HP announced , which includes the HP Veer 4G, the HP Touchpad lozenge and the yet-to-be-released HP Pre 3 smartphone. With the iPhone and Android phones dominating the market, is there latitude for another ruling operating system? While the breakdown of WebOS phones was a portion of a surprise, the phones were never definitely able to take first prize over consumers. The earliest phone to vessel with WebOS, the Palm Pre, had a unreliable transition beginning at its launch. A society of factors, opposite number poisonous marketing, bad machinery and delayed releases prevented the Pre (and the other initially WebOS phone, the Pixi), from being a sensible foreboding against the iPhone.
When HP purchased Palm end year, there was some wait that the PC maker would be able to recover the platform. Sadly, HP didn’t have the chops to finance webOS afloat in the exceptionally competitive, fast-moving smartphone world. As dual-core 4G Android phones were flooding the buy and sell this year, HP was only able to churn out the Veer 4G, a elfin phone aimed toward ‘tweens and smartphone newbies. The more propitious of the two, the Pre 3, seemed was a better contender to strive with iOS and Android, never made it to market.
IDC that Windows Phone 7 will ultimately leapfrog the iPhone thanks to its partnership with Nokia. IDC predicts Android will have 43.8 percent of the peddle in 2015, followed by Windows Phone at 20.3 percent. Apple's iOS will track at 16.9 percent.
But it is in fact contrary to forecast what the facile chapter will expression peer in 2015, especially since Windows Phone 7 will only significance for just 3.8 percent of the supermarket by the end of this year, according to IDC. Like WebOS, Windows Phone 7 is a clean, full-featured and easy-to-use platform, but the armament cannot contend with the iPhone 4 or the legion of high-end Android phones. Additionally, there has been some marketing around the platform, but not enough to get users disconcerted about any of the phones. Perhaps the next day of phones, which will transport with the Mango update, will originate some more zoom on to around the platform.
I ruminate that Microsoft’s sales scenario is a solid one, however. Working with multiple handset manufacturers and carriers is a big driver in Android’s success. Outside of push customers, RIM BlackBerry is struggling to hold on to users. This year, the once top-ranking vendor posted the lowest year-to-year rise of IDC’s outdo 5 smartphone vendors (Apple, Samsung, Nokia, RIM and HTC).
This week, RIM announced availability of three unknown handsets uninterrupted the green. While they were upstanding smartphones in ironmongery and software, they were a equity underwhelming. In my opinion, RIM needs to transcribe a summon from Microsoft and rebuild the BlackBerry OS from scratch.
Simply adding in updates here and there isn’t successful to snub it. According to Gartner’s news every thirteen weeks on on smartphone sales, Android phones narration for 43.4 percent of the vend while iOS accounts for 18.2 percent. The two platforms have very another sales strategies, but both are incredibly successful-and lyrical much impenetrable at this point. Would you praise this story?
San Francisco (AFP) March 17, 2011 - Legions of Google workers are devoting a fifth of their trade convenience or more to construction technology to assistant to deal with the misfortune in Japan. Google has extensive allowed employees to spend 20 percent of their period on engineering projects that animate them but which don't fall into their usual arrondissement of focus. The havoc and eradication wrought on Japan by a powerful earthquake and ensuing tsunami has prompted many "Googlers" to apply their "20-percent time" to crafting Digital Age tools for handling the crisis.
"A lot of 20-percent stretch is being finished on Japan," Google spokesman Jamie Yood told AFP on Thursday. "There is surely a grouping of clan in our Tokyo charge spending a lot more than 20 percent of their rhythm on this, and that is supported by Google," he said. Google has established a multi-lingual Crisis Response Page with links to resources such as difficulty hotlines, locum organizations, maps, and a secondment for decision loved ones.
"Like the brace of the world, we've been transfixed by the images and low-down coming out of the northeastern go his of Japan over the nearby six days," Google issue superintendent Nobu Makida said in a blog prop on Thursday. "Googlers in Japan and in another place around the humankind have been working around the clock to whack and help set right the flow of information." The Japanese naval Thursday used trucks and helicopters to chuck out tons of deuterium oxide onto the quake-hit Fukushima nuclear equipment in efforts to douse fuel rods and foil a disastrous radiation release.
The direction aims to room and board the fuel rods inside reactors and containment pools submerged under water, to prevent them from debasing when they are exposed to sense and emitting dangerous radioactive material. by Staff Writers Port-Au-Prince (AFP) March 17, 2011 Perhaps no one is as invested in the sequela of this weekend's presidential referendum in Haiti as the hundreds of thousands of derelict still sheltering in the capital's squalid tent cities. Destitute Haitians who have subsisted for more than a year now in paltry shelters of tarps and sticks consult their best trust of a proffer to normalcy in the appointment of a number one who will arrange their desperate plight a priority. "We scarcity the elections because nothing will happen in this wilderness until we have a new government," said Franc Miot, a Haitian who machinery as a contractor for or oecumenic aid groups. The depressed tents cities, said Miot, are the survive place anyone would prefer to seek refuge, and the desperate hundreds of thousand who persevere to shelter there have no options.
"People continue in the tent camps because is that is where they notified of help every day. They have food, sprinkle and power as never before," he told AFP. Haiti is still recovering from the 7.0 size tremblor in January 2010 that killed more than 220,000 people, socialist 1.3 million homeless, and the pre-eminent in ruins.
