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Everything You Need to Know About Embroidered Drapery Fabric

Drapery refers to loose decorative clothing such as curtains. It has been an important aspect of home decor since ages. Dating back to the Victorian era, drapery has been designed with serious thought and preserved with due reverence. Interestingly, the functions of drapery and upholstery are interchangeable. The former can be used to for covering sofas or making chair cushions to match the decor. Let's see how drapery evolved and how it can be used to make your space reflect your tastes!

History of Drapery Fabric Fabric weaving has been the basis of all kinds of drapery around the world. Be it Egyptian cotton or the Chinese silk, embroidered drapery owes its existence to development and trade of fabrics across the globe. For instance, silk, the ancient Chinese fabric has an interesting story. Imperial silk, reserved only for the royals of China became popular for its texture and strength. The development of the Silk Road gave an impetus to the trade of silk between Asia, Africa and Europe. Since then, silk has been extensively used in the form of drapery, as well. The evolution of draping styles have also changed over a period of time. Some styles gone extinct, while same made comebacks. For instance, the Victorian times saw multi-layered drapes to create a royal effect. With times though, the frilly drapes become more plain and simple. The silk curtains in South East Asia and cotton ones in warmer parts of the world also adapted to changing styles in the past decades. Despite the changes in fashion, the fact remains that the embroidered fabric for both, curtains and furniture remains in vogue. Embroidered Fabric For Curtains Embroidered drapery is the simple way adding ornamentation to your home. The exquisite embroidery brings your imagination to life. With a variety of materials, choosing the perfect fabric is extremely easy. The handmade embroidery gives the decor a personal touch. These materials may be expensive, but they surely are worth it. The market of drapery fabrics offer you a wide range of colors, styles, designs and patterns to match your needs. Embroidered Upholstery Upholstery defines your home. The fabric used for curtains is called as drapery, whereas the fabric used for covering sofas and chairs is called as upholstery. You can use drapery fabrics as your upholstery too. Make it colorful, interesting, boring or vibrant, it's your choice! But implementing that choice needs matching upholstery. Cotton, silk or synthetic embroidered upholstery is available in every material. Bohemian, Indian and Persian upholstery is one of its kind and a must have it you are a true connoisseur of handicrafts.

Sheer Drapery Fabric Sheer drapery has replaced the lace curtains, which would Extra resources allow a wee bit of sun to come in. The translucent fabric allows a little bit of sun, keeping the area at just about the temperature you'd want. Sheer fabrics as drapery look delicate but are equally strong. Floral patterns are famous on these sheer fabric, but abstract designs are picking up too! Embroidered Textile For Clothing Your dressing sense speaks volumes about you. Embroidery looks rich if it is delicately done. The intricate patterns made out of embroidery show the time and effort put into making it. Embroidery is a characteristic of Indian clothing. Especially the kurtas and the sarees have been the icons of embroidered textile fabric in India. Do not confuse embroidered drapery material with just upholstery. Upholstery is what curtains, sofa covers, table mats and dining sheets are made of. On the other hand, drapery is what makes the upholstery. Embroidered drapes are expensive as they traditionally are handmade. Today, even machine-made drapery is available, the hand crafted one is still the most sought after. Preserving your embroidered drapery requires high-maintenance and utmost care. Upholstery cleaning is one thing but handling the precious drapes with care will go a long way in cherishing them!

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What Does a Common Core/Danielson Lesson Plan Look Like?

