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Site Busts Morons Posting Photos of Their Debit CardsGaining followers this week is the Twitter account @NeedADebitCard, a service which aggregates publicly tweeted photos of peoples' debit and ATM cards. While some of the photos are blurry or cropped, most clearly display the full names and account details, and in some cases even addresses, of their owners.
Several posts proudly show expired or damaged cards being cut in half, their owners presumably believing that to be sufficient in deterring thieves. (Though it's intended as a preventative measure against just these sorts of situations, the absence of the card's three-digit security code doesn't necessarily guarantee that the owner's account will remain secure.)
Most of the account's retweets can be found with a quick public search on Twitter for "debit card + instagr.am" - it's not really difficult to find good examples, most of them taken by young people who probably haven't considered the dangers of identity theft and credit card fraud. The account, whose byline implores "Please quit posting pictures of your debit cards, people," appears to have been active since late May.
Several of the original photos and tweets have unsurprisingly been deleted after news of the account started to spread earlier this week. @NeedADebitCard resembles previous privacy-shaming site PleaseRobMe.com, a privacy awareness site that aggregated and streamed FourSquare check-ins of people posting when they were away from home.
QUESTION: What do you think drives this sort of irresponsible behavior? Are sites like this a good deterrent/reminder for people, or are they doing more harm than good by broadcasting things like debit card numbers to a larger audience?
SOURCE: The Verge
RIM Denies They’re In a “Death Spiral”Blackberry maker RIM announced made some disappointing announcements on Thursday: Last quarter's sales and losses were worse than expected, and the new BlackBerry 10 platform won't be ready until next year. RIM shares fell some 14% in after-hours trading on Monday; they're down about 95% since mid-2008. The company also said it plans to cut about 5,000 jobs and that’s it’s operating at a loss for the first time in 8 years.
There is some limited good news: RIM still has almost 80 million subscribers, is still selling some phones and still has some big customers, particularly in the government sector. On Tuesday, CEO Thorsten Heins told Canadian radio that “There’s nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now,” and that “the company is not ignoring the world out there, nor is it in a death spiral.”
QUESTIONS: Is there any hope for RIM? If you were the new interim CEO, what would you do first to right the ship. If RIM can't turn things around, how does this story end? Acquisition? The death of the Blackberry brand entirely?
Bill Gates Vetoed Prototype eReader in 1998In 1998, 8 years before Sony introduced the "Sony Reader" and 9 years before Amazon introduced the Kindle, Microsoft founder Bill Gates was shown a prototype for a new eReader and rejected the concept. He didn't like the interface, which he complained didn't match the company's Windows brand, and therefore felt it wasn't right for Microsoft.
The anecdote came to light this week as part of an extensive Vanity Fair piece by Kurt Eichenwald about Microsoft's downfall, which he links to "astonishingly foolish management decisions." The piece includes a number of interviews and also relies on internal corporate records to trace the history of the Steve Ballmer era. Eichenwald in particular calls out a Microsoft management policy known as "stack ranking," which forces each unit in the company to categorize employees as top performers, good performers, average or poor, which was extraordinarily unpopular and forced teams to be overly competitive internally.
According to the article, the group who built the e-reader prototype was assimilated into the division dedicated to managing Office software. Former employee Steve Stone complained that the group was no longer able to focus on developing innovative technology that was useful for consumers. Instead, they had to think about how to make as much money as possible from Office.
Still, the article comes at a peculiar time: Microsoft’s stock is trading up 15% from a year ago, following promising announcements about the next iteration of Microsoft’s mobile OS, Windows 8 as well as the company’s first tablet.
QUESTION: A legitimately stupid decision by Bill Gates, or just a case of hindsight being 20/20? Do you agree that Microsoft under Ballmer has suffered a "Lost Decade," as the Vanity Fair piece alleges?
SOURCE: Vanity Fair
Hipmunk Involved in Patent DisputeJust days after travel startup Hipmunk’s announcement of a new $15M investment, a company called i2z Technology LLC told the company that it has to buy a license for a 1994 patent that covers a method for displaying data in multiple computer windows. According to GigaOm, i2z is a Texas shell company run by a California lawyer that is targeting a variety of online travel companies including Kayak, Google, Yelp and Microsoft.
Under i2z’s business model, sometimes referred to as patent trolling, firms that don’t make anything collect patents in order to extract licensing settlements from companies that do. In a new twist, trolls have begun laying in wait for start-ups to receive funding before pouncing.
Hipmunk is fighting back, filing a lawsuit asking a federal judge in San Francisco to declare that it’s not infringing the patent and that the patent should be invalidated because it’s obvious. Hipmunk’s complaint notes that this is the second time it has been threatened by a patent troll this year and that the patent has nothing to do with Hipmunk’s technology.
The patent in question is US Patent 5,345,551, “a method and system for synchronizing the presentation of data from different, but related, sources in different windows of a computer display.” Like many patents related to software, it covers seemingly common-place functions.
QUESTION: Think there's any chance this company will succeed at protecting a 20 year old patent for technology that seems commonplace? Should patents like this expire at some point, after enough people have built upon the core technology?
Yahoo and Facebook Make PeaceAs part of the final settlement of their much-discussed patent infringement kerfuffle, Yahoo and Facebook have agreed to an extensive strategic deal, according to AllThingsD. The agreement includes a joint advertising sales effort and cross-licensing of key patents between the two companies. Both companies' boards have approved of the deal, which is expected to be announced today.
No actual money will be involved in the settlement, though the advertising deals could prove profitable for both companies if executed well. There is also the open possibility that Facebook may pay Yahoo to license selected patents down the road. According to AllThingsD, these negotiations started almost immediately after Yahoo's CEO Scott Thompson was ousted (following the controversy over inaccuracies in his professional biography), furthering the narrative that the lawsuit was Thompson's big initiative and not approved by other leading figures at Yahoo.
The move comes amidst public discussion about who will get the permanent Yahoo CEO job. Interim president Ross Levinsohn, who was integral in negotiating this deal with Facebook, is considered a strong candidate, as is Hulu's CEO Jason Kilar. (Kilar has said he's not interested in the Yahoo job.)
QUESTION: Think, based on his handling of this situation, Levinsohn deserves the top Yahoo job?
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As part of their ongoing initiative to educate consumers about the importance of sleep, the Better Sleep Council (BSC), the consumer-education arm of the International Sleep Products Association (ISPA), is launching an edgy campaign for May’s Better Sleep Month.
The Better Sleep Month campaign, “Are You Better in Bed Than …?” taps into the growing trend of sleep as status symbol to get participants bragging about how good they are in bed – as it relates to sleep, of course.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen a shift in how consumers talk about sleep,” said Mary Helen Rogers, vice president of marketing and communications for ISPA. “In the past, people tended to brag about their lack of sleep. But today’s consumers – in particular, the emerging Millennial market – understand the importance of a good night’s rest, even boasting about how many hours they sleep. We’ve seen that quality sleep has become a status symbol among consumers, and we’re looking to tap into that trend and join the conversation to help consumers learn more about how a supportive mattress figures into getting their best rest. Better Sleep Month is an excellent opportunity to really educate consumers about the sleep environment, ultimately leading to more productive conversations with retailers when consumers are mattress shopping.”
The BSC will offer consumers numerous ways to get involved in Better Sleep Month, including:
- Get daily tips and inspiration through posts on the BSC’s Facebook and Twitter channels, featuring BSC consultant, R.N. and certified sleep educator Terry Cralle’s “31 Ways to Be Better in Bed!”
- Participate in weekly “sleepstakes” on the BSC’s Facebook Page with opportunities to win Amazon gift cards
- Read weekly posts on the BSC’s blog
- Check out partnering lifestyle bloggers’ sleep-related content, including material from the BSC’s spokesperson, Lissa Coffey
- Learn more about what consumers do in bed, their habits and more through the release of the BSC’s new survey results
- Take the Better Bed Quizzz
- Sign up for the new BSC newsletter
Here’s how you can participate:
Liven up your social media this May by sharing the BSC’s Facebook and Twitter posts and asking consumers to get involved. They may just need to visit your store in order to improve their sleep quality!
To learn more about Better Sleep Month, visit bettersleep.org starting May 1.
About the BSC:The Better Sleep Council is the consumer-education arm of the International Sleep Products Association, the trade association for the mattress industry. With decades invested in improving sleep quality, the BSC educates consumers on the link between sleep and health, and the role of the sleep environment, primarily through www.bettersleep.org, partner support and consumer outreach.

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- More than 9,000 team members and their families, suppliers and guests witness the line off of the Mississippi-built Corolla
TUPELO, Miss. (September 7, 2013) – What’s 47 years old, stunning, and turning heads in Tupelo today?
In front of an estimated crowd of nearly 9,000 people at the BancorpSouth Arena this afternoon the all-new, next generation 2014 Corolla officially made its Mississippi debut at its line off ceremony, featuring an illusionist, aerialists, fire artists and other performers. Attendees included Toyota Mississippi team members and their families, suppliers and invited guests including Miss. Lt. Governor Tate Reeves and Congressman Alan Nunnelee.
The line off celebration was combined with the plant’s Team Mississippi Appreciation Day.
“The Corolla is not built with one part. It is not built by one person. And it is not built by one company. It takes all of us, Toyota Mississippi and our strong supplier support, working together as one team, to produce high quality Corollas,” said Masafumi Hamaguchi, president of Toyota Mississippi.
The all-new 2014 Corolla is assembled by 2,000 team members at Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Mississippi, Inc., located near Tupelo. Five “near-site” suppliers employ an additional 1,300 people.
The Corolla, now in its 11th generation, is the world’s most popular compact sedan and last month sold its 40 millionth unit worldwide.
Immediately following the all-new Corolla’s debut, guests were treated to Team Mississippi Appreciation Day outside of the arena. Rides, games, food, live music, karaoke, a magic show and other fun-filled activities took place.
The all-new 2014 Corolla arrived in dealer showrooms last week.
Toyota, (NYSE:TM), the world's top automaker and creator of the Prius, is committed to building vehicles for the way people live through our Toyota, Lexus and Scion brands. Over the past 50 years, we’ve built more than 25 million cars and trucks in North America, where we operate 14 manufacturing plants (10 in the U.S.) and directly employ nearly 40,000 people (more than 37,000 in the U.S.). Our 1,800 North American dealerships sold more than 2.3 million cars and trucks in 2012 – and about 80 percent of all Toyota vehicles sold over the past 20 years are still on the road today.
Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc. (TEMA), headquartered in Erlanger, Ky., is responsible for Toyota’s engineering design, development, R&D and manufacturing activities in North America. TEMA’s Toyota Technical Center (TTC) operates engineering, research and development facilities in Ann Arbor, Mich., including Toyota’s Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC.) Toyota partners with philanthropic organizations across the country, with a focus on education, safety and the environment. As part of this commitment, we share the company’s extensive know-how garnered from building great cars and trucks to help community organizations and other nonprofits expand their ability to do good.
NOTE TO EDITORS: Photos to accompany this story are available and can be retrieved in digital form by media without charge at www.toyotanewsroom.com.


