After Hurricane Sandy (video)

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World Cup and US fans (video)

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Renault-Nissan & Daimler (video)

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TED Talk The world's largest family reunion

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A Spanish princess is in trouble (audio)

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From baristas to BA-ristas

 On June 16th Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO, told a meeting in New York of hundreds of top-performing employees—and their families—that the firm will pay for their university education. From later this year, it will cover all the tuition fees in the final two years of college for staff who work at least 20 hours a week, and may also contribute to the cost of their first two years. The only conditions are that they must get their degree online from Arizona State University, and achieve a certain number of course credits.

This is highly caffeinated PR, at a time when cheaper rivals in the fast-food industry are under attack for low wages from disgruntled workers and unions. Starbucks already offers good health-care benefits and employee share ownership. However, Mr Schultz says that, “When we talked to our people, help with college was the thing they wanted most.” Of the firm’s 135,000 retail employees in America, 28% are graduates, 32% are undergraduates and 42% (including some graduates) are not currently studying but would like to be. Mr Schwartz says he plans to spend “tens of millions” on the scheme; 15,000 staff may benefit in the first year.

Starbucks is hardly the first firm to pay college fees for some staff, though other employers typically do so only to give them specific skills needed by the firm, and require them to remain on the payroll for some period after completing the course. Starbucks employees will have no such obligation, though Mr Schultz says he hopes they will see enough career potential with the company to want to do so.

He thinks shareholders will benefit because employees will be more motivated and loyal. Although the attrition rate at Starbucks is well below the fast-food industry’s average of around 110% a year, it is still said to turn over two-thirds of its workforce annually. Reducing that, and thus the cost of recruiting, training and integrating new workers, could save a fortune. Mr Schultz says he hopes eventually to offer similar help with higher-education costs to employees outside America.

Since Mr Schultz returned to run Starbucks in 2008 when it was in deep trouble, almost everything he has tried has paid off, from selling healthier food to developing instant versions of its coffee..

 Investors reacted well to Mr Schultz’s College Achievement Plan. Starbucks shares rose slightly on the news, to just over $75, up from $18 when he began his rescue mission. Perhaps other bosses should drink what he’s drinking.

edited from The Economist

Starbucks offers free college tuition (video)

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The Luggage Tag With GPS

A  magician and  juggler for a cruise line, David Deeble opened his suitcase and realized that his clothes, the stuffed rabbit and the juggling pins were missing.. He discovered six hours before the ship’s departure from Singapore that he had the wrong black wheeled bag. Who had his bag?

As luggage is increasingly indistinguishable, travelers try many ways to set their bags apart, like tying bright ribbons on the handle or slapping on fluorescent stickers on the side. Now, some companies and airlines are developing a digital alternative to the paper tag, not only to find lost bags, but also to make check-in quicker.

Air France-KLM is working with FastTrack Company, a technology firm based in London and Amsterdam, on a tracking system that works through a smartphone app.

“Our aim is to take the stress out of travel and put you in control of your bag,” said David van Hoytema, a co-founder of FastTrack. "The system consists of two devices. A digital luggage tag will replace a paper version. A tracking device inside a bag will tell the owner its location through a smartphone app, using Bluetooth when a traveler’s phone is near the bag, and GPS and G.S.M. cellular technology when Bluetooth is out of range. Travelers flying any airline will be able to use the tracking device."

Air France will have it available to travelers by the end of this year, said Carole Peytavin, the airline’s customer experience director.

Airbus is working on a suitcase with an embedded digital luggage tag that uses a cellular connection plus GPS for tracking. The device, called Bag2Go, is in a trial phase and will be available in the near future.

The airline industry hopes it will help ease what is one of the biggest headaches of air travel — the lost bag. Some 26 million bags are lost every year. While most are misdirected, airlines and customers say that a small portion is taken by mistake. Airlines are looking for a way to reduce the incidence of such mix-ups.

“Because many bags look alike, we encourage customers to check their claim check number when they pick up their bag,” a United Airlines spokesman, Charles Hobart, said via email.

Ric Fleisher, an entrepreneur, he flew to London to speak at a conference. Mr. Fleisher had a luggage tag on his tan bag, but that wasn’t enough to keep another traveler from walking off with it.

