Republic of Ireland national team head coach Martin O’Neill insists Jeff Hendrick may have set the bar too high for himself with his performances at the Euro 2016 finals.The Burnley midfielder, alongside club teammate Robbie Brady, starred for the Republic of Ireland at the Euros in France as they made it to the last 16, where they gave the hosts an almighty scare before bowing out with their heads held high.However, O’Neill believes the levels they reached at that tournament has left people expecting too much of them, with the players having been able to rediscover that kind of form on a consistent basis for their country since.Speaking alongside as he prepared for Saturday night’s UEFA Nations League clash with Denmark at the Aviva Stadium, the Ireland boss said, according to Sports Mole:Report: Former Liverpool striker Heskey reveals all George Patchias – September 10, 2019 Former Liverpool striker Emile Heskey reveals all in his new book.In Heskey’s new book “Even Heskey Scored,” serialised in the Guardian, the player talks,…“He was part of a side that actually did go 11 games with one defeat, and we never lost in a game away from home.”“We went to some difficult places – Serbia, in fact he scored a goal out in Serbia – so he had reached a very high-performance level in the Euros, and so the expectation on himself and Robbie Brady and the likes of Seamus Coleman did become very high.”“It became high with all of us and I think it became high with himself as well. Sometimes whatever you do, maybe you don’t reach that sort of level, but that was very high.”“I just think you have to give him a little bit of slack here. He’s done exceptionally well. There are some games where he didn’t do so well, but the very fact is that we’re judging him now on the performances that he made out in France.” read more

Juventus Football Club manager Massimiliano Allegri has confirmed his squad for the Serie A game against Genoa on Saturday.The Italian champions host Ivan Juric’s Genoa team at the Allianz Stadium looking to picking up their ninth consecutive victory in the league this season.Allegri and his team are unbeaten so far this campaign, as they go in search of their eight consecutive Serie A title but face in form Genoa striker Krzysztof Piatek.The Poland international has equaled Gabriel Batistuta’s Serie A record of scoring in the first seven games of the season and will be looking to continue his form against the champions.Allegri might be looking to rotate his squad with a trip to Old Trafford to face Manchester United coming up on Tuesday. Here is Allegri’s squad in full, as reported by the official Juventus website:1 Szczesny2 De Sciglio3 Chiellini4 Benatia5 Pjanic7 Ronaldo10 Dybala11 Douglas Costa12 Alex SandroFiorentina owner: “Ribery played better than Ronaldo!” Andrew Smyth – September 14, 2019 Fiorentina owner Rocco Commisso was left gushing over Franck Ribery’s performance against Juventus, which he rates above that of even Cristiano Ronaldo’s.14 Matuidi15 Barzagli16 Cuadrado17 Mandzukic18 Kean19 Bonucci20 Cancelo21 Pinsoglio22 Perin23 Emre Can24 Rugani30 Bentancur33 Bernardeschi read more

December 3, 2018 Categories: Good Morning San Diego, Local San Diego News, Sports 00:00 00:00 spaceplay / pause qunload | stop ffullscreenshift + ←→slower / faster ↑↓volume mmute ←→seek  . seek to previous 12… 6 seek to 10%, 20% … 60% XColor SettingsAaAaAaAaTextBackgroundOpacity SettingsTextOpaqueSemi-TransparentBackgroundSemi-TransparentOpaqueTransparentFont SettingsSize||TypeSerif MonospaceSerifSans Serif MonospaceSans SerifCasualCursiveSmallCapsResetSave SettingsSAN DIEGO (KUSI) – Utah will face Northwestern in the Holiday Bowl on New Year’s Eve at San Diego County Credit Union Stadium in a match up of teams that lost their conference championship games, organizers announced Sunday.Utah (9-4) lost to Washington, 10-3, Friday in the Pac-12 Conference title game.Northwestern (8-5) lost to Ohio State, 45-24, in the Big Ten Conference title game Saturday night in a game it trailed 31-24 early in the fourth quarter.The Holiday Bowl gets the second selection from the Pac-12 after the participants in the New Year’s Six bowls. The Alamo Bowl selected Washington State with the first choice.Utah and Northwestern will both be making their debuts in the Holiday Bowl, which has been played annually since 1978.The Holiday Bowl has matched teams from the Pac-12 and Big Ten Conference since 2014.The game is scheduled for December 31st at SDCCU Stadium.For tickets and more information click here. Updated: 8:09 AM Northwestern and Utah to play in 2018 Holiday Bowl KUSI Newsroom KUSI Newsroom, Posted: December 3, 2018 FacebookTwitter read more

YouTube’s product chief helps safeguard and expand the… YouTube is throttled the most, according to a new study. Angela Lang/CNET Wireless carriers have long said they may throttle, or slow down, data when mobile networks are congested. But a new study suggests your video viewing may be getting slowed down even when networks aren’t overcrowded. Researchers at Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst found that carriers throttle online video whether their mobile networks are congested or not. Location and time of day also appeared to have little impact, the researchers said. All four main US carriers — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon — were found to be throttling, according to the study released Monday. The researchers collected data from more than 600,000 tests in the US between January 2018 and January 2019 using the Wehe app, which measures whether a provider is throttling speeds. Globally, they collected data from more than 1 million tests.When it comes to specific video apps, YouTube was throttled most often and Vimeo was throttled least often, according to the study. AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon all throttled YouTube and Netflix, the researchers said. T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon also all throttled Amazon Prime Video. “They are doing it all the time, 24/7, and it’s not based on networks being overloaded,” David Choffnes, associate professor at Northeastern University and a study co-author, told Bloomberg. AT&T said it doesn’t throttle, discriminate or degrade network performance based on content. “We offer customers choice, including speeds and features to manage their data,” AT&T spokesman Jim Greer said in an emailed statement. “This [Wehe] app fails to account for a user’s choice of settings or plan that may affect speeds. We’ve previously been in contact with the app developers to discuss how they can improve their app’s performance.”In a message, Choffnes said that the team doesn’t deny that the plan a user chooses or the plan’s settings can affect throttling. “What is true is that AT&T throttles a significant fraction of our user’s Wehe video tests (about 70%). So at least for our users, it seems very likely that their plan/settings are set up to throttle video,” Choffnes said. In addition, the researchers said that throttling can lead to decreased video quality. T-Mobile declined to comment on the study but pointed to a 2015 press release about its efforts to enable more streaming.Verizon and Sprint didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Originally published Aug. 19.Updates, Aug. 20: Adds responses from researchers and T-Mobile.  Mobile Internet Mobile Apps Internet Services 15 Now playing: Watch this: 2:03 Tags Share your voice Comments T-Mobile read more

Samsung Inc’s upcoming Android tablet, Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, will be powered by Intel’s processor, said a new report.New agency Reuters, citing a source having knowledge of the development, said Samsung has chosen Intel’s Clover Trail+ mobile chip for Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 which is expected to debut on 20 June. The event to be held in London would also see the debut of Samsung’s Microsoft Windows ATIV tablets which employs Intel chips, said the source.Both Samsung and the chipmaker Intel are yet to make any announcement on the same. If the latest news rings true, it would be a great breakthrough for US-based Intel, which has been facing major challenges in the mobile market ever since Apple introduced its revolutionary iPhone and iPad devices.With the launch of the Intel-based Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, the chipmaker views it as an opportunity to gain a strong foothold in a segment beyond PCs.Speaking of its design, Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64 told CNET, “[Intel’s] Clover Trail+ delivers competitive performance and battery life with Qualcomm and Nvidia ARM chips.””It’s the first [version] of Atom that can support both Android and Windows 8. In the past, Intel’s platforms for Windows 8 differed from their platforms for Android. So, it would be possible for Samsung to build a Galaxy Tab that is physically the same hardware [as an Android product] and use it for a Windows 8 version,” he added.According to earlier reports, the upcoming Galaxy Tab will feature a 1,280 x 800 pixel resolution display and run on Android 4.2.2 operating system. read more

