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Shopping channel audiences all over the world have fallen in love with products made by Crafter’s Companion, a growing business based in a little village in County Durham. John Hill meets founder Sara Davies, and finds out why is she is being lauded as one of the region's best young entrepreneurs.
NOT long after County Durham native Sara Davies turned up on shopping TV in Florida, the phone lines started begging for attention. Of course, that didn’t mean the millions at the other end of the line necessarily had a clue what she was saying.
The founder and figurehead of Crafter’s Companion had taken her products over to the USA and swept away the buyers at the Home Shopping Network with her enthusiastic pitch. They insisted Davies showcase her products to the nation herself, but could an American audience cope with a North East accent?
She says: “Someone advised me to take elocution lessons. I told the elocution person I wanted to speak more slowly but didn’t want to change my accent. I only went to one lesson and never went back.
“I started off with the best intentions of speaking slowly, but imagine you’re in a studio with seven robotic cameras and TVs around the sides, and you’ve got to process all the information while you’re making your pitch in 10 minutes.
“As the phone lines went into meltdown and the dollar signs started going up, I got more excited and just got faster and faster.
“I looked at one of the forums afterwards and someone had asked who that new English person they’d brought in was. They said they couldn’t understand a word I’d said, but that I’d sounded so excited about the product, they’d bought one anyway.”
Davies’ enthusiasm has made her a familiar face on shopping channels across the world.
She says she clocks up 150 live hours a year on Florida-based HSN, the UK’s Ideal World and Create & Craft, Home Shopping Europe in Germany and The Shopping Channel in Canada.
Her globe-trotting appearances have introduced viewers to a range of products from her Coundon-based company, which was born in the bedroom of a student flat she shared at the University of York Management School.
She says: “I have an over-the-top passion because I’ve developed a lot of these products myself, and I really believe people will like them.“
The success of Crafter’s Companion has seen Davies win a string of awards, most recently two national accolades – the UK Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year award at the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur Awards last year, followed by the Santander Small to Medium Sized Business of the Year award at the National Business Awards.
The company boasts an office in Orlando in Florida, and sells a range of more than 300 products both online and to more than 400 shops across the UK.
Crafter’s Companion is a big innovator in a quiet but huge crafts market that was worth $28bn in the US alone last year.
Davies says: “For the last 10 years, crafting has been the second biggest luxury-spend market in the UK. As the recession hit, we found that people were cutting back on new kitchens and cars but not the £20 they spent on their hobby.
“More than ever now, mothers and daughters are crafting together, younger people are getting involved and the next generation is coming through. There’s even been research which indicates that crafting is beneficial to your health in terms of dexterity and stress relief.”
Crafter’s Companion spearheaded the rise of producing CDs which contain data which customers’ computers can turn into templates for crafts projects. The firm has also handled licensed products for characters such as Beatrix Potter’s childhood favourites.
But you might have to slow down as you pass through Coundon to spot Davies’ base of operations, tucked away in a red-trimmed brick building just above her mother’s longstanding wallpaper and paint store.
Davies grew up as the daughter of two entrepreneurial parents. Her father, who ran firms including a logistics business, retired five years ago to help Davies as her start-up gathered pace.
She says: “I grew up helping my dad with his business and helping my mum at weekends. It wouldn’t be unheard of for a painter and decorator to knock on our door in the morning as he had a job at late notice and needed some paint mixing, and we’d open up the shop especially for him. They brought me up with the mentality that if you’re going to work hard you might as well do it for yourself.
“If you’d have asked me at 19 what I wanted to do, I would have said I was going to run my own business, but I wouldn’t have known what that business would be.”
With that in mind, she attended the management school of the University of York, eventually graduating with first class honours.
She says: “I was very much the underdog. It was an elite course that only took about 30 people a year, and many had private school educations and had just been rejected by Oxbridge.
“By the end of the first year I was one of the highest achieving students on the course and by the end of the fourth I was one of the highest in the whole school.
“I enjoyed what I was learning so much as it felt like common sense because I’d been brought up around business. I’m also a bit of a geeky swot who spent a lot of time revising.”


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A boost in the bedroom and your portfolio from this medicine firm
The difference between 0.2 and 0.3 per cent may not seem terribly significant – and in most cases, it is not.
But news that British economic growth fell 0.3 per cent in the last three months of 2011, compared to earlier estimates of a 0.2 per cent slide, unnerved markets on Wednesday.
Economists had not been expecting the downward revision, which resurrected fears that Britain may face months of little or no growth in 2012. Adding to concerns, disposable incomes fell at their fastest pace since 1977, sliding 1.7 per cent last year, compared to 2010.
Brokers were already unnerved by uninspiring consumer confidence data from America, a reawakening of worries about recovery in the Eurozone and huge losses at Lloyd’s of London. Share prices, which had been trading higher earlier in the week, slipped back and the mood was sombre.
Traded on: Aim
Contact: 020 3077 5400 or plethorasolutions.co.uk
Some companies are more defensive than others, however. Plethora, for example, is focused on urology and sexual health, specifically conditions such as acute cystitis, prostrate gland problems and premature ejaculation.
The company was founded in 2005 by Dr Mike Wyllie, who helped develop and launch Viagra when he was in a senior position at the US drugs giant Pfizer. Wyllie realised that, while Viagra helps men with erectile dysfunction, it does not treat premature ejaculation, a condition which has always been considered highly embarrassing and virtually unmentionable in polite society.
Yet, according to the International Society for SexualMedicine, a body of doctors specialising in this area, around 26 per cent of men suffer from premature ejaculation (PE), to such an extent that it seriously harms their relationships, their self-esteem and their partners' confidence and well-being.
Products do exist to treat the condition but most have not been through clinical trials so they have not been rigorously tested and often have unpleasant side-effects, including numbing of the genital area, nausea or even diarrhoea. Some products affect a man’s partner too. Others have to be applied hours in advance, cannot be used with alcohol or are rather expensive, costing between £10 and £15 a shot.
Plethora’s product is different. A spray treatment, it was created by Dr Wyllie and has worked successfully in extensive clinical trials. Many biotech businesses try to bring new drugs to market but fail at Phases I, II or III (increasingly demanding clinical studies). Plethora’s PE formulation, known as PSD502, has passed all these studies and earlier this month, received a warm initial endorsement from European regulators. The company now has to submit a formal dossier to these watchdogs but there is a more than 90 per cent chance that they will approve the new drug and that it will be on the market by 2014.
Reaching this stage is quite an achievement. PE affects more than 100 million men in Britain, France, Spain, Italy and Germany alone and if even a fraction of them use PSD502 once it comes onto the market, the revenue implications are substantial.
The drug is likely to be sold for between £6 and £9 at first, with the price falling over time as volumes increase. Brokers estimate it will generate tens of millions of pounds a year initially but revenues are expected to rise rapidly as news of the drug spreads and men and their partners become less self-conscious about buying it.
Plethora's chief executive is Ronald Openshaw, who spent many years as an investment banker advising pharmaceutical companies, including highly-successful drugs group Shire, now worth £12 billion on the stock market. Openshaw has also successfully developed smaller firms and is determined tobuild Plethora into a £300 to £500 million company over the next few years.
While this may seem ambitious to the point of hubris, Plethora has several supporters in the broking community. Even more encouragingly, renowned investor Jim Mellon has backed the business, acquiring stock and taking a seat on the board in January of this year.
Gaining regulatory approval for a drug is a giant step but it then needs to be marketed and sold to doctors and patients. This requires time, money and a decent sales force. Plethora has sales people in Britain but not many elsewhere so Openshaw is in talks with larger drugs firms to share the cost of sales and marketing in return for a cut of the proceeds.
Common practice among small firms, this could deliver a chunky upfront payment in the next year to 18 months and help establish Plethora’s credentials as a serious company with a treatment for a serious condition. The group is also making money from its urology business, whose products are already on sale and making good progress.
Midas verdict: Plethora’s shares are trading at 5p and the company is valued at just £10 million on the stock market. At this price, the group is seriously undervalued. Not only does PSD502 have real potential but the urology side of the business is already generating sales. This stock is not for the ultra-cautious investor but for the adventurous partner, Plethora looks like a bargain.
Update: Inland Homes
Traded on: Aim
Contact: inlandplc.com or 01494 762 450
Inland Homes buys and develops brownfield sites. Sometimes it builds homes on the land and sometimes it sells the sites on to other housebuilders. In each case, Inland is responsible for taking land that has been used in the past, removing contaminants and doing everything else necessary to gain new planning permission from local authorities.
The company focuses on the South East of England and has a substantial land bank, equivalent to 2000 homes.
Virtually debt-free, it is run by a highly experienced team, led by Stephen Wicks, who founded mini-house-builder Country & Metropolitan, floated it on the Stock Exchange for £6.5 million in 1999 and sold it six years later for more than £70 million. Wicks is hoping to repeat the pattern at Inland Homes, expanding the land bank to around 5000 plots and selling to a nationwide operator.
Progress has been slow over the past couple of years, as bank finance has been virtually unobtainable and sentiment towards the house-building sector has been negative. Now the mood is changing.
Earlier this week, Inland revealed an increase in half-year profits from £900,000 to £1.1 million for the six months to 31 December and encouraging news on its sites, particularly West Drayton Village, formerly an unsightly Ministry ofDefence land bank, now populated with homes, trees and gardens.
Midas verdict: Midas Extra recommended Inland in April 2010 when the shares were 20p. Fast forward to today and they are still 20p. This is disappointing but investors should not sell out now. The stock should gain ground as property markets improve and Inland’s South East bias gives it a further edge. Hold.
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domain: news


