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Amid a growing body of calls, high-end national burger chain Shake Shack is refusing to back down from the Pennsylvania-based vendor that sells the potato buns used in many of their signature sandwiches.
The buns in question are made by Martin’s Famous Pastry Shoppe. The family that owns Martin’s are among the key supporters of Doug Mastriano, the state senator and Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, who was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee and is a leading voice in opposing the 2020 election results and many have labeled as a Christian nationalist because of his expressed views.
Several food companies that have long used Martin’s products dropped them like hot potatoes upon hearing the connection, but Shake Shack appears to be sticking with its supplier.
“Regarding the actions of individuals associated with the Martin’s company and their personal political contributions, these are the decisions of those individuals and do not express the values of Shake Shack. We remain in active discussions with Martin’s to express our concerns,” Brand and Communications Director Kristyn Clark said in a company statement.
After articles appeared in national media Tuesday afternoon, Martin’s Famous Pastry Shoppe issued a statement on the matter.
“We are aware of the recent criticism that has been leveled at Martin’s and our business partners,” said the bakery’s marketing team. Although members of the same family, the private company’s shareholders represent a wide range of views, the statement said, so the company does not endorse any particular candidate or party.
“We will continue to focus on the values that have made our company successful – baking quality products, providing excellent service to our customers and supporting the communities around us,” said Martin’s.
Concerns about the political ramifications of using Martin’s products began for Philadelphia restaurants ahead of the Pa spring primary. to gush, as Billy Penn reported in May.
After Mastriano won the GOP governor’s nomination and brought increased national attention to the statewide race, Martin’s also came under more national scrutiny. The San Francisco Chronicle, citing Billy Penn’s reporting, noted that Bay Area businesses are also dropping the list because of the Martin family’s six-figure donations to the nominee.
Popular chef and food writer J. Kenji López-Alt tweeted about the issue, urging his followers not to support establishments that use Martin’s products. He specifically named Shake Shack and Federal Donuts.
Philadelphia-based Federal Donuts, part of the CookNSolo restaurant collective, which also owns world-famous Israeli restaurant Zahav, now appears to be joining the boycott.
When Billy Penn asked CookNSolo about the Martin’s-Mastriano connection in May, the company declined to comment. Within the last week, as the news broke, fans began commenting on FedNut’s Instagram to pressure for a postponement.
Starting May 31st with “Still using Martin’s Buns?” and a link to Billy Penn’s story added by @sculpturegrl. More Martins-focused comments surfaced in the next day’s donut post.
“Have you already brought up the topic of potato rolls? I thought a company like this would be more aware of its impact…” @thebeardedbarbarian commented on a June 2nd post.
In a comment, Federal Donuts replied: “We are aware of this. We’ve been working on that. Many Thanks.”
The company confirmed the move to Billy Penn on Monday. “I am pleased to confirm news from FedNuts that they have been working on this,” a spokesman said, declining to provide further details.
“You are shatterable”
In relative terms, Martin’s support for Mastrianos was quite significant. The PA senator’s gubernatorial campaign received a $110,000 donation from Jim Martin, whose parents founded the company. It was the largest single donation the campaign received ahead of the Pennsylvania primary. Other members of the Martin family have also made smaller donations to the Mastriano campaign.
According to public financial records, Martin’s is the sole supplier of Shake Shack potato buns. The burger chain made over $715 million in sales last year.
Shake Shack, like Martins, said the company itself does not make political donations or endorse donations from individuals.
One of the voices urging Shake Shake to sever ties with Martin is Joe Rosenthal, a Minnesota mathematician who also runs an Instagram account with over 31,000 followers that denounces restaurants for bad behavior — often unfair labor practices.
Rosenthal has promoted Martin’s on his own website for the past several years, although he said he never took any money for it.
That won’t happen again, he said. “I have lost all hope that Martin’s will acknowledge the harm in their actions.”
So Rosenthal has focused on Shake Shack. Founded by restaurateur Danny Meyer, the New York-based company went public in 2015 and now has hundreds of locations around the world. On its website, under the “Our Values” tab, Shake Shack notes that the original hot dog cart in Madison Square Park raised funds for a public art project.
“As we grew into a global company, our mission to make a difference expanded to include mentoring our team, sourcing quality ingredients from like-minded partners, designing our shacks responsibly, supporting our communities through donations, events and volunteering. and much more,” states the Shake Shack website.
On the homepage, Shake Shack prominently features its Pride Month fundraiser for The Trevor Project, which provides crisis support services to LGBTQ youth.
Mastriano reportedly vowed to ban trans women from women’s sports in his victory speech on primary day, saying “you can only use the toilet your biology and anatomy dictates” if he becomes governor. He wrote a master’s thesis in 2021 warning of a leftist “Hitler coup,” saying, “The attack began with the introduction of homosexuality into the military.”
In an Instagram post Monday, Rosenthal noted Shake Shack’s promise to donate at least $75,000 to the Trevor Project. “Martin’s has donated an order of magnitude more than that to Mastriano through its owner, and Shake Shack, through their extensive use of Martin’s buns, is enabling more and more money to be channeled into far-right Christian nationalism,” the post reads.
“It’s not a massive brand, but they potentially have a massive impact on a candidate that’s mostly stringing together contributions from smaller donors,” Rosenthal told Billy Penn. “They are shakeable, not directly, but through Shake Shack.”


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NEW YORK -- Great Britain's top tourism officials arrived in the
Big Apple March 21 to launch a media blitz aimed at convincing
Americans the U.K. is "open for visitors" despite the
hoof-and-mouth outbreak that is costing the tourism industry $200
million a week.
Britain's minister of tourism, Janet Anderson, arrived here last
night and will be interviewed by at least 12 major news outlets,
including CNN, over the next two days, and "will try to help clear
up the misconceptions out there about hoof-and-mouth, explaining
that humans cannot get it, that our food is safe to eat and that
the only places you cannot visit in the countryside are farms."
She announced that Prime Minister Tony Blair had allotted $4
million for a marketing campaign in the U.S. to stem the harm that
the hoof-and-mouth crisis already has done to the country's tourism
Anderson confirmed an earlier report by Travel
Weekly/TWcrossroads.com that the travel trade in Britain was losing
up to $200 million a week because of the closing of tourist
attractions in farm areas, but also because tourists were staying
away from all of rural Britain.
Tomorrow, 120 of the country's 180 National Trust historic sites
will re-open to visitors, and Anderson said she expected many
private mansions and castles to follow suit.

domain: news


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Gotham Knights is an upcoming game from DC and Warner Bros Games Montréal that’s expected to be released on 25th October 2022. It was recently announced that Gotham Knights will not be released on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One due to quality reasons, and will only be released on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
The new open-world, third-person action RPG is set in Gotham City, immediately after the death of Batman. Whilst tasked with fighting crime and protecting the citizens of Gotham City: Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood and Robin must battle and take down secret society: the Court of Owls and their loyal Talon assassins.
Gotham Knights has been in development for a couple of years now and was initially set for a 2021 release. Gamers who have been eagerly waiting for DC’s latest game were recently treated to 13 minutes of new gameplay, showing off Robin and Red Hood’s different play styles and more.


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Arrayjet, a 5-year-old spin-off from the Scottish Centre for Genomic Technology and Informatics (GTI), has entered the European tools market with its first product, a microarray printer, BioArray News has learned.
Duncan Hall, the marketing and sales director of the Stirling, Scotland-based company, said that the company is now making available its Arrayjet100 microarray spotter, a non-contact, ink-jet-enabled printer, that Hall claims will produce microarrays of “excellent quality, consistency and uniformity.”
“A range of different analytes [can] be printed, including antibodies, oligonucleotides, and intact cells, which have been shown to be bioavailable in subsequent assays,” he said.
According to Douglas Roy, a molecular biologist at the University of Edinburgh who co-founded Arrayjet in 2000 with physicist Howard Manning from the University of Cambridge and Peter Ghazal, the director of GTI, the motivation for creating the microarray spotter was to increase flexibility for researchers who print their own tools and to create high-quality arrays that will provide reserachers with a more consistent set of data.
“The key feature here is increasing density on the arrays. You can enhance the quality of your data from the consistency of array-to-array variation. If arrays were absolutely perfect compared to each other then that would translate to a higher quality of data” said Roy.
Roy said that Arrayjet’s ink-jet based printing made it more attractive than the standard pin-based microarray spotters offered by competitors because they often experience differentiation in quality of printing — so those producing their own arrays would often wind up with “sub-arrays” or quadrants of the chip that had higher densities of oligonucleotides than others.
“They achieve a certain level and then they just plateau and it’s very hard to push beyond that. So like the pin-prints were like quill pens in the 18th century, this is sort of like modern printing for microarrays,” he said.
Hall said that there are competitors for ink-jet printing, but not in the UK, and Roy confirmed that the initial market for Arrayjet will be in the UK and Europe. Hall said they had already sold three of their printers, one at GTI, and two more at research facilities within the UK. Hall said further discussions were at advanced stages and would not disclose the firm’s first customers.
Both said that their product differed from competitors because of its easily replaceable print-head.
Hall declined to discuss pricing of the printer, only to say that it was available upon application.
The new offering represents a foray into the market from part of a cluster of genomic activity in Scotland that includes GTI and the University of Edinburgh, as well as the Roslin Institute and researchers at the University of Glasgow.
Roy said that Arrayjet and GTI see themselves at the nucleus of the developing Scottish genomic cluster.
Arrayjet is a privately held company, and it secured £1 million ($1.6 million) in funding in May 2003 from the Scottish investment group, Archangels Informal Investments, the Scottish Enterprises Investment Fund, as well as a loan guarantee from the Bank of Scotland. (See BAN 5/9/2003)


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We reported earlier this week that Nintendo Japan confirmed it is ceasing production of the Wii, bringing the system’s long run to a close. However, Europe and North America have continued to post fairly strong sales of the console, so we were left wondering whether the Wii would continue production in these markets—or if Nintendo would attempt to shift the potential sales onto the Wii U.
Pulling the Wii off the shelves might be a bit premature at this stage, and a Nintendo of America representative has responded to GameSpot regarding this curious question:
“The announcement that the Wii console has been discontinued is specific to Japan. There is no change in status of the Wii in the United States, and it is available for purchase this holiday season.”
Well, that’s interesting. We knew that it would be available—it’s not like they were going to run out and destroy existing stock—but they also aren’t specifically saying that production will continue after the holiday. Can Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe continue production on the console after 2013? That’s what we’re wondering, and that’s what no one seems to be saying for sure.
Either way, there will be plenty of Wiis for sale this holiday, so if you’re looking to spend a few dollars on a console and the Wii U is out of your price range, this little system still has plenty of juice!


