This logo image released by UP shows the new logo for the Uplifting Entertainment channel, formerly known as the Gospel Music Channel. The Atlanta-based channel's focus on "uplifting and faith-friendly entertainment" will continue with an expansion of its mix of original movies, plays and series and reruns of network programs, said Brad Siegel, its vice chairman. (AP Photo/UP)
This logo image released by UP shows the new logo for the Uplifting Entertainment channel, formerly known as the Gospel Music Channel. The Atlanta-based channel's focus on "uplifting and faith-friendly entertainment" will continue with an expansion of its mix of original movies, plays and series and reruns of network programs, said Brad Siegel, its vice chairman. (AP Photo/UP)
This undated image released by UP shows Charles Humbard the president and CEO for the Uplifting Entertainment channel, formerly known as the Gospel Music Channel. The Atlanta-based channel's focus on uplifting and faith-friendly entertainment will continue with an expansion of its mix of original movies, plays and series and reruns of network programs. (AP Photo/UP)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? First it was Gospel Music Channel, then it became GMC when it expanded beyond music programming. Now the cable channel said it's changing its name again, but not its identity.
Beginning Saturday, the 8-year-old channel will be reintroduced as UP.
Don't call it a "rebranding," said Charles Humbard, the channel's president and CEO, who started his broadcasting career with his TV-minister dad, Rex Humbard, and was an executive with Discovery Networks.
"We're 'refacing' or renaming the network to be clear about what we really stand for as a brand," he said. "For us, the move to UP is a way to very succinctly say something that's always been."
The Atlanta-based channel's focus on "uplifting and faith-friendly entertainment" will continue with an expansion of its mix of original movies, plays and series and reruns of network programs, said Brad Siegel, its vice chairman.
On June 7, UP will introduce "Family Addition With Leigh Anne Tuohy," its first original reality series. Hosted by Tuohy, who was portrayed in "The Blind Side" movie, the program will follow families through the adoption process and help with a home makeover.
"Bullock Family Ranch," another reality show debuting in July, is about a Florida couple who have taken in more than two dozen teenagers whose hardships range from homelessness to gang life.
In its recent presentation to advertisers in New York, UP also announced seven new movies that include the holiday titles "Guess Who's Coming to Christmas," starring Drew Lachey, and "Silver Bells," with Bruce Boxleitner.
The programming schedule, which is bookended by the music video blocks "Uplifting Urban," ''Uplifting Pop" and "Uplifting Country," includes repeats of dramas and sitcoms including "Touched by an Angel" and "Moesha."
The ad-supported basic cable and satellite channel, available in about 62 million U.S. homes, did a road test of the new name and found significantly more people said they would watch UP over the alphabet-soup GMC.
"This is how much of a roadblock that GMC was to some people," said Siegel. "They didn't know what it stood for or what to expect."
"Its new name is more in line with the type of programming they're offering viewers," said analyst Brad Adgate of Horizon Media. "It's probably got wider appeal than gospel music."
It's also part of a trend in which generally lower-rated cable channels reboot themselves in order to boost ratings and revenue, Adgate said. He cited examples including the planned changeover of the G4 channel to Esquire Network.
GMC has been drawing its biggest viewership ? in the 300,000 range ? with theatrical movies and its original films, according to Nielsen Co. figures. It ranked among the top 50 channels for women ages 25 to 54 in 2012, according to GMC.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A suspicious letter mailed to the White House was similar to two threatening, poison-laced letters on the gun law debate sent to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the nation's most potent gun-control advocates, officials said Thursday.
The Secret Service said the letter was addressed to President Barack Obama and was intercepted by a White House mail screening facility. Two similar letters postmarked in Louisiana and sent to Bloomberg in New York and his gun control group in Washington contained traces of the deadly poison ricin.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the letter sent to Obama contained ricin. It was turned over to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force for testing and investigation.
The two Bloomberg letters, opened Friday in New York and Sunday in Washington, contained an oily pinkish-orange substance.
New York Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Thursday that all three letters apparently came from the same machine or computer and may be identical but referred specific questions to the FBI.
