The Alabama Board of Education will discuss two-year college Chancellor Freida Hill's future at an upcoming meeting after an evaluation showed the board is sharply divided over her performance.

Of the nine board members, four -- Ella Bell, Stephanie Bell, Betty Peters and Dr. Charles Elliott -- gave Hill many low marks on an evaluation that rates her in dozens of categories grouped into four sections: goals, personal qualities, performance and key job responsibilities, and relations with the public. In addition, board members rated Hill on their personal experiences with her.

Members' criticisms of Hill include a lack of communication with the board, a fractured relationship with K-12 education, a poor relationship with the media and low morale in the two-year system.

Of the remaining board members, three -- Gov. Robert Bentley, Randy McKinney and Mary Scott Hunter -- gave Hill overwhelmingly high ratings, while Yvette Richardson's and Gary Warren's appraisals were mixed.

McKinney, the board's vice president, said he believes the board, which next meets on Feb. 23, likely will place Hill on a performance improvement plan, which will outline specific goals for her to meet and give her six months to meet them. Her contract states that upon an unsatisfactory performance evaluation, she will be given up to six months to correct deficiencies.

"Any deviation from this could be dangerous territory for this board to enter," McKinney said.

Efforts to reach Hill for comment Thursday and Friday were unsuccessful.

Bentley, who serves as the board's president, agreed that Hill's goals should be more specific and suggested the board draft them and re-evaluate Hill in six months. He rated Hill highly on the evaluation, giving her fours or fives in every category using a scale in which one was the lowest and five the highest mark she could receive.

In a letter attached to the evaluation, Bentley praised Hill for her commitment to workforce development and innovative ideas.

"She has identified several areas of need around workforce development and postsecondary access and has committed to developing creative solutions to address them," he wrote. "This is exactly the type of 'out of the box' thinking that we need in leadership roles across the state."

Opinions

Ella Bell, who gave Hill a rating of one in most categories, declined to comment, but previously has questioned whether different school board districts were receiving equitable funding in the two-year system. She represents many Black Belt areas.

"Until this matter is resolved, I really don't want to speak about it publicly," she said.

Hill began the job in December 2009, and her three-year contract expires Nov. 30. According to her contract, Hill receives an annual salary of $289,900, as well as the use of a car and a housing allowance of $24,000 a year. She also can earn up to $15,000 a year in performance bonuses, but has not received any bonuses since joining the system. She had been deputy commissioner of Georgia's technical college system before coming to Alabama.

Hill is the sixth person to lead Alabama's two-year college network since it was hit hard by a corruption scandal in 2006 that led to more than a dozen former college and system administrators and employees being charged with money laundering, theft and conspiracy.

McKinney, who said overall he is happy with the job Hill is doing, said he thinks other members' dissatisfaction comes down to a few disgruntled college presidents who are speaking to them.

A small group of community college presidents, he said, want to have their own lobbyists again, even though policies were put into place after the corruption scandal that doesn't allow that.

"Apparently, they do not like the policies that the board put in place to require more transparency and allowing no pass-through earmarks, along with other reform policies," he said. "We are now one system, and the Alabama Community College System speaks with one voice at the Legislature."

McKinney said some board members also are unhappy with personnel decisions Hill has made, but he called their response to those decisions "wrong and out of line."

"All in all, the majority of the people who work with the chancellor are happy with her," McKinney said. "She should be able to put people on her team who she wants on her team without having to answer to the board."

Board member Stephanie Bell, who gave Hill low ratings in many categories, wrote in her evaluation that morale is "extremely low within the department and throughout the system."

"Legislators have shared their concerns about a lack of communication/presence, and members of the media do not know the chancellor," Bell wrote. "Some board members have more 'standing' than others and there is a lack of communication with board members who are not informed/ invited when the chancellor is in their districts. Unfortunately, some perceive a lack of appreciation/respect for the board and its roles as trustees."

Stephanie Bell said Friday that Hill also has made some questionable decisions to hire highly paid administrators at a time when the education budget is lean.

Board member Mary Scott Hunter said she was perplexed by some of her fellow board members.

"I regret the board's discontent with the chancellor's work performance. I respectfully disagree with some of their assessments," she said. "I expect we will be implementing a performance improvement plan, and I agree with Gov. Bentley that goals laid out should be specific and measurable."

