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With China recently overtaking the US as the number one business travel market in the world and double digit growth predicted for the Chinese market in 2016, the trend looks set to continue, according to CiCi Chen, Senior Project Manager for ibtm china, part of leading global exhibition organiser, ibtm events’ portfolio. Testament to this is the fact that ibtm china, the next edition of which will take place from August 23rd to 24th 2017, has reported a surge in international exhibitors – up over 45% year-on-year at its September 2016 edition.
Chen comments: “As a result of the booming business travel industry, the MICE market in China continues to evolve and grow very rapidly. We’ve seen the direct impact of this at our annual event, ibtm china. Our 11th edition, in September 2016, was our most successful yet, with over 5,500 attendees and 7,700 pre-scheduled appointments; up over 10% against 2015. Ongoing improvements to the country’s infrastructure, exponential levels of hotel and venue development and government support for the industry means that it remains on a steep upward trajectory. Plans for our 2017 show are already well underway and we’re expecting the next event to be even bigger and more successful.”


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Samsung electronics has announced a new chip that will make it possible for the company, and others, to build smartphones and tablets with up to 4GB of RAM.
The firm has developed the industry's first 8 gigabit LPDDR4 (low power double data rate) mobile DRAM. By combining four of them, a high-end smartphone or tablet would be able to field 4GB of RAM, Samsung said on Monday.
Many expensive smartphones today have 2GB of RAM, while Samsung's own Galaxy Note 3 has 3GB. The memory increase, alongside the performance improvement, offered by the new chip will mean faster, more responsive applications. It will also open the door for more advanced features as well as higher resolution displays, according to the company. The new chip also consumes less power than current chipsets.
The chip will start shipping next year and it will be used by large screen smartphones, tablets and ultra-slim notebooks, according to Samsung. Some of the devices will also have 4K or UHD screens, the company added, though without offering any product details.
Other expected smartphone trends for next year are faster LTE network connections and faster processors.
Qualcomm recently announced the Snapdragon 805 processor, which runs four cores at up to 2.5GHz and is expected to be available in commercial devices in the first half of 2014. The company is also expected to show what its next-generation devices will be powered by at the International CES trade show.
Last week, Samsung posted a message on Twitter asking if followers were ready to unlock Exynos, which is what the company calls its mobile processors, on January 7 2014.
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and a maturity of 10 years. The company is supposed to put aside $1 million in a sinking fund each year to pay off the bonds. Dolly Frisco, the finance manager, of the company, has found out that the bonds are selling at $800 apiece on the open market now when a deposit to the sinking fund is due. How much would Dolly save (before transaction costs) by purchasing 1,000 of these bonds in the open market instead of calling them in at $1,000 each?
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Many public health experts warned that banning vaping flavors would result in more adults smoking cigarettes.
In news that seems to fit with the 2020 memes: Cigarette sales have increased during the coronavirus pandemic.
People are spending less money than they would have on things like leisure activities and vacations. “They are also switching back to traditional cigarettes from vaping devices in the wake of federal restrictions on e-cigarette flavors,” The Wall Street Journal reports. Earlier this year, the federal government banned some pod and cartridge-based e-cigarettes flavors that were the most popular option for adults who switched from traditional cigarettes to vaping.
E-cigarettes have been demonstrated, beyond any reasonable doubt, to be safer than cigarettes. A host of studies have shown that vaping is more effective in helping smokers quit than nicotine patches or gum. Many public health experts warned that banning vaping flavors would result in more adults smoking cigarettes.
Unfortunately, these warnings went unheeded and their grim predictions appear to be materializing. Smokers who had switched to flavored e-cigarettes, particularly smokers in their 50s, are now switching back to their old habits.
E-cigarettes were already being targeted by lawmakers before COVID-19, with much of the public wrongly believing a series of lung-injuries related to vaping black market THC cartridges were actually being caused by legal e-cigarettes. The Centers for Disease Control Prevention (CDC) later found, and belatedly announced, that black market THC cartridges cut with vitamin E acetate were to blame.
Guy Bentley – Reason – August 24, 2020.


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By Gus Trompiz and Giancarlo Navach
PARIS/MILAN (Reuters) – Italian pasta makers are fearful of a substantial supply squeeze in the coming months after this summer’s durum wheat price shock, as the market runs out of ways to offset a dire harvest in top exporter Canada.
Extreme heat and drought this year in the North American country, which usually accounts for about two-thirds of global durum trade, are expected to cut output there by about 3 million tonnes to nearly 50% below 2020 levels.
That has sent durum quotations to 13-year highs, stoking concerns about food inflation at a time when many economies are struggling to recover from COVID-19.
An index of food prices from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is at a 10-year high, with the cost of bread also climbing as European wheat prices hit a 13-year peak this month.
With forecasts for Italy’s domestic durum crop, which typically covers most of pasta makers’ needs, also recently cut, the country’s food producers are particularly exposed to turmoil in the wider market for the niche wheat variety.
Some Italian processors risk being caught short when the local crop runs out and may see production stoppages in the coming months, Strategie Grains analyst Severine Omnes-Maisons said.
“In terms of prices and scarcity of durum, the worst is perhaps still to come.”
Canada’s output wilted just as world durum stocks were already at a six-year low, partly due to at-home hoarding of pasta during pandemic lockdowns.
Several crops have seen prices jump this year due to harvest setbacks and mounting supply chain costs, but tensions in durum have been particularly intense, with export prices almost doubling since June.
Italy’s durum crop had been expected to surpass 2020 levels this year, but the European Commission in October cut its estimate to 3.7 million tonnes from 4.3 million, leaving pasta makers fretting about availability in the first half of 2022.
“It will be more dramatic than it is now because at the moment we can find domestic wheat,” said Vincenzo Divella, chief executive of the Divella pasta brand. “The situation with durum wheat is very serious.”
Supply from this year’s harvests may be even lower than anticipated. Unfavorable local crop reports in Canada suggest its official durum production estimate may be cut again in December, Omnes-Maisons says.
“Durum presents the greatest challenge in terms of balancing global import requirements with global export availability,” Rhyl Doyle, director of export trading at Paterson Grain in Winnipeg, said.
Buyers have adjusted to some extent with non-Canadian supply. Australia has become the EU’s second-largest durum supplier this season after Canada, while Mexico was expected to fill most of a large import purchase by Algeria in September.
Like Canada, the United States is set to see production drop by about half this year after suffering similar torrid weather since spring. France’s rain-hit harvest meanwhile has curbed European supply.
That has led some to blame weather shifts for upsetting a balance of moderately warm and dry growing conditions suited to producing the hard, high-protein wheat variety.
“The increase in the price of durum wheat is a symptom of climate change,” said Alberto Cartasegna, chief executive of Miscusi, which has a dozen restaurants in Italy.
PAYING MORE FOR STAPLES
Adjusting to low stocks will partly come from paying more for durum-based staples and switching to less costly common wheat.
Price rises are not expected to dampen pasta demand in wealthy European countries – where pasta is required to be made from durum – despite double-digit percentage increases by some manufacturers that are being passed on partly to shoppers.
But consumption patterns may shift more in emerging economies.
North African households face an increase of around a quarter in the price of durum-based semolina bread, which is expected to reinforce the prevalence of soft wheat bread.
“We have no choice but to increase prices to cover costs,” Abdelaziz Bouchireb, an Algerian baker, said of semolina bread.
Turkey, a major pasta exporter, earlier this year relaxed rules to increase the maximum share of common wheat allowed in pasta exports from 30% to 100% in response to dwindling durum supply.
Reduced demand in Turkey and North Africa is expected to account for the bulk of a 6% drop in global food use of durum in the 2021/22 season compared with pre-pandemic levels, Strategie Grains forecasts.
The International Grains Council projects that worldwide durum demand will hit a 19-year low in that period. Nevertheless it sees end-season durum stocks at a 14-year low, suggesting a tightrope for the market before next year’s harvests.
Even in wealthy economies, households may feel the pinch.
Market data specialist Nielsen says supermarket prices of budget pasta brands – those most dependent on raw material costs – rose nearly 20% year-on-year in France in October, which could augur significant across-the-board increases to come.
In the United States, stores are still stocking products made with last year’s durum, so the impact of tighter supplies has not reached the end of the supply chain, said Jeffrey McPike, a U.S.-based trader and consultant with McWheat Trading Inc.
“It will,” he warned.
(Reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris, Giancarlo Navach in Milan, Hamid Ould Ahmed in Algiers, Ahmed Eljechtimi in Rabat, Can Sezer in Istanbul, Nigel Hunt in London, Julie Ingwersen in Chicago and Rod Nickel in Winnipeg; Editing by Veronica Brown and Jan Harvey)


