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Zero Tolerance for Zero-Calorie?
By Editorial Staff
It sounds enticing enough, particularly for anyone trying to lose weight: zero calorie. Over the years, artificial sweeteners have emerged as the popular choice for people who want to prevent weight gain and diabetes without sacrificing the sweet taste of their favorite desserts and beverages. In fact, these days you'll find artificial sweeteners in a wide range of food and drink products including soft drinks, gum, candy, jelly, yogurt, breakfast cereals, baked goods and many other processed foods.
But is "zero calorie" all it's cracked up to be? According to new research, consuming zero-calorie artificial sweeteners may have the same impact as consuming good-old fashioned sugar. For the study, presented this month at the American Physiological Society's 2018 Experimental Biology meeting, researchers gave one group of mice sugar (glucose or fructose) and a second group zero-calorie artificial sweeteners: aspartame (sold under the brand names Equal and NutraSweet) or acesulfame potassium (sold as Sunett and Sweet One).
In less than a month, the group given artificial sweeteners showed significant changes in their metabolism, particularly related to the processing of fat and energy. The researchers suggest these changes could increase the risk of obesity and diabetes in a similar fashion as that produced when consuming excess amounts of sugar.
This isn't the first study to suggest artificial sweeteners may negatively impact metabolism and how the body processes fat and energy. The moral to the story: Avoid consuming too much sugar, whether it's natural or artificial! Talk to your doctor about a low-sugar, balanced, nutritious diet that helps you maintain a healthy weight and avoid the health consequences associated with obesity.
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WELL, what a night that was! The great and the good of the UK’s used car industry gathered tonight at The Brewery in central London for Car Dealer Magazine’s Used Car Awards – and now we can reveal who the winners were.
Massive and warm congratulations to all concerned from everyone at Car Dealer – and best wishes from all of our sponsors who are mentioned below.
Used Car Product of the year, sponsored by BEN
Winner: WMS Group for the Safe and Sound warranty scheme.
Highly commended: Codeweavers and iVendi.
Service and Repair Outlet of the year, sponsored by IGA
Winner: Anderson Clark.
Highly commended: Brookspeed and Grimsdyke Service Station.
Used Car Dealer Website of the year, sponsored by CarGurus
Highly commended: Carshop and Harvey Cooper Cars.
Social Media User of the year, sponsored by iVendi
Winner: Prestige Diesels Portsmouth.
Highly commended: Harwoods and Perrys.
Dealers’ Dealer of the year, sponsored by Plan Insurance Brokers
Winner: Jim Reid.
Highly commended: Sean Cantillon and Umesh Samani.
Used Car Sales Team of the year, sponsored by The Car Finance Company
Highly commended: Harvey Cooper Cars and Quirks Car Company
Used Car Dealer Principal of the year, sponsored by WMS Group
Winner: Robin Luscombe
Highly commended: Ching Patel and Will Blackshaw.
Manufacturer Website of the year, sponsored by Codeweavers
Winner: Land Rover
Highly commended: Audi and Kia.
Manufacturer Used Car Scheme of the year, sponsored by Car Dealer Magazine
Highly commended: Jaguar Approved Used and Vauxhall Network Q.
Outstanding Achievement of the year, sponsored by Evolution Funding
Andy Turner of Chorley Nissan.
Lifetime Achievement Award, sponsored by AA Cars
Sir Arnold Clark
Best-performing Used Car of the year (residual value), sponsored by MotoNovo Finance
Best-performing Used Car of the year (days to sell), sponsored by Auto Trader
Used Car of the Year, sponsored by HPI
Best Customer Care, sponsored by First Response Finance
Winner: Uber GT of Reading
Highly commended: McCarthy Cars and Specialist Cars of Stoke.
Newcomer of the year, sponsored by National Car Cleaning
Winner: T H Boler Automotive
Highly commended: RS Car Sales and Salisbury Mitsubishi.
Specialist Dealership of the year, sponsored by Glass’s
Winners: Quirks Car Company.
Highly commended: GC Motors and Top 555.
Used Car Supermarket of the year, sponsored by GardX Protection
Highly commended: Caralot and Cargiant.
Used Car Dealer of the year, Under 50 Cars , sponsored by Black Horse
Winner: Lawries Volkswagen
Highly commended: Prestige Diesels and Southern Sky
Used Car Dealer of the year, 50-100 cars, sponsored by Black Horse
Winner: Country Cars of Bristol
Highly commended: Jim Reid Vehicle Sales, Wimbledon Specialist Cars
Used Car Dealer of the year, Over 100 Cars, sponsored by Black Horse
Winner: Hendy Group, Eastleigh.
Highly commended: McCarthy Cars and SW Car Supermarket.
Best Used Car Dealer Group of the year, sponsored by Black Horse
Winner: Go Vauxhall!, Chislehurst
Highly commended: Inchcape and Perrys.
And that’s it! Congratulations once again to our worthy winners as well as those who were highly commended or made it to the finals.

domain: news


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Mozilla created plenty of buzz at the Mobile World Congress when it showed off a prototype phone running the Firefox operating system that it says will cost only $25.
George Downs/The Wall Street Journal
An employee held up Nokia X, left, and Nokia X+ smartphones for photographs at the Nokia pavilion. On Monday, the company unveiled the Android-based X range of three new phones that come in at $150 and below.
Simon Dawson/Bloomberg News
LG Electronics hasn't released pricing information for its new LG F70 smartphone But the company said its range of new offerings is part of a bid "to offer choice," particularly at the low end of the market, which LG sees as underserved.
LG Electronics Inc.
Mozilla said the new ZTE Open C, which runs the Firefox operating system, will be aimed at developing markets, but its pricing wasn't immediately available. Chinese manufacturer ZTE said the phone will initially be launched in Venezuela and Uruguay during the second quarter of 2014.


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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Toyota Motor TM, -0.99% said Wednesday it is recalling 978,000 pickups and SUVs because the steering relay rod might crack under certain conditions, which could lead to a loss of steering. The recall covers power-steering equipped 1989-1996 model year 4Runner SUVs, compact pickups and T-100 pickups. Toyota said there have been no reported injuries or accidents relating to the potential problem. Toyota said it will notify owners of these vehicles by mail beginning in mid-September.
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Farfetch said Thursday it's buying one of the most dynamic groups of fashion forward designer brands as it continues to expand fast. It also had news on its exec team and reported wider losses as it invests in growth.
Sportswear maker Under Armour Inc on Tuesday cut its full-year revenue forecast for North America, its biggest market, as it suffered in the face of a strong performance by bigger rivals Nike and Adidas.
The swimwear-focused event kicks off in Miami on Thursday, offering attendees a packed schedule of runway shows from both local and international brands, as well as trade fairs and a range of parties and receptions.
Jil Sander is unveiling a capsule collection of ready-to-wear and accessories inspired by the spirit of summer and the rhythms of nature, two themes that are expressed in the cuts, volumes, materials and palette.


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Apple is preparing to announce European launch partners for its iAd mobile advertising product this week, but has found it more difficult to woo brands there than it did in the U.S., one report suggest.
According to a Financial Times story, the iAd’s European debut has already been delayed twice, and Apple has been forced to drop its $1 million minimum spend policy in order to attract interest from the major brands it’s pursuing.
Although Apple secured a solid lineup of advertisers for its U.S. iAd launch – including Nissan, Sears, and Citigroup – the actual rollout of those campaigns also appeared far from smooth. Brands and agencies have expressed frustration with Apple’s insistence on handling the production of campaigns itself, leading to delays and reportedly causing some brands to withdraw their campaigns completely.
Perhaps hoping to avoid a similar situation in Japan, Apple recently opted to partner with local agency group Dentsu for its launch there, choosing to hand off creative and sales responsibilities instead of building out its own in-house teams.
In Europe meanwhile, the Financial Times suggests Apple is in talks with brands including L’Oreal, Renault, and Nestle, and is expected to have its first campaigns live in early December.
Despite the delays and possible difficulties, European brands might still see added value in being the first to make use of the ads. As Phuc Truong, U.S. managing director of mobile agency Mobext points out, users are likely to be more engaged with the ads soon after launch, out of curiosity if nothing else. “The novelty [of the launch] will wear off,” he said of the format following its launch in the U.S. earlier this year.
Many companies use SMS, email and push notifications to deliver updates to customers and stakeholders, and such notifications are especially important to publishers ... read more
Effective app marketing is not about generating app page traffic, but rather about ensuring your app is discovered by targeted and relevant users who will install your app and use it regularly.
Shell has switched its corporate marketing from 80% traditional advertising to 85% digital media, and has stopped blowing its own trumpet in order to focus on telling video-led stories about the alternative energy start-ups it helps.
Google sparked a small firestorm last week as reports surfaced that its intelligent assistant device Google Home delivered an unsolicited advertisement to unsuspecting owners.


