The Lives of Princes

Sons of Charles and Diana
Left: Princess Diana helps a 10-month-old Prince William stand up during a photo shoot. Right: Prince Harry, aged 1, at home in the playroom at Kensington Palace.

A life in the public eye
Prince William poses with members of the press at Kensington Palace for his 2nd birthday. Of press coverage of his life and relationships, Prince William recently told TODAY's Matt Lauer, "[I] occasionally see a bit of it here and there, but you just let it wash over you."

First day at Eton College
Left: Prince William on his first day at Eton College, England's premier school. Photo is dated September 7, 1995. Right: Three years later, Prince Harry follows in his brother's footsteps and also goes to Eton. Both are wearing the traditional Eton tail coat.

An outpouring of grief
Earl Spencer, Prince William, Prince Harry and Prince Charles at Princess Diana's funeral, September 6, 1997. The memorial services were watched by millions around the world. "After it happened, we were always thinking about it," says Prince William of their mother's death. "There's not a day that goes by... that I don't think about it once in the day." Prince Harry tells TODAY that for the brothers, time has gone by "really really slowly."

Royal fans
Left: A 14-year-old Prince Harry walks past cheering teenage girls during a visit to a high school in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. Prince William, 9 years old, shakes hands in an enthusiastic crowd of Canadian women

On the field
Left: An 18-year-old Prince William plays soccer at Eton College. In 2006, William is appointed President of the English Football Association. Right: Prince Harry, 20 years old, coaches rugby at Greenfield Primary School, in Walsall, England

Sports-minded
Left: Prince William, like his father and brother, enjoys playing polo. Here he is photographed during a match at Cirencester Polo Club, June 10, 2007. Right: Prince Harry talks to fellow supporters prior to a Rugby Union International match in 2003.

In their mother's footsteps
After graduating from Eton College, both princes spent a year traveling around the world doing humanitarian work. At left: Prince William carries a log used to construct walkways during an expedition in the village of Tortel in southern Chile. At right: Prince Harry and a young orphan boy plant a peach tree at a children's

Must love sports
Left: Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton at a rugby match at Twickenham stadium in London, February 2007. Right: Prince Harry with Chelsy Davy, watching the Champions League match at Stamford Bridge in London, April 2007

Remembering Diana
Prince Harry and Prince William hosted and helped organize the Concert For Diana on July 1, 2007 in London, England. The concert marked the 10th anniversary of their mother's death with an event to celebrate her life

Relationship rollercoaster
Prince Harry has been dating his girlfriend Chelsy Davy on and off for five years. The two split up in January 2009, but have been spotted together recently

10 biggest technology failures

The last 10 years have seen several big technology launches biting dust. Launched with much fanfare and riding on lofty predictions, these products / companies failed to excite customers. The decade also saw the downfall of some big technology brands due to lack of foresight or strategic miscalculations. Time magazine recently brought out a list of such products / companies that according to it were the biggest tech failures of last decade. These products / companies clearly missed the mark of living up to the potential that their creators expected, and that the public and press were lead to believe was possible. So, here's over to the 10 biggest technology flops of the past decade.

Topping the list is Microsoft's operating system Vista released worldwide on January 30, 2007. The most recent generation of the company's flagship product operating system, Vista was aimed to improve the security of the most widely used PC operating system in the world. However, according to most software reviews, the securities features were not much better than the previous versions of Windows. The fact that Vista came with its own list of hardware requirements for the users too acted as a dampener in the operating system's popularity. Many analysts even claimed that Vista ran slower on PCs than XP. These factors prevented Vista from taking over from its predecessors, according to the magazine. According to research site Net Applications, as of last month Vista's global share of PC operating systems was less than 24 per cent, while Windows XP had 62% and Apple's OS X product had over 9%.

