Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Today is the 39th observance of Earth Day in the northern hemisphere. Earth day is celebrated in Autumn on November 30 in the southern hemisphere. Senator Gaylord Nelson initiated the first Earth Day in April 1970 in the United States, and it is now celebrated by over 1 billion people in over 170 countries worldwide. Earth Day is the biggest environmental event which addresses issues and educates people on environmental awareness on a global scale.

This year, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will beam high-definition images to the NASA website and television. By doing so, NASA hopes to increase appreciation of global climate issues. There will also be a Washington exhibit relating to environmental issues viewed from space as well.

At the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center activities will focus on their slogan for Earth Day 2009, “Just One Drop … PRICELESS” and will demonstrate how the Environmental Control Life Support System operates as used on the International Space Staton (ISS).

Amongst the many festivals, WorldFest is a solar powered music celebration held in Los Angeles, California. Buenos Aires will also feature its second Earth Day event featuring a music festival as well.

“We are in a new era of energy innovation,” said Daniel Yergin at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) forum. Lithium-ion batteries are providing electric storage solutions for electric cars such as the Chevrolet Volt and the Dodge Circuit EV. Algae fuel is a new form of biofuel, but is still under development.

“Energy Smackdown” was a competitive household activity which compared energy usage between 60 separate households across three cities in or near Boston. The various competitors came up with a variety of innovative methods to cut their carbon footprint, installing solar electric panels, geothermal heat pumps, wind turbines, and using a caulking gun to seal the home from drafts.

“In the average home, 75 percent of the electricity used to power home electronics is consumed while the products are turned off.” is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) estimate.

Miami is installing a smart grid which will use individual household smart meters to allow energy consumers know via a web site, their exact home energy usage. “To me these are prudent and smart investments that will easily pay for themselves. It will show the nation how to address environmental, energy, and economic challenges all at the same time.” said Miami mayor Manny Diaz.

Cal Dooley, CEO of the American Chemistry Council ACC, says the plastic bag industry is prepared to spend US$50 million to revamp their manufacturing facilities and will collect 470 million pounds of recycled plastic every year to make plastic bags of 40% recycled content. The ACC is providing a donation to the Keep America Beautiful environmental organisation, both of whom endorse this new project. The Earth Day Network (EDN) and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) would like to see an end to the use of plastic bags, however. “We don’t want people to use disposable bags. We want people to use reusable bags,” says Darby Hoover of the NRDC.

Calgary researchers will begin field surveys to help save the “Northern Leopard Frog (Rana Pipiens). “Northern Leopard Frogs are threatened in Alberta, but endangered in British Columbia,” said Dr. Des Smith, Primary Investigator and Research Scientist with the Calgary Zoo’s Centre for Conservation Research. “It is essential to develop new monitoring techniques for Northern Leopard” said Breana McKnight, Field Team Leader and Endangered Species Researcher.

The traditional Earth day ceremony of planting trees is garnering further attention in Japan as Koichi Nakatani, the nation’s Tree Planting Father travels from Hokkaido to Okinawa.

Students can take part in an Earth Day photo contest sponsored by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies which will feature images and scientific student research for the environmental change depicted in each photo submitted.

“Earth Day should be about teaching about the environment every day,” said Sean Mille director of education for EDN, “We emphasize taking action for your classroom, school, district or community.” 25,000 schools across America made use of the environmental curriculum developed by the National Civic Education Project, the Green Schools Campaign and the Educator’s Network. Lesson plans are broad and varied and may focus on water pollution, recycling, composting, using chemistry to convert cafeteria left-overs into biodiesel or ethanol fuel or converting go-carts to operate on biodiesel or ethanol fuels in shop class.

Monday, September 7, 2015

The US economy added 173,000 jobs in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. The unemployment rate fell from 5.3 to 5.1 percent, the lowest since April 2008.

Although August job gains were lower than most economists forecast, job growth numbers for June and July were revised upwards by a combined 44,000. Average job gains over the past three months stand at 221,000, compared to March-May’s 189,000 monthly average. Over the past twelve months, job growth has averaged 247,000 per month.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.3 percent, or 8 cents, marking the largest increase in earnings in seven months. Hourly earnings had risen by 6 cents in July. Wages have risen by 2.2 percent over the past year.

