Archive for the ‘NEWS’ tag

Belgium plans to neuter most cats as feline population explodes (Guardian)

Almost all Belgian cat owners will be obliged to have their pets sterilised and registered by 2016The Belgian government has come up with a radical way to deal with the burgeoning cat population ? to sterilise all but a select few of the animals within five years.If it is passed into law, the country will embark on a phased neutering of all cats except exotic pedigrees at the start of next year, and there will be a ban on using corner shops, noticeboards and small ads to get rid of unwanted litters of kittens.The feline population in Belgium, a country of 11 million people, has increased to an estimated 1.7 million, and the culling of cats has become a daily routine. According to the health ministry, more than 13,000 were killed in animal refuges last year, more than one in three of the country’s 37,000 strays.We are confronted with a dramatic situation, said Jan Eyckmans of the Belgian health ministry. So our minister asked the animal welfare council to come up with ideas.The result is the Multi-annual Cat Plan 2011-2016, which says sterilisation is necessary to halt the increase in the numbers of strays and cats collected in shelters.Initially, all cats in shelters will be sterilised. The next phase imposes neutering on cats from breeders and sellers. Finally, all cat owners will be obliged to have their pets sterilised and registered, costing about ?130 (£108) for a female cat and ?50 for a tom. Breeders and owners of Siamese, Abyssinian and other special pedigrees will be exempted from the new regime.If you buy a very expensive cat for ?600 and want to have kittens, you can’t sterilise them all, said Eyckmans. We need to find the right balance.Many are sceptical about the proposal. Not a good idea. It won’t be easy. They’ll never be able to sterilise all the cats, said Alan, who helps to run the Nos Amis Fidèles (Our Faithful Friends) kennels in Waterloo, south of Brussels.Pet owners will rebel and refuse to do it, agreed Marleen Meersseman, who helps to run a rescue service for stricken wild animals in the Flemish village of Nieuwkerke. And this wouldn’t be Belgium if people did not find a back door.But the animal welfare lobby is strongly supportive of the scheme.We don’t want the cat to vanish from the earth, said Ann De Greef, director of Gaia, which is taking the campaign to the town squares of Belgium and reports enormous support.A cat can have one pregnancy every six months and 36 offspring in less than 16 months, said De Greef.The new project is the first to propose compulsory sterilisation nationally. It will be watched closely in other countries wrestling with ballooning cat populations.Cat culls have a long history in Belgium. In Ypres, in western Flanders, they’ve been hurling the animals from the belfry of the 12th-century Cloth Hall for hundreds of years in an annual ritual to ward off the devil.The massacre continues, now every three years. But nowadays the cats are fluffy, velveteen toys. The cat cull is considered a tourist attraction, an excuse for a fancy-dress party. Yvette Deraedt enjoys Ypres’s feline festival. But the pensioner, who tends the eight strays at the ancient Flemish town’s municipal animal shelter, would not dream of killing a cat.The vet euthanised one earlier this year, but it was very sick. Otherwise we would never do that, she said.BelgiumPetsIan Traynorguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Newsroom at France’s CNN turns into battleground

When it was launched four years ago France 24 was billed as a “CNN a la francaise”: a television news channel that would counter the influence of Anglo-Saxon media and make the voice of France heard around the world. In recent days, however, that voice has sounded more anguished than authoritative.

HP Buys 3Par, Apple Rolls Out New Gear

Hewlett-Packard swooped in with the better bid to overtake Dell and win 3Par, so now we can all sit back and wait for the next acquisition battle to roll around. Meanwhile, Apple debuted updated iPods and Apple TV to entertain us, among other IT news stories of the week.

Lucas Tete’s wife, daughters in state of shock

Slain policeman Lucas Tete’s wife Pyari and three grown up daughters fainted several times in shock on receiving the news that his bullet-riddled body was found in a forest in Bihar on Friday.