Second biggest failure of the past decade is Gateway according to Time's list. Founded in 1985, the US PC major was bought by Acer in August 2007. One of the most successful PC companies in the US, its sales quadrupled in 1990. By 2004, it was No. 3 in US market share behind Hewlett-Packard and Dell and had 25 per cent of the retail PC business. However, the company's reluctance to enter the laptop business cost it dear. In fact, it is considered one of the main reasons for its downfall. The company failed to gauge technology shift and move top portable computers as fast as its competitors could. And by 2007 Gateway was in such poor shape that Acer was able to buy it for $710 million. Gateway was also slow in entering the business of selling PCs to enterprises. The company tried to diversify by moving into consumer electronics, but the profit margins were small and this decision only hurt the firm's margins.A prominent tech research firm wrote when Gateway was sold, "The $710 million price tag is quite a comedown from the mid-1990s, when Gateway and Dell were spoken of in the same breath and commanded mega-billion dollars in market capitalisation."

The year 2008 saw the death of HD-DVD, putting an end to the long-going high-definition format war. At Consumer Electronic Show in January, just hours before the HD-DVD group was due to hold a press conference, Warner Bros film studio announced that it was withdrawing its support for HD-DVD, and instead would be exclusively backing rival format Blu-ray. Warner Brother's defection spelled the end of the line for the North American HD DVD promotion group, which had been backed by Toshiba and Microsoft, among others. And by February, Microsoft too announced that it has stopped making the HD-DVD add-on for its Xbox 360 console, while Toshiba also said it would cease production of HD-DVD players. This made Sony's Blu-ray emerge as the defacto standard for next-gen high definition. Industry analysts estimate that Toshiba lost almost $1 billion supporting the format before abandoning it in 2008. According to analysts there are several factors that led to HD-DVD format lose out to Blu-ray. The most commonly cited explanation, according to Time is that Sony did a better job convincing major film studios to release high definition editions of movies for Blu-ray. Sony owning one of the largest studios also helped the company.

Vonage is regarded as the grandfather of voice-over-IP (VoIP). However, today the US-based company is hardly a footnote in the growth of the industry which is currently dominated by products from cable companies and free services, says Time. The company went public on 24 May 2006 at a price of $17 per share, and dropped 23.5 per cent to $13 the following day. The closing price on 15 December 2008 was $1. Lawsuits over some of its intellectual property cost the company millions of dollars. Vonage's business has been going from bad to worse, with its operating revenue in the first quarter of this year only standing at $224 million. Vonage is no longer growing. In contrast, cable giant Comcast now has 6.8 million VoIP customers and added almost 300,000 in the last quarter. Analysts blame Vonage's consistent overspending on marketing as one of the company's problems. Some also point out the company's inability to find alternative revenue streams or applications to use its VoIP networks and capabilities as an impediment to success.

YouTube is the world's largest video sharing site. According to comScore, 99.7 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube.com in the US during March 2009. However, the fact that the company despite being a no. 1 and huge user base is still struggling to make profit is what makes it a part of the list. YouTube was bought by Google in November 2006 for $1.65 billion. However, according to Time article, "YouTube has not come up with a model to make money by either selling advertising or charging for premium content, even though it has an a enormous audience and library of content." In its regulatory filings, Google has said that YouTube revenue is "not material." Recently, Credit Suisse estimated that YouTube could lose as much as $470 million in 2009, despite generating $240 million in revenue for a 20 per cent year-over-year (YoY) increase. Even though YouTube is the clear leader in the online video market with about 41 per cent share of total domestic video streams, monetization remains a challenge, according to Credit Suisse. Compounding the problem is YouTube's considerable expenses, including the cost of bandwidth, content licensing, ad-revenue shares, hardware storage, and sales and marketing, which equal roughly $711 million, landing the video site in the red for this fiscal year.

Microsoft's Zune was launched in November 2006 as an rival to Apple iPod which had been in the market since 2001 and dominated the multimedia player and music download business globally. The software giant managed to get the four largest music labels to sign licensing agreements with the company. However, the company could not manage to excite customers. According to Bloomberg Television, between the launch date and mid-2007 only 1.2 million Zune players were sold. In May 2008, Microsoft said that it had sold two million players since its launch. The Wall Street Journal reported that revenue from the Zune player was $85 million during the 2008 holiday season compared to $185 million in the same period in 2007. Apple's iPod revenue during the last quarter of 2008 was $3.37 billion.According to recent reports, Microsoft Corp plans to launch a new version of its Zune portable media player later this year, incorporating high-definition video, touchscreen technology and Wi-Fi connection.

