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crohnsdigest · 5 years ago

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7 Ways Meditation Can Help You Stick To Healthy Habits During the Coronavirus Pandemic

1. You’ll Give Your Immune System a Boost

While it��s important to eat well and stay active during stressful times, it’s equally important to keep calm, because stress can literally make you sick. Not having an outlet to release stress can lead to an increase in bodily inflammation, which leaves you vulnerable to disease and common infections. A comprehensive review published in the journal PLoS One in 2014 looked at 34 studies to evaluate the effects of mind-body therapies (MBTs), including meditation, yoga, qi gong and tai chi, on the immune system. The researchers found that MBTs reduced markers of inflammation and influenced virus-specific immune responses to vaccination, which could be key to staying healthy in uncertain times.

2. You’ll Choose Salads Over Sweets

Stress can lead to overeating and eating too much of the wrong (unhealthy) foods. “In the midst of all the anxiety hanging in the air right now, we are becoming emotionally depleted, and that’s where the craving for comfort food comes in,” says Naomi Torres-Mackie, an advanced PhD candidate at Columbia University and an adjunct lecturer in psychology at the City College of New York. “Many of my therapy patients have told me that all of a sudden they feel unable to resist overeating.” Compounding the problem, the American Institute of Stress notes that increased stress increases levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which in turn increases abdominal fat deposits. The good news: Practicing mindfulness — both on your meditation mat and at the kitchen table — may help decrease deep belly fat, according to a study published in Obesity. The study recruited overweight and obese women who felt that stress influenced their eating behavior and weight. Participants were instructed in various mindful meditation and breathing exercises. They were also led through guided meditations that emphasized mindful eating practices, such as paying attention to physical sensations of hunger, stomach fullness, taste satisfaction, and food cravings. The more mindfulness the women practiced, the greater the drop in their anxiety, chronic stress, and deep belly fat. In addition, the women in the mindfulness program maintained their body weight, while the women in the control group increased their weight over the same time period. “Practicing meditation relaxes the sympathetic nervous system so that you become calmer, less impulsive, and more likely to make food decisions you won’t end up regretting,” says Torres-Mackie.

3. Your Outlook and Mood Will Improve

Staying indoors day in and day out can be a challenge, especially if you live with other people. “During times of high stress, conflicts or old resentments often become amplified," says Torres-Mackie. “Engaging in a mindfulness session can help move you into a space where you’re better able to tolerate the situation and react to others with more patience.” You may also find that your mood improves. A study published in the journal Mindfulness in December 2016 looked at the acute effects of mindfulness meditation and hatha yoga, a popular style of yoga that aims to cultivate mind-body awareness and higher states of consciousness, on mood. The researchers found that 25 minutes of hatha yoga and mindfulness meditation significantly improved overall mood.

4. You’ll Be Less Anxious

A small study published in FASEB Journal and presented at the American Physiological Society annual meeting in April 2018 found that a single 60-minute guided meditation session reduced anxiety for up to an hour post-meditation. But if you’re overseeing your kids’ studies or working at a hospital or supermarket during the pandemic, it may be difficult to steal even an hour away from the reality of the day. Leah Lagos, PsyD, a health and performance psychologist and the author of the forthcoming book Heart Breath Mind, encourages her patients to practice a mindfulness technique known as a “heart pivot” to shift from a negative to a positive emotional state no matter where they are. To do this, Dr. Lagos says to first think about a time in your life when you felt incredibly safe and grateful. Perhaps it was the first time you held your newborn or your first day of a dream job, she suggests. Find three such experiences, and practice bringing them to mind on demand. The next time you find yourself spinning post-apocalyptic scenarios in your head or you’re at the grocery store piling rolls of toilet paper into your cart out of fear you’ll run out, pivot your heart, she says. Focus on that past happy experience as you inhale, and then let go of any fear or anger as you exhale. For best results, Lagos suggests repeating this mental exercise five times.

5. Setting Up a Regular Practice Can Help Structure Your Day

As the world deals with the coronavirus pandemic, most countries where the virus is widespread have enacted shelter-in-place policies, and everyone’s normal routine has been thrown off balance. Torres-Mackie says that a lack of structure “can add to feelings of stress and panic in a big way.” To combat this, she suggests setting specific times to meditate once or twice a day. “Scheduling 5 or 10 minutes a day to meditate, and literally putting it on your calendar in order to commit to it, can go a long way.” If you can’t find a quiet place in your crowded home or tiny apartment, Laube suggests taking your meditation outdoors. “Walking meditation, commonly performed on longer retreats, includes walking back and forth between two points, which are a specified distance, such as 10 feet apart,” he says. “This allows you to focus more on the body-mind relationship when moving through space.” There is also the option to walk and meander, letting the body and mind move wherever it prefers. Tied to your desk? Laube recommends standing up while you're on a conference call or while banging out a report. “Standing is useful when you're feeling tired and opens up awareness of the feet, posture, and more body awareness.”

6. It Will Help You Avoid Vices

In an effort to keep calm and carry on, some may turn to alcohol or other vices to blunt emotions or pain. “Many of us are feeling various degrees of fear in the current environment, and it's challenging to sit with this,” says Laube. “Partaking in alcohol initially brings calm. The challenge is that while it may help in the short term, in the longer term, it can lead to addiction and ill health.” In addition, your sleep quality may suffer, since alcohol blocks REM sleep, which is considered the most restorative kind, according to the National Sleep Foundation. Meditation can be an alternative. Research published in November 2017 in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology found that just 11 minutes of mindful meditation may help even heavy drinkers cut back on alcohol. In the study, participants who listened to an 11-minute recording that taught basic mindfulness strategies, like thinking consciously about one’s feelings, drank 9.3 fewer units of alcohol (about three pints of beer) in the following week than they had the week before the study. “Mindfulness can help increase awareness of our behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations, and to recognize the limitations of addictive tendencies,” explains Laube.

