Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

Department of Conservation principal compliance officer Alan Christie (right) issues professional hunter and guide Dave Wilson (second from left), of Te Anau, a trespass notice while Mr Wilsons wife, Ali, and a police officer look on. Photo Guy Williams

Operating from Te Anau Airport, five helicopters from Taieri company HeliOtago carried out the operation over 11,200ha in the valley.

Subject to suitable weather, it will be followed by a drop of 1080-laced pellets in a few days.

It is the first of at least 22 operations to drop 1080 over 600,000ha of South Island conservation land in the next three months.

It is aimed at knocking back rising numbers of rats and stoats caused by an unusually heavy seeding in beech forests known as a "beech mast".

The first stage of a similar operation in Southland's Waitutu Forest is expected to start today.

A lone protester was yesterday issued with a trespass notice by a Doc officer.

Professional hunter and guide Dave Wilson, of Te Anau, spent seven hours at the airport's entrance gate under the close watch of police and Doc staff.

Mr Wilson said he was protesting at the "inhumanity of the poison".

Doc science adviser Dr James Reardon said the Iris Burn operation was the first because it "couldn't wait any longer".

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Protest as pest control starts

A feisty 82-year-old Uptown woman was hauled to court for spray-painting a fence built by her next-door neighbor a high-ranking federal prosecutor as part of a raging dispute over the property line between their brownstones.

Great-granny Sylvia Kordower-Zetlin has been warring with Arlo Devlin-Brown, the newly appointed chief of the Public Corruption Unit in the Manhattan U.S. attorneys office but prosecutors say she crossed the line when she tagged the backyard fence that separates the properties on W. 113th St.

The octogenarian was arrested June 22 and charged with making graffiti.

Its an ongoing dispute, Assistant District Attorney Justin Chung said at the criminal court arraignment Wednesday. The defendant was going onto what the complainant believes to be his property and refuses to stop coming over.

Thats why the fence was put up in the first place, Chung added.

Devlin-Browns wife, Daniela Kempf, says the senior citizen has been harassing her family incessantly, turning their idyllic Morningside Heights yard into a minefield.

We have a beautiful home and we would enjoy it a lot more if she werent making our lives hell, said Kempf, a professor at Barnard College.

She takes pictures of us whenever we come outside, added Kempf, who lives with Devlin-Brown and their children, ages 7 and 5. She gets on a ladder (and) yells, Bastards! Bastards!

Kempf said the fence was erected entirely on her familys lot but Kordower-Zetlins lawyer told the criminal court judge she was simply preserving the boundary lines.

This is an absurd allegation, said the lawyer, who is also her son-in-law, Jonathan Reiter. My client was completely in the right. The fence is actually partially on the defendants property and she marked that fence . . . to prevent the complainant from acquiring prescriptive rights by adverse possession of her property.

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EXCLUSIVE: Woman, 82, arrested for spray-painting fence

I must admit I was slow to consider Drywall as a viable alternative to internal brick walls, and by general discussion I realized I am not alone; so allow me to share what I have learned so far to possibly help you change your mind.

We in Trinidad and Tobago have in many ways been conditioned into believing that building with bricks and mortar is the only way to build if you want quality and that alternative building methods give a lesser product and are to be frowned upon.

Well folks, this is definitely no longer the case and one of the alternative construction methods that have been perfected to give a classy finish is in fact dry walling.

In Trinidad and Tobago, are a number of companies that supply materials that can be used and choosing the correct materials for your application is all important. It is however very important to get this process done well because some homeowners have had disappointing results with dry walling because the wrong materials and specification have been used in construction or because incorrect construction methods have been used. I think however that so much information is now available, and the skill sets developed enough to mitigate against recurrences of these negative results.

The big advantage that dry walls have over brick walls is that they are lightweight and thus do not need any foundations or strong support structures when building on a suspended slab or floor structure and there is no mess. Construction is quick and drywalls can be easily erected by a professional contractor or a Do It Yourself enthusiast.

Drywalls are also easy and quick to remove without mess or dust as is the case with brick walls.

