A lot of people find that once they get started with learning about network marketing strategies they feel more positive in their network marketing goals. If you are feeling a little flustered with network marketing or if you just want some more insight on ways to improve in network marketing, then read this article and take these tips into consideration.
A great tip for successful network marketing is to join online forums and participate. These network marketing forums are great places to get tips on network marketing for free. Do an internet search and find a forum that you enjoy and spend a little time there each day picking up tips from others in the business.
Commit to your business fully and devote as much time into it as possible. This is especially true in the beginning and is what separates the ones who will be making enormous amounts of money from those who fail after just a few months. If you don?t invest yourself into this endeavor it won?t give you the result you want from it.
In the world of network marketing, your name is your brand, so establish a domain site based on your name (i.e. johndoe.com). Your primary page should include a good picture ?head shot only? and some biographical information. This page should showcase your primary blog, with your own high quality content, to explain your business line and services. When someone searches the internet for your name, this is the page you want them to see. Over time, your business lines may change, but this domain site, with your personal blog, remains the constant through which your clients and contacts can stay in touch. If you need help establishing your own domain site, ?Go-Daddy.com? has some excellent resources to get you started.
When you?ve completed your initial website, ask someone you know who knows nothing about network marketing to look at it. Have them use a critical eye when reviewing everything, and then find out if they would sign up through you if the website is all they had known about you.
Include word pictures in your seminars or even on the phone with a lead to show them exactly what it is you?re offering them. Most people think in pictures anyway so you?ll be directly targeting their brain with your sales pitch. This is an extremely effective way to convert them from leads to recruits.
Make the lead you?re talking to about your network marketing business value your time. Ensure that you don?t give them too much of your time when you talk to them on the phone or in person. Even if they want to sign up, ask them to meet you again when you can have the paperwork ready. If you show you?re not going to waste their time, they will respect what you say.
Take advantage of training provided and any workshops that are offered. Most business owners do not take advantage of these things, but they are often presented to you when you join up with a network marketing business opportunity. Make sure you take part in these, and stay focused on your success.
Make use of social media to build your network. Reach out and make contact with others on these sites by answering questions in a professional and scholarly manner. This builds your reputation as a trustworthy advisor, and makes people more likely to believe in you when it comes time to pitch your business to them.
You need to become a leader to be successful in network marketing. The reason for this is simple: people are attracted to leaders. Customers will question someone with leadership skills less. They show such confidence, that many people just assume they know what they are doing, and have less doubt.
Furthermore, businesses use different strategies to run their company. One of these strategies, known as network marketing, links sellers to the sellers they recruit. The tips in this article should help you to learn how to use network marketing for your business model and adapt it to your sales force.
Longaberger is a great business where you can work from home.
TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft, which has already made an interesting $300 million investment in Nook, wants to double down and buy the whole darn thing. Specifically, Microsoft wants to pay $1 billion to acquire the digital assets of Nook Media LLC?that would be the separate Nook company that spun off from Barnes & Noble last year. Microsoft wants its own Kindle (or iBooks) store.
TechCrunch explains the internal documents that show that Microsoft is interested in the e-reader ecosystem that is not named Kindle (which continues Redmond's trend of being the search engine not named Google, the phone not named iPhone or Android, etc.):
In this plan, Microsoft would redeem preferred units in Nook Media, which also includes a college textbook division, leaving it with the digital operation ? e-books, as well as Nook e-readers and tablets.
So Nooks will continue to exist. But not all of them. The internal documents show that Nook is planning to discontinue the Android-based tablet business by the end of its 2014 fiscal year and push Nook content to a 'third party partner'. I guess that 'third party partner' would have been Microsoft? Or other Android tablets too? Who knows. The internal documents do not show Nook planning to discontinue the Nook e-readers, however. [TechCrunch]
Hubble finds dead stars 'polluted' with planetary debrisPublic release date: 9-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Nicky Guttridge nguttrid@partner.eso.org 49-893-200-6855 ESA/Hubble Information Centre
The stars, known as white dwarfs small, dim remnants of stars once like the Sun reside 150 light-years away in the Hyades star cluster, in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull). The cluster is relatively young, at only 625 million years old.