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US: Coach adds two executives to creative team
Upscale footwear, handbags and accessories retailer Coach Inc has added two executives to its creative team to help it develop into a global lifestyle brand.
Zach Augustine has been named EVP of global environments, joining the company on 11 March, while Erin Thompson has been appointed VP and artistic director of global environments. Both are newly-created roles.
Augustine will lead initiatives across visual merchandising, architecture and creative development and report to president and executive creative director Reed Krakoff.
Augustine most recently served as global creative director of direct-to-consumer experience at sportswear giant Nike. He has previously held various positions at consulting firm Winston, Giorgio Armani, Diesel, Polo Jeans, Nautica and Levi Strauss.
Meanwhile, Thompson will oversee creative development for windows, in-store, showrooms and events and report to Augustine.
She joins the company from UK department store retailer Selfridges & Co, where she most recently served as head of visual. Thompson has also held senior visual merchandising roles at luxury fashion house Mulberry.
Outgoing CEO and chairman Lew Frankfort said: "The appointments of Zach Augustine and Erin Thompson to these newly created roles are the latest steps we've taken to broaden our capabilities to enhance the Coach experience through product, retail environments and integrated marketing communications. This comprehensive approach to our transformation to a lifestyle brand will add excitement and cachet to Coach."
Separately, Sandra Hill joined Coach in January as EVP of women's design, while Jeffrey Uhl was appointed SVP of men's design last September.
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Sweden is seeing a spike in demand for face masks, several drug stores said, ahead of a possible U-turn by the authorities, who have so far doubted their effectiveness in fighting the spread of the new coronavirus.
Unlike most other European countries, Sweden has kept many businesses, restaurants and most schools open,
"Compulsory vaccination, not with us"
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Kia Niro EV scheduled for launch in Singapore in early 2019
According to reports, automaker Kia has efforts underway to launch its Niro EV -- a battery-powered version of the Kia Niro -- in Singapore in early 2019.
The forthcoming launch of the Niro EV in Singapore will mark a notable new addition to the country’s EV market. With EVs from Hyundai and Renault already available in the country, the Kia Niro EV will apparently give a third EV option to mass-market buyers.
As per a report in The Business Times, an unidentified source from Cycle & Carriage has said that the upcoming availability of the Niro EV in Singapore will also give a significant boost to Kia’s image as an EV maker. The source also said that the move reflects that Kia is capable of developing high technology, and has mastered the low-cost aspect for EVs.
Moreover, the source ahs also projected that the Niro EV will particularly be of great interest to fleet operators in Singapore, especially against the backdrop of the fact that the running and maintenance cost of EVs is comparatively much lower than those of fuel-powered cars.
The Kia Niro EV will be available in Singapore in two versions with different battery sizes, capable of offering a range of 450km or 300km on a single charge. The 204-horsepower motor of the EV will enable it to accelerate from zero to 100km/h in just 7.8 seconds.
In a recent announcement via a press release, General Motors (GM) and Honda have revealed that they have signed a new partnership for building high-performance, next-generation batteries for electric vehicles (EVs).
In an indication that Honda has preparations underway for India’s electric car push, the Japanese automaker is reportedly mulling the option of a battery production facility in the country.
On Tuesday, ride-hailing giant Uber announced the launch of a new pilot program, under which the company will provide cash incentives to some drivers who switch to electric or hybrid vehicles.
During the course of a recent interview with Digital Trends, Mitsubishi Motors North America’s Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President Don Swearingen shared some information about how Japanese automaker Mitsubishi -- controlled by Nis
In a recent press release, Nissan has revealed that a fleet of its new LEAF electric vehicles (EVs) will be used for policing in Japan.
According to reports, Japanese automaker Nissan would be using LG Chem batteries in its next LEAF EV version, rather than using the battery cells produced by its own Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC) battery cell subsidiary.


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BASF presents innovative products and technologies for a wide variety of industries
Chemistry and sustainability are a perfect match – as BASF has recognized for a long time. As the world’s leading chemical company, we provide innovative solutions that make an important contribution to supporting the sustainable transformation of society and the optimal use of limited resources, said Dr. Melanie Maas-Brunner, member of the Board of Executive Directors and Chief Technology Officer of BASF, at the company’s Research Press Conference held. Maas-Brunner and BASF’s technology experts highlighted current innovation projects as concrete examples of this contribution.
BASF continuously develops new and even more sustainable products and technologies. “This is possible thanks to our unique innovation power, the success of which is evident in numerous indicators,” Maas-Brunner said.
In recent years, the company has continuously increased its sales generated with products launched on the market in the past five years that stemmed from R&D activities; they rose to around €12 billion in 2022. This innovation power is also reflected in the more than 1,000 patent applications filed last year, making BASF a leader in the industry once again. “I am particularly happy that 40 percent of these patents are inventions with a particular focus on sustainability and a further 20 percent are related to digitalization,” said Maas-Brunner.
Around 10,000 employees in research and development worldwide have contributed to these successes. “As Chief Technology Officer, I am very proud of this highly qualified research and development team.” One current research project that Maas-Brunner discussed in detail was the development of materials that significantly enhance the efficiency of water electrolysis. Water electrolysis is used to produce CO2-free hydrogen that is essential for the transformation of the chemical industry.
Making sustainability transparent
To support its customers on the journey to greater sustainability, the company co-developed an internationally recognized method that it uses to continuously evaluate its product portfolio: Sustainable Solution Steering, also known as TripleS. With this evaluation method, BASF analyzes the sustainability contribution of its products and classifies them in five categories: Pioneer, Contributor, Standard, Monitored and Challenged.
“With TripleS we are transparently measuring the sustainability of our activities and how we are improving,” said Maas-Brunner.
With examples of five innovative products and technologies, BASF experts demonstrated how customers from a variety of industries can better reach their sustainability goals.
Building better roads
Roads worldwide are subject to intensifying stress, including increased heavy-duty traffic and more extreme climate conditions. As a result, roads usually need to be replaced after 10 to 12 years. With B2Last (Bitumen to Last), BASF has developed an innovative bitumen additive that improves the durability of roads and reduces the carbon footprint during construction.
Flying with improved aerodynamics
When an airplane has lower friction resistance in the air, its fuel consumption and therefore its CO2 emissions also decrease. Since the 1980s, researchers have been looking for solutions to reduce aerodynamic drag. Inspiration can also be found in nature: the skin of a shark, for example, which has tiny ridges on its surface that reduce drag when the shark swims through water.
Now researchers from BASF and Lufthansa Technik have achieved a breakthrough with the development of NovaFlex SharkSkin. This functional film reduces drag on surfaces, is UV-resistant and can withstand rapid temperature changes and mechanical stress.
The innovative surface film – covered with 50-micrometer-high riblets – is being applied to Lufthansa Cargo’s entire 777F freight fleet as well as all Boeing 777-300ER passenger airplanes flown by SWISS International Air Lines. Applying NovaFlex SharkSkin to the flow-related parts of the aircraft reduces the aerodynamic drag by 1.1 percent.
Bringing cosmetics to life
Numerous different bacteria live on human skin and are important for the health of our largest organ. Until now, however, not much was known about their exact function. A study conducted by BASF researchers has now shown that Lactobacillus crispatus bacteria are very abundant on the skin of younger people around their eyes but are not found inside the wrinkles of older people. In vitro studies demonstrated that these live bacteria stimulate the production of collagen in skin cells.
Based on these findings, BASF developed Probiolift. It is the first cosmetic active ingredient that contains a living probiotic – Lactobacillus crispatus bacteria – found on human skin.
Protecting crops more precisely
Weeds on agricultural land can lead to crop losses of 30 percent or more. Farmers usually control weeds by spraying the entire field with herbicides at a standard dose rate. To enable more precise and sustainable weed control, BASF and Bosch developed ONE SMART SPRAY in a joint venture.
ONE SMART SPRAY is an innovative, integrated hardware and software solution. Using BASF’s digital agronomic platform xarvio, it offers real-time automated weed detection and treatment in row crops.
Driving battery materials into the future
Electric vehicles charged with green electricity do not produce any emissions when they are driven. However, manufacturing these vehicles is resource-intensive, as is the production of the cathode active materials (CAM) that are needed for their batteries.
BASF therefore aims to significantly reduce the environmental footprint of its battery materials throughout the entire value chain. The focus is on three areas: the CAM itself, the production process and the recycling of battery materials from end-of-life batteries.
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LAS VEGAS (KRON) — It is that time of year.
The tech world converges on Sin City for the Consumer Electronics Show.
The annual event kicks off in Las Vegas on Thursday.
KRON4’s Tech Reporter Gabe Slate joins us with a look at some of the hot items this year.
This is like the Super Bowl for the tech world.
Thousands of vendors are showing off everything from robots, to self-driving cars, to the newest games, and of course, to the latest gadgets.
Watch the above video to see Gabe’s full report.


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Deako’s smart lighting system could be in 10 percent of the new homes built in Seattle next year.
Seattle smart-home company Deako has raised $3.5 million as it prepares to test its smart lighting systems in homes around Seattle.
The company has raised $6.8 million in total funding, including $1.8 million this past April. Deako creates easy-to-install light switches that can be controlled by touch and by the resident’s smartphone.
Deako’s hook is its price: rather than rewiring the whole house, its smart light switches can be installed along with existing systems, making them cheaper than many whole-house systems.
Founder and CEO Derek Richardson said the company will begin beta testing in September, but its main debut will come next year. Deako has signed contracts with builders to be implemented in about 10 percent of all new homes built in Seattle next year.
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Any of the touch-screen light switches can be used to turn on a pre-set “scene” in the house — for example, a group of lighting actions might dim a room or turn on lights in only one part of the home.
Deako did not disclose the names of the venture capital firms that invested in the round.


