Colon Health Check ? Self Test For Early Colon Cancer Detection ...

Colon cancer, also known as colonic or bowel cancer is quickly becoming a mass killer among us. It is the third most common cancer for both men and women and it is estimated that 150,000 new cases of colorectal cancer will be diagnosed this year in America. One of the biggest problems is early detection. There usually no symptoms associated with the early stages of colorectal cancer, making makes this type of cancer very lethal. Until recently, no self test kits were available for colon cancer early detection. Fortunately technology has advanced and now this is a very real option.Screen Yourself with a Self Test Kit for a Home Colon Health CheckBefore you rush to your doctor and embark on a series of unpleasant tests, such as a colonoscopy, you may consider a new alternative now available. It is possible to perform a colon health check for detection of early stages of colonic cancer by identifying fecal blood in the stool. In fact the American Cancer Society strongly recommends people test for fecal occult blood every year. Fecal occult blood indicates bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract which may be an indication of cancer.Bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract can also be caused by benign conditions such as hemorrhoids, polyps, stomach ulcers, rectal fissures and more. In any case this will be detected in the colon health check self test after which you would see a physician as soon as possible to determine the cause of the bleeding.Who Should Take a Colon Health Check?Testing for colon cancer is recommended to anyone over the age of 40 as well as for any one who is at high risk to develop colon cancer. High risk categories include:People who have had colon or rectal cancer, breast, or reproductive tract cancer, anyone with benign intestinal polyps. People that have a family relation to anyone who has been diagnosed with colon or rectal cancer. African-American men and women.Colon cancer is very real and can happen to anyone. It is recommended to self test your colon once a year, remember, one simple test every year can help save your life!

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Source: http://newsvision.hooobo.com/2011/10/05/colon-health-check-%E2%80%93-self-test-for-early-colon-cancer-detection/

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The Jobs legacy: Ease, elegance in technology

Steve Jobs will be remembered as a titan of business, of course. But for those of us who struggled decades ago to learn the machinations of lines of code in order to create something as elementary as a letter on a computer, Jobs will forever be associated with making modern computing simple, seamless and satisfying.

The iconic co-founder of Apple, along with Steve Wozniak, helped create a funny-looking computer named the Apple I, then II, in the 1970s that became synonymous with style and ease of use, as did dozens of products that would follow over the decades, including the Macintosh, iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. With the creation of the iTunes Store and 99-cent song downloads in 2003, he upended the digital music business at a time when it could have easily tipped in favor of piracy, a direction it was headed.

By 2008, the iTunes Store was the leading source for consumers to buy digital music, and it spawned other online-buying websites that tried to follow its simple-to-use model. It also led to Apple's creation of the App Store in 2008 for buying programs and software for the iPhone, and this year, the Mac itself.

  1. Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

    1. Updated 4 minutes ago 10/6/2011 1:58:47 AM +00:00 Apple co-founder?Steve Jobs dies at 56
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The wireless world was completely revolutionized by the release of the iPhone in 2007. At that time, the word "smartphone" was largely equated with BlackBerrys, the standard bearer for the business class. Jobs saw the iPhone as a mobile computing device, and not just a phone, for everyone ? something his competitors did not grasp at that time.

'I'll always stay connected with Apple'
Jobs' failing health ? he was diagnosed with rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2004, and had a liver transplant in 2009 ? was obvious to all who saw photos of the world's most famous CEO in recent years in his trademark blue jeans and black turtleneck.

Despite taking a leave of absence from Apple earlier this year, he did make a few public appearances to unveil new products ? still the showman that he was known to be, with his trademark, "And... one more thing"to deliver the big reveal, whether it was a new Mac or iPhone.

But at each of his subsequent public appearance, he seemed a little more frail and a little less energetic than the time before, the turtlenecks looser, the blue jeans baggier.

Apple fans and followers were devastated by his letter of resignation Aug. 24, in which he wrote: "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come."

It was an ominous sign from the man who said, in 1985, "I?ll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I?ll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry."

But the threads of the tapestry were fraying. Jobs asked in his letter of resignation to remain as chairman of Apple's board, holding out, as he did so defiantly about many things ? products, software, design, marketing ? until the end.

Some had hoped Jobs would even make an appearance at Tuesday's unveiling of the new iPhone, nearly six weeks after his resignation. But he did not.

A telling speech
The year after his cancer diagnosis, when Jobs was 50, he gave the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Stanford University. It's an oft-quoted speech, because it was such a personal one. Jobs the showman was quite the opposite when it came to family matters. But in the speech, he shared his thoughts about many personal things, including his own life ? and death.

"No one wants to die," he said. "Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true."

That was typical Jobs: Dramatic and yet no-nonsense all in the same breath.

