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UC M&A Activity Further Validates NEC’s Smart Enterprise Strategy

Seems like every time I read about what’s happening in the marketplace, I learn that there’s another merger or buy-out happening in the enterprise communications space. Mitel announced recently it is acquiring rival ShoreTel, reportedly to accelerate its “move-to-the-cloud” strategy. This acquisition, along with other recent moves by Avaya and Toshiba, only reinforces my belief in NEC’s strategy for the Smart Enterprise.

NEC’s long history and innovation heritage means we are much more than just a voice and UC company – we are a true enterprise technology pioneer with roots dating back more than 50 years in the United States and over 118 years in Japan.

In developing our wide range of technologies and services, we strive to build solutions that will address specific business needs and challenges by driving safety, security and operational efficiency. These solutions, when integrated and combined in various scenarios, form our portfolio for the Smart Enterprise – our definitive technology strategy for NEC’s vision of the future.

Want advice on how to enrich your customer experience?But let’s get back to the cloud, and more specifically, Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). NEC has developed a wide range of unified communications (UC) solutions that can be deployed in the cloud, on-premises or in a hybrid scenario.   For starters, NEC has a strong UCaaS offering called UNIVERGE BLUE Business Cloud Services. UNIVERGE BLUE allows a business to host all or just some of its UC in the cloud.  We also offer the UNIVERGE SV9100 BLUE solution, which is a full phone and UC system deployed on premises with no large up-front investment.   The cloud allows us to offer SV9100 BLUE as an operating expense with a single bill for hardware and service.  All of this is offered today through our extensive channel partner network.

Our portfolio also includes Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), software defined networking (SDN), data center technologies, Unified Communications (on-premises, cloud and hybrid), biometrics, analytics, Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence solutions. With a world-class network of Channel Partners and as a direct solutions integrator, we can deploy these solutions globally. Here in the U.S., we also have NEC Financial Services which delivers tailored leasing structures of extraordinary flexibility to customers nationwide.

Additionally, we are discovering new and innovative ways to utilize our biometrics solutions by integrating them with our other solutions. For instance, we have developed a virtual receptionist solution that integrates one of our biometrics applications with our Android™-based touch-screen UT880 telephone. The telephone can be placed in the lobby area and a remote worker is able to greet visitors and then screen them through our NeoFace Watch facial recognition application.

Don’t just take my word for it, the Boston Consulting Group named NEC as one of its 50 Most Innovative Companies and Frost & Sullivan recently honored NEC with their 2016 North America Frost & Sullivan Company of the Year Award for our market approach for the Smart Enterprise by stating, “NEC’s Smart Enterprise initiative is providing holistic enterprise communications transformation options that help customers adapt and flourish in the face of complex challenges.”

While the technology world is ever-changing, one thing that you can count on is NEC and our solutions for Smart Enterprise. We have demonstrated over the years our long-term commitment to our customers and to understanding their unique needs as well as their particular vertical industries. If you are ready to learn more about our solutions for Smart Enterprise and how they can help you optimize your business, please contact NEC today for a free consultation.

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Is Your Business at Risk Running an Outdated Communications System?

(Editor’s Note: This is an update to an article originally posted June 2, 2014.)

You know your communications system is way past its prime, and economic pressures have led you to delay its upgrade or replacement.

But there comes a point in time when it no longer makes sense to put off replacing your communications assets—from both a financial perspective and a business/productivity perspective. Retaining outdated equipment can essentially increase your IT costs and prevent your users from utilizing communications tools that help your business processes.

Plus, keep in mind; the greatest risk to your business if your communications go down is your business shuts down. This can lead to huge losses for your business, including customer dissatisfaction, customer loss, damaged reputation and costs related to regaining your reputation. These all can greatly affect your business and result in huge losses.

Phone systems are one of the assets that many companies take for granted as long as they have dial-tone. They don’t think much about it and will definitely spend their budget elsewhere if they can. As a result, many of these organizations are sitting on archaic (or end-of-life) equipment that is no longer efficiently supporting their business while possibly putting it a risk.

Yet for some, the prevailing practice is to continue operating the existing system well past its useful life and beyond the end-of-support – not realizing the potential costs and the risk they are putting their business in.

We often hear the following reasons to avoid upgrading:

  • We don’t have the budget, or there is a higher priority budgetary request.
  • The lifespan on the last communications system was too short.
  • We’re afraid that if we upgrade tomorrow, something better will come out next week (a.k.a. the cycle of obsolescence).
  • We’re unclear on our unified communications plans and how our phone system should fit in with UC.
  • Newer phone systems are becoming too complex to use.
  • The buying cycle is too long, and we will have to get too many people involved who will all have different opinions.
  • We don’t know which approach to take—i.e. premises, hybrid, or cloud-based.

There’s a chance that the phones you think are supporting your business aren’t. While the value of your older technology may not have appeared to change—for example, the phones still work, and you can still make calls—the outdated system may be hurting your business.

Free White Paper:  Time to Replace that Old PBX

We know the decision to move to a new telephony system is sometimes a difficult one to make. That’s why we’ve created the following list of 3 of the benefits of a modern unified communications system over an outdated phone system.

1. System Stabilization

If you are a business owner or decision maker, you have probably thought, “We save money keeping the old system. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Every day your business uses an analog, TDM, or older VoIP phone system that has reached end-of-life, you run the risk of having your phone system fail without access to support. If that happens, revenue will likely be lost as a result. How much? Well, you could lose what equates to hours, days, or even weeks of revenue—depending on the amount of time it takes to quickly repair or worst case find and install a new system. Not to mention what was previously stated about customer dissatisfaction and loss.

And hurrying to find a new system isn’t ideal. If your system fails, it could mean you are forced to make a quick replacement decision. Companies that don’t have the time or don’t take the time to research properly before purchase usually discover they’ve spent too much money or are unhappy with their purchase after it is too late to change it. Taking the time to find the right IP Telephony solution or Unified Communications solution will improve your business processes and efficiencies without over-extending your budget.

2. Improved Operational Costs

Maintaining separate systems like directories, conferencing software, voicemail, and telephony is expensive and time consuming for IT departments to sustain. In fact, it can be so time-consuming that the IT department spends the majority of their day keeping these systems functional—time that can be better spent on more strategic IT projects.

The older the system, the higher the operational cost is when you don’t upgrade. Some of the costs businesses accrue using older systems include:

  • Proprietary hardware at each location (equipment, phones, PBX)
  • Installation
  • Licensing
  • Maintenance, repairs and upgrades
  • Additional services
    • Fax
    • Business SMS
    • HD video meetings
    • Audio conferencing

When you factor the lost IT time spent maintaining each separate communications system with the opportunity cost of not having the advanced applications and features that modern unified communications provides, you end up with a total cost that is just too high for most businesses to ignore.

3. Competitive Advantage

Have you stopped to think about whether your competitors are taking advantage of modern communications software? If they are and you’re not, then chances are they are able to work smarter, faster, and more efficiently. Working smarter gives them an edge by increasing their productivity and creating a competitive advantage.

Your competitors that are working with updated communications systems, most likely have these advanced features at their disposal:

  • Audio/video/web collaboration, white boarding and document sharing
  • Support for the mobile workforce with a consistent user experience across smartphones and tablets
  • UC clients that provide status, presence, call history, call control plus more
  • Integrated vertical applications through standard and open services

While the cost of upgrading may seem high, the advanced applications and features associated with modern communications systems will help re-gain lost competitive edge and offer companies an opportunity to better serve their customers.

Unified communications can help businesses re-gain competitive advantage in two ways:

First, a new system can help you increase your revenue by providing your business with the communications applications needed to be more productive and efficient. You could gain better advantages and increased competitive edge by choosing a modern solution with a lower total cost of ownership and features that enable collaboration across your business, improving the speed of your communications.

Secondly, UC provides communications software that makes enterprise-level communications applications available on an ad-hoc basis. This either gives you access to applications that you might not have previously been able to budget for, or, saves your organization money as you no longer have to pay the fees required to utilize multiple services. Replacing hosted web, audio or video conferencing services is a perfect example. The accrued savings can boost the return on your unified communications investment, and expand your competitive edge through re-investment into other IT projects that help your business grow.

Increased Productivity

If you fear that your new technology will become obsolescent and use that as an excuse to avoid upgrading, you shouldn’t. Look for vendors that offer software assurances and extended warranties for hardware that will provide your business with more security and less risk in the long run.

With a modern communications solution, you ensure that your system has the flexibility to handle rapid growth, giving you the ability to provide support to your increasingly mobile and distributed workforce. Your IT team will re-gain some of their time, allowing them to focus on other strategic IT initiatives. And, your employees will re-coup benefits that improve the speed of communication from access to applications that positively impact your daily business—whether it’s through more efficient collaboration with colleagues, or improving customer response times.

