To view more press releases, please visit http://ir.wintrust.com/news.aspx?iid=1024452.

To view more press releases, please visit http://ir.wintrust.com/news.aspx?iid=1024452.

To view more press releases, please visit http://ir.wintrust.com/news.aspx?iid=1024452.

With SA bonds now rated as junk or non-investment grade, life for ordinary South Africans just got worse.

A 25-year-old woman has revealed how she has cut her food waste and managed to travel.

By Bishop Arthur Serratelli

On January 18, 2019, a video of Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann went viral. He was at the Lincoln Memorial standing face to face with a Native American man during the March to Life in Washington, D.C. On the basis of that picture, a frenzy of condemnations from reporters, commentators and politicians were heaped upon this student, accusing him of prejudice and hatred. Misinformation and lies spread like wild fire. Finally, when the facts were uncovered, the high school student was exonerated of any wrong-doing, even though much wrong had been done to him and his family. It was a rush to judgment. 

On January 29, 2019, American actor and singer Jussie Smollett reported that two masked men attacked him at 2 AM near his apartment in Chicago. He claimed that the attack was racist and homophobic. After Smollett’s initial report, friends and fans, celebrities and politicians expressed outrage at this hate crime. Twitter and Instagram fueled the frenzy of self-righteous indignation. However, in just three weeks, it was discovered that the whole event had been orchestrated by Smollett. Yet, before the facts were fully known, there was the rush to judgment and much chatter.

Gifted with reason, we are wired to make judgments. Discerning the good from the bad, the beautiful from the ugly, the right from the wrong, and virtue from vice: this is an essential part of our being human. However, every judgment must be founded on truth, not rumor; on fact, not fiction; on substance, not appearance. And every judgment must always be tempered with compassion. Albeit from opposite directions, the Sandmann and Smollett incidents show how quick we are to believe or disbelieve, to accuse or defend and how easily we pick a side and draw a line in the sand. And, all the while, truth grows ever more fragile.

Today’s rush to judgment gathers speed along the newly constructed digital highway. We get information instantaneously and, because we want solutions just as fast, we are quick to judge. As a result of this incessant communication about other people’s lives, we live on the edge between truth and falsehood. What years ago was whispered between a few people now goes viral and can never be retrieved. As a result, in this environment, deliberately passing on stories that destroy other people’s good names is nothing less than cyber bullying.

There is no area of modern society that is exempt from someone passing on false information, half-truths or blatant, deliberate lies. In a society of fast-paced information sharing, gossip has become so commonplace that people justify it as a way to right wrongs, correct others and unseat those whom they deem unfit for their chosen work. However, unlike the surgeon’s scalpel that removes the cancer, gossip is the arrow that destroys the other. 

As a statement sometimes attributed to Mark Twain says, “a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots.” In a similar vein, Jonathan Swift once wrote, “if a lie be believ’d only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it; so that, when men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late…the tale has had its effect” (Jonathan Swift, The Examiner, Number 15, November, 1710).  For this reason, people of good faith should be slow to judge others. And never should they gossip. People who constantly judge or criticize others truly lack compassion.

Sadly, making negative judgments on others on the basis of appearances and then spreading those judgments to others is found among those who consider themselves Church-going people. It is especially found among those who set themselves as crusaders for a just cause and, then by their lack of charity, become unjust themselves. The fondness to judge and criticize others may well be a way of not facing one’s own sins. "It is often easier or more convenient to see and condemn the faults and sins of others than it is to see our own” (Pope Francis, Angelus, March 3, 2019).

In speech after speech, Pope Francis has been courageously warning us of the evil of gossip. “Gossip is a weapon and it threatens the human community every day; it sows envy, jealousy and power struggles… We might welcome someone and speak well of him the first day but little by little that worm eats away at our minds until our gossip banishes him from good opinion. That person in a community who gossips against his or her neighbor is, in a sense, killing him.” (Pope Francis, Homily, Domus Sanctae Marthae, September 2, 2013).  

