proAV captures slice of surging video wall market

As forecasts of a dramatic rise in the global video wall industry continue to be met, proAV has confirmed the pioneering multidisplay technology has dominated its sales in key vertical markets throughout 2012.

(PRWEB UK) 22 December 2012
As forecasts of a dramatic rise in the global video wall industry continue to be met, proAV has confirmed the pioneering multidisplay technology has dominated its sales in key vertical markets throughout 2012.
In a recent report, Futuresource Consulting suggested the international video wall market is likely to achieve a 60 per cent growth this year, predicting sales of some 380,000 units. Rear projection cubes (RPCs) and super narrow bezel (SNB) displays are already becoming commonplace in retail, public and exhibition environments as well taking centre stage in some of the world’s most dynamic corporate spaces. Indeed, according to Parmit Bhangal of Futuresource, SNBs achieved year-on-year sales growth of more than 100 per cent last year, accounting for over 80 per cent of the total video wall market; a trend that looks set to continue.
proAV is one of the world’s most exciting professional AV systems integrators and has noted a significant shift from single, very large screens to the cost effective, immersive user experience of multiple displays that serve as an expansive video display canvas, often in very diverse market sectors.
Mark Hazell, Sales Director at proAV, points to the versatility and future-proofed features of the high impact, ultra large format video wall as key factors in its rapid growth.
‘You only have to stand in front of a video wall to see why vertical markets are embracing this technology in all manner of applications,’ he explains. ‘Powerful digital signage systems are driving the growth of video walls that capture attention within retail and public spaces while corporates are wowing their business partners with futuristic presentation and reception areas that only a video wall can dominate to this extent.
‘But, of course, with versatility comes an appeal that other verticals are now pursuing with increasing zest; mission-critical environments such as transport and logistics, IT and command and control centres are looking to increasingly more dynamic displays to communicate news and induce a new level of collaboration. Add to this a suite of innovative features and it’s easy to see why enterprising organisations are deploying these tiled display solutions as part of ever more ambitious and interactive marketing strategies. Our clients are exploring the integrated touch technologies such as gesture and projective capacitive touch features that would be impossible to replicate on a smaller, traditional display screen.’
proAV has recently completed a number of high profile integrated AV projects where large video walls have been central to the scheme and highlight the benefits for deployments within the rapid growth areas, identified by Futuresource, i.e. retail and corporate sectors.
Burberry, the leading luxury fashion retailer, already entrusts its international AV solutions to proAV and recently commissioned the organisation to install a series of 9’ high Christie MicroTile arrays and a stunning 22’ high Laser Phosphor Display (LPD) video wall as part of groundbreaking AV scheme for its new, flagship store in London’s Regent Street. The vast wall sits between two sweeping staircases and is made up of hundreds of Prysm LPD tiles, each using a solid-state laser diode that emits a 405nm wavelength laser beam.
Taking the initiative within the corporate sector, JPMorgan Chase & Co, the global financial services organisation, tasked proAV with an integrated AV solution that features a spectacular 22 x 8 tile curved, digital display wall in its auditorium and is designed to immerse viewers in remarkable HD video and graphics.
And, commensurate with its forward-thinking corporate identify, Cisco Systems commissioned proAV to deliver one of the UK’s most inspired, large-scale digital video display wall to front a vast auditorium at its UK Virtual Events Center in Middlesex. The 24 x 5 tile Prysm video wall uses a bespoke tramline system that enables the wall to be divided into three separate displays when the room is configured into smaller rooms.
The Futuresource report suggests sales of video walls look set to reach close to a million units in 2015; proAV will certainly be playing an important role in the incredible rise of this remarkable technology. If you haven’t marvelled at, touched or engaged with a dynamic tiled display yet, it’s unlikely the experience is too far away.

