Thursday 31 May 2018
Pinterest gives advertisers a way to show promoted videos that take up the screen – TechCrunch
Pinterest is continuing its push into video as a potential avenue for advertisers by today saying that it will offer advertisers a promoted video tool that takes up the width of the entire screen.
While Pinterest normally offers users a grid that they can flip through — compressing a lot of content into a small space — taking up the full width of the screen with a promoted video would offer advertisers considerable real estate if they’re looking to get the attention of users. Pinterest pitches itself to advertisers as a strong alternative to Facebook or Google, giving marketers a way to reach an audience that behaves a little more differently than when on those other platforms and coming to Pinterest to discover new things.
The company also said it’s hired Tina Pukonen as an entertainment strategist and Mike Chuthakieo as an industry sales lead. Pinterest says more than 42 million people in the U.S. come to Pinterest for entertainment ideas, and that potential tool offers an interesting niche opportunity for advertisers to capture the attention of a user for a product — say, a movie — that needs a lot of awareness marketing. Getting a user’s attention for just a few seconds can be more than enough time to at least plant the seed of potentially buying a product down the line.
It’s that argument that what gives Pinterest potential value for advertisers. The company offers an array of advertising products designed to target users at all phases of a potential buying cycle, whether that’s just clicking around on the platform looking for ideas down to actually saving an idea or buying it — through Pinterest or through a referral. Most of Pinterest’s content consists of images and other content from brands or businesses. That makes sense given that it’s a place where people tend to go to plan life events, whether that’s parties, or weddings, or home improvement — and those events center around products that they may in theory one day buy. All the while Pinterest is accumulating a lot of different plays at advertising products and an experienced level of senior hires, including hiring its first COO Françoise Brougher, who was the former VP of SMB global sales and operations at Google and business lead at Square.
Pinterest, interestingly, seems to have been a little more tolerant of making what might seem like small design changes but may have substantial user implications. The company added a tab for followers at the bottom of the app, shaking up what is often seen as a core navigation bar for any app. But the company continues to grow, crossing 200 million monthly active users in September last year.
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Google is quietly formulating a new strategy for China – TechCrunch
Google is slowly piecing together a strategy for China to ensure that it doesn’t miss out on the growth of technology in the world’s largest country. It’s been months in the making through a series of gradual plays, but further evidence of those plans comes today via a product launch.
Files Go — a file manager for Android devices released last year — has made its way to China today. Not a huge launch, for sure, but the mechanisms behind it provide insight into how Google may be thinking about the country, where it has been absent since 2010 after redirecting its Chinese search service to Hong Kong in the face of government pressure.
For Files Go, Google is taking a partner-led approach to distribution because the Google Play Store does not operate in China. The company is working with Tencent, Huawei, Xiaomi and Baidu, each of which will stock the app in their independent app stores, which are among the country’s most prominent third-party stores.
Let that sink in a little: the creator of Android is using third-party Android app stores to distribute one of its products.
On the outside that’s quite the scenario, but in China it makes perfect sense.
There’s been regular media speculation about Google’s desire to return to China which, during its absence, has become the largest single market for smartphone users, and the country with the most app downloads and highest app revenue per year. Mostly the rumors have centered around audacious strategies such as the return of the Google Play Store or the restoration of Google’s Chinese search business, both of which would mean complying with demands from the Chinese government.
Then there’s the politics. The U.S. and China are currently in an ongoing trade standoff that has spilled into tech, impacting deals, while Chinese premier Xi Jinping has taken a protectionist approach to promoting local business and industries, in particular AI. Xi’s more controversial policies, including the banning of VPNs, have put heat on Apple, which stands accused of colluding with authorities and preventing free speech in China.
Political tension between the U.S. and China is affecting tech companies. [Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Even when you remove the political issues, a full return is a tough challenge. Google would be starting businesses almost from scratch in a highly competitive market where it has little brand recognition.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that it hasn’t made big moves… yet at least.
Instead, it appears that the company is exploring more nimble approaches. There have been opportunistic product launches using established platforms, and generally Google seems intent at building relationships and growing a local presence that allows its global business to tap into the talent and technology that China offers.
Files Go is the latest example, but already we’ve seen Google relaunch its Translate app in 2017 and more recently it brought its ARCore technology for augmented and virtual reality to China using partners, which include Xiaomi and Huawei.
