Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Kroger Details Its Fun-Filled Visa Negotiations

Have retailers suddenly started developing backbones, in terms of pushing back on payments companies? On Monday (June 27), Kroger sued Visa about how it was implementing EMV, in much the same way that Walmart and Home Depot have done. This follows Walmart kicking Visa out of Canada and a major German company rejecting PayPal after PayPal apologized and reinstated it. Did somebody spike the NRF water fountains with super-caffeine or something? Or have merchants decided that they can push back on payments giants with little else of meaningful pain?

EMV rules seems to have been the PIN straw that broke the POS camel's back, as even Apple Pay has suffered performance degradations following EMV migrations. The big picture arguments about security-that it's blindingly obvious that PIN is far more secure than signature-are obscured by the reality that this is really a fight about interchange fees. And the EMV argument that the path to PIN must be glacially slow or else American consumers will freak out from the change, despite the fact that most are quite used to PINs from ATMs and debit cards, is frighteningly valid. And here it is in the land of EMV rules that grocery giant Kroger makes it stand.

For Brexit Payments, A Big PF Opportunity

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote in the U.K., some payments professionals were panicked given the huge number of European Union payments regulations at play. A U.K. that went its own way on payments-just as it did with monetary policy when it stuck with the Pound and never embraced the Euro-could cause confusion and other problems with cross-border transactions.

This issue is critical for payment facilitators for two reasons. First, one of the biggest values offered by PFs is that PFs offer a way for merchants to sidestep payments complexities. With all of this uncertainty throughout the European payments world, confusion could easily make merchants far more open to the idea of bringing in a PF, as a guard against having to deal with a wide range of potentially changing payments rules. Secondly, the other dominant value offered by PFs are services for merchants that go way beyond what is currently offered. Those services include a wide range of offerings, but ways to effortlessly manage cross-border payments in a post-EU payments world would certainly be among them.

How To Easily Clean Your Upholstery and Your Leather Couch

Leather Sofa - CleaningTips

How to Clean Upholstery and How to Clean Your Sofa

Make sure you vacuum your upholstery before cleaning it.

If your upholstery starts to look dingy, or has developed lots of stains and spots, before you do anything else it is important to vacuum it.

Blot the spill quickly – One of the most important tips on cleaning your upholstery.

READ MORE

The first thing to do when any spill occurs is to blot (not scrub or rub) the spill up with a white cloth as quickly as possible to lessen the spread of the stain, and to keep it from setting in a larger area.

How To Easily Clean Your Leather Couch Sofa

Fiber Care & The Cleaning Company

Fabric Protection & Cleaning Services for Upholstery, Draperies, Rugs and Carpet.

CALL (214) 987-4111

Monday, June 27, 2016

Ultherapy – Visible Effects the Only FDA-Cleared Procedure to Non-Invasively Lift the Eyebrow, Neck and Under-Chin

Ultherapy is back!! Book an Ultherapy treatment and get 50% off Photofacial!

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Friday, June 24, 2016

Natural Cancer Treatment – Benefits of Massage, Yoga and Acupuncture in Cancer Care

Find the Natural Cancer Treatment for You

Cancer Tutor is a leading voice in natural cancer treatment and prevention.

How important is building your immune system?

The immune system is critical when fighting cancer. While some treatments kill cancer cells and other treatments revert the cancer cells into normal cells, the immune system still has to be fixed before the patient is whole.

Read More

Gerson Therapy

The Gerson Institute is a non-profit organization in San Diego, California, dedicated to providing education and training in the Gerson Therapy, an alternative, non-toxic treatment for cancer and other chronic degenerative diseases.

How Yoga Helps Cancer Patients and Cancer Survivors

Cancer patients who practice yoga as therapy during their treatment often refer to their yoga practice as a life-saver. No matter how sick from treatments and no matter how little energy, many find that the one thing that would bring relief were a gentle set of therapeutic yoga poses geared for cancer patients.

Read More

The Value of Acupuncture in Cancer Care

The evidence currently available has suggested that acupuncture is a safe and effective therapy to manage cancer and treatment related symptoms, while giving patients the ability to actively participate in their own care plan.

Read More

What are the general benefits of massage for someone with cancer?

deep relaxation

reduced stress

improved sleep

eased constipation

increased alertness and mental clarity

reduced anxiety

less nausea

reduced pain

Read More

Stress Relief Massage Center

Center for Massage Therapy

Today, medical doctors, chiropractors, osteopathic physicians and massage therapists advocate the use of massage therapy to ensure maximum health.

Providing massage in Denver, Colorado since 1984, Center for Neuromuscular Massage Therapy, Inc. is a group of nationally certified massage therapists whose skills, advanced training, and integrity have helped grow our massage center to be one of the largest massage therapy clinics in Colorado.

