The Polish paradox [Name necklace]
Poles, who have been able to live and work in Britain since their country joined the European Union in 2004, have already become the second largest foreign-born group, after Indians. The 2011 census counted 579,000, a tenfold increase from a decade earlier. Many more have come and gone: since 2002 almost 1.2m Poles have been issued with National Insurance numbers. But that still leaves a lot of settlers. In 2012 Polish women gave birth to 21,156 children, more than any other group apart from native Britons. They have ventured to rural market towns and small cities that rarely see foreigners.
Poles and other east Europeans have also become political footballs—with almost all national politicians playing in the same, hostile, team. Jack Straw, Sizing up gifts for the cooks on your list once Labour’s home secretary, calls the decision by his party to grant them free access to Britain a “spectacular mistake”. Priti Patel, a Conservative MP, says (with many others) that they are straining public services to breaking point.
Politicians are now applying the conclusions they have drawn from the Polish surge to a new group of migrants. Fearing an influx of feckless Bulgarians and Romanians, who will be allowed free access to Britain and other EU countries from January 1st, the coalition government is tightening access to welfare. David Cameron, the prime minister, insists that Britain will not see a repeat of “the Polish situation”.
tuation? It is much more encouraging than politicians imply. Poles and migrants from other new EU member states have been readily absorbed into Britain’s labour market. They are tolerated, even welcomed, locally. The huge imbalance between local experience and national conviction has implications for next year’s migrants.
Poles have mostly ended up in fast-growing bits of the country. Many live in London. Corby is one of the few places in NIMBYish Britain that welcomes house-building. Tom Beattie, the council leader, wants its population to double by 2030. Southampton, another city with lots of immigrants from eastern Europe, has gone from being an ageing city with declining skills to a young one with great aspirations, says John Denham, one of the city’s MPs.
Marco Cereste, the Tory leader of the council in Peterborough, another popular destination for migrants, says his magazine-distribution company was turning away business ten years ago for a lack of workers. Not any more. And Poles are moving beyond menial, letterbox-stuffing work. Britain got younger and better-educated Poles than Germany or America. Many are overqualified for their jobs, and ought to move into more appropriate ones as their English and social networks become stronger.
Some are already doing so. In the West Midlands, Polish entrepreneurs at first set up restaurants and construction firms. But later migrants, many of them women, built design firms and marketing agencies. A couple run bakeries big enough to supply leading supermarkets. Websites that once simply provided information for new arrivals have become commercial ventures that charge for access and advertising. Ilona Korzeniowska, editor of the Polish Express, a London-based newspaper, suggests Bulgarians and Romanians may fill jobs no longer of interest to Poles.
Sizing up gifts for the cooks on your list [Sunglasses]
With the holidays nearly upon us, many people find selecting gifts for folks who cook to as hard as an oak butcher block, especially if that giftee has been cooking for a while.
What I do when considering a holiday gift for well-seasoned cooks is to look at what cooking tools or books I appreciate. With that and my own 50 years of cooking experience, here are my top three gift ideas.
"Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking" by Marcella Hazan: I love cookbooks and am literally surrounded by them in my office. With hundreds of cookbooks hitting the shelves every year selecting the right one can be an arduous task. If the person to whom you want to give a gift loves Italian food you will not go wrong with Hazan's book (about $20).
Sadly, Hazan passed away this year, but her literary presence in the cooking world still shines a bright light on what authentic Italian food is all about and, most importantly, how it's prepared.
In "Essentials," Hazan combines two of her early books: 1973's "The Classic Italian Cook Book" (considered by many as a true "classic") and her 1978 follow-up "More Classic Italian Cooking."
Check the price online for an original 1973 copy of Hazan's first book and you'll discover they go for several hundred dollars. "Essentials" contains everything Hazan brought to the table in those two books and would definitely be appreciated by any good cook.
