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In the fast-paced world of electric vehicles (EVs), the quest for a superior battery technology has taken a promising turn with recent revelations from two key players – Swedish start-up Northvolt and Indian company KPIT Technologies. These groundbreaking developments centre around a sodium-ion battery, aiming to eliminate the reliance on critical metals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel. If successful, this could reshape the EV battery game and address the current challenges faced by manufacturers.
Lithium Limitations and Supply Challenges
Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have long dominated the electrochemical battery landscape, offering a combination of light weight and extended life cycles. However, their energy density is nearing a physico-chemical limit, and the use of elements like cobalt, nickel, and manganese poses significant challenges. The burgeoning electric vehicle market is facing hurdles in securing a stable supply of these raw materials, creating a bottleneck in the industry’s growth.
Enter the sodium-ion battery, a potential game-changer in the EV arena. Historically lagging behind lithium batteries in terms of energy output per unit size, recent advancements have seen sodium-based batteries packing more energy into a compact package. Northvolt’s sodium-ion battery, with an impressive energy density of 160 watt-hours per kilogram, is closing in on traditional lithium batteries used in energy storage.
Notably, sodium-ion batteries offer enhanced safety compared to their lithium counterparts, as sodium exhibits lower chemical reactivity, reducing the risk of thermal runaway and fire hazards. This safety advantage positions sodium-ion technology as a compelling alternative for electric vehicles.
Addressing Supply Chain Concerns
The supply chain woes associated with lithium-ion batteries may find relief with sodium-ion technology. Sodium, abundant in the Earth’s crust, is about 1,300 times more plentiful than lithium. Northvolt, supported by industry giants like Volkswagen, BlackRock, and Goldman Sachs, claims to produce its sodium-ion cells using minerals such as iron and sodium, avoiding critical metals like lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite. Similarly, KPIT Technologies emphasises the use of Earth-abundant raw materials, making their battery technology more economically viable for electric mobility.
While other attempts at sodium-ion batteries have been made, they often relied on costly and scarce components, limiting their commercial feasibility. However, Northvolt and KPIT are charting a new course by prioritising readily available materials, potentially disrupting the dominance of lithium in the battery market.
Navigating Market Dynamics
The future of sodium-ion batteries is intricately linked to lithium prices. Industry experts, such as Jay Whitacre from Carnegie Mellon University, caution that a decline in lithium prices could pose challenges for sodium-ion batteries gaining traction. The delicate balance between cost, material accessibility, and market dynamics will play a crucial role in determining the success of sodium-ion technology.
Both Northvolt and KPIT are actively working towards global commercialization. Northvolt aims to deliver initial samples to customers next year, with full-scale production targeted by the end of the decade. KPIT Technologies, committed to sustainable mobility, looks forward to partnering with manufacturing companies for the global commercialization of their sodium-ion battery technology.
Conclusion: Sodium Technology’s Niche Future
While sodium-ion technology may not dethrone lithium entirely, it holds promise in finding its niche. The combination of thermal capability, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability makes sodium-ion batteries particularly appealing for regions like the Middle East, Africa, and India. As these innovations unfold, the EV industry anticipates a potential paradigm shift in battery technology, marking a significant step towards a more sustainable and resource-efficient future.


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Return of the Shrimp King
Việt Nam’s shrimp king Minh Phú Seafood Corporation (MPC) began trading 70 million shares on the UPCoM on Monday at a reference price of VNĐ79,000 (US$3.48) per share, equivalent to market capitalisation of VNĐ5.5 trillion ($242.3 million).
Minh Phú is one of the two largest seafood exporters in Việt Nam. Its total export turnover reached over $530 billion in 2016.
Two years ago, the seafood firm voluntarily cancelled the listing to issue additional shares to strategic shareholders. However, the delisting did not help in raising more capital and its business declined, incurring a loss of VNĐ7 billion in 2015. It rebounded with profits of VNĐ82 billion in 2016 and revenue of nearly VNĐ12.1 trillion.
The company’s return to the stock market is part of an ambitious business plan. It has targeted consolidated revenue of VNĐ15.8 trillion and net profit of VNĐ841 billion in 2017, a 10-fold increase over the previous year. It earned VNĐ159 billion in profits in the first half the year.
Hoàng Liên Sơn Technical Ceramics JSC (HLS)
Also on Monday, Hoàng Liên Sơn Technical Ceramics JSC debuted its entire 5.44 million shares on the UPCoM at a reference price of VNĐ16,800 per share.
Established in 1980, the Yên Bái-headquartered company specialises in designing, manufacturing and supplying various types of porcelain insulators and technical porcelain/ceramic products.
The company was equitised in 2014 with initial charter capital of VNĐ8.5 billion, of which the State held 56 per cent stake. State shareholders divested the entire amount by June 2016.
It reported net profit of over VNĐ18 billion last year, down 34 per cent year-on-year. The firm has targeted revenue of VNĐ110 billion and net profit of VNĐ22 billion in 2017. The company paid high dividend rate of between 40 and 70 per cent in the last four years.
Vietnam Industrial Construction Corp (VVN)
On Tuesday, Vietnam Industrial Construction Corp (VVN) will trade 55 million shares on the UPCoM. The Ministry of Industry and Trade holds 82.75 per cent stake in this firm.
The company reported revenue of over VNĐ6 trillion in both 2014 and 2015, but it incurred losses of VNĐ148 billion in 2014 and VNĐ346 billion in 2015. It returned to surplus last year with net profit of over VNĐ506 billion last year.
An Giang Power And Water Supply JSC (DNA)
Nearly 48.7 million shares of An Giang Power And Water Supply will begin trading on October 19 with a reference price of VNĐ13,500 apiece.
The company officially operated as a joint stock company in March 2011 with charter capital of VNĐ486.6 billion. As of June 2017, An Giang People’s Committee is the only major shareholder with 90.12 per cent ownership.
Its revenue mainly comes from electricity supply, accounting for over 70 per cent of its annual revenue, while water supply sales make up 24-26 per cent.
Last year, the company reported total revenue of over VNĐ1.3 trillion and net profit of VNĐ102 billion. by Vietnamnews.

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Women try and spot the real from fake designer handbag
Holidaymakers could be fined thousands of pounds - or even jailed - for buying fake designer goods when abroad, copyright lawyers are warning.
Authorities in France and Italy are not just targeting those who produce and sell fakes but also those who buy them.
In France, the maximum fine is 300,000 euro (£260,000) or three years in jail.
The UK government has decided against criminalising consumers. Instead it has launched an information campaign aimed at people using markets and boot sales.
Seizures of counterfeit goods on the continent more than doubled in 2008, with customs authorities seizing 178 million fake items - mostly imported from China.
The European Commission is concerned about the growing involvement of organised international criminal gangs.
These are not cheeky chappies making an honest living on a Sunday morning, these are hardened criminals
Susie Winter Alliance Against Intellectual Property Theft
It says: "Without doubt, one of the principal methods of dispersing counterfeits is the 'ant-like' traffic of tourists returning home from holiday, bringing back souvenirs."
This has prompted some member states to take a harder line.
Intellectual property lawyer Simon Tracey said anyone tempted to bring back items such as fake designer sunglasses, a football top or handbag from their holidays should beware.
He said lots of people have already been fined thousands of euros for owning a fake, and France seemed "a little bit harsher" than Italy.
But he said it was hard to persuade people that owning a fake was "a bad thing".
"The problem is, it is an intellectual theft, so therefore it's much harder to explain to people that it is wrong, but in reality - as a matter of social responsibility - it is just as bad as stealing.
"We all tend to debate the fake bag, we tend not to think about the products that can cause serious harm or kill like fake pharmaceuticals," he added.
John Tuchier, from the Trading Standards Institute, said holidaymakers can easily be caught out by things that "look like a bargain", and shoppers should consider the "safety and quality of a product".
"Some of these counterfeit goods are so good that you might not be aware that the product is counterfeit until an expert actually looks at it and brings it to your attention," he said.
The UK government says legitimate businesses lose an estimated £10bn a year to counterfeiters, with £9bn ending up the hands of gangs.
It also warns that fake alcohol can cause blindness or death, copied toiletries can be harmful and that counterfeit toys or medicines will not have passed safety tests.
Susie Winter, director general of the Alliance Against Intellectual Property Theft - a grouping of creative industry associations, said the UK's counterfeit trade centred around markets.
"We would urge people to think about where their money is going," she said.
"These are not cheeky chappies making an honest living on a Sunday morning, these are hardened criminals."
Many organised criminal gangs exploit child labour, she added.
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Stories tagged: wine
KING Valley vigneron Christian Dal Zotto has successfully applied to be part of the wine industry’s Future Leaders program.
NEW marketing officer for Wines of the King Valley, Alison Lloyd, has hit the ground running.
MILD conditions without any major heat spikes have the 2015 vintage nestled just where Baileys of Glenrowan wants.
HEAVY rainfalls have kept vignerons busy across the district over the past month.
THE first soil will be turned today at Chrismont after the State Government announced a new food and wine complex.
QUALITY at one of the country’s premier family-owned wine companies has not faltered.
A KING Valley winery is looking to export following a new partnership between Australia and Japan.
HEAVY rainfalls haven’t dampened the grape harvest across the King Valley.
EARLY seasonal frosts and scorching heat have lessened fruit yields across the King Valley.
AUSTRALIA’S wine industry has many challenges, but a new report into growing the wine sector’s profitability can help.
OPERATORS of a boutique winery in Glenrowan are content with what rural life has to offer them.


