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12/27/2011
12/25/2011
12/22/2011
The most expensive apartment
Former Citigroup chairman Sandy Weill listed his 6,744-sq-ft apartment at 15 Central Park West for an astonishing $88 million in November, promising to donate the proceeds of the sale to charity.
Now comes news that Ekaterina Rybolovleva, the 22-year-old daughter of Russian billionaire Dmitriy Rybolovlev, is buying the condominium. Rybolovleva is currently studying at an undisclosed U.S. university and plans to stay in the apartment when visiting New York. According to a source familiar with the sale, she paid the full asking price of $88 million setting a record for highest individual transaction in New York City history.
Here is the official statement from her representatives:
"A company associated with Ekaterina Rybolovleva, daughter of a well-known businessman Dmitriy Rybolovlev, has signed a contract to purchase an apartment at 15 Central Park West, New York. The apartment is a condominium currently owned by the Sanford Weill Family.
Ms. Rybolovleva is currently studying at a US university. She plans to stay in the apartment when visiting New York. Ms. Rybolovleva was born in Russia, is a resident of Monaco and has resided in Monaco and Switzerland for the past 15 years.”
The apartment, in one of the toniest post-war buildings in Manhattan, has 10 rooms including 4 bedrooms, a wraparound terrace of more than 2,000 sq. feet, 4 bedrooms and 2 wood burning fireplaces.
“This sale is an outlier. It works out to be about $13,000 per sq. foot, the highest on record, for anything, that has ever occurred,” says Jonathan Miller, chief executive of real estate appraiser Miller Samuel, “What is ironic is that when Sandy Weill bought it for less than half this amount, he paid the highest price per sq foot to date in that building, around, $6,400 per sq. foot. He is again setting a record.”
The previous New York City record had been set back before the market crash when investor Christopher Flowers paid $53 million for a townhouse at 4 east 75th Street. He resold the property on August 15 f
or just over $36 million.Rybolovleva is the second daughter of a billionaire to make huge real estate news this year. Back in July, heiress Petra Ecclestone, daughter of UK Formula One billionaire Bernie Ecclestone, apparently paid $85 million for Spelling Manor, the 56,500-square foot mansion that was previously owned by Candy Spelling, widow of famed TV producer Aaron Spelling, whose works include the “Beverly Hills 90210,” “Charlie’s Angels,” and “Dynasty” series.
Rybolovleva’s father Dmitriy sold the majority of his stake in Uralkali, the fertilizer business that made him rich, for $6.5 billion in 2010. He is already known in U.S. real estate circles for his May 2008 purchase of Donald Trump’s Palm Beach mansion, Maison de L’Amitie. He paid $95 million in cash for that residence, $25 million less than what Trump had originally asked. It was apparently the largest single residence price concession of all time. He may not own that house much longer though. His wife Elena, who filed for divorce in Palm Beach court in 2009, is seeking transfer of ownership of the former Trump mansion. He himself spends much of his time at his home in Monaco and is likely to buy the struggling French football club, AS Monaco.
12/21/2011
12/19/2011
Experts question need for stronger cellphone ban
When the head of the National Transportation Safety Board called for states to pass tough new laws banning drivers from using cellphones or hand-held devices, she said: "No call, no text, no update, is worth a human life."
While Tuesday's statement by NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman is undeniable, there are those who question the advisability of such a ban. Some state lawmakers and transportation experts say it could be difficult to enforce and that there's no real evidence yet that existing laws on hand-held devices have significantly reduced accident rates.
The curious thing is that even as cellphone use has increased exponentially by drivers in vehicles, we see no surge in crashes.
"To date, no state has taken the steps that the NTSB is suggesting," says Jonathan Adkins, communications director for the Governors Highway Safety Association.
The NTSB's recommendation, which is not binding, called for a ban on all portable electronic devices, including hands-free devices, while driving except in emergencies. The sole exception would be devices "designed to support the driving task," such as GPS devices.
Current state laws o
n cellphone use are a patchwork. Connecticut, New Jersey and Delaware, for example, have some of the strictest laws, banning hand-held devices, cellphones and texting behind the wheel, while states like South Carolina, South Dakota and four others have no ban at all. Local governments may have their own laws.
A telephone survey of more than 6,000 drivers in the U.S. showed that people were twice as likely to take incoming cellphone calls as they were to make calls.
South Carolina Rep. Bakari Sellers, who has tried unsuccessfully for about four years to ban drivers from using hand-held devices in his state, says the main argument against it revolves around individual freedoms.
