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More than a month after reports first surfaced that Dunkin' Brands Inc. sought an initial public offering, the holding company of Dunkin' Donuts filed a prospectus today for an IPO worth up to $400 million.
The lead underwriters on the IPO are: JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays Capital, and Morgan Stanley & Co., with Bank of America Corp., Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs & Co. acting as joint book-running managers, Dunkin’ reported today.
Boston private equity firms Bain Capital Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners teamed with Washington firm the Carlyle Group in 2005 to buy Dunkin’ from Pernod Ricard SA for $2.43 billion.
In its filing, Canton, Mass.-based Dunkin’ disclosed $26.9 million in net income on $577.1 million in sales during its 2010 fiscal year. In the first quarter of 2011, Dunkin’ posted a net loss of $1.7 million on $139.2 million in sales, the filing disclosed.
Dunkin’ announced its earnings in a press release last Friday, reporting $1.79 billion in global, system-wide sales - which includes franchisees and licensees - in the first quarter of 2011.
Dunkin' Brands is the franchise operator of four business segments: Dunkin’ Donuts U.S., Dunkin’ Donuts International, Baskin-Robbins International and Baskin-Robbins U.S.
There are more than 9,700 Dunkin' Donuts stores in 31 countries. There are 50 Dunkin' Donuts locations within a 10-mile radius in the Albany,New York, area.
Last year, the company generated revenue of $577 million. It sells 2.5 million doughnuts a day.
It competes against other coffee and ice cream sellers such as Starbucks Corp., and McDonald's Corp.
J.M. Smucker Co., the producer of namesake jams and jellies and the Folgers coffee brand, licenses and sells Dunkin’ Donuts at retail locations including Target Corp., Kroger Co., Supervalu Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp.
Moore writes for an affiliated publication.


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News: Government announces provision for a the third year.
Britain’s biggest 350 firms are being urged to take part in free Cyber Health Checks that are being launched by the government today.
Firms who take up the opportunity will be given a confidential, tailored report so that they can see boardroom trends, make comparisons with their peers, and tackle weaknesses that are identified.
The initiative, the third time firms have been offered the annual digital hygiene checkup, was launched by digital economy minister Ed Vaizey at the Intel Security summit.
He said:"With more and more of our daily transactions done online, keeping our personal data safe is a top priority for this Government. Our Cyber Health Check will help the UK’s biggest firms strengthen their cyber security and ensure they continue to thrive in our growing digital economy."
The health check will produce aggregated data, revealing how will well the UK’s top firms are performing in terms of cyber security, with the results published early in 2016.
The announcement comes the day after Chancellor George Osborne announced a doubling a of Britain’s cyber security budget, and said Britain would launch cyber attacks against ISIS.

domain: news


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With a new organic farm looking to take root in Stone County, News 25 takes a look at organic food on the Gulf Coast. Sidney's Marketplace in Gulfport sells gluten free, organic, and local food items for those looking for a healthier option.
Store owner, Sidney Olson, says he started the market because he saw a need for organic food on the Gulf Coast. Most major grocery stores do not have a large organic section, yet the demand for organic food is growing.
Olson says, “Probably 90% of the people that come in my store are looking for the more healthier foods. They want organic products. Everybody seems to be learning now that a lot of the products you buy in the grocery store, there seems to be so many additives.”
Sidney's Marketplace is open Monday through Saturday 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and on Sundays from noon to 5:00 p.m.


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Magazine Founder Collaborates with Expert
Today's VA! Magazine founder, Renee Chapman from The Admin Chick and Rosie Shilo founder of Virtually Yours Virtual Assistant Network have signed an agreement to become Co-Editors-in-Chief of the new industry publicationToday's VA! Magazine. This will help bring the online magazine into a position to become not only the first of its kind for the industry but also a great source of information for new and existing virtual businesses owners in Australia.
The Admin Chick is a relavitely new business in Western Australia and is known in the Virtual Business for products & packages such as the VA Startup Toolkit, The Bookkeeper's Best Friend and other vonline products and services.


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Jeff Bezos’ private space company Blue Origin will launch the fourteenth test flight of its New Shepard rocket booster and capsule, a system designed to get people on short trips to the edge of space.
The mission has no passengers on board, although the capsule on top of the rocket is said to carry up to six people for future flights. Known as the NS-14, this mission also marks the first flight of a new rocket booster and improved crew capsule. The rocket booster and capsule used by Blue Origin’s NS-13 mission in October are still operational. The company says they are now dedicated to flying payloads for zero gravity research.
The NS-14’s new capsule offers several upgrades to the Blue Origin astronaut experience.
“The upgrades include improvements to environmental features such as acoustics and temperature control in the capsule, crew display panels and speakers with a microphone and push-to-talk button in each seat. The mission will also test a range of astronaut communication and safety alarm systems,” said the company in a blog post.
The inside of the newest New Shepard capsule
New Shepard is designed to take people off the edge of space on a journey, with the capsules reaching an altitude of more than 100 kilometers on previous test flights. The capsule spends up to 10 minutes in weightlessness before returning to Earth. The massive windows offer passengers a view.
Blue Origin noted that “all mission crews supporting this launch are applying strict social distancing and safety measures to reduce COVID-19 risks to staff, customers and the surrounding communities.”
Bezos is personally funding the development of Blue Origin by selling some of his shares on Amazon. While previously saying that he sells about $ 1 billion in Amazon stock annually to fund the space company, Bezos recently increased his sales in Amazon stock, valued at more than $ 10 billion in 2020. Dollars paid out.


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How retailers are delivering a personalized holiday shopping experience
The holiday season is always the most important time of the year for retailers, and this year is no exception. Consumer confidence has wavered over the past year because of uncertainties surrounding issues such as the election and Brexit, creating concern that 2016 sales growth would continue on the downward trend that began last year. However, that has not been the case. Sales growth has increased throughout most of the year, including a strong Cyber Monday which has set the pace for the holiday shopping season. Add in the low costs of fuel, decreasing unemployment and moderate wage gains, and the retail industry is poised for a healthy holiday season.
Retailers are using a variety of personalization tactics to capitalize on as much as possible of the estimated $884 billion in holiday spending.
Target has introduced its Wonderlist Gift Guide, a digital product finder that helps consumers select personalized gifts. As shoppers navigate through a selection of 400 tailored gift ideas, the tool presents customized recommendations based on personality types, interests and shopping history. Also new this year, Target is providing shoppers with a curated assortment of 2,000 holiday-related items. This seasonal shop-within-a-shop, called Wondershop, is designed to help consumers find the holiday products that best fit their preferences.
1-800-Flowers is also deploying a new product finder tool that guides consumers through a personalized shopping experience. This feature, which is called GWYN (Gifts When You Need), utilizes IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence software to better learn consumer preferences and shape personalized recommendations. This is a smart move, not only to cater to holiday shoppers, but also because the company is evolving from a niche floral website to a multi-branded gifting business. Expanding the product inventory can be a beneficial strategy for retailers, but only if they can continue delivering a seamless and personalized shopping experience.
Retailers’ holiday initiatives go far beyond gift finders, too.
Motocross and dirt bike retailer MotoSport has partnered with Certona to improve its site performance and enable the real-time transfer of product data and inventory. This ensures MotoSport provides online visitors with updated inventory, offers and personalized product recommendations, while eliminating the risk of suggesting out-of-stock items or offers that don’t reflect shoppers’ recent activity. The partnership has already generated increases in engagement with personalized recommendations (42 percent), average order value (20 percent) and units per transaction (16 percent).
eBay has also stepped up its personalization strategy in time for the holidays. In mid-October the company launched the eBay Collective, which provides a curated inventory of furniture, antiques, contemporary design and fine art. eBay tailors the products to its consumers. The initiative represents eBay’s efforts to branch out from its traditional auction style in favor of appealing to shoppers as individuals.
Omnichannel fulfillment is an increasingly popular method for providing a shopping experience that accommodates consumer preferences. According to eMarketer, 42 percent of retailers now offer the option to buy in-store and ship to home, versus 14 percent last year. Additionally, 44 percent of retailers now enable consumers to buy online and pick up in-store (21 percent last year) and 61 percent allow in-store returns of online purchases (18 percent last year). This demonstrates how retailers are focusing on being flexible so they can provide the shopping experience that’s ideal and most convenient for each individual visitor.
With more than 40 percent of online orders picked up in-store, Home Depot is continuing the growth of its omnichannel strategy. The giant retailer is expanding its omnichannel program to include “buy online, deliver from store.” This new concept allows shoppers to buy items online and schedule a delivery from a local store. The option is now available at about 1,600 stores, a figure that has more than doubled since Q2. With its innovative approach to omnichannel fulfillment, Home Depot has seen a steady double-digit growth of online sales in 2016. Online sales were up 19 percent during the second quarter and 21.5 percent during the first quarter.
Toys R Us, which last Christmas had to halt some online orders due to overloaded e-commerce fulfillment centers, also added seasonal employees to help with omnichannel fulfillment. The retailer is offering bonuses and higher wages to attract more seasonal warehouse workers. Furthermore, Toys R Us equipped almost all of its 870 stores to help ship online orders during the holidays, and it began stocking those stores with products weeks earlier than last year. So far so good for the retailer: Its website, fulfillment centers and stores handled record levels of online traffic in the days around Thanksgiving.
Walmart has also optimized its omnichannel fulfillment capabilities for the holidays. The retail giant reported that online sales for Thanksgiving weekend were available for in-store pickup in 30 percent less time than the previous year.
Whether it’s personalized gift finders, real-time personalization or omnichannel fulfillment, retailers are pulling out all the stops to optimize and personalize the shopping experience in time for the influx of holiday shoppers. As retailers continue to make omnichannel fulfillment and personalization a priority, the industry should prepare to celebrate impressive sales records.
About Meyar Sheik
Meyar Sheik is a seasoned software industry executive with 25 years of experience. Since 2000, Meyar has been a web analytics pioneer working with some of the largest sites on the Internet such as Staples, ESPN, Fox, Sony, Best Buy, Disney, CBS and many other leading brands, in the areas of web analytics, personalization and real-time content optimization. Prior to Certona, Meyar was the CMO and COO of web analytics leader, WebSideStory (now part of Omniture/Adobe).
Other articles on omni-channel and retailing:


