text:
- Japan Telecom to lease out broadband fiber-optic communications lines to companies by the hour starting next year. The company will offer the right to send the optical signals of various wavelengths along its fiber-optic lines. Each line, which can transmit data at 10Gbps, can be used simultaneously by several firms.
Mobile / Wireless
- J-Phone opens a Vodafone mobile phone store in JR Shinjuku Station. Vodafone holds a controlling interest in the Japanese firm's corporate parent. J-Phone, which intends to change the brand name of its mobile phones to "Vodafone" by the end of the year, plans to gradually remodel all of its outlets.
- Fujitsu looking to partner in the field of hard disk drive development and production but is also considering selling its HDD operations. Negotiations related to the HDD division are under way with both Japanese and foreign companies and that Fujitsu wants to engineer a tie-up arrangement by March 2004. The firm wants to wipe out its cumulative loss of more than 100 billion yen by restructuring.
- Advantest nearly doubles its full-year net loss forecast as a dull economy and uncertainty over war in Iraq took their toll. But the company, Japan's largest maker of microchip-testing equipment and one of Japan's most-actively traded hi-tech shares, vowed to return to the black on a pre-tax basis in the next business year from April 1, with help from new products and cost cuts.
- Niws plans to enter the market for Linux software. Until now, the systems developer focused on Unix systems, but it has decided to respond to the strong growth in demand for Linux products. It plans to use Linux in all its systems by May, and sign cooperative agreements with 50 companies with Linux technology in the coming year. Its sales target is 3 billion yen in the first year.
- Japan Research Institute develops a security software application for Linux. The software will be marketed in April, together with an IT service offering. The module adds monitoring functions, forced access controls and enough other security features to meet the criteria for B1 level security as detailed in the U.S. government's Orange Book for computer procurement.
- Japanese government re-evaluating 41 legacy computer systems running proprietary software that are now being used by central government ministries and agencies. The Liberal Democratic Party's Select Commission on the e-Japan Priority Policy Program will present reform guidelines calling for the replacement of legacy systems with new, open systems that can run general-purpose software.
- An All Nippon Airways computer system down for about two and a half hours Friday morning, causing cancellations of about 150 domestic flights and delays in others nationwide. The computer glitch occurred at around 4:50 a.m. on the first day of a three-day weekend in a system that manages flight schedules, nationwide cargo transport, and check-ins at Tokyo's Haneda airport.
- KT Freetel names a majority of externals to its board of directors. KTF has appointed 5 outside directors to the 9-member board of directors to guarantee its independence. The former environment minister Kim Myung-ja was the 5th appointee as an outside director in the directors' pool that consists of professors, businessmen and lawyers.
- DDI Pocket announces international roaming service in Taiwan for PHS (personal handyphone system) users. International roaming services for cellular telephones have been relatively expensive, but with the spread of common PHS standards overseas, DDI Pocket can offer the service at low cost. The company is partnering with Taiwan's First International Telecom to offer the service.
- KT to jointly market wireless broadband services in the region. KT's partners are StarHub, Telstra, Maxis Communications and China Netcom. The alliance will provide global roaming Internet services across the Asian-Pacific region starting in the second half of 2003. The marketing alliance will provide high-speed wireless Internet access in South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and China.
- Heads of conglomerates in Seoul to lead operations following the outbreak of a U.S. war with Iraq. LG Chairman Koo Bon-moo has been engaged in the establishment of a holding company and pushed R&D investments in electronics sector as planned. SK Chairman Son Kil-seung is busy coping with fraud allegations, while drawing up a contingency plan in response to the Iraqi war.
- E-commerce sales reached 44.92 trillion won ($36.05 billion) in the third quarter of last year, the National Statistical Office (NSO) said yesterday. The office said this was a 3.5 percent or 1.57 trillion won rise compared to the preceding quarter. It also represents a surge of 41.0 percent compared to the same period in 2001 when 31.86 trillion won worth of business was conducted on-line.
- KDDI to cooperate with the Communications Authority of Thailand, Thailand's largest communications carrier, to link Japanese companies in Thailand with Japan through a low-cost international IP network, by June. KDDI has already formed similar links with communications carriers in China, offering IP networking, and in South Korea, offering wide-area Ethernet.
- Samsung SDI targeting a big increase in sales of plasma-display panels this year. The South Korean company aims to sell 350,000 plasma-display panels this year, up from 63,000 in 2002, citing increased orders from domestic companies and negotiations with suppliers in Europe, China and Japan. Samsung SDI expects its monthly capacity of 20,000 units to rise to about 40,000 units by 4Q.
- Samsung Electronics ranks as the world's largest flat-screen manufacturer for five years in a row in 2002, a report issued by U.S.-based market research firm Display Research showed. LG.Philips LCD, a unit of the LG Group, also ranked second in the global market share for the flat-panel screens, known as TFT-LCD.
A week in tech is brought to you by FinanceAsia, and IRG, Asia's boutique investment bank to the telecoms, media and tech sectors. More can be found at:


text:
How we will soon be paying on everyday level and what significant changes are coming to the world of financial services and banking were among the key topics of the panel discussion „Mobile payments in Serbia – past, present and future“. H.E. Arne Sanes Bjornstad, Ambassador of Norway to Serbia and Norwegian fintech Auka hosted the panel.
The way of paying and providing financial services in Serbia, as well as across Europe, will be affected by Revised Payment Service Directive – PSD2, adopted in EU early this year, even though Serbia is not the part of EU at the moment, it was concluded at the panel. This directive enables third parties to provide financial services, whether these are fintech companies or giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook or Amazon.
According to PSD2, banks will have to provide access to third parties to account of their clients through APIs and enable them to form finance services based on bank data and infrastructure. This will have to happen September 2019 the latest, when Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS), which regulate PSD2, will come to power.
“People don’t like change, but if you give them a solution, they will accept it. This can apply as well to mobile payments. When mobile payments come to a market, it is like a tsunami, and you don’t know what is going to happen. Banks can be very scared, but they want to have an opportunity to be a part of that because nobody knows what this ‘tsunami’ will bring. You can’t fight change, but you can be the change“, underlined Daniel Doderlein, CEO and Founder of Auka.
Srđan Novaković, Head of Group Digital Banking at Addiko Bank Serbia exclaimed that market in Serbia, and the regional markets are ready for the mobile payments:
„Customers are glad to accept it, but it’s not all about the customers. It’s about the merchants as well, the big players, and also about the banks who need to get together and to launch the best and the only one mobile app that would be acceptable for the customers. I think it’s feasible and we need to be quick because the customer wants to have a simple solution directly on the mobile phone rather than to use payment cards”.
“If banks go together in this, we can succeed. The banking is going to change. All the banks in Serbia have the will, but you need permission as well. Serbia was often used as a pilot country for this”, said Miloš Polovina, President of Digital Banking Committee at the Association of Serbian Banks.
Zorana Branković, Head of Multichannel Office, Banca Intesa Serbia, said that the future of mobile payments in Serbia is bright and that there is a lot of positive will from the banks’ side, from the National Bank of Serbia and the users as well. „In the next three to four years we will have a completely different situation in banking and payments in our country. Banca Intesa is doing a lot of things already in this regard“, she added.
In research that Auka commissioned in April this year, 2000 senior decision-makers in banks were asked about payments regulations and mobile payments, out of them 100 Serbian bankers.
In the survey, even though 45 per cent of Serbian bankers said that banking would fundamentally change in the coming period, not more than 30 per cent of them said they are ready to accept that third parties take over the payment channels.
Doderlein added that the biggest obstacle to introducing mobile payments would be if no bank would have the courage to cooperate with fintechs.

domain: news


text: MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. (AP) - There's a new place to get fruit, vegetables and other fresh food at Central Michigan University. The Morning Sun of Mount Pleasant reports vendors set up shop in a field on campus Tuesday for the new student-run farmers market. A student group called Campus Grow is behind the effort. Co-president Claire Gudhrie says the group's focus is on gardening and sustainability. The market comes after they organized a one-day mini-market last year where vegetables and baked goods were sold. Campus Grow collaborated with nonprofit Real Food Grows Inc. to get the Mount Pleasant school's approval for the market. Additional market days are planned this month.


text:
Industry News & Trends
Amazon becomes INHOPE funding Partner
Taking action today is Amazon, our newest annual funding partner. We are delighted to welcome Amazon and its global subsidiaries in becoming our newest sponsors, reflecting their continued and ongoing commitment to preventing child sexual abuse material (CSAM). In 2021, the INHOPE network handled almost 1 million URL’s depicting suspected child sexual abuse and exploitation, and this illegal and harmful content continues to proliferate online at alarming rates. It is going to take the role of all players in the digital ecosystem to prevent the spread of CSAM.
Amazon uses a variety of tools and technologies to prevent and detect CSAM on its consumer services, as well as quickly investigating and responding to reports of CSAM. Amazon also engages with and supports a wide variety of organizations in order to help protect children online.
“Amazon has devoted a significant amount of resources to prevent, detect, and respond to child sexual abuse material, and this three-pronged approach is how we must challenge bad actors. This year we have seen a serious shift in action globally and this is a great step forward. We are pleased to welcome a business like Amazon as one of our funding partners.” – Samantha Woolfe, Global Partnerships and Network Expansion Lead at INHOPE
The contribution of partners, such as Amazon, is reflected in INHOPE’s ability to expand its network, raise awareness amongst the public of how to make reports, and ensuring that a coordinated, effective, and secure approach to reporting CSAM is undertaken internationally.
“Becoming an annual funding partner of INHOPE is another step in working alongside international colleagues to combat child sexual abuse material. As a business, we are invested in assisting NGO’s and hotlines such as INHOPE, our businesses, our customers, and the global community fight online child sexual abuse and exploitation.” - Jeff Collins, Director of Trust and Safety, Amazon Web Services.
INHOPE welcomes the commitment being demonstrated by Amazon in its approach to fighting CSAM.
INHOPE welcomes the commitment being demonstrated by Amazon in its approach to fighting CSAM.'