"We are a very conservative state that borders on libertarianism," says Sellers, a Democrat. "Not a safety argument, but an argument that the government is trying to take away our rights."
While he applauds the NTSB's proposal for its substance, he thinks it will sink his efforts at home because it has the imprimatur of the federal government.
"It will seal any chance of passing this in South Carolina," he says, chuckling.
The same survey found that drivers under the age of 25 were two to three times more likely than older drivers to read or send text messages or emails.
That sort of us-against-them attitude is shared by many people in South Dakota, says Republican state Rep. Betty Olson, who has opposed efforts to implement a ban in her state.
She doubts the NTSB's recommendations will cause any of her fellow lawmakers to seriously reconsider the issue. "Most of us don't pay much attention to what the feds are doing," she says. "We're kind of an independent bunch out here."
Olson, a former emergency medical technician, has seen plenty of automobile accidents, most of them attributable to "distracted driving" — of all kinds. That's already aga
inst the law in South Dakota, she says, so there's no need for a specific ban to target cellphones and hand-held devices.
"I think using a cellphone while driving is stupid," Olson says. "But the last thing the cops need is another law to try to enforce."
Since Delaware's ban went into effect in January, police officers have issued 9,000 citations for cellphone use while driving, says Sgt. Paul Shavack, a spokesman for the Delaware State Police. During the same period, there have been 139 accidents in which cellphones were cited as a distracting factor, one of which was fatal.
Shavack says the law can be tough for officers to enforce "because it's hard to tell if the driver was using a cellphone unless he or she admits it or a witness says it's happening."
He also notes that it's too soon to know whether the ban has had any effect on the number of accidents. "That might take three years of data," he says.
A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration pilot program in Hartford, Conn., and Syracuse, N.Y., suggested that a combination of aggressive public service advertising ("Phone in One Hand, Ticket in the Other") and stepped-up enforcement can reduce the numbers of distracted drivers, if not the number of accidents.
Each city received $200,000 in federal funds and $100,000 in state funds last year to test whether a crackdown would work. It did. Officials in Hartford say cellphone use and texting declined by a third during the enforcement period. In Syracuse, handheld use dropped by more than one-half and texting by nearly three-quarters, officials report.
The NTSB call to action was spurred by a deadly pileup in Missouri in August in which a 19-year-old pickup truck driver was texting when he rear-ended a semi-trailer, which careened into a school bus that subsequently hit another school bus. The pickup driver and a 15-year-old student were killed; 38 others were injured.
"The success of these pilot programs clearly shows that combining strong laws with strong enforcement can bring about a sea change in public attitudes and behavior," says NHTSA Administrator David Strickland.
Russ Rader, a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, agrees but says there's just one problem: "We don't know if [the demonstration project] had any effect on crashes — and that's a key measure."
The institute's own study shows that states with cellphone bans have seen no real decrease in accident rates.
"The curious thing is that even as cellphone use has increased exponentially by drivers in vehicles, we see no surge in crashes," Rader says. "So as this trend has accelerated, with more and more people having phones in their cars and using them, the number of overall crashes has been declining."
Cellphone use behind the wheel is no doubt a dangerous distraction, Rader says. But the overall problem of distracted driving is much bigger — it's about fiddling with the car radio or eating a sandwich as much as it is cellphones, he says.
Adkins of the Governors Highway Safety Association acknowledges that there is no evidence proving that state bans reduce crashes.
"People in the safety community have been able to show that enforcing the ban has reduced the number of people actually using the phone while they drive," he says. "But we haven't been able to show that that actually reduces accident or crash rates."
Adkins says even though his organization hasn't decided whether to support the NTSB's proposal, "we understand it and think it has a lot of credibility."
Photos: Jeff Roberson/AP
12/11/2011
In Argentina, Violence Is Part of the Soccer Culture
Joao Pina for The New York Times Fans of River Plate, which was relegated from Argentina's top division, greeted the team before a September match at Quilmes.
BUENOS AIRES — Three fans of the soccer club San Lorenzo de Almagro slipped past security guards after a closed-door practice last month and berated players on the field for their recent losses.
Jonathan Bottinelli, a star defender, told the men to leave. One of them lunged at Bottinelli and punched him in the face. Another hit him from behind. A few teammates rushed in to stop the fight, Bottinelli and other players said, but the beating continued, leaving Bottinelli, a club fan since childhood, with doubts about ever again pulling on the red-and-blue San Lorenzo jersey.
