Image Resources' North Perth Basin mineral sands project just keeps getting better

Image Resources' financial returns for its North Perth Basin mineral sands project just got a whole lot better with increases in the prices of titanium dioxide and zircon mineral sand products.

Tellingly, the increases would boost the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of the project to 47% at the current A$/US$, up from 43%. The net cash flows for life of the mine to $381 million, up from $259 million.

The capital for the project would be repaid from cash flows after just 13 months of operation, previously 18 months.

Capital costs are estimated at $84 million.

The project would produce some 1,393,000 tonnes of ilmenite, 85,000 tonnes of rutile, 193,000 tonnes of zircon and 93,000 tonnes of leucoxene over a twelve year mine life.

Image has commenced a Feasibility Study on the North Perth Basin projeHand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin,ct.You can find best china Precision injection molds manufacturers from here!

Environmental consultants are carrying out baseline studies and the environmental permitting of the Atlas deposit, the first of the deposits to be developed.An offshore merchant account is the ideal solution for high ,Why does Plastic moulds grow in homes or buildings?

Bulk samples from the Atlas and Red Gully deposits are being collected in preparation for further metallurgical test work to be carried out during the first quarter 2012.

This test work is expected to demonstrate that metallurgical recoveries for these resources can be improved.

There has been an 80-85 per cent increase in rutile prices and 85-90 per cent projected increase in synthetic rutile prices next year. While zircon prices are expected to flatten early next year after strong increases the last few years.The EZ Breathe home Ventilation system is maintenance free,

The pigments are used in paints and other building materials and then on-sold to China and other developing countries.

While new supply is coming on stream, the new suppliers will simply help satisfy the demand growth out of China.

The key markets for zircon, a product used in ceramics and tiles, are generally outside of the regions affected by the current sovereign debt issues. zircon in particular, the ceramic-centric cultures, the tile-centric cultures tend to be Latin American, Asian, Islamic and the Middle East.

With very strong demand for minerals sands products the outlook for Image's North Perth Basin mineral sands project is very solid based on projected financial returns.

If Iluka is anything to go by, Image presents a real opportunity for investors with booming mineral sands prices and demand for rutile and zircon.

Iluka is up more than 470 per cent since the lows of July 2009 and is up more than 86 per cent since January. In comparison, the ASX 200 index is down about 13 per cent this year.

While Iluka is an industry leader, it was not always the case and in 2009 was down and almost out. For keen investors, there is an opportunity to potentially catch a wave with Image riding high demand for minerals sands products as it moves closer to development of its Perth Basin mineral sands project.

UAE’s Piling Tech wins Iraq deal

Piling Tech,The EZ Breathe home Ventilation system is maintenance free, a unit of UAE-based Tech Group, on Thursday said it had won its first oil contract in Iraq valued at $10 million from Lukoil, the second largest oil producer of Russia.Why does Plastic moulds grow in homes or buildings?

Under the terms of the agreement, Piling Tech will be involved in the installation of piles, foundations and wells for the West Qurna-2 oil field in southern Iraq.An offshore merchant account is the ideal solution for high , Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil firm along with Norway’s Statoil and Iraq’s state-owned South Oil Company, is prospecting for oil in West Qurna – 2 after its won the contract in Iraq’s second licensing round in December 2009.

Tech Group CEO Ali Ghaleb Jaber said: “The West Qurna-2 deal is a milestone development for Piling Tech on two counts. One - it is our first foray into the oil and gas sector of Iraq, and second the deal signifies Piling Tech’s growing business footprints across various redevelopment projects in Iraq.”

Piling Tech set up its office in Iraq in 2009 and has been involved in a host of redevelopment projects across the country including piling works for the Sports City, bridges, water desalination plants and buildings in Basra and Baghdad.

“We look at the Lukoil contract as a stepping stone into oilfield development sector in Iraq as Piling Tech is expecting to conclude more deals which are in the active pipeline,” Jaber said, adding that “the volume of work with Lukoil is also expected to increase further as more contracts are awarded in West Qurna-2 oilfield.”

He said the increasing volumes of business for Piling Tech in Iraq was a direct reflection of the company’s reputation in the region as a leader and specialist in piling and foundation works with modern technology at its disposal and ability to complete works on schedule in a timely and cost-efficient manner.You can find best china Precision injection molds manufacturers from here!

Piling Tech is one of the seven specialist companies under the Tech Group umbrella in the construction sector.

Abdul Khalik Sultan, General Manager,Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin, Piling Tech, said that the current contract with Lukoil for five well clusters from 2 to 8 was a beginning and is the first phase of the project.

“We do intend to participate in more projects in West Qurna-2 and firm up our role in the oil and gas sector in Iraq. Our aim is to grow and reinforce the reputation as Piling Tech as a trustworthy partner in the lucrative oil and gas sector of the country,” Sultan said.

Triad ends 2011 with pledge of more than 4,700 jobs

The Triad's economy is ending 2011 on another promising uptick with more than 4,700 jobs pledged, the Piedmont Triad Partnership reported Wednesday.

The Triad, according to the partnership's geographic definition, is comprised of Alamance, Caswell,Omega Plastics are leading plastic injection moulding and injection mould tooling specialists. Davidson, Davie, Forsyth, Guilford, Montgomery, Randolph, Rockingham,I have just spent two weeks shopping for tile and have discovered China Porcelain tile. Stokes, Surry and Yadkin counties.

By comparison, there were 4,782 pledged jobs in 2010, led by 510 at Caterpillar Inc.'s Winston-Salem plant and 500 at the Timco Aerosystems plant in Wallburg, and 2,568 pledged jobs in 2009.The EZ Breathe home Ventilation system is maintenance free,

The partnership said its report does not include jobs "created under the radar" without an official announcement.

As usual, Guilford and Forsyth counties had the largest number of pledged jobs for 2011 at 1,681 and 1,143, respectively.

"The jobs news in 2011 for the Piedmont Triad is certainly good considering the slow national recovery out of the Great Recession," said David Powell, the partnership's president and chief executive.

"2012 can be a year of more positive change for our region. The good news is that we have the fundamentals in place to make this happen in the Triad. We have momentum."

Still, in the 21 years in which Winston-Salem and Forsyth County government officials have been granting incentives, more than 40 percent of the more than 14,000 pledged jobs either weren't created or have been eliminated.

The biggest example is the closed Dell Inc. plant, which was projected to have about 1,700 employees and had about 1,400 at its peak.

And economists and employment officials cautioned that because of the sour economy, many of the jobs announced by 61 companies could be several months, if not years, away from actually being created.

Two of the three largest pledges this year have had little job movement: 419 with the Honda Aircraft Co. expansion at Piedmont Triad International Airport and 308 with NS Aviation LLC, doing business as North State Aviation, at Smith Reynolds Airport.

Honda Aircraft committed Oct. 10 to a $78.7 million expansion that will create 419 jobs over five years at an average salary of $53,000 a year. Honda Aircraft already has about 600 local employees.

However, instead of doing the entire rollout at once, Honda Aircraft will start with a $20 million maintenance, repair and overhaul center. The company has not said how many jobs the center will require. Put on the back burner is a components manufacturing facility and a parts/distribution warehouse that could be two or three years out.

Meanwhile, North State Aviation is struggling to gain aircraft-maintenance business since saying in January it would create 125 jobs in its first year of operations and 308 over four years. North State officials could not be reached for comment.

Mark Davidson, director of Smith Reynolds Airport, said that although North State has not created jobs at the projected rate, having the company as an anchor tenant has been positive.

The Forsyth County Airport commission is eligible for $500,000 in funding from the Golden Leaf Foundation, primarily to buy tooling equipment for NS Aviation that is required to work on Boeing 737 aircraft.

"The Golden Leaf funds have provided much-needed funds to the airport, which have contributed to several capital improvements around the airport, including runway and perimeter fencing," Davidson said.

In some instances, it's not the sour economy that is holding a company back.An offshore merchant account is the ideal solution for high ,

After pledging in October to create 120 jobs at its Winston-Salem headquarters, Inmar has said it is struggling to find enough qualified employees in information technology, accounting, customer service and operations.

By comparison, US Airways Group Inc. is close to completing the hiring of the second wave of 200 reservation jobs at its Hanes Mall Boulevard operation, said Vonda Hardy, president of Communications Workers of America Local 3640. The commitment is tied for sixth on the partnership's list of pledged jobs.

Timco said in November that it has hired 140 employees toward its first-year goal of 191. Caterpillar has 80 employees at its Winston-Salem plant, including at least 34 local hires.

Getting on board with those companies can be challenging. Caterpillar, for instance, has been getting about 10 applicants for each job opening.You can find best china Precision injection molds manufacturers from here!

Michael Walden, an economics professor at N.C. State University, said the pledged jobs number is important from a shot-in-the-arm perspective since it indicates employer intentions.

"However, plans can change since businesses are being cautious today," Walden said.

"These intentions also may underestimate reality if the economy performs better than many expect, which I think could be the case."

Dolls putting out less straw for bedding for bulls in nice weather

A bright sun was peeking out last week on a cool morning with temps in the 20s but no snow on the ground as the Dolls put out bedding for their bulls.