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Posted Nov 07, 2012By
NEW YORK—Rihanna rocked the lingerie look at Wednesday night’s Victoria’s Secret fashion show in New York, providing the highlight of the live-music soundtrack and holding her own on the catwalk with some of the world’s top models. And those models even had props, including Adriana Lima’s ringmaster wand, Doutzen Kroes’ body cage and several pairs of the oversized wings that the retailer has made its signature. It would be a close contest who got the biggest wings: Toni Garrn’s giant poppy pair or Miranda Kerr’s swan-style feathered pouf. Only Lily Aldridge could boast star-spangled wings that shot out silver sparkles.
The show will be Broadcast on Tuesday, December 4, at 10p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
Amanda Bynes was arrested in Los Angeles yesterday after cops determined she was driving under the influence, accor
George Clooney and Lebanese-British lawyer Amal Alamuddin married in Venice in one of the most high-profile celebri
Images from the closing day of the Los Angeles County Fair at Fairplex in Pomona Sunday September 28, 2014. (Will L
Way Over Yonder folk music festival is held on the Santa Monica Pier on Friday night, September 26, 2014. (Photo by


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- July 10, 2020
Peter Vosotas, CEO of Nicholas Financial Inc., will preside over the closing bell at the NASDAQ stock exchange this afternoon as his company celebrates its 25th anniversary.
The NASDAQ OMX Group Inc. invited Vosotas to ring the bell not just for his firm's longevity, but for its consistent level of success as well — Nicholas Financial has grown revenue for 20 consecutive years.
Just recently, the company posted its largest earnings total ever in a first quarter. It opened two new branches last month, as well.
Based in Clearwater, Nicholas Financial Inc. specializes in direct consumer lending, and in the purchasing of sales contracts from automobile dealers. The company's common stock has been traded publicly since 1987.


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It’s a bit of a tradition. Every year mighty Intel takes over the towering glass-and-steel Moscone Center West meeting center in San Francisco to tout its plans. And Intel rival AMD’s people slip into a plush hotel suite nearby, where they can whisper into reporter’s ears about how they’re going to trip up their giant foe.
The couch is comfy. The drinks are cold. The PowerPoint slides are plentiful. And AMD’s brainy engineers always come ready to spar.
What’s new: Intel isn’t focused on AMD. Instead ARM is looming. The UK-based chip company licenses its designs for low-power application processors to Samsung, Qualcomm, Apple, Texas Instruments, and a pack of others. These licensees dominate gizmos such as smart phones the way Intel dominates PCs. Now Intel wants to push into that booming business before ARM’s gang can make a serious move on Intel’s business in notebooks and servers.
Which is why the semiconductor giant is talking so much about software. In an effort to grab some of the excitement generated by Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Marketplace -- both of which are cranking out software for handsets running ARM-based processors -- Intel launched its own AppUp effort for netbooks running its processors (see “Left Out By Apple, Intel Launches AppUp”).
Intel also launched a new version of its Atom processor aimed at in-vehicle infotainment systems for cars, smart grid devices, and media phones -- many of which now rely on ARM designs. And it introduced another aimed at set top boxes that blend the Internet with television. Kind of like Apple TV, which recently swapped out an Intel processor for its own ARM-based A4 design. Intel’s message was clear: we’re coming for the ARM guys.
AMD’s people, by contrast, could dismiss any immediate threat from ARM in 30 seconds. John Fruehe, director of business development for AMD’s server and workstation division simply dropped the I-Bomb. “Itanium proved its all about the software, not the hardware,” said Fruehe, referring to a once hyped Intel server processor that flopped since it couldn’t run all the software built for Intel and AMD’s so-called x86 processors. “It’s the same thing with ARM today,” Fruehe said. ARM can’t threaten Intel and AMD in the server room and on the desktop until they build a whole lot more software.
Of course, you could say the same about Intel’s efforts to move into smart phones.
AMD, by contrast, is talking about notebook and server processors. David Hoff, director of strategic initiatives at AMD, brought a prototype laptop to AMD’s hotel suite to demonstrate AMD’s plan. Equipped with a mobile processor that combines a chipset, a processor, and graphics smarts, Hoff demonstrated lush visuals on a machine that will have a cut-rate price. AMD will unleash a new processor design, code-named Bulldozer, for servers next year.
AMD’s effort lacks the flash, to be sure, of Intel’s impending blitz. But as Bob Grim, director of client and platform marketing at AMD says “we’ve got to pick our battles.”


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This week Google distributed its first voice-activated coupon offering customers $15 off Target purchases placed on Google Express through Google Assistant –through desktop, mobile or Google Assistant enabled devices.
Details and Implications:
In a first-to-market partnership with Target a voice activated coupon was used by Google to drive adoption of both Voice Search and Google Express: a universal shopping cart that allows purchases from multiple retailers within a single checkout.
To redeem the coupon customers using Google Home or devices with Google Assistant simply had to say, ‘Spring into Target’ to activate $15 off Target purchases exclusively on Google Express.
As with all test there were some kinks to iron out. Some customers experienced problems with Google Assistant misunderstanding ‘into’ and ‘in to’, so had to resort to typing the promo phrase to receive their coupon.
According to Target, the promotion was a success and though no specific ROI metrics were mentioned, ‘goals were met, and they were met early’.
“Target and Google teams are working on the next chapter, building experiences that digitally replicate the joy of shopping a Target store to discover stylish and affordable products,” said Target’s chief information and digital officer, Mike McNamara.
In the US, Amazon Echo has more than twice the penetration of Google Home (13.9% vs. 5.9%, Kantar WorldPanel), however, Google is positioning itself to become a market leader in Voice Commerce given the penetration of Android Smartphones there (62%, Kantar WorldPanel). Though it must be noted that Google Assistant only runs on the Marshmallow OS and above (52% of the 62% of Android users have access to Google Assistant).
It is yet another example of Google trying to provide retailers a scaled alternative to Amazon. The early rush to of more established retailers like Walmart, Target and Walgreens towards Google Express, gives the appearance of a coalition of sorts to challenge the dominance of Amazon. Whereas Amazon is notoriously guarded with consumer data, Google requires users to link their loyalty programs, which will allow results to be personalized by the retailers based on their existing consumer data.
With the distribution of the first voice-activated coupon within the Google ecosystem, Google will now be looking for ways to incentivize more retailers to join the trend. The results seem to have been overwhelmingly positive, aside from the odd technical snag, so we would expect others to venture where Target has blazed the trail.
In much the same way as Amazon is actively encouraging Voice Search by heavily discounting its range of voice enabled devices in a land grab for the home, Google is similarly incentivizing a behavior it wishes to encourage. It’s proof that both are betting heavily on the future of Voice and AI at the risk of short-term revenue. ‘Google it’ became the vernacular for search but what it will be for voice search and commerce is still up for grabs.


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Many in Venezuela are facing their bleakest Christmas holiday season yet as the country’s economic and humanitarian crisis means many families will be unable to buy presents or even eat.
In the capital of Caracas, the streets are lined with Christmas decorations, although few are feeling the festive cheer. Engineer Armando Holguín, 53, told EFE that the situation “is worse than last year” and even previous years in which “we saw economic activity where people went out to buy.”
This year, many Venezuelans will not be enjoying a traditional Christmas dinner as the country’s hyperinflation crisis has made the cost of food too expensive for ordinary people. Most families will also be unable to carry out the exchange of gifts, with parents instead choosing to prioritize the purchase of food, medicine, and other essential living resources.
As noted by Bloomberg, mass gasoline shortages have also plagued the economy in the run-up to Christmas, meaning many people have been unable to travel across the country for the holiday season.
The Maduro regime has long used the Christmas season to distract from the country’s dire predicament, providing handouts to those most loyal to his regime. In a message on Twitter, Maduro cited the story of Christmas nativity to wish the country a Merry Christmas.
“Today we prepare to celebrate, with faith and joy, the arrival of the child of God,” he wrote. “I express my sincere desires that, in every man and woman of the Fatherland, the hope of a future of peace and prosperity for the whole family is reborn. Merry Christmas Venezuela!”
Hoy nos preparamos para celebrar, con fe y alegría, la llegada del Niño Dios. Expreso mis sinceros deseos para que, en cada hombre y mujer de la Patria, renazca la esperanza de un futuro de paz y prosperidad para toda la familia. ¡Feliz Navidad Venezuela! pic.twitter.com/nyvFsamUsG
— Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) December 24, 2018
In previous years, the regime has used a range of illegal methods to promote government-sponsored Christmas festivities. Last year, Maduro declared the beginning of a “Christmas season of happiness” on November 1st, 2017, while also providing a 500,000 Bolivar “Baby Jesus Bonus” for government workers, equivalent to around five dollars.
In 2016, authorities seized nearly four million toys from private businesses, while also detaining two company executives on charges of promoting price speculation.


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TV Shipment Growth Seen for 2012
After a year of nearly no TV shipment growth, the sector is seen growing 2 percent globally in 2012, according to a forecast issued Tuesday by NPD DisplaySearch.
The research firm predicted a 2 percent rise in TV shipments this year, compared with only 0.1 percent growth in 2011. LCD will remain the top technology, with 40-inch and higher TVs driving most growth and LED's share reaching two thirds this year.
“Global economic conditions have improved in 2011, but more slowly than expected, and consumers in mature TV markets like Europe face continuing uncertainty, which is leading to very cautious spending patterns,” Paul Gagnon, Director of North America TV Research for NPD DisplaySearch, said as part of the announcement.


