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The nail-biter 2020 presidential election in the United States has a lot of folks scratching their heads. The hemp industry is no exception.
Though the presidential campaigns never talked about the the newly legal crop, the race set up enormous implications for the business landscape faced by the hemp industry. That’s because the main regulators of hemp in the United States – the Departments of Agriculture and Justice and the Food and Drug Administration – all lie within the executive branch.
So the razor-thin count for the White House had hemp operators watching closely. Either outcome promised ongoing uncertainty for an industry desperate to settle on firm rules under which to do business.
Making matters worse for the hemp industry, Congress appeared likely to remain divided into 2021, with a Democratic House and Republican Senate. Though lawmakers from both parties have been hemp allies in recent years, the industry has gotten little help from a legislative branch mired in partisan rancor.
Hemp Industry Daily talked to large and small industry operators and observers this week to find the areas where hemp entrepreneurs are looking for answers. Here are five of the biggest looming questions – and one election outcome that gives folks hope that regulatory certainty for the industry isn’t as distant as it may appear.
Who’s in charge?
The presidency was quite naturally the biggest question on the minds of hemp operators.
President Donald Trump signed into law the watershed 2018 Farm Bill that took hemp out of the Controlled Substances Act and allowed the industry to come out of a patchwork of state-level trials with the crop. At the same time, hemp operators have been frustrated over the past two years with slow-moving executive agencies led by Trump appointees.
“We have to have a clear-cut path on where we’re going, regardless of who wins,” said Jackson Garth, vice president for sales and marketing at Verde Leaf, a hemp producer and CBD manufacturer in Atlanta.
Talking to Hemp Industry Daily while his home state was still counting ballots, Garth said that uncertainty chills the kind of investment needed to grow the hemp industry.
“When you’ve got this lack of leadership, you’ve also got a lack of compliance, a lack of sales channels. People say, ‘You know what? It’s not worth the risk. I’m not risking my farm right now,’ and they’re going to stay out. So that means our industry never really develops because there’s no infrastructure.”
What about the farm rules?
The U.S. Department of Agriculture floated a nationwide set of hemp regulations to replace the patchwork of state-level hemp laws in late 2019. States were given a year to comply.
But as the pandemic took hold in early 2020, states complained they needed more time – while hemp farmers and activists complained that some aspects of the rules would hobble the nascent industry. Weeks before the nationwide framework was to take effect this fall, the USDA backpedaled and gave states another year, thanks to a last-minute requirement from Congress. The agency still hasn’t said whether it will make changes to unpopular areas in the national rules, notably the crop sampling and testing rules.
The election gave the industry no answers. Even if Trump remains president for another term, changes in Cabinet leadership are common, and the administration has given no signal what might change in its hemp rules. So hemp farmers making plans for a 2021 crop are preparing for the possibility of more shifts and back-tracking from the USDA.
What about CBD?
The largest sector of the hemp industry by market value – CBD – also faces the most regulatory uncertainty. Here too, the election has raised new questions about CBD’s future.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given nothing but mixed messages on the extract. The agency says CBD can’t be sold outside of pharmaceutical channels, but has done little to enforce that position even as thousands of over-the-counter CBD brands popped up, many sold alongside prescription medications in pharmacies.
Complicating the picture, FDA leaders have said they’re open to considering over-the-counter CBD sales but have given no details. The agency took public testimony on the question, invited researchers to submit data about it, and then did nothing.
The FDA says it has sent proposed guidelines to the White House for final review, but has kept those recommendations secret and given no public indication when to expect them.
The FDA is rightly preoccupied with a pandemic that has claimed more than 200,000 American lives. That leaves the CBD industry with nothing but questions about the future of the industry.
Market analytics giant Nielsen Global Connect recently projected that CBD sales in the U.S. would reach $2 billion this year and grow to $6.9 billion by 2025 – assuming the FDA gives producers some clarity on the regulations. That’s a dicey assumption for entrepreneurs considering investments in a market that remains shrouded in uncertainty.
Jonathan Havens, an attorney who specializes in food and drug law, warned that the looming FDA CBD regulations probably won’t answer the industry’s questions even when they’re released.
“This enforcement policy at best will be biding time, but (is) not at all a permanent solution. And I certainly don’t think it’s going to be a panacea,” he said.
What about the DEA?
There’s no agency more hated by cannabis entrepreneurs – both hemp and marijuana – than the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, part of the Justice Department.
The DEA raised hemp hackles considerably this summer when it laid out some rules for hemp extracts that would criminalize common extraction methods by saying that hemp byproducts become illegal substances if their THC levels spike at any point during manufacturing.
The rule is being challenged in court by the Hemp Industries Association and a South Carolina CBD maker. And the DEA has yet to take action on its extraction rule.
Still, hemp operators are watching nervously. The agency faces the same possibility of leadership change as any other executive branch, and election turmoil does hemp manufacturers no favors.
What about Congress?
If the executive branch is a big question mark for hemp entrepreneurs, the legislative branch isn’t much better.
Hemp operators were dismayed to find that one of their most powerful allies – Democratic House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson – lost this week after 30 years representing rural Minnesota. Peterson sponsored a measure to alleviate the CBD sector’s FDA anxiety by requiring the agency to treat hemp-derived CBD as a dietary supplement.
Peterson’s loss throws into doubt any prospects for passage of CBD legislation during a lame-duck session of Congress. Democrats retained control of the House but haven’t said who would replace Peterson in 2021.
The most prominent hemp advocate in Congress – Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell – won re-election and appeared headed toward remaining in charge of a majority. Still, hemp operators are left asking what kind of pressure McConnell would be willing to exert on executive agencies that stymie hemp growth.
But there’s good news
Despite those five nagging questions for the political future of the hemp industry, activists looking for clues in the 2020 election results have reason to smile.
That’s because the marijuana industry appeared headed for a clean sweep, with voters approving new markets in Arizona, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota that could generate more than $2.5 billion in medical and recreational cannabis sales a year by 2024.
None of those measures has any direct effect on the hemp industry. But they’re a strong indication that the public embraces cannabis reform, giving a spillover boost to low-THC varieties known as hemp.
“People across the country continue to vote in large numbers for cannabis reform,” said Jonathan Miller, attorney for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, which advocates for the industry in Congress. “That’s an encouraging sign.”


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Drive-in restaurant chain Sonic is the latest major company to be the target of a significant data breach.
Fast-food chain Sonic Drive-In, with nearly 3,600 locations in 45 U.S. states has admitted to a data breach affecting a yet-unknown number of payment systems. According to Krebson Security, the data breach could have possibly led to a major sale of millions of stolen credit and debit card details on underground cybercrime forums.
The company has said it is unclear as to just how many restaurants or customers may have been impacted.
A statement from Sonic reads:
We are working to understand the nature and scope of this issue. While law enforcement limits the information we can share, we will communicate additional information as we are able.
In his blog, Brian Krebs revealed he first picked up patterns of a major breach after a pattern of fraudulent transactions on cards previously used at Sonic restaurants. Krebs then cross-referenced a new batch of some five million credit and debit card accounts put up for sale on a underground forum, with banking sources who confirmed they were recently used at Sonic locations.
Upon contacting Sonic, the company soon responded that it was investigating a “potential incident” at store locations.
In responding to Krebs’ security blog, Sonic stated:
Our credit card processor informed us last week of unusual activity regarding credit cards used at SONIC… We immediately engaged third-party forensic experts and law enforcement when we heard from our processor. While law enforcement limits the information we can share, we will communicate additional information as we are able.
The hackers are likely to have gained remote access to point-of-sale card machines at Sonic store locations. The incident sees parallels with another major credit breach at fast-food chain Wendy’s. Wendy was having a particularly hard time in fixing the situation as the majority of the breached locations were independently-owned franchises rather than corporate-owned outlets.
‘The Wendy’s breach was extremely costly for card-issuing banks and credit unions, which were forced to continuously re-issue customer cards that kept getting re-compromised every time their customers went back to eat at another Wendy’s,” Krebs explained.
Indeed, some 90% of Sonic locations in the country are also franchised, which leaves room the possibility of another fiasco.
Image credit: Flickr.

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Native Instruments have completely rebuilt their DJ software Traktor from the ground up, as well as doubling the size of their Traktor team. In an email message sent out to tech media, NI’s Director of Products (Traktor) Pedram Faghfouri set to reassure users after a long period of dormancy from the software, explaining that new hardware and software will be coming in 2018.
“The digital DJ market is fast moving and increasingly cluttered with competition. At Native we are passionate about leading genuine change and taking our time to ensure we blend quality, innovation and user functionality.
In 2018 we will unveil new Traktor hardware and software that we believe achieves this goal, and further empowers our global community of professionals and hobbyists.”
It’s been a quiet time for Traktor – besides a small update last week – and NI are clearly biding their time, taking a step back from the busy DJ market to see where they fit in. A lot of what brought users to Traktor – the ability to store thousands of tracks, playlists, analysis and advanced cue and waveform features – were all matched by the CDJ-2000 range, meaning Traktor became more of a ‘performance’ software, for those looking to use four-deck mixing or to expand on the usual A-to-B style DJing.
Although they introduced Stems in 2016, they failed to make the impact NI had hoped, no doubt leaving the company questioning their role and what DJs want from their products.
With Denon and Pioneer DJ both continuing to expand the performance aspects of their product range, it’s no surprise NI have taken their time with the next major Traktor update. The next Traktor will be a complete re-write, moving on from the ‘Pro’ tag, although we’re assured that the current version will continue to be supported. “We will maintain and improve Traktor Pro for several more years until the new Traktor is mature enough, also for our Pro users. There are more updates to Traktor Pro planned in the coming months.”
What Traktor’s new software and hardware will look like is anyone’s guess, but considering they’ve moved away almost completely from jog wheel designs on their most recent controllers, we’re guessing the new versions will be a performance-led unit, with sequencers, MIDI outputs and be designed to be the heart of your electronic music performance, not just DJing.
We’ll have any major news for you as it breaks.


