Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

Anna Chidambar

Timber and plantation companies that had secured timber licences and provisional leases (PL) in Sarawak are now worried about their investments because of landmark cases in the Federal Court that affirmed the Native Customary Rights (NCR) over native land.

It is learnt that some investors met recently with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the state as part of their fact-finding mission to clarify their positions as most of their projects involve NCR land that required investments running into millions of ringgit.

They are concerned that they could lose their money if their projects fail to take off because of the court cases that have favoured the natives. All this time, they had thought they had the upper hand when it came to the law.

Sources say that prior to two landmark decisions meted out by the Federal Court, the final appellate court in the country, the investors had based their understanding of customary land rights on information provided by legal sources representing the state, including former state Attorney-General Datuk J C Fong.

Fongs book entitled The Law on Native Customary Land in Sarawak, which was released in March 2011, stated that the acquisition of rights to land is by custom or practice recognised by law, such as clearing virgin jungle, planting and occupying the land continuously.

Detractors pointed out that he continued to insist that this custom and practice was confined to temuda or farmed land and felled settled areas only. They stated that both the former AG and the state continued to maintain that they only recognised customs and practice under the laws of Sarawak.

However, the Federal Court affirmed in two landmark cases that NCR lands extended to an area wider than the temuda, to encompass the pulau galau reserve virgin forest within the vicinity of the village and pemakai menoa communal territory covering hunting, fishing grounds, former longhouse site and virgin forests surrounding the village.

However, sources said the state repeatedly showed its contempt of the court ruling by continuing to issue PLs and timber licences for such lands, and appealing judgments made by the lower courts which favoured native landowners.

The Federal Courts affirmation in two landmark cases namely, Madeli bin Salleh and Bisi Jinggot set a huge precedent and the tone for all other future cases that will be handled by the courts.

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Sarawak investors getting jittery over projects on NCR land

interior designer glass sliding doors

By: Hani Farran

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interior designer glass sliding doors - Video

Lisa Dreissig Design Studio is a full-service residential and commercial NJ interior design firm serving New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Lisa Dreissig is an acclaimed NJ interior designer known for her chic modern aesthetic. A neutral color palette and clean lines combined with bursts of color from artwork and accessories come together to shape inspired spaces that are sophisticated, yet comfortable and fun. Lisas philosophy is to create environments that are warm, inviting and easily kept. Providing creative storage solutions, while tastefully styling the space allows her clients to effortlessly maintain an uncluttered environment that exudes warmth and comfort.

A mixture of retail pieces, custom furnishings and vintage finds work with one another to create a unified contemporary design focused on sophistication and style. The willingness to incorporate existing client pieces can promote individuality, while maintaining a manageable budget. Being fully conscientious of, and working within a budget, is of top priority. Thoroughly understanding the vision of each client allows Lisa to properly align the project with the needs of her client. Prioritizing client needs and allocating resources effectively ensures the project stays on time and within budget, while not sacrificing design quality. Concentrating on each clients style, vision and needs, Lisa creates environments that uniquely reflect upon the individuality of each client.

Being a full-service NJ interior design firm, Lisa Dreissig Design Studio will completely manage a project from inception through installation. By working with her clients during design development and coordinating with vendors and contractors, Lisa can maintain a smooth workflow through project completion. A complete list of available services can be viewed on the interior design services page.

New Jersey interior designer, Lisa Dreissig, holds an Interior Design degree from the highly regarded Fashion Institute of Technology. Working with several award-winning NYC and NJ interior design firms, Lisa has been exposed to a wide array of aesthetics and design principals. This rare opportunity shaped Lisas diverse approach and perspective on interior design and sets her apart from other NJ interior designers. Lisas interests include camping, shopping, entertaining, gardening, antiquing and cooking all of which influence her creativity and style. To read more about Lisas inspiration and interests please take a look at her interior design blog and Like Lisa Dreissig Design Studio on Facebook.

To speak with Lisa about your design project please contact us today!

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NJ Interior Design | Lisa Dreissig Design Studio

Last Friday, Ethel Wright, 66, and her four grandchildren stepped into their new home in Kyle. It was a year in the making, but this Christmas, they will finally wake up in a home that doesnt leak every time it rains, that doesnt have holes in the floor, that has all its windows, and heating and air conditioning, and electrical wiring that works.

This is awesome, said 9-year-old Petey Crawford, as he and his siblings ran through the new three-bedroom mobile home picking out their rooms. We have a good home to live in.

Wright was part of last years Statesman Season for Caring program, which features 12 families each year and helps hundreds of others through local nonprofit agencies. Wright was nominated by Community Action Inc., which has spent the year trying to turn reader donations into a new mobile home.

