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German beer contaminated with plastic
Invading plastic particles have been identified in a number of German beers threatening the country’s historic beer purity laws.
All of the country’s biggest beer and mineral water brands tested were found to contain microscopic plastic fibres, according to a report by The Local, research released on Tuesday and commissioned by consumer rights magazine programme Markt has revealed.
Pilsner was the worst affected beer with an average of 78.8 particles per litre, followed by Munich’s Paulaner wheat beer at 70 and Warsteiner Pils at 47, while mineral water was found to be less affected.
Microplastics are small particles found in the environment which have become of particular concern to the marine environment polluting lakes and oceans.
Plastic particles can be found not only in food and drink but in the air, according to Professor Gerd Liebezeit, the study’s lead researcher.
No danger to human health has as yet been identified with the particles, however Professor Stephan Pflugmacher, an ecological toxicologist from the Institute for Ecology at Berlin’s Technical University, told Markt, “micro-plastic will sooner or later represent a danger to us.”
Pflugmacher’s research looked into the effects of plastic particles on mussels finding that over time high concentrations can kill the organisms.
Both the German Brewing Federation (DBB) and the producers of the mineral waters involved have launched their own investigations into the plastic content of their products.
Germany’s 500-year-old beer purity law states that the national beverage can be made from only four ingredients – water, hops, malt and yeast.


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Stephen Lanzo says he used Johnson & Johnson products for decades, including products with talcum powder (e.g., the company's famous baby powder), and that his aggressive form of lung cancer was brought about by that powder. On Thursday, a jury awarded the New Jersey banker and his wife a total of $37 million in compensatory damages in his suit—$30 million for him, $7 million for his wife, Kendra—making J&J assume 70% of the liability for Lanzo's illness, per CNN. Imerys Talc, the supplier of the talc, a mineral that's been linked to cross-contamination with asbestos when being mined, was hit with the other 30% liability. Reuters notes it's J&J's first loss at trial regarding complaints about its talc products containing asbestos. There are thousands of other cases tying its talc products to ovarian cancer.
In Lanzo's situation, he said he got deadly mesothelioma from inhaling baby powder dust during regular use since his 1972 birth. A seven-woman jury in Middlesex County found both J&J and Imerys concealed the asbestos in their products, which files from Lanzo's legal team indicate they may have worried about as early as 1969, per Bloomberg. J&J insists it has long tested its products for contamination, and Imerys claims any asbestos exposure Lanzo may have had came from somewhere other than its talc. "The evidence was clear that his asbestos exposure came from a different source such as the asbestos found in his childhood home or schools," a spokeswoman says, adding the firm will appeal. The Lanzos may still have punitive damages coming as well; that phase of the trial begins Tuesday. (Read more Johnson & Johnson stories.)

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The Ladies Professional Golf Association has unveiled the uniforms that the U.S. team will wear at the Solheim Cup tournament that will be held at Finca Cortesin in Andalusia, Spain, from Sept. 18 to 24.
Dunning, the official uniform supplier for the 2023 and 2024 seasons, will provide the U.S. team — including the athletes, caddies, team captain Stacy Lewis and assistant captains Morgan Pressel, Natalie Gulbis and Angela Stanford — with complete uniforms and outerwear to be worn during practice and play at this year’s competition.
More from WWD
Not surprisingly, the outfits sport a palette of red, white and blue and feature technical fabrics such as Coolmax with moisture wicking and breathability properties as well as stretch. Key pieces include a quarter-zip pullover, a hoodie and a vest and jacket pairing featuring PrimaLoft.
“Working with the Dunning team on designing our U.S. uniforms for 2023 and 2024 has been an incredible collaborative and interesting process,” said Lewis, a four-time U.S. Team competitor. “Their team is open to all the ideas we’ve brought to the table and their expertise in working with these performance fabrics has elevated those ideas into some beautiful uniform pieces.”
“The Solheim Cup is the absolute pinnacle of women’s competitive golf and we’re truly honored to be associated with the U.S. team and the event’s spirit of competition,” added Michael J. Setola, chief executive officer of Dunning. “Golfers often say there’s no greater honor than playing for your country, and as we strive to meet the performance needs of players at the highest levels of the game, we feel just that way, too.”
The Solheim Cup is held every two years and pits the best U.S. players against the top Europeans.
The collection will also be available for fans to purchase on the Dunning and Solheim Cup websites as well as at a select group of Dunning’s network of 1,500 country clubs, resorts and golf retailers across the U.S.
Dunning launched a women’s golf collection earlier this year. The company was founded by Ralph Dunning in 2001 and sold to Tharanco Lifestyle in 2011. Tharanco, a brand management and operating company, also owns the Greg Norman Collection label.
Best of WWD


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Apple Queen to Appear at Frankenmuth Festival
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Denise Yockey
Frankenmuth, Mich – 2006 Michigan Apple Queen Ashley Wright of Belding will be attending the 48th Annual Frankenmuth Bavarian Festival in June. Wright will be making her appearance at the festival on Sunday, June 11, 2006, during the Bavarian Festival Parade.
“I am really looking forward to attending the Frankenmuth Bavarian Festival. Frankenmuth is such a unique town and the people are always so fun and welcoming! I know that the court and I are going to enjoy the parade and festival so much!” said Wright.
Wright will be joined by first runner-up Jessica Rasch of Conklin and second runner-up Sarah Heffron of Belding on the Michigan Apple Industry float. The Apple Land-themed float will be one of over 100 units in this year's parade.
The Michigan Apple Committee is a grower-funded nonprofit organization devoted to promotion, education and research activities to distinguish the Michigan apple and encourage its consumption by consumers in Michigan and around the world. For more information, visit www.MichiganApples.com.


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Horizon Worlds launch on mobile as VR numbers hit low point
Meta's social VR app Horizon Worlds continues to struggle with low player numbers. The starting smartphone and browser version might help.
Meta has launched a closed beta version of Horizon Worlds for smartphones. This is the first time the former Facebook company's proto-metaverse has appeared outside of virtual reality, taking on competitors like Roblox, Fortnite, and Rec Room. The VR version continues to struggle with very low user numbers, according to a YouTuber.
Reboot after development problems
Originally, Mark Zuckerberg announced a smartphone version of Horizon Worlds for early 2022. However, due to technical problems, the implementation was not realized. Instead, the company decided to rebuild the app from scratch.
Selected users can now be placed on a waiting list within the Meta Quest app to try out Horizon Worlds on mobile devices. There is no separate app for now. First images show that the avatars of the mobile version walk through the virtual worlds with legs, unlike their VR counterparts. VR players have been waiting for their legs for meta avatars for almost a year.
Horizon Worlds remains Meta's problem child
With the launch of the mobile version for smartphones and browsers, Meta hopes to breathe new life into its social VR application. Horizon Worlds has been struggling with low user numbers and poor reviews for quite some time. In March, it was revealed that only one in ten players return to Horizon Worlds.
To attract more users, Meta recently lowered the minimum age and promised many improvements in gameplay and graphics, as well as generative AI for Horizon Worlds. So far, the efforts and announcements seem to have had little effect.
According to Meta's data, Horizon Worlds still had about 200,000 monthly users as of October 2022. According to Jarvis Johnson, the number of daily users may have dropped to less than 1,000.
The YouTuber spent every day for a week in Horizon Worlds and hardly counted more than 900 active players. In his video (see above), he talks about empty worlds, low player numbers with a high percentage of children, and a generally poor user experience.


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UltraBOOST and adizero 5-Star included.
A first look at the upcoming collaborative footwear.
Arriving in an ultra sleek and sporty runner.
Featuring several unique new styles.
“The most advanced, fast and lightweight running shoe ever created by adidas” is now available to purchase.
You’ll have to import these from Australia, for now.
adidas has released the adizero 99g Boot, touted to be the lightest pair of football kicks of all
For those who prefer stealth to showboating, adidas’s new “Black Pack” boots have you covered. With
The adidas adizero silhouette is back with another rendition. The shoes featuring adidas’ popular


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River Island kicks off its 30th year with its spring-summer 2018 campaign. The British fashion brand proclaims that “Labels are for Clothes.” An individual spirit is celebrated with River Island’s new advertisement. Richard Burbridge photographs Steven Lyon, David Agbodji, Zakaria Khiare, and Chris Bunn for the occasion.
I’m proud to be part of our most exciting ad campaign to date, says River Island customer director Josie Cartridge.
In recent years, we have witnessed a shift in the market and the attitudes of our consumers–they want to express themselves and not be defined by convention.
The Labels are for Clothes campaign is our recognition of this welcome movement. We aim to continuously evolve as a brand and ensure that our campaigns are the truest possible representation of the modern River Island customer.


