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THIS PRESS RELEASE AND THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN ARE NOT BEING ISSUED AND MAY NOT BE DISTRIBUTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, CANADA, JAPAN OR AUSTRALIA.

- Complete repayment of silent participations of SoFFin (EUR 1.6 bn) and Allianz (EUR 750 m)

- Capital increase with subscription rights of EUR 2.5 bn; 10:1 share consolidation

- Clear improvement in capital structure and ability to pay dividends

- Fully phased-in Basel 3 Common Equity Tier 1 ratio expected to increase after transaction to 8.6 % (pro forma at year-end 2012), up from 7.6 % at year-end 2012

- Blessing: With the complete repayment of the silent participation of SoFFin, we are repaying ahead of schedule all components of the state support over which we have influence.

Commerzbank is planning an early repayment in full of the silent participations of the Financial Market Stabilization Fund (SoFFin) of about EUR 1.6 billion and Allianz of EUR 750 million by means of a combined cash capital increase/capital increase through contributions in kind with subscription rights in the amount of EUR 2.5 billion. The capital increase is to be approved at the annual general meeting of Commerzbank, which is being brought forward to April 19, 2013. After the completion of the capital increase, SoFFins shareholding in Commerzbank is expected to decrease from 25 % plus one share to below 20 %. The regulatory capital structure of Commerzbank will be considerably improved by this transaction. The fully phased-in Basel 3 Common Equity Tier 1 ratio will increase as a result of this the transaction from 7.6 % as of year-end 2012 to 8.6 % on a pro forma basis as of that date.

With the complete repayment of the silent participations of SoFFin we are repaying ahead of schedule all components of the state support over which we have influence. At the same time we are improving Commerzbanks fully phased-in Basel 3 capital base on a sustainable basis and are enhancing future dividend paying ability, said Martin Blessing, Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors of Commerzbank. The support of politicians and the taxpayer was very important for us during the financial crisis. We would once again like to take this opportunity to thank them for this support. For us the repayment of the silent participations and the reduction in the Federal Republics stake marks the beginning of the end of the Federal Republics engagement in Commerzbank.

Silent participations of SoFFin to be repaid in full

During the financial crisis, the Federal Republic supported Commerzbank with silent participations totaling EUR 16.4 billion in two steps in 2008 and 2009. The Bank has already repaid EUR 14.3 billion of this amount in 2011 together with a one-time payment of EUR 1.03 billion. With the announced repayment of the remaining EUR 1.6 billion, the silent participations of the Federal Republic will be repaid in full. At the same time SoFFin will receive a one-time payment of approximately EUR 60 million to compensate for the early repayment.

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DGAP-News: Commerzbank plans to repay silent participations of SoFFin and Allianz in full - shareholding of Federal ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) Rhode Island's capital city has won a $5 million contest created by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg with a high-tech plan to overcome a language skills problem known as the word gap that puts low-income children at a profound disadvantage in the classroom.

Providence was one of 305 cities that pitched an idea to Bloomberg Philanthropies' Mayors Challenge, a contest designed to spur innovation in America's cities. Houston, Philadelphia, Chicago and Santa Monica, Calif., were selected for $1 million runner-up prizes. The winners are set to be announced Wednesday in New York.

Providence's winning proposal will equip low-income children with recording devices that count the words and conversations they are exposed to. Combined with coaching lessons for parents,, the plan is designed to help poor children overcome a language skills deficit that develops before they even start kindergarten.

A landmark 1995 study found that children in families receiving welfare hear less than one-third as many words per hour as their more affluent peers and will reach age four having heard 32 million fewer words than children from professional families. Research shows the word deficit is tied to later academic performance and employment opportunities.

"Education is the path out of poverty; I know, because I have followed it," Providence Mayor Angel Taveras told The Associated Press. "We need to make sure that path is available to more kids. The first teacher in a child's life is a child's parent. We can do something to help them."

The selection committee at Bloomberg Philanthropies selected Providence's proposal because it takes a new approach to a systemic problem and could be replicated in other cities.

"Mayor Taveras found an evidence-based solution to a major challenge the word gap for low-income children that has potential to move us forward in a cost effective, scalable, and sustainable way," Bloomberg said in a statement. "The Mayors Challenge aimed to find the most powerful ideas that have the greatest potential to spread and each of these five mayors knocked it out of the ballpark."