text:
dYdX, the decentralized derivatives trade, has secured $65 million in a Sequence C elevate led by Paradigm.
The San Francisco-based protocol improvement agency, which is concentrated on decentralized perpetual swaps, introduced a $10 million Series B fundraise as just lately as January of this yr. Three Arrows Capital and DeFiance Capital led that spherical, with Wintermute, Hashed, GSR, SCP, Scalar Capital, Spartan Group, and RockTree Capital all collaborating.
“It’s a elevate that’s coming fairly quickly after the earlier one. The explanation for that is we simply see an enormous alternative in crypto derivatives and particularly the best way that decentralized derivatives can play into the market,” Antonio Juliano, founding father of dYdX, instructed The Block. “Actually our objective for dYdX is to make it one of many largest crypto exchanges interval, however on a 3 to five-year time horizon.”
Earlier backers of the protocol embody a16z, Bain Capital Ventures and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.
A variety of new strategic buyers participated within the Sequence C elevate alongside Paradigm, together with liquidity suppliers QCP Capital, CMS Holdings, CMT Digital, Finlink Capital, Sixtant, Menai Monetary Group, MGNR, Kronos Analysis; enterprise capital corporations HashKey, Electrical Capital, Delphi Digital; and StarkWare, a associate targeted on scaling options for blockchains.
The cash shall be used so as to add new belongings and options to the trade’s perpetual contracts, launch a brand new cell app, proceed to spend money on worldwide enlargement, and to double the 16 person-strong workforce over the course of the following yr. There are additionally plans to decentralize the protocol.
“Our objective actually is to get to a degree the place we’re solely publishing open-source code and all of dYdX is run natively on the blockchain, and the blockchain is accessible to extra folks in additional locations on the earth,” mentioned Juliano.
Launched October 2018, cumulative buying and selling volumes throughout perpetual, margin and spot buying and selling on dYdX reached $2.5 billion in 2020, up from $63 million in 2019. By January 27 this yr, the protocol had already surpassed $3.5 billion in whole buying and selling quantity.
However in February, dYdX launched a brand new Layer 2 protocol for cross-margined perpetual contracts utilizing StarkWare’s StarkEx scalability engine. The concept behind the mixing was to make the trade perform extra effectively, and dYdX mentioned in a press launch that prospects can now commerce with zero fuel charges, decrease buying and selling charges, and lowered minimal commerce sizes.
“The first objective of rolling that out was for scalability. An enormous downside that’s plagued decentralized exchanges on the entire, dYdX included, was fuel charges and transaction charges on high of Ethereum,” mentioned Juliano.
At one level in March this yr, dYdX customers have been paying on common over $100 in fuel charges to make a single commerce, in accordance with Juliano. Below the brand new Layer 2 system, dYdX picks up these charges, however they’re roughly 100x lower than what its customers have been paying beforehand.
“We’re capable of supply very aggressive charges now when it comes to what customers are used to on centralized exchanges,” mentioned Juliano.
Prior to now 5 months, the Layer 2 protocol has supported over $2.2 billion in quantity from over 11,000 merchants.
© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This text is supplied for informational functions solely. It’s not supplied or supposed for use as authorized, tax, funding, monetary, or different recommendation.


text:
Macy’s Inc. is opening its stores at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, two hours earlier than last year, to lure holiday shoppers.
You have until October 17th, 2014 to apply to be a Phillies ballgirl.
The retailer Macy’s has agreed to pay $650,000 to settle allegations of racial profiling at its flagship store in Manhattan’s Herald Square.
The “Philadelphia Fashion Incubator” is a yearlong designer-in-residence program that provides the participants workspace, guidance from industry professionals, and essential resources needed to run a business.
Flipp gathers those ads and lets you keep your favorite stores at your fingertips, highlighting the best deals and coupons to help you save money.
The announcement comes on the heels of a strong holiday shopping season for the department store chain.
The following are five of the best American cities for Black Friday deals.
With wind gusts expected to go up to forty miles an hour today, shoppers are facing an unexpected obstacle.
James Kenney, vice president and general manager says about 150,000-250,000 people are expected to view the walk-through display that depicts the Charles Dickens tale, “A Christmas Carol.”
An organization dedicated to reducing gun violence in high risk communities in Philadelphia was among groups participating in Macy’s “Shop for a Cause” day.
Pyro Spectaculars produces some of the biggest July 4th fireworks displays. We talked to them about their plans for this year.
With the right clothing, men can look good at any age. Here are some fashion tips to help dad spruce up the wardrobe.
Philadelphia is stitching together what could be the next big fashion designer, by setting up a “fashion incubator” at a center city department store.
With no funds available from the city, the Philadelphia Police Foundation is launching a fundraising drive to build a home for the police department’s mounted patrol unit.
So did you receive any gift cards this holiday that you really didn’t want? Or maybe you have a handful of gift cards with small balances remaining and you don’t know what to do with them?


text:
The Associated Press reports Apple has a somewhat ambitious goal of 100 million subscribers for its new “Apple Music” streaming music subscription service, likely to be unveiled at today’s WWDC 2015 Keynote address.
A subscriber base that large would trump competing services such as Spotify, Pandora, Deezer and others, which had a collective 41 million paid U.S. subscribers in 2014 per the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
Apple Music is the Cupertino companies rebranded and revamped version of Beats Music, the streaming service Apple purchased last year. The service is expected to cost $10 per month, although Apple is likely to offer a three-month trial period to draw in listeners.
In comparison to Apple’s lofty 100 million subscriber goal, Beats Music had 303,000 subscribers as of December. Market leader Spotify currently boasts 4.7 million U.S. subscribers. However, Apple does have over 800 million users with iTunes accounts, and even if they only lure a small percentage of those users to the new streaming service, it would still add up to substantial numbers for the new service. The company plans to suggest an Apple Music subscription when those users purchase a song or album via the iTunes Store.
Apple is expected to unveil the new Apple Music service at today’s opening Keynote for this year’s WWDC 2015. MacTrast will be covering the keynote, beginning at 10AM Pacific/1PM Eastern time.


text:
For the past half-century, the avocado has defined the North County community of Fallbrook. The town touts itself as “The Avocado Capital of the World,” but that may be changing.
Water shortages, more specifically the rising cost of water, are threatening the core industry of the area as some growers have given up while others have stopped watering parts of their groves. The profit margin is too low, they said, even though the demand for avocados and the selling price are as high as ever.
While an official figure isn’t available, farming officials in San Diego County estimate that growers have let 20 percent to 30 percent of the avocado trees in Fallbrook and Valley Center stop bearing fruit in the past three years.
Three years ago, as drought persisted in Southern California, water districts mandated that growers reduce their water consumption by 30 percent or face financial penalties. Water expenses currently account for roughly 70 percent of the cost of cultivating and maintaining an avocado tree.
Today, a drive around Fallbrook, Valley Center and other North County agricultural sites will reveal avocado groves full of stumps or parched trees that have turned brown and fruitless.
Certain growers have tried to carve out a more profitable niche by setting up websites for direct sales to consumers. Others are starting to experiment with higher-density clusters of avocado trees to reduce water use. Still others expect to call it quits, believing that escalating water rates are far more formidable than imports from Chile and Mexico.
David Smissen had a 22-acre avocado grove — about 2,000 trees — on his property just north of state Route 76 on a hillside that overlooks Gird Road.
Then two years ago, Smissen said, he stopped watering about half of the trees after making an annual net profit of only $2,000. “That’s pretty much when I said this isn’t working,” he recalled.
Smissen plans to cut down the dead trees and sell them as firewood.
Ed Buscis and Vikki Fulkowski are not growers, but like many people in Fallbrook, have close ties to the avocado industry. They run a small company called Avocado Dreamin LLC that makes avocado oil-based hand and body lotion.
“Last week we went to the Avocado Festival,” Buscis said. There were about 350 booths set up for the expected 70,000 visitors who came to downtown Fallbrook that Sunday for the community’s trademark annual event.
“What was really upsetting was as you walked down Main Street, there were probably only 20 booths that had anything avocado related,” Buscis said. “It’s sad. It seems to me we are losing that farming feel.”
Communities such as Fallbrook and Valley Center, which mostly rely on water pumped in from outside sources, have been hit the hardest compared to growers who rely on groundwater. The cost of water for agricultural use in the county has more than doubled since 2004 and further rate increases are on the horizon despite the drought being declared over earlier this year. That’s because much, if not most, of a water district’s expenses are linked to pipe maintenance, other infrastructure needs and capital projects.
“If it costs $6,000 to grow an acre of avocados, between $4,000 and $5,000 of that cost is for water,” said Bob Lucy, co-owner of the Del Rey Avocado Co., a farming, packaging and distribution business in Fallbrook. “It’s a huge part of your bill.”
Water hardships aside, the local avocado industry remains sizable.
California produces about 90 percent of all the avocados grown in the United States, and San Diego County accounts for more than half of that figure.
Almost 25,000 acres in this region were farmed for avocados in 2009, producing nearly 46,000 tons of the fruit, said Eric Larson, executive director of the San Diego County Farm Bureau, The wholesale value of that crop was about $116 million. Figures for 2010 are not yet available.
Larson estimates that roughly 5,000 acres of local avocado groves have been idled in the past few years.
At Del Rey Avocado, thousands of avocados were being sorted and packaged one afternoon last month for distribution across the United States. Lucy, who is also a director of the Rainbow Municipal Water District, said that three years ago growers were hit with a “triple whammy.”
“We were saying to the farmers, ‘You need to reduce your water by 30 percent because of the drought. We’re going to give you water that’s a poorer quality — saltier water. And oh, by the way, we’re going to raise your water costs.’”
He and Charlie Wolk, who has managed groves in the area for 36 years and is president of the California Avocado Commission, both said the industry will need two things to thrive in the future:
• Water districts must be persuaded to give agriculture users discounted prices.
• The development of new types of avocado trees, including ones that suck up less water, can process saltier water or can be planted in closer proximity to one another and bear more fruit.
“The problem with research is you don’t get the answer tomorrow. It takes time,” Wolk said.
Wolk remains hopeful about Fallbrook’s decades-long tradition with avocados. He said that for a hundred years, people have at various times predicted the death of agriculture in the county, only to be proven wrong.
Fallbrook will always be identified with the avocado, said Richard Kennedy, CEO of the town’s chamber of commerce. But he also said the industry’s decline has made it necessary for civic leaders to explore other ways of marketing the area.
“We’re a community trying to find its identity,” Kennedy said.


