#Document Management Company in India

[orientalsolutions]

Visit the Oriental Solutions blog page to explore a dynamic company dedicated to providing end-to-end solutions for information processing and document management needs

[aquariusindia]

Documentation Service | Aquarius projects | Vadodara | Gujarat | India

Aquarius Projects Provide best Study Report for water management system and we have best professional team for study Documentation and Maintain waste water plant. For more information Visit our site and call now.

[scrsoft]

What is an APQP Checklist?

An Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) checklist is a vital tool used in various industries to ensure the systematic development of products and processes. It serves as a comprehensive guide to managing quality throughout the product lifecycle, from initial design to production and beyond.

Importance of APQP in Quality Management

APQP plays a crucial role in maintaining product quality and customer satisfaction. By following a structured approach outlined in the checklist, organizations can:

Ensure Product Quality: APQP helps in identifying potential risks and quality issues early in the product development stage, allowing for timely mitigation measures.

Reduce Defects and Rework: Through thorough planning and risk assessment, APQP aims to minimize defects and rework, thereby reducing overall production costs.

Understanding the APQP Checklist

An APQP checklist is a document that outlines the necessary steps and requirements for implementing APQP processes effectively. It typically includes:

Definition: A clear definition of APQP and its objectives.

Components of the Checklist: Sections covering various aspects such as planning, design, process validation, and production.

Benefits of Using an APQP Checklist

The utilization of an APQP checklist offers several benefits, including:

Streamlining Processes: By following a structured approach, organizations can streamline their product development and manufacturing processes.

Enhancing Communication: The checklist facilitates effective communication among cross-functional teams, ensuring everyone is aligned with project requirements.

Facilitating Risk Management: APQP checklist helps in identifying and mitigating risks early in the product lifecycle, reducing the likelihood of costly failures.

How to Develop an Effective APQP Checklist

Developing an effective APQP checklist involves several key steps:

Gathering Relevant Information: Collecting necessary data and information related to product requirements, customer expectations, and regulatory standards.

Involving Cross-Functional Teams: Engaging representatives from various departments to ensure comprehensive input and buy-in.

Establishing Clear Criteria and Metrics: Defining specific criteria and metrics for evaluating product quality and process performance.

Implementing the APQP Checklist in Different Industries

APQP principles can be applied across various industries, including:

Automotive Sector: APQP is widely used in the automotive industry to ensure the quality and safety of vehicles.

Aerospace Industry: Aerospace companies utilize APQP to meet stringent regulatory requirements and ensure the reliability of aircraft components.

Healthcare Sector: In healthcare, APQP helps in developing safe and effective medical devices and pharmaceutical products.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using APQP Checklist

While APQP checklist offers numerous benefits, organizations must avoid common pitfalls such as:

Lack of Stakeholder Involvement: Failure to involve key stakeholders from different departments can lead to oversight and suboptimal outcomes.

Failure to Update the Checklist Regularly: An outdated checklist may not reflect current industry standards or regulatory requirements, compromising its effectiveness.

Ignoring Feedback and Improvement Opportunities: Organizations should actively seek feedback from users and stakeholders to identify areas for improvement and refinement.

Examples of APQP Checklist Templates

There are various APQP checklist templates available, ranging from basic to advanced, tailored to specific industry requirements.

Basic Checklist Template: Includes essential steps and requirements for implementing APQP processes.

Advanced Checklist Template: Incorporates additional features such as risk assessment matrices and validation protocols.

Tips for Maximizing the Effectiveness of APQP Checklist

To derive maximum benefit from APQP checklist, organizations should:

Provide Adequate Training: Ensure that employees are trained in APQP principles and understand how to use the checklist effectively.

Regular Audits and Reviews: Conduct periodic audits and reviews to assess compliance with APQP processes and identify areas for improvement.

Continuous Improvement Initiatives: Encourage a culture of continuous improvement, where feedback is solicited, and lessons learned are applied to enhance processes.

Case Studies: Successful Implementation of APQP Checklist

Several organizations have successfully implemented APQP checklist, resulting in improved product quality and customer satisfaction.

Future Trends in APQP Checklist Development

As technology advances and industry requirements evolve, APQP checklist development is expected to incorporate:

Integration with Digital Tools: Increasing integration with digital tools and software platforms to streamline APQP processes and enhance collaboration.

Emphasis on Sustainability: Incorporating sustainability criteria and metrics into APQP checklist to address growing environmental concerns.

Conclusion

In conclusion, an APQP checklist is a valuable tool for organizations seeking to ensure product quality, minimize risks, and enhance customer satisfaction. By following a structured approach outlined in the checklist, businesses can streamline their product development processes and stay competitive in today's dynamic market.

FAQs

What is the role of APQP in quality management?

APQP plays a crucial role in maintaining product quality by identifying potential risks and quality issues early in the product development stage.

How can organizations develop an effective APQP checklist?

Developing an effective APQP checklist involves steps such as gathering relevant information, involving cross-functional teams, and establishing clear criteria and metrics.

In which industries is APQP commonly used?

APQP principles can be applied across various industries, including automotive, aerospace, and healthcare sectors.

What are some common mistakes to avoid when using an APQP checklist?

Common mistakes include lack of stakeholder involvement, failure to update the checklist regularly, and ignoring feedback and improvement opportunities.

