Liberty All-Star(R) Growth Fund, Inc. May 2013 Monthly Update

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BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Jun 17, 2013) - Below is the May 2013 Monthly Update for the Liberty All-Star Growth Fund, Inc. (NYSE: ASG)

Investment Approach

Fund Style: All-Cap Growth

Fund Strategy: Combines three growth style investment managers, each with a distinct capitalization focus (small-, mid- and large-cap)selected and continuously monitored by the Fund's Investment Advisor.

Investment Managers: M.A. Weatherbie & Company, Inc. Small-Cap Growth | Matthew A. Weatherbie, CFATCW Investment Management Company Mid-Cap Growth | Chang Lee and Mike Olson, CFA Large-Cap Growth | Craig C. Blum, CFA

The net asset value (NAV) of a closed-end fund is the market value of the underlying investments (i.e., stocks and bonds) in the Fund's portfolio, minus liabilities, divided by the total number of Fund shares outstanding. However, the Fund also has a market price; the value at which it trades on an exchange. If the market price is above the NAV the Fund is trading at a premium. If the market price is below the NAV the Fund is trading at a discount.

Returns for the Fund are total returns, which include dividends, after deducting Fund expenses. The Fund's performance is calculated assuming that a shareholder reinvested all distributions and exercised all primary rights in the Fund's rights offerings. Past performance cannot predict future investment results.

Performance will fluctuate with changes in market conditions. Current performance may be lower or higher than the performance data shown. Performance information shown does not reflect the deduction of taxes that shareholders would pay on Fund distributions or the sale of Fund shares. Shareholders must be willing to tolerate significant fluctuations in the value of their investment. An investment in the Fund involves risk, including loss of principal.

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Liberty All-Star(R) Growth Fund, Inc. May 2013 Monthly Update

First Liberty Power Advances Fencemaker Mining Operation

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Las Vegas, NV, June 17, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- First Liberty Power Corp. (FLPC), an innovative and diversified mine exploration and development company focused on bringing to market "Mined in America" strategic industrial minerals, announced today that the Small Mine Development (SMD) mining personnel are scheduled to be on location at the Fencemaker antimony mining project starting Monday.

VP Operations Robert Reynolds, together with Director James Vogan of First Liberty's strategic partner Stockpile Reserves, LLC, elaborated "The first operational items will be to complete the water removal and water storage plan, followed immediately by the full reinforcement of the existing adit. Subsequent to the completion of these operational safety matters, the start of stibnite ore removal from Fencemaker is forecast to commence in the latter portion of July. SRL, in addition to collaborating with SMD, will oversee the Fencemaker work site."

Mr. Nicholson further stated, "We are pleased that we remain on target to transform First Liberty Power from an exploration and development venture to a revenue-generating production operation. Our strategic planning has helped us achieve these initial goals and we will continue to inform our shareholders and investors of our continued progress through our Pathways of Progress updates."

ABOUT FIRST LIBERTY POWER CORPORATION (FLPC): First Liberty Power Corporation is an innovative and diversified mine exploration and development company focused on bringing to market "Mined in America" strategic industrial minerals. The FLPC corporate philosophy is driven by a dedication to Pathways of Progress, a program of best corporate practices designed to rapidly drive the company towards mine production/milling and to serve the greatest benefit of FLPC shareholders, investors and mining partners, while ensuring safety, environmental integrity, and good governance. Presently, FLPC has interests in four properties: the Fencemaker antimony project in Nevada, the Lida Valley and Smoky Valley lithium brine projects in Nevada, and the San Juan vanadium/uranium project in Utah.

http://www.firstlibertypower.com

http://www.facebook.com/FirstLibertyPower

ABOUT STOCKPILE RESERVES, LLC (SRL): SRL is a Nevada-based company dedicated to the safe, environmentally sound and efficient extraction of strategic industrial minerals.