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Date: Monday, March 20, 2023
Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger once famously said, “Every time you hear ‘EBITDA,’ just substitute the phrase ‘bullshit earnings.’”
Public shipping companies in different segments highlight different earnings metrics. Tanker and dry bulk owners focus on adjusted net income. Listed container shipping lines often highlight adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
EBITDA has been criticized for decades — Munger’s quote is from Berkshire Hathaway’s 2003 annual meeting — but it has become an even more problematic metric for container shipping lines due to accounting and industry-specific changes over the past four years.
IFRS 16 followed by COVID boom
The International Financial Reporting Standards implemented Rule 16 (IFRS 16) on lease accounting in January 2019.
Prior to IFRS 16, the amount carriers paid to charter ships was accounted for under operating costs. Since IFRS 16, vessel charters of “right-of-use” assets for durations of one year or more have been accounted for in shipping lines’ income statements under depreciation and interest expenses, mainly depreciation — not under operating costs.
EBITDA takes operating costs into account, but not depreciation. (Depreciation of owned assets is a non-cash item but depreciation of leased right-of-use assets under IFRS 16 is a cash item.)
A year after IFRS 16 came into play, the pandemic ensued. COVID changed consumer buying patterns, sparking a boom in freight rates. That, in turn, led to a surge in demand for chartered vessels, an unprecedented spike in lease rates, and ultimately, a dramatic increase in charter durations.
Nonoperating owners (NOOs), the companies that lease ships to liners, held all the power. Freight rates reached stratospheric heights, and liner companies needed chartered ships to secure the historically high freight income.
By March 2022, the Harpex index, which measures container-ship charter rates, was eight times higher than pre-COVID levels.
Not only were liners forced to pay NOOs historically expensive leasing rates — inflating liner leasing costs — they were also forced to accept longer charter durations, with ships being locked up for five-year terms at the peak.
As a consequence, shipping lines have even more lease payment expenses counted as depreciation and interest on their income statements under IFRS 16. And because of longer charter durations, the accounting effect of higher leasing rates on EBITDA will persist for years.
The problem with EBITDA for container shipping is that it includes the positive cash effect of freight revenue earned by liner companies from their leased ships, but excludes the negative cash effect of charter payments carriers make to NOOs for the vessels that allow them to earn the freight revenue.
Not surprisingly, container liner EBITDA has skyrocketed.
EBITDA vs. EBIT
Israeli carrier Zim (NYSE: ZIM) is the most extreme example. Most carriers own roughly half their fleet and charter the rest. Zim charters 94% of its fleet, according to its annual report filed Tuesday.
Not only have Zim’s leasing costs increased due to higher rates charged by NOOs, but it has also significantly increased the number of ships it charters, from 106 qualifying as right-of-use assets at the end of 2021 to 136 at the end of last year.
Another metric, earnings before interest and taxes, shows the effect, as it covers the lease cost effect of long-term charters on depreciation (although not on interest).
Zim’s adjusted EBITDA exceeded its adjusted EBIT by $1.4 billion last year. The carrier’s depreciation jumped 81% in 2022 versus 2021, “primarily due to an increase … related to right-of-use assets, mainly vessels.”
Zim forecasts its adjusted EBITDA for 2023 will be between $1.8 billion and $2.2 billion. In contrast, it estimates adjusted EBIT will be $100 million-$500 million. The difference between the midpoint of these ranges: $1.7 billion.
Other shipping lines show the same divergence between EBITDA and EBIT, but to a lesser degree due to their lower reliance on chartered ships than Zim.
Maersk’s 2022 adjusted EBITDA was $36.8 billion, its adjusted EBIT $31.2 billion. Depreciation of right-of-use assets increased $1.1 billion year on year, according to Maersk’s annual report.
Hapag-Lloyd’s EBITDA in 2022 was $20.5 billion, its EBIT $18.5 billion.
Hapag-Lloyd said in its annual report that depreciation and amortization increased by 16% in 2022 versus 2021 “primarily due to the year-on-year rise in the percentage of vessels chartered in on a medium-term basis at simultaneously higher charter rates.”
The real earnings: Net income
Beyond EBIT, the next level of accuracy for shipping line financial metrics is net income, which includes the bottom-line effects of interest and taxes.
Taxes are generally not a major issue for most international shipping companies, although Zim, once again, is an outlier.
Shipping expert John McCown explained in his latest quarterly review of container shipping earnings: “International shipping companies normally pay to the flag state in which their vessels are registered a fixed annual fee related to deadweight tonnage in lieu of income taxes.
“A noteworthy exception is Zim, as most of its vessels fly the Israeli flag, which does not have a tonnage tax regime. As a result, Zim has a more typical income tax expense, which is a function of pretax income.”
Zim had $1.4 billion in income tax expenses last year. As a result, it shows a wide disparity between net income and EBIT, and an even wider disparity between net income and EBITDA.
Zim posted net income of $4.6 billion last year. Its adjusted EBIT was $1.5 billion higher than that. Its adjusted EBITDA was $2.9 billion higher than its net income.
In the black vs. in the red
How much will container lines “earn” in 2023? It depends on the metric.
Sometimes, press reports loosely refer to EBITDA as earnings. The latest guidance from Zim led to a headline stating that the company “expects to earn a cool two billion this year,” referring to the midpoint of its adjusted EBITDA guidance.
In contrast, Bloomberg consensus as of Thursday was for Zim to earn net income of $58.6 million. That’s still a big improvement from its $13 million net loss in 2019, pre-COVID, but it’s much closer to the border between profit and loss.
There will be considerable focus in the coming quarters on when falling freight rates push container lines into the red. Carriers will still be reporting positive EBITDA when that happens.
Jefferies analyst Omar Nokta currently predicts Zim will earn a net profit of $89.9 million this year. He expects net losses in the first half offset by profits in the second. Nokta predicts full-year EBITDA will still be in the 10 figures, at $1.75 billion.
Even if large container lines do start posting net losses, they haven’t lost the windfall they earned during the COVID boom, nor will they face anything akin to financial distress anytime soon.
The top container lines have never had more cash. Zim has amassed $4.6 billion in cash in the wake of the boom ($3.9 billion including the effect of the dividend to be paid April 4). Hapag-Lloyd has liquidity of $17 billion, up from $1.2 billion at the end of 2019. Maersk’s liquidity is a whopping $28 billion.
As Citi Global Head of Shipping Michael Parker said in Lori Ann LaRocco’s “Dynasties of the Sea,” “No shipping company went bankrupt because it was unprofitable.” They go bankrupt when they “run out of cash.”


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Huntsman Corp. has reported revenues of $2,401 million for the third quarter of 2010, an increase of 16% compared to $2,075 million for the same period in 2009 and an increase of 2% compared to $2,343 million for the second quarter of 2010.
Adjusted net income for the third quarter of 2010 was $83 million, compared to adjusted net loss of $48 million for the same period in 2009.
“I am very pleased with our earnings in the third quarter 2010,” said Peter R. Huntsman, president and CEO. “We have seen a continuous recovery in global demand for all of our products, and margins are increasing in most product lines. We have previously used 2007 as a benchmark for a normalized demand environment. In the third quarter, our total company sales volumes exceeded the same period volume in 2007, however, with a very different product and geographic profile. As our global focus is on the further development of our specialty products, we continue to see many opportunities for growth.”
For additional details, visitwww.huntsman.com.


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NEW LONDON, CT: Conversion Marketing, which launched early this year and filled its ranks with IBM veterans, is supporting a virtual summit for IT giants CenturyLink, VMware, and Amazon Web Services.
The project, called Connect: A Virtual Series, will be broadcast on November 1 and feature a panel of experts from AWS, CenturyLink, and VMware. It will be hosted by Katie Linendoll, a tech correspondent for "Today" and The Weather Channel.
Work on the summit began in August, and Conversion Marketing has produced a promotional video for the series. According to partner and agency lead Matt Berry, the project has a $200,000 budget.
Since its launch in January 2018, Conversion has filled out its ranks with IBM communications and marketing vets, including Berry, a former VP of marketing and assistant to Jon Iwata, retired SVP of comms and chief brand officer.
Earlier this month, the agency hired strategist Kami Snyder, a marketing and product-line management executive. Marketing specialist Joanne Macdonald, a former worldwide marketing manager at IBM, joined in September, and creative strategist Ron Favali came aboard in July. Favali was program director for IBM MobileFirst for iOS and Apple Partnership Marketing until May 2017.
Berry said he wants to replicate the successes he had at IBM by following the tech giant’s data-focused blueprint. When Conversion started delivering analytics, it signed CenturyLink and VMware as clients.
After that, the agency worked on The Catalyst Club, a client advocacy project for VMware and CenturyLink. The so-called "club" is a group of select clients who receive "exclusive access and benefits" and meet every quarter, according to a statement.
The success of The Catalyst Club led to VMware and CenturyLink teaming up with AWS on its Connect series.
"It’s something I lived and breathed every day, looking at the data and understanding the data," Berry said. "Now I’m working with so many new companies, I can see the exact same appetites. They’re already embracing it; it’s something appealing to clients, and it’s something we’re comfortable doing as IBM alumni."
Conversion is also applying the social media lessons it took from IBM. The agency puts clients through 90-day programs to build up their "social eminence," a concept championed by Iwata, according to Berry. A similar IBM program trained thousands of employees, according to a statement.
Conversion is a sister agency of Green Ink Marketing Communications, a firm that worked with IBM for 20 years, Berry said. Conversion’s principals are Berry, Green Ink founder Alan Green Jr., and Gary Schaefer, a managing partner at Green Ink, according to public records.
During his tenure at IBM, Berry launched IBM brands including MobileFirst and PureSystems.


