Latham quits as Australian Labor leader
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Tuesday, January 18, 2005
AUSTRALIA –Following hospitalisation for pancreatitis and ongoing speculation about his leadership, Mark Latham has resigned from his roles as leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and also the Federal Member for Werriwa. He cited as reasons the media harassment, and a desire to put his family and health first.
Mr Latham became leader of the ALP just over a year ago, on 2 December, 2003, leading the party during the October 2004 federal election. He was hospitalised in the run-up to that election, also for treatment of pancreatitis. Following the defeat of his party, his leadership increasingly came under question.
He fell ill a second time almost simultaneously with last year’s Indian Ocean tsunami disaster. His failure to issue a statement on the tsunami drew criticism from the media and calls for his resignation from within his own party, even after it was revealed that he had been incapacitated at the time.
Mr Latham’s resignation sidesteps the possibility of a leadership challenge by other members of the party and leaves no clear successor.
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By Nick Pegley
Dun & Bradstreet operates the largest business database in the world, with information on over a hundred million businesses worldwide.* This includes thirty-eight million in the US. Dun & Bradstreet is far and away the number one provider of business information concerning marketing, credit and purchasing decision-making. Currently, over a hundred and fifty thousand businesses of many sizes depend on D&B for the insight needed to build and maintain profitable business relationships.
The information found in the D&B database is compiled by gathering millions of bank and trade transactions, business owner info, public utilities, federal bankruptcy listings, and all the offices of the US Secretaries of State. They also go over hundreds of magazine, newspaper, trade publication, and electronic news to gather data. In addition, they conduct millions of interviews, with managers and businesspeople. They can attain up to as many as fifteen hundred data elements compiled on a particular company.
Overall, over two hundred million financial transactions are added to D&B’s database annually. They update the information on a continual basis; one and a half million times each business day, to be sure the information is the most current available.
It’s a good idea to manage your business’ credit as this credit rating can either save or cost your business money.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shFpCNY8KBc[/youtube]
Have you ever been denied a loan? Have you been required to pay a high insurance premium? Have you been required to pay cash on delivery to receive supplies?
If you’re not exactly sure of what is in your credit profile, you can’t really be sure if your company is being presented in a favorable way. A bad or absent credit profile can affect your bottom line directly. Having good credit is a lifeline to your business. This will let you find the funds to expand, make capital expenditures, create research and development, and hire staff. Your future growth is dependent on this rating, along with access to the cash needed to survive. Maintaining a good business credit rating also let you keep cash on hand to cover your costs, and this kind of liquidity will allow you quick response to situations that are time sensitive – without the need to wait or pause operations.
Business credit has become the main method of setting the terms of business loans, lease payments, and insurance rates. Maintaining excellent credit can help your business earn lower rates and improve cash flow. Your credit record is the main method which companies will determine if they want to do business with your company or not – and, on what terms. These companies will depend upon your creditworthiness in order to make important decisions. These decisions include whether or not to sell to your business, lend money, accept you as a partner, increase a line of credit, lease equipment, extend favorable rates of financing, and determine if you compare well against competitors in your field.
A number of business data points are included in business credit: date began, experience of executive leadership, annual sales figures, and the total number of employees. This info is listed with the credit profile, as well as ratings and scores which have been determined though the past behaviors of your business. For example, past willingness to pay bills is factored into determining the likelihood that you will pay bills in the future. The overall credit worthiness of a business is determined by the four Cs of credit: character, capital, capacity and conditions.
Character includes the total number of years operating in business, workforce size, willingness to share information, judgements or law suits, coverage in the media, stock market valuations, and comments from relevant references.
Capital determines if a business has the resources necessary to repay creditors. Generally, this part of the credit report is most important in the review of an analyst. Top importance is attributed to items including net worth, working capital amounts, and cash flow.
Capacity refers to a company’s ability to satisfy its accounts payable. This also covers the debt of the company and how it is structured, including unused credit and defaults.
Conditions are the outside factors which surround the company. These include industry growth, market changes, political or legal factors, and currency valuations.
Loan officers and credit managers answer these sorts of questions by reviewing information supplied by customers, banking information, trading information, and requests for credit check information. The process is quite like that of gaining personal credit. If you’ve ever opened a banking account, financed an auto, or used a credit card, you have a personal credit file. This info intends to help you locate the funds to operate your household. Still, not all businesses have a credit profile; this is why some creditors check the personal credit of small business owners. If you want to reduce your personal liability and operate a business, it is preferable to establish credit for your business and use this to run it. Using personal credit to obtain funds to operate your business could pose some problems.
The bottom line is that other businesses need to take note of your credit profile regardless of the size of your company. You too, need to understand your own business credit profile, to understand how creditworthy you appear there. All transactions affect your profile. On-time payments help keep the cost of borrowing low. The information about new and old companies are equally available, obtained from numerous sources and added into your compiled profile. Make sure this information is true, accurate and updated. A strong credit score can help you maintain favorable rates, and affect your overall cash flow, the lifeblood of a business.
*The information provided in this article is strictly for informational purposes only. Please consult with your financial advisors regarding any aspects of your credit profile.
