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All the best Black Friday deals on flights and travel for Australia 2020
Stays at hotels and resorts in Australia’s top holiday destinations are being slashed by up to half in the travel deal sale of the year.
Our articles are dedicated to helping you find the right product at the right price. We may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and when you make a purchase. Learn more
Now there’s no excuse not to book your next trip.
As more of the nation’s state borders begin to open up, IHG hotels has announced its biggest Cyber Sale, with savings of up to 50 per cent some of its incredible range of luxury hotels.
It is among the jaw-dropping deals being offered to Australian travellers to mark the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping sales.
The Black Friday sale day has evolved into a week of bargains and hot deals coinciding with Cyber Monday for all things tech, home and lifestyle, and travel has not been neglected.
RELATED: Black Friday and Cyber Monday – Everything you need to know.
IHG Hotels & Resorts is offering huge discounts for guests staying for a minimum of two nights at participating Regent, InterContinental, Kimpton, voco, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express or Staybridge Suites hotels.
While the deal applies to IHG properties worldwide, it also includes 32 hotels in Australia.
IHG Rewards Club members will get a guaranteed 50 per cent off while non-members will received a guaranteed 45 per cent off.
The sale is on from Thursday, November 26 to Wednesday, December 2.
Travel dates are November 25 to June 30, 2021 for IHG Rewards Club members and November 27 to June 30, 2021 for the general public.
MASSIVE SAVINGS ON ICONIC AUSSIE SPOTS
Good thing the Queensland border has flung open to NSW and Victoria — Wotif is slashing prices on some of the Sunshine State’s top holiday spots for the Black Friday sales.
Wotif is offering savings of up to 30 per cent on a range of Australian accommodation as part of its Wot a Sale promotion.
Travellers can save big bucks on destinations including the iconic Queensland holiday spots of Daydream Island, Cairns and the Gold Coast, as well as Sydney, Hunter Valley, Melbourne and Perth.
Travel dates are between November 2020 to November 2021.
You can also save an 15 per cent off select hotels on Cyber Monday through the Wotif app.
The sale ends on November 30. Visit wotif.com
UP TO 40% OFF HOTELS WITH KAYAK
KAYAK.com.au has rounded up more than 80 of the best hotel deals across Australia where travellers can save up to 40 per cent off.
This includes five-star hotels in major cities to idyllic beachside accommodation across the country.
Among the highlights are Sea World Resort & Water Park, Oaks Port Stephens Pacific Blue Resort, Qube Broadbeach, Zagame’s House and Rendezvous Hotel Perth Scarborough.
Sale ends on November 30. For more details, visit kayak.com.au
HUGE SAVINGS ON TOP TRAVEL BRANDS
The Travel Corporation has launched penny-saving deals across all its brands including Trafalgar, Contiki, AAT Kings and Inspiring Journeys, Uniworld Luxury River Cruises, Insight Vacations and Costsaver. Plenty of great deals can be found at those links.
Among the highlights are huge savings on Trafalgar’s full range of “Best of” trips, including up to $700 on all 2021 departures, such as the Best of Portugal and Best of South Africa tours. That can be combined with Trafalgar’s $99 Deposit Offer, which lets travellers secure their trip for $99 and get a full refund if they need to cancel within 30 days. Travel period is from now until December 8, 2021. Visit trafalgar.com.
Younger travellers can take advantage of Contiki’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday travel deals that offer up to 30 per cent off worldwide 2021 and 2022 adventures.
Contiki’s flexibility promise will apply to all bookings paid in full by March 31, 2021.
Travellers can choose from a number of unique and authentic travel experiences such as the European Quest itinerary or the Greek Island Hopping itinerary.
Available from November 27 to December 1, and booking conditions apply. Visit contiki.com
SEABOURN’S BLACK FRIDAY OFFERS
Luxury cruise line Seabourn’s Black Friday deals have launched, and it’s offering inclusions for bookings made by December 1 on select voyages throughout 2021 and 2022.
Benefits include $US1000 ($1359) shipboard credit per suite for Ocean View and Veranda Suites, $US2000 ($2718) shipboard credit per suite for Penthouse and Premium Suites, veranda for Ocean View suite upgrade, three category Veranda Suite upgrade, and reduced deposit of $350 per guest. Visit seabourn.com
10% OFF RED BALLOON EXPERIENCES
If you’re in the mood for adventure — or looking for a unique Christmas gift for someone special — Red Balloon is offering 10 per cent off experiences sitewide when you spend $150 as part of its Cyber Sale.
This includes experiences that are already 30 per cent off. Use the code CYBER at the checkout until November 30, 2020. Visit redballoon.com.au
WEBJET’S CYBER WEEKEND SALE
Travellers can save up to $100 on hotels and $200 off packages across Australia with Webjet’s Black Friday offers, which are on sale until November 30.
To save on hotels, travellers can save $50 with a minimum spend of $500 with the coupon code BFSALE50, or save $100 with a minimum spend of $1000 with the coupon code BFSALE100.
On packages, save $100 with a minimum spend of $1000 with the coupon code 100BLKFRI, or save $200 with a minimum spend of $2000 with the coupon code 200BLKFRI.
Travellers can also buy eGift cards now to receive 10 per cent extra value.
Travel dates are between November 17, 2020 and August 31, 2021.
NINE DAYS OF EXPEDIA SALES
All Australian travellers can get up to 30 per cent off select domestic hotels over nine days of sales by Expedia.
The sale ends December 1, 2020.
Among the deals is 40 per cent off stays at Smiths Beach Resort in the stunning Margaret River region of WA, 40 per cent off Reef Retreat in Cairns, and 30 per cent off Radisson BLu Plaza Hotel in Sydney’s CBD for select travel dates between November 23 and December 29, 2021.
Visit expedia.com.au for the full list of deals.
EXPLORE AUSTRALIA ON THE CHEAP
StayWell Holdings is rolling out a series of deals for Black Friday to encourage guests to explore their own backyard.
With room options from studios to larger apartments, there’s a range of accommodation offers to suit a variety of budgets.
The travel period is between November 26, 2020 and November 30, 2021.
RELATED: Black Friday deals to bookmark now
$4000 OF EXTRAS ON NORWEGIAN CRUISE LINE
Norwegian Cruise Line is offering stateroom category guests up to $4000 additional value with five “Free at Sea” offers as part of its Black Friday sale.
The options include a free beverage package, free shore excursion credit, free speciality dining package, free Wi-Fi package and reduced rates for every third and fourth guest on select sailings.
The offer is available until December 10, 2020. Visit ncl.com.
RELATED: Best Back Friday Amazon deals
While Black Friday is technically November 27, the annual event (which originated as a post-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas spending opportunity in the US) includes a huge number of Aussie and international retailers and brands slashing the prices of products across technology, beauty, fashion, home and more.
Black Friday first began in the US on the Friday following Thanksgiving, which is usually observed on the fourth Thursday of November.
Traditionally, this Friday marked the beginning of the holiday spending rush, but in recent years it has snowballed into a global shopping phenomenon where retailers offer staggering discounts on a range of products across technology, beauty, fashion, homewares and more.
In Australia, Black Friday now competes with Boxing Day as our biggest shopping extravaganza and last year, National Australia Bank expected shoppers would spend $2.9 billion on the sales.


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For a magazine that prides itself on showing just about everything, one thing it won’t be showing next month is up.
Christie Hefner, daughter of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and chairwoman and chief executive of Playboy Enterprises International, has refused an invitation to appear before the Scottish Parliament to give evidence to the equal opportunities committee holding December hearings on “sexualized imagery and children” and to explain why her company’s bunny logo is used on products attractive to children.
That has some lawmakers accusing her of cowardice, reports Scotland on Sunday.
The planned hearings follow a number of recent incidents of leading UK stores selling items inappropriately aimed at children: Woolworth’s “Lolita” bed for little girls, BHS’ “Little Miss Naughty” underwear and Tesco’s pole-dancing kits advertised on its website’s toy section.
Playboy was drawn into the controversy in May by a spontaneous protest by York vicar, Father Tim Jones, who pulled down a display of pencil cases and notebooks bearing the bunny logo at a local stationary story.
|Father Tim Jones (Courtesy York Press)|
“I told the assistant manager who was on duty at the till that I was going to be launching a protest at the shop, and I went over to where the Playboy material was on the shelf alongside the Winnie The Pooh and Mickey Mouse material, and I started tossing it on the floor away from where people were,” Jones, 40, told the York Press at the time.
The minister also asked store patrons to sign a petition protesting “the intrusion of commercial brands such as Playboy into goods and services targeting children.”
“The long-term intention of this strategy is to encourage children to see the Playboy bunny as a friendly child-appropriate brand, preparing them for early commercial acceptance of Playboy pornographic merchandise,” Jones said.
“This constitutes a kind of ‘institutional grooming’ of children for their commercial exploitation by the powerful sex industry. This institutional grooming may be indirect but it is not accidental. It is deliberate, intentional, cynical and wicked, and must be resisted.”
Playboy blamed the stationary story for the problem:
“We were surprised to discover that Playboy stationery has been so inappropriately positioned. Playboy’s target audience is 18 to 34-year-olds so we clearly did not authorize, nor approve, the placement of our product next to such well-known children’s characters. Our licensee and its distributor were also unaware of this placement. We will be reviewing this situation immediately,” a spokesman said.
In September, 20 members of the Scottish Parliament offered a motion charging Playboy with “manipulative, dangerous and exploitative” practices to “target sexualized merchandise at children.”
“Such morally corrupt marketing practices contribute to the desensitization of society to pornography and the continuing inequality and exploitation of women,” read the motion offered by Elaine Smith MSP.
In light of the much publicized protest by Jones and the action by the MSPs, Christie Hefner herself responded by letter, defending the company:
“Although I have not been contacted directly, this is an allegation I take seriously, and I want to underline to the Scottish parliament … that Playboy does not market its products to children.”
Hefner described the adult magazine, founded in 1953, as “part of America’s popular cultural landscape” and a “social and political forum for some of the most influential figures of our time.” Its target audience, she insisted, was “trend-conscious men and women aged 18-35.”
“I have seen the considerable media coverage of the Rev. Tim Jones’s protest,” she wrote. “His actions and words, as well as a motion tabled by Elaine Smith MSP referring to Playboy, incorrectly suggest our merchandise is targeted at children.”
After Hefner interjected herself into the matter, an invitation was extended to appear before the committee to defend her company. Playboy has since informed the lawmakers it will send no one and the company says it has nothing to contribute to the discussion.
“I think it’s cowardly,” said Sandra White, a member of the committee. “The committee wrote to Christie Hefner because she had complained to us and made an issue of this. Playboy drew attention to themselves.
“Now, when they could be giving their side of the story, they’ve decided to turn tail and run. I’m pretty disappointed because I would have liked to hear them explain why things like Playboy pencil cases are on sale in ordinary stationery counters.”
If you would like to sound off on this issue, participate in today’s WND Poll.