"This stuff doesn?t change the world. It really doesn?t," he said about technology in a Wired magazine interview, eight years before he was diagnosed with cancer.

"I?m sorry, it?s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We?re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It?s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much ? if at all."

Related: Apple-cofounder Steve Jobs dies at 56

But Jobs changed technology and how the everyday person used it.

"His impact on the world of technology and American business can not be underestimated," said Tim Bajarin,a technology consultant who attended the Apple shareholders? meeting in January 1984, where the first Macintosh was unveiled.

"His simple vision of creating products that he would want ? ones that were elegant and easy to use, is what drove him and Apple to spectacular success."

In a 1985 interview with Playboy, not long after the first Macintosh came out, Jobs said, "We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn?t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren?t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build."

Telling, too, were his remarks about the quality of the build of the Mac, which was ? and still is ? pricier than the average computer.

"When you?re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you?re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it," he said in the interview. "You?ll know it?s there, so you?re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through."

'He basically went on his gut'
Ken Auletta, in a recent interview with CNBC, likened Jobs' legacy to that of inventor and scientist Thomas Edison's a century ago.

While Jobs wasn't a scientist or inventor, he said, Jobs "invented and popularized and conceived products that all of us use, and have changed not only all of our lives, but the lives of many businesses that he's disrupted."

Related: Stars react to the news of Steve Jobs' death

Like Edison, Jobs "was a great businessman. and that's unusual to have that kind of combination," said Auletta, a long-time technology and business writer and author, and columnist for The New Yorker.

And he took a path that is anathema to most modern business execs today, Auletta said: He "never did market research ? he basically went on his gut ... because he understood that people couldn't know what they would like when they had never seen it before."

Indeed, the most recent example of that was the iPad. A year before Jobs announced it in January 2010, there were plenty news stories about the then-unnamed tablet that Apple was working on, and in fact had started working on before the iPhone.

Many analysts and commentators dismissed it as the kind of Jobsian product that would go the way of the infamous Mac Cube computer or hockey puck mouse, but even faster because there was no need for a tablet the way that Jobs envisioned it.

Even more ridicule followed when it was named the iPad. But Jobs, and Apple, had the last laugh. Since its release in April 2010, nearly 30 million iPads have been sold. Competitors have been churning out their own versions non-stop; none of them can touch the iPad in terms of success.

In large part, that's because no matter what Apple's tablet is called, it is one of the easiest devices to use ? and it has the force of the App Store, with more than 90,000 programs for the iPad alone, behind it. No competitor has yet to match that.

The iPhone has more than 425,000 apps; Google's Android phones ? almost as easy to use as the iPhone, and the other 800-pound gorilla now in the mobile landscape ? has more than 261,00 available.

Not everything Jobs did turned to gold. Several products were failures , both before and after his return to Apple.

'Your time is limited'
In 1985, Wozniak left Apple, but Jobs was forced out after clashes with members of Apple?s board of directors, including John Sculley, the former PepsiCo president Jobs brought to Apple to help run the company.

Jobs ? acerbic, demanding, difficult, often cruel to the "fools" and mere mortals he did not suffer ? was "devastated" by the ouster.

Still, Jobs reflected in that 2005 speech at Stanford, "it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

Consultant Bajarin said he met with Jobs on the second day after he came back to Apple in 1997. The company languished for much of the 12 years he was gone from it.

"At the time, Apple was $1 billion in the red and in serious trouble," Bajarin said. "So I asked him how he planned to save Apple. He said that he would go back and meet the need of their core customers. And then he said something that at the time puzzled me: He said he would pay close attention to industrial design when creating products. Not long after that, he gave us the candy-colored Macs that broke the mold of what a PC should look like."

Indeed, what followed was not only the iMac in 1998, but the iPod in 2001, iTunes Store two years later, and the iPhone in 2007 ? as well as some duds like the Cube (2000) and Apple TV (2007), the latter still an anemic offering.

In "over 30 years of covering Steve Jobs as an analyst, I saw him at his highs and lows," Bajarin said. "But even in his lows, he never took his eye off of the vision of creating products that were stylish and simple to use."

And for much of the past decade, Jobs also heeded his own advice, given at that 2005 commencement speech:

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life," he said. "Don't be trapped by dogma ? which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice."

Most importantly, he added: "Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44294819/ns/technology_and_science/

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Tigers top Yanks, even series

Scherzer takes no-hitter into sixth inning as Detroit wins 5-3

Image: ValverdeGetty Images

Tigers closer Jose Valverde gave up two runs in the ninth but held on to beat the Yankees on Sunday.

updated 6:43 p.m. ET Oct. 2, 2011

NEW YORK - Detroit closer Jose Valverde held off a furious New York ninth-inning rally and the Tigers avoided a major slip-up, beating the Yankees 5-3 on a rainy Sunday and evening their best-of-five AL playoff series at one game apiece.