More than a decade after England finally tamed the roving bands of hooligans that long ravaged soccer stadiums in Britain, fan-related violence continues to stain the sport in Argentina.
The unrest in part reflects an increasingly violent Argentine society, where street crime has been on the rise. But much of the violence can be traced to hostilities between rival factions of barra bravas, the Argentine version of hooligan fan groups that use fists, firearms and knives, and operate like mini-mafias. They engage in legal and illegal businesses, including selling drugs, often with the cover and complicity of the police, politicians and club officials, according to prosecutors and others who have studied them.
Barra bravas are blamed for many of the 257 soccer-related deaths in Argentina since 1924, almost half of which have occurred in the past 20 years, according to Let's Save Football, a nongovernmental organization in Buenos Aires that is working to eradicate violence in the sport.
“We don’t feel safe inside of our stadiums in Argentina,” said Monica Nizzardo, president of Let’s Save Football. “That is why families have stopped going.”
The head of the San Lorenzo barra brava, Cristian Evangelista, led the attack on Bottinelli, players testified in court, though they refused to name the other barras involved. Club officials did not respond to requests for comment. After the episode, the Argentine government canceled San Lorenzo’s next match while officials investigated.
Soccer violence became so rampant in the past decade that officials barred visiting fans from attending all but first-division matches for four years. The prohibition was lifted in August.
Visiting fans are not always the problem. After the storied club River Plate lost a match in June, relegating the team to the second division for the first time in its history, its fans pulled apart their own stadium, throwing bleachers and metal poles onto the field as the police fired tear gas into the stands. Fans fought with one another and attacked reporters and the police, who used rubber bullets and water cannons to try to quell the chaos. An estimated 70 people were injured, including 35 police officers, and about 100 people were detained.
The tension was palpable at a second-division match in September between River Plate and Quilmes. Some 600 police officers set up roadblocks around the stadium to separate Quilmes and visiting River fans. After the match, Quilmes fans had to wait a half-hour for River fans to exit before being allowed to leave the stadium.
Asserting control over unruly fans is more complicated than in England, said experts who have studied soccer violence.
In England, many hooligans were working-class men looking for a weekend fight. In Argentina, the barra bravas have ties to politicians, the police and club management, and some of their leaders have gained the admiration of young fans. Politicians tap them as a “shock force” to muscle unions backing rival politicians. Prosecutors have accused barras of killing union workers.
“On Sundays they go to the stadium and wave the flag of the club to support the team,” said Gustavo Gerlero, a public prosecutor. “During the week they are giving support to politicians and union leaders as laborers and bodyguards by the very people that theoretically should be stopping them.”
The Argentine Football Association, the sport’s national governing body, said it was concerned about the barra bravas’ role in the violence. Nizzardo and others have criticized the powerful president of the association, Julio Grondona, for not showing the will to break the barras. Grondona, 80, has led the association since 1979, when Argentina was in the midst of a bloody dictatorship. He is also a senior vice president of FIFA, soccer’s world governing body.
Grondona, who officials said has been ill lately, declined to be interviewed. In an interview last year that appeared in an Argentine book, “Football and Violence,” Grondona said his association wanted to eradicate the barra bravas to “ensure normality in the stadiums.” And he said the clubs needed to institute “biometric” control of fans entering the stadium to “deepen the right of admission.”
A barra brava typically has a few hundred members. They chant songs and wave flags and organize the huge banners supporting their club. Away from the field they earn money from scalping tickets, parking cars, selling illicit drugs and, some prosecutors have said, taking a cut of the sale of players.
Gerlero suggested that a deadly attack in 2007 on a high-ranking barra brava member, Gonzalo Acro, was sparked by a dispute over a cut of the sale of striker Gonzalo Higuaín by River Plate to Real Madrid for 13 million euros (about $17 million). In September a court in Buenos Aires sentenced Alan and William Schlenker, leaders of one of the River Plate barras, and three associates to life in prison for shooting Acro three times after he left his health club. Grondona, in the interview last year, called the notion that the barra bravas were working with the clubs in the selling of players “absurd.”
The barra bravas of the top clubs, like Boca Juniors La 12, earn more than 300,000 pesos a month (about $70,000), with a group’s leader earning $15,000 or more per month, said Gustavo Grabia, a journalist and author of a best-selling book about the Boca barra brava.
Rafael Di Zeo exemplifies the cult-figure status of some barra bravas leaders and the changing fan culture here.