Balsamic vinegar: Hazan brought balsamic vinegar to American tables and I'd bring it to a cook in your life. I've tasted many balsamic vinegars and have found Calivirgin's Barrel-Aged Balsamic Vinegar to be the best in terms of quality for the price. At $16 to $18 for a 250 mL bottle it's a bargain compared to imported balsamic vinegar.
For me, it's quite simply the best for the price and I guarantee it will bring a warm smile to whomever you give this gift.
Victorinox chef's knife: If you've got a guy on your list who loves to cook, I suggest what a Victorinox's 8-inch or 10-inch chef's knives.
Over the years, both knives have won several Cook's Illustrated magazine comparative competitions and rightly so. I own both sizes and they are my go-to kitchen workhorses.
I keep those and other knives sharp using a Chef'sChoice AngleSelect Knife Sharpener (about $169). This sharpener can get and keep 15- and 20-degree knife blades razor sharp. I lent my sharpener to a chef who uses knives that cost hundreds of dollars each and when he returned my sharpener he had a single comment: "Wow!"
If the price tag kicks that sharpener off your gift-giving list, I find Chef'sChoice's Manual 3-stage Sharpener ($29.95) does almost as good a job for a fraction of the cost.
Twenty cookbooks from 2013 that will inspire greatness [Hand Dryers]
I can’t think of many retail experiences more social than the cookbook section of a good bookstore in December. While over in Fiction or True Crime, or around the slippers and Slankets display at your local big box store, the pre-holiday browsing is so often a solitary pursuit, cookbook lovers can’t help themselves from talking with each other. From the buying to the reading to that unique other thing that cookbooks allow – the feeding of friends and loved ones – cookbooks are a shared experience.
These are my picks for the 20 best cookbooks of 2013 – the books so good that I can’t stop thinking about them and cooking from them. (Or telling people about them.) Consider this my excited shout from across the aisle.
Fuchsia Dunlop, a Brit who trained as a chef in Chengdu, China, is the go-to Western authority on regional Chinese cooking. Her latest, loaded with easy, extraordinarily tasty recipes (gingery beef brisket soup with goji berries), is also peppered with easy-to-follow instructions on Chinese cooking basics, from using a wok to proper knife cuts. Indispensable.
There are no high-end sushi creations here this accessible, beautifully written book by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat is a guide to the dumplings, curries, rice, ramen, noodle bowls and deep-fried delicacies – the soul cooking – that most Japanese people eat every day.
Portuguese might be one of the planet’s most underrated cuisines; it is also a vital (if perpetually overlooked) part of Canada’s culinary heritage. With ridiculously tasty takes on both straight-up Portuguese and Portuguese-Canadian classics, Carla Azevedo’s terrific collection might change that. My favourite Canadian cookbook of 2013.
Valerie Gordon, a Los Angeles-based pastry chef, combines smart advice with uncommonly sophisticated flavours: sweet-and-savoury pumpkin seed toffees, and buttery galettes filled with apricots and basil cream. The cake section lays out seven basic cake recipes (orange; hazelnut; matcha; golden butter) and nine fillings (passion fruit buttercream; gianduja ganache), which readers can mix and match.
Written by Rick and Michael Mast, a pair of bean-to-bar chocolate makers, the recipes in this love letter of a cookbook are designed for the extra-good stuff, instead of the usual waxy commodity chocolate. From its pies (chocolate and beet) and cakes (dark and stormy chocolate) to its exquisite savouries (chocolate ricotta pancakes), drinks and confections, the results taste out of this world.
I am impressed with its functionality
The inside of the Hampton also has two pockets on the bag's sides, one of which sports a charger tab. Neither is big enough for a water bottle, even though that's what is stated on the site; plus I'm never comfortable putting a bottle of liquid where it can drip onto an electronic device. A medium sized fleece-lined zippered pocket can be used for your iPhone or iPod.You can order the bag in Black, Emerald (looks more like a clover color), In news announced to accompany the sale Terra (a brownish gray), Red, Tide (a dark aqua), or Yellow. I tested a Tide one and received a few compliments on the color of the bag from strangers.Even with the Hampton's minor design issues, the bag is well-made. The seams are all reinforced and no stray threads appeared on the bag itself. The belt stitching is coming undone, but the belt is easy to remove. I found the bag for a slightly lower price on a number of sites, and I think it's definitely worth the $62 price tag, which is the lowest I found. The lifetime warranty adds that extra bit of confidence to your purchase also.It is always a gamble buying any kind of carry bag or purse for your special friend, because of individual tastes in bags.