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Lessons from the Lucent Debacle Think twice about what you promise Wall Street. And don't send a lumbering old company to do a startup's job.
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Henry Schacht, Lucent Technologies' once-and-again CEO, has a simple story to tell, and he's sticking to it. He told it to the press in October to sum up Lucent's year of woes when he took over the company for the second time in five years. He told it to Wall Street in December when he announced that Lucent would have to go back and cut revenues by $679 million for the fiscal year that had ended three months before. And he told it to FORTUNE in January when he made the case for why Lucent would remain a top-tier supplier in the increasingly complex telecommunications industry. On that occasion, at the end of a long discourse that was part business-school case study, part mea culpa, Schacht concluded: "The single lesson you get out of Lucent is, Don't try to run the business faster than it's able to run."
Lucent shareholders might wish he had made that declaration a year ago. Today, Schacht does not have an enviable job. To restore Lucent's luster, he will have to cut costs, reorganize management, and resist Wall Street's demand for headlong growth. He'll also have to appease frustrated customers, rebuild morale among employees, and regain the confidence of investors who have lost $200 billion in market value in the past year. Schacht's predecessor, Richard McGinn, who was fired by the board, has to answer for much of what happened. (Reached for comment, McGinn maintains that Lucent's recent troubles stem largely from "a missed product cycle in optical systems.") But Schacht bears responsibility as well. He was Lucent's first CEO, and he handed the company to McGinn. He has also been on Lucent's board since its inception. Now, at the request of the board, he has come out of retirement at age 66 to take this job. At his second inaugural address to employees, he played a clip from The Godfather Part III--the bit where Al Pacino says, "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
A Pennsylvania native, Schacht speaks with a quiet confidence that comes from 40 years in business, 31 of them with Cummins Engine. Cummins had gone through tough times, and he turned the company around. But the turnaround he will have to engineer at the $34-billion-a-year Lucent may be the biggest challenge of his career. Dozens of interviews with customers, competitors, and current and former employees of Lucent tell a cautionary tale for the post-bull market era. It is an account of management that became so focused on near-term growth that it offered deep discounts and wildly generous financing arrangements for its customers. The hunger for growth also clouded Lucent's ability to forecast where its business was going.
How did Lucent adopt this go-go mode in the first place? After all, Lucent was carved out of AT&T, a former monopoly, and it traces its roots to stodgy old Western Electric--hardly the DNA of a company that chases growth obsessively.
It may be helpful to begin at the beginning. When AT&T spun off Lucent in 1996, investors and analysts expected the slow-growing equipment arm to get a nice little kick in its bottom line from expense reductions and a tidy boost in sales simply from being independent. AT&T rivals such as MCI and the Baby Bells felt more comfortable buying from Lucent once it was a stand-alone company.
But the boost Lucent got was more than small. Around the time the company went public, the telecommunications industry was on the verge of unprecedented expansion. In 1996 Congress passed legislation to make it easier for carriers to compete with the local phone monopolies. The robust economy and the introduction of Internet services fueled consumer demand for second and third phone lines, prompting the Bells to buy billions of dollars of equipment to expand their networks. Wireless, too, began to take off in the U.S. Lucent successfully positioned itself as an arms merchant to the battling phone companies, selling to incumbents and emerging competitors alike. In fiscal 1997 Lucent sales rose 13%; the following year revenue climbed 20%--and earnings a staggering 49%. At that rate, Lucent outpaced the overall growth of the telecom-gear sector, grabbing market share from other big manufacturers such as Motorola and Canada's Nortel.
Lucent executives didn't think this kind of growth was an aberration. Their mantra for investors and the business press was that Lucent's revenue would grow three to five percentage points faster than the overall telecom-equipment market, which was growing at 14% to 17% annually. In other words, Lucent would grow by 17% to 22% a year.
Wall Street loved hearing this. Even by bull-market standards, Lucent was a standout. By the end of 1998, the value of Lucent shares had risen eightfold from the IPO price, strongly outperforming the S&P 500 and far outshining its former parent. This was a source of great pride at Lucent; according to former employees, many of the folks at Bell Labs, now part of Lucent, had felt overshadowed at AT&T and reveled in showing Ma Bell that Lucent could succeed on its own.
Those were proud days, too, for Richard McGinn, who succeeded Schacht as CEO in 1997. A Bell System lifer, he had run AT&T's network systems unit and had hoped to lead Lucent at the time of its spinoff. According to people familiar with the matter, he was furious that AT&T's board had tapped Schacht to run Lucent first and "groom" McGinn for the CEO post, although McGinn was unfailingly gracious about his role in public. Some in the industry suggest that McGinn may have felt he had something to prove to those who initially passed him over.
Pretty soon Wall Street types started mentioning Lucent--Lucent!--in the same breath as highflying tech companies such as Cisco, Intel, and Microsoft. And because Lucent was so widely held, its stock performance was a way for the average Joes, widows, and orphans to participate in the bull market. That made Lucent executives a little giddy: The company specifically set out to increase its base of individual shareholders, sending representatives to attend individual investor conferences and to speak to investor clubs. McGinn, grinning with delight, once told a visitor about going into a pizza place, where he saw one of the workers stare at the stock ticker running across the television screen and call back to the kitchen, "Lucent's up!"
But Wall Street is a fickle suitor, and its love affair with Lucent was conditioned on top-line growth. The day Lucent announced a revenue increase of 6% for its first quarter of 1999, investors pushed shares down 7%--never mind that it had also reported a 26% jump in earnings.
Meanwhile, a new breed of competitors had their eyes fixed on Lucent's bread-and-butter customers--the phone companies. The super-efficient Cisco Systems entered Lucent's territory with gusto, pitting its data-centric view of the world against Lucent, which supplied old-world telco networks as well as new-world data networks. Also, a raft of fast-moving upstarts that specialized in optical networking began shipping products to Internet carriers and other communications companies. They had no market share to protect, only share to steal from the likes of Lucent.
So began a fierce fight to win customers and protect revenue growth. Telcos that were once considered "Lucent shops" because they favored the company's gear were now up for grabs. And that seems to have been when Lucent started to cut some fairly brash deals to hit its revenue targets--deals that have hurt the company and could do further damage.
Most notably, Lucent has participated heavily in so-called vendor-financing arrangements, particularly to win business from new carriers with no earnings and limited funds to pay for equipment. Lucent would lend customers the money to buy the gear (and sometimes to pay for engineering and installation too); terms were generous, and payment was often deferred. At the end of fiscal 2000, Lucent had extended $6.7 billion in credit to customers; about $1.3 billion of that sum had actually gone out the door.
Lucent wasn't alone in cutting such deals. Rivals Cisco and Nortel also financed equipment purchases, and offering loan packages became part of the process of bidding for customers. But you have to wonder why Lucent pursued some of its customers in the first place. By early 2000 several new carriers were showing signs of trouble, laying off workers and shuffling management. Yet Lucent continued to make new loans and to expand existing credit facilities to companies in this sector.
Last year, for example, Lucent arranged to lend $35 million to a subsidiary of KMC Telecom, a closely held phone company to which it had previously agreed to lend up to $450 million. KMC doesn't owe Lucent any principal on most of that sum until 2003, and some telecom analysts are betting the carrier won't be around by then. The company lost $185 million during the first six months of 2000, and its bonds today trade at less than 30 cents on the dollar. With customers like that, who needs enemies?
So far the fallout from Lucent's pursuit of upstarts has been minimal; in fiscal 2000 the company wrote off $69 million in uncollectibles, down from $112 million the year before. But additional write-offs could loom as more Lucent customers struggle.
In making these deals, Lucent may have had other motives besides building its business. "It does raise the issue of whether companies like Lucent were buying their sales and playing to Wall Street," says Cecilia Ricci, a finance professor at Montclair State University who has written a paper on vendor financing in telecom. "All they were concentrating on was revenue growth."
Schacht acknowledges that some of Lucent's vendor-financing customers may run into trouble and says the company has adopted a more conservative lending policy. "We did not make loans in anticipation of writing them off," he says. In some cases, he adds, "we didn't get it right." But he notes that Lucent will continue to use vendor financing to win business.
Lucent also indulged in another risky practice: offering some of its biggest customers deep discounts to make purchases they might otherwise have postponed until a later quarter. These discounts are a common sales incentive, especially at the end of the calendar year, yet they can have bad consequences. The seller gets an immediate pop to the top line, but at the expense of a future sale at list price. Some Lucent customers say they received substantial discounts to make purchases in the quarter ending Dec. 31, 1999--the quarter in which both Lucent's earnings and its revenues first fell short of expectations. In sewing up many of its customers' equipment needs on the cheap, Lucent was bound to have a hard time making its numbers later in the fiscal year.
Lucent's discounts are a gift that keeps on giving too. In a lawsuit filed in New Jersey Superior Court, a former Lucent group president alleges that the company "mortgaged the future" by promising additional discounts to carriers who buy products in 2001. The plaintiff, Nina Aversano, ran North American sales until Lucent announced her retirement in October. She claims McGinn ordered her to retire after she presented material showing that 2001 sales in her region would fall short of growth targets, in part because of those promised future discounts.
Lucent declines to comment on the lawsuit, but Schacht says Lucent's use of discounts is legal and properly accounted for. Still, the issue of credits was the source of some of Lucent's fourth-quarter "revenue recognition" woes. Specifically, Lucent reduced revenue by $125 million because a sales team improperly extended credit to a customer. The company pared back revenue by a further $74 million to reflect credits that apparently were offered orally to customers. (Lucent also decided to take back $452 million for equipment that distributors had failed to resell or install and another $28 million for a system that had been incompletely shipped.)
Throughout 2000 Wall Street steadily lost patience with McGinn because he refused to temper growth projections, even in the face of mounting shortfalls. Just days before warnings of a fourth-quarter shortfall, for instance, McGinn told FORTUNE that strong demand for wireless and Internet gear would buoy sales.
Some of McGinn's defenders suggest that his optimism was based on rosy projections from his executive team. And, in fact, plenty of other Lucent executives talked up the company's outlook. In an interview with FORTUNE in July, chief strategist Bill O'Shea declared: "What's rewarded is growth and the prospect for growth. We have a strong foundation for great growth opportunities for the future." Some customers and others close to the company say Lucent superstar Carly Fiorina, who left in July 1999 to become CEO of Hewlett-Packard, was an early advocate of the growth agenda. She intimated to employees and outsiders that Wall Street would generously reward companies that emphasized and delivered robust revenue growth. Aversano, who in her lawsuit claims she also warned McGinn that growth projections were too high, doesn't emerge unscathed either. People close to the company say she authored some of Lucent's most aggressive deals and pushed hard for loans to a number of upstart phone companies, including KMC. Aversano, through her lawyer, and Fiorina declined to comment.
Lucent's growth strategy also hurt operations. By consistently "pulling forward" sales that customers might otherwise have deferred, the company diminished its ability to forecast demand. Schacht says one product-development unit last year simply had to guess what customers would buy in 2001. Sure enough, the unit guessed wrong, but by the time this became clear Lucent had manufactured products that were out of favor. Schacht says such problems plague the entire company, which helps explain why inventories grew 34% in fiscal 2000, far outpacing annual revenue growth of about 12%.
Lust for growth also prompted McGinn to restructure the company into 11 different business units, which he used to refer to as "11 hot little businesses." The idea was that these units, operating separately, would be less bureaucratic, more market-focused, and faster-moving. But this structure may also help explain one of the biggest mistakes in Lucent's history: its failure to develop optical-networking gear for superfast OC-192 systems to carry long-distance voice and data traffic. According to Schacht, Lucent's scientists believed customers would want to deploy these fast networks, and they urged Lucent to develop lasers and switches for them. But the optical unit--one of the hot little businesses--instead sought to boost network speed by increasing the number of light streams pumped through standard optical fiber. Nortel bet on OC-192, and rode it to dominance of the optical market. Lucent missed out on hundreds of millions of dollars in potential sales.
Then, in its haste to play catch-up with Nortel, Lucent misstepped again. Industry sources say that in fall 1999, Lucent asked Qwest to buy some of its OC-192 gear. Qwest, which was Nortel's first OC-192 customer, grudgingly agreed to install the products. It was a disaster. Lucent rushed to get the system into Qwest's network before the gear was ready for deployment. Qwest refused to comment on the matter, but sources say Lucent ended up crediting Qwest's account for its troubles. McGinn, who declined to comment on other parts of this article, said the miss in optical systems was the cause of Lucent's financial underperformance in 2000: "As carrier investment recovers in the latter part of 2001, I believe Lucent will reassert itself because of its focused research and development and the quality of its people."
Where, in this interconnected web of pain, were Schacht and the rest of the board? As long as a year ago inventories and receivables were far outstripping revenues--a sure sign the company was making things that nobody was paying for. Didn't the board notice?
Schacht seems willing to accept responsibility but not blame. "We are accountable. Anytime you decide that you have to make the kind of fundamental change that we've made, you always wonder why you hadn't done it sooner," he says. Asked why he believes Lucent was consumed with growth, Schacht says only that the pressure was "self-induced." He lays some of the blame on the irrational stock market of the late '90s, which rewarded top-line growth. But, he says, Lucent should not have fallen for that. "Stock price is a byproduct; stock price isn't a driver. And every time I've seen any of us lose sight of that, it has always been a painful experience," he says.
Now Lucent is in the middle of a different recovery plan; only, this time the company isn't rushing things. Schacht has declared 2001 a rebuilding year, and investors should expect the next few earnings periods to be rocky. He is on the verge of announcing a major restructuring that includes layoffs and significantly more than $1 billion in cost savings. Schacht hopes the company will start fresh in 2002 and end the year with revenue growth at--or slightly above--the growth rate of the industry.
In the meantime he's looking for a successor (again). The ideal candidate is someone who understands technology and knows how to turn companies around. But these days turnaround experts are in demand. Schacht may have to wait a while before he can at last retire for good.
REPORTER ASSOCIATE Irene Gashurov