Job growth in August was primarily concentrated in the health care and social assistance, financial activities, and professional and business services sectors. Those three areas of the economy added a combined 108,000 jobs. Food service and drinking places employment increased by 26,000 over the month, and other economic sectors saw employment hold steady. Manufacturing, on the other hand, saw employment decline by 17,000 in August. A stronger dollar and worldwide economic weakness make US exports less desirable, leading to a flattening in manufacturing employment so far this year after steadily rising in the early years of the US economic recovery.

The solid overall job gains led analysts to slightly raise expectations for a decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this month. Investors raised the likelihood of a September rate increase from 26 percent before the jobs report to 30 percent, and stocks dropped by over one percent on Friday. “The payrolls data is certainly good enough to allow for a Fed rate hike in September,” said Deutsche Bank’s head of currency strategy, Alan Ruskin. “The big question is still whether financial market volatility will scupper the plans.”

“This is the first time the market has looked at a Fed meeting and really has no idea what the Fed is going to do,” said Mark Kepner, a New Jersey equity trader with Themis Trading. “Right now you’re looking at the overall uncertainty and that’s what’s hanging on the market. I don’t think this number in and of itself changes how somebody’s going to vote.”

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Charges against the five rail bosses accused of manslaughter on four people who died in the Hatfield, England train crash, have been dropped at the Old Bailey.

Alistair Cook, 50, Sean Fugill, 50, Keith Lea, 53, and two executives from Balfour Beatty — Anthony Walker, 46, and Nicholas Jeffries, 53 — all denied the manslaughter charges. A charge of corporate manslaughter has also been dropped against the engineering firm Belfour Beatty.

But the five men and their employers, Balfour Beatty and Railtrack, still face health and safety charges under the Health and Safety at Work Act.

Four people were killed and many more were injured when a high speed train travelling from Leeds to London derailed just outside Hatfield on 17 October 2000. An investigation after the crash found that a cracked section of rail caused the train to come off the tracks.

After five months on trial, the judge Mr Justice Mackay told the jury to find the men not guilty, saying:

“It is not open to you to convict any of the six defendants on charges of manslaughter”

He added: “I must ask you to accept my ruling, which does not affect one way or the other the important decisions you will have to make when considering verdicts on the health and safety counts.”

Mr Justice Mackay made the decision after reviewing the evidence and listening to submissions.

The collapse of yet another high-profile corporate case will more than likely put pressure for changes to current laws to make it easier to prosecute in corporate manslaughter cases. Work on new corporate manslaughter legislation has been under way for more than a decade in response to the problems encountered in bringing successful prosecutions. The latest proposals would criminalise gross management failure and the government has promised legislation before the end of next year.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Nervous savers have re-formed queues this morning outside many branches of Northern Rock, after the £2.68 billion bank took an emergency loan from the Bank of England, the UK central bank.

Shares in the bank had dropped 25% by lunchtime yesterday in London – and stood nearly 60% lower from their high of February – after the Bank of England acted in its capacity as “lender of last resort” to provide Northern Rock with short-term financing to enable it to continue operations.

The Bank of England hasn’t acted as lender of last resort since 1973, when the collapse of Cedar Holdings – a pioneer of second mortgages to UK home-owners – threatened a crisis in the country’s banking industry.

Northern Rock has been hit hard since June this year by the turmoil in world credit markets. Although only 0.24% of its assets are exposed to subprime US housing debt, the bank’s business model saw it grow its loan book by 43% in the first six months of this year. Rather than lending money deposited with it by savers, Northern has borrowed aggressively in the short-term capital markets.

“Northern Rock is not a reckless lender,” said Angela Knight, head of the British Bankers Association on national radio this morning. Urging the bank’s savers not to withdraw their money in panic, “the mortgage lending it does well and it does in a high quality, high calibre way,” she added.

But savers queuing to withdraw their money from Northern Rock today said they were “horrified” by the Bank of England needing to step in.

“I am going to take out the lot, every penny,” said one Northern Rock saver to Bloomberg as he queued outside the bank’s West End branch in London.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party.

The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love.

“What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today.

“The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday.

“The question is more the sensory return that he will get in the hand itself and the fine movements he will have in the fingers and the toes, and that will come with time, hopefully. We will assess that over the next 18 months to two years.

“I’m sure that he’ll enjoy a game of basketball in the future.”

The weight and force of the collapse, and the sharp brick edges, resulted in the three limbs being cut through about 7cm above the wrists and ankle.

Terry’s father Tan said of his only child, the injuries were terrible, “I was scared to look at him, a horrible thing.”