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Brands should prepare for a surge in Strictly inspired spending from this Saturday up until Christmas, as fans of the hit show settle down for both the series finale and festive special. That’s according to new data insights from eBay Ads UK, which finds that Strictly Come Dancing prompts viewers to shop for what they’ve seen on TV – whether for their favourite looks or gear for their new dancing career.
With the 2021 final set to air this Saturday, figures from 2020 show that on the day of last year’s final, searches for ‘strictly’ and ‘ballroom’ increased 30% and 23% respectively compared to the day before. Meanwhile, during last year’s Christmas special, searches for ‘strictly’ also rose 22%. And demonstrating that Strictly fever is still going strong this season, eBay Ads saw searches for ‘strictly’ jump 104% on the day of this year’s first live show (25th September 2021) compared to the day before, with searches for ‘ballroom’ rising 94% in the same timeframe.
Dual screening is the ultimate duet for brands
The new insights from eBay Ads UK reveal an opportunity for agile brands to cash in on second screening – as viewers shop from the sofa on second devices. The style of glamorous host Tess Daly in particular inspires shoppers in the moment. When Tess wore a black halterneck jumpsuit during last year’s second live show on 31st October 2020, searches for ‘jumpsuit’ shot up 28% at 8pm compared to the previous hour. And during the series semi-final (12th December 2020), Tess’s pink floor-length gown prompted searches for ‘pink dress’ to surge 161% at 7pm compared to the hour before.
But it’s not only the presenters that get the nation shopping. When The Wanted singer Max George performed his movie week routine dressed as Homer Simpson on 3rd November 2020, searches for ‘Simpsons’ jumped 38% from 6 to 8pm. And focusing on slightly more conventional attire, when singer HRVY wore a gold tuxedo during the quarter final (5th December 2020), searches for ‘tuxedo’ soared 73% in the same timeframe.
Harmony Murphy, GM Advertising UK at eBay, comments: “Strictly Come Dancing continues to be one of Britain’s most loved television shows, and our data demonstrates that fans are online-and-inspired while each episode and dance is aired – presenting a great opportunity for brands to tap into this Strictly fever. As we approach this year’s final and Christmas special – the final hurrahs of the series – brands should harness the freshest, real-time data insights that allow them to reach a nation of Strictly fans while they’re in the mood to dance, and shop.”
Shoppers get their dancing shoes on
Beyond outfit inspiration, the insights from eBay Ads UK suggest that Strictly also inspires people to get dancing and invest in dance gear of their own. On the day of last year’s final (19th December 2020), searches for ‘ballroom dress’ increased 75% compared to the day before, and ‘tap shoes’ rose 31% in the same time frame. Meanwhile, as Strictly kicked off with its first live show this year, searches for ‘tap shoes’ and ‘leotard’ jumped 96% and 28% respectively, compared to the day before.
And brands mustn’t forget that dancing is for everyone. During last year’s semi-final, searches for ‘ballet shoes’ by male shoppers surged 75% compared to the day before – compared to a 44% increase amongst female shoppers. And during this year’s opening show, searches for ‘tap shoes’ by male shoppers increased 173% compared to the day before, close to double the 95% increase in searches made by females. This demonstrates a clear need for brands to consider all demographics when it comes to reaching those caught up in the magic of Strictly.
Harmony Murphy, GM Advertising UK at eBay, adds: “With shows such as Strictly Come Dancing firmly embedded into British pop culture, marketers must realise that their annual occurrences have become retail events in their own right. Brands must consider how they can map shows such as Strictly into their yearly campaigns and engage a nation of fans inspired to shop – whether for glamorous outfits or their own dance gear.”


