What is the best option to make in foreign currency exchange?

Financial companies make their astronomical profits in one way or another. Foreign currency conversion fees are one of the ways they accomplish this. Any time you’re using or exchanging money in a foreign land, someone is trying to  make money off of your transaction. Banks and credit card companies aren’t letting you make purchases around the world without getting their own cut. Most of the companies add a few extra percentage points onto the transaction and include it in small print on your statement. These “hidden fees” can pile up quick, and are easily overlooked. This can lead to a couple hundred dollars in fees you could have saved on your foreign vacation. The same goes for any foreign currency exchange location.  All of the rates are exaggerated in the house’s favor.  The following list will give you an overview of the currency conversion fees you will encounter and help you find the best options for making payments while traveling.

Exchange Rates – Get an idea of the current exchange rates before you leave for your trip. XE  provides current exchange rates of currencies around the world. You can also view historical rates. The site also includes a useful Travel Expenses Calculator for keeping track of expenses in foreign currencies) and a Global payments and Transfers Tool (for sending and receiving payments (with a guaranteed best rate) around the globe) for free.

Credit Card Fees – Most people are unaware the majority of credit card companies tack on an extra 3% foreign transaction fee. This usually includes the 1% Visa/Mastercard fee and a 2% bank fee. The chart below shows the foreign transaction fees for mainstream credit cards. Cards from Capital One, which eats the 1% Visa/Mastercard fee to offer a 0% foreign transaction fee, are your best bet for travel purchases. And don’t even think about taking a cash advance from a credit card. The fees for a cash advance usually include 3% on top of the normal foreign transaction fee and 24% interest accrued daily.

About 80% of Hurricane Harvey victims do not have flood insurance, face big bills

• Personal and community finances are more at risk from Hurricane Harvey than from other storms.
• Only two out of 10 homeowners in Harvey's path of destruction have flood insurance, insurance experts say.
• About half of flooded homes were covered by flood insurance during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Homeowners suffering flood damage from Harvey are more likely to be on the hook for losses than victims of prior storms — a potentially crushing blow to personal finances and neighborhoods along the Gulf Coast.

Insurance experts say only a small fraction of homeowners in Harvey's path of destruction have flood insurance. That means families with flooded basements, soaked furniture and water-damaged walls will have to dig deep into their pockets or take on more debt to fix up their homes. Some may be forced to sell, if they can, and leave their communities.

"All these people taken out in boats, they have a second problem: They have no insurance," said Robert Hunter, director of insurance at the Consumer Federation of America.

Harvey made landfall in Texas late Friday as a Category 4 hurricane and has lingered off the coast, dropping heavy rain as a tropical storm. Hunter expects flood damage alone from the storm to cost at least $35 billion, about what Katrina cost. But in that 2005 hurricane about half of flooded homes were covered by flood insurance.

With Harvey, only two of 10 homeowners have coverage, Hunter estimates.

Homeowners insurance typically covers just damage from winds, not floods. For that, you need separate coverage from the federally run National Flood Insurance Program. The insurance must be bought by homeowners with federally-backed mortgages living in the most vulnerable areas, called Special Flood Hazard Zones.

People in those areas and near them have complained for years that the premiums are too high, though they would be much higher still if not subsidized by the federal government.

North Korea launches ballistic missile over Japan: JCS

North Korea launched a ballistic missile towards the Sea of Japan (known in Korea as the East Sea) on Tuesday morning, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

The missile then flew over Japan and landed in the sea east of Hokkaido.

CS said the launch took place in Sunan, northeast of Pyongyang, at 0557 KST, and that the missile flew 2700 km at a maximum altitude of around 550 km.

The Japanese government, according to local broadcaster NHK, warned residents in the north of the country to take necessary safety precautions.

The missile passed over Hokkaido at 0606 JST, according to the Japanese government and the South Korean military.

It then landed in the sea around 1180 km east of Cape Erimo at 0612, the Japanese government said.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga described the launch as an “unprecedented, serious, and grave threat to our nation,” in comments carried by Reuters, saying that Tokyo protested the firing in the strongest possible terms.

Patience is a mental development? Individual defeat?

Many people living in society do not really know life from birth to death.

Before the time of birth, people do not have a time schedule.

Since the existing society is made by humans, every person must be adopted according to the method of society.

For example, children learn the language of older people.

In this way, the person who adopts the external society grabs all the activities that exist within the social system.

The society has various interpretations of the response of the individual to the challenges, achievements, defeats, as well as denunciations, insults and sarcasm.

