Rocketing crime on the cards
Credit and cash card conmen are targeting Tyneside which has seen a massive increase in fraud cases.
More than £5.5 million was cleared out of North East bank accounts by criminals using credit card cons in 2003.
Now police chiefs are warning people to keep an eagle eye on their flexible friends and to use new chip and pin devices in shops.
The Association for Payment Clearing Services revealed £5.5 million has been creamed off by conmen in the North East during 2003 compared to £3.5 million in 2002.
In Newcastle the figure was £3 million, almost 176% more than in 2000 when £1 million was lost.
Secretary of the North East Anti-Fraud Forum, Frank Nesbitt, said thieves are using a range of devices to get their hands on credit card and to switch details.
He said among the most prolific was a hand held scanner which can copy credit card details in seconds and which can then be used to create a carbon copy.
He added they also use skimming devices that copy and record account details from the magnetic strip of each card. A tiny camera is sometimes used in conjunction so criminals can record pin number details.
In the past this system has been used in at the HSBC ATM, in Team Valley and the Abbey National machine, at Safeway, in Gateshead.
Another device is the Lebanese Loop, where a plastic or wire device is inserted into the cash withdrawal slot, giving the impression the machine has malfunctioned and has not issued any money.
It is then removed and the trapped card is taken by a gang member while the victim tries to sort out the problem with bank staff.
Mr Nesbitt said Newcastle was being targeted by gangs of criminals who travel the country on credit card fraud.
He said they were attracted to the area by the recent growth of wealth in Newcastle.
"They see Newcastle as a vibrant city where there is wealth because we have such a good economy."
Mr Nesbitt said: "Economic crime is a very serious problem. The bottom line is to not lose sight of your credit card. Do not let someone you do not know walk away with it."
Mr Nesbitt said the best way to beat fraudsters was to use chip and pin machines which can now be found in the Post Office and major stores.


Friday, October 14, 2016 / 11:39 am
Playing Lawyer
At the CBS TCA Summer Press Tour back in August, Katherine spoke to the press about her upcoming show Doubt. She also touched on how much she enjoyed working as a producer on State Of Affairs, the entertainment industry, life in Utah, and dealing with internet trolls.
What’s it like now playing a lawyer?
I’ve not really watched any legal dramas and I forgot about the whole courtroom thing, that you have to perform for a jury. I found that fascinating, that as an actor I get to actually act in front of a jury, to be demure or passionate and get them on my side. I’ll bet the best lawyers are the ones comfortable grandstanding, because that’s a big part of it.
It’s not a gritty, heavy show though. Was that one reason you wanted to do it?
It has a lightness and joyfulness to it. Everyone [in the cast] has fascinating story lines and great characters and that’s more interesting for fans – they can get invested in this character here or there and are not force-fed one storyline or one actor. There’s always a bit of levity and banter between us. I wish people would write me witty banter, just for my personal life.
Was it hard to come back to TV after State of Affairs?
This came my way and I wasn’t looking for anything at that moment. I was grieving for State of Affairs. It was sad. I was so committed to that and loved it so much and it was such an extraordinary experience. I wasn’t gunning to do something else right away. But I got the call and read it and it was such an interesting character I’d be a fool to say no.
You must have learned a lot from that experience though.
What I learned is that I love producing. I loved that experience and reveled in it. It was my opportunity to be a real producer and not just a vanity title. I learned a lot. But I did not nail it. I would love to do it again. I have a couple of ideas I’d love to pitch just for the opportunity to produce again.
It must take a certain amount of resilience to be in this industry.
You’ve got to be resilient if you want to succeed. You can’t give up and say, "I’ve had enough failure and I’m tired of publicly failing and I’m going to retire to Utah," because that was the plan. But I just keep wanting to do this. I like it, and I feel like it’s my thing. Life is about trying and failing and trying again and one day it all comes beautifully together and you ride that wave for as long as you can and then you fail all over again. That’s the nature of the industry. If you can take the pain out of it, it’s amazing. It makes room for other talent and other interesting stories to be told and other performers to rise up, and then your wave rises again.
Was it a conscious decision to not live in Los Angeles anymore?
Utah is my home base now. It’s where I raise my family and spend 90 percent of my time. I’ve spent the past two years just being a mom. But then I was ready to go back to work, and that’s part of who I am too. I always said I’d be a working mom. I was naive enough to think I could totally do both. You can, but you’re compromising both to do both. When I’m done filming here in early December, I’ll go back to Utah, give birth, and I get to be in that world again. It helps me keep everything in perspective.
How have you handled the negative things said about you?
I started acting when the Internet was just starting, and fan sites were happening. I was 17 and had done a little movie and suddenly my body was changing. I was putting on weight and I didn’t know how to diet. I was doing the Cindy Crawford exercise videos, but didn’t know I had to stop eating so much. Somebody online called me "thunder thighs". I was horrified. I felt like the world had turned into high school and they were bullying me and there was nothing I could do about it. Five years ago, I realized this is enough. I couldn’t influence how everyone felt about me but still, I was thinking, they hate me, and they are right. Is there something wrong with me? Then I realized, if I was that big of an asshole, there’s no way Josh Kelley would have married me. Everyone loves him. He’s the most charming guy, and he would never love that person, because if I’d turned into that person, he would have left me.
Do you think it’s harder for someone starting out in the industry now, with all the trolls and twitter wars?
For anyone in entertainment, it’s hard to resist. You want to engage in the fight, but the more breath you give it, the bigger it gets. Look at what happened to me. I kept talking about it, explaining it, defending it, and it just made it bigger. It’s hard to disengage from the phone and not read the comments because they alert you! They notify you! Every time somebody says your name! Turn it off, turn it off. It does not define you. Use it to your advantage, and as a tool for self-promotion, and to give your fans your version of you. There’s always going to be some asshole who has something ugly to say. It’s high school on a bigger scale. My niece is 14 and that phone – my God, it’s a nightmare. We’re just trying to teach her that she doesn’t have to put so much of herself out there and rely on what strangers think of her. That’s what our youth is growing up with – having relationships with anonymous, faceless people. As the mother of young girls, and the aunt of a young girl, I’m trying desperately to teach them how little that matters. It’s all so pointless.
Categories: Interviews, News, Production, Television
Tags: CBS, Cindy Crawford, Doubt, Pregnancy, Social Media, State Of Affairs, TCA Press Tour 2016, Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour 2014, Trolls, Utah