Join the conversation by clicking to comment or email Marie Leech at mleech@bhamnews.com.

More here:
Performance of chancellor for Alabama's two-year colleges Freida Hill polarizes board of education

Getty Images

While making the rounds on a slow Sunday late afternoon, the NFL page at ESPN.com greeted me with this click-grabbing headline:  “Football Apocalypse?”  Given the massive withdrawal symptoms that many of us are feeling on this first Sunday without pro football since Labor Day Weekend coupled with the return of The Walking Dead, I thought the article would have something to do with the short-term disappearance of the game and its impact on the millions who wandered aimlessly around their houses today with nothing to do.

Instead, the item speculates openly on the possible permanent disappearance of the game.

To get there, Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier (yep, I’d never heard of them, either) have cobbled together for the “Grantland” microsite an exercise in dot connection that begins with lawsuits arising from concussions and ends with football no longer existing.

I’ve got a fairly obvious bias on this one, but I still need to point it out.  I now make my living from football.  And I have a strong interest in seeing the sport become even more popular.  I also have spent nearly 40 years following the sport, and I hope to spend the next 40 (or more) doing the same.  Thus, I naturally am inclined to downplay anything that could prevent me from covering and following football.

That said, there are many flaws in the logic put forth by Cowen and Grier, starting with their efforts to set the mood for the potential extinction of football.  Here are a few of them.

“If you look at the stocks in the Fortune 500 from 1983, for example, 40 percent of those companies no longer exist,” they write.  And the NFL has continuously grown in popularity from the 30 years before and the 30 years after 1983, so what’s your point?

“The original version of Napster no longer exists, largely because of lawsuits,” they write.  Given that the original version of Napster was fundamentally premised on the illegal dissemination of copyrighted musical content, the lawsuits, and the death of the original version of Napster, were inevitable.  The original version of football (you know, the one where they didn’t wear helmets at all and grew their hair long because they thought it would protect the skull) also no longer exists.

“In the first half of the 20th century, the three big sports were baseball, boxing, and horse racing, and today only one of those is still a marquee attraction,” they write.  If any of those sports translated as well on TV as football does, they’d all still be marquee attractions.  Even before most people lost interest in boxing, whether due to an absence of compelling personalities in the sport, a chronic perception/reality of corruption, or the inherently barbaric nature of two men repeatedly punching each other in the head, the mainstream audience didn’t appreciate or enjoy the nuances of the so-called sweet science.  Instead, watching boxing was all about waiting for a knockdown and otherwise pretending to know what was happening through the flurry of activity that occurred when someone wasn’t in danger of getting knocked down.

Likewise, horse racing is an antiquated activity that can be fully appreciated only by being there, and baseball became America’s pastime in an era when there weren’t many ways to pass the time.

With the advent of television, football gradually became the most popular sport in the country, with more than 166 million tuning in for some portion of last Sunday night’s Super Bowl.  Today, as the national audience has shattered from three channels into a thousand options, only one event simultaneously pulls together a large chunk of the populace:  NFL football.

As to their contention that football is in peril, the biggest hole in Cowen and Grier’s theory comes from the presumption that the rash of lawsuits filed in recent months against the NFL automatically will spread to lower levels of the sport, and then strangle it.  Though a proliferation of civil complaints could happen, there are several important differences between lawsuits being filed against the NFL and lawsuits that would be filed against college, high school, and pee-wee programs.

First, as a matter of basic physics, the collisions are far less intense at the lower levels of the sport.  At the NFL level, the size and the speed and the intensity of the contact make brain injuries far more common.  Also, with more practices and more (and longer) games come more opportunities for impact.

Second, many of the former NFL players suing the league are motivated by resentment over the perception, legitimate or otherwise, that the men who made the game what it is aren’t receiving their fair share of the current financial windfall.  And so with no legal ability to try to strike a better deal for themselves after the fact, some players are looking for other ways to get that to which they believe they are morally entitled.

Third, while insurance policies would provide much of the compensation for any judgments or settlements at the non-NFL level, there’s not the same multi-billion-dollar pot of money to be raided.  With football more popular and successful than ever, lawyers who are in the business of staying in business target the biggest fish.  And the fish don’t get much bigger right now than in the NFL.