Bouquets of flowers lie on the Google logo outside the company’s China head office in Beijing on March 23, 2010 after the US web giant said it would no longer filter results and was redirecting mainland Chinese users to an uncensored site in Hong Kong — effectively closing down the mainland site. Google’s decision to effectively shut down its Chinese-language search engine is likely to stunt the development of the Internet in China and isolate local web users, analysts say. (Photo credit: xin/AFP/Getty Images)
Beyond products, Google is cultivating relationships, too.
It inked a wide-ranging patent deal with Tencent, China’s $500 billion tech giant which operates WeChat and more, and has made strategic investments to back AI startup XtalPi (alongside Tencent), live-streaming platform Chushou, and AI and hardware company Mobvoi. There have been events, too, including AlphaGo’s three-game battle with Chinese grandmaster Ke Jie in Wuzhen, developer conferences in China and the forthcoming first Google Asia Demo Day, which takes places in Shanghai in September.
In addition to making friends in the right places, Google is also increasing its own presence on Chinese soil. The company opened an AI lab in Beijing to help access China-based talent, while it also unveiled a more modest presence in Shenzhen, China’s hardware capital, where it has a serviced office for staff. That hardware move ties into Google’s acquisition of a chunk of HTC’s smartphone division for $1.1 billion.
The strategy is no doubt in its early days, so now is a good time to keep a keen eye on Google’s moves in this part of the world.
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HoloLens acts as eyes for blind users and guides them with audio prompts – TechCrunch
Microsoft’s HoloLens has an impressive ability to quickly sense its surroundings, but limiting it to displaying emails or game characters on them would show a lack of creativity. New research shows that it works quite well as a visual prosthesis for the vision impaired, not relaying actual visual data but guiding them in real time with audio cues and instructions.
The researchers, from Caltech and University of Southern California, first argue that restoring vision is at present simply not a realistic goal, but that replacing the perception portion of vision isn’t necessary to replicate the practical portion. After all, if you can tell where a chair is, you don’t need to see it to avoid it, right?
Crunching visual data and producing a map of high-level features like walls, obstacles and doors is one of the core capabilities of the HoloLens, so the team decided to let it do its thing and recreate the environment for the user from these extracted features.
They designed the system around sound, naturally. Every major object and feature can tell the user where it is, either via voice or sound. Walls, for instance, hiss (presumably a white noise, not a snake hiss) as the user approaches them. And the user can scan the scene, with objects announcing themselves from left to right from the direction in which they are located. A single object can be selected and will repeat its callout to help the user find it.
That’s all well for stationary tasks like finding your cane or the couch in a friend’s house. But the system also works in motion.
The team recruited seven blind people to test it out. They were given a brief intro but no training, and then asked to accomplish a variety of tasks. The users could reliably locate and point to objects from audio cues, and were able to find a chair in a room in a fraction of the time they normally would, and avoid obstacles easily as well.
This render shows the actual paths taken by the users in the navigation tests
Then they were tasked with navigating from the entrance of a building to a room on the second floor by following the headset’s instructions. A “virtual guide” repeatedly says “follow me” from an apparent distance of a few feet ahead, while also warning when stairs were coming, where handrails were and when the user had gone off course.
All seven users got to their destinations on the first try, and much more quickly than if they had had to proceed normally with no navigation. One subject, the paper notes, said “That was fun! When can I get one?”
Microsoft actually looked into something like this years ago, but the hardware just wasn’t there — HoloLens changes that. Even though it is clearly intended for use by sighted people, its capabilities naturally fill the requirements for a visual prosthesis like the one described here.
Interestingly, the researchers point out that this type of system was also predicted more than 30 years ago, long before they were even close to possible:
“I strongly believe that we should take a more sophisticated approach, utilizing the power of artificial intelligence for processing large amounts of detailed visual information in order to substitute for the missing functions of the eye and much of the visual pre-processing performed by the brain,” wrote the clearly far-sighted C.C. Collins way back in 1985.
The potential for a system like this is huge, but this is just a prototype. As systems like HoloLens get lighter and more powerful, they’ll go from lab-bound oddities to everyday items — one can imagine the front desk at a hotel or mall stocking a few to give to vision-impaired folks who need to find their room or a certain store.