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Scott Disick professed his love for his girlfriend, and reported future fiance, as the couple welcomed a new bright red Ferrari California, by forcefully grabbing her pert derriere. The restaurateur was so excited at one point, that he could've been mistaken as a proctologist.
According to several reports, Scott was out shopping for an engagement ring at Levinson Jewelers in Fort Lauderdale.
An onlooker told RadarOnline: "Scott was most definitely shopping for engagement rings, and all of them were large! Scott and his friend looked at a whole selection of amazing rings, all diamond, all different cuts, sizes, settings — he certainly is taking his time and wants to make the right purchase."
Check out more photos of Kourtney and Scott in the above slide:
Source: Daily Mail


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21 March 2023
The UK’s largest independent toy retailer, The Entertainer, has joined forces with retail industry charity the Retail Trust to introduce a range of new measures to support its employees’ health and wellbeing.
The partnership is set to give over 2,000 employees at The Entertainer, and their families, access to a range of personalised wellbeing resources from the Retail Trust.
This includes access to a virtual GP, digital support, financial aid, counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy, support following a critical incident, discounts and rewards, and the Retail Trust’s 24-hour wellbeing helpline.
Vikki Congiu, store manager at The Entertainer Derby, said: “I recently used the Retail Trust’s virtual GP and was very impressed with how easy the service is to use. The service supported my daughter with securing treatment quickly for inflamed skin around the eyes through an online video call with a GP, where she was diagnosed and received a prescription. It’s a benefit of working at The Entertainer that I really appreciate and will definitely use again.”
Lee Robinson, store manager at The Entertainer Scunthorpe, added: “A member of my team was trying to get an appointment with her GP and was informed that the soonest appointment was in two weeks’ time so she decided to try the online GP through the Retail Trust site. Through this service, she was seen within an hour, given thorough advice and her prescription was cheaper than usual - she was very impressed and has advised other members of The Entertainer team to use the service as it is speedy, simple and stress-free.”
Over 200 other major British retailers including Dunelm, River Island, Ann Summers and The Works already work with the Retail Trust to help improve the mental health of the retail workforce by supporting their staff and training their managers amidst falling morale across the industry.
A survey of 1,500 retail staff workers the Retail Trust’s health of retail report last year found 83% had experienced declining mental health due to concerns around their finances, abuse from customers and poor mental health after working through the pandemic.
Nearly nine out of 10 retail managers also reported an increase in mental health problems among their teams and more than half said their team members have experienced issues that they felt ill-equipped to deal with.
Michelle Akerman Wilkes, HR & systems advisor at The Entertainer, said: “At The Entertainer, our people are our business so we’re very excited to be supporting them with resources from the Retail Trust.
“As part of the project team, Retail Trust ensured the launch was as smooth as possible and it has been fantastic to work with a charity that is so enthusiastic about creating hope, health and happiness for everyone in retail.”
Jon Savage, head of people at The Entertainer, said: “We’re delighted to be partnering with Retail Trust to further support our employees and their mental health. Offering a host of all-important wellbeing support tools, we’re confident that the services and information available from the Retail Trust partnership will benefit all of our employees.
“So far, the launch has been a great success and we hope the Retail Trust partnership will continue to provide added value to our employees.”
Chris Brook-Carter, chief executive of the Retail Trust, added: “We’re partnering with The Entertainer to give its people some of the vital support they need to take control of their wellbeing and look after one another.
“Retailers of all shapes and sizes work with the Retail Trust in this way but we’d encourage even more to join us as retail workers continue to face huge uncertainty around everything from levels of abuse in-store to the rising cost-of-living.”


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Americans are having a tough time putting on masks. It's become a politically divisive accessory that symbolizes care to some, conspiracy to others. All this has distracted many devotees from a more scientific conversation that's equally important: The quality of our masks matters, and our supply chain isn't ready to support a safe reopening.
Sabrina Paseman and Megan Duong realized this—and started working on a technical solution to address it—when they were coordinating N95 collection for local hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area. The two women had both recently left jobs at Apple, and started gathering masks full-time, collecting thousands, only to learn that covers about a day or two in a large hospital.
The problem, as they came to see it, is that even hospitals are facing shortages of N95 masks, but if the general public continues to wear less protective surgical masks or cloth masks, hospitals will keep being flooded with new cases.
So Paseman started prototyping a product intended for everyone outside hospital settings. The Essential Brace, live on Kickstarter now, is a reusable silicone band that slips over surgical masks to create a seal comparable to N95s. Paseman and Duong hope that, if more people use the Essential Brace and surgical masks, leaving N95s for hospitals, we can all get through the pandemic more safely and efficiently.
A family endeavor
The Duong family has three siblings. Megan's sister is married to an ER doctor at one of the Bay Area's hardest-hit hospitals. Megan's brother is engaged to Paseman. So within a few weeks of shutdown, the family was all very invested in sourcing N95s.
"We were calling warehouses. We called every paint store. We called every hardware store. We just knew N95 masks were really, really hard to access," says Duong. "And we started looking overseas, and it was just not a safe alternative, because it wasn't properly vetted in terms of certification. We were acting as this middleman for hospitals, which are very red taped. It just was not a sustainable solution."
Fix The Mask's founders Sabrina Paseman and Megan Duong.
But Paseman, with her masters degree in mechanical engineering and years of experience designing and manufacturing Macs, was well-suited to prototype alternatives. Via her soon-to-be brother-in-law, she had the insight that hospitals had plenty of unused surgical masks, but N95s are favored because they fully seal around all edges.
"From an engineering standpoint, after looking into what an N95 mask is, it's literally just a sealed filter that goes against your face," Paseman says. "It's a very, very basic engineering thing. And so my thought was, if there are other filters out there, why can't we just seal them? And that is the concept we started with. During our brainstorm, [collaborator] Simon Lancaster kept acting out a seal that pressed around the nose, mouth, and chin, and we came up with the idea for the mask brace that night."
Prototyping human-centered design in lockdown
Creating a new product in a global pandemic brought on unexpected challenges. For one thing, Paseman had limited supplies to work with—her first brace prototype was made of rubber bands.
She tested her next iterations mostly on her own face. "I have the smallest nose in the world," she says, and this was clearly a problem for troubleshooting one of the most important product features—preventing the much maligned glasses fog. But she did her research, and found that the CDC released a dataset of 5,000 different face shapes averaged down into five common shapes. She got them 3D printed and started using them to test her prototypes. "Those are my friends that I use for prototyping," she says, "I even named them."
Paseman named her "friends" Louie, Lonnie, Mervin, and Samantha, inspired by the CDC's names: "Large, Long Narrow, Medium, and Small"
"Finding a way to make the nose cushion work on a bunch of different faces, have it be comfortable and still mass-manufacturable, was really difficult," Paseman says. "Most other solutions solve it with a metal band, which doesn't work well, or a 3D printed contour, which isn't mass producible, or physical foam cushion, which isn't easily washable. Also, adding another piece makes it more complicated to produce. I knew I had to integrate it into a single piece." The key innovation was splitting the nose cushion into individual elements, something she and her dad, Bill Paseman, brainstormed together.
The built-in silicon nose cushion seals masks tight—and prevents fogged up glasses.
Once that prototype was looking promising, she tested it on some family members with the PortaCount Pro, a system used to test N95 fit, and confirmed that it actually does work on various face shapes. Now, she's excited that she's connected with Loren Bast of Bainbridge Protects, a group that's been offering free fit testing to people like dentists, teachers, and firefighters who don't work in hospitals but are still certainly frontline workers. They've been testing the Essential Mask Brace alongside N95s and other solutions.
Easing the stressed supply chain
The beauty of this brace solution is that it makes the most efficient use of the melt-blown fabric found in both N95s and surgical masks.
"The issue with the global mask supply is the fact that there's a shortage of melt-blown fabric, which is the center layer inside of these surgical masks as well as the center layer inside of an N95," Paseman explains. "And that special fabric material is really hard to make, because it basically involves really, really high-pressure molten plastic being shot out into giant sheets. There can be lots of issues with clumping, non-uniformity of the material, or densities being off. And all of those things matter for how good the quality of the material is."
"Right at the start of this pandemic, lots of people were trying to bring up melt-blown fabric lines", she says, "and it's really hard to do it properly. I think there are less than 10 manufacturers across the world that really know how to do it properly. And none of them want to share the secret because they'd lose all of their market capital."
The way that N95s are cut makes them a less efficient use of this extremely limited resource, so, while they're important to have available for ease of use in hospitals, the more people we can get wearing braced surgical masks, the more protection there is to go around. It significantly brings down the cost per wear, too.
Working around the establishment
Their solution is elegant, but not certified. Though Paseman has tested the product with a methodology similar to what official certification labs use—and found surgical masks with her braces to be as much as 10x more effective than generic cloth masks from Amazon—FDA-certified labs are too busy or too expensive to sign off on the product.
That's part of why they've meticulously documented their process and aimed to serve the frontline workers who need protection and have basically no access to N95s now—dentists, hair stylists, grocery stockers, etc.
"We realized over time, working with hospitals, there's a lot of red tape," Duong says. "It's a really bureaucratic system. I started thinking of our campaign kind of like the Andrew Yang campaign.
"He was an interesting candidate because he was an unconventional politician. Yang somehow managed to appeal to Elon Musk and all these intellectual influencers and managed to make quite a splash in a very short period of time. I was curious how he did it. So I reached out to his campaign team to ask how they approached this similar situation of having a solution but needing to convince people to listen to us," Duong says.
"Their response was, 'We did a bottom-up strategy, you need to convince everyone else. Eventually you'll impact the healthcare system.' We began observing hospitals and learned that the people who were being hit disproportionately hard from the pandemic were essential workers, communities of color, and underserved communities. It didn't sit well with us. So we focused on getting PPE into the hands of the people that need it the most. The people who are also in a hazardous situation outside of a hospital setting."
A pivot from Silicon Valley
"We always believed in creating a solution that's for everyone," Duong says. And she sees that as a significant difference from what she's used to doing at tech companies like Apple.
"I talk to a lot of startups, and many times I hear about this brilliant solution they have built but lack clarity on their purpose or mission that drives their company and community forward. Defining your north star is so important ," she says. "Because our mission is to make safe masks accessible to everyone, our journey began as a DIY and an open-source solution so that people could make a brace at home. By making our design open, we were able to get data, grow with communities who don't have access to N95 masks, and get a lot of feedback to improve the design."
"Other companies hide all of the back workings of how they made the secret sauce," Paseman says. "But for us, our mission is so transparent. We basically have shown every step of the work that got us to this solution and made it available to anyone who wants to join our community. People can see that we're not in this to make large swaths of money. We're doing it because we all want to get out of this pandemic together. Everyone needs this protection in order for us to actually get back to life as normal."