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Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Gaming Payments Gets Serious: Tencent Drops $8.6 Billion On Game Firm

Of all of the various payments hotspots that payment facilitators need to focus on, gaming-and all of its in-app potential-may be the one of the most lucrative. Witness Tencent Holdings Ltd., which this week confirmed plans to drop $8.6 billion to buy an 84 percent slice of the Finnish maker of the Clash Of Clans mobile game.

Games generate one payment for the initial purchase-which, for a popular game, is tantalizing enough on its own-and then a potentially unlimited number of follow-on purchases as players purchase new weapons or characters or cheats or various upgrades. Game companies are generally great at creating the games, but they need help facilitating effortless payments within those games. Enter PFs.

Will Police Take Payments During Traffic Stops?

For the payments geeks among us, transaction processing can be arresting. But in a bizarre twist, some police are doing both: arresting and processing payments and doing them both in the middle of a traffic stop on the side of the road. Will the familiar flashing-red-light refrain soon be "License, registration and Visa card, please?" In Oklahoma City, the answer might be "yes."

This all comes from a bid request that started with the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety to a Fort Worth supplier named ERAD Group Inc., which specializes in payment offerings for law enforcement.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

3D Printing Dutch Designed Chair – Fun With 3D Printing Technology!

Dutch designer Lilian van Daal claims 3D-printing can replace traditional upholstery techniques to produce spongy-surfaced furniture in this movie filmed in Eindhoven.

Van Daal is investigating alternative production methods for upholstered furniture, which is usually very resource-intensive to make.Are there other benefits to 3D Printing a chair?

Learn more about 3D Printing!

Monday, June 20, 2016

Frankfurt A Model For Sustainability

Most Cities Failing On Sustainability

Cities around the world are failing to meet the needs of their people, according to the inaugural Sustainable Cities Index. However, on a broad scale that measures people, planet and profit, Frankfurt is the world's most sustainable city. London is the runner up.

The research was conducted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research. It examines 50 cities from 31 countries ranking them across a range of indicators to estimate the sustainability of each city. The cities included in the study were selected to provide a sampling of the planet's greenest cities.

The 2015 report finds that no utopian city exists, with city leaders having to manage a complex balancing act between the three pillars of sustainability (people, planet and profit). The overall Arcadis Sustainable Cities Index ranks the cities as follows:

Frankfurt

London

Copenhagen

Amsterdam

Rotterdam

Berlin

Seoul

Hong Kong

Madrid

Singapore

Sydney

Toronto

Brussels

Manchester

Boston

Paris

Melbourne

Birmingham

Chicago

New York

Houston

Philadelphia

Tokyo

Rome

Washington

Kuala Lumpur

San Francisco

Los Angeles

Dallas

Santiago

Sao Paulo

Mexico City

Dubai

Abu Dhabi

Shanghai

Istanbul

Johannesburg

Buenos Aires

Beijing

Rio de Janeiro

Doha

Moscow

Jeddah

Riyadh

Jakarta

Manila

Mumbai

Wuhan

New Delhi

Nairobi

The index takes into account 20 different indicators ranging from green space to income inequality to ease of doing business.

Although mature cities achieve the best balance, they cannot rely on historic investment. In a rapidly urbanizing world, the way in which cities are planned, built, operated and redefined has a huge social, environmental and economic impact.

Arcadis defines a sustainable city as one that works well for their citizens in the present without causing problems for themselves and the rest of the world in the future.

Roughly half of Frankfurt's surface area is green, according to the city's environment department, which notes that 52 percent of the city area has been set aside for recreation and to offset climate change. It consists of parks, woodland, farmland, orchard meadows, grassland, allotments and hobby gardens, cemeteries, roadside grass verges and bodies of water.

Frankfurt also is a founding member of the Climate Alliance of European Cities, pledging to continuously reduce its carbon emissions by 10 percent every five years, resulting in a 50 percent cut by 2030.

Across the world, cities are performing better for being sustainable for Profit and Planet purposes than they are for People factors. Many of the world's economic powerhouses are becoming less affordable for their citizens, with the cost of property in New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong penalizing their rankings. There is also a tradeoff globally between strong education and poor work-life balance, particularly demonstrated in Hong Kong.

“City leaders need to find ways to balance the demands of generating strong financial returns, being an attractive place for people to live and work, while limiting their damage to the environment. To truly understand how sustainable a city is, we must understand how it ranks in People, Planet and Profit. Only then can city leaders act to assess their priorities, and the pathway to urban sustainability – for the good of all,” said John Batten, Global Cities Director at Arcadis, which produced the new urban index.

For more information about the Sustainable Cities Index, visit http://www.sustainablecitiesindex.com/

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Planning Can Make Or Break Advocacy Campaigns

Coalitions, Grassroots Campaigns Can Influence Policy Reform

Citizen movements continue changing the world in the face of corruption, cronyism and mismanagement. It's a dynamic that needs to gain momentum now more than ever as the clash between public health, public property and public servants reaches new heights around the world. It's up to citizens and nonprofit organizations to purge these threats to democracy and citizens.

