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Short Sale

What it is:

A short sale is a three-step trading strategy that seeks to capitalize on an anticipated decline in the price of a security.

How it works/Example:

First, arrangements are made to borrow shares of the security, typically from a broker. Next, the investor will sell the shares immediately in the open market with the intention of buying them back at some point in the future. Finally, to complete the cycle, at a later date he/she will repurchase the shares (hopefully at a lower price) and will return them to the lender. In the end, the investor will pocket the difference if the share price falls, but will of course incur a loss if it rises.

Let's look at an example:

Mr. Johnson firmly believes that ABC Corp. stock is due to fall, so he calls his broker to sell short 100 shares of the company.

In this example, we will assume that Mr. Johnson places the trade, which is immediately executed, to sell short 100 shares of ABC Corp. at $25.00 per share. He will receive a cash inflow of $2,500 from this transaction.

Now let's assume that two weeks later, the price has indeed dropped, and that Mr. Johnson is able to buy back the shares (known as covering a short position) for $20.00 per share. In this transaction, he'll have to spend $2,000 to repurchase the shares. His profit on the trade will be $500 ($2,500 initial cash inflow minus an eventual $2,000 cash outflow). The other way to look at it is that he will have earned $5 per share on the trade, giving him a gain of $500 ($5 gain multiplied by 100 shares). Using this same calculation, we can see that if the shares had risen to $27.50 during his holding period, then he would have been responsible for a $250 loss (100 shares * $2.50/share).

Why it Matters:

Essentially, a short seller is still trying to do the same thing a regular investor is -- buy low and sell high. However, the short seller is trying to accomplish this in reverse order. In other words, he/she is trying to first sell high and then buy low. The short sales strategy, which is the opposite of entering a long position, is a risky one for a number of reasons. These include the potential for a margin call, as well as theoretically unlimited losses should the underlying stock rise instead of fall. A short seller is not entitled to keep any dividends distributed while he/she has shorted a stock.
When a large number of investors decide to short a particular stock, their collective actions can have a dramatic impact on the company's share price. An investor can quickly determine the percentage of a company's outstanding shares that are currently being sold short by checking the stock's "short interest." For example, a 10% short interest means that one of every ten outstanding shares is held short.

Often, market analysts or financial journalists will attribute a rise in a given stock, or occasionally even the broader markets, to short covering. Eventually, all short sellers must close out their trades by repurchasing the underlying shares that they initially sold. If many of them begin to do this simultaneously, then the rush of buying orders can temporarily boost stock prices. This often occurs after the market has fallen steeply (as short sellers attempt to lock in gains) or while it is rising sharply (as short sellers try to prevent further losses).

Occasionally, a sharp rise in a particular stock can trigger a large number of short sellers to cover their positions all at once. This short covering can push the share price even higher, causing even more short sellers to cover their positions and cut their losses. In these cases, the stock is said to be caught in a short squeeze. Volatile stocks with large short interest are particularly susceptible to this phenomenon, and prospective short sellers should be wary of it.

Though they are a small minority, a few investors actually own shares in the company they intend to short. This alternate strategy -- known as shorting against the box -- is typically used when an investor expects the price to fall, but does not yet want to close out his/her position by selling his/her current long positions.

Best execution refers to the imperative that a broker, market maker, or other agent acting on behalf of an investor is obligated to execute the investor's order in a way that is most advantageous to the investor rather than the agent.


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In Pictures: Biggest Stock Scams

In what is now being called the "flash crash", the Dow lost over 700 points in a matter of minutes, at one point being down nearly 1,000 points for the day, before storming back. In the wake of that craziness, exchanges and investors had to sift through broken trades and regulators are still trying to figure out what happened.

Clear Out the Dross First
Before talking about what may have happened, let us begin with some of the exciting theories that have been roundly discarded by the experts.

The Fat Finger
This describes a trade where a human input error leads to a significantly erroneous trade, like adding an extra "zero" to an order. In this case, there was a rumor that a trader mistakenly input a sell order for either S&P 500 futures or Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) stock as "billion" instead of "million". It is an amusing idea, but there are fail-safes at trading houses and exchanges that would flag such a mistake.

Rogue Traders and Terrorists
There have been stories claiming that certain investors sold a large amount of futures or bought a large amount of puts just before the crash began. Likewise, others have whispered that it was a cyber attack by the likes of Al-Qaeda or the Chinese. In all cases, regulators and investigators have found no evidence to support these ideas and if it was due to the actions of a single U.S. money manager, we would know by now. (It may have not been the case this time, but terrorist activity tends to have a negative impact on the markets. Find out how to take cover. Read Terrorism's Effects On Wall Street.)

What May Have Really Happened
In point of fact, I consider it a near-certainty that there was no single cause of this flash crash. More likely, it was a series or collection of events that happened to just all go wrong simultaneously, and this appears to be the current position of U.S. financial regulators as well.

One detail is important to understand. Prior to the drop in the stock market, there was a drop in the S&P e-mini futures. These are futures contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and are hugely popular with traders, and the daily dollar volume is often much higher than that of the actual stocks in the S&P 500. These contracts matter, though, because of arbitrage - the price of the S&P futures and underlying stocks are linked and will move together. (Learn more about this advanced trading technique in Trading The Odds With Arbitrage.)

Sudden Liquidity Drain
Generally speaking, there are about a half-dozen firms that provide about half of the liquidity in the e-mini futures. That is a huge amount of volume in the hands of a small cadre of traders. It appears, though, that as selling began on that fateful day some of these traders left the market. As we have seen in every financial market (whether stocks, bonds, options, or futures), a sudden drop in liquidity can be very bad for prices and morale and prices can fall precipitously.

Stub Quotes
Have you ever looked up a quote for a stock outside of market orders and seen a bizarre bid-ask spread like "Bid - 0.01 Ask - $100,000"? That is a stub quote. Market makers are required to maintain active bid and ask prices for their stocks, and those prices are supposed to be legitimate.

In practice, though, sometimes market makers do not want to trade and that is when they will offer those ridiculous spreads. There is never any intent to actually do business at those prices, but they are real offers and when computerized systems cannot find a better place to execute a trade, those stubs will get hit. That, in a nutshell, is how we saw some stocks trade for one cent on the day of the flash crash.

Mismatched Trading Rules
Unfortunately, the various stock exchanges open to investors and traders do not have a uniform set of rules. The simplest example is the NYSE which still uses a mix of electronic and human trading. In periods of exceptional chaos or volatility, these mismatches in rules can cause big disruptions in order flow and liquidity, sometimes moving trades away from markets with willing traders and credible quotes and into the periphery where issues like stub quotes become relevant.

Intermarket Sweep Orders
This is a relatively unusual type of stock order that is almost never used by regular investors. Typically, investor orders are routed to whatever market offers the best price - many NYSE-listed stocks are actually traded through Nasdaq or electronic exchanges. Some investors, especially those engaged in algorithmic trading, will use a sweep order to direct trades to a specific market regardless of price. That can lead to trades being executed at very strange prices if there is a failure in liquidity in the markets. In the flash crash there were many strange quotes for NYSE-listed stocks trading on Nasdaq.

Stop-Loss Orders
Stop-loss orders are often promoted as a way of reducing risk, but they can actually amplify a crisis under certain conditions. Stop loss orders become active when a stock declines to a certain level and create automatic sell orders. If a stock or index is dropping rapidly, an influx of sell orders can function like throwing gasoline on a fire. It is entirely possible, then, that the triggering of thousands of stop loss orders led to a flood of sell orders and an extreme amount of downward pressure on prices for a short period of time. (Learn more in The Stop-Loss Order - Make Sure You Use It.)

Along similar lines, the linkage between futures and stocks cannot be ignored. Arbitrage is a well-known and reputable part of a healthy and functioning market, but it can lead to strange results in volatile times. As the S&P futures dropped, it triggered automated orders to sell the underlying stocks, which triggered a vicious cycle as the selling in futures led to selling in stocks which led to more selling in futures.