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aims to grow faster than the industry in 2018-19 as it has started bagging an increasing number of deals in newer areas of business.
The growth has resulted from investments made as part of a new strategy, said CEO Nitin Rakesh
, who took charge of the Bengaluru-based company a year ago.
"We crossed the $250-million mark this quarter. The idea is that this growth should be sustainable. And we think because of the investments we have made in the new strategy, which we call front-to-back, it looks good. Most of our new deal wins came from these new areas," Rakesh told in an interview.
Mphasis won $130-million worth of deals in the quarter to December 2017 in its direct international business, 83% of which came from digital offerings and governance, risk and compliance services. In the first nine months of this fiscal, the company won deals worth $435 million in this segment, up from $276 million a year ago.
Rakesh said the deals provided a base for the company to continue growing ahead of Nasscom's forecast. The industry body has projected 7-8% growth in constant currency for the industry this fiscal.
The Blackstone-backed IT company's growth comes after a prolonged slowdown. Mphasis was earlier owned by HP, which took over the company through its acquisition of EDS. Revenues from its parent kept falling, even as the company worked to expand its direct business. Blackstone took over Mphasis in 2016 in a deal worth $1 billion. The private equity company also made an open offer for the shares and now owns over 60% of the IT player.
The CEO said the HP-driven slowdown had the unlikely effect of preparing the company for the future. "Since we used to be focused on HP, we didn't really chase the large deals. So, the lack of them in the market has not hurt us as much as the larger companies. Due to our revenue crunch, we always hired just-in-time, so we do not have a large workforce on the bench that needs to be retrained," Rakesh said.
"But we had great architecting capabilities and an architect programme. That is what you need to grow in the agile model," he said, adding that focusing on the company's "hidden jewels" helped drive the strategy.
Mphasis plans to shift some of its focus to Europe - the company has appointed Guru Grewal as the head of Europe. Unlike its larger rivals, it still gets 80% of its revenue from the Americas, while Europe, West Asia, and Africa contribute just 10%. "You will see us growing our sales team in Europe. We have a plan to grow the business there," Rakesh said.
Europe is increasingly important for large IT firms. Revenue from Europe grew faster than from the US for large IT firms in the third quarter.


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Even with new businesses signing leases, retail rents in Manhattan continued to fall in the first quarter, reports Cushman & Wakefield.
“Just because you’re not seeing bankruptcy filings doesn’t mean there isn’t distress,” says Mark Kronfeld, a managing director with BlackRock.
The retailer was late to embrace online shopping. But it’s now making a bold wager on robotics.
The merged shopping center REIT will have a market cap of $12 billion.
Revenue at the company’s fashion and leather goods unit jumped by 52 percent in the first quarter compared to a year earlier.
The company confirmed it was in discussions to sell seven properties to Brookfield for $479 million.
Retail, lodging/resort and apartment REITs posted the biggest gains in the first quarter.
Roughly one in every 11 stores will close in the next year, according to an analysis by UBS.


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The third round of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) talks between the European Union (EU) and Vietnam is set to take place on April 22, 2013. The pact is expected to bring many benefits to Vietnam, but it also generates plenty of difficulties and challenges by increasing competitive pressures. In an attempt to help Vietnamese businesses understand more about the impacts of this agreement on key sectors, as well as opportunities and challenges to businesses after the signing, the European Trade Policy and Investment Support Project (EU-MUTRAP) and the Ho Chi Minh City Branch of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI - HCM) co-organised the workshop: “Vietnam - EU FTA: Noteworthy contents for Vietnamese businesses.”
Mr Bui Huy Son, Director of the Asia - Pacific Markets Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said, being important trade and investment partners of each other, both Vietnam and the EU have high expectations for Vietnam - EU FTA and hope for quick conclusion to negotiations for the official signing. The EU is one of the leading economic, trade and investment partners of Vietnam. According to the General Statistics Office (GSO), in 2012, it emerged as the largest importer of Vietnamese products with total value of US$20.3 billion, a year on-year increase of 22.5 per cent, accounting for 17.7 per cent of the country's total exports. Vietnam - EU cooperation has entered a new chapter with the signing of the Vietnam - EU Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) in June 2012 and the visit of the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy to Vietnam in October 2012.
The signing of Vietnam - EU FTA is expected to bring many benefits to Vietnam, like reducing at least 90 per cent of tariff lines on Vietnam's exports to the EU to zero, and increasing EU capital sources for Vietnam. The FTA signing will open up many new opportunities for Vietnamese businesses to penetrate deeper into the EU market and force them to move closer to international standards. In addition to the above benefits, Vietnam may face certain difficulties and challenges, with commitments to bringing tariffs to zero for most tariff lines, wider opening of service markets, and increased transparency of business and investment management regulations.
Also remarking on the FTA impacts on Vietnam, Mr Vo Tan Thanh, Director of VCCI - HCM, said the Vietnam - EU FTA will be an important boost for Vietnam's exports. With 501 million consumers and over US$17,000 billion of GDP, the EU is the dream market. At present, Vietnam's exports to the EU account for 0.75 per cent of the bloc’s total imports. Only 40 per cent of imports are tax free while the remaining 60 per cent are subjected to different tax rates. With the FTA, import duties with the EU will drop and Vietnam’s exports will thus have a great opportunity to penetrate and increase their market share in this market. Besides, with increased transparency and facilitation, Vietnam - EU FTA will certainly help improve the business environment in Vietnam in the direction of increased openness and easiness, thus bolstering business activities and direct investment from the EU and other countries to Vietnam. With the EU’s investment size and potential, Vietnam will have a chance to become a bridge connecting the EU’s trade and investment with the ASEAN region. This will actively support Vietnam’s economic restructuring growth model.
Besides, the FTA will help Vietnam diversify export markets and therefore diminish dependence on certain markets. Like the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, it will give a chance for Vietnam to balance its export market structure. But, as a general rule, benefits are always balanced with obligations and Vietnam must bring most of its own import tariffs to zero, open more service markets than WTO commitments, and not rule out the possibility of opening up the public procurement market. As a result, competitive pressures will be definitely be intensified and increased.
Mr Pham Ngoc Hung, Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Business Association, said that the ending of tariffs on at least 90 per cent of exports to the EU market will be the key to promote Vietnam's exports. But, Vietnam's exports will still face many barriers. For instance, textiles and footwear will see more difficulties in EU requirements for origin of commodities; wooden products must satisfy Regulation 995/2010 of the European Parliament or the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Action Plan of the European Union (FLEGT) for legal logging; and agricultural products will confront competitive pressures from new EU member countries. He proposed that the EU apply specific, flexible nontariff barriers on Vietnam’s goods, while the bloc necessarily recognises Vietnam as a market economy in applying anti-dumping policies. Besides, FTA provisions need to have a roadmap for Vietnam on a number of areas like small and medium enterprises, agriculture and labour.


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What’s Moe Zulfiqar pitching as “The one tech stock to buy and never sell?” I’ve seen a couple versions of this teaser ad come rolling into Gumshoe HQ over the past week or so, and it’s time for a quick Thinkolator answer for you…
The ad is peddling subscriptions to America’s Redemption, one of the newsletters from Lombardi publishing (Zulfiqar is apparently editor of this letter, now, last time we looked at this, several years back, it was Mitchell Clark — and he was peddling investment “prophesies” from the Bible), and it’s one of those “ramp up” subscription deals — you pay $5 up front, and then if you don’t cancel they charge you another $92.50 for a six month membership, and if you still don’t cancel they start renewing you at $295/year.
So, assuming you don’t want to commit to all that in the service of learning about this “secret” tech stock, let’s get you some answers… then, if you feel like it, you can consider a subscription to America’s Redemption if you feel like it, with no pressure and in the full light of day. OK?
Here’s a taste of the ad, including pretty much all the clues we need:
“… owning stock in this company is like owning Apple stock back in 2004… before it surged from $2 a share to over $150 today. It has the potential to deliver me massive returns, just like it already has for other investors, for these four specific reasons:
“The company possesses several “must-have” technologies car makers need (related to driver-assist technologies) that could make fatal car accidents a thing of the past.
“Gross profits have jumped from $2.8 billion in 2015 to $5.8 billion in 2017.
“The company has $4 billion in cash and equivalents in the bank….
“The stock has more than DOUBLED in value every year for the last three years alone! If I had invested just $500 per month in this tech stock beginning in 2003, I’d be sitting on more than $1.5 million today—and it keeps going up!”
OK, so that “if I had invested $500 per month” is a new one — we usually see pitches about “if you had invested X years ago, you’d be rich as Y,” not “invest every month” teases. And I needn’t tell you that anyone can backtest and identify which companies would have been the best ones to hold for the past 15 years, of course — predicting the past is pretty easy, predicting the future is where it gets hard.
If you’re curious about the math, by the way, that’s a total investment of $90,000 over those 15 years to get to your $1.5 million.
How about the rest? Well, they said that this special report went out about a week ago, so it’s still quite current, and this is obviously a pretty big company — there are only about 50 tech stocks that have gross profit over $5 billion a year. Add in the cash balance and the fact that it has doubled a few times already, and you’re left with only one answer… this is, sez the Thinkolator, our old friend NVIDIA (NVDA).
And yes, I own shares of this one, too. It’s been the true darling of tech stocks over the past several years, and for much of that time it has been the single best performing stock in the S&P 500. So no, you don’t need a newsletter to tell you about this ‘secret’ stock, it’s probably one of the most widely covered stocks outside of the FANG names… though you might need a strong stomach, or some convincing from your friendly neighborhood newsletter writer, to buy shares at current prices.
I added (very) slightly to my NVDA holdings recently, at prices near $225, but it’s a hard valuation at which to commit much capital (my cost basis is about $125, which makes it emotionally easier to ride the ups and downs)… particularly when we’re about a week away from NVDA’s next quarterly earnings release. Shares have bounced around quite a bit this year after a huge multi-year run, so you needn’t decide today — take your time, research, figure out if it’s a good risk/reward balance for you, personally… the stock has bounced up and down between $200-250 so far this year
But man, it is quite a company. NVIDIA has p


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adidas Drops an Exclusive Grey NMD at JD Sports
Yet another limited-edition Three Stripes release comes to the UK retailer.
Back in November, JD Sports dropped a trio of exclusive takes on the NMD XR1 and now the UK-based retailer is back with yet another limited-edition adi release. This time around the drop comes in the form of the NMD R1 and employs a predominately grey mesh upper alongside blue accents, black and grey midsole plugs, a black rubber outsole and stark white BOOST cushioning.
NMD fans can add these to their collections online now while supplies last.


