View Comments Airline Highway About the Artist: With a desire to celebrate the magic of live theater and those who create it, and with a deep reverence for such touchstones as the work of Al Hirschfeld and the wall at Sardi’s, Squigs is happy and grateful to be among those carrying on the traditions where theater and caricature meet. He was born and raised in Oregon, lived in Los Angeles for quite a long time and now calls New York City his home. Show Closed This production ended its run on June 7, 2015
The spirit of New Orleans comes alive at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre as Airline Highway opens on April 23. Tony winner Joe Mantello directs the vibrant play, written by Lisa D’Amour (a fifth-generation resident of the Big Easy). In honor of the show’s official opening, Broadway.com resident artist Justin “Squigs” Robertson sketched this compilation of the cast of characters.From left to right, the portrait features Ken Marks as Francis, Scott Jaeck as Wayne, Julie White as Tanya, Judith Roberts as Miss Ruby, K. Todd Freeman as Sissy Nana, Joe Tippett as Bait Boy, Tim Edward Rhoze as Terry, Caroline Neff as Krista and Carolyn Braver as Zoe.Broadway.com wishes the cast of Airline Highway a happy opening. We’ll bring the tortilla chips! Related Shows
Legislative delegations from 60 nations of Latin America and the European Union will meet in Mexico next week to draw up recommendations on combating organized crime in advance of the presidential summit to be held in Chile in June, one of the organizers announced on February 13. The legislators who make up the EUROLAT Political Affairs and Security Committee meet twice a year. The last meeting was in Belgium in November, and the meeting this time will be from February 21 to 23 in the Mexican capital. Mexican Senator José Guadarrama, co-chair of the committee, explained that the recommendations they issue will be submitted to the summit of heads of state of the two regions, with the aim that the presidents “know what we’re thinking in the parliaments.” He added that the chosen topic is “of the greatest importance,” pointing to drug trafficking as “so severe a plague around the world, particularly in Mexico.” The meeting will be attended by the Mexican foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, and other members of the government, in addition to experts from the United Nations and the Organization of American States. EUROLAT was constituted in 2006 and represents 33 Latin American and Caribbean legislatures and the 27 members of the European Union. The interparliamentary meeting will take place in Mexico, which is facing a wave of violence that has left more than 50,000 dead over the last five years, with the majority of deaths attributed to conflicts between drug cartels and to the military offensive launched by the government against those organizations, but also including civilians without ties to organized crime. By Dialogo February 15, 2012
By Steven McLoud/Diálogo October 24, 2020 U.S. Navy Admiral Craig Faller, commander of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), visited El Salvador on October 21, where he met with the country’s Defense Minister Rear Admiral Rene Merino Monroy and his staff.The visit comes after Adm Faller — who is visiting the Central America region — made stops in Honduras and Guatemala, where he spoke with leaders of partner nations about the benefits and successes of cooperative security partnerships in the region.Adm. Faller and his delegation also met with U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson to discuss SOUTHCOM’s role in the U.S.-El Salvador cooperation on security.Security cooperation topics discussed with Rear Adm. Merino included dismantling transnational criminal organizations, counternarcotics operations, and future military engagements.“The visit of Adm. Craig Faller and his team reaffirms the sincere relationship of friendship and trust between the armed forces of both countries to face these transnational threats,” said Rear Adm. Merino in a tweet.Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, echoed those sentiments tweeting that his country was proud to be a key partner to the United States in combatting security threats.While in El Salvador, Adm. Faller also visited the Cooperative Security Location (CSL) Comalapa, which operates through an agreement between the U.S. and the government of El Salvador. This location is one of two centers in Latin America and the Caribbean, and plays a key role in supporting multinational and interagency efforts to combat transnational criminal organizations.Each fiscal year, CSL operations disrupt more than $4 billion worth of drug trafficking operations. This location significantly enhances the ability of the U.S. and partner nations to patrol Eastern Pacific smuggling corridors, through which more than half of the drugs heading for the U.S. transit through, often in multi-ton shipments.El Salvador is a valued security partner in the fight against illicit trafficking and is one of more than 20 nations engaged alongside the U.S. in cooperative efforts to detect and dismantle transnational criminal organizations in the Western Hemisphere.
