Industrial espionage, economic espionage, corporate spying or corporate espionage is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security. While economic espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governments and is international in scope, industrial or corporate espionage is more national and occurs between companies or corporations. Economic or industrial espionage takes place in two main forms. In short, the purpose of espionage is to gather knowledge about organization, it may include the acquisition of intellectual property, such as information on industrial manufacture, ideas and processes, recipes and formulas. Or it could include sequestration of proprietary or operational information, such as that on customer datasets, sales, marketing and development, prospective bids, planning or marketing strategies or the changing compositions and locations of production, it may describe activities such as theft of trade secrets, bribery and technological surveillance.

As well as orchestrating espionage on commercial organizations, governments can be targets — for example, to determine the terms of a tender for a government contract. Economic and industrial espionage is most associated with technology-heavy industries, including computer software and hardware, aerospace, telecommunications and engine technology, machine tools, energy and coatings and so on. Silicon Valley is known to be one of the world's most targeted areas for espionage, though any industry with information of use to competitors may be a target. Information can make the difference between failure. Although a lot of information-gathering is accomplished through competitive intelligence, at times corporations feel the best way to get information is to take it. Economic or industrial espionage is a threat to any business whose livelihood depends on information. In recent years, economic or industrial espionage has taken on an expanded definition. For instance, attempts to sabotage a corporation may be considered industrial espionage.

That espionage and sabotage have become more associated with each other is demonstrated by a number of profiling studies, some government, some corporate. The United States government has a polygraph examination entitled the "Test of Espionage and Sabotage", contributing to the notion of the interrelationship between espionage and sabotage countermeasures. In practice by "trusted insiders", they are considered functionally identical for the purpose of informing countermeasures. Economic or industrial espionage occurs in one of two ways. Firstly, a dissatisfied employee appropriates information to advance interests or to damage the company. Secondly, a competitor or foreign government seeks information to advance its own technological or financial interest. "Moles", or trusted insiders, are considered the best sources for economic or industrial espionage. Known as a "patsy", an insider can be induced, willingly or under duress, to provide information. A patsy may be asked to hand over inconsequential information and, once compromised by committing a crime, bribed into handing over more sensitive material.

Individuals may leave one company to take up employment with another and take sensitive information with them. Such apparent behavior has been the focus of numerous industrial espionage cases that have resulted in legal battles; some countries hire individuals to do spying rather than use of their own intelligence agencies. Academics, business delegates, students are thought to be used by governments in gathering information; some countries, such as Japan, have been reported to expect students be debriefed on returning home. A spy may follow a guided tour of a factory and get "lost". A spy could be an engineer, a maintenance man, a cleaner, an insurance salesman, or an inspector: anyone who has legitimate access to the premises. A spy may break into the premises to steal data and may search through waste paper and refuse, known as "dumpster diving". Information may be compromised via unsolicited requests for information, marketing surveys or use of technical support or research or software facilities.

Outsourced industrial producers may ask for information outside the agreed-upon contract. Computers have facilitated the process of collecting information because of the ease of access to large amounts of information through physical contact or the Internet. Computers have become key in exercising industrial espionage due to the enormous amount of information they contain and the ease at which it can be copied and transmitted; the use of computers for espionage increased in the 1990s. Information has been stolen by individuals posing as subsidiary workers, such as cleaners or repairmen, gaining access to unattended computers and copying information from them. Laptops were, still are, a prime target, with those traveling abroad on business being warned not to leave them for any period of time. Perpetrators of espionage have been known to find many ways of conning unsuspecting individuals into parting only temporarily, from their possessions, enabling others to access and steal information. A "bag-op" refers to the use of hotel staff to access data, such as through laptops, in hotel rooms.

Information may be stolen in transit, in taxis, at airport baggage counters, baggage carousels, on trains and so on. The rise of the internet and computer networks has expanded the range

Phacelia formosula is a rare species of flowering plant in the borage family known by the common name North Park phacelia. It is endemic to the state of Colorado in the United States, where it is known only from the North Park region in Jackson County, it is threatened by a number of human activities, such as motorcycle and off-road vehicle use in its habitat. It is a federally listed endangered species of the United States; this plant was first collected on August 1918, near Walden, Colorado. It was placed on the US Endangered Species List on September 1, 1982. There are eight to eleven occurrences of the plant for a total of fewer than 5000 individuals. All but two of the occurrences are small; this biennial herb grows to a maximum height around 22 centimeters. The leaves have blades cut into lobes; the inflorescence is a scorpioid cyme, an array of branches curved into a curl that resembles the tail of a scorpion. Blooming occurs in August; the flowers are pollinated by insects, including the pollen wasp Pseudomasaris zonalis.