Next debacle of the past decade, according to Time is Palm. The company which pioneered smartphones is staring a bleak future at a time when smartphones are hottest property in the gadget world. Palm produced both a portable wireless device and an operating system for portable hardware devices and desktops. The company launched its Palm Pilot hardware device in 1996 as a personal organizer. In 1999, it released its Palm V. The Palm Treo smartphone was developed by Handspring which Palm acquired. In the quarter that ended in September 2005, Palm sold 470,000 Treo units, up 160 per cent same quarter the year before. During this time, three companies dominated the smartphone market: Palm, Research-In-Motion, maker of the Blackberry, and cell phone giant Nokia. By the September 2007 quarter, Treo sales had only moved up to 689,000, but sales of the Blackberry hit almost 3.2 million and the newly launched Apple iPhone sold more than a million units during the same period after it debuted on June 29 of that year. In November 2008, Global Crown Capital analyst Pablo Perez-Fernandez cut his rating on the company to Underweight from Neutral. Some other analysts too downgraded the stock and called into question whether the company can raise the capital necessary to turn its fortunes around.

Iridium, the global satellite phone company backed by Motorola filed for bankruptcy in 1999. The company is often called a $5 billion flop. The Motorola-backed venture that sought to build and launch its infrastructure of satellites to provide worldwide wireless phone service. To work properly, the system needed 66 satellites. The creation of this enormous system forced the company to default on $1.5 billion of debt. The service had been such a failure that it only had 10,000 subscribers. Finally, the system that cost Motorola more than $5 billion to build ultimately sold for $25 million. According to a Dartmouth Tuck Business School case study on the history of Iridium in 1998, the company forecast that it would have 500,000 subscribers by the following year. But, the service was expensive for customers, and the cellular phone business had started to take hold as its infrastructure was built out in most of the large developed countries. An Iridium handset cost $3,000 and talk time was as much as $5 a minute. Cellular service was not as broadly available, but it was far less expensive.

The last on Time magazine's biggest technology failures of the past decade is Segway, the two-wheel transportation vehicle launched in 2002. During Segway's much-fanfared launch its head said, "It will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy". A famous VC predicted that Segway sales might hit $1 billion as fast as any company in history. The company spent about $100 million developing the product. However, the company failed to get the pricing right. According to Time, "Segway did not understand that its price point, well above $3,000 for most models and $7,000 for some, was too high to draw a mass consumer base." Another unforeseen trouble for Segway was that the vehicle was classified as a road vehicle in some countries requiring licensing, while it was illegal to use on roads in other nations. Thus from 2001 to the end of 2007, the company could mange to sell only 30,000 units.

Happiness can be inherited

Our feelings in our lifetime can affect our children, concludes a new study.


Happiness can be inherited (Getty Images)Dr Alberto Halabe Bucay led the study published in Elsevier's journal Bioscience Hypotheses. The expert suggests that a wide range of chemicals that our brain generates when we are in different moods could affect 'germ cells’ (eggs and sperm), the cells that ultimately produce the next generation. Such natural chemicals could affect the way that specific genes are expressed in the germ cells, and hence how a child develops. In his article in the latest issue of Bioscience Hypotheses, Halabe Bucay of Research Center Halabe and Darwich, Mexico, suggested that the hormones and chemicals resulting from happiness, depression and other mental states can affect our eggs and sperm, resulting in lasting changes in our children at the time of their conception. Brain chemicals such as endorphins, and drugs, such as marijuana and heroin are known to have significant effects on sperm and eggs, altering the patterns of genes that are active in them. "It is well known, of course, that parental behavior affects children, and that the genes that a child gets from its parents help shape that child's character," said Dr. Halabe Bucay. "My paper suggests a way that the parent's psychology before conception can actually affect the child's genes," he added.