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Recently, my daughter had her debit card numbers stolen. She found this out two days later when she went to buy food and her card was denied. She contacted the bank and was advised that the card was used in a major chain store in another state and more than a $1,000 was taken from her account.
Because she uses the card little and uses it only in local places, we were able to figure out that it was used at a local restaurant chain. She contacted the restaurant and it chose to do nothing. She also contacted the retail store in West Virginia (a major chain) and it really didn't want to talk to her either.
She filled out a police report and was advised, after describing the circumstances and how they occurred, that the numbers were probably taken by our waiter. He was young and probably a college student. She was told there are thieves who seek out college students to steal these numbers for extra money. The local police said they are too small to investigate this.
If this is being done on the scale that we were told about, the sum of money these people are getting must be in the millions. It sounds like it is very organized and deals across state lines, so isn't that interstate theft? It's banking and insurance theft, it is interstate and it's very large, so why isn't the FBI involved?


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In this article, John Denslinger sees the expansion of existing IoT applications, plus the introduction of new connected technologies, as a fundamental driving force over coming years.
Forecasting several years out is often futile. Results are rarely accurate and frequently altered by disruptive technologies unknown at the time. Somehow, that doesn’t stop us from planning the future for many new technologies like IoT.
I admit a certain fascination with IoT. It stems from a white paper released in 2011 by Cisco projecting 50B connected devices by 2020. At the time, that caught my attention. The application was ubiquitous. It would require components, connectivity and engagement across every market segment. The opportunity for growth would be great.
The road to adoption was anything but smooth. It’s a great case study. Just five years ago, consultants everywhere were pushing huge growth in connected devices. Collectively, the projections varied widely as one might expect. The low-end forecast hovered around 25B (Gartner, McKinsey, Harper Research and others) and the high end at 30B+ (Statista, BI Intelligence). As a group, they missed and missed by a lot. The actual figure for 2020 is just a little over 20B. That means these forecasters over-estimated market adoption between 25 to 50 per cent. In a way, the forecast miss is the lesser story largely because billions were connected. Also, those billions will continue as the outlook remains at double digit CAGR affirmed by the latest consensus forecast of 64B to 75B connected devices by 2025. Whether adoption reaches that amount or not, it will be spectacular growth by any measure.
To be fair to our forecasters, the unknowns constricted 2020 growth. First, as IoT implementations occurred, companies acquired a deeper understanding of the networking complexities and from that grew greater concern for security, connectivity, data collection, data sharing, reliability and privacy issues. Secondly, the ecosystem for IoT was, and still is, under constant refinement as newer technology is introduced offering better performance, lower cost and solutions to many of the attribute concerns mentioned above. Lastly, enter the regulators. Around the globe, guidance initiatives and protective measures were instituted in response to national security and individual privacy concerns.
On a positive note, IoT is still in its infancy. There is an explosion of new ecosystem enablers and next-generation market drivers that will enhance IoT adoption. Think of the enablers as technology conduits. When applied to IoT, the performance of the entire ecosystem is elevated. Consider these five following technologies: AI driving faster decision making and unbiased control logic via algorithms; blockchains offering verifiable security for every digital transaction; nanotechnology pushing componentry to micro-scale levels with greater integration capabilities; VR augmenting control through vision; and lastly sensors, the under-pinning of the IoT network. Sensors are the eyes and ears of the grid. Each is becoming smaller, more efficient, less costly, more secure, and easier to mesh into any system set up.
As for next-generation market drivers, 5G and eSIM alone is expected to generate nearly 37B connections by 2025 according to Juniper Research. Add to that figure key emerging technologies such as autonomous vehicles, smart homes, healthcare wearables, smart cities, and smart agriculture. Plus, there still is substantial application expansion available in current markets such as EV, fitness, factory automation, consumer electronics, warehousing, and enterprise.
So much more is now known about IoT and its deployment. Solutions to every problem are many and readily available. The market opportunities are real. It would seem then that resolving the unknowns most assuredly paves the way to meeting the 2025 IoT growth forecast.


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The holidays are all about hot chocolate and whipped cream with peppermint sticks. However, this holiday season people may need to leave out the whipped cream, especially with the shortage that consumers are about to encounter.
A recent explosion at a Florida factory means that there will be a whipped cream deficit, reports The Daily Caller.
Those that want whipped cream on their holiday treats will need to whip it by hand or just skip it because local stores will not have the aerosol cans in stock. This nationwide shortage is due to a fatal explosion that occurred at a nitrous oxide plant back in August. Only now are consumers seeing the effects of that explosion.
Reddi-Whip the Hardest Hit
Reddi-Whip is by far the biggest brand to suffer from the shortage, says NBC DFW 5. The Chicago-based company makes their Reddi-Whip aerosol cans that are easy to spray just about anything with a dollop of whipped cream.
However, due to the limited supply of nitrous oxide, Reddi-Whip will equally have a limited amount of whipped cream canisters to go around.
This industrywide shortage is since the propellant is the main ingredient for aerosol topping cans.
ConAgra Brands has already released a statement that stores will have the product in stock, but some stores may have limited supply and others will sell out fast and not receive another shipment until ConAgra receives their nitrous oxide.
Redid-Whip’s makers are encouraging customers to buy now and avoid the holiday rush. They suspect the closer it gets to Christmas; the fewer cans will be in stock. The shortage will hit all brands of food products that rely on nitrous oxide — not just whipped cream.
Coffee Shops Have to Forgo the Whip
Coffee shops like Starbucks and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf must serve their favorite holiday lattes without whipped cream, reports Time. Some are already noticing the shortage because they have run completely out of their “whip” option for customers.
Stores that sell pies with whipped cream on top will also no longer be able to do so until the shortage stops. While they can whip and pipe their own, some stores may not afford the time loss to do so; therefore, they will simply serve up their pies without the side of whipped cream.
Not a Shortage of Heavy Whipping Cream
It is important for consumers to realize that the shortage merely affects canisters of ready-to-use products. This doesn’t impact the heavy whipping cream sold in stores. For those that need a dose of whipped cream to top their holiday dishes, all it takes is a container of heavy whipping cream, a wire whisk, and a little elbow grease to make whipped cream at home.
Naturally, homemade will take a little longer and indeed require a sweat, but it must do for those that just cannot live without whipped cream for the holidays.


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Australia’s competition watchdog has announced that it’ll allow Amazon to undercut Australian businesses with big discounts when it opens in the country.
Amazon won’t confirm when its local operations will open, but sharemarket analysts are convinced it will be in November after the retail giant started buying thousands of products from suppliers – which Amazon could then slash for the consumer by up to a third in the lead-up to Christmas.
Despite being seen by many retailers as a major commercial threat, Chairman for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Rod Sims, said that Amazon was able to – by law – set prices low enough to win business without breaching competition laws.
Competition laws will allow retail giant Amazon to undercut local businesses (stock image)
‘In terms of misuse of market power, if you open a store in a new town and you set a common price point, you are going to lose money initially if you don’t have scale,’ Mr Sims told AFR Weekend.
‘Eventually, if you get your business plan right, you will make that price point, that is in no way illegal.
‘Everyone is assuming that Amazon is going to be a screaming success and they will put everyone out of business. That may not happen.’
Amazon has been building a 24,000 square meter distribution warehouse in Melbourne, and has been advertising for jobs in both Melbourne and Sydney since August.
On November 13, Amazon’s country manager Rocco Braeuniger is holding a meeting in Sydney where he is expected to address more than 500 local suppliers.
Australian Small Business Minister Michael McCormack has said he will watch Amazon closely to ensure the company pays its fair share of tax.
Australia’s first distribution centre site (pictured) in Dandenong, near Melbourne, Victoria
‘Amazon pays all the taxes we are required to pay in every country where we operate,’ an Amazon spokeswoman told Fairfax.
‘Perceived tax avoidance by large foreign companies is a big issue in Australia, and the government is now enforcing new measures known as the ‘Earned here, Taxed here’ corporate tax laws.’
Amazon is now twice as large as Walmart, which used to be the world’s biggest retailer.
ACCC Chairman Rod Sims (pictured) said Amazon’s low prices are in ‘no way illegal’


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March 10, 2013
Free Tax Preparation
If you haven’t already done so, it’s time to get busy on your 2012 tax return. But with new tax laws in effect, you may want to think about having a professional prepare your taxes this year. If paying to have your taxes prepared is an expense you don’t think you can afford, you may be eligible for free tax prep service in Maryland, Virginia and D.C.
March 8, 2013
D.C. Travel and Adventure Show
The Travel and Adventure Show is in town this weekend.
DC School Lottery
The D.C. Public Schools Preschool / Pre-K / Out-of-Boundary Lottery results are now available.
March 7, 2013
A new consumer survey shows that most adults don’t know their rights with telemarketers.
March 6, 2013
Bumble Bee Recall
Bumble Bee Foods has issued a recall on some of its packaged fish products because they do not meet the company’s standards for seal tightness.
March 4, 2013
Mobile Work Exchange is holding its third-annual Telework Week 2013, a global effort to encourage agencies, organizations, and individuals to pledge to telework anytime from March 4-8.


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Just one day after providing the betas to developers, Apple today seeded the first public betas of the upcoming iOS 14.3 and iPadOS 14.3 updates.
Public beta testers who have signed up for Apple’s beta testing program can download the iOS and iPadOS 14.3 updates over the air after installing the proper certificate from the Public Beta website on an iOS device.
iOS 14.3 introduces the ProRAW feature Apple announced at the iPhone 12 launch to the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max. ProRAW lets those who prefer to shoot in RAW take advantage of the Apple image pipeline data like noise reduction and multi-frame exposure adjustments while still using the RAW format.
Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees when people conduct searches, can now be set as the default search engine on iPhone and iPad as an alternative to Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and Bing.
MacDailyNews Take: Ecosia’s search results are provided by Bing and enhanced by the company’s own algorithms, so give it a try and plant some trees while helping to break Google’s abusive grip on search!


