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SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Frost & Sullivan finds that the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing market is gaining momentum following the development of vehicles with advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) capabilities. This growth is driven by the need for a solution that can cost-efficiently validate the number of electronic control units (ECUs) incorporated into these vehicles. The automotive industry accounted for 60.7% of all industry verticals in 2020 and generated $442.0 million in revenues. It also leverages innovative HIL solutions to test electric vehicles (EVs) and validate the function of the battery unit and other power electronics components. By 2026, the global HIL testing market is estimated to reach $1.30 billion from $728.3 million in 2020, up at an impressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.2%. The aerospace and defense industry is another important vertical, and the entry of private companies into space exploration offers new opportunities for HIL testing companies. For further information on the analysis, Accelerating Advanced Driver-assistance Systems (ADAS) Development Drives Growth in the Global Hardware-in-the-loop Testing Market, please visit: http://frost.ly/5hi. "Vehicles with enhanced ADAS functionalities will involve a significant amount of sensors and embedded software that cannot be tested individually," said Rohan Joy Thomas, Industry Analyst, Industrial Practice at Frost & Sullivan. "HIL testing will be crucial for simulating the drivability of the vehicle, reducing product development costs and time to market significantly." Thomas added: "Like with the automotive industry, the components and subsystems inside the aerospace and defense industry are becoming increasingly software-defined. With the rising amount of embedded software, a lot of the HIL testing has to be executed during the earlier phase of the development life cycle. Additionally, testing should be done for both components and the integrated system as a whole." Testing solutions system integrators are the fastest-growing component of HIL solutions, followed by software and hardware. In 2020, HIL system integration accounted for 35.3% of the entire market because it offers a custom test solution containing the best HIL test solution at a competitive price. Market participants should focus on the following growth opportunities: Demand for EVs and autonomous vehicles in China: China is an important market for EVs and accounted for more than 50% of the global EV sales in 2020. HIL testing vendors should partner with Chinese vendors, engineering service providers, and other testing equipment manufacturers that provide crucial communications testing. Upsurge in Defense Spending and Commercial Space Exploration: While the A&D industry decreased during 2020, military spending increased. HIL testing vendors should work with the government and partner with its contractors to provide custom-based test solutions for the military. Rise of Smart Cities: The increase in the adoption of sensor technologies, open Internet of Things (IoT) platforms, and smart applications with the development of smart cities presents immense prospects for vendors. Aviation in Emerging Markets: Domestic air travel has witnessed an upswing in Asia-Pacific, primarily China and India. HIL testing will be required for airplanes that are more automated and equipped with electric or hybrid engines. Accelerating Advanced Driver-assistance Systems (ADAS) Development Drives Growth in the Global Hardware-in-the-loop Testing Market is the latest addition to Frost & Sullivan's Industrial research and analyses available through the Frost & Sullivan Leadership Council, which helps organizations identify a continuous flow of growth opportunities to succeed in an unpredictable future. About Frost & Sullivan For six decades, Frost & Sullivan has been world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders, and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models, and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion.

The delisting of several Mario games on March 31 has left many saying this is the day Mario dies. Nintendo is taking Super Mario 3D All-Stars off of its online store today, along with a lot of other Nintendo goodies. All the special products released by Nintendo last year to celebrate the Super Mario Bros.’s 35th Anniversary will be gone for good after today, meaning this is your last chance to pick up these titles. The main game that’ll disappear from Nintendo’s online store after today is Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a special collection for the Nintendo Switch with remasters of Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy. There’s still a chance to get a physical copy of the game after today if stock is still available at stores, but since this was a limited edition collection, the sooner you grab your copy, the better. The same goes for the Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros., a limited edition Game & Watch game with both the original Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. Super Mario Bros. 35, a free game that allowed 35 players subscribed to Nintendo Online to compete in the original game’s levels, is also being pulled. Nintendo is discontinuing Super Mario Bros. 35 service after today, and even players who already had downloaded the game won’t be able to play it anymore. Super Mario Bros. 35 will live only in our memories from now on. Nintendo is also shutting down online services for the original Super Mario Maker, making this a sad day for Super Mario fans. But it's not just Mario games that are going offline today, as Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light will also be leaving the Nintendo Online store today. The game celebrates the 30th anniversary of Fire Emblem and marks the first localization and release of the game in North America. Nintendo justified the discontinuity of the services as a way to make Super Mario Bros.’s 35th Anniversary more special. While this makes sense for limited editions and collector’s items, fans are not too happy about this decision also encompassing long-awaited remakes of classic games. There’s still hope each of the remakes will be made available on the Nintendo Store at a later date, being charged individually. There could also be special events in the future to also include Super Mario Galaxy 2 in the list of Super Mario games available on the Switch. For now, though, all we know for sure is that the clock is ticking, and this might be the last chance in a long while to play a lot of great Mario games.

Elon Musk a annoncé jeudi matin le rachat de ses principaux rivaux. Tesla disposera d’un quasi-monopole sur les véhicules terrestres. La manœuvre impromptue d’Elon Musk va transformer l’automobile. Le patron de Tesla et de SpaceX a annoncé avoir pris le contrôle de nombreux géants mondiaux de l’industrie à l’issue d’un raid boursier inédit, financé par l’utilisation massive de bitcoin, cryptomonnaie dont le cours s’est enflammé ces dernières années. « I got’em » (« je les tiens ») a-t-il posté sur son compte Twitter pendant la nuit de mercredi à jeudi. Volkswagen, Toyota, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, General Motors, Kia-Hyundai, Ford, Stellantis, Geely, Dongfeng, Daimler, SAIC ou encore BMW sont désormais des propriétés personnelles du capitaine d’industrie américain. asi-monopole Tesla Dans un e-mail envoyé vers 3 heures du matin aux salariés de sa marque automobile, Elon Musk a détaillé ses plans pour les constructeurs historiques : « Mon idée est simple. Tesla s’occupera des voitures sur Terre. Le reste, ça part dans l’espace« . Dans ce document, il évoque notamment la fin de l’assemblage de véhicules au sein des marques sous son contrôle « autour de 2028 ». Renault, Peugeot, Volkswagen ou Toyota cesseront de produire des voitures avant la fin de la décennie, selon ce message dont l’objet est : « Masterplan : Part Quatre ». Le courriel se poursuit ainsi : « Franchement, si c’est pour finir comme Nokia ou Motorola, autant qu’ils passent directement à autre chose. On gardera peut-être Ferrari ». Seuls quelques « petits » constructeurs automobiles ont échappé à l’appétit du patron de Tesla : Caterham, Gordon Murray Automotive, Lotus et McLaren. L’autoproclamé « Technoking » a été propriétaire d’une McLaren F1 conçue par Gordon Murray et Lotus a fourni les châssis des premières Tesla Roadster, à la fin des années 2000. Lancia – qui sort du groupe Stellantis – poursuivra ses activités en solo et la commercialisation de son Ypsilon en Italie jusqu’en 2050 au moins. Le patron de Tesla prévoit par ailleurs la sortie d’une compacte Model 2 et d’une citadine Model 1 pour compenser la disparition progressive de la concurrence à ses modèles. Une Model 0 plus simple de conception sera commercialisée sur les marchés émergents. Carlos Tavares sur la Lune « Après 2030, l’ensemble des ressources, des mains et des cerveaux présents chez ces constructeurs historiques seront consacrés à l’exploration de l’espace. Il n’y aura pas de licenciements », poursuit l’e-mail signé par Elon Musk, dessinant les contours d’un programme nommé THE HuGe N’ SeriOUS SPACE PROJECT, YEAH COS’ WHYnOT ?. Dès 2016, l’homme d’affaires de 49 ans avait annoncé sa volonté d’œuvrer pour faire de l’être humain « une espèce multi-planétaire ». La première étape sera l’envoi de premières équipes sur la Lune afin d’y construire un camp scientifique permanent. Elon Musk donne davantage de détails : « Pour aller là-bas, j’ai besoin de gars et de femmes qui ont du sang froid. Et les constructeurs traditionnels, il y en a. Voilà pourquoi j’ai choisi d’envoyer Carlos Tavares sur la Lune ». Le patron du groupe Stellantis (Peugeot, Citroën, Opel, Fiat, Jeep…) partagera son module d’exploration avec Luca de Meo, directeur général du Groupe Renault depuis l’été 2020. « Il n’est pas chaud chaud » affirme un proche de ce dernier, contacté par Auto Moto. Obstacles en vue L’opération boursière hostile devrait tout de même attirer l’attention de la Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), gendarme de la bourse américaine. Mais aussi les foudres du département de la Justice, chargé de veiller à la libre-concurrence. Dans une conférence de presse, l’avocat général sortant de la division anti-trust, Makan Delrahim, a déclaré : « On ne peut pas créer un monopole sur un secteur aussi stratégique que l’automobile en une nuit. Et on ne peut pas non-plus tordre ses concurrents ainsi. Nous allons examiner toute cette affaire avec attention. Cela sent le poisson pourri« .