How can organizations maximize the effectiveness of APQP checklist?

Organizations can maximize effectiveness by providing adequate training, conducting regular audits and reviews, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

[panchtatavaa]

Documentation Service | Aquarius projects | Vadodara | Gujarat | India

Aquarius Projects Provide best Study Report for water management system and we have best professional team for study Documentation and Maintain waste water plant. For more information Visit our site and call now.

[aquariusprojects02]

Documentation Service | Aquarius projects | Vadodara | Gujarat | India

Aquarius Projects Provide best Study Report for water management system and we have best professional team for study Documentation and Maintain waste water plant. For more information Visit our site and call now.

[octuscle]

Sustainable changes

Nicolas had just been promoted to Senior Product Manager. But the condition was that he had to take a foreign assignment for two years. He had reckoned with Germany, the USA or maybe Japan. India would also have been okay. But he was supposed to go to Turkmenistan. His employer had just bought a large agricultural cooperative there, which was now to be converted in the direction of ecological and sustainable agriculture. On the one hand, this sounded like a completely unknown field of work. Nicolas had previously worked more in the consumer goods sector. On the other hand, anything that bore the label "sustainable" was naturally a career driver at the moment. So he took a cautiously optimistic approach.

Once Nicolas arrived at his new workplace, the optimism quickly evaporated. He had arrived somewhere in the middle of nowhere. There was no office building, there were only barracks. Mostly not air-conditioned. He had expected to be put up in some hotel. But he had been given a room with a farmer. Toilet in the yard. Bathroom was an outdoor shower served from the cistern. He felt infinitely silly in his outfit.

In the first service meeting, a colleague asked him if they could tweak Nicolas's resume a bit for the presentation to the workers. It might be good for his credibility if they could give him some local roots. Nicolas was tired. The trip had been exhausting. He remembered his parents' Russian gardener. A picture of a man. Former combat swimmer. And of the Turkish cook. So he answered, one may mix in there with pleasure something Russian and Turkish. The main thing was that he was allowed to retire now.

The night had been hell. It smelled like a pigsty in his room. And he could hear the pigs too, as if they were sleeping in bed with him. There was no hot water to shave with. And company policy forbids the use of shower gels containing microplastics without functioning wastewater treatment for environmental reasons. So all he can use is a bar of curd soap. When introduced to the staff, he looks appropriately a bit bedraggled. One of his colleagues asks Nicolas to say something in Russian. He has to think a bit. His grandmother sometimes spoke to him in Russian. But it's enough for a "I'm happy to be here and look forward to working with you. The employees cheer for their new boss.

Before Nicolas takes a shower the next morning, he drives the pigs out of the barn. If he's going to share the roof with them, he might as well make himself useful. His hosts invite him to breakfast. The conversation in Russian is still a bit bumpy. Nikolai hasn't spoken his father's language for years. And his host family, of course, actually speaks Turkmen. But with hands and feet it works. And so it goes on in the office. The team meeting was supposed to take place in English. But the interpreter dropped out. With every hour it gets better. The memory of his father's language comes back.

At breakfast, Nikolai realizes that he understands Turkmen better than he thought. It definitely works out that his hosts ask him in their native language. But he prefers to answer in Russian. Nikolai speaks it again as fluently as he did when he lived with his father in the Sevastopol army barracks. At work, they discuss the tasks for the next few days. Nikolai considers the projects for preventing soil erosion and unused surface water runoff to be urgent. Everyone passionately discusses the possibilities of transforming agriculture to get by without artificial irrigation. But Nikolai realizes that it will be difficult to irrigate only naturally in the desert.

The next morning, Nikolai surprises your host family with a few words of Turkmen. With his fluency in Russian and Turkish as his mother's language, it's not that hard for him to learn the language. On the job, they speak almost only Turkmen anyway. Today, his job is to drive the fields and inspect and document the environmental damage. Nikolai doesn't even need to shower for that. It will be hot anyway. And air conditioning is only for wimps. The point is to save energy wherever possible. In the afternoon, he gets a call from headquarters. They are very pleased with his work on site. It is clear that the project would not make an economic contribution. But the advertising impact is enormous. Whether he is interested in accepting a junior director position at the headquarters in Paris.

Nikolai turns his camera, bares his left breast and says in broken French that his heart beats for his new home. He won't leave until the desert blooms again.

[whencyclopedia]

Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories

"Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories" is a sweeping and jarring work of how opium became an insidious capitalistic tool to generate wealth for the British Empire and other Western powers at the expense of an epidemic of addiction in China and the impoverishment of millions of farmers in India. The legacy of this “criminal enterprise,” as the author puts it, left lasting influences that reverberate across cultures and societies even today.

Written in engaging language, Smoke and Ashes is a scholarly follow-up to the author’s famous Ibis trilogy, a collection of fiction that uses the opium trade as its backdrop. In Smoke and Ashes, the author draws on his years-long research into opium supplemented by his family history, personal travels, cross-cultural experience, and expertise in works of historical verisimilitude. Composed over 18 chapters, the author delves into a diverse set of primary and secondary data, including Chinese sources. He also brings a multidimensional angle to the study by highlighting the opium trade's legacy in diverse areas such as art, architecture, horticulture, printmaking, and calligraphy. 23 pictorial illustrations serve as powerful eyewitness accounts to the discourse.