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If you want to protect yourself against government spying, or you're afraid you might be the target of a drone, there's hope beyond the good-old tinfoil hat. Two artists are now selling their high-tech privacy-protecting gear to fool drones and spies — and you can buy some of it for under $100.
These high-tech anti-surveillance gizmos are now on sale at the first-ever Privacy Gift Shop, at the New Musem in New York City. The shop will be open through Sept. 22, but the products will be available from the New Museum through the holiday season.
Mashable went downtown in New York City to check out some of this gizmos, which include stuff like metallic t-shirts that fool thermal cameras, or cellphone cases that jam transmissions and prevent spies from eavesdropping on your calls.
"We have things in all price ranges, which is what we like to do at New Museum, so we make sure things are accessible for everybody," said Dan Thiem, director of retail operations at the New Museum.
For more, check out our interview with Harvey, Bloomfield and Thiem at the New Museum in the video above.
Image: Adam Harvey


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Almost time to start thinking about holiday shopping
Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) -- Most of you have finished your back-to-school shopping and now it is time to start thinking about holiday shopping.
If you are on a budget, don't worry. Once again, layaway will be an option for holiday shoppers.
Toys R Us has already started its program and they have announced that it will be free from now until Halloween. After that, the fee is just $5.
Walmart's layaway program starts next week and they have lowered their fee from $15 to $5. But, they do have some restrictions.
Each item must be at least $15 and the total purchase must be at least $50.
As for what you should buy, Time magazine says now is a good time to look for jewelry. They say September isn't a prime gift-giving month so many retailers may be more willing to negotiate than they will during the holidays.
Ranges and stoves will also be going on sale soon since stores need to make way for next year's models. So, this is also a good time to look for those kinds of items.
And, if you have any back-to-school items still on your shopping list, you may be able to get some deals now.


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According to Digital TV Research, the number of gross subscriptions grew by 28% in the year to 642 million up from 503 million the year prior.
Showing the proliferation of streaming is the rapid growth since 2015, when there was only a grand total of 172 million SVOD subscribers globally.
Meanwhile the net subscriber count only grew by 55 million (16%) to 403 million. This indicates that consumers are increasingly stacking their subscriptions, with the average SVOD users paying for 1.59 subscriptions in 2019 – an increase from 1.44 in 2018. Net subscribers in 2015 was at 140 million, with the average user paying for 1.23 accounts.
Country-wise, the US overtook China as the gross SVOD leader, though the total is close with about 200 million each. Between them, the countries accounted for 63% of all SVOD subscriptions by the end of 2019. Subscriptions increased by 43 million in the US and 35 million in China, thanks in no small part to the monumental success of Disney+.
A further eight countries had at least 10 million SVOD subscriptions by the end of the year, accounting for 84% of the total
Simon Murray, principal analyst at Digital TV Research, said: “The number of gross SVOD subscriptions increased by 139 million in 2019 to 642 million – having grown by a similar amount in 2018.”
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Foreign tourists won't be allowed to visit Bali for the rest of 2020 due to coronavirus concerns, its governor said, scrapping a plan to open up the Indonesian island from next month.
The holiday hotspot re-opened beaches, temples and other tourism spots for domestic visitors at the end of July and had said it would let foreign tourists return on Sept 11.
But the plan has now been cancelled over concerns about Indonesia's mounting virus cases and with many foreign nationals subject to travel bans in their home countries.
Jakarta is also yet to lift its ban on foreign tourists entering Indonesia.
"The situation in Indonesia is not conducive to allow international tourists to visit Indonesia, including...Bali," the island's governor I Wayan Koster said in an official letter dated Saturday.
"The central government supports (Bali's) plans to recover tourism by opening the doors for international tourists. However, this requires care, prudence, not to be rushed, and requires careful preparation," it added.
He did not give a new date for allowing foreign tourists to visit.
The volume of flights to and from Bali plummeted during the global pandemic, leaving hotels empty and restaurants struggling to survive.
Bali has recorded some 49 deaths and just over 4,000 cases of coronavirus.
"New cases are under control, the recovery rate is increasing and fatality rate is under control," Koster said.
Nationwide, Indonesia has seen at last 6,680 virus deaths with more than 153,000 confirmed cases, but the real toll is widely believed to be hidden by limited testing.


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Google bets big on this little tech startup
Google Ventures is leading a $12 million investment in CoreOS, a tiny startup that's changing the way modern web applications are built and maintained.
The startup will also use a recently released Google technology called Kubernetes in one of its own products, which is aimed at helping companies run their data centers more efficiently.
CoreOS makes a super-lightweight version of the free Linux operating system, which reduces the amount of hardware you need to run applications in big data centers. That's made it popular among software developers looking to do more with less.
For a while there, CoreOS was tight with Docker, one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley, and it's no surprise why - they both had the mission of taking apps and putting them into what we call "containers."
Think of containers as a metaphor. Shipping yards put goods into a bunch of shipping containers all the same shape and size because it makes them easy to stack onto boats.
In the same way, containers let you take an application (an email server, a blogging platform, whatever) and whatever else it needs to run and throw it into a standard virtual "box." You can put this box on your own servers in your own data center, or upload it to Amazon's or Microsoft's or Google's cloud service and it'll run the exact same way, without the extra effort of having to struggle with it to make it work. It's all self-contained. (Hence, "containers.")
CoreOS made a version of Linux that went into these boxes, and Docker made the boxes themselves.
But Docker and CoreOS had a falling out late last year. A container on its own doesn't really do much, it needs to be overseen and managed. Docker wanted to sell this management technology as well.
CoreOS had an issue with what it saw as Docker getting too big for its britches, and made its displeasure clear with the public launch of Rocket, a competitor to Docker. Suddenly, developers had two options for building those self-contained apps-in-boxes.
Meanwhile, Google has quietly been using containers in its own huge data centers for many years now. As Docker made containers popular to the rest of the world, Google released some of its own technology for managing them, dubbed Kubernetes, for free. Kubernetes seen some uptake in both the CoreOS Rocket and Docker communities.
Today, in addition to the funding, CoreOS is announcing a new product called Tectonic, which combines the CoreOS operating system and the Rocket container technology and a management system for those containers based on Google's Kubernetes into one package.
"With Kubernetes, we have a complete platform," says CoreOS CEO Alex Polvi.
It's also the first purely commercial product that CoreOS has: The operating system and Rocket containers are both free; the company sells consulting and support services to make money. This whole Tectonic platform, though, will cost enterprise clients some cash.
Why is Google so interested? Because Kubernetes is supported by Google's own Cloud Platform, where applications can be run at high scales. A customer using Tectonic would likely be attracted to the Google Cloud Platform, since it wouldn't require them to change anything at all to get it running at large scale.
While the Microsoft Azure cloud does support Kubernetes, reigning cloud champion Amazon Web Services does not (it has its own tools for managing Docker containers).
This may be too early to say, but the fact that CoreOS is opening some doors for Google Cloud Platform could make CoreOS an attractive acquisition for Google.
Other investors in the round include Kleiner Perkins, Fuel Capital, and Accel Partners.
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- List of famous things to buy in Lonavala


