Miami Heat superstar LeBron James was voted as the NBA's most popular player in ESPN's latest poll, as reported by the network's Darren Rovell.
It makes sense that respect and likability have both risen for the game's best player after he took home MVP accolades in both of the past two regular seasons and NBA Finals.
Now that the self-proclaimed "King" has two rings to his name, his popularity increase is suitable.
James has justified his greatness by taking his game to another level in the past two campaigns, which has resulted in the Heat winning back-to-back Larry O'Brien Trophies. He beat out Los Angeles Lakers all-time great Kobe Bryant in the poll by a nose, receiving 12.9 percent of the vote while Bryant garnered 12.5.
Video Credit: ESPN
At the mere age of 28, there is plenty of time for the still-healthy James to add to his accolades in his prime.
Initially when James made the infamous appearance on a TV special known as The Decision, and stated he would take his talents from the Cleveland Cavaliers to South Beach, many were outraged.
As Rovell notes, the 2008-09 season was the last time James was polled as the Association's most popular player. It was also his last in Cleveland, where his percentage of popularity was at 15.6. That number dipped to 10.2 and 9.4 in the past two polls.
Criticism over James' lackluster playoff performances plagued the end of his tenure with the Cavs, and the poignancy didn't decrease after a disappointing showing in the NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks.
The Heat lost that series in James' inaugural campaign in Miami, but now the perception of James has taken a complete 180.
There are no doubts as to whether Dwyane Wade or James is the best player on the Heat. It's James' team now, despite Wade's perpetual presence with the organization that drafted him in 2003.
A noticeable adjustment James made was his efficiency and three-point shooting. He posted career highs in field goal percentage (.565), three-point percentage (.402), rebounds (eight per game) and had his second-best assist numbers with an average of 7.3 dimes per contest.
With all the money James has and his incredible physical gifts and talents, he could have rested on his laurels, coasted for several more years and put off figuring out how to win championships for later in his career.
But that isn't what champions do, and it isn't what James did. His evolution as a basketball player is nearly impossible for NBA fans not to appreciate regardless of their perception of him, and it's reflected in the level of popularity James is currently experiencing.
Nike's PR director Heidi Burgett captured the scene of James' recent visit to China:
Who is your favorite NBA player?
Who is your favorite NBA player?
LeBron James
Kobe Bryant
Kevin Durant
Derrick Rose
Dwyane Wade
Other?comment below
James has always desired to build his brand on a global scale. While it may have detracted from his attention on the court as the early phase of his career progressed, the glamor has certainly seemed to take a backseat.
At the forefront for James now are the blood, sweat and tears toward the single accomplishment that earns the highest praise from fans.
Winning.
The best basketball player on the planet has learned to do just that with his second NBA team, and observers have adjusted accordingly.
Stay off the roads! The "Golden Sisters" are learning how to drive again in the show's season finale, and TODAY.com has an exclusive look at the white-knuckle event.
It's been almost 40 years since Mary has driven, but Josie and Terry have convinced their sister to get behind the wheel again and renew her long-expired driver's license. But as the clip shows, Mary's driving lesson is hardly smooth with her two constant companions in the car.
"You know, I'm really nervous driving the car with my backseat sisters ... telling me how to drive," Mary admits to the cameras. "For sure I'm going to crash!"
With Josie and Terry screaming for Mary to turn the steering wheel this way and that, to hit the brakes and generally freaking out during the lesson, it's no wonder the practically new driver is nervous. But the backseat sisters have reason to worry too.
When Terry advises Mary to "put her signal on," Mary replies, "What's a signal?"
Fortunately, there were no collisions and little damage -- except to a few garbage bins, a curb and a probably their Jaguar's hubcabs.
The season finale of "Golden Sisters" airs Saturday at 9 p.m. on OWN.
However Hughes was contacted by OU. The OU baseball job is one of the top 20 in the country. Couple that with OU's reputation for pay scale (mostly from Stoops) and I can see lots of interest. What has made the OU job during the Cochell years not as attractive was the baseball camps. Several of these programs make lots of money off their camps as outside income and particularly the assistants. Ryan Gaines has really ramped up OU's camps under Golloway.
This post was edited by SoonerPeace on 7/12/2013 at 10:34 AM
Back in 2004 'Man of Steel' director Zack Snyder successfully remade George A. Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead', a feat many thought unaccomplishable. So to acknowledge that Lati Grobman and Christa Campbell ('Drive Angry') have their work cut out for them in attempting to redo Romero's zombie follow-up 'Day of the Dead' is an understatement. The pair have acquired the rights to the original and "...want to keep it as close to the Romero version as possible," Campbell told the LA Times. So completely bypassing the horrid Steve Miner attempt back in 2008, which ironically Christa (below) herself starred in. The pair also exec produced this years 'Texas Chainsaw 3D' sequel and the upcoming Edgar Allen Poe adaptation 'Eliza Graves'.
The hunt for a writer to pen the script to the 'Day of the Dead' remake is now on.
Hint: It's not Chicago O'Hare or Atlanta in the US.
By Peter Ford,?Staff Writer / July 12, 2013
Passengers queue up for a security check at Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, China, Jan. 20, 2012. China's airlines and airports continue to have the worst flight delays in the world.
Eugene Hoshiko/AP/File
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Chinese airline passengers, who have a reputation for losing it in dramatic fashion, can now feel vindicated. Beijing?s airport has the worst punctuality record in the world. And Shanghai is close behind.
Skip to next paragraph Peter Ford
Beijing Bureau Chief
Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.
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Only 18 percent of flights took off from Beijing?s Capital Airport on time in June, according to a just-released survey of the world?s 35 busiest airports. And 42 percent of them left more than three quarters of an hour late.
Shanghai?s Pudong International Airport had a punctuality rate of 29 percent, the US company FlightStats.com said in its report.
That will not be news to many of the 82 million passengers who passed through Beijing Airport last year, making it the second busiest air hub in the world (after Atlanta). Long waits at airports here are routine and Chinese passengers are growing increasingly less likely to put up with them.
