#Drennn.

Releasing May 7 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S The follow-up to Capcom's largely successful 2017 first-person survival horror experiment Resident Evil 7, Resident Evil Village is a narrative sequel that picks up with protagonist Ethan Winters several years later. Set in a haunting gothic European town, Ethan must carve his way through werewolves, vampires, mermen, puppets and more on a terrifying journey to rescue his daughter from the horrors that reside in the titular village. The team behind Village cited the critically-acclaimed and fan-favorite Resident Evil 4 as one of its primary inspirations, focusing on nailing that perfect balance between combat, exploration and puzzle-solving while making the entire experience feel more like a first-person horror movie than ever before. Combine that with the highly detailed visuals produced by the RE Engine, and Resident Evil Village could just be one of the biggest (if not scariest) releases of the year. RELATED: Why Resident Evil 5 Is A Masterful Successor To Resident Evil 4 Hood: Outlaws And Legends Releasing May 10 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S Developed by Sumo Digital, the studio behind PlayStation 5 launch title Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Hood: Outlaws And Legends is a unique third-person multiplayer-only experience that pits teams of outlaws against each other in a race to steal treasure from the depths of a highly-guarded keep. Forming two teams of four, players must work together to pull off a three-stage heist before their rivals beat them to the riches and make off with a victory. With a heavy emphasis on stealth and teamwork, Hood's gameplay largely relies on players mastering the abilities of the four character classes and using them to work together to progress. Only certain characters can perform specific actions, like unlocking gates or becoming completely invisible, so teams will have to act like one if they want to pull off the heist faster than their opponents. Overall, Hood looks to be a refreshing and intriguing multiplayer experience for anyone looking for something different from the ever-po[CENSORED]r battle royales. Mass Effect Legendary Edition Releasing May 14 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One & Xbox Series X/S Rumored for years before finally being announced on November 7, 2020, Mass Effect Legendary Edition is the long-awaited remaster of one of gaming's most beloved trilogies. Developed by BioWare alongside Abstraction Games and Blind Squirrel Games, this three-game compilation comes complete with nearly all single-player DLC released for each title, as well as a host of graphical, technical and gameplay improvements to create the ultimate Mass Effect experience. Whether you're reliving Commander Shepard's incredible space epic once more or experiencing it for the first time, you'll find that the games have been updated with new textures, shaders, models and visual effects, as well as increased resolutions and frame rates compared to when they first released roughly a decade ago. The original Mass Effect has received a more extensive rework than its sequels, a welcome effort for fans who have often complained that the first title was mechanically inferior to the crisp controls and speedier load times of the later games. The Mass Effect trilogy is regarded as one of the best sci-fi video game series ever, making this legendary remaster a must-play for fans of RPGs. Miitopia Releasing May 21 for Nintendo Switch Nintendo surprised everyone during the February 2021 Nintendo Direct by announcing a port and remaster of its 3DS life simulation RPG Miitopia, upgrading the quirky Mii-focused title with enhanced visuals, additional gameplay features and new ways to customize your favorite Miis. When Miitopia originally launched for the 3DS in 2017, it was met with mixed reviews, yet found its niche as an accessible RPG that gave Nintendo's often ignored (but incredibly endearing) avatars new life long after the Wii-era. By casting Miis as the heroes of a fantasy game, Miitopia allows players to watch them interact and grow as they embark on a fairly traditional RPG adventure to stop the Dark Lord from stealing faces and creating monsters. The 3DS version was a unique, sometimes hilarious concept that didn't quite stick the landing, but perhaps the Switch version can iron out its issues and give the title a second chance with a new audience. Rust Releasing May 21 for PlayStation 4 & Xbox One After eight years of being a PC exclusive, the multiplayer survival game Rust is finally making its way to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, as well as next-gen consoles via backwards compatibility. First appearing as a clone of DayZ (which itself was just a mod of ARMA 2), Rust is a multiplayer-only survival sim that pits players against the environment and each other as they're thrust into the open wilderness with nothing but a rock and a torch to fend for themselves with. This port been designed as a separate and optimized experience, with developer Facepunch Studios promising faster load times and reworked menus to work better when using a controller. In Rust, players must scavenge for materials and supplies, craft tools and weapons, and avoid or defeat hostile animals and humans all while trying to survive its notoriously harsh and lawless open-world. While its initial difficulty is certainly not for the faint of heart, the game has still gained a reputation as an incredibly satisfying survival simulator with a deep, rewarding crafting system and unpredictable open-world social experiment. Biomutant Releasing May 25 for PC, PlayStation 4 & Xbox One In development for nearly six years, Biomutant is the debut title from Swedish developer Experiment 101. Founded by former members of Avalanche Studios (the team behind the Just Cause series), Experiment 101 was founded on the idea of returning to the roots of game development and creating a game that's simply fun to play. This game has popped up in sizzle reels and at press conferences sporadically throughout the last four or so years since it was formally announced. Billed as a "post-apocalyptic kung-fu fable," Biomutant is a third-person action-RPG set in a sprawling open-world where players take control of a customizable creature that they can design themselves right down to the fur and fangs. Once their mutant mammalian protagonist has been thrown together, they'll set out on a fully narrated, mission-based adventure to save the Tree of Life from a poisonous oil that's polluted the world. There's a variety of customizable melee and long-ranged weapons, and gameplay focuses on a fast and fluid martial arts combat system that sets it apart from other open-world adventures. With branching storylines, tons of collectibles and a huge environment to explore, Biomutant has the potential to be one of the biggest surprises of May. Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster Releasing May 25 for PC, PlayStation 4 & Nintendo Switch Originally released for the PlayStation 2 back in 2003, Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne is a post-apocalyptic RPG and part of the parent franchise to developer Atlus' incredibly po[CENSORED]r Persona series. It stars a high school student in modern-day Tokyo who is transformed into a demi-fiend after the world is thrust into chaos by an evil cult hell-bent on bringing about the rebirth of civilization. Utilizing a turn-based battle system and recruitable demons, the protagonist must traverse dungeons and gather a stable of demons to fight back against the forces of Lucifer. This remastered edition of the game was first announced during a Nintendo Direct Mini last year and promises to revamp the infamously difficult RPG with improved character models and backgrounds, more accessible difficulty settings, save states and fully-voiced dual-audio cutscenes based on the Maniax Chronicle Edition of the game. This fresh coat of paint, along with several new additions and features included through DLC, make Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster worth checking out for fans of darker JRPGs, as well as those looking to ease the wait for the long-awaited next entry in the series, Shin Megami Tensei V. World's End Club Releasing May 28 for Nintendo Switch A collaboration between the creators of the Zero Escape and Danganronpa series, World's End Club is a puzzle action-adventure game that sees a group of elementary schoolers called the "Go-Getters Club" lost in a theme park under the sea and forced to play a dangerous game by a mysterious clown to escape the park with their lives. A side-scrolling, fully-voiced adventure with beautiful character designs by Take, known for her work on the Katanagatari light novel series as well as Pokemon Sun and Moon, World's End Club features a visually stunning yet harsh anime-inspired experience that will feel instantly familiar to fans of its creator's other work. Set in the 1990s, World's End Club is split into two forms of gameplay: action sequences where the players must solve puzzles to survive and adventure sections that focus on character interactions and the overall story. Protagonist Reycho and friends must attempt to work together to overcome the obstacles thrown their way and escape the undersea theme park with their lives. World's End Club looks to be another excellent entry in the po[CENSORED]r death game genre, and a title worth checking out for anyone looking for a unique story-based experience for their Nintendo Switch.

Auteur d’un début de saison raté, le Finlandais peut-il continuer indéfiniment de jouer les lieutenants de Lewis Hamilton ? Jusqu’à quand Valtteri Bottas demeurera-t-il intouchable chez Mercedes ? Critiqué depuis déjà deux saisons par des passionnés de Formule 1 qui rêvent de voir Lewis Hamilton être confronté, en interne, à un véritable adversaire, le Finlandais, lui, s’accroche à son siège. Comme à une bouée de sauvetage. Et avec toujours cette ambition qu’il exprime de manière naïvement optimiste : «Je crois absolument pouvoir me battre pour le titre cette saison. Lewis a certes remporté le titre chaque année depuis que nous sommes équipiers, mais nous abordons cette saison en repartant de zéro. Mon but ultime est d’être champion, mais il y a un long chemin à parcourir, j’en ai conscience.» Une distance qu’il peut mesurer de manière chiffrée avec ses 120 points de retard de la saison passée, alors même qu’il a couru une épreuve de plus que le Britannique, touché par le Covid-19 en fin de saison. L'accident de trop avec Russell ? Un véritable gouffre, qui semble bien parti pour se reproduire cette année. En deux grands prix disputés, Bottas accuse en effet déjà un débours de 28 unités sur son coéquipier septuple champion du monde. Pire, il ne parvient même plus à donner le change en jouant les éternels seconds derrière son leader, histoire de conforter l’hégémonie de Mercedes. Avant d’aborder le Grand Prix du Portugal ce week-end, le Finlandais ne pointe ainsi qu’au 5e rang au Championnat du monde avec 16 points à son compteur. Ceux de sa 3e place au Bahreïn. A Imola, il y a quinze jours, il avait abandonné avec fracas lors d’un spectaculaire accrochage avec George Russell. Celui-là même qui rêve de prendre sa place un jour au volant d’une Flèche d’argent. Un accident dont Bottas n’était pas responsable, certes, mais cela ne l’a pas épargné de nouvelles critiques sur son niveau. A commencer par celle de Ralf Schumacher au micro de Sky Deutschland : «Il devrait se demander pourquoi il s’est retrouvé dans une position qui l’a obligé à se défendre contre une Williams alors qu’il conduit une Mercedes… Il a souvent été à un niveau similaire à celui de Hamilton, mais je dois dire qu’il en est très loin pour le moment. Mercedes a beau nous expliquer que Bottas souffrait d’un manque d’adhérence avec le train arrière de sa voiture, moi je pense que c’est l’ensemble du package de Bottas qui manque d’adhérence en ce moment. Il faut qu’il progresse, sinon il sera rapidement mis sur la touche à mon avis.» Une pression qui pourrait s’accentuer au fil des courses pour le Finlandais, qui peine à menacer Hamilton en qualifications également, alors qu’il s’agissait du seul terrain de jeu où il parvenait, parfois, à le devancer. Néanmoins, le principal intéressé continue de cultiver sa propre méthode Coué : «Lors de certaines saisons, je me suis sans doute mis trop de pression. Ou au contraire, j’ai pris les choses peut-être trop à la légère. C’est à moi de trouver le bon équilibre et le meilleur moyen d’y parvenir est de discuter de tout ça avec l’écurie. Je dois être honnête avec moi-même et essayer de trouver une bonne méthode, un état d’esprit heureux chaque week-end.» Au Bahreïn, il avait néanmoins pris le contrepied de son attitude habituelle en critiquant la stratégie de son équipe. Avant d’être vite remis en place par son patron, Toto Wolff : «Il n'y avait pas d'autres stratégies possibles. Nous avons également tenté l'undercut (anticiper l’arrêt pour ensuite repartir devant celui qui le précède) avec Valtteri, je pense que cela aurait pu changer l'issue de sa course. Ce que nous ne voulions pas voir, c'est la perte d'une position au départ. Bottas n'a pas pu combler l'écart avec les deux pilotes de tête.» Un écart qu’il lui faudra combler, sous peine de perdre son rang de lieutenant…