Is There Anything an Individual Can Do?
Unfortunately, systematic breakdowns are an inevitable weakness of any elaborate system. In other words, despite the best intentions of the SEC, exchanges and brokerages, something like this will happen again eventually. The best thing an individual investor can do is to use stop-limit orders instead of stop loss orders. A stop loss order means that once a trigger price is reached, an order is issued to sell that stock as soon as possible, at whatever price. A stop-limit order, however, is likewise triggered by a decline in the stock price but the order specifies a price below which the trade is canceled. That may not sound like a great solution, but it at least offers the hope that a crazy hour in New York will not leave you with precipitous losses.

Catch up on the latest financial news in Water Cooler Finance: The iPhone Launch, Buffett's Lunch And BP's Lashing.

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After a Shaky Day of Trading, Markets Make Small Gains

By: , dated June 1st, 2015

All three major domestic indexes were up when today was all said and done, but it was a close call for much of the afternoon. The Dow added 29.69 points over the course of rocky trading today, and closed out the day at 18,040.37. The NASDAQ added 12.90 points and closed at 5,082.93, thanks in large part to the big tech companies who held their own in the market today. The S&P 500 gained as well, up 4.34 points to close out Monday's trading at 2,111.73.

Oil Rises But Energy Companies Fall

Usually the fate of the price of crude and energy production companies are tightly tied together, but in trading today the price of oil rose while many energy companies fell. I've written before about the fragile state of energy companies, but nothing illustrates the weak energy market like the fact that crude oil futures can rise while energy producers lose money.

Murphy Oil Corp (MUR) fell over -2%, or -0.94 points to close the day at $42.52. Transocean (RIG) was down -1.50% to $18.58. Diamond Offshore (DO) dropped a percentage point to $30.09. The price of crude oil was up 0.13% to $60.28 per barrel.

Airlines Soar On Better Than Expected Quarterly Results

The only market segment that has been hit as hard as energy producers has been the airlines. Expensive tickets and crowded flights, along with an intimidating level of security, have made it hard for the industry to turn much of a profit. Still, with the American consumer economy picking up and people traveling more, it's only a matter of time until things turn around. Today, the airlines got a faint glimmer of just what such a turnaround might look like, when they announced higher than expected profits on increased volume for the quarter.

American Airlines (AAL) rose over 4% on the day to close at $44.18. Delta (DAL) was up 1.43 points to $44.35. United (UAL) and Southwest (LUV) rose 1.72 and 0.88 points respectively. Southwest closed at $37.85 per share, while United ended the day's trading at $56.31.

Blue Chips Anchor Today's Volatile Market

If it weren't for the major market players, today would have had a very different outcome. Blue chip stocks -- so-called for the high value of the poker chips they're named after -- anchored the marketplace today, neither making huge gains or posting big losses. That was enough to turn a rough day for traders into a small win for the markets.

Google (GOOG) was up less than a percentage point to $549.21 per share. Boeing (BA) rose 0.73 points to close the day's trading at 141.25. Goldman Sachs (GS) posted a gain of 1.62 points to close at 207.81.

Aaron Phillips

is a financial researcher and journalist based out of Michigan. He regularly writes the IG Daily and IG Weekly columns. Just recently, he's started covering the investment news beat for IG.

Copyrighted 2015. Content published with author's permission.

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 Competitions

December 2009 Newsletter competition results

Congratulations to Michael Lange of Denmark for winning out December 2009 IOGKF International Newsletter competition!
The competitions aim was to find the best IOGKF photo, which captured the spirit and essence of our organisation. Michael's entry entitled 'two strong men', features Sensei Jakob Kold of Denmark being tested in Sanchin by Sensei Morio Higaonna. Michael's pictures displayed the endeavors of the IOGKF training spirit and it is for this reason that he won this competition.
Michael will be receiving a copy of the 2006 Miyagi Chojun Festival commemorative DVD set, which features Masters demonstrations performances by instructor like Higaonna Sensei, Bakkies Sensei and Terauchi Sensei! Thank you to all those IOGKF members who entered this competition!


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Germany grows

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Germany posted modest economic growth in the second quarter of the year and France stagnated, suggesting the euro zone as a whole contracted over the three months, a downturn that its largest economy is unlikely to be able to defy for long.

Germany eked out growth of 0.3 percent over the quarter, marginally beating forecasts, but economists said it could soon succumb unless decisive action is taken to tackle the currency bloc's debt crisis.

More up-to-date evidence from the third quarter has shown declines in German manufacturing orders, industrial output, imports and exports. Germany's forward-looking ZEW sentiment index will be published later in the day.

“Growth turned out to be pretty solid. But this could be the last positive piece of news out of Germany for some time,” said Joerg Kraemer at Commerzbank. “The German economy could contract in the summer. It is fundamentally in good structural shape, but can't decouple from the recession in the euro zone, plus the global economy has also shifted down a gear.”

For France, it was the third consecutive quarter of zero growth. The central bank has already said it expects a mild contraction in the third quarter.

The euro zone is forecast to have contracted by 0.2 percent in the second quarter, having flatlined in the first. That figure will be published at 11:00 SA time. Economists say worse is probably to come.

“Despite the positive growth number for Germany, we expect total euro zone GDP to have contracted by around 0.4 percent on the quarter in the second quarter, as severe fiscal austerity is pulling most economies into recession,” said Aline Schuiling, senior economist at ABN AMRO.

Safe-haven German Bund futures fell and European stocks rose after the slightly stronger than expected German and French GDP reports eased concerns about the euro zone's two biggest economies.

Austria and the Netherlands almost matched Germany's performance, each posting growth of 0.2 percent. Economists surveyed by Reuters had expected the Dutch economy to shrink 0.3 percent.

Finland, one of Germany's northern European allies in pushing for austerity, suffered a 0.7 percent year-on-year fall in GDP.

For the currency bloc's members at the sharp end of its debt crisis, the picture is bleaker still and as economies shrink, so do tax revenues, making deficit-cutting even harder to achieve.

That has fostered a growing debate inside and outside Europe about the sense of austerity drives.

Figures released on Monday showed deficit-cutting measures helped to shrink Greece's economy 6.2 percent year-on-year in the second quarter. Economists say the slump will persist as the government scrambles to secure billions in additional cuts to keep bailout funds flowing.

Italy's second quarter data was released last week and showed the economy contracted 0.7 percent quarter-on-quarter, compounding the difficulties for Mario Monti's technocrat government as it tries to avoid a bailout.

Spain's economy shrank 0.4 percent over the same period, pushing it deeper into recession, according to figures out two weeks ago.

The big unanswered question is whether a weakening economy will make Germans less likely to support government rescue efforts for the broader euro zone.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said repeatedly over the past year that she will do everything to save the euro, most recently after the European Central Bank signalled it would intervene in the bond market to lower Spanish and Italian borrowing costs.

Not all Germans support that course and the chancellor's room for manoeuvre appears to be shrinking at a time when both Greece and Spain may soon require new rescues. However, if ordinary Germans start to feel real economic pain, their response could be to demand their leaders sort out the crisis that is now finally knocking at their door.

Spanish and Italian bond yields have steadied since ECB President Mario Draghi promised to do whatever it takes to save the euro zone. It is quite possible that Madrid and Rome will seek help from the euro zone's rescue funds and the ECB before the year is out.

“It remains decisive whether the euro crisis can be controlled. We expect that the ECB has initiated a turning point with its signal of bond purchases,” said Christian Schulz, economist at Berenberg Bank. “After a weaker summer the German economy will be able to grow faster again from the fourth quarter.” - Reuters

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New MJ album to be released

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IOL Tonite si jackson Reuters Pop star Michael Jackson sings the 'Earth Song' during the World Music Awards ceremony at the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo in this May 8, 1996 file photo.

Five years after the death of the “King of Pop”, a posthumous Michael Jackson album due in May is set to thrill fans with eight previously unreleased songs, Epic Records announced on Monday.

The album, due for release on May 13, has been named “XSCAPE”, which is also one of the new tracks mined from Jackson's archives.

After gaining access to four decades of the late singer's material, Epic Records, a subsidiary of Sony, chose eight songs that featured completed vocal tracks by Jackson.

The record company then asked producers to “contemporize” the music while “retaining Jackson's essence and integrity”, it said in a statement.

Among the producers brought in to give a modern edge to the tracks were global hitmakers Timbaland, Rodney Jerkins, Stargate and John McClain.

