HUGS from the HeART - The Bliss Blog

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Enter the world of huggably heart felt Robin Schwoyer whose work in the world was introduced to me by a mutual friend.?She wears many hats as you will clearly see when you dive into this interview that will tickle you with delight. It incorporates art, yoga, children, sprituality and a clear sense that she is Divinely Guided.

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How do you live your bliss?

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I choose to connect to joy on a daily basis. I feel things very deeply and can over process, yet I learned there was a benefit for this as a counselor, minister and business woman. I developed a good understanding of why and how things happened from my processing. However, it could be a bit much. I noticed that time in nature, listening to classical music, being creative and helping others seemed to expand my awareness and allowed me to integrate feelings, observations and ponderings. Over time, it has become my ?ritual? to breathe deeply using various mindful breath exercises, to listen to beautiful music each day, or play my Native flute, to write or create art, to laugh, to pray, to listen deeply to others and to listen deeply to my own heart. Connecting to my heart gives a richer, grander perspective to life, allowing me to go with the flow more easily and to simply be. In life, we know the saying sh*t happens?as a holistic person, I believe shift happens?and as a joyful person I know Bliss Happens! For me bliss is ?being in a state of Love.?

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You seem to be a Renaissance Woman who wears many hats; how did you learn to become a multi-talented multi-tasker?

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This probably grew out of my constant curiosity about people and how the world works. From my earliest memories, I was fascinated by people. I was often confused as a young child about what I could sense was the disconnect as someone presented themselves to the world. I tended to be quite intuitive and would tell my mother I could ?see? masks or shadows on people. They might smile, but inside they were hurting. Or they were angry on the outside, but inside was this person on the inside screaming to get out and just play. I noticed the ?happy?people too. They seemed to be the same inside and out. I would say today they were ?aligned.? They were genuine. These persons smiled with authentic smiles and they seemed to respond to life with an evenness. They had hobbies and helped people or animals. I liked the sense of calm, yet, saw they were filled with life and enjoyed themselves, even when life threw them tough times. I had a grandfather like that too. I compared him to the complainers of the family and noticed his humble, joyful approach seemed to energize him to accomplish much, as compared to those who drained themselves with negative thoughts. So, I suppose, early on I began to model myself from these observations. I had a teacher too, who taught me in 5th grade that every year you should learn something new. Study it, practice it, and become it. In years, she would say, you will have a rich life of experiences to enjoy and share with others. Voila! Here I am! I love to learn and try things and I love to create. I love to help others and use my creativity to support those in need and to model for them ways to be empowered in their own lives.

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What is Pink Hearts Wellness?
Pink HeARTs Wellness for Women is a non-profit organization inspired to empower and promote vital health and wellness for women of all ages. Mind, Body, Spirit support is offered through holistic services, education and creative expression. It was created to address the needs of women I was meeting a few years ago. I already had the Autism outreach using creative expression with the kids and families, yet, in my client practice, more and more women were coming forth wanting to ?be creative? and ?be powerful.? I thought it interesting. These requests for healing were rooted in this creative urge. Additionally, in 2009, I decided to join the Susan Komen 3 day, 60 mile Walk for Breast Cancer in honor of my mother and step mother, who had both passed on from cancer. This was for personal healing. I heard the message, ?This a necessary first step of many steps for your healing and the healing of many others.? So, my good friends helped me form a team, which we called Pink HeARTs Wellness. It was true. All those physical steps in training, led to me organizing myself more and taking better steps in health, wellness and time management. Pink HeARTs Wellness is still evolving as a support, educational and creative playgroup. And recently, I have had more men contact me, so we shall see how spirit leads us.

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You use 7 ?E words? to describe what you do?.how did you come to choose them?
I have always used alliterations in marketing and in sermons. I find they capture people?s attention and help them to retain more of the message. Educate * Envision * Empower * Enlighten * Embrace * Expand * Enjoy. These words expressed the ways in which we could help one another to live more vibrant lives, healing one heart at a time, yet radiating global healing with this new empowered state of being.

