Thursday, June 16, 2011

Food Revolution rolls on in Los Angeles as schools ban corn dogs and chicken nuggets... and opt for sushi

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution may have been cancelled by television executives last month, but the Los Angeles public school system is still feeling its effects.The city's school board has announced it will stop serving corn dogs, chicken nuggets and a list of other unhealthy foods, in favour of protein-packed sushi.The new menu, proposed for this autumn, will also offer vegetarian dishes, such as spinach tortellini in butternut squash sauce and California sushi rolls, along with many ethnic foods.The decision comes weeks after officials agreed to ban flavoured milk, pushed by Oliver's campaign against childhood obesity in America.The decision has been a long time coming for the district, which banned sodas on campuses in 2004.Food services director Dennis Barrett said fried and breaded items are gone for good from the menus, which until last semester consisted of cheese burgers, hot and spicy chicken chunks, beef steak fingers in gravy and peanut butter and jelly pockets.Later that year, the school board passed a motion to ban the sale of junk food during the school day by restricting the calories and fat content in snack foods.The decision was the start of a trend followed by the state as well as districts across the country. 

London to get its sixth international airport in Southend - just in time for the Olympics

The budget airline easyJet unveiled ambitious plans yesterday to transform Southend-on-Sea airport into a rival for Gatwick and Stansted.
It means London will be served by a sixth international airport in time for the 2012 Olympics.
EasyJet will carry around 800,000 passengers in the first 12 months at its new Southend base, three miles from the seafront of the Essex resort.This is set to rise to two million a year by 2020, making London Southend Airport almost as big as the capital’s City Airport.Under a ten-year partnership with the airport’s owners, Stobart Group, easyJet is to start flights at Southend from April next year. A multi-million-pound terminal is due to open at the airport this autumn.
Currently private jets and charter flights take off from the airfield - although there are a few commercial flights to Ireland.
The Southend expansion will create about 300 jobs, half with the airline and half at the airport. It will serve a range of destinations in Europe, including Barcelona and Ibiza.Airport bosses said passengers would never wait more than four minutes to clear security, and trains from a new station nearby would get them to central London in an hour.The airport is owned by the Stobart Group, the trucking firm, which paid £21million for it in 2008.It has invested £60million on a new control tower, a runway extension, a new terminal building due to be finished this autumn and the railway station. A new hotel is due to open next year.Catherine Lynn, easyJet's customer and revenue director, said: 'In summer 2012 we’re expecting to see huge demand from passengers right around Europe to come to London.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

'No one's going to drink a cup of Pee-quod!' How Starbucks was almost named after the doomed ship in Moby-Dick


It's the largest coffee house in the world, but Starbucks may have had a very different story had one of its founders had his way.
According to Howard Schultz's book Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, Mr Bowker suggested the name Pequod to his then-creative partner, Terry Heckler, who responded: 'No one's going to drink a cup of Pee-quod!'After a brainstorming session, Mr Bowker's co-founders, teachers  Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegl, decided Captain Ahab's first mate Starbuck would be the name of the then-unknown brand.t was not the only inspiration the entrepreneurs found in the unusual name.Writer Gordon Bowke, who co-founded the company in 1971, originally wanted to name the company Peqoud, after the doomed whaleship in Moby-Dick.Luckily, his business partners settled on the name of the ship's first mate instead.It also inspired Starbucks' famed green and white logo, which features a Siren from Greek Mythology.As the story goes, Sirens lured sailors to shipwreck off the coast of an island in the South Pacific, also called Starbuck Island.Starbucks, it seems, proved a wise choice. The company later changed hands and Mr Schultz became the company's sole owner when he bought out the three founders in 1987.The company, however, could have gone by many different names with founders so captivated by the Herman Melville classic.Stubb, Flask, Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo, Pip and Fedallah are among the other characters in the story, about Captain Ahab's search for a monstrous sperm whale wandering the seas after that destroyed his boat and bit off his leg.
Starbucks went on to become the largest coffee house company in the world, with 17,009 stores in 50 countries, including over 11,000 in the U.S.



