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Jack Dorsey is set to keynote for this year’s Africa Fintech Summit holding virtually on November 9, 10, and 12.
As the Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Square, Inc., Dorsey is considered to be one of the biggest influencers in tech ecosystems worldwide and is often revered as a futurist.
Founded in 2009, Square has introduced a suite of innovative tools and services that supports financial inclusion and the growth of businesses. In recent weeks, Square announced it would become one of the first publicly traded U.S. companies to hold Bitcoin on its balance sheet.
Dorsey’s keynote marks a year since the visionary visited Africa to meet with several of the continent’s tech leaders and incubation houses. His listening tour in Africa confirmed the consensus that Africa will define the future (especially the bitcoin one!).
He has since held an active and insightful voice on the future of African fintech, in particular, the future of cryptocurrency. With an unbanked population of 66%, and a credit card penetration rate that averages 1.5%, the applications for crypto in sub-Saharan Africa only help solidify Dorsey’s interest in the continent.
Dorsey’s closing keynote on November 12 will revolve around the concepts of decentralized finance and opportunities it creates for financial inclusion.
Throughout the three day event, registrants will have the opportunity to:
Engage and learn from 60 of sector’s most active thought leaders over the course of 12 panel sessions, 3 fireside chats, and related discussion forums
Participate in discussions that dissect some of the sector’s regulatory hurdles
Connect with early-stage startups and the latest innovations through a startup expo
Meet with the industry’s stakeholders – investors, startups, regulators, banking execs, and more! – in curated networking sessions or 1×1
Learn best practices for approaching different types of investors, banking partners, and regulators
The Summit will conclude on November 12 with the regional final of Pegasus Tech Ventures’ Startup World Cup global pitch competition, the winner of which will be invited to compete for US$1M at the global semi-finals in Silicon Valley in May 2021.


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Motorola Droid X: If videos and Web surfing is your thing, then this is the smartphone for you.
iPhone 4 has created a lot of interest with consumers. Over 1.5 million iPhones have been sold, according to Apple.
iPhone 4 has some new competition: Motorola and Verizon announced their next Android phone, the Droid X. How does it compare to the iPhone 4?
Droid X, the newest unit in Verizon's top-selling Droid line, will likely be unveiled on June 23. Early reports put the high-powered Motorola Droid X as a worthy competitor to the Apple iPhone 4.
Apple kicked off its iPhone preorder Tuesday with a couple glitches. The biggest: the white iPhone 4 won't be available June 24.
With all that glass, is the new iPhone 4 all that it's 'cracked up' to be?
"We have the technology." Just like the Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Jobs is expected to announce that the new iPhone 4 is better, stronger, and faster.
Google's $750 million purchase of Admob strengthens the firm's dominance of web advertising.

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Council’s grants help local businesses weather the pandemic storm
Diversification grants totalling more than £112,000 have helped a raft of local high street businesses thrive over the last 16 months despite the unprecedented challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Located across the six borough town high streets, 32 local businesses were successful in applying for Telford & Wrekin Council’s diversification grants, each receiving between £1,000 and the maximum £4,000 funding.
The grants, which form part of Telford & Wrekin’s Council’s wider Pride in Our High Streets “Revive & Thrive” programme, were specifically created in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated restrictions. Their goal was to support the borough’s independent high street businesses in the face of on-line competition through the pandemic, whilst also helping ensure that the borough’s high streets bounce back and increase the range and opportunity for Telford and Wrekin’s shoppers supporting ‘shop local’.
Local businesses used the grants to fund equipment, new products, digital innovations and expansions to enable them to continue trading competitively through the pandemic, diversify their offer and futureproof their businesses.
Work enabled by the grants has included a website to take yoga and Pilates classes online for Tina Carter Wellness Studio in Newport; a delivery vehicle for Nanny’s Craft Bakery in Wellington; an e-commerce website enabling local delivery and kerbside pickup for drinks retailer, Moonshine and Fuggles, in Ironbridge; expansion of the business to incorporate a leisure fashion and cosmetic shop at the premises for the Laura Deighton Dance Company in Dawley; marketing material for Flares Hairdressers in Madeley; an e-commerce website for clothing hire company, Kings, in Oakengates; and sound equipment to run online music events for Gratitude Café & Music Venue in Wellington.
Kristiyan Dimitrov, whose bakery business – Nanny’s Craft Bakery – benefited from a £4,000 diversification grant from the council said:
“Ever since we’ve opened our doors, the community has welcomed us and shown us wonderful support, with lots of customers returning time and time again.”
After being closed for a month due to Covid-19 restrictions, the bakery changed its business model, using its diversification grant award to buy a vehicle enabling the business to make deliveries and supply products to other shops.
Cllr Lee Carter, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhood, Commercial and Regeneration, said:
“Kris and Nanny’s Bakery are exactly the kind of business our Pride in Our High Street scheme aims to support: entrepreneurs providing a service and helping maintain the unique nature of the retail offer across the borough.
“The recent crisis has demonstrated how important it is for a high street business to be able to adapt and diversify to survive. This grant has helped businesses to diversify, both to react to difficult times but also to capitalise on new opportunities.
“The survival of our high streets is essential to thriving local communities and they are important contributors to successful local economies.
“Whilst the current diversification grant programme has now ended, we are now moving into phase three of our Pride in Our High Streets programme, which will see an expansion of the Revive and Thrive grant programme to include new digital and green initiatives to further support our high street businesses and increase sustainability in the borough.”


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This is not exactly the kind of news Apple needed, on a day when its shares were at an all-time high and it was getting downgraded by an analyst for the first time in more than six months: The voice software on its new iPhone 4S seems to be acting up.
Tom Loftus at Digits reports that users are having trouble getting the Siri voice-activated personal assistant to work:
Some users started having problems on Friday, the day the iPhone 4S went on sale, according to CNet, with many saying that the app was not connecting to process voice commands. The software requires the use of a Wi-Fi or 3G network to access the Apple servers that power the app’s answers.
As Siri this was one of the most-touted and best-reviewed features in the new iPhone that just broke sales records, this could be kind of a problem.
Apple shares are down nearly 1% at $418.11, after opening the day higher.
It’s too early to say this is going to be a long-lasting problem. It could simply be that the servers are overwhelmed by the rush of new users. And the stock is probably at least partly reacting to broader market anxieties. But you can bet people will be watching.
Research in Motion, which after recently suffering its own server issues should be enjoying some schadenfreude, is not — its shares are down 6%.


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5 Things to Know Today: November 17, 2016
Liz Biscevic—5 Things to Know Today
In case you missed it, you can now use marijuana inside of Denver bars and restaurants, Thanksgiving dinner is getting cheaper, and Tesla and SolarCity signed a $2 billion dollar deal.
Though patrons will have to bring their own, Denver is allowing restaurants and bars to apply for a permit that would allow their guests to use cannabis indoors as long as it’s not smoked and smoke weed in designated outdoor areas. Get the snacks ready.
The James Dyson Award celebrates university student invention to inspire future design engineers. This year, the award honors Isis Shiffer, a graduate student at the Pratt Institute of Design in New York for her EcoHelmet, a bike helmet made from recycled paper and woven into a protective, honeycomb shape.
Both the American Farm Bureau Federation reports and the Consumer Price Index confirms that supermarket groceries have fallen for the sixth straight month and common Thanksgiving foods—like turkey, sweet potatoes, and cranberries—are 2.3 percent cheaper than last year. But don’t get carried away. The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates 204 million pounds of turkey will get thrown away over the Thanksgiving Holiday.
Tesla Motors Inc. and SolarCity approved the purchase of SolarCity's solar installer in a $2 billion dollar deal. This acquisition brings Elon Musk even closer to his vision for a one-stop-shop for clean energy consumers.
461 Dean, a 32-story rental property in Brookyn’s 22-acre Pacific Park mega-project is open and ready to begin leasing this week. Nearly 60 percent of the building was prefabricated at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, transported back to the site, and stacked one on top of the other, cutting construction waste by around 80 percent and reducing energy use by approximately 67 percent.


