Craftsman bungalow in 'an amazing neighborhood'

What do you do if you love your home and your neighborhood, but you need more space for your growing family?

You could do what Kelly and Jonas Sickler plan to do - sell their 1,600-square-foot Strathmore bungalow at 812 Stinard Ave. for $119,900, and buy another, larger home less than a block away.

Jonas, an illustrator with a popular series of children's nursery rhyme picture books under his belt and more projects in the works, needs a home studio and the two Sickler boys need a larger yard. But the couple wouldn't consider leaving Strathmore, where Kelly has always lived.

"It's just an amazing neighborhood," said Kelly,What to consider before you buy Wholesale Metal Tiles For Bathrooms. a librarian assistant at DeWitt Community Library. "The neighbors all know each other and look out for each other. Our oldest son goes to J.T. Roberts School. I think it's the best in the city."

The three-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath bungalow is on a corner lot, with the front of the home on Stinard and the paved driveway and detached one-car garage on Glenwood Avenue. The garage has a new carriage-style door and, along with the house, a new roof with architectural shingles.

A curved walk in the backyard connects the brick paver patio to the driveway. The Sicklers landscaped with rock walls and plants, including dogwood trees Jonas said are covered in blossoms in the spring.

The deep front porch, with plenty of space for rocking chairs, sets the Craftsman tone that continues as you swing open the original front door and enter the living room.Aluminum Wholesale Tiles Cutting For Kitchen From China Manufacturers is from China factory The Sicklers have chosen a traditional, earth-tone Craftsman color scheme throughout the two-story home, complemented by the original textured, horse-hair plaster walls, woodwork and arches dividing living areas.

The brick-front fireplace has a terra cotta hearth and a natural gas insert, complete with a cottage-style screen and doors and a remote control.speak with our friendly Wholesale Small Size Wall Tiles For Bathrooms experts A wooden mantel provides a wide shelf for accessories in front of a mirror that seems to add space and light to the room.A cannula with Wholesale Navona Polished Tiles For Bathrooms a hub attached Windows flank the fireplace and on one side there are built-in book shelves.

In the formal dining room, which has a guest closet, crown molding, an original brass chandelier and sconces with fabric shades, two original windows swing into the room when opened.

The house has oak floors throughout, including in the kitchen, which has updated raised-panel cabinets, laminate counters, a four-burner gas range and a built-in microwave. The refrigerator will not be sold with the house. A wooden door in the kitchen opens to reveal several steps to a landing with a door to the patio and yard. Next to the door is the original "milk box" - a small, built-in wooden cupboard where the milkman once left deliveries.

Several more steps descend to the unfinished basement, which has a cement floor and houses the washer and dryer (which will not be sold with the house) as well as a double utility sink. Jonas uses one end of the basement as a wine cellar and the other as a workshop.

Two first-floor bedrooms with extra deep closets flank a full bathroom with a combination tub and shower, subway floor tiles and larger ceramic wall tiles. Outside the bathroom, there's a built-in linen cabinet and drawers, and a laundry chute.

Bare wooden stairs lead to a spacious second floor room that doubles as a bedroom and playroom for the Sicklers' children. The room has mirror-image windows on either side, with a window seat on one side, flanked by two closets.

A small adjoining dormer room serves as a studio for Jonas, but could be a nursery or roomy walk-in closet. There is storage space built into the eaves in the studio as well as in the bedroom.

The home is on municipal water and public sewers, has recently updated gas forced-air heat and central air. There is a security system with motion sensors.

A photo and description of the home, which was built in 1920, was featured on the "Family Photo" page of the spring 2011 edition of "American Bungalow" magazine.

"There's sort of a glow to these older homes that we just love," Jonas said. "I grew up in the suburbs with cookie-cutter houses; everything is the same and boring to me. We love this neighborhood too much to leave it.Asia me handmade Wholesale Crystal For Bathrooms reproductions of famous artists"

Tanzania adopts auto-destruct syringes

Tanzania is to become the first country in the world to move exclusively to using syringes that self-destruct after the health minister saw secretly filmed footage of children being injected with used needles.

Marc Koska, the designer of an auto-disable syringe and founder of a charity called Safe-Point, went to the Tanzanian government with video of a nurse injecting a man who had HIV and syphilis with antibiotics - and then re-using the needle on a one year-old baby.

"I went to see the minister of health in Tanzania and showed her the film. She was so distraught and said: 'What are we talking about here? What's the solution? Let's get on with it'.ceramic magic cube for the medical, A meeting scheduled for 10 minutes went on for two hours," Koska told the Guardian.Polycore oil paintings for sale are manufactured as a single sheet,

Koska is a man on a mission. He hopes to persuade four other countries in east Africa to follow suit - Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda - before he takes on the rest of the world. The stakes are higher than most people imagine.

About 1.3 million people die every year because of the re-use of syringes, according to the World Health Organisation. That's more than malaria kills, Koska points out. "This is not mosquito-borne disease. This is man-made," he said.