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The world of Italian wine mourns the loss of Abruzzese pioneer winemaker Gianni Masciarelli (left, photo by Gambero Rosso), who succumbed to a stroke on Monday and died this week after being flown to Munich for emergency care. He was 53 years old and is survived by his wife Marina Cvetić, for whom his top line of wines was named, and his three children. Masciarelli began making wine at his father’s winery in 1978 and has long been credited as a visionary in the revival of winemaking in Abruzzo and the refashioning of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo as a grape that could produce world-class wines. In 1984 he launched his Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Villa Gemma, a new benchmark in quality for the appellation and in 1991, he released the first vintage of Trebbiano d’Abruzzo Marina Cvetić, named after his wife, a wine that set a new standard for “modern” expressions of the grape variety.
According to a report published today at Wine Spectator online, Frescobaldi 2003 Brunello di Montalcino has been partially cleared by the Siena prosecutor’s office.
“Local magistrates have released approximately half the production of Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi’s Castelgiocondo Brunello di Montalcino 2003 from impoundment,” writes the Spectator‘s Jo Cooke, “after laboratory tests concluded that the wine contained only Sangiovese, as required by Brunello DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) regulations.”
Frescobaldi’s 2003 Brunello was impounded this spring by local authorities who alleged that the wine contained grape varieties other than Sangiovese. Brunello di Montalcino appellation regulations require that the wine be made from 100% Sangiovese grapes grown in Montalcino.
“According to Lamberto Frescobaldi, who oversees production of all his family’s estates in Tuscany and beyond, the cleared wine consists of 469 hectoliters (equivalent to around 5,200 cases) of yet-to-be-bottled Brunello. The winery has already bottled 5,000 cases, which remain under the scrutiny of the magistrates, who have not said when Frescobaldi can expect further results.”
The 14th annual Friuli DOC food and wine festival will be held September 18-21 in Udine, Friuli. Long considered one of Italy’s top food and wine festivals, the 2008 Friuli DOC fair will feature “hillside” food, wine, culture, and artisanal products from 15 townships.
July 2008 marks the 1-year anniversary of the launch of the fair’s highly popular blog, Friuli DOC Vive, which boasts more than 8,000 page views a month.
In December 2009, Ovada producers will be able to send their wines to market labeled “Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore DOCG” or simply “Ovada DOCG,” according to a report published by FocusWine.it. Earlier this month, Italy’s Ministry of Agriculture gave the DOCG the long-awaited green light, which had been delayed by bureaucratic wrangling, according to the report. In order to expedite the new legislation, the ministry has also vowed to publish revised regulations in the Italian government’s Gazzetta Ufficiale (Official Journal of the Italian Republic) within 30 days.
Last week, in a move that astounded Italian Communist Party (PDCI) members, the party’s convention organizers banned the consumption of Lambrusco at the party’s congress in Salsomaggiore Terme, in the province of Parma — the heart of Lambrusco country. A lack of funds was reported as the reason for the absence of Lambrusco at the convention-goers’ repast. But when members purchased bottles of Lambrusco at a nearby bar, event organizers instructed the bar owner to cease and desist.
Historically, Lambrusco has been closely associated with the Italian Communist Party, which has always enjoyed strong support in Emilia-Romagna, one of Italy’s wealthiest regions where communist-party members have dominated local politics for generations. When asked about the ban, the newly appointed Secretary of the Italian Communist Party, Sardinian-born Oliviero Diliberto (above), responded bluntly telling a reporter from a local publication, “Lambrusco is disgusting.”
“When we saw Parmigiano on the tables, unaccompanied by Lambrusco,” said Donato Vena, secretary of the Reggio Emilia Communist Party federation (local chapter), “we began to worry. This is sacrilege. If they refuse to give us Lambrusco, we will buy it ourselves and we will offer some to Diliberto so that he can change his mind.”
When Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi compared himself to Brunello di Montalcino in his address to the Coldiretti national convention on Friday, editorialists and political pundits took note (Coldiretti is Italy’s powerful farmers union). As the Brunello inquiry drags on, media-savvy Berlusconi was clearly lending his support to the embattled winemakers of Montalcino and the fact that he made the remarks before the farmers union did not go unnoticed.
“I am proud of having gathered together a splendid team of young ministers,” Berlusconi told the group of commercial farmers on Friday. “But an old man’s experience was also needed. I can be compared to Brunello di Montalcino, which, as you know, gets better with age.”
In a political cartoon published on Saturday in the national daily Corriere della Sera, one of Italy’s greatest vignettistes, Emilio Giannelli, parodied the controversial Berlusconi (click image to enlarge):
In the cartoon, it is Minister of Public Administration and Innovation, Renato Brunetta, a staunch reformer and member of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, who offers Berlusconi a glass of wine and tells him (borrowing Berlusconi’s line), “The older I get, the better I become.” Berlusconi tastes the wine, chokes, and then spits it out, exclaiming, “But this isn’t Brunello! It’s Brunetta,” one of the “young” ministers appointed by Berlusconi.
The satire also makes reference to an episode that took place earlier this year, when Berlusconi feigned an attack of food poisoning after eating mozzarella di bufala, a much-discussed and ill-advised gesture in the light of the recent mozzarella scandal (harmful toxins were discovered in cheese produced in Campania).
According to Vinowire’s sources in Montalcino, the city’s mayor and the Confederazione italiana agricoltori (Italian Farming Federation, otherwise known as CIA), and many individual winemakers (members of the CIA) have expressed support for radical changes in the Brunello di Montalcino DOCG. Some have called for the creation of new appellations within Montalcino and Sant’Antimo and for changes that would other grape varieties besides Sangiovese to be used. At the same time, in a meeting yesterday, the Unione italiana vini (Italian Wine Union or UIV), members expressed opposition to any such changes. Modifications of the appellation, Union members said, should come from within the Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino (association of Brunello producers).
Our sources report that many producers have expressed support for the creation of a new appellation designation, reserved exclusively for Brunello made with 100% Sangiovese (possibly with a “prestigious” attributive or qualifier). A new name for Brunello made with 100% Sangiovese, proponents say, would allow producers to continue to exploit the Brunello “brand name,” even if produced using other grape varieties.
The editors of VinoWire encourage winemakers, bloggers, wine critics and writers, and lovers of Italian wine to submit their comments.
Craig Camp, Oregon winemaker and author of one of the most respected wine blogs in the U.S., recently posted the following editorial on the fallout of the Brunello controversy:
- The recent “scandal” in Brunello di Montalcino has forced the Italian government to guarantee that all Brunello wines hitting the American shore are made from Sangiovese and Sangiovese alone. Funny, I thought that’s what the DOCG did.
The hypocrisy of the TTB in such matters is truly sad. Under the guise of consumer protection, the TTB continues to make the American market a mess with reams of confusing and contradictory regulations. Their wasting time on a matter the Italians were clearing handling on their own only shows how out of touch with the world of wine they are. Anyway, anyone who has gotten a look at the true majesty of Italian bureaucracy, which may be the most complex and convoluted in the world, would realize that the piling on of an American bureaucracy was redundant at best.
Italian winemaker Gianpaolo Paglia of Poggio Argentiera (Tuscany) recently weighed in with the following observations on proposed “deregulation” of the Brunello DOCG:
- Does deregulation mean no rules? Not to me. Does deregulation mean to remove all the obstacles that make the wine industry a fenced garden where the notion of free market is often unknown? I agree with this.
Wine industry, as well as the rest of agriculture in EU and USA, is regulated in order to avoid the excess of product and not to push up quality. That is because agriculture is heavily subsidized (50 Billion Euros is the yearly budget for EU for agricolture), so that the excess is taken out of the market at taxpayer expenses. The transformation of wine in alcohol alone absorbs 400-500 Million euros per year in EU. That is not only costly, but also has been proven to be ineffective. Let the farmers decide what to grow (not possible today, especially for wine) and stop wasting money in politics that are ineffective and reduce the free market at taxpayers and consumers expenses.
Let’s invest more money in the quality of products, even implementing and enforcing more sophisticated control procedures and techniques.
That’s what I call deregulation.
This is the second part in VinoWire editor Franco Ziliani’s two-part interview with winemaker Renzo Cotarella of Marchesi Antinori. Scroll down for part 1.
What led to the investigation of Antinori?
In Montalcino, Marchesi Antinori has 62 hectares under vine, of which 31 are registered as Sangiovese for [the production of] Brunello. The rest are in Sant’Antimo, even though we still haven’t applied for this DOC. These grapes — various red varieties — are destined for our Villa Antinori Rosso IGT Toscana, as is some of the Sangiovese that comes from the Monteriggio zone.
[An error arose] because of a superficial mistake, due to our intention to maintain moderate amounts of this variety in Montalcino, even though it’s an accepted and authorized variety: 3.2 hectares in Sant’Antimo had been registered as Sangiovese but they were actually Petit Verdot. [It was] a technical error that led investigators to believe that those grapes could have ended up in the Brunello di Montalcino, even though the analysis — and I will never get tired of repeating this — has shown that there is only Sangiovese in our Brunello: Sangiovese from Montalcino.
None of us — employees and colleagues at Marchesi Antinori — has the authority to act like an idiot or to do anything less than correct whether it be in Montalcino or on any of our other estates. In 2005, when the scarcity of the vintage could have led us to [employ] the practice of “talking vats,” using grapes sourced from other Tuscan estates, in Montalcino we chose to purchase officially registered Brunello Sangiovese grapes.
Do you think that appellation regulations should be changed to allow other grape varieties other than Sangiovese?
Montalcino is one of the few places, together with certain, limited zones in the Chianti Classico area, where [winemakers] should work with 100% Sangiovese. Brunello should have a consistent, recognizable style. In Chianti Classico, Sangiovese can be blended with up to 20% of other grapes. In my opinion, this is excessive. To do this [in Montalcino] would be a mistake because 10-15% of Cabernet in a Merlot or vice versa doesn’t really change much. But when you add 15-20% of French grapes to Sangiovese, things change a lot.
[The idea of] flexible appellation regulations is a complicated one — for example, allowing up to 10% of other grapes (but which ones?) in difficult vintages like 1992 or 2002. [It would be better] if the law of the market permitted it, to decide not to make Brunello and skip the vintage when Sangiovese shows ripening or other type of problems. But, frankly, this would be unthinkable. A small margin for error [could be allowed], no more than 2-3%, in the case of errors by grape growers or accidents in the cellar.
VinoWire editor Franco Ziliani spoke recently to Marchesi Antinori’s winemaker Renzo Cotarella about the Brunello controversy. Antinori was one of the first wineries to be named in the investigation: in March 2008, the Italian national daily La Repubblica reported that Antinori’s 2003 Brunello di Montalcino Pian delle Vigne had been impounded by the Siena prosecutor. On June 26, Antinori announced that investigators had released the wine, reporting that it had been analyzed and was found not to contain grapes other than Sangiovese. The wine was made available for sale on July 1.
Of the wineries officially implicated in the investigation, Antinori is among the first to be cleared by Italian authorities.
This is the first in a two-part interview. Look for part 2 tomorrow at VinoWire.com.
What was your first reaction to the investigation?
None of us at Marchesi Antinori expected that such a situation could come about. It literally took us by surprise. We weren’t prepared for the search warrants, the inspections, and the involvement of our company and brand in an episode that was blown way out of proportion. Our first concern, beyond protecting the good name of our company, was that of protecting the land value of our vineyards. Even before the Siena prosecutor decided to impount our 2003 Brunello di Montalcino (of which we had planned to release 200,000 bottles), we ourselves decided not to release the wine for sale as a precaution. It was a tough decision for us but we wanted to undestand what was happening.
The prosecutor has now released your wine and approved it for sale, clearing Antinoris name. Why then did you declassify 80,000 bottles?
These were difficult months during which the company had to act with style, on the one hand respecting the job the magistrate was doing and on the other not making counter-productive statements. We had to wait for the chance to show that we were innocent, that we had nothing to do with the allegations, and our respect for the existing appellation regulations, and the law. [We didn't want to lose an order from a valued customer], “Emirates Airline, and we realized that this was taking a long time and didn’t know if we would be able to meet our deadlines, so we decided to declassify 80,000 bottles of Brunello Pian delle Vigne 2003 to IGT Toscana. The airline’s choice was essentially based on the quality of our product. The appellation change did not bring about any change to our agreement and we sold the IGT at the same price we had agreed upon for the Brunello.
We promptly followed the Siena prosecutor’s office instructions — using a method agreed upon in the name of common sense — and we were able to submit our 2003 Brunello for analysis. We were thus able to show that we were working correctly and that our wines were in perfect conformity with appellation regulations requiring that the wine is pure Sangiovese from Montalcino. For future vintages, which Brunello has yet to be “cleared”), if required, we will request testing and the wines will be made available for sale on schedule.
How will the 2004 Brunello di Montalcino be released?
Because of the nature of the vintage, the 2003 was bottled a year early. For 2004, we plan on bottling the wine between the end of July and the beginning of August 2008 and we will then let it age 6-8 months in bottle.
We have not yet decided whether or not we will bottle before or after we have performed the required analysis. Shortly, we will contact the Siena prosecutor’s office to coordinate every step of the process.
We have roughly 1,200 hectares under vine in Tuscany and Marchesi Antinori is entirely in favor and open to any type of analysis. We believe that this practice is the most appropriate response in our efforts to bolster the value of our land and to maintain consumer confidence and perception of our company.
What are your thoughts on the recent controversy and the future of Brunello di Montalcino?
What happened is still the source of great bitterness. We didn’t realize that it could have such a devastating effect.
It has caused considerable damage, even though Brunello is still incredibly strong. Many brands, including our own, have maintained their credibility. In just a few days, we will have the green light to ship the wine [and] most of the bottles of 2003 Pian delle Vigne have already been sold.
At any rate, I believe that the “Brunello scandal” has brought attention to the necessity for an “ethical approach” to wine, its production, its sale, and marketing. When a product can be monitored and the source of the fruit and the grape varieties can be analyzed, it invariably acts as a deterrent for those who might resort to shortcuts.
Sangiovese is a fantastic grape variety but it is also difficult and it creates a lot of problems. Montalcino is one of the few places — together with certain, well-defined areas in Chianti Classico — where you can work with 100% Sangiovese.
We have to accept the fact that over the last few years, when ripening conditions are not the best, you either have to decide not to produce Brunello or you need to make less of it.
[The press] needs to learn how to understand Montalcino and Sangiovese and to realize that great wines can be made from vineyards in Montalcino but those wines shouldn’t be considered too tannic, acidity, or as having excessive volatile acidity.
Do you think that appellation regulations should be changed to allow other grapes besides Sangiovese?
We need to accept the appellation rules and consider them as a plus and not as a limitation. These wines have a personality all their own and we shouldn’t expect them to be something other than what they are.


