Friday, December 27, 2019

Performance of Goldman Sachs and Financial Ratio Analysis - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 6 Words: 1871 Downloads: 10 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Finance Essay Type Analytical essay Did you like this example? Conventionally the Bank performance is evaluated by analysis of the financial ratios. However, despite of quite a few number of ratios being calculated, a sculpt that completely convinces the analysis of requirements and bank operations efficiency evaluation is yet to be developed. Hence for these reason, the financial ratio analysis is balance with unlike eminence evaluations, with characteristics such as organization quality, equity structure, spirited position and others which are incorporated in the concluding assessment. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Performance of Goldman Sachs and Financial Ratio Analysis" essay for you Create order In this piece of work we are going to evaluate overall performance of Goldman Sachs and critically analyse how financial ratios are used to evaluate banks performance. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a American investment banking and securities organisation which slot in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and erstwhile financial services principally with institutional clients. Goldman Sachs was founded in the year 1869 and its headquarter is at 200 West Street in the Lower Manhattan area of New York City. It has additional offices in major international financial hubs. The Goldman Sachs offers mergers and acquisitions advice, underwriting services, asset management, and prime brokerage to its clientele, which include corporations, governments and individuals. The Goldman Sachs also engages in proprietary trading and private equity deals, and is a primary dealer in the United States Treasury security market (Goldman Sachs Website). Bank Internal Performance Evaluation Strategic planning Goldman Sachs ability to address and tap into important economic and financial trends through roles such as advisor, financier, market maker and asset manager are critical for fulfilling their mission to help spur growth and perform strongly as a firm. Technology Technology is a core part of GS product offering and client experience. GS ability to respond quickly and effectively to address its clients needs with customized systems, products and services helps differentiate the firm. A technological advantage for GS is that they have only one central risk system, which is partially a byproduct of not having done multiple, major acquisitions that often require merging and retrofitting platforms. Personnel development The success of the GSs efforts are measured by how effectively their people act. Over time, effective training and development have enrich their corporate culture and strengthen the values of client service and focus on reputational risk management. Recognition includes compensation, promotion, assignments and mobility opportunities. They have made it clear the link between the behaviour expected of its people and the recognition used to encourage it. This is critically important because it signals broadly the way GS expects its people to behave and conduct business (Goldman Sachs Annual report 2010). Bank External Performance Evaluation Market share GS has frequently performed above the market despite worsening economic conditions. Since the 2008, the company has outpaced the market enough to draw public admiration. With strong profits and expected strong returns, the company has set aside $500M to invest in small businesses. These efforts are a combination to both improve the economy and their public image. Regulatory compliance The Dodd-Frank legislation and new capital and liquidity requirements under Basel 3 are two of the more significant outcomes from the recent focus on enhancing financial stability. Given regulatory implementation is only just beginning, and unclear on how the new rules will ultimately impact the industry. The broad contours of new regulation, however, are clear: improve the safety and soundness of the global financial system, increase the transparency of derivatives markets, limit certain investing activities and reduce the consequences of a failure of a large financial institution. Public confidence Goldman Sachs announced in May 2010 that it formed a Business Standards Committee to reshape its business practices and mend its reputation. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said at the time that there is a disconnect between how we view the firm and how the broader public perceives our roles and activities. GSs shareholders, BoDs, clients and customers have supported Mr. Blankfein through all the crisis and this shows their faith in bank (Goldman Sachs Annual report 2010). 4.0 Analyzing Bank Performance with Profit Ratios Goldman Sachs financial performance was better in 2009  than 2010 and Q4 2009 was the best quarter since the recession. 4.1 ROE Return on equity (ROE= net income after taxes/total equity) reveal GS capability to produce profits from shareholders equity (further referred as net assets or assets minus liabilities). In other words, ROE shows how effectively a company uses the shareholders money. As seen in graphical representation above, it is clear that Goldman Sachs is tendering a lower return on shareholders equity as compared to year ended in2009. The ROE of GS for the last year was 18.93% as compared to 10.08% this year. There has a been a significant decrease in the ROE which suggests GS is not utilising shareholders money properly. GS return on equity has declined substantially due to deleverage and is only marginally higher than its current cost of capital. 4.2 ROA Return on assets (ROA = net income after taxes/total assets) is how resourcefully a firm uses its assets. From the formula it is quite obvious that higher the ratio, the company is performing more efficiently and thus is generating more profits. A low ROA with enormous assets designate that the firm is handling its asset at a poor rate. As seen in graphical representation above, it is seen that Goldman Sachs has provided a lower ROA of 0.91% this year over 1.58% last year. There is one key differentiation between ROE and ROA and it is debt. In absence of debt, the shareholders equity is same as total assets of the firm which means that in this case, ROE and ROA are identical. Now if the firm come to a decision to take a loan, ROE exceeds ROA. A elevated ROE does not always guarantee a extraordinary performance of a firm. Incidentally, ROA is then a healthier pointer of the financial performance of a firm. With a high ROA and manageable debt, if ROE is also high it means th at the company is generating decent profits using shareholders money. But if ROA is low and there is huge debt carried by the company, even a high ROE can only be a misleading figure. 4.3 Net Interest Margin 4.4 Leverage ratio Debt to Equity Ratio 4.5 Decomposition of ROE DuPont Analysis As revealed in Appendix B, The ROE of a bank is dependent on a various factors and thus change in any one of these factor can affect the rate of return on shareholders equity of the bank. As Net Income is the main source to calculate ROE in conjunction with the shareholders equity in the bank, every alteration in the Income and Expense of the bank openly affects the net income and thus influence the ROE of a bank. The detailed DuPont analysis of Goldman Sachs for year 2010 is presented in Appendix B. The ROE is decomposed as follows wrt dupont identity. Now assuming that changes are made in Income or Expense levels of the Goldman Sachs, its effect will be seen on ROA and ROE. Let us consider a case where the Interest Expense for Goldman Sachs goes down by 10% and there are no changes in its Interest Income, following are the effects on ROA and ROE of the bank. Scenario 1 : -5% change in interest expense Change Values after change Interest Expense -10% 6125.4 Interest Income 0% 12309 Effect on NI 6680.6 39841.6 Effect on ROA +0.07% 0.99% Effect on ROE +0.88% 11.68% A few other situations with amendment in Total Non-interest Income and expenses and their outcome on the ROA ROE of bank are given away in the chart below. Scenario 2 : -5% change in non-interest expense Change Values after change Total Non-interest Income -5% 31975.1 Effect on NI -1682.9 37478.1 Effect on ROA -0.19% 0.73% Effect on ROE -1.46% 8.62% Scenario 3 : +10% change in non-interest expense  Change Values after change Total Non-interest Expenses 10% 27962 Effect on NI -2542 3160 Effect on ROA -0.31% 0.27% Effect on ROE -4.44% 3.78%    Bank Performance Evaluation Based on Economic Profit 5.1 Risk-Adjusted Return on Capital (RAROC) In risk- adjusted return on capital the capital is allocated for two vital motives: (1) risk management and (2) performance evaluation. In support of risk-management rationale, the banks most favourable capital structure can be establish by allocation of capital to individual business units. This course of action entails assessing the amount of the risk (volatility) each business unit chip in to the total risk of the bank and hence to its overall capital requirements. Now, for performance-evaluation function, RAROC structure allocate capital to business units as part of a procedure for shaping the risk-adjusted rate of return and, eventually, the economic value added of each business unit. The EVA of every and each business unit is its adjusted net income minus the amount of equity capital allocated to the unit times the required return on equity. The purpose is to compute a business units input to shareholder value and so to provide a source for effective capital budgeting a nd incentive compensation at the business-unit level. RAROC is calculated by dividing risk-adjusted net income by the total amount of economic capital assigned which is dependent on the risk calculation. Risk-adjusted net income is calculated by taking the financial data allotment to the bank and fine-tuning the income statement for expected loss. A further modification is also required to take into account the effects on the net interest margin because the attention is moved from book profitability to economic profitability. Thus RAROC = Risk adjusted income / Allocated Capital RAROC for 2010 of Goldman Sachs therefore comes to 2.24 %. Let us consider some scenarios where the risk adjusted income for Goldman Sachs are changed by {-2%, +2%, -5% +5%}, The effect on its RAROC is represented as below. Change in Risk Adjusted Income 2 % + 2 % 5 % Effect on RAROC 2.20 % 2.29 % 2.13 % Economic Value Added (EVA) EVA (Economic Valued Added) is a present day financial dimension instrument which concludes whether a business is earning greater than its true cost of capital. EVA stands out apart from ROA ROE which are most accepted measures of bank performance. This is because it includes cost of equity capital employed. On the other hand, net banking income and the efficiency ratio, also, do not consider the cost of equity capital employed. Therefore, these ratios possibly will propose a banks performance as healthy but in fact it could be deteriorating its value to its shareholders. EVA is essentially a tool that focuses on maximizing shareholder wealth. EVA = Adjusted earnings Opportunity cost of capital {Net operating Profit after Taxes} {Cost of Equity X Equity Capital } With an aim of creating values, the return on invested capital (ROIC) for a bank must be greater than cost of capital. So, the EVA can be possibly increased in quite a few ways, by: 1) Increasing Net operating Profit after Taxes; 2) Lowering the Cost of Equity and 3) Reducing Equity Capital Conclusion Year on year Goldman Sachs revenues have descended by 11.04% from $51.67bn to $45.97bn. This along with an increase in the cost of goods sold expense has contributed to a reduction in net income from $13.39bn to $8.35bn, a 37.59% decrease. In 2010, Goldman Sachs did not generate a significant amount of cash. Cash Flow from Financing totalled $7.84bn or 17.05% of revenues. In addition the company used 6.16bn for operations while cash used for investing totalled $185m. Goldman results were also dragged down by a $465 million one-time expense to cover a U.K. payroll tax and a $550 million outlay to settle  SEC  charges that it favoured certain clients over others.