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Delegates were welcomed to Citi's Digital Money Symposium by Naveed Sultan, the bank's global head of Treasury and Trade Solutions, with an uplifting anecdote involving that renegade of digital money – bitcoin.
Sultan told the story of an Afghani woman who decided to learn how to use the internet thanks to an NGO where all the teachers were women. She started blogging about art and this came to the attention of a large art dealership in the US who said they would like to add her to their payroll. But paying her was going to be a problem. The company suggested using bitcoin.
"Now I'm not trying to advocate bitcoin here," Sultan paused to point out.
He said the company made an arrangement with Amazon that she could use those bitcoins to do shopping on Amazon. She ended up buying her first laptop, becoming fully connected and gainfully employed.
"What is the underlying point?" asked Sultan. "The underlying point is that in addition to social and economic inclusion, how quickly she got connected to the rest of the world. If you go by a traditional process of civilisation and economic development, probably it would not happen in her lifetime. So that is really the power digital money. And that particular role, which is really in my mind a civilisation-building role, we often tend to overlook."
This message was carried on by Carol Realini, co-author of Financial Inclusion at the Bottom of the Pyramid. She said in the next five years we are going to see big changes with digital money across the world, as countries manage to replicate the conditions necessary to allow the sort of adoption rates seen in Kenya.
The alignment of the stars in Kenya facilitated the big success story in mobile money, leaving technologists and philanthropists alike trying to reverse engineer similar circumstances other places. Some 46% of the total GDP of Kenya moves through a simple mobile phone wallet called MPesa.
In Kenya the regulations were supportive, doing KYC was affordable, and Safaricom was the only carrier and had universal coverage across the country. There was also a hugely compelling use case, in that most people who worked in Nairobi had family 50 miles or more from the city and so they wanted to send money home on a weekly basis.
"Why hasn't this happened elsewhere?" asked Realini. "The rest of the world has struggled; there are probably less than 10 scaled implementations of a similar system. To answer that question we can look at India."
Realini said India has figured out why it hasn't happened and is laying the foundation so that it can happen on a large scale. India is 30 times bigger than Kenya. It has 600,000 towns and villages: only 75,000 of them have a bank. To meet the scale of this challenge, India's public and private sectors have joined up to prepare an environment for digital money to happen.
Firstly, is the introduction of the Aadhaar identity system, a central government project to collect the biometric and demographic data of residents, and store them in a centralised database. With over 900 million users, it is the world's largest national identification number project.
This crucially drives down the costs of KYC. It typically costs about $15 to bring someone into India's banking system. "This isn't like a lot to us, but if you are trying to bring 600 or 700 million people into the banking system it becomes ridiculously expensive. A big part of that cost was paper forms and very weak ID systems; people would have state driving licences that all looked different and sometimes they would get wet and damaged."
Realini recounted how she was working on identity schemes in India, trying to bring people into the banking system in India. "We knew it was $15 because we measured it. So we worked really hard taking pictures of IDs and being really clever and we brought it down to $12.
"Then one month it went right back up to $15 and I asked my team what's going on here, why is it back to $15? And they said its monsoon season so everybody's ID is wet so the rejection rate is really high. When you are trying to bank 600 million people you have to deal with these environmental problems."
In addition, India now has a faster payment system, similar to what we have in the UK. And to ensure debit transactions are very low cost, the Indian government ran a debit system called RuPay to keep the costs of very small transactions down. It facilitates electronic payment at all Indian banks and financial institutions, and competes with MasterCard and Visa in India.
Then they tied government disbursements, which were previously cash-based, expensive, and slow, to the ID system. Last but not least, India added to its network of social and private banks, three new types of bank licences: pre-paid issuer licences, small bank licences, and payment bank licences.
"New actors are investing in these new models; all those things are in place now, so my prediction is in the next five years, India will eclipse Kenya in terms of the number of people brought into the banking system. It's a great example of what countries have to do, what industry has to do, to make this type of change happen."
Realini ended with a special point about regulatory reform, which is essential if these types of digital money initiatives are to happen. "Many countries around the world do not have clear regulations and that's probably the hardest thing to deal with. The second hardest thing is when the regulators restrict non-bank actors from having any role in digital money.
"Then it becomes very difficult to leverage the assets of retailers or mobile operators to third party actors online like Google or Apple - they can't take a role if the regulator says everything has to be done by a bank."
Sandeep Dave, director of Citi's global digital strategy, carried on the theme, stating that "digital money solutions are necessary but not sufficient". There is a tipping point for adoption but mapping this out involves a complex cultural mix
Dave analysed flows of value that had a far reach and high frequency - retail payments, digital commerce, SME collections, government disbursements and remittances.
"Lots of markets opportunistically made progress by digitising one of these flows. So what we found was actually connecting flows was critical for uninterrupted digital transactions," said Dave.
He cited China's evolution where electronic commerce is 10% of overall commerce (US is 7%) and 96% of that happens on digital wallets like AliPay. He said the 2015 Chinses New Year saw over one billion virtual red envelopes sent.
In addition to India's ID scheme, which has 150 million bank accounts off its back, Dave pointed out that Nigeria also is implementing an ID system that will connect money flows digitally, and the Philippines, where the largest remittance market in the world is bleeding into domestic transfers and point of sale.
The FinTech Borg
Other highlights included the Izabella Kaminska of the Financial Times invigilating a panel looking at the storied explosion of fintech, which she likened to banks and financial institutions simply absorbing startup innovation – a bit like the Borg from Star Trek. She went on to question banks' potential use of big data to model behaviour whereby "we all end up in the Panopticon" - reserving the right to make bad financial decisions, such as buying Jimmy Choos instead of saving money.
A blockchain breakout session in the afternoon was well attended. It was hosted by William Knottenbelt, Professor of Applied Quantitative Analysis, Imperial College London and Morgan H. McKenney, global business head, cross currency payments, treasury and trade solutions, Citi.
Knottenbelt was enthusiastic about use cases for smart contracts, automated parcels of event-driven business logic that can take custody over assets on a shared ledger. He used the example of a simple wager with value at stake held within the contract.
An oft-cited use case - not to mention proof of concept - involving smart contracts is the smart bond, operating all by itself within some blockchain-enabled financial future. Knottenbelt was asked what happens if the issuer is unable to pay the coupon; would a smart bond involve a pre-funded escrow account, like the wager example?
Apparently it's too early to say exactly, but Knottenbelt pointed out there could be regulatory penalties programmed into such an instrument in the case of default. Citi's McKenney fielded a related question about how blockchain models might tackle complex areas such as the netting down of securities settlements.
Asked whether blockchains would likely settle trades on a gross or a net basis, she plumped for gross, adding that this was an "off the cuff" prognosis.


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Konami announced that he signed a long-term partnership agreement with Atalanta, one of Italy’s well-established football clubs.
Konami announced today that they signed a long-term partnership agreement with Atalanta Bergamasca Calcio (“Atalanta”), who finished third in the Italian league and is one of the best football clubs in Italy. As the “Official Football Game Partner”, KONAMI will be able to use Atalanta logos and jerseys in real-time football games with the start of the 2021/22 football season.
Konami signs with Italian football club Atalanta
Naoki Morita, chairman of Konami Digital Entertainment BV, expressed his feelings on the subject: “While we are preparing new announcements about the future of the eFootball PES franchise, I am delighted to announce this very special collaboration with the rising star of European football Atalanta BC. We attach great importance to advancing shoulder to shoulder with our Partner Clubs in order to offer enjoyable games to football lovers from all over the world. he stated.
Luca Percassi, CEO of Atalanta BC, stated his thoughts about the partnership as follows: “We are happy to announce our agreement with KONAMI. KONAMI is such a big and international brand that it is enough just to pronounce the brand name. This cooperation marks a very important stage in Atalanta’s growth ”.
Atalanta, a team from Bergamo, Italy, has been running the best leagues in the country for 60 years and has a very solid fan base across Europe. The team has managed to take place in the last 16 of Europe’s most prestigious tournaments for the last two seasons. This new collaboration announcement by KONAMI for eFootball PES is a continuation of the agreements previously made with the leading Italian football associations and clubs such as the Italian Football Association, AS Roma and SS Lazio.


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According to Boston Consulting Group, the global market for pre-owned apparel is growing at a rate of 15 percent per annum, generating a whopping $40 billion per year. As a result, established retail marketplaces have invested heavily in online resale technology platforms to expand their operational reach with consumers. In the last year, Poshmark’s recent acquisition of sneaker authentication platform Suede One to Etsy’s acquisition of Depop, and secondhand marketplace Vestiaire Collective raised $216 million in funding, has established resale as a top retail category.
With the supply chain in flux and the prospect of new inventory in the wind, more and more retailers are adapting their omnichannel strategies to incorporate circular economy concepts to maintain consumer interest and brand engagement. The secondhand retail market experienced a steady resurgence throughout the pandemic, inspired by consumers’ frugality and the aesthetic perpetuated by today’s youth and their prioritization of sustainable fashion, which influences 64% of Gen Z and Millennial purchases. And while we know this isn’t necessarily new information, perhaps the rising trend of luxury retailers embracing consignment and resale is newsworthy enough.
Accessories Make the Outfit
In the last few weeks, pre-owned luxury watches have dominated the digital resale marketplaces, and analysts predict that the remainder of the accessories sector will soon follow. For example, Net-a-Porter recently partnered with Reflaunt on a pilot program that encourages its loyal consumers to sell “well-preserved” previous purchases in exchange for credit or a direct deposit transfer, with accepted categories including designer jewelry ready-to-wear, bags and shoes.
The return on investment can be pretty lucrative for fashion enthusiasts and the retail marketplaces themselves. For example, coveted collectible handbags from Birkin, Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Hermes are more likely to resell at 75%-90% of their retail prices as reported by Rebag, an online platform for buying and selling luxury handbags.
Luxury Resale Makes a Global Impact
The US isn’t the only market reverting to the secondhand retail market due to supply chain struggles. China, which represents about 19% of the world’s population, is also driving revenue into secondhand luxury sectors. Before the pandemic, 56% of the yearly luxury purchases of Chinese consumers were abroad. Now, more than half of those purchases, or 86% of luxury purchases in both retail and resale, are happening locally. Now, more than half of those purchases, or 86% of luxury purchases in both retail and resale, are happening locally. Moreover, when you factor in the average age of the Chinese luxury consumer at 28 is a full ten years younger than that of the rest of the world, one can estimate the significant impact of this generation’s future buying power. The younger consumers of the post-00’s could make up nearly 40% of China’s luxury buyers by as early as 2035, according to Bain & Co., as the majority of the demographic enters the workforce.
How can we help your brand achieve growth with brick and mortar – call us.