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What Obama Can Do On Guns Right Now, Without Congress

While lots of "pro-gun" Democratic senators are calling for new gun control legislation in the wake of the Newtown school shooting, and some conservative pundits are, too, the real barrier to passing such legislation remains conservative House Republicans. After Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head in 2011, more than 130 Democrats co-sponsored a bill to ban high-capacity magazines, but zero Republicans did, The New York Times ​points out today. But President Obama could use executive orders to impose some gun restrictions, Reuters' David Ingram reports, and the Justice Department has been looking at ways to do that since the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in 2011. The New York Times's Charlie Savage reported over the weekend that the department's study had been shelved a year ago, but Reuters now indicates the study is ongoing. Options for immediate executive action may include:
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Incorporating more information in background checks, like a potential buyer's history of mental illness.
Sharing more information with state and local officials about gun purchases that could be illegal.
Keeping information on gun sales longer.
Limiting the importation of military-style weapons.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg also suggested this morning on MSNBC that Obama can appoint new officials, force prosecutors to process gun buyers lying on their applications, insist on tracking down rogue gun dealers, and more:
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The Washington Post reports today that the president has asked his cabinet "to formulate a set of proposals that could include reinstating a ban on assault rifles." But Obama has shown a willingness to use executive orders on controversial issues before, like when he stopped the deportation of young illegal immigrants this summer. Still, opposition to gun control has been strong. Reuters explains that when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms instituted a rule requiring gun sellers to report when someone bought more than one semi-automatic weapon at a time, congressional Republicans tried to defund the rule. Gun makers sued, lost, and are appealing the decision.
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There are some signs the gun lobby is a little weaker than it used to be. The National Rifle Association has long been one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington, but since Citizens United, its campaign war chest is less impressive, The New York Times' Nicholas Confessore, Michael Cooper and Michael Luo report. (A billionaire can easily match its funds with a single donation.) And the NRA's constituency — white, male — is not the group of voters the Republican Party has been looking to reach out to after the 2012 election. But Illinois Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley frankly explained Obama's lack of action on guns in his first term to Roll Call. "I don’t blame him. I know exactly what happened to Clinton after this in the mid-term elections," Quigley said. "The reality is we need him to be a president for a second term, and the opposition to this maybe has finally turned.

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Out of Office, Republicans Turn to Bush for Inspiration