Down 5-1, the Yankees scored twice in the ninth. Helped when Detroit catcher Alex Avila lost his footing on the slick on-deck circle while chasing a foul pop that would've been the final out, New York got a chance to win it.

"It's a little hard. That's what happens sometimes," Valverde said.

After his popup landed untouched, Curtis Granderson drew a walk. With two outs and two on, Robinson Cano came to the plate.

Cano, who hit a grand slam and had six RBIs as the Yankees won the opener, wiped away raindrops from his helmet and then hit a routine groundball to end it.

"All of a sudden, against anybody - but particularly against a team like them with the short porch in right field - it was not a good feeling," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "But it worked out OK."

Tigers starter Max Scherzer pitched no-hit ball into the sixth before Cano blooped an opposite-field single to left.

Miguel Cabrera's two-run homer in the first off Freddy Garcia gave Scherzer an early edge, and the Tigers took a 4-0 lead into the eighth.

Granderson hit a solo homer off Tigers reliever Joaquin Benoit in the eighth. Pretty soon, the rain - and all the drama - filled Yankee Stadium.

Game 3 is Monday at Detroit. In an ace rematch, of sorts, CC Sabathia is scheduled to start for the Yankees against Justin Verlander. The two All-Stars faced each other in the series opener Friday night, but the game was suspended after only 1 1/2 innings because of rain.

The Yankees lost three of four this year at Detroit and are 22-25 at Comerica Park since it opened in 2000. It's one of only two AL stadiums where New York has a losing record.

Playing on the scheduled travel day, the Tigers now fly home with a chance to take command of the series, just as they did in 2006, when they lost the opener in New York before sweeping three straight.

Perhaps planning to play two more days in a row in Detroit, Yankees manager Joe Girardi did not use his top late-game relievers, Rafael Soriano and Dave Robertson, and Detroit added a run in the ninth on Don Kelly's RBI single for a 5-1 lead.

So Valverde entered in the ninth with a four-run lead. He led the majors in going 49 of 49 in save chances this year, and the Tigers were a perfect 83-0 this season when taking an edge into the ninth.

But this was not a save situation for Valverde, and he was far from perfect.

Nick Swisher sent Valverde's first pitch over the right-field wall for a home run. Jorge Posada followed with his first triple of the year and Russell Martin walked. With crowd rooting for a rally, Andruw Jones hit a sacrifice fly that made it 5-2.

Derek Jeter struck out, and the rain that has hounded this playoff series from the start returned in buckets. Granderson then lifted his foul pop near the Detroit dugout and Avila tracked it.

But the All-Star catcher slipped on the mat in the on-deck circle, lost his balance and had no play. Given another chance, Granderson drew a walk that sent him to first base as the tying run.

Cano and Valverde both did their best to stay dry - the Yankees' star asked for a towel to wipe off his helmet, the Tigers' excitable reliever tried to tuck away the ball in his glove to keep his grip.

With the crowd roaring, the game ended with a simple grounder to second base.

Cabrera took advantage of the short right field porch in the Bronx to give Detroit a 2-0 lead. The AL's top hitter this year added an RBI single in a two-run second that began with a throwing error by Jeter.

Making his postseason debut, the 27-year-old Scherzer excelled. He gave up two hits, struck out five and walked four. He was lifted for Benoit with a 4-0 lead after allowing a walk and a single to Jorge Posada to open the seventh as ominous clouds settled over the ballpark.

Benoit had not given up a run in his last 22 outings and he retired Martin, then struck out pinch-hitter Eric Chavez as it began to pour, sending fans running for cover.

Jeter came up with runners on first and second for the second time in the game and struck out looking with rain drops dotting his batting helmet.

Umpires never called for the tarp and blue skies returned about 10 minutes later in the top of the eighth in a game that began with players wearing sunglasses after two days of wet weather.

Benoit gave up Granderson's to start the eighth but got Alex Rodriguez, 0 for 8 in the series, and Mark Teixeira to pop out, eliciting boos from many of the 50,596 in attendance.

NOTES: Andy Pettitte, the Yankees' stalwart Game 2 starter for five World Series championship teams, threw out the ceremonial first pitch. His wife, Laura, sang the national anthem. ... The Yankees had won seven straight division series games. They swept Minnesota in 2009 and '10 and won Game 1 Saturday. ... Benoit struck out the final seven batters he faced in the regular season. ... Cabrera stole second in the eighth. He had two steals in the regular season. ... Ramon Santiago had two sacrifice bunts. ... The Tigers handed the Yankees a rare day-game defeat. New York was a major league best 44-12 (.786) during the afternoon in the regular season, the best winning percentage in the modern era.

? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Tigers top Yanks, even series

Detroit closer Jose Valverde held off a furious New York ninth-inning rally and the Tigers avoided a major slip-up, beating the Yankees 5-3 on a rainy Sunday and evening their best-of-five AL playoff series at one game apiece.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/44750100/ns/sports-baseball/

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Finance And Business | Sources of Taxes in Less and More ...

Personal Income and Property Taxes: Personal income taxes yield much less revenue as a proportion of GDP in-less developed than more developed nations. People with higher incomes theoretically pay a larger percentage of that income in taxes. It would be administratively too costly and economically regressive to attempt to collect substantial income taxes from the poor. But the fact remains that most LDC governments have not been persistent enough in collecting taxes owed by the very wealthy. Moreover, in countries where the ownership of property is heavily concentrated and therefore represents the major determinant of unequal incomes (e.g., most of Asia and Latin America), property taxes can be an efficient and administratively simple mechanism both for generating public revenues and for correcting gross inequalities in income distribution. But in a World Bank survey, in only one of the 22 countries surveyed did the property tax constitute more than 4.2% of total public revenues. Moreover, in spite of much public rhetoric about reducing income inequalities, the share of property taxes as well as overall direct taxation has remained roughly the same for the majority of developing countries over the past two decades. Clearly, this phenomenon cannot be attributed to government tax-collecting inefficiencies as much as to the political and economic power and influence of the large landowning and other dominant classes in many Asian and Latin American countries. The political will to carry out development plans must therefore include the will to extract public revenue from the most accessible sources to finance development projects. If the former is absent, the latter will be too.

Corporate Income Taxes: Taxes on corporate profits, of both domestically and foreign-owned companies, amount to less than 3% of GDP in most developing countries, compared with more than 6% in developed nations. LDC governments tend to offer all sorts of tax incentives and concessions to manufacturing and commercial enterprises. Typically, new and foreign enterprises are offered long periods (sometimes up to 15 years) of tax exemption and thereafter take advantage of generous investment depreciation allowances, special tax write-offs, and other measures to lessen their tax burden. In the case of multinational foreign enterprises, the ability of LDC governments to collect substantial taxes is often frustrated. These locally run enterprises are frequently able to shift profits to partner companies in countries offering the lowest levels of taxation through transfer pricing.

Indirect Taxes on Commodities: The largest single source of public revenue in developing countries is the taxation of commodities in the form of import, export, and excise duties. These taxes, which individuals and corporations pay indirectly through their purchase of commodities, are relatively easy to assess and collect. This is especially true in the case of foreign-traded commodities, which must pass through a limited number of frontier ports and are usually handled by a few wholesalers. The ease of collecting such taxes is one reason why countries with extensive foreign trade typically collect a greater proportion of public revenues in the form of import and export duties than countries with limited external trade. For example, in open economies with up to 40% of gross national income (GNI) derived from foreign trade, an average import duty of 25% will yield a tax revenue equivalent of 10% of GNI. By contrast, in countries like India and Brazil with only about 7% of GNI derived from exports, the same tariff rate would yield only 2% of GNI in equivalent tax revenues. One further point about these taxes, often overlooked, must be mentioned. Import and export duties, in addition to representing a major source of public revenue in many LDCs can also be a substitute for the corporate income tax. To the extent that importers are unable to pass on to local consumers the full costs of the tax, an import duty can serve as a proxy tax on the profits of the importer (often a foreign company) and only parity a tax on the local consumer. Similarly, an export duty can be an effective way of taxing the profits of producing companies, including locally based multinational firms that practice transfer pricing. But export duties designed to generate revenue should not be raised to the point of discouraging local producers from expanding their export production to any significant extent.

In selecting commodities to be taxed, whether in the form of duties on imports and exports or excise taxes on local commodities, certain general economic and administrative principles must be followed to minimize the cost of securing maximum revenue. First, the commodity should be imported or produced by a relatively small number of licensed firms so that evasion can be controlled: Second, the price elasticity of demand for the commodity should be low so that total demand is not choked by the rise in consumer prices that results from the tax. Third, the commodity should have a high income elasticity of demand so that as incomes rise, more tax revenue will be collected. Fourth, for equity purposes, it is best to tax commodities like cars, refrigerators, imported fancy foods, and household appliances, which are consumed largely by the upper-income groups, while forgoing taxation on items of mass consumption such as basic foods, simple clothing, and household utensils, even though these may satisfy the first three criteria. The conventional wisdom in recent years has been that switching to a broad-based value-added tax (VAT) would improve economic efficiency; encouraged by development agencies, such tax reforms have accordingly been undertaken in several LDCs. However, this approach has been challenged recently. In particular, welfare may be worsened when the ability of the informal economy to remain effectively untaxed introduces new distortions in the economy. The impact on human capital accumulation raises further complexities.


