IHT Rendezvous: Which Companies' Sustainability Promises Do You Believe?

H&M, the Swedish clothing retail giant, has vowed to become greener and more sustainable when it comes to the water it uses to make its clothes.

“Water is a key resource for H&M, and we are committed to ensuring water is used responsibly throughout our value chain. We do this to minimize risks in our operations, protect the environment and secure availability of water for present and future generations,” said Karl-Johan Persson, the head of H&M, in a press statement released yesterday.

The World Wildlife Fund, the venerable environmental group, will monitor the effort and collaborate with H&M in a campaign called “Pioneering Water Stewardship for Fashion” over the next three years.

With 94,000 employees selling clothes in 48 countries and 750 direct suppliers, H&M is a significant global force in the garment industry.

WWF sees H&M’s commitment to changing all aspects of its water use — from cotton to the customer — as a chance to change the way an entire industry deals with water use and pollution.

“This partnership marks an evolution in the corporate approach to water,” said Jim Leape, Director General of WWF International, according to the statement.

Just two years ago Greenpeace U.K. condemned H&M for wasting water, shaming it with commitments Puma, Adidas and Nike had made to do better. At the time Greenpeace charged: “H&M had links to factories discharging a range of hazardous chemicals into China’s rivers.”

The German sportswear-maker Puma (owned by the French PPR) has been scoring points with environmentalists on several sustainability campaigns. Two years ago, the company introduced an accounting tool that measures the sustainability of products in terms of the greenhouse gases emitted and water consumed to make them. More visible to consumers, the company has received much praise for its environmentally friendly packaging.

Even the corporate behemoth Nike, which in the ’90s was forced to fight against the image of profiting from child labor, has long vowed to be a good and sustainable corporate citizen. In 2011, it announced it wanted to stop discharging hazardous chemicals by 2020.

Join our sustainability discussion. Do you trust these multinational companies when they announce sustainability plans? Or are such announcements more public relations and marketing than honest goals?

Read More..

Nokia CEO closes the door on a potential Android smartphone

Nokia (NOK) CEO Stephen Elop on Thursday shot down rumors that his company might be interested in developing Android-based smartphones. During Nokia’s fourth-quarter earnings call, the executive reiterated his support for the company’s Asha phones and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone platform, while shutting the door on earlier Android rumors.

[More from BGR: Unlocking your smartphone will be illegal starting next week]

“We are clearly innovating with Microsoft around Windows Phone, and are focused on taking that to lower and lower price points,” he said, according to TechCrunch. “You will see that over time [we will] compete with Android. But at the same time we’ve said consistently — and we’re just beginning to see it in the Asha full-touch products — that we will continue to innovate around our Asha smartphone line in order to compete with the very lowest levels of Android.”

[More from BGR: Why the iOS-Android feud is so intense: It’s about core philosophy more than products]

The executive also took shots at Google (GOOG) and the openness of its Android operating system, or lack thereof.

“The situation that Android is facing, where the amount of fragmentation that you’re seeing is increasing as people take it in different directions, is of course offset by Google’s efforts to turn an open ecosystem into something that’s quite a bit more closed as you’ve seen quite recently,” Elop said.

Elop concluded by saying that Nokia is “not in a situation where we are considering something other than Windows Phone combined with what we’re doing with Asha.”

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Nokia CEO closes the door on a potential Android smartphone
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/nokia-ceo-closes-the-door-on-a-potential-android-smartphone/
Link To Post : Nokia CEO closes the door on a potential Android smartphone
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Jennifer Lopez: The Twins Want a Rainbow Birthday Party

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

01/24/2013 at 01:00 PM ET

Henry Lamb/Photowire/BEImages

Jennifer Lopez may be capable of juggling many activities at once, but her primary responsibility right now is planning the birthday party for her twins, Max and Emme.

“They’re 5 next month, and they want a rainbow party. Lots of rainbow stuff!” Lopez told reporters at Wednesday night’s L’Oreal and Cinema Society New York screening of her new thriller, Parker.

“I don’t know [what that means],” says the singer and actress, 43. “Very colorful?”

Although upbeat for her premiere, Lopez wasn’t shy about discussing her painful split from Marc Anthony – which, it turned out, also influenced her movie role.

“It was very difficult,” she explains, “so in front of kids and at work you have to be so professional and you have to be so up for your children in that moment.”

Her screen character “was going through the worst moment of her life, and I had just gone through divorce literally like a month before, so it was hard to get [up in the morning] — that’s why we added the scene at the beginning when she had trouble getting out of bed.”

Still, she called filming the movie cathartic, saying: “I was lucky to be in front of the cameras and act exactly how I felt, so it was a blessing.”

– Carlos Greer

Read More..

S&P 500 eyes best winning streak in eight years

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Friday, buoyed by sturdy corporate earnings from Procter & Gamble and Honeywell, with the S&P 500 poised for its longest winning streak in more than eight years.