“By this point we expect that the reader already has proposals in mind for enhancing the cognitive prosthesis,” they write. “A hardware/software platform is now available to rapidly implement those ideas and test them with human subjects. We hope that this will inspire developments to enhance perception for both blind and sighted people, using augmented auditory reality to communicate things that we cannot see.”
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A journalist reappears, and Russia cries foul
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Lady Colin Campbell claims she turned down the chance to do Diana’s official biography
Lady Colin Campbell, who shocked viewers of I’m A Celebrity with her bullying behaviour and caustic put-downs, claims she turned down the chance to be Diana’s ‘authorised’ biographer because she didn’t agree with her ‘posture of victimhood’.
The author went on to write an unauthorised book, Diana In Private, which made shocking claims that later proved to be true, including her struggle with bulimia and affair with James Hewitt.
The Princess, who felt trapped in her desperately unhappy marriage to Prince Charles, co-operated with Andrew Morton on his international bestseller, Diana: Her True Story, which was published several months after Lady Colin’s book in 1992.
Lady Colin Campbell (right) claims she turned down the chance to be Diana’s (left) ‘authorised’ biographer because she didn’t agree with her ‘posture of victimhood’
‘Diana In Private started out as the official biography,’ claims Georgia, who still uses the title bestowed during her one-year marriage to Lord Colin Campbell, the Duke of Argyll’s younger son, in 1973.
‘Diana and I agreed that I’d do an official biography of her — an anodyne biography. Then she saw it was what she called her ‘get out of jail card’.
‘And she decided to turn it from an official biography to an unofficial biography, detailing her dissatisfaction with her life as a member of the Royal Family.
‘I took some convincing, but she convinced me that it was in both our interests to do this.
‘Diana was advised by friends that she should play the victim.
‘I did not agree with her posture of victimhood. I sensed it was not going to do her or her children or her family or the Royal Family any good in the long run, so I walked away.’
This weekend, Lady Colin is staging her debut play, Bid For Freedom, at her Sussex stately home, Castle Goring.
It is based on conversations she claims to have had with Diana.
Georgia, 68, adds: ‘She wanted me to effectively tell lies like propaganda. I’m not criticising Andrew Morton — he wrote what she told him.
‘He chose to believe all that she said and accepted it undiluted, while I was not prepared to do so.’
Meghan’s page boys cash in!
Meghan and Harry’s pageboys, Brian and John Mulroney, nearly stole the show with their awestruck faces and gap-toothed smiles.
Now their mother, Jessica, is making the most of their fame.
The stylist, 38, reveals her seven-year-old twins are selling their beloved Pokemon cards to raise money for her charity.
Sharing this snap online, she writes: ‘Let’s make a killing boys!’
Meghan and Harry’s seven-year-old pageboys, Brian and John Mulroney, nearly stole the show with their awestruck faces and gap-toothed smiles
Their mother Jessica Mulroney reveals her twins are selling their beloved Pokemon cards to raise money for her charity. Sharing this snap online, she writes: ‘Let’s make a killing boys!’
Matt and Lily are pout and about…
Cinderella star Lily James is used to fairytale romance on screen, but her real-life relationship with The Crown’s Matt Smith runs the whole gamut of emotions in just one lunchtime.
Lily, 29, wearing a pretty pink lace dress, was spotted sharing a meal at a Greek restaurant, Lemonia, with 35-year-old Matt, near their home in North London.
After pouting at each other like schoolchildren, Matt gave Lily a kiss.
Who could resist?
Lily, 29, wearing a pretty pink lace dress, was spotted sharing a meal at a Greek restaurant, Lemonia, with 35-year-old Matt, near their home in North London
After pouting at each other like schoolchildren, Matt gave Lily a kiss. Who could resist?
That’s not Moira, it’s me! Newsreaders’ big mix-up!
Line Of Duty star Thandie Newton revealed last week that Victoria Beckham once mistook her for American actress Zoe Saldana.
Now, broadcaster Zeinab Badawi, 58, tells me that people often confuse her for the BBC’s Moira Stuart, 68, who was the first Afro-Caribbean female newsreader on British television.
‘I get it all the time,’ she says at a party in London’s Fitzrovia.
‘It’s probably because we’re both black and work as newsreaders.’
