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Gogoro recently reported a healthy increase in electric scooter sales last month, thanks to the rollout of its VIVA MIX series and the renewal of government subsidies.
The company sold 5,945 units, up from 1,107 in February.
That enabled Gogoro to secure an 8.4% share of Taiwan's overall scooter market, up from 2.6% a month earlier.
During the first three months of this year, accumulated sales reached 8,119 units, the company said.
Gogoro continued to dominate the local electric scooter market, seizing a 79.9% market share in the first quarter.
Together with electric scooters made by Yamaha Motor, Aeon Motor, Motive Power Industry, Suzuki Motor Corp and Kwang Yang Motor, overall electric scooter sales in Taiwan plunged 48.27% to 10,159 units last quarter from 19,637 units a year earlier, industry data showed.
Electric scooters accounted for about 6.1% of the nation's scooter sales last quarter.
Scooter sales in Taiwan contracted 5.29% to 70,550 units last month from 74,493 units a year earlier, but last month's figure grew 63% from February's 43,300 units.
In the first quarter, scooter sales shrank 10.88% to 166,317 units from 186,617 units a year earlier, data showed.
In the first quarter, Kwang Yang, the nation's biggest scooter maker, saw its sales drop 8.71% to 55,194 units, or a market share of 33.2%.
Sanyang Motor was second with 45,447 units sold, a decline of 11.69% from a year earlier, or a market share of 27.3%.
Yamaha ranked third with sales of 43,569 units, up 2.38% annually. The company was the only scooter maker among the top three that increased sales last quarter.


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Global agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) announced record fourth quarter results and said robust soyabean crushing margins and buoyant global demand for crops would help the company continue to deliver strong results this year, Reuters reported.
The solid quarterly earnings highlighted how global agribusiness companies held up operations despite rising energy costs and supply chain disruptions such as lower Black Sea grain exports following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the 26 January report said.
ADM announced a substantial year-on-year increase in operating profit in its core Ag Services and Oilseeds unit in the quarter ended 31 December, which more than offset lower earnings from ethanol operations and in its high-margin Nutrition segment, Reuters wrote.
“As we look forward to 2023, we expect another very strong year,” ADM chief executive Juan Luciano was quoted as saying.
“We still see tightness in supply and demand balances in key products and regions,” he added, citing reduced Ukrainian grain supplies and smaller harvests in drought-hit Argentina.
Adjusted operating profit in Ag Services and Oilseeds increased due to strong South American crop exports and good margins offsetting reduced US exports and as quarterly oilseed crushing profits more than doubled, the report said.
Low water levels on the Mississippi River at the end of last year restricted barge shipments of newly-harvested crops to US Gulf Coast terminals during the peak post-harvest export season, Reuters wrote.
ADM’s adjusted net fourth-quarter earnings increased to US$1.069bn, or US$1.93/share, from US$850M, or US$1.50/share the previous year.

domain: news


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Dr. Martin Cooper invented the first portable cell phone in April 1973.
The first mobile phone handset weighed about 2.2 pounds.
While at Motorola in the 1970s, Cooper conceived the first handheld mobile
phone (distinct from the car phone) in 1973 and led the team that developed it
Who invented the cell phone is explained in this article from HowStuffWorks. Find
out who invented the cell phone.
www.ask.com/youtube?q=Inventor of the Cell Phone&v=C6gNeKjC9Cc
Jun 24, 2015 ... Motherboard spends a day with Martin Cooper, the father of the first ever portable
, handheld cell phone. If I were the brains behind a ...
The 2" by 3" cell phone
will be manufactured by Altschul's Cliffside Park, New Jersey company, Dieceland Technologies. "An engineer's mentality is to make something last, to make it durable. The cereal comes in the shape of a monster and dissolves into mush with milk. More »
Dr Martin Cooper, a former general manager for the systems division at Motorola,
is considered the inventor of the first portable handset and the first person to ...
4 days ago ... Marty Cooper, inventor of the cell phone, in Seattle this week. (GeekWire Photo,
Jacob Demmitt) It been more than 40 years since Marty Cooper ...
Apr 3, 2013 ... The cell phone was the culmination of a good, old-fashioned race to invention,
much like the one that led to the telephone itself. And it was ...
Invention. The mobile phone may be seen as a new technology in our day, but
the idea was actually first conceived in the year 1908. This statement is only true
Jul 9, 2010 ... Martin Cooper talks on the "DynaTAC," the first commercial cell phone, which hit
the market in 1983. STORY HIGHLIGHTS. In 1973, Martin ...


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BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 25. Iran's non-oil exports to Tajikistan increased by 2.7 times in value and 2.6 times in volume, during the first month of the current Iranian year (March 21 through April 20, 2023), compared to the same month last Iranian year, Trend reports via the statistics of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA).
Within the 1st month, Iran exported 19,800 tons of non-oil products worth $13.4 million to Tajikistan.
Meanwhile, Iran's export of non-oil products to Tajikistan stood at 7,470 tons worth $4.93 million in the first month of last Iranian year (March 21 through April 20, 2022).
Iran mainly exported petrochemical products, steel products, agricultural and food products and, etc. to Tajikistan in the first month.
In total, Iran exported about 279,000 tons of non-oil products worth approximately $79.6 million to Tajikistan in the last Iranian year (March 21, 2022 through March 20, 2023), which is an increase of 86.2 percent in value and 87.6 percent in volume compared to the preceding year (March 21, 2021 through March 20, 2022).
Overall, Iran exported about 10.5 million tons of non-oil products worth approximately $3.65 billion for the first month of the current Iranian year (March 21 through April 20, 2023).
This is a decrease of 12.9 percent in value, while an increase of 17.7 percent in volume compared to the same month in the last year.
Follow the author on Twitter:@BaghishovElnur


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Global private equity firm KKR & Co. is considering selling mining services and logistics business Bis Industries, two people familiar with the matter said.
A trade sale of Bis could be expected to fetch up to 1.8 billion Australian dollars (US$1.8 billion), one of the people said. The private equity firm is also considering an initial public offering, or IPO, of the business, however the Australian market has not been hospitable to such deals lately with only US$227 million raised in the year-to-date, according to Dealogic.
Bis Industries provides transportation services in the coal, iron ore and steel industries, among others. Its clients include Fortescue Metals Group, which on Friday lodged a challenge in Australia’s High Court against the federal government’s new Mineral Resource Rent Tax.
Australia’s resources industry has been an engine of economic growth in recent years but with the global economy slowing, commodity prices have been declining, casting doubt on the future of new projects. Iron ore demand has remained solid, with companies like Rio Tinto recently approving the spend of an additional US4.2 billion; however thermal coal prices have fallen more than 20% this year.
Bis Industries was created in 2006 after KKR bought Brambles Industrial Services and Cleanaway Australia from Brambles for A$1.83 billion. KKR later sold waste and recycling business Cleanaway Australia to its larger rival Transpacific Industries for A$1.25 billion.
KKR could also choose to refinance Bis Industries’ A$905 million of debt which expires in the first half of 2013 and continue owning the business, one of the people said.
If KKR decides to list Bis Industries on the Australian Securities Exchange, it will likely retain a stake following the initial public offerings of private-equity backed retailer Myer Holdings and quick service restaurant operator Collins Foods. Neither have traded above their issue prices of A$4.10 a share and A$2.50 a share respectively.
UBS is handling the sale process for KKR, the people said.
A spokeswoman from UBS wasn’t immediately available to comment.


