tory

Michelle Obama, Dr. Jill Biden, Mark Kelly And LeVar Burton Host Story Time Event For Elementary School Students - Joining Forces Event at Fort Leonard Wood, MO

Joining Forces Event at Fort Leonard Wood, MO





tory

Trusting Their Plan and Each Other, Family Faces Down Daunting Cost of Care for Son with Special Needs - “Trust” – The Vollmert Family Story

Trust is critical, especially for a person with autism and their family. Meet the Vollmert family and get a sense of how they approach daily life and planning for a financially secure future with their autistic son, Scott. Learn more: http://u.nm.com/1AQBAsN







tory

Tesla secures $565 million loan for Shanghai factory

Electric carmaker Tesla has entered into an agreement for a working capital loan of up to 4 billion yuan ($565.51 million) with a lender from China for its Shanghai car plant, according to a regulatory filing on Friday.




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US private payrolls drop by 20.2 million in April, the worst job loss in the history of ADP report

Private payrolls hemorrhaged more than 20 million jobs in April as companies sliced workers amid a shutdown that took most of the U.S. economy offline, according to a report Wednesday from ADP.




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Russia's Victory Day celebrations pared back; Spain's daily coronavirus death tolls falls

Russia marks the 75th anniversary of Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two on Saturday, but the coronavirus outbreak means that celebrations have been pared back massively.




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Tesla reportedly halts car production at Chinese factory

It's unclear why Tesla halted its operations at the plant that's normally operated six days a week. But the move means that Tesla isn't making any cars worldwide.




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Cramer says his most trusted indicator 'makes me concerned' about the market's trajectory

Stocks on Wall Street have reached levels that are "too hot" for Jim Cramer's liking.




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Stocks' bullish momentum poised to continue in 2020, if history is any guide

Stocks are on pace to log their best year of gains since 2013, and if history serves as a guide, the bullish momentum should continue through the next 12 months.




tory

Tesla rally won't stop at $500, recent stock trading history suggests

Tesla shares hit $500 for the first time, and the trading history of Elon Musk's electric vehicle maker over the past five years shows the rally can continue.




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Alphabet's trillion-dollar mark won't be the end of the near-term gains in stock, according to history

Alphabet hit a $1 trillion market valuation, an elite status only Apple, Microsoft and Amazon previously touched. Gains for the Google parent are not about to stop, history says.




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This defensive sector is market's best right now, and history suggests more gains are coming

Utilities is now the stock market's best-performing sector this year, as the coronavirus sends investors into a defensive position. History says gains can continue.




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Crude bear market: History says oil prices can fall another 10%

WTI crude and Brent crude are both near bear markets in 2020, with declines of roughly 17%. Trading history in the past decade suggests oil prices can fall by as much as 10% more.




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Twitter's brief history of earnings rallies shows they often don't last

Twitter surged after a big quarterly increase in users, but history shows the social media stock's rallies don't last.




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History says Super Tuesday is last thing stock market needs right now

In periods leading up to Super Tuesday primaries that span a dozen states, stocks tends to sell off. That's not good news for a market already being tested by the coronavirus.




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Here's why recent surge in S&P 500 couldn't last, according to market history

The S&P 500 surged 12% last week, but the market has been up and down since. That is not a surprise based on recent crisis-era trading history for both the S&P and Dow Jones Industrial Average.




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Traders grapple to find the bottom as Dow enters bear market territory with S&P 500 not far behind

The S&P 500 is in bear market territory but it's difficult to predict a market bottom. Typical metrics do not apply in this very unusual situation.




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Cheesecake Factory swings to a loss as coronavirus weighs on earnings

The Cheesecake Factory swung to a loss in its first quarter as the coronavirus pandemic forced the company to close its dining rooms and furlough thousands of its workers.




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Papa John's CEO says April was the best month in company's history

"We feel very confident that we have the infrastructure in place to deliver long-term, sustainable growth," Papa John's CEO Rob Lynch told CNBC.




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Tesla is not cleared to reopen US factory, local officials say

Interim Health Officer for Alameda County Public Health Department, Erica Pan, said on an online town hall meeting that even though California had relaxed Covid-19 restrictions at the state level, that legally, "If there are local orders, whichever is stricter prevails."




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Coronavirus forces Russia to hold slimmed down Victory Day in blow to Putin

Russia marks 75 years since the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two on Saturday.




