text:
Grand Theft Auto V Hinted for a Spring 2013 Release
Polish gaming site GTA-Five.pl has the release schedule of Rockstar's hotly anticipated Grand Theft Auto V nailed down to Spring 2013, although this is still speculation until other sources confirm a solid date. The date stems from uploaded images of what is purportedly promotional images of GTA V, just several days after Rockstar unveiled an official game artwork titled Pest Control, the latter of which may refer more towards a violent heist than insect extermination. While lucky Game Informer staff got treated to a early preview that readers can probably access on its upcoming December issue, Rockstar North also promised to publicly reveal more information about the game next month.
In other GTA-related news, it's now a decade since Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released last October 29, 2002, and Rockstar is celebrating the 10th anniversary with some groovy extras including an anniversary trailer, music from the game and promotional items that will soon be available on the Rockstar Warehouse. A mobile version of GTA: Vice City will also be out sometime this fall, and will be compatible with select iOS and Android devices.


text:
Chauffeur service pivoting to offer grocery delivery
Another business has announced they're pivoting in order to survive the pandemic.
Rosedale Livery Ltd., a transportation company, has announced they are launching a new venture that involves delivering groceries dubbed Zum Zum.
With restrictions having been in place for much of Ontario for the majority of the last 12 months, Rosedale has seen a 98 per cent decrease in activity.
However, as many businesses have done, they have elected to adapt in order to survive.
Zum Zum will provide a grocery delivery service and online shopping platform which will allow customers to shop online from the Costco Business Centre to residents of the GTA from Oshawa to Newmarket to Burlington and everywhere between.
“We have secured a fulfillment centre, where each order is sorted into ‘pantry,’ ‘Refrigerate’ and ‘Freeze’ upon arrival in our environmentally friendly, recycled paper bags. More of our chauffeurs have stayed on the road, professionally delivering the orders and providing their touch of class," Craig McCutcheon, CEO of Rosedale Livery and founder of Zum Zum, said in a news release.
- Boy dies after suffering medical episode while playing basketball in Milton
- Mississauga, Brampton services will be affected by new federal holiday in September
- Large Mississauga complex used by Bell sold in billion dollar deal
- You will now be rewarded for licencing your pet in Hamilton
- Mississauga man facing charges after 7-month-old puppy dragged beside car

domain: news


text:
Get the facts about the proposed merger
If you're like us, you've been hearing tons of rumors about the proposed merger between T-Mobile and Sprint. What we really need right now are facts about this deal. So our union, CWA, has put together a website, TMobileSprintFacts.org, that shows just how negative the impact would be on workers and consumers if the merger were approved.
In fact, CWA's research shows the merger would result in the loss of 30,000 jobs across the United States. And a report out just this week (PDF) by the Economic Policy Institute and the Roosevelt Institute shows the merger would reduce the number of major wireless carriers from four to three, and thereby increase prices for consumers and depress wages for workers, not just at T-Mobile and Sprint, but at AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless as well.
Despite what T-Mobile and Sprint executives are saying about their deal, we believe the merger would be bad news for workers and consumers. Hundreds of other T-Mobile and Sprint workers have joined us in calling on regulators to hold the companies accountable for their promises to increase jobs after a merger. Click here to add your voice today.
Get the facts--not rumors--about the merger.


text:
Tourism spending increases in Savannah
SAVANNAH, GA. (WJCL) Great news for tourism in Savannah.. 2015 was a very good year.
The number of total visitors increased over 2 percent and as a result that led to more spending, In fact over
$2.-67 billion were spent in the Port City last year, a 7 percent rise from 2014.
And another great piece of news.. The average length of stay increased some 4 and a half percent to an average of 2.7 nights.
"Our visitors are staying longer and when they do that means they buy an extra breakfast or extra lunch," said Joe Marinelli, Visit Savannah. "While they are here, maybe take an extra tour, visit an attraction and so forth, we were really pleased to see this increase."
By the way, Savannah and Tybee Island's tourism and hospitality industry supports 26,000 jobs locally.


text:
A new study quantifies the environmental footprint of wasteful UI design by tech companies–and proposes a new way of measuring the sustainability of digital interfaces.
Every day, people watch more than a billion hours of video on YouTube. According to a new study by researchers at the University of Bristol, all those hours add up to a large carbon footprint over the course of a year. They calculated that in 2016, people watching videos on YouTube resulted in approximately 11.13 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, a standard unit of measure that indicates carbon footprint. That’s similar to the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by a city the size of Frankfurt or Glasgow, Scotland, over a year.
We don’t usually think about the environmental impact of our internet use, but the researchers point out that today’s websites are designed in a way that’s inherently wasteful, using more electricity than is necessary to maintain the same user experience. That’s certainly the case with YouTube, and there are a few easy ways that YouTube could update its interface to make its entire service greener.
One common practice for users is to play a YouTube video just to access its audio. In their paper, which was presented at the annual ACM Computer-Human Interaction conference this week, the researchers show that YouTube’s carbon footprint could be meaningfully reduced if the company were to design a feature that would stop playing videos if they’re running in a browser tab that a user isn’t actively watching. If 25% of music videos are played in the background of a user’s browser, then YouTube could save 323,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. This conservative estimate saves about 3% of the total annual greenhouse gas emissions associated with watching videos, and is about the same as the carbon footprint of 50,000 cars over the course of a year.
YouTube isn’t the only internet platform that has wasteful design that could be avoided. According to Chris Preist, a professor of sustainability and computer systems at the University of Bristol and one of the paper’s co-authors, other examples of digital waste include downloading documents to the same device multiple times, storing almost identical photos in the cloud, and video autoplay.
“The environmental impact of each of these for one individual will be small–so it isn’t something worth feeling eco-guilt about–but when totaled over global services, they could have a noticeable impact,” Preist tells Fast Company via email. “So spotting them, and designing to avoid them where possible, is worth doing.”
In the paper, Preist and his co-authors suggest a methodology for calculating the carbon footprint for digital waste that includes a host of estimations because they aren’t privy to company data. But their work shows that it’s possible for companies to invest in understanding more about the way their designers are unintentionally causing extra emissions. Ultimately, their model only works for very basic design decisions (like playing a video or not), but Priest indicates that the goal is for tech companies to have an algorithm that quickly assesses any interface design as well as the code underlying it and determines its carbon footprint. That way designers could take this metric into account as they’re developing an interface, as well as other more traditional measurements like engagement.


text:
Prized by aquarium hobbyists and used in Chinese medicine, the world"s seahorses©Photos to Go
Each morning just after dawn, seahorses participate in a courtship ritual in which the two mates intertwine their tails and "dance," and most species stay faithful to their partners for life. In their bizarre form of reproduction, the male is the one who gets pregnant, carrying the female’s eggs in a small brood pouch for weeks before giving birth. But this millennia-old dance may soon be over, as seahorses are increasingly endangered.
Sadly, seahorses" monogamous lifestyles, coupled with the fact that both mates must survive in order to produce offspring, actually count as a strike against them in terms of species survival. If a seahorse loses its mate, it will not reproduce until it finds a new one, and low population density suggests that lost mates are not easily replaced. Seahorse populations are on the decline, due to a variety of threats from habitat destruction to over-exploitation. They are unintentionally snagged as "bycatch" in huge shrimp trawler nets, and they inhabit some of the most endangered aquatic ecosystems—estuaries, coral reefs, mangrove stands, lagoons and seagrasses—which makes them subject to widespread habitat destruction.
Yet the most compelling threat facing seahorses is the ever-growing, unsustainable international seahorse trade, a force that has attracted the attention of marine conservationists worldwide and ultimately propelled an international collaboration to ensure their protection before it is too late.
In 2002, 32 species of seahorses were entered under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), signed by 166 nations. Under the treaty, which since last May protects all 34 known species, any country that engages in seahorse trade is required to show that the activity won’t put wild populations at risk. International seahorse traders now need permits, and a minimum size limit has been imposed to guarantee that juvenile members of populations can reproduce.
"It was a landmark meeting," says Sonja Fordham, who attended the 2002 CITES gathering. Fordham, the International Fish Conservation Program Manager at the Ocean Conservancy, says it’s always difficult to obtain CITES protections for fish. "Marine species are some of the most controversial species on CITES," she explains. A handful of countries took out reservations on the seahorse listing, which gives them the power to ignore the treaty regulations, undermining its provisions. Still, Fordham remains confident that the new measures will have an impact. "We all believe it will be a step in the right direction," she says.
The seahorse listing was largely the result of Project Seahorse, a Vancouver-based team of marine conservation scientists working with similar groups to make the measure possible. One co-collaborator of the effort was TRAFFIC, a division of the World Wildlife Fund. The CITES working group that recommended the listing was chaired by Amanda Vincent, the group’s co-founder and director.
According to Project Seahorse, international trade culminated in the annual exchange of 24 million individual seahorses for traditional medicinal purposes alone, with hundreds of thousands more taken for the growing aquarium trade. "CITES is not an attempt to close down trade," Vincent says. "But it is important that we do not over-consume. Any trade in seahorses can only be conducted if it does not threaten wild populations." Seahorses are in high demand, both living or dried. The principal importers are China and Singapore, where they are used in traditional medicine. A typical Chinese medicine practice is to grind dried seahorse into powder and combine it with herbs for the treatment of a large number of ailments, but most commonly impotence. "They have some other minor uses, but virtually all the supply used in Chinese medicine has gone to this one application," says Subhuti Dharmananda, director of the Institute for Traditional Medicine in Portland, Oregon.
There has been speculation that the increase in trade is linked to the release of Viagra onto the global market. The medicinal seahorse trade jumped from 45 to 75 metric tons annually between 1995 and 2001, coinciding with the introduction of Viagra in 1998. The popularity of this and other impotence drugs, according to a recent article in Independent Online, could be pushing Asian consumers to seek out seahorse remedies as safer, cheaper alternatives to these drugs in higher quantities than before.
Yet Dharmananda believes that "in China, most people are happy to use the drugs like Viagra. They are much more potent than the seahorse." Similarly, Vincent maintains that there is "no credible data showing a connection between increases of trade in Viagra and trade in traditional medicine." If anything, she says, the contrary would be expected. She sees the greater issue as having to do with the opening up of China and its overall economic growth, which has led to an increase in traditional Chinese medicine exports on the whole.
"We [at Project Seahorse] have respect for traditional medicine," says Vincent. Project Seahorse agrees with the World Health Organization that ancient Chinese herbal medicine is an effective form of treatment, and recognizes that it has been used for 600 years. Vincent and Dharmananda agree that there have been collaborations between conservationists and the traditional Chinese medicine community to raise awareness about endangered species.
The aquarium trade takes a smaller but still significant toll. The United States exports only about 1,000 seahorses annually, but it is a large importer of live specimens. According to a spokesperson from a wholesale tropical fish distributor based in the U.S., "Up until recently, all seahorses offered in pet stores were wild caught, because they could be obtained at a very low price." Wild-caught seahorses are sold without a minimum lifetime guarantee because they rarely survive captivity for long. There is also a demand for dried seahorses to be sold in souvenir shops around the world.
In addition to the fishing industries that target seahorses specifically, a large portion of them are unintentionally killed in shrimp trawls. Vincent says, "Ninety-five to 99 percent of the catch is non-shrimp."
??TES, seahorses may have a chance of bouncing back. Unchecked, the trade could have spelled doom for all 34 species, but the new listing could prove to be an important turning point. Activists urge consumers to protect seahorses by reducing their shrimp consumption, refusing to shop at stores that sell seahorses as souvenirs and keeping them out of their personal aquariums.