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Jennifer Lopez has been announced as the new face of the TOUS Spring 2011 Ad Campaign. The 41-year-old singer, actress and American Idol judge will be shot by Ellen Von Unwerth in a fun, feminine approach to the whimsical Italian label’s Spring jewelry collections designed by Rosa Tous with her husband Salvador Tous.
Jennifer, who recently got named as first-ever global brand ambassador for Venus razors, said “This is my favorite bear. You know, all girls love diamonds.”
“We are absolutely delighted to have the iconic Jennifer Lopez be the face of TOUS’ Spring campaign,” declares Rosa Tous.
“Jennifer is not just an amazingly beautiful woman, but also a talented actress, musician and dancer sharing with us strong family values as we are a family-owned business” explains Salvador Tous, Honorific President of TOUS. “We are confident that Jennifer Lopez will be a great spokesperson as she is genuine and endlessly charismatic; a great illustration of our brand.”
What do you think about the latest addition in Jennifer’s resume? Share your thoughts with FashionFame.com in comment box below and also don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more latest celebrity news and red carpet fashion updates.


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Snoop Dogg and his son rap in an NFT music video featuring Bored Apes and CryptoPunks as Clay Nation’s iconic clay characters
- Snoop Dogg and his son help create a music video featuring Clay Nation’s clay characters.
- Already, the Cardano NFT project has seen more than 100,000 ADA in trading video since the launch of the video.
- The music video “Bron and Bronny” showcases other OG NFT projects.
The Creation of Bron and Bronny
Snoop Dogg first joined forces with the famous Cardano project Clay Nation and his son in early April this year. Together, they created the music video “Bron and Bronny”.
Clay Nation is no stranger to pairing up with musicians. The flagship Cardano NFT project consisting of 10,000 algorithmically generated clay characters, has been featured by the band Good Charlotte alongside Snoop Dogg in the past.
Nevertheless, only since the launch of Snoop and his son’s NFT music video has Clay Nation become the third-largest Cardano NFT project with more than 100,000 ADA in trading volume.
What the NFT Music Video Brings
As you can see, in the NFT music video above, Clay Nation turns Snoop and his son, Champ Medici, into its iconic clay characters shown on its NFT projects. As clay figures, they then venture into the world of Web3.
Moreover, Snoop and his son—otherwise known as Bron and Bronny in the music video—partake in an iconic rap duo. Following this, they bump into the ever-so-famous co-founder of Cardano, Charles Hopkins, who’s also clay, just like themselves.
Throughout the video, you can quickly grasp which character is Snoop. However, Champ Medici and Charles Hopkins appear in IRL and clay motion sequences featuring iconic NFT projects Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks and Clay Nation itself.
Nevertheless, you’ll soon guess who’s who, thanks to context clues.
Listening to the music video’s lyrics is also a massive giveaway.
Subscribe to the NFT Lately newsletter to receive news covering the latest NFT-related drops, releases, reviews, and more.


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It won’t come as a surprise that Microsoft engineers are keenly interested in who’ll be the company’s next CEO. So when board member and search committee member John Thompson said that he expects the job will be filled early next year, it created quite a stir.
It shouldn’t have.
Microsoft’s $7.5 billion buyout deal of Nokia’s devices and services business isn’t expected to close until the first quarter. If you believe the speculation that Microsoft will name the device-maker’s former CEO Stephen Elop as its new chief, it will have to wait until that billion-dollar deal closes. In the meantime, Elop is serving a dual role at both companies: Executive vice president of devices and services.
Why Elop and why wait for the close?
Despite reports that Elop has fallen off Microsoft’s short list, there are a number of reasons that he’s likely still on it, according to a Dice News source familiar with the software giant’s thinking:
- Microsoft’s Business Division accounts for the largest slice of its revenues, $24.7 billion in fiscal 2013. Elop served as its president from 2008 to 2010, when he left to become Nokia CEO. “Look where Microsoft makes it money. They’re not going to put it in jeopardy with a car guy,” says the source, referring to talk that Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally is a front-runner.
- Mobile and cloud computing are two of Redmond’s key initiatives. To address the mobile piece, just look at the Nokia deal. Who led Nokia as CEO? Elop. Although the company’s performance didn’t dramatically improve under him, its business had the right mix of what Microsoft was looking for.
Still, why wait until the Nokia deal closes? One big reason comes to mind: What if the agreement hits a snag and doesn’t close? The value-add that Elop brings to the table with his knowledge of the mobile space — particularly as it relates to Microsoft’s major smartphone partner Nokia — will be diminished. Elop may also wish to return to Nokia as its CEO. Microsoft has cleared two major hurdles in clearing the transaction: gaining Nokia shareholder approval and regulatory approval in both the U.S. and Europe.


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The World Travel Awards (WTA) have selected Peru as the World's Leading Culinary Destination for the sixth consecutive year. Plus, Machu Picchu was recognized as the World's Leading Tourist Attraction.
The voting process is online and a year-long communications campaign encourages global participation. The votes come from qualified executives working within travel and tourism and the consumer travel buyer.
"The recognition we've received as a country is the result of the work carried out to promote our tourism resources and gastronomy," PromPeru Communications and Country Image Director Isabella Falco said.
"These awards put Peru in the spotlight, mainly for the travel industry's elite. Therefore, we will keep working to maintain the lead and further improve the quality of life of those whose well-being depends on the surge of foreign arrivals," she added.
According to a study conducted by PromPeru, Machu Picchu
is the main reason for visiting Peru. However, gastronomy is already one of the motivators for such trip.
The report found that 82% of vacationers visiting the Andean nation identify Peru as a gastronomic destination, and 25% said people in their countries are more familiar with Peruvian cuisine.
As stated by experts, the Peruvian gastronomy
is better placed in the global arena, thus bringing new opportunities to export native products, introduce culinary traditions and keep on innovating Peru's acclaimed fusion cuisine.
PromPeru has been promoting the country with innovative campaigns that were well received by the international community.
Three Peruvian restaurants appear in the World's 50 Best Restaurants list: Central (5th), Maido (8th) and Astrid & Gaston (33rd).
Additionally, the Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants ranking includes ten Peruvian eateries: Maido (1st), Central (2nd), Astrid & Gaston (7th), Osso Carniceria y Salumeria (12th), La Mar (15th), Isolina (21st), Rafael (24th), Malabar (30th), Fiesta (46th) and Amaz (47th).


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Fortune 500 companies plan to use 100% renewable energy
Ten Fortune 500 companies joined the cause for renewable energy.
Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, NIKE, Inc., Procter & Gamble, Salesforce, Starbucks, Steelcase, Voya Financial, and Walmart joined RE100 last September 22, pledging to source 100% of their electricity from renewable energy to reduce CO2 emissions.
RE100 is a global campaign led by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP, to engage, support and showcase influential businesses committed to 100% renewable electricity.
The companies have chosen this year’s Climate Week NYC to unveil their leadership move before senior figures from global business and governments. With December’s COP21 UN climate talks fast approaching, this key milestone event sends a timely reminder to negotiators that leading businesses want strong climate action from governments, while increasing demand for renewables themselves.
America’s business drive to a low carbon economy has been picking up speed recently. Goldman Sachs and Walmart were two of 13 companies in July to commit to reducing their emissions as part of the American Business Act on Climate pledge – and the White House is expected to announce new names next month.
Momentum behind RE100 has also grown globally in the last year. When RE100 was launched one year ago at Climate Week NYC 2014, there were 13 original corporate partners – IKEA Group, Swiss Re, BT Group, Formula E, H&M, KPN, Nestlé, Philips, RELX Group, J. Safra Sarasin, Unilever and YOOX Group – as well as Mars, Incorporated, the first US business on board.
Now 36 major businesses from around the world have joined the campaign, with green desert economy developer Elion Resources Group becoming the first Chinese company in March 2015, followed in May by the first Indian company Information Technology leader Infosys.
Last week saw the addition of Swiss financial services provider UBS, and earlier this week the first science-based participant, Dutch Life Sciences and Materials sciences company Royal DSM.


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VIRTUALLY MOVING IN: Paris and Rome-based creative agency Al Dente has scooped up some of the hottest real estate of 2021 — a plot in the metaverse known as The Sandbox.
Heralding the metaverse as “the next promised land for luxury brands after China” in a statement announcing the acquisition, the agency plans on leveraging its expertise in luxury, fashion and beauty to help brands take their first steps in this virtual landscape.
“Our aim is to embrace the infinite brand experiences and business opportunities,” noted Al Dente’s president and founder Patrizio Miceli, explaining that the agency’s aim was to help its clients “develop their cultural aura in the metaverse” by expanding their consumers’ experiences into this new territory.
While no projects have been confirmed by the creative agency, its roster of clients includes Chanel, Boucheron, Ami Paris, watchmaker Audemars Piguet and LVMH-owned Emilio Pucci, where Miceli’s sister Camille was recently named artistic director.
A blockchain-based gaming world with a retro graphic rendering, The Sandbox describes itself as “an expansive metaverse to play, build, own and monetize your virtual experience.” It is divided into 166,464 pieces called Lands, each an NFT hosted on the public Ethereum blockchain and said to correspond to a physical-world square of 96 meters by 96 meters.
A “3×3 Estate,” like the one purchased by Al Dente for an undisclosed sum, corresponds to 9 Lands totaling a whopping 90,000 square meters (just shy of 1 million square feet), according to Al Dente’s meta-experts. This kind of space is large enough for existing monuments to be re-created at scale.
Created in 2012 as a mobile gaming platform, The Sandbox was acquired in 2018 by Hong Kong-based software company Animoca, who transformed it into its Ethereum-based incarnation. It is considered one of the four leading virtual lands and completed a $93 million funding round led by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank in November.
It recently made headlines after an NFT collector had shelled out a cool $450,000 for a plot in Snoop Dogg’s property, and after Adidas confirmed it was moving there with a tweet asking “AdiVerse anyone? What should we build, together in @TheSandboxGame?”
Businessman and real-world real estate scion Adrian Cheng has personally invested in a chunk of digital land, Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post reported earlier this month.
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Bargain hunters stand in line outside new Lidl store – bringing 40 new jobs to the county
- Credit: Supplied
Dozens of supermarket bargain hunters stood patiently in line at the launch of a new Lidl store in Cambridgeshire.
Pictures show eager shoppers outside the Cambridge Retail Park shop which is one of the four launched today (February 20) - making 800 stores across the UK.
Up to 40 jobs have been created in the region as a result of the store opening and employees will benefit from Lidl's £9.30 hourly wage.
Christian Härtnagel, Lidl GB chief executive officer, said: "We're excited to have reached this milestone of 800 stores.
"It simply means that we're bringing affordable, high quality food to even more households across Britain.
"I'm proud of our fantastic teams, from our colleagues working on the shop floor to our colleagues in the warehouse and across our offices, who have driven our expansion efforts around the country.
"We're looking forward to opening our doors to even more communities this year and into this new decade where we see so much potential for further growth."


