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November 2009

Dash Covers

The lumbar is the region of the spine between the diaphragm and the pelvis; it supports the most weight and is the most flexible. The adjustable lumbar mechanisms in seats allow the user to change the seat back shape in this region, to make it more comfortable. Some seats are long enough to support full thigh.

In suitably equipped cars, seats and mirrors can be adjusted using electric controls. Some vehicles let the driver(s) save the adjustments in memory for later recall, with the push of a button. Most systems allow users to store more than one set of adjustments. This allows multiple drivers to store their comfort settings, or a single driver to store several different occupant positions. Some vehicles associate memorized settings with a specifically numbered, remotely operated key fob, resetting a seat to the position associated with that fob when the vehicle is unlocked (e.g. key fob #1 sets seats to memory position #1, #2 to #2, etc.)

http://www.leonoxautoaccessories.com/

Coca-Cola aims to double system revenue by 2020

ATLANTA (Reuters) –
Coca-Cola Co (KO.N) unveiled goals on Monday that call for the revenue generated by the company and its bottlers to double to roughly $200 billion by 2020, with profit margins increasing.

Coke also said it hopes to more than double the number of soft drink servings it sells to more than 3 billion per day by the end of 2020.

The world's largest soft drink maker discussed its targets for the next 10 years at a two-day investor meeting in Atlanta, its first such gathering in its hometown in more than a decade.

Chief Executive Muhtar Kent said the annual revenue growth rate implied by the 2020 goal is a little higher than the top end of Coke's standard long-term growth target, but he sought to assure investors and analysts that it is "definitely achievable."

"It's going to take a lot of work. It's going to take some fantastic marketing and a lot of synergies to be powered back into marketing," Kent said. "But we believe our system has the capacity to achieve that trajectory."

Kent said there were several worldwide trends that supported the accelerated growth in the medium- to long-term -- rising economic power of developing countries, increasing urbanization and a growing middle class.

For example, Chinese consumers drink an average of 8 servings of Coca-Cola per year, compared with 214 in the United States and 387 in Mexico.

In addition to its trademark cola brand, Coca-Cola has 12 other brands that currently generate over $1 billion in retail sales, including Sprite, Fanta, Dasani water, Powerade sports drink and Georgia coffee. By 2020, Coke said it should have about 30 brands with sales of $1 billion.

FOCUS ON MARKETING

Coke derives more than three-quarters of its revenue from international markets, and is therefore able to offset falling sales in the United States with strong growth in emerging markets like India, China and Brazil. The company said last week it was ramping up investment in Brazil.

Industrywide sales of carbonated soft drinks had been falling in the United States even before the recession slammed the brakes on consumer spending. Some consumers, taking heed of growing awareness of nutritional health, have opted for drinks such as bottled water, juice and tea.

Competition in the sagging U.S. market is about to heat up, since No. 2 soft drink maker PepsiCo Inc (PEP.N) recently agreed to buy Pepsi Bottling Group Inc (PBG.N) and PepsiAmericas Inc (PAS.N), its largest bottlers, in a bid to cut costs, after a decade of operating as separate companies.

Coke has staunchly defended its franchise business model in which it sells drink concentrate to separate bottlers.

The company on Monday said strong brands, targeted marketing campaigns and new packages and price points would help drive growth. It also highlighted a marketing campaign it is planning for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

The company does not provide specific earnings forecasts, but has repeatedly said its long-term growth targets call for annual sales volume to increase 3 percent to 4 percent, revenue to increase 5 percent to 6 percent and earnings per share to increase at a high single-digit percentage rate.

"The long term growth rates are appropriate (moving into 2010), but we're not content with them," said Chief Financial Officer Gary Fayard.

He added that if the company and bottlers achieve the 2020 goals, they would generate cumulative cash flow of $130 billion to $150 billion and would reinvest $32 billion to $37 billion in capital expenditures, with "quite a bit of cash available for other things, such as dividends, acquisitions and share repurchases."