This summer I have led about a dozen Common Core workshops for social studies teachers in the New York metropolitan area. At these workshops, teachers consistently ask the same three questions. 1. Is Common Core required? 2. Are teachers being evaluated based on Common Core? 3. What does a Common Core/Danielson lesson plan look like? The answers to these questions are both simple and complicated. In states that have adopted the national Common Core Standards teaching to the standards is required, it is just not clear what that means. The standards enumerate skill goals, but not curriculum, not specific lesson plans, and not approaches to teaching. They also do not specify how student achievement and teacher performance will be evaluated. Under Race to the Top, the federal program that provides states with grant money to persuade them to adopt the Common Core standards, state education departments are moving to implement Common Core by developing, either individually or along with governmental and corporate partners, high-stakes tests for students and standardized teacher evaluations. In a very real sense, teaching to the Common Core standards will not be required until these tests are developed and in place, but eventually it will be. One of the largest test-development groups is the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). It describes itself as a consortium of 20 states (the number varies as state education departments enter or leave the group) that will develop kindergarten through 12th grade assessments in English and mathematics. PARCC received a $186 million grant from Race to the Top to create high-stakes standardized tests that are supposed to be ready during the 2014-15 school year. It is not clear how states and school districts will evaluate students in other content areas. And although student scores on these tests will be part of a package used to assess teacher performance, it will be up to individual states or school districts to decide how much weight the exams receive in evaluations. The PARCC website claims its assessments will be "tightly aligned to the Common Core State Standards" and that "These are shifts the Standards require of teachers and students." On the ELA tests, the standards and the tests "require regular practice with complex text and its academic language"; "emphasize reading and writing grounded in evidence from text"; and understanding "content rich non-fiction." The math standards and tests will promote "focus," "coherence," and rigor" as students develop "conceptual understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and application." PARCC estimates that it will cost $29.50 per student per year for computer-based administration of the assessment. For New York City with approximately 1.1 million students, 75% of whom will be tested, the reading and writing tests alone will cost $25 million, but the cost of providing computers with online access and will be astronomical. Los Angeles, the 2nd largest school district in the United States signed a $30 million contract with Apple to buy iPads for every student in 47 schools so they can complete Common Core tests. Eventually the district will pay Apple hundreds of millions of dollars for iPads for its 655,000 students. The district is paying $678 per device, which is more than the iPads cost if purchased individually through Apple stores. The iPads will be pre-loaded with educational software, but the sale price does not include a keyboard, which will be necessary when students have to write essays. Nationally, there are almost 100 million school children in the United States. If 75 million children are tested yearly at $30 each, the bill will be $2.25 billion a year, not counting the cost of the hardware and software. No wonder the technology and education service companies are counting their profits. Well hidden on the PARCC website are the corporate partners who are already profiting from the PARC assessments. Education First and Achieve are both involved in workshops providing that will help states gauge "the strength of their implementation plans and to illustrate how to improve them." Achieve and the Education Delivery Institute (EDI) also produced a PARCC workbook. According to its website, Education First is in the business of selling school districts Strategic-Planning and Counsel; Research and Public Policy Analysis; Communications and Advocacy; and Grantmaking Effectiveness. Jennifer Vranek, its founding partner, previously was an advocacy grantmaker for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Achieve is a not-for-profit advocacy group whose Board of Directors has ties to Intel, Prudential Financial, IBM, Battelle, a global research and development company, and a long list of major foundations. EDI is another not-for-profit with ties to the world's major for-profit companies. Its Board of Directors includes its founder, Sir Michael Barber, Chief Education Adviser at Pearson Education where he advises the British-based publishing mega-giant on the "development of products and services" that Pearson will sell to "fast-growing developing economies." Sir Michael Barber has also been a lead speaker at PARCC Institutes. But the big winners appear to be ETS and Pearson. According to the PARCC website: The first phase of item development contracts were awarded to ETS and Pearson. ETS' proposal can be found here and Pearson's can be found here. - Phase I of Item Development began in the example lesson plan fall of 2012 and will be complete in late summer 2013. The second phase will begin as soon as Phase II is complete in late summer 2013 and run through late summer 2014.- The contracts for Phase II will be awarded to one or more of the Phase I contractors, based on the quality of work in the first year. Major problems facing teachers are the vagueness of the standards and the new "improved" assessments. In addition, districts are moving ahead with their evaluations of teachers using new guidelines aligned with the Common Core standards even though the tests and supporting curriculum are not in place. One of the more commonly used rubrics for the evaluation of teachers is the Danielson Framework for Teaching developed by Charlotte Danielson and marketed by the Danielson Group of Princeton, New Jersey. The New York State Education Department has decided that this rubric will be used to evaluate all New York City teachers starting in Fall 2013. Danielson is the default teacher evaluation framework in New Jersey and Illinois; it has been adopted for statewide use in Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho and South Dakota; and was approved for use in Florida and Washington. In addition, it is being used in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Memphis City Schools, Pittsburgh Public Schools, and fifteen Florida school districts. But a big problem here is that no one can figure out what a Danielson lesson plan based on achieving national Common Core standards actually looks like. As a teacher educator, I am also being pressed to prepare student teachers for a similar performance evaluation using edTPA, a slightly different rubric that was developed at Stanford University and is being put into place by Pearson, the mega-giant publisher. To assist teachers grappling with what a Common Core/Danielson lesson plan looks like and student teachers preparing for edTPA, I met with members of the Hofstra University New Teachers Network to develop this sample activity-based lesson plan. It is geared to secondary school social studies, what we teach, but we believe it is easily adaptable for other grade-levels and subject areas. I want to thank Jessica Cartusciello of Island Trees High School in Levittown, NY, Michael Pezone of the High School for Law Enforcement in Queens, NY, Ashley Cannone of Locust Valley (NY) High School, and Louis Tolentino of the Lawrence-Woodmere Academy. Unlike material prepared by the education-corporations and their not-for-profit allies, this lesson plan is free for anyone to use. ACTIVITY-BASED LESSON ADJUSTED TO COMMON CORE, EDTPA, AND DANIELSON DOMAINS UNIT: LESSON TOPIC: AIM QUESTION: A. What LEARNING OBJECTIVES/ MAIN IDEAS do students need to know (maximum of 3)?

