write a Python program to find the second largest number in given list.
Method 1: Sorting is an easier but less optimal method. Given below is an O(n) algorithm to do the same.
Method 2 : Sort the list in ascending order and print the second last element in the list.


Garfield :: I haven't seen a stewardess in hours, Garfield. - I'm going to find out what's going on around here. - Excuse me sir. How's the service on this airline?
I haven't seen a stewardess in hours, Garfield. - I'm going to find out what's going on around here. - Excuse me sir. How's the service on this airline?


Do you still use Windows XP? What about XP Mode?
We are using it a lot for our voice labs when we need to simulate remote branches. In fact we are using Windows XP Mode virtual machine with installed either Cisco IP Communicator or VTGO IP Blue to have an additional softphones.
Officially Windows XP died on April 8, 2014 but it is still quite popular OS, okay. In fact it is the third one (up to date) popular Windows OS operating system and it is used from almost 4% of our visitors. I'm saying that because even we are still using it a lot and it is pretty common for some dirty tests, especially if you are native Windows user. Microsoft did a great job with their Windows 7 when they offered the possibility to have a virtual machine running Windows XP. Windows XP Mode for Windows 7 makes it easy to install and run any programs that run on Windows XP directly from a computer that runs Windows 7 (or later, as we will see). And although Windows XP is officially dead, yet the XP Mode is still available for download. However Microsoft are advising us to use it only offline because of the expired support.
The official End of extended support for Windows 7 is announced as of January 14, 2020 which most probably means that until 2020 we will be still able to use Windows XP Mode for our dirty tests. Currently Windows 7 is the most used Microsoft OS among our visitors, but we cannot ignore the newer versions 8 and 8.1 which are growing constantly. The problem is that Windows XP Mode is not officially available for these operating systems and if you want to have a spare Microsoft OS, you have to install it from scratch on some virtual machine.
From all available virtualization vendors, Cisco products support only VMware - this is important! We prefer to keep the things as simple as possible so if we want to build a Cisco voice lab we would stick to the same virtualization platform for all components. Because of that, if I'm running my Cisco Unified Communications Manager on VMware Player, I would like to have my branches and Cisco IP Phones running on virtual machines sharing the same hypervisor. Here comes the next logical question - is it possible to run Microsoft Windows XP Mode on the latest VMware Player under Windows 8.1?
It is pretty simple to do that. The steps below are explaining the process to get running Windows XP virtual machine on your VMware Player from the official Windows XP Mode binary packet in less than 5 minutes. The result is a Windows XP virtual machine available for 30 days but as we are using this OS for tests, these days are more than enough. Of course, if you have an OEM key you can apply it and you will get a fully functional operating system.
Step 1: Download the Windows XP Mode installer.
Step 2: Use a program like 7-Zip to open the downloaded .exe file.
Step 3: Browse the archive structure and go to the \sources\xpm\ path. Extract the VirtualXPVHD file.
Step 6: Edit your virtual machine and add another hard drive. Right click on your VM and choose Settings - Add.
File name: Point the path to the VirtualXP.vhd file.
Step 7: Remove the first hard driver and change the ID of the second one to IDE 0:0.
Step 8: Boot up your virtual machine. In the beginning you will not be able to use your mouse so you will have to navigate only with your keyboard while finishing the Sysprep. Accept the license agreement; use the default Regional and Language settings; configure a hostname and Administrator password. When everything is done there will be a black screen so you need to power off and on your VM.
Step 9: After the first boot the most important thing is to uninstall the Virtual PC Integration Components. This software is not compatible with VMware and it is causing the problems with the mouse. After removing it, reboot your virtual machine and your mouse should become usable. For smoother operation it is highly advisable to install VMware Tools.
Step 10: Install your Cisco IP Communicator or VTGO IP Blue and enjoy your additional IP Phone.


Paramount, widescreen 1.66:1, languages: English DD 5.1 & Surround [CC], French Dolby Surround, subtitles: none, single side-single layer, 24 chapters, 2 theatrical trailers, rated PG, 103 min., $29.99, street date 1/26/99.
Directed by Peter Weir. Starring Jim Carrey, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Natascha McElhone, Noah Emmerich, Holland Taylor.
Welcome to The Truman Show. The whole world is watching.
The Truman Show came about from the brilliant and complex producer, Christof, winner of an Academy Award for a moving documentary of street people called Show Me The Way To Go Home, when at the age of 29, he sold the concept of The Truman Show to Moses Opperman, President and CEO of the world's largest media conglomerate, The OmniCam Corporation. The company was an overnight success when its camera devices were used by millions to telecast their private lives through the Internet. On television, this type of reality-based telecast is made popular by such shows as MTV's Real World, where the lives of culturally diverse twenty-something are brought in to live together under multi-camera scrutiny, and by The Jerry Springer Show, where guests reveal their most shocking secrets to their partner(s) in front of a live audience. However, unlike those reality-based shows, the difference on The Truman Show is that the main character is blissfully unaware that he is on the air. While it has a few detractors during the course, The Truman Show maintains an overwhelming support by critics and fans alike and evidenced by the numerous nominations and awards. Rex Reid praises it as "one of the most original and provocative show ever produced" and Esquire Fashion as "captivating and divine."
For those discernable readers that have watched the movie or read the Studio Line section, I hope you realize that the facts on the above paragraph are mostly fake (some are from the Introduction by director Peter Weir on The Truman Show: The Shooting Script), and that in a nutshell is what The Truman Show is about. Christof is, of course, a fictious character in the movie as with OmniCam Corporation. If you are a reader who is unaware of the story, you might readily accept what I just presented as a reality.