Options Available to Your Business

Ultimately there is a high cost, in terms of inefficiencies and operational cost, when you continue to operate an outdated or end-of-life phone system.

Some organizations struggle with selecting the best model (premises, hybrid, or cloud-based) to meet long-term communication needs. Ultimately you’ll look for the platform and vendor that has the flexibility to customize the right solution to meet your specific needs.

Smart Enterprise

Free White Paper
Time to Replace that Old PBX

To learn more about the risks associated with running an outdated communications system and the steps you should take in purchasing a new system, fill out the form to download the white paper written by Dave Michels, principal analyst at TalkPointz.

5 Features to Look for When Differentiating UC Solutions

Unified communications is an increasingly important investment for organizations looking to improve productivity and responsiveness while reducing their IT costs. UC and it’s convergence of voice, video, and applications, is bringing benefits to enterprises and SMBs in every industry across the globe.

But if you’re undertaking a UC upgrade, it can be hard to know how to differentiate between all the many UC solutions that exist on the market today. Unified communications technology evolves so rapidly that it’s becoming more difficult for organizations to predict which requirements they might need now and in the future. What are the implications on your IT infrastructure?  Will the technology become obsolete too quickly?

In fact these fears are consistently on the list of the many reasons that organizations tend to sweat legacy investments for too long.

The key to differentiating the right UC solution is to search for and ultimately adopt a solution that’s built with/on:

  • Sufficient Flexibility – As office applications change, desktop and IT experiences evolve, and system requirements grow an enterprise-grade UC solution should offer multiple choices to adapt. The right UC solution will be flexible—with choices for both premises and self-managed deployments, subscription models with cloud services, or a hybrid with private cloud option—and accommodating  of  new requirements as your business needs evolve over time. Solutions that extend the value of your existing IT investments and promote end-user adoption should be high on the list of anyone looking for flexible, agile communications.  Core elements of a flexible solution should include: use of open, standards based protocol interfaces, Web Service orientation, the ability to add complimentary solution components including devices (IP phones, smart phones, etc.),productivity applications (plug-ins for email clients, or web portals), and even purpose built applications to automate certain business processes.
  • All Inclusive Licensing – All-inclusive licensing gives technology and financial decision makers the ability to anticipate user costs while ensuring that their end users have full access to the UC productivity apps and tools they desire. The inclusive structure makes purchasing UC easier by eliminating complexity associated with mapping licenses for specific apps or features to individual users or groups of users.
  • Variety of UC apps and services such as mobility – Often users throughout an enterprise adopt varying work styles which best suit their roles and responsibilities.  Offering a range of UC applications allows users the ability to choose the apps that best suit their particular needs and work styles.  These may include some, or all, of the following:  desktop UC apps for windows MAC users, browser based applications for cross platform use, mobile device apps for smartphones and tablets, plug-ins for other productivity tools like email and calendar apps or document management and related groupware systems.  Ideally, all of these various UC oriented applications will have uniform features delivered with a common look and feel to simplify transition from one to another.
  • Software-based solution – software-based UC and collaboration platforms operate across premises, cloud, or hybrid environments (flexibility). With a variety of software apps, operating across multiple devices (PCs, smartphones, and tablets), software-based UC systems fit naturally into an enterprise’s IT systems environment, leveraging common operating principles and practices.  This lowers overall operating costs, and maximizes the possibility for integration into an enterprise’s business processes maximizing the return on investment.
  • Vendor Maturity – vendor maturity is incredibly important when choosing a UC solution. There are multiple types of vendors in the marketplace today. There are those whose background is in network convergence. There are others whose background is strictly telephony. But for today’s modern communications—that work consistently in co-operation with other enterprise technologies—you need a vendor whose strengths are in both telephony and IT infrastructure. You need more than a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader—you need a challenger, an innovator, a customer-focused vendor building next-generation unified communications and collaboration experiences that reduce IT complexity and delivers superior reliability, scalability and robustness.

Enterprise Connect 2015

Each year at Enterprise Connect, a mock Request for Proposal (RFP) session is held. The mock RFP is a simulation of the requests that enterprises and government agencies put out when looking for a new unified communications solution.

The session, led by independent consultant David Stein, Principal at Stein Consulting Group, assesses the most common unified communications and collaboration that SMBs and enterprises alike typically differentiate between.  Each of the vendors that participate is required to answer questions related to their solutions’ architecture, features, and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over a 3-5 year period.

This year’s UC RFP and Review session will, again, look at premises vs. cloud-based communications platforms. The session is a long running tradition and the ideal way to provide potential customers an objective way to learn about the top vendors in the industry. The session includes discussion of:

  • Overall findings/trends as of Q1 2015
  • The system offerings currently available from leading suppliers
  • Strengths and weaknesses of leading vendors’ offerings
  • The subjective rankings based on architecture, functionality and cost
  • Product Differentiation (what really matters?)
  • UC Procurements (should enterprises focus on platform or use cases?) and more.

There are a number of factors to consider in evaluating Unified Communications RFPs—high availability, voicemail, unified messaging, and unified communications are just some of the features of modern communications technology.

If your organization is starting the process of looking for a new UC solution to replace your existing IP/PBX, I invite you to join me during the session and listen to how each vendor ranks.

For a comprehensive look at weighting, factors and TCO evaluations from 2015, download the UC RFP whitepaper by David Stein.

How to Choose a Cloud or SaaS Vendor

2015-02-26_1113Choosing a cloud and SaaS vendor can be tricky for SMBs with small IT organizations and larger corporations looking to lower operating costs. There are many benefits to choosing cloud or SaaS over on-premises but the route to those benefits is not always risk-free.

Difficulty vetting cloud or SaaS vendors is a common problem in today’s IT world. We see many organizations that continue to sweat older assets, having used on-premises software for many years. Irwin Lazar, of Nemertes Research, has pointed out, however, that more than 90 percent of businesses are starting to employ these technologies on some scale.

Vetting cloud or SaaS vendors can be very easy if you take the right approach. Rather than simply taking trusting the vendor’s qualifications or what you’ve read/heard, you should validate each claim the vendor makes to ensure that they don’t overstate their capabilities.

Verification is the key to success when choosing a cloud or SaaS vendor. Here are our tips to help you make the comprehensive assessments needed to make the right choice.

Vetting the Business

You wouldn’t buy a car from a manufacturer you knew nothing about. The same should be said of a cloud or SaaS solution. When your business is thinking about adopting a new cloud or SaaS technology, its imperative that you vet the vendors’ businesses as well as their technology.

You need to ensure that their leadership is strong, their business model is sound, and that the firm has the financial stability to survive the stressors of the current economy. This stage is the time to ask the tough questions, and get real, specific responses in return. Keep pressing until you get a real answer, one that’s supported by policies and procedures. Questions like these can help you determine the viability of the business at large:

  • Do you have a burn rate where you are making less than you are spending? If so, how long is the runway where you can survive at this pace without new partners investing?
  • Is your leadership rounded and truly qualified? Do you have a technologist at the helm, and has he surrounded himself with the operational, financial and sales expertise to keep turning out great products and services?
  • How do you maintain accountability for your administrative staff in regard to the control and management of customer data within/and outside of your application? What security challenges might we face if we give you direct control over our sensitive or compliance-relevant data?
  • How do you address government regulations?
  • Can we adjust our services as the business evolves?
  • Where does my support come from (vendor, support partner, etc.)?
  • What will I really pay?

Vetting the Technology

Just like with the manufacturer situation stated above, you probably wouldn’t buy a car you hadn’t test driven or looked under the hood of either. In order to determine whether the products/services you’re vetting work properly, you’re going to need to get your hands dirty and test each cloud or SaaS product/service for yourself. Does the product/service have known glitches/issues? Will it fit into the environment(s) as expected? Will it work with all of your platforms and impacted software products?

Now is the time to get the engineers involved to assess the technologies behind the vendor and ensure that they are ready for your purposes. Again, specific instances and case studies will help provide proof points to the vendor’s claims. Questions like these can help determine the efficiency, security, and usability of the technology itself:

  • What role does customer input play when your company plans updates and enhancements?
  • Can I see the software/technology’s R&D roadmap? What other changes are planning for performance and usability? Is this investment actually future proof?
  • Can you describe your data center?
  • How do you define uptime and downtime?
  • How frequently do you test your disaster recovery procedures?
  • Do you have a Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
  • How different is our current infrastructure from yours?
  • Can I move existing apps/services from my private cloud to your public cloud without massive reconfiguration?
  • How do you support my workforce’s mobility requirements?
  • How are my apps and data protected from other users on the same cloud servers?

Vetting their Customer Service

Let’s hit the car analogy one more time. You wouldn’t buy any car from any manufacturer if you weren’t going to get service and support to help you maintain the car over the course of its life.