Charles, David and Harlan Doll, who operate Doll Charolais and Simmental Ranch, lay out bedding for the bulls every three days, but it is nothing like last year at this time.

David said they’ve only used 10-15 percent of the bedding they had used at this time a year ago when 20-30 inches of snow had already fallen in the region, making cattle chores difficult.

There’s been only a dusting of snow so far this year, and producers are looking forward to a clear forecast for the next 10 days.

Bedding is a project that used to take two men and last an hour and a half.

“Now I can do it myself in 10 minutes,” said Harlan.

Harlan drove the bale processor which the Dolls purchased last year, and picked up a bale of straw and then distributed it evenly across the feed yard.

The bulls came running to the fresh bedding, laying soft, thick and even. They enjoyed nuzzling in it – and so did the farm dogs.

David said they bale both straw for bedding and hay for feed in the summer and store it for future use.

The North Dakota Simmental Association’s state sale, which the Dolls had bred heifers in, was a success last weekend at Farmer’s Livestock Exchange in Bismarck.

Charles said producers from states as far away as Nebraska and Wisconsin consigned bred heifers in the sale.

David added it was a “really good sale” with the average sales price being $3,400 on the bred heifers, and $2,900 on the open heifers.

During the sale, some of the Doll kids, Hailie, Krysten, Katie and Jacie, stood in the ring with the heifer donated by Joseph and Helen Doll, longtime members of the North Dakota Simmental Association.

“They were really proud of being able to donate a heifer to an association that they have been members of for many years,” David said.

The week before, the Dolls trailed the last of their cows home, then sorted and worked the cows the same day with a  Scour Guard injection, and another dose of Ivomec.

The cows were out grazing stalks and grass in two groups across the road from farm headquarters. They have a nice open creek running through the fields bringing them fresh water daily.

“The creek hasn’t iced up at all,” David said.

A few shiny-coated cows were in a separate pen and eating a higher ration. Harlan said these were the cows they flushed for embryos, and they are fed extra mineral. They had 20 embryos flushed out of two cows and 10 out of another.

He added they decide which cows should be flushed based on if they are consistently having a nice calf year and have good mothering EPDs such as milking, good birth, weaning and yearling weights and they also check the carcass data, too.

The Dolls also went through their bulls a final time, making cuts, and castrating the cuts as steers.

They finished weighing the bulls in their sale and the heifers they are retaining. Charles likes to wait until he has the final 365 day weight to add to the other information, before he registers the animals. That way the data is complete.

“The bulls are averaging 3.8 pounds a day. They are gaining really well,” Charles said.

Meanwhile, their trainee from Brazil, Durval Neto, left to return home after nine months with the Dolls. It is an exchange program through the government that the Dolls have participated in before.

They had a cattle buyer from Minnesota come out looking for quality calves, and the Dolls took him around to some of their customers. Some weren’t ready to sell until after the first of the year, so he may come back then.

The brothers have been holding on to their grain and hoping the wheat market has a sustained rally soon. Harlan said it  has been up some for six days in a row, but David said it seems to go up in a lot slower increments than it comes down.

Harlan added he is starting to look at rotations for next spring, and seed. He sent a sample of wheat in to get the germination level and see if it is high quality enough to use next spring. They will probably plant the same crops next year: wheat, barley, flax, corn and sunflowers.

The Dolls are also doing some end-of-the-year paperwork, and went over some numbers with their tax accountant.

David added, “After the first of the year, we will also start marketing our feeder calves.”

Harlan said they have had some people come out to the ranch and look at the bulls that will be in their March production sale.

“It is nice for us, too, because we like to visit with them one-on-one, and can spend more time that way,” he said.

David agreed. “We enjoy visiting with them and spending the time with them. On sale day, it get pretty hectic, and you don’t always get to visit as long as you’d like,” he said.

Charles added they will have about 80 Charolais and 50 Simmental bulls in their March sale.

They are beginning to send out some photos and advertisements to different magazines for the upcoming sale.

Russ Choka created what we all yearn for – a place of community

On Friday, Russ Choka was laid to his rest, a much-deserved one. The gray skies reflected the somber mood at the morning vigil outside his restaurant, later at his funeral in the cathedral and finally at his grave in the Catholic cemetery.

So what was it then? Homage to Mr. Choka or simply that old familiar craving for a coney dog that drove us downtown three nights before Christmas? I don't know, but whatever it was when we pulled into the last space in the darkened parking lot, it was evident we were not alone.Monz Werkzeugbau und Formenbau. The place was jam-packed!

We stumbled through the back door, down the steps, through the kitchen, past the stove with the huge pots and the counter with tubs of dirty dishes into the restaurant, where we joined half of Fort Wayne. There was no room at this inn. We latecomers huddled together at the front and rear entrances of the old-timey establishment,Why does Plastic moulds grow in homes or buildings? eyeing the crowded tables, wondering “how long,” eager for our chance at the trough.

I'm telling you, that blazing Santa Claus sign was the slickest promotion Choka ever devised, shooting his revenue through the roof every December.

There were big-bellied Steelers fans chomping down dogs. Small shepherds and wise men with their worn-out parents chomping down dogs. Hot-shot high-schoolers in letter jackets with their girlfriends, businessmen, a woman in a fur coat, the ragged, the rich, the young and the old, all chomping down dogs. Why, it was “weinermania”! A fat baby in a high chair with a hot dog in one hand and pacifier in the other. An 89-year-old Leo Lion retelling the tale of his 1940 championship season when the whole team celebrated at this very establishment.

Knowledge handed down from one generation to the next is a beautiful thing to behold, and I watched as a doting grandfather hoisted his little angel onto a barstool at the counter.Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin, It took the child three seconds flat to discover the mystery of the motion of the swiveling stool, as she looked up in gratitude at her grandpa.

It had now been almost 10 hours since the vigil, and still the exhausted staff displayed a professionalism that would put the high-class joints in town to shame. In their soiled aprons and sweaty T-shirts proclaiming “Our buns are steamed,” I observed as they smiled patiently doing their best to satisfy all comers, sorting out Rubik's-cube orders — “Twenty- one coneys, nine with mustard, four without, five no onion.”

Thank heavens, a righteous man in a dark suit and tie, obviously straight from the church, was helping out, acting as maitre'd and busboy, alternately wiping tables and his brow.

Soon it was our turn to be seated, and in just an instant, like magic, our chili and coney dogs were placed before us. Gloria in the highest! Those dogs are the world's best!

Confirmed by the neon “World Famous Coney” sign blinking back in the window,The EZ Breathe home Ventilation system is maintenance free, I surveyed the scene. Only Norman Rockwell could have captured the magnitude of the neighborliness — friends sharing tall tales, strangers invited to pull up a chair,You can find best china Precision injection molds manufacturers from here! the laughter, the hugs, the “Merry Christmases”…

It was then I spotted her looking down on all of us — Mary with her baby, on a memorial blanket hung on a wall at the far end. Now my husband thinks I'm goofy, tearing up at the most inappropriate times, but honestly, that did it — that and the knowledge that Choka had chopped 50 pounds of onions seven days a week for more than 50 years!

And in that instant I knew why the place was packed, why business was booming, why the children would bring their children. The recipe was simple. With a humble hotdog, a spoonful of sauce and a fresh bun, Russ Choka had created what we all yearn for: a place of community.

Israel, Iran Eye Baku

Religious, cultural,Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin, and historical links notwithstanding, the Republic of Azerbaijan has had a difficult relationship with neighboring Iran ever since its independence in 1991. But tensions have reached new heights in the last couple of year years.

This was no clearer than it was on August 9 this year, when Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi,The EZ Breathe home Ventilation system is maintenance free,Why does Plastic moulds grow in homes or buildings? chief of Iran’s armed forces’ Joint Staff Command, warned Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev that he would face “a dark fate” should he continue to expand ties with Israel.

The statement prompted the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry to deliver an official protest to the Iranian Embassy in Baku, as well as to arrest three members of the banned Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, which Baku claims is funded by Tehran. Last month, meanwhile, Baku accused Iran of being behind the stabbing of Azeri writer and journalist Rafiq Tagi. And last week, the director of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting office in the Azeri capital, Ahmad Kazemi, was denied entry into Baku, and was forced to leave Azerbaijan the same day.

Tehran has for its part accused Baku of fomenting divisions within its large Azeri population, which is estimated to number between 20 to 25 million, with the majority residing in northwestern Iran. On August 13, Tabnak, an Iranian news website, revealed what it called an “Azerbaijani plot” to foster ethnic conflict in Iran’s northwestern provinces, including the dissemination of anti-Iranian programs by Azerbaijani TV and radio stations. Equally alarming for the authorities in Iran is the decision by the Aliyev government to include several Iranian provinces, including Ardabil, Qazvin and Hamedan,Monz Werkzeugbau und Formenbau. as parts of a “Greater Azerbaijan Republic” in school textbooks.

Compounding Iranian fears is Israel’s key role in Azerbaijan’s energy and defense sectors. Iran is deeply concerned over growing Israeli and Western investments in the Azerbaijani energy sector, seeing such developments as a major threat to its own economic interests. Unable to compete with and/or attract Israeli and Western technology and capital for tapping abundant Caspian natural resources, Iran has resorted to a policy of intimidation in order to discourage foreign investment in the Azerbaijan offshore sector. Tehran’s efforts in this are greatly enhanced by the fact that maritime disputes between the five littoral states of the Caspian Sea remain unresolved, allowing Iranian gunboats to make several incursions into what the Azerbaijani government considers as its territorial waters.

