Whilst I may not vouch for the accuracy or how up to date this online directory is, I found it to be rather helpful and informative, link hereunder:
http://www.yellowpagesmw.com/
Comment just in it is up to date!!!!!!! Brian 26/08/2007
All things must change to something new, to something strange. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow US poet (1807 - 1882).
The non-life insurance industry in Malawi has changed a great deal since the country's independence, as evidenced by senior staff indigenisation in the various companies, growth in premium terms, complexity in locally written covers, changeover in regulatory function from being overseen by the Ministry of Finance to the Reserve Bank of Malawi and much much more along the years jointly as an industry and severally in the singular inimitable maturing of insurance companies. We have also proudly seen the brave birth of indigenous Malawian firms like Citizen, Prime and Reunion Insurance companies, with some of them boasting the best staff training policies in the country. Malawi now has 8 licensed insurers and a locally domiciled Re-insurer asides from the vibrant insurance intermediary market.
Non-life (General) policy wordings adopted from the British companies that introduced insurance to the warm heart of Africa invariably continue almost unaltered since their initial introduction over 35 years ago save for 3 or so firms that have adopted to user friendly English within their offerings in the last decade. What used to be termed 'Tariff' wordings (Motor, Fire, Workers Compensation insurance covers) which were a common front approach in insurance policy wording and product pricing by members of the all strong Insurance Association of Malawi have generally fallen into disuse except for serving as a guide in the light of financially stable insurance units, healthy competition and consumer fairness. The original firms from the United Kingdom have long since shed off their Malawi operations in the main due to their low Kwacha return in relation to the strong British pound making little commercial sense, mergers, acquisitions and changes in strategy. This has seen the Royal Sun Alliance (UK), Commercial Union, Pearl Assurance inter alia leave the country, and with them most of the European personnel that ran them, leaving a crop of well trained and professionally qualified Malawians that now run the companies with the biggest market shares.
I opine that whilst there have been many positive developments on the local front, on a global scale comparison the local industry has somewhat lagged behind in issues such as regulation and product development due to Europe de-linking, in-aggressive local demand and the economic woes that characterised Malawi since the advent of multi-democracy (not that this is an entirely bad thing).
Markets such as Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya and North Africa have been at the fore of adapting innovations such as bank-assurance which is a term coined to denote the combination of banking and insurance business within the same organisation, Alternative Risk Transfer (ART)- a method of protecting your assets using the non-traditional insurance market and shedding the 'small print' era. In the absence of having these alternatives on our insurance shelves the local market has turned to importing these covers from external providers for a fee on behalf of the multi-nationals such as Banks and manufacturing industry that enjoy these covers elsewhere in the world and therefore demand for them in Malawi.
However, the country need not copy blindly the offerings and regulatory climate of the first world and other stronger economies, there must be some deliberate benchmarks introduced, these suggestions that I will nowput forward in my essay are not my own, are not exhaustive but are necessary and urgent and will put us on the correct footing, we have witnessed them ably function in for example markets Zimbabwe, Tanzania, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
Most important is the need to re-structure insurance regulation to be more active and visible as per the Tanzania model, why 'fix it if it ain't broken' you may ask? because amongst a number of reasons this would ensure adequate 'solvency margin ratio' monitoring, the solvency margin ratio is one of the indices which the supervisory authority utilizes in order to judge the management soundness of a non-life insurance company. The solvency margin ratio means the ratio of "solvency margin of non-life insurance companies by means of their capital, reserves, etc." to "risks which will exceed their usual estimates" such as the risk of catastrophic loss or a sharp reduction in the value of their assets. Establishing a semi autonomous regulatory body by Act of Parliament would be a start, this body run by one of the insurance fraternity's 'own' would asides from monitoring the solvency margin ably transform the insurance industry into a sound and competitive agent for national savings mobilization and development investment channeling, promote the insurance sector as an effective catalyst for enhanced economic growth, strengthen and promote the industry health and orderly growth through establishment of operating performance standards and prescriptions, exempt the Industry from undue interference and develop an efficient, cost effective, comprehensive and customer driven insurance service.
Next would be the need to protect local policyholders and employees from the potentially abrupt and sudden decisions of foreign investors in locally registered insurance companies, a case in point would be the sale of the Malawi branch of the CGU which left ex-employees rather disillusioned and unsure of their future, and witnessed the first employee 'strike' of an insurance company in Malawi. This protection would be afforded by the introduction of a minimum shareholding quota of say 20% to 33.33% by Malawi citizens. This would in effect restrict registration of companies to those having at least the above quoted controlling interest, whether in shares, paid up capital or voting rights by citizens of Malawi and at least one third of members of the board of the company in question being citizens of Malawi, where for the purposes of definition the "citizens of Malawi" would include a body corporate registered in Malawi in which a citizen of Malawi or the government holds the majority of shares.
The Insurance Association of Malawi has a code of ethics that its members drew up that is currently voluntary and only enforceable on its own members by its own membership, it is a constructive, forward looking and timely document that would best serve its purpose if it were legally enforceable as a tool embedded within the Insurance Act as a deterent against rogue practitioners.
The Insurance Act of Malawi was enacted in 1957 and has the minimum capital requirement of US Dollars 38,000 for a company to register locally, this needs to be increased to an amount commensurate with the risks being underwritten on the market and the times, all of Malawi's neighbouring countries have minimum capital requirements that are on average ten fold our current prescribed capital requirement. This would ensure confidence in the market and protection of consumers.
Final in my suggestions would be to curb unnecessary capital flight of premiums currently being 'exported' to other countries through re-insurance premiums. Reinsurance is insurance for insurance companies. It is a way of transferring or “ceding” some of the financial risk insurance companies assume in insuring cars, homes and businesses to another insurance company, termed the Re insurer. Reinsurance is a highly complex global business. There is currently no prescriptive control by the government on amounts of risk and commensurate premiums exported outside of Malawi by resident insurance companies, this needs to be looked at carefully noting that a market as small as ours definitely needs protection but to avoid unqualified excesses permission must be sought as is required by persons travelling abroad to externalise funds, it must be that the local capacity being the sum total of all licensed insurance companies is satisfied before premiums are externalised, this would curb capital flight, 'spread' the risk on the local market which the basis of insurance business and would give the small growing companies impetus subject to their capacity, a chance to dip their fingers into the pie which hitherto has been beyond their reach in some cases.
