Thursday 12 May 2016

Investigation wraps up at Colorado shooting suspect's building

AURORA, Colo. - Kaitlyn Fonzi, 20, had her hand on the doorknob of her upstairs neighbor's booby-trapped apartment here early last Friday, ready to complain about his blaring music. She had no idea how close she was to becoming one of the casualties in a massacre that left 12 dead and 58 injured. On Wednesday, Fonzi returned to the three-story brick apartment building with her boyfriend, Chris Rodriguez, 30, to see when they could come back. Many others in town were wondering the same thing - not only about the apartment building, but about the Century 16 theater, where police say James E. Holmes attacked moviegoers during the post-midnight premiere of the latest Batman installment,"The Dark Knight Rises.

Friday 22 April 2016

Not all benefits are means tested

Some benefits help you with the extra care needs you have because you’re disabled or have a long-term or terminal health condition.
These benefits are not means tested. In other words they are not affected by your income and savings. They include:
  • Personal Independence Payment
  • Disability Living Allowance
  • Attendance Allowance
Benefits that are means-tested are those that are designed to:
  • replace earnings – for example Employment and Support Allowance
  • top up your income – for example tax credits
  • help you with essential costs – for example Housing Benefit

Sunday 17 April 2016

Are Women More Generous Than Men?

When it comes to giving to charity, women are in the driver's seat.

A recent survey conducted by Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC) found that women are more generous than men when it comes to charitable giving, especially with respect to decisions about volunteer activities and smaller financial donations.

Large financial donations are often made jointly.

Reuters asked Lorna Sabbia, managing director and head of retirement and personal wealth solutions at Merrill Lynch, for insights into giving and issues surrounding philanthropy among families and women.

Sunday 27 March 2016

insurer

The more detailed information you provide up front, the more accurate the quotes will be. “A quote is only as good as the information you put in,” says Des Toups, managing editor of CarInsurance.com.
When you pursue a quote, the insurer will check your driving record, credit history and other information before finalizing the rate. Whether you’re working with a quote site or agent or dealing with the insurer directly, you should track down certain information ahead of time, says Toups, so there aren’t any surprises when the insurer pulls your record:

title

Sunday 20 March 2016

overjoyed

I am of course overjoyed to be here today in the role of ceremonial object. There is more than the usual amount of satisfaction in receiving an honorary degree from the university that helped to form one’s erstwhile callow and ignorant mind into the thing of dubious splendor that it is today; whose professors put up with so many overdue term papers, and struggled to read one’s handwriting, of which ‘interesting’ is the best that has been said; at which one failed to learn Anglo-Saxon and somehow missed Bibliography entirely, a severe error which I trust no one present here today has committed; and at which one underwent excruciating agonies not only of soul but of body, later traced to having drunk too much coffee in the bowels of Wymilwood.

Friday 18 March 2016

Shakespeare in Swahililand: Adventures with the Ever-Living Poet.

By Edward Wilson-Lee. William Collins; 288 pages; £20. To be published in America by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in September; $26.
ACCORDING to the diaries of Captain William Keeling of the East India Company, in 1607 “Hamlet” was performed on his ship Dragon off the coast of Sierra Leone. If the extract is genuine, it was the first performance of the play ever to be mentioned in writing. Edward Wilson-Lee of Cambridge University has pulled together this and many intriguing threads in his “story of Africa less often told”. “Shakespeare in Swahililand” is an attempt to understand whether the great playwright’s work speaks across cultural boundaries to a shared humanity. It primarily looks at “Swahililand”: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and the parts of Congo, Malawi and Sudan, where the language is spoken, but cannot resist ranging farther afield. (Ethiopia’s emperor, Haile Selassie, said that after God, Shakespeare was “the greatest creator of mankind”, but his information ministry banned an Amharic-language staging of the regicidal “Makbez”.)