Category: News

The WSJ solidifies an intriguing post by Mary Jo Foley last week that J. Allard, the guy behind the Xbox, Zune and Courier—or more formally, the Chief Experience Officer and Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft’s E&D division—is leaving after Steve Ballmer killed the Courier tablet project. More »










Microsoft – Xbox – J Allard – Mary Jo Foley – Steve Ballmer

Ali Fedotowsky was the contestant who left the last season of “The Bachelor” because she had to go back to work as an account executive at Facebook.

Now the beautiful and career-oriented Ali Fedotowsky is back as the new Bachelorette. She quits her job and gave up her apartment to come on the show. She said she “re-prioritized her life.”

During the Bachelorette season 6 premiere, Ali Fedotowsky meets her 24 suitors. There was Ty from Tennessee; Chris L, the beach-blonde from Cape Cod; Roberto, the quiet dark-haired guy; Kirk, who made a scrapbook for Ali; Chris, a graduate of Providence College; and some unnamed guys.

Chris Harrison asked each contestant to write down the name of a guy he considered to be there on false pretenses. The guy with the highest number of votes was Justin, an “entertainment wrestler”. But Ali figured that just because he fakes it in the ring doesn’t mean he’s faking his feelings for her.

Ali’s soul mate search is on!

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This one comes via Jay Rosen, who points us to an article at NowToronto.com that trashes a new Toronto-based journalism project called OpenFile, for being a “citizen journalism” project. The main complaint seems to be that so-called “citizen journalism” companies haven’t done well, and thus, this new one won’t do well either. It also complains that “the tone” is “all over the place” because it doesn’t have an institutional voice. That point struck me as odd, because any news publication that has many opinion writers and columnists often has a tone that is “all over the place” due to the conflicting views of those opinion writers. Just look at the NY Times and its varied op-ed writers.

But what made the story more amusing is the note in the comments that the guy trashing this “citizen journalism” project got pretty much all of the facts wrong, including the idea that it’s a “citizen journalism” project. As the comment noted:

We don’t do citizen journalism, and people don’t vote on the pitches. Maybe you want to consider linking to this comment in the piece, or offering a correction.

Your points about the challenges faced by sites like NowPublic etc. are valid, but in all honesty they don’t apply. It’s incorrect to say we’re practicing citizen journalism in light of the fact that we actually hire professional journalists to follow up on pitches submitted by the public. That’s one of the distinguishing characteristics of our model.

When you ask whose perspective is offered in the piece about Sonny Yeung, it’s perfectly clear that it’s the perspective of the author of the piece, who also happens to be working at the Toronto Star for the summer. It wasn’t written by a citizen journalist. It has professional byline just like the above post does.

We take suggestions from the public and encourage them to be part of the reporting process, but the work is done by professionals

It would seem that, if you’re working for an established publication, and want to dump on “citizen journalism” for not being of particularly high quality, it would behoove you to make sure that your own article on the subject is at least close to accurate.

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Sony’s doing surprisingly good running up to this year’s E3. If you remember last year, they were getting a lot of flak, left and right, for all the leakages that went down, as well as the major

The Garbstore just stocked some new Steven Alan items for this season. Included in the new stock are some reverse seam shorts, corduroy shorts, vintage work shirts, some twisted placket shirts, and a popover work shirt. It’s honestly hard to purchase just one, when all these new items just seem to work well with any attire this summer. Available now at The Garbstore.

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After the series finale of TV show ‘24‘ tonight, Jack Bauer says goodbye but not for a long time, because there may be a ‘24′ movie after all.

There are plans to make a movie based on the TV show. It’s supposedly going to involve Jack Bauer fighting some form of evil in Europe.

According to Howard Gordon, Executive producer of ‘24′, “The current status of the movie is that Billy Ray has written a draft which Kiefer Sutherland has read, and we’re all working together on the second draft.”

Right now there is no official status whether the movie will be pursued or not. The executive producer believes that there’s a tricky balance in crafting the movie script. “There are two sets of requirements, which is honoring the series and the creative integrity of the character, and also potentially bringing in a whole new group of people into the franchise who can then go back and watch, and believe it’s been consistent. So I think we recognize that we’re serving two masters or two audiences here, not that they are mutually exclusive but there are two requirements,” Gordon said.