I do not think I would have picked it for myself on first look, but after using it, I am impressed with its functionality, especially as an airline personal carry-on. The Hampton's Women's Tote is more comfortable for me to carry than computer bags I have with specially padded shoulder straps. So, add a little style to your computer-using friend's life and give it a go! This year was undeniably a banner year for Triangle companies going public, but the outlook from investors' perspective has been a mixed bag.Seven Triangle companies raised big bucks from investors – from tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars – via an initial public offering this year. That is the most local IPOs in recent memory and possibly the most ever.By contrast, just a single local company went public in each of the past four years."There's a reason these guys all went public this year," said Hal Eddins, vice president and investment adviser at Capital Investment Companies in Raleigh. "Because it's a good year (for IPOs)."Indeed, the nationwide tally of 209 companies that have gone public this year represents a 68.5percent jump from a year ago, according to Renaissance Capital.Eddins sees the strong IPO market as a major plus."
In news announced to accompany the sale [Hand Dryers]
In general in the Mojave Desert, it can be hard to tell whether yellow-rumps are migrating or resident: even the ones that are just passing through tend to take their time. But in the Ivanpah Valley, it's quite rare to see yellow-rumped warblers in summer: Those shopping at the business Tuesday the citizen science site eBird displays no records of yellow-rumps in tthe Ivanpah Valley between late May and late September for the past 10 years.October is generally the local peak of the yellow-rumped migration season, and so it makes sense that last month would not only provide the first recorded yellow-rumped casualties at Ivanpah, but that they would be the species most amply represented in the list of victims.The fact that most of the yellow-rumped warbler bodies recovered showed signs of solar flux injury is serious cause for concern. Though the species tends to hunt for its insect food from perches in trees, usually foraging in among the branches in typical warbler style, it's more flexible in its habits than many of its cousins. Not only do yellow-rumps often leave the trees' canopies to grab a likely insect, but they also take detours on long flights to grab an invertebrate snack on the wing.
Those long migration flights often take place in the company of large groups of other yellow-rumped warblers, meaning that a tempting source of insects along a flight path may divert a large number of birds.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports that its staff have seen large numbers of insects apparently attracted to the Ivanpah site while that site has been producing solar flux. It doesn't seem too far-fetched that a crowd of bugs would in turn attract hungry migrating warblers.About half the dead yellow-rumps were noted during surveys of the inner portions of the solar fields, with the remainder found "incidentally" -- by workers engaged in unrelated pursuits. (In its compliance report BrightSource maintains that birds injured by solar flux would fall within the first few tiers of heliostats.) This means that the vast majority of the project site is not being surveyed for dead and injured birds, so that the actual numbers may well be considerably higher.
Those shopping at the business Tuesday [Name necklace]
Deputies are trying to track down a woman who robbed two Statesville businesses with a large knife.The crimes happened on Monday, just hours apart.Investigators are concerned she could be dangerous.Eyewitness News talked to customers worried where she could hit next.Sheriff's deputies said the woman was in and out of the businesses in just a couple of minutes.Both times she caught the cashiers off guard, going to the counter to buy something but then pulling out an eight-inch knife.The robbery unfolded inside the Dollar General east of Statesville.The woman pulled a large knife from her sweatshirt, jabbed at the cashier and stole money out of the cash register.Those shopping at the business Tuesday were not surprised to learn a woman was responsible or her choice of weapon."Today nothing surprises me. I'm not surprised by anything today. People are going crazy. They don't have enough money and they are doing anything they can," said customer Amy McCoy.In surveillance video it was difficult to see the woman's face, but the sweatshirt had the letters TMS on it.
