In a coordinated effort to combat the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have agreed to work closely to ensure the latest and most reliable information and tailored guidance reaches the global business community.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global health and societal emergency that requires effective immediate action by governments, individuals and businesses. All businesses have a key role to play in minimising the likelihood of transmission and impact on society. Early, bold and effective action will reduce short- term risks to employees and long-term costs to businesses and the economy.
To aid this collective effort, ICC will regularly send updated advice to its network of over 45 million businesses so that businesses everywhere can take informed and effective action to protect their workers, customers and local communities and contribute to the production and distribution of essential supplies.
ICC will also contribute to enhancing information flows on the coronavirus outbreak by surveying its global private sector network to map the global business response. This will both encourage businesses to adopt appropriate precautionary approaches and generate new data and insights to support national and international government efforts.
As an immediate priority, businesses should be developing or updating, readying or implementing business continuity plans. Business continuity plans should aim to reduce transmission, including by: promoting understanding of the disease, its symptoms and appropriate behavior among employees; setting up a reporting system for any cases and contacts; preparing essentials; limiting travel and physical connectivity; and planning for measures such as teleworking when necessary.
Calls to Action
As the pandemic evolves, ICC Secretary General John W.H Denton AO and WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus will continue to coordinate their efforts.
Essential information on the COVID-19 pandemic can be found on the WHO’s dedicated site.
.tmb-1200v.jpg?Culture=en&sfvrsn=84087804_6 "ICC-WHO Joint Statement: An unprecedented private sector call to action to tackle COVID-19 2")
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https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/16-03-2020-icc-who-joint-statement-an-unprecedented-private-sector-call-to-action-to-tackle-covid-19
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This schedule indicates when year-end estimates are expected to post to the site.
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https://investornews.vanguard/mark-your-calendar-for-year-end-fund-distributions-3/
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Businesses are forever trying to improve their SEO ranking. In order to ensure that you continually appear on the first page of Google, Bing and Yahoo, there are honest and upfront practices you can use in order to ensure that your website ranks high on search engines and to avoid being penalized for underhanded optimization practices.
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http://www.associationofmarketing.org/articles/view.php?article_id=14685
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While you are writing a book or for a specific magazine or article site, you must be using flowery language using striking words, long sentences, phrases or idioms. In short, you need all those elements that will make the text more catchy and will hook the readers! However, that is not the case in technical writing, i.e. when you are writing for websites that are services or products based. Built using advanced web development frameworks, they need to be produced with clean and simple content that is conversational to the buyers. Specifically, the web content must be representative of the services and the company. But, why called technical writing? A good content on the websites plays a great part in SEO and content marketing. It helps in getting the backlinks and scale up in position of the websites in the search engines to get more visitors.
So, the next time you are preparing content for a high-end website or online application for your business, keep these tips in mind.
#1 Know your target audience
The first thing you need clear-off in your head is the target audience of your site. Be it a group of businessmen or corporate services clients, they are all layman! So, keep your vocabulary outright simple. Don’t use more of technical words and flowery English to make the content snappy. Instead, keep it outright simple, such that even a kid can understand what you provide from your site.
#2 Show but don’t dictate
Do not dictate or describe everything about your products or services to the visitors in text. Let them discover that gradually as they proceed to different pages. It makes the visitors curious and persuades them to visit more pages of your site in a session. Thus, show them what you provide, but don’t spell it.
#3 Use simple, short sentences and active voice
There is actually no point in over-elaborating technical stuff in the websites. Most visitors are basically skimmers and like to wrap up things quickly. So, try using shorter and simple sentences. And, also use active voice as it’s like you are directly interacting with them.
#4 Be assertive
Do not assume that everyone knows about your company, products or services. They don’t. But, they are coming to your site to know about it. So, write with absolute authority and command.
#5 Avoid the jargon
Your website is for the layman. Not only for the technically skilled ones! Be sure you are putting information that is also easily understandable by the non-specialists. Even if you need to use complex, technical or niche terms, explain them or hyperlink them to other pages that will give their basic information.
#6 Use text to compliment the images
While you will be putting images at every relevant point or pages on the website, create content that will perfectly compliment them. This will enhance the visuals of the site and make it more captivating for the readers.
These explain web development just do not end with creating a great website or application. But, developers need to have some online content marketing ideas too. They have to know well what exactly can fetch a good amount of visitors to a website, besides making it design-wise attractive.
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Source by Rob Stephen
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Are you looking to boost your English language teaching or learning skills to yet ever higher levels? Would you like to stimulate more interest in your language classes or break out of a slump or plateau? Combine the use of a variety of language learning techniques with continually developing technology to spur your successes. Here are some useful ideas and web sites to get you started.
BLOGS
A Web Log or Blog, is not unlike a dairy you keep online. You can write instructions, an essay or post any type of information you want. Graphics and images can be included to illustrate the written material. Sound and audio-visual files can also be placed into a blog for added impact. A teacher can post a reading or assignment where students can comment right online. No papers, no clutter and you can view it almost any time. Blogs are becoming easier to use and access and many sites allow you to set one up for free.
