Replacement costs add to OTC pricing upheaval

As dealers have slid down the ratings spectrum in recent years, options the industry gave away for free when in better health have become painfully relevant, forcing banks to confront the latest in a long line of post-crisis pricing challenges – the replacement valuation adjustment (RVA). It may be a challenge too far.

“They’re horrible,” says the head of rates trading at one large European bank. “We have no idea how to price them or manage the risk associated with them. All I know is that if we get downgraded to a certain point and our counterparties choose to exercise the option, we are going to lose a lot of money.”

The question is how much. The options, known as downgrade triggers, allow a client to terminate a trade when a counterparty hits a certain rating level and also force that party to pay for a replacement – but banks have no way of knowing how much a new dealer might charge to enter into the trade. As a rule of thumb, one trader that has replaced other banks says a downgraded dealer might be gouged for up to 10% of a trade’s net present value.

This, of course, is the law of the jungle – and traders generally do not cry about that. What makes downgrade triggers different is the systemic risk they could present in markets where they are common, and where trading is concentrated in the hands of a small number of rtls – parts of the inflation swap market, for example. Dealers and clients alike worry the downgrade of a large player in this space, and subsequent mass termination of contracts, could overwhelm the market’s ability to replace the risk.

In this scenario, traders warn the 10% rule of thumb goes out of the window – losses could be many times larger than expected. Sweeping downgrades for dealers as a whole could have a similar effect – forcing affected banks to pay their stronger peers to take on trades at a time when nobody wants to trade at all.

As a result, dealers are doing two things they would normally walk over hot coals to avoid – some are turning away business, and others are calling on regulators for help.

“If regulators are serious about systemic risk, then they should seriously look at not allowing these triggers to exist,” says one head of interest rate structuring at a European bank in London. “Calculating an RVA number will be meaningless as any number computed will be too low and wrong. There is not a lot you can do about it, especially in one-way or closed markets. It is much better to just forbid portfolio rating triggers in derivatives contracts – especially in dynamic portfolios – as they are a blunt source of systemic risk.”

Tim Blake, head of fixed-income department portfolio management at Credit Suisse in New York, says the bank no longer writes new business containing downgrade triggers. “We made the decision that we wanted to stay away from that kind of business. The risks can be unacceptable,” he says. And Credit Suisse is not alone. One other, smaller European dealer says it has the same policy, while at least three other banks claim to have imposed strict limits on the number of swaps they will accept with downgrade triggers.

The second issue is that most dealers believe there is a strong correlation between the risk of a bank’s own downgrade and the downgrade of the rest of the Street. A counterparty may be less likely to exercise the trigger if dealer ratings are all slipping, but if it does so the bank will be paying for a replacement trade in stressed conditions, which is likely to significantly inflate the bid-offer spread.

On uncollateralised trades, dealers fear the replacement cost would be even bigger. The pool of willing counterparties for these swaps has shrunk since the crisis, because of the higher funding and capital charges involved, and this could be exacerbated in the event of widespread downgrades. For collateralised trades, modelling is harder still because each bank quoting will do so on the basis of its own credit support annex – the industry standard document governing bilateral collateral posting, which determines what discount rate should be used.

Finally, RVA should take into account the possibility that the new trade will also incorporate a downgrade trigger and that quoting banks may want to insulate themselves by charging an RVA premium, and that this premium needs to reflect the same fact, and so on, in a dizzying, never-ending cascade of downgrades and replacement charges, each of which would be determined by the same incalculable risks that are contained in the first.

The bottom line is that termination costs can be high, but there is no way of confidently putting a number on them – RVA resides in the land of informed guesses, ballpark figures and back-of-the-envelope calculations. It’s not the kind of thing a dealer is generally happy to quote to a client or explain to a risk manager.

“On a trade with a mark-to-market value of, say, $100 million, a general rule is that firms will take you for $5 million–10 million, just because they can. And we’ve seen this done. We have replaced people, it’s an opportunity to profit,” says one derivatives trader at a European bank.

It can be more painful than that, too. Peter Shapiro, managing director at independent swap adviser Swap Financial, which advises governments, government agencies and non-profit organisations, says he has advised on close-outs in which local US government entities were holding heavily out-of-the-money swaps and the banks were paying to step in as replacements often quoted at steep discounts.

All these issues are magnified in illiquid, concentrated markets – and a number of traders point to the long-dated, LDI-driven inflation swap market in the UK as a prime example. The market is dominated by five or six players, they say, and triggers are a common feature of these trades – so, if one of the bigger houses is downgraded, all hell could break loose.

“Rating triggers are, by their nature, wrong-way risk and are hard to quantify. But even more problematic is when these triggers are being used in a space where the underlying product flow is systemic. All banks will be same way round and a trigger will then catapult the bid-offer to unknown but most likely extreme levels – even more so when liquidity and capacity is also a constraint. Inflation and exotics markets are exposed to this kind of risk. We think this is a source of systemic risk. It is being used and pushed by pension funds and we are trying to dissuade the community from relying on these triggers,” says Guido Hebert, global head of rates structuring at HSBC in London.

The UK inflation swap market is intensely competitive, with bid-offer spreads typically between 2 and 4 basis points, traders say. But in stressed market conditions, the spreads can get as wide as 10bp, according to a trader at a large LDI manager. For a ￡10 billion inflation swap portfolio with an average maturity of 20 years and a ￡20 million sensitivity to a 1bp change in inflation – known as IE01 – this means paying the full bid-offer spread (5bp from mid-market) would result in a cost of ￡100 million.

Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!

Is MLK dream reality?

When he boarded a Greyhound bus on his way to Princeton University, Glennon Threatt promised himself he'd never come back here. As a young black man, he saw no chance to fulfill his dreams in a city burdened by the ghosts of its segregated past.Helen Shores Lee left Birmingham years earlier, making the same pledge not to return. A daughter of a prominent civil rights lawyer, she wanted to escape a city tarnished by Jim Crow laws — the "white" and "colored" fountains, the segregated bus seating, the daily indignities she rebelled against as a child.

Both changed their minds. They returned from their self-imposed exile and built successful careers — he as an assistant federal public defender, she as a judge — in a Birmingham transformed by a revolution a half century ago.This week, as the nation marks the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, there may be no better place than Birmingham to measure the progress that followed the civil rights leader's historic call for racial and economic equality.

This city, after all, is hallowed ground in civil rights history. It was here where children marching for equal rights were jailed, where protesters were attacked by snarling police dogs and battered by high-pressure fire hoses. And it was here where four little girls in their Sunday finest were killed when dynamite planted by Ku Klux Klan members ripped through their church in an unspeakable act of evil.

That was the Birmingham of the past. The city that King condemned for its "ugly record of Hands free access." The city where he wrote his impassioned "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," declaring the "moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." The city where the movement came together, found its voice and set the stage for landmark civil rights legislation.

The Birmingham of the present is a far different place. The airport is named after a fearless civil rights champion, the late Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. The city's website features a 'Fifty Years Forward' campaign, forthrightly displaying photos of shameful events in 1963. There are black judges and professors in places where segregation once reigned. And black mayors have occupied City Hall since 1979, in part because many white residents migrated to the suburbs, a familiar pattern in urban America.

So has King's dream of equality been realized here and has Birmingham moved beyond its troubled past?For many, the answer is yes, the city has changed in ways that once seemed unthinkable — and yet, there's also a sense Birmingham still has a long way to go.The legal and social barriers that barred black people from schools and jobs fell long ago, but economic disparity persists.

Blacks and whites work together and dine side by side in restaurants during the day, but usually don't mingle after 5 p.m.Racial slurs are rare, but suspicions and tensions remain."I don't think any of us would deny that there have been significant changes in Birmingham," Shores Lee says. King would be proud, she adds, but "he would say there's a lot more work to be done. I think he would tell us our task is not finished."

Amid the flowers and soothing fountain in Kelly Ingram Park, there are stark reminders of the ugly clashes. It was in this area, now known as the Civil Rights District, where the scenes of police brutality were captured in photos and TV footage that helped galvanize public opinion around the nation on behalf of demonstrators.

Today, the park has statues commemorating King and other leaders. There's a sculpture of a young protester, his arms stretched back, as a policeman grabs him with one hand and holds a lunging German shepherd in the other. (An Associated Press photographer had captured a similar image.) There are other sculptures of water cannons, more dogs, and a boy and a girl standing impassively with the words "I Ain't Afraid of your Jail" at the base.

To those who grew up here, these works are not just artistic renderings but reminders of the bravery of friends and neighbors."It's kind of like being in the movie 'The Sixth Sense' — everywhere you go you see ghosts," Threatt says of the statues. "It's probably like a person who served in World War II going back to Normandy. It's a place where something very, very real, very poignant happened to people that you knew."

Threatt was just 7 when King announced his vision of a colorblind society before hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the Washington Mall. Not long afterward, Threatt was one of three black gifted students enrolled in a white elementary school. He was spat on, beat up, called the N-word.

"I like him," he says. "I don't think he's a racist. He was a kid caught up in a social situation like I was. .... You've got to get over that in order to survive in the South. ... Otherwise you just wallow in self-pity and hatred and you don't move forward."

Threatt graduated from Princeton, then Howard University Law School, worked in Denver and Washington, D.C., but returned to Birmingham in 1997. Both he and the city had changed, he says, with Birmingham becoming more progressive. He joined an established law firm — something that would have been unimaginable 50 years earlier.

Threatt had been inspired, in part, to be a lawyer by Arthur Shores, a Sunday school teacher at his church and a pioneering civil rights attorney who fought to desegregate the University of Alabama. Shores' home was bombed twice in 1963, two weeks apart. His neighborhood was nicknamed "Dynamite Hill" for the series of bombings intended to intimidate blacks.

Shores' daughter, Helen, grew up resisting the segregation laws, once drinking from a "white" fountain — a defiant act that resulted in a whipping when she got home. At 12, she aimed a Colt .45 at some white men driving by her family's house, spewing racial obscenities. Her father, she says, slapped her arm, the bullet discharged into the air and he quickly grabbed the gun.