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Thousands of jewellery manufacturers and gemstone suppliers are set to charm professional buyers at the29th June Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair, which opens on June 23 at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre (HKCEC).
A total of 2,198 exhibitors from 41 countries and regions will showcase their latest collections of fine jewellery and loose gemstones at the four-day fair, according to trade show organiser UBM Asia Ltd. Manufacturers of jewellery tools and equipment are likewise displaying their goods.
Occupying 70,000sqm of exhibition space, the event is strategically divided into 16 zones, making sourcing easier for buyers, added the organiser.
The June Hong Kong Fair will also shine the spotlight on 17 group pavilions from Australia, Antwerp, Brazil, mainland China, Colombia, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the US and the International Colored Gemstone Association (ICA).
“This year, the ICA group pavilion is bigger with more exhibitors. The strong participation of group pavilions confirms the importance of the fair in this industry. Buyers can expect to see a range of quality opals from the Australian pavilion, emeralds from the Colombian pavilion, Akoya pearls from the Japanese pavilion, and more,” said Sunny Chan, deputy fair manager of Jewellery Fairs at UBM Asia.
Buyers can also visit themed halls for specific product categories such as the Diamond Pavilion located in Halls 3B, C, D and E. It gathers 480 diamantaires from around the world. Exhibitors in the Diamond Pavilion are under the banners of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre and the Israel Diamond Institute. The Gemstone Pavilion, located in Halls 5E, F and G and concourses, hosts 501 gemstone suppliers.
Other highlights of the fair are the Hong Kong Premier Pavilion, which features the latest collections of 30 major jewellery brands from Hong Kong and the Fine Design Pavilion & Fine Gem Pavilion, a top destination for the world’s finest jewellery and gemstones where 80 globally renowned exhibitors are showcasing their products.
The JNA Awards 2016 Press Conference, hosted byJNA, will also be held on June 23. The annual JNA Awards recognises innovation and excellence in the jewellery and gemstone industry, honouring companies and individuals for their contributions to the advancement of the trade and achievements made in Asia.
A diamond auction by PJSC Alrosa is likewise scheduled for June 23 to 26. A seminar on synthetic diamonds and a book launch by GRS Lab (HK) Ltd will be held on June 25.
Two shows, one venue
The Mineral, Gem and Fossil Asia will be held concurrently at the Convention Hall of the HKCEC, according to UBM Asia. This all-in-one marketplace gives buyers the opportunity to source a wide range of rare mineral specimens, rough gemstones and fossils. Buyers at the June Hong Kong Fair can enjoy free entry to the mineral show.


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NOLA— Searching for down home New Orleans cooking? Ian McNulty reports on a new wave of neighborhood eateries that are perfecting the feel good classics like gumbo, po’ boys and more, including The Munch Factory, Station 6, Bevi Seafood Co, Seither’s Seafood, Rosedale, and High Hat Cafe. [Advocate]
METAIRIE— Ten year old burger spot Phil’s Grill has sadly shuttered its flagship on Severn. Owner Phil De Gruy tells Todd Price that “a failed expansion effort on Camp Street, increased competition, the rising costs of operating a restaurant, and... a personal battle with stage III Colon Cancer” have all contributed to the closure, but a location in Harahan is still open. [NOLA.com]
BAYOU ST. LOUIS— Brett Anderson reports that chef Armand Jonte, who came up under Paul Prudhomme at Commander’s and “who pushed the boundaries of New Orleans and Gulf coast cuisine in the 1980s and '90s” at Gautreau’s and elsewhere has passed away due to cancer at the age of 64.
NOLA— Just FYI, Dat Dog currently has a Turducken Holiday Dog on the menu. Also this Saturday, November 26, the Magazine location will have local handcrafted gifts from 20+ small businesses and artists for purchase as part of the Magazine St. Art Market. And the first three weekends in December, the courtyard will transform into a holiday market with lots of activities for kids and a toy drive to benefit Children’s Hospital New Orleans. [Eaterwire]


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Apple has threatened to remove apps from its widely-used App Store when they do not comply with the upcoming personal feature allowing users to block advertisers from tracking them across different applications.
The new feature, dubbed App Tracking Transparency, was initially intended to launch this season, but has been delayed to give developers more time to make changes to their apps and address privacy issues.
Some technology companies and advertisers, such as Facebook, have criticised the projected shift, saying it could damage smaller developers like gaming companies disproportionately.
However, Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software technology at Apple, said consumers ought to know when they are being tracked over different apps and websites.
“Early next year, we’ll begin requiring all apps that want to do that to obtain their users’ explicit permission, and developers who fail to meet that standard can have their apps removed in the App Store,” he said at the European Data Protection and Privacy Conference.
The new feature will require a pop-up notification saying the app “would like permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other businesses.”
“When invasive tracking is the business model, you don’t to welcome transparency and customer choice,” Federighi said, rejecting criticism of the new feature.
“We want the world to observe the arguments for what they are: a brazen attempt to keep up the privacy-invasive status quo”
Facebook and Google are the largest among thousands of companies that track online consumers to pick up on their habits and interests and serve them relevant ads.
Apple itself was under fire last month when a Austrian privacy group, led by famed campaigner Max Schrems, filed complaints with data protection watchdogs in Germany and Spain, alleging an online tracking tool used in its devices breached European law. Apple rebutted the charge, calling it “factually inaccurate”.
Federighi said the industry would adapt to provide effective advertising without invasive tracking.
“Getting this right will require time, collaboration, listening — and true venture across the entire technology ecosystem. But we think the outcome will be transformative.”
The team at Platform Executive hope you have enjoyed the ‘Apple could block apps that do not comply with new privacy feature‘ article. Initial reporting via our official content partners at Thomson Reuters. Reporting by Jonathan Landay. Editing by Steve Orlofsky.
Stay on top of the latest developments across the platform economy and gain access to our problem-solving tools, proprietary databases and content sets by becoming a member of our community. Premium subscription plans start from just $16 per month.