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Dupont has tallied up the information, crunched the numbers, and determined that silver and black are neck and neck for the world’s most popular car color, at 26 and 24 percent of the market share, respectively.
White and gray are tied at the three spot with 16 percent each, followed by red, the only non-neutral color in the top five, at six percent.
Only three years ago, silver led the pack globally, being the most popular car color in all regions. With the shift towards automotive globalization, we are starting to see different trends across the world in terms of who prefers what color of car. The neutrals are the dominant color choices however, as silver, black, and white all occupy the top three in most regions of the world.
In North America, white/white pearl has held the top color title for four years in a row using its 21 percent share of the market. Black is close behind in second with 18 percent, beating silver by only one percentage point.
The European market heavily favors the black/black effect coloring of its automobiles with a remarkable 24 percent share. Gray and silver sheepishly take the two and three spot.
In the Asian/Pacific markets however, light neutrals lead the way. Blue has become an increasingly popular car color because of its associations with many of the environmentally friendly concept vehicles that are being produced by manufacturers in the region.
Scroll down for the full press release from Dupont.
Wilmington, Del., December 7, 2010 –Silver and black are in tight competition for the title of “world’s most popular car color,” according to DuPont. As the global automotive coatings leader, DuPont issued its 58th Global Automotive Color Popularity Report today, which includes automotive color popularity information and regional trends from 11 leading automotive regions of the world. Each year, the DuPont report reflects data from established and emerging growth markets in the automotive industry; and in 2010, for the first time, includes trends from South Africa. DuPont’s study is the original and most comprehensive report on global automotive color popularity and remains the first of its kind compiled on a global basis.
Only two percentage points separate silver from black as the leading vehicle color globally, and black’s popularity in key automotive markets outside of North America is substantial. White and gray are tied for third place, with gray’s popularity increasing three percentage points from last year’s survey. Red, the only non-neutral color in the top five, is increasing in popularity, taking the fifth spot on the global color popularity rankings. The top 10 global vehicle colors are as follows:
1. Silver – 26 percent
2. Black/Black Effect – 24 percent
3. White/White Pearl and Gray – 16 percent each (tie)
5. Red – 6 percent
6. Blue – 5 percent
7. Brown/Beige – 3 percent
8. Green – 2 percent
9. Yellow/Gold – 1 percent
10. Others – <1 percent
|Nancy Lockhart, DuPont color marketing manager, presenting the 2010 “Protection of Color” trend show.|
“Our annual global color analysis allows DuPont to share insights into global color trends with automakers as they’re planning future vehicle designs,” said Nancy Lockhart, DuPont color marketing manager. “The demand for fresh, high-quality information is more relevant today than ever before, as the industry continues to see increased consumer demand for innovative vehicle design and styling.”
Just three years ago, silver led all regions in color popularity. With the shift toward more globalization in the automotive industry, regional preferences are influencing the global trend. With trends of silver, black and white – all neutrals – vying for the top three spots among most regions, gray has increased in popularity and is gaining in interest among consumers in many regions. Both silver and black/black effect saw a 1 percent gain in global popularity in the 2010 report, with white remaining flat over last year. Gray increased in popularity by three percentage points. While regional preferences remain for red and blue, both have fallen three percentage points this year over last. DuPont analysts continue to see a trend toward brown and beige increasing in popularity as well.
Differentiated Regional Markets In North America, white/white pearl retained its lead for the fourth year in a row, with 21 percent popularity share. DuPont experts say this largely reflects the preferences of the fleet and light truck and sport utility vehicle (SUV) markets in North America. Black/black effect beat silver by one percentage point, for the No. 2 spot, with 18 percent popularity. Gray saw a 2 percent increase over last year, and now has a stronghold, in fourth place for the region. Rounding out the top five is red with 11 percent popularity.
Black/black effect lead the compact/sport and luxury/luxury SUV categories in North America, while white/white pearl lead the truck/SUV category. Not surprising, silver leads by just one percentage point over black/black effect for the intermediate/crossover utility vehicle (CUV) segment in the North American market.
European trends this year show black/black effect leading overall, across nearly all vehicle categories, with 24 percent. Gray is five percentage points behind with 19 percent, and silver has fallen to 17 percent popularity in Europe.
The exception of black/black effect’s lead in Europe is within the intermediate/multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) segment, which saw gray in the lead by a slight margin. Gray is in the No. 2 spot in the region overall, and within all categories except truck/SUV, where white leads by just four percentage points.
“Even though neutrals lead the color popularity for the European region, we’re still seeing consumer willingness and preference to showcase a chromatic hue as a form of personal expression,” said Elke Dirks, DuPont color designer for Europe. “The volume of blue hues for vehicles has been constantly decreasing over the last years, but it is still the No. 1 chroma color for all vehicle segments in Europe and will have increasing potential for the future,” she said.
In Mexico, there was no change among the top three colors since 2009, but black/black effect increased four percentage points to tie with white at 22 percent in the market, while silver remained in third place at 18 percent. Gray and red finish the top five colors of choice for the region, with 11 percent popularity each. Also, brown/beige saw a significant increase in the region, representing 5 percent of the Mexican market.
In South America, silver reigns with 33 percent of the market, 10 percentage points ahead of black in the region. White and gray tie for a distant third, each with just 13 percent of the region’s popularity, while red (9 percent) completes the top five.
Specific to Brazil, silver leads the country with 34 percent popularity, garnering the largest percentage in popularity of any of the regions/countries reviewed in the report. Black is 10 percent behind at 24 percent, and white stands in the third spot with 13 percent.
In the Asia/Pacific region, light neutrals lead in popularity, while black/black effect are popular for luxury models in the region. “The concept of ‘Think Blue’ has developed industrywide, as OEMs strive for green vehicles and concept designs,” said Emily Hung, DuPont color designer for the Asia-Pacific region. “Light blue metallic colors are widely selected for environmentally responsible concept vehicles by many auto manufacturers in the region.”
China finds silver in the lead in this year’s report, with 33 percent share in popularity. Meanwhile, black is back, increasing 8 percentage points over last year to garner a close second place spot in the region with 31 percent share. Gray holds the No. 3 position with 18 percent, with white (9 percent) and red (4 percent) in fourth and fifth places respectively.
Japan maintained white/white pearl as its top color choice for vehicles, continuing at 28 percent of total market share. In the region, white pearl is often preferred for the small/compact vehicle segment. Silver held its second place rank with 24 percent and black was just behind with 22 percent of the market. Blue increased in popularity in the region by two percentage points, with an overall 10 percent popularity share for fourth place. Light purple metallic is also new for the region, and is becoming a trendy option for small/compact and intermediate vehicle segments.
In India, white is the leading color choice for vehicles, with 29 percent share in the market. Silver is just five percentage points back, at 24 percent. However, in a first among the regions surveyed, brown/beige (11 percent) is in third place for the Indian market. Gray and black follow at 9 and 8 percent respectively. Black/black effect (8 percent) is lowest in the ranks in India among all of the regions, with a fifth place finish.
South Korea’s affinity for silver (33 percent) for intermediate vehicles and black/black effect (26 percent) for luxury vehicles continued this year, ranking one and two, but white (18 percent) and gray (14 percent) continue to gain in popularity over the 2009 report.
South Africa and Russia – Growth Markets Important for Color Choice
The substantial growth of the automotive industry in South Africa was the impetus for its inclusion in this year’s report. White was overwhelmingly the most popular vehicle color choice in the region, at 35 percent, which is the highest percentage of any region covered in the report. Silver (24 percent) takes second and black/black effect combine for 14 percent. Another growth region, Russia, maintained black/black effect (21 percent) as its most popular hue, with silver and gray nearly tied for second place in the region. White vehicles in Russia account for just 16 percent of the market. Also of interest, the preference for green vehicles in Russia is 11 percent, the color’s only rank within the top five in this year’s report.
This new Porsche Experience Center Atlanta track has been designed by Tilke (of Formula 1 fame), offering four distinct driver modules.
Automobili Lamborghini has announced the launch of its first hybrid super sports car, the Lamborghini Revuelto, marking a new era for the marque.
Round 1 saw it’s fair share of returning racers and newcomers to Spec MX-5 Challenge, with Wyatt Couch pull ahead of the field.
Porsche’s flagship sports car, the 911, is set to receive a major upgrade with an electric introduction; enter the Porsche 911 Hybrid.
More details have been revealed on the Lamborghini LB744 Hybrid Hypercar, featuring a 6.5-liter naturally aspirated V12 mid-engine, three electric motors, and a new lithium-ion battery.