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As Covid-19 spread around the world, the sudden and urgent demand for face coverings threw supply chains into upheaval. Global shortages for personal protective equipment (PPE), including masks, threatened to overwhelm healthcare services and derail public safety efforts to contain the pandemic.
In Macao, the Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Centre officially confirmed the city’s first case of Covid-19 on 22 January 2020. And by that afternoon, the government had pre-emptively ordered 20 million masks, available for purchase to the general public by the following evening.
Local entrepreneurs subsequently joined the effort to meet local demand with high-quality masks in a variety of styles. From rainbow-hued disposable options to reusable cloth-based designs, we have shortlisted a few Macao-made masks that balance form and function.
Launched in December 2019, Mo-19’s previous work quickly transitioned into local facemask production. Prior to the pandemic, co-founder John Cheong, a Macao local, had been exploring antibacterial technology, using silver microparticles (SMP) as a means to sterilise surfaces.
Partnering with HME (Honesty Medical Equipment), Cheong and HME General Manager Sum Chao successfully applied SMP technology to cotton yarn in December 2019 – a step that naturally paved the way toward mask manufacturing.
By June 2020, they brought reusable Macao-made facemasks to the local market and have since expanded to sell their products in Singapore as well. Mo-19 offers brightly hued “Urban Casual” collection as well as a “Pro Series” in monochromatic shades. Both offer two layers of protection: the antibacterial, cotton SMP fabric and an optional disposable filter.
Attached separately, the filter provides dust protection, as well as anti-smoke and anti-pollen functions. The mask itself can be worn for months at a time, but replace the filter every day for optimal protection, Cheong advises.
Since they are reusable, the masks can help reduce waste from PPE gear. “Environmental protection is invaluable,” says Cheong. “We have to wear masks for protection, but we can choose a mask that is less harmful to the environment. Our Mo-19 provides people with this choice.”
Production capacity: Roughly 1,600 per week
Where to find them: Mo-19 facemasks can be bought via various online stores.
Despite having no prior PPE experience, Gary Chong, founder of Macau Artisan, started planning his own line of locally made masks in February 2020. It took a few months to ramp up, with production starting in June.
“The epidemic came suddenly, and Macao lacked the mask supply and needed to buy from other places, such as mainland China,” says Chong. Initially, they had a team of 30 people working from 9 am to 3 am every day. Later, they teamed up with Hong Kong and Taiwanese manufacturers to increase production.
“Good quality and absolute safety have always been the most important considerations for our masks,” asserts then marketing head Cindy Cheong. “Our masks are light, comfortable, breathable, waterproof and completely free of allergenic ingredients.”
After obtaining quality certification from the Macao Economic Bureau, Macau Artisan got to work creating disposable ASTM Level 2 facemasks, which offer 98 per cent filtration, then later stepped it up to ASTM Level 3, the highest level of mask protection. They come in a wide range of colours and designs including flowers, graphic patterns, and Chinese New Year motifs.
Production capacity: 100,000 masks per day
Where to find them: Macau Artisan facemasks can be bought in Chi Fu Stationery Shops, Kong Seng Ticketing and most pharmacies in Macao.
Chan Chi Meng and Chan Mei Wa, who have experience in the industry as co-founders and shareholders of Macaufacture Medical Supplies, established 853 FaceMask in March 2020. Inspired by businesses in Hong Kong, Meng and Wa took swift action and immediately set up face mask-manufacturing facilities as soon as the pandemic began to spread.
“To the best of our ability, we are doing our social responsibility for Macao society,” says Chan Chi Meng. Even the name of the company embodies this ethos – 853 being the city’s calling code.
Their disposable masks are made with a special, nonwoven fabric from Germany that looks and feels a bit like fleece, plus a filter that’s manufactured with maximum breathability in mind. But function is not the only selling point: 853 collaborates with local design team LOKSOPHY Design for masks in a range of colours and prints.
Many of Macao’s biggest companies – MGM, Macau Water Company and CTM Macau – source masks from 853. And with distribution expanding internationally to Portugal, Chief Marketing Officer Angel Lai highlights the significance of 853 beyond simply producing masks: “We are proud to promote ‘Made in Macao’ brands so that Macao citizens may take pride in the products that represent us internationally.”
Production capacity: 200,000-250,000 masks per day
Where to find them: 853 FaceMasks can be bought online, via 853 FaceMasks vending machines (several locations, including China Plaza and the new Hengqin Port), or at pharmacies and OK convenience stores.
Macanese software engineer entrepreneur Jorge Neto Valente has long collaborated with leading medical technology and biotech companies in China and Portuguese-speaking countries. With Covid-19’s arrival, these same companies contacted Valente expressing their eagerness to help.
Seizing the opportunity to build a new biotech programme base in Macao, Neto Valente set up AS-King Medical Products. “Naturally, facemasks became the first product to launch,” Valente says, retelling the humorous story behind their name. “Everyone at the time was ‘asking’ for a mask, which led to ‘AS-King.’”
Currently, the brand’s disposable facemasks are relatively run-of-the-mill but Neto Valente has big plans to innovate. “In the future, we are looking to make nano-coated facemasks and partner with local Macao designers,” he adds.
Still, the entrepreneur plans to focus on protection above all else. “Covid-19 isn’t likely to go anytime soon, so we will still continue wearing facemasks a year or two from now,” he says. “People are more picky, the more masks are considered part of their daily fashion choices. But a sudden [outbreak], if any, will tilt it over towards function over form.”
Production capacity: 200,000 masks per week
Where to find them: Most pharmacies around the city carry AS-King Facemasks.


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It has been a long time coming, but at last it seems like Verizon is finally ready to deliver on their promised Ice Cream Sandwich update for the Motorola Droid RAZR. Some users, not all it seems, have received a free text from the carrier, saying that Android 4.0 is on the way soon.
If you are not already on a custom version of Ice Cream Sandwich, then this update to Android 4.0 has been a long time coming – eight months and counting so far since the launch back in November 2011 in actual fact. Whether you are too frustrated with Verizon to even care at this point is irrelevant though, as the official update should be arriving before the end of this month.
Some of you may have feared that another delay was on the cards, since Verizon and Motorola’s revised Q2 2012 deadline has well and truly reached its limit. However, users have reported that a message has now arrived on their device, informing them that the Android 4.0 update is on the way soon and that they should download an alternative IM app, since the current Verizon one will not be supported by ICS.
The big question that everyone is wanting to know right now though, is how soon is soon? If any other problems do arise after sending out this message, you can only imagine how angry Verizon customers are going to be. With any luck though, the update will be out before the end of this week and we’ll all be discussing a potential Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update in the months to come.
Did you receive this notification from Verizon over the weekend, because we’re hearing that some users did not?
*Identifying Monetised Links - outgoing links that we monetise are marked with an '*' symbol.


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On April 4, 2023, Johnson & Johnson announced a new proposed plan to commit $8.9 billion USD to “resolve all claims arising from cosmetic talc litigation against the Company and its affiliates in North America” through a newly filed Chapter 11 case in a US bankruptcy court.
The proposed plan relates to J&J’s talcum powder products, which were globally discontinued in 2022 (Read my prior blog, Johnson & Johnson stopping all sales of talcum-based baby powder for more info).
J&J pledges $8.9 billion for talc claims resolution but key details remain unknown
In its press release, J&J pledged $8.9 billion USD to fund a new reorganization plan in a freshy filed case for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by a J&J subsidiary – LTL Management – in a New Jersey bankruptcy court. According to the company’s statement the plan would contemplate up to $8.9 billion payable over 25 years to resolve all the current and future talc claims.
The full details of the plan are not yet known, as J&J has yet to file the Plan in court.
Though J&J’s stated intent is for the new plan to resolve talcum powder claims “as quickly and efficiently as possible,” any proposed bankruptcy plan does not guarantee that victims will ultimately receive compensation any time in the near future, if at all. To become effective, a Chapter 11 Plan would need to pass an approval vote by prospective claimants, as well as receive the approval of a bankruptcy judge and survive any appeals, which may take years.
The company has yet to announce specifics as to when payouts to victims would be projected to occur over the 25-year lifespan for the Plan.
New plan marks second attempt to use bankruptcy court after initial attempt dismissed
This new case is the second time J&J will attempt to use the US bankruptcy court system to resolve talcum powder claims in North America pending against the company and its affiliates. LTL filed an initial petition in the NJ bankruptcy court back in 2021, but their initial reorganization plan would have only seen $2 billion allocated to pay the claims of cancer victims and other creditors. That initial proposed bankruptcy plan was rejected by a US Court of Appeals in January 2023 (Read my prior blog, Johnson & Johnson’s bankruptcy strategy for talcum powder cancer lawsuits rejected by US Court on the appeal decision, for more info).
Although J&J initially stated an intent to appeal the January 2023 ruling to the US Supreme Court, no appeal was filed, and the US bankruptcy court issued an order formally dismissing the original bankruptcy case on April 4, 2023. Hours later, the 2nd bankruptcy case was filed.
Canadians affected by J&J’s talcum powder products are encouraged to seek representation
Any Canadian who believes that they or a family member may have been harmed by Johnson & Johnson’s talcum powder products is encouraged to reach out to a lawyer to ensure that their potential legal interests in the new bankruptcy, if any, are protected.
Siskinds LLP is representing Canadians who have been diagnosed with cancers, including mesothelioma or cancers of the ovaries, fallopian tubes, or peritoneum, after regular use of J&J talcum powder products. If you or a loved one have impacted, contact us at [email protected] or visit our website for more info.


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Apparel Textile Sourcing Canada, held every August in Toronto, will now have a sister show with the debut of the Apparel Textile Sourcing Miami trade show.
Set for May 21-23 at the Mana Wynwood Convention Center in Miami, the show aims to attract small businesses, retailers, manufacturers and designers across the U.S. and Latin America. The show will feature hundreds of international apparel and textile manufacturers from China, India, Bangladesh, the U.S., Turkey, Pakistan, Mexico and many other countries and territories from across Central and South America, and all around the world.
Moishe Mana, Miami-based developer and chief executive officer of Mana Group, said, “We are committed to making Miami the nexus for commerce between Asia, North America and Latin America. We’re excited to have ATS Miami join this initiative as the fashion and apparel industry is one of our core verticals.”
Next to the hundreds of manufacturers’ booths and exhibits, ATS-Miami will gain insights and information to best navigate and profit in the international sourcing process. The show with include a featured focus on “Manufacturer Transparency, Speed & Responsiveness,” and benefits of “Near Sourcing Americas.”
“The expansion of the ATS Brand to Miami is a direct response to the market demand and fills a significant gap for the US-&-Latin American markets,” said Jason Prescott, CEO of JP Communications, organizer of the event and parent company to TopTenWholesale.com and Manufacturer.com, a network of business-to-business sourcing platforms in the U.S.
[Read more about sourcing trends: Sourcing in 2018: The Predictions, The Challenges, The Hard Truths]
ATS-M will feature seminars, panels and runway shows covering topics from trade agreements to best practices with an eye on the changing Latin American market, as well as tips on how to choose overseas producers, plus new approaches on succeeding in the U.S. market.
“The ATS-Miami design pods and fashion show will include International apparel producers, Latin American artisans, Made-in-Americas manufacturers and active design students,” said Apparel Textile Sourcing Director John Banker.
In addition, ATS-M will feature a “Made in USA” pavilion showcasing U.S.-based manufacturers who source apparel and textiles from abroad for their finished goods, as well as U.S. designers who have their designs made into finished products overseas.
The Americas Pavilion will feature products from such countries as Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Mana Group is currently developing a 10-million-square-foot trade hub in the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami to facilitate trade across all verticals between Asia and the Western Hemisphere.