The former leader of the Boca La 12 barra brava, Di Zeo was released from prison in May 2010 after serving more than three years for aggravated assault for his role in a 1999 fight against fans of the Chacarita Juniors that resulted in 14 injuries. He signs autographs at matches for young fans and has appeared on magazine covers.
Until the 1990s, fans idolized the top players at their clubs. But with the growing lure of bigger contracts abroad, many Argentine stars leave to play in Europe.
“There isn’t time for kids to identify with a player as the idol of their club,” Grabia said. “So they identify with the barras instead.”
On Oct. 30, Di Zeo made his long-awaited return. He stood at the opposite end of the field from Mauro Martín, his successor, and both men rallied fans to shout louder for the players. Di Zeo and some 2,000 of his followers hurled insults at a large group of Martín’s followers, chanting about fighting.
“Oh lele, oh lala, we are going to kill all the traitors,” Di Zeo and his supporters chanted. Across the field, Martín was captured on camera making a cut-off-your-head gesture.
After the match Di Zeo told reporters that he sat on the visitor’s side to avert problems. Carla Cavaliere, a judge in Buenos Aires, did not agree. On Nov. 4 she barred both Di Zeo and Martín from going within 500 meters (about 547 yards) of any stadium where a game was taking place or about to take place until at least the end of this season, a move apparently intended to avert a violent clash for control.
Di Zeo has said that the violence is eternal in Argentine soccer.
“Do you think that with me in prison the violence is going to end?” he told Grabia before entering prison in 2007, as recounted in his book. “Do you believe that if you put us all together in a plaza and kill us the violence is going to end? No, it isn’t going to end ever. Do you know why? Because this is a school. It is heritage, heritage, heritage.”
That sort of violent posturing has driven many families away from the stadiums.
Andrés Nieto, a supporter of San Lorenzo, said he stopped attending matches three years ago, and lately has had to resist pressure from his 8-year-old son, who wants badly to go.
“Every day it is harder to go to the stadiums with your kids to see the games,” said Nieto, 41, a graphic designer. “It seems like the quality of soccer is getting worse every day. The young players, most of them, are looking to play in whatever other country because they can earn more and it’s less violent.”
Nieto said the threats and assaults on players had become all too common.
After being beaten up at the hands of the barras, Bottinelli went to the coast to recover. He has decided to stay with San Lorenzo — for now.
“I am a little nervous, a little tense about what we had to go through,” Bottinelli told Fox Sports after the beating. “Now it’s over. What are you going to do? We have to live with this in soccer.”
from The New York Times
12/04/2011
Tablet computers to all kindergarteners (audio)
Photo: Tom Porter
Teacher Laurie Gerard uses iPads with her kindergarten students in Auburn, Maine
12/02/2011
Corporate fraud - Appropriate behaviour
THE lot of the middle manager is not always a happy one. Dumped on from above and resented from below, they are often first in the firing line when cuts are made. It is probably no surprise, then, that they also tend to be the quickest to steal from their companies when the chance arises.
from The Economist
According to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy and accounting firm, just over half of British firms said that they had uncovered high levels of fraud over the last year. Only Kenyan and South African ones found more (see chart), although it is likely that British companies are just better at spotting it.
Most fraud is carried out by outsiders, such as customers or vendors. But a firm’s employees still represent a big risk. A third of the companies questioned said that the biggest swindles over the last year were perpetrated by their own staff. Middle managers were by far the biggest culprits—and they are becoming more sticky-fingered. In 2007 32% of reported internal frauds at British companies were carried out by middle managers. By 2011 this had risen to 65%.
This is happening even as the overall level of internal fraud is falling. Middle managers are particularly keen on “asset misappropriation” (common theft to you or I), while the types of crimes more associated with the big cheeses, such as accounting fraud, have fallen—probably because firms, and regulators, have become more stringent after the credit crunch. But it might also be that internal fraud is now less likely to be detected. During a downturn, c
ompanies are tempted to do away with frontline defences, such as internal audits. This may have led to the under-reporting of some crimes.
When PwC asked firms to describe their typical fraudster, they identified him as a man in his 30s, who has been with the organisation for between three and five years. It sounds like a wild generalisation. But Tony Parton, an investigation partner at PwC, thinks it is not so far-fetched. In all likelihood, he says, it is describing a particular type of disgruntled manager, who has been passed over for promotion during straitened times. He might be driven to fraud by a sense of bitter entitlement, or it may be that he is feeling the economic pinch of sending his kids to private school or maintaining a second home.