PITTSBURGH, April 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Known for her spice-filled performances in Georges Bizet's, Carmen, Denyce Graves has brought her passion for music and food to a new stage--her kitchen! The 2020 global pandemic inspired the commencement of Cooking with Denyce (CWD). As opera houses and concert venues around the world were closed to most musicians, Graves would bring her industry friends together-virtually to cook a variety of recipes with a twist of opera. April 1-4, 2021, Graves will bring CWD to the home of Marc & Diana Reid Chazaud of Pittsburgh for her first off-site taping and introduce The Denyce Graves Foundation (DGF) and its first philanthropic project with the National Opera House (NOH). "We are very excited to introduce Cooking with Denyce to a few of our friends who are lovers of opera and food. When we learned of the cooking show platform and the launch of the Denyce Graves Foundation, we jumped at the opportunity to support," said Marc Chazaud who along with his wife Diana Reid are founding board members of the Denyce Graves Foundation. What was originally meant to bring entertainment and cooking to communities of opera lovers, became the springboard for introducing the work Graves and her team have been committed to do in a short few months for the NOH. The team has gained accolades from community leaders such as Esther L. Bush, President & CEO of the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh, for being able to convince key people in Pittsburgh and the nation about the importance of this structure in Black history and the American story. CWD not only makes its debut in Pittsburgh this week, but Graves will also have prominent conversations with stake-holders regarding the historic opera house founded by the late Mary Cardwell Dawson. This summer Graves will play the title role in the Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson, a new play set to music, at the Glimmerglass Festival in New York, under the artistic direction of Francesca Zambello. Graves recalled, "When Francesca approached me about the play, I was excited about the project. It wasn't until I read the script in 2020 that I realized this was the same site I visited in 2017 while on a tour during the run of The Summer King, at that point, this all seemed serendipitous." Playing the role of Grace, in the in The Summer King, allowed Graves to cultivate a now long-standing partnership with Pittsburgh Opera Company, led by her friend, Christopher Hahn, General Director. Notably, Pittsburgh Opera has consistently been committed to diverse artistry and to programming that will expose opera-goers to the type of diversity that exists in the classical music realm; solidifying why this historical project is just as meaningful to the opera company as it is to the Denyce Graves Foundation. The DGF will meet with the City of Pittsburgh, the Mayor's office, the Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh, the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, Pittsburgh Opera Company and each organizations' guests. The foundation is reaching its goals with the help of major political and public figures who have joined its mission.

RAMALLAH, Palestine In the run-up to the parliamentary elections in Palestine, two estranged leaders of Fatah have decided to contest polls together independent of the parent party. The newly formed National Democratic Forum led by Naser al-Qudwa negotiated an electoral arrangement with Fadwa Barghouti, wife of iconic jailed leader Marwan Barghouti, queering the pitch for the Fatah, the dominant faction in the ruling Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. Nasser Al-Qudwa, who will lead the coalition as per the arrangement was expelled from Fatah in early March for his attempt to field a separate list of candidates. With this new alliance in the fray, three lists from the Fatah have joined the contest that includes the official list headed by Mahmoud al-Aloul, deputy leader of Fatah, the Qudwah-Barghouti coalition, and the list of Abu Dhabi-based sacked leader Mohamed Dahlan. Many political experts see that the conversion of Fatah from a movement to an authoritarian party, where power has centered around its leader Mahmoud Abbas. “This coalition is a reflection of policy errors that made by the influential leaders over past years, which has led to a deterioration of the party situation,” said Sari Orabi, a writer and political analyst. “Fatah failed to attend to its problems and wrong policies in the sixth and seventh conferences. As a result, these political factions are not strange, either historically neither logically,” Orabi added. Experts believe that these estranged leaders contesting elections independently have thrown the toughest challenge to Fatah, more than when Dahlan fractured it a few years ago. Barghouti’s substantial following inside Fatah and Qudwa’s political acumen makes it a perfect coalition to challenge the main Fatah in the polls. Experts believe that his alliance has chances of winning a good number of seats and may align with other lists of Hamas to claim power. “These factors may lead to President Abbas to think seriously to delay the elections since Fatah has poor chances as compared to Hamas. These poor chances are due to the continuous internal conflict in Fatah,” said Bilal Shobaki, associate professor at Hebron University. The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections are supposed to be held on May 22. According to the Central Elections Commissions (CEC), so far 36 electoral lists have submitted applications for nomination.