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Auto sales in the U.S. appear to be trending up, however, in China they’re up and running with General Motors seeing the benefits, reporting a 12% jump in its third quarter — its first positive report in two years.
The company reported Monday that it delivered 771,400 vehicles in China – it’s biggest market – where it sells Buick, Cadillac and Chevrolet-branded vehicles. Buick’s sales rose 26% during the quarter and Cadillac enjoyed a 28%. Chevrolet was dark spot, sales falling 20% during the period.
GM said sales of luxury vehicles, sport-utility and multi-purpose vehicles were strong during the quarter, citing the Buick Envision and GL8 as well as Cadillac XT5 as examples. The company also produces vehicles in partnership with Chinese-based makers. The Wuling brand saw an increase of 26% while Baojun saw its sales fall 19 percent.
The company is also trying to meet China’s demand for new energy vehicles, or NEVs, launching 10 models. The Chinese government has been offering subsidies to get more buyers for the zero-emissions offerings since sales have started to pick up in earnest after the impact of the pandemic in China.
GM’s NEV line-up includes the Buick Velite 7 all-electric SUV, Velite 6 plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) and Wuling Hong Guang Mini EV introduced in July. Its NEV sales more than doubled in the first nine months from a year earlier. In the next five years, more than 40% of GM’s new launches in China will be NEVs, in line with GM’s global move to create a zero-emissions future.
A big share of that is due the aforementioned Wuling Mini, which debuted this summer and starts at just 28,800 yuan, or about $4,200. Demand for the Mini has turned the market upside-down, last month knocking Tesla off its perch as the country’s best-selling battery-electric vehicle, or BEV.
The price tag is the main driver of its appeal as the former top-selling Model 3 is nearly 10x more expensive, starting at about $45,750 in China. Buyers of the Mini can enough options to push the price past the $6K mark. It travels about 125 miles on a single charge, which lags the Model 3 which can travel at least 250 miles.
However, part of the problem that China’s had with getting people to buy EVs is the price and not the range. Most Chinese drivers – much like their American counterparts – travel much less than that. In fact, they tend to drive even less than U.S. drivers on a daily basis.
The Wuling brand has traditionally targeted China’s most budget-limited buyers with products like the Dragon cabover microvan. For many customers, these serve as work vehicles by day and personal transport at night and during the weekend. The Mini, however, is being targeted at office workers who need an affordable runabout. The low price helps offset the fact that it doesn’t qualify for all of the government subsidies that its larger, further-driving competition does.
“We positioned this model as a ‘people’s commuting tool,’” Zhou Xing, the branding and marketing director for joint venture SGMW, told Reuters ahead of the Beijing Motor Show. “Customers can drive their cars to work every day.”


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The No. 8 Maryland Terrapins (21-12 overall, 11-9 in the Big Ten) will take on the No. 9 West Virginia Mountaineers (19-14 overall, in the 7-11 Big 12) in the first round of the NCAA tournament on March 16 at Legacy Arena, Birmingham, Alabama.
The game (12:15 p.m. ET start time) will be televised on CBS, but if you don’t have cable, you can watch a live stream on Amazon Prime, Paramount+, FuboTV or DirecTV Stream, which all come with a free trial.
Here’s a full guide on the different ways to you can watch a live stream of West Virginia vs Maryland online for free:
Note: Heavy may earn an affiliate commission if you sign up via a link on this page
Amazon Prime subscribers (Prime comes with a 30-day free trial) can watch a live stream of their local CBS station via the Prime Paramount+ channel (“Premium” plan). You can try both Amazon Prime and the Paramount+ Channel at no cost with a free trial right here:
Once you’re signed up for the Prime Paramount+ Channel, you can watch West Virginia vs Maryland live on the Amazon Video app or Amazon website.
Compatible devices for the Amazon Video app include Roku, Roku TV, Amazon Fire TV or Fire Stick, Apple TV, Chromecast, any device with Android TV (such as a Sony TV or Nvidia Shield), Xbox One or Series X/S, PlayStation 4 or 5, various smart TV’s, Xiaomi, Echo Show or Echo Spot, iPhone, Android phone, iPad or Android tablet.
This is ultimately the same as the Amazon Prime option above, only you’ll watch on Paramount’s digital platforms instead of Amazon’s. You can watch your local CBS channel live via Paramount+ (“Premium” plan), which comes with a free trial:
Once signed up for Paramount+, you can watch West Virginia vs Maryland live on the Paramount+ app or Paramount+ website.
Compatible devices for the Paramount+ app include Roku, Roku TV, Amazon Fire TV or Firestick, Apple TV, Chromecast, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Samsung Smart TV, any device with Android TV (such as a Sony TV or Nvidia Shield), iPhone, Android phone, iPad or Android tablet.
You can watch a live stream of CBS and 100-plus other live TV channels on FuboTV, which comes with a free seven-day trial:
Once signed up for FuboTV, you can watch West Virginia vs Maryland live on the FuboTV app or FuboTV website.
Compatible devices for the FuboTV app include Roku, Roku TV, Amazon Fire TV or Fire Stick, Apple TV, Chromecast, Xbox One or Series X/S, Samsung TV, LG TV, any device with Android TV (such as a Sony TV or Nvidia Shield), iPhone, Android phone, iPad or Android tablet.
DirecTV Stream has four different channel packages: “Entertainment,” “Choice,” “Ultimate” and “Premier.” CBS is included in every one, but you can pick any package and any add-on you want with your free five-day trial:
Once signed up for DirecTV Stream, you can watch West Virginia vs Maryland live on the DirecTV Stream app or DirecTV Stream website.
Compatible devices for the DirecTV Stream app include Roku, Roku TV, Amazon Fire TV or Fire Stick, Apple TV, Chromecast, Samsung TV, any device with Android TV (such as a Sony TV or Nvidia Shield), iPhone, Android phone, iPad or Android tablet.
West Virginia vs Maryland Preview
The Terps are led by senior guard Jahmir Young, who is averaging 16.1 points, 4.7 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game. Two other seniors, guard Hakim Hart and forward Donta Scott, are netting 11.5 points apiece per contest. Maryland is allowing just 63.2 points per game on defense, also holding opponents to 32.1% shooting from beyond the arc.
The Terrapins fell to Indiana in the Big Ten quarterfinals, losing 60-70. Maryland hit just 20 of 62 shots from the field (32.3%) in the loss and while it was a tad better from distance (37.5% on 9-of-24 attempts), the Terms can’t afford to have another poor shooting performance in the opening round.
“Your first one is really important for a lot of reasons,” Maryland head coach Kevin Willard said, per NBC Sports. “One of the main reasons is you have a lot of kids that haven’t been here before, so their reaction and their emotions and their feelings (are) great, it’s awesome. It’s great momentum for the program moving forward.”
On the other side, West Virginia fell to top-seeded Kansas in the Big 12 quarterfinals, losing 61-78. WVU went 25-of-56 from the floor (44.6%) and 4-of-19 from downtown (21.1%) in the loss.
The Mountaineers are led by senior guard Erik Stevenson, who is scoring 15.5 points and 3.5 boards per game. Tre Mitchell (11.6 points and 5.5 rebounds a game) is second on the team in scoring and Kendrian Johnson (11.2 points a game) is third. WVU is averaging 76.3 points a game on offense while shooting 45.3% from the field.
Both teams are fairly evenly matched in this one, with balanced scoring attacks and solid defenses to boot. It should be a hard-fought and entertaining contest.
“I think at this time of the year, one, your guys understand it’s one and done, which I think they’re more attentive and they play harder and so on and so forth, Mountaineers head coach Bob Huggins said. “At that time of the year, that’s something that they look forward to. We have a lot of guys that have played a lot of ball, that have never played in an NCAA Tournament.”
The winner of this game will move on to face the winner of the No. 1 seed Alabama-vs-Texas A&M Corpus Cristi matchup. Maryland trails the all-time series against West Virginia, 24-14. These two teams last met in the tourney in 2015, when WVU won, 69-59.


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President-Elect Donald Trump has threatened to impose a hefty border tax on any cars that German manufacturer builds in Mexico, according to a report from Reuters. In an interview with German newspaper Bild, Trump warned that the United States would impose a tax of 35 percent on any vehicles built at their new Mexican plant which were brought across the border for sale.
The border tax threat comes one week after BMW confirmed their commitment to building their new plant in Mexico. According to The Independent, BMW was aware that they might face threats of a new tax from the President-Elect, who made similar threats to General Motors at the beginning of the month. General Motors also manufactures vehicles in Mexico, and Trump took to Twitter to issue his ultimatum.
“General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to US car dealers-tax free across border. Make in USA or pay big border tax!”
Ian Robertson, a sales and marketing director with BMW, responded that the firm was “absolutely committed” to its new Mexican plant, and pointed out that not only did BMW build vehicles worldwide, it’s business as usual for the German company to expand their operations as they sell more cars.
“I don’t think there’s any discussion that BMW is not at home in the United States. Yes, we are building a plant in Mexico. Yes, we built a plant in Brazil last year. Yes, we are building plants in other parts of the world as our capacity increases. But that’s part of a normal strategic manufacturing direction.”
According to BMW, the plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico will build the BMW 3 Series starting from 2019 and is an expansion of existing 3 Series facilities in Germany and China. Trump, however, said that BMW should build their new factory in America, suggesting that it would be “much better” for BMW. He added that Germany was a great car manufacturer, which he said was evidenced by the number of Mercedes Benz vehicles to be seen in New York, but claimed that there was no reciprocity with America because Germans weren’t buying Chevrolets at the same rate.
BMW, meanwhile, noted that they also planned to invest $1 billion in their South Carolina plant, and that BMW is the largest exporter of vehicles from America by value. Another BMW spokesperson said that BMW was “very much at home in the U.S.,” pointing out that they employ some 70,000 Americans.
While German manufacturers appear unmoved, the President-Elect’s threats seem to have hit home with American car companies. Following Trump’s tweet at General Motors, Ford announced that it was stepping back from its plans to build a $1.6 billion, 2,800 job plant in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, and would instead invest an additional $700 million in a Michigan plant, adding 700 jobs. Ford’s chief executive, Mark Fields, said that the decision was made partly due to falling sales, but also as a “vote of confidence” in Trump’s expressed industry policies. Fiat Chrysler also announced its intention to modernize two plants in Ohio and Michigan, at a cost of $1 billion, and move the production of three Jeep models back to America, adding an estimated 2,000 jobs. Chrysler also said that they were considering bringing production of a heavy-duty Dodge Ram truck back from Mexico.
It is also worth mentioning that Trump’s tweet caused an instant hit to GM’s stock prices, which continue to trend downward as of the time of publishing, and that BMW shares have also been on a downward trend since reaffirming their decision to build the Mexico plant.
[Featured Image by Miguel Villagran/Getty Images]


