At least seven people have died at a shopping centre outside Amsterdam after a gunman opened fire with an automatic weapon before killing himself.

There were also at least 16 people wounded during the attack at the Ridderhof mall in the suburb of Alphen aan den Rijn, 15 miles (25km) southwest of Amsterdam.

The mayor, Bas Eenhoorn, said children were among the victims, but he could not confirm whether they were among the wounded or dead, or both. “It’s too terrible for words, a shock for us all,” he said.

A witness identified as Maart Verbeek told the Dutch state broadcaster, NOS, that he had seen five people he believed were dead. “There was a panic in the mall, a lot of people running,” said Verbeek, a pet shop owner. “I see the attacker coming, walking, and I go inside the store … and I see him going by with a big machine gun.”

NOS cited witnesses as saying the man later shot himself in the head with a second weapon, a pistol.

The gunman was described as a 25-year-old white male with blond hair who was wearing a leather jacket and camouflage pants. His identity was known and it was “all but certain” he acted alone, district attorney Kitty Nooy said, but investigators were not yet ready to release his name or age. She said he was a native Dutchman from Alphen who has a criminal record.

Martine Spruit, a 41-year-old receptionist, said she was shopping at a drug store when she heard bangs and people in the store hid behind shelves. When they realized a shooting was taking place, customers shouted for employees to lock the doors.

“Then we heard the shots getting further away, so he was walking back and forth,” she said. “Then we thought we’d have a look and there were two people lying dead near the entrance … then he came back shooting so we locked the door again.”

“You hear about this sort of thing happening at American schools and you think that’s a long way away,” said Rob Kuipers, 50, a project manager. “Now it’s happened here in the Netherlands.”

A resident who lives near the mall who gave his name as Marijn said the shooting went on for several minutes. When he went to see whether friends working at the mall were OK, he saw the shooter lying dead in front of a grocery store.

“There was glass everywhere,” the resident said. “He was just shooting everywhere as if it were the Wild West.”

Four of the wounded are in critical condition, five were in serious condition and at least two others were slightly wounded, Eenhoorn said.

He described the incident as a “disaster of unparalleled proportions” for Alphen, known as a quiet suburb.

“Under these circumstances, with many people shopping at the Ridderhof today, including parents with children, it’s an incomprehensible situation,” he said. Netherlands Gun crime Europe Ben Quinn guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

View full post on All Stories

Billings, MT, United States (AHN) – Hundreds of starving horses in a foreclosed ranch east of Billings are having their first taste of hay in weeks.

Hay is being trucked and airlifted to Home Place Ranch and surrounding areas, where about 800 horses have been roaming without sufficient food or water for a month.

The former owner of the ranch, James Leachman, was charged with five counts of animal cruelty last Friday. He lost his ranch in July following an appeals court ruling that an auction be held to pay off his company’s debts to the federal Farmers Home Administration.

A nearby rancher, Turk Stovall, bought Home Place for $2.6 million but has not fed the horses, which Leachman was supposed to remove from the property. Leachman, who made his name as a cattle rancher, is hoping to regain his ranch under a state law that allows debtors to buy back their old property within a year.

Leachman faces as much as a year in prison and a $1,000 fine for each of the charges against him, which are misdemeanors. The charges stem from five horses who died from neglect since the auction last year, including two who were humanely euthanized because of their medical condition.

A non-profit group, the Northern International Livestock Exposition, is coordinating donations for the horses while Yellowstone County prosecutors build their case.

The group has received donations and offers of help nationwide and from overseas. It is prioritizing the delivery of donations of hay and grass over water, the supply of which the group said has increased due to warm weather.

View full post on All Stories

View full post on All Stories

By selecting a site title that targets the unique key phrases for your website you may flood your website with laser specific site visitors by enhancing click via response.

Pick a site name that provides your prospects what they most desperately desire. By such as the keywords in your website name which are your shoppers desires, which includes them inside your advertising messages and your website content you can’t aid but flood targeted visitors to your site!

Wondering what your customer’s desires are? If so, you may require to figure out what your actually selling. Let’s look at an instance solution here: house security alarm technique.

Keep in thoughts couple of individuals know, nor do they care what the heck the product or service looks like or the features of the merchandise such as size, color, pounds, rate, or availability. The only issue they have an interest in may be the “results” your solution will accomplish for them. It all boils down to what’s-in-it-for-me?

Why would a prospect buy a home alarm method? What’s-in-it-for-them? Should you believe for just a moment you may arrive up using the appropriate answer.

Yes, it is to safeguard their jewelry or valuables whilst they’re at work or when the property is empty.

You ought to stop considering of your self or even the attributes of the item to ascertain what your customer’s deepest desires are. By turning your product or service or support functions into “benefits” or “results” you may be capable to hit their hot buttons and flood site visitors to your site inside the process.

The easiest method to turn characteristics into rewards is usually to list all of the characteristics of your respective solution or assistance on a piece of paper very first. (a feature is really a characteristic of the issue: size, colour, weight, rate, availability) Then one by a single turn every feature into a advantage for the buyer. What’s-in-it-for-me– conserve money? youthfulness? buddies? safety? money? energy? luxury? prestige? thinner body? obedient pet?