ABOUT SMALL MINE DEVELOPMENT (SMD): SMD builds and operates America's underground mines, specializing in underground, hardrock mining from exploration, through engineering, development, production mining, and, ultimately, closure. The SMD mission is to be the leader in safe, productive and innovative mining solutions. http://www.undergroundmining.com/.

Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This current report contains "forward-looking statements," as that term is defined in Section 27A of the United States Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Statements in this press release which are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future plans of the company, the prospects for our mineral properties, and our ability to raise necessary working capital.

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First Liberty Power Advances Fencemaker Mining Operation

Liberty All-Star(R) Equity Fund May 2013 Monthly Update

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BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Jun 17, 2013) - Below is the May 2013 Monthly Update for the Liberty All-Star Equity Fund. (NYSE: USA)

Investment Approach

Fund Style: Large-Cap Core

Fund Strategy: Combines three value-style and two growth-style investment managers. Those selected demonstrate a consistent investment philosophy, decision making process, continuity of keypeople and above-average long-term results compared to managers with similar styles.

Investment Managers: Value Managers: Matrix Asset Advisors, Inc. Pzena Investment Management, LLC Schneider Capital Management Corporation

Growth Managers: Cornerstone Capital Management LLC TCW Investment Management Company

The net asset value (NAV) of a closed-end fund is the market value of the underlying investments (i.e., stocks and bonds) in the Fund's portfolio, minus liabilities, divided by the total number of Fund shares outstanding. However, the Fund also has a market price; the value at which it trades on an exchange. If the market price is abovethe NAV the Fund is trading at a premium. If the market price is below the NAV the Fund is trading at a discount.

Returns for the Fund are total returns, which include dividends, after deducting Fund expenses. The Fund's performance is calculated assuming that a shareholder reinvested all distributions and exercised all primary rights in the Fund's rights offerings. Past performance cannot predict future investment results.

Performance will fluctuate with changes in market conditions. Current performance may be lower or higher than the performance data shown. Performance information shown does not reflect the deduction of taxes that shareholders would pay on Fund distributions or the sale of Fund shares. Shareholders must be willing to tolerate significant fluctuations in the value of their investment. An investment in the Fund involves risk, including loss of principal.

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Liberty All-Star(R) Equity Fund May 2013 Monthly Update

Fitch Rates Liberty Mutual’s $600MM Debt Offering ‘BBB-‘

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CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Fitch Ratings has assigned a 'BBB-' debt rating to Liberty Mutual Group Inc.'s (LMG) new $600 million issuance of 4.25% senior debt due 2023. Additionally, Fitch has affirmed LMG's Issuer Default Rating (IDR) at 'BBB' and insurance operating subsidiaries' (collectively referred to as Liberty Mutual) Insurer Financial Strength (IFS) ratings at 'A-'. The Rating Outlook for all ratings is Stable. (A full list of rating actions follows at the end of this release.)

KEY RATING DRIVERS

The affirmation of LMG's ratings are based on the company's established and sustainable positions in its chosen markets, benefits derived from the company's multiple distribution channels, adequate capitalization and financial performance.

LMG's new debt issuance ranks equally with LMGI's existing and future unsecured senior indebtedness. Net proceeds from the offering are expected to be used to redeem upcoming maturing notes and for general corporate purposes.

Liberty Mutual's financial leverage as of March 31, 2013 was 28.3% and on a tangible basis 41.1%. The additional $600 million in debt will temporarily increase financial leverage, but with approximately $560 million in debt maturing in the next year the impact on long term financial leverage is negligible.

The new debt carries a lower coupon rate than maturing debt, promoting marginal interest coverage improvement. Interest coverage was 7.2 times (x) as of March 31, 2013 and five year average from 2008-2012 was 3.4x.

LMG's consolidated GAAP combined ratio for the three months ended March 31, 2013 was 98.3% an improvement over the 100.9% reported at March 31, 2012 and the 104.7% reported for full year 2012. A main driver of the improvement was reduced catastrophe losses, offset by a slightly higher expense ratio.