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The price of oil could go sharply higher, depending on the duration of the disruption at Saudi oil facilities and whether there is a military response.Powering the Futureread more
Energy stocks, one of the worst-performing sector this year, spiked on Monday after an attack on Saudi Arabia's heart of oil production Saturday sent oil prices soaring.Marketsread more
The Saudi-led military coalition battling Yemen's Houthi movement said on Monday that the attack on Saudi oil plants was carried out by Iranian weapons and did not originate...Oilread more
President Donald Trump said Monday he's in no rush to respond to a coordinated attack that hit Saudi Arabia's oil industry over the weekend.Marketsread more
"The United States military, with our interagency team, is working with our partners to address this unprecedented attack and defend the international rules-based order that...Politicsread more
Traders in the fed funds futures market on Monday were pricing in a 34% chance that the Fed will stay put on rates.The Fedread more
Gas prices could rise by about 20 cents per gallon "starting tomorrow," oil analyst Andy Lipow says Monday.Oil and Gasread more
Some operators are cashing in on the CBD craze by substituting cheap and illegal synthetic marijuana for natural CBD in vapes and edibles such as gummy bears, an AP...Health and Scienceread more
Attack on Saudi oil facilities shows that 'risk is real', Chevron CEO Michael Wirth said on CNBC's "Closing Bell" Monday.Marketsread more
J.P. Morgan's chief quant says oil prices would start to hurt stock prices when they hit the $80 to $85 range.Market Insiderread more
Walmart said Monday it's relaunching the once-beloved trendy New York fashion brand, Scoop NYC, on its website nationwide and in select stores.Retailread more
The central banker was asked why inflation has been so low since the financial crisis.
"It's a global phenomenon. We don't perfectly understand it. Since the [financial] crisis, a big factor that has been weighing down inflation is just the weakness in the economy. You had a lot of slack and the economy has not been tight," Powell said Thursday during his testimony to Senate Banking Committee.
"There are other stories. There's the Amazon effect story. There's global slack. The idea that slack around the word is affecting the tightness of the U.S. labor market. [It's] really hard to tie those down from an empirical standpoint, but they may be having some sort of an effect on inflation," he said.
Amazon's market share of U.S. retail sales is rising. The e-commerce juggernaut generated 44 percent of all U.S. e-commerce sales last year, or about 4 percent of the country's total retail sales figure, according to data from One Click Retail. Consumers are gravitating toward online sales due to lower prices and wider selections versus physical store retailers.
The central banker also cited currency and energy commodity prices as factors for low inflation during the past decade.
"We also had the strong dollar and lower oil prices in '14 and '15. That pushed down [inflation]," Powell said.


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SeaWeb Seafood Summit
June 10, 2019 - June 14, 2019
The World's Premier Conference on Seafood Sustainability
The SeaWeb Seafood Summit brings together global representatives from the seafood industry with leaders from the conservation community, academia, government, and the media for in-depth discussions, presentations, and networking around the issue of sustainable seafood.
Illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU) is a scourge of the seafood industry and, by some estimates, a trade worth USD 23 billion (EUR 19.7 billion) annually.
But there are increasingly ways of using modern traceability technology to trace IUU culprits and hold them to account through their investors and banks.
The threat of being dropped from a fund – and public reportage of this – is a powerful source of leverage.… Read More
At the start of the final plenary at this year’s SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Barcelona, Spain, John N. Kittinger – senior director of the Global Fisheries and Aquaculture Program in Conservation International's Center for Oceans and a professor of practice in Arizona State University’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability – posed a question to the audience: “What does it take to make a… Read More
Indonesia is a model that other countries should follow, according to a leading campaigner advocating for the sharing of fishing data to reduce illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
By making its vessel monitoring system (VMS) data publicly available, the country has increased transparency, said Tony Long, CEO of Global Fishing Watch, who was speaking at the 2018 SeaWeb Seafood Summit. The Indonesian fisheries ministry, which… Read More
Amidst a lively discussion surrounding the value and potential of seafood by-products at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Barcelona, Spain this week, Regal Springs Group’s Peter Hajipieris noted the power of words – and suggested a revision to the way the industry refers to its “by-product” innovations and initiatives.
“By-product is an industrial term, it’s not a consumer term,” Hajipieris said during the… Read More
Consumers are now more aware than ever that eating seafood is a healthy choice. That’s good news, but it’s also a challenge, according to Susan Marks, the sustainability director for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI).
During a panel session at this year’s SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Barcelona, Spain, Marks spoke on the latest consumer insights ASMI has uncovered through its various campaigns and initiatives aimed at… Read More
A leading Spanish retailer is seeking collaborators to join it in securing more sustainable seafood.
Low volume buyers in Spain face challenges in securing sustainable local supply because Spanish producers sell to higher paying markets like Japan and Northern Europe, according to Gorka Azkona, head of the fresh fish buying department at Eroski, a co-operative retailer with 1,650 outlets concentrated on northern… Read More
Spurred forth in part by a new internal policy, the eight PNA Pacific Island nations and the associated Tokelau territory responsible for the Pacifical logo plan on being fully blockchain compliant by the end of next month, Maurice Brownjohn, Commercial Manager of the PNA Office, announced during this week’s SeaWeb Seafood Summit (SWSS18) taking place in Barcelona, Spain.
Pacifical, the PNA’s market development company, will… Read More
Before a packed auditorium at Barcelona, Spain's Hotel Arts on Tuesday, 19 June, during this year's SeaWeb Seafood Summit, the 2018 Seafood Champion Award winners were recognized for their exemplary contributions to the global seafood sustainability movement. Click through SeafoodSource's exclusive profiles on the four honorees below to understand the scope of their impact on the industry and… Read More
Guy Dean of Albion Farms and Fisheries, Pelagic Data Systems, Open Blue, and Labour Rights Promotion Network Foundation founder Patima Tungpuchayakul are the latest Seafood Champion Awards winners to be recognized for their outstanding contributions to the seafood sustainability movement.
Selected from a pool of 17 finalists, the 2018 Champions “reflect a seafood marketplace striving for even greater environmental, social, and… Read More
It wasn’t long before an in-depth discussion of sustainable tuna products – carried out during a pre-conference session leading up to this week’s SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Barcelona, Spain – turned to a familiar question that has long puzzled the sector’s stakeholders: Who pays?
If you’re asking Jonathan Curto, the sustainability coordinator for Tri Marine Management Company, everybody pays at some… Read More