It must be noted that all the above suggestions need to work in tandem to be effective and need to be enforced by a legal tool, which can only be the re-enactment of the now outdated 1957 Act. A team of insurance experts and others need to look at the future of the country's insurance market independently and suggest the constructive way forward to complement the successes the stewards of the insurance market have so far brought about with the support of the insuring public. It is time for change, albeit constructive forward looking change, change the insurance industry has called for and lobbied for unsuccesfully hitherto, serious attention must be paid to our outdated Insurance Act.
Any disrespect or harm to the Malawi insurance market and its members by this essay is unintended and regretted; it is the future of the market and the continued protection of the economy that matters most.
As we study insurance today and get our professional qualifications, we omit to look at risk in its historical context and we take for granted the terms 'risk management' and uncertainty, these two terms prior to the 1920's were interchangeable but of course we still pass the module's exam. I came across this American character's dissertation which he wrote in the 1920's, he obviously started it off in the economic context relating risk and uncertainty with profit and was influenced by other studies of risk at the time ("Readings on Risk and Risk-Bearing." unpublished by Professor C. O. Hardy, of the University of Chicago) but he took it a step further, he looked at Risk for the first time as being quantifiable and Uncertainty being the opposite, little did he know that he was laying down the groundwork for Risk management as a science as we know it today. His life itself was also in itself interesting- here's a guy who never completed his high school but was accepted by a University and went on to graduate (BS, MA & doctorate). I append below a 'cut and paste' version on Frank Knight complete with links, and by the way he shares his first name with both my 'old' man and 'little' man!
Frank Hyneman Knight (November 7, 1885 - April 15, 1972) was an important economist of the twentieth century. He was born in McLean County, Illinois in a devoutly Christian family of farmers. He never completed high school but was admitted in 1905 to the American University in Tennessee. He graduated in 1911 from Milligan College. At the University of Tennessee he obtained a B.S. and an M.A. (the latter in German) in 1913. He then moved to Cornell University for doctoral studies. His initial main subject was philosophy, but he soon switched to economics. He studied with Alvin Johnson and Allyn Young, who both supervised the work on his dissertation, that was completed in 1916 under the title Cost, Value and Profit. Knight would subsequently revise it for publication under its more familiar name Risk, Uncertainty and Profit(1921).
The "Grand Old Man" of Chicago, Frank H. Knight was one of the century's most eclectic economists and perhaps the deepest thinker and scholar American economics has produced. Jointly with Jacob Viner, Knight presided over the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago from the 1920s to the late 1940s, and played a central role in setting the character of that department that was perhaps only comparable to Schumpeter's tenure over Harvard or Robbins's at the L.S.E.
His famous dissertation Risk, Uncertainty and Profit(1921) remains one of the most interesting reads in economics even today. In it, Knight made his famous distinction between "risk" (randomness with knowable probabilities) and "uncertainty" (randomness with unknowable probabilities), set forth the role of the entrepreneur in a distinctive theory of profit and gave one of the earliest presentations of the the now-famous law of variable proportions in the theory of production.
As with most historical characters, to understand their contributions to the world at large one needs to scan the breadth their whole life account and not be satisfied with the confines of biased commentary by the odd teacher or indeed high school history text, the advent of the Internet has done wonders to the accessibility of information on a lot of aspects, issues and characters, a search on the name Napoleon gave me close to 2.5 million hits and that's how much you have to sift through for starters before you decide on your own where in a historical context you place Napoleon Bonaparte, but then again that only creates the unenviable position of separating the legend from the man himself. The man was born in the Corsican islands in the Mediterranean Sea and ended by meteoric rise to be the Emperor of France through obvious ruthless efficiency; so my take is reduced to a few quotes from him that I find rather farsighted:
On China:
"Let China sleep, For when she awakes, let the nations tremble." shes awake now isnt she?
Napoleon's own opinion of his career is best stated in the following quotation:
"I closed the gulf of anarchy and brought order out of chaos. I rewarded merit regardless of birth or wealth, wherever I found it. I abolished feudalism and restored equality to all regardless of religion and before the law. I fought the decrepit monarchies of the Old Regime because the alternative was the destruction of all this. I purified the Revolution." Well, I'leave that to you, but my minds made up, like Hitler mass produced the VW Beetle so that all 'his' people could afford it Napoleon also had his positives and definitely was a lesser evil in direct comparison by virtue of time period lived in and the perception of most reasonable and ordinary people.... and to trivialities he didnt have that horrible moustache!
Well for those that were born out of wedlock, whose parents separated or divorced, or those who have a family full of 'serial' divorcing, scientists have proven that it is not due to genes....so no more excuses work on your relationship... read on
Family, More Than Genes, Helps Drive Divorce
By Carolyn Colwell
HealthDay Reporter
1 hour, 51 minutes ago
FRIDAY, July 20 (Health Day News) -- The propensity toward divorce does not lie mainly in the genes, new research suggests.
An Australian study of twins and their grown children finds that family history plays a key role, however. Adults whose own parents had split had nearly twice the risk of going through a divorce themselves, the researchers found.
But there is no "gene" for divorce, so to speak, said lead researcher Brian M. D'Onofrio, an Indiana University psychologist. "Genetic factors that influence both generations do not [significantly] account for that increased risk," he said.
The findings are published in the August issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.
Prior studies have found that a higher percentage of divorced people come from families split by divorce. That raised the question of whether genes, "could account for the increased risk of marital instability in offspring of divorce," D'Onofrio explained. His team is the first "to test out that possibility and, in large part, rule out the role of genetic factors," he said.
