On our wedding day Denise I exchanged gold rings.I was then told I could kiss my bride.I moved in and picked her up which brought gasps and squeals of delight.We then kissed long and hard.The minister said he had never seen that before.

Each of us have our favorite national park. Now that they are closed perhaps we will appreciate them even more. Mine as you may know is Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. In fact I was just there in November. Above are three of my photos from t

Newport Beach California 532NOW PLAYING W

My friend Mizzi who lives in Melbourne Australia and I had decided to meet somewhere halfway between Germany and Australia for a holiday. I had suggested Borneo since I had wanted to go there during my year in Singapore but had never made it there. Mizz

It was not the aching feet that were stopping me in my tracks . To be fair they were burning . This walking plays havoc with the arches of your feet . It was not my brain working overtime thinking of reasons not to go out . Although it would have been easy

Budicek 630 hodeny do seba jogurt zbalenie pinguin batoha a hor sa odchytit bus c.103 smer poiso.Na tury uz chodim s normalny batohom maly latkovy som odpisal odtrhli sa mi snorky je to provizorne zaviazane ale nic moc.Odchytavam bus na hlavne

Early in the morning the other couchsurfers were still asleep I got up to catch an early bus to Singapore. I knew it was gonna take all day to get there and didn't want to arrive too late. After my experience from the other night.. No way Unfortunately

It is dark when I wake . It is Day 48 of the lockdown . The sun has not risen and the birds have not woken. It is Thursday . Sage are meeting today with our government . Sage used to be that herb that you stuffed up a chicken together with onion . Now it i

19th Feb Pollonaruwa part of the Cultural Triangle. Today we went to a museum to see lots of statues of the person Buddha. There were lots of beautiful beads. Then we went to some Buddhist houses and palaces. The homes had lots of statutes of the Buddha

Hi evryone and thanks for all the comments and messages it really makes me feel good to get them. If you are new to the blog thingy the difference between making a comment and a message is that when I accept the comments they public on the blog so a

Went to the Greek Island of Poros today with 3 friends.It was pretty funny because we had planned on going to the island of Hydra. When we got to the Port of AthensPiraus we asked at the ticket booth which ferry was going to Hydra. The man directed

In Taupo we slept one Night near the Lake. The next Day was Hammer Time again. 15000 feet Skydive. Unbelievable Feeling. At the same Day we driven along the Desert Road Highway 1 to see Mt. Doom and Mordor from the Lord of the Rings. Very cool Scenerys

Arrived in Hasting we're slept on a nice Campsite near a Beach. The german Couple was 3 Days before us there. Manu and Vera are now 9 Month in NZ and have a Working Visa for 1 Year. On the next Day our 2 Vans heading to the North. We visit the Peninsula Ma

After what can only be called a slight lie in although the traffic on the road outside was dieing to wake us all up we went down for breakfast in the local restaurant underneath our 'hostel'. I think we've all learned by now that nothing starts the day l

oct 72010. momentum gaining. video now viewable on flagoz.com click on youtube. tom and i spent three hours yesterday cutting form the clips i'd done into a three minute collection of vox pop and flag waving. very exciting and rewarding that i've done i

Three weeks into our stint at Monkeyland. times are good sometimes too much spare time the volunteer house is very basic... and as sad as it sounds sometimes it is just nice to sit back and watch mindless or mindful TV. We keep ourselves busy though

It has been 6 weeks since we all started at Dulwich College and the time has just completely and utterly flown away. I can't believe it has been almost 2 months since we moved into our lovely new apartment in Jinqiao and our new life on 'the dark side' if

So this post will be a bit of a different one from the norm. I haven't done much poetry writing since I've been here but for some reason walking to school the other day I looked around and truly came to appreciate how gorgeous it is here in the fall. Next

Ukip has made thousands from merchandise on its online store. What could the other parties learn from it?

It can't be easy trying to fund a political movement in the current climate, when politicians are about as popular as a wasp in a submarine. You'd have more luck organising a whip-round for President Assad. That's why politicians are forced to suck up to billionaire donors, who expect them to tailor their policies accordingly, thereby further widening the gulf between parties and the public.

But wait. Not all parties are alike. The Daily Telegraph has revealed that, last year, Ukip made a whopping £80,000 from flogging branded merchandise to the public from its online store.

The first rule of panic mode is you don’t talk about panic mode. And this is purely for personal reasons, but I don’t want Scotland to reject us

It used to be unthinkable. Now it’s thinkable. In fact, in some minds, it’s already been thought. Scotland might be voting yes to independence and splitting from the rest of the union. I’m not Scottish, and I’m therefore powerless to intervene, although I would personally prefer Scotland to stay – but only for entirely selfish and superficial reasons. Reason one: I’d rather not be lumbered with a Tory government from now until the day the moon crashes into the Thames. Two: I quite like Scotland and the Scottish, so it’s hard not to feel somehow personally affronted by their rejection. Why did you just unfriend and unfollow me, Scotland? What did I ever do to you? What’s that? Sorry, you’ll have to slow down a bit. Can’t understand a word you’re saying. Don’t you come with subtitles?! Ha ha ha! No, seriously, come back. Scotland? Scotland?