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Volvo Car Group (Volvo Cars) is ramping up production of the V60 Plug-in Hybrid by 90% to meet demand, especially in Holland, Belgium and Italy. Production at the Torslanda plant in Sweden will be increased continuously from 150 to 282 units per week. All in all, Volvo Cars will produce 7,600 plug-in hybrids in 2013, with a 2014 target of 10,000 units.
The driver of the V60 Plug-in Hybrid selects the required driving mode via three buttons in the dashboard: Pure, Hybrid or Power. Continue reading
Volvo Car Group has completed extensive testing of kinetic flywheel technology on public roads – and the results confirm that this is a light, cheap and very eco-efficient solution.
“The testing of this complete experimental system for kinetic energy recovery was carried out during 2012. The results show that this technology combined with a four-cylinder turbo engine has the potential to reduce fuel consumption by up to 25 per cent compared with a six-cylinder turbo engine at a comparable performance level,” says Derek Crabb, Vice President Powertrain Engineering at Volvo Car Group, “Giving the driver an extra 80 horsepower, it makes car with a four-cylinder engine accelerate like one with a six-cylinder unit.” Continue reading
The Advanced Lead-Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC) and Controlled Power Technologies (CPT) will take centre stage when they showcase their affordable energy efficient low carbon 48 volt LC Super Hybrid technology demonstrator at the International Vienna Motor Symposium, which will be… Continue reading
BMW will introduce the Concept Active Tourer plug-in hybrid for the first time in North America at the 2013 New York International Auto Show on 27 March. In addition to other introductions, the automaker will also showcase the diesel-powered BMW… Continue reading
When the New York auto show opens to the press on March 27, the all-new 2014 Infiniti QX60 Hybrid will debut and then be highlighted on the show floor during the NYIAS public days starting on March 29. The new… Continue reading
Peugeot and Total will showcase the 208 HYbrid FE (Fun and Efficient) concept vehicle at the Geneva motor show. The hybrid, optimized for fuel efficiency accelerates from 0 to 62 mph in 8 seconds, and has very low CO2 emissions of 49 g/km.
The concept—based on the Peugeot 208—features Peugeot and Total’s latest innovations in aerodynamics, weight-saving and drivetrains.
The project is based on the very efficient 208 1.0-liter VTi 68 bhp, which will be extensively evolved. The style and the aerodynamics will be the first visible elements. Redesigned, the 208 HYbrid FE will be more aerodynamic with a much lower co-efficient of drag (Cd) than that of the production model, while retaining its occupant space. Special tires and wheels will contribute to reduce rolling resistance. Continue reading


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Impact Of Covid 19 On Chemicals Industry
Prasad has been associated with Aranca for over a decade now, prior to which he has worked with InterSTrat Consultants and Forbes & Company.
Since its outbreak in China toward the end of 2019, the coronavirus pandemic has evolved into one of the most significant challenges the global economy has ever faced. With 4.5 million infections and 300,000+ casualties so far, it shows no signs of abating anytime soon. Lockdowns and social distancing remain the only ways to control the spread, and these measures have caused widespread disruption on the demand and supply fronts. Many industries are facing a downturn, and as the quarters roll by, the impact is only becoming more visible.
Preliminary trends indicate impact on the chemical industry is relatively low and it continues to be resilient. The Chemical Activity Barometer (CAB), a leading economic indicator released by the American Chemistry Council, fell 5.5 percent in April 2020, declining for the third straight month. A continuous decline of more than three percent for three consecutive months is generally believed to signal recession, and this drop in April 2020 affirms the fears. That chemical production had begun to decrease was, however, evident much earlier, as year-on-year growth decelerated 1.5−3% in North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific in January and February 2020.
Supply chains of specialty chemicals are intertwined, and China continues to be the most crucial cog in the wheel.The disruption in supply chains globally due to the coronavirus outbreak has prompted specialty chemical manufacturers to revisit their manufacturing strategies and shift production to low-risk geographies.
Supply chains of specialty chemicals are intertwined, and China continues to be the most crucial cog in the wheel
In the wake of these unforeseen changes, specialty chemical manufacturing companies have shelved their expansion plans, which has negatively impacted the supply landscape.Further, the specialty chemicals segment had already taken a hit due to regulatory crackdown in markets such as China. The pandemic has exacerbated the problems, which would impede growth in production in this segment through 2020.
On the flip side, the decline is expected to be offset by the relatively low impact on basic chemicals. At the beginning of the outbreak, petrochemicals production in China did suffer. However, a quick resumption in industrial activity meant that production was never significantly affected for long; as a result, impact on supply was negligible. Cracker expansions continue to be on track, implying basic chemicals segment remains comparatively immune to supply-side disruptions.
On the agri-chemicals front, the impact is still vague. Leading agri-chemical manufacturers depend heavily on the supply of ingredients from Asian markets such as China and India. In early 2020, while the pandemic was still in the early stages, much of the agri-chemicals required to meet demand for the 2020 crop season in western markets had already been formulated and shipped. Hence, the market did not face any supply disruption in Q1 2020.However, the inventory is now depleting rapidly, and with the global logistics networks impaired, western manufacturers are beginning to worry. Taking advantage of the phased relaxation of restrictions on trade and lockdowns, these manufacturers are slowly building inventory for the next phase of demand. However, if the pandemic is not contained in Q2, the agri-chemicals segment is likely to start feeling the heat in H2 2020.
In summary, the slowdown in some segments has been offset by an uptick in others; this has ensured balance in the overall industry, helping it fare better than most others. As a leading indicator of industrial activity, the chemical industry is being closely watched for any indication of revival. Given its robust supply side, the industry is set to be the first to benefit from the rebound, whenever it occurs.