Railway construction and tunnelling works have commenced around the Simandou iron ore project in the southeast of Guinea, a mine in west Africa which is set to reshape global iron ore trading patterns. A consortium, which includes Singapore’s Winning Shipping, Guinean mining logistics firm United Mining Supply (UMS), Chinese aluminium producer Shandong Weiqiao and Guinea’s government, won a tender in 2019 to develop blocks 1 and 2 in the northern area of Simandou. Simandou deposits have been estimated at 2.4bn tonnes of high-grade ore, with much of it earmarked for Chinese consumption. Simandou iron ore exports will potentially work out at 68 capesize voyages a year, according to estimates by Splash. The consortium will build a 650 km railway line and a deepwater port at Matakong on the Atlantic coast aiming to bring the two blocks into production by 2025. The railway will cross the Madina-Oula subprefecture through a 11.7 km tunnel under a mountain. A second tunnel, with a total length of 9 km, will also be built in the subprefecture of Ouré-Kaba in the prefecture of Mamou. According to the Guinean Ministry of Mines, the tunnels will take three years to build, between June 1 2021 and January 2024. Winning Shipping has been growing its cape fleet dramatically in recent years, and is principally engaged on the growing commodity ties between West Africa and China.

By Francisco Moreira, Partner, Bocater, Camargo, Costa e Silva, Rodrigues Advogados, Brazil & Rachel Mira Lagos, Senior Associate, Bocater Advogados, Brazil After 20 years, the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court took an important step towards forming a new understanding of software taxation. The judgement in Direct Unconstitutionality Actions 1,945 and 5,659, addressed whether software-related transactions should be taxed by ISS or ICMS. The Supreme Court delivered its judgment on February 24. The Supreme Court decided, by a majority, that the ISS levy would apply to commercial off-the-shelf software, to subscription-model software, and to software developed to meet the specific demands of a given customer (customized software). The court also decided that no ICMS should be levied on the licensing or assignment of the right to use computer programs. The ISS and ICMS levies are Brazilian indirect taxes. Brazil’s Supreme Court had not analyzed the topic of the taxation of software licensing since the mid1990s. Up until this time, the prevailing jurisprudence was that the physical support for software sales, when sold in bundles (commercial off-the-shelf software), would become a tangible good, treated as merchandise and, as such, subject to the ICMS. The commercial off-the-shelf software as a method of sale/purchase is not currently performed, as the majority of the market is moving towards a subscription model. In addition, transactions involving the provision of goods and services have led to disputes between taxpayers and the Brazilian tax authorities. The digital economy is bringing these disputes to the spotlight, primarily because Brazil’s tax legislation has not been updated to account for this new environment. Because different jurisdictions within Brazil impose the ISS and ICMS (municipalities and states, respectively), the municipal and state authorities have argued over which tax is triggered by a software sale. This latest Supreme Court decision brings long-lasting effects going forward (ex-nunc effects). With respect to past transactions, the so-called “modulation of effects” considered various aspects: Taxpayers who collected only ISS: Confirmation of the validity of the ISS payment and prohibition of the ICMS being charged by the States. Based on this, states will not be able to charge ICMS; Taxpayers who collected only ICMS: The taxpayer will not be entitled to recover the ICMS collected, and the municipality will not be able to charge ISS; Taxpayers who did not collect ISS nor ICMS by the eve of the publication of the judgment: Possibility of charging only ISS; Taxpayers who collected ISS and ICMS, but did not file a claim for restoration of undue payments: there will be the possibility of refunding the ICMS, even if there is no action in progress, under penalty of unlawful enrichment by the states, and the validity of ISS payment; Pending lawsuits taxpayers filed against the States or by the States against taxpayers aiming at the collection of ICMS: Judgment must be carried out in accordance with the Supreme Court’s understanding (ISS levy only), with the possibility of recovering the ICMS in cases where this right is the object of the lawsuits; and Pending lawsuits taxpayers filed against the municipalities or by the municipalities against the taxpayers: Judgment must be made according to the Supreme Court’s understanding (ISS levy only), except if the taxpayer has already paid the ICMS. Commercial off-the-shelf software is well-defined and stable software. It’s developed for widespread use and distribution. It is generally available to the public on a commercial basis or on a non-exclusive basis under standard terms and conditions for a one-time license or an ongoing licensee (subscription). Commercial off-the-shelf software solutions typically require on-site hardware, installation, system validation, back-ups, maintenance, and periodic upgrades. Normally the consumer is responsible for the management and configuration of the software. Commercial off-the-shelf software that has been on the market (physical media, CD or DVD) for a long time has been subject to ICMS. After the demise of the physical media technologies and the start of electronic data transfers, a long dispute began between states and municipalities regarding the tax levied on such transactions – primarily because Brazil’s tax legislation has not been updated to account for this new environment. In 1998 and 1999, the Supreme Court analyzed two cases regarding the taxation of software. It had the understanding that the commercialization of off-the-shelf software (either by means of a physical copy, or download, directly from the licensor, etc.) is considered a transaction of goods, which would be subject to the ICMS. The court also had the understanding that the development of a customized or tailormade software is considered a service, which could be subject to the ISS. The Supreme Court’s decision changed more than two decades of understanding by deciding that the ISS will be levied on the licensing of software of any nature, making the differentiation between commercial off-the-shelf software and customized software irrelevant. The Supreme Court’s decision changed more than two decades of understanding by deciding that the ISS will be levied on the licensing of software of any nature, making the differentiation between commercial off-the-shelf software and customized software irrelevant. As was explained in a previous article, we expect that the Supreme Court may interpret the concept of computer software in accordance with Law n. 9.609/1998 (the Brazilian software law), and the nature of the software licensing contract, and its differentiation between sale and purchase with the corresponding change of ownership. According to the software law, the use of a computer program in Brazil is subject to a license agreement, regardless of the term (perpetual or limited term) and payment conditions (lump sum or monthly) of such a license. The software law also equates the licensing of software to the licensing of copyright. This definition will have ramifications in the analysis of other taxes also levied on such payments, such as the WHT on payments for license or assignment of software. Given the current stage of leading Supreme Court cases, the interpretation of an intellectual property right (a copyright), rather than the commercialization of goods or services provisions should prevail – such as in the case of software as a service (SaaS). Until recently, tax authorities used to understand that remittances made abroad for the licensing of commercial off-the-shelf software were not subject to the withholding tax (Private Letter Ruling COSIT n. 149/2013), aligned with the understanding of the Supreme Court, seeing standard/ commercial off-the-shelf software as merchandise. If considered as a good, the import of such a type of software was not subject to WHT, including if there were no physical media (downloaded software). But the latter jurisprudence supercedes this understanding. In 2017, the Conflict Resolution Ruling 18/17 began to reassess this understanding, stating that the licensing of commercialization and the distribution of software differs from licensing for the right to use the software. Payments Brazilian companies made abroad for the right to commercialize software would fall under the concept of royalties, which are subject to the withholding tax. On the other hand, withholding tax is not levied on licensing for the right to use the software. Recently, the Brazilian IRS (Receita Federal) published Private Letter Ruling COSIT n. 43 of March 23 (after the judgment of ADIs 1,945 and 5,659), expressing the same understanding that the payments Brazilian companies made abroad for the right to commercialize the software should be included under the concept of royalties, which are subject to the withholding tax. Regarding the social contribution taxes (PIS and COFINS), the Conflict Resolution Ruling 2/2019, which consolidated the understanding of the Brazilian IRS, concluded that PIS/COFINS should not be levied on amounts paid, credited, delivered, or sent to individuals or legal entities domiciled abroad as remuneration of the copyright related to software. The Private Letter Ruling COSIT 43/2021, mentioned above, However, it should be noted that although the Private Letter Ruling COSIT 43/2021 was published after the judgment of ADI 1.945 and 5.659, the Brazilian IRS has not mentioned the understanding the Supreme Court established. Besides, since the differentiation between commercial off-the-shelf software or customized software is no longer applicable, it is possible that this understanding will be modified in future rulings. On April 6, 2021, a Consultation Solution COSIT n. 99001/2021 confirmed that payments for software as a service (SaaS) should be treated as technical services and, thus, be subject to the Income withholding tax – so we expect this change in understanding will be reflected in other taxes, such as PIS and COFINS, as well.

