Clayton Homes CEO Kevin Clayton talks to Duck Dynasty’s Si Robertson about the American dream of home ownership and how his company makes that dream a reality for so many right now.
The company is the largest home builder in America.
Clayton Homes offers manufactured homes, mobile homes, and modular homes.
The company strives to create a great customer experience by giving you hundreds of floor plan options to customize your home.
Clayton Homes also offer affordable name brand amenities you can add to make the home fit your needs. Friendly home centers want to help you find the right home for your lifestyle.
Duck Dynasty family members are bringing their story to life onstage for the first time with TheDuck Commander Musical.
Based on the best-selling book The Duck Commander Family by Willie and Korie Robertson, the show will make its world premiere at the Crown Theatre inside of the Rio All-Suite Las Vegas Hotel and Casino in April 2015.
TheDuck Commander Musical transports the Louisiana bayou to the Las Vegas stage in a captivating 90-minute show – seasoned with all the southern spirit and down-to-earth humor you expect from America’s most famous rednecks, the Robertson family.
While the true-to-life, rags-to-riches story behind A&E’s Duck Dynasty will surely please its most loyal fans, audiences unfamiliar with the Robertsons will also find themselves charmed – and even moved – by this surprising tale of faith, food, and family.
Featuring a contemporary score that blends country, rock, gospel, and pop and a multimedia set delivering backwoods authenticity through cutting-edge technology, The Duck Commander Musical will leave audiences humming the tunes, shedding a tear, and laughing at the hijinx of one family in pursuit of the American dream.
Additional 10PM performances on Thursdays and Saturdays
The show is suitable for ages 5 years old and up.
Camouflage
This driving country-pop song features Korie Robertson teaching her husband Willie a lesson about staying true to himself.
Cookin’ for the Family
Miss Kay Robertson shows the young’uns how it’s done in the kitchen in this rocking country hoe-down.
Faith, Food, and Family
The opening song of the Duck Commander Musical lays it all out for you with a Southern rock heartbeat: these are the three pillars guiding the Robertsons’ everyday lives, and they all start with F !
Like the River Flows
In this sweeping ballad, Willie and Korie Robertson realize they have been destined to be together all along and that their future rests in the hands of a higher power.
Kenyan farmer Charles Mamboleo has revealed that one of his cows has started eating sheep.
The farmer at Elementaita in Gilgil constituency has expressed shock over the unusual behaviour exhibited by his cow that has “eaten” two sheep in a span of three weeks.
According to the Daily Nation website, Charles Mamboleo says he discovered a cow at his farm in south-western Nakuru County feeding on a sheep one morning, having apparently gored it to death.
Fresh food and water couldn’t tempt the cow, and another sheep met its end the following day, the report says.
Charles Mamboleo said: “After the first incident, we thought the cow was starving, so we increased the supply of fodder and water, but it still continued chasing after sheep.”
According to a Kenyan agricultural officer, while cows are herbivores, developing a taste for meat could be a sign of a nutrient deficiency.
“The dry season, which has just ended, has seen most animals lack minerals found in green grass,” Albert Kabugi told the website.
The White House has admitted that two hostages held by al-Qaeda were accidentally killed by a US counterterrorism operation in January.
American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto were killed in the raid in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
President Barack Obama described it as a painful loss he profoundly regretted.
Two other Americans thought to be al-Qaeda members were also killed, one of them in the same raid.
Al-Qaeda leader Ahmed Farouq was killed in that operation and Adam Gadahn, once regarded as a spokesman for the militant group, was killed in a separate raid, the White House said.
Unnamed officials told Associated Press the attack that killed the hostages was a CIA drone strike.
Barack Obama, speaking at the White House about the operation that killed the hostages, said the US had launched the raid in the belief the target was an al-Qaeda compound with no civilians present.
As commander-in-chief, the president said, he took “full responsibility” for the operation.
The White House said compensation would be paid to the families of the hostages.
Warren Weinstein’s wife Elaine said in a statement the family was “devastated”.
“Those who took Warren captive over three years ago bear ultimate responsibility,” she added.
Elaine Weinstein thanked several members of the US congress and unnamed officials from the FBI, but said the assistance received from “other elements of the US government was inconsistent and disappointing”.