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Tractor Supply (NASDAQ:TSCO)‘s stock had its “neutral” rating restated by stock analysts at Bank of America in a note issued to investors on Thursday, April 11th, Briefing.com Automated Import reports. They currently have a $95.00 price target on the specialty retailer’s stock. Bank of America‘s target price would suggest a potential downside of 8.54% from the stock’s current price.
TSCO has been the topic of a number of other research reports. Wells Fargo & Co reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $102.00 target price on shares of Tractor Supply in a research report on Monday, February 11th. Deutsche Bank raised Tractor Supply from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and lifted their target price for the company from $94.00 to $107.00 in a research report on Thursday, December 13th. BidaskClub lowered Tractor Supply from a “strong-buy” rating to a “buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, March 6th. Zacks Investment Research raised Tractor Supply from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $97.00 target price on the stock in a research report on Wednesday, December 19th. Finally, Piper Jaffray Companies lifted their target price on Tractor Supply from $102.00 to $114.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a research report on Thursday, April 11th. One research analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, eleven have issued a hold rating and ten have given a buy rating to the company’s stock. The stock has a consensus rating of “Hold” and a consensus price target of $97.44.
NASDAQ TSCO opened at $103.87 on Thursday. The stock has a market cap of $12.58 billion, a PE ratio of 24.10, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 1.92 and a beta of 1.11. The company has a current ratio of 1.58, a quick ratio of 0.15 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.43. Tractor Supply has a one year low of $64.70 and a one year high of $107.98.
In related news, CEO Gregory A. Sandfort sold 25,896 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, March 26th. The stock was sold at an average price of $95.00, for a total value of $2,460,120.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now directly owns 117,554 shares in the company, valued at approximately $11,167,630. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, Director Edna Morris sold 4,174 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Friday, February 15th. The shares were sold at an average price of $96.07, for a total value of $400,996.18. Following the completion of the sale, the director now owns 1,916 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $184,070.12. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders have sold a total of 379,236 shares of company stock valued at $38,304,166 over the last quarter. 1.50% of the stock is currently owned by corporate insiders.
Institutional investors and hedge funds have recently added to or reduced their stakes in the stock. Bruderman Asset Management LLC acquired a new position in Tractor Supply in the 4th quarter valued at $25,000. Cordasco Financial Network raised its holdings in Tractor Supply by 53.6% in the 4th quarter. Cordasco Financial Network now owns 338 shares of the specialty retailer’s stock valued at $28,000 after acquiring an additional 118 shares in the last quarter. Rational Advisors LLC raised its holdings in Tractor Supply by 570.9% in the 4th quarter. Rational Advisors LLC now owns 369 shares of the specialty retailer’s stock valued at $31,000 after acquiring an additional 314 shares in the last quarter. Liberty Wealth Management LLC acquired a new position in Tractor Supply in the 4th quarter valued at $31,000. Finally, Laurel Wealth Advisors LLC acquired a new position in Tractor Supply in the 4th quarter valued at $33,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 82.83% of the company’s stock.
Tractor Supply Company Profile
Tractor Supply Company operates rural lifestyle retail stores in the United States. The company offers a selection of merchandise, including equine, livestock, pet, and small animal products necessary for their health, care, growth, and containment; hardware, truck, towing, and tool products; seasonal products, such as heating products, lawn and garden items, power equipment, gifts, and toys; work/recreational clothing and footwear; and maintenance products for agricultural and rural use.
Recommended Story: What is a Market Correction?
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Yes, there are many Apple fans who are now enjoying the new iPhone 5. But this doesn’t mean that Apple will keep the other countries salivating over their latest jewel. In the Philippines, it has been almost a year now since they have received their iPhone (I am talking about the predecessor of the iPhone 5 the iPhone 4S). The device was introduced and launched in 9 lucky countries last September 21st; soon the iPhone 5 will land in the Philippines and in other countries too.
Apple recently announced in a statement that the thinnest and lightest iPhone to date will soon be available in the Philippines together with 50 more countries before the year ends. Currently, the iPhone 5 is available in 47 countries including the UK, US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, and Germany. On the 7th, the iPhone 5 will arrive in South Korea.
On the 14th of December, the iPhone 5 will land in the Philippines and the following countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Albania, Amenia, Bahrain, Bahamas, Brazil, Bolivia, China, Chile, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Ecuador, Grenada, Israel, Indonesia, Jamaica, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Paraguay, Panama, Qatar, Russia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE, and Venezuela.
Meanwhile, on the 21st, this device should also be available in: Barbados; Botswana; Central African Republic; Cameroon; Egypt; Guinea; Ivory Coast; Kenya; Madagascar; Mauritius; Mali; Morocco; Niger; Senegal; St. Kitts; St. Vincent & the Grenadines; St. Lucia; Tunisia; Uganda; and Vietnam.
Last December 16th 2011, the Philippines top two mobile carriers Globe and Smart received and launched their respective iPhone 5 devices. Today, many Filipinos are now waiting for this new Apple gem to land in the country.
“iPhone 5 comes with iOS 6, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system with over 200 new features including: Shared Photo Streams, Facebook integration, all-new Maps app, Passbook organization and even more Siri features and languages” Apple said.
Find the best iPhone 5 deals at Phoneslimited.co.uk.


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Coinfloor Boosts UK Deposit Speeds In Customer Satisfaction Bid
Coinfloor is now accepting deposits from the UK via local bank transfer as part of a customer satisfaction effort.
UPDATE (30th June 20:00 BST):
Updated with comment from Coinfloor
UK-based bitcoin exchange Coinfloor is now accepting domestic deposits via local bank transfer in an effort to accelerate its local payments services.
The feature was brought about by popular demand thanks to a Coinfloor customer survey that found that the majority of Coinfloor's users (47%) would like to see faster local payments.
Coinfloor also credited its customers with helping it continue to improve its services, stating:
The news follows Coinfloor's March decision to open customer registration, and its April announcement that it would seek to make its reserves publicly auditable. Coinfloor had originally sought to open registration for its services in November, but cited technical problems as the reason for the delay.
Faster Payments on Coinfloor
The requested local payments feature has now been delivered via UK's Faster Payments Service (FPS). The new deposit method is completely free when the transfer originates with UK banks.
"We are also waiving the GBP deposit fee for all customers depositing into our Capital Account," Coinfloor added.
Deposits will be processed at 2 PM on business days, but may take up to 24 hours. Users will need a copy of their UK bank details including a new reference code from Coinfloor’s deposit page. The minimum deposit amount for the Capital Account is £500.
"Any users depositing less will be charged £20 for having their deposit rejected," Coinfloor added.
Debit cards, margin trading and more
Coinfloor indicated the announcement is part of a broader effort that could find it integrating more offerings suggested by customers.
For example, the survey also revealed that almost one-third of Coinfloor’s users would like to use a bitcoin debit card, and according to the company’s survey chart, work on the card is already in progress. Ten percent of Coinfloor users would add margin trading and short selling functionality, while another 5% are interested in rebates for market makers.
Coinfloor did not indicate whether all these features and services will be eventually become a part of its platform.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that a maximum deposit amount for the Capital Account is £500.
Image via Coinfloor
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OYO Rooms has recently launched their first television commercial titled ‘Aur Kya Chahiye’ which talks about the convenience of booking and standard amenities that all OYO Rooms provide. The brand has used a hashtag ‘#AurKyaChahiye’ to engage with the users on the online forum and create conversations around the brand. The tagline ‘Aur Kya Chahiye’ encapsulates the notion that the brand provides the users with everything they need for a comfortable stay. Two TV films have been launched as of now and unlike their digital ads which were bent heavily on ‘emotion’, these ads are quirky in nature.
Infact the first communication from the brand was made on the digital forum and they released two videos, one during Father’s Day and the other in Independence Day this year. The videos went viral, not only because of the unconventional faces like Raveena Tandon, Manoj Bajpai, Piyush Mishra and Zeeshan Ayyub, but also because of the innovative and differentiated content. The ads have been conceptualised by Boring Brands. Madison Media won the media duties, on the back of a multi–agency pitch that took place a few months ago.
Click here to view the ads:
Giving her views on the ad, Ambika Sharma, Managing Director & CEO, Pulp Strategy, said, “The style of communication is a sea change from the digital films previously, focused and younger. The commercial picks on the small fun moments of 20 somethings, gets the message across. Over all it is interesting and fresh.”
Commenting on the creative insight of the campaign, Anshul Sushil, Co-Founder and CEO, Boring Brands said, “The stories which have been shown in the films, are the actual cases of consumer experiences with Oyo Rooms. Till now we have come out with two films and whether there will be any more, it will depend on the brand’s decision. While making the film, we realised that, people usually end up spending more time in finding a hotel, than sightseeing. We wanted to change this entire harrowing experience of the customers into a lovable one because the concept of OYO Rooms itself is a revolutionary one. The idea was to create an image in the minds of the consumers that OYO Rooms is just around the corner and booking a room will take not less than 5 seconds.”
Ritesh Agarwal, Founder and CEO of OYO Rooms, highlighted, “The problem OYO Rooms was built to combat was that of a lack of predictability and a trust deficiency that Indian travellers had to face. We pride ourselves on being problem solvers with unmatched consumer experience. We have become the go-to option for people looking for convenient stays. These commercials introduce the audiences to the various situations where OYO emerges as the alternative to home.”
Click here to view the digital ad:


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Fortune Magazine published an interesting interview with Esri‘s Jack Dangermond today. In the interview, Dangermond talks about what has been the traditional stronghold of GIS use (government), and what he sees as the biggest growth sector now (hint: it isn’t government). Read the complete interview here.
Tags » Logistics
Wasted food is one of the greatest logistical inefficiencies in our system to date.
The ease with which we can order anything online masks the tremendous complexity of getting that item to your door in a day or two (or less). 28 more words
There is a serious image problem arising for the West coast ports that could easily lead to a long secular decline despite their advantages for overseas shippers. 398 more words
Senate says Fed put financial system at risk by failing to oversee commodities
The banks took advantage of the rules the LME had on warehouse management, and it caused huge backlogs of metal being delivered to buyers in two key regions: Detroit and Vlissingen, the Netherlands. 31 more words
New York Times
Senate Probe: Banks Exploit Commodity Market – Analyst Blog
Further, warehouse management paid incentives to metal owners to participate in 'merry-go-round' deals that transferred metal from one building to another but not shipping it out of the warehouse, thus creating an artificial supply shortage and leading … 28 more words


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Sugar prices rose to an eight-month high in a period that imports dropped 58 per cent following crackdown on contraband.
Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) show a kilogramme of sugar in July on average retailed at Sh137.70—the highest level since December.
Traders have linked the rise in the price of the sweetener on reduced supply following a dip in imports as importers shied away from shipping in the commodity due to a market glut and the crackdown on foreign made sugar.
A market report by the Sugar Directorate indicates total sugar stock in the six months to June stood at 358,000 tonnes compared to the 439,000 tonnes in the same period last year, representing a drop of 18 per cent.
The reduction was due to the 58 per cent drop or 138,844 tonnes cut in imports, which could not be offset by rise on local production from 201,992 tonnes to 259, 826 tonnes in the review period.
The consumer price of sugar fell towards the end of last year as volumes held by millers rose due to stiff competition between imports and local produce.
More than 500,000 tonnes of contraband sugar has been confiscated in the ongoing crackdown.
The Sugar Directorate has been regulating the volume of imported sweetener to an average of 7,000 tonnes a month from highs of 29,000 tonnes in an ideal situation.
It recently said that the number of traders seeking import permit had gone down in the recent months because of the glut.
The Treasury scrapped duty on the commodity last year following a sharp decline in production that saw the price of sugar go up to Sh400 per two kilo packet.
Kenya produces about 600,000 tonnes of sugar a year, compared with annual consumption of 870,000 tonnes.
The sugar deficit is usually covered by stringently controlled imports from Comesa trade bloc with the country allowing in only 300,000 tonnes annually.


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Virtual banks have reinvigorated competition in financial services, for both consumers and businesses. They have provided new and improved services to customers who have for so long had to make do with the less-than-perfect services provided by traditional banks.
The success of these virtual banks in winning business from traditional players – as well as the fact that established brands have begun to launch digital offerings that copy many of the innovations introduced by virtual banks – are both testament to this.
The question now is whether virtual banks can sustain this level of competitiveness, as traditional banks use their financial muscle to develop digital platforms and services to enable them to catch up.
For example, RBS has launched a digital bank called Mettle that offers a business-focused current account, along with additional services such as invoicing and cash-flow forecasting for small-business customers via a mobile app. Mettle is built on a new digital platform, which should enable the rapid introduction of new services and functionality. HSBC and Santander UK reportedly have similar plans for digital brands in the pipeline.
But there are a few reasons why virtual banks should be able to stay ahead of the chasing pack of banking giants both in the short and longer term.
The convenient and user-friendly services that virtual banks offer are built on digital platforms that take advantage of rapidly developing internet infrastructure. In contrast, traditional banks have considerable legacy infrastructure and culture that make them less agile. Years of work will be needed to transform their operations before they can truly compete with their digital rivals.
In addition, schemes like Banking Competition Remedies help UK startups and online-only banks win business from established rivals to boost competition in lending to small businesses.
In February this year, Metro Bank, Starling Bank and ClearBank (together with business banking service provider Tide) received a total of £280 million from the fund to be spent on developing and improving the financial products and services they offer SMEs. More recently, Nationwide Building Society, Investec Bank and The Co-operative Bank were granted a combined £80 million.
These factors will provide a short-term advantage, but how will virtual banks fare once the established players have transformed themselves to offer the digitally enabled and responsive services customers are demanding?
The simple answer is that they could well race even farther ahead through continued and sustained innovation.
In a recent interview with Wired, Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield said the fact that more banks are offering services pioneered by his virtual bank business (which is currently acquiring 100,000 new customers per month) is forcing Monzo to continue to innovate.
Monzo innovations that have already been adopted by major high-street banks include the option to temporarily ‘freeze’ a debit card if the user suspects it has been lost or stolen, and the ability for online customers to track their spending using Google Maps.
But Blomfield is confident his company can stay ahead. The major reason for his optimism is that legacy banks are focusing on where virtual banks are now, rather than where they will be in the near future. They will be chasing a constantly moving target.
Like other virtual banks, Monzo stands out for its transparency and the customer and software developer communities it has built up.
Monzo’s customer forum, for example, allows customers to vote for new features. Another differentiator is support for financial inclusion, with many virtual banks offering people shut out from traditional banking products a way to make payments online without the risk of going into debt, giving them the ability to restore their financial standing.
The final factor in favour of virtual banks cited by Blomfield is the health of the fintech ecosystem in Europe: “I can't remember a time ever in the history of European technology where three companies [Monzo, N26 and Revolut] have raised hundreds of millions in a single sector, let alone one company.”
While it could be argued that virtual banks should make hay while the sun shines, it’s likely that the brands that innovate effectively will continue to have success long into the future.


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Nvidia announced the RTX 3070 Ti, the successor to the popular RTX 2070 Super, at Computex 2021 at the end of May, offering a 1.5x improvement in performance with a near-identical price tag – and it’s now available to buy in the UK.
But, with stock shortages aplenty across the entire graphics card market, it’ll likely sell out very quickly, so you’ll have to be quick if you want to get Nvidia’s latest 1440p-focused GPU at launch.
Fret not; we’ve outlined all the UK retailers selling the RTX 3070 Ti right now.
How much does the RTX 3070 Ti cost in the UK?
The Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti has an RRP of £529 in the UK, but as with most graphics cards, the price of the GPU you buy will vary.
It’ll depend in part whether you decide to go for an Nvidia-manufactured Founders Edition or an overclocked model from a third-party manufacturer, but the bigger factor is the severe
lack of graphics card stock across the industry right now, driving GPU prices to an all-time high.
That means if you don’t get one at launch for the RRP from a respected retailer, you’ll likely be paying over the odds from a site like eBay.
It’s a £30 increase compared to the £499 Nvidia RTX 2070 Super, but when you consider it’s 1.5x more powerful than its predecessor, that pill’s a little easier to swallow.
Where can I buy the RTX 3070 Ti in the UK?
The good news is that the RTX 3070 Ti is available to buy at a handful of online retailers in the UK, with others expected to offer stock soon. We’ll mark retailers as confirmed as RTX 3070 Ti listings appear, so check back frequently for the latest details.
With that being said, you can buy the Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti from:
We’ll update this list with more confirmed UK retailers as listings continue to appear.