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Specialty consumer electronics retailer Best Buy Co., Inc. (BBY) announced Tuesday its latest offerings ahead of the upcoming holiday season. Black Friday Early Access for Members will start on October 27 and Early Black Friday Deals for Everyone will start on October 30. Black Friday Sale officially begins on Friday, November 17, with incredible deals on thousands of gifts and top brands.
Further, Best Buy’s Cyber Monday Savings Event will start on Sunday, November 26, when customers will get thousands of deals, including savings up to 50% on top gifts.
Stores will be closed Thanksgiving Day, but customers can still shop on the Best Buy App or BestBuy.com.
The company said its holiday calendar is packed with full of savings events, and its newly launched Holiday Gift Center will be a destination to explore and discover new and innovative tech.
Throughout the season, My Best Buy Plus and My Best Buy Total members will see deeper discounts and member-only savings during select events.
Plus and Total members will get exclusive access to some of the hottest Black Friday deals from October 27 to 29, before they’re available to all shoppers, starting October 30.
Throughout the holiday, there will be more Best Buy Drops, including product releases, limited runs, launches and serious savings – all in real time and exclusively through the Best Buy App. Drops for this week start Wednesday and are limited-edition items.
Starting Monday, November 6, Best Buy stores will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. local time Monday through Saturday and 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday. At select stores, Plus, 24/7 Pickup Lockers are available.
The company has also extended the hours shoppers can connect directly with a Virtual Sales Expert over video, audio and chat. Beginning October 29, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. CT, Virtual Sales Experts will give tech guidance, provide live product demos and help customers shop.
Source: Read Full Article


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The CHF 1.95 billion Vontobel US Equity fund is continuing to overweight consumer staples, despite the sector's performance weakness in 2018.
Currently, 20.1% of the fund is invested in the consumer staples sector – an overweight of twelve percentage points compared with the benchmark, the S&P 500. However, this overweight has been reduced in recent months.
'This year, consumer staples have been the worst performers in the US. Many of these names have long been traded as a bond proxy,' said Ed Walczak, one of the fund's portfolio managers, in an interview with Citywire Switzerland's sister title, Citywire Deutschland.
'With interest rates rising slightly, investors have sold these stocks and invested in real bonds. This resulted in a sell-off of consumer staples. In addition, many investors have focused on more cyclical stocks.'
However, in these more volatile markets, Walczak urged investors to keep an eye on fundamentally good stocks in the consumer staples sector. 'Consumer staples will be more interesting to investors in the event of falling stock markets and a slow but certainly weakening economy,' he said.
New portfolio addition
The fund, which is also managed by Citywire A-rated Matthew Benkendorf, invests more than 25% in the consumer discretionary sector – its largest overweight and well above the 12.5% allocation in the benchmark.
'The overweight in consumer discretionary stocks has been around for some time. But we change our stock selection and sell stocks that have gone strong and achieved their goals. We are very disciplined,' Walczak said.
For example, the fund recently bought Royal Caribbean Cruises, the world's second largest cruise company with 44 ships and a market share of 25%.
'All in all, the first quarter of this year was very intense for us, which is quite unusual for our strategy. But the flash crash in February has given us many opportunities,' Walczak said.
'Some names at the start of the year went extremely well. We sold them consistently when we reached the price target.'
As of May 2018, the fund had achieved returns of 45.7% over three years, performing well above the sector average of 31.1%. It sits 24th out of the 224 Citywire-tracked funds in its category.


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After being briefly banned for policy violations, UberMedia apps UberSocial (formerly UberTwitter) and Twidroyd, the popular Android Twitter client, are back online. The ban began just two days ago.
10 Recent Stories
Update: UberMedia says it has updated UberTwitter and Twidroyd to comply with the changes. A new version of Twidroyd will be available soon in the Android Market. Twitter announced Friday that it has suspended popular third-party Twitter clients UberTwitter and Twidroyd for policy violations. Both applications are part of UberMedia, a startup that has made a name for itself by acquiring high-profile Twitter clients for multiple platforms and devices.
Popular Twitter client for the BlackBerry, UberTwitter, is now also available for the iPhone. The current version has been released as a beta, with the full 1.0 version being announced for December. Aside from the standard features offered by most Twitter clients: tweeting, retweeting, direct messaging and link shortening, UberTwitter boasts a unique feature called UberView.
Tammy Camp is a serial entrepreneur, company advisor, blogger and adventure traveler. Find her via @TammyCamp on Twitter. BlackBerry, the enterprise phone, is often dismissed as the “other” brand within social media communities. But worldwide, BlackBerrys still outnumber iPhones, and RIM has made major strides in recent years to become more social-friendly. I use my BlackBerry not only for business, but for most of my social media.
Third-party Twitter apps have been in a race to keep up with the onslaught of new Twitter functionality, and today popular BlackBerry app UberTwitter is out with support for a number of the microblogging service’s major new features. UberTwitter Beta 6 adds Twitter’s new retweet functionality (with the option to use the old style RTs too), Twitter lists and the ability to geotag your tweets.
If you've tuned in previously, you'll know we throw out a Lunchtime Poll topic weekly to get a zeitgeist of Mashable readers' opinions on your favorite software and services out there. Recently we saw your top blogging platforms, and next we took a look at your favorite mobile social apps. We took a broad definition of social app, so specifically mobile apps like Foursquare and Gowalla went up against mobile components of more concretely web-based apps like Facebook and Twitter.
Yesterday, we reported on the firestorm that erupted when popular BlackBerry client UberTwitter added advertisements to its application. The move caught many users off guard (including myself), as it came in conjunction with a new version of the app. In other words, rather than enjoying all of the new features that UberTwitter had added, users focused on the ads and tweeted their wrath.
BlackBerry Twitter client UberTwitter has been asking me to upgrade for about a week (rendering the program virtually useless until I did), and now I know why. The latest version of the most popular BlackBerry app for Twitter has added advertising to the mix, a move that has lots of users upset this morning. To be fair, there are other new features in this release, including multi-account support, video integration with TwitVid, and bit.ly powered URL shortening.
As a Twitter and BlackBerry fanatic, I’ve been reviewing most of the new Twitter clients for BlackBerry that come out. While TwitterBerry, perhaps because of its obvious name, has long been ubiquitous with Twitter and BlackBerry, UberTwitter, my personal favorite, has actually risen to become the most popular client for the device. According to TwitStat, UberTwitter now accounts for 1.26 percent of Twitter users, beating out TwitterBerry’s 0.87 percent penetration.
If you use Twitter and BlackBerry, it’s easy to be envious of iPhone owners, since they have so many options when it comes to Twitter applications. TwitterBerry is probably the best known app for BlackBerry users, but it’s by no means as feature packed as many of the iPhone options like Tweetie or TweetDeck. UberTwitter, which just released an update to its BlackBerry app today, offers a few interesting options for those looking for a TwitterBerry alternative.


