 muffin tins with paper cups.
5. Cream together butter and sugar until light and smooth.
6. Add eggs, vanilla, and milk. Lightly beat until smooth.
7. In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.
8. Add to liquid ingredients and stir just until flour disappears.
9. Gently stir in berries. Spoon into muffin cups and sprinkle tops with streusel.
10. Bake about 25 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.

Pasta has been a part of the Mediterranean diet since ancient Greece. While many forms of pasta are universal, each nation has its own regional traditions and specialties for this universal comfort food. Fides (“Fidelini” in Italian) are long strands of delicate angel hair pasta formed into the shape of discrete and beautiful nests. In Greece, these noodles are classically used in soups like the lemony Chicken Avgolemono Soup or served with a hearty tomato and meat sauce. At Misko, we have been making traditional Italian-style pasta in Greece since 1927. Misko Fides (Vermicelli Nests) are a wonderful ingredient for vegetable, chicken and fish soups. They are lovely presented intact, in the center of each bowl or mixed into whatever soup you’re making. Once you start working with these versatile noodles, you will find Misko Vermicelli Nests pair beautifully with light and rich sauces. For a mouthwatering rice or bulgur pilaf, break the Fides into tiny pieces and toast them, along with the grains you’re using, in olive oil or butter before adding your cooking liquid. You don’t have to be Greek to love our Fides!Newsroom
Understanding the Real Impact of Recent Drug Pricing Announcements
In July, several major pharmaceutical companies responded to President Trump’s call to action to lower drug prices by announcing they would freeze price increases through the end of 2018. While much was made in the media about the effectiveness of the president’s request and the public announcements by some pharmaceutical companies at the time, no one really knew what the real impact would be on the actual cost of medications. Further, a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that 55 percent of Americans didn’t believe this strategy would be effective and sadly, they may not be wrong.
For nearly 20 years, Vizient has been tracking drug price increases for our member hospitals and each year they have exceeded the rate of inflation. In our most recent Drug Price Forecast we projected drug prices to rise by 4.92 percent, more than double the U.S. inflation rate, which was reported at 2.4 percent in July 2018.
We recently looked at eight major pharmaceutical companies (Pfizer, Merck, Novartis, Roche, Novo Nordisk, Gilead, Bayer and Astra Zeneca) that publically promised to freeze prices for the balance of 2018. While we applaud these companies for stepping forward and giving providers a level of price predictability never seen before, we shouldn’t minimize the impact of the price increases that were taken prior to July 2018. Data compiled by Vizient show those companies will have a combined effect of more than $450 million in drug price increases for Vizient members alone in 2018.
For example, while Pfizer reversed price increases on some drugs for this year, which resulted in $21.7 million in savings for Vizient members, overall they are still projected to experience $28 million in increased expenses related to price increases Pfizer passed down in January of this year.
In assessing the public promises made by the other drug manufacturers we found other items of note:
- All of the companies had already raised prices in the first half of 2018, with some raising prices more than they did in all of 2017
- One manufacturer executed a second round of price increases a few weeks prior to pledging a price freeze. As a result, Vizient members have experienced $173 million in additional costs in 2018 from the two increases.
- Merck notably pledged to reduce prices on certain drugs. Unfortunately, those drugs were not widely used so the impact was minimal.
Since the July announcements, no other manufacturers have made any public comments about price freezes. However, pharmaceutical manufacturers continue to engage in practices that drive up the cost of medications:
- Price of new products - The price of new products seems to know no bounds. New drugs, biologics and immunotherapies are entering the market at prices never seen before. Just this year we saw the introduction of voretigene neparvovec-rzyl (Luxturna™; Spark Therapeutics), the first in vivo gene therapy product to treat a rare form of vision loss, whose price for treatment of both eyes is $850,000.
- Blocking competition - Companies continue to use litigation and other market strategies to block market entry for generics and biosimilars. As reported in our last Drug Price Forecast, this has a substantial impact considering that 79 percent of the projected price inflation for the next 12 months will be caused by drugs with no competition.
The great unknown in all of this is what will happen in early 2019. Will any of the more than 200 manufacturers who have not yet publicly commented about price freezes step up and commit to not raising prices? Or, will pharmaceutical companies resume raising prices as usual? Will the president again try to publicly pressure drug companies? And, will the next round of price increases be even larger to make up for the increases they didn’t take in 2018? 2019 may be shaping up to be a watershed year for pharmaceutical pricing practices.
About the author. In his role as senior vice president of pharmacy services, Dan he led the pharmacy group by using customer insight and data to drive value for clients and the pharmacy program. Kistner has a diverse background in the pharmaceutical industry with experience in retail, hospital, specialty, pharmacy benefits management, supply chain management and mail order.I don’t search for books on Amazon or google. I find books I want to read from awards lists, other books by authors I like, local librarian lists, recommendations from people I know, reviews I read online (book reviews in NYT Atlantic etc not Amazon or blogs or other “reader reviews”). 

I don’t care who published them, but pretty much all that I end up with are published by one of the big publishers or well respected indie publishers. 

Books I have run across that are self published typically have been low quality. These have typically been local authors or special interest things I’ve run across. 

I don’t specifically avoid self published or indie publishers or even check to see who published it, I just don’t usually run into them because of the way I search.When most people think of identity theft, it is usually in connection with the stealing of one’s personal information (e.g., social security number, credit card number, passport). But a recent conversation with a friend about what is usually an innocent question brought to mind a different kind of identity theft, one that is perhaps even more insidious.
London, United Kingdom (July 05, 2010) Innovate CV, a global interactive CV platform, has launched its Career & Training Centre, providing candidates creative and interactive training, testing and career counselling courses to give them skills and knowledge to succeed in getting their ideal job, as well as ongoing training and support during their careers.
Getting a job in the current economic climate is not easy. Ensuring that a CV coherently represents a candidateâ€˜s abilities without spelling mistakes, poor grammar and missing information is one critical element to success but ensuring the right skills for the job are verified is essential.
This is the very time when training matters most in order to equip people with the skills to find new jobs. With over 100 interactive courses to pick from 24 hours a day, gaining confidence and marketability has never been easier. The courses vary - from advice on careers to practical training on a range of areas including, communication, IT (including Microsoft office courses for all levels of ability) and sales - so that individuals can fill any skill gaps and turn their new knowledge into paper qualifications to impress potential employers. The courses are not only educational, but are entertaining at the same time, and feature celebrities - such as John Cleese, Dawn French and Jamie Oliver. The majority of the courses have interactive testing built in and the Innovate CV diploma and score can be directly uploaded onto an Innovate CV.
Daniella Winton, Director of Sales and Marketing for Innovate CV, commented: Ã¢â‚¬Getting the right help at the right time is essential. This is about getting new skills and qualifications or keeping skills up to date on paper to get the right job. Typically quality training is expensive and thatâ€˜s why we have set up state-of-the-art online learning that is affordable and fun.
The Innovate CV Career &Training Centre also hosts profile interviews with top professionals from a variety of industries who share their passion for their subjects in a relevant and engaging way, offering tips to candidates looking to enter their profession, and some practical advice on being successful once they land their dream job. Some come from training backgrounds, some are renowned industry experts and speakers and some are global board directors.
Whilst ensuring that their skills are up to date, Innovate CV also offers candidates the best opportunity in the marketplace to create an online CV with video and photo features and a variety of other functionality.
J clients is a great way to figure out whether you are doing a good job, but it’s also kind of a pain in the ass. But it turns out you only need to ask one question to get a really good idea of how well you are doing at inspiring client loyalty.
Net Promoter Score is