This comes at a time when Tehran is nervously watching the expanding military and intelligence cooperation in the region. Surrounded by U.S. troops in the south, east, and west, Iranian officials tend to perceive the deepening military ties between Jerusalem and Baku as the latest element in a Western plan to completely encircle Tehran. Ultimately, Iran views Israel’s effort to develop a military industrial complex in Azerbaijan as a long-term plan to open up a new front for a possible military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities should the need arise.

The problem for Baku is that, strategically speaking, it’s impossible for Azerbaijan to forgo its ties with one of these countries in favor of the other. The recent Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, as well as the Azeri elites’ concern over the perceived “Islamization” push by Ankara, are of particular concern for Baku, and it’s these two developments more than anything that have added extra value to Azeri-Israeli relations. This was underscored in a January 2009 diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan, which said that President Aliyev was uncomfortable with the pro-Islamic and pro-Palestinian stance of Turkish Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

But Iran is no ordinary country for Azerbaijani strategists. The two states share a 600 kilometer land border, while an estimated 85 percent of Azerbaijan’s population is Shiite. These two realities allow Iran the potential to cause real trouble for authorities in Azerbaijan and provide it considerable opportunities to destabilize the country. Certainly, there have been reports that Iran has an active religious network operating in Azerbaijan that it could utilize to undermine the Aliyev government.

Azerbaijan is fully aware of Tehran’s capacity for mischief making and so has refrained from crossing Tehran’s “red lines,” including by deciding against opening an embassy in Jerusalem. But this is unlikely to be enough to prevent ties between the two countries entering a period of even more heightened tension, not least because the Tehran-Tel Aviv rivalry for influence over Azerbaijan is intensifying by the day.

Iran and Israel have been playing a cat-and-mouse game in Azerbaijan for more than a decade, one that utilizes the businesses, diplomats, citizens and spies both countries have in Azerbaijan.You can find best china Precision injection molds manufacturers from here! With growing regional uncertainty, there’s now an extra incentive for both Tehran and Jerusalem to continue building on their already well-established networks in Baku. How the Aliyev government – stuck in the middle – will respond, remains to be seen.

The right players in the right roles for innovation gold

Science-based innovation is vital to improving the economic, environmental and social well-being of Canadians.

Cal Stiller, one of our most accomplished medical scientists and entrepreneurs, has therefore offered this challenge: Canada should resolve to “own the innovation podium,” just as we aimed to own the podium in Vancouver at the Winter Olympics.

In the case of the Olympics, Canada especially sought to own the podium in hockey.Monz Werkzeugbau und Formenbau. To achieve that objective, Steve Yzerman was given the job of assembling and managing the necessary talent. He had a great pool of goalies, defencemen and forwards from which to choose. The greatest challenge was to mould them into a gold-winning team.

In competing with the world to excel in science-based innovation, Canada also has an impressive talent pool – world-class academics and scientists, innovative entrepreneurs and business executives, dedicated and experienced public servants.I have just spent two weeks shopping for tile and have discovered China Porcelain tile. The greatest challenge is to get them to play the innovation game as a team at a gold-winning level.

By the time hockey players get to the national or international level, everyone knows his role. In the innovation game, however, the most appropriate roles for the major players are not nearly as well defined,The EZ Breathe home Ventilation system is maintenance free, assigned, or accepted.

University-based scientists are urged to more aggressively pursue the commercialization of their work – a task that entrepreneurs and business people are usually better equipped to perform. Corporations that ought to be taking the initiative spend far too much time waiting for governments to take the lead. And government efforts to stimulate innovation are often unfocused and diffused through multiple departments and programs.

The lack of teamwork among Canada’s key players in the innovation game is compounded by serious communication gaps. Business executives and politicians complain that the science community fails to express its findings in a commercially relevant or politically communicable form. Scientists respond that far too many business people and politicians are scientifically and technologically illiterate.

Is there a division of labour that can enable Canada to own the innovation podium at the international level? I believe there is.

Let the universities focus primarily on basic research and (together with the polytechnics and colleges) on training students to serve as the prime carriers of advanced science and technology to the marketplace.

With respect to commercialization, let this be the primary focus of the entrepreneurs and business executives whose primary goal is wealth creation.

As for governments, it is time to acknowledge that the public is increasingly skeptical about “big government solutions to big challenges,” including innovation. Let governments, therefore, shift their emphasis toward serving primarily as facilitators, enablers and partners with other players.

Of course there will still be circumstances when universities should commercialize,You can find best china Precision injection molds manufacturers from here! businesses should facilitate and governments should lead. But let such occasional departures from basic roles arise out of real-time interactions and good communications among the players rather than from a priori prescriptions.

Are there examples where this division of labour has worked? I think of Fred Marsh, the hockey entrepreneur who developed and commercialized the Marsh Flexible Goal Peg that permits the hockey net to break away from its moorings when hit by a player.

The Marsh peg is composed of a unique blend of rubber and plastic,Omega Plastics are leading plastic injection moulding and injection mould tooling specialists. the chemistry of which was explored and defined long ago in some university lab. But it was Marsh the entrepreneur who saw the need for the peg, initiated and completed its development as a commercial product and marketed it to the hockey world. “Governments” too played a crucial role – in this case the governing bodies of the Western Hockey League and the NHL – by testing the Marsh peg and eventually buying it.

But the clock is ticking. The coaches have assembled the team for last-minute instructions. No time now for further discussion, conferencing, or report writing – only time to repeat the game plan: “Academics and scientists, investigate and educate; entrepreneurs and business executives, initiate and wealth create; governments, facilitate. And all of you, communicate. Now let’s get out there and win innovation gold!”

Santorum: I'm more electable than Romney, Paul

Fresh from his sudden rise in the Iowa polls, Rick Santorum on Thursday had harsh words for the two Hawkeye State front-runners, contending that Rep. Ron Paul's foreign policy would "leave an enormous void around the world" and that Mitt Romney has "been all over the map" on too many issues.

Less than a week before Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses, a CNN/Time/ORC poll showed Santorum in third place with 16 percent, with Romney at 25 percent and Paul at 22 percent. The poll had Santorum gaining ground while Newt Gingrich, who had previously led in the state, saw his support collapse to 14 percent.

In an interview on CNN, Santorum attributed his new status to his dogged strategy of visiting all 99 Iowa counties to compensate for a lack of money and organizational support. "Hard work pays off," he said.

He said that Paul, who has the best organization in the state, has given many voters pause with his laissez-faire foreign policy views, which include withdrawing troops at U.S. bases abroad.

"My concern is that Ron Paul would walk in there, day one, pull our troops back and leave an enormous void around the world," Santorum said. "He can do that day one without congressional approval. He can as commander-in-chief, move our troops anywhere in the world, disengage from every place from Europe to the Middle East, China, abandon the Straits of Hormuz, pull the Fifth Fleet back."

Meanwhile, the former Pennsylvania senator said, Romney has not been consistently conservative. He cited the ex-Massachusetts governor's views on overhauling health care and a "cap and trade" proposal aimed at reducing greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. "There's a whole laundry list of issues where Mitt's been all over the map," he said.

Although Romney is often described as the Republican most likely to win over Democratic and independent voters in a general election, Santorum said Romney has never won an election where he campaigned as a conservative and went after those voting blocs.

"I've run as a conservative in a blue state of Pennsylvania and won two elections," he said. "Yes, I lost one in an election year where everybody lost [2006], but in the election years that were contested that are going to be more like 2012 than 2006, those are the elections I won in Pennsylvania, and we can win them again."

Santorum also took a swipe at Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann, both of whom have played up their "outsider" status in being willing to take on the Washington establishment.

"What we've seen is experience is a valuable thing," he said. "We had the president, who came in with little experience ... If you look at the track record, I got a lot of things done when we were in the senate." He added that even though he disagrees with the policies of President Lyndon Johnson - a former Senate majority leader - he said Johnson was "a pretty effective president. He was able to understand the dynamics."

Trail-blazing party is a big hit

A FESTIVE event organised by South Tyneside teenagers to break down barriers should be copied across the region, say councillors.This page contains information about molds,

Youngsters from Horsley Hill Community Centre hosted a Christmas party with a difference.

As well as spreading seasonal cheer, the event also had a serious safety message.

The teens hosted a fire safety presentation and acted out plays warning of the dangers of pickpockets and bogus doorstep callers.Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin,

Sunderland councillor Robert Heron, chairman of Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Authority, was so impressed by their actions, he wants to see similar events staged elsewhere in the North East.

The party, at South Shields Community Fire Station, saw teens tell their older guests how they caChoose from our large selection of Cable Ties,n reduce fire risks in the home by ensuring grill pans are clean before cooking, plug sockets are not overloaded and smoke alarms work.

The group then acted out two short plays, with the help of Neighbourhood Beat Manager Pc Dave Rockell, showing how quickly a purse thief can strike and revealing the tricks used by bogus callers to get into a person’s home.