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The world could be your oyster: How to capitalise on opportunities post-Brexit regardless of marketing budgets
As 2020 unfolded, the spotlight quickly shifted from Brexit to coronavirus. But with lockdowns beginning to ease and business disruption, thankfully, decreasing, it is time for British SMEs to once again focus on Brexit – and the potential it could hold for expansion beyond the bloc. As budget constraints remain a harsh reality, British businesses will need to be savvy with their spending to maximise marketing efforts and ensure post-Brexit growth is a possibility — despite reduced budgets. Simon Woolley, PR Account Manager, IBA International, explains.
In the current environment, financial resources are already limited, and bosses are more hesitant than ever about making adventurous expansion plans for their business. However, now could be the perfect time for B2B organisations to grow outside of the EU. The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated that remote working can be a successful approach to doing business – location is no longer a limiting factor. With organisations the world over wanting to restock their sales pipeline, British SMEs need to apply the post-pandemic mindset to the post-Brexit business expansion. Organisations must use the lessons they have learned during the coronavirus pandemic to enable growth into new markets and geographies beyond the limits of Europe.
The pandemic has highlighted the need for innovation within businesses – and this applies to marketing strategies as well. As budgets are squeezed in the wake of the virus, organisations need to look beyond the age-old structure of PR and marketing that revolves around large retainer fees and look to a leaner approach to communications. With a hub strategy, B2B organisations can control their global marketing efforts from a single location and scale into new geographies and industries as they choose – keeping costs down and company messaging consistent.
Time is ripe for British businesses
Small and medium sized-enterprises, or SMEs – are often nicknamed the ‘backbone of the British economy’ because they account for 99 percent of all UK private sector firms. The sector continues to fuel innovation, job creation and economic growth. In 2019 alone, 200,000 new SMEs entered the market and one only has to look at the London Stock Exchange Group’s annual ‘1,000 Companies to Inspire Britain’ list to find shining examples of world-class expertise and grit. As the potential of post-Brexit prosperity begins to take shape, SMEs have no time to waste.
Look beyond the bloc
These businesses are fully aware of the opportunities available to them on the wider global stage – especially across the Atlantic. A recent survey by the Federation of Small Businesses found that the US is considered as the most important individual country market for small firm exports over the next three years, with over 30,000 SMEs already involved in export activities. In fact, SMEs that focus on exporting to markets outside the EU grow faster than those exporting to the bloc – the 2019 YouGov research found businesses that drew more than a quarter of their revenue from non-EU exports reported annual growth of 13 percent.
Rethinking traditional marketing models in the post-pandemic era
A recent report from the British Business Bank shows a third of SMEs have the desire to grow, but feel a lack of available funding is curbing their ambitions. The single biggest force holding these businesses back will be their expectation that in order to gain brand awareness they must employ PR agencies or have a marketing team on the ground in every new geography they want to expand to, creating an organisational nightmare. With multiple offices working in silos, approvals processes are lengthy, messaging is diluted, and timely press opportunities are often missed. Location-based PR is big business for ‘old school’, inflexible agencies that boast smart offices in high-rise buildings and equally sky-high fees – with a three-month launch campaign costing anywhere between €6,000 and €11,000 per month.
A hub delivers compelling thought leadership, social media and influencer programmes to put your brand front and centre in new industries and geographies – and win new business. Geography-specific content should be localised centrally, translations managed through an agency or designated in-house staff member and all communication should be routed via a single point of contact, providing accountability and streamlined, frequent, metrics-based reporting.
One team – multiple geographies
An asset library will offer boundless possibilities to create media touchpoints. With a content hub, created internally or by an agency partner, one team can create, store content and re-purpose it from existing assets – localising with specific insights depending on the geography it is intended for. This should then be pitched and placed in media targets in specified geographies – with further reworking where required to guarantee multiple placements for each piece of content. Prospects will find their way to your subject matter experts and website, no matter where they are in the world.
Targeted press pitching – to the journalists that matter
The press release is a hugely powerful tool for establishing presence and building credibility in a new market or geography. Many organisations will spend endless cycles on getting it right, only to pass the release on to newswire services that plaster it on websites that prospects may have not even heard of – let alone read! This ‘spray and pray’ approach is not only ineffective but also unnecessarily expensive. Press releases should go straight into the inboxes of the most influential target journalists in a certain industry or geography to ensure it is read by the right people at the right time – and for a fair price.
Golden opportunity for British SMEs
As British SMEs emerge from an extremely difficult period, expansion might not be top of mind. But those businesses that have successfully weathered the storm of widespread business disruption will be well primed to grow in a post-Brexit market environment. With trade agreements underway with leading economies across the globe, the world is open for businesses following Brexit, and British SMEs should take advantage.
But the financial implications of the pandemic continue to take shape, so B2B organisations will need to keep a close eye on budgets. Large fee agencies that adhere to traditional time-based models of marketing and PR will soon damage expansion plans. Either in-house or through a results-driven agency, organisations need to maximise their marketing spend and have the flexibility to scale their business – and marketing efforts – into new markets and geographies when they wish. Those businesses that re-think their marketing strategy in the post pandemic age will be able to grow post-Brexit, while keeping budgets under control.
B2B Marketing virtual ABM Conference 2020
Taking place over two full days, if you really want to master your account-based marketing this is the only place to be. And for 2020 only, we also have a limited session Free ticket.


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Cadence Design Systems, Inc has welcomed Kudan and Visionary.ai to the Tensilica software partner ecosystem, acquiring industry-leading SLAM and AI ISP solutions to Cadence Tensilica Vision DSPs and AI platforms. The wide Tensilica Vision and AI software ecosystem includes over 50 partners creating solutions for these platforms, covering automotive, IoT, smartphone apps, software services, and many other segments.
"To best address our customers' design challenges, it's important to approach solutions holistically. From a hardware standpoint, ongoing innovations in Tensilica IP and architecture are critical for continued momentum with leading smartphone manufacturers and providers of IoT systems and next-generation connected vehicles," said Amol Borkar, director of product management, marketing and business development for Tensilica Vision and AI DSPs at Cadence. "A robust software ecosystem is also essential, and partnering with industry leaders like Kudan and Visionary.ai helps us bring cutting-edge SLAM and AI ISP solutions to run efficiently on Tensilica IP-based devices with the best power-performance envelope yet."
Kudan is a visual odometry and an early implementer of SLAM algorithms. SLAM is a technique many camera or sensor-based systems employ to determine one's position and orientation in an environment with high precision. While rather complex, SLAM is executed in many household products, including robot vacuum cleaners and AR/VR devices, and in more complicated systems, such as self-driving vehicles and self-navigating drones. The company's proprietary SLAM implementation on the Tensilica Vision Q7 DSP delivered a 10X performance improvement for the front-end feature extraction stages, offering nearly 15% speedup of the overall SLAM pipeline compared to CPU-based implementations.
"We're very excited about our partnership with Cadence and the opportunity to work with the Tensilica platform to accelerate Kudan's SLAM pipeline," said Juan Wee, CEO at Kudan USA. "Cadence's Tensilica Vision DSPs provide specialised instructions that optimise various stages of the SLAM algorithm, delivering significant gains with power savings to the end customer. We look forward to improving the accessibility and adoption of our SLAM solution together."
In the majority of systems with an image or video functionality, the set of ISP functions is well established and commonly provided as a hardware block, providing high-performance throughput but no flexibility or adaptability to current conditions. Visionary.ai's novel approach utilises AI to substitute conventional 'hardwired' ISP functions, allowing high-quality videos to be created in real-time, even in the most difficult lighting conditions. Its efficient AI-ISP will enable customers to implement a camera pipeline with resolutions greater than full HD while operating at over 30fps on the Tensilica NNA110 accelerator.
"At Visionary.ai, we have developed a method of using AI to dramatically improve image quality in real-time, particularly in the most challenging lighting conditions," said Oren Debbi, CEO of Visionary.ai. "For this technology to reach its true potential, there is a need for fast and efficient neural network computations. Joining Cadence's Tensilica ecosystem will help ensure that our customers have a very competitive solution that runs on some of the most efficient vision and AI platforms out of the box."


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Electric vehicles have certainly been a long time in rising to prominence. However, it looks like this is the year when they could finally hit the big time.
As the mileage range for mains charged vehicles increases and the charging infrastructure improves, an EV becomes a more viable alternative. Choice has been slow to grow so far, but is set to grow in 2020 as many new models start to arrive.
Full electric vehicles continue to be subsidised by the Government, courtesy of a £3000 grant coming off the ticket price. In additional to this, there are a growing number of models which also come with an attractive AF saving.
There are many more, new EV’s set to arrive onto the market in the next 12-months – DS 3, Honda e, Skoda Enyaq IV, Volvo XC40, Volkswagen ID3, Audi Q4 e-Tron, BMX iX3, Peugeot e-2008 and FIAT 500.


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TAPSTAK is intent on transforming the way we interact with the world around us, having created one smartphone App that can interact with everything.
TAPSTAK co-founders Michelle Donovan and Tony Donovan approached Nimbus with an idea for automating SMS based interactions with radio and TV shows. A beta platform called ‘Voxtake’ was developed, however, it was soon realised that the possibilities went far beyond the initial use-case. With the help of Nimbus Michelle and Tony acquired a patent and changed the name to TAPSTAK to reflect the more universal appeal.
TAPSTAK will remove friction, confusion and hesitation from real-world interactions, such as entering competitions, paying for parking, reporting faults and opening high-security locks – in fact, anything that can be done by pressing a button on a smartphone – by allowing people use to TAPSTAK for every interaction.
Talking to Irish Tech News, Michelle discusses the benefits of TAPSTAK not just for individual users, but businesses too. “Developing and deploying mobile Apps can be costly and time-consuming – particularly for small and medium companies. TAPSTAK now removes the need to get an app onto every smartphone and allows them to instead concentrate on building smart systems to receive and react to information sent from TAPSTAK. TAPSTAK opens up huge new opportunities for businesses to add direct mobile interaction to their digital toolbox as well as allowing data analysis systems developers and hardware manufacturers to bring new products to market quicker and more cost effectively”.
Read about TAPSTAK’s success story in Irish Tech News.


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News & Analysis
The latest news across the UK horticulture industry including garden retail, plant production, edibles production, landscaping, parks, sports turf and arboriculture.
The British Tomato Growers Association (TGA) conference heard a range of perspectives on what changes lie in store for the sector and how to anticipate them.
Next year is Fleuroselect year of the chilli pepper and Thompson & Morgan and Mr Fothergill's have ranges around the hot vegetable, with a new way of promoting sales.
A revived marketing campaign and the weak pound mean UK poinsettia growers are looking forward to Christmas.
Horticulture is at the forefront of a major change in the way we train people for work, after its various sectors joined together to become one of the first industries to develop Trailblazer Apprenticeship standards.
As the British apple season begins, English Apples & Pears (EAP) is warning that growers will feel the effects of both a late frost in spring and also constrained labour supply.
After a lull in new builds, 2018 could see a slight resurgence in garden centres being erected.
The Wandle Valley Regional Park Trust in south London has secured a near £95,000 Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to help its development.
Tesco has widened its specifications to ensure that UK apples hit by "frost ring" will still go on sale.
A European Commission position paper on intellectual property rights sounds like what the UK wants but the two-year transition period to leave and general uncertainty means nothing is decided.
Wyevale Garden Centres' newly issued accounts show the firm recorded revenues at the year end 25 December 2016 of £325m (£311m in 2015) and a loss of £122m - the biggest ever for a garden centre group.
Gardening Team Leader
Garden Transformation North London
Head Horticulturist Required
Ginkgo Landscape Contractors Ltd London (Central), London (Greater)
Garden Centre Manager’s required for the west of Ireland
Horkans Garden centre West of Ireland
Contracts Manager – Runcorn
Lowther Forestry Group Ltd Penrith, Cumbria
Head of Gardening
Cadogan Estates London (Central), London (Greater)
- Horticulture House, Didcot, OX11 0RN
- NIAB Park Farm Cambridgeshire
- If there are any agenda items you wish members to consider, please forward them to the e-mail address below, to be received by 28th June 2017.
|Horticulture Week Custodian Awards 2017 - the winners!|
Find out more about the outstanding parks, gardens and arboricultural projects and teams that became our Custodian Award 2017 winners.
Accurate figures are notoriously difficult to get at, but without doubt the UK imports a great deal of its ornamental plant requirement.
I found myself recently thumbing an old copy of George Orwell's 1984. Flicking through, much of what is unfolding today chimes with my memory of the book.
Continuous food supplies are cornerstones of social well-being. Even minor blips like last winter's disruption of fresh produce supplies from Iberia become "media disasters".