She also criticized the Pakistani government and military who, she said, treated her husband’s captivity “as more of an annoyance than a priority”.
Barack Obama said the operation was in compliance with the White House’s counterterrorism protocols.
Warren Weinstein, 73, was abducted in Lahore in 2011, where he was working as an aid worker. Giovanni Lo Porto disappeared from Multan, Pakistan in January 2012. Both men were aid workers.
Michael Brown’s parents are suing Ferguson authorities over their son’s death.
Michael Brown, 18, was shot dead by Ferguson police in August 2014.
The wrongful-death suit seeks a minimum of $75,000 compensation.
The shooting of the unarmed Michael Brown by white police officer Darren Wilson in Missouri became a national cause and sparked protests, some violent.
The shooting was reviewed by a grand jury, which decided in November not to charge Darren Wilson.
However, Michael Brown’s parents say they have new forensic evidence that raises questions about the police version of events.
“The narrative of the law enforcement all across the country for shooting unarmed people of color is the same: That they had no other choice,” attorney Benjamin Crump said.
“But time and time again, the objective evidence contradicts the standard police narrative.”
Along with seeking punitive damages from the City of Ferguson, the suit also calls for a court order prohibiting the use of police techniques “that demean, disregard, or under-serve its African-American population”.
A St Louis County grand jury and the Department of Justice had declined to prosecute Darren Wilson, who resigned in November. Civil cases generally require a lower standard of proof than criminal cases.
This is not the only current civil case involving the police killing of an unarmed black man. In New York, the family of Eric Garner is seeking $75 million in damages.
Facebook posted a slower revenue growth in the first quarter of 2015 with a profit of $512 million, down 20% on a year earlier.
Revenue rose 42% to $3.5 billion, a figure slightly below analysts’ forecasts.
A bright spot was the rise in monthly active users, up 13% from a year earlier to 1.44 billion.
Notably, for those investors concerned about the company’s efforts to appeal to younger users who access Facebook on their smartphones, monthly mobile users increased by 24% to 1.25 billion, a majority of the site’s users.
Facebook has been particularly adept at channeling that growing mobile user base into advertising dollars. The company said that during the quarter, revenue from mobile ad sales made up nearly three-quarters of total ad sales.
Investors have been worried about slowing revenue growth, as well as increasing costs at the company. Facebook has been spending more on research and development as it moves beyond its original social networking operation.
Spending on research and development jumped to $566 million from $181 million a year earlier.
Facebook has warned that those costs are set to increase, as it looks to expand some of its acquisitions including photo-sharing site Instagram, messaging service WhatsApp, and virtual reality company Oculus Rift.
James May has said he will not return to Top Gear without Jeremy Clarkson, who was dropped from the BBC on March 25.
The Top Gear co-host told the Guardian: “Me and Hammond with a surrogate Jeremy is a non-starter. It has to be the three of us.”
James May added that Top Gear without Jeremy Clarkson would be a “tough call” and “a bit of a daft idea”.
Jeremy Clarkson, 55 was removed from Top Gear after fracas with producer Oisin Tymon.
“I don’t think you could carry on with two people and put someone in as the new Jeremy because they are not going to be the new Jeremy,” James May said.
“That would be short-sighted and I don’t think it would work. Virtually impossible.”
James May changed his Twitter account to say “former Top Gear presenter” on March 25, the day it was announced Jeremy Clarkson’s contract with BBC would not be renewed.
His contract, and that of his co-presenter Richard Hammond, expired last month.
It raises the possibility of an entirely new presenting line-up for Top Gear.
Channel controller Kim Shillinglaw has been given the job of finding a replacement for Jeremy Clarkson, with former X Factor host Dermot O’Lear and Jodie Kidd rumored to be in the running.
However, James May has said there “might be an opportunity for three of us to get back together on the BBC to do Top Gear or a car show of some sort”.
“The BBC haven’t completely closed the door on Jeremy’s return,” he told the Guardian.
“They’ve not banned him or fired him, only just not renewed his contract for the moment. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one.”