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Monday termed the reason for fuel price hike as unjustifiable when there is no change in the international price of crude oil.PMK founder S Ramadoss accused the central government and the oil marketing companies of cheating the public. The statements came as oil companies on Sunday hiked the prices of petrol and diesel by 36 paise and 90 paise respectively.Jayalalithaa said it was unjustifiable to hike the fuel prices citing the exchange rate between Indian rupee and the US dollar and also the international prices of petrol and diesel when there is no change in the crude oil prices in the international market.Citing the central government’s hike of the excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs.1.60 and 40 paise per litre last week, Jayalalithaa said the hike in retail prices of fuel is not right.It was unacceptable to decide the prices of fuel based on the exchange rate as the dollar prices change as per demands. Demanding the rollback of the recent fuel price hike, Jayalalithaa urged the central government to change the manner of pricing oil.Ramadoss said contrary to the claims of the central government and oil companies, the crude prices in the international market have come down from $44.72 per barrel to $42.41 on 13 November.Ramadoss said petrol and diesel were retailed at Rs. 41.25 and Rs. 29.30 per litre in 2004 when the international price of crude oil per barrel was $43.05. The current price of crude oil per barrel in the international market being $42.41, reduction in fuel prices is warranted.Currently, the petrol and diesel are sold at a price higher by Rs. 20 per litre. This is clearly a burden on the people, Ramadoss said.Instead of reducing the fuel prices on 1 November, the oil companies hiked the petrol and diesel prices by 40 paise and Re.1 respectively.Referring to the latest excise duty hike on fuel, Ramadoss said, “The oil companies then said they would bear the increased duty. But now they have increased the prices.””In totality, the central government and the oil companies have jointly cheated the people,” he said. The central government owned Indian Oil Corporation on 15 November announced hike in petrol and diesel prices.”The current level of international product prices of petrol and diesel and INR-USD exchange rate warrant an increase in prices, the impact of which is being passed on to the consumers with this price revision,” Indian Oil said in a statement on Sunday.The oil marketer said the price of petrol per litre from Monday will be Rs. 61.06 in Delhi, Rs. 66.39 in Kolkata, Rs. 68.13 in Mumbai and Rs. 61.38 in Chennai.Diesel will cost Rs. 46.80 a litre in Delhi, Rs. 50.29 in Kolkata, Rs. 54.04 in Mumbai and Rs. 48.00 in Chennai. read more

Obaidul QuaderRuling Bangladesh Awami League (AL) general secretary Obaidul Quader on Wednesday said his party’s arch enemy Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has nothing to do except lying while seeking vote from people for the next general election, reports UNB.Quader, also the road transport and bridges minister, came up with the remarks while inaugurating district Awami League’s fresh member collection drive at Harimohan Government High School ground in Chapainawabganj.”Looting through Hawa Bhaban will resume if BNP is voted to power and the country will be champion in corruption and anarchy once again,” the AL leader claimed.He urged the people to vote for AL to continue the “advancement and progress of the country”.He also warned his party men saying that those leaders not acceptable to people and party activists won’t get nomination for the next general election.District AL president Monuddin Mandal presided over the programme where AL central joint general secretary Jahangir Kabir Nanak, organising secretary Khalid Mahmud Chowdhury and Rajshahi city unit AL president and ex-mayor AHM Khairuzzaman Liton also spoke. read more

Listen at WEAA Live Stream: http://amber.streamguys.com.4020/live.m3uOur Supreme Court expert Ken Jost, discusses the Muslim travel ban ruling against the Trump administration and a North Carolina racial redistricting ruling by the Supreme Court. And we’ll open the phone lines to ask the question: In the wake of the latest incidents of racial hatred in Maryland, what should the state’s Black communities do to protect themselves against hate crimes?These stories and much more on AFRO’s First Edition with Sean Yoes, Monday through Friday, 5-7 p.m. read more

As part of the D.C. Language Immersion Project, the Thurgood Marshall Center, located at 1816 12th Street, NW, is scheduled to host a Bilingual Education Fair on Jan. 20 from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The fair will allow parents to discover multilingual education options and fun resources that will let them bring bilingual education to their communities. All participants will receive a free CD with songs in Spanish and English from 123 Andres, a singer that uses music to teach Spanish. The event will include 50 exhibitors and five speakers. The event is sponsored by D.C. Public Schools and the D.C. Public Charter School Board. To register for the event, visit bilingualfair.dcimmersion.org. read more

×Actors Reveal Their Favorite Disney PrincessesSeveral actors, like Daisy Ridley, Awkwafina, Jeff Goldblum and Gina Rodriguez, reveal their favorite Disney princesses. Rapunzel, Mulan, Ariel,Tiana, Sleeping Beauty and Jasmine all got some love from the Disney stars.More VideosVolume 0%Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcutsKeyboard Shortcutsplay/pauseincrease volumedecrease volumeseek forwardsseek backwardstoggle captionstoggle fullscreenmute/unmuteseek to %SPACE↑↓→←cfm0-9Next UpJennifer Lopez Shares How She Became a Mogul04:350.5x1x1.25×1.5x2xLive00:0002:1502:15 Huawei would only allow Variety to write about what was said in the open session if no individual was named, and repeatedly asked the reporter to drop the story, saying: “There’s no reason why – we just don’t want the media to expose this information.”Huawei hopes to convert as many people as possible in Southeast Asia into 4G customers. With research showing that 4G penetration in developing countries such as Sri Lanka remains slow “because users haven’t yet found any strong incentive to use it,” Huawei hopes to acquire high-quality and high-resolution content in order to stimulate greater demand for faster Internet service.“Our understanding is that when people see higher-quality videos, they will be more likely to pay for higher definition,” the representative said.The content would go out either directly to users, via a branded video app currently pre-installed on all Huawei smartphones, or via third-party businesses delivering it to consumers via smart TVs.Huawei currently sells phones in 170 countries, and the representative at FilMart said the app would be at the fingertips of 200 million mobile users by 2019. He said he expected “all Huawei smartphone users and technical subscribers” to be covered by its video-streaming service within three years.Previously, it took Southeast Asian broadband operators seven or eight years before they broke even from investing in building fiber lines to a home, but the wait for a return on investment has now been cut to just four years.According to a Huawei analysis of Facebook and YouTube viewing habits in various Southeast Asian countries, videos from a firm like Facebook reached user penetration levels of nearly 90% of mobile users, but viewers across the entire region spent less than 20 minutes watching them. That leads Huawei to conclude that “this kind of [passively watched] video has already reached its limits.”Huawei is mulling over a business model for its video services in which either content is free and revenue comes from selling data packages and is redistributed to content providers via reversed revenue-sharing, or by bundling content and traffic packages together. One strategy is to target young people and residents of rural areas who have lower incomes but more free time, and are thus bigger potential users of data.The representative denied that the push into Southeast Asia was related to the recent pushback against Huawei products from the U.S. and Europe, saying that, as a neighboring region, it had been an area of strategic importance “from the beginning.”A senior manager from Huawei’s content cooperation department said that the company’s broader troubles would have “no impact” on its development of content relationships or on its potential partners. One of the most surprising first-time attendees at FilMart is Chinese tech giant Huawei, which has come to Hong Kong to acquire the video content it needs to support its strategy of expansion into Southeast Asia. The company is currently embroiled in a PR nightmare as it defends itself against accusations that its equipment could be used for spying by the Chinese government; the firm has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government over a ban on its products.At an information session Tuesday morning, a senior representative from Huawei’s Southeast Asia business and network consulting division described in depth the company’s to mission to “win broadband, win mobile, win video, win all” in the region.“Broadband is more stable [business] than mobile, and finally if you have video as well, it’s a business model everyone can win from,” he said. Popular on Variety read more

