RP seizes $10.4-million smuggled diamonds

A British woman has been arrested for allegedly smuggling $10.4 million worth of diamonds into the Philippines, an official said Friday.

Officers from the presidential anti-smuggling group arrested Alpha Kwok, a Chinese-born British national from Hong Kong, at an upscale Manila condominium Tuesday and seized 160 carats of diamonds along with uncut emeralds and other precious stones, said Antonio Villar Jr., head of the agency.

Kwok has been charged with smuggling and detained pending a review of the case by the Justice Department, Villar said.

He said that some of the seized diamonds already were set on rings, earrings and pendants and others were loose stones.

Kwok and her lawyers could not be reached for comment.

Villar said Kwok may have been part of a smuggling syndicate that has been bringing diamonds into the country and selling them to wealthy Filipinos.

He said immigration records showed she had visited the Philippines more than 170 times in over two years, giving a dozen different addresses in metropolitan Manila during her stay.

"She doesn't have any permit to import, and she has no working permit," he said.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo created the anti-smuggling group in 2007 to curb unlawful imports and other tariff violations facilitated by corrupt customs officials.- AP

source

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Secrets to Successful Trading: How start risk-free without risking a single penny

Secrets to Successful Trading: How start risk-free without risking a single penny

You can have the best daytrading plan but you‘ll never make any money if you don‘t take action and actually start trading. But how can you start without risking a single penny of your own money?

After all, you are still new to trading and don‘t want to lose thousands of dollars because you made a small mistake in your trading plan, do you?

The best thing you can do to get started is to get a so-called “Paper Trading Account“. And the best: You can get a paper trading account for free from your broker. Or just contact me and I‘ll set you up with a free paper trading account.

So what is a paper trading account?

A paper trading account let‘s you trade your system with “virtual money“. You will get live quotes and can enter the trades according to your plan. The daytrading system will simulate fills, and you‘ll find yourself in a trading position. Paper trading accounts show the profit and loss in real time, and you can see LIVE how much money you are making or losing. Keep in mind that we‘re talking about “virtual money“, so actually you‘re not making any money yet.

Why you MUST trade your day trading system on a paper trading account first.

The biggest enemy of a trader is discipline. Traders lose because of the lack of discipline. Your day trading plan might be excellent, but if you don‘t have the discipline to follow your trading plan then you‘re doomed. Trading your system on a paper trading account will help you to gain confidence in your daytrading system and developing the needed discipline to actually make money with it.

Don‘t make this mistake
Many traders start “improving“ their trading system after they experienced a loss or a few losers in a row. Though encountering a loser might be exactly within the expectations of your system, you start questioning the system. You start “improving“ the system by changing a few parameters or adding some filters. You forget that you tested your system on more than 2,000 trades; you traded it for a few days and think that‘s it needs some “fine tuning“.

That‘s the biggest mistake a trader can make. If you developed your system based on the outline I gave you in Step 1 and tested it against the principles I gave you in Step 2, then most likely you have a robust daytrading system.

Keep in mind that trading a system does NOT mean having an ATM in your front yard. Losses are part of our business, and NO trading system has an equity curve that‘s straight pointing up without any dips. You need to trade your system for at least 40 trades before you should think about modifying it.

How to become a successful trader
In order to become a successful trader you need a trading plan. After reading thus far you already figured that out, did you? :-)

Equally important is having the discipline to follow the plan.
Lack of discipline is caused by your emotions, basically greed and fear:

You fear losses and if you‘re experiencing a winner you become greedy. And that‘s when you start tampering with your system: You might want to give your trade “a little bit more room“ and increase the stop, or you want to “get a few dollars more“ and start moving your profit goal. And BOOM: You just lost the discipline you need.

By watching your trades on a paper trading account you will learn a lot about yourself and how to deal with emotions:

• Can you “pull the trigger“ when your entry signal appears?

• How do you feel when you see the trade moving against you?
Do you feel the urge of moving your stop loss?

• How do you feel when the trade makes a profit?
Do you want to get out?
Do you want to stay in a little bit longer?