Article Source:?http://www.BharatBhasha.com
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Article Added on Sunday, October 2, 2011

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Whereas financial policy deals with money, interest, and credit allocation, fiscal policy focuses on government taxation and expenditure. Together they represent the bulk of public-sector activities. Most stabilization attempts have concentrated on cutting government expenditures to achieve budgetary balance. But the burden of resource mobilization to finance essential public developmental efforts must come from the revenue side. Public domestic and foreign borrowing can fill some savings gaps....

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The reasons why developing nations have usually been eager to accept aid, even in its most stringent and restrictive forms, have been given much less attention than the reasons why donors provide aid. The major reason is probably economic. Developing countries have often tended to accept the proposition - typically advanced by developed-country economists and supported by reference to success stories like Taiwan, Israel, and South Korea to the exclusion of many more failures - that aid is a...

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In developed nations, central banks conduct a wide range of banking, regulatory, and supervisory functions. They have substantial public responsibilities and a broad array of executive powers. Their major activities can be grouped into five general functions: (1) Issuer of currency and manager of foreign reserves: Central banks print money, distribute notes and coins, intervene in foreign-exchange markets to regulate the national currency's rate of exchange with other currencies, and manage...

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God and Profits: How the Catholic Church Is Making A Comeback in Cuba (Time.com)

It's been a year of resurrection for Cuba's Roman Catholic Church. Last November, it opened a new seminary ? the first since Fidel Castro's communist revolution all but shut down the church 50 years ago. In May, Cuba's bishops finished brokering the release of 115 political prisoners. Though education is strictly the role of the regime, Catholic dioceses have been able to expand their training of teachers, civic leaders and entrepreneurs ? they even offer that iconic capitalist degree, the M.B.A. A statue of Cuba's Catholic patroness, La Virgen de la Caridad (Our Lady of Charity), is being hailed by large, devoted crowds as it tours the island before her 400th anniversary next year. "It demonstrates a spiritual desire in Cubans," Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Cuba's top prelate, told me. It is, he adds, "a return to God."

But any sense of exultation by church leaders is tempered by a familiar feeling of persecution. Its role in the prisoner releases has been questioned by critics who accuse the church of accepting the regime's onerous condition that the freed dissidents go into exile. (Most did leave for Spain, but Ortega insists it was by choice and not part of any deal.) Conservative Cuban Americans like U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, have branded Ortega a government "collaborator" because they feel he's too quiet about human rights. Meanwhile, progovernment militants are harassing dissident groups like the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White), prisoners' wives and other relatives outside Catholic churches in the capital, Havana, and cities like Santiago. (See pictures of Fidel Castro's years in power.)

The church is discovering that being the first ? and only ? alternative institution to the Cuban revolution is both a blessing and a curse. As President Ra?l Castro, who took over for his ailing older brother Fidel in 2008, tries to engineer politically perilous economic reforms in his severely cash-strapped nation, he seems to have decided the church is the only noncommunist entity he can trust to aid those transitions without seriously challenging his rule. Speaking to the National Assembly in August, Ra?l even offered a mea culpa for decades of blacklisting "Cubans with religious beliefs." Says Ortega: "We're breathing an atmosphere of change, feeling a moment when there are no more confrontations" between church and state.

But confrontation is exactly what many Castro critics crave. What good is the church's return to the Cuban center stage, they ask, if it doesn't spark democratic change, as the Polish church did a generation ago in Eastern Europe? The clergymen plead for patience. Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, who has aided the Cuban church's revival, says his counterparts there are "opening new space for individual initiative and independent thought," which they believe could help hasten communism's demise when Fidel, 85, and Ra?l, 80, die. But Ortega warns against the church "overreaching," and Wenski says that it also wants to promote "a sense of reconciliation" among Cubans. (See visions of Cuba through an artist's drawings.)

Those sentiments are at odds with the inevitable expectation among the regime's opponents ? and a fear among Castro loyalists ? that the church will lead a Caribbean Spring. "For many," says Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, "the [church] is simply moving too slowly."

That may be a harsh judgment, given how far the church has come in a relatively short time. The Jesuit-educated Fidel declared Cuba an atheist state in the 1960s: he banned Catholic media, expropriated church schools and exiled or hounded out 3,500 priests and nuns. Only 200 clerics remained to minister to millions of Cuban Catholics. The openly faithful, including priests like Ortega, were often sent to labor camps for "re-education."