The research did not completely eliminate all genetic factors, however. According to D'Onofrio, about 66 percent of the increased risk for divorce appears to stem from the simple fact of a person's parents having been divorced. The remaining 34 percent of the risk seemed to be tied to genetic factors, as well as other factors affecting parents and children.
Also, since the study was conducted in Australia, the results cannot be generalized to the United States, D'Onofrio said. To do that, researchers will need to replicate the results in an American sample -- something his group is already working on.
The study is unique, the researcher said, because it is based on data from more than 2,300 twins, their spouses and their adult offspring. In other words, many of the younger people in the study are actually cousins who are also "genetically half-siblings," because their aunt or uncle shares their parents' genes.
So, to help separate out the effects of genetics from family environment, the Australian team compared the marital success of cousins who grew up in stable families (no divorce) against cousins who came from families split by divorce.
The study still had flaws, one expert said.
One factor that D'Onofrio and his colleagues did not look at in their study was what's known as "assortative mating" -- the tendency of people to marry people like themselves, noted British expert Dr. Stephen Stansfeld, a professor of psychiatry at Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry.
According to Stansfeld, this means that people who experienced a parents' divorce as children may be romantically drawn to people with similar experiences -- potentially raising their own odds for an unsuccessful marriage.
In that sense, the study doesn't address what happens when "people from a background of unstable relationships" marry each other, Stansfeld explained.
D'Onofrio acknowledged that his team's results are limited by not taking this factor into account.
"The tendency for individuals to marry similar people may place some children at greater risk for marital separations, because the offspring are exposed to two parents with increased levels of psychopathology and other characteristics," that could have negative effects on their children, the study said.
It's also not known whether assortative mating is genetically driven and how that might affect children's genetic propensity for stable or unstable marriages, D'Onofrio explained.
Divorce can and does often undermine people's happiness, added Richard Lucas, an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University. "Once people get divorced, people seemed to be permanently changed" and are generally less happy, he said.
"We've known for quite awhile that people with divorced parents are more likely to divorce. This study really does a nice job of looking at why that might be," Lucas said. Anything that increases understanding of all the factors involved in divorce "should help people figure out what they should be focusing their efforts on in terms of ending divorce," he added.
More information
For more on divorce's psychological impact, head to the U.S. National Institutes of Mental Health.
Various governments have along the years increasingly found ways of 'charging' their citizens as it were a 'little' amount of money they call tax, to ensure that their state avoids going into liquidation or to put it more constructively to fund benevolent activities of the state for its citizens as a commune. My research on tax origins in its current format are quite interesting! It started off in Africa, as usual Egypt is the culprit, and amongst many items they coveniently taxed cooking oil! http://www.taxworld.org/History/TaxHistory.htm
The one I found profoundly interesting however was a tax on windows in the UK, no not the Microsoft windows, yes the glass imbedded in house and building structures was taxed by King William III in 1696 as a means of solving a financial crisis created by wars in Ireland and on the continent. Tax was paid on any house with more than six windows, as usual the population tried to 'cheat' its way out of it and that was by amongst other ways, bricking up your one or two windows. The tax was replaced after over 160 years (proves how difficult it is and how long it takes to remove a tax once introduced through the August house) later in 1851 with house duty.
I bet Zimbabwe could learn a lesson or two from the window tax.
The Cerne Abbas Giant, Dorset
The Cerne Abbas Giant or the 'Rude Man' is the largest hillfigure in Britain, he (the figure's gender is beyond doubt) is one of two representations of the human form, the other being the Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex. The giant, carved in solid lines from the chalk bedrock measures in at 180 feet high, and carries a huge knobbled club, which measures 120 feet in length.
The first written record of the giant appears in 1751 in a letter by Dorset historian John Hutchins, he suggested that the figure was cut in the mid 1600's. Another slightly later reference to the figure can be found in the Gentleman's magazine of 1764, where the figure is described and depicted with a navel, that has long since disappeared. The lack of earlier references is frustrating but does not mean that the figure dates to the 17th century, and its style and proximity to an Iron Age earthwork suggests a much earlier origin.
There are numerous theories as to when and why the giant was created, one of the more popular is that he is the Greek-Roman god Hercules, who is often represented with a club and an animal fur. It has been suggested that the figure was once depicted carrying and animal fur in his left hand. It is possible that worship of Hercules arrived in the early part of the Roman invasion, which was then became amalgamated with a god of a local Celtic tribe. The theory given the most weight by historians is that it was created during the reign of the Emperor Commodus between 180 - 193 AD, he believed himself to be a reincarnation of Hercules and allowed the cult to revive.
Other stories suggest that the monks at the nearby monastery cut the giant as a joke on an Abbott called Thomas Corton, who was expelled from the area for malpractice. This is unlikely but its close proximity to a ecclesiastical house is strange, how could such an obviously pagan symbol have survived for so long? especially through puritanical times and the reformation. It may be that the religious buildings were built close to the giant as a form of amalgamation of the pagan site. This was common practice, and many churches are built on, or near to, sites that were once Pagan religious centres.
Folklore
According to one tradition, recorded from a farm labourer in the Gentleman's Magazine, the figure is the representation of a Danish giant who had led an invasion of England from the coast. He had fallen asleep on the side of the hill, and the local villagers had taken advantage of his slumber and cut off his head. They had then drawn around his prone body in the manner of a gigantic police chalk line, to show where he met his doom. However, the chalk figure sometimes rose from the dead on dark nights, to quench his thirst in the local stream, a habit also common to certain standing stones.
The giant's obvious sexuality and virility was put to use in fertility folk magic. Local women who wanted to conceive would spend a night alone on the hillside - most productively within the confines of his giant phallus, and young couples would make love on the giant to ensure conception.
Sleeping on the giant was also thought to be a good way to ensure a future wedding for unmarried women. Just above the giant's head is a small Iron Age earthwork which encloses a roughly square piece of land, this is known as the 'Frying Pan' or the 'Trendle' and it was within this enclosure that the Mayday Maypole was erected during the festival celebrations. Like many traditional village Maypole ceremonies this practice died out in the 19th century.