Over the past several years, the unfavorable margin in underwriting performance between Liberty Mutual and its property/casualty insurer peers has reduced particularly on an accident year basis. However, Liberty Mutual's underwriting results still lag those of higher rated peers.

Fitch believes that LMG's capital position provides an adequate cushion against the operational and financial risks the company faces, but capital metrics are weaker than most peers of its size and scale. In 2012, LMG's ratio of GAAP net written premium to adjusted shareholders equity was considerably higher than peers at 2.0x, an increase from 1.9x in 2011. A modest decline in adjusted shareholders equity in 2012 was driven by an increase in the pension liability, and several one-time charges related to debt extinguishment and restructuring charges offset by core operating earnings and realized investment gains.

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Fitch Rates Liberty Mutual's $600MM Debt Offering 'BBB-'

Liberty Mines Obtains Bridge Financing and Appoints New CEO and CFO

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TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Jun 17, 2013) - Liberty Mines Inc. (LBE.TO) has entered into a term sheet for bridge debt financing with Forbes & Manhattan, Inc. in the principal amount of $500,000. In connection with this financing, Liberty has appointed Pat Gleeson as a director and as Liberty's president and chief executive officer and Deborah Battiston as Liberty's chief financial officer.

Pat Gleeson is the senior legal advisor to F&M. He has been involved in the initial organization, financing and development of a number of the world's leading mining companies. Deborah Battiston is a Certified Management Accountant who serves as the chief financial officer of a number of public mining companies. In their new roles with Liberty, Mr. Gleeson and Ms. Battiston will focus on addressing Liberty's current financial circumstances and re-structuring the company.

F&M is a private merchant bank focussed on the resource industry. The F&M Group of Companies is comprised of more than 30 companies, which operate in over 20 countries, have six mines presently in operation and six other properties at development stage.

F&M has had significant success turning around struggling companies to create leading mid-capitalization mining companies. Pat Gleeson stated that "Liberty Mines is in a similar position to that of Avion Gold, Belo Sun Mining and Sulliden Gold when F&M became involved with those companies. We look forward to working with Jilin Jien and the Liberty board and stakeholders to make Liberty Mines the next turnaround success."

Liberty Mines would like to thank Chris Stewart and David Birch for their contributions and efforts as president and chief executive officer, and chief financial officer, respectively.

Details of Bridge Financing

Liberty has executed a term sheet for a bridge loan in the principal amount of $500,000. Amounts drawn under the loan will accrue interest at a rate of 10% per year, payable quarterly in advance. Closing of the facility is subject to standard commercial terms, including execution of a definitive loan agreement.

About Liberty Mines Inc.

Liberty Mines Inc. owns the only nickel concentrator in the Shaw Dome area, a prospective nickel belt region near Timmins, Ontario. Liberty also owns two former producing nickel mines and a prospective land package near Timmins, Ontario.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENTS

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Liberty Mines Obtains Bridge Financing and Appoints New CEO and CFO

Darkwood Byte: Frank Schaeffer on the Vast Non-Existent Biblical Libertarian Agenda – Video

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Darkwood Byte: Frank Schaeffer on the Vast Non-Existent Biblical Libertarian Agenda
Darkwood Brew guest Frank Schaeffer, author of "Crazy for God," can #39;t find a a libertarian voice in either the Old or New Testaments. Maybe that #39;s because we...

By: Sogo Media TV

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Darkwood Byte: Frank Schaeffer on the Vast Non-Existent Biblical Libertarian Agenda - Video

Why Be Libertarian?

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Why be libertarian, anyway? By this we mean, what's the point of the whole thing? Why engage in a deep and lifelong commitment to the principle and the goal of individual liberty? For such a commitment, in our largely unfree world, means inevitably a radical disagreement with, and alienation from, the status quo, an alienation which equally inevitably imposes many sacrifices in money and prestige. When life is short and the moment of victory far in the future, why go through all this?