Last month, Coke reported lower-than-expected third-quarter revenue, hurt by the stronger U.S. dollar and said a weak economy would keep consumers under pressure next year.

Coke shares closed 0.5 percent higher at $56.74 on Monday. The shares have gained roughly 25 percent this year, outperforming a 14 percent increase for PepsiCo.

(Editing Bernard Orr and Steve Orlofsky)

Personalized Pens

Personalized Pens

A pen (Latin penna, feather) is a writing instrument used to apply ink to a surface, usually paper. There are several different types, including ballpoint, rollerball, fountain, and felt-tip. Historically, reed pens, quill pens, and dip pens were used.

The first patent on a ballpoint pen was issued on October 30, 1888, to John J Loud. In 1938, László Bíró, a Hungarian newspaper editor, with the help of his brother George, a chemist, began to work on designing new types of pens including one with a tiny ball in its tip that was free to turn in a socket. As the pen moved along the paper, the ball rotated, picking up ink from the ink cartridge and leaving it on the paper.

U.S. offshore tax amnesty yields big response: IRS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
Some 14,700 rich Americans worried about a U.S. government crackdown on offshore tax cheats came forward to participate in a tax amnesty program, the top U.S. tax official said on Tuesday.

Participation in the Internal Revenue Service's amnesty program was "unprecedented" and the final number was nearly double the agency's estimate in October, U.S. Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman told reporters in a telephone briefing.

The IRS amnesty program, which ended in October, offered reduced penalties for wealthy Americans who voluntarily disclosed previously undeclared foreign bank accounts and assets. "We were flooded with people coming in the final days of the program," Shulman said.

While agency officials were still analyzing the amount of offshore assets and bank accounts disclosed, Shulman said "we are talking about billions of dollars coming into the U.S. treasury" from the amnesty program.

Of the 14,700 newly disclosed accounts, Shulman said many involved bank accounts in Switzerland and Europe, but assets were also hidden in more than 70 countries.

"The whole game around bank secrecy, around offshore (tax) evasion is changing" because of pressure from the U.S. Justice Department and from international capital markets, he said.

At the center of the U.S. efforts to combat tax evasion abroad is a case against Swiss banking giant UBS AG, which led the bank to agree to reveal the names of 4,450 client accounts. Shulman also said the outpouring of hidden offshore accounts does not affect in any way the obligation of UBS to turn over those American account-holder names.

Although the amnesty program has ended, Shulman encouraged Americans with hidden offshore assets to continue to come forward and talk with the IRS about them. "It will be much worse for them if we find them first," he said.

(Reporting by Kim Dixon, writing by Julie Vorman, editing by Maureen Bavdek)

Rotting deer carcasses in Pa. yard raise stink

KITTANNING, Pa. – Hundreds of rotting deer carcasses in a southwestern Pennsylvania yard are causing a stink among the neighbors.
Randy Good of North Buffalo Township has a contract with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to remove the animal carcasses from roads in five counties.
Good says he has been picking up 50 to 100 carcasses a day. To cope with demand, he has been dumping a few hundred at a time in his yard. He says weekend landfill closures and a broken truck have worsened the backlog.
Neighbors a half-mile away say they have resorted to burning candles in their homes to mask the stench.
Good says he has gotten a trash container that will help, but it will take a week or two to remove them all.