Map ref: ST 666 017
Directions: Half a mile North of Cerne Abbas, Dorset, the best viewpoint is beside the A352
Source:
http://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/majorsites/cerne_abbass.html
While comparing what foreign investors and their locals their local counterparts can achieve, Tanzania President Jakaya Kikwete argued; “Mkia wa mbuzi hufagia anapokaa, na mkia wa ng’ombe hufukuza nzi” (A goat’s tail sweeps only where it is seated while a cow’s tail chases flies). The budget speeches by East Africa’s finance ministers failed to focus on growing the tail of local enterprises.
The news that Kenya government will scrap 205 licences and simplify another set of 371 is good for business opportunity creation but stopped short of growing the goat’s tail. Take for instance the braking effect the government put on local enterprises by introducing a 20 per cent excise duty on imported motor vehicle spare parts. Poor road network costs Kenyan businesses people not only in terms of spare parts but also in terms of health and time. One would have expected the minister to argue that since it takes the government a long time to fix roads (a 6 kilometre stretch Mbagathi highway almost taking three years!) spare parts will be tax exempt to cushion Kenyans against costs that accrues to them.
A farmer, who transports cabbages from Eldoret to Nairobi, will spend close to 3 hours at the crater dominated Timboroa section of the Eldoret-Nairobi road, and by the time he reaches Nakuru, he will need to replace shock-absorbers and springs. From Nakuru, he should be ready for a diversion that will take him through gullies to Gilgil for another two hours. Such a farmer will never dream of supplying the same to Dar es Salaam, Kampala leave alone Mombasa. His cabbage business will remain small, and may never reach a “multinational cabbage supply” status. Thanks to his government short term focus by his government!
Consumers, on the other hand, will be forced to pay for shock absorbers and other repair incidentals due to bad roads driving up prices. In a matter of time, consumers will shun Eldoret cabbages due to prices all because of government’s inability to fix roads. Recall, the government’s roads department was reported to have been unable to absorb 6.3 billion shillings earmarked for road upgrades in the financial year 2006 to 2007.
Introducing excise tax to mineral water business will also make it difficult for local businesses to effectively compete with established giants. This is a sector that one would have expected the government to encourage for purposes of engaging in value addition with a specific focus on addressing clean water needs for rural communities. In the long haul, the mineral water sector would have had a huge multiplier effect given the fact that it has been a source of weaning local entrepreneurs to beverage business.
Despite the budgetary odds, it is still important for East African states to stop limiting local enterprises to “mbuzi” status and provide a road map to “ng’ombe” status. This can be addressed through reforming licensing, regulatory and tax for revenue framework. For East Africans to be competitive at a global level, they cannot afford to remain informal and micro-enterprisers because of fear of government regulators and their policies. Such enterprises ought to be encouraged to link up with established businesses for purposes of strengthening their business muscle, and get exposed to international standards of operation.
To grow business opportunities, the government policy makers ought to also focus on what leads to inefficient expenditure of public funds. A review of procurement procedure ought to be put in place to make it easier for those charged with the responsibility of delivering public goods to do so in a timely fashion. East African business people, on the other hand, should not limit their vision to village markets. We have 100 million strong-market waiting out there. Let us grow the tail!
This article first appeared in Business Daily, a publication of Nation Media House
By James Shikwati
Director, Inter Region Economic Network
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This Tuesday social web browser Flock will release Version 0.9, as they inch towards the full 1.0. Version 0.9 is currently available to early adopters as a 'Release Candidate'. I had an in-depth chat with Flock's CEO Shawn Hardin last week and I have been testing the 0.9 version too. The actual version I have been running is 0.899.1, but the improvements over v0.7 are no less evident. Flock's latest upgrade is geared towards increased "discoverability" for users and further delineates it from conventional browsers. Shawn explained the reasons behind these changes...
Flock History and Version 0.7
Flock launched their social media browser amid a flurry of hype back in 2005. The innovation for the Flock browser was originally billed as a marriage of social media and Web 2.0 functionality. It initially met with mixed reviews, as Flock fell victim to over-stimulated user expectations and “too much” attention. Version 0.7, released June of 2006, was essentially not a great enough departure from Firefox - and even with its innovative features, many users considered Flock as just a Firefox clone.
The browser's “less than perfect” entry into the market has not daunted the over 1.5 million users who have downloaded it so far. Version 0.9 is really an overhaul of the UI - focused on “discoverability”, or essentially relieving the pain involved in integrating a new browser into a user’'s routine. As Steve O'’Hear said in a great article about Flock on ZDNet, Flock is not simply a passive browser experience, but a “write”-capable platform designed to enhance the social media experience. The list of v0.9 additions and upgrades is too vast to list completely, but Flock has added or upgraded features for: people aspects, the general features, media bar, favorites, feeds, accounts, the Web clipboard, blog editor, search and uploader aspects - all on a broad scale.
Discovering Flock
Flock is a very elegant and well organized browser. I am as good a “test rat” as there is, having been so anchored to IE over the years, so working with a new browser for some days proved illuminating. The first thing I noticed about Flock was the media bar, so prominently displayed at the top. This bar has superb flexibility and is the heart of the video and image interface. Searching and acting on the various services is a fairly "right in your face" function, as are most of the other inherent functions. Shawn and I talked about the need for reducing the amount of clicks needed to work with applications; this aspect was one of their main goals. From what I can tell, virtually every Flock task can be completed in one or two clicks - and typing is limited.
As an example: adding my WordPress blog was a two-click action. Posting straight from the Flock UI is also simple and the resultant postings looked as if they had been created in WP. Indeed every feature I tested proved to be a derivative of Wordpress. Flock has done an excellent job of making the "discovery" experience enjoyable and easy. What is less evident initially is the amount of time and pain saved in performing what Flock treats as simple click functions; where Fx or IE require more clicks. The bottom line is that an old IE user like me learned more advanced features and functions over 3 or 4 days, than I probably know about IE in years of use.