B. What COMMON CORE skills will be introduced or reinforced during this lesson? C. Which content area STANDARDS are addressed in this lesson? D. What academic and content specific VOCABULARY is introduced in this lesson? E. What materials (e.g., ACTIVITY SHEET, MAP, SONG) will I present to students? F. What activity, if any, will I use to settle students and establish a context (DO NOW)? G. How will I open the lesson (MOTIVATION) and capture student interest? H. What additional INDIVIDUAL/TEAM/FULL CLASS ACTIVITIES will I use to help students discover what they need to learn (suggest three)? If these are group activities, how will student groups be organized? I. How will I DIFFERENTIATE INSTRUCTION with MULTIPLE ENTRY POINTS for diverse learners? J. What H.O.T. (Higher Order Thinking) questions will I ask to engage students in analysis and discussion? K. How will I ASSESS student mastery of the skills, content, and concepts taught in this lesson? L. How will I bring the lesson to CLOSURE (SUMMARY QUESTION)? M. How will I reinforce and extend student learning? 1. CLASSROOM APPLICATION / FOLLOW-UP: 2. ENRICHMENT ACTIVITIES: 3. HOMEWORK: N. What topics come next? 1. TOMORROW: 2. DAY AFTER: O. How do I evaluate this lesson? 1. STRENGTHS: 2. WEAKNESSES: 3. AREAS TO WORK ON: 4. THINGS TO CHANGE:

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Budget Worksheet: How to Spend Your Money

Growing up, one of my all-time favorite episodes of "The Cosby Show" was the one where Theo Huxtable got a lesson on "real world" budgeting from his dad. He quickly learned that if he didn't prioritize his spending he'd be left eating bologna and cereal each month. Budgeting can be tricky. Besides wanting to know how to get out of debt, the most common question I receive from young adults is "how much" should I pay for x, y and z. From rent to car payments to saving and eating out, young adults often lack a solid frame of reference. Having structure and discipline can mean the difference between living comfortably within your means or bursting at the seams. And despite rebelling against it, I find that young adults secretly desire financial structure. On Bank of Mom and Dad, I managed to get some of the wildest spenders to follow a budget. Although they were skeptical and hesitant at first, months later, we found them sticking with the budget - and, frankly, much happier. Following a budget made them feel empowered.

