Faisal Hoque: Growing a Small Business with 5 Essential Principles

We tend to hear about people when they are successful but not when they are struggling. This creates a distorted perception that people succeed overnight.

Behind every "overnight success" is a story of a person or a team toiling away for years, with very few people except themselves and perhaps a few friends and partners supporting them. Consider the following two stories:

Overnight Delivery, Not so Overnight: On March 12th, 1973, founder of FedEx, Fred Smith secured just seven packages for the first night's run. He sent his salesmen back into the field, more than doubled his network to 25 cities, and re-launched the service a month later -- this time handling a grand total of 186 packages. Smith was so desperate for cash that he flew to Las Vegas to play the blackjack tables. He wired the27,000 he won back to FedEx. Needless to say, Smith's persistence paid off.

Rising from the Ashes: At the beginning of 2009, the creator of mega successful video game Angry Birds, Rovio (located in in Espoo, a 20-minute drive west of Helsinki) was close to bankruptcy. Angry Birds was Rovio's 52nd game. The 'overnight success' of Angry Birds took just eight years. And the founders of Rovio had been thinking about video games for long before that.

So many business founders come up with a good idea yet they are unable to scale their companies for growth. Through my own journey as an entrepreneur, I've learned that every business is unique, but there are certain key precepts to follow for success. The few that do succeed do so with unmatched focus, discipline, and unconventional thinking.

Although it takes more than just this to be a success in business, here are five essential principles that you can begin implementing right away as you begin your journey toward growing your business:

1. Timing is Everything
The timing of your product or service must be right in the marketplace. If the market isn't ready and you are way ahead of the market, then you must possess the drive and the willingness to sacrifice in order to make that product or service work.

You will need to choose to either wait for the market to catch up (requiring the resources to survive during that period, and accepting the risk of emerging competition), or you'll need to adjust your offering to something more palatable to the market's current readiness.

Smaller businesses have the advantage of being able to make choices and implement changes without the exhaustive process and conflicting points of view that slow down major corporations. You need to anticipate your market and customers' needs and constantly innovate to stay ahead. This requires leadership with agility, resilience, and a willingness to fail -- and to recognize that failure quickly enough to adapt and move forward.

2. Brand, Brand, Brand
Today's economy requires business leaders to create positive memories for customers and partners, or customers will turn to a competitor in search of a better experience. If you want to create a scalable business, you have to understand just how crucial it is to build brand equity. The emotional attachment that links customers to your product, as opposed to any other, translates into sustainable growth. Here are some basic rules to connect, shape, influence, and lead with your brand:

• Choose your target audience - the surest road to product failure is to try to be all things to all people.
• Connect with the public - your objective is to make your audience feel an emotional attachment to your brand.
• Inspire and influence your audience - an inspirational brand message is far more influential than one that just highlights product feature functions.
• Reinforce the brand image within your company - make sure employees at every level of your organization work and behave in a way that reinforces your brand image.

3. Scale Your Sales
Creating a unique product and a unique brand isn't enough. It takes repeatable sales processes to create a scalable business. It is one thing to sign up a few customers; it is another thing entirely to identify, design, and implement repeatable sales and customer delivery processes. You've created a repeatable and scalable sales model when:

• You can add new hires at the same productivity level as yourself or your sales leader.
• You can increase the sources of your customer leads on a consistent basis.
• Your sales conversion rate and revenue can be consistently forecasted.
• Your cost to acquire a new customer is significantly less than the amount you can earn from that customer over time.
• Your customers get the right product in the right place at the right time.

A repeatable sales model builds the platform to scale. Like the search for product/market fit, it can take major experimentation/R&D to find a repeatable and scalable sales model.

4. Embrace Technology
Nearly two thirds, or 64%, of the recent Bank of America (BofA) Small Business Owner Survey respondents said they wish they took better advantage of technology innovations to help manage their business. If a small business can identify a genuine need, technology likely exists to fulfill that need both locally and globally. There are few barriers to entry in an age where anyone with wireless can cheaply and quickly access the enabling technologies needed to execute their business model. It comes down to creating the right operating blueprint that connects the dots between your business model and the application of accessible technologies.

5. De-Stress for Success
Most small business owners consider managing the ongoing success of their business to be twice as stressful as maintaining a healthy relationship with a spouse or partner, nearly three times as stressful as raising children and more than four times as stressful as managing their own personal finances, according to the same Bank of America report mentioned earlier. The survey indicates that small business owners routinely forgo physical fitness and other personal priorities to keep up with business demands. Thirty-eight percent of small business owners maintain full or part-time jobs while running their own business.