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Apple is reportedly preparing to announce a new high-speed connection technology, CNET reports today.
CNET claims a "source" has confirmed the Cupertino-based company will soon announce a new connection technology which is faster than the USB 3.0 specifications and could potentially utilise Intel's Light Peak technology, which allows manufacturers to use the one connection for every item which connects to a computer, be it a printer, mouse, display, keyboard or external hard drives.
"An announcement from Apple is expected soon about a new high-speed connection technology," CNET reporter Brooke Crothers wrote.
"Apple is expected to adopt this technology in the near future--but likely use a name other than Light Peak, a source familiar with this aspect of Apple's plans said."
Intel first demonstrated the technology in the middle of last year, where the company showed two computers running Mac OS X playing a 1080p video while also transferring files. While many were left impressed, others felt Light Peak may have less of an impact than before with USB 3.0 beating it onto the market.
At the time, rumours were rife that Apple may debut the technology in early 2011, with speculation the company may be working closely with Intel to be a launch partner of the product alongside Sony, who've also displayed a high interest in the technology.
If CNET's report is accurate, Apple may even include support for the Light Peak technology in the upcoming update to their operating system, dubbed OS X "Lion" which is due out later this year. A revamped Macbook Pro range that may also have support for the technology is also expected to debut soon, possibly as soon as next week.


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Bulgarian development outfit The Sixth Hammer has announced today that it will be releasing Moo Lander on PS4 early next year. But what is Moo Lander? Good question…
Moo Lander is a 2D adventure platformer where you have to save your ancient race, the Landers, from extinction. To do this you need to harvest the most precious power source in the galaxy. That precious power source? Milk. Cow milk. Like what comes from the udder of a cow. We all know that milk is good for us, but I had no idea it was this good…
According to the press release, Mood Lander is a tactical platformer with lots of different environments, enemies, and puzzles. Oh, and cow bosses that must be defeated so you may steal their precious milk. You won’t have to take on the bovines alone, though, as the game will support online and couch co-op for up to four players – a rarity in this day and age, but milk is precious stuff so it makes sense the developers would want you to have a helping hand.
There’s no solid release date attached to Moo Lander just yet, though the press release and accompanying trailer states that the game is set to release during Q1 2020. However, if you really can’t wait to get your fix of the white stuff, there’s a free demo that can be played on PC via a Steam download.
Chris has been writing about gaming news for far too long, and now he’s doing it even more. A true PlayStation know-it-all, Chris has owned just about every Sony console that ever existed. Trophies are like crack to this fella. (Bronze trophies, that is – he only has one Platinum.)


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Posted on July 22, 2013 AT 06:51pm
Dark Horse Comics were very busy at San Diego Comic-Con this year, revealing a lot of really exciting things that are on the way from the major publisher. Not only were there many major announcements, but there were a few very special ones that should make many fans very excited.
The fist major announcement is that they will be bringing the highly-acclaimed silent webcomic by Victor Santos, Polar, to the printed world, and this time, there is dialog, for the very first time. This action-adventure series was originally creator by Santos to explore the process of story-telling, and this time, it’s done without dialog. Now that it’s coming to print with a brand new script, Polar is the story of a retired spy brought back from his rest by a former agent looking to kill him. With a brand new audience to turn to, Santos can create something even more complex with the addition of dialog. Polar: Came from the Cold is on sale December 11 from Dark Horse Comics.
Dark Horse also announced a very special partnership with PopCap Games to offer a very special Plants Vs. Zombies comic! Written by Paul Tobin with art by Ron Chan, this series will place a very fun spin on the hit franchise. Plants Vs. Zombies: Lawnmageddon #1 and #2 are both available now, and the next chapter will release each week until August 14th, when the series ends. The hardcover editions will be available on November 6th.
Dark Horse also announced two major writers coming to Dark Horse for a few special licensed projects. Coming from writer J. Michael Straczynski and artist Pete Woods comes the brand new, twelve issue series of The Terminator. This historic franchise is poised for a reboot in the near future, and this series will likely feature some major work on helping to launch the new era. These two major names will likely jump start the hype for the series, so be on the lookout for this brand new series, coming soon.
The biggest announcement of the convention for Dark Horse was likely the announcement that superstar writer Gail Simone will be coming to Dark Horse for a very special series as she takes her convention-shattering writing into the world of the legendary heroine Lara Croft in a brand new Tomb Raider series. This is a huge deal for fans of Simone’s works and of the franchise, as her work with female characters are better than anyone in he business and she will surely take care of the recently rebooted character.
Dark Horse is still going to be very busy in the coming weeks, so be on the lookout for more announcements from this major company!
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Window of opportunity to promote the creativity of Leighton Buzzard's independent businesses
A competition to showcase their wares following a challenging year due to Covid, was a window of opportunity too good to miss out on for independent businesses in Leighton Buzzard.
Town centre traders were invited to take part in the Best Dressed Shop Window competition organised by Leighton-Linslade Town Council, with judging taking place on December 13.
The judging panel consisted of the Mayor, a representative from the Rotary Club of Leighton-Linslade and the senior carnival princess.
The panel commended the variety and high quality of entries received which was reflected in good scores throughout.
Shops were awarded marks for their use of products displayed within the windows, the incorporation of a winter theme and the percentage of their shopfront incorporated within the display.
A final set of marks was also awarded to the impact which the display had on passers-by.
Scoring highly throughout, the judges awarded first place to Happydashery, second place to Wilde Flower Boutique and third place to Selections. Upon hearing their winning news, Carrie and Sarah from Happydashery said: “We are absolutely over the moon to have won the competition for the Best Dressed Shop Window.
“We love being on the High Street and a part of this lovely and supportive community.
“We knew we wanted to go as Christmassy as we could this year after being closed for so long. We were lucky enough to be able to work with Lettered By Annie who helped us to bring our ideas to life on the window with her beautiful lettering.
“Huge thanks to Leighton-Linslade Town Council for running this competition, it was such a great idea and good fun to get involved!”
The competition was organised by the council as part of the town centre ‘Welcome Back’ campaign following the initial national lockdown earlier this year. It also coincided with the re-opening of shops following the November lockdown.
> What’s your favourite independent shop and why? Email [email protected]


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Travel in 2020 has been interesting to follow, to say the least. As we head into the holiday season, it’s important to stay up-to-date. Here are the top travel news stories of the week.
What Will Be Different At The 2020 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
Despite all the challenges of 2020, the 94th Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is not canceled this year. This unique holiday tradition, with its giant balloons, its colorful floats, and its A-list entertainers, is how millions of Americans begin their Thanksgiving morning. The organizers have been hard at work to ensure this tradition remains intact while following health and safety protocols. Here is what is changing this year.
Everything You Need To Know About The 2020 Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting
The traditional Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree dates back to 1931 and has since become a Christmas staple in New York. This year, organizers realized the importance of this symbol and insisted it must still go on. However, the global pandemic forced a few changes to this tradition. Read on to find out when and how to view the lighting ceremony and what changes to expect.
CDC Warns Against Cruise Travel As Cruise Lines Delay Sailing Dates To Meet Guidelines
Cruise travelers and cruise lines have undoubtedly endured a difficult year. After being forced to cancel all cruise travel in U.S. waters due to the pandemic, cruise lines remained hopeful about 2021. However, this week the CDC pushed back the date to resume cruising in American waters even further. Read on to find out the latest in the cruising industry.
Qantas Airlines To Require International Travelers To Have COVID-19 Vaccine
Qantas Airlines has suspended all international flights except very limited trips to New Zealand but has been looking at ways to safely begin flying again. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce announced on Monday that in 2021, international travelers will need to show proof of their COVID-19 vaccination in order to board their flight. Read on to find out how this will work.
Costco Is Selling The Ultimate Travel Gift: Private Jet Service For A Year
Do you have a person on your Christmas list who already has everything? Costco has the answer for you! The store that already sells thousands of bulk products is now offering its members one year of private flights through the company Wheels Up. The price tag, however, isn’t cheap. Read on to find out what one year of Costco’s private flying service will cost and what it entails.