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Among the 15 companies included in the series are technology companies Microsoft, Siemens, Sony and Creative Technology.
According to the Singapore Post, the stamps commemorate the introduction of the small piece of gummed paper in the island state 150 years ago.
Singapore Post CEO William Tan said the companies were selected based on their brand attributes and successes, as well as their effect on Singapore.
The stamps will be released over an 18-month period until the end of the 2004 World Stamp Championships, which Singapore will host.
CNETAsia's Winston Chai reported from Singapore.


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No Man's Sky studio Hello Games has announced that it's surprise-released remasters of its debut Joe Danger games on Apple devices.
Before it gained notoriety for making No Man's Sky, Hello Games cut its teeth with Joe Danger - a sidescrolling mobile series. Now, ahead of the character's tenth birthday, Hello Games has revealed that both Joe Danger and Joe Danger Infinity have been remastered for iOS15 and are available as of today from the App Store.
The remasters see a number of enhancements over their predecessors. Improved graphics, a new engine, and upped framerates are present in both titles, while Joe Danger Infinity will also gain the added benefit of gamepad and ProMotion support for those who are interested. To cap off the good news, Hello Games has also revealed that any fans who already own either game will receive an update today for free.
Studio head Sean Murray added that, at a later date, both games will be "fully playable for free online".
Having originally sold over a million copies, Joe Danger unfortunately became a casualty of the Apple App store, as iOS looked to cull older games that were no longer supported by the latest Apple devices. While Hello Games founder Sean Murray admits that the success of No Man's Sky left Joe Danger slightly unloved, he says that the team has been working for the past two years to bring the character back to life, piece by piece through eight years of Unity updates.


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Equifax: 400k UK accounts ‘may be compromised’
Written by Chris Lemmon
Equifax has confirmed that the personal information of around 400,000 UK consumers may have been breached in its recent US cyber attack – which has also now seen the company’s CIO and CSO step down.
The Equifax statement said that while UK systems were not affected by the US attack, a file containing UK consumer information may potentially have been accessed. This was due to a process failure, corrected in 2016, which led to a limited amount of UK data being stored in the US between 2011 and 2016.
The information was restricted to name, date of birth, email address and a telephone number. Equifax confirmed that the data does not include any residential address information, password information or financial data. Having concluded the initial assessment, Equifax established that it is likely to need to contact the affected consumers in order to offer them appropriate advice and a range of services to help safeguard and reassure them.
Equifax will also incorporate web and social media monitoring alerts for those affected, and provide links to services provided by other UK regulated organisations which these consumers may prefer to take up in addition to or instead of the free services provided by Equifax.
Patricio Remon, president at Equifax, said: “We apologise for this failure to protect UK consumer data. Our immediate focus is to support those affected by this incident and to ensure we make all of the necessary improvements and investments to strengthen our security and processes going forward.”
Following the breach in July – which only came to light earlier this month – Equifax’s chief information officer, David Webb, and chief security, Susan Mauldin, also announced on Friday that they will be retiring from the company.
Commenting on the news, Dan Panesar, vice president EMEA at security specialists Certes Networks, said: “As the fall-out of the Equifax breaches continues, it is ever more apparent that not only is maintaining traditional approaches to cyber security an open invitation to hackers, but also that the mindset of most CIOs and CISOs needs to change.
“It’s all good and well having the buck stop with the CIO when a breach occurs, but when are boards going take a holistic view of their risk profile, and empower dedicated security teams working under the supervision of the CIO to have full control over policy and implementation?”


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Artists in the digital age and presenting art online, as well as exhibiting online art in offline spaces, were the focus of a couple of panels at Internet Week, a citywide festival examining the digital landscape that was held May 14 to 21.
Did you know this week is Internet Week New York? Surprise! And there are art events, too. Tonight only, curator Lindsay Howard will be taking over Internet Garage, a Williamsburg internet cafe, with a team of net artists.


text: Bungie hasn't been shy about teasing Destiny updates in between The Taken King and its sequel, but what are those going to look like, exactly, and when is it arriving? The studio isn't spilling all the beans just yet, but it's now offering a few clues. As part of a multi-post preview, Bungie has revealed that Destiny's first big post-TTK update (aka version 2.2) will launch on April 12th with at least a few sweet offerings. There's a new quest that revolves around the mysterious Blighted Chalice strike, as well as additional player-versus-environment challenges. Also, you can anticipate a smattering of new and updated gear, Crucible updates and an increased maximum Light level with rewards to match.


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Silhouette launches virtual try-on tool
The tool will allow customers to try on different frames and styles, and will also direct them to their local stockist
As well as allowing customers to try out a variety of styles, the website will also direct customers to their local practice that stocks Silhouette frames.
The new service, which launched on 17 December, will be accessible 24/7 on Silhouette’s website.
With frames made-to-order and mostly by hand, the company said: “Some Silhouette frames are available in hundreds of combinations, with consumers able to elect the style, colour and lens shape that captures their personality and personal style.”
The service can be accessed with any laptop, smartphone or tablet with a camera. After selecting a style to try, the digital tool asks users to record a short video and take a picture of their face.
The smart camera will then “optimise” their face shape, size and features, in order to ensure that glasses are displayed at the right size.
Announcing the tool, the company said in a statement: “Silhouette is still dedicated, especially in the light of the pandemic, to supporting its opticians and local retailers.
“The brand-new tool, whilst leading customers directly to them, also shows the wide versatility of styles on offer online from the comfort of people’s homes – where we are spending increasing amounts of time.”


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Hotnews is one of the oldest and most popular Romanian news sites, focusing on general topics such as current affairs, finance, and politics. The site continuously publishes news, interviews, opinion pieces, and video documentaries. Here’s a short list of its top articles from this year. But before you subscribe to HotNews, make sure you check out its archives. In addition to providing Romanian news, HotNews also features international news from around the world.
In addition to the news on Autodesk products, HotNews also contains special offers and news from the industry. HotNews allows you to customize your subscriptions by selecting topics you’d like to receive and those you don’t. Subscribe to the newsletter from your MY AUGI profile. When you click the subscribe button, you’ll receive an email every month containing the latest news and information from Autodesk. It will contain articles and other relevant information that you can use in your daily work.
While copyright laws are not the best tool to protect against hot news, it is still an effective legal remedy. The concept of hot news has been recognized in five states since 1918 when the International News Service stole war reports from Associated Press journalists abroad. The ruling is likely to be rare and depends on copyright laws. But hotnews may be a legal solution in some cases. The next time you see a viral video about a helicopter crash in New York, remember to check whether or not it’s a violation of copyright laws.
SAP’s HotNews newsletter is an excellent resource for SAP users. You can subscribe to specific topics or products and receive updates as they happen. You can also subscribe to specific SAP news feeds, such as news on SAP development. The newsletter is updated frequently, which makes it a great way to stay on top of the latest developments in the industry. Furthermore, you can customize HotNews to suit your needs, and receive the latest news from SAP directly to your email.
The Hot News doctrine was designed to protect the commercial value of news. News that is not updated within a certain period of time is deemed copyright infringement, since it no longer has commercial value. This doctrine also applies to live events broadcast all over the world. Hot News has major implications for the media, publishing industry, and technology. For instance, the concept of copyright is likely to continue to expand beyond the news industry. But for now, it’s still a very useful legal tool.
HotNews is the oldest and largest news website in Romania. It focuses on current affairs, finance, and politics. It also publishes opinion pieces, interviews, and videos. It publishes news stories in Romanian, English, and Russian, and is updated daily. HotNews is updated daily, so you can count on timely content and news. HotNews boasts 2.5 million unique visitors per month. You can subscribe to HotNews through MY AUGI.


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Flexible workspace operator Convene has laid off 54 employees following an eager expansion.
Convene, which also provides rentable event spaces, fired 34 workers at the company’s headquarters in New York, with other impacted employees working in locations across the city.
“Like many companies, we’ve had to reassess the organizational structure of Convene to best position the business for future growth in an increasingly challenging & dynamic macro environment,” said Ryan Simonetti, CEO and cofounder of Convene, in a recent LinkedIn post.
“Unfortunately, this meant making the incredibly tough decision to say goodbye to a number of Convene team members this week.”
The company has also closed its 50,000 square foot location in Chicago Citadel Center, indicating that these layoffs may be larger than originally reported.
Currently, the company has over 500 employees across its 23 locations in the U.S. and London.
This comes as a huge pivot for the company, particularly as it plans to continue opening new locations in the new year due to demand for flexible offices expected to accelerate in the new year.