Exclusive: ‘Jurassic World’ Director Colin Trevorrow Talks Plot Details and Recent Leaks
Posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2014 by Peter Sciretta
Exclusive Photo: Director Colin Treverrow on the set of Jurassic World
Jurassic World plot details leaked onto the Internet last week (by way of a scooper for JoBlo), sending Jurassic Park fans into a tizzy. Some of the details that leaked turned out to be spoilers that the filmmakers would have preferred not be released before the film. I got an exclusive opportunity to talk with Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow from the set of the Jurassic Park sequel about the recent information leaks, to clarify some of the misconceptions and address some of the fan concerns. The conversation will surely calm many of you who were worried about some of the material in the recent leaks. You can read our full Colin Trevorrow Jurassic World interview after the jump.
The following interview was conducted over e-mail with Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow this week while he was on set shooting the movie. Be warned, Colin talks about some of the contents of the recent leaks in this conversation.
What do you feel are the biggest misconceptions from the leaked rumors about the Jurassic World story versus the real screenplay?
That’s the thing about leaks, sometimes they aren’t misinterpreted or false. They’re real story elements that the filmmakers were hoping to introduce to the audience in a darkened movie theater. But unfortunately, in 2014, you read about it on a computer. Last week was discouraging for everyone on our crew–not because we want to hide things from the fans, but because we’re working so hard to create something full of surprises. When I was a kid, you got to discover everything at once, it washed over you and blew your mind. Now it only takes one person to spoil it for everyone else. I hope whoever leaked it is actively trying to undermine what we’re doing. Because if they’re trying to help, they’re doing it wrong.
So the rumors are true?
Yes. Jurassic World takes place in a fully functional park on Isla Nublar. It sees more than 20,000 visitors every day. You arrive by ferry from Costa Rica. It has elements of a biological preserve, a safari, a zoo, and a theme park. There is a luxury resort with hotels, restaurants, nightlife and a golf course. And there are dinosaurs. Real ones. You can get closer to them than you ever imagined possible. It’s the realization of John Hammond’s dream, and I think you’ll want to go there.
How long has elapsed since the third film and how has the world we knew from those films changed in that time?
This film picks up twenty-two years after Jurassic Park. When Derek [Connolly] and I sat down to find the movie, we looked at the past two decades and talked about what we’ve seen. Two things came to the surface.
One was that money has been the gasoline in the engine of our biggest mistakes. If there are billions to be made, no one can resist them, even if they know things could end horribly.
The other was that our relationship with technology has become so woven into our daily lives, we’ve become numb to the scientific miracles around us. We take so much for granted.
Those two ideas felt like they could work together. What if, despite previous disasters, they built a new biological preserve where you could see dinosaurs walk the earth…and what if people were already kind of over it? We imagined a teenager texting his girlfriend with his back to a T-Rex behind protective glass. For us, that image captured the way much of the audience feels about the movies themselves. “We’ve seen CG dinosaurs. What else you got?” Next year, you’ll see our answer.
What are the relationships between the main characters and the dinosaurs? Are there “good guy” and “bad guy” dinosaurs in the movie?
There’s no such thing as good or bad dinosaurs. There are predators and prey. The T-Rex in Jurassic Park took human lives, and saved them. No one interpreted her as good or bad. This film is about our relationship with animals, how we react to the threat they pose to our dominance on earth as a species. We hunt them, we cage them in zoos, we admire them from afar and we try to assert control over them.
Chris Pratt’s character is doing behavioral research on the raptors. They aren’t trained, they can’t do tricks. He’s just trying to figure out the limits of the relationship between these highly intelligent creatures and human beings. If people don’t think there’s potential in those ideas, maybe they won’t like this movie. But I ask them to give it a chance.
Will there be crossbred dinosaurs or new species created for the movie?
We were hoping audiences could discover this on their own, but yes, there will be one new dinosaur created by the park’s geneticists. The gaps in her sequence were filled with DNA from other species, much like the genome in the first film was completed with frog DNA. This creation exists to fulfill a corporate mandate—they want something bigger, louder, with more teeth. And that’s what they get.
I know the idea of a modified dinosaur put a lot of fans on red alert, and I understand it. But we aren’t doing anything here that Crichton didn’t suggest in his novels. This animal is not a mutant freak. It doesn’t have a snake’s head or octopus tentacles. It’s a dinosaur, created in the same way the others were, but now the genetics have gone to the next level. For me, it’s a natural evolution of the technology introduced in the first film. Maybe it sounds crazy, but most of my favorite movies sound crazy when you describe them in a single sentence.
What makes Jurassic World different than the previous three Jurassic Park films?
That’s something you’ll have to tell me after you see it. We’re trying to tell a bold new story that doesn’t rely on a proven formula, because the movies we watch over and over again are the ones that surprised us, that worked when they shouldn’t have.
I understand the risks of leaving the safe zone. We’ve all been disappointed by new installments of the stories we love. But with all this talk of filmmakers “ruining our childhood”, we forget that right now is someone else’s childhood. This is their time. And I have to build something that can take them to the same place those earlier films took us. It may not happen in the same way everyone expects it to, but it’s the way I believe it needs to happen.
Honestly, the biggest misconception on this movie is that there’s some massive conference room at the studio where all these cynical story decisions are made. There is no committee. Universal has given us the resources to tell the story we want to tell, on the scale we want to tell it. Will this one be different from the other movies? You bet it will. And I’m not going to pass the buck if it doesn’t work. This one’s on me.
Jurassic World will hit theaters on June 12th, 2015.
‘Jurassic World Aftermath’ Review: This Hair-Raising Stealth Game Keeps You on Edge But Needs More Variety
‘Jurassic World Aftermath’ Trailer: This VR Game Will Have You Hiding from Velociraptors
‘Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous’ Season 2 Trailer: The Campers Must Evolve or Die
‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ Wraps Filming, Colin Trevorrow and Cast Celebrate
/Featured Stories Sidebar, Interviews, Sci-Fi, Sequels, Universal, Colin Trevorrow, Jurassic World


Funding for Whitacre's Virtual Choir 4 reaches halfway
Virtual Choir 4 has reached $50,000 in donations, halfway to its target of $100,000.
Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 4 project has reached the halfway point. The project, which encourages amateur singers to submit videos of themselves singing a specific composition to be then made into an immense online choir, is now in its fourth incarnation and requires $100,000 to launch.
Currently, the funding (which has been organised and publicised via the Kickstarter fundraising website) has just reached $50,000, with 20 days to go until pledging closes. Backers are invited to donate money in return for a range of different packages, ranging from $5 up to $10,000.
A $25 donation will land you a copy of the digital presentation of the Virtual Choir including photographs, sketches and lyrics and a credit on the choir's website. $7,500 will get you Eric's backstage pass from the 2012 Grammy Awards, alongside a host of other goodies.
The highest pledge of $10,000 will get the lucky donor Eric's own conducting baton, used to conduct his own Paradise Lost at Carnegie Hall. You can see a full list of the various pledging packages at the project's Kickstarter page. You can also view the project's video below:


The Subject Steve
3.32 (714 ratings by Goodreads)
By (author) Sam Lipsyte
List price: US$9.53
Dark, dazzling American satire from the natural heir to George Saunders or David Sedaris. 'A brilliant novel, in every conceivable way.' Toby Litt
Steve's fettle is absolutely fine, but nevertheless, he's dying - of a mystery disease that just might be boredom. At least, that's what the guys in the white coats say. They're not doctors, they're just guys in white coats, and the subject's name isn't Steve, either, but we'll get to that...
Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
Imprint Flamingo
'Sam Lipsyte is a gifted stylist, precise, original, devious, and very funny. In a time when the language of most novels is dead on arrival, this book, about a dying man, is startlingly alive.' Jeffrey Eugenides, author of 'Middlesex' and 'The Virgin Suicides'
'An all-American tale made up of smart deliveries and cracking ideas...reminiscent of Douglas Coupland or "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius".' Observer
'I laughed out loud - and I never laugh out loud...' Chuck Palahniuk, author of 'Fight Club'
'An original voice: smart, savvy...intensely funny.' TLS
'The best thing since George Saunders last broke cover...Kind of Beckett meets "Six Feet Under", comedy doesn't come much blacker than this.' Uncut
'Rowdy, shocking and lyrical...very funny.' New Yorker
'Dark, lancing humour, first-rate satire and writing that dares to be bold and edgy.' San Francisco Chronicle
'Laugh-out-loud funny...By turns strange, disturbing and hilarious.' Irish Independent
About Sam Lipsyte
Sam Lipsyte is the author of 'Venus Drive', a collection of short stories, and two novels, 'The Subject Steve' and 'Home Land'. His work has appeared in the New York Times and the Quarterly. He was born in 1968, and got married in 2003.