The stressors can be relentless. But if you're not happy, healthy and motivated, you can't create a business model that provides a positive market experience. You also set the tone for everyone who works with you. Nobody wants to do business with a grouchy, bitter and exhausted owner. Therefore, investing the time and effort to adequately take care of your physical and mental well-being will further increase your chances for long term success. Mental health is not just about going to the gym to let off steam. It's about achieving a state of mental calmness to see you though the relentless challenges - but that's another topic in itself!

For more by Faisal Hoque, click here.

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Taliban capture 9 from helicopter in Afghanistan

A taxi tries to make its way through a sandstorm that obscures the city of Kanadahar, Afghanistan, Sunday April 21, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

A taxi tries to make its way through a sandstorm that obscures the city of Kanadahar, Afghanistan, Sunday April 21, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? A civilian transport helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in a Taliban-controlled area of eastern Afghanistan, and the insurgents took all nine people who were on board hostage, officials said Monday.

The aircraft landed in strong winds and heavy rain on Sunday in a village in the Azra district of Logar province, southeast of Kabul and about 30 kilometers (or 20 miles) from the Pakistan border, said district governor Hamidullah Hamid.

Taliban fighters then captured all nine aboard the helicopter and took them from the area, Hamid told The Associated Press. He said the crew members and passengers are all civilian, but he did not know their identities or nationalities.

NATO confirmed the helicopter went down on Sunday, but the International Security Assistance Force did not have any other details. ISAF spokeswoman Erin Stattel said the coalition was assisting in the recovery of the aircraft. She could not say whether the aircraft had made a precautionary landing or whether the Taliban had forced it down.

In Ankara, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said it was asking officials in Afghanistan to check unconfirmed news reports that some or all of the nine people aboard the helicopter were Turkish citizens.

Logar deputy police chief Rais Khan Abdul Rahimzai said the helicopter is owned by a company named Khaorasan. He first identified it as an Afghan company, but later said he didn't know where it is based. Rahimzai said he didn't know what kind of cargo the aircraft was carrying, where it was headed, or whether it was working for NATO.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-22-AS-Afghanistan/id-dc5024e19c094dd0b7c215947e9db4b8

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AMD reveals G-Series X embedded chips, drops a little ARM-powered bombshell

We're no strangers to AMD's embedded processors, designed for specialist applications such as casino gaming and dashboard infotainment systems. But this latest announcement of an updated G-Series processor reveals something totally unexpected. It's not just that the chip contains four Jaguar cores of PlayStation 4 fame, or that it also includes a Radeon 8000 GPU and I/O module on a single piece of silicon -- although that's all interesting enough. The key thing is actually the "X" in the lower right corner of the logo, which signifies that this is an x86 chip of the type we'd normally expect from AMD. The question is this: Why bother even mentioning the "X" when everyone knows AMD is an x86 stalwart already? Read on and we'll explain its true significance.

Filed under: Laptops, Tablets, AMD

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/23/amd-reveals-g-series-x-embedded-chips/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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How Coffee Brings The World Together : Bay Area Bites - KQED

Post by Dan Charles, The Salt at NPR Food (4/22/13)

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Coffee is more than a drink. For many of us ? OK, for me ? it?s woven into the fabric of every day.

It also connects us to far corners of the globe.

For instance, every Friday, a truck pulls up to the warehouse of Counter Culture Coffee, a small roaster and coffee distributor in Durham, N.C., and unloads a bunch of heavy burlap sacks.

On any random day, that truck could bring ?10 bags from a farm in El Salvador; 20 bags from a cooperative in Burundi; two bags of a special coffee from Guatemala,? says Kim Elena Ionescu, one of the coffee buyers for Counter Culture Coffee. She travels the world, visiting coffee farms and deciding which beans the company will buy.

The best coffee, she says, comes from high altitudes, but you cannot grow it in places that freeze, ?so you need that mixture of high altitude and warm climate, which makes the tropics the place to grow it.?

All across Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, people grow coffee.

In many tropical countries, especially poor ones, it?s a pillar of the economy; exports of green coffee beans, globally, are worth $15 billion a year.

Some of these farms, Ionescu says, are idyllic places, high in the mountains. Taller trees often shade the coffee bushes. Such scenes ?hearken a little bit to coffee?s homeland, which is Ethiopia,? Ionescu says. ?Southwestern Ethiopia is really lush, it?s got amazingly high altitudes, it?s green, misty.?

