empire

Empire State Mfg Survey

The New York Fed conducts this monthly survey of manufacturers in New York State. Participants from across the state represent a variety of industries. On the first of each month, the same pool of roughly 200 manufacturing executives (usually the CEO or the president) is sent a questionnaire to report the change in an assortment of indicators from the previous month. Respondents also give their views about the likely direction of these same indicators six months ahead.




empire

SUNY Empire State College launches student exchange programs with UNYP

UNYP

Last month a new partnership agreement was signed between the University of New York in Prague and SUNY Empire State College. Under the agreement, SUNY Empire students would have access to new extensive study abroad and exchange programs between New York and the Czech Republic, which would incorporate a wide range of educational options to experience Prague.

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empire

1BR Linden Residences for sales at EMPIRE CITY THU THIEM

1BR Linden T2A-xx-06, river view, high floor with Superior class & lifestyle. Selling price: 8,65 billion VND (included fee and tax) Investors: Tien Phuoc - Keppel Land - Tran Thai - Gaw Capital Partner Address: Functional Area 2 (Area 2B) Thu Thiem New Urban Area, District 2, ...




empire

Penthouse at Empire City for sale by reputable Develop, Cove Building, view of Bitexco

Penthouse Cove Residences in Empire City For Sale.Luxury new penthouse, views of the river, Empire City Cove.InteriorEach apartment is spacious, has an open plan and includes three bedrooms, one of which features a humidity-controlled walk-in closet and a spa-style bathroom.Equip...




empire

The rise of Netflix: an empire built on debt - podcast

Mark Lawson and Dan Milmo discuss the sustainability of the streaming service. Plus: Lara Spirit on why you should register to vote before Tuesday’s deadline

Netflix has risen from obscurity to be one of the most powerful media companies in the world with more than 150 million global subscribers. It has launched critically acclaimed hits such as House of Cards, The Crown and Unbelievable, as well as showcasing the back catalogues of popular television series. But as part of its rapid growth, the company has racked up huge debts.

Joining Anushka Asthana to discuss the long-term sustainability of Netflix are the TV critic Mark Lawson and the Guardian’s deputy business editor Dan Milmo.

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empire

Author Alison Roman Shades Chrissy Teigen's Cooking Empire: ''That Horrifies Me''

Move over, Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow. There's a new feud brewing between two leaders in the lifestyle industry. Best-selling cookbook author Alison Roman has caught the...




empire

On the airwaves: Ira Glass on lockdown life and his podcast empire

'People like stories' says New York-based Glass




empire

Author Alison Roman Shades Chrissy Teigen's Cooking Empire: ''That Horrifies Me''

Move over, Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow. There's a new feud brewing between two leaders in the lifestyle industry. Best-selling cookbook author Alison Roman has caught the...




empire

Author Alison Roman Shades Chrissy Teigen's Cooking Empire: ''That Horrifies Me''

Move over, Martha Stewart and Gwyneth Paltrow. There's a new feud brewing between two leaders in the lifestyle industry. Best-selling cookbook author Alison Roman has caught the...




empire

Former Owner of Empire Towers Pleads Guilty for Fraudulent $7 Million Bond Scheme and Filing False Tax Return

Misled More Than 50 Individual Investors Who Bought Bonds

A former Queenstown, Maryland, resident pleaded guilty today to securities fraud and filing a false tax return



  • OPA Press Releases

empire

Drugs and drones: The crime empire strikes back


Editors’ Note: Organized crime actors have increasingly adopted advanced technologies, with law enforcement agencies adapting accordingly. However, the use of ever fancier-technology is only a part of the story. The future lies as much behind as ahead, writes Vanda Felbab-Brown, with criminal groups now using primitive technologies and methods to counter the advanced technologies used by law enforcement. This post was originally published by the Remote Control Project, a project hosted by the Oxford Research Group.

The history of drug trafficking and crime more broadly is a history of adaptation on the part of criminal groups in response to advances in methods and technology on the part of law enforcement agencies, and vice versa. Sometimes, technology trumps crime: The spread of anti-theft devices in cars radically reduced car theft. The adoption of citadels (essentially saferooms) aboard ships, combined with intense naval patrolling, radically reduced the incidence of piracy off Somalia. Often, however, certainly in the case of many transactional crimes such as drug trafficking, law enforcement efforts have tended to weed out the least competent traffickers, and to leave behind the toughest, meanest, leanest, and most adaptable organized crime groups. Increasingly, organized crime actors have adopted advanced technologies, such as semi-submersible and fully-submersible vehicles to carry drugs and other contraband, and cybercrime and virtual currencies for money-laundering. Adaptations in the technology of smuggling by criminal groups in turn lead to further evolution and improvement of methods by law enforcement agencies. However, the use of ever fancier-technology is only a part of the story. The future lies as much behind as ahead (to paraphrase J.P. Wodehouse), with the asymmetric use of primitive technologies and methods by criminal groups to counter the advanced technologies used by law enforcement.