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Think for a moment about how organizations are evolving. They all want to be lean, fast and specialized. They're trying to become more adaptable, intelligent and resilient. Wherever you look, it's a pretty consistent pattern. Now, think about the main trends in enterprise software. It seems to be evolving in 20 directions at once: AI, ML, SaaS, PaaS—it feels like you're drowning in alphabet soup. Even when you spot a recognizable word like "cloud," there are half a dozen different flavors. How can you make sense of it all? Software buyers need to understand all the factors, decide which matter most and check that the software they're considering has them. I've included a checklist below to help you do this. For me, though, as CTO of an enterprise software company, it's slightly different. I have to understand all of these options in order to decide which way to steer our software development program. In this article, I'm sharing what I've decided to do for my purposes in the hope that it will help you make software choices that are right for your business. MORE FOR YOU Google Cloud Extends API Connections With Apigee X Redefining Traditional Pathways To Tech Microsoft’s Most Impactful Announcements At Ignite 2021 How Is Enterprise Software Evolving? In my mind, there are five categories of trends in enterprise software. 1. Platform trends. Enterprise software is moving to the cloud for reasons of accessibility, resilience and scalability. The trend is also to distribute different parts of the software across multiple locations (data center, public cloud and user devices). Vendors are building software out of ready-made blocks of functionality called microservices and allowing them to interact with other software using universal connectors called APIs. They're also breaking down huge software suites into task-specific chunks that just give the user what they need to do their job. 2. Trends in intelligence. Business software firms are increasingly using AI to improve user experience by automating repetitive processes and spotting patterns in how users behave in order to plan improvements to the software. AI can also automatically create little bits of contextually relevant software in the moment to capture missing information, for example. Vendors are also introducing natural language interfaces into their software. A Constellation Research report confirms that "customers expect the ability to use voice as an interface as much as they use touch and gestures." 3. The software ecosystem. Enterprise software normally comes as a suite that covers all the main business functions like finance, people, purchasing and project management. These days, people want their enterprise software to work with (and be as easy to use as) major collaboration platforms like Teams or Slack. Increasingly, vendors are offering industry-specific software, with industry best practices encoded into ready-to-use modules. The Constellation Research report points out that "customers expect their cloud-based ERP solution to deliver on deep industry vertical functionality." 4. Extensibility. Many industries still use specialist software, like the fundraising systems found in the nonprofit sector, and enterprise software needs to be easily extensible to such systems. The Constellation report adds that "customers also expect their ERP vendor to provide integration support for adjacent solutions in the ecosystem.” Despite all the vendors' efforts to make their standard products as customized as possible, some organizations still need to develop their own bespoke applications on top of the vendors' platforms. Vendors need to provide extension toolkits to enable them to do this. 5. Business issues. Beyond industry specialization, some enterprise software vendors are also specializing in providing organizations of a particular size with software that is neither too simplistic nor overly complex for their level of maturity. Last, but certainly not least, software buyers are placing more importance on the cultural fit between their organizations and the software vendor. Some peer review sites even produce rankings on the "emotional footprint" of ERP vendors. The Enterprise Software Buyer's 11-Point Checklist Here's my advice for what to look for in enterprise software to help ensure it will be right for your business in the future. 1. Can you place the software wherever you like (on-premise, in private and public clouds or at the edge)? 2. Does it have a modular structure? Is it built from microservices and connected via APIs? 3. Does it offer task-specific apps that people can put on their mobile devices? 4. Does it include AI to automate mundane tasks and continuously improve user experience? 5. Can you talk to it in natural language? 6. Does it come as part of an integrated suite of software that handles all the main business functions? 7. Can you easily connect it to other business software that you use in your industry? 8. Does it work with major collaboration platforms like Teams or Slack, and does it feel as intuitive to use? 9. Is it tailored to your industry sector, and does it come with industry-specific business processes out of the box? 10. Is the software the "right size" for your business—not too big and not too small? 11. And don't underestimate this one: Is there a good cultural fit between your organization and the vendor? Predicting the future has never been easy; these days, it's virtually impossible. The only way to prepare for it is to be prepared for anything. That means having the flexibility to change quickly, cheaply and easily. In the end, the sort of enterprise software that'll be right for your business in the future is probably the sort that's most easily adaptable.

A new two-year procurement framework for IT hardware has been launched with the potential to save the public sector up to £250m. The Digital Workplace: Hardware Framework is designed to help NHS and public sector organisations purchase cost-effective IT hardware, offering consumer-orientated technologies from 19 suppliers. Developed by NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) in partnership with NHS North of England Commercial Procurement Collaborative (NOE CPC), the framework is due to run until February 2023 with an option to extend to 2025. It has an estimated value of £1bn, with average indicative savings of 25% compared to buying direct from a supplier at list price, a potential cost saving of £250m, according to NHS SBS. The agreement replaces the Link 2: IT hardware framework and includes desktop PCs; laptops; notebook devices, mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, wearables; specialist healthcare related IT hardware including clinical displays, infection control keyboards, mobile carts; and printers and scanners. It’s free-to-access to provide public bodies, such as NHS trusts, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), universities, emergency services and local authorities, with a simple and compliant route to market for the most frequently required end-user client devices. Phil Davies, director of procurement at NHS SBS, said: “The new framework provides ease and peace of mind for organisations looking for an efficient and cost-effective way to meet their end user device needs. “In 2020, much of the country moved to remote working with huge success. The launch of the Digital Workplace: Hardware framework means the public sector can continue to access technologies that are pivotal to supporting productivity through flexible and innovative ways of working. “The framework has been carefully-negotiated to ensure it offers the latest devices with highly competitive public sector pricing. With a comprehensive procurement exercise already undertaken, NHS and other public sector organisations can save valuable time and resource by directly awarding or carrying out mini-competitions as required.” The new Digital Workplace: Hardware framework is part of a growing portfolio of digital and IT agreements managed by NHS SBS, including Digital Workplace Solutions, Cyber Security Services, Cloud Solutions, Digital Dictation, Speech Recognition and Outsourced Transcription and Healthcare Clinical Information Systems.