This book should interest students and scholars seeking historical analysis based on facts on the ground instead of colonial narratives. Readers will also find answers to how opium continues to play an outsize role in modern-day conflicts, addictions, corporate behavior, and globalism.

Amitav Ghosh’s research convincingly points out that while opium had always been used for recreational purposes across cultures, it was the Western powers such as the British, Portuguese, the Spaniards, and the Dutch that discovered its significant potential as a trading vehicle. Ghosh adds that colonial rulers, especially the British, often rationalized their actions by arguing that the Asian population was naturally predisposed to narcotics. However, it was British India that bested others in virtually monopolizing the market for the highly addictive Indian opium in China. Used as a currency to redress the East India Company (EIC)’s trade deficit with China, the opium trade by the 1890s generated about five million sterling a year for Britain. Meanwhile, as many as 40 million Chinese became addicted to opium.

Eastern India became the epicenter of British opium production. Workers in opium factories in Patna and Benares toiled under severe conditions, often earning less than the cost of production while their British managers lived in luxury. Ghosh asserts that opium farming permanently impoverished a region that was an economic powerhouse before the British arrived. Ghosh’s work echoes developmental economists such as Jonathan Lehne, who has documented opium-growing communities' lower literacy and economic progress compared to their neighbors.

Ghosh states that after Britain, “the country that benefited most from the opium trade” with China, was the United States. American traders skirted the British opium monopoly by sourcing from Turkey and Malwa in Western India. By 1818, American traders were smuggling about one-third of all the opium consumed in China. Many powerful families like the Astors, Coolidges, Forbes, Irvings, and Roosevelts built their fortunes from the opium trade. Much of this opium money, Ghosh shows, also financed banking, railroads, and Ivy League institutions. While Ghosh mentions that many of these families developed a huge collection of Chinese art, he could have also discussed that some of their holdings were most probably part of millions of Chinese cultural icons plundered by colonialists.

Ghosh ends the book by discussing how the EIC's predatory behaviors have been replicated by modern corporations, like Purdue Pharma, that are responsible for the opium-derived OxyContin addiction. He adds that fossil fuel companies such as BP have also reaped enormous profits at the expense of consumer health or environmental damage.

Perhaps one omission in this book is that the author does not hold Indian opium traders from Malwa, such as the Marwaris, Parsis, and Jews, under the same ethical scrutiny as he does to the British and the Americans. While various other works have covered the British Empire's involvement in the opium trade, most readers would find Ghosh's narrative of American involvement to be eye-opening. Likewise, his linkage of present-day eastern India's economic backwardness to opium is both revealing and insightful.

Winner of India's highest literary award Jnanpith and nominated author for the Man Booker Prize, Amitav Ghosh's works concern colonialism, identity, migration, environmentalism, and climate change. In this book, he provides an invaluable lesson for political and business leaders that abdication of ethics and social responsibility have lasting consequences impacting us all.

Continue reading...

[occidentaltourist]

Before Gentleman Jack: Emma Donoghue on Anne Lister and Eliza Raine

Bestselling author Emma Donoghue introduces Anne Lister (now often known as Gentleman Jack) and Eliza Raine, the real women behind her latest novel, Learned By Heart.

Who was Eliza Raine, and what was her relationship with Anne?

I wish Anne Lister’s first lover was just as famous as her, but Eliza Raine (1791-1860), shamefully mistreated during her long life, has been ignored ever since she died in obscurity. This fascinating woman – orphan heiress of an English East India Company doctor and his Indian ‘country wife’ – deserves attention not just for her beauty, her importance to Lister and her vivid letters, but for her outsider perspective on Regency England. Banished to the so-called motherland to be ‘Englished’ at six, with a sister she never got on with, Eliza Raine must have witnessed society from a uniquely critical perspective, and so I found it was her untold story that ended up as the centre of Learned by Heart.

Is Gentleman Jack based on a true story?

Yes, the two seasons of Sally Wainwright’s BBC/HBO series Gentleman Jack (2019-22) are not only gripping, big-budget period drama, but they’re based on archival documents. Wainwright somehow managed to craft the dramatic arcs of each episode from the daily minutiae of Lister’s five-million-word secret diary. I can’t think of another example of TV adaptation actually contributing to an archive in a virtuous feedback loop: Wainwright not only used a screenwriting award to fund scans of the massive diary, but the fandom spawned by her show helped inspire hundreds to sign up as Code Breakers (aka Lister Sisters) and do the comma-by-comma work of transcribing it. A smaller group of the Code Breakers also made it possible for me to write Learned by Heart, by transcribing and making sense of about a hundred letters between, by or about Lister and Raine.

[homomenhommes]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … April 17

1725 – South Africa: Leendert Hasenbosch  (c.1695–1725), a Dutch East India Company employee, is convicted of sodomy on a ship in Capetown. He’s left on Ascension Island as punishment and dies of thirst six months later. He kept a diary entitled Sodomy Punish’d which was published in 1726. In 2006 the full story was published by Alex Ritsema, with the support of Koolbergen’s family and publisher, in the book A Dutch Castaway on Ascension Island in 1725; a second, revised edition was printed in 2010.

1857 – Maine sets a one-year minimum for sodomy and eliminates the word "detestable" from the sodomy law.