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By Morgan Bryce
Construction is nearing completion on a new Dollar General store in Opelika, which will be located at 23 Samford Ave.
DG Public Relations Spokesperson Angela Petkovic said the store’s grand opening is tentatively scheduled for early spring, pending construction progress.
“When choosing store locations, meeting customers’ needs is Dollar General’s top priority. The company looks for places where we can offer customers an easy and convenient shopping choice,” Petkovic said on the store’s location. “We know convenience is a major factor in our customers’ shopping decisions as we generally serve customers within a three-to-five mile radius, or (a) 10-minute drive. We also take demographic trends, competitive factors, traffic patterns and community concerns into consideration.”
Petkovic added that the store will hire 6-10 employees based on store needs.
For more information and updates, visit www.dollargeneral.com.


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Shares of cruise operators took a hit in morning trading following the release of Norwegian Cruise Line’s third-quarter profit outlook, which fell short of Wall Street analysts’ expectations.
Norwegian’s stock plummeted by almost 16% to $18.62, while Carnival and Royal Caribbean also experienced significant declines at over 6% and almost 3%, respectively.
Despite the disappointing profit outlook, Norwegian remains committed to cost reduction. Chief Financial Officer Mark Kempa revealed during a conference call that the company has enlisted the help of a consultant to facilitate this process.
Lower Than Expected Profit
Norwegian set a target of 70 cents per share for its adjusted profit in the third quarter. However, analysts were anticipating a higher figure of 80 cents per share, according to FactSet data.
Second Quarter Performance
In the second quarter, Norwegian exceeded market expectations with sales totaling $2.21 billion, surpassing estimates of $2.17 billion. Additionally, adjusted earnings per share reached 30 cents, beating Wall Street’s forecast of 26 cents per share.
Positive Outlook on Demand
Despite the setback, Norwegian executives expressed optimism about the future. They confirmed that demand for cruises remains robust and indicated strong bookings for 2024.
“We continue to witness unwavering consumer interest,” shared Chief Financial Officer Mark Kempa. “We anticipate this trend to persist.”


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SSLCOMMERZ and CASHe Alliance have recently signed an MoU for developing a first-of-its-kind strategic partnership offering Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) services to millions of consumers and merchants.
Through this unique collaboration between the two industry leaders, they will combine their resources and expertise to democratise online retail in Bangladesh.
SSLCOMMERZ can enable its network of 100,000+ merchants to add BNPL as a payment option for its consumers, giving shoppers the ultimate financial freedom to buy according to their aspirations and pay back conveniently and securely, reads a press release.
SSLCOMMERZ plans to scale its platform to reach over a million merchants, all of whom could offer BNPL to its consumers, which will transform the country's consumer spending landscape.
CASHe Alliance's modular, scalable, and world-class technology uses alternative data sources to assess the creditworthiness of digital consumers in Bangladesh.
This technology enables the participating bank(s) and non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) to make better lending decisions of BNPL products for its consumers.
This industry-defining partnership will benefit customers and merchants by increasing customer lifetime value, lower customer credit risks, and transforming customer experiences by making access to products and services affordable.
Ahmed Kamal Khan Chowdhury, group advisor, SSLCOMMERZ, said, "BNPL is a very dynamic, fast-moving space. We are the largest payment aggregator in Bangladesh and pioneers in the fintech space since 2010. As the market share leader, we want to keep innovating for our customers, and that's why the SSLCOMMERZ-CASHe Alliance partnership is a powerful combination."
"The consumer-oriented BNPL industry will exceed $1 trillion in annual gross merchandise volume globally by 2025. We are proud to be offering this innovative integration of our credit decisioning engine that will enable our partner bank(s) and NBFI(s) to offer BNPL to 100,000+ merchants in Bangladesh through our partnership with SSLCOMMERZ from day one and ultimately scale it up to million merchants," said Deepak Saluja, co-founder, group CEO of The Social Loan Company (TSLC), and vice-chairman, CASHe Alliance Ltd.
Deepak further said, "We have a proven tech stack and solution architecture that will support our big move into this exciting and untapped consumer financing niche in Bangladesh. We have had great success in deploying this tech stack with TSLC's subsidiary company in India. CASHe is India's leading financial wellness focused lend-tech, has over 20M consumers on its platform."
He hopes that together, working as one team with SSLCOMMERZ, his company wants to transform the country's payments and consumer spending landscape by augmenting their merchant partners' outreach and market share and giving young, dynamic Bangladeshi consumers affordable access and freedom to shop and pay, their way.


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Google dad or mum Alphabet on Tuesday reported its to start with quarterly earnings miss of the pandemic just after the war in Ukraine harm YouTube ad income, leaving traders rattled as the world wide financial state sputters.
The world’s most significant company of research and online video made a fortune more than the previous two a long time as the pandemic forced additional outlets and people today on line. But outdoing those people income is proving tricky so considerably this year with the war, growing inflation and merchandise shortages producing advertisers to dump internet marketing strategies, in accordance to analysts.
Alphabet Main Economic Officer Ruth Porat mentioned it was too early to predict when sales slowed by the war might select up and warned that the strengthening US dollar would hurt product sales even far more in the existing quarter.
Alphabet shares, which have been up almost 90 per cent in excess of the past two a long time, fell about 2.5 percent following the effects late on Tuesday. They had dropped 3.6 % all through the regular session.
David Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, voiced escalating fears about the macro natural environment. “Alphabet has been seen as a person of the most insulated corporations in the advertising and marketing room relative to peers, but often you can still have the best home in the worst neighborhood,” he explained.
Alphabet explained initial-quarter product sales rose to $68.01 billion (roughly Rs. 5,21,185 crore), up 23 p.c from past yr but beneath the average estimate of $68.1 billion (about Rs. 5,21,184 crore) between fiscal analysts tracked by Refinitiv, its to start with skip considering that the fourth quarter of 2019.
Notably, YouTube advertising and marketing income of $6.9 billion (approximately Rs. 52,881 crore) skipped analysts’ target of $7.5 billion (roughly Rs. 57,485 crore), according to FactSet.
Porat explained the war in Ukraine that started throughout the quarter experienced an “outsized effect” on YouTube revenue because the corporation stopped ad revenue in Russia and manufacturer advertisers, especially in Europe, pulled back on shelling out right after fighting broke out.
Google all round derived 1 per cent of its product sales in 2021 from Russia, Porat explained.
She also documented moderating progress in sales to immediate-reaction advertisers on YouTube, and extra that cuts to app shop service fees to tackle antitrust problems had wiped out gains in membership income.
Google’s “other” income, which contains app, hardware and subscription income, ended up $6.8 billion (about Rs. 52,880 crore), beneath estimates of $7.3 billion (about Rs. 57,484 crore).
Quarterly income was $16.44 billion (roughly Rs. 1,26,010 crore), or $24.62 (about Rs. 1,890) for each share, lacking anticipations of $25.76 (approximately Rs. 1,974) for every share.
Alphabet also claimed its board had authorised an further $70 billion (about Rs. 5,36,490 crore) in stock repurchases. It has purchased back again in excess of $81 billion (around Rs. 6,20,795 crore) in shares over the past two a long time.
Google is predicted to grab 29 p.c, or the main share, of the $602 billion (about Rs. 46,12,975 crore) global on the net advert sector in 2022, at least the 12th straight year it has been on prime, according to Insider Intelligence.
Sophie Lund-Yates, lead fairness analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, mentioned in a notice that the macro atmosphere could deliver some ups and downs for Alphabet, though the business remained indispensable to shoppers and advertisers.
Previous 7 days, Snap warned that inflation, labor shortages and other economic problems could pressure ad revenue.
Facebook father or mother Meta Platforms Inc, the next-biggest on the internet marketing system with an expected 21.4 percent share of the world current market in 2022, reviews earnings on Wednesday. Its shares fell 2.5 per cent on Tuesday after Alphabet’s final results.
Rising competitors from companies such as Amazon.com and ByteDance’s TikTok are chipping absent at Google advertisement sales, much too. Still, stores proceed to pour income into advertisements and vacation and entertainment advertisers are ramping up once again. In addition, Google is greater positioned than rivals to withstand economic shocks due to the fact its promoting instruments tend to be amid the previous deserted by advertisers as they are nicely known, quick to use and reach additional buyers than alternate options.
Higher on the checklist of pitfalls confronted by the business are quite a few lawsuits and investigations into irrespective of whether Google has engaged in anticompetitive carry out by means of its advertising and marketing and other corporations.
The hottest scrutiny has been on its pending $5.4 billion (roughly Rs. 41,378 crore) acquisition of cybersecurity providers company Mandiant, which the US Division of Justice is examining closely. Google has mentioned it nonetheless expects to shut the deal this calendar year.
Google Cloud, the unit that would include Mandiant, elevated revenue in the first quarter by 44 p.c when compared with a calendar year back to $5.82 billion (approximately Rs. 44,597 crore).
© Thomson Reuters 2022