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The ultra-premium British brand has started this week to hand over the first Bentayga SUVs to customers, during an exclusive event at Bentley’s global headquarters in Crewe.
The worldwide deliveries of Bentley’s very first ever full-luxury SUV has begun this week, thus reaching a major milestone in the automaker’s history, as the brand has high hopes for the Bentayga in terms of sales volume. Taking more than 130 hours to produce each car, the world’s fastest, most luxurious and most expensive SUV is built in Crewe, UK, alongside the Continental GT, Flying Spur and Mulsanne. Volkswagen’s exclusive division marked this moment with a special event, allowing guest to take a tour of Bentley’s factory to see how the model takes shape, and meet key people involved in the car’s design, engineering and craftsmanship. Four years on from the initial concept stage car, part of an 840-million-pound investment programme, the Bentayga entered production in late November last year.
Bentayga has under its hood a 6-litre twin turbo W12 engine, being capable of producing a total output of 600 bhp (608 PS). The unit is connected to an 8-speed automatic transmission, and the power is being sent to the four-wheel drive system, which is allowing the luxury cruiser to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.1 seconds. Bentley already raised the pace of its production line in December from 3,600 to 5,500 models this year, but it might be forced to build more Bentaygas in the near future, as it has around 10,000 pre-orders.


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QuickBooks 2009 for Mac coming October 8Intuit next month will begin shipping QuickBooks 2009 for Mac, an overhaul to its small business accounting software redesigned for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard that leverages features such as Spotlight and Cover Flow.
The new release promises much closer functional parity with QuickBooks Pro 2009 for Windows, but will reportedly still lack some important functions like networking (multi-user) support.
One of the new features Intuit plans to tout is a redesigned Super Navigator home page that should make it easier for clients to manage their business by providing flowcharts for Customer, Vendor, and Transaction Centers.
The other major selling point will be something called Company Snapshots, or a unified dashboard offering greater visibility into the performance of a business through expense charts, customer balances, and key reminders. Company snapshots can be printed for consultant engagements and otherwise used to help clients better manage their business.
Outside of those two major features, other changes in QuickBooks 2009 largely center around improvements to pre-existing functions, such as improved iCal integration, and improved usability of Forms and List Views.
The new version will also introduce DirectConnect access for securely downloading bank and credit card transactions, and feature improvements to handling of batch invoicing.
QuickBooks 2009 has a new look and feel Super Navigator homepage.
Although Intuit has yet to issue a press release announcing formal availability, online retailer Amazon.com began taking pre-orders for the $200 software earlier this week, listing a release date of October 8th.
Company Snapshot groups graphs with key financial information.
Meanwhile, Ars noted earlier this week that the radical redesign of Quicken for Mac previewed for AppleInsider over 8 months ago at Macworld 2008 has thus far proven to be vaporware.


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There’s just a matter of months to go until Square Enix releases a new remake of its beloved PlayStation RPG, Star Ocean: The Second Story. It’s not just the game getting a facelift, either, as the company has shared the game’s brand-new opening!
The fresh animation was produced by Yostar Pictures who have previously produced works for Arknights and Blue Archive, while the music, “stellar”, is by the Japanese duo SUIREN. Give it a watch below:
Star Ocean: The Second Story R will launch for the Nintendo Switch on November 2nd, 2023.


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Wine Intelligence awarded the Hugel scion (Etienne) from an impressive list of 30 for their awards for "10 wine industry figures who have made a significant contribution to the business of wine over the past decade - voted for by a panel of 10 leading figures from the global wine industry"
The report of the ceremony during Vinexpo Asia Pacific in Hong Kong here
The info is relayed on Meiningers WBI and the list of nominees is quite impressive: MW's Gérard Basset, Lynn Sherriff and Tim Atkin, but also Robert Parker, Miguel Torres, Ian Harris, Michel Rolland or Eduardo Chadwick... So why me ?
Anyway, my family and friends must be proud, a clear sign of ageing too but I am NOT the oldest in that list ;-)


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After arriving on PC in the fall of 2021, is finally heading to mobile devices. Developer Witch Beam Games revealed today during the showcase that it plans to release its breakout game on phones and tablets later this year. The studio didn’t say exactly when the title would arrive on mobile devices, nor if it plans to release Unpacking on both iOS and Android, but judging from the trailer it shared, Apple devices are a lock.
Hope you all were paying attention during #WholesomeDirect, because we had a pretty big announcement—that’s right, ✨ UNPACKING IS COMING TO PHONES AND TABLETS!! ✨ We can’t wait for you all to experience it and take Unpacking with you on the go later this year! 📦 🔜 📱 pic.twitter.com/Y1tEr3vlnZ
— Unpacking 📦 plushies AVAILABLE now! (@UnpackingALife) June 10, 2023
Notably, the announcement comes after Unpacking Master, a nearly identical copy of Unpacking that featured ads and in-app microtransactions, briefly topped the App Store charts at the start of last year before it was . The incident highlighted the difficulty small studios have in preventing copycat developers from stealing their work. If you’re the impatient type, Unpacking is currently available to play on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PlayStation.


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The world's largest duty-free operators may be interested in opening shop in Hawaii, but the terms of the contract may make it impossible for a new entrant to make money doing business here.
The state announced last week that it will seek a new bid on the statewide duty-free concession including on and off-airport operations. The announcement came as the state and DFS Group Ltd., the current concessionaire, released details of a settlement of a long-standing rent dispute.
DFS will receive rent relief in exchange for withdrawing its contract, and today the state will put out the bid package for the duty-free concession. Tentatively, the terms call for a new bidder to pay a minimum guarantee of $26.7 million for the first eight months, $34 million annually for the next two years and $45 million as a performance bond, and build a 10,000-square-foot retail concession at the Honolulu International Airport by next March.
DFS is required to bid on the new contract.
The list of potential bidders includes some of the big international duty-free concession operators. Although they are sold on the Hawaii market they remain unsure of the economic viability, based on the state's terms.
Competing against DFS, which has had a stranglehold on Hawaii duty-free operations since 1963, will be difficult, said Roger Dunbar, CEO of The Nuance Group's North America division. The Nuance Group, which is based in Switzerland, operates retail stores in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and the Caribbean.
"DFS owns Hawaii -- it's gotten to the point now where it's very difficult for any other operator to be competitive in terms of bidding on the business until now," Dunbar said. "It's a good opportunity but again it depends on how the state wants to set up the contract.
"We certainly do intend on responding if it's reasonable," he said. "We're interested in any opportunity that's sizable and certainly this is one of the bigger ones that will come out this year. Whether or not we'll tender depends on whether or not it allows us to be profitable, but we'll take a very serious look at it."
However, the deck appears to be stacked against a potential new entrant in the market.
"There's just [two years and eight months] on the contract and there's a high guarantee and a high bond to be paid," said state Attorney General Mark Bennett.
"We set those goals because our primary goal in reletting the remainder of the contract is to maximize revenue for the state," he said. "There may be others [than DFS Group] who want to bid on the contract, but the higher the minimum guarantee the less expansive is the universe of those willing to bid.
"It may very well be that, based on the numbers in the concessionaire contract and taking into account some of the realities of the [post-Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks] market, it may be difficult to break even for other bidders in this market."
One of the reasons the state settled with DFS is that it wanted to prevent the concessionaire from being branded a defaulting company, which would disqualify DFS from bidding for five years.
"If the [Department of Transportation] awarded the concession to any entity with virtually no experience in the Hawaii in-bond market...the D.O.T. would likely suffer severe and prolonged revenue losses for an extended period," said the D.O.T. in a statement.
Further, 80 percent of the DFS Group's sales on the existing contract come from off-airport stores it operates in Waikiki and Waikoloa on the Big Island. The rest comes from airport stores in Honolulu. In order to be competitive, a new vendor would have to rent space in Waikiki or a location favored by Japanese tourists since DFS owns DFS Galleria in Waikiki, industry experts say.
"It'll probably default back to DFS," said local retail analyst Marty Plotnick, president of Creative Resources Inc. "From a business point of view [the settlement] was very anti-competitive on the state's part. There's no company in Hawaii that can possibly bid. They don't have an infrastructure; they don't have capital; they don't have the experience."
The statewide contract requires a new vendor to split the minimum annual guarantee 20 percent for on-airport and 80 percent for off-airport store operations. So, if the concessionaire doesn't set up an off-airport site, it will be required to pay only 20 percent of the $26.7 million in the first eight months.
"It's difficult for a new entrant to set up a store in Waikiki and the airport," said Sharon Weiner, DFS Group vice president. "We have been in business here and already have a system in place. The cost of starting a business is much higher than maintaining an existing business."
Another potential entrant is Duty Free Americas Inc., which operates more than 90 concessions in U.S. airports and North American borders. It plans to assess the new bid package and make a determination after completing the due diligence process, said Joe Kearney, Duty Free Americas' senior vice president of business development.
"We're going to take a hard look at it like we always do," Kearney said. "It's a great market, it's a great opportunity, but depending on the requirements and anything else that might be in the [request for proposals] that we're not aware of we'll have to take a look at it and make a determination at that time."
Switzerland-based Weitnauer Group of Companies and Ireland-based Aer Rianta also may be potential bidders, industry leaders say.
Of significant concern is the quick turnaround and tight timelines that are required under the bid proposal, Nuance Group's Dunbar said. In addition, the industry has been beset by a number of problems in recent years including the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak and the 2001 terrorist attacks, which negatively impacted U.S. visitor arrivals, he said.
"One of most significant concerns is how much flexibility is built into this model," Dunbar said. "Travelers can move up and down at very high levels so you get a lot of ups and downs in the business, and if you have a high fixed contract it makes it difficult to operate -- and that's exactly what DFS is facing."
Smaller operators likely will not have the funds to meet investment requirements, Dunbar added.
For instance, Host International (now HMS Host) won the bid to operate the larger duty-free shop at Honolulu in 1981 and after eight months walked out on the contract, unable to make the monthly rent and get a profitable business model going. HMS Host currently holds the food and beverage concession at the Honolulu airport.
DFS settlement terms
The state will dismiss its lawsuit against DFS and withdraw a notice of default.
"Withdrawing and rebidding is a drastic step, but after close study of DFS' operations and financial condition, the state concluded that it was the best course of action to take and in the best interest of the state," Bennett said in a press statement announcing the settlement.
The rent relief applies only to DFS' duty-free operations at the airports. No rent relief was granted for the retail concessions of the business.
Weiner said the settlement will save DFS at least $12 million this year and as much as $20 million if DFS wins the new contract.
Under terms of the settlement, DFS has agreed to pay the state:
- $285,000 in back rent from 2002.
- $6 million for January through May of 2003. However, the state will give DFS a 5 percent loan to cover this amount.
- A total of $4.4 million for June and July.
- $3.3 for each month of August and September.
DFS also owes the state approximately $7 million in rent not associated with the duty-free shops.
Earlier, the company paid the state $25 million, about half the back rent due, so that it could enter into negotiations with the state on redoing the terms of its contract. The state had sued DFS alleging the retailer violated state law by transferring over $100 million to its parent company while it owed the state back rent.
DFS Group is confident its rebid will win and accepted the state's tentative bid terms -- including the minimum guarantees. After the bid is out this Friday, DFS Group has a week to accept the terms of the state's settlement and agree to bid on the new contract.
Other concessionaire contracts
Other airport vendors have been waiting for DFS to settle with the state and hope to reach a rent-relief agreement before the next legislative session.
"The state has looked at our books and realized we have financial hardships," said Peter Fithian, president of Greeters of Hawaii, which holds the flower-seller contract at $400,000 minimum rent.
"We hope they would apply the same policy [DFS rent relief] to us in smaller numbers -- some adjustment of the rent agreement would be the way to go for us," said Fithian, also chairman of the subcommittee on Relief and Legislative Affairs, Airport Concessionaires Committee.
Despite the spike in tourist numbers the concessionaire says business remains flat compared to last year, especially in Honolulu.
"The situation is created because of great numbers of direct flights to the neighbor islands and restricted the number of security checkpoints in Honolulu, which slows down the number of people getting into the shopping area," Fithian said.
However, Kahului and Lihue airport concessionaires are seeing a spike in their sales thanks to the highest-ever number of direct flights to those airports this summer. Fithian expects this trend to continue for the rest of the year.


