Delta Airlines Makes An Emergency Landing In Texas

Delta Airlines has to make an emergency landing in Texas due to the air conditioning system not functioning properly.

Delta Airlines unfortunately had to make an emergency landing into Texas of its flight for Atlanta from Mexico due to problems with the airplanes air conditioning. Delta Airlines had to consider the diversion and implement on this on Wednesday, as the plane landed in Texas at the Corpus Chris International Airport.

The officials informed that the air conditioning of airplane stopped working completely. John Hyland is the airport’s chief of public safety, who informed that the environment of the plane as, ‘being in your attic in the summertime.’

Six of the air travelling company’s passenger fell sick, however not severely, thus no medical attention or aid was required. As a safety measure, firefighters and emergency medics were available just in case when the plane landed. These people led the passengers on the flight to areas where air conditioning was available. There were 71 passengers on board and 4 crewmembers including the pilot.

The plane was having problem before it took off, however the crew was able to cope with the issue two hours prior take off. The remedy unfortunately did not last throughout the flight and the plane had to take an emergency landing. The airline later had to put two passengers in an air-conditioned ambulance and the plane was unloaded. Luckily, for the giant air traveling company, according to Hylan, none of the customers were injured or harmed severely. The later boarded again to continue its journey to Atlanta.

In other news regarding the air travel provider, video footage of a cat on the loose during a flight was captured; the crew was terrified on the plane and shocked as to how the animal managed to escape its cage during the flight. The attendants were unable to catch the cat, and made an announcement saying, “Whoever’s cat this is please come and… wake them up if you see them with the cat carrier, I need them to come and get their pet.” Finally, the owner came to calm the pet down and take it away. The footage however went viral and was shared on YouTube by the name ‘CATastrophe’.

The carrier does allow pets to travel in US but it asks the passengers specifically to keep their pets within the cage throughout the flight. The passengers do not always follow the rules evidently. This could cause various problems like the one faced by Delta’s crew recently during the cat escape.

Alibaba Tackles Counterfeit Goods Problem With Former Apple Employee

Alibaba hired a former Apple executive to investigate and combat against counterfeited goods on its platforms.

Alibaba Group Holding has been issued several warning from the US Trade Group to look into its counterfeit goods issue. It is believed that the online retailer is accused of fakes on its multiple online marketplaces and has been instructed to eliminate them at its earliest. The last warning was issued a couple of months ago where luxury brand owners raised concerns regarding the sales of fake goods of the same products at lower rates on the platform. The luxury brands asked the trade group officials to inspect and take further action to eliminate fake goods.

Since the last warning, Alibaba Group and its founder Jack Ma assured that they would be changing strategies and checking methods in order to remove counterfeited goods from its online retail platforms, including Alibaba.com and Taobao Marketplace. Despite of that, the luxury brand owners complained and got another warning issued to the Chinese tech giant over fake goods.

The US Trade Representatives previously urged the US government to add Alibaba in the notorious list of fakes but it refused this time to add itself. The Group believes that the company must get another chance to try removing counterfeits from its marketplaces.

Alibaba.com and Taobao Marketplace were previously banned in the region but they were recently removed in 2009 and 2012 respectively. The company realizes how significant the US market is and due to little or no presence in the region, it does not want to be completely banned again in the United States. Therefore, for that matter, the online retailer has hired a former Apple investigator who would help the company to battle counterfeit goods.

According to Tech Crunch, Matthew Bassiur will be saying goodbye to his current job at Pfizer as Vice President of Deputy Chief Security Officer. He is now set to become the Vice President of Global Intellectual Property Enforcement at Alibaba. The recruitment will be effective from January 1.

The firm avoided a place in the US government’s notorious list for counterfeited goods. Regardless of taking high security measures previously, it is still one of the major problems for the business. Forbes reported, “Alibaba has sophisticated software and a 2,000-strong team focused on shutting down shop owners peddling fraudulent goods, but Alibaba does also allow many Chinese sellers to continue to make money from selling fake items, so there’s a compromise.”

All eyes are on the new recruitment now to see how he takes this new challenge in his career.

Twitter Head Of Design Quits Hackers Manged to Trace ISIS Twitter Accounts

The head of design of the social media giant might be leaving the company soon, ISIS accounts on the platform are located in Britain after a detailed analysis.

Twitter’s vice president of the designs department, Mike Davidson, who has remained in the position since 2012, might be resigning soon. Headlines escalated recently that some of the company’s user accounts might become victims of hacking; it even warned and guided users on how to protect themselves. Some hackers have managed to trace some of ISIS account through their IP addresses and it seems that those accounts are not from Saudi Arabia, but Britain.