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Fair Wear Foundation
Bluesign System Partner
Haglöfs is a Swedish outerwear brand. It's been owned by Asics since 2010, but publishes its own sustainability report that shows the company is taking responsibility and is improving every aspect of its operations. But while the company is moving forwards rapidly, there are some hurdles to be taken. The biggest hurdle is that Haglöfs has not yet measured its supply chain emissions, which keeps them from efficiently decreasing its carbon footprint. But it’s actively measuring it and wants to achieve this in 2020. In order to collect the data, the company uses the Higg Environmental Module and has joined the Swedish Textile Initiative for Climate Action. But this doesn’t mean the company is currently not taking action. Haglofs has published its tier 1 factories and is working on mapping and publishing its material suppliers by 2020. In 2019, materials were 75% Bluesign certified, which means that these materials were sourced responsibly and chemicals were being managed. It sourced all its leather from Leather Working Group certified tanneries and offers an elaborate overview of where its materials originate and why it uses them. This includes 100% organic cotton and 100% responsible down. Wool is currently certified mulesing-free and the company aims to source strictly Responsible Wool Standard by 2022. Fluorocarbons are not phased out completely yet, but the company aims to achieve this in 2020 as well. The company doesn’t use plastic bags in its stores, has adopted a target for completely reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging by 2022 and done a pilot with the Repack project to improve its packaging. This is an area that definitely requires improvement. Another point of improvement is Haglofs’ energy usage, which grew in 2019 because of the opening of more stores. The Swedish brand consumed 70% renewable energy in its own stores in 2019 and aims for 100% by 2022. As a member of the Fair Wear Foundation, Haglofs has 96% of its production under monitoring, with a benchmarking score of 66. The company has therefore received a Good rating and already ensures good labor rights in its supply chain. The year before, Haglofs received a Leader rating by the Fair Wear Foundation. Although it’s doing above industry average on workers’ rights, there is improvement to be made. Haglofs is moving forwards rapidly and doing its part when it comes to improving the industry. It raised its prices on Black Friday and launched a project completely made from leftovers to make a statement, which shows that the company is willing to go the extra mile. However, measurements of its carbon footprint and appropriate climate action is needed first.


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AWS is releasing Amazon ElastiCache Serverless, a new serverless option that allows customers to create a cache in under a minute and instantly scale capacity based on application traffic patterns.
ElastiCache Serverless is compatible with two popular open-source caching solutions, Redis and Memcached.
ElastiCache Serverless can be used as a cache for even the most demanding workloads without spending time in capacity planning or requiring caching expertise, according to AWS.
ElastiCache Serverless constantly monitors users’ application’s memory, CPU, and network resource utilization and scales instantly to accommodate changes to the access patterns of workloads it serves.
Users can create a highly available cache with data automatically replicated across multiple Availability Zones and up to 99.99% availability Service Level Agreement (SLA) for all workloads, which saves time and money, according to the company.
With ElastiCache Serverless, there are no upfront costs, and users pay for only the resources used.
Amazon ElastiCache Serverless is now available in all commercial AWS Regions, including China.
For more information about this news, visit https://aws.amazon.com.


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Weibo Corporation (NASDAQ: WB) is set to report its third-quarter 2019 earnings results on Thursday before the market opens. The top line will be benefited from advertising and marketing while gaming could hinder growth. The bottom line, meanwhile, will be hurt by higher costs and expenses arising from the investments in the creation of content.
For the third quarter, Weibo estimates net revenues to increase 6-9% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. The company has been relishing an increase in engagement by the users. However, this is likely to decline in the future as users are shifting from microblogs to specific social media platforms such as WeChat and ByteDance.
The company will also be impacted by the soft advertising market, falling engagement, and competitive pressure from private short-video platform players. The cost optimization has been a crucial part of Weibo since the past year as the company is looking into ways to achieve improved margins.
Also, Weibo has been struggling to catch the attention of the people as there remained a decelerating trend seen for the Weibo main app. The company has been facing immense competition from short-form videos platform ByteDance and Kuaishou while TikTok is turning into the fastest growing media app in China in terms of active users.
Both the platforms are likely to turn public next year. This is likely to hinder the growth of Weibo in the social media platform. The people have turned towards short-form video as it can deliver a more robust and entertaining content than microblogs. This can be seen from the diminishing trend of the Weibo microblog and in turn, hurt the engagement metrics and revenue growth.
Read: Baidu Q3 earnings review
Analysts expect the company’s earnings to decline by 2.70% to $0.73 per share while revenue will rise by 1.70% to $468.07 million for the third quarter. The company has surprised investors by beating analysts’ expectations in all of the past four quarters. The majority of the analysts recommended a “buy” rating with an average price target of $53.25.
For the second quarter, Weibo posted a 27% drop in earnings due to higher costs and expenses despite a 1% rise in total revenues. The growth in the live streaming business drove the top line higher and partially offset a decline in gaming revenue and unchanged advertising and marketing revenues.
Last month, the IPO market was in a full swing. IPOs of Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW) and JFROG (NASDAQ: FROG) had an impressive opening day in September, the former creating a
PepsiCo Inc. (NASDAQ: PEP) beat market expectations on both revenue and earnings for the third quarter of 2020. The company saw the momentum continue in its snacks business while the
With more and more people turning to virtual entertainment sources, amid the virus-related movement restrictions, video game publishers like Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA) are witnessing unusually high demand. Not surprisingly,


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The CEO of online estate
agency Purplebricks has said in an interview with Sky News that the company is
planning to change its pricing model.
Vic Darvey said that the
current fixed-fee sale-or-no-sale model of £899 or £1,399 in London will be ‘evolved’, but did not suggest
what the replacement model will be. He said that several different options may
be tested to see what the response from customers is.
Darvey said: “We’re
looking at evolving the pricing and will be in market with a series of tests
and customers will tell us whether we’ve got that right or wrong.”
Experts have been
suggesting for some time that a fixed fee model may not always be viable in
estate agency, including more latterly Darvey himself. Now it seems
Purplebricks are ready to make the change from their long-standing pricing
model it will be interesting to see what the alternatives are, and how they


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“Anito Legends is headed for a very exciting time in the next few months. With our beta testers already having access to Cloud Save and the PVP system, they are given a deeper preview of what the Anito Legends early access will offer once it releases this August 2022,” –James Chua, the Chief Executive Officer of Anito Legends
Anito Legends, a Filipino folklore-inspired play-to-earn game, announced recently that is now set to launch early access version of the game. Aside from this, the developers shared more updates and improvements players will enjoy along with the release.
According to the team, they have implemented Cloud Save and the Player vs. Player (PVP) battle system. They noted these two as “key features that are extremely significant to the game’s early access release this August 2022.”
They explained that Cloud Save will allow players to sync and access their game data across all devices where Anito Legends is currently playable. Currently, Anito Legends is available on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS devices.
PVP, on the other hand, lets players match and fight against other players within the game, offering another exciting game mode for competitive gamers.
Last June, Jayvee Fernandez, the CMO and Co-founder of Anito Legends, priorly announced the launch dates for the player-vs.-player feature to open by early July while the beta launch will kick off in August with a community tournament with prizes for the leaderboard. (Read more: Filipino-Led NFT Game Anito Legends Prepares for Early Access Launch)
After months of preparation through beta testing, Anito Legends Chief Operations Officer Erick Garayblas highlighted how this phase helped further develop the game. (Read more: Filipino-led Play-to-Earn Game Anito Legends Opens Its Closed Beta Testing)
“Letting our beta testers utilize Cloud Save and PVP before early access helps us make everything work efficiently and securely on the back end. This provides a smooth and convenient gameplay experience for our player base and community,” Garayblas explained.
What is Anito Legends?
Anito Legends is a homegrown roguelike auto-battler game based on Philippine folklore. Its players take control of a team of “Anitos” to conquer towers and earn rewards. There are currently four Anito classes available for launch; the Kiwig, the Sarangay, the Tikbalang, and the Siyokoy.
The game will essentially have two modes – an adventure mode where players can earn rewards to level up and strengthen their Anitos, and a more competitive PVP mode where players can compete to earn more valuable rewards. The game also uses a dual token system with $LARO as the governance token and $GINTO for the utility token.
For the game’s lore, the developers had a collaboration with award-winning horror writer, Yvette Tan. (Read more: Filipino Play-to-Earn Game Anito Legends Partners with Award-Winning Writer Yvette Tan)
This article is published on BitPinas: Filipino-developed NFT Game Anito Legends to Open Early Access
Disclaimer: BitPinas articles and its external content are not financial advice. The team serves to deliver independent, unbiased news to provide information for Philippine-crypto and beyond.