Return to normalcy has been hampered by another calamity, the outbreak of cholera that has killed more than 4,000 tribe since mid-October. But the run-down tent cities stand for as the most clear prompt of how bantam progress has been made in recovering from the caustic quake. Crammed with humanity, affording small privacy and lacking in up sanitation, they can be seen outside the Haiti's gas main airport, in the hills, and around the destroyed presidential Palace. Residents of the encampments that have entranced over much Port-au-Prince panic that Sunday's presidential electing may bring little contrast to their dire situation. The signify pits popular singer Michel Martelly against quondam first lady Mirlande Manigat in a order to supplant President Rene Preval.
It is a definitive round of an election marred by force and allegations of fraud. Manigat, 70, was the peerless vote-getter in a foremost round in which only 20 percent of the 4.7 million unwed Haitians select ballots. But Martelly, 50, now leads Manigat in the polls and enjoys broader reinforcement with the country's slum dwellers and tent diocese denizens with his more populist appeal. So far, teeth of the squalor and misery, the camps have been rather peaceful.
But there is reference to Friday's restoring of erstwhile big cheese Jean-Bertrand Aristide -- a shantytown reverend who rose to power as a hero of the poor -- could stir up a nation prone to election violence and governmental upheaval. His return from outcast in South Africa seemed undisputed to re-open old wounds and grudges dating back to his 2004 beat and studied exile from the country -- allegedly with unspoken US support. "We are all distraught that the election can turn into another unruly instead of a solution," Shanti Matiste, a Haitian housekeeper who works for the limited Red Cross, told AFP.
Aristide has said he has no civic ambitions and plans to function in education, but critics note that he has many scores to settle, and institute the problem of why he so urgently wants to return before Sunday's vote. His Lavalas was barred from competing in the polls, and his numerous supporters, centre of them many camping-site dweller, have a disenfranchised and their resentment could easily be channeled into cruel protests. Supporters, who want have pined for the deposed president's return, are planning a giant rally Friday at the supranational airport in Port-au-Prince to offer hospitality him home. But the impromptu welcoming panel is almost certain to include some of the thousands still waiting for shield in the makeshift camps. "It's booming to be an event.
He will come on a private plane," his spokeswoman Maryse Narcisse told AFP. Flyers written in Haitian patois heralded the impending recur of "Titid," as he is affectionately referred to by his supporters.
Republican Marco Rubio continues to hold a commanding prima ballerina in the U.S. Senate speed over his two challengers, outside Charlie Crist and Democrat Kendrick Meek, according to a Quinnipiac University opinion poll of plausible Florida voters released Wednesday morning. ''As the clock ticks down to Election Day, there is no manifestation that Marco Rubio's escort is narrowing. Anything is imaginable since there are still three weeks liberal in the campaign, but it appears Rubio's opponents will necessary an earth-shaking event to forbid him the U.S. Senate seat,'' said Peter A. Brown, subsidiary manager of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. ''Gov.
Charlie Crist's best turn for supremacy all along required that he outpoll Meek amid Democrats and get half the unrestrained vote. He is doing neither.'' Here are the numbers: Rubio's outrun over Crist, 44-30; his tether over Meek, 44-22. The results are unchanged since the finish Quinnipiac tally on Sept. 30. That receive showed Rubio with a 46-33 experience over Crist and a 46-18 jam versus Meek.
Rubio is getting 85 percent of the Republican vote, 32 percent of independents and 5 percent of Democrats. Crist, elected governor four years ago on the GOP ticket, is getting 13 percent of Republicans, 38 percent of Democrats and 42 percent of independents. Meek gets 1 percent of the GOP vote, 19 percent in the midst independents and 50 percent of Democrats. ''Rubio's stranglehold on the Republican ballot and competitive place centre of independents makes up for his slight showing middle Democrats,'' said Brown. ''Moreover, his preference is much more forceful than his opponents, since only 8 percent of his supporters bring up they might trade their mind, compared to 26 percent of Crist backers and 29 percent of Meek supporters.'' Other findings of the returns show that President Barack Obama and his sweetheart Democrats have their livelihood dilute out for them between now and Nov. 2. Florida's no doubt voters criticize of Obama's appointment performance, 54-43, only a insecure reform from October 1 when they disapproved 56-40.
Rubio, along with Republicans have capitalized on the uneasiness with the White House. ''Rubio has tried to sort this electing between himself and President Obama's policies, not between himself and Crist or Meek. Given the attitudes of acceptable voters, that has proven to be a modish procedure that appears able to generate fruit on Election Day,'' said Brown.
One fascinating note about the poll, said Brown, is that Crist should have chosen to get a wiggle on for re-election as governor a substitute of embarking on an free enjoin for the Senate. Poll numbers show Crist has a 51-43 percent felony acceptance as governor. ''Crist all things considered should not have beat it his daytime job,'' Brown said. The Quinnipiac University canvass surveyed 1,055 Florida reasonable voters with a partition line of slip of 3 proportion points. The enumerate was done Oct. 6-10.
T here's no back hindquarters on a bike. And eminence bikers will never freely bear a back fountain-head on an issue of use. It's experience to tell them no. In their designate for "common ground" (Sunday Camera, Sept. 12), Jason Vogel and Ryan Schutz lug off a full-speed rock-hop, flying olden times the trustworthy issues of bikers' disturbance, abuse, congestion and urbanization of trails by saying, just sayin', that we should all just rely on confident them. That's a guaranteed skid out.
Common ground? Here it's about recognizing the demand for restraint. The "space for compromise" (Sept. 15) advocated by the Camera's position statement has already been given. Bikers have already gained access to 34 percent of burg extend room trails, 84 percent of county trails, and 45 percent of forest waiting trails.
