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U.S. National Highway Traffic & Safety Administration| Detroit Free Press

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued recalls for July 7 through 14, including a Nissan recall involving 180,176 units and a Ford recall involving 100,689 units. See the list of this week's car recalls involving ten or more units below, or search USA TODAY's automotive recalls database for more:

Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. (Audi) is recalling certain 1998 Audi A8 and 1997-1998 Audi A4 vehicles equipped with Non-Azide Driver air bag Inflators (NADI) that do not contain phase stabilized ammonium nitrate (PSAN) propellant. Due to a manufacturing issue, the NADI inflator may absorb moisture, causing the inflator to explode or the air bag cushion to underinflate. 28,624 units are affected. Read more

General Motors, LLC (GM) is recalling certain 2018-2020 Buick Regal vehicles. In the event of a vacuum-power brake assist failure, a software error in the electronic brake control module (EBCM) may result in a loss of power brake assist. As such, these vehicles fail to conform to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 135, "Light vehicle brake systems." 23,734 units are affected. Read more

Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2022 Lincoln Aviator and Ford Explorer vehicles. The engine rails may have been improperly heat-treated. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard numbers 208, "Occupant Crash Protection" and 301, "Fuel System Integrity." 1,000 units are affected. Read more

Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2020-2022 Escape, 2021-2022 Lincoln Corsair, and 2022 Maverick vehicles equipped with 2.5L HEV or PHEV engines. In the event of an engine failure, engine oil and fuel vapor may be released into the engine compartment and accumulate near ignition sources such as hot engine or exhaust components, possibly resulting in an engine compartment fire. 100,689 units are affected. Read more

Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2022 F-150 BEV vehicles equipped with 20" or 22" all season tires. The tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) light may not illuminate as intended, failing to warn the driver of low tire pressure. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 138, "Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems." 2,666 units are affected. Read more

Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2022 Bronco and Ranger vehicles. The windshield may not have been properly bonded to the vehicle, which could allow it to detach during a crash. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 212, "Windshield Mounting." 63,294 units are affected. Read more

Honda (American Honda Motor Co) is recalling certain 2020-2022 GL1800 Gold Wing motorcycles equipped with manual transmissions. An ignition timing software error for the engine control unit (ECU) may reduce engine performance, which can result in an engine stall. 1,740 units are affected. Read more

Hyundai Motor America (Hyundai) is recalling certain 2017-2018 Ioniq HEV and Ionic PHV vehicles previously recalled under recall number 18V-704. The Power Relay Assembly (PRA) located underneath the rear seat may overheat. 10,575 units are affected. Read more

Hyundai Motor America (Hyundai) is recalling certain 2020-2022 Venue vehicles. In the event of a crash, the front driver-side and/or passenger-side seat belt pretensioners may explode upon deployment. 72,470 units are affected. Read more

Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2022 Lincoln Aviator and Ford Explorer vehicles. The engine rails may have been improperly heat-treated. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard numbers 208, "Occupant Crash Protection" and 301, "Fuel System Integrity." 1,000 units are affected. Read more

Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2022 Lincoln Navigator vehicles. The headlight control module software may cause the side marker and daytime running lights to fail. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 108, "Lamps, Reflective Devices, and Associated Equipment." 965 units are affected. Read more

Ford Motor Company (Ford) is recalling certain 2020-2022 Escape, 2021-2022 Lincoln Corsair, and 2022 Maverick vehicles equipped with 2.5L HEV or PHEV engines. In the event of an engine failure, engine oil and fuel vapor may be released into the engine compartment and accumulate near ignition sources such as hot engine or exhaust components, possibly resulting in an engine compartment fire. 100,689 units are affected. Read more

Mercedes-Benz, LLC (MBUSA) is recalling certain 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLS 450 and GLS 580 vehicles. The front air bag wiring harness may be routed incorrectly, which can cause the air bag not to deploy properly. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 208, "Occupant Crash Protection." 81 units are affected. Read more

Mercedes-Benz, LLC (MBUSA) is recalling certain 2022 Mercedes-Benz EQS 450, EQS 580 and AMG EQS53 vehicles. The front or rear bumper tow ring assembly may have insufficient thread depth, which can result in the tow ring detaching from the vehicle. 2,526 units are affected. Read more