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Epic Games investor and co-chairman of Bain Capital invests in Indian gaming startup WinZO
- WinZO has secured funding from Stephan Pagliuca, co-chairman of private equity firm Bain Capital.
- Pagliuca is also the co-owner of the NBA Basketball team, Boston Celtics, and is an investor in the American gaming company and Fortnite maker – Epic Games.
- Earlier in September, WinZO had raised $18 million from top global VCs – Singapore’s Makers Fund and New York-based Courtside Ventures.
AdvertisementIndian gaming startup WinZO has secured funding from Stephan Pagliuca, co-chairman of private equity firm Bain Capital in a mix of primary and secondary investment. Pagliuca is also the co-owner of the NBA Basketball team, Boston Celtics, and is an investor in the American gaming company and Fortnite maker – Epic Games.
WinZO is Pagliuca’s first investment in India. A part of the investment ($1 million) was made through a secondary transaction, this after WinZO carried out its first ESOPs buy-out worth $1 million of its early investors and employees.
“We are thrilled to be backed by Steve, an investor of high repute in our growth journey. The kind of confidence exhibited by industry experts from across the globe is a testament to the scalable, sustainable and robust business we have built in a very short span of time. It's soul satisfying to be able to generate value through ESOP buyout for our early employees too. This is just the beginning of an exciting journey towards solving social entertainment for Bharat.” said Saumya Singh Rathore, co-founder, WinZO in a statement.
Earlier in September, WinZO had raised $18 million from top global VCs – Singapore’s Makers Fund and New York-based Courtside Ventures, both of whom are pioneers in gaming investments.
WinZO has grown rapidly in the last year and saw a boost after the popular Chinese gaming app PubG was banned in India.
|25 million||48 minutes per user per day||1 billion micro transactions|
During an interview with Business Insider in September 2020, WinZO’s co-founder Paavan Nanda had said that they had grown 15 times over the last 12 months, and since the pandemic began, they have been doubling every two months.
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Lady’s Island Wal-Mart is hiring to fill 200 jobs before the new store opens later this spring, a company news release said Wednesday.
Construction of the store on Sea Island Parkway and Airport Circle is almost complete. Store management created a temporary hiring center at 3 Celadon Drive on Lady’s Island.
Applications are being accepted from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday; from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday; and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.
Job-seekers can also apply online at www.careers.walmart.com. Most of the new employees will begin in April ahead of a grand opening, the release said. A specific opening date has not been announced.
The openings are for full-time and part-time jobs. Both offer benefits.
A store program guarantees jobs to military veterans who have been honorably discharged since Memorial Day 2013.
Wal-Mart employs more than 30,000 people in South Carolina, according to the release.
The store on Lady’s Island began construction early last year amid some controversy. The 26-acre site required a significant amount of fill dirt and the development spurred traffic and planning questions.


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Just a quick hit from the front lines of the e-commerce madness. One of New York’s big daily deal players, ideeli, just fired off an email on their Black Friday sales. The economy as a whole may be in the toilet, but that’s not showing up in their numbers.
- ideeli doubled revenue over last year for the Black Friday weekend.
- Visits to the site were up 30% over last year during the same period.
- Conversion rate was up 50%. Not only did more customers visit, they bought more.
- Over the Black Friday weekend, mobile traffic was double compared to same period last year. ideeli is now seeing over 20% in sales coming from mobile devices.
- Cyber Monday sales were up 36% as of 2pm yesterday.
The dark economic climate may in fact be contributing to ideeli’s success. As CEO Paul Hurley told Betabeat back in August, “Recessions are very good for businesses like ours, because there is so much excess product available, and people are looking for good deals. Most of our market is aspirational consumer, we do big brands but not couture. Partly what happened at Gilt was they built a brand around the promise of luxury discounts, and that is not a scalable model. We have a much larger target market of lower end shoppers.”
Ok Gilt, hit us with some holiday numbers and show Mr. Hurley if this whole luxury discounts thing can scale or what?


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The decision to raise prices for Paramount Plus is a controversial one, and one that has many subscribers questioning the future of the streaming service. With the ever-growing competition in the streaming market, Paramount Plus is feeling the pressure to keep up with the big players. With Netflix recently eliminating password sharing, and other services such as Disney+ and HBO Max making their mark, Paramount Plus is taking a risk in raising their prices.
The decision to raise prices for Paramount Plus will have a direct impact on their existing subscribers. Many loyal customers are already feeling the pinch of the price increase, and their loyalty may be tested as they consider other streaming services. Paramount Plus is now competing in a crowded market, and it is up to them to prove to their customers that they are worth the extra cost.
The increased cost of Paramount Plus could be seen as a sign of desperation. With losses mounting, the streaming service is looking to increase their profits. This could be a risky move, as many subscribers may decide to switch to a cheaper option. Paramount Plus is also competing with other services that offer more content and features. This could be a major factor in their customer’s decision to stay or go.
Paramount Plus is also dealing with the issue of content. With their competitors offering more and better content, Paramount Plus is finding it harder to keep up. This could be a major factor in the decision to raise prices. Paramount Plus needs to find a way to differentiate themselves from their competitors, and offer something that no other streaming service can.
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The decision to raise prices for Paramount Plus is a risky one, and one that could have long-term consequences. With the competition in the streaming market growing, Paramount Plus needs to find a way to stand out. They need to prove to their customers that they are worth the extra cost, and that they are offering something that no other service can. If they can succeed in this, then their subscribers may be willing to pay the extra price.


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Vietnamese automaker Vinfast revealed its Italian-designed first production cars that will debut at the Paris auto show on Oct 2.
It said the sedan and SUV represent the "powerful, progressive spirit of a new, energetic and developing Vietnam."
VinFast is part of Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup and is led by James DeLuca, former vice president of manufacturing for General Motors.
The SUV is similar in size to the BMW X5. Its more muscular hood and bold character lines give it a more sporty identity, Vinfast said in a statement on Sept 10.
The sedan is the same length as cars such as the BMW 5 series. It has long hood, classic trunk and horizontal body lines.
Vinfast's models have a prominent V element on the front. A horizontal chrome splint that combines with the LED daytime running lights creates an italicized F-motif, representing the second syllable of VinFast.
The V logo in the grille references the country of Vietnam, as well as the Vingroup and VinFast brands, Vinfast design chief David Lyon said in the statement.
Both cars have been designed by Italy's Pininfarina.
Vinfast is using the Paris show to raise its global profile. It says Vietnam’s first automotive manufacturer to participate in a major international auto show.
The automaker plans to launch the sedan and SUV in the third quarter of 2019. The company is targeting annual production of 500,000 vehicles by 2025 after an initial output of between 100,000 and 200,000. It also plans to export to foreign markets.


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Once upon a time we all worried about getting busted with a bag of weed. Lord help us if we did. The legal fees were astronomical to get out of the charges – if that was even possible. Cannabis legal services were all about the bust.
Enter legal cannabis. What would the lawyers do? Now who would hire them?
Those who have been busted for illegally possessing or selling marijuana are not the only ones that need to hire an attorney.
Is the Sky the Limit for Cannabis Legal Services?
Along with the legalization of medical and recreational cannabis comes a multitude of businesses that need cannabis legal services. These businesses are facing some very unique concerns. Not only are they having problems with banking, but there are things to consider like: zoning, real estate, contracts, settling disputes, copyrights, and licensing.
As is sometimes sadly the norm, as companies grow, mergers and acquisitions are happening and thus stakeholder disputes. Who will mediate these M&As? That’s right. Attorneys.
Many attorneys are realizing that cannabis legal services can provide a quite lucrative income. With typical attorney hourly rates of $400 to $600 an hour, firms can easily pull in millions of dollars in revenue strictly from their cannabis clients.
With more states set to legalize some form of marijuana this year, the future looks quite bright for attorneys wanting a piece of the cannabis pie.
The Stigma is Lifting
In one of our recent articles, we wrote about the stigma of using cannabis. The stigma does not just apply to the everyday user. Attorneys are feeling more confident entering the industry because it is becoming a more acceptable industry in the eyes of the legal world.
In the last few years, the public is turning the corner on their ideas of cannabis legalization. Along with that has come the acknowledgement of cannabis law being acceptable to practice.
Attorneys Helping to Legalize Cannabis
Even in states where medical or recreational marijuana is not legal there is still a market for cannabis legal services. Florida has faced obstacles in the legalization process and the last vote narrowly failed.
But attorneys like Peter Porcaro in South Florida, are studying medical marijuana laws around the country and are at the forefront of the Florida cannabis movement.
Still some Obstacles and Decisions to Face
Even though the stigma is lifting and attorneys are building lucrative businesses, there are still ethical questions. There are potential problems with cannabis still being illegal federally.
Since cannabis businesses are dealing almost exclusively in cash, money laundering concerns are an issue.
As the industry grows so are the attorneys wanting to be involved. Competition is mounting. Firms are considering diversifying their services and making some important decisions about their future.
The number of ancillary cannabis businesses are growing. And you can count cannabis legal services as one of them.


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Choose a section
Pro Dealers & LBM
After opening a store in Athens, Ga., in November, Kent, Ohio-based Carter Lumber today announced the opening of a new yard in the Atlanta area.
The new location, a former Stock Building Supply unit, is in Oakwood, Ga. It is the company’s second location in the Atlanta area.
Kent, Ohio-based Carter Lumber expanded south with the opening of its first store in Georgia.
The 144-unit pro dealer acquired Athens Building Supply in Athens, Ga., which opened yesterday under the Carter Lumber banner.
The company saw sales of $390 million, down 18 percent from $473 million in the year-ago period....
The company will indefinitely shutter mills in Chambord, Quebec, and Athens, Ga....
A diverse group of home channel companies competed in Olympic promotions and tie-ins this year,...
When Norcross, Ga.-based Pike Family Nurseries filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month, it became...