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Essay on The Constitution and the U.S. Government

Introduction After the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the United States Government was reorganized under the Constitution. This gave the federal government far more power than did the Articles of Confederation, which invested power within the states. Basically, the Constitution created three branches of government (Executive, Judicial, and Legislative) which would work together to run the government. To make sure that there was an equal balance of power among the branches, a system of checks and balances was devised so that each branch could limit the power of the others. It is important to note that the doctrine of separation of powers is not established by any constitutional provision [but] rather it emerges from he framers†¦show more content†¦Rise of the Supreme Court and the federal government Established in 1789, the Supreme Court was created to interpret the meaning of the Constitution and to use that interpretation to declare any actions of the Legislative or Exe cutive Branches unconstitutional. However, the Supreme Court was capable of also acquiring more functions as evidence of the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison (1803). The case dealt with President John Adams appointing sixteen new circuit court justices for the District of Colombia. Adams appointed these justices so that his political party would have more justices than the rival party. Problematically, the appointment letters were not delivered by the end of his term. By that basis, President Thomas Jefferson annulled the appointments because he retained the right to appoint the justices during his time of jurisdiction. Consequently, this aggravated the appointed justice and therefore one of the justices named William Marbury filed a case in the Supreme Court over the commissions that they were promised (Goldstone). The Court ruled that Marbury did have a right to commission and also with it made a statement that enacted the doctrine of Judicial Review. This meant that the court had the right to review, and possibly nullify, laws and governmental acts that violate the constitution. Judicial Review is a means of assuring that politicians and various other leaders adhere to the constitution and do not use powers granted to them byShow MoreRelatedU.s. Constitution And Government Policies1258 Words   |  6 Pagesviewpoints on government and politics, including conflicting viewpoints on key issues like immigration, war, and education. At the end of the day, even though the American people give power to what president will run our country, this can still result in the people becoming livid at the President’s use of that given power. In the case of President Obama, who was elected back in 2008 and 2012, during his time in office he has utilized the powers given to him by the U.S. Constitution, including militaryRead MoreA Traditional U.S. Government During the Formation of the Constitution1981 Words   |  8 PagesAmerican tradition of representative go vernment. Is representative government as strong as it was when the Constitution was formed? The idea of representative government is deeply rooted in Americas history and tradition. It began as far back as the voyage of the Mayflower. The spirit of freedom, self-reliance, the common law, and an understanding of representation, were brought by the settlers from their home. Though many of our ideas about representative government developed from the English modelRead MoreThe U.s. Constitution s National Government And Fundamental Laws1251 Words   |  6 Pages The U.S. Constitution was created to establish America s national government and fundamental laws in order to guarantee the citizen s rights. It was signed on September 17, 1787 at the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia. Before the Constitution was written, the Articles of Confederation is what America was governed by. Under the Articles of Confederation, the nation was weak and the states were run like they were independent countries. At the Philadelphia Convention, delegates formulatedRead MoreTheu.s. And Texas Constitutions Essay1005 Words   |  5 Pagesmany changes to state government since receiving their independence from Mexico. The state has been governed by six different constitutions. The most recent was written during the Constitutional Convention of 1875, and adopted February 15, 1876 by popular vote. This constitution contains sixteen articles, and four hundred eighty-three amendments. Throughout thus essay, the role of the state constitution will be examined along with a comparison of the U.S. and Texas Constitutions, and rationale for aRead MoreThe United States Constitution And Texas Constitution908 Words   |  4 PagesThe United States Constitution and Texas Constitution are similar, but not indistinguishable. The constitution was made to prevent tyranny in the states from the idea of the Federalists who wanted to build a strong form of government that gave people rights without giving their representatives too much power. Additionally, both constitutions form a bi cameral form of government, a House of Representatives, and a Senate. The Federalists wanted a strong central government to help the economic and socialRead MoreU.S. Constitution vs. Jamaican Constitution1444 Words   |  6 PagesUpon initial consideration, one would presume that the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Jamaica would not be similar at all. After all, the United States Constitution was ratified in 1787, whereas the Jamaican Constitution was not ratified until 1962, the year Jamaica gained its independence. At first glance, Jamaicas constitution appears to be most similar to that of England, because they both establish a parliament and share the same chief of state (Queen Elizabeth II). TheseRead MoreThe Resolved Issue Of The Constitution Essay1457 Words   |  6 Pagesthe Constitution. Over the duration of conducting research the overlay of the essay will be describing the major benefit of the U.S Constitution. While several issues have been unresolved by the U.S Constitution such as the issues of the Articles of Confederation. The entire focus of the essay will describe the resolved issue that have been corrected in the constitution, while also describing some of the historical events that were caused the U.S constitution to change. The U.S constitution helpedRead MoreU.s. Constitution Vs. Georgia Constitution859 Words   |  4 PagesU.S. Constitution vs. Georgia Constitution Bill of Rights A Bill of Rights recognizes and lists the rights individuals have and protects those rights from governmental interference, unless of course there is a valid reason for government action to take place. While the Bill of Rights for the Georgia Constitution and the United States Constitution do just that, they do have some distinctive similarities and differences. For example, the major difference I see is the fact that the Georgia Bill ofRead MoreWhy the ratification of the constitution was a good thing1595 Words   |  5 Pages Why the ratification of the constitution was a good thing The Constitution of the United States is one of the first written constitutions and one of the ‘oldest’ to have been made on the national level and applicable today. It was developed and adopted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in May and September, 1787. The Constitution of 1787 followed the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The U.S. Declaration of Independence, asRead MoreComparison Paper GOVT200679 Words   |  3 Pagesï » ¿The U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are two of the oldest documents in America and two of the most popular. These documents help to shape America and gave us freedom from the British government. The two documents contains very important information about our independence but they are different in many ways. In this paper I will compare the two documents and incorporate an outlook from the Christian biblical worldview. The U.S Constitution and the Declaration of Independence

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Women Athletes vs Men Athletes free essay sample

Should the amount of money an organization brings in effect the amount they play their players, regardless of the sex? Dont know? Well, here is some more information: This website below shows the salary for a male athlete compared to a female in the same sport. According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, the average NBA salary rose to $3. 17 million per player in the 1999-2000 season, while the average WNBA salary was about $55,000 (askmen. com). So what about now? Well, The salary cap for the 2010–2011 NBA season is $58,044,000. The WNBAs salary cap is $852,000 per team for the 2010/2011 season and the average player makes $42,000. Kobe Bryants salary for the 2009/2010 season is $23,034,375. There is a huge difference in salary wouldnt you say? And this is just basketball. There is also tennis, golf, and even bowling. All of which women get paid less. Ok, so its pretty obvious that man get paid A LOT more than women when it comes to sports. We will write a custom essay sample on Women Athletes vs Men Athletes or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page However, is there a good reason for it? Or is it sexist? Here are some of the reasons you see a salary difference: Attendance: far less people attend womens sports compared to mens. When Seattle had a team (The Supersonics) attendance was twice as high as the Seattle Storms. If twice as many people are filling the stands of the NBA versus the WNBA then its no wonder they are bringing in less revenue. But its not just the amount of fans in the stands, its also a matter of ticket prices. The average attendance for a WNBA game is 8,000 people and the average ticket cost is around fifteen dollars. Thats about $120,000 per game. Averaging out to a little over $4,000,000 a season. However, half of the WNBAs games are away games so they really only see about $2,000,000 a year in ticket sales. How does that compare to the NBA? The average ticket cost of an NBA game is around $50 (a lot more than the WNBA) and average attendance for the 2009-2010 season was around 16,000. Double that of the WNBA. So thats $800,000 on average per game. Times that by the 41 home games they play in the regular season and we come to $32,800,000 of yearly ticket sales per team. That is over 16 times the amount the WNBA brings in. And that is just ticket sales. Far more NBA games are televised compared with the WNBA. Bringing in even more money. The average NBA team brings in about $15,000,000 in pure revenue, that means after all expenses (such as salary, taxes, promotions, etc). The WNBA doesnt even turn a profit. How do they stay afloat? The NBA subsidizes the WNBA to the tune of about $12 million per year. So I ask you again: do these women deserve equal pay? If they cant even turn a profit and need to be supported by their male conterparts, than how can they expect equal pay?

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Turkey, Media and Human Rights