7. You’ll Sleep Better

Fears of the unknown — Will I get coronavirus? Will my loved ones get it? Will I lose my job? — can keep you tossing and turning well into the night. And when you lose sleep, you’re more likely to feel emotionally untethered the next day. “Meditation can be useful to connect with our body, and if there is any bodily need for sleep, it commonly will take over,” says Laube, who adds that many of his patients use either guided imagery meditation or body scan meditation before bed to help initiate sleep. If you are older and tend to wake up during the night, a study published in 2015 in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that mindfulness meditation also improves sleep quality and, in turn, quality of life https://crohnsdigest.net/ Read the full article

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walterfrodriguez · 4 years ago

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Record-breaking surge in Covid cases spells trouble for South Florida’s hotel market

From left: The Fontainebleau Miami Beach, Shore Club and Clevelander South Beach

Jeffrey Soffer’s iconic Fontainebleau Miami Beach was among the first of the city’s hotels to reopen on June 1, after the majority were shut down for the entire month of May.

The sponsors of the 1,500-room oceanfront resort — whose hallways have been graced by Elvis Presley, Lucille Ball, and more recently, Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian West — spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the reopening.

Jeffrey Soffer, CEO of Fontainebleau Development

Preparations included the purchase of electrostatic sprayers, thermometers and hand sanitizer dispensers throughout the property, as well as training employees in the latest health and safety protocols. And as it prepared to reopen its doors, the luxury hotel planned to hire 500 employees back in the first couple weeks, adding more as occupancy returned.

“We’re cautiously optimistic that people are making reservations,” Philip Goldfarb, president and CEO of the hospitality division of Soffer’s Fontainebleau Development, said at the time.

But of the more than 2,000 employees who were temporarily laid off due to the pandemic, the Fontainebleau ended up bringing back just 774 by July. About 1,300 workers were recently provided with a separation notice, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification that cited the effects of ongoing restrictions on travel and large gatherings, as well as the hotel’s low occupancy.

At the same time, a $975 million CMBS loan backing the resort is stuck in special servicing, a situation the hotel’s owners say occured because they are seeking modifications to the loan.

The Fontainebleau is not alone.

“No hotel can operate on less than 20 percent occupancy. The numbers don’t work.”

Suzanne Amaducci-Adams, Bilzin Sumberg

After Florida began to lift its stay-at-home orders, positive cases of Covid-19 skyrocketed. As of July 13, following a daily record for the U.S. with 15,300 cases reported in 24 hours, there have been more than 282,000 cases and 4,277 deaths documented in the state.

That, coupled with closures of the beaches and countywide curfews, led to already low occupancy rates taking another hit. Many hotels — banking on being sold out for the 4th of July weekend — ended up with significant cancellations.

The start-and-stop of the market spells trouble for South Florida’s hotels, with distressed sales expected to occur later this year. That’s reflective of an even bigger problem for the state’s business activity and real estate markets. Since the pandemic began, close to 3 million people in Florida have reportedly filed for unemployment, with the accommodation and food services industry seeing the highest number of jobless claims.

Suzanne Amaducci-Adams, Bilzin Sumberg

“Until we have a steady stream of income from travelers, the hotels are not going to be able to function properly and not be able to meet their obligations,” said Suzanne Amaducci-Adams, a partner and head of real estate at Bilzin Sumberg, a major commercial law firm based in Miami.

“No hotel can operate on less than 20 percent occupancy,” she added. “The numbers don’t work.”

Survival tactics

Dozens of hotels are in a similar situation as the Fontainebleau and tens of thousands of hospitality workers have lost their jobs in South Florida alone.

The Trump Organization, for example, laid off nearly 800 employees in March, including many at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort and club in Palm Beach. Alan Lieberman’s South Beach Hotel Group and the Loews Hotel each laid off more than 700 employees.

And with air travel, occupancy and room rates still low, the layoffs will likely last longer than originally anticipated.

Occupancy among South Florida’s hotels that haven’t shut down completely exceeded 30 percent during the week of July 4, according to data from the hotel research firm STR. But while that’s an increase from earlier in the pandemic, it marks a 54 percent annual decline.

The average daily rate was $124, a 24 percent drop from the same week last year, and revenue per available room was $42, down 65 percent year over year, per STR.

A majority of hotels secured loan deferments or concessions that were set to expire by July, and a good chunk of the high season was lost to coronavirus. Like most commercial real estate, any hotel sales that were in the pipeline were either canceled or indefinitely placed on hold.

Before the pandemic, 2020 was supposed to be a banner year for South Florida’s hotels — after the market faced setbacks from the Zika outbreak in 2016 and Hurricane Irma in 2017.

Super Bowl LIV (Getty)

Super Bowl LIV, which Miami hosted in early February, was a boon for local hotels. That weekend, the average daily rate increased almost 150 percent year-over-year, with occupancy rising above 90 percent. Following that, hotels had other events to look forward to: 2020’s Ultra Music Festival in March, the Miami Open in April, and weeks of Spring Break.

“Most hotels were having sort of the best year in five or six years,” said Max Comess, managing director of Hodges Ward Elliott’s Miami office. But all of the big events lined up for the spring were eventually canceled.