Coun Heron said: “This kind of event breaks down the barriers between the older and younger generation.

“Praise must go to the young people,We're also Australia's leading online Bedding retailer. the fire service, the police and the youth workers who were all involved in the scheme.

“It’s something I would like to see extended around the area covered by Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service.

“I think this is something that will take off. Quite often it’s the simple ideas that have the biggest impact.”

South Shields watch manager Ray Houghton said: “It was a great event and both the young people and their guests enjoyed themselves.

“It was a feel-good afternoon with serious messages behind it, and the young people were excellent.”

Neighbourhood Inspector for East Shields Dave Hudson said: “I think the event was great. To see the young people interacting with the older generation, in my view, broke down some of the barriers that exist between the two groups.

“I also thought the presentations, on fire safety and crime prevention were tremendous and really hit the message home to those watching.”

South Tyneside Deputy Mayor,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. Coun Eileen Leask, said: “It truly was a fantastic event which was very professional.

“I was really impressed by the young people. You could tell they had worked hard alongside the fire service and the police to put the event on.

“Everyone went away from the event learning something and the way they interacted with the guests was fantastic. They chatted with them, and made sure they had cups of tea and were enjoying themselves.

“But for me the nice thing about it was the young people made you feel at ease. They didn’t make you feel like it was a chore talking to you, and that meant a lot, as it showed they wanted to be there and they were keen to ensure everyone had a good time.”

Entertainment for the event was provided by singer and firefighter Tony Chapman.

Legislation alone can't stop piracy

After the payroll tax cut, the hottest issue animating Washington these days is online piracy. Legislation to curb overseas Internet sites that purvey pirated copies of movies, television shows and other creative content is steadily advancing.

Arms are being twisted,My advice on what to consider before you buy oil painting supplies so your money is well spent. campaign checks written and competing experts trotted out in a Titanic struggle between the film industry (in favour of cracking down on the pirates) and technology companies (against anything that blocks the free flow of information over the Internet).

Under existing law, television networks and film studios can simply request that websites remove pirated videos. Sites must quickly take down the content to avoid a lawsuit. The system works - without stifling anyone's Internet use.

But because some overseas websites exist solely to distribute bootleg content, and are beyond the reach of United States' law, Hollywood is seeking stronger protections. In essence, it wants the right to require American companies to stop doing business with entire websites.

There are two legislative approaches, both claiming broad support - and both flawed.Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin, The House and Senate Judiciary committees are moving measures that would let the Justice Department obtain court orders to certify sites as dedicated to theft, at which point the entire online ecosystem - search engines, Internet service providers, payment processors and advertising networks - could be told to block the sites.This page contains information about molds, Google, for example, could be required to remove a link to a site so that it doesn't come up in search results.

Both Bills would also let copyright holders obtain court orders to choke off a site's financial lifelines to advertisers, credit-card companies and payment processors such as PayPal.An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air.

A more Internet-friendly House-Senate collaboration would let copyright owners petition the US International Trade Commission (ITC) to investigate foreign websites linked to piracy. The ITC could issue cease-and-desist orders against rogue sites that "primarily" and "wilfully" violate copyright - in other words, only the most blatant infringers - at which point US companies would have to cut ties to them.

Both approaches risk violating free-speech principles by snuffing out entire websites, no matter how much the film industry insists its sole aim is to shut down only purposeful copyright theft. One example: It's doubtful that the early YouTube, indispensable to hundreds of millions of digerati today, would be allowed to exist under the stiffer House version, called SOPA, for the Stop Online Piracy Act.

SOPA and its Senate cousin, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, could also prove overly disruptive - Google chairman Eric Schmidt says they would "break the Internet" - by allowing the film industry or, if that doesn't work, the US to give domain-name registrars and advertising networks just five days to cease directing traffic to a site or starve it of ad revenue. It's not hard to imagine how that might chill free speech or be abused by a politically ambitious US Attorney-General.

The measure that relies on the International Trade Commission,They become pathological or Piles when swollen or inflamed. for its part, is impractical. It would require that individual artists and content creators hire lawyers who practise before the ITC to litigate cases that could cost millions of dollars and more than a year to complete. Only large companies could afford their day in the ITC court.

But the more fundamental problem is that SOPA and its ilk are too late. Anti-piracy legislation would only put a finger in the digital dike. If the film industry thinks Congress can stop nimble code-writing entrepreneurs (okay, hackers) from replacing any movie-streaming sites the US manages to shut down, it hasn't been paying attention.

We sympathise with Hollywood, which is frantic to cut off websites, such as one where bootleg films can be downloaded free by anyone with a laptop and a broadband connection. The film business, which says it loses more than US$6 billion (S$7.7 billion) a year to piracy, doesn't want to end up like the music industry, whose sales were obliterated once music-lovers learned to download songs from file-sharing services.

But Hollywood can't prevent that by trying to strangle pirates. Its greater threat is its own antiquated business model. The reality is that moviegoers, couch potatoes and Net surfers want to download videos to laptops, tablets and smartphones. They want to watch the latest Harry Potter movie or Modern Family episode when and where it's convenient.

The film industry can no longer expect to control distribution to theatres, cable TV, network TV, overseas venues and streaming services such as Netflix - each one a separate revenue source.

King of the Modifieds

It's not surprising Everett "Cotton" Owens would have a special gift for machinery. After all,This is interesting cube puzzle and logical game. his grandfather and father were both mechanics. But the idea of actually making a living out of racing automobiles? That seemed far-fetched at best.

Born on May 24, 1921 in Union, S.C., Owens bought his first car when he was 16. He and a friend named Walter Moore spent a lot of time tooling around Spartanburg, S.C., in that vehicle -- when they didn't have to dodge the local police.

"I bought a '34 Ford sedan -- a two-door sedan -- and that was my street car," Owens said. "I was a terror, which you couldn't do today. You could do a lot more than you can now, as far as learning to drive on the streets."

Owens eventually gravitated towards racing -- first as a driver with more than 100 feature wins and two NASCAR Modified championships, then as a mechanic and championship car owner. For his contributions to the sport, Owens was named as one of five persons nominated this year for possible induction into NASCAR's Hall of Fame.

But it wasn't until 1940 that Owens got his first glimpse of stock car racing. It came when Bill France and several other top drivers arrived in town to race at the famous fairgrounds track.

"I had to climb the fence to see that race, and I fell in love with it," Owens said in a story written by freelance journalist Cary Estes. "I'd seen some midget races, but I hadn't seen any stock cars. I watched that one race,I have just spent two weeks shopping for tile and have discovered China Porcelain tile. and that's all it took."

But shortly thereafter, the war intervened. Eventually, Moore went off to fight in Europe,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. where he participated in D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. Upon his return to Spartanburg, Walter -- better known as "Bud" -- and Owens found jobs at a local junkyard.

One day, a driver came in with a race car that had been damaged in an accident and needed a new body. Owens and Moore did the work,Omega Plastics are leading plastic injection moulding and injection mould tooling specialists. the car won the next race, and the two friends realized they had a skill that set them apart.

Not only was Owens a talented car builder, but he excelled on the track as well. In 1950, he won 19 consecutive races, then later added the 1953 and 1954 Modified championships -- earning him the nickname "King of the Modifieds."

"I did have quite a bit of success in the Modified division," Owens said. "We used to have the U.S. Modified championship race that Bruton Smith used to put on in Concord, N.C., in those days. I won four of those,The company pioneered the manufacture of Coated Abrasives, against drivers from all over the United States.

"When you win, that's nice, but when you do it more than once, that stands out. It was poor man's racing, but we ran pretty near all over the East Coast. It was a good division back then."

But Owens realized the money -- and the fame -- was in NASCAR's premier series, known at that time as Grand National, and by 1957 he had switched his allegiance. It paid off handsomely with a win on the Daytona Road and Beach circuit to start the year.

He added a victory in each of the next three seasons -- finishing second in the points to Lee Petty in 1959 -- and won four races as a part-time driver in 1961, including two at Columbia and one at his home track in Spartanburg.

However, Owens hung up his helmet for good in 1964, shortly after getting in a car and beating David Pearson at Richmond in an effort to teach the young driver a lesson in maximizing his potential. Owens admitted lingering injuries from a serious crash a decade earlier was the major reason.

Pack, rack and stack small hay bales

HANDLING hundreds of small bales of straw is no longer a laborious time-consuming job for Callington oaten hay, barley and pea straw specialist producers Colin, Nathan and Brett Wegener.

The family produces about 35,000 bales of mulching and bedding straw annually, much of which until this year had to be manhandled as many as three times before being carted off the farm.

For this year's production, the Wegeners invested in a Canadian-developed Super Bale Baron bale accumulator machine that operates behind their traditional small baler and literally packs and stacks 21 small bales into one compressed-and-tied large bale before discharging it onto the ground.

Nathan Wegener says the Bale Baron has virtually given the family a hands-free handling system for its entire 35,000 straw bale production business.

"It has allowed us to get the baled straw into storage quicker and this is important in retaining the quality, particularly with the barley and oaten straw bales which are predominately used as bedding material," he said.

"It has reduced our labour time and cost, and because of the reduced handling and pickup trips to the various paddocks, it has also cut our fuel costs."