Humor in abundance at the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
Humor suffuses the charming little novels of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, but I have never laughed so much as I did when reading the 15th entry in the series, The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Cafe.
The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Cafe (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency #15) by Alexander McCall Smith
Here, for example, is a conversation between Mma Precious Ramotswe, founder and proprietor of the agency, and her friend Mma Potokwane.
“Ah, Mma Ramotswe,” she said. “Do you know whether this sauce is as hot as the jar claims? The label has a picture of a man with fire coming out of his mouth. Look.”
She handed her friend the jar for scrutiny. “I believe this is very hot,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But the picture is an exaggeration, I think. I do not think it will set you on fire.” For a moment she pictured Mma Potokwane with flames coming out of her mouth. She imagined herself reaching for a fire extinguisher and covering her friend in white foam, or pushing her down to the ground and covering her head with a fire blanket. It would be an undignified end to a meal.
The humor of Alexander McCall Smith is gentle and forgiving, never mean. Underlying the meandering dialogue that exposes the naivete and stubborn ignorance of Smith’s characters is a love for the culture of Botswana and its people, a wistful yearning for the simpler life he portrays. It’s all a fantasy, of course; Botswana has its ugliness and its challenges despite the charmed history that has isolated the country from the greatest excesses of ill-intentioned governments. But the people of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Series embody the African ideal of homegrown wisdom, tender manners, and a love for the land.
Mma Precious Ramotswe has named Mma Grace Makutsi as a partner, inflating the younger woman’s already outsized ego to gargantuan proportions. Now married to the wealthy owner of a furniture store and many cattle, Mma Makutsi has determined to establish a restaurant in the time she can spare from her duties as co-director and mother of her infant son. This leaves little time for Mma Makutsi to lend a hand on the mysterious new case that surfaces when a prosperous Indian shopowner requests help with an amnesiac woman who has wandered into his life. Meanwhile, Mma Ramotsewe’s ever-loving husband, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, is facing a decline in his auto-repair business and must lay off his long-serving apprentice, Charlie. In other words, it’s a typical time in the life of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. The three strands of the plot weave together artfully and amusingly in unpredictable ways, with complications galore: unbeknownst to Mma Makutsi, her bete noir, Violet Sephotho, has become the restaurant critic of the local newspaper.
The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Cafe is more comedy of manners than detective fiction. I loved it from beginning to end.
A diplomatic thriller set in a country where more died than in the Holocaust
An African American detective investigates the Rwanda genocide
A nitty-gritty view of Ghana today in this inventive detective novel


Former amateur basketball league director Merl Code leaves federal court after sentencing, Friday, Oct. 4, 2019, in New York. Code was sentenced to three months in prison for his role in a college basketball bribery scheme that focused on NBA-bound athletes. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
NEW YORK (AP) — An amateur coach was sentenced to three months in prison Friday for his role in a college basketball bribery scheme that sought to steer impressionable NBA-bound athletes toward fledgling money managers and handlers.
Merl Code, 45, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Edgardo Ramos, who called the Greer, South Carolina, resident a “very decent human being” who played a lesser role in a conspiracy that gave a glimpse into corruption in major college sports.
“It appears that all this type of conduct is prevalent in college basketball and other college sports,” the judge said. “The money is there. There’s a lot of it and it’s so easy to take it. It doesn’t make it right, but it explains how an individual like Mr. Code ends up in this courtroom today.”
Without leniency, Code faced between three and four years in prison according to federal sentencing guidelines.
A day earlier, Ramos sentenced former aspiring sports business manager Christian Dawkins, 26, of Atlanta, to a year and a day in prison when sentencing guidelines called for a prison term of three-to-four years.
Dawkins and Code were both convicted at a May trial on a bribery conspiracy charge, though Dawkins was also convicted of bribery. Previously, each had been sentenced to six months in prison after they were convicted in a related case.
They were among 10 individuals arrested in 2017 as authorities revealed a conspiracy involving a network of individuals including several affiliated with apparel companies that sponsor college athletic programs.
The goal was to steer top players to certain schools, then get them to sign with managers who would handle their finances once they turned professional.
Four former assistant basketball coaches who pleaded guilty to bribery conspiracy also were sentenced leniently.
Code was a Clemson point guard in the 1990s who later worked with Nike and Adidas. He declined to speak when given the opportunity to address the judge prior to sentencing.
His attorney, Mark Moore, said his client was too emotional.
“This has been very difficult for him,” Moore said. He added that Code had no employment prospects and feels “he’s toxic because of these prosecutions.”
Code and Dawkins were previously sentenced to six months in prison in a related case. They will remain free on bail pending the outcome of appeals.


Bahrain industrial firms see fall in revenue
Bahrains industrial sector, just like other economic segments, is grappling with the impact of Covid-19 as both its manufacturing and supply chain operations have been disrupted, according to a study conducted by the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI).
Alba SPL treatment plant on track for Q1 2021
Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), the world’s largest aluminium smelter ex-China, said the construction work was progressing as per schedule at its Spent Pot Lining (SPL) treatment plant, a first-of-its- kind facility in the whole of GCC and Bahrain.
Ebrahim K Kanoo wins top Toyota awards
Toyota Engineering & Material Handling has honoured Ebrahim K Kanoo, the sole distributor of Toyota vehicles in Bahrain, with the prestigious President’s Award for outstanding sales performance.
Export Bahrain facilitates $32m deals in 18 months
Export Bahrain, a key initiative of the national SME Development Board, has facilitated over $32 million worth of exports across more than 26 various product and service categories to over 32 markets worldwide in a span of 18 months.
Bahrain-origin exports hit $464m during May
The value of Bahrain’s exports of national origin decreased by 16 per cent to BD176 million ($464 million) during May 2020, compared to BD210 million for the same month of the previous year, said the Information &eGovernment Authority (iGA) in foreign trade report of May.
Bahrain’s first drug factory starts production
Medicines boosting immunity will now be produced in Bahrain as the country’s first ever drug factory has initiated trial production, reports our sister publication GDN. The BD5 million project by Bahrain Pharma will produce the first batch of 600 million gelatin coated multivitamin capsules and 20 million soluble syrup bottles in two months.
Emirates Steel to secure 1mt of scrap locally
Emirates Steel, a leading integrated steel plant in the UAE, has announced its continued efforts to support trade and business in the UAE through purchasing local scrap material for use as feed stock in its production process.
Garmco receives ISO 14021:2016 certification
Gulf Aluminium Rolling Mill (Garmco), a Bahrain based international aluminium rolling mill, and one of the largest downstream facilities in the Middle East, has embarked on a transformative role in shaping the climate agenda through the Garmco Green Initiative that sets the stage in steering the company’s vision for a sustainable future in a
Basrec wins quality certification
Bahrain Ship Repairing and Engineering Company (Basrec) has received Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance (LRQA) certification of ISO 45001:2018 for the shipyard’s integrated management system. The certification attests to the company meeting the requirements of quality of service as well as the latest health and safety standards.
GCC chemical industry ‘must lift competitiveness’
The chemical industry in the Arabian Gulf must plan and prepare for the post-Covid period, turning adversity into advantage, and capitalise on the lessons learned to retain and enhance its global competitiveness, according to the Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association (GPCA).
Trade in UAE food products hits $8.6bn in Q1
The value of Emirati food products traded in the first quarter of 2020 totalled AED31.7 billion ($8.6 billion), according to the latest figures from the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority. The figures also show that the value of the country’s food imports in the first quarter of 2020 amounted to AED17.98 billion ($4.