text:
A voluntary plan to restrict direct-to-consumer drug advertising was launched Tuesday by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America - with the intention of polishing the industry's tarnished public image and heading-off mandatory controls imposed by lawmakers.
PhRMA will also set-up its own advertising accountability unit. This will collate complaints from the public and forward them to the appropriate companies for action.
At the end of a trial period PhRMA will appoint an independent panel to review the process - although it has yet to explain how such a panel can be independent if chosen by the body whose activities it is reviewing.
Such a set-up is unlikely to placate the industry's legion of critics, many of whom argue that self-policing is both inappropriate and inadequate.
Ad industry executives say it is too early as yet to gauge the extent to which the voluntary controls might affect drugmakers' massive d-t-c advertising expenditure.
This is now worth an estimated $4 billion (€3.28bn; £2.26bn) annually, having risen from zero in 1997 when the Food and Drug Administration lifted its ban on d-t-c advertising.
These are the key elements of PhRMA's Guiding Principles:
Companies should submit all new direct-to-consumer television advertisements to the FDA before releasing them for broadcast.
DTC television advertising that identifies a product by name should clearly state the health conditions for which the medicine is approved and the major risks associated with the medicine being advertised.
DTC television and print advertising should be designed to achieve a balanced presentation of the benefits and risks associated with the advertised prescription medicine. Specifically, risks and safety information in DTC television advertising should be presented in clear, understandable language, without distraction from the content, and in a manner that supports the responsible dialogue between patients and health care professionals.
- Companies should spend an appropriate amount of time to educate health professionals about new medicines or new therapeutic indications before beginning the first direct-to-consumer advertising campaign. In determining "an appropriate time," companies should consider the importance of informing patients of the new medicine, the complexity of its risk-benefit profile, and health care professionals' knowledge of the condition being treated. Companies should continue to educate health care professionals as additional valid information about a new medicine is obtained from all reliable sources.
But Dr Sidney Wolfe of the Public Citizen's Health Research Group is less easily dazzled: "PhRMA's latest campaign of industry self-regulation via the guidelines announced today is both dangerous and, like previous industry efforts, doomed to failure," he said.
"Selling drugs will always trump obeying the law," Wolfe opined, while calling on the FDA to monitor drug advertising more closely .
Data sourced from New York Times; additional content by WARC staff


text:
Holt Renfrew is Canada's leading luxury retailer, offering designer apparel, footwear, accessories, and beauty products from the world’s most prestigious fashion houses, for both women and men.
Number of employees
Number of stores
Latest news & developments from Holt Renfrew
Holt Renfrew's Long-Term Lease Renewal
Holt Renfrew and Ivanhoé Cambridge, a global leader in real estate, announced the renewal of a long-term lease at the CORE, in Calgary....
Start Black History Month in Holt Renfrew
For the night of Feb. 1, Holt Renfrew set its sights on food. For one night, to mark the start of Black History Month, it handed over...
Holt Renfrew’s Spring Campaign
Holt Renfrew’s Spring 2022 campaign is starring Toronto singer, songwriter, and poet, Mustafa. The foundation of the campaign is a sense...