The body of the letter mailed to New York was addressed to "you" and referenced the gun control debate. Kelly said the unsigned letter says, in so many words: "Anyone who comes for my guns will be shot in the face." He refused to quote directly from the letter, saying he didn't want to do the author's bidding.
Bloomberg has emerged as one of the country's most important gun-control advocates, able to press his case with both his public position and his private money.
The New York letter was opened at the city's mail facility in Manhattan in a biochemical containment box, which is a part of the screening process for mayor's office mail.
"In terms of the processes and procedures that are in place now we think they worked," Kelly said. "This is sort of an effect of the post-9/11 world that we live in that these checks and facilities are in place and the system worked."
The second letter was opened Sunday by Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the Washington-based nonprofit Bloomberg started.
The letter Glaze opened tested positive for ricin initially. The other letter to Bloomberg at first tested negative but tested positive at a retest Wednesday.
The postal workers union, citing information it got in a Postal Service briefing, said the letters bore a Shreveport, La., postmark. Kelly would not comment on the origin of the letter.
Louisiana State Police spokeswoman Julie Lewis said state authorities have deferred to the FBI and have not opened an investigation. The Shreveport postal center handles mail from Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, so the letter could have come from any of those states, Lewis said.
The people who initially came into contact with the letters showed no symptoms of exposure to the poison, but three officers who later examined the New York letter experienced minor symptoms that have since abated, police said. The mayor visited the mailroom on Thursday but made no public comments on the topic.
On Wednesday, he said he didn't know why they were sent.
One of the letters "obviously referred to our anti-gun efforts, but there's 12,000 people that are going to get killed this year with guns and 19,000 that are going to commit suicide with guns, and we're not going to walk away from those efforts," said Bloomberg, adding that he didn't feel threatened.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ricin is a poison found naturally in castor beans. Symptoms can include difficulty breathing, vomiting and redness on the skin depending on how the affected person comes into contact with the poison.
The letters were the latest in a string of toxin-laced missives, but authorities would not say whether the letters to Bloomberg and Obama were believed to be linked to any other recent case.
In Washington state, a 37-year-old was charged last week with threatening to kill a federal judge in a letter that contained ricin. About a month earlier, letters containing the substance were addressed to Obama, a U.S. senator and a Mississippi judge. One of the letters postmarked in Memphis, Tenn., was traced back to Tupelo, Miss., and a Mississippi man was arrested.
Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which now counts more than 700 mayors nationwide as members. It lobbies federal and state lawmakers, and it aired a spate of television ads this year urging Congress to expand background checks and pass other gun-control measures after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. The background check proposal failed in a Senate vote in April, and other measures gun-control advocates wanted ? including a ban on sales of military-style assault weapons ? have stalled.
Separately, Bloomberg also has made political donations to candidates who share his desire for tougher gun restrictions. His super PAC, Independence USA, put $2.2 million into a Democratic primary this winter for a congressional seat in Illinois, for example. Bloomberg's choice, former state lawmaker Robin Kelly, won.
___
Associated Press Writers Jennifer Peltz and Frank Eltman in New York and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.
LONDON (AP) ? Unemployment across the 17 EU countries that use the euro hit another record high in April ? and appears to be on course to hit 20 million this year in what would be another gloomy landmark for the currency bloc.
Eurostat, the European Union's statistics office, said Friday that the unemployment rate rose to 12.2 percent in April from the previous record of 12.1 percent the month before. In 2008, before the worst of the financial crisis, it was around 7.5 percent.
A net 95,000 people joined the ranks of the unemployed, taking the total to 19.38 million. At that pace, unemployment in the currency bloc ? which has a population of about 330 million ? could breach the 20 million mark by the end of the year.
Eurozone economies have been suffering because their governments are trying to improve public finances through aggressive spending cuts and tax increases. The problem is they've done it at a time when much of the private sector has been unable to plug the gap in activity left by the retreating state, unlike in the U.S., which has opted for a more gradual approach to debt reduction.