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Your tech news digest, by way of theÂ DGiT Daily tech newsletter, for Wednesday, 29 July 2020.
Bezos, Cook, Pichai, and Zuckerberg face Congress
Super short here because itâ€™s all about to happen:
- Itâ€™s a big day, as Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google CEOs, aka Bezos, Cook, Pichai, and Zuckerberg, testify before Congress. Members of the House judiciaryâ€™s antitrust subcommittee will be looking for answers, as they look at possible new and updated antitrust laws that could limit Big Tech for the first time in decades.
- It will all be on Zoom so the visceral in-person views (and traditional Monopoly Man cosplayer) will be missing, and it might be a little more restrained.
- Itâ€™ll be Jeff Bezosâ€™ first appearance before Congress. Weâ€™ve seen the others before.
What do you need to know?
- This is probably the one primer you can read ahead of time: â€œWhat to Watch for in Congressâ€™ Big Tech CEO Hearingâ€� (Wired), although if you donâ€™t want the thick detail yet, the Gizmodo primer is a little faster and more obvious. Like, why isnâ€™t Microsoft going to be there? (Actually, no one really knows.)
- Opening statements have already been made with TechCrunch pulling out the details that matter. Apple is saying the smartphone market is fiercely competitive and it canâ€™t possibly therefore be anti-competitive, Google is talking rivals too, Facebook goes all-in on America vs. China, while tiny Amazon says itâ€™s just tiny: Amazon says it accounts for â€œless than 1% of the $25 trillion global retail market and less than 4% of retail in the US.â€�
- Reports are lawmakers will bring evidence of â€œcopy-kill-acquireâ€� strategies where competitors are squashed through aggressive reactionary apps and strategies, or just allegedly buy problems to make them go away,
- When: it goes down at 12PM ET today, and you can watch freely below from YouTube. You know, the one owned by Google.
- The big question: Will anything come of this?
Also: Apple threatens to remove Airbnb from App Store over virtual experiences commission. Not a good look. (MacRumors)
1.Â CES 2021 is going online-only, and you already know why (Android Authority). This is probably secondary news to if it was going to still happen in person! But itâ€™s a pretty huge loss for the industry which met in Vegas each year to show off tech for the coming year and beyond, networked, and so on. My colleagues are basically relieved given the stresses. Berlinâ€™s IFA 2020 is still happening, but with strict limits and controls.
2. This could be our first real-world look at the Galaxy Z Fold 2 (Android Authority).
4. Sonyâ€™s Alpha a7S III is official and itâ€™s built for recording 4K video, but not 8K (Android Authority).
5. LGâ€™s upcoming 163-inch 4K microLED TV is ideal for those unadorned walls in your new mansion (notebookcheck.net).
6. Our guide to picking the best case for your new phone (Android Authority).
7. â€œThis app is keeping my plants alive, no thanks to me.â€� (Gizmodo).
8. Gogoro Eeyo 1s is the lightest carbon fiber e-bike people have tried yet (CNET).
9. Mellow made its â€˜smartâ€™ sous vide machine (thatâ€™s been out since 2014) dumb, unless you pay a monthly fee (The Verge). Also: Canadian smart glasses going â€˜offlineâ€™ (aka, becoming normal glasses again) just weeks after company bought by Google (CTV).
10. Virgin Galacticâ€™s spacecraft has six passenger seats and lots of windows: looks good, but these are renderings? (Ars Technica).
11. Mad scientists revive 100-million-year-old microbes, but fear not! (Wired).
12. Worldâ€™s largest nuclear fusion project begins assembly in France: â€œNuclear fusion promises clean, unlimited power but, despite 60 years of research, it has yet to overcome the technical challenges of harnessing such extreme amounts of energy.â€� Yup. (The Guardian).
13. I think the Disco Goats are worth watching today in particular (Twitter).
14. â€œWeâ€™re preparing to launch NASAâ€™s Perseverance Mars Rover and Mars Helicopter Ingenuity. Ask Us Anything about our #CountdownToMars!â€� (r/askscience). 80% chance of favorable weather conditions for the launch tomorrow.


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Are you one of the non-existent few who wanted the Xperia Play, the PlayStation/phone hybrid, but couldn't tear yourself away from your phone that works better? Well guess what sports fans; according to PlayStation's latest press release, you can make video calls with your Vita via Skype as of today (or this evening, rather).
Skype video calling will be available for both Wi-Fi and 3G models sometime today, whenever the PlayStation Store updates. The app will run in the background, thereby allowing you to pause a game to answer a call and then return back to whatever you were playing. Skype will also support both the front and back cameras, so uh, take that as you will.


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A consent order between the city of New Orleans and three Jackson Square artists will allow them to sell reproductions of their work at the famous site. The decree caps a dispute that has been simmering since 2005 over a New Orleans law that said artists on that coveted French Quarter turf should display and sell only work that has "been accomplished essentially by hand" and without the use of "any mechanical or duplicative process."
Under the ordinance, city officials could yank violators' permits to sell artwork for a year.
The consent order signed Dec. 20 by attorneys for the city and the three local artists -- Holly Sarré, Barbara Yochum and Jack Wittenbrink -- states the city is "permanently enjoined from impairing these plaintiffs' right to display and sell reproductions of their original art."
While the order relates only to these three individuals, Sarré's attorney Brian Bégué contends that the floodgates are now open.
"Once the word gets out -- and it's a small artists community so word spreads quick -- new suits are going to be filed seeking the same relief," Bégué speculated Thursday afternoon.
The city also is required to pay the three artists' attorneys fees, totaling $127,500 under the order.
Bégué also had represented artist Marc Trebert, who won a suit against the city in 2005 that contended Trebert's First Amendment rights had been violated by the city's attempt to stop Trebert from selling items it said weren't handmade: digital photographs that he colored with pastels.
A few months later in 2005, Sarré -- a contemporary folk artist perhaps best known for the hand-painted toilet seats she used to display along the Jackson Square fence -- sued the city, similarly saying the ban on prints violated her rights of free speech under the First Amendment and of "basic economic liberty" under the 14th Amendment.
Sarré, who had caused a stir among some in the Jackson Square artists' colony after she began selling $35 prints of her more expensive acrylic-on-canvas New Orleans renderings, essentially argued that artists should be allowed to sell less expensive multiples to help make ends meet. Since Hurricane Katrina, she has produced acrylic series such as the "Flood Series" and "After da Spill."
Yochum, who worked on the square for about 40 years, stopped in 2009 when she could no longer support herself there without selling reproductions. Instead, she opened 906 Dream Studio on Royal Street.
"With this economy, you just can't make money with originals," Yochum said. "I was selling a painting once or twice a month, which wouldn't pay my rent."
She says she was hoping that the city would change the ordinance for everyone but that the current order "is better than nothing."
"Prints are important, as three quarters of the population can't afford an original unless it's a $5 fleur de lis," she added. "Jackson Square, it's all souvenirs now."
The city has contended that, without the ordinance, artists could sell lower-priced prints that would inevitably take the lion's share of the business, driving out artists producing original works and diluting the square's attractiveness to tourists.
In 2006, U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle suggested the city should adopt a "more narrowly tailored ordinance" than a total ban on prints, but the City Council in 2007 refused to go along with his idea, rejecting, for example, a proposal to allow every Jackson Square artist to sell reproductions, provided they did not generate more than 20 percent of the artist's sales.
Then, in 2009, Lemelle ruled in favor of the city, saying he had become "convinced that allowing print sales would subvert the creative, improvisatory interplay between working artists and audiences that is inherent in the Jackson Square experience."
But in March, a U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling gave the artists new life. The New Orleans-based appeals court determined that Lemelle had erred in 2009, as the city had failed to prove it had a good reason to forbid the sale of prints.
The appeals judges stated that the city "merely offered affidavits of rival artists, who are likely to be biased against their competitors" and had failed "to prove a nexus between the sale of prints at Jackson Square and harm to the character of that area."
While there are alternative forums for reproductions, such as the Dutch Market Co-op and the flea market in the French Market, plus local galleries and websites, the artists have argued that they were not adequate substitutes for spaces along the Jackson Square's al fresco gallery strolled by millions of tourists a year.
Yochum is known in part for creating fantasy scenes populated by mermaids and pixies.
Wittenbrink, who has recently used Katrina-ravaged scrap metal to create New Orleans-inspired images, has said he joined the suit in part because he wants to reach "gas station attendants from Lafayette" and other visitors who can't afford original works of art and won't venture into galleries. He has said the square's artists should be able to offer something for everyone.