Broadcaster Zeinab Badawi (left) says people often confuse her for the BBC’s Moira Stuart (right), who was the first Afro-Caribbean female newsreader on British television
Could Bridget Jones’s Diary have been made in the #MeToo era?
Bridget, played by Renee Zellweger, tells her potential employer (Neil Pearson) she left her last job ‘because I shagged the boss’.
Pearson’s character replies: ‘You can start tomorrow.’ Does he think the line would have been included these days?
‘No chance,’ he tells me, ‘but that’s the line most of my fans quote when they meet me.’ The film, incidentally, was produced by Harvey Weinstein.
A wizard £1million a year for Rupert
Seven years after he last appeared in a film about the boy wizard, Harry Potter star Rupert Grint is still enjoying a magical effect on his finances.
The actor, 29, who played Harry’s best friend Ron in the films, has just disclosed £14.6 million in shareholders’ funds at Clay 10, the business through which he channels his earnings.
The company, managed by his father, held £13.6 million in 2016, which means he made £1 million profit over the past year.
Yet Grint’s millions are small change compared with those accumulated by his co-star Daniel Radcliffe in his company Gilmore Jacobs — a staggering £72.7 million, according to its latest accounts.
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Canadian Yahoo hacker gets a five-year prison sentence – TechCrunch
After pleading guilty in November, the Canadian hacker at least partially to blame for the massive Yahoo hack that exposed up to 3 billion accounts will face five years in prison. According to the Justice Department, the hacker, 23-year-old Karim Baratov, worked under the guidance of two agents from the FSB, Russia’s spy agency, to compromise the accounts.
Those officers, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, reside in Russia, as does Latvian hacker Alexsey Belan who also was implicated in the Yahoo hack. Given their location, those three are unlikely to face consequences for their involvement, but Baratov’s Canadian citizenship made him vulnerable to prosecution.
“Baratov’s role in the charged conspiracy was to hack webmail accounts of individuals of interest to his coconspirator who was working for the FSB and send those accounts’ passwords to Dokuchaev in exchange for money,” the Justice Department described in its summary of Baratov’s sentencing.
Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Alex G. Tse issued a stern warning to other would-be hackers doing a foreign government’s dirty work:
The sentence imposed reflects the seriousness of hacking for hire. Hackers such as Baratov ply their trade without regard for the criminal objectives of the people who hire and pay them. These hackers are not minor players; they are a critical tool used by criminals to obtain and exploit personal information illegally. In sentencing Baratov to five years in prison, the Court sent a clear message to hackers that participating in cyber attacks sponsored by nation states will result in significant consequences.
In addition to his prison sentence, Baratov was ordered to pay out all of his remaining assets up to $2,250,000 in the form of a fine. As part of his plea, Baratov also admitted to hacking as many as 11,000 email accounts between 2010 and his arrest in 2017.
Baratov’s crimes include aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
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Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s American site – TechCrunch
Starting in July, Australians will be blocked from ordering items on Amazon’s United States site. The company said today that shoppers in Australia will be redirected to its local site, Amazon.com.au, and that its international sites, including Amazon.com, will no longer ship to Australian addresses. The change is in response to a new tax regulation that goes into effect on July 1 and requires businesses earning more than $75,000 AUD a year to charge Australia’s 10% Goods and Services Tax (GST) on low value items imported by consumers.
Called the “Amazon tax,” the new policy was introduced following concerns about the impact of Amazon and other large overseas e-commerce businesses on Australian retailers, who have to apply GST to all products they sell. A loophole in tax regulations, however, means that the GST is currently applied only to items purchased from overseas retailers if they are worth $1,000 AUD or more, which many local companies argued gave Amazon, eBay and other overseas competitors an unfair advantage.
Amazon launched its Australian site last December and says it currently has 60 million products, a fraction of the estimated 500 million products that are listed on Amazon’s U.S. site. As a placation, Australian customers will also have access to 4 million products that were previously available only on Amazon.com through its new Global Store.
In a statement emailed to TechCrunch, an Amazon spokesperson said:
“As a result of changes to Australian GST law on 1 July, international shopping options for Australian customers will change.
While we regret any inconvenience this may cause customers, we have had to assess the workability of the legislation as a global business with multiple international sites. Based on our assessment, we will redirect Australian customers from our international sites to amazon.com.au where they can shop for products sold by Amazon US on the new Global Store, available today. This will allow us to provide our customers with continued access to international selection and remain compliant with the law which requires us to collect and remit GST on products sold on Amazon sites that are shipped from overseas.”