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Kodak, the firm which brought photography to the masses, filed for bankruptcy protection today.
The last-ditch move gives the 130-year-old US-based photography giant time to try to save its crumbling empire.
Kodak, which invented the first hand-held camera in 1900 with the box Brownie, has seen its valuation plummet from £20billion to just £100million in 15 years. Its share price fell 90% in the past 12 months .
It has shed 50,000 jobs worldwide as it failed to compete with digital camera makers Canon and Nikon. The improving quality of cameras on mobile phones has also squeezed the firm to the brink of extinction.
Court papers filed in New York showed Kodak’s £4.5billion debts were around £1billion greater than its assets.
After moving to keep the company’s creditors at bay, chairman Antonio Perez said: “This is a necessary step and the right thing to do for the future of Kodak.”
He hopes to raise funds by selling some of the thousands of digital patents its experts have developed over the years.
Kodak, founded by George Eastman, has agreed a £600million loan from Citigroup to tide it over. Mr Perez said this meant it would be able to keep paying workers’ wages during a restructuring plan which is expected to take at least a year.
Kodak has already reorganised its business to focus on printers, but this has failed to restore profitability. The company has closed 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs since 2003.
The restructuring is the last hope for Kodak which created the phrase Kodak Moments in ads – used to signify big family events or personal achievements that warranted recording for posterity.
The company can trace its roots back to 1880. Its highs include Neil Armstrong’s use of a Kodak camera as the first man on the moon in 1969.
Six years later, it developed the world’s first digital camera. But bosses locked it away fearing it would undermine its traditional 35mm film business. It was the beginning of the end for the firm which once employed thousands of workers in the UK.
Robert Hutton from Windsor, Berks, who worked for the firm in Harrow from 1995-2000 said: “It was a large company but there was a family feel to it. But you sensed they were internally focused.
“In the late-90s while Sony, Panasonic, etc were producing the first hand-held digital cameras I was working on the launch of Kodak’s new colour reversal film. It just felt a bit like we were King Canute trying to hold back the digital tide.”
The first Kodak office was opened by George Eastman in New York in 1880.
Eastman hit on the name because the letter K was his “favourite”, saying: “It seems a strong, incisive sort of letter.”
The entrepreneur insisted that the name of his company should be short and could not be mispronounced.
His first Kodak camera appeared in the shops in 1888 and carried a roll of film which could take 100 pictures.
It was followed by the fabulously successful Brownie camera in 1900, priced $1.
In 1935 it introduced Koda-chrome, the first 35mm colour film and completely dominated in the 1960s with sales of more than 50 million Instamatics.
Kodak came to control 90% of photographic film sales in America and 85% of camera sales by the 1970s.
It proved so popular that astronaut Neil Armstrong used Kodak during the first moon landing in 1969.
In 1975 the firm marketed the world’s first digital camera.
By 1981 its sales hit £6.5billion.
However, it faced competition from the Japanese company Fujifilm. Fuji’s popularity rose further when it won the right to be the official film of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Kodak’s slice of the market fell dramatically and three years ago it cut 4,500 jobs, after posting losses of around £850million.
Its shares fell 80% last year and it finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today.


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Integral Ad Science Names Chance Johnson as Chief Revenue Officer
August 19, 2019 – New York, NY – Integral Ad Science (IAS), the global leader in digital ad verification, today announced the appointment of Chance Johnson as Chief Revenue Officer. Johnson, who most recently served as the Senior Vice President of Sales for Amobee, is a seasoned digital media executive who will lead the global sales organization at IAS. His role will be based out of the New York office and he will report directly to the CEO, Lisa Utzschneider.
“Chance brings a winning record of success in leading world class sales organizations and in building deep and lasting relationships with customers and industry partners. We are thrilled to add his depth of leadership, experience, and drive to IAS,” said Lisa Utzschneider, CEO, IAS. “With the addition of Chance, IAS will continue to aggressively scale our global footprint and build innovative solutions the advertising industry can trust.”
Johnson is a proven sales leader with over a decade of multi-country experience managing high-performing commercial sales teams and scaling revenue globally. He specializes in bringing strategy, direction, and focus for advertising technology companies. In his new role, Johnson will spearhead an accelerated growth plan for IAS and optimize the company’s global sales approach and strategy.
“I am honored to be joining IAS at this exciting juncture. IAS powers digital media quality and outcomes for the world’s largest set of brands, publishers and proprietary platforms and I am excited to grow these relationships even further,” said Johnson, CRO at IAS. “Marketers everywhere are looking to build more meaningful connections with their respective audiences and I’m thrilled to be a part of the driving force in helping them deliver great impressions.”
Prior to his role at Amobee, Johnson was Global Vice President of Sales at Rubicon Project in New York and later relocated to London where he evangelized the need for a clean, transparent advertising marketplace to their expanding international client base. He joined Rubicon Project via the acquisition of Chango where he led the sales and client services functions, growing the business from its earliest stage.


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The Lunar New Year is traditionally a time for gathering with family and friends to eat and drink.
And for hundreds of years the drink of choice in China for these celebrations has been baijiu – a clear spirit made with fermented grains which packs a potent punch.
Baiju is also often drunk straight and at social events such as weddings and birthdays.
Its Alcohol-By-Volume (ABV) can top 60% – in comparison spirits like scotch whisky and tequila typically have an ABV of around 40%.
“Baijiu certainly still has its place in Chinese liquor consumption, even among young consumers,” says Allison Malmsten, public research director at Daxue Consulting.
It accounts for well over 90% of China’s spirits sales, with annual sales of around $160bn (£127bn).
However, in recent times drinks from abroad have been growing in popularity in what is the world’s biggest spirits market.
Brand new story
In 2022, sales of whisky in China were valued at $2.3bn, according to market research firm Euromonitor International.
That figure is expected to almost triple by 2027 as the whisky market there is expected to grow at around five times the rate seen globally.
Those sales are being driven by young, middle class, urban, educated and increasingly female drinkers.
Many of them are shunning baijiu in favour of less alcoholic spirits from outside China, according to Ms Malmsten.
The growth in demand for whisky in particular, has helped encourage international brands to open distilleries across China.
Amongst them is French drinks giant Pernod-Ricard, which owns the Jameson Irish whiskey brand as well as Beefeater Gin and Absolut Vodka. It is investing $140m in a production base near Emei Mountain in Sichuan Province, Southwest China.
UK-based rival Diageo also opened a plant in the Yunnan Province in December and is currently trialling production with plans to be fully up and running later this year. The company is also opening an Asia-Pacific Innovation hub in Shanghai.
“We are here for a long-term play,” Managing Director for Diageo in China Atul Chhaparwal told the BBC.
He is bullish about the market, saying the demand is so strong that is space for everyone.
“Given the vibrancy of the overall whiskey category in China, there will be enough space for single malts, for blended whiskies, for local players, for imported whiskey, to grow,” he says.
“Whiskey currently makes up less than 2% of the total spirits consumed in China, which indicates that how much room headroom everyone has to play in here,” he adds.
That includes homegrown distilleries which have sprung up across the country. Pernod estimates there are between 30 and 50, with many still being built.
The whisky market is also expanding in other parts of Asia.
“The growth is immense”, spirits retailer Maison du Whisky’s Jamie Li told the BBC in the French company’s store in Singapore.
Mr Li, who heads sales to South Korea, Japan and China expects to see a boost during the Lunar New Year as Chinese tourists visit Singapore.
“Chinese New Year is kind of like Christmas in Europe – it’s festive, people want to spend money, buy nice gifts and have something memorable. So whisky is part of their memory,” he says.
There is also a growing number of collectors who “buy and hold” bottles of whisky which are expected to rise in value.
But it’s not all smooth sailing for China’s whisky market warns Ms Malmsten.
“The local distilleries are still in the early stages. 80% of the whisky has only been aged for two years or less. There’s a lack of barrels and a lack of professionals to help with production,” she says.
Still, if the success of China’s wine industry is anything to go by, ‘watch this space’ when it comes to whisky.
“What we saw with China’s wine industry is that once it started to mature, the demand for Chinese wines skyrocketed. In our recent survey, we found that after French wines, Chinese wines are the second most preferred,” Ms Malmsten says.
“As China’s whisky production matures, we might see a similar rise in demand for domestically produced whisky as well.”


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Living freely and exploring the unknown are key elements inherent to the brand that is Louis Vuitton – the French luxury house just announced a new travel campaign, “Horizons Never End,” with the help of the inimitable Jackson Wang – and now it jets off from Paris to the cosy, intimate island of Isola Bella for its Cruise 2024 show. A true European treasure, the island houses the Palazzo Borromeo, a hallmark of Baroque architecture and a gorgeous vessel on the crystal-clear waters of Lake Maggiore. The brand will be the first to ever stage a fashion show on Isola Bella, which has been in the hands of the Borromeo family for over 400 years. Tune in to watch the show live here.
- louis vuitton


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Amazon has launched the UK’s first ‘micro-mobility hub’ with the aim of swapping ‘thousands’ of polluting delivery trucks for electric cargo bikes – and in some cases, walking. The project It aims to help Amazon meet its climate goals to be 50 percent of deliveries carbon-neutral by 2030.
Starting in London’s Hackney borough, the company says it will deliver 1 million packages a year using electric cargo bikes and walking, as well as deliveries made with electric trucks. Amazon said its delivery workers on foot and e-bikes will help offset “thousands” of traditional bus trips.
Carbon-neutral trips will take place within a tenth of London’s ultra-low emissions zone, where vehicles are charged based on the amount of emissions they produce. Electric bikes and electric vehicles are exempt from duty.
Amazon said it plans to open additional hubs in the coming months. The company already operates 1,000 electric delivery trucks in the UK, and has plans to introduce a new Rivian lineup in the US later this year (depending on Rivian’s ability to meet those orders).
Electric cargo bikes, especially those designed to look like pickup trucks, are growing in popularity among delivery companies looking to improve their environmental credentials. FedEx also uses e-bikes in London (emissions cost!), while Domino has partnered with Rad Power Bikes to deliver pizza in two cities. UPS used cargo bikes in Seattle. German delivery company DPD wants to use this pickup trucks which are actually compelling e-bikes. In New York City, e-bikes are used almost exclusively by food delivery workers.
Amazon hasn’t released any details about what they call their “electronic assistance vehicles,” even though they look a lot different than most of the traditional cargo bikes out there. If anything, they look like the pickup trucks first proposed by DPD, designed by a startup called Eav, or SUV “eQuad” Used by UPS.
But we have yet to witness the widespread deployment of charging e-bikes by any delivery company. If Amazon sticks to it and actually delivers on its promise, the company’s micro-movement effort in the UK could be a first.