“I just came with the clothes on my back so I had to go to Marks and Spencer; I got a cheap shirt and a change of underwear,” he said. “I was a little perturbed.”

Now Mr. Fleisher takes no chances. Shortly after the incident, he tied two colored ribbons — one red, one with yellow stripes — to his bag handle, and when he eventually went shopping for a new bag, he chose one in bright blue. The eye-catching color also helps speed up his stop at the baggage carousel. “If I can see my bag when it comes out I can grab it quickly, and I don’t want it to be mistaken by anybody else,” he said.

A couple of years ago, Doug Howard, the chief executive of an information technology security company, who travels a couple of times each week for work, checked into his hotel around 10 p.m. with what he described as a “standard black bag that 90 percent of America travels with.” When he opened the bag, it was full of women’s clothes. With a 7 a.m. breakfast presentation looming, Mr. Howard called the airline and some hours later someone from the airline came to his hotel and exchanged Mr. Howard’s suitcase for the bag he had inadvertently taken. Hreceived fresh clothes in time for his breakfast meeting, but the incident left such an impression that he decided to make one of his company’s promotional giveaway items a brightly colored wrapper for bag handles.

“When you feel the pain, you feel the necessity,” he said. “I figured I wasn’t the only one in the world who had that problem.”

 

 
  adapted from The New York Times

A Brazilian soccer fan (video)

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Argentina: Won't Submit To 'Extortion' On Debt

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — President Cristina Fernandez said Argentina can't comply with U.S. court orders to pay $1.5 billion to winners of a decade-long legal battle over defaulted debt, the position her country was left in Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her government's final appeal.
Delivering a nationally broadcast address Monday night, Fernandez expressed willingness to negotiate with the winners, but said there is simply no way that Argentina can pay in cash, in full, starting just two weeks from now, which is what the U.S. courts have ordered.
"What I cannot do as president is submit the country to such extortion," Fernandez said.
Under the U.S. court orders, Argentina must hand over $907 million to the plaintiffs before June 30, or lose the ability to use the U.S. financial system to pay an equal amount to holders of other Argentine bonds. Fernandez said the total owed, including interest, would be $1.5 billion.
Paying that could mean defaulting on the vast majority of the country's performing debts, which are held by bondholders who agreed previously to provide debt relief that enabled Argentina to rebound from its economic crisis of 2001, she said.
Fernandez said she has experts working on ways to avoid such a default and keep Argentina's promises to pay those bondholders. But, she added, her government will not make the court-ordered payments to NML Capital Ltd. and other investors she calls "vulture funds."
"It's our obligation to take responsibility for paying our creditors, but not to become the victims of extortion by speculators," Fernandez said.
The president said her government has repeatedly shown its willingness and ability to negotiate debt accords, and called on her countrymen to "remain tranquil" despite the Supreme Court loss. "It was known that this would happen," she said.
The markets had expected Fernandez to take a hard stance, which could be tough on the economy. Argentine stocks plunged as economists, analysts and opposition politicians practically begged her to comply.
The justices not only rejected Argentina's appeal without comment — they also ruled 7-1 that bondholders could force Argentina to reveal where it owns property around the world. That could make it easier to collect on other debts that have gone unpaid since Argentina's economy collapsed.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that U.S. federal law offers no shield to Argentina's assets. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg worried that this could expose even its embassies and military ships to seizure if the government doesn't pay.
"This is the end of the line for Argentina in the judicial appeal process. It has nowhere else to turn," said Richard Samp, a lawyer for the Washington Legal Foundation who lobbies for plaintiffs that included NML Capital Ltd., the hedge fund owned by New York billionaire Paul Singer.
Argentina could win a delay of a few weeks by asking for a rehearing, but they are almost never granted.
Bowing to the U.S. courts would force Fernandez to betray a pillar of the government that she and her late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, have led since he won the presidency in 2003: That Argentina must maintain its sovereignty and economic independence at any cost.
Paying off the lawsuit winners in the way the courts have ordered also would encourage a long line of other creditors to seek similar treatment. Fernandez said Monday night those creditors together hold $15 billion in defaulted debt, or more than half the Central Bank's remaining foreign reserves, and that paying it all immediately in cash "is not only absurd but impossible."
In addition, Fernandez said, there's near certainty that if Argentina paid, holders of the other 92 percent of Argentina's defaulted debt "will find a judge who will tell them that they, too, have the same rights," leading to "the more than certain possibility that the economy will crash." She said those investors hold $24 billion worth of debt.
Refusing to comply could win applause from her core supporters, because paying the plaintiffs 100 percent plus interest in cash would mean sacrificing the subsidies and populist programs that enabled her to win re-election by a landslide.
But while she and NML Capital's owner, New York billionaire Paul Singer, jockey for any remaining advantage ahead of the inevitable negotiations, Argentina's immediate economic outlook seems grim.
Argentina's Merval stock index dropped 11 percent after the court decision, its largest one-day loss in more than six months. Share prices for the state-run YPF energy company fell nearly 13 percent, while the Edenor electricity utility plummeted 20 percent. The cost of insuring Argentine bonds against default soared, and the value of Argentina's currency plunged to 12 pesos to the dollar on the black market, implying a 33 percent loss to anyone needing to buy foreign currency legally.
Refusing to comply was "the best option" among a series of grim alternatives that Cleary, Gottlieb, U.S. law firm representing Argentina in Washington, presented to Fernandez ahead of the Supreme Court decision.
Argentine analysts warned about the consequences of not complying with the U.S. courts.
Fernandez will pay a steep political price by paying off the winners, but doing so will lower Argentina's country risk, restore foreign reserves and prevent the recession from worsening, said Miguel Kiguel, a former deputy finance minister and World Bank economist in the 1990s who now runs the Econviews consulting firm.
Defiance "would be very damaging to the Argentine economy in the near future," he said.