Screenplay penned by Andrew Niccol (Gattaca), directed by Peter Weir (Fearless, Dead Poets Society), and starring Jim Carrey in a terrific performance, the reality as known to Truman since birth is all fabricated in a giant studio and broadcasted live to the whole world 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In today's media-saturated world, The Truman Show raises some provocative and interesting issues, but ultimately, as a social commentary or satire, the movie never fully addresses the issues that it raises. The concept is certainly fascinating and entertaining, so much so that I wish the movie could be longer. At only 103 minutes, the characters are under developed and we are not given the oppurtunity to explore the inhabitants in the show or outside of the show. In the end of the movie when the door closed, there wasn't much of a revelation and left me unsatisfied with more questions than answers, and perhaps that's the effect that Peter Weir aims for -- to step out of the boundary and learn the truth for yourself. That might be the case, but the movie could have been much better and that applies to the DVD release also.
On the DVD production, The Truman Show DVD is the first to incorporate animated menu from Paramount and I am really impressed by the design. It's cool to see the blimp goes by during the selection. Thankfully, the audio formats could now be selected during play, previously it could only be done on the menu. The spherical film is presented at the theatrical ratio of 1.66:1 and while it is not 16x9 enhanced, the presentation is perfectly framed and centered. The compression, thought, is a disappointment. On my Panasonic A110 player, the picture exhibits some video noise, strong shimmering on patterns, and even jittering on a few static backgrounds. That's totally unacceptable at this stage and for such a high profile movie. The print also contains few dirt particles. Colors, however, are fully saturated with beautiful shade of hues and accurate fleshtones. Images are sharp and brightness is extremely luminous. Blacks and shadow details are well defined.
The encoded DD 5.1 soundtrack is not particularly impressive and lacks a strong surround presence. The discrete effects are rarely used, but do get involve more aggressively during the storm sequence on the latter part of the movie. Imaging and panning is adequate, but again does not project to a large soundstage. What the soundtrack does have that I really enjoy is the score composed by Burkhard Dallwitz and Philip Glass. It's one of the more eclectic score, combining various styles and elements, and in fact, Philip Glass uses some of the cues from his previous films. Peter Weir describes the selections as what Christof would have chosen. The overall structure retains the intimacy of what you'd expected from a television show. Ranging from a lovely piano concerto by Chopin to a cue of swelling orchestration during the reunion that aims for teardrops. Other times, the heavily synthesized cue is eerily sharp and harsh in reflecting the artificial environment and technology that enslaved Truman. The score was recently awarded the Golden Globe, and while I feel James Horner's Mask of Zorro and George Fenton's Dangerous Beauty would be a better choice, The Truman Show makes for a very interesting experience.


Preparing for the OCPJP7 I have come across the java.util.concurrent.locks.Condition.
How is it possible managing more condition with the same lock? Underneath does not it use the intrinsic lock?
Yes, it is possible to have more than one Condition variable with the same lock. However, I am not sure of your question -- why should this not be possible?
I am not saying that it is impossible, or why it is possible or anything. I would like just to know how it works, is it supported merely by the management of the intrinsic lock or there is something more which comes with the locks package?
I know I should go through the source code However I am running out of time (in preparing the exam). So if somebody knows in short how it works and has time to share it responding to this question, thanks in advance.
Condition variables are highly integrated with it corresponding Mutex lock. In this case, the Condition class is highly integrated with the ReentrantLock class. Obviously, the reason for this is because condition variables do things with the lock that can't be done with the public interface -- such as release all the nested locks atomically.
As an implementation detail, The ReentrantLock class (along with it's Condition Class) do not use the Java synchronization mechanism. Instead it use the atomic classes, which in turn, uses JNI to get to features based around the processor's CAS operator. As an FYI, the CAS operator is what synchronization is implemented with, so the Lock/Condition classes goes even lower than synchronization to be implemented.
Interestingly, the last time that I checked, the Lock/Condition classes doesn't use the underlying mutex/condition variables of the operating system either -- instead choosing to go to the CAS operator directly. In my opinion, this was likely a bad idea, as most OSes support priority inheritance with mutex locks, which currently, I don't think is supported by the ReentrantLock class (perhaps it can be implemented in the future).


My p.c.b. has a top layer and bottom layer only. 95% of the tracks will be on the top layer. When I've finished organising components on the top layer and connecting them with tracks, I wish to pour copper on the bottom layer to create a GND plane.
Some of the component pads will be connected to GND. How can I identify which component GND pads are not to be avoided when I carry out a copper pour? Is there a workflow method I can apply to carry out my .pcb file creation efficiently?
Users Guide V21.0 has a section on copper pouring (pp218-224) but I can't pick a bit that can answers the above question.
Your GND pads will be on presumably a named net ... eg GND .... the copper pour will ask what net you wish the pour to be ... obviously you give it the same net name "GND" then all GND nets will be connected in the pour, all others (different nets) will be avoided.
Thanks for your quick reply, Ian.
So the net name is something I can set for each pad in the .pcb file? I assumed that it would be set only if you did a .sch file first.
I will give it a try and come back if there's a problem. Thanks again.
OK. Just to clarify, the GND pads won't be connected to anything on the top layer. By the time I've finished laying out the top layer, all pads will be connected apart from the GND pads (because they will be connected by the copper pour on the bottom layer). How will a net name be assigned to the unconnected GND pads when the top layer is complete?
I must be missing something simple, so thanks for your patience.
Use the "Add Unrouted Connection" tool (3rd down from top) to join up all the dots (pads) that you want to connect to 0V. It will elastic band them together for you. It will automatically give this a net name like N0000xyz. Then rename this net to GND. Then pour GND either with/without thermal spokes (set in Design Tech).