The church began to regain its footing in the 1980s, but its fortunes rose with the economy's collapse in the 1990s, after the fall of Cuba's benefactor, the Soviet Union. Sensing the usefulness of Catholic aid organizations like Caritas, whose Cuba chapter Ortega founded in 1991, Fidel proclaimed the island merely a "secular" state. Then, in 1998, he welcomed a historic visit by Pope John Paul II. The planning of that event, says Wenski, was a watershed: "It gave Catholics there a new confidence and planted the seeds of civil society." That was evidenced by new Catholic publications like Vitral magazine, one of the island's first independent media.

But it wasn't until the more pragmatic Ra?l succeeded Fidel that the church stepped up as a political as well as spiritual player. Some clergy, like Havana Vicar General Carlos Manuel de C?spedes, forged diplomatic ties with the all-powerful Cuban Communist Party; others began testing the limits of social dialogue from the pulpit, like the outspoken Rev. Jos? Conrado Rodr?guez of eastern Santiago province, who sent Ra?l a letter in 2009 complaining of "constant and unjustifiable human-rights violations" in Cuba. Though closely watched by the state, Rodr?guez has not been jailed.

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In early 2010, Cuba's bishops started the unprecedented mediation, along with Spain, between Ra?l and dissident groups, leading to the prisoner release. The church had a special stake in the matter, since most of the prisoners belonged to the Christian Liberation Movement started by the prominent dissident Oswaldo Pay?; they'd been arrested in 2003 as part of one of Fidel's most severe crackdowns. Nonetheless, says the University of Miami's Gomez, "the church saw an opportunity to get these people out of their miserable condition ? and by doing so, it feels it succeeded in gaining new prestige that can help it influence democratic and market reform in Cuba that much more." Still, Gomez and others worry that the departure of so many of those prisoners from Cuba ? by choice or under pressure ? leaves the impression that the church, far from leveraging its clout with Ra?l, has instead been co-opted by him. (See a video on young Cuban-Americans: Not their parents' politics.)

But hopes that the church can do to the Castros what it did to East European communist regimes are vastly overblown. In Poland the clergy could galvanize democracy groups like Solidarity because the church enjoyed popular support. Even before the Castros' 1959 revolution (which was backed by many priests who opposed the abuses of the Batista dictatorship), the Cuban church couldn't count on that kind of mass devotion. The island's Spanish colonial era bred a skeptical, anticlerical current, and the church competes with other spiritual outlets, including Protestant Evangelicals and the syncretic Afro-Cuban religion Santer?a ? not to mention the cult of Fidel, revered by many Cubans as a secular savior.

That reality, along with the tight grip Ra?l's military and state security still have on the country, has forced the church to maneuver more carefully. When the bullying of dissidents like the Damas de Blanco became too frequent to ignore in recent months, Ortega, 74, had his office issue a statement insisting that "violence of any kind against defenseless people has no justification." But it took pains to note that the government "has communicated to the church that no national decision center has given the order to attack these people."

As repressed as Cubans may feel politically, their bigger concerns are economic ? most earn a meager $20 per month ? and that's where the Cuban church may be making its most dramatic mark on reform. Among its most popular diocesan programs are clases de liderazgo, or leadership classes, which often teach Cubans the kind of free-enterprise skills, from bookkeeping to marketing, they'll need under Ra?l's economic reforms. (He's planning soon to cut a million state workers loose.) Ortega's Havana archdiocese, apparently with Ra?l's blessing, has partnered with a Spanish university to offer an M.B.A. program.

Caritas hopes to launch a micro-loan project to help Cubans grow beyond timbiriches ? tiny informal businesses, like vendors of homemade sweets, that the Castros have allowed since the 1990s ? to enterprises that can absorb the almost 20% of the state workforce facing layoffs. If Havana and Washington permit it, nonprofit groups in the U.S. and Europe tell TIME they're set to channel tens of millions of dollars to Caritas for a micro-loan fund. "My last hope is the church," says Roque, a thin, middle-aged former Cuban soldier who was among the throng welcoming Our Lady of Charity to Havana in September. "They help with extra food and are sending me to computer lessons."

Many of the thousands of Cubans who've attended the church workshops say they also learn how to do business legitimately after decades of often illicit hustling in a desperate black-market milieu. "The economic reforms need an ethical posture as well," says Ortega. One participant from eastern Cuba, who asked not to be identified, agrees: "I'm not really religious, but the church, as you'd expect, brings a moral framework that is sometimes missing as we struggle to get by." (See pictures of the sounds of Salsa Fade from Cuba.)