Investigators believe it may stand for Troutman Middle School and told Eyewitness News the color of the sweatshirt is the same as the school colors.Channel 9 has learned they went to the school on Tuesday after a Food Lion and Dollar General were hit just a few hours apart Monday in hopes of identifying the woman responsible.On Tuesday afternoon, they released two pictures of the woman inside the Food Lion.Kay Stevens works at a restaurant nearby and isn't taking any chances on Tuesday night."I know we have been very cautious keeping the doors locked and watching our surroundings. It is getting close to the holidays and you got to be careful," she said.Investigators told Eyewitness News that they are working with other law enforcement agencies to find out if they've had similar cases or can identify the woman.One of the great things about a Swiss Army knife is that it is packed full of helpful tools, yet it still remains easy to use. This combination of simplicity and utility is one of the reasons why I like the Survival GPS app.The Survival GPS app gives you a bunch of tidbits of data that'll help you get your bearing whether you are in the woods or on a city street.
The cab was hailed by a man at Morphett Vale [Name necklace]
Waite Park police have arrested a man they say robbed two women at knife-point Tuesday night.Seth Crawford, 21, has been booked into the Stearns County Jail and he could be charged with robbery and second-degree assault.Police say the incident occurred in the 100 block of Second Street South in Waite Park.Victim fights off knife-yielding suspect They responded at 7:20 p.m. Tuesday to calls of a robbery in progress there, according to a news release from Waite Park police.Police say their investigation determined a man had approached two women as they were getting into their vehicle in a parking lot, threatened them with a knife, removed items from their vehicle and fled on foot.A Waite Park officer was near the scene and found Crawford based on a description given by the victims, according to the release. Crawford was later identified by the victims and a K-9 track also led to the location where he was detained, police say. Cloud police and the Stearns County Sheriff's Office assisted with the investigation.
The cab was hailed by a man at Morphett Vale about 4.30am and asked to drive to Pearson St at Thebarton.There the passenger threatened the driver with a knife and then fled with cash.Police hope to indentify the thief from the taxis security video.Some cabbies have said they refuse to drive at night because it is too dangerous."We are always getting threatened by the behaviour of these youngsters these days, getting drunk, getting drugged," one driver told 7News.In April, a cab driver's throat was slit during a carjacking.Cabbies have the option to buy security shields, but they come at a cost $900.Jim Triantafyllou from the Taxi Council said there was indecision over who should install the shields."The drivers are saying maybe the owner should pay for it, the owners say the driver should pay for it, somebody else saying someone else should be paying for it," he said.Some drivers said the latest victim made a simple mistake, and should have asked for the money for the fare upfront."We got cameras, we got security, we got safety, it's up to the individual to care for themselves, a bit more careful," one driver said.
Victim fights off knife-yielding suspect [Name necklace]
Sentencing Judge Richard Griffith-Jones told him: "When she was not receptive to eating your mother's cooking with the appreciation you had hoped you completely lost your temper."You used weapons which were at hand; and in a bad-tempered and persistent attack you caused more than one wound and injured her in a distressing way because one of the blows caused her lung to collapse."At the same time I have to deal with you for a serious case of doing acts intended to pervert the course of justice.
"The court heard the vicious attack happened on the same day Auwkit was released from prison.He was previously jailed for 16 weeks at Coventry Magistrates Court in April this year for breaching a sexual offences prevention order and for riding a motorbike while disqualified.But because of the time he had spent in custody, he was freed on May 9 when he was met by his girlfriend.His defence barrister said he had expressed remorse and told the court there was no lasting consequences from her injuries.
A man armed with four knives went on the rampage yesterday chanting that he wanted to kill non-Muslims and threatening passers by.He smashed a window with an iron bar, threw bottles and also threatened firemen and police officers, witnesses said.The Muslim-convert was allegedly heard making threats to kill kuffars a highly insulting word for non-believers before being arrested on suspicion of attempted murder of a police officer.The officer escaped with minor injuries after helping to overpower the man.Firefighters at a nearby station heard shouting in the street yesterday morning and a couple went out to investigate when they were threatened.