You can choose straight or curved walls, add character with arches or recesses. There is no problem with fixing items like pictures or mirrors as there are suitable fasteners readily available from various suppliers. The finish is smooth and apart from having to fill in the joints with fiber tape and mud (or a similar product), it is ready for painting.

Dry walls can be just as soundproof as brick walls, are an effective fire barrier, and have good insulation qualities. Framing can be either in timber or using lightweight metal studs. Dry walls are thinner than brick walls and thus have an advantage where space is a problem. The speed and ease of construction coupled with the cost of materials and labour make dry walling a good financial option when compared to conventional brickwork.

There are, however, a definite number of dos and donts when it comes to drywall construction and it is most certainly not just a case of buying a pile of materials and knocking up a wall. But as I said before, this information is available from a number of suppliers. Dry walling is a viable alternative to brick walls and its versatility makes it a good option to consider. Thanks for Connecting

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Contractors Corner Drywall vs. Brick wall: Weighing in

JENNY DeHUFF, Daily News Staff Writer dehuffj@phillynews.com, 215-854-5218 Posted: Monday, August 18, 2014, 3:01 AM

STRAWBERRY Mansion residents will be the benefactors of three Philadelphia Housing Authority projects within 24 months.

The neighbors say they want and need the housing but they want to make sure they have a say in how it's done.

City officials broke ground on the first development Tuesday: the Oakdale Street Apartments, on a longtime vacant lot in the north end of Strawberry Mansion. Twelve units will be built on Oakdale Street near 28th, across from the Widener Library. The three developments will result in a total investment of about $30 million.

City Council President Darrell Clarke, PHA president Kelvin Jeremiah and nearly a dozen others pitched their shovels in the dirt and gave it a toss Tuesday, ceremonially ringing in the start of the undertaking.

Early on, a 12-member task force was assembled with the intent of having full community involvement and participation in the awarding of contracts for the job, from initial construction to plumbing to painting and all the way down.

Dale Corp., a construction-management firm based in Glenside, Montgomery County, was the lowest and most qualified bidder, Jeremiah said. Dale will oversee the project's development, but some members of the task force - half PHA and City Council staff and half neighborhood residents - are skeptical about whether their voices are being heard.

"The approach on this one could have been better," said Tonnetta Graham, of the Strawberry Mansion Community Development Corp.

"You have to remember that this is a very old community and a lot of our residents have something to say about what happens."

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Strawberry Mansion on deck for new affordable housing

August 15, 2014 // Paul Buckley

The Danish capital city Copenhagen is planning to roll out a large-scale pilot project featuring smart LED lights that is aiming to save money, cut carbon emissions and even alert police about suspicious activities.

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The Danish Outdoor Lighting Lab (DOLL) a GreenLab by Photonics is to be open September 2014 and will stretch for about 9 km along the roads of the Copenhagen suburb Albertslund and will cover about 1.5 square kilometres in total.

Hundreds of lights will be installed in Albertslund and its local citizens will take part in a major experiment to examine how future cities should use streetlighting.

As many as 25 companies have reserved space for their products in parcels of land 300 metres square. Each lamp is being assigned a separate IP address to enable remote monitoring. The project plans to test smart lamps that dim if it is sunny and brighten if a few people pass by at night. Other smart lights will be used to automatically send out alerts when they are not operating correctly.

Sensors that track traffic density, air quality, noise, weather conditions and UV radiation will also be fitted throughout the site to see what sort of environment the lights are operating in and will indicate which lights are making the biggest difference in terms of lowering costs and emissions.

DOLL wants to encourage more cities to make the change by demonstrating what different types of lamps can do and describes the project as a "huge urban playground". The project is described as a 'Living Lab'.

Michael Nissen-Petersen, key account manager in Street & Outdoor Lighting Thorn Lighting A/S explained it is important to show customers what is the effect of dimming the lights by 50 percent. "It is our experience that customers are becoming more confident at turning down the lights when they see it work in practice. Typically, they think that if we dim the lights by 50 or 70 percent, it will have a dramatic effect. But from personal experience, they can see that in an outdoor environment it can be difficult to tell the difference."

