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From GimPy2434: Canadian Dr.'s reply to companies requiring medical note after sick day.
From GimPy2434: Canadian Dr.'s reply to companies requiring medical note after sick day.
When will folks learn that companies are stalking public Facebook pages...
From Mail Online:
Nordstrom has fired a sales associate who made a statement about killing police on his Facebook page.
Aaron Hodges, 37, of Portland, suggested killing a white officer for every black man killed by police. His comment quickly circulated online, prompting complaints both online and directly to his employer.
Nordstrom spokeswoman Tara Darrow said the department store chain does not tolerate violence, violent conversation or 'threats of any kind.'
'What our former employee chose to post from his personal account does not in any way reflect our views as a company,' said Darrow said. We do not tolerate violence, violent conversation or threats of any kind.'
The post in question, reports KGW, read:
'Every time an unarmed black man is killed, you kill a decorated white officer, on his doorstep in front of his family.'
Hodges, who is African-American, said Tuesday he's troubled by the police killings of Michael Brown in Missouri, Eric Garner in New York and Tamir Rice in Ohio, and he made the Facebook comment in an exchange with a friend from high school. Hodges said he sometimes says outrageous things to 'bring things into scope' and didn't literally mean that white officers should be killed.
'I'm a black Mormon, so there's no way I could be racist,' he said. 'I'm just passionate about black issues because nobody else seems to be.'
Hodges said a manager from the downtown Portland store called him Friday to say people were calling nonstop and he must remove references to his Nordstrom employment from his Facebook page.
The next day, Hodges said, a manager told him to stay away until Wednesday, because there had been a death threat.
'And then the store manager called me on Sunday and was like: 'We can't support you anymore Aaron. We got to let you go.'
Given the flood of complaints, Hodges said he understands why Nordstrom fired him, but he doesn't understand why someone took a screen shot of his Facebook comment and destroyed his livelihood.
From Mail Online:
Bowing her head in shame, a senior Korean Air executive whose 'nut rage' delayed a flight made a grovelling apology for exploding with rage after her snack was served in a bag.
Screaming Cho Hyun-ah, a senior vice-president at the airline, angrily demanded the removal of a crew member from a flight for failing to serve nuts in a bowl.
She then forced the Incheon-bound flight to taxi back to the terminal at New York's JFK Airport to kick the junior flight attendant off the plane.
Clad in a long black coat, with her head bowed in shame Cho told reporters in an almost inaudible, trembling voice that she was 'sorry' about the December 5 incident.
'I sincerely apologize.' she said, gloomy-faced, adding that she will 'apologize sincerely' at a meeting with the victimized crew member.
Adding to her humiliation, her father and airline chairman Cho Yang-ho called her behaviour 'foolish' and said that he regretted that he didn't raise her better.
He added that his eldest would resign from her executive roles at all affiliates of Hanjin, the group that controls Korean Air.
Flight 86 was already on the runway for its departure when Cho lost her temper after an unidentified worker placed some macadamia nuts in front of her as she sat in first class.
Furious that he had not followed protocol and presented them in a dish she screamed at the attendant and told him to bring out the company’s in-flight service manual so he could read the proper nut-handling guidelines.
When he failed to find it, Cho lost her cool and ordered him to get off the flight.
'The chief flight attendant failed to get the right manual, and this led Cho to believe he was not qualified for that job,' a Korean Air official told the Korean Times at the time
Without giving the 250 passengers on board a warning, the pilots decided to give in to her demands and return to the airport to drop off the attendant, delaying the flight by around 20 minutes.
Her entitled actions caused an uproar in her home country and abroad.
South Korean media called the 40-year-old a princess and while others branded her an embarrassment to her country.
Earlier this week, Cho resigned as Korean Air's head of cabin service but retained other executive roles at the airline and its affiliated companies.
In a separate probe, prosecutors searched the headquarters of Korean Air Lines on Thursday after a civil society group laid a complaint about Cho's behavior on the plane.
Korean Air Lines had earlier excused her behavior even as it apologized for inconveniencing passengers. It said it was 'natural' for Cho to fault crew's ignorance of procedures.
From Salon by Nick Rahaim:
After years of organizing in secret, building bonds over beer and supporting co-workers when issues have arisen with management, team members at a Whole Foods Market in San Francisco disrupted the normal workday and demanded a $5 an hour pay increase last month. More than 20 employees beckoned store management to the floor and presented a petition signed by more than 50 of the store’s workers calling for more paid time off, better health and retirement benefits as well as steady, consistent schedules.
I worked at Whole Foods in the spring of 2012. As is the typical way of getting to know co-workers, I went out for drinks with a tight-knit group of employees. Conversations went quickly from the getting-to-know-you banter to politics, and it was at the time the Occupy Movement was running out of steam. We exchanged battle stories of political engagement and mused about how best to carry the momentum from Occupy in new directions. I asked about organizing at Whole Foods; a few of my co-workers smirked while others played dumb. A week later I was brought into the fold, and found people had been organizing for more than two years. I was feisty for action, but the others knew better; they were in it for the long haul.
Since workers came out after plotting in the shadows for nearly five years, store managers have reportedly attempted to kill them with kindness, while saying nothing of their demands. On the corporate side, Whole Foods Market announced a pay increase in its San Francisco stores effective Jan. 1, shortly after the Whole Foods Union went public. The $1.25 increase in the starting wage, from $11.50 to $12.75, sits 50 cents above San Francisco increase in minimum wage that will take effect in May of 2015. Outside of that, both the store and corporate management have refused to publicly address the situation. Workers organizing at Whole Foods claim the announced wage increase four months ahead of schedule was likely in response to their demands.
In an attempt to put teeth to their demands workers held pickets at the Whole Foods Northern California Regional distribution center in Richmond, California. The picket fell short of stopping the flow of goods to the Bay Area stores it had envisioned, in the spirit of the Black Friday actions taken in 2013 by retail workers. Although the Teamsters did agree that their drivers would not cross the picket line. To that Ruan, the shipping company contracted by Whole Foods, hired temporary workers — scabs — to cross.
Organizing with the radical-syndicalist union, the Industrial Workers of the World, Whole Foods employees are shunning traditional unions that represent the majority of workers at Safeway, Alberson’s and other national grocers. In doing so, they have given up access to the deep pockets of United Grocery Workers and the like, but have the added agility to stealthily maneuver. The IWW is also the only union to have successfully created union shops at Starbucks.
“Organizing through the IWW gives us a lot of autonomy,” said Nick Theodosis, an organizer and beer and wine specialist at Whole Food SoMa. “All the decisions are made on the shop floor.”
It’s no secret that Whole Foods Market is hostile to unions. Its co-founder and co-CEO John Mackey has compared unions to herpes, and has insisted that his company is “beyond unions.” Whole Foods is the second-largest union-free retailer behind Wal-Mart, a company that does not hide its hostility to labor behind progressive rhetoric.
Nonetheless, Whole Foods Market has been listed on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For 17 years in a row. For 2014 the green giant was listed at 44, just beating out Goldman Sachs. While it’s no surprise, Fortune does not consider organized labor as a significant factor in its metrics.
My first day working at Whole Foods, Mackey and co-CEO Walter Robb were walking around the store shaking hands with employees. Mackey — to his credit — has turned the ratio between executive and worker pay upside-down, earning a token salary of $1 a year; unfortunately those executive savings don’t seem to be passed down. He was goofy, yet sociable, and after some chitchat about backpacking he let it slip to me that on the trail he goes by the name Strider, a confession that brought an embarrassed look to Robb’s face. The trail name is likely a “Lord of the Rings” reference to the humbly disguised Aragorn.
Having worked on fishing boats for a few years prior, I ended up on the seafood team with a starting wage $2 an hour more than the minimum. To my dismay, I realized I was making significantly more than my friend from Mexico who helped me get the job. He had been a consistent worker at Whole Foods for more than five years and hadn’t seen anything more than meager raises.
At Whole Foods various departments are called teams — for example, grocery, seafood, produce, and employees in those teams are called team members. Bosses and management? You won’t see those words; there are only team leaders. If these words had authenticity the “us versus them” dichotomy of normal labor discourse would be irrelevant. In fact, the company’s employee handbook specifically states “Us versus them thinking has no place in our company.” To counter this thinking Whole Foods states it attempts to cultivate an atmosphere of “happiness, joy and love,” and encourages “participation and involvement” in company policy.
While working at Whole Foods, the company actively sought out team member participation on how the company would restructure its benefits package. All team members attended a mandatory meeting on benefits. At the meeting the in-store human resources manager made it clear that Obamacare had resulted in higher health costs that had to be passed down to workers — ahem, team members. So the vote — non-binding, of course — was a vote on how workers would like their benefits cut.
During the meeting I pulled up a chart on the performance of Whole Foods’ stock on my iPhone and found it steadily climbing. The company’s stock price had increased more than 30 percent in the previous year and has continued to grow since — even though the company’s stock got pummeled earlier this year after it failed to meet growth expectations. I flashed the graph to an organizer sitting beside me who chuckled, then to the rest of the room, but there was no humor seen in it. They knew they were about to pay more so Whole Foods could tout its cost reductions to Wall Street.
This was, and still is, a clear sign of the times. At one of the country’s highest preforming companies, benefits continue to be eroded and wages stagnant at a time when the cost of living was steadily on the rise.
In fact, a public housing project a few blocks away from the SoMa store is known as the “Whole Foods Hotel,” in that more than a few team members live there. Even working full-time at one of the 100 best companies to work for, employees often rely on public housing and other forms of public assistance, shifting the burden to municipal coffers.
My time at Whole Foods was short. After three months of being a part-time team member while working full-time hours, with a schedule that made it very difficult to see my daughter regularly, I quit. As is often the case I didn’t have any grudges with the store management, I never felt abused or threatened. But I did suffer a very common indignity in the U.S. workforce: working 40 hours a week while still being chronically broke.
Many of the workers who now fear their jobs by standing up and making demands had been at Whole Foods for years. They support children and raise families with their unlivable wages. While retail is an industry with high turnover — for example, myself — it’s the livelihood of many. For a company that prides itself on promoting participation and involvement, it should respect and encourage the most direct form of participation a “team member” can engage in: organizing and demanding more from their highly profitable employer.
From NY Times:
Waves of demonstrations aimed at eliminating racial injustice have been sweeping through much of the United States just as the holiday shopping season has begun. And early numbers indicate that retail sales have been disappointing.
Both developments have attracted considerable attention. But for the most part, major media outlets have treated them as separate phenomena — like events taking place on two different continents — even though thousands of protesters declared explicitly that they were boycotting stores on Black Friday.
So, what about the obvious question: Have the protests contributed to the sales decline?
Vast quantities of data about American consumers are churned out daily, and you might expect that it would provide an answer. Businesses, investors, academics and policy makers rely on that data. The problem is that for illuminating answers, you need to ask the right questions.
Last Sunday, for example, the National Retail Federation, a trade association, released its annual survey of holiday shopping. As usual, it was heavily covered.
The federation announced that for the holiday weekend through Saturday, nationwide year-over-year sales had dropped 11 percent, a startlingly big number. The extensive survey data, along with anecdotal information compiled by the federation’s chief executive, Matthew R. Shay, suggested a variety of reasons for the sales decline. These included pre-Thanksgiving discounts by retail chains, ever-present cheap deals on the Internet and the still-shaky fiscal condition of many Americans who have not entirely recovered from the recession.
But when I listened to a recording of the conference call held by the federation with reporters on Sunday afternoon, I found that the conversation didn’t include a single word about the nationwide protests that closed some malls over the holiday weekend, obstructed traffic in big cities and flooded social media with appeals for Americans to stop shopping. Events like those weren’t examined by the survey. Protest wasn’t on the federation’s radar.
“That’s not an area we’ve ever gotten into,” said Kathy Grannis, a spokeswoman for the federation, when I asked her about it last week. The federation has traditionally avoided touchy subjects, leaving it up to the retail chains in its membership to talk about them if they so choose. And last week, the big chains generally weren’t saying much about the boycott.
Macy’s, which was the target of a demonstration on Black Friday at its flagship store in Herald Square, declined to comment. Tara Darrow, a spokeswoman for Nordstrom, said that chain wouldn’t comment about its holiday sales, either. “In relation to the recent protests,” she said, “we have experienced some activity at a few of our stores across the country, but the impact has been really minimal.”
Perhaps the lack of solid data is why most mainstream news reports didn’t examine a possible link between the protests and flagging sales. These apparent omissions lit up Facebook and Twitter. For example, in a Twitter post on Wednesday, Shaun Abreu, a recent graduate of Columbia University, said: “The media is straight up downplaying the impact #BoycottBlackFriday had on the 11% decrease in sales. Let’s take it through Christmas then.”
I asked some of the boycott organizers how effective they thought they had been. They were able to provide detailed information about their roles in promoting the protests on social media but had no data about the effects of their efforts on retailers.
Rahiel Tesfamariam, the founder and publisher of the online magazine Urban Cusp, created the hashtag #NotOneDime on Twitter on Nov. 24, after a St. Louis County grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who this summer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed man in Ferguson, Mo. Her slogan has been repeated across the Internet.
“The power structure isn’t listening to us in the streets or in the courts, so we are going to have to do it with our buying power,” she said in an interview. With a new hashtag, #BlackDecember, she is calling for people to buy from black-owned businesses.
Separately, a Los Angeles-based network called the Blackout for Human Rights used the hashtag #BlackoutBlackFriday on Twitter in early November, according to Michael Latt, a spokesman for the group. The group decided to include a Black Friday boycott in its protests “because America speaks the language of money, and that’s something that everybody can understand,” Mr. Latt said. But he and Ms. Tesfamariam said that they had not tried to come up with any numbers that might prove they were having an economic impact.
“We think the impact is obvious,” Mr. Latt said. And, he said, protests and, perhaps, boycotts will continue. They are now focused on the decision on Wednesday of a Staten Island grand jury not to indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner, another unarmed black man, who died after being placed in a chokehold.
There’s no doubt that such protests can galvanize public opinion. But what effects are they having in this prime shopping season? This brings us back to the data. Early shopping numbers are notoriously unreliable, and the National Retail Federation’s 11 percent decline was only an estimate based on a survey of 4,631 people. It divided respondents by income level and age — but not by race — and asked them about their intended and actual purchases, both in bricks-and-mortar stores and online. On the basis of their answers, it extrapolated aggregate numbers for the entire American economy.
The questions in this year’s survey were decided on Nov. 17, Ms. Grannis said, before the grand jury decision in the Ferguson case. In any event, no questions about social unrest have ever been included in the survey. “It’s just an estimate,” she said. “It’s our best shot.”
Other data providers have come up with varying numbers, generally pointing to a decline in bricks-and-mortar sales, along with an increase in online sales, at the start of the shopping season.
For example, data provided by Applied Predictive Technologies, based on sales by national chains with annual revenue of at least $500 million, showed a 3.5 percent decline in same-store sales nationwide for the Thanksgiving weekend through Sunday. Among the top 25 metropolitan areas in the United States, the St. Louis region — perhaps the one most deeply affected by the trauma in Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb — had the second-worst performance, a 9 percent decline from the same period the previous year. Jonathan Marek, a senior vice president at the company, said he had no way of knowing what impact the demonstrations and the boycott might have had. “It’s logical to assume it all had an impact, maybe half a percent, something like that, but I don’t really know,” he said.
At this point, I don’t know either. But the question certainly seems worth asking.
Washington (AFP) - Fast-food workers and others in low-pay jobs on Thursday launched one-day strikes and protests across the United States demanding a $15 an hour minimum wage and union rights.
Organizers said workers at major chains like McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Taco Bell walked off their jobs in more than 190 cities, from Los Angeles and Phoenix to Chicago, New York and Washington.
For the first time since fast-food workers began walkouts two years ago, they were joined by workers from convenience stores and markets in 24 cities, the Fight for $15 campaign said in a statement.
Employees in low-wage jobs and labor unions supporting them are pushing to raise the minimum hourly wage to $15 -- about double the current federal minimum of $7.25.
Workers say they are fed up with pay that does not come close to keeping them out of poverty and the threat of retaliation from employers hostile to them joining or forming unions.
"Every day I look my kids in the face and they realize we live in poverty. They are the reason I fight," Terrence Wise, a 35-year-old father of three who is paid $9.30 an hour at Burger King in Kansas City, Missouri, said in the statement.
At 10 major airports, baggage handlers, skycaps, wheelchair attendants and aircraft cleaners were demonstrating in support of the strikers, the organizers said.
And home-care workers, which launched the Home Care Fight for $15 in September, were protesting in more than two dozen cities from coast to coast, according to the Fight for $15 campaign.
"Millions of working men and women across this country -- white, black and brown -- have stood up and stood out together, mounting their offense against extremism and inequality," said Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, in a separate statement.
The SEIU provides organizational and financial support to the Fight for $15 campaign.
"The economy -- and our country -- are out of balance because so many people are trying to raise families on service-sector paychecks but are getting crushed as corporations use their power to push down the wage floor," Henry said.
- Push for 'living wage' -
The Fight for $15 movement has grown since a few hundred fast-food workers went on strike in New York in late November 2012 to push for a "living wage" of $15 an hour.
In August 2013, fast-food workers launched their first national day-long labor strike, in 60 cities, and their outcry has increasingly resonated in national politics.
"Fast-food workers deserve a livable wage to keep families out of poverty. When they fight, I'm proud to fight alongside them," said Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democratic senator, in a tweet.
President Barack Obama has faced stiff Republican opposition in his push for an increase in the minimum wage to $10.10 to lift hundreds of thousands of people above the poverty line and reduce the widening income gap.
San Francisco and Seattle have adopted an local minimum wage standards of $15; the state of California raised its lowest pay rate by $1 to $9 an hour in July.
On Thursday, even McDonald's food-service workers under contract with the federal government went on strike at the restaurant in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington.
"At McDonald's we respect everyone's right to peacefully protest," the company said in a statement.
McDonald's said about 90 percent of its US restaurants are independently owned and operated by franchisees "who set wages according to job level and local and federal laws."
But not all employers play fair, a Labor Department study released Thursday highlighted. The study found "pervasive" minimum wage violations in California and New York, with more than 300,000 violations in each state monthly.
About 3.5 percent to 6.8 percent of jobs covered by federal or state law were not paid the required minimum wage, pushing roughly 7,500 families in each state below the poverty line, the report said.
From Huff Po:
WASHINGTON -- This coming Black Friday will mark six years since a worker died beneath a throng of shoppers at a Walmart on Long Island. Although federal regulators faulted the retail giant in the tragedy, Walmart still hasn’t been compelled to pay the modest $7,000 fine that was levied against it.
The case, Department of Labor v. Walmart Stores, has not moved forward since HuffPost reported on it a year ago -- on appeal with a federal review commission that handles workplace safety fines. As of this writing, the commission lists the status of the case as “pending review.”
The case was first referred to the commission three and a half years ago. A spokeswoman for the commission said it does not comment on the timeline for pending cases.
It’s common for employers to appeal whatever penalties the Labor Department’s safety inspectors issue against them, including when workers are killed on the job. But the case of 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour, who had worked at Walmart for only a week when he was asphyxiated beneath the Black Friday crowd, underscores just how long those appeals can drag on, even in cases where the fines are comparably small.
Brooke Buchanan, a Walmart spokeswoman, said the retailer has made significant changes in recent years to minimize the frenzy among shoppers and make for a safer atmosphere, including spreading out merchandise that's on special and staggering sales times.
"After this horrible incident that happened six years ago, we took major steps working with crowd experts, law enforcement and people who do this for a living to see and help set up our stores," Buchanan said.
As HuffPost previously reported, Walmart, which had net sales of $473 billion last fiscal year, probably isn’t disputing the penalty in order to save $7,000, the maximum amount the Occupational Safety and Health Administration can fine a company for serious violations. Indeed, the company has already spent millions of dollars in legal costs just to fight the case. For Walmart, more significant than the nominal fine itself would be the ramifications if the fine were upheld.
OSHA used what’s known as the general duty clause as the foundation for its fine against Walmart. The clause holds that employers have a basic responsibility to provide a workplace that’s “free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to [their] employees.”
In essence, the agency argues that Walmart should have foreseen the dangers presented by a mass of excited shoppers waiting at the store’s doors. An administrative law judge agreed back in 2011, though Walmart appealed that decision to the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission, where cases often wait years for review.
OSHA regulations tend to be very specific, and the agency doesn’t often reach for the general duty clause because it isn’t so easy to prove what should be a “recognizable” hazard. Employers, unsurprisingly, often criticize citations using the general duty clause as too vague. That's what happened when OSHA cited a poultry processor recently for violating the clause and putting workers in danger of ergonomic hazards. Before that, OSHA hadn’t tried to wield the clause in such a case in more than a decade.
In the Black Friday case, Walmart would be more eager to defeat OSHA's arguments than to avoid the $7,000 penalty. The company has argued that the dangers on Black Friday could not have been predicted. If regulators ultimately succeed in their case, OSHA would theoretically have an easier time putting Walmart and other retailers on the hook for Black Friday disasters in the future.
In a deal to avoid prosecution, Walmart agreed to develop a new crowd control plan the year after Damour's death. For its part, OSHA has started issuing guidance each year on how stores can handle their sales events safely. The agency recently sent letters to the major retailers urging them to adopt their own plans ahead of Black Friday.
“Retail workers should not be put at risk,” David Michaels, the head of OSHA, said last week.
It would be amazing if this caught on around the nation.
From Huff Po:
Amid growing concern over erratic work schedules, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday passed a first-of-its-kind law aimed at securing more stable hours for retail workers.
Dubbed "the retail workers bill of rights," the law, which passed the 11-member, all-Democratic board unanimously, requires the city's large chain retailers to post workers' schedules at least two weeks ahead of time. Workers will be owed supplemental pay if unexpected changes are made to their schedules, or if they're required to be "on call" and their shifts are suddenly canceled.
The law, championed by Supervisor David Chiu, also requires that the employers offer any extra hours they have to their current workforces, rather than bringing on more part-time or temporary workers.
Passed as a set of two bills -- the first sailed through last week, the second on Tuesday -- the law marks a significant victory for labor groups and other advocates for retail and low-wage workers.
At a time when minimum wage and sick leave proposals are proving extremely popular, backers of the San Francisco legislation hope similar measures will now pop up in other cities and perhaps even states. California and its cities often find themselves on the leading edge of progressive labor policies.
Ann O'Leary, head of the children and families program at Next Generation, a San Francisco nonprofit that pushed for the legislation, said the law was fashioned partly in response to retailers' use of on-call and just-in-time scheduling. Modern scheduling technology may help retailers cut costs and become more efficient, but it also makes workers' hours less reliable, she said.
"It's not the manager thinking about people's needs -- it's a computer looking at the data," O'Leary said. "In San Francisco there's a higher minimum wage, but some weeks you're getting 10 hours and others you're getting 25. It's very hard to figure out what you're doing in terms of family income."
O'Leary also said the legislation was meant to address recent economic trends. With the high unemployment rates of the recession and recovery, many more workers than usual found themselves underemployed, working part-time but wanting more hours. The number of these so-called "involuntary part-time" workers has gradually dropped as the economy has rebounded, but it's still far from from its pre-recession levels.
Although popular among city supervisors, the San Francisco measures were opposed by the city's chamber of commerce. As Politico reported, the lobby sent a letter to the board last week criticizing the crafting of the law as opaque.
"These ordinances were drafted in large part behind closed doors, with last minute changes that brought numerous other employers within the scope of the ordinances, without notice or outreach," the letter stated.
Backers of the legislation tried to make it more palatable to the San Francisco business community by carving out smaller employers. The law only applies to what city law considers "formula retail" companies, which are retail and food chains with 11 or more locations nationally. So while companies like Target and McDonald's will have to follow the law, the local corner store and mom-and-pop boutique will get a pass.
Despite the chamber's concerns, O'Leary said advocates didn't encounter much opposition to the proposal, probably because of how it was limited to larger companies.
"Since we moved from something that would cover the entire workforce to more formula retail chains, we haven't seen big resistance from the employer community," she said.
The coalition of groups supporting the law was hoping to raise standards in general at large chains, according to Michelle Lim, an organizer with the San Francisco office of Jobs with Justice, a non-union labor group focused on low-wage industries. Groups like Lim's have been instrumental in winning labor-friendly measures like San Francisco's through city councils as well as the ballot box.
"What a retail worker bill of rights could do is really lift the floor not just for retail workers but for chain businesses," said Lim. "It's also creating lot of opportunities for organizing."
From Huff Po:
A Chicago-based restaurant chain appears to have shifted into damage control this week following a report that one of its employees was fired after asking for time off in order to undergo surgery as part of his cancer treatment.
In an interview with NBC Chicago that first aired Saturday, 19-year-old Jonathan Larson, a delivery driver at Rosebud Restaurants’ location in Naperville, Illinois, claimed he was fired by his employer after he told the restaurant he would need to take six weeks off from his job for back surgery related to his diagnosis with cancer of the brain and spine.
“[My manager] said, ‘No, by that time I’ll already have another driver hired. Just leave, I have to make some phone calls,” Larson told NBC. “I’m really disappointed and saddened by it. It’s not something I can help.”
The story was shared widely and prompted a backlash, including many individuals leaving negative comments on Rosebud Restaurants’ Facebook page.
On Saturday, the restaurant chain posted a statement acknowledging the Larson report, stating “we want you to know that we’re listening and since learning of the incident have acted swiftly to better understand what transpired.” The restaurant also said it had spoken with Larson about the incident.
In a second statement posted Sunday, the restaurant indicated it had spoken with Larson’s family and confirmed that his job would be waiting for him after his surgery. In a comment posted in response to the statement, Larson confirmed he would be meeting with restaurant chain leadership and the manager who fired him “to try and resolve the situation.”
“Rosebud always strives to treat its employees and customers as family but, in this case, we did not live up to our own expectations,” the statement read. “Like so many, we have been inspired by Jon Larson's personal strength and perseverance in his battle to beat cancer. We hope Mr. Larson makes a full and speedy recovery and returns to his job with Rosebud soon.”
In a comment on the Facebook page of the Naperville restaurant on Sunday, Debbie Sitko, who identified herself as Larson’s mother, said she was initially “angry along with disappointment and sad for my son” but that she is “please[d] with the way Rosebud is handling the situation at this time.”
Larson and Sitko did not respond to requests for comment. Rosebud Restaurants declined to comment for this story, but stood by the statements the company made on its Facebook page.
Several laws protect employees from being fired under similar circumstances, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act; the Americans with Disabilities Act; and the Illinois Human Rights Act. The Huffington Post has been unable to confirm specifics of Larson's situation that would have determined which law was most applicable.
Rosebud Restaurants operates 10 restaurants in and near Chicago. The company was sued last year by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for allegedly refusing to employ African-Americans in its restaurants on account of their race. Joseph Taylor, the company's former CEO, filed a separate lawsuit this year alleging that he was fired because he suggested "there may be some merit" to the EEOC lawsuit.
Not long after a Walmart manager in Midwest City, Okla., started a food donation campaign for her co-workers, Walmart heiress Alice Walton got an unexpected “gift” with a strong message from some other Walmart employees.
According to Consumerist, a massive food donation bin was chained outside Walton’s Park Avenue condo in Manhattan. The message on the side of the bin read:
Walmart owner Alice Walton: We don’t want charity. We want decent pay. Love, Walmart workers.
Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton, is one of the richest people in the world.
“In Forbes’ latest list of billionaires, she ranked 10th, with a net worth of $38.8 billion, right behind her sister-in-law Christy (No. 8, with $41.3 billion) and brother Jim (No. 9, $40.2 billion), but ahead of older brother and Walmart chairman S. Robson Walton (No. 11, $38.7 billion),” Consumerist wrote.
In stark contrast to Walton’s ultra-wealthy status, some Walmart employees are just scraping by. ABC News said, “The average starting wage for Walmart’s sales associates is $8.81 per hour in urban markets, according to IBISWorld, which translates to annual pay of $15,576, based on 34 hours of full-time work a week.”
Walmart, the nation’s largest employer with more than 1.3 million workers, said its average pay for part-time and full-time workers, excluding managers, is $11.83 an hour, according to ABC.
This is not the first time an in-store food donation campaign to benefit Walmart employees has prompted criticism. A similar food drive at an Ohio Walmart in 2013 helped fuel critics’ argument that the retailer’s pay is too low.
Walmart will likely be in the headlines again later this week, as a number of protests are planned at 1,600 Walmart stores across the country on Black Friday. According to Consumerist, workers are protesting for higher wages and full-time hours.
Although I applaud Walmart employees for trying to help impoverished co-workers by organizing a food donation campaign, it seems obvious that if Walmart would bump up its notoriously low wages, more of its employees could be self-sufficient.
What do you think of the message delivered by the food donation bin outside Alice Walton’s residence? Share your thoughts below or on our Facebook page.
Now, here’s a video Walmart workers might find useful. It’s about unusual ways to make extra money.