URGENT: Passenger in Custody at Miami Airport (FOX News)

Track-II forum seeks solution to Kashmir (Google News – India)

Journalism in the Gulf is losing its appeal | Hussain Ahmad (Guardian)

Indian journalists have long formed the backbone of the media in the Gulf but it’s a decreasingly rewarding career moveRecently a friend of mine who wanted to start a magazine in a Gulf country asked a prominent journalist in India to look for an editor to work with him. My friend wanted someone with modest experience and the salary offered was decent. After two months came the reply: the search in India had turned up nothing and, more surprisingly, many young journalists who were contacted didn’t even bother to get the details of the offer.This is not unusual. Across the Gulf, an increasing number of newspapers and other publications are finding it difficult to recruit journalists from India, and some have to contend with a depleting staff. Also, many Indians who joined the Gulf media recently have returned home.This development marks a seismic change in the short history of English journalism in the Gulf. For decades, Indians have formed the backbone of the region’s English-language press and currently constitute around 70% of its journalists.So why is the Gulf losing its allure for Indian journalists? First, India is witnessing a media boom, which has resulted in an unprecedented surge in salaries. Television channels are proliferating, newspapers are on an expansion spree and new players are entering the market ? all of which have opened up an Eldorado of opportunities for local journalists. At the same time in the Gulf, salaries haven’t kept pace with galloping inflation due to the availability of cheap labour from a number of countries.Secondly, journalism in the Gulf is not held in high esteem by media professionals in India, and Gulf experience adds no value to one’s CV. Those who have had a long stint in the region admit it has been a drain on their creativity and a corrosive influence. There is no professional growth for a large majority, no freedom of expression and no competition, and journalism practised there is, at best, the PR variety.Investigation into sensitive issues is unheard of. The Gulf governments tend to have an aversion to public exposure of anything negative and detest controversies. Even the local population doesn’t expect foreigners to dig up anything murky, as it is seen as an intrusion. The lines are clearly drawn and foreign journalists should not cross them ? unless they are prepared for a one-way ticket home.In the Gulf, it’s not governments alone that influence news. Commenting on an article I wrote in Cif recently about migration to the Gulf from the Indian state of Kerala, a reader said Indian journalists in the Gulf should highlight the exploitation of workers by companies, especially those managed by Indians.He was perhaps alluding to the failure of Indian journalists to expose the violations committed by their own countrymen. This failure is a fact and is a rank example of both the helplessness and degeneration of Indian media workers. Businessmen are the biggest dispensers of gifts and favours to journalists, and the latter wouldn’t do anything to invite their displeasure. Even if a few want to expose their misdeeds, they may not succeed because businessmen, as advertisers, have immense influence over media owners. This doesn’t mean they routinely flout the laws, but that free and fair reporting is very tough.Indian journalists working in the Gulf miss the influence and social status they enjoy back home. India has a free media and journalists have easy access to all centres of power. Politicians, bureaucrats and celebrities court them, and vice versa. Steady, stunning exposés of corruption in high places, controversies involving celebrities, and a stream of sensational stories make their career exciting.For those who are used to such heady stuff, reporting on the routine activities of expatriate organisations and the inauguration of neighbourhood supermarkets in a Gulf country will appear not only utterly stupefying, but even outright trash.The English-language media in this region will continue to be dominated by foreigners, Indians or others, for a long time. Gulf citizens are a rare sight in the newsrooms. Despite the vigorous nationalisation of jobs being undertaken by governments, there is no talk of representation of Gulf nationals in the English-language media. The reason: this is a creative profession that requires both skills and experience to excel, and Gulf citizens who enter the field don’t have the patience to acquire both ? at least, not for the salaries they are paid.The new trend doesn’t mean that Indians will soon empty out of the newsrooms. India has a huge reservoir of manpower; so replacement will not be a problem. But quality will certainly be a casualty if managements don’t take corrective steps to retain and attract talent.While I was writing this, my mobile phone rang. I answered the call and my colleague broke the news: he has submitted his resignation.Middle East & the mediaIndiaMiddle EastNewspapers & magazinesHussain Ahmadguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

China reserves 65% in dollars, 26% in euro: report

[at MarketWatch] – China s $2.45 trillion foreign exchange reserves consist of approximately 65% in U.S. dollars and 26% in euros, according to a state media news report Friday. The reserves also include 5% in British pounds and 3% in Japanese yen, according the China Securities Journal report, which didn t cite sources for the information.

