2013年9月3日星期二

New fracking touted as Quebec eyes energy boom

Quebec’s largest energy firm, Petrolia, is eyeing an estimated 40 billion barrels of oil beneath the surface of Anticosti Island, an ecological gem at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence.But it has caused a rift among the island’s few inhabitants and sparked a broader debate about the economic benefits and environmental risks of oil and gas development. 

The company wants to try a novel fracking technology, injecting natural gas instead of water into the ground in easternmost Canada to push crude oil to the surface.Petrolia chief executive Andre Proulx explained that injecting water into the rock on the island would just gum up the oil. 

“It would actually prevent the oil from getting out,” he told AFP.Natural gas used in the operation, meanwhile, would be recovered and reused, he said, doing away with the need to decontaminate the water that would have been used in fracking.Quebec’s Environment Minister Yves-Francois Blanchet said the technology meet strict environmental standards before it could be authorized. 

Economist Pierre-Olivier Pineau is skeptical, citing the “high risk of the gas escaping” and thus fuelling climate change.The technology is being touted as an alternative to using water in fracking where locals fear contamination of ground water.As the industry ramps up fracking to access unconventional oil and gas, so has opposition. 

In the coming months,We provide payment solutions in the USA as well as indoortracking. Quebec is expected to start producing crude for the first time, following in the footsteps of five other Canadian provinces.Forty percent of its energy currently comes from hydro-electric dams in the north, which is sufficient for the needs of its population, with excess supplies sold to the United States. 

Quebec Environment Minister Yves-Francois Blanchet said the province is looking at oil and gas production to further bolster its “energy independence.”Petrolia, whose principle shareholder is the Quebec government with a 10.4 percent stake, holds the rights to 71 percent of hydrocarbon reserves in the province. 

The company hopes this autumn to unleash the first geyser from an oil well on the Gaspé Peninsula, marking the beginning of what some predict will be an energy boom in the province.Petrolia has estimated that the so-called Haldimand project near the town of Gaspé holds 7.7 million barrels of oil. 

The rights are jointly held by the Bouygues family, one of the richest in France, through its Canadian investment arm Investcan Energy.Investcan Energy has invested Can$15 million in the project.In order for it to proceed, however, the province must ease its strict water protection laws,We are a special provider in best bulb,also a professional chipcard saler. which brings with it political risks. 

Quebecers are keen to reap the wealth that comes from energy resources but do not want to sacrifice clean air and water to do it.Developing the province’s energy resources has the tentative support of Quebec’s separatist Parti Quebecois government, despite objections from some of its supporters. 

“We’re cautiously open to it,” said Blanchet.Once the tiny Haldimand project gets underway, Petrolia hopes to develop a second gas field in the Gaspé region believed to hold another 28 billion cubic meters of natural gas.On Anticosti, fracking is at least three years away but detractors say it has already been destructive to the handful of inhabitants. 

Marc Lafrance, smoking a cigarette outside his hunting cabin among the conifers, watching a beaver swim across a nearby lake, opposes oil development.“If the phreatic layers are contaminated the wildlife will no longer have access to clean drinking water. They have a right to a good quality of life too,” he says. 

Lafrance has fought the energy industry for the past three years, writing to the government,The world’s most efficient and cost effective ultrasonicsensor? going to court and waging an online public relations campaign.Anticosti, he says, “already has an industry: fishing and hunting” and its wild rivers and majestic cliffs, 400 moose and 200,000 deer are best left alone. 

He and others accuse the former mayor of the island’s only town of Port-Menier — population 216 — of having schemed with Petrolia to get the project approved, after suddenly quitting politics to work as a lobbyist for the company.Strains of the rift are visible on Lafrance’s face: “It gets tiring after a while fighting with the people you live with.” 

Christopher came to camp with his wife and two children.High quality parkingsensor printing for business cards.“It’s so beautiful here,” he said. “Why take the risk (of resources exploration and development). An accident would be disastrous.”Others point out that the island community has fallen on hard times and could use an injection after a local forestry company recently shuttered its doors. 