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Shay Mitchell isn’t letting the new provincial restrictions on dine-in eating stop her from getting some of Vancouver’s most divine baked goods.
The former Pretty Little Liars actress has recently returned to town, sharing snaps of where she’s visited to get her fix for some of the city’s best eats.
She shared in an Instagram story earlier this week as to where she had her last dine-in meal before the new health orders came into effect.
The star headed to Vij’s on Cambie Street to indulge in some of the best-known Indian food in the area.
And today Mitchell, a longtime fan of Vancouver’s food scene, made a quick trip to Small Victory coffee shop, which is known for its croissants, breads and croissant-doughnut mashups.
She shared an Instagram story showing their bakery case with a croissant doughnut with vanilla — aka a cronut — with the caption “Yup, I got one.”
After grabbing her treat, it looks like Mitchell partook in one of the city’s most popular COVID-friendly outdoor activities: Spotting the famed cherry blossoms in bloom.
Shay isn’t the only star eating their way around town. John Cena was just spotted at yet another trendy eatery in the city.
Earlier this week, the former professional wrestler was seen enjoying one of our newest outdoor spaces, the recently-renovated Roof at Black + Blue on Alberni Street.
There are still tons of ways Vancouverites can support our restaurants, bars, and cafes over the next three weeks, including sitting on one of these 100+ patios.