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Can you speak about HUGS from the HeART?
HUGS from the HeART stands for Helping You Grow Spiritually from the heart. HUGS was actually a program I originally had for a kids yoga program, but it seemed to fit with the requests for a creative playgroup. I use the word HeART in most of my programs, since I see connecting to the heart as being key to the art of living life. And art bridges hearts in ways that many times words cannot. So, this group offers workshops where women and men enjoy breathing, meditation, music, discussion, and creating an art piece which is unique to them and expresses whatever they need, all while supporting them in their transformation.

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How have the layers of life losses that you experienced shape the woman you are now?
From my earliest memories, our family life seemed to be marked by significant death and loss. Some quite tragic. Again, I observed. Those family members who could find greater significance for happenings or could connect to the good memories seemed to do better than those who became depressed or those who expressed nothing. I remember as a teenager telling others, ?life is for the living, so enjoy it.? I saw so many other teenagers who were into the drama of being perpetually miserable. I didn?t understand it. It seemed somehow worse to be alive and missing life, than it was to actually die. Some aspects of this formed a part of my desire to be a minister, helping others to have the ?abundant life? that Jesus spoke of. I was always compassionate and good at taking care of people, yet I wanted to inspire people to seek and accept the joy that is their birthright.

And then, there is Happy Hearts Yoga. Please share about the benefits of yoga for those on the autism spectrum.
I have done Yoga since the 80?s. When my son was exhibiting many impulsive behaviors and sensory issues, I thought maybe I could use Yoga to help him. We practiced breathing and doing poses to move energy through his body. As I learned more about his Autism diagnosis, I studied Occupational Therapy and various other approaches and began to see connections. This would lead me to working with his peers and school teacher. From there over 10 years, I developed a Yoga approach which addresses sensory issues, emotional regulation, focus, cooperation, communication, imagination, fitness and self confidence. It is called SMARTKIDS? Method and is the basis for our Spectrum Kidz Yoga?. There are studies done by others using Yoga with children and special needs children which show an improvement in many areas such as focus, calming, cooperation, balance, strength, better self control and regulation, along with others. We know we see differences and hear about it from the families. I love the stories parents share when their child remembers to breathe and can feel better. Or they do poses spontaneously, often to self regulate or express.

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How does creativity feed your soul?
I would say creativity is my soul! I think we are all divine sparks just waiting to shine brightly. Observing the Universe and nature here on Earth, we see constantly evolving creativity. Expansion, contraction, birth, death, light, dark, all mixing colorfully as we cycle through time. We each are a divine expression of that ultimate flow of Creative Force, and we get to express that creativity as part of our blueprint of existence. For me music and colors feed me. I love to play with colors. I love sparkles and glitter. I love to swirl colors together and see what happens. I do this with music and toning as well. What resonates?what resists?how do we create good vibrations in and around us which uplift not only ourselves, but all those around us. This is what lead to some of my new art and healing sessions called Good Vibrations HeART tunings. Using creativity, tuning forks, toning, colors, images and energy balancing to create wholeness and joy for the participant. Lots of fun for the ?serious? work of simply becoming the joyful person we are meant to be and accepting that ?Bliss Happens.?

Source: http://blog.beliefnet.com/blissblog/2012/10/hugs-from-the-heart.html

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HR chiefs who propel organizational performance | Successful ...

You might think that the corporate human resources function doesn?t have much of a role in improving business processes, such as product development, operations, customer service, or distribution. But I?ve found that it does. HR can propel or inhibit process improvement because it has an outsized influence on people: how they are recruited, rewarded, and developed. In organizations like IBM, Lowe?s, and Harvard Vanguard where HR has accelerated change, it has emerged from its compliance and administrative focus to make bold changes in spite of regulations, bureaucratic entanglements, and other barriers.

As I explained in my last post, IBM?s corporate HR function was instrumental in the company?s strategy of standardizing and integrating processes globally. It developed ?Global Enablement Teams? that brought marketing experts from mature IBM country units to help IBM businesses in developing countries. In a post about Lowes, the $49 billion home improvement retailer, I described how Cedric Coco, senior vice president of learning and organizational effectiveness, quickly united his group with the firm?s internal performance improvement team when he joined in 2008. And I also described how HR at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, a large Boston-area physician group, has changed how they recruit, orient, reward, and develop people to fit with their ?care improvement? activities.