As Republicans reassess their future in the presidential wilderness, seeking a message and messenger to resonate with a new generation of voters, one unlikely name has popped up as a role model: former President George W. Bush.
Prominent Republicans eager to rebuild the party in the wake of the 2012 election are pointing to Bush’s successful campaigns for Hispanic votes, his efforts to pass immigration reform, and his mantra of “compassionate conservatism.” Bush won 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2000 and at least 40 percent in 2004, a high-water mark for a Republican presidential candidate.
In contrast, Romney received only 27 percent of the Latino vote, after taking a hard-line approach to illegal immigration during the Republican presidential primaries, touting “self-deportation” for undocumented workers. In exit polls, a majority of voters said that Romney was out of touch with the American people and that his policies would favor the rich. While Romney beat Obama on questions of leadership, values, and vision, the president trounced him by 63 points when voters were asked which candidate “cares about people like me.”
These signs of wear and tear to the Republican brand are prompting some of Bush’s critics to acknowledge his political foresight and ability to connect with a diverse swath of Americans, although the economic crash and unpopular wars on his watch make it unlikely he will ever be held up as a great president.
“I think I owe an apology to George W. Bush,” wrote Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of the conservative National Review Online, after the election. “I still don't like compassionate conservatism or its conception of the role of government. But given the election results, I have to acknowledge that Bush was more prescient than I appreciated at the time.”
The ebb in Bush-bashing could help pave the way for a 2016 presidential bid by his brother, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, another proponent of immigration reform with proven appeal in the Hispanic community. “The Bush family knows how to expand the party and how to win,” said GOP consultant Mark McKinnon, a former George W. Bush political aide, when asked about a possible Jeb Bush campaign. Voter wariness toward a third Bush administration could ease if the former president and his father, who served one term, are remembered less for their failures and more for their advocacy of “compassionate conservatism” and “a kinder, gentler nation.”
“I think all that certainly helps if Jeb decides to do so something down the road, though I think he will eventually be judged on his own,” said Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union, who led the Florida Republican Party when Bush was governor.
President Bush’s press secretary, Ari Fleischer, was tapped last week by the Republican National Committee to serve on a five-member committee examining what went wrong in the 2012 election. Two days earlier, a survey released by Resurgent Republic and the Hispanic Leadership Network found that a majority of Hispanic voters in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and New Mexico  don’t think the GOP “respects” their values and concerns.
“One of the party’s biggest challenges going forward is the perception that Republicans don’t care about people, about minorities, about gays, about poor people,” Fleischer said. “President Bush regularly made a push to send welcoming messages, and one of the lessons of 2012 is that we have to demonstrate that we are an inclusive party.”
President Bush’s success with minority voters stemmed in large part from his two campaigns for governor in Texas. He liked to say, “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande.” Unlike Romney, who invested little in Spanish-language advertising until the final two months of his campaign, Bush began reaching out to Hispanics early; he outspent his Democratic opponents in Spanish media in both the 2000 and 2004 campaigns.
“I remember people grumbling about making calls in December 2003, but we kept pushing,” said Jennifer Korn, who led Bush’s Hispanic outreach in his 2004 campaign. The president’s upbeat Spanish-language ads depicted Latino families getting ahead in school and at work. “I’m with Bush because he understands my family,” was the theme of one spot.
Korn, who now serves as executive director of the Hispanic Leadership Network, said Republicans are constantly asking her how the party can win a bigger share of the Latino vote.
“I tell them we already did it,” she said. “President Obama just took Bush’s plan and updated it.”
Republicans are also looking at the groundwork that Bush laid on immigration reform. He has kept a low profile since leaving office, but he waded into the debate in a speech in Dallas last month. The legislation he backed in his second term would have increased border security, created a guest-worker program, and allowed illegal immigrants to earn citizenship after paying penalties and back taxes.
“America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time,” Bush said in Dallas. “As our nation debates the proper course of action related to immigration I hope we do so with a benevolent spirit and keep in mind the contributions of immigrants.”
Bush is even a presence in the current high-stakes budget negotiations between Capitol Hill and the White House. Although the tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration for the wealthiest Americans have been a major sticking point, the tax policy it put in place for the vast majority of households has bipartisan support.
“When you consider that the Obama administration is talking about not whether to extend the Bush tax cuts but how much of them to extend, you see that Bush is still setting the agenda,” said Republican consultant Alex Castellanos, who worked on Bush’s 2004 campaign.
While a possible presidential bid by Jeb Bush heightens the impact of his brother’s evolving legacy, it’s not unusual for a president’s image to change after leaving office. (Look at former President Clinton, who enjoyed positive ratings during most of his presidency, infuriated Obama supporters during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008, and emerged after the election as a better Democratic spokesman than Obama.)  Gallup pegged Bush’s presidential approval at 25 percent at the end of his second term, the lowest ranking since Richard Nixon. But after President Obama spearheaded unpopular spending packages and health care reforms, Bush’s popularity began to tick up.
A Bloomberg News survey in late September showed Bush’s favorability at 46 percent, 3 points higher than Romney’s rating. Still, with a majority of voters viewing the former president unfavorably, Romney rarely, if ever, mentioned his name during the campaign. Asked to address the differences between him and the former president in one of the debates, Romney said, “I’m going to get us to a balanced budget. President Bush didn’t.” Obama seized on the comparison, taking the unusual tack of praising the Republican successor he had vilified in his first campaign to portray Romney as an extremist.
“George Bush didn’t propose turning Medicare into a voucher,” Obama said. “George Bush embraced comprehensive immigration reform. He didn’t call for self-deportation. George Bush never suggested that we eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood.”
Democrats and moderate Republicans found themselves cheering for Bush, if only for a moment. A majority of voters said that Bush is more to blame for the current economic problems than Obama, according to exit polling. If Bush wasn’t the bigger scapegoat, Obama may not have won a second term.
Veterans of Bush’s campaigns and administrations say that while learning from his mistakes, Republicans should also take note of the political risks he took by proposing reforms to immigration and education laws and boosting funding for community health centers and AIDS outreach in Africa.
“One of the issues we ran into in the 2012 campaign is that there weren’t a lot of differences between Mitt Romney and Republican orthodoxy,” said Terry Nelson, Bush’s political director in the 2004 campaign. “I think that’s something Republican candidates in the future have to consider.  The public respects it when you can show you can stand up to your party on certain issues. Bush did that.

