With the anticipation of the game leaving millions of gamers rushing to get their hands on their version of the game that was tipped to, and did, break sale records within the first 24 hours of sales but with Modern Warfare 2, the previous title developed by the same creators, selling 4.7 million copies within the first day, Activision failed to see the 9.3 million titles being purchased on opening day and that resulted in devastation within their new ‘premium’ option that had been freshly developed for the latest instalment.

Modern Warfare 3 Elite had been taunted as a new addition that was going to intensify the gaming experience of players that bought the MW3 title but with the additional features came a new twist that upset gamers across the globe, yet another yearly fee to be added to their account.

Charging a premium for what the company claimed was going to offer a new ground breaking experience, with clans and titles being more powerful than ever before, seemed to split the gaming community but that didn’t stop millions of gamers subscribing to the Elite offering from the moment that the game hit the shelves.

The result of the interest and the element of the unknown was gamers paying out a fee for a yearly membership into the Elite aspect of the game, only for the servers that Activision had powering it to fail and be unable to handle the demand that came flooding towards it.

The MW3 Elite servers were soon blocked to any user, resulting in backlash from angry gamers that were demanding an explanation, something that they were given via social networking site Twitter, being told that “A surge of new Elite registrations” were the cause of the problems, showing that the reception of the new element of the game had been well received despite the questions of whether Activision were right in adding yet another expense onto a title that releases regular download content at a price.

When players have tried to access the Elite servers  they have been consistently shown the same message, telling them that traffic into the servers was at its ‘peak’ and that they should return to try again later.

With the Call of Duty franchise now valued at a huge £3 billion surely you would have expected Activision to have produced the game on servers that were capable of handling the huge number of gamers that they have had logging into their online section of the game over recent years, especially as they are charging for the chance to be part of the Elite section.

Activision have issued comment on the problems and have pledged that all those who have bought Elite membership will be issued with a further 30 days of membership once the problems have been rectified, possibly too little too late for any of the gamers according to the online gaming community with players claiming that they are set to turn the back on the title in order to purchase the game’s rival title, Battlefield 3.

Call of Duty

The world capital of knock offs could be Kunming in the southwest corner of China, after a travel writer found a fake Apple store in the area, further investigations by Apple found four more. Now it seems that the famous Swedish furniture company Ikea may also have been copied.

On the outside the store called 11 Furniture looks like any other building and not at all like an Ikea store however inside you will be able to notice striking resemblances. You will find Ikea’s blue-and-yellow colour scheme, mock-up rooms, miniature pencils, signage and even its rocking chair designs as well as the company’s signature its cafeteria-style restaurant, complete with minimalist wooden tables.  Although the menu does vary from Ikea’s Swedish meatballs and salmon, serving Chinese-style braised minced pork and eggs.

Although it seems the store is not directly selling itself as an Ikea store a lot of the branding and styling seems to be a very close match. The name of the store in Chinese is ‘Shi Yi Jia Ju’ sounds very much like Ikea’s Chinese name ‘Yi Jia Jia Ju’. However there are some differences at 11 Furniture store the furniture sold is made to order, not flat pack like Ikea, plus some customers have also noted that at the real Ikea, the layout is much neater and the decorations are laid out properly.

In a statement, Ikea explained that it is consulting with lawyers over the matter. It said: “Inter IKEA Systems B.V, the worldwide franchisor and owner of the IKEA Concept, sees it as very important to protect the intellectual property rights. We have reported it to Inter IKEA Systems B.V and they are dealing with this matter together with their legal counsel. The best thing we can do to prevent such stores from opening up in the future is to open more stores and make the IKEA products available to more people.”

Most of the Ikea stores in China are in the wealthier coastal and southern cities and not in areas such as Kunming.

U.S blogger BirdAbroad who visited the store was convinced at first that it was a real store. Then she noticed that the signage said ‘Apple Store’ – and Steve Jobs’, something which would not be seen in a genuine official Apple store.

According to BirdAbroad, upon closer inspection, she noticed other things that weren’t quite right, she wrote on her blog: “The name tags around the necks of the friendly sales people didn’t actually have names on them – just an Apple logo and the anonymous designation ‘Staff’. Also, the stairs were poorly made and the walls hadn’t been painted properly. This was a total Apple store rip-off. A beautiful rip-off – a brilliant one – the best rip-off store we had ever seen. Even the salespeople genuinely thought they worked for Apple.”

BirdAbroad was convinced though that the products on sale looked genuine, even though they weren’t.

An Apple spokeswoman confirmed that BirdAbroad was absolutely correct, the store is a fake.