Typically I'll cater a budget to a person's lifestyle and needs. For example, someone with credit card debt would have a wildly different budget than someone who is debt-free and has a three-month savings cushion. But in general there are guidelines that can help prevent young spenders from going overboard, so I've prepared a basic budget outline using average national statistics. It takes into account the average starting salary for the graduating class of 2010 - roughly $47,000 a year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Post-taxes, that comes to about $34,000 a year. The average graduate also has approximately $23,000 in student loans and about $4,000 in credit card debt. Here's the budget breakdown: Credit Card Debt: 5% Allocate 5%, or $135 a month, to paying that down. The minimum payment on a credit card with a $4,000 balance and average 15% interest rate is $90 a month. But at the minimum rate it would take 20 years to pay off the debt. Paying 50% more, or $135 a month, you would need only 3 years to erase the debt - and you'd save more than $3,000 in interest. If you have more than one credit card, prioritize your debts by more aggressively paying off the card with the highest interest rate. It's your most expensive debt. Student Loan Debt: 10% A $23,000 loan balance with an approximate 7% interest rate and 10-year repayment term comes to a minimum $267 a month. That's roughly 10% of your budget. You can figure out your loan repayment at MappingYourFuture.org. With student loans, if all you can afford is the minimum, that's OK by me. It's more critical that you never miss a payment, because falling behind can cause nightmarish problems. As MoneyWatch's Ray Martin wrote earlier this year, "there is no statute of limitations for collection of student-loan debt, and lenders have very strong powers to collect on defaulted student loans. For instance, lenders can garnish up to 15 percent of your take-home pay, seize your federal and state tax refunds, and prevent renewal of professional licenses." Keep in mind that paying your student loans on time comes with a nice reward: You can deduct up to $2,500 in student-loan interest from your taxable income. Once you are making more money, or if you receive a lump sum of cash (say, a bonus or a gift), consider allocating some of that towards the loan's principal to speed up the repayment process. Housing: 30% This includes rent and utilities (cable, phone, electric bills). You can read more about how to budget specifically for housing in my recent blog post. Transportation: 15% This includes car payments, gas and insurance. If you live in a big city that has accessible public transportation, you may be able to pocket 15% this way and drop it into other spending buckets. Start with the credit card debt first, savings second. Rainy Day Savings: 5% It seems impossible to save when you're first starting out. But if you automatically commit to this at the top of the month, research shows you'll have an easier time getting in the habit. Save in an online account that offers a higher interest rate, and hide the ATM card so you won't be tempted to cash out on a whim. Over time, you want to build an emergency savings account that'll cover at least 6 months of your living expenses. Retirement Savings: Up to 10% Ten percent is the ideal. At the very least, invest enough in your company's 401(k) to earn a full match from your employer (if available). The federal cap on annual pre-tax 401(k) contributions rose to $16,500 in 2010. For IRAs, it's $5,000. Health Insurance: 7% This may cost you relatively little if you are a member of an employer-sponsored group plan. But recognizing this is no longer a guarantee, it's important to set aside money for acquiring your own health benefits, at least $200 a month. The good news is, until you reach age 26, you can piggyback on mom or dad's health care plan. Food: 10% That comes to approximately $340 a month, and should include groceries, Starbucks runs and eating out. Hands down, this is the category in which it's easiest for young, social adults to go overboard. After all, a few dinners out per week can quickly blow the entire month's budget in two weeks' time. It won't be easy, but it's all one can technically afford on a starting salary. For help, read Moneywatch's Kathy Kristof's piece on eating out on a dime.

Miscellaneous: 8% Toiletries, haircuts, concerts, gadgets, travel and clothes. Eight percent - or approximately $220 a month - is not much of an allocation for the tech enthusiast, social butterfly or fashionista. But the sooner you get out of debt and build some savings, the more room you'll have for such miscellaneous spending. Remember, a budget lesson plans for highs chool is about trade-offs. Some expenses are a must - like paying down debt, health insurance and savings. But other categories - like housing, food and travel - are more negotiable. If you live at home, for example, that leaves more money on the table for the rest of your budget. If you clip coupons and eat leftovers, you can easily spend below your food budget. If you bike instead of drive, your transportation costs will also decrease. So use the above breakdown as a starting point. Got a budget breakdown that's working for you? Sign in below to share it with us.

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Microsoft licenses software shelf's print manager plus for Windows XP Logo Certification.