As to the potential death of football via the courtroom, Cowen and Grier also presume, prematurely if not incorrectly, that the lawsuits will be deemed to have actual merit.  Regardless of the maneuverings that occur before a trial begins, liability ultimately will be determined by a group of average Americans who will be at some level influenced by the reality that anyone with half a brain should know that banging the brain into other brains could cause injuries to said brains.  Though, as it relates to the NFL, there very well could be compelling evidence of secret studies that were hidden and/or twisted in order to conceal the true impact of chronic head trauma, it’s highly unlikely that any similar proof of shenanigans exists at the college, high school, and pee-wee levels.

Though concerns over head injuries could cause some helicopter parents to prevent their kids from doing anything that entails wearing a helmet of any kind (including flying a helicopter), the sport continues to thrive even after the fairly obvious link between chronic head trauma and an increased risk of long-term cognitive problems has officially become completely obvious.  Football has become a fundamental part of our shared experience, and boys, young men, and adult males will continue to be willing to assume the risk of playing.

As we’ve said before, our nation was founded by risk takers.  Millions risk their health and well-being every day in a wide variety of potentially dangerous jobs.  Others freely accept the possibility of injury and/or death arising from non-paying endeavors like riding a motorcycle, jumping out of a plane, climbing a wall of rock, and/or trying to kill with a gun a wide assortment of creatures that can kill humans without one.

But the biggest factor that Cowen and Grier ignore is that the NFL is trying to make the sport safer, from the top down.  The head is receiving more protection than ever, with perhaps the bigger risk to the NFL not the evaporation of the supply of future players but the alienation of fans who continue to want to see big hits and who complain loudly about efforts to make an inherently violent sport less violent.

Until there’s a way to identify the presence of Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy without carving into the brain and unless there’s evidence that even mild blows to the head that cause no concussion-like symptoms nevertheless create CTE, football will continue to thrive.  Even if the parade of presumptions and possibilities put forth by Cowen and Grier ultimate come to fruition, football will make whatever changes it has to make in order to endure.

Unlike other sports that have enjoyed their moments in the sun, football has become too big to not make whatever adjustments need to be made to ensure that the game is as safe as it possibly can be.  Though the game will never be completely safe, many jobs and hobbies aren’t completely safe.  Unless we’re all destined to walk around in plastic bubbles and pay money to watch people play chess, football isn’t going away.

And the folks at ESPN who place an article speculating on that possible demise of the sport that has made ESPN what it now is know that football is here to stay, or they wouldn’t have dropped Cowen and Grier’s article in the top center of the ESPN.com NFL page.

See more here:
PFT: 'Personal problems' denying Carter Hall spot?

NEW YORK, Feb. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue:

Dosing and Dispensing Drives Home and Personal Care Closures

http://www.reportlinker.com/p0769982/Dosing-and-Dispensing-Drives-Home-and-Personal-Care-Closures.html#utm_source=prnewswire&utm_medium=pr&utm_campaign=Personal_Care

Plastic screw and dispensing closures dominate home and personal care closures, but pumps and triggers are the most dynamic formats. With consumers influenced by product delivery and performance, closures are increasingly a point of difference. Adding such value is especially important in mature developed economies, where growth is increasingly hard to come by. Nevertheless, plastic dispensing closures will still account for most growth, with emerging regions and BRIC countries to lead the way.

Euromonitor International's Dosing and Dispensing Drives Home and Personal Care Closures global briefing offers an insight into to the size and shape of the packaging market, highlights the effect of emerging geographies, categories and consumer trends on the packaging landscape. It identifies the leading pack types, offers strategic analysis of key factors influencing the packaging market - be they packaging innovations, consumption growth, category switching, economic/lifestyle influences, legislation or environmental issues. Forecasts illustrate how the market is set to change and criteria for success.

Data coverage: market sizes (historic and forecasts), company shares, brand shares and distribution data.

Why buy this report?

* Get a detailed picture of the Packaging market;

* Pinpoint growth sectors and identify factors driving change;

* Understand the competitive environment, the market's major players and leading brands;

* Use five-year forecasts to assess how the market is predicted to develop.