Hotel owners and operators typically budget a loss for the slow season, Comess noted, but with the high season cut short, it’s almost impossible to say which hotels will make it through the rest of the year.

“No one knows when the market will really start to bounce back without a vaccine for Covid-19 and a return of consumer confidence in travel,” he added. “Business travel is non-existent, and most Americans are now vacationing in areas they can drive to.”

After being shut down on March 23, Florida’s hotels were allowed to reopen beginning June 1. But many owners are waiting until August or September to start welcoming guests, while others continue to delay their opening dates due to increased restrictions and low demand.

Among those that are still closed are the Standard Spa Miami Beach, the JW Marriott Marquis Miami, Four Seasons Hotel Miami, the Shore Club, the Gale South Beach, and Novotel Miami Brickell, according to their websites.

The Clevelander South Beach (Getty)

The Clevelander South Beach, a popular party hotel on Ocean Drive, voluntarily closed its doors in July. A notice posted on its website said it was closed until further notice “due to public health concerns” caused by Covid-19.

“Some hotel owners are opting to stay closed,” Amaducci-Adams said. “Hotel owners have never really been faced with that horrible decision before.”

A deal drought

Some big deals that were in the works prior to the pandemic are also on ice.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Hotels — an offshoot of the billionaire entrepreneur’s Virgin Group — had prepared a 46-page offering package for the Shore Club in South Beach, a self-described “Art Deco labyrinth of gardens and alcoves” on Collins Avenue.

Richard Branson

The hotel group had been searching for a flagship property in Miami Beach for years, and seemed to have found it in the 309-room Shore Club owned by Ziel Feldman’s HFZ Capital Group.

Then the pandemic hit.

“Once institutional lenders start saying no, they’re all going to start saying no.”

Luis Flores, Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr

Virgin was seeking to acquire and redevelop the Shore Club for roughly $335 million. The proposal, obtained by The Real Deal, included a purchase price of $235 million and upgrades that would cost an additional $100 million.

HFZ acquired the hotel in late 2013, with plans to redevelop the historic property into luxury condominiums, but canceled plans three years ago and returned buyers’ deposits due to the slow condo market.

Virgin was aiming to close on the property in the first quarter of 2020, break ground a year later, and open as early as August 2022. But the deal has been tabled indefinitely, as the market overall remains on hold.

Barry Sternlicht, Starwood Capital Group

What happened with the Shore Club is telling for other significant hotel deals in the works prior to the pandemic, in major cities across the country. Some investors, including Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group, are on the hunt for deeply discounted hotels.

“We have a pretty deep background in hotels, and I’m willing to buy cheap real estate in the hotel space because I believe in the asset class,” Sternlihct told TRD in a May interview. “I think I know what we can do with them.”

But Miguel Pinto, president and broker of Apex Capital Realty, said for investors who need access to bank financing, even buying distressed hotel assets could be a challenge.

“Banks, for the most part, don’t want to touch hotels today,” he said. “It’s a big risk for them to have hotels in their portfolio — especially at high loan-to-value ratios.

“Without the lending from banks, hotel transactions tend to be very difficult,” he added.

“Completely frozen”

Lenders are unsure of when the market will return and how to value properties.

International and business travel are non-existent, domestic travel is limited, and the cruise line industry, which feeds hotels, is still shut down.

As a result, hotels are “not exactly the most attractive lending asset class right now,” said J.C. de Ona, president of Centennial Bank’s Southeast Florida division. “How do you underwrite a hotel not knowing when they’re going to get profitable right now?”

And the timeline for a recovery is to be determined. The weekend of July 4th was expected to be a “turning point,” Ona said, but once the beaches were closed, hotel owners saw cancellations left and right.

“Are they going to get back to normal? Yes, but it could take a couple of years,” he noted. “At what point do banks get comfortable that the environment is getting better? That’s the unknown.”

Centennial isn’t actively looking to lend on any hotel deals in South Florida, though de Ona said the bank wouldn’t rule it out entirely — depending on the borrower.

Boaz Ashbel, Aztec Group

Boaz Ashbel, managing director of the Miami-based debt brokerage Aztec Group, said the lending market is “completely frozen.”

“Most lenders right now are evaluating every single hotel loan they have, trying to determine what kind of risk they have and how to eliminate it,” he said.

Just a small handful of non-traditional lenders will offer “very high-priced loans” that are designed to be more like bridge and short-term loans “to buy enough time to allow a borrower to get over the pandemic,” Ashbel added.

Most loan agreements include a measuring point to ensure hotels are producing enough income to cover the debt service, said attorney Luis Flores of the law firm Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr.

If properties are barely covering their mortgage payments, it could trigger a higher interest rate. Lenders could start to foreclose if the hotel isn’t generating enough money.

“At some point, that breathing room is going to expire and the water is going to boil over,” Flores added. “Once institutional lenders start saying no, they’re all going to start saying no. It will be like a brush fire, it will start to spread very quickly.”

Desperate times

Borrowers with securitized commercial mortgages will likely be the first to default, according to several industry sources.

CMBS loans are typically hardest to renegotiate and hotels dependent on large groups and conventions could take the largest time to recover, Ashbel said.

That could be especially true for Soffer’s Fontainebleau, the largest hotel in Miami-Dade, known for hosting conventions and star-studded concerts.

Typically, about 50 percent of the Fontainebleau’s business comes from group bookings and conventions; leisure travelers take up the other half.

And the hotel’s nearly $1 billion CMBS loan is the largest to go into special servicing in South Florida. Though special servicing is usually triggered by two missed payments, the hotel is on up to speed on its debt service, according to Trepp.