The strong start for the equity market this year has been attributed to solid corporate results, agreement in Washington to extend the government's borrowing power, encouraging signs from the global economy and seasonal inflows into stocks.

Those factors helped the S&P 500 rally for a seventh day on Thursday to a five-year peak. Still, the index struggled to climb convincingly above 1,500, a level it surpassed briefly Thursday for the first time since December 2007.

If the S&P 500 rises for an eighth day on Friday it will be its longest winning streak since late 2004, when it rallied for nine straight days.

"We are seeing a very broad-based rally and the ingredients are still in place," said Steve Goldman, principal at Goldman Management in Short Hills, New Jersey. "This is the lift-off phase and it's still significant."

Procter & Gamble , the world's top household products maker, said quarterly profit soared past expectations and raised its sales and earnings outlook for the fiscal year. Shares rose 3.5 pct to $72.93.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 27.45 points, or 0.20 percent, to 13,852.78. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 4.19 points, or 0.28 percent, to 1,499.01. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> added 8.63 points, or 0.28 percent, to 3,139.01.

Honeywell International Inc posted fourth-quarter earnings just above Wall Street estimates, reflecting the diversified U.S. manufacturer's campaign to boost profit margins in the face of sluggish sales growth. The shares rose 0.9 percent to $68.82.

Pointing to a rotation out of bonds, U.S. 30-year Treasury bonds traded more than a point lower in price on Friday, with yields touching session highs at 3.10 percent.

"You have had more confidence from fund managers to provide more allocations to equity markets," which looked more attractive than bonds or cash, said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management.

Recent company earnings have been encouraging. Thomson Reuters data through early Thursday showed that of the 133 S&P 500 companies that have reported earnings so far, 66.9 percent exceeded expectations, more than the 65 percent average over the past four quarters.

Microsoft Corp reported lower quarterly profit on Thursday as Office software sales slowed ahead of a new launch, offsetting a solid but unspectacular start for its Windows 8 operating system and sending the company's shares down 0.2 percent to $27.51.

Apple stepped up audits of working conditions at major suppliers last year, discovering multiple cases of underage workers, discrimination and wage problems. The shares, which fell 12 percent Thursday after disappointing earnings, were little changed at around $450.93.

German business morale improved for a third consecutive month in January to its highest in more than half a year, providing further evidence that growth in Europe's largest economy was gathering speed after contracting late last year.

Echoing a more positive tone in Europe, ECB President Mario Draghi said on Friday he expects the euro zone economy to recover later this year, and that financial market improvements had not yet trickled into the general economy.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Read More..

IHT Rendezvous: Denying American Scots Their Holiday Haggis

LONDON — Scots at home and abroad will be sitting down on Friday night for Burns Night suppers to commemorate their national poet with a feast of haggis.

Robert Burns’ “great chieftain o’ the puddin’-race,” a mix of sheep’s innards and oats tied up in a sheep’s stomach, is the centerpiece of the annual celebration of Scottishness.

It is a pleasure that will once again be denied to Scots-Americans this year, as the BBC’s John Kelly wrote this week in a report that blew a breeze through the heather of the haggis-loving community.

The genuine article has been outlawed in the United States for more than 40 years as a result of a ban on one of its key ingredients — sheep’s lung.

A 1989 health ban on all British offal extended the restriction to hearts and livers, also vital for a true Scottish haggis.

“For many expat Scots and Scots-Americans, the notion of Burns Supper without haggis is as unthinkable as Thanksgiving without turkey,” Mr. Kelly wrote in a report from Washington that revealed aficionados would have to make do with ersatz versions of the Scottish national dish or even — horror of horrors — vegetarian ones.

His report provoked some indignant comments on social media from haggis lovers who pointed out that their favorite sausage was probably a lot safer than the kind of weaponry freely available to U.S. consumers.

Others noted that haggis was no more esoteric than some of the extremes of American cuisine.

And some advised offal-adverse Americans to take a more “waste not, want not” attitude to their food.

As many as 30 million Americans, predominantly in the southeastern states and Texas, have some Scottish ancestry.

Many of their forebears arrived in the New World via settlements in Northern Ireland, an odyssey celebrated by one of their number, former Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, in his 2004 book “Born Fighting.”

One of their imports, fried chicken, has thrived. But not so the humble haggis.

Scottish producers have attempted to fight back against the ban and two years ago the Scottish regional government invited U.S. health officials to come and try the real thing.

“Scotland’s produce is amongst the best in the world and I’ve asked U.S. Department of Agriculture officials to come here to see for themselves the high standards we have in animal health and processing,” Richard Lochhead, Scotland’s rural affairs minister, said.

U.S. authorities have resisted such blandishments. President George W. Bush passed up an opportunity to taste the delicacy at an international summit in Gleneagles in 2005. “Yes, I was briefed on haggis,” he commented unenthusiastically at the time.