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Another quick look at the Kogan.com Ltd [ASX:KGN] share price.
The online retailer is one of the standout performers of 2020. With the catalyst being COVID-19.
Kogan proved itself to be one of the go-to places to shop while people are stuck working from home.
Announcing that they have just recorded one of the best months in the company’s history, the share price pushed up 6.40% to $20.46 at time of writing.
What’s happening at Kogan?
Pre-COVID-19, Kogan was already a popular online company, selling a range of their own branded goods along with all the big-name furniture and electronic goods.
This all changed when the virus hit Australia with all states and territories going into lockdown.
The knock-on effect for Kogan was exploding sales and a rapidly rising KGN share price.
As people kept spending online, the stock price shot up from the low in March 2020 to over 490%.
The company also recorded its active customers growing to 2,461,000 as at 31 August 2020, an increase of 152,000 in the month of August 2020, and the largest monthly increase in the history of the business.
Where to from here for the Kogan share price?
With the pandemic grinding on into September, there are some changes coming that may affect Kogan. The federal government announced changes to JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments that will take effect at the end of this month.
This coupled with the end of the mortgage freeze may see a dramatic decrease in retail spending as people tighten their belts.
The Kogan share price declined in recent weeks to find support at the $18.68 level, if it continues down through this then the level of $15.91 may come into focus.
On the upside, if the KGN share price moves up, it may find resistance at the $23 level, which was the all-time high set in August.
There have been a number of stocks do very well through the pandemic. JB Hi-Fi Ltd [ASX:JBH], Afterpay Ltd [ASX:APT], and Temple & Webster Group Ltd [ASX:TPW] to name a few — what all these companies have in common is they are either solely internet-based or do considerable business online.
In recent weeks nearly all these companies have started to come down in price — could this be a sign of weakening spending and a start of a downtrend for the overall market?
Time will tell.
For Money Morning


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Samsung has been working on taking the smartphone camera to a whole new level. Forget 50-megapixels or even 100MP, Samsung has been working on an astounding 600MP camera for an upcoming smartphone.
Reliable leaker, Ice Universe, tweeted a photo showing a slide from what appears to be an internal Samsung presentation in regards to the new camera. The leak reveals that the camera with its massive sensor will be capable of zooming in on 4K or 8k videos without loss of resolution or image quality.
- Samsung Galaxy S21 groundbreaking new display
- Samsung Galaxy S21 leak reveals striking new design
- Samsung Galaxy S20 FE review
As nice as having a 600MP camera could be, according to the render the camera module itself will affect the thickness of the unit and overall size. Obviously, Samsung has thought of this and must be already working on making such a camera smaller.
Samsung has experience in this area being the only company to have developed a 108MP ICOCELL camera that's actually already in use on phones today. However, 600MP is a huge jump from 108MP and even with ISOCELL sensor experience, Samsung may take a while to bring a smartphone with the 600MP camera module to the market.
The other question is, does anyone truly need 600MP? What would the uses be for such a camera module? Looks like we will find out soon.
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Mark has spent 20 years headlining comedy shows around the country and made appearances on ABC, MTV, Comedy Central, Howard Stern, Food Network, and Sirius XM Radio. He has written about every topic imaginable, from dating, family, politics, social issues, and tech. He wrote his first tech articles for the now-defunct Dads On Tech 10 years ago, and his passion for combining humor and tech has grown under the tutelage of the Laptop Mag team. His penchant for tearing things down and rebuilding them did not make Mark popular at home, however, when he got his hands on the legendary Commodore 64, his passion for all things tech deepened. These days, when he is not filming, editing footage, tinkering with cameras and laptops, or on stage, he can be found at his desk snacking, writing about everything tech, new jokes, or scripts he dreams of filming.


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The introduction of the Apple iPad into the European market has tripled sales of tablet computers in general, resulting in a 257 percent market boost, according to trend watcher Context Research.
Since the iPad’s introduction in late May, demand for tablet systems has increased dramatically across the continent. The iPad influence may have also helped boost the cost of higher-priced all-in-on mobile PCs by about three percent, as people look for smaller and lighter systems, says the market researcher.
Just as in the U.S., anxious consumers and early adopters camped out all night at Apple Stores in Europe to be the first to purchase the iPad. Apple reportedly sold hundreds of thousands of iPads in the first few weeks following the May 28th introduction in Europe, according to reports.
Total worldwide shipments of the Apple iPad are expected to reach 8.13m units by the end of this year, according to some estimates.
While the Apple iPad sparked interest, however, it may be increasingly difficult for the company to maintain a wide lead from the competition as more companies enter the fray and the market gets more crowded. There are already a number of processor choices, including x86 and ARM-based chips, and operating system alternatives include Android, Chrome, MeeGo and WebOS, noted market researcher IDC. All of this may lead to market fragmentation and dilution.
“In Asia in particular, the iPad is likely to spark off intense competition from Asian brands, leading to a wealth of offerings in varying price tiers,” says Bryan Ma, Associate Vice President, Asia/Pacific Devices and Peripherals Research at IDC.
Tablet devices, like the iPad, are presently marketed as multifunction entertainment devices, he adds. The success of these devices will therefore depend on the availability of local applications and content.
“Media tablets are certainly the talk of the town today, but the next year or so will be critical for the category’s evolution as early adopters figure out what they really need a media tablet for, and in what kind of usage scenario,” notes Ma.


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Articles in Category: Products and Guidelines
Swiss Drug major Novartis AG has suffered a severe blow, with the Supreme Court rejecting its plea for an Indian patent for its cancer drug – Glivec. Dismissing the pharmaceutical major’s plea, the court held that modification of a known cancer-fighting drug cannot be considered as a patentable new invention.
Drug manufacturers are now free to make cheaper duplicates of Prezista, the Johnson & Johnson's HIV/AIDS, for sale in Africa and other less developed countries. J&J has allowed the manufacture of cheaper versions of the recently developed drug, provided high quality standards are maintained by drug makers.


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The City of Durban has 45 700 street traders who collectively pay millions of rands to the eThekwini municipality to sell goods on the pavement. Many of these people live perilously close to the breadline. After the looting in July, it will take months for shops to reopen in Durban’s central business district, making their tenuous existence even more precarious.
Asiye eTafuleni (AeT), a non-profit organisation that advocates for street traders, says about 460 000 people traverse Warwick Junction, the city’s busiest intermodal transport intersection, every day. But about 30% of the people who would ordinarily go into the business district will not be doing so anytime soon because many shops have been destroyed.
AeT co-founder Richard Dobson says that if ever there was a time for Durban to live up to its slogan of being a “caring city”, it would be now.
During the riots, grocery stores were either looted, destroyed or closed their doors, and food queues formed in KwaZulu-Natal. AeT called on the municipality to quickly re-establish street trading in Warwick Junction because these sellers are more nimble than supermarket behemoths.
“Traders are fleet-footed,” Dobson says. “They can knock up a table and sell spinach that can feed people quickly. This doesn’t rely on big organisations. We obviously need huge supply chains at scale. But where convoys of big trucks are vulnerable, bakkies ferrying fruit and vegetables are less so.”
The City should help kickstart the informal economy, Dobson adds. “People are desperate. The people we are speaking to are in tears. In an economy wracked by Covid and unrest, people have turned to the streets to survive. We should relieve the pressure.”
The looting has similarly affected Durban’s waste pickers. An AeT study in 2012 showed that these people collected 150 tonnes of cardboard and paper around eThekwini every day. But with many retailers closed, much of this is not available.
Arbitrarily policing permits
Workers in South Africa’s informal economy account for 5% of the country’s gross domestic product, but government policies are largely hostile to this sector. Dobson’s colleague and AeT co-founder Patrick Ndlovu is at the forefront of monitoring the harassment of street traders, most of whom require a permit to operate.
A permit costs at least about R560 a year and traders without one are fined and have their goods confiscated. But the permit is almost impossible to renew, because the municipality’s business support unit is understaffed and its processes cumbersome, the traders say.
Smangele Ngcobo, 29, is too scared to leave her goods on the pavement in the care of her peers to go to the toilet. She is worried she will be fined. Ngcobo says she was fined R600 on two consecutive days and her goods were seized.
Albert Sihlope, 50, sells vegetables in the same spot on which his family has traded for decades. Though his family has a permit, it is not in Sihlope’s name. A relative’s name appears on the document. “I have been to [the business support unit] so many times. I waited for a long time and they said I am not on the system, but my family was allocated a site.”
“We plead with the police not to confiscate our goods because it is our livelihood, but they do,” says Thandeka Zungu, 42. “We have applied for sites from before the lockdown but you just wait in the queue at [the business support unit]. You don’t get a receipt or a reference.”
Street sellers say there is no order or consistency in the management of traders. Officials and the police behave arbitrarily. “The police here are God. Sometimes they give you a chance, sometimes not. It is a money-making scheme,” says Thoko Mabaso, 66. “The police come in a convoy and they just jump on us like we are hardened criminals. The best thing to do is pack your goods quickly and run.”
“I look after four grandchildren,” says Thembisile Ndlovu, 70. “I have been trading since 1986. When the police come, they are harsh. We try to take pictures of them on the cellphone and they shout at us to put the camera away.”
Ngcobo says most traders have no option but to turn to loan sharks to replace seized stock or pay fines. “It took me three months to save R3 500 for stock. Profits don’t come easy. You get a little bit every day. I am a single parent, and I work here seven days a week.”
‘They treat us like dirt’
AeT’s Ndlovu says the permit system is so dysfunctional it is almost worthless, and traders receive very little support in return from the City. Cleaners are scarce and overburdened, the toilets are filthy and traders often bring their own water to clean fresh produce. They say the system “criminalises” them.
Ndlovu says that when they challenge fines they have to wait months before they can plead their case in the municipal court. When traders’ goods are confiscated, these are often not itemised or registered. Ndlovu questions how the business support unit allocates trading, echoing the street sellers’ claims that it is haphazard.
Scelo Mabaso, 45, says: “They [officials and police] don’t care. This is harassment. Why do they want to instil fear and make money from us? They are arrogant. They treat us like dirt.”
eThekwini spokesperson Msawakhe Mayisela says the City advertises vacant or newly developed trading sites quarterly in its newspaper. The allocation is done to support, grow and provide opportunities for new entrants. “It is a useful tool for job creation and for the inclusion of the people who were excluded from economic activity in the past.”
Mayisela says it takes six weeks to process a permit and this is communicated in writing or via text message. The metro police, he adds, confiscate goods and conduct daily operations to ensure traders comply with by-laws and have valid permits. Receipts are issued for goods seized.
Traders pay R47 a month for a site without shelter, R79 for a site with a shelter and R379 a month for a bigger “business hive” site. Mayisela says the City uses the money from permits to develop trading facilities, remove garbage, provide security, water, electricity and storage facilities, and to do maintenance. He says the City’s approach to the sector is “developmental”. Its economic recovery plan allows a six-month rental holiday for traders with valid permits.
A new paradigm
Verushka Memdutt, general secretary of the Market Users Committee in Durban, disputes the City’s claims that its permit system is managed well. “It is not. We have traders who have been seeking permits for over five years. The permit system is nonsense. It is used by City managers to lord over people. No government should be charging informal traders who are trying to survive.”
Dobson asks how the City determines which sellers can ply their trade. “The permit system is ostensibly to stop overtrading, but who are we to say R20 in earnings for someone doesn’t count? Nobody is going to sit on the street and make no money.”
He says guidelines released by the South African Local Government Association on public space and trading were aimed at the functionality of public spaces and should be used as a “route out of the regulatory and enforcement cul-de-sac that local government has been caught in over the last 20 years, to the detriment of the informal sector”.
“Really, what we need now is an urgent moratorium on permits. We are not being creative and constructive. We need a planning scheme that looks at trading thresholds and spatial and management dictates that can be jointly negotiated. We need a new paradigm.
“Politicians and officials talk about the City being ‘caring’ and the phrase flips off their tongues. What does it mean if you punish people for trying to feed their families every day?”


