Mandatory News

Thursday, May 26, 2016

FedEx executives offer up additional insights on TNT acquisition

AC/DC - T.N.T.

With the ink on FedEx $4.8 billion acquisition of TNT Express NV now dry, the integration process begins in earnest.

That was a major theme of a conference call hosted by TNTs new owners in the Netherlands yesterday, which featured David Bronczek, CEO and president of FedEx Express, David Binks, president of FedEx Express in Europe, and Tex Gunning, TNT Express CEO.

Now that the deal, which had to clear several regulatory hurdles in multiple countries, is official, the executive trio was able to speak a little bit more freely, albeit being somewhat guarded in regards to certain specifics at the same time.

Bronczek noted that this deal marks a coming together of two great companies to create an even stronger one going forward that will create even more value than either one could have done individually.

And Gunning explained that while this deal went through some ups and downs, it is the right thing for TNTs customers, its employees, and the industry.

As was noted yesterday, Bronczek said the beginning stages of integration now begin in earnest.

Both companies have an extensive reach, he said. FedEx now serves 220 countries and regions around the world, linking more than 95 percent of the global GDP in 1-3 business days, with combined companies having nearly 400,000 employees around the world.

He added FedEx moves 11.5 million packages per day, and TNT moves more than 1 million shipments per day, with the companies cumulatively possessing more than 150,000 vehicles. FedEx has 657 aircraft globally, which makes it one of the top five airlines in the world.

With the integration process now in effect, Bronczek said that both companies for now will continue to operate as they have in the past, with a strong focus on its customers and its people.

Together these two companies will transform the worldwide express playing field, there is no doubtwe have a complete portfolio of services now, he said, by combining the largest express international global business of FedEx with an unparalleled European road network of TNT. This provides customers with greater global access, broader services, and extended portfolio services. Together our future looks incredibly bright. This will unlock opportunities to global growth that benefits FedEx and TNT team members around the world.

FedEx has spent more than four decades expanding and simplifying its global network that spans around the world, coupled with its extensive experience in acquisition integration in creating the global network it has today. Bronczek explained that the companys customers have varied needs, and FedEx has continued to expand its service portfolio so that it can provide the right network for the right customer at the right cost.

FedEx Binks, who is also now the president of TNT, said that FedEx is committed to Europe, which he described as a highly competitive marketplace with multiple strong players, with FedEx now having strong European roots to go along with its strong U.S. roots.

We believe that acquiring TNT will propel our position and positioning as a major competitor in this part of the world, he said. In other words, an already global service has become more global. We have enhanced our global network with a European road network that connects more than 40 countries and that is going to be good news for our customers since that network will allow us to move goods faster and more reliably across borders and offer our customers more options and more choice. As a result, we believe FedEx and TNT customers and new customers we hope to bring in tomorrow can improve their supply chain and identify new opportunities for growth so that the growing intra-European business of FedEx will increase revenues and profitability.

And at $60 billion U.S., or $53 billion euros, the European express market is a large and growing business, he explained, with e-commerce continuing to be a significant growth factor, not only here in Europe but globally. Binks estimated that the growth rates for the total e-commerce market in Europe are growing at around 15 percent per year, and could grow to more than $600 billion euros by 2017.

This acquisition offers significant opportunity in that marketplace for a combined FedEx and TNT andour customers will benefit from the strong intercontinental network capability of FedEx and TNT and the combination of the air and ground capabilities.

As for the focus of the integration process, he said it will be to maintain the high quality of service that customers have come to expect from both companies, with things business as usual, coupled with the potential for a much broader reach and scope.

Binks stressed that it is important to understand this is an acquisition based on future growth in a growing marketplace, with the major FedEx hubs in Paris and Cologne and the TNT facility in Liege will all remain as major entities for the combined operation moving forward.

The details of how the operations will work together will be determined through the integration planning process, which really starts right now, he said. We also expect our employees to have more growth opportunities than either company could have provided separately. This acquisition is one of the most strategically important we have experienced in FedEx history. We also know from our experience in dealing with acquisitions and integrations that it will take time. We will take the proper amount of time to get it right and execute with absolute precision.

As for integration processes from a financial perspective, Binks said there is only so much commercial-sensitive information FedEx and TNT can currently share, noting it is too early to put costs around that as it relates to the integration planning, as it begins to map out the details and planning and begin rolling out an implementation timetable and put some costs behind that. When that has moved along, he said more information will be shared at that time.