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Ammo is About to Get More Expensive and Harder to Buy in NY State
A new law is set to go into effect throughout New York next week that will make it harder for people to buy ammunition.
New York's new gun laws have been rolling out over the past year, and this month a new ammunition requirement is about to make purchasing bullets a bit more difficult.
The law now designates New York as a Point of Contact state for background checks. Starting next week, the state will begin conducting its own background checks on purchases of firearms, rifles, shotguns and ammunition. That's right, all customers attempting to buy not just guns, but any ammunition will also have to go through a background check before being allowed to walk out of the store with bullets.
How ammunition purchases will now work in New York State
Now, whenever someone goes into a store to buy ammunition the retailer must contact New York State Police to do a background check. Police will conduct the FBI National Instant Background Check database and let the retailer know if the customer is allowed to make the purchase. In the past, retailers would search the FBI NICS themselves.
Customers must wait to receive the all-clear before being able to purchase their ammunition.
Reasons for being denied the opportunity to buy ammunition
According to the New York State Police, there are several reasons why someone can now be disqualified from purchasing ammunition in New York State. The sale of ammunition can be denied if the buyer:
- Has been convicted of a felony offense
- Is a fugitive from justice
- Is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance
- Has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to a mental institution
- Is illegally or unlawfully in the United States, or has been admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa (with limited exceptions)
- Has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions
- Has renounced U.S. citizenship, after having been a citizen of the United States
- Is subject to a qualifying order of protection that restrains the purchaser from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such intimate partner
- Has been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence
- Is under indictment for a felony offense
Extra charges for purchasing firearms and ammunition in New York
Because of the added expenses of the new background check system, those purchasing a firearm will now pay an additional $9.00 fee. Each ammunition transaction will include an extra $2.50 fee.
The changes officially go into effect on Wednesday, September 13.
5 Potent Weapons You Can Legally Carry for Self Defense in New York
How Many in America: From Guns to Ghost Towns


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The arrival of virtual reality (VR) technology has huge implications for the long-established videogame industry. While traditional titles certainly aren’t set to go away, this new medium is an entirely different means of delivering experiences to players. In fact, Coatsink Software, a UK-based indie developer that’s created two VR experiences already in Esper and Esper 2, with a VR adaption of Boneloaf’s Gang Beasts on the way, think that VR signifies ‘the first time’ that videogames have felt ‘new and fresh and exciting’ since the original PlayStation was first introduced.
That’s what CEO Tom Beardsmore said to VRFocus in an interview about its work with the tech. When asked why Coatsink Software had become so heavily invested in VR, the developer replied: “Because it’s awesome. Because it’s the forefront of the games industry, or we feel that it’s going to become that at the very least over the next five or ten years, and we want to be in there. We love the experimental nature of it, we like the feeling that we get from it which is the first time anything has felt really new and fresh and exciting since the early days of PlayStation.”
Of course PlayStation itself will soon have its own VR head-mounted display (HMD) in PlayStation VR, though Beardsmore wouldn’t comment on if the company was working with the HMD at this point in time.
For the latest on Coatsink Software’s work in VR, check back with VRFocus.
The post Coatsink: VR is ‘the first time anything has felt new’ since PS1 appeared first on VRFocus.


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Adam West, aka Batman, you can retreat to your cave. Kevin Lamar, aka Nautilus president, has stolen your bat phone. Or at least the concept. Holy Hotline, Batman!
Looking to put an end to even one frustrated dealer or the smallest of unsolved problems, Lamar has installed a hotline to himself -- a telephone number given to some 900 dealers that he promises will get to him, personally, in 20 minutes or less.
"There's no reason dealers should sit around with any questions or frustrations and not get an answer," Lamar told SNEWS. "The industry is built on relationships, and if I'm going to be the head of our group, I need to be accessible."
Since its implementation in August, the hotline has had five legitimate phone calls from dealers with concerns. (We say "legitimate" since Lamar got three calls from dealers to see if the bat phone did indeed go straight to him. Boy, were they surprised when Lamar picked up within minutes, especially the caller who was standing across the room from him less than hour after the announcement of the hotline at the company's dealer meeting in August!)
The calls have been to discuss distribution concerns, to double-check the details of a warranty, and to find out what the company was going to do when the installation of a home gym scratched a floor, he said.
"I encourage the dealers to use it if their frustration level is so high because they aren't getting what they need or it's a time crunch," he said. "I want them to know if I need to get involved, I'll do it."
Here's how it works: A special phone line was installed on the desk of Lamar's assistant, who always knows where he is. The number also rings on Lamar's desk -- where the screen lights up with the words "Bat Phone" when it rings -- and it rings to the company receptionist. If Lamar isn't around to pick it up, his assistant calls him. If the assistant has stepped away, the receptionist tracks her down who then tracks him down. All guaranteed to get him back to the caller in 20 minutes or less on weekdays. Lamar checks the phone on weekends and holidays as frequently as possible.
Mike Cirillo, president of The Fitness Store in Northridge, Calif., has called twice -- once to see if it really rang to Lamar ("I just wanted to know if this d--- thing really works," he said he told Lamar) and once to discuss concerns he had about some of the company's distribution.
"It's awesome," Cirillo said. "We were able to get straight to the top. It's nice to know if I have an issue with something, I can talk to the guy.
"Kevin is a real hands-on person, and I give him credit for being that type of guy," Cirillo added. "He wants to know what's going on -- be it good or bad."
Lamar said that with the marriage of three companies in the last couple of years, including two that were bankrupt and one that was under-performing, there naturally have been some customer service issues and dealer questions. He said he wouldn't expect every company executive or president to have this kind of hotline -- although he's surprised more don't -- but that he felt it was necessary for his group to take the next step.
"The biggest challenge is to keep that phone from ever ringing," he said. "When this phone rings, it means something out there has to be fixed."
Already the company is smiling since it's been two weeks since it last rang.
SNEWS View: We couldn't be more impressed with the cut-to-the-punch attitude of Nautilus and Lamar with this phone line. In our first Fitness Retailer Survey, published in the GearTrends fitness magazine in August (go to www.geartrends.com and click on the magazine icon if you missed it), Nautilus was unfortunately called out by the retailers polled as a company that had some â€¦ er â€¦ issues. This kind of proactive response we think should earn the company kudos, prove its commitment, solve the issues and perhaps keep it off that list when we do our second annual survey next year. The fact that Lamar has only gotten five real calls already makes a statement: Perhaps the dealers are resting easier just knowing the option exists. Holy The-Buck-Stops-Here, Batman!


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It may come as a surprise, but it looks like there’s high demand for a convertible version of Tesla’s Model S sedan, as Newport Convertible Engineering (NCE) confirmed receiving 100 orders for the car from a Chinese investor alone, and plans to ask the Californian electric car maker to provide the company with an additional 5,000 unit for this purpose.
“Newport Convertible Engineering has officially requested Tesla Motors in a joint effort to build another 5000 Tesla Model S convertible for a worldwide demand. [An] Announcement will be made in April 18 2014,” said the aftermarket convertible specialist that’s based in California.
NCE will begin production of the 100 Tesla Model S Convertibles earmarked for China in July 2014, in three locations around the world, including California USA, Dubai UAE, and Barcelona Spain.
After six months of development, NCE came up with two solutions for the Tesla Model S, a ragtop conversion priced at $29,000 (€21,100) and a hard tonneau cover priced at $49,000 (€35,700). Naturally, these prices exclude the cost of the donor car. The tuner has not yet released actual pictures of the Model S Convertibles, only photoshops.
By John Halas


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Generic Drug Firm Thembalami Withdraws Antiretroviral Drug Bid in South Africa; Short List Reduced to Seven Companies
South African generic drug firm Thembalami Pharmaceuticals has withdrawn a bid to supply the South African government with antiretroviral drugs, leaving seven companies on the government's "short list" to supply drugs for millions of HIV-positive people in the country, Business Day reports. Thembalami was created as a joint venture between the South Africa-based pharmaceutical group Adcock Ingram and India-based generic drug firm Ranbaxy to produce generic antiretroviral drugs for South Africa. However, Ranbaxy has voluntarily recalled all of its HIV/AIDS drugs in South Africa because of problems with a research company that conducted studies to determine if the generic drugs offered the same "therapeutic value" as the brand-name versions, according to Business Day. A company report to the World Health Organization in September highlighted problems with the bioequivalence studies for tablets of the antiretroviral drug Avocomb -- which contains the antiretrovirals zidovudine and lamivudine -- and subsequent investigations revealed similar problems with other products. Deloise Raubenheimer, a doctor for Ranbaxy, said she did not know how many people would be affected by the recall but said the number was "small." The company "strongly urged" people taking its drugs to continue with their current therapy "until an equivalent alternative can be substituted," Business Day reports. Ranbaxy CEO Desmond Brothers said that the recall would not affect distribution in other countries (Kahn, Business Day, 10/26).
Antiretroviral Drug Program
The South African government earlier this year launched a national antiretroviral drug treatment program that aims to provide antiretroviral drugs to 1.2 million people -- or about 25% of the country's HIV-positive population -- by 2008. Officials expect 50,000 HIV-positive people to be on antiretroviral drugs by the end of the year and 1.4 million people to be on the drugs by 2009, at a total cost of $700 million (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 10/27). The remaining bidders for the government contract are Abbott, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Meyers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck's South African subsidiary MSD and generic manufacturers Aspen Pharmacare and Cipla-Medpro (Business Day, 10/26). Thembalami was expecting to produce a generic of Boehringer's nevirapine that would have cost 30% to 40% less than the brand-name product (Moodley, Business Report, 10/26).