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they already found an exploit, GG
You are correct
Taken From iOS 4.1 jailbreak exploit found just hours after release
As we reported yesterday evening, iOS 4.1 was released with a number of new features, along with security and bug fixes.
But within hours of it going live, hackers had managed to find a method which can be used to jailbreak devices running the latest version of Apples operating system.
The Register reports that pod2g, a member of the iPhone Dev-Team, has uncovered an exploit in the boot Rom of iOS devices. Because this is such a low-level hole in the system, it wont be a case of Apple being able to simply patch it up, either.
Apple will have to make hardware changes and tweak the boot Roms on its iGadgets to successfully close up this particular exploit.
Having said that, theres still a considerable amount of work to do before a functioning jailbreak is ready to roll, by all accounts. But were betting it wont be too long, and the problem this time round will be much more of a headache for Apple than the previous jailbreak.
Although there could be a potentially very simple solution. Just let people run what they want on their iPhones (like thats going to happen)


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Amazon, Tesco Bank, Waitrose and the NHS app were all taken offline yesterday as widespread internet outages hit millions of users.
The NHS app, now notorious amid the ongoing ‘pingdemic’ crisis, alongside major banking and retail apps were among thousands of services brought down for nearly an hour yesterday evening.
Tesco Bank, Sainsbury’s bank alongside financial giants like HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays, American Express and TSB were all affected by the outages, while retailers like Amazon and its Amazon Web Services arm, Waitrose and Home Depot also went offline.
It is the second major internet outage in two months, following a similar incident on June 8 in which a number of major retail websites were down for around an hour.
Dubbed ‘the hour the internet broke’ retailers including Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, Shopify and Boots are understood to have lost a collective £1 billion in revenues.
This outage, which also affected streaming services and gaming platforms like Steam and PlayStation Network, is understood to be traced to the world’s largest content delivery network Akamai.
Akamai issued a statement on its website at around 5pm yesterday saying it was “aware of an emerging issue with the Edge DNS service. We are actively investigating the issue.”
At 5:47pm Akamai tweeted: “We have implemented a fix for this issue, and based on current observations, the service is resuming normal operations. We will continue to monitor to ensure that the impact has been fully mitigated.”
The increasing number of outages have spurred some MPs to call for online infrastructure to be beefed up to avoid similar situations.
In June, Conservative MP and chair of the the all-party parliamentary group for cyber security Simon Fell, said: “This incident shows just how reliant we are on a few big providers to host and enable access to content online.
“Thankfully today’s outage was brief, but the Government and National Cyber Security Centre should take this incident as an urgent prompt to review how to build-in resilience to infrastructure just as critical as our physical transport networks or even our broadcast media.
“Single points of failure put us at risk not just to error and unexpected downtime, but also show where we are vulnerable to cyber-attacks or warfare. It is time to take heed and act.”


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The team behind Moves, a fitness tracker app on iOS and Android, is joining Facebook. "Since we launched Moves, we’ve been focused on running a simple and clean activity diary that millions of people have enjoyed using," the company said in a blog post today. "Now, we’re joining Facebook’s talented team to work on building and improving their products and services with a shared mission of supporting simple, efficient tools for more than a billion people."
But don't expect to see a step-counter in Facebook's mobile apps just yet. Moves says its app will remain a standalone experience and the company is also looking to swiftly settle any privacy concerns, telling users "there are no plans" to share its data with Facebook.
Moves took a unique approach with its app, which first debuted last January. Aside from regular activity tracking, the app also makes note of where you've stopped throughout your day — be it work, a local lunch spot, or a coffee shop. In the beginning, Moves only supported running and walking activity, but has since expanded significantly and now offers a wide variety of exercise tracking. It fares all right with users too, with an average four-star rating on both the App Store and Google Play. The company says it's been downloaded over 4 million times.


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Celebrity chefs 'exacerbate Britain's obesity crisis by encouraging people to eat dishes packed with fat'
- Study found 87% of recipes fell short of eating recommendations
- Nutrition experts tested more than 900 recipes from 26 famous cooks
Nigella Lawson and other celebrity chefs are 'exacerbating' the country's obesity crisis by encouraging people to eat dishes packed with fat, a new study has warned.
Nutrition experts tested more than 900 recipes from 26 famous cooks and found 87 per cent fell 'substantially short' of the Government's healthy eating recommendations.
Just 13 per cent recommended ingredients that would create a healthy meal based on guidelines devised by the Government's Food Standards Agency.
Nigella Lawson was one of the celebrity chefs whose recipes were tested by nutrition experts
Researchers from Coventry University, who are publishing their findings today, refused to name the chefs involved beyond making clear they are household names.
However, previous studies have shamed the likes of Nigella Lawson, Rick Stein, Jean-Christophe Novelli and John Burton-Race.
Nigella's most recent TV series and book for the BBC, Nigellissima, was promoted with images of the cook looking remarkably slim following a punishing exercise regime.
By contrast, some of the recipes in the book could see a follower eating the recommended maximum calorie count for an entire day in a single sitting.
Her desserts included a chocolate and hazelnut cheesecake, which contains more than 7,000 calories, while here ice cream brioche came in at 2,144 calories.
The brioche may be delicious and indulgent, but it contains more than the 2,000 calories that a woman should eat for one day.
Rick Stein's Raspberry Cranachan has been highlighted for its high cream content
Nigella has also been criticised for her heavy handed use of butter in her egg and bacon pie. A single serving contains 38g of fat, which is also double the recommended daily maximum for a woman.
Rick Stein's Raspberry Cranachan has been highlighted for its high cream content.
The recommended daily saturated fat limit is 30g for men and 20g for women in order to head off clogged arteries, obesity, heart attack and stroke.
Stein's creamy pudding weighs in at 36g of saturated fat per serving, putting it well above the daily ration.
The study, published in the Food and Public Health journal, found that many celebrity chef recipes in cookbooks contained 'undesirable levels' of saturated fatty acids (SFA), sugars and salt which are linked to obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
Nigella's most recent TV series and book for the BBC, Nigellissima, could see a follower eating the recommended maximum calorie count for an entire day in a single sitting
Lead author Dr Ricardo Costa, a senior lecturer in dietetics at Coventry University, explained the decision not to name the chefs and recipes that were examined.
'This study is not about naming and shaming celebrity chefs. However given the level of trust the public tends to place in the nutritional integrity of these cooks' recipes, it's important to highlight where they're falling short of healthy eating benchmarks,' he said.
'When you have celebrity chefs involved with promoting many of the Government's healthy eating initiatives, you inevitably encourage a culture of confidence in their culinary practices.
'I think there ought to be a tightening up of regulation around what these chefs can present on their own terms when it comes to nutrition or healthy eating messages, particularly in light of the results of this study.'
Some 92 per cent of celebrity chefs sampled had at least one recipe with saturated fatty acids above the recommended intake for one day, the study found.
One meal contained more than five times the recommended amount, while half of the chefs had recipes with salt content equalling or exceeding the daily recommended limit of 6g.
Researchers also found 96 per cent were high in saturated fat, while 65per cent had a high level of sugar.
Dr Costa added: 'If people regularly use the recipes found in these cookbooks, it could be that celebrity chefs are exacerbating public health nutrition issues in the UK.
'Our research is aiming to draw more focused attention towards the recipes of professional cooks in the public eye, and will hopefully prompt the chefs to consider working with qualified dietetic and nutritional professionals in the future to reverse their potential negative impact.'
The study's authors said evidence showed three-quarters of the public believed celebrity chefs promoted healthy eating.
The experts formed their list of famous chefs from the best-selling cookbooks on Amazon, as well as those listed on the Good Food Channel's website.
The study found that recipes from male celebrity chefs contained substantially more energy, macro-nutrients, sodium and salt per portion on average than their female counterparts.
Nigella has said her weight is always likely to fluctuate. She tweets regularly on what she is eating and her daily diet appears to include a lot of healthy options, such as smoked salmon, rye bread, eggs, avocados, houmous and salad.
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From tacos to tortas to camel burgers to barbecue, you can find plenty of incredible food at Midtown Global Market. But one thing you can’t find among their globetrotting offerings? A pizza place.
That’ll soon change, with the recent announcement that Slice, which only opened its first location about six months ago, is readying to open a second at the Global Market.
Jessie Higgins of the Neighborhood Development Center (NDC), which owns Midtown Global Market, says they’d actually been looking for a pizza concept for quite a long time. Slice made sense, not just because they have great pizza, “but also, they’re very community driven, community focused, which is everything that the Midtown Global Market is about,” Higgins tells Racket.
(You may remember that during the Minneapolis teachers’ strike, Slice was one of the handful of local restaurants that showed support for striking teachers, offering free slices to educators who flashed their badges.)
On the Slice side, “Things have been going really well, and we really needed it, business-wise,” says Hosie Thurmond, who co-owns the pizza shop with friend and business partner Adam Kado. “We’re working in a really small space in our Northeast location. Like, our whole kitchen is really only 300 square feet.”
The catering side of Slice’s business has really ramped up—when we spoke on Wednesday afternoon, they’d just wrapped up a 35-pizza order for Southwest High School staff. Preparing those big orders while handling walk-ups, takeout, and delivery at the same time… it’s been a lot.
So the Midtown Global location won’t just bring their pizza to a new group of hungry Minneapolis residents, but it will give them much more room to work with, kitchen-wise, almost like a “ghost kitchen” that also belongs to them. As a bonus, they’re heading for an area that doesn’t have a ton of pizza places, especially shops where you can just walk in and grab a slice. (Higgins says Slice is not moving into the recently vacated Hot Indian Foods location, but another spot in that central food court area that’s been vacant since about the start of the pandemic.)
And because it’s not quite enough to open a second location across town just six months after opening your first one, Thurmond and Kado also have some big stuff in the works at their place in Northeast.
Not long after opening Slice last year, their building suffered a fire. People rallied around them in support; many donated to a GoFundMe that was set up to help them start slingin’ slices again quickly.
“People really, really supported us on that,” Thurmond says—like, to the tune of $25,000. The had some money left over after repairs, “so we thought, what better to do with the money than reinvest it in our space and create an outdoor community space that looks a little bit better and a little more copacetic to the vibe?”
They’re in the process of building out that space right now, adding tables, benches, and greenery, and if their permits are approved, they’d like to have a big block party for the new community gathering space/Slice patio come Memorial Day weekend. Not long after, they’ll celebrate the soft opening of their Global Market location—look for it the week of Juneteenth.