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NRA promises to help prevent school shootings

WASHINGTON (AP) — After four days of self-imposed silence on the shooting that killed 26 people inside a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, the nation's largest gun rights lobby emerged Tuesday and promised "to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again."
The National Rifle Association explained its unusual absence "out of respect for the families and as a matter of common decency" after Friday's shooting that left dead 20 children, all ages 6 or 7.
The group — typically outspoken about its positions even after shooting deaths — went all but silent since the rampage. As it faced public scrutiny online and in person, the group left many wondering how — if at all — it would respond to one of the most shocking slayings in the nation's history.
"The National Rifle Association of America is made up of 4 million moms and dads, sons and daughters, and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown," the organization said in a statement. "The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again."
The group said it would have a news conference to answer questions Friday, the one-week anniversary of the shootings.
Almost immediately after it became clear the extent of carnage, the group's Facebook page disappeared. It posted no tweets. It made no mention of the shooting on its website. None of its leaders hit the media circuit Sunday to promote its support of the Second Amendment right to bear arms as the nation mourns the latest shooting victims and opens a new debate over gun restrictions. On Monday, the NRA offered no rebuttal as 300 antigun protesters marched to its Capitol Hill office.
Yet on Tuesday, the NRA re-emerged, albeit more slowly than normal and with its somber statement.
After previous mass shootings — such as in Oregon and Wisconsin — the group was quick to both send its condolences and defend gun owners' constitutional rights, popular among millions of Americans. There's no indication that the National Rifle Association is prepared to weaken its ardent opposition to gun restrictions but it did hint it was open to being part of a dialogue that already has begun.
Its deep-pocketed efforts to oppose gun control laws have proven resilient. Firearms are in a third or more of U.S. households and suspicion runs deep of an overbearing government whenever it proposes expanding federal authority. The argument of gun-rights advocates that firearm ownership is a bedrock freedom as well as a necessary option for self-defense has proved persuasive enough to dampen political enthusiasm for substantial change.
Seldom had the NRA gone so long after a fatal shooting without a public presence. It resumed tweeting just one day after a gunman killed two people and then himself at an Oregon shopping mall last Tuesday, and one day after six people were fatally shot at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in August.
The Connecticut shootings occurred three days after the incident in Oregon.
Since the Connecticut shootings, the NRA has been taunted and criticized at length, vitriol that may have prompted the shuttering of its Facebook page just a day after the association boasted about reaching 1.7 million supporters on the social media network.
Twitter users have been relentless, protesting the organization with hashtags like NoWayNRA.
The NRA has not responded to them. Its last tweets, sent Friday, offered a chance to win an auto flashlight.
Offline, some 300 protesters gathered outside the NRA's lobbying headquarters on Capitol Hill on Monday chanting, "Shame on the NRA" and waving signs declaring "Kill the 2nd Amendment, Not Children" and "Protect Children, Not Guns."
"I had to be here," said Gayle Fleming, 65, a real estate agent from Arlington, Va., saying she was attending her first antigun rally. "These were 20 babies. I will be at every rally, will sign every letter, call every congressman going forward."
Retired attorney Kathleen Buffon of Chevy Chase, Md., reflected on earlier mass shootings, saying: "All of the other ones, they've been terrible. This is the last straw. These were children."
"The NRA has had a stranglehold on Congress," she added as she marched toward the NRA's unmarked office. "It's time to call them out."
The group's reach on Capitol Hill is wide as it wields its deep pockets to defeat lawmakers, many of them Democrats, who push for restrictions on gun ownership.
The NRA outspent its chief opponent by a 73-1 margin to lobby the outgoing Congress, according to the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, which tracks such spending. It spent more than 4,000 times its biggest opponents during the 2012 election.
In all, the group spent at least $24 million this election cycle — $16.8 million through its political action committee and nearly $7.5 million through its affiliated Institute for Legislative Action. Its chief foil, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, spent just $5,816.
On direct lobbying, the NRA also was mismatched. Through July 1, the NRA spent $4.4 million to lobby Congress to the Brady Campaign's $60,000.