Thanks for your explanation - much appreciated.
I've actually joined all the GND pads with a track on the bottom (ground plane) side. I'm hoping this works just as well as "add unrouted connection"? It seems to. Or should I remove the GND track and replace it with unrouted connection?
(a) When I drew a 'test' copper pour rectangle on the top side, the copper only poured into the bit of the rectangle that had a GND pad. Should I put GND vias in the unpoured areas first (I guess that the software doesn't want to create floating islands)?
(b) On one of my trial pours, the software reported an error that less than minimum number of spokes on two pads were present and so the pour could not proceed. I adjusted the pour shape a bit and the error disappeared. I can't reproduce the error now. Was it because my pour area bisected a GND pad perhaps?
Ah. My GND tracks appear as "large spokes". It will function correctly but doesn't look great.
However, some of the GND tracks do need a solid track connection as the carry relatively high currents.
1) This does the same add joining up all the dots with the "Add Unrouted Connection" tool. Its has auto named the net something other than GND, so you should re-name it.
2a)You were asked to specify a net name for the pour, so if you answered GND and there wasn't a pad connected to GND within your copper pour area it can't pour it. (Unless you allowed "Isolated Islands" in the Pour Copper dialogue).
2b)The physical spoke size is set up in the Design Tech=> Rules dialogue. You've defined a spoke size such that can't fit (all 4) in the space available on your design.


America is now entering upon an era of government by the Democratic Party. Barack Obama will be our president for at least the next four years, possibly eight. The Democrats will control both Houses of Congress for at least the next two years, and quite possibly four or more. The Republicans are doomed, therefore, to be the minority party for some time to come. How should they conduct themselves?
It goes without saying (at least, I hope it does) that they should avoid mere nitpicking -- complaining about small matters. The American people won't be impressed by Republican objections to this or that minor Democratic blunder. What the GOP must do is put forward a strong case for the proposition that the country would be better off under a Republican president and Congress.
And that will entail not so much demolishing the Democrats as constructing a powerful affirmative case for a Republican administration. The task, in other words, is to build an image of a Republican Party that is based on sound and attractive ideas -- and be capable of implementing them in a Republican administration.
No doubt about it, that is a tall order. It requires the GOP to concentrate, not on criticizing this or that Democratic policy, but constructing an image of a Republican Party that has a firm concept of what good government amounts to and a clear plan for bringing it into existence. Luckily, the GOP has acquitted itself relatively well in recent decades. The Eisenhower and Reagan administrations are, in general, favorably remembered by the American people, and -- while Nixon certainly had his critics -- he is quite rightly identified with various American successes, particularly in the field of foreign affairs.
The Cold War was conducted resolutely and successfully, and ended in the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was surely our most formidable adversary in the 20th century. And while Democratic presidents contributed mightily to that collapse, it is fair to contend that Republican opposition to the spread of world Communism was the central engine of American policy on that subject.
So the GOP has the makings of an image as an already existing instrument of sound policy in foreign affairs. Domestically, the Democrats undoubtedly have an edge in their image as the defender of the "little guy," but the Republicans' warnings against the dangers of Big Government also resonate in the minds of the American people, and can be counted on to be heard when demands for government action become too loud.
It is up to the GOP, in the months and years ahead, to make sure that this dual image of the party as a bulwark in foreign affairs, and a constant guardian against governmental overreaching in domestic matters emerges in the public perception as a sound and successful combination of policies, well qualified to guide the country in the years ahead. And the image ought to take shape, not only as a set of policies floating around in a loose combination, but as a connected series of parts, rather like a well-constructed house in which people can live comfortably.
In other words, the Republican Party should offer itself, not simply as a gratuitous assemblage of good ideas, but as a thoughtfully designed plan for the administration of good government. The American people will understand, and appreciate, the difference.
William Rusher is an accomplished author, former publisher of the National Review and former vice chairman of the American Conservative Union.


What is the boundary strip?
What should I do if RoboVac's movements or travel path are abnormal?
Why is RoboVac making a strange noise while in use?
Why has RoboVac's suction become weak?
What should I do if the remote control doesn't work?
- Make sure the main power switch on the bottom of RoboVac is in the "I" position.
- Make sure RoboVac is fully charged.
When I remove/replace the batteries of the remote control or turn off the main power switch, will these actions cancel RoboVac's scheduled settings?
- If a schedule is set and the batteries are removed from the remote control, the cleaning schedule will first disappear on the remote control. Afterwards, when you press any button on the remote control, you will also cancel the cleaning schedule on RoboVac.
- Turning off the main power switch will not cancel RoboVac' scheduled settings.
What should I do if RoboVac does not clean according to the schedule I set?
- Make sure the main power switch on the bottom of RoboVac is in the "I' position.
- Make sure the time, time of day (AM/PM), and the scheduled time have been set correctly. There will be 1 beep after you finish setting the actual time, and 1 beep after setting the scheduled time. If you do not hear both beeps, the schedule will not be set.
- Check if RoboVac’s power is too low to start cleaning.
What if RoboVac can't be charged? What should I do?
- Check if the indicator on the Charging Base lights up. If not, contact the eufy service center to repair or replace the Charging Base.
- Dust off the charging contact pins with a dry cloth.
- Check if you can hear a beep when RoboVac is docked onto the Charging Base. If not, contact the eufy service center to repair or replace the Charging Base.


Should Cody And The Young Bucks Stage An 'All In' 2?
The biggest independent wrestling show is in the books as the "All In" event turned out to be a huge success. Aside from some small issues with timing, the PPV was well received by the wider wrestling community.
