Amway is an American multi-level marketing company that sells health and home care products. The company is based in Ada, Michigan. Amway and its sister companies under Alticor reported sales of $8.8 billion in 2018. It conducts business through a number of affiliated companies in more than a hundred countries and territories. Amway has been investigated in various countries and by institutions such as the Federal Trade Commission for alleged pyramid scheme practices. Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos had been friends since school days and business partners in various endeavors, including a hamburger stand, an air charter service, a sailing business. In 1949, they were introduced to the Nutrilite Products Corporation by Van Andel's second cousin Neil Maaskant. DeVos and Van Andel signed up to become distributors for Nutrilite food supplements in August, they lost interest for the next two weeks. They traveled to Chicago to attend a Nutrilite seminar soon after, at the urging of Maaskant, who had become their sponsor.

They watched promotional filmstrips and listened to talks by company representatives and successful distributors they decided to pursue the Nutrilite business. They sold their second box of supplements on their return trip to Michigan, proceeded to develop the business further. Earlier in 1949, DeVos and Van Andel had formed the Ja-Ri Corporation to import wooden goods from South American countries. After the Chicago seminar, they turned Ja-Ri into a Nutrilite distributorship instead. In addition to profits on each product sold, Nutrilite offered commissions on sales made by new distributors introduced to the company by existing distributors—a system known as multi-level marketing or network marketing. By 1958, DeVos and Van Andel had built an organization of more than 5,000 distributors; however and some of their top distributors formed the American Way Association, or Amway, in April 1959 in response to concerns about the stability of Nutrilite and in order to represent the distributors and look for additional products to market.

Their first product was called Frisk, a concentrated organic cleaner developed by a scientist in Ohio. DeVos and Van Andel bought the rights to manufacture and distribute Frisk, changed the name to LOC, they subsequently formed the Amway Sales Corporation to procure and inventory products and to handle sales and marketing plans, the Amway Services Corporation to handle insurance and other benefits for distributors. In 1960, they purchased a 50% share in Atco Manufacturing Company in Detroit, the original manufacturers of LOC, changed its name to Amway Manufacturing Corporation. In 1964, the Amway Sales Corporation, Amway Services Corporation, Amway Manufacturing Corporation merged to form the Amway Corporation. Amway bought controlling interest of Nutrilite in 1972 and full ownership in 1994. Amway expanded to Australia in 1971, to parts of Europe in 1973, to parts of Asia in 1974, to Japan in 1979, to Latin America in 1985, to Thailand in 1987, to China in 1995, to Africa in 1997, to India and Scandinavia in 1998, to Ukraine in 2003, to Russia in 2005, to Vietnam in 2008.

In 2014, a Russian loyalty card program called "Alfa-Amway" was created when Amway joined with Alfa-Bank. Amway was ranked as the 42nd largest held company in the United States by Forbes in 2018, as the number one largest company on the Direct Selling News Global 100 list in 2018. In 1999 the founders of the Amway corporation established a new holding company, named Alticor, launched three new companies: a sister Internet-focused company named Quixtar, Access Business Group, Pyxis Innovations. Pyxis replaced by Fulton Innovation, pursued research and development and Access Business Group handled manufacturing and logistics for Amway and third-party clients; the main difference was that all "Independent Business Owners" could order directly from Amway on the Internet, rather than from their upline "direct distributor", have products shipped directly to their home. The Amway name continued being used in the rest of the world. After all Amway distributors in North America switched to Quixtar, Alticor elected to close Amway North America after 2001.