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Bioreactor to Table Can barbecue culture come to terms with cultured meat?
By Steve Haruch
If you’ve ever sat in a barbecue restaurant and wondered how many flesh-and-blood animals it takes to supply the meat for all those shoulder sandwiches, smoked chicken quarters, and half-racks of ribs, you’re not alone. A new wave of companies is betting that in the not-too-distant future, the answer might approach zero. So-called “clean meat,” or meat that is grown in a laboratory from stem cells under controlled conditions, forgoes the live animal altogether.
In his book Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, Paul Shapiro explains, “Using technology first developed by academics and the medical field and now being commercialized by several start-ups, innovators are taking tiny biopsies of animals’ muscles and then culturing those cells to grow more muscle outside the animals’ bodies.” The reasons for pursuing this method anticipate a near-certain imbalance of supply and demand: growing demand for meat by an increasing human population is unsustainable.
Certainly, the labs currently working on this technology will need to scale up to industrial bioreactors at some point, in order to brew anything approaching current production. In his book The One True Barbecue: Fire, Smoke, and the Pitmasters Who Cook the Whole Hog, Rien Fertel describes a hog slaughtering and processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, where “2,500 Smithfield employees arrive in two rotating shifts to kill, prep, pack, and ship more than 30,000 hogs each day.” That’s a lot of pigs.
It’s also a lot of water, a lot of land, and a lot of pollution. For the United States market, roughly 9 billion animals are raised and slaughtered for their meat each year. On a warming, crowded planet, livestock production accounts for more greenhouse gases than all modes of transportation combined. What if it didn’t have to be this way?
In 2016, a company called Memphis Meats produced its first meatball, using beef cultured from cow cells, including those for muscle and connective tissue. CEO and co-founder Uma Valeti, who hadn’t eaten meat in years due to his discomfort with how it’s produced, declared the meatball a success. He later told Inc. magazine that it “just immediately brought back all the memories you get when you eat meat.”
The cost of that lab-grown meat at the time was a daunting $18,000 per pound. More recently, Memphis Meats offered up two poultry creations: a “Southern Fried Chicken”—with a candy-orange swirl of sauce and a cilantro sprig that belied its non-Southern origins; and duck à l’orange. With the chicken coming in at $9,000 per pound, price is clearly still a barrier. But the company reportedly hopes to have their products on store shelves by 2021.
Despite the moniker, Memphis Meats is based not in Shelby County, Tennessee, but in Silicon Valley. “We love the meat-loving culture of Memphis; it’s an iconic place,” Valeti told the Commercial Appeal in 2016. “There’s an association with good meat.”
Their actual association with Bluff City appears to continue in name only: Co-founder Will Clem—a tissue scientist and owner of Baby Jacks BBQ, which for a time dedicated blank menu space to possible future clean meat dishes—no longer appears on the company’s website. Similarly, a reference to having “one foot in San Francisco and the other in Memphis, Tennessee” has been removed from the “Our Story” page—though it does still mention “combining the innovative spirit of Silicon Valley and the rich food traditions of the American south [sic].” (Memphis Meats declined multiple interview requests for this article, and a company representative did not respond to a list of questions sent via email.)
With significant progress already under their belts and a recent $17 million fundraising round, they are widely considered to be the company best positioned to bring lab-grown meat to the consumer market. They count Bill Gates and Richard Branson among their financial backers. In January, the venture capital arm of Arkansas-based Tyson Foods invested, joining fellow agribusiness giant Cargill.
Valeti likens the promise of lab-grown meat to “the second domestication.” Whereas humans first took control of animals to harvest their flesh, now we can directly harvest the cells themselves. The Memphis Meats team tends to use the term “cultured meat” a lot, and those in the business also speak of “brewing” meat—in a 2016 story in the Memphis Flyer, Clem compared the process to craft beer.
James Peisker and Chris Carter started Porter Road Butcher as a pop-up farmers market stall, and have since expanded to their own East Nashville shop and an online mail-order business. As you might imagine, they are skeptical of Memphis Meats and their ilk.
“I don’t necessarily think it’s the right move,” Peisker says of lab-grown meat. Though he calls the intent “noble,” he says that for him, lab meat fundamentally addresses the wrong problem. “The way that we as humans need to think about meat,” he says, “is consuming it in a much more responsible manner—the way it’s raised, the way we harvest it—and eat a higher quality, and less of it.”
But as Paul Shapiro notes in Clean Meat, we’ve known for decades that “the Earth isn’t big enough to sustain a global population of American-style meat-eaters.” Even so, vegetarianism has held steady around 2-5 percent of the population, and ethical arguments for reducing meat consumption have historically failed. For his part, Peisker—a butcher advocating for reduced meat consumption—offers a socio-economic argument.
“Meat is incorrectly priced, and it is getting paid for by the low wages of the people, by the misery of the animals,” Peisker says. In effect, he argues that the ugliness of the system alone should be enough for consumers to demand a change. “And if lab-creating meat is the only way we can feed our need for inexpensive unhappy meat,” he adds, “we need to look at ourselves as a society.”
Lab-grown meat would solve the unhappiness of livestock by removing animals from the picture altogether. (Once their cells are gathered, that is.) To Peisker’s other point—that the low prices of commodity meat are borne on the backs of people earning very little—Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn adds that working conditions will be an important point of distinction between new lab-meat companies and the industry they seek to replace. “They really need to look at the way they treat their workers,” Vaughn says. “They need to focus big-time on that.”
The view from Porter Road is that lab-grown meat also has serious gustatory shortcomings. “You can recreate actual tissue of animals in a lab,” Peisker says. “But…what develops flavor in muscle protein is the action of that muscle working.”
There appears to be a similar principle at work in cultured meats. “Valeti and Genovese noticed that if they harvested the meat earlier in the growing process, the flesh was more tender, similar to when taken from a younger animal like a calf or lamb,” Shapiro notes in Clean Meat. “If they waited a little longer, it was more texturized, like that of an older animal.” Longer, in this case, is a matter of days or weeks. That’s unlikely to satisfy the Porter Road butchers.
Oddly enough, the lab-grown muscles do work—or at least they twitch. When they reach a certain stage of maturity, the disembodied fibers begin to spontaneously contract.
One advantage lab-grown meat has over plant-based alternatives, according to Valeti, is that they don’t require a change in mindset. “People can buy it off the shelf, take it home, and cook it in the ways they’ve known for centuries,” he has said.
But will people really eat it? A poll conducted by Pew Charitable Trusts in 2014 found that only 20 percent of Americans were willing to eat “meat that was grown in a lab.” (A separate study of Belgian consumers found somewhat better results if the question was framed with environmental benefits.)
Rodney Scott, proprietor and pitmaster at his eponymous restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, is known for his slow-cooked, whole-hog barbecue, and for sourcing and splitting his own wood. His motto, “cut, chop, cook,” speaks to a work ethic that accepts no shortcuts.
When I call him and pose the question of cooking with lab-grown meat, he’s at a loss for words at first.
“Wow,” he replies. Then a long silence.
“In my honest opinion, I wouldn’t,” he says. “I don’t think my customers would understand it, either.”
Scott admits part of this reaction comes from being set in his ways. “For us old-school country boys,” he says, “that whole hog sums it all up.” Hearing him describe the way the juices from the back bone, along with the different flavors from the ribs, hams, and belly, all come together over the course of twelve hours above smoldering wood coals, it’s hard to imagine anyone choosing a cultured meat product over that.
Vaughn is less skeptical. Once a few high-profile chefs put it on their menus and their Instagram feeds, he reasons, the public will follow suit. “I think all these people who say they wouldn’t eat it, they just haven’t seen anyone else eat it,” he says. But, he adds: “Any of the barbecue hardcore folks out there, you’re never going to win them over.” Anyone who would decry prime grade brisket, he reasons, will reject lab-grown anything.
There’s also the question of whether lab-grown meat can ever really serve more than a niche market. As Vaughn puts it: “If we were having this discussion about kobe beef—all this meat is going to be expensive for a good long while, I imagine—if we’re talking about it in those terms, nobody’s saying, ‘Yeah, but what about that guy in the shack who’s cooking barbecue?’”
The whole idea of Southern barbecue, he says, is “taking these cheaper cuts, and through long, low cooking times, you can transform them into something entirely different. If you’re designing a cut of meat, why would you ever design it to be that difficult to cook?”
But this is about more than marbling. With global population heading toward 9 billion and beyond, and demand for meat expected to double in coming decades, the math says that eventually even the pitmaster will feel the effects, one way or another. So it’s easy to agree, at least in principle, with Memphis Meats’ basic position that “we need a better way to feed a hungry world.”
There are as many questions as answers. Could this new generation of companies one day supply racks of lab-grown ribs? Or does it defeat the conservationist purpose to create waste material like bone? What about growing the never-alive body of an entire pig? It’s at least theoretically possible—but is the idea of brewing entire carcasses from stem cells just too freaky?
“Very freaky,” Scott offers. Another long silence.
But the longer we talk, the more he comes around to the idea. “If that ever came about, I would love to try it,” he finally says. And if Scott’s manning the pits that day, he’ll draw a crowd.
Steve Haruch is a writer and independent filmmaker based in Nashville. He is the editor of People Only Die of Love in Movies: Film Writing by Jim Ridley, out in June from Vanderbilt University Press.


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Dickey’s Barbecue Pit, a restaurant chain based in Dallas, has settled a class-action suit by agreeing to pay $2.35 million to people impacted by a data security breach. In the breach, hackers were able to access customer’s payment card information.
The breach took place between April 2019 and late October 2020. Attorneys say the restaurant’s customers who paid with credit and debit cards during that time period are eligible to receive money and credit monitoring.
Affected consumers can submit a claim here. The deadline is April 23, 2023.
Conservice, a utility management company, has agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle a class-action suit filed by a Maryland consumer. The suit charges, among other things, that the company collected debts from Maryland consumers without having a proper license.
Even though it isn’t a debt collection firm, Conservice provides that service for the utilities serving multi-family communities and other residential and commercial properties.
Under the terms of the settlement, class members can receive an equal share of the net settlement fund. Maryland residents can file a claim here.
The clock is ticking for affected Apple MacBook customers to file a claim for part of a $50 million settlement. The class-action suit, filed last year, claims that MacBook laptop computers sold between 2015 and 2019 were equipped with defective butterfly keyboards. It followed an initial suit filed in 2018.
The suit claims the defect resulted in "characters repeating unexpectedly; letters or characters not appearing; and/or the keys feeling "sticky" or not responding in a consistent manner."
Eligible class members will receive up to $395 but court documents say the payout will be awarded based on a tier system. More information is available on the MacBook settlement website.
A record year
It turns out that 2022 was a record year for class-action lawsuits and consumers who received compensation. The legal publication Duane Morris Class Action Review analyzed 635 class action judgments last year. It found the total value of the judgments was more than $63 billion.
One reason for the record amount is the settlements are getting larger. In the last year, there were 15 class action cases that produced $1 billion or more in settlements.


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So long, secrecy. Samsung appears to have accidentally let the cat out of the bag in terms of its highly anticipated artificial intelligence assistant. While we’ve long suspected that one of the Galaxy S8’s most talked-about features would be named Bixby, it wasn’t until January 9 that we had solid confirmation from the horse’s mouth.
As initially reported by Sammobile, Samsung confirmed a bit early on its website that it will not only have a standalone online payment platform named Samsung Pay Mini, but will also have Bixby help facilitate these payments.
The original image on the Samsung Pay Beta site has since been removed, but screenshots last forever.
While it’s unclear as of yet exactly how Bixby -the AI assistant, will integrate with Samsung Pay Mini, it seems reasonable to assume that it will allow you to make payments via your voice. And the “Mini” version of the payment platform may allow customers to make transactions via Samsung Pay, even if they’re not using a Samsung device. Whereas Samsung Pay has previously been available only on its own phones, the stripped-down version of the app just might be found on other handsets as well.
Of course, all this speculation only serves to build even more buzz around the Galaxy S8. Although Samsung has never officially confirmed that Bixby would actually make its debut on the new flagship phone, it seems safe to make such an assumption.
After all, the S8 will be the next flagship phone to come out of the company (after its extremely ill-fated predecessor, which had a penchant for explosions). So in order to make up for past mistakes, the new Galaxy will need something big — something like Bixby.
To stay up to date on the latest rumors and speculation around the S8, check out our roundup here.
- Meta wants you to use its creepy Portal as a secondary monitor
- The Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Flip 4 are exciting because they’re boring
- I’ve used an iPhone since 2007, but the Galaxy Z Fold 4 makes me want to switch
- The Galaxy Watch 5 doesn’t fix my biggest problem with Samsung wearables
- How many folds can the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 survive? Spoiler — it’s a lot