The thing on everybody's mind right now is if there will be another event like All In that will happen in the near future.
Cody and The Young Bucks did not mention if they are interested in doing a similar show next year, but I feel All In deserves sequel.
Whether or not Cody and The Young Bucks have enough money to stage an All In 2 is unknown at this stage.
I'm not sure how rich they are, but they don't have the type of funds to do a show like this very often as none of them are businessman.
That said, they should have received a nice profit from the money they got from the first All In show.
In my opinion, I feel if All In is to happen next year it should be a joint effort.
Ring of Honor, New Japan Pro Wresting and Billy Corgan's NWA should team up and make an event even bigger than the first All In show.
That being said, ROH and NJPW may not need to do anything because the two organizations already have a big show next year inside Madison Square Garden.
They can pretty much use the same talent of wrestlers that appeared at All In.
It will be interesting to see if Billy Corgan uses the NWA brand to make it bigger than it is today.
After all, Corgan has more money than Cody and The Young Bucks so he could probably afford to stage an even bigger show in the near future.
Personally, I feel All in deserves a sequel because wrestling fans need competition.
It has been kind of boring seeing the WWE dominate the wrestling industry for the past twenty years or so. Hopefully this is not the first or last All In show!


Public relations (PR) implies a series of practices that focus on spreading information about a company in an effort to influence the public favourably. Basically, this means to offer your target audience information about your company, products, and services. But over the past few years, public relations has changed dramatically. Also involving two-way communication with prospects, customers, and investors, PR now provides one of the most effective ways to build brand reputation and get more business.
Since PR is a critical success factor in business, developing a functional strategy could help you achieve surprising results. For this, you need to follow the next seven steps.
Review your PR activity: When assessing your previous public relations activity, you should pay attention not only to the elements that have delivered positive results, but also to the overall amount of neutral, negative, and positive coverage along with the progress your company has made as a result of your campaigns. Once you’ve assessed your previous activity, it’s important to define new objectives as soon as possible and align them with what you’re trying to accomplish.
Develop a comprehensive plan: Before developing a plan of action, you need to consider the interests of your prospects, customers, and investors. Then, establish a detailed timetable of the events you intend to organise throughout the year. Having an exact task list that specifies new product launches, service offerings, trade shows, conferences, etc. can help you make the most of your public relations strategy. Equally important is to determine how often you should generate press releases, email newsletters, social media content, and blog posts.
Create a crisis management plan: Crisis planning is an essential part of any public relations strategy. To define the most appropriate crisis procedures, it’s imperative that you consider all possible negative scenarios.
Set up a budget: Executing your PR plan is impossible without determining your budget. When creating the budget, be realistic and consider all events. Also, allocate extra funds for unforeseen occurrences. When unplanned things happen (e.g. a higher number of participants than expected), having money to cover additional costs could help cushion the effects of unexpected expenses.
Select the most effective tools and tactics: There are several tools and tactics you may want to employ to ensure the success of your public relations campaigns. For instance, you could opt for industry-specific software solutions, which include editorial and product release calendars along with customer relationship management functionality. In addition, a few proven PR tactics consist of inviting media and government officials to your events, participating in community sponsorship programmes, and launching email campaigns.
Craft key messages: When presenting your company, products, or services, your content should be relevant and consistent, but not identical. As an example, if you want to announce the launch of a new product line, you could create three different press releases: one for prospects, presenting product features and benefits; one for investors, indicating new investment opportunities; and one for the community, letting people know that you’re looking for more employees.
Re-evaluate your plan: By reviewing your plan regularly, you can determine whether or not specific events have delivered the results expected, and make adjustments as necessary. Additionally, frequent re-evaluations can help you stay within your budget.
Strategic planning, smart budgeting, and creative thinking along with the ability to manage unforeseen circumstances are the most essential factors for an efficient PR plan, which will give you peace of mind in day-to-day activities, whilst offering new opportunities for your business to shine.


What in the World?: Does Canada need an Office of Religious Freedom?
Does Canada need an Office of Religious Freedom?
The proposal by the Canadian government to establish an Office of Religious Freedom is politically motivated. It fulfills a promise made in the 2011 federal election. The Conservatives won this election handily, in part by attracting votes in many ethnic communities, especially in Greater Toronto Area, which according to the United Nations is the most cosmopolitan urban area in the world. Nearly every nation and language on earth is represented here, as are most religions. This forms part of the context in which this proposal was made.
Does Canada really need an Office of Religious Freedom, or is it largely a political ploy, as is my impression?
The Conservatives needed the support of various ethnic groups, which represent many different religions, in order to win the election: Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, are only a few of them.
The most important of these religious groups, although not identifiable as a single ethnic category, were evangelical Christians. They tend to vote Conservative, are well organized, and have been persecuted in many different countries, especially during the last few years.
In fact, Christians are persecuted more than any other religious group today. There are many reasons for this. There are also many organizations, such as Freedom House, that keep careful track of instances of the persecution of Christians. Many Christians certainly support the creation of an Office of Religious Freedom.
The Conservatives also attracted the Jewish vote through their unqualified support for the State of Israel. Canada is now one of Israel's most faithful friends and supporters. The existence of the State of Israel is rooted in the Holocaust. Canadian Jews do not want a repetition of this, very understandably, and thus they too would support such an office.
Both Christians and Jews are somewhat ambivalent in their attitude to Muslims, however. The Palestinian cause is hardly popular among many of them, and Muslims are often viewed as terrorists. Both have for centuries been persecuted for various reasons, but they are often unwilling to extend protection to Muslims.