Grand Theft Auto 6 from Rockstar Games is high on fans' wish lists, but the developer might not feel inclined to finish the sequel just yet. Grand Theft Auto 6 is inevitable, and it's just a matter of time before the next crime saga is released. Rockstar Games' series has been hugely po[CENSORED]r for years, with each iteration in the series bringing something new to the table for gamers to enjoy. While a new sequel might be high on fans' wish lists, it could be some time before a new GTA is released. Rockstar is known to take its time when developing games and doesn't adhere to traditional marketing efforts at events such as E3, Tokyo Game Show, and other big industry events. Rockstar Games might not have much incentive to make Grand Theft Auto 6 just yet. The last entry in the Grand Theft Auto series came in 2013, with Grand Theft Auto 5. The multi-protagonist crime game has been extremely po[CENSORED]r since its release and shows no signs of slowing down. Despite the sustained po[CENSORED]rity of GTA 5, Grand Theft Auto 6 has been subject to countless rumors and leaks. As always, rumors and leaks should be taken with a grain of salt until there's official confirmation, but it goes to show that the next game has been on the minds of gamers. Unfortunately for some, there could be quite a wait yet for GTA 6. There's A Next Generation Grand Theft Auto 5 Coming It was confirmed in 2020 that a next-generation version of Grand Theft Auto 5 is coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Rockstar has mentioned that it will benefit from performance and visual upgrades, but there aren't more specific details on the next-gen version of GTA 5. There is no confirmed release date for it other than a rough estimate of the second half of 2021. Due to how imminent this release could be, it's reasonable that this could be the next big project Rockstar is working on and the team will likely support this for some time to come after release. A project of the presumed size of Grand Theft Auto 6 would likely take up a huge chunk of resources, making it unlikely that Rockstar is entirely focusing on it at the moment. Paired with the next-generation release of GTA 5 is a standalone release of Grand Theft Auto Online. The online GTA game continues to be extremely po[CENSORED]r to this day, and the multiplayer mode is likely going to receive additional support. Launching on the new generation of consoles could open doors for the game to receive a sizeable addition to its already large audience. GTA Online is set to launch for free on PS5 for its first three months of availability after launch, potentially bringing a new influx of fans. Rockstar will likely want to support GTA Online as long as it remains po[CENSORED]r, which could mean the developer is in no rush to proceed with Grand Theft Auto 6. Grand Theft Auto Online And GTA 5 Are Still Very Po[CENSORED]r Grand Theft Auto 5 and GTA Online continue to be extremely po[CENSORED]r even years after release. So much so that 2020 was a record year for GTA Online in particular, with the multiplayer game setting a new record for its largest player count yet. While a lot of GTA fans are clamoring for Grand Theft Auto 6, it continues to be unlikely to happen any time soon due to the financial gain from the current versions of Grand Theft Auto and its online mode. Based on the report from Rockstar that 2020 was a record year, this would suggest that its po[CENSORED]rity hasn't even begun to plateau. The future continues to seem bright from Grand Theft Auto Online, and Rockstar is likely to reap the rewards from it for some time. Role-playing servers have contributed hugely to a resurgence in GTA Online's po[CENSORED]rity. For those who are unfamiliar, role-playing or RP servers encourage gamers to embody their characters and engage with other players while in character. This isn't unlike tabletop role-playing games where the players are tasked with performing as their characters. Grand Theft Auto 5 Continues To Sell Incredibly Well Grand Theft Auto 5 is the second best-selling game of all time, right behind Minecraft. The game has managed to outpace industry tentpoles like Tetris and Pokemon Red and Blue. What's more, the game continues to sell well to this day. It's a common occurrence for Grand Theft Auto 5 to re-enter the charts of top-selling games, which is a huge feat considering the game was originally released in September 2013. As long as Grand Theft Auto 5 sees sustained success to this level, it's hard to imagine that Rockstar would press on with Grand Theft Auto 6 while there is success to be made from the last major iteration of the series. Grand Theft Auto Online specifically has been a huge source of success for Rockstar. The online multiplayer mode is set to get its own standalone release to make it easier for players to start experiencing the online component, according to Rockstar. A standalone GTA Online release could see Rockstar gain even more followers and financial success. Much like the base Grand Theft Auto 5 game, the online mode is enduringly successful and regularly features new content for players to experience. With so much life left in the online mode, Rockstar is unlikely to move past it any time soon. Grand Theft Auto 6 will likely continue to see rumors until some official news is revealed on the much-anticipated title. Considering how long-lasting the success of Grand Theft Auto 5 and GTA Online has been, it feels unlikely to some gamers Grand Theft Auto 6 will get news any time soon. Rockstar continues to see sustained success with the current GTA titles, making it more unlikely that the developer would want to go full steam ahead with the next Grand Theft Auto game.

Non, Volkswagen ne changera pas de nom. Après 24 heures de rumeurs et d’atermoiements, les pontes de VW ont confirmé que la marque n’opterait pas pour l’identité « Voltswagen », soi-disant chargée de mettre l’accent sur la conduite électrique. Il s’agissait bel et bien d’une campagne marketing destinée à faire du bruit autour du lancement de l’ID.4. un article nos confrères de Road & Track, la branche américaine de la marque devait changer de nom pour « Voltswagen of America ». Vous aurez bien évidemment noté le jeu de mot entre « Volk » – le peuple, en langue allemande – et le « Volt », différence de potentiel électrique entre deux points d’un circuit. L’information avait été reprise par l’Agence France Presse ou Associated Press. Nous étions plus sceptiques… Et VW avait volontairement alimenté le feu. L’information avait été « confirmée » dans l’après-midi de mardi par le compte Twitter officiel de VW en Amérique du nord. « Nous savons que 66 ans est un âge inhabituel pour changer de nom, mais nous avons toujours été jeunes dans nos cœur. Voici Voltswagen. C’est comme Volkswagen, mais avec un accent particulier porté sur la conduite électrique. Cela démarre avec notre tout nouveau ID.4 100 % électrique – disponible dès maintenant ». We know, 66 is an unusual age to change your name, but we’ve always been young at heart. Introducing Voltswagen. Similar to Volkswagen, but with a renewed focus on electric driving. Starting with our all-new, all-electric SUV the ID.4 – available today. #Voltswagen #ID4 pic.twitter.com/pKQKlZDCQ7 — Voltswagen (@VW) March 30, 2021 L’info, révélée dans un premier temps par CNBC, avait été extraite d’un communiqué de presse publié (soi-disant) par erreur le 29 mars sur le site média local du constructeur. Celui-ci révélait que ce changement soulignait l’engagement de Volkswagen vers la « mobilité électrique ». « Voltswagen sera inscrit sur un écusson sur tous les modèles électriques alors que les véhicules thermiques porteront encore l’emblème VW » assurait CNBC. Le logo bleu foncé aurait été utilisé sur les essence et diesel quand un VW bleu clair serait apparu sur les électriques. Ce coup marketing destiné à faire du bruit autour du lancement de l’ID.4 rappelle l’initiative du constructeur qui avait volontairement écorché son nom (en Wolkswagen) sur les panneaux publicitaires lors d’un match de football France-Brésil en 2015. Ces derniers mois, le patron du groupe – Herbert Diess – a multiplié les signaux, indiquant un grand tournant de la marque de Wolfsbourg vers l’électrique. Il a même longuement échangé avec le « king du VE », Elon Musk, venu en Allemagne pour superviser la construction de l’usine européenne de Tesla. Le patron de VW a récemment indiqué que sa marque ne développerait pas de nouveau bloc thermique dans les prochaines années.

Lifestyle hotels have been marching to the beat of their own drum in recent years - and travellers are loving the tune, as Accor Lifestyle CEO, Gaurav Bhushan details. The Lifestyle segment’s success has been rewriting the rules in the hospitality sector for several years now. The health crisis hasn’t dampened the segment’s appeal: it is actually seeing the steadiest growth rates in the sector around the planet. As talks continue with Ennismore about creating the world’s biggest lifestyle operator, Accor Lifestyle CEO, Gaurav Bhushan, discusses the changing face of hotels playing in this space and the direction the Ennismore partnership may lead the growing sector. 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 10 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 ambiance, service, style and delivery are so unique. At that point in time, we realised 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 wanted 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 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, to work on concepts that integrate the notion of entertainment and adapt our product beyond traditional rooms-based travel and 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 ambiance, 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.