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With most Americans focused on COVID-19 vaccines, pharmaceutical companies are quietly raising the list prices of name-brand prescription drugs at a torrid pace.
January is typically when increases hit the U.S. market. Already, more price hikes by drugmakers have been recorded in less than half a month (813) this year than for all of January 2020 (737), according to research by Ohio nonprofit 46brooklyn.
That two-week 2021 total also is approaching the record for a full January during the past decade, 895, set in 2018.
“It is clear from the data that January 2021 is bucking the recent downward trends in brand drugmaker list price increases,” said one of the founders of 46brooklyn, former Ohio Pharmacists Association lobbyist Antonio Ciaccia. “And it is also clear that aside from price increases, the launch prices for new drugs has been going up over time.”
The cost of prescription drugs remains among the top issues for Americans, surveys show. Three in 10 say they haven’t taken their medicine as prescribed due to costs, including many who skip doses or cut their pills in half.
It’s been a key issue in races from the Statehouse to the White House, with President-elect Joe Biden promising a fix is a high priority for his administration.
Another record might come as well. To date this year, 100% of U.S. changes in drug prices this month have represented increases. That’s never come close to happening; the high for the month of January over the previous 10 years is 72%, recorded last year.
COVID-19 vaccine-maker Pfizer raises prices on almost 200 drugs
Pfizer, which with BioNTech developed the first COVID-19 authorized for use by the federal government, has raised the prices on 193 name-brand drugs this month, although the median increase is a modest 0.5%.
“This modest increase is necessary to support investments that allow us to continue to discover new medicines and deliver those breakthroughs to the patients who need them,” said company spokeswoman Amy Rose in a statement.
However, the price jump was about 5% for several of Pfizer’s most popular drugs, such as Xeljanz, which treats rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and ulcerative colitis; Lyrica, used for nerve and muscle pain; Ibrance, a breast cancer inhibitor; and sedative Xanax.
In January 2020, Pfizer raised the price of just 81 drugs and actually decreased the charge for 20 others. A year earlier, it was 49 price increases and one decrease.
The brooklyn46 Research’s dashboard did not show any entries for the other COVID-19 vaccine maker, Moderna, because that company has not yet had any other drugs approved by the Federal Drug Administration.
So far this year, the median 2021 price elevation by all drugmakers is 4.9%.
But in the complex world of drug pricing, essentially no one actually pays the list price, usually called the wholesale acquisition cost. The actual, or net price is greatly impacted by rebates and discounts from the list price, and those hidden factors are rising, Ciaccia noted.
“Due to the general lack of transparency within the entire prescription drug supply chain, the public is left in the dark on our American-made drug pricing dysfunction,” he said.
The overall net cost of brand-name drugs actually fell in 2020, while list prices grew at their slowest rate in at least 20 years, according to the online publication Drug Channels.
Of course, what you pay personally is mostly affected by your health insurance.
Although generic drugs far outnumber brand names, the latter account for about 80% of drug spending in the U.S.
Examples of the drug price increases this year, per 46brooklyn:
- * Cosentyx, injections used to treat inflammation from plaque psoriasis, made by Novartis – 9%.
- * Ambien, sleep aid, Sanofi – 5%.
- * Epidiolex, treats seizures, GW Pharma – 8.2%.
- * Humira, injections for arthritis, plaque psoriasis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, made by AbbVie – 7.4%.
Sarah Sutton, senior manager for public affairs with the drugmakers’ trade group, PhRMA, did not address questions about this year’s increases. She did talk about the overall drug supply chain:
“Recent public data shows that net prices for many brand medicines have decreased, but it does not feel that way for patients because of a broken system that benefits insurers and other middlemen and works against patients who need care. We are working on solutions that put patients first by fixing this broken system and lowering what patients have to pay at the pharmacy counter.”
Reasons for the latest drug price increases
Ciaccia offered three reasons for the price increases:
1. “Drugmakers could just be hiking prices simply to make more money.”
2. “Because of the growing drugmaker rebates and discounts to PBMs (drug chain middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers) and governments, it stands to reason that drugmakers would raise their prices to accommodate those concessions.”
3. “Because Medicaid programs get the biggest discounts, as Medicaid enrollment swells during the pandemic, that means a growing share of the drugmaker portfolio has shifted to less lucrative market segments, which would also help explain why prices are going up.”
Name-brand drugs are protected by a patent for 20 years, including a general five-year exclusivity awarded by the U.S. government so pharmaceutical companies can recoup the money they spent for research and development of the new medication.
“We have an obligation to ensure that the sale of our medicines provides us with the resources necessary to invest in future research and development. noted a 2019 ” transparency report by Janssen, pharmaceutical company of Johnson & Johnson.
The overall financial impact of this month’s price increases is hard to gauge. Aside from the cost to individual consumers, government health care programs pay billions of dollars to provide name-brand drugs.
To use but a single example from the above list: The state-federal Medicaid program paid about $2.5 billion nationwide just to provide Humira to low-income and disabled recipients. So just a small percentage price increase could translate into a large dollar amount.
The new 2021 data accessed by The Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA TODAY Network, comes on the heels of a study by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, an independent nonprofit research organization, that found no clinical justification for 2019 price increases for seven of the top 10 most popular drugs.
Those unjustified cost elevations added $1.2 billion beyond what would have been spent if their net prices had remained flat, the study showed. The 8.9% price jump for one of those drugs, Etanercept, cost $403 million nationwide – “the single largest impact on national drug spending among all drugs evaluated in this report.”
The drug, sold under the brand name Enbrel, is an injection used to treat inflammatory conditions associated with such ailments as rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis.
Humira also was on the list with unjustified cost increases, which added $66 million to U.S. drug spending in 2019, the research found.
“Several of these treatments have been on the market for many years, with scant evidence that they are any more effective than we understood them to be years ago when they cost far less,” said Institute for Clinical and Economic Review’s chief medical officer, Dr. David Rind.


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Against the backdrop of the release of No Man’s Sky on Nintendo Switch, Hello Games has finally provided official confirmations about the release of the PS VR2 version of the exploration title.
If you remember correctly, the PS VR2 version of the game was announced at the State Of Play in June. However, the trailer mentioned a release scheduled for February 2022, an obvious mistake that immediately attracted the attention of the most attentive eyes. At the beginning of the week, some users of the PlayStation 5 store then noticed that the wording in the trailer has been changed, and the publication of the title in augmented reality is now scheduled for the first months of next year.
Curious to find out more, Eurogamer’s colleagues contacted the developers of Hello Games, who have confirmed that the new version of the game will be released on February 22, 2023, which is the launch day of PS VR2. This new version, according to the words of Sean Murray himself, will allow you to ‘immerse the player in completely new ways’, thanks also to the computational power of PlayStation 5 and the possibilities offered by the hardware of the new viewer made in Sony.
The latest update of No Man’s Sky also allowed the Hello Games title to expand further thanks to a series of interesting contents including:
an automatic save system; a new option to automatically sell assets without leaving the planet; custom matches.


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LUXEMBOURG: Starbucks won its fight on Tuesday against an EU demand to pay up to €30 million ($33 million) in Dutch back taxes, while Fiat Chrysler Automobiles lost its challenge against an order to stump up a similar amount to Luxembourg.
Both cases were part of European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s crackdown on unlawful tax breaks offered by EU countries to multinationals, which has also extended to Apple’s Irish deal and Amazon’s Luxembourg deal, among others.
The judgments show that the General Court, Europe’s second-highest, generally endorses the European Commission’s methodology in its tax crackdown but stipulates the Commission must do its homework properly to prove its case — a bad omen for Apple fighting a record €13 billion Irish tax order.
It is an important victory for the Commission, said Dimitrios Kyriazis, head of Law at New College of the Humanities London.
“Regardless of the outcome of individual cases, the General Court seems to have sanctioned the Commission’s approach,” he said.
In Starbucks’ case, the EU competition enforcer failed to show the coffee chain benefited unfairly from the Dutch tax deal.
“The Commission was unable to demonstrate the existence of an advantage in favor of Starbucks,” judges said.
The Dutch Finance Ministry said the judgment showed it was treated the same as other companies.
Starbucks also welcomed the ruling, saying it had not received any special treatment from the Netherlands and that it “pays all of its taxes wherever they are due.”
In a separate ruling, the Court upheld the Commission’s decision against Fiat’s Luxembourg’s tax deal, saying that the Commission had applied its state aid rules correctly to assess if there was an illegal advantage and was not seeking to harmonize tax rules across the bloc.
It also agreed with the Commission’s finding that the Luxembourg tax ruling was a selective one, meaning that such rulings were not available to all companies.
The Commission said in 2015 Starbucks and Fiat Chrysler set prices for goods and services sold between subsidiaries, known as transfer prices, that were below market rates and which artificially lowered their taxes.
The losing side can appeal to the Court of Justice of the EU.
Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Ireland are among countries whose economies have benefited from attracting multinationals. They have amended their tax regimes in recent years following the EU tax drive.
The European Commission is currently investigating Ikea AB and Nike Inc’s Dutch deals and Huhtamaki Oyi’s Luxembourg tax ruling.


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Belgique Looking for New Owners
October 15, 2013
Continental café chain, Belgique, has been placed on the market after its owners and founders Igor and Ann Bekaert appointed DCL to sell their bakery and delicatessen business.
Launched in 2005, the business has expanded across the South East and now comprises leaseholds in Bishops Stortford, Woodford Green, Chingford, Ware, Epping, Loughton, South Woodford, Theydon Bois and Wanstead. DCL is looking to dispose of the entire business, groups of sites or single units.
Josh Leon, Associate Director at Davis Coffer Lyons said: Igor and Anne nurtured this very original concept from the very first store and, while it is largely run by the management these days, their passion still emanates throughout the business. There is a lot of potential for the new owner. The multi-format business is suited to high streets, shopping centres and transport hubs and so far all the sites are concentrated within half an hour of each other. I have no doubt that Belgiques appeal and surprising price point will soon find fans a lot further afield than just Essex and Hertfordshire and it may not be long before we see it all around the UK. The introduction of its fledgling internet cake making side of the business too could be a significant area for growth in the new owners hands.


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Another major business has signalled their fears for a Brexit deal that does not favour the UK.
This time it is Jaguar Land Rover who has voiced concerns over the outcome of the UK withdrawal from the EU.
The company is the UK’s largest carmaker and claim a Brexit deal could threaten £80bn investment plans for the UK, and may close factories, putting thousands of jobs at risk.
Last year, the company made more than 600,000 cars, 20% of which were sold to mainland Europe, one of its biggest markets.
The owner, India’s Tata Motors, wants to remain in UK claiming its “heart and soul is in the UK.”
However, that emotional link to the UK could be replaced by the harsh reality of the business landscape of the UK post-Brexit
Jaguar Land Rover has warned that a “bad” Brexit deal would threaten £80bn worth of investment plans for the UK and may force it to close factories.
Jaguar Land Rover chief executive Ralf Speth said: “A bad Brexit deal would cost Jaguar Land Rover more than £1.2bn profit each year.
“As a result, we would have to drastically adjust our spending profile. We have spent around £50bn in the UK in the past five years – with plans for a further £80bn more in the next five.
“This would be in jeopardy should we be faced with the wrong outcome.”
He told the Financial Times: “If I’m forced to go out because we don’t have the right deal, then we have to close plants here in the UK and it will be very, very sad. This is hypothetical, and I hope it’s an option we never have to go for.”
PB Balaji, chief financial officer at Tata Motors, said: “Jaguar Land Rover and Tata Motors have always maintained that the uncertainties from Brexit are avoidable and the business seeks clarity to ensure that industry takes timely and right decisions to manage the transition.
“Additionally, Jaguar Land Rover needs free and full access to the single market beyond transition to remain competitive which we also firmly believe is in the best long term interests of the United Kingdom.
“The recent statement from JLR only reaffirms this position that a Brexit which increases bureaucracy, reduces productivity and competitiveness of the UK industry is in no-one’s interest.”