Introduction The study focuses on the freedom of the press in Turkey. Turkey is supposed to be one of the more liberal Muslim countries but events of the past few months on media crackdown do not reflect that.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on Turkey, Media and Human Rights specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Some of the issues this study explores relate to how the government recently shut down social media sites, namely Twitter and YouTube before the elections. The research also covers media censorship and highlights any laws related to the freedom of the press in Turkey. Today, the media industry in Turkey faces challenges related to press freedom, including indirect or direct government censorship, imprisonment of journalists, and laws that would allow prosecutions of journalists that criticize the governments. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Turkey has the highest number of im prisoned journalists in the world (more than China and Iran). At the same time, a judicial package was adopted in 2012, which addressed these challenges but they were not strong enough to allow and protect full press freedom. Evidence from available studies indicates that Turkey’s press freedom has been deteriorating over the years and has dropped in the ranking of organizations such as Reporters Without Borders by fifty places. Other organizations such as Freedom House have categorized Turkey as partly free and the 2012 European Commission Progress Report for Turkey (EU membership annual report) categorized press freedom as one of their main concerns. In addition, research shows that 68 percent of the imprisoned journalist’s cases were related to the Kurdish Issue. Many of the journalists were charged under laws that were unrelated to media and the press like anti-terror laws and organized crime laws. There are also issues of court-ordered suspension of online sites a nd conflicts of interest due to media ownership.Advertising Looking for research paper on political culture? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The Possible Cause of the Increased Media Crackdown in Turkey In the year 2010, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, Human Rights Investigation Commission issued a report on its outcomes concerning the allegation that some of the news reports by Turkish Media had violated the presumption of innocence (Çataklar). The outcomes of this Commission were devastating to the Turkish Media. For instance, it criticized the media and their reporting methods. The Commission accused the media of striving to be the first power rather than the fourth power. This was a source of concern for the Turkish government and society. The report noted that media continuously reported â€Å"fabricated news, violation of the right to respect for private life and the infringement of the presumption of innocen ce† (Çataklar). According the report, â€Å"press freedom, freedom of opinion and expression and presumption of innocence should be exercised within the articles of the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey, Turkish Supreme Court decisions and judgments of the European Court of Human Rights†. In this regard, the Commission summed up their concerns and suggested possible solutions to these problems. In its recommendations, the Commission claimed that it included â€Å"opinions of the media members and academics†. The content of this report could have sparked the outrageous government crackdown on the media and journalists. Some of the Common Challenges to Journalists in Turkey According to Freedom House, Turkey’s civil liberties rating has deteriorated from three to four. This has resulted from the ongoing pretrial detention of many people, including â€Å"Kurdish activists, journalists, union leaders, students, and military officers with charges that appear to be politically motivated†. This new rating suggests that Turkey is not only dangerous to journalists alone, but also other groups of citizens too. Many publications, including an article by The Economist have highlighted that Turkey remains the most dangerous country for journalists (A dangerous place to be a journalist 1) because many journalists facing charges have covered news that the government considers sensitive and dangerous to national security. For example, some journalists have covered issues related to police complicity in the murder of Hrant Dink, a journalist and the influence of the Gulenists within the security forces (A dangerous place to be a journalist).Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on Turkey, Media and Human Rights specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The most important point one should consider is the impact of detention of journalists on journalism, press freedom and f ree speech and expression. This is a step backward in the gains made in the media freedom and human rights. Turkish media are under pressure to be subservient and deferential to interests of the government yet no media should play such a role. Thus, the case of Turkish media highlights vulnerability of journalists. In any society, journalists have the right to gather information and deliver the same to the public. These are core roles and principles, which guide journalism and its integrity as a profession. Many organizations and the US have expressed their concerns about the state of media freedom in Turkey. In addition, Turks have also protested against the government’s actions. At the same time, several reports by various organizations with different mandates have documented the state of media freedom in Turkey. They have noted that the major challenges relate to â€Å"government interference in media affairs, the structure of the media sector, firing or harassment of col umnists, growing practice of self-censorship, and prosecution, detention and imprisonment of journalists over criminal and terrorism-related charges† (Onur). In addition, there are some other issues related to hate speech and the use of defamatory terms. Government Interference One major obstacle that many journalists and the media industry encounter in Turkey is the escalating cases related to â€Å"the government’s interference in media-related affairs†. In most cases, the Prime Minister and the ruling party, Justice and Development Party (AKP) have lashed out at different† journalists, columnists and newspapers because of their decisive position on critical affairs in the country†. The Turkish government has used different but direct techniques to restrict media freedom in the country. For instance, the government has publicly criticized and condemned journalists and columnists. They have asked the public to boycott newspapers and only buy them fro m pro-government media houses. In some instances, the government has forced many senior editors to eliminate some investigative pieces from their dailies or Web sites and exert pressure on media owners to dismiss some news commentators or columnists (Onur).Advertising Looking for research paper on political culture? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The Turkish government has claimed that negative media coverage of the government could have unprecedented, unwanted consequences for the economy because such news portrays the government in a negative manner and destroys the image of the ruling party. Self-censorship Various actions of the government have forced journalists and columnists into a state of self-censorship. At the same time, journalists also face direct pressure from the government. Therefore, one may notice that many prominent columnists and journalists in Turkey were fired or had their contracts terminated. Most journalists affected were mainly fierce critics of the government. The government has also resorted to filing libel lawsuits against some of the journalists. Yeni Akit is a pro-government newspaper. However, recent coverage of significant events by the media has led to serious concerns in the country and globally. For instance, the daily has accused other parties of financing terrorists while it has increasi ngly published hate speech and targeted â€Å"Jews, Christians, Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Alevis, the LGBT community and the government’s critics† (Onur). The current state of the media market in Turkey has â€Å"encouraged the government interference in the industry†. The Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) has noted that more than â€Å"80 percent of the market is under the control of two pro-government media houses†. Onur claims that the inadequacy of the legal framework and regulations to support media cross-merger has hindered transparency in the industry. In addition, the law restricts participation in tender processes and diversified investments. Consequently, the media industry has become highly polarized and structured. In this context, media owners have sacrificed public interests of receiving news because of business interests as they assist â€Å"the government in strengthening political power and fighting critics†. T herefore, the Turkish media cannot act as a watchdog for the public. Prosecution, Imprisonment and Human Rights of Journalists Perhaps the most outrageous aspects of the government’s attempts to restrict press freedom in Turkey are by arresting, detaining and prosecuting journalists (Franklin). Many reports have noted that Turkey remains the most dangerous country for journalists. Currently, more than 100 journalists have been arrested and detained. A significant number of these journalists face charges related to being a part of terrorist groups, using propaganda to support terrorism or directly offering supports to terrorists (Bilefsky and Arsu). Many journalists have faced charges under specific, similar offenses. For instance, most cases relate to the infamous Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) Case and the Ergenekon Case (Onur). The government has been able to exploit legal loopholes to carry out mass prosecution of journalists. The Anti-Terror Law and the Turkish Crimina l Code have provided such opportunities. In addition, several other journalists face trials for different offenses. A report by the Organization for Security Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) has shown that one journalist had 150 different Court cases. The high number of journalists in prisons has negatively affected the media industry in Turkey. While Turkey has made significant reforms since the year 2000, serious challenges have persisted with regard to the freedom of speech and press freedom. The tendency of the Turkish government to interfere with press freedom has attracted the international attention, specifically when social media were blocked in the country. This is an alarming situation to journalists and media owners, including online media platforms. Both the government and media owners have focused on business and undermined the role of the media in a democratic society. In addition, the use of laws on terrorism and legal loopholes in the constitution has forced journalist s to practice self-censorship. Turkey had focused on building a democratic state that would lead others in the Gulf region and the Muslim community. However, the country may not be able to realize this vision because of its poor records on press freedom and freedom of expression and opinions. Turkey, therefore, has contradicted its objective of promoting press freedom and building a stable democracy. Turkey’s Social Media Crackdown Human rights advocates in Turkey have a cause for concern ever since the government declared its strong stance against its critics, journalists and columnists (Eissenstat). According to Eissenstat of Amnesty International USA, in the past months, there has been â€Å"a sharp decline in human rights conditions in Turkey†. The author argued that the situation could only escalate toward the presidential election to be conducted in August. This has been the case since the country banned YouTube and Twitter sites. The government’s decision to censor the Internet resulted into widespread public protest in the country (Pierini and Mayr). The Internet has revolutionized information sharing. As a result, the Turkish authority has attempted to find various ways of regulating the Internet by focusing on religious, cultural and social issues. Onur has cited the OSCE report, which noted that, â€Å"Turkey provides the broadest legal measures for blocking access to Web sites by specifying eleven different content-related crimes, but does not reveal the number of Web sites blocked† (Onur). According to the Freedom House’s ranking, Turkey’s Internet is partly free while the European Commission refers to the censorship as disproportionate. At the same time, other prominent bodies have listed the ban as matters of concern. Reporters Without Borders had listed Turkey as an enemy of the Internet in its 2012 report. One must not dismiss the role of the Internet, Web contents and social media in providing informa tion to the public. Citizens understand the relevance and importance of news Web sites. Consumption of news on the online platforms has increased steadily with the increase in Internet accessibility through mobile devices. Many Turks, therefore, rely on the Internet to receive news updates. Online news has become an alternative to many people. Therefore, the government’s decision to shut down Twitter and YouTube in Turkey was impairment to the media industry with impacts on press freedom and freedom of opinion and expression. The Human Rights Watch has raised concerns that even after the Court order to restore Twitter access in Turkey, the social media platform has remained shut down (Human Rights Watch). Turkey’s Telecommunications Authority (TIB) blocked Twitter after a Court ruling on certain contents. While the Court ordered the Telecommunications Communication Directorate to unblock the account, the agency is yet to comply with the Court ruling. This highlights im punity and disregard for the rule of law and press freedom. While users have relied on proxy sites to receive YouTube and Twitter contents, all these other proxy sites have also been blocked. As a result, many