Optoelectronics

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Copenhagen starts large-scale smart LED lighting experiment

A new mother in Oregon says she wants to breast-feed her baby even though she regularly smokes marijuana, but experts say they would be concerned about the risks of the drug to the baby's brain.

The mother, Crystal Cain, said she is a medical-marijuana user who smoked the drug during her pregnancy to reduce anxiety and nausea, according to the Portland TV station KATU. Her baby was born 8 weeks premature, and Cain planned on breast-feeding the child because of the known benefits of breast-feeding.

But doctors at the hospital did not allow Cain to breast-feed until she signed a waiver acknowledging the potential risks of using marijuana while breast-feeding, KATU said.

"There's not enough information [on the risks] because nobody tests it," Cain was quoted as saying. [Trippy Tales: The History of 8 Hallucinogens]

t's true that few studies have looked at the risks of smoking marijuana while breast-feeding, and many of the studies that have examined this question were conducted several decades ago. However, several organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, discourage the use of marijuana by breast-feeding mothers, in part because of concern that the drug may affect the baby's brain development.

What is clear is that the drug can get into breast milk, and into the baby's body.

The active ingredient in marijuana, THC, is fat soluble and can be stored in the fat tissue for quite a while. "Any drug that is fat soluble gets into fat (tissue), and breast milk has lots of fat because that's what's good for the baby," said Dr. David Mendez, a neonatologist at Miami Children's Hospital, who had not treated Cain or her baby. The more marijuana that a woman smokes, the greater the amount of THC in her breast milk, Mendez said.

Babies who have been breast-fed by a woman who smokes marijuana can have a positive urine test for marijuana for up to three weeks, said Martha Lasley, a lactation consultant from Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies in Orlando. However, the amount of THC that's transferred to the baby through breast-feeding is not enough to produce a high, Lasley said.

There is also some concern that smoking marijuana can lower women's levels of prolactin, the hormone needed for breast-milk production, Lasley said.

A 1990 study found that a baby's exposure to THC in the first month of life was linked with reduced movement and coordination skills at age 1. Doctors have also observed lethargy, less frequent feeding and shorter feeding times in babies exposed to THC, according to a 2005 review in the journal Canadian Family Physician.

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Smoking Pot and Breast-Feeding: What Are the Risks?

James A. Morrow

Funeral services are Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2014, for James A. Morrow, 74, Belle Plaine, at 11 a.m. at First Lutheran Church, Belle Plaine.

Morrow went home to be with our Lord on August 15, 2014, at the Vinton Lutheran Home in Vinton.

Minister officiating is Pastor Dean Duncan. Organist is Jolene Blanchard. Vocalist is Miranda Pope.

Casket bearers are M.J. Pope, Codi Morrow, Kyle Morrow, Brent Morrow, Matthew Morrow and Christopher Morrow.

After the services, all are cordially invited to the First Lutheran Church Fellowship Hall for a time of refreshments and fellowship

He was born Sept. 23, 1939, in Fulton, IL, to Allen Bud & Georgia (Creecy) Morrow. Jim received his education in public school in Fulton, IL, and in Glidden and Belle Plaine. He graduated from Belle Plaine High School in the Class of 1957. After high school, Jim enlisted in the U.S. Army and was very proud to have served as a member of the Honor Guard. On July 5, 1959, Jim married Virginia Dunn in Waterloo. To their union, they were blessed with five children, 18 grandchildren, and 24 great-grandchildren. They have resided in Fort Eustes, VA, Clinton, Bryant, Charlotte, Alden, Des Moines and Belle Plaine.

Jim was an active member of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, most recently belonging to First Lutheran Church in Belle Plaine. He enjoyed gardening, lawn mowing, fishing and spending time with his loved ones. He was known by all for his generous and caring personality. Always lending a helping hand to anyone who needed it. He never, ever hesitated to put anyone before himself. Jim was definitely a good and faithful servant.