Incredibly, we have found among the increasing number of libertarians in this country many people who come to a libertarian commitment from one or another extremely narrow and personal point of view. Many are irresistibly attracted to liberty as an intellectual system or as an aesthetic goal, but liberty remains for them a purely intellectual parlor game, totally divorced from what they consider the "real" activities of their daily lives. Others are motivated to remain libertarians solely from their anticipation of their own personal financial profit. Realizing that a free market would provide far greater opportunities for able, independent men to reap entrepreneurial profits, they become and remain libertarians solely to find larger opportunities for business profit. While it is true that opportunities for profit will be far greater and more widespread in a free market and a free society, placing one's primary emphasis on this motivation for being a libertarian can only be considered grotesque. For in the often tortuous, difficult and grueling path that must be trod before liberty can be achieved, the libertarian's opportunities for personal profit will far more often be negative than abundant.

The consequence of the narrow and myopic vision of both the gamester and the would-be profit maker is that neither group has the slightest interest in the work of building a libertarian movement. And yet it is only through building such a movement that liberty may ultimately be achieved. Ideas, and especially radical ideas, do not advance in the world in and by themselves, as it were in a vacuum; they can only be advanced by people and, therefore, the development and advancement of such people and therefore of a "movement" becomes a prime task for the libertarian who is really serious about advancing his goals.

Turning from these men of narrow vision, we must also see that utilitarianism the common ground of free-market economists is unsatisfactory for developing a flourishing libertarian movement. While it is true and valuable to know that a free market would bring far greater abundance and a healthier economy to everyone, rich and poor alike, a critical problem is whether this knowledge is enough to bring many people to a lifelong dedication to liberty.

In short, how many people will man the barricades and endure the many sacrifices that a consistent devotion to liberty entails, merely so that umpteen percent more people will have better bathtubs? Will they not rather set up for an easy life and forget the umpteen percent bathtubs? Ultimately, then, utilitarian economics, while indispensable in the developed structure of libertarian thought and action, is almost as unsatisfactory a basic ground work for the movement as those opportunists who simply seek a short-range profit.

It is our view that a flourishing libertarian movement, a lifelong dedication to liberty can only be grounded on a passion for justice. Here must be the mainspring of our drive, the armor that will sustain us in all the storms ahead, not the search for a quick buck, the playing of intellectual games or the cool calculation of general economic gains. And, to have a passion for justice, one must have a theory of what justice and injustice are in short, a set of ethical principles of justice and injustice, which cannot be provided by utilitarian economics.

"A flourishing libertarian movement, a lifelong dedication to liberty can only be grounded on a passion for justice."

It is because we see the world reeking with injustices piled one on another to the very heavens that we are impelled to do all that we can to seek a world in which these and other injustices will be eradicated. Other traditional radical goals such as the "abolition of poverty" are, in contrast to this one, truly utopian, for man, simply by exerting his will, cannot abolish poverty. Poverty can only be abolished through the operation of certain economic factors notably the investment of savings in capital which can only operate by transforming nature over a long period of time. In short, man's will is here severely limited by the workings of to use an old-fashioned but still valid term natural law. But injustices are deeds that are inflicted by one set of men on another; they are precisely the actions of men, and, hence, they and their elimination are subject to man's instantaneous will.

Let us take an example: England's centuries-long occupation and brutal oppression of the Irish people. Now if, in 1900, we had looked at the state of Ireland, and we had considered the poverty of the Irish people, we would have had to say: poverty could be improved by the English getting out and removing their land monopolies, but the ultimate elimination of poverty in Ireland, under the best of conditions, would take time and be subject to the workings of economic law. But the goal of ending English oppression that could have been done by the instantaneous action of men's will: by the English simply deciding to pull out of the country.

The fact that of course such decisions do not take place instantaneously is not the point; the point is that the very failure is an injustice that has been decided upon and imposed by the perpetrators of injustice in this case, the English government. In the field of justice, man's will is all; men can move mountains, if only men so decide. A passion for instantaneous justice in short, a radical passion is therefore not utopian, as would be a desire for the instant elimination of poverty or the instant transformation of everyone into a concert pianist. For instant justice could be achieved if enough people so willed.