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Apple has filed a motion in hopes of stopping the court appointed monitor in its ebook antitrust case. Michael Bromwich was appointed by Federal Judge Denise Cote to help ensure Apple doesn't engage in negotiations that could run afoul of antitrust laws, although the iPhone and iPad maker thinks he has overstepped his bounds and has conducted an "overzealous romp through Apple's executive suite."
Apple to court: Ix-nay Judge Cote's monitor
Mr. Bromwich was tasked with monitoring Apple and ensuring the company puts procedures in place to avoid engaging in antitrust activities. Apple, along with five of the big book publishers, had been accused of colluding to artificially raise the price of books. The publishers all settled out of court to avoid hefty legal expenses and the threat of steep fines. Apple, however, pushed forward alone with the assertion that it had done nothing wrong.
In the end, Judge Cote ruled that Apple did, in fact, conspire with book publishers and ordered Mr. Bromwich in to serve as a court appointed monitor. Mr. Bromwich jumped in with both feet and promptly demanded one-on-one interviews with Apple's top executive staff and board members regardless of whether or not they were involved in ebook price negotiations, then handed over a US$138,432 bill for two weeks worth of work.
Apple wrote to the court in an earlier complaint, "Mr. Bromwich appears to be simply taking advantage of the fact that there is no competition here or, in his view, any ability on the part of Apple, the subject of his authority, to push back on his demands."
In its motion to stay Mr. Bromwich's activities pending an appeal to Judge Cote's ruling, Apple is saying,
[Mr. Bromwich] is conducting a roving investigation that is interfering with Apple's business operations, risking the public disclosure of privileged and confidential information, and imposing substantial and rapidly escalating costs on Apple that it will never be able to recover.
The DOJ disagreed with Apple, according to Forbes, telling the court, "Mr. Bromwich's actions to date have been wholly within the scope of his authority... and at all times appropriate and consistent with his impeccable reputation."
Mr. Bromwich will review Apple's new policies on January 14, assuming the company hasn't been granted a stay blocking him from continuing as a court appointed monitor. Judge Cote has scheduled a hearing on January 13 where Apple and the DOJ can both argue their sides.
Assuming Apple isn't granted a stay, the company will push for an expedited appeal where it hopes to overturn Judge Cotes' ruling.


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Approximately 1,500 exhibitors from 40 countries from around the globe presented their latest technologies at EuroBlech 2016. The technology exhibition for the sheet metal working industry, which takes place in Hannover every two years, once again drew an international audience of more than 60,000 trade professionals. “Despite the slight decline in exhibitor numbers, the exhibition was very well visited, as was clearly evidenced by the increase in visitor numbers. We saw a lot of decision-makers and technical experts at our booth,” comments Franek Dodek, Industry Sales Manager Sheet Metal Working at Beckhoff.
Beckhoff technology could be seen at many different booths all over the exhibition grounds: many exhibitors presented their sheet metal working machines with Beckhoff control systems solutions. “As a globally active company, EuroBlech’s international focus is very important to us. Our subsidiaries worldwide use the exhibition as a platform on which to stay in touch with their existing customers and to establish new contacts on location,” continues Franek Dodek.
With the “Next Generation of Sheet Metal Working” as its main theme, this year’s exhibition was all about Industrie 4.0. As a result, the Beckhoff show booth focused primarily on the topics of production efficiency, increased process quality and production flexibility on the basis of Industrie-4.0-enabled products and solutions. “The presentation of TwinCAT IoT and TwinCAT Analytics for real-time acquisition of process data and the advantages that result, for predictive maintenance, for example, attracted a lot of visitor interest,” explains Franek Dodek.
Beckhoff, however, also met the demand for complete solutions at EuroBlech with the new eBend Panel, the turnkey solution for press brakes, which enables users to start work immediately and saves a lot of engineering time.


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Everything you need to know about tax-time fraud is in this primer. Learn how the fastest growing form of identity theft occurs, what puts you at risk and how to protect yourself.
It’s the ultimate in financial creepiness: knowing someone’s been spying on your credit or other financial details. How about then having those details posted online for anyone to view — or grab?
That’s apparently what happened yesterday when a group of public officials and celebrities including First Lady Michelle Obama, FBI Director Robert Mueller and, yes, celebrity Paris Hilton. They all reportedly had their credit reports and other financial details posted online. are pointing to a website in Russia that published the information on Monday and continued to add to it throughout the day. So far, it hasn’t been confirmed whether the information posted was accurate or whether it perhaps was a hoax, though it sounds as if it probably was the former.
Though the number of victims here appears to be small — just under a dozen by last report — the fact that they are high profile public figures means the hack not only makes the news, but it brings out the big guns to head an investigation and hopefully track down the perpetrators.
It’s one thing to be pursued by fans and paparazzi. It’s another thing when hackers are on your tail.
Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian and other well-known names got a taste of a new cybercrime called “doxxing” when their sensitive information, including financial details and photos, was posted to a Russian website. Read more about it here.
Your financial stats and pics may not be as enticing as a pop star’s, but this is a good opportunity to take steps to protect your identity online. Here are some tips from our experts:
Identity theft is on the rise again, hitting a three-year high and producing one new victim every three seconds in 2012, according to a by Javelin Strategy & Research. Data breaches are responsible for much of the stolen personal information. One in four people who received a breach notification letter fell victim to identity theft, the study found, compared with one in five people in 2011.
Fallout from the upswing in identity theft is hurting small businesses. Fraud victims are more selective of where they shop after an incident, the study said. About 15 percent of all fraud victims actively changed their shopping behavior, avoiding smaller online merchants in favor of larger retail sites.
More than 12.6 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2012, up by one million from 2011. All told criminals rung up $21 billion in stolen funds, goods and damages in 2012.
The Federal Trade Commission recently released . The results are unsettling: As many as 40 million Americans may have mistakes on their credit reports; 20 million of those errors may be significant.
The big three credit reporting agencies—TransUnion, Experian and Equifax—collect consumer data from credit cards, banks and loan agencies we do business with, then profit by selling that information to new banks, merchants, insurance companies and even our employers. Consumer credit worthiness often is reduced to a number—your credit score—which can have dramatic effect on insurance and loan rates.
“This study highlights once again the need for consumers to be vigilant when it comes to checking their credit reports and adopting a culture of monitoring,” said Adam Levin, chairman and founder of IDentity Theft 911. “Consumers need to discover negative information, whether it is due to error or identity theft, as quickly as possible.”
In a new form of identity theft, fraud rings are stealing personal information then applying to low-cost, online colleges to milk money from federal student loan programs. But Uncle Sam is hardly the only victim here. Trapped in red tape, one San Francisco Bay area woman has spent more than a year trying to clear her name and repair her damaged credit report.
In October 2011, Christina Benson*, 71, a teaching coordinator, first received a phone call from a U.S. Department of Education investigator, which handles fraudulent federal loan claims. The inspector wanted to verify some of Benson’s information, but Benson knew better than to divulge that data over the phone since her purse had been stolen and her mail raided by identity thieves. “If you don’t cooperate,” the inspector told her, “we’ll assume you’re the ringleader.”