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In our new column, Hire Up, FN checks in with new execs from companies across the industry to talk about leadership, strategy and burning industry issues.
Brian Minnix isn’t the typical techie.
Unlike his Silicon Valley peers, the Charlotte, N.C.-based executive knows that the importance of e-com prowess, deep data, same-day deliveries, voice-activated assistants and artificial intelligence will never replace the need for retail’s human touch.
“Retailing is about putting key product stories out there, pricing it right and then interacting with our customers in-store or online,” said Minnix, who joined Rack Room Shoes in April as chief information officer.
Prior to Rack Room, the IT veteran had long runs at Belk, Shoe Carnival and at the brand formerly known as Brown Shoe Company.
In 2012, he stepped away from the footwear industry and joined CompuCom, an IT services firm.
Minnix is expected to implement the latest technologies to help Rack Room sharpen its customer shopping experience across retail platforms.
In FN’s new “Hire Up” column, the executive talks about his career path and how technology will boost company sales.
In your new job, what are some of the big goals you’d like to accomplish?
“If you look at our strategy, which is fairly simple, it is to deliver trend-relevant merchandise to our customer. We need to have a consistent voice to the customer and not a lot of consumer promotions. It’s pretty simplistic in terms of how we do our promotions — we don’t do the ‘greatest sale of the season.’ Retailing is about putting key product stories out there, pricing it right and then interacting with our customers in-store or online. Another one of our cornerstones is making sure our store delights and excites our customer. So the IT strategy becomes, how do we exceed the customer experience and our store associate experience, be it brick-and-mortar or through our e-commerce site?”
What are some immediate challenges you face?
“With all of the new company initiatives we have, it’s a matter of prioritizing our technology efforts and putting the right ones in at the right time. Also, we all have a proliferation of data these days; transactional data is exponentially higher than in the last 10 years. With all of that information, how do we deliver actionable data to our associates?”
Who are some of your career mentors?
“Fortunately, I’ve had several. The ones I remember the most are the ones who took the time and challenged me, the ones who wanted me to be better. Cliff Sifford at Shoe Carnival was one: he might be the best at understanding relationships and partnerships with vendors. He helped me understand that dynamic early in my career — how to get the most out of partnerships and still represent the company well. Ron Fromm, at the then-Brown Shoe, was another. Ron was a real steward of the brand. He was great at strategy and great at the long game. He taught me to focus on where we are going, not where we are.”
What’s the best decision you ever made?
“One key highlight was when I joined Famous Footwear. At the time, we were faced with challenges on inventory management. We were able to do work on process, people structures and systems to reduce our inventory, increase turns and provide fresher product to inspire our customers.”
Conversely, what was one of the worst decisions you made?
“It was probably when I was a buyer — sometimes we would hop on a trend too early and I couldn’t create the value that I thought I could.”
Industry Moves: June 2019
Industry Moves: May 2019
Industry Moves: April 2019


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The Fallon business community recently learned the new Dairy Farmers of America dry milk plant should be operational in either March or April.
Al Trace, a Douglas County resident who is director of member services for the DFA, gave an update on the facility to members and guests at a breakfast hosted by the Churchill Economic Development Authority.
Although the opening date has been pushed back into the first quarter of 2014, Trace said much work is currently ongoing at the dry milk plant located southeast of Fallon.
“We have an incredible number of moving parts,” Trace said, adding that 220 people including 30 vendors are working at the site.
Trace said the DFA’s 89,822-square foot plant sits on 32 acres. Eight silos, which were constructed in Fernley and transported to Fallon, will hold milk and process water.
“We’ll have state of the art separation,” he added.
Once the plant begins its operation sometime in the spring, Trace said the production numbers will be huge. For example, Trace said the plants will be able to process 7.1 tons of milk per hour, 20 hours a day, and that will result in 284,000 pounds of dry milk. This ingredient manufacturing facility is being billed as the first of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.
He said the plant will provide 45 permanent jobs but indirectly create 1,800 agricultural support jobs.
“The benefits will be $5 million in new taxes over 10 years,” he said, referring to state and county statistics.
He said the state also said the plant will add $200 million to the local economy within the next decade.
Trace said the milk will be collected in close proximity to the plant and will come from DFA members.
Trace said once the milk is processed into the dry milk powder, it will be shipped to the Port of Oakland and then shipped overseas to China.
“We’re excited to be your new neighbor,” Trace said at the CEDA breakfast. “We’ll be OK when we open the first or second quarter, but we need the local milk production.”
He said the plant will have quality assurance personnel to ensure the product is of the highest caliber.
Ground breaking on the plant began during the spring of 2012. Trace said the member-owned co-op has 8,000 members across the United States including 20 within the DFA site’s of operation — 18 in Fallon and two in Smith Valley southwest of Yerington. Of the seven DFA regions, Fallon is in the West with California.
For example, he said dairy farmers in the West tend to have larger farms, and in Churchill County, Trace said local members also grow their own feed.
Trace said Nevada’s member farms produce a daily milk supply of 18 loads per day, and the average farms has 614 cows.
“DFA exists for our 8,000 dairy farmers,” Trace stressed. “We exist for our farmers, and without them, there would be no Fallon plant.”
Overall, he said many positives affect milk production in Nevada. He said the state has a good climate, good quality forages, environmentally agriculture-friendly areas, an existing infrastructure and no taxes (personal income, inheritance of inventory).
On the other hand, Trace said challenges focus on the lack of sizable dairy-suited property for sale, few facilities for lease or rent and the downturn in the dairy industry and the possibility of drought, which would result in a lack of water for processing.
Trace said the Fallon plant will need 28 extra loads or 220 million pounds of milk to be fully operational. Recent developments, though, have caused him to be optmistic. Trace said a new 3,000-cow, 2,200-acre facilty has been built in Smith Valley and an empty 1,5000-cow dairy farm northeast of Fallon was recently purchased.
While the dry milk for Fallon is destined for the Far East, Trace said other DFA plants manufacture milk products for a wide variety of outlets to include Kroger, Walmart, Costco and Chobani Greek Yogurt.
Trace also mentioned the national trends affecting dairy farms. He said in 1992, 130,000 farms existed in the U.S. but 20 years later, only 59,000 dairy farms remain.
“They’re fewer and larger,” Trace added.


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"A bit of madness is what you need" – now that Black Mirror's latest trailer has dropped, we've never been so sure of this.
Yep, it's as delightfully trippy and spine-tingling as you'd think. Both Will Poulter and Dunkirk's Fionn Whitehead look to be key characters in the dystopian drama's latest instalment, focusing on the use of questionable-looking drugs and a tantalising retro video game called Bandersnatch.
The official synopsis reads: "In 1984, a young programmer begins to question reality as he adapts a sprawling fantasy novel into a video game and soon faces a mind-mangling challenge. Welcome back."
The latest tease comes shortly after a holding page for Bandersnatch popped up on Netflix earlier this month. It only featured the message "Be right back" and also gave us a tease at the possible length of the episode, displaying an intriguing runtime of 1 hour and 30 minutes.
It's been reported that Bandersnatch will be a Netflix film, as well as a choose-your-own adventure experience, allowing viewers to interactively dictate events using their remote control.
Either way, we doubt Charlie Brooker's latest delve into the void will disappoint.
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch will be available on Netflix from Friday, December 28 at 8am.