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So, Lost ended, as you may have heard, and you also may have heard your friends complaining about the number of commercials that were in the finale. EW says there were 107 of them in 2.5 hours — or more than 45 minutes worth.

From EW:

ABC packed roughly 107 spots — or more than 45 minutes of commercial and promotional time — into the two-and-a-half-hour Lost series finale, according to our (very unscientific but pretty reliable) count. Just when the finale would unveil a major plot point, a break would occur featuring anywhere from five to 11 ads and/or sneak peeks for fall shows on ABC. Granted, some of the spots were extremely clever (Target used images of the island’s smoke monster to peddle fire detectors) but numerous, nonetheless.

EW says the typical hour of show will have 18-20 commercials — whereas the first hour of Lost had 37!

Did you notice the difference? We sure did.

Lost series final carried more than 45 minutes of commercials [EW]

Be sure to see the great interactive feature the Times put together for my piece on ultramarathon birds.

I bet you’re all very curious as to why the development of Gran Turismo 5 has been stalled at 90%. Well, we just might have the answer now as MCV reports that it’s actually because of the

There is a fundamental incompatibility between the attainment of global economic stability and having a single national currency perform the role of the world’s reserve currency. This is hardly a new revelation. But events of the past few months have brought this topic back into the spotlight.

Belgian born American economist Robert Triffin first highlighted this incompatibility in the 1960s. He observed that having the US dollar perform the role of the world’s reserve currency created fundamental conflicts of interest between domestic and international economic objectives.

On the one hand, the international economy needed dollars for liquidity purposes and to satisfy demand for reserve assets. But this forced, or at least made it easy, for the US to run consistently large current account deficits.

Triffin argued that such persistent deficits would eventually put pressure on the US dollar and lead to the demise of the Bretton Woods system of international exchange.

The Triffin Dilemma, therefore, argued that the demands on an international currency meant that excess supply would undermine its value.

Bretton Woods

After WWII the Bretton Woods international monetary system came into being. This was a fixed rate currency regime with the US dollar as the global reserve currency. But to ensure stability and financial discipline, the major currencies were fixed to the US dollar and the US dollar was fixed to gold at the rate of US$35 an ounce.

This is where the Triffin Dilemma kicked in.

The US soon understood that reserve currency status allowed them to run large deficits. The deficits were ‘paid’ for by issuing US dollars. When the excess US dollars began showing up in global central banks, they began converting their dollars into gold. This lowered the value of the US dollar in relation to gold.

At first the authorities tried to manage the Dilemma. In 1961 they established the ‘London Gold Pool’ in an attempt to keep the US dollar price of gold to $35 an ounce. This system worked for a while but fell apart by 1968 when France withdrew from the Pool.

The various nations then attempted to preserve the Bretton Woods system by maintaining a two-tiered gold market; one operating at the official US$35 an ounce price while another traded gold at the market price, which was well above $US35. Of course such a policy was completely unsustainable and it too failed.

Bretton Woods was on its last legs. President Nixon ended the system once and for all when in August 1971 he suspended the convertibility of US dollars into gold. From that point on, the US dollar was without an anchor and the global monetary system went from a fixed to floating regime.

What followed was a decade of monetary instability and record high inflation.

US Dollar maintains reserve currency status

Perhaps surprisingly, the US dollar maintained its role as the world’s reserve currency throughout the decade. Due to its economic and military might, the reserve currency status of the US dollar actually grew in acceptance throughout the next few decades.

But Triffin’s Dilemma never went away. It did remain out of sight though as parties on both sides of the equation enjoyed the mutual benefits of the US dollar’s reserve status.

The US benefitted by paying for imports with essentially costless US dollars. In turn, the US’ main trading partners enjoyed robust demand for their products, creating employment and income growth.

The huge deficits brought about by excess US consumption produced a massive amount of liquidity throughout the global economy. While Triffin’s Dilemma would have predicted a collapse of the dollar because of the glut of dollars in the system, such an outcome didn’t eventuate.

This was primarily because the beneficiaries of US consumption didn’t want it to end. So they reinvested their excess dollars back into US asset markets, notably US Government debt. Such actions supported the dollar, kept interest rates low, and perpetuated the imbalances.