Software Shelf International, Inc. recently announced that Microsoft Corporation has licensed Windows XP Logo Certification to Print Manager Plus. Additionally, a new suite of reports has been added to the award winning Print Manager Plus, including key reports, which show the total cost of printing/savings in detail. These reports are vital in helping reduce the cost of printing that has escalated to the equivalent of 40% of a company's cost of labor. Print Manager Plus 4.0 audits and reduces the cost of printing in the corporate, government and education markets. Version 4.0 is a major upgrade of this tracking, accounting, and quota setting software for enterprise printing. Print Manager Plus supports printing from most operating systems through a Windows print server or workstation. Dataquest figures show the average cost of producing documents (paper, hardware, ink) is equivalent to 40% of a company's labor cost. Gartner calculates the cost of acquiring a printer is only 20% of the total cost involved. 70% of companies are unaware of their printing costs because they don't have a means to effectively audit these costs. Print Manager Plus creates a detailed audit trail of the cost of additional hints printing so these costs can be reduced. Print Manager Plus lets the administrator enter a different page cost per printer (such as for more expensive color printers) and account for exact printing costs per user or printer. The interface contains built-in reports showing how many pages each user or printer printed over specific time periods and the actual cost. Reports can be customized and can be printed or exported to most accounting databases or billing systems. Print Manager Plus supports SQL, Access, and ODBC compliant databases. Print Manager Plus lets the administrator set an overall price quota per user or group over a time period. One can limit job sizes by user to a specified number of pages. Printing jobs can be restricted based on file type, application, or by key words in the document title. Print Manager Plus installs in seconds on Windows XP or Windows NT/2000 print server. In an average organization of 1,000, it pays for itself in saved paper and toner every ten days. Print Manager Plus includes an e-Update function that automatically downloads upgrades and updates as they are released. Print Manager Plus is used in organizations around the world. The previous version 2.8 won the year 2001 W2K News Target Award for #1 Print Management Product of the Year. Customers of the Print official website Manager Plus family of products include Yale University, University of California, New York University, CNN, NASA, Microsoft Corporation and more. Pricing and Availability Print Manager Plus 4.0 is licensed per print server. One license including annual maintenance is $795.00. COPYRIGHT 2002 Millin Publishing, Inc. No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder. Copyright 2002, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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U.S. consumers favor Amazon for online holiday shopping | Reuters

By Nathan Layne | CHICAGO CHICAGO A majority of U.S. consumers plan to go to Amazon.com for most of their online holiday shopping, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, even after traditional retailers have collectively spent billions of dollars to try to capture Web demand. The survey of 3,426 adults conducted from November 12 to 18 found that 51 percent plan to do most of their online shopping at Amazon (AMZN.O) this holiday season, compared to 16 percent at Walmart, 3 percent at Target and 2 percent at Macy's. A little more than a quarter of respondents said they would use another retailer not listed in the poll. (Graphic: reut.rs/1WZBrmF) The poll underscored the hurdles that traditional retailers faced in expanding online. Their own sales data this week showed that such efforts were falling short. Target Corp (TGT.N) said on Wednesday its digital sales grew 20 percent in the latest quarter, missing its expectations for a 30 percent gain. The discount retailer cited weakness in electronics demand.

A day earlier, Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) reported quarterly online sales growth of 10 percent, slower than its target growth in the mid-to-high-teens this fiscal year. Wal-Mart pointed to sluggish market conditions in China, Britain and Brazil, and said it fared better in the United States. In contrast, Amazon.com Inc had posted a 28 percent jump in North American sales in its quarterly report last month. "The Big Kahuna that continues to grab market share is Amazon," said Craig Johnson, head of retail consultancy Customer Growth Partners. "Both Wal-Mart and to some extent Target have simply not kept pace enough." Johnson added that sluggish spending overall contributed to the weaker-than-expected online sales at Target and Wal-Mart, which also faced increased competition from other online retailers, such as Wayfair Inc (W.N). According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, 8 percent of adults said they plan to shop only online this year, compared to 6 percent a year earlier. The proportion of respondents who said they would shop mostly online remained steady at 17 percent. All major retailers are investing in e-commerce.