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Representatives for SNL and Life Storage did not respond to requests for comment.
The facility was part of a self-storage portfolio that SNL was hoping to sell for about $200 million as of 2019. The firm has not sold its other properties that were in the portfolio. They include 1200 McDonald Ave. in Brooklyn and 1430 Bruckner Blvd. in the Bronx, property records show.
SNL said it expects to finish several projects in the city this year, including at 2604 Richmond Terrace on Staten Island, 145 18th St. in Brooklyn and 87-16 121st St. in Jamaica, according to its website.
Industrial real estate has been one of the few sectors to hold up well in New York despite the Covid-19 pandemic. Companies leased more than 2.2 million square feet of industrial space during the third quarter last year and about 870,000 square feet during the fourth quarter, according to CBRE reports. Andrew Chung’s huge Long Island City warehouse development at 23-30 Borden Ave. recently landed a $155 million construction loan, and CubeSmart recently closed on its $123 million purchase of a Flushing warehouse.
Amazon has gotten off to a busy start this year, with plans to open delivery stations soon in Long Island City and Middle Village in Queens, Hunts Point in the Bronx and elsewhere.
Other midmarket investment sales this year have included EJS Development buying a trio of adjacent Upper East Side parcels for about $32.4 million and jewelry company Graff International buying 712 Madison Ave. for $43 million from SL Green.


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Automotive audio manufacturer announces closure of Franklin facility
FRANKLIN, Ky.- An automotive audio equipment company in Franklin is closing its doors.
Employees at HARMAN have been notified that the company will be closing on Sept. 30, 2019.
Approximately 165 employees will be affected, according to a statement from the company’s communications director Carol Campbell.
The statement goes on to read that the company has encountered intense competition and is adapting to the changing dynamic in the automotive industry.
The company will provide severance packages and job search assistance to all eligible employees.
HARMAN has about 2,000 employees in the United States.


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One of the most anticipated titles this year is none other than Halo Infinite. Two years ago the game was teased at E3, then teased again at E3 last year with a sentimental take.
In a recent posting, 343industries [343i] discussed mainly updates and community events for current Halo games. It looks that the summer of 2020 will be packing a lot of game variances for multiplayer. For Halo: The Master Chief Collection, they focused on the Halo Pro Series starting May 23rd. The series will be streamed online, rather than the in-person events we are used to. 343i is encouraging players and fans of the series to also register to compete with the best of the best. This is awesome news coming right off the heels of the Halo 2: Anniversary release on PC version of The Master Chief Collection.
For Halo 5: Guardians, 343i included community events. This looks to be continuous rotating match-types popular among the Halo community. This rotation started May 7th and runs through June 25th so far. July will be discussed on a further date.
However, the best news was saved for last. 343i confirms that Halo Infinite will be present at the July 20/20 event. While the game has been in speculation that it will be shown, it is good to hear that they will be delivering us news on the title. As of this moment, there is no indication if this will be a controller in hand gameplay or another tease as they have given over the past two E3 conferences.
Source: 343 Industries


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Toyotas have minds of their own, apparently. But not to worry. The U.S. government will smite the robotic menace -- and the company's profits along with it.
As one Lexus-driving victim stated at a recent congressional committee hearing, "Shame on you, Toyota, for being so greedy."
Indeed. Greed has reared its ugly head again. Shame on Toyota for consistently selling cars we want to buy. Shame on Toyota for employing thousands of Americans and building those unseemly factories. Shame on the company for perfecting the mass production of environmentally friendly hybrid vehicles.
Toyota has such an insatiable appetite for profit it knowingly allows consumers to perish in Lexus deathtraps. One wonders why Toyota would risk its sterling reputation. Then again, it matters little now that D.C. has started dismantling it.
The Toyota horror is well on its way to transforming the Corolla into the Pinto of the 21st century. Who knows? Perhaps the worst is true about Toyota. Perhaps it is hiding something. Maybe Toyota thought it was infallible. Maybe it is evil. Right now, though you might not know it, it's all just a bunch of maybes.
There have been to this point 2,600 incidents of "sudden unintended acceleration" reported to Toyota -- a company that used to sell 9 million cars yearly, most of them in the United States. This yet-to-be-defined glitch -- maybe floor mats sticking -- reportedly has caused more than 30 deaths.
What we do know is that anyone involved in a Toyota-driven accident now has a scapegoat -- and, if the person's smart, a lawyer.
All of a sudden, Toyotas are dangerous. Edmunds.com, which reviewed more than 200,000 complaints filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the past decade, found that Toyota ranked fourth best among the top 20 automakers in the overall number of complaints per vehicle sold.
General Motors came in six spots lower. Then again, GM is special -- or, rather, developmentally disabled. Thus, the U.S. government has the majority stake (with funding extracted from taxpayers) in Toyota's main competitor. It also has the power to drag the CEO of its chief rival to Washington to nearly badger him into cutting off a pinky in one of those ritual atonement ceremonies.
All in good time on the finger thing. Toyota's January sales fell 16 percent, and some analysts are expecting sales will be down as much as 40 percent in the coming year, which doubtlessly will do wonders for the economy.
The other majority shareholder in GM (also on your dime) is the United Auto Workers union. As Mark Tapscott of The Washington Examiner recently uncovered, 59 Democrats serving on the two congressional panels involved in the investigation of the non-unionized Toyota had received re-election campaign contributions from UAW.
Then there is the administration. Less than a year ago, Ford -- a private, nongovernmental good ol' American corporation -- issued the largest single recall in its long history. A total of 4.5 million vehicles were recalled after it was learned that faulty switches were fire hazards.
At the time, the Obama administration's overmatched transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, gently prodded customers "to pay attention." When news of Toyota's problems began to emerge -- before we even knew what it was all about -- LaHood told Americans to "stop driving" them. (He later claimed he misspoke.)
Now, it is difficult to believe that congressfolk and the administration are engaged in some concerted effort to prop up GM by sinking Toyota. (After all, if that were true, why would our government be running the company in the first place?)
There is, however, an unsettling conflict of interest. Whatever happened with these cars, the subsequent investigation creates suspicion about the motives of those involved. And just another of countless reasons that Washington should stay out of the car business.


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Cloudflare is best known for its content delivery network and DDoS mitigation services, but it has been steadily expanding into other areas of web security over the past few years.
This week, the company made three product announcements, all aimed at protecting its customers from online threats, including new offerings for API security, web applications, and email.
In 2020, Cloudflare said that its network was touching more than 25 million websites. It sees a lot of traffic, and, as a content delivery network, is extremely motivated to stop bad traffic before it clogs up its pipes.
New API security offering
One kind of bad traffic is automated API requests. Attackers use brute force methods or known vulnerabilities to try to break into company APIs and steal data or do other damage.
"For us, 50% of web traffic that we see is API traffic," Cloudflare CTO John Graham-Cumming said.
And the category is growing fast. According to a January report, API traffic grew 21% last year, compared to just 10% for overall web traffic.
This morning, Cloudflare announced a new API Gateway service to help companies manage their API security at a low cost.
"We see some of the API gateway products out there are crazy expensive," Graham-Cumming told Data Center Knowledge. "You shouldn’t be spending a fortune on core functionality."
Some API security was already built into Cloudflare's existing services, he said.
"Web application firewalls, DDoS protection – all of those things can be used for APIs," he added.
Now all of this tech is going to be part of a single, comprehensive package. Companies will be able to use Cloudflare's service to find the APIs active in their environments, validate them, analyze incoming traffic, protect against abuse, set up custom API routing, enforce SSL, and get analytics.
In addition, customers will be able to create and manage APIs directly and offload authentication and authorization to Cloudflare.
API schema validation, API discovery, and API abuse detection are all available today, and other features will be coming later on this year.
Unlike some of Cloudflare's other offerings, there will not be a free tier for the API gateway, and the company hasn't yet announced pricing.
"It will be significantly cheaper than what they're using today," Graham-Cumming said.
This could be a big deal. There's been a spate of API-based attacks recently. Notable victims include Peloton, Equifax, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, and PayPal.
In fact, according to an IBM Security X-Force report released last fall, two-thirds of all cloud breaches are now due to misconfigured APIs.
And according to the latest data from Salt Security, API attacks increased 681% in 2021, while API traffic went up 321%.
According to the Salt Security survey, 62% of companies have slowed the roll-out of a new application because of API security concerns, and 95% of companies had an API-related security incident in the past 12 months.
New email protection
A free service that customers should be seeing soon is email protection.
In September, Cloudflare announced free email forwarding, allowing customers to forward email from a Cloudflare domain to another domain.
"A lot of people use that for a vanity domain," Graham-Cumming said.
But the new toolkit isn’t limited to forwarding. As part of the free service, Cloudflare also offers basic configuration management, to help users ensure that their email is set up to be as secure as possible. That includes settings for SPF, or sender policy framework, DKIM, or domain keys identified mail, and DMARC, or domain-based message authentication, reporting, and conformance.
"If you think about the threats to business, a lot of it comes through email," Graham-Cumming said. "In fact, it's the number one threat."
On Monday, Cloudflare announced that it will be integrating technology from recently-acquired email security vendor Area 1 Security to significantly expand its email security offerings.
"We will be actually scanning email and blocking email," Graham-Cumming said.
The new service won't be available to Cloudflare's non-paying users, but anyone on a paid plan can sign up at no additional charge, he said. Business can sign up now, he added, and the service will become available once the Area 1 acquisition closes.
New Web Application Firewall tools
Those non-paying users did get a freebie this week. On Tuesday, Cloudflare announced that it will now offer a Web Application Firewall management console for free.
Cloudflare has always had a WAF for its paid plans, Graham-Cumming said. The tool protects websites against attacks like SQL injections, credential stuffing, cross-site scripting, and Layer 7 DDoS attacks.
In times of emergency, the service was sometimes extended to cover non-paying customers.
"Over the last ten years, we’ve occasionally seen an attack on a web application that was so serious and widespread that we gave a version of the WAF to everyone on our free plans," he said. For example, in 2014, Cloudflare began protecting all its customers against Shellshock.
"At the end of last year, we gave everyone protection for the Log4j vulnerability," he added.
But this protection was behind-the-scenes, he said. "If you were a free customer, you got the protection but you couldn't turn the functionality off or see any analytics around it."
On Tuesday, that changed, and even free customers will now get access to the WAF console.
"If there's a high-severity vulnerability, they'll have a user interface for it, and see analytics for it."