1897 – Born: Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder (d.1975), a prolific writer prominent in twentieth-century literature. A discreet homosexual, his sexual proclivities were kept far out of the limelight. Wilder's mainstream literary works are landmarks of American literature, but they reveal scant traces of his homosexuality. He can be credited for acting as a behind-the-scenes ambassador for the Lost Generation, making their avant-garde themes accessible to a middle-brow American public.

Wilder was born in Wisconsin though he spent most of his boyhood in Berkeley, California. As an adolescent, Wilder isolated himself in academic projects. Wilder's entire family was one of achieving, industrious, self-reliant Congregationalists with a strong work ethic.His roving intellectual enthusiasms blossomed in his adolescence, especially his interest in theater. At fifteen the budding playwright was cast as Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, but his strict father forbade this drag role. Later, Wilder delighted in playing central characters in his own plays, such as the Stage Manager in Our Town and Mr. Antrobus in The Skin of Our Teeth.

Wilder described himself as "The only writer of the Lost Generation who did not 'go' to Paris," a statement that was not literally true but which expresses his attachment to American life and values even as many of the writers of his generation yearned to escape what they saw as the stifling conformity of small-town life.

Wilder's warmest friendships included Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas whom he met in Chicago in 1934. Through them he befriended many of the gay artists in their circle. For all the liberation of the Jazz Age and the period following, homosexuality was only discreetly discussed among writers of the Lost Generation.

Wilder seems to have been regarded even by his closest friends as a kind of Henry James figure, somewhat sheltered and cerebral, and frightened of sex. The relationship between Wilder and his one documented companion, Sam Steward, (aka Phil Andros) may have begun as a furtive sexual fling in Zurich in 1937. Steward, a writer, pornographer, tattoo artist, and one-time college professor, was, in pointed contrast to Wilder, open and adventurous. He wrote popular erotic gay works in the 1970s under the pseudonym Phil Andros. Wilder seems to have backed away from Steward after several awkward encounters. Intimate affection eventually became fond intellectual acquaintance.

Typical of some gay men of the era, Wilder preferred to play the role of the perennial Respectable Bachelor. Although he never publicly discussed his homosexuality, later in his life he is believed to have had discreet affairs with younger men. Despite his reticence concerning his sexuality, Wilder was a notably convivial man who enjoyed friendships with writers and actors and academics.

Wilder is the only writer to receive Pulitzer Prizes for both literature (The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 1927) and drama (Our Town, 1938; The Skin of Our Teeth, 1943).

During World War II, Wilder enlisted in the armed services, eventually becoming a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. In the 1940s, Wilder also wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943).

After the war, he reworked an earlier play, The Merchant of Yonkers (1938), a comedy set in New York in the 1880s, that features the adventures of a neighborhood matchmaker, Dolly Levi, who eventually snares herself the perfect husband. It was not much of a success originally, but it became The Matchmaker (1955), a popular vehicle for Ruth Gordon, and it evolved into the even more popular Jerry Herman-Michael Stewart musical Hello, Dolly! (1964).

Thornton Wilder died on December 7, 1975. In Wilder's public and personal life, the "love that dared not speak its name" usually remained unspoken. One can only wonder whether he might have addressed more explicitly the question of homosexuality (and its repression) had he lived in a more tolerant time or place.

1919 – Chavela Vargas is a household name in Mexico but many North Americans aren’t privy to one of the most passionate performers of the last century. The queer masculine-presenting singer was prized for her tragic, tearful emoting — her songs appear in Pedro Almodovar films like Flower of My Secret.

A late bloomer, perhaps, but what a flower — Chavela Vargas did not release her first album until she was 42, didn't come out as a lesbian until she was 81, and didn't debut at Carnegie Hall until she was 83.

What was she doing all those years before recording Noche de Bohemia in 1961? Well, she dressed as a man, often in her signature red jorongo, smoked cigars, drank heavily, and packed a pistol, so obviously she was busy with more than singing rancheras in the streets. And maybe she had an affair with famed Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo (as Josephine Baker had).

Since that first record, she has released more than eighty albums. Her great fame of the 1960s and 70s subsided when she retired to battle her alcoholism. She returned to performing at 72 in 1991 in Mexico City. Since then her music has been widely used in films and she has appeared singing in several movies including Almodovar's Flower of My Secret, Julie Taymor's Frida, and Alejandro Innartu's Babel.

Buy her, beware: The first time you hear Chavela unleash her power midway through the quiet Paloma Negra you might drop whatever you're holding. She died in 2012 at 93.

Lindsay Anderson with Malcolm McDowell

1923 – Born: Film and stage director Lindsay Anderson (d.1994), a foundational figure in the "Free Cinema" movement of the 1950s, a group of British filmmakers who created low-scale realist works that focused on the ordinary or the socially marginalized, particularly the working class and the younger generation. A leader among such peers as Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, Gavin Lambert, and John Schlesinger, Anderson was influential in shaping what now might well be considered the golden age of British cinema in the 1960s. Ironically, as a result of his independence and idealism, he directed relatively few major films, and both his professional and personal lives were affected by the repression and sublimation of his homosexuality.