Microsoft co-founder Allen treated for lymphoma

SEATTLE – Microsoft Corp. co-founder and billionaire investor Paul Allen has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and is undergoing chemotherapy.
In a memo sent to employees, Jody Allen, Paul Allen's sister and the CEO of his investment firm Vulcan Inc., said the 56-year-old received the diagnosis early this month. According to the memo, Paul Allen has diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a relatively common form of lymphoma.
Allen battled another form of immune system cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma, more than 20 years ago and survived. The CEO wrote that Allen "is optimistic he can beat this, too."
"Paul is feeling OK and remains upbeat," she added. "He continues to work and he has no plans to change his role at Vulcan."
Allen founded Microsoft with Bill Gates, a high school friend and fellow computer enthusiast, in 1975.
Gates said in a statement late Monday that Allen remains one of his closest friends.
"Melinda and I have Paul and his family in our thoughts and prayers," he said in the statement, as reported by TechFlash, a tech news Web site. "I know to him be a strong and resilient individual."
Allen served as the company's executive vice president of research and new product development until 1983, when he left to focus on his health.
Allen remained a major shareholder and member of the board, and went on to invest broadly in technology, real estate, sports and the arts.
He formed Vulcan in the mid-1980s to invest in media and communications companies, including America Online, DreamWorks Animation and cable operator Charter Communications Inc. He also co-founded a Silicon Valley research lab that he then shuttered after investing more than $100 million.
Beyond technology, Allen has used his Microsoft earnings to take his interests to an extreme. A longtime sports fan, Allen bought football's Seattle Seahawks and basketball's Portland Trailblazers, and he is part owner of the Seattle Sounders FC, a major league soccer team. Allen has been present at Seahawks games this season, chatting in the locker room with players. He has a band and a recording studio, and built the Experience Music Project, a museum about rock music in Seattle.
Allen has also collected and restored more than 30 vintage airplanes, started a brain science institute and through Vulcan's real estate arm redeveloped a large swath of downtown Seattle known as the South Lake Union neighborhood.
At last count, Allen's net worth totaled about $11.5 billion, making him the 17th richest person in the world according to Forbes' September 2009 tally.

Poor countries see troubling rise in breast cancer

WASHINGTON – Nurses were training women in rural Mexico to examine their breasts for cancer when one raised her hand to object. If she lost her breast, Harvard public health specialist Felicia Knaul recalls the woman saying, "My man would leave me" — and with him, the family's income.
International cancer specialists meet this week to plan an assault on a troubling increase of breast cancer in developing countries, where nearly two-thirds of women aren't diagnosed until it has spread through their bodies.
Adding to the problem, some worrisome data suggests that breast cancer seems to strike women, on average, about 10 years younger in poor countries than it does in the U.S. No one knows why.
"Today in most developing countries you see a huge bulge of young, premenopausal women with breast cancer," says Knaul, who heads Harvard's Global Equity Initiative and was herself diagnosed at age 41 while living in Mexico.
"We should help them to know what they have and to fight for their treatment."
But from Mexico to Malawi, stigma like Knaul witnessed a few weeks ago may prove as big a barrier as poverty.
"One of the trainers said, 'If he'd leave you for that, he's not worth having,'" Knaul says. But she acknowledged that will be a hard message for some women's economic realities.
"It's not a trivial consideration," agrees Dr. Lawrence Shulman of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, who is part of a team working to begin cancer care in parts of Africa where "the women are often seen as really either vessels for producing children or as sex slaves."
But some success in treating HIV and tuberculosis in those areas has him "hopeful we can make a difference. I don't think it's a pipe dream."
Knaul and Shulman on Tuesday were bringing together an international task force of health specialists and prominent charities to begin planning a two-pronged approach.
First, train midwives and other rural health providers to perform regular breast exams, using the power of touch in places where mammography machines simply are too expensive. That won't catch the very smallest tumors, but specialists agree it could improve diagnosis dramatically in some areas.
Second, the task force will start negotiating lower prices for generic chemotherapy for poor countries, following the same model that has helped transform AIDS care in parts of Africa.
You don't need in-country cancer specialists to administer that chemo, says Shulman — just a network of oncologists who can provide help or instruction to local health officials by e-mail or phone, as he has advised colleagues in Malawi.
Breast cancer long has been considered a cancer mostly of wealthier countries. Indeed, about 192,000 new cases are expected in the U.S. this year, where long-term survival is high thanks in part to good screening.
The true prevalence in most developing countries is unknown, because of poor diagnosis and bad record-keeping. But new Harvard research estimates they'll be home to 55 percent of the world's 450,000 expected breast cancer deaths this year.
The report predicts the poorest countries will experience a 36 percent jump in breast cancer by 2020.
One problem: In wealthy countries, earlier diagnosis can lead to breast-saving surgery instead of breast removal. Even countries like Rwanda and Malawi have clinics that perform mastectomies if patients can travel to the capitals, Shulman says. But few have radiation equipment, making breast-conserving surgery there not an option yet. (He is hunting a radiation unit for Rwanda but says that's in the very earliest stages of planning.)
Mexico is a mixed situation, with radiation, other treatments and diagnostic mammography available in some places. That's how Knaul — whose husband is a former health minister of Mexico — was diagnosed, early enough that mastectomy and chemotherapy give her good odds.