text:
November 14, 2015 – LiberTerre was a proud sponsor of The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation Cook for the Cure: Culinary Showdown. Now in it’s third year, this interactive culinary event raised an impressive $730,000 for Breast Cancer Research.
Held at the Westin Harbour Castle, an all-star line-up of chefs from the Food Network (including, Lynn Crawford, Elizabeth Falkner, Marcus Samuelson etc.) joined fifty fundraising foodies to compete in a live cooking competition like no other! This extraordinary challenge gave culinary enthusiasts the opportunity to cook alongside celebrity chefs in a chopped-style competition.
Our LiberTerre Pork was featured in the appetizer round as a “Mystery Ingredient.” The chefs and fundraisers expertly incorporated our LiberTerre Pork Jowls, creating five different yet delicious dishes in less than 20 minutes! In the end, Chef Marcus Samuelson took home the top prize – congratulation to both you and your team!
To learn more about the Cook for the Cure: Culinary Showdown, please click here!


text:
AMD's first Fusion accelerated processing units are apparently proving popular—so much so that, according to DigiTimes, AMD is working with TSMC to increase production of the chips in order to address tight supply in the United States and Europe.
Basing itself on a story by Taiwan's Commercial Times, DigiTimes says AMD wants to secure "all new capacity from TSMC's 12-inch fab, Fab 14's phase 4 facilities to solve the shortage issue." AMD's efforts aren't just aimed at keeping chips flowing to the U.S. and Europe. Reportedly, the chipmaker also intends to push its Fusion APUs in China next month, which may well require extra capacity.
As frustrating as shortages can be for consumers, the shortage is likely caused by strong demand, which sounds like good news from AMD's perspective. That good news isn't undeserved, of course. As we've seen in our successive looks at the Brazos platform—first in pre-release form, then in a $330 Acer netbook, and finally on the desktop—the new AMD APUs can spar with both Atoms and entry-level Consumer Ultra-Low-Voltage processors, offering solid integrated graphics and great battery life to boot.
|The TR Podcast 166 is now available on YouTube||22|
|Chromebooks now come with 1TB of cloud storage for two years||28|
|Deal of the week: Devil's Canyon starting at $179.99, Intel 730 Series for $0.42/GB, and more||37|
|AMD prolongs A-series software deal; price cuts still a work in progress||24|
|Report: Valve lays out new rules for Early Access games||59|
|Intel's 2015 revenue outlook beats Street expectations||53|
|Intel's 3D NAND has 32 layers and 256Gb per die||61|
|Telltale's Game of Thrones game looks pretty good||13|
|Sounds like a good way to conceal the terrible financial performance of the mobile business unit.||+36|


text:
How COVID-19 Is Impacting Home Sales in Northeast Ohio
At this point in time, the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States is impacting nearly every dimension of daily life — restaurants and stores are closed, small businesses are hurting and people are avoiding public settings and staying home. So, how has all this impacted the real estate business?
Spring is usually a hot market for home sales in Northeast Ohio, especially with 2020’s low inventory and super-low mortgage rates. However, the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to slow the projected home sales for the Greater Cleveland area.
Even with home sales halting with the rest of public life, realtors are adapting and the availability of credit will still be irresistible for many homebuyers. It’s not all doom and gloom for real estate this spring, and here are some specific ways the housing market is changing and adapting.
Virtual Open Houses and Tours
Strict social distancing is proving to be an effective measure to slow the spread of the virus in Ohio, so some realtors are choosing to go the digital route for home tours and open houses. Virtual open houses can be as simple as a group video call over FaceTime, but some realtors are going all-in with 3-D imaging for self-guided tours.
For those who are still offering on-site tours, they are almost exclusively one-to-one, and social distance and frequent handwashing are encouraged.
Even Lower Interest Rates
Mortgage interest was already extremely low heading into Spring 2020, but following the outbreak of COVID-19, interest rates have hit a record low, troughing at around 3.3% in the Northeast Ohio region.
So, what does that mean for home sales?
Even with hesitation over big purchases in the U.S. right now, historically low interest rates are a big motivator for homebuyers to consider making a purchase this year. Home sales may slow down, and sellers may be inclined to lower their prices. However, home sales are still going to happen because credit is very available.
You Can’t Move In
Here’s a big catch for those who purchase a home this spring — you can’t move in right away. Professional cleaning services are recommended prior to a move-in, and with stay-at-home orders and non-essential business closures like the ones in Ohio becoming more prevalent, move-in dates will likely be delayed.
This is another way the real estate market is becoming more flexible — to keep people safe, the closing date or move-in dates may need to be set back to accommodate social distancing, lack of available movers and good hygiene practices.
As the pandemic situation evolves, more changes, holdups and innovations may be coming to the real estate market in 2020. If you are selling or purchasing a home right now, please remember to wash your hands, maintain social distance and stay safe!


text:
Black Friday is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. Black Friday is all the time celebrated on the Friday after Thanksgiving. In 2018, it falls on Friday, November 23. In case you’ve ever puzzled the place the identify originated, the most well-liked story hyperlinks it to retailers. Retail companies would document losses in purple and profits in black when doing their accounting. The day after Thanksgiving was a tremendous shopping day for retailers — because of vacation buyers in search of discounted merchandise — so many retailers would file a revenue. Therefore, the time period Black Friday.
Whereas tablets and smartphones continue to extend in recognition, laptops stay among the hottest Black Friday doorbusters. The Apple Store not has reductions on Black Friday, so look to third-get together retailers — Finest Purchase, Walmart, and Staples — for offers on the various MacBook Professional and Air models. Low-end laptops now begin at under $100 for doorbusters, and you’ll have to spend around $350 for a excessive-finish mannequin. Gaming laptops are still round $500. Most laptops will meet the free delivery minimal for the majority of shops, however we never advocate paying shipping fees. Either get it in-retailer, or discover a retailer that gives free transport.
Hyped-up offers events are great opportunities to shift previous stock rapidly. Whereas the reductions are arduous to argue with, it’s price digging just a little deeper to search out out precisely how much of a reduction you are getting. The likes of Amazon will at all times make its discounts look as big as potential, typically displaying the saving they’re offering towards the RRP of a product. As a result, a few of these ‘savings’ you’re getting aren’t as huge as you suppose, with prices maybe solely slightly decrease than they have been the day before.
Amazon is different from different Black Friday retailers. Not only does the online-only retailer not have a brick-and-mortar location, it also doesn’t have a traditional Black Friday ad. As an alternative of releasing a print advert for the Largest Shopping Day of the Year, Amazon releases new offers every hour starting the week of Black Friday. While it could be tougher to plan your Black Friday purchasing without an advert from Amazon, the variety of deals and deep reductions on gadgets across the website greater than makes up for it. In addition to offers during the week of Black Friday, Amazon also offers amazing “Countdown to Black Friday” deals starting on November 1 in addition to mind-blowing Cyber Week deals. With so many sought-after presents at such sizzling costs, many people have hassle staying away from their smartphone or laptop in the course of the holiday purchasing season.
Apple has been notoriously stingy when it comes to any sort of gross sales on its merchandise typically, and not even the yearly mania around Black Friday will get it to budge a lot. In fact, the tech giant abandoned discounts at its Apple Shops on Black Friday years ago, only attempting to entice shoppers with free iTunes gift cards with iPhone, iPad, and Mac purchases. It’s a tactic that other Apple companions have adopted as nicely – you’re now much more likely to get a retailer present card from Goal and Walmart when you buy an Apple product than any sort of savings from the conventional price. You may typically have to depend on retailers like MacMall and B&H Picture for actual offers, particularly on MacBooks.
Final yr gave us discounts that took the Xbox One S down to ?199.ninety nine alongside copies of Minecraft and Forza Horizon 3, which in itself was an excellent deal, although the very best worth bundle had to be RECREATION’s offering of an Xbox One S with FIFA 17, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Forza Horizon three, together with a Now TV Sky Cinema pass – that pack would have cost you ?229.ninety nine. With all this in thoughts, it is simple to conclude that we’ll be seeing bundles this year that may each match those prices and go even additional, we’ll doubtless see Xbox One S bundles from as little as ?160 whilst you can guess on a handful of titles being offered up in Xbox One X bundles free of charge during Black Friday week.