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World class downstream petroleum company, Rainoil, has officially confirmed its participation as a Gold Sponsor at the forthcoming 13th Oil Trading and Logistics (OTL) Africa Downstream Week slated to hold in Lagos Oriental Hotel, Lagos state, from 28-31st October, 2019.
Rainoil is a fully integrated downstream petroleum company and provides bespoke energy services to its customers in West Africa, which also comprises of a one-stop-shop solutions from shipping all the way to tank farm operations, and marketing in the downstream sector.
The 13th Oil Trading and Logistics (OTL) Africa Downstream Week is an intellectual platform for midstream and downstream businesses in the continent to define their value chain. With global recognition as the biggest stage for downstream oil and gas businesses in the black continent, the event enters its 13th edition late October 2019. The 2019 edition of OTL Africa Downstream Week will accommodate over 2500 delegates, exhibitors, speakers, and equally special guests opportunities for high-profile networking, learning, and business match-making.
Among of events for the conference is the robust exhibition program. OTL Africa Downstream Exhibition showcases the most vital products and services of the industry, which presents an avenue for companies at the event to identify and make use of relevant solutions. The exhibition is also an excellent platform for new innovations and technologies to be showcased to the public. Top executives from some of the largest and most successful downstream petroleum companies in Africa will grace the occasion with the major goal of improving their performances, identifying solutions to aid bolster their delivery and also project their brand to the public. It is important to note that attendance for the OTL Africa Downstream Exhibition is free and open to registered visitors and delegates.
As a prominent player in the Nigerian petroleum industry, incorporated in November 1994, and fully commencing operation as a petroleum products marketing company in May 1997, Rainoil possess leveraged experience, professionalism, synergy, and a passion for excellence towards meeting international standards and best practices, and attaining global relevance through contemporary business practices.
With 22 years of effective operation and organic growth in the downstream sector’s value chain, Rainoil have been able to build an impressive client base through the use of its network of oil and gas facilities strategically located across Nigeria, and deployment of a blend of local industry knowledge, automation, and customer experience feedback. Rainoil’s operations span across the value chain of the downstream sector; some of its activities include Petroleum Product Storage, Haulage/Distribution, and Retail Sales. Petrol (PMS), Diesel (AGO) and Kerosene (DPK) are some of the company’s primary products.
Owing to its status as Gold sponsor for the 13th OTL, Rainoil’s plans and ambition of building a downstream network that is capable of rivaling any other in Nigeria, combined with its fleet of 91 tanks, six shipping vessels, ownership of over 60 retail outlets, and numerous ultra-modern bulk storage facilities across the country, puts the over two-decades old business at a higher competitive advantage than others in its quest to reach the status of “major marketer” in the downstream sector.
Featured Images Source: Rainoil Limited – Facebook


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New Zealand is now the worlds largest supplier of softwood logs with exports increasing fourfold to almost two billion dollars in five years. Source: Timberbiz, Scoop
Exports are increased fourfold to almost two billion dollars in five years, reported the Wood Resource Quarterly.
More than 20% of the world’s softwood log trade originates from New Zealand.
In 2013, the country exported 57% of the country’s timber harvest and the value of the trade had tripled in five years, according to the Wood Resource Quarterly.
A majority of the log volumes were destined for China, but South Korea, India and Japan were also sourcing logs from New Zealand last year.
Russia and the US ranked second and third as global log suppliers, each shipping about 15% of the softwood logs traded in the world last year.
Not only has the volume of logs exported from New Zealand increased dramatically the past five years, with almost a doubling of exports to over 16 million m3, but the value of the logs has gone up even faster.
The average value of exported logs reached a new record high in March this year, which was double the value just four years ago.
Despite the dramatic increase in sawlogs leaving the country and the closures of a number of manufacturing facilities in New Zealand, domestic log consumption has not changed much the past 10 years.
In 2013, the forest industry consumed just slightly less logs than the 10-year annual average consumption.
China is, of course, the reason for the surge in log exports and the record high timber harvest levels in New Zealand.
In 2013, shipments to China accounted for 72% of the total export volume, followed by South Korea, India and Japan.
The magnitude of the log export volume cannot be underscored enough. In the 4Q/13, as much as 57% of the timber harvest in New Zealand was exported in log form.
Such a high share of exports of unprocessed wood is unmatched in the rest of the world.
While timberland owners have mightily benefited from the strong log export market, domestic sawmills have not seen the same surge in export volumes.
In 2008, the total value of exported lumber equaled that of exported logs at approximately 500 million US dollars.
Since that time, the export value for lumber has gone up a respectable 30%. However, this pales in comparison with the value of logs that have gone up fourfold to reach close to two billion US dollars in 2013.


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Farmers Market beginning July 15 at Woods County Courthouse
July 6, 2017
The Woods County Farmers Market is scheduled to open for the 2017 season on Saturday, July 15, in the northeast corner of the Woods County Courthouse lawn.
The market has not opened in recent years but will endeavor to resume operation.
The Farmers Market will open at 7:30 a.m. each Saturday morning and be open until noon or until the day’s products are sold. The market will be open each Saturday for the remainder of the growing season, probably late October. All consumers are welcome to drop-by and purchase these fresh, home-grown garden products.
Vendor booths at the Farmers Market a...


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Like its predecessor, the B1, the Peak is loaded with sensors capable of tracking your movement, sweat output, heat dissipation, blood flow and heart rate. This time, though, it can also track your heart rate during workouts. If that sounds like a no-brainer feature, CEO Jef Holove says the optical heart rate sensor on the old model produced too much signal noise while in motion. At the same time, an electrical heart rate sensor (the kind used in heart rate-monitoring chest straps) would have had a negative effect on both battery life as well as the size of the device. So that was out of the question. That said, Holove promises that a new optical sensor and an improved algorithm should produce more accurate results.
Additionally, the band now has a Bluetooth LE radio, helping it sync automatically with a brand-new Android and iOS app. This allows the band to behave more like a smartwatch -- sort of. In an interview, Holove said he didn't want users to be annoyed by too many pop-ups, but added that, at the very least, the band would show incoming texts and calls, along with notifications related to fitness tracking (reminders to get up and move, et cetera). Basis also plans to open its API to developers as it considers adding more apps. Really, though, the company is still figuring everything out: Holove says these smartwatch-like features will be added via a software update sometime after the device ships. That leaves Basis time to decide how many notifications is too many.
So that's how the new fitness tracker works. But if you ask us, the real story is how much better it looks. Aside from the fact that the original B1 was on the pricey side, it was also bulky, with various buttons on the side to make up for the fact that there was no touchscreen. It wasn't the sort of device you could wear with just any outfit. In contrast, this new Peak trades a plastic face for a thinner metal body, complete with an LCD touchscreen, and no buttons on the sides. Basis also claims the display is easier to read in sunlight, but we'll be the judge of that when we eventually get one in to review.


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Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MRTI.BO)
Tue, Jul 26 2016
NEW DELHI Maruti Suzuki India Ltd , India's top-selling car maker, posted on Tuesday a forecast-beating 23 percent rise in first-quarter net profit, as higher sales offset the adverse impact of an unfavorable foreign exchange rate.
* Q1 net profit 14.86 bln rupees vs 12.39 bln expected by analysts
NEW DELHI, May 27 Maruti Suzuki India Ltd , the country's leading carmaker, will recall 77,380 vehicles to upgrade the airbag controller software and replace a faulty fuel filter, the company said in a statement on Friday.
* Shares up 3.9 pct (Recasts with comments from company executives on Africa)
NEW DELHI, April 26 India's biggest automaker, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, posted its first fall in quarterly net profit in two years, hit by higher expenses and production loss due to civil unrest near its factory, but met analyst estimates.
NEW DELHI Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, India's top-selling carmaker, will raise the prices of its passenger vehicles by up to 34,494 rupees ($512), after the government imposed a new 'green' tax on all cars sold in the country.
NEW DELHI, March 3 Maruti Suzuki India Ltd , India's top-selling carmaker, will raise the prices of its passenger vehicles by up to 34,494 rupees ($512), after the government imposed a new 'green' tax on all cars sold in the country.
* Exec says to launch 15 new models by 2020 Further company coverage: (Reporting by Aditi Shah)
* Maruti Suzuki to reduce number of platforms in India by 2020 (Adds detail, quotes)
NEW DELHI, Feb 1 Carmakers are gearing up to launch affordable hybrid and electric cars for India in the next few years, executives said, lured by government incentives for fuel-efficient vehicles as the country accelerates efforts to cut worsening air pollution.


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WASHINGTON: The US trade deficit fell in July for the first time in three months, the Commerce Department said yesterday, as the vaccine-fueled surge in American consumer demand ebbed and exports picked up. The trade deficit was $70.1 billion in July, according to the report, 4.3 percent lower than the previous month’s downwardly revised figure and a bigger drop than analysts expected. Imports fell very slightly to $282.9 billion, while exports picked up 1.3 percent to $212.8 billion, in what Mahir Rasheed of Oxford Economics described as trade flows reverting after the United States’ vaccine-fueled spring bounceback.
“We expect the deficit to narrow further as foreign consumption gains momentum and domestic demand decelerates,” he said in an analysis. “The pandemic will continue to pose a downside risk to trade flows, but we expect a gradual normalization in trade dynamics as vaccinations increase and supply disruptions slowly ease.”
The decline in the overall goods and services deficit was fueled by a drop of $5.5 billion in the goods deficit to $87.7 billion, while the services surplus fell $2.4 billion to $17.7 billion. Compared to July 2020, when the pandemic had badly hit global commerce and American consumer demand, the deficit was 37.1 percent, or $131 billion, higher. Services exports increased marginally while goods exports made up the bulk of the overall jump, with capital goods seeing a $1 billion increase, while consumer goods and automobiles and parts rose by smaller amounts. Goods made up most of the decline in imports, with consumer goods falling $2.1 billion and industrial supplies dropping $1.7 billion even as cars and parts rose $1.1 billion.
Meanwhile, new US unemployment benefit filings dropped to a fresh pandemic low last week, government data showed yesterday, a positive sign for the labor market as it faces renewed disruptions from the Delta variant. The Labor Department reported a seasonally adjusted 340,000 new filings for aid in the week ended August 28, 14,000 less than the previous week’s upwardly revised level and the lowest since COVID-19 caused millions of layoffs in March 2020.
Another 102,405 filings, not seasonally adjusted, were made under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program to aid freelancers not normally eligible for aid, about 14,000 less than the week prior. While the new claims were fewer than analysts expected, Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics warned that they may not indicate job growth, since firms may simply be slowing hiring as they wait to see how bad the surge of the fast-spreading Delta variant of the virus will be.
“This is a new cycle low and the trend in claims is still falling, despite the surge in COVID cases across the southeastern quadrant of the country. But claims tell us nothing about the pace of hiring, which appears to be bearing the brunt of the Delta hit,” he said in a note. Shepherdson predicted the Labor Department’s August employment report due out Friday would show job growth slowing. The data come ahead of the September 6 end of the PUA and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) programs, both of which Congress created as emergency measures at the pandemic’s start and will finally expire. As of August 14, the most recent week for which data is available, more than 5.4 million people were receiving PUA benefits and 3.8 million receiving aid under PEUC-most of whom will not receive jobless aid after next week. “Today’s Labor Department report comes as millions of Americans are bracing themselves for extreme hardship, faced with losing pandemic benefits as the Delta variant surges across the country,” said Andrew Stettner of the progressive think tank The Century Foundation, which has been tracking the impact of the benefits’ end. —AFP