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UVA Darden Alumnus Brings Big Changes To Brazilian Fintech — And One Really Big IPO to NYSE
By Sam Worley
PagSeguro Digital likes to use the word “democratize” to describe its mission. The Brazilian payment-processing company was founded in 2006 to give more small vendors access to the world’s eighth-largest economy by letting them conduct transactions electronically. “We have every type of merchant: coffee shops, personal trainers, doctors, dentists, taxi drivers,” says University of Virginia Darden School of Business alumnus Ricardo Dutra da Silva (MBA ’07), CEO of PagSeguro since 2016.
The merchants may be small, but PagSeguro is having a huge effect on the ways that everyday Brazilians do business.
The company was conceived as a kind of Brazilian PayPal. It offers a free digital account through which users can send and receive money, and also sells point-of-service devices for merchants to process credit card transactions using a smartphone or using autonomous POS. Just like there was no PayPal before PayPal, there was nothing on the scene in Brazil to fill the particular niche that PagSeguro created for itself — and it’s still reaping the rewards for being first. Last year over 2.8 million merchants used the company’s payment options: “It’s 100 percent online,” Dutra da Silva says — no salespeople. “It’s very disruptive.”
Once an upstart, PagSeguro has grown into a powerful force that’s given the traditional Brazilian fintech industry a run for its money. In an initial public offering in January 2018 — the biggest IPO by a Brazilian company since 2011 — PagSeguro Digital (PAGS) raised $2.3 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, according to Bloomberg. With lead underwriting from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, it was also the biggest IPO on the NYSE since the March 2017 debut of Snap, the company that produces Snapchat.
Was he surprised by the success? A little bit, Dutra da Silva says: “We planned and worked hard to create an awesome and unique company, and the recognition we got from the market reinforced we are in the right way. And that is great.”
He continues, “We’re the vanguard — we really created this new market. We’re not competing with incumbents.”
Dutra da Silva says he chose the Darden School in 2005 because he believed in the high quality of business and business school in the U.S. At 28 years old, the Sao Paulo native already had some business experience under his belt, having worked since 1997 for UOL, the Brazilian online-content firm that’s now PagSeguro’s parent company. He wanted to broaden his business horizons before settling down in Brazil to start a family, and he knew the U.S. was where to go: “The best place to study business,” he says. “America knows how to do it.”
If he chose America because it was the center of the action, Dutra da Silva selected Darden because of its small class size and case-based learning system — and because he loves Charlottesville. Directly following his graduation from Darden, Dutra da Silva worked in consulting at Bain & Co. in the Sao Paulo office, but ultimately ended up back at his former employer, UOL.
Dutra da Silva, who is also CEO of UOL Digital Content and Products, says UOL created PagSeguro in 2006 to meet a need nobody else was tackling as PayPal was quickly growing in the U.S.
PagSeguro continues to benefit from the trail it blazed. When the company debuted on the NYSE earlier this year, a financial analyst from KeyBanc Capital Markets said PagSeguro “holds a strong position in Brazil’s digital payment space,” according to the finance website Benzinga, taking advantage of “a $400 billion market that’s less than 30 percent penetrated.” Brazil’s small merchants remain “significantly underserved,” the analyst said — pointing the way for future growth.
As the biggest game in town — actually, in the country — PagSeguro is also creating space for other would-be distrupters of the Brazilian fintech industry. After the IPO, Dutra da Silva says, “many other companies in Brazil sent me congratulations. They told me, ‘Thank you very much for doing that for Brazil. You guys are writing a new story — it’s going to be much easier for other companies to follow your path.’ We created this new and unique story that is going to open the door for other companies in Brazil.”
Darden, he says, “was crucial for my success in my career and the success of the IPO. You have 300, 400 meetings with investors. It was the confidence Darden gave me to talk to all these investors and understand the big picture.”
The University of Virginia Darden School of Business prepares responsible global leaders through unparalleled transformational learning experiences. Darden’s graduate degree programs (MBA, MSBA and Ph.D.) and Executive Education & Lifelong Learning programs offered by the Darden School Foundation set the stage for a lifetime of career advancement and impact. Darden’s top-ranked faculty, renowned for teaching excellence, inspires and shapes modern business leadership worldwide through research, thought leadership and business publishing. Darden has Grounds in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Washington, D.C., area and a global community that includes 18,000 alumni in 90 countries. Darden was established in 1955 at the University of Virginia, a top public university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Associate Director, Editorial & Media Relations
Darden School of Business
University of Virginia


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Hazard Ops: Like a Boss Update
Update 1.5 hits Hazard Ops “like a boss.” Boss rush, boss mini-pets, and more are coming today. See the details here.
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The Federal Communications Commission’s June 2015 net neutrality rules that ban Internet providers from selectively blocking or slowing websites or charging more for faster relaying are about to change.
On December 14, the five-member FCC board, consisting of three Republicans and two Democrats and chaired by Trump appointee Ajit Pai, is expected to vote along party lines to roll back the Obama-era rules.
Repealing net neutrality under the banner of deregulation clears a fresh path for Internet access providers to make money in new ways.
Ultimately, that means making money from consumers. But luckily, there’s a way for us consumers to make some money too.
The End is Nigh
New FCC chairman Ajit Pai, a former associate general counsel at Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), has made rolling back net neutrality regulations a “priority,” citing claims that it has “stifled innovation” and epitomizes “government overreach.”
While the vote to reverse neutrality rules appears to be a foregone conclusion, with new rules likely taking effect in early 2018, legal briefs challenging the U-turn are already being prepared.
According to Blake Reid, a clinical professor at Colorado Law, broadband providers will likely wait to see how legal challenges to new FCC orders go. “They’ll probably keep an eye on 2018 and even 2020 elections as well. The courts could shoot down the FCC’s order, or, given enough public pressure, Congress even could pass new net neutrality laws,” Reid says.
In the meantime, Internet access providers don’t have to wait for legal challenges to whatever new rules will be enacted, and probably won’t.
Besides, they’ve already gotten around some of those rules (legally, of course).
For example, Verizon tries to drive users to their own apps by exempting them from mobile data limits. The same goes for AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) customers when they access the AT&T DirecTV Now video-streaming service, and T-Mobile US Inc. (NASDAQ: TMUS) allows multiple video and music streaming services to bypass its data limits.
CRITICAL: Cash In Thanks to Big Tobacco’s Misdeeds
Steering consumers to company-owned content by packaging them in data plans has become an acceptable sidestep of net neutrality rules.
Proposed new rules let Internet service providers freely block content, slow video-streaming services from rivals, and offer “fast lanes” to preferred partners, giving them an exponentially greater level of control of channels, cost of access, and speed of content across the Internet.
In the future (which could be as soon as next year), internet services could mimic cable-TV packages. Subscription packages could be limited to certain sites and services. Of course, for a few dollars more, subscribers will be able to add to their menu items. And, for another fistful of dollars, maybe have unlimited access to everything at the speed of… whatever you’re willing to pay for.
Net neutrality advocates adamantly maintain that directed offerings by access providers harm competition, especially smaller providers trying to offer competing access services, content and app providers who are easily disadvantaged. Most of all, they maintain that it will harm consumers, whose choices drift further from their control.
Three Companies to Buy Into Now
While companies like Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), Amazon.Com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) are against overturning net neutrality rules, they at least have the money to pay higher fees to get their content delivered at the fastest streaming rates they’d be charged.
Smaller companies won’t be able to pay up. Their content could potentially be delivered more slowly, or not at all.
Ultimately, consumers will bear the burden of increased costs, whether they’re pass-through charges from the likes of Netflix or direct charges for access to competitors’ content at a preferred speed.
Along with promising to overturn net neutrality, the FCC wants transparency under new rules, to assure consumers, websites, and app developers they won’t be arbitrarily disadvantaged.
That transparency calls for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to act as referee and enforcer.
If a provider blocks or slows certain websites, or gives preferential treatment to content it owns, that provider would have to inform consumers of its policy on an easily accessible website. And if service providers, content providers, and consumers aren’t satisfied with that and claim any kind of anti-competitive behavior, they’ll have to take it to the FTC.
Ready to do its part, on the heels of the FCC’s announced upcoming vote, the FTC’s acting chairman Maureen Ohlhausen stated, “The FTC stands ready to protect broadband subscribers from anticompetitive, unfair, or deceptive acts and practices just as we protect consumers in the rest of the Internet ecosystem.”
The bottom-line is, consumers are going to pay more for access, packages, and speed. No matter what the FTC says or does.
That might be okay if you know how to make money off the FCC pending changes to everyone’s access to the Internet, the content, and speed of delivery (especially for all you mobile junkies).
There are going to be companies, especially content manufacturers, whose stocks are going to dip on the prospect of increased costs to access what they offer at desirable speeds.
Those dips are going to be buying opportunities.
With the ability to package preferential (company owned) content at desirable speeds and reduced data charges, big broadband companies will be looking for acquisitions. The end of net neutrality will open up mergers and acquisitions floodgates, and knowing which companies are going to make it onto buyers’ lists can make you a lot of money.
I’ll be pointing out who’s in play as soon as the new rules are published.
In the meantime, buying the big Internet providers – AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile – is a no-brainer.
They’re going to be growing their offering menus and their revenue from pending deregulation.
Besides, what’s not to like owning a couple of giant revenue-rich communications utility companies that throw off juicy dividends?
Meanwhile, I’ll be showing Zenith Trading Circle members how they could accelerate their profits by trading on opportunities like these. In fact, the longer you wait to join, the more opportunities you’re missing out on.
Steve L from Georgetown, TX wrote in about his very first Zenith trade, where he made a fat 267%. Thank you, Steve, I love hearing from members like you.
For everyone else, you still have time to get my next trade recommendation when you join now.
You can trust that I will be following the developments in this story very closely.