text:
Dog Buyers Beware:
Heartbreak Comes With Sale of Unhealthy Pets
Metro stores sell stock from breeders cited for violations
By STEVE NEAVLING FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
The moment she laid eyes on them, Jennifer Moodie fell in love.
But a day after she paid $900 for two Yorkshire terrier pups at a Utica pet shop, one went into seizures. The pup, named Jasper, spent the next four days attached to IVs at a vet's office and died in Moodie's arms within two hours of coming home.
"His blood-sugar was so low that he had brain damage," said Moodie, 25, of Northville.
Moodie sued Utica Pet Supply, where she bought the dogs, and received her money back for Jasper in an out-of-court settlement.
The other pup, Kaylie, spent her first few months coughing and vomiting before bouncing back.
Those dogs were among thousands shipped to metro Detroit pet stores in recent years from large out-of-state breeders, many of which have been repeatedly cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for raising puppies in substandard conditions.
Veterinarians critical of large breeders say puppies raised by them - like Moodie's - are often inbred and housed in squalid, close quarters that expose them to genetic diseases, parasites and deadly viruses that may not surface for years.
Most dogs from large facilities go through life without any reported health or behavioral problems, but those with problems can leave pet owners with hefty vet bills - not to mention the heartache of seeing their dog die or become debilitated at an early age. That happens often enough that some animal lovers now refuse to buy from pet stores, saying the risk of getting a dog from a troubled breeder is too great and consumer protections too weak.
Store owners, however, defend getting dogs from breeders. Some say reports of unhealthy conditions at large, licensed facilities are an anomaly, contending that those breeders are far superior to unregulated backyard breeders. And by purchasing from large breeding facilities, the stores receive a wide range of breeds and money-back warranties for sick or dead pups.
Owners also note the USDA - which is responsible for regulating commercial breeders - has not shut down any of the facilities they buy from.
"I'm very content with the quality of dogs we sell," said John Geoth, 47, co-owner of Utica Pet Supply, one of metro Detroit's largest importers of dogs from large out-of-state breeders.
Geoth said he buys all of his dogs from Happy Tails Kennel, a Minnesota breeding operation that is the target of an ongoing federal investigation for housing dogs in squalid conditions. Since 2002, the facility has been cited numerous times, with violations including confining dogs to cramped, filthy cages and selling puppies less than 8 weeks old.
But Geoth says the product is still superior.
"We're putting out a companion animal that is unsurpassed by anyone," he said.
Where the puppies come from
More than 3,500 puppies arrived at metro Detroit pet stores last year from the country's largest breeding facilities and brokers. More than 80% of those dogs were supplied by the nation's eight largest exporters - and all of them have had multiple citations by the USDA in the last five years.
In addition to Utica Pet Supply, which imported 400 dogs, the other big importers in metro Detroit last year were Family of Pets, with shops in Troy, Roseville, Novi, Waterford and Livonia, and Petland, another major pet store chain.
Family of Pets imported more than 1,350 dogs from four facilities with multiple violations; Petland, more than 600 from cited facilities.
Jim Kurdziel, co-owner of the Westland Petland store, said people within the franchise visit facilities they buy from and would stop buying dogs from anyone who mistreats animals. The Free Press looked at the most recent USDA inspections of the eight largest breeders of dogs sent to metro Detroit, some dating to 2002, others as recent as this year. Those inspections have found various problems. Dogs have been confined to overcrowded cages, surrounded by flies and feces and exposed to harsh weather.
A report from a November USDA inspection of Happy Tails, the largest exporter of dogs to metro Detroit, documented dozens of dogs crammed into cages that were too small and had floors that exposed the animals' feet and legs to injury.
Inspections in 2002 and 2003 at the same facility found similarly substandard cages and feces-littered kennels for 120 adult dogs. The facility also sold puppies before they reached 8 weeks, the minimum age required under federal law.
Reports on the more than a dozen other out-of-state breeders that account for the last 20% of dogs sent to metro Detroit could not be obtained, and USDA officials declined to comment.
There are no public records tracking dogs sold at metro Detroit pet stores that came from in-state breeders, but animal welfare groups say Michigan does not have a reputation for abusive breeders.
‘I cried for over two hours'
People who buy dogs with health problems typically have two courses of action - they can sue the pet store they bought the dog from or they can formally complain to the state Department of Agriculture.
Since 2000, at least 65 Michigan residents have taken action against the Petland, Utica Pet Supply and Family of Pets. Most alleged they were sold sickly puppies and some claimed to have been misled about the breed of the dog. Many had paperwork showing the dog came from an out-of-state breeder, but it is not known whether all the complaints involved out-of-state dogs.
While the number is relatively small, Karlene Belyea, executive director of the Michigan Veterinary Medical Association, said she believes few owners take action even when a dog falls ill, dies or become debilitated later in life because of the conditions they were raised in. Most, she said, don't know they have legal recourse.
"It's so sad when people bond with these puppies and then find out there are significant health problems because the dogs were bred by a bad breeder," Belyea said.
Since 2000, at least 10 people have filed lawsuits or complaints against Utica Pet Supply for selling sick puppies; some died soon after they were bought.
Yetiva Allen of Flushing, who filed a complaint with the state Department of Agriculture against Utica Pet Supply shortly after she said she spent more than $1,000 on vet bills for a wheaten terrier pup she bought there in July 2003. The dog developed arthritis and joint problems in November 2005, causing her to limp and sometimes collapse.
"She's had bouts where she just lies on the floor and whines and cries," said Allen, whose dog came from Happy Tails. "Once it lasted 12 hours."
At least nine people have filed complaints with the state Department of Agriculture since 2003 about sick puppies from Family of Pets.
Bridget Polk, 38, of Mt. Clemens said the schnauzer mix she bought from Family of Pets at Macomb Mall in Roseville was bouncy, adorable and a perfect companion.
But she said when she found her dog came from Happy Tails, a breeder whose history she knew of, "I cried for over two hours."
Although Polk hasn't had any trouble with her dog, she filed a complaint with the state this year, saying the store led her to believe the puppy didn't come from a large breeder. The store denied misleading her.
"This is an industry that is counting on consumer ignorance and impulse," said Deborah Howard, founder of the nonprofit Companion Animal Protection Society, which monitors breeders and has campaigned to warn consumers of the risks of buying dogs from stores that buy from large breeders. "It's all about the cute puppy in the window."
'She wasn't herself'
John Stottele, the owner of Family of Pets, declined to be interviewed but said in an e-mail that he and his veterinarian have visited Happy Tails and found no problems.
"If Happy Tails or any other professional breeder were to have their license suspended or revoked by the USDA, we would no longer purchase puppies from them," Stottele wrote.
Family of Pets also bought more than 50 puppies last year from Pick of the Litter, a Minnesota breeder cited by the USDA in January for broken, substandard and overcrowded cages; animals exposed to wind and rain; dirty feeding and water bowls, and no proof of veterinary care.
Parvovirus, an often deadly disease that attacks a dog's digestive system, is among the ailments that spread easily under those conditions, and a state Department of Agriculture inspection of the Roseville Family of Pets store in March 2005 found an outbreak of it.
Pick of the Litter owner Kathy Bauk declined to comment on the conditions of her facility, saying past publicity has subjected her to harassment from animal-welfare activists she considers dangerous.
Meanwhile, Barbara Ann Quinn bought a yellow lab from Family of Pets in Novi and within an hour of bringing it home its rectum began bleeding. A vet diagnosed the puppy, named Bailey, with parvovirus. Quinn estimates the vet bill ran up to $1,500. It is not clear where Bailey was bred. Although Bailey survived, Quinn said she wasn't a typical lab after that.
"She isn't as big," said Quinn of Warren. "Her coat isn't as glowing. Bailey wasn't herself for a long, long time."
Contact STEVE NEAVLING at 586-469-4935 or email@example.com.


text:
by: Mark Hinchliffe
From: The Courier-Mail
October 28, 2011 1:00AM
FUELLING your car could be making you sick – and not because of the price of petrol.
The nozzles we use to fill up the tank have joined the range of everyday items that are seen as dangerous breeding grounds for bacteria and viruses, the Courier-Mail reported.
Levels on nozzle handles are worse than escalator rails, parking meters, pedestrian buttons on traffic signals and handles on mailboxes, a US study by Kimberly-Clark Professional found.
Infectious diseases expert Flavia Huygens, an associate professor at QUT, warned Australian fuel pump handles could harbour the dangerous superbug methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and she wants service stations to provide alcohol wipes for customers.
Assoc Prof Huygens reviewed a study conducted on Japanese public trains that isolated and identified MRSA, which is highly resistant to antibiotic therapy.
She said the bug could lurk on public areas people touched, particularly on fuel pump handles which are in use all day.
“It’s highly likely with fuel pumps because this superbug is transmitted by skin contact and hand-to-mouth contact,” she said.
Assoc Prof Huygens advised motorists to wash their hands after using a fuel pump and called on service stations to provide alcohol wipes.
Motor Trades Association of Queensland spokesman Richard Payne said there was no particular industry procedures for the hygiene of fuel pump handles.
“It’s up to the individual service stations,” he said. “BP has hand wipes at diesel pumps and consumers should take advantage of hand wipes that are available.”
RACQ spokesman Steve Spalding said diesel pumps were not kept clean enough and suggested disposable plastic gloves could be provided as they were in many European service stations at diesel pumps.
“A disposable glove would cost service stations a few cents and when you look at that against what the customer is spending on a tank of fuel, it’s a small cost to bear,” he said.


text:
By Kemi Akintokun
Lagos, Sept. 8, 2020 (NAN) The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has urged herbal medicine practitioners to collaborate with researchers to make herbal products internationally acceptable after clinical trials.
Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, the Director-General of the agency, made the plea on Tuesday.
Adeyeye said in a statement that the African Traditional Medicines Day that holds every Aug. 31 should be a daily reflection of who we are as Africans.
She said that many Nigerians were using herbal medicine every day.
“NAFDAC has been focussing on making traditional herbal medicines prominent with regards to its activities.
“To this end, in March 2019, long before the advent of COVID-19 in Nigeria, we called for a meeting of all stakeholders including academia, herbal medicine practitioners and legal practitioners.
“The essence of the meeting was to engender a culture of collaborative efforts aimed at promoting research, discovery and production of herbal products,” she said.
According to her, herbal medicines renaissance in Nigeria had already begun.
She said the country has the biodiversity and complementary human capital to sustain herbal medicines production.
“The Federal Government, through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), is making loans available to qualified manufacturers of pharmaceutical products.
“The CBN has also launched the Health Sector Research and Development Intervention Scheme to fund successful proposals on translational R&D and manufacturing of therapeutics, herbal medicines and medical devices for infectious diseases, including COVID-19.
“In addition, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) is funding COVID-19 related herbal medicines clinical trial research through NAFDAC administrative oversight.
“The agency currently has about 40 applications on COVID-19 related herbal medicines submitted by interested parties, many of these are for listing, while only very few are for clinical trials.
“It is important to note that while the listing of herbal product guarantees safety, it is for two years at the first instance.
“An herbal product that has successfully gone through clinical trials would receive NAFDAC full registration and the claims of efficacy and cure can then be made by applicants,” she said.
Adeyeye said that further step to enhance collaborative efforts between the various stakeholders in the herbal medicines industry was the institutionalisation of confidentiality agreement among the parties.
“NAFDAC Legal Services Directorate developed the document and will broker the agreement.
“This is necessary to assure traditional practitioners that intellectual property will not be lost in the process of collaboration.
“The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Trade Mark Office, National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion and patent legal practitioners in the area of protection of intellectual property were brought into discussions with the researchers and practitioners by the agency.
“NAFDAC development of modalities for registration of herbal products is to encourage the growth and standardisation of the sector,” the director-general said.
She said that the ultimate goal, with regards to traditional herbal medicines was to come up with products that were not only marketable in the country, but also acceptable globally.
Adeyeye said this could only happen when NAFDAC, as the regulatory authority, subjects products that were submitted for approval to global standards.
She, however, encouraged everyone with products to bring their applications forward.
According to her, registration procedures are already made simple through the published template of required documentation, guidance on registration and clinical trials and the agency’s online platform. (NAN)
Mass Communication Budding Expert