Bronczek said that integration costs relating to this deal will be broken out separately in FedEx earnings reports going forward. And while there is no profitability projection for Europe resultant of this transaction yet, he said that the e-commerce market is booming globally, with a huge opportunity to grow the e-commerce market.

There are big e-commerce players we do business with today in the U.S. and not necessarily [in Europe] that are telling us they would like to see more of a lower cost delivery network for their e-commerce positioning in Europe, he said. I think you are going to see very high growth, especially in the e-commerce market, going forward.

This deal will also impact FedEx business in other parts of the world like China and Brazil, with its global service partners looking at how to combine the businesses for better service, opportunities to grow revenue, and profitability.

Binks praised TNTs strengths in other parts of the world like South America and Asia-Pacific, as well as the Middle East.

We talk a lot about the European trucking network, which Tex Gunning refers to as the jewel in the crown of TNT, and we should not forget about the excellent trucking network TNT established in the Middle East and also in southeast Asia as well, which are notable additions to our network and give us more opportunity to get more customers for network solutions for both express- and ground-based services. The majority of the integration work will be European, but a significant part will be in other parts of the world as we see this as a global effort, not just a European initiative.

As for the market share this deal brings, Shipware LLC President Rob Martinez said that in Europe, it is estimating that that FedEx and TNT combined will have 22-24 percent market share, compared to approximately 41 percent for DHL and 25 percent for UPS.

Apart from the shift in global market share, the merger portends significant benefits for FedEx that include savings related to facility and asset rationalization, productivity improvement due to pickup and delivery route optimization, and cost reduction related to air network and linehaul synergies, he said. FedEx is planning a 4-year integration. We are already hearing of collaboration of key customers towards alignment.

Source: http://www.logisticsmgmt.com/article/fedex_executives_offer_up_additional_insights_on_tnt_acquisition

How Frankie Manning"s incredible dancing skills made him famous twice, 50 years apart

Frankie Manning Tribute Video

In 1935, a dancer named Frankie Manning won a dance competition with a daring feat: He flipped his partner over his back and onto her feet, the Lindy Hop "air step" that would make Manning, honored in today"s Google Doodle, arguably the most famous swing dancer of all time.

Manning, who died in 2009, would be 102 today. Like a good performance, his career included both a first act and a later revival, bookending a 30-year job and a quiet life at the post office. He started dancing in his teens, and he was still dancing at his 85th birthday party, when he danced with 85 different partners.

But the fact that Manning"s career needed a revival at all a revival driven mostly by white swing dancers in the mid-1980s also shows how white Americans embraced black dance steps without always uplifting the people who created them.

Manning, like swing dancing, got his start in Harlem

To understand just how good Manning was at swing dancing, all you have to do is watch him in the 1941 comedy Hellzapoppin". It"s incredible:

Manning was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and moved to New York in 1917 at age 3 with his mother, part of the vast wave of black Americans moving out of the South in hopes of better opportunities.

What they often found was discriminatory high rents. Rent was exorbitant for black New Yorkers in the 1920s: A study by the New York Urban League in 1927 found that rent for black New Yorkers had doubled since 1919 while increasing only 10 percent for white residents. Black residents had to pay far more than white residents for virtually identical apartments.

In order to make rent, Harlem residents would throw "rent parties" opening their apartments for live music and dancing, with a cover charge. Manning would attend with his mother, and even as a kid he"d go home and practice in his room, trying to imitate the moves.

When he was 15, Manning started dancing at the Savoy, the only integrated ballroom in New York City. The Savoy was where the Lindy Hop began, a style of swing dance developed in the late 1920s by black performers; it was apparently named after Charles Lindbergh, who"d just completed his solo flight across the Atlantic, and honored him by featuring solo dancing.

Manning became famous for his enthralling, acrobatic work, particularly the aerial moves he incorporated. After he gained fame at the Savoy, he went on a world tour and was featured in Life magazine in 1941.

Life noted that the specific dance Manning was photographed performing, the Congeroo, could probably be "tamed down for fairly polite society." White Americans liked dances and music created by black people much more than they liked black people themselves.

Dance scenes, such as the one above from Hellzapoppin", often had no relation to the plot, Lisa Wade, a professor of sociology at Occidental College wrote in 2009 for the Society Pages: "This was so that the movie studios could edit out the scene when the movie was going to be shown to those white audiences that were hostile to seeing any positive representation of black people at all."