Daimler Vans USA, LLC (DVUSA) is recalling certain 2016-2018 Mercedes-Benz Metris vans. The value for the maximum combined load weight capacity of the tires is incorrect. As such, these vehicles fail to comply with the requirements of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard number 110, "Tire and Loading Information." 24,403 units are affected. Read more

Nissan North America, Inc. (Nissan) is recalling certain 2020-2022 Frontier and Titan vehicles. The transmission parking pawl may not engage when the vehicle is shifted into park, which can result in a vehicle rollaway. 180,176 units are affected. Read more

Subaru of America, Inc. (Subaru) is recalling certain 2022 Outback vehicles. The engine wiring harness may have been damaged, resulting in a loose electrical connection to the engine control unit (ECU). 15 units are affected. Read more

To find more recalls for vehicles, groceries, consumer products and more, visit USA TODAY's searchable recalls database.

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Nissan, Ford among vehicle recalls this week - Detroit Free Press

Log4j incident response within the community shows collaboration & dedication to security | Security Magazine This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more. This Website Uses CookiesBy closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to our cookie policy. Learn MoreThis website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Visit our updated privacy and cookie policy to learn more.

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Log4j incident response within the community shows collaboration & dedication to security - Security Magazine

A pedestrian is reflected in the window of a branch of the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) in central Sydney, Australia, October 25, 2017. REUTERS/Steven Saphore

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July 13 (Reuters) - Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ.AX) said on Wednesday it was in talks with private equity giant KKR & Co (KKR.N) to buy software firm MYOB Group, in a deal that local media has pegged at over A$4.5 billion ($3.04 billion).

ANZ's confirmation of the news comes at a time when major Australian banks have been divesting non-core operations to simplify their businesses and focus on their core competency, lending.

ANZ's larger 'Big 4' rival Westpac Banking Corp (WBC.AX) has sold its general insurance arm and some of its financial advisory business in the past two years, while Commonwealth Bank (CBA.AX) exited a near two-decade investment in China's Bank of Hangzhou (600926.SS) earlier this month. read more

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Aggressive hikes by the central bank to rein in inflation have rudely awaken banks from pandemic-era near-zero interest rates, keeping margins under pressure.

As rising rates now have the housing market in a chokehold, banks are knuckling down on their lending operations. In such an environment, analysts have cast doubts on ANZ's decision to buy an accounting software company from a PE firm at a hefty price.

KKR had taken MYOB private for A$1.6 billion in a 2019 deal, which was one of its biggest acquisitions in Australia at the time. (https://www.reuters.com/article/myob-m-a-kkr-idINKCN1RF0BX)

Banks do not necessarily need to own accounting platforms as they have products which take data from such platforms to approve loans and accurately access cash flow risks, Jefferies analysts said in a note.

Morningstar analyst Nathan Zaia said he would "rather not see so much capital deployed in a non-banking business, especially buying a business from private equity."

ANZ may be looking to win market share in small and medium enterprise (SME) lending through an integrated banking and accounting offering, but there are less capital-intensive ways of doing that, Zaia said.

While KKR declined to provide additional details on the deal, ANZ wasn't immediately available for further comments but said in a statement that no deal has been reached. It also did not disclose the deal value.

ANZ's shares closed 1.2% lower at A$22.43 on Wednesday, when its "big four" peers closed higher.

($1 = 1.4780 Australian dollars)

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Reporting by Indranil Sarkar and Harshita Swaminathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Amy Caren Daniel and Rashmi Aich

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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ANZ in talks to buy KKR's accounting software firm in reported $3 bln deal - Reuters

Depending on what Calendly plan you pay for, you can avail of integrations with other platforms such as Salesforce, Zoom, Slack and Outlook.

Calendly makes software for teams to schedule, prepare and follow up on external meetings. It helps workers automate their meetings schedules, making the process of arranging meetings less time consuming and more efficient.

The company was founded in Atlanta, Georgia by Nigerian-born entrepreneur Tope Awotona in 2013. It currently has around 10m users globally.

The platform is useful for individuals as well as larger teams. It claims to save users up to four hours of time per week. While that may be a fairly bold claim, theres no doubt that Calendly is a useful tool to have in your arsenal if youre in the sort of job that requires a lot of meetings. And once youve set it up, it will do all the hard work for you.