Muslims too need the protection of an Office of Religious Freedom. They have been vilified and demonized more than any other religious group, especially since 9/11. But will they get that protection this way?
In a year-end interview, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird denies that his department’s new Office of Religious Freedom will become a vehicle for playing domestic politics in Canada’s immigrant communities. He also dismissed criticism that the new office could lead to an uncomfortable mix of religion and politics.
“Freedom of religion is one of the first things in the (Canadian) Charter, it’s one of the first things in the (Canadian) Bill of Rights, it’s front and centre in the UN Declaration of Human Rights -- it’s an essential human right; I don’t see any concern about that at all,” the minister explained.
Baird has high hopes for the new office, even though it will come with a modest $5-million price tag. That includes a minuscule $500,000 budget for operations, so it won’t be a major drag on already thin resources for a government, like governments elsewhere, that is currently focussed on reducing the deficit.
But this office may not have the positive benefit the government is looking for. Alex Neve, the head of Amnesty International Canada, says that while religious persecution “is a serious human rights concern right around the world,” he is not confident about the government’s approach to the new office. Religious freedom can have a “contentious relationship” with other crucial human-rights concerns such as women’s equality, the equality rights of gays and lesbians, and freedom of expression, he explains.
The various human rights must be interpreted so that religious freedom and women's rights are both given their proper due. Communal and individual rights must be carefully balanced. In addition, for years I have reminded my students that rights are not absolute, but carry with them duties as well that can restrict these rights out of respect for others.
There are other problems as well. The governments needs to be careful that it does not -- either intentionally or unintentionally -- convey a message that some religions are preferred over others. The consultations that Baird organized with religious groups in October seem to indicate otherwise. These consultations were not open to the public. Amnesty International and other rights groups were excluded, but more crucially, so were many religious groups.
Panellists invited to closed-door consultations on the new Office of Religious Freedom were drawn almost exclusively from western religions, primarily Christianity. Six official panelists were invited to help lay out parameters for the proposed office during a half-day meeting with the minister.
Thomas Farr, first director of the U.S. Office of International Religious Freedom.
Father Raymond De Souza, Roman Catholic priest and columnist.
Anne Brandner of the Global Peace Initiative and formerly of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.
Don Hutchinson, vice-president with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.
Frank Dimant, CEO of B'nai Brith Canada.
Susanne Tamas of the Baha'i Community of Canada.
Islam was not represented on the panel, nor were the major Eastern religions, all of which have suffered religious persecution: Hinduism, Sikhism, Taoism, Buddhism, and others. The choice of panelists completely ignored the Canadian reality of multiculturalism, which is different from the American situation.
Pressed on what exactly the office will do, Baird replied in the interview: “It will be promoting religious freedom.” He said it would involve “persuasion, lobbying, putting light ... promoting.” The Tories note that the concept of such an office is not entirely new. They point to the fact the U.S. State Department has its own religious freedom office that was created in the late 1990s under the administration of Bill Clinton.
There are three priority areas for the new office: protecting and advocating on behalf of religious minorities under threat: opposing religious hatred and intolerance; and promoting the Canadian values of pluralism and tolerance abroad.
As the Tories mull their final roll out for the new office, religious violence is sparking the usual time-honoured response of Canadian governments, whether Liberal or Conservative: a written denunciation in the minister’s name condemning the perpetrators and an expression of solidarity for the victims.
The Conservatives are unapologetic about making a defense of the right to worship a central objective of Canadian foreign policy, noting, as a recent Pew Center study found, that assaults around the world on religious freedom have increased in recent years. This stance is in response in part to some bureaucrats in the Department of Foreign Affairs who, because of their belief in the separation of church and state, have tended to ignore the issue of religious freedom.
The Tories explain that it was a charismatic Pakistani foe of religious persecution who helped clinch their decision to create the office. Shahbaz Bhatti had visited with Prime Minister Stephen Harper only weeks before he was shot dead in Islamabad. A Catholic, he was the first Pakistan minister for minority affairs and the only Christian serving in the Islamic state’s cabinet when he died on March 2, 2011. A militant Islamist group claimed responsibility for killing Bhatti, who had been urging reform of that country's blasphemy laws.
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, who’s also the party’s point man for outreach to new Canadian voters, said Bhatti made a major impression on Harper when they met in early February, 2011. “The Prime Minister was deeply affected by this as was everyone who had the chance to meet him,” the minister said. “His visit to Canada shortly before his assassination helped to galvanize within the government the reality of this kind of persecution.” Kenny said he counselled Bhatti against returning home -- to no avail.
Former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, for one, offers qualified support for the new office. He said it can “turn a Canadian spotlight on people in danger” and can provide the persecuted “with the protection of visibility and concern.” But he adds it should not become be a tool for pressure groups the Tories hope to appease in Canada.
He advises that the office defend all cases of religious persecution, not just those that are bothering domestic constituencies at home, and that it does not ignore other human-rights violations, which usually accompany religious persecution, like limits on freedom of the press, denial of democratic rights and persecution.
The American office once headed by Farr has been criticized from several quarters, including from within the US State Department, for being Christian-centric, and primarily dedicated to protecting and promoting Christianity overseas. They contend that US officials tend to recognize and emphasize violations of the rights of Christian minorities and Christian evangelical groups to proselytize, rather than using the term "religious freedom" to cover the religious freedom of all communities.
In other words, in the US not all religions are equal and not all enjoy the same rights.
The Conservatives responded by saying that the office will take a multi-faith focus that is representative of Canada. Whether they will or not is debatable, especially if the October panel is any indication.