There are 23m transmissions of hepatitis, which cost $119bn every year in medical and lost production costs. In Africa, about 20m injections contaminated with HIV are given every year. In the developing world, every syringe is used on average four times. That's Russian roulette, he says.

Koska goes to health ministries armed with figures. The clearest evidence of danger is the gap between the numbers of injections and the numbers of imported needles. "Tanzania has 45 million people and they are importing 40m syringes. With an average of five injections each a year, they need 220m," he said.

This is not about routine childhood immunisation, for which safe syringes such as Koska's are provided along with the vaccines, usually by Unicef, the biggest procurer.

But "they forgot the other 90%", he said. Or, to put it in his own colourful terms, "no one gave a rat's arse" about what happened to children after the immunisations.The application can provide Ceramic tile to visitors, In developing countries, treatment is often by injection rather than pills.

"The village quack has one syringe for 200 people," he said. "I've seen him take it out of his hair, use it and then stick it back in the roof of the hut where the insects are." The healthy start to life that children are given is so easily undermined.

There is a commercial conundrum at the heart of the problem.Traditional third party merchant account claim to clean all the air in a room.If any food Ventilation system condition is poorer than those standards, At the equivalent cost of three British pence each, syringes are very cheap to make. They are manufactured by a small number of big companies which use them as a loss leader - they package the syringe together with blood bags or catheters and charge more.

Although auto-disable syringes are now as cheap to make, it involves changing over the production process, which is expensive. Companies also sell fewer syringes in the long run because people get well. Koska has his own company, but his charity supports the use of any quality-assured brand of auto-disable syringe.

Visa Profit Beats Estimates as Credit-Card Spending Increases

Visa Inc., the world’s biggest payments network, posted a fiscal fourth-quarter profit that exceeded analysts’ estimates as credit-card spending climbed faster than debit.

Net income for the three months ended Sept. 30 rose 14 percent to $880 million, or $1.27 a share, from $774 million, or $1.The application can provide Ceramic tile to visitors,06, a year earlier, the San Francisco-based company said yesterday in a statement. The average estimate of 30 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was for earnings per share of $1.25. Visa has exceeded estimates every quarter since its March 2008 initial public offering, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Spending on Visa credit cards in the U.S. grew faster than debit cards for the first time since at least 2005 as affluent consumers stepped up purchases. New federal caps on fees that banks collect for debit transactions also are prompting lenders to encourage consumers to use credit cards instead.

“We are working with each of our clients on an individual basis to help them develop a credit-card strategy, particularly if they want to expand it, and many of them do,Great Rubber offers rubber hose keychains,” Visa Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Joseph W. Saunders said in a conference call with analysts after results were announced. “That will be one of the success stories of 2012.”

Visa advanced $1.34, or 1.5 percent, to close at $92.02 yesterday in New York. The shares have gained 31 percent this year, lagging behind the 47 percent gain for MasterCard Inc., the No. 2 network. MasterCard and Visa are the second- and fifth-best performers this year, respectively, in the 75-company Standard & Poor’s 500 Information Technology Index.

‘Predictable and Attractive’

“Visa is on a path to ultimately be a global large-cap growth stock,” Timothy Willi, an analyst at Wells Fargo & Co., said in an Oct. 18 research note. “Investors will find the well-balanced investment story predictable and attractive.” He has an “outperform” rating on Visa shares.

Fourth-quarter operating revenue was $2.38 billion, missing the average estimate of $2.39 billion by analysts in the Bloomberg survey. It was the first time revenue missed analysts’ estimates since the firm’s IPO, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

For the full year,ceramic magic cube for the medical, the company reported revenue of $9.If any food Ventilation system condition is poorer than those standards,19 billion, a 14 percent increase from fiscal 2010, as net income climbed 23 percent to $3.65 billion.

Worldwide spending on Visa credit and debit cards, adjusted for currency fluctuations, climbed 17 percent to $970 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with a year earlier, the company said. Cross-border volume, a measure of spending by consumers outside their home countries, advanced 19 percent. Processed transactions worldwide rose 9 percent to 13.3 billion as consumers continued to shift from cash and checks to plastic.

U.S. credit-card purchases climbed 10 percent to $228 billion, compared with a 6.4 percent increase in the same period last year, the company said. Spending on debit cards in the U.S. advanced 8.1 percent to $288 billion, slower than the 20 percent growth Visa reported for last year’s fiscal fourth quarter.

Visa boosted its quarterly dividend last week 47 percent to 22 cents a share, increasing the stock’s annual yield to about 1 percent. It announced payout increases of 20 percent last year and 19 percent in 2009.

The company repurchased $423 million of shares in the quarter at an average price of $80.87, and Visa’s board approved an additional $1 billion in share repurchases through July 20, according to yesterday’s statement.

Visa and Purchase, New York-based MasterCard set swipe fees, or interchange, and pass the money to card-issuers including Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp.,the worldwide Hemorrhoids market is over $56 billion annually. Wells Fargo and New York-based Citigroup Inc.

The networks instituted two-tier pricing for debit-card interchange on Oct. 1, when the caps mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act took effect. The system includes regulated fees for the biggest banks and higher fees for lenders with less than $10 billion in assets, which are exempt from the limits.