Banks face their biggest shake-up since the 1930s in attempt to prevent another financial meltdown

George Osborne will propose strict ‘firewalls’ between their high street retail operations and their ‘casino’ investment arms. Banks today face their biggest shake-up for 80 years in an attempt to prevent another financial meltdown.Each of the two divisions will be required to have separate staff, funding arrangements and computer systems.Banks will be required to hold far higher levels of cash reserves for use in the event of another crisis. That would rule out the need for bailouts if investment divisions get into trouble.The measures do not satisfy widespread demands for a complete separation between casino and retail banking.The Chancellor’s move is designed to stop reckless decision-making once again ruining the economy and jeopardising the savings of ordinary customers.The reform blueprint – to be outlined in Mr Osborne’s Mansion House speech to City leaders tonight – was drawn up by the Independent Commission on Banking.Requiring banks to hold far more cash, his interim report suggested, could push mortgage rates up by around 1 per cent, adding almost £1,000 a year to the cost of repaying a typical £140,000 mortgage.There are also concerns that customers will be forced to pick up the bill in the form of higher charges. But a source close to the Chancellor said: ‘This is a far-reaching shake-up to make high street banks safer and protect taxpayers.‘Britain is now leading the world in learning the lessons from the disastrous failures of the last decade.’Aides say the move is the biggest shake-up of the financial sector since the 1930s.There have been growing calls for reforms to create a firewall between high street banking, such as savings accounts and mortgages, and riskier, internationally-traded services.However Barclays, HSBC and Standard Chartered have each voiced concerns over the direction of regulation and have suggested they could move offshore if they felt their business was being damaged by new rules.‘The Government set up the Banking Commission to ask tough questions that weren’t asked before the crisis, and this is right at the heart of their answer.The Royal Bank of Scotland, which is 70 per cent owned by the taxpayer, has hired dozens of City high-flyers on big salaries for its investment division.

Will size matter? BlackBerry launches smaller PlayBook to take on iPad in battle of the tablets

The iPad suddenly has a game on.Or at least that's what computer giant BlackBerry hopes consumers will think when its new PlayBook tablet goes on sale in the UK tomorrow.Blackberry is pitching the tablet against Apple's hugely successful iPad model - believing that its smaller size and ability to connect to a BlackBerry for emails will win over new customers.The PlayBook has a seven-inch screen, compared with 9.7 inches for Apple's iPad2.Experts think the smallness is the key. Luke Peters, editor of T3 magazine, told the London Evening Standard: 'The PlayBook is one of the few tablets that has clear, attractive differentiation from the iPad because of its size.'However, he believes the new gadget - 250,000 of which have already been sold in the U.S and Canada - is unlikely to be able to compete with the huge number of apps on the market for Apple’s tablet. Last week Apple revealed that more than 65,000 are available for the iPad, although it can also run iPhone apps. 'It will need to compete with Apple’s powerful digital ecosystems — iTunes and the App Store — which are gaining momentum and popularity by the day,' Mr Peters said.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Caught on camera: Iraqi playboy races his Ferrari supercar around London's busy streets 'at up to 120mph'

Road safety campaigners said it was a 'miracle' no-one had been injured by his foolish antics.An Iraqi playboy has been slammed for his reckless driving after footage of his 200mph supercar being raced around London appeared on YouTube.The millionaire show-off is seen speeding through Knightsbridge in his turquoise Ferrari 599 without any regard for the safety of pedestrians and other motorists.


Barefoot and beautiful: Angelina Jolie poses for sultry new Louis Vuitton campaign aboard a boat



She is regularly seen toting their exclusive bags and now Angelina Jolie has become the new face of luxury luggage designer Louis Vuitton.
Miss Jolie wears her own clothes, with no make-up and her long dark hair worn au natural.In the picture she carries her own years-old monogrammed Alto bag, a style which is no longer in production.The 35-year-old actress appears in a stunning new ad for the brand's 'Core Values' campaign in which she poses barefoot aboard a traditional wooden boat in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province in a photo taken by famed portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz.'I like the fact that it’s a real moment.'People are not used to seeing Angelina in this situation,' Louis Vuitton’s executive vice president Pietro Beccari tells Women's Wear Daily.Bono, Buzz Aldrin and Mikhail Gorbachev have all posed for the 'Core Values' campaign in the past while Madonna, Jennifer Lopez and Scarlett Johansson have been previous faces of the brand.Cambodia is a country close to the star's heart as it's where she adopted nine-year-old Maddox, her eldest son, as a baby. 'This travel message we give through personal journeys is a fundamental one for the brand. This campaign is about a very special person and a very special journey.'