Find a nice girl, Bebo tells Vivek

Vivek Oberoi, whose name is now being linked to sitar player Anoushka Shankar, says good friend Kareena Kapoor pesters him most to find a suitable


Vivek Oberoimatch for himself and settle down soon. "The pressure (of getting married) is on, not only from my family but from even Bebo (Kareena's pet name)," Vivek, who will be seen with Kareena and Saif in Rensil D'Silva's untitled film, told IANS in an e-mail interview. "Every time we go out for dinner, she would shake her head and tell me - 'find a nice girl and settle down' and I would hide behind Saif to dodge the bullet. We had some great laughs," he said. Vivek's personal life has always been in the spotlight - from the time his engagement to long-standing girlfriend Gurpreet Gill broke off to the short but much-hyped relationship with former beauty queen Aishwarya Rai. But now the actor is single. He reasons his stag status by saying: "I'm single because I am waiting to find the girl who will make me want to never be single again." His personal life apart, Vivek has his hands full with big banner movies like Ram Gopal Varma's "Rakta Charitra", Prakash Jha's "Rajniti" and Tips Films' "Prince" besides Rensil D'Silva's untitled romantic thriller. So Vivek will be back with a bang after experiencing a series of ups and downs in his career. Vivek is in no mood to assess his stint in Bollywood since his launch in Varma's "Company" in 2002 as he says he is still raring to go. "When I retire, I will have enough time to sit back in a rocking chair and judge my career. Right now, it's time for me to grab every opportunity and give it my very best," said Vivek, who was loved by audiences in films like "Saathiya" and "Yuva" as well. The actor also spoke about the only mistake he thinks he made during his seven-year-old career. "What went wrong in between was that I had forgotten why I came here...to be an actor...just that...Not all the trappings of stardom but just the pure fire of burning desire to act," he said. Now Vivek says he has set a goal for himself. "Every day, in every way, I want to be better and better...that is my mission and my prayer," he said...

Unplugged: Akshay Kumar

His first modelling assignment was for a furniture showroom for a sum of Rs 5,500 and now he’s hosting Kylie Minogue! Here are things you didn’t


Unplugged: Akshay Kumar (TOI photo)know about actor Akshay Kumar. - Akshay was born as Rajiv Hari Om Bhatia in Amritsar. His father was a government worker. - The star has a number 9 fixation and thinks it’s his lucky number! - Akki’ first car was a Fiat. Today, the owner of a Porsche, Bentley and Merc, prefers to commute in his Honda CRV. Earlier, he used to drive around with son Aarav in a Zen, which had a 'Baby on Board' sticker. - He loves a tan-colour belt which has the word 'Lust' inscribed on it. He wears it every day! - Is sentimental about the motorbike gifted to him by dad Hari Om Bhatia. He restored it and cleans it every weekend. The Khiladi dated Poota Batra, Raveena Tandon and Shilpa Shetty before marrying co-star Twinkle Khanna. - Once in Milan, he bought a locket for Twinkle, in which he lovingly placed a note. It read: “This is to lock you with me forever”. - Akshay loves to surf and sail on the Juhu Beach and ventures into sea as on his own boat - Akshay’s quite sentimental about the ‘firsts’ in his life. He still keeps his first house, car, motorcycle and pair of jeans! - Akki rides his motorbike to shoots to avoid getting stuck in traffic! - When asked by his dad what he wanted to become in life, a teenaged Akshay replied he would become a hero! - The actor, who is on a blood-group diet, complains, "I earn so much, but still cannot eat!"

His day starts with two glasses of warm water. - Akki used to earn Rs 4,000 a month teaching martial arts in Bombay after returning from Bangkok where he was a waiter. - He’s done seven films with the title Khiladi – Khiladi, Main Khiladi Tu Anari, Sabse Bada Khiladi, Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi, International Khiladi, Mr Aur Mrs Khiladi and Khiladi 420 ! - He buys two sets of everything – one for Aarav and the other for his niece Simar. - Often tells Twinkle, “How will you eat, if I do? For you, I’ve decided to go on a diet!”

He cooks paranthas for friends, but loves Dimple’s paaya and masala jhinga. - The not-too fashion conscious star’s funda is: When in doubt, wear blue jeans and a white shirt! - A number of handbags his ma-in-law Dimple Kapadia flaunts are gifted by him. - He visits the Four Bungalows Gurdwara whenever he is in Mumbai. - Though he made his debut in Deedar, Akshay's first film appearance was in Aaj, where he played a martial arts instructor for five seconds! - Akshay has turned his old house into a gym. Two floors are dedicated to Parkour, an exercise he and Aarav train in. - Once in Australia, the fitness freak walked up and down an 80-storey building because he could not hit the gym! -

Akshay does not prefer to read books. However, his book is releasing soon. - He’s crazy about sushi. Also loves gulab jamuns and jalebis dipped in milk. - He used to jog at 4 a.m on Mumbai roads to avoid being mobbed.