In June 2007 it was announced that the Quixtar brand would be phased out over an 18- to 24-month period in favor of a unified Amway brand worldwide. In 2006, Quixtar published The Quixtar Independent Business Owner Compensation Plan, in which the company reported that the average monthly gross income for "Active" IBOs was $115. According to the Amway website, as of 2011 the company operates in over 100 countries and territories, organized into regional markets: the Americas, greater China and Korea, SE Asia/Australia. Amway's top ten markets are China, the United States, Thailand, India, Russia and Italy. In 2008, Alticor announced that two-thirds of the company's 58 markets reported sales increases, including strong growth in the China, Russia and India markets. See Amway Australia Amway China launched in 1995. In 1998, after abuses of illegal pyramid schemes led to riots, the Chinese government enacted a ban on all direct selling companies, including Amway. After the negotiations, some companies like Amway and Mary Kay continued to operate through a network of retail stores promoted by an independent sales force.

China introduced new direct selling laws in December 2005, in December 2006 Amway was one of the first companies to receive a license to resume direct sales. However, the law forbids teachers, and

Academia del Perpetuo Socorro was founded in 1921 as a Catholic parochial school of the Perpetuo Socorro Parish at the Archdiocese of San Juan, Puerto Rico. The school is located in Miramar in Puerto Rico's capital city of San Juan. Students and alumni refer to their school as Perpetuo; the school has been known to be a prestigious school, traditionally educating young men and women who are to become influential leaders of Puerto Rican society. The school is featured prominently in Tío Sergio. Many graduates attend top-ranked universities. Perpetuo provides academic instruction in Math, History, English and Religion, it provides a variety of athletic intercollegiate teams for its students as well as academic teams its Math, Model UN, High School Choir, Drama Club and History teams. Perpetuo has 42 organized clubs, a varsity program in ten sports, four student publications and a yearbook, a Student Council, an Honor Society for qualified students, it offers membership for a Jr. Honor Society and an Honor Academy.

Students participate in a wide range of extracurricular activities ranging from Drama Club to community service. Every year, a handful of students have the opportunity to participate in a community service trip to Guatemala and Honduras. Students spend two weeks with nuns in villages helping build houses and sharing time with local children as part of a community development program. Rising juniors have the opportunity to participate in a European Educational Trip coordinated by school officials; the goal of the Academia del Perpetuo Socorro is the complete development of the student - spiritually, morally culturally, physically in order to live a full life and to prepare for his/her final goal - union with God. To this end, the school works to create a Catholic academic community in which faith and recreation are shared in a spirit of freedom and creativity; the school, does not emphasize religion over other subjects, accepts students of all faiths and does not impose religious requirements such as baptism, confirmation or church attendance as a condition for continued attendance.

The school provides one of the most encompassing and through education experiences available to Puerto Rican students. It is known to be the stepping stone many future leaders of Puerto Rican society have prior to being educated in elite American institutions and becoming influential professionals. "Esto Perpetua" translated as "This Endures" stressing how the Catholic values and formal academic education learned at this school, symbolized in the school seal by the oil lamp over the open book, are to permeate individuals and society forever. In short this motto is a reference to. Academia del Perpetuo Socorro has the largest gymnasium in the Caribbean; this gymnasium has three wooden volleyball courts that can be transformed into two basketball courts. The gymnasium has a small gym where athletes, faculty members, students can go to do exercise. Perpetuo has a varsity program in ten sports

Émilie Lefel is a French badminton player. In 2012, she won her first National Championships title in the women's doubles event with her partner Pi Hongyan. Women's doubles Women's doubles Women's doubles The BWF World Tour, announced on 19 March 2017 and implemented in 2018, is a series of elite badminton tournaments, sanctioned by Badminton World Federation; the BWF World Tour are divided into six levels, namely World Tour Finals, Super 1000, Super 750, Super 500, Super 300, the BWF Tour Super 100. Women's doubles The BWF Grand Prix has the BWF Grand Prix and Grand Prix Gold, it is a series of badminton tournaments sanctioned by the Badminton World Federation since 2007. Mixed doubles BWF Grand Prix Gold tournament BWF Grand Prix tournament Women's doubles Mixed doubles BWF International Challenge tournament BWF International Series tournament BWF Future Series tournament Émilie Lefel at BWF.tournamentsoftware.com