Facebook fatigue sets in for 100,000 Brits: Users bored with site deactivate accounts amid privacy fears


Tired of social networking? Logging off Facebook? You’re probably not the only one.
Worldwide, the rate of growth has slowed for a second month in a row – and as it aims to reach its goal of one billion active users, Facebook is having to rely on developing countries to boost its numbers.And Facebook fatigue seems to be catching. Six million logged off for good in the U.S. too, figures show.Fearing for their privacy or perhaps just bored with using the site, 100,000 Britons are said to have deactivated their accounts last month.
Worldwide reach: The map displays links between Facebook friends as
lights on a deep blue background

The figures suggest that there could be a ‘natural limit’ for Facebook’s saturation.   
But times change – and last month more than 100,000 in the UK stopped using the website, figures show. In the U.S, user numbers dropped from 155.2million to 149.4 million throughout May. In Canada there was also a fall, of about 1.5million users, while in Russia and Norway numbers also fell by more than 100,000 users.Earlier this year, executives announced that the number of Facebook accounts held in the UK had reached 30million, accounting for about half the population.There is even speculation on blogs that, as is feared for its failing rival MySpace, the website could one day ‘sputter into oblivion’.  It’s not all bad news for the site. Worldwide, Facebook is still expanding and has around 600million users, thanks to strong growth in countries such as Mexico and Brazil.


Monday, June 13, 2011

FBI investigates 'major breach' of IMF security as fund comes under cyberattack


The FBI has been called in as the International Monetary Fund has come under a 'serious and sophisticated' cyberattack. 
The agency is still in disarray from the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was head of the fund when he was accused of sexually assaulting a maid in a luxury New York hotel.Should it fall into the wrong hands and become public, the results could trigger political and economic chaos. The scale of the hacking is still unknown - but the confidential information held by the IMF has the potential to move markets.One expert said the goal of the attack was to establish a 'digital insider presence' for a nation inside the fund's network. IMF spokesman David Hawley says the fund's computer systems are fully functional.'It was a targeted attack,' said Tom Kellerman, a cybersecurity expert who worked at both the World Bank and the IMF.He understands the network architecture at both international financial institutions and who serves on the board of a group known as the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance.The cyberattack is believed to have taken place before Strauss-Kahn's downfall.'The code was developed and released for this purpose,' he said. The goal was to install software that would give a nation state a 'digital insider presence' on the network, he told Reuters.
The New York Times cited unnamed IMF officials as saying the attack was sophisticated and serious - dangerous enough that the World Bank, located across the street from the IMF's headquarters in Washington, cut the computer link between the two bodies. 
Its database also contains the negotiations between national leaders on the terms of international bailouts - negotiations that are often held behind the scenes.The IMF manages financial crises around the world - such as the currency crisis currently gripping much of Europe.It receives highly confidential information about the fiscal condition of many nations that, if revealed, could prove disastrous.

Is Mark Zuckerberg engaged? Bill Gates lets slip that his billionaire pal may be about to update his Facebook status

For women around the world, billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg would be the ultimate catch.
But if Microsoft founder Bill Gates is to be believed he's already taken -- engaged to long-time girlfriend Priscilla Chan.Has Mr Gates just revealed the cyberworld's best-kept secret, or did he just use the wrong word when described Miss Chan as Mr Zuckerberg's 'fiancee'?Mr Gates is friends with Mr Zuckerberg, 26, who has pledged to give most of his fortune away.
Earlier this year they adopted a puppy named Beast and looked every bit the happy young family when they posed for photos with the dog.But the mystery deepens when you look at their respective profile pages.The social network king made headlines when he dropped $7 million on a 5,000 square feet palace in Palo Alto, California, and last month the couple moved in.It could have been a slip of the tongue, saying fiancee instead of girlfriend, but the news would certainly add up. Mr Zuckerberg has been dating Miss Chan since 2003. 'His fiancée Priscilla thought about education and he gave money to Newark, New Jersey, and we did a co-grant so that some of our people who had some expertise in that field could help him out.'In an exclusive interview with the Mail on Sunday, when discussing their philanthropic efforts, Mr Gates said: ‘I didn't say to Mark, "Give me all your money!" He was predisposed to do it and he came to me seeking advice.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Super Cars And The Changing Landscape Of Electric Luxury