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Aston Martin has slashed its half-year pre-tax losses from £227.4m to £90.7m as wholesale volumes rocketed, figures released today (Jul 28) show.
Results for the six months to June 30, 2021 issued via the London Stock Exchange at 7am show that volumes of vehicles including specials went up by 224 per cent on 2020’s first half of 895 to 2,901 this year.
Revenue also soared by 242 per cent to £498.8m, with adjusted EBITDA improving by more than £138m, rising to £48.8m from an £89m loss.
Its operating loss, meanwhile, was reduced from £159.3m to £38m. Net debt, however, rose from £751m in 2020 to £791.5m.
Looking at the second quarter of 2021, the luxury British sports car maker saw its pre-tax loss cut from £117.3m to £48.5m as revenue went up by a massive 380 per cent to £274.4m from £57.2m.
Adjusted EBITDA went from a £50.9m deficit to £28.1m in the black, while operating loss improved from £91.4m to £22.7m.
In the statement, highlighting its Project Horizon transformation plan, Aston Martin said there had been a good demand for current models, with the first DBX derivative poised to start production in the third quarter.
The Vantage F1 edition had been attracting strong demand, it added, and V12 Speedster deliveries had begun.
Meanwhile, the Aston Martin Valkyrie was on track for second-half deliveries, with deliveries of the Valkyrie AMR Pro hypercard to begin in the fourth quarter.
The manufacturer also singled out the successful launch of the Valhalla plug-in hybrid mid-engined supercar, pictured, at the British Grand Prix, and said all Aston Martins would have an electrified powertrain option – either hybrid or battery-electric – by 2025/26, with half of them to be battery-electric by 2030
Executive chairman Lawrence Stroll said: ‘When I joined Aston Martin just over a year ago, I had in mind key milestones that needed to be achieved to put the right foundations in place for the company’s future success.
‘These have all been delivered, from appointing a world-class leadership team, to successfully rebalancing supply to demand and crucially strengthening the financial resilience of the business.
‘Signing the landmark technology agreement with Mercedes-Benz AG underpins our product plans for the future, including the route to electrification, all supported by the important brand benefit of the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula OneTM Team.’
He added that he was ‘tremendously excited about the significant potential of the business’ as he looked to turn things around.
‘Building on the success of DB – our first SUV – we have since delivered two more new vehicles, and with more exciting product launches to come we are well positioned for growth,’ he said.
‘The launch of Valhalla last week signals a new era for specials at Aston Martin as an integral pillar of our brand and our product innovation.
‘The demand we see for our products, the new product pipeline and the quality of the team we have in place to execute gives me great confidence in our continued success as we progress towards achieving our medium-term targets of 10,000 units, £2bn revenue and £500m of adjusted EBITDA, as we transform Aston Martin to be one of the greatest ultra-luxury car brands in the world.’
Chief executive Tobias Moers commented: ‘We have performed well in the first half of the year as we continue to deliver results in line with our plans to improve profitability.
‘Demand and pricing dynamics remain strong and I am particularly pleased that we are now operating with the right supply-to-demand balance for our products, earlier than we had originally expected.’
He added: ‘I am also happy with our excellent progress on Project Horizon as we drive efficiency and agility throughout every aspect of the company.
‘Our manufacturing operations have seen significant changes with the consolidation of all sports manufacturing into a centre of excellence at Gaydon and a shift to a more efficient single production line.
‘I would like to thank all of our employees for their hard work and their dedication as Covid-19 continues to impact all of us, and for their passion, support and commitment as we continue on our journey.
‘Our good progress to date in the execution of our plans as signalled by our results today underpins our confidence in delivering our transformational growth strategy to create a world-class, self-sustaining ultra-luxury automaker.’


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Veterans Day Stock and Bond Markets: What’s Open
Veterans Day is not a day off for the US stock markets. The exchanges will proceed as usual.
However, it is a public holiday for the bond market. There will be no trading on US Treasuries.
Futures contracts are trading slightly higher before the opening bell.
The main futures indices suggest a gain of 0.4% at the start of Thursday’s session on Wall Street.
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No economic report is scheduled for release, but traders will digest the earnings results.
Retail names that report include Dillard’s, Coach, Tapestry, Parent of Kate Spade, and Sally Beauty Holdings.
In Europe, the London FTSE gained 0.4%, the German DAX by 0.2% and the CAC of France by 0.3%.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 gained 0.6%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng 1.0%, while China’s Shanghai Composite gained 1.2%.
CONSUMER PRICES INCREASE AT THE HIGHEST IN 31 YEARS
In the United States, prices for beef, electricity and other items paid by consumers in October jumped from last year’s levels at the fastest overall pace since 1990, suggesting that the Federal Reserve will need to raise short-term interest rates faster from their record lows.
|Me: DJI||MEDIUM DOW JONES||36079.94||-240.04||-0.66%|
|I: COMP||NASDAQ COMPOSITE INDEX||15622.705156||-263.84||-1.66%|
The S&P 500 lost 0.8% to 4,646.71 for its second consecutive decline. He’s just come out of a strong race where he set a record in each of the previous eight days.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.7% to 36,079.94. The Nasdaq composite, which has more tech stocks, fell further. It lost 1.7% to 15,662.71.
Driven by the inflation report, investors are now banking on a 66.5% probability that the Fed will hike rates by the end of June. A day earlier, this probability was 50.9%.
A 3.3% drop in the price of US oil also helped push energy stocks to the biggest loss among the 11 sectors that make up the S&P 500.
MUSK SELLS APPROXIMATELY $ 5B IN TESLA SHARES
Tesla regained some of the ground lost the previous two days after its CEO, Elon Musk, announced he would sell 10% of his stake in the company. Shares are up 2% in pre-market. Musk sold about $ 5 billion in Tesla shares this week while exercising stock options. After selling less than 1% of his holdings on Monday, he sold about 2% over the next two days, according to the Wall Street Journal.
DISNEY + SUBSCRIBER GROWTH, COMPANY PROFITS ARE MISSING WALL STREET EXPECTATIONS
Walt Disney shares fell more than 4% in after-hours trading, after the entertainment giant’s streaming service rose at a slower-than-expected pace in a fourth quarter in which the company missed Wall Street projections across the board.
Rivian Automotive, an electric truck maker backed by Amazon and Ford, rose 29.1% on its first day of listing.
DoorDash rose 11.6% after reporting higher than expected revenue for its last quarter and announcing it was purchasing Finnish delivery service Wolt Enterprises, expanding its reach into Europe and other markets.
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In energy trading, benchmark US crude added 49 cents to $ 81.83 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 47 cents to $ 83.11 a barrel.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.


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Leading Australian law firm Allen Allen & Hemsley has settled a A$70m malpractice claim brought against it by Austotel, less than a week into a hearing at the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney.
In court last week, Austotel retracted the allegations made against the firm and three partners over their role in the sale of pubs from brewing giant Tooheys to Austotel.
The company launched the claim six years ago, alleging that Allens had acted negligently by acting for both vendor and purchaser.
It also alleged that the firm had failed to disclose a barrister's opinion on Austotel's liability to pay tenants' damages for loss of goodwill in the sale.
Allens denied the claims and, in court two weeks ago, its counsel Francis Douglas QC called them “literally hopeless”.
The two sides had been involved in talks to settle the claim prior to the Federal Court case, which was expected to last two months. The terms of the settlement are confidential.
It has been reported that Allens has agreed to pay A$10m to the company.


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Google Rebranding of Ad Products and its Effects on Business
Google has started the process of rebranding its advertising products wherein Adwords and DoubleClick will be getting new names. The main aim of this rebranding is to streamline the offerings so that they better reflect Google’s present capabilities. Let us explore the details in the following sections.
Google Rebranding of Ad Products and the Consequent 3 Main Brands
After this change, all the ad products Google has will get divided into 3 main brands:
- Google Adwords will now become Google Ads.
- DoubleClick (products for advisers) and Google Analytics 360 will fall into new brand called Google Marketing Platform.
- DoubleClick Ad Exchange and DoubleClick for Publishers will be part of the new platform known as Google Ad Manager.
“The features these ad products provide are not changing, instead it is basically a change in name which shows where Google has been channeling its different products in last couple of years,


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Industrial Sales Insights From Amy Kim, Thomas’ New Chief Revenue Officer And A Former Google Sales Executive
Amy Kim, Chief Revenue Officer for Thomas and a former Google sales executive, shares her unique insights into industrial sales, digital marketing, and leveraging technology.Read More »
The company plans on investing more than $50 billion to grow its U.S. operations over the next five years.Read More »
Motion Industries, a $5 billion industrial MRO distributor based out of Birmingham, Alabama, has announced plans to open a 62,000-square-foot distribution center in Auburn, Washington later this spring. Motion, which was founded in 1946, is a subsidiary of Genuine Parts Company, which also owns the chain of NAPA auto parts stores.
The new location will primarily serve 24 branch...Read More »
By now, you’ve probably heard the news that the Trump administration is expected to enact a formal order imposing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. While details of the tariffs are still emerging, the supply chain is already feeling their effects.Read More »


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Most read in blockchain technology
Put simply, blockchain technology is 'a security and transparency innovation'
A little-known import/export financier soared 2,400% after buying a blockchain technology — but now shares are crashing off their highs
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Engine-maker Cummins second quarter revenues hit $6.6 billion, an increase of 8% from the same quarter in 2021, despite a string of global challenges including energy prices, supply chain disruption and its suspension of operations in Russia.
In its Q2 report, Cummins said sales in North America increased 15% while international revenues decreased 2%, “driven primarily by a slowdown in China and the indefinite suspension of our operations in Russia”.
It was also a busy period in terms deals and acquisitions. It completed the the acquisition of JVS, adding engine braking and cylinder deactivation technologies which will key components to meeting current and future emissions regulations.
Cummins was also boosted by aftermarket drivetrain and component manufacturer Meritor’s shareholders voting in favour of its proposed takeover.
“The companies are working together to complete the acquisition this week as we have received all regulatory approvals to close the transaction,” reported Cummins in the report.
The company has also advanced several initiatives as part of its decarbonisation strategy, including tie-ins with Daimler Truck North America and Scania to deliver fuel cell electric powertrains for heavy-duty truck applications, and with Komatsu on the development of zero-emissions haulage equipment, including hydrogen fuel cell solutions for large mining haul truck applications.
Cummins, Chevron, and Walmart are also working together to integrate Cummins X15N natural gas engine, powered by renewable natural gas, into Walmart’s heavy-duty truck fleet.
“The company achieved record revenues and solid profitability in the second quarter of 2022, with demand for our products remaining strong across most of our key markets and regions, apart from China,” said President and CEO Jennifer Rumsey. “Employees across our organisation have worked tirelessly in the face of supply chain challenges and rising costs that continue to impact our industry. While navigating these challenges, we will continue to focus on enabling our customers’ success, driving cycle over cycle improvement in financial performance, investing in sustainable solutions that will protect our planet for future generations and returning excess cash to shareholders.”
“High inflation and rising global interest rates have increased uncertainty about the pace of growth in the global economy. Demand for Cummins’ products and services remains strong, and as a result we have maintained our projection for full year revenues and profitability from three months ago,” added Rumsey. “We continue to monitor economic conditions closely and will adjust our operating plans should the outlook for our core markets weaken.”