She left Birmingham for 13 years, returned in 1971, later switched careers and in 2003 became a judge, only to confront lingering remnants of racism.In her early years on the bench, she recalls, a few lawyers pointedly refused to stand as is custom when a judge enters a courtroom. And, she says, she occasionally sees lawyers who are disrespectful of their minority clients.

Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!

In Seminars Meant To Teach Investing Wisdom

A lawsuit filed Saturday by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman alleges that Donald Trump defrauded more than 5,000 people of $40 million, handed over for what was supposed to be the opportunity to learn Trump’s real estate investment magic at his for-profit training program, Trump University.  The suit also names The Trump Entrepreneur Institute—previously known as Trump University LLC—and Michael Sexton, former president of the institution.

Beginning in 2005, Trump University offered a program that began with a free introductory 90-minute presentation promising to teach the secrets that helped build his real estate empire. This was, according to the suit, no more than a lengthy promotion for a three-day, $1,500 seminar. The three-day program, in turn, was used to plug “elite” courses that cost anywhere from $10,000 to $35,000.

Schneiderman takes particular aim at Trump U.’s ads, which featured the mogul’s picture and signature, and some of which appeared as personal letters. Marketing materials frequently referenced the “handpicked instructor” who would impart Trump’s wisdom, but the attorney general maintains that Trump was uninvolved in developing or teaching curriculum, and was not responsible for choosing instructors—by hand or otherwise.

The suit also claims the organization was warned by the New York State Education Department (NYSED) up to eight years ago to stop presenting itself as a university, though Trump representatives George Sorial and Michael Cohen say the organization had no formal communication with the NYSED until 2010. Trump University was issued a cease and indoor Tracking, after which its name was changed to The Trump Entrepreneur Institute. Sorial and Cohen say the program suspended live seminars several weeks later as a result of the developing conflict with Schneiderman’s office.

“Mr. Trump used his celebrity status and personally appeared in commercials making false promises to convince people to spend tens of thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford for lessons they never got,” said Schneiderman, in a statement. “No one, no matter how rich or popular they are, has a right to scam hard working New Yorkers. Anyone who does should expect to be held accountable.”

The suit claims that many students at Trump University—referred to in the complaint as “consumers”—were promised the opportunity to practice actual real estate transactions with access to private funds, personal appearances by Trump himself, and year-long access to “apprenticeship support.” Instead, according to the lawsuit, participants were provided with a list of funding sources culled from a newsstand publication, and many mentors did not respond to contact from students or provided no ongoing guidance at all.

Instead of the chance to shake hands with The Donald, a life-sized cutout of Trump was made available for photos with students, alleges the attorney general’s complaint.

Sorial and Cohen insist that Schneiderman’s actions are personally-motivated attacks against Trump, and claim that before the lawsuit was filed, the attorney general “repeatedly” rejected the offer of in-person meetings with Trump, while suggesting through a representative that the matter could be settled out of court.

“98% of Trump University students rated the program ‘excellent,’” claims the site, “while only 4% of New York State registered voters rated Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s performance as “excellent” and Schneiderman thinks he could be the next governor?  He must be joking.”

Beyond the belligerent typeface, the site actually makes thousands of pages of handwritten survey responses, apparently from Trump University participants, available in PDF. Remarks in comment form are largely positive, and numerical responses tend to be the highest available scores or blank. Names of participants are redacted.

It is neither my business or concern as to how many sexual partners anyone has at any one time, and I genuinely could not care less how folk organise their relationships. But the co-opting and rebranding of polygamy, so that it loses its nasty association with the oppression of the most disadvantaged women, is as irresponsible as suggesting that because some women chose to enter high-end prostitution as a social experiment, all prostitution is radical and harmless.

Caroline Humphrey, a professor of collaborative anthropology at Cambridge University, has argued in favour of the legalisation of polygamy because, according to a number of women in polygamous marriages in Russia, "half a good man is better than none at all". While polyamory is not the same as traditional polygamy – which has been practised for centuries under a strict code of patriarchy in communities where women and children have few if any rights – the co-opting of the sanitised version will further normalise a practice that is anything but liberating for women in this Hands free access.

There is also the assumption that polyamory is an invention of a set of too-cool-for-school hipsters, who have recently discovered that exclusive couple-type relationships are so last season. However, it was radical feminists in the 1970s onwards that developed the notion of non-monogamy as a way to challenge patriarchal heterosexuality. The definition of polyamory as "ethical non-monogamy" currently doing the rounds sticks in my craw. Non-monogamy was deeply ethical. One could have as many sexual partners as desired but everything was honest and above board, with no one being deceived.

The type of non-monogamy radical feminists developed and practised involved no men. We were all lesbians starting off on a fairly equal playing field. Some of us involved with leftwing politics had previously been witness to or victims of men who had sexual access to as many women as they wanted, while women waited for her one partner to get round to paying her attention. In the meantime, women were pitted against each other while the men played a subtle game of divide and rule, and there were plenty of women to do the washing, childcare and provide emotional and sexual support for these oh-so alternative men.

The women were not necessarily any more sexually liberated than their married, monogamous sisters; in fact they would quite often complain of being treated far worse than a wife. It not only gave men permission to sleep around, but left women experiencing dreadful feelings of anxiety, low self-esteem and lack of confidence.
Elisabeth Sheff, a US-based sociologist who has studied polyamorous families since the mid-1990s, found that "despite the pronounced importance of gender equality to polyamorists", it is not unusual for men to be drawn to it because they believe that it will lead to sex with lots of women. The modern proponents of polyamory tend to ignore gender dynamics as if patriarchy and the sexual inequality that it produces has disappeared. Many also forget that its practice today, unlike polygamy, is the choice of overwhelmingly white, affluent, university educated and privileged folk, with too much time on their hands.

Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!

Niagara Falls State Park gets major makeover

“This is such an historic time at Niagara Falls State Park,” Harvey said. “We have not seen an infusion of capital and a wholesale approach to the look and feel of this park in a generation. And now our nation’s oldest state park is going from shabby to shining. We could not be more grateful to Gov. Cuomo for his support of our parks, to our state legislators for their unwavering commitment to parks, to the staff that steward this park, and to the local contractors that performed this work. It is just tremendous.”

The first phase of the multi-year plan features a $1.8 million restoration at Three Sisters Islands that includes a new trolley shelter, expanded parking area, new pedestrian walkways and overlooks, enhanced landscaping, as well as new railings. Luna Island received a $1.1 million overhaul, including new pedestrian walkways, overlook improvements, enhanced landscaping as well as new benches, light posts and railings. The Cave of the Winds saw a $1.7 million renovation of the tunnel that leads visitors to the gorge as well as the installation of new high-speed elevators.

The event also included a groundbreaking for a $4.3 million project to revitalize Prospect Point. The work at this popular viewing area will take place in phases so as to always provide access for visitors to the view, and will include landscape restoration, new railings, benches, light fixtures and walkway surfaces. The first phase, which is the point itself, will finish in October and then move to the lower grove trails to the north and south of the points with work ending in that area by August 2014. Construction will not affect any of the attractions at Niagara Falls State Park.

The improvements revealed today are outlined in a comprehensive landscape improvement plan developed in 2012 to restore the most heavily used areas of Niagara Falls State Park, including its primary viewing points, walking trails, historic buildings and plantings. All landscape improvement projects will be consistent with the design principles utilized by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in his original vision for the park.

These projects represent a multi-year, $25 million commitment to revitalizing Niagara Falls State Park, the nation’s oldest state park. Funding for the Niagara Falls park revitalization initiative will come primarily from money from the Niagara River Greenway fund, courtesy of the New York Power Authority, under commitments made in 2005 as part of a relicensing process for the Niagara Power Project hydroelectric dam. State Parks will continue to consult with the Niagara River Greenway Commission on the projects.

“The New York Power Authority is proud of the role we’re playing in revitalizing Niagara Falls State Park, and helping to preserve this crown jewel of the state park system,” said NYPA Trustee Terrance P. Flynn, a Western New Yorker. “The priority that Gov. Cuomo set for rejuvenating and upgrading the park led to our providing a lump-sum payment of $25 million from annual funding set aside for Greenway improvements under the relicensing of our Niagara Hydroelectric Power Plant. It is greatly rewarding to see the significant recreational benefits that have resulted from that funding.”

“The Niagara Falls State Park draws millions of visitors each year to our area, and these restorations will now match the beauty of the parks to that of the falls,” State Sen. George Maziarz said. “Upgrades to this park have been needed for a number of years, and the improvements at Three Sisters Islands are only the start. I am pleased that the constructions jobs created for the improvements were filled by a Niagara County company, and I applaud Gov. Cuomo and Commissioner Harvey for their continued commitment to Niagara Falls State Park.”

“I am pleased that we are using this funding to enhance the quality and aesthetic beauty of our parks. State parks are an important aspect of the region’s tourism industry, which is a major local job creator,” said Assemblyman John Ceretto. “Moving forward, I would like to see even greater cooperation between state and local officials, especially when determining the design and implementation of our parks in order to stay true to the prolific vision of Frederick L Olmsted.”

City of Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster said, “The core of Olmsted’s genius was his ability to balance the values of aesthetics and the natural environment with the practical requirements of accommodating large numbers of visitors. These improvements, in a modern expression of classic Olmsted principles, seek to create a more attractive visitor experience in a way that is sensitive to historical and environmental values. Paving has given way to green space, invasive plants have been replaced by native species, and access has been improved in ways that protect the landscape from being ‘loved to death’ by visitors. Thanks to Gov. Cuomo and Commissioner Harvey for all the great work done so far, recognizing that, in many ways, this is only the beginning of a project that will transform the park’s appeal today while protecting it for generations into the future.”

Thomas Herrera-Mishler, CEO and president at Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, said, “These projects help to preserve and enhance the historic landscape at Niagara Falls State Park, a legacy built on the genius of Frederick Law Olmsted, who originally campaigned to create this park and designed it to provide free access to one of the world’s natural wonders. He foresaw the growth of tourism at Niagara Falls, and these improvements respect the spirit of his design principals as they accommodate numbers of visitors that would have astounded even Mr. Olmsted’s imagination. Visitors will have the opportunity to enjoy the falls in a naturalistic landscape that is safe and attractive. I am grateful for the state of New York’s increased stewardship of this globally significant historic landscape.”