Kolkata: Two persons were killed after a toto and a tractor collided at Katwa in Burdwan. Six persons including a child are admitted to Katwa Sub-divisional Hospital.According to locals, a toto carrying seven passengers was moving towards Katwa on Burdwan-Katwa State Highway on Wednesday morning. Near Gangulydanga, suddenly a cow somehow came infront of the toto. To avoid the cow, the toto driver tried to turn the vehicle to its right. At the same time, a tractor loaded with bricks was moving towards the toto. While trying to avoid the cow, the toto driver lost control over the vehicle and it toppled. Also Read – Rain batters Kolkata, cripples normal lifeAs the tractor was moving at a good speed, the driver could stop. As a result, the tractor hit the toto and ran over two passengers. After colliding with the toto, the tractor also toppled and its driver got injured Though the toto driver managed to jump off before the collision took place, two passengers of the toto identified as Rabindranath Pramanik and Kartik Saha died on the spot. Locals rushed the injured persons to the hospital where they are admitted. Sources informed that the passengers of the toto are relatives of each other. They were returning from a festival to Katwa. read more

Tags: Discounts, Intrepid Group, Intrepid Travel Share Posted by << Previous PostNext Post >> TORONTO — With a growing number of Canadian travellers choosing to stay close to home, Intrepid Travel is offering a 20% discount on more than 73 of its North American trips.To receive the discount, clients must book by July 31, 2018 for departure in August or September.The discount applies to all North American trips, including the 20-day ‘Canadian Rockies and Vancouver Island’, the six-day ‘Highlights of Vancouver Island’, and the 12-day ‘Grand Canadian Rockies’.In the past three months, Intrepid Travel has enjoyed double-digit growth on its North American trips. According to Destination Canada, Canadian tourism arrivals hit a 14-year high with nearly 20 million travellers. The following year, Canada was named the top place to visit in the world by Lonely Planet, the New York Times, and Condé Nast Traveler as tourism arrivals continued to rise in 2017 with Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations.For more information go to www.intrepidgroup.travel. Michael Smith Intrepid announces last-minute discount on North American trips Wednesday, July 4, 2018 read more

Satellite operator AsiaSat’s ‘largest ever satellite’, AsiaSat 9, is ready to be shipped to Baikonur in Kazakhstan ahead of its launch.AsiaSat said that the satellite had passed its pre-ship review meeting with manufacturer Space Systems Loral and would be shipped as soon as required.The satellite is a a replacement satellite for AsiaSat 4 at the 122° East orbital slot.AsiaSat 9 is a SSL 1300E satellite equipped with 28 C-band and 32 Ku-band transponders, and a Ka-band payload.The satellite will provide enhanced C-band coverage over Asia, Australasia and the Pacific region, as well as customised Ku-band beams for Australasia, East Asia, Indonesia, Myanmar and Mongolia.AsiaSat 9 will be launched by an ILS Proton Breeze M launch vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.“We are pleased to achieve this key milestone with our largest-ever satellite ready to be shipped to the Baikonur launch site,” said Andrew Jordan, President and Chief Executive Officer of AsiaSat.“AsiaSat 9’s additional capacity and high performance coverage will provide the path for our continued growth and ever better service to our customers.” read more