Anderson was born in Bangalore, India, where his father was a captain in the British army. His family sent him to Cheltenham, an English private school, where he met his lifelong friend and colleague, Gavin Lambert, who like Anderson, was not only gay but would also enjoy a significant directorial career. Subsequently, Anderson attended Oxford University, where he specialized in Classics and later co-founded the film journal Sequence with Lambert. In his essays and reviews in Sequence and other journals, Anderson took aim against the conventions of contemporary British cinema, which tended to avoid controversy and favored the lives and loves of the upper middle class as its subject matter.

Anderson's first films were short semi-documentary studies, looking at the everyday activities of the lower classes. Yet while Anderson had paved the way for feature films about the lives of working-class individuals, such as those that Richardson, Reisz, and Schlesinger directed throughout the early 1960s, he left filmmaking in 1957, when he became a director at the Royal Court Theatre, London. In this capacity Anderson directed many major theatrical works, including the 1975 revival of Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw, the first unexpurgated performance of the play.

It was not until 1963, that he made his first feature film, This Sporting Life, which, in detailing the career of a young coal miner turned professional footballer, seemed to follow rather than lead then-current trends. As such, it was not a commercial success, yet it is significant inasmuch as its depiction of the frustration and the emotional and physical violence that characterize the lives of ostensibly heterosexual working-class men has an inescapable homoerotic undercurrent, as seen in the film's nude bathing scenes.

Many of these themes, although in a very different context, recur in Anderson's best known film, If... (1968). Set in a British private school--indeed, filmed at Cheltenham--the film explores the social fascism that is inculcated in such privileged institutions and ends with student rebels machine-gunning a school assembly. It is also noteworthy for its frank representation of homosexual relationships among the schoolboys.Although If... was well-received as a cinematic political statement in the zeitgeist of the late 1960s, Anderson's subsequent films, though often equally daring, fared less well. O Lucky Man! (1973), the second of a trilogy featuring the character Mick Travis, the protagonist of If... (played by Malcolm McDowell), is a rambling three-hour satire in the mode of Voltaire's Candide on the evils of military-industrial capitalism and scientific experimentation. Ambitious and idealistic, the film was nonetheless a commercial failure, and, as a result, Anderson had few offers or financial backers for subsequent film projects. The third film of the trilogy, the cult classic Britannia Hospital (1982), is a satire on the British national health service. During the 1970s and 1980s, Anderson continued to direct for the stage and directed a number of television plays.

On August 30, 1994, he died of a heart attack while in southern France. Despite Anderson's daring as a director, his recently published letters and Lambert's biography show a tormented man who struggled with his own sexuality. He tended to fall in love with his leading men, including Richard Harris, Albert Finney, and Malcolm McDowell, all of whom were heterosexual, married, and unattainable. His closest associates have speculated that his life was, for the most part, a celibate one. His films, in which homoerotic elements are often presented in a violent or disturbing manner, became the outlet for the desires he could not express in life.

1943 – Tommy Nutter (d.1992), was a British tailor, famous for reinventing the Savile Row suit in the 1960s.

Born in Barmouth, Nutter initially studied plumbing, and then architecture, but he abandoned both aged 19 to study tailoring at the Tailor and Cutter Academy.

In the early 1960s he joined traditional tailors Donaldson, Williamson & Ward. After seven years, in 1969, he joined up with Edward Sexton, to open Nutters of Savile Row at No 35a Savile Row. They were financially backed by Cilla Black and her husband Bobby Willis, Managing Director of the Beatles' Apple Corps Peter Brown, and lawyer James Vallance-White.

The business was an immediate success, as Nutter combined traditional tailoring skills with innovative design. He designed for the Hardy Amies range, and then for the man himself. His clients included his investors, plus Sir Roy Strong, Mick Jagger, Bianca Jagger and Elton John. Nutter himself was most proud of the fact that, for the cover of The Beatles' album Abbey Road in 1969, he dressed three out of the four: George Harrison elected to be photographed on the road-crossing in denims.

In the 1970s he branched out into ready to wear clothing, marketed through Austin Reed. In 1976 Sexton bought Nutter out of the Business. Sexton continued to run Nutters of Savile Row until 1983, when Nutter returned to the row with a ready to wear shop: "Tommy Nutter, Savile Row". (This new venture, which traded at No 19 Savile Row until Tommy's death, was backed by J&J Crombie Limited, who continue to own the "Tommy Nutter" trademark.)

In the 1980s, he described his suits as a "cross between the big-shouldered Miami Vice look and the authentic Savile Row." He created the clothing of The Joker worn by Jack Nicholson in the 1989 film Batman.

Nutter died in 1992 at the Cromwell Hospital in London of complications from AIDS.

1967 – About 150 people attended a public meeting in Wellington, New Zealand on 17 April 1967 to form a society to work for homosexual law reform. It called itself the Wolfenden Association, but it soon became the New Zealand Homosexual Law Reform Society. Lord Cobham, a former governor-general, was invited to become its patron. His letter to the society secretary, Jack Goodwin, declining patronage was blunt and expressed a common attitude:

'These people are mentally sick to as great an extent as, for example, people suffering from smallpox are sick. The whole problem of legalizing this offence seems to me to hinge upon the extent to which the disease is contagious.'

2013 – Marriage equality passes in the New Zealand Parliament 77-44.