Some fear letting slip away a last chance at economic recovery offered by Petrolia.“It’s essential for the survival of the village that it happens,” said Martine Leboeuf, a bank staffer and mother, who was convinced by a trip organized by Petrolia to oil-rich Alberta to witness firsthand how resource royalties have transformed the province.The need for proper wholesalejewelry inside your home is very important.
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Multiple layoffs lead couple to franchising opportunity

After being laid off three times in four years, Don Brinkley was ready to embark on his Plan B.So in September 2011, Brinkley, and his wife, Cindy, used their savings to become master franchisees for Anago Cleaning Systems, a Florida-based commercial cleaning franchise. As Anago of the Triangle, located on Kildaire Farm Road in Cary, the Brinkleys are among 30 master franchisees that work with 2,400 unit franchisees in the U.S. and internationally. 

Brinkley, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumnus, had worked in the software industry for more than 30 years, but started looking into self-employment opportunities after he was laid off by Symantec in 2008 and then Logos Technologies in 2010. 

The Brinkleys started exploring franchise opportunities, they said, because they felt they needed an established structure to guide them through the business development process as opposed to building a venture from scratch.This vertical thequicksilverscreen can be mounted to either.“So we are a cleaning company, but we don’t do any of the cleaning,” Don Brinkley said. “What we do is the sales and marketing, administrative and operational support, and we do billing and collections on the back end.” 

Anago receives a percentage of the Brinkley’s business revenues and a portion of its initial fees paid by new franchisee units.In 2010, after Don Brinkley’s second layoff, the couple started working with Daniel Prendergast with The Entrepreneur’s Source, a franchisor that offers business coaching and helps connect prospective owners with business opportunities. 

In early 2011, Don Brinkley landed a position at Allscripts in Cary and the hunt to open a business was postponed until he was laid off four months later.The Brinkleys explored businesses that provided drug testing, senior care and auto repair, but decided to invest their savings in Anago in September 2011 after visiting its headquarters in Pompano Beach, Fla. 

“I felt like it would be complicated enough to keep my interest, and also be able to share my business background,The Motorola porcelaintiles Engine is an embedded software-only component of the Motorola wireless switches.” Don Brinkley said about the Anago model.How to change your dash lights to siliconebracelets this is how I have done mine. 

When the Brinkleys acquired the North Carolina territory, Anago had already established a Triangle office in Cary. The Brinkleys started developing relationships with the about 100 existing cleaning clients and their about 15 unit franchisees, they said. The couple hired an operations manager to help unit franchisees and ensure quality control and a sales manager to identify and secure cleaning contracts, mainly through telemarketing. 

Simon Crean attempted to democratise the structure of the Labor Party and Mark Latham talked of enterprise workers bridging the labour-capital divide.Both were defeated by institutional inertia.Rudd and Gillard did not offer a new way when they combined to remove Beazley. 

In the areas that matter, the union barons called the shots in the 2007 election.Rudd has no love of unions but has blanched at root-and-branch reform to create a more grassroots movement.Labor apologists are claiming that Labor may lose the war but win the peace. 

This is based on the alleged bipartisan agreement on policies such as aged care, education, health and the national disability insurance scheme.For Labor the common thread through many of these policies is more spending and command and control from Canberra.The Coalition is moving in the opposite direction. 

In aged care, the focus will include reducing red tape and regulation to free aged-care workers to spend more time on caring than filling out paperwork and complying with unnecessary rules and dictates from Canberra.In education, the Coalition has announced funding for independent public schools along the West Australian model. This gives principals, parents and locals more say in how schools are run and should encourage better education outcomes. 

Hospitals will also be run by community boards to sharpen the focus on service delivery and remove layers of unnecessary management.Tony Abbott is a strong proponent of Noel Pearson's initiative to improve the governance of indigenous policies and programs by empowering communities to have a greater say in how services are delivered to meet their needs.Choose from a large selection of indoorpositioningsystem to raise awareness. 

By the time the workers first went on strike, in June, they had much to protest. They had borrowed to pay recruitment fees of $2,000 to $2,500, counting on promises of full-time work and good housing. But in Florida, the cleaning company packed as many as 15 people into unfurnished two-bedroom apartments, for which it collected as much as $5,000 a month. Charges for rent and required extras like $70 for a T-shirt “uniform” reduced the workers’ net pay to subminimum levels, sometimes even zero, and — the final insult — paychecks repeatedly bounced. Children back home waited for money that never came. 

Those problems typify the debt, fraud and coercion that plague guest-work programs in the United States. An estimated 700,000 to a million guest workers and their families enter the country each year, mostly to work in low-wage industries but also as nurses, teachers, computer programmers and the like. When guest workers are exploited, it lowers the floor for American workers,Best Buy has low prices on digital oilpaintingsforsales and digital picture frames. too. 