Dosing and Dispensing Drives Home and Personal Care Closures

Euromonitor International

January 2012

Introduction

Global Closures Overview

Beauty and Personal Care Closures

Home Care Closures

Prospects

Report Definitions

To order this report:

Personal Care Industry: Dosing and Dispensing Drives Home and Personal Care Closures

More  Market Research Report

Check our  Industry Analysis and Insights

CONTACT:
Nicolas Bombourg
Reportlinker
Email: nbo@reportlinker.com
US: (805)652-2626
Intl: +1 805-652-2626

Follow this link:
Dosing and Dispensing Drives Home and Personal Care Closures

By Chris Hill | More Articles
February 11, 2012 |

Apple is highlighted in The Motley Fool's new report,"3 Hidden Winners of the iPhone, iPad, and Android Revolution." The report highlights three other companies that are poised to cash in on the booming smartphone and tablet trend in the United States. You can get instant access to these companies simply by clicking here -- it's free.

Please enable JavaScript to view this video.

The guest on this week's nationally syndicated Motley Fool Money radio show is Adam Lashinsky, editor-at-large of Fortune magazine and author of Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired -- and Secretive -- Company Really Works. Companies like Disney struggled in the aftermath of losing its visionary founder. How will Apple fare in the post-Steve Jobs era? In this audio segment, Lashinsky states that on the heels of the greatest 15-year run in the history of public companies, Apple will need to break into a new industry to succeed.

See more here:
Why Apple's Huge Success Will Be Its Biggest Challenge

Afghanistan's first-ever one-day international against Pakistan achieved what no other sport had managed -- support from the once cricket-hating Taliban, according to an official.

"Friday's match was a big milestone for Afghanistan, so much so that the Taliban sent a message of support, saying they are praying for the success of the team," Omar Zakhilwal, president Afghanistan Cricket Board told reporters on Saturday.

Although Afghanistan lost by seven wickets in the first-ever one-dayer against Pakistan on Friday, they gave a good account of themselves, scoring 195 and then capturing three early wickets before succumbing.

Cricket has become the top sport in the war-ravaged country in the last three years after it was introduced by youths who learnt the game in refugee camps in Pakistan following the Soviet invasion of their country in 1979.

Under the Taliban regime no outdoor sport was allowed and grounds were primarily used for executing political opponents who defied the hardliners.

But since the ouster of the Taliban, following the war on terror led by the United States in 2001, cricket has taken root with Afghanistan winning one-day status in 2009.

Zakhilwal, also the finance minister in the Hamid Karzai-led government, said cricket is uniting the nation.

"Even president Karzai was watching the match and wished the team well," said Zakhilwal.

"Across the country 80-90 percent of the kids were watching the game as this was a big occasion for our cricket."

Zakhilwal said no other thing unites Afghanistan like cricket.

"On streets you can see kids playing, there is no other sport which mobilises the people, neither politics nor any other event, neither the reconstruction, there is nothing which can match cricket.

"This (cricket) becomes an example of progress in other areas as well. Even with little peace in our country we have achieved this much in cricket. We can achieve more -- when there is a will, there is a way, with the support of the people."

Zakhilwal said his board will push other nations to play his team.

"We are pushing the top teams," said Zakhilwal, praising Pakistan for giving them the opportunity.

"It was great support from Pakistan. We are pushing India, Australia, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and with this kind of performance and following I see no reason why they don't play us."

Zakhilwal urged the International Cricket Council (ICC) and Asian Cricket Council (ACC) for more help.

"They have done their part but they should help us get more chances against top teams," said Zakhilwal, hoping countries would not shy away from facing his team.

"My personal opinion is that top teams shy away from playing us because winning against Afghanistan is not huge but losing against them would be big for them.

"I think we are a team and have broken the ice by playing Pakistan and the team has shown maturity and strength," said Zakhilwal, predicting the day when his country would host international matches was not far ahead.

"We now have two international stadiums -- in Kabul and Jalalabad -- and we are open to all teams. If they can't come, they can play us anywhere in the world," said Zakhilwal.

Go here to see the original:
Even Taliban seduced by Afghan cricket success story

LAS VEGAS -- Whitney Houston's death has had a deep impact on some in the Las Vegas entertainment community. One local singer received her personal inspiration from Houston.