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If you ever glance through the acceptable use policies or terms of service of consumer-facing payments company like PayPal or GoFundMe, you'll see that they have incredibly long and stifling lists of prohibited activities. Why would these companies willingly turn away legitimate business?
There are a bunch of reasons, but here are three important ones:
1) Some customers are a nuissance. Their businesses may suffer from high rates of payments fraud and/or frequent chargebacks, which means that it may not be to expensive for a payments company to connect them.
2) The products that some businesses sell are semi-legal (i.e. marijuana) or potentially illegal (libelous publications), and so it's too risky to connect them.
3) Some businesses engage in activity that is legal but potentially controversial (like white supremacist lit or sex toys). The payments company that connects them could look bad, which means potentially losing customers, shareholders, or employees.
This is a pretty sensible set of reasons for prohibiting certain activities from your payments platform. However, if you're a businesses that has been barred by a processor, you'll certainly be upset, and understandably so. Payments are vital to any enterprise. Having as many competitors to choose from is important. To boot, being suddenly cut off is a pain; you'll need to scramble for an alternative.
When a payments firm enacts a new prohibition on a certain type of businesses, this in turn feeds into the political arena. In return for votes and funding, political actors offer support to particular companies and business lobbies. When their constituents are suddenly prevented from accessing a certain payments platform, these political agents loudly broadcast their displeasure. And so the acceptable use policies of companies like PayPal have become incredibly politicized documents. Progressives bellow when sex workers are cut off from PayPal. Republicans howl when firearms are disallowed.
Case in point was the massive push back against PayPal which earlier this month updated its acceptable use policy to prohibit "misinformation." I've screenshotted the update below, with the changes being entirely confined to section 5. PayPal already fines customers $2,500 for engaging in prohibited activities such as selling cigarettes, hate literature, and items that are considered obscene. With this new update, PayPal would now be prohibiting anyone from using its platform to engage in fake news and would extend its existing $2,500 fine to infringers. [An archived copy of the policy update is available here.]
|PayPal's updated acceptable use policy, since rescinded. The changes are all in section 5.|
PayPal executives probably had good business reasons for wanting to prohibit misinformation from their platform. Last month conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was ordered by a judge to pay almost a billion dollars to his victims for fabricating fake news about them. With numbers as big as that being bandied around, lawyers at payments company have to be wary that they too could be pursued by the victims of misinformation for facilitating the disinformation attacks of their customers.
Not only that, but associating with a bad actor like Alex Jones could hurt the reputations of consumer-facing payments companies, leading to customers bolting.
Long story short, the legal, financial, and reputational risks of having fake news artists as customers are just too high for mainstream firm like PayPal, and thus the prohibition on misinformation was introduced into its acceptable use policy page.
But acceptable usage policies have become politicized, and so PayPal's move led to all sorts of outrage. Republicans were furious. Senators Bill Hagerty, Cynthia Lummis, Pat Toomey, and others expressing their "deep concern" in a letter to PayPal, subsequently broadcast across social media. A big chunk of the internet's many misinformation artists are their misinformation artists, after all, and need to be protected.
This week I joined @SenThomTillis and other Senate Republican colleagues in sending a letter to the President & CEO of PayPal. We are demanding answers on the most recent policy change that would financially punish consumers over “misinformation.” Our letter: pic.twitter.com/rzjO8n4VyW— Senator Bill Hagerty (@SenatorHagerty) October 22, 2022
Meanwhile, commentators like Glen Greenwald were upset by what they see as a PayPal attempt at "punishing dissidents in the West through exclusion from the financial system." Which I don't think is the right way to process the event. PayPal is a business. It doesn't refuse to serve a certain set of customers because of an ideology requiring it to punish "dissent from neoliberal orthodoxies." PayPal chooses to stop serving clients because it believes that this would reduce its income, adjusted for risk. While some "dissenters" are too risky for PayPal to serve, many dissenters aren't—and probably make for fine customers.
Greenwald's reliance on the word "banishment" also betrays a misunderstanding of how payments work. PayPal is a low-risk payments processor, not a high-risk one. There are other payments companies that do specialize in serving a riskier clientele. These firms will compete to reconnect the fake news sites that PayPal has decided to offboard. In short, there is no such thing as payments banishment.
In response to the push back, PayPal said that it would not be adding the misinformation clause to its acceptable use policy after all. (It actually said that the update was an error, but that sounds unlikely.)
And again, you can see why it made a business decision to change its tune. The move had made some of its existing rule-abiding customers unhappy, and they threatened to close their acconts. PayPal wants to drop bad customers, but not at the expense of losing the good ones.
This is interesting because it shows how a business decision gets ingested by the political machine, the resulting output being fed back into PayPal's business decision making process, leading to a 180 degree turn.
Nor did things end there. With acceptable use policies having become a key political battleground, and politics loves controversy, the fake news mill – the very targets of PayPal's misinformation clause – kicked into high gear. Across the internet, articles began to pop up alleging that PayPal's rescinded misinformation clause and associated $2500 penalty had been stealthily "added back into the terms of service with equally ambiguous language," as one article put it.
|One of many articles wrongly claiming that PayPal sneakily re-updated its policy|
A quick check of PayPal's acceptable use policy in the WayBack Machine shows that these claims aren't factual. Agree or not with the $2500 fine, it wasn't added back after "criticism on social media died down." The fine has been there since it was tacked on by PayPal back in September 2021.
The article also alleges that the misinformation clause has reappeared in the form of a prohibition on intolerance. But the intolerance clause has been there since 2018. Never mind that it's an error to equate a prohibition on intolerance with a prohibition on misinformation. They're just not the same thing.
The fake facts continued to pile up. PayPal has a long-existing rule against lying about account details like your name and age. A second article erroneously tries to claim that this longstanding rule is a new one, more specifically that it is the "misinformation" clause sneakily reintroduced back into PayPal's list of acceptable uses. It's a silly argument that I rebutted more fully on Twitter.
So no, the controversial rescinded misinformation clause has not been quietly added back to PayPal's acceptable use policy. But the facts don't necessarily matter. This wave of fake news successfully fed back into the political arena, with folks like Republican representative Tom Emmer seizing on them to air his worries that PayPal is being "weaponized to control speech." There are existing users of PayPal, the ones that PayPal would like to keep, who will listen to Emmer and close their accounts.
The whole series of events illustrates how complicated it is for a company to modify its terms of services.
Firms want to boost their profits, which means establishing policies to reach a certain type of desirable client while excluding other types of clients that don't fall within their targeted market. But firms also need to try and calculate how their proposed changes will be digested in the political arena, and how the resulting outrage feeds back into the decisions of their desirable clients, who might choose to leave.
And firms must also consider the third degree of complexity: how the political controversy over their policy changes gets respun by fake news sites, the resulting sausage being imported back to the political arena for additional consumption, more outrage, and (potentially) more client departures. It's a difficult nut to crack. I wouldn't want to be PayPal, or its lawyers, the next time it comes time to update its acceptable use policy.
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Nba 2k13 patch v1.02 xbox 360
2K Sports statement on Twitter: October 30, 2012 - Wrong Roster Update for NBA 2K13.
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Talk about NBA 2K13 here.Available at, jerseys category.By DaCrispy on Fri Apr 07, 2017 5:19 am 2 Replies 354 Views Last post by PatTheHead on Fri Apr 28, 2017 3:25 pm User Video Thread by Dee4Three on Wed Apr 26, 2017 2:57 am 2 Replies 308 Views Last post by Dee4Three.22, 2013 February 23, 2013 - Another minor NBA 2K13 roster update has arrived which added Kenyon Martin to the New York Knicks roster. April 20, 2013 Consoles - 2K Sports released a roster that features players' rating changes and rotations update for the NBA Playoffs. .Darius Johnson Odom (Lakers) not included.Download: NBA 2K13 Official Online Data #2, october 30, 2012 - NBA 2K13 developers uploaded the wrong roster update. .Available at Cyber Faces category.December 6, 2012 PC - 2K Sports announced that they will release the new NBA 2K13 roster update for PC soon.Mod for NBA 2K13 game, created by jepoybulldog.This update includes adjustments on injury status, changes on coaching staff and minor changes in overall player ratings.
However, learning the ins and outs of the controls will allow you to dominate the competition.
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Phoenix waived forward Luke Zeller.
By SirJack on Tue Dec panotour 1.8 pro keygen 02, 2014 11:20 pm Views Last post by SirJack on Wed Dec 24, 2014 5:51 am Game crash during offseason tasks, using red mc custom roster.Download: NBA 2K13 Official Online Data #1.By ryams27 on Mon Feb 16, 2015 8:46 am Views Last post by PatTheHead on Fri Apr 03, 2015 5:24 pm Does anyone know the iff numbers of each teams court?When playing this video game, you can win games simply by using the basic mechanics.16, 2013 March 23, 2013 - 2K Sports has just released a roster update for NBA 2K13 accurate as of March 23, 2013.There are only 14 player rating adjustments that went into this roster update.


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Kim Kardashian isn't shy when it comes to sharing just about everything in her life, and her psoriasis is no exception. The 38-year-old multi-hyphenate and mom of three has always been refreshingly open about her struggle with the common skin condition (a fact her fans praise her for), whether it's posting photos of outbreaks, talking about it on Keeping Up or revealing different treatments she's tried for it.
Most recently, the reality star took to her Instagram Stories where she showed fans a close-up shot of a psoriasis outbreak on her face. The post in question — a short clip of Kardashian holding the camera close to her skin — showcases what appears to be red psoriasis bumps, which look similar to that of a rosacea flareup. Kim K. simply captioned the post, "Psoriasis Face" and left it at that.
If you didn't know, Kardashian was first diagnosed with psoriasis in 2011, which some might remember was revealed on an episode of the family's reality show. Since then, she's been super-candid about her experience with the condition, which for those who don't know, affects more than 7.5 million Americans. She also hasn't held back during vulnerable moments like the aforementioned, which fans — especially those who have the disease as well — have been openly thankful for. There's no doubt it helps those with the skin condition to see that even celebs of her magnitude aren't immune to skin afflictions.
Kardashian didn't say anything else in regards to her facial psoriasis or how she treats it, however, in the past she's said seaweed-based skin-care products and light therapy have both been beneficial at clearing it up.
We're glad Kim was willing to share her skin woes with the world because let's be real: We all have 'em so why not commiserate? Here's to skin acceptance in 2019, y'all.
Now read more about Kim Kardashian's experience with psoriasis:
Done reading? Now watch 100 years of deodorant:


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The bazaar time of the year continues here.
The St. Augustine South Improvement Association will host its annual holiday bazaar Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m. at the clubhouse, 709 Royal Road.
Sponsored by the organization's craft club, the sale will include Christmas decorations, toys, and much more. Proceeds are used for scholarships awarded to students who reside in the St. Augustine South area.nFlagler Hospital Laboratory team members are busy preparing for an Arts and Crafts Fair on Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Matanzas Conference Room at the hospital.
The fair will offer a wide variety of items for sale by different vendors, including handmade jewelry, concrete figures, Native American artwork, watercolors, baked goods, picture frames, and much more.
A raffle will also be held with various prizes donated by featured fair vendors. Proceeds from the raffle will also benefit the Open Heart Surgery Program.
n The Vilano Beach Arts and Crafts holiday sale is planned Nov. 23 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Set up begins at 9 a.m. on a vacant lot on next to the Lazy Sands Dog House and Almost Beach Bar. Take a right off the Usina Bridge.
Food and drinks will be available and there will be paintings, photography, art, jewelry, stained glass, holiday beach cards, holiday decorations and much more. This is the first of what is expected to become an annual event. Persons interested in setting up a booth are invited to call Nancy Ashe, 827-0092. Deadline is Nov. 19 and cost is $20 per space. The event is sponsored by A Touch of Vilano Beach and Lazy Sands Almost Beach Bar.
The Moultrie Oaks Clubhouse Association will host a holiday bazaar Nov. 23 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the clubhouse, 245 Wildwood Drive. A bake sale, arts and crafts, including holiday items and much more will be spotlighted.
Dec. 7 is the date for the Trinity Episcopal Parish annual bazaar. Hours are 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., and featured will be arts and crafts, a baked good table, religious books and tapes, stocking stuffers, Teddy Bears, jars and jellies and lots more, including door prize drawings. Hamburgers and hot dogs will be available for lunch. Trinity Episcopal is located at the corner of St. George and King streets in downtown St. Augustine.
HAWKE, an organization which helps injured wildlife, will have its annual garage sale Saturday from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at 203 S. Matanzas Blvd., Davis Shores. Collectibles, toys, car items, appliances, antiques and more will be offered for sale.
To donate or for more information, call 823-1227. All donations are tax deductible.
An estate sale is planned at 44 Sea Park Drive Friday and Saturday beginning at 9 a.m. The house is located off A1A South, across from Anastasia Baptist Church. The sale will feature contents from two estates, and included are living room, dining room, kitchen and bedroom furniture, lamps, dolls, small appliances, books, crystal, clothing and lots more. Proceeds will benefit the work of the Homeless Coalition Transitional Housing Program.
© 2017. All Rights Reserved. Contact Us


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Massmart Holdings [JSE:MSM] fell the most in three months as the troubled SA retail chain warned on profit and majority shareholder Walmart sent one its own to help stem declines.
Earnings may drop as much as 50% in the first five months of the year compared with a year ago, Massmart said Thursday, when the company also named Walmart veteran Mitchell Slape as chief executive officer.
The shares fell as much as 12.5% to their lowest intraday level in 10 years. At 12:16, shares were changing hands at R70.30 on the JSE.
Walmart bought a majority stake in Massmart in 2011 for R16.5bn ($1.2 bn) to tap into rising African consumer spending. Things haven’t quite worked out that way. Massmart is contending with falling sales at some retail outlets amid a slowdown in South Africa and stubbornly high unemployment.
Now the US big-box giant is sending in Slape, 51, who has worked for Walmart in Japan, India, Mexico and the US. He’ll be facing a challenging turnaround project at Massmart.
South African retailers have been struggling amid dire prospects for growth. Rising taxes, fuel costs and other bills alongside sluggish economic growth have dented consumer confidence, while unemployment in the continent’s most industrialized economy remains stubbornly high.
Walmart has also reported growing hurdles overseas, including in China, India and the UK.
* Fin24 contributed to this article.