Beast's Yang Yo-seob Announces First Solo Album in Japan
Yang Yo-seob of boy band Beast will debut as a soloist in Japan, agency Cube Entertainment announced on May 15.
Yang has engaged in solo activities in Korea since the release of single "Caffeine" last year. Yang will announce his first Japanese solo album, "The First Collage", on May 15.
A Japanese version of Caffeine and the title song, a remake of Japanese song "Another Orion", along with five other tracks are included in the new album.
Yang announced his Japanese debut through promotions in Japan around the end of last month. Japanese music-related luminaries and reporters from Japanese news media - including Nikkan Sports, Sankei, and Tokyo TV - attended his fan meeting, which was held at Zeff Hall in Odaiba, Tokyo, with over 3,000 fans participating. [Yonhap]


Gender equality, and placing diverse women’s voices, experiences and expertise at the centre of our security and peace work supports long term commitment to conflict prevention and sustainable peace.
Implementing UNSCR 1325
The landmark United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted in 2000, acknowledged that men and women experience conflict differently.
It addressed the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflict, humanitarian response and peace building and urged all actors to increase the participation of women and incorporate gender perspectives in all peace and security efforts.
Since 2000, seven additional UN Security Council Resolutions have been adopted providing an international framework that underpins the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. The Women, Peace and Security Agenda encourages action against four pillars:
Participation of women at all levels of decision-making, in peace operations and peace processes;
Protection of women, including from sexual and gender based violence;
Prevention of violence against women through the promotion of rights, accountability and law enforcement; and
Relief and Recovery are designed to meet the specific needs of women and girls’ and women’s capacities to act as agents in relief and recovery are reinforced.
On International Women’s Day in 2012, Australia adopted a six-year National Action Plan on Women Peace and Security. The National Action Plan (or NAP) demonstrates Australia’s commitment to implementing women, peace and security.
It provides a clear whole-of-government framework and a joined-up approach to strategies and actions. The NAP is founded on robust engagement between government and a diverse array of civil society groups.
The Australian Civil-Military Centre plays a unique role in support of women, peace and security and Australia’s National Action Plan. We are not a policy lead for implementation. Rather we work closely with our key stakeholders to enable their work on Women, Peace and Security. We commission research to deepen Australia’s understanding of key issues and to promote good practice. We foster cross-agency collaboration and partnerships and deliver on implementation actions that stretch across agency boundaries. We support capacity building and dialogue, with Australian government agencies and civil society and across Asia and the Pacific.
Main menu: 2nd level navigation
Course: Women, Peace and Security
Women, Peace and Security: Reflections from Australian male leaders
Eds. Helena Studdert
Sarah Shteir
Moving past the theoretical by drawing together the real-life experiences, reflections and lessons of male leaders from the Australian Defence Force, the Australian Federal Police and civilians.
Australian National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security 2012-2018
The National Action Plan sets out what Australia will do, at home and overseas, to integrate a gender perspective into its peace and security efforts, protect women and girls’ human rights, and promote their participation in conflict prevention, management and resolution. ACMC has a role in the design and implementation of this plan.
Conflict-related Sexual and Gender-based Violence
An introductory overview to support prevention and response efforts.
Women, Peace and Security: An Introductory Manual
The Australian National Committee for UN Women
Women’s leadership and collective action have changed the world by combatting violence against women and building equality. Women’s leadership is central to reconciliation and conflict resolution and to peacebuilding efforts that bring results for families and communities.
Gendered Crises, Gendered Responses
The Necessity and Utility of a Gender Perspective in Armed Conflicts and Natural Disasters: An Introductory Overview.
Women Peace & Security
Archie Law, Executive Director of Action Aid Australia, Leanne Smith, Chief of Policy and Best Practices for Peacekeeping Operations at the United Nations and Dr Phoebe Wynn-Pope, Director of International Humanitarian Law and Movement Relations at the Australian Red Cross discuss women, peace and security in crises.
Video: Women Peace & Security - Empowerment of Women
Video: Side by Side - Women, Peace and Security
"Side by Side - Women, Peace and Security" explores how the international community has and can meet its commitments on women, peace and security.
ASEAN-Australian Women, Peace and Security Dialogue
The United Nations’ Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has emerged over the past decade and a half as a significant cross-cutting thematic program for achieving global peace and security.
National Action Plans on Women, Peace and Security - Eight Countries in Focus
The purpose of this report is to identify the lessons learned and emerging best practices of UN Member States committed to the implementation of this agenda through National Action Plans (NAPs).
TALISMAN SABRE – an overview
The past decade of operations has taught us that in order to more effectively respond to complex international crises
Civil-Military – Illicit Small Arms in the Pacific
Stephanie Koorey
With the exception of Papua New Guinea, the number of illicit small arms likely to be in circulation in Western Pacific island countries is not particularly large or widespread. The region remains relatively ‘gun free’ as Philip Alpers’ recently proclaimed.


Marv Levy goes 1-on-1 with Walter Payton’s son to discuss first Super Bowl loss, journey back
(NEXSTAR) – Marv Levy still smiles about the lie he told the Buffalo Bills organization when applying for the head coaching position.
The then 61-year-old told the organization he was 58 years old. But one thing that can’t be disputed is his longlasting impact on the franchise.
The Hall of Fame coach led his team to four straight Super Bowls from 1990 to 1993. Losing all four, perhaps the biggest heartbreak occurred on their first trip to the Big Game. Down 19-20, Scott Norwood kicked what would have been the game-winning field goal wide-right, sealing a Super Bowl victory for the New York Giants.
“It hurt terribly, I didn’t sleep a wink that night after the game when we lost it, knowing how close we came but didn’t,” Levy said.
The coach recalled a four-line poem from a book his mother had given him that read:
Fight on, my men, Sir Andrew said,
A little I’m hurt but not yet slain.
I’ll just lie down and bleed awhile,
And I’ll rise and fight again.
Posted on the team’s bulletin board, the message impacted players after heartbreaking losses. Levy believes the character inside the locker room helped the team make it back to three more Super Bowls.
The 1988 NFL Coach of the Year, Levy retired in 1997 with a 154-120 record over a 17-year career as an NFL head coach.
Watch J. Payton’s full interview with Levy above.


Movie Review: ‘Nomadland’ is a Profound Look at the Lonely in America
By Ryan McQuade
Director: Chloé Zhao
Writer: Chloé Zhao
Stars: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Linda May, Charlene Swankie
Synopsis: A woman embarks on a journey through the American West after losing everything during the recession.
We live privileged lives. Many reading this have a good job, a home, and a loving family to spend time with at the end of a long day. We live in big cities with tons of opportunities and activities to keep your mind off the harsh realities that face so many other people around this country and the rest of the world. The comfort we have is something many struggle to achieve within an entire lifetime. In Nomadland, the latest film from director Chloé Zhao, we are taken into a world where our protagonist, and the people around her, are fighting to get by, one small job at a time, city to city, living in their vans.
We meet Fern (Frances McDormand), a woman in her late sixties living in a sprinter van, coasting through the heartland of America looking for jobs. Her husband passed years before her voyage throughout the country, thus she found her purpose in traveling around, exploring a world we don’t normally get to see on the big screen. Leaving her conventional possessions behind, she makes up her van to fit her needs and quickly becomes a part of a community that is quietly growing around the United States right now.
Van life is a reality for people of all ages due to the hardships of the economy since the late 2000s. Thousands of people are struggling to keep the lights on, put food on the table, and have resorted to the idea of this being their way of life. This doesn’t make it easy on them, considering most businesses will only hire stable employees who live in the area, rather than someone who is looking for something part-time. Jobs are simply hard to come by, we hear about this during every political debate on television, but Zhao shows you that keeping this life is not always going to be easy for Fern. Yet through all the hardships and bad luck, she is able to rise above it all and keep moving on.
It can seem like a lonely business to do this sort of living. After all, Fern’s family believes she is a modern-day nomad, a person that moves around for various new opportunities, but also does it because she can’t be in one place for too long. She does this to mask the pain of her life, the lives lost and people taken due to the harshness of the 2008 recession. It’s clear that Fern struggles to become close to someone, but as the film plays out, her walls come down, realizing this way of life is better because of the people she’s met along the way. Fern doesn’t have to be alone, like many people in this world right now. Therein lies the secret as to why Nomadland is a perfect film for 2020; because it’s a commentary on the ideas of isolation and how we can’t allow it to consume us.
Zhao, whose previous film, The Rider, was one of the best films of 2018, continues to build on the style she curated within that film and the others within her filmography. Besides McDormand and David Strathairn, all of the other characters in the film are played by real-life nomads, people who live this life day after day. That authenticity is what makes Nomadland feel so real. Even though there is a merger of Hollywood and the real world in this story, you never for one second feel like this is being manifested in a way that is disrespectful. Overall, it’s a human story built off the stories and lives of those less fortunate to comfortably live in our country, yet they find the comfort of this lifestyle to suit them even better than before.
McDormand is stellar in the role of Fern, in what might be her best work since her Oscar-winning role in Fargo. This isn’t the showiest of performances, rather one that is stripped of fluff so it can feel like we all know who Fern really is and the emotional toll this is all taking on her. You feel like you could just watch her walk slowly on screen for hours, contemplating the ideas in her head, taking in the beauty of the world around her. One could easily fall under the spell of Joshua James Richards’ cinematography mixed with Zhao’s direction by just watching Fern go through each step of her life.
Ultimately, it’s not hard to connect with everything you see on screen because you can understand every character like they were someone you know. We’ve all experienced hardships in our lives, and Nomadland displays it all so vividly that it hits home hard. In watching movies, we forget that some of the best ones strike us in our most personal emotional spaces, making us react to it in a tearful expression of gratitude. Right now, there are very few directors that can elicit this kind of response from audiences, but one of those is certainly Chloé Zhao. May we see her continue to challenge her audiences, as well as herself, in making some of the best movies you can see on any platform.
Ryan McQuade
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The Town of Torbay Celebrates the Life of Mayor Cyril Power
(TORBAY) – Former Town of Torbay Mayor and local sports icon, Cyril Power, has passed away.
The 75-year-old family man and community-minded volunteer passed peacefully away in the presence of family and friends at the Health Sciences Centre, on Sunday, June 2nd, 2019.
His political career started in 1981 when he was elected to the Town Council. He served five terms on council, over more than 20 years, as Councillor, Deputy Mayor, and Mayor, until 2001.
As far as his sports contributions to the community, he was instrumental in the start of the Town of Torbay Recreation Commission. He was heavily involved in the start of minor softball, adult softball leagues, coaching ladies softball, and was himself a player in the Avalon East Slo Pitch league. In celebration of his contributions, he was one of the first people inducted into Torbay’s Sports Hall of Fame in 2009. He also spent significant time contributing to the annual Swilers Festival.
“I am saddened by the passing of my friend, mentor and former Mayor Cyril Power. Cyril was a great advocate and builder in our community during his lifetime, and his contributions to the Town of Torbay will live on,” says Mayor Craig Scott.
“Our residents benefit daily from the commitment that Cyril made in our community both as a member of Council and as a citizen, who gave freely of his time to make Torbay a better place to live. I want to express my deepest condolences to his wife Genie and son Greg in this difficult time.”
The family will receive visitors at Caul’s Funeral Home, Torbay, on Wednesday, June 5th, 2019 from 4 – 9 p.m. and Thursday, June 6th, 2019 from 12 – 3 p.m. and 5 – 9 p.m. Funeral mass will be held on Friday, June 7th, 2019 at 10 a.m. from Holy Trinity Church, Torbay, with inurnment to follow at the Roman Catholic Cemetery, Bauline Line. Flowers gratefully accepted or donations in Cyril’s memory may be made to the Canadian Cancer Society.