Especially when nobody tells them what is going on, which is usually the case.
Three weeks ago, angry Air China passengers who had found themselves stranded for 24 hours at the Three Gorges airport, either because of bad weather or because of mechanical problems, depending on who was doing the explaining, gathered in a crowd to block passengers from boarding another Air China flight.
Last year, frustrated passengers at two different airports rushed the tarmac, preventing planes from landing or taking off, in protest at the way they had been treated while their flights were delayed.
The stormy weather at this time of year does not help, but the main problems are?the huge increase in air traffic as Chinese citizens take to the air instead of traveling by train, and the lack of available airspace.
Air traffic figures have been rising by over 10 percent a year for some time, and the Civil Aviation Authority of China expects China?s fleet of commercial aircraft to double to 4,200 planes by 2020, according to its chief Wang Liya.
But the People?s Liberation Air Force controls almost all of China?s airspace, and allots only 20 percent to commercial aviation, which makes delays almost inevitable.
The Beijing-Shanghai route is by far the most congested and prone to outrageous delays ? it is generally quicker to take the high-speed train than to fly the 670 miles that separate the two cities.
But provincial airports haven?t got much to boast about either, according to the FlightStats report. None of the Chinese airports surveyed could get even half their flights off the ground on time ? which FlightStats takes to mean ?within 15 minutes of scheduled departure.?
Getting passengers airborne is not the only thing Beijing Airport is slow about. When I rang the airport spokesman to ask why he thought Beijing came bottom of the rankings, he did not exactly hop to it.?
?Fax me your question,? he said, ?and we will answer in two or three days.??
Critics say Smithfield Foods takeover threatens U.S. food safety
Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in America, is set to be sold to its Chinese equivalent, Shaunghui. Supporters of the deal say it would increase U.S. exports to China, while critics say it could threaten America's food safety. Wyatt Andrews reports.
CHILDREN?S CORNER with PANIC CHILUFYA RECENTLY, while browsing on a social networking site, I came across an appeal for signatures against the expulsion of three girls at a school in Southern Province for being in possession of cellphones, which are prohibited. Two other girls in examination classes were suspended until their final examinations. And in Monday?s edition of the Zambia Daily Mail, a writer said a mobile phone is no longer a luxury but a means of communication so long as it is not misused. He further called for comments regarding the use of phones in secondary schools. In relation to the expulsions, I was interested to read what people had to say. Most of those who posted comments thought that although the girls had broken school rules, the punishment was excessive, especially that expulsions would affect the girls? future. I am sure this is happening in other schools elsewhere. Much as parents sign contract forms that pupils will abide by the rules, the punishment should fit the crime and should be used to reform, because every action has consequences. In 2011, about 22 pupils, mainly grade 12s, went through various forms of punishment at a boarding school on the Copperbelt for having been found with mobile phones in their rooms. Initially, the girls were suspended and sent home for two weeks while their classmates were learning. Later, when their classmates went home for mid-term break, the 22 reported back and immediately commenced manual work for ten days as part of the prolonged punishment. Furthermore, the girls were not allowed to braid their hair for the rest of the year (as is the practice, grade 12 pupils were allowed to braid their hair being seniors), the prefects, among the 22 ,had their prefect ship withdrawn and their mobile phones confiscated and sold by the school. Some parents felt the punishment was excessive given that most of the pupils had their mobile phones as a means of communicating with their families, especially when travelling to and from school as most of them used public transport. The only other mode of communication allowed was letter writing, whose replies were frequently withheld. For example, a letter from Lusaka would take about two months to reach a pupil. Furthermore, school phones were only used for ?emergencies? as deemed fit by the administration. Although the pupils broke school rules, depriving them from learning and meting out other forms of punishments defeated the purpose of them being there, especially that the mobile phones were ?used? outside learning school hours. Like one of the contributors in the earlier case said: Schools should be in the business of building, not destroying. Let this be an opportunity for these young ladies to learn that there are consequences to not following rules?however, this punishment is extreme. Everybody deserves a second chance. A cellphone is now a necessity even for children and they are supposed to just come up with rules as to when the students can use their phones?The expelled students must be re-instated at all costs. It is unacceptable for a school founded on Christian values to kill the future of the girls over a mobile phone. Technology today has surpassed pen and paper, chalk and board. When will we as educators wake up and open our eyes and minds and embrace the younger generation?s needs, ideas and skills. It is irrational to think pupils always use mobile phones for mischief because phones can also be used positively as calculators, stop watches or cameras to record schoolwork. Phones can work as alarms for study purposes or to search the internet, an increasingly important tool in education. To ensure the development of digital literacy regardless of the age, there are a lot of benefits in this digital age, which is driven by ever-changing technologies. If adults, while working, can use mobile phones for social reasons, pupils as our future leaders should also be trusted to make their own decisions with necessary guidance regarding the responsible use of these gadgets in schools. It is imperative that the Ministry of Education comes up with a standard form of punishment for erring pupils as opposed to the current situation where individual schools determine what punishment to mete out. Punishment is supposed to reform pupils instead of disadvantaging them in the future. To avoid such occurrences, schools should also make it conducive for pupils, especially those in boarding, to feel that they are at home away from home. For instance, schools could set up monitored payphones at stipulated times to enable pupils keep in touch with their families without having to use unauthorised ways. I am sure most parents would be willing to contribute to such progressive ventures because pupils get homesick, and families are equally keen to know how the children are faring when they are away from home. Such initiatives would definitely put an end to mobile phones being smuggled into institutions of learning, especially boarding schools. This is prudent, especially that some boarding schools are like mini-prisons, where pupils cannot be easily seen other than on designated days, which builds up anxiety in pupils to communicate with their families at all costs. You do not need to use a rifle to kill a fly. The moral of this is that every offence should go with the appropriate punishment. In the case of these pupils, expulsion is certainly not appropriate. There are other forms of reformative punishment befitting this offence. Remember, children are our future. Until next week, take care. pchilufya@daily-mail.co.zm; pcmalawochilufya@yahoo.com or gender@daily-mail.co.zm.