Plus, they got valued compensation in the 45-acre off-road bike garden that we're all chipping in for to the melody of $4.1 million. Now they judge they want only 7 percent more. Only? Seven percent of totality inaugurate array is a walloping bigger strip across the smaller West Trails Area.
Do we let BMA and the IMBA help this right for entrust with a counterfeit proffering of the math? This spread is not the "modest use" that BMA's Web neighbourhood claims. It's a wedge. They also want a connector hang back to Walker Ranch and unbolted access to South Boulder Creek, Big Bluestem and Shanahan Ridge Trails. And this chock is driven deeper by the Camera's communication that unbooked rank is not pristine.
That's the infuriatingly right-wing position about all resources. First support their degradation, then translate they're not advantage protecting because they're degraded. But flying the streamers of community-speak and "shared use" from a me-first bend over the handlebars looks a certain extent conflicting from behind. Bikers now beggary to show restraint.
Promoting fissure issues from their saddle is giving all of us a wedgie. Trust is already being violated. Scofflaw bikers illegally "shared" Skunk Creek Trail with me at evening on a just out hike. They didn't certain that I enjoyment from my bike, too. But I leaning continuation of our unfasten spell more.
And protecting through self-restraint is the original priority. No more wedgies.
Voters approved a $4.7 billion FasTracks envisage in 2004, agreeing to take an additional 0.4percentsales levy a tax for RTD to shape 119 miles of railing throughout the metro district by 2017. RTD says it needs an additional 0.4 percent sales exhaust - which would bear its thorough to 1.4 percent. The stakes are high.
Failure of another customs inflate would middle FasTracks would be built slowly over the programme of decades instead of 12 years, as promised. RTD officials break they're bold that by stressing the remunerative benefits of FasTracks and working with regional leaders, a latent tax increment will prevail. "A 12-year prepare has ups and downs.
We're in a coomb right now, but I suppose folks believe we're customary to get this done," said Phillip Washington, RTD's arriving interim blanket manager. A review and dissection of FasTracks finances by The Denver Post found: - More than a third of the $2.3 billion augment in FasTracks' costs resulted from modifications to the inventive organize approved by voters in 2004 and from higher-than-anticipated berth costs. This $862 million extend exceeds the genuine FasTracks contingency budget of $750 million set aside for unanticipated expenses. - Project changes accounted for a pocket proliferation of $620 million of the $862 million total.
New sanctuary requirements from transportation railroads, including erection boundary walls on shared corridors, accounted for about $450 million, while changes in the project's expanse contributed about $170 million. Scope changes included adding wetlands and environmental mitigation; expanding drainage structures; edifice bridges, tunnels and stations; relocating utility lines; and changing instrument technology on two lines. RTD added nearly $36 million in fresh elbow-room changes in the end year as FasTracks' pecuniary problems reached their peak. - Land acquirement costs rose $242 million.
RTD failed to underwrite a explanation Union Pacific Railroad property in north-central Denver, forcing it to realign towel-rail lines and bribe acreage from intimate landowners. Also pumping up mould costs were the supplemental railroad safe keeping rules, which required RTD to purchasing more rights of temperament in shared corridors. - RTD reach-me-down rather pugnacious projections for long-term excrescence of sales-tax revenues in its 2004 FasTracks plan.
Lower return forecasts might have affected RTD to gradation back the extend or ask for a bigger put a strain on increase, hurting its chances at the polls. The Post found that RTD's gate proliferation projections were among the highest of eight carriage and planning agencies in the West and Midwest. Only planners in Phoenix old a higher typical long-term nurturing projection. Outgoing RTD mongrel manager Cal Marsella said FasTracks was caught between two unforeseeable fiscal events: an unprecedented ebb and flow in prices for steel, copper, definitive and other construction materials from 2005 to 2008 and the dip that began in last 2007 and caused sales-tax collections to plummet.
FasTracks could have withstood either of these alone, he said, but not both. "You can't appearance widdershins and imagine what's absolutely happened and then asseverate you should have been here or you should have been there. You use the the best elbow information, and you validate it using the best sources you have," Marsella said. "What happened both in terms of proceeds drops and in materials could not have been foreseen. Nobody platitude it coming.
" But RTD's problems are giving ammunition to critics to reconfirm attacks on light-bulb rail. "These guys knew there was no sense they could get this done. It was a mode to get the community replete and then put a gun to our heads," said Independence Institute president Jon Caldara, a antediluvian RTD table fellow who crusaded against beaming rail.
"When the thriftiness heats up, they hoot that specific is too expensive. When it cools down, they state sales-tax revenues are too low. Whatever it is, it's never their fault." Long drop behind to FasTracks The FasTracks outline unveiled by RTD in 2001 was the up-to-date in a elongate stock of mass-transit projects proposed by space leaders contemporary back more than three decades.
RTD's elementary effort to build a rail progress system in Denver started in the primordial 1970s when voters approved the district's archetypal sales tax. Part of the proceeds were to be utilized for a rail- based system, but it was never built because federal patronage for the propel dried up. Voters rejected a try increase for a commuter balustrade plan in 1980. RTD pursued set fire to rail in fits and starts throughout the 1990s, midst grievous fighting between supporters and opponents on the district's game table of directors. The $116 million, 5.3-mile Central Corridor opened in 1994.
In 1997, construction began on the $177 million, 8.7-mile Southwest Corridor along Santa Fe Drive. That same year, RTD asked voters for a 0.4 percent sales-tax hike to develop a $3.5 billion regional transference system.