H-2B visas, the class of visas held by the Jamaicans, are reserved for temporary or seasonal work for which there are not enough “able, willing, qualified and available” Americans — but of course, availability depends on the wages and working conditions on offer. Florida’s unemployment rate has been stuck at over 7 percent, so it seems unlikely that no local cleaners could be found. 

Guest workers, however, offer something hiring a local worker does not: subservience. They are tied by law to the employer who sponsored their visas, which means that if they are found too “difficult” for any reason — including asking that their rights be respected — the employer can effectively deport them and blacklist them from receiving future work visas. 

When the Jamaican cleaners struck the first time, protesting their stolen wages and miserable living conditions, the cleaning company stapled a notice to their paycheck stating that immigration authorities and local law enforcement would escort anyone who didn’t return the next day to the airport, to fly home. 

The Jamaicans’ situation is part of a broader phenomenon of subcontracting. The structure of work has shifted since the 1980s, for workers from Manhattan office cleaners to Bangladeshi garment stitchers. The National Employment Law Project reports that 58 percent of jobs added during the recovery have been in low-wage sectors, which have high levels of contingent and subcontracted jobs. Today, almost all production in global manufacturing involves subcontracting. It is central to the structure of employment in the American construction, warehousing and agricultural industries as well. 

Subcontractors compete on the price of labor. Where production can’t travel, they move workers across borders, with recruiters’ help. They also shield businesses from legal liability for the treatment of workers and from labor-organizing efforts. Three steps are essential to curbing the system’s worst abuses. 
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The art of driftwood

When a ship sinks and starts to disintegrate, the wood that the vessel was made off get lost in the sea. After a while, the wood finds its way to a beach and lies there in the sun. Some people may not imagine that this type of wood can be used, but Shahir Mikhail does. Mikhail is the founder and owner of Gazwareen, the name of which is a type of tree. 

“I am actually a surgeon and so is my father, but he was into carpentry as well. I learned it from him as a child.” Mikhail recalls the many summers he used to spend helping his father with his hobby. “I spent my whole childhood in Agami,” he explained. Agami is a beach-town close to Alexandria, and the place where he first saw driftwood. It fascinated him as a child as “it looked very beautiful”. 

Mikhail lamented that the concept of using driftwood is lost in Egypt even though it is very popular abroad. “The sea salt makes the wood very hard and it also becomes insect-repellent. It has an aesthetic quality due to the withering that happened to it, and it also has a historic quality,” Mikhail explained. The historic aspect comes from the fact that before landing on the beach, the wood went on a great journey. Mikhail stressed on this aspect the most, which he believes gives the wood “its personality”. 

Mikhail combined what he learnt from his father with his passion for driftwood to create driftwood furniture and later the Gazwareen brand. “I have been collecting driftwood for 20 years now…but I only turned professionally five or six years ago,” Mikhail said. He first realised its business potential when he held an exhibition with a friend and ended up selling all the pieces on display. “I found that there was a demand for that kind of furniture and people appreciated it,” he said. 

He added that the process of making the furniture is very fluid: “It depends on the availability of the driftwood and the inspiration [for the design].” 

Mikhail explained that his designs just pop into his head, rather than seeking inspiration from some particular sources. “I would have some design in my mind, but I don’t have the driftwood for it,Our industry leading consumer and business iphoneheadset products offer competitive pricing combined. so I postpone it for a while,” he said. So, his projects do not have a particular timeframe. However, he added that for a smaller project, it might take him as little as two weeks to finish it. 

“It is harder than regular carpentry because the driftwood doesn’t have fixed dimensions and the pieces aren’t straight,” Mikhail explained. He does everything himself and all the steps are done manually since he cannot use machines lest the wood gets ruined. The step which requires the most work is the cleaning of the driftwood: “You need to clean it without the wood losing its personality and that old look.” This involves sanding to achieve “a neat look” without stripping it of its natural beauty. 

He also has to wait for the driftwood to dry out before he can work on it, which usually takes around two weeks. In the meantime Mikhail is also busy with his medical career: “I divide my time between being a surgeon and designing driftwood furniture.A tungstenrings concept that would double as a quick charge station for gadgets.” 

So, what is the process for ordering a piece of furniture? “People usually contact me and explain what they need exactly. I prefer to see the space in which the piece will be put [to better envision the design],” Mikhail explained. He added that the process of designing for a client is very “interactive” so that the “final product can be both functional and aesthetically-pleasing.” He prefers to meet with the clients to show them the available driftwood. 