There is too much about the proposed Office of Religious Freedom that smacks of politics. If this office does succeed in defending religious freedom for all religious groups and not just some of them, and if it can untangle the various human rights that are implicated in issues of religious freedom, then it may yet prove to be a blessing for everyone, and not just a cheap ploy to buy votes from strategic religious communities.
In the previous post, it was obvious how complex the issue of religious freedom is. When politics is added to this already potent brew, the mixture becomes potentially explosive. Thus the government should be very careful in what it does with the new Office of Religious Freedom. It is a good idea, but it can be abused in many ways. No one who is serious about religious freedom wants that to happen.
I don't want Christians to hijack the very important issue of religious freedom. It does not belong to any one religious group. If it did, religious freedom would be a contradiction in terms. All religions must enjoy the same rights, if this term is to have any meaning whatsoever. Religious freedom belongs to all of us or to none.
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This illustrated blog discusses what is happening in the world today, especially if it involves religion. After a long period of being dismissed from discussion in the public square, religion is once again openly talked about because of increased recognition of its role in the world today. This change is evident in the light of new developments in the Middle East and North Africa. Allow me to introduce myself. I received a Th.M. from Calvin Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto. For almost forty years I taught philosophy and theology in many countries, primarily the Philippines, Russia, and Nigeria. For most of the year I live in Toronto, together with my wife, Wendy, who also lectures in philosophy and theology. We have three adult children: a daughter living in Toronto; a son also living in Toronto, who has a son; and another daughter, who has four children, living near Boston.
Global warming: Will my grandchildren have to pay for it?
The churches of Turkey: Where are they?


Abase Hussen, whose daughter Amira is thought to be alive and still alongside ISIS in Syria, said the schoolgirls are victims who should be 'helped, not punished'.
Miss Begum is heavily pregnant with her third child and living in a Syrian refugee camp. She says Amira is alive but Kadiza Sultana, the third girl who fled the UK with them, died in an air strike two years ago.
Mr Hussen, 52, who once was filmed at a London flag-burning rally attended by Anjem Choudary, said the three young jihadi brides had 'just made a mistake'.
'These girls were young,' he told MailOnline. 'They were manipulated by evil people and they should be brought home and helped. Not punished. They pose no threat.
- February 17 - Kadiza Sultana, 16, and 15-year-olds Shamima Begum and Amira Abase leave their east London homes at 8am to travel to Istanbul in Turkey from Gatwick Airport. Begum and Abase - who has not yet been publicly named - are reported missing by their families later the same day.
- February 22 - Abase's father Abase Hussen says his daughter told him she was going to a wedding on the day she disappeared. Metropolitan Police officers arrive in Turkey, but refuse to confirm whether they are involved in the search for the teenagers.
'The British government have not done anything to help me or the other parents. We have been badly treated.
'Shamima should be allowed to come home and have her baby in peace.
Mr Hussen, who has two other grown up children, said he and his wife had lost contact with Amira last year.
'The last conversation we had with my daughter was over a year ago when she called out of the blue,' he said.
Mr Hussen, a security guard, said three families of the runaway girls had been in close contact when they went missing in 2015, but had gradually lost touch.
'There's been no co-ordination in helping our children to return,' he said. 'Nothing is being done for us.
Mr Hussen, who has been in the UK since 1999, originally comes from Ethiopia, where Amira was born.
He blamed police for failing to stop his daughter fleeing to join ISIS.
But months after she vanished it transpired that he had taken her to an extremist rally when she was just 13.
Shocking footage subsequently emerged of him amid a flag-burning mob, screaming in rage at a protest outside the US embassy in London, in 2012.
Also at the rally were hate cleric Anjem Choudary and Michael Adebowale, one of the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby.
He later apologised for attending, but admitted going to two further rallies – with his impressionable daughter in tow.
One took place outside the Saudi embassy in London, in 2013, and is said to have been organised by the Islamic extremist group Al-Muhajiroun, founded by hate cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed and linked to many Islamic terror atrocities of the past decade.
Ms Begum, now 19, was tracked down by The Times to a refugee camp in northern Syria where she is the bride of an Islamic State fighter, nine months pregnant and has had two infant children who are dead. Her husband is in captivity.
She also told the paper: 'The caliphate is over. There was so much oppression and corruption that I don't think they deserved victory.
Ms Begum, Kadiza and Amira , who all attended Bethnal Green Academy, left their homes in February 2015 to join a fourth Bethnal Green schoolgirl in Syria who had left London they year before. They each married an Isis foreign fighter, according to The Times.
Kadiza was reported to have been killed in an airstrike on Raqqa in May 2016, while Ms Begum has recently heard second-hand from other people that Amira, and the other schoolgirl who left Britain in 2014, may still be alive.
When she arrived, Ms Begum was put in a house where jihadist brides-to-be waited to be married, she said.
Ten days after arriving in Raqqa in 2015, she wed a Dutchman who had converted to Islam. She claims her husband was later arrested, charged with spying and tortured.
She left Raqqa in January 2017 with her husband but her children, a girl aged 21 months and a three-month-old boy, both died in recent months. Her son had an unknown illness worsened by malnutrition, The Times said.
Ms Begum said she had a 'mostly' a 'normal life in Raqqa, interrupted every now and then by 'bombing and stuff'.
She told the paper: 'But when I saw my first severed head in a bin it didn't faze me at all. It was from a captured fighter seized on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam.


Employers face a high bar when deciding to dismiss an employee for misconduct.
An employee sacked for telling a co-worker to "go and punch [another co-worker] in the face" has been awarded $21,000 compensation by the Fair Work Commission (Davidson v Visa Global Logistics Pty Ltd  FWC 7332).