I was not approached by any bookie: Ganguly (Google News – Cricket)

Muslim GI: Koran SaysI Can’t Fight for U.S. (FOX News)

Pfc. Naser Abdo, a Muslim soldier from Texas, says he wants to leave the U.S. Army as a conscientious objector because his faith and the military simply don’t mixGates: Troops in Afghanistan for ‘Years’ to Come | VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Gates Sits Down With Fox NewsOPINION: Real Consequences

Bangalore’s new hi-tech driving test (NDTV)

A man in uniform shouts in Kannada, ?fail maadi!? The recipient of the news looks dejected. He knows he accelerated too heavily when he was trying to make his way up a slope. He was hoping nobody had noticed the car rolling back. Sensors beeped his mistakes out loud and clear. Big fat ?F?.

Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi banned from Venice film festival (Guardian)

Golden Lion winner denied the right to leave Iran to attend this year’s festival despite being released from jailThe Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi has been denied the right to attend this year’s Venice international film festival. Due to open the short film section of the festival with The Accordion, his request was refused by officials in Tehran.Imprisoned earlier this year while making a film described by Iranian culture minister, Mohammad Hosseini, as anti-regime, Panahi was released on bail in May following a two-week hunger strike and international outcry.But his freedom does not appear to extend to the right to promote his work elsewhere. Despite having been released, I am still not free to travel outside my country to attend film festivals, the director explained. When a film-maker is not allowed to make films, he is mentally imprisoned. He may not be confined to a small cell, but he is still wandering in a larger prison.This is not the first time Panahi has been conspicuously absent from international events. A member of the jury panel for this year’s Cannes film festival, his seat was left deliberately empty by officials when incarceration kept Panahi from his duties. Accepting the best actress award for her role in Certified Copy, a film by Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, Juliette Binoche condemned the Panahi’s imprisonment: His fault is to be an artist, to be independent. She described the government’s treatment of Panahi as an attack on art.A winner of Venice’s top film honour, the Golden Lion, for his 2000 film Circle, as well as the 1995 Camera d’Or at Cannes, Panahi is an active participant in international film dialogue. In a statement to festival officials, he expressed his gratitude to fellow film-makers: In the most desperate moments of my imprisonment … I drew courage thinking of myself as a proud member of this community.Screened yesterday at Venice, eight-minute short film The Accordion explores the lives of two young street musicians. Filmed in Iran as part of UN-backed project Then and Now: Beyond Borders and Differences, Panahi’s work was intended to promote ideas of tolerance and international dialogue.Jafar PanahiVenice film festivalIranguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Today in Car News: Car Sales, GM Fours, and Ghostbusters

By all accounts, this year’s car sales are as nostalgic and flat as a three-week-old A&W root beer left in your cupholder inn summer. [Consumerist] And in what was supposed to be the year of the small car, it’s –not shocking–that the two best-selling vehicles are big ole pickup trucks. [Detroit Free Press] While U.S. sales are sluglike, the…

Summary Box: ECB raises eurozone growth forecast

[AP] – OUTLOOK IMPROVES: The European Central Bank raised its growth projections for the 16-nation eurozone after better-than-expected economic news.

NPR: Keeping Trapped Chilean Miners Sane (Featuring Discovery News)

In response to the article “Can NASA Help Trapped Chilean Miners?”, Discovery News space producer Ian O’Neill was asked to appear as a guest on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” program.

Five Reasons I Won’t Be Using Ping

Despite all the hardware Apple introduced at its press event Wednesday, the most radical news was Ping, a social network for music that’s launching as a feature of iTunes 10. I’ve taken a brief test drive of Ping to see what it’s about, but even before updating iTunes, I knew Apple’s new social network was not for me. Here are five reasons I won’t be using Ping:

Kareena refuses to make love on screen

Though the actress made news with her intimate scenes with beau Saif in Kurbaan, she is not ready to get steamy with five different men in Madhur Bhandarkar’s next.