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Let me begin today?s post by saying that in my opinion, the perfect leader has yet to be born ? and I have studied most of the significant leaders in history.
I also took on my first ?leadership? role at the tender age of eight, so you can assume that ?leading from the front? has been a?major feature of my commercial life.
The reality is that we all have room for self-improvement, but??if at least we can agree upon what it takes to be a good leader ? what are the traits of leadership; what are the skills ? we will at least have made a good start. We should analyse every genuine leader we know and try to learn which qualities influenced us to consider them a good leader. We can probably agree upon at least?six ? these are mine -?and you may well?have a leader in mind as we consider these?
Enthusiasm:
Everyone should?agree that enthusiasm for what one is doing is a critical leadership trait. No man or woman can install much enthusiasm in anyone else for something about which they themselves are not enthusiastic. Genuine enthusiasm does not mean a glib, backslapping, plastic smile type attitude. More often, the genuine leader?s enthusiasm is likely to be of a more quiet nature ? but it is there! It is shown by the manner in which they go about their work. Their manner of handling their job seems to say to everyone. ?This is important! It must be done right. It must be fairly and squarely done! And?-you can do it!?
Unless a person feels right down in their bones that the work they are doing is worthwhile, they can never consistently (day in and day out) act as though they do. So, if they have any feelings or doubt about the importance of their work and cannot?become enthusiastic about it, the trouble is in the person himself or herself. Whether they realise it or not, those around them sense their feelings, their attitude is showing!
Courage:
Leadership takes ?guts.? The true leader has the ability to ?take it? when the going gets rough. Often the leader has to ?take it? for the whole organisation to keep?morale high. The leader has to face up to?new challenges all the time. Indeed, many successful leaders invite difficulties just for the sheer joy of coping with them. The genuine leader approaches each day with a sort of ?joy of battle?.
Courage in leadership sometimes takes unexpected forms; it may mean standing up?for a principle. (Has anyone ever known a real leader who was a ?yes person??) It means having the character to stand up for what you believe in without comprising or cutting corners.
It may mean taking a bold approach to a new idea ? sticking your neck out in support of something which you think is worth trying. It means loyalty to your convictions.
Self Confidence:
Another important requirement for the leader of today is self-confidence. However, in making decisions about people, their motivation and the way they act or react, the leader can never feel completely sure they are right. The best they can do is to make a sort of ?educated guess? based on the facts they can assemble and then?rely upon their past experience and knowledge to interpret them.
?A great help is to know and work within their personal assets and limitations. They know what they can personally do and what they are unable to do. They are willing to listen to other opinions, assess them and be big enough to adopt the meritorious ones even if they do not square with their original thinking. They can take small reverses in stride.
A self-confident leader is never satisfied with their present accomplishments; does not spend their time in useless longing for things they cannot have. Rather, they set about realising their immediate and realistic goals. ? Integrity:
A leader keeps promises: They keep their promises to their associates as meticulously as those made to their superiors. They keep promises made to themselves, which are the hardest to keep and failure in this is the easiest to rationalise. They can keep all these promises because they never commit themselves rashly; but always within the limits of reality and their present capabilities in terms of personal ability.
Part of this matter of integrity is certainly, unquestioned loyalty to their organisation ? to its reputation as well as their own. Also they must have loyalty to their products and to their associates and loyalty to their industry. Loyalty to one?s associates is extremely important in any leader. They should never allow themselves or others in their group to ridicule, or down grade other leaders or people in the industry, as it is a sign of jealousy and this is one trait that cannot exist in a true leader. Part of this loyalty is a sense of stewardship ? a feeling of responsibility for the welfare, progress and security of the industry as a whole, and that includes everybody who ethically runs a business, everyone in their organisation, their customers and their family.
Interest:
Even the Oxford Dictionary has difficulty in defining the meaning of the word ?friendliness? Of ?friendliness? it says, ?it signifies befitting or worthy of a friend.?
A leader has a genuine and sympathetic interest in and a respect for people as individuals -?this is important because?a very high percentage of any leader?s day is spent working directly with individuals.
Be careful ? do not go overboard. Here there could be a danger signal. Friendliness can, of course, be overdone. Although interested and sympathetic, the true leader stays firm ? never getting so involved in the personal lives of people that he forgets the implications of their role as a leader. They never play favourites ? and should never play one personality against another. They know where to draw the line.
Humor:
Whilst not advocating that?a leader be the ?life and soul of the party?, it is essential that they have a keen sense of humour. There will be times when an appropriate joke or light hearted remark, will do more to relax and motivate than all the arranging in the world.
These then are the six basic characteristics which help a person to become a successful leader. Think of others. Upon reflection, you will probably agree that your ideas are closely allied to or even a part of the six detailed here.
They are not by any means a guaranteed panacea that will assure success as a leader. Though all leaders possess them to a varying degree, all of us have known people who have had them all, but were still unsuccessful as leaders. Characteristics or traits by themselves do not make leaders, certain ?core skills? are equally necessary.
?
News: Over at Top Sales World we have announced?last week?s Top Sales Article, together with this week?s Top 10 choices
Away from ?the World? for a moment, I think you will enjoy this post from good chum Dan McDade and his team over at PointClear - ?Power Opinions ? Experts Select Top Three Social Media Tools??and whilst you are over there, have a listen in to Dan?s brand new interview with another good chum, Lori Richardson ? ?Small Sales Improvements Make a Profound Impact?
The unexpected drop in China's exports and imports ? a decline of 0.7% versus expectations of an 8% rise ? sent shudders through the resources sector.
But buried within the data however was a 10% year on year surge in the country's copper imports.
Shipments to China of refined metal, alloy and products were 379,951 tonnes in June the highest since September. China consumes some 42% of the world's copper.