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Just over a week ago, a major leak had surfaced with regards to the next iPhone aka iPhone 5. In The leak revealed images that showed what the next iPhone would look like. Close on the heels of the leak, a video has surfaced showing the same back panel, and the design of the back panel matches up with the leaked image that surfaced earlier.
A report by CydiaBlog, who have obtained the video via eTradeSupply point out to a variety of changes one can expect to feature on the upcoming iPhone. The screen size of the iPhone has remained the same, since it was first launched and from the video we can see that with the sixth generation device, Apple will increase the size of the display to 4-inch diagonally. While the width will not change, the brand will raise the height, thereby giving it an aspect ratio of 1136 x 640.
If this is in fact the back panel of the next iPhone, then it will be significantly thinner in comparison to the iPhone 4S. Though from the video the actual depth of the smartphone cannot be gauged, rumours are indicating that it will measure 7.9mm, down from 9.3mm of the current generation iPhone. The report goes on to state, “The leaked part is neither a battery door nor a middle plate. It is a single integrated part! The iPhone 5 back plate is one piece anchored by an aluminum alloy. Major design changes in the upcoming iPhone.”
Other major changes, include the relocation of the headphone jack from the top to the bottom, the redesigned speaker grille and the connector dock. Another noteworthy mention is that the SIM tray is a lot smaller on the chassis that was shot in the video and when placed in the SIM slot of the iPhone 4/ 4S, it did not exactly fit. If these leaked images are in fact the back and front plates of the iPhone 5, then we can expect the front facing FaceTime camera to be moved above the earpiece in a centralized position, rather than to the side, which is currently found on the iPhone 4 and 4S.
Let us know your reactions about the supposed back panel of the next iPhone in the comments section below.
Published Date: Jun 08, 2012 03:45 pm | Updated Date: Jun 08, 2012 03:45 pm


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As more and more consumers are becoming concerned about the environment, many of today’s leading brands are increasingly offering customers new fiber-based sustainable packaging options.
Sustana Fiber is pleased to announce that it has joined companies from around the world in the creation of a new Consortium, CELAB: Toward a Circular Economy for Labels. CELAB – Circular Economy for Labels – is an industry initiative, founded by companies in the self-adhesive label industry to create greater circularity for its products by enhancing and promoting matrix and release liner recycling around the world.
This edition of Sustana Fiber’s ‘Conversations with Green Champions’ is with long-time customer Monadnock Paper Mills, Inc. which recently introduced two sustainable premium packaging products: Envi PC 100 Performance Board with 100% post-consumer waste (PCW) recycled fiber, and Hemp Envi™ Performance Board with 30% hemp fiber and 70% PCW.
According to the UN-Water Policy Brief on Climate Change and Water, climate change increases unpredictability in the water cycle, inducing extreme weather events, – such as droughts and wildfires – reducing the certainty of water availability and negatively impacting water quality while putting the biodiversity and sustainable development of our planet at great risk.
During this critical time of the COVID-19 pandemic, while we live, work and care about family and friends in new conditions, humanity is prompted to recognize how it must work together to reduce its collective impact.
Sustana Fiber reaches safety achievement for operating one year without a recordable incident.
This edition of Sustana Fiber’s ‘Conversations with Green Champions’ is with Barak Bright, Director of Product Development at Clearwater Paper, which is introducing new paperboard brands with recycled content in an industry dominated by non-recycled products.
Sustana Fiber was recently featured on the Carton Council.
DENTON, Texas – With some recycling programs across the country having to scale back services or halt collection completely as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, recyclers are in a challenging situation trying to find the feedstock needed to keep up with an increase in demand for certain paper products.
Carton Council: Sustana mill in Lévis, Quebec begins recycling cartons
Sustana Fiber’s ‘Conversations with Green Champions’ explores environmental responsibility with sustainability-minded organizations like UPM Raflatac, which has launched the first paper label concept consisting of a face stock containing recycled fiber from waste label liners.


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In the social media ecosystem, there are influencers seeking new revenue streams and aspiring influencers looking to grow their followers. PearPop wants to be the bridge that connects the two.
PearPop, which launched last October, is a platform where users pay TikTok influencers to collaborate on content. The influencers set their price for a duet, stitch, or sound (prices range anywhere from $15 to $3,333 per post), and users have the option to pay outright or bid a higher amount if there’s strong demand. In turn, that access to top influencers could boost a growing account.
It’s an idea that’s catching on with investors and creators.
PearPop recently announced raising $16 million in a Series A led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, with angel investors including Gary Vaynerchuk, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Mark Cuban, Snoop Dogg, and YouTube star Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast. PearPop currently has more than 10,000 creators on the platform (including such celebrities as Heidi Klum, Snoop Dogg, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kerry Washington) and has facilitated more than 1,000 transactions. (The company takes a 25% cut.)
These early collabs have yielded some success stories. Model Leah Svoboda went from 20,000 to 141,000 followers after a PearPop duet with Anna Shumate (10.2 million followers). After musician Tobias Dray collaborated with Katelyn Elizabeth (1.6 million followers) for $25 using one of his tracks as a sound on TikTok, that song got a bump from being used 30 times to 671.
“I always thought there should be a way to pay someone to collaborate with you directly,” says Cole Mason, founder and CEO of PearPop. “It blew my mind that there wasn’t a way to do that.”
Making a market
It’s easy to compare PearPop to the celebrity shout-out platform Cameo, but PearPop is establishing a distinct lane by creating a two-sided exchange with creators: High-level influencers earn revenue and budding influencers gain social capital.
“We’re just facilitating the transactions that are happening in the current marketplace,” says Spencer Market, cofounder and president of PearPop. “If you go direct to [an influencer’s] agent and say, I want to do something with Josh Richards, you would have to go to [management company] Talent X to negotiate a deal, sign a legal contract, pay a fee to facilitate that deal. We streamline and democratize that process entirely and give control to the creators.”
The idea for PearPop came out of Mason’s frustration as a former aspiring model. “[Agencies] really pressure you to boost your Instagram, so I went through different ways to scale it,” he says. “I was following and unfollowing people, trying to do every algorithm—nothing really worked.”
Mason eventually transitioned out of modeling and into work as a promoter, which help bankroll his short-lived 2018 startup GramEnvy aimed at growing people’s Instagram followers. Mason realized one way to do that was to have someone at the level of an influencer post about someone with a smaller following. However, changes to Instagram’s algorithm stunted GramEnvy’s approach, forcing it to shut down and leading Mason to refine the idea into PearPop.
A new revenue stream
Collabs between influencers is nothing new, but PearPop opens up the market while adding an additional revenue stream for influencers who may have a sizable following but not perhaps big enough to score the major brand deals as their top-level counterparts.
Collab with your favorite creators on #PearPop ????
“If you weren’t Charli D’Amelio or Noah Beck, you really weren’t making any money,” Mason says. “There are workarounds: You could sell merch or do meet-and-greets if you’re big enough. But there was just no way to monetize easily.”
TikTok has been trying to solve that issue with initiatives like the Creator Fund, which pays a stipend to creators, and the Creator Marketplace, a platform aimed at connecting brands and creators for collaborations.
While it certainly couldn’t hurt to apply to those initiatives, TikTok influencer Coby Persin appreciates the immediacy of PearPop.
“They’re canceling out the middleman,” he says. And not to mention, mitigating scammers. Prior to joining PearPop, Persin says that he’s has had people reach out to him to collaborate or create content, only to get stiffed. “You don’t want to go after them for $2,500 or $1,000,” Persin says. “What are you gonna do? Hire a lawyer in the hopes of finding the guy in Sweden that took your money? You’re stuck.”
Persin says that while his main revenue on TikTok comes from the Creator Fund, PearPop is a worthwhile addition to the mix of streams available to creators. “It has a spot in the industry where it needs it,” he says.
Mason says PearPop started on TikTok because it had the most robust suite of features to collaborate with other users. But as other platforms expand those capabilities, PearPop’s accessibility will follow suit, e.g. Mason says PearPop will include Instagram in the coming weeks. “PearPop’s mission,” he says, “is to make anyone and everyone accessible on social media.”


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"For each of us, life is a journey. What you want is a device that can help us on the journey," Samsung's CEO JK Shin said on stage, later adding that "We will make life richer, simpler, and fuller." (Shin proved himself a showman as well, though perhaps no Jobs; he appeared as several different characters throughout the hour-long, staged unveiling event.)
The smartphone will be available at the end of April in 155 countries, although Samsung did not reveal the price yet. Sprint immediately announced plans to carry the device, though it did not say when.
"Sprint is excited to bring the benefit of Truly Unlimited 4G LTE data to the U.S. variant of Galaxy S 4 in the second quarter of this year," Fared Adib, senior vice president of product development, said in a statement.
As expected, the phone is best in class against most quantifiable measures.
"It's slimmer, yet stronger," Shin said, who at one point appeared on stage dressed in full costume. The new phone is visually almost identical to its predecessor, the SIII, but slightly larger with a 5-inch 1080p AMOLED screen and a 13-megapixel camera, all of which is enclosed in a polycarbonate case that comes in white and black. It feels thin yet solid in the hand, and the screens transitioned smoothly and looked sharp.