The unemployment figures mask big disparities among the euro countries. While over one in four people are unemployed in Greece and Spain, Germany's rate is stable at a low 5.4 percent.
The differences are particularly stark when looking at the rates of youth unemployment. While Germany's youth unemployment stands at a relatively benign 7.5 percent, well over half of people aged 16 to 25 in Greece and Spain are jobless. Italy's rate has ticked up to over 40 percent.
"Youth joblessness at these levels risks permanently entrenched unemployment, lowering the rate of sustainable growth in the future," said Tom Rogers, senior economic adviser at Ernst & Young.
The differences reflect the varying performance of the euro economies ? Greece, for example, is in its sixth year of a savage recession. Germany's economy has until recently been growing at a healthy pace.
As a whole, the eurozone is in its longest recession since the euro was launched in 1999. The six quarters of economic decline is longer even than the recession that followed the financial crisis of 2008, though it's not as deep.
By contrast the U.S. economy has been growing steadily since the end of its recession in June 2009 and the jobs market has started to improve, with the unemployment rate falling to 7.5 percent in April.
Though the eurozone is the epicenter of Europe's debt crisis, other countries in the region are struggling to recover as well. Some, like Britain, are also pursuing deficit reduction measures at a time when demand in their main export market ? the eurozone ? is falling. As a result, the wider 27-nation EU, which includes the non-euro countries such as Britain and Poland, has seen unemployment ratchet higher in recent months. In April it was flat at 11 percent.
One of the reasons behind Europe's economic decline is governments' focus on cutting debt aggressively by raising taxes and slashing spending programs. With many governments still pulling back on spending and business and consumer confidence still low, economists do not expect any dramatic recovery to emerge over the coming months.
The sharpest change in unemployment rates among the 17 euro countries was in Cyprus, which saw its jobless rate rise to 15.6 percent from 14.5 percent.
The small Mediterranean island nation became the fifth euro country to seek financial assistance in March. The difference with the other bailouts was that the country was asked to raise a big chunk of its rescue money from bank depositors ? a shock decision that led to a near two-week shutdown of the banks and battered economic confidence.
The European Central Bank has sought to make life easier for Europe's hard-pressed businesses and consumers by cutting its main interest rate to the record low 0.5 percent earlier this month.
Another cut is possible, but most economists say it's unlikely, even though the inflation rate is still under the ECB's target of just below 2 percent.
Eurostat said Friday that inflation in the eurozone rose to 1.4 percent in the year to May from the 38-month low of 1.2 percent recorded in April. It attributed the increase to rising food, alcohol and tobacco prices.
Analysts said the ECB is more likely to take measures to shore up lending to small and medium-sized businesses, one of the main job creators in Europe. Such companies are currently not taking out many loans for fear the economy might worsen and because banks are charging high rates.
"So far the ECB's actions have not translated into lower lending rates for businesses and households, failing to boost activity," said Anna Zabrodzka, economist at Moody's Analytics.
The Qantas Spirit of Youth Awards Visual Design & Communications category is currently open for entries with the entry deadline set for 2pm AEST, Tuesday, June 4th.
The Award offers visual designers aged between 18 and 30 the opportunity to choose their own adventure, with $5,000 worth of air travel enabling them to jet off wherever inspiration calls.
ENTER HERE
The lucky and talented winner will also receive $5,000 cash and will have their career propelled by a 12 month mentorship under the guidance of Vince Frost, one of Australia's most recognised designer.
Last year's winner was Melbourne based graphic designer and art director, Luke Brown, who attended the Cannes Lions festival in France as part of his prize.
The competition is open to visual designers working in all styles and formats:? print design, web design, illustration, collage, printmaking, graphic design, books, magazines, posters, album covers, motion graphics.- all welcome.
The Qantas Spirit of Youth Awards (SOYA 365) has been the leading grants program for emerging creative talent for over nine years.
SOYA365 is a creative melting pot spanning 11 key creative disciplines including interactive gaming, music, writing, film making, architecture and more.