China, which has a limited role in Middle East peace-making and security, has proposed a five-point initiative to achieve security and stability in the Middle East, including a meeting between Palestinian and Israeli officials in Beijing. GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — China has been making major political moves in the Middle East region, including an attempt to stir up the Israeli-Palestinian peace file. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced on March 24 his country’s plan to invite Palestinians and Israelis for talks in Beijing. Yi’s statements to Al-Arabiya channel came on the sidelines of his recent tour to the Middle East region that kicked off in Saudi Arabia on March 24 and will extend to six other countries including the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Bahrain, Oman, Turkey and Qatar. Through this diplomatic trip, which comes two months after Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States, China seems to have gone a step ahead of the new US administration. In his interview with Al-Arabiya channel on March 24, Yi also proposed a five-point initiative to achieve security and stability in the Middle East, expressing his nation’s increasing interest in the region for political and economic goals, and waging a somewhat implicit duel against the United States. The official Palestinian stance favoring the expansion of the scope of the International Quartet on the Middle East peace process and rejecting the United States as a sole mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations seems to have encouraged China to start these moves. China and Palestine enjoy good relations. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has accused successive US administrations of bias toward Israel, specifically the former Donald Trump administration. Trump halted financial aid to the Palestinians, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and closed the PLO headquarters in Washington. Speaking to Al-Monitor, a senior official in the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs praised the Chinese initiative. He said the Palestinian leadership is waiting for an official invitation from China to start discussing the Chinese foreign minister’s plan to achieve stability in the Middle East. The official explained that the Palestinian leadership is relying heavily on the Chinese diplomatic moves and stances to break the US monopoly in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, as many countries are reluctant to go against the United States in this process. He further indicated that the Chinese position aligns with the initiative proposed by President Mahmoud Abbas in October 2020 in which he called for an international peace conference in the Middle East based on the two-state solution. His call was welcomed by several countries, including China. A few hours after Yi announced the Chinese initiative on the Middle East, Biden announced the resumption of US assistance programs that support economic development and humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. The United States also announced $15 million in humanitarian assistance to confront the coronavirus crisis and food insecurity in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh welcomed the resumption of US aid. In an official statement on March 25, he described the move as a “step in the right direction toward reshaping the US-Palestinian relations.” The United States had halted its aid to Palestine during Trump's term in the White House “due to his stances on the Palestinian issue,” which Shtayyeh said were “contrary to international legitimacy decisions.” Before taking these diplomatic moves in the Middle East, China initiated a vaccine diplomacy. It donated to the Palestinians 100,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine on March 11 as a contribution to the Palestinian government vaccination campaign. Ahmed Majdalani, a member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, told Al-Monitor that the Palestinian position on the Chinese initiative will not be limited to praise. “The Palestinian leadership will seriously consider and discuss the Chinese initiative and its points, and act alongside China to mobilize an international stance to make it a success.” Majdalani asserted that the Palestinian leadership continues to reject the United States as the sole mediator of the Middle East peace process and supports the expansion of the Quartet to include China. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had revealed the Biden administration’s inclinations toward the Middle East and toward the Palestinian-Israeli file in particular. On Jan. 19, he made clear that Biden believes the only viable settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the two-state solution, but he will continue recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Hamas, for its part, welcomed the Chinese initiative. Hamas leader Hamad al-Raqab told Al-Monitor, “China has always backed the Palestinians and their rights, and its positions have always been in favor of Palestinians. We will study Yi’s initiative and support any point that goes in line with our positions.” On the Chinese support for the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Raqab said that Hamas’ positions in this regard are clear, and the movement supports the establishment of a Palestinian state on any part of Palestinian land on the condition that the rest of the land is not relinquished and resistance will continue to recover it. Raqab added that several international parties, including China, Russia and the European opposition, have adopted positive stances regarding the Palestinian cause and have good relations with Hamas. China does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization; it recognized the movement’s victory in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. Beijing has hosted in the past Mahmoud al-Zahar, the foreign minister in the former government formed by Hamas following its 2006 victory. In contrast, Hamas has repeatedly praised the Chinese positions on the Palestinian cause. Israel, for its part, has yet to issue any official position on the Chinese initiative, amid expectations that it will remain silent in light of its rejection of any mediation in negotiations with the Palestinians other than by its staunch ally, the United States. Talal Okal, a political analyst and writer for the Ramallah-based Al-Ayyam newspaper, told Al-Monitor, “The Chinese initiative reflects the increasing interest by Beijing in the Middle East files, in an attempt to break the US monopoly on negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis. China is also convinced that the success of its economic ambitions in the Middle East is related to its contribution to a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” Okal warned that the Chinese moves will face many obstacles, especially from Israel, which sees the United States as the sole mediator for the peace process. For her part, Palestinian political analyst Reham Odeh said that China is promoting itself as a strong competitor to the United States in the Middle East region. “China wants a diplomatic entry in the region,” she told Al-Monitor. “This will help it achieve its economic ambitions represented in its massive Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to revive the ancient Silk Road stretching across Asia and Europe to transport goods from and to China.” Odeh ruled out that China would score instant success in the Palestinian-Israeli file. “The right-wing government in power in Israel has been the [main] reason for the halt of negotiations with the Palestinians. It has been stalling in accepting any new proposals to relaunch the peace process.” Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations were suspended in April 2014 after Israel refused to release old Palestinian prisoners, freeze Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank or accept the two-state solution based on the pre-June 4, 1967, borders. Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/03/palestinians-welcome-chinese-peace-initiative#ixzz6qhmQlGfh