text:
New River Valley, VA – In May 2022, Onward New River Valley partnered with the New River Valley Regional Commission, through a grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration CARES Act, to conduct surveys of technology and manufacturing companies in Virginia’s New River Valley. Onward New River Valley engaged the Virginia Tech Center for Economic and Community Engagement for research assistance with the surveys. These surveys were a follow-up to surveys originally conducted in September 2020. The goal of both the original and follow-up surveys were to better understand how the COVID-19 pandemic affected technology and manufacturing businesses throughout the region as well as to gain knowledge about common challenges that these companies are facing.
Survey responses were collected from both the tech and manufacturing sectors during May 2022. Each sector was given a two-week response window. The survey was sent to 33 tech companies and 37 manufacturing companies throughout the New River Valley (NRV). 55% of tech companies who were sent the survey responded while 41% of manufacturing companies responded.
The survey results revealed insights about the current state of the NRV’s manufacturing and tech sectors when compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic as well as to the mid-pandemic survey conducted in September 2020. A synopsis of these insights for both sectors, including information about the operating status, employment trends, remote work trends, and current industry challenges, is included below.
The data from the original and follow-up surveys show that the current operating status of both tech and manufacturing companies in the NRV have held steady or improved over the past two years.
Manufacturers in the NRV are operating at strong levels and have successfully weathered the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the survey conducted in September 2020, over three-fourths (76%) of respondents reported operating at or above pre-pandemic capacity. The results of the follow-up survey in 2022 indicated that all responding manufacturers were operating either at (92%) or above (8%) pre-pandemic capacity. No respondents reported operating below pre-pandemic capacity. This shows that manufacturers throughout the region are operating at normal levels when compared to their operations prior to COVID-19 and have improved their operations compared to the height of the pandemic in 2020.
Tech companies in the NRV are operating at stable levels compared to before the pandemic. The original survey results from 2020 reported that the vast majority (88%) of tech companies indicated their business had grown (38%) or stayed about the same (50%) when compared to pre-pandemic. For the 2022 follow-up survey, half of respondents (50%) reported that their firms have grown relative to pre-pandemic levels while nearly one-third (28%) reported maintaining their size. Thus, a larger percentage of tech company respondents reported that their businesses were growing in 2022 than did in 2020. Overall, the percentages of NRV tech companies that report either remaining steady or growing compared to pre-pandemic levels has remained relatively stable over the past two years.
The number of employees at NRV tech and manufacturing companies has only increased in the nearly two years since the first survey was conducted in September 2020. The original survey results revealed that approximately two-thirds (63%) of tech company respondents said that their number of employees had stayed the same since pre-pandemic. A similar amount (62%) of manufacturers said the numbers of employees remained the same or increased at that time.
In contrast, the follow-up survey in 2022 showed that the large majority (83%) of tech company respondents and three-quarters (75%) of manufacturing survey respondents reported maintaining or increasing their number of employees when compared to pre-pandemic.
While the original surveys showed that employment in the tech and manufacturing industries across the NRV remained mostly stable in the middle of the pandemic when compared to pre-pandemic levels, the follow-up survey results show an increase in the percentage of tech and manufacturing companies across the region who are reporting employment numbers similar to or greater than before the pandemic. This shift could indicate that companies across the NRV are beginning to rehire positions eliminated when the pandemic began.
The number of the open jobs in the New River Valley is continuing to grow. In the 2022 follow-up survey, the large majority (82%) of manufacturing respondents and over half (56%) of tech company respondents reported having unfilled job openings in the NRV. This is a notable increase from the 2020 survey where only 62% of manufacturing respondents and 38% of IT/tech respondents reported having unfilled openings. The increase could be attributed to an increase in hiring due to companies’ growth across the region, the current U.S. labor market that is making it harder to fill open positions, or a combination of both factors.
Remote Work Trends
Remote work trends for tech and manufacturing companies in the NRV can be described as the tale of two sectors. While the data from the 2022 follow-up survey shows a continuation of remote work for tech companies, it also shows that manufacturing companies across the region have returned to mostly in-person work.
In the original industry surveys conducted in September 2020, two-thirds (67%) of tech company respondents reported that more than 81% of their employees were working remotely at the time. In the 2022 follow-up surveys, only one-fourth (24%) of respondents reported that over 81% of their employees would be working remotely currently and in the future. However, nearly half (41%) of the follow-up survey respondents reported that 61-80% of their workforce would be working remotely in 2022 and beyond. Over three-quarters (78%) of 2022 tech survey respondents said that remote work would continue to be very relevant to their firms’ operations in the future. Overall, this shows that tech companies in the region still are utilizing remote work to a large extent and will do so moving forward, but that the percentage of employees working remotely in 2022 has decreased when compared to 2020. This could indicate an increase in hybrid work options for NRV tech companies.
In contrast, NRV manufacturing companies have relied less on a remote workforce throughout the pandemic compared to tech companies and continue to do so in 2022. This difference can be attributed to the nature of manufacturing businesses and the need for in-person production operations. In September 2020, nearly two-thirds (62%) of manufacturing survey respondents reported having more than 5% of their workforce working remotely, but almost none (5%) of the respondents reported that percentage of remote workers prior to the pandemic. However, the increase in remote work in the height of the pandemic allowed manufacturers to properly address physical distancing guidelines and health and safety concerns for their employees.
The number of manufacturing survey respondents reporting remote work for their employees decreased in the 2022 follow-up survey. In the current survey, only one-third (33%) of manufacturing respondents anticipated that they would have more than 5% of their workforce working remotely in 2022 and beyond. This shows that remote work for NRV manufacturers has decreased when compared to the height of the pandemic and that manufacturers anticipate remote work will be less relevant to their businesses in the future than in was in 2020.
While manufacturing and tech companies in the NRV have weathered the COVID-19 pandemic with strength and stability, both industries are also facing current challenges that were highlighted in the survey results.
Issues surrounding the supply chain have come to the forefront as some of the most pressing challenges NRV manufacturers are currently facing. In the 2022 follow-up survey, nearly all (91%) manufacturing survey respondents noted a decrease in availability of inputs and raw materials when compared to pre-pandemic. These decreases in availability corresponded to higher costs and expenses for manufacturing companies. Three-fourths (75%) of respondents noted that there was either a slight or substantial increase in the cost of those inputs and raw materials and the same percentage noted an increase in supplier lead times when compared to before the pandemic. Additionally, nearly all respondents noted a slight or substantial increase in freight costs (91%) and overall expenses (92%) for their businesses.
The challenges currently faced by NRV tech companies center around the changes associated with remote work becoming a long-term solution for these businesses. In the 2022 survey, the most frequently reported challenge among tech company respondents was employee morale and company culture. With the increase in remote and hybrid work over the past two years, it makes sense that companies may find it challenging to establish and nurture a positive company culture for their employees. Another challenge facing NRV tech companies is the reduced need for physical office space because of increased remote and hybrid work options. Two-thirds (67%) of tech company respondents reported that their company’s needs for physical space have changed because of the pandemic. Many of those respondents noted that they needed less office space than before the pandemic due to the increase in remote work.
Overall Industry Outlook
In both the original and follow-up surveys, manufacturing and tech companies responded to a question about their overall business outlook in the NRV over the next 6-12 months. In 2020, the vast majority (91%) of manufacturing respondents reported a steady or positive outlook over the upcoming year. In contrast, a slightly smaller number (81%) of manufacturing respondents reported a steady or positive outlook for the same time frame in the 2022 follow-up survey. While the survey was not able to identify a clear reason why manufacturers have a slightly less positive outlook now than they did in September 2020, the supply chain issues highlighted above may be a contributing factor.
Meanwhile, tech company respondents shared a very similar outlook for their businesses in both the 2020 and 2022 surveys. In 2020, the vast majority (88%) of respondents reported a steady outlook for their businesses in the NRV over the next 6-12 months. This closely mirrors the 89% of tech company respondents reporting a steady or positive outlook over the next year in the 2022 follow-up surveys.
The results from the original and follow-up surveys conducted by Onward New River Valley and the Virginia Tech Center for Economic and Community Engagement show that both the tech and manufacturing industries in the region have shown resilience throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. NRV manufacturers and tech companies continue to be successful in Virginia’s New River Valley and are strong contributors to the region’s economy.
Learn more about the follow-up survey and read a final report of the results from the Virginia Tech Center for Economic and Community Engagement here.
Onward NRV: Onward NRV is a public/private, regional economic development organization whose mission is to attract and retain world class jobs, investment, and talent in Virginia’s New River Valley. It’s also a movement where leaders from business, government, and higher education work together to promote the economic vitality of the region.
Virginia’s New River Valley: Virginia’s New River Valley is an eclectic mix of interconnected small towns that each offer their own unique vibe and appeal. The region provides an abundance of cultural and social offerings due to the presence of three world-class universities, while retaining the charm and benefits of small-town living. The NRV is home to a diverse and innovative business community with companies that range from high-tech startups to foreign-based corporations to specialty agribusiness. These organizations benefit from the collaborative spirit of our region and a loyal, highly skilled, and educated workforce. The scenic beauty of the region also fosters a deep connection to nature, which is deepened by access to outdoor recreation and the preservation of our natural environment. It’s clear why Virginia’s New River Valley is “A Natural Fit.”


text:
U.S. authorities launch investigation into Fitbit and Garmin regarding a patent infringement complaint by Philips
The US International Trade Commission (USITC) has launched an official investigation against of wearable smart devices manufacturers Fitbit and Garmin, directly following a patent infringement complaint made by Philips. The federal authority has also confirmed that three other companies are also under investigation as a result of the complaint, including two Chinese-based companies. Reuters was the first to report on this matter with references to a statement made by the US regulatory authority.
According to another report by the Verge, the patent infringement complain mentions violations of four Philips patents that are for used in bioactivity tracking technology as well as alarm functions and others.
A Philips spokesman told the publication that the company had originally been in talks with Fitbit and Garmin over the course of three years to discuss licensing agreements, but the parties have failed to reach a satisfactory agreement. Despite the negotiations failing, the Netherlands-based tech firm expected the companies were going to respect Phillips’s intellectually property, just as they respect the property of others, the spokesman added.
Although Garmin refused to provide comment on the matter, Fitbit has said that the Philips patent claims are unfounded and the company plans to challenge the allegations in court.
"We believe these claims are without merit and a result of Philips’s failure to succeed in the wearables market,” a Fitbit spokesperson said.


text:
Manager, IP Policy and Programs, Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC), U.S. Chamber of Commerce
November 17, 2023
The holiday shopping season is already in full swing. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday offering discounts across a variety of must-haves for 2023, shoppers and businesses alike should be alert to the increased risk of counterfeit products that can spoil the festive cheer.
A hefty haul: The global trade of counterfeit goods amount to over $500 billion annually—impacting 325,000 jobs in the U.S. alone. In a record-breaking seizure in 2022, Customs and Border Protection agents in California intercepted a record $1 billion in fake goods, surpassing the entire previous year’s haul of $725.3 million.
Unwanted gifts: Those counterfeit products that evade detection can end up in the hands of unsuspecting consumers. Michigan State University research reveals that nearly 70% of consumers have unknowingly purchased counterfeit items online in the last year. Since 63% of Americans shop online for the holidays, many of those products likely end up under the tree.
A recipe for disaster: Counterfeit products make bad presents for several reasons. They’re typically made with inferior materials and lack the bench-testing other products receive to ensure high quality and, more importantly, safety. Counterfeit versions of popular holiday gifts have been found to contain serious dangers, ranging from undisclosed choking and fire hazards to lead paint and high levels of mercury and arsenic.
Some winter wisdom: What you don’t know can hurt you, so everyone should educate themselves and their loved ones about counterfeiters and how to avoid them. This holiday season, learn to shop smart to stay safe and unbox real happiness.
These five tips are a great place to start:
- Trust your instincts: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. So, if a deal or product seems off, it's best to keep away.
- Prioritize secure payments: When shopping online, only buy from sites that begin with https:// — the 's' stands for secure. Also, check for a lock symbol in your browser to confirm the site's safety.
- Examine every detail: Pay close attention to labels, packaging, and contents. Watch out for out-of-date perishable items, broken or missing safety seals, missing warranty information, or unusual packaging. These could all be signs of fake goods.
- Protect your data: Keep all your devices, including computers and smartphones, updated with the latest cybersecurity protections to fend off any potential cyber threats. Stay alert to suspicious websites that could conceal harmful software.
- Say something: Spread awareness among your friends, family, and coworkers about counterfeit goods. If you encounter a fake good, report it to CBP or the National IPR Center. Your actions can make shopping safer and smarter for all.
Just how big of a problem are counterfeit goods?
- A very big problem: The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development reports that international trade in counterfeit and pirated goods amounted to as much as $509 billion in 2016. From 2000 through 2019, seizures of infringing goods by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement increased from 3,244 to 27,599. Globally, it is estimated that counterfeiting has resulted in the loss of more than 2.5 million jobs and more than 60 billion euros in tax revenue losses among the G20 economies.
- The dark side of fake goods: Lost revenue and lost jobs pale in comparison to lost lives. The counterfeit trade shares well-documented ties to domestic and international terrorism, child labor, drug and weapons trading, and other criminal activity. Plus, counterfeit goods themselves carry significant safety hazards. For example, counterfeit backpacks and shoes may contain excessive levels of harmful chemicals; counterfeit electronics may melt, catch fire, or explode; and counterfeit toys may hide undisclosed choking hazards. Worse yet, counterfeit cleaning supplies, medicines, and cosmetics have left victims with debilitating injuries - some fatal.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Resources:


text:
In what should not have been a surprise to anyone, NVIDIA launched their own tablet today. This new tablet is part of their mobile gaming initiative and is a smart move considering some of the setbacks NVIDIA has had when dealing with the mobile industry.
AMD kicked an interesting product out the door today in the form of their Operton X-Series APU SoC. You might remember that the possibility of this APU was leaked a while ago by an inadvertent inclusion on a slide showing the Operton X logo. Everyone knew this was going to fold over into an x86 APU based SoC and the launch was just a matter of time. Now the lid is off and we can talk about the Opteron X (Kyoto) and where AMD sees this new product in their server business and in the market as a whole.
According to Display Search HTC intends to send to the market its first Windows tablet, and it will come with a 10.1" diagonal and supposedly 1080p resolution. While a manufacturer for HTC should be Pegatron, the screen would come from LG, which has a production process for matrix density of 218 pixels per inch (iPad has 264 ppi, while Samsung Galaxy tab 2 has 149 ppi) which would put the display somewhere in the middle of the offerings.
Originally this article was to be a stand alone item to show how the mobile world is catchin up to the desktop. However, now that we have the news of domains being seized that offered pirated versions of Mobile Apps it seems there is certainly a new push to secure this highly profitable sector in play. The company that produced the report (Arxan) is not associated with this push, but timing of the publication of the report is very interesting. So let's take a look at how sad the state of the mobile app market is in terms of securing apps from hacking.
The mobile world has exploded in much the same way that the PC world exploded back in the mid to late 90s. It was a time when everyone was selling cheap computers for the masses. Unfortunately the hardware and software that was being used by everyone was also very open to attack. The thought of malware protection, hardened operating systems and edge protection (in the form of a firewall) were still very new in the consumer market. These things were also still in their infancy in much of the corporate market. Now we are seeing the same thing happening in the mobile world. The introduction of the smart phone and the mobile “app” have created a new offshoot which is still very immature and which due to its rapid growth and perceived security has become a target for malware and piracy, just like the PC did in the 90s.
AMD has finally signed the predicted license deal with ARM to incorporate some of ARM’s technology into AMD’s APUs. This was a move that we saw coming back in Q3 of 2011. Around the time when Rory Reed took over the helm at AMD we anticipated the shift to mobile computing. It was Reed’s big push at Lenovo while he was there and we did not expect anything less from him at AMD.
Although we reported on this last year it seems that AMD is intent on reminding all of us about their new strategy. In comments to BloombergBusinessweek CEO Rory Read has made the comment that AMD will no longer compete head to head with Intel in the CPU market. This time Read qualifies his comment with a statement that is sure to be put in the same category of Bill Gates’ famous (although misattributed) “640K ought to be enough for anybody.”
It looks like mobile is the way to go these days; well really it has been for some time. Back in 2009 or so nVidia saw that and turned their attention toward the mobile world by developing the Tegra SoC (System on Chip) at the time many people slammed them for dropping out of the chipset business and fans of their GPUs became annoyed that this new product was taking priority over development of faster and better products for their games. Now, after a rocky start and three generations into it (plus a design win that could put Tegra on the moon), no one is laughing at the tiny little chip any longer.
AMD has faced some rough time recently. After their ATi purchase back in 2006 AMD has had one poor leader after another. Under Hector Ruiz we ended up with the ill-fated $5.4 Billion buyout of ATi. This was a purchase that caused AMD to not have a profitable quarter for almost 5 years. In fact if AMD had not gotten a settlement from Intel in late 2010 they would still be operating in the red. Hector Ruiz was also responsible for the shedding of AMD’s foundries. This split created Global Foundries and forced AMD as a CPU and GPU manufacturer into a Fabless state. They now have to pay to have their processors made by another company.
Have you ever wanted to grab a spot on your couch or bed and bring your notebook/netbook along with you? Personally I have not, but I know more than a few people that have (and often do) participate in this activity. These people all complain about the same things; the laptop is heavy, it gets hot, there is no room for a mouse. There are options to get around this though. Most look like TV trays for meals or some other type of accessory that goes over your lap. Again, there are complaints about this. Thankfully Choiix (a division of Cooler Master) has another option for you. Choiix is a company that specializes in computer peripherals that a very “lifestyle” oriented. So let’s take a look at the Choiix Comforter Lapdesk


text:
One of the selling points of Windows 11 was the ability to run Android apps natively in it without the need for any third-party software. It is not a big surprise that even after its release Microsoft is evolving and expanding Windows 11 and its features.
Microsoft is now rolling out an update for the Windows Subsystem for Android on the Dev Channel of the Windows Insiders program. The new version upgrades the core operating system from Android 11 to Android 12.1 (also known as Android 12L), which means the new system and app features in Android 12 and 12.1 are now available on Windows for the first time. However, not the new features in those updates apply to the modified version that runs on top of Windows. For example, one of the main improvements in 12.1 was a dual-pane notification panel for larger screens, but Android app notifications on Windows just show up in the Windows notification panel.
The upgrade also improves how Android apps integrate into Windows. The Windows taskbar will now show which Android apps are currently using the microphone, location, and other system services — similar to many native Windows applications. Toasts messages (the small popups that some apps use for temporary messages) are now displayed as Windows notifications, and the titlebar on Android apps will use the current activity name for the title.
- Windows Subsystem for Android updated to Android 12.1
- Advanced networking on by default for newer x64 Windows builds
- Updated Windows Subsystem for Android Settings app: redesigned UX and diagnostics data viewer added
- Simpleperf CPU profiler recording now works with Windows Subsystem for Android
- Windows taskbar now shows which Android apps are using microphone and location
- Improvements to Android app notifications appearing as Windows notifications
- Reduced flicker when apps are restored from minimized state
- Apps are not restarted when devices come out of connected standby on recent Windows builds
- New video hardware decoding (VP8 and VP9)
- Fixes for on-screen keyboard in apps
- Fixes for full-screen Android apps and auto-hidden Windows taskbar
- Windows Subsystem for Android updated with Chromium WebView 100
- Added support for Android NetworkLocationProvider in addition to GpsLocationProvider
- Improved general stability, performance, and reliability
The new update is limited to Windows Insiders for now, but once Microsoft fixes all the bugs, it should start rolling out to everyone on Windows 11 that has the Android Subsystem enabled.


text:
(PRESS RELEASE) -- Ladbrokes have become the first high street bookmaker to roll out the Racing Post Tipster on early price screens in 217 of their stores in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The launch follows successful trials at Punchestown Racecourse
and the recent installation of a standalone Tipster screen in the Finglas store in Dublin.
The new deal amplifies the strength of the partnership between Ladbrokes and Racing Post, after the bookmaker used Racing Post Sport video and data football content across 2,100 shops during the 2018 World Cup.
The Tipster provides top tipping and bet prompting content for every race, every day, in Britain and Ireland. The Tipster is a plug and play solution for displaying Racing Post horse racing content in an innovative format. For each race, a selection of 14 top bet prompts will be displayed, which feature alongside a racecard, silks, up-to-date prices and race details.
The prompts are generated by expert opinion from the Racing Post Verdict to Spotlights and the ever-popular Predictor, with the ability to be configured by the time of day, the Tipster will support the next event during live racing and scroll through selected races in the morning period with key stats and bet prompting information.
Racing Post Head of Retail Alan Pepperell spoke about the ease of access to information now available for customers in store. “We’re delighted to be working with Ladbrokes across both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The Tipster displays give punters the opportunity to get live content from expert tipsters across every race in Britain and Ireland, meaning customers have more information in store than ever before."
Philip Chubb, Head of Retail and Product, Ladbrokes Ireland, expressed his delight at the continued collaboration. “By collaborating with Racing Post B2B we have integrated their market leading racing Tipster product into our in-shop early price screen service to provide Ladbrokes Ireland customers with a hugely improved experience. This makes for a truly unique EPS and one that we believe is now market-leading in the U.K. and Ireland by some distance.
“This has been a customer-led project and we are delighted that we can now offer our customers a product that combines the trusted expertise of Racing Post with our own unrivaled value proposition.”


text:
Meanwhile, the world’s largest ocean carrier also says that it is now up-to-date on short-term quotes, is progressing on issuing invoices and that its delivery process for imports is operational.
The world’s biggest container line, Maersk Line A/S, is waiving demurrage and detention fees accrued by customers during the period when a system outage caused by the Petya cyber attack impacted its ability to release cargo, the company said in a statement Wednesday.
In most places, this period covers June 27 through July 9, but there may be local variations based on when the containers were made available for import release, Maersk said.
In related news, the company said it is also now fully up-to-date on short-term quotations requested by customers.
“As previously advised, we honor all rates communicated and have retroactively reflected those agreements for the shipments in our custody,” the company said in a prepared statement.
The company said it’s also progressing on issuing invoices, and that customers are able to see their invoices on My.Maerskline.com under the MyFinance tab starting, Thurs. July 13, but that due to local variances occurring, the distribution of invoices would take place over the next few coming days.
Additionally, Maersk says its delivery process for imports continues to be operational, but the company has acknowledged that the experience is slow in some locations due to manual processing.
“We are working hard on improving within this week as we switch to automated solutions,” the company said in its statement. “We acknowledge that where progress is being made, you may still encounter delays in response time and feel reluctant to return your full booking volumes with us. Rest assured that no one feels more committed to alleviate your concerns, and we are diligently working through backlogs and manual processes to be able to serve you effectively again.”
Maersk’s IT and communications infrastructure was seriously impacted and then shut down as a security measure as a result of the Petya cybersecurity attack in late June.
On June 30, the company petitioned the Federal Maritime Commission to ask for a 20-day respite from service contract filing rules. In its petition, Maersk Line stated that the Petya virus severely impaired its information systems such that it isn’t able to determine which service contracts and/or service contract rates are scheduled to expire in late June or in early July.