• Do you have the discipline to trade your system according to your rules?

Trading a system on a paper trading account will help you:

• Watching yourself and your feelings.

• Helping you dealing with your feelings.

• Developing the discipline you need to become a successful trader.

• And of course: testing your trading system under “realistic“ market conditions

A neat trick to increase your learning curve

The best way to trade your system is to fully automate it!

By automating a system you‘ll immediately gain these four advantages:

Advantage #1: Discipline
The easiest way to follow a trading plan is to automate it. Almost every trading system can be automated, and you could let the computer trade for you. You won‘t have to worry about your discipline any longer, as the computer mechanically trades every setup for you.

Advantage #2: Controlling your emotions
Automating a system removes emotions from trading. If you don‘t automate your strategy try to make decisions when the market is moving, you are liable to become emotionally attached to positions. You may experience panic and indecision when the market does not move in your favor, as you do not have a prepared response. That‘s when most traders lose their money. If you automate your system the computer will trade for you no matter what the market does.

Advantage #3: Controlling your losses
You probably have heard the saying Let your profits run. Unfortunately most traders let their losses run. Automating a trading system will get you out of a position when the predefined stop is hit. Unless you override the system to give the trade a little bit more room the computer will stop the loss and therefore limit your losses.

Advantage #4: Commitment
You won‘t believe how many traders show a lack of commitment and therefore lose money. Lack of commitment means that they stop trading after the first loss, and don‘t give their system a chance to make back the money they lost. Trading is not a one-way street, and losses are part of our business. If you can‘t accept the fact that there will be losses, you shouldn‘t trade. Fortunately the automation of a trading system can help you to overcome this problem; an automated trading system continues trading according to the rules, and therefore adds much more consistency to your trading.

The next step
If you read until here, then you learned a lot. By know you know

• How to define your financial and trading goals.

• How to select the right market for your trading goals.

• What timeframe you should trade in.

• The difference between trading styles and how to find the right one for you.

• How to create a basic trading plan.

• How to make sure that your trading plan will work in reality

• How to start trading your system without risking a single penny

• What it takes to become a successful trader

• How to develop the habits of successful traders

• A shortcut to become a successful trader

Now the ball is in your court. It‘s up to you to take the first step.

If you want to get started within the next 24h, then you should definitely check out the trading systems Smart Start and EaglePro.

Both systems are fully automated, and they have a risk/reward ratio that‘s perfect for beginners. Each system comes with a free paper trading account that lets you test the system risk-free.

It‘s your turn now.

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Power Station Financial Models. Power Station Financial Models Membership Website - Project Finance Spreadsheet Ms Excel Models.

Ancient Celtic coin cache found in Netherlands

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – A hobbyist with a metal detector struck both gold and silver when he uncovered an important cache of ancient Celtic coins in a cornfield in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht.

"It's exciting, like a little boy's dream," Paul Curfs, 47, said Thursday after the spectacular find was made public.

Archaeologists say the trove of 39 gold and 70 silver coins was minted in the middle of the first century B.C. as the future Roman ruler Julius Caesar led a campaign against Celtic tribes in the area.

Curfs said he was walking with his detector this spring and was about to go home when he suddenly got a strong signal on his earphones and uncovered the first coin.

"It was golden and had a little horse on it — I had no idea what I had found," he said.

After posting a photo of the coin on a Web forum, he was told it was a rare find. The following day he went back and found another coin.

"It looked totally different — silver, and saucer-shaped," he said. Curfs notified the city of his find, and he and several other hobbyists helped in locating the rest of the coins, in cooperation with archaeologists.

Nico Roymans, the archaeologist who led the academic investigation of the find, believes the gold coins in the cache were minted by a tribe called the Eburones that Caesar claimed to have wiped out in 53 B.C. after they conspired with other groups in an attack that killed 6,000 Roman soldiers.

The Eburones "put up strong resistance to Caesar's journeys of conquest," Roymans said.

The silver coins were made by tribes further to the north — possible evidence of cooperation against Caesar, he said.