This case highlights that employers continue to face a high bar when deciding to dismiss an employee for misconduct. Before terminating an employment relationship, employers should ensure that they have a well-founded and defensible reason.
Ms Davidson's employment with Visa Australia was terminated following an incident where she allegedly said to a co-worker over the phone, "can you go and punch Stacey in the face".
Visa Australia issued Ms Davidson with a "show cause" letter, which also referred to a previous written warning for "yelling and swearing" at a fellow employee. Under cross-examination, Ms Davidson admitted that she had called her fellow employee a "fu***ing c**t".
While Ms Davidson maintained that her "punch in the face" remark had been taken out of context, was meant as a joke, and apologised nonetheless, Visa Australia dismissed her for breaching its Anti-Discrimination and Harassment Policy.
In deciding whether Ms Davidson was unfairly dismissed within the terms of section 385 of the Fair Work Act 2009, Deputy President Lawrence considered whether the dismissal was "harsh, unjust or unreasonable". In concluding that the dismissal was unfair, he made the following findings.
Deputy President Lawrence accepted on the balance of probabilities that Ms Davidson's request "can you go and punch Stacey in the face" was "meant as a joke", albeit one that could be misunderstood. On the evidence, there was no real threat of violence or act of intimidating behaviour, because the words were spoken to a third person, Mr Pilgrim, who then reported them to Stacey. While Stacey reported feeling intimidated by Ms Davidson's comments, this was wholly based on Mr Pilgrim's account the next day, which seemed to have shifted somewhat. It was therefore determined that there was no breach of the company's Anti-Discrimination and Harassment Policy.
Deputy President Lawrence also remarked that the previous written warning issued to Ms Davidson (to which the "show cause" letter referred) was not justified, because it referred to a workplace conflict in which Ms Davidson was the only employee to be disciplined: "While [Ms Davidson's] language may have been intemperate, in the context of this workplace, it is hard to see it justified a formal warning to her alone." The Fair Work Commission was satisfied that the disciplinary action taken against Ms Davidson was due to a breakdown in the relationship between her and the company's National Transport Manager.
In Deputy President Lawrence's view, Visa Australia failed to give sufficient weight to Ms Davidson's substantial length of service (she had been employed with Visa Australia for 8 years) which saw her promoted to a supervisory role in a challenging work environment.
Aside from the two instances of workplace conflict discussed in the case, there was no challenge made to Ms Davidson's work record.
Even if "the worst interpretation" was taken of Ms Davidson's conduct, there were a raft of other sanctions which Visa Australia could have applied, which were "less severe and more appropriate" than dismissal.
Having found that the dismissal was unfair, and that reinstatement was not appropriate in all the circumstances (Ms Davidson did not seek reinstatement, and it was not be appropriate given the difficult relationship between Ms Davidson and her Manager), Deputy President Lawrence ordered the company to pay Ms Davidson $21,000 in compensation. This figure reflected Ms Davidson's annual salary of $109,000, the likelihood that had she remained employed with Visa Australia she would have been dismissed after six months (given some other difficulties she had with the company's National Transport Manager and other employees), and that Ms Davidson had since obtained another job that paid $60,000 a year.
While it is, to state the obvious, probably never a great idea to joke about punching someone in the head, this case demonstrates that employers continue to face a high bar when deciding to dismiss an employee for misconduct. The employer should have a well-founded and defensible reason for terminating the employment relationship; comments which do not constitute "an actual threat of violence", for example, might fall short of misconduct.
It is also important for employers to implement disciplinary procedures consistently across their workforce. Here, a purported reliance on a previous warning given to an employee for using offensive language was not justified, because the employee was the only one disciplined, despite there being a workplace conflict; it takes two to tango.
Employers must be careful not to dismiss workers on unsubstantiated grounds; the evidence must be solid. If they do, the Fair Work Commission may well deem the termination a sucker punch.


Back in January, I mentioned the release of the Draft 2nd Edition of the Tri‐Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, prepared by Canada's Interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics, or PRE.
Their 20-page critique, "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Draft TCPS-2’s Assault on Academic Freedom," is all meat and no fat, and I recommend that it be read in its entirety. But here are a few salient points.
TCPS 2 states that "researchers may face situations where they experience a tension between the requirements of law and the guidance of ethical principles. In such situations, researchers should do their best to uphold ethical principles while complying with the law." (p. 17, lines 598-602).
Palys and Lowman note that such advice yields what they consider to be the wrong answer to the only recent incident involving a Canadian social researcher who came into conflict with the courts: Russell Ogden's studies of assisted suicide. Palys and Lowman have written about that case at length, and they applaud Ogden's refusal to testify about information given to him after he promised confidentiality.
If subpoenas for confidential information are rarely issued and never enforced, how can a requirement that researchers submit to the law be "a significant threat to academic freedom"?
Perhaps there are situations other than defending confidential information from subpoenas that would put social researchers in conflict with laws, but they are not detailed in the critique. If the policy fails only Russell Ogden, it is certainly a threat to his academic freedom, but a minor threat to academic freedom in Canada in general.
2. TCPS-2 Requires "Anticipating That Which Cannot be Anticipated"
it is not always possible to anticipate with any specificity the nature of the incidental findings that may surface in the course of research. It is therefore not possible to inform prospective participants in anything but the most general terms of what the research may reveal, beyond the realm of the research question itself.
The two parts of this quotation contradict each other; the first requires only the "most general" warnings, while the second demands warnings "concerning certain types of abuse" that must be revealed.