“We’re still working through [loan] modifications,” Brett Mufson, president of Fontainebleau Development, told TRD in July. “We remain in compliance and are not in default.”

The Fontainebleau Miami Beach

There’s a big gap between Fontainebleau’s loan and the next CMBS loan on a South Florida hotel to go into special servicing: the nearly $114 million mortgage backing the Grand Beach Hotel.

The top five CMBS hotel loans in special servicing, per Trepp, are for a variety of properties throughout Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, and no hotel owner is immune, industry sources say.

Real estate investment banking firm Lotus Capital Partners, led by founder and CEO Faisal Ashraf, is working on behalf of lenders on debt restructurings with several hotel owners. That includes reallocating furniture, fixtures, and equipment reserves to make their debt payments and arranging forbearance agreements, Ashraf said.

“Large hotels will be very slow to come out of the gate or be fundamentally changed forever,” Ashraf said. “I think the second round of forbearances is when the claws come out and it could coincide with the lifting of all of these moratoriums.”

Once lender concessions run out, many hotel owners will be forced to spend more of their own capital, sell their debt, or sell their properties.

Most owners aren’t yet desperate, but some “will be forced to make decisions based on their liquidity situation,” said Scott Berman, a principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers, who leads the hospitality and leisure practice for the firm.

“Cash is king and liquidity is essential,” Berman added.

Publicly, many owners have been holding firm, expressing confidence that the market will bounce back in a matter of time. But, behind closed doors, some are also sizing up their options should that take longer than they hope.

“We have knowledge of many hotels [where] the owners want out,” said Pinto of Apex Capital. “You won’t see them hit the market for now, but we are getting calls from the owners to bring them offers. They want out.”

The post Record-breaking surge in Covid cases spells trouble for South Florida’s hotel market appeared first on The Real Deal Miami.

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ladystylestores · 4 years ago

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In Poor Countries, Many COVID-19 Patients Are Desperate for Oxygen

As the coronavirus pandemic hits more impoverished countries with fragile health care systems, global health authorities are scrambling for supplies of a simple treatment that saves lives: oxygen.

Many patients severely ill with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, require help with breathing at some point. But now the epidemic is spreading rapidly in South Asia, Latin America and parts of Africa, regions where many hospitals are poorly equipped and lack the ventilators, tanks and other equipment necessary to save patients whose lungs are failing.

The World Health Organization is hoping to raise $250 million to increase oxygen delivery to those regions. The World Bank and the African Union are contributing to the effort, and some medical charities are seeking donations for the cause.

By a stroke of luck, the WHO, UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2017 began searching for ways to increase oxygen delivery in poor and middle-income countries — not in anticipation of a pandemic but because oxygen can save the lives of premature infants and children with pneumonia.

The organizations began ordering equipment in January, but within weeks suppliers were swamped by the sudden surge in demand created by the pandemic.

Although the machinery needed to generate oxygen is relatively simple, it must be sturdy enough to withstand the dust, humidity and other hazards common in rural hospitals in poor countries. Some companies produce relatively rugged equipment, but prices are rising and restrictions on international flights are complicating deliveries.

The machines cannot come too soon, doctors working in the field said.

In May, the Alliance for International Medical Action, or ALIMA, treated 123 COVID-19 patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said Dr. Baweye Mayoum Barka, the charity’s representative in Kinshasa, the country’s capital. Fifty-six of them needed oxygen, but not enough equipment was available.

Story continues

“So, unfortunately, there were 26 deaths, 70% of them in less than 24 hours,” Barka said. “I can’t say they were all from a lack of oxygen, but it played a role.”

ALIMA needs 40 oxygen concentrators, which filter oxygen from the air, but the agency has just eight, he said. Because it is hard to move patients from one hospital to another, some die waiting, gasping for air.

In Congo, many COVID-19 patients arrive at hospitals with critically low blood oxygen levels — sometimes as low as 60%, a level at which patients must normally be put on a ventilator to survive. (Normal oxygen saturation levels are 95% or more.)

One such patient was a doctor who had for a while refused to go to the hospital and instead stayed home, taking chloroquine, which is still in Congo’s national treatment guidelines.

“Then, when his condition deteriorated and he did come, just as he was nearing the COVID building, he developed convulsions,” Barka recalled. “They stopped to give him a drug for them, and he died just at the gate.”

Nigeria is also grappling with an oxygen shortage, said Dr. Sanjana Bhardwaj, UNICEF’s chief of health there. Since May, hospitals in Lagos and Kano have seen a steady stream of older patients with COVID-19 symptoms who need oxygen.

In nearly every country the virus has hit, rich or poor, about 15% of all symptomatic patients develop pneumonia severe enough to require extra oxygen, the WHO estimates, but not so dire that they must be put on a ventilator.

Ventilators are rare in poor countries. They can cost up to $50,000, and patients must be heavily sedated the whole time the breathing tube is lodged deep in their airways. Also, the pressure must be constantly monitored to prevent lung damage. That requires anesthesiologists and trained respiratory technicians, positions that many hospitals lack.

Oxygen can be delivered in two ways. Tanks contain nearly pure oxygen. For patients who need large volumes and help keeping the air sacs in their lungs open, tanks can deliver oxygen at high pressure through a mask strapped tightly over the nose and mouth.

But tanks are heavy, must be refilled at central stations and delivered by truck, and pose some risk of explosion and fire. While many poor countries have plants making industrial-grade oxygen for construction jobs like welding, it cannot be used on patients because the tanks often contain rust or oily water that could lodge in the lungs, said Paul Molinaro, chief of operations support and logistics at the WHO.