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At the start of this week, Monaco (MCO) went for a little over six dollars apiece. By midmorning on Tuesday, this had risen to $18 – a 200% increase in a little over 24 hours. At time of writing, shortly before markets open for business in the US on Tuesday, MCO tokens trade for $12 apiece, down around one third on early-morning highs.
This is some pretty volatile action and exactly how things are going to mature as we move into the primary US session is unclear. However, if the initial run was driven by a reasonable operational development, then the correction we are seeing right now might just be exactly that – a short-term correction ahead of a longer-term return to the overarching upside trend.
By proxy, if this is true, there might be some value in picking up some MCO ahead of said return.
With this noted, then, let’s try figure out whether this is the case.
For those new to this one, Monaco is a sort of payment processing application of blockchain technology built on the Ethereum platform. It’s designed as a way for users to transact using a debit card in local currencies and, by proxy, using local interbank exchange rates. The ability to use interbank exchange rates as opposed to retail rates means that the users can save substantially on purchases that they might otherwise be making with nondomestic type cards.
The company employs a Visa credit card and – through the credit card and its companion mobile application – users can buy, exchange, and spend fiat and cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin and Ethereum, at perfect interbank exchange rates. When you’re spending $500, this can lead to a saving of somewhere in the region of $30 or $40, so we are not talking insubstantial amounts here, and it’s this degree of savings that has spurred growth to date.
Back in June 2016, Monaco conducted an initial coin offering (ICO) and raised more than $26 million – at the time, one of the most successful ICO’s ever and still up there today, even with the huge wave of ICO activity we have seen throughout 2017.
Since then, the company has on-boarded tens of thousands of users and is now headquartered in Switzerland with offices in Hong Kong and Singapore. In other words, it’s executing on its business plan to a pretty strong degree and – given the very real demand for a product like the Monaco card – we expect it will continue to do just that.
But none of this explains why we’re looking at this company today and – in turn – doesn’t really go too far towards answering the above-outlined question of, is there an opportunity here?
To answer this one, we’ve got to jump right into the current moment and highlight exactly why this coin is running right now – it’s just picked up a listing status on five fresh exchanges, as of today, December 5. These exchanges are BigONE, Exchange X, Huobi Pro, OKEx and UPBit.
Combined, these exchanges have a total reach of around 5 million cryptocurrency users and, as a result, the listing dramatically increases the available liquidity for the company’s underlying token, the MCO.
Increased liquidity should translate to an increased volume which, in turn, should help to push the token higher near term. This allows us to say with a relative degree of certainty, then, that the current action we are seeing in this one is very much representative of a near-term correction and that, in turn, we should see MCO turn around as the US session gets underway on Tuesday.
So that’s a short-term trade on an exposure to the correction and a long-term position as the company continues to execute on its game plan.
We will be updating our subscribers as soon as we know more. For the latest on XXXX, sign up below!
Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.
Is Bex500 an alternative to BitMEX?
An all around review of Bex500
Bex500 is a young but rapid-growing exchange, less adversarial than BitMEX, but with higher leverage than Binance, Bex500 has enough strings to attract many crypto traders.
Those dissatisfied with the old exchange, may find Bex500 exchange with a stable system with no manipulation or “overload”, pleasant UX, user-friendly tool kits, and around-clock customer service.
Bex500 says they are making crypto margin trading “easier” and giving you a better return.
Can they really achieve that? We conduct a comprehensive review as below to see if it is a trustworthy exchange
Question 1. What features does Bex500 have?
Bex500 offers perpetual BTC futures as well as three other cryptos including ETH, XRP and LTC, all paired against USDT. You may find Bex500 doing a good job aggregating most important features traders need for a robust trading experience with better return.
-A fair trade with no overload
Many traders are familiar with “overload” problem, which disables placing orders in peak trading times. It is suspected to be insider manipulations by exchanges which can cost users entire portfolios.
Bex500, with its unmatched TPS (claimed to be over 10,000 orders per second), ensures that the trading…
How Bitcoin Has Changed Online Gaming
We always hear how Bitcoin is great for the financial industry, how it can remove the middleman and help you save money while you spend money. How it can provide fast transactions at any time to any place, even when you wish to send money to someone on the other side of the world.
While all of that is true, it is important to remember that Bitcoin’s impact does not end there. The coin has already changed countless other industries, but one of the first ones that have accepted it with open arms — and therefore one that was changed the most — is the online gaming industry.
Bitcoin’s impact on online gaming
The first thing to note here is that digital currencies have found their use in online gaming thanks to microtransactions. However, it goes far beyond simply purchasing an in-game item from another player. Bitcoin’s biggest impact, without a doubt, concerns online gambling, sports betting, and similar activities.
Bitcoin brings security and anonymity
Bitcoin casino has become one of the new most popular places for an online gambler to visit, and for numerous reasons. Bitcoin brought increased security — to the financial industry, as well as online games. This is important because security is crucial for anyone who enjoys online gambling. It…
The Crucial Role of Cryptocurrencies & Blockchain in Modernising The Telco Industry
Blockchain has caused quite a stir in recent years. In fact, there’s a school of thought that firmly believes the digital ledger technology will prove to be the 21st Century’s biggest innovation.
There are a great many industries braced for the disruptive force of blockchain, and the sweeping benefits it can bring to telecommunications can’t be underestimated.
A blockchain is a decentralised, distributed, public digital ledger that’s fundamentally used to record transactions online. Every transaction that takes place is recorded across an extensive array of computers in a way that ensures that any individual record within the chain can’t be tampered with or retroactively modified.
Because of the virtually impregnable security associated with blockchain and the efficiency that comes with a fully decentralised ledger, there’s plenty of potential for the technology within the telco industry in particular – especially given the financial flexibility that comes with cryptocurrency transactions beyond borders.
Let’s take a deeper look at the important role that both blockchain and its associated cryptocurrencies can play in modernising and securing the telco industry:
The arrival of blockchain is causing a stir at Deloitte. The professional services giant has contributed tens of thousands of words on blockchain within its ‘insights’ network, and there are…


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“If you are passionate about fashion, it can be very rewarding,” declares fashion graduate Madeleine Harman, who spent a semester in 2010 at Montclair University fashion department in New Jersey.
“I had some unforgettable experiences including trawling through Yves’ archives of illustrations at the YSL headquarters in Paris.”
The rewards have continued. Madeleine spent last year in New York, initially as an intern for trend forecasting company Edelkoort Inc and then as design assistant for the creative director of TOCCA, a New York based label with a Hudson St boutique that also sells through online stores such as Shopbop.
Despite being offered a full time design role at TOCCA, Madeleine returned to New Zealand at the start of 2013 and worked as design assistant at Andrea Moore. After a few months break “I am now looking at a new project with a good friend and fellow Whitecliffe graduate to get my design hat back on.”


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Microsoft Upgrades Power BI Mobile Sharing on Android, iOS Devices
The iOS version of the Power BI app makes it easier for users to annotate and share their business insights on the go with Apple mobile devices, including the Apple Watch.Microsoft is rolling out the final Power BI mobile app updates for 2016. This time around, the focus is on making it easier to share findings and get Android tablet users up to speed on the business intelligence (BI) app. On iOS, the company has made new enhancements to the app's annotating and sharing features. New to the latest release is the ability to share both annotated and mobile-optimized reports directly from the app. Further, shared snapshots sent via email now create a deep link that takes the recipient directly to the related Power BI tile or report. Building on Power BI's existing Quick Response code capabilities, which allow users to share reports using codes that can be scanned by cameras on smartphones and tablets, the company has added the ability for unauthorized users to request access directly from the app. The owner of the related Power BI dashboard in question must approve the request using the Power BI web portal. The app also allows Apple Watch users to refresh data from the companion app for the wearable. With the iPhone app running in the background and the dashboard index page visible on the Watch, users can "deep press" the Watch's Force Touch-enabled screen to perform a refresh.
This month, Microsoft finally released a preview edition of the Power BI app for Android tablets. The company is encouraging users to take it for a spin and help the company refine the app by supplying feedback using the Power BI Mobile online community forum.


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When executives of a portfolio company approached Andy Funk with the idea of a reverse merger last year, his gut response was negative.
“I have to admit I was very skeptical of it,” says Funk, managing director of Santa Monica, Calif.-based venture firm Funk Ventures. “I don’t think most VCs would be eager to liquidate this way.”
And they’d have sound reasons to be hesitant. Reverse mergers—in which a private company acquires a public company to bypass the burdensome process of doing an IPO—have lots of drawbacks. Companies that go public in that fashion can expect, among other things, to have low trading volume, very little liquidity, nonexistent research coverage, and no market makers to support their stock.
Nonetheless, in the case of food retailer Organic To Go, Funk eventually reversed his position about reverse mergers. The company’s founder had been seeking follow-on funding for more than a year and Funk, Organic’s largest venture investor, decided a public listing was a sensible alternative for the fast-growing takeout chain.
In February, Organic carried out a reverse merger. Initial response looked too good to be true—and it was. After closing as high as $7.25, Organic’s shares have settled around $2. Funk is hopeful that he will see a pop by the time his lockup expires.
While reverse mergers are admittedly risky, venture capitalists are giving them more consideration as traditional IPOs have gotten harder and more expensive to carry out. So far, that hasn’t led to a surge in deal-making. As of late June, 90 companies completed reverse mergers on U.S. exchanges, compared to 222 and 212 in all of 2005 and 2006, respectively, according to DealFlow Media, a research firm based in Petaluma, Calif.
However, the growing practice of combining a private investment in public equity (PIPE) transaction with a reverse merger has pushed up average deal size. In the first quarter of this year, the average reverse merger had a market cap of $68 million. That’s an increase of 38% from Q4, according to DealFlow.
“This is the new small-cap IPO,” says David Feldman, a securities attorney at Feldman Weinstein & Smith and author of Reverse Mergers: Taking a Company Public Without an IPO. A regular booster of reverse merger-related benefits, Feldman is quick to point to brand name companies that took that route: Berkshire Hathaway, Blockbuster Entertainment, Turner Broadcasting and, more recently, the Jamba Juice chain.
I have to admit I was very skeptical of it. I don’t think most VCs would be eager to liquidate this way.
Andy Funk, Managing Director, Funk Ventures
But moving from reverse merger to high-flying market cap remains rare. The appropriate way to view the transaction, Feldman says, is as a financing event on the path to liquidity rather than a full-blown exit.
Still, some companies are raising sizeable sums through PIPE deals arranged simultaneously with reverse mergers. SVI, the company that merged with Jamba Juice, for example, sold 27.4 million shares at $7.50 each in a private placement before completing the combination in March, 2006. Jamba currently has a market cap of $500 million.
A juicy profit
As liquidity events go, the Jamba reverse merger was a “satisfactory” exit, said one venture backer. Prior to the reverse merger, the company raised about $50 million from funds including Benchmark Capital, Oak Investment Partners, Rosewood Capital, Technology Venture Investors and Trinity Ventures. Benchmark, the only venture firm listed as a beneficial owner in a Jamba proxy statement, owned about 7% of the shares, a stake worth $32 million.
The bigger deals like Jamba commonly involve specified purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. These are publicly traded shell companies, like SVI in the Jamba deal, that raise money and then look for a candidate with which to consummate a merger.
Los Angeles-based clothing maker American Apparel followed much the same route earlier this year when it merged with a SPAC called Endeavor Acquisition Corp. in a deal valued at $383 million, including $110 million of debt assumption. Previously, American Apparel had raised $7.5 million in expansion funding from private equity fund C3 Capital.
Venture-backed companies have figured in a few other recent deals, too. Etrials Worldwide, a provider of software and services for collection and analysis of clinical trial data, went public in February, 2006, through a reverse merger with CEA Acquisition Corp. The company had previously raised $7 million from private equity investors including Newlight Associates and Nazem & Co. At current trading prices, Newlight’s stake is worth about $7 million, and Nazem’s is valued around $3.9 million.
, a venture-backed developer of biodiesel plants and processing technology, raised $25 million in January through a private stock placement carried out in tandem with a reverse merger. The company, which currently trades as an over-the-counter stock, had previously raised $10 million from private investors including Hunt Ventures, Smart Technology Ventures and Unilever Ventures. Smart, the largest venture backer, owns 28% of outstanding shares, a stake valued at around $13 million.
Venture capitalists are the last holdouts in terms of accepting the benefits of this.”
David Feldman, Author, Reverse Mergers: Taking a Company Public Without an IPO
The amount raised in a PIPE is typically much smaller than what a company would bring in through a regular IPO. But it’s also faster and cheaper to arrange, And given that the IPO market is relatively closed to companies with valuations under $100 million, Feldman notes, small startups have limited options.
“You would never do it if you could do a traditional IPO,” agrees Dan Burstein, managing partner at Millennium Technology Value Partners, a New York firm that arranges private equity transactions. “But you might not be able to find the bankers to take a real institutional interest.”
Moreover, the reverse merger industry has done a reasonable job rehabilitating its image. Dodgy companies that went public through reverse mergers showed up with frequency in SEC enforcement actions several years ago. Regulators’ action against Houston-based Mountain Energy in 2001 was typical of the trend. Executives and directors of the energy company, which went public through a reverse merger in 1998, were charged with issuing a string of six fraudulent press releases, causing the company’s share price to leap from 5 cents to $1.75. Other enforcement actions early in the decade involved similar shenanigans following reverse mergers of companies in the biotechnology and Internet sectors.
Regulations have gotten tighter since then. The SEC took measures to clean up the reverse merger business in June 2005, adopting rules designed to protect investors from fraud involving the use of shell companies, while allowing their use for legitimate corporate purposes. Regulators also significantly increased the disclosure requirements associated with such transactions in the public markets.
Feldman says the new rules have had a measurable impact in bolstering investors’ confidence in the credibility of companies that go public through reverse mergers. One indicator: PIPE deals carried out alongside reverse mergers are attracting highly regarded institutional and private equity investors. A June reverse merger completed by VC-backed therapeutics developer Athersys, for example, drew concurrent PIPE investments from Hambrecht & Quist Capital Management, Accipiter Capital Management and OrbiMed Advisors, among others.
Nonetheless, Feldman says much work likes ahead in convincing venture capitalists of the virtues of reverse mergers, whom he considers “the last holdouts in terms of accepting the benefits of this.”
Now that a few VCs have tested the reverse merger waters with non-horrible results, is it the start of a trend? “Only when we’ve seen a few dozen actually work out,” says Funk. “Until that point, it’s really just a crap shoot.”