Both coin types have triple spirals on the front, a common Celtic symbol.

The two other known caches of Eburones coins have been found in neighboring Belgium and Germany.

Maastricht city spokeswoman Carla Wetzels said the value of the coins is not known — their worth is primarily historical. The Belgian cache of similar size was estimated at around 175,000 euros ($220,000).

The farmer who owned the land agreed to sell his interest to the city for an undisclosed sum.

Curfs, a teacher at a nearby junior college, continues to own the 11 coins he found, but has lent them to the City of Maastricht on a long-term basis. The coins will go on display at the Centre Ceramique museum in Maastricht this weekend.

Curfs said he considers his metal detector habit a meditative hobby and not an obsession.

"I have advice for anybody hoping to get rich like this," Curfs said. "Forget it."

Diamonds in high prize

Corsage piece, ca. 1880–1900
Tiffany & Company (American, 1837–present)
Gold, diamonds; Overall 6 1/4 x 1 3/16 in. (15.9 x 3 cm)
Gift of Susan Dwight Bliss, 1941 (41.84.20a-e)

Diamonds had become so fashionable by the last quarter of the nineteenth century that their presence in American society was being noted in the daily press. On April 7, 1889, the New York Sun announced "Diamonds flash from the buttons of a baby's layette, gleam on the dimpled hands of the tiniest child, sparkle on the young girl's fingers, and blaze from the neck and ears and wrists of the society belle…." With the discovery in 1869 of rich diamond fields in South Africa, Americans gained a new and more abundant source for the sparkling gems, which had previously come from India or Brazil. Coinciding with greater availability was the invention of new faceting techniques that sped production as well as enhancing the stone's brilliance. Circular collet settings with foil and metal backings were replaced by more open settings that allowed light to shine through. A particularly American fashion was the corsage piece, a garland of diamonds that was worn on the bodice or waist of a dress. The present example, set with 305 diamonds, was made as a flexible cascade of flowers graduated in size. Its owner, Susan Dwight Bliss (died 1966), donated a handsome collection of diamond jewelry to the Metropolitan Museum in the 1940s and '50s.

Card table (one of a pair), 1817

Charles-Honoré Lannuier (French, 1779–1819)

American (New York City)

Mahogany veneer on white pine, basswood, mahogany; gilded gesso and vert antique; gilded brass, die-stamped brass borders; H. 31 1/8 in. (79.1 cm)

Inscribed twice: (on front to back brace under top) Fait a New-York/ Le 1 May 1817/HL [conjoined]; (on top of figure's head) 1817/May/HL [conjoined]

Gift of Justine VR Milliken, 1995 (1995.377.1)

This superlative card table is one of two from a signature series of gilded sculptural pieces by New York's resident French ébéniste of the Federal period, Charles-Honoré Lannuier. The tables are remarkable not only for their exquisite beauty but also because they are signed and dated masterpieces descended in the family of the original owner, Stephen Van Rensselaer IV of Albany.

The tables are believed to be part of a larger commission by the New York City merchant William Bayard that included a nearly identical pair of figural card tables and two pier tables with gilded swan supports, wedding gifts for his daughters Harriet and Maria, who in 1817 married Stephen Van Rensselaer IV and Duncan Pearsall Campbell. The invoice for the Campbell tables survives, revealing how expensive furniture from Lannuier's shop was. The pair of card tables was priced at $250, and the pier table at $300, astonishing sums when a journeyman cabinetmaker's wage was roughly a dollar a day.

Vase, 1876
Karl L. H. Müller (ca. 1820–1887)
American
Porcelain; H. 22 1/4 in. (56.5 cm)
Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Edward J. Schneider Gift, 1996 (1996.95)

This Century Vase is one of several large-scale works that Karl Müller designed for the Union Porcelain Works booth at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876. Here it is displayed on a classical porcelain pedestal, also designed by Müller, as was originally intended. The vase features motifs celebrating the nation's past: six relief panels portray scenes from American history, including the Boston Tea Party and Penn's Treaty with the Indians. This example lacks the elaborate overglaze embellishment found on other examples, probably because it suffered from minor firing flaws.