About the Author: Nick Pegley is VP Marketing for All Covered: Technology Services Partner for
Small Business, providing local disaster recovery consulting and technology services in 20 major U.S. metro areas. Source: isnare.com
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Cleveland, Ohio clinic performs US’s first face transplant
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Thursday, December 18, 2008
A team of eight transplant surgeons in Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, led by reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow, age 58, have successfully performed the first almost total face transplant in the US, and the fourth globally, on a woman so horribly disfigured due to trauma, that cost her an eye. Two weeks ago Dr. Siemionow, in a 23-hour marathon surgery, replaced 80 percent of her face, by transplanting or grafting bone, nerve, blood vessels, muscles and skin harvested from a female donor’s cadaver.
The Clinic surgeons, in Wednesday’s news conference, described the details of the transplant but upon request, the team did not publish her name, age and cause of injury nor the donor’s identity. The patient’s family desired the reason for her transplant to remain confidential. The Los Angeles Times reported that the patient “had no upper jaw, nose, cheeks or lower eyelids and was unable to eat, talk, smile, smell or breathe on her own.” The clinic’s dermatology and plastic surgery chair, Francis Papay, described the nine hours phase of the procedure: “We transferred the skin, all the facial muscles in the upper face and mid-face, the upper lip, all of the nose, most of the sinuses around the nose, the upper jaw including the teeth, the facial nerve.” Thereafter, another team spent three hours sewing the woman’s blood vessels to that of the donor’s face to restore blood circulation, making the graft a success.
The New York Times reported that “three partial face transplants have been performed since 2005, two in France and one in China, all using facial tissue from a dead donor with permission from their families.” “Only the forehead, upper eyelids, lower lip, lower teeth and jaw are hers, the rest of her face comes from a cadaver; she could not eat on her own or breathe without a hole in her windpipe. About 77 square inches of tissue were transplanted from the donor,” it further described the details of the medical marvel. The patient, however, must take lifetime immunosuppressive drugs, also called antirejection drugs, which do not guarantee success. The transplant team said that in case of failure, it would replace the part with a skin graft taken from her own body.
Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a Brigham and Women’s Hospital surgeon praised the recent medical development. “There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.
Leading bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania withheld judgment on the Cleveland transplant amid grave concerns on the post-operation results. “The biggest ethical problem is dealing with failure — if your face rejects. It would be a living hell. If your face is falling off and you can’t eat and you can’t breathe and you’re suffering in a terrible manner that can’t be reversed, you need to put on the table assistance in dying. There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.
Dr Alex Clarke, of the Royal Free Hospital had praised the Clinic for its contribution to medicine. “It is a real step forward for people who have severe disfigurement and this operation has been done by a team who have really prepared and worked towards this for a number of years. These transplants have proven that the technical difficulties can be overcome and psychologically the patients are doing well. They have all have reacted positively and have begun to do things they were not able to before. All the things people thought were barriers to this kind of operations have been overcome,” she said.
The first partial face transplant surgery on a living human was performed on Isabelle Dinoire on November 27 2005, when she was 38, by Professor Bernard Devauchelle, assisted by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard in Amiens, France. Her Labrador dog mauled her in May 2005. A triangle of face tissue including the nose and mouth was taken from a brain-dead female donor and grafted onto the patient. Scientists elsewhere have performed scalp and ear transplants. However, the claim is the first for a mouth and nose transplant. Experts say the mouth and nose are the most difficult parts of the face to transplant.
In 2004, the same Cleveland Clinic, became the first institution to approve this surgery and test it on cadavers. In October 2006, surgeon Peter Butler at London‘s Royal Free Hospital in the UK was given permission by the NHS ethics board to carry out a full face transplant. His team will select four adult patients (children cannot be selected due to concerns over consent), with operations being carried out at six month intervals. In March 2008, the treatment of 30-year-old neurofibromatosis victim Pascal Coler of France ended after having received what his doctors call the worlds first successful full face transplant.
Ethical concerns, psychological impact, problems relating to immunosuppression and consequences of technical failure have prevented teams from performing face transplant operations in the past, even though it has been technically possible to carry out such procedures for years.
Mr Iain Hutchison, of Barts and the London Hospital, warned of several problems with face transplants, such as blood vessels in the donated tissue clotting and immunosuppressants failing or increasing the patient’s risk of cancer. He also pointed out ethical issues with the fact that the procedure requires a “beating heart donor”. The transplant is carried out while the donor is brain dead, but still alive by use of a ventilator.
According to Stephen Wigmore, chair of British Transplantation Society’s ethics committee, it is unknown to what extent facial expressions will function in the long term. He said that it is not certain whether a patient could be left worse off in the case of a face transplant failing.
Mr Michael Earley, a member of the Royal College of Surgeon‘s facial transplantation working party, commented that if successful, the transplant would be “a major breakthrough in facial reconstruction” and “a major step forward for the facially disfigured.”
In Wednesday’s conference, Siemionow said “we know that there are so many patients there in their homes where they are hiding from society because they are afraid to walk to the grocery stores, they are afraid to go the the street.” “Our patient was called names and was humiliated. We very much hope that for this very special group of patients there is a hope that someday they will be able to go comfortably from their houses and enjoy the things we take for granted,” she added.
In response to the medical breakthrough, a British medical group led by Royal Free Hospital’s lead surgeon Dr Peter Butler, said they will finish the world’s first full face transplant within a year. “We hope to make an announcement about a full-face operation in the next 12 months. This latest operation shows how facial transplantation can help a particular group of the most severely facially injured people. These are people who would otherwise live a terrible twilight life, shut away from public gaze,” he said.