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Sir Dave Lewis, the former Tesco chief, will this week be appointed to lead the £40bn separation of GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) consumer healthcare arm.
Sky News has learnt that Sir Dave, who became one of Britain’s most respected corporate figures during his six years running Britain’s biggest retailer, has agreed to become non-executive chairman of the arm of GSK which owns brands such as Panadol painkillers and Sensodyne toothpaste.
An announcement about his appointment could come as soon as Monday morning, according to one source.
The recruitment of Sir Dave will be viewed in the City as a major coup for GSK, whose management has been under pressure in recent months from Elliott Advisers, the activist investor.
GSK’s consumer healthcare business, which will be given a new corporate name at a capital markets day in the spring of next year, is one of the largest in the world, with sales last year of £10bn.
It is a joint venture with Pfizer, and was formed in 2019, with GSK owning a 68% stake and the US-based pharmaceuticals group the remainder.
Sir Dave will be charged with assembling a board for the new company, which is expected to attain a premium London listing when it becomes a separately traded company in the summer of 2022.
Since leaving Tesco last year, Sir Dave has joined the board of PepsiCo, the US-based snacks and beverages manufacturer, and become chairman of WWF-UK, the animal conservation charity.
In October, he was asked by Boris Johnson to advise the government on tackling the supply chain crisis, which left a range of industries facing severe stock and raw materials shortages.
Sir Dave’s transformation of Tesco pulled the UK’s biggest grocer back from the brink, having joined the company in the midst of a financial reporting scandal and with its operating performance in sharp decline.
He was knighted earlier in this year’s new year honours list for services to retail.
The businessman had previously spent 27 years at Unilever, the consumer goods behemoth which has been occasionally tipped by analysts as a potential bidder for the GSK arm that he is now about to chair.
Reports during the autumn suggested that major private equity firms were assessing the possibility of a joint bid for GSK’s consumer healthcare operation, although most observers regard such a move as unlikely.
GSK has already announced that Brian McNamara, who runs the joint venture between it and Pfizer, will be chief executive of the newly listed company when it is demerged from GSK in the middle of next year.
It has also confirmed a number of other executive appointments to the separated business’s leadership team.
Dame Emma Walmsley, GSK’s chief executive, said in October that the company “continue[d] to make excellent progress towards unlocking the value of Consumer Healthcare through a successful demerger in mid-2022”.
Sir Dave and Dame Emma served together on the prime minister’s business council, jointly chairing its consumer, retail, and life sciences subgroup during Theresa May’s premiership.
GSK’s break-up will leave the rest of the company focused on pharmaceutical products and vaccines, which it has argued it to allocate capital more efficiently.
Nevertheless, it has faced increasing pressure from Elliott and Bluebell Capital Partners, another shareholder, as they have demanded faster corporate action and questioned Dame Emma’s leadership.
GSK declined to comment on Sunday, while Sir Dave could not be reached for comment.


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Fire damages a grocery store on Milwaukee's south side and police have released surveillance video of two individuals spotted outside the store before the fire.
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EasyJet plc said on Wednesday it intends to back US company Wright Electric’s plans to develop an electric airplane. The airline noted it...
Social media website Twitter announced it is testing a larger character limit per tweet. The feature allows up to 280 characters per...
Social network giant Twitter Inc. defended its decision on Tuesday not to delete United President Donald Trump’s post in which he threatened North Korea,...
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Consumer electronics fans may soon be able to purchase a discrete tethered device with a connection to virtual assistant Alexa, the Financial...
BitTorrent creator to launch new cryptocurrency called Chia
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Amazon buys three cryptocurrency-related domain names
Musk shows progress of The Boring Company’s tunnel system
Amazon unveils Alexa-compatible security camera, smart lock service
Report: Tesla strikes deal to build factory in China
Apple and GE announce partnership
Lego to release ‘Women of NASA’ set to honor female astronauts, scientists
Steen’s method prolongs transplant time to up to 12 hours
Disaster drone, a life saving measure
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Google’s new mini AI-powered camera decides when to record clips
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ZEUS, eco friendly crypto mining company, releases Ethereum-based token
Fidelity CEO says company is mining bitcoin
Apple Music reaches 30 million subscribers
Google clashes with Amazon as it removes YouTube access from Echo Show
Russia and US to create Deep Space Gateway, new station in Moon’s orbit


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Congress gives final OK to banning local Internet taxes
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress voted Thursday to permanently bar state and local governments from taxingaccess to the Internet, as lawmakers leapt at an election-year chance to demonstrate their opposition to imposing levies on online service.
On a vote of 75-20, the Senate gave final congressional approval to the wide-ranging bill, which would also revamp trade laws. President Barack Obama is expected to sign it.
“The Internet is a resource used daily by Americans of all ages,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who brokered an agreement with a Democratic leader earlier this week that helped clear the way for passage. “It’s important that they be able to do all of this without the worry of their Internet access being taxed.”
The ban on local Internet access taxes had broad support. Even so, some lawmakers remained unhappy over its trade provisions and because the measure omitted a separate, more controversial proposal to let states force online retailers to collect sales taxes for their transactions.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the bill was full of “missed opportunities and half-measures.”
Since 1998 in the Internet’s early days, Congress has passed a series of bills temporarily prohibiting state and local governments from imposing the types of monthly levies for online access that are common for telephone service. Such legislation has been inspired by a popular sentiment that the Internet should be free, along with Republican opposition to most tax proposals.
Until now, states that imposed Internet access taxes have been allowed to continue. Under the approved bill, those states would have to phase out their taxes by the summer of 2020.
Seven states — Hawaii, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin — have been collecting a combined $563 million yearly from Internet access taxes, according to information gathered by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
Forty-nine Republican and 26 Democratic senators backed the legislation Thursday while 17 Democrats and three Republicans voted “no.”
The House approved the compromise in December with the backing of nearly all Republicans but just 24 Democrats.
The White House did not immediately provide a statement on whether Obama would sign the measure despite lawmakers’ widespread expectations that he would. That seemed to reflect the difficult political balancing act Democrats faced between a popular ban on Internet access taxes and trade provisions many of them considered insufficient or harmful.
The legislation, especially its trade provisions, has pitted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups supporting the bill against opponents including the AFL-CIO and other labor organizations.
Supporters say the measure would strengthen U.S. trading by improving protections for American intellectual property like copyrights and trademarks and upgrading trade law enforcement at the country’s borders.
They also cite provisions reinforcing the government’s ability to head off China and other countries from manipulating their currency to make their exports more affordable, cracking down on imported products made with child labor and accelerating investigations into companies accused of evading the payment of duties.
Democratic critics complained that its trade protections were insufficient and said negotiators who wrote the compromise weakened it significantly, including the currency manipulation language.
Democrats also disliked provisions barring trade agreements that would curb some efforts to restrict greenhouse gas emissions, a major contributor to climate change, or would force the U.S. to revamp its immigration laws.
For years, the drive in Congress to permanently bar taxes on Internet service has languished alongside another effort to empower states to require online retailers to collect state and local sales taxes for online purchases. Supporters of enhancing the collection of online sales taxes say without that, brick-and-mortar stores face a competitive disadvantage.
In hopes of gaining leverage, senators backing the collection of online state sales taxes have long linked the two efforts.
A breakthrough came this week when McConnell agreed to hold a vote this year on the online state sales taxproposal. He reached that deal with No. 2 Senate Democratic leader Dick Durbin of Illinois, a strong advocate of the separate Internet sales tax measure.
Even so, some lawmakers were upset that the sales tax measure would be considered later, with no guarantee of success.


