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When is a dollar not worth a dollar?
When it`s a Canadian dollar and carried by an estimated 1.5 million Canadian tourists to Florida each year.
The Canadian dollar has taken a pounding on the international market -- it fell below the benchmark 70-cent figure earlier this year.
Last Thursday, the Canadian dollar was trading at 72.04 cents on the New York foreign exchange, as quoted by Bankers Trust Co. -- which means that it took 1.38 Canadian dollars to buy the equivalent that one U.S. dollar would.
The performance of the Canadian dollar is closely tied to that of the American dollar, noted Pat Richaudeau, vice president and area manager of Deak Florida Inc. of Fort Lauderdale, an international metals and currency dealer. ``The U.S. dollar has been lower against foreign currencies this year and it seems to be a natural tie-in that the Canadian dollar would do the same,`` he said.
Noted this month`s International Market Forecast, an international exchange newletter published in Palmer, Pa.: ``The (Canadian) market gave up all the ground it gained last month in one week. For the first time in the last 10 years, this country recorded a trade deficit. Trade deterioration with the United States and lower prices for commodities received the blame.``
Several businesses have expressed concern that the roughly 30 percent markdown of the Canadian dollar may cut into Florida tourism this season, and Canadians have long made their presence felt in places such as Hollywood and Pompano Beach.
Enter Andrew Delaplaine, Robert Gale and their Canadian Funds at Par club.
Since June, the club has been signing up Canadians across Canada for the Card Canada, which is to entitle members to discounts at assorted businesses in Florida and throughout United States.
Some businesses -- Delaplaine says about half of those signed up in Florida so far -- will even accept a Canadian dollar at the same value as an American dollar.
More than 30,000 Canadians have paid $25 each to join the club so far, said Delaplaine, 35, a Fort Pierce publisher, and he expects as many as 150,000 eventual members.
With the Card Canada cards comes a directory listing participating businesses and the discounts they offer.
Delaplaine has set up a center in Miami and has given Florida businesses until Oct. 30 to sign up to be entered in the directory. But he adds that a newsletter updating participating businesses and discounts will be provided to members every other month.
The question of whether to honor a Canadian dollar at the same value as a U.S. dollar is nothing new, said several officials involved with Canadian tourism in Florida. And representatives of two Hollywood business organizations last week said their groups don`t support organized at- par efforts.
But a few dozen Florida businesses have at least agreed to give Canadian tourists discounts, with some businessmen readily admitting they could use the additional free publicity.
Businesses from all over the country have signed up so far, said Delaplaine. They include hotels and restaurants in Vermont, New York City and Myrtle Beach, S.C., as well as spots in South Florida and Orlando/ Kissimmee.
``We expected interest from car rental firms, restaurants and hotels,`` said Delaplaine, who used to publish a hotel guidebook before selling it to a Los Angeles company. ``But we`re getting everything from dental clinics to condos and houses for sale to Caribbean yacht charters, shoe stores -- you name it.
``There`s even a guy in Trinadad who`s selling his yacht at par, so Canadians would receive, in effect, a 30 percent discount.``
The idea for the club came from Gale, 29, a Toronto businessman who said he grew weary of seeing his currency devalued by 30 percent each time he crossed the border.
Now the club includes participating businesses as diverse as Antonio Campagne`s Spaghetti Factory in Fort Lauderdale, the motor lodge and the Lakeview Restaurant at the Hollywood Golf and Country Club and the Old Spain Restaurant and Lounge in Hollywood.
Antonio Campagne`s is offering Card Canada holders 20 percent discounts. ``They really take a beating when they come across the border,`` said Al Dawson, owner of the 9-year-old restaurant. ``It took a couple of years before I realized that when I walked through the restaurant, at certain times, I was hearing more French than English. We like the Canadian tourists and they happen to like good pasta.``
Juan Abella, owner of the 12-year-old Old Spain Restaurant and Lounge, said he couldn`t afford to accept Canadian funds at par ``because there`s not that kind of profit on food.`` But his restaurant -- which flies the American, Canadian and Spanish flags out in front -- is offering a 10 percent discount, he said. The club should succeed ``ifit is done well and not cheap -- if it is done with taste.``


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The writing has been on the wall for an awfully long time, but now Motorsport Total reports that the Red Bull Racing Team will definitely not run Renault power units next year. The Red Bull F1 fraternity had to take yet another round of penalties at Monza with both teams being affected by expiring engines.
Of course, this was not the straw that broke the camel’s back as the decision to divorce Renualt was made many moons ago. The delay in resolving the matter has centred around how much Red Bull can mitigate its buy out fee because Renault are ‘considering’ buying Lotus. This would affect their status as the ‘works’ team in the Renault stable, so the £50m damages Renault could receive for the breach of contract will be negotiated down by Mateschitz’s lieutenants.
According to MST, Mercedes has not year agreed to supply Red Bull Racing with their PU’s for next year, though the resolution of Lotus future may impact on this. Lotus have a contract for 2016 with Mercedes and the FIA says the Mercedes engine customer stable is therefore at present filled.
Manor Marussia have been linked to both Ferrari and Mercedes for their 2016 engines, but it appears that with Nico Hülkenberg’s contract extension at Force India, Mercedes don’t consider them prime candidates any more – even as a place for current DTM championship leader and Mercedes test driver Pascal Wehrlein.
Toto Wolff confirmed yesterday that there had been no talks with Manor about Wehrlein yet, but definitely had been over the supply of power units. “Manor is a young fresh team, interested in talking to all suppliers to get the best deal for themselves. That’s why we’ve been in contact.”
The Austrian head of Motorsports at Mercedes also revealed these engine supply discussions were for 2016 aggregates. Manor this year have been using 2014 PU’s so a deal with Mercedes will see them using the latest engine technology in 2016.
Beside the obvious new rival, Red Bull has another problem in their hunt for a new relatively loud bit – to nail into the back of their cars. They have a contract with Infinity as their title sponsor for 2016 and the luxury brand of Nissan is a direct competitor of Mercedes in the consumer market.
Infiniti are not so much a competitor of Ferrari and Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne has already confirmed earlier in the season that the Italian manufacturer would talk “to everyone with a serious intent.”
For Toro Rosso this may mean a return to the quasi independance they enjoyed in a former iteration as Minardi, and they were the only team ever to win a race with a Ferrari engine, except for Ferrari themselves of course.
Unless someone at Honda wakes up and smells the cordite, and recognises the need a second engine customer team to provide incremental data for development, it could be that all teams bar one in 2016 could be using Mercedes or Ferrari engines. Now there’s a sport in the USA called IndyCar….

domain: news


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Juho Sarvikas just added some oil to the fire created by the announcement of new Nokia phones by releasing another short teaser video. The video shows a cracked surface with great details what could suggest that a new Nokia device might shoot videos and images with macro lenses or have an incredible zoom feature. The video is rather still what might suggest that the camera will have optical, or maybe enhanced digital, stabilisation.
Check the video and tell what do you think about this?
The least important thing is what model of Nokia phone this could be, Daredevil, Starlord, 5.2 or even 8.2, since the most important thing is that Nokia should have a great camera-centric device on a mid-ranger. I think that having a capable camera on all the price ranges is an imperative today, something that should be as simple as one-day battery life or HD display.


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While the hype has moved on from the consumer VR market to hot areas such as AI voice assistants and Blockchain, the category continues to advance, slowly gaining a critical mass of consumer headsets, experienced developers, and quality content – in the form of both video and interactive experience/games.
- What trends shaped the last quarter on 2017 in the VR market?
Features and Benefits
- Dive into the trends shaping VR.
- Discover who is winning in the consumer VR space.
Key questions answered
- What trends shaped the last quarter of 2017 in the VR market?
- Who is winning in the consumer VR space?
Table of contents
High-end cord-free headsets unveiled
Collaboration shows a maturing ecosystem
Some firms are backing away from VR
Magic Leap finally announces something


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Dicksons of Forres will cease new and used car sales from its Nissan-Kia site in Forres, Moray, on March 31, after 45 years in the same location.
Finance director Jim Gibson says: “Increased costs made our planned investment in an £800,000 new-build showroom uneconomic. The standards our franchisers wanted were unrealistic for the level of business we would generate.”
New demands, in particular from Nissan would have forced Dicksons to increase the size of its proposed showroom from 3,200sq ft to 4,100sq ft.
The closure means 15 redundancies at the dealership. It will also be the end of motor trade operations at the site, which has been home to garages for more than 100 years.
Managing director Alistair Scrimgeour and Jim Gibson have owned the business, which employs 90 people, since 1989 when they bought the operation from Dicksons of Perth. They later opened a second branch at Inverness, which also sells Nissan and Kia.
They plans to expand the St Catherines Road bodyshop in Forres, and make a £100,000 investment in the Nissan franchise at Dicksons of Inverness.