Few things can match the harmful effects of gossip, whether it be slander or detraction. Defamation inflicts grave harm on the individual and destroys the community. It is against charity and, since God is love, it is against God himself. Charles Spurgeon, one of the most popular Baptist preachers of the 19th century, summed up the evil of talking about other people by saying, “the tale-bearer carries the devil in his tongue, and the tale-hearer carries the devil in his ear.” Gossip makes the devil laugh!

A searing report and federal oversight over Title IX enforcement in Chicago raises the question: Is it an outlier, or just the first to get caught?

New believers in the village of Sunkapur have started meeting together regularly to study God's Word.

"I didn't realize how much I would gain from going to school" Dipu shares about OM Bangladesh's Village Primary Schools.

Massive distribution efforts by OM teams in Bangladesh over more than 10 years sowed gospel seeds and made the Bengali New Testament a #1 best seller.

Americans overwhelmingly believe civics should be taught in school, and almost 70 percent of them think it should be a requirement to graduate, a new survey finds.

In a case from Montana, conservative justices suggested they were inclined to rule for parents who seek to reinstate a state tax credit funding scholarships for use at religious schools.

Russia and Portugal are through to the FIFA Futsal World Cup semi-finals but Spain and Italy, along with holders Brazil, are among the casualties in the knockouts so far.

Argentina beat Russia 5-4 despite three Eder Lima goals in a meeting of two first-time finalists in Colombia while Portugal were pipped to bronze by Iran.

For years, Gustavo, an architect from Central America, felt drawn to working in the Arabian Peninsula. Then, on a short-term trip, he saw what it could be like to use his profession overseas.

House prices in SA could increase on average by 2.3% this year, but a more pessimistic scenario could see them decline by 1.3%, according to analytics company Lightstone.

While its "business unusual" in the SA residential property market, it is also the best buyer's market in a decade, says the chair of the Seeff Property Group.

No more copying and pasting tasks from email to your to-do list or chasing after customers via email. Zapier can automate these tasks and many others, too. Here's how.

Millennials and Generation Z make up 48 percent of the US workforce. Here are some insights on how businesses can better connect with these employees and engage this dominant market segment.

We review and compare four of the most popular universal VPN software clients used by businesses. These solutions have the ability to work as VPN solutions on their own or integrate with any VPN servers or services you might already be using.

We've done the testing, and if you need to build an SMB-focused website, these are the best small business web hosting services for helping you get the job done.

When you meet someone in a professional setting, a well-designed business card helps make a lasting good impression. Here are the best business card printing services for making polished cards, even on a budget.

With 1.6 million customers and 850 000 active accounts and counting, TymeBank's growth in the first year of its launch surpassed its own projections. But can the bank maintain this momentum as the novelty of trying new things wears off for digitally savvy early adopters?

South Africa’s chloroquine supplies were temporarily depleted amid speculation that the drug could be used to treat the coronavirus and additional supplies to treat lupus sufferers had to be procured from India.

The economic meltdown has seen the world's leading central bankers including the South African Reserve Bank come under pressure to bail out their respective economies in the form of interest rate cuts. They've been urged to fund governments, an idea that central bank governor, Lesetja Kganyago, says is tantamount to a client instructing their banker to do the same.

The employee had travelled from Polokwane with four other colleagues who are currently in isolation at the mine's health facility.

Prasa estimates revenue losses for the year of R757 million, due to the impact of the lockdown.

Pfizer and BioNTech said Tuesday they have begun delivering doses of their experimental coronavirus vaccines for initial human testing in the United States.

The Covid-19 lockdown only had a marginal effect on the results of Kaap Agri for the interim period until the end of March 2020, the group announced on Thursday. But it opted not to pay a dividend, in the interests of managing cash flow.

The horse racing authority is pleading for a partial restart of the industry under Level 4 of the lockdown, warning that a prolonged suspension of activity could lead to massive financial impact and job losses.

If you have lost your income due to the lockdown, your options are limited.

The company has also suspended its shares from the JSE, but maintains that there is still a "reasonable prospect" of rescuing the business.