By Alex Daley, Chief Technology Investment StrategistWe all make stupid investment decisions on occasion. With the impending Facebook IPO looming large over the technology markets right now, the in-vogue meme in popular news media seems to be that a lot of investors will make mistakes hopping into that offering when it debuts. But there’s no real consensus. On the one hand, words like “exuberant” and comparisons to the late 1990s are being tossed around widely; on the other, analysts have been quick to point out that Facebook’s expected valuations are not much different than Google’s were at its debut, with a trailing P/E ratio just over 100. The differing opinions and debate are a pretty good sign that we are not at frothy levels of excitement.The big mistakes in the market are made when media and pundits turn into a collective echo chamber. When all parties agree something is a good idea, chances are it is not any longer. Tech stocks. Condo flipping. Rare earths. When everyone out there believes the same thing, the majority of people will end up finding out the hard way that conventional wisdom tends to be wrong.A cacophony of violent agreement is not just dangerous to the decisions we as individual investors controlling our own money make, it affects the decisions made by professionals as well, including fund managers, brokers, and even the management of the companies we invest in. This is why I want to explore some news that has cost technology investors billions of dollars, and highlight the reminder it gives us to analyze before acting.Should Netflix Have Gone Ahead with Qwikster?In September of last year, Netflix announced that it would be renaming the DVDs-by-mail portion of its business to Qwikster, in what was largely thought to be an attempt to spin out that aspect of the company via a quick sale to a private-equity firm or prior competitor.Almost from the moment it was announced, the decision was pounded by critics. Fresh on the backs of a price hike that was communicated poorly, the company had once again made a PR gaffe and announced a confusing change to its services. Why on earth was Netflix going to such great lengths to divide the businesses?To understand that, we have to look back at the summer price rise first.DVDs were once Netflix’s sole business. Streaming was what marketers refer to as a “premium” – something extra tacked on top that helps close the sale, but which is not the core product – the icing on the cake. But the premium quickly proved to be wildly popular… popular to the point that customers began pressuring Netflix to offer streaming alone, and not force them to get DVD subscriptions along with it. Seeing a clear market opportunity, Netflix jumped on the strategy and hasn’t looked back.Just as the company’s advertisements for its DVD-by-mail service were nearly inescapable, it aggressively pursued making access to its streaming service as easy as possible, offering up help to any device maker who wanted to add the feature to its lineup. When offered the chance to add value to their devices beyond just letting that cable wire plug in, electronics manufacturers jumped at the opportunity. Now you can hardly find a Blu-Ray player, game console, or other device without support built right in.Today, 23 million Netflix customers stream content. Only 10 million receive discs. And just 30% of the latter do that exclusively – the other 7 million also pay separately for using the streaming service.At least they pay separately now. That was not always the case, as many of us remember quite well. It wasn’t until the summer of 2011 that the company made the decision to charge a distinct fee for the streaming service to those customers getting discs in the mail. For those customers, it amounted to a 60% price hike.Why would the company make such a huge price hike in one fell swoop, instead of gradually raising rates over time? The reality is, the company had painted itself into a corner. It wanted nothing more than to rid itself of the DVD-renting business – but it couldn’t do that if streaming was to stay.To Netflix, the Qwikster plan seemed like the perfect solution. Separate the charges. Separate the brands. Then quietly – once the changes had settled in – flip the DVDs to a receptive buyer and use the cash to support growing the streaming business.But why rid itself of the thing that made Netflix to begin with? Is DVD-by-mail really that bad a business? After all, Netflix did enjoy healthy rental profits for many years and still counts itself as the overwhelming market leader.It’s not that DVD-by-mail is bad business – it’s that streaming is simply a better business all around.That difference begins with the nature of content delivery. Netflix’s original model – eschewing itself of the large legacy costs of the retail movie rental agreement, and instead relying on economies of scale at large, central processing facilities – was a brilliant one.When Netflix first started offering its DVD-by-mail services, the biggest game in town was the retail chain of Blockbuster Video stores. Rentals were $4 each at best, and if you forgot to return them you were penalized for considerably more. Watching four movies a month could cost upwards of $20 with taxes and fees. That was a great deal compared to going out to a theater, sure. But Blockbuster’s business model – renting brightly lit storefronts, stocking them wall-to-wall with videos, popcorn, and pimply teenagers to scoff at your selection of American Pie 9, all in order to rent to you a little one-ounce disc of plastic – was its ultimate weakness. As digital technology evolved to shrink the massive cassettes of old, Blockbuster failed to adapt with it.Netflix saw the incredible overhead built into the DVD rental market at the time and hit the competition right where it hurt, undercutting the big guys on price by a large margin – you could easily get those same four movies per month from Netflix for just $8, less than half the cost. On top of that savings, it made late fees a thing of the past by creating predictable, recurring revenues per disc out with a customer. Also, its large, centralized warehouses could hold a much larger selection of movies than any retail store could ever hope to stock.The lack of convenience of not being able to pick up a movie on the way home was Netflix’s only real weakness, but many customers were willing to trade the convenience for lower prices, better selection, and no late fees to worry about. At its inception in 2001, Netflix was able to pick up a few hundred thousand subscribers. Riding its momentum and with cash in hand from a successful 2002 IPO, the company soon grew that number to over five million by its fifth year.The DVD-by-mail business was booming, and Netflix was the market leader by a long shot.It was also an expensive business. Customer-acquisition costs grew steadily over Netflix’s first few years, as competition ran wild trying to catch up. Blockbuster Video jumped into the DVD-by-mail game and tried to play catch-up, using the convenience of being able to return to its stores to target Netflix’s weakest point. Ultimately, Netflix’s aggressive marketing, big selection, and low prices proved too much for a chain that couldn’t sustain itself with ever-mounting customer losses.However, all that competition drew stark attention to Netflix’s biggest flaw, too. Would-be competitors saw that if they could find an equal footing with Netflix on price and beat them on convenience, millions of customers were up for grabs.One of the biggest competitors to come along was vending-machine company Coinstar. Its Redbox brand movie-rental machines are now a regular feature of the American landscape, with over 35,000 machines at more than 30,000 locations from grocery stores to fast-food restaurants all around the US. These machines require no staff – except for restocking and the occasional maintenance tech visit – but offer the convenience of “pick up a movie on the way home” retail locations, like the Blockbuster of old. The machines don’t require any rent – just a small royalty to the shop owner to cover a few feet of space – and a power hookup. Thanks to good technology on the backend – emailed receipts let the company do preference tracking (What kind of movies do you rent? At what location? How often?) – it can market for repeat visitors as effectively as Netflix does. And thanks to low cost of operation, it can compete on price, at about $1 per night per disc.Cable companies were added to the mix, too. As they saw the movie-rental business heat up, they saw a way to increase average revenues per customer by a few dollars a month if they could grab a slice of that pie. So they increasingly invested in the burgeoning field of digital cable, in order to increase the number of “video on demand” (VoD) movies available to customers. Providers like Comcast further eroded the selling points that Netflix relied on: There is no wait for a pay-per-view movie… no disc to return, ever. It’s no wonder that VoD revenue jumped 85% in 2011.Both VoD and vending were starting to eat into Netflix’s disc business in a major way.As pointed out earlier, Netflix recognized its own Achilles heel. It tried to bandage over the area with a focus on strategic locations of its facilities to keep that wait down to just a day when possible, and with excellent software that helped keep customers satisfied by pointing them to movies they were most likely to enjoy based on their individual tastes.Still, Netflix needed some way to compete on convenience. Having subjected Blockbuster to the sharp edge of the “innovator’s dilemma,” the company was not about to let itself fall prey to the advances of technology. It was already stocked with one of the best software-development teams in the country, thanks to founder Reed Hastings’ foresight in plastering over the service’s weak spots with excellent technology facing the customers and back at the warehouse. Next, jumping headlong into the streaming business seemed like the logical choice for the company.With that star development team in house, the company added a steaming feature to its website. At the time, DVD sets of television shows had started to explode in popularity, so Netflix convinced every studio it could find that if it was going to buy thousands of copies of their movies and TV shows, the companies should also license Netflix to let users just click on the “play now” button on its website and watch it instantly. Having seen what digital did to the music business, video companies were a little hesitant to open the floodgates full-bore, but knew they couldn’t ignore it either. So they reluctantly partnered with Netflix, treading carefully so as not to rile their bread and butter – the big cable companies – and soon many of the titles in Netflix’s library were available online as well.And the rest, as they say, is history. The feature proved incredibly popular – so popular that soon nearly every customer Netflix had was using it, and it was the driver for new subscriptions. Customer-acquisition costs started dropping, and fulfillment costs did too, as people took fewer discs by mail. When customers started demanding disc-free subscriptions, the future became obvious.Someone was going to kill the DVD-by-mail business. The weaknesses were just too big. Netflix had known that for some time and tried to bandage it over for as long as it could, but in the process it stumbled on something that was going to be bigger and way better than its old business anyway.That’s because it was a cheaper business. Sending DVDs by mail is expensive… cheaper than storefront video retailing, sure, but it still involves huge warehouses, along with a large unskilled labor force to process all of those physical packages and manage that inventory (and all the potential liabilities that come with that kind of labor force). Not to mention a massive postage bill.Since Netflix was founded, postal rates have risen more than 35%. With the postal service losing billions of dollars per year in the midst of the biggest budget crunch this nation has ever faced, and with gasoline prices holding at all-time highs, those rates are poised to move up even faster in the coming years.On the Internet, however, Netflix commands a very different position. The decentralized, private network had already made great