A deluxe edition will include a selection of the recordings in their original form.

“Michael was always on the cutting edge and was constantly reaching out to new producers, looking for new sounds. He was always relevant and current. These tracks, in many ways, capture that spirit,” said John Branca and John McClain, co-executors of Jackson's estate.

Epic Records published its first posthumous Jackson album in 2010. “Michael” included nine previously unreleased songs, mostly drawn from the singer's final recording sessions. - Sapa-AFP

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Abnormal Psychology
3 Credit Hours
This course involves the study of abnormal behavior, including major theories, concepts of psychopathology, and methods of classification. The course is designed to give the student a better understanding of the causes of severe personality and behavior disorders and suggested methods of treatment and control.


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Looncongres.nl - Looncongres Whois Report

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We include detailed information like the server IP Address which is Looncongres.nl resides at Denit Internet Services in Netherlands.

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10 of 10

Rural Irish Holidays

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T: +353(0)879898888

Rural Irish Holidays based in East County Clare, provide a variety of guided leisure activity holidays for guests who wish to immerse themselves in rural Ireland, its people, music, local quality food and good accommodation.

What can you expect from Rural Irish Holidays, East Clare: starting on a Saturday you have the choice of seven nights multi activity leisure holidays, either hill walking or cycling, including a day’s cruise on Lough Derg. The activities are not marathons or endurance tests, they are comfortable trips, easy to moderate. This is a chill out holiday.

A range of accommodation choices are also provided, from full board, bed and breakfast, to self catering. A packed lunch is provided free each day. Rural Irish Holidays also run tailored guided leisure activity holidays.

Visit the itinerary page for details.

Get yourself to Shannon Airport or Limerick train and bus terminus and they will collect and return you free. They will have the kettle ready and homemade apple tart on the table.


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Clay Creations

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Low Street, Thomastown, Kilkenny, Republic of Ireland
T: +353(0)567724977

Brid Lyons is an artist based in Thomastown in Co Kilkenny who is inspired by the style of the 1920’s. Her Ladies won first prize for innovation at Showcase 2002. Brid also makes a range of delightful ceramic eggs.

Clay Creations ceramic studio and Gallery is located in Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny. Brid designs a wide variety of contemporary ceramic pieces, original designs and sculptural works creative in form with vibrant glazes creating a unique character for each piece.

Clay Creations is a member of the "MADE in Kilkenny Craft Trail" which aims to encourage the growth of the professional craft industry and to promote the county as a shopping destination for authentic handmade craft in Ireland. Further details are available from


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One Direction star Harry Styles finds rumors about his love life ‘annoying’

One Direction star Harry Styles finds rumors about his love life ‘annoying’
Harry Styles

Gossip about the One Direction hunk's womanising ways features appears daily and the 19-year-old star admits the constant speculation affected his past relationships with the likes of Taylor Swift and British TV presenter Caroline Flack.

He told the new UK issue of GQ magazine: "Some of them are funny. Some of them are ridiculous. Some of them are annoying. I don't want to be one of those people that complains about the rumors.

"I never like it when a celebrity goes on Twitter and says, 'This isn't true!' It is what it is; I tend not to do that.
"The only time it gets really annoying is that if you get into a relationship and you get into a place where you really like someone and then things are being written in the papers that affect them and how they see you. Then it can get annoying."

Harry also laughed off rumours he may be bisexual.

When quizzed about his sexuality by the publication, he scoffed: "Bisexual? Me? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I'm not."

Meanwhile, Harry's bandmates - Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne and Zayn Malik - are adamant they aren't interested in groupies and don't have time to seduce their fans.

Irish singer Niall insisted: "We go back on the road straight after a show and we're gone. I wish we did have time for girls and parties but we don't."

Louis - who is dating long-term girlfriend Eleanor Caldwell - added: "The type of girls who would sleep with you in a heartbeat aren't the type of girls I'd want to take home."

However, Niall, 19, would make an exception for singer Ellie Goulding, who he has been shamelessly flirting with on Twitter for the past month.

He blushed: "I'll say one thing: Ellie Goulding - wow. She's absolutely amazing looking."


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Henning Mankell on Wallander: One foot in the sand, and one foot in the snow

Henning Mankell created one of fiction’s chilliest detectives in Wallander, but he has a warm world view thanks to living in both Europe and Africa

‘A writer, not a crime writer’: Henning Mankell, author of the Kurt Wallander novels. Photograph: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images

‘A writer, not a crime writer’: Henning Mankell, author of the Kurt Wallander novels. Photograph: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images

Sat, Jul 27, 2013, 18:03

Henning Mankell is pondering the recent Stockholm riots and getting just about as animated as his laid-back demeanour allows.

“I was very astonished that everyone seemed to be so astonished,” he says. “When you read the press outside of Sweden, it seemed to say this was something new, which is not true. In the last 10 years we have had riots in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo, but the world press didn’t interest themselves. Everyone [in Sweden] was expecting this to happen because we have the same problem they have in London or Paris, of a small community of young children immigrants that don’t feel welcome in their own country.”

Recent political talk about tightening immigration laws are unlikely to help the situation. Maybe it’s because we think of Sweden as being a calm, rational place, but it seems out of character.

“But what did you think when Mr Breivik killed 77 children in Norway? We know that Sweden is a very decent society but there are certain problems, as there is everywhere. That mythology about the Swedish perfect society, the blonde girls and whatever, that is created by you, it’s not created by us. There is a mythology created about every country. The greedy Scotsman or some stupid thing . . . there must be something about Irish people too?”

The drunken Irish person?

“No, no,” he says with a wry smile, “if you look at television the drunk is the young British boy or girl in Ibiza.”

Despite his reputation as being a foreboding, intellectual presence, Mankell is good company, with his bone-dry sense of humour coming through his undulating Scandinavian tones. These layers should come as no surprise. While he made his name, and fortune with the Kurt Wallander series of crime novels, set in the bleak icy landscapes of northern Sweden, there’s always been more than one string to his bow.

He divides his time equally between Sweden and Mozambique, where he is the artistic director of the Avenida Theatre in Maputo, and has become heavily involved in Aids awareness and literacy programmes.

In recent years, he has garnered a lot of attention for his political activism, having sailed with an aid convoy in 2010 that attempted to break Israel’s embargo of Gaza, only to be stopped and boarded in international waters. He has written more than 50 plays and more than 25 non-Wallander novels, a few of which concern characters moving between Europe and Africa. Mankell’s relationship with the continent goes back a long way. “I came to Africa more than 40 years ago – I’m an old man – and think I came to see the world from outside of the European egocentricity. And when I go back in August it will be for the same reason, in a way.”

As romantic as that sounds, he happily admits that more practical concerns helped him find his way to the continent initially. Having left school and Sweden at the age of 16, he lived a penniless life in Paris for a time, before spending two years working as a stevedore on a ship ferrying coal to Europe and America. He returned to Sweden for long enough to write his first stage play and novel before the travel bug bit again. Why Africa? “That was the cheapest ticket I could find.”

His latest novel, A Treacherous Paradise, follows the story of Hanna Renström as she moves through a series of misadventures from a life of poverty in remote northern Sweden at the turn of the 20th century to being the owner of a brothel in Portuguese East Africa. It mixes in Mankell’s own knowledge of racism, colonialism and what it is to be a stranger in a strange land.

His cheap ticket landed him in Guinea- Bissau when it was still a Portuguese colony. “On my first entrance to the African continent they stamped me into Portugal. So the madness of colonialism was the first thing I met. I’m in Africa and they say on my passport that I’m in Portugal: ridiculous.”

Leap into the unknown
Travelling to sub-Saharan Africa seems like a leap into the unknown, even for someone with experience of being a merchant seaman. The world’s a smaller place now than it was in the early 1970s.

“I’m not sure. That’s just what Nokia and Samsung say. With all the new technology maybe we will finally understand how big the world is – much bigger than we thought. There is so much that we don’t know about other people and other cultures, that I would say the world today is not getting smaller, it’s finally getting as big as it is.”

Just as he has previously displayed a distaste for some of Kurt Wallander’s character traits, Mankell is quick to distance himself from the alienation felt by the character Hanna upon her arrival in Africa.