text:
Nissan Manufacturing Adding More Jobs in Mississippi
The folks in and around the Nissan Vehicle Assembly Plant in Canton, Mississippi, are undoubtedly feeling happy given that yesterday Nissan Americas announce that it will be building the all-new 2013 Nissan Sentra compact car in the 3.5-million square-foot facility.
With the Sentra, which will go into production in the fourth quarter of 2012, and the addition of the Frontier pickup truck and the Xterra SUV in November, there will be about 1,000 jobs created, bringing the workforce to >4,500 people.
The Nissan Canton plant also produces the 2013 Altima, the Armada full-size SUV, Titan full-size pickup, and NV commercial vans.
There are a couple of notable aspects to what’s going on in Canton. One is that the 2013 Sentra will also be produced in the Nissan plant in Aguascalientes, Mexico, where it is currently built. Evidentially, (1) the demand for Sentras is anticipated to be high and (2) the workforce in Canton is highly competitive (or one might assume that the plant in Aguascalientes would simply be expanded).
Stated Bill Kruger, vice chairman, Nissan Americas, “The Canton team has proved it can compete and win on a global scale, and it is due to this that we are adding three vehicles to our production roster in Mississippi.”
(The Frontier and Xterra are being moved from the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tennessee.)
Second, with the Armada, Titan, Xterra, Frontier, and NV, the Canton plant will be Nissan’s global center of excellence for body-on-frame vehicles. Note well global.
It is also interesting to recognize that the Canton plant will be building everything from a compact car to vehicles that can carry (more or less) compact cars. That speaks to tremendous manufacturing flexibility.
Paul Spadafora, chief engineer, Cadillac XT5, had, in his estimation, a fantastic opportunity as he and his team set about to develop Cadillac’s all-new midsize crossover vehicle for a number of reasons, one of which is the simple fact that this is one of the hottest segments going in the auto industry, so if you want to be in the game, you have to play hard against the likes of the Audi Q5 and the Mercedes GLE-Class.
Imagine having an idea that is transformed without a whole lot of modification into a series of cars rolling off the assembly line. BMW's Anders Warming is one of the few who have had that experience.
Several years back, one of the authors visited a major North American assembly plant engaged in the launch of a new vehicle program. A "ramp-up" schedule was prominently displayed on a bulletin board deep in the heart of the plant. The schedule indicated that the day of the visit was the same day the plant was originally planned to achieve full capacity production of its new product. Yet the plant was actually producing only a few units an hour! The assembly plant's tardiness is certainly not uncommon, but did contribute to our interest in the wide range in vehicle launch performance across major vehicle firms.


text:
Union Civil Aviation Minister Ajith Singh will inaugurate Air Cargo services at the Mangalore Airport on March 18, Monday, informed JT Radhakrishna, Airport Director. Union Petroleum Minister M Veerappa Moily and Minister of State for Civil Aviation K C Venugopal will be present on the occasion.
The air cargo complex covers s 14,000 square feet and has a capacity to store approximately 100 tonnes of cargo. Fresh vegetables, flowers, food products and other items will be exported initially. Meanwhile, cold storage facilities will be installed at the cargo complex to export seafood, Radhakrishna informed.


text:
It was in talks that Google is planning to bring a personal digital assistant since Google I/O 16 kicked off this month. The Silicon Valley technology giant has introduced its own digital assistant called, aptly, the Google Assistant – which will be a major competitor to Amazon Echo on the same day the company introduced the assistant Allo massaging app. Google assistant will be available on both iOS and Android by the end of this year.
Google Assistant is built into the existing technology used in Google Now, and it is also built into the Allo messaging app introduced this year at Keynote. It doesn’t mean that it will replace all other apps like Hangouts but is explicitly meant to be a fresh start for Google’s new communications division (which also runs Hangouts and Project Fi). This app is easy to understand and has a clean interface and great innovations on what you have seen in other apps like WhatsApp or Messenger.
During the Google I/O developer conference, Google CEO Sundar Pichai described the technology as “a conversational assistant” that can carry on “an ongoing two-way dialogue.” The technology is voiced enabled and available to the users across devices and similar to what we have seen in Apple’s Siri and Facebook Messenger’s M.
To get the experience, you will have to sign up with your phone number and can connect with a Google account to it. You can see usual chat app stuff: there are sent and received indicators, emojis and stickers. More specifically, the Google Assistant app has a new conversational interface used for getting information from Google.
It has the power of Google’s knowledge graph, which understands many thousands of “entities” and how they relate to each other. It is just a question of the interface, and this massaging app is a very popular type of application on mobile devices and an easy source of communication for people.
Alexa-powered Amazon Echo Speaker is a voice-activated assistant is another emerging medium, but currently, bots seem more likely to be adopted by the masses.


text:
Canada reaches for critical mass in creating new companies: Don Pittis
Young entrepreneurs, mobile capital and growing talent pool boost job creation potential
When it comes to creating new companies, Canada has had a dismal record.
Statistics Canada data quoted by the Bank of Canada show "aggregate entry and exit rates of new firms" have been plunging for at least 30 years.
But according to experts who study the entrepreneurial sector, there are signs of a turnaround. And with jobs numbers coming on Friday, Canadians could get a better picture of what effect there might be.
A new mood among young people, growing pools of both talent and capital available to Canadian startups, plus technology that is breaking down the barriers between entrepreneurs and the resources they need, are transforming Canada's firm-creation potential.
- Entrepreneurship in Canada ranks 2nd in world, report says
- Self-employment, the cash-starved Canadian Dream
If the statistical data begins to back up that anecdotal optimism there will be no one happier than Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz.
Last week while helping journalists to decode the central bank's latest Monetary Policy Report, the governor said that one of the places the Canadian economy was lagging the most was in rebuilding economic capacity, "the creation of new jobs basically out of thin air."
'A very slow process'
"One of the key indicators of that process would be net firm creation, the population of companies, and you know that's one of my favourite variables," said Poloz in response to a reporter's question. "And it has really not shown what we're looking for yet. It's proving to be a very slow process. Compared to United States and compared to the U.K. we're definitely not producing new companies in the way they are."
As usual with statistics, it depends what you measure and how you measure it. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a consortium of international universities, has ranked Canada near the top in entrepreneurial activity, second only to the U.S., beating most G7 countries and much of the developed world.
Nonetheless, Statistics Canada data shows pretty clearly what Bank of Canada deputy governor Sylvain Leduc has described as "declining dynamism" in new firm creation, a trend shared with other developed countries.
Why the decline? It is hard to be sure said Leduc earlier this month. Among the possible causes are higher wages for educated people that would make them less inclined to take risks and what Leduc refers to as "astonishing" levels of industrial concentration that squeeze out new entrants.
"You must be very optimistic and have a great deal of confidence in your business model to launch a retail business these days, when giants like Walmart and Amazon are making life difficult for established companies," said Leduc.
Stigma of being an entrepreneur is gone
But according to two Canadian entreprenuerial experts young Canadians have begun to demonstrate that they actually do have that kind of optimism and confidence.
Elspeth Murray is on the board of one small startup, Analytics 4 Life, a medical devices company based on artificial intelligence and one of about 65 small firms currently being incubated out of the Smith School of Business at Ontario's Queen's University.
"There are lots of small companies that are 15,16, 17 people," says Murray, who has worked at IBM and Canadian Tire and is now associate dean at the Smith School, teaching entrepreneurship skills to graduate students.
Whether it's the lack of safe jobs in the gig economy, or just the desire to build something of their own, Murray says there is a wave of young Canadians creating new firms. And if there used to be a stigma against entrepreneurship in Canada, it has now disappeared.
"All of a sudden it's more than socially acceptable to be an entrepreneur," she says.
And when it comes to going up against Walmart and Amazon, Murray points to Canadian army Capt. Jeff Alpaugh, one of her graduate students who is already operating a successful custom clothing business under the slogan "the world's most dangerous dress shirts."
Murray says that the internet, which has handed so much power to concentrated giants like Amazon, has also been a boon to small startups. For Alpaugh who sells his products around the world from Fredericton, using the Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify, finding a successful fashion niche no longer requires a base in New York or London.
On the opposite coast, Sarah Lubik, agrees, but she says the value of the internet connection goes well beyond retailing the final product.
Money is global
Lubik, who has advised the Canadian government on innovation strategies and is director of entrepreneurship at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., says the small world created by internet communication has also filled traditional gaps in funding and specialized personnel.
"While there may be fewer funds here, strong Canadian companies do have the ability to attract money from elsewhere," Lubik says.
She gives many examples, including Vancouver startup Kindred, a company that uses artificial intelligence to sort and select warehouse products and got its funding from San Francisco's Eleven Two Capital.
Lubik says that while the Canadian pool of talent essential to entrepreneurship is reaching a critical mass, globalized communications means specialized talent can be found almost anywhere in the world.
And as to the idea that Canadians start a business and cash out, she says that is changing too. By growing organically and building deep roots in the community, companies like booming Vancouver firm, STEMCELL Technologies, are increasingly likely to create jobs at home.
Follow Don on Twitter @don_pittis
More analysis from Don Pittis