strides in driving down the cost to deliver a few megabytes of content to a customer’s house over its 17-year or so popular history. But Netflix – serving up gigabytes of data to 23 million streaming addicts, each watching potentially hours per week of content – sucks up a lot of bandwidth… approximately one-third of all Internet bandwidth these days, according to measurements by network-tracking firms. That gives the company extreme pricing power with content-delivery networks and network-service providers – power it never could have achieved with the postal service.The bottom line is that it costs Netflix approximately a quarter as much to deliver an hour’s worth of video entertainment to a customer via the Internet than it does via the mail.Not only is it cheaper, the mix of fixed to variable costs is more favorable to the company. With fewer people and more servers, the company’s savings only increase as it scales larger and larger. Gone are the indirect costs of a low-skill labor force – wage and benefit limitations like the ones Amazon.com suffers from when hiring against competitors in Seattle who don’t have to offer their health plans to warehouse workers (who outnumber by 10:1 the highly paid and difficult-to-recruit software engineers on the other side of the company).As a streaming company, Netflix is leaner, meaner, and sports lower margins.The cost of acquiring customers also improved. The company spent a great deal of its gross revenue on advertising in the past. Flyers, inserts, mailers, print ads, digital ads, and more were a big upfront cost for the company as it built its brand. But beyond the benefits of inheriting one of the nation’s most recognized brands, Netflix streaming had another, more direct effect on acquisition costs: it came with partners.Those electronics manufacturers that built Netflix into their devices… each is providing a valuable advertising service for the company, making it a “no-brainer” for users to give Netflix a try. It is already right there in front of you. No trip to Redbox required. Just click a button on the remote and voilà. Whether it’s Xbox, Playstation, Wii, your television, Blu-Ray, or even a DVD player, chances are you have at least one Netflix-ready device in your home. The result has been a dream come true for Netflix: accelerating growth of digital subscribers, coupled with plummeting acquisition costs.Graph by SplatFThe concern with any subscription business, of course, is “churn” – the number of subscribers lost each period. In order to keep revenues steady and predictable and to get the value projected from a customer over time, a company must keep its churn low, so that more money goes to finding new subscribers and less to replacing the ones who left. These net acquisition costs for Netflix, despite dropping rapidly, are not what they could be because of losses in the DVD business.DVD subscribers have fallen from a peak of nearly 15 million to just 10 million today. Better options on the market for getting much of the same content now exist for a large part of Netflix’s market, and thus the number of DVD subscribers the company has is falling quickly. Redbox, Comcast, Verizon, and Netflix’s own streaming service are all grabbing a share of the market. The prognosis is so grim that CEO Reed Hastings put it simply in January’s earnings call when he said, “We expect DVD subscribers to decline steadily for every quarter, forever.”Only those who don’t get what they want from streaming or can’t yet be reached by its services will remain loyal – but costly – customers of the DVD-by-mail service.Obviously, Netflix’s DVD business is holding the company back. The finances of the business are constraining key metrics that drive profitability and cash flows. But why try to spin off the business in its entirety with the Qwikster move? Why not just put it into maintenance mode and milk the cash cow until it’s dry?With streaming subscriber acquisition beginning to flatten in the United States, Netflix faces two very expensive challenges over the coming few years.First, the company has to keep churn low, lest those net acquisition costs start to rise dramatically again. And the only way to do that is by maintaining and expanding its library of videos. The moment you can’t find something you want to watch on Netflix is the moment it loses you as a customer.Second, to keep growth numbers up it has to expand to more markets outside the United States. With streaming, this is much easier than it would have been with DVDs, where the postal services of other countries might not have been as affordable or accommodating – i.e., those countries might not be willing to burn billions of dollars per year losing money to help deliver movies to Netflix’s customers’ doorsteps. But with streaming, the answer is as simple as lining up some content-delivery network partners in the region, and immediately you can reach every home with broadband (the penetration rate of which is higher in most other developed nations than the US, thanks to their smaller sizes and denser populations).In both cases the biggest barrier is access to content.In this area, Netflix has been the architect of its own problems. The company’s runaway success – as by far the leading streaming service with over 23 million paying downloaders – has awakened the sleeping giants of the cable industry. The increasing availability of large libraries of streaming movies and TV shows does not just threaten the pay-per-view revenues of the big cable companies, it also threatens their core business. Cable companies around the country have been shedding subscribers, collectively losing more than four million subscribers to other media over the past two years, including the so-called “cord cutters” who rely solely on Internet streaming content for their video entertainment.At the same time, content providers like Hollywood studios and major television networks find themselves dealing with a much larger and more diverse set of potential licensees: cable companies; expanding satellite providers; new fiber-optic networks like FiOS and Uverse; Internet-based providers from major-studio-owned Hulu to Walmart’s Vudu subsidiary to Amazon.com’s Prime Video to Netflix; and a dozen other well cashed-up suitors to boot. This increased demand has allowed content providers to charge higher rates overall and leverage their highest-demand content to incredible heights, as they negotiate exclusive deals for certain providers – for a few months, weeks, or even just days.Netflix saw these higher prices coming, like a freight train headed its way. You see, Netflix’s largest content deal – a license piggybacking on the Starz channels’ agreements with multiple content providers – was due to expire this past year. The company did not just need to prevent itself from losing a large portion of its content, it also needed to increase the total content available to keep current customers happy with the service – managing the churn level. And it was going to have to start licensing entirely new sets of content for new markets. That train carried a load of new expenses.With those daunting costs looming on the horizon, increasingly bad economics in the core DVD business, and its future so clearly tied to the streaming business as its DVD customer base continued to shrink, the right thing to do must have been obvious: spin off the DVD business and raise some cash.By ridding itself of the DVD business, Netflix would not only have acquired the money it needed to sign long-term licensing deals and get it over the costly content hump ahead, but fundamental business metrics like gross margins would have improved in the process. For a company that had seen its stock sink from a high of $300 down to around $155 just before the Qwikster change was announced, that must have seemed like a win-win. Netflix could avoid dipping into cash flows and reserves to license content and improve the make-up of its business (and the attractiveness of that languishing stock) at the same time.How to do that? Step one: separate the pricing of the two products. Stop using one business to support the other, and make a clean break. But that has to be carefully managed. You can’t discount the value of the DVD subscribers lest you make the business less attractive to a suitor. Plus, a dichotomy of pricing for old and new customers post-split would just anger full-paying customers on both sides of the business… hence last summer’s pricing debacle.Step two? Well, there is really no reason why the company could not have sold off its DVD business right then and there. Why it chose to first rename it I can only guess at. Large companies tend to get very attached to their brands, and the fear of a founder-executive suddenly putting that innovative, well-loved name into the hands of some cost-slashing, private-equity bankers (Netflix was rated as the brand with the highest customer satisfaction) may well have played a role.So, had Netflix been aiming to maximize shareholder value, especially in the short term – i.e., drive up the stock price – the Qwikster spinoff actually might have been the best move. It would have yielded better margins and all the cash they needed to get through Q1’s big licensing push, without dropping out of profitability for the first time in years. Now, the company isn’t projecting to make a profit at all during 2012, as its customer-acquisition costs increase from entering new markets for the first time and as its content-licensing costs rise sharply. Had it successfully finished the Qwikster transition and sold off the DVD business (as many analysts suspected was the eventual plan), Netflix shareholders might have been in a very different spot than they are today.[As chief technology investment strategist for Casey Research, Alex Daley is often sought for media interviews. Here’s one he did on the Financial Sense Newshour, where he discusses robotics, biotechnology, and the effects of disruptive technology.]Bits and Bytes123D Make (Apple)Cool app. 123D Make lets you turn 3D models into real-world creations made out of any flat material that you can cut. Convert any 3D STL or OBJ file into a physical object using automatically generated 2D build plans and animated assembly instructions.Computer Gets a Driver’s License (eWEEK)You’ve probably seen footage of Google’s driverless car. Well, in a huge step for the program and enthusiasts of autonomous vehicles everywhere, Nevada has just become the first state to approve a license for a driverless vehicle. Skynet: winning.Zuckerberg Hoodie: Mark of Immaturity? (Bloomberg)According to Michael Pachter of the financial services and investment firm Wedbush Security, “Mark and his signature hoodie: He’s actually showing investors he doesn’t care that much. He’s going to be him. And he’s going to do what he’s always done. And I think that’s a mark of immaturity.” To which we would reply, “No kidding, buddy; the guy is in his 20s.” We’re not bullish on Facebook’s stock prospects at IPO based on the current lofty valuations, but we’re willing to admit that Zuckerberg is a genius. And analysts shouldn’t let his wardrobe get in the way of their opinions of the company. Steve Jobs wore the same terrible outfit for years and built a $500-billion company.Will Google and Facebook Disappear Soon? (Forbes)Can you imagine a world without Google and Facebook? We tend to think that the school of thought known as “organizational ecology” is pretty much crap. Our take is that the evidence overwhelmingly shows the power of the individuals in an organization to succeed regardless of the circumstances. But we’re not too closed-minded to think that a different point of view isn’t worth consideration. This is a pretty interesting article that suggests companies like Google are becoming obsolete.Amazon’s Cloud Carries 1% of the Internet (Wired)Most people still consider Amazon just an online shopping mall of sorts. But the Amazon of today is much more than a low-cost, online retailer. It’s now part Walmart, part Apple, part Netflix, and part Rackspace. In fact, since the introduction in 2006, the company’s cloud-computing infrastructure has grown to the point where it is now on the sending or receiving end of 1% of all the Internet traffic in North America, according to Craig Labovitz, cofounder of DeepField Networks. read more

