by James P. McNamara - In light of the Moore case, the IRS has taken a more lenient approach to exchanges. While it now provides taxpayers with a safe harbor, they also gave us a direct check list under which a dwelling unit will qualify as property held for productive use in a trade or business, or for investment, for Section 1031 purposes, even though they will occasionally use it for personal purposes.

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Get more information about 1031 Exchanges before making a decision.

Bear bile farming is a reality today. Although it is unnecessary to bile a bear, it is still very much a common practice in some places today. It causes extreme pain to the bears. During the process, it can be observed that bears gnash their teeth, bite their cages, moan, and even chew their own paws because of the pain.

Bile Extraction - Bile extraction is done in the crudest manner, and without any form of sanitation. The persons conducting it are unskilled and the process is not up to modern veterinary standards. Most of the bears die during or soon after bile extraction. If they live, they suffer from liver cancer, as a result of chronic inflammation and infection of the gall bladder and liver. Generally, farmed bears live only up to 4 years.

Why People Bile Bears - Bile is a digestive liquid produced by the liver and stored in the gall bladder. Bile gathered from bears has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for at least three thousand years for a variety of purposes. It is used in Chinese physiotherapy, to cure inflammations and to dissolve gall stones and kidney stones. Also, it is thought to help detoxify the liver and improve eyesight. And according to research, bears are the only mammals that produce the bile salt ursodeoxycholic acid, which is effective in treating some liver diseases.

Before, bear bile was gathered by killing wild bears and removing their gallbladders. In recent decades, when wild bears became increasingly rare, bile became prohibitively costly for most Chinese. But then, during the year 1980, the Chinese bear bile farming industry adapted a technique first developed in North Korea. This involved extracting bile from captive bears without having to kill them.

Bear Cruelty - The bears are housed in cages hardly large enough to hold the animal itself. To get the bile, an incision is made in each bear’s abdomen and a catheter (which is basically a plastic or rubber tube) is then inserted into the gallbladder. The bile is drained through the catheter and then gathered for sale.

How is the process done? To gather the bile from the gallbladder, a connection from the gallbladder (located deep inside the body) to the surface has to be established. The connection, which is medically called fistula, is made in any of the three ways: insertion of a metal tube, insertion of a plastic tube, or creation of a tissue bridge between the gallbladder and skin. The connection is conducted by untrained and unskilled individuals who do not observe modern veterinary standards.

To gather the bile, some bears wear a “metal jacket”. It is worn around their bodies and it has a collection container attached to it. There are bears forced to lie on the floor of their small cages so the bile will drip downward. Keep in mind that their crush cages are extremely small. The floor is made up of iron bars so the bears cannot stand or lie down on firm ground. This results in neck and back injury. Since a bear’s body will try to exclude the inserted metal or plastic tube or close the tissue bridge, scarring and damage is done to both the inside and outside of the bear. Sometimes, to prevent the closing of the incision, hot pieces of metal are inserted without any form of sedation or anesthesia. Bile is collected twice a day, and this goes on for the rest of their lives.

Why Bear Farming is Useless - This is all very unnecessary. There is no need to make poor bears undergo such abuse. The use of bear bile is obsolete. There are at least 75 herbal medicines that can be used as an alternative to bear bile. Of which, 54 are proven to work. These alternatives are a lot cheaper and more convenient.

Now, synthesized bear bile that contains UrsoDeoxyCholic Acid (the active constituent in bear bile) is available. All these alternatives are just as effective without the deaths of innocent bears. Let us put a stop to bear bile farming. It causes unnecessary torture to poor bears.

1. Induction - In this phase, which includes first 14 days of the diet, it is said that you will lose up to 15 pounds of your body weight. During this time, the amount of carbohydrates consumed per day will be less than 20 grams. The only carbohydrates included in your Atkins diet recipes will be low carbohydrate-content vegetables like tomato.