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A New Image for Fundraising Needs NFP Support
27 October 2011 at 12:01 pm
Three Queensland entrepreneurs are hoping to bring CardConnect to Australia – a fundraising initiative aimed at giving organisations the opportunity to add a new revenue stream to their current suite of fundraising initiatives.
CardConnect is a branded credit card program that has helped NFP’s worldwide not only increase their fundraising through receiving part of the revenue, but also provide increased visibility for their cause in the wider community.
Executive Director of CardConnect Rob James, says that in a time of economic downturn, donors desire to give does not decline but the means to give might.
He says that charities therefore need to create new ways to give that are high value to them but low cost to the donor.
Benefits to Australian Not for Profits
- New revenue stream to accelerate fundraising resources
- Continuous revenue source – “Set and Forget” style initiative
- No setup fees – FREE program
- Design up to five card designs that reflect your organisation
- Increase organisation awareness – as cards act as mini billboards
- Free online marketing toolkit to reach your supporters
- Supporters information never leaves your organisation
The program has been adapted from a successful model that has worked worldwide for over 20 years in countries such as the US, Britain, Canada and Spain, generating millions of dollars for schools, clubs and Not for Profits alike.
Rob James says Australian banks have shown a great deal of interest in this program and he is calling on Australian Not for Profits to register their interest in the card program.
How does it work?
For every person that signs up for the NFP branded credit card, CardConnect will pay an upfront commission as well as provide ongoing revenue. The more supporters that activate a card the more revenue generated.
CardConnect will help market the program to an organisation’s loyal supporter base through a free online marketing toolkit, to ensure the success of the program.
In the markets where these card programs are offered there has been standout success stories. An example of this success can be seen in Canada’s most respected conservation organisation, Ducks Unlimited Canada. As a conservation of wetlands Ducks Unlimited Canada is heavily reliant on the support of its members and in the eight years between 1998 and 2006 their branded credit card program raised over $1,000,000.
How to become involved
For more information, visit our website www.cardconnect.com.au


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FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) -- Germany specialty chemicals company Lanxess AG (LXS.XE) said Wednesday it expects its third-quarter results to be up from a year earlier, supported by strong demand for rubber used to produce winter tires.
The company also confirmed its outlook for earnings before interest, tax, amortization and depreciation, or Ebitda.
"As previously stated, our Ebitda before special items will rise around 20% this year," Chief Executive Axel Heitmann said at a presentation. The company raised its guidance for the year in August.
Heitmann said he expects strong results in 2012 as well, when a new labeling law for tires becomes effective.
Lanxess has expanded capacity to produce environmentally-friendly and high technology rubber products, and plans to build a new factory in Singapore, slated to begin operations in 2015.


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Wise (LON: WISE) share price rose by more than 10% on Tuesday morning after the company published strong quarterly results. The stock jumped to 387p, bringing its total market cap to about 3.50 billion pounds. The shares remain lower by more than 70% from their all-time high.
Wise business defied odds
Wise published its first-quarter results on Tuesday morning. The firm said that the volume if transactions during the quarter jumped by 49% to £24.4 billion from the previous £16.4 billion. As a result, its revenue rose by 51% from £123 million to over £185 million. This strength happened because of the rising number of new customers and the rising traction of its Wise Account and Wise Business products.
Wise also had a strong quarter as the number of customers continued growing. In total, the number of people who transacted using its platform rose to 5 million. Active customers rose by 37% to 4.7 million as the company completed 50% of its cross-border transactions instantly.
Most importantly, the company left its forward guidance unchanged. It expects that revenue will grow by between 30 and 35% this year. It also sees its adjusted EBITDA margin being above 20% in the medium term. In a statement, the firm’s CEO said:
“In the three months to 30 June 2022 we helped 5 million active customers move more than £24 billion across borders, a 49% increase on last year. We also reached a key milestone in our mission, more than 50% of all cross-border transfers are now completed instantly.”
Is Wise a good buy?
Wise share price has taken a hit in the past few months as investors anticipate slower growth as inflation bites around the world. Other fintech companies like Affirm, PayPal, Block, and Remitly have also seen their share prices collapse.
Still, from a fundamental perspective, there is a likelihood that Wise shares will bounce back in the long term. For one, the company is still growing its business even as market conditions worsen. Further, the company has a room to grow its business by adding the number of services. For example, its borderless business has continued thriving.
On the four-hour chart, we see that the Wise stock price has crawled back in the past few days. It has managed to move above the 25-day and 50-day moving averages. The stock has also formed an inverted head and shoulders pattern, which is usually a bullish sign.
Therefore, there is a likelihood that the stock will keep rising as bulls target the key resistance at 400p. A drop below the support at 320p will invalidate the bullish view.
The post Wise share price popped after earnings. Is it a good buy? appeared first on Invezz.


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Why Are the Chinese Buying Record Quantities of Gold?• www.lewrockwell.com/Gordon G. Chang
This month, the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department reported that China imported 102,779 kilograms of gold from Hong Kong in November, an increase from October’s 86,299 kilograms. Beijing does not release gold trade figures, so for this and other reasons the Hong Kong numbers are considered the best indication of China’s gold imports.
Analysts believe China bought as much as 490 tons of gold in 2011, double the estimated 245 tons in 2010. “The thing that’s caught people’s minds is the massive increase in Chinese buying,” remarked Ross Norman of Sharps Pixley, a London gold brokerage, this month.
So who in China is buying all this gold?
The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, has been hinting that it is purchasing. “No asset is safe now,” said the PBOC’s Zhang Jianhua at the end of last month. “The only choice to hedge risks is to hold hard currency – gold.” He also said it was smart strategy to buy on market dips. Analysts naturally jumped on his comment as proof that China, the world’s fifth-largest holder of the metal, is in the market for more.
There are a few problems with this conclusion. First, the Chinese government rarely benefits others – and hurts itself – by telegraphing its short-term investment strategies.
Second, the central bank has less purchasing power these days. China’s foreign reserves declined in Q4 2011, falling $20.6 billion from Q3. The first quarterly outflow since 1998 was not large, but the trend was troubling. The reserves declined a stunning $92.7 billion in November and December.


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Members of the local union that represents more than 17,000 Giant Food and Safeway grocery store workers in the D.C. region have ratified a new collective bargaining agreement with the grocers.
The agreement, ratified Tuesday by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, maintains health benefits for all current employees and “most future employees,” according to a statement from the union.
Grocery workers will receive an average of an additional $3.35 per hour in compensation during the next three years under the contract. That includes wages, health, pension and other benefits.
“This is one of the best retail food contracts in the country,” said Local 400 President Mark P. Federici. “…Giant and Safeway will pay all benefits in full through the life of the contract and our members’ pensions will be properly funded.”
The existing contract expired at the end of October and was extended twice while the two sides continued negotiations. The new agreement will expire Oct. 29, 2016.
“We are very pleased our associates voted to approve new labor contracts that will bring stability and security to them and their families for the next three years,” said Jamie Miller, spokesman for Giant Food. “Throughout negotiations, our goal was to reach fair and reasonable contracts that respect our legacy and honor our associates’ contributions, while also recognizing our competitive realities.”
A request for comment from Safeway was not immediately returned.