international bodies, including the UN have criticized Turkey for stifling press freedom (Human Rights Watch). The government has strived to look for new ways of empowering the Telecommunications Directorate to block social media sites and target specific contents as happened in February 2014. There were such previous attempts on Google sites in the year 2012 in which the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of the company. The Court claimed that blocking such sites violated the right to freedom of expression. Only a single post from an individual led the Turkish Court to order the blockage of Google sites, but the European Court of Human Rights established that Turkey lacked an effective and adequate legal framework to monitor social media platforms. The government o f Turkey has failed to honor such rulings from the European Court of Human Rights. Instead, the country has concentrated on introducing new ways of restricting access to news Web sites. A rights discourse, communication rights, human rights and media The Organization for Security Co-Operation in Europe has clearly stated that by blocking access to social media platforms, Turkey deliberately disregards the fundamental right to freedom of expression and freedom of the media (Organization for Security Co-Operation in Europe). This is a violation of human rights. Any regulator that blocks media and inhibits the free flow of news and press freedom on both online and offline platforms also breaches several OSCE standards and international conventions it has sworn to protect. In addition, Amnesty International has reported that the government has started to arrest human rights lawyers with 15 of them currently in detention (Amnesty International). According to the Committee to Protect Jo urnalists (CPJ), certain Turkey’s pro-government media have released disturbing reports with false claims against it (Committee to Protect Journalists). On this regard, CPJ has realized that the Turkish government has embarked on a strategy of attacking its fierce critics rather than addressing issues of press freedom, communication rights and human rights. The fundamental sources of concerns are â€Å"communication rights and freedom of opinion and expression and human rights†. On this note, CPJ has written a letter to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, which details its â€Å"profound concerns about Turkey’s anti-press policies, including the jailing of journalists, the censorship of social media, and adoption of restrictive legislation† (Committee to Protect Journalists). CPJ noted in its latest prison census that Turkey had held 40 journalists in prison. This number made Turkey to be the world’s leading country with the highest number of j ournalists in prison. It has also attracted widespread condemnation of the government (Burch). However, the government released nearly half of the journalists and the number reduced to 21. Iran and China also have a significant number of journalists behind bars (Committee to Protect Journalists). Most observers have claimed that Turkey’s crackdown on the media, journalists and press freedom had reached a point of crisis because it has the highest number of jailed journalists and restrictive media laws. The Turkish government has embarked on constant introduction of new laws, legal prosecution, widespread intimidation of columnists, media owners and columnists and broad offensive to stifle meaningful journalism and communication rights in the country. According to CPJ report, there are certain articles in the penal code, which give â€Å"authorities wide berth to use journalists’ professional work to link them to banned political movements or alleged plots† (Comm ittee to Protect Journalists). On the same note, Greenslade has noted that the government uses some articles frequently to â€Å"criminalize basic newsgathering activities, such as talking to security officials or obtaining documents† (Greenslade). In most cases, Turkey has related â€Å"journalism with terrorism†. This is an accepted practice in a democratic state and therefore it undermines the fight against terrorism and the country’s security issues. Most rights discourses have called upon the Prime Minister to stop attacks on the press and instead concentrate on developing a fair process for the detained journalists (Global Network Initiative). At the same time, he should pursue reforms to ensure press freedom and freedom of opinion and expression. Given the flawed nature of laws of communication in Turkey, Reporters Without Borders has noted that the Turkish judicial system often conducts political case analyses rather legal and judicial ones (Reporters Wi thout Borders). For example, if journalists present critical views on the Kurdish issue, â€Å"prosecutors and judges tend to conclude that they therefore share the views of the Kurdistan Workers Party and must be guilty of membership of this armed separatist organization† (Reporters Without Borders). Consequently, several organizations have urged the Turkish judicial system to respect the international conventions in which Turkey is a party. Such conventions clearly define freedom of expression, which may only be restricted in cases of hate messages or violence, but this is not the case in Turkey. On the same note, OSCE and the Council of Europe have asked Turkey to stop relying on jail as a means of restricting press freedom. Today, many organizations and advocates have called for the release of jailed journalists in Turkey. Specifically, these bodies have focused on journalists who have been jailed because of their newsgathering roles. It is imperative for the government t o address press freedom and allow journalists to do their duties. This process, however, requires inputs from all stakeholders so that they can find and implement long-lasting solutions. Human rights activists such as Zafer ÃÅ"skà ¼l have asserted that any obstacles that prevent the public from gaining access to news are clear human rights violations (Bozkurt). Press freedom allows the public to access news and any attempts to challenge such rights indicate serious problems. On this note, Bozkurt noted that political leaders have the responsibility of defending and protecting free media. Media Policy and Press Freedom After the economic crisis of 2001, Turkey embarked on media freedom reforms, which included media ownership restructuring (Kurban and Sà ¶zeri 52). The crisis affected many media companies that had invested in the financial sector too. As a result, the need to secure business tenders led to â€Å"social manipulation to voluntary censorship in the whole sector† (Kurban and Sà ¶zeri 52). As a result, today’s media industry in Turkey is grappling with pressure from â€Å"the government and its agencies, as well as challenges from its own capital structures and poor ideological choices† (Kurban and Sà ¶zeri 52). The situation has become unbearable because these changes have affected democratic processes in Turkey negatively. Moreover, press freedom, freedom of expression and media laws are foreign to the country. This implies that Turkish government and its agencies may not be conversant with effective media policies, which require inclusion and transparency in a democratic state (Ziomek 67; Plaisance 187). Turkey should create democratic, independent media. The media can then act as civilian supervisors on bureaucratic and politic processes and ensure protection of public interests. This process, however, requires significant changes in the legal framework of Turkey and media training (Young 38). At the same time, there sho uld be changes in the media ownership structure and implement laws that facilitate competition in the industry. Media Ethics in Turkey The development in the global information society provides an imperative opportunity of enhancing equal and sustainable development in media ethics, specifically in countries with poor press freedom and human rights. In this context, Jorgensen has observed that the revolution in information and communication technology should focus on ways in which the information society can either advance human rights around the world or threaten them (Jorgensen 34). In the case of Turkey, one can only observe how social media platforms have threatened human rights. A report by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, Human Rights Investigation Commission 2010 established serious allegations against the Turkish media. For instance, there were cases of â€Å"fabricated news, violation of the right to respect for private life and the infringement of the presumption of innocence† (Çataklar). At the same time, Kurban and Sà ¶zeri found that the â€Å"tabloidization of news and violations of professional rules of ethics through inconsistent and even fictitious news in the Turkish media were the outcomes of ‘the industry’s fierce competition in the rating war† (52). These findings from various studies and investigations show that the Turkish media industry lacks professionalism and media ethics. The industry operates in a highly polarized environment occasioned by political divisions that have affected various media and journalists’ groups. These challenges have prevented any meaningful collaboration and efforts to promote self-regulation. While Turkey has the Press Council to oversee media operations, its independence and inputs in the industry remain highly contested. Media owners are a member of the Council, but they have claimed that state interference and differences in ideologies have affected its operatio ns. As a result, the Press Council represents few media owners and lacks a significant support from the media community. The Press Council of Turkey can no longer provide fair representation for media owners because it has remained controversial just like its current leadership. Social media and technologies have provided new opportunities for Turks to gain access to â€Å"alternative news information beyond what the traditional mainstream media could offer† (Kurban and Sà ¶zeri 52). The Independent Communication Network is a body established in 1997 and strives to monitor the media and ensure freedom and independent journalism in the country. The Network has strived to establish professionalism in journalism in Turkey. It provides training, publishes books and organizes media conferences, forums and other exchange programs. This organization receives funds from various European agencies to promote media ethics in Turkey. Online media channels have however presented new form s of challenges to journalism and media ethics. For instance, there are cases of â€Å"copy-paste’ news from the mainstream media outlets or other new agencies† (Kurban and Sà ¶zeri 52). The Turkish government has attempted to introduce some draconian laws to control online media. For instance, it intended to introduce new regulations for online media and provide specific identification cards to online journalists (Kurban and Sà ¶zeri 52). This approach has raised serious press freedom issues in a country that is aggressive toward journalists. In a response to this move, the Alternative Informatics Association launched â€Å"the Internet needs freedom, not press cards’ campaign to criticize the government’s initiative as an attempt of censorship and control of the media† (Kurban and Sà ¶zeri 52). In a quick turn of events, the Turkish government has referred to social media as platforms for crimes, violence, chaos and disorder (Human Rights Obse rvers). In most case, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has often accused social media of causing unrest and branding Twitter as a ‘troublemaker’, and accusing the online messaging service of spreading ‘lies’. Further, he insisted that the Internet inflames the riots and defames government officials, which are both real and virtual crimes irrespective of the medium (Human Rights Observers). Such statements show that Turkey does not have any real legal framework for handling irresponsible journalism and relies on authoritative Press Laws to ban social media. In addition, the government is reluctant to formulate laws that will regulate online media channels. The press freedom crisis in Turkey from moral and ethical points of view One may look at the press freedom crisis in Turkey from moral and ethical points of view in order to identify differences. It is imperative to recognize that no form of governments irrespective of their leadership styles sh ould operate in secrecy. Individuals value their personal privacy and confidentiality. Nevertheless, journalists disclose information due to public interests, which is imperative for their integrity and professionalism. Only vigorous inquiry and transparency can provide liberty and democracy that many countries pursue, but the Turkish government’s approach to press freedom has created media crisis that raises moral and ethical concerns. The main role of journalism is to provide the public with the information they need to be free and self-governing. Information is power and journalism helps to distribute this power to the people. Perhaps this role has elicited fear in the Turkish government because â€Å"shared power is safer and more beneficial to society than concentrated power† (Ethics, Morals and Journalism). The role of journalism, therefore, is beneficial to society and powerful too, but requires ethical decision-making (Fawley). As noted earlier, journalists in Turkey have shown disregard for media ethics. They have abused their power by publishing fabricated news and failed to use their freedom responsibly to provide the truth to citizens. They are unable to balance responsibility and freedom and therefore lack â€Å"personal sense of ethics and responsibility–a moral compass† (Principles of Journalism). Moral growth emanates from community practices, but not conflict while ethics originates from individual choices and decisions and therefore, individuals can learn to be ethical (Ethics, Morals and Journalism). Societal morals originate from cultural practices, which form laws and means of control. Therefore, ethics and morals lead to a comparison between individuals and society. For journalists, common sense accounts in