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KCB in Talks With Facebook, Apple on Kenya Digital Payments
Lender sets up KCB Fintech subsidiary for digital business
KCB targets 20 million mobile bank customers by end-2017
KCB Group Ltd., Kenya’s biggest bank by assets, is in talks with companies including Facebook Inc., Apple Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. about collaborating on digital payments through its new financial-technology unit, Chief Executive Officer Joshua Oigara said.
The discussions, which are also being held with Alphabet Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., form part of the lender’s efforts to double the number of customers on its mobile-phone platform to 20 million by the end of 2017, Oigara said in an interview at his office in the capital, Nairobi, on Wednesday. The unit, known as KCB Fintech, will officially begin operations in June 2017, he said.
The subsidiary will “partner with different players, whether it is M-Pesa, Facebook, Google, Apple and that business will have a new digital-payments platform,” he said. M-Pesa is the mobile-phone payments system pioneered by Vodafone Plc unit Safaricom Ltd., which handled 5.29 trillion shillings ($52 billion) of transactions last year, equivalent to more than 80 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Banks in East Africa’s biggest economy are scrambling for market share in digital transactions with 25 million mobile-money subscribers spending 312 billion shillings ($3.1 billion) on goods and services in the three months through March, according to data compiled by the Communications Authority of Kenya. Lenders are seeking new sources of revenue after the government capped lending rates, pressuring margins.
KCB is doubling capacity on its mobile-phone systems so it can handle 600 transactions per second by next year, Oigara said. A surge in demand for loans caused the platform to collapse last week.
KCB is also in talks with Paypal Holdings Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and Twitter Inc., Chief Digital Officer Edward Ndichu, who will head KCB Fintech, said in an interview.
“This is the journey we are going through,” Ndichu said. “We need to benchmark with the needs of the customer.”
Shares in KCB Group have fallen 38 percent this year to 27 shillings by close of Thursday trading in Nairobi.


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Sony will use the launch of the PlayStation 4 later this year to make a number of significant changes to its PlayStation Plus subscription service.
MD of SCEE UK and Ireland Fergal Gara has revealed that PS4's auto updates feature will not require a PS Plus subscription to function.
Frequent and lengthy updates were a key criticism of the PS3, and while auto-updating was possible on the machine the feature was only activated when a user subscribed to the PS Plus service.
But auto updates will be free to all on PS4, Gara revealed to VideoGamer in a discussion over Sony's decision to move online multiplayer behind the PS Plus paywall.
"It is time to charge, but it is time to charge and still continue to deliver phenomenal value," said Gara of online multiplayer.
"A PlayStation Plus subscriber for PlayStation 4 comes away with a hell of a lot. First of all, the subscription applies across all three platforms [PS4, PS3 & PS Vita], so if you have the three platforms then you have an instant game collection on all three. So that's hugely powerful in its own right."
Gara went on, "If you choose not to subscribe we are still gating relatively little in many senses, so access to online catch-up TV and online movie services sit outside of the gate, for example. The social features of PS4 and PS4 games sit out of the subscription service. Things like auto-updates on PS4 sit outside of PlayStation Plus, so we're trying to be as balanced and as fair as we possibly can."
Sony announced during E3 that it will launch its Gaikai streaming service to play PS3 games on PS4 in 2014. Gara said the firm "hasn't decided yet" how this will be charged for. "Will that be part of PlayStation Plus? I genuinely don't know. Will that require some other, different charging mechanism? Perhaps. We just haven't sat down to answer that question yet," he said.
Sony has said the PS4 release date is set for "Christmas 2013" across Europe and the US. CVG understands the Japan launch could be pushed to 2014 if manufacturing count comes up short, though a final decision hasn't been made yet.


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December 22, 2023
SINGAPORE – Paris-based celebrity fashion designer Andrew Gn will be drawing the curtains on his namesake label after 28 years in the industry.
In an announcement posted to his Instagram page on Dec 20, the 59-year-old Singaporean veteran said he will be bidding “au revoir” to fashion after producing more than 80 collections and 10,000 pieces.
In his farewell note, he thanked all the women who have loved his work, among whom he can count Catherine, Princess of Wales; Queen Rania of Jordan; and American pop stars Lady Gaga and Beyonce.
“All this would not have been accomplished without the fantastic team behind me all along,” he added.
In May, Gn became the first Singaporean designer to be honoured with a retrospective at the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM).
On show were more than 160 pieces he donated to the museum to enter the national collection – among them the emerald dress worn by the Princess of Wales for a ceremony in London in 2023.
It marked the first time she had appeared in a garment designed by a Singaporean at a public event.
Speaking to Vogue Runway from his studio in the French capital, Gn said the upcoming Christmas holiday will be the first he can enjoy without fretting about the fashion calendar’s January or February showings.
In retirement, he will also be able to celebrate his 60th birthday and – for the first time since he arrived in Paris in the 1990s – spend Chinese New Year with his family.
“In that sense, this timing is a great blessing,” he said.
Still, he struck a teasing note in his farewell post, saying: “This is not an adieu, but an au revoir, the beginning of a new chapter of my life.”
Gn’s ACM retrospective, Fashioning Singapore And The World, will open in the United States in 2025, at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
Discussions are also under way to establish a foundation in Singapore to display his work and help new generations of local designers find their paths.
Gn is the youngest of six siblings and grew up in Hougang. His enchantment with fashion began in his childhood.
Speaking to The Straits Times in May, he recalled that his merchant father would bring home beautiful fabrics – shantung silk and batik – that his mother would take to a tailor to be transformed into qipao and suits.
After completing his national service, he left Singapore to study fashion at renowned design school Central Saint Martins in London.
With a loan from his father, he set up his very own fashion house in Paris in 1995.
By the late 1990s, his garments were displayed in the double windows of cult Parisian boutique Colette, where they appeared for three consecutive Paris fashion weeks, launching him onto red carpets and into starry closets.


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Apple iTV, SDK March 2013 Announcement Anticipated:
Apple may be announcing a new product next month. A March 2013 announcement may be related to the iTV or a new software developer’s kit. Apple may launch new product soon and it’s possible it could help the company breakout of its current doldrums. Apple has been losing market share due to its smaller sized phone and it may be releasing an iPhone 5s or a cheaper smartphone.
iTV excitement may have waned in recent months as no news about the product has been released that has caught much steam. When it comes to television, most people opt for a flat screen and cable TV but the internet is taking some share from traditional media. Netflix has created a new show called “House Of Cards” starring Kevin Spacey and content viewing patterns have changed significantly since Apple first introduced the iTV.
Introducing a new SDK for making compatible games with the iTV may not be worth having an event for the announcement. Rumors of a new iWatch hit the net last week so any announcement from Apple is possible as they deflect some bad press that has kept the company’s stock price at one-third from its high of $700.


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Bitcoin Cash Price Prediction: up to $842.545! - BCH/USD
The Growth of Bitcoin - The Bitcoin NewsCryptocurrencies has so many more use cases than just being a worldwide currency thats.
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Once you correlate the value of a bitcoin to the dollar, you create the opportunity for it to be seen as a way to profit monetarily to investors.
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Comparing Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Other. we also wanted to add a quick word on Bitcoin Cash.If you want to make money on bitcoin, the easiest way is to go to a local bitcoin dealer and open your wallet.


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The idea of capturing light rays instead of a flat image is an interesting concept. This will allow users to change things like focal range in post. Lytro have taken it a step further and developed Lytro Immerge – the world’s first light field solution for cinematic VR.
Lytro burst onto the scene three years ago with its first light-field camera. The company’s imaging technology has always been groundbreaking. They brought still cameras onto the market that allow you to capture a shot, then in post let you decide where to focus and how to adjust the depth-of-field. The usual cameraman’s term “fix it in post” can now be applied to things that were never before possible in still photography and now cinematography. However, Lytro’s first two cameras were far from good. Its recent Lytro Illum looked like a DSLR with a hefty pricetage of $1600, but could neither capture great image quality, nor could it shoot video, despite its innovative refocusing technology.
A Lytro camera that shot video was inevitable. Lytro has set its sights on capturing VR video, and the company is announcing a new end-to-end system that could radically change the possibilities for VR viewers and filmmakers alike.
The Lytro Immerge system has been in development for about a year and a half. It’s the first Lytro product intended for professional video production.
In an interview between Wired and Lytro CEO Jason Rosenthal, Rosenthal says the sensors and the system were designed completely from scratch. Its centrepiece is the Immerge camera, a five-ring globe that captures what Lytro is calling a “light-field volume.” Unlike existing VR camera rigs, which capture a static 360-degree image, the Immerge camera will let you move around within the scene.
“Imagine a camera staying stationary, but being able to move your head around and getting further and closer away from an object in a scene,” Rosenthal explains. “Having the reflection and the light rays adjusting accordingly. What the light field volume represents is, we’re densely capturing all the rays in a given geometric volume, and then we’ve built software that lets us play back those rays at very high frame rates and at high resolution. It gives you the perfect recreation of the actual world you’re capturing.”
That capability alone is a mind-boggling leap for VR filmmaking, and the Immerge announcement is timed well in preparation for the next generation of VR hardware. Positional-tracking headsets such as the Oculus Rift and Sony PlayStation VR are all slated for release next year. The Lytro’s video will be compatible with all those platforms.
Lytro intends Immerge to be an end-to-end workflow system. In order to save the amounts of high-speed, high-resolution data, Lytro developed their own server. Each holds about an hour of 360-degree light-field video. It is designed to work with production tools like Nuke, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, and Avid Media Composer. There will be plug-ins for those programs and other industry-standard software that support importing and working with Immerge video.
What is exciting about the future of this technology is the ability to refocus within a scene based on a headset’s eye-tracking, instantaneous 3D-modeling, and realistically blending CG content with live video.
“We’re capturing all the depth and the 3D geometry of the real world, so compositing computer-generated objects into that with the right depth and the right shading and shadows and lighting, that all becomes much easier than it’s ever been before,” Rosenthal explains. “Imagine a video game where instead of having the weird motion-captured, CG-rendered people, you can actually have photo-realistic people. That starts to become possible.”
The Lytro will be available in the second half of 2016 for a couple hundred thousand dollars. Obviously these are numbers that are out of reach for most professionals, however rental plans are being drafted, which will allow you to have it for a mere couple of thousand dollars a day.
For more information, visit Lytro’s website.
What do you think of this new VR capturing Technology? Would you like to try and use Lytro Immerge on your set? Let us know in the comments below.