Not every employee caught defrauding his company is sacked. Seventeen percent get to keep their jobs, while a quarter are not reported to the police. Many bosses decide that, even after being caught in the act, some managers are too valuable to lose. Better, they think, to shift them quietly to another department, with little more than a ticking off.
It is nigh on impossible for firms to quantify the cost of crimes such as theft. Many have concluded that the cost of a proper audit would outstrip the actual losses. The trouble with that approach, says Mr Parton, is that one also needs to consider the "collateral damage". Olympus, a Japanese maker of cameras and medical-imaging devices, may be an extreme example, but it lost 80% of its value after it sacked its new CEO, Michael Woodford, who had uncovered $1.3 billion in dodgy payments. And, of course, accounting frauds have brought down entire companies.
What is more, most firms are home to a vibrant grapevine. Knowing that your peers are stealing with impunity might lead you to think that you are the sucker for staying honest. Particularly if you promise yourself you will go straight once you get the promotion you deserve.
If you're interested in reading PwC’s latest fraud survey please click HERE
from The Economist
11/28/2011
Some Christmas tree! (video)
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Let's describe the tree
1 - Location
2 - Height
3 - Weight
4 - Gold value
5 - Total cost
1 - Location
2 - Height
3 - Weight
4 - Gold value
5 - Total cost
A good Beaujolais? (video)
You can also watch this video by clicking HERE or on the Play Button
After watching the video at least twice, how many of the following questions can you answer?
- How old is it?
- When does it take place?
- Where does it take place??
- What time does it take place??
- What does it take place for?
- What is this year's result?
- Why is this year's result different?
Vending machine offers DIY banners at Dutch airport
Amsterdam's Schiphol airport has the world's first vending machine capable of printing out personalized giant canvas banners in just a few minutes.
You can pick your message, whether that is "Missed you Mummy," "I love you," "Will you marry me?" or anything else that makes you stand out from the crowd, choose the font and background design, pay between four and 15 euros ($19.98) depending on the length of the banner, and hit the button.
"We came up with the idea because when we were at the airport we saw all these people welcoming their friends and family with their own banners made of bed sheets and we thought what a hassle using sheets, wouldn't it just be easier to make the banner at the airport?" BannerXpress's co-founder Thibaud Bruna told Reuters Thursday.
Bruna's first machine, which was three years in the making, made its debut at Schiphol airport on Thursday. If the waterproof banners prove popular, he hopes to install the vending machines in other locations.
"We hope have them in other airports, but also in stadiums for sporting and music events," Bruna said.
Photos: Paul Vreeder - United Photos
edited from Reuters
11/24/2011
11/20/2011
"Exam Hell" in Korea
By Christine Kim and Ju-min Park(Reuters) - On Thursday 690,000 students from South Korea will take the annual exams that could lead them to one of the country's top universities and eventually a good job for life.
Temples and churches across Korea will be jammed with mothers fervently praying this week, not for salvation, but for their children’s success in the National College Entrance Exam..
The experience of preparing for and taking the exam, commonly call “exam hell” in Korea, is a central part of Korea’s educational system. For three years of their lives, the central focus of all high students in Korea is that one day in November. What happens that day determines which college they will enter, which in turn determines their future beyond what they do once they get into college.
One of the little jokes of life in Korea is that college is widely considered a four-year break between Korea’s grueling secondary school system and grinding work culture.
" I have been so stressed! I haven't allowed guests into my home recently because of superstitions against strangers," said Kwon Jeong-hee, whose son is taking the so-called CSAT tests for the second time.
The exams are a major event here, and society tries to make things easier for stressed students.
During oral tests, aircraft will not take off and land, and drivers will not sound their horns.
Police vehicles will escort late-running students to the exam rooms. Even the stock exchange will open an hour late to reduce traffic jams.
A nation
al scandal erupted in 2004 when a group of students were caught cheating with cell phones and working as a network. So serious is the exam that the offending students were handed down suspended sentences in court a few months later.Test supervisors get special training and during the exam, they are not allowed to cough, chew gum or put on strong perfume that might distract students.
With high levels of youth unemployment and a growing informal employment sector that doesn't bring the same benefits as working for huge South Korean conglomerates that offer a steady job and pension, anxious prayers from parents don't always stop when the exams are finished.
"My son took the CSAT more than a decade ago, I'm here to get him a job" said a mother at Jogyesa Buddhist temple in downtown Seoul, which has held special meetings for anxious parents who have been praying for weeks, if not months.