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SEOUL – IBM and Nvidia are two vastly different tech businesses but have one thing in common: They both recently announced that Samsung Electronics are making their most advanced semiconductors.
IBM announced in an August 17 press release the science and capabilities of its next-generation processor chip – and revealed that Samsung would be manufacturing it. On September 1, US gaming giant Nvidia revealed that the Korean giant would also make its next-generation gaming processing unit chips.
The announcements demonstrate that Samsung’s stated ambition to expand its existing dominance of the global memory semiconductor market into the richer, more sophisticated non-memory space is well on track.
It’s a massive ambition and a huge play. Samsung sells 50% of the world’s core memory products: DRAM, found in personal computers and servers, and NAND Flash chips, used primarily in hard drives and consumer electronics.
Now, with a vast universe of new applications appearing in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and 5G, a strategic thrust into non-memory is Samsung’s latest diversification.
Non-memory chips – also known as system or logic chips – offer higher value-add than memory ones. And they demand greater technical sophistication as they must be able to conduct complex functions such as computing and control.
They include central processing units (CPUs) used in computers, application processors (APs) used in smartphones and tablets, APs for auto infotainment systems, and image sensors for cameras.
Moreover, these chipsets are not subject to the semiconductor super cycle of “up-this-year, down-next-year” pricing, which bedevils the commoditized market for memory chips.
All this means that Samsung will be casting an ever-larger shadow over all sub-sectors of the chip market in the months and years ahead. The rising diversity of Samsung’s portfolio, however, has certain drawbacks.
For one, Samsung has to diplomatically manage the moral hazard of competing with many of the clients it also manufactures chips for.
Indeed, its towering profile in the electronics supply chain is proving a curse as well as a blessing. However much the company may wish to remain neutral, it faces growing pressure to choose sides in the intensifying tech war between the US and China, where access to next-generation chips is a crucial front line.
Fitch Ratings, in a July 3 research note, wrote that Samsung’s “credit profile remains supported over the long-term by its technology leadership, robust market position and a diversified business portfolio that mitigates cash-flow fluctuation, particularly from the cyclical semiconductor and display-panel segments.”
Samsung is plenty liquid. Fitch puts the company’s reserves of cash and cash equivalents, including short-term investments, at 107 trillion won (US$899 billion), enough to amply cover its total debt of 15 trillion won ($12.6 billion) as of end-March.
Samsung does electronics from nose to tail. As well as semiconductors, the core component of multiple electronic products, Samsung manufactures smartphones. In recent years, these are the two sectors that have alternated as Samsung’s main revenue stream.
But it also produces displays and the full gamut of devices and appliances from TVs to computers. The only electronics sub-sector where Samsung, a metal basher par excellence, has failed to gain a foothold is software.
Mobile looks challenging. In July, Samsung was overtaken as the leading smartphone player globally by Huawei. In mobile, it is squeezed in a nutcracker between top-end Apple and low-end Chinese players.
But in chips – a sector which has boomed during Covid-19 lockdowns due to demand for data centers and online services – Samsung looks more dominant.
Its fortified position in memory is being bolstered by its thrust into the more lucrative, technically demanding non-memory.
To be sure, Samsung must surmount multiple technological and commercial challenges before it can bestride both sides of the chip market. But it is arguably well-placed and well-provisioned to make the leap.
“Memory chips [are] still Samsung’s stronghold, but it is expanding into system chips…Samsung has the tech leadership, the client base and capital to invest,” an industry official told Asia Times.
“AI and 5G are inevitable trends and Samsung is engaged – either in devices, in IoT or in components. The company has a strong portfolio.”
In April 2019, Samsung revealed its ambition to become “the world leader in not only memory semiconductors but also logic chips by 2030.”
To achieve this, Samsung is sinking 73 trillion won ($61 billion) into research and development (R&D) and 60 trillion ($54 billion) into production infrastructure through 2030.
While Samsung dominates memory, players like Apple, IBM, Intel and Qualcomm are key players in non-memory. Even so, non-memory is not entirely new for Samsung. The company has created in-house logic chips – image sensors, APs and even CPUs – for its own devices.
Most US tech firms, however, only design their chipsets and outsource their manufacturing to third parties’ foundries. It is this sector – the foundry business that supplies chips to external clients – that Samsung aims to gain a toehold.
Only two companies, Taiwan-based TSMC, the industry leader, and Samsung supply foundries that can produce the most sophisticated logic chips sized at 7-nano, 5-nano, and, looking into the future, 3-nano products.
“Foundry for logic has been a long-term goal for many years, it is nothing new,” said Mark Newman, a senior analyst at Bernstein and a former Samsung employee. “It was the 2000s when they first started focusing on it.”
Even so, the 2019 announcement made the vision public and set it in stone. As such, it is foundational for the leadership of Samsung’s third-generation heir Lee “Jay” Jae-yong.
Lee needs a strategic win. His main claim to fame, since his father, Lee Keun-hee, fell into a coma in 2014, has been his role in a 2015 price-fixing, corporate merger and inheritance scandal that helped bring down then-president Park Geun-hye.
“Samsung’s founding family looks a decade or more out to make decisions,” said Geoff Cain, author of Samsung Rising. “Jay Lee’s big announcement has been non-memory chips. I think that is his mark. That is what he will be known for in 10-20 years.”
Newman reckons that technologically, TSMC and Samsung are neck and neck, but TSMC “is bigger and more diverse in foundry.”
Handel Jones, founder and CEO of International Business Strategies, or IBS, a US-based electronics-focused consultancy, adds, “While Samsung is competitive in manufacturing technology, Samsung has not provided a major competitive advantage over TSMC to date.”
Samsung’s experience and economy of scale in memory bolsters its non-memory offensive.
“The material science – the smaller and smaller you shrink the chips, the new types of materials being used – may be developed in memory and transferred to logic,” Newman said. “The long-term future is memory and logic. They are getting closer and closer.”
Could Samsung acquire outside expertise via mergers and acquisitions?
While the company has plentiful cash, Korean firms, with top-heavy internal cultures, have customarily proven unsuccessful at integrating overseas acquisitions.
“Most major decisions made by Samsung are made in South Korea, with strong power with a core group that has worked together for many years,” said Jones. “It is difficult for Samsung to gain major benefits from acquisitions other than product expertise [and] it is difficult for management of an acquired company to fit into Samsung’s culture.”
What Samsung can do is boost manpower.
According to IBS, it hired 500 AI experts in the first half of this year, and plans an additional 500 hires in the second half. The company said in 2019 that it plans to retain 15,000 new staff in R&D and production by 2030.
Still, Samsung’s non-memory business has a long way to go to catch up with memory. The company’s 2019 revenues for non-memory products were $18 billion compared to $43.5 billion for memory, according to data supplied by IBS to Asia Times.
Meanwhile, TSMC will generate revenues of $40 billion by year-end, IBS anticipates, and will grow faster than Samsung’s earnings in the foundry space.
One delicate issue for Samsung is the moral hazard implicit in its nose-to-tail business portfolio.
Apple famously won an $800 million lawsuit against Samsung: The Korean firm, Apple alleged, copied smartphone designs at a time when one arm of Samsung was competing with Apple in mobile, while other divisions were selling Apple components.
The kind of intellectual property exposure embedded in Samsung’s business model does not impact the more focused TSMC. The Taiwanese firm exclusively creates chips designed by and for other companies.
“Samsung competes with many of its customers,” said Jones. “This is a concern to customers because they do not want to provide their product roadmaps and schedules to Samsung.”
The business landscape is relatedly complex.
“Qualcomm uses Samsung and TMSC and one of the other foundries,” said Newman. “Samsung has a very complicated relationship with Qualcomm – they are a competitor and they make their chips and sell them, and they are a client of Qualcomm and they manufacture chips for them.”
Even on home turf, Samsung suffers from trust issues.
“Small fabless companies give contracts to Taiwanese companies as they worry that, if they deal with Samsung, Samsung will steal their IP,” said Park Sang-in, a Samsung watcher at Seoul National University. “Many fabless companies won’t want a rival manufacturing their own products.”
In recent years, Samsung has apparently been more careful in curating its relationships.
“There are some signs that Samsung is not as ruthless as it was in the past,” said Jones.
Indeed, the Apple brouhaha has not stopped other industry giants from engaging Samsung foundries. Samsung itself declined to reveal client relationships to Asia Times, beyond those made public by clients such as Qualcomm and IBM.
For clients, the advantage of Samsung manufacturing is clear.
“Every big Silicon Valley company has designs for chipsets and needs someone who can make them,” said author Cain. “No one can make chips as quickly as Samsung.”
In Part 2 of this story, to appear in Asia Times tomorrow, we investigate the complex commercial and diplomatic risks that Samsung must navigate in the cross-Pacific trade war, and its relationship with China’s tech flagship, Huawei.


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Airgas Refrigerants Enjoys Record-Breaking AHR Expo
Airgas Refrigerants enjoyed a very successful AHR Expo, held Jan. 30-Feb. 1 in Las Vegas. We reconnected with many customers, gathering more than 800 new leads and meeting with a range of national, international and West Coast partners, customers and prospective customers. Traffic at the Airgas booth was so heavy that booth staff members retired the much-loved Airgas Refrigerants prize wheel after day two of the show, as we ran out of visitor prizes.
Airgas management also met with members of the media as we showed off our new website, discussed the Airgas product line mix and buying trends, highlighted the growing urgency to reclaim refrigerants, and discussed our broad services options designed to help contractors with refrigerant needs. See the video of Sr. VP, of Sales and Purchasing Jay Kestenbaum talking with ACHR News here.
Show management for the 2017 AHR Expo announced that the event set three all-time records. The 2017 attendance of 68,615 passed the previous attendance record of 61,674, set in 2015 in Chicago.
Additionally, the 2017 show’s occupied exhibit space totaled more than half a million square feet—500,159 net square feet, breaking the AHR Expo all-time record set in 2015 in Chicago.
48,568 visitors (non-exhibit staff) attended, breaking the event’s attendance record of more than 42,000 set in New York in 2014. Of those 48,000 plus visitors, 14,825 international visitors from 165 countries attended the show.
The 2017 show’s nearly 11.5 acres of exhibit space was occupied by 1,968 exhibitors, 259 of which participated in the AHR Expo for the first time. Exhibitor personnel from most U.S. states and from 32 countries staffed booth exhibits. There were 541 international exhibitors.
The next AHR Expo, co-sponsored by ASHRAE and AHRI, will be held Jan. 22-24, 2018 at McCormick Place in Chicago. For additional information, visit ahrexpo.com. We hope to see you there.