Collectively racking up a victim count in the tens of thousands, high-profile attacks targeting users of SolarWinds Orion and Microsoft Exchange serve as a harsh reminder that threats to software security remain one of the biggest issues facing the security landscape today. And yet, even as both government and industry acknowledge the severity of the situation, strategies are fragmented at best, elusive at worst. Indeed, evidence shows that the attack surface around applications is getting larger. Bugcrowd, which offers a platform allowing companies to connect their applications to a community of thousands of security researchers who root out for bugs and vulnerabilities, reported a 50 percent increase in total bug bounty submissions in 2020 compared to 2019. That tracks with other research that has found a record number of new vulnerabilities reported over the past year, many of which target faulty or shoddy software programs. At the very least, the issue appears to be gaining more attention in board rooms and among policymakers. In a survey of more than 2,400 security technology decision-makers conducted by Forrester in 2020, improving application security capabilities and services was listed as the top tactical IT security priority over the next 12 months, a sign that businesses are starting to confront the growing threat head on. The Biden administration is also poised to take action, with Reuters reporting that an upcoming executive order is likely to implement a raft of software-related security measures designed to prevent breaches like the one that hit SolarWinds and its customers. Specifically, the order would obligate software vendors who do business with the federal government to report a breach of their systems, and also require a software bill of materials on critical government IT programs. But there’s a long way to go – and much more work to be done – if industry and government are going to succeed in stemming the rising tide of software-based attacks they’re facing on a daily basis. A complex picture The introduction of the cloud, APIs, open-source code and containerization has only added further complexity to the software development process. More recently, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses rushed to put new apps online to continue serving their customers or moved existing ones to more unfamiliar cloud environments in ways that have created new security holes and oversights. Software applications have always been vulnerable – hence the development of concepts like DevSecOps – but a number of factors have combined in recent years to supercharge existing concerns. Sandy Carielli, a principal analyst at Forrester who serves as the lead author for the company’s annual report on the state of application security, told SC Media that applications are still one of the most common attack vectors in external data breaches, but awareness is rising at the executive level and newer tools like static and dynamic application security testing and SOAR (security orchestration, automation and response) have made it easier than ever to integrate security during the code-writing process. That being said, the aforementioned changes to the software development process over the years means there are always new considerations or weaknesses to which practitioners have had to adapt. “If I was going to summarize it in one sentence, I would say ‘Not great, but moving in the right direction,’” said Carielli when asked to evaluate the current state of app security. “One caution, though, is that yes, it’s slowly starting to get better, but every time we change the way we build applications, every time we advance in terms of how we architect, every time we make it easier to build and manage and introduce new architectures and new structures – whether it’s containers or serverless or Infrastructure as Code or APIs – every time we do that, we introduce new risk and we discover that there are new ways to breach an application that perhaps we hadn’t thought about.” The rising rate of automation in the software development process could also be creating new holes. Timur Gilmullin, DevOps team lead at security research company Positive Technologies, said most major software vendors have more or less fully automated their Continuous Integration/Continuous Development processes over the past five years, from building components and installers to deploying them on testbeds, testing and publishing updates. “Each of these stages is susceptible to a targeted attack,” similar to the attack that corrupted an update of SolarWinds’ Orion software last year, said Gilmullin. Bad security can also create a negative feedback loop, where damaging vulnerabilities are exploited by bad actors, those successes are observed by new groups and those actors then dedicate more time and resources towards finding more vulnerabilities. Ransomware actors routinely look for easy vulnerabilities to exploit in victim organizations. Traditionally that has meant phishing lures, credential theft and other low-effort pathways, but some observers point to episodes like the recent weaponization of the Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities by multiple ransomware groups and worry that attacks at the application software level could become a more attractive option in the near future. “That’s a space we’re going to really see attackers take more advantage of moving forward,” said Jen Miller-Osborn, deputy director of threat intelligence at Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 research team. “I think that’s an area we’re going to see ransomware actors move into unfortunately, because it tends to be very successful and it’s got a relatively low barrier to entry once there are [proof of concept exploits] published on the internet and that’s another way that attackers can potentially make a lot of money quickly.” Concepts like DevSecOps, a framework for weaving security teams and principles earlier and more naturally into the software development process, have been around for years and were supposed to address many of the concerns around software security. However, while the concept is heavily pushed in some security circles and evangelized at conferences, many dev teams still fail to incorporate the ideas into their process, particularly for cloud-based projects. Some developers feel a lack of standardization for this methodology has hampered more widespread adoption. “There is a set of general recommendations and many specialized programs for monitoring security during development. Each of them solves one minor problem, but requires a lot of time to learn and implement,” said Gilmullin, explaining why some organizations struggle to incorporate DevSecOps into their workflow. “Implementing a set of tools for secure development is not easy – in the absence of proper support, training and outreach activities by the DevSecOps specialists, these tools simply will not be used.” The more complex the development environment, the more complex the security tools used to scan, test and analyze the code integrity. While that reality can allow for more granular security testing, it can also muck up the development process and create awkward tradeoffs between security and other business goals. Integrating security tools into the dev process “is not a one-button click thing,” said Reed Loden, chief open source evangelist at HackerOne, a vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform. It takes work and if its not done correctly, “it breaks the pipeline and that blocks developers from actually doing work,” Loden said. “Security has always kind of been seen as that blocking factor in a lot of ways, and so people are less apt to actually care about it, no matter the company,” said Loden. “They just say ‘Hey, if security is going to block me from doing something, then that’s not helpful to me and I’m not going to be interested in actually dealing with this [problem].'” A note of cautious optimism In speaking to a range of experts, many offer the same general outlook: while the tooling and practices around software security are slowly getting better, a number of changing trends and evolutions in software development over the past decade have combined to decrease visibility and increase the vulnerability and attack surface. Gary McGraw, a software security expert and co-founder of the Berryville Institute of Machine Learning, lays out a “Trinity of Trouble” that is affecting the ability of software developers to spot and fix problems in their code: complexity, extensibility and widespread networking. As software has become more complex, it has become harder to understand how all the different pieces of code interact together and create openings for attackers. Since many applications are designed to be perpetually upgraded and expanded over time, they eventually grow beyond the analytical capabilities of most security teams. Finally, the widespread networking of IT systems and assets – particularly in the post-COVID-19 era – means that a single compromise today is often more impactful than in years past, with the potential to infect multiple systems or victims. One of the features expected to come out of the Biden administration’s upcoming executive order is a software bill of materials. Allan Friedman, director of cybersecurity initiatives at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, has spent years working with other stakeholders on a framework for a software bill of materials that could introduce more transparency into the software world. A software bill of materials (or “S-BOM” as Friedman and colleagues call it) is essentially a list of all the different pieces of code that go into making a software application. Virtually all applications are composed of chunks or snippets of older code that are stitched together by developers to perform a new function. These pieces come from different places – previous internal software, open-source code libraries or licensed third-party applications – and are recycled so much that it is often hard to know where they originally came from, or whether they share commonalities with other vulnerable software products that are regularly reported by security researchers. “Our scope is quite ambitious. We are trying to foster an attitude of transparency in all software on the planet,” said Friedman in an interview. “Not just your traditional modern enterprise software, but also in areas of critical infrastructure, in automotive and energy and healthcare, where especially devices are going on be on-premise, they’re going to be embedded in systems that might have a long lifespan and it’s very important to know what’s under the hood.” Friedman and others believe that breaking down and tracking the provenance of these different bits of code can have numerous, multiplying effects of software security. It can feed into allow lists and deny lists to protect networks from risky code, be used to monitor potential end-of-life software issues and, once it’s implemented widely enough, and become a factor in consumers’ security evaluations of software program lacking a SBOM. It can also help inform cyber insurers, who may choose to raise premiums for companies that can’t document where their code comes from. The research Friedman’s group has done found that there are actually few implementation hurdles that would prevent many organizations from implementing an SBOM for their software beyond the general need to marshal awareness and support for the idea. One big complication is the need to harmonize and standardize the process to ensure organizations are putting out the same information consistently and in a way that can facilitate follow up security actions. “The basics of SBOM are there and an organization can implement it. The challenge is if we want to implement it in a machine-readable, automatable capacity, there’s still a little more work we need to do so that an SBOM from one vendor looks enough like an SBOM from another vendor that a company can integrate them,” Friedman said. One thing that is unlikely to change is the agile nature of modern software development, which tends to emphasize speed and continuous updates in the development process. Carielli said the DevOps concept is deeply entrenched in the software development community and aligns with the larger business needs of most company executives. “Development teams are tasked with getting features in customers’ hands, and ultimately that’s the job of the business,” said Carielli. “So, they’re going to move fast, but the challenge is when security doesn’t have the integration and the tooling and the relationship with development to move at that same speed.” That doesn’t mean nothing can be done, and Carielli said tighter integration between security and development teams can address a lot of these problems without fundamentally changing the nature of the modern software development cycle. Ironically, SolarWinds may now be one of the few companies that has given its CISO the authority to hit pause on any software update where speed and time-to-market are the prime considerations and there are outstanding security questions. Despite these trends, McGraw and others sounded a note of optimism that good security is still possible. “I’m optimistic that we’re making progress in the software security field,” said McGraw during a March 25 virtual event hosted by Neil Daswani, co-director of Stanford Online’s Advanced Cybersecurity Program and author of “Big Breaches.” “Though there will continue to be breaches and we’re going to continue to have problems, we actually do know what to do to build secure software. Now it’s up to us all as a society to do it.”