text:
Codasip opens French RISC-V design centre
German RISC-V core designer Codasip has opened a strategic design centre in France for its processor cores based on teh open source RISC_V instruction set architecture (ISA).
The centre in Villeneuve Loubet is near Sophia Antipolis where major technology companies such as Bosch, NXP, Thales, and many others have offices.
“As we are expanding the product portfolio and fostering our technology leadership, we need talented senior engineers to support the growth,” said Karel Masařík, CEO of Codasip. “Sophia Antipolis is an important European location for R&D and technical talent in the semiconductor industry. We are proud to have hired our French colleagues there, close to customers. Their expertise will be a great supplement to that of our main R&D Centre in the Czech Republic.”
The French team is currently focused mainly on product architecture and verification. The team’s leader is Mélaine Facon, an industry professional with rich experience in the semiconductor IP design field who was previously programme manager at ARM’s site at Sophia-Antipolis.
“The RISC-V open ISA is revolutionizing the deployment of processors in SoCs by being a neutral standard independent of any single company,” said Facon as Director of the French Design Centre. “We are confident that our team’s experience can help respond to the rapidly increasing demand for RISC-V processors, and we are really looking forward to becoming a part of Codasip and its RISC-V story.”
Codasip is a founding member of the RISC-V Foundation and a long-time supplier of LLVM and GNU‑based processor solutions and currently has offices in Europe and China.
- CLOUD-BASED RTL TOOL FOR EMBEDDED RISC-V CORES
- CODASIP SUPPORTS THE WESTERN DIGITAL SWERV EH2 & EL2 RISC-V CORES
- MYTHIC AI ADOPTS RISC-V CORE FROM CODASIP
Other articles on eeNews Europe
- Multicore GPU aims at 3nm for data centre designs
- Xilinx teams for cloud-based open source Covid-19 X-ray classification
- Somos Semi deal boosts ST’s IoT roadmap
- Distributed AI helps robots recognise pain and self-repair


text:
In a move to boost tourism, Thailand is set to waive off visa requirements for travellers coming from India as well as Taiwan from November month to May 2024, said a government official in a statement on Tuesday (Oct 31).
Arrivals from India and Taiwan can enter Thailand for 30 days,” spokesperson Chai Wacharonke said.
Thailand had scrapped visa requirements for Chinese tourists in September this year.
China ranked first in Bangkok’s pre-pandemic tourism market with 11 million of the record 39 million arrivals in 2019.
As per the latest government data, nearly 22 million people visited Thailand from January to October 29, generating 927.5 billion baht ($25.67 billion).


text:
Monday, September 24, 2012
Mike's Auto has been given the OK by the Hamilton Zoning Board of Appeals to sell eight used cars on its downtown Hamilton lot.
Mike’s Auto has been given the go-ahead by the Zoning Board to sell used cars at its downtown Hamilton auto repair garage. The board’s decision was made final in a written decision last Thursday allowing eight used cars to be sold on the Bay Road property. A full copy of the decision is attached to this story as a PDF. There is a 20-day appeal period before the decision becomes final. Stephanie Holland, daughter of owner Michael Holland who works alongside him, said on Friday that after the appeal period ends she plans to resume used car sales. Used car sales had been halted since early July when the Board of Selectmen ordered all used cars off the property because it said Mike’s was in violation of the conditions of its Class II Used Car …
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Hamilton officials are grappling with the question of whether the town's zoning byalws require used cars to be sold from inside a "salesroom."
Do Hamilton’s zoning bylaws require used car lots to sell all the cars from inside a salesroom? That’s one of the important questions that member of the Hamilton Zoning Board of Appeals are grappling with as they consider an application from Mike’s Auto Repair to sell used cars at the downtown Hamilton business. “I do think it is going to be a key question,” said Bill Bowler, chairman of the ZBA as the board was hearing on Wednesday night about plans to sell used cars at Mike’s. It is the second time that the board has considered the plan – a review that began last month. “What constitutes a salesroom under Hamilton zoning bylaws?” Bowler asked, noting it is an auto salesroom that is allowed with a special permit in the downtown business …
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
The newest plan to handle trash in the two towns was called a compromise by Hamilton Selectmen on Monday night.
The newest plan designed to reduce trash collection costs and increase recycling was hailed Monday night by several Hamilton Selectmen as a excellent compromise. But some residents say they want the issue to go to a town vote and a former Selectman says the success of the plan is falsely predicated on the expectations that the recycling rate will double. Jennifer Scuteri, chairman of the Hamilton Board of Selectmen, said the town’s tax rate needs to be controlled and doing things the same way will not help control taxes. The latest plan will enhance services, lower costs and “moderate the (tax) increase significantly.” Several months ago town leaders in both Hamilton and Wenham began discussing the possibility of going to a pay-as-you-…
Friday, May 27, 2011
Bill Bowler writes that it has been an honor and privilege to serve on the Board of Selectmen for nine years.
To the Editor: It has been an honor and privilege to serve as Hamilton Selectman for the past nine years. It has been - mostly - enjoyable and - occasionally - even fun. I have met and worked with many dedicated people who care deeply for the town. I expect to keep interested and involved. I wish the best of luck and success to Jeff and the rest of the Selectmen and town leaders as we go forward. Thank you for the opportunity to serve. Bill Bowler Essex Street


text:
What you need to know
- Several owners of the Exynos 990-powered Galaxy S20 Ultra are complaining about overheating and autofocus issues.
- Even though an update to fix the autofocus issue was rolled out recently, it hasn't been completely fixed yet.
- Some users have also reported disappointing battery life with the $1,400 phone.
Samsung had rolled out a software update for the Exynos-powered variants of the Galaxy S20 phones last month to fix the camera issues that several owners had been complaining about. Unfortunately, it appears that the international variant of Samsung's flagship Galaxy S20 Ultra continues to suffer from autofocus issues.
A video posted on Twitter by @pegasaie (via WCCFTech) shows the Exynos-powered Galaxy S20 Ultra struggling to achieve a focus lock on an object. In addition to the autofocus issue, the user claims the phone has "poor battery life" and also overheats.https://twitter.com/pegasaie/status/1248199585455013890
Several owners of the Exynos-powered Galaxy S20 Ultra have complained about their phones suffering from heating problems on Samsung's Community forum. While some of them claim that the phone heats up all the time, others say that their phone overheats only when playing games or using the camera app.
Needless to say, it is hugely disappointing that Samsung hasn't been able to fix these problems yet, especially when you consider the $1,400 price tag that the Galaxy S20 Ultra carries. That said, it is likely that Samsung will roll out a new software update to fix these issues in the coming weeks.
Samsung has been receiving a lot of flak recently over the performance gap between the Snapdragon and Exynos variants of its flagship phones. Some users actually started an online petition last month, asking Samsung to stop selling "inferior Exynos phones" to customers.
Get More Galaxy S20
We may earn a commission for purchases using our links. Learn more.
What to expect from Amazon's September 2020 Alexa & Ring hardware event
Amazon is set to host its annual fall hardware event on Thursday, September 24. Here are a few devices that we might expect to see at tomorrow's event.
How does Samsung's S Pen work so damn well?
There are other reasons to want a Galaxy Note, but if you want a good stylus experience, it's really the only phone that has one. That's because Samsung has made the S Pen part of the phone through both hardware and software.
A $699 Pixel 5 could be the bargain of the year — if Google gets it right
With the Pixel 5, Google is going back to the basics. The phone will offer robust hardware and an upgraded camera, and with leaks pointing to a $699 price tag, the Pixel 5 undercuts other 2020 flagships. If Google manages to deliver fault-free hardware, it could be the bargain of the year.
Get a case and keep those Surface Duo screens safe from harm
The options may be slim-pickings at the moment, but what can you really expect from a first-generation device like the Microsoft Surface Duo. This dual-screen wielding monster aims to make you more productive with a unique hinge system that we haven't seen elsewhere. But do yourself a favor, and get a case so that even a little bit of dust won't hinder your experience.