He says the machine, believed to be one of only two Bale Barons in South Australia, looks like a big and complicated machine, but is fairly straightforward and simple to use.

"It is feature-packed with a number of built-in safety provisions including a Smart/solve computer control system that constantly monitors and warns the operator of any problems," he said. "And it is equipped with a central lube block that services the machine's 16 grease points consistently and automatically.

"We have also added a couple of cameras to the combined baler and Bale Baron unit with a monitor in the tractor cabin to give the operator an overall view of what is happening behind him.

"The Bale Baron is fully hydraulic-powered and in our case we take the power direct from the SUV outlets of our 112-kilowatt John Deere 6920 FWA tractor."

The machine is directly hitched to the rear of the baling machine, from which the small bales are fed to a receiving chute on the big bale-forming Bale Baron.

"From this chute they are fed onto a revolving turn-table that mechanically rotates the bales 90 degrees and lifts each batch of three small bales at a time that are then forced into a ram loader-packing chamber," Nathan said.

"This process is repeated seven times until all 21 bales are compressed ready for tying.

"The Bale Baron is equipped with Hesston plastic twine-knotters and is equipped an audible alarm in the rare case of a missed tie-function.

"The knotters are fed from a 16-ball twine box.

"As the process is continues and the next 21 small bales pack are being formed, the preceding big bale is slowly forced against the rear doors of the machine and on to a discharge roller ramp and placed gently on the ground.

"From this point the big pack of small straw bales is ready to be picked up with our fork-equipped front-end loader for carting to one of our on-farm undercover storage sheds."

The small bales are formed from the windrows left by the family's John Deere 9670 STS combine which, for pea harvesting, a dedicated rigid front with pea-plucker is used.

"For baling the straw directly behind the harvester we simply bypass the straw-chopper by swinging it out of the way," Nathan said. This year the family will produce 25,000 bales of pea straw, 5000 bales of barley straw, and 5000 bales of oaten hay, which will be reduced by the Bale Baron to about 1700 big-pack bales.

Demand for Wegener straw comes from far and wide, reaching as far as Melbourne for bedding straw. It is particularly popular in the Adelaide Hills for mulching straw.

"The Bale Baron represented a fairly big investment for us, but after only one season's work, we can appreciate the extra efficiencies and savings it has afforded us," Nathan said.

The Wegeners bought their Bale Baron from State distributor G&J East, Strathalbyn, after seeing an advertisement in the Stock Journal Ag-Trader pages and checking-out further on the internet, as well as at a demonstration day held nearby.

At Stanford,Manufacturers and exporters of impact socket, there will be life after Luck

One last wild Fiesta for Stanford, then it all gets blurry and stressful.

Will Stanford ever be the same again -- or close to the same -- once Monday's Fiesta Bowl vs. Oklahoma State is over and Andrew Luck leaves for the NFL?

That's an impossible question to answer right now, and yet Stanford coach David Shaw knows he has to answer it and deal with it, eventually.

"Good teams always handle that," Shaw said recently after one of Luck's final practices on the Stanford campus.

"Everybody wondered how good we'd be after lost Toby Gerhart (before the 2010 season). Everybody wondered how it'd be with three new starters this year on the offensive line."

"And everybody's going to wonder how good we're going to be without Andrew next year. And that's good."

It's good, because Stanford is in its second consecutive BCS game, a feat matched this season by only Oregon, Virginia Tech and Wisconsin.

And if Stanford wins Monday, it will be the only team to sweep BCS games the last two seasons.

So the Cardinal's rise wasn't just about Gerhart, because Stanford went 8-5 in his Heisman runner-up season in 2009 then followed it up with the 12-1 brilliance last season.

It wasn't just about Jim Harbaugh -- the coach who began this (with Shaw as his offensive coordinator) -- because Stanford is 11-1 in Shaw's first season taking over the top spot.Museum Quality hand-painted oil painting reproduction on canvas.

The chances of going to a BCS game in the post-Luck near-future do not seem high. But also: The chances of an extreme fall off seem low,Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin, also.

This will not be a return to the Walt Harris era. Shaw is too sharp and there's too much talent on the roster to ever let that happen.

"I know a lot of people have questions about the team next year -- outside of the locker room -- but I'm real excited to see how things are going to work out next year," junior running back Stepfan Taylor said.

"Especially for our class (2009). We're seniors now and the team is on our backs."

That brings up the metaphoric passing of the torch, as the program thanks and generally moves on from the transformative recruiting class of 2008.

That class was led by Luck, but also includes fellow possible first-round offensive linemen David DeCastro and Jonathan Martin and possible mid-round linebacker Chase Thomas. All are eligible to remain another season, but all could go to the NFL.

Clearly, a wholesale departure would lower every Stanford expectation for 2012.

"I kind of like the high expectations," Shaw said. "Because it shows us that we've earned the right to be where we are, and then you've got to play up to it ...

"We've got three out of our four running backs coming back next year,The company pioneered the manufacture of Coated Abrasives, two of our three tight ends coming back next year and as many as our linemen hopefully coming back as possible next year, as well as a whole bunch of guys coming back on defense.

"We're recruiting very well. I think we're going to have some great speed coming in this year. So for us, it's re-tooling. We might look a little different, but we expect to be competitive from here on out."

After Monday, the weight shifts to the shoulders of the next class of rising seniors, which features Taylor, tight ends Zach Ertz and Levine Toilolo and currently injured linebacker Shayne Skov.Why does Plastic moulds grow in homes or buildings?

Some Chinese turn to U.S. Embassy for clarity in smog data

The Beijing smog often keeps Zhushen Zhenyu trapped at home, on his mother's orders, when he'd rather be playing basketball outside, but the 8-year-old still hopes for a silver lining in the clouds of pollution choking China's capital.

"When will the air quality be so bad we don't have to go to school?" he asked a city official one recent smoggy day.

"That depends on government policy," was the cryptic reply of Li Yunting, an engineer at the Beijing Environmental Monitoring Center,Why does Plastic moulds grow in homes or buildings? which opened to public visits last month.

The doubts about official pollution data keep piling up for China's government, as green activists, celebrity bloggers and ordinary citizens increasingly demand action and information to halt the environmental fall-out from decades of breakneck economic growth.

Burning coal is largely responsible for the oppressive smog, which the United Nations has rated the worst in the world. China has more than doubled its coal consumption in the past 10 years but has not kept pace with the clean-air technology found in the West. It also relies on cheaper forms of coal that emit more pollutants, and Beijing's nearly 5 million cars do not generally meet the standards of the USA.

The past two months have been dire. The high incidence of heavy air pollution has sent many residents rushing to buy face masks, air purifiers and household plants believed to clean dirty air.

The haze has highlighted discrepancies between the government's robustly sunny statistics and the far scarier numbers recorded and issued by the U.S. Embassy here. Beijing described the air pollution as "light" on December 4, a smog-filled day that forced the city airport, the world's second busiest, to cancel hundreds of flights because of poor visibility. The embassy reading was "beyond index," literally off the measurement charts that stop at "hazardous."

The embassy measurements,Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin,Muyoung mould specializes in manufacture Plastic molding, begun in 2008 and issued hourly via Twitter, use a standard employed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to measure tiny airborne particles, such as soot from burning gas in cars, that are under 2.5 micrometers in diameter.

Experts consider these particles most damaging to human health, as they are small enough to penetrate the lungs and blood, potentially causing lung cancer and other diseases.

China publishes figures using a standard that measures coarser particular matter such as dust and keeps secret, for internal research, the measurements of smaller particles its scientists collect.

Despite the Chinese government's blocking of Twitter, the U.S. Embassy figures are widely circulated in Beijing on Chinese websites or microblogs. In recent weeks, celebrity bloggers such as real estate mogul Pan Shiyi and children's author Zheng Yuanjie have pressured Chinese officials to give a more accurate picture of air quality.

Yu Ping, a Beijing journalist and father of a 6-year-old boy who, like him, has suffered a sore throat in recent weeks, threatens to sue the municipal environmental protection agency if they don't respond to his request for the recent data.

"This is very important for me, my son and all citizens of Beijing and China," he says.

Yu's quest has inspired several other Chinese to demand data from their city governments, Yu says. He is grateful to the U.S. government for its transparency, but "it should be the Chinese government that does this," he says.

Some Beijingers, such as Wang Jinlan, say the U.S. government should mind its own business. Her daughter Du Lanxin, 8, says they filled their house with special plants last month to purify the air.

"Our home is better now, but when I go out, it's sometimes very hard to breathe," she says. Her mother drives her to school every day rather than breathe the smog on a bicycle or bus, but in doing so, she adds to the city's clogged, polluted streets.

Hua Lei, vice director of the center, insists that, over the past two years, Beijing's air quality has improved. She says the center measures small particulates in the air but does not release the data because the public "won't understand the figures."

Environmentalist Feng Yongfeng, founder of the environmental group Green Beagle, has been lending air-quality monitoring equipment to companies and communities since May.

"As a government, you must let the people know the worst level of air quality,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air." he says.

Under growing pressure, Beijing is now revising national air-quality monitoring standards and promises to require the release of data on smaller particulates — by 2016.