Twitter Inc. might be losing a senior executive yet again; Mike Davidson made an announcement regarding his resignation on Monday. However, he might have to stay at the social media organization till February. Furthermore, he has plans to move back to where he used to live before joining the business, Seattle.

This is not exciting news for the business, as most of its business is well understood and known by Davidson. With his departure, there is no telling what is going to happen next, and no replacement has been decided yet. The reason for his resignation is not known. Davidson had impressive experience even before joining the company, as he had worked at Disney, NBC News and ESPN.

The social media network has lost many of its senior executives in the recent months and is now in search of a new chief marketing officer, head of corporate development, and finally a new vice president of the design department. The business has faced many changes in the recent past and this will not be a problem for it anymore.

The social media site sent out a warning to a small group of users to stay aware of any cyber-attack that would put their personal data, phone number, and IP addresses at risk. Other social media companies followed its footsteps and made the same warning to their customers just to be on the safe side. Some hackers have managed to find the location of some ISIS user accounts with help of achieving their IP addresses. Earlier, these hackers claimed that Twitter had numerous terrorist supporting accounts.

The hackers who have unveiled the location of the ISIS accounts are a group of four people who go by the name of VandaSec. Three accounts have been traced to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP); these IP addresses at first seemed from Saudi Arabia but after detailed inspections, they have been traced back to London where the British Intelligence Services is located. 

VandaSec’s efforts have finally given some closure, and it is now believed that someone who works at DWP might be involved in running these despicable ISIS accounts. After Mirror Online traced the IP addresses, it indicated to transactions between Saudi Arab and London.

The British Government sells many IP addresses of Saudi Arab organizations, such as Saudi Telecom and many others. Hence, the locations traced can still not lead to the conclusion that the accounts are actually from DWP, who refused owning any of these IPs’. The British government has no right or control over the IPs that have already been sold to different firms.

Twitter stock closed at $24.92, going green by 0.32% on December 14.

Twitter Is Capturing Wider Audience For Its Ads Including Inactive Users

Twitter finds another way of generating money, showing ads to even users who do not log in frequently, which is a new way of dealing with user growth.

Twitter has a change of plans to help it generate money from its loss instead. It is going to do this with the help of advertisements, showing them to users who do not log in frequently and are logged out (almost 500 million people). The announcement of making this its business strategy was made on Thursday. This will be the first time ever the social media company is going to make money apart from its active 320 million users. This might even solve the problem of user growth it has faced for a very long time.

Some of the user of Twitter Inc. long in as less as one every month yet they still see the tweets without logging in by clicking a tweet the see on the internet or it is either emailed to them. The business is now going to capture this 500 million of users market through ads. This is very good news for the investors and a good thing for the company too. It is also satisfying for advertisers who previously were optimistic about the low number of users it has in comparison to Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook.

The social media network has argued for a very long time that its users exceed 320 million but they do not log in frequently. The social organization has expectations of generating money from inactive users at half the rate of monetization from its users who are active. The organization also said that it has started showing ads to some of the normal viewers as soon as they click on a tweets link or simply visit another user’s profile.

Around 60 advertisers are participating in this move, present in the prompted tweets in Japan, Britain, Japan and many other major countries. The social media advertising business’s chief operating officer, Adam Bain said, “What we are launching is a way for marketers to target more of Twitter’s total audience than they have ever had before. We are looking to make sure advertisers’ return on investment is as strong for marketers for these logged-out users as it is for logged-in users. It can contribute to the overall experience and we’re making sure they’re not display ads, not products that takeover the user experience.”

It seems that the CEO, Jack Dorsey has finally found the best way to generate profit out of the organization from the inactive users, making them of use instead of a major problem and looking for ways to keep them entertained which the company was trying very hard to do. The ads are going to be on the desktop website of the company in the beginning. Wall Street also sees high potential in this recent development and the shares of the business have gone up by 7% after the announcement. The social media platform is definitely looking for different ways to attract marketers.

TWTR stock closed at $25.94, going green by 6.71% on December 11.

Massive Loss Of 400,000 Job Opportunities In USA Due To Wal-Mart China Imports

Walmart imports of products from China has caused the loss of almost 400,000 jobs in United States from 2001 to 2013.

Walmart’s imports from China have unfortunately caused a loss of 400,000 jobs in the United States from the years 2001 to 2013; the imports were worth $49 billion in 2013. The retail company was reported to be a provider of 13% out of 3.2 million jobs during the same period according to an EPI report made public on Wednesday.