Best of Flock
There is not a lot to dislike about Flock. My favorite features tend to be smaller elements, but the most incomparable feature of this browser is its RSS display. Adding feeds is performed in the same "one click" fashion as other elements and the feed sidebar is excellent - but the RSS Reader really sets Flock apart in that full excerpts single column, headlines and double column formats can be customized.
The media bar and the added functions within it are excellent as well. Scrolling playlists are not new - but simple, searchable, drag and drop versions do not abound and the Flock version is flexible. The current searchable services are Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket and Truveo; and results can also be filtered. The 'view as a mini' function, combined with drag and drop and the mouse-over preview shown in the next screenshot, make this simple and fun to use.
Little Things Mean A Lot
I tend to like "the details" or smaller elements of these startups, because developers who pay attention to the little things tend to excel at making the more obvious features too. I liked Flock the moment I noticed that I could change my search engine. You will note that the options bar on the My World page displays several search engines and that I have chosen hakia as the default. Favorites are segregated into local and online categories, and they are also viewable in tree form as the graphic below points out. From mouse-over descriptions of virtually every button, to the picture up there in the corner of my son from my Flickr account, Flock has covered off all the little details.
Conclusion
Despite the attention to detail in v0.9, there is currently a limited number of external services supported. Outside of this one negative aspect (and the fact that the tabs remind me too much of Firefox), Flock could be the most impressive browser of them all. In our discussion, Shawn overloaded me with information about upcoming features and improvements. Honestly, this version has far too many features to touch upon, but the partner-friendly business model and version 0.9's integrated search - which shortcuts searches internally to provide faster and more relevant results - are just two of a dozen or more great aspects to this version.
Flock is targeted at social networking users, but if more external services are forthcoming and development continues to differentiate Flock from the others, it will be a compelling product for its target users.
COPIED FROM READ/WRITEWEB
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Richard Wolffe and Daren Briscoe
Newsweek
July 8, 2007 - NEWSWEEK interviewed Sen. Barack Obama on June 27 in Washington. Here are excerpts from that exchange:
NEWSWEEK: Cornel West said some pretty rough things about you.
Barack Obama: Have you talked to him lately?
I have.
OK.
And you won him over. How did you react when you read what he said? And how did you win him over?
Why don't I start it this way? I have not been in national politics very long. I've been in politics for a long time, but for many people I was an unknown commodity. So as certain stories circulated about me, or what my priorities were, or where I came from, not surprisingly people were willing to give credence to some of those assumptions. So with Cornel it was just a matter of calling him up, introducing myself and having a conversation.
In some ways that's a metaphor for what this campaign is about. Me introducing myself, having a conversation, and trying to cut through the noise that is created by political opponents or media that's looking for a good story or my own fumbles and gaffes, trying to make sure by the end of this process people have a good sense of what my history is, what my values are, where I want to take the country.
He's a pretty frank guy. He said, “You're not going to agree with everything I say, and I'm not going to agree with everything you say.”
Maybe you also said that to him?
I said that to him.
He had this whole Shakespearean line about “To thine own self be true.”
Yeah.
What do you say to that?
He's absolutely right. This is a very improbable candidacy, I think it's fair to say. And for me to win, it is important that those qualities that got me into politics in the first place—those values that led me to become a community organizer or a civil rights attorney, that passion for justice and fairness—that those attributes come through. And if I start sounding like everybody else, if I'm just another Washington politician then there's no reason for people to choose me as opposed to people who have been in Washington longer and play that particular game better than I can. So maintaining my voice through this process is critical and it can be a difficult task. There are a lot of forces at work designed to homogenize candidates and there's a premium placed on risk avoidance and not making mistakes. And what I'm trying to do is to say what I think and not be governed by a fear of making mistakes. That means I will make some mistakes.
Let me ask about one. Maybe you don't think it was one. You got into a tangle with your pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. of Chicago, over your announcement and him giving the invocation prayer—in public, at least.
Tangle may be overstating it. But that's OK. It was a blip.
Looking back, do you think you maybe overreacted to some of the press about him being radical?
No. I think that was a pretty simple story. We were doing our announcement and a story came out in which he was sort of singled out as being more radical than he was. Given that we knew we had given 500 press credentials that day, I didn't want him placed in the position where he had to defend himself or the church without any kind of backup or knowing what he was going to get into. I would have done the same thing for my sister or a co-worker. So I guess it's conceivable I might have been overprotective and probably didn't anticipate that he might feel hurt by it. So we had a discussion about it and everything is fine at this point.
So I shouldn't read anything into the fact that he didn't show up when you spoke at the United Church of Christ meeting last month in Hartford?
No, no. He had a wedding. He was actually upset that he couldn't come. That was entirely a scheduling conflict.
I talked to your friend Kirk Dillard about your time together in the Illinois General Assembly and he related a story to me that goes back to the time when you were working on the racial profiling legislation. He says that he walked in on a confrontation between you and another senator in the bathroom, by your seat there on the back row, where he said you were being challenged forcefully on your toughness and questioning whether you really understood what it was to be a young black man on the streets of Chicago getting pulled over by the police. What's your recollection of that encounter, and what was your response?
You know, I don't remember that particular confrontation. I'm not disputing anything of what Kirk remembers. I just don't know exactly what he's referring to.
I think that there's always a tension between getting things done and how people experience issues in very visceral, emotional ways. And that's certainly true any time race is involved. What I'm constantly striving to do—whether it was on the racial profiling legislation, whether it was on the death penalty issues that I worked on in the state legislature, whether it was on some of the criminal justice bills that came up—was to see how could I be true to the core values of fairness and equality and move the ball forward. My experience tells me that we have a better chance of making progress on these issues when we can ground them in a broader appeal to America's aspirations and values than when we simply are shouting racism and trying to guilt people into acting.