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Jim Cramer: 'Going against Beyond Meat is going against history'

CNBC's Jim Cramer says Beyond Meat is one of the most dangerous shorts in the market right now because people are turning to the meat substitutes as coronavirus makes retail demand rise.




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Moderna's vaccine candidate could potentially get regulatory approval in 2021

Moderna has received FDA approval for the company's Covid-19 vaccine to continue into the second phase. CNBC's Meg Tirrell reports.




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VE Day: Churchill feared De Gaulle would declare victory early

War cabinet papers reveal PM’s concern French ally would pre-empt joint announcement

Winston Churchill believed a disgruntled general Charles de Gaulle intended to pre-empt the allies’ announcement of victory in Europe by 24 hours but felt unable to pressure him to change his plans, according to British war cabinet documents released free online by the National Archives during the lockdown.

The 75th anniversary of VE Day will be celebrated on Friday 8 May but Gen Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander in north-west Europe, and the Soviet high command had actually received the German surrender in the French city of Reims on 7 May 1945 at 2.41am.

Continue reading...




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Betrayal and bombast: the surreal story of the Terry v Bridge saga | Jonathan Liew

More than a decade on, fact and fiction remain entangled in the tale of former teammates turned enemies. The human core of the entire episode, though, is not a footballer

Officially, nothing happened. This is, by the way, no minor detail: to this day Vanessa Perroncel fervently denies that any affair took place between her and John Terry in late 2009, and she has the printed apologies and legal documents to back it up. Normally this bit is begrudgingly buried at the bottom of the piece. But it’s worth dwelling on, if only because it forces us to confront the vast, incalculable gulf between what we definitively know and what, over the years, we’ve simply assumed.

A decade on, fact and fiction remain knottily entangled. Over time, the story of how Terry and his former friend and Chelsea teammate Wayne Bridge found themselves at the centre of one of English football’s most hysterical scandals begins to feel surreal, perhaps even a touch unreal: a bad memory that most would prefer to pretend never happened.

Continue reading...




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For MLS, anything less than astronomical losses could be a victory

The league’s centralised structure should help during the pandemic but it is also vulnerable in a way that European competitions are not

The warning from Adrian Hanauer was stark. According to the Seattle Sounders majority owner, the shutdown caused by the Covid-19 pandemic could result in “astronomical” losses for Major League Soccer teams. “Hundreds of millions, billions, really big numbers,” he told the Sounder At Heart podcast earlier this month.

Hanauer’s remarks were in line with much of what is being said around the soccer world. The sport has never experienced anything like this with entire seasons on hold, soon to be abandoned in some cases, and competitions such as Euro 2020 and Women’s Euro 2021 pushed back a whole year. For all the meetings that have been held and contingency plans drawn up, nobody can guarantee when play will resume.

Continue reading...




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LICENSE FOR NEW FACTORY

What are the licenses or registration required by new factory having expected turnover more than 100Cr?




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2(41) is mandatory or optional

As per sec 2(41), if company incorporated on or after january of the year, period ending of 31st march of following year is considered as financial year for which financial statements to be prepared. is it mandatory or optional? if it is mandatory, company need not to be audited in current y





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A new very short story by Chris Chibnall

A new, very short story, written by current showrunner Chris Chibnall




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A new short story by Pete McTighe

A new short story by Kerblam and Praxeus writer, Pete McTighe: "Press Play”.




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A new short story by Steven Moffat

A new short story by Steven Moffat, "Terror Of The Umpty Ums".




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A new short story by Paul Cornell

A new short story by Paul Cornell, "The Shadow Passes".




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A new short story by Joy Wilkinson

A new short story by Joy Wilkinson, "The Simple Things".




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"A Terrible Price": Mardi Gras Story Lays Bare How COVID-19 Is Devastating Black America

We look at the deadly disparate impact of the pandemic on African Americans as told through an in-depth story for The New York Times Magazine by writer Linda Villarosa in her new piece, "'A Terrible Price': The Deadly Racial Disparities of Covid-19 in America," that tells what happened to the Zulu club, a Black social organization in New Orleans, during and after Mardi Gras. She reports that the experience is usually a joy, but the coronavirus made it a tragedy.