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Opinion: How Demography Became the Narrative for Obama's 2012 Victory

Since 2008, commentary about presidential campaigns has been saturated in the rhetoric of narrative. However, President Obama’s 2012 presidential victory wasn’t, strictly speaking, based on narrative.
So what happened? The Obama campaign focused strategically on offering specific policies or programs that targeted the new demographics. This meant ensuring a government mandate to address immigration, the issues of single women, the concerns of Hispanic, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Americans, the supporters of trade unions, and ordinary folks struggling to find jobs or keep the ones they had.
Exit polls suggested the importance of demographics. Obama captured 71 percent of the Latino vote, in contrast with only 23 percent for former Gov. Mitt Romney. The president garnered 93 percent of African-American men and 96 percent of African-American women. He won 73 percent of the Asian-American vote.
Indeed, electoral demographics have become the driving force of the past two presidential elections, a fulfillment of Peter Brimelow and Ed Rubenstein’s 1997 prophecy, “Demography is destiny in American politics.” They forecast 2008 as the year when a shift in ethnic demographics would ensure the Republican Party’s inexorable slide to “minority status.”
What, then, do the demographics of the 2012 presidential election indicate? As Nancy Benac and Connie Cass illustrated, nonwhites represented 28 percent of the 2012 electorate in contrast to just 20 percent in 2000. Obama received 80 percent of the nonwhite vote in both 2008 and 2012. White, male voters represented only 34 percent of the votes cast in the 2012 election as compared with 46 percent in 1972.
According to John Cassidy, white men chose Romney over Obama by 27 percent (62 percent to 35 percent). Caucasian women voted for Romney over Obama by 56 percent to 42 percent, a higher percentage than those who voted for either McCain in 2008 or Bush in 2004.
Today, according to Benac and Cass, 54 percent of single women vote Democratic, in contrast to 36 percent of married women. The single women’s vote was strategically significant since it accounted for nearly a quarter of all voters (23 percent) in the election.
White voters favored less government (60 percent), Hispanics wanted more (58 percent), and, by comparison, blacks were the most interventionist of these ethnic groups (73 percent). Hispanics represented a significant and growing share of prospective voters in the Western battleground states.
In 2000, for instance, white voters constituted 80 percent of voters in Nevada. But by 2012 their percentage of the total vote had declined to 64 percent while the Hispanic vote had increased by 19 percent. Not surprisingly, 70 percent of Hispanics voted for Obama in Nevada.
The youth vote sided decisively with Obama, as Benac and Cass demonstrated. In the case of North Carolina, a battleground state that narrowly supported Romney, two-thirds of these voters supported Obama. Younger voters are also more ethnically diverse. Of all Americans under 30 who voted in the election, 58 percent are white as compared with 87 percent of seniors who voted.
Just how significant are these numbers? As Ryan Lizza noted, three-fifths of white voters selected Romney, equaling or exceeding the support that former Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush had received from white voters in 1980 and 1988, respectively. But if the white electorate was 87 percent of voters in 1992, by 2016 they will represent fewer than 70 percent of American voters.
As the demographic landscape of our country changes, even conservative strongholds such as Texas will be at risk. Ted Cruz, a newly elected senator from Texas, who campaigned from a “secure-the-borders” perspective, expressed it this way to Lizza.
In not too many years, Texas could switch from being all Republican to all Democrat.... If that happens, no Republican will ever again win the White House.... If Texas turns bright blue, the Electoral College math is simple. We won’t be talking about Ohio, we won’t be talking about Florida or Virginia, because it won’t matter. If Texas is bright blue, you can’t get to 270electoral votes. The Republican Party would cease to exist.
Obama and his team of advisers ran a tactically brilliant campaign. Obama’s victory wasn’t based on a narrative, because that would have exposed the economic failings of his administration.
Instead, the campaign demonized Mitt Romney by appealing to the “diversity values” of the Democratic rank and file while saturating the battleground states with attack ads. The party appealed to a multicultural mosaic: Hispanics, single women, African-Americans, ethnic minorities, young people, as well as many of the economically disenfranchised who voted, a significant number of affluent progressives, and, of course, the LGBT community.
The Democrats strategically targeted their demographic, and the demographic became the narrative. “In sports parlance,” as I have noted on The Huffington Post, “Obama’s ‘ground game’ was hard-hitting and decisive. The demonization against Romney began early and never stopped. Even before he was the designated Republican candidate, the Obama machine had Romney effectively in their sights. All is fair in political warfare. And this Democratic victory was supremely won.