Why has HR become instrumental to the success of IBM, Lowe?s, and Harvard Vanguard? It starts at the top. All three companies have tough, business-savvy, and politically astute HR chiefs who are a vital partner to the CEO. They lead by force of personality, credibility, bold thinking, strong conviction and a sense of mission. In addition, they possess two key traits:

Deep operational experience. HR tasks such as benefits administration and recruiting require specialists. But these specialists often have difficulty describing their services in terms that resonate with line managers. In contrast, Coco joined Lowe?s HR function after a career that included process improvement and ?Black Belt? experience at GE. Scott Beaird, director of talent management at Tufts Medical Center in Boston and also a ?Black Belt,? had a background in process improvement at Cigna and Fidelity Investments. Coco and Beaird relish talking operations with line managers. Both have the credibility to challenge them on whether they are improving the attitudes and skills of their people at the same time they?re redesigning their jobs. Coco and Beaird also work intensively with customers and customer-facing teams to make sure their organization gets the ?people? part of process improvement right.

Selflessness. The typical leader of a process improvement initiative is someone who has been appointed to drive actions and direct others, has high visibility and the power to deliver results, and wants to be recognized. But HR leaders must play a more subtle role in change efforts. By taking actions obviously in the best interests of the company, especially advocating for employee development and engagement, the head of HR can earn credibility and respect. And to be seen as an effective team player, HR has to be flexible on its role in policy enforcement, modifying HR policies to achieve enterprise objectives. The HR leader must be seen as focusing first on serving others.

Consider Lily Benjamin, former vice president of organization development and chief diversity officer at Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc., a $2 billion company whose 6,000 employees manage and dispense communications related to securities transactions (e.g., proxy statements for shareholders). While Benjamin and Broadridge have won several awards for their activities, Benjamin consistently deflects any personal credit for their accomplishments. ?I develop people and the culture to support the accomplishment of business goals,? she told me last year when she worked there. ?But I don?t do it alone; my approach is to partner and collaborate. It is very important to me that my team gets the recognition. Without them and their collective intelligence, the breadth and reach of my contribution would be limited. Hence my biggest reward is to attribute the success to my team, even if I am the accountable leader.?

Operational experience and selflessness appear to be traits of growing importance for HR heads at many companies. A major beverage company hired a new HR chief because she had these characteristics, said Sharol Henry, a consultant who helped the company redesign its business and HR processes. ?They picked someone out of left field ? someone with no HR background. The new HR leader was an outsider, yet had to build new capabilities and behaviors for leaders throughout the company and on transforming HR processes.? In addition to experience in making big and lasting changes, the top criterion was ?service to others ? not to self.?

Question: What characteristics have you seen to be critical for HR chiefs who have played big and beneficial roles in organizational process improvement?

This article was first published on Harvard Business Review and has been lightly edited.

Source: http://successfulworkplace.com/2012/10/31/hr-chiefs-who-propel-organizational-performance/

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The Tempest : SCC film program: A journey, part 2

Photo Credit: Brad Daniel

?Love Roulette?s? cast and crew take a moment to relax on set in Mare Island.

Max Shepherd, Staff Writer
October 31, 2012
Filed under Arts & Entertainment, Local, Top Stories

My final project for Cinema 015 was the first short film I ever made. The story was simple: a man had just committed a murder out in the hills, and now needed to transport a garbage bag full of limbs to an undisclosed location.

We used Brad?s camera, a shiny new T2i (which were all the rage back then, but now only cost the number of minutes it would take you to dig one out of a Dumpster behind Fry?s Electronics) and I was forced to play the lead role. I covered myself in fake blood of my own concoction, and Brad and I spent six hours walking the hills of Mare Island in 100 degree heat. The fake blood, composed mostly of Karo syrup, attracted flies, and hardened over my skin like glue. It was uncomfortable.

We traversed rough terrain and did battle with the indigenous wildlife. Eventually after the shoot had finished we headed back, and emerged from the woods into an up-scale golf course. Old men clad in bright pants piloted carts through winding asphalt trails from hole to hole. Some would cast us inquisitive gazes, as though they found the sudden appearance of a blood-soaked stranger unusual.