The seduction of SIGINT and HVT

The improvements in signal intelligence (SIGINT) and big-data mining over the past two decades have dramatically increased tactical intelligence flows to law enforcement agencies and military actors, creating a more transparent anti-crime, anti-terrorism, and counterinsurgency battlefield than before. The bonanza of communications intercepts of targeted criminals and militants that SIGINT has come to provide over the past decades in Colombia, Mexico, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world has also strongly privileged high-value targeting (HVT) and decapitation policies-i.e., principally targeting the presumed leaders of criminal and militant organizations.

The proliferation of SIGINT and advances in big-data trawling, combined with some highly visible successes of HVT, has come with significant downsides. First, high-value targeting has proven effective only under certain circumstances. In many contexts, such as in Mexico, HVT has been counterproductive, fragmenting criminal groups without reducing their proclivity to violence; in fact, exacerbating violence in the market. Other interdiction patterns and postures, such as middle-level targeting and focused-deterrence, would be more effective policy choices. 

A large part of the problem is that the seductive bonanza of signal intelligence has lead to counterproductive discounting of the need to:

  1. develop a strategic understanding of criminal groups’ decisionmaking—knowledge crucial for anticipating the responses of targeted non-state actors to law enforcement actions; Mexico provides a disturbing example;
  2. cultivate intelligence human intelligence assets, sorely lacking in Somalia, for example;
  3. obtain a broad and comprehensive understanding of the motivations and interests of local populations that interact with criminal and insurgent groups, notably deficient in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; and 
  4. establish good relationships with local populations to advance anti-crime and counterinsurgency policies, such as in Colombia where drug eradication policy antagonized local populations from national government and strengthened the bonds between them and rebel groups. 

In other words, the tactical tool, technology—in the form of signal intelligence and big-data mining—has trumped strategic analysis. The correction needed is to bring back strategic intelligence analysis to drive interdiction targeting patterns, instead of letting the seduction of signal data drive intelligence analysis and targeting action. The political effects, anticipated responses by criminal and militant groups, and other outcomes of targeting patterns need be incorporated into the strategic analysis. Questions to be assessed need to include: Can interdiction hope to incapacitate—arrest and kill—all of the enemy or should it seek to shape the enemy? What kind of criminals and militants, such as how fractured or unified, how radicalized or restrained in their ambitions, and how closely aligned with local populations against the state, does interdiction want to produce? 

Dogs fights or drone fights: Remote lethal action by criminals

Criminal groups have used technology not merely to foil law enforcement actions, but also to fight each other and dominate the criminal markets and control local populations. In response to the so-called Pacification (UPP) policy in Rio de Janeiro through which the Rio government has sought to wrestle control over slums from violent criminal gangs, the Comando Vermelho (one of such gangs), for example, claimed to deploy remote-sensor cameras in the Complexo do Alemão slum to identify police collaborators, defined as those who went into newly-established police stations. Whether this specific threat was credible or not, the UPP police units have struggled to establish a good working relationship with the locals in Alemão.

The new radical remote-warfare development on the horizon is for criminal groups to start using drones and other remote platforms not merely to smuggle and distribute contraband, as they are starting to do already, but to deliver lethal action against their enemies—whether government officials, law enforcement forces, or rival crime groups. Eventually, both law enforcement and rival groups will develop defenses against such remote lethal action, perhaps also employing remote platforms: drones to attack the drones. Even so, the proliferation of lethal remote warfare capabilities among criminal groups will undermine deterrence, including deterrence among criminal groups themselves over the division of the criminal market and its turfs. Remotely delivered hits will complicate the attribution problem— i.e., who authorized the lethal action—and hence the certainty of sufficiently painful retaliation against the source and thus a stable equilibrium. More than before, criminal groups will be tempted to instigate wars over the criminal market with the hope that they will emerge as the most powerful criminal actors and able to exercise even greater power over the criminal market—the way the Sinaloa Cartel has attempted to do in Mexico even without the use of fancy technology. Stabilizing a highly violent and contested—dysfunctional—criminal market will become all the more difficult the more remote lethal platforms have proliferated among criminal groups.