The plant only grows in a large basin in northern Colorado. There it is limited to ravines and bare slopes of eroding rock originating from the Coalmont Formation; the substrate is sandy and rust-colored and it contains coal. Few other plants grow on the slopes; the decomposing rock slopes are popular with off-road vehicle users. The vehicles erode the substrate. Other threats include trampling and grazing by livestock, coal extraction, petroleum exploration. USDA Plants Profile for Phacelia formosula

Confrontation is an element of conflict wherein parties confront one another, directly engaging one another in the course of a dispute between them. A confrontation can be at any scale, between any number of people, between entire nations or cultures, or between living things other than humans. Metaphorically, a clash of forces of nature, or between one person and his own causes of internal turmoil, might be described as a confrontation, it has been noted that the term confrontation has "a negative image because people tend to confront others not about pleasant things but about painful, unpleasant things" and that it "suffers from the stigma of being overly aggressive in both nature and intent". An examination of a hypothetical confrontation is the basis of confrontation analysis, an operational analysis technique used to structure and think through multi-party interactions such as negotiations, it is the underpinning mathematical basis of drama theory. The word confrontation from its root to confront, comes from the Middle French confronter and Medieval Latin confrontare, meaning to border or to bound.

These in turn are formed from a combination of con, meaning with or together, frons or front, meaning face or forehead. Together, they carry a contemporary usage meaning to set against each other or to bring face-to-face and are similar in meaning to the contemporary usage of the word conflict, it can be employed, in the most literal sense, to indicate adjacency, such as one parcel of land to another. In a more figurative sense, it may be more used to indicate opposition, similar to some usages of the word face, such as "to confront/face the military might of France"; this may be used to indicated both physical opposition, as well as opposition to objects or ideas, such as would be the case in "confronting the evidence" or "confronting the truth". Confrontation may occur between larger groups; because groups are composed of multiple individuals, with each member having their own specific triggers for a violent response to a perceived provocation, risk factors which "may not be sufficient individually to explain collective violence, in combination create conditions that may precipitate aggressive confrontations between groups".

Thus provocation of a single member of one group by a single member of the other group can lead to a confrontation between the groups as a whole. A person, confronted may respond in a number of ways, including accepting or denying points with which they have been confronted, becoming belligerent, or seeking to avoid the confrontation altogether, it has been observed that "any people seem to dislike confrontations while an equal number seem to relish them". Confrontation, as a means of addressing a dispute, is the opposite of conflict avoidance, it has been noted that "conflict and confrontation occur together", conflict resolution methods may dissipate the cause behind the confrontation. Where a person or entity initiating a confrontation is belligerent or overly emotional, the confronted person or entity may seek to withdraw from the situation by asserting that they will be unable to communicate rationally with the initiator until the initiator changes their approach. George Devereux was among the first to explore the therapeutic function of confrontation as it relates to psychoanalysis.

He described it as a form of "induc or forc the patient to pay attention to something he has just said or done." As Carlson and Slavik continue, this is for the purpose of revealing "new avenues for examination" and to "increase awareness". Devereux saw confrontation as a therapeutic application of "calling a spade a spade" by restating information provided; as Jurgen Ruesch wrote, this incorporates an "element of aggression" in order to demonstrate "discrepancies between intent and effect, between word and action". This may be useful in cases when the patient is being deceptive, pretend to be ignorant, or is oblivious to their own inconsistencies. In psychotherapy, a therapist may deliberately engage in a confrontation with the patient to assist the patient in dealing with an issue that the patient has avoided discussing; such a confrontation is not loud, abrasive, or argumentative, nor does it require antipathy between the parties. A person can confront another and as an act of friendship. At the extreme, attack therapy involves confrontational interaction between the patient and a therapist, or between the patient and fellow patients during group therapy, in which the patient may be verbally abused, denounced, or humiliated by the therapist or other members of the group.