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Legal Scholar Robert Bork Dies

American legal scholar Robert Bork, who was nominated by Ronald Reagan for the U.S. Supreme Court, died on Wednesday morning. He was 85.
The Senate rejected Bork’s nomination to the high court following objections from civil rights groups over his views of the federal government and voting rights.
Conservatives blamed his failed nomination on partisanship.
During the 2012 election, Mitt Romney made Bork the chairman of his Justice Advisory Board.
Bork died in Virginia from heart disease.

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Senior masters Sydney gale to win Australian Open

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Peter Senior  drew on all his experience from 34 years as a professional golfer to master galeforce winds and win the Australian Open by a shot on Sunday, 23 years after he first held aloft the Stonehaven Cup.

Gusting winds of up to 80 kilometers an hour whipped across The Lakes Golf Club all day, knocking over a TV tower on the 18th green and forcing the suspension of play for three hours.

The 53-year-old ground out a final round of par 72 in fading light to finish four-under for the tournament and become the oldest man to win the title in the event's 108-year history.

Brendan Jones finished second after a 71, while his fellow Australian Cameron Percy was third, a shot further back on two under, after carding a 73.

Britain's world number four Justin Rose dropped a shot at the last to finish with a 76 for a share of fourth.

"It was probably one of the toughest days I've ever seen on a golf course," Senior, who first won the title in 1989 and won the last of his four European Tour titles two decades ago.

"I really thought these days were over but golf is a funny game. The key to today's round was that I never put any pressure on myself.

"If the conditions had been better, the better players would have won. But these are conditions I thrive in, where I just battle it out."

On a day when the conditions meant only six players would finish under par, Senior started three shots off the pace and dropped two shots on the front nine.

The Singapore-born Australian won them back, however, with two birdies in three shots after the turn, curling a 20-foot putt into the hole at the 12th to move two shots clear of the field.

It was a lead he would never relinquish and, with his son and caddie Mitch watching on, he drained a three-foot putt at the 18th before waiting for the final group of Rose and John Senden to finish.

Rose had started the day in second, two shots off the pace, but three-putted at the third for the first of two dropped shots on the front nine.

The Englishman went bogey-birdie-bogey-birdie just after the turn and looked to be building up for a charging finish but two bogeys in the last three holes put paid to his chances.

Overnight leader Senden suffered a meltdown in the trying conditions, losing his overnight lead with a double bogey after an errant drive at the first and ending up with an 82.