May 30, 2013 ? On May 20, 2013, the Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., reached an unprecedented milestone. The team mated the instrument and spacecraft decks to form the fourth and final MMS observatory. This is the first time Goddard has simultaneously engineered this many observatories, or spacecraft, for a single mission.
"The logistics of building four of the same thing is a new challenge, one that really makes us push the boundaries of how we operate," said Brent Robertson the MMS deputy project manager at Goddard. "These are first generation, new science observatories, and we've built them all at the same time. It's been like a very intense game of musical chairs."
The large Goddard MMS clean room can hold all four spacecraft at once, and a detailed schedule keeps track of how the team is moving from task to task. The MMS team has cause for pride in their work: building four observatories for a single mission, when many don't have the chance to build four in an entire career.
Due to launch in late 2014, MMS will investigate how the sun and Earth's magnetic fields connect and disconnect, explosively transferring energy from one to the other -- a fundamental physical process that occurs throughout the universe, known as magnetic reconnection. Using four spacecraft will provide MMS with the multipoint measurements needed to determine whether reconnection events occur in an isolated locale, everywhere within a larger region at once, or by traveling across space.
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It's almost time to hit the beach, but you're still about 25 pounds away from your weight loss goal. Sure, it's a tall order. But you can shed weight quickly, depending on how much you have to lose and how focused you remain.
Oftentimes, simple, easy changes can help you see results right away. That said, patience is an important part of the successful weight-loss formula. The pounds didn't get packed on overnight; it's going to take some time to establish healthy eating and exercise habits, and shed the not-so-healthy ones. If you follow these 10 steps, it won't feel like mission impossible, and you'll be more likely to keep the weight off.
4 Ways to Make Exercise a Lasting Habit
Tips For Lasting Weight Loss
Take some time to identify the most likely culprits of the unwanted weight. Are fried or sugary foods too tough to resist? Is it hard to avoid noshing whenever free food is within arm's reach? Are you too tired and busy to shop and cook healthy meals? Or do emotions--like boredom, anxiety, nervousness, depression, and joy--send you straight to the fridge? For most people, a wide variety of factors lead them to pack on unwanted pounds. The answers can lead you to your best first steps. If intense emotions are driving you to eat, identify alternate routes that will offer relief without derailing your weight-loss goals. You might reach out to a friend, get more sleep, sink into the distraction of a good book or movie.
Tips For Lasting Weight Loss
It's difficult to lose weight by just cutting calories. Research shows that reducing calorie intake through diet and exercise is the most effective way to shed unwanted pounds and keep them off. It's ideal to develop a regular exercise routine of three to four times a week (Our Start Walking plan can help you get into the habit of regular exercise with four days of walking and stick with it.) But also try to incorporate more activity whenever you can. Take the long way to the restroom, take the stairs rather than the elevator, park your car as far as you can from the front door. Set a timer to chime every hour so that you get up from your seat. Even standing rather than sitting at your desk will help. Studies have shown that standing at your desk during an eight-hour workday will burn 163 more calories than if you were sitting.
Running vs. Walking for Weight Loss
Tips For Lasting Weight Loss
Everyone has their weak moments-situations where they find it tough to make healthy choices. Make a list of those occasions and settings where your diet tends to take a detour. No healthy lunch options at work? Pack your own. Devour everything in the fridge in the 10 anxious minutes after you walk in from work? Snack on the way home, and have a pre-cooked dinner that you can reheat right when you get home. If you go off the rails late at night, once the kids are in bed and you have a chance to decompress, think of another activity far from the kitchen that helps you relax. Try a book, a shower, a call to a friend, a hot bath, a fun movie. Hate to cook or don't have time for it? Get a book or order premade foods or convenient healthy foods.
Tips For Lasting Weight Loss
Fill Up on Fruits and Veggies
You can eat large portions without loading up on calories-as long as you're eating fruits and vegetables. Compared with other foods, produce is low in calories and high on nutrients, fiber, and water, all of which will help you lose weight without being hungry. Fill half your plate at every meal with fruits and vegetables. Fill the other half with whole grains and lean protein--lean cuts of meat, beans, tofu, or low-fat dairy--to keep you feeling fuller for longer.