“No, that is her, she is not me. I never felt that. I think I did something right when I came to Africa: I didn’t come with suitcases full of answers, I came with suitcases full of questions. And I think this is essential if you really want to be part of a culture that is not your own. And that meant that eventually people didn’t look on me as a stranger but as one of them.”

Mankell also believes his theatre background has helped him to not be too precious when it comes to the many screen versions of his work – there have already been three different detective Wallanders, the latest being Kenneth Branagh’s for the BBC.

“You always take a risk when you say yes to a novel being turned into a film or a TV series. When Kenneth Branagh approached me some years ago I said yes, because first of all he’s a very good actor, and secondly he had some very interesting ideas. The BBC have cleaned everything out [of the story] and what they’ve left is almost like an ancient Greek drama, and I think it’s wonderful. But I can also say that maybe some of the [adaptations] haven’t been as good. So what? You take a risk, and my books are always there.”

While he says there is essentially only one way to tell a story – “You start with ‘once upon a time’ and you finish with the last letter” – he firmly believes that thrillers should give the brain more to ponder than just plot twists.

“The most important thing is that I can reach my reader, I’m published in 45 languages in 112 countries or something. In many of these countries I’m not looked upon as a crime fiction writer, I’m looked upon as a writer.

Democracy and justice
“ All the Wallander books are basically a discussion on the relationship between democracy and the system of justice, which is one of the most important discussions we can have, because if the system of justice can’t work then democracy can’t work.

“People are very clever, they see the subtext of a book, they write to me and that makes me very happy, to reach these people. Call it a thriller or whatever you like, I don’t care. What all the pages with Wallander have taught me is that these are important questions for people everywhere, no matter what part of the world you’re from.”

Perhaps splitting his time between Europe and Africa helps with communicating that message. “I think that I see the world much clearer because I have these two perspectives. Living with one foot in the sand and one foot in the snow is, to me, basic for understanding the times I’m living in.”

A Treacherous Paradise is published by Harvill Secker


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The greatest story I ever told

Irish Times journalists recall stories they wrote that had a major impact, nationally, globally or personally

Tue, Aug 20, 2013, 12:33

Gerry Moriarty

Charlie Haughey, then leader of the opposition, looked up at me from under hooded eyes and said, “You want me to comment on Bishop Hegarty’s decision to remove Fr O Peicin from Tory Island?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Write this down,” he instructed. “While I don’t want to interfere in diocesan affairs . . .” And then he went on to do just that, by criticising the decision by the then bishop of Raphoe. Which in matters of church and State was brave enough for 1984.

Not that it made a blind bit of difference. The bishop had his way, and Fr Diarmuid O Peicin, as an obedient Jesuit, grudgingly accepted his marching orders.

I was writing for the Irish Press at the time. As a young journalist with the Donegal Democrat three years earlier, in the late summer of 1981, I crossed the rough waves to Tory for the first time to meet Fr O Peicin and several of the islanders who were battling to save the island from depopulation.

A semiretired African missionary, O Peicin had arrived on Tory in 1980 to learn Irish and stayed on as its pastor when he learned the awful conditions under which its population of 150 just about survived.

I was involved in the story for several years, starting with a three-part series in the Donegal Democrat that ended up as a pamphlet called Tory’s Darkest Hour.

I later uncovered an official paper that had four proposals for the island after the people had been removed: make it a holiday-home centre for American tourists, build a high-security prison, turn it into a quarantine centre or use it as a firing range for the Army. It helped prove that there was a secret will to rid an island of its people.

Fr O Peicin’s tussles and the surrounding publicity caused anxiety and division that prompted Bishop Hegarty’s move – and Haughey’s intervention. It all seemed lost at the time.

But even though we didn’t realise it, the tide was turning in the island’s favour. Gradually, under all that pressure, conditions improved, and gradually the island’s future was secure. That couldn’t have happened without Fr O Peicin – who died, aged 91, five years ago – and the islanders who campaigned with him.

I like to think my reporting, as Haughey might have said, also did Tory some service.

April 1991

Deaglán de Bréadún

My first big foreign assignment for The Irish Times was to cover the Kurdish refugee crisis at the end of the first Gulf war. President George HW Bush had encouraged the Iraqi Kurds to rise against Saddam Hussein, but then the Americans decided not to proceed as far as Baghdad, and the Kurds were left at the mercy of the brutal dictator. About two million of them fled, mainly to Turkey and Iran. In April 1991 I was sent to the Turkey-Iraq border, where I witnessed horrific scenes that still haunt me.

My lack of experience in foreign reporting at the time put me at a certain personal risk – although this was nothing compared with what the refugees were facing. I got no medical shots in advance, despite being about to go into a situation with considerable potential to contract illness and disease. It was all a bit rushed, and I didn’t quite know what to expect.

I flew to the Turkish capital, Ankara, but there was an internal airline strike, so I hired a car with two American aid workers, and we drove for 24 hours to the border town of Cukurca, population 8,000. In a ravine close to the village was a camp housing up to 80,000 refugees, enduring heavy rain and insanitary conditions. The number of deaths at Isikveren was estimated at 170 a day, two-thirds of them babies.

After my stint on the Turkey-Iraq border, with the Irish Times photographer Frank Miller I covered the plight of the Kurdish refugees fleeing into Iran.

When I arrived back in Dublin I was brought to hospital and put in an isolation ward. References in my stories to cholera outbreaks had caused concern. I didn’t have cholera, but I did have shigella dysentery, and it took some time to recover. In professional terms the trips were a success, but the close-up experience of man’s inhumanity to man left memories that would never be erased.

May 1992

Conor O’Clery

Just before The Irish Times broke the story of Bishop Casey, in 1992, I asked him to tell us his side of the affair. He agreed to meet me and the newspaper’s religious-affairs correspondent at the time, Andy Pollak, at the Skylon Hotel in Dublin. But the bishop of Galway didn’t turn up. My request had triggered a hasty trip to Rome. The Vatican silenced him and exiled him to South America.

I have been associated with breaking the news of Annie Murphy, but in fact the story came to us. Murphy’s partner, Arthur Pennell, rang John Armstrong on the news desk to say he was helping to raise the bishop’s son in Connecticut. I drove to their home. Why The Irish Times, I asked? If we published it, people would know it was true, he replied.

Conor Brady, the paper’s editor at the time, put together a small team, including Armstrong, Pollak and Eugene McEldowney, the news editor, to work on the story in strict secrecy. There was considerable apprehension about accusing a bishop of fathering a secret love child.

But Annie Murphy disclosed to me that the bishop had channelled money to the United States to educate their son, Peter. There is a catchphrase popularised by the film All the President’s Men: “Follow the money.” That was the line Brady took. I spent many weeks tracing the source of cheques and cash. We were able to establish that the bishop had provided Murphy with more than $100,000, and negotiations were going on for more.

Before publication we looked at the story from all angles. What if the bishop was not the father and was being blackmailed? Casey had never admitted paternity. If both parties reached a settlement and Murphy denied everything, what would we do?

But Casey had no known personal wealth, and we established that the money was misappropriated from diocesan funds. This was a scandal. We ran with the story of the money. The bishop resigned and admitted paternity. Over a week we published the details we had accumulated.

It was personally very satisfying, not just breaking one of the most important watershed stories of the 1990s, but beating the opposition every day.

February 1998

Rosita Boland

The best thing about being a reporter is that you get to explore the subjects that make you curious. I thought that the day I started writing articles, 16 years ago, and I still think it.

One of the earliest pieces I wrote was on a topic that had intrigued me for years: when you have been blind from birth, what is your aesthetic experience of the world? What do you dream? What do you think the ocean is like? What would you most want to see?

I interviewed five people, aged from eight to 62.

Christina McCarthy, the child, showed me her drawings. Like many children, she drew her house. But it was a house that showed only the parts that meant something to her – the front door, for example, which she went through daily. There were no windows, because to her they were blanks.

Tony Murray, who was 17, told me that when he was a child he always imagined monsters to be very small, “toy-sized, on the scale of what I knew”. He said he had no idea what a mountain was; it was on a scale beyond his imagination.