An alternative is an oxygen concentrator, which is usually the size of a suitcase or even a briefcase. Concentrators pull oxygen out of ambient air by forcing it under pressure through a “molecular sieve” filled with the mineral zeolite, which adsorbs nitrogen.

Most concentrators cost only $1,000 to $2,000. They need electricity but can run on a generator or batteries, using about as much power as a small refrigerator.

Typically concentrators can produce about 90% pure oxygen. They do not deliver it under pressure, but the thin tube through which the oxygen streams can be connected to a continuous positive airway pressure machine, or CPAP, to enrich the air it blows into the lungs.

ALIMA has started a campaign, “Oxygen for Africa,” to raise money to send about 500 concentrators to six poor countries, Jennifer Lazuta, a spokesperson, said.

UNICEF has ordered about 16,000 concentrators for about 90 countries, but thus far has been able to deliver only about 700, said Jonathan Howard-Brand, an innovation specialist at UNICEF’s procurement center in Copenhagen.

The WHO has ordered another 14,000, of which 2,000 have been delivered and 2,000 are in transit, Molinaro said.

He and Howard-Brand described severe delivery problems created by the epidemic, including delays of up to five weeks. When possible, the aid agencies ship through the World Food Program, which has dozens of planes. But the concentrators must compete for space with shipments of food, personal protective gear and other lifesaving goods.

Also, some countries are far from cargo hub cities, while others restrict all flights, even those containing aid, for fear of the virus being introduced.

“We need more planes in the air,” Howard-Brand said.

UNICEF is also buying tens of thousands of pulse oximeters, fingertip devices to measure blood-oxygen saturation.

In deciding how much equipment to buy, the aid agencies are, to some extent, flying blind. As New York state learned when it was desperately collecting ventilators in March, how great the need will be is unpredictable.

Younger COVID-19 patients and those without other health problems often survive without supplemental oxygen. Populations in Africa skew younger, because vaccination and anti-malaria campaigns over the past two decades have saved many children who otherwise would have died. Wide swaths of older Africans died of AIDS before HIV therapy became widely available in the mid-2000s.

(It is still unclear whether being on HIV treatment increases risks of death from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But UNAIDS, the U.N. program fighting the disease, worries that lockdowns and border closings will disrupt supplies of HIV medicines, which would undoubtedly put HIV patients at high risk.)

The agencies seek advice from other aid personnel in each country to estimate how much equipment is needed, Molinaro said. If he had more money and time, he added, he would concentrate on ways to increase supplies of tanked oxygen, which is dangerous to ship and so must be produced on site.

In recent years, some public-private partnerships have sprung up to do that. In East Africa, for example, an aid organization, Assist International, set out several years ago to break local corporate monopolies producing medical oxygen that many public hospitals in Africa could not afford.

With equipment supplied by the GE Foundation and money from Grand Challenges Canada and other donors, Assist now has a network of oxygen-making plants in Rwanda, Kenya and Ethiopia.

The U.N.’s oxygen-concentrator procurement effort, begun in April, was a natural extension of the U.N.’s Oxygen Therapy Project, which began in 2017 with Gates Foundation support in an effort to save babies and children.

By January, the project had found four manufacturers — two in China and two in the United States — whose machines could stand up to harsh conditions and which could add voltage stabilizers to prevent damage from power spikes, which are common in the electrical systems of poor countries and anywhere that relies on generators for power.

The agencies were just beginning to place orders when the pandemic began.

“Our timing was immaculate,” said Howard-Brand, who helped write the specifications for the new machines. “Now maybe the market will open up.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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southafricajobsnow · 7 years ago

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Job Vacancy at Ellis Suites Limited for Front Officers in Lagos

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christaindaily · 7 years ago