The hands and foot were placed in an ice-filled Esky and rushed to hospital with the boy, where three teams of medical experts were assembled, and he was given a blood transfusion after experiencing massive blood loss. Eight hours of complex micro-surgery on Saturday night were followed by a further two hours of skin grafts yesterday.

“What he will lose because it was such a large zone of traumatised skin and muscle and so on, he will lose some of the skin so he’ll certainly require lots of further surgery regardless of whether the skin survives,” said Mr Love said today.

The boy was kept unconscious under anaesthetic between the two procedures. In an interview yesterday, Mr Love explained why:

“He could have actually been woken up the next day. Because we were intending to take him back to theatre for a second look, to look at the traumatised skin flaps, to close more of his wounds and to do split skin grafting, it was felt the best thing to do would be to keep him stable and to keep him anaesthetised.”

Professor Wayne Morrison, director of the respected Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery and head of plastic and hand surgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said he believed the operation to be a world first.

Friday, April 3, 2009

A gunman attacked a downtown Binghamton, New York-based immigration services center today, killing up to 13 people before killing himself.

New York Governor David Paterson at a news conference indicated that 12 or 13 people were killed at the American Civic Association. It is unclear whether or not the attacker was included in the number of the deceased.

An anonymous law enforcement official indicated the presumed gunman’s body was found in an office of the immigration services center building. The attacker blocked the rear building door with his car and entered through the front door. He then opened fire.

The gunman held over 40 hostages, some in a closet and the rest in the boiler room. Police and EMS started arriving at 10:30 A.M (EDT). SWAT sharpshooters and the Endicott police bomb squad were called to the scene. Nearby residencies and businesses were evacuated, while a nursing home and the high school were placed on lockdown. FBI hostage negotiators and evidence response team were being sent to the scene. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents were headed to Binghamton. About noon, the shooter released ten hostages, then another ten out the back 40 minutes later. At 2:40 p.m., the local police said the standoff had ended and a SWAT team was checking the building for anyone remaining.

In Johnson City, Wilson Medical Center staff are treating three to five gunshot wounds, while Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton is treating a single such case. Both hospitals called in additional staff and cancelled all elective surgeries.

A national law enforcement source identified the shooter as 42-year-old Jiverly Voong. The police asked Broome Community College Assistant Professor Tuong Hung Nguyen, a fluent Vietnamese speaker, to translate for discussions between police and Voong.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Deputy to the Iraq Health Minister, Ammar al-Saffar, who lives with his sister in Baghdad’s Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya, was kidnapped today.

It is reported that six uniformed men and others wearing suits, arrived at Mr Saffer’s home in police cars and pickup trucks and took him off.

As one of the deputies to the Health Minister, Mr Saffer called earlier this year for as much as $8 Billion to restore Iraq’s health services.

On August 9, 2006, Mr Saffar discussed the health situation in Iraq with the BBC. He said that the insurgents were killing doctors and trying to create a brain drain. 100 doctors had been killed “because they were trying to help people and because they were Shia”. He said that there are about 18,000 doctors in Iraq but many have left, while others practice at home rather than at hospitals where they could be better protected. Under Saddam they were not permitted to leave, now there is no restriction. But now there are cash incentives: under Saddam they earned $2-3 a month, now they can earn up to $500 a month. On security, he said that the people blamed the US for the violence because, although they were responsible for security, they left the borders poorly guarded.

Mr Saffer survived an assassination attempt in June, 2004 when he was fired upon as he left his home. He was uninjured.

Monday, July 4, 2016

On Saturday, in the quarter-final of UEFA Euro 2016, Germany defeated Italy 6–5 in a penalty shootout decider as the score was 1–1 at the end of additional time. Germany missed three penalties in the shootout, but Manuel Neuer stopped two penalties by the Italians.

Early in the first half, Bastian Schweinsteiger was substituted for German midfielder Sami Khedira following a muscle injury. The Germans had greater ball possession and also led in passing accuracy. But they had to wait till the 65th minute when Mesut Özil scored a goal. Thirteen minutes later, the lead was nullified as the Italians were awarded a penalty kick as defender Jérôme Boateng committed a handball foul in the penalty area. Stepping up for the penalty, Leonardo Bonucci scored the equaliser. This was the first goal Neuer conceded in his last 557 minutes of major tournament play. The previous record was set by Sepp Maier at 481 minutes.