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Provalis surges on US approval
Shares in biotechnology company Provalis surged nearly 20% in early trading after it announced US approval for its 'point-of-care' diabetes-monitoring product, Glycosal. Provalis stock rose 4p to 24 1/2p on decent opening volume of 340,000.
Glycosal monitors the severity of diabetes and the effectiveness of long-term therapy for the disease, which affects an estimated 15m Americans, Provalis said.
The product, which measures glycated haemoglobin in a single four-minute test, had already been approved in Europe and is currently available in more than 20 markets around the world.
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Sony Ericsson To Unveil Xperia Mango and Smultron Next Week?
There has been a lot of buzz lately around Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Mango — Xperia X10 Mini Pro successor — generated by the numerous pictures scattered all over the Internet. Rumor has it that in the upcoming month of May — chances are that it’s going to be as soon as next week — Sony Ericsson will reveal two new handsets, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mango and the Smultron (Xperia X10 Mini successor).
Both the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mango and Smultron will allegedly operate on Google’s Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread mobile platform and feature 1GHz processors with HVGA (320 x 480) screens of roughly three inches in diagonal, five-megapixel camera at the back plus a front facing webcam. The Mango, codenamed SK17i and SK17a, will feature a slide-out QWERTY keyboard while the Smultron, codenamed ST15i and ST15a will only have a touchscreen. File this under the “R” category for now but Sony Ericsson should definitely launch the follow-ups already!
As a bonus rumor, there will allegedly be one more unveiling for a smartphone yet unseen. No details regarding naming, features and specs are known so we’ll keep our fingers crossed it’s something nice!


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Following a competitive pitch, Ensemble has been appointed to the Australian digital agency roster for pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
Ensemble joins a strong group of existing and new agencies that conduct work for GSK across aspects of marketing communications.
Forthcoming assignments for Ensemble from GSK will focus on digital communications, from strategy and creative through to production and shopper marketing.
This appointment is off the back of the agency broadening its offering into full-service creative and digital services under the umbrella of ‘Contagious Ideas’. So far this year Ensemble has widened its client base significantly including recent appointments from Contiki, Acquire Learning and The Australian Grand Prix Corporation.
Digital publisher network Scroll Media has employed ex-Amazon Twitch gaming executive Costa Panagos (lead image) to strengthen its Scroll Gaming capability. Panagos is highly experienced in game advertising and media sales professional with two years in account management at Twitch and three years in media sales at News Corp, so will bring his extensive media agency […]
School-leaver service Year13 has launched a new Artificial Intelligence course to upskill young people in AI, made in collaboration with Microsoft and KPMG, at an event to rally industry support behind youth AI fluency. The free online course AI Amplified which is part of Year13’s Academy aims to provide all young people with the opportunity […]
General Motors has announced the appointment of Heath Walker (lead image) as the new marketing director for GM Australia and New Zealand, effective April 23, 2024. Walker brings a wealth of marketing and communications experience gained from working across various industries, including IT, sporting, and auto – notably Tesla, Nissan and most recently, Scania in […]


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Instagram is kicking off per week of product reveals with the announcement of “Collabs,” a brand new characteristic that lets two users collectively share possession of a single feed submit or Reel. Tomorrow, it’s following this up by testing a brand new manner so as to add a nonprofit fundraiser to a submit, and lastly on Thursday it’s rolling out the flexibility to create photograph and video posts on desktop, in addition to launching new music-focused results for Reels.
The brand new Collabs characteristic successfully permits two accounts to co-author a submit or Reel. The submit or Reel will seem collectively to every consumer’s followers and will share the identical remark thread, in addition to view and like counts. Collabs are enabled from the tagging display, after which the second account will have to just accept the invite.
The service can also be rolling out the flexibility for users to submit pictures and movies from desktop browsers on Thursday, following a limited test earlier this year. This may sound like a really fundamental characteristic to solely now be coming to desktop, however Instagram’s desktop performance has traditionally lagged nicely behind what’s doable on its apps. It solely added DMs to the browser last year, for instance.
Lastly, there are a few minor options additionally coming this week. Tomorrow, Instagram will begin testing a brand new solution to create fundraisers in posts, which will be accessible after tapping the “+” button on the highest proper of its interface. There are additionally a pair of recent music-focused options coming to Reels on Thursday. Superbeat provides results to a video to the beat of a music, whereas Dynamic and 3D lyrics provide a extra fascinating solution to show music lyrics throughout a video.


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| July 16, 2017, 6:58 p.m.
New Delhi: After all the ongoing talks about this Bollywood Diva and Indian cricket star, the alleged lovers were recently spotted in a grocery store in New York City.
Where Anushka Sharma flew to NYC for IIFA 2017, Virat Kohli, on the other hand, reached out for his lady love, having a little vacay time with her in New York meanwhile.
Anushka, dressed in a casual off-shoulder dress and white shoes had a serious look, staring at Virat, relating to the picture of them in a supermarket.
The 'Jab Harry Met Sejal' actress, with rumoured beau Virat are undoubtedly, on a lovely vacation!
July 16, 2017, 6:58 p.m.


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American e-commerce company Amazon has finally stopped selling the Islamic State's (Isis) propaganda magazine Dabiq two weeks after it mysteriously appeared on its website for sale.
Copies of Dabiq, the terror group's official publication released online, were sold on Amazon sites in the US, France, Germany, Italy and Spain for the last two weeks, Daily Mail UK reported. On Saturday, finally the Seattle-based e-commerce giant decided to withdraw it from sale.
Isis is considered a terrorist group in most of the countries. Israel National News, on the other hand, pointed out that Amazon might have sold thousands of copies of the Dabiq across Europe in the last two weeks.
Amazon now has told BBC that it has removed the terror group's publication from its websites. The Dabiq magazine, in which the ISIS justified the beheading of foreign nationals and rape of Yazidi sex slave girls, was being sold for $10 in the United States, while in the United Kingdom it was priced at £27.
Amazon was also giving buyers the option of gift wrapping the terrorist organisation's propaganda magazine. The Isis is listed as a terrorist group by 14 countries, besides the United Nations and the European Union.
The online retailer, however, does not explain on how the Isis managed to put up its propaganda magazine on Amazon's website, which listed Al Hayat Medi Centre -- the English media wing of Isis -- as the author. Its seller was CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, an Amazon company which allows people to create, publish and distribute books for free.
Before finally Amazon decided to take the terror group's magazine off it shelves, many users used the 'Customer Reviews' section of the listings pages to express their outrage.
One Amazon user wrote: "Islamic State propaganda??? This is better to use as toilet paper..."
Another simply posted rather sarcastically: "Seriously?!!"
The name of the magazine - Dabiq - is taken from a Syrian town which, as per the Islamic mythology, will be the final battle ground during the Apocalypse.


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Japan's Marubeni stops some new soybean sales to China amid trade dispute
By Yuka Obayashi and Hallie Gu TOKYO (Reuters) - Marubeni Corp said on Friday that its U.S.-based unit, Columbia Grain Trading Inc, has stopped all new soybean sales to China because falling sales volumes to the country due to the trade war with the United States have cut earnings. The move highlights the growing impact of the trade dispute between the United States and China even after Beijing agreed to a potential removal of tariffs on some soybean imports. Columbia Grain Trading stopped new sales from July 24, a spokesman at Marubeni, one of Japan's biggest trading houses, told Reuters
By Yuka Obayashi and Hallie Gu
TOKYO (Reuters) - Marubeni Corp <8002.T> said on Friday that its U.S.-based unit, Columbia Grain Trading Inc, has stopped all new soybean sales to China because falling sales volumes to the country due to the trade war with the United States have cut earnings.
The move highlights the growing impact of the trade dispute between the United States and China even after Beijing agreed to a potential removal of tariffs on some soybean imports.
Columbia Grain Trading stopped new sales from July 24, a spokesman at Marubeni, one of Japan's biggest trading houses, told Reuters.
The decision does not impact other Marubeni units such as Gavilon involved in trading grains, including soybeans to China, and their business continues as normal, the spokesman said.
There are no plans to shut down Columbia Grain Trading, the spokesman said.
The suspension was likely aimed at reducing Marubeni's risk exposure at a complicated time for the grains trading business, two traders familiar with Marubeni's operations said.
Most of the sales to China by New York-based Columbia Grain Trading include a freight commitment, a riskier business than that of Marubeni's Portland, Oregon-based Columbia Grain International unit, most of whose sales transfer ownership to the buyer as soon as the grain is loaded for export, the traders said.
China was the top buyer of U.S. soybeans until Beijing slapped a 25% tariff on shipments in response to U.S. tariffs on a range of Chinese products.
That all but halted U.S. soybean imports, dealing a blow to American farmers and traders of the oilseed across the sector.
But as talks have restarted between the U.S. and China on trying to resolve their issues, Beijing indicated it would allow exemptions to the soybean tariffs for some cargoes arriving before the end of the year.
China's demand for soybeans crushed into livestock feed has decreased dramatically in recent months as African swine fever swept across the country, resulting in the death or culling of millions of pigs.
China brought in 16.6 million tonnes of soybeans from the United States in 2018, about half of the 32.9 million tonnes purchased the year before, as the tariffs curbed buying.
Marubeni executives have said slumping grain prices and shrinking trading volumes weighed on the company's U.S. grain business because of the trade war.
(Reporting by Yuka Obayashi in TOKYO, Hallie Gu in BEIJING and Karl Plume in CHICAGO; Writing by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Christian Schmollinger)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Robin Emmott and John Irish | BRUSSELS/PARIS BRUSSELS/PARIS France and Germany will agree to a U.S. plan for NATO to take a bigger role in the fight against Islamic militants at a meeting with President Donald Trump on Thursday, but insist the move is purely symbolic, four senior European diplomats said.The decision to allow the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to join the coalition against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq follows weeks of pressure on the two allies, who are wary of NATO confronting Russia in Syria and of alienating Arab countries who see NATO as pushing a pro-Western agenda."NATO as an institution will join the coalition," said one senior diplomat involved in the discussions. "The question is whether this just a symbolic gesture to the United States
BEIJING Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday called for greater efforts to make the country's navy a world class one, strong in operations on, below and above the surface, as it steps up its ability to project power far from its shores.China's navy has taken an increasingly prominent role in recent months, with a rising star admiral taking command, its first aircraft carrier sailing around self-ruled Taiwan and a new aircraft carrier launched last month.With President Donald Trump promising a US shipbuilding spree and unnerving Beijing with his unpredictable approach on hot button issues including Taiwan and the South and East China Seas, China is pushing to narrow the gap with the U.S. Navy.Inspecting navy headquarters, Xi said the navy should "aim for the top ranks in the world", the Defence Ministry said in a statement about his visit."Building a strong and modern navy is an important mark of a top ranking global military," the ministry paraphrased Xi as saying.