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Why Be Libertarian?

Gulf Islands hosts annual benefit concert: Dreamfest

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GULFPORT, MS (WLOX) -

Fun, sun, and music were on the line up at Gulf Islands Water Park. They hosted the annual DreamFest concert sponsored by the Chris Driebergen foundation. The Driebergen family started their non-profit organization to honor the life of their son Chris. They hold annual events like Dreamfest to raise money for local charities.

Just six weeks into the 2009-2010 school year, on September 18, 2009, Christopher passed away from injuries sustained as a result of a single vehicle accident. He was on his way home from his girlfriend's house.

Chris' mom, Kim Driebergen loves what they are able to do with the proceeds.

"We've raised over $10,000for kids on the coast. We've provided for scholarships, athletic scholarships, and academic scholarships. We've also provided funds to the court appointed special advocate, CASA," said Driebergen.

The music started when the park doors opened and didn't lapse until the park doors closed. This year's line-up featured lots of local talent including, Hallow Hill, who happened to have been classmates with Chris Driebergen.

Hallow Hill singer says Dreamfest is one of his favorite events to play.

"To me it's just a wonderful experience, an honor to play this. This is our second year doing it now, and it's really an honor just to be part of this wonderful event," said Hill.

Dreamfest is just one of the many events Gulf Islands puts on each year. They hope that events like this will give season ticket holders more bang for their buck.

One of Chris's life dreams was to have a show and Dreamfest helps to make that a realization for his family. All funds raised through the concert provide contributions to organizations that help enrich the lives of children on the Gulf Coast. The organizations that benefit from this are selected because of their importance to Chris during his lifetime.

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Gulf Islands hosts annual benefit concert: Dreamfest

Mobile Health Devices Can Improve Health Care Access in Developing Countries

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Published on: 17th Jun 2013

Mobile health technology has substantial potential for improving access to health care in the developing world and in remote regions of developed countries, states an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

In many countries, access to health care is hampered by lack of medical professionals and health care infrastructure, limited or poor equipment, sporadic power and other obstacles. However, the development of remote-presence medical devices can help fill this void by connecting people in remote locations with experienced health care professionals for real-time assessment.

Smartphones, tablets and other consumer devices are being used in health care, but applications are limited because of processing capacity, privacy issues and signal variability.

"The next step in the evolution of mobile telemedicine is the development of portable, dedicated medical communication devices capable of providing real-time remote presence and transmission of diagnostic-quality medical data from a range of peripheral diagnostic devices that will allow point-of-care therapeutic intervention," writes Dr. Ivar Mendez, University of Saskatchewan, with coauthor.

Pilot tests by the authors using a mobile-presence device in the remote Bolivian Andes mountains with pregnant women allowed an obstetrician in Halifax to monitor the baby's heartbeat, communicate with the mother and conduct a complete prenatal ultrasound with the help of an onsite nurse.

"Mobile remote-presence devices for telemedicine have the potential to change the way health care is delivered in developed and developing nations," write the authors. "The availability of cellular network signals around the globe and rapidly increasing bandwidth will provide the telecommunication platform for a wide range of mobile telemedicine applications. The use of low-cost, dedicated remote-presence devices will increase access to medical expertise for anybody living in a geographical area with a cellphone signal."

There are some barriers to implementation of these solutions, such as perceived high costs (about $25 000 for the device plus connectivity charges) as well as medical liability, patient confidentiality, physician payment and other policy issues. However, the public's appetite for these solutions and the promise they have for improving access to health care may help remove barriers for remote-presence medicine in remote communities.

"This switch from the current model of centralized diagnosis in large medical facilities to point-of-care diagnosis could dramatically increase medical efficacy by removing barriers of time and distance, reducing wait times and decreasing the cost of health care delivery," state the authors.

As the rapid advance of technology continues to transform many areas of society, the medical field will see increasingly sophisticated tools and devices to improve point-of-care diagnosis.

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Mobile Health Devices Can Improve Health Care Access in Developing Countries