And when white Americans started doing the Lindy Hop in the 1930s and "40s, renaming it the jitterbug, they erased the black performers who created it. A 1944 instructional movie on doing the jitterbug features a white couple and emphasizes that the dance borrows moves from ballet, waltzes, 18th-century ballroom dance, and "Javanese" dancing but it doesn"t mention the Savoy.

In the 1980s, Americans rediscovered swing dancing

After World War II, swing dancing fell out of favor the dancers and musicians were drafted, the war led to a tax on entertainment in the US, and rock music was supplanting jazz. Manning gave up dancing and went to work at the post office. As Elizabeth Gilbert (yes, of Eat Pray Love) wrote in GQ in 1998:

He never told his new friends about his old career. He even had a friend who used to say, "Frankie, Im going to take you out one of these nights and teach you how to dance." Frankie would just smile, never mentioning that hed once danced a command performance for the king ofEngland.

Then in 1984, a handful of dancers were trying to revive the swing dances of the 1930s. As Gilbert writes, they tracked Manning down, and from there, following his 70th birthday, he enjoyed a career revival.

Manning traveled the world teaching the Lindy Hop. He was interviewed in Ken Burns"s documentary on jazz. And he did choreography for the Broadway show Black and Blue, winning a Tony for it in 1989.

Black dancers created the Lindy Hop, but white performers were the ones who drove the revival of swing in the "80s. Gilbert writes that Manning didn"t like to engage with questions of race, saying that he"d met "good people and bad people of every color." But the racial contradictions of the jitterbug era could still reemerge, as Wade (herself a dancer) wrote:

These contemporary dancers look to old movie clips of famous black dancers as inspiration. These movies portrayed black people in ways that white people were comfortable with: blacks were musical, entertaining, athletic (even animalistic), outrageous (even wild), not-so-smart, happy-go-lucky, etc.

So what we see in the old clips that contemporary lindy hoppers idolize is not a pure manifestation of lindy hop, but a manifestation of the dance infused by racism. While lindy hoppers today look at those old clips with nothing short of reverence, they are mostly naive to the fact that the dancing they are emulating was a product made to confirm white peoples beliefs about black people.

There"s also the question of how Manning fell into obscurity in the first place, no matter how heartwarming the revival of his career was. White dancers of his era managed to stay active in the performing arts even after their dances went out of style. Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly went into television. But Manning worked at the post office. Gilbert wrote:

When I asked Steven MitchellFrankies young, black dancing discipleif he believed Frankies career had been limited by race, Steven looked at me as if I were some new breed of idiot. "Are you kidding?" he said. "Frankie Manning should be a household name. He should be revered. He was every bit as important to American dance as Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. But he was black. He went as far as he could go, but it wasnt far enough. Whatever small fame he has today, its not enough. It will never make up for what waslost."

Manning, though, relished his revival. On his 80th birthday, he danced with 80 different partners. Every year, he"d add one new partner for every year he"d lived. And although he couldn"t leap during the Lindy Hop anymore, he was dancing in public and seemingly having the time of his life until just before his death.

If you want to know more about Manning, this 10-minute documentary from Swing Bud Films features him talking about his life in his own words, plus some amazing old footage:

How the robot dance took over the world

Source: http://www.vox.com/2016/5/26/11776066/frankie-mannings-102nd-birthday

Even Cavs Fans Are Owning The Raptors

Toronto Raptors vs Cleveland Cavaliers - Game 2 - Full Highlights | May 19, 2016 | 2016 NBA Playoffs

The Cleveland Cavaliers took a 100-60 lead into the fourth quarter of tonights Eastern Conference finals game, and thats all you need to know and all Ill say about whats happening on the court. Or at least with the basketball players on the court, because this bald-headed Cavs fan got into a funny little shouting match with Dwane Casey and had to remind him YOURE IN CLEVELAND NOW!

Our friends compatriots were so bored by the blowout that they just sorta took off and hit this reporter with an all-too understandable shrug. The ESPN crew at one point noted that there were a surprising amount of Cavs fans left.

Game 6 is Friday, and, as of publication, Game 5 isoh who cares.