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Joyent is pitching its Joyent Cloud as a faster, cheaper platform that will give customers more insight into their cloud-based operations than the incumbent leader Amazon.
The new-and-improved Joyent Cloud, announced Thursday, builds atop the company’s rethought SmartDataCenter 6 management technology and adds more business analytics to help corporate customers get a better handle on what’s actually going on in their cloud-based infrastructure. One criticism of Amazon (s amzn) is that its cloud services are something of a black box; the company doesn’t make it easy for customers to see what’s happening in its cloud. Many rely on third parties like RightScale for dashboard views into the inner workings of their EC2 operations.
Smaller cloud players like Joyent can compete well on those types of value-added services but have a long way to go to equal Amazon when it comes to sheer scale, said Carl Brooks, infrastructure analyst with Tier 1 Research, a division of The 451 Group.
Joyent claims its SmartOS SmartMachines technology can cram more computing onto less hardware and deliver 14 times faster speeds than a similar Amazon EC2 instance. Joyent compares the new utility pricing of its offering to Amazon EC2 here.
Joyent Cloud claims some big customers, including business-focused social networking site LinkedIn. (s lnkd)
Image courtesy of Flickr user Iwan Gabovitch.


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LAS VEGAS – Late last week, the World Food Championships announced a continued partnership with Wright Brand bacon, a Tyson Foods product, as the title sponsor for the Bacon World Championship as part of its 2014 World Food Championships, which will be held in Las Vegas from Nov. 12-18.
The 2014 World Food Championships will feature the world's best cooks and chefs, pitting "Joes" and "pros" on an equal playing field to battle it out for hundreds of thousands of dollars and the title of the World Food Champion. Following a tournament-style format across nine food categories – BBQ, chili, burger, sandwich, recipe, dessert, bacon, pasta and seafood – competitors will compete for a chance to claim the title of World Food Champion and the event's $100,000 grand prize.
"We are excited to welcome Wright Brand bacon back into our culinary mix of partners in Las Vegas," said Mike McCloud, president of the World Food Championships. "Wright brand bacon's premium products are versatile and known for their quality, which makes them a perfect fit for our competitors at the World Food Championships."
Wright Brand bacon, as title sponsor, will award $25,000 in total category prize money to the best culinary amateurs and pros competing in the Bacon World Championship, the culinary competition dedicated solely to bacon. This product will also be featured in the pantries of all category competitions and served to the attending public throughout the competition week.
"The World Food Championships partnership with Wright brand bacon will place a global spotlight on one of the most unifying themes of our time: our love of bacon," said Keith Barber, director of marketing for Wright brand bacon. "This November, Las Vegas will host bacondom's very best and brightest in their pursuit of the ultimate title of Bacon World Champion. As the bigger, better bacon, we are proud to support and celebrate these bacon visionaries in their delicious quest."
Wright Brand products include hams, smoked ribs, brisket, sausage and bacon. Wright Brand bacon is made from premium pork bellies, slow smoked with natural hardwoods for eight hours, using a 90-year old proprietary curing recipe.


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Apple hires Josh Elman to work on its App store discovery feature. Josh is a Venture capitalist and was also the vice president of the very popular trading app Robinhood. On Monday, he tweeted, “2/ I’m joining Apple to work on @AppStore and help customers discover the best apps for them.” Reports from the Bloomberg quint and The verge also suggests that his presence might help Apple improve its relations with developers.
About Josh Elman
Josh Elman is very well known for his investment journey in Discord and TikTok. He was also a board member at Greylock partners, Discord and Medium the positions that he quit as he joins Apple’s app store team. Elman is also the former vice president of Robinhood (a stock-trading app). With a great personality, a lot of experience and passion, the presence of Josh will bring in a lot of positives for Apple.
Apple’s motive behind hiring Josh
As of now, we know that Apple has hired Josh to improve app discovery for customers. But there can be a lot more to the story as is always the case with Apple. Elman has an excellent understanding of apps and has a clear picture of the apps that can perform well. Apple can use it to their benefits and promote the recommended software by him.
Additionally, Josh is also an investor in the chat app houseparty acquired by Epic games. And we all know the legal battle going on between Apple and the company. This shows that maybe Josh can help these companies come to a mutual understanding. Do note that these are all speculations and Josh might not even work on developers relations and similar stuff.
Apple’s increasing focus on the AppStore
Apple has faced a lot of backlash regarding the 30% commission cut that they charge from developers. But, the fact that after all the legal wars and online protests from developers they finally backed down and reduced the commission fees to 15%. However, it is applicable only if the yearly gross revenue is less than $1 million. And now bring Josh aboard the App store team, might help apple even more.
What re your thoughts on the fact that Apple hires Josh Elman to work on the App store? Let us know in the comments below. Also, if you found our content informative, do like and share it with your friends.


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BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Leaders with the New York Restaurant Association say a new survey shows a majority of New Yorkers want the alcohol take-out and delivery rule for restaurants to stay in effect, even after the pandemic ends.
Right now, that rule is set to expire on June 5. It’s already been extended several times.
The statewide poll involved 700 people and was done between May 14 and May 20.
The results showed 78% of New Yorkers favor permanently allowing alcoholic beverages to be purchased with takeout or delivery orders from restaurants.
Leaders with the New York Restaurant Association say the industry needs stability, and “alcohol-to-go” will help encourage a strong recovery.
“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, struggling restaurants were able to boost sales and keep doors open through the ability of selling alcoholic beverages with their orders,” said Melissa Fleischut, President and CEO of the New York State Restaurant Association. “The same relief that was once needed at the height of the pandemic is still needed now. The restaurant industry needs stability now more than ever, and by making ‘alcohol-to-go’ permanent we can encourage a strong recovery. It’s popular with operators and customers alike. The numbers don’t lie.”
Here are some key findings from the survey:
- The regional breakdown of those who support alcohol-to-go remains strong throughout the state.
- In New York City, 81% of respondents are in favor
- On Long Island, 79% of respondents are in favor
- In Upstate New York, 72% of respondents are in favor
- In the New York City suburbs (Nassau, Rockland, Suffolk and Westchester Counties), 83% of respondents are in favor
- Overall, 96% of New Yorkers who have purchased alcohol-to-go with takeout or a food delivery say they are in strong support of the executive order becoming permanent. Of those respondents, they’ve ordered alcohol-to-go an average of nearly 13 times in the last year, and 71% have ordered an alcoholic beverage to go in the last month.
- New Yorkers also recognize the role restaurants play in communities — 91% believe restaurants are an important part of our community’s character and local economy, and helping our restaurant industry should be a high priority for state leaders.


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When asked when fans might be able to expect that next expansion to be announced, Chilton simply said, “Well, you should pay attention at BlizzCon. See what comes up.”
BlizzCon 2013 will take place on November 9 and 10 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. World of Warcraft’s Patch 5.4: Siege of Orgrimmar will be released on September 10th. For much more on what’s new, see the notes on Blizzard’s official site.
Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.
If you buy something through this post, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, learn more.


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Tourists planning shorter staysLocal | Sophie Hui and Amy Nip 21 Feb 2018
Sophie Hui and Amy Nip
More tourists are expected to visit Hong Kong this year, but their stays will be shorter and they will spend less, according to the Tourism Board.
It projected overall visitor arrivals to go up by 3.6 percent to 60.6 million, including a 4 percent increase in the number of overnight visitors.
However, the average length of visits may be 0.1 night shorter, dropping to 3.1 nights. The average spending per person may also fall 1.5 percent to HK$6,347.
Tourism Board executive director Anthony Lau Chun-hon said changing travel patterns of mainlanders will contribute to the fall in the average length of stay.
He said the length of stay of visitors from long- and short-haul markets has not changed much in the past 10 years.
Since about 70 percent of tourists are from the mainland, this has reduced the average length of stay of overnight visitors, Lau said.
"The only major factor that drives the decrease was mainly mainland China visitors whose stay tend to be shorter than before," he said.
Lau said mainland visitors currently stay an average of 2.5 nights in the city. A decade ago, that average stood at 3.3 nights.
"I think this is because Hong Kong is increasingly becoming more of a short-break destination. I think many mainland visitors who want a break will come over for a long weekend," he said. "In the past, they came here for six, seven days."
As for tourists spending less, Lau said this has to do with a change in shopping behavior.
"People's behavior is changing, they are purchasing less expensive items," he said.
Online shopping is another factor that affects spending, while shorter trips and rising hotel rates also account for reduced spending.
Last year, tourist arrivals increased by 3.2 percent to 58.5 million, ending a decline in the previous two years. Mainland visitors increased by 3.9 percent to 44.4 million, while those from short-haul markets rose 2.9 percent to 8.9 million.
The board received HK$400 million in government funding for the 2018/19 financial year, including recurrent funding of HK$325 million and a one-off approved additional fund of HK$76.5 million.
With the 10th anniversary of the Wine and Dine Festival coming up, the October event will be bigger than ever, with food trucks possibly invited. Following positive responses from "Old Town Central," more district-themed promotions will be launched, starting with Sham Shui Po.