David Shilling is an English milliner, sculptor and interior designer synonymous with designing extravagant hats and clothing displayed on Ladies' Day at Royal Ascot. David Shilling attended St Paul's School, London, he began to design hats and outfits at the age of twelve for his mother, until she died in 1999. The hats were designed for Gertrude to wear to the Ascot horse races. At the age of thirteen he began selling toys to his local toyshop, before moving on to sell clothing accessories such as scarves to major retailers, he left. Shilling opened his first store in Marylebone High Street in 1976: two days after its opening the store received an order from a rock star's wife for twenty four hats, his first collection was purchased in America by Bloomingdale's. In the late 1970s Bergdorf Goodman charged up to $3000 for David Shilling hats. Shilling subsequently decided to stop the wholesale branch of his hat-making works and focus on made-to-order products. In 2007 he displayed the first of an expected ten collections of hats at Top Marques Monaco.

In November 2009 he held his first show in mainland China at the Ritz-Carlton in Beijing. In 1988, the USSR invited Shilling to show his hats during the first Miss USSR Pageant in Moscow, the first live TV broadcast throughout the USSR, viewed by 200 million. In 1990 he headed a mission for the United Nations in Ecuador, hugely successful and led to other projects as an art and design ambassador with the UN in Africa and Asia. In 1994 Shilling was invited to design the emblem for Britain's Festival of Culture. In 1998 his designs for theatre, ballet, film and TV formed an exhibition at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. A hat with diamonds created by David in the late 1970s was nominated by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive hat in the world in the 21st century. In 2012 David Shilling held a preview of a collection of hats designed for men at the Embassy of Monaco, London. Shilling is now a respected fine artist, is represented by the Redfern Gallery in Cork Street and Ferrero Gallery, Nice.

His works may be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum, the Louvre and the Victoria and Albert Museum. One of David Shilling's three-dimensional white canvases is in the United Kingdom Government Art Collection. In 2005 David's steel sculptures were on display in Regent's Park and are now on show at Holdenby House, Northampton. Official website

Kazakhstan is located in Central Asia and Eastern Europe at 48°N 68°E / 48. With an area of about 2,724,900 square kilometers, Kazakhstan is more than twice the combined size of the other four Central Asian states and 60% larger than Alaska; the country borders Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan to the south. There is considerable topographical variation within Kazakhstan; the highest point is the top of the mountain Khan Tengri, on the Kyrgyz border in the Tian Shan range, with an elevation of 7,010 m above sea level. Most of the country lies at between 200–300 m above sea level, but Kazakhstan's Caspian shore includes some of the lowest elevations on Earth; the peak Khan Tengri in the Tian Shan Mountains is Kazakhstan highest elevation at 6,995 m. Many of the peaks of the Altay and Tien Shan ranges are covered with snow, year-round, their runoff is the source for most of Kazakhstan's freshwater rivers and lakes. Except for the Tobol and Irtysh rivers, portions of which flow through Kazakhstan, all of Kazakhstan's rivers and streams are part of landlocked systems.

They either flow into isolated bodies of water such as the Caspian Sea or disappear into the steppes and deserts of central and southern Kazakhstan. Many rivers and lakes are seasonal, evaporating in summer; the three largest bodies of water are Lake Balkhash, a fresh saline lake in the east, near Almaty, the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, all of which lie within Kazakhstan. Some 9.4 percent of Kazakhstan's land is mixed prairie and forest or treeless prairie in the north or in the basin of the Ural River in the west. More than three-quarters of the country, including the entire west and most of the south, is either semidesert or desert; the terrain in these regions is bare, broken uplands, with sand dunes in the Qizilqum and Moyunqum deserts, which occupy south-central Kazakhstan. The Climate in Kazakhstan is continental. In summer the temperatures average more than 30 °C and in winter average −20 °C; the climatic charts seen below are some noteworthy examples of the country's differing climates, taken from two contrasting cities representing two different parts of the country.

