![]() ![]() In 2019 it joined up with Japan’s Mujin and France’s Exotec Solutions, both small robotics companies, with the aim of automating the jobs in its warehouses. The reliance on automation goes deep into the company’s business operations and supply chain, too. ![]() Since 2017 Uniqlo has embedded all its garments with tiny identification tags, which enable automatic scanning at checkouts. Keyence, a largely unheralded giant of industrial automation, is Japan’s second-largest listed firm, worth $111bn. Exposed to demographic constraints in fast-ageing Japan, Fast Retailing has used technology and automation to replace workers, further mimicking the country’s large manufacturers. Now the region represents a promising market for Uniqlo rather than somewhere to put factories. ![]() In the 1960s the focus of Japanese firms was on exploration for oil, the supply of natural resources and producing industrial goods in countries with import-substitution policies. The region now accounts for 16% of sales, up from 11% a year ago, and it is closing in on mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which dropped from 25% to 22% over the same period. ![]() Fast Retailing is also expanding particularly rapidly in Asia, where sales (excluding its home market and greater China) are up by 71% in the six months to the end of February, compared with the same period a year ago. Japanese industrial firms, carmakers in particular, made South-East Asia a second home from the 1960s onwards. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() Hold on tight to this one-you do not want it to slip away." -Michael Patrick Hicks, author of Emergence Praise for The Shining Girls "I'm all over it." -Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl "Lauren Beukes's strong contender for the role of this summer's universal beach read. Whether she''s writing about corporate branded future punks and celebrants, or the downtrodden casual menaces of daily life, from a compilation of tweets to a handful of remarkable non-fiction essays, her stories prove, repeatedly, that she is a masterful writer and that she has a voice that absolutely must be heard. We're lucky to finally have her short work in one place." -Richard Kadrey, author of the Sandman Slim series and The Everything Box " Slipping is a rare surprise, and one that demonstrates Beukes wide-ranging talent. Moving from witty to sad to horrifying, she makes it all seem effortless. Praise for Slipping "Lauren Beukes is one of the most talented writers working today. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sadie and her brother reveal that they genuinely care for Kevin and Brede, despite their religious differences. Brede is a kind-hearted Catholic girl who strives to please those around her, yet fears being trapped in a domestic role. Kevin's sister, being hit in the head with a brick. The second last chapter features a tense confrontation between Catholic and Protestant youths, resulting in Brede, It is not until the book's end that this connection becomes fully apparent. This approach is effective in building a connection between the reader and the characters as the surroundings and personalities slowly become more familiar. ![]() Rather, one can sit back and allow the story to gently seep into their consciousness. The novel has an effortless flow, requiring no overwhelming emotional investment from the reader. It delves into the preparations for the 12th celebration and the unauthorized incursions onto opposing territory. The book covers a lot of ground, considering it all takes place over a mere five days. Interestingly, the title of the book alludes to the historical significance of the twelfth day of July, which marks the annual Protestant celebration of King William of Orange's victory over the Catholics in the late 1500s. This book delves into the mindset of both Catholic and Protestant children residing in Belfast, and how they perceive one another. I have perused a literary work called "The Twelfth Day of July," authored by Joan Lingard. ![]() ![]() “Lots of sharp insights…perfect comic timing. “A novel that tingles with playfulness and wicked observation.” INDEPENDENT What if every woman in town suddenly went on strikeFor the people of Stellar Plains, the staging of a new. When the new drama teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Stellar Plains, N.J. As the women worry over their loss of passion, and the men become by turns unhappy, offended, and above all, confused, both sides are forced to look at their shared history, and at their sexual selves in a new light.Īs she did to such acclaim with the New York Times bestseller The Ten-Year Nap, Wolitzer tackles an issue that has deep ramifications for women's lives, in a way that makes it funny, riveting, and totally fresh-allowing us to see our own lives through her insightful lens. With 'The Uncoupling,' Wolitzer takes on lagging lust and the vicissitudes of female desire in a fable-like tale. ![]() One by one throughout the high school community, perfectly healthy, normal women and teenage girls turn away from their husbands and boyfriends in the bedroom, for reasons they don't really understand. ![]() When the elliptical new drama teacher at Stellar Plains High School chooses for the school play Lysistrata-the comedy by Aristophanes in which women stop having sex with men in order to end a war-a strange spell seems to be cast over the school. ![]() ![]() From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Ten-Year Nap, a funny, provocative, revealing novel about female desire. ![]() ![]() ![]() Still, it's a good introduction for young readers to an inspiring story about taking a stand for one's beliefs. My only reservation about the book is how quickly it skims through the decades following his Olympic victory, passing quickly through the backlash he faced and his own marriages and children. He reflects on the events and forces of the 1950s and 1960s that caused him thrust his arm into the air: his upbringing, racism, the Civil Rights Movement, other athletes who had taken stands, and the assassinations and growing turbulence in the United States. ![]() Smith retraces his life from a sharecropping farm in Texas through a move to California as part of the Second Great Migration to his rapidly rising star as a track athlete. Before Colin Kaepernick polarized the United States by taking a knee, Tommie Smith shocked the world by raising his fist in a Black Power salute with fellow American John Carlos on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. ![]() ![]() ![]() They’re two writers whose careers began in earnest in the last five years but who have been working and cheering each other on for a lot longer than that. The great challenge of imagining the future exposes what we believe, hope, and fear for today’s world, the one we have no choice but to live in.