Adapted from Reuters
The hidden beauty of pollination (video)
Pollination is vital to life on Earth, but largely unseen by the human eye. Filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg shows us the intricate world of pollen and pollinators with gorgeous high-speed images from his film "Wings of Life," inspired by the vanishing of one of nature's primary pollinators, the honeybee.
You can also watch this video by clicking HERE or on the Play Button
You can also watch this video by clicking HERE or on the Play Button
11/18/2011
Benetton withdraws Pope-Imam kiss ad
Photo: AFP A Benetton clothing store window in Paris is covered by posters showing Pope Benedict XVI kissing Egypt's Ahmed el Tayyeb and US president Barack Obama kissing his China's Hu Jintao, November 17, 2011.
Italian clothing manufacturer Benetton has withdrawn a controversial ad showing Pope Benedict kissing a leading Islamic leader.
The Vatican has said it will take legal action in connection with the ad, unveiled Wednesday and yanked shortly thereafter.
The photo was one of a series of artificially created pictures in a campaign named "Unhate." Other photos depict the North and South Korean leaders kissing, and lip locks between the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as well as U.S. President Barack Obama and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
The Vatican called the picture of the pope kissing Sheik Ahmed Mohamed el-Tayeb a "totally unacceptable" show of "grave disrespect."
The Obama administration also spoke out against the ads. A presidential spokesman said Thursday that the White House disapproves of using the president's name and likeness for commercial purposes.
Benetton said the campaign was meant "solely to combat the culture of hatred in all its forms."
11/14/2011
11/06/2011
Reinventing Post Offices in a Digital World
Benjamin Kilb for The New York Times - The German postal service has few stand-alone branches now, having sold almost all of its 29,000 buildings. Most branches are in other businesses, like this convenience store in Barmen. DÜSSELDORF, Germany — The Deutsche Post office across from the train station here offers DVDs, umbrellas, phone cards and toys — with the processing of mail appearing nearly an afterthought. And the facility housing it is not a post office at all. Deutsche Post occupies a corner space in a bank.
With mail volumes decreasing 1 to 2 percent annually in many countries, European postal services from Germany to Sweden to Switzerland have reinvented themselves over the past decade as multifaceted delivery and information companies tailored to the virtual age. Though Deutsche Post by law still delivers to every address six days a week, it has jettisoned tens of thousands of buildings, 100,000 positions and its traditional focus on paper mail.
“We realized that being a national postal provider was an endangered business, that we had to redefine the role of postal providers in a digital world,” said Clemens Beckmann, executive vice president of innovation of the German post office’s mail division.
With the United States Postal Service facing insolvency, and one of the postal workers’ unions hiring consultants on business restructuring, it is looking toward Europe for new operating models, even though American legislation currently precludes adapting some of those innovations.
After selling off all but 24 of 29,000 post office buildings in the past 15 years, the German postal service is now housed mostly within other business “partners,” including banks, convenience stores and even private homes. In rural areas, a shopkeeper or even a centrally located homeowner is given a sign and deputized as a part-time postmaster.
At the same time, many European postal services, including the one here, have developed a host of electronic services that are increasingly making traditional post offices and mailboxes obsolete. Bills and catalogs can go first to digital mailboxes run by the post office on customers’ computers, and the customers can tell the post office what they want it to print and deliver. And while Americans are asked to send in suggestions for what celebrity should grace the next stamp, Germans can buy virtual postage from their cellphones.
Deutsche Post has expanded package delivery networks to profit from the uptick in online shopping and has also progressively expanded its offerings into completely new areas, like running online marketplaces similar to eBay for freelance writers.
Instead of watching its business be eroded by more aggressive marketplace competitors, as has happened in the United States, Deutsche Post completed its purchase of the logistics company DHL in 2002, meaning many Americans have been customers of the German post office.
European postal services vary widely in their degree of adaptation to the digital age. “But the U.S.P.S. is probably the best example of a pure monopoly that has seen the least change,” said John Payne, the chief executive of Zumbox, a Los Angeles-based start-up that offers virtual mailboxes for personal computers in the United States on a private basis and that has sold the program to foreign postal services.
Mr. Payne, who describes himself as a postal geek, has empathy for the failing postal service for all the regulation it must abide, including not being able to close an outpost “solely for operating at a deficit.”
He said: “It’s easy to say that the U.S.P.S. is a bunch of morons, but they live under legislative restrictions on what businesses they can enter and are expressly prevented from entering business unless it’s related to physical mail.”