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Quebec cranberry processor Atoka Cranberries is set to become an arm of the U.S.-based cranberry grower co-op Ocean Spray.
Massachussetts-based Ocean Spray on Friday announced it would buy the Atoka processing plant at Manseau, Que., about 70 km east of Trois-Rivieres, along with the Atoka brand from berry producer Canneberges Bieler.
Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close “in the coming weeks,” weren’t disclosed Friday.
Ocean Spray, which makes and markets cranberry juices, juice drinks and dried cranberries, also plans to buy Bieler’s freezer and receiving facilities “in the coming year,” and to make “additional capital investments in these facilities to further increase efficiency and improve yield.”
Bieler is to continue its cranberry-growing operations, Ocean Spray said, and will become a “farmer-owner” in the Ocean Spray co-operative.
Out of its 700-odd members in three countries, the co-op’s Canadian cranberry-growing members are based in Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. It recently set up a 125-acre co-operative-owned farm at Rogersville, N.B., about 40 km south of Miramichi.
The co-operative’s Canadian holdings also include receiving facilities in British Columbia, at Langley and Richmond.
The co-operative said the deal “will expand Ocean Spray’s manufacturing footprint in Quebec, the second-largest and fastest-growing cranberry farming region in the world.”
On its website, the co-op noted Quebec’s cranberry industry has seen “stunning” expansion, having become the world’s second-biggest cranberry growing region as of 2014, compared to just three growers on 264 acres in 1992.
According to Atoka, Quebec’s production in 2012 represented about 20 per cent of the world’s total cranberry output, behind Wisconsin at about 40 per cent that year.
“Ocean Spray’s brand strength and global marketing reach, coupled with Atoka’s unique product portfolio and location, will benefit all of our farmers and expand the reach of the overall Quebec cranberry industry,” co-op CEO Randy Papadellis said in a release.
The deal for Atoka, he noted, comes “exactly 60 years after Quebec growers first joined the Ocean Spray co-operative in 1958.”
Atoka began building its processing plant in 1988, four years after Bieler began growing cranberries in the Centre-du-Quebec region.
Since then, Atoka said on its website, its processing business expanded into marketing and packaging and its plant has undergone seven more expansion phases, today including five production lines, three freezer units and a laboratory, and employing about 130 people.
Atoka employees will become part of Ocean Spray’s manufacturing network, the co-op said. That network also includes manufacturing plants in Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Washington and at Lanco in southern Chile, plus beverage plants in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas and Nevada.
“The employees of Atoka and Ocean Spray share a similar culture of quality and customer focus, as well as a unique dedication to increasing demand for cranberries,” Bieler CEO Marc Bieler said in Ocean Spray’s release. — AGCanada.com Network


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Sharing gameplay and other memorable moments is an essential part of gaming nowadays. Players frequently post videos not only on YouTube, but also on Facebook and Twitter. Microsoft wants to improve the way this is handled on Xbox One.
A few months ago Playground Games, the developers behind the Forza Horizon franchise, announced that they were working on an open world game. The studio recently hired programmers from Grand Theft Auto V and the Metal Gear Solid series for help.
The campaign of the recent Star Wars Battlefront II gives a strong amount of insight into the waning years of the Galactic Civil War following the destruction of the second Death Star, but it also left us with several unknowns, too.
Studio Wildcard, the developers behind Ark: Survival Evolved, today announced that on December 12, 2017, the game's second expansion, called Aberration will launch on Xbox One, Steam, and PlayStation 4.
Where headsets are concerned, a bulky wire can make a big difference in comfort. The EasySMX Wireless Headset is an affordable gaming headset that can be used wirelessly for game audio with Xbox One and completely wirelessly with PlayStation.
A few weeks ago, Bungie officially announced Destiny 2's Curse of Osiris expansion. The studio revealed that the game would take players to Mercury but aside from the basics, no details were provided. Today's livestream answered many questions.
Star Wars Battlefront II recently generated a lot of controversy for its loot crates and microtransactions. The outcry among gamers caused the publisher to pull micropayments but the issue has since been taken by up by governments worldwide.
Mass Effect: Andromeda may not have been the expansive and polished game fans were hoping for but it's still a good experience. EA Access members are in for a treat because they now get access to the Deluxe Edition through their subscription.
Today, Warner Bros. Interactive released the Slaughter Tribe Nemesis Expansion for Middle-earth: Shadow of War. The expansion brings the gruesome and bloodthirsty Slaughter tribe to Mordor with their own unique weapons, fighting style and more.
As with previous entries in the Starwards Battlefront series, there's a massive variety of weapons, vehicles, and more available to players to help achieve victory in the field in Battlefront II. Here's the complete list of all of them.


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Switzerland-based cryptocurrency bank SEBA is now fully operational.
In a statement shared with The Block on Tuesday, SEBA Bank AG (formerly SEBA Crypto AG) said that Swiss clients, including corporates, asset managers and professional private investors, can now open an account with it. The bank has plans to onboard clients from selected foreign jurisdictions in December.
SEBA was set up in April 2018 and received a banking license from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) in August of this year. “We are proud to have founded a bank within 18 months, raised CHF 100 million [$100.5 million] in capital from investors and obtained a banking and securities dealer license from FINMA,” said SEBA CEO Guido Buhler.
He added that the bank’s customers should be able to take full advantage of digital assets “without having to sacrifice security.”
SEBA said secure custody of digital assets is its “critical” success factor and that customers can invest in both traditional and digital assets, store them, trade them and take out loans – via an integrated interface.
Wallets and cards
The bank is offering SEBAwallet app, e-banking, and SEBA card facilities, through which customers can manage five cryptocurrencies – bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), Stellar (XLM), litecoin (LTC) and ether classic (ETC), and convert them into traditional currencies and vice versa online, per the announcement.
SEBA cards, on the other hand, can be used at 42 million points of sale worldwide. “The SEBA Card represents an important step towards the mass introduction of cryptocurrencies,” said Buhler.
SEBA is also providing corporate accounts to Swiss blockchain companies and their employees, per the statement. “They will be able to have accounts and custody for fiat and digital assets and tokenize assets according to their needs.


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Black Owned Toronto opened their first retail store on Saturday full of products created by Black business owners in the GTA and people were absolutely loving it.
View this post on Instagram
The grand opening at Scarborough Town Centre featured an inaugural ribbon cutting, a DJ, free giveaways and many of the local Black business owners whose products now line the shelves of a store in a major shopping mall.
After the death of George Floyd, the page went viral, with many people searching for ways to support local Black-owned businesses themselves.
John then launched a website and online searchable directory, which gave Black small business owners the platform to share their products and services with consumers.
John has since taken things nationwide with the launch of Black Owned Canada.
“When 2020 started, one of my biggest goals was to support more Black-owned businesses. But it was surprisingly difficult to find and tell what businesses in the city are TRULY Black-owned. So, I created Black Owned Toronto, in hopes of discovering more Black-owned businesses,” reads a statement from John on the website.
Some of the online shop’s most popular items include haircare, skincare, spices and seasonings, clothing and art.
While the new store is no longer accepting applications for vendors, they encourage Black business owners to keep checking their website.
You can shop from local Black-owned businesses on Black Owned Toronto’s website or at the new store located in Scarborough Town Centre.


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Owners selling 'too early'
Technology firms told to focus more on sales and scale
Tech hubs create lots of firms but sales are key
Scottish technology firms have been advised to switch more of their focus from developing their products to achieving sales and scale.
They are spending excessive time trying to create the “perfect product” and many are selling their businesses too early.
These were the views of investor Dan Halliday from Foresight Group who was guest speaker at Johnston Carmichael’s first Meet The Tech Investor event.
Addressing the session, held in the firm’s Dundee office, Mr Halliday said Scotland is producing many exciting technology businesses, but investors wanted to see a revenue stream.
“The most attractive businesses for investment are typically in the B2B space, where they are less exposed to consumers’ disposable income,” he said.
“Software as a service models, which attract income through subscriptions, are especially appealing as investors like to see predictable revenue.