But honestly, even though there are millions of small, idyllic coffee farms, they aren?t producing the majority of the world?s coffee.

Most coffee isn?t specialty coffee. It?s just coffee: big cans of it, or instant coffee.

Forty percent of all coffee comes from Brazil, and the typical coffee farm in Brazil looks more like a corn farm in Iowa, Ionescu says ? ?coffee plants as far as the eye can see, unbroken by any kind of tree.?

When it?s time for harvest in Brazil, big machines roll through and strip off the cherrylike coffee fruit, with its valuable bean inside.

The second-biggest producer in the world is a surprise for many people: Vietnam. ?Not a lot of people, especially in specialty coffee, talk about Vietnam,? says Ionescu.

Vietnamese farmers grow a species of coffee tree called robusta. (The scientific name is Coffea canephora.) It grows fast and produces a big crop, but the bean has a bitter taste. It?s often used in blends, especially in Europe. But high-end coffee producers like Counter Culture avoid it. They stick to another species ? arabica.

This is one big divide in the coffee business. On one side is ?commodity? coffee; on the other, small companies like Counter Culture Coffee, or even big ones like Starbucks or Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which sell coffee that?s been more carefully harvested and graded. These companies market coffee almost like wine, labeling where it came from and how it tastes.

At Green Mountain?s headquarters in Waterbury, Vt., tasters suck in mouthfuls of fresh brew, pause to reflect, then give each sample a score and talk about what their supersensitive taste buds picked up. ?Chocolate, melon, lime, subtle peach,? says one taster.

Specialty coffee like this accounts for only a small part ? probably 10 or 15 percent ? of the global coffee market.

Sometimes, these two sides of the coffee business seem to live in different worlds. But Counter Culture Coffee?s Ionescu says they sometimes come together in surprising ways.

?You know, what?s interesting to me is the large proportion of coffee growers who drink instant coffee, even on some of these idyllic hillsides in Central America,? she says.

Instead of drinking their own top-quality coffee, they export it to people who can pay more for it, such as Europeans or Americans.

Lindsey Bolger, director of coffee for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, says if you measure the amount of coffee consumed per coffee drinker, the world champions live in Nordic countries. ?Depending on which country, they?re up to eight cups of coffee per person, per day. In the U.S., we?re at maybe 2 or 2.5 cups of coffee per day,? she says.

Americans actually used to drink a lot more coffee. Per person, we drank almost twice as much during World War II.

People used to divide the coffee world neatly into producers, like Brazil, and consuming countries in Western Europe and North America.

Bolger says those clear lines are getting blurred. Brazil could soon overtake the United States to become the world?s single biggest coffee-consuming country, she says, and ?we?re seeing significant growth in consumption in regions like Southeast Asia, South Korea, Eastern Europe, India and the Gulf nations.?

The coffee experience, it seems, is more global than ever.

This is the first in a series of reports for Coffee Week. Along with our friends at Morning Edition, we?re bringing you the stories behind the coffee in your cup ? from the farms of Guatemala to the corner coffee shop.

Related Quiz at NPR:

Copyright 2013 NPR.

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Tags: coffee, Counter Culture Coffee, the salt

Category: NPR food, radio, sustainability, tea and coffee

Source: http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/2013/04/22/how-coffee-brings-the-world-together/

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YouTube for iOS updated to support live streams, TV video queuing

Google, we have to talk about your sense of timing. You've just streamed Coachella's first weekend on YouTube, and now you update the YouTube app for iOS to support live video? Better late than never, we suppose. Thankfully, there's a pair of extra features in the bargain, including the ability to queue multiple videos for TV viewing and a port of the Android version's uploads-only My Subscriptions feed. While it'll be awhile before we recover from missing the Tegan and Sara show, everyone can prepare for future events by upgrading at the source link.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile, Google

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Major Dell shareholder favors recent buyout offers

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Dell's largest independent shareholder is leaning toward supporting one of the two bidders trying to scuttle the slumping personal computer maker's proposed $24.4 billion sale to a group including CEO Michael Dell.

Southeastern Asset Management expressed its preliminary support for the alternative offers in a letter sent Tuesday to the four-person committee overseeing the negotiations. The development doesn't come as surprise, given that Southeastern has been the most vocal opponent to Dell Inc.'s plan to sell itself to Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners for $13.65 per share.

That price struck Southeastern as too low. The Memphis, Tenn., investment firm tried to prove its thesis Tuesday by noting that Dell Inc. has spent $3.4 billion during the past two years buying back the company's stock at an average price of $15.25 per share.