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Skydance Interactive announced that The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners reached a new revenue milestone across all platforms.
The game has now reached $50 million in revenue across PC VR, Oculus Quest and PSVR since its initial release in January 2020.
The game released first for PC VR before making its way to PSVR in May and then launching on Quest and Quest 2 (and as a launch title for the latter) in September. Throughout 2021, the game has continued to see new content arrive with both the Meatgrinder and Aftershocks updates adding new modes and post-campaign content entirely for free.
Back in April, Skydance revealed that in its launch month on Quest, Saints & Sinners sales more than tripled compared to its launch month on PC VR. That accounts for three platforms versus just one, but that being said, it’s clear that Quest games, in general, are performing well if not better than counterparts on other platforms.
As we’ve said before, Saints & Sinners’ success is well-deserved – the game sits high among our lists for the best VR games of all time and the best Quest releases. We loved the game at release and loved it even more in our recently-updated review (which takes into account the free Meatgrinder and Aftershocks updates) giving it an Essential rating.
It looks like there’s more to come too — some hints at the end of the most recent Aftershocks campaign seem to point towards more content that could be on the way.
The Walking Dead: Sainmts & Sinners is available now for PC VR, Oculus Quest and PSVR.


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E-cigarette giant Juul Labs will stop some selling some sweet flavored e-cigarette pods in retail stores and quit promotion via social media. The statement from CEO Kevin Burns said that as the industry leader, Juul must lead in decreasing underage use of e-cigarettes.
“Our intent was to never have youth use Juul, but they are,” Burns’ statement said. "Youth useage is a serious problem and we are committed to solving it."
Juul reiterated that they don’t want youth to use their product, which they said is for current adult nicotine users. “It is bad for public health, and it is bad for our mission,” which the company maintained is to help adult smokers quit traditional cigarettes.
Skyrocketing youth use, both in Colorado and nationally, has prompted the FDA to announce a crackdown on access for minors. Colorado’s governor has made a similar move.
Juul will stop taking retail orders for mango-, fruit-, creme- and cucumber-flavored pods. That includes more than 90,000 retail stores that sell its product, including traditional tobacco retailers like convenience stores and specialty vape shops. Those flavors will remain available online at the company’s own website through age verified purchases.
The company said it would only renew sales of those products at retail outlets that install age-verification technology.
The announcement wasn’t enough for RJ Ours, the Colorado government relations director with the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network.
“They should also pull menthol products from stores and prohibit online sales of flavored products,” he said.
Teen use in Colorado has prompted pushback. You now need to be 21 to buy tobacco products in four mountain resort towns. The town of Berthoud decreed that public indoor spaces are now vape-free in a bid to restrict teen use.
Gov. John Hickenlooper’s executive order directed regulators to increase checks of retailers to make sure they do not sell to underage customers. The order also bans vaping in state buildings and on state grounds.
In Juul’s announcement, they said they will increase their secret shopper program to verify that retailers follow their guidelines on product purchase.
Many public health advocates are skeptical about the moves from Juul. The suspension of flavored pod sales “reminds me of many other ‘shows’ big tobacco has made over the years,” said Ben Miller, chief strategy officer for Well Being Trust. “Kids are using [and] becoming addicted because of these new delivery mechanisms and that’s what they [companies like Juul] want. The social-flavor side is a distraction.”
Alison Reidmohr, Tobacco Communication Specialist with the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment, gave credit to Juul for the move, “because it is true that flavored tobacco and vaping products do hook kids.” She cited one study that found 80 percent of tobacco users started with a flavored product. However, she doubts that Juul’s actions will keep flavors out of the hands of kids.
“That’s why regulatory action from the FDA, state government, and local government is critical,” she said. For her, “licensing tobacco retailers would be the most effective way to ensure that sellers of vape products are obeying age laws and not selling to minors.”
You want to know what is really going on these days, especially in Colorado. We can help you keep up. The Lookout is a free, daily email newsletter with news and happenings from all over Colorado. Sign up here and we will see you in the morning!


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Benetton and Mango: Rana Plaza survivors risk losing their homes
Thousands of you joined us last May by sending a message to the brands linked to the Tazreen fire and Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, demanding that they take responsibility by paying compensation. We need your help again. Without adequate compensation, workers now risk losing their homes. Tell Benetton and Mango that the right for compensation unites all people.


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Limo look, more legroom among trends in motorcoach seating
Seating on motorcoaches is getting more comfortable and stylish. Manufacturers are introducing seating with more legroom and materials that take a page from limousines and other high-end cars.
Sardo Bus & Coach Upholstery says it is seeing growing requests for simple, more elegant seating.
“I think some of that’s coming from the limo companies that have been buying more coaches,” said Sandy Follis, president of sales, adding that Sardo has done 70 coaches so far this year in a “limo look.”
Also in demand are faux wood floors in cherry and gray finishes, she said. “For every other bus I do, I’m doing a floor, and it didn’t used to be like that,” Follis said.
This year, the 102-year-old company doubled the size of its factory in Gardena, California, to 20,000 square feet, and the Sardo crews travel the country installing seating and renovating interiors.
Amaya Astron Seating is seeing demand at a livelier end of the design spectrum. The company has been ramping up the use of brilliant hues and patterns so seats look more original or identify with a client’s brand or logo. The demand is being supported by upholstery suppliers in their fabric, vinyl, and leather choices in order to meet the motorcoach operators expectations, said Donovan Albarrion, the company’s vice president of export sales.
Over the past two years, the seating manufacturer has introduced two new seat models—A220 and GT—that take the opposite approach to today’s shrinking airline seat room. The seats have a thinner seatback design to provide more legroom and comfort as well. The company is in the final stages of development of its newest seat model, the SIGMA, which was first introduced as a concept at the UMA EXPO last year in San Antonio. “The SIGMA is also a thin seatback seat and includes the integration of ergonomic and stylish design featuring to allow for more visibility from the passengers’ perspective,” Albarrion said.
Taking cures from high-end cars
Automotive interiors have inspired some of the new seating coverings. Flatwoven constructions such as classic wool plush and luxurious looking chenille are rapidly gaining in popularity, along with leatherette and vinyl, especially as accent pieces, says Brett Lowell, Product Manager of Market Development at Camira Fabrics Limited.
He added that wool and polyester velour are still the most popular choice due to their durability and comfort, though they are often now used in combination with flatweaves and vinyl to create a more modern aesthetic. Design detail in flatweave and plush velour is going toward more geometric and subtle repeating designs.