Earlier this week, Kim Shillinglaw also stressed there was no ban on Jeremy Clarkson returning to the BBC, despite director general Tony Hall’s decision to fire him last month, saying “a line has been crossed”.
Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz has been fined 350 million yuan ($56.5 million) in China for price-fixing as part of a broader clampdown on anti-monopolistic practices.
A pricing regulator in Jiangsu said Mercedes-Benz pressured local dealers into setting a minimum sales price on some of its car models.
Some of the luxury German carmaker’s local dealers were also fined 7.7 million yuan, regulators said.
A Mercedes-Benz spokesperson said the company “accepts the decision and takes its responsibilities under competition law very seriously”.
“We have taken all appropriate steps to ensure to fully comply with the law,” the spokesperson told the Reuters news agency.
In a statement, the Chinese regulator said: “The investigation found Mercedes-Benz and its dealers in Jiangsu came to and carried out monopoly agreements to cap the lowest sales prices of E-Class, S-Class models and certain spare parts.”
In 2014, the Xinhua news agency reported that Mercedes had also been found guilty of manipulating the prices of after-sales services in China.
China is the world’s largest car market and foreign automakers have been under scrutiny for allegedly reaping high profits by overcharging customers.
In 2014, Chinese regulators fined the local units of Volkswagen and Fiat Chrysler a combined $46 million for price-fixing.
They also levied a record fine totaling 1.24 billion yuan on 12 Japanese car parts companies including Sumitomo Electric and Mitsubishi Electric for price-fixing.
Chinese authorities also conducted investigations into foreign business practices in the pharmaceutical, technology and food sectors.
American Airlines Chairman and CEO Doug Parker has decided to give up his cash salary and annual bonuses opting to be paid entirely in shares.
Doug Parker, 53, was paid more than $12 million last year, 40% of which was in cash, according to regulatory filings.
Google chief Larry Page, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Kinder Morgan’s Rich Kinder are also paid solely in shares.
“I believe this is the right way for my compensation to be set – at risk, based entirely on the results achieved, and in the same currency that our shareholders receive,” Doug Parker said in a letter to employees.
Photo Reuters
Under the new deal, 54% of Doug Parker’s payout will tied to performance targets.
Doug Parker has helped transform American Airlines into one of the country’s most successful companies.
Shares of American Airlines have more than doubled in value since the company merged with rival US Airways in 2013.
Both carriers had undergone bankruptcy but their combination has since created the world’s largest airline company based on passenger traffic.
American Airlines also posted a record profit of $2.9 billion in 2014, helped by cheaper fuel prices and reduced competition.
According to international specialists, physical activity has little role in tackling obesity and instead public health messages should squarely focus on unhealthy eating.
In an article in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, three experts said it was time to “bust the myth” about exercise.
They said while exercising was a key part of staving off diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and dementia, its impact on obesity was minimal.
Instead excess sugar and carbohydrates were key.
The experts blamed the food industry for encouraging the belief that exercise could counteract the impact of unhealthy eating.
They even likened their tactics as “chillingly similar” to those of Big Tobacco on smoking and said celebratory endorsements of sugary drinks and the association of junk food and sport must end.
The experts said there was evidence that up to 40% of those within a normal weight range will still harbor harmful metabolic abnormalities typically associated with obesity.
Despite this public health messaging had “unhelpfully” focused on maintaining a healthy weight through calorie counting when it was the source of calories that mattered most – research has shown that diabetes increases 11-fold for every 150 additional sugar calories consumed compared to fat calories.
The experts pointed to evidence from the Lancet global burden of disease program which shows that unhealthy eating was linked to more ill health than physical activity, alcohol and smoking combined.
Chile’s Calbuco volcano has erupted for the first time in 42 years.
The volcano erupted twice in the space of a few hours.
Chile’s Onemi emergency office declared a red alert following the sudden eruption at around 18.00 local time, which occurred about 625 miles south of Santiago, the capital, near the tourist towns of Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt.
Footage from the area shows a huge column of lava and ash being sent several miles into the air.
More than 4,000 people have been evacuated within a 12 mile radius.
The Calbuco volcano is one of the most active in Chile, but its eruption took officials in the area by surprise.
Alejandro Verges, an emergency director for the region, said Calbuco had not been under any special form of observation.