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The historic rally in the price of bitcoin helped that cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to ramp up its revenues nine folds for the first quarter of the current year compared to the same period a year ago, the company said while preparing for making a debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange next week.
Coinbase said in a press release that compared to revenue of $190.6 million in the first quarter of 2020, its revenues in the same period this year was at about $1.8 billion, but added that the number was preliminary and unaudited.
With 56 million verified users, the net income of the company grew to between $730 million and $800 million fofr the same period from $31.9 million a year ago. Coinbase said.
Benefitting from the continued growth in the tech sector despite broader economic struggles caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Coinbase is set to become the latest tech firm to make a market debut with a massive valuation. The company has been valued at $68 billion in trading on the private market which according to analysts, will increase to about $100 billion when a fully-diluted share count is factored in.
There have been public listings of a number of tech companies, including software vendor Snowflake, food delivery app DoorDash, room-sharing site Airbnb and gaming platform Roblox, in the past seven months. The combined market cap of these companies currently is between $40 billion and $113 billion.
The valuation of Coinbase is however unique because it follows the pattern of growth of the cryptocurrencies. Within the last one year, the value of bitcoin itself has risen by about 700 per cent while there has been an appreciation of 1,100 per cent in the value of ethereum.
The direct listing, which is set for April 14, was approved by the SEC last week, Coinbase said. it plans to register nearly 115 million shares of Class A common stock, which will trade under ticker symbol COIN, at the exchange, the company has said.
Coinbase is betting on the development of a larger ecosystem of crypto-related assets in the coming years even though currently its business is significantly dependent on it being able to attract users who store and trade the two major cryptocurrencies.
“We expect meaningful growth in 2021 driven by transaction and custody revenue given the increased institutional interest in the crypto asset class,” the company said in the release.
There were about 6.1 million monthly transaction users (MTUs) of Coinbase for the first quarter, the company said. For the entire of 2021, the company set out three possible scenarios that will dictate the revenue its earns because a very large proportion of the company’s revenues is generated from those transactions.
The most aggressive estimates of the company is that its MTUs could increase to 7 million because of rising market values, while it assumes that its MTUs will drop to about 5,5 million if there is a flat crypto market. At the worst, the company expects its MTUs to drop to 4 million if there is a drop in crypto prices.
(Adapted from CNBC.com)


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A couple weeks ago, a tipster informed us of a stop work order posted on a Market Street building near Preston Street. A few days later, another tipster cleared up the matter as a case of mistaken identity. Way to go Broken Sidewalk readers! Share the information.
Apparently, the owner of the building at 327 East Market Street (home to the 8664.org gallery) was “forced” to install a new fire-rated corridor to ensure safe egress from the building’s two upper floors. The building is joined with its neighbor at 325 East Market and an inspector did not notice a permit had already been issued for the project under a different street number. The matter has now been officially cleared and the Stop Work notice has been removed from the door.
It seems a little unfortunate the fire-corridor was required to align the way it does, covering two-thirds of the retail frontage, but the code says safety first.
Keep your sightings and snapshots coming in to firstname.lastname@example.org.


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Environmental campaigners and human rights groups have said the revelations of slavery in the prawn supply chain are a wake-up call for consumers. They are urging shoppers to boycott cheap Thai prawns and other imported seafood if supermarkets cannot guarantee the goods have been sourced ethically.
The Marine Stewardship Council, which backs a labelling scheme to help shoppers buy fish ethically, said the other option was to buy cold-water prawns fished from the north Atlantic – which accounts for about a third of all prawns eaten in the UK – or Dublin Bay prawns from the Irish Sea.
An MSC spokesman said: "This is undoubtedly an extremely serious and important issue. We condemn the practices described in the Guardian investigation."
The Marine Conservation Society, which advises consumers on fish to eat and fish to avoid on ethical grounds, urged consumers to try to find out, before buying, whether supermarkets were engaged with improvement projects in Thailand or the rest of south-east Asia. It said, however, that labelling was limited in its scope and might not help.
Willie Mackenzie, Greenpeace's oceans campaigner, said: "Cheap seafood trashes oceans and ruins lives. The Guardian's investigation exposing slavery in the seafood industry should be a worldwide wake-up call to retailers and consumers.
"Forced labour and human rights abuses are not just issues in tropical prawn farming, they are unseen factors in other fishing too. UK retailers are in many ways the best in the world on sourcing seafood responsibly, but there is clearly a lot more to do."
The six-month Guardian investigation established a trail between prawn products sold by US, British and European retailers and violent slave labour. The investigation found that the world's largest prawn farmer, the Thailand-based Charoen Pokphand (CP) Foods, buys fishmeal, which it feeds to its farmed prawns, from some suppliers that own, operate or buy from fishing boats manned by slaves.
Supermarkets which have sourced cheap Thai "king" prawns supplied by CP Foods include the world's top four retailers – Walmart, Carrefour, Costco and Tesco – along with big UK supermarket chains Morrisons, the Co-op, Aldi UK, and Iceland.
Retailers refrained on Wednesday from adding to their earlier statements condemning slavery and human trafficking.
A spokeswoman for the charity Compassion in World Farming said: "Consumers should take the advice of the Environmental Justice Foundation; ask retailers about their supply chain, and when buying fish look for the Marine Stewardship Council logo to ensure wild-caught fish is sustainable.
"Consumers should also be aware that there are no animal welfare standards for prawns, while there are also questions of the long-term sustainabiliy of feeding fish meal to prawns, which takes away from the global food basket, rather than adding to it."
Owen Espley, economic justice campaigner at the anti-poverty charity War on Want, said: "This investigation shows how UK retailers are profiting from appalling labour rights violations within their supply chains. British [firms] need to come clean about their sourcing and ensure action is taken to protect all workers from such abuses. The time is long overdue for British ministers to step in where retailers' voluntary initiatives have failed and ensure that all companies take action to address the exploitation throughout their supply chains."
The chef and Guardian writer Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who investigated Thai prawns for his Fish Fight series for Channel 4, said that CP Foods and UK retailers had "to use their buying power and political influence to clean up Thailand's fisheries, and fast".


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The 2017 Hyundai Verna gets a completely new design and is longer, wider and more spacious than before.
Come August, the next-gen Hyundai Verna will be launched in India. While it’s confirmed that the new Verna will go on sale in August, the company hasn’t officially revealed the exact launch date of the new sedan. Reportedly, though, it is expected to launch in the country on or around August 22, 2017.
In the build up to the launch, Hyundai has already started teasing the new Verna on social media platforms – however, the teaser image doesn’t reveal anything significant. That said, the car has already been launched in Russia, and comes badged as Solaris there. So, we already know what it looks like.
As can be seen in the pictures, the new Verna follows the same Fluidic Sculpture 2.0 design language as of the Elantra and Tucson. The design has been completely overhauled – the front-end features a new grille, new swept-back headlamps with LED DRLs and projector lamps, a new bumper and new fog lamps. The side profile is largely unchanged and has hints of the current car, however, around the back it gets Elantra-esque tail-lamps. The new Verna is also longer and wider than the outgoing model and its wheelbase has been increased by 30mm, so as to liberate more space for the rear-seat passengers.
The cabin has also been redone and it gets inspiration from the Elantra. The dashboard design is all new and it’ll get an 8-inch touchscreen infotainment system with Apple Car Play and Android Auto smartphone connectivity options.
Engine options on the new Verna will be unchanged, meaning it’ll continue with the current 1.4-litre and 1.6-litre petrol and diesel engines. A six-speed manual transmission will be a standard fit, whereas the 1.6-litre engines will now have a six-speed automatic as optional.
The new Hyundai Verna is expected to be priced between Rs 8 lakh and Rs 12 lakh. Its competition will include usual suspects, namely – the Honda City, Maruti Suzuki Ciaz, Volkswagen Vento, etc.
Also read: Hyundai India teases the new Verna


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The Chinese are not like Americans.
That’s obvious on so many levels, but Asia Unhedged wants to focus your attention to consumption, and especially conspicuous consumption.
Basically, Americans are willing to piss away their money on almost anything. They’re even willing to go into debt to get something they really, really want.
The Chinese not so much. They’re much more careful with their money. With no government safety net, if you want a retirement or health care you better save up the money to pay for it. So, they’re much less likely to buy a new car every three years, or a bunch of frivolous stuff.
Which means when you transition from a government-based economy to a consumer-based economy, it’s already a bumpy road. But if the consumers are traditionally not big spenders, it’s that much bumpier.
All of which is Asia Unhedged’s way of saying the Chinese economy, in particular consumer inflation and producer prices, continues to slow down.
China’s consumer price index (CPI) posted an annual growth rate of 1.6% in September, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Wednesday. It was a significant drop from the 2% in August and expectations of 1.8%. The non-food CPI was even milder, up 1.0% from the year-ago September.
Meanwhile, weak demand from thrifty consumers is forcing manufacturers to cut prices. This sent the producer price index lower for the 43rd consecutive month. The September PPI sank 5.9% year over year, matching expectations and the August decline, which was the biggest drop since the depths of the global financial crisis in 2009, according to Reuters.
“Overall, the still weak PPI highlights the severe overcapacity problem and sluggish domestic investment demand,” economists at Nomura told Reuters.
“Given the lackluster growth outlook, we continue to expect moderate fiscal stimulus from the central government and continued monetary easing.”
Nomura expects one more cut to banks’ reserve requirement ratio (RRR) late this year and another four in 2016, each by 50 basis points, together with two more interest rate cuts of 25 basis point each next year, reporter Reuters. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.