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Google launches a Q&A app for neighborhood communities in India – TechCrunch
Google is increasing its focus on India after it released a new social app that’s aimed at building neighborhood communities within cities in the country.
The company’s ‘Next Billion’ team in charge of emerging markets has dedicated significant resources to India. Its initiatives include data-friendly versions of YouTube and other popular services, its Tez mobile payment app, a food delivery service and a national WiFi network initiative. Now it is adding one more to the list with the release of Neighbourly, a Q&A app for sharing local knowledge.
The basic goal is to give local communities an outlet to seek answers to practical questions about local life, routine and more. Google believes that an increase in urban migration, short-term leasing and busy lives has changed the dynamic of local communities and made it harder to share information quite so easily.
“Life happens close to home, in order the of a 1-2km radius, and local questions come up all the time. But as cities get bigger and bigger, we’re finding that these local questions are getting hard to use — word of mouth used to be key,” Josh Woodward, a product manager within the Next Billion initiative, explained to TechCrunch.
“We built neighborly as a way to connect you with your neighborhood, ask questions, share expertise and stay up to date in a safe way,” he added.
This idea is nothing new, of course. Already in India, WhatsApp — which counts 200 million users in the country — has a range of community groups, but the big issue is discovery since new users have to be added to the group directly.
The new Google app is much like Jelly, the question and answer service from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone that was ultimately bought by Pinterest, but with localized tweaks. A beta version of the app is initially available in Mumbai, but users located in other areas can join a waitlist pending expansion.
Questions and answers are handled via swipeable cards — who knew Tinder’s design would reach neighborhood community apps in India — while the app uses GPS to add a user into their neighborhood right from sign-up.
Woodward said Google is employing ranking and personalization technology which, over time, will match users with the kind of questions they can answer or have shown an interest in. For now, the service is app-based with a read-only mobile web version.
Google’s local tweaks to make the app easy to use include voice-based entry for questions, which covers a range of India’s non-English languages, and a series of prompts that pop up when a user decides to post a question to help them start.
The company has looked at safety issues, and made it easy to flag content which is unsuitable. Once flagged, Woodward confirmed the content is passed to a local content moderator who asses whether it is “neighborly.”
In terms of safety, users sign up using a first name only, there is no private messaging or phone number requirement, and individual profile photos cannot be copied via screenshot and don’t expand when clicked to prevent being stolen. That taps into concern women have about their photos being abused, an issue that Facebook has taken measures against in India, too.
In fact, at sign-up, Google asks users to agree to a ‘contract’ — “I will respect my neighbors” — before letting them into the app. But still, you’d imagine that the laws of the internet will mean that some people will misuse the service.
Profile pages do, however, display badges earned by answering questions — both an incentive and a display of trust, according to Woodward — while users can follow, and be followed, to keep with certain users and their content.
Google tested the app on thousands of users over a period of about a month to get the mechanics right. Woodward said that 30-50 percent of questions were answered within five minutes, which bodes well but discovery looks like being the key issue. That was ultimately the downfall of Jelly, albeit that both apps serve very different audiences and purposes.
Further down the line, Woodward said that Google could add business accounts and integrate other Google services into Neighbourly, but for now the sink-or-swim challenge is to make an impact.
The launch of Neighbourly comes the same day that Google launched Files Go in China. In doing so, the search giant gave a glimpse at its new strategy for China, which involves opportunistic product launches, relationships and strategic investments.
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Experience was key component: CSK coach Fleming
‘It was difficult two years for the franchise. The desire to get back to the competition was high. It was sustainable to keep winning throughout. The players were motivated (to win)’
IMAGE: Chennai Super Kings’ Shane Watson and Suresh Raina enjoyed good form this season. Photograph: BCCI
Chennai Super Kings head coach Stephen Fleming has admitted that his franchise experienced a difficult time during the two-year ban from the IPL and his players were motivated to win the title.
Reinstated into the IPL after a two-year ban for their team management’s role in the 2013 spot-fixing scandal, CSK outplayed Sunrisers Hyderabad by eight wickets in the summit clash here last night to clinch their third title, with Shane Watson leading the charge with an unbeaten 117 off 57 balls.
