DENVER—As President Trump unveils his proposed 2018 budget, the Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Jennifer Rokala:
“This budget is a shameless attack on America’s parks and public lands. From gutting one of America's most important parks programs to increasing spending on drilling and mining, it sure looks like this budget was written by oil, gas and coal companies.
“The proposal will make it harder to keep America’s most spectacular lands pristine for future generations. President Trump and Secretary Zinke are running roughshod over the legacy of Teddy Roosevelt, tilting the scale toward special interests instead of the American people.”
President Trump’s budget would cut the Interior Department’s funding by $11.7 billion, a 10.9 percent cut. The only program activity to see a budget increase is “energy and minerals,” while every other program experiences massive cuts. These include:
Slashes funding for transportation and facilities maintenance by 15 percent, in spite of the Trump administration’s promise to address maintenance on America’s parks and public lands.
For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. To speak with an expert on public lands, contact Aaron Weiss at 720-279-0019 or aaron@westernpriorities.org.
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The Center for Western Priorities is a conservation policy and advocacy organization focused on land and energy issues across the American West
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Voting Underway for America First Credit Union
Fan Favorite Series
Tour of Utah Fans Make Selections for Most Popular
Merchandise and Race Competitors
SALT LAKE CITY (May 23, 2017) – Organizers of the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah have teamed with America First Credit Union by asking cycling enthusiasts to make selections on preferred race merchandise and to recognize top stars of the peloton. The America First Credit Union Fan Favorite series provides online voting to select designs for a commemorative cycling jersey, hat, and T-shirt. During race week, July 31-Aug. 6, fans will be invited to cast daily ballots at TourofUtah.com for past and present top-performing athletes in the weeklong professional cycling event.
Now in its fifth year, the interactive program launches this week with the America First Credit Union Fan Favorite Jersey category. From May 23-29, fans can vote for one of six cycling jersey designs, which will be produced for retail by DNA Cycling. The series will continue June 6-12 with the America First Credit Union Fan Favorite Hat category, followed June 20-26 with the America First Credit Union Fan Favorite T-Shirt category.
Once the ballots are cast, one fan from each merchandise category will be selected in a random drawing to receive a $100 Visa gift card, courtesy of America First Credit Union. The designs with the most votes will be available for purchase at the official online store for the Tour of Utah, and will be available race week at the Harmons Healthy Living Expo. All rules and regulations for the America First Credit Union Fan Favorite series are provided online (www.tourofutah.com/experience/fan-favorite-rules).
Daily categories during race week spotlight the professional cyclists, both former Tour of Utah standouts and current competitors. Six athletes will be nominated for each category, with voting open on July 31. Athletes who receive the most votes each day for a specific category are awarded the America First Credit Union Fan Favorite jersey. Each year, more than 130,000 votes have been cast by cycling fans to determine winners in select categories.
A Look Back at 2016 America First Credit Union Fan Favorite jersey winners
Stage 1 -- Best Ambassador - Ben King (USA), Cannondale-Drapac Pro Cycling
Stage 2 -- Most Loved Veteran - Ryan Roth (CAN), Silber Pro Cycling
Stage 3 -- Best Climber - Andrew Talansky (USA), Cannondale-Drapac Pro Cycling
Stage 4 -- Best Sprinter - Travis McCabe (USA), Holowesko|Citadel Racing Team p/b Hincapie Sportswear
Stage 5 -- Tour of Utah Legend - Joe Dombrowski (USA), Cannondale-Drapac Pro Cycling
Stage 6 -- Most Promising Rookie - T.J. Eisenhart (USA), BMC Racing Team
Stage 7 -- Overall Favorite - T.J. Eisenhart (USA), BMC Racing Team
The Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah continues to be free to all spectators, making professional cycling one of the most unique professional sports in the world today. The Tour of Utah attracted more than 400,000 spectators and contributed a new high of $23 million in direct economic impact for Utah last year. The Tour of Utah also continued its strong media reach with 28-plus hours of national television coverage on FOX Sports Network as well as more than 35 hours of live start-to-finish web casting via Tour Tracker, which attracted viewers from 142 countries.