Apparently the consequences of a split in the union could be calamitous. The skies will fall and the seas will boil and the dead shall rise and the milk will spoil. There will be a great disturbance in the force. Duncan’s horses will turn and eat each other. Starving ravens will peck out your eyes halfway through the Great British Bake Off. Your dad will give birth to a jackal full of hornets. And in London’s last remaining DVD shop, Gregory’s Girl will quietly be re-categorised as “world cinema”.

If the fashion industry truly cared about the future of our planet, it would issue a solitary line of unisex, one-size-fits-all smocks, then shut down for good

So then. Alongside “eating a sandwich” and “holding up a copy of a newspaper”, we now have to add “wearing a T-shirt” to the growing list of Ordinary Things Ed Miliband Somehow Just Can’t Do. The other week he was pictured in Elle magazine wearing the Fawcett Society’s “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like” T-shirt. Last Sunday the Mail claimed those T-shirts are stitched together in a Mauritian sweatshop by women earning 62p an hour.

A T-shirt. He can’t even wear a T-shirt without somehow condemning both himself and any surrounding witnesses to ridicule. What’s going to trip him up next? A doorknob? Next week he operates a doorknob so badly he fractures his wrist, and as the medics wheel him to the operating theatre, they accidentally knock an ageing war veteran off a waiting room chair, leaving him groaning in pain on the floor, at which point Miliband insists they stop his gurney so he can lean over and help the guy up, but he forgets about his fractured wrist, so as the 96-year-old decorated-war-hero-and-humbling-inspiration-to-us-all gingerly grabs his hand, Miliband abruptly screeches a barrage of agonised obscenities directly into his face, causing him to hit the floor again, fatally this time, in front of the world’s media, oh and also Miliband does a frightened little wee at the end, and they film that too.

Nach der Zwangspause wollen nun viele möglichst schnell wieder fit werden. Doch Mediziner warnen davor, es beim Einstieg zu übertreiben - vor allem nach überstandener Krankheit.

A DER SPIEGEL reporter committed large-scale journalistic fraud over several years. Internal clues and research have provided significant evidence against reporter Claas Relotius, who has since admitted to the falsifications and is no longer employed by DER SPIEGEL. Other media organizations may also have been affected.

Maria Sharapova effortlessly managed to combine her life as a tennis player with that of a superstar. With the announcement of her retirement, we take a look back at her career.

Germany's federal and state governments have agreed to further tighten restrictions on public life. Here's an overview of what's now allowed and what's not.

Drägerwerk is a world leader in the production of ventilators. In an interview, company head Stefan Dräger, 57, discusses the challenges of keeping up with current demand as the corona crisis accelerates.

German politicians have begun calling for industry to be shielded from too much environmental protection during the coronavirus crisis. But corporations aren't joining the appeal. They managed to turn CO2 reduction into a competitive advantage long ago.

The Leopoldina National Academy, Germany’s academy of sciences, recommends that schools be reopened soon. Businesses and public authorities are also expected to be reopened gradually. Travel should also be permitted under certain conditions, according to the report, which DER SPIEGEL obtained in advance of publication.

We study the impact of non-pharmaceutical policy interventions (NPIs) like “stay-at-home” orders on the spread of infectious disease. NPIs are associated with slower growth of Covid-19 cases. NPIs “spillover” into other jurisdictions. NPIs are not associated with significantly worse economic outcomes measured by job losses. Job losses have been no higher in US states that implemented “stay-at-home” during the Covid-19 pandemic than in states that did not have “stay-at-home”. All of these results demonstrate that the Covid-19 pandemic is a common economic and public health shock. The tradeoff between the economy and public health today depends strongly on what is happening elsewhere. This underscores the importance of coordinated economic and public health responses.

One EU country after the other is moving to restrict public life. The Dutch government has opted for less drastic measures, hoping for herd immunity and relying on the common sense of its people. But the country has still had to make adjustments to its policies.

In an interview, Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio calls for greater solidarity among Europeans and for the EU to come up with an aid package comparable to the one recently passed in the United States.

While Spain continues to battle a dire coronavirus outbreak, the situation is vastly better in neighboring Portugal. But why?

We study a novel policy tool—interest rate uncertainty—that can be used to discourage inefficient capital inflows and to adjust the composition of external accounts between short-term securities and foreign direct investment (FDI). We identify the trade-offs faced in navigating between external balance and price stability. The interest rate uncertainty policy discourages short-term inflows mainly through portfolio risk and precautionary saving channels. A markup channel generates net FDI inflows under imperfect exchange rate pass-through. We further investigate new channels under different assumptions about the irreversibility of FDI, the currency of export invoicing, risk aversion of outside agents, and effective lower bound in the rest of the world. Under every scenario, uncertainty policy is inflationary.