Walmart Stores Inc. was responsible for 15.3% of the US products trade growth through the imports with China. The EPI also said, “Walmart has aided China’s abuse of labor rights and its violations of internationally recognized norms of fair trade by providing a vast and ever expanding conduit for the distribution of artificially cheap and subsidized Chinese exports to the United States.” The retailer defended itself saying the analysis of the EPI was incorrect and distorted. It provides jobs in departments such as distribution, logistics, and the supply chain.

Walmart Wholesale also said it is planning to add 1 million jobs in USA by 2023, but this is just a claim that it has made, only time will tell what is going to happen by then. However, the EPI believes more jobs are going to be lost in the future because of the China Imports trade business the company does.

The multinational retail corporation has informed another step it is going to take in 2023 – buying $50 billion of USA manufactured products – the target was later increased to $250 million due to the pressure put on the company by critics and unions.

A spokesman for the retail chain, Lorenzo Lopez said, “We are very proud of our US manufacturing initiative, and the results speak for themselves. By investing in products that support American jobs, we are able to bring new products to our shelves while bringing new jobs to local communities in Ohio, Tennessee, California and many others.”

The retail giant has been accused in the past for supplying USA with cheap products that have been imported to it; regardless it makes $500 billion worth of sales each year. To settle the matter, it announced of putting more US made products on its shelves to put ease to the recent issues.

The EPI’s involvement in the company contributing to the region in the loss of 400,000 opportunities is mainly because this is not the first time. EPI gets support from many of the labor agencies in the country. The workforce of the retailers took support of such labor organizations only to demand raise in wages and better discounts on food items.

Walmart stock closed at $59.63, going red by -1.44 on December 9.

ConocoPhillips Makes Huge Investments To Achieve Alaska Oil Reserves

ConocoPhillips Invests money in the National Petroleum Reserve and Alaska Oil and Gas Division lease.

ConocoPhillips is making huge investment in Alaska in order to achieve the area’s oil reserves. It was reported to make high bid worth $788,680 for six of the tracts in the US Bureau of Land Management, and later invested $409,011 in three North Slope tracts at the Alaska Oil and Gas Division lease.

ConocoPhillips aims to make Alaska its nets drilling project. The huge investments are a major indication to the statement but this oil company is not the only one in the business who has eyes for the region, as many others in the business are looking for the same benefits. This is mainly due to the 1989 Exxon Valdes spill, which pumped around 11 to 38 million gallons of crude oil in to the waters of the region, and the fact that other businesses have not yet touched the areas reserves.

The Oil Company third quarter daily production was 1.554 million barrels of oil (MMBOE). Evidently, it is producing the right amount with a growth in its margin by 3.5%, making liquid-rich ventures its focus in US and Canada. The organization is hoping to replace the reserves and keep the production high in the future. It has a strong foothold in North America’s gas and oil business. The oil giant is also keeping expectation of lowering labor cost by 2016, after completing the delivery of oil from Surmount 1.

The oil and gas company has cut its capital expenditures for this year to $13.5 billion, mainly because of the unfortunate decline in the oil industry and oil prices. It has moved its focus to upstream operations, thanks to the success achieved in the 66 spin-off. This will cause the company to lose the chance of diversifying but it cannot do much about the market changes worldwide in crude oil and gas prices.

ConocoPhillips is learning to deal with losses and making the required changes to stay successful. If this does not happen, the least it can do is to protect its business as much as possible. While the oil prices might remain low for a while, the company is planning to focus on upstream operations making it even more fragile to the prices. This recent strategy of the oil giant has not proved to be very successful. Most of the businesses in the oil sector are facing the same problems due to the decline in the products prices.

ConocoPhillips stock closed at $54.61, going green by 1.04% on December 1.

Alibaba And Tencent Rivalry Takes A Twist

Meituan joins forces with Tencent resulting in Alibaba agony.

Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. is said to be the biggest stakeholder in Meituan but is not content with the online platform’s recent move. The company decided to opt for a merger in October with Dianping which is backed by Tencent. So after this move, Dianping invested another $1 billion in the merged commodity.

So now Alibaba Group is deciding regarding the streamlining of the proceeds they have observed from the sales of its stakes to Ele.me – an app that delivers food being a direct competitor to Meituan-Dianping.

The reason why BABA wishes to invest in Ele.me is simple since it wishes to take Tefncent along with other growing Interhnet based companies like Baidu down.