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Showing results for tags 'bitcoin california'.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order on Wednesday to start implementing a crypto framework in the state. The state will create a "transparent and consistent business environment" for blockchain-related enterprises, including crypto-asset asset projects and those of related financial technology, under the order, as well as the California Consumer Financial Protection Law passed in 2020. According to Newsom, "California is a global hub of innovation, and we’re setting up the state for success with this emerging technology – spurring responsible innovation, protecting consumers and leveraging this technology for the public good. Too often government lags behind technological advancements, so we’re getting ahead of the curve on this, laying the foundation to allow for consumers and business to thrive" https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/05/04/california-governor-signs-executive-order-to-spur-crypto-industry-in-the-state/


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After weeks of declining prices, European dairy commodity prices finally found stability over the past fortnight, according to multi-national financial services firm INTL FCStone.
Price stability was reached two weeks ago, on April 22, and was followed by some support last week, on April 29.
Speaking to AgriLand, Dr. Peter Meehan, senior commodity analyst at INTL FCStone, explained:
"The European butter quotation gained 1.7% over the last two weeks climbing to €2,627 while the European skim milk powder (SMP) quotation increased by 2.0% since the middle of April, moving up to €1,920."
While the SMP index is now just 2.4% behind where it was this time last year, butter’s index remains 38% below where it was at the start of May 2019.
"This improved sentiment has also fed through into the European dairy futures markets with EEX butter and SMP gaining 0.9% and 1.2% respectively across their May 20 to January 21 contracts."
Mixed milk supply for March
From a milk supply perspective, production numbers for March have been somewhat mixed, the senior analyst explained.
In Europe, UK production remained under pressure compared with last year (-2.4%) while Irish (+2.1%); Dutch (+3.0%) and Polish (+1.9%) collections all saw strong numbers for the month, Dr. Meehan noted.
US milk production, meanwhile, continued its record-breaking run in March (+2.2%).
"In the southern hemisphere, New Zealand production was down on last year (-1.9%) but Australian collections continued their recovery (+7.0%) - though it should be noted both countries have now moved well into the back-end of their respective seasons, with supplies tailing off."
"Looking at the demand picture, European butter exports were very strong - up 62% - in February while exports of SMP (-19%); infant milk formula (IMF) (-5%) and cheese (-1%) were all down on last year.
"Chinese dairy imports on the other hand bounced back sharply in March compared to last year with whole milk powder (+7%); SMP (+21%); IMF (+7%); butter (+108%); anhydrous milk fat (+21%) and cheese (+54%) all seeing strong year on year gains.
New Zealand export data for March showed sharp year-on-year declines for most products.
New Zealand exports were exceptionally strong in the first three months of 2019, however, which is making the year-on-year decline appear exceptionally large for some products, Dr. Meehan added.
Continuing, he said:
"Despite the recovery in demand from Chinese in March, export statistics are showing global demand remains a little subdued.
"However, milk supplies in Germany and France, Europe’s two biggest milk producers, showed signs of slowing down somewhat in April - which should help re-balance the supply/demand picture as we progress through peak milk."


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THE GROWTH OF KENYA’S INformation and Communications Technology sector has, in the last 10 years, been nothing short of phenomenal.
From the huge growth in mobile telephony to the use of computers and the Internet, the industry, now estimated to be worth Sh10.5 billion, is a real success story by most yardsticks.
But there remain various obstacles that continue to hamper an even bigger explosion in this sector.
They range from the still quite high cellphone airtime and inter-connectivity rates charged by some of the providers, refusal to bring down Internet rates especially for retail users despite the coming of the fibre-optic cable, and what some observers view as a near-monopolistic regime in a sector that was liberalised only 10 years ago.
These high charges, instead of helping boost the economy, say some economic analysts, actually impede growth as they do not foster optimum business activity, but instead only create enormous wealth for a few individuals.
This may be what has led a frustrated government to contemplate forcing the prices down through controls.
As the most rapidly expanding economic engine, this sector could quickly become the nation’s cash-cow and a source of skilled, youthful employment.
According to the most recent United Nations Development programme (UNDP) report, which ranks the development status of countries globally, Kenya is third in ICT growth after the continent’s powerhouses, South Africa and Egypt.
The country’s Internet usage currently stands at 3.5 million but this is for PC-based users only. This is bound to leap substantially when the uptake of mobile Internet services fully takes root. Kenya is already fourth in Africa in this medium.
This huge potential in an industry that is still below 60 per cent of capacity in the mobile sector and less than 10 per cent for the Internet is not lost on both the government and other players.
A LEGITIMATE CONCERN IS THAT some major stakeholders, already raking in billions, have not only done their best to curtail efforts to substantially reduce charges, but also resist portability — that which allows customers to call across networks cheaply.
This is an obstacle that has seen the Prime Minister, the PS for Information and Communications, Dr Bitange Ndemo, the CCK and others express outrage and vow to change all this. The stakes are too high for monopolistic tendencies to be allowed to thrive.
Just as bad is that when the much-hyped fibre-optic cable landed, the hopes of many Kenyans for cheaper Internet prices were quickly dashed by the same players. The super-speeds came but the same prices remained.
Just why fibre-optic which costs 90 per cent less than the satellite system would not lead to even a modest drop in prices is mystifying.
If a major Internet company such as Kenya Data Networks whose officials have been calling for a vast drop in prices could afford to cut theirs by 90 per cent and they are a major stakeholder in some of the fibre-optic companies, why not the others?
Consumers are getting severely short-changed by these expensive, communications-unfriendly services. The economy is the other major loser.
Lower charges would mean wider usage, more and cheaper transactions, growth in the sector, and, ironically, more money in the bank for the for the ICT-based corporations.


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THISTLE SEAFOODS, one of Scotland’s largest family-owned seafood manufacturers, is celebrating two decades of a fruitful collaboration with Aldi, a partnership that has significantly contributed to the company’s growth and success.
Established in 1947 in Boddam, a small fishing village near Peterhead, Thistle Seafoods has evolved into a fifth-generation family business, attributing its recent success to the longstanding relationship with Aldi and the introduction of innovative seafood products.
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The partnership commenced in 2003 when Thistle Seafoods began supplying Scottish Aldi stores with just two products. Over the years, this collaboration has flourished, and today, Thistle Seafoods’ diverse product range, featuring 39 different items, is available in every Aldi store across the UK. The product lineup includes fresh Melt in the Middle Fishcakes, frozen Breaded and Battered Fish, and speciality lines for the festive season, such as Salmon Wellingtons and Luxury Fish Pies.
Headquartered in Peterhead, Thistle Seafoods strategically expanded its operations in 2022 by acquiring a second site in Uddingston, just outside Glasgow. Spanning 100,000 sq. ft., the Uddingston facility complements the existing processing facilities in Peterhead, enabling Thistle Seafoods to better serve its Scottish customers and expand its product offerings, particularly targeting the growing market for seafood exports.
Ryan Scatterty, Managing Director of Thistle Seafoods, expressed gratitude for the enduring support from Aldi, stating, “We’ve had a number of firsts since we started supplying Aldi back in June 2003. The most notable was the launch of our fresh fishcakes and coated fish in 2012, which opened up a whole new audience of customers to try our quality seafood products, with the fishcakes going on to become our most popular product at Aldi.”
Scatterty emphasized the pivotal role Aldi played in Thistle Seafoods’ success, providing support, encouragement, and a platform for growth. He added, “The relationship we’ve built over the last 20 years has allowed us to plan for the future, giving us the confidence and justification to invest in new equipment and facilities. As we mark 20 years with Aldi, we’re excited to continue our partnership in Scotland and beyond.”
Graham Nicolson, Group Buying Director at Aldi Scotland, hailed Thistle Seafoods as a true success story in the Scottish food and drink industry. He commented, “Aldi is committed to supporting local suppliers who bring quality produce to our shelves, so we’re delighted to celebrate 20 years of partnership with the fantastic team at Thistle Seafoods. We look forward to seeing what the next 20 years have in store.”
Some of the popular products from Thistle Seafoods, such as Specially Selected Melt in the Middle Fishcakes with Salmon, Cod, or Haddock, and Specially Selected Chip Shop Style Extra Large Battered Cod Fillets, are among the 39 different offerings available across Aldi’s 104 Scottish stores.


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Computer specialists create a 3-D model of Tower fire.
Take a walk-through tour of a luxury yacht.
Ready to go to space? Pick up a paper and be amazed!
Optometrists warn 3D movies can have dangerous effects
The BBC has decided to abandon its experiment with 3D
Miller-Heidke intrigued but nervous about 3D-integrated live opera
New Zealand scientists create 3D heart model
3D printing the future of technology


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After being teased since 2016, Audi finally revealed its new and completely electric SUV, the e-tron, in San Francisco on Monday. The e-tron will be available in 2019.
This luxurious EV model will compete with the Tesla Model X and is the first automobile revealed in response to parent company Volkswagen’s promise made in March of this year to mass produce e-cars; this week that initiative received an official name: “ELECTRIC FOR ALL.”
The plan is for the group to electrify all their vehicles by 2030 in an attempt to counter the VW emissions scandal of 2015, that is, when the EPA found a software in diesel engines that could detect when the emissions levels were being tested and alter the true value.
Volkswagen also announced Monday that the group intends to make 10 million electric vehicles in the first wave by investing $7 billion in EV production, and this Audi e-tron is just the first of the wave — the Brussels plant is already producing 200 of these per day.
They have officially become part of the luxury electric vehicle race alongside Porsche, Jaguar, Mercedes, and of course, Tesla.
As for the specs, the e-tron seats 5 people and, as advertised, is 100% electric and can be charged at home or at public charging stations.
Two models of the Audi e-tron will be available next year: The Premium Plus starting at $74,800, and the Prestige starting at $81,800.
Both will be equipped with dual asynchronous electric motors, city and side assist, LED headlights, a Bang & Olufsen® 3D Premium sound system, and heated and ventilated front seats among other features.
Some of the more luxurious features on the Prestige model include front seats set in Valcona leather with massage functioning, an air quality package that ionizes and fragrances the air, and a complete Driver Assistance Package.
The 95kWh battery can be fully charged in nine hours, to 80% in 30 minutes, and can exceed 400km on a single charge, which makes it the second highest-capacity battery on the EV market, and it’s already available for reservation.