Location data platform Here Technologies has announced that Siemens Mobility is integrating its corridor travel time API into its Journey-Time-as-a-Service (JTaaS) solution for the UK market. With the Here corridor travel time API, Siemens Mobility is now able to offer public authorities the possibility to monitor journey times without the need for additional on-street hardware such as ANPR cameras with Bluetooth and wi-fi sensors. This data-based solution is easy to set up and fast to deploy. It is based on a subscription model and as a result, is just a click away. This new traffic management option, based on data rather than hardware, has already been adopted by Bedford Borough, Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole, Hampshire County, and Warrington Borough Councils. “Congestion and the pollution it causes is one of the challenges we are committed to tackling,” says Simon Lawrenson from Warrington Borough Council. “The new JTaaS solution provides us with key insights we need to better manage our traffic flow. The solution was quickly implemented, and the savings made in installation costs can be redirected to undertake projects that will help improve traffic flow across Warrington.” “For a long time, we had been looking for a data-driven solution to complement hardware-based traffic monitoring,” says Wilke Reints, MD of intelligent traffic systems for Siemens Mobility. “Thanks to Here’s flexibility and expertise, we are now pleased to be in a position to offer UK local authorities and transport bodies an accurate data driven solution which is both fast to deploy and cost effective – and that is key for operating transport networks more efficiently. We are delighted to see customers already benefitting from our new solution and partnership with Here.” “We are proud to be the key data partner for Siemens Mobility and many public authorities across the UK. Together, we are making traffic management easier with goal to improve the quality of life of British citizens, be it by reducing the time they have to spend in traffic, or the pollution caused by congestion,” says Eduard van Mierlo, head of strategic alliances EMEAR at Here Technologies.

The single-player campaign of GTA 5 is an excellent gaming experience, yet that doesn't mean players shouldn't try out GTA Online. GTA Online is a wildly po[CENSORED]r online game for a reason. Hence, there's always an argument to be had for introducing new players to Rockstar's most successful business venture. The base game of GTA 5 is excellent, but GTA Online is excellent in its own right. There will always be fans that prefer one game and hate another, but there will also be fans that love both GTA titles. Most gamers who have tried out GTA 5 have more than likely given GTA Online a try in the past. However, there is still a small subset of GTA 5 players that have never tried GTA Online in any capacity. Why fans of GTA 5’s Story Mode should give GTA Online a try in 2021 The simplest reason to give GTA Online a try in 2021 for fans who enjoyed GTA 5 is that the two games are near identical in terms of physics and core gameplay. The main difference lies in what the player is allowed to do and what the player's goals are. After all, GTA Online twists GTA 5's core gameplay in a way that makes the game feel unique. Main differences between GTA 5 and GTA Online The most readily apparent difference between the two games is that GTA 5 is a single-player game, whereas GTA Online incorporates several multiplayer elements into an online game. Predictably, that means GTA Online requires internet and GTA 5 doesn't. In the instance that players just don't have good internet, it's understandable as to why they don't play GTA Online. For those that do have good internet, it's the other differences that play a crucial role in why they don't currently play GTA Online. If fans of GTA 5's story mode love social interaction, then they'll get their fill from GTA Online quite easily. Of course, the differences between the two games extend past just single-player vs multiplayer arguments. There are legitimate differences between the way the two games are played. It's most obvious to notice these differences when one notices that the base game of GTA 5 hasn't been updated in the same way that GTA Online has been updated. GTA Online heists vs GTA 5 heists If players love the heists in GTA 5, then they'll love the heists in GTA Online. The main difference between the two is that GTA 5 heists have players pick a random squad of NPCs for their heists and GTA Online has real players instead (for the most part). Neither game has the other's heists, so GTA 5 players could experience a brand new set of heists by playing GTA Online. Like in GTA 5, these heists are replayable, so fans of that feature will greatly enjoy it. Whereas GTA 5 heists were mandatory for the storyline, GTA Online heists technically aren't. They are a part of their own storyline, but players could do some heists unrelated to the previous ones whenever they wanted. Good features in GTA Online not present in GTA 5 GTA Online isn't just about heists (surprisingly). Players can run Organizations and businesses with one another, which is a feature completely lacking in GTA 5. This can range from owning a Vehicle Warehouse to Nightclubs to Bunkers and so much more. Players could also run businesses by themselves, so being a solo player isn't that much of a detriment in GTA Online. Hence, players don't have to worry about that aspect within GTA Online, for there are plenty of successful players who achieved everything on their own. There's also a wide assortment of various game modes unique to GTA Online. While some are shared between the two games (like golf), there are far more unique game modes like Last Team Standing or Flag War that have no equivalent in GTA 5. Add in the possibility of a bonus event increasing these game modes' cash and RP, and GTA 5 players might find GTA Online to be surprisingly diverse. Speaking of, RP is unique to GTA Online. Different level of progression between the two games In GTA Online, it's all about increasing one's RP and cash. By comparison, GTA 5 is technically about completing a story from the beginning to the end. As a result, these two games can feel very different in terms of how a player perceives the two games, despite the two titles sharing many similarities. If a GTA 5 player loves to grind, then they'll likely appreciate GTA Online for providing those kinds of opportunities for them to experience.

umenta il parco circolante delle vettura a gas naturale in Italia. Nel 2020, si è toccato quota 1,088 milioni, mentre, nei primi tre mesi del 2021, si è registrato un aumento del 63,2% delle immatricolazioni rispetto allo stesso periodo del 2019. Secondo l'elaborazione di Federmetano sui dati forniti da Aci, il circolante a metano oggi rappresenta il 2,1% del totale, passando da 1,071 milioni di veicoli nel 2019 a 1,088 milioni nel 2020. Il 90% è rappresentato dalle autovetture (circa 980.000) e il 9% dagli autocarri trasporto merci (circa 95.000). E il trend di crescita risulta ancora più evidente se si prendono in considerazione gli ultimi cinque anni, in cui le vetture a metano sono passate dalle 972.000 unità del 2015 ai 1,088 milioni nel 2020. Un buon segnale anche per l'ecosostenibilità, visto il ridotto impatto del biometano sull'ambiente. Segno positivo anche per le immatricolazioni, che nei primi mesi del 2021 hanno visto una sorprendente ripresa: secondo i dati di Unrae, marzo 2021 vanta un +59,2% rispetto a marzo 2019, mentre l'intero periodo gennaio/marzo 2021 riscuote un + 62,3% sullo stesso arco temporale del 2019. «Questi numeri ci dicono che gli utenti credono nelle potenzialità di questo virtuoso carburante e costituiscono un forte messaggio per le case automobilistiche che ci auguriamo non passi inosservato. Per raggiungere nell'immediato una mobilità sostenibile è necessario che questa sia economicamente accessibile a tutti. Già oggi la percentuale di biometano usato in autotrazione è ben il 20% ed è destinata ad aumentare nei prossimi anni. Il biometano consente a chi ha un mezzo a metano di muoversi senza emettere CO2 già ora e senza ulteriori investimenti. È necessario che stakeholder e decisori politici collaborino per tutelare e sviluppare la filiera del metano/biometano che tanto può dare al nostro Paese», commenta Dante Natali, presidente di Federmetano.

New Delhi, Apr 28 (IANSlife): Established about 4,500 years ago, the Indian culture is among the world's oldest cultures in the world. Several Indian scriptures describe India as 'Sa Prathama Sanskrati Vishvavara' or, the first and the supreme culture of the world. Traditional Indian practices and ways of living have been found to prolong one's life span, help sustain a healthy life, and live a disease-free happy life. These traditions that have been passed down generations, from our great grandmothers to us, have their own significance and importance. While the lives we live today is far from what life was like 50 years ago, a lot of what was needs to be preserved. Listed below are a few ancient rituals that help one lead a healthy lifestyle, and also help develop a deep meaningful relationship with nature: * Drink water from earthen or copper pots: Microplastics that have now found their way into our bloodstream causing more harm than we could ever imagine! Drinking water from earthen pots and copper utensils boosts your immune system, facilitates digestion, strengthens joints and muscles, and helps improve blood circulation in the body. * Walking barefoot: Fancy footwear and shoes all the time? We'd advise you otherwise. Back in the day, there was this rule wherein no one wore footwear inside the house. With changing times, diabetes, and other ailments, this is not a viable option for many. That being said, you should try walking barefoot while there's still dew that is, the first thing after you wake up. It helps alleviate joint pain, decreases muscle tension, and even lowers stress levels. All you need is a break from your regular footwear-- just once a day, and you'll see this boost of energy almost immediately. * Wearing Gold and Silver Jewellery: Piercing a new born child's ears shortly after its birth is a tradition all Indians abide by. Wearing gold and silver jewellery has been known to regulate body temperature, reduce anxiety and stress, and also help ameliorate one's mood. We recommend wearing metal jewellery and ditch plastic that does nothing but add to all that toxic waste. * Eating with your hands: In trying to mimic the west, we have equated using cutlery to be more civil. This, however, is not the case. In ancient India, both the King and his subjects ate their food using their hands. It does not just increase the 'Prana' or life energy within oneself, but also satiates one's hunger-- brings forth humility and respect for the food served. * Inculcating the habit-- Eating early: Ayurveda and its theories suggest eating food as early as 8 p.m, a couple of hours before going to sleep by 10 or 11 p.m. This discipline to eat early and sleep at least 3 hours after the last meal can help one stay aloof of all gastrointestinal and digestion problems. * Practicing 'Shauch' or Cleanliness: Reiterating the importance of clean living now more than ever, we should understand the relevance of taking a bath every day, keeping our shoes outside the house, and practicing sanitisation. * Fasting: The holy month of Ramzan and the sobriety one has during the Navratras. Do you think there's no science here? Indian traditions include fasts every once in a while. Not only do they cleanse one's system of all the toxins, but also give the digestive system a much-needed break. Fasting can help speed up metabolism, aid in weight loss, and even improve longevity. * Practising Yoga: There's no underestimating the power of Yoga and meditation! 30 minutes dedicated to Yoga each day-- 4 rounds of Kapalbhati and Surya Namaskar in addition to deep meditation and healthy eating. This is all you need to keep most diseases at bay and lead a healthy life.