Some commentators called this apparent happy state of affairs ‘Bretton Woods II.’ As the saying goes, markets make opinions and this was a flawed opinion born out of an ignorance of what brought the first Bretton Woods system undone.

Triffin Dilemma persists

The underlying conflicts identified by the Triffin Dilemma always remained. The ease with which the US could borrow and create debt was tolerated for decades. No doubt such tolerance was due to gold no longer being a monetary anchor.

But in 2007/08 it reached a point where it could no longer be tolerated. Not because investors decided to be prudent, but because the market structure could no longer cope with more debt.

At this point, the end of the decades long US driven credit expansion turned abruptly into a contraction and asset markets collapsed. Amongst the carnage, the US dollar was about the only asset to increase in value relative to everything else. This was because previously abundant global liquidity rapidly evaporated and returned to the source, pushing up the value of the US dollar.

The point here is that in times of crisis, the US dollar trades as the world’s reserve currency, not based on its domestic fundamentals, which are just as bad as other countries. That’s what you saw in late 2008 early 2009. And because of the European sovereign debt crisis, you’re again seeing the US dollar rise against most other paper currencies.

So the Triffin Dilemma is beginning to rear its head again. The US domestic political preference is for a weaker dollar to stimulate exports and create employment. But the international situation, being market driven, is more powerful.

The US dollar is therefore strengthening just as the US economic recovery loses momentum. Or perhaps the economic recovery is losing momentum because the dollar is strengthening?

Check out the accompanying chart. It shows the performance of the US dollar against a basket of currencies. You can see how the dollar has traded as an international currency in the past few years. As described above, the large rises in 2008/09 occurred as liquidity evaporated.

The weaker dollar throughout 2009 signified the recovery or ‘reflation’ of global markets. But that has given way to renewed concerns. The dollar has rallied in the past few months (especially against the euro) and now looks overbought.

In the past the US response to this currency strength would have been to lower interest rates and turn on the liquidity taps. This would have increased credit growth domestically and liquidity internationally (think of all those US treasuries piling up in foreign central banks when US economic growth is strong). But the interest rate ammunition has been spent.

Like every other country, the US needs a weaker currency. However a global reserve currency operates under different rules to ordinary currencies. In times of global uncertainly, like now, the US dollar will be strong regardless of its fundamentals.

With the Euro-zone under pressure, the reserve asset of choice remains the US dollar. Perversely, this will allow the US authorities to pursue even more reckless policies in their attempts to provide global liquidity.

We wouldn’t be surprised to see the Federal Reserve restart its quantitative easing program by the end of the year. And Federal Government deficits will likely remain elevated for years.

Investment Implications

As you can see, the inherent conflicts in the global monetary system that led to the GFC have not been addressed. The US dollar has served as the world’s reserve currency, without being linked to gold, since 1971.

While on the surface the experiment has been a success, the legacy is a huge build up of debt. The need for global liquidity creates an incentive for the US to live beyond its means and run up debt levels. Perversely, the debts sit in the vaults of foreign central banks and masquerade as assets. (It is from this asset base that domestic banking systems generate their own credit growth).

But debt levels have reached a point where this system no longer works properly. The crisis of 2008 has quickly given way to the European sovereign debt crisis of 2010. It is a sign of things to come.

The implications for you as an investor are many. Expect continued uncertainly and volatility as the world increasingly recognises the current financial system has reached its use by date. This is a gradual and subtle process. You won’t see this recognition splashed across the front pages anytime soon. But it is happening now.

Uncertainty leads to lower stock prices. Our disciplined valuation methodology is designed to ensure that won’t overpay when buying companies. In times of high volatility, we expect to see share prices trading well below intrinsic value and that’s when our prudent approach will pay off.

In the shorter term you should expect continuing loose monetary policy out of the US and a lack of fiscal discipline. The demise of the euro is leading to renewed buying of the US dollar, providing more incentive for authorities to run deficits.

Of course, the big picture investment implication here is that the US dollar will eventually lose its role as the world’s sole reserve currency. This is a multi year event and certainly difficult to assess in terms of the effect on markets.

But as we told you last week, the IMF is already holding discussions about making changes to the financial architecture. Very few people understand the magnitude of what is going on, but it hasn’t been lost on the gold market.