This paper documents a new fact, then analyzes its causes and consequences: in most countries, import tariffs and non-tariff barriers are substantially lower on dirty than on clean industries, where an industry’s “dirtiness” is defined as its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per dollar of output. This difference in trade policy creates a global implicit subsidy to CO2 emissions in internationally traded goods and so contributes to climate change. This global implicit subsidy to CO2 emissions totals several hundred billion dollars annually. The greater protection of downstream industries, which are relatively clean, substantially accounts for this pattern. The downstream pattern can be explained by theories where industries lobby for low tariffs on their inputs but final consumers are poorly organized. A quantitative general equilibrium model suggests that if countries applied similar trade policies to clean and dirty goods, global CO2 emissions would decrease and global real income would change little.

The Austrian winter-sports mecca of Ischgl is well known for its parties. But after helping spread the virus across Europe, the town's reputation is changing to one of incompetence and greed.

The coronavirus is forcing us to keep our distance from other people. Yet these extraordinary times have also brought forth moments of warmth and solidarity. People are offering each other words of encouragement and banding together to fight their loneliness.

Banks usually hold large amounts of domestic public debt which makes them vulnerable to their own sovereign’s default risk. At the same time, governments often resort to costly public bailouts when their domestic banking sector is in trouble. We investigate how the interbank network structure and the distribution of sovereign debt holdings jointly affect the optimal bailout policy in the presence of this "doom loop". Rescuing banks with high domestic sovereign exposure is optimal if these banks are sufficiently central in the network, even though that requires larger bailout expenditures than rescuing low-exposure banks. Our findings imply that highly central banks can use exposure to their own government as a strategic tool to increase the likelihood of being bailed out. Our model thus illustrates how the "doom loop" exacerbates the "too interconnected to fail" problem in banking.

We use longitudinal data from the income tax system to study the impacts of firms’ employment and wage-setting policies on the level and change in immigrant-native wage differences in Canada. We focus on immigrants who arrived in the early 2000s, distinguishing between those with and without a college degree from two broad groups of countries – the U.S., the U.K. and Northern Europe, and the rest of the world. Consistent with a growing literature based on the two-way fixed effects model of Abowd, Kramarz, and Margolis (1999), we find that firm-specific wage premiums explain a significant share of earnings inequality in Canada and contribute to the average earnings gap between immigrants and natives. In the decade after receiving permanent status, earnings of immigrants rise relative to those of natives. Compositional effects due to selective outmigration and changing participation play no role in this gain. About one-sixth is attributable to movements up the job ladder to employers that offer higher pay premiums for all groups, with particularly large gains for immigrants from the “rest of the world” countries.

We explore whether minimum wage increases result in substitution from lower-skilled to slightly higher-skilled labor. Using 2011-2016 American Community Survey data (ACS), we show that workers employed in low-wage occupations are older and more likely to have a high school diploma following recent statutory minimum wage increases. To better understand the role of firms, we examine the Burning Glass vacancy data. We find increases in a high school diploma requirement following minimum wage hikes, consistent with our ACS evidence on stocks of employed workers. We see substantial adjustments to requirements both within and across firms.

Traveling beyond the immediate surroundings of one’s residence can lead to greater exposure to new ideas and information, jobs, and greater transmission of disease. In this paper, we document the geographic mobility of individuals in the U.S., and how this mobility varies across U.S. cities, regions, and income classes. Using geolocation data for ~1.7 million smartphone users over a 10-month period, we compute different measures of mobility, including the total distance traveled, the median daily distance traveled, the maximum distance traveled from one’s home, and the number of unique haunts visited. We find large differences across cities and income groups. For example, people in New York travel 38% fewer total kilometers and visit 14% fewer block-sized areas than people in Atlanta. And, individuals in the bottom income quartile travel 12% less overall and visit 13% fewer total locations than the top income quartile.

China is the largest creditor in the world, funding infrastructure projects in the developing world in exchange for access to raw materials. A new study shows that the risk of a new debt crisis is significant.

In an interview, Arne Schönbohm, 49, the head of Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, discusses the potential danger posed by Huawei, why he thinks it is "manageable" and the general state of IT threats in Germany.

Scientists believe designer viruses created in the laboratory can help the agricultural industry deal with pathogens and extreme weather. A vast experiment is currently being planned. But can the viruses be controlled?

Pressure is growing across the board for large corporations to do more to protect the environment and the climate. Even institutional investors like Blackrock head Larry Fink are joining the chorus of voices calling for change.

Just as Volkswagen was undergoing a radical restructuring to focus on e-mobility and driverless cars, the company has announced it is shutting down factories across Europe due to the coronavirus. There is hope in China, however.