journalism as Glasser and Ettema (512) had noted. In this sense, journalists must be able to differentiate between right and wrong practices (Glasser and Ettema 515 – 516). Assistant Secretary for Pub lic Affairs, Douglas Frantz has claimed that what Turkish government is doing to the media can be found in a Turkish proverb, which is â€Å"you don’t burn the sheep to kill one flea† (Frantz). The US government has raised concerns that Turkey is among many countries that have tried to shut the Internet despite reforms it gained since the year 2001. While Frantz recognizes that the number of jailed journalism has declined, still there is a need for freedom of expression and press freedom. He asserts that journalism is not a crime and the government should not confuse journalism with criminal activities. Specifically, the social media have raised concerns. The Turkish government has tried to ban the social media. Banning social media is a blunt approach, which â€Å"punishes the technology not the individuals who are misusing the technology† (Frantz). Hence, one can draw the difference between moral (society) and ethics (individual) based on the Turkish media cri sis. Elaine Scarry highlights these philosophical perspectives by showing that it is difficult for individuals to notice pain in others and therefore avoid aggravating the same pain (Scarry 39). Scarry has focused on violence and cruelty toward foreigners and this reflects actions of Turkish government on journalists. It shows that the Turkish government sees journalists as foreigners who are interfering with state affairs. The government has not fully understood media principles or recognized journalists. As a result, it can inflict pain on journalists through imprisonment and detention. If the government understood the principles of journalism, then it would not be able to ban social media and imprison journalists. In this regard, violence and cruelty against media houses and columnists result from the failure to recognize these entities and individuals as real. Scarry notes that â€Å"the best solution to the problem of cruelty to strangers combines spontaneous imagining with le gal equality and enfranchisement† (Scarry 53). Therefore, political equality should facilitate social equality, press freedom and freedom of expression. Under such conditions, variations do not reflect inequality. The Turkish government aims to ensure conformity by stifling the media. Scarry notes that political equality encourages toleration, and â€Å"to tolerate others is to make room for them in one’s imagining†(p. 55). Constitutional and legal framework changes in Turkey should improve imagination of citizens and press freedom and freedom of opinion to allow citizens to maintain social unity and solidarity. Nevertheless, Scarry points out that any changes in legal frameworks and structures cannot guarantee that strangers will receive â€Å"a full measure of attention and adequate imagining† (Scarry 40-62). In other words, these instruments cannot guarantee safety of journalists yet laws aim to provide standards for fair treatment for citizens and hold them accountable. Hence, structures of laws may fail but a structure of sentiment can achieve much (Scarry 58). Sentiments come from individuals and define ethics. Margalit notes that ethics should define individual ties with whom they have special relations with while morality should reflect societal obligations to humanity (147). From Margalit’s perspective, past events are critical and should help individuals to remember specific people whereas the community should have such collective memories. In this regard, it would be imperative to understand how Turks would remember the government that banned social media, jailed journalists and restricted press freedom and abused human rights. Turks have the obligation to remember their government because it has abused people, undermined human rights and morality altogether. Such memories should be used to alienate citizens from past cruel memories and reconcile them rather than seek for revenge (Margalit 149). Summary of the Findi ngs, Conclusion and Recommendations Summary of the Findings Turkey’s attempts to restrict press freedom and freedom of expression and opinion have negative impacts on the state. At the same time, they do not help in the fight against terror. The Turkish government, therefore, must take initiatives and improve its record on Press Laws and human rights. Government interference with media affairs is rampant and serious. Perhaps the most serious case involves imprisonment of journalists under flimsy charges, including accusation of being a member of terrorism groups. Social media crackdown in Turkey is an attack on the entire technology industry. Instead, the government should concentrate on specific elements that it believes are responsible for chaos and disorder. Media owners and journalists in Turkey lack media ethics. They fabricate news and violate privacy and confidentiality. The focus on politics and business has led to poor ethics in journalism. By highlighting moral and ethics, one can draw a clear distinction between moral and ethical community. The Turkish government has treated journalists as foreigners and criminals. Conclusion The research has established that Turkey’s strategies and efforts to restrict press freedom have resulted in poor rating for the country and therefore, the government must take corrective measures. Many institutions have released several reports, which show that press freedom, freedom of opinion and human rights are deteriorating in Turkey because of the arrested journalists. The government’s attempts to convince the public and the world have failed though the number of jailed journalists has declined. The concepts of press freedom, human rights and freedom of expression seem foreign to Turkey. It is not clear how the Turkish government intends to handle the issue of media crisis and improve the current situation because all its approaches have resulted in negative outcomes. The fight against terror should not lead to media restriction. A reliable judicial process should help the government to identify terror suspects among the arrested journalists. This process, however, requires judicial reforms because the current system has failed to achieve reliable outcomes. The government must allow civil societies, academics and media owners to participate in such reform processes. In addition, the Turkish government should accept external assistance to facilitate the required reforms. Turkey needs all these stakeholders to help it to create a stable democracy and promote peace within its borders. Such reforms will improve Turkey’s ranking among the international community and promote its image and influence. At the same time, the media industry and journalists also should embark on reforms and training to understand media ethics. Currently, there are serious ethical and moral concerns among Turkish journalists because they are engaged in fabricating news. Common sense should guide jour nalists to decide on right or wrong practices and present the truth to the public. This is the fundamental role of the media in any country. Recommendations Press freedom is essential for a democratic society. Nevertheless, press freedom is not unlimited and therefore, journalists must use common sense and observe freedom and responsibility. This calls for moral and ethics in journalism. The presumption of innocence is fundamental right in the Turkish constitution. It is imperative for media owners, the government and the judicial system to cooperate on determining issues of ethical concerns. The legal framework and the Court system require reforms so that the judiciary should not treat journalists’ cases as political ones. Information should be shared within the law. Media owners must consider changes in capital and ownership structures in the entire Turkish media industry. The current model is business driven and has created monopoly in the media industry. Moreover, the ind ustry has become pro-government. The media industry should not serve the interests of the government. Instead, it should represent all stakeholders in society. Judges and prosecutors need training on media and public relations. Likewise, journalists too require training programs on coverage of legal affairs. Turkey must formulate laws for the Internet and social media immediately. The government should desist from authoritative approaches when dealing with social media. So far, its actions have been detrimental and abusive. It is imperative to remember that media laws are almost similar irrespective of the platform used. Works Cited â€Å"A dangerous place to be a journalist.† The Economist. 10 Mar. 2011. Web. http://www.economist.com/node/18333123. Amnesty International. â€Å"Turkey: Anti-terror arrests target prominent human rights lawyers.† 18 Jan. 2013. Web. http://www.amnesty.org/en/for- media/press-releases/turkey-anti-terror-arrests-target-prominent-human-right s- lawyers-2013-01-18. Bilefsky, Dan and Sebnem Arsu. â€Å"Charges Against Journalists Dim the Democratic Glow in Turkey.† The New York Times. 4 Jan. 2012. Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/world/europe/turkeys-glow-dims-as- government-limits-free-speech.html?pagewanted=all_r=0. Bozkurt, Gà ¶ksel. â€Å"Silencing media a human rights violation, says Turk rights czar.† Hà ¼rriyet Daily News. 10 Oct. 2009. Web. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438n=silencing-media- a-human-rights-violation-says-uskul-2009-10-11. Burch, Jonathon. â€Å"Rights groups condemn arrests of Turkish journalists.† Reuters. 21 Dec. 2011. Web. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/21/us- turkey-journalists-idUSTRE7BK1DS20111221. Çataklar, Eda. â€Å"Turkey: Media Report of the Human Rights Investigation Commission.† 2010. Web. http://merlin.obs.coe.int/iris/2010/5/article41.en.html. Committee to Protect Journalists. â€Å"CPJ calls on Turkey to addres s press freedom challenges.† 30 Apr. 2014. Web. https://cpj.org/2014/04/cpj-calls- on-turkey-to-address-press-freedom-chall.php. Eissenstat, Howard. â€Å"How Much Do You Know About Turkey’s Social Media Crackdown?† Amnesty International USA. 2014. Web. http://blog.amnestyusa.org/europe/how-much-do-you-know-about-turkeys- social-media-crackdown/. â€Å"Ethics, Morals and Journalism.† n.d. Web. http://www.uiowa.edu/~c019168/168s6online2.html. Fawley, Sabrina. â€Å"The Importance of Journalism.† 5 Sept. 2013. Web. http://scrippsmediaethics.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-importance-of- journalism.html. Franklin, Stephen. â€Å"Turkey: Where Truth Is a Hard Sell.† 7 Jan. 2013. Web. http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/turkey-human-rights-risk-kurdish-media- government-politics-jailing-journalists-CPJ. Frantz, Douglas. â€Å"Roundtable with Turkish Journalists on â€Å"The Role of an Independent Media in Civil Society†.† 18 Apr. 2014. Web. http://www.humanrights.gov/2014/04/18/roundtable-with-turkish-journalists-on- the-role-of-an-independent-media-in-civil-society/. Freedom House.† Turkey.† 2013. Web. http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom- world/2013/turkey#.U9ycVKPm7jI. Glasser, Theodore and James S. Ettema. â€Å"Ethics and Eloquence in Journalism: An approach to press accountability.† Journalism Studies 9.4 (2008): 512-534. Print. Global Network Initiative. â€Å"Turkey: Stop Blocking Social Media.† 28 Mar. 2014. Web. https://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/news/turkey-stop-blocking- social-media. Greenslade, Roy. â€Å"Turkish press freedom crisis.† The Guardian. 23 Oct. 2012. Web. http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2012/oct/23/press- freedom-turkey. Human Rights Observers. â€Å"Ankara slams social media role for â€Å"chaos and disorder†.† 28 Jun. 2013. Web. https://hromedia.com/2013/06/28/ankara-slams- social-media-role-for-chaos-and-disorder/. Huma n Rights Watch. â€Å"Turkey: YouTube Block Violates Free Expression.† 27 Mar. 2014. Web. http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/03/27/turkey-youtube- block- violates-free-expression. Jorgensen, Rikke Frank. Human Rights in the Global Information Society. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, n.d. Print. Kurban, Dilek and Ceren Sà ¶zeri. Caught in the Wheels of Power: The Political, Legal and Economic Constraints on Independent Media and Freedom of the Press in Turkey. Ä °stanbul: TESEV Publications, 2012. Print. Margalit, Avishai. The Ethics of Memory. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2004.Print. Onur, Murat. â€Å"Turkey’s Press Freedom Crisis.† Foreign Policy Blogs. 11 Mar. 2013. Web. http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2013/03/11/turkeys-press- freedom-crisis/. Organization for Security Co-Operation in Europe. â€Å"Censorship of social media platforms must stop in Turkey, says OSCE media freedom representative.† 27 Mar. 2014. Web. http://www.osce.org/fom/116897. Pierini, Marc and Markus Mayr. â€Å"Press Freedom in Turkey.† 14 Jan. 2013. Web. http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/01/14/press-freedom-in- turkey/f1td#. Plaisance, Patrick. â€Å"Transparency: an assessment of the Kantian roots of a key element in media ethics practice.† Journal of Mass Media Ethics 22.2/3 (2007): 187-207. Print. â€Å"Principles of Journalism.† Pew Research Center. 2014. Web. http://www.journalism.org/resources/principles-of-journalism/. Reporters Without Borders. â€Å"Turkey – World’s Biggest Prison for Journalists.† 20 Dec. 2012. Web. http://en.rsf.org/turkey-turkey-world-s-biggest-prison- for-19-12-2012,43816.html. Scarry, Elaine. â€Å"The Difficulty of Imagining Other Persons.† The Handbook of Interethnic Coexistence. Ed. Eugene Weiner. New York: Continuum Publishing, 1998. 40- 62. Print. Young, Iris Marion. Inclusion and Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print. Ziomek, Jon. Journalism, Transparency and the Public Trust. Washington, DC: Aspen Institute, 2005. Print This research paper on Turkey, Media and Human Rights was written and submitted by user Enzo O. to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Death Of A Boy Essays - David, Ketuvim, Psalms, Death, Night