TRY THIS: 20 Best Weight Loss Foods
Tips For Lasting Weight Loss
Don't Drink Your Calories
Stick to calorie-free beverages like water or hot tea. A 20-ounce soda can pack 240 calories and 65 grams of sugar. Even a grande hot chocolate with fat-free milk has 360 calories. Add whipped cream, and you have an entire meal's worth of calories before you've taken your first bite. If you love specialty drinks, choose a smaller size with fat-free or low-fat milk and skip the whipped cream and syrups.
Tips For Lasting Weight Loss
Don't Do Anything Drastic
It's hard to feel bad about your body or have a burning desire to be thinner. Everyone wants to get thin now. But crash diets that promise to help you do that-by limiting you to a small group of foods, drastically reducing your calorie intake, or requiring you to buy certain engineered foods, won't work. Even if you lose weight fast, you'll likely regain the weight and then some. If you want the weight loss to last for life, you need to make changes that you can sustain for life.
Tips For Lasting Weight Loss
Set Smart Calorie Targets
Eating three meals each day keeps your metabolism revved, keeps you burning calories, and prevents you from getting so ravenously hungry that you eventually eat everything that's not tied down. If you restrict your meals to less than three per day, you'll be more likely to go overboard as soon as anything edible is within arm's reach.
Women: Aim for 300 to 500 calories a meal
Men: Aim for 400 to 600 calories a meal
Women and men: Aim for a 100- to 200-calorie snack
PLUS: 16 Snacks That Won't Ruin Your Diet
Tips For Lasting Weight Loss
Studies show that people who track the calories they consume lose weight and keep it off more than those who don't. And there's good reason. When you have to track your calories, you see the sources of empty calories that are low on nutrients. In order to accurately track calories, you have to measure out portions--another practice that's proven to aid weight loss. Read this article on how to keep a food diary.
Tips For Lasting Weight Loss
Don't Make Weight the Only Measure of Success
Even as you get fitter, you may not see results on the scale. Keep in mind: muscle weighs more than fat, and hydration, hormones, time of day, and other factors can all have an impact on the numbers on the scale. Don't measure success with the scale alone. Are your pants getting looser? Are you getting more compliments? Do you have more energy? What about your blood pressure, cholesterol, and other markers of chronic disease: Which way are they moving? Learn more about methods--beyond the bathroom scale-to measure your success.
Tips For Lasting Weight Loss
Just Practice; Don't Try to Be Perfect
Realize that it's okay to indulge on occasion; one extra treat will not doom your dieting efforts. Everyone goes overboard from time to time. When you do, try not to wallow in guilt or anxiety about it. You can't control the past, all you can control is the choice you can make right now. Work in enough foods that feel like rewards on a regular basis so that you don't feel deprived and primed to binge on a regular basis. Remember, it takes time, effort, and practice to form new healthy eating habits.
May 29, 2013 ? Mexican American mothers' formal immigration status affects the educational achievement of their children and even their grandchildren, according to a study written by Penn State and University of California, Irvine, sociologists and released by the US2010 Project at Brown University.
Based on a large-scale survey of second-generation Mexican young adults in Los Angeles, the study finds that those whose mothers were authorized immigrants or U.S. citizens averaged more than two years more schooling than those whose mothers entered the country illegally. The researchers estimate that more than a third of the education gap between third-generation Mexicans and native whites is attributable to the legacy effects of grandparents' unauthorized status.
"The fact that Mexican-origin children appear to fall behind most of the rest of the population in terms of educational attainment has long been a concern of researchers and policy-makers," said James Bachmeier, research associate, Population Research Institute, Penn State. "This report indicates that this derives in large part from the fact that many of these children are raised in families in which one or both parents lack legal status."
This study and future studies may help guide the national debate on immigration reform, said Bachmeier, who worked with Jennifer Van Hook, director of Population Research Institute and professor of sociology and demography, and Mark Leach, former assistant professor of rural sociology and demography, both of Penn State.