They dialled 999 but when the first patrol car pulled up the man broke a window and, armed with at least four knives, chased an officer in Battersea, South London.Colleagues arriving on the scene also gave chase and he was finally arrested after officers Tasered him.The man is believed to have been released from a nearby psychiatric hospital two years ago.
Joseph and Redwood Memorial hospitals [Name necklace]
Family practitioner Lee Leer, president of Eureka Family Practice, says that since the hospital developed its own physician group (which he has not joined), it has diverted recruitment funds toward recruiting into that group. "Birmingham stabbing victim's friend They made it clear to us" they weren't going to help recruit again, Leer says.Grotke says St. Joseph Hospital quit helping him with recruitment when his last recruit left Humboldt after less than a year - "His husband didn't like the area," says Grotke. "They moved to Las Vegas." The hospital had paid for the recruit's move, given him money for a downpayment on his house; Grotke says his clinic guaranteed the new physician's income. The deal was, if he stayed four years, the loans would be forgiven. The doctor hasn't paid back the money - an amount Grotke can't disclose because he signed a confidentiality agreement - and now Grotke is on the hook for it.
Asked about these claims, David O'Brien, president of St.
Joseph and Redwood Memorial hospitals, said in an e-mailed statement, "Our hospitals continue to recruit for our medical foundation, Humboldt Medical Specialists, as well as local private physician practices."Leer says he can't afford to recruit new doctors. And he doesn't have the pile of doctors' resumes St. Joseph's recruiter used to send over. Two of Leer's doctors work part time, one of whom is close to retiring. Leer isn't sure what his practice will do when it's time to hire another doctor. "We're just burying our heads in the sand," he says.Even if a practice or group can afford the recruitment, getting doctors to come remains a challenge - sometimes for reasons beyond Humboldt's control.There is a nationwide shortage, for instance, of primary care doctors - those internists, family practitioners, pediatricians and general practitioners on the front lines of keeping us all healthy. While demand is rising, the number of medical students going into primary care is dropping.
Birmingham stabbing victim's friend [Name necklace]
Gyare Patrick, 66, who lives near the suspect, claimed: "He has always ranted and raved, swearing and shouting, ever since he got here. But in the last three months he has started chanting in Arabic."The suspect was allegedly heard shouting "kill kuffars" and "I'm going to Medina", which means kill non-believers and I'm going to heaven."Mr Patrick heard a "piercing scream" from upstairs and went outside to see the man, described as mixed-race, smashing a neighbour's window with an iron bar.He said: "The cops turned up and he just went at them, smashing the windows of their cars.
They got out of the cars and just ran, he was carrying a knife, they did not want to engage him."He ran after them and chased this one cop down the road. A couple of the rest of them chased after him."A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "Police were called to Battersea at 12.21pm after reports of a man carrying a knife and threatening passers-by."The suspect was taken to a south London hospital with minor injuries. A man was arrested for attempted murder of a police officer, though whether or not he will be charged with that is another question."The spokesman added: "There appears to be a mental health issue.
There is no suggestion this was a terrorist related."A friend of a man stabbed to death outside a Midland shopping parade is launching a new campaign to tackle knife crime.Carlton Pollock killed Lance Gregory with a blade he "habitually" carried "for his own protection" on Remembrance Day last year.The 25-year-old was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for ten years at Birmingham Crown Court.Now Lance's pal Natacha McArdle is planning to mark the first anniversary of the 24 year-old's death with a Unity in the Community workshop.
The campaign will be held from 1.30pm to 2.30pm next Saturday, November 16 at Chelmsley Wood Baptist Church next to the scene where Lance was killed.And Lance's mum Crystal and his cousin will attend to give talk about the devastating affect knife crime has.Police officers, the youth offending team and self-defence instructors will also be there to educate people about knives and "break the mentality of carrying a weapon as a form of self-defence".