The Great Repeatable Business Model
Leveraging a simple formula allows corporations to create new and more-lasting differentiation.
Chris Zook
From the Magazine (November 2011)
The sharper a company’s differentiation, the greater its competitive advantage. In studying companies that sustained a high level of performance over many years, the authors, both partners at Bain, have found that more than 80% of those companies had a well-defined and easily understood differentiation at the center of strategy. But differentiation can wear with age: The growth it generates creates complexity, and complex companies tend to forget what they’re good at. Often they respond by trying to reimagine their entire business models quickly and dramatically.
That’s rarely the answer, the authors write. Really successful companies relentlessly build on their fundamental differentiation, going from strength to strength. They learn to deliver it to the front line, creating an organization that lives and breathes its strategic advantages day in and day out. They learn to sustain it through constant adaptation to changes in the market. And they learn to resist the siren song of today’s hot market better than their less-focused competitors do. The result is a simple, repeatable business model that a company can apply to new products and markets over and over again to generate sustained growth.
Idea in Brief
Really successful companies build their strategies on a few vivid and hardy forms of differentiation that act as a system and reinforce one another.
They grow in ways that exploit their core differentiators by replicating them in new contexts. And they turn the sources of their differentiation into routines, behaviors, and activity systems that everyone in the organization can understand and follow.
Powerful differentiations deliver enduring profits only when they are supported by simple, nonnegotiable principles and robust learning systems that drive constant improvement across the business.
Differentiation is the essence of strategy, the prime source of competitive advantage. You earn money not just by performing a valuable task but by being different from your competitors in a manner that lets you serve your core customers better and more profitably.
The sharper your differentiation, the greater your advantage. Consider Tetra Pak, a company that in 2010 sold more than 150 billion packages in 170 markets around the world. Tetra Pak’s carton packages extend the shelf life of products and eliminate the need for refrigeration. The shapes they take—squares and pyramids, for example—stack more efficiently in trucks and on shelves than most cans or bottles. The packaging machines that use the company’s unique laminated material lend themselves to high-volume dairy operations. These three features set Tetra Pak well apart from its competitors and allow it to produce a package that more than compensates for its cost.
In studying companies that sustained a high level of performance over many years, we found that more than 80% of them had this kind of well-defined and easily understood differentiation at the center of their strategy. Nike’s differentiation resides in the power of its brand, the company’s relationships with top athletes, and its signature performance-focused product design. Singapore Air’s differentiation comes from its unique ways of providing premium service at a reasonable cost on long-haul business flights. Apple’s differentiation consists of deep capabilities in writing easy-to-use software, the integrated iTunes system, and a simplicity of design and product line (Apple has only about 60 main SKUs).
You can find high performers like these in most industries. The cold truth about hot markets is this: Over the long run, a company’s strategic differentiation and execution matter far more to its performance—our research suggests at least four times as much—than the business it happens to be in. Every industry has leaders and laggards, and the leaders are typically the most highly differentiated.
But differentiation tends to wear with age, and not just because competitors try hard to undermine or replicate it. Often the real problem is internal: The growth generated by successful differentiation begets complexity, and a complex company tends to forget what it’s good at. Products proliferate. Acquisitions take it far from its core. Frontline employees, more and more distant from the CEO’s office, lose their sense of the company’s strategic priorities. A lack of consistency kills economies of scale and retards the company’s ability to learn. Small wonder that “reinvention” and “disruption” have become leading buzzwords; companies struggling with complexity and fading differentiation come to believe they must reimagine their entire business models quickly and dramatically or else be overwhelmed by upstarts with disruptive innovations.
Most of the time, however, reinvention is the wrong way to go. Our experience, supported by more than 15 years of research into high performance, has led us to the inescapable conclusion that most really successful companies do not reinvent themselves through periodic “binge and purge” strategies. Instead they relentlessly build on their fundamental differentiation, going from strength to strength. They learn to deliver their differentiation to the front line, creating an organization that lives and breathes its strategic advantages day in and day out. They learn how to sustain it over time through constant adaptation to changes in the market. And they learn to resist the siren song of the idée du jour better than their less-focused competitors. The result is a simple, repeatable business model that a company can apply to new products and markets over and over again to generate sustained growth. The simplicity means that everyone in the company is on the same page—and no one forgets the sources of success.
Let’s look in more detail at what this involves.
Sources of Differentiation
Opportunities for differentiation are rich and varied in virtually every industry. To examine them more closely, we built a database of 8,000 global companies and tracked their performance over 25 years. We created another database of 200 global companies, which we studied in detail. We supplemented that research with two other data sets: a survey conducted with the Economist Intelligence Unit of nearly 400 global executives, and 50 interviews with chief executives around the world. Building on the data, we cataloged 250 assets or capabilities that can contribute to differentiation and sorted them into three major clusters of five categories each. (See the exhibit “The Differentiation Map.”)
The Differentiation Map
We cataloged 250 assets or capabilities that can make up a company’s differentiation. We then sorted them into three major clusters, each with five categories, to create the Differentiation Map. Assuming that four or five categories are required to achieve differentiation, these 15 basic categories generate more than 5,000 distinct ways in which a company can differentiate itself. (It is possible, however, to break the categories down further, in which case the number of ways to differentiate explodes into more than a million.)
Vanguard’s differentiating strengths are highlighted below.
The most enduring performers, we found, built their strategy on a few vivid, robust forms of differentiation that acted as a system, reinforcing one another. To illustrate, let’s examine the factors that make the mutual fund company Vanguard one of the most consistently high-performing businesses in our study.
Ever since its founding, in 1974, Vanguard has been a different kind of company. Its founder, John Bogle, believed passionately in the value of index funds. He saw that a company based on them would need few fund managers and researchers and could therefore charge considerably less than companies with actively managed funds. Bogle also felt he should deal directly with customers and offer them highly responsive service, thus building loyalty. These characteristics are at the core of Vanguard’s differentiation today, as can be seen in “The Differentiation Map.” The company has the lowest-cost mutual fund “engine,” a distribution system that avoids middlemen and allows direct contact with customers, and the highest level of customer loyalty in the industry.
The strongest sources of differentiation in a company’s strongest businesses are its crown jewels. Yet our research shows that most management teams spend little time discussing or measuring them and therefore don’t agree on what they are. This lack of clarity permeates entire organizations. For instance, more than half of frontline employees say in surveys that they are not clear on their companies’ strategic tenets and differentiators. Customers are even more mystified: Although 80% of managers told us they thought their companies were strongly differentiated, fewer than 10% of customers agreed. Yet understanding and agreeing about differentiation, where it can be applied, and how it must evolve is what makes a strategy work.
A systematic approach to understanding your sources of differentiation is key to rectifying this situation. It enables you to have a meaningful discussion of what distinguishes your company from competitors and what you can build on. When we ask each of a company’s top 15 managers privately what he or she feels are the most differentiated and important assets and capabilities, we often find a surprising lack of agreement.
One way to bring data to bear on this range of views is to rate the success of your company’s past 20 growth investments and determine what they have in common. This is a starting point for mapping the company’s differentiation. Discussions of what really differentiates a business from its competitors are, however, often based on past beliefs more than on current data. As you deliberate about your own key differentiators, you might consult these criteria: Are they (1) truly distinctive? (2) measurable against competitors? (3) relevant to what you deliver to your core customers? (4) mutually reinforcing? (5) clear at all levels of the company? Though each of the five seems obvious, reaching agreement on your differentiation and testing it against these criteria is not as easy as it sounds. The harder it proves, the more valuable the exercise. In our experience, many companies fail these tests—but the most successful ones pass them every time.
Making Your Differentiation Easier to Repeat
Replicating your greatest successes means deeply understanding their root causes, maintaining a 360-degree view of where they could be adapted, and ensuring that the entire organization internalizes the strategy and the differentiation on which they are built. Here are six actions to consider:
1. Make sure that you and your management team agree
on your differentiation now and in the future. You may want to ask each person to write it down; then you can collate the results in advance for discussion. At a minimum, consider three questions: (a) What do our core customers see as our key sources of competitive differentiation? (b) How do we know? (c) Are these sources becoming more or less robust?
2. See whether the front line of your organization agrees
with what you come up with. Can employees and supervisors describe the strategy and the areas of differentiation as you do? Do they feel that they understand the strategy? Is it simple and clear? Online surveys, anonymously tabulated, can be a big help with this task.
3. Write your strategy on a page,
or even on an index card. Does your description of it center on the key sources of differentiation? Is your page sharp and convincing to others, including customers and investors, and backed by data?
4. Conduct a postmortem
of your 20 most recent growth investments and initiatives. Are your greatest successes or disappointments explained, in part, by the central differentiators that were transferred?
5. Translate your strategy
into a few nonnegotiables. Can you describe simple principles that the organization believes in and that define the key behaviors, beliefs, and values needed to drive the strategy? Are they embedded in day-to-day routines, or are they simply words on a page?
6. Review how you monitor
the most important health indicators of your core business and its differentiators, both for short-term adjustment and for long-term investment in new capabilities. Does your method drive learning and adaptation? Is quickness to adapt a competitive advantage? Are you sure?
The ability to recognize and test the sources of your differentiation in this way is important for focusing innovation. Most innovations, even disruptive ones, affect only one part of a business model, leaving the rest intact. The shift from glasses to contact lenses, for example, had little effect on the basic customer need for vision correction, the industry’s distribution system, or the network of eye doctors. The shift from wired to wireless telephony caused chaos for many incumbents, yet some used their infrastructure, customer access, brand, and ability to work with regulatory organizations to prevail. The more precise your understanding of your model and the sources of its success, the more precisely you can focus innovation resources on the areas where the threats and the need for change are greatest.
Growth Based in Differentiation
The best way to grow is usually by replicating your strongest strategic advantage in new contexts. Companies typically expand in one or more of four ways: They create or purchase new products and services, create or enter new customer segments, enter new geographic locations, or enter related lines of business. A company can pursue each of these strategies in various ways—for example, adding new price points or finding new uses for a product or service that will appeal to new customers.
The power of a repeatable model lies in the way it turns the sources of differentiation into routines, behaviors, and activity systems that everyone in the organization can understand and follow so that when a company sets out on a particular growth path, it knows how to maintain the differentiation that led to its initial success. The global agribusiness Olam is a case in point. The company began as a cashew trader. It purchased nuts directly from farmers in Nigeria and sold them to a dozen customers in Europe, managing a supply chain from the farm gate to the shop door. This approach was unusual for the industry. It cut out middlemen, safeguarded Olam’s access to products, and increased the company’s market intelligence and speed of reaction. To do this well, of course, Olam had to learn to work closely with small farmers. It also had to develop a risk management system that drew on information garnered from farmers, customers, and commodities and foreign exchange markets to minimize the risks of crop problems, price and currency volatility, and supply disruption.
These capabilities translated into other contexts. Olam realized that its knowledge of small farmers in Nigeria could be applied to small farmers in, say, Burkina Faso. Its risk management skills could be applied to peanuts or coffee beans as well as to cashews. The company accordingly added both farmers and customers in new countries and new products. It now sources 20 agricultural products from farmers in 65 countries and delivers them to more than 11,000 customers across the world.
Of course, Olam’s differentiation evolved as the company grew. For instance, as it expanded into certain countries, it found opportunities to acquire and fold in small operations based in those countries. Although Olam had no experience with M&A, its capabilities and assets, including good contacts at the ground level in its countries of operation, gave it an advantage in recognizing promising opportunities and understanding how to negotiate with and integrate acquisitions.
Over time, the company has developed playbooks for M&A and deal integration and now considers them important differentiating features that frontline managers (and everyone else in the organization) understand and value. As Olam’s CEO, Sunny Verghese, explains, “Our line managers find and consummate transactions at the local level. It is sort of a hidden asset that we have because our people are in the market at a lower level of contact than anyone else. Our ability in transactions is now part of our core, and we manage it centrally with a unique repeatable formula of clear rules and criteria.”
Supporting Your Differentiation
Although differentiation is at the heart of a repeatable model, it needs the support of a rigorously focused yet flexible organization. Our research shows that powerful differentiations create the most enduring profits when a company delivers them to the front line in the form of simple, nonnegotiable principles and when it creates robust learning systems that facilitate constant adaptation. Let’s look at these factors in turn.
Nonnegotiable principles.
This is a fundamental building block of repeatability, a way of keeping everyone on the same page. Analysis of our 200-company database reveals that 83% of the best-performing businesses had established explicit, widely understood principles across the organization, while only 26% of the worst performers had done so. Indeed, a link between well-defined, shared core principles and frontline behavior was more highly correlated with business performance than any other factor we studied.
The logic of this connection seems clear. Nonnegotiables translate the most important beliefs and assumptions underlying the company’s differentiation into a few prescriptive statements that all employees can understand, relate to, and use as a reference point for making trade-offs and decisions. In effect, they are the headlines of the user’s manual for a company’s strategy.
To illustrate how companies use nonnegotiables, let’s go back to Olam. A key differentiator is that the company manages supply chains right from the farm gate. To support this, Olam requires managers to live in the rural areas of developing countries in order to learn what really goes on at the farms. This nonnegotiable principle is the foundation for hiring criteria, assignments, and the structure and content of training. Another nonnegotiable is that each manager give highest priority to relationships with local farmers. Olam’s field operating manual captures many of the routines that support this requirement. The company’s principles, and the practices that support them, are central to its culture and provide a bonding experience for managers, who respond to trade-offs and challenges at all levels with remarkable consistency.
Tetra Pak has different but equally powerful nonnegotiables. One of them is that the package must save more than it costs, an idea that originated with the company’s founder and was the reason for developing its signature tetrahedron-shaped package for milk or juice. Every major new product, package design, or line of equipment must meet that standard. Tetra Pak has developed sophisticated methods for evaluating the systems cost of packaging, including production costs, spoilage, transportation and storage, and disposal costs. It claims that it can reduce operating costs by as much as 12% for a dairy or juice company.
To understand the power of this consistency, consider that from the moment a business is founded, management becomes increasingly distanced from the customer and the front line. Up and down the organization, information slows and grows distorted—the corporate equivalent of the classic game Telephone, in which a message is relayed around a table in whispers and has become unrecognizable by the time it completes the circuit. When a company internalizes a set of principles, the message no longer gets garbled. A shared point of view, core beliefs, and a common vocabulary improve everyone’s ability to communicate and foster self-organization, permitting fewer layers, fewer handoffs, and shorter communication lines. All this increases the speed of a business, which means you can capture more growth opportunities ahead of competitors and accomplish more per unit of time.
Robust learning systems.
Clear differentiation supported by nonnegotiables confers a competitive advantage—for a while. As markets shift, however, successful organizations must also be able to learn quickly and adapt to new circumstances. Both our research and the recent history of business reflect the importance of supporting your differentiation with rapid learning and adaptation. Some 48% of managers in our top group of performers felt that their companies were characterized by strong learning systems, compared with only 9% among the rest. The travails of Kodak, General Motors, Xerox, Nokia, Sony, Kmart, and many others can be seen as cases of arrested adaptation—great formulas that simply did not change fast enough. Most such cases, we should note, didn’t involve disruptive innovations that caught the incumbent flat-footed. Stalls and stagnation stem from a failure to learn much more often than from a hard-to-predict disruption.
The most common method of learning in companies with great repeatable models comes from direct, immediate customer feedback. The most powerful demonstration we have seen is through Net Promoter systems, which are used at Vanguard, in Apple’s retail division, and at many other companies. In this approach, customers are usually asked one or two questions shortly after contact about their satisfaction with the experience and their willingness to recommend the product, service, or company to a friend or colleague. The power of the Net Promoter Score lies in its simplicity. Companies that chase more-detailed feedback typically find that customers don’t bother to engage, so data are fewer and poorer as a result.
In more-complex environments, companies with direct sales forces have other interesting opportunities to create strong feedback loops with customers. Take the toolmaker Hilti. Founded in 1941 by Martin and Eugen Hilti as a mechanical workshop with five employees in Schaan, Liechtenstein, the company focused on innovative tools for difficult construction jobs. Martin Hilti spent much time at job sites, observing and interacting with customers. This was the start of the Hilti direct sales force. Over the decades, the business grew one tool at a time. The company would develop a basic design and then innovate intensively on the details, using information its salespeople acquired at job sites. Today, in an industry where about 75% of products are sold through indirect channels, this direct customer contact remains a differentiated strength. It accounts in part for Hilti’s ability to command significant price premiums over competitors.
Real-time response is a competitive weapon of growing importance in a world of increasing speed and complexity. The companies that move fastest can often operate within competitors’ decision cycles, so competitors are always responding to them rather than the other way around. Marcia Blenko, Paul Rogers, and Michael Mankins recently studied 760 companies worldwide through 40 questions regarding perceptions of decision speed, quality, and ability to execute. When they synthesized the responses into an index of decision effectiveness, they found that companies ranked in the top quintile produced, on average, a total shareholder return about 6 percentage points higher than the returns of other companies. Companies with robust learning systems usually score higher than average on all three counts.
A repeatable differentiation can falter and even collapse without nonnegotiable principles and robust learning systems—and without strong management to preserve and protect it. Think of Nokia. Its leaders created a formula for tablet-shaped handsets that allowed it to achieve enormous economies of scale and dominate the market for more than a decade. Yet despite considerable surplus resources during that time, the company’s leaders failed to adapt and invest aggressively in the future. As a result, in just a year Nokia lost its market position to Apple, Google, and Research In Motion. This lesson is all the more sobering given that Nokia’s R&D and product development teams had many years earlier created some of the basic concepts later used in the iPhone: a large display, a touchscreen, internet readiness, and an app store. The search for profitable growth is becoming increasingly difficult. Today fewer than 10% of companies achieve more than a modest level of profitable growth over a decade, and the odds of success are declining. A series of interviews we conducted with CEOs regarding their challenges on the job spotlight two reasons for this state of affairs. One is that companies are forced to adapt faster than ever. The other—and this one was at the top of the list—is the need to control ever-growing levels of complexity. Sluggish, too-complex organizations are the silent killers of corporate growth and profitability. Interestingly, only 15% of executives in our survey cited a lack of attractive opportunities as a major barrier to growth. Internal complexity and barriers to speed of adaptation were far more important.
Our findings show that the simplest strategies, built around the sharpest differentiations, have hidden advantages not only with customers but also internally, with the frontline employees who must mobilize faster and adapt better than competitors. When people in an organization deeply understand the sources of its differentiation, they move in the same direction quickly and effectively, learning and improving the business model as they go. And they turn in remarkable performance year after year.
Most innovations, even disruptive ones, affect only one part of a business model.
The power of a repeatable model lies in the way it turns the sources of differentiation into routines, behaviors, and activity systems.
The travails of Kodak, General Motors, Xerox, and others can be seen as cases of arrested adaptation—great formulas that simply did not change fast enough.
Read more on Business models or related topics Competitive strategy, Growth strategy and Strategy
Chris Zook is a partner in Bain & Company’s Boston office and has been a co-head of the firm’s global strategy practice for twenty years. He is a co-author of a number of bestselling books including Profit from the Core and The Founder’s Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth (Harvard Business Review Press, June 2016).
James Allen is a partner in Bain & Company’s London office and a co-head of the firm’s global strategy practice. He also leads Bain’s Founder’s Mentality 100 initiative. He is a co-author of a number of bestselling books including Profit from the Core and The Founder’s Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth (Harvard Business Review Press, June 2016).