World number seven Adam Scott started the day five shots off the pace but never looked like making a charge and a chip-in for an eagle at the 17th was too little, too late and he finished with a 76 for a share of 14th.

Eight-times major champion Tom Watson continued his Jekyll and Hyde week, turning in three birdies in a flawless round in the relative calm of the morning to end up with a card reading 78-68-78-69 in joint 28th.

Senior is 10 years younger and has enjoyed nowhere near as much success as the American, but he was just as popular with those who braved the weather to populate the galleries.

"It was a really nasty day and I had a lot of support," Senior said.

"I can't believe how many people stayed around, I would have been home in bed by now."

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New Zealand coach Hesson's advice 'laughable' - Taylor

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Disgruntled former captain Ross Taylor has slammed New Zealand's team management, dismissing head coach Mike Hesson's advice as "laughable" and claiming he was not given enough support in his 18-month stint as skipper.

Taylor was stripped of the Twenty20 and one-day captaincy last week on Hesson's recommendation, and rejected an offer to stay on as test skipper in the wake of New Zealand's drawn test series away to Sri Lanka.

Opener Brendon McCullum will take on all three roles and faces a baptism of fire as he leads New Zealand on tour to South Africa later this month.

"I knew it'd be tough from the outset (with Hesson)," Taylor said in comments published on the New Zealand Herald's website (www.nzherald.co.nz) on Sunday.

"I gave him as much support as I could but it wasn't reciprocated.

"We liaised during the Champions League," added the 28-year-old, who played with the Delhi Daredevils at the T20 tournament in South Africa in October.

"He wrote down a few things for me to improve on, which were laughable, frankly."

Hesson, a career coach with no experience as a player at senior level, was appointed in July.

A former coach of New Zealand A sides and provincial side Otago, he also had a short stint as assistant coach to John Bracewell at English county side Gloucester and was head coach of Kenya last year.

Taylor, New Zealand's top test batsman, has opted out of the tour to South Africa in a blow for the tourists' hopes of upsetting the number one-ranked test nation in their two-match series.

He has flagged a return to the team in time for their three-test home series against England in March, but said he still felt "raw" after his demotion.

"I knew I had areas to work on, like in communication, but I didn't get much support," he said of his captaincy, during which New Zealand struggled in all three formats of the game.

"Instead, I organised a number of things myself, like chatting to (psychologist) Gilbert Enoka. I thought that indicated I was trying to be a better captain.

"I'm more disappointed in the process to be told four days before the test series began (in Sri Lanka) that they didn't want me as captain.

"I also wasn't consulted in the tour review process by (New Zealand Cricket chairman Chris) Moller or (NZC chief executive David) White. No one got hold of me."

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British police contact Australian police over hoax

LONDON (AP) — British police say they have contacted Australian authorities about a possible investigation into an Australian radio station's hoax call to a U.K. hospital.

The callers impersonated Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles and received confidential details about the former Kate Middleton's medical information. The call was recorded and broadcast.

The prank took an ugly twist Friday with the death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, a 46-year-old mother of two, three days after she took the hoax call.

Police have not yet determined Saldanha's cause of death, but people from London to Sydney have been making the assumption that she died because of stress from the call.

The disk jockeys involved have been suspended indefinitely.

Australian police Sunday confirmed they had been contacted by London police and said they would cooperate.

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British police contact Australian police over radio station's hoax call impersonating queen

LONDON - British police say they have contacted Australian authorities about a possible investigation into an Australian radio station's hoax call to a U.K. hospital.

The callers impersonated Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles and received confidential details about the former Kate Middleton's medical information. The call was recorded and broadcast.

The prank took an ugly twist Friday with the death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, a 46-year-old mother of two, three days after she took the hoax call.

Police have not yet determined Saldanha's cause of death, but people from London to Sydney have been making the assumption that she died because of stress from the call.

The disk jockeys involved have been suspended indefinitely.

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