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Genesis wants to enter Europe when its upcoming SUV models are ready.
The G70 will use the same engine as the upcoming Hyundai Sonata N-Line.
Hyundai’s N sub-brand will also expand to include crossovers and EVs.
Like the G90 sedan, Genesis’ first SUV, the GV80, has an oversized grille with a certain Superman shield feel about it.
The 2020 Genesis G90 will go on sale locally in December, with prices yet to be confirmed.
Chevrolet had the worst models, but Cadillac was rated the least reliable brand.
Set to launch in 2021, Genesis’ new G70 luxury SUV is coming for BMW’s X3 / X4 and Audi’s Q5.
The all-new 2020 Genesis GV80 will most likely debut at the LA Auto Show next month.
Will the Genesis GV70 look exactly like this? Probably not, but we’re hoping it will stay pretty close to these renderings.
Is the Genesis G80 a smart buy with a third-generation model just around the corner? Here’s what we found out.
Korea’s new luxury flagship comes with striking looks, an (expected) affordable price and all the relaxation you could ask for.
The GV80 will reportedly get a 2.5-liter four-pot, a petrol 3.5-liter V6 and a diesel 3.0-liter inline-six, as well as an eight-speed dual-clutch ‘box.


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The electric car manufacturers announce intentions to bump up support for their European customer base.
Within their proposals Tesla hope to provide a dedicated network of Supercharger stations spread across major traffic routes in 7 new European countries including the UK. Tesla’s Superchargers are proprietary charging stations allowing drivers to quickly charge their cars for free, a typical charge taking around 75 minutes.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk notes that, “By the end of this year, we expect you will be able to travel almost anywhere in Europe using only Superchargers.”
The proposed network will build upon 14 Superchargers currently to be found in, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and the Netherlands.
Tesla project sales of their cars across Europe and Asia to be double those within North America by the end of 2014, so providing better support is certainly within their best interests.
To help facilitate their Supercharger roll-out, Tesla also plan to build 30 new service and sales centres. In the UK the first service centres outside of London are planned for Birmingham and Manchester.
image: © Tesla Motors Inc.


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Labels are frequently attached to fruit so consumers can identify which company grew the produce.
However, the stickers can be an annoyance to buyers — they can be difficult to peel from the fruit and leave a bit of glue residue after being removed. Now, some fruit manufacturers have developed a new type of sticker that can be easily washed from the produce, Discovery News reports.
Scott Amron, an electronics engineer, has designed a fruit label that can dissolve into an organic fruit soap that removes pesticides, fungicides and water-resistant waxes from the product.
"I've always been discontent with fruit labels and felt they could do more than just display product info and be difficult to peel off," Amron explained. "We buy, wash and eat fruit. So, the wash step was the next thing the label should help with."
Innovative packaging, such as the labels designed by Amron, can help brands stand out from their competitors. By thinking outside of the box, product manufacturers may be able to capture more sales.


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Chief Financial Officer
Discount Retailer B&M Picks DFS Furniture's Schmidt As CFO
B&M European Value Retail has named DFS Furniture's chief financial officer Mike Schmidt as its new finance boss, at a time when the discount retailer'...
Carlsberg CFO Heine Dalsgaard Steps Down
Danish brewer Carlsberg has announced that its finance chief Heine Dalsgaard has decided to step down, after six years in the role.


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Sony Corp. said it is set to introduce its first wireless broadband communications and entertainment device, aimed at heavy users of instant messaging.
Sony's new "mylo" personal communicator is a hybrid electronic device that competes with a range of gadgets already on the market, including the Sidekick, created by Danger Inc., and Nokia's 770 wireless Internet mini-tablet.
The name mylo stands for "my life online" and provides users access to online instant messaging services, HTML Web pages, e-mails and to play music or view photos. Mylo will be available in September retail for about $350, Sony said.
Sony is borrowing the name mylo from a prior, ill -fated generation of its handheld devices the Japanese consumer electronics giant had planned to launch in the United State s on Sept. 11, 2001 but subsequently cancelled.
The mylo was the last product in its discontinued line of Clie devices, which were aimed at business and professional users and would have competed with Research in Motion's Blackberry or Palm Treo devices.
The mylo is meant to operate on Wi-Fi wireless networks, which are increasingly available on college campuses, in busy public spaces and in homes with wireless broadband connections.
It is a small, oblong device with a 2.4 inch screen and a slide out keyboard designed for typing with one's thumbs.
The device bears similarities to Sony's PSP gaming device, but is targeted at a different market: socializers who are heavy text message users and music fans, rather than gamers.
Available in black or white, Mylo comes embedded with three, free instant messaging services: eBay Inc.'s Skype, Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Messenger and Google Inc.'s Google Talk.
The product does not require initial computer setup or a monthly service contract, which may make the device more attractive to teen and twenty-something users.
Mylo comes with 1 gigabyte of flash memory to store music or photos or files. It supports playing digital music files in MP3, Sony's ATRAC or Microsoft's WMA format. The device can be expanded to add up to 4 gigabytes of additional internal memory. Sony is introducing a 4-gigabyte Memory Stick flash memory device this month for $170, a spokeswoman said.
The device offers 45 hours of music playback, around seven hours of instant-message chatting and Web surfing and more than three hours of continuous Skype Web-based telephone call time.


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Facebook has officially released their new app, Slingshot, which was accidentally leaked/teased to the app store early last week and then quickly removed. The concept of this app is to share photos via message with friends, similar to the well known app Snapchat, but Facebook says they put a different approach to this app that will make it stand out and not be the same.
One of the first things I thought when having seen the release of Slingshot was "how could this possibly be any different than Snapchat which already controls the market?" In a way, I think it really is. Though, there are some noticeable differences which Facebook has implemented. Photos and videos will actually stay on the feed your created much longer, to be exact, they will be up until you deleted them. Unlike Snapchat photos which disappear after a few seconds, Slingshots will stay live and can be seen again and again until they are removed. Pretty cool in my opinion.
Another thing Facebook has done differently is that they will not be letting users see a photo that a friend has sent to them until they respond with another photo. This seems to encourage you and the friend to interact. Plus, now I can finally figure out who has been clicking my Snapchats just to make the notification disappear.
You can still draw on your photos and type messages on them like Snapchat, which they seem similar with. Yahoo pointed out that Facebook did make attempts to address Snapchat in their announcement of the new app.
" We’ve enjoyed using Snapchat to send each other ephemeral messages and expect there to be a variety of apps that explore this new way of sharing," Facebook writes on its blog. "With Slingshot, we saw an opportunity to create something new and different: a space where you can share everyday moments with lots of people at once."
We will be playing with this app over the next few days and seeing how it is. Obviously, the big comparison and competitor is going to be Snapchat even though Facebook seems to be trying to make a point about how different they are from them and other apps like this, I think we will find quite a lot to be similar. Overall, I am excited to see what this app has in store. I think this will be an eye opener for the people at Snapchat and we might start seeing some updates or new features on both sides of the line. Competition can be good and with such a large company jumping into this instant photo/video messaging, it keeps other ones that are on top on their toes.