When you sign up for Calendly, it asks you to pick a personal URL or username that best represents you. Its a good idea to pick something simple such as your first name and last name, your initials, your organisation, or a combination of those.

Next, it will ask you to select what times you are free in a given working week. You can change your availabilities later on, following this initial set-up process.

You can personalise your experience by letting Calendly know what your role is within your organisation. There are several options to choose from, such as: interview scheduling, leader and entrepreneur, freelance and consultant, sales and marketing and customer success. If your role isnt listed within these options, theres an other option too.

Once youve completed that process, youll be able to see your Calendly dashboard, which is integrated with your email calendar schedule. Calendly will send you an email notifying you that your 14-day free trial has started.

The email will prompt you to think of a specific meeting you host over and over again. You can customise your pre-built template card (this is labelled 30-Minute Meeting) on the Homepage to use as a template for that meeting.

To customise the template, click the settings cog on the top right of the template card. Then click edit on the drop-down menu that appears. Next, youll be taken to a form which lets you fill in details about the meeting, such as its name and location.

You can also set options for people to book the meeting with you based on your availability in the future. Scroll back to the top of the page and click Save & Close.

This will generate a shareable link of your calendar and availability which you can send via email to a client, colleague, or friend. They will see your availability and they can select a time that suits them within these windows.

You can click on your scheduled events to view your meetings schedule. This list can be filtered with a click to view past, upcoming or pending meetings.

You can change your availability by clicking on Availability on the menu bar on the top of the screen. Your regular working hours will be listed as your default schedule, however, you can also add a new schedule by clicking on the + New Schedule tab beside your default one.

On your default schedule, you will see a list of days of the week with boxes beside them. You can click in these boxes to select or deselect your availability. By clicking on the time-stamps, you can edit the times you are available and add overtime.

Calendly integrates with most of the tools you use in your daily working life. It integrates with Zapier, Salesforce, Zoom, Slack, Outlook, iCloud Calendar, Google Calendar and Google Meet.

Theres also an option to embed your availability page on your website with WordPress, Wix and Squarespace integrations. This gives clients the option to view your schedule when they visit your website.

Calendly itself has detailed instructions on how to set this up.

Calendly interface on desktop and a smartphone. Image: Calendly

Depending on whether youre an individual user or your team is using Calendly, you can avail of different payment plans. As mentioned above, everyone who signs up for Calendly gets a 14-day free trial on the Teams plan. After that ends, you are downgraded to the basic plan.

Some integrations are not available on certain lower-priced plans, so thats worth keeping in mind.

The free plan lets you have one calendar connection, one active event type and unlimited one-off meetings. (Calendar connections are email addresses connected to the platform.)

The Essentials plan is $8 per month. It includes two calendar connections, the option to create unlimited event types, help centre access, the ability to add Calendly to your website, customisable booking links and automated event notifications. It is suited to individual users.

The Professional plan will set you or your organisation back $12 per month, and offers additional features including custom integrations, unlimited event types, live chat support for teams of more than 10, six calendar connections per person, automated workflows and customisation options.

The Teams plan is the most popular plan for organisations, according to Calendly. It costs $16 per month. It includes all the features from the Professional plan as well as a Salesforce integration and live chat support. This is the plan you will be offered during your two-week trial.

Large organisations can opt for the Enterprise plan which doesnt have any set price. It offers all the Teams plan features and others such as onboarding and implementation, member support via email and SAML single sign-on.

If you decide to pay for Calendly and you want to learn more about the different features it offers, check out the website.

Calendly also offers anyone who signs up for a free trial a free webinar. Youll get an email notifying you when the next one you can join is. The webinar covers things like scheduling meetings with Calendly. You can also ask questions and request a recording of the webinar if the time its held at doesnt suit you.

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Calendly: Here's what you need to know about the scheduling tool - Siliconrepublic.com

Illustration by The Globe and Mail

Gabrielle Drolet is a journalist and cartoonist based in Montreal.

Im writing this with voice-to-text. It isnt going well.

Im sitting at my desk, my laptop propped up in front of me with a small black microphone beside it. As I write, I say everything you would usually type on a keyboard out loud: I say the words, period, comma, semicolon; I say, italicize; I say new paragraph and delete sentence. I also say profanities when the software misunderstands me, which is often.