We are ready for talks with Maoists: Nitish;

Responding to news reports that the Maoists had killed one of the four policemen they abducted on Sunday, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar late on Thursday said his government is ready for talks with the Leftwing rebels.

Garmin Nuvi 1695 – NuLink connected GPS – 5-Inch screen, Google Search, Traffic

Garmin just announced the new Nuvi 1695, an updated connected GPS device that has a 5-inch screen. The Nuvi is connected to Garmin’s branded NuLink! service, that includes data such as realtime traffic, Google Local Search, weather, fuel prices, flight status and more. They threw in a few more NuThings like NuRoute technology which offers you trafficTrends and MyTrends; two routing features that help you route around known traffic issues and allows the Nuvi to learn from your driving habits and preferred routes, giving it Yoda-like intelligence.

“The nüLink! 1695 is designed to give drivers a full variety of accurate, up-to-the-minute information that they can access quickly, on a full-size, 5-inch touchscreen display,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “When you add the power of Google Local Searches and nüRoute historical information, the nüLink! 1695 delivers the ultimate navigation experience.”

The Nuvi 1695 comes loaded with information n board like phone listings and millions of Points of Interest, but also gives you the ability to access NuLink white pages and look up people and their phone number and street address. Pretty handy.

“The Garmin nüLink! traffic feature provides the best-in-class information from NAVTEQ™, a world leader in premium-quality mapping, to help customers navigate in and around congestion. “

The Nuvi 1695 also comes with available NEXRAD radar giving you insight into impending storms. This is something I’ve been waiting for in an auto format since Garmin launched an Aviation/Auto combo unit (GPSMAP 496) back in 2006.

The Nuvi 1695 also comes with several other features carried over to round out the offering:

• Bluetooth Handsfree
• Lane Assist with Junciton View of complex intersections to make on route decision making easier.
• Text to Speech – says street names
• ecoRoute – to help you document your mileage and save gas

Expected to be available this month, the Nuvi 1695 will retail for a street price of $449; the first year of Garmin nüLink! is free, and after that, the subscription renewal price for data services is $5.00/month.

Full Press Release after the jump……

OLATHE, Kan.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN – News), the global leader in satellite navigation, today announced the nüLink! 1695 – a 5-inch touchscreen portable navigation device (PND) that connects drivers with relevant, online information from Garmin’s nüLink! service, including links to online information like Google™ Local Search, traffic, weather, fuel prices, flight status, and other real-time, location-relevant content, plus it uses nüRoute™ technology with trafficTrends™ and myTrends™ to make your daily commute easier than ever. The U.S. version of the nüLink! 1695 comes with one year of free Garmin nüLink! services out-of-the-box, and is also the first device to offer the nüLink! Store where customers can purchase optional premium services.

“The nüLink! 1695 is designed to give drivers a full variety of accurate, up-to-the-minute information that they can access quickly, on a full-size, 5-inch touchscreen display,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “When you add the power of Google Local Searches and nüRoute historical information, the nüLink! 1695 delivers the ultimate navigation experience.”

The nüLink! 1695 has a comprehensive set of points of interest (POIs) search capabilities thanks to nüLink!’s Google Local Search and white page telephone listings. Google Local Search brings online POIs to customers’ fingertips and lets them search for destinations by name or key words just like they are accustomed to doing on their personal computer. Detailed search results are displayed for many POIs, including a location description, business address, phone number and popularity rating. Customers can also use the nüLink!’s white page telephone listing feature to search for a person’s street address by their first and last name or phone number.

In addition to the local search capabilities, Garmin nüLink! offers a plethora of other online services that will help you travel like a local. Convenient services like local events and movie listings help customers find interesting activities wherever they might travel. Real-time flight status takes the stress out of traveling to the airport with up-to-the minute arrival and departure information for major air carriers. Plus, the Garmin nüLink! traffic feature provides the best-in-class information from NAVTEQ™, a world leader in premium-quality mapping, to help customers navigate in and around congestion. In addition to the standard included services, the nüLink! 1695 offers the nüLink! Store where customers can purchase optional premium services that offer information like real-time advanced weather with Nexrad radar and severe weather alerts, and premium safety camera alerts.