fter more than a century in the same family, Towle's Hardware & Lumber Co. in Dixfield has sold to a Maine entrepreneur outside the family who views local hardware stores as an important community tradition. Norman "Butch" and Donna Towle sold the business, after it spent five years on the market, to Richard Chadbourne. Dennis Wheelock of Magnusson Balfour KW Commercial-Keller Williams Realty brokered the transaction. “It doesn’t happen every day that a hundred-year-old business sells,” Wheelock told Mainebiz. The Towle's Hardware & Lumber store was listed in 2016. Established in 1911, it’s a long-time institution in the community run by the same family for four generations, with multi-generation customers. A rebuild in 2008 provided up-to-date premises and technology, and it’s in a central location. Wheelock fielded several queries each year, including a couple of folks from Florida. The reason it took so long to sell is because the Oxford County town, in western Maine, is itself off the beaten track, he said. “I would get people calling from away and they’d say, ‘Well, where is Dixfield?’” he recalled. “I’d say, ‘It’s near Rumford and Mexico. ‘They’d say, ‘Where’s that?’ I think a lot of people lean toward more urban areas.” Nail kegs Towle’s Hardware, at 5 Weld St., was started in 1911 by Charles “Charlie” Hershel Towle and his wife Alice, according to a couple of family histories, including one written by Michael “Mickey” Towle, the founder’s grandson and Butch’s brother. When Charlie opened the store, he sold glass, dog food, John Deere tractors, cast iron stoves, gas and electric refrigerators, paint, lumber, Stanley tools, hardware and gasoline. “Glass came in wooden crates which, being frugal, Charlie dismantled and used to build the storage bins for bulk garden seeds,” Mickey Towle wrote. They ran a “tin knocking” shop in the rear of the store. Tin knocking refers to sheet metal work. Turpentine was sold from a 55-gallon drum. The customer brought his own can or bottle to fill. Nails came in 50-pound kegs and were stored in nail bins and sold by the pound. Pipe was cut and threaded by hand. A row of shed roof garages at the rear of the building was at one time used for horse stalls, then to store cars for a nearby hotel. “The middle garage had a basement area that housed a sawdust-fired, hot-air heating plant to prevent the cars in these garages from freezing in cold weather,” he wrote. Charlie made a miniature motorized Ferris wheel to fit in the store windows. On each seat he placed a quart of paint and when the motor started the wheel turned to make a motion display. Rope-pull elevator By the 1960s, Charlie and Alice’s son John, and John’s wife Betty, were running the store. Their sons, Butch and Mickey, worked at the store when they were kids. In his history, Mickey recalled that the store was the first building in Dixfield to have an elevator. It went from the second floor to the basement and was operated by hand, using a rope to pull it up and let it down. “Butch and I used it to move spool wood from the basement to the second floor for the Round Oak cast iron kitchen stoves,” Mickey wrote. When truck loads of sheetrock were delivered to the store, the boys unloaded and stacked it by hand — several hours of nonstop work. The same scenario was carried out when John had a train car load of rolled roofing and shingles delivered to a railyard in the nearby town of Peru. John would hire a man to drive the truck to Peru and Butch and Mickey would spend the day loading a truck up from the railroad car, ride back to the store, unload it, then return to the railyard for another load. “Everything was done by hand,” Butch told Mainebiz. “We didn’t get a forklift until I took over.” Butch recalled a favorite time at the end of Christmas, when the family would deliver the store’s unsold toys to children in town whose families normally couldn’t afford much. Rebuild Butch and his wife Donna purchased the store from John and Betty in 1976. They performed other facility improvements and expansions, including acquisition of a railroad car for storage. In 2008, the original building was torn down and replaced with a new one with double the space. The original grain shed became part of the new store. An original storehouse was repurposed as an insulation shed. Original seed crates and nail bins remained in use. Granite front steps that John put in for the entrance to the old hardware store became the outside entrance to the new hardware store. Eventually, Butch and Donna’s son Chip began helping them keep the store’s digital technology up-to-date. Chip also built a convenience store called Towle’s Corner Store on the same property beside the hardware store. Chip continues to own the convenience store, which was not part of the transaction. Butch and Donna donated over 1,000 of John Towle’s tools to the Dixfield Historical Society. The tools are now on display in a collection called the John L. Towle Antique Tool Museum. Butch will soon be 76 and figured it was time to retire. “I worked there about 55 years,” he said. “So it was time.” Right person The family retained the property but wanted the right person to buy the business. “We’ve had chances to sell i3t, but we wanted to make sure it stayed a hardware store here,” Butch said. “It took a little while to find someone who would run it like it is.” Some potential buyers envisioned putting in a dollar store, he said. “You can find those everywhere,” he continued. “We just wanted to keep it as hardware store.” Some queries came from out-of-state. “But a lot of them didn’t want to move this far north,” he said. “They wanted to go to Freeport and South Portland. If it were in those areas, we could have sold it overnight. But we waited for someone who wanted a country store in a smaller area.” That person was Richard Chadbourne, who learned the store was on the market when he was in the area on other business. “I like to look at real estate when I’m driving,” Chadbourne said. “I came across Towle’s Hardware.” Chadbourne contacted Wheelock to learn more about the opportunity. “I wanted to meet with the owners and see what their vision was and see if I could be a good fit,” he said. “Towle’s has been there over 100 years. That’s what really attracted me, seeing the relationship between the family and the community. Once I met with Butch and Chip, it was a no-brainer.” Investment opportunity Born and raised in Portland, Chadbourne pursued finance and economics as an undergraduate in West Virginia. He returned to Maine and worked in inventory management and international seafood trading for Bristol Seafood in Portland. After about four years, he went to work for Key Bank for several years, then for Bank of America, where he was branch manager in Westbrook. In 2019, he went into business for himself to invest in real estate. On Long Island, in Casco Bay, he bought a six-unit residential property called Sunset Landing, to offer as short-term rentals. That venture led him to hardware stores as an investment. “I started needing supplies,” he said. “Every time I bought an item, I found myself at the hardware store, so I started looking at opportunities.” In 2020, he bought Freeport Hardware. In Dixfield, Chadbourne’s plans include expansion of the do-it-yourself home improvement section, the pet section and the garden section, with the addition of a greenhouse and products such as organic soil sourced from Maine companies. “We’re doing that in Freeport and have had a really good response,” he said. Chadbourne will keep the Towle’s name. Hardware stores are important community institutions, he said: “I want to continue the tradition of the local homegrown store that’s meaningful for Maine going forward.”