But she fumes that while Mexico's poor and rural women often get Pap smears to check for cervical cancer, "no one even suggests they check your breasts" at the same visit. She founded an advocacy group — Cancer de Mama — to help, noting that Mexico's insurance program for the poor covers breast cancer care but they must get diagnosed first.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

Merkel set for historic speech to US Congress

WASHINGTON (AFP) –
German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivers a major speech to the US Congress Tuesday, nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, amid tough questions on Afghanistan and climate change.

Merkel was scheduled for talks with President Barack Obama before heading up to the US Capitol to deliver her speech.

In her first US trip since winning a second term in September, the German leader was expected to speak on the future of transatlantic ties and the demise of European communism days before Berlin marks the 20th anniversary with November 9 festivities.

She has called the invitation a "great honor" and said in her weekly podcast that she would use the occasion to thank the United States for backing German unification in 1990 -- 11 months after the Wall's fall -- with "great enthusiasm and fondness."

Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, will be only the second German chancellor to address the US legislature, after Konrad Adenauer spoke to separate sessions of each chamber in 1957.

But beyond the pomp and expressions of goodwill, Merkel will be confronting a series of tough issues of strategic importance.

Among topics expected to be discussed are Afghanistan, Iran, standards for financial market regulation and climate change, her spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said.

Merkel's invitation, extended by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has largely silenced early media reports of chilly relations between Obama and the German leader, who enjoyed generally warm ties with former US president George W. Bush, a Republican.

But Josef Braml of the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin said Merkel would be naive to think the honor did not come at a price.

"It is a gesture where a service is expected in return," he said.

"The German government should do more to help shoulder the burden of international commitments," notably in Afghanistan as Obama reassesses the US deployment.

With around 4,200 soldiers, Germany is currently the third-largest supplier of foreign troops in the war-ravaged country after the United States and Britain.

Braml said now that the German election is over, Merkel was likely to face requests for more forces and training personnel for Afghanistan, more money to stabilize neighboring Pakistan, as well as firm backing for UN sanctions against Iran if it continues to pursue sensitive nuclear work.

Germany is one of Iran's top trading partners and one of six world powers working to settle the dispute with Tehran.

"The grace period is over -- now we need to deliver," Braml said, warning that a refusal risked greatly diminishing Berlin's influence in Washington.

Merkel, who leaned hard on Bush to make concessions on climate change, also aims to make headway ahead of the UN conference in Copenhagen in December, when 192 countries will work toward an accord on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"It is not yet clear whether Copenhagen will be a success but the European Union and Germany in particular will push for us to achieve ambitious, forward-looking political resolutions," she said.

Obama's talks with Merkel will precede an EU-US summit Tuesday.

The chancellor is also seeking proof that the United States is serious about new market rules to head off future global financial crises.

"The international financial and economic crisis has not yet been surmounted and we have not yet ensured that such a crisis cannot repeat itself," she said.

Jackson Janes, head of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies in Washington, said "there is a lot of concern in Berlin that Washington will not be as rigorous in its pursuit of reforms and will return to old ways of oversight."

Merkel's new foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, was due to come to Washington on Thursday for talks with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sources said.