Environmental consultant Steven Andrews, an American based in Beijing, says the problem is that China's "target culture" means officials, fearful for their jobs, distort pollution levels to ensure they meet government benchmarks.The temporomandibular joint is the joint of the jaw and is frequently referred to as TMJ.

Even under the new standards, "levels will still be called good in Beijing that would be in the unhealthy range in the U.S," he says.

"The air is dangerous; it will cause cancer," says Sam Zhang, 41, a vegetable wholesaler who signed up for the monitoring center visit. He says he trusts the U.S. Embassy figures over his own government's data.

"Taxpayers pay the government officials' salaries, so they should tell the truth about air quality," he says, "but they are not elected by the people, so we have no hope they will tell the truth."

Richmond woman gives kidney to ailing former boss

This year, Susan Preston gave Bruce Dodds a Christmas gift that is changing his life.

Preston donated a kidney to Dodds.

"Her gift means a normal life again," Dodds said.

The living donor kidney transplant surgery took place Dec. 7 at IU Health University Hospital in Indianapolis. Dodds and Preston, both Richmond residents, are well on the mend.

For the first time in three years, food tastes good again to Dodds. His fluid intake is no longer restricted and he is free from dialysis.

"It's pretty amazing for someone not related to our family to make that gift," said Dodds' daughter, Lara Dodds.

Preston's husband, Roger Preston, and her daughters, Jessica McMorrow and Elise Chadwick, were not surprised by Preston's generosity.

"Susan is a make-a-difference kind of person," Roger Preston said.

"I would say my mom was unswerving in her decision (to donate) from Day One," McMorrow said.

Preston feels the Christmas season is the perfect time to celebrate Dodds' renewed life.

"The greatest gift given to us was Jesus," she said. "It almost seemed minuscule (in comparison) to give a kidney.Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin, It just seemed so right."

Preston and Dodds became acquainted eight years ago when he became her boss at Earlham College, where she is an administrative assistant. They each have three children and became grandparents at about the same time.

They worked together for five years before Dodds was blindsided by kidney failure from polycystic kidney disease, a genetic disorder causing cysts. It is the most common life-threatening genetic disease, one that often lies dormant for years.

Dodds had been treated for cancer not long before the kidney failure and believes that was his trigger.

His life changed immediately.

The kidneys control about 80 to 85 percent of the body's operating systems, Dodds said. He couldn't work and had to have dialysis three days a week.Why does Plastic moulds grow in homes or buildings?

"It (dialysis) takes over your life," Dodds said.

Most people, he said, understand that dialysis cleanses the blood because the kidneys can no longer handle that function. What they don't realize, he said, is that dialysis also removes the excess fluid from the body because without working kidneys,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. urination is not possible.

Each dialysis treatment, Dodds said, is as hard on the body as running a marathon and that body is operating at just 30 percent of its normal energy level.Choose from our large selection of Cable Ties,

Roger Preston, who works at Reid Hospital, said there is a misconception that a person can handle dialysis indefinitely.

"It's a Band-Aid on a gaping wound,We're also Australia's leading online Bedding retailer." he said.

"We had no idea it was such a physical hardship," Susan Preston said.

The past three years have been an emotional roller coaster for Dodds and his family. Initially, Dodds' wife, Marilyn, was deemed a match as his kidney donor. But when doctors discovered she had kidney stones, she became ineligible. Dodds said his wife literally cried for two weeks.

Other family members sought to be a match, but they were discovered to have the genetic predisposition to polycystic kidney disease. Dodds was listed as a transplant candidate on state and national databases. He had one near match.

"It's been three years of trying circumstances," Lara Dodds said. "(My father) has gotten through it with great courage and great strength."

A view of Italy

Today we wrap up our discussion on balconies with a little construction strategy.

First, your balcony will consist of a cantilever-style structure, which, like the nose on your face, will simply protrude from the exterior wall.

Supporting a balcony via pillars or fibreglass columns from below would certainly be an easier strategy to follow,Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin, construction wise, and would certainly suit a home where the balcony was placed over the front entrance, however, pillar support is not quite the style we're shooting for.

Will our balcony not need some type of support system? Of course, if you're in the blueprint stage of your future new home, your architect will be able to modify the floor system so that the engineered joists extend past the exterior wall the desired number of feet, or that the joists be designed to accept some form of steel framework.

When adding a balcony to an existing home, whereby the use of columns underneath is not possible, or just not desired, then the manner of installation will have to be examined by a contractor and further okayed by an engineer, in order for you to get a permit.

A cantilever-style balcony isn't like any other deck, since the outer perimeter will seemingly be defying gravity. Realizing that nothing defies gravity, at least not for long, a support structure (as unintrusive as possible) will need to be installed underneath the balcony platform. This support structure should, no doubt, be made of steel, to ensure a long lasting, maintenance free quality.

If the steel's angled support structure isn't in line with the style or decor of the home, the beams could be easily covered with foam mouldings. These mouldings would, in turn, be coated with a stucco-type product that would duplicate the texture of stone or concrete.

Or, you could conceal the supports in true Italian fashion with the always classic statue of Zeus or Atlas, whereby the statue's form, usually starting at the waistline, protrudes from the wall.

The stylish effect of your platform resting on Atlas' shoulder, with arms raised in support, would be impressive indeed.Why does Plastic moulds grow in homes or buildings?

Now, if the likes of Zeus, Atlas, or any of the Greek or Roman gods,This is interesting cube puzzle and logical game. don't hold any great historical or ancestral significance to you, but you still like the statue idea,Online fine art gallery of quality original landscape oil paintings, perhaps the likes of Big Joe Mufferaw, or Canadian strongman Louis Cyr, or Cornwall's legendary football great Moe Racine, would provide that statuesque, yet closer to home, desired effect.

The challenge, of course, would lie in finding a sculptor, a profession that really lost its market about 500 years ago.

Balcony framework?

I like the steel frame, poured concrete floor best.

Steel is forever, and so is the concrete, especially if it's coated with a porcelain or slate tile.

Railing systems?

Again, consider the maintenance free,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. everlasting quality of steel, aluminum or cast iron spindles.

What about glass?

Glass looks great, but may not suit your traditional or formal stone type home, and would definitely clash with your Moe Racine, dueling statue support system. However, for a contemporary home, glass panels are perfect.

First step to balcony success?

Contact your contractor and explain your vision. If this initial visit is positive, meet with your engineer, since the project will require some structural expertise.

If all goes as planned, you're well on your way to a very special home feature indeed.

Walter Scott: The satisfaction of the stalk

The rut seems to have turned off like someone hit a switch. The breeding frenzy has gone from deer running around day and night to the more-normal routine of bedding down during the day and moving mostly at dawn and dusk.

It makes for much safer driving on the roads, but bow hunting has become much more difficult. A person can still go spend the day in a tree and deer will eventually wander by. It is nothing like a couple of weeks ago when anyplace on the farm was good enough because large numbers of deer were moving constantly.

I have yet to get a deer. This is not altogether a bad thing. It means I still have the opportunity to hunt. There have also been many bucks I passed on, in hopes of getting a bigger one, so I have no complaints.

There is an old saying to the effect there is no such thing as a bad day hunting. I have to agree, with the possible exception of the day I slid the truck sideways down the hill on the ice and ended up in the pond. That was not an extremely bad day hunting for me, since it was not my truck and I was able to swim, unlike my passenger, Rob, who was sporting a long leg cast at the time.

Most any day a person can go hunting is a good day.

Sunday, the wind was blowing and it was cloudy. Rain had fallen during the night, which made the air feel even colder as the strong north wind blew damp air into my face.

This is the kind of weather made for stalking. To stalk deer close enough to get in bow range, several things are necessary. The wind needs to be blowing so a person can approach without being scented. The deer need to be bedded down tight, such as they are after the rut on a cold windy day, and the leaves need to be wet and quiet. Miserable weather makes for perfect stalking.

I crossed twin sluices and drove to the south fence near what is affectionately known as the “Dark Woods.” We call it that because it is so thick with trees and brush, sunlight cannot reach the ground. Deer will escape into the area if pushed, but even they prefer to stay in the more hospitable timber on the edge.

I started into this patch of timber at the edge, sure there were deer bedded in the area, I walked slowly and carefully into the wind. The cold wind blew tears into my ears as I approached the top of the hill. Four deer were just over the crest lying next to a fallen tree. The tree blocked the wind for them and they could see the entire timber that dropped away from their bedding area. They were about 30 yards away and appeared to be a mature doe, her two fawns from this spring, and a reasonable sized buck.

Since the buck was not huge, I decided to take the doe. It would help control the deer population and she looked fat and tasty. A large rose bush partially blocked my shooting lane to the doe. I had an open shot at the buck but was confident I could move closer and to my left to get a clear shot at her.

The buck and doe were oblivious to my presence but one of the fawns spotted me on my next step. She jumped up and ran toward the Dark Woods with white tail flagging. In an instant, the other three deer were up and heading away.

Returning to the truck, I felt the satisfaction of having stalked into range of deer, even if I did not take a shot. I also had the satisfaction knowing it was a lot warmer in the truck and even nicer back at the house.

Claudia's Corner: And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?

It is Christmas morning.We're also Australia's leading online Bedding retailer. There is such a frenzy of preparation to get to this day. Upon its arrival, it turns into a time of reflection. Quoting that famous John Lennon Christmas song, "What have you done?"