Most nonprofit organizations could boost their impact with more aggressive advocacy campaigns. Much of the sector needs to shift from just responding to problems to trying to address the root causes of those problems. They must build awareness, understanding and support from all stakeholder groups.

The power to share information and engage stakeholders has never been greater, but most organizations aren't making the most of opportunities. These failures are costly. To help you avoid missed opportunities, here is a quick checklist of strategies and tactics that can help organize and optimize most campaigns.

Internal Communication Strategy

All advocacy campaigns begin internally. Make sure that you notify, educate, motivate and empower your support structure first. Members, customers, employees, allies and others will help you start the parade and they can serve as spokespeople, recruiters, donors, volunteers and more. They will play instrumental roles of disseminating information and opinions via social media. Be sure to segment out these groups as much as possible for tailored messages and different calls to action.

Better Advocacy and Lobbying

Lobbying is when an organization tries to influence the outcome for proposed legislation through communications with legislators and their staff. All lobbying is advocacy, but not all advocacy is lobbying. Nonprofits can hire lobbyists and use staff for lobbying, but it's important to know the rules to protect your campaign and the policymakers from violating procedural rules.

Legislator engagement and education can be different than lobbying, especially when the legislature is out of session. It's important to build awareness, understanding and support for your issues outside of the legislative process. Be sure to target newly elected legislators, committee chairs, past allies, past foes and others who can hurt or help your cause. The pursuit of common ground can yield important alliances and neutralize the most challenging adversaries.

Elected officials respond best to messages from people they know well and from the people they represent, their constituents. While your top level (grass tops) advocates are talking with many different elected officials, support those efforts with you front line (grassroots) supporters should be mobilized and directed to the elected officials that represent their districts.

Harness Public Opinion

Public opinion still influences most public policy, but the battle for the hearts and minds of citizens, communities and leaders is fierce. Plus, people are being bombarded with issues at an accelerating rate, so gaining attention and keeping audiences engaged long enough to act is part of the challenge.

$frack demonstration event$

Every issue is different, which means that every campaign is different. However, the assessment and planning process is fairly standard. The following checklist is a simple overview of our planning process at Crossbow.

Stakeholder Research and Segmentation. Start a list of all groups that share a stake in the issue and the outcome. Build and buy lists with current contact information. Make sure that you can segment that list based on a variety of factors to help you send custom messages to each group as appropriate. Learn as much as possible about each group and each contact.

Competitive Research. Who stands in your way and why? What can you do to overcome their objections? What can be done to neutralize their voice and influence?

Read the full story about maximizing the power of advocates at http://crossbowcommunications.com/tips-tools-for-advocacy-campaigns/

Friday, June 17, 2016

Tips and Tools For Better Advocacy Campaigns

Public Opinion Can Shape Public Policy

Grassroots movements continue changing the world. It's a dynamic that needs to gain momentum now more than ever. It's up to citizens and nonprofit organizations to purge threats to democracy and people.

Most nonprofit organizations could boost their impact with more aggressive advocacy campaigns. Much of the sector should shift from crisis response to problem prevention. They must build awareness, understanding and support from all stakeholder groups to build support for reform.

The power to share information and engage stakeholders has never been greater, but most organizations aren't making the most of opportunities. These failures are costly. To help you avoid missed opportunities, here is a quick checklist of strategies and tactics that can help organize and optimize most campaigns.

Internal Communication

All advocacy campaigns begin internally. Notify, educate, motivate and empower your support structure first. Members, customers, employees, allies and others will help you start the parade and they can serve as spokespeople, recruiters, donors, volunteers and more. They will play instrumental roles of disseminating information and opinions via social media. Segment out these groups as much as possible for tailored messages.

Advocacy and Lobbying

Public Opinion

$frack demonstration event$

Competitive Research. Who stands in your way and why? What can you do to overcome their objections? What can be done to neutralize their voice?

Identify & Recruit Existing Allies. Recruit the strongest supporters first. Use that momentum to keep recruiting other key individuals and organizations.

Coalition Development. Do you form a coalition or just have supporters, members and endorsements to represent your position? Coalitions can help the movement position itself and the adversary in a strategic light. The coalition name can serve as a statement itself. A coalition also can help deflect attention away from individual supporters or allies.

Campaign Strategy and Plan. establish a clear and measurable goal. Draw up the action plan that can reach that goal. Include a timeline and budget.

Message Development. Who needs to hear what? Can we segment our lists/mediums and customize messages accordingly? What are the top three points that we must convey? What objections must be overcome? What action do we want people to make?

Community Engagement and Education. Who are the major stakeholder groups? Who are the local leaders and influencers? What are their goals and concerns?

Community engagement can broaden understanding of the issues and increase people's willingness to give their time and money to support your cause. It also can activate clients that directly benefit from nonprofit services.

Channel Development and Management. Build your audiences and networks on social media. Build your email lists. Encourage people to subscribe to your RSS feed.