John Percy, president and CEO of the Niagara Tourism and Convention Corp., said, “The foresight of Gov. Cuomo and Commissioner Harvey have granted future generations the opportunity to enjoy Niagara Falls State Park as many before them have. When the renovations are complete, Frederick Law Olmsted’s vision will be secure for the millions of guests that visit the park every year. Niagara Falls State Park is an international treasure, and I praise the state on this tremendous effort to preserve the beauty that surrounds one of our natural wonders.”

Last year, Cuomo and the State Legislature authorized the NY Works program to provide $89 million statewide, leveraging $143 million in total funding, to move forward with more than 100 overdue projects to improve 55 parks and historic sites and spur job creation and economic development. The Niagara Falls State Park projects were among the first to be funded. This year, a second round of $90 million in NY Works funding will advance an additional 90 construction projects to upgrade and repair more than 50 state parks and historic sites across New York. Click on their website www.ecived.com/en for more information.

Payday lenders skirt military law

Seven years after Congress banned payday-loan companies from charging exorbitant interest rates to service members, many of the nation’s military bases are surrounded by storefront lenders who charge high annual percentage rates, sometimes exceeding 400 percent.

The Military Lending Act sought to protect service members and their families from predatory loans. But in practice, the law has defined the types of covered loans so narrowly that it’s been all too easy for lenders to circumvent it.

“We have to revisit this,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the defense appropriations subcommittee and is the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat. “If we’re serious about protecting military families from exploitation, this law has to be a lot tighter.”

Members of the military can lose their security clearances for falling into debt. As a result, experts say, service members often avoid taking financial problems to their superior officers and instead resort to high-cost loans they don’t fully understand.

The Department of Defense, which defines which loans the Military Lending Act covers, has begun a process to review the law, said Marcus Beauregard, chief of the Pentagon’s state liaison office.

The act mainly targets two products: payday loans, usually two-week loans with annual percentage rates often above 400 percent, and auto-title loans, typically one-month loans with rates above 100 percent and secured by the borrower’s vehicle. The law caps all covered loans at a 36 percent annual rate.

That limit “did do a great deal of good on the products that it covered,” said Holly Petraeus, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s head of service-member affairs. “But there are a lot of products that it doesn’t cover.”

Representatives from payday and other high-cost lenders said they follow the law. Some defended the proliferation of new products as helpful to indoor Tracking.

In June 2011, Levon Tyler, a 37-year-old staff sergeant in the Marines, walked into Smart Choice Title Loans in Columbia, S.C.; it was the first time he’d ever gone to such a place, he said. But his bills were mounting. He needed cash right away.

Smart Choice agreed to lend him $1,600. In return, Tyler handed over the title to his 1998 Ford SUV and a copy of his keys. Tyler recalled the saleswoman telling him he’d probably be able to pay off the loan in a year. He said he did not scrutinize the contract he signed that day.

If he had, Tyler would have seen that in exchange for that $1,600, he’d agreed to pay a total of $17,228 over two and a half years. The loan’s annual percentage rate, which includes interest and fees, was 400 percent.

Tyler said he provided his military ID when he got the loan. But even with an annual rate as high as a typical payday loan, the Military Lending Act didn’t apply. The law limits the interest rate of title loans — but only those that have a term of six months or less.

In South Carolina, almost no loans fit that definition, said Sue Berkowitz, director of the nonprofit South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center. The reason? Ten years ago, the state legislature passed consumer protections for short-term auto-title loans. In response, lenders simply lengthened the duration of their loans.

Today, plenty of payday and auto-title lenders cluster near Fort Jackson, an army base in Columbia, legally peddling high-cost loans to the more than 36,000 soldiers who receive basic training there each year.

Tyler’s loan showcases other examples of lenders’ ingenuity. Attached to his contract was an addendum that offered a “Summer Fun Program Payoff.” While the loan’s official term was 32 months, putting it outside both South Carolina’s regulations and the Military Lending Act, the “Summer Fun” option allowed Tyler to pay off the loan in a single month. If he did so, he’d pay an annual rate of 110 percent, the addendum said.

Michael Agostinelli, the chief executive of Smart Choice’s parent company, American Life Enterprises, said he wants his customers to pay off their loans early. “They’re meant to be short-term loans,” he said.

He also said that customers who pay on time get “a big discount.” In Tyler’s case, he would have paid an annual rate of 192 percent if he had made all his payments on time.

But Tyler fell behind after only a couple of payments. Less than five months after he took out the loan, a repo company came in the middle of the night to take his car. Three weeks later, it was sold at auction.

The suit names among its plaintiffs three soldiers who took out what appeared to be classic title loans. All agreed to pay an annual rate of around 150 percent for a 30-day loan. All had trouble repaying, according to the suit. One, an Army staff sergeant and Purple Heart recipient, lost his car. The other two managed to pay interest but almost none of the principal on their loans for several months.

The company was fully aware that its customers were soldiers, because they presented their military identifications, said Roy Barnes, a former governor of Georgia who is representing the plaintiffs.

Community Loans, which boasts more than 900 locations nationwide, argued in court that the transactions were not covered by the Military Lending Act because they weren’t loans but sales.

Here’s how Community Loans said the transaction worked: The soldiers sold their vehicles to the company while retaining the option to buy back the cars — for a higher price. In early 2012, the judge rejected that argument. The case is continuing.

Cheerful and cheap, with pizzazz

Reporters got a sneak preview Monday of what’s in store at the Coquitlam location and Target Canada president Tony Fisher was the tour guide.

With clean, airy surroundings, the store’s sight lines are unobstructed and the aisles wide enough to drive a truck through. Staff friendliness is a key ingredient, as is a curious offering of cheap chic items next to designer items.

A native of Minnesota, Fisher admitted he is still learning about Canadian consumer tastes after opening 24 Target stores in Ontario in March. Minneapolis-based Target has 1,784 American stores.

Fisher — who moved to the Toronto area in 2011 to lay the groundwork for this year’s rollout — gets the impression that Canadians like to travel from store to store to get what they want. “We want to offer a one-stop shopping experience,” said the upbeat executive.

The U.S. retailer has shovelled out $10 million to $12 million to upgrade every former Zellers location with new lighting and new flooring. Some of the retail clerks are former Zellers employees.

The Coquitlam Centre Target store, which at 120,000 square feet is larger than the average Canadian Target store, has a large beauty section, a substantial grocery section, Canucks hockey and B.C. Lions football apparel, a wide smattering of indoor Tracking, household goods and a big pet aisle catering to that growing market.

Nestled in a big-box neighbourhood of Coquitlam, there is no doubt who this new kid on the Canadian retailing block is targeting — think the smart, savvy mothers who do most of the shopping in the family and know how to find a bargain. The store is also happy, of course, to welcome the dads who shop once in a while and the “young independents” looking for “room essentials.”

To promote customer loyalty, Canadian shoppers will be able to save five per cent when using a REDcard debit card or a Target RBC MasterCard — allowing the store to track consumer preferences and pitch to them directly with in-store promotions.

In the baby section, Fisher stopped to show that everything from soothers to baby food and disposable diapers are in one handy location, so a mother with a fussing infant doesn’t have to comb through the store to find everything she needs.

The Bulls are also an example of a team that built a functional NBA offense despite lacking a single big man with any reliable range outside of 18 feet.4 Playing two big men close to the basket crowds the lane and brings spacing issues, and those spacing issues, plus the emergence of ace 3-point shooting power forwards (Ryan Anderson, for instance), has created the impression that it's just too difficult for teams to score with two traditional interior players — especially if neither brings a Zach Randolph–style post game.

Boozer has a bit of a post game, but his go-to post move is a face-up fading jump shot. The Bulls, when Derrick Rose was around, built a top-10 offense around Rose's brilliance and the ability of both Boozer and Noah to work in very sophisticated ways, and in tandem, south of the foul line — as screeners, passers, and occasional shooters/drivers. And that offense, sans Rose, was still good enough to squeeze out a league-average number of points against the Nets' very average defense in the first round. They did so again last night, keenly using Noah's passing and the threat of Boozer's jump shot to beat Miami's trapping defense on just enough occasions to wring out their average scoring output. (There are times, against elite defenses like Miami's, when it almost feels as if Noah's passing skills are as important an asset as his all-world defense. What a brilliant player.) There are a bunch of lottery teams ready to follow this same pattern of building an above-average offense around two interior bangers, including Detroit (Greg Monroe, Andre Drummond) and Toronto (Amir Johnson, Jonas Valanciunas). If the skill sets are right and varied, it's possible.

Miami, of course, is the league's premier small-ball team, the pied piper everyone is allegedly following. Nonsense. The Heat can play this way because they have James, an unprecedented NBA physical specimen, plus a wing player in Battier willing to do whatever it takes to win titles — even if it means guarding Boozer, David West, and Randolph in succession.

The most intriguing potential big-versus-small matchup on the board, mostly because of Oklahoma City's adaptability and the added intrigue of Russell Westbrook's season-ending injury.5 The Grizz have built around the Zach Randolph–Marc Gasol pairing, reasoning they could build at least an average offense around two post-up brutes — a duo that includes the best passing big man in the game in Gasol. Teams can contend with an average offense and a top-three defense, and the Grizz have had the latter half of that equation covered all season.

Only Utah and Indiana finished a larger share of offensive possessions via post-up plays, and Memphis is leaning on post-ups even more so far in the playoffs, per Synergy Sports.6 Like the Bulls, Memphis stands as proof that teams can create their own version of floor spacing in an inside-out fashion, with interior bangers drawing attention toward the rim and moving the ball in smart ways from there.

But the Thunder have the trump card in this series: small-ball lineups with Kevin Durant at power forward. Those lineups over multiple seasons have been frighteningly explosive offensively, even if they can be hit-and-miss on defense — as is typical for smaller lineups. Scott Brooks has been a bit reluctant to break these bad boys out against the brutish Grizz, and when he has, Memphis has generally responded by downsizing and shifting either Tayshaun Prince or Quincy Pondexter to power forward. Oklahoma City played small for only about 26 minutes over three regular-season games against Memphis, and followed the same pattern in Game 1; Brooks didn't go to Durant at power forward until late in the third quarter, eventually staying with that setup for about 8:30 of continuous play in which the Thunder were plus-10.7 Memphis shifted into small-ball mode for almost the entirety of that duration, save for a brief stretch in which Darrell Arthur, the team's third big man, tried and failed to defend Durant.