At last week’s virtual J Street conference, US Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren broke a political taboo when they expressed a willingness to leverage US military aid as a way of pressuring Israel to respect Palestinians’ human rights. Sanders said that the US “must be willing to bring real pressure to bear, including restricting US aid, in response to moves by either side that undermine the chances for peace,” while Warren showed a willingness to restrict military aid as a “tool” to push Israel to “adjust course.” Generally, Sanders’ increasingly pro-Palestinian stances are more progressive than those of Warren, although both are still hovering within the mainstream Democratic discourse: Showing willingness to criticize Israel, as long as it is coupled with equal, if not even more pointed, criticism of the Palestinians. Arab scholar Seraj Assi explained this dichotomy in an article published in Jacobin magazine. “Sanders’ stance on Israel-Palestine could undoubtedly be more progressive. He has consistently voted in favor of US military aid to Israel, which subsidizes occupation, settlement expansion, and systematic violence against Palestinians. He still opposes the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign, signing onto an anti-BDS letter to the UN Secretary-General in 2017 and reiterating his opposition to BDS (in 2019),” Assi wrote. However, as Assi himself indicated, Sanders’ position on Palestine and Israel cannot be judged simply based on some imagined ideal, but within the context of America’s own political culture; one in which any criticism of Israel is viewed as “heretical,” if not outright anti-Semitic. Sanders’ influence on the overall Democratic political discourse is also palpable. He has paved the way for more radical, younger voices in the US Congress, who now openly criticize Israel while remaining largely unscathed by the wrath of the pro-Israel lobby, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Gone are the days when AIPAC and other pro-Israel pressure groups shaped the domestic American political discourse on Israel and Palestine. Nothing indicates that the tide has completely turned against Israel, as this is nowhere close — yet. However, a decisive US public opinion shift must also not be ignored. It is this po[CENSORED]r shift that is empowering voices within the Democratic Party to speak out more freely without jeopardizing their political careers, as was often the case in the past. In order to decipher the roots of the growing anti-Israeli occupation, pro-Palestinian sentiments among Democrats, these numbers could be helpful. While Sanders, Warren and other Democratic officials who are willing to criticize Israel still vehemently reject BDS, the grassroots Democratic Party membership does not hold the same view. An early 2020 Brookings Institute poll found that, among Democrats who had heard about BDS, “a plurality, 48 percent, said they supported the movement, while only 15 percent said they opposed it.” This indicates that grassroots activism, which directly engages with ordinary Americans, is largely shaping the public’s views on the movement to boycott Israel. Ordinary Democrats are leading the way, with their representatives merely trying to catch up. Other polls are also indicative of the fact that the vast majority of Americans oppose pro-Israeli efforts to promote laws that criminalize boycotts as a political tool, as such laws, they rightly believe, infringe on the constitutional right to free speech. Expectedly, 80 percent of Democrats lead the way in opposing such measures, followed by 76 percent of independents and 62 percent of Republicans. Such news must be disturbing for Tel Aviv, as it has heavily invested, through AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, in branding BDS or any other movement that criticizes Israel’s military, occupation and systematic apartheid in Palestine as anti-Semitic. Israelis find this new phenomenon quite confounding. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been repeatedly criticized, even by mainstream Israeli officials and media pundits, for turning Democrats against Israel by unabashedly siding with former President Donald Trump and his Republican Party over their domestic rivals. Hence, Netanyahu has turned the support of Israel from a bipartisan issue into a Republican-only cause. A February 2020 Gallup poll perfectly reflected that reality, as it found that a majority of Democrats (70 percent) support the establishment of a Palestinian state, in comparison with 44 percent of Republicans. The rooted support for Israel among establishment Democrats is too deep and well-funded to be erased in a few years, but the pro-Palestine, anti-Israeli-occupation trend continues unabated. The last year has been particularly difficult for the Israeli lobby, which is unaccustomed to electoral disappointments such as Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Last June, for example, the lobby painted itself into a corner when it rallied behind one of its most faithful supporters, Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, depicting his Democratic primary opponent, Jamaal Bowman, as “anti-Israel.” Bowman is hardly anti-Israel, even though his position is moderate in comparison to the extremist, one-sided views of Engel. In fact, Bowman made it clear that he continues to support US aid to Israel and openly opposes BDS. However, unlike Engel, Bowman was not a candidate whose love for Israel is blind, unconditional and ever-lasting. To the embarrassment of the lobby, Engel lost his seat in the US Congress, which he had held for more than 30 years. Unlike Bowman, Cori Bush, a grassroots activist from Missouri who last year ousted the pro-Israel Rep. William Lacy Clay, has defended the Palestine boycott movement as being a matter of freedom of speech, despite a relentless smear campaign that described her as having an “anti-Israel agenda” merely because she appeared in a photograph with a pro-Palestinian activist. Last August, Bush — a black woman from a humble background — became the House representative for Missouri’s first congressional district, despite all the pro-Israeli efforts to deny her. It is important to acknowledge the role played by individuals in the undeniable shift within the American political discourse on Palestine and Israel. However, it is ordinary people who are making the real difference. While the Israel lobby still wields the weapons of money and propaganda, politically engaged grassroots activism is proving decisive in garnering American solidarity with Palestine and is slowly translating this solidarity into political gains.

The forecasted revenue figures released by Gartner for the global hyperautomation-enabling software market are up from $481.6 billion in 2020, with $532.4 billion being projected this year. Hyperautomation is an approach that enables organisations to rapidly identify, examine and automate as many processes as possible using technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA), low-code application platforms (LCAP), and virtual assistants. Tools such as RPA, LCAP and AI are considered process-agnostic software, meaning that they can be used in any organisation across multiple IT and business use cases. Process-agnostic software will be most in demand as key enablers of the hyperautomation trend, while other software used to automate more specific tasks, such as ERP, supply chain and CRM systems, will also contribute to the growth of the market. “Hyperautomation has shifted from an option to a condition of survival,” said Fabrizio Biscotti, research vice-president at Gartner. “Organisations will require more IT and business process automation as they are forced to accelerate digital transformation plans in a post-Covid-19, digital-first world.” Going forward, Gartner predicts that through 2024, the drive towards hyperautomation will lead organisations to adopt at least three out of the 20 process-agonistic types of software that enable hyperautomation. The fastest-growing category of hyperautomation-enabling software includes tools that provide visibility to map business activities, automate and manage content ingestion, orchestrate work across multiple systems, and provide complex rule engines. Technologies to automate content ingestion, such as signature verification tools, optical character recognition, document ingestion, conversational AI and natural language technology (NLT) will be in high demand. Organisations will need such tools to automate the digitalisation and structuring of data and content – for example, automating the process of digitalising and sorting paper records. Additionally, Gartner expects that by 2024, organisations will lower operational costs by 30% by combining hyperautomation technologies with redesigned operational processes. “Organisations are transitioning from a loosely coupled set of automation technologies to a more-connected automation strategy,” said Cathy Tornbohm, distinguished research vice-president at Gartner. “In response, vendors are developing integrated offerings that combines technologies like RPA, LCAP and business process management into one, packaged tool. “The shift towards hyperautomation will be a key factor enabling businesses to achieve operational excellence, and subsequently cost savings, in a digital-first world.” In its IT predictions for 2021, released in October, Gartner recommended that CIOs look at hyperautomation “as a principle, not a project” when updating processes.

or at least three decades, the AI community has patiently waited for Moore’s law to catch up. With the advent of GPUs, TPUs and other exotic silicon supplements, research accelerated. Machine learning models became more efficient. But, this efficiency came at a cost. The models got larger. For instance, language models with billion parameters like GPT and BERT outperformed other models. As the research moved from labs to enterprises, the heft of such models has started to become an issue. Smaller organisations have no other option than to rely on pre-trained models or use licensed versions like in the case of OpenAI’s API, which gives access to its powerful GPT-3 model. Hidden technical debts in ML Data comes in different formats–images, video, text, and tabular. A typical ML engineer spends significant time on “feature engineering”. And building a data integration pipeline is no small task. Additionally, velocity requirements (i.e. processing time or real-time low latency demands) may call for big data techniques such as streaming processing. This adds numerous challenges to the task of building an extensive data DL system. Apart from extraction, transforming and loading (ETL) data, new distributed training algorithms might be needed. Deep learning techniques are not trivially parallelised and again need special supporting infrastructure. Now, these processes have taken the automated route–AutoML. According to Peltarion, a no-code AI company, a critical difference between ML systems and non-ML systems is that data partly replaces code in an ML system: A learning algorithm is used to automatically identify patterns in the data instead of writing hard-coded rules. Working with distributed systems, data processing such as Apache Spark, Distributed TensorFlow or TensorFlowOnSpark, adds complexity. The cost of associated hardware and software go up too. Traditional software engineering typically assumes that hardware is at best a non-issue and at worst a static entity. In the context of machine learning, hardware performance directly translates to reduced training time. So, there is a great incentive for the software to follow the hardware development in lockstep. Deep learning often scales directly with model size and data amount. As training times can be very long, there is a powerful motivation to maximise performance using the latest software and hardware. Changing the hardware and software may cause issues in maintaining reproducible results and run up significant engineering costs while keeping software and hardware up to date. Building production-ready systems with deep learning components pose many challenges, especially if the company does not have a large research group and a highly developed supporting infrastructure. However, recently, a new breed of startups have surfaced to address the software-hardware disconnect. For Luis Ceze of OctoML, the biggest pain point is bridging the gap between data scientists and software engineers to deploy ML models effectively. According to Ceze, ML models are composed of high-level specifications of the model architecture, which need to be carefully translated into executable code, creating significant dependencies on the frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch and the code infrastructure. With the growing set of hardware options such as GPUs, TPUs and other ML accelerators, the portability problem only worsens as each of these hardware variants requires manual tuning of low-level code to enable good performance. And that has to be redone as models evolve. The largest tech companies solve this problem by throwing resources at it, but that’s not a sustainable solution for them — or a possible solution for most. For example, Apache TVM uses machine learning to optimise code generation. Since it can’t rely on human intuition and experience to pick the right parameters for model optimisation and code generation, it searches for the parameters in a very efficient way by predicting how the hardware target would behave for each option. According to Ceze, machine learning software stacks are significantly fragmented at the data science framework level (TensorFlow, PyTorch etc) and at the systems software level needed for production deployment, such as NVIDIA’s cuDNN. There are no appropriate CI/CD integrations to keep up with the model changes. OctoML’s open source solutions can make it easier for any ML developer to build models without burdening themselves with the hardware backend. This whole subdomain of affordable, efficient ML deployment has gained traction of late. While some call it MLOps, others call it AIOps. Regardless of their monikers, the deep learning community has realised that the time is ripe to decouple software-hardware dependencies for progress; one reason why companies like OctoML have been successful in attracting investors. Firms like Graphcore have been bullish on this phenomena. The team at Graphcore develop customised AI chips. The word “customised” leans more towards the software end of the business. Dave Lacey, the chief architect at Graphcore, believes the best software not only makes AI processors much easier to use for developers but can also harness the full potential of the underlying hardware. “In future, the best AI chips will be those with the best software,” he said.