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Rev. Dr. William Barber, head of the Poor People's Campaign, was recently sentenced to a year of probation for trespassing after refusing orders to leave a protest at the North Carolina legislature. Barber plans to appeal — and to continue pressing for Southern legislatures to be open to their citizens.
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June 12, 2019 -
New evidence from the files of a dead North Carolina gerrymandering expert reveals the Trump administration pushed for the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census to benefit the Republican Party. But the question could lead to an undercount, which would diminish the South's electoral power and cheat it of its fair share of federal funds.
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We recently spoke with Amanda Reyes, executive director of Alabama's Yellowhammer Fund that helps women in need access abortions, about how her organization is carrying out its mission after the state passed the most restrictive abortion ban in the country.
June 6, 2019 -
North Carolina's courts have been in the crosshairs of the Republican-controlled legislature for years, with bills introduced to gerrymander judges, pack the bench, and manipulate judicial elections. But last week, lawmakers quickly restored a controversial cut to the chief justice's budget, suggesting the era of GOP judicial power grabs may be over.
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Investigations & Reports
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June 5, 2019 -
The Republican-led Georgia ethics commission is investigating the campaign of 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and several groups that focused on mobilizing minority voters. The probe has sparked accusations that the GOP-led commission is inappropriately engaged in partisan politics — and that's neither a new concern for Georgia nor limited to the state.
June 4, 2019 -
While the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among the developed nations, Southern states have the highest rates in the U.S. — and black women are at dramatically higher risk of complications than white women. A congresswoman from North Carolina is taking action to tackle the problem.
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As the movement for criminal justice reform takes center stage ahead of the 2020 elections, governors and legislators in the South are offering reforms to create a more welcoming reentry process after prison and to restore rights stripped from ex-felons — though progress on that front faces backlash in Florida.


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Tulip continues to expand its global footprint and serve the growing demand for digital solutions and services in APAC.
JANUARY 15, 2024, SOMERVILLE, MA — Tulip Interfaces, a leader in frontline operations, announced today that it will be further expanding into the APAC region with a local presence in Singapore with Strategic Alliances and partner ecosystem across South East Asia, China, Japan, Korea, and Australia. This move comes after an initial expansion into the Indian market in 2022 — underscoring an ongoing commitment to expanding Tulip’s global footprint and serving the growing demand for digital solutions and services in APAC.
“Tulip’s continued expansion in APAC highlights our ongoing investment in this rapidly evolving market,” says Aanchal Gupta, Managing Director of APAC at Tulip. “We see tremendous opportunities in this area — and look forward to partnering with various organizations within our ecosystem to drive a human-centric approach to frontline operations across APAC manufacturers.”
Manufacturing represents one of the largest contributors to Economic GDP in Asia, and Tulip has seen accelerated adoption of platform-based solutions globally and in APAC with customers like UCT, Stanley Black and Decker, DMG Mori, among others.
“The manufacturing environment is constantly evolving. Every day there are new technologies entering the scene,” says Tulip CEO and Co-Founder Natan Linder. “In order to capitalize on these advancements and remain competitive, the industry as a whole is moving toward an increasingly open and composable tech stack. APAC plays a critical role in the global supply chain, and our goal is to enable manufacturers in the region to augment their workers and processes with composable solutions that can be scaled seamlessly.”
Tulip’s investments in APAC, as well as throughout Europe and North America, share a common goal: enabling the people at the frontline of manufacturing operations to drive measurable improvement and efficiency at scale. This vision is in parallel with sessions led by Tulip CEO and Co-Founder Natan Linder at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2024 in Davos, Switzerland, this week.
ABOUT TULIP INTERFACES
Tulip, a leader in frontline operations, is helping companies of all sizes and across industries, including complex manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices, equip their workforce with connected apps — leading to higher quality work, improved efficiency, and end-to-end traceability across operations. A spinoff out of MIT, the company is headquartered in Somerville, MA, with offices in Germany and Hungary.
Press contact: email@example.com


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4,000 banking staff face axe
MORE than 4,000 investment banking jobs are under the axe. CSFB is poised to cut up to 1,750 worldwide. JP Morgan plans about 2,500 in the US, Asia and to a lesser extent Europe. CSFB chief executive John Mack 'the Knife' warned staff by e-mail that cuts are coming because markets have worsened. 'Eliminating jobs is never easy,' said Mack, who has sacked 4,800 in a year.
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11 January 2002
GE COTTON SEED HAS MAJOR QUALITY PROBLEMS - TOP US COTTON MERCHANT
"No, quality has not improved. I still believe the [GE] seed is a major, major problem and I think a lot of people agree with that." - William Dunavant Jr., the chief executive of top U.S. cotton merchant Dunavant Enterprises
AGNET JANUARY 11, 2002
*DUNAVANT SAYS U.S. COTTON QUALITY STILL LAGS, BLAMES SEEDS
*Farmers press GE-free crops in Maine
*Dow Agrosciences says launching 1st cotton seed 2004
*Canadian organic farmers sue Monsanto over GM crops
[full bulletin archived At:
DUNAVANT SAYS U.S. COTTON QUALITY STILL LAGS, BLAMES SEEDS
January 10, 2002
ATLANTA, Georgia - William Dunavant Jr., the chief executive of top U.S. cotton merchant Dunavant Enterprises, was cited as telling reporters at the annual Beltwide Cotton conference here Thursday that American cotton quality remains a problem, saying the seed produced by biotech companies is to blame, adding, "No, quality has not improved. I still believe the seed is a major, major problem and I think a lot of people agree with that."
Earlier Thursday, the chief executive of major mill Parkdale Inc. said U.S. cotton quality has improved although problems linger in some areas. Anderson Warlick, President and Chief Executive of Parkdale Inc. in Gastonia, North Carolina, was quoted as telling Reuters that, "I think our industry is very pleased at the quality (of U.S. cotton). But I don't think you eliminate some of these problems."
The story says that disputes over seed quality marred the last Beltwide meetings in California last year when farmers, milling firms and major merchants on the one hand and seed companies on the other disagreed over the quality of the genetically modified seeds produced by biotech firms. Despite the quality issues plaguing U.S. cotton, Dunavant said this has not hindered the pace of American cotton sales because cotton fiber which contained some defects were selling at a discount. He projected U.S. cotton sales in 2001/02 to hit 9.8 million (480-lb) bales and to rise to 10 million bales in 2002/ 03.
FARMERS PRESS GE-FREE CROPS; GRASS-ROOTS EFFORT SEEKING 3-YEAR MORATORIUM IN MAINE
January 9, 2002
Bangor Daily News
AUGUSTA - According to this story, one of the booths getting a lot of attention Tuesday on opening day of the Maine Agricultural Trades Show at the Augusta Civic Center had a big map of Maine fitted with stickpins, and that each pin represented a farm that has pledged to grow only genetically engineered-free crops.
Sherri Winger was quoted as saying, "We can't manage the technology," and that she and other members of a grass-roots movement, Co-op Voices Unite, are trying to position Maine farmers to have a unique and distinctive edge in the global marketplace. Through farmer pledges and an effort to install a three-year ban on genetically engineering crops across the state, CVU members say that Maine will have the reputation as being GE-clear, which in today’s international market is an advantageous standing.
The story says that in just the first few hours of the trade show, CVU increased its farmer pledges by 33 new members, up to 136 farms. That represents a total acreage of 23,525. But volunteers at the booth said the pledges are only part of the goal, which for them is education. CVU founder Leslie Cummins of Five Star Farm in Brooklin, was quoted as saying, "There is some really hard-core evidence that farmers choosing to grow GE-crops are losing a great deal of money." According to a University of Nebraska study, not only are GE soybeans producing 11 percent less yield than conventional soybeans, the price farmers were receiving per ton dropped 62 percent from 1990 to 1998.
DOW AGROSCIENCES SAYS LAUNCHING 1ST COTTON SEED 2004
January 10, 2002
ATLANTA, Georgia - Joseph Sobek, the Global Business Leader of Dow's Biotechnology Fiber Corps, was cited as telling a briefing at the annual Beltwide Cotton conference Thursday that Dow AgroSciences will launch its first venture into cotton seeds in 2004 and will submit the papers to the government for regulatory approval after the 2002 growing season, adding, "We're talking of significant control here. It really picks up all of the army worm family, including loopers." He added that the new seed variety will help farmers improve on the economics of producing cotton, stating, "We expect full commercial launch for growing season 2004."
CANADIAN ORGANIC FARMERS SUE MONSANTO OVER GM CROPS
January 11, 2002
WINNIPEG, Manitoba ? A group of Canadian organic farmers were cited as launching a lawsuit against biotech giants Monsanto Co. and Aventis SA Thursday, seeking compensation for damages caused by genetically modified canola they say is blowing into their fields. Marc Loiselle, a board member of the Saskatchewan Organic Directorate (SOD), a group representing organic producers in the province, was quoted as saying, "Organic farmers in Saskatchewan have said that the time has come for this legal challenge, and we're here today to let the world know that. We claim that the two companies, Monsanto and Aventis, are responsible for GE (genetically engineered) contamination on multiple grounds, and we're confident that this will be proven in the court of law."
The story notes there are about 1,000 organic growers in Saskatchewan, whose farms represent about 1 million acres (405,700 hectares). SOD alleges that genetically engineered crops threaten the environment and their industry. Arnold Taylor, an organic grower and president of SOD, was quoted as saying, "Any kind of science, whatever it is, if it's infringing on our rights, they don't have a right to do it."
The story notes that organizations that certify crops as organic have zero tolerance for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the seed supply. They also prohibit organic farmers from applying most crop chemicals. Instead, organic farmers rely on crop rotation, which includes the staggered planting of canola and wheat, to control weeds. Today, about 60 percent of the canola grown in Saskatchewan is genetically modified to resist weeds. Monsanto Canada spokeswoman Trish Jordan was quoted as saying, "To me it's just a matter of continuing to give farmers choice in terms of what they grow. And farmers make choices whether they grow organic or conventional or transgenic, and they make those choices based on what works for them on their farm."
ngin bulletin archive


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And not a whole lot else
Bethesda gave us a glimpse into the far future tonight. It’s working on a new game called Starfieldwhich it says is its first wholly-original franchise of the past 25 years.
Apart from this brief teaser, we don’t know much about Starfield. It’s single-player and it won’t release soon. When director Todd Howard described it, he phrased things so as to suggest this game will launch for the next generation of consoles. Howard also said Bethesda has spent “years thinking about and working on” and that the developer is “uniquely positioned to pull [this game] off.”
Starfieldwill probably be a big deal at some future E3. But at E3 2018, it’s just a quick mention to put everyone on notice.