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Santosh Sankar is a Founding Partner at Dynamo Ventures, a specialist investor in seed-stage supply chain, and mobility businesses. Sankar was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List in 2017 and is a graduate of Penn State University.
In discussions with early-stage founders and investors in the logistics technology landscape, the reality is starting to creep in. There is seemingly no end to investor enthusiasm for the industry, but there's also the practical issue that very few startups have a clear path to a dominant position in the global logistics industry, which remains fragmented and regionalized. This session will focus on how domain experts in the supply chain venture capital space see the next phase of investment into the global logistics industry.


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London-based Brazilian artist Giacomo Picca has taken a tactile approach to designing the catalogue for his exhibition Trees for the Wood. The cover employs the texture of wood, a detail from one of his paintings, to create the impression of opening a box. ‘[My art] operates on the margins of abstraction, design and decoration. It’s a subtle balance between its design and the subject,’ according to Picca. The show, which marks the end of the year-long ArtBrazil+ series, starts this week and runs until 28 February at Gallery 32, London W1.
7-Inches for Planned Parenthood has released a compilation vinyl boxset featuring original work from the likes of designer Shepard Fairey and musician Björk to raise money for the charity.
Integrated packaging design specialist Equator shares advice on what it takes to stand out as a successful design consultancy in a competitive landscape.
The cans feature the artist’s famous toucan and lobster illustrations, created during his four-decade-long association with the brand.
Integrated packaging design specialist Equator, offers tips on how to keep new business coming through the door.


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The International Business Accelerator, a program of the LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce, Opens Applications for 2018 Cohort.
The International Business Accelerator is California’s only business accelerator focusing on growth and profit via international commerce.
(Los Angeles, California – November 3, 2017) The LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce announces the sophomore cohort of its International Business Accelerator program. Running January to March, the IBA @ LAX shepherds start-ups and small businesses into global market expansion. Greater Los Angeles area business owners are encouraged to apply for the program. Applications are being accepted through December 31, 2017.
The IBA accepts early-stage startup founding teams and small businesses with global products, technologies and services who are looking to develop their international readiness. Participants will receive coaching, mentorship, market research, consulting services, education and more.
“The IBA @ LAX fits our mission of promoting business, community and the entrepreneurial ecosystem. It starts here in our global transportation, logistics and manufacturing around LAX and through Silicon Beach on to the greater Los Angeles area. We always take special pride in supporting the regional economy by helping businesses expand and create new jobs,” said Christina Davis, President/CEO of the LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce.
“The LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce sits within the one of the largest export markets in the country with billions in export revenues. We’re excited to introduce IBA participants to this revenue pool by offering them a personalized fast-track into global markets and expansion of their international reach,” said Davis.
“The IBA goes far beyond ‘how-to-export’ workshops. The platform works with companies to launch them into global markets using proven business acceleration techniques. The extensive one-on-one business support participants receive is simply not available in any other program," said founder Christopher Lynch, an international business expert and professor.
Participating companies will receive and have access to:
· Business coaching and consulting,
· Market research and development of a company-tailored export strategy,
· Proven business acceleration techniques for entering the global market,
- Partners including KPMG for global accounting, DHL for logistics, Governor Brown’s office and others,
- Resources through LAX Coastal Chamber of Commerce extensive international business network,
· Training in funding and financing tools,
· Continued support through the completion of their first international sale.
Applicants can be pre-revenue, early-stage or established businesses with global growth potential. Proven prototype or process (beyond proof of concept) with founding teams of two or more preferred. Additional consideration for products or services in manufacturing, advanced manufacturing, clean tech, robotics and artificial intelligence. The five 2017 IBA @ LAX cohort companies included a personalized travel service tech platform targeting SE Asia, bed-in-a-box targeting Switzerland and the EU, ergonomic bike seat exporting to 70 countries at graduation, a revolutionary power generator technology targeted at the Middle East and a health food brand with a tech solution for customization targeting China and S. Korea.
The 2018 IBA @ LAX has six Monday seminars on Jan 15 & 22, February 5, 12 & 26 and March 5 and a Demo Day pitch to investors on March 19. During weeks without seminars, companies implement the workshop material and company-specific growth plan via one-on-one coaching and consulting with mentors.
# # #
To learn more about the 2018 IBA @ LAX program, business owners are invited to watch a video at the IBA’s website at www.IBA.io, visit www.laxcoastal.com or contact Michael McClune at (858) 342.2626 and IBA.at.LAX@gmail.com. Program cost is $1500 tuition, no equity, and a limited number of scholarships may be available.
Apply for the 2018 IBA @ LAX here: www.iba.io/iba-at-lax


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NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Response Biomedical said on Wednesday that full-year 2011 revenues rose 32 percent year over year, driven by growth in product sales.
Full-year revenues for the firm came in at C$9.5 million (US$9.5 million), up from C$7.1 million a year ago, as product sales also increased 32 percent year over year to C$9.0 million from C$6.8 million a year ago.
Cardiovascular sales increased to C$7.3 million from C$6.0 million, a 21 percent increase year over year, primarily due to an increase in sales in China, while infectious disease, bio-defense, and vector infectious disease sales more than doubled to C$1.7 million from C$800,000 a year ago. Contract service fees and revenues increased 40 percent to C$449,386 from C$320,878
The Vancouver, British Columbia-based firm cut operating expenses in 2011 to C$7.4 million from C$9.2 million in 2010 as a result of a restructuring of its operations.
Its net loss for 2011 improved to C$5.4 million, or C$.14 per share, from a net loss of C$10.1 million, or C$.32 per share, in 2010.
The firm ended 2011 with C$20.9 million in total assets.
In 2011, Response Biomedical restated its financials for the first two quarters, as well as for full-year 2010 after a review determined an improper recognition of revenues and other improprieties. During the summer, Wayne Kay also abruptly resigned as CEO.
Response Biomedical Executive Chairman and Interim CEO Peter Thompson said in a statement on Wednesday that despite the improvements in its financial performance, "further progress is clearly required and we remain focused on accelerating our path to profitable growth."
He added that the company remains confident that the "evident value of near-patient testing for time-critical diagnostic information along with the quality and performance of our products will continue to drive overall market expansion for Response products."


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The German government doesn’t like to see its local automakers rely on battery cells from Asia to build electric vehicles, which is why it announced today a 1 billion euro investment to support local battery cell production.
Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said on Tuesday that it is imperative that they move quickly (via Reuters):
“Production should start as quickly as possible.”
They want to “lay the groundwork in the months ahead for large-scale battery production in Europe and expected such production to start in Germany from 2021.”
Most of the efforts to bring battery production to Germany right now have to do with battery pack production from German automakers.
Yet, there are also a few efforts to bring battery cell production to the country, but it’s not directly led by German companies.
For example, BMW signed a $1 billion battery supply contract with CATL, China’s biggest battery cell manufacturer who in return is expected to establish production in Germany.
Like Tesla’s deal with Panasonic for Gigafactory 1 in Nevada, where they produce cells and also use cells imported from Asia, CATL is expected to start by exporting its Chinese batteries to Germany for local EV production and gradually ramp up local cell production.
The German government wants to encourage more local production of the critical component for electric vehicle production.
“Altmaier said that the sites for battery cell output would be decided on with the consortiums and that there would be more than one. The first production lines could be available from 2021 and each consortium is likely to provide 1,000 to 2,000 jobs at first, he said.”
He expects the first project to be announced during the first quarter of 2019.
Some other projects are currently underway in the country.
For example, Terra E Holding GmbH announced plans for a massive new battery factory with a planned capacity of 34 GWh at full production.
Tesla is also planning to soon announce a Gigafactory for both electric vehicle and battery production in Europe. The California-based automaker has been looking at Germany for a new Gigafactory.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.


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While the previous bromance is over, there's a new one brewing in Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel. At the heart of it all appears to be some gorgeous environments just ripe to be exploded into tiny bits of debris and dust.
The latest Army of Two game is set to be released early next year, showcasing two new heroes at the center and a promised more serious tone. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game brings a renewed focus on co-op play, dropping any form of competitive multiplayer all together to make the cooperative experience that much tighter.
We've got a handful of screenshots leaked from website All Games Beta showing some impressive looking visuals. Bullshots or not, there's going to be a lot of things blowing up when Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel hits in March.