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How coronavirus data from history is helping fight COVID-19

Originally posted on - blogs by NPG staff

Many of us had heard the term ‘coronavirus’ for the first time at the office lunch table. Our team lunches are unusual, discussing topics that range from evolution, to bodily functions to Bollywood. The scientific experts in the team were trying to explain how the coronavirus works, its relation to respiration and the conspiracy theories associated with it.  Read more




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Taiwan’s vice president says 'possibility' that Covid-19 came from Chinese laboratory

In an interview with FRANCE 24, Taiwan's Vice President Chen Chien-jen, an epidemiologist by training, discussed his country's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, while criticising the response of China and the World Health Organization. Chen refused to rule out the "possibility" that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan. He also expressed concern about a second wave of the virus appearing in autumn or winter.




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Russia scales back WWII Victory Day celebration in Moscow amid Covid-19

Russia marks 75 years since the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two on Saturday, but the coronavirus outbreak has forced it to scale back celebrations seen as boosting support for the Kremlin.




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the history of games

Today on Toothpaste For Dinner: the history of games


I NEED YOUR HELP: Please chip in $1 or more on Patreon and I can keep Toothpaste For Dinner updating daily, PLUS you'll get to see bonus comics & writing!










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Contest Caution: The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award


Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®

Founded in 2010, The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award bills itself as "the richest prize for a single short story in the English language." And indeed, the prize is major: the winner receives a cool £30,000 (no, I did not add extra zeroes.)

With judges yet to be finalized, the selection process will include a 20-story longlist announced in May 2020, a six-story shortlist unveiled in June 2020, and the winner revealed on July 2. The shortlisted stories will be published in an Audible audiobook, with included writers receiving "an extra £1,000 fee, on top of a prize payment of £1,000". To be eligible, writers must previously have had at least one work published in the UK or Ireland by an "established print publisher or an established printed magazine" (the Terms and Conditions include an extensive list of the kinds of publishers and magazines that don't qualify). The contest is open for entries until 6:00 pm on December 13.

You can read more about the award, including the prestigious judges who've participated and the well-known writers who've submitted stories, here.

So what's the catch? -- because you know I wouldn't be writing this post if there weren't one. Well, as so often happens, it's in the Terms and Conditions. Specifically:


To summarize this dense paragraph: simply by entering the competition, you are granting a sweeping, non-expiring license not just to Times Newspapers Limited (The Sunday Times' parent company), but also to Audible and any other licensees of TNL, to use your story or any part of it in any way they want, anywhere in the world, without payment to or permission from you.

This is far from the first time I've written about "merely by entering you grant us rights forever" clauses in the guidelines of literary contests, some of them from major publishers or companies that should know better. Sure, in this case the license is non-exclusive, so you could sell your story elsewhere--but only as a reprint, because by granting non-exclusive rights to one company, you remove your ability to grant first rights to another, at least for as long as the initial rights grant is in force.

It's not uncommon for literary contests that involve publication to bind all entrants to a uniform license or grant of rights--so that, when winners are chosen, the license is already in place. But ideally, the license should immediately expire for entries that are removed from consideration--or, if the contest sponsor wants to retain the right to consider any entered story for publication (as TNL clearly does--see Clause 4.2, below), rights should be released within a reasonable period of time after the contest finishes--say, three or six months. There's simply no good reason to make a perpetual claim on rights just in case, at some unspecified point in the future, you might just possibly want to use them.

Not to mention--why should Audible get to make this same claim?

There's a couple of other things to be aware of. Shortlisted authors enter into a 12-month exclusive contract with Audible, for which they are given a "one-off" lump-sum payment (the £1,000 noted above). But thereafter, Audible retains the right "to record, distribute and market such audio version for at least ten (10) years." Again, this right is non-exclusive--but there's no indication that Audible has to pay these authors for potentially exploiting their work for a decade. (If you don't consent to these terms, you can't be shortlisted.)


Finally, although publication is guaranteed only for the shortlist, TNL reserves the right to publish longlist and non-listed entries as well. Great! Except...there's nothing to suggest these writers would be paid either.


There's no question that this is a prestigious--and, for the winner, rich--award. But sober evaluation is definitely in order here. Enter at your own risk.




tory

How Predatory Companies Are Trying to Hijack Your Publisher Search, Part 3


Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware®

In my first post about the ways that predatory companies attempt to ensnare unwary writers who are searching for publishers, I discussed fake publisher-matching websites. In my second, I exposed the scammy Google ad tactics of vanity publisher Austin Macauley.

In this third post, I'll talk about an equally insidious practice: providing misinformation or even outright lies about traditional publishing, in order to make self- or vanity publishing appear superior.