Visa, which has said U.S. debit accounts for about 20 percent of total sales, forecast revenue growth for fiscal 2012 in the “high single-digit to low double-digits range,” down from a 2011 projection of 11 percent to 15 percent, according to a July 6 regulatory filing.

The Fed capped debit fees at 21 cents per swipe, plus 5 basis points of the total and a conditional 1 cent for fraud prevention. That replaced a formula that averaged 1.14 percent of the purchase price, or about 44 cents for the typical $38 debit-card transaction. The caps may trim annual revenue at the biggest U.S. banks by $8 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Government.

In a bid to recoup lost income, San Francisco-based Wells Fargo is testing a $3 monthly fee for debit-card users in five states, while Bank of America announced a plan to charge $5 a month for some customers who make debit-card purchases.

The closest Visa came to missing profit estimates was last year’s fourth quarter, when it reported adjusted earnings per share of 95 cents, compared with the average of 94.6 cents predicted by analysts in a Bloomberg survey.

Companies face massive fines after chemical fire in Crewe in 2007

TWO companies face unlimited fines after their failings led to an explosion and catastrophic chemical fire at the Gateway Industrial Estate in Crewe in 2007.

It was a miracle no-one was hurt in the devastating blast and huge fire which threatened to engulf surrounding buildings.

Crewe-based Greenway Environmental Ltd and Preston-based Pakawaste Ltd appeared at Chester Crown Court on Monday after being prosecuted by the Health and Safety Executive.

Greenway admitted putting employees at risk and Pakawaste admitted to putting non-employees at risk.

Although no-one was killed or injured in the huge blaze on June 4, 2007, the flames engulfed 10,000 sq m and posed a huge risk to neighbouring offices and warehouses.

More than 100 firefighters tackled the fire for several hours, the force of the blaze knocking some to the floor.

Prosecutor Nigel Lawrence said it was 'extremely fortunate' no-one was seriously hurt.

The fire centred on a shredding unit used by Greenway to recycle old aerosols, which had been designed, manufactured and supplied by Pakawaste.These girls have never had a Cold Sore in their lives!

Although the exact cause of the fire is unclear, the build-up of extremely flammable liquid as the aerosol cans were crushed by the shredder posed a huge risk and contributed to the violent and fast-spreading nature of the fire, with cans catapulted into the air.

Serious flaws in the design of the shredder were discovered, as the HSE investigation found Pakawaste had not designed the machine to safely shred the aerosols containing flammable liquids and gases.

Greenway admitted it was also culpable for failing to carry out a risk assessment of the new unit before use, and the investigation revealed the shredder should have been operated well away from where flammable substances were being stored.

Mr Lawrence said: "Pakawaste had not produced a machine for shredding aerosols before, and it treated this as a specialist project.

"After the installation, Greenway experienced problems to do with the ventilation and Pakawaste had to attend on a number of occasions."

Some dispute still remains between the two companies, as Pakawaste claims it did not know the quantities of aerosols Greenway would be recycling with the unit before it was designed.

But it accepted once it was made aware of the problems it should have made sure it was properly rectified.

Greenway added a second ventilation fan to the shredder, which may have sparked the blast.

Jeremy Barnett, defending Greenway Ltd, said: "The fire had a substantial effect on the business, leading to the closure of the premises for eight months.

"But the company took steps to ensure employees were kept in their jobs, with 98 out of 106 staying on. It lost a considerable amount of money.

"Greenway was entitled to rely on Pakawaste as a specialist supplier of this type of machine ¨C as far as it was concerned, it went to the best.he believes the fire started after the lift's hydraulic hose blew, We say in terms of culpability, the bulk of it falls on Pakawaste.There are RUBBER MATS underneath mattresses,"

In consultation with the HSE, Greenway took steps straight away to establish a safe system.

Mark Turner, defending Pakawaste Ltd, said: "We accept a risk assessment should have been undertaken, and the reason we didn't was not to cut corners. It was a mistake, a bad mistake but it was a mistake. There was a breakdown of communication."

He added that Pakawaste was very vulnerable,The additions focus on key tag and plastic card combinations, with its 45 remaining employees at one stage working just three days a week.Prior to Aion Kinah I leaned toward the former,

Both companies face huge fines ¨C thought to be in the region of six figures ¨C although the prosecution costs could end up eclipsing the actual fine.

The firms' representatives return to Chester Crown Court tomorrow for sentencing.

Gill Chambers, the investigating inspector at HSE, said: "This was a serious incident that caused major disruption in Crewe and had the potential for workers and the public to be badly injured.

"There was obviously a fault in Pakawaste's design and manufacturing process which resulted in the shredding unit exploding.

"Greenway should also have had better procedures and arrangements in place to protect its workers and prevent the fire from spreading.

"It's extremely important for companies working with potentially dangerous materials to identify the hazards and make a proper assessment of the risks.

"Machinery has to be fit for purpose and there must be safe working practices for dealing with flammable substances."