Now that doesn't mean there aren't times for some righteous anger. But I strongly believe that Americans want to do the right thing. And if you can show them that racial profiling is neither a smart way to fight crime, nor is it consistent with our values as Americans, then we can get a bill passed. If you can argue to defenders of the death penalty that at minimum we should be able to agree that nobody innocent should be on death row, and by videotaping interrogations and confessions you are not only protecting the innocent person in custody but you are also protecting the police, then you have got a better chance of passing legislation.
So not everybody is going to take that same approach. But I like to say that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We got those two bills passed.
To the death penalty legislation, one of the people you sat on the judiciary committee with was Ed Petka. From everything I understand about Ed Petka, including his nickname, “Electric Ed” …
Electric Ed. That's what they called him.
It sounds like he was a person who needed no small amount of convincing in terms of reforming the death penalty law. I know there were other people who were key to getting this done, but you played a crucial role in winning people round. Is there anything you can tell me about how your interactions with him, how you brought him round?
I don't remember the specific conversations I had with Senator Petka, or some of these other senators. What I think is always important to me is trying to see the world through the eyes of people you don't agree with. My starting point on the death penalty legislation was, if I'm a sincere believer that the death penalty is a deterrent, if I'm a sincere believer that people who have engaged in heinous crimes deserve the ultimate retribution, if I sincerely believe that generally police arrest people who are guilty, how do I look at the world? If I can imagine myself in their shoes, if I can see the world through their eyes, I can answer their objections in ways that are consistent with their values. So I can say to an Ed Petka that even supporters of the death penalty should have a deep interest in making sure that the innocent are not on death row. It undermines the credibility of the criminal justice system as a whole. You've been a prosecutor, it's much harder for you to be able to bring successful convictions if juries start thinking that evidence is concocted or coerced. So this is good for law and order and that's why we need to make progress on this one.
When you ran against Bobby Rush for the House of Representatives in 2000, you seemed to face in that race for the first time this question that had been with you throughout—this question of belonging, and could you really understand people in a certain place and area whose experience you hadn't shared growing up. But here it was being used politically against you. Did you learn something from that race about how to deal with that issue politically?
I have to say that aspect of the race probably has been thoroughly overhyped. I think people are trying to fit that into a narrative that isn't entirely there. Were there moments during the campaign where the suggestion was that the Harvard-educated, Hyde Park law professor wasn't keeping it real? Yes. Did that have any significant influence on the outcome of that race? No.
The issue in that race was, as I wrote about in my book, the fact that I didn't do a poll until after I had announced and discovered I had 11 percent name recognition and he had something like 95. And people just didn't know who I was, and as people got to know me we ended up moving from single-digit support to I think we ended up with 31 percent. Without any TV advertising, it wasn't bad. The problem with that race was not in execution; it was in conception. There was no way I was going to beat an incumbent congressman with the limited name recognition that I had.
So there weren't moments in that campaign where I anguished, “Oh goodness, is my black authenticity being questioned?” Most of those problems or issues were resolved when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. The fact that they have resurfaced in this presidential campaign says more about the country than it says about me. I think America is still caught in a little bit of a time warp: the narrative of black politics is still shaped by the '60s and black power. That is not, I think, how most black voters are thinking. I don't think that's how most white voters are thinking. I think that people are thinking about how to find a job, how to fill up the gas tank, how to send their kids to college. And I find that when I talk about those issues, both blacks and whites respond well.
You described your mistake as one of conception. Rush describes that race as your ambition coming up against his legacy.
Now that I think is fair, in the sense that he had been there a long time. He had a long track record. I may have believed I could do a better job in highlighting some issues, but I think that it was a young man's mistake. Just because you think you're smart, you think you can shake things up, then everybody else is automatically going to see that.
He also says he thinks to this day, he thinks you were put up to it by your advisers and people around you. You just decided on your own?
I don't necessarily mean paid advisers. I mean people around you.
I couldn't afford advisers.This is something that I think is important for people. Bobby may just be saying that because now that he's come out in support of me, he may want to relieve me of the burden of having run against him. But I haven't had a bunch of people plotting and planning on my behalf. I didn't know a soul when I moved to Chicago. As an organizer, I was pretty much out there on my own. I ran Project Vote without much supervision. I just haven't had a series of political operators who can give me advice. I've been going by my instincts of what I think is right.
Let's talk about the Father's Day speech you gave in 2005. Bill Cosby had said some similar things and taken a lot of heat. Did any of that cross your mind as you put this thing together?
Michelle says this is the kind of thing you talk about around the kitchen table.
But did you think it would have that kind of impact? Were you wary about people who had trodden that path before?
No. I don't know if we have a transcript of that speech, but I've talked about issues of responsibility in the past. I am always very careful in talking about the individual responsibilities of African-Americans, of fathers, of parents, to combine that with a discussion of our societal responsibilities, our collective responsibilities to adequately fund schools, to provide job opportunities in neighborhoods. So I talk about these things not out of shock value. And I also am not at all interested in what some conservative commentators are interested in, which is to use the issue of personal responsibility as an excuse for governmental inaction. As I write in my book, it is very much a both-and [approach] as opposed to an either-or approach. When you talk about it in those terms, then the African-American community is responsive. What they don't want is to hear the “pick yourselves up by your bootstraps” speech, and that's why we're going to cut funding for programs that are desperately needed.
I think it's important for Democrats to not miss the truth and I include myself in this, so I'm not attacking Democrats here, I'm talking about us, those of us who are progressives and care about these issues, it's important for us not to forget about the issue of individual responsibility because we're so caught up in the legitimate battles to make sure that our government priorities are on track.
One last thing. This is unprompted by a question, but it's prompted by the cut or the angle you guys are taking. I may be off base here. But the impulse I think may be to write a story that says Barack Obama represents a quote-unquote postracial politics.
That term I reject because it implies that somehow my campaign represents an easy shortcut to racial reconciliation. It's similar to the notion that if we're all color blind then somehow problems are solved.
I just want to be very clear on this so that there's no confusion. And on this I think Cornel [West] and I would agree. Solving our racial problems in this country will require concrete steps, significant investment. We're going to have a lot of work to do to overcome the long legacy of Jim Crow and slavery. It can't be purchased on the cheap.
I am fundamentally optimistic about our capacity to do that. And I do assert that there's a core decency in the American people and in white Americans that makes me hopeful about our ability to deal with these issues. But these issues aren't just solved by electing a black president.
I think there's a temptation to posit me in contrast to Jesse [Jackson] or [Al] Sharpton, and the thing I am constantly trying to explain is that I'm a direct outgrowth of the civil rights movement, that the values of the civil rights movement remain near and dear to my heart. To the extent that I speak a different language or take a different tone in addressing these issues is a consequence of me having benefited from those bloody struggles that folks previously had to go through. And so to suggest somehow that I'm pushing aside the past in favor of this Benetton future is wrong.
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc. | Subscribe to Newsweek
The below article is on the BBC website, it brings to the fore a problem with aggressive workmates who may be rather a handful for junior employees and sometimes other fellow senior personnel, in most cases these bullies are so cunning that they are always in the good books of the main manager, they are the official 'office informant' to the main manager as it were, seemingly beyond reproach....for a time...I have seen one at play, they can be very disruptive,close to wreaking havoc on rank and file especially with weak senior managers, they tear apart the workplace cohesion fabric by playing petty politics... but I also discovered that there is more to it, sometimes it is a cry for help by the pepertrator Fight back against the bullies
For most people bullying is a hazy memory from their days at school, but for some it can be a depressing part of their everyday experience at work.
There are two main forms of abuse - harassment and bullying. Generally speaking, harassment is conduct that demeans an individual, whether related to their age, sex, race, disability or religion. Bullying, on the other hand, normally consists of offensive, insulting or threatening behaviour.
Both types can be carried out by individuals or groups and can be frightening and miserable for the victim.
They can take the form of malicious gossip, ridicule of a person in front of everyone else, barbed threats about job security or unwanted sexual advances such as standing too close or personal contact.
Speak out
If this is happening to you then find someone you can talk to about your concerns - it may be a sympathetic line manager or colleague. If you are convinced you are being bullied or harassed then make immediate contact with your union representative who will give you advice.
Keep a detailed diary of every incident. Note down dates, times, who was involved and what happened - this could be crucial evidence for an employment tribunal.
Warn the person who is causing the problem to stop otherwise you will take it further, alternatively you can get someone to do this on your behalf or write them a letter. Be firm and confident, but not aggressive or confrontational.
If it fails to stop then you may decide to make a formal complaint. All companies should have a grievance procedure - details of which would be laid out in your contract of employment - which you should follow to the letter. Again, advice from a union rep or sympathetic manager can be crucial at this stage.
BBC
Other sources:
http://www.femail.com.au/workplacebullying.htm
http://www.howtohaveabullyfreeworkplace.com/?gclid=COHz-JatmI0CFQNQEgodHDLV6Q
www.bullyonline.org/workbully/articles.htm
hodu.com/bully.shtml
Aviva and former Norwich Union (UK Insurance firms) boss Richard Harvey and his wife Kay have announced that they will be spending a year in Africa doing voluntary work with the international relief and sustainable development charity, Concern Universal, when Richard retires in July.
The couple, who used to live just south of Norwich in Yelverton, and attended St Mary's parish church, will be following the lead of their daughter Jenny whose Christian faith inspired her to spend a gap-year in Uganda working with Aids victims. It was a visit to the village where she was working which started them thinking.
Richard and Kay will travel to Kenya, Mozambique and Malawi in the autumn to meet the Concern Universal teams there and gain an understanding of the realities of development work in these countries. They then plan to live for extended periods in Malawi and Kenya working in rural communities on a range of projects including the installation of sustainable clean water supplies, micro-finance programmes and education in schools on issues such as HIV/Aids, health and sanitation.
Richard brings the organisational, financial and communications expertise of a FTSE CEO, along with a personal hands-on interest in building, engineering and woodwork. Kay has already had significant experience as a volunteer across a number of community organisations in the UK and New Zealand, and, as a teacher of PE and English as a foreign language, is well-placed to support education projects for Concern Universal.
Richard and Kay's own strong Christian faith was a key factor in the decision they have made.
"All of our lives we have had an active faith," said Kay. "I have been working with the School of Urban Mission so I am able to teach English as a second language. Other voluntary work shows a huge variety of needs in the UK especially inner cities; however Africa is on our hearts."
Since moving to London a few years ago, the couple have mainly been involved at Holy Trinity, Brompton.
"There has been a lot of prayer support towards our decision making and I am sure they will be continuing interceding for us," explained Kay.
Little-known in the UK, Concern Universal’s mission is to deliver sustainable change that enables people in developing countries to improve their lives and shape their own futures. It has over 500 staff and volunteers that work with partners across the globe to facilitate development and emergency work which reaches more than 1.5 million people per year in some of the world’s poorest countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Richard said: “We are in the fortunate position of having both the energy and freedom to take the gap year we never had – this is a timely opportunity for us to live and work for a substantial period in Africa. In the financial services industry we worry about people living longer and out-living their savings.
In Malawi, the problems are very different. Life expectancy is estimated to be about 37 years and decreasing. “We looked at volunteering our services to a number of organisations but it was the nature and scale of Concern Universal that appealed to us; the chemistry with the people was good, its cost effective reputation in developing countries excellent; it was large enough for us to make a genuine contribution, but at the same time had the feel and personal approach of a smaller organisation that we were looking for. Their down-to-earth approach will give us the insight and practical experience needed to make a meaningful contribution to the charity sector in the longer term.”
Dr Ian Williams, Executive Director of Concern Universal, said: “Concern Universal is well known in parts of Africa, but not so well known in the UK. We’re delighted that Richard and Kay have chosen us as their charity in a field where there are other, more high profile charities that they could have chosen. “Partnerships with the corporate sector are increasingly important for organisations like ours, and it is a great opportunity for us to share our work with Richard and Kay. More and more people like them are taking a gap year much later in life and we hope to provide Richard and Kay with a hands-on and inspiring experience that will encourage others to follow suit. They will be facing some uncomfortable issues, and will no doubt raise some challenging questions. We will learn a lot from each other and it will help us engage much more effectively with businesses and business people in future.”
Based in the UK, with its co-ordinating office in Hereford, Concern Universal (CU) was established in 1976 and is an international relief and development charity. CU’s mission is to support practical actions that enable people to improve their lives and shape their own futures.
http://www.concern-universal.org/
Richard and Kay Harvey will be working with Concern International.
The life expectancy in Malawi at independence was 50 and now it's at 37! Scary!
Richard Harvey is the CEO for Aviva (Life and Non-life).
Aviva in the Key rankings:
UK non life: 1. Lloyds, 2. Aviva, 3. Royal Bank of Scotland, 4. Royal and Sun Alliance Group, 5. Zurich Financial Services (Source- Standards & Poors)
UK Life: 1. Aviva, 2. HBOS, 3. Standard Life, 4. Legal & General, 5. Lloyds TSB. (Source- Standards and Poors)
Insurance markets: 1. United States, 2. Japan, 3. United Kingdom, 4. France, 5. Germany (Source: Sigma- Swiss Re)
Life/Health international: 1. ING Group- Netherlands, 2. AXA- France, 3. Assicurazioni- Italy, 4. Aviva- UK, 5. Prudential- UK (Source- Fortune)
From http://antivirus.about.com/od/emailhoaxes/l/blenhoax.htm
Virus hoaxes, scams, and chain letters abound in email. Before forwarding that dire sounding warning or too good to be true promise, check the validity of it here. Chances are, it's a hoax. Virus hoaxes and myths waste time and money - and can make the sender look foolish. Don't fall victim to a virus hoax. Check the list of hoaxes below to find out the facts behind that email.
!0000 Tip #77 48 Hours 5-Cent Email Tax 809 Area Code 90# AAAAA.AAA Tip A.I.D.S. AIM Petition Airline Spiders Al-Jazeera Interview An Internet Flower for You AOL4FREE AOL Email Tracking AOL.EXE AOL/Intel Merger AOL Messenger Petition A Virtual Card for You Believe the Unbelievable Bill Gates Email Tracking Bill Gates Email Tracking 2 Bluemountain Greetings British Airways 'Free Flight' Bud Frogs Buddy List Butt Spider California/Wobbler Card for You Cell Phone Hoax Cellsaver Choke (Worm & Hoax) Death69 Deeyenda Maddick Demon (Worm & Hoax) Discount Disney $5000 DR.SIMON.WAJNTRAUBWS Economic Slowdown Elf Bowling Euro - Afro Asian Sweepstake Euro Lottery International Family Pictures Fat Cat FCC Virus Warning Federal Bill 602P Free Nokia Phone Frogapult G Virus Give a Cat a Colonic Good Times Hackingburgh Hard Drive Killer Hotmail Warning International Sweepstakes Lottery Internet Flower
Invitation Irina It Takes Guts to Say Jesus JDBGMGR.EXE Join the Crew Klingerman Knockout Perfume Let's Watch TV Life is beautiful.pps Lotus Notes Matrix_99.MTX Microsoft Email Tracking MS/AOL Email Tracking Mobile Phone Hoax Mohammed Al-Asuquf Monkeyman935 MSN Hacker List MSN Hotmail Shutdown MSN server shutdown Naughty Robot Nigerian 419 Scam November 15 Hotmail shutdown NEW PICTURES OF FAMILY Nokia Phones for free Olympic Torch OPEN:VERY COOL! Osama Bin-Laden hanged Osama vs Bush Outback Steakhouse Penny Brown PenPal Greetings Perfume Perrin PKZ300 PLEEEEEEEASE READ President Bush Returned/Unable to Deliver RH Power Tracking Ryder Trucks Sandman Sector Zero Shopping in Malls Spiders in the toilet Strunkenwhite Sulfnbk.exe Swiffer WetJet Two-Striped Telamonia Upgrade Internet2 Vigo Examiner Virtual Card for You Win a Holiday Win a Nokia WTC Survivor VIRUS WITH NO CURE
A virus hoax has only one purpose in life and that is to spread to as many people as possible. Quite the same goal as viruses, some might say. Don't be fooled into forwarding a hoax "to everyone you know". Consult this article first instead.
If you are unable to find a description for a particular virus hoax, please contact me or post a message in the forum.
If it's a real virus you're seeking information for, check out the Virus Encyclopedia or peruse various Virus Information Databases.
David Emery, your About.com guide to Urban Legends has a wealth of information on myths and urban legends.
From Mary Landesman,Your Guide to Antivirus Software.FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!
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Chain of FoolsHoax EncyclopediaVirus descriptionsThe Hoax That Cried VirusWin a Holiday Virus Alert (Hoax)
A. Charlotte, North Carolina man, having purchased a case of rare, very expensive cigars, insured them against ... get this ... fire. Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of fabulous cigars, and having yet to make a single premium payment on the policy, the man filed a claim against the insurance company.In his claim, the man stated that he had lost the cigars in "a series of small fires".
The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason that the man had consumed the cigars in a normal fashion.The man sued... and won!In delivering his ruling, the judge stated that since the man held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable, and also guaranteed that it would insure the cigars against fire, without defining what it considered to be "unacceptable fire", it was obligated to compensate the insured for his loss. Rather than endure a lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the judge's ruling and paid the man $15,000 for the rare cigars he lost in "the fires."
After the man cashed his check, however, the insurance company had him arrested ... on 24 counts of arson! With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used as evidence against him, the man was convicted of intentionally burning the rare cigars and sentenced to 24 consecutive one year terms!
This one has been making the rounds since the 60's, it originated with the Toastmasters and has a number of variations, as interesting as it is, it has dubious origins.