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But he also knows the impact that high-quality food from the farmers market can have on his wallet. “The vegetables and fruits at market look so good, but it’s expensive,” he says. And it’s a real challenge to decide whether his dollars will go towards healthy market produce, or whether he will spend them on “transit, housing, city living—it all costs so much.” TemRa, and so many others in our community, face this tough decision every day. That’s why he so values FRESHFARM’s Matching Dollars program, which matches what shoppers spend with their federal nutrition benefits, up to $10. Matching Dollars helps TemRa stretch his shopping dollars, making the prices “more comparable to supermarket rates—and the quality is so much better!”
His colleague, known as Ms. Lioness, agrees. The first time she had a fresh tomato from the farmers market, she said it brought back a flood of memories: “It tasted like the tomatoes from my grandma’s garden, and much better than anything I’ve ever had from Harris Teeter!” She wants everyone to know what it was like “when food tasted like food,” which is why she’s working to increase access for all at the farmers market. “I have children. When I found out about Matching Dollars, it helped me feed fruits and vegetables to two more people in my household,” Ms. Lioness explains. The program has had a real, tangible impact on her family’s diet and has increased the amount and diversity of healthy foods she can purchase.
TemRa and Ms. Lioness are both very conscious of the impact the Matching Dollars program can have for farmers as well. They know that market prices reflect the effort farmers put into raising their crops and the wages they are paying their employees, and that most small farmers cannot compete with large, national distributors. They view the Matching Dollars program as essential in getting more money in the pockets of local farmers, while also increasing the number of shoppers that have access to market. “So many farmers themselves are struggling to make a decent living,” Ms. Lioness says. “We need these farmers,” TemRa adds, “and we need to bridge the gap between low-income shoppers and farmers. This is about more than just food. I know that spending money with them is an investment in my health.”
Indeed, the Matching Dollars program, at its heart, is about leveling the playing field so that all members of our community can have access to the fabulous produce that our local farmers bring to market every week. But we need your support to keep the program thriving. From now until Labor Day, if you donate at least $20 to Matching Dollars, you will be entered into a drawing to win a ticket to the FRESHFARM Feast on October 18. And you’ll know that you are helping shoppers like TemRa and Ms. Lioness buy more of the fruits and vegetables that we all deserve to enjoy.
Thanks to you, we've already raised $500 in the first week of our fundraiser!