The inhabitants of the nearby town of Ensenada – along with residents from two other smaller communities – have been ordered to evacuate their homes.
Schools in the area have been shut and some flights cancelled.
The nearby city of Puerto Montt – a gateway to the popular Patagonia region – has already been blanketed in a cloud of ash.
TV footage showed traffic jams in the city and long queues at petrol stations. The nearby town of Puerto Varas was also under a state of alert.
Mayor Gervoy Paredes said residents were “very, very frightened”.
Interior Minister Rodrigo Penailillo called on people affected to “remain calm and stay informed”.
Neighboring Argentina has also put emergency measures in place for the city of Bariloche – about 65 miles from Calbuco – where ash clouds are expected.
Residents there have been warned to stay indoors.
Chile has the second largest chain of volcanoes in the world after Indonesia, with about 500 that are potentially active.
A new Ebola drug has cured monkeys infected with the virus, US researchers announced.
Experimental drug TKM-Ebola-Guinea targets the Makona strain of the virus, which caused the current deadly outbreak in West Africa.
All three monkeys receiving the treatment were healthy when the trial ended after 28 days.
Three untreated monkeys died within nine days.
However, scientists cautioned that the drug’s efficacy has not been proven in humans.
Currently there are no treatments or vaccines for Ebola that have been proven to work in humans.
Thomas Geisbert from University of Texas, who was the senior author of the study published in the journal Nature, said: “This is the first study to show post-exposure protection… against the new Makona outbreak strain of Ebola-Zaire virus.”
Results from human trials with TKM-Ebola-Guinea are expected in the second half of this year.
Thomas Geisbert said the drug, produced by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, could be adapted to target any strain of Ebola and could be manufactured in as little as eight weeks.
TKM-Ebola-Guinea works by blocking particular genes, which stops the virus replicating.
The two-month production time compares with the several months needed to make ZMapp – another experimental drug, which cured monkeys with a different strain of Ebola than the one in the current outbreak.
Since March 2014, more than 10,602 people have been reported as having died from the disease in six countries – Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, the US and Mali.
The total number of reported Ebola cases is more than 25,556.
In a special edition of ABC’s 20/20, Amanda Berry recalls the moment she and two other women escaped from Ariel Castro’s Cleveland house after 10 years of imprisonment.
Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight escaped from Ariel Castro’s house of horrors in May 2013.
“When the cops had gotten there, I told them, <<there’s two other girls in the house>> … they put me in a car and then that’s when they ran upstairs to get them, and once I saw that, I’m like, <<This is it. I think we’re free now>>,” Amanda Berry says.
Amanda Berry, 29, and Gina DeJesus, 25, co-authored a book and confirmed to People magazine that they are no longer close with third victim Michelle Knight, who also chose not to appear in the ABC special.
Photo ABC
“I think we all did like each other at one point, then [Ariel Castro] played us against each other so we couldn’t trust people,” Gina DeJesus told People magazine.
Michelle Knight, now 33, who has since changed her name to Lilly Rose Lee, was 21 years old when she was the first to be taken captive in 2002.
Amanda Berry disappeared in 2003, a day before she turned 17. A year later, 14-year-old Gina DeJesus also went missing.
Thus began an unbearable decade of beatings, abuse and imprisonment inside their torture-chamber bedrooms.
ABC’s 20/20 special will air on Tuesday, April 28th, at 10/9c.
In an interview with Howard Stern on Sirius XM, Rumer Willis has opened up about her mother Demi Moore’s marriage to Ashton Kutcher.
Rumer Willis, 26, admits Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore’s May-December romance was awkward given that Kutcher was one of her celeb crushes when she was younger.
“He was one of many on the wall, but I totally did,” Rumer Willis said about hanging Ashton Kutcher’s poster in her bedroom.
“I feel like I told my sister that, <<Man, ugh, alright, gotta cross him off the list>>.”
The Dancing with the Stars contestant said the awkwardness didn’t last very long, and she quickly accepted Ashton Kutcher’s role as stepfather.
“It was definitely weird for a minute but I have to commend him, he was a really great stepfather and the perspective shifted very quickly,” Rumer Willis said.