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Rates expectations adjustment
In the US 63% of companies having reported with 36% in Europe so far. Earnings are contracting on a y-o-y basis, for the first time since 2020. In the US, 70% of S&P500 companies that reported beat EPS estimates, which is below their historical median. EPS growth for these companies is down, at -2% y-o-y, surprising positively by 1%. Of the key sectors, Energy, Industrials and Discretionary are reporting strong growth, while Materials, Financials, Tech and Communication Services are down double-digit on EPS growth. Top-line growth in the US is at +5% y-o-y, surprising positively by 2%. A smaller proportion of US companies are raising EPS guidance this quarter vs Q3, well below the historical median. In Europe, of the Stoxx600 companies that have reported so far, 64% beat EPS estimates. Q4 EPS growth is coming in at -2% y-o-y, surprising positively by 2%. Outside Energy, delivery is underwhelming; Staples, Healthcare and Communication Services are seeing low single-digit growth, while the remaining sectors are coming in negative. Revenue growth is better at +13% y-o-y, surprising positively by 4%. In Japan, 39% of Topix companies beat EPS estimates, with overall EPS growth at -5% y-o-y. Top-line growth is running at +15% y-o-y this quarter, and 50% of companies have beaten revenue estimates.
After financial conditions loosening significantly in Jan., the tide changed and the implied terminal rate ratcheted up hitting a high of 5.19% in the US. After mixed auctions of 10-yr and 30-yr, we saw larger moves at the front end of the curve, as investors modestly raised their estimates of the Fed’s terminal rate. These curve levels are still very extreme and at levels where a recession has always followed within months as per analysts from Deutsche Bank.
Rates expectations adjustment
The S&P 500 closed the week at 4,090.46, -1.11% lower. The Dow Jones closed at 33,869.27, -0.17%, with the Nasdaq lower by -2.41%. The volatility index VIX closed the week at 20.53 up from 18.33. The Euro Stoxx 600 slipped -0.63%.
The 10-year UST closed at 3.73% up from 3.52% a week before. The yield curve is inverted with the yield spread between the 3-month and 10-year UST at -105bps. US Corporate Bond spreads: Investment Grade widened 3bps at 186bps and High Yield widened 7bps at 444bps. German 10-year Bunds yield closed at +2.36% up from +2.19% a week before. In Europe, Corporate Investment Grade spreads tightened 4bps at 157bps and High Yield spreads tightened 27bps at 442bps.
The US Dollar Index (DXY) appreciated +0.69% last week and closed at 103.63. The Euro closed at 1.0678 (-1.08% weekly); the Yen depreciated -0.13%, closing at 131.36 and the Swiss Franc appreciated +0.25%, closing at 0.9238. Gold closed at $1,865.57 appreciating +0.03%. Oil was up, Brent closed at $86.39 (+8.07%) and WTI at $79.72 (+8.63%).
Speaking at the Economic Club of Washington, Fed chief Jerome Powell said that the process of disinflation has already begun. He even said that he expected there to be a significant decline in inflation this year, although it is unlikely that inflation will fall back to the official target of 2% next year. Powell described it as "positive that we have been able to see the trends of slowing inflation without seeing the labor market weaken". We had other Fed speakers during the week. President of Atlanta Fed Raphael Bostic highlighted that Jan.'s strong jobs report raised the possibility the Fed will need to lift borrowing costs to a higher peak than previously anticipated. New York Fed President Williams saying he believed a 5-5.25% Fed Funds range was a reasonable view, but he also touched on unsustainably high wage growth prints. The most hawkish comments came from Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari who said “there’s not yet much evidence, in my judgment, that the rate hikes that we’ve done so far are having much effect on the labor market...we need to do more”.
US economic data
The Federal Reserve’s quarterly scenario loan officer survey showed that banks continue to tighten credit conditions on both consumer and company loans, a sign that higher Fed interest rates continue to make their way through the US banking system. Wholesale trade sales were flat in Dec. after -1.4% m-o-m in Nov., raising the risk that the level of inventories may be too high in the economy right now. Looking ahead, US CPI inflation will be released on 14 Feb. Consensus is +0.5% m-o-m for headline (+6.2% y-o-y) and +0.35% m-o-m for core inflation (+5.4% y-o-y). Jan.’s retail sales are expected to be strong (consensus: +1.7% m-o-m) thanks to a sharp rebound in car sales.
Europe economic data
Euro area retail sales fell by 2.7% m-o-m in Dec., in line with expectations, vs. -1.5% m-o-m decline in Oct. and a +1.2% m-o-m rebound in Nov., which left retail sales down 1.1% q-o-q in Q4. The decline was also broad based across countries and sectors (food and non-food). European natural gas futures fell to a fresh 17-month low of €52.77 per megawatt-hour. German hard data were mixed in Dec. Factory orders rose by 3.2% m-o-m in Dec., boosted significantly by large-scale orders. German HICP inflation fell to 9.2% y-o-y in Jan. (vs. 10.0% expected) from 9.6% in Dec. That’s a 5-month low and is also the third consecutive decline since its peak of 11.6% back in Oct. In Sweden, Riksbank hiked by 50bps as expected. The new governor announced that QT would be starting from April and indicated that the policy rate would “probably be raised further during the spring”. That triggered a massive reaction among Swedish assets.
China economic data
Headline CPI inflation in Jan. picked up to 2.1% y-o-y on rising food prices. Core CPI also rose by 1.0% y-o-y (0.4% m-o-m) amid stronger seasonal demand due to the Lunar New Year holidays. The tourism sub-index bounced by 11.2% y-o-y. PPI inflation remained negative at -0.8% y-o-y (-0.4% m-o-m) in Jan..
What to watch
- Monday: US ISM manuf. index (Apr.)
- Tuesday: Australia RBA decision (May); Euro area: final PMIs, M3 (Mar.), Bank Lending Survey (Q1), flash HICP (Apr.); US durable goods (Mar.)
- Wednesday: US FOMC decision (May); US ISM non-manufacturing index (Apr.)
- Thursday: Norway Norges Bank decision (May); Euro area ECB decision (May); US trade balance (Mar.)
- Friday: Germany factory orders (Mar.); US: nonfarm payrolls (Apr.)


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Every year during the Fortnitemares event, Epic Games releases some of their deadliest surprises. The Halloween-themed event will start on October 18 and probably go until at least October 31.
Ahead of the Fortnitemares update, big modifications to the island and the addition of new eerie skins to the Item Shop are expected in the upcoming weeks.
With a video that appeared to depict some sort of metal wolf that will probably be present during this event, Fortnite announced the commencement date on its official Twitter account.
The statement from Epic Games doesn’t provide much information about what to anticipate, although it does mention “screams, awful dreams, and all monstrous things.” The Fortnitemares of this year seem to be one to remember.
What is to be expected?
Data miners on Twitter have indicated recently that a new mini-boss would be visiting the island as part of the occasion. New eerie skins that Epic and the community have been developing will also be available. Due to a contest that allowed fans to submit ideas at the beginning of the year, we are already familiar with a couple of Halloween skins.
One of the skins looks like a fallen angel type with a large scythe and chains. The other skin has a hand for a head and also comes with a giant scythe. Both should be released as part of the Fortnitemares update on Oct. 18. They could also be added on Oct. 4’s update, ahead of the event, but they’ll definitely be in the game by the time Fortnitemares starts.
As we get closer to this event, we’ll likely learn more about the frights and scares coming as part of this year’s event.
Will there be Zombies?
Data miner and multimedia producer HYPEX speculates that the jumpscare zombies from previous seasons may be making a comeback in Fortnite. That might not surprise you, but a different new aspect of the game might. In the upcoming weeks, it seems possible that Zombie Chickens will start prowling the landscape.
The chickens have previously undergone recent tweaking by Epic Games to occasionally make them more hostile. Perhaps the aggressive behavior mod was applied by Epic Games to prepare for the impending invasion of brain-hungry birds. We don’t yet know how the upgraded versions of the jumpscare zombie and the zombie chicken will look; their textures will probably be introduced in the update, according to HYPEX.
Players are excited for any new information on this year’s Fortnitemares event because there haven’t been many leaks. Players are also aware that Fortnite will launch the two skins mentioned above later this month in addition to the zombies.
There are now a lot of speculations and demands floating around, with some fans asking for collaborations from everyone, such as Michael Myers and Ghostface. We’ll probably find out more information about the next Fortnitemares event in the next two weeks, but the hype is strong.