So when vetting vendors, you need to ask point-blank if they are ready to handle you as a client. The only question that need to be asked during this phase is, “Can I speak with some of your customers?” Current customers are the best resources when it comes to determining whether the vendor’s product/service is on par with what you are expecting.

Don’t settle for the few they give you either. Look at trade shows and vendor events for customers that aren’t raving fans. Looking for non-specific issues can save you a lot of headaches in the future. Be skeptical, but open-minded. Knowing the issues that could arise will help you prepare for them in the future.

Vetting cloud or SaaS vendors can take up to 200 man-hours and could require some policy changes on your part. To do it right, though, you do need to assess more than the technology—you need to look at everything; the vendor’s business, technology, security, service, and employees. While it might seem like a bit of an undertaking, spending more time up front will save you headache and frustration in the end.

SaaS and Cloud in Perspective: UCaaS

Let’s take a quick look at a unique cloud and SaaS perspective: UCaaS.

Let’s say you aren’t ready for a full cloud deployment. You still have some reservations about the public cloud, and you have on-premises assets you want to continue to use. Research is actually beginning to show that “Hybrid Cloud UC Demands Unified Platform Management”. This is one of many cases where UCaaS makes sense.

The market for UCaaS is growing pretty rapidly. Among IT pros responding to a 2014 Spiceworks survey, 11% had adopted UCaaS. However, another 12% indicated they are planning to adopt it in the next year, more than doubling the number of people using UCaaS today.

Some suggest that growing confidence in hosted solutions in general is the impetus for the projected dramatic increase in adoption. Much of that confidence is due to the service providers’ dedication to security improvements.

We are excited about the opportunities UCaaS presents to the cloud and SaaS Markets.

Fear of vetting vendors shouldn’t hold you back from learning more. Check out the Reducing UC Costs and Increasing Business Performance whitepaper to take a deeper dive into the advantages of UCaaS, market drivers, concerns, and what to look for in a provider.

4 Crucial Steps to Implementing a UC Cultural Shift

7K0A0129The advent of unified communications (UC) technology has transformed the business landscape for companies that successfully adopt and use it.

These days, email, instant messaging, and social media combined with the myriad types of mobile devices can work together to create an incredibly versatile and productive work environment. But this environment, known as unified communications, is only successful if a business devotes the time, energy, and resources to implement both the physical UC solution as well as a UC-oriented cultural shift.

It’s estimated that roughly 80 percent of companies never “fully realize” their UC implementation.  Why?  Well, while the physical implementation  of a new technology is often planned for, it’s typically assumed that users will accept the new communications system out of the box and will automatically understand its features. More often than not, this isn’t the case.

Here is the problem stated as blatantly as possible: either plan for the culture shift or reap the consequences that unrealized ROI can bring.

Whether your business is thinking of making the UC transition or  if you’re just upgrading to a new iteration of your current communications system, there are steps to follow to make sure that everything goes both physically and culturally smoothly.

Here are our 4 Crucial Steps to Implementing a UC Cultural Shift.

1. Involve the Entire Team
The first critical step in implementing a UC initiative is obtaining the needed buy-in from everyone in the company (not just the management team). The need for buy-in warrants a process that ensures consultation of all department leaders and requires they come to the same understanding in regard to the implementation. This process makes it so all stakeholders can work and learn together—helping define what the vision for the UC implementation will be.

But developing a clear-cut picture of the UC initiative is just a small part of this step. Once upper-management has communicated the needed information to the department leaders, these key players must then take the time to energetically and continuously communicate with their subordinates. This portion of the implementation process is the time to cull departmental knowledge—on the current technology’s best practices and failings, and to get employee opinions on the tools that they think would increase productivity.

Topics discussed should include all of the opportunities that UC offers, even those that may not directly affect most people’s daily work. Case in point: a good UC solution can help businesses realize more timely interactions (that means more revenue) and can help them implement a Capex/Opex shift.

While Capex/Opex isn’t something that even I think about on a daily basis—I more than realize the need for more revenue. And if a new affordable technology is the way to achieve that, then I can more readily get on board with the technology change than I could if I didn’t know anything about the change at all.  And, when I get a look at the full picture, I begin to feel included in the actual decision-making process (which also makes me more likely to be at least interested in the new solution, if not a little excited in anticipating it).

2. Test for User Acceptance

While your IT department will lead the technical aspects of the implementation, departmental leaders, and other key personnel will need to be and should be included in the piloting phase. The role of the latter is to ensure that the software is usable in a practical, real-world, day-to-day scenario.

This step should include demo sessions for both senior executives, who can give “big picture” recommendations, as well as front-line employees. These employees are your best resource when testing new UC solutions because they can explain and highlight specific difficulties with certain tools—giving you the opportunity to take note and the company to tailor the solution appropriately.

Even if this project is your responsibility—i.e., you are the one who knows more about it than anyone else in the company—you must remain open-minded to any recommendations or criticism. In the end, a new UC solution will have to both accommodate the needs of everyone in the company more easily while also helping achieve new business objectives.
3. Market Internally

There are many enterprise-level software products that are remarkably robust and dependable. The failure of a UC-oriented one is rarely the fault of the technology. Instead, the more common cause is implementers failing to impress upon their team the importance of embracing the new “initiative.” Everything must be planned for, and everything must be explained.

The vendors, however, can’t do all the explaining themselves. The department leaders mentioned in Step One should “champion” the initiative, developing the messaging and communicating directly the benefits the new solution will bring to their direct reports, co-workers, and other staff.

But you can’t force change. You have to win over your converts. And that requires marketing. The language and materials that you use to market your UC initiative internally can have a dramatic effect on user acceptance and can potentially win over converts. The choice of the word “initiative” instead of “project” is not accidental. The word “initiative” denotes more powerful and compelling reasoning than the word project, and better conveys the all-encompassing nature of a UC implementation.

That vocabulary choice that we just made is actually called marketing. And when you market appropriately to the majority of your end-users, the stragglers will inevitably follow.

4. Mandate Training and Measure Afterward
Here’s a fact. People hate “training”. When you’re in the process of implementing any new technology, you’ll find that most of your co-workers will balk at the idea of attending when the training sessions start.

In the same vein, many businesses are also hesitant to make training mandatory. Regardless of how your employees will feel about it, training provides valuable information on how to shift to the new solution and gives you another opportunity to champion your new solution. So they need to be there. And if you have to incentivize it with something awesome to keep everyone happy, then that’s what you should do. Making UC training fun and valuable—and it is imperative that you have your vendor’s help during this period—is the key to getting ultimate buy-in.

BUT, before you count the implementation as “complete”, you need to measure the adoption rate. Analytically speaking this is your one chance to determine whether the UC implementation initiative was truly successful. It’s also an opportunity to identify the last pockets of employee resistance.  If you want to overcome any and all lingering objections to the implementation—measuring the adoption rate is the way to do it.

Keep these tips in mind as you plan your UC implementation. They will make the whole process simpler and really will raise your overall chances of success.


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Sweet 16 Saturday + NIT + NHL

The NCAA Tournament returns on Saturday with Sweet 16 games. The NIT semifinals are also in play early today.

Don’t miss a TRIPS-2-WIN in the NIT from Bobby Dalton today!

The Big E has his next two 10* Biggies today – $9.94 each. His 25* Tournament Game of the Year is expected to be released Sunday morning.

Nelly’s has turned in three straight NBA wins this week and we’ll hope to hit in the NCAA Tournament today.

Also we have our 2021 MLB Preview out with the MLB season starting April 1

Check out any of today’s picks on the site or call 1-800-336-3559

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Newberry Springs Fire Truck

Interior of the wayward fire truck.

Bamboozled!   So sadly funny!

Posted: December 15, 2013

      The saga continues on the Newberry Springs Volunteer Fire Department's missing 2011 International 4,000 gallon water tender.

      It appears to have a permanent home; but it isn't Newberry Springs.

      The truck is reported as being in service in the state of Colorado, having been legally sold by Fire Trucks Plus, a fire truck speciality dealer located in Ontario, California.

      As reported earlier, the water tender that was being contracted to be sold by the dealer was apparently sold a number of months ago.  However, the dealer never reported the transaction to the Newberry CSD.  Instead, the dealer allegedly kept the deposit, estimated to be about $25-grand, and never processed the title paperwork so as not to alert the Newberry CSD regarding the sale.

      While months went by, the buyer has not received registration, but has had the truck that the Newberry CSD has continued to make bank payments on; the last being $25,954.92 that was due on December 4, 2013.

      Complicating the matter is that the Newberry CSD has to get in line.  It is not the only party that has been apparently snookered by this alleged charlatan dealer.  A number of other fire departments are also reported to be now missing their fire trucks too!