Audrey Tormey, who was 27, was a keen photographer. She took pictures to have records of events like Christmas to show new friends in the future, although she would never see them herself. She said she could not understand perspective – how something as large as the Eiffel Tower could fit into a tiny photograph.

The first memory Emer Mulhall, who was 29, had was of her mother standing in a door, singing about a bird flying. “And I didn’t know what a bird was.” She had since held a bird in her hand, but she couldn’t understand flight, because it was not something she could touch. What Mulhall most wanted to see was a lion. “No toy can give me that sense of power or of their movement, because they run fast, don’t they?”

Joe Bollard, who went blind at two, did not know what colour his wife’s eyes were. Colour was meaningless to him. He had never asked her.

I think that early piece is the most important article I’ve written. It was about trying to gain an insight into the everyday lives of people who have different experiences, and make that meaningful.

Read Rosita Boland's original story here

July 2006

Patsy McGarry

It was August 2005, and I heard a remarkable story from my hometown, Ballaghaderreen, in Co Roscommon. Felicity MacDermot, better known as Madam MacDemot, had organised a 90th-anniversary Mass in Monasteraden, about five kilometres from the town, for her brother-in-law Lt Hugh MacDermot, who was killed at Gallipoli in August 1915, at the age of 18.

I was amazed on two counts: that anyone at home should have such a close living link with a soldier killed in the first World War; and that a young man from there had died in that war.

By 2005 I had reported annually on the Drumcree crisis, near Portadown, in Co Armagh, for about eight years. It is about 150km northeast of Ballaghaderreen. The service at Drumcree on the first Sunday of July each year commemorated the 24 young men from the parish who had been killed in the first World War. All were Protestant.

MacDermot’s Mass made me curious. The MacDermots are one of the oldest surviving Gaelic Catholic families and can trace their lineage to AD 157. They have survived famine, war and confiscations.

With MacDermot’s assistance I established that 39 young men from the parish of Ballaghaderreen had been killed in the first World War. All were Catholic. They went to war encouraged by their priests and politicians. I heard of none of them as I grew up.

In all I found out that 317 young men from Co Roscommon were killed in the war. All had been airbrushed from our history.

I wrote an article about this that appeared on Saturday, July 1st, 2006, the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. It was headlined “Bringing their memory back to life”.

In February 2008 a delegation of Roscommon county councillors and staff visited Flanders as a mark of respect for the young men from the county who had died there. I was invited along as a guest. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life.

Madam Felicity MacDermot died in March of last year. She was 89.

Read Patsy McGarry's original story here

September-October 2007

Mac Cormaic

On a Monday morning in September 2007, workers sorting through piles of rubbish at a recycling plant in Limerick found a man’s body. He had been crushed to death when the skip in which he was sleeping was emptied into a refuse lorry.

The story of the rough sleeper and his lonely death struck a chord with people, but, apart from his name and reports of a connection to the English midlands, nothing was known about Kevin Fitzpatrick, so within a couple of days his death faded from the news pages.

My brief was simple: find out who he was.

I travelled to Derby with those bare facts. There I found some of Fitzpatrick’s old friends and teachers, who helped me sketch his early life. I visited his old haunts, went along to the funeral and took a stroll around the graveyard where he was buried alongside his father.

Fitzpatrick’s family invited me into their home and tolerated my questions with grace and generosity. I knew they feared being judged, but they were also keen to share what they knew of the rich, complex life behind the monochrome cipher of the news reports (“the man in the skip”).

As I collected people’s stories, the narrative turned in unexpected ways. Fitzpatrick’s milieu in Derby was almost exclusively Irish. His story was a window into a community – second-generation Irish emigres in the old industrial belt of the English midlands – and the questions of identity and belonging they grappled with.

The piece was the work of a callow 25-year-old less than a year in the job, but, rereading it now, I’m relieved to see I had the sense to resist reaching for facile answers to the big questions that hang over the piece. Most of them are left unanswered, and it’s a truer piece for that.

I’ve had more difficult assignments, and ones with larger implications, but none that left a deeper impression. I remember writing it quickly, in a single sitting on the night I flew back to Dublin, and feeling that once I’d found the tone of the piece the story wrote itself.

Above all I remember the Fitzpatrick family: their grief, their warmth, their dignity. The memory of May Fitzpatrick throwing herself on her son’s coffin as the pallbearers prepared to carry it from the church is as vivid as yesterday.

Read Ruadhán Mac Cormaic's original story here

October 2009

Patrick Freyne

In 2009 I was sent by the Sunday Tribune to report on the second apparition at Knock foretold by the mystic Joe Coleman. About 4,000 people turned up at the basilica, where Coleman led a noisy congregation in prayer.

At 3pm, when the Virgin was expected to appear, Coleman began acting as if he could see something, but most people seemed a bit baffled. Twenty minutes later someone shouted, “She’s in the car park!” and a few thousand people ran out and saw what I took to be the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Some gasped as soon as they looked up. Others initially saw no apparition but, on seeing the effect it was having on their neighbours, squinted their eyes before gasping too.

From talking to people afterwards, most had seen the sun “move” in the sky. One lady saw “the Sacred Heart and the Virgin Mother, and it was absolutely beautiful”. A sceptic who had previously been wandering around looking “for projectors” saw the sun move and said, “I can’t explain that.” Nearly all claimed to have seen some sort of mystical phenomenon.

I found their certainty disturbing. But I found it almost more disturbing that the journalists and photographers were immune to the phenomenon. Most wrote pieces gently mocking what they saw as mass hysteria.

It got me thinking about consensus. Why was our journalistic consensus so different from that of the pilgrims? Are we especially freethinking and nonconformist? Not really. We just find it easy to judge the views of people we perceive as different from us, whom we don’t see as our peers. Journalists see apparitions, too, arguably more dangerous ones: infinitely inflatable property markets, “floods” of immigrants or unprecedentedly crime-ridden streets. As much as anyone else, we look to our immediate neighbours to see what they can see before forming our opinions.

I worried about all this much more after not seeing an apparition at Knock.

August 2011

Mary Fitzgerald

It was August 2011, and Tripoli had just fallen to rebel forces seeking to oust Muammar Gadafy. The Libyan leader had been routed from the capital, leaving his Bab al-Azizia compound wide open to triumphant rebel fighters, curious onlookers and looters.

After picking my way through a residential building bombed by the US in 1986, and preserved in that state by Gadafy, I entered an annex of newer buildings.

In a room filled with books and study materials I found passport photographs of a woman, dressed in medical clothes, who appeared to be in her mid 20s. Some of the rebels sifting through the room’s contents shouted excitedly, “It’s Hana, it’s Hana, the daughter Gadafy lied about. This was her room.”

For decades Gadafy and his apologists had invoked Hana’s name as evidence that he had personally suffered as a result of the 1986 bombing of Tripoli. They claimed an adopted infant daughter of Gadafy, named Hana, had died in the US raid. Many Libyans had long doubted the story, claiming in 2011 that she was quietly working as a junior doctor in Tripoli.

In Hana’s room I found an examination paper from a Libyan university medical faculty that was signed “Hana Muammar Gadafy” in Arabic. A British Council certificate showed she had completed an English-language course at its Libyan centre in 2007, achieving an A grade.

My front-page exclusive for The Irish Times, which included the first photographs of the adult Hana the world had seen, was picked up by TV channels and newspapers across the globe. Follow-up stories included claims by former regime insiders that this Hana had been adopted after the first Hana had been killed and named in her memory – an explanation that begged more questions than it answered. If that was the case, why did she not feature in family appearances? Why did Gadafy appear to want to hide her existence?

More stories trickled out, including interviews with staff at hospitals where Hana had worked. They explained that everyone knew but that nobody said anything because they feared the repercussions – hardly surprising in Gadafy’s Libya.

I often wonder what became of Hana. Her current whereabouts are unknown. Many believe she fled Tripoli for Algeria with other family members and then moved on to Oman. I hope to some day meet and interview her, so that the full story of Hana Muammar Gadafy can finally be told.

Read Mary Fitzgerald's original story here

November 2012

Kitty Holland

Her name. Her face. Both have become iconic and been appropriated and used to further and dispute agendas with which she had nothing to do.