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The B.C.-Korea Trade and Investment Forum on June 23, 2015 drew a capacity crowd of 350 business and government leaders from the Republic of Korea ...
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GM boosts price of new trucks to pay for rebates
- Prices rise %241%2C500 on all but top model%2C same amount as latest rebate offer
- Truck market becoming fierce as demand grows for makers%27 most-profitable vehicles
- Easier to sell higher-price truck with rebate than lower-price model without
General Motors has boosted prices of its redesigned 2014 full-size pickups $1,500 – enough to pay for a $1,500 rebate currently offered on most models.
"It's the oldest game in the book – raise the price and raise the rebate. It's a marketing message," says Karl Brauer, senior analyst at Kelley Blue Book. Shoppers have come to expect a rebate, and are less attentive to whether the price of the vehicle has gone up commensurately, he says.
The new prices make the least-expensive 2014 GM pickup – a Silverado with two-wheel drive and regular cab -- $26,670 including $1,095 shipping.
The peculiarities of car buying mean that it's easier to get financing for a $36,500 truck that comes with a cash rebate of $1,500 than it is for a $35,000 truck – even though the net price is the same.
The $1,500 rebate becomes all or part of the down payment that lenders want to see. "Dealers like that. They can use it to help get customers qualified for a loan," says GM spokesman Jim Cain.
Average transaction prices for full-size pickups are $40,000 to $42,000, Brauer says, "so $1,500 is nothing."
The higher prices were announced to dealers Oct. 7 and are effective from then. The $1,500 rebates run though Oct. 31. GM, Ford Motor and Chrysler Group's Ram are battling fiercely for sales so rebates, cheap leases, low-interest loans all are likely to continue.
"This price adjustment was planned and is a normal part of business," Cain says. The 2014 trucks were launched in the summer at the same prices as similar 2013 models, and "a new truck with more capability, more power, better mileage, more equipment – that's kind of a rebate itself," he says.
Might seem odd coming just after a month when Chevrolet Silverado sales were down 10.8% and GMC Sierra sales were off 1.5%, according to sales tracker Autodata.
But in GM's view, that's because it ran short of leftover 2013 pickups before it had fully ramped up production of the 2014s – not because the new pickups are unpopular.
Even though Cain says GM has just 20,000 of the 2013s left in stick, discounts on those are huge: as much as $6,000 on a 2013 Silverado regular cab, $5,500 on an extended cab.


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Work Never Ends
DOW – 185 = 17,535
SPX – 17 = 2046
NAS – 19 = 4717
10 Y – .05 = 1.70%
OIL – .37 = 46.33
GOLD + 9.90 = 1274.10
Well, if you are triskaidekaphobic you might have expected a day like this. For the week, the Dow fell 1.2 percent, the S&P dipped 0.5 percent and the Nasdaq lost 0.4 percent. It was the third week in a row of losses for the Dow and S&P 500.
US businesses in March posted the biggest increases in inventories and sales since June, good news for economic growth. The Commerce Department says business inventories rose 0.4 percent from February. Sales rose 0.3 percent. Falling inventories have been a big drag on the U.S. economy. They trimmed economic growth by 0.3 percentage point in the first quarter.
Retail sales increased 1.3% last month, spearheaded by big gains among auto dealers, gas stations and Internet retailers. The Commerce Department reports that every segment of the retail industry saw improved results except for home centers whose sales were hurt by bad weather. Americans have increased their savings and they are still finicky shoppers. Retail sales have risen a modest 3% clip in the past 12 months.
Producer prices rose 0.2% in April after two straight declines, but inflation at the wholesale level remained largely absent in the broader economy. The cost of services edged up 0.1% in April. Goods rose 0.2%, led by surge in scrap metal prices and higher energy costs. Food prices fell 0.3%. Wholesale prices are unchanged in the past 12 months.
Consumer sentiment surged in early May. The University of Michigan’s index rose 7.6% to 95.8. Most of the gain was due to the expectations index, which soared 12.8% to 87.5, its highest in nearly a year. The current conditions component also rose, by 1.8%, to 108.6. The largest gains were centered in lower-income and younger households, who may be more sensitive to income gains and the jobs outlook.
Eurozone GDP missed estimates. The Eurozone’s economy grew 0.5% in the first quarter, missing the 0.6% that economists had forecast. Spain’s economy was the standout, growing at a 0.8% clip. The German economy grew at a 0.7% pace.
International Monetary Fund Chief Christine Lagarde said there were no economic positives to Britain leaving the European Union and that the impact would range from “pretty bad to very, very bad”. Her blunt warning came as the IMF said the country risks falling into a spiral of weaker economic growth, lower house prices and diminished foreign investment if voters opt to leave the European Union after the referendum next month.
OPEC said the global oil market is oversupplied and signaled the glut may increase this year, as surging output from its members makes up for losses from other countries whose production has been hit by a price fall. Supply from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is climbing after sanctions on Iran were lifted and an initiative with Russia and other non-members to tackle a supply glut by freezing output failed last month.
Global investors are fleeing stock market funds. In a note to clients, analysts at Jeffries said global equity funds “recorded their fifth consecutive weekly outflow, at a net $7.3 billion.” The biggest outflow came from Japanese stock market funds where investors pulled $4.9 billion. $3.1 billion left European funds, leading to an 11th straight week of outflows.
US funds fared slightly better as only $1.8 billion was pulled out of the market. Meanwhile, Bank of America Merrill Lynch reports investors pulled $44 billion out of US equity funds in the past 5 weeks; with the lion’s share being parked in money market accounts. It’s probably an understatement to say organic growth has been weak and unbalanced.
Much of the earnings growth we have seen has come through financial engineering, or smoke and mirrors if you prefer, in the form of stock buybacks, job cuts and consolidation and sales purchased through mergers and acquisitions, and also margin expansion fueled by interest expense reduction from the prolonged zero interest rate policy. According to research from JPMorgan, revenue, or top-line sales growth contracted during each of the past 4 quarters, and the first quarter numbers are expected to show a further decline of 1.8% year-over-year; while second quarter sales are estimated to drop 1.1%.
For corporate America’s bottom line, there hasn’t been a worse quarter since the financial crisis. For the more than 90 percent of companies that have reported, earnings haven fallen 6.3 percent from the year before, spreading particular pain to the energy, financial services and technology sectors. At least that’s the best estimate; you can’t really tell much from earnings reports anymore. FactSet reports 90% of S&P 500 companies make up their own metrics in an attempt to make their numbers look better.
For example, can you explain the difference between “EPS diluted and adjusted” and “adjusted diluted earnings per share from continuing operations” and “” adjusted earnings” and “adjusted free cash flow”. Don’t feel bad, even Warrant Buffett thinks many of the earnings reports are confusing. Heading into the second quarter for every company that has given an upbeat preannouncement, 2.3 others have sounded warnings. That has left the S&P 500 trading at about 16.5 times expected earnings.
Apple has decided to jump into the ride-sharing wars. Apple is investing $1 billion in Didi Chuxing, the largest taxi hailing app in China, joining other investors including Alibaba and Tencent, and dealing a blow to Uber Technologies. Didi handles more than 11 million rides a day and serves about 300 million users in China. Hooking up with Didi could help Apple secure a firmer foothold in the world’s largest mobile arena at a time when the company is looking to combat a slump in its smartphone business.
The tie-up also represents the company’s first public investment in the auto market and could provide valuable insights should Apple proceed with its own car. Apple shares dropped below $90 per share yesterday and for a few minutes Alphabet was the world’s largest company based on market capitalization. Today, Alphabet was down slightly and Apple about .18 cents, to retake the crown by about $6 billion dollars.
Charter Communications’ proposals to buy Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks has been approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, overcoming the last hurdle to complete the deals. The FCC valued the transaction for Time Warner Cable at $78 billion and the purchase of Bright House at $10.4 billion. A deal makes Charter the second-biggest cable company in the U.S. (and third-largest pay-TV operation) with about 18.4 million subscribers.
Hackers have again gained access to the world’s largest system for transferring funds among banks, a breach the network’s operator said indicates a wide-ranging effort to penetrate the financial system. According to SWIFT, the malware attack targeted a commercial lender and managed to send messages using the bank’s valid codes, following February’s $81 million cyber heist at the Bangladesh central bank.
Three oil and gas bankruptcies this week – Chaparral Energy, Penn Virginia and Linn Energy. According to law firm Haynes & Boone, 130 North American oil and gas producers and service companies have filed for bankruptcy since the start of 2015, owing almost $44 billion. More energy firms are also nearing default, including Breitburn Energy Partners and SandRidge Energy.
New crowdfunding rules taking effect Monday will let anyone, not just the wealthy, invest in startups. The change overrides a longstanding Securities and Exchange Commission requirement that investors backing private companies be “accredited,” meaning they make at least $200,000 a year and have a net worth of $1 million or more (excluding their home).
Now startups raising money through online crowdfunding portals will be able to sell shares to people regardless of their wealth or income so long as the founders have submitted annual financial reports to the SEC. In exchange, companies can raise up to $1 million. The rules, implemented as part of Title III of the JOBS Act, were four years in the making. The big question is how much the change will transform crowdfunding, which has typically rewarded backers with T-shirts, events tickets and early iterations of gadgets.
Some startups may find the rules a bit too strict; there are costs associated with filing and submitting annual reports; and they can only raise one million. Still, for many startups that don’t happen to be a tech company in Silicon Valley, it can be a viable option. As of Thursday, five crowdfunding portals had been approved, including: WeFunder, Seedinvest.com, CrowdfundingSTAR.com, NextSeed, and StartEngine. One of the bigger portals, Indiegogo expects to get involved soon.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, almost 20 percent of Americans 65 and older are now working. That’s the highest percentage of older people with a job since the early 1960s, before the US enacted Medicare. Part of the reason is demographics; the baby boomers are hitting retirement age, and they are healthier and living longer. Education comes into play. People with college and graduate degrees tend to work later than those with less schooling. And since 1985, the share of older Americans with college degrees has tripled, to about a third of 60- to 74-year-olds.
With the U.S. unemployment rate at 5 percent, the lowest since 2008, employers have a greater incentive to keep older workers happy. They might not be able to replace them. And 27 percent of Americans said they will “keep working as long as possible.” Another 12 percent said they don’t plan to retire at all. Three in five retirees surveyed said making money or earning benefits was at least one reason they put off retirement. Almost half said financial problems were their main reason for working past 65. Thirty-six percent of respondents said they had worked past 65 mainly because they enjoy their jobs or “want to stay involved.”
Susannah Mushatt Jones, the world’s oldest person, has died in New York at age 116. Jones was born in a small farm town near Montgomery, Alabama, in 1899. Ms. Jones was the very last American from the 1800s. Family members said last year that they credited her long life to love of family and generosity to others.