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About the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah
The Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah, referred to as "America's Toughest Stage RaceTM," is a week-long, professional cycling stage race for the best men’s teams in the world. The 2017 event will be held July 31-Aug. 6. Now in its 13th year, the event was elevated in 2015 as a 2.HC-rated UCI stage race, making it one of the premier events in North America. The 2016 Tour of Utah covered 705 miles of racing and 52,825 feet of climbing with Lachlan Morton of Jelly Belly presented by MAXXIS Cycling Team winning the overall title. The Tour of Utah is owned by Larry H. Miller Sports & Entertainment. More information about the Tour of Utah, host venues and professional teams can be found by visiting www.tourofutah.com, as well as social channels Facebook (tourofutah), Twitter (tourofutah), Instagram (thetourofutah) and YouTube (tourofutah
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UESP, MountainStar Hospitals, and iHeart Media celebrate 5•29 Day
(Salt Lake City) The Utah Educational Savings Plan (UESP) is celebrating college savings by rewarding two schools whose students achieved reading goals.
UESP awarded certificates in the amount of $529 to Manti Elementary School in South Sanpete School District and Ferron Elementary School in Emery County School District, on May 19, 2017. Each school will use the funds to buy books and other resources for its library media center. The awards for winning the UESP/Road to Success Read-A-Thon commemorate 5•29 College Savings Day, a national day to promote saving for higher education with a tax-advantaged 529 plan.
In addition to supporting Road to Success, UESP will also celebrate 5•29 Day with MountainStar Hospitals and iHeart Media:
· UESP is partnering with MountainStar Hospitals during May 2017. Every child born in May at a MountainStar hospital will be entered into a drawing to win a $1,000 UESP scholarship account. The hospital where the winning baby is born will also receive $529.
· iHeart Radio stations KZHT, KODJ and KNRS will also provide listeners with the opportunity to win one of three $1,000 UESP college savings certificates to go toward a UESP account. Listeners can enter at either 941kodj.iheart.com, 971zht.iheart.com, or knrs.iheart.com. Click on Contests tab and select Win $1,000 for Your Education from Utah Educational Savings Plan! Three unique winners, one from each radio station, will be announced on air on May 29, 2017.
“We are excited to be out supporting our community during the month of May and in recognition of 5•29 Day,” said Lynne Ward, UESP executive director. “We’ve found that 5•29 Day is great way to engage families. It allows for the dialogue on college savings to begin, and it helps families realize that saving even small amounts in a low-cost, flexible UESP account can make a difference in making college more affordable for families.”
Earnings on contributions to a UESP account grow deferred from federal and Utah state income taxes. Withdrawals used for qualified higher education expenses are exempt from federal and Utah state income taxes. Qualified expenses include tuition and fees; required books, supplies, and equipment; computers, peripheral equipment, educational software, and internet service; and certain room and board costs at any university, college, or technical school in the United States or abroad that participates in federal student financial aid programs.
In 2017, a trust or single Utah taxpayer who files a Utah state income tax return can claim a 5 percent tax credit on contributions to a UESP account up to $1,920, for a maximum credit of $96 per qualified beneficiary. Spouses and grantor trusts filing jointly can claim a 5 percent tax credit on contributions up to $3,840, for a maximum of $192 per qualified beneficiary. In order for an account owner to claim the credit, the beneficiary must have been age 18 or younger when designated as such on the account. If this requirement is met, the account owner can claim the credit each year a contribution is made for the life of the account.
About UESP
UESP, Utah’s official nonprofit 529 college savings plan, is highly ranked by Morningstar Inc., Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, Money magazine, CBS MoneyWatch.com, and consumer expert Clark Howard for its low fees and industry innovations such as its customized allocation investment options.
Accounts are free to open, and UESP requires no minimum deposit or account balance. UESP’s user-friendly website, uesp.org, makes it easy to open, manage, and contribute to an account online.
To learn more about the Utah Educational Savings Plan, visit uesp.org, call UESP toll-free at 800.418.2551, or send an email to info@uesp.org.
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Read the Program Description for more information and consider all investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses before investing. Call 800.418.2551 for a copy of the Program Description or visit uesp.org.
Investments in UESP are not guaranteed by UESP, the Utah State Board of Regents, the Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority or any other state or federal agency. However, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insurance is provided for the FDIC-insured accounts. Please read the Program Description to learn about the FDIC-insured accounts. Your investment could lose value.