text:
Digital disruption in the banking industry
Should banks be doing more to address advances in technology?
Considering the amount of resources banks are spending on IT and digital assets, it may seem surprising that there is not more evidence of technology innovation in the banking industry. Various reasons may seem likely such as legal and compliance hurdles or antiquated backend systems that make delivery particularly difficult.
It could also be a question of priorities. According to a webinar by the tech research company Gartner, a survey among bank CIOs has shown that in the past three years their main focus was on scaling existing products to help grow revenue rather than on driving innovation. But if investing in internally-driven technology or products upgrades is not the way forward, then what should banks be doing to address digital disruption?
There are clear signs for a need for customer-centric digital innovation in today’s business world. The technology-driven changes of consumer behavior are significant and are revolutionizing the face of whole industries (one example discussed in a former blogpost is the music business). Besides technological advances banks are subject to the transforming forces of markets, consumers, and governments. For an industry that is only just recovering from a crisis, this is a lot to deal with.
The explosive increase of apps is also causing significant challenges for the banking industry. Mint, a free money organizing app acquired by the American software company Intuit in 2012, has over 14 million users and has received rave reviews as well as various awards for its reliability and ease of use. But now Intuit is digging even deeper into personal finance. Last month it announced the acquisition of Check, a mobile bill-paying app that has already been downloaded by 10 million users. "It's not hard to imagine that most of our financial lives might soon be overseen, directly or indirectly, by Intuit", commented the Washington Post on the deal.
In an interview with the American Banker, an analyst warns that “the digital revolution is a bigger threat than when a traditional bank competed with one down the street”. However, banks are not ignoring these trends and have responded with incremental improvements within the context of an overall digital strategy. In its current edition, “Schweizer Bank” cites UBS’s mobile banking application which contains new features that help users monitor and manage their money similar to the mobile app Mint.
The advances in mobile devices, social media, big data analytics and cloud computing should be combined to drive innovation by banks, as well as new financial services providers. Banks should not be lagging behind on delivering digital experiences that are on par with other industries. Therefore, the benchmark for banking should perhaps not be within banking.


text:
TORONTO/ VANCOUVER, June 2- New car and truck sales in Canada hit a record high in May, with Chrysler leading the pack as the top-selling carmaker for the month and bolstered by strong demand for luxury vehicles, according to data released on Tuesday. Auto sales were up 1.1 percent, with 197,937 cars and light trucks sold in Canada, industry data showed.» Read More
Many are overlooking the big battle that's already taking shape in the auto industry: Who will win drivers' time behind the wheel?
Leave it to Tesla's Elon Musk to spice up a quarterly earnings call with a vague comment that will spark speculation on what's coming up next.
Tesla rolled out the new Model S P85D, a performance edition of its flagship Model S, in an attempt to expand sales in cold-weather states.
NEW YORK, Feb 10- The U.S. Department of Justice said on Tuesday that it reached a settlement in its first-ever discrimination case against auto dealers who also finance the purchase of used cars. Two so-called "buy here, pay here" dealerships in Charlotte, North Carolina, Auto Fare Inc and Southeastern Auto Corp, agreed to set aside $225,000 to reimburse...
MOSCOW, Feb 9- New car sales in Russia slumped 24.4 percent in January year-on-year, the Association of European Businesses lobby group said on Monday.
MOSCOW, Feb 9- Russian car sales are expected to decline by 25-35 percent this year, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers said on Monday, hit by a sharp economic slowdown and devaluation of the rouble. Russia, a country with 143 million people, has been a booming market for car producers since the fall of the Soviet Union. But with the economy heading for...
MOSCOW, Feb 9- Russian car sales are expected to decline by 25-35 percent this year, PricewaterhouseCoopers said on Monday, hit by a sharp economic slowdown and devaluation of the rouble. PwC said in a presentation that sales could reach 1.52 million to 1.75 million units, compared to 2.34 million autos sold in 2014. It would be the second year of declines in a row.
There was a hefty increase in the number of drivers with illegal drugs in their systems, according to the NHTSA.
The new Jeep Renegade, which is produced in Europe and sold predominantly in the U.S., is poised to reap the benefits of a strong dollar.
Discussing the correlation between cheap gas, and auto sales, as well as the health of the luxury auto market, with Earl Hesterberg, Group 1 Automotive CEO.
Ford, moving to keep up with growing demand for its new F-150 pickup, is hiring more workers to support increased production of the truck.
DETROIT, Feb 3- U.S. auto sales in January month were the highest for any January since 2006, Autodata Corp said on Tuesday.
NEW YORK, Feb 3- U.S. stocks rose more than 1 percent on Tuesday, led by gains in energy shares as oil prices extended their recent rally, while higher-than-expected January car sales also bolstered the advance.
CNBC's Phil LeBeau reports on the number of cars and trucks sold in January.
Lower gas prices increases affordability, which can drive car sales, explains former General Motors vice chairman Bob Lutz.
Are lower gas prices having an impact on car sales? CNBC's Phil LeBeau explains the impact to the type of vehicle people are buying during a period of cheaper gas.
Americans are buying trucks, SUVs and crossovers at their fastest pace in years.
January U.S. car sales analysts' expectations, as low gasoline prices and easy credit terms helped fuel sales of utility vehicles and big pickups.
DETROIT, Feb 3- January U.S. car sales by the three Detroit- based automakers topped analysts' expectations, as low gasoline prices and easy credit terms helped fuel sales of utility vehicles and big pickups. Sales of trucks and SUVs accounted for 69 percent of January sales at General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, compared with 66 percent a...
DETROIT, Feb 3- AutoNation Inc, the largest U.S. auto dealer group, on Tuesday posted a higher-than-expected quarterly profit due to strong profit margins from new and used vehicle sales, driving its shares up nearly 8 percent. AutoNation Chief Executive Officer Mike Jackson said in an interview that low gasoline prices of about $2 a gallon, generous financing...


text:
Eight 300-pound pigs were delivered to the kitchen cooler at The Little Nell Hotel in Aspen, Colo., a month ago. They came from the slaughterhouse dead but whole, with their skin and hair intact.
“I unloaded them into the cooler and my butcher looked at me and said, ‘You have got to be out of your friggin’ mind,’” says Little Nell’s executive chef Ryan Hardy, who raised the pigs. Before chefs could make bacon and prosciutto, the hair would have to be removed.
“We had to shave it


text:
Russ Solomon, who grew Tower Records into one of the world’s largest record and video retailing chains, has died. He was 92 and passed away at his home in Sacramento, California, of an apparent heart attack on Sunday.
The store’s patrons included Elton, Prince, Lou Reed, Bette Midler and Michael Jackson.
Solomon grew Tower from a section in his father’s Sacramento drug store to a chain that was internationally rec
The chain thrived on massive demand for physical music — first records and then CDs. Solomon built sprawling mega stores where fans could find everything from pop hits to obscure albums.
But the retailer was soon undermined by dramatic changes in the music industry.
The rise of music sharing sites such as Napster put it under pressure, and the company’s debt ballooned. Tower declared bankruptcy in 2004, and was liquidated in 2006.
In 2015, All Things Must Pass: The Rise And Fall of Tower Records was released. It was directed by Colin Hanks and featured Russ as well as former customers like Elton and Bruce Springsteen.


text:
CES 2019, the biggest consumer tech show on the planet that is held in Las Vegas every year, has been and gone. This year, we’ve been spoilt by the sheer variety of amazing gadgets on display at the Consumer Electronics Show that are set to shape the tech landscape over the coming 12 months.
But what were the standout items on display? Here’s a look at the very best of this year’s show.
Finally, the world has its first foldable smartphone in the Royole FlexPai. It’s not small and sleek, but it does boast a large flexible display and can be used as both a smartphone and a tablet.
It is far from refined, and it is unlikely to drive people away from their iPhones anytime soon, but it shows that the technology is now there – and that’s exciting.
LG OLED TV R
TVs are always on show at CES, and this year was no exception. There were a number of eye-catching TVs on display, but LG’s OLED TV R was the one that really stood out.
This 65-inch OLED TV rolls away into its soundbar when not in use, saving space in the living room. It can even use just a small section of the screen to display photos or the time.
Withings Move ECG
Tech is playing a bigger role in health every year, and the Move ECG from Withings shows what it is now capable of. It has now added an ECG to its fitness-tracking devices. And while the Apple Watch now does this, the price is just $130 making it more affordable than ever. It also looks great!
The reality of the flying car is getting closer and closer, and airborne commuting is no longer just a sci-fi fantasy. A number of companies including Uber have teamed up to create the Nexus, a flying taxi. It can carry up to four passengers, and Uber is hoping it will help it to launch its flying service within a few years.
The BreadBot caught the eye of a lot of visitors to CES 2019. Made by Wilkinson Baking Company, the futuristic-looking breadmaker is described as a fully automated bread baking tool that its makers say will ‘revolutionize the bread industry’.
It can produce up to 10 loaves every hour, and while not designed for the home kitchen, it could be a big hit in supermarkets and shops.
Other Items of Interest
These were just a few of the major products that stood out at CES 2019, but there were many more that deserve at least a mention.
Like the FoldiMate, a robot that folds laundry automatically! It folds 25 pieces of laundry in under five minutes – which could even put Marie Kondo to shame! While it has a few limitations (like baby clothes and sheets), it works for most items and could be a godsend for anyone who seems to spend half their day folding clothes.
Or the Lime-S Gen 3 e-scooter, the third generation of the company’s dockless scooters that is better in every way. It travels further on a charge and has better suspension, making e-scooters more desirable than ever.
What Caught Your Eye at CES 2019?
So, did anything take your fancy at CES 2019? While many of the items on display will no doubt die a sudden death and never be heard of again, some of them will turn into bestsellers. And some may even change our lives forever.


text: DANBURY, Conn., Oct. 25, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ATMI, Inc. (Nasdaq:ATMI) today announced that it has further extended its global biopharma manufacturing footprint with the opening of a new Chinese manufacturing facility as part of a joint venture with Austar, a Hong Kong-based comprehensive service provider to the China pharmaceutical industry. The joint venture, ATMI Austar LifeSciences Limited, originated with the goal of producing and marketing high-end, ultra-clean sterile materials packaging for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and sterile pharmaceutical components to meet growing demand across the biopharmaceutical industry in the Asia-Pacific region. The new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Beijing, which was brought online today at an official Grand Opening ceremony attended by customers and Chinese FDA and government officials, represents a significant step toward that goal. Under the joint venture agreement, ATMI Austar LifeSciences will be producing certain ATMI LifeSciences products, including Cleansteam TM products, with local blow-film extrusion and packaging converting lines using a copy-exact strategy. The new Beijing facility also offers potential expansion opportunities for ATMI's Integrity TM line of bioprocess vessels (BPVs) manufacturing, which management says could be rolled out directly as the Asian biotech market continues to emerge. "This joint venture not only provides ATMI LifeSciences with access to the API and biopharmaceutical markets in Asia but also access to Austar's existing ISO Class V GMP-certified, cleanroom-based infrastructure that we can begin to leverage immediately," commented Mario Philips, General Manager and Senior Vice-President of ATMI LifeSciences. "Together, under the ATMI Austar LifeSciences banner, we are working to create a new standard for advanced materials packaging for pharmaceutical manufacturing throughout the region." The new Beijing facility's capabilities include blow extrusion of films and ultra clean packaging converting and assembly lines, for use in ultra-clean sterile packaging applications for steam or gamma irradiation applications. In addition to film extrusion and packaging converting lines, the facility also features warehousing and significant cleanroom extension opportunities. It will also serve as a back-up facility for ATMI LifeSciences' Hoegaarden, Belgium plant, providing enhanced supply chain security and contingency for ATMI customers globally.