Back to the past: The Ewoks of crime and anti-crime

In addition to adopting ever-advancing technologies, criminal and militant groups also adapt to the technological superiority of law enforcement-military actors by the very opposite tactic—resorting asymmetrically to highly primitive deception and smuggling measures. Thus, both militant and criminal groups have adapted to signal intelligence not just by using better encryption, but also by not using cell phones and electronic communications at all, relying on personal couriers, for example, or by flooding the e-waves with a lot of white noise. Similarly, in addition to loading drugs on drones, airplanes, and submersibles, drug trafficking groups are going back to very old-methods such as smuggling by boats, including through the Gulf of Mexico, by human couriers, or through tunnels. 

Conversely, society sometimes adapts to the presence of criminal groups and intense, particularly highly violent, criminality by adopting its own back-to-the-past response—i.e., by standing up militias (which in a developed state should have been supplanted by state law enforcement forces). The rise of anti-crime militias in Mexico, in places such as Michoacán and Guerrero, provides a vivid and rich example of such populist responses and the profound collapse of official law enforcement. The inability of law enforcement there to stop violent criminality—and in fact, the inadvertent exacerbation of violence by criminal groups as a result of HVT—and the distrust of citizens toward highly corrupt law enforcement agencies and state administrations led to the emergence of citizens’ anti-crime militias. The militias originally sought to fight extortion, robberies, theft, kidnapping, and homicides by criminal groups and provide public safety to communities. Rapidly, however, most of the militias resorted to the very same criminal behavior they purported to fight—including extortion, kidnapping, robberies, and homicides. The militias were also appropriated by criminal groups themselves: the criminal groups stood up their own militias claiming to fight crime, where in fact, they were merely fighting the rival criminals. Just as when external or internal military forces resort to using extralegal militias, citizens’ militias fundamentally weaken the rule of law and the authority and legitimacy of the state. They may be the ewoks’ response to the crime empire, but they represent a dangerous and slippery slope to greater breakdown of order.

In short, technology, including remote warfare, and innovations in smuggling and enforcement methods are malleable and can be appropriated by both criminal and militant groups as well as law enforcement actors. Often, however, such adoption and adaptation produces outcomes that neither criminal groups nor law enforcement actors have anticipated and can fully control. The criminal landscape and military battlefields will resemble the Star Wars moon of Endor: drone and remote platforms battling it out with sticks, stones, and ropes.

Publication: Oxford Research Group
      
 
 




empire

Rant [1097] "The Great Underground Empire is Here!"

Book 5 of the MegaTokyo: Endgames series is live for all platforms! Amazon Kindle and Paperback can be purchased here. Nook readers can follow this link. Of note, if you are completely unwilling to order through Amazon, you can also order the paperback through Barnes & Noble. And for the first time, Kobo users can go here and be a part of the launch day as well! Thank you again for all your support, and with luck it won’t be long...

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empire

Premier League must be very careful or the empire will come crashing down

Resuming the season is absurd and the ‘safety’ ideas are terrible, but whatever football decides it must decide together

“You eat alone, you choke.” During the years of plenty it became a habit to compare the Premier League’s wielding of power – always with a note of admiration – to the structures of a mafia family.

It isn’t hard to see why: the hierarchy of captains, the beautifully ruthless sense of unity, of a cartel of self-propelling interests. And yet the thing about mafia families is that now and then those interests start pulling in different ways. In mob lore breaking ranks is sometimes referred to as “eating alone”, with a certainty that bad things follow – and worst of all that bad business follows.

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empire

Empire, Shark Tank, StartUp: These business shows that will bring alive the entrepreneur in you

If you are a budding entrepreneur and an avid watcher of TV shows, you must be certainly thinking of which product to launch post the lockdown and if there are any shows out there that can help you better assess the target audience, risks, financial aspect amongst other facts that are involved with launching your own business.

While business markets and sectors are certainly a tough place to be in with a humongous competition, here are a few shows that will give you a glimpse of the entrepreneurial world with a few lessons that will help you through your journey.