“It was difficult two years for the franchise. The desire to get back to the competition was high. It was sustainable to keep winning throughout. The players were motivated (to win),” Fleming said after his side beat SRH to clinch the title.
“I am proud of how different individuals stood up at key times. I am proud the way experienced players showed their way. We believe experience coming back into the competition was going to be a key component. There were lots of emotions in the franchise for what had happened, there was a lot of reasoning behind this team,” said Fleming.
CSK had won the title previously in 2010 and 2011 and was suspended from the event in 2016 and 2017.
Fleming said the consistency brought by the likes of captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Suresh Raina also played a major part in his side’s campaign.
“We value experience for consistency, guys who keep doing it and not one-offs. The (Mahendra Singh) Dhonis and (Suresh) Rainas take you deep into the tournament,” he said.
In the end, CSK notched up an easy 8-wicket win with 1.3 overs to spare against SRH in the summit clash but Fleming admitted that it was a tough battle in the initial overs.
IMAGE: CSK players celebrate a wicket. Photograph: BCCI
“It was a good struggle, the opening spell was outstanding from Sunrisers. It was a real battle in the first four or five overs. Shane gradually found a bit of rhythm and range. He kept patience and did not give it away. He knew his power game would get the team out of trouble. He has been a star performer for us,” the New Zealander said.
He said he was always confident of Australian Watson making an impact in this IPL though there were a few question marks on his fitness.
“Fitness was an issue as it is a long tournament but he (Watson) is more professional than I thought. We did not have to use much in bowling but he has got through one of his greatest performances. He is a bit broken now,” said Fleming, after Watson was seen limping during the post-tournament awards function.
“With RCB (Royal Challengers Bangalore), Watson batted at four. I also watched him closely at the Big Bash (T20 league in Australia) and there were signs that he was in good form. I had no doubt he was going to make an impact,” he added.
The Super Kings head coach praised the pace duo of South African Lungi Ngidi and Shardul Thakur for keeping things tight towards the end of SRH innings.
“They could have got to 190-200 too. Ngidi and Shardul bowled two good overs. Anything under 180, we were happy with it,” said the head coach while pointing out how the batsmen stood up to the challenge posed by Afghanistan leggie Rashid Khan.
“Rashid Khan was a different player, we played him quite well,” he said.
The coach also said that communication and defining roles were important for his team.
“Communication and defining roles is crucial. We needed to look at characters, (Ambati) Rayudu was a character who I valued. M S (Dhoni) was open about batting him top of the order. Kedar Jadhav is another good character who we lost (due to injury). It is not rocket science, but looking after little things,” Fleming said.
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Wednesday 30 May 2018
Hunter who slaughtered wild buffalo is killed in South Africa
- Claude Kleynhans, 54, had femoral artery torn in a buffalo attack last week
- Proessional hunter had been loading carcass of another buffalo on a jeep
- Father-of-three died at the scene in Limpopo province, north east South Africa
A South African hunter who had shot a wild buffalo was himself killed by another member of the herd, reports say.
Claude Kleynhans, 54, was attacked by a large male buffalo as he was loading a carcass onto a vehicle in Limpopo province, north east South Africa.
The buffalo tore the father-of-three’s femoral artery and he died at the scene, Citizen.co.za reports.
Killed: Professional hunter Claude Kleynhans, 54, was attacked by a large male buffalo as he was loading the carcass of another buffalo onto vehicle in Limpopo province, South Africa
Mr Kleynhans, who ran a hunting safari company in nearby Tzanen, had been out on a guided hunting trip with clients when he died last Tuesday.
Another South African news website hailed Mr Kleynhans, a former police officer, as ‘one of the country’s finest ethical hunters’ with an interest in hunting for conservation as well as trophy.
In the wake of his death, a number of people have sought out Mr Kleynhans’ public Facebook and posted offensive messages.
Hunted down: Mr Kleynhans was attacked by a large buffalo which tore his femoral artery
The 54-year-old father-of-three ran a hunting safari company in Tzanen, Limpopo province
One woman named Pamela Tomaro D’Angio wrote: ‘I love when Poachers get killed by the animals it makes me extremely happy!!
‘Hope you don’t RIP you f***ing sucker. You killed plenty of animals and now it was your turn you useless sick minded coward. Rot in hell.’