Jim is survived by four children, Allen (Kimberly), Clinton, Douglas, Minier, IL, Teresa (Randy) Kennegieter, Iowa Falls and Kristine (Marcus) Pope, Belle Plaine; three siblings, Janet Johnson, Thompson, IL, Donald (Linda), Belle Plaine and William (Lucy) of Des Moines. Preceding him in death were his wife (2012), a son David (1986), his parents, a sister, Dorothy Anders, and a brother Michael.

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OBITUARY: James A. Morrow

WASHINGTON The balance of power in the job market is shifting slowly toward employees from employers.

Bob Funk sees it firsthand from his position as chief executive officer of staffing agency Express Employment Professionals.

Were short of people in a number of cities, he said.

So hes changing the focus of his $2.5 billion, Oklahoma City business. Instead of concentrating on finding jobs for those who want them, Express Employment is putting more effort into finding workers for companies that need them.

Were back in the recruiting market again, Funk said.

The 74-year-old industry veteran isnt the only one to notice the change. Americans who have been hunting for employment for more than six months are finding theyre having better luck landing a job, while people who had given up looking are returning to the labor force to resume their search.

Companies, meanwhile, are beefing up their in-house recruiting teams and increasingly using complicated computer algorithms to scour the Web for prospective job candidates.

This is all good news for the economy, according to Nariman Behravesh, the Lexington, Massachusetts, chief economist for IHS Inc. He said the United States has entered a virtuous cycle where job gains are leading to increased household expenditures, encouraging employers to hire more workers.

Consumer spending rose in June by the most in three months, according to Commerce Department data published Aug. 1.

The expansion is self-reinforcing and is very solid, Behravesh said. Growth of around 3 percent, plus or minus, is well within the cards for the remainder of this year and much of next year.

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Employers seeing tighter labor pool

Aug. 18, 2014, 4 a.m.

ON Peter Yench's sheep farm the bulldozers are ready. When they surge forward, trees will be ripped from the earth, clearing the land for grazing and crops.

Peter Yench

ON Peter Yench's sheep farm the bulldozers are ready. When they surge forward, trees will be ripped from the earth, clearing the land for grazing and crops.

Elsewhere another vast stretch of sparse, dry native forest stands on Mr Yench's land. It is hardly the Daintree, but like all forests it is a sink for carbon dioxide. If it too is brought down then the CO2 stored in the trees will be released, exacerbating climate change.

Mr Yench holds a permit to clear on his western NSW properties, Bulgoo Station and The Meadows. Traditionally the more land a grazier could clear the more sheep they could run, bolstering their economic return.

Reminded of an old farming adage that "the only good tree is a dead tree", Mr Yench smiles in recognition, but retorts: "yeah, but that's not right".

"You got to have both, your balanced country. That's the way I look at it."

Instead of clearing everything, Mr Yench has promised to keep almost 7000 hectares of forest on Bulgoo standing for 100 years. In exchange he receives carbon credits under the federal government's Carbon Farming Initiative. It has proved a healthy alternative revenue stream.

Quietly, another 30-odd landowners in western NSW have promised to do the same or are exploring the option. Like Mr Yench, many are based around the mining and grazing town Cobar. It has quickly become an unlikely national centre for carbon farming.

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How carbon farming won the west

TACOMA (AP) A sheriffs deputy found two bodies in a home in the Tacoma suburb of Frederickson Sunday, and authorities detained four people for questioning.

Pierce County sheriffs spokesman Jerry Bates says it is unclear yet how the two people died or who they were.

The four people detained were found in a vehicle associated with the house where the bodies were found.

The News Tribune reported Sunday night that a 40-year-old man had been taken into custody in what the Sheriffs Department described as the homicides of two men, 22 and 66.

The News Tribune reports that experts from the Sheriffs Department were called to examine a possible booby trap in the home. Bates later said that investigators believe that the suspicious wiring connected to an outbuilding may be part of an old marijuana grow.

The bodies were found around 8:30 a.m. Sunday by a deputy who was doing a routine address check on a sex offender.

Frederickson is about 20 miles south of Tacoma.

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Deputy finds 2 bodies in home south of Tacoma; 4 people detained