Target said it has kept up the pace of investment in initiatives needed to grow its online business. In March, the retailer said it will invest $1 billion in improving its online sales technology and supply chain. Wal-Mart is spending about $1 billion a year to bolster its e-commerce infrastructure. In the third quarter, it opened its fifth fulfillment center dedicated to online sales - establishing This Site a network from which it said it could deliver to customers across the United States in two days. For many shoppers, Amazon has become synonymous with online shopping. It gained tens of millions of members to its Prime service by offering access to movies, music and other services in addition to free shipping in return for an annual fee. Amazon can also focus on online sales because it does not have to worry about getting customers into physical stores, said Kerry Rice, an analyst at Needham & Co. "They drive you to that site in many, many ways," Rice said of Amazon. "It's not about driving foot traffic to retail stores." The Reuters poll had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points. (Additional reporting by Nandita Bose; Editing by Peter Henderson and Tiffany Wu)

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U.S. regulatory guidance improves quality of resolution plans, but more work remains

Banks need to improve data management and reporting practices in their U.S. mandated resolution plans, but they have nonetheless made progress in meeting regulators' expectations with the help of customized playbooks on issues such as governance, reporting, and management information systems, participants learned in awebinar by consultancy Deloitte. Guidance from regulators The Federal Reserve Board, and to a lesser extent the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, have provided clarification on their increased expectations for the "living will" resolution plan requirement of the Dodd-Frank Act. The Fed issued two critical supervisory letters (SR 14-1andSR 14-8) in 2014. SR 14-1 listed steps that could improve bank operational resiliency and contingency planning. These include capabilities that would allow a clear analysis of funding sources, a comprehensive understanding of exposures, an effective process to value and manage collateral, and better management information systems capabilities that can generate key data on a legal entity basis and controls ensuring data integrity. They also include robust arrangements that guarantee continued provision of shared or outsourced services to maintain critical operations. If SR 14-1 focused on technical matters, SR 14-8 provided more of a roadmap to strong internal governance framework and a thorough impact assessment program. It detailed recovery options and identified potential impediments to a recovery process and offered ways to mitigate them. Both letters supplement theDodd-Frank Act's Title Ienhanced prudential regulation framework. That stipulates that bank holding companies submit resolution plans on an annual basis -by July 1st for the largest ones, and by year-end for the rest. These plans are to include critical and detailed information of an institution's material entities, its business lines, its management information system as well as the concrete steps it needs to take during a resolution or a possible lesson plans for highs chool recovery process. The FDIC, for its part, issued similarguidanceon a number of areas including corporate governance, identification of counterparties, critical services and operations, assumptions of stress scenarios, resolution obstacles and their mitigation for insured depository institutions in December 2014. It is with these documents in mind that the regulators evaluated this year's submissions. Lessons learned from the living wills The specific feedback and strongly worded press statements from regulators in 2014 -- citing unrealistic or inadequately supported assumptions and obstacles to resolvability among other shortcomings -- have prodded the firms to think harder about their living wills. It is the Fed's Supervisory Assessment of Recovery and Resolution Preparedness (SRP), however -another regulatory initiative -- that transformed this annual routine into a pop quiz for measuring a firm's progress in its resolution capabilities. It is essentially a horizontal review of firms' operations that support recovery and remove impediments for a successful resolution. The common evolving practices that have emerged in this year's round of submissions include more thorough information on material entities, including a holistic legal entity structure, discussions of steps taken or planned to make the firm more resolvable, and removal of potential impediments. Firms went beyond simply outlining their preferred resolution strategy, testing and validating their assumptions, either through a third party, an internal audit, or both. They have also demonstrated improved capabilities in dealing with liquidity funding needs, collateral management, and shared services through specific playbooks. These playbooks enumerate a clear process flow, including key people, what systems will be used and how they will be linked to other procedures that may affect the rest of the firm. Expectations for the next round of submissions Despite notable progress in these areas, challenges remain for banks, said Marlo Karp, a partner with Deloitte. "The fact that a large number of processes to obtain data are still manual and time consuming, and that the data itself is fragmented across a number of business lines or geography increase operational risk at a time when it may be needed the most," she said at the Deloitte webinar. Furthermore, firms have not yet integrated the concept of resolution planning into their business as usual operations. They do not yet link it, for example, with other areas such as new product approval, or liquidity reserves. Nor have they demonstrated a robust range of options regarding different failure scenarios and alternative resolution approaches. Firms have also been debating how often and how much testing and validation should be used to reach a definite conclusion.