Gold will be one of the major beneficiaries of change. Back in the 1960s Robert Triffin warned about the dollar glut and the fact that it would bring the Bretton Woods system undone. He was right.

The rising gold price was the first warning sign of the system’s weakness. Now, the gold price is again warning of monetary instability. It has been rising along with the US dollar. Gold is again being viewed as a reserve currency.

So the best way to profit from this instability is to own physical bullion (not ETF’s or gold certificates). For a longer term bet on forthcoming changes to the financial system, you should be looking to buy gold on weakness.

Greg Canavan
for The Daily Reckoning Australia

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A recent report from the Pew Charitable Trusts tallies up each US household’s share in the economic collapse. Your household’s share? $104,350. That includes lost income, government bailouts, and both reduced home values and reduced stock values.

Pew says:

• Income – The financial crisis cost the U.S. an estimated $648 billion due to slower economic growth, as measured by the difference between the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) economic forecast made in September 2008 and the actual performance of the economy from September 2008 through the end of 2009. That equates to an average of approximately $5,800 in lost income for each U.S. household.
• Government Response – Federal government spending to mitigate the financial crisis through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) will result in a net cost to taxpayers of $73 billion according to the CBO. This is approximately $2,050 per U.S. household on average.
• Home Values – The U.S. lost $3.4 trillion in real estate wealth from July 2008 to March 2009 according to the Federal Reserve. This is roughly $30,300 per U.S. household. Further, 500,000 additional foreclosures began during the acute phase of the financial crisis than were expected, based on the September 2008 CBO forecast.
• Stock Values – The U.S. lost $7.4 trillion in stock wealth from July 2008 to March 2009, according to the Federal Reserve. This is roughly $66,200 on average per U.S. household.
• Jobs – 5.5 million more American jobs were lost due to slower economic growth during the financial crisis than what was predicted by the September 2008 CBO forecast.

The Impact of the September 2008 Economic Collapse [Pew]

Even the toughest military vehicles break down in the harsh conditions of Southern Afghanistan.

Temperatures are topping 110 degrees daily.  There are almost no paved roads in Helmand Province and none in the 1^st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion’s area of operation, plus the sand and grit wreaks havoc with many of the moving parts on the LAV’s (light armored vehicles) and the bigger trucks and personnel carriers the Marines use.

That’s why Corporal Rhett Buford and his team are so busy.

The 21 year old from Charleston, South Carolina is known as a  “maintainer”, which is Marine-speak for mechanic.

In 14 days at Forward Operating Base Payne, he’d already fixed 12 engines.

“That’s all I’ve ever done my whole life…” he says during a short break on another blistering hot day.

“It’s what my dad and stepdad do, what my granddad did…

“It’s hard sometimes… it’ll test you, it’s a little stressful, but it’s what I signed up for.”

Buford, who enlisted when he was 18, also did a tour in Iraq, repairing the LAV’s Detroit Diesel 6-cylinder Turbos in Anbar Province.

He says he hasn’t decided if he’ll re-enlist next year.

When asked if his family is nervous about him being in a war zone, he says he tells them not to worry.

“I’m a mechanic!” he says, with a big grin.

A very busy mechanic for sure.

Ninja Theory is working on a secret title, that much we’re sure of. They did reveal that it was in the works a couple of months back after all. What we don’t know is whether or not

Irmscher has launched a special edition of the Dodge Journey Crossover in Germany to give the family car a complete makeover. The Journey SR is the product, and it receives a sporty look for the so called SUV, but it really still holds minivan features. It’s a family van that has been taken under the wing of the German tuning firm Irmscher, along with the cooperation of Dodge. The modifications are all cosmetic, so there are no performance gains for the stock 2.0-liter turbo diesel engine producing 140 horsepower. Included in the styling kit is a new front apron, roof spoiler, chrome tail pipes, and tinted rear windows.

Inside the Irmscher Dodge Journey Crossover you will find a full leather treatment to the instrument panel, aluminum sport pedals, leather sports steering wheel, and unique floor mats. An interesting customization to the metallic black exterior are twin rally stripes running throughout the body in a vintage orange. Black alloy rims with an orange lip complete the tuning package for the Dodge Journey SR. Irmscher will begin to offer this program for the Dodge Crossover at a starting price of €31,190.