Astronomers believe that all stars formed in clusters. However, searches for planets in these clusters have not been fruitful of the roughly 800 exoplanets known, only four are known to orbit stars in clusters. This scarcity may be due to the nature of the cluster stars, which are young and active, producing stellar flares and other outbursts that make it difficult to study them in detail.
A new study led by Jay Farihi of the University of Cambridge, UK, instead observed "retired" cluster stars to hunt for signs of planet formation [1].
Hubble's spectroscopic observations identified silicon in the atmospheres of two white dwarfs, a major ingredient of the rocky material that forms Earth and other terrestrial planets in the Solar System. This silicon may have come from asteroids that were shredded by the white dwarfs' gravity when they veered too close to the stars. The rocky debris likely formed a ring around the dead stars, which then funnelled the material inwards.
The debris detected whirling around the white dwarfs suggests that terrestrial planets formed when these stars were born. After the stars collapsed to form white dwarfs, surviving gas giant planets may have gravitationally nudged members of any leftover asteroid belts into star-grazing orbits [2].
"We have identified chemical evidence for the building blocks of rocky planets," says Farihi. "When these stars were born, they built planets, and there's a good chance that they currently retain some of them. The signs of rocky debris we are seeing are evidence of this it is at least as rocky as the most primitive terrestrial bodies in our Solar System."
Besides finding silicon in the Hyades stars' atmospheres, Hubble also detected low levels of carbon. This is another sign of the rocky nature of the debris, as astronomers know that carbon levels should be very low in rocky, Earth-like material. Finding its faint chemical signature required Hubble's powerful Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), as carbon's fingerprints can be detected only in ultraviolet light, which cannot be observed from ground-based telescopes.
"The one thing the white dwarf pollution technique gives us that we won't get with any other planet detection technique is the chemistry of solid planets," Farihi says. "Based on the silicon-to-carbon ratio in our study, for example, we can actually say that this material is basically Earth-like."
This new study suggests that asteroids less than 160 kilometres across [3] were gravitationally torn apart by the white dwarfs' strong tidal forces, before eventually falling onto the dead stars [4].
The team plans to analyse more white dwarfs using the same technique to identify not only the rocks' composition, but also their parent bodies. "The beauty of this technique is that whatever the Universe is doing, we'll be able to measure it," Farihi said. "We have been using the Solar System as a kind of map, but we don't know what the rest of the Universe does. Hopefully with Hubble and its powerful ultraviolet-light spectrograph COS, and with the upcoming ground-based 30- and 40-metre telescopes, we'll be able to tell more of the story."
###
Notes
1] The two "polluted" Hyades white dwarfs are part of a search of planetary debris around more than 100 white dwarfs, led by Boris Gnsicke of the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. Using computer models of white dwarf atmospheres, Detlev Koester from the University of Kiel in Germany is determining the abundances of various elements that can be traced to planets in the COS data.
[2] Seeing evidence of asteroids points to the possibility of Earth-sized planets in the same system. Asteroids are the building blocks of major planets. Planet-forming processes are inefficient, and spawn many times more small bodies than large bodies but once rocky embryos the size of asteroids are built, planets are sure to follow.
[3] The team estimated the size of the infalling asteroids by measuring the amount of dust being gobbled up by the stars about 10 million grams per second, equal to the flow rate of a small river. They then compared that data with measurements of material falling onto other white dwarfs.
[4] The Hyades study offers insight into what will happen in the Solar System when the Sun burns out, five billion years from now.
Notes for editors
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.
[1] The international team of astronomers in this study consists of J. Farihi (University of Cambridge, UK; STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow), B. T. Gnsicke (University of Warwick, UK), D. Koester (University of Kiel, Germany).
[2] The new study is appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
More information
Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI and G. Bacon (STScI)
Links
Contacts
Jay Farihi
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
Tel: +44 (0)12 2333 0896
Email: jfarihi@ast.cam.ac.uk
Robert Massey
Royal Astronomical Society
London, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7734 3307
Cell: +44 (0)794 124 8035
Email: rm@ras.org.uk
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Hubble finds dead stars 'polluted' with planetary debrisPublic release date: 9-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Nicky Guttridge nguttrid@partner.eso.org 49-893-200-6855 ESA/Hubble Information Centre
The stars, known as white dwarfs small, dim remnants of stars once like the Sun reside 150 light-years away in the Hyades star cluster, in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull). The cluster is relatively young, at only 625 million years old.