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Talking to PTI, RS Kalsi, Executive Director, Sales and Marketing, MSIL, revealed that Maruti Baleno bookings have exceeded 21,000 units. The newly launched premium hatchback has drawn over 56,000 footfalls to the Nexa outlets within 10 days from the launch.
The Baleno ended its first week with sales (dispatch) of over 4,500 units. With festive season acting as a catalyst, the new Maruti is expected to end November as a segment leader, dethroning the Hyundai Elite i20 in the process.
The Baleno is powered by a 84.2 PS 1.2-litre K-series petrol engine or a 75 PS 1.3-litre DDiS diesel engine. The former gets a 5-MT and CVT while the latter makes do with a 5-MT.
Staying true to its premium positioning, the top-end variant of the hatchback offers projector headlamps, foglights, alloy wheels, dual airbags, ABS with EBD, SmartPlay touchscreen infotainment system, reverse parking sensor with camera, automatic climate control, electrically controlled and foldable wing mirrors, etc.
The Baleno is available in four variants – Sigma, Delta, Zeta and Alpha. Dual airbags and ABS with EBD are standard across the lineup.
The Maruti Baleno will play a crucial role in the automaker’s campaign to establish itself in the upmarket segments.
Via – PTI


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According to the startup it will be using the funding to tap a new market of $34 billion daily workplace needs for consumers. Also the funds will also be used for research and development, customer acquisition and tech development.
On Tuesday, a D2C brand F5 serving daily workplace consumption announce that it has raised Rs 2.5 crores approx as its pre-Series A round of funding.
The investment saw a participation from angel investors including Mohit Satyanand, Chairman, Teamwork Arts who led through LetsVenture platform; Gurugram-based accelerator Huddle, AngelList, Venture Catalysts, Forbes Indian angel investor – Rohit Chanana, Dr Jeevak Gupta – VP, Private Equity, InvAscent among others.
The startup had earlier raised Rs 3 crore as a part of a seed round in May 2020.
Saying on the investments Raghav Arora, Co-founder, F5 said, “We are in the middle of closing the next tranche and very excited and hopeful for the future. Pandemic has made the general public more tech savvy creating demand for our products is highly inelastic which ensures our demand bounces back immediately post lockdowns”.
Founded by two IIM Lucknow alumni — Raghav Arora and Lalit Aggarwal, F5 aims to be the one-stop solution for daily workplace consumption for a consumer, both online as well as offline. With over 6,000 daily consumers, F5 started by providing basic refreshments (tea/coffee) at workplaces (initially focused on shops/showrooms/retail chains and other general market establishments) across three formats: subscription, on-demand and retail outlets.
The company claims to have registered 6x growth in business subscribers post-COVID-19, and has served more than 50 lac cups to date, serving more than 12,000+ cups per day to 6,000+ daily consumers.


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The 4 credit card challengers looking to disrupt the market in 2021
Credit cards and fintech seems like a match made in heaven, here are the top alternative credit card providers in 2021.
Fintechs have disrupted the digital banking industry, trading and investing, wealth management, pensions and the property market to name but a few and now they’re turning to one of the last mainstays of the financial industry: credit cards.
The credit card industry has been painfully slow to innovate and adapt to change and now a handful of fintechs are looking to make waves in the sector.
So, here is our list of the top 4 credit card challengers looking to disrupt the industry in 2021.
Zopa’s colourful card boasts a handful of novel features, including a ‘Safety Net’ option that ringfences part of a customer’s available credit for emergencies, and real-time credit balance updates.
The card also includes all the fintech-y features one would expect from a new card+app product in 2020, including instant notifications on purchases, spending categorisation, the ability to freeze the card and block certain types of purchases like gambling.
Zopa’s credit card comes with a representative rate of 34.9 per cent APR variable based on an assumed credit limit of £1,200.
By combining real-time open banking data held by ClearScore and Zopa, users will be able to find out immediately if they are pre-approved for a Zopa credit card, with the credit card offered via ClearScore’s marketplace carrying a personalised APR and limit depending on a customer’s creditworthiness and personal financial situation.
Find out more about Zopa’s credit card here.
Founded in 2015, Jaja is one of the longest-running credit card disruptors out there, but it’s had a pretty tumultuous time.
The Jaja card has no annual fee but does charge foreign exchange fees when spending abroad and the interest rates vary depending on what you plan to do with your card.
For purchases, the card carries an interest rate of anywhere between 18.9 - 34.9 per cent, for money transfers it’s 13.9 - 29.9 per cent and for cash advances, it’s 18.9 per cent. The upper credit limit on a Jaja credit card is £20,000 and the minimum is £250.
Back in 2019, the fintech bought the Bank of Ireland’s (BoI) British credit card portfolio for £530m in a bid “to “become a major player” and also signed a partnership with the bank to become its UK consumer credit card issuer.
As well as scooping up the BoI’s UK credit card customers, Jaja also bagged the AA’s and the Post Office’s existing credit card users as part of the £530m deal.
But those deals weren’t exactly plain sailing. A series of teething problems saw the alternative credit card provider put its own credit card on pause and there were reports that AA and the Post Office’s customers that had been transferred over to Jaja were struggling to access their own money.
At the time of the acquisition, Jaja had a 6,000-person-long waitlist for new customers here in the UK, although the fintech is not currently accepting new customers.
Find out more about Jaja’s credit card here.
Launched in 2019, Tymit offers its customers a buy-now-pay-later style credit card, with users able to split their transactions three, six, 12 or 24 equal monthly instalments, with interest only charged on purchases over three months.
Customers are charged anywhere between 12 - 22.7 per cent on purchases between £500 and £15,000.
The credit card disruptor also doesn’t charge foreign exchange or monthly and annual fees.
To open a Tymit account, customers must be over the age of 21, be a UK citizen and have an Android or iPhone to download the app.
Earlier this year, the fintech partnered with fellow fintech Marqueta for its card issuing and payment processing.
Find out more about Tymit’s credit card here.
Accessible credit provider NewDay released Bip to help access a previously untapped corner of the market.
Bip is the UK’s first digital-only credit card, which officially launched just earlier this week, offering customers the chance to add their new credit card straight to their digital wallet.
The credit card disruptor offers no annual, foreign exchange or late payment fees and just one interest rate, 29.9 per cent APR.
New customers can simply sign up for the credit card on the app, in a completely digital and paperless application process that takes only a few minutes.
Bip allows customers to add their own spending caps and receive alerts and warning notifications when they are getting close to spending their limit, as well as an optional freeze cap that halts all transactions after a certain amount has been spent.
The new credit card also enables customers to calculate how much they can save on interest, helping users to understand the impact of increasing or decreasing payments would have.
Find out more about Bip’s credit card here.
Did we miss anyone out? Or is there a credit card challenger you think we should be keeping an eye on? Let us know email@example.com


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An apple iPhone 13 Pro The iPhone 13 Pro Max will likely have 120 Hz LTPO OLED displays when the phones are released later this year, and now a new report has suggested that similar technology could be used on cheaper models released in 2022.
Report from the Korean publication Electricity He says that LG Display is preparing to make panels that Apple will use in its 2022 mobile phones that we currently expect to be called the iPhone 14. This indicates that Apple will be ready to include this technology on a larger number of mobile phones beyond just the Pro and Pro Max models. .
Apple is expected to introduce the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini 2021, but none of these phones will have 120Hz LTPO panels. Instead, there are rumors that the company will stick with 60Hz OLED screens, as in iPhone 12.
If this report is correct, it’s a lot of evidence that the iPhone 14 – or whatever Apple now chooses to name its 2022 models – will be Apple’s first series of mobile phones with all models featuring 120Hz panels.
LG Display is currently talking to a manufacturer called Avaco, which makes the hardware necessary to be able to supply LTPO panels. There are rumors that Samsung makes the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max screens, but it is not believed that it has the ability to offer them for all models in the series.
A 120 Hz screen means that the image on the screen is refreshed 120 times per second, giving a smoother picture than a 60 Hz screen. Many Android phones use a similar refresh rate, and we expect it to be one of Apple’s major upgrades to the iPhone 13.
This new report does not guarantee that Apple will include the technology in its entire series by 2022, but it does strongly suggest that this is the company’s intent.
Apple may change plans at a later time, or you may not be able to find enough components to make the feature possible. We can’t know for sure until the iPhone 14 is introduced, but that’s, like I said, a clear sign that it’s going to happen.


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Imagine spending thousands of dollars on an elite weekend in the Bahamas attending a music festival deemed “the next Coachella."
You're expecting luxury cabanas, surrounded by the world’s most famous models, athletes, and musicians only to find yourself stranded on an island with shark-infested waters, sandflies, and none of the musical performers you were promised.
This was the reality for consumers attending Fyre Festival this year.
Seemingly doomed from the start, Fyre Festival is the latest case study on what not to do when trying to run a successful business.
Of the nearly 400 influencers -- called Fyre Starters -- who shared social posts and videos promoting the event, none noted that they were being paid to do so.
While some were paid outright, others received free flights, tickets, and accommodations in exchange for helping spread the word about the event. It’s illegal to not specify that you receive payment for promoting an event according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Also, in the end, a lot of these people didn’t show up. Most of the musicians, models, and athletes, who teased the Fyre Festival as the place to be, didn't bother attending the event themselves.
One of the most concerning shortcomings revealed was the lack of security and infrastructure.
Though Fyre Festival claimed it was "working with local law enforcement, private contractors, and the Royal Bahamian Defense Force to provide a secure festival experience," it later came out that the Royal Bahamian Defense Force never even heard of the festival.
Even after the event was canceled after its first day, attendees were stranded on the island with a lack of food, water, shelter, and medical care. Many resorted to stealing beds from the disaster relief tents (which were the housing accommodations provided instead of luxury cabanas) and sleeping outside for the night. These safety issues are at the heart of a $100 million lawsuit recently filed.
We all know the ensuing results but what I found most fascinating was what people involved in the event had to say after it imploded.
Many influencers shared apologies and immediately tried distancing themselves from it. Even rapper, Ja Rule and co-founder Billy McFarland did not accept the blame right away. Ja Rule went as far as claiming it was “NOT MY FAULT” in his apology tweet.
Apologize for any wrong doing and establish a plan to rectify the situation as best as possible. This will humanize your brand and set your business apart from others that tend to stay silent or point the finger at someone else and can help salvage your brand in the public eye.
Ultimately, Fyre Festival did release an apology and a way for attendees to submit for a refund but it did not come without the mention of next year’s festival.
Though there were many mistakes made along the way, Fyre Festival did not have to result in the way it did. Having a better plan from the start could have helped the festival avoid many of the issues that led to its downfall -- like the lack of control in its influencer marketing and event organization.