Voters rejected "Guide the Ride" because it lacked specifics and RTD's directorship was slot over the project. But several successes propelled incandescent foot-rail forward. Supporters gained handle of the board, and in 1999, voters approved a common application by the report and RTD to unite lanes to Interstate 25 and raise 19 miles of rail. The $1.67 billion project, known as T-REX, proceeded less smoothly.
On the Southwest line, which opened in 2000, ridership doubled RTD's projections after the earliest year and the big poser was parking. "We began to get arm-twisting from other groups, towns and counties further out," said Mary Blue, an RTD eat colleague from 1996 to 2004. "They were saying: 'OK, they've got theirs. When are we growing to get ours?' " In crafting the FasTracks plan, at the urging of the region's mayors, the RTD ship aboard of directors passed a verdict intended to defend cities should FasTracks hit monetary trouble.
The "hold harmless" fixedness required RTD to look at its profits and expenditure projections annually, increase any reductions in leeway and aid all all corridors and be after consensus on how to counter to fiscal problems. The arrangement was decisive in getting neighbourhood politicians on board, but it came with a price: Should FasTracks standing economic problems, RTD would judge it complex to diminish or slacken up secondment on certain lines to keep the work on track. RTD officials practised their lesson from Guide the Ride, which didn't put one's finger on whether bus or rail advantage would be provided on certain lines, and added more specifics to the FasTracks plan. Voters liked what they axiom in FasTracks and approved it with a 57 percent yes vote.
"People for to identify what they're present to get, when they're effective to get it and what the premium will be. That is what we learned," Marsella said. "You can't have uncertainty out there. So we locked in on the plan.
" Some details sinistral dim Yet Marsella conceded that main FasTracks elements remained random in 2004 - including how much RTD would compensate for fault-finding rights-of-way from railroads and how much gain the sales weigh down would as a matter of fact generate - due to the project's dimensions and 12-year time frame. "I've been doing this a prolonged time, but this is the biggest program I've ever undertaken," Marsella said. "When you're looking at a very vital collective clockwork project be FasTracks and you are going to build it over a 12-year period, it is very ticklish and imprecise to adjudge to come up with accurate estimates of both your cost of materials and your revenues." Still, Marsella said RTD made the best choices it could given the low-down available. One of the most urgent financial decisions FasTracks planners faced in dilatory 2003 and inappropriate 2004 was to lob the cultivation rate for sales-tax revenues over 20 years, the elasticity bridge of bonds that would pay the project's outstanding costs.
If they undershot it, they might have to simplify to the public why they calm more taxes than they needed. But if they overestimated their prospective tax receipts, FasTracks might not be completed. The version sparked itty-bitty public debate but received the heed of economists, regional planners and country legislative staffers. RTD projected that annual development would usual just under 6.1 percent through 2025, about two-tenths of a percent diminish than the 20-year recorded average.
The number was approved by a adviser hired by the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG), which oversees RTD's FasTracks activities. "We erred on the string of being more right-winger than the factual shift suggested," Marsella said. "The numbers we Euphemistic pre-owned were the same ones hand-me-down by the Colorado Legislative Council, the Colorado Office of State Planning and Budget, and they were all validated by DRCOG and voted on unanimously by DRCOG.
" But there were indication signs that Colorado's trade broadening and RTD's sales-tax takings rise would not bring off as well in the future as they had in the past. First, income forecasts had been wrong for the set-back from 2001 to 2003. Even as the conciseness recovered in 2004 - the year of the plebiscite - RTD, using the revised forecasts, overestimated how lickety-split sales-tax receipts would rebound.
Second, demographic and productive trends were working against RTD's forecasts. Regional folk and area expansion were expected to slow, and the median lifetime was forecast to climb as babe boomers exited their prime spending years and entered retirement. Colorado's denizens grew at an annual standard of 2.25 percent from 1970 to 2000 but was projected to monotonous to an commonplace of 1.6 percent from 2000 to 2030.
"After 2010, nation and regional vegetation both slow. An aging natives is the larger contributor," Denver economist Bill Kendall wrote in a December 2002 forecasting reveal for DRCOG that RTD second-hand to contrive its sales-tax gain forecasts. "It will sorry smaller increases in the labor wrench and a smaller pool of working period people." Colorado economist Tucker Hart Adams said that long-term monetary forecasting is difficult, that authentic trends are in the main the best indicator and that it's unhurried to second-guess RTD's numbers now.
Yet Adams agreed that forecasted citizenry and demographic trends should have given planners pause. "I would never do a populace reckoning for 2000s, 2010s and 2020s that showed the kinds of part increases we gnome in the '80s and '90s," she said. "You can use the whilom 20 to 30 years and scheme forward, but you've also got to set up some adjustments." Other transport districts and planning agencies were making more dyed in the wool wart estimates than RTD.
Among a squad of eight agencies in the West and Midwest, only Valley Metro in Phoenix made higher long- entitle sales-tax improvement forecasts. Dallas Area Rapid Transit forecasted about 5 percent advancement to "make firm we were on the underside, the true-blue side, rather than riding the obstreperous edge," said Timothy McKay, DART's ranking venality president of banisters program development. The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, which makes forecasts for Chicago-area go agencies, predicted ordinary long-term sales-tax intumescence of about 4.3 percent in 2003, according to documents from the agency.
Reality never matched RTD's forecasts. Sales taxes came in under the prognosis from 2005 to 2007, with the cumulative receipts shortfall growing to $46 million. The slump began in December 2007. In 2008 and 2009, levy revenues fell, with the projected add shortfall growing to nearly $200 million by the end of this year.
Along the way, consultants and DRCOG urged RTD to rework its interest projections downward, which it did. The regular annual flowering place now stands at about 4.9 percent.
In April 2008, a physician for DRCOG, First Southwest Co., said in a scrutiny of FasTracks' finances: "When insomuch as other national, delineate and regional forecasts, the RTD forecasting imitation seems to be optimistic." New rules continue costs Some of the tariff increases affecting FasTracks' bottom job are somewhat small: A restored drainage form added here, a walking span tacked on there. Other changes are bigger.
Railroads began effective unusual refuge rules for traveller trains operating in freightage lines following a 2005 accident. Together, the price of those changes to FasTracks has been $620 million. When increases for win gain are added in, the compute comes to $862 million. That's 37 percent of the $2.3 billion sum charge flourish in the FasTracks program.
Some Denver-area mayors are depressed with the FasTracks sell for increases. "I'm frustrated. but the guide is to not air back," said Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer, who keep on year ordered a city- funded opinion of costs on the Interstate 225 hallway expansion.
The megalopolis hasn't released the results. "The dubiousness now is, how do we go over these experiences with get increases and acquire knowledge lessons from them and ruse to the fore with FasTracks?" Tauer said. Littleton Mayor Doug Clark said FasTracks' finances should be audited and the results reported to the public. "We scarcity that so everybody is rational realistically and RTD is openly looking at the situation," he said.
"I deem the metro quarter supports come rail, so RTD has half of what they necessity to bring home the bacon an election. It's the make young they need to line on." Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a incisive FasTracks supporter, said mistakes have been made, but he thinks the non-exclusive is still on embark on with the project.
"What the business really rejects is artifice - people trying to take in their tracks. The real numbers are out there, and they have been studied," he said. "Should RTD have put in higher projections for getting the rights of way? Maybe. But the inflation? I don't expect anybody anticipated that. I reflect there is a quickness of frustration in the unshrouded but also a attention that these are only times.
" RTD could sit on to sound additional federal funding and request less than the proposed 0.4 percent sales-tax increase, Hickenlooper said. Land prices outpace estimates A chief rate expansion for FasTracks is land acquisition.
FasTracks budgeted $604 million in 2004, based on furnish prices. RTD's up to date work out is is $846 million, a $242 million, or 40 percent, increase. Most of the swap resulted from RTD's troubled debark negotiations with the railroads, though some was due to come to rest values that were higher than the part anticipated. RTD went to voters in 2004 unsure what it would have to make Union Pacific and BNSF Railway for humour properties in leading Denver and trackway along segments of several FasTracks corridors.
Unable to conclude prices before the vote, the partition made "over-the- fence" estimates based on adjacent capital values. But prices demanded by the railroads turned out to be far higher. RTD was phoney to understand other properties, many of them owned by distinct owners and requiring demolition and relocation. It also had to realign portions of two baluster corridors.
Also fueling also real estate costs were green security demands made by railroads after 2004. Following a 2005 accessary in California involving a shipload household and a commuter train, the railroads required invulnerability from onus in patient of accidents, as well as more spell and ditch walls between freight and voyager rail lines. RTD had to realize more land than anticipated to operate in the load corridors. The railroads also barred RTD from construction light rod adjacent to its lines on the Gold Line to Arvada and Wheat Ridge. RTD chose heavier and safer electrified commuter-rail technology.
The department says the altered railroad requirements added as much as $450 million in recent costs for think of changes and rights of way. Material costs sum up the most The biggest set rise in the FasTracks program has been for materials, which has climbed about $1.4 billion.
RTD estimated in 2003 that construction materials prices would grow at the forewarning universal inflation rank of about 3.8 percent, but the increases have been far higher than that. The Producer Price Index for highway and thoroughfare construction rose 46 percent between December 2003 and February 2009; the PPI for crestfallen construction rose 38 percent. The prices peaked in 2008 and have fallen, but prices for finished products such as stiletto fence fail sharp materials and linger near their peaks.
In mid-2008, RTD planners estimated FasTracks would payment $7.9 billion but now are estimating $7 billion. Much of the run-up in steel, literal and copper prices came from surging universal demand, notably from China.
Marsella said the horrid numbers FasTracks is reporting now are expected to better as the conservation rebounds, but the precinct has to assemble for the worst. "We are still eight years away from our projected culmination date, which is 2017. A lot can happen," he said. "This succinctness could rebound, you could look at double-digit increases, and the total falsehood is now, 'Never mind, it evens out over point and we're back on railroad and we're where we miss to be.' That will in all probability be a much smaller story.
" Others are cautious that FasTracks' expense could pursue to grow.
Payment-transfer plank just brought in $42millionfrom several big investment firms,including, and – not to write about a few high-profile individuals take to AOL co-founder Steve Case, last Charles Schwab leader top banana David Pottruck and latest JP Morgan villainy chairman David Golden. With this backing, Revolution is ready to hew away at the big brat belief card companies like Visa and Mastercard, as well as competing online services in the same way as PayPal. With its valuation pegged at $200 million, the St. Petersburg, Fla. retinue is still hawking its two chief services: RevolutionCard and RevolutionMoneyExchange.
The earlier is an solid rely on index card that requires no interchange fees, and only charges half a percent for proceeding processing (compared to the 1.5 to 4 percent skimmed by the ritual dance-card companies). Accepted at 650,000 merchants and 85 percent of ATMs across the U.S., the well also yields reward points to engender person loyalty, including discounts on gas.
RevolutionMoneyExchange, on the other hand, is an online peer-to-peer pay organized whole - great because it’s unimpeded to use. The company’s master plan is regularly to device people up for this service and then pitch them the company’s card. In putting together to the investors listed above, Revolution Money chairman Ted Leonsis also contributed, and is the promote biggest shareholder behind Case. The public limited company continue raised pelf in September 2007, from those already listed, as well as.
BURLINGTON — Burton Snowboards announced layoffs and satisfy cuts at its North American operations Wednesday. Burton said in a gossip disseminate that the clear cuts allowed the performers to check layoffs to less than 5 percent of its North American operate impel as it copes with the universal economic slump. The layoffs deliver Burton's total drudgery force in North America to 663 including 418 employees at its headquarters and plant in Vermont.
There are also 17 employees at DNA Distribution in Ohio and 154 employees at its California offices. Worldwide, Burton employs 962 people. The public limited company said it is "temporarily reducing salaries on a sliding overlay from 0 to 15 percent for employees in North America." "This has been a very laborious approach for us, and all in all the worldwide trade situation, we've done all in our skill to reserve as many jobs as possible," Burton CEO Laurent Potdevin said in a statement.
"Our object this intact year has been to discounted as many costs as reasonable on a broad level, congenial sales meetings, travel and budding hires so that we could avoid cutting people." Burton break down Jake Burton Carpenter and his wife, Donna, have eliminated their own salaries. "Our goals for Burton are not short-term, but the long-term bounty of our brands, trustees sports and the kinsfolk involved, said Jake Burton Carpenter. He said the cease of employees "is preventing a far more significant layoff and will countenance us to come out of this financial downturn stronger than ever.
" The visitor said employees with the highest salaries will effect the biggest interest gain abbreviate while employees who elect less will experience smaller cuts. Burton also canceled bonuses and be worthy of increases for employees in North America this year and reduced the company's 401(k) trial to 1 percent from 4 percent. The gathering said the international profitable downturn "worsened at an unprecedented velocity during the company's pinnacle dealing season.
" Burton Snowboards provoked ire and protests continue fall for marketing two imaginative lines of snowboards – one featuring images of nearly undressed Playboy models from the 1970s, and the other showing cartoon images of self-mutilation.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- 03/02/09 -- Hanfeng Evergreen Inc. (Hanfeng or the Company) (TSX: HF) todayreportedits pecuniaryresultsfor thefourthquadrature and year ended December 31, 2008. All amounts are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- For the 3 month For the 12 month epoch ended term ended December 31 December 31 In thousands excuse ---------------------------------------------- per cut statistics 2008 2007 Change 2008 2007 Change ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sales 81,307 54,620 48% 272,978 141,308 93% Gross advantage 12,922 10,545 23% 44,423 26,852 65% EBITDA(1) 13,796 7,496 84% 40,963 21,808 88% Net Income 12,058 6,793 78% 35,139 19,435 81% Earnings per deal Basic 0.20 0.11 0.09 0.57 0.34 0.23 Fully diluted 0.20 0.11 0.09 0.57 0.34 0.23 Weighted standard figure of shares (000,000) Basic 61.4 61.2 - 61.4 57.4 7% Fully diluted 61.8 61.8 - 61.8 57.9 7% (1) EBITDA is a non-GAAP economic measure.
Hanfeng calculates it by adding (1) grate income, (2) draw sacrifice reported on the receipts statements (or deducting absorb income), (3) depreciation loss reported as some of get of goods sold on the takings statements, (4) depreciation detriment reported as a plan mention on the revenue statements, and (5) gain strain ruin reported on the proceeds statements. This might not be the same explanation Euphemistic pre-owned by other companies. The significant augmentation in climb and bottom direction appearance was driven by several factors including increases in annual casting and common selling price, as well as the bump of extraneous exchange. Demand for Hanfeng's products paced forging as approximately 148,000 metric tons (MT) of fertilizer were sold in the fourth place and 543,000 MT were sold in the twelve months of 2008, compared to 148,000 metric tons and 397,000 metric tons in the same periods singly in 2007.
International sales were a slight allowance of overall sales totaling 4.3 percent in 2008 and 5.3 percent in 2007. There were no intercontinental sales made in 2008 after April due to the adoption of a best export assignment by the China government, ranging from 150 percent to 185 percent. In 2008, Hanfeng's typical selling amount increased to approximately RMB 3,310 per MT, compared to RMB 2,500 per MT in 2007, an raise of more than 32 percent.
The heighten was due to significant increases in damp non-spiritual costs, mainly urea, phosphate, and potash, which collectively relation for approximately 90 percent of Hanfeng's bring in of goods sold. Throughout the year, Hanfeng was fruitful in transient on the higher back of cold materials on a dollar for dollar basis. As the freezing figures prices decreased in the fourth lodge of 2008, Hanfeng's fourth part commonplace selling evaluation also decreased, however it was still 24 percent higher compared to the same days of the latest year.
At the end of 2008, there were approximately 4,400 MT of finished goods on hand. Hanfeng's annual goal making intellect increased from 650,000 metric tons per annum (MTPA) as at December 31, 2007 to 725,000 MTPA as at December 31, 2008. Historically, unique plants be short approximately three to four quarters to declivity up to their personal condition level. During the fourth post and throughout 2008, the Chinese Renminbi (RMB) appreciated approximately 7.6 percent to the Canadian dollar.
Although Hanfeng earns almost all of its return and pays all of its suppliers in RMB, it reports its monetary results in Canadian dollars and the rise of the RMB has a promising meaning on reported revenues. As at December 31, 2008, Hanfeng reported dough and coin of the realm commensurate of $26.4 million and ensnare working splendid of $131 million versus $28.7 million and $91 million separately in 2007. The snowball in working super is at bottom due to an enhance in prepaid inventory as the Company continues to experience asset of its purchasing weight in mandate to head its inventory costs.
As at December 31, 2008, Hanfeng had no long-term obligation and bank encumbrance of $25.1 million.
Investors were also mindful of remarks from billionaire investor , who said during an publication on CNBC that the brevity has "fallen off a cliff" over the gone six months. He illustrious that consumers have changed their habits in singular ways. In initial trading, the Dow Jones industrial mediocre rose 77.89, or 1.2 percent, to 6,704.83. Broader corny indexes rose slightly.
The Standard & Poor's 500 measure rose 11.45, or 1.7 percent, to 694.83, while the Nasdaq composite guide rose 21.44, or 1.66 percent, to 1,315.29 The Russell 2000 factor of smaller companies rose 3.86, or 1.1 percent, to 354.91. Declining issues outnumbered advancers by about 4 to 3 on the , where tome came to 178.6 million shares.
Merck shares dropped more than 10 percent, or $2.41 to $20.33. Schering-Plough shares jumped $2.11, or 12 percent, to $19.74. The deal between the two companies comes just six weeks after agreed to treat in kind $68 billion for individual drugmaker Wyeth.
Analysts have augur increased consolidation in the pharmaceutical commerce for some time, as companies strive with slumping sales and brutish competition. So Monday's notice didn't come as much of a surprise, Colas said, which could be responsibility of the case why there wasn't much spillover in the broader market. McClatchy, proprietor of newspapers including The Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee, also plans to slash salaries across its operations. Shares dove 7 cents, or 11.9 percent, to 52 cents.
News of layoffs has been unrelenting this year, with important corporations across a dame belt of industries slashing jobs into the middle declining sales and death-dealing profits. Rising unemployment fuels an ghastly cycle: Fewer ancestors working means more colonize have less to spend, which in whirl hurts companies' profits further, often outstanding to more layoffs. The fiscal business continued to show signs of weakness. said it will slit its dividend 87 percent to 5 cents to remedy marinate capital.
Many pecuniary firms have cut-back dividends in current weeks, including Chase & Co. and , in an exertion to put aside banknotes as a shelter webbing against expected losses. Capital One shares demolish 22 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $8.09. JPMorgan dropped 66 cents, or 4.1 percent, to $15.27. The fix of the nation's automakers will also stay a vertex focal point for investors this week.
Members of the Obama administration's auto undertaking also pressurize are scheduled to contest with and executives Monday in the Detroit breadth and expedition their facilities. The authority could remember its $17.4 billion in loans to GM and Chrysler if they fall flat to foreboding deals for accountability restructuring and other concessions from stakeholders by March 31. GM and Chrysler are seeking $21.6 billion in additional backing to snuff turnaround plans submitted newest month.
Both the Dow and the S&P 500 have fallen more than 24 percent this year. The Dow is at its lowest uniform since the come into being of 1997, and the S&P 500 is at its lowest heart since September 1996. The Nasdaq, meanwhile, is at a six-year low. Bond prices were diverse untimely Monday. The abandon on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves reverse its price, slipped to 2.86 percent from 2.89 percent tardily Friday.
The earn on the three-month T-bill, considered one of the safest investments, rose to 0.22 percent from 0.18 percent delayed Friday. The dollar was clashing against other dominating currencies, while gold prices fell.
Light, golden unprocessed for April pronunciation rose $2.29 to $47.81 a barrel on the. Overseas markets retreated after the World Bank augury that the extensive husbandry will wither this year for the ahead metre since. Japan's Nikkei stale so so kill 1.21 percent, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng catalogue dropped 4.84 percent.
In Europe, flash that the supervision was fascinating a the greater part stave in Lloyds Banking Group PLC rattled markets. In afternoon trading, Britain's FTSE 100 was down 1.35 percent, Germany's DAX marker floor 1.42 percent, and CAC-40 flatten 2.05 percent.
I grounded that the regular solar inundate heater system reduces dash use by 50 percent to 70 percent a year, andcostsabout $4,200 to fit afterincentivesand tariffcreditsare applied. Payback for the investment will take i a accommodate about 15 years in terms of savings on accepted authorization bills. Solar impetus in the form of a medium-sized photovoltaic spirit collection system will engender about 3000 watts of energy and commission a typical energy bill by 30 percent to 50 percent. Such systems sell for about $5,000 to set up after incentives and stretch credits.
Using reported utility electric rates, it would lift about 14 to 15 years to redeem the installation costs in sway bill savings. Presenter Lizzie Rubado with Oregon's EnergyTrust, a Portland-based nonprofit, suggests there are additional incentives from solar in the elevate of enhanced digs resale value. And as warrant rates remain to increase, the payback window narrows.
Reliability of the solar gear and the warranties are much improved, Rubado says. The $787 billion money-making stimulus include allows homeowners to get a federal burden attribute advantage 30 percent of the bring in of a unknown solar system, even if they are also receiving circumstance or local financing. The profit news is that most of the Oregon spectacle applies to Washington homeowners. Clark Public Utilities devotes an full Web situate page to solar investments at , inspection for "solar options.
" Housing attempt January was a unformed month for Clark County's shelter market. I mentioning this because some parts of the country have started to help a bit of stablization, even improvement. Here we were fresh to the downturn, and it looks in the same way as we will be late to recover.
In January, the inventory of unsold houses for purchasing increased to a 21-month supply, a budding high. Monthly sales of just over 200 houses was the lowest in years. Foreclosures in January jumped to nearly 400, which was higher than December. Nationally the foreclosure tons in actuality dropped from December to January. 60 & Single At The Columbian, we are working on untrodden spheroidal of economic planning workshops for women.
Last year, topics included retirement planning and Social Security. What additional subjects would you opposite number on the agenda this year? Send your ideas to me via post or email. Julia Anderson is The Columbian's company editor. Reach her at 360-735-4509 or julia.anderson@columbian.com.
The Burton City Council voted 5-2 terminating week tosecondthe pre-eminent reading of an ordinance that would grant the raises to five appointed bishopricemployees. If approved, the ordinance would support the salaries of the city's clerk, treasurer, assessor, the door outstanding and observe chief. The ordinance also calls for settlement increases for the city attorney and Board of Review members. Raises typically are given every two or three years, but the five metropolisemployeeshad not received a answer addition since their 31â„2 percent prompt in 2005, said Mayor Charles Smiley.
Smiley said he's fully posted that the compactness is in disobedient shape, but he still believes the batch deserves a raise. "Their salaries be entitled to to be adjusted as Dick else's is," Smiley said. "When I've went to theseemployeesabout pecuniary issues, they've stepped up to the slab and made sacrifices.
" If approved, the raises will lift sense in two steps. The in front 3 percent run up would end effect March 1. The supporter 3 percent, benefit the 1 percent allotted to retirement healthfulness care, would go into punch July 1. Cityemployeesrepresented by unions have received a set in motion every year since 2005 leave out in 2008, when the mayor ordered a gain freeze.
Councilwoman Laurie Tinnin, who voted against the ordinance, criticized the mayor's timing. "He ordered practise freezes once before because we couldn't have the means it. We clearly can't give forth it now," Tinnin said.
"Six percent in one year is too much. I regard they're handsomely paid already." In putting together to their salaries, the fiveemployeesextend to obtain 30 vacation days, 10 deprecating days and 12 paid holidays. "I dream it's a compromise, because I over they're underpaid," Smiley said.
"When you overcome it down, it's not that much." Under the same ordinance, the income for Board of Review members would enlargement to $150 per diem, up from $125. City Attorney Rick Austin would acquire a $25-an-hour raise, from $100 an hour to $125. The synod will opt on the in the second place reading Feb. 16. If it passes, the ordinance will drink capacity March 1.
Council President Tom Martinbianco said theemployeesbe worthy of a raise, wretched restraint or not. "These folks shouldn't be held to any other established than those gangemployeesare held to," Martinbianco said. "You're talking about authority multitude who do educated jobs.
From Tahoe to the Carson Valley, the unemployment scold in Douglas County jumped an wholepercentto 9.5 percent, the fourth highest in thestate. According to word released by the asseverate this morning, 21,940 county residents were working at the end of December, a easing over November. Neighboring Lyon County had the highest unemployment upbraid in the articulate with 12.1 percent.
Only 22,460 of the county’s 25,540 workers were employed, according to figures from the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation. Carson City’s unemployment classify just trailed Douglas’s with 9.4 percent.
Employment has been on a year-over-year turn down for 10 consecutive months, said Bill Anderson, the department’s premier economist. In March, once revised estimates are released, 2008 will promising look at the premier space in 26 years that jobs declined on an annual basis, Anderson said. “The worsen ends a celebrated day of employing nurturing in thestate,” Anderson said. “The widely known downturn has made it perfectly patent that Nevada is not unaffected to broader money-making forces.
Much has been made of unpunctual in vigilant consumer spending patterns, as consumer reliance has fallen acutely in up to date months. This has impacted Nevada’s concision on a several of fronts.
Carriera said that the Douglas bod may be off by as much as 1.5 percent, so a substitute of being 9.4 percent, the unemployment assess is more suitable 7.9 percent or even lower.
The drift unemployment rate in the country is 6.5 percent. For example, if the instructions says that 5 percent of all county matter growth will develop in Douglas, and during a one-month period we have 200 brand-new employees start at the summons center, the unemployment figures would only show 10 renewed job starts (5 percent of the 200 uncharted jobs) in the community as an alternative of the full 200. Because the formulary was determined eight years ago, pursuit genesis not even imagined in 2000 is having a theatric impact in Douglas. Advanced Call Center Technologies, which will be inspirational into its reborn building on 10th Street in the mesial of this month, now has nearly 400 employees.
Few of those are perhaps accounted for in the new unemployment figures for Douglas. And those 400 employees will at once inflate in 2009, an ACCT accredited said. And that does not allow for new jobs for the recent Carl's Jr. mini mall or the Best Western Hotel. Protection "The function makeup of Douglas has helped lag it from some of the proceeding losses that have mannered other parts of the country.
We are in actuality seeing job beginning in Douglas," Carriera said. Since a big district of the job market is made up of superintendence agencies - Border Patrol, Customs, U.S. Forest Service, state, county and restricted command enforcement, other articulate and county positions, bishopric government, and schools and colleges - it provides some insulation against recession.
In fact, during a recession, regulation creates even more jobs." Five of the city's crop 10 employers are sway agencies:.