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Attendees donned traditional Bavarian clothing including dirndls for women and lederhosen for men along - many of whom were sporting an array of incredibly bushy beards as part of the costume parade.
Axar.az reports citing Dailymail that the annual event was kicked off yesterday by Mayor Dieter Reiter who inserted the tap in the first leg with two blows of a hammer before handing the first liter to Bavarian governor Markus Soeder.
Around six million beer lovers from around the world are expected to have attended the festival before it ends on October 6.
But beer prices have increased again this year with a liter jug now costing up to 11.80 euros (£10.42) which is an increase of 30 cents.
The weekend is being policed by around 600 officers and security guards as well as 50 doctors.
2019.09.23 / 14:38


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Favo, a Brazilian social commerce platform, closed on $26.5 million in Series A funding to continue developing its app that takes grocery orders through local social networks.
Tiger Global Management led the round, with existing investors GFC, Elevar Equity, Kevin Efrusy, David Velez, FJ Labs and H2O participating. The latest round gives the company about $37 million in total funding since the company was started in 2019 by Alejandro Ponce and Marina Proença.
Families in Brazil spend, on average, $118 a month on food. According to IBGE data, they spend up to 22% of their budget on groceries. Favo enables under-employed entrepreneurs to create new income streams through steady sales commissions from their own local network. People order groceries through the Favo app, and the logistics system fills the order and arranges delivery, in bulk, to the entrepreneur the next day. The entrepreneur completes the last-mile delivery.
Ponce was previously the founder of another company, but felt he was not fulfilling his purpose. He was introduced to “ikigai,” the Japanese concept for finding your purpose, which he explained says to do what you love and what keeps you going. When he learned about social commerce from a friend, he traveled to China in 2019 to see it firsthand.
“I came back and knew that this is what I wanted to build,” Ponce said.
He met Proença, who has a marketing and user experience background. They bonded over their humble beginnings and set out to build a company for families just like theirs that would bring e-commerce to all consumers across Latin America, not just for the wealthy.
“We are creating a new class of entrepreneurs,” he added. “We empower unemployed people, mainly moms, with technology and logistics to become owners and generate extra income for households. This could be one of the largest e-commerce platforms in LatAm because we are democratizing it.”
By having entrepreneurs be the contacts for the shoppers, Proença said Favo is removing the lack of trust for buying groceries online, which included the fear of not receiving their goods because they didn’t have a human to talk to.
It also doesn’t cost entrepreneurs any money to work with Favo.
“Many direct sales organizations force people to buy things, but in our case, they don’t have to do anything,” Ponce said. “Latin America is 20 years behind the United States, and in most cases, we are the first-time introduction a client has to e-commerce in their lives.”
Favo launched in Peru in 2020 and then Brazil. The co-founders plan to focus the new funding on logistics and fulfillment operations, as well as expansion in Brazil and into Mexico. Ponce expects to be in 20 cities in the following months.
The company is working with 160,000 buyers and seeing revenue increase 30% month over month. Buyers can choose from over 3,000 products that are delivered to them within 24 hours.
Meanwhile, Ponce said Favo partnered with this round of investors because they are known for helping with expansion. He added that Tiger Global has already helped put the company on the right path.
“Favo’s innovative social commerce business model and rapidly growing logistics platform are transformative developments for the purchase and distribution of goods in Latin America,” said Griffin Schroeder, partner at Tiger Global Management, in a written statement. “We are excited to support Favo’s mission to democratize e-commerce and to partner with Alejandro and Marina as they quickly expand across new markets.”


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Founded in 2018, the Mumbai-based startup, which offers insurance infrastructure to platforms to distribute insurance products, closed a $1.25 million pre-Series A round in May 2020, led by Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund, Varanium Capital and Better Capital, which have also participated in the current round.
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Riskcovry is insurance-agnostic and provides plug-and-play technology to its 50 partners across sectors and industries. InMobi’s Glance, EMI financing platform ZestMoney, and Future Group's digital wallet FuturePay are among its enterprise clients.
The startup is on track to sell 200,000 insurance policies in the current financial year.
The pandemic accelerated the digitisation of the insurance value chain, and Riskcovry wants to enable businesses whose core business is not selling insurance. It wants to save them time and effort by providing technology, teams, and processes, according to co-founder Chiranth Patil.
The startup will utilise the funds to build new insurance products, invest in its data science team and products, and quadruple its partner network in the next 18 months.
Some products of insurtech startup Turtlemint, which recently closed its Series D fundraise, directly compete with those of Riskcovry's. Singapore-headquartered Symbo Platform Holdings which raised $9.4 million last week is also amping up its presence in India.
“The pandemic was an inflection point for us, with the insurance industry witnessing accelerated digital adoption, similar to the tailwinds that digital payments witnessed post demonetisation,” founders Patil, Suvendu Prusty, Sorabh Bhandari and Vidya Sridharan, said in a joint statement. “Our goal is to make insurance as ubiquitous as digital payments by powering digitisation across the insurance value chain in India.”
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India received ‘normal’ rainfall during the four-month-long monsoon season despite El Niño conditions, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Saturday.Byju’s Puts Up a Two-week Notice for FY22 Results
Byju's said on Saturday that it would in the second week of October present the audited fiscal-2022 results to its board, advisory council as well as investors Peak XV Partners and Prosus that have recently withdrawn their representatives from the edtech firm’s board.‘No Inflation Risk from Rising Oil Prices’
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Elon Musk issued a subpoena to Jack Dorsey’s co-founder and former Twitter CEO in a new bid to bolster his claim to walk away from his $44 billion bid for Twitter.
Dorsey is expected to have evidence of how the social company measured bots and spam accounts, via a subpoena that appeared in court on Monday for the filing of the world’s richest man.
Musk and Twitter are fighting a legal battle in Delaware Chancery Court, with Twitter trying to keep Musk on the original purchase terms.
Musk has contended in the lawful documenting that Twitter has made bogus and deceiving portrayals, including the limit of phony and spam accounts on the help, that add up to a material breach of the treaty.
The subpoenas served to lawyers for Dorsey Musk were requested to mention all documents and communications related to the tech billionaire’s deal as well as the impact or impact of false or spam accounts on Twitter’s business and operations prior to January 2019.
The subpoena also seeks information related to Twitter’s use of monetizable daily active users, a key metric the company introduced with its Q4 2018 results, as noted in Twitter’s SEC filing.
Musk censured Twitter’s utilization of the mDAU metric, charging that it doesn’t precisely mirror the promoting income produced from the informal community’s client bsae.
Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter in November 2021 after more than six years .Dorsey and Musk have had a cordial relationship. Dorsey backed the move after Musk signed a deal to acquire Twitter.
Dorsey wrote in a Twitter thread in April that he wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving the problem of being a company though Elon is the only solution I trust.
In an effort to obtain funding for the Twitter acquisition, Musk said in an SEC filing that he was in discussions with some current holders of Twitter stock, including Dorsey .
Can you According to the company’s 2022 proxy statement, Dorsey owns approximately 18 million shares of Twitter which represent 2.3% of the company’s stock.
Musk’s lawyers also summoned Bruce Falk, Twitter’s former head of consumer products and head of product revenue, on August 19, both of whom were fired by CEO Parag Agarwal in May.
After Musk sealed a $44 billion deal to buy Twitter on April 25, it began to question Twitter’s longstanding estimates that spam and fake accounts account for less than 5% of total active users.
On July 8, Musk’s legal team informed the company that it wanted to strike a deal over Twitter’s alleged inability to prove metrics and stonewalling in providing relevant data. In response, Twitter sued Musk in the Delaware Court of Chancery on July 12.
which sought to compel them to complete a binding agreement to take over the company. Lawyers for Twitter have argued in a legal filing that Musk is looking for an excuse to exit the deal after his personal net worth fell in line with the fall in Tesla’s share price.
The Delaware court has set October 17 as the date to begin the five-day hearing. It is possible that both the parties can settle the dispute beforehand.


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November 29, 2006
Last Wednesday's Scholarship Day at the Steamboat Ski Area raised almost $47,000 for the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club. The Steamboat Ski Area donated proceeds from opening day's $15 lift tickets to the local youth sports organization.
Stories this photo appears in:
Winter Sports Club benefactor of opening day sales
The Steamboat Ski and Resort Corp. raised $46,905 for the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club during Scholarship Day.


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NU Online News Service, April 26, 2005, 3:43 p.m. EDT
CIGNA Corp., Philadelphia, will be selling employee assistance program packages along with group life coverage.[@@]
Traditionally, most companies sold EAP packages on their own or together with group health plans. Today, some carriers are selling EAPs along with group insurance products other than group health insurance.


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Entrepreneurship jamboree to run alongside APEC Summit
The Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister will be hosting an entrepreneurship jamboree concurrently with the upcoming Asia-Pasific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Bali scheduled for October.
The gathering will welcome not only Indonesian participants but also international representatives from the APEC Summit delegations as well.
The APEC Summit will, from Oct. 1-8, welcome at least 21 heads of state and around 1,000 CEOs of international companies.
“The entrepreneurship gathering is a routine national event. But this year, we are increasing the numbers of participants from 200 to around 400 people so as to include the representatives of the APEC countries. Domestic participants can take part through selection,” Handito Joewono of the national coordination team for creative entrepreneurship development at the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister told Bali Daily recently.
He said that the APEC Summit would serve as the perfect ground to test the competitiveness of domestic products on the international market.
“Business people can share information and experience and even attract market interest,” said Joewono, stating that connectivity between domestic and foreign markets served as a key requirement in an entrepreneurial world.
The jamboree will, among other things, feature exhibitions, seminars and workshops, as well as contests related to innovation and creativity. He acknowledged that the ministry was currently in high spirits to develop entrepreneurship in Indonesia.
The ministry is working jointly with the representative office of Bank Indonesia for Bali and Nusa Tenggara, which has hosted seminars and training in Bali, including a two-day event in February participated in by businesspeople from around 500 micro, small and medium businesses (SMEs), new entrepreneurs and student representatives from universities across Bali.
Dwi Pranoto, head of the Bank Indonesia representative office for Bali and Nusa Tenggara, said that since last year, his office had started to promote a new program called Youth Marketpreneur. As many as 23 new entrepreneurs had been supported by capital funding of Rp 10 million (US$1,030).
Dwi said that Bali had huge entrepreneur potential.
“The name Bali itself is already a brand. Its products are acknowledged by the foreign market. The local market is also strong because visitors come all year round,” said Dwi, stating that Bank Indonesia continued to encourage entrepreneurs in Bali by increasing loan allocations for SMEs and young entrepreneurs.