Ultimately I was unsatisfied with the film. I showed it to our professor, Meile Ornelas, in the back room instead of playing it on the projector in front of class. Now it lies buried at the bottom of my hard-drive collecting digital dust.

It was also during this semester where I once again encountered Alden ?Alabaster MaGruff? Tatum. One evening Alden and I wrote a screenplay over a fifth of vodka. That screenplay was eventually adapted into the short film, ?Love Roulette.? A man is sent a letter from the woman he loves telling him to meet her at an abandoned building, when he arrives he finds a trap. Gunmen lying in wait.

After an intense shoot-out Tatum?s character is shot to death. ?Love Roulette? was a success. Brad put his After Effects skills to tremendous use, rendering shockingly realistic gun shots and bullet impacts. The short was filmed in a stylish, ?Sin City? inspired B&W with scattered bits of red. I had the honor of being killed twice, as two different characters, dressed in two different outfits. We ran out extras. ?We were drunk as hell when we wrote it,? recalled Tatum. ?Looking back that was the start of many good projects that stemmed from that specific film.?

Daniel had no trouble recalling the shoot. ?Filming in a place you aren?t allowed to be is a great way to get the blood flowing, and that?s just what we did in all of the shorts I was part of,? Daniel said.

I remember the stripped and crumbling buildings we braved to film that short. The ceilings were littered with holes as if the structures were bombarded by meteorites, and tiny jungles of moss and mold spread across the floors and walls like a metastasizing infection. Entire sections were charred black from unknown fires. It smelled like a pond filled with trash and the excretions of vagrants and stray cats, but, as a guerrilla filmmaker, you will quickly acclimate yourself to the pungent scent of the fluids of the homeless (both human and animal). It will be a necessary adaptation in order for you to effectively film in many low-rent locations.

?I had to choreograph and film full cast and crew,? Daniel said. ?In suits and ties, all carrying mock-up firearms, disaster was imminent.?

But disaster didn?t strike. Everything just kind of worked out, mostly. Nobody fell through the floor or impaled themselves on rebar spikes, nobody got rabies from bats in the attic, we didn?t stumble upon a meth deal gone wrong or witness a murder, and we weren?t mistaken as an exceptionally stylish and heavily armed militant group hiding in an abandoned building by the police and then gunned down in a blaze of glory. None of those things happened. Did they almost happen? Maybe. But ultimately everything worked out fine. Sometimes that happens, and it?s pretty cool.

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Tags: Brad Daniel, Cinema 015, college film program, Film program at Solano Community College, filming, Mare Island, Max Shepherd, Meile Ornelas, SCC film department, T2i, Tim Tatum

Source: http://www.solanotempest.net/arts-entertainment/2012/10/31/scc-film-program-a-journey-part-2-55656/

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N.Y.U.?s Lab Rats and Mice Die in Flooding

Among the smaller but still important casualties of Hurricane Sandy were thousands of laboratory rodents, genetically altered for use in the study of heart disease, cancer and mental disorders like autism and schizophrenia, that drowned in basement rooms at a New York University research center in Kips Bay.

The collection of carefully-bred rodents was considered one of the largest and most valuable of its kind in the country. The animals lived in colonies in the cellar of the Smilow Research Center, on 1st Avenue near 30th Street.

New York University medical and research staff worked furiously to protect their human patients ? and others threatened by the storm ? in all three of its facilities in Kips Bay. Though most of the animals at the center were unharmed, the center staff could not rescue the animals in one of the facilities, despite hours of work amid the flooding that started at the institute on Monday night.

?The combined tide and wind resulted in extensive flooding in the building, and unfortunately, my mouse colonies were wiped out,? said Gordon J. Fishell, associate director of the N.Y.U. Neuroscience Institute. ?These animals were the culmination of 10 years of work, and it will take time to replace them.?

N.Y.U. officials said that, storm warnings notwithstanding, there was every reason to expect the Smilow building to be protected; the building was designed to withstand surges 20 percent higher than had historically occurred.

