If you are tired of working for someone else then you should consider starting your own business. The biggest obstacle that you will face is coming up with work at home ideas that make sense for your needs and budget. If cost is a major concern for you then operating a service based business may be the best path. Some low cost services could be dog walking, with consumers spending hundreds of dollars to buy a dog they will do just about anything to ensure the animal is happy and healthy. To advertise these services you can post information about your services on a variety of different classified websites. It might be a smart move to also create a website that belongs solely to your business. This will help establish your brand as the premiere choice for dog walking services while at the same time enhancing your professionalism. This is just one example of the many types of home based businesses that are available to you, just ensure you have passion for it. When passion is present the chances of you succeeding will grow exponentially.
MANILA (Reuters) - Global miner Xstrata Plc's $5.9 billion Tampakan mine in the Philippines has been granted an environmental compliance certificate by the government, the company said on Tuesday, removing one of the hurdles delaying work on Southeast Asia's biggest copper-gold prospect.
The Tampakan project, the Philippines' single largest foreign direct investment and seen as a bellwether for overseas investors, has been held up by a 2010 ban on open-pit mining imposed by the provincial government of South Cotabato because of its harmful effects on the environment.
Governor Arthur Pingoy told Reuters there were no plans to revoke the ban, but the central government's environmental compliance certificate, or ECC, puts Xstrata a step closer to actual construction of the project if the ban is at all lifted.
The company, however, still needs at least three more local permits before construction work can begin.
"We received an official notification that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has signed the ECC for our Tampakan mine project," Sagittarius Mines Inc, the local unit of Xstrata, said in a statement.
The Tampakan mine, predicted to have a 17-year lifespan, is expected to contain 15 million metric tons (16.5 million tons) of copper and 17.6 million ounces of gold. Australian miner Indophil Resources N.L. has a 37.5 percent interest in the project.
BAN STAYS
The ban by the South Cotabato government on open-pit mining runs counter to the national mining law, which does not restrict exploration methods.
The Philippines is estimated to sit on mineral deposits worth $850 billion and the government is keen to extract more revenues from the mining industry.
But a 2010 moratorium on new mining projects, and a strong anti-mining lobby led by the influential Catholic Church, some local government officials and environmentalists have hampered several multibillion-dollar projects.
"We have this ordinance banning open-pit mining that we consider until now as legal. Until this is declared illegal, I have to do my job to implement it," South Cotabato Governor Pingoy said by telephone.
A review of the ban is unlikely while Pingoy remains in office. Local elections are to be held in May in the Philippines, however, and that may usher in a more mining-friendly council.
REGULATORY DELAYS
Sagittarius has pushed back the target date to start production at the Tampakan mine in South Cotabato by three years to 2019 as it struggles to win regulatory approvals.
The project delay means actual mining investments between 2012 and 2016 will be short of a previous government forecast of $12 billion for the period.
Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Ramon Paje said the government had included certain conditions in the ECC granted to Sagittarius "in order to protect and mitigate possible adverse impacts of the project on the community health, welfare and the environment."
Sagittarius said it was reviewing the conditions.
Sagittarius had filed for an ECC in 2010, shortly before the local council of South Cotabato banned open-pit mining -- the extraction method the company plans to use.
Paje had previously said an ECC for the project cannot be issued while the ban was in place. But a mining council, overseen by President Benigno Aquino's office, ordered the environment department to grant Sagittarius the ECC if it had complied with all requirements.
(Reporting by Erik dela Cruz; Editing by Rosemarie Francisco and Miral Fahmy)
The sister of one of the students who attended President Obama's speech on gun violence Friday was shot and killed while walking with a group of friends. Police say the gunfire was meant for someone else in the group. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
By Alexandria Fisher and Summer Nettles, NBCChicago.com
Police are questioning two men in the murder of an 18-year-old Chicago woman who was killed Friday in a north suburb, officials said Sunday.
Janay McFarlane was shot and killed while leaving a store in North Chicago, hours after her younger sister attended President Barack Obama?s speech on Friday addressing gun violence in Chicago.
McFarlane's mother, Angela Blakely, said McFarlane was not the intended target and that the bullet was intended for a friend she was with. Blakely said McFarlane had asked two male friends to go with her to the store because she didn't feel safe walking alone.