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Australian auto industry's voluntary CO2 shift shows it's time for government to get moving5 August 2020
The Australian auto industry’s decision to unilaterally move on CO2 standards shows the door is open for government to implement mandatory emission standards that encourage the best clean vehicles to be made available to Australian consumers, according to the Electric Vehicle Council (EVC).
The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) today announced a voluntary industry CO2 standard in recognition of Australia’s declining global position.
EVC chief executive Behyad Jafari said the move was “a welcome step that paves the way forward.”
“Today’s announcement proves the industry recognises that CO2 standards benefit consumers,” Mr Jafari said.
“The government should follow the lead and introduce mandatory standards comparable to the US, the EU, and most other markets. Until this happens we’ll just have to accept that a huge proportion of the world’s most appealing EVs will be unavailable to Australian consumers.
“Standards need to be designed in a way that encourages automakers to bring their EV models to Australia. Australians are early adopters, but they’re missing out on many of the benefits of EVs because our governments have failed to act.
“The relevant stakeholders in Australia are ready to move with the times. But ultimately government needs to play a major role.
“The EVC is focused on building the ecosystem that will be required for the long term viability and economic sustainability of low emissions transport. We recognise that vehicles are an important part, but that the evolution of the automotive industry will require a range of traditional sectors to work together.
“We stand ready to work cooperatively with government and industry players to help drive the transition we know will make Australia a better place.”
- New electric car sales figures show Australia stalled with hazards flashing
- Incentives for electric vehicles make sense to Biden, Boris, and OECD – but Taylor apparently knows better
- Victorian voters reject Andrews Government’s tax on electric vehicles
- GM’s all-electric announcement proves Australian pollies have been Holden us back
- Statement regarding leaked draft of Australia’s electric car strategy


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Entries in 'sony conference' (7)
It's been one hell of an evening for PlayStation.
"While others have shifted their message and changed their story, we were consistent."
Sony has announced a strategic partnership with Virgin Media, naming the firm as PlayStation 4's official UK ISP partner.
Watch Dogs is the latest Ubisoft franchise to set its sights on Hollywood.
Sony Worldwide Studios has announced a slew of new IP for PlayStation Vita.
Sony is expected to detail launch plans for PlayStation 4 at its Gamescom conference this evening, and you can watch the action for yourselves.
Sony will be showing off more about PS4 at Gamescom this year, starting with a press conference before the world's biggest games show.


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Key Highlights The history of network marketing Global industry size Need of the hour for the direct selling industry to thrive and flourish in India What is Direct Selling and Network Marketing? Before we discuss or try to understand the current situation of Network Marketing /MLM or Direct Selling Industry in India, it is important […]
#RBI #MLMScam #PonziScheme Lots of fly by night ponzi mlm schemes have duped millions of investors in India. On Thursday Reserve Bank of India notified investors against MLM companies that promise high returns and run on hefty member subscription fees. Any break in the chain leads to the collapse of the pyramid, and the members lower down […]
New Delhi: In recent time many multi-level marketing companies have mushroomed all over India and few have even duped gullible people with millions of rupees. Recently in a Sebi board meeting where the ministry of corporate affairs and finance, and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) participated. During the meeting, they discussed how they should monitor such MLM ponzi schemes. […]
It is quite likely that soon there will be a strict regulation on Network Marketing in India. From past few years people have lost money to the tune of hundreds of crores in ponzi schemes. Now Consumer Affair Ministry has asked Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to look into the operations of MLM companies.
May 09, 2011 11:34 PM |MLM News Blog Editor Things to know before making money from online surveys firms. By now someone must have shared that how easily one can make online income by just taking few online surveys, which pays you around Rs.900 a week. There is just one simple requirement to become panelists of […]


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“Today, I measure inflation in Ghana at 101.74%/year, ~1.9x the ‘official’ rate.,” Mr. Henke posted on Twitter.
He opined that the Ghana Statistical Service “just keeps on producing rubbish”.
According to the GSS, Ghana’s inflation rate recently dropped from 54.1% to 53.6%.
This is the first minimum decline against a 19-month upward trajectory.
The decline is related to the month of January 2023.
According to GSS, month-on-month inflation between December 2022 and January 2023 was 1.7%.
Also, food inflation was 59.7% in January.
Monthly food inflation is 2.8% while non-food inflation (0.563) is 47.9%.
Non-food inflation for January was 49.9%.
Month-on-month non-food inflation stood at 0.8%, while domestically produced goods inflation was pegged at 50.0%.
Inflation of imported goods was 62.5%.
At the regional level, the Eastern region recorded the highest year-on-year inflation of 66.2% while Greater Accra followed with an inflation of 65%.


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News states that
Some chemists are selling their patients prescription information to a global health information company which sells it on to pharmaceutical companies trying to boost their sales.
Doctor and consumer groups have expressed outrage about the practice they fear may impinge on patient privacy. After News Corp drew the Department of Health’s attention to the profit making venture it asked the Privacy Commissioner to investigate.
The Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim warned chemists against a similar prescription data for profit arrangement in 2013 that involved linking doctors names to the data. “I am concerned about whether pharmacies will be complying with their obligations under the Privacy Act should collection activities commence,” he told the Pharmacy Guild of Australia.
While the name the doctor scheme did not go ahead the Australian general manager of health information giant IMS, Andrew Sutton has confirmed his company is collecting patients prescription data. “We do have arrangements with pharmacists to get prescription information,” Mr Sutton told News Corp. “The purpose is to help us understand how patients and doctors are using medicine in the real world to help our clients, primarily pharmaceutical companies, to get market aligned outcomes,” he said.
Mr Sutton says the information is “all fully encrypted and the anonymous information is not linked to physicians or patients,” he told News Corp. Mr Sutton said he could not reveal how much chemists were making for selling the information to his company. “It’s in the hundreds of dollars at a pharmacy level,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Privacy Commissioner said he had not been informed about the latest arrangement with IMS. “We requested IMS Health to advise the Office of the Australian Information Commisisoner if it recommenced this program. We have not received any information from IMS Health about the recommencement of this program,” the spokesman said.The article states that the Australian Medical Association
fears the information may have geographic links to chemists which would allow pharmaceutical companies to target doctors in the same area who were prescribing a rival companies medicine. ...
Consumers Health Forum chief Adam Stanevicius expressed grave concerns about the sale of patient prescription data. “Without some kind of oversight by the Privacy Commissioner we are very concerned about this information changing hands and whether patient identities are protected,” he said. “We have seen nothing to give us any level of confidence to date,” he said.
Mr Stanevicius questioned whether the information was even the chemists to sell given that the government was paying not only for the prescriptions but subsidising the chemists who dispense the scripts, the doctors who write the scripts and the IT system that ensures chemists get paid.An AMA spokesperson is reported as commenting
it was “an amazing invasion of privacy purely for commercial reasons”
“It’s not for research or in the interests of patients and one has to question the ethics of the pharmacies providing this information”.
When doctors released any patient health information for a medical trials or to an insurer they had to get the patients consent and chemists should also have to tell patients they are selling their prescription information,


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Oppo F1 Plus, a smartphone that marketed as a selfie-expert, used local young celebrities as brand ambassadors. (Photo courtesy of Oppo)
Aggressive Chinese Vendors Dominate Indonesia's Smartphone Market
BY :TABITA DIELA
JULY 21, 2017
Jakarta. Popular Chinese brands are beginning to dominate Indonesia's lucrative smartphone market, according to a report from information technology research company International Data Corporation.
"The smartphone market in Indonesia as we know it has changed with the China-based vendors becoming more aggressive with their strategies," said Risky Febrian, an associate market analyst at IDC Indonesia, according to a Wednesday (19/07) press release.
"Their cash-rich initiatives have left local vendors struggling to compete in the market space with their limited resources."
The IDC Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, which monitors technology markets from more than 100 countries around the globe, found that smartphone shipments to Indonesia reached 7.3 million units in the first three months this year, a 13 percent increase compared to the corresponding period in 2016.
The research firm noted that China-based vendors took 31 percent of the market share out of the total 7.3 million smartphone units sold in the period, compared to 23 percent in the first quarter of 2016 and just 12 percent in the first quarter of 2015.
The IDC classified other vendors as "global," whose market shares have gradually declined due to the fast growth of Chinese competitors. These vendors took 47 percent of the market share in the first quarter, down 4 percent in the corresponding period in 2016.
Local vendors also suffered a continuous decline in market share, booking 17 percent of the market in the first quarter of 2017, down 3 percent from the same period a year earlier and 17 percent from the first quarter of 2015.
This year's top vendors include South Korean electronics giant Samsung, Chinese company Oppo Electronics, Taiwanese AsusTek Computer, Indonesian vendor Advan and China-based multinational tech company Lenovo.
The IDC said the Chinese vendors have been aggressively marketing their products in the country by utilizing billboard spaces, flyers and television commercials. Other strategies include featuring local celebrities to market their products, as well as a boost in hiring of sales personnel.
To remain relevant, local vendors have introduced competitively priced phones with similar specs to Chinese products, and have focused on marketing their products in rural areas of the country.
IDC Data shows that Chinese vendors typically price their products between $200-400 per unit, similar to local vendors that must compete in the low-end segment of the market due to a lack of brand equity.
Risky said "competition will further intensify" as multinationals look set to make a comeback in the Indonesian market, including Canada-based BlackBerry — operating through its local arm BB Merah Putih — Xiaomi and Nokia.
"While features and tech innovation are crucial to sustaining long term growth, some local vendors will continue to make efforts to localize their product and service offerings to address the specific needs and preferences of Indonesians, as we have seen with Advan's smartphones equipped with locally developed apps such as the Muslim Guide for Ramadhan," Risky said.