To close a projected $9 billion budget gap, the United States Postal Service has proposed eliminating 3,700 of its 36,000 post offices and is selling off historic buildings that have anchored towns across America. The 17,000-square-foot neoclassical landmark post office in downtown Greenwich, Conn., was recently sold to a developer who plans to turn it into upscale retail space, perhaps a Bergdorf Goodman. Meanwhile, the post office will move to a former pet supply store.
European postal services started to think about new business models in the 1990s, when the European Commission opened up postal monopolies to competition and liberalized regulation. But the subsequent changes have come in response to declining mail volumes and, to a lesser extent, pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
While Deutsche Post was an owner of 29,000 post offices in 1990, it is now largely a tenant, with tens of thousands of counters lodged in other businesses. Outsourcing has allowed it to trim staff.
After Deutsche Post closed the post office in the village of Dorn-Assenheim seven years ago, it hired Renate Weitz, a retiree, to dispense postal services from her house each morning — though it now has plans to close that “branch” as well. In Schmitten (population 10,000), Jens Kinkel took over postal tasks at his stationery store. “I run the post office to get more customers,” Mr. Kinkel said. “Most buy stamps or envelopes and grab a paper as well.”
Dr. Julia Neu, a professor of sociology at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, said the loss of post offices had been particularly painful for older people in the former East Germany, where they doubled as meeting places. “A lack of post offices is mostly dealt with by people helping each other by sharing cars or dropping off mail for the ones who aren’t mobile,” she said.
But over all, advocates say, the expansion into virtual services has improved customer satisfaction, saved money and helped reduce carbon emissions.
Virtual mailboxes can receive, store and organize years of bills, sparing digital customers the need to check one by one the Web sites of credit card companies and cellphone providers, for example. While this free service was slow to catch on in Sweden, membership has spiked in the past year, said Anders Asberg, head of product and market development for the Swedish post office. For actual packages, Deutsche Post customers can choose to pick up items at automated banks of lockers in places like train stations; the locker number and opening code are sent to their cellphones. Posten, the Swedish post office, allows vacationers to transmit cellphone photographs that Posten prints as postcards and delivers as physical mail.
Surprisingly, perhaps, new postal models have not meant the end of direct marketing (a k a junk mail), a lucrative business — though executives say such promotional material will be increasingly likely to arrive via computers and cellphones. PostNord — an umbrella company that includes both the Danish and Swedish postal services — now even helps smaller companies develop direct marketing campaigns through its “Advertising Planner,” which boasts: “It’s just as natural for PostNord to ensure that your offer reaches the right customer at the right time via satellite and cyberspace as via a traditional postman.”
adapted from The New York Times
11/05/2011
11/04/2011
10/30/2011
Bicycles: The plague of the Pavement
Fully 55 percent of residents travel to work or school on bikes. Some roads, including bridges, are just for them. (Photograph by Johan Spanner for The International Herald Tribune) By JOHN TAGLIABUE
COPENHAGEN -- Mikael le Dous, 56, a power plant engineer, rides a bike, though he also has a car. He just wishes bikers behaved.
''We call cyclists the plague of the pavement,'' he said.
As the head of the Danish Pedestrian Association, which he founded six years ago, he dedicates his spare time to doing something about them.
Armed with a digital camera and a video recording device mounted on the dashboard of his car, he photographs bikers who ignore traffic lights, or go up one-way streets the wrong way. He gathers material to present to the authorities to argue for stricter surveillance of cyclists.
Sometimes, he says, the results of biker misbehavior can be fatal.
''It happens occasionally that you'll have an older woman, not hit but surprised and frightened by a bike so that she falls and maybe even dies,'' he said. ''Then they say, 'Is the cyclist to blame?' ''
In a nation dedicated to bicycling, however, Mr. le Dous has been fighting an uphill battle. The association now has only about 160 members, with a meager annual budget of a little over $2,000. But the focus of their annoyance is clear.
''I cycle a lot. We don't mind cyclists,'' Mr. le Dous said over coffee on a recent afternoon. ''We mind people who don't respect the law.''
Andreas Rohl thinks he has seen the future and is convinced that it moves on two wheels. Over at the city's immense neo-medieval town hall, he heads a successful program to make bicycles the dominant means of transportation. Every day, fully 55 percent of Copenhageners travel to work or school on a bike, though last year, he admits, the number sagged a bit because of a severe winter. Why so many bikes? Simple, he says: ''Because it's an easy way to get around.''
Broad bike lanes abound in the Danish capital, population 1.2 million, and bikers fill them. Some thoroughfares, including bridges over the harbor, are exclusively for bikes. On some days, as many as 36,000 bikers swarm through the Norrebrogade, one of the streets leading to the city center that now consists of wide bike paths in both directions and of narrow lanes for cars and buses.