Daniel Briesemann, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, said in a report imports could continue to be relatively robust in the coming months too and that "the trade statistics for the economy as a whole are probably to blame for the fact that the copper price is not profiting significantly from these figures."
China's traders have been trading "opportunistically" says Commerzbank to make the most of softer prices and also making the most of arbitrage opportunities as London Metal Exchange prices decline to as much as $75 below the Shanghai price.
Copper for delivery in September climbed 0.8% to $3.09 a pound by in New York on Wednesday, up from near three-year lows of $3.03 reached on Tuesday.
London Metal Exchange copper for delivery in three months rose $50 to $6,780 a tonne.
SEE ALSO: Report: China starts stockpiling metals again
[unable to retrieve full-text content]An innovative neurocognitive study shows that the individual variability that exists in brain connections affects people?s learning ability and, in turn, the learning process produces a change in brain networks associated with the trained areas.
Social gaming. It?s awfully exciting isn?t it? Hundred million dollar acquisitions, joint ventures, software deals and more new products being released than you could shake a stick at.
While social gaming is still in its formative years, there are some figures that suggest that its explosion in popularity has ceased and the novelty is close to wearing off. Rather than hearing about IGT dropping $500 million on Double Down Casino, most of the traffic has been heading in the other direction.
The issue of monetisation still looms large ? highlighted by Facebook?s increasing lenience towards real-money gambling on their site. It was even deemed that the champions of social gaming Zynga were in need of some real money play away from social networks as the launch of Zynga Plus Casino and Zynga Plus Poker demonstrates.
Perhaps as a result of the monetisation factor, investment in social gaming in 2012 halved from the previous year. A Digi-Capital report published in January showed that investment in 2012 was 94% lower than it was at its highest point in 2011.
Investment in social gaming returned to similar levels that it was at in 2010 and the 94% decrease from 2011 to 2012 is estimated to amount to around $1 billion. This trend hasn?t escaped the attention of those with an interest in the industry with the likes of Techcrunch questioning the suitability of VC investment in gaming companies.
The New York Times claimed that the increased wariness among investors had been caused by what they labelled as ?the Facebook effect?. The initial public offerings of Zynga and Facebook itself have provided weight to the argument that social gaming may not be a sustainable long term industry.
There are of course social games that are kept away from social networks such as Facebook and it?s these products that are still able to find funding relatively easily. The fear of an over-reliance on social networks is stunting the growth of many social games start-ups, but are there ways to restore confidence? And if not, how can social games creators react?
The reputation of monetisation
One issue regarding the bigger picture is that social gaming hasn?t quite found its place in life yet. Many companies that work within the traditional online gambling industry are yet to decide whether it?s simply a marketing tool, whether it?s acquisition or retention, and whether these new apps can make money as a standalone product.
Of course, this is where monetisation rears its head yet again. The fact that there?s no necessary and immediate income from free-to-play games has made for an easy excuse for much of the media and analysts regarding any issues that have been had by game creators.
Raf Keustermans is co-founder and CEO of Plumbee, a social gaming company that has had few problems in raising investment. The London-based company has raised $3.8 million to date with $2.8 million of that coming in August 2011 at a time that not only were revenues were not yet coming in but a product hadn?t even been launched.
Keustermans explains that there?s still plenty of hope for those looking for funding. Fortunately for them, not everyone is quite so downbeat about the free-to-play format that most social games have adopted.
He says: ?I think every investor worth their salt knows the free-to-play model. This is becoming the standard dominating model in entertainment so if you?re not aware of it or sure of how it makes money then you?ll have problems investing in the industry.?
While their are clear benefits to the free-to-play model as Keustermans? Plumbee and others have demonstrated, it?s hard to ignore the fact that many social gaming companies have struggled with monetisation in the past. But this is now something which Keustermans believes developers are getting much better at.
?All the companies that I know have improved their monetisation in the last couple of years even though, particularly on Facebook, the audience has stagnated a little bit,? he says.
?Pretty much every studio that?s chosen to use the free-to-play model has definitely learnt a lot about optimisation on all metrics but especially monetisation.?
Lots of less
Speaking broadly about social gaming investment, Keustermans agrees that the increased competition on Facebook is making it harder to get started.
?If you?re only on Facebook I can see that investment has definitely dropped in the last couple of years. The perception is that Facebook is a very mature platform and it?s much harder to grow. It?s still a big platform, it?s still very viable but there?s much more opportunity to grow and grow fast on mobile and tablets,? he explains.
?There?s still a lot of money going into games and games companies but if you?re only on Facebook that makes it a lot harder.?
However, he?s very keen to emphasise that it?s by no means doom and gloom. Quite the opposite in fact. Interestingly it may be that while you?re not going to see much of the type of deals mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are plenty going on that just aren?t headline news.
Keustermans explains: ?It?s a bit harder to find Series A or Series B money, if you want to find someone to write a $5m, $10m or $20m cheque that?s probably still harder. But that?s not just in games, that?s across the whole spectrum of start-ups.?
?On the flip side it?s probably never been so easy to find seed capital.?
Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer ?Represents Creative Recycling Systems ?in Relocation to Columbia
Jul 8, 2013
COLUMBIA, SC - July 8, 2013 - Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer has
completed a 33,600 square foot lease of industrial space for Creative
Recycling Systems, a leader in IT asset management and electronics
recycling.? They will be relocating to their new location at Carolina
Pines I, 1061 Carolina Pines Road, Suite #5 in Columbia, South
Carolina.?
Brian J. Young, CCIM, SIOR and Elliott Fayssoux of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer handled the lease negotiations.
?
Thalhimer
was founded in 1913 and currently has offices in Richmond, Newport
News, Virginia Beach, Fredericksburg, Roanoke, Lynchburg, VA; Charlotte,
Raleigh, NC; Charleston, Greenville, SC.? The company has over 125
broker professionals and employs over 300 associates with a property
portfolio of over 50 million leasable square feet and management of over
21,200,000 square feet.? In 2012 Thalhimer completed over 2,100
transactions with a transactional volume in excess of $1.15 billion.? Thalhimer is the region?s leading provider of comprehensive commercial
real estate services.? The firm offers comprehensive commercial real
estate services including corporate services, investment sales, tenant
representation, construction management, project management, asset
management, and the sale and leasing of office, industrial and retail
properties.??