Death Of A Boy The storm of the battle swept. Stars of heaven Kept. Upturned faces through the night. Mangled corpses in the light. Pale stars faded, morning broke. Then death awoke. Golden hours, bright summer day. The dead unburied bodies lay. Stark and cold unceased prayer. Hide them from the Staring sun and air. Possesion of that won plain. Denying burial of our slain. Night round them so holy, so calm. Moonbeams hushed prayer and psalm. Apart from all the rest, Fair young boy put to the test. Death touched him gently, as if he sleeps. Mother suddered, slumber calm and deep. Marble limbs so perfect, passionless repose. Matchless purity unpitying foes. Broken, Lifes story told. Did his duty, deaths-tide rolled. Midnight garment of stars. Hung the fiery planet Mars. Sound of foot steps, voices low. Leaves murmuring flow. They pass the corpses on the ground. Hand in hand never looking down.

Sunday, November 24, 2019

About Uranium-Lead Dating

About Uranium-Lead Dating Of all the isotopic dating methods in use today, the uranium-lead method is the oldest and, when done carefully, the most reliable. Unlike any other method, uranium-lead has a natural cross-check built into it that shows when nature has tampered with the evidence. Basics of Uranium-Lead Uranium comes in two common isotopes with atomic weights of 235 and 238 (well call them 235U and 238U). Both are unstable and radioactive, shedding nuclear particles in a cascade that doesnt stop until they become lead (Pb). The two cascades are different- 235U becomes 207Pb and 238U becomes 206Pb. What makes this fact useful is that they occur at different rates, as expressed in their half-lives (the time it takes for half the atoms to decay). The 235U–207Pb cascade has a half-life of 704 million years and the 238U–206Pb cascade is considerably slower, with a half-life of 4.47 billion years. So when a mineral grain forms (specifically, when it first cools below its trapping temperature), it effectively sets the uranium-lead clock to zero. Lead atoms created by uranium decay are trapped in the crystal and build up in concentration with time. If nothing disturbs the grain to release any of this radiogenic lead, dating it is straightforward in concept. In a 704-million-year-old rock, 235U is at its half-life and there will be an equal number of 235U and 207Pb atoms (the Pb/U ratio is 1). In a rock twice as old there will be one 235U atom left for every three 207Pb atoms (Pb/U 3), and so forth. With 238U the Pb/U ratio grows much more slowly with age, but the idea is the same. If you took rocks of all ages and plotted their two Pb/U ratios from their two isotope pairs against each other on a graph, the points would form a beautiful line called a concordia (see the example in the right column). Zircon in Uranium-Lead Dating The favorite mineral among U-Pb daters is zircon (ZrSiO4), for several good reasons. First, its chemical structure likes uranium and hates lead. Uranium easily substitutes for zirconium while lead is strongly excluded. This means the clock is truly set at zero when zircon forms. Second, zircon has a high trapping temperature of 900Â °C. Its clock is not easily disturbed by geologic events- not erosion or consolidation into sedimentary rocks, not even moderate metamorphism. Third, zircon is widespread in igneous rocks as a primary mineral. This makes it especially valuable for dating these rocks, which have no fossils to indicate their age. Fourth, zircon is physically tough and easily separated from crushed rock samples because of its high density. Other minerals sometimes used for uranium-lead dating include monazite, titanite and two other zirconium minerals, baddeleyite and zirconolite. However, zircon is so overwhelming a favorite that geologists often just refer to zircon dating. But even the best geologic methods are imperfect. Dating a rock involves uranium-lead measurements on many zircons, then assessing the quality of the data. Some zircons are obviously disturbed and can be ignored, while other cases are harder to judge. In these cases, the concordia diagram is a valuable tool. Concordia and Discordia Consider the concordia: as zircons age, they move outward along the curve. But now imagine that some geologic event disturbs things to make the lead escape. That would take the zircons on a straight line back to zero on the concordia diagram. The straight line takes the zircons off the concordia. This is where data from many zircons is important. The disturbing event affects the zircons unequally, stripping all the lead from some, only part of it from others and leaving some untouched. The results from these zircons therefore plot along that straight line, establishing what is called a discordia. Now consider the discordia. If a 1500-million-year-old rock is disturbed to create a discordia, then is undisturbed for another billion years, the whole discordia line will migrate along the curve of the concordia, always pointing to the age of the disturbance. This means that zircon data can tell us not only when a rock formed, but also when significant events occurred during its life. The oldest zircon yet found dates from 4.4 billion years ago. With this background in the uranium-lead method, you may have a deeper appreciation of the research presented on the University of Wisconsins Earliest Piece of the Earth page, including the 2001 paper in Nature that announced the record-setting date.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Literature review matrix Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Literature review matrix - Essay Example   The researchers designed two phases for the study. In the first phase, participants were interviewed and their responses noted down while in the second phase, the researchers studied participants independently and noted their observations.   In the results, the researchers were able to identify some factors which influence the proper implementation of evidence based practices. They included organizational and practice issues, multi-professional relationships and the role of project leaders.   Some of the factors that were identified as influencing the process of implementing evidence based practices include number of years in the nursing practice, the age of the nurses and the number of years since obtaining the last professional degree.   Majid, S., Foo, S., Luyt, B., Zhang, X., Theng, Y. L., Chang, Y. K., & Mokhtar, I. A. (2011). Adopting evidence-based practice in clinical decision making: nurses perceptions, knowledge, and barriers. Journal of the Medical Library Association: JMLA, 99(3), 229.   Rycroft†Malone, J., Harvey, G., Seers, K., Kitson, A., McCormack, B., & Titchen, A. (2004). An exploration of the factors that influence the implementation of evidence into practice. Journal of clinical nursing, 13(8), 913-924.   Dalheim, A., Harthug, S., Nilsen, R. M., & Nortvedt, M. W. (2012). Factors influencing the development of evidence-based practice among nurses: a self-report survey. BMC health services research, 12(1), 367.   Van Achterberg, T., Schoonhoven, L., & Grol, R. (2008). Nursing Implementation Science: How Evidence†Based Nursing Requires Evidence†Based Implementation. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 40(4),

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Field of business and accounting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Field of business and accounting - Essay Example Even presently, I will not pay for any product that I consider unnecessary although those products are the popular items amongst youngsters. My friends always persuade me to buy an Ipod, but this item for me is considered an unnecessary purchase because I will not use it that often; I can play music whenever I want to, such as at home and in car. Gradually, I have developed an interest of trade and hence saving money. For me, learning is a process of attaining knowledge, value and skill; not only through study but also through working experience. As a result, when I started to see that I had an interest in the business field that was the time when I decided to work for my uncle’s company for a few months before I thought of pursuing my career in the United States. Although I worked as  the receptionist there, I learned that in order to accomplish a job, the same required diverse skills as well as knowledge from different individuals and more than that communication forms up as an important skill in the field of business nonetheless. In the year 2005, I started working in my father’s company as an accounting assistant. My job was to make a simple statement of different accounts, create wire and transfer money to those companies that we dealt with because I was one of the authorities in my fathers company. Other than that, I started to learn how to use information systems to track financial performance. Since working as an accountant assistant consumes a lot of time.

Sunday, November 17, 2019

US embassy safety after the 1998 US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Essay

US embassy safety after the 1998 US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya - Essay Example The Foreign policies of countries are seen to generally be made up and designed in order to help protect that country's national interests, national security, ideological goals, and economic prosperity.However it is common knowlegde that that can occur only and only in the result which would be of peaceful cooperation and interaction with other nations, and to the contrary through exploitation and ultimately War. One can easily assume that foreign policies are as old and ancient as the society of humans itself. The century known as the twenthieth century has seen a fast rise in the importance and the need of foreign policies, with every nation in the world now having the means, methods and ability of being able to interact with one another in some form. There fore it is vital that one keeps a close check on the bills and formal agreements that are passed between various countries. And the kind of effects that those bills and other agreements have on the relationship and over all view s and feelings of the people belonging to those countries.This should be done so that devestating attackes and other tragedies can be avoided based on the effects of certain agreements and bills. Some agrrements and decisions taken on the basis of foreign polivy often cause the economy of either one or both countries involved to go down this in turn takes down the level of employment and ultimatley effects the quality of life for general public. This causes hatred and anger in the hearts of the people towards the people of the othercoutry and drastic expression of such hatred takes the shape of suicide and mass destruction bombings. One take on a foreign policy move which effected relationships between countries can be seen through the implementation of the Trade and lifting of trade barriers, as trade amongst coutries is the number one means of interaction there fore it holds great importance in the formation of zforeign policies. The Bill in questin here is the implementation of NAFTA. The terms and conditions of NAFTA have long been the basis form shaping the relationships between the United States and its neighbouring countries. Some highlights of NAFTA are given below. Approved in November 1993 and brought into effect on 1 January 1994 NAFTA or the North American Free Trade Agreement a trilateral agreement holds Canada, Mexico and the United States as its members. Its approval will see a Drastic change in the economics of these three nations. NAFTA basically draws rules and guidelines between Mexico, Canada and the United States for the elimination of trade barriers regarding goods and originating from within North America. Barriers such as Health and safety standards, import taxes and import/export laws. NAFTA aims at gradually reducing these barriers to the extent of making them non-existent between the member nations. It called of majority of the tariffs and remove restrictions from major categories such as motor vehicles, computers, textiles and agriculture. HISTORY AND ADDITIONS: Provisions regarding Investment restrictions between the three countries also saw removal and intellectual property safety saw new heights (patents, copy writes and trademarks). It being trilateral means that all stipulations equally applying on all members. Further more provisions regarding the protection of labor, workers and the environment were added later on to the agreement. This gave rise to the formation of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). Founded on the basis of concerns from the environmentalists that companies would either relocate to Mexico or that the United States would lower its standards if all three countries