text:
Apple has formally confirmed that QuickTime is dead, but the company’s phase-out doesn’t seem to have taken the needs of its partners into account — and it’s not exactly bending over to notify users, either.
Microsoft released a patch for Internet Explorer 11 that blends security updates with a push towards Windows 10, at least in theory — but while doing so is bad practice in general, it’s not clear what impact this update actually had.
Microsoft’s first major Windows 10 update is available today, with a slew of bug fixes and a few performance enhancements — but whether or not it resolves problems with the operating system will depend on what your issues were.
A critical new vulnerability has been discovered on Samsung Galaxy S5 and S6 devices, but the state of the Android ecosystem means there’s nothing end-users can do about it (except avoid unsecured WiFi, anyway).
Subscribe Today to get the latest ExtremeTech news delivered right to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our


text:
Consumers downloaded the Windows 8 Consumer Preview over a million times in less than 24 hours, but we're willing to bet that the majority of those downloads came from the technically inclined rather than, say, your parents. The tech world has already proclaimed
what it likes
in Windows 8 -- but do everyday people really care if W8 has an enhanced contact app? Can everyday people even locate the contact app in W8?
Chris Pirillo decided to put the W8 interface to the test by plopping his elderly father down in front of the new OS with no introduction.
As you can see, Pappa Pirillo struggled to find his way back to the Metro home screen after opening Windows Explorer. What does this prove? Nothing, really -- it's far from a scientific test. But anecdotally, the video shows that the loss of a Start button and the schizoid Metro/Classic interface will likely cause headaches in everyday non-techie users who think that, say, Internet Explorer is the Internet. Or, as Pappa Pirillo says, "Are they trying to drive me to Mac?"
Thanks to Geek.com for pointing this out !


text:
There is a movement that advocates saving the planet by donating the fortunes of the richest to just and fundamental causes that can reverse the situation of hunger, global warming and poverty. Joined today by a billionaire we all know.
los founder of AmazonasJeff Bezos has said that he plans to donate most of his wealth to charity in his lifetime. In this way, he is the last billionaire to join a philanthropic current that intends to save the Earth. It sounds very superficial, but it is something like that.
Jeff Bezos He did not give details about how he would distribute the money or what exact percentage of his wealth he would give away, but said that wanted to fight climate change and support people who can unify humanity (whatever this means).
The Amazon founder is the fourth-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $124 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. CNN reports that It is the first time Bezos has announced his plans to give away most of his fortune.
Amazon has spent years wanting to fight against Climate Change and taking initiatives for it. This is the way the company, one of the most polluting companies in the world, has of offsetting all the CO2 emissions it emits into the atmosphere each year.
Amazon founder doesn’t want inefficiencies in donations
«There are also many ways that I think ineffective things can be done.Bezos added.We are building the capacity to be able to give this money away.«. In this way, it makes it clear that, first, they must create a way to donate the money to worthwhile causes and projects.
The first billionaire belonging to the list of the five richest in the world to announce that he was joining this movement was the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, who announced that he planned to give away “virtually all” his fortune (currently estimated at 114,000 million dollars ) to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gates, as we said, is co-founder of The Giving Pledge, a campaign to encourage the world’s super-rich to donate most of their wealth to philanthropic causes. As of this writing, Jeff Bezos is not listed as a signatory.
Jeff Bezos has already donated large sums of money to charitable causes, though nothing that comes close to the bulk of his estate. In 2020, he announced the creation of the Bezos Earth Fund and pledged to allocate 10,000 million dollars to the fight against climate change.
With information from Telam, Reuters and AP


text:
Digital consumer insights agency Toluna has partnered reward-U, a loyalty program founded by Hong Kong’s low-fare airline, HK Express. Through the partnership, reward-U members are invited to join Toluna.com, the world’s largest social voting community, and participate in real-time surveys that are directly available via Toluna’s integrated survey platform.
Launched in 2016, reward-U has reached 1 million members quickly by offering an easy-to-understand program structure, and unique features and benefits that members see value in. reward-U caters to the needs of the mass market and the growing millennial segment that is overlooked, helping them maximize moments of enjoyment with loyalty points as a virtual currency.
The new partnership between Toluna and reward-U will bring more benefits to members, allowing them to influence the direction of products and services of different corporations and brands, and earn 5,000 reward-U points for completing their first survey on Toluna.
Toluna offers a user-friendly platform for communities to brainstorm ideas, uncover new business opportunities and answer questions all in real-time, globally. Toluna’s global consumer panel has more than 13.4 million of active members in 68 countries, and is continuously growing.
“Partnering with Toluna provides a new reward earning channel for our members,” said Steven Greenway, CEO of reward-U. “Now they can be a part of a community to shape the market’s products and services and be rewarded for their participation.”
“Toluna is transforming the way that research is conducted via our real-time research platform. We continue to bring top-quality respondents to our consumer panel to uniquely address the global market research needs of our customers,” said Sandy Casey, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Marketing, Toluna. “Our community members are incredibly valuable to brands which are looking to tap consumer insights in shaping future company and product direction.”


text:
Dresses of Princess Diana and Elizabeth Taylor in digital show
PUBLISHED: 09:35 21 March 2013 | UPDATED: 13:01 27 March 2013
New online archive of Kent designer Zandra Rhodes
Famous designs worn by global icons like Princess Diana, Jackie Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor will be catalogued to create a digital archive of work by world-renowned Kent fashion designer Zandra Rhodes.
The University for the Creative Arts has collaborated with Zandra Rhodes Studio to produce an online educational tool featuring more than 500 of the designer’s creations.
The project has also been funded by a £110,000 grant from the digital education charity - Jisc.
Zandra said: “I am tremendously proud to announce that the Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection is now available to the world.
“I am absolutely thrilled to unveil this high quality digital archive of 500 of my most famous designs, as well as drawings and behind-the-scenes footage in my studio, for access by today’s fashion and textile students, designers, and researchers, and I hope that it will be an inspiration worldwide.
“I would like to thank the University for the Creative Arts, Jisc (for funding), the team at my studio and VADS for believing in the project and making this happen – it’s not easy to locate, prep, photograph, research, and catalogue 50 years of fashion collections but they have done a fantastic job.”
Famous for her bright pink hair and cutting-edge designs, Zandra Rhodes has remained one of the most recognisable names in fashion during the past 50 years and remains relevant with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Sarah Jessica Parker and Paris Hilton wearing her dresses today.
She was appointed UCA’s first Chancellor in 2010 and studied at Medway College of Art - one of the Kent and Surrey colleges that formed UCA.
Students at UCA worked with Zandra to produce learning materials which explore her creative processes and production techniques through video interviews, tutorials and original drawings.
Director of Research at UCA Professor Kerstin Mey said: “Zandra gave our researchers and students unprecedented access to her studio which has enabled them to catalogue 500 famous items from her personal archive that we will make available to a global audience.
“I am certain that this accessible, open education resource featuring one of the most influential British fashion designers over the past 50 years will stimulate and inform future generations.”
The Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection will be available from 7pm on 26 March at: www.zandrarhodes.ucreative.ac.uk


text:
Vertical rules – adapted for an omnichannel future, but some uncertainty remains
Press release - Competitiveness & Single Market
10 May 2022
The European Commission has today adopted new rules on the assessment of vertical agreements in distribution which will come into force from 1 June 2022. These rules provide a safe harbour from anti-trust rules for agreements between suppliers and their customers, for example, for the sale, purchase or resale of products.
Christel Delberghe Director-General of EuroCommerce, which represents the retail and wholesale sector in Europe, commented:
“The European Commission has taken an important step by adapting the vertical block exemption rules to a digital environment. We welcome the Commission’s efforts to change the framework, but we are concerned that for SMEs the complexity will mean they remain reluctant to explore or pursue online sales. We, therefore, remain cautious about the degree to which the new rules leave room for interpretation and how they will be used in practice in a market where brands hold a very strong position.”
The retail and wholesale sector is going through a significant digital, sustainability and skills transformation. COVID accelerated the move to online sales and consumers who bought online during the pandemic are expected to continue doing so. Businesses need to be able to offer consumers such online sales, alongside or independently from their brick-and-mortar shops, and to do so as easily as possible. Clear rules on retailers’ and wholesalers’ ability to sell on online marketplaces are vital for small businesses to reach consumers, including those in other member states. EuroCommerce remains concerned about fair competition. It is unlikely SMEs will challenge brands that hold a strong position, where the effect of restrictions such as selective distribution, do not enable them to make effective use of the internet.
Mrs Delberghe added: “Effective competition provides choice for consumers. We ask the Commission and national competition authorities to remain vigilant and to act consistently, to address abuse of the rules to the detriment of the Single Market and of EU consumers.”
Retailers and wholesalers welcome the fact that the guidelines make it more explicit that territorial supply constraints, which are used by large manufacturers to restrict parallel imports, fragment the Single Market. The Single Market is key for the recovery of the retail and wholesale sector from the challenges of the pandemic, says EuroCommerce. But it needs strong and consistent enforcement across the Union to create the right competitive environment that can help retailers and wholesalers offer choice and reasonable prices to consumers struggling with rising costs of living.