When I first heard of her my contact wasn’t sure of her name (“Sabita, or Sinita or Savita or something”). All she knew, when she called me at home on November 7th last year, was that a woman had died at Galway University Hospital a fortnight before. The woman had been miscarrying a 17-week foetus and asked for a termination a number of times but was refused because this was a “Catholic” country.

A search on Google found her death notice on the website, with her address. En route to Galway I managed to get a phone number for Halappanavar’s widower, Praveen, who had just buried her at home in southwest India.

The story he told that evening appeared in The Irish Times on Wednesday, November 14th, last year. It convulsed Ireland and shocked people across the world.

This was a human and needless tragedy, but the use of the term “Catholic” in explaining the refusal of her request for a termination transformed the situation from one of medical treatment denied to one of medical treatment ideologically denied.

When people heard her name and her husband’s voice, many felt she could have been any one of us, whether mother or husband or partner, or her brother or her sister. Halappanavar became someone we all believed we could relate to.

Many didn’t like what her death seemed to say about Ireland. They mobilised in their thousands, demanding that it never again happen. Her death led to three inquiries and, arguably, galvanised the Government to enact the Protection of Life During Pregnancy legislation.

All of this means little to Praveen Halappanavar and to Savita’s parents, Andanappa and Akamahadevi Yalagi, or to her older brothers, Santosh and Sanjeev. Her father told me in June this year that he and his wife cannot bear their future now. “She was such a sweet daughter for us,” Andanappa Yalagi said.

Read Kitty Holland's original story here

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Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour all make zero returns – indicating that the parties’ fundraising is geared towards raising money through encouraging multiple donations worth €126 or less.  Photograph:  Frank Miller

The Standards in Public Office Commission said yesterday that files had been sent to the gardaí in relation to the People Before (...)


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Children are strapped into buggies for the convenience of parents, often until they start school. Photograph: Getty Images

The HSE National Office for Suicide Prevention (NOSP) and 25 partner organisations have launched a new mental health campaign called “little things”. (...)

President Michael D Higgins has said in the the western world the security of employment is being stripped away  and ‘we are introducing far greater stresses of casualisation in both temporary work, in relation to part-time work, in relation to the structure and definition of work itself’.

People are under greater distress and are more at risk of suicide because of “new insecurities” in employment, President Michael D Higgins has said.Th(...)


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McIlroy and Donald poised for a shoot-out

Sat, Nov 24, 2012, 00:00

Rory McIlroy was probably the wrong person to ask if the Earth Course here should be toughened up for the European Tour’s season finale. A second-round 67 leaves him with a halfway share of the lead at the Dubai World Championship, alongside Luke Donald and Marc Warren.

That aggregate score is 11-under par, with McIlroy on track to meet his ambition of departing from the Emirates with two trophies as hand luggage. He has already claimed the Race to Dubai order of merit.

There are 14 players within three shots of the leading trio and only seven of the 60-man field sit over par for 36 holes. Given the prominence of McIlroy and Donald at the business end of the event, its organisers look like being granted the desired denouement.

The level of scoring, though, prompts a legitimate debate over whether such a prominent – and lucrative – competition should be played over a more testing layout.

“The scoring is low but you still want to have a balance,” said McIlroy. “You want to see guys making birdies. You don’t want people grinding for par all the time because it’s no fun to watch and it’s no fun to play, either.

“You want to have chances for birdies and you want to give yourself opportunities.

“This course could be a little bit tougher. They could bring the rough in a little bit, the fairways are very generous. But, you know, it’s a great end to the season. It’s a great place. It’s nice to be here, in the top 60 [in Europe] and it’s a reward for a lot of the guys. It’s a course that should be enjoyable to play.”

Warren was tipped for greatness by his compatriot Colin Montgomerie after the pair claimed the World Cup in 2007. Five years on, he finally looks like fulfilling his undoubted potential. Having played yesterday with Donald, he will partner McIlroy for round three.

“I played in the Walker Cup alongside Luke so it was great to be back in that position and to perform as well as I did,” Warren said.

Yesterday Sergio Garcia, in his first outing since he underwent laser eye treatment, equalled the course record of 64 with an extraordinary morning’s play. His round featured two eagles, nine birdies, two bogeys and a triple bogey.

Pádraig Harrington slipped back into a tie for 23rd spot after a 71, Peter Lawrie is tied for 31st following a 72 while Graeme McDowell is one-over par after a disappointing 73.

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Home / Lifestyle / Brad Harris: Very Alive at 75

Brad Harris: Very Alive at 75

Riding a life” is the best way to describe Brad Harris’ rise from a wide-eyed youth of 14 who was inspired by the immortal Steve Reeves to start weight training and traveled to Muscle Beach on a bus from his home in Burbank, California. He later followed Steve Reeves to Italy and, like Reeves, became an international movie star. His film career spans 48 years, and he’s appeared in more than 40 pictures plus a slew of TV shows as an adventure-movie hero and phenomenal stuntman. He was inducted into the Hollywood Stuntmen’s Hall of Fame on January 19, 2006, and was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the “Brad Harris Live” Film Festival on April 29, 2006, in Germany, where he signed autographs for three hours. There are active Brad Harris fan clubs even today.

Brad’s exciting and adventurous career is documented in a 387-page biography by Reiner Boller, Brad Harris, the American Bavarian, which received glowing reviews. There are stories of incredible adventure, life-threatening danger, love, sorrow and grief, as well as some that are very funny indeed. Negotiations are currently under way to make Brad’s life story into a feature film.

Harris’ name represented action in the European cinema of the 1960s, whether as Hercules in the Italian epics or as Captain Rowland in the “Police Inspector X” series of films. He was also the role model for such strong action heroes as Arnold Schwarzenegger and, in fact, had the Governor under personal contract at one point. He always performed his own stunts, risking his life in more than a few of them. He was the stunt coordinator on many of his films and also trained stuntmen.

He belongs to a unique fraternity of cinematic heroes who established their place in motion picture history in the period Italians commonly refer to l’epoca d’oro, or the golden age, which began in the early ’60s with Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita,” “Cleopatra” with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and “Hercules” with Steve Reeves, and took in the 1960 Olympic Games, which were held in Rome. Of the many musclemen to appear in those sword-and-sandal movies, none was as versatile or as prolific as Brad. He was far and away the best athlete of the group.

Later this year Brad is set to appear in a new movie based on the million-seller novel Shiver, written by Brian Harper. He will also serve as associate producer on the project. His rigorous daily workout regimen keeps him in tiptop shape so that he’s always ready.

Harris was an outstanding athlete at Burbank High School, where he competed in football, basketball and track. Classmate and highly acclaimed actor-bodybuilder Bill Smith used to train with Brad in his garage. Brad was elected student body president and was offered a football scholarship to USC, but he chose the academic climate at UCLA, where he graduated with a degree in political geography. Brad speaks Italian, German and some French and Spanish.

“Because of Muscle Beach and Steve Reeves, I began weight training,” says Brad. “Because of Muscle Beach and Steve Reeves I became a third-world movie star and traveled around the world many times and experienced many adventures. I now live near Muscle Beach and see it almost every evening. I walk down to the beach and sit on a turned-over trash can while gazing up into the great beyond. The oxygen from the ocean breeze is invigorating and rejuvenating. I get some of my best ideas during that quiet period of meditation under the darkening sky. Modern medicine is now discovering the value of pure oxygen used in a hyperbaric chamber to combat the many diseases that can’t survive in pure oxygen. Exercise and oxygen therapy is a new medical discovery with great promise.”

He holds a possible world record for attending the world’s largest party, the Oktoberfest, in Munich, Germany—2008 was his 49th consecutive year. Not even Arnold can top that.

Today, Brad Harris is dedicated to his fitness corporation, Modern Body Design. He produces Ab-OrigiOnals, a unique abdominal-exercise device that enables the user to work the midsection from all angles for maximum results. His company also produces HotPex, which are the ultimate pushup handles for working the chest, triceps and shoulders. He has developed other exercise devices that he uses in his workouts.