Red Bull has brought back the Red Bull Flick tournament as they're preparing to set up more 2v2 CS:GO matches for prizes. This year's competition is coming back with a futuristic theme and brand new custom maps to fight on. The tournament will be open to players from around the world, as they will be holding national tournaments and international online qualifiers for the chance to challenge some of the best CS:GO players on the planet in an official pro-am competition. What's more, the competition will conclude with the Red Bull Flick Invitational to be held in Helsinki which will conclude the season. You can read more about the tournament below, with online qualifiers starting on April 24th. If you wish to sign up you can do so at the link above. This year's game mode features capture points, with each duo fighting for control of the map. This will be the first time that a narrative of this kind, along with themed maps and content, has been incorporated into a Red Bull event. Red Bull Flick began in 2019 as a local event in Turkey and is now a prestigious global tournament, with over 45,000 registrations and duos from some of the biggest teams on the scene competing in 2020. For Red Bull Flick 2021, G2 NiKo will join as the official Red Bull Flick Brand Ambassador. As an expert rifler and one of the best CS:GO in-game leaders in the world, NiKo will give fans expert insight and commentary on the top plays of the tournament. Last year's 2020 Red Bull Flick Pro EU Invitational saw exciting upsets and incredible duos from Team Vitality, BIG Clan, ENCE and G2, with Team Germany emerging victorious over the likes of Kévin "⁠misutaaa⁠" Rabier and the undisputed best player in the world, Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut. Red Bull Flick 2021 will comprise national tournaments in more than 30 countries and international online qualifiers open to all. Winners will earn a spot in the Red Bull Flick Invitational Helsinki. There they will compete against other regional winners, as well as some of the best pro players in the world. Red Bull Flick has partnered with world-class partners to bring cutting edge hardware to competitors. The tournament welcomes SteelSeries as the new official Peripheral Partner, providing headsets, keyboards and mice to players, ensuring full immersion with tools built for both high performance and durability. Additionally, AOC, the global leader in gaming monitors, returns as the Official Monitor Partner for the event, bringing exceptional visual clarity and ultra-high refresh rates to competitors.

Teinte bleu nuit, lettres entremêlées, forme circulaire… Le nouveau logo de l’Inter de Milan, dévoilé mardi matin par le club italien, comporte d’étranges similitudes avec celui de la marque automobile allemande Volkswagen. Il figurera dès la saison prochaine sur les maillots des hommes d’Antonio Conte (s’il entraîne toujours le club). Jusqu’ici, l’équipe aux 18 scudetti affichait un emblème plus complexe, notamment habillé de doré. Soucieux de changer son image après le Dieselgate, Wolfsbourg avait inauguré son nouveau logo en 2019, avec les lancements de l’ID.3 et de la Golf 8. Le géant automobile avait simplifié son design, retirant les ombrages et mixant les couleurs. Renault, Peugeot ou Kia ont également mis un coup de neuf à leur identité visuelle ces derniers mois. => Le nouveau logo Renault sera inauguré sur la prochaine Mégane => L’histoire du logo Peugeot de 1905 à 2021 De manière amusante, le nouveau logo de l’équipe milanaise aurait pu évoquer une autre marque automobile. Dans les années 1980, les nerazzurri portaient sur leur poitrine le biscione (ou vouivre), créature mythique figurant sur les armes de la famille Visconti, qui régna longtemps sur le duché de Milan. Le même biscione figure aujourd’hui encore sur le logo de la marque milanaise Alfa Romeo. Incidemment, la créature est dessinée en train de dévorer en homme. Il figure également – stylisé – sur le logo de Mediaset fondé par Silvio Berlusconi (et de la chaîne Canale 5, dont la version française, La Cinq, fit un flop). Berlusconi qui fut le principal financier du club rival de l’Internazionale,

Drew Barrymore is expanding her footprint in the lifestyle space with the launch of her own namesake magazine. Barrymore is teaming with Bauer Media Group to launch Drew, a quarterly lifestyle magazine that focuses on many of the actress and talk show host’s passions, including beauty, travel and food. The magazine will debut exclusively at Walmart stores on June 14 at $9.99 and then be available on newsstands nationwide a week later. Barrymore has embarked on other exclusive partnerships with Walmart in the past, including for her Flower Beauty and Flower Home brands, as well as her recently launched kitchenware brand, Beautiful by Drew Barrymore. “I’ve lined my walls with magazine tear sheets since I was like 10 years old,” Barrymore said about why she wanted to launch the magazine. “I have a picture of myself in my bedroom and it’s like floor to ceiling and wall to wall. I’ve always loved magazines because of the paper and the experience. Magazines are such a huge part of my life and they’re such a huge part of my inspiration for everything I do.” Barrymore has been working on the magazine for roughly two years, and was partially inspired to launch it after working on a zine ad campaign for her Flower Beauty brand a few years ago. She will take on the role of founder for Drew, and is teaming with her longtime partners Crystal Meers, who serves as editor in chief, and floral stylist Christy Doramus, who serves as editor at large.

RAMALLAH, Tuesday, March 30, 2021 (WAFA) – Palestine confirmed today 16 deaths of people infected by the coronavirus, along with 1870 new cases, and 2395 recoveries recorded over the last 24 hours, according to Minister of Health Mai Alkaila. She said in her daily report on coronavirus in Palestine that nine people have died in the West Bank, where 1032 new cases were recorded along with the recovery of 1769 patients. The Gaza Strip had six deaths, 785 new cases, and 300 recoveries, while East Jerusalem had one death, 53 new cases, and 326 recoveries. Alkaila said 213 corona patients are getting treatment in intensive care, among them 68 are on ventilators. She also said that a total of 52,449 people in the West Bank have been vaccinated against coronavirus, and 21,515 people in the Gaza Strip.

My vote is DH1 good song

V1 lights, effects

When you typically think of luxury car features, do you envision rich leather seating and extravagant trim? Advanced cruise control and intelligent self-parking? Whatever you’re imagining, I’m betting “dim my headlights so I don’t blind other people” isn’t it. But not only has BMW used its “High Beam Assistant” as an upsell for well over a decade, it’s also charging drivers extra to unlock the safety feature that’s already built into their cars — by buying it as an over-the-air software update. Apparently, this has been going on for nearly two years, but Car Magazine editor Jake Groves brought it to my attention for the first time this week in this viral tweet: Let’s forget the price for a moment, because that’s not what infuriates me. (In the grand scheme of things, £160 isn’t a huge amount for your average BMW buyer to spend.) It’s that the rest of us are depending on BMW drivers being such good citizens that they’ll spend their own money to avoid showing off the power of their blazing headlights, all because a car company locked a perfectly good public safety feature behind a digital paywall. Perhaps there should be a law about this? Don’t expect the US to move on that anytime soon, though; a different technology called adaptive beam headlights are actually still illegal in the United States, while we wait for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to issue a final decision on whether to even allow them, much less encourage their use. That ruling was supposed to come last year. I’ve asked the NHTSA whether there’s been any movement, and I’ll let you know what I hear.