text:
In the battle with Intel Xeon, AMD Epyc chips have grabbed a competitor for the 14th quarter in a row, but in the segment of processors for desktops and laptops, the representatives of the “red” camp are much less lucky: the company had a better time in the third quarter taken all the achievements of past years, writes computer base.
The market for notebook chips recorded the largest loss. At the end of the third quarter, AMD’s share was 15.7% – down 9.1 percentage points. compared to the II quarter and a year earlier it was 22%. The company’s current stock was last seen in late 2019, but that’s clearly not the case if a return to pre-pandemic levels is worth celebrating. Equally unfortunate was the decline in the desktop chip market, down 6.6 percentage points. on a quarterly basis, and the company’s share fell to 13.9% from 17% last year. And that’s the worst value for AMD since 2018.
AMD continues to show positive momentum in the server segment, with the company’s stock up 3.6 percentage points over the quarter. and reached 17.5%, a year earlier it was only 10.2%. The performance superiority continues to pay off: Even if the recently introduced Genoa processor family hadn’t appeared by the end of the quarter, the company would have further increased the stake with Milan, as Sapphire Rapids is definitely not appearing this year.
In average selling price (ASP), AMD gained 8pp over the year while Intel lost 12pp. Finally, the Reds should once again thank the console chip segment: PlayStation and Xbox are flying into the millions and sales compared to before continue to grow throughout the year. As a result, AMD sells more console chips than laptop, desktop, and server processors combined.


text:
At a hearing held yesterday in Boston federal court, Toysmart said it would temporarily remove the customer list, which the company had attempted to auction to pay off its debts, because it had not received an acceptable offer.
"The debtor said that because of all of the objections being filed (against the sale of its customer list), no bidder was wanting to come forward," said Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General Pam Kogut. "All of the objections had chilled the possibility of a sale." But this does not mean Toysmart will no longer consider the sale of its list, she added.
Representatives for Toysmart could not be reached for comment.
Kogut is part of a coalition of 39 states' attorneys general, led by Massachusetts, that last week filed an objection in federal court to block Toysmart's proposed sale of its customer list. Lawyers said the sale goes against the company's earlier promise to safeguard consumer information and never share that information with a third party.
Toysmart, which filed for bankruptcy in June, is one of several failed e-commerce companies that either have sold or were trying to sell customer information, such as home and email addresses, phone numbers, transaction histories and family profiles.
CNET News.com reported in June that Boo.com had sold its customer list to Fashionmall.com. Toysmart and Craftshop.com included customer information with the rest of the assets they were trying to liquidate. Craftshop last week reversed itself, quietly pulling its customer information from its list of assets. Craftshop's list is no longer for sale, said former Craftshop CEO Angus Mackey.
Just last week, the Federal Trade Commission reached an agreement with Toysmart about earlier charges relating to the sale of confidential customer information. Under the agreement, the Waltham, Mass.-based company must withdraw the customer information as a separate item on its list of assets. The list may only be sold if it is packaged with the entire Web site. In addition, the company must find a suitable buyer or "an entity that is in a related market" and one that agrees to be "Toysmart's successor-in-interest" to the customer information.
Still, Kogut said she and other lawyers are standing by their objection and don't believe the FTC settlement went far enough.
"Our concern with the FTC settlement is that it didn't provide notice and consent to the consumers," she said. "Under the circumstances with this case, Toysmart said it would never share their customer list, so consumers should have a say in this. They relied on that promise. The decision should rest with (the consumers) in light of the promise that Toysmart made."
Walt Disney, the majority owner of Toysmart, recently offered to buy the company's customer list to ensure consumers' privacy. But the attorneys general against the sale said that while Disney may protect consumer information or even destroy the list, Toysmart would in fact be selling the list to a third party, which again goes against its initial promise to customers.
Kogut added that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Carol Kenner has yet to rule on the FTC-Toysmart settlement and indicated in court that she felt the states had a strong case against the company.
The next court date has not been set.


text:
Google recently started shipping Pixel Folds, and already devices are breaking. The $1,800 folding phone resembles Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold series in that it offers a 7.6-inch inner display that can be folded in half and features ultra-thin glass with a plastic protector to shield its screen – but unfortunately this latter feature leaves gaps that trap dust particles and puncture its OLED when the device closes shut.
Ron Amadeo from Ars Technica discovered this issue with his Pixel Fold. Within just four days of use, the bottom portion of its display had turned white and stopped responding to touch inputs; he believes a piece of dust had lodged itself between its plastic layer and bezels, then was blasted down upon by closing the device, puncturing and ultimately killing off an OLED display panel and eventually leading to its death.
Amadeo did not treat his Pixel Fold roughly and believes it to be a design flaw that affects everyone who uses foldable phones, including himself. According to Amadeo, dust particles tend to get trapped between the two halves of the inner screen protector when folding devices inward causing scratches when being folded back up again.
The Pixel Fold’s design forces users to fold it in landscape orientation, leaving its screen vulnerable to more dust particles than if used portrait mode. Furthermore, its gap makes it easier for dirt particles to adhere themselves inside of it.
This issue isn’t limited to Pixel Fold users alone – other users are reporting similar problems with their foldables as well. One Reddit user from r/PixelFold reported their crease had developed horizontal cracks after only 24 hours of ownership while another experienced a bright pink line appear shortly thereafter in their fold’s display.
These issues could turn some customers off who had considered purchasing the Pixel Fold. Google’s customer service record hasn’t exactly been stellar and many Pixel owners have turned to Reddit for assistance – one user on r/floatingOnTheForth detailed an upsetting story where they were told they needed a replacement phone as their broken Pixel Fold had to be sent back for repairs.
This issue won’t directly impact Pixel Fold sales, but it could affect its popularity and credibility as a foldable device. It would be difficult to justify spending so much on a phone that breaks in mere days; we hope Google addresses its issues as quickly as possible as they promise five years of OS and security updates for this device.


text:
This isn’t the first time Tesla has used a tempting incentive to boost its earnings, but this one is over the top. With Tesla aiming to deliver 500,000 vehicles before the end of the year, the company is pulling out all the stops to reach its goal.
When looking at the first three quarters, Tesla produced a total of 329,980 vehicles, meaning the Californian firm will have to manufacture around 170,020 units throughout the fourth quarter. A 17.2% increase from the previous personal record quarter from the firm.
The automaker was previously offering the usual free Supercharging as an incentive, but new reports are suggesting Tesla has authorized its staff to offer three months of a free Full Self-Driving package to individuals who are available to accept delivery before the years end (via Elecktrek).
New Tesla owners will receive access to the following features for free for three months:
-Navigate on Autopilot: automatic driving from highway on-ramp to off-ramp including interchanges and overtaking slower cars.
-Auto Lane Change: automatic lane changes while driving on the highway.
-Autopark: both parallel and perpendicular spaces.
-Summon: your parked car will come find you anywhere in a parking lot. Really.
-Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control: assisted stops at traffic controlled intersections.
Tesla currently offers its Full Self-Driving package for $10,000, with plans to release the package in the form of a monthly subscription service “early next year.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk however, has reiterated that buying the FSD package is the smartest move financially: “I should say, it will still make sense to buy FSD as an option as in our view, buying FSD is an investment in the future. And we are confident that it is an investment that will pay off to the consumer — to the benefit of the consumer. In my opinion, buying FSD option is something people will not regret doing”
Musk said in an email addressed to employees last weekend, that Tesla is still capable of achieving 500,000 cars in 2020, stating “Please go all out to make it happen. This is a great milestone to rally the company around achieving. All the critics who, as recently as two years ago said that we’d never make it, also called our target of half a million in 2020 “impossible”. The heck with them, we are doing it!”