Mr. le Dous looks enviously at the Danish Cyclist Federation. Founded in 1905 and boasting 17,000 members around the country, the federation wields the enormous clout in Denmark on matters of traffic that automobile associations have elsewhere.
With 25 employees in its main office, the federation has grown in recent years to make the bike an exportable item, not just physical bicycles and biking equipment but also consulting and advice for cities elsewhere seeking to become more biker friendly
Bike safety has improved recently thanks to a range of measures, including wider bike paths and programs to alert bikers to the need for discipline. ''Last year, we had the lowest number of traffic accidents ever, including the lowest number of fatalities involving bicycles ever,'' the Federation spokesman said. In 2010, the number of seriously injured cyclists dropped to 92, including 3 fatalities, compared with 252 seriously injured only five years earlier.
Like many in Copenhagen, Natalia Privalova, 37, an office manager, has two bikes, including a cargo bike with a wooden platform in front to transport her children. Cyclists respect pedestrians, she said and then added, ''when they follow the rules.''
''Of course,'' she said, ''rush hour is another story.''
In a market stall where he sells beer and wine downtown, Simon Barfoed, 32, was tougher on cyclists. "Pedestrian anger is 'justified,'' he said. ''I think many bikers drive like they own the place.'' He owns no car and uses a bike to ride work, yet he said the bike brought disadvantages for businesses like his. ''If you want to buy a case of beer, it's hard to carry on a bike,'' he said.
Ullaliv Friis, 66, a retired city official who is the pedestrian association's managing director, says the sidewalks have become risky for retirees and older people because of cyclists. ''The cyclist has taken over everything,'' she said.
Over at City Hall, Mr. Rohl hears the pedestrians' complaints, and says the city has taken measures to improve biker behavior. It occasionally sends out field workers, for example, stopping cyclists they see displaying exemplary behavior, like making proper hand signals or respecting pedestrians, and rewarding them with small boxes of chocolate.
Ms. Ayfer Baykal, 35, the deputy mayor for technology and the environment, was born in Copenhagen of Turkish immigrant parents, and is proud of what the city has accomplished. When relatives visit from Turkey, where the automobile remains a symbol of success, they are stunned at her use of a bike. ''They say, 'Can't you afford a car?' '' she said with a laugh.
"Biker abuse of pedestrians happens, but then pedestrians walk in bike lanes, too. They have to respect each other. It's not that bad.''
Mr.le Dous, while not discouraged, is realistic about his chances of bending the discussion toward pedestrian rights. Their plight, he said, ''is not looked upon as something serious, it's simply not their field of interest.''
Then, referring to cyclists, he added ''The new kid has all the attention.''
adapted from The International Herald Tribune - NYT
10/28/2011
Gadhafi Remains Popular in Much of Africa's Sahel (video)
You can also watch this video by clicking HERE or on the Play Button
Please read the following linkers carefully and then use them to paraphrase the sentences below. You can't use the words in capital letters
- anyway
- although
- because of
- due to
- due to the fact that
- however
- nevertheless
- since
- therefore
- whereas
1. Gadhafi admirers recall Gadhafi's support for South Africa's African National Congress in the 1970s.
BUT Gadhafi's detractors recall his support for brutish rebellions in Sierra Leone and Liberia in the 1990s.
2. "Gadhafi's death is a huge loss for Africa and there is no doubt the continent will miss how much he did. He helped all of Africa, not only Libya. BECAUSE Africa did not support Gadhafi when he needed it, Africa will ultimately come to regret losing him".
Businessman Marius Navarro, in the Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou.
3. "I wonder about the future of the alliance without him BECAUSE Gadhafi was one of the biggest financial contributors to the African Union. Gadhafi helped develop many African countries and Africans should mourn his death. In Burkina Faso, for example, he helped build a hotel and medical clinics.
SO his death is a loss for the country and for all of Africa"
Burkinabe student Assita Compaore
4. "The ultimate cost of Gadhafi patronage is too high for Africa. Gadhafi sold weapons to Africa that Africans used to kill each other. I'm happy that he is dead BECAUSE he was a terrorist. He gave us food BUT later he gave us weapons and those weapons were used to kill"
Burkinabe businessman Adama Badame
5. "The nature of Gadhafi's death makes him a martyr, BUT a trial would have exposed his brutality".
Nigerian human rights activist Shehu Sani, author of the book Civilian Dictators of Africa.
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