Astronomers believe that all stars formed in clusters. However, searches for planets in these clusters have not been fruitful of the roughly 800 exoplanets known, only four are known to orbit stars in clusters. This scarcity may be due to the nature of the cluster stars, which are young and active, producing stellar flares and other outbursts that make it difficult to study them in detail.
A new study led by Jay Farihi of the University of Cambridge, UK, instead observed "retired" cluster stars to hunt for signs of planet formation [1].
Hubble's spectroscopic observations identified silicon in the atmospheres of two white dwarfs, a major ingredient of the rocky material that forms Earth and other terrestrial planets in the Solar System. This silicon may have come from asteroids that were shredded by the white dwarfs' gravity when they veered too close to the stars. The rocky debris likely formed a ring around the dead stars, which then funnelled the material inwards.
The debris detected whirling around the white dwarfs suggests that terrestrial planets formed when these stars were born. After the stars collapsed to form white dwarfs, surviving gas giant planets may have gravitationally nudged members of any leftover asteroid belts into star-grazing orbits [2].
"We have identified chemical evidence for the building blocks of rocky planets," says Farihi. "When these stars were born, they built planets, and there's a good chance that they currently retain some of them. The signs of rocky debris we are seeing are evidence of this it is at least as rocky as the most primitive terrestrial bodies in our Solar System."
Besides finding silicon in the Hyades stars' atmospheres, Hubble also detected low levels of carbon. This is another sign of the rocky nature of the debris, as astronomers know that carbon levels should be very low in rocky, Earth-like material. Finding its faint chemical signature required Hubble's powerful Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), as carbon's fingerprints can be detected only in ultraviolet light, which cannot be observed from ground-based telescopes.
"The one thing the white dwarf pollution technique gives us that we won't get with any other planet detection technique is the chemistry of solid planets," Farihi says. "Based on the silicon-to-carbon ratio in our study, for example, we can actually say that this material is basically Earth-like."
This new study suggests that asteroids less than 160 kilometres across [3] were gravitationally torn apart by the white dwarfs' strong tidal forces, before eventually falling onto the dead stars [4].
The team plans to analyse more white dwarfs using the same technique to identify not only the rocks' composition, but also their parent bodies. "The beauty of this technique is that whatever the Universe is doing, we'll be able to measure it," Farihi said. "We have been using the Solar System as a kind of map, but we don't know what the rest of the Universe does. Hopefully with Hubble and its powerful ultraviolet-light spectrograph COS, and with the upcoming ground-based 30- and 40-metre telescopes, we'll be able to tell more of the story."
###
Notes
1] The two "polluted" Hyades white dwarfs are part of a search of planetary debris around more than 100 white dwarfs, led by Boris Gnsicke of the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. Using computer models of white dwarf atmospheres, Detlev Koester from the University of Kiel in Germany is determining the abundances of various elements that can be traced to planets in the COS data.
[2] Seeing evidence of asteroids points to the possibility of Earth-sized planets in the same system. Asteroids are the building blocks of major planets. Planet-forming processes are inefficient, and spawn many times more small bodies than large bodies but once rocky embryos the size of asteroids are built, planets are sure to follow.
[3] The team estimated the size of the infalling asteroids by measuring the amount of dust being gobbled up by the stars about 10 million grams per second, equal to the flow rate of a small river. They then compared that data with measurements of material falling onto other white dwarfs.
[4] The Hyades study offers insight into what will happen in the Solar System when the Sun burns out, five billion years from now.
Notes for editors
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.
[1] The international team of astronomers in this study consists of J. Farihi (University of Cambridge, UK; STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow), B. T. Gnsicke (University of Warwick, UK), D. Koester (University of Kiel, Germany).