In this excerpt from a talk at the Casey Research Recovery Reality Check Summit, legendary resource speculator Rick Rule makes a strong case for careful, disciplined investing in the junior resource sector, despite the market turning truly ugly.You can hear Rick’s entire entire presentation, along with those by the 30 other experts at the Summit – including their stock tips and other recommendations. The full audio collection is available in CD or MP3 format. Get full details here.

In This Issue. * Central Banks line up to meet this week. * Is most of the bad stuff priced into the euro? * Aussie and kiwi rally VS USD. * Is Canada’s Poloz losing credibility? And Now. Today’s A Pfennig For Your Thoughts. RBA Leaves Rates Unchanged. Good day.. And a Tom Terrific Tuesday for you! Whew! I didn’t want to answer the bell this morning. It took a lot of motivational speaking on my part to get me to wake up and get out of bed! Good thing I’m not a bad motivational speaker, like Pinocchio! I look around this room and see nothing but untapped potential. You have potential. That commercial cracks me up!  And the new camel commercial where the people at the zoo start yelling out to the camels, Hey camel, what day is it?  And the one camel says to the other, It’s not even Wednesday. Funny stuff! The beautiful Linda Ronstadt is singing: Long, Long Time to greet me this morning, what a very sad song, and not the one I needed to kick start me this morning! Well, Front and Center this morning, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) left rates unchanged last night. Neener, neener, neener, I told you so, I told you so! HA!  That came as no surprise to me, and all you have to do is go to www.dailypfennig.com and reread yesterday’s Pfennig, to see where I said I didn’t believe the RBA would cut rates at to consecutive meetings, and I appeared to be in the minority (As If that’s something new for me. NOT!) , and said the risk would be to those shorting the Aussie dollar (A$) if the RBA didn’t cut rates.. The RBA didn’t cut rates, and those that had shorted the A$ the night before got their rear ends handed to them. Serves them right, eh? So, the opposite took place last night and this morning. Yesterday it was the A$ getting whacked  and the N.Z. dollar / kiwi trading in sympathy with its kissin cousin across the Tasman, but this morning we have the A$ rallying, and the kiwi following it upward. So, what a difference a day makes, only 24 hours!   And yesterday, the euro was carving out a small gain VS the dollar, but today, the euro is getting sold. So, just turn the table today, Just when it appeared that the euro was about to exit its downward trend when it held 1.12 for a couple of weeks, the euro has now surrendered 1.12 and this is the second time in the last week that it has done that, so the euro is a not ready for prime time player right now. But, Greece aside, the Manufacturing indexes of the Eurozone are inching higher, Inflation just printed a tick higher, and growth is stronger. I just wish European Central Bank (ECB) President, Draghi, would see this the way I see it. There’s no need to get your hands in there and act like you know what you’re doing. Let the economy work out its problems on its own, the way economies always did before Central Banks thought they knew better!  But that’s not going to happen. Draghi is hell bent and whiskey bound to implement all-out Quantitative Easing / QE. And we’ll hear all about his plans this Tub Thumpin’ Thursday!  I would like to think that a lot of the bad stuff that is laid at a country’s currency when the Central Bank begins to print money and buy bad debt, would be priced in to the euro by now. But my spider sense is tingling and telling me that’s not the case, so the euro is bound to see more selling coming up. Before we get to the ECB meeting on Thursday, we’ll have the Bank of Canada (BOC) check in with their latest decision on rates. Now, the BOC has an advantage because they will get to see the color of their 4th QTR GDP today before they meet tomorrow.  The Consensus for the Canadian 4th QTR GDP is for annual growth to be 2.5%..  I would have to think that 2.5% is a little overly optimistic. But we’ll have to see later this morning, eh? But if Canadian GDP does hit 2.5% annualized, then that would be good for the Canadian dollar / loonie. For that would make the BOC’s decision in January to cut rates, look silly..  And I love it whenever a Central Bank, anywhere, is made to look silly! And longtime Pfennig readers will recall me making a big stink about the appointment of Poloz as the BCB Gov. after Mark Carney left for the Bank of England (BOE)..  I told you then that we needed to be wary of Poloz, because he came from the “trade side” of Gov’t, and those guys are always whining about a currency’s strength limiting their “trade” with other countries. Well, those fears became reality, when Poloz began talking about the currency being a problem for “trade”.  I think Poloz needs to tread carefully here now, for if he would lose credibility with the markets, that would be a very bad thing, and I do believe he’s dangerously close to doing that. One Central Bank meeting that I missed listing that will take place this week, when I listed them yesterday, is the Brazilian Central Bank (BCB) and here, I do think we’ll see some fireworks in the form of a rate hike, which would be the third consecutive BCB meeting that announced a rate hike. This time the rate hike shouldn’t be so aggressive as previous ones were, but still I would look for 50 Basis Points (1/2%) to be added to their internal rate, which they call the Selic Rate, and it would bring the Selic rate to the highest level since Feb 2009..  At some point, just like I was saying the other day regarding the Russian ruble, at some point, you would have to think there’s value here. In addition, Brazil’s latest Budget has quite a few people smiling these days due to the improved fiscal outlook in the Budget. But those are all just numbers folks. I could do a house budget that called for net revenues to increase 50%, but just because I put that down doesn’t mean 1. I know how to achieve that, 2. There’s no way in hell I would achieve that! So, Budgets for countries are about the same. They can say this and that, but achieving this and that is another thing. But with inflation in Brazil already running at a greater than 7% clip, something has to be done, and raising rates seems to be the logical thing to do. In Japan, Prime Minister, Abe’s economic advisor, Honda, who before now was a HUGE proponent of a weak yen,  was out on the town last night, and decided to come clean on a couple of things. Honda said that “further U.S. dollar ($) gains VS yen would not be sustainable from a PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) perspective, and then warned that the Bank of Japan (BOJ) should not overheat the economy.”  Doesn’t this all sound strange? Memo to Mr. Honda.. Hey dude! The cat is out of the bag here, the cow is out of the barn, and so on. The $ is going to be strong VS yen, because you and your PM told everyone that the way to a Japanese revival was through a very weak yen. You can’t go changing your mind now, dude!   So, we have the BCB, and BOC tomorrow. The ECB and BOE on Thursday, and the Jobs Jamboree on Friday.  The rest of the week should be chock-full-o-items from which the markets can gain direction from. And just as a reminder.. Chuck no longer cares about the Jobs Jamboree’s results.. It’s all mumbo-jumbo, smoke and mirrors, and cooked books to me, and I don’t see why anyone would put stock into the creation of these jobs numbers. Well, I was bang on with my thought on Personal Spending yesterday morning. later in the morning, Personal Income and Spending printed and while Income had a nice gain of .3% it was below the expectations of .4%, and Personal Spending fell more than expected, falling -.2%, while the expectations were for a fall of -.1%..  So, as you can see, these two items are going in the wrong direction.Both reports were for January, and as I told you yesterday, the poor spending made sense given the negative print of Retail Sales in January that previously printed. In addition to the Personal Income & Spending data yesterday, the U.S. Data Cupboard had the latest ISM Manufacturing Index for Feb. And the index nudged downward to 52.9, from the previous month’s 53.5 index number. Still above 50, which is a good thing, I won’t argue that, but I will point out that in October 2014, just 4 prints ago, the index was at 57.9. Losing steam? I would think that to be the appropriate way to describe this data..  So much of manufacturing is tied to exports. And with the dollar relatively stronger these days, exports have to suffer, thus visa-vi Manufacturing suffers.. It’s not all the dollar’s fault, folks. But you can trace back to the dollar on most of this loss in Manufacturing. Especially when you have the currencies of the world, debasing their currencies left and right, it just magnifies the problem. The Chinese renminbi / yuan was pushed downward in value / weakened, overnight again. I see where Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) Deputy Gov. Yi, said overnight that the Chinese renminbi / yuan was second only to the U.S. in strength, and that the currency has remained quite stable..   Hmmm.. Interesting thoughts, eh?  In a relatively short period of time since the renminbi was made available to trade through non-deliverable forwards with liquidity, the renminbi has moved ahead of the euro. and has left the British pound sterling, and Japanese yen in its dust.  I find that to be quite amazing. Gold is up a couple of bucks today, after being up a couple of bucks yesterday morning, only to give them back and basically trade flat on the day.. India continues to increase their Gold imports folks.. Seems that importers, jewelers, and traders were all waiting for the new budget to have some tax implications in it.. But when the budget was released the other day, there were no new tax implications, and now it is thought that India’s Gold imports will surge to 100 metric tonnes this month, after a so-so month of 25 metric tons in February.  Physical Gold continues to have plenty of buyers, if only we could get rid of those short paper trades! Before I head to the Big Finish today, I want to make mention of a pretty impressive event. A good friend, during High School, and the older brother of my friend from kindergarten, Scott Sullivan, has been notified that he will enter the St. Louis Amateur Baseball Hall of Fame. WOW! Congrats! Scott was a heck of a ballplayer as a young man. He was a catcher, and was scouted by several Major League teams. He went on to play in college, but as an adult he has been instrumental in running the St. Louis Baseball & Fastpitch Academy.  Where many of the boys and girls in the St. Louis area go to learn the right way to play ball! For What It’s Worth. The Big Boss, Frank Trotter sent me this and I though it played well with the stuff we talk about every day. It’s Bill Gross, the former head of PIMCO, who left last year and went to Janus Bond Funds. I used to grab quite a few quotes from Bill Gross, who’s known as the “bond king”, so it’s nice to have him included here once again.  You can find the whole article here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-02/bill-gross-says-currency-war-risks-slowing-global-growth “Central bank policies have pushed interest rates below zero in Europe, and countries including China and Japan appear to be devaluing their currencies.  While such moves make debt burdens more tolerable and exports cheaper, they are bound to hurt the global economy as a whole. Common sense would argue the global economy cannot devalue against itself. Either the strong dollar weakens the world’s current growth locomotive (the U.S.) or else their near in unison devaluation effort fails to lead to the desired results. More importantly, low to negative interest rates hamper the functioning of capital markets and prompt investors to take on higher risk to boost returns, making the financial system more vulnerable.” Chuck again.. yes, nothing really new there but it’s always nice to hear from someone else other than just me all the time, eh? To recap. The RBA left rates unchanged last night as Chuck thought they would, as opposed to the markets who thought another rate cut was coming, and shorted the A$ ahead of the meeting only to get their rear ends handed to them later! Serves them right!  The Central Banks are all lining up to meet this week.. I expect the BCB (Brazil) to hike rates 50 Basis Points and the rest to be chock-full-o-B.S., of course we’re expecting the ECB to give us the details of their implementation of all-out QE. Currencies today 3/3/15. American Style: A$ .7815, kiwi .7540, C$ .7995, euro 1.1160, sterling 1.5355, Swiss $1.0405, . European Style: rand 11.8000, krone 7.7155, SEK 8.3175, forint 273.40, zloty 3.7260, koruna 24.5845, RUB 62.20, yen 119.85, sing 1.3640, HKD 7.7550, INR 61.91, China 6.1543, pesos 15.02, BRL 2.9050, Dollar Index 95.52, Oil $50.41, 10-year 2.09%, Silver $16.55, Platinum $1,186.25, Palladium $826.00, and Gold. $1,210.20That’s it for today. Well Happy Anniversary to the Star Spangled Banner.. On this day in 1931, president Herbert Hoover signed a congressional act that made the Star Spangled Banner, which was written by Francis Scott key in 1814, the official national anthem of the U.S.   The countdown to the first Spring Training Game for Chuck in attendance is now 3.. On Friday, I’ll go to my seat, and get ready for a good spring of baseball. Great stuff for my friend, Scott Sullivan, eh? The sun is up and bright as can be right now. I gotta love that!  Billy Squier is playing his song: Lonely Is The Night on the iPod.  Billy Squier has been one of the faves for the boys and girls on the desk over the years, and we’re still hoping that he would make a stop in St. Louis, so we could all go see and meet him!  A few years ago now, Jeff Opdyke wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal about me, and in it he mentioned Billy Squier. Craig Karmin of the WSJ wrote the first piece about me in the WSJ also a few years prior to Jeff’s article..  Those were days, folks, I was always being asked to do an interview, be questioned for an article, and so on. and then one day, it happened the mighty Puff came no more..  Oh well, more time to myself I guess!   Time to get this out the door. I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday!Chuck Butler Managing Director EverBank Global Markets read more