"The same board that was confident with Dell buying its shares for $15.25 is now attempting to convince all shareholders that Dell's business is in such dire straits that they should take $13.65 and exit their investments," Southeastern's top executives, O. Mason Hawkins and G. Stanley Cates, wrote in the letter. "We believe the Board's sudden rush to sell is triggered by one thing: Mr. Dell's desire to buy.

The backlash to the board's deal with Michael Dell emboldened buyout specialist Blackstone Group and billionaire investor Carl Icahn to submit separate proposals offering a slightly higher price. Blackstone is proposing to buy most of Dell Inc.'s stock for $14.25 per share while Icahn is willing to pay $15 per share for up to 58 percent of the shares.

Dell's stock dipped a penny Tuesday to close at $14.19.

Unlike the deal with Michael Dell, a portion of the company's stock will remain publicly traded if Blackstone or Icahn prevail. That would allow current shareholders such as Southeastern to share in some of the future gains if Dell Inc. successfully executes on a plan calling for the company to lessen its dependence on the shrinking PC market and diversify into more profitable sectors such as selling data storage services and business software.

The deal with Michael Dell and Silver Lake would end Dell Inc.'s 25-year history as a public company, allowing a potential turnaround to be worked out away from the scrutiny and pressure of Wall Street.

With an 8.4 percent stake, Southeastern is Dell's second-largest shareholder after Michael Dell, who still owns 14 percent of the company that he founded as a college student in 1984.

That makes Southeastern a potentially influential player in Dell Inc.'s fate. Michael Dell is contributing $4.5 billion in cash and stock to the deal he worked out with Silver Lake because that agreement will leave him in control of the Round Rock, Texas, company.

It's unclear if Blackstone or Icahn will negotiate a similar arrangement with Michael Dell, who has said he is willing to work with the alternative bidders.

If Michael Dell remains exclusively aligned with Silver Lake, Blackstone and Icahn would either have to line up even more financing to pay for their proposed deals or find other ways to replace the cash and stock that Michael Dell could contribute. One way to do that would be to persuade Southeastern and other existing Dell shareholders to contribute some of their stock.

Southeastern didn't delve into that possibility in its Tuesday letter. But the firm called the Blackstone and Icahn bids better deals than the one worked out with Michael Dell.

"We view these proposals as superior primarily because each offers shareholders the opportunity to remain owners of Dell while also offering a higher cash price to owners who choose to exit their investment," Hawkins and Cates wrote. They urged Dell's special committee to negotiate with the alternative bidders in "good faith."

In a statement, the Dell committee said it's still backing the deal with Michael Dell and Silver Lake while it assess the alternate proposals. Both Blackstone and Icahn are reviewing Dell Inc.'s books before taking the next step in their bids.

"Our goal was, and remains, to ensure that whatever transaction is consummated is the best possible outcome for Dell's shareholders," the board committee said.

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Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-04-09-US-Dell-Acquisition/id-b056b538467a47a8934db789173505fd

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Finding genes for childhood obesity: Genome wide study identifies genetic variants associated with childhood obesity

Apr. 5, 2013 ? A new study has revealed promising targets for the development of new drugs against childhood obesity. Researchers have identified four genes newly associated with childhood obesity and an increased burden of rare genetic deletions and rearrangements in severely obese children. Gaining a better basic understanding of obesity will open new doors to clinically relevant research.

Researchers have identified four genes newly associated with severe childhood obesity. They also found an increased burden of rare structural variations in severely obese children.

The team found that structural variations can delete sections of DNA that help to maintain protein receptors known to be involved in the regulation of weight. These receptors are promising targets for the development of new drugs against obesity.

As one of the major health issues affecting modern societies, obesity has increasingly received public attention. Genes, behavior and environment, all contribute to the development of obesity.

Children with severe obesity are more likely to have a strong genetic contribution. This study has enhanced understanding of how both common and rare variants around specific genes and genetic regions are involved in severe childhood obesity.

?We?ve known for a long time that changes to our genes can increase our risk of obesity. For example, the gene FTO has been unequivocally associated with BMI, obesity and other obesity-related traits,? says Dr Eleanor Wheeler, first author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. ?In our study of severely obese children, we found that variations in or near two of the newly associated genes seem to have a comparable or greater effect on obesity than the FTO gene: PRKCH and RMST.?

The team found that different genes can be involved in severe childhood obesity compared to obesity in adults.