Personally, I’m a fan. A culinary tip: if you manage to get your hands on a real haggis, cook slowly at a simmer and never allow to boil. Eat with a mash of neeps and tatties — swede (or rutabaga) and potato. And don’t forget the compulsory whiskey accompaniment — Scotch, of course.

Read More..

Go forth and Tweet! Pope sees web networks as “portals of truth”

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict urged Catholics on Thursday to use social networks like Twitter and Facebook to win converts, as he launched his own smartphone app streaming live footage of his speeches.

The websites – often associated with endless postings of idle gossip and baby photos – could be used as “portals of truth and faith” in an increasingly secular age, the pontiff said in his 2013 World Communications Day message.

“Unless the Good News is made known also in the digital world, it may be absent in the experience of many people,” the 85-year old Pope said in the a letter published on the Vatican‘s website.

The Holy See has become an increasingly prolific user of social media since it launched its ‘new evangelization’ of the developed world, where some congregations have fallen in the wake of growing secularization and damage to the Church’s reputation from a series of sex abuse scandals.

The Pope himself reaches around 2.5 million followers through eight Twitter accounts, including one in Latin.

Belying his traditionalist reputation, the Pope praised connections made online which he said could blossom into true friendships. Online life was not a purely virtual world but “increasingly becoming part of the very fabric of society,” he said.

Social networks were also a practical tool that Catholics could use to organize prayer events, the pope suggested. But he called for reasoned debate and respectful dialogue with those with different beliefs, and cautioned against a tendency towards “heated and divisive voices” and “sensationalism”.

The websites were creating a new “agora”, he added, referring to the gathering spaces that were the centers of public life in ancient Greek cities.

The speech coincided with the launch of ‘The Pope App’, a downloadable program that streams live footage of the pontiff’s speaking events and Vatican news onto smartphones.

Pope Benedict‘s embrace of new media responds to the Church’s concern that it is invisible on the internet.

The Vatican commissioned a study of internet use and religion prior to the pope’s Twitter debut, which found the majority of U.S. Catholics surveyed were unaware of any significant Church presence online.

(Reporting by Naomi O’Leary; editing by Andrew Heavens)

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Go forth and Tweet! Pope sees web networks as “portals of truth”
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/go-forth-and-tweet-pope-sees-web-networks-as-portals-of-truth/
Link To Post : Go forth and Tweet! Pope sees web networks as “portals of truth”
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Julia Pace Mitchell Expecting First Child

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

01/24/2013 at 09:00 AM ET

Stephanie Matthews

Life will soon be imitating art for actress Julia Pace Mitchell — she’s pregnant!

The Young and the Restless star, 27, and her husband Stephen L. Hightower are expecting a baby together in May, her rep tells PEOPLE exclusively.

“I feel so blessed and hopeful about becoming a mommy for the first time,” the mom-to-be says in a statement.

Having experienced an onscreen delivery, Pace Mitchell, who plays Sofia Winters on the long running show, isn’t expecting to wrap the arrival of her first child — a boy the couple plan to name Stephen L. Hightower III — so quickly.

“I’m sure giving birth in real life will take a lot longer than on TV!” she jokes to PEOPLE.

Pace Mitchell and businessman Hightower tied the knot in September 2011.

– Anya Leon

Read More..

AP Interview: UN wants better family planning

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — The U.N.'s top population official wants governments to do more to ensure that women have access to family planning.

The U.N. says the world will add a billion people to its current population of some 7 billion within a decade, further straining the planet's resources.

Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, says more than 220 million women in the developing world want family planning but aren't getting it.

Speaking to The Associated Press at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he said many women want to have fewer children and that "30 percent of those who die giving birth we can prevent with family planning."

He also called for providing girls with "comprehensive sexuality education."

Read More..

Wall Street opens lower after Apple results

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks opened lower on Thursday, a day after Apple Inc reported revenue that missed expectations, tanking the stock and weighing on technology shares.

As the most valuable U.S. company and a heavy weight in both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 <.ndx>, a decline in Apple shares has an outsized impact on the broader market. Apple dropped 10.5 percent to $459.84 in early trading.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 21.73 points, or 0.16 percent, at 13,801.06. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 2.16 points, or 0.14 percent, at 1,492.65. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 24.98 points, or 0.79 percent, at 3,128.69.

(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Read More..

The Lede Blog: Live Updates: Clinton Testifies on Benghazi Attacks

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Lede is following Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the American Consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Mrs. Clinton had been scheduled to testify before Congress last month, but an illness, a concussion and a blood clot near her brain forced her to postpone her appearance.

As our colleagues Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt reported, four State Department officials were removed from their posts on last month after an independent panel criticized the “grossly inadequate” security at a diplomatic compound in Benghazi.

Read More..