[2] The new study is appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
More information
Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI and G. Bacon (STScI)
Links
Contacts
Jay Farihi
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
Tel: +44 (0)12 2333 0896
Email: jfarihi@ast.cam.ac.uk
Robert Massey
Royal Astronomical Society
London, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7734 3307
Cell: +44 (0)794 124 8035
Email: rm@ras.org.uk
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Obama says does not foresee sending U.S. troops to Syria
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday he does not foresee a scenario in which he would send U.S. ground troops to Syria and outlined a deliberate approach to determining whether the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in a 2-year civil war. Obama insisted that the United States has not ruled out any options in dealing with Syria as the United States investigates whether the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons.
Israel has conducted airstrike in Syria: U.S. official
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israel has conducted an airstrike in Syria, apparently targeting a building, a U.S. official said on Friday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to elaborate. CNN quoted two unnamed U.S. officials as saying Israel most likely conducted the strike "in the Thursday-Friday time frame" and that Israel's warplanes did not enter Syrian airspace.
Israel's Netanyahu, Palestine's Abbas head to China
BEIJING (Reuters) - China will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas next week for separate bilateral talks as it tries to shore up its role in a region where its diplomatic influence is limited. Netanyahu's visit -- the first trip by a top Israeli leader to China since former prime minister Ehud Olmert visited in 2007 -- will be focused on trade, though experts have also said he is likely to discuss Iran's nuclear program with China.
In Malaysia, online election battles take a nasty turn
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Ahead of Malaysia's elections on Sunday, independent online media say they are being targeted in Internet attacks which filter content and throttle access to websites, threatening to deprive voters of their main source of independent reporting. Independent online news sites have emerged in recent years to challenge the dominance of mostly government-linked traditional media. The government denies any attempts to hobble access to the Internet in the run-up to a close-fought election.
Iran diplomat's arrest due to "misunderstanding:" minister
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's foreign minister said he believed the detention of a former diplomat linked to the country's reformists was caused by a "misunderstanding" and defended the man's record, Iranian media reported. Bagher Asadi, who was a senior diplomat at Iran's U.N. mission in New York before becoming a director at the secretariat of the D8 group of developing nations in Istanbul, was arrested mid-March in the Iranian capital, sources told Reuters this week.
Support for Najib falls ahead of election: poll
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Support for Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak fell among all the country's main racial groups in an opinion poll, signaling the tough fight he faces in an election in the Southeast Asian country on Sunday. The survey, conducted between April 28 and May 2 among 1,600 voters, showed 42 percent of respondents believed the opposition Peoples' Pact of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim should be given a chance to govern. That was narrowly ahead of the 41 percent of respondents who said that only Najib's ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition could govern the country.
Obama says U.S. watching 'crackdowns' on Venezuela opposition
(Reuters) - The United States is watching "crackdowns on the opposition" in Venezuela, President Barack Obama said in a television interview aired on Friday when asked if he considered newly elected Nicolas Maduro to be the country's legitimate president. Maduro, elected in April by a narrow margin, earlier this year accused the United States of seeking to kill opposition leader Henrique Capriles to stir chaos and spark a coup. Maduro's mentor and predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, was one of the world's most vocal critics of the United States.
American journalist held in Syria believed to be in detention center
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The family and employer of James Foley, a U.S. journalist missing in Syria since November, say they now believe he is being held by the Syrian government in a detention center near the capital, Damascus. That conclusion follows a five-month investigation by Foley's family and his employer, GlobalPost, and was announced on Friday in an article posted on the news organization's website.
Venezuela's Maduro says Colombia's Uribe plotting to kill him
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Friday said Colombian ex-president Alvaro Uribe was plotting to kill him, adding to a deluge of accusations by the former bus driver in recent months. "Uribe is behind a plot to kill me," Maduro said in a televised speech. "Uribe is a killer. I have enough evidence of who is conspiring, and there are sectors of the Venezuelan right that are involved."
At least three killed in violent Guinea election protest
CONAKRY (Reuters) - At least three people died on Friday on the second day of violent street protests that have swept the Guinean capital over the organization of delayed legislative elections, witnesses and officials said. Guinea's opposition parties have accused President Alpha Conde, who took office in 2010 following Guinea's first democratic transfer of power since 1958, of trying to rig the polls in the world's largest bauxite exporter.