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That familiar catchphrase shows no sign of stopping as NPD says Apple is on track to sell between 4.1 million and 4.3 million Macs in the December quarter. As AllThingsD points out, Apple's U.S. Mac sales are up 20 percent year-over-year for the first two months of the current quarter. International sales are growing even faster than domestic sales with 22 to 28 percent year-over-year growth for the first two months of the current quarter.
Still haven't picked up Apple stock? There's still time as many think there's a 30ish-percent 12-month upswing coming.


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Updates get us excited, especially when they involve making the leap to the latest version of Android. But for some Nexus 5 users, the transition has come at the expense of their camera. Following the release of Android 5.1, they've been unable to reliably activate the camera without getting hit by crashes.
This incident occurs once the stock app or any other piece of software tries to access the camera, such as Facebook or Snapchat. Read More
The Moto 360 has dropped to some downright cheaper prices over the past few weeks. Amazon and Best Buy alike have sold the smartwatch for up to $100 off, depending on the variant. People have been able to buy the wearable in any color or material at a discounted price.
Now the Moto 360's Google Store listing has received a price drop as well. The device is showing up there for $165. And this doesn't appear to be a sale, either. Read More
If you've got a Nexus 4, your days on Android 5.0 are numbered: because you're going to Android 5.1! Assuming you, you know, want to. The OTA link is right here, allowing you to upgrade from LRX22C to LMY47O. The update clocks in at 174MB.
You can check out all of the new Android 5.1 features in our various feature spotlight posts, and there are actually quite a few. 5.1 is also a major bugfix release, so hopefully the inevitable issues you've been running into on Android 5.0 are largely solved with this OTA. Or, more likely, hopefully they will be solved in Android 5.1.1, the bugfix to the bugfix. Read More
Large companies have a hard time keeping secrets, especially when multiple partners and countless employees become involved. Bits and pieces are bound to leak out, both intentionally and accidentally, and sometimes a wealth of information can be discovered about unannounced plans. It appears that an app designed for Google's much anticipated MVNO has turned up in an unofficial Nexus 6 firmware image. If legitimate, the app not only confirms the service, but it may reveal some details about service plans, billing, and even a previously unheard-of name, "Project Fi."
Disclaimer: No matter the confidence level, there's always a chance product updates, features, and some or all details will be changed or cancelled altogether.
Amazon is sending out an update to the Android-powered Fire TV and Fire TV Stick that makes a few tweaks to the experience, the most significant of which is support for X-Ray. This feature has been on the Fire tablets for some time, but now it's on a streaming box for the first time.
It was inevitable. Inevitable, I tell you. With the smartphone market becoming a ridiculous battlefield of overpowered spec sheets, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to cram a 4K resolution into a phone. That someone is Japanese smartphone maker and frequent part supplier Sharp, who revealed a 5.5" screen module with a resolution of 3840 by 2160 pixels. That's a density of 806 pixels per square inch, for those of you keeping score at home. Read More
If the Moto 360 price drops from two days ago aren't sweet enough for you, it looks like Best Buy is offering an in-store deal that could be even better if executed correctly.
Until April 18th, Best Buy will give in-store customers $100 off the Moto 360 when purchased with any Android phone. The key word here of course is "any." According to one tipster, this even works with inexpensive prepaid devices. (This particular tipster went the extra mile, combining the deal with a USPS movers coupon and a .edu discount, for a final cost of just $118 plus tax for the 360 with a steel band.)
If you've been on the fence about getting a Moto 360, this seems like a pretty good deal. Read More


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Craig Asling has been named as Esa Gaming’s new head of games, with the casino content provider targeting a large expansion of its igaming portfolio.
Asling will be in charge of extending the company’s EasySwipe game portfolio, which includes the Mine Series, as well as launching a new collection of mobile slots.
This portfolio was created to integrate smoothly into sportsbooks in order to provide gamers with casino games without interfering with the sports betting portfolio. They want to provide an alternate experience for sports bettors and introduce them to a new vertical.
Following the initial success of the games collection last year, the addition of Asling will boost the portfolio even more as Esa Gaming continues to execute its expansion strategy across a number of regulated regions.
Director Zorica Smallwood of Esa Gaming explained: “We are thrilled to welcome Craig, an experienced and creative content producer with a passion for games, to the ESA team.
“With his help and expertise, we will be able to inject more time and resources into further developing our product offering after what has been a successful period of growth for ESA Gaming.
“We have great plans for the future, and we look forward to introducing fresh and exciting content to players around the globe.”
Asling joins Esa Gaming after seven years at iSoftBet, where he most recently served as studio lead and game producer. Prior to entering the gaming industry, Asling worked in the video game industry in a variety of capacities.
Asling added: “I’m very happy to join the dynamic and innovative team at Esa Gaming and to be part of their future evolution.
“Esa’s content brings something unique to the market and with a vision to expand the offering further, it’s an exciting time for me to join the company.”


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February 6th, 2016
With the planned launch of the Vio brand in February 2016, Coca-Cola ventures into flavoured milk drinks, a rapidly growing category in India. It will be at least initially available in just two relatively classic flavours, Almond Delight and Kesar Treat, at a price of Rs25 per 200ml bottle (US$0.37), and is positioned as an […]
February 3rd, 2016
Coca-Cola has announced its intention to purchase a 40% stake in Nigeria’s Chi (holding company Tropical General Investments) and will buy the rest of the group within three years. This is not a surprise move as it fits Coca-Cola’s coordinated global strategic movements in enlarging investment in dairy and juices. Euromonitor International’s latest data show […]
January 27th, 2016
Whilst much of the expansion in bottled water volumes is driven by low-priced, low-margin bulk water purchases in emerging markets and budget private label purchases in many developed markets, the impact on consumer behaviour–and tastes–is real, and lasting. Intriguingly, the continued shift to bottled water could create real opportunity for innovation on the high end, […]
January 22nd, 2016
Euromonitor recently released new data for soft drinks and the results are showing 2015 as the slowest year for global carbonates growth in all of our historic data set. Microeconomic factors are definitely to blame, but there is also a heightened global sense of health and wellness that is turning consumers away from carbonated drinks. […]
January 18th, 2016
Global strategic planners and soft drinks investors are facing an increasingly complex marketplace, where consumers are slowly moving away from carbonates and drinking a variety of beverages.
January 18th, 2016
The economic turmoil in Russia and Ukraine in 2014-2015 echoed across neighbouring CIS countries in terms of devaluation, leading to a down-trading trend in these markets. However, what seems as a negative prospect at first glance has potential opportunities.
January 16th, 2016
Skandinavia er på verdenstoppen når det gjelder forbruk av saft, med en sterkere vekst i sukkerfri saft enn i de fleste andre markeder. I Norge er det spesielt to merker som driver veksten i retning av sukkerfri saft; Fun Light og ZerOH!. Med en solid posisjonering rettet mot unge kvinner, en voksende demografisk gruppe i […]
January 8th, 2016
In July, I discussed the possible reasons for the slowing market for Chinese juice. This subject is important to the industry as a whole, as, over the last five years, the majority of global retail juice growth has been in China. Low-fruit-content, single-serve juice drinks in particular supported strong development of the wider Chinese soft […]
January 7th, 2016
As major emerging markets (China, Russia and Brazil) are experiencing slowdowns in their economies, manufacturers are assessing the possible impact on sales of their fmcg products and discussing how to ideally plan their medium-to-long-term investment strategies.
January 6th, 2016
One of the advantages of Euromonitor International’s new Soft Drinks Forecast Model is the ability to identify unexpected markets of opportunity. This is increasingly important for the drinks industry, as the large emerging markets of China and Brazil have slowed significantly in 2015, impacting the global outlook for retail beverages.


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Kelly Moss Road and Race will race a Porsche 911 GT3R in the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship next year, the American team has announced.
In a statement to MotorsportWeek.com, the team said: “Kelly Moss continues to support Porsche and our clients across multiple racing platforms extending from Porsche Club of America, Porsche Sprint Challenge and Carrera Cup North America.
“2022 saw program expansion into IMSA’s Michelin Pilot series with a Cayman in the GS class. Our hope is to field a second Cayman in Michelin Pilot in 2023 along with expansion into the WeatherTech championship running in GTD with new 992 GT3R. While we have our eyes on GTP as soon as 2025, our focus is on winning championships in 2023.”
This will see the team campaign the brand new Porsche 911 GT3R, based on the 992 platform. The German manufacturer has been testing the car this year and first raced the car in a “test race” in the Nurburgring Endurance Series, with Frédéric Makowiecki and Julien Andlauer finishing on the podium.
It is not yet clear who drive the car in the IMSA GTD class, although in recent years Porsche has placed factory drivers at its customer teams.
Looking into the future, Kelly Moss also confirmed they were looking at racing in the new-for-2023 GTP class, possibly as soon as 2025. In 2023, Porsche will campaign two factory cars in the class, in partnership with Penske. In addition, Porsche will make two cars available for customers — one of which will be run by current Cadillac customers JDC Miller Motorsports.