[Source: carscoop]

Source: Fancy Tuning – the latest car tuning news

We’re so excited over this…SmrtGuard informed us this morning that they turn a whole year tomorrow! That’s right, for a year they have been working to improve the app that has your back. In light of the birthday, they are beginning the celebration today! Happy Birthday SmrtGuard!! And they’re inviting us to join in the birthday celebration! How? Check it out…

To start they have released an update, v2.52 for BlackBerry that includes support for Twitter within the Personal Guardian. If you are a subscriber, please update now. If not, this is a great time to find out what SmrtGuard is all about. And there are giveaways to be had, so let’s check out the details…

Personal Guardian is a feature in the SmrtGuard that is a 1 push panic button when you’re in trouble. When it’s Triggered, it will send out a short message with your location information (using GPS and Network Triangulation).  If you’re a current subscriber, click on the following link for directions on how to configure it.

Directions for configuring the Personal Guardian

So now the giveaways at hand. SmrtGuard would like to thank all the users who have supported them and as a thank you they are doing a grand giveaway.

• 10 SmrtGuard Unlimited Edition (cannot be sold). This means YOU WILL NEVER pay for SmrtGuard service EVER.
• 20 SmrtGuard Yearly subscriptions
• 30 SmrtGuard Semi-Annual subscriptions
• 100 SmrtGuard Monthly subscriptions

How do you enter?

Download SmrtGuard from the link here

Download between May 24th and May 31st 2010. You will be automatically entered to win after you successfully verify your account. All existing users are automatically entered. There’s no purchase necessary. Winners are going to be announced June 1st, 2010.

So go download your copy of SmrtGuard now and start finding out what is so great about it. We love SmrtGuard, and we know you’ll see the value in trying it. What are you waiting for?

You’re reading a story which originated at BlackBerrySync.com, Where you find BlackBerry News You Can Sync With…

This story is sponsored by the new BlackBerry Sync Mobile App Store. Grab your free copy today at www.GetAppStore.com from your BlackBerry.

Happy Birthday To SmrtGuard, Be On Guard For The Celebration!

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Luke Timmerman wrote:

Businesses have financial data to show how they are performing. Research centers can point to how their discoveries are cited by peers. But nonprofits seeking to benefit society? Hard data and accountability that goes with it can be elusive.

That’s why what happened yesterday at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue was so impressive. The Northwest Association for Biomedical Research (NWABR), the Seattle-based nonprofit that seeks to improve science education, showed some truly meaningful results today that didn’t come in the form of a chart on a PowerPoint. Instead, the group gathered three young people who were inspired by its mentorship program in the past, put them up on stage as the poised young adults they have become, and asked them to tell their stories.

I’m sure that a lot of people would cynically write this off as a well-intended but fruitless endeavor. After all, something like 46 percent of Americans reject evolution and think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, according to Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum in their recent book, “Unscientific America.” Aren’t kids in China, India, and pretty much everywhere else around the world absolutely clobbering Americans in just about every measurement of science and math educational achievement?

NWABR’s executive director Susan Adler had a quiet but powerful counter-story. This effort was founded in 1999 around a conference room table at Immunex, now Amgen, the world’s largest biotech company. The people there then, and those still there today, haven’t wavered in their belief that they have to give back to young people to invest in the future of science.

“We here in the Northwest invest in our leaders, and they often return to us,” Adler said.

And there they were in the flesh, three bright young Northwest natives, telling KPLU science reporter Keith Seinfeld about how their teachers, and volunteer researchers the expo matches them with, inspired them to pursue their current career paths.

They kept their stories short and to the point. One of the alumni, Jessica McHugh, was urged by her teacher at the time to join the inaugural Student BioExpo in 2001 while she was a student at Eastside Catholic High School. McHugh’s project looked into the damage tobacco products can do at the molecular level in yeast. She went on to get a medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine. Now she has returned home as a family practice physician at Swedish Medical Center’s Cherry Hill campus.

“I was fortunate to be in a high school where science was really appreciated,” McHugh said today. Joining the Expo showed her that this wasn’t just some nerdy, isolated pursuit. “It was an eye-opening experience to meet other like-minded people. It was a great opportunity to interact with other students,” she said.