Ive been typing this way for about a year, I say.

Ive been typing this way for amount here, the computer writes.

About a year, I repeat, raising my voice and enunciating each word clearly.

A mountain here, it types.

Damn it, I mutter.

Damn it, it types.

I laugh at this a sound the computer tries to process but cant and I give up, using my mouse to go back and fix the mistake manually. This short act of clicking, deleting and typing sends pain shooting down my forearms and fingers.

My computer and I play this game every day to varying degrees of frustration: I try to type something, and it finds increasingly absurd ways to mishear me. At this point, this is more funny than anything else. Ive become used to writing this way, and better at ignoring the typos until it comes time to edit the article or essay Im working on. I let the computer write up whatever it thinks Im saying and come back to it when a draft is done.

There are times when the computer gets it so wrong that I can barely remember what I was trying to say entire paragraphs needing to be decoded like hieroglyphs. However, for the most part, I get by with voice-to-text just fine.

Most days, I even like writing this way. I like leaning back in my chair and holding the mic up to my chin, orating an article like Im telling a story (albeit with out-loud punctuation). It feels natural. I like watching the words appear on screen as I speak them, too. But I didnt feel this way a year ago.

In February, 2021, I developed a nerve condition that would affect almost every part of my life, both professionally and personally. The condition, called thoracic outlet syndrome, was the result of overwork and bad ergonomics. The pandemic meant I was suddenly spending all my time working from home, writing hunched over my laptop on the couch like a goblin instead of upright at a desk.

The damage could have been minimal, but was made severe because I was misdiagnosed twice by physiotherapists, giving my symptoms the chance to progress beyond the point of being manageable. Pain manifested itself in my entire upper body, starting at my neck and spreading down through my arms and into my hands. Some days it was numbness instead of pain, my fingers turning red and swelling up as feeling left them entirely.

When this all started, I was a creative writing masters student also working as a freelance journalist. This is to say that my life revolved around writing a task that was suddenly extremely difficult for me. Any time spent at a keyboard caused my symptoms to flare up, my pain growing sharp or my hands becoming too numb to type at all. Writing with pen and paper wasnt a viable alternative, bringing on the same symptoms.

Those early days were scary and disorienting. I suddenly had to change the way I lived and worked without much time to properly adapt. Given that writing was central to both my academic and professional life, I wasnt able to take a beat and figure out how best to reapproach it. Instead, I dove headfirst into the world of voice-to-text, playing around with the free software available online.

If voice-to-text is still sometimes challenging today, it felt impossible when I was starting. I had yet to invest in an external microphone, so the software misunderstood me more than ever. I spoke so loudly that I was practically yelling, and most of my sentences still appeared so mangled on the screen I couldnt make out what I was trying to say. My symptoms were also at their peak, so supplementing my voice with a mouse and a keyboard was less of an option than it is now. However, the hardest part wasnt just getting the right words down; it was the fact that the words no longer sounded like my own.

We dont often have to think about this, but the way we speak is incredibly different from the way we type or put pen to paper. Like most writers, years of practice had shaped my written voice into one I was proud of and familiar with: It had a certain cadence and style that felt like it was recognizably mine. As I started speaking my work out loud, that style eroded away until it was lost to me. I found myself unable to achieve the same voice I had before, no matter how hard I tried. This, more than anything else, made me tailspin.

When I say I started using voice-to-text, I want to be clear that this wasnt just for writing articles and essays; it was for everything. Emails, text messages, tweets, grocery lists everything was suddenly spoken out loud. For the most part, this all worked just fine (though I was embarrassed at speaking into my phone in front of friends or in public, which I pushed myself to overcome). Odd and unexpected problems cropped up, though.

Hey comma what are we doing for dinner tonight? Id once asked my then-partner after work.

Did you just say the word comma out loud? My partner laughed.

I frowned. Did I?

I had, and it was a mistake I would continue to make. As I spent entire days writing with my voice, I became hyperaware of where punctuation went in my spoken sentences, sometimes letting it slip out conversationally. This problem was especially apparent when I read anything out loud, whether to myself or others: I would read the punctuation, too, forgetting that its only supposed to live on the page.