      This then raises the question as to whether the dealer's DMV bonding will be sufficient and whether the dealer will be able to make restitution on the CSD's losses.  Currently, one Newberry CSD board member, shaking his head, has stated that the CSD will be taking a financial loss.

      Other sticky matters include liability and costly insurance coverage for a registered $165,000 Newberry Springs fire truck that is being operated in Colorado.

Earlier related links:
Wanted: New GM • Return of fire truck.
CSD meetings still conducted in a clueless fashion.

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New Balance Gift to UMass Boston Helps Launch Sports Leadership Program

Last Wednesday, NEC Member UMass Boston announced the launch of a new academic program to train future leaders in the sports industry.  The new program was made possible by a $5 million gift from fellow Council member New Balance.

Starting in the fall of 2018, UMass Boston will accept 25 full-time and 10 part-time students into the program with the goal of increasing the program to a total of 140 students by its fourth year. This program includes courses in management, finance, entrepreneurship, and marketing. A program advisory board will provide mentorship and internship opportunities for students.  The advisory board members include such local sports legends as former New England Patriots linebacker Andre Tippett, and representatives of the Patriots, Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics.  The program recently received approval from the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education.

“Through this new program, UMass Boston envisions creating pathways for students from all communities to the multi-billion sports industry that looms so large in society and in the imaginations of many young people,” said UMass Boston interim chancellor Barry Mills. This gift from New Balance and its chairman Jim Davis is the largest donation in UMass Boston’s history.

The New England Council looks forward to the new program’s success and commends both UMass Boston and New Balance for their commitment to preparing students for career success. Read more in the Boston Business Journal and the Boston Globe.

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Thermo Fisher Announces STEM Scholarships

NEC member Thermo Fisher Scientific recently announced that it will devote $700,000 annually towards a scholarship awarded to college students pursuing a degree in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). STEM education continues to be a hot topic in the education, political, and business communities as the United States economy continues grow in areas that are dependent on STEM skills. Unfortunately, while a large number of jobs are available in these fields and many Americans remain unemployed, there simply are not enough people with the necessary training  to fill the available positions.

Thermo Fisher’s competitive scholarship program will award students an average of $5,000 to attend one of four colleges and universities, which include Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of California-Berkeley, Imperial College London, and Fudan University in Shanghai. These institutions were selected because the company has a substantial presence in these areas and is looking to support students who may become employees after graduating.

“Thermo Fisher is dedicated to instilling a passion for STEM education in students who may one day be our employees, or our customers,” said Marc N. Casper, president and chief executive officer of Thermo Fisher Scientific. “By making education more accessible for some of the brightest young minds, we hope to have a positive impact on industries that are using science to improve healthcare, the environment and public safety.”

Students may apply for the scholarship each year as long as they maintain a strong academic record and continue to focus on a STEM education. Thermo Fisher’s scholarship program is just one part of its multi-million dollar effort to encourage STEM education. The New England Council thanks Thermo Fisher for its commitment to promoting STEM education and wishes them luck with the start of its scholarship program.

Read more in the Boston Business Journal or in Thermo Fisher’s press release.

Visit the Technology page of our website to learn more about the NEC’s recent work to support STEM education.

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NEC Endorses Bill To Expand Access to Telehealth Services Amid Pandemic

06/18/2021 | Read Post

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06/17/2021 | Read Post

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Feb. 12 Rest Day

Peace Walkers at FOR

Tuesday the walk had a rest day in Nyack at the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
FOR is stationed in a building named Shadowcliff, a massive estate overlooking the Hudson River.

It was a beautiful rest day.
It was one of the only days on the walk so far that it’s rained all day, we were lucky to be indoors.
The staff of FOR were incredibly helpful and welcoming!
Mary cooked up an incredible gourmet spread for each meal (including desert), Heshi, Jonette, and Linda spent time getting to know the walkers and sharing information with us about their programs like the “Young, Pacifist and Proud” initiative, and a recent newsletter which featured information on Leverett Peace Pagoda’s inauguration.
Linda sat down for a 40 minute interview with some of the walkers for to learn more about the walk, nuclear disarmament, and Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo.

At FOR we got a chance to watch two films, Samsara and America’s Chernobyl.
It was a good chance to reevaluate why each of us were walking and envision what a nuclear free future actually looks like.

We said goodbye to two of our walkers, Larry & Nurya who had to return home to other responsibilities.

Miki & Nurya

Hopefully they will be back.

In the evening a professor from the Lamont-Doherty Observatory at Columbia University came to speak to the walk about the dangers of nuclear power from a seismological perspective.
John explained that earthquakes on the east coast are much smaller than earthquakes on the west coast, so small that many times they are not even felt by the average person.

Smaller earthquakes can cause problems to the reactor in a much less obvious way than a direct meltdown.
For instance, if an earthquake occurs in upstate New York near Indian Point (which is on two fault lines) the community may not notice. But the control panel which enables the operators at the plant to control heating or power may be affected. There is no way to be sure that smaller earthquakes have not already caused damage to this reactor in a way that the community does not yet know about.

We also watched a great video that was on CBS of Maurice Enis and Jamie Lee Plym, the two Navy vets who became very sick after their work near Fukushima.

Fellowship of Reconciliation: http://forusa.org/
CBS Video Interview with Maurice & Jamie Plym: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50142557n
Lamont Doherty Observatory: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/
America’s Chernobyl: http://defendblackhills.org


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Commercial Concrete Contractor in New Haven CT

Do you have plans to commence any concrete construction project?

Working with one of the finest Commercial Concrete Contractors is the only way to guarantee that superior quality and durability will be attained in your concrete construction project. Hire the services of New Haven Concrete Services
When it comes to matters of concrete construction projects, New Haven Concrete Services takes pride in being industry leaders. We are widely known for our ability to deliver exceptional results regardless of how big or small the construction project is. Reliable services are offered to our ever-growing customers. Throughout the states of CT, we are proud to say that we’ve successfully concluded many concrete projects. Rest assured we will meet and surpass your expectations pertaining to your concrete needs.

What We Do

  • The best service provider of commercial concrete construction is the Top Rated Commercial Concrete Contractor New Haven Concrete Services. We have a competent team of builders, engineers, etc. who’ve undergone extensive training. This team is able to produce exceptional results for concrete construction projects.
  • We assist our clients so that they can make the best decisions regarding their concrete needs that are informed by the use of the latest technological innovations. A complete project outline is then presented. It is precisely mapped out with cost estimates, processes, and a practical schedule. The implementation of the project begins once terms are agreed upon. Our industrious team of concrete experts begins executing the project using state of the art machinery and equipment.
  • Whatever concrete construction needs you are having trouble with it new construction, walkways, sidewalks, docks, and loading ramps; New Haven Concrete Services has a team of specialists to get it done. New Haven Concrete Services is prepared to work with you from setting up, pouring and finishing for projects such as constructing truck terminals, commercial concrete pads, manufacturing facilities, tilt panel, foundation, concrete placement, flatwork, and finishing. As a highly rated commercial concrete contractor, we are constantly geared to meet your concrete construction needs.

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A deserving reputation has been gained by New Haven Concrete Services for the completion of projects with a high rate of success. These projects have been executed with set budgetary limits and on time. Three main reasons have made New Haven Concrete Services able to achieve this:

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With capable engineers, a diverse background, and the passion to step extra steps, New Haven Concrete Services is the best commercial concrete contractor in New Haven. To take advantage of our services, reach out to us today at 203-717-4980.

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NIF New Gen Activism Fellowship

Introducing the New Israel Fund’s New Gen Activism Fellowship

The New Israel Fund (NIF) is delighted to launch the New Gen Activism Fellowship- an exciting new opportunity for young British Activists who are passionate about social justice, human rights, equality and pluralism and who care deeply about the State of Israel. The New Gen Activism Fellowship will offer 3 New Gen Fellows a unique immersion into issues in Israeli society, connect them with Israeli activists leading positive change on the ground, and equip them with skills and tools to lead initiatives to promote NIF’s work within the UK community.

The ten-month programme will include an eight-day immersive experience in Israel, training and development opportunities in the UK, and the provision of platforms and networks to support fellows to develop and implement their own projects and events. The programme is running in conjunction with a parallel Fellowship of our partners in the Australian NIF, and some components will be conducted jointly.

The fellowship is for young activists who are able to demonstrate leadership experience, a commitment to NIF’s vision and values, and skills or professional expertise that they are interested in developing and applying to activist work to advance a just, democratic and pluralistic Israel.

Fellows are offered a unique opportunity to attend a highly subsidised 8-day trip to Israel. During this trip, fellows will engage with issues that they care about in Israeli society, meet inspiring activists on the ground who are working to further solutions to these issues, and develop ideas for meaningful activism that they can lead in the UK in support of their Israeli peers.

Fellows will receive training, development and mentorship opportunities in the UK which will assist their growth as leaders and agents of change, and which will contribute to their personal and professional development.