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Editor in Chief
Microsoft (MSFT) has a lot riding on the success of Windows 8. And public’s reception of the Surface, the company’s first piece of Windows hardware, could dictate Microsoft’s future as it shifts to a position more closely resembling that of rival Apple (AAPL) — one where it can more closely control every aspect of the hardware and software it produces. According to a recent Wall Street Journal interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, however, Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Surface launches weren’t anything spectacular.
When asked by the Journal’s Shira Ovide how the public received Windows 8 and the Surface tablet after their first few days of availability, Ballmer is quoted as having said, “Numerically there’s not really much that’s interesting to report.”
Ballmer continued, “If you were to call the retailers, they would say, ‘Hey, off to a very good start.’ We’re out of stock a lot of places on touch [screen] machines. I was at a dinner in San Francisco last week, and I brought out this beautiful, very thin [touch-screen] laptop, and they said, ‘Wow, I never thought touch could be valuable and important in a laptop.’ “
Continue Reading @: Surface Sales 2012: Ballmer says nothing ‘interesting to report’ | BGR


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GIVE IT TO ME
Schumer solicits feedback on federal cannabis legalization bill
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have invited colleagues to help shape the final draft of their forthcoming federal cannabis legislation, reports The Hill.
“In order to appropriately address such a nuanced issue, we respectfully request the input, advice and guidance of Chairs and Ranking Members of relevant committees as well as senators who have dealt with the challenges and realities of legalization in their own states,” they wrote.
At a press conference last week, Schumer said the legislation will be introduced in April.
Begging the question: what have they been waiting for?
Enjoy Cannabis Daily each morning at 7 a.m.
DOWNHILL IN EDMONTON
Aurora Cannabis reports $75 million loss
Edmonton-based Aurora Cannabis lost $75.1 million in the last three months of 2021, reports BayStreet. Revenues dropped by 10%.
By the numbers
- Net revenue fell 48% year-over-year from $28.5 million to $14.8 million
- Medical cannabis was up 18% year-over-year, from $38.8 million to $45.7 million
- The company sold 14% fewer kgs of cannabis
- Prices dropped from $4.45 to $4.20 in the last year
Still, the latest losses aren’t as bad as the same period a year ago. From October to December of 2020, Aurora reported a $297.9 million loss.
BAD ALL AROUND
Limiting licenses hurts diversity and equity in cannabis: study
A new study by the Minority Cannabis Business Association warns that state regulations that limit the number of licenses available are hurting efforts to make the industry equitable and inclusive, reports MJBizDaily.
According to the report
- 27 states limit licenses
- Minority entrepreneurs are believed to lose expensive licensing opportunities to multi-state operators
- The 15 states with equity programs haven’t been successful
- Limited licensing is one of several barriers
“The best thing you can do for social equity is open up the market,” said MCBA executive director Amber Littlejohn.
Rounding up the latest in European cannabis news
Our friends at BusinessCann rounded up the latest in Europe’s accelerating cannabis industry.
Here are the highlights:
- With an up-coming general election in the near future, there were fears Malta’s National Party would veto the country’s recently passed cannabis legislation should they win. The party has now confirmed it will keep that legislation
- Albania’s government is consulting the public on medical cannabis legalization
- Following its launch in Germany, PepsiCo is bringing its hemp seed-infused energy drink to the US market
- Germany’s Cannabis Industry Association is fighting on behalf of several business owners who are being prosecuted for selling hemp products wrongly deemed to be used for intoxicating purposes


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“China has dropped some of the world’s leading technology brands from its approved state purchase lists, while approving thousands more locally made products, in what some say is a response to revelations of widespread Western cyber-surveillance,” Paul Carsten reports for Reuters. “Others put the shift down to a protectionist impulse to shield China’s domestic technology industry from competition.”
“Chief casualty is U.S. network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc, which in 2012 counted 60 products on the Central Government Procurement Center’s (CGPC) list, but by late 2014 had none, a Reuters analysis of official data shows,” Carsten reports. “Smartphone and PC maker Apple Inc has also been dropped over the period, along with Intel Corp’s security software firm McAfee and network and server software firm Citrix Systems… The number of approved foreign tech brands fell by a third, while less than half of those with security-related products survived the cull.
“China’s change of tack coincided with leaks by former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden in mid-2013 that exposed several global surveillance program, many of them run by the NSA with the cooperation of telecom companies and European governments,” Carsten reports. “‘The Snowden incident, it’s become a real concern, especially for top leaders,’ said Tu Xinquan, Associate Director of the China Institute of WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. ‘In some sense the American government has some responsibility for that; (China’s) concerns have some legitimacy.’ U.S. tech groups wrote last month to the Chinese administration complaining about some of its new cybersecurity regulations, some of which force technology vendors to Chinese banks to hand over secret source code and adopt Chinese encryption algorithms.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The shorts will attempt to push AAPL down on this news, but Apple sells mainly to Chinese consumers. Apple Retail Stores continue being built and opened throughout China. Apple will be just fine.


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Foreign Enterprises Rev up Projects Implementation in Tianjin
From April to September, it took just over five months for European aircraft manufacturer Airbus to break ground on its second final assembly line in north China’s Tianjin Municipality after signing the agreement.
This is a powerful vote of confidence in the future of aviation here in China, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said, adding that it also underlines Airbus’ long, trustful, and successful relationship with partners in China.
The comprehensive advantages of the Chinese market, featuring its large scale, complete industrial system, a favorable environment for scientific and technological innovation, and continued opening-up, have attracted more and more foreign investments.
In May, refrigeration industry giant Danfoss inaugurated its global refrigeration research and development (R&D) and testing center in Tianjin. With a total construction area of about 7,000 square meters and a total investment of about 140 million yuan (about 19 million U.S. dollars), the center is the company’s most advanced and largest one worldwide.
Arthur Xu, president of Danfoss China, said it is significant for the group to move from “producing” in China to “creating” in China, which reflects the company’s confidence in China’s green development and the long-term prospects of the Chinese economy.
In recent years, it has become a trend for foreign companies to choose China as their R&D centers to cater to the vast Chinese market demands and serve a larger global market.
In June, Honeywell, a U.S. industrial conglomerate, unveiled its Sustainability and Digitalization Innovation Center in Tianjin, another strategic layout of the company in China.
Henry Liu, vice president and general manager of Honeywell Performance Materials and Technologies Asia-Pacific, said Honeywell has set up a number of R&D centers and innovation institutions in China in 2023 alone and has worked with many Chinese partners to promote more innovative technologies and mature solutions.
Liu said Honeywell is optimistic about the opportunities brought by China’s “dual carbon” target. “We will work with Chinese partners to shape a sustainable future by developing products and technologies that meet our customers’ energy-saving and environmental protection needs.”
British-headquartered global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca’s Qingdao regional headquarters was inaugurated in east China’s Shandong Province recently. According to the MOU signed in August, AstraZeneca will further invest 250 million U.S. dollars in its Qingdao pMDI inhalation manufacturing and supply site.
At the end of this year, SMC (Tianjin) Manufacturing Co., Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japan’s pneumatic component manufacturer SMC Corporation, will start the second phase of its expansion project.
After the new plant is put into operation, the annual output value of the Tianjin company is expected to reach 1.5 billion yuan, which will make it SMC’s largest base in China, said Ma Qinghai, general manager of the company.
As the Chinese economy recovers and the foreign investment environment further improves, increasing high-value-added industries around the world will cluster in China, said Bai Ming, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce.


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For EveryMatrix, the launch of a new US arm will be a brand new experience. For Erik Nyman, tasked with leading that arm, it means establishing a business in the market for the second time, after leading NetEnt’s US launch.
Nyman tells Daniel O’Boyle what it will take for EveryMatrix to succeed in the US market
As EveryMatrix looked to enter the US market, it sought out someone who had brought a supplier across the Atlantic before.
The supplier chose Erik Nyman, former managing director of NetEnt Americas, to serve as president of EveryMatrix Americas, hoping his prior efforts could be replicated.
Nyman’s previous venture is emerging as a growing element of the wider NetEnt business. For the first half of 2020, the Americas accounted for just under 10% of the slots studio’s first half revenue, breaking the 10% mark in the second quarter.
“To enter the US is a massive undertaking, regardless of what products or services you offer, and online gaming is no exception,” Nyman tells iGB North America. “I have the experience of a previous thoughtfully planned, well-executed successful entry.
“My knowledge from this experience and the connections that I made during that time are important for what EveryMatrix aims to accomplish—to become an industry leader.”
He’s certainly optimistic about the US market, believing it could be EveryMatrix’s largest within five years. The sheer volume of potential US online gaming revenue when the market matures makes that a possibility, but that will take more than following NetEnt’s path.
In slots—which until 2019 were only available in New Jersey—the US lacks established suppliers, creating room for an experienced European business to carve out a foothold.
With sports betting and casino, however, a few operators with an existing presence in the country—whether through daily fantasy sports or the land-based market—have taken up much of the share. Nyman says there is a similar incumbency effect among platform providers, meaning EveryMatrix must prove itself as an option in the new market.
“The ability to build a brand is a key aspect in the US market,” Nyman says. “In the early days, we’ve seen that the existing operators and suppliers had an advantage as the US players were most familiar with them. That’s mainly true for operators, but also expands to suppliers, as it takes time to be familiarized within the market.
Still, Nyman is quick to stress that the market is still open and any inroads the competition have made are far from insurmountable. The potential for 50 different regulatory landscapes to manage has meant that only a few businesses have been equipped to have a serious impact in the market.
“The barrier of entry is high when compared to other markets, but the competition is quite limited,” he says. “This presents many opportunities for those who are able to navigate and overcome the challenges of entry, including complex regulatory frameworks, hiring personnel, often from both the US and Europe, and organizational changes.
“Every country and state has their own unique characteristics in terms of market and regulation, and the frameworks in the US are significantly different to Europe. This requires a keen eye and even greater attention to compliance.”
A key part of any new market entry is tailoring content, something Nyman says will be an “integral part” of EveryMatrix’s US offering. But despite Nyman’s predictions about the importance of the US to the supplier once it establishes itself, he says it’s important that the American arm must still act like a part of EveryMatrix, rather than a distinct entity.
“Another challenge is to ensure that a US market entry does not harm existing company initiatives,” Nyman says. “It is important to find the right balance between making the US part of the organization, while at the same time facilitating existing functions and fitting into the EveryMatrix Group as a whole.”
While sports betting has taken the US by storm since the repeal of PASPA, online casino has been moving a lot more slowly, with igaming only fully legal in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia—with Michigan to follow. Naturally, that’s led to the biggest players in the market being focused on sports, but Nyman isn’t so sure that this will continue.
In his view, a strong casino offering will be integral to succeeding in the States as the market grows.
“I firmly believe that operators who focus on both sports and casino as their core offering will experience the most success. This is exactly what EveryMatrix has focused on for many years now and is what we do best.
Because of this dual focus, EveryMatrix plans to focus on markets in which both verticals are already regulated. As many new players to the market have done, it will start in New Jersey, with eyes on Pennsylvania and Delaware.
“It brings the largest value as a company, and it fits well with our offering and value proposition,” Nyman said. “We’ve seen early adopters take a large part of the business, but that will change over time as new companies enter and competition grows.
“The potential within the US market is huge, and the timing is right for EveryMatrix to expand.”