Bangkok: Forbidden street Food Authorities for Cleanliness, Safety

Authorities say the ban is aimed at improving food hygiene and follows complaints by residents that vendors are obstructing sidewalks. However, critics assert the crackdown is part of a series of measures by Thailand's ruling junta enforcing public order and is detrimental to Bangkok's tourist appeal
"If you want to clean out all the vendors it's like you are cleaning out our culture itself," Chiwan Suwannapak, who works for a Bangkok tour agency, told 
As for the street-food festival, the NNT says the number of participating streets and vendors has yet to be determined but that they will include "major tourist streets in Bangkok." 

Well, probably not according to the official dictionary, but having eaten and explored the street food in this culinary wonderland since 2009, I can say without doubt, Bangkok is one of the world’s best cities for food.
******************
There’s food everywhere you look in Bangkok

End of intelligence - English translation of science novel

Chaminda Preethi Kumara in 2006 is a Sinhala novel written from Buddimatha Niamey. (End of intelligence)  Available in English language on the Worldceylon e news website.

ISBN 978-955-1548-06-3

There is nothing wrong with the author's authority to quote, the book's intellectual property law.

            First introduction
* If you succeed in working well, then you will definitely get them to Mars.In the next 124 o'clock, we go out of Earth."You even remember me, "I do not know"."It will not happen" "I will not forget you"You should be a good and intelligent person.only if that happens, You can take Mars to the planet.

* "Women like us, mostly in small things,These are your love, protection, and feelings! The great expectations of women.You do not give me a gift for flying vehicles, "If you can respond to these feelings.

* If something is to be systematically emphasized and removed from a human, it can be forgiven.But can you believe, at all times, a fiercely-minded woman to destroy all the people?

 *  "We do not use these, we are the natural men who rooted in ancient society.We have customs and a good culture.These are very low-powered jobs, no survival, a mistake in history, but cannot be right now.It's all over.

We informed the LTTE Leaders. Say that you are surrendering to raise white flags,- Erik Solheim says in an interview.

The Sri Lankan people can hardly ignore the 30 year war in Sri Lanka.
The related news, events, and various media often come forward.
During that period, Eric Solheim was an exceptional figure in Sri Lanka.
An interview with Erick Solheim by Padma Rao Sundarji has been extracted from the WIOM's website and released without any editing.
This is because it contains many important information for Sri Lankans.

Erik Solheim, the Norwegian peace mediator in the 30-year-long Sri Lankan civil war, breaks his silence on his controversial role in a conversation with WION's Padma Rao Sundarji.
Padma Rao Sundarji: How and when did the government of Norway decide to mediate in Sri Lanka and why did they pick you?
Erik Solheim: We were invited in absolute secrecy by the then President Chandrika Kumaratunga. At the time, only two people in Colombo knew, she and foreign minister Lakshman Kadiragamar. It stayed like that for one-and-a-half years. Only later, it became public.I believe we were invited because we could potentially be acceptable to India as a small nation. And, we were invited because we had, at that time, seen some successes in the Middle East. They were small successes. But as a small, faraway nation it was felt that we could not really mess up Sri Lanka and could be acceptable to both the Tigers and the government of Sri Lanka at the same time.

And were you acceptable to New Delhi too? India is, after all, the biggest immediate neighbour with close cultural, religious and linguistic ties to Sri Lanka.
There was a lot of scepticism in Delhi. What will these pink, Christian Europeans with no real knowledge of South Asia make of problems on this continent? But at the end, we were not only acceptable to India, we had the closest relationship. After every visit to Sri Lanka, I went to New Delhi to inform the political leadership and the Indian intelligence about what I had achieved or not achieved.

People will eliminate the elephants from the earth. Wayne- Lotter: Elephant Conservationist also killed

August 16, Wayne Lotter was shot and killed in the Masaki District of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania by unknown gunmen.
Lotter was stopped and then fatally shot while travelling by taxi from Dar es Salaam airport to a hotel. He had been working in Tanzania for many years, exposing and jailing wildlife poachers and traffickers, and he had received a number of death threats. 
Tanzania’s director for criminal investigation, Robert Boaz, said a murder investigation was underway.

A ‘shining light’ in the conservation world
Both Lotter and Clark have worked in wildlife conservation for decades. Inspired by their mutual passion for Africa’s wildlife, and appalled by the devastation they saw poaching wreaking across the continent, Lotter and Clark founded PAMS as a small, nimble NGO, that they hoped would be able to have the maximum amount of impact. They train wildlife rangers, sponsor education initiatives and after-school wildlife clubs and work with farmers. They also work with law enforcers, with police and with a special taskforce, to identify poachers and trafficking networks, and then to get them into court and through the Tanzanian legal system. PAMS has earned a global reputation as a NGO that punches well above its size; tough, committed and effective. 