2011 has been an amazing year for me professionally. It has been filled with both new and repeat clients. There is a big misconception that working with a decorator is expensive. There are levels of service from high-end custom work to design on a dime. My clients are the later. It is not based on income level but being budget conscious these days. Over the years I have saved clients money by avoiding costly mistakes.

From color, furniture placement to ideas on how to update a home without spending a fortune, clients are looking for creative ways to live comfortably while enjoying their home.

If you are looking for a changing or updating your home for the New Year, start collecting images of things you love.An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. Search through magazines, catalogs and the internet. Create your own "Style File" of these images. This will give you ideas and direction you need to start making selections.

Take advantage of those after-holiday sales for new bedding, sheets and towels to freshen and update your bedroom and bath.Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin,Information on useful yeasts and moulds, Use colors from the bedding to inspire you to paint or coordinate your space.

Look for inspiration within your home to change colors. It could be from a piece of artwork or a rug. A trade secret is selecting a lighter color from your inspiration and accenting with a darker color. It all depends on how you want the space to look and feel.

If you plan on selling, don't do anything outrageous. The most disappointing and surprised look I get during a staging consultation is when an unusual or too personal of a color is on the walls and I suggest paint. In some cases they just recently painted.

The competition is tough in real estate. With real estate staging, neutral is best but not mandatory if it works within the space. A boldly accented wall in a well-staged room will generate more interest from potential buyers than a neutral, cluttered, unkempt space. Want proof? Take a peek at online listings to see what I'm talking about. What house can you see yourself living in?

The staging end of my business has become more of a necessity in the current real estate market.Choose from our large selection of Cable Ties, There is a huge inventory of homes for sale that are not selling. Many people do need to sell for many reasons. A staged home will sell faster than unstaged if it is priced right. Some of my staged homes sold within a week while others within a month or two. We will have more on "how to update for less" in future columns. Send in your questions.

Christmas comedy? Don't make me laugh

'Tis the season to be jolly, or at least in which to seek jollity, so I trawled through the schedules in pursuance of a laugh, alighting immediately on an RT One programme with the promising title Ho! Ho! Ho!

Unfortunately, this yuletide chat with "a host of stars", conducted through the medium of Irish by an alternately simpering and gushing Blthnaid N Chofaigh, had the immediate effect of eliciting an earnest plea of No! No! No!

Maybe someone more indulgent than myself was happy to hear from gaelgeoir academic Alan Titley that snow is "lovely when you're indoors" but is "not so nice if you're outside". And maybe the same wide-eyed soul was fascinated to learn from Nationwide presenter Mary Kennedy that she's "always fit to burst after Christmas dinner". And, on the same topic, maybe Blthnaid's advice to "open that top button of your trousers quietly so no one can see you" conjured up less disturbing images for others than for me.

Moving swiftly elsewhere, I found myself drawn to the same channel's Meet Your Neighbours, a comedy sketch show featuring PJ Gallagher in a variety of guises. Never mind that I've always thought this comedian about as funny as a cold sore, RT's Real Player had assured me that his latest series was intended for "mature audiences" and I like to think of myself as belonging to that select category of viewers.

What the Real Player's preliminary caption had neglected to mention was that all the sketches were entirely witless and that some of them were quite rancid. About halfway through, one of Gallagher's creations leered "Anyone can get their face on television", and I was compelled to concur with his observation.

Still, there was always the festive edition of RT Two's The Republic of Telly,Hand-painted Chinese porcelain tiles on the floor of a Jewish synagogue in Cochin, even though the continuity announcer warned me at the outset that "if you're easily offended, this one might not be for you".

How right she was, though the offence was purely to my intelligence. At one point the camera positioned itself on a Dublin street while various young guys either mooned at it or stripped off entirely and waved their willies in its direction. Another segment featured regular participant Bernard O'Shea laughing uproariously at his own jokes. Well, I suppose somebody had to.

The comedy wasn't much better across the water. Channel 4 offered Catherine ("Am I bovvered?") Tate in the hour-long Laughing at the Noughties, which promised to explore how television comedy has developed and changed over the last decade but which was merely an excuse for Tate and a few of her cronies to tell us how great they all were, especially Tate herself.

Dawn French turned up to assure her that she was brilliant. So did Rich Hall, Lee Mack and David Tennant. Tate described them as "trailblazers who also happen to be my mates." They were certainly that.

Then there was ITV's The Comedy Annual, a supposedly side-splitting look back at the past year presented by Phillip Schofield, whose affinity with laughs is roughly comparable to my expertise in nuclear physics. Alistair McGowan came on to give so-so impersonations of Prince Charles, Gary Barlow and Arsene Wenger, while I thought the routines by Jason Manford and Patrick Monahan just as lack- lustre, though I did chuckle at voiceover maestro Dave Lamb's one-liner about Shane Warne wooing Liz Hurley: "The last time he held something that wooden he hit a six with it."

But it was left to Jason Byrne's concluding 10 minutes to make me laugh out loud.An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. Byrne can be far too shouty for his own good, but when he's on form -- and the material is good -- his manic energy is irresistible. His subjects here included the Irish visits of Obama and the Queen, the quaintness of landline phones and the demented Christmas Eve behaviour of his drunken parents, and I never stopped chortling.

In his Imagine series (BBC One),My advice on what to consider before you buy oil painting supplies so your money is well spent. Alan Yentob offered the two-part The Art of Stand-Up, which contemplated the business of comedy with his usual earnestness. This led Ed Byrne, who was one of his interviewees, to wryly marvel at "the idea of elevating comedy to the status of art", but that didn't stop Yentob -- or, indeed, most of his interviewees, who were only too chuffed to be regarded as the Shakespeares, Rembrandts and Mozarts of their chosen profession.Information on useful yeasts and moulds,

It's only rock and roll, as Eric Clapton said about his own endeavours,They become pathological or Piles when swollen or inflamed. but try telling that to some of these guys. Come to that, there were hardly any girls to be seen or heard from, but then we all know that girls aren't funny.

'Boyd's Hill' depicts a world of work in 1892 Pittsburgh

Boyd's Hill is one of those old Pittsburgh names that has fallen by the wayside, ever ready to trip up even native Pittsburghers. Ask for directions to Boyd's Hill and we'll merely gape at you, something our ancestors never would have done.

"Boyd's Hill" is the name of Martin B. Leisser's small painting of the rocky promontory we call the Bluff. The son of a South Side immigrant glass factory worker who became the dean of Pittsburgh painters, Leisser was 46 when he painted it on Jan. 4, 1892. It was among the first works he produced here after more than five years of living and working in Europe, most recently in Munich, where he had studied two decades earlier.

For the sixth consecutive year, the Post-Gazette features a winter-scene painting on the cover of the Christmas Day newspaper. This year's painting was selected by PG publisher John Robinson Block and executive editor David Shribman during a recent visit to the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg.

In the painting, a woman -- or is she still a girl? -- pours a bucket of coal ashes onto the snow, maintaining a path to the row house. A man, hunched against the cold, carries firewood, perhaps, next to the horse-drawn wagon. Because this is Pittsburgh before the turn of the last century, the domestic tableau is set against the industrial architecture, dramatic topography and smoky atmospherics that so captivated and inspired the city's artists. This is no winter wonderland. "Boyd's Hill" is a painting about work.

Almost 120 years later, it's also a painting about evolution and loss. Everything we see in "Boyd's Hill" has vanished, save for the land in the foreground.

The Bluff was first known to settlers as Ayres' Hill, named for a British engineer who promoted the idea of building a fort there, after the demise of Fort Duquesne,This is interesting cube puzzle and logical game. because of its commanding views. But when John Boyd took his own life on the hill,I have just spent two weeks shopping for tile and have discovered China Porcelain tile. he unwittingly gave his name to it.

Henry Brackenridge, lawyer and Pittsburgh Gazette co-founder, had enticed Boyd to come to Pittsburgh from Philadelphia in 1786 to assist Brackenridge's struggling partner, John Scull. During his time at the paper, Boyd also tried to establish Pittsburgh's first lending library, but the project was dropped for lack of interest.

Ella Chalfant, who wrote about Boyd's intestate passing in her 1955 book on early wills in Allegheny County, suggests that Brackenridge oversold Pittsburgh and that the reality of life in a small frontier town didn't measure up to his descriptions.

We may never know what motivated young Boyd. Inscrutably -- he gave no reason -- John Boyd left his Water Street office one day in the summer of 1788 and climbed Ayres' Hill to hang himself.

The painting isn't easy to read, either. At first glance it seems to show, at the top of the hill in the background, Duquesne University's Old Main administration building, which for many years had a cupola. But that interpretation collapsed under research. The cupola in the painting didn't match Old Main's, and Old Main stood taller and more solitary on the Bluff in those days. Comparisons of early maps and photographs on the Historic Pittsburgh website indicated the hilltop background building more likely would be a school or other institution in the Lower Hill. If Boyd's Hill was the foreground, as increasingly seemed to be the case, the logical terminal view was the nearest hillock, on the undulating Lower Hill.