Community Actions Jon Engel went to multiple mobile home dealers until finally Clayton Homes agreed to sell Wright a new home, worth $42,000, for the $30,000 Community Action Inc. had allocated from last years Season for Caring funds. Clayton Homes also removed the existing home. Matt Chambers, who is a home contractor and who teaches GED classes for Community Action, became the foreman to organize moving the new home onto the property and removing the old one. Pack-Rat gave storage units for Wright to store her things while the new home was being set up. Pullen Electric and Air Pro Heating and Air Conditioning donated their services. Students from Chambers GED class also helped.

Engel called it a Christmas miracle as he watched the family check out their new home. Without Season for Caring, this would not have been possible.

I appreciated what they did for me and my family, Wright said. Now we got a good place to stay, and we wont be cold anymore.

Without heat and with leaky windows, the family had placed tarps over the windows and put blankets in the doorways to keep in what little warmth they had from space heaters. Wright worried about the safety of the space heaters for Petey, 11-year-old JaRai, and 3-year-old twins Michael and Makhia, but she didnt have another solution.

It was really, really dangerous, Wright said.

Community Action still has work to do on the new home, including finding people to put on the skirting and build front and back porches and permanent steps into and out of the house. Scraps from the old house need to be cleaned up from the yard, and, sadly, Wright will have to replant her beautiful front garden.

I just want to thank all the nice people, Petey said.

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Season for Caring: After a year’s wait, a new home for Ethel Wright

Bose SoundLink Mini.

In terms of technology, hotel rooms are still firmly locked in the 20th century. An in-room DVD player is a big deal at most hotels. Wi-fi? Only if you're happy to be ripped off, and then it's mostly marginal. Music? Forget that - if it's not on the television, it doesn't exist.

So if music helps you survive travel, it's all up to you, and unless you like listening to the horrible speaker in your phone, or wear headphones, you'll need a portable speaker. There may be plenty available across a wide range of prices, but not all of them travel well and lots of them sound little better than your phone.

First, you need something small and light enough to throw into your bag. It also needs to be robust enough to take the knocks. It needs sufficient volume to avoid washing out the detail by the time the sound has crossed from the room's only available power point to the room's only couch when the battery is charging.

Samsung DAF61.

Most of all, it needs to sound good, and this is where the laws of physics are against you. The smaller and more compact a speaker, the more it favours high-range sounds. If you want heaps of bass - well, it comes out best with large speakers, and these make serious inroads into your suitcase. So, you have to compromise, but advances in technology mean you don't have to compromise as much as you once did.

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The Samsung here has a passive radiator, essentially a cone with no driver behind it, operated by changes of air pressure within the speaker cabinet as the smaller drivers do their work. It enhances bass performance but, again, the bigger the better.

Bose has a tricky way of getting long (and therefore low) soundwaves out of very small enclosures.

Beats Pill.

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Home away from home

Published on December 24, 2013

More than 4 million Americans buy a home each year, but there's no telling how many offers are discarded along the way. And no one wants to get edged out in the bid for a dream home.

Real estate is rebounding in many regions of the country, and buyers can face formidable competition. Of course, the best way to snag the home you want is to promise the most money. But there's more to making an offer than simply setting and stating your price.

Here, two top real estate agents in a perpetually competitive market Washington, D.C. share pointers on crafting an offer that will outshine the rest:

SHOW THEM THE MONEY

The key, both said, is assuaging the sellers' fears. They worry mainly that the deal will fall through, so have your financing in order before you submit an offer. Make sure the lender checks your credit, assets and employment status before pre-approving your loan, and get a detailed letter with the amount you are authorized to borrow, recommends Elizabeth Blakeslee, a Coldwell Banker broker in the capital region.

Another way to signal you are a serious buyer is by putting down a large, good-faith deposit. A 2 per cent to 4 per cent escrow deposit is common. However, Nancy Itteilag of Long and Foster real estate, who has been listed among the top 10 agents in the country for sales volume by the Wall Street Journal/REAL Trends, tells her clients to write a check for at least 10 per cent. Within 30 days, the buyer will need to hand over this money as part of the down-payment anyway.

"If the seller has a nice deposit in escrow, they know the buyer is not going to wake up and change their mind," she says.

ELIMINATE SURPRISES

The other unknown that keeps sellers up at night is dread of repairs, says Blakeslee. Most offers are contingent on a home inspection. To eliminate that variable, have the inspection done before putting in an offer, and specify any repairs you expect the seller to make. That way there won't be surprises later.