If the company is successful in rapidly proliferating the mobile Ecommerce service, the company has now decided to offer consolidation since by devising strategy that revolves around big discounts has actually failed to bolster businesses. Consumers are not loyal to the brand since they start to withdraw once the offering ends.

This has actually given birth to the turf battle that is gradually making its way tyo similar industries.  Certain vendors in an informal manner have been approached by the sales team of Meituan-Dianpingso that they ditch Alipay the payment system, by Alibaba.  They are now encouraging the consumers to opt for the alternative platform designed by Tencent.

Meituan-Dianping on its own has also asked vendors to sign an exclusive pact with Alipay instead of the recent Koubei venture that the company had launched a few months back.

According to the Financial Times, “Further clashes are being set up by changes to the companies’ business models. For example, Meituan, which accounts for four out of every 10 movie tickets sold in China, is now considering a move into film distribution, where it would compete with Alibaba’s Ali Pictures.” This has actually resulted in the executives at Alibaba to approach the investors and acknowledge them that consider Mr.Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan as “ungrateful”.

On the other hand, the local battles might just result in yielding the bargains for the upcoming investors considering the competition in this business. This actually encompasses Digital Sky Technologies. Tiger Global, andthe US investment fund. This is a great time for them to secure better terms with the Internet giants in China

However all those investors that have already invested in Meituan- Danping need to be worried now since a lot is at stake considering the present rivalry.

Alibaba Plans To Buy The South China Morning Post

Alibaba and Jack Ma are under now advance negotiation phase to purchase Hong Kong based newspaper in the coming times.

Alibaba is looking to reinvest its interest in buying The South China Morning Post, an influential English newspaper based in Hong Kong. Alibaba Group Holding, reportedly, is under negotiations to purchase a major newspaper company in the near future. The news came out from a person who has direct knowledge of the discussion between both parties.

In 2013, Amazon purchased The Washington Post. This deal would be quite similar to the Amazon one, as Jeff Bezos wanted to buy the newspaper company in order to support it at a turbulent time of its business. It is obvious that The Washington Post and The South China Morning Post are facing difficulties to keep their business going and adapt to the major changes within the media space.

In both situations, the buyout does not result in a clear business benefit for the buyer. The source familiar with the matter stated that it is still unclear whether Alibaba or Jack Ma, himself, would buy the Hong Kong based newspaper.

Any agreement regarding the newspaper will result in a lot of political interference. New York Times reported, “The prospective takeover is raising concerns that the newspaper’s editorial independence could be compromised by a corporate owner whose market position depends in large part on the good will of the Chinese government.”

Jack Ma is currently dominating the tech industry and the internet world of China. Andrew Collier, a former reporter for the newspaper, suggested that the founder of Alibaba Group wants Beijing to support him in this decision as it might help him in continuing the dominance in the sector. Mr. Andrew Collier is currently in a financial research firm.

It is still not confirmed whether the deal would be agreed within the next few weeks or in the coming months. According to the person familiar with the matter, he also stated that there is a slight chance that the deal would not go through at all.

So far, both companies have declined to comment on these rumors and speculations. The South China Morning Post stated that the company does not comment on the market rumors.

The Chinese tech giant has once again made the headlines in the sector with another big acquisition if the deal is successful. Alibaba is determined to continue its dominance in the internet space and stay ahead in the competitive market among its rivals. Experts also view this decision in favor of the organization.

The Story Of Twitter Moments

Here is how Forbes explained why Twitter came into being and what is its purpose.

It has been a tough year for Twitter Inc. as it did not only post poor results but did not improve its business at all. The company’s user growth is stalled as well as the monthly active users are declining which is worrying the shareholders and investors. A few months ago, the company was on its verge to launch one of its most anticipated products, Project Lighting, which is also known as Moments. During that time, Moments was a win win situation for the social media network.

Analysts and professionals claimed that it will prove to be a game changer for the company in the coming times. Twitter is not only battling in the market to compete against Facebook but now it has to do well so that it can lure more users on its platform that are currently preferring the likes of Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp as their normal routine social media network. Moments was said to be not only improve and increase the user growth but make things attractive for the existing users as well.

As Forbes reported, “If Twitter’s primary challenge has been to simplify discovery of its rich content and become more relevant for novice and non-users, then Moments takes a critical first step forward in that mission.” The social media website was created for this purpose only however ever since its inception it has not been used for the purpose it was created for. And this annoys the old investors that have been with the company from the time it was not public.