Silicon Valley

Created by Mike Judge, Silicon Valley is a critically-acclaimed sitcom that follows the struggle of a group of young software programmers and developers trying to succeed in Silicon Valley. The show features the challenges new entrepreneurs face to make an impact in the competitive environment of Silicon Valley, despite having a game-changing product. Silicon Valley recently completed its 6th season and can be viewed in the country on Disney+Hotstar

Shark Tank

Shark Tank, the critically acclaimed and multi-Emmy Award-winning reality show that has reinvigorated entrepreneurship around the world, recently returned with its dynamic eleventh season. The Sharks – tough, self-made, multi-millionaire and billionaire tycoons – continue their search to invest in the best businesses and products that America has to offer. Watching this show will give you an insight of all aspects of the business world as you will develop the insight of a venture capitalist mind. Season 11 of Shark Tank is exclusively streaming on Voot Select while its television premier on 18th May 2020 on Colors Infinity

Billions

Think of Billions as the high-finance counterpart to House of Cards and you will not be far off the mark. Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti are superb as, respectively, the win-at-all-costs head of a massive hedge fund and the win-at-all-costs district attorney determined to put him behind bars, although both are thoroughly upstaged by the even better Maggie Siff as the woman who keeps both at the top of their game. This show emphasizes on the importance of being street smart and ahead of the game. The latest season of Billions is streaming in the country on Disney+Hotstar

Empire

Created by Lee Daniels and Danny Strong, Empire is a drama series that tells the story of Empire Entertainment, a fictional hip hop music and entertainment company, and the drama that unfolds among the members of the founders’ family as they fight for control of it. The show will familiarize you with the importance of always staying on top of your game, the show is streaming in the country on Disney+Hotstar

Startup

StartUp follows the emergence of GenCoin, a brilliant yet controversial tech idea centred on a digital currency — an idea that gets incubated on the wrong side of the tracks by three strangers who don’t necessarily fit the mould of 'tech entrepreneurs' and a crooked FBI agent who will go to any lengths to take them down. The series is available to watch in the country on Amazon Prime India.

Tune-in to these compelling entrepreneurial shows for all the inspiration you need to begin your journey towards your dreams.

Catch up on all the latest entertainment news and gossip here. Also, download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps.

Mid-Day is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@middayinfomedialtd) and stay updated with the latest news




empire

Fall of the roaming empire: telecom groups face revenue loss as travel collapses 

Industry forecast to suffer $25bn hit this year as coronavirus changes working life




empire

Sky Atlantic, Boardwalk Empire and the state of TV drama

The launch of Sky Atlantic on February 1 – the result of Sky's exclusive five-year deal with HBO - raises questions about British and American television drama. Is the US - with cult series like The Sopranos, Mad Men and now Boardwalk Empire - enjoying a Golden Age of TV drama? What about Britain? Has its Golden Age been and gone? Jan Dalley, FT arts editor, is joined by Mark Duguid, senior curator of the British Film Institute National Archive, Huw Kennair-Jones, Sky1’s commissioning editor for drama, and John Lloyd, the FT’s television columnist. Produced by Griselda Murray Brown  


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empire

Philip Green fashion empire crumbles

The high-street fashion empire of Philip Green is on the rocks. The UK retail tycoon has secured creditor support for a complex three-year overhaul that will involve rent reductions, store closures and a halving of the company’s pension deficit reduction payments. But will this be enough to save the business? Matthew Vincent discusses this question with Jonathan Ford and Jonathan Eley.


Contributors: Suzanne Blumsom, executive editor, Matthew Vincent, Lombard editor, Jonathan Ford, City editor, and Jonathan Eley, retail correspondent. Producer: Fiona Symon

 

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empire

Ed Sheeran spends £10million on five London flats, growing his empire to 27 properties worth £57m

Ed Sheeran has added five properties into his London portfolio, including two flats in Covent Garden and a pair of flats by the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. His property value is now worth £57million.




empire

Victoria Beckham 'told to ditch her chauffeur' after fashion empire plunges £36m in debt

Victoria Beckham has reportedly been forced to make dramatic cuts after her eponymous fashion label plunged £36million in debt.




empire

Victoria Beckham's fashion empire pushes forward amid staff changes and coronavirus pandemic  

Victoria Beckham's fashion empire is continuing to look positively to the future amid the current COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the globe, as well as staff changes at the company.




empire

The Empire signs off!

BRIAN VINER: The biggest cinematic event of the year? The decade? The century? If the Millennium Falcon is your spiritual mothership, you will doubtless think so.




empire

Star Wars actor Alan Harris who portrayed Bossk in The Empire Strikes Back dies aged 81 

Star Wars actor Alan Harris has passed away at the age of 81. Harris played several differed roles in the original trilogy films, most notably Bossk in The Empire Strikes Back.




empire

Donald Trump's former Russian oligarch business partner says real estate empire is sinking

Russian real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, 64, said his Crocus Group business is in trouble due to coronavirus shutdowns and fears the worst is yet to come when Russia hits its peak in May.




empire

Khloe Kardashian prays for humanity while sister Kylie Jenner gives an update on her beauty empire

The 35-year-old reshared a post where she encouraged everyone to take care of themselves during this testing time.