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Home-buying without heartache: how to make an irresistible offer

Austin, TX (PRWEB) December 23, 2013

Home security heavyweight Protect Americas safety technology has been featured by celebrated consumer electronics review blog The Gadgeteer. Expert technology reviewers found that Protect Americas Copper Security Package worked flawlessly and were pleasantly surprised by the SMART Connect smartphone app.

Read the article here.

The Gadgeteer thoroughly investigated Protect Americas Copper Security Package, exploring its quick installation process and wireless features. Each element of the system was analyzed, including remote keychains and the companys free smartphone app SMART Connect, which allows users to control their security systems, lights and even locks from anywhere.

I love technology, especially when it works, said contributor Raul Sanchez. So after installing the app and setting it up with password, I was arming and disarming my house like crazy. Sanchez also connected notifications to his email account to alert him as to the status of his home security system.

The Gadgeteer is a specialty review site - voted a Top 50 Technology Blog and is a Golden Retrevo Award Winner (among other awards). The site has reviewed countless products since 1997. The wide range of expertise from each contributing reviewer reinforces The Gadgeteers product reviews.

Now more than ever, homeowners are turning to simple and powerful wireless technology to defend their homes against fires and burglary. Protect America offers affordable safety solutions customizable to every home. Visit http://www.protectamerica.com or call 1-800-951-5190 to speak with a Protect America home security expert about a wireless alarm system.

About Protect America, Inc.

Protect America is an Austin, Texas-based provider of wireless home security systems that employs approximately 400 people. Since the companys founding in 1992, Protect America has secured over 400,000 American homes. Protect America is part of the Rockbridge Growth Equity family of companies that includes the Cleveland Cavaliers and Quicken Loans. Protect America offers affordable security solutions customizable to every home. Call 1-800-951-5190 to speak with a Protect America home security expert about an interactive wireless alarm system.

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Technology Authority The Gadgeteer Gives Protect America Security Systems High Reviews

MIAMI -

A security company installed a surveillance camera system at the Miami home of a 4-year-old girl who vanished one Friday and was found two days later.

Unique Surveillance LLC installed two cameras and two monitors at the Jacques-Louis's family's home in Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood.

"Hopefully to make them feel better and safer in their environment," said Assia Payne, the owner of Unique Surveillance LLC.

"I'm very happy today," said the girl's father, Joseph Jacques-Louis.

The girl was reported missing on Dec. 13. Two days later, a driver saw her walking with a man near the girl's home in the city's Little Haiti neighborhood.

When the driver and a neighbor confronted him, he ran off.

"We saw the story on the news and we were like, oh my God, this is tragic," said Payne.

Police continue to look for a man (left) seen in the neighborhood the night the girl disappeared, and the man (right) seen walking with her two days later.

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Security system installed at home of girl who went missing

Kaspersky Labs flagship security solution for home users, Kaspersky Internet Security 2014, was recognized as the best of the products compared in the Whole Product Dynamic Real-World Protection Test conducted by AV-Comparatives, an independent research lab, from August to November 2013. The labs experts analyzed how effectively popular security products protect against real-world threats faced by home users.

The testing procedure allowed security solutions to use any techniques to prevent the test computers infection with malware from blocking malicious links clicked by the user to detecting and removing malware already present on the device. However, security solutions had to operate with minimal input from PC users. This is because users are sometimes not sure what to do with suspicious programs detected by security solutions and might make poor decisions.

AV-Comparatives experts tested a total of 22 security solutions from different vendors. Each product was subjected to 1,821 test cases. Kaspersky Internet Security successfully blocked 1,820 threats, demonstrating 99.9% effectiveness over the four-month testing series the best result among all products tested. The Kaspersky Lab product prevented the systems from being infected in all cases, only prompting the user to make a decision in one instance.

Several hundred legitimate sites and apps were also used during testing to check whether the products generated false positives. If the security solutions blocked one of these sites or files from opening, they received a penalty. Kaspersky Internet Security was one of just five products that did not generate a single false positive.

The outstanding results produced by Kaspersky Internet Security earned the product an Advanced+ rating from AV-Comparatives.

For ordinary users its not that important at exactly which stage a security solution manages to block malware the main thing is that it prevents their computers from being infected. Because the testing by AV-Comparatives assesses a products combined capabilities, the results present home users with a much more practical evaluation than other tests that only assess individual security components, commented Oleg Ishanov, Director Anti-Malware Research, Kaspersky Lab.

Testing was carried out on a 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 with all the updates that were available as of August 2013. The latest versions of popular applications such as Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Apple QuickTime, Mozilla Firefox, and Oracle Java were also installed on the test computers.

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Kaspersky Internet Security on top in ‘Real-World’ Protection test

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