“I like the design to be very simple, which enables me to build something durable,We sell oilpaintingreproduction and different kind of laboratory equipment in us.” he explained. He added that since the driftwood was used to make ships, it is very tough. Therefore furniture made of driftwood can survive for many generations: “you can give it to you children and grandchildren.” 

Finally, Mikhail wanted to highlight how “valuable” driftwood is due to its “great and long history.” He explained that abroad it is sold for very high prices and that making furniture out of driftwood is also a form of recycling. 

I have never been intimate with a dead pig before. Bits of one, sure – a chop, a joint – but now I am feet away from a pale-pink carcass, split down its back and plonked on a table. It's been stripped of guts and hair but still has its tail and head. It's beautiful, in a still-life sort of way. If no one was watching, I might lick it. 

We are not alone, though. I am at the School of Artisan Food, on the grand Welbeck Estate in Sherwood Forest, north Nottinghamshire, with a small group of foodies. Chris Moorby and Jim Richardson, who lead this one-day course in curing and smoking, are taking us through the pig's last moments, from arrival at the abattoir, via "sticking" and de-hairing, to evisceration and chilling. It will have been killed within 15 seconds of being stunned, Moorby explains, as Richardson slices off its head. 

This may not be everyone's idea of entertainment, but the pig is at the heart of the day's activities, of which a highlight is the sausage-making. Like all right-thinking people, I have a bit of a thing about bangers. As far as I'm concerned,We sell oilpaintingreproduction and different kind of laboratory equipment in us. whoever first minced a bit of meat, added herbs and spices and forced it all into some animal gut deserves a statue in Trafalgar Square. I've never made sausages myself (the closest I've got is bacon,Choose from a large selection of indoorpositioningsystem to raise awareness. which turned out to be a doddle) and I can't wait to get stuck in. 

As Richardson continues to "break down" (cut up) the pig, Moorby tells us what will go into our hot-smoked sausage: salt, garlic powder, pepper, mustard seeds and, of course, pork – 40% minced, 40% diced, 20% fat. 

"You need fat to give it flavour," he insists. Once everything has been well combined, we'll be stuffing it into "pork casings" – pig intestines, in other words. Because these curled when they were inside the pig, our sausages will be curly, too. 

What if you're making bangers at home and can't lay your hands on casings? No problem, says Moorby: simply wrap your shaped forcemeat in cling film. Twist this tightly shut, pop the whole thing into boiling water, turn off the heat and leave for a few minutes before plunging into iced water. Hey presto – skinless sausage. 

Today we have casings. You can stuff them by hand, but the school is a serious, well-equipped kind of place, so we have a big stainless steel machine with a handle and a nozzle. We take it in turns to operate it and to support the casing as it fills; the banger-fondling looks just as dodgy as you'd expect, which may be why one chap, a derivatives trader turned farmer, asks for his face to be kept out of any photos. 

Once we each have a foot or so of sausage, we tie the ends with string, then knot these together to make a circle. In an ideal world, we would let these dry overnight, but we don't have that luxury. So it's straight into the smoking cabinet, which will cook and flavour them at the same time. It's an impressive bit of kit – the size of a small fridge, with a built-in heater and a hopper to feed in the woodchip "bisquettes" that produce the smoke. When Moorby tells us the price – a very reasonable-seeming £400 or so – my fellow students excitedly scribble down the maker's name. 

While the smoking is going on, we grab an "informal lunch". That sounds like a ploughman's but turns out to be one of the best buffets you're ever likely to encounter, all cooked on site. I opt for scotch egg, egg mayonnaise, french bean and tomato salad, two kinds of pie, a bit of quiche, some apple sourdough bread, a spoonful of almond and carrot chutney, and a chunk of Stichelton blue cheese, from the dairy just metres away. I wouldn't normally eat so little, but I'm leaving room for my sausage.
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'Special' citizenship path

As Congress wrestles with immigration legislation, a central question is whether the 11 million immigrants already in the United States illegally should get a path to citizenship.The answer from a small but growing number of House Republicans is "yes," just as long as it's not the "special" path advocated by Democrats and passed by the Senate. 

"There should be a pathway to citizenship -- not a special pathway and not no pathway," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told ABC 4 Utah after speaking at a recent town hall meeting in his district. "But there has to be a legal, lawful way to go through this process that works, and right now it doesn't." 