Brad is quick to point out that his personal program is designed specifically for his needs and goals, based on more than 60 years of trial and error. He performs many exercises with the equipment that he designed and sells—he feels that they are the best, or he wouldn’t recommend them. He doesn’t recommend that anyone try to follow his exact exercises, but you can learn the basic principles of his system and apply them to your own workouts.

He has an individual approach to training and diet:

“I train every single day—seven days a week. Presently, I’m on a four-day cycle. I concentrate on one major muscle group each workout, keeping in mind that several other muscles assist on each exercise, which gives them a good workout as well. I train at Gold’s Gym in Venice in the morning. My workouts are 40 to 45 minutes of high-intensity action.

“In the afternoon, about three or four o’clock, I run the famous stairs in Santa Monica for legs and cardiovascular work. The 167 wooden steps are used by hundreds of fitness enthusiasts every day. I used to charge up those steps in less than 30 seconds and do it eight to 10 times, but that’s totally unnecessary. We all used to overtrain all the time in the old days. Now that I’m 75, it kicks my butt to run them under one minute, which is still a very good time. I run them twice, once to warm up, and the second time I go full blast. I do the stairs every other day. Some days I do wind sprints on my mountain bike instead of the stairs. Those two exercises provide all the work I need for my legs.”

Morning Workouts

Monday: Arms

Low-pulley rope curls

Forward-leaning rope triceps extensions

Tuesday: Shoulders, back

Circle high pulls (Harris Row)

Seated side raises

Wednesday: Chest, front delts

Decline dumbbell presses

Bradomatic push presses

Thursday: Upper back

Pulldowns (slant bar, various positions)

Friday:  Cycle begins again.

Afternoon Workouts

Abs: Ab-OrigiOnals 4 x 40

Next day: Legs

Runs stairs twice or does mountain bike wind sprints.

“To describe each exact movement would be near impossible,” he says. “On every exercise I try to incorporate as many assistance muscles as possible. I generally do 12 sets of 30 reps on a single exercise each workout day. I may use a second exercise for four sets of 30 reps. I start with a light weight, which serves as a warmup. Then I increase the weight 10 pounds each set until I reach the heaviest weight I’m going to use that day. Even though I know I could use more weight, I don’t because I don’t want to injure myself. Overtraining leads to injuries.

“For me it’s extremely important to have good blood flow every day. When I do my decline-bench presses with dumbbells, I put my feet up in the air so that the blood flows into my upper extremities and blood flows throughout my entire body. I want all those veins and capillaries open. That’s what keeps you healthy. When people get older and aren’t getting enough blood flow from their activities, those little veins all shut down. That makes the heart work harder, and if it’s suddenly overworked, a heart attack is the result. That’s what happens to people who aren’t paying attention to proper blood flow throughout the body every day.

“My diet is based on getting balanced nutrition from fresh, healthful foods that are low in sugar, salt and fat. I start the day with a protein drink mixed with nonfat milk, nuts, fruit and grains. For lunch I may have a prepared meal from Whole Foods Market, which might be a delicious thick soup with tender chicken and other healthful ingredients. For supper I may have a big salad with fish and assorted organic vegetables. About once a month I have an eight-ounce filet mignon when I go out and dine with friends. Green tea is one of my favorite beverages. I do take some food supplements, such as vitamins and minerals, vitamin E, vitamin C, fish oils and MSM, for joint health. I believe that supplements are intended to balance what may be missing from your food intake. I try to get what I need from a well-balanced, healthful diet.

“I monitor myself on how I look, how I feel and how I perform. I weigh myself every day. If I gain a couple of pounds, I make necessary adjustments to get back in the 170-pound zone. If anything goes out of balance, I correct it. I’ve never been overweight, and I don’t take any medicine. I try to avoid stress or minimize it.

“The best advice I can offer for anyone wishing to start a weight-training program is to get a qualified personal trainer to design a program suited to your goals and condition. You won’t need the trainer forever. When training, you must concentrate fully on each movement so that you feel it in the area you’re working. Be consistent. At first it takes discipline to stick to the program and diet, but after a while it becomes a way of life that you’ll enjoy. It will add years to your life and more life to your years.”

A fitting way to close is with Brad’s motto: “Stay Fit, Have Fun, Harm No One, Inspire Everyone.”

Editor’s note: For more information on Brad Harris, visit www.hotpex.com and www.aborigionals.comIM

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Walking club in Iron Mountain

August 9, 2012
The Daily News

IRON MOUNTAIN - Dr. Sara Edlebeck, physical therapist, and U.P. Rehab Services have announced the commencement of the Iron Mountain-Kingsford Walking Club.

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Forging - Aetolia Online Help

9.6.1 Forging

-- At a Glance ---------------------------------------------------------------
  Forging, step-by-step:
    1) Choose an item type (SmallBlades, Helms, Armour, etc.) and then check
       the requirements for the template (AB FORGING RAPIER, etc.).
    2) Gather the required commodities for your template. Find a forge, put
       some coal inside, and FIRE it.
    3) Determine the stats you want on the item based on a template. You can
       see these in AB FORGING under the second section (base templates). For
       example, AB FORGING REINFORCED which can be used on armour items. The
       template is NOT the template you would use for customization.
    4) FORGE [template] <item>. (IE: FORGE REINFORCED CHAINMAIL, not FORGE 5164
    5) TEMPER your item as desired (AB FORGING TEMPERING).

  CUSTOMISE your item with an existing design (AB FORGING CUSTOMIZATION).

Forging is the skill of creating a wide assortment of weapons and armour, ranging from the chipped-obsidian throwing dagger, to the venerable longsword, to impressive suits of full plate armour.

In order to forge something you know how to make (AB FORGING will show you what you can make, if you have forging), you must first find a forge. Chances are it will not be burning, in which case you must buy some coal (probably at one of the markets), and put it in the forge. Then, you must FIRE FORGE to get it going.

Once you have got the forge going, you can try to forge something. Each item has certain commodity requirements. FORGINGCOMMS <item> will tell you what you need to have in your inventory in order to make that item. For all forging commands, you should use the exact name of the item that you see when you type AB FORGING.

Once you have the proper ingredients, you may FORGE <item>. Weapons and armour will need a template to go with them, so the syntax for those is FORGE <template> <item>.

If you are not forging a weapon or armour, that's it, your forging is done! Otherwise, your forging is still raw and unrefined and needs to be TEMPERed to increase its quality.

Weapons can be tempered up to six times, and armour can be tempered up to five times. How tempering works depends on if you're forging a weapon or an armour.

For weapons:
    - TEMPER <item>
    - TEMPER <item> FOR <damage|penetration|speed>

For armour:
    - TEMPER <item>
    - TEMPER <item> FOR <cutting|blunt>

You can either focus your temper on a specific stat, or just temper generally. Focusing a temper on weapons will greatly increase that stat, but decrease the other two. Focusing a temper on armor will increase the desired stat, but only marginally increase the other. Tempering without a focus will increase all the stats, but nowhere near as much as if you had focused on that stat.

In order to see the statistics on a particular piece of weaponry or armour, you need the WEAPONPROBE ability in the Weaponry skillset.

Once your weapon is refined, you can choose to customize it should you have your own design! You must first learn the Customization ability in Forging, which will enable you to apply designs to any appropriate weapon or armour you own. See AB FORGING CUSTOMIZATION for details on how this is done.

Once you have Transcended the skill of Forging, you will be able to create your own designs, in accordance to HELP CRAFTING. Please be sure to read HELP FORGING POLICY to see what limitations exist for forging-based designs.


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Monday, May 10, 2010

Week Ending May 9 (WS - 7 Weeks)

Mon - Noon: 7 miles (800'). Super easy on Valley Trails.
PM: 7 miles easy at Pineridge, last two with Dana/Alistair (on his bike).

Tues - Noon: 5 miles easy (1,000'). Super easy again. Falls loop.
PM - 6.5 miles (1,200'). Super easy again with FCTR group.

Weds - Noon: 9 miles (2,300'). Horsetooth/Audra long route. Easy again. Felt a bit of pep.