Luxury brands generally set the benchmark for most trends —  except, when it comes to the green and digital space. Several years ago, one would be hard pressed to find an informative, well-designed luxury car website or a car that ran on more than 20 mpg among the world’s high-end automakers, for that matter.News that Rolls-Royce will make a one-off electric Phantom called the 102EX broke at midnight on Sunday in the UK, as the luxury automaker launched the website, ElectricLuxury, devoted to exploring the concept of producing an electric car for it’s elite niche customer base based on the 102EX.  This plan marks a distinct shift for the automaker — representing a definitive move toward a more green perception, but also a deeper imprint in the digital realm, with the creation of an internal website to host discussions that’s being pushed to the public.
Rolls-Royce follows the efforts of it’s parent company BMW which has launched the Megacity sub brand for its electric exploratory missions.  Mercedes-Benz has the A-Class E Cell, sold only in Europe, and the B-Class F-CELL, but plans to debut the SLS-AMG E Cell in a battery electric version by 2013. It’s clear — luxury brands are positioning to be on the edge of green technology.  However, the electric and battery-powered car is still cautious territory as the questions looms  — do consumers who spend more than $300,000 on a car care about fuel economy enough to invest in such a product? Companies like Tesla and Fisker have teased this line with sleek sports car press, but it still remains to be seen if the old vanguard of luxury will delve into a green product line. The answer these days is shifting toward a tentative yes, as manufacturers dip their toe in the greener waters, and rely on the Internet as the wave pool for gauging results.The shift toward integrative informative websites with consumer-ready content is now commonplace, as luxury automakers have learned to harness exclusive eyeballs.  Land Rover and Jaguar have launched sites that function as  blogs, that customer and journalists alike can access for up-to-date company info, complete with Twitter feeds, original videos, and hyperlinks to websites followed by the company. These sites function as reference material for journalists, but also bleed over to the curious customer base. Audi has also broaches this territory with performance based sites.The new definition of luxury now includes integration, presentation and forward-thinking perception — the sleekness of well-thought out clean technology is an essential part of the package.It’s telling that global and technological events of the past several years have transformed the marketplace. In a curious shift, the manufacturers of scrappier city cars have led the way for an industry wide makeover.  Once, the Internet space for car companies was reserved for younger buyers who were more comfortable with technology and flashy digital campaigns, and partial to affordable fuel efficient cars, while owners of luxury cars carried on in private forums.It seems that we’ve come circle to the idea that emerged at the beginning of the industrial era — luxury is not only about comfort, but about progress. Business is moving faster than ever before, even among the classics.
What’s happening is that high-end automakers are spending more resources on the digital realm, where they can control the message, educate potential buyers and create a conversation among customers. Small internet marketing companies and digital consultancies are springing up to help organizations and agencies tailor those efforts.  It’s a new kind of luxury.


Could this be the greatest F1 track ever? Former F1 champion David Coulthard certainly thinks so


Which F1 circuit is the best? Is it Monaco, with its famous hairpins and glamorous harbour? Brazil, the last track of the season, where for the last two years titles have been decided? Or our very own Silverstone, steeped in racing history?
In fact, it’s none of them... Live asked former F1 driver and BBC commentator David Coulthard to put together a fantasy circuit combining elements of grand prix tracks from around the world. 
His brief was to devise the most entertaining circuit for fans and drivers alike, and the result is a thrilling mix of sweeping turns, tight hairpins and challenging right-left-rights, incorporating sections from Spain, Britain, China, France, Belgium, Brazil and Malaysia. Sadly we were unable to accommodate DC’s fi nal suggestion: to have it built in Scotland…