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Following Data Privacy Day, we’ve compiled the key observations and opinions of experts across the fintech industry to take the pulse of the sector in our latest Fintech Sentiment Series article.
Data privacy and protection, a global effort
Data transfer continues to be a talking point within the European Union. Alongside this, organizations are still enduring the implications of the Schrems II judgment and grappling with the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
Further afield, “there is a proliferation of new privacy laws and amendments to existing privacy laws to keep up with. These range from new laws (or amendments to existing laws) that have now come into force, laws or amendments that are expected to come into force this year, as well as discussions or proposals for future reforms.
“In particular, there are developments to be aware of in Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Canada, Argentina, Vietnam, Switzerland, several US states, and the UK. Almost half of these are G20 economies so we except such changes will be important given the inextricable link between information-driven trade ecosystems,” a Baker McKenzie report reads.
Data privacy and protection trends
The report outlines the status of each data policy that could make an impact on the financial services industry in 2023.
UK Data Protection Reform
Although the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, otherwise known as the DPDI Bill, was published in July 2022, it has not yet progressed through the legislative process. GDPR in the UK will not be replaced, but there will be a shift away from viewing regulation as a box-ticking exercise in 2023.
UK Addendum and International Data Transfer Agreement
Since 21 September 2022, new contracts that involve personal data transfer to areas not under UK GDPR, the International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses is now used. Existing contracts approved under the Data Protection Directive (Directive SCCs), will be valid under UK GDPR until 21 March 2024, provided operations and the contract remain unchanged and data transfer is secure.
ICO Guidance and Transfer Risk Assessment Tool
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) published new guidance on data transfers in November 2022, and provided a new transfer risk assessment (TRA) tool. Companies can also choose to follow the European Data Protection Board’s (EDPB) advice.
Future UK Adequacy Regulations
The UK Government will be issuing new post-Brexit adequacy regulations and will be conducting adequacy assessments with Australia, Colombia, the Dubai International Financial Centre, Singapore, the US, and South Korea. In the future, this group will include India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Kenya. In addition to this, the UK’s adequacy regulations will also cover credit information processed by controllers.
ICO25 and future regulatory approach
The ICO25 will aim to regulate and review the impact of predatory marketing calls, the use of algorithms within the benefits system, the use of AI software in recruitment for which neurodiverse or ethnic people weren’t considered and tested, and support of children’s privacy.
Colum Lyons, CEO and founder of ID-Pal, shares his view on UK policy and regulation. “Data Protection Day is an important reminder of the role we all play in data privacy and protection as a global cause. In 2020, many industries were forced to move their processes fully online. For example, in the UK, temporary Covid-adjusted guidance on how to conduct Right to Work checks was introduced for employers, and now the ability to perform checks digitally is permanent.
“The digitalisation of manual processes improves the user experience and offers enhanced security when processing and storing personal documents and data. Individuals can assess data is being handled in a compliant, secure way. Something that is impossible to confirm with a manual method.
“It’s crucial businesses are aware of their duty to protect all customer, and employee, personal information. Organisations can reduce risk and vulnerability to fraud using digital identity verification to securely verify identity and address documents. They should also question vendors on what their approach is to data protection and privacy. How do they ensure the highest standards are in place across their framework, so that your business is not put at risk? By integrating these digital solutions that also have data protection at their core, companies can overcome their vulnerabilities and develop trust with customers from day one.”
France and sanctions
In 2022, the CNIL (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés) in France imposed 22 sanctions totaling 100,927,900 EUR for various entities in various sectors for failure to respect the right of access, obtain valid consent, and define appropriate data retention periods. Among the largest sanctions were for lack of valid consent and mismanagement of cookies, which resulted in a fine of 60 million EUR. Another significant fine of 20 million EUR was imposed on a provider of facial recognition technology not established in France for collecting and using data without a legal basis.
The CNIL’s annual investigation plan in 2022 focused on commercial prospecting, cloud services, and remote working monitoring. Its strategic plan for 2022-2024 prioritized targeted regulatory actions on high privacy topics such as augmented cameras, cloud computing, and smartphone apps.
The CNIL’s Digital Innovation Lab has a research plan for 2022-2023 on the impact of data protection on the environment, new data economies, practices and perceptions of data subjects, and capturing data. In 2021, the CNIL’s priority was cybersecurity, inspecting 21 organizations’ websites and issuing formal notices for defects in data encryption and security management.
The CNIL has issued reminders and practical recommendations for individuals and companies on ransomware, encryption, and passwords. It may be working on guidelines for Transfer Impact Assessments but has only published a reminder on the use of new Standard Contractual Clauses in data transfer agreements.
Germany and five main topics
Germany is expected to see continued developments in the area of data protection and privacy in 2023. The following are the five main topics to be focused on:
International data transfers: There is a hot debate on the subject of international data transfers, particularly in light of the European Commission’s draft adequacy decision published in December 2022 and the US president’s Executive Order in October 2022 addressing points raised by the CJEU in the Schrems II decision. A German DPA has also pointed out unanswered questions and deficiencies with the Executive Order.
Appointment of data protection officers: The European Data Protection Board’s plan to focus on data protection officers will be a relevant topic in Germany since German local data protection law requires the appointment of a data protection officer in most cases, particularly for companies employing at least 20 persons dealing with automated processing of personal data.
Guidance from German data protection authorities: The German Data Protection Conference, consisting of all German DPAs, has updated its guidance and published new statements and guidance. For example, in February 2022, the Conference updated its guidance on the processing of personal data for direct marketing under the GDPR and in December 2022, it published updated guidance on the interpretation of the Telecommunications and Telemedia Data Protection Act.
Enforcement and data disputes: German DPAs have continued to impose fines, such as in July 2022 when the DPA of Lower Saxony imposed a fine of EUR 900,000 on a bank for insufficiently basing its profiling activities for advertising purposes on legitimate interests. In 2023, we can expect continued enforcement by DPAs in the form of fines and audits, as well as an increase in private actions and claims under the GDPR. This includes private actors who are collecting damages and legal fees and introducing privacy claims in proceedings between employers and employees, as well as an increase in claims by private associations.
Increase in claims by private associations: The risk of private enforcement is expected to increase once the Representative Actions Directive, which must be implemented into German law by June 2023, is applied. The Court of Justice has already ruled that the GDPR does not preclude national legislation allowing a consumer protection association to bring legal proceedings for infringements of laws protecting personal data.
Canadian Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA)
While there is no AI-specific legislation in Canada, AIDA “would require organisations that design, develop and use AI systems to identify, assess, manage, and mitigate risks and biases associated with high-impact AI systems.” With this regulation, there would be new criminal prohibitions and penalties for unlawfully obtained data being used for AI development, where careless deployment of AI systems poses serious harm, and where there is fraudulent intent to cause substantial financial loss through the deployment of the AI system.
According to a new survey from Interac published found that nearly eight in 10 Canadians (76%) are worried about protecting their online privacy, and seven in 10 (74%) want more control over their online information. Further to this, sign-in – the act of verifying your identity to access online services or activities – is what Interac views as a critical moment for organisations to build trust with their customers by giving them more control over their personal information.
53% believe organisations are responsible for protecting their personal information, and 69% would hold them accountable in the event of a data breach. Despite this, Canadians continue to sign in through services in which they report low levels of trust and confidence. For example, 58% say they use their social media accounts to log in to other online services, yet only 11% trust these accounts to store their personal information.
Colette Stewart, senior legal counsel and privacy lead at Interac, says that “when customers sign in to an online service, they are putting their trust in that provider to keep their data safe. As Canadians hold organizations accountable for the use and storage of data, entities of all sizes have an imperative to provide clear guidelines on how personal information will be used and to enable increased control for users when it comes to managing their privacy online.”
Hong Kong cybersecurity legislation
The Hong Kong Government aims to strengthen cybersecurity of critical information infrastructure (CII) by imposing network security obligations on operators of CII. Examples of CII include water, electricity, coal supply, communication networks, transport services and financial institutions.
India Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022
In November 2022, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India introduced a draft of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022 (DPDP Bill). This follows a similar regulation that was withdrawn after pushback from stakeholders.
Preekshit Gupta, vice president – APAC & MEA, Bureau.id believes that Data Privacy Day “is a reminder that data privacy is a fundamental right, and companies must take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of customers’ data. With the emergence and growing usage of new-age technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, organisations can use them to detect and prevent data breaches, identify fraudulent behavior and protect user privacy. Machine learning algorithms can process large volumes of data to identify potential threats and protect user data.”
On Indian policy, he adds that the “recent draft of the data protection laws released by the government also placed significant penalties for any company breaching the regulations. Data security is the cornerstone of online financial transactions, and the rise of cybercrime makes it a priority for companies across sectors, especially digital lending and e-commerce, to ensure that their customers’ personal information remains safe. The Reserve Bank of India has showcased concerns around the digital lending space and has also issued clarifications on digital lending, reiterating the need to protect borrowers’ data lenders.
“While traditional data protection laws such as the Information Technology Act and the Personal Data Protection Bill provide a basic framework for data privacy, it is also essential that companies also invest heavily in data security and data privacy infrastructure to safeguard their customers.”
Mexican Data Protection Regulator
In 2022, the INAI published recommendations “to exercise extreme caution when making purchases online. These recommendations focus on the precautions individuals can take to avoid becoming a victim of cybercrime when carrying out an online transaction.”
Peruvian Data Protection Authority
The PDPA has conducted important actions aimed at ensuring the protection of personal data, including the issuance of 173 resolutions aimed at safeguarding data subjects and supervising 317 public and private entities, most of them acting in the financial and telecommunications sectors.
Qatar 2021 Regulations
The Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) has issued new data protection rules known as the 2021 Regulations which came into effect on 21 May 2022. The new regulations will establish a new Data Protection Office led by a Data Protection Commissioner, introducing purpose specification, data minimisation, new rights and additional transparency for controllers.
DIFC Data Protection Law
On 8 March 2022, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Authority enacted the DIFC Laws Amendment Law, DIFC Law No. 2 of 2022, which includes amendments to clarify the process for individuals to seek judicial redress, increasing accountability for controllers and processors when handling requests for data access. This also grants more authority to the data regulator Commissioner of Data Protection and will introduce a $75,000 penalty.
Hamad Sayah Al Mazrouei, CEO of ADGM Registration Authority, posits that the “ADGM acknowledges the fundamental right of data privacy and protection and emphasises it not just through words but through mandates and policies for the local and global community-based in the international financial centre.
“As an authority, we take our responsibility seriously and are continuously addressing the emerging challenges from the rapid acceleration of the digital ecosystem that we are all part of. ADGM’s Registration Authority is the sponsor of ADGM’s overall data protection frameworks that is a part of ADGM’s legal frameworks since its establishment, a reflection of the importance we have placed on data protection and privacy since the beginning.”
Sweden Enforcement Action: Transparency
In 2022, the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection issued a decision where a fintech company would be fined approximately EUR 720,000 if it was unable to adequately provide information to its customers for one of its financial services.