Rare genetic changes in one of the newly associated genes, LEPR, are known to cause a severe form of early onset obesity. The team identified a more common variant in this gene, found in 6 per cent of the population, that can increase a person?s risk of obesity. This finding is an example of where rare and more common variations around the same gene or region can influence the risk of severe obesity.

Some of the children in this study had an increased number of structural variations of their DNA that delete G-protein coupled receptors, important receptors in the regulation of weight. These receptors are key targets for current drug development and may have potential therapeutic implications for obesity.

?Some children will be obese because they have severe mutations, but our research indicates that some may have a combination of severe mutations and milder acting variants that in combination contribute to their obesity,? says Professor Sadaf Farooqi, co-lead author from the University of Cambridge. ?As we uncover more and more variants and genetic links, we will gain a better basic understanding of obesity, which in turn will open doors to areas of clinically relevant research."

As part of the UK10K project (http://www.uk10k.org/) the team are now exploring all the genes of 1000 children with severe obesity in whom a diagnostic mutation has not been found. This work will find new severe mutations that may explain the causes of obesity in other children.

?Our study adds evidence that a range of both rare and common genetic variants are responsible for severe childhood obesity,? says Dr In?s Barroso, co-lead author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. ?This work brings us a step closer to understanding the biology underlying this severe form of childhood obesity and providing a potential diagnosis to the children and their parents.?

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Eleanor Wheeler, Ni Huang, Elena G Bochukova, Julia M Keogh, Sarah Lindsay, Sumedha Garg, Elana Henning, Hannah Blackburn, Ruth J F Loos, Nick J Wareham, Stephen O?Rahilly, Matthew E Hurles, In?s Barroso & I Sadaf Farooqi. Genome-wide SNP and CNV analysis identifies common and low-frequency variants associated with severe early-onset obesity. Nature Genetics, April 7, 2013 DOI: 10.1038/ng.2607

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/genes/~3/8Qmnc5Jeo8w/130407133146.htm

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$14 M for wildlife conservation efforts in Indiana

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Indiana is getting nearly $14 million in federal funds to assist wildlife conservation and outdoor recreation efforts.

The state Department of Natural Resources says Indiana's share of the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration fund is $13.9 million. The funds come from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services.

The money can be used by the states for wildlife management, public access for fishing, hunting and boating, hunter education, conservation land acquisition and similar programs.

The program has resulted in millions of acres of habitat saved and population increases in several species of fish.

The funds are generated from a tax on purchases of outdoor sporting goods.

Source: http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/indiana/14-m-for-wildlife-conservation-efforts-in-indiana

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Lending to small business: don't blame the banks ... - The Guardian

The Bank of England survey shows a drop in demand from small companies. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

It's now five years since Britain first dropped into recession and during that half decade there have been regular growls of complaint from small businesses about the raw deal they have been getting from the banks. The Federation of Small Businesses has insisted that the flow of credit has dried up.

Not so, say the banks. This is a demand problem not a supply problem: there is money available if only small businesses apply for it. The Bank of England's latest credit conditions report suggests that the banks may have a point, since there was a "significant" drop in credit demand from small companies in the first three months of 2013. But not so fast. The drop in demand may be the result of companies simply giving up on the banks and looking for other lending channels. The growing importance of crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending suggests this might be the case.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2013/apr/03/bank-lending-small-businesses

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Man shoots tree, tree fires back

As per usual, Google put out various, elaborate April Fools Day jokes, which only reminded everyone how much time and money the tech company has to spend on projects that aren't core products like, ahem, Google Reader.?For those too busy to follow along, The Next Web has a running list of the myriad pranks. And while some of the antics, like the pirate treasure map,?are harmless and cute, others hit too close to home.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/man-shoots-tree-tree-fires-back-002913032.html

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L.A. police ID suspect in girl's abduction case

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Police said Saturday they are looking for a transient in the kidnapping of a 10-year-old girl who was snatched from her San Fernando Valley home before dawn last week and abandoned hours later in front of a hospital.

Investigators identified 30-year-old Tobias Dustin Summers as a suspect in the case but couldn't elaborate on the motive or what led them to him. Police don't know if the girl was targeted but said they don't believe Summers had a connection to her family.

"We have no information that the family knew this individual or that the individual knew any members of the family," Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese said.

About 40 detectives have been working around the clock looking for clues since the girl was abducted from her home Wednesday. She was found hours later, wandering near a Starbucks several miles away.

