Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Three people were hospitalized with injuries after a series of explosions at Southwest Industrial Gases, Inc., a gas facility in Dallas, Texas. None of their injuries are considered life-threatening.

Tanks of oxygen, helium and acetylene began to explode after a connector used to join acetylene tanks during the filling process malfunctioned. The explosions sent flaming debris into the air and onto buildings and expressways. Black smoke that could be seen for miles billowed from the facility. The problem began around 9:30 a.m CDT (UTC-5) at a loading dock, according to Dallas Fire Department Lt. Joel Lavender, and then spread to a trailer housing some 100,000 cubic feet (approximately 28,300 cubic metres) of gas.

Authorities evacuated an area that was one-half of a mile (approximately 800 m) wide. Portions of Interstate 35 and Interstate 30 were shut down. Flaming debris ignited small grass fires next to the roads. Tanks were reported to have landed as far away as four blocks.

Officials for the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as local and state environmental officials, have deemed air quality levels acceptable following the blast. Hazardous material crews have blocked water used in the fire from entering the Dallas storm drains.

“I just advised my teams to get out,” said Eddy Parker of Airgas which operates right next to Southwest Industrial. “I didn’t really see anything other than the smoke. Then we turned and ran and just kept hearing explosions.”

“Given the fact that there haven’t been any fatalities, it seems like our fire department and emergency responders did a great job. But we need to let the fire department look at why this is occurring there in that area,” said City Councilman Steve Salazar.

Two of the injured men, Randal Bibb, 52, and Daniel McMurry, 56, were taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital to be treated for upper-body burns. The third, an unidentified truck-driver, was treated and released at Methodist Dallas Medical Center. He hurt his back when he jumped from the cab of his truck.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Jim Cramer, CNBC’s host of Mad Money, plans to appear on The Daily Show Thursday, in the midst of an escalating feud between Cramer and the Comedy Central show’s host, Jon Stewart.

Jim Cramer has been the only CNBC employee to publicly respond to Daily Show segments strongly criticizing the television business news channel’s financial coverage during the growing global recession, particularly focusing on specific remarks by made by Cramer.

The feud began on March 4, when The Daily Show aired an eight-minute clip lampooning CNBC. The comedy news show featured several clips of pundits, focusing particularly on predictions or reports by CNBC reporters that The Daily Show argued were overly optimistic or too strongly slanted in favor of the companies being discussed.

In one clip, a CNBC host reported Merrill Lynch said it would not need capital, which The Daily Show followed with a list of billions in bailout money the financial services firm has required since September. In another clip, Jim Cramer is shown allegedly affirming “Your money is safe in Bear Sterns”, followed by a Daily Show statement that the global investment bank went under six days later.

“If I’d only followed CNBC’s advice, I’d have a million dollars today,” Stewart said during the bit, “provided I’d started with a hundred million dollars.”

Although most CNBC reporters and executives declined to comment, Cramer defended himself in a column published Monday, claiming the clip was taken out of context. Cramer said he wasn’t talking about buying Bear Sterns stock, but simply reassuring a viewer that his liquidity held in Bear Sterns was safe.

“The absurdity astounds me,” Cramer said of the Daily Show bit. “The fact that I was right rankles me even more.”

Later that day, The Daily Show responded with another montage of clips, this time more specifically targeting Cramer.

“So Jim Cramer, I apologize,” Stewart said ironically, then promptly showcased video of Cramer suggesting the safety of Bear Stearns stock 5 days prior to the collapse of Bear Stearns on Mad Money’s Lighting Round. Provokingly, Jon Stewart then admitted, “He’s not saying literally ‘I’m asking you to buy Bear Stearns,’ for that you have to go back a full 7 weeks” this time showing video footage of Cramer on January 24, 2008, telling TheStreet.com TV viewers to specifically “buy Bear Stearns” stock 7 weeks before it collapsed.

The following day on March 10, Cramer responded again during a Tuesday appearance on the Today show, saying, “[Jon Stewart] is a comedian, and he’s decided to focus on some calls I made during a bull market. The guy is a comedian. Did I make a mistake? First of all, any time you recommend a stock and it goes down, you’ve made a mistake. Here’s a shocker: Almost every stock is down! Any stock you recommended is bad. You know, Warren Buffett, I could run tapes from him, he would look like a complete fool.”

The feud between The Daily Show and CNBC generated a significant amount of attention in the mainstream media. The Associated Press called the first Daily Show bit a “brutal takedown” of CNBC. Other publications, like New York magazine, defended CNBC, writing, “We doubt there’s a single news outlet that hasn’t made a misstatement regarding the economy in the past year.”

The Thursday Daily Show sketch ran the same day CNBC reporter Rick Santelli was scheduled to appear on the show, to discuss his vocal criticisms of President Barack Obama’s plans for dealing with foreclosures. Santelli cancelled the appearance, but Daily Show executives said the CNBC montage was not retaliatory and that they planned to show it before the cancellation was announced.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

The Internet group Anonymous today held further protests critical of the Church of Scientology.

The global protests started in Australia where several hundred protesters gathered at different locations for peaceful protests.