empire

Savage Mexican drug lord El Mencho's empire has set up cells in 35 US states and Puerto Rico

The growth of Reuben 'Nemesio' Oseguera Cervantes' Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion from coast to coast over the past decade has made the cartel a 'clear, present and growing danger'.




empire

Restaurant empire Caprice Holdings makes 75,000 meals a week

Caprice Holdings hospitality establishments, which include Mayfair celebrity hotspots such as Scott's, Annabel's and Sexy Fish, are preparing food at their kitchens for NHS staff across the UK.




empire

Newcastle United existed simply to make Mike Ashley's retail empire more profitable

Mark Jenson is the co-founder of The Mag, now the leading independent website on all things Newcastle United. He speaks out about what it is like to support a team owned by the retail giant.




empire

Newcastle United existed simply to make Mike Ashley's retail empire more profitable

Mark Jenson is the co-founder of The Mag, now the leading independent website on all things Newcastle United. He speaks out about what it is like to support a team owned by the retail giant.




empire

Kylie Jenner buys 5 acres of land in Hidden Hills for record $15MILLION, adds to property empire

The 22-year-old self-made billionaire has made a record-breaking $15million purchase on 5 acres of land in Hidden Hills, California according to TMZ on Tuesday.




empire

How a teenage tradie turned his 'hobby' selling products on eBay into a $25MILLION hair care empire

In 2012, Anthony Nappa, then 19, was juggling a university commerce degree with a part-time labouring job. But the ambitious teen was always looking at ways to scrape together extra money.




empire

Asteroid bigger than the Empire State Building has its own miniature satellite 

The binary system of space rocks was discovered by radar images from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and is called 2020 BX12.




empire

Movies and Theme Parks: 'Baby Shark' Creators Look to Expand Empire

The South Korean company behind the hit video "Baby Shark" is hoping to expand its empire with films and merchandise while pursuing the next viral sensation. Its strategy aims to beat competitors in an increasingly crowded space for children’s attention. Image: Pinkfong




empire

The empire flows again


The second coming of the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh thus has opened the doors for total private control of Godavari waters. Sir Arthur Cotton's legacy is likely to continue without critical examination, writes R Uma Maheshwari.




empire

The Indian mercantilist empire


The pattern of development in India seems ominously like England in the nineteenth century. Are Indian companies the vanguard of a 21st century Indian imperialism, ask Rajesh Kasturirangan.




empire

Chowkidar to the Empire?


Didn't parliament condemn this war? Then why do we need a new consensus on sending troops to Iraq, asks P Sainath, remembering similar sacrifices of Indian lives for the British empire.




empire

The Empire strikes back - and how!


The original report on 'paid news' of the Press Council of India sub-committee is relegated to the archive. Then too, it does not even appear on the PCI's website, writes P Sainath.




empire

The empire's script-writer


Zareer Masani's book is enriched by its narration of the contrast between Macaulay's strong likes and dislikes in personal life and his libertarian streak in public affairs. R Rajagopalan reviews Macaulay.




empire

Redrawing French empire in comics / Mark McKinney

Online Resource




empire

Rule Britannia: Brexit and the end of empire / Danny Dorling & Sally Tomlinson

Dewey Library - HC240.25.G7 D67 2019




empire

Imperial metropolis: Los Angeles, Mexico, and the borderlands of American empire, 1865-1941 / Jessica M. Kim

Dewey Library - HC108.L55 K56 2019




empire

Daughter of the Empire / Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts

Feist, Raymond E




empire

Empire ascendant / Kameron Hurley

Hurley, Kameron, author




empire

The mirror empire / Kameron Hurley

Hurley, Kameron, author




empire

World War Four and the Catholic empire : a novel / by David Peter Ehrlich

Ehrlich, David Peter, 1959- author




empire

Between bread and empire

Throughout history, governance and justice have often taken divergent paths




empire

Aquatint worlds: travel, print, and empire, 1770-1820 / Douglas Fordham

Rotch Library - N8258.F67 2019




empire

Beauty in the age of empire: Japan, Egypt, and the global history of aesthetic education / Raja Adal

Rotch Library - NX384.A1 A33 2019




empire

Affect, emotion, and subjectivity in early modern Muslim Empires: new studies in Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal art and culture / edited by Kishwar Rizvi

Rotch Library - NX650.E46 A39 2018




empire

Incomparable empires: modernism and the translation of Spanish and American literature / Gayle Rogers

Hayden Library - PQ6073.M6 R636 2016




empire

Restraining great powers: soft balancing from empires to the global era / T. V. Paul

Dewey Library - JZ1313.P38 2018