"The extent to which parental legal status shapes the opportunities of U.S.-born children warrants more attention in the future, especially as Congress discusses comprehensive immigration reform," said Bachmeier.
According to the study, legalization may help the children and even grandchildren of immigrants increase their educational attainment.
"The implication of our findings is that clear pathways to legalization can boost Mexican American educational attainment even as late as the third generation," said Frank D. Bean, professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine. "Legislation providing the possibility of entry into full societal membership helps not only the immigrants themselves but also their children and their children's children."
The study looked closely at the trajectories of parental immigration status. In 10 percent of cases, the mother was U.S.-born but married to an immigrant spouse, and about 44 percent entered the country legally. It is in comparison to the children of these mothers that the researchers found a disadvantage for those whose mothers were unauthorized immigrants -- about one third of mothers.
"There are nearly 4 million children of Mexican immigrants living in this country, most of them born here," said Bean. "At present, with few pathways for their parents' legalization, they live too long in the shadows. Because America's future labor force depends so heavily on the children of immigrants, we all have a stake in their progress."
Susan K. Brown, associate professor of sociology, University of California, Irvine, also worked on the report.
Leveraging Sustainability, Social Value Creation for Improved Business Results
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When reading the daily headlines, it is not uncommon to find news about a company behaving badly. Check today?s top stories and there is probably an investigation, an executive gaffe or a serious disaster which has both business and societal costs. Increasingly, companies are being perceived as a major cause of our social, environmental and economic issues. Big banks, big oil, big mining, big insurers ? companies in these industries are perceived to be prospering at the expense of others. The legitimacy of business is being called into question. This is compounded by increased industry oversight into business and management practices, both driven by regulation and expectation.
Communities increasingly expect companies to do the right thing ? to act responsibly and keep societal well-being in mind. Consumers expect businesses to provide safe working conditions, respect the environment and support social development. Research shows people are more likely to engage with a brand or a company if it is doing something good for society.
We live in an era of new transparency and visibility. Now, consumers can turn to social media to provide feedback on a product or service. What?s more, a company?s integrity can be jeopardized by a Facebook post or tweet; consumers are eager to express their anger and dissatisfaction when companies are perceived to not be acting responsibly or in their best interest.
This poses an opportunity and a challenge for the business community. How should businesses be working with society, looking beyond profit, and focus on generating value for people and the planet?
Creating Shared Value
The ideal of building responsible business practices has been around for a long time. In 1962, Milton Friedman declared there was only one social responsibility of business ? to meet shareholder expectations and profits. Businesses could pursue practices with a social good angle in mind, as long as they generated profit. Later, in 1984, Edward Freeman introduced his corporate management theory, which asserted that other stakeholder interests ? like communities and employees ? should be valued just as much as shareholder interests when considering best business practices.
In 2011, the Harvard Business Review published a thought leadership article by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer that introduced the concept of ?shared value,? which is ?creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges. Businesses must reconnect company success with social progress. Shared value is not social responsibility, philanthropy, or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success. It is not on the margin of what companies do, but at the center.?
For companies to thrive, the communities in which they operate must thrive.? Businesses must manage the risks and seize the opportunities associated with their activities, particularly within the context of developing countries ? local communities are the customer base, the local suppliers, and the talent pool. Companies must be in tune with societal needs, and to be successful, companies must fully understand their impact on local society and execute a defined action plan to address them ? in line with their business strategy.
To manage and to create shared value, companies must be able to measure it on all dimensions: business value and societal value, short and long-lasting effects, intended and unintended, positive and negative. Also important is a clear communications strategy, both for investors and the wider public, which articulates and promulgates the contribution to society, thereby facilitating the building of positive relationships with all stakeholders.
Understanding Impacts
At my company, we take a broad perspective, going beyond just inputs and outputs to evaluate long-term outcomes of company activities and its presence in essential domains of societal progress. Social value creation is pursued through a clear management process focused on understanding and driving the triple bottom line impact ? ensuring that the long-term outcomes for local societies are considered and included when measuring business success.