Credit union attendees yesterday received an update on NAFCU and the current regulatory environment, as well as learned how lateral thinking can help create revenue-boosting breakthroughs during NAFCU’s Strategic Growth Conference in San Diego, Calif.Tuesday’s program kicked off with remarks from NAFCU President and CEO Dan Berger who provided an update on the association’s activities. Berger was followed by keynote speaker Shane Snow, an award-winning journalist, entrepreneur and bestselling author of “Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success.”Snow discussed how credit unions can use lateral thinking to create revenue-boosting breakthroughs. He also explained the challenge to credit union attendees of successfully engaging the millennial market. continue reading » 5SHARESShareShareSharePrintMailGooglePinterestDiggRedditStumbleuponDeliciousBufferTumblr
1. Your Members are not just Numbers, but Numbers Help You Understand Your MembersThe best way to build strong relationships with your member is to know your member. Learn their habits, needs, and patterns. In the same way that you can learn more from a video than a snapshot, you can learn more about a person using data over time and analyzing transactional data behavior.Help your members (and your business) by making members’ lives easier. According to Blesson Abraham, CEO and Co-Founder of SavvyIntel, the future of credit unions is to be financial advisors to the financially engaged masses. Credit unions should be able to provide specific offerings to individuals based on transactional behavior.You will continue to experience success by continuing to engage with members. According to Tony Rizzo of Marquis, businesses that have a strategy for engagement are more successful. For example, Starbucks has built a model around building relationships with customers, getting feedback, and utilizing those inputs to create profitable opportunities. Make it easy for your members to utilize your services, and it will reward your business.2. Times are Changing and Credit Unions Need to Keep UpNew technology today means faster changes and greater effects on financial institutions than ever. Therefore, it is very important that credit unions understand and know how to deal with the implications of these changes.Lodging, taxis, and financial institutions are all examples of industries, which have been around for a long time with little innovation. However, recent years have brought disruptors into the industries of lodging and ride services with breakthroughs such as Airbnb and Uber. Both Airbnb and Uber have turned their industries upside down and have one thing in common: they are supported by easy-to-use mobile applications.As these types of innovations grow in number and popularity, credit unions must keep up. Innovations are happening already in the financial lending industry. Credit unions must learn how to cater to the needs of members before they are made irrelevant by the next Uber or Airbnb of lending. According to Anne Legg, CEO of Thrive, credit unions need to understand that “data is king”. Data is the solution to building meaningful relationships with members by understanding their needs and providing solutions to questions they have not even asked.3. More data can lead to either more confusion or more success – It’s your choiceWith the changing technologies and banking methods, it is becoming easier to collect larger quantities of data. This can either overwhelm you and go to waste, or you can utilize the data and it will become your best friend.Larger banks have been heavily investing in analytics and it has been paying off. There are a number of examples to show that mistakes are made when analytics are not used. It is easy for these mistakes to cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. In order to stay relevant and competitively meet the needs of your members, it is increasingly important to effectively utilize data.According to Bill Goedken, CEO of Idea5, credit unions must use analytics, predictive modeling, and marketing to improve and understand trends. It is no longer acceptable to just present numbers. Credit unions need to truly understand their data and tell the story of what the numbers mean.4. Data has Two SidesThe key to effectively utilizing data analytics is understanding the two different sides: descriptive and predictive. You can collect all the data in the world, but it is not very helpful until you learn to analyze the data and build predictive models, from which you can base future decisions for the company. According to Rahul Nawab, the CEO and Co-Founder of IQR Consulting, hindsight plus insight equals foresight. You will not be able to successfully predict future trends until you have collected and analyzed the past data.Once the data is collected and inputted successfully, you have a very powerful tool. You can use the data to learn solutions to pre-determined problems, or even use “data lake” technologies to uncover unseen trends and correlations.5. Getting Started is Easier than You ThinkBeginning to integrate data and using predictive analytics can seem like a huge and overwhelming step. Like most projects, start with a goal. To build a house, design the house before collecting materials. When building a data warehouse, determine the goals for the data and create a strategy. After a strategy is set, the data to collect and the method of organization can be determined. At that point, the strategy can be executed to meet the goals.Like any big decision, there are likely some reservations. A common concern with big data is the members’ perceptions. Some members might have concerns revealing private information because they are worried about being “stalked”. However, the credit union’s role is utilizing data, not stalking members. Data allows the credit union to leverage information for the benefit of members.Another concern of credit unions might be a lack of software. The number of software options can be overwhelming. Think back to the strategy for using data and use that as a guide to evaluate software.A third concern for credit unions is likely lack of expertise. Most credit unions do not employ data scientists to drive the analytics effort. Fortunately, many excellent vendors operate in this market ready to provide expertise so the credit union can get started. It is important, however, for the credit union to use this opportunity to learn and develop an internal capability over time. There is no better judge of what business questions need to be answered than the credit union. Analytics that are targeted at critical business questions create the most value. 39SHARESShareShareSharePrintMailGooglePinterestDiggRedditStumbleuponDeliciousBufferTumblr,Austin Wentzlaff Austin J. Wentzlaff joined OnApproach in 2013 as a Business Development Analyst and is now currently Director of Business Development. He is responsible for developing marketing strategies, driving prospects to … Web: www.onapproach.net Details