Dr. Fishell said that his lab alone lost about 2,500 mice. Other programs at the Smilow center, including research into cancer, cardiovascular disease and epigenetics, lost a combined 7,500 more animals, both mice and rats, according to faculty estimates. The animals were an important resource, but research in all of these areas is broadly based and will continue, university officials said.

?It?s an absolute tragedy any way you look at it,? Dr. Fishell said.

The colonies are bred to carry some of the same genetic glitches thought to contribute to disorders in humans like high blood pressure, cancer or epilepsy. The Fishell lab has been studying the effect of specific genetic mutations on neurons that inhibit runaway electrical activity in the brain. Such neural overheating is associated with seizures, among other mental symptoms. The mouse lines included about 40 genetic variants.

Medical centers typically have veterinarians on hand, as well as other lab staff, to feed and care for research animals. ?That facility is top-notch, one of the leading centers in the country, so the loss is just terrible,? said Dr. Yariv Houvras, a cancer researcher at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

The loss is the second major blow to basic research in developmental disorders in just the past several months. In June, a freezer failure at the Harvard Brain Bank in Belmont, Mass., ruined 150 brain specimens, many of them from people with autism who died young.

Lines of genetically altered animals, like brain banks, are painstakingly built up over time. But the mouse colonies can be restored, researchers said; many of the rodents lost in the storm have genetic relatives living elsewhere, and those animals could be used to begin the process.

Already scientists at two research centers, the University of Pennsylvania and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, have pledged to donate animals to restart some of the Smilow center?s colonies. ?That?s the one really positive thing to come out of this,? Dr. Fishell said. ?Individuals in the research community, who in most businesses would be considered my competitors, have been eager to help.?

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/health/nyus-lab-rats-and-mice-die-in-flooding.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Phillips 66 quarterly profit up on good margins

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Phillips 66's increased access to cheaper crude oil from the United States and Canada boosted its quarterly profits above analyst expectations after the U.S. refining company spun off from ConocoPhillips earlier this year, the company reported on Wednesday.

More than half of the company's refining capacity is on the Gulf Coast and in the central corridor of the United States with access to those cheaper crudes in North Dakota, Texas, Kansas and other states, executives told analysts during Phillips 66's third-quarter earnings conference call.

"Our U.S. advantaged crudes increased from 52 percent last year to 61 percent to date in 2012," Chief Financial Officer Greg Maxwell said.

Shares rose 1.4 percent in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange, but later fell less than 1 percent to 47.14.

Those advantages stem from efforts to beef up logistics, such as pipeline and rail connections, to gain access new crude sources, said Tim Taylor, executive vice president of commercial, marketing, transportation and business development.

He said the company was delivering up to 40,000 barrels per day of cheap crude from North Dakota's Bakken shale play by rail to Phillips 66's 238,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) Bayway refinery in Linden, New Jersey, double the amount shipped in the second quarter.

Power was restored at the Bayway plant on Wednesday after it sustained damage and flooding from Hurricane Sandy, but executives had no estimate on when it would restart.

"The water is receding, we've gotten power back this morning and starting to restore that to the various units. But we're still making assessments and we really haven't determined when we can start back up," Taylor told Reuters in an interview.

Taylor also said Phillips 66 is ramping up pipeline and truck deliveries of Mississippi Lime crude to its Ponca City, Oklahoma, refinery, to 50,000 bpd by the end of 2013. The Energy Information Administration puts the Ponca City refinery's capacity at 198,400 bpd, although Phillips sets the plant's capacity at 187,000 bpd.

That is in addition to a deal with Kinder Morgan Energy Partners L.P. to build a pipeline to carry Eagle Ford shale oil from South Texas to the refiner's 247,000 bpd plant in Sweeny, Texas.

Also, Taylor said the company is "working hard" on ways to bring those inland crudes to its pair of California refineries, which face higher operating costs under a state law that requires dramatic reductions in emissions by 2020.

"All in all, by mid 2014, these actions along with others that we're taking are expected to increase our access to advantage crudes by about 165,000 barrels per day across our domestic refining system. This represents about 9 percent of our U.S. refining capacity," Taylor said.