Reporting by WVUA 23 Reporter Chelsea BartonWritten by WVUA 23 Digital Reporter Savannah BullardThe new Brookwood High School has been open for a mere four years. Each day, hundreds of bright students fill the hallways, but there is one student who brings a smile to everyone’s face when you hear her name.Josie Hogeland is 18 years old, and she has had a great senior year at Brookwood.“It makes me so happy seeing her happy because she loves to make everyone else happy,” Linley Campbell, a friend of Josie’s, said.During the fall, Josie was elected homecoming queen by over 900 students who attend her school.“Since she’s so friendly and she knows everybody, everyone just wants to be her friend,” Campbell said.And her reign did not end there; Josie was also chosen out of all the homecoming queens in Alabama to represent the state at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee.She also competed in her first pageant this year, stealing the show with her personality and, to no one’s surprise, was voted Miss Congeniality by all of the contestants.“She thinks she is just like everybody else and she is to us,” Campbell said. “She sees everyone as her friend. She does everything that any of us other seniors do, so I don’t see her different at all and I don’t think anyone else here does.”To top off her senior year, Josie also made the cheerleading squad at Brookwood. She even received a special prom-posal as she was cheering on the Panthers earlier this year.Senior homecoming king Rayquan Swisher sees Josie as one of his best friends. That is why he had to find a special way to ask her to prom. And although she is excited about prom with Swisher, Josie said her heart belongs to her friend Jaylan Wade.“It really means a lot to me, it really does,” Wade said. “Some people don’t know but it’s like she’s like everybody else. She is always going to be here for us. She is always going to be here. We are all doing the same thing. We are all in school together and we are making it the best for her too.”Josie’s mother, Kristy Hogeland, said it’s been the most heartwarming part of her daughter’s senior year. Seeing so many students like senior Maryah Mott love on her girl and make sure Josie feels as special as she truly is.“We and Josie got really close really fast,” Mott said. “I wouldn’t trade her for anything, really. I’d do absolutely anything for Josie if she asked.”Brookwood students say Josie is the one who has blessed them and when they look back a decade from now on their high school memories, she will be there.“Josie really teaches you to take each day as it comes,” Mott said. “She doesn’t stress about anything. As soon as something comes up, she knows how to handle it. She knows how to take it and that’s something we could all pick up from her. Josie is the highlight of the school. Everyone knows that.”If you have a story you would like to see featured in our Spirit of Alabama report, email us at spiritofalabama@wvua23.com. read more