62nd Cannes Film Festival

U.S. actress Elizabeth Banks poses on the red carpet as she arrives at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival

62nd Cannes Film Festival

Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan at the premiere and party of film UP in Cannes

62nd Cannes Film Festival

Neighbours' fury over Man United star Ronaldo's 'offensive and brutal' £4million mansion

He may be a hero to millions of football fans, but Cristiano Ronaldo's new neighbours have branded his £4million mansion "offensive, brutal and insensitive".
The Manchester United star is the latest of his team-mates to move into a vast property built in place of a knocked-down modest family house in Cheshire's "Footballers' Wives" belt.
Fed up with seeing the bulldozers sent in to flatten what they regard as perfectly good, traditional houses, residents of the village of Alderley Edge even attempted to hold a referendum to halt the trend.
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'Offensive, brutal and insensitive': (Above and below) Cristiano Ronaldo's house, which has upset his neighbours in Alderley Edge, Cheshire


Love birds: Ronaldo and new girlfriend Nereida Gallardo
But the torrent of negative descriptions of his new five-storey home is unlikely to trouble the 23-year-old Portuguese star, protected from prying eyes as he is by a high security fence and forbidding gates.
It may boast the usual footballer prerequisites of swimming pool, sauna, cinema and "media room", not to mention five bedrooms and his-and-hers bathrooms for the unmarried winger, but that cuts little ice with neighbours.
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Luxurious: The mansion boasts the usual footballer prerequisites of swimming pool, sauna, cinema and 'media room'

It was revealed yesterday that comments sent to the local council when developers applied to knock down the two-storey house that stood on the spot in 2005, residents and conservation groups slammed the proposed replacement as "overwhelming".
Martin Regan wrote that it would have a "wholly negative" effect on the local conservation area, saying: "The new building will be massively intrusive on the vistas."
He added: "The applicant might as well have proposed a three-storey block of flats."
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Rolling greens: Beautiful landscaped gardens contrast with the gaudy exterior of the house in Cheshire

Fellow neighbour John Priestley complained its "mass and scale" were out of proportion and that it would "overlook and threaten the privacy of my house and garden".
A third neighbour, Mr Patten, pointed out that the new house would be four metres higher than its predecessor and have 40 per cent more floor space.
He went on: "This development is symptomatic of what is happening more and more often within this part of the village, where existing comfortably proportioned properties sitting within mature grounds are sacrificed for the construction of larger and larger structures with the effect that the sylvan nature of the environment becomes more and more urbanised."
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An aerial view of the footballer's home which has drawn complaints from residents of Alderley Edge

The Edge Association, the group behind the referendum plan, described it as "offensive and out of scale", while the Wilmslow Trust slated the plan as "an insensitive and brutal proposal that does not respond to the architectural challenge of the site".
However, planners in Macclesfield rejected their submissions and gave permission, and following its completion it was bought earlier this year by Ronaldo for just under £4million.
The spread of similar mansions has been dubbed the "Rooney effect" after Ronaldo's Manchester United team-mate knocked down a five-bedroom house in neighbouring Prestbury to make way for a £4.5million home.
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Hi-tech: The kitchen boasts every modern convenience, with stainless steel applicances and slick black units

Footballers Wes Brown and Mikael Silvestre have acted similarly in Alderley Edge.
Planners say wealthy buyers today demand such facilities as en-suite bathrooms and swimming pools that older homes lack, and they cannot refuse planning permission simply because neighbours prefer the existing property.
The referendum plan has now been scrapped as the cost would have meant the village was unable to afford to put up Christmas lights this year, but its sentiment was carried by 176 votes to 11 at a public meeting earlier this month.
Martin Sinker, of the Edge Association, said: "We don't like the principle of demolishing perfectly good houses and putting up huge mansions - it's environmentally unsound and it's changing the social profile of the area.
"We've got nothing against footballers like Mr Ronaldo, but the house is very big for the site it's squeezed onto, and it's exactly the sort of thing we're trying to discourage."