Home / NCAAF / NCAAF News / North Carolina vs. Florida State, 10/17/20 College Football Week 7 Predictions
North Carolina vs. Florida State, 10/17/20 College Football Week 7 Predictions
North Carolina vs. Florida State Prediction
ACC rivals will meet in Tallahassee on Saturday night when unranked Florida State hosts No. 5 North Carolina at 7:30 p.m. ET. Are the unbeaten Tar Heels laying too many points to their division rivals or will Mack Brown’s team role against the inferior Seminoles?
125 North Carolina Tar Heels (-13.5) at 126 Florida State Seminoles (+13.5); o/u 64
Doak Campbell Stadium, Tallahassee, FL
7:30 p.m. ET, Saturday, October 17, 2020
North Carolina sophomore QB Sam Howell completed 18-of-23 passes for 257 yards with three touchdowns in a 56-45 victory over Virginia Tech. Howell just missed having a fourth touchdown pass, but his swing-out to Dazz Newsome was behind the line of scrimmage, so it was ruled a rushing score. Even without it, this was a very impressive effort from the 6-foot-1, 225-pound signal-caller. His best throw of the day was a 43-yard dart to Dyami Brown to make it 35-14 with just 14 seconds left in the first half. Howell had some issues getting the ball down field prior to this week in the first two games. He did not against the struggling Virginia Tech defense on Saturday. The Tar Heels move to 3-0, and they should have no trouble scoring points against Florida State next Saturday.
Florida State Seminoles Game Notes
Florida State redshirt freshman QB Jordan Travis (hand) was a participant in Tuesday’s practice according to HC Mike Norvell. Just how much Travis (6’3/195), who injured his hand during Saturday’s loss at Notre Dame, was able to do during the session was not divulged by his head coach. But the fact that the redshirt freshman, who is listed as the starter on the depth chart ahead of the Seminoles’ game at North Carolina, has taken part in each of the last two practices in some capacity may be viewed as a positive. Should Travis not be healthy enough to play on Saturday, former starter James Blackman would be first choice to fill the void.
North Carolina vs. Florida State Betting Prediction
The Tar Heels covered in all four of their last four trips to Tallahassee and are 5-2 against the spread in their last seven meetings with the Seminoles overall. The road team has also cashed the last six times these two ACC rivals have faced each other and the Tar Heels have covered five of their last six games overall. The Seminoles, meanwhile, have been a dreadful play for backers. They’re 0-5 against the spread in their last five home games, are 1-6 against the number in their last seven games overall and are 4-11-1 at the betting window in their last 16 games as an underdog. It’s tempting to take the home dog on a Saturday night when facing a ranked rival but I just can’t do it with FSU.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL WEEK 7 BETTING PREDICTION: NORTH CAROLINA TAR HEELS -13.5