Source: http://deadspin.com/even-cavs-fans-are-owning-the-raptors-1778816023

TV Ratings: "Nashville" Says Goodbye, "Wayward Pines" Returns

WAYWARD PINES | I"ve Got A Feeling from "Enemy Lines" | FOX BROADCASTING

NBC wins the night with the season finale of "Law & Order: SVU."

NBC won the final night of the 2015-16 TV season. Naturally a finale-heavy night, there was a notable boost for Law & Order: SVU. The drama topped the night for broadcast with an average 1.5 rating among adults 18-49, a 17 percent lift from the prior episode.

Heartbeat wrapped its brief run with a 0.7 rating in the key demo, and Chicago P.D. fetched a steady 1.4 rating.

The third night of CBS" Price Is Right primetime specials nabbed a 1.2 rating among adults 18-49 before back-to-back episodes of Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders.

ABC may have tied CBS for No. 2, but it marks the end of the network"s third consecutive demo win for the May sweep. With the typical Wednesday comedy block already off the air, Finding Nemo led into the last-ever Nashville. The drama was steady, if slightly improved, with a 0.9 rating among adults 18-49.

Wayward Pines returned to Fox, in line with last summer"s premiere, averaging a 0.9 rating among adults 18-49 and 3.1 million viewers. It followed the finale of Rosewood (0.8 adults).

On The CW, Arrow and Supernatural each fetched 0.8 ratings among adults 18-49 for their finales.

TV Ratings Nashville

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-nashville-says-goodbye-897629

Elizabeth Warren Demands Harvard Let Grad Students Unionize

Trump: "Pocahontas" Elizabeth Warren is a total failure

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Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren demanded in a letter Tuesday that Harvard University let graduate students unionize despite opposition from the college.

Graduate students at a number of Ivy League universities have fought to unionize. The universities, however, warn such unionization would undermine the relationship students have with their professors by making them more akin to workers. Warren, alongside a few other progressive lawmakers, demanded in a letter to Harvard President Drew Faustthat that the university end its opposition.

The work of Harvard graduate student research and teaching assistants help to make Harvard a world leader academically, the letter stated. They are part of what makes Harvard an important economic engine in Cambridge and Greater Boston. Respecting the wishes of these students to form a collective bargaining organization will help these students continue this important work.

Warren previously was a professor at Harvard Law School and has been a big advocate for union rights. The United Auto Workers has been at the forefront of the unionizing drive. This union has pushed federal officials to reverse a 2004 case involving Brown University, which prevented graduate students from forming unions with collective bargaining rights.

We believe that the relationship between graduate students and a university is fundamentally about education, not employment, Harvard spokesman Anna Cowenhoven told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Our graduate students are engaged, valued, and supported as a critical part of the learning, teaching, and research that happens at Harvard.

Cowenhoven said the university is encouraging an open debate on the matter. Graduate students could technically join a union, but since theyre not employees, they are not afforded the right to collectively bargain. A collective bargaining agreement is a special labor contract that grants unions monopoly rights over a workplace by winning a majority vote.

Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cornell and a handful of other elite schoolscame together in March, issuing a legal brief in opposition to the union challenge. Graduate students often perform a multitude of paid activities that could be considered work, like student teaching. They often get paid for these activities, though theyre not technically considering workers.

Student athletes forming unions has also been a point of debate, but both universities and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been hesitant to support the effort.

Warren did not respond to a request for comment by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Source: http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/25/elizabeth-warren-demands-harvard-let-grad-students-unionize/

s*x, Lies, Cover Up In Casey Anthony Case, PI Alleges

Casey Anthony - Interview with Detectives after Arrest

SEMINOLE COUNTY, FL The private investigator hired in July 2008 to help the Baez Law Firm work onCasey Anthonys defense in the 2008 murder of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, has dropped a bombshell in court documents.

Dominic Casey claims inaffidavits filed in Anthonys bankruptcy case that her lawyer, Jose Baez, toldhim that Casey had murdered Caylee and dumped the body somewhere and, heneeded all the help he could get to find the body before anyone else did.

Dominic Casey alsoalleges an attempt was made to point the finger at Roy Kronk, the meter readerwho found the child"s body in 2008. In addition,Dominic Caseys affidavit also claims that Anthony and Baez had sexualrelations.

I arrived at Baezsoffice unexpectedly one day and once again, witnessed a n***d Casey, oneaffidavit said. When Dominic Casey confronted Anthony about it, Casey told meshe had to do what Jose said because she had no money for her defense, theaffidavit, posted online by WFLAsaid.