The business contribution to society can be assessed according to six domains of societal progress:
Enterprise development
Infrastructure development
Governance
Community development
Quality of life
Ecosystem conditions
To gain further insight into determining impact, we worked with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development to build the Measuring Impact Framework and further developed a Societal Value Management Model. This model was created to help companies articulate local development strategies that best meet business and stakeholder expectations and includes a broad scope of analysis. The model is used as a management tool throughout the asset lifecycle to drive investment decisions and is instrumental in stakeholder engagement to improve transparency and communication. This model is currently rolled out internally and externally, to companies across a variety of industries with a desire to integrate the social value management in their business practices.
To measure and achieve maximum social value, companies should consider focusing on the four main pillars of the asset life-cycle:
Capital project management, to create competitive advantage by mitigating the social impacts and optimizing local input;
Local procurement processes, to build economic and societal value in the local communities;
Supplier development, to create a sustainable local supply chain and equip local businesses for self-sustained economic growth;
Capability development, to integrate the indigenous workforce into business performance; and
Community development, to improve social infrastructure and access to services for the local population.
In each area, companies must define a long term strategic view, define objectives and set out clear implementation plans, followed by consistent monitoring, quantitatively, with a series of targeted metrics, and qualitatively, through stakeholders consultation.
Putting Principles to Practice
There are countless opportunities to put social value into action. In several industries, social value management is considered an urgent, and sometimes even requisite, practice. In developing countries, oil and gas companies are under increasing pressure from local governments to provide solutions that are sustainable for society, in addition to their businesses. Mining companies also are anticipating increasing regulations and expectations to minimize impact on local communities.
In Denmark, DuPont was exploring possible energy savings when it discovered that during the production phase at its Grindsted plant, surplus heat was coming from the cooling towers. The energy team decided to leverage the surplus by distributing it to the Grindsted Electricity and Heating Plant (GEV). GEV delivers heat and electricity to private households and other buildings in Grindsted, where it is used for water and space heating during the winter. District heating is common in most cities in Denmark, as they are densely populated with little sprawl. This makes it possible to produce heat efficiently and subsequently supply this to customers through a network of insulated pipes. The project provided GEV an estimated heat energy supply of 12,627 MWh, enough to power 900 homes in the community. This generated savings of 1,200,000 Nm3 in natural gas at GEV and 195 MWh in electricity at the Grindsted plant. In terms of carbon footprint, this is equivalent to a reduction of 2,700 tons (MT) CO2 at GEV and 70 tons CO2 at the Grindsted site.
We have established Community Advisory Panels at nearly every global site we operate, ensuring that the frequency and type of community engagement are tailored to the individual conditions of each location. We also established wider mechanisms for funding local partnerships, such as the DuPont Community Fund. Founded in 1990, the fund has provided financial support to more than 500 global projects addressing sustainability, social progress, economic success or environmental excellence.
Managing a company?s contribution to society in a way that builds growth and well-being for present and future generations can only be achieved with a systemic strategic approach to social value creation.? This effort and forethought can be translated into a significant competitive advantage, a stronger brand and improved reputation.
Angela Fratila is in the Sustainability and Social Value Creation Practice with DuPont Sustainable Solutions.
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Bloomfire, the Austin, Texas-based startup that makes cloud-based content-sharing software for enterprises, has taken on an additional $2 million from Silver Creek Ventures as an add-on to its $8 million Series A funding round previously announced back in March. This brings the total investment into Bloomfire, which was founded in 2010, to $20 million. In addition to Silver Creek, Bloomfire's investors include Austin Ventures and Redpoint Ventures. The funding was disclosed today in a regulatory filing with the SEC, and confirmed by a Bloomfire spokesperson who provided the following statement:
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) ? Fidelity National Financial Inc. has agreed to buy Lender Processing Services Inc. for about $2.82 billion in order to broaden and diversify its business.
Lender Processing is a Jacksonville, Fla.-based technology company that services the mortgage and real estate industries. Fidelity National, also based in Jacksonville, Fla., provides title insurance, mortgage and other services.