How climate change affects populations
The main activity of the team’ s research program is the study of the effects of global changes on marine ecosystems, using birds and mammals as sentinels. Located in the upper part of food webs, marine birds and mammals naturally integrate the dynamics of lower trophic levels and are considered reliable indicators of the state of the ecosystems to which they belong.
The scientific objective is to understand the mechanisms of interactions between individuals, populations and their environment, in order to establish scenarios on the future evolution of marine ecosystems and populations of top predators. Past observations (long-term series over decades) make it possible to establish how changes in the environment and uses influence the demographic trajectories of predator populations and to estimate their capacity to adapt to environmental changes.
This research is being conducted in a wide variety of marine ecosystems, mainly in French mainland and overseas waters, notably in the French Southern and Antarctic Territories (TAAF), with the support of the Institut Polaire Français Paul Emile Victor (IPEV). Every year, six young contract biologists are recruited to go into the field to study marine predators (albatrosses, petrels, penguins, sea lions, elephant seals, etc.) for a 14-month break, cut off from “civilisation”.
The Marine Predator Team began its activities at the CEBC in 1985. It is currently the result of the merger in 2014 of two teams located respectively in Chizé (CNRS) and La Rochelle (La Rochelle University). This natural rapprochement was preceded by the creation in 2010 of the PELAGIS Observatory which gathers the pre-existing databases of the two sites. The PELAGIS Observatory is now directly supported by the new Marine Predators team and manages spatial databases (observations, telemetry), strandings, counts and capture-recapture databases, as well as the oceanographic database of the MEMO Observing System.
Birds and marine mammals, sentinels of the oceans
The Marine Predators team studies the effects of global changes on ocean ecosystems and works towards their conservation.
Charles-André Bost
Christophe Barbraud
LRU Senior Lecturer
Research Engineer CNRS
Chritophe Guinet
Research scientist CNRS
Professor of Universities LRU
Study Engineer CNRS
Students and Post-docs
Pierre-Loup Jan
Candice Michelot
Yann Planque
Christophe Sauser
Lola Gilbert