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UK: Distillery investment at Glenmorangie
The Scotch whisky producer, Glenmorangie, is to invest £0.5m in expanding its Tain distillery to accommodate new fermentation vessels. With the expansion, production capacity at the distillery will increase from 3m litres a year to 4m litres. The work is due to be completed by September.
With the acquisition of Allied Domecq, the wave of consolidation that has dominated the spirits industry for the best part of a decade may have hit an impasse. The families that control the next tier ...
The Scotch Whisky industry has launched a training initiative across the sector....
Brown-Forman Corporation has reported a 46% rise in diluted earnings from continuing operations for the first quarter of the current fiscal year....
At its AGM yesterday (28 July), chairman of Brown-Forman, Owsley Brown II, told shareholders that the company was enjoying a very strong start to the 2006 fiscal year....
Brown-Forman and LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton have concluded the contracts through which Brown-Forman acts as the US importer of the Glenmorangie brands....
Brown-Forman has reported earnings growth of 21% for its fiscal year to 30 April....
Bacardi Limited and The Glenmorangie Company have said their UK and European distribution agreements will come to an end on 30th June 2005. Moet Hennessy, which acquired The Glenmorangie Company at th...
LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton said today that it had seen organic sales growth of 11% in the first quarter of 2005. Consolidated sales were €3,082m for the period....
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- Early Signals: future scenarios that will drive consumption and product innovation over the next five years
- Global Scotch whisky insights - market forecasts, product innovation and consumer trends research
- Global Beer Opportunities: Beyond Standard Lager
- The IWSR Global Trends Report 2014
- Global Cognac insights - market forecasts, product innovation and consumer trends research


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The president fired off an early-morning tweet on Thursday declaring that billions of dollars are “pouring into the coffers of the United States” because of the tariffs his administration has put on some $250 billion in Chinese imports.
“If companies don’t want to pay Tariffs, build in the U.S.A.,” Trump wrote. “Otherwise, lets just make our Country richer than ever before!”
Billions of Dollars are pouring into the coffers of the U.S.A. because of the Tariffs being charged to China, and there is a long way to go. If companies don’t want to pay Tariffs, build in the U.S.A. Otherwise, lets just make our Country richer than ever before!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2018
But that’s not really how tariffs work: The US may be generating some revenue from tariffs, but billions of dollars aren’t pouring in. Moreover, a lot of the money that is made off of tariffs comes from US consumers — not Chinese companies.
“If you think about who’s actually paying the tax, it’s like a sales tax. It’s like saying, ‘I put a sales tax on producers, isn’t this great we’re getting all this money?’ And then consumers say, ‘Wait, that’s from my wallet,’” said Michael Klein, a professor of international economic affairs at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and founder of the nonpartisan economics publication Econofact. “It’s just another example of taking where there’s a tiny germ of truth and blowing it up to the point where it’s absurd, for his own political purposes.”
On Thursday, Trump will travel to Buenos Aires for the G20 summit, where, among other agenda items, he’s expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping for a working dinner to discuss the countries’ relations, including trade. The sit-down is seen as high-stakes, given that the US has placed nearly $250 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods and China has levied retaliatory tariffs of its own. The escalating trade war poses a threat to both nations’ economies.
Tariffs don’t really work this way
The Trump administration has shown itself to be pretty into the idea of tariffs. It’s put tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from multiple countries as well as on several billion dollars of Chinese goods. The way tariffs work is that the goods marked for tariffs face a border tax when they’re imported into the US.
As Vox’s Matt Yglesias recently explained, the US government with its initial rounds of China tariffs was careful to make sure the products it targeted had foreign-made alternatives:
When that happens, US purchasers switch to non-Chinese alternatives, and then consumers from outside the US tend to switch around and start buying the Chinese products. The overall impact is slightly less efficient global supply chains, some real pain to Chinese firms that need to find new customers, and a limited impact on American prices.
In other words, thus far, things have been relatively tame. A recent study from EconPol Europe found that Trump’s first round of tariffs have increased the prices US buyers pay for Chinese-made goods by 4.5 percent and decreased the prices received by Chinese sellers of US-bound goods by 20.5 percent.
That means that thus far, the tariffs have been mostly, but not entirely, paid for by China, but it’s not going great for anyone. And if Trump’s meeting with Xi doesn’t go well and the trade war escalates, the economic effects of tensions could worsen.
And it’s not going to be making the US significantly richer, because the more tariffs, the less incentive to import the goods affected, and therefore the less money being collected.
“If the point of tariffs is to reduce what you’re buying, that means you’re not going to make that much money,” Klein said.
And much of the money that does come in will be from Americans themselves. Tariffs are often passed on to consumers, therefore driving up prices and, ultimately, inflation.
Trump, who is personally very wealthy, has been rather cavalier about the potential for prices going up. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal this week in which he appeared to float the idea of putting tariffs on iPhones and laptops, he said, “I mean, I can make it 10 percent, and people could stand that very easily.”
“Made in the USA” isn’t as easy as Trump makes it out to be
President Trump often makes the case that many of the United States’ trade and economic problems could be solved if companies would just do all of their manufacturing here. He’s attacked General Motors, Apple, and Harley-Davidson, among others, for having operations outside the US.
But “build in America” (which, by the way, many of Trump’s companies didn’t) isn’t as easy as it sounds. Supply chains are global, so even when Trump thinks he’s hitting back at China over, say, the iPhone, he’s missing the fact that the product is sourced from a lot of places, and its supply chain spans many countries.
In an Econofact analysis last year, Klein and Harvard political economist Marc Melitz estimated that each iPhone 7 imported to the US was recorded as a $225 import from China, but of that amount, only $5 represents work performed in China, largely assembly. The remaining $220 corresponds to other parts of Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
“It always sounds good when a president sounds tough on trade and issues protectionist policies,” Wayne Lam, a principal analyst at the information and analytics firm IHS Markit, told me when discussing the iPhone earlier this year. “We just don’t have the sheer workforce size nor skill set to be good at consumer electronics manufacturing.”