Cushman & Wakefield is the world?s
largest privately?held commercial real estate services firm. The company
advises and represents clients on all aspects of property occupancy and
investment, and has established a preeminent position in the world?s
major markets, as evidenced by its frequent involvement in many of the
most significant property leases, sales and assignments. Founded in
1917, it has 253 offices in 60 countries and nearly 15,000 employees. It
offers a complete range of services for all property types, including
leasing, sales and acquisitions, equity, debt and structured finance,
corporate finance and investment banking, corporate services, property
management, facilities management, project management, consulting and
appraisal. The firm has more than $3.7 billion in assets under
management globally. A recognized leader in local and global real estate
research, the firm publishes its market information and studies online
at www.cushmanwakefield.com/knowledge. ?
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Scientists have developed a new method to massively synthesize enhanced yet affordable materials for supercapacitors.
The iconic Richard Roger?s-designed Lloyd?s Building at One Lime Street, London EC3, has been sold to Ping An, a Chinese insurance company for ?260 million, it?s been confirmed. The Lloyd?s Building will continue to house the world?s leading insurance market as it is let in its entirety to the Society of Lloyd?s on a lease expiring in 2031. Jon Crossfield, director within Savills? Central London team, says ?This is a potentially landmark transaction, given it is the first by a Chinese Insurance company overseas.? It is a high profile and confident entry to the market for them and further illustrates the dominance of overseas investors in London at present.?
The sale, which represents the first purchase by a Chinese insurance company in the UK was managed by Commerz Real and advised by Savills and CBRE. Roland Holschuh, the member of the Management Board of Commerz Real AG responsible for the real estate business, says ?We are delighted with the transaction and it has been a major success for our investors.? The current liquidity and investor demand within the London market presented an ideal time for us to seek an exit in line with our original business plan?.
The Lloyd?s building took eight years to build and 33,510 cubic meters of concrete, 30,000 square metres of stainless steel cladding and 12,000 square metres of glass were used during its construction. Since it opened in 1986, its unusual design, which puts its services such as staircases, lifts, electrical power conduits and water pipes on the outside, has been the subject of much debate.
LinkedIn is positioned to become the first global economic graph with the ability to mine the transactions of an emerging data economy. That’s the conclusion of a study by faberNovel, a Paris-based consulting group that has published the results of its work with a detailed 127-slide report titled: LinkedIn, The Serious Network. FaberNovel has a history of doing reports about the tech giants. As Ingrid Lunden wrote, last year it examined?why Facebook at that time was the perfect startup. And in years past, the firm has published reports about?how Amazon controls e-commerce,?how Apple dominates, and?what could go wrong with Google. The company chose Linkedin for its expertise in data analytics and algorithms, which has helped LinkedIn become far more than a site to post a resume. Instead, FaberNovel argues, LinkedIn is positioned to become a mega business platform. Since its start 10 years ago, LinkedIn has become the place for people to network. In recent years, though, it has started pooling the data, becoming one of the early adopters of open-source data technologies, such as Hadoop and Lucene/Solr for search. It has one of the most-recognized teams of data scientists who have learned to shape the data to create what CEO Jeff Weiner calls a global economic graph. It’s through the understanding of its users’ interactions that LinekdIn is establishing a platform that could put it in a position to emerge as an enterprise services provider and a player in the CRM market. LinkedIn understands the new concepts of business, particularly the transition from hierarchical to network-based organizations. The trend is to treat business as a graph more than a top-down organization with centralized communications and infrastructure. The company is adapting to this change in how an organization functions by focusing on talent as the center of its network. This provides the basis for developing products and services that span recruitment, as well as the expansion into the CRM and media markets. FaberNovel argues that the data LinkedIn collects and efficiently analyzes will help the company realize what LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner calls the company’s dream to create an economic graph that identifies the connections in its vast talent network. It’s by connecting the data that LinkedIn will continue to better its real-time analysis. Growing Fast LinkedIn is still small compared to its competitors in terms of revenue, but it is the fastest-growing talent network in the world with 225
IT spend globally -- from devices through to data center investments and the services that run on them -- it set to reach $3.7 trillion in 2013, but that represents shrinking growth of only 2% on 2012, as more expensive items like PCs and on-premise software continue to get pushed out by less expensive, newer things like lower-cost tablets and cloud services. Gartner, the analyst house publishing these numbers today, projects spend for 2014 to rise to $3.9 trillion, up 4.1%.
An ABC News report is dashing the hopes and dreams of Android fans everywhere. According to Joanna Stern, a version of the Motorola X will be available with custom casings and wallpapers, not customizable internal hardware like was widely speculated.
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?All the better to eat you up with,? replied the wolf, which had just gobbled up the girl?s relative and strategically donned some of her accessories.
Well, not necessarily. It turns out that big teeth don't always mean a big bite, especially if the animal lacks the strong jaws to wield them.
The hulking, toothy predators that roamed the earth millions of years ago have long been figures of lore for sinking their horrible teeth into the animals unlucky enough to keep company with them. One of the animals in the sabre-tooth lineage, a South American version called Thylacosmilus atrox, had two massive teeth, each with roots stretching back to its braincase and that protruded from its mouth like angry warnings to run away, fast. The catch is, this extinct animal, a species whose closest living relatives are the Australian and American marsupials, had a bite no more powerful than that of a modern domestic cat.
Scientists have found that the worryingly toothy animal actually lacked the sheer jaw power to leverage its own teeth. Instead, the ancient mammal had to rely on its brawn to snag its food, pinning its prey with its muscled arms before administering a precise, strategic bite that depended entirely on its neck muscle force.?