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Charlotte, N.C.-based Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated announced a $10 million investment in its Baltimore manufacturing plant, located at 701 North Kresson St. Mayor Catherine Pugh joined company officials on a tour of the production center to learn more about the investment and manufacturing processes at the facility.
Although carbonated soft drinks (CSDs) still is among the top performing beverage categories, more than a decade of volume declines has challenged the established category as it competes with better-for-you beverages and premium products.
Company celebrates 90th anniversary with Slurpee Week
July 11, 2017
Irving, Texas-based 7-Eleven Inc. is celebrating its 90th birthday on 7-Eleven Day (July 11).To celebrate its milestone birthday, 7-Eleven is inviting millions to enjoy a free Slurpee party, continuing the tradition that started on the retailer's 75th birthday in 2002.
Reed’s Inc., a Los Angeles-based handcrafted, all-natural beverage company, named Val Stalowir as its new chief executive officer (CEO). In conjunction with his appointment as CEO, Stalowir also will serve on the company’s Board of Directors.
Limited-edition packaging features lyrics from six rappers
June 19, 2017
Sprite, a brand of Atlanta-based The Coca-Cola Co., announced the release of the Summer Sprite Cold Lyrics Series limited-edition packaging, which features cold-inspired lyrics from six of the hottest rappers in the game, the company says.


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NEWSLETTER by Alessia Falsarone. The author acknowledges the team at The University of Chicago Circular Economy and Sustainable Business Management Program and all participants of the innovation knowledge hub for their insights and collaboration.
A year has passed since the launch of the UN Environment Programme‘s Global Treaty on Plastics, the first global attempt at addressing a worldwide issue that requires collective action. Plastic waste a global issue, with both an environmental and a social DNA. It has been stated more than once: 25 companies holding a total of 50% market share are responsible for half of the world’s plastic production. Yet, the ecosystem of plastics is complex — production, processing, consumption, waste collection, sorting and recycling— with a variety of stakeholders being primary decision makers at each step.
This year, on World Environment Day 2023, I invite you to leave behind the focus on individual stakeholders and remediation actions (downstream activities) and start considering the full lifecycle of plastics as a system which comprises inefficiencies, bottlenecks as well as opportunities to move investments and policies upstream where the recycling potential of materials can turn plastic waste into value.
| The Science of Impact
The team in the Innovation and Digital Finance Advisory division at the European Investment Bank (EIB) have recently shifted the discussion on plastic pollution from systemic bottlenecks to the inefficiencies in the plastics value chain that, once clearly laid out, could offer a stronger prioritization rationale when it comes to investment opportunities as well as policy measures.
>>click to zoom in | Courtesy of Vanessa Paul and the EIB Innovation and Digital Finance Advisory team.
Root Cause #1: Design requirements of retailers and brand owners influence the recyclability of plastic products. In essence, decisions surrounding packaging materials are the leading contributor to the plastic waste problem.
Packaging materials are primarily designed to enhance product positioning and marketing, while also meeting logistical and safety needs. However, the product development process rarely considers material recovery in product design. This emphasis (on positioning and marketing first) causes packaging materials to be highly heterogeneous in terms of color, material, format, etc, thus lacking viable reuse or recycling pathways.
Bottomline: If we followed basic sustainable design principles, much of the plastic packaging material used today could already be waived by retail and brand owners.
| Circularity Roadmaps Explained
Beyond the environmental risks, the growing financial risks of unmanaged plastics pollution linked to human health and society, and financial risks for corporate investments, are becoming stronger drivers of action – both in terms of policy making as well as defining priority areas for investing in plastic waste solutions. The majority of the current efforts by local government authorities and international bodies have prioritized downstream solutions (for example, clean up and remediation after a major leakage in the environment) as opposed to developing prevention measures, where most technology-driven alternatives remain in proof-of-concept stage.
So far, most of the circularity roadmaps involving plastics have served the purpose of policy making as a key complexity of the plastics value chain is in bringing to the market lifecycle solutions. In their recent release, the teams at Chatham House and the Global Water Partnership, stress the importance of plastics data transparency and traceability as key steps to implementing such solutions with an industrial applications lens in mind.
Not surprisingly, most plastic products are not currently labeled in ways that clearly state the additives included in them, making data gaps even more relevant at a time of focus on raising public awareness on plastic waste pollution. The lack of homogeneity in plastics, reinforced by brand owners’ preference for a variety of shapes, sizes and colors, adds to the challenges of recycling and sorting, makes plastic packaging is the biggest contributor to the plastic waste problem (both by volume and environmental impact).
The introduction of Digital Product Passports starting from the EU is likely to deliver another tool to enable businesses and government to simplify the complexities of the plastics value chain and introduce new investment opportunities for the private sector.
| Investing in the Circular Economy
Globally, plastic waste represents a USD100 billion problem annually.
Europe is doing comparatively well in curbing plastic pollution and advancing a baseline for global plastic treaty negotiations along with Japan and Chile. Its Waste Framework Directive and Packaging Directive have been enforcing recycling targets and promoting circular design features for plastic packaging products for over a decade. These efforts have significantly reduced plastic leakage into the environment. However, the EIB study points to an investment gap in the range of €7-9 billion for the EU to meet its recycled content targets by 2025 . While the overall amount seems minimal, it relies on a reliable end-market for recycled content to upgrade annual sorting and recycling capacity by 2025 in pursuit of its 10 Mt annual target for recyclate – reusing materials that have been recycled – across the continent.
With more than 90% of that cost not included in the market price of plastics according to estimates from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the case for venture debt innovation in this market is an established one. Yet, venture debt – think of a loan to an an early stage business that provides liquidity for the period between equity funding rounds – requires specialized skills and an established transaction ecosystem to thrive. The EIB alone has rolled it out as a tool to finance plastic lifecycle ventures extensively. An example of such a transaction is the EIB’s financing of the French company CARBIOS in 2021, for a €30 million loan agreement. Through its technology development, Carbios converts PET plastic (the dominant polymer in bottles, trays and textiles made of polyester) into its core monomers, which can then be used for feedstock as new 100% recycled PET suitable for all original applications.
In the US, the case for funding plastics recovery and recycling infrastructure has continued to grow strong as an economic and environmental opportunity that can benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The recent $10 million investment from Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation into Closed Loop Partners Circular Plastics Fund is a strategic bet into an addressable market for plastics with potential revenue opportunities of $120 billion in the U.S. and Canada alone.
| You don’t want to miss this week
From Bologna, to Seattle, and Tallinn (Estonia), this week offers new opportunities to connect with fellow circularity practitioners both in person and in hybrid mode.
Discover, grow and leave your mark!
〉June 5th – June 9th: EU Biomass Conference (Bologna, Italy). At a time when opportunities and headwinds for biomass extend globally, the EU biomass community will discuss its role for the future of decarbonization. Led by Isabella De Bari, Conference Chair and Head of the ENEA laboratory for the processes and technologies for bio-refineries and green chemistry, with the participation, among others, of international experts Paolo Frankl, Renewable Energy Division chief at the International Energy Agency (IEA), James Spaeth from the US Dept Of Energy, and Marko Janhunen, Director of Public Affairs with the Advanced Biofuels Coalition, Finland. *Note: Attendance is free in person and via streaming.
〉June 5th – June 7th: Circularity 23 (Seattle, WA). Join me in Seattle this week at the annual circularity gathering by GreenBiz Group. I will be participating in the session “Track and Trace: Navigating the Enabling Tech Landscape” on Monday morning with a deep dive into Digital Product Passports and how product-level transparency promises to enable stronger supply chains and deliver more effective investor due diligence. A packed morning and tutorial guided by Heather Clancy.
〉June 5th – June 6th: 5th OECD Roundtable on the Circular Economy in Cities and Regions (Tallinn, Estonia). Part of the EU Green Week, the event will focus on how to enable urban spaces for circular solutions, and showcasing the experience of Estonia. The city of Tallinn has been awarded the title of European Green Capital 2023 and is committed to reaching carbon neutrality by 2050. It also marks the launch of the new OECD report on “The Circular Economy in Tallinn, Estonia”, which offers policy recommendations for effectively implementing circular economy policies across all levels of government.
Off to another impactful week!
Alessia Falsarone is executive in residence, practitioner faculty at the University of Chicago, where she leads the Circular Economy and Sustainable Business program. The article is based on the author’s newsletter A Week of Circularity from the innovation knowledge hub.
| All opinions expressed are those of the author and/or quoted sources. investESG.eu is an independent and neutral platform dedicated to generating debate around ESG investing topics.


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Spain-based tuna supplier Grupo Calvo increased global sales by 7.5% in 2017 to €618.3 million, marking a decade of consistent growth for the company.
The group posted a volume sales increase of 1.7%, while EBITDA was €62 million, slightly down on the €66 million the company recorded in 2016.
Grupo Calvo is present in over 70 countries through its three main brands, Gomes da Costa, Calvo and Nostromo, and the company boasts production and packaging plants in Spain, El Salvador and Brazil.
Despite a shortage of local raw material (primarily sardines) for its Brazilian Gomes da Costa subsidiary and the depreciation of the Brazilian real, the company either increased or maintained its sales volume and market share in all markets in which it operates.
Growth was especially positive in Spain, with market share increases in almost all canned fish product segments.
The launch of the new Ecoline, featuring pole-caught tuna packed in certified organic oil, and the consolidation of its Claro Light Yellowfin Tuna range contributed to strengthening brand leadership in the tuna category, the company said.
In Italy, where Grupo Calvo owns a 40% stake in Bolton Group (Rio Mare), the Nostromo brand has successfully focused on organic and new products dedicated to health and well-being, such as the new Tuna Nostromo Zero SKU, the first tuna product that is completely free of fats.
After Spain, Italy is the second biggest canned tuna market, worth €1.3 billion in 2017, based on data from the Italian National Association of Fish Canneries (Ancit).
Canned tuna is especially popular among under-25s and in families with children, and is present in 94% of Italian households, according to a Doxa-Ancit survey.
Overall, global canned tuna sales are worth over €36 billion.
© 2018 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Branislav Pekic. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine


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Associate Editor Ashley Willis talks with Mobotix Chief Sales Officer Dr. Magnus Ekerot about what the industry can expect in terms of technology for 2013. Read on as Ekerot tackles that question and explains how Mobotix can aid integrators in growing their businesses.
Ashley Willis · November 14, 2012
Global sales of IP video products will overtake analog video equipment by 2013, according to a new report by IMS Research.
June 11, 2012
SSI caught up with a pair of Schneider Electric executives at ISC West to discuss the firm’s technology offerings, including the Pelco video brand.
By Scott Goldfine · May 09, 2012
Although global sales of network video products will best analog equipment by 2014, IMS Research forecasts that in terms of shipments, analog cameras will continue to outsell network cameras.
July 26, 2011
A new study conducted by the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) reports that 87 percent of retail companies that currently use analog surveillance technology are considering switching to network video ...
January 11, 2011
More than 50 percent of all network security cameras shipped will be megapixel or HD resolution by 2014, according to a new report by IMS Research ...
August 24, 2010
Panasonic System Networks Company of America is one of several companies that arrived at ISC West this year with products that reflect the incorporation of business units that once operated independently.
March 25, 2010
It's been pretty firmly established: The Digital Revolution is inevitable. The Convergence Wave is coming crashing down whether we like it or not. That being said, there is still much debate on the merits and benefits of old-school analog systems.
June 30, 2009
A lot of information (some say disinformation) swirls around the wider adoption of IP ...
December 31, 2008
A stock market maxim says that past performance does not necessarily indicate future returns. Nowadays, the same holds true for the ...
September 30, 2007


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Lithium-ion battery makers accelerated capacity expansion, and Tianqi Lithium's key lithium products saw significant increases in both sales volume and average sales price compared to the same period last year.
Tianqi Lithium expects a third-quarter net profit of RMB 5 billion ($695 million) to RMB 6.5 billion, up 1,026.10 percent to 1,363.92 percent from RMB 444 million a year earlier, the Shenzhen-listed Chinese lithium giant said in an October 15 announcement.
After deducting non-recurring gains and losses, Tianqi expects a third-quarter net profit of RMB 4.98 billion to RMB 6.48 billion. The company posted a loss of RMB 141 million in the same period of the previous year.
Tianqi expects third-quarter earnings of RMB 3.09 - 4.01 per share, up from earnings of RMB 0.3 per share in the same period last year.
For the first three quarters, Tianqi expects a net profit of RMB 15.2 billion - 16.9 billion, up 2,768.96 percent - 3,089.83 percent from earnings of RMB 530 million in the same period last year.
Tianqi expects its net profit after non-recurring gains and losses for the first three quarters to be RMB 14.2 billion – RMB 15.8 billion, compared to a loss of RMB 122 million for the same period last year.
Tianqi expects to earn RMB 9.97 - RMB 11.08 per share in the first three quarters, up from RMB 0.36 per share in the same period last year.
The performance mainly benefited from a number of positive factors, including an increase in the global new energy vehicle (NEV) boom, accelerated capacity expansion by lithium-ion battery makers and a rebound in orders for downstream cathode materials, Tianqi said.
During the reporting period, sales volume and average sales price of the company's main lithium products both increased significantly compared with the same period last year, it said.
The average spot price of battery-grade lithium carbonate rose RMB 4,000 per ton to RMB 535,500 per ton on October 17, according to data provider Mysteel.
This was up 7 percent from the same period last month and continued to set a new record high.


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2016 marked the 14th year of “The Quail” automotive showcase in Carmel , California.
The big news for the 2017 Range Rover Sport deals with the European-spec model. Land Rover is introducing a 2.0L turbodiesel four-cylinder with 240 horsepower and 369 pound-feet of torque.
While speaking during the Camaro 50th anniversary festivities this past weekend, Camaro chief engineer Al Oppenheiser stated that the 2017 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 with the 6-speed manual transmission
Wasn’t Tesla supposed to be different?
The Tesla Model S is by far the quickest electric vehicle sold in the USA and since this big EV went on sale with the high performance P85D models, we have seen videos of these all-wheel drive beas
A few months back, spy shots of a Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT with a front end similar to the one shown above hit the automotive world and immediately, many outlets rushed to insist that this was the f
Although it hasn’t been seen in the wild on the East Coast yet, automotive watchers have reported sightings of the new Kia compact crossover romping on the roads somewhere in the Southwest.
Flood owners have enough to worry about without having to stress about making payments on a car that may have been destroyed by flooding.
Driving on two wheels or "skiing" is a stunt made famous over the years from James Bond films, Knight Rider and the Dukes of Hazzard among others.
The parking lots around Subaru’s Canadian headquarters in Toronto, overflowed with every year of Subaru WRX STI that you can think of.
Although it probably won’t come as news to anyone who has followed cars or a car brand longer than five minutes or so, there are many interesting vehicles overseas that never make it here to the go
Subaru Motor LLC, distributor of Subaru cars in Russia and Belarus, has dropped the price on the 2016 Subaru WRX STI in a big way.
So, why do you think Volkswagen is cutting back on production a bit? The cuts are coming in the highly popular Golf line, the automaker’s biggest-seller in Europe.
Subaru UK has announced an exclusive Special Edition 2017 Forester that celebrates a milestone for the Japanese automaker. Subaru is celebrating their 50th Anniversary of the Subaru Boxer engine.


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Cash loans, which attract low-income men and women to share transient profit for untenable rates of interest, are actually a scourge relating to the US technique that will be economic. Which is the reason really these announcements that is welcome yahoo will stop pay day loans advertisements, beginning appear july very first.
You’re most likely more satisfied if you’re not familiar with the technique of payday advances. It’s well worth recapping a few of their most bad professors, however, that will help you understand the need for Google’s switch. Finance companies, progressively using the internet, create quick cash loans that are generally speaking because of relating to the borrower’s payday that is appropriate. In as well as itself, which is not too bad, then again the smoothness regarding the financial loans desire the indegent, alongside their exorbitant rates of interest make sure they are amazingly challenging to pay out.
Respected view, a recent Pew Charitable Trusts analysis found out that the typical lump-sum APR for cash loans on the internet were 650 percent. Numerous charge cards mean upwards in the mid-teens or fair 20s. The middle for trusted credit offers realized which APR that is regular all payday advance loan is simply an astonishing 391 %. Creditors generally ask for acce for the borrower’s account which is checking set withdraws, whether there’s adequate income truth be told there or perhaps not just. Pew located that virtually 50 percent of on-line pay check loan debtors wound up overdrawn for a loan provider departure, while the marketplace economical housing Bureau has really stated that those loan company penalties mean over to $185 per loan provider.
That’s a little bit of very small sample from the damning research across the practice of cash loans. The CFPB is now looking at an idea that may rank stricter limitations on the rehearse, but a judgment is not forecast until later this early spring. At the moment, Google’s went to do exactly what it can to disaociate alone from predatory credit, and hopefully save your self a not a lot of people from debt-related disorder in the proce.
The mortgage that happens getting pay check try obviously irritated. These guidelines are actually prejudiced in addition to a kind censorship, a spokesman about neighborhood monetary vendors Aociation with the usa informs WIRED. The internet is supposed to expre the movement that is without and develop deal. Yahoo is in fact discovering a quilt aement when it comes to the payday credit market place as opposed to discriminating the favorable movie stars with the dreadful stars. That is unjust towards people that are certified, qualified lenders and look after most advance payday loans online Georgia readily useful busine techniques, such as people in CFSA.
Googles club, which work into effect July 13, will targeted a cla which is certain of. The bar will placed on organizations providing bills that may are available because within two months related to go out this is iue plus in the united states, right after which to financial products making use of the APR of 36 per cent or maybe more.
By firmly taking motion against scientifically suitable but morally bankrupt payday advances, yahoo has taken an even more aggreive strategy toward customer securities. Great.
After test our very own individual systems, studies show these kind of financial loans may result in uncontrollable price and large regular charges for customers and we are going to likely be altering the restrictions internationally to echo that, created yahoo international product technique movie director David Graff, creating the difference.
Banning advertisements can be not only a training that is brand-new Google; as Graff documents, only earlier 12 months the business disablednearly 800 million adverts for practices like counterfeiting and phishing. By firmly taking motion against theoretically genuine but morally broke wage advance personal loans, however, yahoo is taking a much more aggreive strategy toward shoppers securities. Good.
This truly measures is believed by me is really as unequaled as everything is crucial, posted CRL government vp Keith Corbett. By instance, yahoo is showing precisely how effective companies may easily generally be moral and advantageous of monetary that will be fairne getting rid of advertising that destination financially-strapped consumers into unmanageable, long-term and expensive private debts snares, Bing happens to be expressing what company citizenship looks like.
Pay day loan companies won’t end up as prohibited from online absolutely; they’ll though happen to take into consideration amazing benefits. If doing away with the advertising tends to make likewise a little big difference, though, the effective. Things which should allow it to be more difficult for predators allowing you to connect making use of their prey number as progre.


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Vital Signs buys fluid warming company:
This article was originally published in Clinica
Anaesthesia breathing systems manufacturer Vital Signs has bought blood warming technology specialist Enginivity in a deal worth $5.9m. The deal sees Totowa, New Jersey-based Vital Signs acquire the enFlow device, a fluid warming system that brings the warming element closer to the patient, reducing heat loss and post-operative infections. The enFlow device will be introduced to market in November, and provides the company with an entry into what it claims is a $40-45m domestic market. Enginivity (Lexington, Massachusetts) sold its FDA-cleared and CE-marked products to hospitals and the US government but received no revenue in 2006.