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Mature industries like steel making and bauxite mining pretty much know how to do things. There may be incremental improvements to be had by tweaking the process here and there, but until some disruptive new technology comes along that displaces how things have been done traditionally, each new day means doing exactly what was done the previous day. Redwood Materials is in the lithium-ion battery recycling business, a nascent industry which is in the process of discovering the best way to reuse the materials inside batteries that are no longer serviceable to make new batteries without having to mine and process new materials.
New industries have to design new machinery and develop new procedures. All learning is a feedback loop. We learn what works and what doesn’t by constant experimentation, observing what works and what doesn’t, and incorporating those lessons into improved machinery and procedures. After one year of operating a pilot battery recycling program in California, on March 2, Redwood Materials published a blog post that details what it learned during that first year. “Today, we share a year’s worth of findings in hopes of demonstrating the value of end-of-life [battery] packs, identifying gaps where the industry may need support, and aiding policymakers as they begin to make critical decisions on how best to responsibly manage EV batteries at end-of-life,” Redwood says.
Over the past year, it has collected used lithium-ion and nickel metal hydride battery packs from Toyota, Ford, Volvo, and Volkswagen, as well as from auto dismantling companies. With EVs accounting for nearly 19% of all new car sales in California in 2022, Redwood Materials says management of end-of-life battery packs will serve as a model for other states and the battery recycling industry.
In its first year, Redwood Materials was able to identify and recover 1,268 end-of-life packs, totaling approximately half a million pounds of material. Of the packs collected, about 5% were damaged, defective, or recalled. The rest were safely packaged, transported, and recycled at the company’s facility in Nevada. High quality battery materials for anodes and cathodes are already being produced there and are being supplied to battery cell manufacturers in the US.
“The packs we collected were a mix of older NiMH and newer lithium-ion chemistries from more than a dozen different automakers,” the company says. “We expect mixed chemistries to continue as older, hybrid vehicle models now reaching end-of-life continue to retire in greater numbers from California roads. However, lithium ion represented the majority of the chemistry types collected and we expect it will continue to grow as it is now the only type of vehicle battery on the market.”
At the end of the first year in operation for the California recycling program, the company determined the most significant cost of battery pack collection and recycling is logistics. Finding ways to reduce those costs is essential to achieve economies of scale through increased collection volume. “As the volume of end of life battery packs increases, the logistics cost will decrease so that batteries will become assets that will help make EVs more sustainable and affordable in the long run.”
As of today, the recycling process is already profitable for smaller batteries such as those found in consumer devices and production scrap. “As logistics becomes a smaller component of the overall value proposition, we anticipate a similar trend to happen for larger electric vehicle batteries in the coming years,” the company says in its one-year report.
Redwood Materials & Auto Dismantlers
The auto dismantling industry is just beginning to come to grips with the unique requirements of electric vehicles. Redwood Materials says it is grateful for the cooperation it received from the Automotive Recyclers Association and California Auto Dismantlers and Recyclers Alliance. Together, the company and the industry are working to create the safest and most efficient recycling pathways.
“Everyone we worked with in the dismantler community wants to do the right thing and they were excited to partner directly with Redwood to ensure responsible recycling. The dismantler community helped us to establish the most efficient transportation routes and aggregate batteries at their central locations and in return, they were appreciative of the knowledge we shared on handling, packaging and transporting EV packs,” the company says.
Redwood Materials found that automakers are strongly interested in managing how the batteries in the cars they manufacture are managed when they reach the end of their useful life. It encourages an Extended Producer Responsibility approach that allows automakers to partner directly with recyclers or to recycle the batteries themselves. “This is paramount to ensure the market manages EOL batteries in the safest and most efficient manner, while avoiding unnecessary costs to the battery value chain. It also presents an opportunity for the industry to drive down the costs of future domestic battery production and pass those savings to consumers.”
Increasing The Role Of Recyclers
Redwood Materials is clearly concerned that regulators could unintentionally impose requirements that impede the recycling process or add additional costs that would limit its profitability. It warns that mandating a singular Producer Responsibility Organization for EV battery recycling similar to certain existing e-waste frameworks is not the appropriate solution for end-of-life EV battery packs. Instead, it says Extended Producer Responsibility programs will ensure best practices and responsible EOL management without choosing winners and losers. CleanTechnica readers will recognize that “winners and losers” language from other policy debates in America.
Automotive OEMs must also collaborate directly with recycling partners which can sustainably manage the materials throughout the supply chain, collecting and recycling end-of-life lithium-ion batteries, and then refining the materials sustainably into “battery-grade” metals that can go directly back into battery component production, the company says. “It is essential that recyclers have the capability to produce ‘battery-grade’ refined metals. Without this capability, we will end up with a chain of recyclers producing only intermediates, adding to costs, and increasing the likelihood that critical materials could end up overseas instead of being reused in batteries to support the United States’ electrification goals.”
“Our ability to effectively recover a high percentage of metals (~95%) and, in turn, produce downstream battery components from that recycled content demonstrates not only the need for qualified recyclers to manage these batteries but also a clear solution that both addresses EOL batteries and ensures material for future EV production. The value of end-of-life batteries lies in ensuring responsible recycling, and any proposals or actions that add extra costs to the EV battery value chain will put both California and the United States at a competitive disadvantage during this critical period of transition toward clean energy and electrification.”
Impact Of The IRA
The Inflation Reduction Act recently put stringent requirements in place for critical mineral and battery components that will require battery makers and automotive manufacturers to have a reliable domestic supply of both.
“Our program demonstrates the strong market for these materials within the U.S., especially considering the recent expansion of the Clean Vehicle Credit through the IRA,” Redwood Materials says.
“With a year’s worth of knowledge and counting, it is clear that the market economics for EV battery packs and the valuable metals they contain provide an increasingly strong incentive for responsible end-of-life management.
“As policymakers across the nation consider proposals to ensure responsible EOL management of batteries, we encourage them to incentivize responsible recycling here in the US similar to the policies established by the IRA. We also urge policymakers to be mindful that, while still in the early stages, market forces and industry partnerships are already at work to create safe, efficient, and sustainable pathways for end-of-life batteries. As a nation, our focus should be on increasing EV adoption, which requires lowering EV costs so that they are widely accessible to all communities.”
Redwood Materials has shown its recycling technology works and it is clearly sending a signal to regulators not to gum up the works. Soft costs are like sand in the gears of commerce. We just did a story about BlocPower, a company that is working to lower the carbon footprint of America’s built environment. Central to its mission is reducing the “soft costs” that make its job more difficult and therefore more expensive.
Battery recycling is vital to America getting out of China’s shadow when it comes to electrifying its transportation sector. Redwood Materials is asking regulators to get out of the way and let it do its job. That may be wise, but we have seen what happens when the fossil fuel companies put a lid on regulatory function. Capitalism requires referees. What is needed is for business and regulators to collaborate in a way that fosters business development while protecting people from risky shortcuts that contribute to environmental degradation.
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The video game industry is one of the most popular entertainment mediums that people around the world can enjoy. With new releases like Anthem, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 5, and Halo Infinite coming out every week, this article will highlight some games released within Week 46 in November 15th 2021.
The “video game release dates 2021” is a list of the new video game releases in Week 46 of November 15, 2021. The list includes both console and PC games.
The “upcoming games ps5” is a list of the new video game releases in week 46 of November 15, 2021.
- upcoming games 2022
- game releases 2020
- upcoming game releases
- upcoming games ps4
- 2021 games ps5


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As Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and Samsung Galaxy S3 owners wait not-so-patiently for their Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean update, rumors now propose that Samsung may skip that version of the operating system altogether and update the older devices directly to Android 4.3 Jelly Bean.
Tipsters from India's Samsung R&D told tech website Temefy that Samsung is currently working on both Android 4.2.2 and Android 4.3 updates for the Galaxy Note 2 and Galaxy S3. The next update appears to be delayed, as it was expected to roll out to devices in July but reportedly won’t be released on the Note 2 and S3 until November or December.
According to Samsung R&D, the Korean manufacturer is now deciding whether it will update its older Galaxy devices to Android 4.2.2 or Android 4.3. With Android 4.3 expected to be released in the near future -- some have proposed July -- many consider it would make sense for Samsung to skip the Android 4.2.2 update as Android 4.3 would possibly be several months old by the time the next update is expected for the Galaxy Note 2 and Galaxy S3 at year’s end. However, an Android 4.2.2 update is still likely for the devices.
Temefy points out the fact that there have been firmware leaks for both Android 4.2.2 and Android 4.3 indicates that Samsung could still go in either direction when it comes to system updates. Android 4.2.2 firmware leaked for the Galaxy S3 in May, suggesting that the device would adopt several Samsung Galaxy S4 features, while Android 4.3 firmware for the Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition promptly leaked in June.
Some note that there has been no Android 4.2.2 firmware leak for the Galaxy Note 2. Since firmware was recently leaked for the Galaxy Note 8.0, we wonder if that could indicate that Samsung is leaning toward an Android 4.3 update for the Galaxy Note 2. While all reports remain unconfirmed speculation, some also consider that Galaxy Note 2 and Galaxy S3 owners would likely be more inclined to wait until November or December for an update if it were the most currents Android 4.3 software.
The Galaxy Note 2 is currently running either Android 4.1.1 or 4.1.2, likely depending on when it was sold, while the Galaxy S3 originally shipped with Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich and is upgradable to Android 4.1.1. If the Galaxy Note 2 and Galaxy S3 updated to Android 4.3, it wouldn’t be the first time a Samsung device skipped operating systems. The original Galaxy Note first shipped with Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread and didn’t update until Android 4.1.2, skipping the entire Ice Cream Sandwich line as well as a version of Jelly Bean.
Android 4.3 Jelly Bean is expected to feature Bluetooth LE, always-on Wi-Fi connectivity and a new notifications bar, likely among many other updated specs; however leaks suggest that the update is a minor one.
Samsung S&D also reports that the Android K release build also known as Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie will release in October and that Galaxy S4 and Galaxy S3 as well as the yet-to-be-released Note 3 and the Note 2 will all update to the still rumored operating system in varying intervals. Reports of the system died down in May in favor of Android 4.3 but recently have begun to pick up momentum.
Do you want to see the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and the Samsung Galaxy S3 update to Android 4.2.2 or Android 4.3? Let us know in the comments below.
Follow me on Twitter @FionnaatIBT.