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A version of this article originally appeared in the March/April issue of ESSENCE magazine, available on newsstands now.
There’s something special about Black creatives, and American culture owes so much to them. Through every major event—good or bad—Black creatives have helped us survive and thrive. Let’s just look at the relentless year of 2020. We experienced everything from a global pandemic, a presidential impeachment, a monumental election that included our first Black vice president, and racial unrest and racial injustice protests across the world. Yet, through all of this there were books, songs, movies and television shows that kept us entertained and educated, comedy specials, recipes that everyone wanted to try, hand-crafted items that made retail therapy a must, and viral TikTok videos and challenges, all by Black creatives that gave us joy, hope, and a smile.
ESSENCE had a chance to talk with some undeniably talented Black creatives and find out more about who they are, what drives their creativity, and why creativity drives them.
Kerby Jean- Raymond
Founder, Pyer Moss
Raised in Brooklyn’s East Flatbush, fashion designer and activist Kerby Jean-Raymond launched Pyer Moss in 2013. Five years later, he won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award, and in 2020 he received another CFDA Award, this time for American Menswear Designer of the Year. While fashion insiders have long praised his work, including the culture-shifting 2019 runway show “Sister” — in homage to the original Black girl who rocked, Sister Rosetta Tharpe — the rest of the world learned his name when it swooned over the custom camel overcoat he designed for Vice President Kamala Harris, which she wore on the eve of her inauguration. For this son of Haitian immigrants, dressing the first Black woman VP sent a larger message: “We need [everyone] to be accountable to Black people in this country,” says Jean-Raymond. “Wearing Pyer Moss doesn’t absolve anyone from doing the work. Instead, it’s a commitment to go above and beyond.” — Nandi Howard
Fashion Director and Author
When Virginia-raised fashion editor Kenya Hunt got a job offer as global style director at London’s Metro International newspapers, it was one she couldn’t refuse. The American in London has since risen in the ranks of the U.K.’s top publications, including Elle and Grazia U.K., where she now serves as deputy editor, a role she cherishes as a global Black creative who didn’t grow up on couture. “I came to fashion as an outsider,” Hunt writes in her memoir, Girl, Gurl, Grrrl: On Womanhood and Belonging in the Age of Black Girl Magic. “My earliest memories of fashion was listening to my mother and aunts recount attending Ebony Fashion Fair.” She continues to be inspired by the Black women in her life. “One of the things I’ve loved most is this collective spirit of lifting as we climb, happening among Black image-makers, on both sides of the Atlantic,” she says. — N.H.
Crafter and creator, MyFroggyStuff
If “be who you are because it’s more fun that way” were a person, it would be the wife and mother of two who’s also the woman behind MyFroggyStuff. “I never grew up, so MyFroggyStuff is a creative space where everything goes, and anyone’s welcome,” says Latoya Moore-Broyles, who can also be seen as a judge on HBO Max’s Craftopia.
Most people know MyFroggyStuff as a mother-daughter collaborative doll- and miniature-crafting YouTube channel that has amassed more than 2.3 million subscribers. While Moore-Broyles and her 15-year-old daughter, Bella Broyles, inspire millions with their creations, they also thrive on being inspired. “I totally take from whatever I see,” Moore-Broyles says. That includes reimagining dolls based on Beyoncé at Coachella and Shuri from the award-winning Black Panther.
Today, the Atlanta-based brand is hugely successful—and to think it all started with Moore-Broyles accidentally publicly posting home videos for her mother and in-laws, who don’t live in the same state, to see their grandkids. “Other people started watching the videos of us playing with the dolls and were like, ‘How did you make that?’ So I started showing people how we made things, and it just turned into this giant crafting-toy phenomenon.”
The Kabs Family
The Kabs family—Chan, the mom, Tay, the dad, and their three children, 11-year-old Teija, 4-year-old Maliya and 1 1/2-year-old TJ —have become one of our favorite U.K. families since their first video went viral in October 2018. It was a father-daughter car sing-along moment, with then 1-year-old Maliya bopping to the widely popular “Baby Shark” song. She held her own with “Finesse” by Bruno Mars and Cardi B. She even sang (some of the words) New Edition’s “Candy Girl.”
Those special moments in the car warmed our hearts, so we were thrilled when the videos kept coming. Soon, more kids got involved and the Kabs videos became a true family affair. Whether they are having a daddy-daughter rap battle in the front seat, sharing the story of Chan and Tay’s marriage proposal or enjoying family game night, the Kabs have garnered more than 100 million video views and millions of followers and subscribers on their social media platforms.
Chan and Tay, both 30 years old and now full-time content creators, have been together for nearly 18 years, and they are completely comfortable sharing their lives with the world. “We’re just showing home life,” Tay says. “There are times when you might see us debating, or being loving, and sometimes we’re fighting, so you just never know what you’re going to see when you go into our videos.”
When it comes to the source of their inspiration, Chan is clear. “Family,” she says. “It’s a big thing for us. A lot of people say it’s not common for a Black family to be together—whereas we just see it as normal, and we want [others] to see it as the norm, too.”
Academy Award-winning director, screenwriter and producer
Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, two masterful pieces of art, were both helmed by Barry Jenkins. Today, the 41-year-old native of Liberty Heights, Miami, is widely lauded for his prodigious talents—but for the young Jenkins entering Florida State University, this was hardly foreseen. “When I first started film school, I didn’t know how to make movies the way the other kids did—and I’m talking about just the craft of making movies,” he says. “I had to ask myself, Is that because I grew up poor and Black in the projects, or do I just not know how to do this because I haven’t had the experience?”
Jenkins continued studying creative writing but took a year off from film school to teach himself filmmaking and, ultimately, he was able to answer his question. “I came back, and my work was just as strong as anybody else’s,” he recalls. “In some ways, it might have been stronger. And that’s the moment where I thought, OK, these limitations that I think the world is placing on me, I don’t have to accept them.”
Since then, he’s been focused on telling impactful stories that contribute to larger conversations—like the much-anticipated Amazon Original limited series The Underground Railroad, his adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Colson Whitehead. It arrives May 14.
Visionary jeweler Lorraine West won her first art contest at eight years old. From that moment on, she thought of herself as an artist—and made sure that everyone knew it. Her confidence and her fearlessness in pursuing her goals was learned from watching her first teachers: her parents.
“My dad was a carpenter and taught himself everything,” says the 45-year-old Brooklyn-based designer. “Subconsciously, I was picking up that energy, that resilience to move forward [even if at first], you don’t know what you’re doing.” When it comes to jewelry making, it’s hard to believe that she stumbled upon her gift. “One day during my junior year at the Fashion Institute of Technology, I walked past a jewelry supply store,” explains West. “Something just told me, Why don’t you buy some pliers, beads and wire? Next thing you know, I was like, ‘I really like this.’”
As fate would have it, West met Erykah Badu in 1997 at a poetry reading, which serendipitously led to Badu and her friend Andre 3000 being her first celebrity clients two years later. Today, the award-winning creative genius literally has her work hanging from everyone’s earlobes. And by “everyone,” we mean even the queen herself. When Beyoncé proudly proclaims “Drip all on me” in “Black Parade,” that drip includes West’s bold, brass Abstract Palette earrings that Bey donned for her Black Is King visual album.
Director of Creator Community, TikTok
“I was in a serious car accident—and not to be dramatic, but I remember being faced with my mortality [afterward], which was a light-bulb moment for me,” says Kudzi Chikumbu, director of creator community for TikTok, the app that saved so many of us from completely drowning in the abyss that was 2020.
As an African child, Chikumbu knew the expectations of him clearly: medicine, law, finance or engineering. And for as long as he could, the Zimbabwe-born, South Africa–raised 33-year-old kept his head down in spreadsheets and ignored his passion for creativity. But as fate would have it, his brush with death inspired him to finally pursue life on his own terms. “I [realized] I needed to turn my life into more of a creative one and give other people the opportunity to do the same,” he says.
After graduating with an M.B.A. from Stanford, he found his home at Musical.ly—now TikTok—helping to nurture a diverse community of makers; and he found his joy in “empowering people to understand that they are creative and that they have the skills to take their creativity to the next level,” he shares. “I think of creativity as my self-care, my gym,” he adds. “I need to create stuff to feel happy and healthy. It brings me joy.”
Cookbook author and culinary entrepreneur
“My greatest inspiration has been my mother,” says Hawa Hassan, a community organizer from Somalia. “She’s always had the audacity of hope—long before it was trendy. She’s had to uproot her life and start over and over again due to migration, civil war and divorce, and she’s always done it from a place of, ‘And on we go,’ never from a place of despair.”
In the midst of Somalia’s civil war, in 1993, Hassan’s mom, who had 10 children, made the hard decision to send Hawa to Seattle with a group of refugees. She was 7 years old and alone; she didn’t see anyone in her family again until 2008. “I’d always longed for connection to my origins and to my family—and the older I got, the more I craved that,” explains the 35-year-old founder and CEO of condiment line Basbaas. “And I felt one way to connect with them was through food.”
In late 2020, Hassan, now based in Brooklyn, published In Bibi’s Kitchen, a cookbook of recipes and stories of tradition from grandmothers who hail from eight African countries that touch the Indian Ocean.