The match proceeded to additional time as the score was 1–1. None of the sides could find the net in the additional time and the referee signalled a penalty shootout. Lorenzo Insigne and Toni Kroos scored their respective kicks. In the next round, Simone Zaza missed while Thomas Müller’s spot kick was saved by Gianluigi Buffon. When Andrea Barzagli scored his penalty kick and Özil missed by hitting the woodwork, Italy were 2–1 up.

Graziano Pellè missed his penalty and the Germans levelled as Julian Draxler scored. Leonardo Bonucci’s attempt to score was saved by Neuer, but Schweinsteiger wasted his chance to lead the shootout. Emanuele Giaccherini and Marco Parolo scored their spot kicks, as did Mats Hummels and Joshua Kimmich. Mattia De Sciglio’s goal was followed by Boateng’s equalising penalty. Neuer saved Matteo Darmian’s kick and Jonas Hector scored the winning penalty.

Neuer was awarded the Man of the Match award.Eighteen players stepped up for the penalty shootout equalling the record of the UEFA Euro 1980 third-place encounter. Except for these two fixtures, never has a Euro match witnessed eighteen men taking the spot kick.

Germany is to play winner of France and Iceland in the semi-final. Mats Hummels is to miss the semi-final serving a one-match ban. Striker Mario Gomez is to miss the semi-final with torn muscle fibres. Schweinsteiger pulled his knee ligaments.

Manager Joachim Löw responded to these injuries saying, “It is very bitter to lose important players in the decisive stage of the tournament. I am especially sorry for Mario. […] For us this means accepting the new situation and having to find solutions. We will do so. The quality in the squad is high and I have full confidence in all players.”

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Venture capital investment in Ireland has leaped by 35% in the first quarter of 2005, according to a new report by Ernst & Young. The report found that Europe-wide venture capital investment increased by a healthy 19% on the same period in 2004.

Total investment in Ireland was €42.11m (US$52.8m, £28.9m) for the first 3 months compared to €31.23m (US$39.1m, £21.4m) in the first quarter of last year. The report found that 85% of the capital was invested in the information technology sector; largely helped by a successful €15m fundraising by Corvil Networks.

€880.3m (US$1.1bn, £605m) was raised throughout Europe in almost 200 separate deals, with €407.3m of that invested in the IT sector.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

An alleged Russian spy was arrested in Montreal, having threatened national security. The man is identified as a Russian spy and has been living under a false name.

As he prepared to board a plane out of Canada, Canada Border Services agents took the man into custody at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport in Montreal on Tuesday. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Immigration Minister Monte Solberg signed the document that authorized the man’s arrest.

This document is called the national security certificate and is rarely used. The certificate alerts Ottawa about possible threats to the country. The ministers of immigration and public safety are obliged to sign the national security certificate.

“The government’s most important duty is to ensure the security of all Canadians. A security certificate has been issued … against a foreign national. He is now in custody in Montreal,” said Melissa Leclerc, spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day. “A foreign national alleging to be a Canadian citizen named Paul William Hampel was arrested in Montreal after a national security certificate under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act was issued against him.”

The man came to Canada several years ago with the name of Paul William Hampel, and is now reported to be false. Officials at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) are working on identifying the man who entered Canada years ago.

“He is now in custody in Montreal. This is not a counter-terrorism case. More information will become available as the Federal Court process unfolds. Any speculation about the individual’s other nationality is premature at this point,” Barbara Campion, a spokesperson for CSIS.

Ottawa believed the man had been “engaging in an act of espionage or an act of subversion,” and “belonged to an organization that there are reasonable grounds to believe engages.”

“I don’t think we’re going to get the most intimate of details, no, not at all,” he told CTV Montreal….We’ll see a public version of the allegations that will be released by the federal court judge who is going to be responsible for reviewing the basis upon which cabinet will have declared this individual subject to a security certificate. beyond that, though, we may see things settle more quietly between governments,” said David Harris, former chief of strategic planning at CSIS.

“There are also influence operations where countries might try to influence their expatriates and émigré communities in Canada. Beyond that, there is a real appetite building among many countries for technological secrets,” he said. “They can be of use to industries of the sponsoring nations and these things can have values in the billions for the economies of those countries undertaking these operations.”

Reports say the man’s methods in Canada matched the techniques used by the Russian intelligence agency’s Directorate S, which runs the Russian spy network.

Twenty people since 1991 have been charged under the Security Certificate legislation in Canada. The last time it was used was in 2003.

The court hearing for the man being held in Montreal will be on Wednesday. It is still unclear if the hearing will be in Ottawa, the nations capital, or in Montreal.

More information will be released as the case progresses.