Disco Elysium's revolutionary approach to the detective genre is truly remarkable, and creates an experience unlike any other investigative RPG. Disco Elysium was a surprise hit when it was released in 2019, largely because few players knew what to expect. It was presented as an isometric RPG, but lacked the combat mechanics typically associated with the genre. Instead, Disco Elysium focuses heavily on the inner life of its main character as he explores the fictional city of Revachol. Though the main character of Disco Elysium is a detective, the police work he does feels largely incidental. He spends so much time reflecting on his own mortality and getting caught up in side quests that it's easy to forget he's supposed to be working. The central plot is a murder mystery, but Disco Elysium doesn't feel like a mystery game — and that might be the key to its success. Disco Elysium: Who Am I? The first few moments of Disco Elysium show the main character recovering from a bender so severe that he's forgotten his own name. His newly-assigned partner has to remind him that he's a detective and that they're supposed to be solving a murder. From the get-go, Disco Elysium is about far more than simply catching a killer; it's also about discovering one's own identity. In contrast, most detective games feature a protagonist at the height of their abilities. Their competence at solving mysteries is never in question; in fact, they're often so hopelessly devoted to their profession that they'll risk life and limb in order to solve a case. This level of investment can be hard to relate to, especially if their only motivation is a personal zeal for law enforcement. Focus On Disco Elysium's Story Disco Elysium doesn't have a combat system, and most of the story is conveyed through text. Skills are represented as intrusive thoughts that appear when interviewing witnesses, and players must decide which of their impulses to act upon. Most of the drama in the game centers around knowing how to push someone's buttons, and the ideas the main character comes up with are often entirely wrong for the situation. This useless mental flak is also present when trying to search for clues. Even if players find something interesting, they often need to possess the correct skills if they want to determine its significance. It's common to feel half a step ahead of Disco Elysium's detectives, which is a welcome departure from other mystery games. Though not all detective games feature combat, many use the pursuit of clues as an excuse to move a main character from one gunfight to the next. Clues aren't usually hard to find, and the main character often determines their significance in seconds. Solving the mystery isn't an intrinsic reward, but rather a way to get to the game's other mechanics. Personal Politics Drive The Narrative Most of the NPCs in Disco Elysium distrust the police and are especially fearful of the main character due to his drunken antics. The attitude is more reflective of many of the conversations being had about law enforcement today. Disco Elysium doesn't glorify the Revachol Police Department: Of all the characters in the game, the protagonist is one of the least fit to be a police officer. Players are forced to grapple with their own beliefs towards law enforcement, which ultimately decides the fate of several characters. This ambiguity sets Disco Elysium apart from other games featuring detectives/investigators, which often assume that all laws are just and that law enforcement is inherently good. Challenging those core assumptions makes Disco Elysium's story feel more true to the political reality of the real world, which is far less clear-cut. In short, Disco Elysium is successful because it never talks down to its players. It presents a complex story that incorporates the politics of its world as well its protagonist's inner demons. The story is delivered confidently, without relying on copious violence or action-packed cutscenes to keep its audience engaged. Disco Elysium knows exactly what kind of game it is, and its refusal to be anything else is what makes it so unique. Disco Elysium: The Final Cut is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, and Stadia. Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch versions slated for this Summer.

La berline tricolore assemblée en Chine entend allier confort et technologie. Pari réussi ? Notre premier avis aux commandes du vaisseau amiral de Stellantis. Notre essayeur Arthur Matal a pris ce matin le volant de la DS 9 en finition Rivoli, équipée du bloc 1.6-litre essence hybride rechargeable de 225 ch. Voici son premier bloc-notes : « Dès les premiers mètres, le confort offert par les suspensions DS Active Scan est bluffant. A bord de cette DS 9, nous franchissons les ralentisseurs comme s’ils n’étaient pas là. Le réglage est souple et concorde parfaitement avec l’esprit de cette voiture, même si l’on sent que la coque – partagée avec la 508 – demeure rigide. Volumineuse mais pas pataude, la DS 9 bénéficie surtout de la chaîne de puissance de sa cousine au Lion. Les transitions entre le bloc thermique et le moteur électrique se réalisent dans une grande douceur. La conduite est très agréable à basse vitesse. Un bref essai du mode sport nous a moins emballé. La direction – ordinairement légère – se durcit exagérément. => DS9 : prix, équipements, moteurs… la gamme en détails L’idée d’un habitacle made in China de faible qualité est balayée par la belle qualité des matériaux les plus visibles. Les plastiques granulés dans les zones les moins exposées demeurent tout de même moins valorisants que dans une Audi ou une Mercedes équivalente. Les moquettes épaisses et l’espace gigantesque à l’arrière contribuent à son pédigrée de grande routière, capable de transporter agréablement des passagers sur de longues distances. Notre version d’essai démarre à 57 900 euros. Une somme élevée lorsque l’on compare cette berline de 4,93 m à des rivales allemandes du même format ». Fiche technique Moteur : 4-cylindres, 16 soupapes, turbo, injection directe, distribution variable, start&stop, 1 598 cm3 Puissance : 225 ch à 5 550 tr/min Couple : 360 Nm à 1 900 tr/min (cumulé) Batterie : Lithium-ion 11,9 kWh Transmission : roues avant motrices, boîte de vitesse automatique à 8 rapports Suspensions : AV McPherson triangle., barre antiroulis, AR multibras, amortissement piloté Freins : AV disques ventilés, AR disques Longueur : 4,93 m Largeur : 1,93 m Hauteur : 1,46 m Empattement : 2,74m Coffre : 510 l Réservoir : 42 l Poids : 1 839 kg Vitesse maxi : 240 km/h 0 à 100 km/h : 8,3 km/h Consommation constructeur : 1,5 l/100 km CO2 : 33 g/CO2 km

You are head of Accor’s Lifestyle division. How did this lifestyle journey start, for you personally and for the group? I have been with Accor for a long time, for 20 years. Before my role now, I was global head of development. The group moved into lifestyle ten years ago, when we opened the SO/ Bangkok. People were shocked. It was a bit non-traditional. But it has been one of the most successful hotels because the ambience, service, style and delivery are so unique. At that point in time, we realised that the customer was starting to evolve and that we had to follow the customer. Lifestyle has taken on a whole new meaning: it was a ‘toy’ back then, but it has grown into a serious business with amazing potential. At this point, 25% of our pipeline by value is in this segment. The lifestyle concept isn’t always clearly demarcated and can be slightly hackneyed at times. What are the main pillars underlying the lifestyle concept at Accor? Lifestyle hotels typically derive a big portion of their income from F&B and entertainment – it can be between 40 and 50%. This is because they tend to be closely tied to their local communities, and F&B is a very local business, so F&B revenue in these hotels is a very significant part of the total. That isn’t the case for our other brands. This local element is a differentiating factor – again, lifestyle hotels are very plugged into their community. And they have a way of intertwining distinctive design, which often bears a designer’s hallmark, and a more intangible ethos that comes from the background music, fragrances, etc. Their look and feel, and the story they tell, is very much at the heart of what makes a lifestyle hotel. And they are Accor’s fastest growing segment today. One of the highlights in 2020 was the start of the talks between Accor and Ennismore with a view to creating a shared lifestyle platform. Tell us more about Ennismore – its hotels, brands, geographic wingspan and revenue. First of all, Ennismore isn’t a B2C brand or a hotel brand: it’s a B2B brand. And we will be using this brand with our hotel owners, for our business and in our sector. Ennismore is very much part of the Accor ecosystem, but it is operating as an autonomous platform within Accor with its own group of people. We will start with 12 brands and more than 70 hotels, and we will be looking at opportunities to grow and develop more brands. We already have 110 hotels in the pipeline, so this sector is looking at steady growth ahead. What exactly puts this platform and its brands in a class by themselves? We are bringing together all of our lifestyle brands. So of course you have SBE (Mondrian, Delano, SLS, Hyde), Mama Shelter, 25hours and the existing lifestyle platform, which encompasses SO/, Tribe and Jo&Joe. And we are adding Ennismore’s iconic brands, so The Hoxton and Gleneagles. One of the most important factors here is that we are embarking on this journey with our partners, the very people who founded Mama Shelter (Serge Trigano), 25hours (Christoph Hoffman), SBE (Sam Nazarian), 21c Museum Hotels (Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson) and Tribe (Melissa and Mark Peters). It’s interesting none of them decided to step down when their companies joined the Ennismore fold: they all want to stay on and be the face of the brand they have created. So they are still with us to help us grow the brand, the product and so forth. That, to me, is a strong vote of confidence from these guys. It shows that they believe in what we are doing with Ennismore. As CEO of the new entity, what is your view on its complementary skills and strengths? Will it manage to keep what makes each brand singular? The biggest danger in doing this is to grow too fast, and lose the essence of what you are developing, lose touch with the fact that people like lifestyle hotels because they are real. The decision to team up Accor and The Hoxton is a good example to follow. At Accor, we have an amazing portfolio of brands, we know how to build these brands’ scale fast all over the world, and our distribution and tools are among the best in the industry. Then, The Hoxton’s founder Sharan Pasricha, who will be Ennismore’s co-CEO with me, is a fantastic entrepreneur who built a business from scratch. So The Hoxton will bring us what I would call the ‘magic touch’ to come up with unique concepts revolving around F&B, digital innovation and customer approach. The experience Ennismore has in its brands is at the heart of what we are trying to build – and that is where the value is. That is why the strategy we have honed with Sébastien Bazin [Accor chairman and CEO] isn’t to agree on a one-size-fits-all model and cascade it into hundreds of hotels: it is to expand our portfolio with authentic brands, which are carefully curated and developed in the right locations and markets. As vaccination campaigns get underway around the world and the prospect of travel is back on the horizon, what do you expect to see happen in the hospitality sector in general and in the lifestyle segment in particular? I absolutely believe that the sector will bounce back, and bounce back hard. We are seeing that, every time a restaurant or bar reopens somewhere, people rush back. Basically, human beings are built to interact with other human beings, and that is the essence of socialising and travelling. It applies in F&B and entertainment too. However, we do not know how quickly it will recover. But we believe that the leisure business, particularly the F&B business, will come back before the corporate business. Notwithstanding the brightening outlook, why should Accor invest massively in its lifestyle portfolio when customers haven’t actually come back yet? We continue to invest because we know that the lifestyle segment is a very strong, high-growth business for Accor. And it will be an even more important segment in the post-Covid world because, as I said, the leisure segment and F&B will be the most resilient: 45% of revenue at these hotels comes from F&B and 50 to 60% of the Ennismore brands’ rooms business is leisure. So I would say it’s a smart move for Accor to strengthen its position in this segment, which is capable of bouncing back quicker than other segments. And work on concepts that integrate the notion of entertainment and adapt our product beyond traditional rooms-based travel to address a lot of new emerging trends and reach a hybrid customer base, who may not necessarily be travelling but may want to use a business venue or F&B facility because they appreciate the distinctive environment or ambience, for instance. On that front, we are mainly competing with independent bars and hotels. So we are stepping beyond traditional hotel management and into an ecosystem that touches every aspect of a customer’s leisure and professional life. That is why lifestyle is gaining ground. It will continue to grow in the next five years, so we need to look past the pandemic to build their future.