The HPV vaccine can prevent both cervical cancer and a nasty sexually transmitted disease in women. But emphasizing the STD prevention will persuade more young women to get the vaccine, a new study suggests.
These results go against the conventional wisdom that scaring women about the possibility of cancer is the best way to get them vaccinated.
The failure of that cancer-threat message may be one reason that fewer than 20 percent of adolescent girls in the United States have received the HPV vaccine, said Janice Krieger, lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication at The Ohio State University.
"Young women don't respond strongly to the threat of cervical cancer," Krieger said.
"They seem to be more worried about getting an STD. That's the way we should try to encourage them to get the HPV vaccine."
The vaccine ? most commonly sold under the brand name Gardasil ? prevents the types of HPV, or human papillomavirus, that cause most cases of cervical cancer and most cases of genital warts, a sexually transmitted disease.
Krieger conducted the study with Melanie Sarge of Texas Tech University. It appears in a recent issue of the journalHealth Communication.
Many early studies of how to sell the benefits of the HPV vaccine found that the message that it prevents cancer was effective. But these studies often involved women of all ages, from adolescence to old age. The problem, though, is that the vaccine is targeted to women under the age of 26.
"Cancer is something people start to worry about later in life, not when they're in high school and college. We decided to do a clean study that compared what message worked best with college-aged women versus what worked with their mothers," Krieger said.
Participants in the study included 188 female college students (average age of 22) and 115 of their mothers (average age of 50).
The mothers and students both received a packet of materials that included a questionnaire and a pro-vaccine message. The student message recommended talking to a doctor about the HPV vaccine, and the parent message recommended encouraging their daughter to talk to a doctor.
Two different messages were created. Half of the mothers and students received a message sheet about the vaccine with a large headline that read, "Prevent cervical cancer." The other half received a similar message, but with the headline declaring, "Prevent genital warts." A text box on the sheet also re-emphasized either the cancer or the genital warts message.
Participants then filled out the questionnaire, which asked a variety of questions that included how they felt about the threat of HPV and whether they felt they (or their daughter) could talk to a doctor about receiving the vaccine.
Results showed that the message emphasizing the vaccine's effectiveness at preventing genital warts was a clear winner with the young women.
Compared to those who received the cancer prevention message, young women who read that the vaccine prevented genital warts were more likely to say they intended to talk to their doctor about the vaccine. They also said they felt more comfortable talking to their doctor about the vaccine.
"Preventing cancer was not a big motivator," Krieger said.
Overall, the findings showed that scaring young women into getting the vaccine doesn't seem to be a good strategy.
Young women who perceived HPV as a bigger threat to their health than others, or who thought they were more likely to get the virus, were not consequently more likely to say they would get the vaccine or talk to their doctor.
"Our results suggest it is more important to get women to feel comfortable talking to their doctor about the vaccine," she said. "Fear doesn't work. They need to feel it is not difficult or embarrassing to discuss the vaccine with their doctor. That's the best way to encourage them to be vaccinated."
The researchers expected that the mothers in the study would be more likely to talk to their daughters about getting the HPV vaccine if they read the cancer prevention message rather than the STD prevention message.
Part of their reasoning was that the mothers, being older, were at a stage in their life when cancer was a bigger issue for them, Krieger said. But they also thought mothers would not feel comfortable about an STD message that assumes that their daughters were sexually active.
However, it turned out that the mothers weren't affected by which of the messages they received.
"We believed that mothers would react negatively to the message about preventing genital warts, but that wasn't supported. Mothers reacted similarly to the genital warts and cancer prevention messages. It suggests that if we focus on the prevention of genital warts in our messages to daughters, it may not mean we have lost the mothers."
Krieger said the results should encourage policymakers, doctors and others to shift their messages to young women concerning the HPV vaccine.
"Cancer may seem to be the more serious issue to some older adults, but it is not the top concern for young women," she said.
###
Ohio State University: http://researchnews.osu.edu
Thanks to Ohio State University for this article.
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WEST, Texas (AP) ? Investigators working to figure out what caused a massive, deadly fertilizer plant explosion in Texas have talked to more than 370 people and received more than 200 tips as they continue to search for a breakthrough.