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Much of the rhetoric around established brands right now suggests that if you're being disrupted, you deserve to be. The mattress industry? Overpriced and predatory. Department stores? A parade of sameness lacking the services that differentiated them in the first place.
In beauty, though, even the old guard, so to speak, are innovating. Sephora and Ulta, once the disruptors themselves, are making moves to keep themselves top-of-mind as a cluster of direct-to-consumer (DTC) beauty brands crop up in the space. And both retailers have banked their strategies on partnerships with digitally native brands.
At Sephora, that means a series of in-store merchandising initiatives calling out digitally native or otherwise up-and-coming brands. There's a skin care trend wall that highlights new brands in that space, a planned rollout to 100 stores of a wall that focuses on hair products and Sephora's Next Big Thing, a dedicated space of the store to display new makeup brands.
The fixtures for Sephora's Next Big Thing launched in its Times Square store in June, but the retailer has plans to roll the section out nationwide in time for the holidays, Chief Merchandising Officer Artemis Patrick told Retail Dive.
"It's the first time we've had this sort of very dedicated, multi-branded space that is going into all stores," she said. "The biggest difference really is the scale, because it's not about just, like, 50 doors here or 100 doors here, it's really in every single store. It allows a destination and sort of a constant destination for our clients to know."
The battle for exclusive brands
It's a smart play to try and get much-hyped internet brands into stores — and one that Target has also picked up in the mass merchant space. The only problem? That's Ulta's strategy, too.
In the fourth quarter, Ulta reported that about 6% or 7% of merchandise is now exclusive, with plans for more on the horizon
"Our strategy to be the partner of choice for digitally-native brands like Morphe and Kylie cosmetics are paying off," CEO Mary Dillon said at the time, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. "Both brands drove very strong traffic in stores, suggesting our guests are motivated to make more trips to the store to try these products in person."
Sephora, too, is trying to nab exclusives, and Patrick said that most of the brands in Sephora's Next Big Thing are either exclusives or limited distribution, though she noted that the company wouldn't refuse to sell a promising brand just because it was being sold elsewhere.
"Exclusive and limited distribution brands and products have always been part of our strategy. We do believe that the client does come to Sephora to find the latest, hottest, newest trends," she said, adding that the company is focused on innovative products above all else. "If there's an amazing, innovative product from a brand that's not exclusive and our client is asking for it, we believe we're here to serve the client, and of course, we would offer that as well."
According to Patricia Hong, partner and head of beauty and luxury in A.T. Kearney's Consumer and Retail practice, the initiative could help Sephora "maintain a sense of newness in the store" and test consumer trends, but may not have as big of an impact on foot traffic.
"I don't see this as an immediate traffics builder," she said in emailed comments to Retail Dive. "It could help increase AOV (Average Order Value) as consumers go for additional items, because of the newness this brings and the fact that most of these brands are still small, hidden gems."
Sephora's prestige cosmetics focus could serve to differentiate it from Ulta as a potential brand partner for up-and-coming businesses in the space. But it also means that Sephora is losing out on direct-to-consumer brands in different areas of beauty.
Madison Reed, for example, a DTC hair color company, selected Ulta as its exclusive brand partner because of its focus on hair, and pulled the one product it sold at Sephora as a result.
"That's just not where someone would go to get their hair color," Madison Reed CEO and founder Amy Errett told Retail Dive in an interview earlier this year. "Ulta has a salon in every Ulta. So hair has been very much what the company has started with and has flourished."
With Sephora's Next Big Thing, at least, hair isn't the focus. Makeup is. And as the merchandise rotates, either as new product comes in or on a quarterly basis, Patrick and her team will have their eyes out looking for hits.
"There are going to be brands that fly off the shelves and grow their assortment, and I would say 'graduate' from that end cap and start selling in a bigger space or in some more linear space," she said. "So it's also a great way for us to test new brands."
The brands featured could be anything from an entirely new company to someone like Lululemon, which is well-known in the athletics space but has just started selling a self-care line through Sephora.
While some DTC brands have started to expand on their own rather than relying on retail partners, including Glossier, Patrick believes DTC brands and specialty beauty retailers are complimentary, as the larger brick-and-mortar locations give new brands access to potential customers.
The Sephora advantage
When asked about securing brand partnerships, Patrick said the retailer's beauty advisers are what differentiate it from competition. Sephora has long prided itself on high touch-and-feel stores, and it's the job of associates to educate clients about what products might (or might not) work for them, as well as how to use them effectively.
That includes Sephora's Next Big Thing, with the company "putting a lot of effort" into educating store associates on the new products and how best to use them. "It's in our DNA to educate and personalize the experience for our clients," Patrick said, and she thinks that potential brand partners recognize that as well.
"We do think of our business relationships as more than just business relationships," she said. "Our brands are like family to us. We sit in the kitchen with them, we partner on product type, on marketing, on education and content. We're in it for the long game. So that and again, the incredible amount of education that our beauty advisers get on product. The passion that you feel when you walk into a Sephora store — I think that's a huge advantage."
As with any retailer pitching itself as the place to find up-and-coming brands, Sephora has to stay on top of the trends its consumers care about. While not all-encompassing, some of the trends Patrick and her team are watching in the space include men's beauty, as well as gender-neutral product lines, and clean beauty — areas that beauty advisers should be able to talk to customers about, recommending products based on their preferences.
To that end, the Clean at Sephora seal was launched last year and has since been expanded to include more brands and more banned ingredients. According to Patrick, it's been wildly successful, as more customers look to understand what ingredients they're putting on their skin.
"It's not to say that if something is not classified as clean that it's bad. It's just a personal choice," she said. "We believe very strongly that we need to make it easier for her to navigate, should she choose to try on and purchase products that are made out of certain ingredients. I don't think it's actually a trend. I think it's the reality, and where we live today and in the future."
Being a clean beauty brand alone won't get you on Sephora's Next Big Thing, though. The retailer is also laser-focused on bringing on beauty brands that have something to say.
"It's all about the story — the story behind the brand, the founder or the founders," Patrick said. "That's the number one thing we love: to understand where the brand came from, their unique point of difference and what their innovation is in the product type. All those things are really, really, really critical, regardless of whatever the trend is."


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The 2020 Summer Olympics will start in Tokyo on July 24, 2020 and Canon & Nikon are planning to announce their new flagship DSLR cameras for the sports photography. And now it seems that Sony will join the sports game via their new flagship Sony a9 II mirrorless camera.
The latest rumor suggests the upcoming Sony a9 II mirrorless camera will be announced in September 2019 with the release date for the end of 2019, just ahead of the 2020 Summer Olympics. Hope we can see the Sony a9 II, Canon EOS-1D X Mark III, Nikon D6 announcements in the next several months.
In addition, Sony has developed at least three new full frame image sensors:
- IMX455 (60MP, 8K Video, Low Version of IMX551)
- IMX551 (60MP)
- IMX555 (102MP, 6K Video)
Like Sony a9 II on Facebook:


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Shoppers Heed Warnings of Shortages in Mad Opening Rush
Undated (AP) _ Retailers wallowing through the second year of a damaging slump will have at least one, brief shining moment to recall in 1988.
Christmas shoppers crowded stores around the country Friday in a post- Thanksgiving rush worthy of its traditional billing as the busiest day of the year for merchants.
Malls and downtowns were crowded early with people racing to snap up electronic gear, Nintendo video games, cashmere sweaters, customized luggage, Barbie dolls and kitchen appliances.
Part of the spurt was credited to post-election relief among consumers, but the main motivation came from the retailers themselves, who tightened inventories and cooked up promotions in an effort to reverse their sagging fortunes.
The strategy led to warnings of shortages and to giveaways no self- respecting shopper could resist.
″This is serious. I set my alarm for the first time in my life to go shopping,″ said Lynn Loull, who arrived at Emporium-Capwell in San Francisco at 8:40 a.m. ″It’s going well. I’ve gotten four people done in an hour-and-a- half.″
The 7 a.m. shoppers at a K mart in suburban New Orleans included Charlene Jones and her sons Nathaniel, 7, and Leonard, 5.
″I woke up the boys and said ’Let’s go,‴ she said.
Store managers around the country found customers lined up to greet them when they opened the doors.
″There’s stroller gridlock in places,″ said Susan Inskeep, 56, who had brought her grandson to the Galleria Glendale in suburban Los Angeles.
In Boise, Idaho, where last month’s opening of Boise Towne Square ended residents’ 20-year-long wait for a modern shopping mall, crowds swelled to 60,000, double the average daily traffic.
In Lexington, Ky., crowds were ″probably the best I’ve seen in my 30 years with McAlpins,″ said Scott Overley of the regional department store chain. ″It’s just a blowout on everything.″
While most retailers and industry analysts had predicted a modest 5 percent improvement in sales over last year, activity began picking up after the elections earlier this month.
Whether it was an expression of confidence in President-elect Bush or just plain relief at having put politics to rest, spending increased noticeably even before Thanksgiving.
″People have loosened up more,″ said Paul Lantz, floor manager at Toys ‘R’ Us in Raleigh, N.C. ″They are feeling a little more relaxed at this time.″
They were anxious about the availability of popular gifts, however.
Melanie Bergeron of Bourg, La., traveled 90 minutes to a Toys R Us looking for a toy grocery-store checkout scanner. She said she hadn’t known such a toy existed until her daughter asked for it, and it wasn’t in the stores in Houma, the city nearest her home.
Retailers said they were well stocked for the surge, but they also agreed close inventory control might stave off the disastrous markdowns they were forced to make last Christmas.
″Our inventories are better fine-tuned than last year, which should result in less of a panic-sale environment,″ said Gerald Gura, president and chief executive officer of Cherry, Webb & Touraine, a chain of retail fashion stores based in South Attleboro, Mass.
Stores also plied customers with inventive promotional gimmicks - like early-bird sales, giveaways and visits from fairy-tale and cartoon characters.
In Florida, Maison Blanche stores advertised ″a CrackerJack of a sale″ and gave away 4,500 boxes of CrackerJacks, some with diamond rings or gift certificates inside.
In Green Bay, Wis., more than a thousand people lined up before sunrise for a 7 a.m. coupon giveaway at the H.C. Prange store.
Elsewhere, Disney characters decorated the corridors of the Cinderella City shopping mall in Englewood, Colo.; a mall in Jersey City, N.J., beamed in the cartoon space family the Jetsons; and Santa Claus showed up almost everywhere.
The lure of Santa may have inflated the size of the crowds, according to some skeptics. At Macy’s in Manhattan, one of the nation’s largest shrines of the season, the toy department and Santa Land were packed while traffic in the rest of the store appeared light.
″Today we’re just looking around and taking the kid to see Santa Claus,″ said Louise Hickey, who was browsing through the Colonie Center shopping mall in Albany, N.Y., with her husband and grandson. ″We’ll do the heavy shopping later.″
Layton Widner, manager of Wal-Mart in Decatur, Ala., said buying was heading in a practical direction.
″People are buying the basics,″ he said. ″There are no hot items in toys like the Cabbage Patch doll of previous years.″