Thurs - Noon: 5 miles easy (1,000'). Falls loop.
PM: 9.5 miles (1,800). Towers Road handicap. 2.5 miles to Soderburg TH, then hard effort on Towers. Up in a surprisingly easy PR and new FKT (29:27). Legs definitely felt fresher than they have in a while after a couple of very easy days. That combined with the fact that I had Eric pushing me from the start, I was able to maintain a consistently strong effort up the hill. Eric PR'd, going under 30 mins and the old FKT, ten seconds back on me. Still didn't feel like I was in overdrive, so starting to think that 28:xx, maybe even 27-high, is in the cards this summer once I drop the mileage post WS100 and focus on quality Pikes training.

Fri - Noon: 9 miles (2,300'). Horsetooth/Audra long route. Easy, easy.

Sat - 25.5 miles (8,200'). Crosier Triple Bagger with Mike. An out and back from each of three trailheads to the top of Crosier Mountain (9,250'). Went at a moderate yet steady effort the whole way on this one. Climbs go: 3150', 2500', 2200', over 5, 3.8, and 4 mile legs respectively. Half mile, 500' summit grunts in 9:08, 7:57, 7:30.

Mike hits the summit

Summit elev.

Requisite summit shot.
Total climb on the day.

Not that I really need a watch to give me a visual representation of what I've just run, but strangely satisfying to look at.

Sun - 18.5 miles (1,000'). From home, 14 miles to Laporte via 38e/Centennial/Foothills trail/Laporte Ave/Overland, then hooked in to the Fort Collins Marathon on the bike paths at the 21.5-mile point. Stopped at the 23-mile point to chat with Bryan and Dan Goding, who were out watching on their bikes, then ran with Sam Malmberg for a bit before stopping again to chat with Brooks Williams who was waiting for his Dad to come by. Saw Pete coming soon after, so jumped back in and ran the last three miles at 6:40 trying to keep a clear path for him through the half marathoners. I counted 50+ in the last mile alone, which is not an ideal set-up for front-running marathoners by any stretch of the imagination. Pete cruised to a huge PR, finishing 13th, right on his 2:54 goal and chopping exactly an hour off his time from two years ago. Solid.

Pete bringing it. Photo: Mike Hinterberg

Ran with Alistair in the kids race, followed by lunch and a stroll with Dana and Alistair in town, then out for a three-hour hike at Horsetooth with Alistair, Chad & Isaac. Fun day.

Total: 102 miles (19,600').

So this was a good week. Turned a bit of a corner on Tuesday after indulging a bit here about feeling tired. Took Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday super easy, and by Thursday felt rested enough for a hard effort up Towers, where I shaved a chunk of time from my PR. Easy on Friday, then a big day of climbing and descending at a comfortable pace on Saturday, followed by a beautiful Sunday morning running the reservoir roads into the very north end of town, hopping in on a little marathon action, running with my son, celebrating Mother's Day with the family at the Stonehouse, and then giving Mom the afternoon off with a long hike up to Horsetooth.

It didn't feel like I was pushing the miles at all this week. I was planning a big weekend, so took that as an opportunity to rest midweek. Feeling a little sore in a few spots today - but in a good way - so will go easy again through the week, I think, and then run hard on Friday and hopefully do something long on Saturday or Sunday. We'll see. Anyway, four more weeks to iron out the fitness before the heavy lifting is done, and then 20 taper days to make sure the hay in the barn is dry enough to eat (mixing my metaphors, and stealing a line from AJW).

So while I was much more relaxed about volume this week, I would be a liar if I said I wasn't targeting 100 miles. If nothing else, it represents my tenth straight week in triple-digit land. Obviously the fixation with banging out 100-mile weeks is as much psychological as it is anything else, but then racing 100 miles is probably as much mental as it is physical, so the confidence factor is huge. On that note, I'd say that right now I'm feeling as physically and mentally tough as I have throughout this whole process, so I'm hoping that I can ride these last few weeks out and bring it all with me come race day - all while trying to keep the rest of life's challenges and duties (which get short shrift on this blog) in some kind of balance.

  1. Hey Nick,

    I was the guy that said "Are you Nick Clark?" on the bike path. Been reading your blog for a little while, didn't want to pass up the opportunity to say hi (which I don't think I actually did as I ran by). So...hi. :)

    What do you know about the Blue Sky 50k? I'm thinking of signing up. The course pics are few, but it looks nice. Trying to decide on a marathon/50k for the fall - preferably on trails.

    Take care,

  2. Hey Shaun - thanks for the shout out, and hi. Congrats on your run this weekend.

    This I can tell you about the Blue Sky 50k: it is not happening this year. Partly my fault, as I have been badgering the organizers all winter into choosing between the marathon and the 50k. The races are so similar in distance and route that it seemed a little silly to chop up the field between the two races. Anyway, the race committee decided to ditch the 50k and keep to their original race - the marathon.

    The marathon is a great event, and the course is a lot more challenging than it appears on paper. The route is 100% dirt and 90% singletrack. Definitely recommended.

  3. That's some serious vertical on 25.5 miles. Thanks for posting that ;-)

  4. Nick - A big "attaboy" to Alistair out there - he was killing it - and had to be top ten in an impressive field of kiddos. Although I think he is now out of the running for the "never been chicked" award.:-( Better to get it over with early - a good life lesson. By the way, That's my son in the red shirt hanging onto the side of your hat)!

  5. Nick,
    I was thinking of a Crosier Triple this weekend and actually checked your old post from last year when you and Burch did it in just under 5 hours. After seeing your blog today, now I gotta do it (need a change of scenery from the Htooth/Lory/BlueSky). Hopefully this snowstorm will melt away by the weekend. Wanted to let you know I saw a mtn lion on Stout at 5am (in the dark) 2 weeks ago. After a brief stand off, no harm done. I guess that is why most don't start their runs at 4am like I typically do. Sounds like training for WS shaping up well for you and Pete. We (FoCos) are expecting big things from you guys (not like you won't have a little competition out there). Thanks for sharing your trail adventures.

    Brother Pine
    BH100 minus 6 weeks

  6. Rick - thanks for helping me figure out how to use the watch properly, doh! I'd previously figured the route was closer to 7k, so I'll take the bonus.

    Travis - yeah, it was a fun event for the kids. I can't believe how many were out there running. Looks like your boy had a blast too. See you tonight if you're planning on being at Reservoir Ridge.

    BP - The climbs on Crosier are just reasonable enough on the mileage front that doing all three seems manageable as you go one by one, and then when you're done it turns out to be a pretty significant outing. Great views of the Estes valley/mountains from the top - only Signal is better in my opinion among the lower-elev peaks.

    Thanks for the heads up on cat activity. I only ever see the evidence - there was a half eaten deer leg just off the main Reservoir Ridge trail last week, and there was the upper half of a carcass on Spring Creek (near Stout) sitting there last year for weeks. Saw a gnawed out neck this weekend on Crosier too, not to mention this at my neighbors house last year. Through the winter, I'll see tracks up on Westridge, so no doubt in my mind that they're out there watching. Not quite sure what I would do face to face though. Sounds like you were pretty calm about the whole interaction. I figure there's enough deer at Horsetooth to keep them from dropping their standards and eating a runner. Not much meat on these bones.

    We'll see on that WS thing. Pete looks to be in great shape, so he'll definitely surprise a few people.

  7. Cool run on Crosier, great route and good workout. You're setting up really strong for WS, not to mention Green and Jemez.
    Thanks for waiting for me! I didn't know I was on video, or I would have done something cooler (e.g., vomit on command, which is what I felt like doing???) Mostly, though, thanks for sharing a good run.

    Cool to see you and Pete out on Sunday as well. Cheers!


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Business Directory | < Back

KT Pets

Address: 403 Main Street
Irwin, PA 15642
Phone: 724-861-8816
Year Established: 1992
Store Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: 12 noon to 4 p.m.
Thursday: 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Saturday: 12 noon to 3 p.m.

Services and Products: Professional pet grooming, natural shampoos,
one-on-one service
Least-Known Service: Sells puppies.
About Us: “I have been grooming for fifteen years. Most dogs are done in one hour, and we have reasonable prices.”

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United Way campaign kick-off Tuesday morning

October 22, 2012

The United Way of Lee, Hendry, and Glades will officially kick off the 2012-2013 community-wide fund-raising campaign Tuesday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 a.m....

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