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A Nigerian man with three lovely kids has shared his testimony after he was told by a doctor that his wife won’t be able to conceive a child. The thankful man identified Ifeanyi Okeke, revealed that rather than worry over his wife’s medical condition, he believed in God that something positive will eventually happen and it did. Read his story below; BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRAY FOR BECAUSE GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS – What was my Prayer Point: God please takeaway these wealth and give me children, even a child give me whether male or female. Dated March 2008. In March 2008 I had been married to my wife (my Blessing) for eight years without a child. Eight years is not eight days or eight weeks or eight months. I mean eight years, enough to graduate and bag a PhD and be called a Professor. I was blessed with a flourishing banking career. About the most popular banker in town already an Assistant General Manager (in-waiting). Nothing was more frustrating to me as going home to my wife with the news of a new promotion, a new car for her or a new house I intend building because of the response which will give me: what is all these worth without a child together. It was in this frustration that I went into my room on that fateful day but equally blessed day, went Unclad, knelt down, raised my hands up to heaven and made the radical prayer request. To put things in perspective, in October 1999 we were both serving (NYSC) (having been dating since 1997) when I proposed to her. March 2000 just one month out of NYSC we got married (paid her bride price). Yes we got married, TW and Church wedding were ceremonies that followed later. I got a job April 2000. On June 26, 2000 we got into a night bus together at Ido park, Lagos on a journey to Kano as I had completed three months training and was posted to Kano Main branch of the elsewhere Universal Trust Bank (UTB) as a Credit and Marketing Staff. We arrived Kano early morning June 27 2000 and moved into a one room she lived in as a CORPER which shared toilet, bathroom and kitchen with with another CORPER (Helen MO, tagged) It was about October in 2004 that a renowned Consultant Gynecologist and Head of Gynecology & Obstetrician Department of Teaching Hospital in Nigeria after a laparoscopy procedure on my wife, had given his verdict to myself and wife that she will not be able to carry a child. In his opinion, even if she is able to conceive either naturally or assisted, her WOMB could not carry a baby. He further advised that I discuss with my wife to marry another lady if I want to have kids. Story for another day back to my answered prayer. Yes God granted the two petitions I made in March 2008 but the second one came first “give me even a child”. In January 2009 our first child, Angel oluebubechukwu (Miracle work of God) was conceived and was successfully carried to term and delivered September 2009. About the time of her delivery God was already in motion to grant the first “takeaway all my wealth” as the stock market crashed with all I had worked for. At this point I was a Deputy General Manager in a top bank. One year after different circumstance had led me to leave my job. Well I got another the next month at the same level in another top bank. Four months after God decided it will not only be a child but children so my wife conceived again, this time twins, CHIMZARAMEKPERE (My God has answered my prayer) and CHIMDERA (Once my God has written or ordained) carried to term and delivered November 2011. Two months before their delivery God completely answered the first prayer as in a circumstance beyond my control but by mutual consent I left my top banking job. What would you say: YES GOD granted my prayers offered to him kneeling down Unclad with my hands raised to heaven. A month after their delivery I couldn’t afford to buy pampers. Three/Four months later I couldn’t afford to take them to church for dedication. One year after I couldn’t buy even a cake to mark their birthday. What did I do: I ran back to God Unclad, knelt down with hands raised up to heaven. I pleaded with God and said: Yes I told you to take away my wealth and give me children or even a child but I didn’t ask you to takeaway so much that I cannot afford to feed them. God said: my child I granted your request exactly as you asked. This was in 2012. Well I believe God has a reason for everything under the sun. We went through struggles through for two years. By late 2014 through the special intervention of the Mother of Perpetual Help (Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God) God looked back with a smile and started the restoration process. It’s been three years of God’s divine restoration project in our lives. Yesterday when I took these shots of my kids the entire memory came back so I decided to share with you. These kids I will not exchange for all the wealth in the whole world. Friends, please bless God with my family. But beware what you ask from God because he answers prayers. When you are down and out inside the gutter, run to the Mother of Perpetual Help (The Blessed Virgin Mary) to intercede for you. She NEVER fails to get result from her son who NEVER says no to her Mother

http://christaindaily.blogspot.com/2017/07/doctors-told-my-wife-she-cant-conceive.html

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juditmiltz · 7 years ago

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This was supposed to be Don Jr.’s time as a real estate macher. Then came the emails

Donald Trump Jr. (Background image credit: Getty Images)

From TRD New York: “If it’s what you say I love it”

That’s what Donald Trump, Jr. told a quirky British publicist who promised him Russian-stamped dirt on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.

A series of reports by the New York Times this week, amplified by Don Jr.’s shifting responses to them, thrust the president’s oldest son and Trump Organization executive vice-president into the national spotlight. But in New York’s real estate industry, where Don Jr. spent years trying to emerge from under his father’s immense shadow, he is still not a well-known figure.

President Trump’s election victory and his decision to pass the family company’s management onto his sons finally seemed to offer Don Jr. a chance to become more than his father’s son. He announced plans for the company’s national expansion, and even entertained the idea of running for governor. Then, the email scandal broke. Now some observers fret he is in over his head.

“I do think he was bitten by the political bug, and I think this whole presidential election went to his head and I think it changed him,” said Louise Sunshine, the former Trump Organization executive and new development marketer who has known Don Jr. since he was a child. “It changes a lot of people.” As for how Don Jr. should be working to limit the fallout from the emails, Sunshine said he’s in desperate need of people from outside the family to guide him.

“You have to have very good advisors,” she said. “And who are his advisors? No one.”

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization did not return a request for comment. Trump, as part of a brief statement addressing the emails, said: “Don is — as many of you know Don — he’s a good boy.”

“None of us know his children.”

Many close to the Trump Organization, like its longtime real estate attorney Jay Neveloff, speak positively of Don Jr., calling him a smart and effective dealmaker, who, although more low-key than his gregarious father, is still sincere and engaging.

“He’s such a good guy and he knows how to make a deal,” Neveloff said. “My heart’s breaking for him in this situation and I think I could take the same facts and spin them differently and it would be a non-story… I’ve had more meetings with Russians claiming something than I should have had,” he quipped, citing numerous sit-downs with Russian attorneys and investors promoting deals that ultimately went nowhere.

Gil Dezer, himself the son of a real estate magnate and a partner of the Trumps on six developments in South Florida, called Don Jr. “a guy’s guy” who is “extremely intelligent and very quick, very quick.”

“The entire Trump family works 28 hours a day, they manage everything, it’s amazing how they do it,” Dezer said. “You go out with these people and you almost feel like you don’t work [compared to them].”

But exit Trumpland, and New York and Florida real estate executives have little to say about the man.

“I honestly never heard anything about his business dealings,” said Stephen Kliegerman, the president of Halstead Property Development Marketing.

In New York City, being the oldest son in a well-known real estate dynasty usually confers upon you princeling status. Jared Kushner, the 36-year-old son of developer Charlie Kushner, took over the family business when his father went to prison in 2005 and quickly gained considerable clout. Jerry Speyer’s son Rob now runs Tishman Speyer and became chair of the powerful Real Estate Board of New York in 2013. It was a borderline scandal when the late developer Seymour Durst skipped over his eldest son Robert to name Douglas the heir to the throne.