The nonprofit uses a multifaceted approach to conservation pioneered by Lotter that saw the group train hundreds of wildlife rangers across Tanzania and sponsored several education initiatives and after school wildlife clubs in dozens of schools in areas where poaching was rampant. The group also worked with farmers in several areas to reduce human wildlife conflict.

North Korea and Kim II Sung, family politics

Today, there are various news about North Korea in the international media.
North Korea's political principles do not endorse the international community.
Their attempt to become a world power in the world is a failure.
There are many reasons.
By reading this article, you will get an idea of the North Korean and Kim family.

The Kim family has maintained power in North Korea through fear politik, referred to as the “reign of terror.” While Kim Jong Il was thought to be a more cunning manipulator of people, Kim Jong Un has shown a penchant for ruthlessly purging senior executives and his own family members. But the concept of fear politik is not new to the North Korean population, because Kim Il Sung also secured his dominance through merciless purges of the political elite decades ago. 

What was the political environment like for Kim Il Sung in the process of regime establishment after the country’s liberation?

 When the North Korean regime was first established after liberation, not all senior politicians blindly advocated or supported the Kim family as they do now. Kim Il Sung was the nation’s leader, but various leaders from other groups took important roles in the regime’s establishment as well, including Namrodang (Communist Party of Korea)'s Pak Hon Yong who ran communist activities in South Korea, Yananpa (Yan'an group)'s Kim Du Bong who led an independence movement in Manchuria, and Sorienpa (the Soviet group)'s Ho Ka I (also known as Alexei Ivanovich Hegai) who took the lead in bilateral relations with the Soviet Union.

The Muslim law that does not match the modern world is changing the Indian court.

Many factors are based on the traditional connotations of Muslim society and are not in keeping with the modern social order.
A man of the advanced world is a high-value human resource.
The most advanced minded human being has a valuable life to live freely.
There is no basis for theories and norms, an obstacle to the free life of people.
There is an opportunity for all the changes in the developed world.
The talaq law that severely damaged the Indian Muslim woman has changed.
The baseless beliefs and laws are the best testimony to the future.

God, Man, and Law: Understanding your differences according to the following dialogues.

Accusations of misogyny and injustice also seemed to worry the judges who repeatedly asked if instant divorce was bad in theology, how could it be good in law?
"You pray in the mosque every Friday. In that prayer, you say triple talaq is a sin and bad. How can you then say it is an integral part of Islam?" Chief Justice Khehar wondered.
Justice Kurian Joseph added: "Can something found to be sinful by God be validated by men through law?"
In the end, the court did not accept the argument that just because it had been custom for 1,400 years, it should still be acceptable.
With Tuesday's order, India finally has an answer to this key question - instant divorce is no longer just sinful, it's also illegal.

Self-indulgent artificial intelligence will destroy natural man in the future.

In the future, the intelligence of the natural man who makes artificial intelligence for his own convenience will be deprived of his control.That day may be the end of natural human life on earth.
By that time, many natural intellectuals have already left the Earth and have moved on to another planet.

End of intelligent 
Extracted from the book.

Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk  has joined dozens of CEOs of artificial intelligence companies in signing an open Letter urging the United Nations  to ban the use of AI in weapons before the technology gets out of hand.

The letter was published Monday — the same day the U.N.’s Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems was to discuss ways to protect civilians from the misuse of automated weapons. That meeting, however, has been postponed until November.

“Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare,” read the letter, which was also signed by the chief executives of companies such as Cafe X Technologies (which Built the autonomous barista ) and PlusOne Robotics (whose robots automate manual labor). “Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close. Therefore we implore the High Contracting Parties to find a way to protect us all from these dangers.”

I'm still chairman: not take off - did not quit. Mahinda Rajapaksha

 I am still the Chairman of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.
 not take off 
 did not quit, 
 Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa says.

If, I have not taken off, or withdrawn, the chairman of the party, Mahinda Rajapaksa said that anyone else cannot stand up for the position of the party president.

Everybody is trying to defend their positions nowadays.

He said that legal action will be taken against the ministers of the government issuing statements in the manner that they incite the racketeers.
Sinhala translation
Extract of the Mawbima newspaper 22/08/2017