īrown and Drayden will appear together (along with non-Texas writer Jen Julian) on a panel at the Texas Book Festival called “Transmissions From the Multiverse: Science Fiction in Several Styles.” They’ll discuss their different approaches to science fiction and what’s possible within the genre. Chris Brown (l) and Nicky Drayden It’s not just spaceships and aliens and robots – though there are plenty of those, too. ![]() ![]() ![]() We are all biased by our past experiences, which shape what we see and how we evaluate it. There is growing evidence in cognitive science that expectations, context-dependent prior beliefs, are crucial to perception. Picasso lived for three more decades, but this is the final volume. “The Minotaur Years” ends before World War II is over. Richardson, who was not trained as an art historian, was a friend of Picasso, a fluent writer with a gift for narrative and a sensitive ability to read the artist’s work in relation to his life. “Picasso” is a name that has come to mean “greatness.” Only “Einstein” rivals it as shorthand for “genius.” John Richardson’s three earlier volumes of “A Life of Picasso,” published between 19 and now followed by a fourth, rest on the unquestioned assumption that Picasso represents a pinnacle of artistic achievement. A LIFE OF PICASSO The Minotaur Years, 1933-1943 By John Richardson with the collaboration of Ross Finocchio and Delphine Huisinga ![]() ![]() “He convinced her it was all just a huge mistake.” ![]() “He lied to my daughter,” said Janette Mayo. The mother of McFadden’s wife claims he kept the family in the dark about his past, and they only learned about his criminal history a few months ago as his trial date on Monday loomed. McFadden was rearrested a month after he was released in October 2020 for the child pornography and solicitation charges, but was released on US$25,000 bail. Yet he was still freed in 2020 for the rape charge, three years early, in part for good behaviour. Court records show McFadden was charged with the new crimes in 2017, during the prison sentence, after a relative of the victim alerted authorities. During his sentence, he was accused of using a contraband cellphone in 2016 to trade nude photos with a 16-year-old girl. McFadden was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in 2003 for first-degree rape. The gruesome scene was discovered on the same day that McFadden was to stand trial for charges of soliciting sexual conduct with a minor and possession of child pornography. ![]() ![]() ![]() The property where seven bodies were discovered on Monday is pictured in Henryetta, Okla., on Wednesday, May 3, 2023. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This is a truly tragic story, but through it shines a brave, intelligent and principled young woman, who deserves acknowledgement of her place in history. At the age of just 17 she bravely refused to recant her faith and was beheaded on Tower Green. She was destined never to leave it, as her witless father organised a cock-eyed and hopeless rebellion against Mary, which forced the Queen reluctantly to order Jane and Guildford's execution. Inevitably she was overthrown and sent to the Tower. Jane tried to make the best of it, in her brief rule she demonstrated her strength of character and refusal to bow down to the men who tried to manipulate her, but she was doomed by the lack of support from the people, who wanted Mary to reign. Tallis picks apart the scanty evidence of Jane's short existence, giving a excellent picture of her growing up in one of the most powerfully-connected nobles families, her formidable intelligence and her love of study, her passion for the reformed faith, her forced marriage to Guildford Dudley and the utterly tragic story of how, very much against her will, she was selected as a figurehead by powerful and unscrupulous men to take the throne instead of her fiercely Catholic cousin Mary. ![]() An engaging, very readable account of the short life of the most tragic Tudor, Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Day Queen (or as Tallis points out, actually the 13 Day Queen). One of the best books on the Tudors I have read for a long times. ![]() ![]() ![]() and you say through the deepest possible pain, ‘God is enough.’” ![]() “It’s when you smash your car, and your little girl goes flying through the windshield, and lands dead on the street. “I’ll tell you what makes Jesus look beautiful,” Piper told them. The sanctuary at Mountain Brook Community Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was so full “it felt like college students were hanging from the rafters,” recalled David Mathis, who accompanied Piper on the trip.īut “you could hear a pin drop that night,” said Bryan Johnson, who was helping lead the University Christian Fellowship (UCF) campus ministry. It is not the gospel, and it’s being exported from this country to Africa and Asia, selling a bill of goods to the poorest of the poor: “Believe this message, and your pigs won’t die and your wife won’t have miscarriages, and you’ll have rings on your fingers and coats on your back.” That’s coming out of America-the people that ought to be giving our money and our time and our lives, instead selling them a bunch of crap called “gospel.” ![]() ![]() The founder of Desiring God and then-pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church continued: “I don’t know what you feel about the prosperity gospel-the health, wealth and prosperity gospel-but I’ll tell you what I feel about it,” Piper told a gathering of more than 1,000 college students in November 2005. ![]() |