RAMALLAH, Tuesday, April 27, 2021 (WAFA) – Minister of Health Mai Alkaila said today that 1414 new COVID-19 infections, 17 deaths and 2686 recoveries were registered in Palestine during the past 24 hours. In her daily report on the coronavirus pandemic, Alkaila said five deaths were reported in the West Bank and 12 others in the Gaza Strip. She said no updates were available regarding the situation in occupied Jerusalem. In the West Bank, 376 coronavirus tests came out positive, while 1038 new cases were registered in the Gaza Strip. The health minister said 140 patients of coronavirus remain in intensive care, of whom 41 are on ventilators. In addition, 397 patients are receiving treatment at hospitals and COVID-19 dispensaries. Alkaila pointed out that the recovery rate in Palestine has so far reached 91.7 percent, while active cases slightly declined to 7.2 percent. Deaths stood at 1.1 percent of total infections. Concerning vaccinations, the health minister said over 251,628 people have received their first jab of the vaccine in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, of whom over 165,426 received the second dose. K.T./M.K.

Ten years ago this August, Marc Andreessen made his famous declaration that “software is eating the world.” In the decade since, the “dramatic and broad technological and economic shift” that Andreessen illuminated has only accelerated, disrupting nearly every industry and transforming our daily lives. If software is eating the world, open source is the kitchen where the meal is prepared. Without open source, it’s impossible to imagine innovations such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT), or innovators from Amazon to Zoom. Thanks to open source, businesses can freely download high-quality source code and flexibly adapt it to their own needs, without constantly building everything from scratch and sans the cost and licensing frictions of proprietary commercial software. No wonder 99% of enterprise codebases are reported to contain open source components. Open Source Challenges Nothing is perfect, however, and open source’s po[CENSORED]rity also has brought a downside for enterprises: a tough array of software management challenges. While it’s certainly easy for organizations to acquire a tremendous amount of useful open source software, many companies then struggle with complexity in operational tasks such as onboarding, integration, patching and upgrading all that software. In a way, open source adoption is being threatened by its own success. A huge amount of outstanding software is being published across the industry, coming from tech giants and tiny startups, and organizations have proven eager to consume it. But these operational hurdles are hindering many companies from realizing the full benefits of open source. The entire promise of a software-defined landscape is greater agility in everything a company does, from improving the end-to-end digital experience with customers to better serving employees. Businesses can’t allow software complexity to stand in the way. Yet when one looks across the enterprise computing spectrum of public cloud, private cloud, micro clouds and IoT, that is what’s happening. The number of moving parts keeps growing exponentially. For example, one trend in particular – the shift away from monolithic applications and toward microservices (collections of independently deployable services that can be more easily developed, tested and modified) – has dramatically added to the management burden. In a single cloud deployment, an organization may be managing a stack of several technologies – OpenStack, Kubernetes, data lakes, machine learning infrastructure and transcoding, to name a few. The organization must deal with a plethora of head-spinning technical pain points: application-specific configuration file management, app-specific update and upgrade processes, app-specific packaging, app-specific networking, scenario-specific configuration, service dependency mappings, custom integration code, layer admin segregation and substrate-specific behaviors. The list goes on and on. And each task must be tuned and tweaked for the specific public cloud an organization is using. Managing Complexity Consider that a billing database in 2005 may have required three pieces of software on two machines to be integrated. Now, that same function may have 20 pieces of software spread across 60 machines. Each has to be configured, integrated, patched and upgraded – a massive explosion in complexity. So what’s the answer? What should enterprises be doing to reduce this inefficient operational complexity? The answer lies in automation technology that can handle the skyrocketing number of application life cycle management chores that have become a natural byproduct of the open source-driven, software-defined world. Operational packages that can automatically handle software installation, configuration, updating, scaling and patching saves time and money across organizations, industries and almost any application scenario. Instead of needing to understand each function in detail, model-driven operations handles all the work without the need for human intervention. As software continues to eat the world, we can’t allow software complexity to block innovation. The solution is to, in effect, let software eat software.

The rate of video on the internet has been exploding upwards, year after year, as has the number of videos YouTube serves per year. Unfortunately, CPUs and GPUs don’t deliver the kind of yearly performance improvements they once did. Faced with a slowing rate of silicon improvement and rapidly increasing amounts of video, YouTube decided to build its own video transcoding unit, or VCU, codenamed Argos. The company has disclosed its Argos effort in both a blog post and a paper, depending on how deep into the details you feel like digging. According to YouTube, moving workloads to the VCU has improved efficiency by 20-33x depending on the exact particulars of the stream. YouTube’s new chip is designed to be capable of transcoding to one resolution target at a time, or of targeting multiple resolutions simultaneously. A key component of YouTube’s power savings is the fact that the software and hardware stacks are explicitly designed to work with each other. The physical architecture of the system is shown below: There are more encode than decode cores on each iteration of the ASIC, and more than one ASIC on each VCU card. This solution has been designed for dense scaling. Transcoding a video to multiple output resolutions simultaneously is part of how YouTube achieves its power efficiency improvements, as it “allows efficient sharing of control parameters obtained by analysis of the source (e.g., detection of fades/flashes),” according to the company. Handling these transcodes in parallel (MOT) is much preferred to doing them one at a time (SOT), as it avoids redundant decoding. At least some of the claimed power efficiency improvements will come from avoiding redundant work. MOT is generally preferred to SOT, as it avoids redundant decodes for the same group of outputs. In MOT, the video is decoded once, scaled to all target resolutions, and then encoded at all relevant targets. YouTube notes that it also designed the ASIC to be able to process multiple MOTs and SOTs simultaneously to further boost efficiency. The actual encoder is designed to encode H.264 and VP9 in hardware while searching three reference frames. It has a pipelined architecture, local reference stores for motion estimation, and can accelerate entropy encoding, but Google notes the chip is “optimized for power/performance/area targets.” Each encoder core is capable of encoding 4K at 60fps in real time, with 10 cores per ASIC, and multiple ASICs per card. YouTube is already drawing up plans for a next-generation accelerator that would also be capable of decoding AV1 in hardware. VP9 is generally considered to be the open-source competitor for HEVC, while AV1 is a more advanced follow-up expected to deliver greater bandwidth savings. Argos represents the kind of company-specific project we’ve seen more of in recent years as Intel has struggled to improve its CPU performance, but this isn’t strictly a CPU issue. The GPU decode blocks built into an Ampere or RDNA2 GPU clearly weren’t specialized for the task YouTube had in mind. This is the kind of semi-custom work one could theoretically see AMD taking on, but AMD doesn’t appear to have pursued outside manufacturing deals for its IP all that aggressively. We know the company is working on a deal with Samsung for a mobile graphics solution based on Radeon IP, and it partners with Sony and Microsoft for console gaming, but not much beyond that — at least, not publicly. Ten years ago, Google, Facebook, and Amazon began to quietly revolutionize the server market by paying ODMs to build servers for them directly rather than buying off-the-shelf standardized hardware from the likes of Dell or HPE. Today, these same companies are designing their own custom silicon to fill various cloud industry use-cases. CPUs and GPUs still dominate the consumer space, but specialized accelerators and purpose-built chips are creeping into the enterprise in ever-increasing numbers. It’s also interesting to see YouTube rather pointedly not backing HEVC or even discussing future support for VVC / H.266. Any avoidance of these standards would likely be due to royalty entanglements and licensing fees.