“That’s when you open up your Teen Beat and then you just take him down, find someone else and put him up.”
Demi Moore, 52, and Ashton Kutcher, 37, were married in September 2005, but separated in 2011 following an Us Weekly report that he cheated on her with a woman named Sara Leal in San Diego.
However, Rumer Willis said she didn’t feel any skepticism about the relationship despite plenty of naysayers given the former couple’s age difference.
Earlier this month, The Longest Ride actor Scott Eastwood dropped a bombshell during his Watch What Happens Live appearance, when he claimed that he was actually dating Sara Leal when she allegedly cheated on him with Ashton Kutcher.
Ashton Kutcher filed for divorce from Demi Moore in December 2012, citing irreconcilable differences. The divorce was finalized on November 2013. He is now married to Mila Kunis and they have a daughter together.
Lindsay Lohan wanted to send an inspirational Arabic message, but she botched the phrase insulting everyone.
On April 21, Lindsay Lohan shared an Instagram picture of a phrase in the foreign language, along with her own translation: “You’re beautiful.”
A number of Arabic speakers said that Lindsay Lohan’s phrase actually translates to: “You’re a donkey.”
Her own Instagram commenters began to point out the mistake.
Dubai-based reporter Jenan Moussa tweeted a picture of Lindsay Lohan’s gaffe and wrote: “Next time @lindsaylohan, let me check b4 u post 🙂 Arabic words don’t mean ‘U are beautiful’ but ‘u are a donkey.’”
Bruce Jenner was shown wearing a striped dress on CNN.
The photos, obtained by the New York Daily News, and broadcast by CNN on April 21, were reportedly taken outside of Bruce Jenner’s Malibu home.
In a panel discussion, anchor Don Lemon asked HuffPost Live host Marc Lamont Hill what Bruce Jenner’s reported transgender revelation means for the transgender community.
Marc Lamont Hill supported Bruce Jenner by using female pronouns she and her, and said it’s exciting for such a major celebrity figure to be transitioning publicly.
Bruce Jenner’s exclusive interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer set for April 24 has been hotly anticipated, with little information known about what the former Olympian will say.
The two-hour exclusive interview airs on Friday, April 24, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.
Baltimore protests have increased day by day since April 21 after last week’s death of Freddie Gray in police custody.
Freddie Gray, 25, died a week after being chased and arrested from a fatal spine injury under unexplained circumstances.
The US Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation.
A thousand people gathered on April 21 at the site of Freddie Gray’s arrest, kicking off seven days of protests against what they believe is excessive police force.
Photo AP
As people raised their hands, Pastor Jamal Bryant, one of the demonstrations organizers, said the gesture was not an act of surrender.
“It’s a sign of strength, of one unity and one commitment that we will not rest until we get justice for Freddie Gray,” he said.
Freddie Gray was arrested on April 12. Officials said that he ran away after he “made eye contact” with officers on patrol.
Officers pursued him and took him into custody minutes later. The officers’ reasoning for detaining Freddie Gray is not clear.
“There is no law against running,” Police Commissioner Anthony Batts told reporters on April 20.
“Running while black is not probable cause,” Billy Murphy, a lawyer hired by Freddie Gray’s family, said.
Mobile phone video shows police pinning Freddie Gray to the ground before a detention van arrives to transport him to a police station.
In the video, officers are seen dragging Gray’s limp body into the van. It is not known whether Freddie Gray’s body was limp because of a deliberate act of defiance or because of a medical condition.
Freddie Gray was in the van for approximately 30 minutes. At one point, police stopped to put Gray into leg shackles after determining he had become irate.
He asked officers for medical care on multiple occasions, Anthony Batts said.
Freddie Gray was eventually rushed to hospital where he lapsed into a coma and died a week later.
A national debate over the use of police force has been going on since August 2014, when black teenager Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri.
A writ of habeas corpus has been issued by a New York court in a case brought by animal rights activists on behalf of two chimpanzees.
The order means the university holding the chimpanzees will have to respond to the activists’ petition in court.
The activists said the court had “implicitly determined” that the two chimpanzees are legal “persons”.
Other experts say the writ may simply be a way for the court to gather more information at a further hearing.