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Even so, the first infomercial of the same type we see on TV today, aired in 1982 and was for a hair growth supplement called “New Generation” which was marketed by entrepreneur Robert E. Murphy Jr. It was such a success that other companies quickly began following suit and purchasing program-length commercial air time. At this time infomercials used to commonly be shown during late night/early morning hours, although stations discovered success showing them at other times when they learned that the majority of purchases were made in the morning, during the day, and around primetime.
A9.com, Inc.AbeBooksAmazon AirAlexa InternetAmazon BooksAmazon Game StudiosAmazon Lab126Amazon Logistics, Inc.Amazon PublishingAmazon RoboticsAmazon.com Services, Inc.Amazon StudiosAmazon Web Services, Inc.Audible Inc.Body LabsBook DepositoryDigital Photography ReviewGoodreadsGraphiqIMDbRingSouq.comTwitch.tvWhole Foods MarketWootZappos
In 2013, Amazon secured a US$600 million contract with the CIA, which poses a potential conflict of interest involving the Bezos-owned The Washington Post and his newspaper's coverage of the CIA. Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said, "It's a serious potential conflict of interest for a major newspaper like The Washington Post to have a contractual relationship with the government and the most secret part of the government." This was later followed by a US$10 billion contract with the Department of Defence.
Use apps to check prices in real-time. “The app ShopSavvy is really useful when you’re out shopping in stores because you can scan the barcode on items and see if there is a better deal elsewhere,” says Palmer of Nerdwallet. Woroch is also a fan of ShopSavvy, as well as Flipp, which provides circulars all in one place so you can quickly compare to plan your shopping trip strategically.
The difference is that Amazon has data to prove what’s popular and easy to sell, and free shipping to get people to buy it online instead of in the store. (That’s gotten the attention of the European Commission, which is looking into whether Amazon is harming competition by using data from its sellers to develop its own products.) You can now buy Amazon-produced electric kettles, toasters, office chairs, knife sets, neoprene dumbbells, comforters, suitcases — name a product you’d find in a Walmart, and it’s probably already made and sold under the AmazonBasics name. Earlier this month, the company started selling its own mattress, striking fear in the direct-to-consumer mattress startup market dominated by Casper and Tuft & Needle.
While Amazon grew in the ‘90s largely thanks to its growing share of the print book market and its dominance of online book sales, it was its early investments in ebooks and e-readers that turned it into a digital publishing and book-selling powerhouse. Amazon began work on its first Kindle e-reader starting in 2004 under codename Fiona, with its internal Lab126 hardware division leading the product development process. The first device was released in November of 2007 and sold for $399. Amazon has since released numerous iterations of the Kindle, and it now dominates the e-reader market after edging out competing products from Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and others.
Amazon Studios, which was founded in 2010 to compete with Hulu and Netflix in original programming, has become a powerhouse in Hollywood, taking home both Emmys and Oscars and growing into a staple of the modern entertainment diet of many Americans. Rounding out its position in digital media is the FireTV streaming device, which Amazon first launched in 2014 to compete with Apple, Roku, and other set-top box makers. The product has since been shrunk into a skinny HDMI stick — Amazon still sells the box and now also a small, square-shaped Fire TV Cube — and it remains one of the best-selling consumer electronics devices on Amazon.com.
Bezos selected the name Amazon by looking through the dictionary; he settled on "Amazon" because it was a place that was "exotic and different", just as he had envisioned for his Internet enterprise. The Amazon River, he noted, was the biggest river in the world, and he planned to make his store the biggest bookstore in the world. Additionally, a name that began with "A" was preferential due to the probability it would occur at the top of an alphabetized list. Bezos placed a premium on his head start in building a brand and told a reporter, "There's nothing about our model that can't be copied over time. But you know, McDonald's got copied. And it's still built a huge, multibillion-dollar company. A lot of it comes down to the brand name. Brand names are more important online than they are in the physical world."
Install a browser extension. Tools like Honey hang out quietly while you shop, combing the web for the lowest price on whatever you’re buying. “One tool that saves Honey members time and money is Droplist,” says Honey’s Parisi. “Droplist watches selected items, notifying shoppers when the price of an item drops below the amount initially chosen. Droplist monitors the price of the item for 30, 60, or 90 days and will automatically send an email when the price drops to the amount that was set.”
AWS started way back in 2000 as a way to help other retailers manage e-commerce operations, but it soon expanded into much more when key project members managed to convince Bezos that improving and evolving Amazon’s own infrastructure may hold the key to a new business model. In 2006, the product as we know it today launched into public availability and proved to be a pioneer for the entire cloud computing industry, offering cloud storage, hosting, and a suite of other tools for managing entire digital infrastructures in remote data centers. The division now pulls in roughly $6 billion every quarter and continues to grow at breakneck pace. It earned $17.5 billion in revenue in all of 2017 and regularly outperforms the company’s entire North American retail division in terms of profit.
Twitch started in 2007 as a 24-hour live stream of co-founder Justin Kan’s life (he coined the term “lifecasting”) called Justin.tv, but it became very clear very quickly that live gaming content was more popular than pretty much anything else. In 2011, Twitch spun off gaming-centric channels as Twitch.tv, and it grew exponentially as online games and the technology to broadcast them live on the internet became more widespread and popular.
Opt for the second-best deal to stay a step ahead of the madness. “A few years ago, my husband needed a new iPad and we decided to brave the Black Friday crowds,” says Slickdeals’ Conway. “We went to two different Target locations, both of which were sold out on the specific product, even though we were there within an hour of the sale start time. We ended up purchasing the iPad at Best Buy, which had it listed for about five dollars more, but had more inventory available. It was still a great deal and easier to access.”
In September 2017, Amazon announced plans to locate a second headquarters in a metropolitan area with at least a million people. Cities needed to submit their presentations by October 19, 2017 for the project called HQ2. The $5 billion second headquarters, starting with 500,000 square feet and eventually expanding to as much as 8 million square feet, may have as many as 50,000 employees. In 2017, Amazon announced it would build a new downtown Seattle building with space for Mary's Place, a local charity in 2020.
Amazon, with its unfettered access to troves of valuable consumer and seller data, came upon a rather interesting business model around 2009, when it launched a private label division under the name AmazonBasics. It started first with the items the company noticed people most often purchased without thinking too hard about the brand name, like batteries and HDMI cables. But as The New York Times reported this past summer, this proved to be a way to fast track a fledgling product category into a massive money-making top seller — AmazonBasics’ AA batteries now outsell Duracell and Energizer on Amazon.com after just a few years.
Compare prices and availability by typing in your search, scanning a barcode or an image with your camera, or using your voice. Never miss a deal with easy access to Lightning Deals and the Deal of the Day. You can also sign-up for shipment notifications to know when your order ships and arrives. You have full access to your Shopping Cart, Wish Lists, payment and Prime shipping options, Subscribe & Save order history, and 1-Click settings, just like on the full Amazon.com site. All Amazon Shopping app purchases are routed through Amazon's secure servers to encrypt and safeguard your personal information.


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Amazon has acquired Thinkbox Software, a firm that provides tools for media and design content creation. The company announced in a brief blog post that it will be a part of Amazon Web Services. The terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
"At this point, it's still business as usual for us. We'll continue to provide you, our customers, with remarkable support whether you work on-prem, in the cloud or both," the company said.
Thinkbox, founded in 2010, has a portfolio of offerings including a render management system, a geometry caching system and image process automation.
The acquisition comes just a few weeks after AWS launched Chime, a videoconference call service. Both moves suggest AWS, which is already a powerhouse when it comes to infrastructure services, is aiming to provide customers with a more robust cloud services stack.


text: Many iOS devices could be vulnerable to a specific issue called the “masque” attack. This basically allows hackers to get into your phone and hijack traffic, as well as disable communication between apps. The way to acquire the malware is through a third party app installer. Many companies use this to install apps that aren’t on the official app store. The hackers disguise their malicious app as something that may be needed. The apps have hidden software allowing them to bypass user control. Apple released a software update in January to help fix this issue (iOS 8.1.3), but one third of devices are still on an earlier iOS. This will not affect many personal use phones, but company phones could be at risk. The best way to eliminate this issue is to update to the newest OS, 8.4.


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New exhibits opening at Elvis' Graceland
Three new exhibits will open next year at Graceland in Memphis to commemorate the 35th anniversary of Elvis's death.
The first exhibit looks at the 1972 documentary Elvis on Tour, which chronicles a multi-city concert tour. The exhibit, which opens on January 5, will include jewellery and clothing worn by Elvis during the shows, Elvis Presley Enterprises says.
Elvis... Through His Daughter's Eyes, which opens on February 1, will highlight the superstar's relationship with his daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. It includes family photos and home movies that show her growing up at Graceland.
The third exhibit, opening on March 1, is called Icon: The Influence of Elvis Presley. It features clothing, musical instruments and other items used by performers who were influenced by Elvis.
Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977.
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Best Brand Moments of 2015
Looking for a little inspiration for your next marketing or ad campaign? Check out CMO.com’s roundup of the best “brand moments” of 2015:
Since more than 50% of the U.S. population supports same-sex marriage, you could argue that brands that wanted to declare their admiration for the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26 ruling on the matter risk little. Even so, the outpouring of support from brands including American Airlines, Macy’s and Maytag, in the U.S. at least, was both surprising and creatively executed. It was also an important cultural moment, demonstrating that much of corporate America was aligned with the Blue States.
2. GIFs On Facebook
GIFs have been around for almost three decades, but millennials love them. While GIFs proliferate in email messages and on Tumblr, though, they had been absent from the Facebook news feed. That changed in May, when the social network finally acquiesced and, in August, allowed brands to get their GIFs on. Among the first to try were Wendy’s and Kuat, a Brazilian Coca-Cola brand.
3. Budweiser’s Super Sequel
Budweiser won the 2014 Super Bowl with “Puppy Love,” a Lassie Come Home-type tale featuring an adorable yellow Lab that kept returning to its original owner (and his Clydesdales). What did Bud do for an encore? It continued the tale, showing the same guy and what looks like the same pup, who gets loose, confronts a wolf, and is saved by those Clydesdales. What will the brand do in 2016? Despite the ad sequel’s success, don’t expect another pup. A Bud exec told Adweek that the spots don’t move enough cases, so we’ll likely see a more overt paean to the brew itself.
4. The New York Times Goes Virtual
The Old Gray Lady has been justly accused at times of being behind the curve on advances in digital media, but on November 7 the brand gave its subscribers a vision of the future. The newspaper shipped 1 million Google Cardboard devices that let readers experience “The Displaced,” a virtual-reality (VR) film about war refugees. The effort also included a VR ad for GE.
5. Facebook VR Ads
Speaking of VR, Facebook made it clear that it is not prepared to cede any ground to Google. As Facebook plans to put its Oculus Rift headset on sale in early 2016, the company has laid the groundwork with 360 video, which lets user click and drag to zoom in on an image within the panoramic video. Within a few weeks, Facebook began offering 360 video ads from Ritz crackers and AT&T.
6. Barbie’s Girl Power Message
Mattel, readying an interactive, Wi-Fi-connected version of Barbie, shrewdly countered years of criticism about its famous doll with a two-minute ad that went viral in October. The ad features young girls in adult roles, such as veterinarian and businesswoman. Key to the humor, though, is that the girls don’t exactly talk like adults, but rather express themselves like young girls do. “Can your cat fly? Because mine can,” one young vet tells a startled pet owner. At this writing, the ad has close to 16 million views, making it one of the viral hits of the year.
Check out the full list of 12 brand moments here.


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Plaid’s recent acquisition of competitor Quovo is helping to set the stage for a new chapter in data aggregation; David Jegen of F-Prime Capital recent explained in a blog post according to Forbes, “I believe the combined Quovo-Plaid will become the data access layer in the new financial services tech stack,”; the open banking initiative in Europe is also playing a role as consumers what more access and control of data; Jegen goes on to say that eventually we will get to a world where digital dashboard exist and Plaid could end up being a forward facing brand; there are a lot of potential minefields along the way with regulation, banks potentially creating their own products and more M&A that could create a new industry leader. Source.
Todd is the host of PitchIt: the fintech startups podcast, a weekly interview show featuring emerging fintech founders and leading venture capitalists. He is responsible for leading the content team which covers fintech through daily & weekly email newsletters, editorial, virtual events, and in-person conferences. He has been covering fintech, banking, and venture capital for more than 15 years, including speaking regularly at industry events.