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Apple has announced its M3 chips family boasting faster cores alongside more memory, all while being energy efficient.
Housing 25, 37, and 92 billion transistors, respectively, the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips are built using the 3nm process, allowing Apple to pack more cores all while keeping high power efficiency.
Apple talks about 2.5 times faster GPU rendering in addition to big advancements in GPU performance, thanks to the so-called Dynamic Caching which uses real-time hardware memory allocation to improve GPU utilisation – especially handy for most demanding tasks and games. Moreover, the new GPU features AV1 decode plus hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading.
The M3 can be configured with up to eight CPU cores, 10 GPU cores, and 24GB of unified memory, while the M3 Pro takes things a bit further to 12 CPU cores (6-P + 6-E), 18 GPU cores, and 36GB of memory. But this is nothing compared to the M3 Max’s massive 16 CPU cores (12-P + 4-E), 40 GPU cores, and 128GB of memory.
For reference, the M2 Max topped at 96GB of RAM accompanied by fewer cores built on a 5nm node.
Apple claims that the new M3 Pro chip has a 20 per cent faster CPU and 40 per cent better GPU than the M1 Pro, with the M3 Max announced as, respectively, 80 per cent and 50 per cent faster than an M1 Max. Against last year’s M2 Max, the new M3 Max still holds its ground with a claimed 50 per cent CPU and 20 per cent GPU uplift.
Keep in mind that a portion of these performance gains are probably resulting from the increased core counts. Not a bad thing by itself, just good to know.
These chips will be found on the new 14in MacBook Pro machines starting at £1,699 and 16in MacBook Pro starting at £2,599, respectively packing 8 CPU cores, 10 GPU cores, 8GB of memory, plus 512GB of SSD storage, and 12-CPU cores, 18 GPU cores, 18GB of memory, plus 512GB of SSD storage.
However, if you have deep pockets, you can go as high as £7,299 for a fully-decked-out MacBook Pro boasting 16 CPU cores, 40 GPU cores, 128GB of memory, and 8TB of storage. Note that at least for now, the 16in models don’t offer a basic M3 version.
MacBook Pro models with the M3 and M3 Pro chips are launching next week, with M3 Max machines scheduled for later in November.
This leap isn’t as large as from M1 to M2, by the looks of it, and with Apple comparing M3 to M1 more often than not, the laws of diminishing returns rears its head. Apple usually gives the best CPUs a run for their money despite targeting different audiences, so it’ll be interesting to see how they stack up once benchmarks land.


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Swappable batteries could accelerate UK EV adoption, report argues
21 July 2022
Author: Sean Keywood
Switching EV adoption in the UK to a battery-as-a-service (BAAS) model could be a big boost to the market, according to a new report.
It is argued that switching to the model, which enables EV owners to swap out depleted batteries for fully charged ones at a service station via a subscription service, could reduce the upfront cost of EVs by 30%, and help with progress towards the UK Government's target of stopping new petrol and diesel car sales by 2030.
The report, entitled 'Battery-as-a-service: An unexplored opportunity?', has been produced by research company Cornwall Insight and law firm Shoosmiths, and questions why the model, which is currently being used at scale in China, has yet to take off in the UK, amid continuing questions about the adequacy of charging infrastructure provision.
As well as being replaceable, BAAS batteries can still also be charged using regular EV chargers, which the report argues allows them to complement infrastructure that has already been installed.
As well as the potential 30% price reduction for EVs, the report also argues that the battery subscription approach provides greater flexibility for buyers.
BAAS is also said to address range anxiety, since a depleted battery can be swapped for a fully-charged one in a matter of minutes, and provide a solution to charging in inner-city areas, where residents are often unable to charge at home.
The report also argues that BAAS offers flexibility to the electricity network, by allowing unutilised batteries to be discharged onto the grid at swap stations during peak hours, and provides battery recycling and reuse opportunities, such as using second life swappable batteries in an onsite storage facility at swap stations.
However, the report also highlights issues BAAS faces, such as a lack of battery standardisation across vehicle manufacturers, meaning swap stations are not currently scalable, with each station only able to service a specific make or model of car.
Other hurdles are said to include shortages of the raw materials needed to manufacture batteries, and uncertainty over battery ownership, especially when the EV is re-sold. Major investment is also said to be needed to develop and service the technology and infrastructure the model requires.
From a business adoption point of view, the report also notes that there could be concerns about the environmental footprint of battery swapping, with a surplus number of batteries needing to be held to meet demand, and batteries being under-utilised.
The report also states that more favourable engagement from the government would be required, with government intervention likely to be needed to help deliver the significant investment that would allow BAAS to be introduced.
Discussing deployment of BAAS, the report notes that most entrants into the market globally have focused on fleets, in particular taxi fleets. It says this is because such fleets often have a limited range or service patch in which they travel, so battery swap locations do not need to be very widely distributed, and the frequency of required battery swaps is also more predictable, while vehicle downtime is reduced compared with conventional charging.
The report argues that due to these advantages, a key way into the UK for BAAS could be via fleet charging, while it could also be a workable solution for car rental firms, which have a large density of vehicles in a very close location and a quick turnaround time. However, it was also noted that for BAAS to be of significant benefit to the leasing sector it would have to significantly reduce the cost of the vehicles.
Cornwall Insight lead research analyst Dr Matthew Chadwick said: "The UK faces many hurdles in its strive to increase the number of EVs, with many consumers put off by the high prices and lack of charging infrastructure.
"A switch to the BAAS model, while still at the beginning stages of development, has the potential to encourage EV uptake as costs, rather than being all upfront, are spread more evenly through a subscription service. The system of service stations would also work to cull range anxiety - often cited as a reason not to switch away from petrol and diesel cars.
"Moving to the battery swap model would not be an easy transition and any success would rely on EV manufacturers co-operating in the standardisation of their car batteries, as well as working through a number of other concerns. However, the government's target to put an end to the sale of all new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 is very ambitious, and it is clear that sticking to a purely charging EV model, with the need to roll out extensive charging infrastructure, will likely lead to the target being missed.
"The BAAS model has the potential to be the out of the box thinking needed to increase EV sales, take the pressure off the infrastructure programme, and help the government deliver on its promise to lower emissions and reach net zero."
Shoosmiths partner and head of mobility Jonathan Smart said: "By 2030, up to 14 million EV's could be on the road in the UK. A minimum of 300,000 public chargepoints will be needed to support those vehicles, however, the ratio of EV chargepoints to plug-in cars is deteriorating - down 31 per cent in 2020 alone.
"Any shortfall in charging infrastructure could hamper the roll out of EVs and journey towards net zero.
"The BAAS model is not in opposition to traditional charging infrastructure. Rather, as this report shows, it can complement the existing system by helping meet demand in specific areas, such as city centres where access to plug in charging can be limited.
"The growth of BAAS in the UK is reliant on creating a supportive regulatory environment in which companies across the mobility sector can collaborate. We believe this report can spark the conversation needed to drive change, while encouraging increased research and development into BAAS and the role it could play as part of the UK's EV infrastructure."


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MUMBAI, August 6, 2013 (AFP) – India’s rupee plunged to a fresh record low against the dollar Tuesday over concerns that foreign capital could flow back to the United States as the American economy picks up. The rupee, Asia’s worst-performing major currency this year, hit 61.
buy grifulvin online buy grifulvin online no prescription
35 against the greenback in morning trade, below its previous low of 61.21 on July 8.
Demand for the dollar has increased amid expectations of a sooner-than-expected scaling back of US stimulus as the American economy recovers, analysts said.
Slackening domestic growth, weak exports, rising foreign fund outflows and India’s high current account deficit have battered the rupee.
Market sentiment has also weakened in the absence of fresh positive news from India’s government, particularly the “quasi-sovereign” bond issue which it had promised last week, dealers said. The Reserve Bank of India kept interest rates on hold last week, prioritising rupee stability over economic growth, but said it was unsure when its recent liquidity-tightening measures would rolled back.
Last month the central bank announced a range of measures to prop up the rupee, including raising short-term interest rates and lowering the amount a bank c