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Wholesale distributor cuts commercial ties
Tire Group International LLC (TGI) is getting out of the commercial tire and service business. TGI recently sold its six-year-old Commercial Tire Service Inc. subsidiary to Bentley Truck Services Inc.
“Our aggressive growth plans and commitment to further expanding our footprint in Latin America and the Caribbean has been the driving force behind TGI’s success," says Tony Gonzalez, CEO of TGI. "After much consideration, we have decided to channel our resources and focus on the continued development of our wholesale distribution network."
Enhanced by its partnership with Transportation Resources Partners (TRP) and key affiliates, TGI is positioning itself as a leading wholesale tire distributor worldwide. With more than 40 consumer, commercial and specialty tire brands, TGI is southern Florida’s largest independent tire wholesaler.
For more information, visit www.tiregroup.com. For additional news, click on these links:


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Many of the technologists at AMD who are driving the Epyc CPU and Instinct GPU roadmaps as well as the $35 billion acquisition of FPGA maker Xilinx have long and deep experience in the high performance computing market that is characterized by the old school definition of simulation and modeling workloads running on federated or clustered systems. And so, it is no surprise that when AMD plotted its course back into the datacenter, it had traditional HPC customers, who flocked to its Opteron processors in droves in the middle 2000s, in mind.
AMD president and chief executive officer, Lisa Su, hails from IBM Microelectronics and notably headed up the “Cell” hybrid CPU-GPU processor that was used in Sony game consoles as well as the $100 million “Roadrunner” petaflops-busting supercomputer, which set the stage for hybrid supercomputing in 2008 when it was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Significantly, it paired dual-core Opteron processors with the Cell accelerators, themselves with Power4 cores and eight vector processing units that could do math or process graphics.) Papermaster led the design of several generations of Power processors at IBM, including many that were employed in federated RISC/Unix systems that predated Roadrunner. Interestingly, Brad McCredie, who took over processor design at Big Blue after Papermaster left and founded the OpenPower consortium, joined AMD in June 2019 to take over development of its GPU platforms.
As part of our ongoing coverage of the SC20 supercomputing conference, we sat down with Mark Papermaster, chief technology officer at AMD, about the hard work AMD has done to get mindshare with its CPUs and GPUs with the much broader HPC market, which now includes traditional HPC and rising machine learning workloads as well as various kinds of data analytics, both on premises and in the public cloud. AMD has much to be proud of, pulling itself to parity or ahead of Intel in the X86 server chip space with the second generation “Rome” Epyc processors and getting a lot closer to Nvidia in GPU acceleration with the shiny new “Arcturus” server GPU and the Instinct MI100 GPU accelerator that uses it, which debuted during the SC20 virtual event.
This particular interview was recorded from my office (that’s the real one, including the cherry cradle that my Dad made for his grandchildren and that will be used for many more generations to come, my crazy ivy that is more than three decades old, and a portion of my library) and Papermaster’s office (really at AMD HQ in Austin, but that is not his view).
We started off with the obvious question: is the return of AMD just a reprise of the Opteron from almost two decades ago, or can AMD’s compute business just keep growing along with the appetite for compute and also take some market share away from rival platforms?
“One part is really the same and one part is really different,” explains Papermaster. “What do I mean by one part is the same? AMD is built on a history of innovation, and that part of AMD’s culture has thrived and is stronger than ever. One part of the AMD culture that you see has really improved, and that is our execution. We are executing on our roadmap exactly as we called it, and we re-engineered engineering, how we go about creating each of the components across the hardware, across the software, how we put it together, and delivers what our customers are really looking for. That is really key in all markets, but particularly in HPC. HPC typically plans out their purchases years in advance, and they have to have confidence in that delivery and confidence in the performance.”
One of the keys to AMD’s success in winning the deals to supply the compute engines for the future “Frontier” system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the future “El Capitan” system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, weighing in at an estimated 1.5 exaflops and 2.1 exaflops respectively, was a close relationship between AMD’s engineering teams and the US Department of Energy, which funded pathfinding research that got woven into the CPU and GPU roadmaps.
AMD is starting to ship the third generation “Milan” Epyc 7003 processors for revenue this quarter and plans to do a formal launch for everyone who is not one of the hyperscalers or big public cloud builders in the first quarter of 2021. But Papermaster gave us some hints about what the server chips sporting the “Zen 3” cores might have in store and the advantages they might have over current and future Xeon SP processors from Intel. The Zen 3 core has improved branch prediction and prefetching and twice the L3 cache per core, and across a variety of workloads is delivering a 19 percent average instruction per clock (IPC) on integer workloads compared to the Zen 2 core used in the current Rome processors. This is a very significant bump in raw integer performance, with the typical Xeon E5 and Xeon SP offering somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent increase in IPC generation to generation and not really much improvement at all between “Skylake” and “Cascade Lake” and “Cooper Lake” over the past several years.
The question we had is can this IPC gravy train keep going, or does it run out? AMD has done 50 percent IPC with the jump from the “Piledriver” Opteron core to the Zen 1 core (which stands to reason given how long AMD was really out of the server market), then double-digit from Zen 1 to Zen 2, and now 19 percent from Zen 2 to Zen 3. We wondered if there is a kind of limit of diminishing returns at work here as we have seen from Dennard scaling for processor clocks and then Moore’s Law limits to shrinking transistors and making them exponentially less costly to make.
“It does have more to come,” Papermaster says, in reference to IPC improvements. “There really is no lack of innovation that the team has to really continue to drive performance. But what you are seeing is that each successive node of semiconductor is getting more expensive, so you will see the continuation of these high performance cores and you are also seeing a bifurcation of how people optimize. People will put CPUs together with other kinds of accelerators like GPUs and FPGAs to drive performance forward not based on CPUs alone, but thinking about system design. And that is what we did with our supercomputer wins with the US Department of Energy and the EuroHPC win with the Lumi system.”
We talked about the bifurcation of the AMD GPU line, with the RDNA architecture for clients and the CDNA architecture for servers – the first time this has happened at AMD and mimicking to a certain extent (like Intel is doing as well) the different GPU tiers that Nvidia has created for the past several years. There are engines that do compute in many forms (and a lot of it) and engines that do graphics as well as compute (and less of it). We also talked about the new ROCm 4.0 software stack, which has some interesting new capabilities, and what might be in store for FPGAs as they are woven more tightly into the AMD fold. To hear about that, you have to listen to the full interview above. Enjoy.
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KARACHI: Despite achieving over 90 per cent localisation, the tractor assemblers have increased farm machinery prices by Rs254,000-422,000 in the outgoing fiscal year.
In FY21, the assemblers raised prices by Rs92,000-196,000. An assembler said rupee devaluation and higher freight rates are making an adverse impact on the cost of imported parts.
In FY22, the government continued the relief package that allowed the supply of imported farm machinery and equipment at reduced tariffs (customs duty 0-2pc and GST at 5pc).
In budget 2022-23, the government had proposed to exempt tractors from the 5pc GST which may bring down tractor prices.
The number of operational tractors is 670,000 versus 612,000 in FY21, resulting in the availability of around 0.09 horsepower (HP) per acre against the required power of 1.4HP in both fiscal years.
According to a comparison of Economic Surveys of 2020-21 and 2021-22, NH-480 (55HP), NH-480 Power Plus (55HP), Ghazi 65HP, 640 (75H) and Dabang (85HP), assembled by Al Ghazi Tractors Ltd, are now priced at Rs1.228 million, Rs1.282m, Rs1.419m, Rs1.819m and Rs1.879m as compared to Rs945,000, Rs969,150, Rs1.082m, Rs1.441m and Rs1.479m.
Various models of Millat Tractors Ltd like MF-240 (50HP), MF-350 PS (50HP), MF-260 (60HP), MF-360 PS (60HP), MF375 4WD (75HP) and MF385 4WD (85HP) carry prices of Rs1.251m, Rs1.449m, Rs1.446m, Rs1.527m, Rs2.436m and Rs2.530m as compared to Rs997,500, Rs1.092m, Rs1.150m, Rs1.197m, Rs2.016m and Rs2.152m.
The Economic Survey 2021-22 has also carried a box item titled “Tractor Industry a Success Story: Made in Pakistan” claiming that the industry has established itself on a firm footing by achieving more than 90pc localisation.
Pakistan was a net importer of tractors a few years ago and imported $195 million worth of tractors in 2017. The country had exported tractors worth $47m in FY21, the survey said.
During July-March FY22, Pakistan’s export of tractors was $29.9m.
It claimed that due to the high level of localisation, Pakistan’s low-priced tractors are well-received in Afghanistan and African countries. Botswana, Nigeria and Kenya have emerged as the largest export destinations for tractors.
Massey Ferguson sales in 11MFY22 shrank by 4pc to 30,616 units from 32,051 while Fiat sales improved by a massive 53pc to 20,741 from 13,587 units in 11MFY22.
Published in Dawn,June 19th, 2022