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The Slovak technological sector has been the sight of another acquisition, the Index magazine reported.
Following the acquisition of the event platform Slido and the Exponea specialist for managing online marketing campaigns, Capturing Reality, experts in 3D scanning software, reported belonging under a new proprietor.
The company, founded in 2013 by Tomáš Bujňák, Martin Bujňák and Michal Jančošek, was bought by the US-based Epic Games company.
Epic Games can be counted as one of the world's leaders when it comes to the production of video games; a notable achievement of theirs is, for example, the game Fortnite, which boasts 350 million players.
So far, the value of the transactions or the size of Epic Games’ share in the company wasn’t made public.
Capturing Reality develops software for so-called 3D scanning. In layman’s terms, 3D scanning is the creation of digital models from real pictures and scenes with the help of photography and laser scans.
This software is used by companies and organisations from across the fields of architecture, culture and 3D printing.
Among their references, Capturing Reality lists the Zamani Project from South Africa, a platform for the digitalisation of cultural and natural heritage, and their development of rendering tools called Lumion for the Netherlands.
The sales of Capturing Reality have been on a continual rise since its inception. In 2019 the company reported gross earnings of €2.3 million, which represented €1.2 worth of wealth after tax.
In Epic Games, the technology of Slovak IT specialists will become part of the Unreal Engine software ecosystem. Besides games, the engine is used by film studios, the automobile industry and architecture.
11. Mar 2021 at 17:11 | Compiled by Spectator staff


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Yesterday, Microsoft released its earnings report for Q2 FY2014 (that is Q4 CY2013), revealing revenue of $24.52 billion and net income of $6.56 billion (78 cents per share). The Redmond, Wash.-based corporation has managed to beat the average analyst consensus of $23.68 billion and 68 cents per share respectively, as my colleague Joe Wilcox noted.
Aside from the strong overall results, there was another part of the earnings report which has caught our attention -- Surface sales. Revenue from Microsoft's Windows RT and Windows 8 tablets reached $893 million during the quarter. That is $493 million more than in the first fiscal quarter of the year. Good news, right? Surface is finally starting to take off, after all. Well, an SEC filling puts a damper on any enthusiasm, as Microsoft actually lost money on its tablets in Q2 FY2014.
Finnish maker Nokia has released its earnings report for Q4 2013, the first that indicates how the company, and its financial health, will look like without the Devices & Services arm that is set to be part of Microsoft's portfolio. That business is listed under "Discontinued operations".
Another effect of the sale of this business is that Nokia no longer lists the exact volume for the mobile phones and smartphones sold during the quarter. This effectively rules out any precise Lumia Windows Phone performance comparison. However, the company gives bad news as it reveals unit sales are actually lower for its Windows Phones compared to the previous quarter, when it sold 8.8 million of them.
Intel has used the Bett 2014 educational technology show in London to announce reference designs for the next generation of devices aimed at the education sector.
The Intel Education Tablet and Classmate PC feature student-friendly features along with Intel’s Education Software suite of learning tools.
What do you get after taking out the cellular prowess from a very, very large smartphone? The answer would be a tablet, albeit one that falls on the smaller side. It is exactly what Japanese maker Sony has done with its Xperia Z Ultra, which will be available in a Wi-Fi only version this week.
For those unfamiliar with the Xperia Z Ultra, the device was announced in the first half of 2013 with a 6.44-inch display, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and 4G LTE/HSPA+ cellular connectivity, as the main selling points.
What's that? Another music streaming service? Another one?! You could be forgiven for having this reaction to the news that Dr Dre's Beats Music is now available for iOS and Android; this is a market that is already rather saturated, and music lovers are not exactly short of options when it comes to picking a service to satiate their audio needs. So any new service vying for attention has to have something rather unique to offer if it is going to stand out from the competition.
Beats Music does have a unique selling point. It is a service that is about more than just streaming music, it aims to deliver the right music according to the time of day, what you are doing and where you are. Is this sort of stream tailoring enough to win over music fans? Only time will tell, but Beats Music certainly has a fight on its hands if it is to wrestle users away from the existing services that have been established for some time.
Since the latest generation of the Kindle Fire family of tablets rolled out, it almost seems the devices are on sale more often than not. Just recently the retail giant celebrated being named number one in customer satisfaction with a promo code for its devices, now it’s using football as an excuse for one more deal.
It’s not hard to deduce why this latest bargain is being given -- Amazon is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, home of the Seahawks who are now Super Bowl-bound to battle the Denver Broncos. In fact, the graphic currently displayed on the homepage illustrates the Seahawks-49ers game this past Sunday.
The phablet. It's a device with a silly name, but it's a market that is gaining massive momentum. Analysis by Juniper Research suggests that the number of larger-screened devices that ship will rocket by 600 percent by 2018. Projected figures show shipments jumping from around 20 million devices in 2013, to 120 million five years later. But taking into account the loose definition of a phablet it is possible that the figures could be even higher.
In fact there is no "official" definition of a phablet, at least in terms of the size of screen a device must sport in order to qualify for the title. Juniper Research acknowledges that phones with very large screens are increasingly common, with many high-end handsets featuring 5 inch - 5.5 inch displays. For the purposes of its report, Juniper Research uses the term phablet to refer to handsets that have a screen size between 5.6 inches and 6.9 inches.
Almost 3.5 million British children under the age of eight have tablets and nearly 4 million learned to use a smartphone or tablet before they were three.
New research from price comparison and switching service uSwitch reveals a growing nation of cyber tots with 29 percent learning to use a touch screen device before the age of three and 11 percent before they were two.
There's no shortage of choice when it comes to 7-inch tablets, and Samsung is extending the selection even further with the release of the Galaxy Tab3 Lite. As you've probably discerned from the not-particularly-enigmatic name, this is a device closely based on the original Galaxy Tab3, albeit in a thinner lighter design. Or so you might think. Despite the name, the Tab3 Lite is not smaller in terms of dimensions or mass. In fact it is both larger and heavier than its predecessor. Here, 'Lite' refers to trimming back on the hardware spec.
Looked at in terms of size, it looks as though the Tab3 Lite has gained a little over the holiday period. The Lite model is more than 3mm wider, over 5mm taller and 10g heavier. The new device is 2mm thinner than the Tab3, but it is the other specs that make for interesting reading. A 2 Megapixel rear camera replaces the 3 Megapixel unit, while on the front you'll find that the camera has disappeared entirely.
This was a week dominated by CES, and there were a huge number of announcements about upcoming hardware. Lenovo took the wraps off the (slightly) heavyweight ThinkPad Tablet 8, but any excess weight was countered by the ultra-light ThinkPad X1 Carbon ultrabook. HP's range of business desktops even included one device running Android, while Nvidia's new Tegra K1 promises much for the mobile market.
Competitor Qualcomm revealed two processors designed for entertainment while Pure's Connect platform opens up the possibility of using any streaming music service with its wireless speakers. Smart TVs are set to benefit from the addition of Roku software, but it seems that the technology du jour is 4K, with a new 4K laptop from Toshiba joining the streams of 4K TVs and monitors.
While the world points fingers at companies like Microsoft and Google over recent security matters, in light of the big NSA scandal, one company goes on mostly unscathed. Perhaps it’s our love of shopping and the convenience of doing it online. But maybe, it’s just about making that experience so good.
Amazon announces today that is has been voted number one in customer service satisfaction for the ninth straight year. The online retailer isn’t resting on this laurel, but instead using it as an excuse to drum up more good will.
It seems that these days it is not enough for a laptop to just be a laptop, or a tablet to be a tablet. I'm not talking about the strange new breed of devices that are capable of running Windows and Android, or the rumors that handsets running Windows Phone and Android might see the light of day (haha! Can you imagine?). I'm talking about the devices that seem to be trying to become best friends with Michael Bay, transforming between multiple modes.
It's not really a new concept. We've already looked at Lenovo's Yoga 11S which can be bent into four different positions. The same company also has the Flex range which has fewer Transformer-like capabilities, but is still more than just your average laptop. At CES 2014 Toshiba decided to up the ante, taking the wraps off a 5-in-1 device.
Ours is not to reason why…well, let's leave the poetry behind. This week at CES we've seen a boatload of new products, including tablets. When Panasonic unveiled its seven-inch Toughpad, it seemed a bit pricey, but specs were good, and it's made for a specific task.
Now, we are seeing a 20-inch Performance version (as opposed to the Standard). Again, specs are certainly solid -- an Intel Core i7 processor, NVIDIA Quadro K1000 GPU, 5 MP rear camera, a staggering 4K screen (3840x2560) that Panasonic claims holds 9.8 million pixels, Ethernet port and DisplayPort, 16 GB of RAM, card reader and a 256 GB SSD.
When I was a teenager I used to love having stickers on some of my things -- furniture, school notebooks and my PC. Of course, I later regretted my decision to "personalize" my belongings, but at the time it was fun and, in my mind, cool. I especially enjoyed seeing the logos of major then-popular tech companies, like Intel, AMD, Nvidia, ATI, on the front of the PC case. It meant something for me, and maybe others, at the time. My stance changed, rapidly, as I grew up.
After I bought my first laptop, the first thing I did was to remove the stickers that were on it. Unlike on my PC, they were not out of the way and, quite frankly, looked silly on my business-grade machine. For people who buy new Windows PCs, stickers are still a part of the present as you continue to have them on your (even flagship) devices. It is a common sight, even though they are in fact as attractive as the plague. Sadly, the same trend is emerging on new Windows tablets. I'm looking at you, Lenovo and Toshiba. How disappointing. And here I was thinking that stickers were reserved only for the cheapest and gaudiest Android slates that are usually displayed in supermarkets. I was, unfortunately, wrong. But so are you for placing them there. Why can't you escape that aging stink that surrounds you and move on with the times?
We’re a week into the New Year, a time to look to the future, and all the news flooding out of CES has us excited for what’s coming up. But that’s not to say we can’t still take some time to look back on 2013 -- a year that brought us some great (and not so great) tech.
FinancesOnline.com has created a new infographic summing up 2013 in tech launches and featuring the best smartphones, tablets and other gadgets. Each of the included devices has been sorted into the following categories: