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On Veterans Day weekend, a group of Vietnam veterans, including myself, had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of flying from Salt Lake City to visit Washington, D.C., and the various memorials, including the Vietnam War Memorial.
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This all occurred as the result of Utah Honor Flight and the generous sponsorship of Nate Wade Subaru of Salt Lake City.
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I want to thank Utah Honor Flight chairman Mike Turner, Steve Snow, the Honor Flight staff and Nate Wade Subaru, all whose selflessness and dedication to veterans saw to it that this group of Vietnam veterans had the opportunity of feeling appreciated and recognized.
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For most, if not every, veteran returning to Salt Lake City from D.C., we experienced the long-overdue feeling of being "welcomed home." People in the Salt Lake City and Baltimore airports overwhelmed us with their applause, handshakes and greetings of "Welcome home" and "Thank you for your service." I believe that I can speak for many of the vets in saying that our hearts were filled by these gestures and our eyes a bit teary.
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Once again, thanks to the Honor Flight personnel and especially Nate Wade Subaru for making this possible. Your efforts were over the top and very much appreciated.
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BROCKTON, MASS. (WHDH) - Discount retailer Ocean State Job Lot announced Tuesday that it has purchased six former Toys “R” Us locations and has agreed to a long-term lease at a seventh.
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The Rhode Island-based chain’s expansion includes new locations in Brockton, North Dartmouth, and Salem, New Hampshire.
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“The recent closure of Toys “R” Us retail stores has allowed Ocean State Job Lot to acquire seven outstanding locations at an extraordinary price,” Ocean State Job Lot Principal Owner and CEO Marc Perlman said.
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Additional locations include one store in New York and three in Pennsylvania, which is a new market for the company.
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Ocean State Job Lot currently has 133 stores across New England, New Jersey, and New York.
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The high-profile disclosure over the weekend of the GhostNet cyberespionage ring that targeted 1295 computers in more than 100 countries underscores how highly targeted and sophisticated attacks, often run by criminals, are changing the security landscape, according to a security researcher at Symantec.
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"How much is the landscape changing? It's changing drastically," said Joe Pasqua, vice president of research at Symantec Research Labs.
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GhostNet, documented in a report released on Sunday by the SecDev Group's Information Warfare Monitor and the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto, used malware and social engineering to give attackers full access to compromised computers. It also let attackers control the video cameras and microphones of these computers, letting them remotely monitor activity in the room where the computer was located.
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"It's another example of the sophistication of the types of attacks that are being put together," Pasqua said.
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The highly targeted nature of GhostNet and similar attacks makes it difficult for antivirus vendors to respond quickly.
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"In the old days, you had a threat that targeted hundreds of thousands of people. It was extremely likely that Symantec was going to have a copy of it very early on and the vast majority of those hundreds of thousands of people were going to be protected," Pasqua said. "Now you have these targeted attacks that may only target a handful of people."
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"By the time we get a sample, it can be too late. They've already gone and morphed into another variant," he said. "There's no end in sight."
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While there has been a lot of speculation that GhostNet was developed and controlled by the Chinese government, criminal groups are just as likely to be responsible for these types of attacks.
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"The profile of the attackers has completely changed over the last few years and has gone from vandals, kids looking to have some fun and make a reputation for themselves, into a very economically motivated body of attackers," Pasqua said. "They are getting more sophisticated in what they're doing and, furthermore, they are acquiring larger resources."
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To help counter the changing security threat, Symantec Research Labs is developing security technologies that are based on virtualization or use reputation to separate trusted Web sites and servers from machines that could pose a threat.
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"My team is also doing advanced research in behavioral analysis as well as automatic signature generation," Pasqua said.
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Symantec's aim is to match the automated generation of new malware variants by attackers. "Instead of fingerprinting specific pieces of malware, in essence we fingerprint these behaviors," he said.
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Technical measures alone can't stop determined attackers. In the case of GhostNet, social engineering was a key component of the attack, used to trick users into downloading malware without their knowledge. This is an area where companies and individuals need to take steps to protect themselves.
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"Education is an important thing, getting the word out on good hygiene and good behavior for users on the Internet is important for everyone," Pasqua said.
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Move to the Center, or Move the Center?
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Greg Sargent and EJ Dionne separately hope that Obama's State of the Union address will be less about moving his presidency to the center than about moving the center to where he is already standing. Good point, though it needn't be one or the other, of course. It could be some of both. Obama and the center could, you know, meet in the middle.
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I'd say that the President calling for new investments and staying silent on the Bowles-Simpson cat food recommendations is pretty darn good, all things considered.
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Good for whom? Without those cat-food recommendations, or something quite like them, the ceiling might fall in on the US economy and whoever occupies the White House sooner than Obama would like. And though Obama, if he tried, might convince the middle of the country that universal health insurance is worth the cost, I'd guess his chances of persuading it that public borrowing is not a problem are pretty slim. It isn't good politics for Democrats to seem unserious about long-term deficit reduction.
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Absolutely, move the center. That should be part of Obama's ambition. But if he fails to take the fiscal problem seriously, he will be getting policy wrong and the politics wrong as well.
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“I thought that was someone else calling to complain about service cuts,” said the councillor as he answered the phone.
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County councillor Mike Devaney was talking about buses – or more to the point the looming loss of them.
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Worried folk throughout Lancashire are waiting to hear if the bus that takes them to work, the shops, the hospital, will still be there for them.
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In particular, the elderly and isolated living in rural locations, for whom the bus is a lifeline, are seriously worried.
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For Lancashire County Council is preparing to give the go-ahead to its plans to save £65m over the next two years, as part of action to tackle a massive funding gap of at least £262m faced by April 2020.
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The plans will result in the loss of an estimated 367 full-time equivalent jobs, in addition to the 1,100 staff who have already left the authority since January 2014.
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At the same time the council will be continuing work on delivering the remaining savings identified last year, adding up to a further saving of almost £148m over the period 2015/16 to 2017/18.
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The decisions follow the announcement in August that the council needs to save an additional £262m by April 2020, to tackle a funding gap caused by reduced government funding and rising demand for services. Last week it announced further cuts in Government funding.
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County Coun Devaney, speaking at the latest meeting of Brindle Parish Council, said the Tory group’s request had been made because of the scale of objections to cuts.
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Coun Devaney, who represents Chorley rural north, said: “With my Conservative colleagues, we’ve said they should go back to their officers and do an assessment route by route rather than have a blanket chop.
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“The 112 and 114 through Cuerden and Lancaster Lane and that is going to stop completley in April. A lot of people rely on that bus route, not just to get to Chorley but kids getting to school.
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Preston’s two park and ride services from Preston Portway and Walton le Dale, provided by Preston Bus, could also be vulnerable, although the council says it still hopes a lifeline can be found.
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Meanwhile other contractors operating subsidised services have been given just 12 weeks’ notice that council funding will end.
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Residents in the Ribble Valley villages of Ribchester and Chipping face being marooned without bus services.
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A £535,000 subsidy keeping four services on the road, linking the villages to Longridge, Whalley, Clitheroe, Mellor, Accrington and Blackburn is to go. Ribchester Parish Council clerk Alan Ormand said talks were continuing to see if there was any chance of providing a partial service, but with a budget of just £8,000 Ribchester Parish Council had no funds to help support a service.
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The increase in new home permits issued in Riverhead Town is once again on trend with national statistics.
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Town building department statistics for 2015 reveal the number of new residences, including manufactured and mobile homes, increased by 14 percent, from 77 to 88.
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Nationally, according to building permit statistics issued by the U.S. Census, the increase in new home starts, widely considered a major economic indicator, went up 12 percent in 2015.
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But while 14 percent in Riverhead Town sounds good, it only represents an increase of 11 homes.
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In 2014, the number of single-family residence permits more than doubled over the previous year. Even so, Mr. Walter said people aren’t spending like they used to.
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“I think a lot of people are just paying off debt and saving money,” he said.
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Mitch Pally, executive director of the Long Island Builders Institute, had the opposite reaction.
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The Riverhead building permit statistics did see alterations to residences increase from 84 in 2014 to 132 in 2015.
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The 88 new residential permits issued in 2015 are still modest compared to numbers from the early 2000s, when 381 permits were issued in 2002 and 271 were in 2003.
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Volunteers organize vital blood drive efforts frequently. But how?
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The iPhone 6 at 6 Months: How Are Sales Holding Up?
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Apple's new iPhone 6 has been on sale for six months now. Is it still selling?
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Last fall, Apple's(NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus took the tech world by storm, boosting iPhone sales into the stratosphere. In the first weekend that the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were on sale, Apple sold more than 10 million of them -- despite not selling any in mainland China, one of Apple's biggest markets.
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Then, in the first full quarter of sales, running from late September to late December, Apple sold a stunning 74.5 million iPhones -- up 46% year over year. The average selling price also increased by 8% compared to the December quarter of 2013, despite some currency headwinds, indicating that many customers opted for more expensive models.
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Thursday marked the six-month anniversary of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus on-sale date. With the second full quarter of sales about to conclude next week, how are Apple's latest and greatest iPhones doing?
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Apple's new iPhones sold at an astounding pace during the first few months that they were available. By late December -- around the end of Apple's Q1 -- the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus together accounted for approximately 20% of all iPhone usage, according to Fiksu.
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While estimates of the size of the iPhone user base vary significantly, 400 million is a reasonable ballpark estimate of the installed base as of December. This implies that there could have been as many as 80 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus phones in use by the end of 2014.
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In practice, early adopters of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus probably use their phones more than people with older models. This suggests that the actual number of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus sales through late December could be lower, perhaps by 60 million-70 million. Either way, it means that the vast majority of the phones Apple sold last quarter were the new models, and that they quickly made their way into the hands of active users.
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Whereas combined iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus usage reached 20% of all iPhone usage in a little more than three months, the adoption pace has slowed more recently. As of this past week, the new iPhones represent a little less than 29% of iPhone usage.
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Usage share growth for the new iPhones has been slowing recently. Photo: Apple.
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On the one hand, this means that there are still plenty of users migrating to Apple's new iPhones. However, the usage share of the new iPhones (as measured by Fiksu) rose by nearly 1.3 percentage points per week on average last quarter, whereas the usage share is on pace to rise roughly 0.7-0.8 percentage points per week in the March quarter.
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If the iPhone 6/iPhone 6 Plus usage share growth as measured by Fiksu was a perfect predictor of iPhone sales, then the reported slowdown in usage share growth would be bad news. Comparing the recent usage growth trend to last quarter's trend would imply sales of only 44 million iPhones this quarter.
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However, the Fiksu data is probably underestimating Apple's March quarter iPhone sales for three reasons. First, Apple's product mix tends to shift toward older and cheaper products as each product cycle plays out. So sales of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c will probably represent a greater proportion of total iPhone sales this quarter than in the December quarter.
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The iPhone sales mix may be starting to shift back toward the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. Photo: Apple.
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Second, high demand for the new iPhones prevented Apple from reaching supply demand balance last quarter. The buildup of normal retail channel inventory this quarter could potentially account for sales of 7 million additional iPhones.
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Third, Fiksu discloses that its data for the Asia-Pacific may not be representative, based upon the apps that utilize its software development kit. In all likelihood, this means that Fiksu is under-sampling in that region, especially in emerging markets.
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This means that Fiksu is probably undercounting Apple's strong sales in China. Kantar Worldpanel reported earlier this month that the iPhone snagged more than 25% of smartphone sales in urban China in January, up 4.5 percentage points year over year.
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The popularity of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus as luxury gifting items probably kept the sales momentum up during February due to the Chinese New Year. As a result, if Fiksu is not fully capturing usage growth in China, it may be missing the biggest iPhone sales driver of the past quarter.
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We'll find out in a month just how well iPhone sales have held up this quarter. But based on the evidence available today, it looks like Apple is poised to post another quarter of strong iPhone sales growth. This will, in turn, lift the company's profit margin and EPS, keeping shareholders happy.
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Microsoft will soon harvest a lot more corn — err, servers — in Iowa.
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The tech giant is investing in data center infrastructure in West Des Moines, miles away from an existing company data center, Iowa public officials announced today.
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The company has been gradually improving the feature set and lowering prices of its Azure public cloud service. Such moves could attract more customers.
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And with the long-awaited release of Microsoft’s Cortana virtual assistant for mobile devices, more consumers could start pinging Microsoft data center infrastructure more frequently in the near future.
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Meanwhile other cloud providers like Amazon, Google, and IBM have announced infrastructure build-outs in recent months.
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Incidentally, Microsoft isn’t the only company that likes Des Moines for data centers. Facebook has one there, too.
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Microsoft’s new data center campus will go up on a 154-acre lot over the next four or five years, costing roughly $1.126 billion, according to a report from the Quad-City Times.
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Indeed, Microsoft fully intends to keep erecting new data centers.
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When the Los Angeles Dodgers were pursuing a trade for Bryce Harper last summer, one potential deal that wasn't completed involved Yasiel Puig.
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Per Jorge Castillo of the Los Angeles Times, the Dodgers offered Puig to the Washington Nationals last summer before the Nationals decided to keep the 2015 NL MVP.
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It's unclear when the Dodgers made their offer for Harper. They were among the teams interested in the 26-year-old prior to the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, according to Michael J. Duarte of NBC LA.
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In August, MLB Network Radio's Grant Paulsen reported the Dodgers claimed Harper off waivers and had 48 hours to work out a deal with Washington. No trade was consummated, and the Nationals chose to ride out the rest of the year after falling out of the playoff race.
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Per USA Today's Bob Nightengale, the Nationals pulled Harper off waivers after the Dodgers claimed him and were not close to any trade because they will receive a first-round compensation pick if he signs elsewhere this offseason.
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Harper would have provided a boost to Los Angeles' lineup if he had been traded. The six-time All-Star hit .249/.393/.496 with 34 homers and a career-high 100 RBI in 159 games.
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Puig had a solid 2018 campaign with a .267/.327/.494 slash line. He was also instrumental in the Dodgers' victory over the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 7 of the NLCS. His three-run homer in the sixth inning extended Los Angeles' lead to 5-1 as the team secured its second straight appearance in the World Series.
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The deck was certainly stacked against Park University’s Plern Promboobpa entering the final round of the Southwestern College Invitational on Tuesday at Winfield Country Club in Winfield, Kan.
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Promboobpa, who graduated from Blue Springs South in 2008, trailed tournament leader Courtney Huppert by 10 shots, firing an 88 in Monday’s opening round to Huppert’s 78. But Park’s lone senior rebounded and stormed back, carding a second-day 77 to make up 11 shots on Huppert and come away with the victory – her first since winning the Park University Invitational last April.
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As a team, Park University (728) finished second to tournament host Southwestern (702). The Moundbuilders entered the day with a 20-shot lead on the Pirates and walked away with a 26-stroke win in the 36-hole event. Park finished ahead of Baker University (767), Ottawa University (809) and Seminole State College (825).
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Promboobpa ended up edging Huppert by two shots with a two-day 165 to Huppert’s 167.
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MetLife said it wants to increase its penetration into the middle market and become “a player” in the group voluntary benefits marketplace.
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Expansion into the middle market represents an important change for MetLife, which has traditionally been the go-to supplier of insurance and benefits products for many of the nation’s largest companies.
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“MetLife retail is going through a lot of change and we’re on the road to growing this business in the future,” William J. Wheeler, president of MetLife’s Americas segment, said during the company’s annual presentation to investors and analysts.
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Company and industry statistics reveal as many as 44 million U.S. households without life insurance, and another 35 million insured households that don’t have enough insurance or are underinsured, Wheeler added.
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The estimated U.S. life insurance gap — the difference between the amount of life insurance people have and the amount people say they need to cover their expenses for several months — amounts to as much as $15 trillion, according to MetLife.
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To be successful, though, carriers need to offer a portfolio of protection products, not simply one or two life insurance products.
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MetLife’s retail segment delivered operating earnings of $2.52 billion in 2013, an increase from $2 billion in 2012, the company said. Compound annual growth in operating earnings was 37.5 percent in a three-year period from 2011 to 2013.
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