With nüLink! 1695 customers will receive efficient routing and realistic arrival times with trafficTrends, which recommends routes using historical data and recurring trends that Garmin has collected about traffic in your area at any given time of day. And making your commute easier than ever, the nüLink! 1695 remembers your frequent favorite destinations and uses myTrends to predict your destination without you needing to activate a route, displaying your arrival time and best route based on relevant traffic information. In addition, the nüLink! 1695 includes lane assist with junction view so drivers will see a realistic presentation of road signs and junctions along the route, as well as arrows that indicate the proper lane for navigation where available.

The nüLink! 1695 comes standard with ecoRoute™, an innovative application that helps customers stretch their dollars and conserve fuel by creating routes that are optimized for using less fuel. When a user selects the “less fuel” option, the 1695 will determine a fuel efficient route based on fuel consumption rates, estimated driving speeds and vehicle acceleration data. Customers can then develop better driving habits by reviewing the results of ecoRoute’s Fuel Report and Mileage Report. When used in combination with nüLink!’s fuel prices, customers can not only optimize their routes but also can choose their refueling locations in order to minimize the cost of vehicle operation.

The nüLink! 1695 also has Bluetooth® Wireless Technology that makes it possible to receive and place phone calls directly from the device. It can be paired with over 200 Bluetooth enabled phones, and a driver can retrieve and dial numbers using a supported phone’s contact list, the phone’s call history log, or the nüLink! 1695′s preloaded points of interest database.

The U.S. version of the nüLink! 1695 has preloaded maps of North America and is expected to be available in September 2010 for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $449.99. In the U.S., the first year of Garmin nüLink! is free, and after that, the subscription renewal price for data services is $5.00/month. Fuel prices in the U.S. are updated daily. nüLink! coverage area information is available at www.garmin.com/nulink.

European Central Bank holds key rate steady at 1%

[at MarketWatch] – The European Central Bank on Thursday left its key lending rate unchanged at a record low 1%. The decision was widely expected. Attention now turns to ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet s monthly news conference at 8:30 a.m.

Iran unveils video games depicting Israeli ‘crimes’

Iran’s Islamist Basij militia unveiled two new video games depicting Israeli “crimes” on Thursday, on the eve of annual Palestinian solidarity rallies, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Three AIADMK cadres stunned at SC verdict

The news of confirmation of their death sentence was received with stoic silence by the three AIADMK cadres, involved in the Dharmapuri bus burning case’ on Monday, said prison department sources.

Jordan’s budget deficit falls

Jordanian finance ministry has said the kingdom’s budget deficit fell to JD280.9m ($396m) in the first seven months of the year, as the government reined in expenditure and continued to shelve non-essential projects, Reuters has reported. This contrasted with a JD640.5m deficit for the same period in 2009, a year which ended with a record deficit of JD1.45bn, or 9% of gross domestic product, ministry sources told the news service.

Online marketing Specialist at King Hussein Cancer Center

1- Develops, maintains and coordinates relevant website content and data.

2- Writes, develops, and produces effective content for news stories. blogs, video/audio podcasts web pages and additional material, such as events programs, invitations, posters, brochures and signs.

3- Edits content and coordinates the flow of website material.

4- Establishes a functional communication system with different departments within KHCC to ensure that all content is complete and regularly updated.

5- Manages projects, including coordination of web presence on Face book, Twitter, and other social media sites.

6- Provides guidelines and guidance to KHCC bloggers.

7- Collaborates with internal and external service providers.

Jobs in Jordan
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SB 1070 – Governor Brewer =1, Tucson Police Officer=0 – Hispanically Speaking News (Topix.net)

The Federal Court today has dismissed a challenge to SB 1070 that was filed by Tucson Police Officer Martin Escobar.