Free Online Games No Downloads : In the last decade, the gaming industry has seen a boom leading to an increase in the number of fans and users’ manifold. There are websites that you can utilize to download various games and play on your own computer. However, there are all kinds of malware, hackers, and fishy activities that might rob you of your important data. Free Online Games No Downloads To have a secure platform that provides a variety of exciting games is very important. Keeping that in mind, we have curated a list of websites from which you can download to play games easily and for free. 1. GameTop GameTop is one of the best websites accessible for downloading PC games. It has multiple games on it and a wide range of downloadable games. All of it is accessible in a huge number without any particular fees or charges to be paid during or after the game has been downloaded expenses. 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like he said my friend "CONTRA"

Tragedia della strada ieri sera a Portomaggiore, in uno scontro frontale tra un’auto e una moto ha perso la vita il centauro Cristiano Arlotti, 49 anni, originario di Portomaggiore ma che viveva ad Argenta. L’incidente è avvenuto poco prima delle 20, nel tratto iniziale della provinciale che va dalla rotatoria del cimitero alla frazione di Portoverrara. Secondo una prima ricostruzione dei carabinieri della Stazione di Portomaggiore, il motociclista portuense era diretto verso Portoverrara, mentre dalla direzione opposta proveniva l’auto, una Fiat Punto. Gli occupanti dell’utilitaria hanno raccontato di aver visto la moto, una Ducati di grossa cilindrata, sbandare e poi se la sarebbero vista piombare addosso: questo almeno il loro racconto. Lo schianto è stato talmente violento che il centauro ha sfondato cofano e parabrezza, e poi ha sbattuto contro il guardrail. L’auto è finita nel campo di grano che costeggia la provinciale, la moto si è frantumata in vari pezzi, rimasti disseminati sull’asfalto. La dueruote poi è finita nelle acque del canale; i vigili del fuoco del distaccamento di Portomaggiore hanno cercato vanamente di recuperarla, ma il buio e le acque limacciose hanno costretto a interrompere la ricerca. Sul posto, oltre a carabinieri di Portomaggiore, polizia municipale e vigili del fuoco, sono intervenuti i sanitari del 118 e dell’elimedica, arrivata da Bologna, mentre la strada è stata presidiata dai volontari del Radio Club Portomaggiore. I sanitari si sono prodigati per salvare la vita al centauro. Con il defibrillatore hanno tentato per una mezz’ora di rianimare l’uomo, ma alla fine si sono dovuti arrendere. Gli occupanti dell’auto sono statiascoltati a lungo dai carabinieri. Si tratta di un pensionato e di un parente, stavano andando a Portomaggiore a recuperare il nipote. Il guardrail sul lato del canale è stato montato da poco tempo dalla Provincia, dopo numerose sollecitazioni e anche interrogazioni in consiglio comunale proprio per migliorare la sicurezza, una precauzione che purtroppo non è servita. E’ il secondo motociclista portuense a perdere la vita nel giro di pochi mesi, in precedenza un incidente mortale era avvenuto sulla superstrada 16 bis, poco distante dalla frazione di Ripapersico.

A partner at a global private equity firm. A professional racing driver. A founder and creator of a lifestyle app. It is possible that each of these descriptions render images of three distinctly different individuals. For Omar Jackson, however, wearing all three hats at the same time seems to be a seamless process. Private equity firm Berkeley Assets, headquartered in the British Virgin Islands, is a multi-asset company with a diversified portfolio of investments across several sectors for well over a decade now. One of the five key people in the firm’s global leadership team is Jackson, who has been designated as a partner responsible for developing Berkeley Assets’ global growth strategies for both existing and new markets. While this corporate role can be considered as the Dubai-based British national’s day job, Jackson is also the founder of his eponymous lifestyle brand, OJ Lifestyle. Billed as “a disruptive force of passion and drive, designed to energize, thrill, and inspire,” it primarily aims to bring exciting offers from a plethora of lifestyle brands across the UAE to one accessible platform. In a nutshell, the platform aims to cater to three main verticals: experiences, fashion, and social sustainability. At face value, OJ Lifestyle may initially come across as yet another lifestyle-influencing brand, but look a little closer, and one will find the platform’s essence to be based off Jackson’s life experiences and lessons, which includes his humble beginnings in life, having been raised by a single mother. In fact, it seems like Jackson has incorporated the biggest turning points of his life into creating the brand. “I think I naturally had a fire in my belly, and a desire to have lots of things that I didn’t have growing up,” he says. “My mum worked very, very hard with the main priority of providing food and shelter, and to give my brother and me the best education she could. Witnessing what my mum did every day has a big part to play in who I’ve become today.” In an era when our social media timelines are increasingly inundated with influencers and lifestyle gurus who flaunt the concept of a picture-perfect life, it is refreshing to listen to what Jackson believes is an ideal lifestyle- his personal viewpoint is largely the by-product of surviving a potentially life-ending allergy attack when he was 18. “When I survived that, which I am thankful for, it gave me a different perspective on life- anything can happen any day, you have to live life to the fullest, and you have to do what you love to do,” Jackson says. “Which means living a lifestyle that means something to you as a person, because every person is different. Living a life that grants you the satisfaction that you want.” This focus on individuality and personal preference is thus a key aspect of Jackson’s approach to build his lifestyle brand. But there is another more noteworthy aspect to the firm’s offerings- that of social responsibility, and the concept of “giving back.” With a focus on entrepreneurial ventures as well as community projects in areas of the world that require sustainable assistance, the origins of this facet of the business can again directly be correlated to Jackson’s life. “Giving back was never a strategy of mine,” he says. “It’s just that I was brought up in a way where I was told that there are always people worse off than you, and that everyone deserves equal opportunities. So, I don’t really work with charities in that regard, I take a more personal way.” The results of OJ Lifestyle’s social sustainability endeavors, so far, have been heartening. “I know we could change a lot of lives for the better by helping in building a school in a village in Tanzania and providing education to a very unfortunate group of children. When I visited Sri Lanka on a personal holiday, I was able to renovate a local orphanage where children lived and were educated, and we also supported them through the COVID-19 crisis in 2020. We were able to send two months worth of food, supplies, sanitizing equipment to support over a 100 kids and 20 adults who were their minders and teachers.” Related: The Best Of The Best: Joelle Mardinian Gets Candid About What Drives Her Life And Career As Jackson narrates the social causes he’s worked on, he continues to reiterate multiple times that none of these were done based on a calculated strategy. “We’ve also fed over 10,000 workers at a labor district called Sonapur in 2019 during Ramadan with the very kind support from Dubai Police,” he continues. “That was planned in four days, in a spur of the moment. I go with my gut instinct with such initiatives. It’s all because of how I was brought up, the mentoring and assistance that I received once upon a time. I know the difference it made to my life. So where I can, I will help.” The mentoring Jackson alludes to here is that which he received from two individuals he met when he was a teenager: Ash Shah and Mike Clark. Interestingly enough, all these years later, Shah and Clark are now his fellow partners at Berkeley Assets. “I was fortunate enough to have a couple of important mentors in my life, and both of those mentors are now my mentors at Berkeley Assets,” says Jackson. “I know the difference they made to me, and the guidance they gave me. If it weren’t for other people, I potentially may not be where I am today. So, I strive to always make a difference where I can. If my instinct tells me I should do something, then I’ll do it.” This observation very neatly loops right back into why OJ Lifestyle was started in the first place. “The number one priority in life are experiences- that is the focus of OJ Lifestyle,” states Jackson. “You don’t get experiences by sitting down on your sofa at home- you get them by living and breathing, by being out and about. So, I want to drive people, utilizing technology and digital advances, towards an app called X.” Jackson explains that the X app helps users navigate their way through enticing offers from lifestyle brands in and around the UAE. Ranging from luxury experiences to daily necessities, the app is designed to help members redeem offers from lifestyle outlets such as restaurants, beach clubs, beauty salons, and other high-end experiences. This, in turn, leads to the accrual of “X points” in a given member’s personal membership account, which can be further used to avail any of OJ Lifestyle’s many events around the country, including live events. Available for free download from both iOS and Android platforms, the membership costs AED699 for a period of 12 months. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the concept of social sustainability has been incorporated into the X app as well. By partnering with UAE-based non-profit charity Gulf For Good, which was founded under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the app aims to help children affected by COVID-19 by donating a small part of each sign-up to the cause. The prime focus, however, has been to encourage having more real-life, visceral experiences. But the idea of experiences itself changed with the arrival of the COVID-19 crisis last year. Live events were no longer viable, and Jackson and his team took the hit just like most businesses across the globe. In fact, the firm was prepared to launch a gym called The BOX by OJ Lifestyle, powered by Amir Khan in November 2020. But with the onset of the pandemic, that was moved to a tentative May 2021 launch date. However, Jackson has taken this setback in his stride, noting how part of OJ Lifestyle’s ethos is to also showcase the downsides of running a business, not just the ups. “Too many businesses set up, and you only hear about them when they’re successful, but you don’t hear about the struggles or hurdles they’ve had to face,” explains Jackson. “OJ Lifestyle is not about that. We’re about showing the trials and tribulations, the challenges, and how we’re going through it. That’s okay, it’s life! Sometimes it is out of your control, and it’s all about how you handle the setbacks as a team.” During such times of uncertainty, it is perhaps quite rare to witness such clarity of thought and calmness, and Jackson attributes having these traits to his experience as a professional racing driver. “With racing, it’s discipline, focus, staying calm under pressure, and the ability to deal with circumstances that you cannot plan for,” he elaborates. “All these things have had a massive contribution to who I am. I race professionally against Ferraris on international Formula One circuits where you’re one mistake away from a potentially fatal accident. Your head has to be in the right space because it requires attention to detail and focus like nothing else. All of these things I apply to various parts of my life, so if a hurdle hits me in business, I’m able to stay very calm under pressure.” If there is anything that best reflects the results of Jackson’s cool-headed approach, it is his decision-making at Berkeley Assets through the pandemic last year- the most notable of which was the decision to not lay off any of his employees in any of the firm’s three offices. “On reflection, I made the right call, because we kept a team that was very close knit, and whilst they saw much of the world crumbling around them, they felt a sense of comfort that they were being taken care of during a very difficult period,” says Jackson. “There’s a reason why there is that loyalty within our walls- it’s a family life environment that doesn’t exist in many other scenarios, and I think that is what kept us together. It resulted in the end-of-year business turnover figures matching the same results as the start of the year. In fact, the first quarter of 2021 have been our best months ever.” 2021 undoubtedly comes along with its own share of challenges and opportunities for Jackson, but he remains upbeat and optimistic for what is to come. “We have multiple activations opening very soon, and the first one that I can mention is The Box by OJ Lifestyle, powered by Amir Khan, opening next to the Coca Cola Arena. There are some very exciting partnerships that are due to be announced imminently and in the future. I guess it’s the old clichéd saying of ‘watch this space,’ because it is a space to be watched, and we’re not short of anything, and have an action-packed schedule of launches, announcements, activities, activations, events- we’re just waiting for the doors of the world to open before we really kick into gear!”

As Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are scheduled to cast their vote for the Palestinian Legislative Council elections on May 22, the Palestine Liberation Organization's Negotiations Affairs Department published this article to highlight some issues relating to the Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli detention: RAMALLAH, Sunday, April 25, 2021 (WAFA) - The question of Palestinian prisoners, as one of the forefront issues of the Palestinian national agenda, is a crucial part of our national and legitimate struggle in defending the Palestinian historical narrative and countering a forged narrative that denies Israel’s occupation of Palestine and therefore undermines the right of the people of Palestine to confront and put an end to it. As fighters for freedom, the Palestinian political prisoners’ political participation in the election and their candidacy to present their people and righteous cause is a natural, human, political, and legal right enshrined by the Palestinian Basic Law and international conventions. Article (21) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 provides that “1. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. 2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country (…)”. Likewise, article (25) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recognizes that “Every citizen shall have the right and the opportunity, without any of the distinctions mentioned in article 2 and without unreasonable restrictions: (a) To take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives; (b) To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors; (…)” The rights provided for in this article are related, though different from, the right of nations to self-determination. In this context, 16 Palestinian prisoners will run for the legislative elections expected to take place next May, of whom eight are in administrative detention[1], and two were arrested after declaring their candidacy. The Israeli occupation authorities detained the Palestinian prisoners for their political activities to ban them from running in the elections and affect the electoral process. The Israeli practice echoes what happened in 2006 when the Israeli authorities created all kinds of restrictions to render the second Legislative Council dysfunctional. In 2009, Israel arrested more than a third of the members of the Legislative Council, which resulted in halting all its functions since then. In 2017, 15 other members were arrested, six members in 2018, and 11 members in 2019. Currently, there are ten parliament members in Israeli prisons, of whom three were convicted and seven are in administrative detention. Israel's Apartheid Regime The incarceration of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons located on land within Israel proper is a flagrant violation of the International Law and the International Humanitarian Law, particularly article (76) of the Fourth Geneva Convention. And while Israel, which claims itself as the only democracy in the Middle East, allows Israeli prisoners to exercise their democratic right to participate by voting in the Israeli elections, it denies the Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons the same right. During the recent Israeli elections in March 2021, the Israeli authorities allowed Israeli prisoners to vote. All the Palestinian prisoners are being denied to exercise their democratic voting rights in the upcoming Palestinian elections as Israel is rejecting all arrangements allowing them to vote and refusing to set up ballot boxes. Currently, 4,450 Palestinian prisoners, including 440 administrative detainees, 140 children, and 37 female prisoners[3], are arbitrarily detained. In 2006, the Palestinian Central Election Commission raised the issue of the participation of Palestinian prisoners. It demanded the Israeli occupation authorities grant “its staff access to Israeli prisons and set up ballot boxes in the prisons, or make necessary arrangements in cooperation with the Red Cross. But the Israeli authorities rejected that (…) A number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons ran for the 2006 elections but did not take part in voting because the Israeli authorities refused to make arrangements in that regard.” This blatant discrimination in treatment between Israeli and Palestinian prisoners regarding their fundamental political rights is one expression of Israel’s apartheid regime in occupied Palestine. Detention and Pursuit of Candidates: A Blatant Violation of International Law that Warrants Accountability Since the issuance of the Presidential Decree on 15 January on holding the Palestinian general elections and the beginning of the preparation for the democratic electoral process, the Israeli occupation authorities immediately began to obstruct the electoral process. By intensifying arrest campaigns and carrying out organized assaults against potential Palestinian leaders and related activities, Israel aims to prevent their participation and thwart the electoral process. Since January 2021, around 1,300 arrest cases have been recorded, including the arrest of prominent figures and former parliament members, as well as potential candidates.[4] According to human rights and prisoners’ organizations, the Israeli occupation forces arrested last March alone around 438 male and female Palestinians, including 69 children and 11 women. Since the issuance of the Presidential Decree, Israel has so far carried out the following violations: On 13 April: the occupation authorities arrested a physician running for one of the electoral lists from his home in al-Bireh city. On 7 April: the Israeli occupation authorities arrested two Palestinian volunteers working for a committee supporting one of the electoral lists from villages east and west of Ramallah (Deir Jarir and Ras Karkar). The Israeli occupation authorities also summoned a few Palestinian candidates representing different Palestinian political factions and threatened them to withdraw their candidacy under the penalty of arrest and prosecution. On 6 April 2021: the Israeli occupation forces arrested two Palestinian candidates (from occupied East Jerusalem and Bethlehem city) on the same day the Palestinian Central Elections Commission announced the registered electoral lists. Also, the Israeli occupation authorities summoned one male and another female candidate from East Jerusalem. They handed them notifications to report to the Israeli intelligence at the Moscovia Detention Center in West Jerusalem, in flagrant violation of the agreements signed between Israel and the state of Palestine concerning the participation of Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents in the elections. On 6 April: the Israeli police and intelligence forces raided a consultation meeting on the legislative elections in occupied Jerusalem. The meeting was disrupted, similar to other related activities, and the participants were arrested. On 23 March: Israeli intelligence warned a potential Palestinian candidate against running in the upcoming Legislative Council elections. An Israeli military unit raided and searched his home in Hebron. In its recently issued Annual Report 2020-2021, Amnesty International documented the systematic Israeli violations against Palestinian prisoners within a broader context, explaining that “The Israeli authorities arbitrarily detained in Israel thousands of Palestinians from the OPT, holding hundreds in administrative detention without charge or trial. Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, including children, were committed with impunity.” In the paragraph on arbitrary detention, the report states: "Israeli authorities conducted hundreds of raids throughout the West Bank to arrest Palestinians, usually at their homes at night." The report adds that "Palestinian civilians, including children, from the OPT were prosecuted in military courts that did not meet international fair trial standards." International Responsibility: Safeguarding the rights of Palestine’s Prisoners The State of Palestine calls upon the international community, especially countries that respect human rights, to exert pressure on Israel to deter its violations, incriminate its illegal actions, and guarantee respect for the political rights of Palestinian prisoners under international law. The State of Palestine calls on the occupying power to: Release of Palestinian prisoners who will be elected to represent the Palestinian people. They have immunity which the Israeli authorities must respect. Allow Palestinian political prisoners to exercise their right to vote by allowing the Palestinian Central Elections Commission to set up ballot boxes in Israeli prisons. Stop interfering in the election campaign that disrupts related activities and threatens Palestinian candidates. Refrain from arresting and detaining any of the candidates throughout the election campaign and refrain from charging any elected member of the Palestinian parliament. Guarantee respect for the electoral process and the rights of Palestine’s prisoners. M.N

Westpac has raised the threshold for software to be capitalised as an asset from $1 million to $20 million. The bank said in an ASX filing [pdf] that it would also write-down the value of capitalised software and other intangible assets already on its books to the tune of $115 million. The $115 million writedown is part of net impact of $282 million on the bank’s cash earnings for the first half of the financial year. The overall impact was partially offset by valuation gains in the bank’s holdings of Coinbase (up $288 million) and Zip ($18 million). On the change in software capitalisation policy, Westpac said it is “increasing the threshold before a project is capitalised to $20m (previously $1m).” “This policy has been applied from October 1 2020 and will see the group expense a higher portion of its investment spending from first half 2021,” it said. “The higher expense is not treated as a notable item. “This change had no impact to the carrying value of capitalised software at September 30 2020.” Software costs incurred by listed companies can be either expensed upfront or capitalised and amortised (gradually written off); the latter can allow a company to report lower expenses and therefore higher income. As noted by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), “Software has considerable costs attached which, depending on their nature, are capitalised as an asset, or expensed.” “It is important these costs are correctly accounted for to provide users of financial statements with accurate information on an entity's software assets and the costs of its operations,” ANAO said. “Understanding the true value of software assets better enables entities to plan future investments to replace, extend or improve their software assets, in support of strategic and operational objectives.” Westpac is not alone in raising the threshold for software capitalisation. NAB similarly did so last year, saying the move would "uplift business accountability" for software-related expenses incurred on projects internally. Westpac has been criticised in the past for the way it accounted for software-related expenses. The bank will announce its first half results next week.

CLYDE — Wouldn’t you know it: Based on growing demand, Great Lakes Ace Hardware needs to expand. The Clyde-based company recently opened a new lumber yard filled with plywood, drywall and dimensional lumber, “just what the home-handy person needs to build a deck or renovate a room,” according to a company statement. Caleb Wynbissinger, the store’s manager, explained the reason for an upcoming expansion. “We heard from customers that they were looking for a convenient place to quickly and easily get the building supplies they needed for home improvement projects,” Wynbissinger said. “Customers were already visiting the store to pick up the tools and hardware they needed so adding building materials seemed like the helpful thing to do.” History lesson Company representatives provided some background on Great Lakes Ace Hardware: Great Lakes Ace Hardware began operations in Dearborn, Michigan, in 1946 and has a history steeped in the traditional American tale of hard work and reinvention. The company provides local neighborhoods with access to national brands — such as Craftsman, Scotts, Benjamin Moore, EGO, Traeger and others — while providing customers with a localized product mix and a friendly neighborhood hardware store experience. The chain operates 58 stores serving neighborhoods in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. It has been part of the Ace Hardware Cooperative since 2014.