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Oilfield services major Schlumberger has posted first-quarter 2017 profit of $279 million, or 20 cents per diluted share, versus profit of $501 million, or 40 cents per diluted share same time last year.
Sequentially, net income, excluding charges and credits was at $347 million against $379 million.
The company’s revenue was up 6 percent year-on-year at $6.9 billion, from $6.5 billion in the corresponding period in 2016, but decreased 3 percent sequentially.
Cameron revenue of $1.2 billion decreased 9 percent sequentially and 25 percent year-on-year, driven by lower project volumes in OneSubsea and reduced product sales in Surface Systems. OneSubsea had orders od $546 million and a backlog of $2.63 billion at the end of first quarter 2017.
Schlumberger reported cash flow from operations of $656 million.
The company approved a quarterly cash dividend of $0.50 per share of outstanding common stock, payable on July 14, 2017 to stockholders of record on June 1, 2017.
Subsea World News Staff


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Video-game retailer GameStop (NYSE:GME) is known on Wall Street for being the target of a Reddit-fueled short squeeze in 2021. So, some onlookers might have expected GME stock to zoom higher after GameStop recently announced an upcoming share split.
Here’s the scoop. According to a Form 8-K filing, on March 31, GameStop disclosed its plan to request stockholder approval at a future annual shareholder meeting “for an increase in the number of authorized shares of Class A common stock from 300,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 … in order to implement a stock split of the Company’s Class A common stock.”
This is exciting news — no doubt about that. For one thing, CNBC suggested that GameStop could use the share-count increase to possibly sell more stock at some point. The implication, we can assume, is that GameStop could get a sizable capital infusion from selling more of its shares.
Second, GameStop is now part of a larger trend of stock split mania. This includes recent and soon-to-be share splitters like Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG, NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA).
With all of that in mind, it should make sense that social media traders would have pumped up the GME stock price. Right? Well, things don’t always happen as expected on Wall Street.
As it turned out, the GameStop share price actually fell from $170 to $146 over the following week, after the stock split announcement. Perhaps this happened because the aforementioned Form 8-K didn’t provide enough details.
In particular, InvestorPlace Editor Sarah Smith pointed out that GameStop hadn’t announced the date and location for the annual meeting. Moreover, there’s some uncertainty because GameStop’s shareholders still need to vote to approve the share split.
This presents an opportunity, though. Just maybe, its a case of “buy the rumor, sell the news, then buy the actual event.”
Perhaps, GME stock will turn around if/when the company actually does enact a share split. This would make the stock more affordable, and could potentially generate more capital for GameStop.
So, investors might want to be patient and hold their GameStop shares. There could be a delayed positive reaction from investors, but hey, it’s better late than never, as they say.
On the date of publication, David Moadel did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.


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A few days ago we reported the rumors that revealed the probable prices of OPPO Find X3 Pro, Neo and Lite for the European market. Now, however, a new leak reveals the probable ones release dates of the new flagship series from OPPO. The new tip comes from Jon prosser, a leakster often informed in advance of the entire tech industry and very reliable.
According to the leakster, the presentation date of OPPO Find X3 Pro, Neo and Lite has been set for the11 March. 20 days have passed since the official announcement, on 31 March, the entire series will be made available at pre-order. Finally, the date of willingness to purchase it is instead the 14 April. March 11 is the same date on which, according to rumors, the launch promotion will be launched that will allow customers to grab free gifts with the purchase of one of the three devices (by registering the purchase on the official website of the promo within half May).
I prices of OPPO Find X3 Pro, Neo and Lite this year would be slightly different than the Find X2 series. Only the price of the Lite variant would remain the same, which according to rumors will cost 499,90 euros. For the Neo version, the company would have decided to raise the bar by offering it to 799,90 euros. On the other hand, the Pro would be a little more affordable, with a list price of 1149,90 euros.
The three devices will be powered by Snapdragon 888, 865 (to be confirmed) and 765G processors. On the Pro variant we will see the debut of the “microscope camera” with 25x zoom and a 10-bit color depth display. The Lite and the Neo are supposed to be rebrands of Reno5G e Reno5 Pro +.


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EA Sports revealed on Wednesday that Paris Saint-Germain superstar Kylian Mbappe will grace the cover of FIFA 21. After years of having Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo on its cover, the company is now shifting towards featuring one of the game’s brightest talents in the sport.
On Thursday, EA Sports followed up its announcement by releasing an official trailer. It highlights cover star Mbappe and features clips of his early days as a child playing football along with quick gameplay footage that puts a spotlight on its improved graphics.
— Paris Saint-Germain (@PSG_English) July 23, 2020
They also unveiled a reveal trailer featuring Mbappe along with the FIFA 21 ambassadors Trent Alexander-Arnold, Joao Felix and Erling Haaland. The quadrant of players are among the most promising talents in world football today.
The game is set to be released on October 9th.
Want more PSG? Visit the PSG Talk Podcast Network page and subscribe to PSG Talking, The 1970, and 24th & Parc.


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Two food bloggers from North Carolina have gathered more than 200,000 signatures in an effort to persuade food giant Kraft to remove two chemical food dye additives from the mac'n'cheese packaged meals that it sells in America.
Both ingredients, called Yellow #5 and Yellow #6, are not present in equivalent products produced by Kraft in many other countries. In some places they are replaced by other substances, such as paprika, amid some health concerns over their safety.
The two campaigners, Vani Hari of Foodbabe.com and Lisa Leake of 100daysofrealfood.com, have also recorded a video of themselves conducting a taste test between the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese sold in Britain without the additives and the product sold in the United States that contains them. In the shoot the two bloggers say that the products taste and look exactly the same and point out the risks alleged to be carried by Yellow #5 and Yellow #6.
Since being launched a week ago their petition has now attracted some 220,000 signatures on the online activist website Change.org. The swell of signatures has resulted in a flood of media stories on the Kraft petition, including a segment on Good Morning America.
"We have been surprised by the response. A week ago right now we had not even launched it, and now the amount of support it has got has taken us back," said Leake, 35. Hari, 33, added that they had singled out Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in order to highlight a wider issue of how ingredients banned elsewhere in the world could be found in use in food products in the United States. "We wanted to educate the American consumer and let them know what is in their food. We just picked an iconic food product to really get that message across," she said.
Kraft Macaroni and Cheese certainly fits that bill. The famous blue box – and the bright yellow cheesy pasta dish that it contains – have been a staple of American and Canadian meal times for decades. But Hari and Leake's petition points out the targeted ingredients in the American version have been banned in countries such as Norway and Austria amid claims that they can cause cancer or hyperactivity in children. A report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest has previously recommended removing Yellow #6 from the domestic market.
A Kraft spokeswoman said that the company was committed to obeying all the rules set by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States. "The safety and quality of our products is our highest priority and we take consumer concerns very seriously. We carefully follow the laws and regulations in the countries where our products are sold. So in the US, we only use colors that are approved and deemed safe for food use by the FDA," the spokeswoman said.
However, Leake said that the blogging pair would continue their campaign until Kraft stopped using the additives and replaced them with the ingredients that it already deployed in its products overseas and some brands already sold in the US. "They don't have to reformulate and re-invent the wheel. They just have to use the same formula that they do in the UK," she said.
Other campaigners have previously used petitions on similar subjects. Last year a Mississippi high school student used Change.org to lobby Gatorade to stop using a specific chemical added to its energy drinks that had been linked to possible neurological disorders. The company later said it would phase the substance out, though insisted its decision was not due to the petition – which had also attracted more than 200,000 backers.
The development also shows the potential peril and power of social media in the modern age. Last year ABC news ran stories on a beef product that was dubbed "pink slime" and saw its coverage go viral on the internet. The result was a massive collapse in sales by the firm that made the substance and a rash of lawsuits.


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Ford Applies for Record Number of Patents as CEO Eyes Innovationby
Company's 5,872 filings so far this year are up 36% from 2014
CEO Fields presses automaker to adopt Silicon Valley mindset
Ford Motor Co., the 112-year-old automaker, has sought a record number of patents in 2015 as Chief Executive Officer Mark Fields pushes the company toward Silicon Valley-style innovation.
The company applied for 5,872 patents so far this year, a 36 percent increase from all of 2014, in areas including autonomous cars, wearable devices and ride-sharing, according to a statement Tuesday. Ford said its filings related to electrified vehicles have almost tripled in the past five years, including more than 400 last year.
“We’re getting innovation not just from the major centers we’ve had historically in Michigan and in Europe, but really the entire enterprise is becoming more inventive,” Bill Coughlin, chief executive officer of Ford Global Technologies, said in a telephone interview. “Once someone starts thinking like an inventor, they can’t turn that off,” he said, adding that “it changes your mindset more toward one that would be very familiar in Silicon Valley.”
Fields has repeatedly said he wants Ford to be part of Silicon Valley as it pushes further into new businesses such as driverless cars and electrified vehicles. The Dearborn, Michigan-based company said earlier this month that it will invest $4.5 billion in electrified autos by 2020, after stepping up its autonomous-vehicle efforts in a June announcement that expanded its Smart Mobility plan and also included car-sharing test programs.
Ford also said Tuesday that it has 275 U.S. patents on its EcoBoost engines, more than any other automaker for gasoline turbocharged direct-injection technology, and an additional 200 pending.
As of November, about 1,000 of Ford’s patent applications from this year have been approved while the rest are in the process, said Karl Henkel, a company spokesman.