Years of effort and investment lead to NCI's biggest win
Navy intends to award 5-year cybersecurity IDIQ
By Matthew Weigelt
The Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC) intends to award a single, five-year indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity contract for IT and cybersecurity support services.
The warfare center will use the IDIQ for services, such as analysis, design, development and testing, integration and deployment of IT systems and services. The work will include configuration management, technical information assurances, network monitoring, and defense and security, as the contractor backs up the cybersecurity workforce.
The Navy expects to release a request for proposals for the IDIQ in early 2017.
The Navy released a solicitation Nov. 14. Responses are due by Jan. 5.
Matthew Weigelt is a freelance journalist who writes about acquisition and procurement.


“Ocean’s 11” (2001) Review
Posted on December 9, 2001 October 24, 2011 by John DiBiase
– for some language and sexual content.
Director: Steve Soderbergh
Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts, Andy Garcia
Danny Ocean has just been released from prison after serving time for a robbery crime. Once out he immediately starts work on a new plan… a crazy plan to rob three casinos at once. To pull it off, Danny needs to enlist the help of some trustworthy assistance. Ocean hires a total of eleven men (including himself) to carry out the tall task. Can they pull it off? Things get even more complicated when the ten discover Ocean’s ex-wife is dating the casino owner of the casinos they intend to rob…
Wow. Quite the cast. This film surprised me in many ways, and also kind of disappointed me from a content standpoint. For what one might expect from such a cast and from almost any film these days (and considering the director who did such films as Erin Brockovich & Traffic), you would probably expect a vulgarity-soaked let-down. But although I’m grateful it wasn’t worse, and that they did overall keep the swearing and vulgarities to a minimum, I can’t help but notice that with just a little bit more fine tuning, we could have had a winning PG film on our hands.
Of course, we can note that the film does break the eighth commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” And while it does glorify the act, I believe it is possible to watch the film for entertainment value and not feel the need to rob a wealthy (or any) establishment following viewing the film. The film has a slick, cool, funky feel to it. It’s sly, witty, and most of the dialog follows suit. It’s a clever remake of the 1960 original which featured the “Rat Pack” Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and others. It was nice getting to see such an ensemble and have it actually work while other notable times it has completely flopped (anybody remember Mars Attacks? If you see this film anywhere… run and hide from this atrocity in filmmaking).
Let me just say, I want to love this movie. I really do. There’s so much to like about the characters and the plot. Let me say what I want to hate about the movie as well. The language. Yes it’s arguably less than most movies in this genre, but were the 2 “f” words really all that necessary? Did the (roughly) eight uses of blasphemy add to the film? (Tell me it did and I’ll show you another commandment) There were, of course, a number of other unnecessary
colorful phrases and a few sexual comments but thankfully not many. Only instance of sexual content otherwise is a brief glimpse at a flyer ad for a hooker who is suggestively holding her bare chest (no nudity shown). Also in a bar we briefly see some dancers dancing suggestively in a couple scenes. They really could have done without all this but unfortunately didn’t.
The chemistry between the actors was magnetic and fun to watch. The movie took its time and may seem to drag for some, but it didn’t rush through character development or the planning of the heist. It was well directed by Soderbergh and executed in a very stylish fashion. If they had only polished it up — content-wise — it would have been much more enjoyable.
Overall, I really liked the film, but due to the above-mentioned complaints, I can’t completely recommend it.
– John DiBiase (reviewed: 12/9/01)
Parental Guide: Content Summary
Sex/Nudity: Two uses of innuendo. While Rusty is playing cards with a table of guys, we see some female dancers in immodest outfits dancing in a somewhat suggestive fashion. We see a advertisement for hookers that has a topless woman on the front with her hands over her bare chest, but there is no explicit nudity.
Vulgarity/Language: 2 “f” words, 7 “s” words, 5 “g*dd*mn,” 1 “scr*w,” 3 “h*ll,” 4 “J-sus,” 1 “G-d,” 1 “For G-d’s sake.” Yen gives Rusty the finger after he makes a sarcastic comment to Yen.
Alcohol/Drugs: Lots of people have drinks during the film considering it takes place in a casino.
Blood/Gore: After being beaten up, we see that Danny has some cuts and bruises on his face.
Violence: Some gunshots; in a flashback we see a man shot as he’s trying to rob a casino (not graphic); Danny is beat up by a large man
Posted in Reviews, TheatricalTagged 4.5 stars, Andy Garcia, Brad Pitt, crime, George Clooney, heist, Julia Roberts, Matt Damon, remake, Steve Soderbergh
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