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Future of luxury: A look at the year ahead
Back in early March, when parts of Europe went into lockdown, and designers began to panic as collections got stuck in warehouses or were refused by the department stores that had ordered them, analysts warned of an “unprecedented crisis” for the £2.2tn fashion and luxury industries.
Eight months later, that “unprecedented crisis” looks more like a blip — especially at the higher end of the price spectrum. While luxury goods sales shrunk by about a fifth last year, according to Citi and Bain estimates, a strong third quarter and the rapid deployment of a vaccine has led some analysts and executives to predict a near-full return to 2019 revenues in 2021.
Such optimism is shared by investors: for the fifth consecutive year, the luxury sector has outperformed the wider equity market — this year by about 10 per cent — notes Thomas Chauvet, head of luxury goods equity research at Citi.
It helped that Japan and China, the second- and third-largest luxury markets by sales, recovered quickly from the virus, and the rise of “revenge buying” (shopping sprees driven by pent-up demand during lockdown) and “reunion dressing” in China buoyed purchases in the spring. Where stores were closed, many shoppers turned to ecommerce for the first time — and brands say they’ll keep shopping there.
The US luxury consumer also proved surprisingly resilient. With stock indices reaching record highs and fewer opportunities to spend on international travel, restaurants and spas, the wealthy snapped up luxury handbags, fine jewellery and cashmere tracksuits.
Luxury executives also responded quickly and ably during the first wave of infections, says Chauvet: slashing marketing and events budgets, renegotiating rents and, among the publicly listed companies, reducing the dividends they had planned to pay to investors.
But while sales might return to 2019 levels, in other ways, the industry will look rather different in 2021.
That will be evident on your next trip to a department store. Prior to the pandemic, tailoring was enjoying a comeback, steadily replacing hoodies, track bottoms and other streetwear-inflected designs on catwalks and on garment rails. A year of mostly working from home has changed all of that.
“We won’t go back to the way we were — clothes will remain more casual for the best part, because our lives have become more of a blend,” says Natalie Kingham, chief fashion officer of luxury e-tailer MatchesFashion.com. In lieu of a full suit, she thinks customers will pair a blazer with a T-shirt and jeans when they return to the office; they’ll also be seeking out more “versatile” pieces for that transition.
Lydia King, fashion buying director at Harrods, says she saw “a seismic shift away from workwear and party-wear” in 2020. While she expects a “big bounce back” in events and wedding attire in 2021, “it’s hard to imagine emerging from the house in a power suit”.
Instead, King has been stocking up on “soft tailoring” such as cardigans and drawstring trousers, which can be worn on Zoom and at the office; timeless staples, such as cashmere camel coats and “investment bags that will hold their resale value”; and “joyful, exuberant” party clothes for all of those reunions we plan to have in 2021. Comfort, which was “never the top factor when we looked at our buy” in past seasons, is now paramount for customers, she says.
One thing that won’t go away this year? Logos. “In previous crises, logos were a no-no, it was inappropriate,” observes Erwan Rambourg, a luxury analyst and author of Future Luxe: What’s Ahead for the Business of Luxury. “Right now, even with high unemployment, it is the iconic, recognisable products that are outperforming versus pre-Covid. There is no guilt factor — it’s more of a ‘I’ve survived this, it’s ok to reward myself, I’m worth it’.”
Fashion weeks will also look a little different next year. While some brands, including Fendi and Dolce & Gabbana, plan to go ahead with live catwalk shows at men’s fashion week in Milan in January, many others will continue to focus on digital and audience-less presentations — at least in the first half of the year.
Others will move their shows to China. Already luxury’s fastest-growing market prior to the pandemic, mainland China will become even more important in 2021 as Chinese luxury shoppers take fewer trips abroad and buy more goods at home. The migration for brands is already happening: Cartier released its latest Pasha watch in China in July, two months before the rest of the world, and Moncler plans to move its Genius show from Milan Fashion Week to Shanghai in 2021.
Analysts say brands have already begun to discuss the expansion of their main flagships in China and the opening additional locations in less populous cities.
Other pre-pandemic trends are also set to accelerate this year. The major, conglomerate-backed luxury brands, which were already gobbling up market share from smaller players, are poised to capture yet more market share in 2021, analysts say. That will make things tougher for independent, family-owned houses — some of which are likely to be put up for sale.
“The big brands are going to outperform when rebounding from this crisis, and probably the small independent guys will realise they need to sell or merge,” Rambourg predicts. M&A activity is already picking up: in the past two months, VF Corp agreed to acquire streetwear brand Supreme for $2bn and puffer jacket maker Moncler took a majority stake in rival Stone Island.
Collections will also continue to be smaller, and more designers will opt for certified-sustainable fabrics in response to climate concerns. Even before Covid-19, collections were shrinking as brands moved away from trendy, seasonal products towards more dependable “evergreen” items.
In the world of venture capital, profitability has become a much bigger priority for start-ups, says Nicole Quinn, a general partner at Lightspeed Ventures, whose investments include Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and Lady Gaga’s Haus Laboratories, both of which became profitable this year.
She is keeping an eye out for opportunities in beauty, skincare, fitness and live-video shopping next year, all of which were given a boost by the pandemic, she says.
Quinn also predicts a “huge influx” of companies staging IPOs in the US in 2021 following the strong performance of tech players such as Airbnb and DoorDash. (Just this week, the parent company of Munich-based luxury etailer MyTheresa, a competitor of Net-a-Porter and MatchesFashion, filed for a IPO in the US.)
Not everyone is confident of a recovery in 2021: researchers at Bain believe luxury goods sales will not fully rebound until mid-2022 or 2023, given the state of the global economy.
In some ways, luxury brands will emerge stronger from the trials of 2020. During the pandemic, stores in Europe and other tourist-driven markets began reconnecting with their local customers, gathering a wealth of data and connections — advantages that will continue even as international travel resumes.
“Before, these brands didn’t know who they were selling to, they were relying on tourism,” says Rambourg. “That’s one of the silver linings to this crisis.”
Follow @financialtimesfashion on Instagram to find out about our latest stories first


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The move comes as drugmakers face growing difficulties obtaining approvals for medicines in China, the world's No. 2 drug market.
Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson said on Monday it was buying the telecom business of China's Sunrise Technology with around 1,000 employees.
The US Federal Reserve is seen unlikely to tighten monetary policy in June since the world's biggest economy barely grew at the start of the year.
A butler can typically expect to earn 20,000 yuan ($3,200) a month, according to Hu, making the course a worthwhile investment.
IIM Indore's students will be trained on, 'Doing Business with China', 'Indian Public Policy', 'Big Data Analytics' and 'Econophysics' – the application of physics in financial economics.
It found the entrepreneur confidence index fell to 59.2 per cent in the first quarter, down 1.8 per centage points from the previous quarter.
Delegations from both China and India have been flown out to visit the field in the remote tundra.
Prime Minister Modi's visit to China has redefined the economic partnership of the two largest and fastest-growing developing economies in the world".


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Seshadri Ramkumar, Texas Tech University, USA
Reviving textile manufacturing in the United States is getting a fresh look. A year end discussion with Professor Eric Hequet, an internationally renowned cotton fiber quality expert at Lubbock-based Texas Tech University, threw light on why there needs to be revival in the textile manufacturing sector in the United States.
While United States’ advanced textile industry that includes nonwovens is showing steady growth and investments, conventional textile manufacturing has shown a decline since 1997. This could be identified with the consumption of cotton in domestic mills, according to Hequet. Currently the cotton consumption in domestic mills within the shores of United States ranges between 3.4 to 3.8 million bales per year. Majority of the cotton produced in the United States is exported, about 80% of its production.
Commenting on the current international spinning scenario, Professor Hequet highlighted that the trend is towards finer yarns and ring spinning technology, while United States focuses on coarser yarns. United States can do a better job of bringing back its textile production by focusing on high quality textiles, complete automation and improved cotton breeding programs. In speaking about improved production efficiencies, Kanti Jasani, president of Harrisburg, Pa.-based Performance and Technical Textile Consulting, emphasized the importance of less manual handling, sustainable practices and automation in the production sectors in developed economies.
Cotton breeding program needs to focus on length, enhanced length uniformity and strength according to Hequet. Today, cotton’s strength can reach 40 grams/tex, but efforts must be streamlined to go up to 50 grams/tex, stated Eric Hequet. He added that it is a bold goal but is possible. Such high strength cottons will pave way for the high productive vortex spinning. United States is still the cheapest place to produce rotor cotton yarns and these advantages must be properly capitalized.
Having recently visited the National Institute of Cotton Research in Anyang, China, Hequet stated that China is concentrating on high quality textile products and the commodity industry is moving towards Vietnam and Bangladesh.Skilled labor, cheap energy and the availability of high-quality cotton within its borders should encourage the United States’ textile sector to take a serious look at revitalizing its spinning and the upstream textile sector.


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Looking back at the year of 2013, the top multifamily, commercial, residential, and hospitality sales in South Florida. With prices rising, investors paid higher prices to add to their South Florida real estate portfolio.
Even properties needing work, sold for significant premium rates, like Resort at Pembroke Pines Apartment community. In the most expensive transaction of the year, a commercial transaction, the Atlanta based Carroll Organization paid $225 Million for the 1,520 unit complex in Pembroke Pines.
In the second most expensive transaction of the year, out of town buyers purchased the shops at Pembroke Gardens. Jeffrey Anderson Real Estate and partner purchased this nearly 400,000 square foot shopping center for $188 Million. This shopping center is home to more then 70 retailers.
Sabadell Financial Center in Miami, Florida was also sold for $185 Million to Prudential Real Estate Investors.
Joseph Chetrit and his New York based development firm was on the list twice, once for selling and once for buying.
The top 10 real estate transactions in 2013 in South Florida:
1.The Resort at Pembroke Pines sells for $225 Million
2. Cinncinati investor buys the shops of Pembroke Gardens for $188 Million
3.Prudential acquires the Sabadell United building for $185 Million
4.Chetrit acuires the Miami Beach Resort for $117 Million
5. Broward Mall sells for $115 Million
6.Chetrit flips the Versailles for $110 Million to Faena
7. Doral West Apartment Complex sells for $94 Million
8.Miracle Mrket Places Sells for $92 Million
9. BAC Colonnade Building Sells for $81 Million
10.Sunforest apartments for $77 Million
Information derived from therealdeal.com


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Onion prices have skyrocketed on the back of low procurement from producing states. In Delhi, onion prices have touched Rs 100 per kg. On Wednesday, onions were sold at Rs 100 per kg at the Paharganj retail vegetable market. Not only that, prices of other vegetables have also seen an increase, including tomatoes that were being sold for Rs 60 per kg.
The increase in prices comes even as wholesale prices are dipping. Reports suggest that the increase in prices that had been brewing for the past few weeks, is the result of the disruption of trade due to imposition of stock limits on traders. Rain in some parts of the country, including Maharashtra, is also believed to have sent onion prices spiralling.
Onion Dealers Association President Rajendra Sharma said, "In the past, the price of onions in the wholesale had reached Rs 60-70, due to which the price of onion in retail touched Rs 100. But it is a matter of relief that now the onion prices have started falling. In last 2 days, onion prices have come down. Now that onion has started coming in abundance, prices are likely to dip in the next one week," as mentioned in India Today TV.
Union Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan has assured consumers that the government is taking all the necessary measures to contain the price rise. The minister consulted top officials of his department on Wednesday. "We have reviewed the onion availability and price situation. Prices have gone up as production (kharif onion) has declined by 30-40 per cent in the country. We are concerned about the situation and the government is trying its best. We have taken maximum steps," Paswan told reporters.