?Thylacosmilus looked and behaved like nothing alive today,? said University of New South Wales?palaeontologist Stephen Wroe, the leader of the research team. ?Frankly, the jaw muscles of?Thylacosmilus?were embarrassing."
To make those findings, published in PLOS ONE, scientists built three-dimensional computer models that played out how three feared animals chased and killed their prey: Thylacosmilus, its cousin, the classic North American sabre-toothed ?tiger? (Smilodon fatalis), and the modern leopard.
The models showed that that both of the extinct species had extremely weak jaws relative to the modern leopard, with those of the odd Thylacosmilus being the weakest. That means that Smilodon fatalis, a true member of the cat family, was similarly dependent on sheer brawn, rather than wickedly punishing jaws, to kill its food.
Lest it be too much of an embarrassment to legend, where Thylacosmilus did have an advantage was in its skull, which was uniquely adapted to absorb the stress of plunging its fangs into hapless animals.
?Grandmother, what a big neck and well-adapted skull you have,? said Thylacosmilus?s prey, allegedly.
2:46 PM?Along with The Guardian, a more popular newspaper based in England, the Washington Post first published the surveillance revelations from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Now that Snowden's in limbo and the U.S. government is making threats around the world to keep the 30-year-old former intelligence contractor from asylum, the cowardly Washington establishment paper has gone on the offensive?against Snowden, who gave the paper one of its few big stories of this century.
Snowden Breaks Silence ... Or Does He?
Monday, July 1, 2013 7:55 PM?For the first time since he dragged the NSA's surveillance machine into the light, Edward Snowden has released a statement to the public. But did he write the strangely structured missive, or is it a hoax? Snowden remains in Moscow, reportedly still within the transit zone of the international airport there, a month since his revelations to The Guardian and Washington Post brought the extent of Silicon Valley and British cooperation with the NSA and FBI's widespread, wholesale monitoring of all telephone and Internet activity.
Snowden Asks For Asylum In Russia
2:02 PM?Surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden has applied for political asylum in Russia, U.S. news agencies are now reporting. Russian President Vladimir Putin now says he'll never give Snowden to the Americans, while also warning Snowden against harming Russia's "American partners" with more NSA leaks. But Snowden has officially asked to stay, Putin says.
Did WikiLeaks Get Snowden Stuck In Moscow?
1:14 PM?Surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden might have left his safe haven in Hong Kong thanks to some bad advice from the WikiLeaks team, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. Russian President And new details of the Prism program revealed by the former NSA contractor now show at least 117,675 individuals are "targets" of a system that can watch users in real time as they send texts and emails. Developing...
Thursday, June 27, 2013 12:09 PM?With NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden still in hiding at the Moscow airport, the writer who broke the story is now being targeted by the tabloids. Glenn Greenwald, the American lawyer and blogger who now works for The Guardian, was once a business partner in a porn company and owes back taxes. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is downplaying the U.S. pursuit of Snowden, telling his press pool that he wouldn't "scramble jets" to catch the 30-year-old former intelligence contractor. Snowden has been on the run since he first revealed details of Verizon's participation in a telecommunications industry program to store information on all telephone calls, and then broke news of the NSA/Silicon Valley PRISM system that watches over the whole Internet.
Snowden Hides In Moscow Airport
Wednesday, June 26, 2013 3:01 PM?The former NSA contractor who turned the world's attention to widespread surveillance of telephone and Internet users is still within the "transit zone" of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport. Snowden, the 30-year-old American who leaked details of the NSA's massive electronic spying operation to The Guardian and Washington Post, is now the subject of an international struggle between the United States, China and Russia.
11:45 AM?Russian president Vladimir Putin has flatly rejected Washington's demands that Snowden be handed over to the Americans, describing Snowden as a "transit passenger" and "free man" who could travel wherever he liked. But Putin encouraged Snowden to move fast to his destination, whether Ecuador or another nation friendly to Snowden's cause.
Snowden a No-Show On His Flight To Cuba
Monday, June 25, 2013 11:56 AM?Edward Snowden's seat on the Russian airliner to Cuba was empty today, with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange announcing that the NSA whistleblower is safe but giving no other details. Snowden is seeking political asylum in Ecuador after fleeing Hong Kong and reportedly arriving in Moscow on Sunday. Washington has revoked Snowden's U.S. passport and Secretary of State John Kerry is demanding that the Russians hand over the former intelligence contractor.
Monday, June 24, 2013 10:26AM?Was Snowden's purchased seat on the Aeroflot jet to Havana just a trick to fool reporters? Dozens of journalists were on the flight, but he wasn't.
Snowden's final destination may not be Havana, however. The current speculation is that he may go to Caracas after landing in Havana. Other rumors point to Iceland. Wikileaks claims his final destination is Ecuador. Julian Assange and his organization claim they are helping him.
And it's not just data that flows between the California technology giants and the NSA. Facebook's former security chief, Max Kelly, left the social network to take a similar jobwith the National Security Agency.
Tuesday, June 18, 10:45 PM?The surveillance of Americans' phone calls and Internet activity is "transparent," President Barack Obama said on television Monday night. The names of these secret programs revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden are turning up on job sites all over the Internet.
The NSA and FBI has had access to private accounts on Facebook, Microsoft,Google and Apple during the last six months, and appears to be expanding and extending online surveillance that first began with the controversial Patriot Act programs launched after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Monday, June 17, 10:45 PM?Edward Snowden?the NSA contractor employee who revealed the secret US government spy program Prism on June 6?now says that more details are coming.
11:23 AM?Answering The Guardianreaders' questions, Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden claims that more details are coming no matter what happens to him: "All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."
10:42 AM?Apple has admitted that the government obtained data from 9,000 to 10,000 devices as part of investigations on "robberies and other crimes, searching for missing children, trying to locate a patient with Alzheimer?s disease, or hoping to prevent a suicide." The company also claims it doesn't chat messages or videoconferences and that "it doesn't store Maps, location, or Siri data in any way that could identify you."