[orientalsolutions]

Document Management Company

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[aquariusindia]

Documentation Service | Aquarius projects | Vadodara | Gujarat | India

Aquarius Projects Provide best Study Report for water management system and we have best professional team for study Documentation and Maintain waste water plant. For more information Visit our site and call now.

[beardedmrbean]

A blackmail scam is using instant loan apps to entrap and humiliate people across India and other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At least 60 Indians have killed themselves after being abused and threatened. A​ BBC undercover investigation has exposed those profiting from this deadly scam in India and China.

Astha Sinhaa woke up to her aunt's panicked voice on the phone. "Don't let your mother leave the house."

Half-asleep, the 17-year-old was terrified to find her mum Bhoomi Sinhaa in the next room, sobbing and frantic.

Here was her funny and fearless mother, a respected Mumbai-based property lawyer, a widow raising her daughter alone, reduced to a frenzied mess.

"She was breaking apart," Astha says. A panicked Bhoomi started telling her where all the important documents and contacts were, and seemed desperate to get out of the door.

Astha knew she had to stop her. "Don't let her out of your sight," her aunt had told her. "Because she will end her life."

Astha knew her mother had been getting some weird calls and that she owed somebody money, but she had no idea that Bhoomi was reeling from months of harassment and psychological torture.

She had fallen victim to a global scam with tentacles in at least 14 countries that uses shame and blackmail to make a profit - destroying lives in the process.

The business model is brutal but simple. There are many apps that promise hassle-free loans in minutes. Not all of them are predatory. But many - once downloaded - harvest your contacts, photos and ID cards, and use that information later to extort you. When customers don't repay on time - and sometimes even when they do - they share this information with a call centre where young agents of the gig economy, armed with laptops and phones are trained to harass and humiliate people into repayment.

At the end of 2021, Bhoomi had borrowed about 47,000 rupees ($565; £463) from several loan apps while she waited for some work expenses to come through. The money arrived almost immediately but with a big chunk deducted in charges. Seven days later she was due to repay but her expenses still hadn't been paid, so she borrowed from another app and then another. The debt and interest spiralled until she owed about two million rupees ($24,000; £19,655).

Soon the recovery agents started calling. They quickly turned nasty, slamming Bhoomi with insults and abuse. Even when she had paid, they claimed she was lying. They called up to 200 times a day. They knew where she lived, they said, and sent her pictures of a dead body as a warning.

As the abuse escalated they threatened to message all of the 486 contacts in her phone telling them she was a thief and a whore. When they threatened to tarnish her daughter's reputation too, Bhoomi could no longer sleep.

She borrowed from friends, family and more and more apps - 69 in total. At night, she prayed the morning would never come. But without fail at 07:00, her phone would start pinging and buzzing incessantly.

Eventually, Bhoomi had managed to pay back all of the money, but one app in particular - Asan Loan - wouldn't stop calling. Exhausted, she couldn't concentrate at work and started having panic attacks.

One day a colleague called her over to his desk and showed her something on his phone - a naked, pornographic picture of her.

The photo had been crudely photoshopped, Bhoomi's head stuck on someone else's body, but it filled her with disgust and shame. She collapsed by her colleague's desk. It had been sent by Asan Loan to every contact in her phone book. That was when Bhoomi thought of killing herself.

We've seen evidence of scams like this run by various companies all over the world. But in India alone, the BBC has found at least 60 people have killed themselves after being harassed by loan apps.

Most were in their 20s and 30s - a fireman, an award-winning musician, a young mum and dad leaving behind their three- and five-year-old daughters, a grandfather and grandson who got involved in loan apps together. Four were just teenagers.

Most victims are too ashamed to speak about the scam, and the perpetrators have remained, for the most part, anonymous and invisible. After looking for an insider for months, the BBC managed to track down a young man who had worked as a debt recovery agent for call centres working for multiple loan apps.

Rohan - not his real name - told us he had been troubled by the abuse he had witnessed. Many customers cried, some threatened to kill themselves, he said. "It would haunt me all night." He agreed to help the BBC expose the scam.

He applied for a job in two different call centres - Majesty Legal Services and Callflex Corporation - and spent weeks filming undercover.

His videos captured young agents harassing clients. "Behave or I will smash you," one woman says, swearing. She accuses the customer of incest and, when he hangs up, she starts laughing. Another suggests the client should prostitute his mother to repay the loan.

Rohan recorded over 100 incidents of harassment and abuse, capturing this systematic extortion on camera for the first time.

The worst abuse he witnessed took place at Callflex Corporation, just outside Delhi. Here, agents routinely used obscene language to humiliate and threaten customers. These were not rogue agents going off-script - they were supervised and directed by managers at the call centre, including one called Vishal Chaurasia.

Rohan gained Chaurasia's trust, and together with a journalist posing as an investor, arranged a meeting at which they asked him to explain exactly how the scam works.

When a customer takes out a loan, he explained, they give the app access to the contacts on their phone. Callflex Corporation is hired to recover the money - and if the customer misses a payment the company starts hassling them, and then their contacts. His staff can say anything, Chaurasia told them, as long as they get a repayment.

"The customer then pays because of the shame," he said. "You'll find at least one person in his contact list who can destroy his life."

We approached Chaurasia directly but he did not want to comment. Callflex Corporation did not respond to our efforts to contact them.