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Chairman Roberts Moves to Protect U.S. Economy from $3.2 Billion in Trade Retaliation
Files Amendment to Repeal Country of Origin Labeling
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture Nutrition and Forestry today spoke on the Senate floor about his amendment to repeal mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) requirements for beef, pork and chicken – required by Canada and Mexico to prevent billions of dollars in retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. economy.
The amendment can be found Audio and video of Senator Roberts’ remarks can be downloaded here.
The most recent statement from Canada regarding COOL is here.
The following are Senator Roberts’ remarks as prepared for delivery:
Mr. President, today we ask our fellow colleagues to stand with us to protect the U.S. economy from 3.2 billion dollars in retaliatory tariffs being applied to our exports to Canada and Mexico, every year.
A recent ruling from the World Trade Organization found, for the fourth and final time, that our Country of Origin Labeling program for meat, or COOL to which it is often referred, violates our trade agreements with our two closest trading partners.
Mr. President, this debate isn’t about the merits of a particular labeling program or our opinions about how our beef or pork or chicken should be sold. No, this debate is about a simple fact, and facts are stubborn things.
Whether you support COOL or oppose COOL, the fact is retaliation is coming unless the Senate acts to stop this program that the WTO has found to be discriminatory.
Over the years, this body has attempted many times to craft a workable COOL program for all stakeholders while still living up to our international trade obligations.
Congress, through directives in the 2002 Farm Bill and the 2008 Farm Bill, required the establishment of COOL for meat.
Through regulations issued in 2009 and revised in 2013, the Department of Agriculture made several attempts to implement a workable and WTO compliant COOL program.
However, as I mentioned earlier, again and again the WTO ruled in favor of Canada and Mexico. On four occasions our trade regulator ruled that the U.S. policy did not live up to our international trade obligations and disadvantaged our best trading partners, Canada and Mexico.
Some have suggested we should salvage this labeling program by once again making more changes. However, simply changing certain aspects of the program will not prevent the 3.2 billion dollars in retaliation from damaging our economy.
Mr. President, you don’t have to take my word for it. Here’s a statement, issued just today, from the Canadian governmentwhich will determine whether or not retaliation on U.S. products will take effect in the near future.
“’The only acceptable outcome remains for the United States to repeal COOL or face $3 billion in annual retaliation.’”
Mr. President, I have worked with many of my colleagues over the years and over the last few weeks to craft a solution that meets the needs of all stakeholders.
However, after all of our work, it is clear that to protect our economy -- to ensure Canada and Mexico drop their pursuit of retaliation on U.S. exports -- we must firsttake up the House passed bill repealing COOL. A bipartisan bill that received 300 votes.
The damages Canada and Mexico are seeking are immense—over 3.2 billion dollars in sanctions on U.S. products is probable if we do not repeal COOL- - and these are not just agriculture products in the cross hairs.
Products including beef, pork, cherries, ethanol, wine, orange juice, jewelry, mattresses, furniture and parts for heating appliances are just some of the targets of Canadian retaliation. Mexico has yet to finalize their list, but we expect it to be just as damaging.
California alone has $4 billion in exports to Canada at risk.
Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin each have roughly $1 billion in exports from their state at risk from Canadian retaliation alone.
I remind my colleagues that again today, Canada released a statement in response to legislation authored by others that reaffirmed their position, and I quote:
“’The U.S. Senate must follow the lead of the House of Representatives and put forward legislation that repeals COOL once and for all.’”
I must emphasize to my colleagues that retaliation is fast approaching and the responsibility sits squarely on our shoulders to avoid it.
Regardless of what farm groups, the Department of Agriculture, or USTR say, or regardless of what some Members of Congress would like; Canada and Mexico, and only Canada and Mexico, have the ability to halt retaliation.
So this takes me back to the beginning of my statement…It doesn’t matter if you support COOL or oppose COOL, you cannot ignore the fact that retaliation is imminent and we must avoid it.
Repeal of mandatory COOL is necessary to protect the U.S. economy from damaging sanctions, and our amendment will accomplish just that.
Thank you, I urge my colleagues to adopt the amendment.
The U.S. Senate has debated COOL for nearly three decades. In what continues to be a divisive issue, Chairman Roberts has attempted to find a workable solution for all stakeholders that will also meet U.S. commitments to trading partners. However, the fact remains that Canada and Mexico have won their case at the World Trade Organization four times and soon will have the ability to impose potentially $3 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports every year.
The amendment was offered to the Developing a Reliable and Innovative Vision for the Economy (DRIVE) Act, commonly known as the highway bill. Co-sponsors include Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas; Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.; John Boozman, R-Ark.; Richard Burr, R-N.C.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; Cory Gardner, R-Colo.; David Perdue, R-Ga., James Risch, R-Idaho; Ben Sasse, R-Neb.; and Thom Tillis, R-N.C.
Chairman Roberts has opposed COOL from its inception. The Senate Agriculture Committee in June held a hearing on COOL and trade retaliation.
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Adder Technology Enters Distribution Partnership With Portugal’s Gloone
Adder Technology, a global specialist in connectivity and IP KVM solutions, has announced a new partnership with the recognized and respected Portuguese integrator, Gloone. The collaboration supports Adder’s continued growth in the European market.
“Over the years, we have built a strong network of customers in the global control room space. Our work in the control room sector has driven us to become a trusted designer and supplier of command and control systems,” said Luis Xavier, Co-CEO, Gloone. “However, there has been a paradigm shift in the way that our customers plan and specify their facility – now opting for a complete solution from one chosen partner. By adding Adder’s range of IP KVM products into our portfolio, we are now able to meet this need.”
“Adder’s products are renowned for their quality, flexibility, and reliability and we are proud to be able to use our expertise and experience to bring these products to our customers,” added Pedro Tuna, Co-CEO, Gloone.
Gloone will distribute and integrate Adder’s full range of innovative solutions including the ADDERLink INFINITY 4000 Series (ALIF4000), which has continued to exceed anticipated success since its launch earlier this year. As the world’s first, dual-head 4K IP KVM matrix over a single fiber, the ALIF4000 enables command and control businesses to transition to 4K when they need to.
“Portugal is a strong market for Adder and we firmly believe that this new partnership will help us grow even further,” said Jamie Adkin, VP EMEA, Adder. “By working with Gloone, we can continue to meet the increase in demand for high-performance IP KVM solutions and improve the service and support we give to our customers.”


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Tesla in January (TSLA) – Get Tesla Inc report CEO Elon Musk has promised that the company’s vehicles will be self-driving by the end of the year.
“I’d be shocked if we couldn’t achieve fully autonomous driving that’s safer than humans this year. I’d be shocked,” Musk said on Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings call.
“Being safer than humans is a low bar, not a high bar. People are constantly distracted, tired, texting. … We don’t have more accidents, which is remarkable,” he stressed.
In other words, by the end of the year, owners of Tesla vehicles will have a feature that enables their cars to drive themselves in any condition.
At the risk of dampening the enthusiasm of Tesla fans, there’s a good chance that their champ Musk’s schedule won’t be met again.
That’s because regulators, particularly the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, are increasing their investigations into accidents involving Tesla vehicles, Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Assist.
Another accident involving a Tesla vehicle
NHTSA is opening a special crash investigation into the July 6 crash along Interstate 75 in Florida that killed two people, a person familiar with the matter told TheStreet.
A 2015 Tesla Model S exited Interstate 75, entered a rest area, and struck the back of a parked tractor-trailer.
Two 66-year-old women and 67-year-old men from Lompoc, California, were killed in the collision, local media reported.
The Florida Highway Patrol said: “For unknown reasons, the Tesla pulled into a parking lot and drove towards a trailer. The Tesla hit the back of the trailer and eventually came to a stop.”
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So far, NHTSA has not said whether any of Tesla’s driver assistance systems, Autopilot and FSD were active at the time of the crash.
Tesla, which has not had a communications unit since last year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The crash was a blow to the automaker, with rivals on all sides determined to grab market share from it. The accident also adds to a long line of investigations now involving Tesla vehicles.
Tesla is working with NHTSA
In fact, NHTSA is investigating 37 crashes involving self-driving systems since 2016. Thirty of those involved Tesla, including 11 fatal crashes that resulted in a total of 15 deaths.
The agency also said in the filing that it was investigating a fatal pedestrian accident involving a Tesla Model 3 in California this month.
It also sent a team to investigate a minor-injury Cruise self-driving car accident in California in June.
Newly confirmed NHTSA administrator Steven Cliff recently told The Associated Press that the agency is stepping up efforts to understand the risks posed by self-driving car technology in order to decide what regulations might be needed to protect drivers, passengers and pedestrians. .
He also said that automated systems such as automatic emergency braking have huge potential to save lives.
Cliff added that Tesla has been working with NHTSA.
“I think we’ve worked very well with them,” the head of the regulator told The Associated Press. “When we found there was a risk, they’ve taken action, which is appropriate.”
In June, the federal agency released data from automakers and tech companies showing nearly 400 accidents involving vehicles equipped with partially automated driver-assistance systems in a 10-month period, 273 of which were related to Tesla .