Saturday, June 15, 2013 3:00 PM?The Associated Press has numerous sources detailing that Prism's collaboration with tech companies is just the tip of the iceberg?the NSA actually captures every single bit of data that comes in and out the United States, storing it for analysis:
...larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet's backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.
Thursday, June 13, 2013 1:55 PM?The Silicon Valley giants are telling a very different story than the NSA, which explained in top secret Power Point presentations exactly how the data comes from the biggest Internet companies to the government's massive spying operations.
Patriot Or Traitor: Edward Snowden and the NSA Prism Surveillance Web
Wednesday, June 12, 2013, 7:25 PM?More Americans see Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden as a patriot than as a traitor, according to a new opinion poll. But the 29-year-old former intelligence contractor who leaked the details of the NSA's massive data mining operation is still unknown to most Americans?46% have no opinion on his motivations.
1:40 PM?Prism whistleblower Edward Snowden has resurfaced in Hong Kong, telling the South China Morning Post that he's "revealing criminality" and has no other motives. He plans to stay in Hong Kong and has more secrets to reveal.
Since the shocking revelations were revealed a week ago, Snowden has been vilified as a defector but also hailed by supporters such as WikiLeaks? Julian Assange.
?I?m neither traitor nor hero. I?m an American,? he said, adding that he was proud to be an American. ?I believe in freedom of expression. I acted in good faith but it is only right that the public form its own opinion.?
Snowden tells the Hong Kong paper, ?I will never feel safe."
Ron Paul Fears Edward Snowden Will Be Assassinated
Tuesday, June 11, 2013 11:39 PM?Congressman Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who first became a hero to young computer technicians in 2007, said today that he fears that the United States government will assassinate Edward Snowden using either a "cruise missile or a drone missile."
Google, Microsoft and Facebook released open letters today asking the U.S. government to get the tech firms off the hook for cooperating with widespread electronic spying on Americans by the biggest tech firms as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
In Maryland, the father of Snowden's girlfriend described Snowden as a man of "strong convictions of right and wrong." But because Snowden is generally "shy and reserved," Jonathan Mills said he was shocked by the revelations.
Lindsay Mills, the 29-year-old girlfriend of Snowden, reportedly texted her father but did not reveal her whereabouts. Snowden disappeared from his Hong Kong hotel at least a day ago, and has yet to surface.
6:40 PM?While the world's attention turned to Edward Snowden's pole-dancing ballerina girlfriend today, the American Civil Liberties Union launched a legal backlash against the NSA and FBI's widespread domestic spying as Google and Apple sought permission from the U.S. government to disclose at least some of what's going on.
The ACLU lawsuit is the first challenge to the widespread phone company spying revealed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old American who has single-handedly brought the nation's attention back to the long forgotten issue of constant surveillance.
2:31 PM?The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald wrote the shocking stories based on Snowden's leaks, but Greenwald knows firsthand that surveillance dragnets allegedy created to target foreign terrorists are just as easily?and clumsily?turned on U.S. citizens critical of an overreaching government that increasingly seems to exist only to protect itself from the nation it ostensibly serves. The Nation's Lee Fang describes what was revealed just two years ago:
Two years ago, a batch of stolen e-mails revealed a plot by a set of three defense contractors (Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, and HBGary Federal) to target activists, reporters, labor unions, and political organizations. The plans ? one concocted in concert with lawyers for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to sabotage left-leaning critics, like the Center for American Progress and the SEIU, and a separate proposal to "combat" WikiLeaks and its supporters, including Glenn Greenwald, on behalf of Bank of America ? fell apart after reports of their existence were published online. But the episode serves as a reminder that the expanding spy industry could use its government-backed cyber tools to harm ordinary Americans and political dissident groups.
The episode also shows that Greenwald, who helped Snowden expose massive spying efforts in the U.S., had been targetted by spy agency contractors in the past for supporting whistleblowers and WikiLeaks.
Majority of Americans Support NSA Spying
Monday, June 10, 2013 5:42 PM?NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has left his Hong Kong hotel as Republican members of Congress call for his extradition and the White House. The 29-year-old contractor for U.S. intelligence services provided details of Washington's decade-long spree of data collection on the phone calls and Internet use of all Americans, and now fears for his life.
Nearly 19,000 people have signed the "Pardon Edward Snowden" petition at WhiteHouse.gov. Daniel Ellsberg, whose life was upended by his decision to leak the Pentagon's bleak assessment of its war in Vietnam, today is praising Snowden's "conscience and patriotism."
Meanwhile, a solid majority of Americans surveyed by Pew Research Center say they're just fine with the constant surveillance of telephone calls and Internet use?56% of Americans support the illegal domestic spying, but only 27% of Americans claim to be closely following the scandal.
3:04 PM?Palantir, the Silicon Valley startup named for an evil all-seeing rock from Lord of the Rings reportedly behind the NSA's Prism program to spy on all Internet activity, takes the hobbit life very seriously. A company director explained in 2010 that a surveillance program called "Save the Shire" saw America's perceived enemies as orcs and dark wizards.
Sunday, June 9, 10:00PM?Edward Snowden: This is the man who told the world about PRISM, the NSA spy network capable of grabbing all your personal data?including private messages, photos and videos?with the help of America's top tech companies.
According to the Guardian, Snowden worked for the last four years at the National Security Agency. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," Snowden told The Guardian. ?I don?t want public attention because I don?t want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the U.S. government is doing.?
Following the revelation of his identity, Edward Snowden was hiding in a Hong Kong hotel.
Despite Denials, Tech Companies Collaborated With NSA
Saturday, June 8, 3:30 PM?The Guardian has revealed the existence of a second NSA surveillance network. Its name is Boundless Informant and, unlike PRISM, it covers the entire planet. Unlike PRISM, however, this network doesn't capture the data but merely organizes it, indexing countries by the metadata obtained from local phone and computer networks.
3:10 AM?The New York Times says that Facebook, Google and Apple are collaborating with the NSA, rebutting the companies' carefully worded statements. According to their sources, companies like Facebook built specific systems so the government could easily request and access their data.