Friday, November 15, 2019

Richness And Density Of Information Information Technology Essay

Richness And Density Of Information Information Technology Essay E-commerce is a method of trading via internet. This came into practice and became popular after the people are aware of the advantages in using internet to shop for their needs. The term e-commerce can be defined as a means of modern technology to sell goods and services through a web portal to deal with the needs of customers and traders to minimize maintenance charges, development cost as well as the delivery to the customers. (Ritendra Goel, 2007). It can also be called as e-marketing and is one of the fastest developing industries in the present world. It is gaining its importance as the shopping is just a click away instead of the traditional way of going to the stores. It also contains the exchange of information to make easy about funding and payment options of the business dealings. A major percentage of e-commerce is done electronically for essential things like an access to premium content of companies. Online sellers are called as e-tailers and online retail which is also known as e-tail. Approximately all large retailers contain this e-marketing on internet. E-commerce carried out among businesses is known as Business to Business (B2B). This B2B could be open to various users in the aspects like product exchange or limited to particular products, pre-qualified members, public or private e-markets etc. E-commerce can also be applicable to customers and businesses, moreover it is referred to as Business to Customer (B2C). Amazon.com is one of the leading website of such kind. (Steven N. Kalpan and Luis Garicano, 2006). Unique characteristics of E-commerce These days, e-commerce is considered as a buzz word. Many of the users promote websites, affiliate marketing and SEO and other things, however their aim is to gather the clients and sell the online services or products of the corresponding company. Electronic medium is the main tool available to purchase the online products. Following are the considerable characteristics of e-commerce (E-Commerce, 2010): Ubiquity: In conventional commerce, the global market is a physical place where all the users visit to transact. For instance, radio and television are normally directed to motivate the consumers to visit the places to purchase the products. E-commerce is ubiquitous since it is present everywhere during all the times. E-commerce releases the marketplace from being constrained to a physical space and allows shopping the users from their desktop or laptops. Hence, the outcome is specified as market space. From the consumer point of view, ubiquity reduces the transactional costs. In order to perform, one does not require spending their money and time travelling to their nearer markets. More clearly, the ubiquity of e-commerce lessens the cognitive energy which is needed to complete a mission. Global Reach: Generally e-commerce is a technology which allows the commercial transactions to national and cross cultural boundaries extremely more effectively and conveniently when compared to conventional commerce. Hence, the possible market size of electronic merchants is approximately equal to the worlds online population size. Universal Standards: The unseal characteristic of e-commerce technology is the technological standards of Internet and hence the technological standards for carrying out e-commerce are generally the universal standards these are shared by all worldwide online users. Interactivity: Dissimilar to the commercial technologies of the present generation, there are possible ways of interactivity through telephone. Hence the technologies of e-commerce are interactive enabling the two-way communication among the consumers and merchants (E-Commerce, 2010). Richness and Density of information: Internet immensely increases the data density. Quality and total amount of data is available to the market participants, merchants and consumers. The technologies of e-commerce lessens the data collection, communication, storage and the handling costs. Simultaneously, these technologies enhance the timeliness and accuracy of data, enabling data more important and useful than ever before. Hence the data becomes cheaper, with higher quality and available in plenty. Richness of data refers to the content and complexity of a message. Personalization: The technologies of e-commerce allow personalization. Online merchants can aim their marketing notification to particular individuals by altering the message to an individuals name, their interests and previous purchases. The e-commerce technology also enables the customization. Online merchants can regulate the service or product based according to the prior behavior or users preferences. With the use of e-commerce technologies, it is easier for the merchants to recognize the online consumers and utilize the data more efficiently than ever before. Merchants can utilize this data to enhance the new data asymmetries, develop their capability to charge premium prices, brand products for high quality services and divide the marketplace into never-ending groups, sub-groups and everyone getting different prices based on their account history (E-Commerce, 2010). Research on E-Commerce The online transactions using the e-commerce are very high in the year 2006 with hundred billion dollars in United States of America i.e., ten percent of the years total domestic market which shows the increasing trends in online shopping. Almost 33% of the people doing online shopping are relaying on the search engines for their needs. But a characteristic feature of the online shopping trends that people believe in the word of mouth of others when it comes in selecting the best website for online shopping or of the company than the results found through the search engine. Before starting an e-commerce or business through website, there is a need for the firms to analyze the uses and suitability for their products or service which are being offered to customers. In the present market, the most common items being purchased online are Books, Cloths, perfumes, mobile, some of the grocery and latest technology products. So firms must recognize the areas in which e-commerce can be implemented unlike implying on all segments of business. They must decide before implementing electronic commerce in business dealings. This will enable the firms to adopt appropriate strategies to utilize the existing resources that are available in the company. While doing the research, it is found that e-commerce business is available for all the small to large businesses based on the brands or products. However, there are very few websites which got integrated with different brands or shops or products but the thing is only integration is with respect to the products like all the super markets shopping at one place or different mobile shops at one place but there was no website which could integrate irrespective of the category. When browsed online, it was noticed that most of them are very slow and didnt had good look and feel. Also, no security was provided to the customer details or card details. Hence, it resulted in designing the e-commerce website with the title iStore sounds like Internet Store. The project is a web application for users to browse and purchase different products from different shops or brands of their choice using the present upcoming technology known as Adobe Flex Builder and also a tool called Xampp which got the different servers and database integrated in one tool. The project is divided into two modules one is for admin side and the other is for user side. The admin side consists of different operations like adding stores, managing store, adding products under different categories with respect to the stores etc., and on the user side we got the features like viewing the products, adding them to the cart, checkout with fully secured features for card payments, login and logout etc. Mainly inspired by the online shopping business have determined to develop the solution for e-commerce using the latest technology in order to provide rich user interface , user friendly navigation and secured payment options. Features of e-commerce: Any Portal with the below features can be a e-shop. Categories: Generally the online stores have different categories like Books, Antiques, Baby products, Arts, Industrial and Business, Photo and Camera, Vehicles and Parts, Boats, Cars, PDAs and Mobile Phones, Shoes and Accessories, Clothing, Electronics, Toys, Jewelry, Computers and Networking, Dolls and Bears, Crafts, Movies and DVDs, Beauty and Health, Home and Garden, Music and Instruments, Watches, Pet Supplies, Glass and Pottery, Specialty Services, Real Estates, Sport Memo, Sporting Goods, Tickets, Stamps, Hobbies and Travel, Games, and etc. Online users can browse the above products to view and purchase the products. Products: The website enables the user to browse different product based on the categories. Accordingly, the products will be displayed with brief descriptions like price and name along with thumbnail images. Product Details: The complete details of the product can be viewed by the users by just clicking the on their desired product to see the product description, bigger image and video of the product and if the customer like the product, the customer can directly add the product to the cart.. Shopping Cart: E-commerce provides all the solutions for the online users. The e-commerce website generally specializes in business to consumer, business to business, Web Stats, Inventory Management and e-accounting. The websites of e-commerce are totally equipped with IP Fraud checking and ecommerce security. Hence, providing all the shopping cart features like enabling the users to add or remove the products to the shopping cart. The amount to be paid can be viewed by the customer on the cart panel. Login: Login page is provided so that user can get his desired products. Once the customer finishes the shopping they needs to login for the payment options which enables the security feature. If the customer is not a registered user, then customer has an option called New user? Register here to register himself. Once the registration is finished, he can complete the shopping. Registration : Registration form is provided so that the users can register themselves before purchasing their desired products. Here, the new user is intended to register with the website for finishing the shopping. Based on the details like User name, password, retype password ,e-mail id etc. to finish the registration. Payment Type : Once the customer is logged in he can pay the bill by two options like pay with cash or pay with card. Confirmation: Finally, the users are provided with the checkout product list for billing purpose. This process of checkout requires the Users to login in order to track their order. Admin: The site administrator has been provided with the admin panel to manage the stores and the store administration has been provided with the admin panel so as to manage the portal content such as products, categories, etc. Business Analysis: A business can be defined as an organisation or industry or online service that provides services like selling or buying the goods providing career to others. Any Business results either in profits and losses. To start a new business there is a need for good planning and organising, nevertheless research. Now-a-days business is not constrained to an organization or an industry but is boundless to the whole world considering e-business as an example. Online business is booming everywhere as it changes the way the people do their business using the internet with just a click without effecting other facility. Any business needs a strategy i.e., scope and direction to maintain the business for long term and to have good customers. Revenue: Any Business needs a revenue i.e., money which can be received from selling products or services. The total revenue for any company is calculated using the formula Total Revenue = Selling Price per unit *Number of units Sold For example if a company sales a single item for  £1.10 with a profit of  £0.40 than its revenue is ( £1.10 * 1)  £1.10 with a profit of  £0.40. Similarly for 10 items it would be ( £1.10 * 10) is  £11.00 would be the total revenue with a profit of  £4.00 i.e., profit is calculated as Profit = Total Revenue Total cost If the Revenue is greater than Total cost than it is profit and if revenue is less than total cost than it is loss. In the present project iStore the business gets the revenue from Once the store is registered, the store is provided with a 15days free trial and thereafter if the stores want to continue the store is charged particular amount. For every product sold from any store the iStore gets 5-10% of profit from the cost of item sold. User part got the advertising banner for advertising products or stores, which is one of the sources of revenue. For the delivery of the products the customer is charged  £3 for normal delivery and  £7.99 for the express delivery. In this business everything is insured like the products being sold, Equipment used like vehicles used for delivered .An insurance police will be provided to the company and also the employees. Methodolgy : This part of the document gives the information about the technologies used to develop the project and the technologies being used are compared with the other technologies avaliable in the market to show how good is the technology we are using. Background : The web designing projects are developed using different tools and technologies with a database. In general, a web desinging can be developed using the technologies like asp,jsp,java. Dot net, PHP, mxml, and xml etc and there are different databses like Oracle, SQL , MySQL etc. But, for the e-commerce application being developed uses PHP, Mxml , CSS and the database My SQL providing the customers to have a good look and security with easy navigation. Technology Assessment : Web Servers : Any Website is placed on a computer known as a webserver and this servers are always connected to the internet . Every websever is connected to the internet and is been given with a unique address which is a series of four numbers between 0 to 255. The range would be from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 . For Example 68.178.101.200 . Mainly there are four webservers in the market Apache HTTP Server : Apache web server is developed by Apache Software Foundation and it is the most popular web server used world wide . More than 60% of the web server machines use the Apace web server which is an open source software. The great thing of the Apache web server is it can be used or installed on almost all the operating systems like Linux,Unix, Windows ,FreeBSD, Mac OS X and more. Internet Information Services (IIS) : IIS is a web server from Microsoft it has got very high performance. IIS web servers are designed to run on windows NT/2003 and 2003 servers as this comes bundled with Windows NT/2003 and 2003. And even new version of IIS are avaliable for windows new versions. Lighttpd : The Lighttpd is a web server that is avaliable free and is distributed with the FreeBSD operating system and is pronounced lightly. As like Apache it is also a open source software which can run on the different