The targeted traffic driving prospective of keyword qualified website names is awesome, supplied that you research your target market and satisfy their “true” requirements, desires and positive aspects. As soon as you have established this program for promoting, you may be capable to make use of your website brand to construct certain ad campaigns precise to specific markets even if your site provides numerous items and companies.

To take it a step additional, you could formulate a site brand that works just like a headline for a classified ad. Whenever you break a headline down it really should have many distinct parts. It really should fan the flames of desire having a hint of data about solving a certain problem, satisfying a need, providing a benefit, or invoking curiosity using a call to action. Your site identify must include as quite a few of these “headline characteristics” as feasible. Attempt and phrase the key phrases into some thing fairly short, catchy and easy to remember.

Keep in mind “what’s-in-it-for-me?” as to “what your actually selling”. The employment of your respective domain brand would be to act just like a headline to drive precise traffic to your website by “scratching the itch of your clients.” If you have discovered the proper words to scratch that itch, then ONLY You can place it to use with your domain title. You may discover that not only will you do far better on your lookup engine rankings you are going to also attract lots more attention along with your pay per click ads or any type of promotion you use.

More Sources
Useful Pointers On Choosing A Domain Name That Increases Traffic To Your Website Choose A Domain Name That Floods Traffic To Your Website Enhance Your Prospects For Your Website By Choosing The Correct Domain Name

View full post on All Stories

Flint, MI, United States (AHN) – The Michigan Wolverines are starting to build a niche again in college basketball with the arrival of second-generation hoopsters.

After a long layoff in big-time basketball, the Wolverines seem poised to make significant runs in the coming seasons following their successful recruitment of the sons of former basketball stars.

The Wolverines might have relied on basketball genes alone, when they recruited incoming freshmen Jon Horford and Tim Hardaway Jr.

Horford, the son of former NBA player Tito Horford and younger brother of Hawks center Al Horford, is a 6-foot-9 power forward from Grand Ledge High School in Michigan.

Horford received solid reviews from Scout, Rival, and ESPN, which graded him as an above-average prospect with an enormous upside.

Meanwhile, ESPN described the 6-foot-5 Hardaway as an offensively talent, who inherits the outside touch of his father.

Michigan is expecting Horford and Hardaway to form a solid core next season with sophomore Jordan Dumars, the son of Detroit Pistons’ legend and executive Joe Dumars.

Moreover, the Wolverines also received commitment from another second-generation player, Glenn Robinson III.

The son of former Milwaukee Bucks star Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson, the 6-foot-6 Robinson is a versatile swingman who possesses an inside and outside game.

Rivals and Scout currently consider Robinson as three-star talent for the class of 2012, although some scouts think the kid has a lot of potential.

Michigan is hoping that this bunch of second-generation players will reach the ability of their fathers and eventually bring the Wolverine basketball back in its glory days.

Glen Rice, whose son Glen Rice Jr. enters his second year at Georgia Tech, led the Wolverines to its only NCAA Tournament championship in 1989.

View full post on All Stories

One of the key factors in planning a business model is simply researching the demand for your product. If you are great at making kitty blankets, for instance, its worth checking out to see if there is a market for it. The entrepreneur may find that there are three times as many potential customers for dog blankets, and by simply adding dogs to your marketing strategy, you will increase your sales four times over. This fact would be an important one to know before all the labels, website promotion, and branding was done with the words Kitty instead of Pet!

Supply is worth researching, too. Keeping with the pet blanket approach, you may find that there are tons of different blankets available, but none that have catnip in them. Marketing two types of blankets, one for dogs and one for cats, and placing catnip in the cat blankets may dramatically increase sales. Again, this type of research is much more helpful to have before any product has been made. It would be a shame to have a room full of single-ply cat blankets that will not hold any catnip, when that is the product that is a unique niche. The brand name needs a lot of thought because once the name is out in the market, it can be very difficult to change. Picking a name, and then finding out six months later that the name is confusingly similar to a competitors would be disastrous. Finding out that the name is easily mis-spelled, hard to pronounce, or difficult to remember are all pitfalls that could have been avoided with proper planning. Apologie Clothing is now finding that web surfers are having difficulty remembering the odd spelling of their name when searching for their website, and the marketing campaign of Chevrolet Nova in Mexico failed dramatically (no va means does not go in Spanish).

Most entrepreneurs are surprised to find that once their business is successful, much more time is taken up running the business than in actually providing the service or making the product. The architect who starts his own architecture firm finds that hes only drawing 1 hour a day the rest is spent meeting with clients, interviewing, marketing, planning, etc. Skills such as salesmanship can be learned through courses, techniques such as accounting can be found in books, and software and outsourcing can help with payroll. But proper planning will help considerably. If a bookkeeping system is set up ahead of time, linked to the accounting software and interfacing with a business account at your local bank, this set up will save huge headaches in the future.

While no amount of planning will foresee all difficulties, these researching and planning steps will improve your odds of succeeding immensely.

Author: Tom Coleman
Article Source: EzineArticles.com