Are you familiar with member journey mapping? It’s one of the hottest topics I encounter in my work with credit unions throughout North America. Member journey mapping is metaphorically putting yourself in your members’ shoes and walking through typical interactions with your organization. Along the way, you’ll observe what’s working and what isn’t. The goal is to improve the experience however, whenever and wherever a member engages with you.For a process that yields big rewards, it’s amazingly easy to implement. Here’s a simplified framework:Pull together a handful of people from across your organization (a.k.a. “subject matter experts”) who bring relevant experience to the table.Supply them with big paper, markers and sticky notes.Give them an assignment to walk through every step of the current approach to the top three to five member experiences that matter most (e.g., account opening, a loan application and problem resolution). continue reading » 3SHARESShareShareSharePrintMailGooglePinterestDiggRedditStumbleuponDeliciousBufferTumblr
We all know that customers today are bombarded by advertising everywhere they turn. When it comes to business banking, you’re not just competing with other financial institutions; you’re also competing with the busy needs of a business owner. To really connect with the business owner mindset, it’s important to understand where they are coming from to really plan a strategy that catches their attention.Business owners start what they’re doing because they have a passion for their product or offering. They go through roller coasters of emotions, unexpected challenges, long hours and lone decision making because they relish in seeing their hard work pay off. They need a financial institution that supports these passions, is ready for the challenges and gives smart advice for financial decisions. If your credit union is that financial institution, it’s time to reach your customers.Pinpoint their needsThere’s no point in speaking to someone who isn’t listening. A business owner may have an office, but they’re rarely found sitting behind the desk. They’re on the go, always multitasking, and they expect those around them to work just as hard. They’re looking for financial support and want a credit union that can fit specific needs. Things like cost of doing business, availability to access finances, and opportunities for new capital are top priority.Tell them how you can helpFor years, surveys of small business owners reveal one of the biggest challenges is funding. In the last year, 63% of business owners reported difficulty getting a loan, and 77% decided to start a business relying on personal savings entirely. Knowing challenges like this creates a huge opportunity to reach your customer where they are most likely to listen. Don’t tell them what you do, tell them how you can help them. Get them to listenCreate a conversation all about the customer. After sharing how your credit union’s services can help, give them a chance to respond. Gallup found that only 29% of B2B customers are currently engaged, but if engagement happens it leads to higher revenues, profitability and share of wallet.Business owners may be busy people, but they’re also very focused on what helps their business succeed. It’s all about understanding, engagement and persistence. Be what they need when they need it. Figure out their priorities, then prove you’re there to support each one. *Statistic information found through data from Business 2 Community, Wells Fargo Works and Gallup. 18SHARESShareShareSharePrintMailGooglePinterestDiggRedditStumbleuponDeliciousBufferTumblr,Ben Prager Prior to forming Prager Creative, Ben worked with design studios, branding firms and advertising agencies to push great strategy and design for all his projects. His experience with all aspects … Web: www.pragercreative.com/creditunions Details
“Controlling avian influenza is an enormous challenge for the veterinary community,” Dr. Ilaria Capua, head of virology at Italy’s Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie, said in a speech yesterday. “Local administrations in different parts of the world are not well prepared. The virus is changing as it moves to new ecosystems and hosts. We need money. We need resources.” Threat to humans persistsOther presentations at the conference underlined avian flu’s persistent but unpredictable threat to human health. A study of more than 900 people in four provinces of Thailand where there had been serious human cases of H5N1 flu found no mild or asymptomatic infections, according to Dr. Rapeepan Dejpichai of the Thai Ministry of Health, underlining a growing impression among some scientists that H5N1 is a difficult disease to catch. Episodes such as those are of particular concern to scientists who worry that underfunded animal-health efforts could leave humans vulnerable to a resurgence of H5N1 or another novel strain. “There is certainly variability in the response to commercial vaccines,” he said. “We are not getting very many new vaccines that are closely matched to the [wild] strains, and I think protection over time will suffer.” Vaccinating poultry and ducks to contain avian flu has been controversial. It reduces birds’ clinical symptoms, keeping them alive and preserving their economic valuethough not necessarily their utility as a trade good, because some countries refuse to import vaccinated chicken. It decreases viral shedding, slowing disease transmission, but it does not block infection entirely, potentially allowing the virus to spread silently. Despite investments by international aid agencies, the animal-health system in Africa remains so poorly funded that “we have had several experiences of samples being stuck in countries for weeks when they should have been sent to reference laboratories,” said Dr. Stella Chungong of the World Health Organization. “When you talk about capacity in Africa, you are really talking about very basic issues of specimen collection, transportation, and storage.” “Freedom from infection has not been sustained in the region,” she said. “There has been a recurrence of cases in most of the affected countries, with some countries having continuing outbreaks. The virus may be endemic in some countries.” That is also true in Europe and the Russian Federation, where “the reemergence of the virus in a number of countries does suggest we are moving toward endemicity,” even though some countries have deployed vaccinations against the disease, said Dr. Ian Brown of the British government’s Veterinary Laboratory Agency. It is not clear what is driving the slippage, Dr. David Swayne, director of the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory, said in a separate session: The influence could be immunologic pressure within vaccinated poultry or the birds’ exposure to ducks that harbor other viral strains.