This information contradicts Zuckerberg's denial, posted on his Facebook page Friday afternoon, which has the vague sound of many, many lawyers parsing their own language:
Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access [added emphasis] to our servers. We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received. And if we did, we would fight it aggressively. We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday.
First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government?or any other government?direct access [emphasis added] to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a ?back door? to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.
According to the Times, the key words here are direct access. The government didn't have a backdoor to access the data, but these companies built a system for them:
[C]ompanies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said.
Obama Says PRISM Exists To "Keep Us Safe"
Friday, June 7, 3:31 PM?A mysterious Facebook-connected startup called Palantir?a Lord of the Rings reference to a magical method of surveillance?appears to be the entity that runs the NSA's PRISM program just revealed to be spying on all Americans at all times, with Barack Obama's approval. Obama was in Silicon Valley this morning shaking down the tech billionaires for campaign money:
1:36 PM?Obama claimed the massive, unprecedented national surveillance system involves only "modest encroachments on privacy." As for any political fallout in Congress, Obama also made it clear that "your duly elected representatives have been consistently informed on exactly what we're doing."
12:41 AM?Barack Obama, speaking live in Silicon Valley right now, said the electronic snooping "helps protect us from terrorism" and insists all the eavesdropping of every mobile call, email, instant message and file attachment is completely legal. Obama is in San Jose raising campaign money from the Internet billionaires who allow the NSA to spy on all Americans.
Newly exposed proof that all the major telecommunication companies in America continue to hand over all phone data to the National Security Agency means that the White House's illegal mass wiretapping of people suspected of no crime has continued for a dozen years.
Along with monitoring of web traffic, email and searches through the major telecom carriers, all phone calls been wiretapped with full cooperation of the communications companies since at least 2001. That the practice is illegal hasn't stopped the White House or NSA from continuing the wholesale surveillance. Congress reliably moves to make illegal spying legal whenever there's a scandal like the current Verizon outrage.
White House Says Spying On Millions of Verizon Calls a "Critical Tool"
Wednesday, June 6, 2013 9:03 AM?America's spy agencies have had full access to US cellphone call data to and from Verizon customers since April, the Guardian reports. The Obama Administration is defending the National Security Agency phone spying as a "critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States."
The secret order was obtained by the British newspaper and reported Wednesday night.
The Obama administration on Thursday acknowledged that it is collecting a massive amount of telephone records from at least one carrier, reopening the debate over privacy even as it defended the practice as necessary to protect Americans against attack. Read...
The White House on Thursday defended the National Security Agency's need to collect telephone records of U.S. citizens, calling such information "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats." Read...
[T]he extent of the NSA?s surveillance shows that it has focused specifically on Americans, to the degree that its data collection has in at least one major spying incident explicitlyexcluded those outside the United States. Read...
A senior Obama administration official [...] stressed that the information acquired by the purported order "does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call." Read...
Data from all incoming and outgoing calls is provided to the NSA under the top secret order, which the Washington Post describes as a "routine renewal of a similar order first issued in 2006." The White House did not specifically address the Verizon order this morning, but referred to at least one telecommunications company.
Past revelations of major U.S. telecommunications companies spying on Americans suspected of no crimes has shown that the other carriers have consistently opened their lines and data banks to America's spy agencies since 2001.
[Photos by the Associated Press and Getty Images. Illustrations by Front]
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CHILDREN?S CORNER with PANIC CHILUFYA
Social gaming. It?s awfully exciting isn?t it? Hundred million dollar acquisitions, joint ventures, software deals and more new products being released than you could shake a stick at.
LinkedIn is positioned to become the first global economic graph with the ability to mine the transactions of an emerging data economy. That’s the conclusion of a study by faberNovel, a Paris-based consulting group that has published the results of its work with a detailed 127-slide report titled: LinkedIn, The Serious Network. FaberNovel has a history of doing reports about the tech giants. As Ingrid Lunden wrote, last year it examined?why Facebook at that time was the perfect startup. And in years past, the firm has published reports about?how Amazon controls e-commerce,?how Apple dominates, and?what could go wrong with Google. The company chose Linkedin for its expertise in data analytics and algorithms, which has helped LinkedIn become far more than a site to post a resume. Instead, FaberNovel argues, LinkedIn is positioned to become a mega business platform. Since its start 10 years ago, LinkedIn has become the place for people to network. In recent years, though, it has started pooling the data, becoming one of the early adopters of open-source data technologies, such as Hadoop and Lucene/Solr for search. It has one of the most-recognized teams of data scientists who have learned to shape the data to create what CEO Jeff Weiner calls a global economic graph. It’s through the understanding of its users’ interactions that LinekdIn is establishing a platform that could put it in a position to emerge as an enterprise services provider and a player in the CRM market. LinkedIn understands the new concepts of business, particularly the transition from hierarchical to network-based organizations. The trend is to treat business as a graph more than a top-down organization with centralized communications and infrastructure. The company is adapting to this change in how an organization functions by focusing on talent as the center of its network. This provides the basis for developing products and services that span recruitment, as well as the expansion into the CRM and media markets. FaberNovel argues that the data LinkedIn collects and efficiently analyzes will help the company realize what LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner calls the company’s dream to create an economic graph that identifies the connections in its vast talent network. It’s by connecting the data that LinkedIn will continue to better its real-time analysis. Growing Fast LinkedIn is still small compared to its competitors in terms of revenue, but it is the fastest-growing talent network in the world with 225
IT spend globally -- from devices through to data center investments and the services that run on them -- it set to reach $3.7 trillion in 2013, but that represents shrinking growth of only 2% on 2012, as more expensive items like PCs and on-premise software continue to get pushed out by less expensive, newer things like lower-cost tablets and cloud services. 
An ABC News report is dashing the hopes and dreams of Android fans everywhere. According to Joanna Stern, a version of the Motorola X 
2:46 PM?Along with The Guardian, a more popular newspaper 