operating systems like Windows, Mac OS X , Linux and Solaries. It got the features like fast, secure and consumes very less CPU power. Jigsaw : Jigsaw(W3Cs server) is also a open source software and avaliable free of cost and can be used on different platforms like Linux, Windows ,Unix, Free BSD, Mac OS X etc, and it is been developed in Java even than it can run CGI scripts and PHP programs. It comes with the World Wide Web association. Conclusion : Considering the features of the different servers available, I finalized to use Apache web server as it is most popular open source software and most of the hosting providers provided apache hosting. Web Application Scripting Tools: Any web application is developed using the scripting tools like PHP, ASP , JSP or Pyton for creating web pages. Benefits of PHP over other Scripting Tools PHP Hypertext Processor is a web programming language on server-side which can be embedded into HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language). The uses and benefits of PHP are extensive that includes any sort of server functionalities like taking the inputs from the user and manipulating and displaying the outputs. PHP is considered to be a platform independent as it runs on both UNIX and Windows servers thus it is considered to be more accessible than Windows (ASP). This scripting language is gaining its hold in the programming area of development. This is another language in the slot of object oriented language which even has speed on Linux server which is useful to build large and complex web application. PHP is a useful programming and scripting language as it is easy to integrate with the given web pages and allows for the use of advanced programming structures in the development. Another main advantage of PHP compared to other scripting languages is that it easily and very well interfaces with MySQL which is a popular type of online database. Another add-on point of PHP is that it is an Open Source code as it is available public for free whilst the source code for ASP.net and other language based product cannot be obtained. With all these reasons PHP is considered to be relatively cheap and best programming and scripting language for the open source products. As it is an open source programming language the code can be shared between the developers without any reflexes. This indeed leads to the stage where the developers can rely on each other for using the characteristic of reusability of the pieces of the code which can be termed as functions, classes instead of developing the common piece of code every time and reinventing the wheel. This scenario will reduce the production time vividly. Some of the benefits of PHP over other open source languages like JAVA are as follows: PHP is considered as more swift development tool in comparison with JAVA if once the developer once get used to the process of developing the simple web pages. There is no particular IDE for the development of PHP applications. There are some tools like Komodo for checking the syntax at real time process and debugging. It is not necessary to restart the server whenever it is required to update a PHP file unlike does in JAVA. Even this is not exact problem with JSPs but when it comes to Java Servlets the web server will try to unload all the classes from the memory and reload it as and when requested. These are some of the advantages of PHP over some other scripting languages and some other open source developing languages. Therefore I have chosen PHP for the project development process as it is open source, lightweight and rapid in comparison with other technologies like MS.NET Database : Any e-commerce needs to have a database for storing the data of the registered users, products, etc. In market, there are lot of database systems available like Oracle, MySQL , SQL Server etc. Benefits of My SQL over other Database Major database systems that are used in the present web developing systems are Microsoft MS SQL server and My SQL. These two systems are similar with respect to the general data manipulations some of the features like supporting the primary key operations, key indices which enables the user to speed up the operations and queries and restrain input. In addition to this these two systems Microsoft offer some form of support to XML formats. But the advantages of MySQL over the other start with its nature of open-source system which is not present in MS SQL server as it is a closed one and a build on proprietary structure. MySQL is an open storage and extensible database engine that offers multiple variations such as Berkeley DC, InnoDB, Heap and My ISAM while these options cannot be seen in MS SQL server as it offerings are limited only to a Sybase-derived engine. MySQL has major advantage of integrating impeccably with any number of web designed technologies and programming languages which keeps it over the MS SQL server. MySQL is also considered to be ahead in terms of its compatibility which works better than any Microsoft products. MySQL is considered as a robust, fast database with relatively good feature set. If any project is designed to be portable then its pretty good to implement on My SQL. It also offers a very good admin security and a good database system to implement. Postgre SQL is one of the other open s ource relational database management system which matches the standards and operations of SQL server and also runs on different platforms. In spite of all these features it is a slow due to its advanced features and becomes complicate to use by the developer in a large web developing projects (Mike Jewson, 2006). Due to these advantages, MySQL has been chosen for the database management system in this project. User Interface : Benefits of Adobe Flex over Silverlight Adobe flex is an open source structure which runs in adobe flash player to create rich internet applications (RIAs). It merges the functionality of desktop applications with that of the accessibility of web applications. This tool will allow for the speed prototyping of difficult web applications. The aim of flex is to understand the Adobes goal for its suite of products. And adobes goal is to influence the wide number of designers who already know with adobe design tools. Whereas for Microsoft Silverlights goal is to influence the Windows Presentation foundation framework (WPF), the .NET framework and also its ascertained developer base. WPF is used to present a visual front end for all windows foundational applications. Flex has a wide selection of out of the box elements like DataGrid, Tree and Panel which are employed to deliver the view of a Flex RIA. These flex applications are collected into Flash bytecode and it runs in Flash Player. It also influences Flash transitions and animations and supports media streaming and data push. Flex applications programming is done in combination of MXML and Action Script languages. When it comes to Silverlight this type of programming is not possible (Chris Giametta, 2009). Adobe flex events are more spontaneous than the Silverlight to implement. This can be defined as static resources in App.Xaml and compiled into the application. These two tools provide XML based mark-up language and with convenient methods for designing controls. But there are some differences which are practically proved between these two tools-Flexs MXML and Silverlights XAML. Prior tool is assembled straight into Action Script modules. If Flex builder is used, then developer could set a breakpoint directly in MXML and wait for it to be performed. After breakpoint is reached the object and its related property assessments can be examined. Silver lights XAML is gathered into common runtime object code. This creates problems with debugging. This tool is less compact and is more flexible than flex (David Roossien, 2009). Technical Analysis: iStore project is divided into two modules the first module is Admin which got two things iStore admin and store admin and the second module is User . User Features: Home Login Categories Featured Stores Products Product Description About Us Contact Us Shopping Cart Check Out Payment Options ( Card or Cash) My Orders Search Logout Store Admin features: Login Manage Orders Products Add new Products Logout iStore Admin Features : Login Manage Orders Manage Stores Add new stores Manage Categories Add new categories Customers Change Password Logout Application Analysis Design: Application Implementation: iStore project has been implemented using PHP, Adobe Flex Builder and My SQL. This project is divided into two modules such as Admin module and User module. Admin Module This module got two categories iStore Admin and Store Admin. iStore Admin Login Page:  Here the admin users login in to the site using the login details provided by the iStore team. If the admin enters wrong user name and password then user will be prompted to re-enter the correct user name and password. When the login details are successful the webpage redirects to the Home page which is Manage Order. Once the admin is logged in he got the permissions to manage the stores, categories or change password as the admin is given with some default password. Manage Stores:  Admin is responsible to manage the stores i.e., adding the new stores are editing the stores that is deleting the existing the stores ,or by clicking on the products link in the product of the table which is displayed in the form admin can view all the available products under a particular store name and can manage the products as well. Manage icon in the manage field of the table is used to edit the required attribute with respect to the products and the stores in the site. Delete icon is used to delete the stores which are no more required or no more posting the products onto the site. On the top right corner of the table there is link called Add New Store through which the admin can enter new store and register them accordingly.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Add new Store:  This form is accessed by the admin user to add new stores so that the user can post the new products or services into the site by creating the new store. Here in this form it is required to give the store name logo, image of the store and branch of the store with a user name and password so that the store admin can login to add the products, when the iStore admin wants to add a new store. Here it is even required to mention the status of the store whether it is active or inactive by selecting check box given in the form. The Store logo is displayed on the home page of the user . Manage categories:  This form is used to manage the products that are posted onto the site. This is done by the admin user to manage the products and its arability on the site. Here by clicking on the icon in manage field of the table category details can be edited according to their requirement and specifications. If the admin wants to delete the field admin can do that by just clicking on that delete icon. On the top right corner of the table there is link call Add New Category through which the admin can enter the new category or the products type into the site. Thus the product type or the categories can be managed by the admin through this form in the site.       New Category:  This form is sued to enter the new categories of the products into the site. When the admin clicks on the top link in the manage categories form the form will be redirected to this page. In the form admin can enter the details of the new category they want to enter into the site and even have to mention the status of the category by selecting the check box active in the form to keep that particular category in active state and once save button is clicked the category is saved. And the page will be redirect to the list of the categories page. Admin Categories Page In this page the list of categories will be displayed and there will be option for the admin to update and delete the category. On the right corner there is a link called add categories if this is clicked then it will redirect to the new category page. Admin Add new Products In this page the admin can add the product providing the details that are required for adding a new product. The fields in that page are selection of the category giving the product name, image , video , cost and description of the product. And there is a check box called Active if it is checked then that particular product will be displayed on the product page under selected category and if it is not checked then the product will not be displayed. After that admin just needs to click on the save button. Then the page is redirect to the list of products under that particular store. Even the store admin can also add the new products if required. Admin manage Products In this page the list of added products are displayed and the admin can manage the product by clicking on the manage icon and can also delete the product by clicking on the delete icon. Manage Order: In this page the admin can see the order and can modify the status of the delivery of the order. Clicking on Order Info will give the complete order details including how the payment is made, list of items purchased, total amount paid etc. Clicking on manage will provide the option of editing the status. Change Password: In this page the admin can change his password by typing new password field and retype password field, and clicking on the save button. Log Out Every form have the log out link on the top right corner when clicked on that link then the admin is logged out from that account. Store Admin Module : Login: The store admin can login to check the orders , products for particular category. Manage Order: In this page the admin can see the order and can modify the status of the delivery of the order. Clicking on Order Info will give the complete order details including how the payment is made, list of items purchased, total amount paid etc. Clicking on manage will provide the option of editing the status. Products In this page the list of added products are displayed and the admin can manage the product by clicking on the manage icon and can also delete the product by clicking on the delete icon. Add new Products In this page the admin can add the product providing the details that are required for adding a new product. The fields in that page are selection of the category giving the product name, image , video , cost and description of the product. And there is a check box called Active if it is checked then that particular product will be displayed on the product page under selected category and if it is not checked then the product will not be displayed. After that admin just needs to click on the save button. Then the page is redirect to the list of products under that particular store. Even the iStore admin can also add the new products if required. Log Out Every form have the log out link on the top right corner when clicked on that link then the admin is logged out from that account. Customer Module Home Page Home page is the initial page of the Website. In this page on the top right corner there are four links they are Home, Products, about us and Contact us. By clicking on the about us link the page is forwarded to the about us page. If clicked on the products or contact us they forward to their respective pages. On the left side of the home page there is a panel for login in t