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The Federal Drug Administration released its first-ever regulations for electronic cigarettes Thursday. The rules mean e-cigarettes will fall under the same regulations as traditional tobacco products.
Prior to Thursday, there were no federal rules regulating e-cigarettes. And the Federal Drug Administration says that made it too easy for them to fall into the hands of teenagers, whose use of the products increased more than 900 percent between 2011 and 2015.
“We know from the history of cigarette smoking the earlier that someone becomes addicted to nicotine the harder it is for them quit later in life,” says FDA Center for Tobacco Products director Mitch Zeller.
The Indiana Youth Institute is applauding the new rules.
“This move by the FDA will provide clarity on the exact ingredients included in e-cigarettes, as well as expressly prohibiting businesses from selling them to minors,” Tami Silverman, president and CEO of the Indiana Youth Institute, said in a statement. “It also will allow the FDA to expose the potential risks to anyone using these products, including teens.”
The regulations means those who make or sell e-cigarettes and e-liquids will be subject to the Tobacco Control Act of 2009. Among other rules, manufacturers will have to report the ingredients of their products and have them reviewed and authorized by the FDA before going on the market.
The rules will apply to all products on the market after Feb. 15, 2007, but manufacturers can continue to sell their products for up to two years while going through the approval process.
Attorney General Greg Zoeller, who pushed for more strict regulations at the state level says the regulations are a step in the right direction but should have been adopted earlier.
“While the rule may be a positive step by the FDA, the two-year delay in the process to reach a final rule and the bureaucratic delays built into the compliance requirements and the length of the review process before any FDA enforcement actions guarantees that nothing will happen in the near future,” Zoeller said in a statement. “My overall complaint is that the FDA has shown more concern for the business of tobacco than the public health risks to youth over four to five years.”
American Vaping Association president Greg Conley says that will force many vape shops to go out of business.
“The actual final rule makes clear that just to get one single product approved is going to cost well over a million dollars, likely several million dollars,” he says. “So the only companies that are going to still be in business two years from now are going to be large cigarette companies that make e-cigarettes.”
The FDA says the highest estimated costs will actually be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The new rules also apply to premium cigars and hookah.


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Bitcoin, the most famous crypto currency, posted a drop of 2%, after reaching a new all-time high above $50,000 the day before. The reason for this decline? US inflation report higher than expected. The latter weighed on expectations of interest rate cuts from the FED. How does Bitcoin (BTC) react to inflation? What is the outlook for crypto as well as traditional markets? Decryption.
The report on American inflation, a hard blow for Bitcoin
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has just released the US inflation report for the month of January. According to this report, the CPI increased by 0.3% month-on-month and 3.1% year-on-year. This is well above the expectations of analysts, who expected 0.2% and 2.9% respectively. It’s about highest annual inflation rate since 2022.
This higher-than-expected inflation had a negative effect on Bitcoin, which fell below $49,000. The flagship crypto nevertheless crossed the $50,000 mark the day before. Indeed, this inflation reduces the chances that the FED will lower its interest rates in the coming months. Which would have been favorable to Bitcoin. According to the CME FedWatch tool, the likelihood of a rate cut in May went from 52% to 34%.
What prospects for Bitcoin?
Despite this declineBitcoin remains on a long-term upward trend. This is driven by growing demand from institutional and retail investors.
Bitcoin also enjoys the support of influential figures, such as Elon Musk. The Tesla boss reportedly invested $1.5 billion in crypto. Bitcoin could therefore rebound quickly and aim for new heights.
In short, Bitcoin experienced a 2% decline after the publication of a higher than expected inflation figure in the United States. However, the crypto remains on a long-term uptrend thanks to its scarcity and popularity. To be continued…
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“Despite the clever name, this anti-menu labeling bill is neither common sense nor would it disclose additional nutrition information,” said Margo G. Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has led the charge for restaurant nutrition labeling. “It would result in consumer confusion and prevent disclosure of straightforward, consistent calorie information at many food service establishments.”
Supporters positioned the bill as providing modest flexibility to industry, when in fact it would withhold nutrition information from consumers, hampering their ability to make informed choices, according to CSPI.
The bill, H.R. 2017, is opposed by more than 100 nutrition and health organizations and researchers. Many food establishments are already labeling calories as a result of voluntary action and state and local laws.
“Menu labeling allows people to make informed food choices for a big and obesity-promoting part of their diets. Dozens of studies link restaurant meals to higher calorie intakes and obesity,” said Wootan. A recent Harvard study found that restaurant menu calorie labeling could prevent up to 41,000 cases of childhood obesity and could save more than $4.6 billion in healthcare costs over ten years.
The national menu labeling law passed as part of the Affordable Care Act in March 2010, with broad support from public health groups and the restaurant industry. Implementation has been delayed for nearly six years, says CSPI, due to lobbying by the Domino’s Pizza-led “American Pizza Community,” the supermarket trade group Food Marketing Institute, and convenience stores. A rider in the omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal year 2016 delays menu-labeling implementation until one year from the issuance of final guidance on menu labeling by the Food and Drug Administration.
“I have faith that the Senate will maintain the integrity of national menu labeling, which was built on an agreement between public health groups and the restaurant industry,” said Wootan. “Senators should listen to the eight out ten Americans who want menu labeling over the whining of Domino’s Pizza.”


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Cameras that see both visible light and infrared could enhance the next generation of 3D and virtual reality cameras, as well as expand the capabilities of driverless cars that rely on camera systems. This week, Imec announced a new image sensor that uses both the traditional color filter as well as a near-infrared filter, allowing the sensor to capture both traditional photographs as well as light that is invisible to the human eye.
Imec, a nanoelectronics research company, says the new RGB-NIR multispectral sensor makes it possible to use both data from the RGB spectrum as well as near infrared, an extra layer of detail that could be essential for the next generation of 3D and virtual reality. The sensor uses the standard RGB color filter as well as an NIR-cut filter.
The second type of infrared filter, called an NIR narrow band-pass filter, would allow camera manufacturers to tune that NIR layer to capture only a certain wavelength, allowing the sensor to be adapted for different uses. Imec says the unique sensor filters allows a single sensor to overlay NIR light with the traditional image. That extra NIR data could give images depth information.
For example, the sensor could be adjusted to capture both the normal footage as well as the light from a laser. By reading how far that laser light, invisible to the human eye, traveled, the sensor could add more depth to virtual reality or 3D videos, or give details on the distance to a car’s camera system or a security camera.
“An affordable, high-resolution and high-speed solution for integrating true RGB color combined with narrow-band NIR detection was essential to develop for future applications that need to detect or track near infrared signals that should not be visible to human eyes,” said Andy Lambrechts, program manager for Imec’s integrated imaging activities, said in a statement. “This capability to integrate a color view with one or several near-infrared narrow bands will be a key enabler for next-generation 3D, virtual reality and augmented reality imaging platforms, as well as in machine vision, medical, automotive and security surveillance applications.”
The new sensors haven’t yet been integrated into an actual product — the company will be demonstrating the ability of the prototype next week.


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Vokacom Limited, Now Afrifanom Limited
Vokacom Limited, Ghana’s premier IT company has disclosed its new name, Afrifanom Limited.
The name change according to the company is designed to reflect the transformation and growth of the firm whilst staying true to its African Heritage.
“This rebranding effort is a clear reflection of our identity, commonality, and unstoppable drive to dominate Africa,” the company emphasized in a statement.
“The values of the company still remain Accountability, Innovation, Can-do, and Excellence,” the company added.
Along with this name change, Afrifanom has developed a new company logo.
A new website will be rolled out in January 2021, according to the company.
For marketing and branding purposes, Afrifanom will commence referring to itself under the new corporate name.
“More importantly, Afrifanom would like to assure all its stakeholders that the change of name will not affect the nature, staff, and board of the company, all documents and business interests bearing the former name still hold valid,” the company added in the statement.