The case concerns two chimpanzees – Hercules and Leo – being held at a research facility at Stony Brook University in New York State.
The Nonhuman Rights Project originally filed a lawsuit on behalf of the chimpanzees in 2013 with a view to having them transferred to a sanctuary in Florida, but in that instance the courts refused to issue a writ.
On April 20, Judge Barbara Jaffe of New York’s state Supreme Court issued the writ, meaning a hearing will now be held on May 6 in which the university’s lawyers will have to explain the legal basis of the chimpanzees’ detention.
Habeas corpus – Latin for “you may have the body”- is a writ which traditionally requires a person detained by the authorities to be brought before a court of law so that the legality of the detention may be examined.
“The judge may merely want more information to make a decision on the legal personhood claim, and may have ordered a hearing simply as a vehicle for hearing out both parties in more depth,” law professor Richard Cupp told Science magazine.
“It would be quite surprising if the judge intended to make a momentous substantive finding that chimpanzees are legal persons if the judge has not yet heard the other side’s arguments,” he added.
David Bookstaver, a spokesman for the New York State Courts, also rejected the activists’ claim that the judge had conferred personhood on the chimps.
The judge had merely signed an order to show “cause”, he said, and the hearing in May would determine next steps.
The Nonhuman Rights Project says the ruling is the first of its kind and can be used as a precedent in future litigation.
The group argues that New York law does not limit legal personhood to human beings.
The state has previously conferred legal personhood status on domestic animals who are the beneficiaries of trusts, the campaign says, as well as extending rights to non-human entities such as corporations.
Michele Marie Leonhart, the Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), will resign following allegations that agents attended parties funded by cartels.
Michele Leonhart’s retirement was announced by Attorney General Eric Holder.
The move follows a justice department report last month alleging that drug agents attended parties with prostitutes, some funded by local drug cartels, in a foreign country.
The DEA said the incidents had happened in Colombia.
Correspondents say Michele Leonhart, who has run the agency since 2007, had been under pressure to resign since testifying to a congressional committee last week.
Following her appearance, a majority of the committee said they had lost confidence in her.
“Michele has led this distinguished agency with honor, and I have been proud to call her my partner in the work of safeguarding our national security and protecting our citizens from crime, exploitation and abuse,” Eric Holder said.
Eric Holder added that Michele Leonhart would leave the agency in mid-May.
According to the justice department report, the sex parties were held at government-leased quarters where the phones and laptops of agents were present.
It said that DEA investigators at the time had not reported the allegations because they “did not believe that the special agents’ conduct rose to the level of a security risk requiring a referral”.
The report said that several agents were also provided with money, expensive gifts and weapons.
One DEA official told investigators: “Prostitution is considered part of the local culture and is tolerated in certain areas called <<tolerance zones>>.”
Seven agents who admitted attending parties were given suspensions ranging from two to 10 days. One was cleared of wrongdoing.
The investigation had been instigated by Congress following reports from 2012 that Secret Service agents had hired prostitutes while protecting the president during a summit in Colombia.
John Hinckley Jr.’s lawyer has told a court his client should be permanently released from his mental health facility.
John Hinckley Jr. shot President Ronald Reagan, who survived, and three others outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington in 1981.
He was found not guilty by reason of insanity but was sent for treatment to a Washington hospital.
Currently, John Hinckley Jr. spends 17 days per month at his mother’s home in the nearby state of Virginia.
John Hinckley’s lawyer, Barry Levine, told a federal court on April 22 that the would-be assassin is “clinically ready” to leave St Elizabeth’s Hospital permanently because he has been in “full and stable remission” for more than two decades.
The lawyer is asking a judge to grant his client “convalescent leave”, which would allow him to live outside the hospital with regular visits to mental health professionals.
Prosecutor Colleen Kennedy disagreed and said more restrictions and conditions are necessary to keep John Hinckley Jr. and others safe.
His mother is 89 years old and lives near Williamsburg, Virginia.
While living with her, John Hinckley is allowed to live a normal life that includes unsupervised shopping and dining out, and occasional contact with the US Secret Service.
Ronald Reagan was just 69 days into his presidency when the attempt was made on his life.