Voice-to-text was changing the way I spoke, thought and interacted with the world. But the area where I struggled most was still my relationship with creative writing. What was difficult wasnt just using voice-to-text itself it was the fact that my identity had long felt closely tied to my written voice, which was starting to feel irreparably different.

As I complained to my friends and peers about my challenges with writing, I had a hard time explaining what, exactly, the problem was. They would recommend solutions (new software, different microphones), but the issue wasnt technical.

The harder I tried to speak in my writing voice, emulating what my old stories and articles sounded like, the worse my work sounded. It became awkward and stilted. I felt like a high-schooler fulfilling an assignment to do a pastiche of another writer, never fully able to attain her style.

Its easy for what we do to feel closely tied to who we are. This can be especially true in creative fields, where our identities become wrapped up in work all too often. Being a writer was a bigger part of my identity than Id realized until writing itself became physically difficult. As my voice shifted, I found myself grieving for it. Who was I, if not the writer Id always been?

Writing stopped being something I enjoyed. More than that, it became something I was embarrassed by. Every time I handed in work to professors or editors, I always wanted to attach the disclaimer that it wasnt really my work.

Im better than this! I wanted to yell. This isnt me!

No matter how often I was reassured that the way I was writing was fine, if a little different, I convinced myself it wasnt. As my voice shifted and changed, I had the sense that it wasnt really my voice any more at all.

It goes without saying that Im far from the only writer who uses voice-to-text, though its hard to know how many of us do. Author Richard Powers writes this way by choice, explaining it makes his work sound more natural. Dan Brown reportedly writes his early drafts using dictation software, too. But the practice of dictation has been around long before computers have, and there are countless examples of it throughout literary history.

Agatha Christie wrote her novels using a Dictaphone, getting a typist to write them out afterward, while Winston Churchill famously dictated his speeches to a secretary. Other famous writers turned to dictation as a way to work while disabled, as I have. John Milton dictated all of his later poems, including Paradise Lost, after going completely blind in his 40s. Well into his career, novelist Henry James hired a secretary to take dictation when rheumatism made writing too painful and difficult.

All the way back in the 19th century, James was experiencing the same issues Ive grappled with: He found his writing style changed when he spoke his stories out loud, saying he was too diffuse when he dictated. Eventually, however, he became so used to writing by speaking that it apparently became second nature.

Ive thought a lot about why shifting to voice-to-text was so difficult for me (beyond the technical issues). When dictation has been around for hundreds of years and is present in mainstream publishing today, why did it feel like a life-altering obstacle?

Looking back, its clear that there were a few factors at play here. Chief among them is the fact that I didnt want to accept that I was disabled that my issue was chronic, and I would need to alter how I lived in a long-term, maybe even permanent way. I wasnt ready to think of how disability might affect who I was and how I engaged with the world around me. I opted, instead, to reject it altogether. Rather than leaning into a new way of writing, I grasped and grieved for the way Id done it before, feeling my sense of self slip away.

I spent almost a full year this way. I pushed myself to type with my hands whenever my symptoms were remotely better, which ultimately made them worse. I avoided writing for fun, only doing it when I had to.

Things didnt shift until my understanding of disability did. As I slowly came to understand what it meant to be disabled and made other friends who were, I also accepted that the way I navigated the world would simply have to change, and that included how I wrote. Coming to this realization might have been easier if we spoke about disability and accessibility more often and openly say, if Id known that disabled writers have turned to dictation for hundreds of years.

Today, my hands are much better than they were when this all started over a year ago. Still, I mostly write with voice-to-text, being careful not to push myself just because I can. Its a big part of both my professional and personal life, and Ive learned to appreciate both the nuance and the humour in this. (After all, theres something deeply funny about shouting at a computer alone in my office or saying the words, colon, closed parentheses, when I want to send a smiley face in a text.)

Despite the fact that I still sometimes struggle with the logistical sides of voice-to-text, having those little arguments with the computer every day, Ive learned to celebrate the perks of it. I can identify the ways in which my writing sounds more conversational and to the point, more reflective of the way I speak. I can hear my vocal cadences in some of my written work, and genuinely appreciate that. And though my writing will probably never be the same as it was, Im learning thats not a bad thing.

Im still a writer, even if I have to say it out loud.

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Opinion: Being a writer was central to my identity. Then I was forced to write with my voice - The Globe and Mail