Fellows will benefit from forging connections and partnerships with Israeli, British and Australian peers and mentors and will join an international community of like-minded New Gen activists with whom they can share ideas and provide inspiration and support in their respective activist projects.

Fellows will be provided with the structure and support to become leaders and activists of NIF’s New Gen (‘New Generations’) community. They will be expected to produce events, activities and campaigns for New Gen, to galvanise support for NIF and to contribute to generating a transformation in attitudes, knowledge and awareness of NIF’s work and values within the UK Jewish community.

NIF is the leading organisation advancing democracy and equality for all Israelis, based on the vision of Israel’s founders. New Gen is the NIF’s international community of young adults and social activists who are committed to this vision, and New Gen members in the UK are offered a variety of ways to learn, connect and act through our menu of educational, social and philanthropic activities.

The NIF New Gen Activism Fellowship is our opportunity to take the UK New Gen community to the next level and nurture a new generation of leadership which can steer the British Jewish community to actively engage in NIF’s work to advance social justice, human rights, religious freedom and shared a tolerant society in Israel.

The Fellowship is open to outstanding young activists aged 22-35 who can demonstrate the following:

1. Active engagement with Israel, including having travelled to Israel previously and possessing a solid understanding of modern Israeli politics and a basic understanding of historical context

2. A strong affinity with NIF’s values and mission

3. Skills and experience of leadership and activism, and a keen interest in applying these within the Jewish community

4. Desire and ability to commit to all the Fellowship components

5. Professional and/or voluntary experience relevant to the planning and execution of effective activities in areas such as fundraising, communications and community organising.

6. Desire and ability to act as ambassadors for NIF

We are keen to develop a diverse group of fellows from a range of backgrounds and interests so make sure to tell us your unique story and highlight any distinctive qualities, skills or knowledge you could bring to the group.

Recruitment Process

To apply for the 2015-2016 New Gen Activism Fellowship, please complete the form in the Apply Now section. The application includes questions on your reasons for wanting to participate in the fellowship, examples of your relevant skills, experience, and knowledge, your personal goals for the fellowship and your initial ideas for activism in the UK. The application form will also allow you to highlight the NIF areas which you are interested in and about which you would like further develop your knowledge.

You will also be required to provide 2 referees.

***The deadline for submission for applications is Thursday 30th April at 12pm***

If your application is successful, you will be invited for an interview which will take place in the NIF’s offices in London on Friday 1st, Tuesday 5th or Wednesday 6th of May. Successful candidates will be informed shortly thereafter and the Fellowship activities will begin on May 31st.

Orientation Seminar 31.05.15

This full day orientation seminar in London will:

1. Introduce fellows to the programme, NIF staff and each other

2. Clarify expectationes and requirements

3. Offer a broad introduction to the work of NIF

4. Provide a framework for fellows to begin to prepare for fellowship components

Israel Tour 19.07.15- 27.07.15

The intensive eight-day tour will include visits and tours hosted by NIF grantees, meetings with experts and activists, and practical workshops and trainings. In this holistic, immersive experience, fellows will:

1. Learn about key issues affecting contemporary Israeli society

2. Engage with the goals, values and strategy of NIF and its partners

3. Study a variety of strategies of social change

4. Identify and explore issues which you care about are are motivated to act on

5. Forge personal connections with activists on the ground and lay the groundwork for future partnerships and joint projects

6. Gain skills for activism

Training and Development Seminars- August, November and February

Three complementary seminars will punctuate the fellowship in the UK, offering training, development and a forum for peer support as fellows develop three separate activist events or projects throughout the duration of the fellowship.

The seminars will enhance fellows’ skills and knowledge of tools of activism, and may include such topics as:

1. Community organising

2. Campaign planning

3. Inspiring communication

4. Digital campaigning and organising

5. Community fundraising

In addition to the three training and development seminars, Fellows will be offered mentoring throughout the duration of the Fellowship, to assist with developing and implementing projects.

Dates for the training and development seminars will be confirmed at the orientation seminar.

Fellows’ Projects

Fellows will be expected to plan, execute and evaluate three projects and/or events as part of the Fellowship- either individually or in pairs or small groups.

Proposed activities will need to be approved by NIF staff, Each Fellow will be given a small budget for their projects.

The types of activities that will be considered include:

1. Meeting a fundraising target agreed by NIF staff and Fellows by establishing or participating in an event, challenge or giving circle

2. Raising awareness  about a specific issue and NIF grantee/s working to address this issue by organising a speaker event, social media campaign or other relevant activity

3. Taking a lead role in existing New Gen activities such as educational events, the New Gen Human Rights Award Committee, or the New Activism blog

Closing Seminary- April 2016

The closing seminar will conclude the Fellowship and will enable Fellows to reflect, measure their impact, celebrate successes and consider their plans for ongoing engagement with NIF and Israel Activism.

The cost of the Fellowship, including the tour in Israel, is £150


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Virgin Recipe: Cherry Chiffon

This week, in Recipes for the Post-Apocalypse….

two boxes of cherry Jell-O, a tub of Cool Whip, and a can of cherries

Cherry Chiffon fixin’s, before the use-by date check

Just kidding. Kind of. You may notice in the photo that the two boxes of cherry Jell-O look different. The one in the back was pulled from my stash, and the one in front was purchased yesterday. I had never thought about the shelf-life of Jell-O before, so out of curiosity, I examined the older box, and discovered a use-by date: October 29, 2011.

Would it really be dangerous to use a packet of Jell-O five years after its ostensible expiry? I turned to Mr. Google. I was not the first person to have this question, and among the answers the consensus seems to be that powdered Jell-O can last indefinitely when stored in a cool, dry place. It isn’t so much that the contents go bad, but if the packaging breaks down and moisture gets in, mold can grow and make the gelatin unsafe to eat.

I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve been playing some of the games in the Fallout franchise. The game world is an alternate-history United States, many decades after a nuclear war with China that occurs in 2077. One of the tasks the player-character performs is collecting food that can be used to restore health points, and along with the meat of various creatures that the player has to kill in the Wasteland, there are a lot of 21st-century leftovers lying around, somehow still safe to eat (if slightly radioactive). So now I’m wondering – where’s all the Jell-O? If Nuka Cola, Cram (tinned meat) and potato crisps are still edible 200 years on, there should be some Jell-O (or maybe “Gel-Oh!”) out there for the scavenging.

my character in Fallout: New Vegas examines the contents of the kitchen in the Presidential Suite in the Lucky 38

Okay, but where’s the Jell-O?

Well, I’m better at making Jell-O than I am at playing those games (I enjoy them, but I suck at them, and I cheat a bit because I don’t want to have to die a million times to see how the stories go), so – Cherry Chiffon.

leftover canned cherries

Do these look appetizing to you?

Armed with my new knowledge of the shelf-life of Jell-O, I opened the old packet, and recognized some clumping as a sign that moisture had gotten in. (Freak Mountain is barely climate-controlled.) Into the bin it went. Luckily, I’d bought a few new packages of the cherry flavor, because the recipe calls for two, one for each layer.

The first layer is just cherry Jell-O with canned dark sweet cherries (one 8.75-oz. can) suspended in it. It turned out that my options at the supermarket for canned cherries were limited to the brand and size I bought; at 15 ounces, I have some leftovers. I’m not sure what to do with them, because I don’t really care for canned cherries, much as I’ve never liked maraschino cherries. One interesting thing about being a grownup is that you develop the ability to, well, be a grownup about eating things that you don’t care for, as long as they’re in small quantities, but six ounces of canned cherries are more of a challenge.

recipe for Oreo Soup from "Junk Food"

This kind of recipe is always a little dangerous…

I may attempt this recipe for Oreo Soup from one of my absolute favorite books, a sort of anthology/art/coffee table book called Junk Food. Stay tuned….

The second layer is a simple bavarian of cherry Jell-O and 4.5 ounces of Cool Whip. Since the smallest available container of Cool Whip is eight ounces, I have some of that left over, which is handy, because if I make the Oreo Soup, I can use the leftover Oreo wafers and Cool Whip for Almond Joy Creme Pie, which appears a couple of pages after Oreo Soup in Junk Food. It just never ends, does it?

Something I was really iffy about when making Cherry Chiffon was the order of the layering. It seemed to me a bad idea have the gelatin layer on top. In my experience, the bavarians tend to be softer and less dense than the straight gelatin, so not exactly the best base for a Jell-O mold. Still, I went ahead with the recipe per the instructions, figuring that if the bavarian layer collapsed under the weight of the gelatin layer, I’d at least get to bitch about it on the internet.