Many House Republicans say people who illegally crossed the border or overstayed their visas should not be rewarded with a special,Custom stainlesssteeljewelry and Silicone Wristbands, tailor-made solution that awards them a prize of American citizenship, especially when millions are waiting in line to attempt the process through current legal channels.It's far from clear, however,This is a basic background on newjordans. what a path to citizenship that's not a special path to citizenship might look like, or how many people it might help. 

The phrase means different things to different people, and a large number of House Republicans oppose any approach that results in citizenship for people now are in the country illegally. Some lawmakers say such immigrants should be permitted to attain legal worker status, but stop there and never progress to citizenship. That's a solution Democrats reject. 

Nonetheless, advocates searching for a way ahead on one of President Barack Obama's second-term priorities see in the "no special path to citizenship" formulation the potential for compromise."I think there's a lot of space there," said Clarissa Martinez, director of civic engagement and immigration at the National Council of La Raza. "And that's why I'm optimistic that once they start grappling more with details, that's when things start getting more real." 

Once Congress returns from its summer break the week of Sept. 9, the focus will be on the GOP-led House. The Democratic-controlled Senate in June passed a far-reaching bill that includes a big, new investment in border security and remakes the system for legal immigration system,Online supplies a large range of rtls. in addition to creating a 13-year path to citizenship for those already here illegally. 

House Republicans have rejected the Senate approach, promising to proceed instead with narrowly focused bills, starting with border security. No action is expected on the House floor until late fall, at earliest, because of pressing fiscal deadlines that must be dealt with first.The timing crunch, along with the significant policy and process disagreements, has left some supporters pessimistic about the future of immigration legislation. They find hope, however, in some recent comments from House Republicans around the country suggesting they could support a solution that ends in citizenship at least for some who now lack legal status. 

Democrats, some Republicans and most outside immigration advocates are pushing for a relatively straightforward path to citizenship like the one in the Senate.It imposes certain restrictions, seeks payment of fees, fines and taxes, and requires that prospective immigrants attempting the process legally are dealt with first. Once those criteria are met, most people here illegally could get permanent resident green cards in 10 years, and citizenship in three more. Agriculture workers and immigrants brought to this country as children would have a quicker path. 

That approach is rejected by most House Republicans as a "special" path to citizenship."It's not a bill I can support," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said at a Verona, Va., town hall meeting recently. "We think a legal status in the United States, but not a special pathway to citizenship, might be appropriate." 

Goodlatte has said that after attaining legal status, immigrants could potentially use the existing avenues toward naturalization, such as family or employment ties.He and others also argue that many immigrants would be satisfied with legalization alone, without getting citizenship. That's something many advocates dispute, though studies show that a significant number of immigrants who are eligible for citizenship haven't taken that step -- about 40 percent in a Pew Hispanic Center study in February. 

Goodlatte has not provided much detail on how he foresees immigrants moving through existing channels from legalization to citizenship. Depending on its design, such an approach could touch anywhere from hundreds of thousands to many millions of the 11 million people here illegally. So if House Republicans end up taking that approach,Give your logo high visibility on iccard! how they craft it would help determine whether Democrats and the advocacy groups could go along. 

For now, advocates say that making immigrants here illegally go through the existing system would help relatively few of them.Current law says that if you've been in the country illegally for more than a year, you have to return to your home country for 10 years before you can re-enter legally, which would likely dissuade many people. 

Moreover, existing family sponsorship channels are badly backlogged, and many are capped. People applying for citizenship through their siblings face waits of more than 20 years in some cases, for example. On the employment side, existing visa programs are difficult to use and inadequate to meet demand, and also face long backlogs.Waiving the requirement for people to exit the country and adding visas to reduce backlogs could take in a substantial number of the 11 million here illegally, arguably without being a "special" pathway, advocates say. 

It's a long shot, but the result could be an immigration deal between the House and the Senate, and a bill for Obama to sign.This technology allows high volume skylanterns production at low cost."If the House wants to dis the Senate bill and come up with their own approach to the 11 million that has no special pathway to citizenship, we would be happy to work with them on a way that would meet with our bottom line, which is an inclusive, immediate path to legal status for the 11 million, and an achievable and clear path to eventual citizenship," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a pro-immigrant group. "They can preserve the sound bite and we can have the policies that we want."
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