Bookie Majeed’s rise in the ugly world of ’fixing

Sept. 1: The sleepy Moonshi Mohallah of Faisalabad suddenly gained global attention as alleged British match-fixer Mazhar Majeed’s roots are in this textile city. Mazhar was arrested by London Metropolitan Saturday after The News of World revealed, in a sting operation, that the property-tycoon had taken £150,000 before Pakistani fast bowlers Mohammed Asif and Mohammed Amir bowled no balls in t

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Emirates looking to spend $28bn on expansion

Gary Chapman, president of group services at Emirates Airline, has said the carrier needs more than $28bn through 2017 to expand its fleet of Boeing and Airbus jets, Bloomberg has reported. Financing requirements for the 12 months through March 2011 will be $1.3bn, and total about $27bn for the following six years, he told the news service in an interview. “With the activity that we have coming up, we’ve got to leave no stone unturned,” Chapman said. The financing plan is “substantial because it’s pretty close to double what we’ve done in the previous 14 years.”

Fans demand refund after scandal

Miffed by spot-fixing allegations published in The News of the World tabloid angry Pakistani cricket lovers are reportedly demanding a refund on their tickets for upcoming matches.

Asian Shares Bounce Back After Wall Street Rise (ABC News)

Asian stock markets advance; GDP data powers Australia benchmark

Stock market – Business – Investing – Stocks and Bonds – Equities

Reader’s issue resolved: Landline malfunction

Gulf News reader raises complaint about landline phone malfunction

Bins are a menace in Bur Dubai

Gulf News reader says garbage bins are placed right outside apartment block in Bur Dubai

Today in Car News: Volt, Cruze, and Cash for Clunkers Redux

Without a Cash for Clunkers boost, August car sales were soft. Recovery summer, where for art thou? [Detroit Free Press] The 2011 Chevrolet Volt is close to reality: production begins on Veterans’ Day. [AutoBlogGreen] GM is seeking to trademark “range anxiety” as it pitches the Volt at nervous-nelly electric-car likers. Snarky Tesla PR folks are…

Teetotallers die early

Washington, Sept. 1: Want to live a few years longer? Well, then start drinking, for a new study suggests that non-drinkers die sooner than heavy drinkers. Moderate drinkers, however, fare the best.

The study took a look at 1,824 participants over 20 years, according to the news website www.time.com. Sixty-three per cent of them were men, reports CBS News.

A team of Scientists, led by psych

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Video: Porsche Undergoes DNA Test To Prove Its Babydaddy-ness

It’s a fairly quiet week as far as car news goes, what with many folks trying to get in some last-minute R&R before the busy fall season kicks off. That makes it a perfect time for Porsce to launch a new marketing campaign that explores the automaker’s high-performance pedigree. The campaign in question is more about the Porsche brand as a…

Pakistan cricket scam: Riddle of Mazhar Majeed and phone calls linked to big games (Google News – Cricket)

I don’t owe Salman: Veer producer

Vijay Galani, the producer of Veer reacted to last week’s news reports which claimed that actor Salman Khan had filed a legal notice for non-payment of his fees amounting to Rs 15 crore.

Digg users revolt after redesign (Guardian)