Sofa, 1850–60
John H. Belter (American, born Germany, 1804–1863)
American; New York City
Rosewood; 53 1/4 x 66 x 25 in. (at feet) (135.3 x 167.6 x 63.5 cm)
Purchase, Friends of The American Wing Fund and Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1999 (1999.396)

John Belter has long been recognized as among the most important of the cabinetmakers producing high-style furnishings in the Rococo Revival style for the luxury market in nineteenth-century America. Belter garnered an international reputation for the suites of drawing room furniture he manufactured, many out of laminated and richly carved rosewood. He was a prolific cabinetmaker and a large body of furniture is ascribed to his shop, but the very best of his oeuvre is epitomized by his large and exuberant drawing room sofas, which are embellished with bouquets of naturalistic blooms.

View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, 1836
Thomas Cole (American, 1801–1848)
Oil on canvas; 51 1/2 x 76 in. (130.8 x 193 cm)
Gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1908 (08.228)

Long known as The Oxbow, this work is a masterpiece of American landscape painting, laden with possible interpretations. In the midst of painting The Course of Empire (New-York Historical Society), Cole mentioned, in a letter dated March 2, 1836, to his patron Luman Reed, that he was executing a large version of this subject expressly for exhibition and sale. The picture was shown at the National Academy of Design in 1836 as View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm. Cole's interest in the subject probably dates from his 1829–32 trip to Europe, during which he made an exact tracing of the view published in Basil Hall's Forty Etchings Made with the Camera Lucida in North America in 1827 and 1828. Hall criticized Americans' inattentiveness to their scenery, and Cole responded with a landscape that lauds the uniqueness of America by encompassing "a union of the picturesque, the sublime, and the magnificent." Although often ambivalent about the subjugation of the land, here the artist juxtaposes untamed wilderness and pastoral settlement to emphasize the possibilities of the national landscape, pointing to the future prospect of the American nation. Cole's unequivocal construction and composition of the scene, charged with moral significance, is reinforced by his depiction of himself in the middle distance, perched on a promontory painting the Oxbow. He is an American producing American art, in communion with American scenery. There are both sketchbook drawings with annotations and related oil sketches of this subject. Many other artists copied or imitated the painting.

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845
George Caleb Bingham (American, 1811–1879)
Oil on canvas; 29 x 36 1/2 in. (73.7 x 92.7 cm)
Morris K. Jesup Fund, 1933 (33.61)

On June 4, 1845, Bingham returned to St. Louis from a winter stay in central Missouri, bringing with him several paintings and many sketches. Fur Traders Descending the Missouri apparently was one of the pictures that he brought with him, and later that year consigned for sale to the American Art-Union. It was first called "French-Trader–Half breed Son," but the Art-Union gave it the title by which it is now known. Bingham, whose earliest efforts were portraits, produced a masterpiece of genre painting with little precedent in his oeuvre. The strikingly spare, geometric composition with luminist light recalls the paintings of William Sidney Mount, particularly his Eel Spearing at Setauket (New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown). The solemn, motionless scene immortalizes the vanished world of the American frontier, constructed for a northeastern audience. The tranquil work was submitted to the Art-Union as a possible companion to the more implicitly violent The Concealed Enemy (Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas), in which an armed Osage warrior lies in wait behind a boulder. The polar opposition of pastoral quietude and frontier savagery embodied in the paintings held enormous appeal for urban viewers. Bingham painted a similar, though less extraordinary, picture called The Trapper's Return (Detroit Institute of Arts) in New York in 1851.

Plums, 1870
John William Hill (American, 1812–1879)
Watercolor, graphite, and gouache on off-white Bristol board; 7 1/8 x 12 in. (18 x 30.5 cm)
Gift of J. Henry Hill, 1882 (82.9.1)

Hill's conversion in the late 1850s to the aesthetics of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites was manifested most notably in his still lifes. In 1857, Ruskin had written enthusiastically about the broken-color, or stipple, watercolor technique used by William Henry ("Bird's Nest") Hunt, the British master whose still lifes of humble subjects Ruskin especially prized. This watercolor well illustrates how closely Hill followed the example of Hunt as interpreted by Ruskin, creating wonderful effects with Ruskin's prescription of "interlaced touches of pure colours," some emulsified with gouache.