Non-Utah taxpayers and residents: You should determine whether the state in which you or your beneficiary pays taxes or lives offers a 529 plan that provides state tax or other benefits not otherwise available to you by investing in UESP. You should consider such state tax treatment and benefits, if any, before investing in UESP.
UESP does not provide legal, financial, investment, or tax advice, and the information provided in this document does not contain legal, financial, investment, or tax advice and cannot be construed as such or relied upon for those purposes. You should consult your own tax or legal advisor to determine the effect of federal and state tax laws on your particular situation.
A Morningstar Analyst Rating for a 529 College Savings Plan is not a credit or risk rating. Analyst Ratings are subjective in nature and should not be used as the sole basis for investment decisions. Morningstar does not represent its Analyst Ratings to be guarantees. Please visit Morningstar.com for more information about the Analyst Ratings, as well as other Morningstar ratings and fund rankings.
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OWC HOLDINGS SHIPS NEW VERSION OF SoftRAID --
MAC RAID SOFTWARE -- NOW WITH SoftRAID EASY SETUP
SoftRAID’s New Easy Setup Application Now Makes it Super Easy to Create Advanced RAID Systems for Everyone Who Wants to Protect their Data against Sudden Disk Failure --
for Photographers, Videographers, Editors, Musicians, Audio Producers, Database Managers and Anyone with Data Files That are Important to Them
Press Release: http://www.thomas-pr.com/softraid/softraidrelease.html
Protects Your Precious Files Against Disk Failure
Also Includes USB & FireWire Disk Failure Prediction Monitoring & Translation to Chinese
Mill Valley, CA May 23, 2017 -- OWC Holdings, Inc., a division of OWC, a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, announced today the launch of SoftRAID v. 5.6 RAID software featuring SoftRAID Easy Setup¬, which now makes it super easy to create a RAID system (redundant array of independent disks) from scratch to keep your precious files protected against disk failure and achieve faster data access. SoftRAID’s software RAID system is ideal for everyone who needs to safely store and backup massive amounts of data, including photographers, videographers, editors, audio producers, database and media managers, advertisers, archivers, and more. SoftRAID’s Easy Setup guides less technical users through the process of creating SoftRAID volumes, automating the process of configuring disks and making recommendations to help users setup their SoftRAID system. All users have to do is decide what the RAID volume will be used for and how much space to use (with hints from the application) -- SoftRAID Easy Setup does the rest.
Additional new features in SoftRAID include the ability to monitor USB and FireWire disks for failure and impending failure and translation to Simplified Chinese (for both the application and documentation), in addition to the 5 other languages SoftRAID already supports: English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese. SoftRAID is available to purchase from www.SoftRAID.com/store for SoftRAID lite at $49 and the full SoftRAID at $179. A 30 day fully functional Free Trial of SoftRAID or SoftRAID Lite is available to download immediately from www.SoftRAID.com/freetrial.
New Features in SoftRAID 5.6:
• SoftRAID Easy Setup: helper application guides less technical users through the process of creating SoftRAID volumes.
• SMART over USB proprietary driver: extends disk checking and monitoring to most USB drives, including most USB 3/3.1 and many USB 2 drives, FireWire enclosures and FireWire 400/800 connected drives.
• Supports 6 languages: now translated to Simplified Chinese, in addition to English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese.
• Supports Thunderbolt 3 devices: with sustained throughput of over 2.5GB/s on a single Thunderbolt 3 bus. You can even use two ThunderBolt 3 buses at the same time and create a volume which can read and write at over 4 GB/s.
• Email Notifications: updated to support recent security enhancements in SMTP servers, includes support for almost all third party email servers.
• Quick Start Guides: updated for both SoftRAID and SoftRAID Lite to include an entire section on using SoftRAID Easy Setup.
• Features improved failover handling: in the event of Mirror (RAID 0), RAID 4, RAID 5, and RAID 1+0 disk failure scenarios.
• Extends disk certification: to all 4Kn (4 KB sector) drives.
• Compatible with all versions of Mac OS X: from 10.6.8 through the latest release of Mac OS 10.12 (Sierra).
• Includes bug fixes: details of which can be found in the release notes.