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Samsung is planning to release phones and tablets with flexible displays sometime in 2012, according to PCWorld.
According to the news outlet, the electronics giant is "aiming to launch mobile phones with flexible displays next year."
This information was revealed during a third-quarter earnings conference call with analysts, with spokesman Robert Yi.
"The flexible display, we are looking to introduce sometime in 2012, hopefully the earlier part. The application probably will start from the handset side," Yi said.
International Business Times also reported that Samsung was working on a Galaxy smartphone that would include a flexible AMOLED display.
This device is rumored to be called the Galaxy Skin.
Its display will be made from plastic polyimide substrate instead of glass that allows the screen to be highly flexible.
And Samsung is not the only company planning this for a device.
"Microsoft, too, is betting on flexible displays in its vision of the post-PC future," wrote 9to5Google.com regarding the company’s future plans for personal computers.
A 2011 prototype of a 4.5-inch flexible AMOLED with electro activity polymer was displayed at CES by Samsung Mobile Display.
CES always creates hype for futuristic displays but fails to deliver with anything substantial or innovative, according to 9to5Google.com.
Steve Jobs had even dismissed the possibility of foldable displays for Apple at the D8 conference stating them as being “many, many years into the future."
Samsung seems to be attempting to beat Apple to the punch with the debut of this display prototype.
The company also plans to implement these flexible displays in tablets as well as smartphones, according to 9to5Google.com.
Newspapers could become completely obsolete when the day comes where tablet users can roll up their device and throw it in their bag.


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TESLA, the electric-vehicle maker that just raised $5 billion in a private offering, said it is offering its customers guaranteed second-hand car prices to Hongkongers to reduce the cost of living and boost the city’s economy.
In an announcement on its website, Tesla said it will offer $2,500 for a second-hands Tesla Model S sedan, $4,500 on a second hand Tesla Model X SUV, $5,000 on a third-hand Tesla Model 3 sedan, and $5 at a Tesla store.
“Tesla will help our customers reduce their second-handed car prices, which are often high, by providing them with guaranteed secondhand car price in the form of a monthly payment or a one-time payment to reduce their cost of energy and reduce their carbon footprint,” said a Tesla spokesperson in a statement.
“We will also provide them with additional incentives to encourage them to stay in Hong Kong.
We expect to continue offering these benefits to our customers in the months ahead.”
The company has set up a dedicated page on its site to offer the guaranteed prices.
The page also says Tesla is working on a “second-hand-price guarantee program for our customers” in Hongkou and other locations around the world.
Tesla said the guarantee will be offered to first-time buyers of a secondhand Tesla and any first-timers who pay a deposit.
“This will ensure that all our first-timer customers who have the car they want get it before we sell it to anyone else,” the spokesperson said.
“Our second-time customers will have to pay the guaranteed second car price at a car showroom.
We will also be working with them to determine their eligibility for the program.
We’re excited to share more details with our customers as they become aware of this program.”
The guaranteed car prices are not a total refund.
Tesla said the guaranteed price will apply to “a full month’s worth of Tesla Model E” for a customer to use if they paid $5 for the car in a Tesla dealership.
“For the first-year owner, the guaranteed monthly payment will be $1,000 per month, which means a monthly bill of $1.6, which is less than a quarter of the cost per month of a regular monthly car payment, according to the company,” the company said.
“For the second-year customer, the guarantee is a full month of Model X with a $1 per month deposit.”
The guarantees are available for first- and second-timer customers who pay Tesla the minimum deposit required to qualify.
The guarantees also cover those who paid a deposit for a car when the car was on the reserve list or when the vehicle was unavailable due to an accident or mechanical failure.
The company said its guarantee program is being implemented in partnership with Hong Kong’s government and that the guarantee amounts will be paid into the city government’s “first-time” tax credit program, which provides financial assistance for first time buyers.
The guaranteed second hands will also help reduce the costs of living for those living in Hong-Kong, Tesla’s spokesperson said, noting that a “guarantee is calculated based on the average cost of a comparable second-sale car.”
“If you can afford to pay more, we recommend that you pay the $1 a month deposit, but if you can’t afford to, we will still offer your car to you at a fair price, no matter how much you can pay,” the Tesla spokesperson said in the statement.
Tesla’s first-quarter financial results, released last week, showed a loss of $0.11 per share and a loss per share of 14 cents.
The company also said it expects its second-quarter revenue to be $2.45 billion.
The Palo Alto, California-based company said it plans to continue to invest heavily in its electric vehicle business in the United States and Europe, and said it planned to begin deliveries of its Model 3 later this year.
The electric-powered cars have gained momentum in China, where they are becoming a hot commodity and attracting attention from celebrities, including Elon Musk, a billionaire who has also invested heavily in electric-traded companies.