text:
Manville man charged with wielding knife in cellphone incident
NORTH PLAINFIELD – If you’re going to ask for help finding a cellphone, don’t get into an argument while holding a folding knife in your hand.
That’s why Georg Gayko, 25, of Manville, was charged with assault following an incident Sunday afternoon at Batteries and Bulbs, 513 Route 22.
Police went to the store at about 12:25 p.m. on a report of a dispute. A person inside the store said that a man, later identified as Gayko, came into the store and asked for help finding his cellphone, police said.
After the person in the store tried to help Gayko but couldn’t find the cellphone, Gayko became angry and held a folded knife in his hand, causing the people inside to store to fear for their safety and call the authorities, police said.
Officers Donald Everett and Tim Boykoff found Gayko at a nearby BP station, where he was trying to hide the knife in a soda machine, police said.
Gayko was charged with assault under the part of the statute that includes putting “another in fear of imminent serious bodily injury” as assault.
Staff Writer Mike Deak: 908-243-6607; firstname.lastname@example.org


text:
About two years ago, Toronto youth-travel tour operator Alexander Handa took a hard look at the limited Canadian market and realized his growth horizons didn’t extend very far. Handa, whose family founded Handa Travel, had launched Handa Travel Student Trip Ltd. The company was tripping along on a rapid expansion trajectory, sending high-school and university students on experience-based sun, ski and European vacations. By 2013, the company ranked 25th on the PROFIT 500 ranking of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies.
So, last year, Handa looked to the U.S. for the company’s next phase of growth. It seemed like a no-brainer. After all, tens of thousands of American teens flock to sun locations during the fabled spring break, and Handa figured his concept—stem-to-stern tour packages—would sell briskly.
Sign up for PROFIT’s Trade Tipsheets for useful, proven, free tips for cracking foreign markets!
It didn’t take Handa long to discover that for all the superficial similarities, the vast U.S. market is a deep ocean with lots of unfamiliar undercurrents. From the regulatory and insurance framework to the finer points of American sales culture, Handa’s U.S. expansion gambit turned out to be a foreign adventure in every way.
“That,” he says, “was a big learning experience.” Among Handa’s lessons:
Target 50 markets, not one
The tour and travel business is heavily regulated, but the rules vary—sometimes sharply—from state to state. For example, each jurisdiction, Handa says, has its own insurance and licensing policies. Early on, he realized that it didn’t make sense to launch across the entire U.S. because of the formidable cost of dealing with so many distinct species of red tape.
READ: 4 Keys to Selling Your Innovation to Americans
Instead, Handa began researching and came to the conclusion that he should focus initially on the Boston area and a swath of New England that takes in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire. Boston has thousands of students, and the U.S. Northeast seemed to be culturally similar to Canada.
Retool the product
Everyone in the travel industry knows a few key points about the way that Americans travel. First, they tend to go abroad far less often than do Canadians and Europeans. Second, Americans take shorter holidays; whereas Canadians will set aside an entire week for a sun or ski holiday, American working-age adults want more flexibility, often booking three- to five-day trips.
Members of the 16- to 26-year-old set prefer compact holidays just like their parents. “I don’t know why that is,” Handa says. His company not only had to refine its tour packages but find suppliers that would provide components (hotel rooms, plane trips, etc.) for shorter-duration packages. Indeed, one of the early sweet spots for Handa’s U.S. expansion has been selling three-day, all-inclusive ski trips to Quebec.
Solve the hiring puzzle
“We wanted to hire local people in Massachusetts,” Handa says. “We found it very, very difficult.”
Handa quickly realized that American job-seekers expect employers to foot the cost of a health-benefits package that can add US$5,000 to $10,000 to an entry-level sales person’s salary.
But he also discovered that American sales professionals and customers alike are more keyed to a hard-sell approach than Handa has employed in his Canadian operation. In Canada, the company’s soft-sell tactic is to help a prospective customer plan the trip of a lifetime, he says, whereas “Americans champion a good salesperson and a good sales pitch. They’re OK to be sold to.”
Initially, Handa says, the people who were auditioning for the jobs didn’t seem to understand the company’s culture. After setting up an eight-person office in Boston last summer, Handa dispatched two Canadian sales managers to project the firm’s culture. In the meantime, he has brought the American employees up to Toronto for training.
Keep branding consistent
One area in which Handa didn’t have to do a big rethink was around his company’s edgy, suggestive branding. He has gotten the same sort of feedback when selling tours in the Dominican Republic and Australia: “Eighteen- to 24-year-olds are consuming the same videos, the same magazines and the same websites. Design and messaging among that demographic is streamlining very quickly.”
Today, heading into the company’s second summer in Boston, Handa is feeling bullish about expansion into the U.S. The reluctance by families to spend on frills such as holidays, a hallmark of the post-2008 economy, appears to have abated in the past year. Handa, indeed, has ambitious goals: last year, international revenue accounted for about 10% of his company’s gross revenue. Within five years, Handa wants that proportion to reach 50%. The goal, he says, is not to sell to all 300 million Americans; rather, the goal is to expand his company’s reach in the U.S. Northeast, which, he adds, is about the same size as Canada in terms of population. “It’s a decent area to increase our share instead of spreading ourselves too thin.”
READ: Selling to Americans


text:
West Oakland's Mandela Parkway may seem like an unconventional place for a neon lighting shop, but then again, everything about owner Benjamin James and his business, Cool Neon Funhouse Creations, is unique.
In Vegas for Marco's big night tomorrow. #tcl #coolneon pic.twitter.com/DhKR8r4Gfe— benjamin james (@coolneon) April 4, 2016
"There is no other store like this in the world," James said. "A significant amount of the product line here is designed in house by myself and my buddies."
James had his first encounter with neon at Burning Man in 1998 in the form of an animated horse moved by a bicycle rider. His camp was enthralled and immediately determined to build a school of neon glowing fish the following year.
Since neon wasn't commercially available, James used the resale license for his silk screen business to try to place an order. Still, the manufacturer was skeptical, so James made a huge commitment.
Although he only needed 56 units to illuminate his school of fish, he ended up ordering 1,000. To move the remainder, he developed a pre-e-commerce method for other burners to place orders, and his neon was a big hit at the next Burn.
"All these people came up with such gratitude that I was sort of hooked," James said. "I quit taking silk screen shirt jobs and have been doing nothing but lighting full-time since then."
Burning Man creations are still a huge part of the business. Artist Marco Cochrane's 'Truth Is Beauty' sculpture, which debuted on the Playa in 2013 and now stands permanently in San Leandro, required around 3,000 lights.
"What we do here is people come in and say, 'I have a vision, I have a project that's never been done,'" said James, who's attended every Burning Man since 1995; his young children have gone every year since they were born.
Still, the festival is far from all of his business. James and his team create anything and everything imaginable from bedroom signs, costumes and bike lighting to Hollywood billboards, Oakland churches and whole buildings in Brazil.
What is the most unusual piece they've done?
"The majority of our projects," said Gian Giglio, who's worked at Funhouse Creations for more than 10 years.
All the products and projects James has created - some techniques and technology unique to his store - have come out of fanatical experimentation and the tutelage of friends. James and his team have developed materials like "thin and bright" lighting (great for costumes) that can't be found anywhere else. Next on his short list is to master programming.
Community was the catalyst for the store's creation and has been at the center of the business ever since, so a brick-and-mortar store (complete with showroom) where people can come in and discuss and evolve their ideas doesn't seem so strange after all.
"Shipping constantly works great, but having a place where people can unspool their mind is very rewarding," James said.
For Giglio, the best part of the job is "easily the people," he said. "Everyone who calls and walks through our door is a unique, kooky, artistic person, someone I would want to be friends with or at least have a beer or more with, and it makes it a real pleasure."


text:
In the quest to give you an insiders view of what is going on behind the doors of the best builders and suppliers we cornered Lingenfelter Performance Engineering’s Mike Copeland to see what’s new and upcoming with LPE. Check it out here!
Kurt Urban has been the go-to guy for some of the most prominent LS builds known to mankind. We recently got him to slow down just long enough to give us some insight into where he’s been, and where he’s going next…
With carbon fiber construction, LS7 power, and US design and construction, the Falcon F7 is a true American supercar on par with the best Europe has to offer. We got to spend some time with Falcon CEO Jeff Lemke and get the inside story behind this striking new exotic.
Chevrolet’s Head of Consumer Affairs, James Bell, hit the automotive journalist talk circuit with a vengeance, and we had a chance to ask him some questions about the announcement of the Stingray’s estimated fuel economy, what the LT1 will mean for Chevy as a whole, and the future of the C7 Corvette.


text:
President of Mongolia meets with President of AzerbaijanVideo
President of Mongolia Khaltmaagiin Battulga is paying a working visit to the Republic of Azerbaijan. President Battulga held a bilateral meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev in tête-à-tête and extended formats on September 24th.
The heads of state of Mongolia and Azerbaijan agreed to jointly enter foreign markets via Mongolian territory, actively participate in regional development, and explore opportunities to cooperate on logistical assistance in exporting Mongolian-made products to the world market.
During the extended format meeting, President Battulga pointed out that there is enormous potential to enrich Mongolia-Azerbaijan relations with economic content, while requesting to cooperate in increasing bilateral trade and investment and activating business-to-business ties.
President Ilham Aliyev supported the proposal, and the sides agreed on sending a research team of the Ministry of Economy and business representatives of Azerbaijan to Mongolia in October, 2018.
President Ilham Aliyev also expressed his support toward the export of Mongolian products and goods to the Middle East through Azerbaijan.
The sides agreed to carefully study the matters of exporting animal-origin products, including meat and leather, to Azerbaijan, making an investment for the establishment of cashmere and wool processing and carpet factory that will provide jobs to 300 people in Mongolia, and bringing in the required technology from Azerbaijan.
At the end of the meeting, President Battulga invited President Ilham Aliyev to visit Mongolia, and the latter expressed his appreciation of the invitation.