I went about unmolding the Cherry Chiffon expecting the worst. What I ended up with was – a perfectly firm Jell-O mold. The bavarian layer turned out much firmer than I’d expected. The layers even seemed to be adhering to each other. I had thought that even if the bavarian layer held up, the gelatin layer might slide off, a distinct possibility given how slant-wise the layers came out. (We live in a crooked little house; nothing at Freak Mountain is level.)

two-layer cherry Jell-O mold

Cherry Chiffon, standing tall and proud

Cherry Chiffon is far from the worst Jell-O I’ve made so far, but I don’t exactly love it. The Pepto-pink color of the bavarian layer is off-putting, as is the cough-drop cherry flavor. The canned cherries aren’t all that bad, but taste-wise they’re overwhelmed by the artificial cherry flavor of the Jell-O, and their texture is kind of icky.

I wish I could say I won’t be making this again, but there’s a Strawberry Chiffon variant coming up later on in the calendar. At least there’s no such thing as canned strawberries.

6 responses

  1. […] I hinted at in Cherry Chiffon, for my pre-savory “free week”, I decided to try out a couple of recipes from Junk […]

  2. […] can actually see some red, although he tends to have trouble with the Pepto-pinks (so Jell-Os like Cherry Chiffon probably don’t look that great, either) and depending on the brightness, greens appear to him […]

  3. […] shown in the book, Strawberry Chiffon is just a variant on Cherry Chiffon, with strawberry Jell-O and strawberries instead of cherry Jell-O and […]

  4. […] when I made this, nor were there any plain old frozen cherries (I’m wondering now why it’s so hard to find processed cherries at all). I found myself wishing that I’d deviated from the recipe in other ways. The gelatin and hot […]

  5. […] recipe bears an uncanny resemblance to Cherry Chiffon, except that the liquid from the canned cherries goes into the Jell-O, and instead of Cool Whip the […]

  6. […] date on the ham. I needn’t have worried – it said “April 2020”. Not quite post-apocalypse survival fare, but not […]

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Todrick Hall’s Twerk Du Soleil Tour Now On DVD

Screen Shot 2014-11-10 at 11.33.29 AM

Who but the genius that is Todrick Hall would realize how satisfyingly “twerk” and “Cirque” rhyme? Bringing his Twerk du Soleil tour to DVD, the dancer/singer/all-around talent has cobbled together a fascinating performance spectacle that would be tragic to miss.

And yet, for as progressive as it is a concept, I can’t help but wonder why it isn’t available on new media formats like iTunes or VOD? My guess is that profit margins have something to do with it. But don’t let the frustration of having to wait for snail mail in this age of instant gratification stymie you from experiencing Todrick at his very best.

Or you could wait til his new show pops up on MTV and hope that some of the elements from the tour DVD find their way in. But then, this is also about supporting a fellow YouTuber, so just buy the damn footage already.

Go to to get your own copy!

And share this article because Todrick is fierce as f66k and would want you to share it.


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Here’s Where a “Bitcoin Bear Whale” Has Put Up a Massive Sell Wall

banking dlt

Bitcoin’s price action as of late has greatly favored buyers, with the cryptocurrency being caught within the throes of an intense bout of sideways trading just below $19,000 as buyers try to garner enough buy-side pressure to break through this level.

The selling pressure here has been intense, but it has yet to catalyze any type of intense selloff throughout the past few days.

This seems to point to immense underlying strength amongst buyers and may indicate that near-term upside is imminent. If bulls can break above this level, they may face some resistance around $19,300 before they can push the crypto to new all-time highs.

One trader is noting that there is a Bitcoinbear whale” that has sell orders placed at this level, which may prove difficult to surmount upon the first attempt.

That being said, one analyst explained in a recent tweet that he is expecting Bitcoin to break above this resistance and set fresh all-time highs in the near-term.

Bitcoin Shows Signs of Strength as Bulls Target $19,000

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading up marginally at its current price of $18,750. This is around where it has been trading throughout the past few days.

A strong break above $19,000 could catapult BTC to fresh all-time highs, as the resistance in the lower-$19,000 region level is the last resistance seen before $20,000. Once it sets new all-time highs, the media cycle and retail “FOMO” could send it rocketing even higher.

Because of the current strength being projected by Bitcoin, it does seem like a clean break above this level is imminent.

Once new all-time highs are set, it may enter a price discovery mode that results in it seeing significantly further upside.

This “Bear Whale” May Slow BTC’s Ascent

While sharing his thoughts on where Bitcoin might trend in the near-term, one analyst explained that he is watching for a move to all-time highs.

He also notes that there is a “bear whale” that is putting up some serious sell walls at $19,300.

“Longed BTC: Chad Bear Whale is resting at $19.3k and needs relieved of his corns. But more importantly, we have an all time high to make.”

Image Courtesy of LedgerStatus. Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.

Although it may take some time for bulls to chew through these sell orders, it’s clear skies ahead for the crypto once this resistance is broken.

Featured image from Unsplash.
Charts from TradingView.

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Blue Shield of California and Its Employees Set Record for Charitable Giving in 2020

For 2020, employee giving reached $1 million with our company match which is almost double employee giving in 2019

As 2020 has brought more than its fair share of crises, Blue Shield of California and its employees have stepped up our commitment to support the communities where we live and work. Record-breaking fundraising by employees, together with Blue Shield’s corporate gifts, are supporting on-the-ground wildfire recovery efforts and helping people cope with the impact of COVID-19.

“Blue Shield of California and our employees continue to show how much we care for others” says Kimberley Goode, senior vice president of external affairs at Blue Shield. “For 2020, employee giving reached $1 million with our company match which is almost double employee giving in 2019.”

Blue Shield corporate gifts announced

As we cope with COVID-19 in California we are also facing the challenge of wildfires. Climate change, among other factors, is causing massive wildfires to happen more often, with greater ferocity and ever closer to our communities, towns, and cities. In response, Blue Shield announced a $25,000 company donation in October to the California Community Foundation’s Wildfire Relief Fund to help communities recover.

“We recognize that these wildfires – and to a larger extent climate change - are public health threats for all of us,” says Goode. “We have to listen to the science and work together to take care of our fire-ravaged communities and are proud to support nonprofits that are leading this important work.”

A banner year for employee giving

In addition to our record-breaking employee giving, Blue Shield reached another impressive milestone through volunteering. More than 1,000 employees took time to help their favorite nonprofits – either virtually or in person – contributing more than 10,000 volunteer hours so far this year.

“Like everyone else in this pandemic, Blue Shield and our employees had to pivot in unexpected ways to meet the needs of our employees, members, providers and the community,” Goode said. “We quickly adapted our approaches and our employees stepped up. We like to say, ‘We Never Stop,’ and that is certainly what happened here – with employees and leaders making sure we do our part to help those who need us most.”


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Austin Chalk NEWS

Return of the Austin Chalk
June 18, 2018
Source: Oil Price

Return of the Austin Chalk

While shale from Permian Base has occupied all the limelight in the recent times, the forgotten oil source of the 90s has slowly started to emerge from the shadows. This assumption gains strength from the fact that oil majors including ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil, and EOG Resources have purchased some 600,000 acres in the chalk formation that runs from the Mexico-Texas, in last six months.

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The socks are strong: Why Trudeau is wearing Darth Vader

The Canadian prime minister is renowned for his novelty socks, taking Darth Vader threads to India for his latest feet treat.

Darth Vader
Image: Darth Vader is not the first Star Wars character to appear on Justin Trudeau's feet
Why you can trust Sky News

Darth Vader isn't known as a symbol of international diplomacy.

But this week, he made a brief appearance in the world of global negotiations with a cameo on Justin Trudeau's feet.

The Canadian prime minister started a week-long trip to India wearing a pair of Star Wars-themed socks - a choice that it is rumoured could be an attempt to charm the country's President, Narenda Modi, who is reportedly a fan of the movie franchise.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, and their children Ella Grace, Hadrien and Xavier pose in front of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India
Image: Mr Trudeau teases a glimpse of his Darth Vader socks as he poses with his family in front of the Taj Mahal

And it is not the first time Mr Trudeau has played diplomacy and provoked excitement with a flash of ankle.

Yellow rubber ducks, Chewbacca and R2D2, a skull and crossbones and maple leaves are all united by the common thread of his footwear.

Justin Trudeau and Leo Varadkar bonded over socks
Image: Mr Trudeau and Leo Varadkar have previously bonded over socks

Perhaps his most memorable sartorial selection came during last year's Toronto Pride, which coincided with Eid - prompting Mr Trudeau to choose rainbow socks emblazoned with the phrase Eid Mubarak, bought from a local Halal sock producer.

Justin Trudeau's socks. Pic: Canadian Press/REX/Reuters
Image: Justin Trudeau has worn Eid and science-fiction themed footwear

He also drew laughs from world leaders at a recent meeting in Belgium, with a pair of socks bearing the logo of intergovernmental military alliance NATO.