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Great britain could be the start-up money of European countries. Yet women nevertheless face too investment that is many whenever installing a small business. Plenty so it might actually be damaging the British economy and the us government is stepping in to handle things.
Now British banking institutions, investors along with other loan providers are finally being pressed to write the quantity of capital they give you female-led organizations. This might be simply section of a brand new voluntary investor code launched by the united kingdom Treasury in a bid to enhance variety of female business owners.
The ‘Code for purchasing Women’ is driven because of the findings of the government review posted by Alison Rose, the deputy leader of NatWest. The review reveals shocking sex investment space numbers additionally the negative effect this investment disparity is having from the UK economy.
Therefore now, as a few banks that are large prepared to register with the effort, will women-led organizations finally have equal help and investment? Does the Code actually go far adequate to raise the British economy?
Reviewing entrepreneurship that is female
Whilst the sex space happens to be a continuing company investment problem for a long time, findings into the Alison Rose report about Female Entrepreneurship report have actually finally convinced the Treasury to behave.
The report describes a disparity that is clear feminine and male business owners. Describing just exactly exactly how this will be holding the united kingdom right right back, and intends to launch the enormous potential that is unrealised great britain economy.
Statistically, ladies compensate simply a 3rd regarding the entrepreneurship force in the united kingdom. By boosting the variety of female-led company, which equates to at least one million missing organizations, the united kingdom economy can reap the benefits of extra Ј250 billion in GVA.
The information suggests that female-run companies are frequently half the dimensions of businesses led by guys. Shockingly, they are 5 times more unlikely than males to measure as much as Ј1 million turnover.
Is designed to boost entrepreneur that is female 50% by 2030
Handling sex inequality problems running a business could be the first faltering step. Regrettably, you will find many areas that require work.
To begin with, feminine business owners get a share that is meagre of.
Another Treasury report ladies in U.K. investment capital, undertaken because of the British company Bank, discovered glaring investment inequality. That for almost any Ј1 of investment capital bridesfinder.net (VC) investment into the UK, all-female creator groups have significantly less than 1p, all-male creator groups have 89p, and mixed-gender groups 10p.
The Rose Review has in reality confirmed the sex parity gap has widened since 2013. Although the amounts of male-led businesses are flourishing, women’s confidence in opening and operating a fruitful company is in decrease. Presently, just 5.6percent of females choose to begin up their company.
Chart: At virtually every phase, women can be less inclined to result in the entrepreneurial journey than guys supply: The Alison Rose post on Female Entrepreneurship
Empowering females produces a more powerful economy
You aren’t the drive and abilities should certainly set up and scale up their company, immaterial of these sex. And let me tell you, ladies are as capable and talented of operating businesses as guys.
However, money inequality is merely one barrier to empowering business that is women-led. Insufficient family members help, not enough appropriate systems and mentors may also be obstacles that are top this potential.
The Rose Review additionally identified 8 recommendations that are long-term empowering females at various phases of the entrepreneurial journey.
- Improve greater transparency in British funding allocation, by welcoming institutions that are financial get involved with purchasing ladies Code
- Launch investment that is new to improve financing likely to feminine business owners
- Encourage UK based institutional and personal investors to support that is further spend money on female business owners
- Review existing and produce brand brand brand new banking services and products directed at business owners with household care obligations
- Improve usage of expertise by expanding the business owner and specialist in residence programme
- Expand current mentorship and networking possibilities sites are a robust procedure to give aspiring company
- Accelerate development and roll-out of entrepreneurship-related courses to schools and universities
- Create a business owner electronic shop that is first-stop
Therefore, the suggestions rise above company guidance as well as on to enable the generation that is next. With is designed to improve feminine engagement in entrepreneurship also to market entrepreneurship among 15-18 year-old schools girls.
Investing in Women: an actual chance of the united kingdom economy
The Treasury effort is a tremendously good part of the right way. Supported by a breadth and level of help through the wider federal federal federal government, also major UK organizations.
The percentage of little and medium-sized organizations led by females is gradually growing, as well as the creation with this effort is a reason for optimism. But only when the promises are supported by actions and all sorts of the review guidelines are used over the UK. “Real switch to split the cup ceiling”, as commented by the Prime Minister.
As Ms Rose noted, “The UK has perhaps one of the most vibrant entrepreneurial communities on the planet, but only 1 in three of y our entrepreneurs is feminine — we need to become more ambitious in order to find techniques to unlock the massive untapped potential.”
The investment that is UK is provided an original possibility to lead just how for British business. The opportunity to slim the gender space, as well as in doing so supply the UK economy a boost that is powerful. Let’s all hope they go on it
All of us at Maxwell-Davies strongly rely on empowering ladies in company.
For a free consultation if you are a female entrepreneur whose business is going through a difficult financial period, contact us.


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|Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Politburo member and Deputy Prime Minister attends a workshop to review the country's 30 years of renewal in Vinh Phuc Province yesterday.
VINH PHUC (VNS) — Opportunities for Viet Nam during global economic integration were so intertwined that breakthrough measures were needed, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Politburo member and Deputy Prime Minister, told a workshop to review the country's 30 years of renewal in Vinh Phuc Province yesterday.
Phuc said economic structuring during the last 30 years had led to positive changes in industrialisation and modernisation. "The deeper, wider and comprehensive international integration of the economy has presented us with enormous opportunities," he said. "At the same time, it has also posed many challenges.
"Industrialisation and modernisation has successfully solved relationships between economic growth and cultural development as well as the course of progress and social equality. As a result, living conditions have been improved while the rate of poverty has been reduced; the national defence and security have been well maintained; and our national strength and position has been elevated."
However, Phuc conceded that many problems had to be still addressed. He said industrialisation and modernisation had not well been co-ordinated. He said Vietnamese industry was dominated by supporting industries with low value added capability, adding that policies for industrialisation and modernisation of agriculture and rural areas had been implemented slowly and less effectively.
|A worker at Honda's motorbike manufacturing factory. The Japanese corporation is one of the first investors in the northern province of Vinh Phuc.— Photo vinhphuc
Phuc said that in addition, the quality of human resources in the agriculture sector was still poor. So was the obsolete infrastructure, which he said was a major hindrance. And he complained that Viet Nam's limited investment resources had not been fully utilised.
"Many key economic regions or economic zones have failed to maximise their potential due to poor planning," he said. "Worth mentioning is that by now we have not been able to find the right path to advance so that we can avoid the middle-income trap experienced by other countries."
Phuc asked workshop participants to come up with suggestions to help the nation to move forward. He asked them to focus on the core issues for a development model in the implementation of industrialisation and modernisation. Phuc listed three bottlenecks in economic growth, namely institutions, quality of human resources and infrastructures and asked participants to focus on them.
During the workshop, delegates came up with various models for the national economy. For example, the Central Economics Committee suggested having an industrialisation model geared toward "modern industry" so that Viet Nam could participate in the global value chain with its comparative advantages.
Participants from provinces and cities laid emphasis on the scope and scale of the development model in their localities and each region. — VNS


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Next week, Azerbaijan will begin restructuring loans under the decree of President Ilham Aliyev on additional measures in connection with solving the issue of the individuals’ problem loans.
Prices of precious metals decreased in Azerbaijan on April 23 compared to the prices on April 22
In January-March 2019, 19,100 citizens of EU visited Azerbaijan, which is 2.8 percent more than the same period last year.
Official exchange rate of the US dollar and euro against Azerbaijani manat for April 23 was set at 1.7 and 1.9126 manats
In the 1Q2019, revenues to the state budget through the Ministry of Taxes of Azerbaijan amounted to 1.67 billion manats
Turkish Airlines have launched a direct Ankara-Baku-Ankara flight.
Iranian government is unlikely to extend the ban on imports of some commodities, the spokesman of Customs Administration Ahmad Khani told Trend.
ASPI AGRO LLC producing wine in Azerbaijan’s Gabala city intends to export wine to more countries, Aygun Atayeva, chief sales manager, told Trend.


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JAKARTA, Indonesia, April 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Coocaa, a subsidiary of Chinese TV manufacturer Skyworth Group, announced new special offers to welcome the holy month of Ramadan on the TV & HOME APPLIANCES DAY launched by Lazada, a leading shopping destination in Southeast Asia, offering discounts and gift giveaways to keep customers entertained and engaged with their families and friends during this religious festival.
The special offers include discounts of up to 50% on Coocaa TVs. Customers who buy 55S6G and 65S6G Smart TVs will have a chance to get free Coocaa party speakers. In addition, customers who watch their live streaming and subscribe them will have a chance to win a set of snacks.
“Ramadan this year is special due to social distancing measures and the fight against the COVID-19. While staying at home, we want to invite customers to spend quality time with their families, friends and themselves,” said Peter Zhang, General manager of Skyworth overseas brand business center. “Customers can enjoy an incredible home entertainment experience and do everything at home through our smart TVs, from enjoying movies by full screen vision to educational lessons, exercise classes and games.”
Powered by the latest Android 9.0 operating system (OS), Coocaa smart TV S6G makes setting up compatible smart home devices more accessible by allowing users to build an intelligent home ecosystem by themselves. The built-in Google assistant offers a more stylish way to watch hit TV shows and turn on home appliances through voice control.
The all-in-one OS features an intuitive, smoother UI which reduces memory footprint and mic latency by 25%. While, the AI-powered platform personalizes broadcasts and streaming channels based on the viewing and searching history of users. Customers can use Netflix and YouTube or other build-in apps from Google play to make TV watching more enjoyable.
Coocaa smart TV S6G house cutting-edge technology coupled with edge-to-edge infinity view 2.0 display. The minimal and elegant design is powered by the CA53 Quad-core CPU and Mali470 Triple core GPU that transform everything on the screen into stunning ultra-HD and vivid images with vibrant and fine-tuned colors. Perfectly aligned with pristine picture quality, Coocaa’s Audio Surround System offers full immersion with three-dimensional soundscape bringing the viewer into the gaming and cinematic world. The TVs also come with versatile connection functionality including HDMI，high-speed USB 2.0, LAN and SPDIF, capable of integrating with other smart devices to enhance the home entertainment experience.