The girl was barefoot, had bruises and scratches, and wasn't wearing the same clothes she had on when she vanished. She told the police two men she didn't recognize had taken her from her home.

Police initially said they were looking for two suspects, but now are focusing their efforts on locating Summers.

"This is the only person we are looking for right now," Albanese said Saturday.

Investigators have said they believe the girl was driven around the San Fernando Valley in a couple of cars and taken to at least two locations, including a storage facility, before she was released.

A passer-by who recognized her picture from media reports saw her outside the Starbucks and called police. The girl had wandered there from the hospital where she had been dropped.

Summers, who has a distinctive tattoo of a ghoulish face on his right arm, has arrests dating back to 2002, police said. Among them are robbery, grand theft auto, possession of explosives and kidnapping, authorities said.

Police said they had no details on the prior kidnapping case.

Summers was released from prison in July on a petty theft conviction as part of a California law designed to ease crowding in state prisons. He also spent six days behind bars in January on a probation violation.

Summers last checked in with his probation officer at some point earlier this month and had been complying with his release terms, police said. He is known to frequent the area where the kidnapping took place.

The Los Angeles Times reported that law enforcement sources said the girl was sexually assaulted. The Associated Press does not identify victims of sexual assault. Summers isn't a registered sex offender, police said.

Albanese said Summers had been arrested four years ago for investigation of battery that involved child annoyance. Court records show Summers was convicted of battery in September 2009 but the child annoyance charge was either dismissed or not prosecuted.

Summers has family in Southern California, according to police, and the FBI said it will obtain a warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, if the agency determines he has fled the state.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/la-police-id-suspect-girls-abduction-case-223900956.html

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This Teensy Keychain Knife Could Save Your Life One Day

There are plenty of knives out there you could feasibly carry around with you all the time—Gerber's got a whole suite of them. The latest to join the crew is an especially tiny lil' guy, but it could save your life. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/NukboE10HRk/this-teensy-keychain-knife-could-save-your-life-one-day

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Suspect sought in L.A. abduction of 10-year-old girl

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? A transient with a long criminal record is being sought in the kidnapping of a 10-year-old girl who was snatched from her San Fernando Valley home before dawn last week and abandoned hours later in front of a hospital.

Police identified Tobias Dustin Summers, 30, as a suspect Saturday, but they couldn't elaborate on the motive or what led them to him. They also don't know if the girl was targeted.

"We have no information that the family knew this individual or that the individual knew any members of the family," Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese said.

About 40 detectives have been investigating since the girl was abducted from her home at around 3 a.m. Wednesday.

"They're working around the clock until this guy gets captured," Officer Norma Eisenman, a police spokeswoman, said Sunday. "As of right now, there are no new developments on the case."

The girl was found about 12 hours after she was abducted, wandering near a Starbucks several miles away.

She was barefoot, had bruises and scratches, and wasn't wearing the same clothes she had on when she vanished. The girl told police two men she didn't recognize had taken her from her home.

Police initially said they were looking for two suspects but now are focusing their efforts on Summers.

"This is the only person we are looking for right now," Albanese said Saturday.

Investigators have said they believe the girl was driven around the San Fernando Valley in a couple of cars and taken to at least two locations, including a storage facility, before she was released.

A passer-by who recognized her picture from media reports saw her outside the Starbucks and called police. The girl had wandered there from the hospital where she was dropped off.

The Los Angeles Times reported law enforcement sources said the girl was sexually assaulted. The Associated Press does not identify victims of sexual assault. Summers isn't a registered sex offender, police said.

Summers, who has a distinctive tattoo of a ghoulish face on his right arm, has arrests dating back to 2002, police said. Among them are robbery, grand theft auto, possession of explosives and kidnapping.

Police said they had no details on the prior kidnapping case.

Summers was released from prison in July after serving his sentence on a petty theft conviction. His supervised release was being handled by county probation instead of state parole as part of a California law designed to ease crowding in state prisons. He also spent six days behind bars in January on a probation violation.

Summers last checked in with his probation officer earlier this month and had been complying with his release terms, police said. He is known to frequent the area where the 10-year-old's kidnapping took place.

Albanese said Summers had been arrested four years ago for investigation of battery that involved "child annoyance." Court records show Summers was convicted of battery in September 2009 but the child annoyance charge was either dismissed or not prosecuted.

Summers has family in Southern California, according to police, and the FBI said it will obtain a warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution if it determines he left the state.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/suspect-sought-la-abduction-10-old-girl-204749417.html

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