Facebook generates most of its revenues from advertising and when Twitter tried to boost advertising and marketing on its platform, it miserably failed as no big name advertisers and marketers chose Twitter to do business. But gradually, this has changed. Several businesses and brands are now looking to promote in order to extend their reach and presence throughout the social media.

Twitter has been a victim of immense criticism recently because of lack of its product direction. Everyone uses Twitter the way they want to use it. Hence all the virtual happenings that take place across the globe is actually reported on Twitter first in comparison to other social platforms. Forbes wrote “For brands, the opportunity is to start rethinking their approach to media publishers.  As curation becomes increasingly central to news delivery, brands should pay close attention to trending stories and topics that align with the most influential curators such as Twitter.”

Samsung Expands Its Wearables Portfolio Rapidly

Samsung is expanding its wearable portfolio and already has more in the market than its rivals.

Samsung is not stopping any soon when it comes to manufacturing wearable electronics. It is making continuous addition in the wearable portfolio, already having more gadgets of the kind in the market in comparison to its biggest rivals, such as Microsoft Corporation and Apple. The demand for wearable electronics is more in Japan than Europe and USA.

The famous galaxy series maker is well aware of the rising demand for wearable gadgets and is taking all the right and necessary actions to be at the top of the game. The tech giant was reported to have more patents than any other organization in 2013 and 2014, as it has achieved 600 patents for wearable in those years. According to KETI, Korea Electronics Technology Institute, which was the biggest number in the market achieved, and it beats its rivals in that case.

Samsung is aiming to develop more smartwatches and other mobile payments facilities in order to grow globally, while Apple is making efforts to do the same as well. Samsung has already been at the top for a very long time in the mobile phone market because of its successful Galaxy series, such as the Galaxy 6 and S6 Edge.

The electronics company has made reports that have mentioned leaked pictures of Galaxy A5 and A7, which showed the back and the front of the phones. A7 was black in color while A5 was golden. The public now knows that these upcoming smartphone are going to be presented in a metal body, which is a change as most of the mobile phones the company makes are in plastic or aluminum, but the previous model of A5 and A7 consisted of metal bodies as well.

The most evident difference is the glass back panels both phones will have, according to the pictures. They both look like the company’s famous Galaxy S6 and the designs will have an LED flash that would be next to the primary camera of the phones.  The speakers have been placed in a different location this time, being at the bottom of the phone.

Sadly, these devices will not have the heart rate sensor feature in them which would have gotten the company more sales through customers who care about their health. The home button is taller, which might be a hint that the phone might have a fingerprint option in them, the sensors have been rearranged in upcoming devices. These devices might be launch in January in 2016 packed with average specifications yet economical prices in comparison to the company’s other smartphones.

Samsung stock closed at $1,100.00 on November 5.

Alibaba Decides To Pause International Expansions

Alibaba has decided to temporarily stop international expansions for other issues.

Alibaba just achieved huge success on its most awaited Singles Day, but oddly, its shares were still reported to decline. This leads to the decision it just announced that it is putting a pause to its expansions in India for the time being. India is the world second most populated country, and would have given the company huge business.

The future would be very good for the company if and whenever it expands to India in future, due to the high population of the country, around 1.2 billion and is growing every year by 1.24%. Alibaba Group stopped the deal it was supposed to sign with a smartphone group in India, MicroMax. A delay has been reported by business finance news on other investments in China’s demising economy. It has plans to expand to India but not now.

The chairman of the retail giant values the plans of growth in India, and made it the main feature of growth strategy in 2014, but its hometown’s slow economy has made it suffer and delays its plans. It has been making headlines over controversies of fake product on its platform, which has also played a part in the company’s decline in share.

It does not want to ruin its name and image in the market, but the ongoing lawsuit regarding this accusation have done the damage already. Alibaba Company deal with MicroMax was getting it 20% shares in the group, worth $3 billion. Other companies in the market are also interested in this attractive deal, and now that Alibaba has put a pause on everything, they will try getting their hands on the India’s major phone manufacturer’s deal.

The retail company has made a smart decision, and has a close eye on the currrent happenings in the market. It takes decision accordingly so that it faces as less damage as possible. It should give importance towards keeping a strong and dominant image in the market so that it can face the obstacles that will come in the future due to the declining economy of China.

Pause on the expansion is good decision even though it would have been very profitable for the retail giant. Patience is what will get the company through now but once the expansion takes place in such a populated country, it has to keep in mind to maintain its standard and take actions of the accusation of fake products on its online shopping platform.

Alibaba stock closed at $75.77 on November 13.