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Google recently snagged Andy Berndt from Ogilvy to head up their new Google Creative Lab. Not much has been revealed about what Andy will be doing there, but this interview with David Kaplan at Paidcontent.org starts to shed some light on what Andy’s philosophy is in regards to the future of advertising, and how Google fits in that picture.
Google has recently opened up their iGoogle themes so you can create your own custom themes. There aren’t a ton of themes right now, but there are a few designed by fuseproject designer Yves Behar, simplicity design guru John Maeda, Boing Boing writer Mark Frauenfelder, and Troy Lee. All are very pretty! I installed Behar’s which is a cool dynamic projection of the world. Very smart for Google to include these design stars in launching a new functionality from a marketing POV – I’ll bet that it will help in both the adoption and design of new themes.


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DHAKA, Setsuyo Astec Corporation, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, is considering to set up its factory in Bangladesh as the wages here is the lowest among the Asian and Oceania countries.
The production cost in Bangladesh is the lowest in the region and the country has been moving ahead with the efforts to set up power, traffic, building and other social infrastructures in recent years. The country's expectations are also high as it has achieved even greater growth in the textile industry.
Talking to BSS, Chief Representative of the corporation's Bangladesh office Yusuke Imagawa said Bangladesh's economy is moving forward with a higher speed than the other neighbouring countries, so Setsuyo Astec Corporation recently launched its representative office in the country to strengthen market survey, information collection and such other capabilities.
We have opened the office to provide detailed customer support and even higher levels of service by providing supports to local sales agencies in addition to implementing timely market surveys and collecting information within the nation, he added.
He said, Many Japanese companies are showing interest to expand their business in Bangladesh. We have set up the office in Bangladesh as our 11th overseas office.
Now, Imagawa said, Setsuyo is investing in the marketing and research, but it has a plan to open factory in the country as per the demand and development. We have factories in different countries, including China and India. Now, we are considering setting up factory in Bangladesh due to lots of potentialities in the market, he added.
Responding to a question, Imagawa said there is a prediction that living standards will improve in alignment with economic growth, which will lead to expanded private consumption in Bangladesh.
Local companies are expected to achieve greater growth in the future together with the accelerated arrival of foreignaffiliated manufacturers (from Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Europe and the USA) which rises expectations for expanded demand in the fields of factory automation equipment, power distribution and control equipment and other such equipment, he added.
As per a study of Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO), about 70 percent of the Japanese companies in Bangladesh want to expand their business in the next one to two years as their confidence has improved.
About 270 Japanese companies are operating their business in Bangladesh. Even after the Holey Artisan incident in 2016, no single Japanese company withdrew business from the country, said the JETRO country representative for Dhaka D Arai.
He said the Japanese investors are looking for an alternative destination like Bangladesh, pulling back their investments from China for the high wages and production cost.
Source: Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS)


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NDIs, Adulteration on AHPA's RadarNDIs, Adulteration on AHPA's Radar
Interview with Michael McGuffin, president, American Herbal Products Association
November 15, 2010
While notification to FDA of new dietary ingredients (NDIs) has been a requirement since the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act (DSHEA), many companies continue to struggle to understand the process. Virgo Publishing's Jon Benninger spoke with Michael McGuffin, president of the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), during SupplySide West in October 2010 regarding NDIs and other hot industry issues, after McGuffin spoke on a panel about NDIs.
Specific to the NDI notification process, McGuffin reminded industry that the requirement is notification with convincing information; companies can continue to market even if the agency disagrees with the notification, although the agency has been forthcoming with suggestions to improve notifications to get to a preferred "no questions" outcome. Regardless of whether FDA issues a planned guidance on the topic, McGuffin said the existing records hold great information for companies to learn from.
McGuffin and Benninger also chatted on the topic of adulterated products "masquerading" as dietary supplementsa distinction McGuffin called out, as products containing unlabeled pharmaceutical ingredients are not legally dietary supplements. McGuffin added the problem is not just a U.S. issue, but one that spans international borders. As such, McGuffin shared steps AHPA is taking to help bring the issue into focus around the globe.
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The sticker shock is real. With not enough vehicle stock available to meet the quickly returning tourist demand in Hawaii, car rental rates in the Aloha State have soared.
In 2019, it was common to find car rental prices in the neighborhood of $50 per day, but as visitation has steadily climbed through early 2021, tourists are finding daily rates have jumped to more than $300, and in some cases travel advisors reported receiving quotes for as much as $600 per day.
At the outset of the pandemic, tourism saw an unprecedented drop, and car rental companies responded by shedding vehicles to keep costs down. Now, with vaccination distribution well underway in the U.S. and all types of travel returning, the car rental companies are struggling to replenish their fleets and keep pace with demand. A drop off in new car manufacturing has only exacerbated the problem, and the shortage could continue through the summer.
That's bad news for those planning Hawaii vacations. Specialists say demand is high in the Islands: vacation bookings were strong for spring break and are looking promising for summer and beyond, as well.
"More travelers are coming, and Waikiki is getting crowded again," said Keiko Mori, a travel advisor with Kittle Travel on Oahu. "But a lot of travelers are looking for very discounted packages right now, and the car rental prices are quite the shock."
Travel Weekly spoke with several travel advisors who know Hawaii well or live in the Islands themselves to get their tips and advice for managing the car rental crunch and making sure an exorbitant transportation bill doesn't drag down a client's experience.
The best time to book? Yesterday
Many Hawaii specialists said that in the past they paid little attention to the timing of a rental car booking and felt comfortable leaving it until the last minute. The current situation has led to a complete reversal.
"I tell my clients as soon as they have the plane ticket booked, they should be looking at rental cars," said Jasper Stevens of Island Time Travel in California. "Really, if you think you'll need a rental car, you should be making a reservation the minute you have your dates set. It's the most important piece of the puzzle right now; flights and hotels are not so hard to come by."
While many Hawaii visitors have been hit with high daily rates, others who waited too long found some car rental lots were sold out.
"Right now, you have to be looking two, three, four months in advance at least to get anything reasonable," said Laura Lukasik, of Viking Travel in Illinois. "The prices are just outrageous, and if you're looking a week or days in advance, good luck."
For travelers headed to Hawaii during the busy summer months or the holiday season at the end of the year, the landscape for car rental cars could be even more competitive.
It was national news when a U-Haul operator in Hawaii issued a statement saying tourists were booking the moving company's smaller vehicles to get around the Islands. The white-and-orange trucks showing up at beach parking lots were just one indicator of tourists and advisors getting creative when it comes to transportation.
Commonly called "the Airbnb of cars," several travel advisors said they have turned to the online service Turo, which enables people to rent out their private vehicles and operates in more than 50 countries. A recent search on Turo for vehicles available in Honolulu for one week in mid-June found more than a dozen options for less than $75 per day. The service offers a wide range of vehicles, everything from Ford sedans and compact, easy-to-park Fiats to Teslas and exotic Italian sports cars.
"Just anecdotally, I've heard that a lot of people in Hawaii, where we've had very high unemployment during the pandemic that is thankfully getting better now, are turning to things like Turo to make extra money," Debbie Misajon, owner of Coconut Traveler on Oahu, said. "It's added to the stock of available cars on Turo when the service is getting some attention."
Other travel advisors said they are turning to online portals and services outside of the nationwide car rental companies that tend to be the first place consumers go, such as Enterprise, Hertz or Avis.
"For car rentals I regularly check on the Funjet Vacations site," Mori said. "So far, they've still had rental cars available for booking."
Choose wisely when booking a hotel
For those who want to skip the headache of finding an affordable rental vehicle altogether, it pays to be particular about your hotel or accommodations location.
Resort areas such as Wailea and Kaanapali on Maui, Kona on Hawaii Island and Poipu on Kauai pack a bunch of properties, restaurants and other amenities and services into carefully planned and manicured communities. Walking paths make moving between properties easy, and many resort areas or the individual properties offer shuttles that cover the immediate area. Finding out the shuttle situation at a resort is a smart thing to do right now.
Some small towns, such as Haleiwa on the North Shore of Oahu, Lahaina on Maui and Hanalei on Kauai, are also easily navigated by foot and pack a lot of tourist activity into a small area. On the other hand, travelers who book vacation rentals or hotels in more isolated, less urban areas may feel stranded without a vehicle.
"It really depends on what the client wants," said Alan Cordera, an independent travel advisor based in Portland, Ore. "If they want some beach time, high-end shopping and great cuisine without much hassle, I might recommend keeping it simple and focusing in on one of the resort areas. If they have their mind set on doing a bunch of hikes or staying in off-the-beaten-path areas, then a car might be a necessity."
Waikiki, the state's largest resort corridor, is just 10 miles from the Honolulu Airport and packs a wealth of activities into a three-square-mile area. Without ever getting behind a wheel, visitors staying in Waikiki can surf, snorkel, eat at award-winning restaurants, visit the Honolulu Zoo and choose from a roster of shows and luaus. Using the city's bike share program, Biki, travelers also have easy access to the shops and parks of Ala Moana to the west and Diamond Head State Monument to the east.
"The [rental car prices] have created a situation where you have to dig a little deeper and find out what the person wants from their trip," Stevens said. "If they need to be out of the hotel every day doing something new and unique, transportation might be required. But maybe they can get everything they want staying in a certain area, and they'll thank you for saving them $2,000 for a week of car rental."