One of the many lives destroyed was Kirni Mounika's.

The 24-year-old civil servant was the brains of her family, the only student at her school to get a government job, a doting sister to her three brothers. Her father, a successful farmer, was ready to support her to do a masters in Australia.

The Monday she took her own life, three years ago, she had hopped on her scooter to go to work as usual.

"She was all smiles," her father, Kirni Bhoopani, says.

It was only when police reviewed Mounika's phone and bank statements that they found out she had borrowed from 55 different loan apps. It started with a loan of 10,000 rupees ($120; £100) and spiralled to more than 30 times that. By the time she decided to kill herself, she had paid back more than 300,000 rupees ($3,600; £2,960).

Police say the apps harassed her with calls and vulgar messages - and had started messaging her contacts.

Mounika's room is now a makeshift shrine. Her government ID card hangs by the door, the bag her mum packed for a wedding still lying there.

The thing that upsets her father the most is that she hadn't told him what was going on. "We could have easily arranged the money," he says, wiping tears from his eyes.

He's furious at the people who did this.

As he was taking his daughter's body home from the hospital her phone rang and he answered to an obscenity-laden rant. "They told us she has to pay," he says. "We told them she was dead."

He wondered who these monsters could be.

Hari - not his real name - worked at a call centre doing recovery for one of the apps Mounika had borrowed from. The pay was good but by the time Mounika died he was already feeling uneasy about what he was part of.

Although he claims not to have made abusive calls himself - he says he was in the team that made initial polite calls - he told us managers instructed staff to abuse and threaten people.

The agents would send messages to a victim's contacts, painting the victim as a fraud and a thief.

"Everyone has a reputation to maintain in front of their family. No-one is going to spoil that reputation for the measly sum of 5,000 rupees," he says.

Once a payment had been made the system would ping "Success!" and they would move on to the next client.

When clients started threatening to take their own lives nobody took it seriously - then the suicides started happening. The staff called their boss, Parshuram Takve, to ask if they should stop.

The following day Takve appeared in the office. He was angry. "He said, 'Do what you're told and make recoveries,'" Hari says. So they did.

A few months later, Mounika was dead.

Takve was ruthless. But he wasn't running this operation alone. Sometimes, Hari says, the software interface would switch to Chinese without warning.

Takve was married to a Chinese woman called Liang Tian Tian. Together, they had set up the loan recovery business, Jiyaliang, in Pune, where Hari worked.

In December 2020, Takve and Liang were arrested by police investigating a case of harassment and released on bail a few months later.

In April 2022 they were charged with extortion, intimidation and abetment of suicide. By the end of the year they were on the run.

We couldn't track down Takve. But when we investigated the apps Jiyaliang worked for, it led us to a Chinese businessman called Li Xiang.

He has no online presence, but we found a phone number linked to one of his employees and, posing as investors, set up a meeting with Li.

With his face shoved uncomfortably close to the camera, he bragged about his businesses in India.

"We are still operating now, just not letting Indians know we are a Chinese company," he said.

Back in 2021, two of Li's companies had been raided by Indian police investigating harassment by loan apps. Their bank accounts had been frozen.

"You need to understand that because we aim to recover our investment quickly, we certainly don't pay local taxes, and the interest rates we offer violate local laws," he says.

Li told us his company has its own loan apps in India, Mexico and Colombia. He claimed to be an industry leader in risk control and debt collection services in South East Asia, and is now expanding across Latin America and Africa - with more than 3,000 staff in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India ready to provide "post-loan services".

Then he explained what his company does to recover loans.

"If you don't repay, we may add you on WhatsApp, and on the third day, we will call and message you on WhatsApp at the same time, and call your contacts. Then, on the fourth day, if your contacts don't pay, we have specific detailed procedures.

"We access his call records and capture a lot of his information. Basically, it's like he's naked in front of us."

Bhoomi Sinha could handle the harassment, the threats, the abuse and the exhaustion - but not the shame of being linked to that pornographic image.

"That message actually stripped me naked in front of the entire world," she says. "I lost my self-respect, my morality, my dignity, everything in a second."

It was shared with lawyers, architects, government officials, elderly relatives and friends of her parents - people who would never look at her in the same way again.

"It has tarnished the core of me, like if you join a broken glass, there will still be cracks on it," she says.

She has been ostracised by neighbours in the community she has lived in for 40 years.

"As of today, I have no friends. It's just me I guess," she says with a sad chuckle.

Some of her family still don't speak to her. And she constantly wonders whether the men she works with are picturing her naked.

The morning that her daughter Astha found her she was at her lowest ebb. But it was also the moment she decided to fight back. "I don't want to die like this," she decided.

She filed a police report but has heard nothing since. All she could do was change her number and get rid of her sim card - and when Astha started receiving calls her daughter destroyed hers too. She told friends, family and colleagues to ignore the calls and messages and, eventually, they all but stopped.

Bhoomi found support in her sisters, her boss and an online community of others abused by loan apps. But mostly, she found strength in her daughter.

"I must have done something good to be given a daughter like this," she says. "If she hadn't stood by me then I would have been one of the many people who've killed themselves because of loan apps."

We put the allegations in this report to Asan Loan - and also, through contacts, to Liang Tian Tian and Parshuram Takve, who are in hiding. Neither the company nor the couple responded.