The church, though still not allowed to run schools, at least has a backdoor entry to education, and Ra?l gets Cubans the kind of entrepreneur training that state-run schools and universities often aren't equipped to offer. It may smell like collaboration to Castro foes, but Ortega argues that this arrangement allows the church to preach a social, economic and even political pluralism that could do more for democracy than the U.S.'s 49-year-long trade embargo ever did. Accomplishing more at this point may require the intervention of Our Lady of Charity.

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/religion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/time/20111002/wl_time/09171209559900

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DOES A COMPANY MAY GO WELL AND PLACE IN CONTEST OF ...

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WHY A COMPANY GOES WELL AND MAY END IN CONTEST OF CREDITORS?

Financial institutions have cut funding and both have been so suspicious with their clients that are systematically cutting the funding of working capital. We hear cases of SMEs with good levels of business profitability and liquidity problems and even solvency.

Any company can see that working capital financing needs of the working capital requirements, there is increasing because companies customers and suppliers companies have more cash flow problems. For example, customers increasingly demand that they fund. Even if that does not change the date of payment delay the delivery of the payment document. If the payment was 90 days to pay the invoice date, at this time do not usually send the note until it nears maturity. Reason ??, They do not know which bank will hold funds or because they do not want to give up not sure if they can answer the note. With suppliers something similar happens. As liquidity problems and risks, push for an advance payment and can set any maximum credit ceiling, which in practice must be paid before maturity to release new credit and reapply for more supply.

If we add the restriction of credit from financial institutions we find that more than a profitable company may be doomed to bankruptcy.

You have to devote much effort to put pressure on financial institutions that have lent money to the company to understand that if they do not increase the current financing company may be doomed to bankruptcy. Their natural tendency is to follow its general policy of reducing funding. When you have little money invested in SMEs can be displayed but when ruthless enough money already provided either are in favor of giving more funding unless they know ?convincing?. Knowing is not easy to convince. You have to know pressure, negotiate and, at the same time, convincing data and reports, business plans, budgets, cash, etc..

Arriaga Associates is providing this service to SMEs. Arriaga Associates is an expert in dialogue with financial institutions to increase financing for working capital. There are success stories in this regard. In some cases it has increased funding of working capital, refinancing of long-term debt and an increase of the same, all to avoid a bankruptcy of a company with good business. We usually say, ?better cow for milk for their meat, aliment?mosla?.

Some financial institutions have already realized the risk they have if they do not help and have developed the concept of ?Transactional Banking? as a section of the entity with which you get good customers do not fall into bankruptcy, and already step cost advantage to ask for more funding. Arriaga Associates can manage a line ?umbrella? for circulating within this tendency of some financial institutions.

Associated Arriaga get their fees in these cases largely based on the objectives achieved.

Jes?s Mar?a Ruiz de Arriaga

Economist, lawyer and consultant. Expert in finance and bankruptcy law.

Source: http://www.arriagaasociados.com/2011/10/01/does-a-company-may-go-well-and-place-in-contest-of-creditors-yes-current-issues-and-bank-financing-arriaga-partners-experts-financing-and-refinancing-for-smes-can-be-avoided-attorney-now-also-in/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=does-a-company-may-go-well-and-place-in-contest-of-creditors-yes-current-issues-and-bank-financing-arriaga-partners-experts-financing-and-refinancing-for-smes-can-be-avoided-attorney-now-also-in

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How To Make Money With Your Home Based Business | webb ...

Business gurus like Donald Trump University Trump, Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad Poor Dad and Tony Robbins Robbins Institute said the home-based businesses, including network marketing to become the largest industry the growth in the future years to come. What is needed to become a business of network marketing success? The network marketing companies offer marketing support, but can also generate leads online. Network Marketing does not get rich quick. There are many ways to grow a business: getting new customers, to convince customers to buy their products, convincing customers to buy more expensive or more profitable. Small business marketing is that not only covers the cost of advertising. Because small businesses typically have a small budget for marketing, creativity and resources to promote your business without spending a lot to gain. Diligence is required in marketing a small business that needs regular basis with your marketing plan. How to extract Company Best Network Marketing Get
Over the years, we have heard about network marketing scams and failures. Check the capitalization of part of network marketing company. Always the market large enough to support marketing efforts to sell long term. The study, if the network marketing business by leveraging technology to marketing. There are many options all in one internet network marketing business the most recommended. Internet is a network marketing business you need a debt if you choose the right set higher at the beginning, for examples ?e-commerce fulfillment, e-commerce fulfillment Canada, e-commerce fulfillment companies.

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Source: http://www.webb-babies.org/how-to-make-money-with-your-home-based-business.html

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Standardized Tests ? Mobile Broadband Is Also Becoming One Of ...