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Facilities Must Re-register With FDA by Dec. 31
Food facilities required to register with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must renew their registrations between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, according to the Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg Trade Report. Under section 102 of the Food Safety Modernization Act, all domestic and foreign facilities that manufacture, process, pack or store food, food ingredients, pet foods or dietary supplements are required to renew their registration with the FDA every other year.
Facilities can register online, via mail or by fax. U.S. Customs and Border Protection states that beginning on Jan. 1, 2015, if a foreign food facility required to register with FDA fails to do so, food from that facility that is being imported or offered for import into the U.S. could be held at the port upon arrival. As a result, import brokers who file prior notices for food shipments are encouraged to contact clients with high-volume food shipments, inquire about the food facility registration renewal status of foreign manufacturing facilities associated with their shipments and confirm any new registration numbers.
Online Grocery Sales Expected To Quadruple By 2023
By 2023, online grocery sales are projected to range between $80 billion to $123 billion, according to new statistics released by Steve Bishop of Brick Meets Click (BMC) in a recent webinar. Online grocery sales in 2014 are estimated to be about $27 billion by BMC. Currently, online grocery store sales account for about 4 percent of market-level spending, but over the next decade it’s expected these sales will account for between 11 percent and 17 percent of the total, with some major markets such as New York and San Francisco potentially exceeding that level while others where there is less invested online falling below that 11 percent figure, commented Bishop.
Canada Proposes National Database For Tracing Livestock
Canada Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz says a national database for tracing livestock will help improve food safety, according to Canada TV News. The government is spending $7.5 million to develop, implement and operate a centralized service. Plans are to use information from industry groups, including the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency, to build a comprehensive database by 2016.
Ritz, saying food safety is the main goal, points to the mad-cow crisis, the tainted beef recall in Alberta and a more recent outbreak of porcine epidemic diarrhea in Manitoba.
Amazon.com To Open First Store In New York City
Amazon.com, the e-commerce giant, is opening its own store in New York City, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Manhattan store on 34th Street will contain a selection of inventory to accommodate local same-day delivery and shoppers who want to pick up products bought online, according to the report. Amazon was also mulling over the idea of using the space as a showroom for its gadgets, such as its Kindle e-readers and Fire smartphone, the report said. A successful trial could persuade the company to open stores in other cities around the country, the report said.
Thermo King Rolls Out More Energy Efficient Solutions
Thermo King has introduced several innovations to extend shipping distance, improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• In 2015, Thermo King will offer marine reefer units with a newer refrigerant that is equally energy efficient and reliable as the current refrigerant yet has about half the global warming potential. Customers who want to transition their existing reefer units can do so without any technical adjustments.
• The new Magnum Plus Optima enables exporters to provide customers with more sensitive types of fruit and vegetables. Magnum Plus Otima provides an active oxygen removal system within its controlled atmosphere solution. By prolonging the post-harvest life of fresh products, cargo owners can extend shipping distances and reach unexplored markets. The system helps maintain the firmness and crispness of the transported fruits, vegetables and flowers, reducing shrinkage and decay of the cargo. Additionally, it permits growers to harvest produce closer to its natural maturity time and peak flavor.
• A new passive refrigeration technology, an autonomous refrigeration concept for intermodal applications. Passive refrigeration provides the operational simplicity of a dry container with the cooling capacity and functional benefits of a reefer. The system uses a food-grade eutectic solution to store thermal energy for completely autonomous operation during transport. Passive refrigeration ensures the cargo is transported at the right temperature and humidity conditions to preserve the quality of fresh harvested produce, regardless of the region, time or operator. This feature gives the cargo owners access to new markets with limited or inadequate conventional reefer services.
Ebola Outbreak Brings Food Crisis To West Africa
The Ebola outbreak is causing a food crisis in West Africa. The virus has already killed more than 4,000 people and left local residents struggling to cope with food shortages and spiking prices, according to news reports. Ebola has now spread through most of the country, with a badly equipped health care system struggling to keep up and a series of quarantines further hindering the response.
WTO Sees Global Trade Pact Coming
The World Trade Organization (WTO) reported there was a “high probability” that a major deal on streamlining global customs rules will be implemented after India and the U.S. recently overcame a key impasse. India and the U.S. settled a dispute recently that had paralyzed the WTO and risked derailing the reforms that are seen adding about $1 trillion to global trade.
India had plunged the WTO into the deepest crisis in its 20-year history in July by vetoing a deal on streamlined customs rules due to a lack of progress on its demands to be allowed to stockpile food without observing the usual WTO rules on agricultural subsidies. That put the WTO’s future in doubt just months after it appeared to have overcome decades of stalemate on the issue at a meeting in Bali. The breakthrough was the second at the WTO in as many days, following a U.S.-China pact to cut tariffs on IT products, also billed as a $1 trillion advance.
Food Security Challenges Mount, Report Claims
Food security poses a growing challenge to the world as the population increases by more than 75 million each year and access to affordable becomes more difficult, according to the 2014 Global Food Security Index released by DuPont and the Economist Intelligence Unit. Food prices will pose major obstacles to food accessibility as billions in the developing world already spend half to three-quarters of their income on food. Rising shortages of water and arable landlso present challenges. The Index further noted that obesity and food loss affect access to safe, nutritious and affordable food.
EPA To Restrict Refrigerants For Retail/Wholesale Food Operations
The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed changes that would affect refrigeration systems throughout the grocery store, which could create unnecessary disruptions to store operations and impose costly equipment changes, according to the Food Marketing Institute. The proposed rule changes the listing of several hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) from approved to unapproved, some of which are commonly used in commercial refrigeration equipment.
2015 Outlook: E-commerce, ‘Craft’ And Fermented Foods
The growth of online grocery shopping and a preference toward craft foods, fermented foods and smoked flavors rank among the top food trends for 2015, according to consultant Phil Lempert, known as the Supermarket Guru. Lempert predicts the most significant changes next year will stem from a desire for bold-flavored foods that also offer health benefits, and shifts in approach to supermarket shopping – both online and at brick-and-mortar stores. Other trends highlight new eating behaviors among Generation Z and boomers, as well as new technologies that improve the ease of reading and understanding of nutrition labels.
Alibaba’s Payment Affiliate Goes Global
The payment-processing affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding is expanding in the U.S. and Russia, according to reports. Zhejiang Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group is reorganizing into six business units, including the PayPal-like Alipay, to process digital sales of small businesses globally. The units are focused on areas where they already have a presence, such as Brazil, Spain and China.
Whole Foods Market Launches Fresh Food Rating
Whole Foods Market has launched “Responsibly Grown,” a tiered produce rating system that assesses growing practices that impact human health and the environment. The rating system labels fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers as “good,” “better” or “best” to help shoppers make informed choices in the produce and floral departments, and it prohibits hazardous neurotoxins still allowed in agriculture.
EU Seeks To Let Members Ban Genetically Modified Crops
European Union (EU) politicians backed a plan to allow nations to ban genetically modified (GM) crops even if they are given approval to be grown in the EU, raising the chance their use will remain limited on the continent. A previous compromise endorsed by EU ministers would have required negotiation with relevant companies if a nation wanted to ban a GM crop in the event it had been approved for EU-wide use. The plan approved by the EU parliament would eliminate that stage and allow member states to ban GM crops on environmental grounds. The EU’s executive commission said it was confident the law could be in place by 2015 once it received final endorsement from the European Parliament and member states.
Budreck Truck Lines Breaks Ground On Freezer/Cooler Facility In Monee, Ill.
Budreck Truck Lines has broken ground on a new 46,500-square-foot freezer/cooler building in Monee, Ill, according news news reports. The facility will have 7,000 square feet of corporate offices, 4,000 square feet of truck driver lounge/warehouse support areas, 6,000 square feet of trailer maintenance and repair bays, 6,700 square feet of cooler space, 10,000 square feet of freezer space and 12,800 square feet of refrigerated dock space.
Group Sues To Halt Poultry Inspection System
Food & Water Watch recently filed suit in federal court to stop the implementation of the New Poultry Inspection System (NPIS) rules which would turn over food safety inspection to poultry companies with limited oversight by USDA inspectors. The organization alleges NPIS violates statutory requirements, including the Poultry Product’s Inspection Act rule that federal inspectors, not poultry slaughter establishment staff, are responsible for condemning adulterated young chicken and turkey carcasses.
ReeferTek Northeast Starts Refrigerated Truck Rental Program
ReeferTek Northeast has started a company-managed refrigerated truck rental program, servicing customers in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Previously, the company arranged rentals with a third-party vendor on behalf of clients and saw an opportunity to bring the service “in-house” for the benefit of customers while providing an advertisement for the ReeferTek brand when the vans are out on the road.
ReeferTek is building the fleet, starting with the Sprinter chassis paired with ReeferTek’s standard 3-inch insulation package and cooled by a Carrier 30S refrigeration unit with electric standby capability. The company plans to diversify the fleet so customers can sample the various chassis and refrigeration equipment available.
Volvo Near Deal To Deliver Parcels To Parked Cars
Deutsche Post AG’s DHL unit is in talks with Volvo Car Group on a partnership that would allow the parcel-delivery service to remotely open autos made by the Swedish manufacturer, according to reports. Discussions with other automakers are also ongoing. The offering would follow a pilot project in Sweden that used Volvo’s GPS-linked On Call service to enter vehicles. DHL would only get access after the owner accepts delivery via text message. Volvo Cars and Deutsche Post declined to comment on any talks.
California Moves On Banning Plastic Grocery Bags
Prospects grew for a proposed California ban on plastic grocery bags recently as the state assembly broadly approved the prohibition after an earlier vote failed to garner enough support in the face of opposition from bag manufacturers, according to Reuters. A number of cities in California and other states, including Hawaii’s Maui County, have made it illegal for grocery stores to pack consumer purchases in plastic. The measure, which passed the Assembly by a 44-29 vote, would ban grocery stores from handing out single-use plastic bags with customer purchases, and would give local bag companies funds to retool to make heavier, multiple-use bags. Customers could purchase paper or compostable plastic bags for 10 cents.