Two weeks after the April 17 blast that killed at least 14 people, agents compare their work to solving a puzzle or completing an archaeological dig.
"We're trying to find the critical piece," said Chris Connealy, the state fire marshal, on Thursday.
Their work is complex for several reasons: the magnitude of the blast at West Fertilizer, which knocked out windows and rooftops all over the tiny town of West and registered as a small earthquake; the deaths of 10 first responders and two others who volunteered to help; and the spread of debris as far as two miles away.
Agents are using digital mapping of the plant, rakes, shovels and front-end loaders to sift through dirt and rubble over an approximately 15-acre site. Possible bits of evidence are being cataloged and tested.
Investigators in dark blue uniforms and light blue helmets raked through piles of dirt and lifted debris. Many of them had worked almost every day since the blast. Small skid-steer loaders carried away piles of dirt that already had been examined.
On a cool, windy day, the faint smell of fertilizer filled the air, and officials said the air quality was continuously being monitored. Remnants of burned-out cars and trash littered the sides of the plant site.
Some of the remaining wall from a plant building had been raised at the site, as officials also are trying to reconstruct as much of the plant as possible as part of their investigation. A specialist from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will later design a model of what the plant looked like at the time of the explosion, so that authorities can test several scenarios of what happened, said Assistant State Fire Marshal Kelly Kistner and Robert Champion, ATF's Dallas special agent in charge.
Authorities have not yet begun to fully investigate the approximately 90-foot-wide crater left by the blast, Kistner said. On Thursday, teams were sifting through dirt at the former site of an administrative building next to the crater.
Chemical tests so far have only revealed fertilizer at the site, Kistner said. He said he didn't know yet what specific chemicals were found or how much ammonium nitrate was on site during the blast.
Two months before the explosion, it reported the capacity to store as much as 270 tons of ammonium nitrate, though how much was actually on site when the blast occurred is unknown. In addition to mapping the site, agents have spoken to the plant's owner and are reviewing documents to find out how much ammonium nitrate was there, Kistner said. They have previously ruled out a rail car carrying ammonium nitrate.
"This is planting season. This is fertilizing season," Kistner said. "This is a busy, busy time for this facility right here. So they were constantly turning product, tons a day, out of this facility."
Officials would not reveal all of the technology they are using, but said the process could continue after a previously set May 10 target date. They also continue to investigate the possibility that the blast was a criminal act.
"Nothing has been ruled out at this point," Champion said.
Officials defended the amount of time they were taking to finish the investigation, saying they owed it to the victims of the blast to take their time, and criticized speculation about the blast. Kistner criticized speculation about the explosion as uninformed.
"It's not becoming a distraction to the investigation, but I think it's a distraction to the public and to the people, and the families of the people, who lost their lives here," Kistner said. Because you've got a lot of people running around trying to tell people what happened, but they're not down here to have the facts and the evidence to know what happened."
Six lawsuits have been filed in local county court against Adair Grain, which owns and operated West Fertilizer. Those suing include people injured in the blast and insurance companies representing businesses that were damaged.
Kistner said the owners of the plant have cooperated with investigators, but declined to say what documents they had turned over.
Irish lawmakers presented guidelines describing when life-saving terminations could be allowed. Opponents of the bill worried it would become a platform for further expanding abortion rights in Ireland.
By Shawn Pogatchnik,?Associated Press / May 1, 2013
This file photo shows abortion rights protesters holding pictures of Savita Halappanavar. Ireland's government published a long-awaited bill, Wednesday, explaining the law on when life-saving abortions can be performed in a country that officially bans the practice.
AP Photo/Shawn Pogatchnik, File
Enlarge
Ireland?unveiled a long-awaited bill Wednesday that lays down new rules governing when life-saving abortions can be performed, a point of potentially lethal confusion for women in a country that outlaws terminations.
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Prime Minister Enda Kenny, speaking to reporters after his government published the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, said he hoped the coming weeks of debate would not turn bitter. But he warned Catholic conservatives within his own party to back the bill or be expelled.
"I do hope that we can bring everybody with us, on an issue that I know is sensitive," said Kenny, who said his government was seeking only "a clarification of rights within existing law."