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Recently we heard that NFL and CBS are in talks for streaming rights of NFL games. Now we have confirmation from Facebook that they are also in talks for rights to stream NFL games. There are also reports that Yahoo and the NFL have had high level talks.
So what does this mean that CBS, Yahoo, Verizon, Amazon, and Facebook are all in talks for NFL streaming rights? It likely means official and serious talks for streaming rights for all NFL games are occurring. (There are reports that Apple was once part of these talks but has dropped out.)
This is also one more hint that Amazon is looking at live streaming.
Some have suggested that CBS is looking to add the games to their CBS streaming service for a fee. Other services, like Facebook and Yahoo, are rumored to be looking at an ad-supported model for the streaming deal.
Facebook has been pushing live streaming for some time now mostly from smaller Facebook pages, but Dan Rose, Facebook’s VP of partnership, told Verity, “We’re talking to a lot of folks about live (video). There are a ton of types of content that can fit under this format,” Rose said.
Regarding the NFL, which is shopping an over-the-top package for next season anchored by “Thursday Night Football” games, Rose said, “We’ll see.”
For now we will have to wait and see what happens, but all signs point to the NFL becoming more cord cutter friendly. If that happens it will set a standard for other sports to match because the NFL has the largest fan base and is often seen as a trendsetter in sports.
Need cord cutting tech support? Join our new Cord Cutting Tech Support Facebook Group for help.


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TEEN Mom Jenelle Evans' new clothing line is now being criticized as "junk" and "cheap" because the former TV star imitated some of its projects.
The former reality TV star has been promotin
Men's water polo Sunday double-headed match comes to an end
Nothing can motivate us to make our bodies more active than cute fitness equipment-what better than the beginning of the new year to refresh sportswear? If you decide to exercise in a fashionable w
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After the team won the first WNBA championship, Chicagoans hope to join the Chicago Sky trend. It may be difficult to find jerseys and T-shirts to show off their fans before the team’s champions


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Those purchasing devices running on Google’s latest mobile platform or planning on upgrading their gadgets to the Jelly Bean OS, ought to know that there won’t be Flash Player for Android 4.1. And this isn’t all – starting August 15, 2012, Adobe plans on withdrawing the application from the Google Play store.
According to the San Jose-based developer, the company has neither developed nor continued to test the Flash Player for Android 4.1. To top it off, they don’t even plan on creating any certified implementations of the app for Jelly Bean. Users who update to Google’s new version of the mobile platform may notice unpredictable behavior as the application isn’t optimized for the OS.
“Devices that don’t have the Flash Player provided by the manufacturer typically are uncertified, meaning the manufacturer has not completed the certification testing requirements. In many cases users of uncertified devices have been able to download the Flash Player from the Google Play Store, and in most cases it worked. However, with Android 4.1 this is no longer going to be the case, as we have not continued developing and testing Flash Player for this new version of Android and its available browser options. There will be no certified implementations of Flash Player for Android 4.1,” reads a post made on the official Adobe blog.
It’s also recommended that the application be uninstalled from devices running the new platform to avoid stability concerns. Like we said earlier, Adobe will pull off its Flash Player app from Google Play. This means that users will not be able to download the plug-in for their smartphones and tablets. On the bright side, security updates for the add-on will continue to roll out for devices having the tool installed.
Adobe has listed 2 key reasons for discontinuing its Flash Player for Android. Firstly, various services offer premium experiences through applications and not the web. And most websites adopted for mobile phones utilize HTML for delivering video and other content.


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Franchise Case Studies are an essential ally to your franchise research. Reading about people who have been where you are now, considering starting their own business and taking one of the biggest decisions of their lives, can be extremely helpful and give you the confidence you need to take the step into self-employment for yourself.
Read all the latest franchise case studies, franchise testimonials and other franchise success story features. Case studies are being added frequently, so check back regularly for latest franchise case studies.
Iftikhar Hussain has started the first MagiKats Maths and English tutoring franchise in Scotland.
FiltaFry is delighted to announce that Jonathan Hulls has just invested in another three FiltaFry territories.
Director of Aspray Luton, Barry Thurston, hosted a very successful launch event for the opening of his new local business.
Sara le Roux gives 10 insider tips that you need to know about running a franchise!
In 2015 Jigsaw Performing Arts Schools are celebrating 20 years of running top quality performing arts schools.
Three years ago Paul Brandrick decided to turn care into a business and become a SureCare franchisee.
Amrit Dhaliwal bought the SureCare Oxfordshire franchise almost three years ago after seeing first-hand how vulnerable elderly people can be in our society.
Ian Keddie, owner of Oven Wizards Dartford, joined the network back in July 2005 and he has renewed his Franchise Agreement for a further five years.
Enthusiasm and a passion for education are the key qualities that sisters Sarah, 26, and Holly Bell, 28, bring to their enormously successful MagiKats Workshops in Hove.
Seven years ago Phil Arnold became his own boss as a Healthcare Practice Partner.


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FROM the West Sussex County Times of Friday, January 2, 1981.
DESPITE all the talk of financial gloom, Horsham shoppers were more determined than ever to have a good Christmas and the stores have reported bumper takings.
Most managers agreed the run up to Christmas was slow but once it started, it really took off.
There was a trend towards spending less on larger items and on toys but food and drink sales rocketed and the most expensive goods went first, according to Tesco manager, Rupert Salter.
“It was better than last year and proves once again that people always want a good Christmas. It was slow but there was a mad rush in the last three days,” he said.
‘Wild’ was the word Charlie Bennett, of Sperrings Ltd, used. The shop in West Street, which sells confectionery, cards and books, set targets above last year and these were smashed.
“People went wild,” he said. He suggested people were worried at first about the gloomy messages and talk of redundancies and then thought ‘blow it at least we’ll have a good Christmas’.
A shop looking to the new year is Grants with its January sale already started. Manager Peter Evans said it did not appear people had spent all their money over Christmas and the sale was going well.
“Christmas buying was late but marvellous,” he said.
Peter Mackman, secretary of Horsham Chamber of Trade, said his general impression was that trade bucked up tremendously towards the end when there was quite a rush.
ON WHAT was a gift of a day for any lover of the countryside, with clear blue sky and crisp fresh air, the Crawley and Horsham Hunt came into the Carfax as it has every Boxing Day for as long as most people can remember.
But this year the equally old tradition of the members taking a stirrup cup before setting off for the forest was broken. The King’s Head Hotel, which has been the host to the hunstmen every Boxing Day, was closed.
A spokesman for the hotel said on Monday the owner was away and he could not comment on why the doors remained shut over Christmas. Some hunt members suspected it was a sign of the times and the biting recession.
The lack of refreshment did not affect the numbers and the crowd of spectators seemed greater than ever with people packing the Carfax and lining the route up East Street.
They took pictures of the men in pink, patted the hounds and admired the neatly cropped horses.
There were no objectors this year to disrupt the trot round the town and up to St Leonard’s Forest, and the hunt later reported that it had had a ‘very good day’.
The County Times received one letter of dissent whose writer suggested there should be a referendum in Horsham and Crawley to see what people thought of hunting.
HORSHAM’S new indoor swimming pool is taking shape. The work being carried out in Horsham Park, reveals the basic outline of the building, with its gently sloping pitched roof.
The wooden laminated beams and columns are now in position, with the surrounding steel frame which embrace the whole of the structure.
The beams and uprights are pine, and of laminated construction for strength. They were brought from Finland by sea and road.
All the exposed structural work of this building is of timber, and the pine beams and columns will be a feature of the new pool, clearly visible to swimmers and spectators. Work on the pool is on schedule, and the contract is due for completion in October,1981.
Proceeds from the current Horsham lottery, which is the last of a series of five, will provide amenities at the new swimming pool.
By the date of sale, January 5, 1981, it is expected that over £15,000 will have been raised by the lottery for this project.


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HUNTSVILLE – Toyota Alabama, on the heels of an earlier investment of $222 million in an i-Force 2.4-liter turbo engine, announced Wednesday it will begin production of the line for its all-new Tacoma hybrid.
The Huntsville plant said the move furthers its commitment to diversified powertrains that align with customer demand.
“The completion of the i-FORCE 2.4 liter turbo engine line marks a significant milestone for Toyota Alabama and further supports job stability for our 2,000 employees,” said Jason Puckett, president of Toyota Alabama. “Now, with Tacoma offering a hybrid option, every line at our plant includes engines for hybrid vehicles.
“It’s our team and their skills that have paved the way for this plant to play a critical role in Toyota’s efficient and electrified future.”
According to a news release, Toyota Alabama continues to “go big” in its commitment to carbon-reducing and carbon-neutral products with plans to invest more than $70 billion in vehicle electrification through 2030.
The i-Force 2.4-liter turbo engine line marks the plant’s sixth building expansion and brings Toyota Alabama’s total investment to $1.5 billion. In 2023, the plant reported record production, assembling more than 777,000 engines for Toyota vehicles manufactured in North America.
Toyota Alabama produces four-cylinder and six-cylinder engines for the Tundra, Sequoia, Corolla, Corolla Cross, Tacoma, Highlander, Sienna and RAV4.
The company also said the new line demonstrates Toyota’s commitment to long-term employment and the success of its operational communities.
Last year, Toyota announced two initiatives:
- A $49 million solar array, in partnership with Huntsville Utilities and Toyota Tsusho, to supply more than 70% of Toyota Alabama’s energy needs when complete.
- Grants of up to $6.7 million to help prepare Huntsville City Schools students for future careers in science, technology, engineering and math. The grants are part of Toyota USA Foundations Driving Possibilities initiative and will fund a five-year phased rollout of programming in select schools.