Earned Media. Earning media coverage is one of the most powerful tactics available.It's credible, it's influential and it can become viral. Pitch journalists and reporters to write features. Send out media releases to consumer and trade mediums. Offer expert lists and media kits, fact sheets, b-roll, photos and other resources necessary to tell the story from your perspective. Write letters to the editor and comment online in response to related news coverage. Use these opportunities to expand the conversation or focus it as appropriate.

Social Media. Have your advocates create and share videos telling why your issue is important to them. Upload it to YouTube, share it on social media, and embed it in your landing page or website. The organization's leaders can do this as well for educational purposes. Start off by using social media to educate and expand your networks. As a bill moves through the legislature, for example, your social media should move from educating and organizing to mobilization with specific calls to action. Remind people to share and spread the message to friends and their networks.

Develop Spokespeople. Who are the most influential people in your organization and coalition? Recruit them to serve as official spokespeople. Train different leaders to help you reach specific target markets. Train them to deliver the key messages concisely. Empower them with tools that can help maximize their reach and their impact.

Develop Volunteers. Grassroots campaigns depend on volunteers. They can help with logistics, events, fundraising, social media and so much more.

Petitions. Some petitions are actionable and some are purely symbolic statements. Seek more than signatures during these outreach efforts. Make the action step easy to find and appealing to take. Keep these supporters informed and engaged.

Events and Rallies. Events can help accomplish many objectives. Use them to help build awareness, understanding and support for your cause. Use them to feature your most influential supporters. Use them to recruit new supporters and engage existing ones. Use them to educate citizens, the media and stakeholders at large. Use them to position your supporters as leaders and your opponents as losers. Use them to raise money and generate online buzz.

Web Strategy. Maximize your online visibility and influence. Have an online portal (a microsite specific to the cause) and drive traffic there for more information and engagement. Maximize search engine optimization to help stakeholders and media find you.

Ongoing Email and CRM. Keep stakeholders and supporters informed and engaged. Aggregate all the actions that have happened on your legislative landing page and email it directly to legislators prior to their vote. Send it also to your supporters and let them know that you have sent their actions on to their legislators. Everyone wants to know the results of their actions and stay informed.

Good luck with your campaign. Please contact us for more firepower.

Crossbow is a full-service advertising agency and public relations firm in Denver, Colorado and Phoenix, Arizona. The firm specializes in issue management and public affairs, with an emphasis on healthcare and natural resources. Crossbow has helped influence public opinion and public policy around the world.

Stakeholder Management via http://crossbowcommunications.com/tips-tools-for-advocacy-campaigns/

Global Business Video-How Do Executives Handle International Business Demands?

Many times, U.S. companies want to sell their products overseas, but aren't willing to make the required investment to do it right. For primary markets that a firm is really wants badly, going cheap isn't advisable. But it can be done less expensively - if you get a partner, and if you're careful. International business videos can help!

Thursday, June 16, 2016

China Reforestation Becoming A Global Model

Economic Growth Has Taken Its Toll On China's Natural Resources

The Chinese government has payed close attention to ecological and environmental issues for years. Contrary to popular belief, sustainability and environmental protection are long-term strategies vital to the country's health and wealth.

China started framing environmental protection as a fundamental national policy in the 1980s. It established sustainable development as a national strategy in the 1990s. At the turn of the century, the government proposed a “Scientific Outlook on Development” that is people-centered, fully coordinated, and environmentally sustainable. Since 2012, the government has incorporated Eco-civilization into the national blueprint, which outlines a commitment to “innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development.”

This blueprint has given great impetus to the implementation of Eco-civilization with environmental quality at its core aiming at making the skies bluer, mountains greener, water cleaner, and the ecological environment better.

President Xi Jinping has pointed out that green is gold and that moving towards a new era of eco-civilization and building a beautiful China are key to realizing the Chinese Dream of rejuvenating the nation.

Since its reform and opening-up thirty years ago, the country has seen its economy grow at an annual average of 9.8 percent. It has successfully transitioned from a low-income to a high middle-income country with significant economic achievements, almost having reached levels of industrialization and urbanization that took one to two hundred years in developed countries.

Meanwhile, China has paid a heavy environmental price, with the emergence of problems such as soot pollution, ozone depletion, fine particulate matters (PM2.5), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Pollution from different sources – production and households, urban and rural, industry and transport – appear to be intertwined with each other.

For years China was notorious for denuding its forests of vegetation to expand its economy. The economy grew, but water sources were tainted, air polluted and animal habitats demolished. Only a few years ago, just two percent of China's forests were undisturbed. Deadly floods in 1998 caused by the lack of trees prompted the government to finally take action. They implemented the National Forest Conservation Program.

China banned logging in many areas and then paid farmers, who were accustomed to earning money by cutting down trees for wood, to plant trees instead. Some local citizens were paid to monitor forests and report illegal logging activity. The Chinese government claims that the conservation and reforestation plans are working.

Scientists from the University of Michigan evaluated the Chinese government's conservation measures using images from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. They studied data between 2000 and 2010 and found forest cover has grown rapidly in 1.6 percent of China. That may not sound like much, but it's about 61,000 square miles. Meanwhile. 0.38 percent of the nation suffered from deforestation – that's around 14,400 square miles.

The research isn't simply a green light for China to continue every current policy. They're importing more wood now, from countries such as Vietnam, Madagascar, and Russia, which the scientists warned causes deforestation in those other countries.

China plans to cover nearly a quarter of the country in forest by 2020, according to an announcement made via a United Nations report. The goal is part of a larger plan to build an ecological civilization that will serve as a model for future projects around the world.

“The outdated view that man can conquer nature and ignore the bearing capacity of resources and the environment should be completely abandoned,” said Zhu Guangyao, executive vice president of the Chinese Ecological Civilization Research and Promotion Association. “Conscientious efforts should be made to live in harmony with nature.”

In addition to planting, the country will also step up efforts to restore 35 percent of the natural shorelines, reclaim more than half of the desert, and increase prairie vegetation coverage by 56 percent.

“If China succeeds in implementing targets outlined in its ecological blue print, then it will have taken a major step towards shifting to a greener economy,” Achim Steiner, UNEP executive director, said.

To address the dilemmas between economic development and resource/environmental constraints, the government has most recently proposed a policy of pursuing green development and building an Eco-civilization, which involves management of the relationship between humans and nature in a comprehensive, scientific, and systematic manner. It embodies the green is gold perspective of values, development, and governance. It goes beyond and does away with the traditional development patterns and models, guiding the transformation of the production methods and the lifestyle of the entire society.

As China firmly supports and actively implements the concept and actions of sustainable development at the global level, its effort to build an Eco-civilization will make a significant contribution to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The country's practices and experiments to promote an Eco-civilization will not only contribute to addressing its own resource and environmental challenges but also serve as demonstrations for other developing countries that may wish to avoid the dependence on, and the lock-in effect of traditional development pathways. This is conducive to promoting the establishment of a new global environmental governance system and benefitting the noble course of sustainable development for all people, men and women.

Reforestation China via http://reliefweb.int/report/china/green-gold-strategy-and-actions-china-s-ecological-civilization

Tips, Tools For Advocacy Campaigns

Coalitions, Grassroots Campaigns Critical To Policy Reform

Citizen movements continue changing the world in the face of corruption and cronyism. It's a dynamic that needs to gain momentum now more than ever as the clash between public health, public property and public servants reaches new heights around the world. It's up to citizens and nonprofit organizations to purge these threats to democracy and innocent people.

Most nonprofit organizations could boost their impact with more aggressive advocacy campaigns. Much of the sector needs to shift from just responding to problems to trying to address the root causes of those problems. They must build awareness, understanding and support from all stakeholder groups.

Internal Communication

Advocacy and Lobbying

Public Opinion

$frack demonstration event$

Competitive Research. Who stands in your way and why? What can you do to overcome their objections? What can be done to neutralize their voice and influence?

Identify & Recruit Existing Allies. Recruit the strongest supporters first. Use that momentum to keep recruiting other key individuals and organizations.

Campaign Strategy and Plan. establish a clear and measurable goal. Draw up the action plan that can reach that goal. Include a timeline and budget.

Community Engagement and Education. Who are the major stakeholder groups? Who are the local leaders and influencers? What are their goals and concerns?

Channel Development and Management. Build your audiences and networks on social media. Build your email lists. Encourage subscribers to your RSS feed from your blog.

Develop Volunteers. Grassroots campaigns depend on volunteers. They can help with logistics, events, fundraising, social media and so much more. Your best supporters are those who become engaged and involved.

Good luck with your cause and campaign. Please contact us for more firepower.

Crossbow Communications is a full-service advertising agency and public relations firm in Denver, Colorado and Phoenix, Arizona. The firm specializes in issue management and public affairs, with an emphasis on healthcare and natural resources. Crossbow has helped influence public opinion and public policy around the world. It has won state and national awards, while setting state and national records for our clients.

Fraud And Compliance And Rules, Oh My!

The pain of keeping all the rules and regulations straight for a payment facilitator is only exceeded by the pain of not keeping them straight. A PF has to protect itself from merchant problems with underwriting and monitoring, while adhering to the mandates from card brands and acquirers. It's a lot now, but as everyone knows, there's more coming.

As heard in this week's edition of the PaymentFacilitator.com podcast, the best PFs can do to mitigate excessive regulation from without is to do more within, said Rich Consulting president Deana Rich, moderator of the session Emerging Threats Cage Match: Compliance v. Fraud at the second annual Payment Facilitator Day at Transact 16 in April.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Apple Pay Announcement Looks Like A Zero But Could Be A Hero

As exciting as Apple's annual World Wide Developers Conference can be, the news from Monday's keynote seemed on its face sort of ho-hum for payment facilitators. The new abilities within the upcoming release of the iOS 10 mobile and macOS desktop software updates are for now merely more options that PFs have to consider along with their merchant clients. The long term view of these Apple payment moves is scintillating however, given the higher incomes of iOS and MacOS users and the huge gap between what they spend on apps compared to Android users.

The features will allow merchants to add Apple Pay to their Safari browser shopping portal's payment suite, and for merchants to develop apps for iMessage users to use for P2P transactions. In the short term, there are challenges. Shoppers with desktops must have not only a Mac, for communicating with the iPhone or Apple Watch that authenticates the payment, but the Safari browser that Apple owns.

Alibaba-Backed PayTm Struggles With Global Payments. What Chance Do Others Have?

A brutal reminder of how convoluted and treacherous mobile cross-borders are today was shared by Paytm on Friday (June 10). That's when the Alibaba-backed wallet said that it can't be used for overseas payments based on current regulations, requiring instead that wallet users pay in Indian rupees.

Let's be clear. Paytm is no slouch among mobile wallets and it's backed by Alibaba-the multinational's multinational. If Paytm and its partners can't navigate payments from country to country, that's frightening. "While the mobile technology can create lower cost and friction free alternatives for cross border small value payments, the same is subject to licensing under FEMA (Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999). Any cross border payments services by the payments bank will be offered subject to FEMA authorizations and RBI approvals. As such, the current Paytm Wallet cannot be used for overseas payments," the Paytm statement said. "As per the existing authorization, the wallet can only be used in India and any impression that the existing Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPI) semi closed wallet can directly used offshore/for cross border transactions is unintentional."

Square Finally Settles Its Ren Holding Lawsuit

After seven years of back-and-forth legal bickering and on the eve of a civil trial, Square on Friday (June 10) blinked and finally settled with Ren Holdings 3 and Robert Morley. The case was the quintessential Silicon Valley founder tiff, involving arguments over who really came up with the key parts of the idea that launched the now-powerful payment facilitator player. (Why do we never see pitched legal battles over who came up with the idea for companies that quickly fizzled and died? Just asking….)

The particular ideas that were mostly at issue were the patent for Square's payment card reader-seems that glass art business owner Jim McKelvey's name was left off, after he allegedly pointed out the payment flaw that was the essence of Square's raison d'etre-and other mobile payment approaches. The argument is that McKelvey came up with the idea and that he discussed it with Jack Dorsey-now the CEO of Square and, in his spare time, Twitter-and Morley. These arguments are classic Silicon Valley. Whose implementation idea is it? The person who noticed the problem and had a vague idea how to make it work, the more technical person who figured out a precise way to make it work, the specialist (in this case, payments expertise) who amended all of the above to work best with the rules and infrastructure of existing reality or the business person who figured out the way to let it generate revenue and profits? It's usually something close to a true collaboration-which makes splitting up the money later more challenging. Also, these interactions are rarely transcribed, beyond some e-mails and texts. If key meetings happened in person, egos and greed-fueled memories dominate. Hello, judge and jury.

Monday, June 13, 2016

Achieve a YEAR'S Worth of Success in Just 90 Days

Want to achieve a year's worth of success in just 90 days? Here's how…

Not only does Todd Herman rock a damn good suit…

But he also rocks a damn bold promise too.

Not too many coaches would have the chutzpah to stand before an audience of savvy (and skeptical) entrepreneurs and proclaim to have a framework that allows them to achieve a year's worth of EPIC wins in just 90 days.

And it doesn't matter how well researched, proven and battle-tested his methods are.

(as you'll see in Video 3, Todd goes to EXTREME lengths to prove the efficacy of his systems).

Nor the fact that he's spent two decades working in the trenches with Olympians, pro athletes and Fortune 100 CEO'S in the world's most grueling competitive environments.

Regardless of ALL that…

Todd has shown a crazy amount of courage to make his claims, knowing that they could easily trip up the BS detectors of a VERY smart audience.

But that's the promise Todd has made us.

To help ambitious entrepreneurs like you and I reach levels of unparalleled performance while outgunning our competitors with the advanced achievement systems that allow us to rack up game changing win after game changing win.

And while the first two videos in his 90 Day Jumpstart Series gave us a strong peek into that possibility…

Video #3 (which Todd JUST released)… pulls back the curtain on the ENTIRE 90 Day Year System.

What Todd reveals is a robust, yet elegant 8-Phase Model that breeds 100% confidence that the results he promises are not only “possible”…

… but downright PROBABLE when armed with the right system.

He also aims his rockets at a bunch of widely popular “mindset” myths that his research proves do wayyyy more harm than good.

(If you've ever bought into the nonsense that you need to “go big”… or start with a meaningful “why” then you'll want to watch this right now)

Anyway, you know the drill.

Don't want to spoil any surprises for you.

Go load up VIDEO #3, and come face to face with the advanced achievement system that will drive your success in 2016 and beyond.

Friday, June 10, 2016

Sewage Sludge On Crops A Public Health Disaster

Contamination Spreading Brain Disease In Humans, Wildlife and Livestock

In 1972, world leaders realized that dumping millions of tons of sewage sludge into the oceans killed entire underwater ecosystems. Some nations stopped the dumping immediately, while others did not.

The U.S., for example, finally passed the Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988. It required dumping all municipal sewage sludge and industrial waste on land. That meant dumping it into landfills or dumping it openly on land, including farms, ranches, national forests, city parks, golf courses, playgrounds, sport fields and beyond. The Act went into effect in 1992 and it sparked a public health disaster. The practice is spreading pathogens to people, livestock, wildlife and beyond every day. It's also fueling mosquitoes with the Zika virus and others that cause brain disease.

Landfills designed to handle this toxic soup are extremely expensive. So, the dumpsters hired a public relations firm to convince unsuspecting citizens that neurotoxins and carcinogens are fertilizer. The PR firm started calling this toxic waste biosolids. It's even sold in bags at your local home and garden store as soil for your garden and potting plants. It's death dirt.

Since then, millions of tons of sewage sludge have been given to farmers as fertilizer and dumped into food and water supplies around the world every year. Those farmers and ranchers who don't believe that “fertilizer” bullshit are being paid to dump sewage sludge on their land and shut up. Sick livestock are sold or buried as quickly as possible. Those that make it to market are consumed by people and pets, while permanently contaminating everything that they touch.

The landowners are held harmless if the sewage sludge causes damage to people or property downwind, downstream or on the dinner table. Landowners are literally making a killing with government assistance.

Unfortunately, the practice of dumping extreme quantities of sewage sludge on land has created an even bigger public health problem. It's killing people, wildlife, livestock and sea mammals downstream.

Prions are infectious proteins responsible for a group of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). The operative word is transmissible. TSEs have been given a wide range of confusing names to keep innocent citizens from connecting the dots of this global disaster, including:

bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) in cattle;

scrapie in sheep;

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans; and

chronic wasting disease in deer, elk, moose and reindeer.

badgers, mink, cats, elephants, dolphins and many other mammalian species have died from TSE. The concept of a species barrier is a myth. A deadly prion is a deadly prion. They don't discriminate.

According to Nobel Laureate Stanley Prusiner, Alzheimer's disease, ALS and Huntington's disease also are on the TSE spectrum. All are fatal, neurodegenerative brain diseases.

Infectious prions are in the bodily fluids of its victims, including blood, urine, mucus, saliva and feces. As such, these victims send prions to the municipal sewage treatment plant where they remain untouched. Wastewater effluent and sewage sludge applied to land recycles prions into the environment. Once dumped on open land, prions remain infectious. Irrigation, precipitation and wind carry the prions into groundwater, streams, lakes, oceans and airways, including homes, offices and beyond.

Reckless wastewater treatment policies and practices are now fueling a global epidemic of neurodegenerative disease among people, wildlife and livestock. In fact, Europe just reported its first case of chronic wasting disease in a reindeer in Norway. There will be many more.

The risk assessments for the land application of sewage sludge (LASS) are based on fraud and outdated information. The risk assessments were developed back in the 1970s and 1980s–before we knew about prions and other killers in modern sewage streams, including many forms of infectious medical waste. These fraudulent risk assessments make the entire practice illegal. Common sense makes them immoral and a crime against humanity.

Because of these reckless practices, it's time to reform many laws, practices and policies. For example, it's vital to demand testing for mad cow disease in beef cattle and hope like hell that dairy producers aren't spreading the disease in milk, cheese and meat. There is no reliable test for live animals, yet, which means that animal health is paramount for public health. There also is no testing of crops grown in sewage sludge, despite the science that has proven that crops for humans and livestock absorb the toxins and pathogens that they are grown in–including deadly prions.

Ironically, the United States passed homeland defense laws to protect our food and water supplies from potential terrorists. Many other nations followed suit. When the U.S. government enacted the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, it classified prions as select agents that pose an extreme risk to food, water and much more. With reckless policy, the U.S. transferred responsibility for the management of select agents in the U.S. to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC–a private corporation that seems to act as the Coverup Division). These questionable defenders of public health quietly took prions off the list about 10 years later because the regulation criminalized entire industries and several reckless practices. They obviously chose to defend someone's bottom line instead of public health.

Unfortunately, prions linger in the environment, homes, hospitals, nursing homes, dental offices and beyond infinitely. They migrate, mutate, multiply and kill with unparalleled efficiency. Prions defy all attempts at sterilization and inactivation.

Prions shed from humans are the most deadly. They demand more respect than radiation. They're being ignored by regulators and industry alike. As such, food and water sources are being contaminated with the deadliest forms of prions. Municipal water systems can't stop them from reaching water taps in millions of homes. Filtration doesn't phase them.