ONLINE VIDEO / AUDIO
Most professionals have an e-mail address or two. Your e-mail can now become a communicative tool between you and the learners. E-mail can now also include the use of images and sound or audio-visual clips, as well as the message text. Learners can send in assignments as attachments or pasted into the body of the e-mail. They can ask questions and receive timely feedback without waiting for the next class session. Teachers can send out instructions, updates or other information to learners individually, or as a group also without having to wait for the next scheduled class session.
No computer? No problem. In many parts of the world e-cafes are so cheap they’re actually a viable alternative that students can easily afford. Whole “communities” of young learners are based on hangouts at e-cafes in some cultures. Talk to your students about it. You might be surprised.
USE OF ONLINE RESOURCES for TEACHING / LEARNING
The use of online games, EFL practice sites student and teacher forums, communities and activities has exploded in recent months in many parts of the world. Virtual communities and online reference libraries now enable learners to problem-solve, research a paper or to more quickly complete assignments that formerly would have taken disproportionately large amounts of time to complete. For example, a few sites worth mentioning include:
o http://www.books.google.com/
A web site which offers free access to books that can be read on-screen
This is a site which has a lengthy listing of virtual libraries in almost any genre and connects more than 900 mostly Spanish language libraries
This site interconnects an advanced academic network of Latin American libraries
This site allows you access and read a large number of its collected works online and contains exposition pages
o The official Project Gutenburg web site contains an extensive listing of literary works in English which have entered the Public Domain. It’s online at: [http://promo.net/pg/]
Try some of these useful ideas and web sites to get you started in combining the use of a variety of language learning techniques with continually developing technology to explode your English language teaching and learning successes. If you need to know more about using these or other new technologies to boost student interest and motivation making your English language teaching more effective, feel free to e-mail me at the address below with questions or comments.
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Source by Larry M. Lynch
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The last time you called your doctor’s office, how long did you have to wait for a reply? How long do you usually have to wait to get an appointment or wait for a prescription to be called in? When you get to the office, how long do you spend in the waiting room and how much time does the doctor spend with you?
Did you get all your questions answered? How many seconds do you have in the beginning of your appointment to explain your symptoms before you are interrupted? Do the nurses and doctors seem to be more interested in their computers or their charts than they are to you?
If your experiences are like most people, your answers to these questions are not very flattering to the medical profession and to the health care system in general. Most doctors don’t really want their practices to be like this, but they don’t have much choice. They have to have a high volume of patients in order to make ends meet financially. The high volume makes the clinic a very busy place and most patients don’t feel like they get much attention.
In 1996 in Seattle, a doctor named Howard Moran thought there should be a better way to do this. He pioneered the concept of having a lower volume practice with highly attentive medical care provided as a service for patients in return for a retainer fee, much like many attorneys or accountants use. This fee may be in addition to, or in lieu of, the regular office fees that are billed to insurance companies. This concept allows the practice to remain financially solvent while providing better, more attentive medical service to its low volume of patients (usually keeping the patient count down to about one tenth of the number in a typical traditional primary care practice).
Unfortunately, health insurance companies currently don’t pay for this type of service, so that means the patients have to pay this out of pocket, but if the service is good, it may be worth it. Patients who join these practices are encouraged to keep their usual insurance which they will need for visits to other specialists, laboratory testing, radiological testing and/or hospital services if needed.
Many concierge practices offer same or next day appointments, no long waits for appointments or prescription refills, direct access to your personal physician day or night, house calls if necessary, continuing care if hospitalized, complete physical examinations, audiometry screening, cardiovascular and cancer risk screening, more attention to preventive care, unrushed appointments, all questions answered, family meetings if needed, coordination of care with specialists, provision of personal health records on CDs or flash drives, etc., etc.
Depending on the type and number of services that are provided, the flat retainer fee can vary widely from one area to the next ranging from $100 to $20,000/ year, most probably averaging around $1500-3000/year. There were only a few hundred of these physicians a few years ago, but there are over 5000 of them now all over the country. Many of them, but not all, are listed at the main website for the American Academy of Private Physicians – http://www.aapp.org/. Patients may be able to find a concierge physician in their area on this site.
There has been some controversy surrounding some of these practices because some authorities feel the growth of concierge medicine will lead to a 2-tiered medical system in this country – one for the wealthy and one for the not-so-wealthy. Also, with the current shortage of primary care physicians (PCPs), with increasing numbers of concierge practices, the number of PCPs available for traditional offices will be even smaller, and access to care for patients served by those practices will suffer. On the other hand, more medical students may become interested in primary care if opportunities in concierge medicine are available to them when they finish their residencies.
Some of these practices have come under fire from insurance companies who say that concierge physicians are basically providing an insurance plan for their patients without having an insurance license to do so. The practices must therefore be legally and financially structured in such a way that avoids this criticism.
Overall, the concept of concierge medicine provides a good alternative to the currently unsatisfying traditional model of medical practice. The fee may seem high to some, but in most instances, it probably isn’t much higher than the cost of the local cable or telephone bill, or about the same as what a family would spend eating out at a restaurant once a week.
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Source by Greg Warth, M.D.
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