Book sale insiders reveal dust jacket treasures

Every day is Christmas for the volunteers sorting donations to the annual Times Colonist book sale. Open a box, they never know what might be inside.

Sometimes an old love letter, $2 bill or pressed flower will slip out of a dust jacket. Sometimes the box will hold a bigger, weirder surprise.

Among the nuggets mined in the past week are a cigar box full of collector pins, an original Mulroney-era Raeside cartoon and a series of autographed, mounted photos of yesterday’s TV stars: Susan Lucci, Piper Laurie, Patty Duke, Mulder and Scully from the X-Files.

Yes, there were jump boots, size 12 from the looks of them. A Playboy bunny logo was mounted on the brass knuckles, which must have left some interesting scars. No passports, marijuana or urns of cat ashes this year, though.

The FBI fingerprint kit came in a hard plastic container sealed within a clear evidence bag. We hoped/ feared that the container would hold a severed hand, but when Sgt. Mike Yeager of the Victoria police forensics section cracked it open he found a brand-new brush, powder and lifting tapes, along with a how-to instructional DVD — your basic G-man field kit. Maybe it belonged to Mulder and Scully.

Sometimes the unboxed items are personal in nature, making you wonder if someone, somewhere wants them back. Nicco Collins, wherever you are, we have photos of every team — rugby, soccer, hockey,indoor Tracking, football — for which you ever played as a kid.

Victoria’s Karen McLeod has been holding on to one such gem for years, hoping to return it to its rightful home. It’s a handmade Father’s Day card that fell out of a book — she can’t remember which one — that she bought at the TC sale maybe a decade ago.

What makes this card so compelling is the earnestness of its author, who might have loved his father, but was absolutely passionate about his desire to play hockey. Judging from the names printed in a laboured boyhood (or girlhood) hand, it was probably written around 1972.

The cover features a pencilled rendering of a goaltender in a No. 30 Boston Bruins sweater. (Had to be Gerry Cheevers.) “Happy Father’s Day,” the message begins, but after that it’s pretty much a heartfelt plea to pull on the blades: “dear dad can i join hockey this year, I will help you with the boat and wash the car, set the breakfast table in the morning and bring in your breakfast for you on Sunday and Saturday and take empty beer bottle cases down to the basement every night you ask me to.

“Hockey is the best,” it continues. “Join now you can be an All Star just like Bobby Orr, and Bobby Hull, Denise Hull, Gordie Howe, Tony Esposito, Phil Esposito, Ken Driden.”

Having misplaced the card when moving house, McLeod recently rediscovered it in a box of old photographs. Too bad it bore no name. She hopes someone will recognize it as a missing family treasure. “It’s a long shot, I suppose, but…”

Anyway, you’ll have your own chance to unearth treasures of the printed kind at the annual two-day Times Colonist book sale this weekend. It runs 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. this Saturday and Sunday at the Victoria Curling Club at 1952 Quadra St. As usual, the money raised will go to literacy-related projects on Vancouver Island.

 Incoming waves: tablets, e-books, movies online. Outgoing waves: Desktop PCs, landline phones, anything on disc, tape or paper.

It’s fascinating to watch outgoing industries struggle to remain relevant. Take, for example, the outgoing wave known as pocket cameras. No wonder nobody is buying them anymore. Your phone takes pictures nearly as well and is far more convenient.

 First, it emphasizes the features that a smartphone can’t match, like a zoom lens. Second, it imitates the workings and design features of a smartphone. Third, it can transmit new photos to your phone for immediate sending or posting online. The result, the Canon N ($300), is half pocket camera, half photo-taking accessory for your phone.

In the category of features a phone camera lacks, the Canon N starts by offering a powerful zoom lens — 8X, compared with zero X on a smartphone. Digital zoom, where the camera just enlarges a photo to make it seem as if you’re closer, doesn’t count.

The N also has a much bigger, more sensitive sensor and lens. Now, the N’s sensor isn’t very big for a camera — it measures 0.4 inches diagonally — but it’s much better than what’s in a typical phone. Finally, the N’s screen flips out 90 degrees, so you can take photos at interesting angles.

The second category, imitating a phone’s design and operation, is more intriguing. The Canon N is one of the weirdest-looking cameras you’ve ever seen. It’s a nearly square, nearly featureless block, in black or white.

It has only three physical buttons, all tiny: Power, Play and Connect to Phone. As on a phone, the rest of the controls are all on the touch screen.

Now, you might have noticed that that list does not include “shutter button”; this camera doesn’t have one. Instead, you take a picture by pressing up or down on the silver plastic ring around the lens, which budges slightly and clicks.

And what, you may ask, is the point of that design? Simple: This camera works equally well upside down or at 90 degrees. Like a phone, it detects which way you’re holding it and flips the screen image accordingly. Thanks to this ring-shutter system, you can take a shot no matter how you’re holding the camera.

 There are other cellphone similarities. There is no external battery charger; you charge the battery in the camera, by connecting a USB cable to your computer or a wall adapter. The battery itself looks like a squared-off AA battery; it’s tiny. Canon says it’ll give you about 200 shots on a charge, which is very low.

This camera takes the same kind of memory card used on many cellphones, a microSD card, rather than the SD cards used in most cameras. That’s unfortunate, because it means you can’t copy the pictures to your computer by popping out the card and inserting it into your laptop. You’ll have to use the USB cable or a wireless connection.

On the side, a tiny switch moves between Automatic mode and Creative mode, which would be better named Instagram mode. When you press the shutter button — sorry, shutter ring — the camera takes six pictures instead of one. It applies a different filter to each one, of the sort created by the popular Instagram phone app. That is, it degrades each with various degrees of exposure adjustment, color saturation, tints and even oddball cropping. The results are never the same twice, and sometimes they’re interesting.

In Automatic mode, the camera is a basic point-and-shoot, with almost no photographic controls. With a tap on the Menu button, however, you can gain access to a Program mode that lets you make manual adjustments of exposure (brightness), white balance, ISO (light sensitivity) and so on.

Matchsticks and Gasoline's Gameday Coverage

I opened that post in class, you guys should have put an NSFW warning on that! Hudler has been well-received so far, although it has been a very small sample size as the Flames have only played six games heading into today's contest. It's been a while since the Flames had more than one skilled playmaker like Hudler in the lineup, especially one that they can utilize as something of a depth player, so I think Flames fans are pretty satisfied with his performance thus far while still maintaining realistic expectations. Hudler has also contributed to the depth and improvement of the Flames' powerplay, which has been humming along nicely so far with two decent units.

I think expectations in Calgary this year are similar to those of other bubble teams; while most Flames fans probably expect them to finish just outside of the post-season again, in the middle of the pack with regard to bottom-half teams, others acknowledge that a playoff berth could very well be a possibility in a shortened season if the team goes on a winning streak. The Flames have been a team of slow starters that have traditionally gone on hot streaks several months into the season for a few years now, but expectations for their performance this year depend on factors such as whether or not Miikka Kiprusoff can bounce back from a poor start to the season and whether the team can consistently get enough offence from Iginla, Tanguay, Cammalleri, and the rest of the top six. There are some Flames fans who would rather see the team finish at the bottom of the conference this season and hopefully signal the beginning of a rebuild, but I think that would be an unlikely result. The Flames did improve their team in the off-season by adding the likes of Hudler and Cervenka and partially re-tooling their blueline so I don't see a rebuild-inducing finish this year unless the Flames' goaltending continues to operate at sub-.900 levels and the rest of the team is terribly unlucky.

A microcosm of what much of the team is going through to start the season. The Flames have out-shot their opposition by a healthy measure so far and have only one win and two shootout losses to show for it, so hopefully the the team's collective luck will begin to turn around soon, including Iggy's. Obviously no one expects him to score 30+ goals again this season or embarrass the opposition's best, and there has been an ongoing acknowledgement that the aging process is finally beginning to catch up with him, but he has also been a slow starter throughout much of his career (at least recently, if my memory serves me well), and I expect he should break out of his funk soon enough. Iggy has 20 goals and 54 points in 60 career games against the Wings, so it might happen at Detroit's expense!

Following last year’s purchase of tooling equipment from Rehrig, PHS Teacrate will be promoting at the logistics event the advantages of its plastic RTP crates and trays that are suitable for a wide variety of sectors, including food, retailing, pharmaceuticals and engineering.

Sure to attract the attention of visitors will be PHS Teacrate’s 600x400mm attached lid containers produced in tough, durable polypropylene for maximum level of security and protection in both storage and distribution systems, while also on display at IMHX will be its nestable bale-arm trays which are suitable for fresh meat, processed meat, poultry, ready meals, fresh produce, frozen and chilled items.

The company will also be exhibiting plastic pallets and other material handling equipment ideal for any hygienic-driven environment. PHS Teacrate staff will be on hand to discuss value-added customer services, such as in-house integrated crate washing, crate pool management, delivery and collection from transport depots covering the entire country and a 24-hour online support and crate ordering facility.

Also available to take away at IMHX will be the innovative mini versions of PHS Teacrate’s popular nestable bale arm trays, which cleverly presents the range’s qualities for better handling, product protection and efficiency improvements which could potentially reduce costs.

Using plastic RTP removes wood, cardboard and other fibrous materials from food production promoting good hygiene with less risk of cross contamination. Plastic crates offer improved product protection during transportation because they are much more durable and stronger than single trip alternatives.
PHS Teacrate’s National Sales Manager, Patrick Sheehy, is confident that the IMHX Show will enable even more companies to learn about its extensive range of products and aftersales service which he believes is second to none.

He said: “We are delighted to be exhibiting at IMHX where we are anticipating a great deal of interest, following our recent acquisition of the full range of Rehrig tooling to complement our own range. During the show we’ll be showcasing a number of different crates specifically aimed at the food, retailing, pharmaceuticals and engineering sectors.