General SoftRAID Features:
• Support for all Intel based Macs with Core Duo 2 processors or later.
• Supports Thunderbolt 1, 2 & 3, eSATA, SAS, FireWire and USB 2.0, 3.0, 3.1 and USB-C.
• Converts AppleRAID stripe (RAID 0) and mirror (RAID 1) volumes to SoftRAID.
• Supports RAID 0, 1, 4, 5 and 1+0 (and non-RAID volumes) - (RAID 4, 5 and 1+0 volumes not available with SoftRAID Lite).
• Supports TRIM (for SSDs) on all SoftRAID RAID levels.
• All SoftRAID volumes can be startup volumes.
• Supports volumes up to 4 petabytes (4,000 TB).
• Supports up to 16 disks per volume and up to 32 volumes per Mac.
• Automatic rebuilding of out-of-sync RAID volumes.
• Fast Rebuilds for accelerated rebuild times.
• Disk error reporting: SoftRAID monitors and logs all disk errors (often ignored by Mac OS).
• Email notifications (not available with SoftRAID Lite).
• Predictive failure analysis: gives advance warning of imminent disk failure on all disks which support SMART, most USB 3, 3.1 and USB C disks (enclosures) and also many USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and 800 disks.
• Certify Disk: guarantees disk reliably read and write data (destructive, ideal for new disks).
• Verify Disk: ensures entire disk can be read (non-destructive test for any-time use).
• Validate volume: confirms your entire volume is readable and all parity data is correct.
• I/O and error counters for every SoftRAID disk and volume.
• Extended disk information, including hours of use, reallocated sector counts and media wear for SSDs.
• Disk labeling and LED blinking to aid in disk identification.
• Extensive logging of SoftRAID events.
• Command line interface with dedicated man page (CLI not available with SoftRAID Lite).
• Built-in recovery tools for recovering severely damaged partition maps.
Pricing for SoftRAID, SoftRAID Lite, & Free 30 Day Trial
SoftRAID version 5.6 is available now as a fully functional 30 day free trial at SoftRAID.com/freetrial, with pricing at just $179 through www.SoftRAID.com/store, Apple Certified Consultants, and retail outlets worldwide. It includes one year of free technical support via email. In addition, SoftRAID Lite is available for just $49 and includes support via online forum. SoftRAID Lite supports only non-RAID, stripe (RAID 0) and mirror (RAID 1) volumes. Users of SoftRAID version 4 can purchase an upgrade to version 5.6 for $89. SoftRAID requires Intel running Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later. Support for TRIM commands on SSDs require Mac OS X 10.7.5 or later. SoftRAID is known for their exceptional tech support, available nights and on weekends, in addition to standard hours. See customer comments at: https://www.softraid.com/pages/comment/customers_comments.html. For more information, see the website: http://www.SoftRAID.com and http://www.macsales.com, Facebook:
facebook.com/softraid.
About SoftRAID & OWC Holdings, Inc.
Based in Mill Valley, California, SoftRAID was founded in 1996 by a team of Mac software engineers to provide high quality storage solutions for Mac OS. The company’s founders have worked with disk drives on Mac OS since the Mac Plus shipped in 1986. Available for Mac OS X since 2003, SoftRAID has earned its reputation as a rock solid product with great technical support -- the first to market with many key features, including fast mirror rebuilds, full email notifications, bootable RAID volumes, disk certification, RAID volume validation, TRIM support on all RAID Levels, disk failure prediction, and more. In 2014, SoftRAID was acquired by OWC, the leading manufacturer and upgrade provider for Apple and PC enthusiasts, and renamed OWC Holdings, Inc. SoftRAID is included with all preconfigured OWC ThunderBay RAID enclosures and will power the upcoming OWC Mercury Viper SSD that offers read speeds of 4.6 GB/s and write speeds of 4.0 GB/s. For more information, see the website: http://www.SoftRAID.com and http://www.macsales.com, Facebook: facebook.com/softraid.
Photos:
Screen shot: http://www.thomas-pr.com/136/photos/softraideasysetup.html
Lifestyle: http://www.thomas-pr.com/136/photos/softraidlifestyle.html
Logo: http://www.thomas-pr.com/136/photos/softraidlogo.html
Video: https://www.facebook.com/SoftRAID/videos/324347741284991/