Kenny said the bill would set a maximum 14-year prison sentence for anyone involved in an illegal abortion, whether doctor or patient. The current law, dating to 1861, sets the maximum penalty at life.
Kenny's government took action following the death of a woman last year from blood poisoning after she was refused a termination because her dying fetus still had a heartbeat. The bill, if passed, would change nothing for the vast majority of an estimated 4,000 Irish women who travel annually for abortions in England, nor the growing number who order miscarriage-inducing drugs over the Internet.
Anti-abortion activists, including many in Kenny's own Fine Gael party, protest that the proposed law could become a platform for eventual wider access to abortion in?Ireland. Malta is the only other European Union country that bans it.
Activists particularly oppose the bill's provisions for women who threaten to kill themselves if they are denied a termination. The bill specifies that three doctors ? the woman's obstetrician and two psychologists ? must determine that the suicide risk is substantial. If denied, the woman would have a right of appeal to a panel of three other doctors.
Most other life-saving abortion cases would require certification by two doctors, or just one in emergencies requiring an immediate decision.
The bill, published after weeks of government infighting on its terms, faces lengthy debate and likely amendments. Kenny wants it passed by July.
During parliamentary debate, left-wing opposition lawmakers who want broader access to abortion accused Kenny of hypocrisy.
"What you've presented is the absolute minimum," lawmaker Clare Daly told Kenny. "The clear intention is to make it so restrictive that most women will not even bother. Instead they'll continue to make the journey to Britain so that you can continue to pretend that there's no Irish abortion."
Countering government claims that?Ireland?had one of the world's lowest rates of maternal death, Daly said more pregnant women would have died from complications or killed themselves if not for?Ireland's?"proximity to Britain."
Ireland's?abortion law has been muddled since 1992, when the Supreme Court ruled that abortions should be legal when doctors deem it necessary to save the woman's life. The judges defined a credible suicide threat as one reasonable ground.
That ruling was made in the case of a 14-year-old girl who had been raped by a family friend, a crime that her parents reported to police. The government ordered the girl not to travel to England for an abortion, and she threatened to kill herself if forced to give birth. The Supreme Court ruled that she should receive an abortion in?Ireland, given her suicide threats. The girl then miscarried.
While the ruling had the power of law, a series of governments refused to enact supporting legislation, fearful of a voter backlash in a country that is more than 80 percent Catholic.
Obstetricians long have complained they need clearly defined abortion regulations to avoid lawsuits or even criminal murder charges.
"We're pleased to see legislators doing the job they're paid to do. After 21 years," said Peter Boylan, a prominent obstetrician who ran a Dublin maternity hospital.
Boylan said dozens of life-saving abortions had been performed annually in Irish hospitals, but only involving the most clear-cut emergencies. Too often, he said, doctors advised patients to go to England.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2010 that women's lives were being unnecessarily endangered by a system that forced seriously ill women to travel while pregnant.
The government took action after a 31-year-old woman, Savita Halappanavar, died in an Irish hospital in October. Halappanavar, who was 17 weeks pregnant, died from blood poisoning one week after being admitted at the start of a miscarriage. As her condition worsened, doctors rejected pleas to abort the fetus because its heart was still beating. Subsequent investigations determined that by the time the fetus died, it was too late to save the woman.
Some of?Ireland's?approximately 350 psychiatrists have formed rival lobbying groups. Those opposed argue that abortion is never an acceptable treatment for someone contemplating suicide.
Anthony McCarthy, one of only three psychologists in?Ireland?who specializes in counseling pregnant women, welcomed the bill ? but forecast its provisions would affect only "a tiny number" of patients.
Over the past 16 years, McCarthy said he'd helped women suffering from self-destructive delusions or hallucinations, who may have stabbed themselves in the stomach or taken drug overdoses in attempts to kill themselves, their fetuses or both. However, he believed that only one of those patients was really serious about suicide.
"The vast majority do not want termination of their pregnancy. They want help with their depression and suicidal thinking," McCarthy said.
Online:?Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill,?http://bit.ly/17x26dq
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Public release date: 9-May-2013
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