Despite the nation's low precipitation rates and arid geography, spring floods that can be brought on by heavy rainfall and melting snow, are not unusual in the northern and central regions of the country. In April 2017, following a winter which had left snow volumes exceeding the average by 60 percent, heavy rains wrought widespread damage and temporarily displaced thousands of people; the environment of Kazakhstan has been badly damaged by human activity. Most of the water in Kazakhstan is polluted by industrial effluents and fertilizer residue, and, in some places, radioactive elements; the most visible damage has been to the Aral Sea, which as as the 1970s was larger than any of the Great Lakes of North America save Lake Superior. The sea began to shrink when increased irrigation and other demands on the only significant tributaries, the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya, all but eliminated inflow. During the Soviet Era, Kazakhstan received water from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan provided oil and gas for these two nations in return.

However, after the collapse of the USSR this system had collapsed and no plan to replace this system has been put in place. According to research conducted by the International Crisis Group, there is little political will to solve this problem despite Central Asia's need for mutual resource-sharing. By 1993 the Aral Sea had lost an estimated 60 percent of its volume, in the process breaking into three unconnected segments. Increasing salinity and reduced habitat have killed the Aral Sea's fish, hence destroying its once-active fishing industry, the receding shoreline has left the former port of Aral'sk more than seventy kilometers from the water's edge; the depletion of this large body of water has increased temperature variations in the region, which in turn have affected agriculture. A much greater agricultural impact, has come from the salt- and pesticide-laden soil that the wind is known to carry as far away as the Himalaya Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Deposition of this saline soil on nearby fields sterilizes them.

Evidence suggests that salts and residues of chemical fertilizers are adversely affecting human life around the former Aral Sea. By contrast, the water level of the Caspian Sea has been rising since 1978 for reasons that scientists have not been able to explain fully. At the northern end of the sea, more than 10,00

Hampton Heights is a neighborhood and historic district located in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Although the oldest existing home of the neighborhood dates to 1885, the majority of the homes in the neighborhood are from the 1900s to the 1930s, it is the oldest residential neighborhood in the city and one of the closest to Morgan Square, the historical center of Spartanburg. Although the neighborhood suffered from neglect and changing economics during the 1960s and 1970s, today it is a vibrant area undergoing restoration and improvement. During the mid to late nineteenth century, most of the neighborhood was farmland owned by the Kirby family, whose home was located at the top of a hill overlooking the city of Spartanburg, the current site of Bethel Methodist Church. During Reconstruction, the Union Army was encamped in this area; as Spartanburg's economy grew during the 1890s, upper-middle class residents looked for homes adjacent to, but not within, the urban core. Many chose to locate along Spring Street and the newly opened Hampton Avenue, which featured a small dairy farm owned by the Irwin family and a Methodist mission.

By the turn of the century, homes were lining many of the other streets in the neighborhood, which include Hydrick Street, Lee Street, Carlisle Street, Brookwood Terrace, Hampton Drive, Perroneau Street, Irwin Avenue, Pinckney Court, Timothy Street, South Hampton Drive and Cecil Court. Architectural styles in the neighborhood include Queen Anne, Dutch Colonial and Crafts, Colonial Revival. In 1983, the neighborhood was listed on the National Register of Historic Places after a campaign by several neighborhood activists. In 1998, the neighborhood was listed as a local historic district; that same year, the Preservation Trust of Spartanburg was established to increase home ownership in the neighborhood and promote its preservation. The neighborhood has an active neighborhood association, which coordinates home tours, clean-up days, other activities throughout the year. Two public parks are located in Willow Oaks Park and Irwin Park. Hampton Heights Historic District Hampton Heights Neighborhood Association https://web.archive.org/web/20080905130326/http://www.hamptonhts.com/pages/pg-hh-home-01.html