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Following surprising success of BlackBerry KEYone (review) in 2017, TCL plans to launch three new BlackBerry smartphones this year. The devices codenamed Athena, Luna and Uni have been popping all over the internet, making their appearances on Geekbench, through configuration files and in European device registration databases. The latest information comes on the backdrop of BlackBerry Mobile officially announcing two new keyboard-based smartphones will arrive in 2018 with model numbers BBE100-1 and BBF100-1. Now it looks like the company will be releasing three smartphones instead of two.
Starting with Uni, LetsGoDigital recently unearthed patents and trademarks of the phone owned by TCL and Blackberry. The phone is expected to look identical to the Blackberry Priv as per the findings. One of the highlights of the device is a retractable physical keyboard.
The smartphone will come with a 5.5-inch display, and similar to Priv feature a curved touchscreen display. The patent also suggests dual camera module onboard the smartphone. In terms of software, the Blackberry Uni will ship with Android 8.0 Oreo and arrive in mid-2018.
Moving along, the BlackBerry Athena is rumoured to feature a keyboard-based design and have larger keys than the BlackBerry KEYone. The device is said to feature 6GB or 8GB of RAM and has 64GB of onboard storage. The other highlight of the dual rear camera module with portrait mode.
The Athena it also appears will arrive with Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor. As for the timeframe of the release, nothing is confirmed, but one leaked poster says April 2018. It is possible that TCL may unveil the smartphone at the upcoming Mobile World Congress.
Lastly, there’s BlackBerry Luna which aligns with the BBE100-1 model previously rumoured. The device is expected to be a mid-tier model. The original poster of the BlackBerry Luna mentions August release for the smartphone.
However, since this information is coming in from a number of sources, there’s no way to confirm any of this. We advise you to take it a pinch of salt until BlackBerry officially launches any of these smartphones.


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You may have heard that the new Google phone (called the Nexus S, built by Samsung) has built in near field communications (NFC). You might not have heard yet the news from yesterday that Google is running an experimental local marketing campaign in Portland which uses the NFC capability. Any business in Portland which has claimed its Google Places Page will be offered a pack of Google goodies which includes an NFC enabled window sticker, and consumers are being incentivised to leave reviews with a prize for the top reviewer. People with a Nexus S or other NFC enabled phones will be able to bump their phones against the sticker to get information about the business and to leave reviews.
This is pretty cool as a local advertising play as it takes a lot of the friction out of leaving a review – ‘bump and type’ is a lot easier than ‘log in, search for restaurant, leave review’. That said, having to walk to the entrance to bump your phone on the sticker is still a bit of a pain.
More interesting for me though is the wider potential for NFC, and what this implies for the role of smartphones in our lives.
I’ve blogged before about the potential for smartphones to enable new categories of health apps, and NFC functionality brings that future a step closer as communication between third party sensors and the phone gets easier – and health apps aren’t the only, or even most obvious use case for NFC in phones. Payments is probably the top of the list, with contact information sharing also up there. Then there is all the stuff we haven’t thought of yet :).
All of this points to the smartphone becoming more and more important in our lives, to the point of indispensability (if it isn’t there already). Also interesting is the way we are starting to depend on our phones in a social context, most commonly as a sort of outsourced memory – rather than hold facts in our brains we are increasingly doing a quick Google search, or looking someone up in our address book or email.
Aside from the big picture smartphone trends that this talks to it also interesting to look at this in the context of Google’s failed attempts to buy GroupOn and Yelp this year. Leveraging their position in the smartphone market to help crack local advertising is an obvious thing to do.


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While demand may ease, consumer spending will remain a key driver for growth in Central Europe
While growth in Europe is set to ease substantially, Central Europe’s resilience to the current price pressures signals that the region will offer new opportunities to MNCs, who will otherwise struggle to find new sources of demand in the EU and will experience greater pressure to make up for the substantial loss of revenue in Russia and the CIS. MNCs may see higher competition in Central Europe as investors struggle to find strong opportunities in the Europe portfolio.
Retail sales in Hungary and Poland expanded by 15.8% YOY and 33.4% YOY, respectively, in April, despite a surge in inflation. The performance of the retail sector remained much weaker in WEUR, registering a contraction of 4.9% YOY in the UK and 0.4% YOY in Germany throughout April. Industrial production in Central Europe remained elevated throughout April, despite mounting pressures, and grew by 13.0% YOY in Poland and 3.1% YOY in Hungary. Manufacturing output remained weak in Western Europe, growing by a mild 0.7% YOY in the UK and 2.4% YOY in Spain, and it contracted by 2.2% YOY in Germany.
The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has derailed growth across Europe, but despite our initial expectations, the latest data suggests that domestic demand dynamics and industrial output in CE have proven more resilient to the ongoing shock. While much of the increase in domestic consumption in markets such as Poland can be attributed to the significant inflow of Ukrainian refugees, domestic demand across Central Europe has managed to outperform despite the significant surge in inflation. On the other hand, both domestic consumption and output in Western Europe have moved in line with our expectations and eased substantially in the face of mounting inflation and output costs. In the past two months, consumers in WEUR markets have shown greater propensity to trade down and have begun to reduce the volume of purchases, as price pressures have driven real wages into a contraction. While household incomes in Central Europe have come under similar pressure, consumers have so far abstained from significant cuts to their spending habits. A significant part of the reason behind the greater resilience of domestic consumption in Central Europe can be attributed to the fact that consumers have experienced exceedingly high inflationary pressures relatively recently throughout the 1990s and the 2000s and have thus become relatively more accustomed to the high inflationary environment than WEUR consumers, who have never seen such levels in 40 years. While we do expect demand to ease going forward, these trends will necessitate upward revisions to our CE outlook, with consumer spending remaining a key driver for growth.
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Fans of Game of Thrones have a new way to get a bit of the HBO hit show into their daily lives thanks to an update to Google search. When using the Google search app on Android or iOS devices, users can say “Hodor” and they will get a “HODOR!” response from the app. Even on desktop search, if voice search has been activated, Google will respond with an info card full of “Hodor.”
Along with the nod to Hodor, Google also added some new functions to search. You can ask Google to “roll a die” (dice will work as well) and the search results will give you the results of the roll. Thus far that function is limited to a single six-sided die. Google can also “flip a coin” in response to the command. Finally, if you need a romantic quote on short notice, you can ask Google for a love quote and get something appropriate.
Google has finally added a much needed option to finding apps in the Play Store: filtering apps by ratings.
Normally if you’re looking for a new app, you’d have to scroll through every app on the Play Store. If any of you have done that for more than five minutes, you probably know there’s just as much junk and spam as actual apps. Fortunately, most of those apps get poor ratings and it’s easy to see bad apps from a distance, but with this new filter, you won’t even have to see those apps.
Has Google Now ever misheard a word you meant to say?
Chances are, it has. Although the service is pretty damn accurate, it’s still a developing technology and has a ways to go before being perfect. Google knows its product isn’t perfect, and in addition to improving voice recognition in Google Search, it has now added a “no I said ___” command for when the app mishears something you said.
The “OK Google” command on both Android and Chrome has been expanding in both use and languages lately, and today, Google has announced 9 new compatibles languages to activate the service. Hit the break for the full list:
According to a new rumor, Google Now will grasp events posted on other Google apps such as Gmail and Hangouts and then ask if you’d like the event to be added to your calendar.
The information will be clearly displayed to the user as to where the event was taken from and if the user would like to edit the event prior to adding it to the calendar such that when a recipient tells you about a time and location, Google will take that information and allow you to edit it beforehand. The image at the top of the article is a dummy interface of this rumored feature.
Although we see Google branching out into many new areas and products over time, that doesn’t mean they ignore the base of the company, search. Over the years Google has continued to expand the ability of their search engine to respond to queries from users. They have now reached a point where the Google Search engine is able to handle some “complicated” questions.
Some poking around in the settings for Google’s Search app shows it is largely incompatible with many of the apps on a typical smartphone or tablet. This means that users hoping to take advantage of “universal search” are unlikely to get the results they were hoping for. Universal search has been the subject of patent skirmishes, especially for Samsung devices. Nonetheless, the function is now present and has been for a while on Android powered devices. With universal search, users can get results not only from the web, but from applications that are running on their device. As the latest analysis shows, the applications capable of delivering results to Google Search are made up of a small list.
Here’s a nice little treat from Google. Head to your Android device and perform a Google search for “Let’s go caroling.” Your phone or tablet will turn into a holiday-themed karaoke machine, with everything from Jingle Bells to We Wish You A Merry Christmas available for sing-along, including a bouncing ball to help keep you on track. What better way to get you in the holiday spirit?
Be sure to also check out our complete Google Now easter egg collection.
Following up yesterday’s release of an update to Google’s Play Movies that enables saving movies in low resolution, Google has started pushing out an update to their Play Music app that enables a similar feature for music. Instead of giving users an option to save a smaller file, the app will now prompt users to save their music files to external storage if their device has any available. Google also added a standardized “Share” option to make it easier to keep your friends updated on what you are listening to. The code for this latest update reveals support for the redemption of coupon codes as well, though it is not apparent in the app how that might be done.
Today, an absolutely huge Google Search update started rolling out to all Android devices running Android 4.1 and above. The update is version 3.1.8 and is big for a number of reasons.
First of all, the update brings Google Search version 3 (or 3.1.8) to all devices running Android 4.1 and above. This is the version of Search that comes with KitKat, and brings a new UI, as well as a new refreshed animation. The update also allows the Google Experience Launcher APK to work properly when installed. Hit the break for more information on Search 3.1.8.


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