Read more at NBCChicago.com
Two men followed McFarlane and her friends out of the store, police said, and one of them fired nine rounds, missing his target and hitting McFarlane in the head.
McFarlane's family said she talked a lot about the death of another slain teen, Hadiya Pendleton, in the days before her sister attended Obama?s Chicago speech at Hyde Park Academy High School.
McFarlane?s younger sister, 14-year-old Destini Warren, who attended the speech, recalled McFarlane saying she was, ?excited for [Destini]? to see the president.
Warren said the president?s speech ?really connected to what was going on? and she ?didn?t expect that to happen.?
Warren also did not expect the speech to relate to her so personally.
"We could go to each other for everything," she said. "We were more of best friends than we were sisters."
Blakely said McFarlane was "her little buddy."
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"Me and Janay were so close," she said. "It was always 'mommy go with me' or 'mommy let's do this.'"
McFarlane was a senior at the World Changers Leadership Academy and was scheduled to graduate in June. She had plans to go to culinary school.
Blakely said she and McFarlane were supposed to go prom dress shopping later this week.
McFarlane is survived by her sister, mother and 3-month-old son, Jayden.
The BBC's Daniel Sandford says people described a ball of fire in the sky
A meteor crashing in Russia's Ural mountains has injured at least 950 people, as the shockwave blew out windows and rocked buildings.
Most of those hurt, in the Chelyabinsk region where the meteor fell, suffered cuts and bruises but at least 46 remain in hospital.
A fireball streaked through the clear morning sky, followed by loud bangs.
President Vladimir Putin said he thanked God no big fragments had fallen in populated areas.
A large meteor fragment landed in a lake near Chebarkul, a town in Chelyabinsk region.
The meteor's dramatic passing was witnessed in Yekaterinburg, 200km (125 miles) to the north, and in Kazakhstan, to the south.
Continue reading the main story
?Start Quote
A huge line of smoke, like you get from a plane but many times bigger?
End QuoteSergei SerskovChelyabinsk resident
"It was quite extraordinary," Chelyabinsk resident Polina Zolotarevskaya told BBC News. "We saw a very bright light and then there was a kind of a track, white and yellow in the sky."
"The explosion was so strong that some windows in our building and in the buildings that are across the road and in the city in general, the windows broke."
Officials say a large meteor partially burned up in the lower atmosphere, resulting in fragments falling earthwards.
Thousands of rescue workers have been dispatched to the area to provide help to the injured, the emergencies ministry said.
The Chelyabinsk region, about 1,500km (930 miles) east of Moscow, is home to many factories, a nuclear power plant and the Mayak atomic waste storage and treatment centre.
Continue reading the main story
Asteroids, meteors and meteorites
Asteroids are small bodies that orbit the Sun as the Earth does
Larger asteroids are called planetoids or minor planets, smaller ones often called meteoroids
Once any of these enters our planet's atmosphere, it becomes a meteor
Many meteors break into pieces or burn up entirely as they speed through the atmosphere
Once meteors or fragments actually impact the surface, they become meteorites
One Russian politician said the event was not a meteor shower but a US weapons test, Russia's Interfax news agency reported.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, was quoted as saying: "Meteors are falling. Those are not meteors, it is Americans testing their new weapon."
'Blinding'
Chelyabinsk's health department said 985 people had sought medical treatment, including 204 children, Interfax reported. Two people in the town of Kopeysk were in a serious condition, it added.
The governor of Chelyabinsk region, Mikhail Yurevich, was quoted elsewhere as saying 950 people had been hurt, two seriously.
Mr Putin promised "immediate" aid for people affected, saying kindergartens and schools had been damaged, and work disrupted at industrial enterprises.
Many children were at lessons when the meteor fell at around 09:20 (03:20 GMT).
Video posted online showed frightened, screaming youngsters at one Chelyabinsk school, where corridors were littered with broken glass.
Footage shows an icy lake near Chebarkul, where police say part of the meteor landed
Chelyabinsk resident Sergei Serskov told BBC News the city had felt like a "war zone" for 20 to 30 minutes.
"I was in the office when suddenly I saw a really bright flash in the window in front of me," he said.
"Then I smelt fumes. I looked out the window and saw a huge line of smoke, like you get from a plane but many times bigger."
"A few minutes later the window suddenly came open and there was a huge explosion, followed by lots of little explosions."