Cheaza Figueroa is a rising star, singing at Planet Hollywood. She comes from a family of singers, but she can trace her creative roots back to an early conversation she had with Whitney Houston.

Cheaza, as she goes by on stage, is a lead singer at Holly Madison's Peepshow in Planet Hollywood. She traces her creative growth to the songs she heard Houston sing. She never knew Houston well, but a meeting Cheaza had with the singer in Hawaii inspired the local performer.

"She said, 'You know what, keep going. You've got a career ahead of you. Never stop dreaming,'" she said. "How many of us really get to get that close to our idols? She was truly an idol for me."

Cheaza and Houston met once again at the Grammy Awards. She credits Houston's genuine emotion during performances as her most important professional lesson.

Despite Houston's personal troubles, it's not hard to see just what legacy she leaves behind for local singers when it simply comes to vocal range and stage presence.

See the article here:
Singer Credits Whitney Houston for Success

by admin on February 8, 2012

Here are 14 tips that helped me greatly in my blogging and personal life. I share them with you in the hope that they’ll help you as well. Let me know if anything jumps out at you.

Blog consistently. This is a marathon, not a 100-meter dash. Pick a posting frequency and stick to it.
 Know the difference between accounting and finance. Keeping track of the past is accounting. Planning for the future is finance. Separate your business from your personal stuff. Set up a new bank account just for your blog. Don’t mix the personal and blog accounts together. Understand the difference between good debt and bad debt. Good debt makes you money, bad debt cost you money. Use credit cards to your advantage. Earn air miles or get cash back, but NEVER carry a balance. Surround yourself with success. Find the most successful people in your field and get on their radar. Don’t be afraid of rejections. Many will agree to mentor you if you respect their time. If you’re going to hang with success, then it also means you need to stop hanging with failures. Don’t let well-meaning friends or family member bring you down with bad advice. Take your advice from people who are where you want to be. Treat your business partners well. Never try to screw them over. What goes around comes around and payback is a bitch. Think positive. You attract to you what you are, and you are what you think. Negative thinkers attract negative people. Positive thinkers attract positive.
 Live below your means. While I do live in a nice house, I don’t drive a $250,000 sport car or have any flashy cloths. In fact, I get most of my cloth by taking all the free T-shirts at various trade shows. Always keep working on your brand. It’s what separate you from the other 120 million+ blogs
. Don’t take things too seriously. Have fun at this. It’s not the final destination that matter, it’s the journey along the way that’s important. Enjoy it. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you give. Most people equate success with how much money you make. However, I think the true measure of success is not how much you make, it’s how much you give. While it’s great to have a bunch of fancy toys, you have to keep in mind that you can’t take it with you when your time comes and God isn’t going to judge you based on how many fancy cars you drove. If you want to live with masses, serve the classes. If you want to live with the classes, serve the masses. If you look at any successful businesses, you’ll see that they serve a lot of people. The more they serve, the richer they get. Google serves millions of web surfers everyday. Walmart serves more customers than any store in the world. They’re among the richest companies in the world. The rich got rich because they serve the masses. The masses being their customers, employees, shareholders, etc. The poor are poor because they serve the classes (their boss). The more you serve, the richer you become.
 You attract what you give out. If you give out negative vibes, you’ll get negative vibes back. If you want people to smile at you, just smile at them. If you want love, give your love. If you want money, give your money. It will all come back to you in greater amounts than you gave.

This article courtesy of 14 Tips for Blogging and Personal Success

Tagged as: advice, business, difference, masses, money, personal, richer, think-the-true, time, world

See the original post:
14 Tips for Blogging and Personal Success

Photo by Brandon Dill, Brandon Dill/Special to The Commercial Appeal
Buy this photo »

Stonie Fitzgerald is a graduate of the LifeLine to Success program. LifeLine offers ex-offenders counseling, education on re-assimilating into society after being incarcerated and work opportunities around Memphis.

Photo by Brandon Dill, Photos by Brandon Dill/Special to The Commercial Appeal
Buy this photo »

LifeLine to Success founder DeAndre Brown (left) talks with one of the program's participants, Mario Shaw, during a break in the group's class. LifeLine offers ex-offenders counseling, education on re-assimilating into society after being incarcerated and work opportunities clearing and cleaning blight around Memphis.