Fidelity National will pay $33.25 per share, a 1 percent premium to Lender Processing's Friday closing price of $32.89. The companies put the cash-and-stock deal's total equity value at approximately $2.9 billion.
Lender Processing currently has about 84.9 million outstanding shares, according to FactSet.
Fidelity National will pay 50 percent of the transaction in cash and 50 percent in stock. It anticipates issuing about 57.4 million shares of its stock to Lender Processing shareholders, or about 20.2 percent of its outstanding stock.
Fidelity National said that it will combine its ServiceLink business with Lender Processing into a new holding company once the buyout is complete. Fidelity National then plans to sell a 19 percent equity stake in the holding company for $381 million to funds affiliated with Thomas H. Lee Partners LP. Fidelity National will keep the remaining interest in the holding company.
The deal allows Lender Processing to actively seek out third-party alternative bids until July 7. Fidelity National would receive a break-up fee under various circumstances, including if Lender Processing ends its agreement with Fidelity National in favor of a superior proposal received during the "go-shop" period.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter. It still needs approval from both companies' shareholders.
Shares of Fidelity National added 12 cents to $26.30 in premarket trading on Tuesday. Lender Processing's stock gained 26 cents to $33.25 before the market open.
Some Canadians can get multi-room TV through their providers, but a truly wire-free option hasn't been on the table -- no doubt a disappointment for backyard viewing parties. Bell is filling that void today with what it says is the first carrier-supplied wireless TV package in Canada. Fibe TV subscribers can now pick up as many as five Wireless Receivers (really, Motorola VIP2502 boxes) to extend their HD viewing and DVR control to the whole home without cables. It sounds easy; the real challenge, we figure, will be getting a Wireless Receiver in the first place. Customers have to live in Montreal, Quebec City or Toronto for Fibe TV to even be an option, and each Wireless Receiver costs either $7 per month or $199 up front.
Most cord organizers I’ve seen are made of Velcro or plastic or even fabric, but very few of them are made of leather. ?The Cord Taco 5-Pack from the This is Ground shop on Etsy has five leather cord organizers for the price of a single leather organizer from some companies. ?Each Taco is a [...]
Where do boats go when they die? Sometimes they end up in vast ship graveyards, sometimes craggy, foggy places where ships have met their doom, and sometimes spots where ships are deliberately left to rust. There's a quiet beauty to many of these graveyards and their resting inhabitants.
The port of Nouadhibou, Mauritania
More than 300 ships are resting in the world's largest ship graveyard. The practice of abandoning ships here started in the 1980s after the country's fishing industry was nationalized.
The former sea port city has lots of rusting ships, abandoned since the 1980s due to the recession of the Aral Sea, which is now at least 95 miles (150 km) away from the former harbor.
The area was named after the whale and seal bones that littered the shore because of the whaling industry, but there are more than a thousand ships caught by rocks and fog.
The settlement was established in 1904 by a Norwegian sea captain as a whaling station for his fishing company. It was closed in December 1966, but the church is still used occasionally for marriages, and the whaling ships are still in the harbour.
The world's third largest ship breaking yard has a capacity of 125 ships of all sizes, including supertankers. In the 2009-2010 fiscal year, 107 ships were on the yard.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the ship breaking industry was on top, and Gadani was the largest breaking yard in the world.
Double bonus: Japanese Midget Submarines, 1945-1947
?At the end of World War II, Allied Occupation forces found hundreds of midget submarines built and building in Japan, including large numbers of the ?Koryu? type. Many of these boats were in massed groups at shipyards and naval bases.?
You know the drill. You pull up to a Super 8 Motel with the vacancy light on, you argue with the attendent about getting a room away from the ice machine, you whip out your AAA card for extra savings and then you take the 24-karat gold-plated iPad the attendant hands you and head off to your room to stockpile some free soap. Boom.
The Qantas Spirit of Youth Awards Visual Design & Communications category is currently open for entries with the entry deadline set for 2pm AEST, Tuesday, June 4th.
Women: Aim for 300 to 500 calories a meal 