In a global speech, the Internet protest movement said Scientology “betrayed the trust of its members, [had] taken their money, their rights, and at times their very lives.” The protesters welcomed the public interest their protests have led to, and claimed they witnessed “an unprecedented flood of Scientologists [joining] us across the world to testify about these abuses.” The group said it would continue with monthly actions.

In a press statement from its European headquarters, Scientology accused the anonymous protesters of “hate speech and hate crimes”, alleging that security measures were necessary because of death threats and bomb threats. This also makes the Church want to “identify members” of the group it brands as “cyber-terrorists”.

Wikinews had correspondents in a number of protest locations to report on the events.

Anonymous states that the next protest is scheduled to take place on April 18, which happens to be the birthday of Suri, the daughter of Tom and Katie Cruise.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

The Japanese car making company Toyota has announced that their predicted profit loss for 2008 has tripled from their previous estimate. The company reports the loss after demand for its vehicles dropped. In December 2008, Toyota estimated its full year operating loss to be 150 billion yen (US$1.65 billion). Now the company has tripled that number, forecasting a 450 billion yen (US$4.95 billion) loss. This would be the first yearly loss at Toyota in 70 years.

The firm also said that it predicts its global sales to fall by 17.87% to 7.32 million vehicles sold, compared to last year’s 8.91 million vehicles sold. Overall for 2008, Toyota’s car sales in the United States were down 15.4%, but that number was down from 2007 in which sales dropped 18%. For the month of January alone, Toyota’s sales fell 31.7% compared to the overall U.S. sales loss of 37.1%.

As a result of the loss, 17 of the company’s 75 production lines worldwide, will be reduced to only a single shift of workers. The company also announced a full closure of all their Japanese plants for a total of 14 days between January and March 2009.

Toyota’s boss Katsuaki Watanabe described the loss as happening only “once in a hundred years”.

In January, the Japanese Nikkei newspaper said that Toyota was thinking of firing 1,000 Northern American and British workers, all of whom hold full-time positions in the company. The paper quoted Toyota’s Executive Vice President Mitsuo Kinoshita as saying that “outside of Japan, we intend to make every possible effort to protect the jobs of our employees.”

Sunday, March 13, 2011

At least fourteen people have died after a chartered bus crashed in The Bronx, New York. According to authorities, the tour bus accident also injured eighteen other people, amongst which five were critically injured.

The vehicle was travelling from Mohegan Sun in Connecticut to the village of Uncasville, also located in Connecticut. When the crash occurred on Interstate 95 at approximately 0535 EST (1035 UTC) on Sunday, there were at least thirty-one passengers present.

40-year-old Ophadell Williams, the driver of the bus, reported to the police that the vehicle came into contact with a semi-trailer truck, which was veering across the interstate. He said that he attempted to move out of the way of this vehicle, causing the bus itself to swerve, overturn and scrape the side of a railing for one hundred yards before impacting with a highway sign’s upholding bar.

Captain James Ellson, of the fire service, described the scene as “a pile of humans, either still in their seats or on the floor, wrapped in the metal”. Jose Hernandez, one of the survivors of the bus crash, said that “[w]e tried to help people, but there was twisted metal in the way”.

The semi-trailer truck driver failed to stop after the accident. Police are currently attempting to detect this driver. Raymond Kelly, the current New York City Police Commissioner, stated that the truck was moving on a lane to the bus’ nearside, although whether the vehicles came into contact with each other or not is yet to be confirmed. Both vehicles were travelling at “a significant rate of speed”, according to Kelly.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

It can be difficult to be John Reed.

Christopher Hitchens called him a “Bin Ladenist” and Cathy Young editorialized in The Boston Globe that he “blames the victims of terrorism” when he puts out a novel like Snowball’s Chance, a biting send-up of George Orwell‘s Animal Farm which he was inspired to write after the terrorist attacks on September 11. “The clear references to 9/11 in the apocalyptic ending can only bring Orwell’s name into disrepute in the U.S.,” wrote William Hamilton, the British literary executor of the Orwell estate. That process had already begun: it was revealed Orwell gave the British Foreign Office a list of people he suspected of being “crypto-Communists and fellow travelers,” labeling some of them as Jews and homosexuals. “I really wanted to explode that book,” Reed told The New York Times. “I wanted to completely undermine it.”

Is this man who wants to blow up the classic literary canon taught to children in schools a menace, or a messiah? David Shankbone went to interview him for Wikinews and found that, as often is the case, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Reed is electrified by the changes that surround him that channel through a lens of inspiration wrought by his children. “The kids have made me a better writer,” Reed said. In his new untitled work, which he calls a “new play by William Shakespeare,” he takes lines from The Bard‘s classics to form an original tragedy. He began it in 2003, but only with the birth of his children could he finish it. “I didn’t understand the characters who had children. I didn’t really understand them. And once I had had kids, I could approach them differently.”

Taking the old to make it new is a theme in his work and in his world view. Reed foresees new narrative forms being born, Biblical epics that will be played out across print and electronic mediums. He is pulled forward by revolutions of the past, a search for a spiritual sensibility, and a desire to locate himself in the process.

Below is David Shankbone’s conversation with novelist John Reed.