From USA Today

I'm not going to the World Cup (video)

 


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Camel owners and MERS (video)

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2014 Russian revolution

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Flight 370 families start whistle-blower fund

BEIJING — Relatives of passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 are launching a crowd-funding campaign to raise a $3 million reward for a whistle-blower to expose key information about the vanished jetliner.

Almost three months after the plane disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, some relatives are frustrated by the failure of the official search to find concrete evidence about what happened. They are convinced that authorities are concealing the truth.

"We are taking matters into our own hands," said Sarah Bajc, a U.S. citizen whose partner, Philip Wood, 50, an IBM executive from Texas, was on the flight when it disappeared March 8. "There is no credible evidence the plane is in the southern Indian Ocean, where planes, boats and a mini-sub have searched in vain for weeks".

"I'm convinced that somebody is concealing something," said Bajc, 48, a business studies teacher in Beijing and former executive with Microsoft.

The campaign called "Reward MH370: The Search for the Truth" will launch on Monday on the crowd-funding website Indiegogo. The minimum donation will be $5.

The campaign is an initiative of family members from the USA, Australia, New Zealand, France and India and does not involve relatives of passengers from China or Malaysia, whose citizens formed the majority of those on the flight.

"2 million dollars in investigation services won't go very far," Bajc acknowledged. "But we're not going to approach it with boats in the ocean. We're going to approach it with human intelligence."

The relatives hope they turn up a whistle-blower who says, 'I know where to find this'  or a flight controller who can access new data, but they expect they will also encounter some unethical people.

Bajc said "I don't care. I just want to find the plane. If there is any evidence that the plane was wrecked in the water, even a seat cushion, I will take a totally different approach. But right now there is nothing."

Australian transportation authorities will hire a specialist company to begin a renewed underwater search in a revised search zone in August. A Chinese ship is conducting underwater mapping of the ocean floor to assist the later search. The U.S. Navy's mini-sub Bluefin-21 is no longer being used.

edited from USA Today

Corruption in 2010 World Cup? (audio)

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The Curse of Maracanã

In anticipation of the World Cup, The New York Times sent the magazine’s contributing illustrator, Christoph Niemann, to Brazil in search of the soul of soccer.

What he found instead is a curse that still hangs over the country, decades after the home team lost in the final game of the 1950 World Cup in Rio de Janeiro. In this animated storybook, Niemann does his part to unmake that goal that has haunted Brazil for 64 years.

 Click on the picture below if you want to read what Niemann found out

Left or right?