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Cristiano Ronaldo opens a new fashion boutique in Madrid

Last summer we were the first to tell you about CR7, the fashion boutique that Cristiano Ronaldo opened in Madeira and gave to his sister Elma. Since then, the Manchester Utd star has opened another CR7 in Lisbon, and the Spanish press are today getting their knickers in a twist over the location of the next store: Madrid.
The front page of sports paper Marca says he is to bring his fabulous fashion sense to the Spanish capital, and that this is yet another indication of his strong desire to play for Real madrid next season.
Marca also suggests that the store may be named ‘CR9′, as the only way he could wear a number seven shirt at Real would be if he pried it from Raul’s cold, dead hands. It just so happens that he has also trademarked the CR9 name.
While C-Ron has made little attempt to disguise his desire to play in La Liga, The Spoiler has discovered that the new store opening may not be as indicative of a summer transfer as Marca believe. According to the official CR7 site, there are plans to open stores in Paris, Milan, Madrid, London, Berlin, Prague, Tokyo and Los Angeles. (Sorry Manchester, no silver hotpants and Freddie Mercury jackets for you.)
Tags: boutique, CR7, CR9, Fashion, La Liga, Lisbon, Madeira, Manchester Utd, Premier League, Real Madrid, Shop, Transfer

The Numbers

The numbers we write are made up of algorithms, (1, 2, 3, 4, etc) called arabic algorithms, to distinguish them from the roman algorithms (I; II; III; IV; etc.).


The arabs popularised these algorithms, but their origin goes back to the phenecian merchants that used them to count and do their commercial purposes.


Have you ever asked the question why 1 is “one”, 2 is “two”, 3 is “three”…..?


What is the logic that exist in the arabic algorithms?


Easy, very easy…!

There are angles!

Look at these algorithms written in their primitive form and check it up! …

Miracle of Prophet Muhammad - Miracle of Prophet Muhammad - The split of Moon 'Proved by Scientists' Moon Split

The picture shows the location of "Rocky belt" which proves the moon was once spilt..

How big You are

This is really fascinating!
It is going to bring you quite different perspective for your sense of existence!

The Earth is our own home we all share


Her beauty is showing every moment even without our influence …

Nighttime lights on Earth....

And there Sunrise is coming...

This was really enlightening, right?
But let’s take a look beyond our Solar System

Now, please tell me how big you think you are?
How big are your problems?
Try to wrap your mind around this…

Rare Picture

This photo is very rare, is was taken by
NASA.

This kind of event only happens every 3,000 years.

This photo has made a miracle en lots of people’s lives.

This photo was taken with the Hubble telescope of NASA


You are looking at

what is called

what is called

what is called

Morocco and House Design

Here it is...a picture of Moroccan house, Moroccan-house-to-be. (Click on it, to see it a little better).

For those of you who have never been to Morocco...it might seem, well...a bit much. But I promise you, it fits right in - from the dome to the arches. But it's still very special, to me at least, as I am sure you can understand.
What do you think? Please, be kind....if you can. If you can't I will put on my bullet proof vest. I have one left over from my trips to Iraq, deep sigh

Moroccan design is color-saturated with spicy shades of yellow, reds and oranges infused with complicated traditional geometric shapes and luxurious textures and patterns. Being at the coastal crossroads of Europe and Africa, it represents many cultures, traditions and styles, and has long provided inspiration for artists and designers captivated by its symbiosis of styles.

A Mediterranean home can combine not only many cultural traditions such as Moorish motifs with modern Spanish elegance, but layers of various fabrics, intricate lighting accents, and ornate mirrors, baskets and other accessories. Mediterranean design is flexible in the use of accents and colors which allows every participant to create their own unique style.
If you are looking to bring some magic and a sense of the exotic into your home, visit Casablanca Market for authentic handcrafted goods and one of a kind items imported directly from skilled artisans in Marrakech. We feature Moroccan accents and furniture at great prices, and unlike many other merchants all of our items were bought following fair trade policies.