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It’s lunchtime on a Tuesday, and there are no shoppers in sight at the Phillipsburg Mall. Just outside the entrance, a guy is smoking weed. Inside, the loudest sound is the echo of my own footsteps. In the distance, I detect the hum of the mall’s HVAC system.
No one is manning the customer service desk on this afternoon. The ice cream shop is dark—though its blackboard still advertises a “buy one cone, get one free” special. I turn a corner and a few shoppers come into view. A woman with a shopping bag enters a Hallmark Store, and a half-dozen customers browse the aisles of Old Navy. But apart from the cashier, I appear to be the only one in Kohl’s, one of just two anchor stores left in the mall following the closing earlier this year of Sears and Bon-Ton, a department store chain that is liquidating its 256 stores.
I try the wing housing Gold’s Gym, where a few fitness buffs can be seen catching a lunchtime workout. Nearby, nearly all the shops are shuttered. In fact, vacant shops seem to predominate throughout the 29-year-old mall, some behind metal gates, others still illuminated but eerily empty of merchandise.
The Phillipsburg Mall, in western Warren County, not far from where Route 78 crosses the Delaware River, is an extreme example, but throughout New Jersey, many malls are feeling a similar pain.
Online shopping and changing demographics have caused a seismic shift in traditional retailing that has left malls reeling. In some communities, malls are seeking to reinvent themselves as multidimensional destinations, with an increased emphasis on entertainment options and, in some cases, office space and residential units. For almost all malls, creating experiences has become as important as—or even more important than—shopping itself.
WHERE MALLS ARE HEADED
If you’re a Baby Boomer or a Gen Xer who came of age in the Garden State, a mall likely looms large in your memories. The mall was a place to hang out, to meet up with friends, to catch a bite at the food court, and to try on (and maybe even buy) the latest fashions. In winter, it was a little bit of summer even when snow whirled outside; in summer, it was cool and comfortable no matter how high the mercury rose. And when you grew up and had kids of your own, it was the place to go when you needed onesies, toddler fashions, and a place to escape the four walls of home. There was nothing else like it.
But times change. Today, there are some 1,200 enclosed malls across the United States, but that number is expected to shift dramatically downward. Last year, a report from the financial services company Credit Suisse predicted that up to a quarter of America’s malls could close within the next five years. Clearly, New Jersey is not immune. As of this writing, the state is down to 28 so-called enclosed regional malls (malls that draw shoppers from an entire region), following the closing earlier this year of the Burlington Center Mall in Burlington County.
In recent decades, New Jersey has lost the Flemington Mall and the Ledgewood Mall in Roxbury, both replaced by open-air shopping centers, and Seaview Square Mall in Ocean Township. Other malls remain in peril, and meet the definition of a “dead mall”—that is, one that is largely vacant and/or has lost its anchor tenants. Phillipsburg is arguably among those (management would not reveal its vacancy rate), as is Voorhees Town Center, which is suffering a 50 percent vacancy rate.
To be sure, a few malls in the state continue to thrive, notably the Mall at Short Hills, which is considered one of the most successful in the country, with sales per square foot a brisk $1,245 (SPSF is calculated as total revenue divided by total retail square footage). Westfield Garden State Plaza, with SPSF at $892, is similarly healthy. Still, they pale in comparison with the Mall at Rockingham Park in Salem, New Hampshire, perhaps the country’s most lucrative enclosed mall, with SPSF reported at $2,105.
Affluent communities with lots of buying power surround the Mall at Short Hills and Westfield Garden State Plaza, and both succeed in large part by catering to high-income shoppers in A-list stores like Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Unfortunately, not every mall is as well positioned. Voorhees Town Center, when it was sold in 2015, was earning a mere $241 SPSF.
It’s widely believed that online shopping poses the greatest threat to New Jersey’s malls. Retail forecaster Forrester predicts that Web sales will constitute 11 percent of total U.S. retail this year, up from 8 percent in 2013. That doesn’t seem like a huge chunk, so why the dire predictions for malls?
James W. Hughes, dean emeritus of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University and coauthor of New Jersey’s Postsuburban Economy, traces part of the problem to the transformation of department stores, which have long served malls as anchors—large stores expected to draw lots of shoppers. “Fifty years ago they were multifunctional,” Hughes says of department stores. “They sold household goods, furniture, apparel. Over time, though, they narrowed themselves to mostly apparel—and apparel is the largest online sector in absolute terms.”
In fact, according to a U.S. Census report, apparel represents 18 percent of the online market, followed by furniture and home furnishings at 10 percent.
Consider the large number of apparel retailers at almost any mall, and you start to understand the emergence of the term “retail apocalypse.” The coinage is used to describe the recent wave of retail bankruptcies (Bon-Ton, the Limited, Wet Seal) and store closings (Bebe, Michael Kors, J.C. Penney, Sears, Macy’s). The same Credit Suisse report that predicted all those mall closings also reported that a record 8,640 retailers would close up shop in 2017—40 percent more than in 2008, the first year of the Great Recession.
In addition to online competition, many stores are victims of what’s called over-retailing. This trend is seen in the emergence, a decade or so ago, of power centers. These convenient, open-air shopping centers—anchored by a big-box retailer like Target and incorporating a number of other large chain retailers—have become a significant shopping option. Often they mean not having to schlep to the mall for a pair of sneakers.
The retailing industry, says Hughes, “is cannibalistic. What we saw during the boom years was developers saying, ‘Okay, we know there’s not enough growth to support a new facility, but we’re going to build it anyway, because we’ll take this and that away from existing players.”
Photos by Ira L. Black
An additional threat to retail is financial. “Some retailers,” says Thomas Onder, a retail development attorney in Lawrenceville, “have just become too debt heavy.” In fact, many of the retailers that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past two years—including mall standbys like Gymboree and True Religion—had previously been bought by private-equity firms that forced them to assume large amounts of debt. Other familiar brands, among them J.Crew and Claire’s, are reported to be working hard to manage potentially crippling debt loads.
Malls came of age with the Baby Boomers and their parents who, in the decades following World War II, fled the city and settled in the burgeoning suburbs. New Jersey’s first shopping mall was Garden State Plaza, which opened in three stages between 1957 and 1960, but wasn’t fully enclosed until 1983. The Cherry Hill Mall, which opened in 1961, was the first truly enclosed mall in New Jersey—and on the East Coast.
The malls lured shoppers from homes and drew vitality—and cash—away from town centers, often leaving local main streets with a shabby, desperate look. It worked until the millennials—the generation that came of age in the early years of the 21st century—decided they’d rather live in urban environments like Hoboken, Jersey City and Philadelphia, which offered easy access to all of the things they craved: bars, cafés, ethnic eateries, music clubs and the like. Malls began to lose not just a significant customer base, but also, in the words of Hughes, “their magic.”
SHARING THE PAIN
When a mall deteriorates, retailers and mall operators suffer, but so, too, do the municipalities that depend on those malls for a significant portion of their tax revenue. Recently, towns like Burlington and Voorhees have considered extreme measures to deal with their dying malls. The Burlington Center officially closed in January, although its Sears anchor is still operating, at least for the time being. That leaves the town with an eyesore and a sputtering revenue engine. Over the past several years, Burlington’s municipal officials have been in conversations with the mall’s Las Vegas-based owner, Moonbeam Capital Investments, about redeveloping the 1.5 million square feet of retail space, but the talks haven’t yielded much in the way of results.
“We encouraged them to come to the township to request that the area be designated in need of redevelopment,” says Burlington Township mayor Brian Carlin. But that hasn’t happened, and the town is now losing shoppers to nearby Cherry Hill and Moorestown. Carlin expects Moonbeam to eventually file a tax appeal, arguing that the mall has lost value, and that could mean a further reduction in tax revenue for the town. There has been talk about seizing the mall through eminent domain, but that doesn’t sit well with Carlin. “Being a lawyer and respecting property rights,” he says, “I’d rather figure out a way to make it work without the intervention of eminent domain.”
Municipal officials in Voorhees are more actively considering the measure in order to seize the township’s flagging mall. Voorhees Town Center (previously known as the Echelon Mall) lost its Macy’s anchor in 2017. About half its retail space is vacant. Mario DiNatale, the township’s director of community and economic development, expects vacancies to rise, particularly since he believes current owners Namdar Realty Group and Mason Asset Management, both of Great Neck, New York, don’t appear to be interested in maintaining or modernizing the mall. “One of the escalators has been broken for four months,” he says. “In certain areas, the lights had been out for six months.”
“I don’t think the issue has ever been that we are not maintaining it,” responds Elliot Naseem, owner of Mason Asset Management. “Since we bought it, we’ve been trying to lease and redevelop it, with all options considered. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to get traction as quickly as we’d anticipated.”
In May, the Voorhees Township committee adopted a redevelopment plan giving the town condemnation powers through eminent domain. “It gives us the ability to try to convince the existing owner to pay attention to the property a little bit better, or we’ll take it and sell it to somebody who will,” says DiNatale. He’s been in touch with several potential developers, one of whom proposed adding zip lines, a rock-climbing wall, indoor go-carts, and enhanced dining amenities, such as a microbrewery and wine-tasting spots. “Our apartments are full of millennials,” he says. “And rather than have to get on the train and go downtown, they could hang out at the mall if there was enough for them to do there.”
THE EXPERIENTIAL FUTURE
Giving millennials something to do is at the core of efforts to revitalize poorly performing malls and keep the high-performers booming. If they want to do their shopping online, the thinking goes, then draw them in with something the Internet can’t replicate—something experiential. That’s the buzzword among retail developers and analysts. Rather than relying on sales of shirts and running shoes, they say, the malls of tomorrow must sell experiences. It’s a big part of the thinking behind American Dream, the behemoth once again rumbling in the Meadowlands.
You can already see the experiential wave sweeping into New Jersey malls. Dave & Buster’s, the restaurant-cum-play-space, is moving into vacancies left by the closing, or partial closing, of former Sears stores—most recently at the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne. Gone are the circular saws and dishwashers once peddled by Sears. Instead, millennials can get buzzed on Zombie Snatcher and Star Wars Battle Pod.
Non-shopping experiences have always been a part of a trip to the mall, though they were often limited to the food court or draws for children, like the carousels at Woodbridge Center and Freehold Raceway Mall. Today, they’re more likely to involve the kind of games proffered at Dave & Buster’s or the adventures on tap at escape rooms like the Mystery Room at the Rockaway Townsquare mall, where you pay good money to enter a space and then find your way out.
Malls are also becoming venues for fitness centers, gyms and yoga studios, as well as outré experiences like cryotherapy, which involves getting really cold for a brief period of time in order to treat conditions like insomnia and arthritis.
“One of the most active retail categories out there right now is health, wellness and fitness,” says David Townes, senior director for retail brokerage at Cushman & Wakefield in East Rutherford. “They’re very attractive tenants for all kinds of owners, from enclosed malls to neighborhood shopping centers.”
Urgent-care centers are another attractive tenant for mall operators. “People are looking for convenience in their daily lives,” says Onder, “and malls are seeing that this is a positive for them, because it will bring people in and then keep them there to do their shopping.”
Malls also are increasingly welcoming temporary, pop-up experiences, like the Public Market at Garden State Plaza, a collection of artisanal-food sellers that opened—and closed—this spring and included jazz performances and trapeze-fitness demonstrations.
On one April afternoon, Nick Gonzalez and Darrel McDowell, both 17, were hanging out at the Market after school, enticed by the Puerto Rican cuisine at El Lechon de Negron, a pop-up incarnation of an eatery located year-round in Union. A few tables away, Jisele Fernandez, Edwin Sanchez and Andrea Bass were playing cards with an oversize deck—one of several games scattered around the Market—while waiting for their order from the Jerk Shack Grill. “We come to the mall a lot,” Bass noted. “It has everything.”
Another mall, Rockaway Townsquare, recently obtained a use variance from Rockaway Township to allow the Water Circus, a Cirque-du-Soleil-type extravaganza, to perform for a week in the mall’s parking lot. Jason Rittie, a real estate lawyer in Denville, who helped secure the variance, says municipalities generally welcome pop-up events “because they want to still have these malls as vibrant taxpayers.”
Rittie also worked with Rockaway Township to change the local zoning to allow open-air restaurant seating at Rockaway Townsquare, a trend he sees in other malls as they try to cash in on America’s appetite for foodie experiences.
Indeed, trendy eateries are turning up in mall locations where Cinnabon and Nathan’s once reigned. These include Iron Chef Jose Garces’s Distrito, which opened in 2014 in the Moorestown Mall, and Bobby’s Burger Palace, operated by celebrity chef Bobby Flay, which has three New Jersey mall locations, including Princeton’s Marketfair Mall.
“Marketfair has been completely redesigned to have more food accommodations,” says Onder. These include the wine bar and grill Seasons 52, the Caribbean restaurant Bahama Breeze, and the upscale, down-home Corner Bakery Cafe. The hope, says Onder, is that “if you go there for lunch or dinner, you’re most likely going to walk out in the mall and do some type of shopping.”
Joseph F. Coradino, CEO of Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (commonly known as PREIT), the owner of 21 U.S. malls, including Cherry Hill and Moorestown, notes that 75 percent of the company’s newest leases represent “the new mall experience,” including health and wellness, dining and entertainment.
Other burgeoning categories include off-price shopping (exemplified by high-end outlet mall Jersey Gardens in Elizabeth) and fast fashion. In the latter category, retailers like Zara and Topshop scoop up trends from the catwalk and rapidly transform them for the everyday consumer.
With several department store chains in trouble, some mall operators are rethinking the concept of anchors. Onder says anchors are typically given advantageous lease rates because they presumably draw shoppers into the mall. Now, some operators are slicing and dicing former anchor spaces and pulling in much higher rental rates.
To that end, PREIT opened 10 tenants in five former department store spaces last year, says Coradino. This year, they’ll open seven tenants in four former anchor spaces, and in 2019, they plan to open at least 10 different tenants in three spaces previously taken up by anchors.
Still, even smart mall operators may not be able to save what Hughes calls the “dispersed malls,” situated in places such as Sussex, Warren and Hunterdon counties, where populations have begun to stagnate. Malls in such zones, he believes, will be demolished. Others, like Bridgewater Commons and Quaker Bridge in Lawrence Township, between Princeton and Trenton, may have to reinvent themselves as something other than enclosed malls.
That’s exactly what’s being proposed for the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown by its current owners, Kushner Companies, the New York-based real estate operation owned by the family of Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Rouse Properties, a fellow New York-based developer. This spring, the companies presented a plan to redevelop the mall as the Heights at Monmouth. They envision a mix of retail, entertainment, medical, high-end dining and residential spaces. The project has generated a fair amount of controversy—and a pending lawsuit—mostly for its housing component, which some residents fear could burden schools and other municipal services.
Still, Hughes credits the plan “for being ahead of the game in terms of trying to create a 24/7 community attractive to millennials and the like.”
A similar residential/retail development called Riverton has been proposed for Sayreville, where plans for an enclosed mall were recently ditched. As envisioned, the waterfront development would include a marina with indoor/outdoor dining options, low-rise buildings with shops on the ground floor and apartments above, some stand-alone big-box stores, and perhaps small venues for concerts and other forms of entertainment. The Ohio-based developer, North American Properties in partnership with Jersey-based Sayreville Seaport Associates, would be required to assume some of the cost for burdens to the school system; the figure being discussed is $19 million. Joseph Ambrosio, executive director of Sayreville’s economic redevelopment agency, says the project would have “a huge impact on the community in terms of tax revenue and employment.”
If the planned development sounds familiar, it should. Riverton and similar developments—walkable, with a residential/retail mix and a range of amenities, from entertainment to medical care—are essentially old-fashioned towns. In fact, we may well be coming full circle, from a time when enclosed malls pulled shoppers away from traditional downtowns to an era when downtowns regain their luster. Some of those downtowns might even be in repurposed malls.
Correspondent Leslie Garisto Pfaff moved to New Jersey in 1988 and admits that, since then, she’s wasted more than a few hours in the state’s shopping malls.