Though TCPS-2 provides some appeals, "the proposed appeal process also is highly inequitable: an REB can say 'no' in five minutes, while the appeal process can take a year or more, during which time the REB continues to function — and may continue to contravene policy — while the researcher is unable to proceed."
Unlike the authors of TCPS-2, who may have been presenting hypothetical harms, Palys and Lowman write from their own experience and that of their students.
In raising these questions, Palys and Lowman point to a much larger problem with TCPS-2 and its analogues in other nations: a lack of empirical investigation. TCPS-2 makes vague gestures toward empirical grounding, as when it claims that "history offers unfortunate examples where participants in research have been needlessly and at times profoundly harmed by research." (p. 1, lines 21-22) Maybe so, but good historians cite their sources, and the authors of TCPS-2 have not.
If PRE is a deity, it is not omniscient. Let us hope it is not omnipotent either.
The threat to academic freedom is not subpoenas or the courts. The threat is the limited confidentiality doctrine that arises when universities, and now PRE, attempt to force researchers to warn prospective participants of “legal limits” to confidentiality created by “incidental discoveries” i.e. information that might be subject to mandatory reporting laws, such as laws requiring reporting of child abuse, or research information that is potentially subject to subpoena and court-ordered disclosure, i.e. all confidential research information.
When the spectre of court-ordered disclosure arose at Simon Fraser University, the first Canadian university to experience such a threat, the administration attempted to force researchers to promise confidentiality to the extent permitted by law, accompanied by a warning that a court might order disclosure of confidential research information. The implication was that, if ordered to disclose confidential research information, a researcher would comply. This “Law of the Land” doctrine subordinates ethics to law. However, just like journalists, “ethics-first” researchers would feel ethically obliged to protect research information even in the face of a court order to disclose it.
The threat to academic freedom is the attempt to impose the law of the land perspective on ethics-first researchers, because their research would be made impossible by these a priori limitations to confidentiality.
The threat to academic freedom is PRE’s “limited confidentiality” doctrine, not subpoenas or the courts.
Thank you for this clarification. This is an interesting illustration of a chilling effect at work, showing how a rare incident can lead to widespread suppression of inquiry.
Part of my confusion stemmed from the fact that subpoenas are more common in the United States. Social scientists don't receive subpoenas every year, but as Charles Knerr and Andrew Sommerman have documented, the subpoenas arrive every few years.
On the other hand, Knerr and Sommerman also note that only two social scientists--Samuel Popkin and Rik Scarce--have been imprisoned, and neither surrendered confidential information. Three other scholars did reveal such information, but one was able to strip identifiers first, and a second did so only after receiving permission from the research participant. Thus, only once in the past forty years has an American social scientist surrendered a research participant's personal information to a court without the participant's permission.
Thus, your argument--that the warnings which ethics boards require of researchers are disproportionate to the threat of disclosure--appears to apply to the United States as well.


My three world of wonder.
Is it really possible to move on by literally moving to another place?
Traveling gives me a lot of memories. Some are happy and some are painful, but both are worth remembering. It also provides me with an opportunity to create great anecdotes worth sharing.
To be honest, I had never cared much about traveling before. I would rather stay at home, work on my computer, and write about things in my notebook. But recently, I have been hoping for a change.
One big reason why, at one point in my life, I came to hate traveling was that it reminded me of the hurtful experiences in the past, specifically of my daily three-hour trips with him. These trips were something that I used to look forward to -- they were moments of pure joy. Now traveling to me is like walking down memory lane: a flashback of our warm hands intertwined and of hugs, we shared over a long bus ride, our conversations and waves of laughter, and the one goodbye which ended it all. At one moment while we were still together, I thought that maybe he would be the one man whom I would take care of my entire life. However, we came to an end.
My life won't stop just because someone left me in the middle of my journey. I can't hate traveling forever -- it's like denying myself the opportunity to live. Traveling is more than just a whirlwind of fun experiences. In the same way, life is also a fun journey, full of exciting experiences and wonderful adventures. I know that I must continue to travel because maybe along the way, I'll find the one who'll accompany me on all my future travels.
Does it really matter that I have someone to go with to different places just to enjoy it?
I had gone on a lot of vacation travels and short trips with friends en before I had a love life. Maybe what happened was a different kind of happiness when I was with him; there was a thrill that I had never felt before. May it was feeling fulfilled that I got to travel with someone that I wanted to be with throughout my life's journey. I felt comfort when I knew there was someone who was as carefree as I was at every place that we traveled. Lastly, I realized that love was as much a need as a gift of life.
But sometimes, the best travel is when I am alone, which often allows me to see more places and to meet more people. To continue to be alive, I have to live. To experience to be brave, I have to embrace what life may bring. and to explore to be strong, I have to accept what circumstances may have to offer. That's what I did after the break.
For me, a good traveler is one who knows how to travel with the mind. That's why I consider traveling as moments in life where I can go back into the domain of enjoying experiences and leaving my worries of the world behind. Life is something that can't be measured by how long I live but rather how grateful I become. I'm not chained to enjoy the best things of a place because I set my own rules without worrying about what will happen to me. And when I travel alone, I realize how big the world is, taking me beyond the neat corners of my life, I can leave any painful memories and broken promises, even forget them, once I meet people from different places and with different perspectives.
Taking a trip can't fully and instantly heal a heart, but it mends every torn piece as I continue to explore the world -- and as I continue to feel, to create, to express, to sense, to inspire and be inspired, to love and be loved. I don't have to limit myself -- travel, move on and see more of life!
Philippine Airlines flies to Auckland, New Zealand starting December 2015. Book now at www.philippineairlines.com.
**Note: This my winning entry to Globe #Wonderful Blog Competition: Win a Trip to New Zealand.