Social news site Digg endures another user revolt as redesign leaves ‘Diggers’ at a lossDigg’s August redesign was always going to be a totemic moment for the social news site. And so it came to pass, as users stage a high-profile revolt against some of the site’s changes.Protesting at the removal of the upcoming news page, the default setting of My News, deleted favourites, the apparent front page domination of a handful of publishers, and the removal of the bury button (for voting down stories), Digg users flooded the front page with links to rival aggregators and pleaded with chief executive Kevin Rose to turn back the clock.Less than a week since the covers were taken off the new Digg ? complete with many a bug and sans small but significant features ? Rose was prompted to write a blog post addressing the outrage.Under a headline (and mantra) of release, iterate, repeat, Rose tackled 16 complaints, pledging to make changes to suit the feedback. He also pointed out that there were thousands of new registrations, and accentuated the positive. Our top priority is to stabilize the site, then we’ll look at the data/feedback and make decisions on what to change going forward, he commented.However, social media site Soshable graphed 118 stories on the once-fabled Digg front page in three days after the new iteration’s release. Six publishers and one influential technology pundit control the lion share of Digg’s most important space, it shows.This gets to the nub of the anger, says Media Caffeine. In a barbed post calling Digg a broken covenant, MC cites this 2004 quote from the Digg founder talking about then-of-the-moment social news site slashdot: Hundreds of people every single day are submitting content to slashdot. Tons of stories, but an editor chooses about 15 or 20 of them to display to the world. Now the only problem with that is you’re relying on whatever the editor thinks is really cool, so it doesn’t really give the power back to the people.MC writes: This was the premise behind Digg. It was the promise. It was the covenant. Digg V4 breaks that covenant. Despite what Rose, his team, and their beloved mainstream celebrity buddies believe, the people do not have the power right now. The power has been given to corporate level blogs and Kevin’s select-few buddies who, for some strange reason, Rose feels he needs to appease to be successful.The bury button ? giving users the ability to vote a story down the popularity rankings ? is gone, replaced with a moderated hide button, aimed at combating the bury brigades, as Rose calls them.Ian Eure, an engineer who worked for Digg between 2008 and May 2010, said that reverting back to the previous iteration, version 3, is simply not going to happen ? it’s an infrastructural change, Eure says, not just a host of feature adaptions:Digg v4 is not a redesign, not a reskin, it is a 100% rewrite. It’s completely new design, code, architecture, and infrastructure. It has almost no relationship to the v3 system whatsoever.What’s more; of the core team of 12 people that made the legacy Digg code work, Eure says, only one is still at the company.It’s already been quite a summer for Digg. Small but significant feature changes, a rewiring of Google’s algorithm and a cabal of conservative conspirators teed up this summer’s redesign as a(nother) fork in the road ? it would either galvanise the site’s waning influence or be the straw that broke the camel’s back for its users.This isn’t the first Digg revolt in its six-year history, as Rose is at pains to point out on Twitter, but it might be the most consequential. The clock is ticking for the Digg bug fixers. New features are being resurrected ? but many Diggers may prefer running over to momentum-heavy Reddit (where plucky moderators have posted a 101 for new recruits).Previous user revolts over changes in the Digg promotional algorithm, new comment systems, the introduction of the browser-framing DiggBar, and the HD-DVD encryption key debacle, have made their impact and subsided. Release, iterate, repeat, as intended.But never has a revolt come at such a critical time for the company, competing with the exponential growth of Twitter to become more social and keep its millions of influential, well-organised members engaged. At the same time, predicting the demise of the site has become something of an annual sport for Digg watchers. But, to you; how are you finding the new Digg? Have you jumped ship?DiggDigital mediaSocial mediaJosh Hallidayguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Yen, Swiss Franc Lose Ground

[at TheStreet.com] – More strong economic news from Asia improved the mood in the financial markets, and gains were seen for risk assets and currencies, with the Japanese yen and Swiss franc losing ground vs. the majors.

Saudi stops issuing tourist visas

Saudi Arabia has stopped issuing of visas to those who wish to visit the kingdom only for tourism, Gulf News has reported. The Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) declined to comment on the decision but chairman of the consultative committee for organisers of tourist trips Prince Abdullah Bin Saud said this issue would be discussed with the president of the SCTA after Eid to find solutions to the hurdles impeding investment in the field of tourism.

Senior Sales Executive at Agility Logistics

JOB OVERVIEW

Reporting to the Sales Manager you are principally responsible for the achievement of assigned sales target and promoting and expanding the partnership between key customers and Agility.

Job description in detail:
* Present and sell company products to current and potential clients.
* Develop hit lists & pipeline of prospects from various sources such as trade directories, news articles etc…
* Plans his daily / weekly work activities work
* Follow up on sales leads received from various sources and aim to open quality new account business.
* Reflect excellent professional image about the company
* Prepare presentations, proposals and sales contracts.
* Develop and maintain sales materials and product knowledge.
* Establish, maintain and update current and potential client’s relationships & database.
* Resolve customers complain, study their requirements and provide them with the best solutions.
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