2. Ongoing Weight Loss - During this second stage, the consumption of carbohydrates is raised up to 5 grams per day.

3. Pre-maintenance - During this stage of Atkins diet meal plans, the rate of fall of body weight will be slower. Also, you can experiment various other foods to see whether they add your body weight or not. If found safe, you could add it to your Atkins diet food products.

4. Maintenance - You enter this phase when you find that you have reduced the body weight to the desired level. Also you could add some more carbohydrates to your diet which do not raise your body weight, like full wheat bread.

Tail Piece: The ultimate result of Atkins diet program (other diet programs as well) depends solely on how well the person follows the recommendations. Hence make sure that you follow it religiously.

Weight Loss is a real health issue with so many people today, and there’s just so much conflicting information that it’s no wonder people don’t know what to do or which plan to follow.

Some plans suggest eating only low fat foods, and others eating only low-carb.

Some plans say to cut a meal or two out, but others say eat more meals daily.

Some promote dietary supplements, others doing it with diet changes.

Even the type of exercise people suggest varies.

But other factors may come into play besides the usual diet and exercise strategies, for some people to lose weight and keep it off.

Some research released lately shows that, for some people, digestive issues may be keeping them from a proper weight, in spite of diet or exercise. Dr. Suzanne Gudakunst is one of these researchers.

Plaque and parasites in the stomach and colon are known to make weight loss a much bigger issue for some people, even if they are exercising more and eating less.

By making some simple changes to your daily routine, you can address these problems once and for all, and finally lose the weight you may have been struggling with for so long and not understanding why it was such a struggle.

There is no “magic pill” when it comes to weight loss, but there are solid facts.

Yes, there are foods we eat that work against our weight loss goals - like high-glycemic carbohydrate-rich foods.

Exercising every day will always be an important part of a diet plan, of course.

These exercise and food choices won’t be effective, however, till we deal with any digestive issues as discussed above.

No doubt like me you have seen numerous adverts online that promote various programs guaranteeing you a millionaire lifestyle. Those yachts and Ferrari’s are very tempting aren’t they! But unfortunately despite what the adverts say you have very little chance of attaining them. The only people to get rich from those programs are the creator and the top 1% of affiliates.

If only internet marketing was as easy as the adverts make out we would all be rich. However this is not the case Internet Marketing is just like any other job you need to learn the basics first before moving onto the big stuff. Even if you get an honest recommendation for a product that has made a lot of money for someone else , it doesn’t mean to say it will make any money for you. There are too many variables involved , for example do you have the necessary experience to use it to the it full potential?

Think back to when you started to ride a bike. What did you parents buy for you first? A racing bike or a simple bike with training wheels? If they were sensible then it would have been the bike with the removable training wheels. The same when you learned to drive, did you learn in a relatively slow car and easy to use car or 180 MPH Porsche. It’s quite obvious why you don’t learn on something thats too difficult to ride or drive because if you did you’d soon lose confidence and give up.

Imagine what would have been the outcome if you had your first driving lesson in a Ferrari you’d probably have stalled it 100 times wrecked the clutch and never driven again. Internet marketing is very similar, if you don’t know exactly what you are doing you’ll fail and failure will make you give up.

Want to know the best place to begin your Internet Marketing career?

Step one should be to learn all about keywords and niches. Find out what type of sites are the most profitable. Once you have done that then you should come up with a plan. Try researching your markets. Should you build a mailing list or should you concentrate on monetizing blogs. It really can be very daunting at first but persevere and the rewards can be excellent.

It is important to try to resist the temptation to buy every tool you see recommended. I’ve had loads of people ask me what they should do with the tools they bought. If you don’t know exactly what you will use a tool for them don’t buy it! There are hundreds of free tools available online make use of these to start with. The more money you save the greater your profit will be.

I am lucky enough to be able to make a full time income by working online. I am also a believer in sharing what I’ve learned. Therefore I have recently decided to give away many of the guide, e-books and videos I’ve created over the past few years. You’ll find details of the site Profitable Website Guides below.