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HCMC – The Danang government on July 29 issued a decision suspending the operations of online and takeaway restaurants, eateries and cafes from 1.00 p.m. today, July 30, due to the spike in local Covid-19 infections.
The move is aimed at intensifying social distancing measures to effectively prevent the coronavirus, which causes the Covid-19 disease, VnExpress news site reported.
Few days ago, when the city issued an order on social distancing, food stores, eateries, restaurants and cafes were allowed to sell their products online or offer takeaway services. However, some residents flouted the social distancing rule and were still gathering at some stores. As such, the municipal government imposed this suspension.
The city also asked workers at construction sites to regularly wash their hands, wear face masks and maintain a safe physical distance of at least two meters, while districts and wards were tasked with strictly monitoring and checking the health of residents at residential areas and boarding houses.


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This could mean getting big e-commerce players to register for GST here if they sell to Singapore consumers, or getting customers to pay tax on goods and services they buy online.
These comments come after Senior Minister of State for Law and Finance Indranee Rajah said in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday that e-commerce would likely come under the local tax regime soon.
“You can imagine, 20 years from now, the way people purchase is very different and by that time online platforms will be mainstays, so if that’s not part of the tax regime, there’s going to be a lot of holes there,” she said.
Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat said in the Budget earlier this year too that the Government was studying ways to tax e-commerce.
Currently, online purchases of goods and services under $400 are not taxed in Singapore.
The $400 GST exemption threshold could be reviewed for the purposes of capturing online shopping transactions,” said KPMG Singapore’s head of tax, Mr Chiu Wu Hong.
“Digital services (for example, music downloads, e-books) rendered by foreign companies could be brought into the GST net by using a ‘reverse charge’ mechanism, or by way of requiring them to register for GST if they were to provide to end consumers in Singapore.”


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Politico broke the news earlier this week that Walmart hired lobbyists to fight a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have cost the company business. Walmart has refused to sign the binding Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, in favor of a voluntary alliance it formed with Gap and other retailers. From Politico:
Retail giant Wal-Mart hired Porter Gordon Silver Communications to work on successfully stripping a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act in December, according to public disclosures released Tuesday. Several members of Congress had championed a worker-safety provision in the annual defense spending bill that would have given procurement priority to companies that signed onto a legally binding Bangladesh workers’ safety agreement called the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety. Retailers like Wal-Mart and Gap have declined to sign on, and Wal-Mart unveiled its own nonbinding safety plan in May of last year for workers at its Bangladeshi factories. In practice, the provision would have cost Wal-Mart and other retailers not part of the accord a good deal of money — as their products would have suffered at retail stores on military bases as a result of procurement priority given to Accord members.
The Huffington Post describes the intentions behind the NDAA’s ethical sourcing provision:
In the eyes of its crafters, the amendment had a simple underlying message: Markets sanctioned and supported by the U.S. government should be shut off from sweatshop labor…
If passed, the amendment on military exchanges would have been an embarrassment to the alliance, since Congress would have essentially endorsed the accord as a stronger approach to improving safety in Bangladesh. It also would have pressured companies whose clothes are sold in the exchanges to consider joining the accord or face losing business. Alliance leaders asked senators to either insert language putting them on equal footing with the accord or to strip out the accord altogether.
Between December 2012 and May 2013, nearly 1,200 Bangladeshi garment workers were killed in preventable factory fires and building collapses while producing goods mostly for U.S. and European markets. Walmart has responded to the tragedies by refusing to sign the broadly supported Bangladesh Safety Accord and instead proposed its own alternative. In contrast with the accord, Walmart’s plan is a voluntary arrangement without any meaningful enforcement mechanisms, developed without consultation with workers.
In the case of the NDAA, Walmart’s lobbyists were able to help the company again avoid being held accountable for increased safety in the Bangladeshi factories producing goods for the company.


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If Vonage handles this right, their customer service will improve
Vonage announced a move this morning that if they handle it right- and that's one big honkin' IF- their customer service could improve several fold.I'm talking about a new alliance with open-source relational database management system vendor EnterpriseDB.
I'm talking about a new alliance with open-source relational database management system vendor EnterpriseDB. Vonage has already moved part of its trouble-ticket system for customer support from mySQL to EnterpriseDB Advanced Server.
Smith says that EnterpriseDB's reasonable price levels and scalability are why Vonage is seriously looking to move its billing database to EnterpriseDB. This database stores billions (tempted to type "billions and billions"-a la Carl Sagan) of call data records that are accessed frequently by Vonage support.
"There are lots of small records," he said. "We're not too worried about the table size; we just want to be comfortable that we can hammer it [EnterpriseDB] with a load."
So let's see if Vonage and EnterpriseDB are up to the task.


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Energy prices continued to surge in the third quarter of 2021 while most non-energy prices plateaued following steep increases earlier in the year. After reaching all-time highs, natural gas and coal prices are expected to decline in 2022 as demand growth slows and supply constraints ease.
Energy prices continued to soar in October, jumping 16,1 %. Prices stand 105,6% higher than one year earlier and have risen in 10 of the last 12 months.
Symbio Robotics, the provider of a platform that enables AI-powered automation solutions, launched SymbioDCS 2.0, which the company describes as “a major update” to the company’s flagship middleware and python programming framework.
With a streamlined automation solution development and deployment process, the updated platform contains a series of breakthrough features to support accelerated electric vehicle timelines and emissions-reduction goals by automakers through real-time robot-controlled apps such as insertion, fastening and moving lines.
Ford Motor Company and Newlab, a community of experts and innovators applying transformative technology to solve the world’s biggest challenges, announced the five startups that will participate in the inaugural cohort of the Mobility Studio – a new program focused on supporting the advancement of technologies, product collaborations and business models that drive a cleaner transportation future.
In September 2021, demand for new passenger cars in the EU shrank by 23.1% to 718,598 units, marking the lowest number of registrations for a month of September since 1995.
Creation of business units, deployment of a global logistics strategy, acquisitions, recruitments ...
These are words that we read every day in the emails of employees of the ICAPE Group company.
The French company is shifting overdrive to support a significant increase in its business activities
in the electronics industry. In a particularly complex economic context, ICAPE Group is ending the
exceptional year 2021 and keeps building from there for its customers all around the world.
DACIA SPRING, HYUNDAI BAYON, OPEL MOKKA, RENAULT ARKANA, SKODA FABIA and TOYOTA YARIS CROSS are the finalists for the ‘AUTOBEST 2022’ award. These cars will compete for the prize of ‘Best Buy Car of Europe in 2022‘. The jury of 32 members from 32 countries, will make their final assessments and cast their votes in the upcoming weeks, with the winner of the 21st Edition of AUTOBEST being announced in mid-December.


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Pure Leaf Iced Tea, a product from the Pepsi Lipton Tea partnership, earlier this week announced that it would be continuing its partnership with television personality Gail Simmons to support the brand's "Share the Love of Leaves" program.
Nestea on Tuesday announced that it is reviving the "Nestea Plunge" advertising campaign. The overhaul is designed to promote the brand's new recipe, which contains more flavor with fewer calories, according to the brand.
Pilgrim's Pride Corp., the world's second-largest chicken producer, as well as one of the world's biggest protein companies, is in talks to acquire Hillshire Brands for $6.4 billion, according to a report from Reuters.
Boulder Canyon Foods, a snack food manufacturer, on Tuesday introduced Ancient Grains, a whole-grain snack chip that combines grains and seeds to create a healthy snacking experience, the company said.
Peeps & Co. announced the infusion of gourmet fudge into its products, which include Peeps, Mike and Ike, and Goldenberg's Peanut Chews. The company's retail outlet, located in Bethlehem, Pa., will feature the new fudge creations, as well as an assortment of candy, apparel and merchandise.
In an effort to highlight its commitment to consumer preferences and tastes, Hershey is debuting a range of innovative confections this week at the National Confectioners Association's Sweets & Snacks Expo in Chicago.
Nutella, a brand from Ferrero U.S.A., on Monday celebrated its 50th anniversary by teaming up with Dominique Ansel, chef and owner of Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York City and the originator of the Cronut.
Jelly Belly Candy Co. is giving consumers a mix of whimsical fantasy and iconic sci-fi with its latest additions, which includes two of Hollywood's biggest blockbuster films — "Star Wars" and "Frozen."