Magna Latch Vertical Pull

Magna Latch Vertical Pull

Where a fence or hedge has an adjacent ditch, the ditch is normally in the same ownership as the hedge or fence, with the ownership boundary being the edge of the ditch furthest from the fence or hedge. The principle of the rule is that an owner digging a boundary ditch will normally dig it up to the very edge of their land, and must then pile the spoil on their own side of the ditch to avoid trespassing on their neighbour. They may then erect a fence or hedge on the spoil, leaving the ditch on its far side. Exceptions often occur, for example where a plot of land derives from subdivision of a larger one along the centre line of a previously existing ditch or other feature.

Five foot high fences (over which many people can see and talk) are increasingly being superseded by six-foot fences giving the impression of complete privacy.

Merkel under fire for German tax cut plans

BERLIN (AFP) –
Chancellor Angela Merkel, sworn in for a second term last week, is coming under pressure from all sides over her plans for Germany to borrow its way out of its worst recession since World War II.

Merkel, 55, was re-elected to a second four-year term on September 27, ditching her centre-left coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), in favour of a new tie-up with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).

The new government plans 24 billion euros (35 billion dollars) in tax cuts from 2011, in addition to cuts worth around 21 billion euros worth agreed in Merkel's first term that are due to take effect from 2010.

An opinion poll over the weekend indicated that Germany's 62 million voters are impressed, with 74 percent of those surveyed saying they are in favour and 54 percent believing that more cuts should follow.

But Merkel intends to pay for the tax cuts by borrowing more, adding to Germany's 1.5-trillion-euro debt mountain and so, critics say, throwing the country's reputation for fiscal prudence out of the window.

According to forecasts given in July, Germany's budget deficit is set to reach 3.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year, six percent in 2010, five percent in 2011 and four percent in 2012.

Its total, cumulative debt pile is set to equal 74 percent of GDP in 2009, climbing to 82 percent in 2012 and 2013, putting Europe's biggest economy in breach of European Union rules that it was at the forefront of creating.

The EU's Growth and Stability Pact states that a member's annual budget deficit cannot exceed three percent of GDP and that its total debt cannot be more than 60 percent of GDP.

Merkel has ruled out large cuts in public spending to help cover the cost, saying this might endanger Germany's fragile recovery, and that the growth that the tax cuts will trigger will help balance out the books.

"In such a unique economic crisis the state must do the little that it can do to boost growth, financed by higher debt," Wolfgang Schaeuble, Merkel's new finance minister, told Stern magazine last week.

"We will closely follow how the banking and financial crisis develops in Germany and in the wider world, and we will only begin with (fiscal) consolidation when we can afford to," her spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said on Monday.

The strategy has drawn fire both at home and abroad.

Horst Koehler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund and now holder of the mostly ceremonial post of German president, said Germany "has to reduce the national debt" and warned against "unrealistic growth expectations."

Over the weekend, even the head of Germany's powerful main employers' federation, the BDI, said that Merkel was being overly cautious about the economy and that debt needed to be cut.

"We need an exit strategy ... Billions more in debt means higher and higher interest payments and that the financial room for manoeuvre will get ever smaller," BDI head Hans-Peter Keitel told Focus magazine.

Axel Weber, head of the Bundesbank central bank, was quoted as saying last week that Germany should bring its budget deficit below three percent, within EU limits, in 2012.

Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the 16-nation eurozone and a candidate to become the EU's first full-time president, said last week that Germany's debt mountain was "excessive and scarcely bearable for the next generation."

Comments from certain state premiers -- some of them from Merkel's party -- indicate that her programme may have a rough ride through the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat.

There is concern that Germany might inspire other European countries, many of whom already run larger deficits -- Italy's debt is set to hit 116 percent of GDP in 2009 -- to throw caution to the wind.

Schaeuble admitted as much on Monday. "If Germany does not take the (European stability) pact seriously, then we would really have a problem in Europe."