The former president suffered a punctured lung, but survived after being rushed to a nearby hospital.
Three others were wounded, including White House aide James Brady who was shot in the head and suffered brain damage and partial paralysis.
A Secret Service agent and a police officer suffered lesser wounds.
A gun control law passed in 1993 was nicknamed The Brady Bill and the White House press briefing room bears James Brady’s name. He died in August of last year at the age of 73.
Ever since the global financial crisis hit in 2007, the housing market in the UK has been in somewhat of a slump. As most people didn’t have much cash lying around, they chose to stay put in an attempt to make themselves more secure. However, things are looking up in 2015, and so more people are buying and renting new properties now than at any point in the last seven years. Does that mean estate agencies are once again making a mint from the housing market? We did some research in an attempt to find out. Of course, one of the main benefits of a better financial climate is that property prices are climbing steadily. That usually means more people are willing to buy, sell, or rent.
Home Buying
When it comes to helping people find their ideal property, estate agents tend to make a decent commission. As more people are looking to make a purchase this year, business owners in that industry are rubbing their hands together. While they only take a small percentage from the sale of a home, that could be thousands of pounds depending on the price. Some smaller firms simply add their fee onto any sales, but they are also doing pretty well at the current time. One of the country’s leading estate agency groups recently announced their profits for the first quarter of 2015 look set the break all previous records.
When finding out a little more about Hamptons International, we discovered that rental rates were also soaring this year. A lot of people simply cannot afford to purchase a property because their wages are too low. While most high street banks are more enthusiastic about lending money these days, you still have to meet certain criteria for a mortgage. That has helped to boost the rental market considerably since the end of 2014. The average rental price in the UK now stands at just over £500 per month. However, people who want to live in the most desirable areas now have to pay a lot more than that.
Home Selling
It stands to reason that most estate agencies will be making more money from the sale of homes this year. If more people are buying, it will encourage more people to sell. When there are more buyers than sellers in the marketplace, prices tend to rise pretty quickly. That means estate agency firms make an even more substantial commission when the sale finally goes through. If you were looking to start a business in that field in the near future, now is the best time to get on-board. Like it or not, there is no way of knowing how things will progress moving forward into 2016.
To answer the question posed in the title of this post, yes, estate agencies are making high profits from the housing markets this year. While it is impossible to work out how things will change over the coming months, most people in the industry are very positive about the future. So, maybe now is the best time to get involved?
Russian energy giant Gazprom has been charged by the European Commission with abusing its dominant market position in Central and Eastern European gas markets.
The EC said its preliminary view was that Gazprom was breaking EU anti-trust rules.
It added the company may have limited its customers’ ability to resell gas, potentially allowing it to charge unfair prices in some EU member states.
Gazprom rejected the EC’s objections, calling them “unfounded”.
“Gazprom strictly adheres to all the norms of international law and national legislation in the countries where the Gazprom Group conducts business,” the company said in a statement.
The company now has 12 weeks to respond to the Commission’s allegations.
Photo Reuters
The move could further sour relations with Moscow, which are already strained over the Ukraine crisis.
Brussels began investigating Russian state-controlled Gazprom in 2012, but Moscow says the Commission’s allegations are politically motivated.
The EU’s new anti-monopoly chief, Margrethe Vestager, said the Commission had found that Gazprom “may have built artificial barriers preventing gas from flowing from certain Central European countries to others, hindering cross-border competition.
“Keeping national gas markets separate also allowed Gazprom to charge prices that we, at this stage, consider to be unfair.
“If our concerns were confirmed, Gazprom would have to face the legal consequences of its behavior.”
Brussels’ competition authority has the power to impose fines of up to 10% of Gazprom’s global turnover.
The EC questioned the formulae Gazprom used to come up with the different prices at which it sold gas to individual countries.
“Gazprom’s specific price formulae, which link the price of gas to the price of oil products, seem to have largely favored Gazprom over its customers,” it said.
The Commission said that, in its preliminary view, Gazprom was hindering competition in the gas markets in eight Central and Eastern European member states – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia.
Russia supplies about a third of the EU’s gas requirements, with half that amount going through pipelines that cross Ukraine.