In addition to strong margins in the central corridor of the U.S., Phillips 66's margins also were higher than expected in Europe and the Atlantic Basin, which helped drive the earnings beat, Roger Read, analyst for Wells Fargo said in a note to clients.

The Houston company had a third-quarter profit of $1.6 billion or $2.51 per share, compared with $1 billion or $1.65 per share a year earlier.

Excluding items, Phillips had a profit of $2.97 per share. Analysts on average had expected a profit of $2.35 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Phillips 66's consolidated margin of $16.62 per barrel exceeded Wells Fargo's forecast for $12.90 per barrel.

Phillips 66`s worldwide refining utilization rate rose to 96 percent from 92 percent, even though the company's 247,000 bpd Alliance refinery in Bell Chasse, Louisiana, was shut three weeks because of Hurricane Isaac, it said.

(Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Edmund Klamann)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/phillips-66-quarterly-profit-good-margins-012027113--finance.html

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China's Twitter-like Weibo poses danger, opportunity for new leaders

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - As China prepares for a generational power shift in the next two weeks, a similar shift is happening online that is testing the limits and displaying the evolution of China's legions of state-directed censors.

Since its launch three years ago, Weibo, China's version of Twitter, has become the country's water cooler, a place where nearly 300 million Internet users opine on everything from Korean soap operas to China's latest political intrigue.

It has posed a unique challenge for Chinese Communist Party leaders whose overarching goal is to maintain tight political and social control, while at the same time wanting to give their citizens a conduit to blow off steam.

"One of the key challenges for the new leadership will be whether they can establish credibility through new governing mechanisms," said Tony Saich, a professor of international affairs at Harvard Kennedy School in Massachusetts.

"How are they going to deal with a wired, globally connected, urban middle class that is probably less likely over time to be treated like children?"

Part of the solution is also the problem: Weibo.

Last Friday, senior officials from China's Jiangxi province triggered an avalanche of online criticism when they showed up hours late for a commercial flight from Guangzhou. The other passengers were convinced the plane was delayed simply to accommodate the officials, and they were furious.

Government censors let the online anger flow, and the incident was typical of the Weibo exposes that have often revealed details of low level officials' wealth, corruption or abuse of power.

Yet that same day, the New York Times ran a lengthy article on Premier Wen Jiabao family's wealth, which lit up Twitter internationally but hardly made it on to Weibo. All references to the article, direct and obscure, were quickly blocked.

By letting certain types of party criticism flourish on Weibo and even become "trending topics" while censoring even obscure references to others, Chinese authorities have tried to create an illusion of a rowdy online public square.

"Everything going on online, including Weibo, is not happening randomly. It is very much part of a plan," said a China-based American who goes by the alias Martin Johnson. Johnson founded Greatfire.org and Freeweibo.com, websites that monitor China Internet censorship.

"The reason why Weibo exists is because the party allowed it to. The party thinks it can use Weibo to its advantage."

CLOCKING THE WATCH

A microblogger who goes by the name Huazong has become the so called "watch watchdog" on Weibo. Since July 2011, he has collected photos of officials who wear expensive wristwatches despite earning relatively modest government salaries and posted them online.

Huazong's latest victim is a safety official from the northern Shaanxi province, Yang Dacai, who was removed from his position in September after Weibo users dug up photos and counted more than 10 luxury watches sitting on his wrist on different occasions.

"I have exposed dozens of officials' watches before and haven't gotten any direct threats," Huazong told Reuters TV.

"Some officials have asked why I am doing this and I tell them it is to promote the establishment of an officials' property declaration system," he said.

The freedom Weibo users have to excavate dirt on provincial and county-level officials stands in stark contrast to the muzzle they wear when wanting to discuss the nation's top leaders, whose names, nicknames and weird permutations of their names are blocked on the website.

"In China you can criticise and conduct investigative reports on officials who are lower than the county level, but you cannot criticise the top leaders," said Zhang Zhian, a journalism professor Guangzhou's Sun Yat-sen University.

Part of the reason for the dichotomy is rooted in the geography of power in China: edicts on what to censor are issued from the central government in Beijing. This means provincial officials have less say over what gets cut from China's boisterous Weibo.