Andrew Kennard came at the Expo from a different angle. Until he was a sophomore at Garfield High School in Seattle, he never really had much interest in science. He thought he’d be an architect, maybe a writer. The Expo, from its very beginning, has always sought out kids like this and allowed them to pursue scientific ideas through more than just the wet lab, but other things like writing essays, sculptures, song and dance. Kennard chose to write an essay about the pros and cons of current epilepsy medications, since the neurological condition affected one of his aunts. He interviewed a researcher at Seattle-based ZymoGenetics, and was matched up with a mentor from Amgen who helped him think about the vast biological challenge of developing drugs for a disease like epilepsy, when scientists still know so little about what’s fundamentally causing it.

“How can you write about something like that in 10 pages?” Kennard said. “I hadn’t done it? before. And I really felt fulfilled afterward. It was a feeling I hadn’t had before in school. It stuck with me after the Expo. In science, you can tackle big problems you don’t know how to solve, and there’s a lot of room to make a difference.”

Kennard, who just finished up his freshman year final exams at Harvard University, hasn’t decided on a major yet, but he’s thinking about a career in biomedical research.

The light bulb for science turned on in Camille Charlier when she won an award at the 2005 Student BioExpo for songwriting. Charlier, then a student at Shorecrest High School in Shoreline, WA, was personally motivated to learn more about psoriasis, a skin disease that she lives with. So she studied up on what researchers think might be going awry on Chromosome 17 that leads the immune system to go awry and start attacking otherwise healthy skin cells like they are a foreign pathogen. Importantly, she discovered through the expo that science is a creative process, not just about rote fact memorization. It was the kind of field that would bring out the best in her creative impulses, not something that would stifle them.

So she combined what she learned about psoriasis into a new composition of music, as a way of better communicating to people what this mysterious disease is about.

“I thought science was 100 percent rational and objective. But science contains an aspect of creativity,” Charlier said.

After explaining how this experience helped launch her on her journey to Portland’s Reed College, where she’s a senior in biology, Charlier had the guts to take the microphone and sing her award-winning song from 2005 about “sinister psoriasis.”

It’s anybody’s guess how many of the kids passing through the program this year will end up following paths like McHugh, Kennard, and Charlier. Expo co-founder Jeanne Chowning made clear that organizers will be happy if quite a few of the 2,500 students who have passed through this program over the past decade will simply become scientifically literate adults. But just by exposing so many kids to scientific experience of mentors, giving them opportunities to learn, and helping them build relationships, some surprising things can come out the other end.

Like Charlier’s performance. Adler was beaming when it was her turn to take back the mike. “She really sounds just as wonderful as she did then, five years later,” Adler said.

UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

Among the many sounds emanating from the Tokyo Make Meeting 05 this past weekend was the unusually shaped electronic instrument, the Uda. It’s played with two hands, and looks like it might be a less-flexible cousin of the accordion.Notes are played by pressing different sections of a rope that’s coiled around the device, on both the right and left sides. Exactly where you touch it determines the pitch, and there’s a one octave difference between one row of rope and the adjacent row.
..
Continue Reading The Uda makes electronic music with a twist

Tags: Electronic,
Instrument,
Japan,
Make Magazine,
MIDI,
Music

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Dragon Ball Z Kai is remake or the director’s cut of the Dragon Ball Z for its 20th anniversary. Dragon Ball Z Kai  along with One Piece are being maketed together as the hour in which they both air, “Dream 9“. The premier of Dragon Ball Z Kai was on Fuji TV on April 5, 2009 at 9:00am just before One Piece.

FUNimation Entertainment would take the honor of dubbing Dragon Ball Kai into English under the release title of Dragon Ball Z Kai. The first season of the dub would be released and premiered on Nicktoons network on May 24th 2010. Another change as the Dragon Ball series has always been premiered on Cartoon Network in the United States.

Dragon Ball Z Kai is described as the “remastered” edit of certain events in Dragon Ball Z. The  editing also includes the extending of the format picture to 16:9 widescreen. The editing did not also lessen the damages and noise on Dragon Ball Z, but removed the damages completely.

The Kai means ‘altered’ or ‘modified’ fits well the description of the series thus chosen as the extension in the title Dragon Ball Kai. On the other hand, Dragon Ball Z Kai is also appeared to be known as Dragon Ball Kai in Japan. Interestingly, the Z is removed.

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