One man named Pedro Resendes wrote ‘Karma is a B****!!!!, while Matt Skee added: ‘I hope his loser family reads these… Claude deserved everything he got….’
Mr Kleynhans, described as a passionate Christian, leaves behind two daughters and a son.
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Grenfell Tower: Kensington and Chelsea council considering replacing 4,000 sub-standard fire doors
The London borough where the Grenfell tragedy took place will discuss whether to replace around 4,000 doors with ones which are properly fire-resistant, following the publication of a highly critical report on the council’s response in the aftermath of the fire.
It emerged that an undamaged door from the Grenfell tower block could only withstand a blaze for 15 minutes, not the 30 for which it was designed, following testing.
Doors on local authority homes must be fire-resistant for 30 minutes in order to satisfy regulations.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea said the doors it has proposed to replace are “not necessarily deficient” in terms of fire risk assessments since “it is not currently a legislative requirement”.
The announcement follows the release of a new report that found the institutional response to the disaster was “badly flawed” in the first crucial days.
The voluntary sector was “very much on the front line”, due to the void left by a lack of official direction in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, the report found.
“The consequences of the disaster were compounded by the weak leadership of the response initially led by the local council, which was slow to provide direction, coordination and information and to address multiple pressing needs,” the report, commissioned by the charity Muslim Aid, said.
At the Grenfell Tower inquiry on Tuesday, survivors lamented the fire brigade’s advice to stay inside, which discouraged many families from fleeing.
A group of Grenfell Tower residents claim that the “stay put” advice, that was pursued until two hours after the fire broke out, cost residents lives.
It has since emerged that the London fire brigade told the owners of 101 tower blocks over 18 meters tall to evacuate if a fire breaks out.
In an interview on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday, one of the firefighters who fought the blaze and rescued nine people said that “in 26 years of being a firefighter it was the biggest fire I’d scene and dealt with.”
“Fires don’t spread like that did,” Aldo Diana said, explaining why a policy of containment was pursued in the first instance, rather than immediately evacuating the building. “We did what we could that night and worked as hard as we could.”
“I’ve been in tower block fires before and this was totally different to any I’ve been in. Normally its contained in the one flat it starts in, “ he said. “But never in my [experience] has it spread like this.”
Although the London fire brigade has come in for criticism for their initial approach, the individual heroism of firefighters has been much lauded and they have played a role in many community events in the 11 months since the fire.
The report also found that, despite their lack of experience of UK disaster situations, local organisations worked effectively in the immediate and longer-term response phases.
“In the first few chaotic days and weeks, there were examples of timely, effective action, much of it from local organisations with no experience or training in emergency response, complemented at times by key expertise from outside,” it said.
Muslim Aid’s chief executive, Jehangir Malik, who was on the ground coordinating volunteers responding to the plight of those affected by the disaster, paid tribute to “the spirit of humanitarian action” which crucially “filled the void where there was a lack of official direction, coordination and information.”
“I would have expected this chaos in a developing country, because almost always there is poor infrastructure,” he said. “I honestly thought we had better disaster preparedness and response systems here in the UK.
“We are now asking for lessons to be learned and for greater coordination of the voluntary organisations with local authorities, including as part of national emergency response structures.”
The report said it would be easy to dismiss Grenfell as “a one-off, compounded by the failings of a particularly flawed local authority”, but it warned there are aspects that could play out again “at a time when the frequency of disasters in the UK is likely to increase due to climate change, vulnerability to terror attacks and the inherent risks of life in crowded, unequal cities”.
Due to many consequences of the fire still being unresolved – with dozens of families still living in hotels – the report recognised that “it is vital that future action is informed by what has been learnt from the response so far”.
“This applies both to working with the people of North Kensington to address their needs, and shaping wider thinking and practice in emergency preparedness, response and resilience, in London and the rest of the UK,” the report said.
“The Grenfell Tower disaster must be a wake-up call to those in a position to effect change and find 21st century solutions to 21st century challenges”.
The report recommended that, in a major disaster, local secular and faith organisations can draw on their “local rootedness” to act quickly and sensitively in line with the needs of communities they understand.
This capability needs to be better appreciated and supported, including in partnership with local authorities and national actors with expertise in emergency response, the report concluded.
A spokesman for Kensington and Chelsea Council said: “It is not right for the council to comment in detail at this stage – this is a matter for the public inquiry which is reviewing the events around the council’s response to the tragedy.
“It is our responsibility to ensure that the whole, unvarnished truth is told so that lessons can be learned and to ensure that such a tragedy can never happen again.
Local councillors are due to meet on 6 June to consider the replacement of fire doors in its social housing blocks across the borough to bring them into line with the type used across the country.
It would cost around £3.5m to replace all of the doors, just a fraction of the £274m of reserves the council has stockpiled.
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Tuesday 29 May 2018
James Stunt PICTURE EXCLUSIVE: Billionaire sparks engagement rumours with brunette who sports ring
He reportedly enjoyed a short-term relationship with glamorous Samantha Rowley earlier this year and the pair were even said to be engaged after she was caught wearing a giant ring.
And it appears that James Stunt has moved on, as he was seen arriving at London‘s C Restaurant with a mystery woman on Monday night – proving he was a hit with the ladies.
The business, 36, who is estimated to be worth around £4billion, appeared to be smitten with the beautiful brunette, who happened to be wearing a huge sparkler on her wedding ring – sparking rumours of an engagement.
Engaged again? James Stunt, 36, was seen arriving at London’s C Restaurant on Monday night with a mystery woman who was wearing a huge ring on her wedding finger
New love? The eye-catching sparkler certainly caught the eyes and sparked rumours of an engagement
James was clearly in his element as he enjoyed some quality time with the woman outside the restaurant as he lit up a cigarette and puffed away.
While it is unclear what the nature of their conversation was, the ex-husband of socialite Petra Ecclestone appeared to be working his charm as he propped one arm on the wall behind the woman to casually lean closer.
James’ companion was clearly loving the attention, as she was unable to wipe the smile from her face while they continued the cosy display.
The beauty wasn’t shy about showing off her engagement finger, which sported an extremely hard to miss diamond sparkler.
It wasn’t difficult to see why she had caught the eyes of the playboy as she turned heads in her casually clad ensemble.
She dressed her slim figure in a simple white top, which was tucked into her ankle-grazing ripped jeans in a messy manner.
Shunning the usual high heels for a glamorous night out, the brunette opted for a pair of comfortable white trainers and toted her belongings in a chic white handbag.
He’s got company! James was clearly in his element as he enjoyed some quality time with the woman outside the restaurant as he lit up a cigarette and puffed away
While it is unclear what the nature of their conversation was, the ex-husband of socialite Petra Ecclestone appeared to be working his charm as he propped one arm on the wall behind the woman to casually lean closer
Her new man? James’ companion was clearly loving the attention, as she was unable to wipe the smile from her face while they continued the cosy display
While James has been a long-time fan of blondes – with his ex-wife being Petra and his most recent love interest, stunning Samantha Rowley – he appeared to be broadening his criteria as the woman sported glossy chestnut coloured locks.
Sporting a glamorous coat of dewy make-up, completed with mascara laden eyes and pink gloss, James’ companion looked a vision as she enjoyed her night with James.
Bling: The beauty wasn’t shy about showing off her engagement finger, which sported an extremely hard to miss diamond sparkler
Casually cool: She dressed her slim figure in a simple white top, which was tucked into her ankle-grazing ripped jeans in a messy manner
His outing with the beauty comes after Samantha – who was reportedly in a short-term relationship with the London native earlier this year – hit back at critics of her relationship with James stating she’s ‘no gold digger.’
The stunning blonde said James’ ‘heart is as big as his bank balance’ – stating: ‘James has a big bank account. But he also has a big personality and a big heart.
‘I’m no gold digger. The term is derogatory to women and sadly often comes from other women.’
Samantha – who recently attended the 71st annual Cannes Film Festival with pal Laura Zilli – was first photographed on James’ arm just days after the final court hearing in his divorce from Petra in February, wearing a £1.5 million engagement ring.
The high-flying couple were rumoured to have been dating for several months, after being first spotted together in January.
James and his former partner Petra tied the knot in at lavish £12 million wedding at a castle in Rome, Italy, in 2011.
The couple enjoyed an extraordinary life together, splashing out £100 million on a Chelsea mansion and £158 million on a 123-room home in Los Angeles, and went on to have three children.
But the marriage ended in a costly divorce battle at London’s High Court last year.
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