The deal will help Marvell generate $3.4 billion in annual revenue, Marvell says.

Only a few vendors are the best for routing your internet signals and storing your files at the office. Here are PCMag readers' top picks.

Bloomberg says People's Liberation Army operatives added tiny, nefarious microchips to server motherboards made by Super Micro and used by Apple and Amazon, among others. All three companies pushed back hard on the story.

The House appropriations committee voted Wednesday to advance a bill providing a slight funding increase for the U.S. Department of Education, bringing overall funding to about $71 billion.

An after-school program in North Carolina teaches teenagers to collaborate and problem-solve by tasking them with real work-world problems drawn from their community.

With schools shut down, social distancing in place, and parents at home, after-school programs are laying off staff and switching gears to meet families' needs.

The coronavirus has been a big item in the news lately - it's a pneumonia-like illness that has killed several people. It's thought to have started in China, and has spread to several other countries (including at least one case in the U.S.). The World Health Organization says the coronavirus [...]

The post Creating a map to track the coronavirus appeared first on Graphically Speaking.

The COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak has been in the news a lot lately, and everyone is probably looking for a quick/easy way to see the data. The best visualization I've seen so far is this dashboard by Johns Hopkins. Here's a screen-capture: But before we dive into the data analysis, let's [...]

The post Improving the Wuhan Coronavirus dashboard appeared first on Graphically Speaking.

Ridgeline plots are useful for visualizing changes in the shapes of distribution over multiple groups or time periods. Let us look at an example of how we can create this plot using the SGPLOT procedure that is part of the ODS Graphics Procedures. For this example, we will plot the [...]

The post Ridgeline Plots using SGPLOT appeared first on Graphically Speaking.

Everyone's thinking about the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), and wondering if there are any cases near where they live. I recently used SAS Software to create a dashboard with a world map showing which countries had reported cases. And now that the virus has spread around the world, a world/country-level [...]

The post Tracking the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the United States appeared first on Graphically Speaking.

Now that COVID-19 is spreading in the US, I thought it might be helpful to view the data at a more granular level. Follow along as I plot the county data on a map and discuss how the color-binning can influence people's perception of the data. Maps like this can [...]

The post Tracking Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the US at the state/county level appeared first on Graphically Speaking.

As we continue to process and understand the ongoing effects of the novel coronavirus, many of us have grown used to viewing COVID-19 dashboards and visualizations, including this popular coronavirus dashboard from SAS. If you are more accustomed to building graphs and visualizations using the SGPLOT and SGPANEL procedures, this [...]

The post Visualizing COVID-19 data using SGPLOT and SGPANEL appeared first on Graphically Speaking.

करोनाबाधित युवकाच्या मृत्यूनंतर नवा ‘हॉटस्पॉट’ ठरण्याचा धोका

मल्टीव्हिटॅमीन, आरोग्यवर्धक पेयांचे वाटप

दोन दिवसांत तब्बल १०३ रुग्णांची नोंद

वनप्लस कंपनीने अखेर आपला बहुप्रतिक्षित स्मार्टफोन OnePlus 6 भारतात लॉन्च झाला असून अॅमेझॉनवर तो आज (२१मे) दुपारी १२ वाजल्यापासून पहिल्यांदा त्यांच्या प्राईम ग्राहकांसाठी उपलब्ध करुन देण्यात आला. तर उद्यापासून (२२ मे) सर्वांसाठी हा स्मार्टफोन उपलब्ध असणार आहे. भारतात या फोनच्या सुरुवातीच्या मॉडेलची किंमत ३४,९९९ रुपये इतकी आहे. या किंमतीत 6 GB ऱॅम आणि 64 GB […]

Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA) along with Governor Markell and their partners today held the 2012 Governor’s Conference on Housing. The event brought together over 400 housing professionals and residents from throughout Delaware and surrounding states to discuss important issues in housing ranging from homeownership, affordable rental housing, special needs populations and other hot topics. Attendees had the opportunity to discuss regional, state and local perspectives on today’s affordable housing climate, and the event provided strategies to address current and future housing needs.