text:
Sprint is showing generosity to residents impacted by Hurricane Isaac.
The nation’s third-largest wireless carrier on Wednesday revealed it is waiving late fees, overage charges, roaming fees and call forwarding charges in the Gulf Coast region for Sprint services customers used between Aug. 29 and Aug. 30.
Sprint said its waiver affects customers in certain coastal areas in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
For a limited time, Sprint also is offering customers displaced by the hurricane a 50 percent discount on certain charging accessories.
Take a deeper dive into mobile-first marketing with expert advice on optimizing your 2019 digital sales and marketi… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
December 12 2018 @ 16:40:06 UTC
.@bittitan has hired industry veteran Tony Rummans as vice president of global sales. goo.gl/fb/YvwTAe
December 12 2018 @ 14:45:30 UTC


text:
A new BCG report analyzing Russia’s most innovative companies suggests that being able to react quickly to changing economic conditions and being able to attract the best and brightest talent are two of the most valuable traits of innovators in emerging markets.
An Ozon.ru employee in the company's central office in Moscow. Photo: ITAR-TASS / Maksim Shemetov
As Western pressure builds to enact sanctions against entire sectors of the Russian economy, it will force Russian companies to rethink their business strategies. It will force them to consider new export markets, find new supply chain partners and explore new ways of circumventing potential bans on certain financial transactions. The old ways of winning for Russian companies – relying on the growth of a new consumer class in Russia’s biggest cities and profiting from the emergence of new market opportunities via global trade liberalization – may no longer be enough.
On July 10, international consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG) released a comprehensive, 27-page report on the Top 50 innovative companies in emerging markets called “How Companies in Emerging Markets Are Winning At Home.” Included in the list were four Russian companies – Ozon.ru, Mail.ru, Bashneft and Tinkoff Credit Systems Bank. All of them might be considered part of Russia’s growing cadre of “innovation champions” – the companies performing at the highest levels, delivering the highest returns to stakeholders, and establishing new best practices for other companies to follow. Their collective experience in navigating the Russian market over the past few years might be used as models for Russian companies concerned about the looming impact of economic sanctions.
Companies that made it into the BCG Top 50 were chosen for their ability to “operate at warp speed,” their ability to “adapt to uncertainty and circumstance,” and their ability to “build talent engines.” All three of these factors have immediate implications for the current situation that Russian companies face – an uncertain geopolitical situation, the need to react quickly to changing economic conditions and the premium placed on the ability to attract and retain top talent in order to prevent a “brain drain” abroad.
For example, on page 18 of the report, BCG profiles e-commerce company Ozon.ru (think of it as a Russian Amazon.com, controlling 63 percent of the online book market in Russia) for its ability to “adapt to uncertainty and circumstance.” The company successfully addressed two major problems within Russia – “slow, unreliable postal deliveries” and “low credit-card usage” – and turned those problems into advantages. Ozon.ru has created an alternative distribution network that almost entirely bypasses the Russian postal service and has invested in electronic payment technology to attract customers wary of paying with plastic rather than cash.
And, there are also encouraging signs for Russia’s oil and gas sector, which continues to be the most important component of Russia’s economic growth. It is, after all, Russia’s oil and gas companies that will be constructing massive pipelines to China as part of the nation’s pivot to Asia and Russia’s massive $400 billion oil deal with China. On page 10 of the report, BCG gives credit to Bashneft for “shaking up the largely state-owned oil-and-gas industry by reinvigorating exploration and production in legacy regions and launching new projects.” Over the past five years, Bashneft has boosted output by more than 37 percent while simultaneously modernizing and improving the efficiency of its refineries.
There’s still plenty of hard work ahead as Russia works to modernize its economy. Of the BCG Top 50 most innovative companies in emerging markets, only four are from Russia – and that was before the latest call for stronger Western sanctions against Russia. By comparison, other nations in the BRICS fared better: China had ten of the Top 50 companies, India had eight, and Brazil had five. Moreover, there were no companies included from Central Asia or from any of the nations in Russia’s new Eurasian Union – a troubling sign if Russia ever hopes to build a competitive trade bloc with neighbor countries like Kazakhstan.
Ultimately, success in any emerging market is a direct function of being able to attract the best and the brightest. BCG refers to this as the ability to “build talent engines.” The best, most innovative companies find a way to “hire top local talent and build an engaging and rewarding environment so that the hires will stay.” They focus on training these workers and developing leaders, and most importantly, do not give them any reason to travel across borders in search of more rewarding economic opportunities. That’s going to be a critical issue for Russian companies going forward – how do they continue to attract and retain the best talent and prevent a massive “brain drain” out of the country?
Taking a big picture perspective, though, and it’s clear that one of Russia’s main advantages may be its access to the growing business sophistication of companies within the BRICS. As BCG notes, the BRICS will remain the primary economic growth engine of the world for years to come. It’s worth noting that 27 of the Top 50 companies were from BRICS nations. The only question, though, is whether the BRICS can act cohesively when it comes to trade and economic development - especially when one of its key members is under pressure from the West. Russia is about to find out.


text:
A leading analysts is urging tour operators to adopt a more constructive approach to the acquisitions market.
In its latest survey research company Plimsoll named 268 companies ripe for acquisition in the 1000-strong tour operators market.
Publishing senior acquisition analyst David Pattison said previously the market has been dominated by operators snapping up distressed rivals who can be bought for a bargain-basement price.
However, instead Pattison is urging operators to consider the wider strategic implications of any deals and said they should start focusing on high-performing companies whose acquisition will drive their own businesses forward.
He said: “In doing so, you take a strong adversary to your own company out of the market immediately and it will be instantly generating profitability.”
While he would not name any of the companies which would be positive acquisitions, he said many are still independently run or owned and have carved out their own niches in either the destinations or the activities they offer.
Pattison said Thomas Cook’s £21.8 million acquisition of hotels4u.com earlier this year was a good example of a positive deal, adding: “Thomas Cook to a degree is supporting this strategy, they’ve been looking outside of the mainstream and that comes in many different guises.”
He added there are currently 481 operators listed in the report who are in a strong position to make acquisitions and this is largely thanks to companies saving up money when it has been available.
While Pattison believes the trade should focus on the best-performing companies to buy, he admitted that acquisitions of any failing companies do help the market overall.
He added: “This may sound harsh, but if the industry is to develop and evolve then there will need to be acquisitions.”
This is a community-moderated forum.
All post are the individual views of the respective commenter and are not the expressed views of Travel Weekly.
By posting your comments you agree to accept our Terms & Conditions.


text:
City Car Club plans to increase its hire fleet by 50% in 2011 after securing £1.8m extra investment.
The business, which provides pay-as-you-go vehicle hire to members, will increase its 500 car fleet to 750 units as membership is also targeted to grow from 16,000 to 25,000.
City Car Club took over its rival WhizzGo last September to gain a foothold in the north of England.
James Finlayson, City Car Club’s largest shareholder and managing director, said: “Our strategic acquisition of WhizzGo, combined with a 90% growth in membership over the course of the last 12 months, meant we needed additional funding to keep up with demand.”
City Car Club has its largest operation in London plus others in Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Brighton, Bristol and seven other cities. The club will launch in Cardiff and Glasgow later this year.
The car club gives its members access to locally parked cars that can be booked online or over the phone at a moment’s notice for less than £5-an-hour.
Finlayson said City Car Club is set to hit month-on-month profitability from Q4 2010 and will continue to be profitable from this point.


text:
Samsung is ready to dispatch its latest edition of the Samsung Galaxy J7 flagship in the United States where various telecommunication companies will be picking it up. It has been confirmed that the Samsung Galaxy J7 2017 will be dubbed and released as the Samsung Galaxy J7 V, at Verizon. However, the exact release date is unknown as of yet.
Moreover, Samsung has yet to officially announce the release date of the device. Nevertheless, fans can be assured that the latest edition of the flagship will release in the coming weeks. The Samsung Galaxy J7 2017 edition comes after the success the Samsung Galaxy J7 2016 edition saw major success late last year.
The specifications of the latest device as of yet are unknown, however, we can take a hint and an indication of what to expect when comparing to the older version of the device.
The Samsung Galaxy J7 2016 was released in May 2016. That device highlighted a 5.5-inch HD Super AMOLED touchscreen with 720 x 1280 pixel resolution. In addition, it accompanied 2GB RAM and a 16GB memory variant and was controlled by a 1.6GHz octa-core processor. Samsung Galaxy J7 highlighted a 13MP back camera with a f/1.9 aperture, Auto Focus and LED streak. The back camera bolstered FHD (1920 x 1080) video recording at 30fps. The front camera was 5MP with a f/1.9 aperture.
Samsung Galaxy J7 2016 had a removable 3,300mAh Lithium-Ion battery. In addition, the sensor’s aspect of the Samsung Galaxy J7 2016 incorporated an accelerometer, hall sensor and proximity sensor. In addition, the dimension of the Samsung Galaxy J7 2016 was 151.7 x 76.0 x 7.8 mm. Therefore, it is safe to assume Samsung will go down a similar road with their latest edition of the device, with much more higher end capabilities.


text:
People still getting snared by free credit report scams
The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives every American a free copy of his or her credit report from all three main credit reporting bureaus every year. However, some are still falling prey to “free credit report” scams online.
Ads are slick, but please don’t click
Many online businesses and advertisements are perfectly reputable and safe, though the ones that automatically play videos no one wants to watch are definitely annoying. Some people may notice some of them which advertise getting a “free credit report.” It may not be a good idea to click them, as you have no idea who is running those sites.
For instance, according to MSNBC, a “free credit report” site was one of the online businesses run by Jesse Willms, a Canadian man who was recently sued by the Federal Trade Commission for running “negative-option” schemes, where a “free trial offer” is extended to consumers for a particular product. However, if a customer doesn’t cancel the trial right away, they start getting charged a lot of money. Willms and his companies bilked $359 million from 4 million people in five countries.
Ignore late-night television
Most people have seen the “FreeCreditReport.com” commercials, which still air. The format is still the same; a cheeky band plays some relatively upbeat pop tune and sings about how great it is to have great credit and tells them to visit the website. According to BusinessInsider, the site used a similar negative-option hook, where after a seven-day trial offer, charges are billed to a debit or credit card.
The site has also run afoul of the authorities. In 2005, according to the Federal Trade Commission, credit bureau Experian, which runs that site, had to pay the FTC $950,000 for misleading consumers in their promotion of the site and ConsumerInfo, a companion website. In 2009, according to SFGate.com, the website for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act, or CARD Act, mandated that such commercials now have to audibly mention the government’s service for a free annual credit report.
The best website for a free credit report is the one run by Uncle Sam, annualcreditreport.com. Through the site, consumers can request one free copy of their credit report from Experian, TransUnion and Equifax, the three biggest credit reporting bureaus. Anyone and everyone is eligible for one free copy from each bureau per year or in any 12-month period.
Anyone who needs additional copies or wants to keep more frequent tabs on their report can buy copies directly from the bureaus. It is not advisable to go through anyone else.
Federal Trade Commission
SF Gate: http://allbusiness.sfgate.com/economy-economic-indicators/economic-indicators/12345170-1.html


text: L-com, Inc. has launched a line of D-Subminiature female to female gender changers that have the normal mating hardware removed so it does not get in the way of panel mounting. The new items come in DB9, DB15, and DB25 sizes, as well as an HD15, commonly used in SVGA video applications. According to the company, ordinary D-Sub gender changers come with mating hardware that is too short for panel mounting, requiring the installer to remove the old hardware before adding the new. For larger installations, this extra step can add up to a lot of time. By offering these adapters without the hardware, L-com saves installers time and money.