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QR code-based mobile payments platform Yoyo Wallet has launched in private beta to select customers in the US. “Yoyo’s US expansion comes after a successful $10m A round that has boosted Yoyo to become the fastest growing mobile wallet in the UK, processing up to 65% of checkouts across its participating locations,” the company says. An official launch is expected in early 2016. Yoyo began rolling out its service in May 2014.
- Google Pay rolls out Gmail integration that lets users automatically import tickets, coupons and loyalty cards from email
- McDonald’s integrates Alipay mobile payments and rewards into Hong Kong app
- ST webinar explores the potential of Type 5 NFC tags — watch it now
- Queensland rolls out contactless driving licences
- Vietnam tops global growth for mobile payments


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New pilot project offering food delivery services utilising the latest in green technology hopes to shake up the market.
Discover Laos Today is proud to announce the launch of its newest project “Discover Laos Food” (DLF). DLF promises to revolutionise the food ordering and delivery industry in Laos by offering better prices and innovative technology.
Many of the existing food delivery platforms charge restaurants as much as 40% commission. This is a huge cost for businesses to absorb, especially in these very challenging times. DLF promises to charge only 10% commission, which is around a quarter of other platforms.
Payments can be processed through BCEL OnePay, allowing for contactless payments which will greatly reduce the risk of COVID.
Delivery fees will be set by distance, but also promise to be lower than the competitors. A flat fate of 3,000 kip per kilometre from restaurant by straight line raidus will be applied to deliveries, giving customers a clear and transparent understanding of the fees applied to their order.
Deliveries will be made on electric scooters in Luang Prabang at beginning, reducing carbon emissions and noise in the World Heritage City of Luang Prabang. The initial pilot program features nine electric scooters delivering food from 20 restaurants in Luang Prabang.
Once the pilot program has proven its viability further rollouts will feature other cities, other digital wallets, and a wider range of restaurants.
Discover Laos Food also includes the option for restaurants to switch to a cloud based POS system. This easy to use system is designed specifically for the Lao market and aims to help increase efficiency and ultimately profits. This requires no additional hardware and is compatible with PCs, Macs, tablets, and smartphones. Its ease of use and accessibility is perfect for the Lao market where many users are already very comfortable using digital devices.
This is a very exciting time for Discover Laos Today and Discover Laos Food. We encourage you follow us on our social media channels to stay up to date on the latest developments and future plans.


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If you think modern cars burn too much gas, well, you’re right—but don’t blame automotive engineers. For years, they’ve made cars more efficient in ways obvious and subtle: tweaking transmissions, futzing with camshafts, and refining engine architectures. In a recent paper, the MIT economist Christopher Knittel reported that from 1980 to 2006, the fuel economy of the U.S. fleet should have gone up by 60 percent.
Instead, fuel economy increased by only 15 percent. The reason is simple: cars got more efficient, but they also got bigger. Much of the technological progress of the past three decades has been squandered. Electric cars aren’t necessarily the answer, either. The Nissan Leaf, laden with a 660-pound battery, weighs 3,385 pounds. (The Toyota Prius weighs 3,042 pounds.)
Lighter cars are a no-brainer solution—and new materials suddenly make it possible to shave weight without sacrificing safety. (One reason consumers like big cars is that they perceive them, often erroneously, to be safer.) Most cars are made of steel and aluminum, but several companies have released concept cars built with a carbon fiber–reinforced polymer, which is extremely light and stiff.
Taking a different tack is a company called Edison2. Its Very Light Car seats four adults and weighs just over 800 pounds, thanks to a composite body, while its chassis is made of less expensive, easy-to-recycle chromoly steel. The car is optimized for lightness—the aluminum shifter knob, for example, is two-tenths of an ounce, barely heavier than a cough drop. An electric version of the car has garnered an official EPA rating of 245 mpg equivalent.
Next idea: The End of the Checkbook


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A new business is helping 19 other local businesses profit.
Straight From Home is a space for vendors to sell their items around the clock rather than waiting for the next event.
Co-owner Becky Fearneyhough made a business out of her hobby of crafts and sewing and was operating from home. Eventually, she needed more space as her business grew.
She said she rents out her space monthly to other local vendors so they don’t even need to be there during store hours.
“I had done vendor shows with a lot of the people here,” Becky Fearneyhough said. “And, it’s just less going to vendor shows, but not taking everything down, tearing your stuff up.”
Fearneyhough said vendors sell everything from antiques to handmade ornaments to dog treats made by her daughter Abby.
“I’m going to be making peanut butter flavored,” Abby Fearneyhough said. “Or people can choose a flavor from a recipe book I have.”
Becky Fearneyhough said so far, the vendors are booked solid, however they can pull out at any time so one of the vendors on the waiting list can step in.
“Most of the community likes to shop local and that’s the big thing,” Becky Fearneyhough said. “People support other local businesses like Great Scott! and Rural Cyclery.”
Straight From Home is located at 10 E Cross St. It’s open 7 days a week from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays.


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Health insurance is as big as Big Tech
The 5 largest conglomerates combining health insurance and pharmacy benefits are on track this year to be bigger than the 5 preeminent tech companies.
The big picture: Anthem, Cigna, CVS Health, Humana and UnitedHealth Group cumulatively expect to collect almost $787 billion in 2019, compared with $783 billion of projected revenue for Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google.
Yes, but: The tech companies cumulatively were 5 times more profitable than the health care companies in 2018 and are projected to be 3.5 times more profitable this year.
- There's more money to be made selling smartphones and online ads than acting as a health care middleman.
- Health insurers and pharmacy benefit managers pay out a vast majority of their revenues to hospitals, doctors and drug companies.
- But insurers and PBMs are still turning large overall profits. And a delay in an Affordable Care Act tax is expected to create a big windfall for the insurance industry this year. Companies are working behind the scenes to get that tax delayed again for 2020 or permanently repealed.
It's also worth remembering that health insurance giants today do a lot more than just pay out claims for medical care and prescriptions.
- UnitedHealth owns surgery centers, doctors' offices, consulting shops and data-analyzing services.
- CVS, which just bought Aetna, brings in a lot of money through its retail pharmacies and in-store clinics.


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Some, but not all, D.C. cabs will have credit card payment systems by the beginning of September.
You will be able to pay a taxi fare with a credit card in Washington—eventually.
Citing the slow pace of installations, the D.C. Taxicab Commission delayed the deadline again for all cabs to accept credit card payments by one month to September 30, as long as taxi owners and their chosen credit card payment service companies provide a legitimate reason—such as a logistical delay in delivering the hardware—for requesting an extension, said Commission Chairman Ron Linton in an interview with WAMU 88.5. Otherwise the old deadline of August 31 will still apply.
“There have been circumstances in which the ability of payment service providers to deliver the hardware or to make the arrangements has delayed the owners of cabs to meet the deadline through no fault of their own,” said Linton, who also faulted some individual taxi owners for holding up the process.
"Unfortunately, we are getting too many instances where it appears the taxicab owners simply are not doing what they have to do to make this work," Linton said. "They are not keeping their appointments for installations. They are not responding. They are not paying attention. We need to have them understand we are deadly serious they have to do this if they want to stay in business."
No more excuses
In order to receive the time extension to install a credit card payment machine, a taxi owner’s chosen payment service provider (eight PSPs have been approved to operate in the District) must provide the Taxicab Commission written proof of a scheduled installation. The deadline to apply for an extension is August 15.
“We will begin impounding vehicles that have not met the deadline and have not gotten their extension on Sept. 1,” warned Linton, who said this will be the last delay in a process the public has been waiting years to see come to fruition. Polls have shown overwhelming support for credit card acceptance and other modernization proposals for Washington’s decrepit cab fleet.
Of the District’s roughly 6,500 licensed taxicabs, fewer than 1,000 have installed credit card payment machines, Linton said. The chairman hopes close to 3,000 will be installed in August and the remaining in September. And if the PSPs and taxi owners are still dragging their feet come late September? “There will be a reduction in the number of vehicles on the streets for service.”
D.C.’s taxi landscape
Roughly 1,500 D.C. taxicabs are individually owned and operated, unaffiliated with any company. Of the remaining 5,000 cabs, about 3,000 are owned by the drivers and affiliated with any of the 116 taxi companies licensed in Washington. About 2,000 are owned by taxi companies and leased to licensed drivers on a weekly basis, Linton said. A taxi company in Washington usually owns at least 20 vehicles.
One tech startup that intends to have its credit card devices in many D.C. taxicabs saw the delay coming. Sanders Partee, the founder and CEO of Alexandria-based TaxiMagic, said the August 31 deadline was a bit ambitious for a city with 116 taxi companies and little experience with credit card acceptance.
“This is a tremendous logistical challenge in terms of just procuring the equipment, signing up the drivers, installing the equipment, testing it, getting it all rolled out,” Partee said.
The challenge for PSPs
In an interview with WAMU 88.5, Partee provided a glimpse of the challenges tech companies face in the Washington market.
He estimates an individual driver would have to gross $2,000 per month in credit card receipts to make the system viable for everyone involved, including the payment service provider who has invested heavily in the credit card devices that will also accept payments through smart phone apps. Thus, part-time taxi drivers who may only take their vehicles out on the road two or three days a week may be squeezed out of business, forced to work more hours, or affiliate with a fleet that leases cabs instead of owning one individually.
“Our challenge is vetting and underwriting individual cab drivers in the District,” Partee said. “The business model in D.C. is one where we lease equipment to drivers. And when we lease them that equipment, we are putting a lot of assets on the road in individual cars, and so we need to have some sort of comfort that our assets are protected and they are productive.”
It comes down to an arcane term heard in the offices of tech startups: asset utilization. Unlike New York City, where all 13,000 yellow cabs are on the road 24 hours per day, split into two 12-hour shifts, D.C. taxicabs often sit in the owners’ driveways for hours on end.
“If you have a car that you are not using very often, then putting an expensive credit card machine in that car will drive up your cost of credit card acceptance. It will cost that driver more on average per ride to take credit cards than it would someone else. The higher the volume you do, the lower the actual price per ride,” said Partee, referring to the processing fees that take a bite out of every fare.
“There are two risks that we have in [the D.C.] market. One is the driver is not going to do enough volume and, two, the asset may drive away to some other town and I’ll never see it again.”
To compensate drivers for credit card processing fees, the D.C. Taxicab Commission tacked on $.25 to the base fare. Another $.25 will be collected by the Commission to fund the fleet modernization, bringing the amount passengers will pay the moment they step foot in a cab with a credit card machine to $3.50. The current base fare is $3.00.
“I often talk about cheerful credit card acceptance,” Partee added. “If any D.C. cab driver cheerfully accepts credit cards they will have no problem meeting our minimum standards or making a deal where they are not paying an exorbitant amount.”