Speaking about the decision to sever ties with Gills Cruises, Royal Caribbean associate vice president and general manager Jo Rzymowska said the decision to refuse new bookings via Gills was ‘the best thing to do for customers’. She stated to Travel Weekly: “We have pipeline monies outstanding that we are owed. We have been collecting money direct from customers for a couple of weeks as we didn’t want that debt to increase. Now the priority is our customers and to assure them our holidays are safe.”

Customers who have booked a holiday through Gills Cruises who are worried about the status of their trip are advised to contact the cruise company direct, however, travel industry trade body, ABTA,  insisted that people who have booked  with Gills can be guaranteed that their money and holidays are safe.

Gills Cruises have a statement posted on their website, stating: ‘Gill’s Cruise Centre regrets that it is currently unable to accept new booking enquiries.’

One of the reasons why Gills Cruises are facing financial problems is that to get a better share of the market the company were giving huge discounts on cruise holidays, undercutting completion and also the cruise operators themselves, leading the company into debt.

Currently the outlook for the company which was established as the first suburban travel agent in Wales in 1957 by Robert Gill does not look that good, especially with current market conditions. Only this week travel giant Thomas Cook issued a profits warning, many other holiday firms are also struggling as the economic downturn continues to affect people.

Stone is not the only member of the crew to be leaving, Evan Williams, who stepped down from the post last October and has also been acting as and ‘advisor’,’ has also notify the team that he is leaving completely and will be joining Stone in his work with The Obvious Group.  Many people would like to invest in the project, as Twitter is believed to be worth £4.9 billion and another other project like it would definitely be worth investing in!

Twitter will carry on regardless of the loss of Stone as the ever-so-popular (200 million registered accounts and 2,200 tweets ever second) does not want to disappoint its users.

A spokesman for West Yorkshire Police said today: “Police were called at 11.40am yesterday to reports of a man in the River Wharfe, apparently having fallen from the cliffs above. A Segway-style vehicle was recovered. He was pronounced dead at the scene. At this time we do not believe the death to be suspicious.”

Mr Heselden had bought Segway in December 2009, the machines which use gyroscopes to remain upright and are controlled by the direction in which the rider leans he recently became one of the UK’s most generous philanthropists, having given away £10 million to a charity foundation he set up in 2008. He had also in the past given £13 million to the same foundation which was the Leeds Community Foundation. Mr Heselden was worth £166 million and ranked 395th on the Sunday Times Rich List, which placed him above Simon Cowell.

Jimi Heselden, was once a miner by trade however, he made his fortune with Leeds-based defence company Hesco Bastion, which pioneered ‘blast walls’, the steel-mesh baskets that replaced sandbags as protection for soldiers on the frontline in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Picture courtesy of meuh !

Amazed shoppers ran at the raining money and grabbed as much of it as they could before disappearing, the police said only £300 of the money had been handed back and they urge others to do the same and ‘do the decent thing’.

Detective Inspector Andy Symes, of Hampshire Police admitted he was ‘not optimistic’ that much more will be returned. He said: ‘I’m hopeful some members of the public will do the decent thing but in all honesty I can’t see much more as a result of this appeal.’

Speaking about the event the Detective described it as ‘bizarre’ and said: “A man entered the bank and threatened staff into giving him approximately £1,600 in cash. He claimed he was armed, but a subsequent search after arrest proved he had no weapon on him.”

The Police are yet to determine why the man did it however he did say: “We would ask any members of the public who have found money in Jewry Street – or surrounding streets – to please hand the money into their nearest police station. This money is evidence in our investigation. We would like to thank the members of the public who have already come forward and handed in money they have found to us. This was understandably upsetting for the people in the bank at the time, but this kind of incident is thankfully very rare, and in this case a man was arrested quickly and nobody was harmed.”

Picture courtesy of WebWallpapers

However, the mint said they had no plans to take the coins out of circulation, and they have rapidly become collector’s items in the country. Pedro Urúa the mint’s head franker denied allegations that the spelling error had been a deliberate move and said “I have been accused of having written the word “Chiie’ deliberately, but it was an error spotted by neither myself nor the entire chain of people who saw and approved it afterwards”.

Picture courtesy of ricardo.martin

Alexander Skopintsev who was from the eastern region of Primorye near China’s border was convicted for the unlawful construction and storage of weapons and received a two-and-a-half year suspended sentence, he had laid 3 land mine devices on his land after making them in his garage. “Skopintsev testified that he had prepared the explosive devices to protect his garden against thieves,” regional prosecutors said in a statement reported by RIA-Novosti news agency.

Picture courtesy of net_efekt