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50 signatures reached
To: Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten
Label palm oil already
Dear PM Abbott and Mr Shorten, In 2011 a Xenophon - Greens senate bill unanimously passed the Senate that would have required stores to accurately identify and label the palm oil in their products. Alas it was not to become law. After a complaint from Malaysia's minister for trade and palm oil interests, both the then Labor government and opposition MPs flip flopped and dropped previous support for the Xenophon bill in the House.
We call on both sides to reverse your course and come together to pass this important reform - a truth in labeling law for palm oil.
Why is this important?
Palm oil mono cultures are directly linked to widespread tropical deforestation, dispossession of indigenous peoples from their land, and their growth represents a clear and present danger to Asia's natural treasures - its last remaining forests. Often falsely labeled as "vegetable oil" palm oil is used in an estimated 40%+ of every day consumer foods and household products. Labeling palm oil allows consumers to more easily identify and avoid this harmful and unhealthy oil which is clogging arteries as well as causing the devastation to forests and biodiversity in tropical zones around the world, led by Asia.


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Any other major brand, Apple is vigilant about protecting its trademark and image around the world. But sometimes things can go a teensy bit too far, such as when Kellogg threatened to sue a small nonprofit because it used a toucan that looked nothing like Froot Loops’ Toucan Sam for its logo.
Kellogg eventually backed off and contrite. Apple, as if it didn’t have enough to keep it busy, has started the process on what could end up being a similarly silly case. What’s caught the company’s attention is an online grocery in Poland (a “delikatesy internetowe”) that uses the URL A.pl (get it?), according to Reuters.
Apple isn’t just unhappy with the site’s name. It also claims that the grocery copied “one of Apple’s icons to its logo and (is) riding its coattails to win customers,” Reuters reports.[more]
A.pl, of course, has other thoughts on the subject. A.pl chief executive Radoslaw Celinski told the wire service, “The accusation is ludicrous.” After all, it’s hard to imagine anyone will associate a brand famed for its computers with kielbasa.
Meanwhile, Apple has also now officially trademarked its logo for social networking. Apple’s social-networking site Ping will be ending when the new iTunes arrives, according to patentlyapple.com, but it will continue to remain partners with Twitter and Facebook to showcase its products and services in social-media settings.


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Lawsuit Prompts California Companies To Drop Use Of Toxic Chemical In Soaps, Shampoos
The chemical cocamide DEA is used in soaps and shampoos to make bubbles.
In 2012, California added it to the list of chemicals known to cause cancer.
Last June, the Center for Environmental Health sued four major companies for exposing consumers to cocamide DEA. More than 100 other manufacturers were asked to stop using the chemical.
The list of toxic ingredients and the companies that use them is available on the California Safe Cosmetics Program website.
Caroline Cox, CEH’s research director, said a growing number of manufacturers have decided to do the right thing.
“We like to see companies taking responsibility for providing customers with a really healthy, quality product. And taking the cocamide DEA out seems to be the best way to do that,” Cox said.
The state of California requires cosmetic companies to report ingredients that are dangerous.


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Financial technology is heading into its next inflection point. The financial services industry’s last transformation, mobile and digital systems and apps, is morphing yet again into the age of platforms and machine learning.
The FinTech revolution is evolving into a phase of innovation in which addressing customer needs, expectations, and preferences takes precedence over disrupting the business models of incumbent financial institutions.
Entrepreneurs are filling gaps in existing services and starting to use new analytical tools to uncover new needs. “It’s a golden age of FinTech,” says Rob Pinkerton, chief marketing officer, Morningstar.
Pinkerton spoke at the Morningstar FinTech Forum, held on May 24 at Morningstar’s New York office. The panel brought together a variety of perspectives on the opportunities and challenges of building and marketing products for traditional and unchartered financial services markets.
As entrepreneurs increasingly understand financial services, the FinTech story is shifting. From its beginning, the financial technology story followed the narrative of the disruptive Silicon Valley startup challenging the sleeping legacy incumbents. FinTech companies and platform giants are making inroads in financial services: robo-advisors have built successful apps for investment management and social platforms like Apple and Google have integrated payments.
At the same time, incumbent financial services firms are focusing on innovation and learning to behave like startups. They are building or buying technologies developed by FinTech firms, especially in asset management.
Rob Pinkerton, CMO, Morningstar
“The financial technology story went from disruption to collaboration,” says Thomas Jankovich, principal, the Doblin consultancy. “We are at the next stage of development. There is a love affair between incumbents and startups. Incumbents are infatuated with shiny startups and technologies, and startups are in love with incumbents’ ability to scale. But neither of them are configured to engage. They are incompatible, and that’s the next evolution.”
The success of the initial evolution of FinTech generally is measured by the amount of venture investment in the industry. Venture investment in FinTech reached $17.4 billion globally in 2016, nearly an 11% increase over 2015, according to Pitchbook, which provides data on M&A, private equity, and venture capital investments. Investment has been slower in 2017 but is expected to increase, as more mature FinTech firms attract institutional capital.
Yet the evolution of FinTech today cannot be simply measured in dollars raised: it must be measured by the problems it solves. Financial services is fraught with problems on both the provider and consumer sides, and many of them are not distinctly technology challenges.
“People are looking too heavily at the ‘tech’ of ‘FinTech,’ and they are not focusing enough on adoption,” Jankovich says. “The technology will inevitably continue to improve but will not be of much use unless the ‘fin’ aspect of ‘FinTech’ is properly handled.”
Most if not all of the basic technologies exist and are being adopted in other countries, though the basic attitude in the United States is that the technologies must be developed here. “I find that the U.S. is still quite myopic,” he says.
A Different Breed of Entrepreneur
Today’s FinTech entrepreneurs are a different breed. The most successful care deeply about financial services, and many have a mission to help people manage and grow their wealth.
“Today’s FinTech entrepreneurs are passionate about what they are doing and know this is something that makes a difference,” says Jesse Podell, senior vice president, ecosystem development and engagement at Citi FinTech Acceleration. “They are building something that helps people’s lives and not just about getting the money and moving on to the next opportunity.”
Entrepreneurs working in FinTech must be totally responsible and buttoned down with the regulators. “You are playing with people’s money,” says Victor Pascucci III, managing partner, LightBank, a Chicago-based venture capital firm. “You’d better be serious.”
Just like traditional financial advisors, FinTech firms must understand that they are working with people’s finances, whether they are moving payments, lending cash, or managing investments. “People give money in good faith, and you must be responsible for achieving a good return on it,” Pinkerton says.
Consumers must develop a sense of trust in any FinTech firm and its technology. They need to feel that the firm will be around in the industry over the long term, especially in the wealth and asset management sector. Consumers want financial firms to be part of their long-term success and will reward companies they trust with long-term loyalty. If that trust is breached, they will quickly and decisively leave a firm: a death knell for an entrepreneurial FinTech venture.
Focus on Customers, Not Products
One thing that helps build trust is a genuine knowledge of financial services and the daily reality of consumers’ financial affairs. “Entrepreneurs need to understand the industry. They need to understand the end value that they are bringing to the consumer,” Pascucci says.
To focus on real needs, entrepreneurs need to study what people are doing with their finances in relation to their age and income level. They also need to understand what goals people want to achieve and how can technology close that gap, panelists agreed.
At this point in the evolution of FinTech, however, much of the focus is on product development and not enough about the consumers that use the products. “The focus on products in this industry is so far over the top,” says Malik Yacoubi, chief digital officer at the Cossette marketing agency and chairman, X1lab.com. “Any other industry that you look at has the customer at the center.”
Working at the intersection of profit and consumer benefit led the Center for Financial Services Innovation to FinTech early on. “We thought from the beginning that technology was going to be the answer to how we were going to deliver better financial health through financial services,” says Rachel Schneider, senior vice president at CFSI. “At the end of the line, there’s a person, and you have to keep thinking about that person.”
The Search for Mystical Millennials
The search for the “mystical millennial” provides one example of the product focus in financial services and how it carries over to market planning. Most of the advertisers that send proposals to Yacoubi and the startups that pitch Pascucci are focused on reaching members of the Millennial generation.
Millennials are not the only people using digital and mobile apps and technologies. Boomers and Gen Xers have been using these technologies longer than most people, and there is as much if not more demand for FinTech tools among those consumers.
“The reality is that not only Millennials but also Baby Boomers and Generation X do not know how to manage their money. “They need guidance as well, even on how best to spend their money,” Yacoubi says.
The needs of all the generations are not that different either. “At the end of the day, Millennials do not want anything less than Boomers and Gen Xers. There is really no difference. Everybody wants the same thing. I think the ‘Mystical Millennials’ are over-romanticized,” Pinkerton says.
How FinTech Delivers Value
FinTech delivers its ultimate value when it solves consumer problems. Panelists agreed that the needs of middle- and lower-income consumers provide good market potential for FinTech. Consumers on the lower income scale are concerned first and foremost with daily and weekly income and expense volatility, near-term liquidity, and lastly on long-term savings.
The disparity comes because the focus for most FinTech firms and their revenue models is the needs of higher-income consumers. “The top line for most financial designers is retirement savings and portfolio allocation,” Schneider says.
The insights that can provide greater value for a greater number of people lies in data—data that already exist in our financial systems. “We just haven’t connected the dots about the data we have in financial services,” Schneider says. “To me, the long-term vision is that we use the data that exists and apply predictive analytics to find out what people need to be better off.” Then FinTech firms and financial institutions can deliver a set of services and advice that may well go outside existing product lines.
Part of the FinTech proposition may also be that technology can result in new business models. For instance, the lower cost structures that FinTech apps can deliver may enable firms to profitably serve lower-income individuals while creating more wealth, whether from cost savings for financial institutions or through investment income for consumers.
Supporting savings and investments is especially close to the Morningstar mission. As Pinkerton put it, “FinTech provides a great way to help people learn to save, and they should start it early.”
Lawrence Johnson, head of FinTech engagement at Morningstar, contributed immensely to this article.