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The Reserve Bank of India passed a notification banning the use of Cryptocurrencies by authorities and entities regulated by it. All the banks had to stop the use of virtual money in their transactions. But this ban has not banned the entire use of cryptocurrency as it does not provide a penalty for using cryptocurrency, but a person cannot hold the same either. This has not only left the usage of cryptocurrency unregulated but has rather increased its usage.
Post the Reserve Bank of India ban on dealing in Virtual Currency, the Finance Ministry proposed legislation that prohibits the use of cryptocurrency in India. This Bill was called “Banning of Cryptocurrency & Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2019” (hereinafter called “The Bill”). This Bill was drafted by an inter-ministerial committee chaired by Subhash Chandra Garg, secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs under the Finance Ministry. The Ministry confirmed that it was essential to propose a suitable model of virtual currency which would be regulated by the Reserve Bank of India. The Bill states that cryptocurrencies shall not be used as a legal tender or currency at any place in India and also provides penalties for the use of cryptocurrency with a fine or imprisonment of one to ten years. Even though the Bill bans cryptocurrency, there is also a promotion for using blockchain technology to form an efficient financial system. The ban of cryptocurrency can be viewed from the impacts of the same in the economy as well as the environment.
What is Cryptocurrency?
The Reserve Bank of India Notification did not define what a virtual currency or cryptocurrency is. It did not provide clarity on the various forms that a cryptocurrency can be used in and restricted its scope to only its currency form. Section 2(1)(a) of the Bill defines Cryptocurrency “by whatever name called, means any information or code or number or token not being part of any Official Digital Currency, generated through cryptographic means or otherwise, providing a digital representation of value which is exchanged with or without consideration, with the promise or representation of having an inherent value in any business activity which may involve risk of loss or an expectation of profits or income, or functions as a store of value or a unit of account and includes its use in any financial transaction or investment, but not limited to, investment schemes.” The definition includes the whole nomenclature revolving around cryptocurrencies and the use of the same in any business activity. The inherent issue with cryptocurrency is that it has no proper definition. It can be used as virtual money, commodity, a virtual financial asset and distributor ledger assets. It can also be embodied as a security where the case in point is an Initial Coin Offering. In an Initial Public Offering, the person has to take a token by foreseeing that they will gain some monetary value as an end product.
Why is Cryptocurrency banned in India?
The primary contention against Cryptocurrency is that it is an extremely volatile commodity. The system of cryptocurrencies is a decentralised system with no central authority regulating it. The alternative currency will undermine the value of the existing currency and payment system. It does not have a stable denomination as what currency has and does not have any base currency. Thus it lacks all attributes of being a currency and the transactions are irreversible. This also affects the cross-border transactions as it can violate limits on the inflow and outflow of money. There are no prior requirements to invest the money like how it is necessary to invest in a stock which reduces the ability to regulate the same.
The use of cryptocurrency is demand-based which determines the scalability of the cryptocurrency and the medium of exchange value. This is dependant on the technological and behavioural changes in the market. The consumers who invest in a cryptocurrency can be defrauded if they lose access to their currency wallet to miners who collude to fork a currency or breach the system to benefit themselves. Forking is a process where a person brings an upgrade in the software to benefit themselves to encroach the savings of another person who loses the same permanently. It is additionally difficult to track the people who breach the security with law enforcement as the level of anonymity is high.
The reason why it is fear-mongering around the concept of cryptocurrency is that there is no accountability. Since it is a decentralised system, there is no one to hold liable for the illegal acts that may happen. The consumers use the currency at their own risk and there is no one to complain to in case their accounts have been hacked. The ability to hold someone accountable is harder in cross- border transactions where you don’t know whose jurisdiction the cause of action falls under. This leads to cryptocurrency being highly autonomous outside the purview of regulating authorities like the Reserve Bank of India.
Environmental Impacts of Mining
Crypto-mining is the process where the miners produce currency through energy-intensive processes which require extensive computing resources. The miners seek low-cost electricity to maximise profits which create environmental hazards and impact the other communities. As the competition among miners increases due to the entry of more miners, the difficulty of the algorithms to create blockchains increases to prevent inflation and discourage monopolies. This increases the requirement of energy to solve the renewing computational algorithms and if the cost of energy increases and exceeds the profits from the currency gained, there is no incentive to continue mining which leads to a sunk cost on the environment and the infrastructure is undermined. Even though cryptocurrency is banned in China, it has the highest amount of crypto-mining production which can potentially impact the global cryptocurrency market. By the end of 2018, the mining farms consumed 0.05% of the world’s energy which superseded the net power consumption of entire nations such as Ireland and Austria. Thus the diversion of energy can lead to unfavourable long-term economic consequences. In India, where the country is power-starved, crypto-currency will absorb a lot of energy leading to detrimental effects in the country.
Impact of the ban of Cryptocurrency on the Economy
The primary concern of the ban is that it has left the use of cryptocurrencies unregulated. This has led to the increase of the cryptocurrency value to over 44% in the last 16 months that the Reserve Bank of India banned the dealing in virtual currencies. This is more detrimental especially when the current cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Litecoin which are in the form of Bitcoin, altcoins, and tokens. Thus, the Reserve Bank of India’s move was an attempt to protect regulated entities from risks associated with cryptocurrencies without dealing with the roots of the problem and providing regulation for the same.
In the 2008 financial crisis, when the monetary value of currencies was dropping, cryptocurrency came to the rescue. The ban on cryptocurrency primarily affect start-ups and existing businesses that were using cryptocurrencies like Zebpay which started to wind up. The supplementary decision to criminalize investing in digital tokens would destabilize the existing businesses which have been operating legitimately, eroding the wealth of millions. It also affects existing investors who lose their cryptocurrencies after the ban.
Cryptocurrency would ensure that there is no brain drain in India where the human resources migrate to cryptocurrency-friendly countries leaving India with no leading expertise in cryptocurrencies. It would inhibit new applications and solutions from being deployed and would discourage technological start-ups. The new foreign venture capital investments into Indian startups may also reduce, limiting the innovation in technology. This may affect employment as hundreds of jobs will be lost to such transfers.
Advantages of blockchain technology
Blockchain technology is still something that the Bill promotes even though it bans cryptocurrency. Blockchain Technology would ensure that there is a decentralised ledger where every person who has a Letter of Credit to be in the blockchain receives a message or notification when there is a transaction. This ensures a strict recording of the transactions even if they are irreversible. This eliminates the need for a centralised system and the blockchain technology is a self-regulating model. It also reduces the intermediaries in the market and keeps all transactions under check and hence reduces scams (like the GainBitcoin scam). Thus, blockchain technology is beneficial to India not only in financial areas but also in non-financial areas like the land revenue system and in areas of trade financing. It also lowers the costs of personal identification for ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) related issues and improves access to credit.
Blockchain technology of cryptocurrencies reduces the transaction costs by removing banks but shields currencies from political risks. If a cryptocurrency is treated as a commodity it can be taxed by the Government under GST keeping it regulated and receiving revenue out of the same. But in order for the advantages of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to be effective, there has to be an adequate system of regulation to protect the interests of the stakeholders.
How can cryptocurrency be regulated?
The regulations have to ensure compliance regarding the protection of KYC details and enforce stringent measures to report suspicious transactions and money laundering. It has to ensure that there are accountability and transparency and a degree of uniformity in the cryptocurrency exchanges. It must formulate mechanisms to ensure the protection of consumer’s interests and wealth by ensuring there is an authority to approach regarding grievances. With regard to cross- border transactions there can be regulation at the points of entry and exit.
In a country like India, an outright ban on cryptocurrency is not going to solve the problems that cryptocurrency poses. At the same time, being indifferent to the problem is not going to make the situation better either. The Government must accept these challenges and find methods to regulate the same. On its regulation, benefits will not only be felt by consumers but also start-ups, thus increasing foreign investment. Efficient use of the blockchain technology will not only provide incentives but also regulate the use of energy for the same. Thus cryptocurrency has to be regulated in India to extract the advantages it possesses.
Priyadarshini hails from Christ University, Bangalore and she spends most of her time in debating, dancing and reading. Her Interest area lies in constitutional law and administrative law. For any clarifications, feedback, and advice, you can reach her at email@example.com