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Prior to eBay Live an event that is slated to occur in Boston, there is news that has shocked the SEO world. eBay, the auction giant pulled all its US AdWords ads off Google, in order to protest a planned party that was coinciding with their live event. The planned party was organized to promote Google Checkout called Let Freedom Ring.
The big step that was taken by eBay was confirmed by one of their spokesperson.
Google planned the party to expose eBay sellers to its PayPal competitor. eBay was not providing Google Checkout as a payment option for sellers and buyers. Google said that eBay was not showing any positive move to work with Checkout. Moreover, eBay officially has decided on its own that Checkout is unproven, even after a year in the market. Its clear that eBay does not want any sort of competition for PayPal.
Apparently, Google has canceled the party, a move appreciated by eBay. Outside the US, Google is the sole provider of ads on international eBay properties. Last year, eBay had been actively looking for partners to oppose what it perceived as a too-powerful Google. The outcome was a partnership with Yahoo, who is the exclusive provider of ads on eBay's US site.
The step taken by Google puts a question mark on Google's motives and rationale. Google must get access to eBay's marketplace as a strategic initiative for Checkout. On the other hand, one must not forget that eBay gets huge amounts of traffic from Adwords. The whole episode is a reminiscent of the tiff between Google and Viacom over YouTube. To know more on this check this link


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China’s largest seasoning manufacturer, Guangdong province-based Foshan Haitian Flavoring & Food, is to expand its production capacity of soy sauce by building new plants in the local Gaoming district.
According to Haitian, the RMB197.7m (US$29m) programme will add 600,000 tonnes of soy sauce production capacity to the current 1 million tonnes each year. Haitian said the programme is part of its RMB2bn expansion project running from 2009 to 2015.
The company is waiting on permission for the expansion from the Foshan Environmental Protection Bureau.
Soy sauce and vinegar are essential to Chinese cuisines, but nowadays the more diversified the seasonings are, the more likely they are to win market share, said Cago Chen, a seasoning industry specialist and general manager at Guangzhou Midea Marketing Consulting.
“With their rising purchasing power, Chinese consumers are eyeing more diversified and professional seasonings and sauces,” Chen said.
Both Haitain and its rival, Hong Kong-based Lee Kum Kee, offer a wide range of sauces, including oyster sauce, barbecue sauce and shrimp sauce.


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As Greg Sandoval pointed out over at News.com, Apple may be close to winning over even more movie studios to make iTunes rentals a reality. And while I'll be the first to admit that this is a major victory for Apple, considering the possibility of its service being relegated to irrelevance in the video space, how big of a victory is it for Steve Jobs?
As one BusinessWeek column points out, Steve Jobs was only able to win the studios over by increasing the amount he's willing to pay for films. According to the report, Jobs had once capped the amount he would pay for each movie sold at $14, but has agreed to the $17 fee larger retailers like Wal-Mart are currently paying.
To make matters worse, the music industry has stood up to Jobs for the first time and has offered DRM-free music to Amazon even though Jobs and Company have been asking for such a deal for quite some time.
So what's really going on? Has Steve Jobs -- one of the world's most powerful CEOs -- lost his power? You better believe it.
Who would have thought this day would come? Not only did Apple seem like it would ride into the sunset with its iPod-iTunes connection, it seemed as though one company actually commanded the kind of power the film and music industry once wielded. In essence, both industries were at the mercy of one company for once and, well, it felt good.
And then everything went downhill for Steve Jobs quickly.
Whether it's his pompous nature or his belief that he was invincible, Steve Jobs truly believed that he could demand anything from the movie and music industries and win out because of the immense success of his company. After all, what would indicate this mentality was wrong? He was able to keep music prices down to $0.99 even though movie studios wanted them increased and as the iPod continued to sell, the movie studios and record labels needed Apple.
And while they still need Apple, the impetus to give in to Jobs' demands has lessened. Once again, we have entered into a situation where the music and movie industries have been able to gain the majority of control in the business and all Apple can do is acquiesce.
But how did this happen? It's simple really: Amazon came along and in a matter of months, has solidified itself as a major player in the music downloading business because of its willingness to woo record labels by giving in to some demands. Beyond that, the movie studios and record labels really don't like Steve Jobs. Not only has he made them look like fools for far too long, he's all too aware of the popularity of his player. In effect, Amazon appealed to the studios' baser instinct -- a desire to take Jobs down a few pegs.
Realizing the hell record labels have gone through with Steve Jobs, movie studios were not so quick to jump on his bandwagon. Because of this, the iTunes video service is floundering (at best) and the movie studios have shown that Steve Jobs still needs to genuflect at their altar, instead of the other way around.
Now, it should be noted that iTunes is still one of the foremost music retailers in the world and it's a main reason the music industry has been able to enjoy buoyed revenues over the past few years. Regardless, this is not a battle over revenue, it's a war over power. And for the first time since the iPod's release, Steve Jobs is the victim of a coup d'etat.
Say goodbye to power Steve. And while you're at it, say hello to your new rulers.


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Oklahoma Sets a Record for Regulated Cannabis Sales in April and Beyond.
Oklahoma’s Messy Relationship with Cannabis
Like other states in the United States, and dating back to Prohibition, Oklahoma has had a messy relationship with cannabis. During the early thirties, Oklahoma state legislators outlawed cannabis Sativa use for any reason, thus criminalizing the possession or manufacturing of the plant for Okies until the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 when legislators decided cannabis should be taxed by the government. This taxation process lasted until the 1970s when cannabis was again criminalized, only this time as a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance.
On June 26th, 2018 Oklahomans got their first glimpse into legalized medicinal cannabis. Overseen by the Medical Marijuana Authority, this state-sanctioned program issued some 300 thousand medical cards for Oklahomans since legalization. In September of that same year, lawmakers decriminalized simple possession of cannabis removing the 6-month jail term threatened for the offense. Still, an enormous fine of $400 to pay as a consumer, but just 1/3rd of the previous $1,200 fine for possession.
Today’s Okies enjoy the right to carry up to 8oz of regulated cannabis with possession of an mmj card, according to Oklahoma NORML, which could be why there’s been so much legal pot sold in 2020!
April Cannabis Showers
April brought more than showers and stay at home orders for the Oklahoma cannabis market. Cannabis consumers there spent the month of April buying and consuming regulated cannabis at impressive rates. The record April sales are equivalent to more than $700 million on an annualized basis, which would double last year’s sales!
Industry insiders credit the firey sales to the usual 4/20 increase in cannabis consumption. Considered a holiday to cannasseurs, dispensaries offer deals and sales to commemorate. It’s also believed that neighboring consumers from Arkansas are crossing state lines for their cannabis, thus contributing to possible inflation. Sometimes half the price, many take the hike and their chances to an Oklahoma dispensary.
Yet another potential reason for the booming sales is the ability of Oklahoman dispensary owners to pivot to curbside sales of their product. Deemed an essential business in response to COVID-19, dispensaries have been the unsung heroes of the pandemic.
Also celebrated for their quick movement in hemp cultivation initiatives, Oklahoma continues to show states like California up in the regulated cannabis game. An unusual star in the market, thanks to manufacturers, processors, dispensaries, and most importantly, patients, Oklahoma is an example of how to launch a successful and mutually beneficial medical cannabis program. The Oklahoma cannabis community experienced an unexpected setback back in May when Gov. Kevin Stitt vetoed a bill that would’ve allowed home delivery of regulated cannabis.
Despite setbacks and in just over 2 years since state-determined legalization, Oklahoma has created one of the most impressive markets in the country. With over 5% of state residents registered as MMJ patients, they show no signs of letting up either.
Regulated Cannabis Sales: Stay in the Know
CannaCon Oklahoma has been postponed until September 28-29, 2o20, which means you still have time to get your tickets and join us! You’ll have the opportunity to network with industry leaders and meet likeminded business owners and cannabis users. Get your tickets today! We can’t wait to see you!


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Infinity Foils Inc., a member company of the UEI Group, has announced the winner of its Foil Sweepstakes.
Seidl’s Bindery of Houston, TX, USA, won an entire mill roll of Infinity Foils’ new MH release hot stamping foil. Matt Se… Read More »
Infinity Foils has been named the exclusive North American distributor for Nakai. The appointment is effective immediately, according to Naoyuki Shigeta, senior executive vice president of Nakai International Corp.
&ldquo… Read More »
UEI Group, headquartered in Overland Park, KS, USA, has announced it has acquired the assets of Falcontec Ltd. to strengthen UEI Group’s position in the hot stamping and embossing industry. The combined company will underscore the UEI Group&rsq… Read More »


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The latest Honda news, auto shows, reviews and test-drives of Honda cars with photo galleries and videos.
The HR-V from Honda was firm against an influx of new competitors. It remained one of the best sellers in the small SUV segment. However, this does not mean that Honda will rest.
Honda is planning to have 2/3 of all its sales to emerge from EVs by 2030.
Honda has stated about a great recall for this year’s Civic Sedan and Coupe offerings in the U.S. The automaker will upgrade the software that influences the EPB functionality. This fix will be free of charge.
The innovated Civic Si from Honda will be presented at this year’s Auto Show held in LA.
The innovated, 10th-gen Civic Hatchback from Honda has arrived and will be showed off in Paris.
A 2014 Odyssey from Honda was tuned by Bisimoto Engineering.
Pictures of the next year’s Civic hatch from Honda appeared in the Internet.
Honda gives its touches for celebrating the 25th anniversary of Sonic the Hedgehog.
The 2018 Accord from Honda will be larger, likely as the Civic from Honda.
Paparazzi have snapped the next-gen Civic Si from Honda. The vehicle underwent testing without camouflage.
All the latest news, reviews and test-drives of Honda cars with picture galleries and videos. Honda news (2017) stories updated weekly, our archive with 87 posts covering everything about Honda autos.