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Consumers are not only focused on convenience when it comes to their healthy options; they’re also seeking quality.
Shelving snacks such as drinkable yogurt can help
Brand has also debuted a promotion that gives fans the opportunity to win prizes
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Brand manager from SkinnyPop offers tips for operators to bolster category
Consumers prefer potato chips or tortilla chips during the big game
Nearly 40% of U.S. adults are obese—so who’s to blame?
New Flavor Vote Campaign features Mexican Jalapeno Peanut, Thai Coconut Peanut and English Toffee Peanut varieties
M&M’s returns for the fifth time in 10 years, while Planters makes its first appearance
Undeclared peanuts found in ingredients
CSP’s annual list of the largest chains in the convenience-store industry.
Category sales performance in Beverages, Candy, General Merchandise, Packaged Food/Foodservice and Snacks.
Will c-store sales and profit streaks overcome the forces of change?
Corporate retail news affecting the convenience-store industry
The latest information on products and trends in the convenience-store and foodservice industries.
Peek inside new convenience stores to uncover the best in retail store design across North America.


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Three cannabis stocks are poised to offer significant returns for investors who buy the dop
Over the last few years, the cannabis industry has grown at an incredible rate. With strong support from investors, governments around the world have taken steps to legalize cannabis. These stocks offer great upside potential for the long-term and are among the best cannabis stocks you can buy.
Record-breaking high percentages of Americans support marijuana legalization. This indicates that there will be a lot of demand. According to BDSA, global cannabis sales could rise by 22% this year according to the cannabis research company. One of the top companies to watch is Trulieve Cannabis. It is already one of America’s most prominent cannabis retailers and producers, focusing primarily on Florida’s medical marijuana market. Although it is medically-only, it will likely be available for adult use by 2024.
Trulieve is responsible for approximately 50% of the total state marijuana sales. It has been profitable since 2017, and, for multiple years, revenues and profits have been growing at double-digit rates.
High Tide is a Canadian penny stock that has been under the radar. It has seen triple-digit growth in revenues over the past three years. It is Canada’s largest retailer and has established itself in all Canadian provinces.
High Tide has rapidly expanded its retail presence across Canada by acquiring budding entrepreneurs in multiple provinces. To add to its long list of acquisitions, it recently purchased cannabis retailers in Bud Heaven as well as Boreal Cannabis.
Recent results were impressive, with sales growth of 88.5% year-over-year to $65 million during the first quarter. It also reported impressive numbers in April across both its brick-and-mortar stores and ecommerce channels. Retail gross revenues increased 76.21% in April.
Green Thumb Industries, one of the largest multistate operators in the US, focuses on the Northeast. It operates 77 retail outlets in the country, which continue to grow every year. The company’s presence in the US serves approximately 50% of Americans.
Last year, the firm acquired multiple businesses and will likely continue to grow its business by organic and inorganic methods. It could see an increase in sales and EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) with the New York launch of recreational marijuana next year. It was able to generate an impressive $71 million in EBITDA last fiscal year. Once the regulatory hurdles have been cleared, the pace will pick up.


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- Yahoo earnings Q3 2015 are expected to be announced next week (Oct 20).
- Focus is on the Alibaba spin-off and core business progress.
- Investors are waiting for Yahoo to prove that it has more to offer than its Alibaba stake.
- Consensus and guidance reflect a YoY decline in revenues Ex-TAC.
Internet giant Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) is expected to report its Q3’15 results next week and attract a lot of attention from the tech industry and financial sector. In the recent weeks, Yahoo has been heavily involved in managing the long-awaited Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) spin-off that is expected to take place during the fourth quarter of 2015. Yahoo plans to spin off its holdings in Alibaba together with its small businesses division into a new publicly traded company named Aabaco. Yahoo is trying to complete this spin-off as a tax-free transaction and has requested for the IRS to provide a preliminary ruling in that matter. However, the IRS’s refusal pulled Yahoo’s stock into a rollercoaster mode and attracted too much attention from the company’s executives until the company officially announced that it is proceeding with the tax-free spin-off based on a piece of Skadden Arps advice.
The developments in the Alibaba spin-off received most of the attention from investors and the financial sector; however, Yahoo also has a lot to prove in its core business performance after the disappointing results of Q2. In Q2, Yahoo reported revenues Ex-TAC of $1.04B, which was $10M below estimates, and $0.16 EPS, which was $0.02 below estimates. Moreover, Yahoo provided a disappointing guidance of $1.02B, which was lower than the consensus analysts’ expectations of $1.07B. On the spending side, Yahoo presented a disappointing 4x increase in Traffic Acquisition Costs YoY to a quarterly amount of $200M, which was expected to grow up to $250M in Q3’15, according to Yahoo’s guidance.
As shown in Chart 1 below, Yahoo’s revenues are declining and this is expected to slow down and start changing course in Q3’15. If a successful tax-free spin-off is Yahoo’s biggest challenge in its non-core business, executing better than expected results with a significant turnaround is Yahoo’s largest challenge within its core business.
Yahoo’s stock is currently trading 40% below analysts' average target price of $44, mainly due to the uncertainty around the Alibaba spin-off and the disappointing core business performance. As the company has already addressed the Alibaba spin-off successfully, the second challenge will receive higher importance in the upcoming Yahoo earnings release.
Within the core business, investors will be looking at Yahoo's progress in the search and display ads revenue as well as any positive developments in Yahoo’s mobile and social portfolio. In the non-core business, the Yahoo Japan stake will probably attract attention as in the previous conference call, as investors wonder louder than before if Yahoo’s strategy regarding the Yahoo Japan stake is not clear.
These are Yahoo’s comparable figures to watch in this earnings:
|Q315 Guidance||Q3’15 Consensus||Q314|
|Non-GAAP Operating Income||$70||N/A||$42|
Source: Yahoo IR, Yahoo Finance, WSJ
Yahoo is stepping into the earnings season with its focus on the Alibaba spin-off. However, analysts and investors expect a decent improvement in core businesses regardless of the non-core developments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. The market sentiment is negative towards Yahoo after the infamous Barron’s article, the struggle to complete the Alibaba spin-off, and the declining core revenues. Investors are worried that once Alibaba is spun-off, Yahoo’s core business will not generate much revenue nor create value for shareholders. In this earnings event, just before the Alibaba spin-off, Yahoo and CEO Mayer have their biggest test: to prove that the market sentiment is wrong.


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Open Market, Inc. (Nasdaq: OMKT) slipped 21/32 to 3 9/32 Tuesday after announcing an expected third quarter loss and a restructuring that includes job cuts.
Open Market, a Burlington, Massachusetts-based e-commerce software maker, said it expects a loss of at least 25 cents per share for the quarter, while revenue is not likely to top $23.5 million. According to the company, continuing decline in sales of its Transact software, as well as an ongoing realignment and expansion of the North American sales force, held results back.
The restructuring, which will result in a charge of $6 million to $7 million in the fourth quarter, includes 150 job cuts, covering 80 employees and 70 contractors. The cuts will reduce expenses by $3 million to $4 million per quarter, Open Market said. The goal of the plan is to bring the company to profitability by the second half of next year.
Open Market also said that it is in talks to sell its ShopSite online storebuilder product, as part of a strategy to focus on higher-margin services.


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The Lord of the Rings Multiplayer online battle arena title – Guardians of Middle Earth – was released late last year, becoming the first MOBA game to be developed exclusively and specifically for the home console market.
We have already seen two new downloadable Guardians made available last week, in the forms of the Dwarf Gloin and the Enchanter Radagast, and now Monolith Productions have announced the release of the third new DLC Guardian – Snaga the Goblin. A powerful striking character, his different abilities help round out the roster of existing Guardians. He has been released this week, and will be free to all Season Pass holders for the game, as will one other forthcoming DLC Guardian.
See the full character profile for Snaga here:
A powerfully motivated Goblin, Snaga is hungry for flesh and stubborn enough to browbeat anyone or anything to get exactly what he wants. With a perfect build for sneaking and the mental capacity to backstab any who fail to bend to his will, Snaga’s rank as a lieutenant was earned by a driving desire to fulfill evil tasks by any means necessary. His knife has seen the blood of many foes and serves as an excellent tool for his nefarious agenda.
Snaga’s Gameplay Abilities:
- A Mouthful: Deals damage and gains health
- Ravenous: Stuns a marked target
- Famished: Extra damage and resistances; weakness against marked enemy Guardian
- Salivate: Marks enemy Guardian and gains movement and attack speed
See Snaga in all his glory in the trailer and images below:
Guardians of Middle-Earth is out now on Xbox LIVE Arcade and the PlayStation Network.


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Optimum has released a new commercial highlighting that, with its Premier Protection and Support services, all your devices have unlimited expert help, over the phone and remotely.
The spot features the couple Bob and Linda, Optimum clients who love musicals, and their “pet”, Audrey II, from their favorite movie, Little Shop of Horrors. “We just got Optimum Premier Protection and Support, protection for our devices and expert help, putting them all up”, says Linda.
“I can’t wait for that Optimum guy to get here”, says Audrey II, specifying that he’s hungry. Linda’s husband intervenes, mentioning that they will actually get expert help over the phone and remotely, which means no one’s going to be on Audrey’s dinner plate.
“Now what the heck am I going to eat?”, asks the plant from the musical horror comedy movie. “Hey, let’s call the plumber”, suggests, but Linda gives him a straight and clear “no”.
The spot end with the voiceover saying the brand’s tagline “Let’s connect more” and inviting you to protect your devices today.