But a study of a recent outbreak in Wales and England of H7N2 flua mild strain not thought to cause serious human diseaserevealed three people ill enough to be hospitalized and possibly 23 people who had contracted a flu-like illness, according to Dr. Jonathan Nguyen-Van-Tam of London’s Public Health Services Laboratory. Despite the apparent slowdown in human infections and deaths, H5N1 flu is continuing to evade detection and control efforts, recurring in birds in some areas that were thought clear, becoming permanently entrenched in others, and mutating in a way that renders long-used poultry vaccines less effective, according to conference presenters. Jun 21, 2007 TORONTO (CIDRAP News) Declining public interest in the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza and its pandemic potential has sparked alarm among animal-health experts, who worry that shifting priorities will derail the funding still needed to control the disease in birds. And according to papers presented at the conference, vaccination may be driving the virus’s evolution. Isolates gathered in northern Vietnam in December 2005 are not only more virulent than earlier samples, but less likely to be controlled by vaccines that once contained the virus successfully, said Dr. David Suarez of the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Ga. Bird outbreaks keep returningIn Southeast Asia, the area from which the virus began spreading in late 2003, there have been multiple H5N1 bird outbreaks just in the past month, along with Vietnam’s first human death in two years, said Dr. Watanee Kalpravidh of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. Prominent veterinary scientists attending the International Conference on Options for the Control of Influenza, a meeting of about 1,500 flu experts this week in Toronto, urged their colleagues to remember that the virus will remain a human health threat as long as it circulates in birds and mammals. “I’ve never understood why the medical community does not call for more support for the veterinary community, to say that if we could control flu in animals it would have a profound effect on controlling a possible pandemic,” said Dr. Michael Perdue of the WHO’s Global Influenza Programme. “But because it causes both animal infections and sporadic human infections, [avian flu] is not like any other disease. It has competing mandates.”
Log in with your social account Linkedin Forgot Password ? terrorism IS-sympathizers IS-returnees terrorism-in-Indonesia no-repatriation-for-IS-fighters LOG INDon’t have an account? Register here Facebook Topics : Google The government has disowned Indonesian nationals who joined the Islamic State (IS) movement abroad, declaring them stateless and stripped of their citizenship after officials decided against repatriation.Presidential Chief of Staff (KSP) Moeldoko said the IS sympathizers’ citizenship had been automatically lost following their decision to join the terrorist movement in Syria.“[The IS sympathizers] are stateless. It was clearly stipulated in the law on citizenship,” said Moeldoko at the Presidential Palace Complex on Thursday, adding that the fact that several IS sympathizers burned their Indonesian passports signified their forfeited citizenship.Article 23 of the 2006 Citizenship Law stipulates that Indonesian nationals can lose their citizenship after, among other things, joining a foreign military or taking an oath of allegiance to another country.Howe…
Bakker Sliedrecht has been awarded a contract for the for the LNG-powered cutter suction dredger (CSD) Spartacus, Royal IHC is building for DEME.The Dutch electrical systems specialist has been contracted to provide engineering, delivery, and commissioning of the electrical power plant and auxiliary electrical installations for what is said is the “world’s largest” CSD.Spartacus, the 44,180 kW cutter suction dredger will be capable of running liquefied natural gas (LNG) and is scheduled for delivery in 2019.The vessels four main diesel engines are also capable of running on marine diesel oil (MDO) and heavy fuel oil (HFO), while the two auxiliary engines have the dual-fuel technology.The concept and basic design for this mega cutter were done in close cooperation with DEME, Vuyk Engineering Rotterdam, an IHC unit and IHC.