"If a party secretary is criticized, it is hard for them to go all the way to Beijing and say ?please delete everything on Weibo about me'," said Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor at UC Berkeley who founded news website China Digital Times that keeps an updated list of banned words on Weibo.

"If it is just local and does not implicate someone higher up...(the censors) often will let it go. On the other hand, they do make very swift judgments on information they see as challenging the legitimacy of the party," Xiao said.

The censorship, most analysts say, doesn't appear to bother the average Weibo user very much. Industry data has shown that the majority of users on the platform use it for entertainment and not for political or social activism.

"Do I think the Chinese are turned off by the censorship on Weibo? No," said Michael Clendenin, founder of technology consultancy RedTech Advisors. "The average Chinese person is not naive. They know what is happening and choose to participate."

ARE YOU READY FOR SPARTA?

Even though discussion of top political leaders and the taboo Ts - Tiananmen, Taiwan and Tibet - are removed from Weibo, debate about political issues exists in code on the platform, making China's Internet freer than before.

While references to the once-in-a-decade political transition, which begins on November 8, are strictly monitored, Internet surfers trying to elude government censors use code words, like "sparta", which has become shorthand for the upcoming Party Congress. Sparta in Mandarin, "si ba da", sounds like the colloquial reference to the 18th party congress, "shi ba da", which is censored on Weibo.

"My Internet speed is becoming slower and slower, is this because of the approaching 'sparta' or is it the end of the world," said one Weibo user. It is common for Beijing to increase Internet monitoring in the lead-up to marquee political events, experts said, often causing Internet speeds to slow significantly.

The continuous cat-and-mouse game, some Internet industry executives say, is actually vital to the stability and development of China, because it gives the Communist Party real-time feedback on policies and a method to take stock of the public mood.

"Social media cannot be said to be 'tightly controlled'," said one high-level Chinese Internet executive, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the topic. "It is infinitely more open than the Internet, which is infinitely more open than print media. 'Tightly controlled' may be used only if you are comparing against democratic countries."

When a significantly freer Internet in China will come about is anyone's guess, but most industry experts interviewed expect some loosening after the Party Congress.

That loosening, should it come, will be for an overtly political reason, analysts believe: at the outset of its tenure, the new leadership may want to project an image of being more open to political reform, including freer speech, than the old guard.

Weibo users, in turn, are certain to quickly test just how much freedom the new leadership is willing to tolerate.

(Additional reporting by Jiang Xihao and John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI, Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-twitter-weibo-poses-danger-opportunity-leaders-210524873--sector.html

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S.Africa keeps Iran crude imports at zero in Sept

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa suspended all imports of crude oil from Iran for a fourth month in September, data showed on Wednesday, as Pretoria continued to steer away from Iranian shipments because of European insurance sanctions.

In May, imports from Iran stood at 285,524 tonnes, but since June Africa's biggest economy has replaced shipments from Iran with crude from other suppliers, especially Saudi Arabia.

South Africa used to import a quarter of its crude from Iran but has come under Western pressure to cut the shipments as part of sanctions designed to halt Tehran's suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The major supplier in September was Saudi Arabia, with shipments from the Middle East country at 759,643 tonnes. Other crude imports originated in Angola, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates, with shipments totalling 1.76 million tonnes.

Even though the United States granted South Africa an exemption from financial sanctions after cuts in Iranian imports, Pretoria is still facing problems because of European Union sanctions preventing insurance companies from underwriting Iranian shipments.

The EU has not granted any waivers, even though South Africa has been lobbying Brussels because of the impact on its fuel supplies.

Some South African refineries are designed to treat Iranian-type crude only, and refiners and the government have said the country will be hard-pressed to replace those supplies with other products indefinitely.

Any disruption to crude imports could hit fuel supplies in South Africa, which has suffered shortages in the last year because of strikes and refinery problems.

Refiners in South Africa include Shell, BP, Total, Chevron, petrochemicals group Sasol, and Engen, which is majority-owned by Malaysian state oil group Petronas .

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/africa-keeps-iran-crude-imports-zero-sept-120202643--finance.html

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