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Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone 6 may still be months out, but that hasn't stopped the rumor mill from attempting to foresee what Apple has planned for its next smartphone launch. While many details about its next iPhone lineup remain a mystery, there's one commonality among most speculation: Apple's newest smartphones will likely have larger displays.
Taking speculation one step further, MacRumors has even commissioned renderings of alleged iPhone 6 design drawings of 4.7-inch and 5.7-inch models (both larger than Apple's current iPhone 5s display of 4 inches). Could this be what the iPhone 6 looks like?
The photos above were based on the alleged iPhone 6 design drawings below. The drawings were first published by Japanese magazine MacFan.
MacRumors' Arnold Kim notes that design leaks like these are not uncommon leading up to a new iPhone launch. However, they are not always accurate, Kim says. "In some cases, as with the iPhone 5C, early design leaks turn out to be quite close to the final product, though in other instances [like the iPhone 5] they turn out to be inaccurate."
What might the new lineup look like next to the iPhone 5s and the iPad Mini?
Why Apple needs a larger iPhone
Apple seems to be embracing the idea that a larger iPhone is necessary, making the likelihood investors will see these alleged models greater. Recent internal Apple documents that surfaced in court in an Apple-Samsung trial suggest the company is well aware of the growing demand for smartphones with larger displays. In a 2013 slide deck, one slide titled "Consumers want what we don't have" showed that a big chunk of smartphone shipment growth in calendar 2013 came from smartphones with displays larger than four inches -- 91 million units of the year's 228 million unit incremental growth.
A number of Apple analysts have begun to make attempts at estimating the impact of a larger iPhone on Apple's financials. Longtime Apple analyst Brian White of Cantor Fitzgerald is one of them. After his "tech tour" in China recently he shared the following in a note to investors:
In our view, the iPhone 6 with a larger screen (e.g., 4.7-inch, 5.5-inch) has the potential to meaningfully accelerate Apple's growth trajectory in China during (the second half of 2014). We have not heard this type of excitement in China around the iPhone in at least two years and thus believe this could be a very special iPhone launch for Apple.
If Apple is planning to launch an iPhone with a larger display, the move could serve as an excellent catalyst for the stock. Revamping its iPhone lineup with a new form-factor meant to cater to a proven market may help Apple accelerate the year-over-year growth rate of its iPhone business. In Apple's first fiscal quarter, the unexpectedly low growth rate of 7%for the business surprised investors.


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Meridian Specialty Yarn Group (MSYG) ushered in a new era for the US textiles supply chain in July, officially opening a new, high-tech, yarn dyeing plant at the site of their current operations in Valdese, NC, US.
The 116,000 square-foot facility is the first yarn and fibre dyeing operation to be built in the United States in over two decades and offers the only tow-dyeing capacity in the US. Until this summer, all producer-dyed acrylic tow was imported from outside US borders.
“Our new technology gives us the capability to process every dyeable fibre in various forms including yarn, tow and top. This is very unusual in the dyed yarn world,” said Tim Manson, President of MSYG. “We can chemically treat or dye all fibre substrates, ranging from cellulosic and animal fibres, to polyester, nylon and dyeable aramids. Most dye houses specialize in certain products, but we are now in a position to source from all over the world, from every type of textile fibre, supporting a wide array of end uses.”
Modern manufacturing operation
The plant officially went live on 8 July and is equipped to provide a broad number of traditional capabilities, from chemical treatments to dyeing to a combination of the two. Utilising next-generation technology, machines, controls and robotics for package, top and tow dyeing, the plant is said to position MSYG as North America’s most modern manufacturing operation with regard to dyeing technology and robotic support equipment.
Built next to Meridian’s existing operations in Valdese, the plant puts a new spin on the primary staples of the textiles industry – fibre and yarn. Renovations are now taking place in the plant’s original manufacturing plant and when that is done, Meridian’s yarn dye operations – which also include several types of space-dyed yarns as well as twisting capabilities – will span both buildings and 284,600 square feet of office, warehouse and manufacturing space.
“Nothing like this has been built before in North America,” said Mr Manson. “This is one of the only green field yarn and fibre wet-processing plants to be built in the United States in a generation.”
Large investment in sustainability
The package dye technology includes vertical, air pad, low liquor ratio machines that replac all of MSYG’s existing fully flooded package dye equipment. The new acrylic tow dying capabilities will support the raw material needs at MSYG’s plant in Ranlo, NC, and are also available to outside customers. The skein-printed yarns will go into craft yarns, apparel products and some home furnishings. The top dyed wool capability will support worsted spinners supplying high-end apparel, hosiery and home furnishings.
The new plant also reflects a large investment in sustainable technologies and processes. The end result is a facility that operates with considerably less environmental impact than other yarn dyeing operations both here in North America and abroad.
Keeping manufacturing jobs in US
Meanwhile, despite installing a new generation of robotics, the company has added positions and is in the process of retraining employees to work with the new technologies. “We’ve met the initial employment targets of adding 25 jobs and are hiring and retraining,” said Mr Manson. “We did not lose any positions due to new technology.” Meanwhile, the company’s Human Resources Manager, Debbie Sigmon, has begun working extensively in the community and with the local community colleges to develop programs to train a new generation of textile workers, attract new talent to the region and develop concepts for a workplace that appeals to a younger generation.
“It was important to us to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States while supporting the US textile supply chain as well as the community wher we’ve been located for so many decades,” Manson explained. “The new plant and the programs we’re working on in the community do all of the above.”
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FREDERICTON – A unified pesticide ban across Atlantic Canada was a main topic of discussion yesterday between New Brunswick Environment Minister Rick Miles and his regional counterparts.
Calling themselves the Council of Atlantic Environment Ministers, the four ministers got together in the New Brunswick capital to discuss several environmental issues, including the idea of standing united on an banned pesticide list.
New Brunswick was the first Atlantic province to introduce a ban last fall, followed by Prince Edward Island this spring.
Nova Scotia will introduce the first phase of a pesticide ban in the spring of 2011, while Newfoundland and Labrador still weighs its options of going forward with a ban.
“What we wanted to do is get together and try to create legislation that is compatible, similar in nature,” said Miles yesterday, mentioning that it’d be easier to educate the public about what’s banned if the same products were banned across the region.
Miles said industry would be more likely to react to one unified banned product list than the potential of four different lists. Quebec and Ontario also have pesticide bans of their own.
“It would be nice to have some uniform legislation in place so they could conform as they cross the borders,” said Miles.
Richard Brown, P.E.I.’s environment minister, said a single pesticide ban list would also protect consumers who might be buying banned products just across the provincial border.
“We don’t want to make criminals out of people and the best way to do that is to work cooperatively with one another,” he said. “We followed (New Brunswick’s) lead and we basically have the same regulations, the same list.”
Sterling Belliveau, Nova Scotia’s environment minister, said a ban on certain lawn pesticides will come into effect in that province next spring, followed in 2012 with a pesticide ban on some products for trees and shrubs.
“The end result is going to be very similar,” said Belliveau, in reference to New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island’s list. He said fostering uniformity right now on a banned pesticide list would ensure uniformity later.
Charlene Johnson, Newfoundland and Labrador’s environment minister, said that province’s government is watching the other three Maritime provinces with keen interest in their bans.
“We certainly don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” she said. “So I’m learning from their experiences and hiccups along the way.”
More than 200 over-the-counter pesticides are no longer allowed for sale or use in New Brunswick since the ban came into effect last fall. Those pesticides all contained the ingredient 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, more commonly known as 2,4-D. The ingredient is widely used to kill dandelions.
Additionally, the province said they targeted a ban toward pesticide products that were more likely to be “overused and misused” by the homeowner, particularly pesticides that required the user to measure, mix or dilute the product.


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GM is feeling good about the economy and its prospects. Case in point: The automaker today announced that it plans to invest $2 billion in its U.S. assembly and component plants.
The dollars will create or keep more than 4,000 jobs at 17 facilities in eight states, according to the automaker. "We are doing this because we are confident about demand for our vehicles and the economy," GM Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson said during an event at the 54-year-old Toledo (Ohio) Transmission Plant. "This new investment is on top of $3.4 billion and more than 9,000 jobs that GM has added or saved since mid-2009." Akerson said GM will invest $204 million in the Toledo facility for an advanced eight-speed automatic transmission for future vehicles, retaining approximately 250 jobs.
|GM employee Coianne Avant works on the assembly line at the Toledo Transmission Plant, where GM today announced a $2 billion investment in U.S. assembly and component facilities.|
GM's U.S. sales through the first four months of the year are up 24.8% over 2010, and the company last week reported its fifth consecutive profitable quarter since emerging from bankruptcy reorganization in July 2009. "The UAW's goal has been to return all laid-off workers to active status and see the company begin hiring again," said Joe Ashton, UAW vice president-GM Department. "These announcements will create and retain thousands of jobs and bring General Motors back to full employment of our hourly workforce." GM announced the first of the new investments$131 million and about 250 additional jobs in Bowling Green, Ky.last week. Plant improvements and installation of new equipment to make the next-generation Chevrolet Corvette will begin soon, while the current-generation Corvette is assembled for at least the next two model years, according to the automaker. Over the next few months, GM will make specific facility investment announcements dependent on successful completion of state and local incentives in some communities. Union Cooperation Critical According to the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research, the ripple effect of the planned investments would add almost $2.9 billion to the U.S. GDP and create or retain more than 28,000 jobs. "If the market continues to recover, we are confident that GM will hire new workers to meet the strong demand for the products our UAW members build," Ashton said. "I am proud of how our membership has worked hard to ensure the company's success." Akerson said working in partnership with the UAW is essential to GM's success. "Nobody builds them more fantastic than you do," Akerson told the employees in Toledo. "We need you and the rest of our teams at all our facilities to keep working hard and keep being the best." See Also:


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PARIS—French car maker PSA Peugeot-Citroën SA PUGOY -9.09 % said Thursday Thierry Peugeot will leave the company's supervisory board and be replaced by another representative from one of the family's holding companies.
Marie-Helene Roncoroni will replace Mr. Peugeot as a representative of the holding company Etablissements Peugeot Freres, Peugeot said in a statement.
The change in personnel on the supervisory board follows the dilution of the Peugeot's family's share in the company when the French state and China's Dongfeng Motor Corp. took a stake in the car maker earlier this year. During the negotiations, Mr. Peugeot expressed concerns about the impact on the family's control over the company.
A spokeswoman for the company didn't immediately return calls for comment.
Write to William Horobin at William.Horobin@wsj.com