A more integrated regulatory framework Drafting living wills has not been a smooth process for most of the firms. As FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg stated in aspeechin May 2015, "there has been no greater or more important regulatory challenge in the aftermath of the financial crisis than developing the capability for the orderly failure of a systemically important financial institution." They have made progress on many fronts, however, mainly through the development of playbooks on different issues that helped them identify gaps, assess the recovery processes in place, and improve on them. Integrating them into their business as usual processes will be the next step. (This article was produced by Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence and initially posted on (Oct. 16, 2015). Regulatory Intelligence provides a single sourcefor regulatory news, analysis, rules and developments, with global coverage of more than 400 regulators andexchanges. Follow Regulatory Intelligence compliance news on Twitter:@RiskMgment)

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'Hilarious' Airline Complaint Letter Making Internet Rounds

Most airline complaint letters are so filled with rage and tales of woe, it's hard to see any humor in the situation. But that's not the case with a letter written to LIAT, a small airline serving 21 destinations in the Caribbean. The complaint waged in a letter to the airline is so funny that it prompted another airline's CEO to tweet it to his more than 3 million followers. "How to write a complaint letter -- read this hilarious note from a frustrated airline passenger," tweeted Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group.

He even blogged about it. Not all letters to airlines are to complain. Check out this letter to Delta's CEO after he gave up his seat for a mom late to pick her daughter up from a special-needs camp. The LIAT letter appeared in the weekly British Virgin Islands newspaper, the BVI Beacon, earlier this year. The letter was penned by Londoner Arthur Hicks and how to write a lesson plan titled "An Open Letter to LIAT." Dear LIAT, May I say how considerate it is of you to enable your passengers such an in-depth and thorough tour of the Caribbean. Most other airlines I have travelled on would simply wish to take me from point A to B in rather a hurry. I was intrigued that we were allowed to stop at not a lowly one or two but a magnificent six airports yesterday. And who wants to fly on the same airplane the entire time? We got to change and refuel every step of the way! I particularly enjoyed sampling the security scanners at each and every airport. I find it preposterous that people imagine them all to be the same. And as for being patted down by a variety of islanders, well, I feel as if I've been hugged by most of the Caribbean already. I also found it unique that this was all done on "island time," because I do like to have time to absorb the atmosphere of the various departure lounges. As for our arrival, well, who wants to have to take a ferry at the end of all that flying anyway? I'm glad the boat was long gone by the time we arrived into Tortola last night -- and that all those noisy bars and restaurants were closed.

So thank you, LIAT. I now truly understand why you are "The Caribbean Airline." P.S. Keep the bag. I never liked it anyway. Branson himself was once the recipient of what some think is the most epic airline complaint letter of all time. In that letter, the author likens his flight on Virgin to a "culinary journey of hell."

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What Are the 5 Most Popular Printed Promotional Items?

Printed promotional items are very popular with companies because they are a cost-effective way to advertise. Whether you are the marketing manager of a large multi-national company or a local business man or woman who offers their service to their local community, by using this promotional technique, you will get results. Essentially, every piece of promotional item is imprinted with your logo, contact details, website and marketing message. Therefore, this means that everything from clothing to desktop gifts to personal items that are given with your message imprinted on them classify in this category.

Below are 5 of the most poplar promotional items: T-Shirts: These are very cost effective and give you a large area on which to display your marketing message. These are also seen by other people and, hence, they turn the t-shirt wearer into a walking advertising board for your item. Mouse mats: People spend more time at their desk than anywhere else in the day. If your datails are on their mouse mat, then they will see your message multiple times and, most likely, purchase your product or service when the need arises. Pens: It is estimated that in the UK, each person acquires 10 new pens per year. For most people, these are free pens with your brand or company name on them. This method works and this is why so many pens are distributed. Calendars: Imagine if your customer saw your advert every day for a year. With a calendar, this will be the case. By having your contact details on there, there is a high likelihood that they will contact you if your product is relevant to their needs. Key rings: The ideal promotional item is one that is easy to produce, easy to store and ship, easy to distribute and something that people will use frequently Promotional so that your marketing message is seen often. Key rings fall into these requirements perfectly. These are five of the most popular printed promotional items. What other ones can you think of?