"Boyd's Hill" is a small painting, about 10 by 13 inches. While he painted the foreground with precision, recording even the standing seams of the row houses' metal roofs, Leisser defines the background hillside buildings by their snow-covered roofs with a flurry of loose brush strokes. Yet the schoolhouse cupola stands out, and Pittsburghers of 1892 would have recognized the building by its profile. We, however, are left to play detective.

Possible candidates gleaned from maps were compared with photographs of historic school buildings. Franklin School at FranklThe company pioneered the manufacture of Coated Abrasives,in and Logan streets was a massive Richardsonian Romanesque castle with two round corner towers flanking two tall square towers -- the sort Andrew Carnegie called "donkey ears" on the Carnegie Institute building in Oakland, and ordered them removed as part of its expansion. Scratch Franklin; it was nothing like the school in the painting.

Moorhead School -- also known as the Eleventh Ward Public School -- seemed a possibility. The school was at the corner of Enoch and Granville streets and next to St. Bridget's Church. In the painting, the cupola-topped building is close to a building with spires or turrets.This page contains information about molds, But in a 1931 aerial photograph of the Lower Hill from the roof of the Grant Building, Moorhead and St. Bridget's, seen faintly in the distance, don't seem to match the buildings in the painting.

Historic photographs of Hancock School, an 1874 Italianate building at Seventh and Webster avenues on the fringe of Downtown, reveal it had the distinctive cupola and deep cornice of the building in the painting, and there was a Roman Catholic church and school complex a few doors away. Both were located on Grant's Hill, the beloved promenade and picnic spot that, as the city grew, devolved into the topographical inconvenience known as the hump. Both buildings, located between where the U.S. Steel Tower and Civic Arena are now, gained height when the ground beneath them was cut away in the 1912 "hump cut." Eureka? Maybe.An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. The elevation and buildings have changed so much, it's hard to know precisely what view Leisser would have seen and where on Boyd's Hill he would have seen it from.

On 1889 and 1900 Hopkins maps of the Bluff, no buildings have a similar footprint and relationship to each other as those in the foreground of the painting, but it was a rapidly evolving area around the turn of the 20th century, and structures may have come and gone without being recorded on maps. Then as now, the western end of the Bluff had steep drops in elevation between streets as they stepped down to Forbes, a landscape feature evident in "Boyd's Hill."

'Giving Tree' makes wishes come true for several local families

A month ago, Zoe Quewon and six children, ages 18 months to 16 years, were living out of boxes and sleeping on the floor of a new apartment, after being displaced when the home they were renting was foreclosed on.

Today, the Air Force reservist and her family have beds, new clothes and dressers in which to keep them -- thanks to Reporter readers who contributed more than $14,000 in donations and gifts to the 2011 Mary Lou Wilson Memorial Giving Tree.

The Quewons aren't the only Giving Tree family to benefit from readers' contributions. The needs of each of the seven individuals and families profiled in The Reporter a month ago were met.

Eight families on the Giving Tree backup list also were taken care of, including a Dixon mom whose 5-year-old child's abscessed tooth required emergency extraction -- an expense she could not afford. Many of the other families' needs were met by employees from the Valero Refinery in Benicia.

After all of the bills are paid on behalf of the families and individuals, The Giving Tree also should be able to fulfill at least some monetary requests made by financially strapped social service agencies.

As those who deliver gifts and services know, recipients are grateful for the help. That gratitude was expressed by one woman whose Section 8 housing deposit is being covered by The Giving Tree, enabling her to have a home in which she can be reunited with her three children, who are now in foster care.

"Thank you for making me and my kids' dreams come true," she wrote. "It is a blessing to my family. Words can't express the joy you have brought to us this Christmas."

Her sentiments have been echoed by the Giving Tree families profiled last month. Here is an update on how they are faring:

Soon after the Quewon family's situation came to light, The Giving Tree began receiving calls from residents who wanted to help. Several offered furniture, including dressers and couches, and were put in touch with the family to make delivery arrangements. A Travis Air Force Base family who wishes to remain anonymous "adopted" the Quewons, providing not only needed clothing and bedding, but also a gift from each child's "wish" list. The Giving Tree purchased beds and arranged delivery of the gifts.

Quewon said her church also gave the family a Christmas tree and some presents as part of its "Go Without, So Others Don't" ministry.

"We have been tremendously blessed," a grateful Quewon said in an e-mail. This is the "first Christmas ever that I have not bought a gift for my kids, but God had us covered. We are very fortunate. I am so astonished by this. It's unbelievable."

A broken water pipe thwarted the goal of getting Kory and Michelle Breiten out of the Opportunity House homeless shelter by Christmas and into their own Vacaville residence, where they could be reunited with their two sons. The repairs are being made and, when they are complete, the family can move in. When they do, they can use the new bedding and towels provided by The Giving Tree.

In the meantime, both parents have found work and are still staying at the shelter. They plan to spend Christmas Day with Kory's sister, who has custody of the boys.

Nikita Range, whose medical issues have kept her out of work for more than a year, didn't ask The Giving Tree for much: Beds and bedding for her 17-year-old son and 15-month-old grandson, of whom she has custody; clothes and jackets for the family; a vacuum cleaner and some groceries. Her wish list was fulfilled.

Anthony Poulos, 62, has been unable to work since 1994 because he suffers from a number of painful disabilities, including spinal steonsis and osteo arthritis. He gets around his Fairfield apartment with the help of a motorized wheelchair and uses crutches when he goes out, which isn't often. Because he is mostly homebound and living on a modest income, the Prevention and Early Access for Seniors Program requested a year's subscription for Internet and television services -- his main connection with the outside world. The Giving Tree arranged for that.

With five children ages 8 months to 12 years, Cobi and Vincent Rush would have their hands full. But Vincent has become disabled, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and Cobi, an Air Force veteran, has been out of work since giving birth to her youngest child. The family is struggling to pay bills and will likely lose their home to foreclosure. Several families from the Epiphany Episcopal Church Friday Night Dinner program stepped up to provide the Rushes with bedding, winter clothes and Christmas gifts. Another Vacaville family donated a bunk bed frame. The Giving Tree paid some of the family's bills and bought mattresses for the bunk bed, as well as new tires and windshield wipers for their car. Family Auto Care is providing a free oil change and inspection.

Maria Wiley, a 67-year-old Suisun City resident with numerous health issues, was taking part in a 12-week cardiac pulmonary rehabilitation class and wanted to be able to continue the workout when the program ended. Soon after her story was published, two offers came in from residents who had recumbent stationary bicycles they were no longer using. Wiley's therapist chose the one most similar to the equipment Wiley was using in the class. In addition, The Giving Tree supplied her with some hand weights so she can continue her exercises

Veronica Melchor, 20, lives with her parents and teenage brother in a Vacaville mobile home. Everyone in the family works, but money is tight. When their heater went out last year, they family did without. But after her son was born in October, Melchor sought help with getting it and a recently broken clothes dryer fixed. The day her story appeared, Vaca Appliance and Fitchhorn Heating called The Giving Tree to say they would take care of the problems -- and they did.

Self-made benefactor Fred Shuh helped the Museum of Fine Arts

As a young man in Canada, Frederick Shuh was one of many electronics workers in the boom years of television.

He was bright, self-motivated and, for the most part, self-taught. In relations with others, he had a way of coming to an agreement.

Mr. Shuh worked for Jerrold Electronics and its corporate parent, General Instrument, which became the largest American supplier of cable television equipment. He moved to New York, became a U.S. citizen, and rose from manufacturing manager to the top of General Instrument.

After retiring to St. Petersburg in 1989, he turned his attention to philanthropy. Contributions by Frederick and Mary Shuh have helped CASA, the Florida Orchestra and the Museum of Fine Arts.

Mr. Shuh, a major benefactor to some of the city's prized institutions, died Saturday, due to multiple health problems. He was 84.

"He probably was the most determined, tenacious person I've ever met," said Mary Shuh, his wife.Wholesaler of different types of Ceramic tile for your kitchen,

Mr. Shuh held a top position with General Instrument, perhaps the dominant provider of cable television components in the world, without a college degree.

"He was an effective negotiator," said Clifford Pipe, a former General Instrument colleague and longtime friend. "Once he determined what the goals of the negotiation were, he would stay with it for whatever time was required."

Mr. Shuh was born in Kitchener, Ontario. The young electronics worker was recruited by General Instrument, where he moved through management ranks. After a previous marriage, he married Mary in 1985.

"He said she was the most beautiful and interesting woman he had ever met," said David Connelly of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Mr. Shuh retired in 1989 as executive vice president of General Instrument and chairman of the board of Jerrold Electronics. He moved to St. Petersburg, where he and his wife donated to numerous local organizations, including a pace-setting cash contribution to the Hazel Hough Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts.

"What they did, at a key moment, was to provide the impetus for the campaign to move ahead," Connelly said. The $21-million Hough wing opened in 2008. The Mary and Fred Shuh Lobby is located on the second floor.

Mr. Shuh enjoyed boating, billiards and golf, although osteoporosis curtailed some of those activities. He dressed neatly — without ties, which he had sworn off on retirement — and was twice named to the "best groomed men" list by the Woman's Service League.

A former member of the Republican Presidential Roundtable, he admired presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and enjoyed reading political nonfiction.