Genius of Mirth, 1842; this version, 1843
Thomas Crawford (American, ca. 1813–1857)
Marble; 47 x 20 x 24 in. (119.4 x 50.8 x 61 cm)
Bequest of Annette W. W. Hicks-Lord, 1896 (97.13.1)

While on a visit to Crawford's Rome studio in 1842, Henry Hicks of New York commissioned a piece of sculpture, leaving the subject entirely to the artist. Crawford's choice of a youthful dancer was almost certain to please his new patron, for images of children were popular in nineteenth-century art. In a letter to Charles Sumner, he described this "statue of Youth" as "a boy of seven or eight years, dancing in great glee, and tinkling a pair of cymbals, the music of which seems to amuse him exceedingly. The sentiment is joyousness throughout. It is evident no thought of the future troubles his young mind: and he may consider himself very fortunate in being made of marble; for thus his youth remains without change." By invoking in his sculpture's title the Latin meaning of genius (a tutelary spirit), Crawford conjures up the elemental spirit of mirth. Such classical overtones applied to subject matter of temporal appeal were common practice among the generation of Neoclassical sculptors that came after Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen. Compositionally, Genius of Mirth is reminiscent of Dancing Faun, a famous Hellenistic work in the Tribune of the Uffizi Palace in Florence, which Crawford had almost certainly visited. Crawford and his contemporaries relished the challenge of pushing marble to its limit; the disengaged left leg is a prime example of the virtuosity they delighted in displaying. Hicks must have been satisfied with Crawford's production, for he subsequently purchased from him a second sculpture, Mexican Girl Dying, also in the Museum's collection (97.13.2a-e).

Pair of vases, 1824 and 1825

Thomas Fletcher (American, 1787–1866); Sidney Gardiner (American, 1787–1827)
Silver; 1982.4a,b: Overall 23 1/2 x 20 x 14 1/2 in. (59.7 x 50.8 x 36.8 cm); 1988.199: Overall 23 3/4 x 20 3/4 x 14 3/4 in., 12,473.9 grams (60.4 x 52.7 x 37.5 cm, 401.048 troy ounces)
Purchase, Louis V. Bell and Rogers Funds; Anonymous and Robert G. Goelet Gifts; and Gifts of Fenton L. B. Brown and of the grandchildren of Mrs. Ranson Spaford Hooker, in her memory, by exchange, 1982 (1982.4a,b)
Gift of the Erving and Joyce Wolf Foundation, 1988 (1988.199)

In New York City, the most significant event of the early nineteenth century was the creation of the Erie Canal. Upon its completion, New York gained easy access to the country's interior, and its commercial hegemony was secured. A group of New York merchants commissioned this pair of monumental vases to be presented in 1825 to New York's governor DeWitt Clinton, in gratitude for his promotion of the canal's construction. The bodies and handles are modeled on the famous Roman urn known as the Warwick Vase, which was excavated in 1770 near Hadrian's villa at Tivoli. Thomas Fletcher's competition-winning design for these vases features a scheme of allegorical figures and American vistas along the route of the canal. On the front of the 1825 vase, for instance, figures representing Fame and History flank a view of the Cohoes Falls; on the back, Plenty and an American Indian are depicted with the Little Falls of the Mohawk. The cover of each vase is surmounted by an American eagle finial.

The vases are marked by the partnership of Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner, who relocated from Boston to Philadelphia in 1811 in search of greater commercial success. Excellent entrepreneurs, they soon became the leading American supplier of presentation silver, as well as retailing a wide range of imported goods, such as brass, cutlery, and lighting fixtures. Fletcher and Gardiner are representative of the large urban firms that became increasingly common during the nineteenth century. source