In Yekaterinburg, 36-year-old resident Viktor Prokofiev was driving to work when he witnessed the event.
"It was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day," he was quoted by Reuters as saying.
"I felt like I was blinded by headlights."
Debris also reportedly fell on the west Siberian region of Tyumen.
Governor Yurevich reported that the meteor had landed in a lake 1km outside Chebarkul, which has a population of 46,000.
A Russian army spokesman said a crater 6m (20ft) wide had been found on the shore of the lake.
Asteroid coincidence
The Russian Academy of Sciences estimates that the meteor weighed about 10 tonnes and entered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of at least 54,000 km/h (33,000mph).
It would have shattered about 30-50km (18-32 miles) above ground, with most of the meteor burning up.
Scientists have played down suggestions that there is any link between the event in the Urals and 2012 DA14, an asteroid expected to race past the Earth on Friday at a distance of just 27,700km (17,200 miles) - the closest ever predicted for an object of that size.
Prof Alan Fitzsimmons, of the Astrophysics Research Centre at Queen's University Belfast, said there was "almost definitely" no connection.
"One reason is that 2012 DA14 is approaching Earth from the south, and this object hit in the northern hemisphere," he told BBC News.
"This is literally a cosmic coincidence, although a spectacular one."
Such meteor strikes are rare in Russia but one is thought to have devastated an area of more than 2,000 sq km (1,250m) in Siberia in 1908.
Providence 76, South Florida 66: Kadeem Batts poured in 24 points to lead four players in double figures as the Friars overcame a rough first half to defeat the host Bulls.LaDontae Henton added 19 points and grabbed a team-high seven rebounds for Providence (13-11, 5-7 Big East), which missed 14 of its first 22 shots and trailed 36-25 at halftime. The Friars rolled after the break, however, scoring the second half's first 17 points as part of a 23-2 run.Victor Rudd scored 26 points and pulled down 12 rebounds to lead South Florida (10-14, 1-11), which lost its seventh straight contest. The Bulls drained 16 of their 29 first-half shots but went ice cold after halftime, connecting on 9-of-31 in the second half as Providence pulled away.Big East leading scorer Bryce Cotton was not a factor in the first half with five points on 1-of-6 shooting before finishing with 13. Vincent Council contributed 11 points and dished out eight assists to lead the Friars in that category. Anthony Collins posted 12 points and 10 assists for South Florida, while Toarlyn Fitzpatrick finished with 14 points.GAME NOTEBOOK: Providence snapped a tie in the series, earning its seventh win in 13 games against the Bulls. ... South Florida coughed the ball up 11 times compared to only six turnovers for the Friars. ... Cotton failed to top 20 points after besting that mark in six of the previous nine.
Internal GameStop research suggests that a significant proportion of the retailer?s most active customers would not buy a console that blocks pre-owned games.
Sony has filed for a patent on a piece of technology designed to block second-hand game sales, while Microsoft has chosen not to deny recent rumours that the next Xbox will restrict owners from playing used titles.
And speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference this week, GameStop chief financial officer Rob Lloyd warned the platform holders that any such moves to block used games would be likely to alienate potential buyers. "Consumers want the ability to play pre-owned games; they want portability in their games; they want to play physical games. And to not have those things would be a substantial reason for them to not purchase a new console,? he said, according to GameSpot.
Going on to cite in-house research, thought to be surveys of the 21 million US members of GameStop?s PowerUp Rewards loyalty program, Lloyd added: "I think it's approximately 60 per cent of the customers who have said they wouldn't buy a new console if it didn't play pre-owned games."
On the benefits and drawbacks of the used games market to the various parties it impacts, Lloyd noted: "There's two constituencies that the publishers and the console-makers? have to consider. One is the retailer like GameStop that is moving their product through the chain. The second are the development firms that actually develop the games. Developers have historically not liked the pre-owned game business because they don't participate in the revenue streams.
"The publishers really get caught in the middle. [The publisher] understands that, but also understands the importance of the pre-owned game business to the overcall ecosystem of the video game business. And so, I think that as the console makers balance those needs, they consider, 'Is this an appropriate thing to do? Would we make more money by doing this in the future?' I think what customers have told them at this point is they view it as a very unfriendly thing to do."
In a recent GR Editorial we argued that gamer culture will suffer if next-gen consoles block used games.