Stonie Fitzgerald takes notes alongside fellow participants in the LifeLine program during class at the group's facility in Frayser.

Webster's dictionary defines stony as "manifesting no movement or action." Residents of the North Memphis neighborhood of Frayser define Stonie as the total opposite -- a manifestation of movement and action.

This Stonie is Stonie Fitzgerald of Frayser, ex-offender and graduate of the LifeLine to Success program.

Lifeline to Success, run and directed by DeAndre and Vinessa Brown, would be just another faith-based reintegration program if it weren't for people like Fitzgerald, who grabbed that lifeline and ran with it. Not every program reaches every person, but this program reached Fitzgerald, and he is reaching back to offer lifelines of his own.

He works with LifeLine to Success and the Frayser Community Development Center, but his real goal is to meet at-risk individuals on their own turf.

Fitzgerald recites his personal mission as, "Hopefully, doing things like going to the parks and playing basketball with the kids and recruiting them for good, like the gangs do for bad, I can make a difference, be an example. I know what it's like. I've been there."

He admits that as a teen, in his search for something in which to be involved, he stole a skateboard and became so good at the sport he was represented by a skateboard company in competitions.

Still in the gang scene, however, he went on to commit other crimes and finally served six years in a correctional facility. It was when he went from being incarcerated to living in a halfway house that his life really changed. That was where he met the Browns and began the LifeLine to Success program.

Fitzgerald has repaid his debt to society and now he is "paying it forward" through community service work over the last two years.

The next step he hopes to take is to get children involved in music and theater.

He wants to audition teens and cast them for the play he has written.

He said his goal has never veered from hoping that he can help others get off their own personal stony paths, smoothing out the way for them to also contribute to a better Memphis.

Julie Ray is a resident of Uptown.

View original post here:
Personal Success 'Paying it forward'

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 9 (Bernama) -- The establishment of the Personal Data Protection Department following gazetting of the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 will lead to higher "e-commerce" and "e-business" transactions.

This will expedite development of the electronic networking system in the country, said Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Utama Dr Rais Yatim.

He said the government's move to recognise an individual's importance via the Personal Data Protection Act would instil confidence among the masses, practitioners of e-commerce and the electronic network that their personal information was adequately protected.

The Act would also help propel Malaysia to emerge as the hub for communications, electronic commerce and an attractive industrial investment and multimedia destination, he said when opening the department and an awareness seminar on personal data protection.

Rais said the Act would also provide the guarantee for personal data protection in accordance with the international standard to Malaysia's foreign trade partners.

"Higher electronic-based transactions have raised the status of personal data which previously did not have high commercial value. The value was equivalent to that of the main commodities," the minister said.

Rais said a person's integrity and personal data protection were crucial factors for Malaysia's transition from a manufacturing-based economy to a knowledge-oriented nation backed by information and communications technology infrastructures.

So far, more than 100 countries have and are introducing the personal data protection legislation, he added.

See the rest here:
Personal Data Protection Act to boost online transactions: Rais

KUALA LUMPUR: The establishment of the Personal Data Protection Department following gazetting of the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 will lead in higher "e-commerce" and "e-business" transactions.

This will expedite development of the electronic networking system in the country, said Information, Communications and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Utama Dr Rais Yatim.

He said the government's move to recognise an individual's importance via the Personal Data Protection Act would instil confidence among the masses, practitioners of e-commerce and the electronic network that their personal information was adequately protected.

The Act would also help propel Malaysia to emerge as the hub for communications, electronic commerce and an attractive industrial investment and multimedia destination, he said when opening the department and an awareness seminar on personal data protection.

Rais said the Act would also provide the guarantee for personal data protection in accordance with the international standard to Malaysia's foreign trade partners.

"Higher electronic-based transactions have raised the status of personal data which previously did not have high commercial value. The value was equivalent to that of the main commodities," the minister said.

Rais said a person's integrity and personal data protection were crucial factors for Malaysia's transition from a manufacturing-based economy to a knowledge-oriented nation backed by information and communications technology infrastructures.

So far, more than 100 countries have and are introducing the personal data protection legislation, he added. - BERNAMA

Visit link:
Personal Data Protection Act will boost E=Commerce, says Rais