Yesterday on Twitter, someone tweeted this chart, which purportedly compares traditional publishing and self-publishing.


If you're even slightly savvy about publishing, the inaccuracies are easy to spot. Trad pubs often pay royalties on retail price (not "net sales"), or pay a higher percentage (higher royalties are especially common in the small press world). Trad pubs that pay advances don't withhold them from less popular authors, and they don't require authors to make "certain minimum orders" or to buy thousands of copies of their own books. And while it's often true that smaller traditional publishers don't provide much in the way of PR or marketing support, and larger houses invest more marketing in more popular books and authors, they don't simply ignore 95% of their output (this makes no sense; what business markets only 5% of its products?)

As for author rights...trad pubs do license exclusive rights from authors, sometimes for a period of years, sometimes for the life of copyright (with reversion usually happening well before then). But they don't gain ownership of them (as "all rights are with the publisher" implies), because the author retains copyright--plus, authors can often negotiate to keep some of their subsidiary rights. And although self-publishing is typically non-exclusive, allowing authors to publish on multiple platforms if they wish, they do still have to license publishing and distribution rights to whichever platform or service provider they choose--otherwise, the platform couldn't legally produce and sell their books.

The chart comes from this how-to-self-publish article, which is really just a long ad for PublishEdge, which is (surprise!) a paid publishing services provider.


PublishEdge is a "division" of Zaang Entertainment Pvt Ltd, which, unlike the Philippines-based scams I've been covering so much lately, is based in India. The range of services it sells aren't priced as high as some of the scammers', but there are still plenty of warning signs: no information about who is providing the services on offer (so you have no idea who they are or if they're qualified); no cover or website design samples (so you have no idea what you'd be getting for your money); and this pitch for ghostwriting services, which invites you to "Discover the simple secret to how celebrities and busy professionals get their books published without actually writing", courtesy of "our book writing experts", who (judging from the description of the service) basically type up a Skype interview into a chapter book. Most likely these unnamed "experts" are hired on Upwork or Fiverr or a similar jobs site (holy plagiarism scandal, Batman!).

PublishEdge isn't alone in misrepresenting traditional publishing in order to make itself look more attractive. Among other alternative facts, this chart from Morgan James, a vanity publisher with an author purchase requirement, claims that "many major houses" require authors to buy 5,000 copies or more of their own books (doesn't that make MJ's 2,500 purchase requirement seem appealing?), and that trad pubs provide no PR or marketing support for 94% of their books and authors. (Hmmm. Could PublishEdge have borrowed a little something there?)

Here's another misleading comparison, from Union Square Publishing, a self-styled hybrid (read: vanity) publisher. It too borrows heavily from Morgan James's chart, with several of the same dubious claims. Here's another one--this time from Success Publishing, which sells Chicken Soup-style anthology slots.

This one, from "custom" publisher Momosa Publishing (packages start at $5,900), doesn't tell quite so many fibs, but encourages you to believe that trad pubs cap their royalties at 6%, and don't market their books to libraries. And then there's this from Atmosphere Press, another so-called hybrid, which wants to convince writers that a $5,000 publishing fee will save them from the "raw end of the deal" they'd get from a trad pub, "losing not just their royalties but also the rights to their material and to their control over their art." Not addressed: the likelihood of ever making that $5,000 back.

These are just a few examples; there are many more. If you use the internet as part of your publisher search, you're very likely to encounter them (in some cases, disseminated by self-styled experts who ought to know better). It's a great argument for a step that many writers skip: learning about publishing before diving into the quest for publication. As with all aspects of publishing, knowledge is your greatest ally and your best defense: the more you know about the way things really work, the better protected you will be against the disinformation described above.

Final note: I know that many writers have had bad experiences with traditional publishers--I've had some myself. Especially in the small press world, many traditional (at least in the sense that they don't charge fees) publishers engage in nonstandard and author-unfriendly business practices. There's plenty of discussion of that on this blog. I'm not trying to paint trad pub as perfect, or argue that it's necessarily a better choice for any given writer.

But deliberate distortions like those described above don't help anyone, even if you don't take into account their obvious self-serving agenda. Tarring an entire segment of the publishing market with a broad negative brush--especially where some of the supposed negatives are demonstrably false--is as irresponsible as arguing (as some people still do) that only traditional publishing is a worthwhile path.