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Pundole’s artwork sale last week is one of many successful virtual auctions during the pandemic. Is there an explanation?
A torrential downpour, howling winds and even a pandemic couldn’t dampen the enthusiasm of eager buyers at Pundole’s art sale last week. The Mumbai-based auction house sold 98% of its 64 lots, at a hammer price of ₹14.78 crore or $1.9 million (including a 15% buyer’s premium). The sale included world record auction prices for six artists including Krishen Khanna, Piraji Sagara, Mehlli Gobhai, Navjot Altaf and works on paper by Sudhir Patwardhan and Homi Patel. “There were works for all budgets, from ₹20,000 and they were a combination of good quality, superb provenance and hard-to-find subjects, which created the perfect storm – no pun intended”, explains Mallika Sagar, auctioneer and fine arts specialist. Despite the lack of buzz of a live room, technology allowed for frantic bidding. Many works were put on the market for the first time, from two private collections — that of Tina and Bakul Khote and that of Beroze and Michel Sabatier.
Brand modernist artists continue to command a premium. An early work on paper by S.H. Raza, offered by another seller, sold for ₹80,000,000, more than two and a half times its low estimate. But active auctions for contemporary works by Anju Dodiya, Vasundhara Tewari Broota, Nalini Malani and Navjot Altaf were also encouraging. Against the backdrop of the migrant crisis, Nalini Malani’s 1988 watercolor ‘Regarding an Immigrant Family in the City’ sold for ₹13,000,000, well above its estimate of 2,000,000 at ₹3,000,000.
Ways to spend it
Indian art auctions have remained buoyant since March, when Sotheby’s South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art sale fetched ₹35.7 crore. In June, Saffronart auctions totaled ₹17.5 crore. Last month, Christie’s July sale fetched ₹35.7 crore and ₹51.4 crore from Asta Guru. (All figures include buyer’s premium ranging from 15-30%).
During the lockdown, Saffronart has, in addition to its main auctions, held many smaller, unreserved auctions such as Absolute Tuesdays and Friday Fives with a mix of art and other collectables. Minal Vazirani, president and co-founder of the company, says these have also been very successful. “These auctions took on a life of their own during this time,” she says. The company’s 20-year bet on online sales has set it apart, as it has just under 40% market share in the global Indian art auction market.
As discretionary spending on leisure activities, whether travel or shopping, comes to a halt, even occasional art buyers are willing to spend more. After all, how many people will buy high-end bags on the internet and, more importantly, where will they wear them?
“Art around the world seems to be holding its value because of easy cash flow conditions and because people have more time at home to look at art,” says the businessman and art collector. Dara Mehta art. Staying indoors has clearly had an effect on the art market. As Udit Bhambri, another prolific collector, puts it: “You spend so much time at home, but you can’t really rearrange your house right now. Art is an easy way to look at your space differently.
The pandemic has seen serious and emerging art collectors react to stable prices and good works coming to market. Mumbai-based businessman Shyamal Bodani, who started collecting art five years ago, bought 11 works during lockdown months, including a watercolor by Ayesha Sultana, a mural by Manish Nye and a work by young artist Biraaj Dodiya. He finally found the time to find out more about these artists, who were always on his radar. “My art has kept me company for the past six months,” he says.
Digital activity drives sales
“People imagine that the art world is suffering, which is not the case at all,” says Roshini Vadehra, director of the Delhi-based Vadehra Art Gallery. “In terms of volume, our sales in the past two months have been higher than in recent years as everyone is in India and not distracted by holidays.” When the pandemic hit, the gallery decided to intensify its digital distribution, via a weekly newsletter and an online store. Vadehra has also sold to NRIs based in Chicago, Boston, and Atlanta, in the $30,000 or higher range, using apps like Art Placer (which lets you preview a digital display of art).
Shireen Gandhy, who runs Mumbai’s Chemould gallery on Prescott Road, said she sold three works by Anju Dodiya, whose solo show was on display when the lockdown hit. “In March, I wasn’t even sure I would receive payments, but they arrived without us asking,” she says. Since then, about 20 sales requests have come through Instagram alone.
Prateek Raja, co-director of Experiment in Kolkata, explains that the gallery also engages with young collectors who returned to Kolkata during this period. “We meet our collectors at art fairs where there is literally a five minute window to talk, but over the past few months we have had several in-depth conversations with collectors that last much longer than a rushed conversation. “, he says, referring to presentations with customers made on Zoom.
In April, the three galleries joined several others to launch In Touch, an online platform where each shortlisted space works to sell. While the jury decides on its commercial success, the initiative reflects the kind of cooperation that exists between art sellers.
Saffronart has launched a gallery partner program to give local galleries access to a wider global network. “There was a perception in the market that it was a zero-sum game, that if one person sold, it could hinder other sales,” says Vazirani. “If we collaborate, it fosters a greater level of engagement and helps attract more people to the arts ecosystem.”


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Toyota’s new hydrogen-powered car has a record-setting range (TSLA)
After severing ties with Tesla in 2014, Toyota has shifted its focus toward fuel cells and away from all-electric cars.
On Wednesday, Toyota announced that the Mirai had achieved an EPA-estimated range of 312 miles. That’s the longest range of any zero-emission vehicle on the market today, including electric vehicles.
“Toyota realized in the early 90’s that electrification was key to the future of the automobile,” said Toyota’s North America CEO Jim Lentz in a statement
“Just as the Prius introduced hybrid-electric vehicles to millions of customers nearly twenty years ago, the Mirai is now poised to usher in a new era of efficient, hydrogen transportation.”
One major hurdle left for Toyota to surmount is the lack of hydrogen filling stations, which cost about $1 million each to build. According to the Department of Energy, there are only a dozen hydrogen filling stations nationwide, most of which are in California.
The 2016 Mirai is expected to come with a price tag of $57,500 — less than initial estimates, and keeping the car much more affordable than its electric counterparts. (Tesla’s Model S starts at $69,900).
Tesla, which is expected to announce an affordable cousin to its flagship Model S soon, has gone all in on electric vehicles. When its massive battery gigafactory comes on line within the year, battery technology is expected to improve and prices may drop.
To sweeten the deal, Toyota says it will offer three years of complimentary fuel to Mirai purchasers.
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SEE ALSO: China has created the world's first hydrogen fuel cell streetcar


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After a series of Tylenol recalls, the matter has been referred to the Food and Drug Administration’s (“FDA”) crime division. Drug manufacturer McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Johnson & Johnson (“J&J”), has recalled products from its lineup four times in the last seven months. These recalls included over forty kinds of liquid formulations of infant and children’s Tylenol, Motrin, Zyrtec, and Benadryl products on April 30th. According to Colleen Goggins, the worldwide chairman of Johnson & Johnson, production at McNeil’s Fort Washington, PA plant that manufactures children’s products has been suspended. Although Goggins testified that the recalls were not a result of adverse medical events, the FDA is investigating reports of at least 775 serious side effects from recalled drugs by McNeil.
Joshua Sharfstein, the FDA’s principal deputy commissioner, told lawmakers on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that the agency was “considering enforcement actions against the company for its pattern of noncompliance, which may include seizure, injunction, or criminal penalties.” The FDA cited manufacturing problems that included bacterial contamination found in one of the raw ingredients used to make Tylenol. Another problem caused some of the medicines to contain higher concentrations of active ingredients than listed, while other products contained tiny metallic particles left as a residue from the manufacturing process. While Sharfstein said there is no evidence that contaminated raw material was actually used in the finished product and that the finished products tested negative for contamination, he believes the public health risk is too high for these manufacturing problems to have ever occurred.
Consumer complaints about moldy or musty smells from adult Tylenol products began in 2008. However, the product recalls did not begin until 2009. The FDA then sent McNeil a warning letter in January, criticizing the slow investigation process by the company. The investigation eventually found that the unusual odor came from trace amounts of a chemical applied to wood pallets for product storage. Unfortunately, the FDA only has so much influence over product recalls. The agency lacks the authority to initiate product recalls even when it discovers quality problems. In most situations, companies have the final say in whether to voluntarily issue a product recall, demonstrating again the importance of the judicial system and how we cannot rely solely on government agencies to monitor and ensure product safety.


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Apple has reinforced its commitment to privacy with iOS 14, which includes new features to give users more control over what data each app has access to. One of these features is a new banner alert that lets users know if an app is pasting from the clipboard, and this is already exposing the behavior of some popular apps.
According to several reports shared on the web after the release of iOS 14 beta, TikTok is one of the apps that constantly reads user clipboards. The new privacy banner keeps showing up on the screen all the time when the app is running, and this has not only annoyed beta users but also made them worried about TikTok copying personal data without permission.
TikTok told Telegraph that the app is not collecting data from the clipboard. Instead, the app has a custom system to identify repetitive spam behavior. The company alleges this feature is triggering the new iOS 14 privacy banner, and for that reason, TikTok will no longer automatically access user clipboards with a future update to the app.
For TikTok, this was triggered by a feature designed to identify repetitive, spammy behavior. We have already submitted an updated version of the app to the App Store removing the anti-spam feature to eliminate any potential confusion. TikTok is committed to protecting users’ privacy and being transparent about how our app works.
According to the Telegraph report, there are other apps that constantly check the iOS clipboard, including AccuWeather, Overstock, AliExpress, Call of Duty Mobile, Patreon, and Google News. We don’t know the exact reason for each app to read what users copied from other apps, but TikTok’s decision proves that Apple is right to implement more privacy tools.
Hey @tiktok_us, why do you paste from my clipboard every time I type a LETTER in your comment box? Shout out to iOS 14 for shining a light on this HUGE invasion of privacy. inb4 they say it was a “bug” pic.twitter.com/MHv10PmzZS
— Maxel (@MaxelAmador) June 25, 2020
Have you noticed any other app trying to access the clipboard all the time with iOS 14? Let us know in the comments below.
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The customised electronics specialist said it expects to resume acquisitions as market conditions strengthen in the second 50 % of the 12 months
discoverIE Team PLC () has said its order e-book “remains strong” and that it sees “significant scope for even more expansion” in its design & manufacturing (D&M) division.
In a trading update for the to start with 4 months of its present 12 months ending March 31, 2021, the customised electronics specialist said due to the fact Might orders have increased by all-around 10% for each thirty day period in June and July, to a degree very similar to sales.
Browse: DiscoverIE gets upgrade soon after success impress Berenberg
Team sales for the full period are all-around 8% reduced than final 12 months, nonetheless, the corporation said natural advancement prices ongoing to be much better in its goal marketplaces, led by its renewable strength and health-related divisions.