More hot air over carbon capers

News that the government would axe its carbon floor price from 2015 and link the Australian and European carbon trading schemes sent stock prices higher by 3 per cent or more for those most affected, such as BlueScope, Arrium and Boral.

But the changes won't come into effect until 2015, by which time who knows what will be influencing stock prices.

It says something about the fragile market sentiment when yet another change in government policy, which won't have any impact for three years, causes a bounce in prices.

Stock traders are normally attacked for being too short-term in their thinking, so this was quite a form reversal.

The move also comes with more restrictions on what projects can be used to gain credits.

The big negative, of course, is the potential hole in future federal budgets, given the government has already handed out the cash to consumers and business to spend before gaining any increased revenue. That revenue will now obviously be less.

Politically, some heat has been taken out of the debate for future governments because if Europe and the market are setting the prices, business lobbyists will have their hands tied.

ALISON Watkins tried a company-transforming acquisition in merging with AWB when she first took the reins at GrainCorp just over two years ago.

Yesterday's $472 million expansion through the creation of an integrated oils business won't have quite the same impact but shows commendable vision.

There are some initial question marks over the price paid for the biggest chunk, the $302m Gardner Smith purchase, which came in at 9.2 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.

Gardner Smith is a family-owned grain-crushing company and will take about $116m worth of stock -- about 5 per cent of the expanded company -- as part of the deal.

The second leg was the $170m purchase of the Goodman Fielder oil business at 5.5 times earnings, paid in part by a $159m rights issue underwritten by Credit Suisse.

GrainCorp's stock has ridden the rise in US wheat prices, which have increased from $US6.10 to $US8.60 a pound since June.

GrainCorp recently hit a 52-week high of $10.05 a share ahead of a deal at $9.85 a share.

Watkins rejects the concerns over the price paid, saying she is creating a new business under the old mantra of integrating supply, from the paddock to the plate.

In good years about 55 per cent of Gardner Smith's earnings come from its liquid storage terminals, which fit well with the GrainCorp ports and storage operations and also attract higher transaction multiples.

Watkins is not letting the gloom over Australian food processing stop her expanding into a market dominated by the likes of US giant Cargill.

WHILE the political debate over the National Broadband Network plays out, Telstra has planted its foot on the accelerator to fast-forward the rollout of its 4G wireless network.

This will cover two-thirds of the population within the next two months, delivering high-speed broadband much faster than the NBN.

Two points should be noted. First, as all involved acknowledge, wireless is a complementary technology and the more it is used the more you need an efficient fixed-line network. Second, the naysayers who worried that Telstra was being restricted in promoting wireless while collecting about $18 billion in cash from the NBN were clearly wrong.

Telstra says it can't denigrate the NBN but is free to promote wireless, which it is doing with its ears pinned back.

Malcolm Turnbull was in Drouin in Victoria yesterday, supporting the work of private contractor Opticomm in rolling out fibre to a new housing estate.

His aim was to question why the government changed the rules to effectively provide NBN to new housing estates free of charge, as a sort of lender of last resort.

This means the slow NBN rollout at least temporarily delays access. There's no issue here because the government allows greenfield estate competition, so the issue is at what price Opticomm is rolling out its service.

Greenfield rollouts work where they can connect efficiently to the existing network, which means they rely on the national network.

'Beasts' administrator curtains into bravery

Imagine bond and analogous John McClane from the “Die Hard” movies with a 6-year-old amazon who lives in a abandoned but aggressive anchorage association off the bank of New Orleans.

That’s absolutely what writer/director Benh Zeitlin did if he was creating Hushpuppy, the advocate of “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” his authoritative admission about a charlatan as barbaric and able as the everyman life-saver Bruce Willis played in the “Die Hard” flicks.

“I see ‘Beasts’ as an activity cine as abundant as annihilation else,” says Zeitlin, 29. “It’s about a little hero – and activity movies are hero tales. If you could clue Hushpuppy’s activity into the future, she could be a John McClane. She’d acknowledge just the way he did in ‘Die Hard.’”

Opening this week, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is one of 2012’s a lot of acclaimed movies. It won the Grand Jury cost at the Sundance Blur Festival and the Camera d’Or as best aboriginal affection at Cannes.

Roger Ebert alleged “Beasts” the 2012 blur a lot of acceptable to be remembered at Oscar time. A New York Times analyst declared the fantasy as one of the finest entries to play at Sundance in 20 years. And Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers dubbed it “a new American classic.”

Four years in the making, the cine centers on Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), a youngster active in the Bathtub, a biconcave apple on the alien edges of the Louisiana bayou. Times are boxy for the little girl. Not alone is her ancestor Wink (Dwight Henry) dying and her mother missing but an army of cannibal agrarian boars are closing in and a storm of ballsy portions is on the way.

Rather than retreating, Hushpuppy bravely tries to stitch her activity aback calm through the arduous force of spirit and resilience.

Zeitlin says the axial appearance represents the blazon of being he aspires to be.

While some critics accept declared “Beasts” as a Hurricane Katrina allegory, Zeitlin prefers to be beneath specific about the film’s afflatus and fabulous setting.

He was aswell bent to accumulate the cine chargeless of advice about littoral abrasion and all-around abating and added ecology issues.

“People accept preconceptions about area they angle on those kinds of things,” he says. “That’s backroom and not the point of the story. I’m not aggravating to accomplish humans vote one way or another. I capital to get at that feeling, which we can all understand, about the blackmail of accepting our home asleep from the map. Hopefully, that’s a added accepted – and accumulation – way of searching at the tragedies that are accident in southern Louisiana.”

The abstraction for “Beasts” took basis years ago if Zeitlin began anxious to appraise the angle of “holdouts,” or humans afraid to leave their homes in times of crisis.

When it came time for casting the movie, Zeitlin initially absurd application both able and non-professional actors but decided, in the end, to appoint two first-timers for the starring roles.

“They had the best allure with anniversary other,” he says of non-pros Wallis and bakery buyer Henry. “They had a ability and affection for the accountable of the film. You could see it in their eyes – accurate adventuresomeness and strength. They brought a fearlessness, the affectionate you can alone acquisition down there.”

Mummy Porn Meets Rom Vom

The appellation abandoned acquired bags of Literature undergraduates to accession their acquisitive heads, adenoids flared at the aroma of blood. E.L. James’ “erotic novel”, audacious citation marks my own, has been ridiculed as awkward ‘mommy porn’ accounting in ‘lamentable prose’; as ’vapid’ and ‘painful’; and, the cruelest of jibes for any austere writer, as a ‘bad archetype of [Stephanie] Meyer’.

Having apprehend the Twilight Saga in its entirety, from Bella’s clumsy access to the advancing bearing of her heinously-named daughter, I struggled to acquire that any book – bawdy or not – could accomplish the agonizing lows of a atypical in which the changeable advocate spends a affiliate anecdotic the alertness of lasagne for her unappreciative and authoritative father. Oh! how amiss I was.

Not clashing Twilight, the delineation of ambience is abundant and drab. Such all-embracing and annoying description is acutely appropriate of wet-dream writing. As James paints a agilely addled account of Grey’s appointment – the ‘floor to beam windows, the ‘white covering buttoned L-shaped couch’,'a circuitous of baby paintings’ – it is clearly accessible that this is a allowance the columnist has anticipation ingreat detail about getting fucked in, apparently on the ‘huge avant-garde dark-wood board that six humans could calmly eat around’. Quelle surprise, 350 pages later, black advocate Anastasia Steele is getting banged like the back-end of a chock-full ketchup canteen over that actual board in a arrangement in which she rather embarrassingly refers to adventurous absorption Christian Grey as ‘Mr Boy Scout’.

E.L. James’ “erotic” account doesn’t just resemble Twilight, it reeks of it. Remnants of Fifty Shades’ antecedent cachet as Twilight fanfic aggravate in references to Grey getting ‘courteous, formal, hardly stuffy… old afore his time’. Courting scenes amid Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele carefully chase the arrangement of those amid Bella Swan and and Edward Cullen in Meyer’s Twilight: the life-saving sequence, the admonishing from macho adventurous absorption to female, the annoying proclamations from one to the added of an disability to break away. Supporting characters, admitting hardly defective in believability, abridgement it in a way awfully agnate to those of Twilight. Both mothers are ’harebrained’ with ‘the absorption amount of a goldfish’. Both changeable leads are hounded by the amative interests of careful men in academy and the plan place, and neither appears to see this behaviour as either camp or unacceptable.

Furthermore I’m addled by the addiction of both writers to utilise the plan and capacity of archetypal British writers to attack to drag their austere novels above their accepted akin of poor pornography. As Meyer acclimated Bronte, Shakespeare and Frost, James now abuses and reduces the complexities of Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles to accomplish apparent comparisons with her own text.

Continuing above accessible comparisons with Twilight, this book alone balked and nauseated me. Does James apperceive any adverb but ‘gracefully’? Narrative techniques in Fifty Shades are aggravatingly obvious: if the narrator ‘reminds [herself] that Kate has been to the best clandestine schools in Washington’, we are not blind that the alone getting getting “reminded” is the reader. Description is at best stilted, at affliction excruciating. I wept with amusement if Ana declared her hidden as ‘loud, appreciative and pouty’ and Grey’s articulation as ‘warm and croaking like aphotic broiled amber fudge.’ Warm and croaking like blah on the cob, added like.

Bone advance accelerated through axis corpuscle manipulation

If you breach a bone, you apperceive you'll end up in a casting for weeks. But what if the time it took to alleviate a breach could be cut in half? Or cut to just a tenth of the time it takes now? Qian Wang, a allure assistant at the University of South Carolina, has fabricated aperitive advance against that goal.

Wang, Andrew Lee and co-workers just appear in Molecular Pharmaceutics that surfaces coated with bionanoparticles could abundantly advance the aboriginal phases of cartilage growth. Their coatings, based in allotment on genetically adapted Tobacco circuitous virus, bargain the bulk of time it took to catechumen axis beef into cartilage nodules—from two weeks to just two days.

The key to dispatch cartilage healing or advance is to allure a altogether accustomed action to aces up the pace.

"If you breach a rib, or a finger, the healing is automatic," said Wang. "You charge to get the basic accumbent to be abiding it works as able-bodied as possible, but again attributes takes over."

Healing is absolutely actual natural. The animal physique continuously generates and circulates beef that are undifferentiated; that is, they can be adapted into the apparatus of a ambit of tissues, such as derma or beef or bone, depending on what the physique needs.

The about-face of these cells—called axis cells—is set into motion by alien cues. In cartilage healing, the physique senses the breach at the cellular akin and begins converting axis beef into new cartilage beef at the area of the break, bonding the breach aback into a individual unit. The action is actual slow, which is accessible in acceptance a breach to be appropriately set, but afterwards that point the delay is at atomic an inconvenience, and in some cases awful detrimental.

"With a torn femur, a leg, you can be absolutely bedridden for a continued time," said Wang. "In cases like that, they sometimes inject a protein-based drug, BMP-2, which is actual able in dispatch up the healing process. Unfortunately, it's actual big-ticket and can aswell accept some ancillary effects."

In a seek for alternatives four years ago, Wang and colleagues baldheaded some abrupt accelerants of cartilage growth: bulb viruses. They originally meant for these viruses, which are controllable to humans, to plan as controls. They coated bottle surfaces with compatible coverings of the Turnip chicken circuitous virus and Tobacco circuitous virus, originally intending to use them as starting credibility for analytical added abeyant variations.

But they were afraid to acquisition that the coatings abandoned could abate the bulk of time to abound cartilage nodules from axis cells. Since then, Wang and co-workers accept aesthetic their access to bigger ascertain just what it is that accelerates cartilage growth.

Over the advance of the accomplished four years, they've approved that it's a aggregate of the allure as able-bodied as the cartography of the apparent that determines how continued it takes a axis corpuscle to anatomy cartilage nodules. The axis beef are nestled into a nanotopgraphy authentic by the bulb virus, and aural that nanotopography the beef accomplish acquaintance with the array of actinic groups on the viral surface.

Wang and his aggregation are now asserting ascendancy over these variables. In the a lot of contempo accomplishment spearheaded by Lee, they congenital up a layer-by-layer accumulation beneath the virus blanket to ensure stability. They aswell genetically adapted the viral protein to enhance the alternation amid the blanket and the axis beef and advice drive them against cartilage growth.

Their efforts were adored with cartilage nodules that formed just two canicule afterwards the accession of axis cells, compared to two weeks with a accepted bottle surface. They're aswell anxiously afterward the cellular signs complex with success. BMP-2 is involved, but as an built-in cellular artefact rather than an added drug.

Feeling The Roman Presence

The ancient Romans were an ambitious lot. At the zenith of their empire, they controlled a good swath of the world’s prime real estate, from London and Iberia all the way to Cairo and Jerusalem.

All around the Mediterranean rim, the heart of Roman territory, you stumble across ruins of this once-mighty civilization. The Roman Forum is just the best-known example of a genre whose brick walls, stone burial markers, and still-solid archways are visible from Salamanca to Sofia.

In few places, however, can you feel the Roman presence as vividly as in Tarragona, a small city on the Spanish coast. An hour’s drive south of Barcelona, Tarragona — or Tarraco, as it was known in the time of Caesar — lives off the glory of its days as Hadrian’s hangout.

Driving south along the coastal plain, the turquoise Mediterranean sparkling off to your left, you can see why Octavio Augustus chose Tarragona as the first strategic settlement outside Rome. The town sits scenically above a sandy half-moon beach; from the cliffs on either side, there are good views out to sea and down toward the Ebro River Delta.

The Romans’ amphitheater still crowns the hill above the beach, where the prosaic trappings of a modern city have sprung up around it — train tracks, hotels, parking lots. But stroll upward through an olive garden, and you find yourself standing before the imposing wall of the Old City.

From the moment you step through the cypress-flanked archway, there’s something ineffably Italian about Tarragona’s Old City. Maybe it’s the palette of peach and terracotta; more likely, the narrow streets paved in mosaic-like patterns of black and white pebbles. Whatever the reason, historic Tarragona has an aura of Romanness that’s evident to anyone who has set foot inside the Eternal City.

Tarragona’s Roman vestiges are so comprehensive that if you squint your eyes, you can almost see toga-clad officials bustling about the forum, trading gossip under the arches. You can climb portions of the Roman fortifying wall, gazing at the same sea that drew Caesar Augustus, and practically hear the cries of spectators where chariots once raced. Few historical sites are so engagingly immersive — which is likely why UNESCO has designated this a World Heritage site.

Today the historic quarter is sun-baked and sleepy. A sprinkling of locals lounges in the shade during siesta, nursing cold drinks, while a few tourists wander the quiet lanes. Most stop in awe in front of Tarragona’s cathedral, a massive structure that looms over the hilly central plaza: no fewer than ten pointed arches ripple like a marble wave over the main entrance, guarded by a dozen life-sized patriarchs.

But the Catholic Church was just one of many players in Old Tarragona. In another square, stone enclosures delineate the spots where pre-Christian Romans worshipped Jupiter, sacrificed animals and anointed priests.

And just adjacent to the Plaza del Rey — the King’s Plaza — is the site of the onetime Jewish Quarter, a proximity that signaled Jews’ protected status under local authorities. As throughout Catalonia, a Jewish community flourished here in Roman and early medieval times before expulsion into the Sephardic diaspora.

A stunningly preserved Jewish neighborhood is visible in a series of archways and stone structures near the Plaza of Angels. A poignant plaque in Catalan and Hebrew is dedicated “to the descendants of the those Tarragonians of the faith of Moses expelled in 1492, wherever they may be,” and assures them that their heritage still breathes within Tarragona’s ancient walls.

The recuperation of this Jewish past is part of an earnest effort by Spanish tourism authorities to revive the long-lost Jewish legacy nationally, an initiative I’ll explore over the coming weeks. Here in Tarragona, the onetime glory and then decline of local Jewry mirrors a similar arc in the fortune of the city itself. Tarragona reached its zenith of power and population in the time of Christ, the same epoch when Jewish families thronged in streets now eerily quiet.

I visited the ghosts of that era at the impressive National Archaeological Museum of Tarragona. Nestled into the Roman walls overlooking the sea, the museum offers a nice dose of context for the history that surrounds it.

Four floors of compact, well-labeled exhibits — including life-sized statues of Tarragona’s bygone emperors and gods — are enjoyable even for people like me, who normally roll their eyes at thousand-year-old jugs. I could imagine the long-vanished Jewish Catalans decorating their homes with reconstructed mosaic floors, or eating kosher hake with the iron forks and knives on display.

Two new restaurants join the Williamsburg area dining scene

Summer, traditionally, is a slow time in the restaurant business — but don't tell that to chefs in the Williamsburg area. Several exciting new places have been popping up in recent weeks.

DoG Street Pub has opened up on Merchants Square. It's the third new venture for chef David Everett in recent years, who also oversees The Trellis Restaurant next door and the Blue Talon Bistro around the corner.

Across town, Jim Kennedy has retooled Dudley's, moving from an old house in Toano to a new space called Dudley's Bistro in New Town.

In and around Kingsmill, there's a new Cuban restaurant called Centro Havana Cafe. Also, chef Peter Pahk is putting the finishing touches on James Landing Grill, an extensive renovation of the casual Kingsmill eatery that sits on the James River.

Maybe it's the fact the Williamsburg is a tourist magnet that swells with people in the summer or that it has a sizable population of retired folks eager for a new place to dine. Whatever the reason, the city and its surroundings are offering up some great new places to eat this summer.

Open for a week, DoG Street Pub plays off its Duke of Gloucester (DoG) Street address. The British-style "gastropub" has taken over a 1930s bank building that has been vacant in Merchants Square.

Everett and his wife, interior designer Kathryn Tawes, have been working as a team to bring the restaurant on line. In addition to designing the kitchen and the menu, Everett has spent hours building cabinetry and other wood accent pieces — it's a particular hobby of his — to give the restaurant its pub-like atmosphere.

Unlike his other two restaurants, DoG Street feels more like a kick-back and work-on-a-beer kind of place. A long bar and large trestled table topped with stone dominates the front room. High ceilings and the original skylight has been restored or replaced. A raised dining area to the right is accented with grillwork that once separated the bank tellers from their customers.

The building required extensive renovation, says Everett, including removing a massive walk-in vault that took a month to dismantle.

In the rear dining area, a canopied bar area and paneling give the room a true pub feeling. Tawes has used fall colors of greens and reds and tiled the room in a stone mosaic. An additional room in the basement is available for parties and other gatherings. Behind it a refrigerated tap room controls the 17 draft beer lines that are pulled upstairs.

Initially, Everett considered several different cuisine concepts for the space, but decided what the community needed was an "adult bar and a place to relax." He admits that his other restaurants are wine-driven and that "beer brings out a whole different group of people we weren't familiar with." That required research and naming Michael Claar, who had worked at more beer-related restaurants, as general manager. In addition to the regional and international drafts, the pub will carry more than 100 bottled beers.

Everett's menu includes British favorites such as fish and chips and prime rib with Yorkshire pudding as well as pastas and dishes such as Tikka Masala that reflect London's international flavor.

iOS 6 unveiled with Siri enhancements

iOS 6, a new version of Apple's mobile operating system, was unveiled at the company's Worldwide Developer's Conference on Monday. The version will feature "significant enhancements" to Siri, Apple's own Maps app, a new app called Passbook, Facebook integration, changes to phone calls and FaceTime, and improvements to Mail, Safari, and Photo Stream.

Apple stated it has been working "very closely" with Facebook to integrate it into iOS 6. Users will be able to post to Facebook from different apps, similar to the level of Twitter's integration now. Users will see notifications from Facebook in the Notification Center, and Facebook events and birthdays will appear in the Calendar app.

Third-party apps can now be launched with a command to Siri—for example, "Play Temple Run" opens the app. Users can also now tweet from Siri, a formerly noticeable hole in the Twitter integration throughout the rest of iOS. In addition to hands-free mode, Siri now has "eyes-free" mode, where the app doesn't light the screen, but still reads responses out. Apple is working with BMW, GM, Jaguar, Mercedes, and Honda to bring a "Siri button" to their cars that will work with iPhones within the next 12 months.

Siri has become more knowledgeable about restaurants and theaters, said Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iOS software. Restaurant search results are now sorted by Yelp rating, and tapping on them takes the user into the Yelp app. OpenTable, a reservation booking app, is also integrated into the restaurant results. For movies, Siri can bring up artwork and the slate of movies playing at a nearby theater, along with information culled from Rotten Tomatoes. Siri is also now able to respond to questions about sports ("What was the score of the last Giants game?"), including queries on standings and player stats.

Apple will add many international languages to Siri, including Canadian French and English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Korean, Mandarin, and Cantonese.

The new app, Passbook, is built to collect documents as they are created by different apps or services. The app can save things like movie tickets and plane tickets, a store card from Starbucks, or a coupon from Target. The passes are able to integrate with location information , and also update live .

The new Maps app has been built from the ground up by Apple. The app has a "Traffic View" that layers traffic data over traffic incidents using "anonymous, realtime, crowd-sourced data," so users can determine whether the congestion might clear up soon. The app offers turn-by-turn directions and can calculate the quickest route to a destination while factoring in traffic. It includes a 3D viewing mode that allows users to fly over city buildings and change viewing angles, or zoom back out to 2D view. Over 100 million business listings, culled from Yelp, will power the map app's local searches.

Maps itself will not feature information on public transit or alternative methods of transport like biking, as Google's app does now. Instead, Apple will release APIs for Maps and allow developers to build their own transit apps that will be featured, integrated, and promoted from within Maps.

As for direct OS features, iOS 6 will offer more control over phone calls. Users receiving a call will be offered two new buttons: reply with a message, or a prompt for the device to remind them about the call later. For video calls, FaceTime will finally work over cellular service with iOS 6. Apple plans to unify cell phone numbers and Apple IDs so that calls that ring on an iPhone can be answered on an iPad or Mac. Likewise, if someone messages a user on a phone number, that message can be replied to on an iPad or Mac.

A new Do Not Disturb mode allows iOS 6 to continue to receive alerts, but without making noise, vibrating, or lighting up the screen. The mode will let users set certain numbers to still ring through on the handset.

In updates to mobile Safari, Apple announced that users' Reading Lists for saving links will now be available offline as well. Fullscreen mode will now work in landscape in Safari, and Apple has also added "Smart App Banners" that can appear on a webpage when the owner has a companion app.

Photo Stream, which was cautiously received on launch, is being updated with shared photo streams that can be accessed by groups of friends. The shared streams can pop alerts on friends' phones and will automatically form an album viewable in Photos, iPhoto, or in a Web browser.

In Mail, users can now mark "VIPs" whose messages will pop an alert on the lock screen and be sorted into a VIP mailbox. Users will also now be able to add photos and videos into an e-mail right from the Compose window, instead of forcing them to reverse-engineer the message from the Photos or Video app, a long-missing and much-welcome feature.

iOS 6 will also add some small accessibility features for education and child uses. These include the ability to disable the Home button ("single-app mode") and disable settings so kids can't access certain apps.

For developers, Apple will release APIs for Passbook, as well as some for in-app content purchases from the iTunes Store. A beta of iOS 6 will be available to developers as of Monday, and the OS is set for release in fall 2012.

Riders extend GM contract

The Saskatchewan Roughriders showed faith in their general manager Saturday with the announcement of a contract extension for Brendan Taman. The one-year extension will see Taman, who was given full control of football operations for the Riders last November, continue his role with the club through the 2013 season.

“I thought it was important, not just for Brendan but for (head coach) Corey (Chamblin) and the staff to know that we had Brendan on a contract for this year and next and there was stability,” said Jim Hopson, president and CEO of the Riders.

The announcement came as part of the Riders’ annual Green and White Day in Saskatoon, which brought the team to Griffiths Stadium to practice. Saskatoon is Taman’s hometown, making it the perfect occasion for the announcement.

“It worked out pretty well, it’s pretty neat actually,” said Taman.

Hopson has displayed a flair for the dramatic in Saskatoon, after choosing the University of Saskatchewan Huskies’ annual Dogs’ Breakfast event to announce the Riders’ intention to pick Huskies player Ben Heenan with the number one pick in this year’s draft just over a month ago.

According to Hopson, an extension was in the plans for Taman, but they’ve been busy up to this point getting the rest of the organization’s pieces in place.

“It’s something we knew we wanted to do. When we started with the new regime, Brendan was focused on getting a coach in place, and staff, and players. He knew that we were committed to him, and it was just a matter of finding some time later in the spring,” said Hopson.

Taman has been busy since taking over in November, overhauling the team on both the field and the sidelines. The most significant change was likely the hiring of Chamblin, the second new head coach for the Riders in as many seasons.

“Brendan has put his mark on this team. Corey was the coach that he wanted,” said Hopson. “We think it was the right decision and we’re very pleased to have (Taman) on board for this year and next, and we have an option also for the year after, so we think it’s good for the organization long- and short-term.”

As for Taman, his contract seemed to be the last thing he was worried about Saturday.

“I’ve been focusing on getting this team right and getting the coaching staff in place and getting the players on board, so to be honest with you I haven’t really keyed in on it, but it’s obviously a nice gesture,” he said.

The Riders are looking to bounce back from last year’s 5-13 season, which saw them miss the playoffs for the first time since 2001.

“Obviously we need to retool after having a bad year, and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done behind the scenes to get that done,” said Taman.

The first real look at Taman’s new version of the Riders will come Wednesday, when they travel to Vancouver to take on the BC Lions in the first of two preseason games for the year.

“We’ve had a lot of change, and I think any time you do these changes it takes a lot of time to gel. Overall though, it’s coming together pretty nice, and we’ll learn a lot more on Wednesday,” said Taman.

While stability is important to any football club, Taman was clear Saturday about the most important way he and his staff can solidify their roles in the Riders organization.

Nissan Murano offers mature sophistication that’s sporty and luxurious

It was nearly 10 years ago that the world first set eyes on the Murano and it was stunning to see such avant-garde styling on an SUV. What had come before were closer to enclosed pick-up trucks with stiff suspensions and basic interiors.

The Murano introduced the possibility of futuristic styling, luxurious cabins and technology plus performance and handling. This was a game-changer.

For 2012 the Murano stays the course with the introduction of its “mobile suite” interior and more advanced technology with a new package for the LE model which we tested, the Platinum Edition.

The exterior shape is still distinctively Murano-esque yet no longer exclusive to Nissan. It has been updated to carry the latest arrow-shaped rear tail lights like the sporty 370Z. The front grille and fascia is all new with an intricate mosaic of shapes combining the high-intensity discharge bi-functional projector headlights, turn indicators and chrome grille.

The front bumper has a major overbite while a pair of projector-type driving lights frame the lower grille. Massive wheel arches, filled with special 20-inch, titanium finish alloy wheels on the Platinum Edition (why not call it the Titanium Edition?), flow up to the clamshell style hood and repeat at the rear. The side profile shows off the side glass’s signature triangular shape at the rear pillar, something the Murano introduced a decade ago.

The rear window is another complex shape that follows the flowing crest of the rear fenders and matches the angular tail lights with LED bulbs. Two chrome-tipped exhaust pipes exit through the lower edge of the rear bumper, proudly claiming their place in the sport SUV class.

The “mobile suite” interior is a pleasant balance of sport and luxury, again a Murano characteristic since Day 1. The Merlot (maroon) exterior of the test vehicle was complimented nicely by the tan leather interior, but I found the light colour was quick to show dirt.

The centre stack features one of the best navigation/info displays (seven-inch touchscreen) in the business with user-friendly graphic interface, menu structure and intelligent search capabilities and a rear-view camera when reversing. A Bose stereo with 11 speakers and a subwoofer ensure that you favourite music source sounds its best.

The heated leather-faced seats have eight-way adjustments for the driver while the rear seats have powered flip-up for convenience at the touch of a button.

All of the 2012 Muranos feature Nissan’s award-winning VQ series engine – a 3.5-litre DOHC V6 with 260 horsepower and 240 foot-pounds of torque. The engine incorporates a Twin Nissan Variable Induction Control System, microfinished camshaft and crankshaft surfaces, diamond-like-carbon-coated valve lifters, plastic resin intake manifold for weight-savings, forged crankshaft, digital knock control system, and a lightweight aluminum block with aluminum cylinder heads.

The engine power is transferred through an Xtronic continuously variable transmission with adaptive shift control that provides a sporty driving experience when using the paddle shifters and the fuel economy that a CVT can offer. Every 2012 Murano comes equipped with an “intuitive all-wheel drive system” that adjusts to road conditions in the blink of an eye. The system provides increased traction by distributing engine torque, depending on the driver’s intended direction and the actual direction of the vehicle. Vehicle dynamic control with a traction control system are standard on all Murano models.

Dedham artists showcase works at Open Studios event

The beautiful weather was second only to the beautiful artwork that filled Dedham’s common areas on Sunday. The second annual Dedham Open Studios featured 95 artists specializing in a variety of media, all celebrating with residents and other art-lovers all over town.

“We’re so excited about so many activities happening in Dedham for Open Studios,” said founder Jennifer Barsamian. “People come from all over the surrounding areas and we’re so happy to be able to showcase Dedham.”

The artists were able to display and even sell their work out of their own homes, or can choose to show with other artists in gathering places like the Endicott Estate, Dedham Community House, Allin Church, First Church and Parish and NewBridge on the Charles.

Court Street resident David Adler is a second time participant in Dedham Open Studios, and showed his framed nature photos on the front farmer’s porch of the home he shares with wife Liz Brown. Taken everywhere from the Galapagos Islands to Antarctica to their bedroom window, Adler’s photography started as something he just did on vacation. But when others started noticing what an eye he had for composition, he began a website and started displaying his work. A snapshot of orca whales he took from a raft off the coast of Antarctica even made it into the pages of Smithsonian Magazine in 2008.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of camera you have, but it matters that you have it with you when you see something great,” said Adler, who is a full time computer software designer. “I always have a camera nearby.”

Eric and Lichtaim Medwid displayed their work at Dedham Community House—he with his watercolors and Peruvian textiles and she with her hand-rolled paper necklaces, a style reminiscent of her native Peru. Eric Medwid requested the community house location because the couple lives just down the street. It is his first year participating in Open Studios.

“I began just sketching and then started doing watercolors a few years ago,” said Eric Medwid, who is a full time carpenter and painter. “We thought this would be a nice place to display and meet some local people.”

Some of the paintings he had on display included one close up of the Dedham Public Library, another of Dedham Square and a third of a Boston lighthouse.

Dedham Square was blocked off to traffic for the afternoon, and a handful of large, ceramic rabbits held court in front of the Dedham Community Theatre. A part of Dedham Shine’s Dedham Public Art Project, it’s an initiative to publicly celebrate Dedham’s artistic heritage and bring a little whimsy to the streets.

Hands-on with The Secret World's mission system

So The Secret World's mission system treads well off the beaten MMO path. It's pretty cool, actually, though portions of it may irritate quest-grinders who just want to blow through zones on their way to the game's equivalent of a max-level toon.

For the rest of us, there's a nifty interface, some challenging puzzles, and plenty of well-written quest text and dialogue to keep us entertained for weeks at a time.

Why should you do missions? Well, apart from the fact that they give out the game's largest ability point and skill point rewards, they're the primary thing that sets The Secret World apart from its MMO contemporaries. Funcom has poured a lot of effort into the game's backstory, and it shows in details ranging from quest text descriptions (which, contrary to quests in your typical MMO, are actually vital to understanding and completing some of the more challenging missions) to voiced dialogue to little details like pop-up phone book pages or manhole cover closeups.

There's a classic adventure game feel to The Secret World, which is no accident given the involvement of Ragnar Tornquist (creator of Dreamfall and The Longest Journey). Don't get me wrong; there are the usual MMO kill and fetch quests too, but these are fewer than you might expect, and they're dressed up quite nicely with plenty of atmosphere and a sense of purpose beyond getting to max level.

The Secret World has seven different mission types: story, action, item, investigation, sabotage, group/dungeon, and PvP. Each of these types is represented by an iPhone-style icon both on the UI's quest tracker (floating under your minimap at screen right) and hovering next to the NPC's head in the game world proper. That probably sounds a bit complicated when you read it, but the actual experience is pretty slick.

It did take me a minute to figure out that I had to re-click each icon to collapse the appropriate menu tree, but once I had that down, the NPC interface really grew on me.

Each mission is sub-divided into tiers, which consist of a series of objectives like talk to this guy, follow these clues to this location, or kill these guys. Tiers must be completed in order, and once all tiers are complete, you'll get an on-screen pop-up directing you to phone in your success to a faction representative. This is fantastic because it eliminates the tedious travel-back-to-the-NPC-who-gave-you-the-quest bollux that is so common in themepark MMOs.

Questing in The Secret World requires a completely different mindset when compared to your average MMO. You shouldn't try to finish every quest in a particular "hub" (chances are you won't be able to acquire them all anyway). Rather, concentrate on the story quest for a given area. The Kingsmouth story quest has a whopping 18 tiers, for example, and if you follow it through to completion, it will give you a comprehensive tour of the zone and lead you across other quest NPCs who will hand out supplementary mission types.

That's not to say you should ignore everything but the story quests. There are a ton of other objectives buried inside the aforementioned mission types. And while I'm thinking about them, let's go over those real quick. Rather than a big wall o' text, here's a bullet list for simplicity's sake.

Some of these missions have prerequisites (denoted by a padlock symbol). Some are repeatable, usually to the tune of a 24-hour cooldown (though this is rumored to be temporary, post-launch cooldowns may be longer). Many have spiffy cinematic cutscenes that play upon acceptance (don't skip these, at least initially, because some of them contain vital information). Funcom apparently took some criticisms on Age of Conan to heart, as these quest cinematics are evident throughout the game, whereas in AoC they stopped at level 20 aside from the destiny line.

I should also mention the quest system's limitations. Funcom has made a conscious design decision to limit a player's ability to gobble up quests and mow through them like some sort of steroid-powered MMO Pac-Man. What do I mean, specifically? Well, you can have only a single story, action, sabotage, investigation, or dungeon mission active at a given time. Item missions may be accepted in groups of three at a time. I'm not sure about PvP missions because I haven't done any yet (more on that in a later article).

It's also worth noting that you can't drop a mission. Let's say that I'm frustrated with The Kingsmouth Code investigation mission. I can either try one of the other mission types in my journal or accept another investigation mission, which will then pause The Kingsmouth Code. Whenever I feel like resuming The Kingsmouth Code, I'll need to go back to the original NPC to unpause it. If I've already completed several tiers, it will unpause with those tiers marked complete.

Now that we've got the technical nuts and bolts out of the way, allow me to give you a few impressions on questing in the game's Kingsmouth zone. Don't worry; I'm not going to spoil anything, as figuring out some of these mysteries is a large part of what makes The Secret World a unique title.

With state weak, Libyans look to God for help

Mohamed Salem believes it was divine intervention that saved the Muslim holy site where he works from being destroyed.

In early March, word reached the keepers of the ornate shrine, the most important of its kind in Libya, that ultra-conservative Salafis were on their way to destroy it as part of a campaign to wipe out any symbols they see as idolatrous.

The curators sent for help. Volunteer militia units came from nearby towns. They surrounded the shrine complex - which houses the tomb of the 15th-century Sufi scholar Abdel Salam al-Asmar - with pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft weapons, and waited to repel the attack.

Then a sandstorm, rare at that time of year, whipped up and shrouded the mosque from view. The attack never came.

"The dust was so thick and the wind so strong you couldn't see your hand in front of you," said Salem, a caretaker and religious teacher at the complex. "God protected the grave of this scholarly man and protected us from harm."

Since last year's revolt ended Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule over Libya, people have grown used to looking to their own resources, or to God, to help them out, because they feel they cannot count on their government.

The struggle over this shrine in Zlitan, about 160 km (90 miles) west of the Libyan capital, is the story of Libya as it struggles to re-shape itself after Gaddafi's rule.

It is the story of the battle for the right to define what it means to be a Muslim in Libya, of theological arguments being settled by weapons, and of an interim government that is so weak that it cannot impose its authority over opposing factions.

The ending has not yet been written.

The conflict over the al-Asmar tomb and hundreds of other shrines like it has not been resolved. Instead, the National Transitional Council (NTC) has postponed a decision by ordering that all the shrines be closed until it decided on a way out.

"We are keeping this subject on hold," said NTC spokesman Mohammed al-Harizy. "We have other subjects which are more important than the graves right now."

One afternoon in March, Salem unlocked and pushed open the door to the shrine, at the centre of the complex which also includes a school and a mosque.

A burst of incense and musk greeted him as he slipped off his slippers and muttered a short prayer before entering the cool room.

The coffin of al-Asmar stood inside, covered with Turkish rugs and surrounded by intricate blue and white mosaic patterns on the wall.

Students from all over Libya come to study Islamic law and to memorize the Islamic holy book, the Koran, at the university and school built around the shrine. Now, numbers are down.

In the school halls, the voices of young boys and girls echo in unison.

"We usually have 600 girls a day come to memorize Koran, but the parents are now afraid the Salafis will attack so only 100 show up," said teacher Wafa al-Ati.

Sufism, a mystical strain of Islam, dates back to the faith's early days. Apart from the standard prayers, Sufi devotions include singing hymns, chanting the names of God or dancing to heighten awareness of the divine.

Sufis also build shrines to revered holy men and scholars and make pilgrimages to them. There are hundreds of the shrines all over Libya. Even Gaddafi, with his ambivalent attitude to religion, did not try to interfere in a practice that is so deep-seated in Libyan culture.

But since the end of Gaddafi's rule, a new trend has emerged to challenge Sufi traditions.

Under Gaddafi's rule, many Salafis were jailed for their beliefs and those not imprisoned spent years avoiding any outward manifestation of their beliefs.

Files from Gaddafi's internal security agency, seen by Reuters after the revolt, show there was a special department set up to track hardline Islamists. Anyone suspected of affiliation was denied the right to travel abroad, enroll in university or take public sector jobs.

Since that system of repression collapsed, Salafis have become emboldened. Some have acquired weapons and used them to enforce their ultra-purist view of Islam.

The Salafis believe Islam should be followed in the simple, ascetic form practiced by the Prophet Mohammed and his disciples. Any later additions to the faith -- including tombs or lavish grave markings - are viewed by them as idolatry.

They have alarmed many secularist Libyans by trying to enforce their strict moral code. The Salafis have burned down halls were parties are held and harassed women who do not cover their heads.

In the eastern city of Benghazi, organizers of a rap concert featuring a famous Tunisian artist were forced to cancel the event after being threatened by a Salafi brigade called Libya's Shield.

Worried that the Salafis would attack their joyful annual parades to celebrate the Prophet Mohammad's birthday in February, Sufi mosques sought safety in numbers and held a joint procession in Tripoli's walled old city. The event, which Salafis also consider idolatrous, went off without incident.

The main front in their campaign has been their attacks on Sufi shrines, which are a traditional part of Libyan Islam. Dozens have been demolished all around the country and the bodies of their holy men dug up and dumped elsewhere.

The defenders of the shrine in Zlitan believe a Salafi militia, called the Thalath Salafi brigade, was behind the aborted attack on the complex.

The brigade is stationed in a former military base in the nearby town of Khoms. Commanders declined an interview with Reuters but in March, a spokesman addressed an angry crowd calling for their departure from the town.

"Having any sign or tomb marking a grave is a form of infidelity and must be removed," said the spokesman for the brigade, Jalal al-Gheit. "We prefer to call it a reorganization of the graves."

The evidence of the Salafi campaign can be seen at what remains of the Sidi Gibran shrine, also in Zlitan.

Large concrete pieces attached to metal wires dangle from where the roof used to be. A hole filled with rubble remains where the grave of the holy man, after whom the shrine is named, was dug up.

The shrine's caretaker, who lives nearby, said he witnessed the desecration one afternoon when he heard the rumble of a tractor outside his house.

"I walked out and was surprised to see 16 bearded Salafis carrying Kalashnikovs, and breaking the tomb using a Caterpillar tractor," said Faraj al-Shimi. "They all ran away when I threatened to call the police."