A 1990 report by the Institute of Medicine on methods for treating alcohol problems suggested that the self-image of individuals should be assessed before they were assigned to undergo attack therapy. Conflict management The dictionary definition of confrontation at Wiktionary

California's 3rd State Assembly district is one of 80 California State Assembly districts. It is represented by Republican James Gallagher of Yuba City; the district consists of much of the northern Sacramento Valley, along with parts of the adjacent foothills. The district is rural. Due to redistricting, the 3rd district has been moved around different parts of the state; the current iteration resulted from the 2011 redistricting by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission. California State Assembly California State Assembly districts Districts in California District map from the California Citizens Redistricting Commission

Wired is a 2008 three-part television miniseries starring Jodie Whittaker, Laurence Fox and Toby Stephens. It debuted on ITV at 9:00pm on Monday, 13 October 2008, was shown over three consecutive weeks; the complete series was released on DVD on 10 November 2008. Single mother and bank employee Louise Evans finds herself blackmailed by a colleague after documents reveal that she and a former partner stole £3,000 from a former employer; the boyfriend, Philip Manningham, plans to defraud £250m from ZBG Banking, the company from which he was sacked, Louise agrees to help him pull off an Internet scam. Meanwhile, Detective Crawford Hill is working undercover in an attempt to expose the fraud ring and after a chance meeting with Louise, he realises she is involved and is key to him cracking the case. However, their relationship soon threatens to compromise everything and places Louise in mortal danger. Jodie Whittaker as Louise Evans Laurence Fox as Philip Manningham Toby Stephens as DI Crawford Hill Riz Ahmed as Manesh Kunzru Charlie Brooks as Anna Hansen Sacha Dhawan as Ben Goldspink Ramon Tikaram as Yusuf Ralindi Iain McKee as Nick Benson Katy Cavanagh as DS Polly Stuart Helena Fox as Erica Wilson Jane Simon of The Mirror said of episode one.

Add to that little treat, the sight of Coronation Street actress Katy Cavanagh - Kirk's blonde other half - playing hardnosed Jane Tennison-type detective Polly Stuart. "I'm upgrading this to armed ops!" she barks tonight as the banking fraud she's nosing into turns ugly. Ah, banking fraud! We can allow ourselves a twinge of nostalgia for the boom days, when bankers could while away the nine-to-five plotting new ways to screw millions of pounds from fat-cat businessmen who named their accounts after their high-speed yachts. For our heroine Louise, having been stitched up by one friend, knowing who she can trust gets harder, and she discovers that the nice bloke Crawford, acting as her personal guardian angel, is in fact a copper. And that Phillip Manningham, the bloke she made the deal with, is plankton in the dog-eat-dog food chain of fraud. Louise is a quick thinking and resourceful girl - she'll have to be as she meets Phillip's partners tonight and events take a hair-raising turn." Wired on IMDb

The Altai gas pipeline is a proposed natural gas pipeline to export natural gas from Russia's Western Siberia to North-Western China. The memorandum on deliveries of Russian natural gas to China was signed by Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and CNPC CEO Chen Geng during Russian president Vladimir Putin's visit to China in March 2006; the project was put on hold due to disagreements over natural gas price and competition from other gas sources in the Chinese market. In 2013, Gazprom and CNPC agreed to instead pursue a more eastern route, the Power of Siberia gas pipeline. In 2014 the projected was resumed during the APEC summit. In 2015 the project was "postponed for an indefinite period of time"; the 2,800-kilometre pipeline would start from the Purpeyskaya compressor station of the existing Urengoy–Surgut–Chelyabinsk pipeline. It would carry natural gas from Urengoy fields in Western Siberia. Total length of Russian section will be 2,666 kilometres, including 205 kilometres in Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region, 325 kilometres in Khanty–Mansi autonomous region, 879 kilometres in Tomsk Oblast, 244 kilometres in Novosibirsk Oblast, 422 kilometres in Altai Krai, 591 kilometres in the Altai Republic.

The terminal point in the Russian territory is the Kanas mountain pass. Large part of the pipeline will be built within the technical corridor of existing pipelines, such as the Urengoy—Surgut—Chelyabinsk, Northern Tyumen–Surgut—Omsk, Nizhnevartovsk gas refinery – Parabel, Parabel—Kuzbass, Novosibirsk—Kuzbass, Novosibirsk—Barnaul, Barnaul—Biysk pipelines. In China, the pipeline would be terminated in the Xinjiang region, where it will be linked to the West–East Gas Pipeline; the diameter of the pipeline would be 1,420 millimetres. The designed capacity of the pipeline would be 30 billion cubic meters natural gas annually and the total costs of the whole project is expected to be up to US$14 billion; the pipeline was expected to become operational in 2011. The pipeline will be operated by TomskTransGaz, the subsidiary of Gazprom; the pipeline project was criticized by environmental organizations, because it was planned to run across the Ukok Plateau, the natural habitat of the snow leopard and other endangered species.

Besides, Altai national leaders fear that laying the pipeline and accompanying technical highway will pave way for a Chinese expansion into Altai. The pipeline route impacts burial shrines in the region. Altai Project А.Н. Рудой. "Обратная сторона Луны?"