Called "Providence Talks," Taveras' plan will make use of a pager-sized recorder put in a child's pocket that acts as a language pedometer, recording every conversation and word spoken to them through the course of their day. The city intends to offer the voluntary program to children in low-income families, as determined by newborn screening assessments. Their parents will receive monthly coaching sessions from social workers in which they learn ways to boost a child's vocabulary, and social work agencies will be given bonuses if a child's language skills improve.

The recording devices work in English, Spanish and other languages and automatically screen out conversations from television and radio. The recordings will be kept confidential and once the devices' data are analyzed, any conversations on the recordings will be deleted. To prevent a 3year-old from losing or damaging the recorders, the devices come with specially designed clothing to hold them in place.

Providence Talks would begin with a small number of children participating and gradually expand the program to 2,850 families by 2018.

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RI city wins $5M Bloomberg prize with word gap fix

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - Mar 13, 2013) - BlazeMeter, provider of the Apache JMeter compatible load testing platform for developers, today announced the release of its plugin for the leading open-source blogging software, WordPress. WordPress developers can now launch high volume load tests and optimize WordPress websites in minutes.

BlazeMeter's new WordPress plugin allows users to utilize cloud testing services to optimize the performance of their WordPress sites using BlazeMeter's load testing developer platform.

"BlazeMeter's WordPress plugin has insight into the actual WordPress installation and generates an Apache JMeter and a Selenium script for you automatically. It then provisions and configures a cluster of up to 100 dedicated servers ready to run on demand," said Alon Girmonsky, Founder & CEO of BlazeMeter. "All this is done automatically, saving developers days of scripting, provisioning and configuring, allowing developers to focus on their web and mobile applications."

The BlazeMeter plugin supports WordPress 3.1 or higher. The plugin will create a load script that will simulate both anonymous users and authenticated users visiting the WordPress website. During a load test, a dedicated cluster of load engines is launched from a preconfigured geographic location. These servers then generate traffic based on the parameters which the user defines in the BlazeMeter plugin.

During the load, real time measurements of KPIs present themselves on the report dashboard, where users can easily evaluate system performance and run numerous iterations, allowing users to locate bugs and bottlenecks, fix and re-test time and time again.

DOWNLOAD BLAZEMETER'S WORDPRESS PLUGIN

Integration details can be found on our Knowledge Base under BlazeMeter WordPress Plugin.

Users can sign up for BlazeMeter's Webinar 'WordPress Load Testing Made Easy' on Wednesday, March 20 at 9am PDT/12pm EDT. To register: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/183235902

Users can also sign up for "Load Testing for Mobile Made Easy" on Wednesday, March 27 at 9am PDT/12pm EDT. To register: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/537195718

Join BlazeMeter at the NYC Webscale Group Meetup on Thursday, March 28 from 7-9pm EDT, to discuss "Finding & Fixing Performance Bottlenecks At Web Scale."

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WordPress Load Testing Made Easy

How to Write your first Word Press Blog and the EN Back Office Tour
How to Write your first Word Press Blog and the EN Back Office Tour. Uploaded by bloggingbadass on Mar 07 2013. A look insider the EN back office and a quick tutorial on how to write your first blog post To get future Training Videos JOIN my EMAIL LIST at httpsecretmoneysolutioncom Blog Post httpstevekallockcomblogempowernetworkfirstblogpost. Blogging Badass.

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How to Write your first Word Press Blog and the EN Back Office Tour - Video

Incarnate Word press conference at LSC Women #39;s Basketball Championship
Incarnate Word press conference at LSC Women #39;s Basketball Championship. lscmedia31700 videos. Subscribe Subscribed Unsubscribe 50. No views. Like 0 Dislike 0. Like. Sign in to youtube. Sign in with your youtube Accountyoutube Google+ Gmail Orkut Picasa or Chrome to like lscmedia31s video. Sign in. I dislike this. Sign in to youtube. Sign in with your youtube Accountyoutube Google+ Gmail Orkut Picasa or Chrome to dislike lscmedia31s video. Sign in. About Share Add to. Sign in to youtube ...

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Incarnate Word press conference at LSC Women's Basketball Championship - Video