As stated earlier, the risk assessments for biosolids, sewage sludge and reclaimed wastewater were questionable when they were developed and they are total failures now. Plus, these risk assessments do not account for the possibility of sewage sludge dumped on land going airborne via windstorms and tornadoes. These events now leave a trail of sickness and death in their wake. Airborne sewage is a killer. It dumps the toxins, pathogens and superbugs everywhere.

Unfortunately, the U.S. exported these ridiculous ideas to other nations who proceeded to contaminate their food and water supplies with sewage. If hospitals can't stop prions, neither can the brain surgeons at wastewater treatment plants.

The legislation banning ocean dumping was very explicit about the need to stop dumping potentially infectious medical waste into the oceans. Ironically, the current policy that promotes LASS ignores the risk of infectious medical waste and many other threats. It also ignores radionuclides, endocrine disruptors, birth control pills, antibiotics, flame-retardants and other toxins and superbugs. This toxic waste belongs in a lined landfill not our watersheds and food supplies. It's time for immediate reforms.

The same sewage-borne toxins and pathogens are still contaminating our oceans. Now, they're dumped in further upstream. Entire watersheds are now being infected-including the oceans. The body count among people, livestock and wildlife has been stacking up ever since ocean dumping began phasing out.

Biosolids and other forms of sewage mismanagement are now fueling a global epidemic of neurological disease, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, autism,mad cow disease, chronic wasting disease, microcephaly and more. Industry and governments are scrambling to blame the global epidemic on anything but contaminated soil, water, food and air. They are playing dumb in the face of fraud and scientific suppression. Negligence is too kind of a word for these sociopaths.

Sewage sludge and reclaimed wastewater also contaminate our food with listeria, e-coli, salmonella and other killers. In fact, scientists are forced to come up with deceptive new names for the growing list of sewage-related ailments, including Zika virus, West Nile virus, epizoic hemorrhagic fever, equine herpes, valley fever and others. Industrial disease.

As mentioned earlier, crops contaminated by sewage sludge can uptake prions and deliver them throughout the plant. Plants then deliver the deadly prions to mammals that consume the plant. In fact, infected plants are spreading prion diseases to several species, including humans. When hamsters consumed infected wheat grass, the animals were infected with prion disease. Researchers also found deadly prions in plants exposed to infected urine and feces.

“These findings demonstrate that plants can efficiently bind infectious prions and act as carriers of infectivity, suggesting a possible role of environmental prion contamination in the horizontal transmission of the disease,” said Claudio Soto, the lead investigator from the University of Texas at Houston.

Killer prions are impossible to stop. Prions are contributing to the death of millions of people now. Victims produce and spread prions daily because they're in the bodily fluids of all victims. Millions of people with brain disease are contaminating their homes and communities, while exposing caregivers and family members to the contagion. The sewage from these victims is contaminating the local wastewater treatment plant and everything that enters or leaves these facilities, including reclaimed wastewater and sewage sludge. Once dumped on open land, these contagions remain infectious as they migrate, mutate and multiply forever.

Prions demand containment and isolation, not distribution and consumption through air, food and water. These toxins demand lined landfills not reckless dumping on our dinner tables. Since prions migrate, mutate and multiply, dilution is not a solution. Prions are a public health nightmare, not to mention the carnage taking place among other mammals.

The world has never done an effective job of managing its sewage. It's an industry that drives by looking in the rear view mirror. It only swerves when the dead-end road is littered with body bags. After enough people get sick and die, new alternatives emerge. Today is no different.

We now have nearly eight billion people competing for food, water, open spaces and places to dump their sewage. As prion disease spreads and as industrial-scale agriculture becomes more intensive, sewage is becoming deadlier by the day. The stakes have never been higher.

The bodies are stacking up. The contamination grows stronger and spreads further every day. It's time to stop dumping sewage sludge on land because of the prion risk and many others that are not accounted for in the antiquated and fraudulent risk assessments. It's time for citizens to defend our land, water and air. Homelands around the world are under assault and ISIS has nothing to do with it. The terrorists are home-grown traitors. It's treason.

Today, the land application of sewage sludge is killing mammals and more around the world. Pathogens in sludge are causing brain disease, cancer and death. Let's take a meaningful stand for food safety. Just say no to sewage sludge in our watersheds and food supplies. Demand the use of lined landfills and possibly pyrolysis.

Take a free preview of our new eBook to learn everything that you need to know about the epidemic and the mismanagement. The rest of the book explains how to defend yourself with aversion and targeted nutrition. Eating organic foods is one way to minimize your exposure to sewage-borne toxins and pathogens.

Please join our global coalition of Homeland Defenders. Join our campaign for truth and reform. Please write to Gary Chandler for more information gary@crossbow1.com

Food Safety News via http://crossbowcommunications.com/land-application-of-sewage-sludge-spreading-brain-disease/