Some observers argue that the main reason Don Jr. doesn’t have Jared-esque standing is that his father won’t let him.

“When you have such an overbearing father, what do you expect?” said Michael Stoler, a Madison Realty Capital executive who hosts the long-running, industry-focused TV show The Stoler Report.

“There’s a clear hierarchy in the firm, and the father sits on top of it,” said Roy Stillman, a developer who partnered with Trump on a Fort Lauderdale hotel project in the mid-2000s that ended in a legal battle between the two sides.

But Trump’s long shadow can’t explain why Don Jr.’s siblings, Eric and Ivanka Trump, appear to have left a greater impression.

“Everybody knows Eric, not that many people know Donald Jr.,” said George Arzt, a Democratic consultant who has represented the likes of Gary Barnett and the Milstein family. “I always found Ivanka and Eric more approachable than their brother,” added Kliegerman.

Joseph Cayre, the founder of Midtown Equities who spent election night celebrating with Trump and other close associates at New York’s Hilton hotel, said he had never met Don Jr. When asked if any of his friends and colleagues in the business knew Don Jr., he replied: “None of us know his [Trump’s] children. We know him and his son-in-law.”

“I don’t know Donald Trump, Jr.,” said Jeff Greene, the real estate investor, former Palm Beach neighbor of Trump and frequent visitor to the president’s Mar-A-Lago resort. Greene, echoing the sentiments of several others who spoke to The Real Deal, said that Ivanka was always the more sociable of the clan. “I don’t see them” Greene said of the sons. “They’re kind of invisible. I never read about [Don Jr.] and I never hear about him doing anything…Donald Trump [Sr.], he makes an effort with the high profile people at Mar-a-Lago, like with me, maybe because I’m his former neighbor and a billionaire… The sons, if I were one of the sons, I would have been doing a lot of that.”

“In 30 years working in this business, I’ve never seen him at any major real estate events” said Roxanne Donovan, a real estate publicist who counts Savanna and HFZ Capital Group among her clients. RXR Realty’s Scott Rechler said likewise: “I never ran into him and don’t think he has been active in the New York real estate industry scene,” he said.

Others said they had only ever encountered Don Jr. at the annual holiday parties of a popular freelance real estate reporter who was close to many industry bigwigs. Attendees of those parties said Don Jr. developed a close friendship with the reporter, Lauren Price, who died of cancer. He is said to have never missed a get-together at Price’s one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side.

For years now, the Trump Organization hasn’t been a traditional Manhattan real estate developer. It mostly relies on licensing deals instead of equity ownership, with a focus outside of New York City. The company is, however, aggressively positioning for a national expansion, and has already almost fully transitioned to a hotel-focused model around the U.S. and abroad. In September, it announced the launch of a new boutique hotel brand, Scion, although licensing deals have been slow to get off the ground. Its first reported licensing partner, a developer in Dallas, decided to drop project plans in April.

New York is still on the company agenda, though, at least according to Eric Trump. In an interview with TRD last year, Eric said “there’s no question we’ll do something in Manhattan again.”

Crisis management 101

On June 5, Don Jr. announced the Trump Organization’s latest hospitality brand, dubbed American Idea. “Eric and I got a great crash course in America over the last two years,” he said. “We saw so many places and so many towns and heard so many stories that were so touching. People that were so excited about the prospect of this country and Americana in general.”

But now, steeped in scandal for what critics are calling collusion with a hostile government, could Don Jr. remain the flag-bearer for American Idea? It’s a legitimate question for observers of the firm, who wonder whether the scandal could make it harder for him to do his job.

“This would be a very poor time for Don Jr. to be speaking out about something else” other than the email scandal, Stillman said, “because there is nothing else. They’ve been trying to change the narrative but it’s like gum under their shoe.”

Lanny Davis, an attorney and crisis-management specialist who represented President Bill Clinton during his late-1990s impeachment trial, said Don Jr. had so far broken every rule in the book in his attempts to mitigate the potentially damaging revelations of the Russia story.

“He hasn’t missed one opportunity to make a mistake,” Davis said. “He even screwed up when he did the right thing, by putting out the email chain, but he wasn’t honest about why he was doing it. And he allowed his father to be dishonest by saying he was being transparent.”

“I don’t think he is managing the crisis, he never has been,” said Eric Dezenhall, who worked in President Ronald Reagan’s White House and has captained crisis situations for companies like ExxonMobil. Still, he’s not sure if Don Jr.’s gaffe will hurt the business.

“If the Trump business were in software or if they were a big accounting firm this would be a whole other conversation, but they’re land peddlers, so I’m not sure if an investor in Malaysia really gives a damn about any of this stuff,” he added.

Others said balancing the unwanted public attention with work responsibilities was doable, but would require a great deal of outside help and focus.

“Being in the middle of an investigation has clearly got to be a distraction,” Neveloff said. “But you can still run a business.”

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/2017/07/14/this-was-supposed-to-be-don-jr-s-time-as-a-real-estate-macher-then-came-the-emails/#new_tab via IFTTT

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omcik-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on OmCik

New Post has been published on http://omcik.com/cheap-seasonal-labor-shortage-hitting-hospitality-landscaping-others/

Cheap seasonal labor shortage hitting hospitality landscaping others

Innkeepers, restaurateurs and landscapers around the U.S. say they are struggling to find seasonal help and turning down business in some cases because the government tightened up on visas for temporary foreign workers.

“There’s going to be a lot of businesses that just can’t function on a full-time basis, and some might not even open at all,” said Mac Hay, who co-owns Mac’s Seafood on Cape Cod and has organized seasonal businesses to lobby Congress.