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Small business owners see big things in their future
Ian Kelley’s plans for a simple life centering on one small donut shop quickly became complicated.
After opening Sugar Shack Donuts in Richmond, Virginia, in 2013, he suddenly pulled in four times his projected revenue when the shop gained a following among foodies and landed on “best donut shop” lists.
“I thought it was a one and done thing, then things got crazy,’’ said 32-year-old Kelley, who’s since expanded to 10 stores and is eyeing franchising by midsummer.
Kelley’s success may be unique among small business owners, but despite some headwinds, they’re optimistic about their prospects. According to the 2017 Allstate/USA TODAY Small Business Barometer, America’s small business are in solid shape, with optimism surging well above last year’s level.
The Barometer combines a survey of nearly 2,800 small business owners with federal data to create a comprehensive profile of the small business environment across the nation and in 25 of its largest cities. Optimism is particularly high in nine of those cities — Cleveland, Houston, Miami, Nashville, Orlando, Portland, St. Louis, Tampa and Washington, D.C. — and among blacks, Hispanics, owners younger than 50 and military veterans.
“With our network of agencies operating as small businesses across the country, we are constantly pursuing a deeper understanding of Main Street,’’ said John O’Donnell, Allstate’s senior vice president of agency operations. “Small business owners value supporting their communities and are critical to the success of local economies. Their optimism is reassuring.”
O’Donnell said small business owners are gaining renewed optimism from an array of increasingly positive economic guideposts. The nation’s unemployment rate is at post-recession lows. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index is at its highest level since December 2000. And Wall Street’s second-longest bull market celebrated its eighth anniversary in March, bolstering a wealth effect among consumers that business analysts say is likely permeating Middle America.
“There’s a lot of pent-up enthusiasm among small business owners,’’ said Jim Blasingame, host of “The Small Business Advocate,” asyndicated talk radio show.
Indianapolis-based Allstate agent Ranj Puthran says his enthusiasm extends not just to his own business prospects, but also to the ways he and other small business owners can make a difference close to home.
“We try to make a local impact by getting involved in the community,’’ said Puthran, who last year oversaw Allstate community grants that supported literacy and food programs in his county. Like many small business owners, Puthran says being able to support his community is a key source of satisfaction.
But small businesses are not without challenges. One stress owners face today is the rising cost of goods. The Small Business Barometer’s commodities score, which measures how easily owners can obtain the goods and resources they need to run their businesses, plunged to 25 out of 100 points this year, compared to 62 in the 2016 release. And just over half (51 percent) of owners surveyed in 2017 said the costs of materials and equipment they need are higher this year than last.
Even with costs taking a bite out of their budgets — or perhaps because of it — many business owners are optimistic about the prospect of lower corporate taxes and fewer business regulations. Among those surveyed for the Small Business Barometer, almost 55 percent consider the regulatory environment to be reasonable, up from 40 percent in 2015, and 18 percent think the regulatory environment has improved, up from just eight percent.
“Business owners sense a change in sentiment in Washington that could boost expansion and growth while lowering their costs,’’ said Jack Mozloom, spokesman for the National Federation of Independent Business, the U.S.’s largest small business trade association.
Economic headwinds and politics aside, the Small Business Barometer found owners overwhelmingly positive about their work. More than 90 percent say the benefits of owning a small business outweigh the stresses that come with long hours — whether their businesses are startups or community fixtures.
“Time seems to always be an issue,” said Joni Morgan, 33, the sole proprietor of Indianapolis-based Fact+Fiction Toys, which makes handcrafted organic wooden toys. “I will forever be figuring out the balance between juggling being a wife and mom and a small business owner.’’
Barbecue aficionado Lea Richards traded an intense job as a Wall Street financial analyst for an even more grueling schedule when she launched her Dayton, Ohio, mail-order barbecue business, Pig of the Month, in 2009. She had many 18-hour days and six-day weeks in the beginning.
“I had no idea what I was doing, making a lot of mistakes and losing a lot of money,’’ said Richards, 29. “Some days, it was hard to motivate myself.”
Through trial and error, family help and pre-holiday media publicity of her website, business began to take off in November 2011.
“Almost 5,000 orders came in one day,” she said. “It was just insane.”
Within a year, sales hit $750,000, and they are expected to reach about $3 million this year. Richards now employs about a dozen people to handle operations and works a relatively saner schedule.
“I couldn’t imagine working for someone else,’’ she said. “I was clearly meant to do this.”
Innovating is key
Undoubtedly, small business owners who’ve survived business cycles and their own missteps know how to roll with the punches.
“I do whatever it takes to change or tweak things when the going gets tough,’’ said Veronica Hood, owner of Southfield, Michigan, clothing and accessories store Roloni’s Boutique.
Hood, a 56-year-old former pharmacy technician, began her self-guided retail career after friends told her she could make money selling the costume jewelry she was making as a hobby.
While the Small Business Barometer survey found that at least 56 percent of small business owners under 50 tried new business practices last year vs. at least 34 percent of those 50 and older, Hood continues to tinker with her 21-year-old store. In addition to expanding into apparel, home closet reorganizing and customer parties, she recently redesigned the store and plans to sponsor a senior women’s pageant in September.
“I’m pretty clever, and that’s what helps me deal with economic ups and downs,’’ she said.
Service to entrepreneurship
Veterans are also making the most of the personal traits and collaborative experience gained in the military to make their mark as entrepreneurs, said O’Donnell, a former Marine Corps helicopter pilot.
“It’s gratifying to see this particular group of entrepreneurs succeed as small business owners across the nation and make invaluable contributions to their communities,” he said.
The Small Business Barometer survey found businesses owned by or that employ veterans tend to perform better on a number of metrics, both in their past performance and optimism for the future. Among veterans, 70 percent report their businesses are doing well compared to 64 percent of other small business owners.
Leah Olszewski, a Major in the Army National Guard, is hoping to tap an underserved and potentially lucrative market — women who work for law enforcement and private defense contractors. She’s CEO and co-founder of startup FEMTAC, in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, which designs form-fitting clothing and tactical gear for women.
Standard work clothing for law enforcement and industrial jobs is not designed with women’s physiques in mind.
“A lot of women complain about the fit of pants and other apparel that can make them look unprofessional,’’ said Olszewski, 42. “We have designs that aren’t just comfortable, but are something women actually want to wear.”
Olszewski aims to launch some product by mid-year, displaying the optimism that is so characteristic of America’s small business owners, whether they’ve been in the military or not.
“There’s a potential market not just for military and law enforcement apparel, but also apparel for sports and for fields like the oil and gas industries,” she said of her future plans. “The market could be huge.”
View the Allstate/USA TODAY Small Business Barometer , a comprehensive profile of the small business environment across the nation and in 25 of its largest cities. It combines a survey of nearly 2,800 small business owners with federal data to create eight key indicators and an overall measure.


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Gadget Accessory and Consumer Electronics brand U&I has launched “GAMBLE” its latest wireless Bluetooth earphones in India. It was unveiled at an event in Kolkata where actress Zareen Khan graced her presence.
The U&I Gamble earphones uses Bluetooth V5.0 to easily connect with smart devices. It has has operating range of 10 meters and comes with a built-in microphone for taking calls or access to Google Assistant & Siri.
It comes with multi-function volume / track control button and delivers rich bass with HD stereo surround sound. It has passive noise cancellation for optimum audio experience.
The U&I Gamble features in 500mAh battery which fully charges up in 4 – 5 hours. Company is claiming it to last 50 hours of play time or 60 hours of talking.
The U&I Gamble price is Rs. 2999 and comes in Black color. It comes with one year warranty and will be available at leading retail stores and e-commerce platforms.
Paresh Vij, Founder and Director, U&I said –
We at U&I are committed to bringing in lifestyle products with world-class features and styles that are appealing to our fast moving generation while remaining accessible to people at large. With the launch of Gamble earphones, we are looking forward to capturing and expanding the Indian audio market. We plan to launch newer models with futuristic design and technology in the near future which would be added to our existing line-up


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Small Business Cybersecurity leader to offer fully integrated cyber liability insurance coverage with its next generation A.I. Software and Security Operations Center
Transmosis, a nationally recognized leader in small business cybersecurity protection, has announced a new integrated product offering in partnership with Cysurance, a next-generation cyber insurance solutions provider. The partnership introduces a fully integrated cyber liability insurance solution along with the CyberOPS A.I. software and 24/7 live virtual Security Operations Center (vSOC). This enterprise level solution is expected to streamline and enhance small businesses’ ability to protect against cyber attack and reduce their overall cyber liability and financial risk.
CyberOPS now provides small businesses with a one stop shop for advanced cyber protection and bundled cyber liability insurance. The fully integrated solution means that small businesses can be approved for both in minutes and insurance claims are settled faster and more completely through the use of CyberOPS technology. The product requires no insurance brokers, complicated research, or yearly contracts and is bundled into a monthly subscription model.
CyberOPS, which debuted earlier this year to expert acclaim, allows the nation’s small businesses and ‘micro’ businesses (those with fewer than 100 employees) to access a military-grade, enterprise level cybersecurity platform utilizing a 24/7 live vSOC with dedicated security analysts protecting. Modeled after sophisticated protection systems used by Fortune 1000 companies, CyberOPS acts as a fully outsourced cyber security team for small businesses, an option that has been largely unavailable to date with most solutions geared to larger enterprises and big budgets.
Surveys show that many small business owners are overconfident and under prepared when it comes to cybersecurity, falsely believing that consumer solutions like Antivirus and Firewalls are sufficient protection. Antivirus software is typically unable to detect these modern threats, and in some cases it is being used to deploy the ransomware that encrypts the data. (*Forbes)
In the event of a breach, CyberOPS automatically sends critical forensic data to Cysurance’s tech-enabled claims platform to support quicker, fuller reimbursements where a smart contract records it in a blockchain for full transparency and expedited claim settlements. Additionally, unlike many existing cyber liability insurance policies, CyberOPS has negotiated lower insurance coverage amounts and rates that are more appropriate for small businesses and integrated it all into a simple monthly subscription.
“Small businesses are the #1 target today for cyber attack. We decided to further bulletproof our CyberOPS platform with cyber liability insurance, making it easy for business owners to acquire enterprise level protection and coverage for the unexpected in a very affordable way,” said Chase Norlin, CEO of Transmosis.
Source: Company Press Release


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30 Jun California Passes Toughest Privacy Law in the US
Gov. Jerry Brown signed last Thursday the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 which is said to be the strictest privacy law in the US which will give consumers sweeping control over their data.
The law, introduced by assembly member Ed Chau and state Sen. Robert Hertzberg, gives users the right to know what information is being collecting from them, why it is being collected and who it is being shared to. The act also empowers consumers to bar tech companies from selling their data, while children under 16 have to opt in before the companies are allowed to collect their information at all.
However, it is said that the law still have some loopholes which allow tech companies to “share” the user’s data even if the user bars them from selling it.
Source: CNN Money