When asked for comment, Li Xiang told the BBC that he and his companies comply with all local laws and regulations, have never run predatory loan apps, have ceased collaboration with Jiyaliang, the loan recovery company run by Liang Tian Tian and Parshuram Takve, and do not collect or use customers' contact information.

He said his loan recovery call centres adhere to strict standards and he denied profiting from the suffering of ordinary Indians.

Majesty Legal Services deny using customers' contacts to recover loans. They told us their agents are instructed to avoid abusive or threatening calls, and any violation of the company's policies results in dismissal.

[aisling-saoirse]

Princess Tree - Paulownia tomentosa

Today's Plant Profile is a little different, I wanted to cover an 'invasive' that fascinated me.

Before I begin I wanted to dissect my terminology on invasive, the term is often thrown at plants without considering a racialized and often problematic methodology on how we relate to these species. Invasive species are typically advantageous in the face of disturbance and quick to colonize altered areas, the monumental spread of invasives is a direct result of euro-centric land commodification, international trade and colonization. These species would not be as 'destructive' as they are without dramatic change to wildspaces/once-thoroughly-managed landscapes. You don't have to love these plants but understand that they often occupy spaces we disturbed, and that doesnt mean i want monocultures of introduced species but we should analyze what makes them thrive the way they do. I usually cover natives species to a document a dramatic loss I noticed in my lifetime however every plant has a good story behind.

To start let's identify the Princess Tree! Best known for their showy pink-lavender foxglove like flowers, perfect structural form, and massive leaves. This tree can grow up 90 feet, it's extremely fast growing, full trees can form between bricks (see 2 images below). The massive leaves are heart-shaped cataylpa-like often exceeding a foot in size (I see people use them as umbrellas in a pinch). The bark is pretty light in color, younger bark is speckled then becomes furrowed with age. The flowers are rather large, about the size of my palm (image 2), typically growing in large triangular clusters. In fall and winter, flowers typically form this large rough shell (see branch cuttings below) that splits overtime, more about that later.

The Princess Tree has a very rich folklore and introduced history behind it. According to my Chinese classmates the Princess Tree gets it's name from an old story about a beloved betrothed Princess who was transformed into this tree by a trickster, her husband-to-be was transformed into a Phoenix and it's said that when a ruler as great as she returns the Phoenix will land on its branches. I see (mostly western anecdotes) claim that this tree is planted when girls are born and the wood is used as a dowry, my classmates did not agree with this (take note these are landscape students). The wood is very sought-after in east Asia as it is sturdy and light, occasionally some american cities will sell the wood from invasive groves back to China, how fascinating!

The introduced history comes in two parts. The first the tree was initially sold as an ornamental originating from the Dutch east India company, the tree reached America by the 1830s. Due to the structure of the tree itself up into the mid century, modernist designers LOVED this tree, I've seen so many architectural drawings lovingly depicting it's big leaves. The second interesting facet about this tree's spread is that certain Chinese porcelain companies used to use the seed pods as a form of packing peanuts. Since the porcelain was primarily shipped by train in continent the tree quickly took hold around rail lines, if you look in philadelphia the oldest trees are around the railroads. The tree was able to survive in the desolate railway soils because it (like most invasive species) is able to derive nitrogen directly from the atmosphere into its roots. That's why you see these babies growing directly in a brick wall like below, crazy right?

The Princess Tree's native range is central to Western China, not much is know about it's natural habitat because literal millenia of civilization scale landscape changes. What is known is that the tree was typically found in dry-ravines and open valleys. Due to the movement of interesting botanical species the tree found found itself everywhere, even in Catherine the Great's royal garden and eventually into colonial-core markets. In America its currently invasive from Pennsylvania to Florida but can be found in almost every major city.

As said before it typically only invades disturbed locations, it's a pioneer species therefore it's advantageous in areas of full sun, poor soil, and generally super dry. The tree can honestly grow anywhere but typically only thrives in that disturbance niche, it has trouble invading older growth forests. The tree itself usually doesn't live more than 70ish years and after that a new ecology typically sprouts from the area it formerly inhabited, this tree is very good at building a fertile soil network from its nitrogen rich leaves. It must be said that this tree does rootsprout vigorously, and these sprouts can grow a shocking 15 feet in one growing season!!! Trees derived from seed usually take 3 years to reach that size (see my alleyway below)...for basically any oak it would take like 10 years to maybe reach that.

As for ethnobotanical usage, this is invasive so I'm going to recommend you just use this tree to death honestly. The massive leaves are very rich in nitrogen and make great compost. Leaves also make an umbrella in a pinch. The tree is super vigorous and a rapid grower so you can imagine it makes great coppice (and for my silvoculturists: leaves makes good animal fodder). The flowers have a lovely scent and look like foxglove without the poison (and they last a while). The wood is quite light lovely and workable, it reminds me of a lighter colored black locust. Apparently this tree also utlizes C⁴ photosynthesis which utilizing a different compound of carbon to derive energy, that's kind of interesting. It has a lot of great qualities honestly, as far as invasives go I really like this tree.

If you want to plant this tree...don't <3...there's enough, go to any city to experience it. In Eastern America some good alternatives are northern catalypa or black locust. If any of my Chinese followers know the full Princess story I would love to hear about it! As always happy hunting!