At issue are H-2B temporary visas, which are issued for workers holding down seasonal, nonagricultural jobs.

The U.S. caps the number at 66,000 per fiscal year. Some workers return year after year, and Congress has let them do so in the past without being counted toward the limit. No such exception was passed for 2017 at the end of last year, after the presidential election.

Lawmakers on Monday unveiled a government spending bill that would allow the homeland security secretary to increase the number of H-2B visas this fiscal year to almost 130,000.

But there is concern that even if the measure passes, it will take weeks for visas to be processed, meaning many workers probably won’t arrive in time for Memorial Day and maybe not until after the Fourth of July.

Many resorts rely heavily on foreigners on H-2B visas to work as housekeepers, cooks, dishwashers and the like, saying they cannot find enough Americans willing to take such jobs. President Donald Trump himself has hired seasonal workers at his Mar-a-Lago resort in this way.

Each visa typically costs at least $1,000 in government fees, travel and other expenses, paid by employers.

At the Beachmere Inn in Ogunquit, Maine, owner Sarah Mace Diment said she cut back on the number of rooms available during New England’s spring vacation week in April because she is short eight housekeepers, who are paid $10 to $12.50 an hour. None of her visa requests were granted, she said.

Critics say that bringing in cheap foreign labor undercuts U.S. workers and drives down wages and that employers aren’t trying hard enough to hire Americans. Under the H-2B rules, employers must advertise for U.S. workers first.

Diment said she hires housekeepers from Jamaica because there aren’t enough people in rural, southern Maine looking for seasonal work. Maine is at its lowest unemployment on record, 3 percent. She has hired U.S. college students, but they go back to school in August, well before the season ends in October.

“I’m always going to hire an American first. I’m always going to hire someone locally first,” Diment said. “We’re not using this program because it’s easy. It’s not. It’s very difficult and expensive, but we’re using it because we have no other options.”

Landscapers are the biggest users of the H-2B program. Stephen Faulkner, who owns a landscaping and nursery business in Hooksett, New Hampshire, said he expects to turn away hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of work this season because he could not get visas for any of the six Mexican landscapers who have been with him for a decade.

He said he is considering giving up the landscape division.

“My company is being devastated by not having my returning workers,” he said. “I’m running out of energy and fortitude, and American jobs might be lost because of it.”

The AFL-CIO says the H-2B program enables discrimination and exploitation of workers and hurts efforts to raise wages and improve working conditions. And U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders has questioned whether willing Americans truly are unavailable for these jobs.

“We supposedly live in a supply-and-demand economy, and if employers can’t find workers to fill their jobs, they might want to raise wages,” the Vermont independent recently told The Burlington Free Press.

Joseph Lieghio and his family operate hotels and restaurants in Mackinaw City, Michigan. Lieghio said he doubts he could attract Americans even if he doubled the $10-to-$11-an-hour wage for dishwashers, short-order cooks and front desk staff.

“If they breathe and walk in the door, we give them a job,” he said. “There’s no one here.”

He said about 130 of his visa requests were granted and 80 were not. He is cutting hours at his restaurants, raising prices and postponing the opening of a new restaurant, he said.

Novelette Barnes-Chin began leaving Jamaica for seasonal work in the U.S. at 32. Now 50, she said she is praying she will be able to work at the Beachmere Inn for at least part of the season.

“In Jamaica we would say that’s our breadbasket. That’s what we look forward to every year, to go work, save and buy our food, buy our clothes and supplies,” she said. “I feel really, really heartbroken right now, really sad.”

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thetens-blog1 · 8 years ago

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Recent Vacancies at Pact Nigeria,April 2017

Recent Vacancies at Pact Nigeria,April 2017 Pact is an international non-governmental organization with headquarters in Washington DC, USA. Pact has been in Nigeria since 2005, and currently implements donor funded development projects across the country in the area of Health, integrating livelihoods, capacity development, and governance systems. Pact is seeking highly experienced and qualified…

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felixfunny1977-blog · 8 years ago

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Nanet Hotels Limited Laundry Attendants Job - Lagos April 2017

Nanet Hotels Limited Laundry Attendants Job – Lagos April 2017

Laundry Attendants at Nanet Hotels Limited – Lagos April 2017 Career Employment at Nanet Hotels Limited – Lagos 2017 Job Description : Laundry Attendants Vacancy in Nigeria April 2017 Nanet Hotels Limited is an indigenous hospitality company with branches nationwide in Nigeria with a good reward management systems, requires the services of energetic vibrant and result oriented personnel,…

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crohnsdigest · 5 years ago

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7 Ways Meditation Can Help You Stick To Healthy Habits During the Coronavirus Pandemic

1. You’ll Give Your Immune System a Boost

While it’s important to eat well and stay active during stressful times, it’s equally important to keep calm, because stress can literally make you sick. Not having an outlet to release stress can lead to an increase in bodily inflammation, which leaves you vulnerable to disease and common infections. A comprehensive review published in the journal PLoS One in 2014 looked at 34 studies to evaluate the effects of mind-body therapies (MBTs), including meditation, yoga, qi gong and tai chi, on the immune system. The researchers found that MBTs reduced markers of inflammation and influenced virus-specific immune responses to vaccination, which could be key to staying healthy in uncertain times.

2. You’ll Choose Salads Over Sweets

3. Your Outlook and Mood Will Improve

4. You’ll Be Less Anxious

5. Setting Up a Regular Practice Can Help Structure Your Day

6. It Will Help You Avoid Vices

7. You’ll Sleep Better

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