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

There are fresh calls for an inquiry into the way the government assesses eligibility for a key disability benefit, after claimants with mental health conditions described how they had been asked in assessments why they had not taken their own lives.There was a horrified reaction on social media when disabled activist Alice Kirby revealed on Twitter how the healthcare professional who assessed her eligibility for personal independence payment (PIP) had asked her: “Can you tell me why you haven’t killed yourself yet?”After she shared her experience, many other claimants came forward to say that they had been asked the same, or a similar, question by their assessors.Kirby, co-founder of the user-led group Disabled Survivors Unite (DSU), told Disability News Service (DNS) that the question was asked by an assessor employed by the government contractor Atos at her PIP assessment in November.Kirby tweeted: “During my #pip assessment I was asked why I hadn’t killed myself yet. This is standard, assessors regularly ask this question.”This was retweeted more than 850 times, while she received more than 140 comments, many of them from other PIP claimants with mental health conditions.Kirby told DNS: “We know cuts to disability benefits cost people their lives, but these assessments themselves also put us at risk.“The DWP urgently needs to launch an investigation into the assessment process and the effect questions like this have on us.“People are terrified about being assessed, and many find their assessments so traumatic that it has a detrimental effect on their health.“This is simply unacceptable; we should not be living in fear.”Kirby’s concerns are just the latest to be raised about the PIP assessment process, and come as DNS continues its investigation into claims of widespread dishonesty and other poor practice by assessors working for both Atos and fellow contractor Capita on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).DNS has now collected many more than 100 cases of PIP claimants who have raised serious concerns about their assessments, in addition to those collected by Kirby.The assessor’s question was described by those who read Kirby’s tweet as “horrendous”, “unacceptable”, “horrific” and “absolutely flabbergasting”.In a follow-up tweet, Kirby said: “Let that sink in – government are hiring companies and telling them to ask disabled people why they haven’t killed themselves.”She added: “It should be more widely acknowledged how humiliating and uncomfortable #pip and #esa assessments are made for disabled people.”DNS has seen comments posted on social media – collated by Kirby – by at least 30 other disabled people who say they have been asked similar questions during PIP assessments or work capability assessments.One of them, who was assessed by Capita, told DNS that she had been discussing her mental health with a PIP assessor last summer, and mentioned that she had been treated in A&E on a number of occasions after wishing to take her own life, when the assessor asked: “Why didn’t you kill yourself?”Another said they were “aggressively questioned about why I hadn’t killed myself ‘yet’ and what methods I’d use”.One said: “I also got asked this because I have PTSD and have attempted in the past. They asked why I failed.”Another said: “I was asked that. True low point.”One PIP claimant told Kirby on Facebook: “I got asked this, I felt very, very, very degraded. It’s a question that should not be asked.”Another said he had heard it twice when attending other people’s assessments, and when he objected was threatened with being thrown out of the assessment.Others said they had been asked, or heard, other disturbing questions and comments about self-harming behaviour during the PIP process.One said he was told: “You’ve considered suicide? That’s understandable.”Another Twitter-user told Kirby that a friend had been asked at a tribunal appeal to prove that she had tried to kill herself.When she showed the panel the healed scars on her arm, she was told: “Long time ago then.”So far, neither DWP, Atos nor Capita have denied that assessors have asked such questions.A DWP spokeswoman said: “We expect the highest standards from the contractors who carry out PIP assessments.“Both Atos and the DWP take allegations of this kind very seriously and will investigate any complaints made.”An Atos spokesman said: “We are unaware of a complaint but we will investigate if one is made.“Our role is to provide a well evidenced report based upon information obtained using the criteria laid out by government.“The professional and compassionate service we provide to claimants is our primary consideration.”A Capita spokeswoman said: “Our assessments are carried out in line with guidance from the Department for Work and Pensions.“Disability assessors are equipped with knowledge, skills and continuous training in order to understand how various mental and physical health challenges impact upon a claimant’s daily function.“While we cannot comment on specific cases, we expect all assessments to be conducted in a professional and empathetic manner.”When asked whether such questions were offensive and potentially dangerous, and whether Capita would take action to ensure they were no longer asked in assessments, she refused to comment further.But Kirby added: “The fact that neither the DWP or Atos have denied that I was asked this, or that it is a question regularly asked, is very telling.”She said that some people on social media had cast doubt on what she wrote and had demanded proof.But she said: “Assessments are purposefully made very difficult to record, and in any case we are not allowed to publish recordings.“This ensures assessors are not held accountable for what they say, while we are seen by some as unreliable sources.“Until our testimonies are heard and believed, this fight for justice will continue to be a difficult one.” read more

Phones Next Article The study, by analytics firm Zendrive, found that ‘Americans use their phones nearly every single time they get behind the wheel.’ –shares Add to Queue Reporter It’s not an exaggeration to say that looking down at your phone while operating a vehicle — even for just a few seconds — can be deadly. Most of us know this. But, according to a new study, most of us do it anyway.The study, released yesterday by analytics firm Zendrive, found that “Americans use their phones nearly every single time they get behind the wheel.” The company said it conducted the largest distracted driving study to date, analyzing the phone habits of 3.1 million anonymized drivers who made 570 million trips covering 5.6 billion miles between December 2016 and February 2017. Their key finding: “drivers use their phones during 88 out of every 100 trips.” “Every day, that’s the equivalent of people behind the wheel talking or texting on 5.6-million car rides from our sample alone,” Zendrive wrote in a blog post. “When extrapolated for the entire U.S. driving population, the number goes up to roughly 600-million distracted trips a day.”The study also revealed that during an hour-long trip, drivers spend an average of 3.5 minutes on their phones.”This finding is frightening, especially when you consider that a 2-second distraction is long enough to increase your likelihood of crashing by over 20 times,” Zendrive wrote, citing research from Oregon State University. “In other words, that’s equivalent to 105 opportunities an hour that you could nearly kill yourself and/or others.”The firm also ranked the problem by state and found that Vermonters are the most distracted drivers. On the other end of the spectrum, those in Oregon are the least distracted.Zendrive said it’s working with communities, local decision markers, safety experts and driving coaches to bring awareness to this issue.Meanwhile a separate study released last month by the U.S. Governors Highway Safety Association found that pedestrian deaths increased 11 percent last year, and smartphones are partially to blame. This story originally appeared on PCMag April 18, 2017 2 min read Study: Drivers Use Their Phones During 88 Percent of Trips Angela Moscaritolo Image credit: via PC Mag Free Webinar | July 31: Secrets to Running a Successful Family Business Learn how to successfully navigate family business dynamics and build businesses that excel. Register Now » read more