More on Justin Trudeau

:: Sock wars: Canadian PM's footwear incurs wrath of Shatner

The idiosyncrasy has been seized on by people looking to charm the prime minister.

At the World Economic Forum Summit in Davos earlier this year, Coca-Cola boss James Quincey handed Mr Trudeau a pair of socks emblazoned with his drinks company's logo.

In November, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar proudly revealed a pair of maple leaf socks during a meeting with the Canadian leader.

Canadian patterned socks worn by Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, during a visit by the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Farmleigh House in Dublin
Image: Taoiseach Leo Varadkar wore Canadian patterned socks during a meeting with Mr Trudeau

Mr Trudeau's choices here could be strategic: according to a 2014 Harvard Business Review study, people who appear to adopt non-conforming behaviours tend to be held in higher regard than their counterparts.

The study, titled the Red Sneaker Effect, says items such as "crazy socks" can act as a "particular form of conspicuous consumption" that prompts people to view others more favourably - as long as they are seen in be in control and intentionally displaying non-conforming behaviour, that is.

But not everyone has been charmed by the footwear preferences of young and studiedly quirky world leaders.

New Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald recently dismissed Mr Varadkar's socks in cutting terms.

"Leo's kind of smarmy," she said. "You'll have seen him in Number 10 talking about Love Actually and donning various pairs of socks."

Canadian PM wears Star Wars themed socks at Bloomberg Global Business Forum
Image: The Canadian PM has also worn Chewbacca socks

Other commentators think a preoccupation with prime ministerial footwear detracts from more important matters.

They suggest the show of colourful clothing casts Mr Trudeau as a likeable, moral leader and stops people asking more difficult questions about his approach and record.

History has so far suggested a weak correlation between sock-based non-conformity and political allegiances.

One of the last politicians to attract attention for an interest in printed socks was George HW Bush, who in 2013 wore, for seemingly no good reason, a pair of socks printed with his own face.

On several trips to visit the former president, Bill Clinton made sure to take along novelty socks and tweet about his choice of gift.

Jeremy Corbyn prepares for his first leader's speech in his hotel room in Brighton during the annual Labour Party conference at the Brighton Centre, Sussex
Image: Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of inappropriate sock wearing

UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, however, provoked consternation when it was revealed he wore open-toed sandals with socks - a faux pas which prompted some to doubt his suitability as a leader.

Whether you're a fan or not, it seems unlikely that sock selection will disappear from the headlines any time soon.


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Hygio and CreaGen Enter into Agreement for Regional Supply and Distribution of Coviside Hand Sanitizer in Hygio Sanitizing Stations

April 29 01:49 2021

BOSTON – Today, David Robertson, co-founder and CEO of Hygio, and Naveen Rajur, BD Lead of CreaGen, Inc., announced a supply and distribution agreement between Hygio and CreaGen, Inc., based in Woburn, MA. CreaGen will supply the well-known Coviside sanitizer in Hygio wireless, branded, internet-connected sanitizing units.

Hygio began distribution in the United States early this year in the New York and Boston areas. “Expansion throughout New England will require a supply chain including manufacturing and distribution of standard, unscented sanitizer, and we now have this crucial partnership in place,” said Leland Johnson, co-founder of Hygio.

“We are talking with key players within the sanitizer supply chain for mid-range and premium sanitizers, and we plan to announce additional partnerships soon,” added Robertson.

Naveen Rajur, Business Development Lead of CreaGen, Inc., remarked of the agreement, “Our main focus has always been research and development in biotech and pharmaceuticals through our contract research organization. During the Covid-19 pandemic we knew that, at CreaGen, we could give back to the community through our manufacture and distribution of Coviside, which is made according to WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines. We have the capacity to execute this agreement regionally, and we are pleased to contribute to this exciting field of smart, connected, branded sanitizing stations.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

About CreaGen

Founded in 2003, CreaGen, Inc., located in Woburn, MA, is a contract research organization with highly skilled medicinal chemists focusing on design, synthesis and testing of small molecules. In 2014, CreaGen opened C2I, an accelerator bringing companies together in an affordable, centralized space, focused on inter-company co-location and providing instrumentation and services through the CRO-arm of CreaGen.

Contact for CreaGen:

Anny Chum
[email protected]

About Hygio

Launched in late 2020, Hygio secured the North American and Caribbean licenses for technologies developed by the NoSoapCompany. Hygio focuses on wireless, connected hand sanitizer stations that feature communication and messaging opportunities on every unit. Our clients realize that hand sanitizers are now a matter of corporate responsibility going forward, and our units are designed to transform an elegant machine into an unparalleled branding and marketing opportunity.

Contact for Hygio:

David Robertson
[email protected]

Media Contact
Company Name: Hygio, LLC
Contact Person: Leland Johnson
Email: Send Email
City: Boston
State: MA
Country: United States
Website: www.hygio.com


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Coming Up Sunday At 5p.m.: Lawmaker Reacts To CBS4 Investigation Of Assisted Living Center, Proposes Change To Colorado Law

Watch the CBS4 investigation on Sunday.

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Facebook Q&A: Child tax credits

Chantelle Brown, the CEO of A Class Tax Solutions in West Palm Bach, answers questions about the new child tax credit available starting July 15.

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When is the next green list travel update?

·3 min read
<p>Travel is starting to reopen </p> (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Travel is starting to reopen

(Getty Images/iStockphoto)

On 17 May, foreign leisure travel got the go-ahead in England.

From 17 May, holidays can resume under a traffic light system, with destinations graded as red, amber or green according to the level of risk of travellers reimporting Covid-19 infections.

According to the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, recreational travel is only recommended to countries on the green list; travellers have been advised they “should not be travelling to ‘amber’ and ‘red’ countries for leisure”.

The “green list” was first revealed on 7 May.

For the initial international travel restart, only 12 places were designated green. But when will more countries be added to the list, and how often will it be updated? Here’s what we know so far.

Which countries are on the green list now?

A mere 12 destinations made it onto the first green list, many of which do not currently let in British travellers or are impossible to reach directly, thereby necessitating travel through an amber country. The only possible holiday destinations look to be Portugal, Gibraltar and Iceland.

Green list in full

  • Portugal

  • Israel

  • Gibraltar

  • Iceland

  • Faroe Islands

  • Brunei

  • Falkland Islands

  • Australia

  • New Zealand

  • Singapore

  • Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha

  • South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands

When will the green list be reviewed and updated?

The lists will be reviewed every three weeks “from early June” – the first update is expected to take place between 1 and 4 June. Any changes will then come into effect a week later (8-11 June).

Any amends to the lists will be informed by public health advice, including the Joint Biosecurity Centre’s assessment of the latest data.

“These regular review points will allow the government to balance helping the public to understand Covid requirements when travelling to England while allowing us to constantly evaluate the risk for different countries,” according to the Department for Transport (DfT).

The government will also be publishing a green watchlist in the future, to provide an indication of which countries are at risk from moving from green to amber.

Which countries are likely to be added?

There are no guarantees, but there has been much speculation that the US and much of Europe could join the green list at some point in June.

“We believe Europe will mostly turn green by end of June, as will the USA,” tweeted travel consultant and CEO of the PC Agency, Paul Charles, at the end of April. Even if this prediction is correct, it’s difficult to say whether countries will switch colours in the next review or the following one.

If trends continue as expected, the first update could include destinations that many thought would be on the initial green list but ended up being amber: Morocco, Malta, Finland and much of the Caribbean.

What are the rules for green list countries?

Green list countries have the lightest restrictions on arrival, with no quarantine imposed and travellers merely required to take one PCR test within two days of entering the UK.

All travellers must also show proof of a negative Covid test – PCR, rapid antigen or lateral flow – before departure to the UK.

Read More

Holidaymakers prepare to jet off as Covid travel rules ease

Green list of quarantine-free countries to be expanded, Grant Shapps says

How can I get a holiday refund if my destination is on the red or amber list?

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Temperatures surge across the country

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The U.S. is dealing with oppressive heat as temperatures hit triple digits in multiple cities and dozens of records were broken on Sunday. Meanwhile, the Gulf Coast was hit with torrential rainfall and flooding. Tom Hanson has the story.

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text:
Treasure Coast residents await new Lake Okeechobee water release schedule

There are no plans to release Lake Okeechobee water to the St. Lucie Estuary any time soon. That was the message Friday during the Army Corps of Engineers' weekly update.

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text:
Make-A-Wish giving kids options, still granting wishes

A Colorado kid's wish was granted with the help of Camping World. He’s one of hundreds of wish kids in Colorado who were given the option to wait to travel for their wishes, or to “re-imagine” a new wish to be granted right away. Many are taking that second option and keeping the local chapter quite busy.