A request for commentfrom Baezs office made by Patch has not been answered.

Anne Hathaway and Amy Schumer don"t want to hear it: These comebacks to rude body comments are perfect

Explain This Photo with Amy Schumer

Fact: the world is full of horrible sad people who get off on policing womens bodies. Fact: they will always be with us, like roaches. But if there is any note of satisfaction to be found in the unending chorus of c**p that women have to put up with, its in the sound of ladies, increasingly, refusing to endure this nonsense. Every time a woman or girlmakes a declaration that she doesnt give a d**n what strangers think of her body, surely the angels sing. And right now, they sing for Anne Hathaway and Amy Schumer.

On Ellen this week, new mom Anne Hathaway, promoting Alice Through the Looking Glass, discussed her eight-week old son and her halting steps back to the outside world. Ive been out of the house a couple of times, the woman who won an Academy Award for playing a starving person admitted. Ive been to the gym. I went to the gym three times. Hathaway, who looked gorgeous in a dark halter dress, said that she goes to a gym with people who resemble Thors trainer the people who have too many muscles to be in The Avengers," she said.

Yeah, I work out with 5- pound weights, but I pushed a baby out of my body, I feel good right now. So I dont care what I look like, I feel great, Hathaway added.

Then she recounted that she told a trainer at the gym that shed recently become a mother, and Im expecting him to say the thing that you say when someone says that youve had a baby. If somebody says, I had a baby 13 years ago, you say, You look great. That is what you do. That is the etiquette. So I say to this guy, I had a baby seven weeks ago. And he goes, Oh, trying to lose the baby weight?"

Hathaway paused, to let the inanity of the comment reverberate to the audience, before saying that shed mustered up her dignity and told him No, its a little bit too soon to worry about weight, Im just trying to regain my strength. Then, she admitted, she cried a little.

As Hathaway demonstrates, the appropriate response to a woman whos just had a baby is congratulations and praise. The expectation the she surely must, after delivering into the world a new human being, want to get her body as bikini-worthy as possible as quickly as possible, is frankly nuts even if its one celebrities themselves perpetuate with their inevitable sexy postpartum magazine covers.

Yet increasingly, Hollywood moms are pushing back. Last year, after welcoming her second daughter, Kristen Bell told Elle, I find the baby weight conversation to be a very stale topic. Who really cares? Just be healthy, dont beat yourself up, and have fun with your kid. The only way pressure is lifted is if we choose not to accept it any longer. I think thats what I did. And on Mothers Day, Kendra Wilkinson-Baskett, whose entire career was built on her formidable body, posted an abs flaunting photo on Instagram of her loose, stretch-marked and two kids later midsection.

But G*d knows a woman need not have given birth to be scrutinized for and unapologetic about her body. Elsewhere on Instagram, giver of zero effs Amy Schumer posted on Tuesday a photo of herself wading in the ocean in a one-piece bathing suit. For context, recall that last month Schumer was surprised to find an old Glamour feature on her repurposed for the magazinesspecial plus-size edition a move she publicly called them out for doing without asking or letting me know and it doesnt feel right to me. And earlier this month, she yet again addressed the issue of existing in the world in non supermodel-shaped corporeal form, in a brilliant sketch with Lena Dunham on the horrors of clothes shopping if youre above a toddler size 3.

This time around, she accompanied the photo with the message to the trolls that read, I hope you find some joy in your lives today in a human interaction and not just in writing unkind things to a stranger youve never met who triggers something in you that makes you feel powerless and alone. This is how I look. I feel happy. I think I look strong and healthy and also like miss trunchbull from Matilda. Kisses!

Funny, self-deprecating and yet not self-loathing, with a devastatingly spot on assessment of what fuels bottom feeding commenters check, check, check!

Yes, there will continue to be moments for many of us when we will judged for not being a photoshopped version of femininity, and there will be times we, like Anne Hathaway, may want a cry a little over it. But like Schumer, we can also pause to consider that emotionally healthy people dont berate women for not being sufficient masturbation fodder for them. And we can work out in the gym or jump in the ocean without anybodys permission or approval.

Source: http://www.salon.com/2016/05/25/anne_hathaway_and_amy_schumer_dont_want_to_hear_it_these_comebacks_to_rude_body_comments_are_perfect/