text:
It’s the 2020 U.S. Open champion’s second collection in less than one month. On November 26, she released a collection of T-shirts, sweatshirts, sport tops, shorts and other accessories like fanny packs with Nike.
Latest posts by Onz Chery (see all)
- Naomi Osaka’s bag collection is out – Dec. 04, 2020
- Haiti PM: Gang members shoot at police vehicle – Dec. 04, 2020
- Bocchit Edmond appointed as Haiti’s Ambassador to the US – Dec. 03, 2020


text:
Steve Jobs' childhood home — where the first Apple computers were created — has been added to the list of historic properties in Los Altos.
The Los Altos Historical Commission voted unanimously Monday night to designate the home at 2066 Crist Drive a "historic resource" because of its association with Jobs, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
The vote comes after a two-year effort by the commission to preserve the one-story, ranch-style home.
The designation will add another layer of review if renovations to the home are ever sought.
The commission did not need the permission of Patricia Jobs, Steve Jobs' sister and the current owner of the property. But she could appeal the decision to the City Council, the Mercury News reported.
Jobs and Steve Wozniak created the first Apple-branded computer, the Apple 1, in the house's garage.
In documents supporting the designation, the home is described as the birthplace of Apple computers, where the first 50 Apple 1 machines were assembled.
"The subject property is associated with the development of the first Apple computers in Silicon Valley," reads one of the supporting documents.
Jobs died in 2011 at age 56.


text:
CENTURY CITY, Calif. Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products and Macy’s have announced the launch of their exclusive "Glee" apparel line.
The apparel line is manufactured by Awake Inc. amd features fashion apparel including t-shirts, fashion tops and hoodies priced from $19.99 to $34.99. The line will be available at all Macy's stores on Aug. 15.
“In just a short period of time, 'Glee' has inspired millions of fans,” said Martine Reardon, EVP marketing for Macy’s. “It is our goal to extend that excitement to the Macy’s customer with the products we’ll be showcasing in our stores. There’s something so refreshing about 'Glee,' and we are committed to channeling that into exclusive fashion merchandise that will impassion 'Glee' fans across the country.”
According to the companies, the Glee apparel program will be supported through a multi-platform advertising campaign including key placement in Macy’s Back-to-Sch


text:
Mitsubishi reveal Triton Absolute; a macho Raptor-rivalling concept
Search Driven for vehicles for sale
The new 2019 Mitsubishi Triton is undoubtedly one of the Japanese manufacturer's most important releases of recent times; especially given the explosion of demand for double-cab utes in places like Australia and New Zealand.
And, by and large, the new Triton is a worthy addition to the segment indeed. We road-tested it last month, finding it to be a well rounded upgrade over the previous model — both in terms of the (admittedly divisive) styling changes and in terms of new technology.
Now, Mitsubishi have revealed an enthusiast-focused model at the Bangkok Auto Show overnight.
It's called the Mitsubishi Triton Absolute, and — yes — it is still currently just a concept vehicle. But, judging by its production-ready appearance, it wouldn't surprise us if the model's status changed in due course.
What's different on the Absolute then. Well, it's been raised by 50mm via a lift-kit that enables increased suspension travel and a more staunch appearance. The latter is naturally backed by a tough wheel and rubber combination in the form of Falken Wildpreak off-road tyres and beadlock wheels. A blackened grill adds to the 'murdered out' aesthetic.
There's also, weirdly, a lot of carbon fibre. The light-weight material appears on the revised wide-body fender flares, as well as on the tailgate (which itself sports a big, proud, indented Mitsubishi logo).
Red and grey accents scattered along the front and rear skid plates and roof-mounted red grab handles above the doors and bed are among the other styling changes, while buyers hoping to hit the dunes and the dirt at night also get a roof-mounted LED light bar.
The aforementioned suspension changes appear to be the only performance differences in the Absolute concept, meaning that the 2.4-litre MIVEC turbo-diesel engine (making 135kW of power and 437Nm of torque) likely remains untouched under the bonnet.
Not that this would make for a huge drama in the sales department. Yes, bigger power to match the big looks would be nice, but having a small engine hasn't stopped possible rivals like the 2.0-litre bi-turbo Ford Ranger Raptor from being sales successes.
All to question now is whether Mitsubishi will put the tough looking Absolute into production. We'll keep you posted.


text:
- House and Senate negotiators reach two-year budget deal
- Congress seeks ban on in-flight calls
- Michelle Malkin’s Twitchy site sold to owners of Townhall, HotAir: report
- GM’s Barra to be first woman to run top American carmaker
- China: Poisonous smog is a military asset, if you think about it
- Texas woman admits to sending ricin to Obama
- Ron Paul on son Rand: ‘I think he probably will’ run for president
- Cold War heats up again in the Arctic: Russian airfield reactivated after 20 years
- 6-year-old boy suspended for sexual harassment over kiss
- Voters deciding Mass. congressional contest
Latest Uber.Com Items
D.C. cab regulators steer clear of healthy competition
On the same day police announced the arrest of a car-service driver in connection with the rape of a woman in front of her Northwest D.C. home, prosecutors said they are declining to bring charges and the man taken into custody would be set free.
D.C. lawmakers gave preliminary approval to a billthat limits taxi regulators' authority over sedan-on-demand companies as long as drivers are transparent about their fares and follow some consumer-protection rules, making the nation's capital the latest American city to tackle 21st-century services that allow passengers to order up a ride with a few keystrokes on their smartphone.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick told D.C. Council members Monday that legislation and proposed regulations to oversee the burgeoningsedan-for-hire industry in the District are chock full of "gray areas" and impediments that could harm his business and the customers who rely on it.
On Dec. 15, San Francisco startup Uber brought its "personal driver" service to Washington. The selling proposition: Any time you want a car ride, just pull out your smartphone and tap the Uber app, and a luxury car will respond within minutes. You can even watch your phone map as the car gets closer.


text:
16. March 2020
This is an updated version of the Report 42, which now includes Estonian trade data for 2019.
Joint Declaration of the Prague Eastern Partnership Summit on 7 May 2009 stated: “Open
markets and economic integration are essential to the sustainable economic development of
the partner countries and to underpin political stabilization.” After ten years of Partnership,
it is possible to say that the potential for trade is below the potential level. In general, the
trade between the EU and the Partnership countries is on a similar level as it was in 2008.
Looking forwards to post-2020, it is clear that further progress in trade is a crucial element
of the development of the EaP and relations with the partner countries.
Four Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries are members of the WTO – Georgia (2000), Moldova
(2001), Armenia (2003) and Ukraine (2008). Azerbaijan and Belarus are still in the midst of
their accession process. Belarus expressed the intention to conclude this process before
the 2020 WTO ministerial meeting. The absence of WTO membership means that trade
relations with respective countries have various legal and technical limits.
The European Union has concluded Association Agreements and Deep and Comprehensive
Free Trade Area agreements with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Armenia and Belarus are
members of the Eurasian Economic Union, which has established its regulatory framework
in the area of trade.
During the past decade, trade between the EU and the six Eastern Partnership countries
has had its ups and downs, influenced by the global economic crisis and political tensions
like the Russian war against Ukraine in 2014.
The full report by Raul MälkESTONIAN TRADE WITH THE EASTERN 2


text:
The brand new Streford Paddock FC home shirt is available to order now!
Designed by our new kit supplier, Puma. Paddock’s First Team, Reserves and our new development squad will be wearing this vibrant new kit for the upcoming 2021/22 season.
Engineered Jacquard front and sleeve panels. Henley collar with a single button placket. Contrast fabric roll over shoulder and back panel with wrap around side. Ribbed collar and cuff detail with open hem. 100% polyester, 140gsm.
“Delighted to have released our new home kit for next season.” said manager Stephen Howson.
“I think people are going to love it, it’s a shirt that looks great on photos but even better in person. Puma have done an amazing job with it, I expect it will be even more popular than last season’s kit – and I can’t wait to see the lads run out in it!”
The new kit is now available to buy now in adult and children sizes (using this link) – Stretford Paddock Home Shirt
or visit the club shop on the menu above.