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French man gets 4-month prison sentence for slapping Macron

A 28-year-old Frenchman who described himself as a right-wing or extreme-right “patriot” was sentenced to four months in prison Thursday for slapping President Emmanuel Macron in the face.

Damien Tarel was also banned from ever holding public office in France and from owning weapons for five years over the swipe Tuesday, which caught Macron’s left cheek with an audible thwack as the French leader was greeting a crowd.

During Thursday’s trial, Tarel testified that the attack was impulsive and unplanned, and prompted by anger at France’s “decline.”

He sat straight and showed no emotion as the court in the southeastern city of Valence convicted him on a charge of violence against a person invested with public authority. He was sentenced to four months in prison and handed an additional 14-month suspended sentence. His girlfriend broke down in tears.

Tarel, who shouted a centuries-old royalist war cry as he hit the president, described himself as a right-wing or extreme-right “patriot” and member of the yellow vest economic protest movement that shook Macron’s presidency in 2018 and 2019.

Poised and calm, he firmly defended his action and his views on Macron, without providing details of what policies he wants France to change.

Tarel acknowledged hitting the president with a “rather violent” slap. “When I saw his friendly, lying look, I felt disgust, and I had a violent reaction,” he told the court. “It was an impulsive reaction… I was surprised myself by the violence.”

While he said he and his friends had considered bringing an egg or a cream pie to throw at the president, he said they dropped the idea — and insisted that the slap wasn’t premeditated.

“I think that Emmanuel Macron represents the decline of our country,” he said, without explaining what he meant.

He told investigators that he held right- or ultra-right political convictions without being a member of a party or group, according to the prosecutor’s office.

The slap called attention to an assortment of ultra-right groups bubbling beneath France’s political landscape, which are considered increasingly dangerous despite their small following.

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Macron wouldn’t comment Thursday on the trial, but insisted that “nothing justifies violence in a democratic society, ever.”

“It’s not such a big deal to get a slap when you go toward a crowd to say hello to some people who were waiting for a long time,” he said in an interview with broadcaster BFM-TV. “We must not make that stupid and violent act more important than it is.”

At the same time, the president added, “we must not make it banal, because anyone with public authority is entitled to respect.”

Another man arrested in the ruckus that followed the slap, identified by the prosecutor as Arthur C., will be judged at a later date, in 2022, for illegal possession of weapons.

The prosecutor’s office said as well as finding weapons, police who searched the home of Arthur C. also found books on the art of war, a copy of Adolf Hitler’s manifesto “Mein Kampf,” and two flags, one symbolizing Communists and another of the Russian revolution.

Neither Tarel nor Arthur C., also 28, had police records, the prosecutor said.

While crimes in France often take months or years to reach trial, in this case authorities used a special emergency procedure to hold a trial within just two days of the slap. Tarel did not object to the procedure.

Videos showed Macron’s attacker slapping the French leader’s left cheek and his bodyguards pushing the man away during a quick meet-and-greet with members of the public, who were kept back behind traffic barriers in the winemaking town of Tain-l’Hermitage.

The attacker was heard to cry out “Montjoie! Saint Denis!” a centuries-old royalist war cry, before finishing with “A bas la Macronie,” or “Down with Macron.”

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Insecurity: Islamic Group attacks Clarke Over Call For A Military Takeover

Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), has described the call made by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Robert Clarke for President Muhammadu Buhari to hand over the Nigerian government to the military as outright balderdash.

Recall that Clarke had recently suggested that Buhari should delegate his executive powers to the Chief of Defence Staff who should thereafter declare a state of emergency in all the 36 states of the federation.

Clarke said that a temporary military rule would bring the state of insecurity to a halt and balance the economy.

However, the Defence Headquarters had discarded the call for military takeover and pledged to remain loyal to constitutional authority and remain apolitical.

MURIC in a statement made available to one of DAILY POST correspondent, on Thursday, signed by its director, Professor Ishaq, said Chief Clarke should perish such thought

According to MURIC, Nigerians will rather be free men in their graves than live like puppets and slaves, calling on the people to reject such suggestions vehemently.

“Chief Robert Clarke’s recent suggestion is, to say the least, nauseating, preposterous, and egregious. It is outright balderdash,” MURIC’s statement said.

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“We are grossly disappointed that a learned fellow of timber, caliber and caterpillar, a SAN, would offer such an outrageous suggestion.

It may have been 22 years away since 1999 when the military ceded power to civilians, but we have not forgotten the woes visited on this country by the military. The travails of Nigeria today can be traced to military misadventure in politics.

Chief Clarke should bury the thought. Neither should the Nigerian Army swallow the bait because no decent Nigerian will buy military rule for 10 kobos.

We wish to reiterate the fact that military involvement in politics is out of fashion, toxic and anachronistic.

Nigerians will rather be free men in their graves than live like puppets and slaves. We say ‘No’ to another banana republic.

It may not be perfect yet, but Chief Clarke should respect Nigeria’s democracy,” the group said.

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Factbox: Five takeaways from Facebook oversight board’s Trump case By Reuters

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Facebook logos on a computer screen are seen in this photo illustration taken in Lavigny May 16, 2012. REUTERS/Valentin Flauraud

By Elizabeth Culliford

(Reuters) – Facebook (NASDAQ:)’s oversight board, a body set up by the social network to give independent verdicts on a small number of thorny content decisions, has ruled Facebook was right to bar former U.S. President Donald Trump after the Jan 6. riot but wrong in placing an indefinite suspension.

Here are five takeaways from the board’s case decision:

1. Facebook’s oversight board said the company was correct to block Trump – the first current president, prime minister or head of state it has banned.

The board’s verdict sends a message that the world’s largest social media company may act on other rule-breaking political and influential leaders in the United States and globally, backing Facebook on a major decision that has both been praised for cracking down the violations of an influential account and criticized for abusing a private companies’ power to censor elected leaders.

It also puts a burden on Facebook to be clearer about how it enforces its rules on world leaders. Some human rights advocates have called for the platform to be more consistent in its approach to violations of international leaders and invest more in localized content moderation and expertise.

2. The board passed decision on Trump’s fate to Facebook

The board, which said Facebook should have used the rules on its books rather than an “arbitrary penalty” without an end-date, told the company to come up with a response consistent with its rules within six months.

In punting the case back to Facebook, the board sends the dilemma of how to police one of its most controversial users back to the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg. It said Facebook must decide whether to restore Trump, suspend him for a definite period or restore his account.

Some civil rights groups and Facebook critics blasted the board for passing the buck, which it denied doing. Board members said they were not there to lift responsibility from Facebook but to make sure it follows the rules it has on the books.

The board also recommended Facebook come up with a policy to govern its response to crises where its normal processes would not prevent imminent harm.

3. Trump’s representatives told board outside forces to blame for Capitol riot

The board said that a statement was submitted on Trump’s behalf, through the American Center for Law and Justice and a Trump page administrator, requesting that the board reverse the decision.

The statement said Trump’s Jan. 6 posts did not threaten public safety or incite violence and said there was no serious linkage between Trump’s speech, in which he said the election was stolen and urged protesters “to fight,” and what the statement called “the Capitol building incursion.”

It said the riot was “certainly influenced, and most probably ignited by outside forces” and described a federal complaint against members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, which it said were not associated with Trump.

Trump representatives declined to share the full statement made to the board with Reuters.

4. Board members disagreed on criteria for Trump to return to Facebook

The board said Facebook must decide Trump’s penalty “based on the gravity of the violation and the prospect of future harm.”

A minority of the board thought the criteria should include Facebook being satisfied that Trump had stopped making unfounded election fraud claims and withdrawn praise or support for those involved in the riots.

The board also disagreed on how narrowly it needed to assess Trump’s posts in deciding if Facebook’s ban was correct. A minority thought that while the ban was justified on Jan. 6 events, it was important to look at posts before the November election, including Trump’s post during racial justice protests that said “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” and multiple posts referencing the “China Virus.”

5. The board says Facebook needs to tell users about its newsworthiness rules

The board said Facebook needs to be less opaque and address the confusion it has caused around how it makes decisions on influential users, though this recommendation is not binding.

Facebook’s newsworthiness allowance allows violating posts to stay up where the public interest outweighs the harm. Facebook told the board it did not apply the exemption to the posts in the Trump case, even though the company has previously said it treats politicians’ speech as newsworthy.

The basic principle of giving world leaders greater latitude than average users has been criticized by some researchers and human rights advocates, who argue these posts should instead be more strictly policed.

The board said all users should be held to the same content rules, but it emphasized Facebook should take quick action when posts by influential users pose a high probability of imminent harm and that this should take priority over other values of political communication.

The board noted it does not see a useful distinction between political leaders and other influential users on the site.

It also said Facebook’s penalty system in general was not clear and it should tell users more about the “strikes” it imposes, how penalties are calculated and give warnings before restricting accounts on Facebook and Instagram.

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