In mobile broadband connection, there are lots of plans that are available according to the user who is using that. The well known plans that are commonly in use are prepaid plans and postpaid plans. In prepaid mobilt broadband plans, the people can recharge the Mobilt Bredb?nd device which could be identified by using the unique number given to that and hence the people can use the Mobilt Bredb?nd connection till there is balance in the account of that particular Mobilt Bredb?nd number. Postpaid Mobilt Bredb?nd connection is one kind of plain in which the people can browse unlimitedly in a Mobilt Bredb?nd connection and then they can pay their bill at the end of that month. Thus both the plans of Mobilt Bredb?nd connection are getting their own way of welcome from various sorts of the people. Similarly the Mobilt Bredb?nd device is also available in various forms, like some Mobilt Bredb?nd device is looking like a pen drive which could easily be inserted into a laptop or a desktop and could easily be installed to browse the internet. Some other forms of Mobilt Bredb?nd devices are also available which will be looking like a simcard or chip. It will have a unique number which could be used in either of the postpaid plan or in the prepaid plan according to the user who is going to pay the bill and the user who is going to use it in day to day life. The mobile broadband has attained success only because of the portability which is absent in the wired internet connections. It itself has some disadvantages also like its speed. Though the companies promise to give maximum speed in the Mobilt Bredb?nd it?s not actually in front of the wired internet connections. It is possible to overcome this disadvantage also in mere future.

Source: http://standardizedtests.info/2011/09/29/mobile-broadband-is-also-becoming-one-of-the-members-in-a-family-using-internet-nowadays/

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Getting People to Kick the Cigarette Habit Pays Much More than Tobacco Taxes-and Quickly

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Image courtesy of Flickr/Ted Abbott

In 2009 California took in $839 million in taxes from the sale of cigarettes. And with its?and many other states??budget in dire straights, it is hard to turn down any extra income.

But that?s just what the state has been doing, with overall cigarette sales dropping year after year thanks to anti-smoking efforts. And these tobacco control programs aren?t free either?adding up to some $100 million per year for California alone.

So why take such a hit, with the state more than $374 billion in the hole? The payoff in medical savings more than makes up for money lost?and fast, according to a new essay published online Wednesday in The Lancet.

Tobacco use, as we well know, can lead to long, slow and expensive chronic conditions, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and respiratory problems. So getting people to stop smoking now had been expected to pay off in avoided medical costs down the road. Such long-term benefits, though, can be a tough sell in the world of short-term, election-cycle politics.

The payoffs of getting people to kick their cigarette habit are actually quite immediate, argue the essay?s authors, Stanton Glantz and Mariaelena Gonzalez, both of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at University of California, San Francisco. In the past decade evidence has been mounting to show that ?benefits of reducing smoking accrue quickly; a reduction in tobacco use rapidly decreases [non-communicable diseases] and health-care costs within one year,? they wrote.

As soon as a person stops smoking, his or her risk of a heart attack drops, and it continues to fall for five years, when it reaches levels close to those of people who have not smoked. With the number of smokers in that state having declined some 50 percent since 1985, that is presumably a lot of heart attacks?and related medical bills?avoided. But just how much?

Here?s how the numbers break down: In the first 15 years of the California tobacco control program, the state spent $1.4 billion on the initiative, during which time it also lost some $3.1 billion on tax revenue from all of the billions of packs its residents were no longer buying. Could all of that lost money possibly be made up in avoided health care expenses? Yes, more than 19 times over. With the reduction in smokers over that same 15-year period, some $86 billion in direct medical costs were avoided, Glantz and Gonzalez noted. And that does not include the extra money flowing into the economy generated by increased productivity?thanks to more, and higher quality, days of work?of the non-smokers. A similar story has played out in Arizona, where like tobacco control measures were introduced.

After last week?s U.N. General Assembly?s special session on non-communicable diseases, to which tobacco use is a major contributor worldwide, the organization recommended that ?member states implement six tobacco control policies based on the [World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control] (strong clean indoor air laws, increased price, banning of advertising and promotion, education and prevention, cessation services, and monitoring or tobacco use and prevention policies),? Glantz and Gonzalez wrote. ?However, as of 2009, less than 10 percent of the world?s population was covered? by these guidelines.

Despite the challenge of putting these recommendations into practice?and the continued opposition of the tobacco industry?the researchers noted, there is good reason to forge ahead, even from a purely economic standpoint. Policy makers and the public ?can be confident that there is good evidence showing that effective programs not only reduce tobacco use and the attendant [non-communicable diseases] in the short term, but [also] make an important contribution to curbing health care costs and improving standards of living and human capital levels immediately, with increasing benefits over time.?

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=1442fdd05de2da9b6a1f454ae9a3b890

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