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A Gold Coast company has won the right to name its snack food product “Nuckin Futs” but a branding expert says it “smells of a short lived gimmick”.
The trademark examiner passed the brand name – a spoonerism of ‘f…in nuts’ – after it received no official complaints.
Neil Shewan, managing director of Melbourne-based Tank Branding, believes there are two options for the brand.
“They are going to have some short lived success based on the fact that there is talkability about it and then it will just sort of fade away,” Shewan said to B&T.
“Or if the underlying product is actually good and they really carefully target it to the right audience it could get a cult following and have longer term success,
“As an agency we’d avoid anything that smells of a short lived gimmick as I suppose this does – but as I said it could get a cult following if the product is good.”
Dan Ratner, managing director and head of brand at Uberbrand, said the controversial name is a ploy to gain cut through.
“I’m not endorsing it and I don’t know if it is going to be successful but brands are about getting into somebody’s head and taking risks,” Ratner said.
Ratner said the strategy behind Nuckin Futs appears similar to Lynx which recently caused a storm with its 'clean your balls' campaign .
“Lynx is not for everyone it is just for one particular type of audience and that level of irreverence makes it interesting for that audience,” he added.
“The fact that it disgusts a lot of people actually adds to its irreverence and drives its brand forward.”
Ratner also believes the Australian consumer is set to see more controversial and headline grabbing marketing stunts in the future.
“Because people are trying to cut through the clutter and having a really crazy brand name or doing really crazy things in marketing is going to do that,” he said.
The most successful example of a contentious brand name is fashion label FCUK according to Shewan.


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25. February 2021 | 11:28 CET
NIO, Silver Viper, BYD: E-car investors should think outside the box
Electromobility is turning industries upside down, much more than many think. It has long been known that electric cars rely on lithium and copper. It is also an open secret that Chinese manufacturers now have a competitive advantage in electromobility and that manufacturers such as BYD and NIO are rightly being hyped. However, in this article, we will look at why silver can be an alternative for investors with a weakness for e-car stocks. But first, let's look at an auto stock that has it all.
time to read:
ISIN: US62914V1061 , CA8283341029 , CNE100000296
"[...] In our experience, the local communities are supportive and friendly. [...]" Steve Cope, President, CEO and Director, Silver Viper
NIO: A range of 1,000 kilometers is something to talk about
NIO unveiled a new model a few weeks ago and was one of the investors' darlings for a while. But recently, the value weakened somewhat. In the last month alone, it fell by a whopping 20%. What does this mean for the share? If you look at the chart from an annual perspective, the correction no longer seems so dire. The upward trend is still intact. The first investors are already repurchasing the share at EUR 40. If the stock comes under pressure again, a healthy correction could also allow prices to fall below EUR 35, without this necessarily being a bad sign in the long term.
Most recently, a Deutsche Bank analyst also issued a buy recommendation for NIO. The Company is increasingly a competitor for Tesla and further increased its sales in the fourth quarter. The new premium sedan with the somewhat clumsy name ET7 indicates that NIO's cars could also find brisk sales in the future. The Chinese flagship is said to enable ranges of up to 1,000 kilometers - making even Elon Musk jealous. The NIO share shows that prices and fundamental developments do not always run in lockstep and that investors need to keep a cool head, especially in times of weakness. However, given the general conditions and the Company's situation, this should be easy for investors: Apart from the share price, everything is fine with NIO.
Silver Viper: The Instis love this small silver stock
The boom in electric mobility is currently spilling over into the commodity markets: Copper has known no stopping for months. Silver has also freed itself in recent months and, at times, even made gold look old. Silver has always been used in seat heaters, displays, infotainment systems and silver-coated contacts. Even more of the precious metal is needed in electric cars or hybrids because of silver's high conductivity. The Canadian Company Silver Viper operates in Mexico and is developing a gold-silver project there, La Virginia, which the Company wholly owns. Furthermore, there are options to acquire further claims. A few weeks ago, good drilling results pushed the share.
The property has already been explored in the past. Silver Viper can therefore rely on historical data, which makes exploration easier for the Company. Further drilling is planned for 2021. Silver Viper's management emphasizes being in the same boat with shareholders and holds 23%. In addition, some institutional investors hold another 60% in Silver Viper. The share has been running sideways for months and could prove to be an alternative to already ambitiously valued stocks from the e-car sector. Silver Viper is currently valued at only EUR 23.5 million and that may change on good upcoming drill results.
BYD: All-inclusive share rides roller coaster
One stock that is also causing a stir in the wake of the e-car hype is BYD. The Chinese manufacturer shines as a jack-of-all-trades: BYD not only builds electric cars but is also a well-known producer of batteries. The latter will soon be increasingly offered to other manufacturers and the battery division could then go public. Compared to NIO, the stock showed greater relative strength last month and lost about 15%. BYD also showed initial signs of stabilization yesterday. Bargain hunters can still hope for prices between EUR 20 and EUR 22. As with NIO, everything is still okay for BYD from a chart perspective. Although the valuations are high, the companies are also well positioned. Those who find the drop in NIO or BYD too great should not disregard silver - Silver Viper, in particular, currently appears to be in a solid starting position.


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Your Pop Alternative Source
The much awaited re-launch of Tokio Hotel's official webpage (www.tokiohotel.de) will finally take place on Monday the 1st of June! The new site will feature tons of TH news and the release date for their single and brand new album!! Prepare yourselves, TH fans...this is gonna ROCK!!


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Franchise owners Omar Hadeed and Daniel Fakoory are dismissing the view that franchises are absorbing most of this country’s foreign exchange.
“But the truth is whether we are here or not people are going to be purchasing online because that’s the way of the future,” Hadeed told Express Business, speaking generally about the impact of local businessmen owning foreign franchises.
“We are actually bringing business back to Trinidad. Yes we do need foreign exchange requirements but at the end of the day we are creating employment. If people just shop online there would be no benefit at all,” Hadeed said in an interview last week at his corporate office in Trincity.


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Tesco has launched a new crowdfunding initiative to raise money for small suppliers.
The new platform, called Tesco BackIt, began this week with four companies on board. More are set to go live next week, The Grocer understands, with Tesco saying it wants to help discover business talent from across the UK.
Site users have been given 48 days to raise money to help the companies expand, with those in the running so far asking for amounts from £2,000 to £10,000.
In return, as well as helping entrepreneurial ideas, backers receive rewards of products from the companies involved.
One of the companies, Tg Green Tea, a British-backed start-up, is bidding for £10,000, with investors able to get a month’s supply of its green tea if they pledge more than £100.
”BackIt gives small food and drink businesses the chance to tell their story, show off their products and campaign for funding to help them grow”
Tesco is giving each of the companies 48 days to hit their target and they will only receive the money promised if they reach the total, with backers able to promise from £5 to £250.
Tesco said it would help the small businesses involved with advice and mentoring. The site, backit.tesco.com, also provides links to videos about the companies involved.
Rebecca Jeavons-Fellows, whose Nanaimo Bar products are due to go live on the site next week, aiming to raise £10,000 funding, said: “This is a great initiative for Tesco to help small retailers. Obviously it’s good PR for them but it’s also a good way for companies to get important funding and get noticed. It’s a great way to encourage innovation.”
She added: “Tesco has given no guarantee that we will get listings if we get funding but it has indicated that this is very much a possibility.”
Tesco has also said it will not take any commission from the platform, unlike other platforms, which take up to 3.5%.
A spokesman for Tesco said: “At Tesco, we want to help customers discover great new products from the best small food and drink businesses in the UK.
“Tesco BackIt gives small food and drink businesses the chance to tell their story, show off their products and campaign for funding to help them grow.”