Friday, March 28, 2008

2008 Taipei International Cycle Show (Taipei Cycle) & Taipei International Sporting Goods Show (TaiSPO) not only did a best reunion with conjunctions of the launch of Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition and the concurrent cycling race of 2008 Tour de Taiwan but also provide opportunities and benefits for sporting goods, bicycle, and athlete sports industries to establish the basis of the sourcing center in Asia and notabilities on the international cycling race.

Although the Taipei cycle was split from the TaiSPO since 1988, but the trends of sporting good industry in Taiwan changed rapidly and multiply because of modern people’s lifestyles and habits. After the “TaiSPO Innovation Award” was established since 2005, the fitness and leisure industries became popular stars as several international buyers respected on lifestyle and health.

For example, some participants participated Taipei Cycle and TaiSPO with different product lines to do several marketing on bicycle and fitness equipments, this also echoed the “Three New Movements” proposed by Giant Co., Ltd. to make a simple bicycle with multiple applications and functions. As of those facts above, Wikinews Journalist Rico Shen interviewed Ideal Bike Corporation and Gary Silva, designer of “3G Steeper” to find out the possibilities on the optimizations between two elements, fitness and bicycle.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

According to reports, two United States Senators, Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, suffered medical problems during a luncheon with new U.S. President Barack Obama.

Kennedy collapsed as a result of a seizure and was taken away by paramedics in a wheelchair. In May, Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer, which required an operation. Kennedy is at Washington Hospital in Washington, D.C. where his family says he is awake and talking. At the time of his collapse, he was reported to be sitting with John Kerry, another Massachusetts Senator, 2004 presidential candidate, and close friend of Kennedy.

President Obama commented on the situation during the luncheon: “And so I would be lying to you if I did not say that right now a part of me is with him, and I think that’s true for all of us. This is a joyous time. But it’s also a sobering time. And my prayers are with him and his family and Vicki [Kennedy’s wife].”

U.S. Senator Byrd was also taken out of the luncheon after he had reported that he had trouble eating. Byrd, 91 is the oldest member of the U.S. Senate and the longest-serving Senator in the history of the body. Reports indicate that Byrd is doing well.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Authorities in the Mexican state of Sonora arrested 7 state officials, from the state finance department, yesterday; and charged them with negligent homicide for the deaths of 47 children in a fire at a daycare centre that occurred earlier this month.

In 2005, the Hermosillo, Mexico daycare was advised to carry out repairs in a safety inspection went unheeded. It is felt that negligence contributed to the massive fire Friday afternoon, June 5, taking the lives of 47 toddlers and infants and injuring the majority of the 142 children being cared for by six staff who were also hospitalized.

The ABC Daycare Centre installed a brightly coloured tarpaulin as a ceiling below the high roof. In 2005 the owners were advised to remove the tarp, and equip emergency exits and the main exit with larger and wider regulation sized doors. The daycare owners did not make the recommended changes, and continued to receive contracts to operate and also passed subsequent safety inspections including one a couple of weeks before the fire.

Officials have determined that the fire began in the neighboring warehouse which was used by the northern Sonora state Finance Department and contained license plates, tires, and paperwork. Nobody was working Friday and this warehouse was locked with the air conditioner left running. The air conditioner overheated, short circuited and melted its aluminum housing which began flames in the paperwork below. This neighboring warehouse had no fire alarms, fire extinguishers nor water sprinklers installed.

“The fire was caused by the overheating of an air conditioner due to continuous and prolonged use,” said Eduardo Medina Mora, the Attorney-General.

The fire and smoke rose above the wall connecting the daycare and Finance Department warehouse, and was trapped in the daycare between the tarp and the warehouse ceiling. The daycare fire alarms were installed below the tarp, and did not alert the staff to the fire trapped above the tarp until the tarp itself caught fire which instantly dispersed smoke and flames onto sleeping infants below. One of the emergency fire exits was padlocked shut and could not be used the day of the fire by rescue teams.

Seven finance department officials have been arrested on negligence and charges of negligence are to be laid also against seven others. “They are employees and officials with the Finance Department who have a direct responsibility for the warehouse where the fire started,” said Abel Murrieta, the state Attorney General.

The fire chief of Hermosillo has been removed from his position.

The wives of two high ranking state officials operated the privately run daycare under contract from the Social Security Institute. These two state officials have resigned. The owners will be charged with negligence by the state’s Finance Department. The Social Security Institute will also begin a civil lawsuit against the owners. The head of the Social Security Institute has stepped down and others have been suspended.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Owsley Stanley, mass-producer of LSD, the drug underlying much of the culture of the 1960s California hippie era, died Sunday in a car accident in Australia at the age of 76, his family announced on Tuesday.

According to The New York Times, “Mr. Stanley lent the ’60s a great deal of its color — like White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer, the varieties of his LSD that were among the most popular.”

Stanley, a talented, self-taught chemist who was known for the purity of his LSD, supplied the drug to such music groups as the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix, and provided the acid for Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose antics were recorded by Tom Wolfe in the The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The Rolling Stones once called his acid “the best LSD in the world … the genuine Owsley.”

He was also an early sound engineer and designed the high-fidelity sound system for the live rock concerts of the Grateful Dead, known as the “wall of sound”. It was essentially a massive public address system made up of 600 speakers that enabled musicians to mix their sound from the stage and reduce distortion. His recordings of Grateful Dead live performances, some having been commercially released, are valued as a documentary of their early music.

Sam Cutler, formerly the tour manager of the Rolling Stones, said of Stanley: “He was a very sophisticated man, an amalgam of scientist and engineer, chemist and artist.”

Stanley was born in Kentucky and studied engineering briefly at the University of Virginia before dropping out and joining the Air Force. In 1958, he moved to California and worked at a wide variety of jobs, before enrolling at the UC at Berkeley in 1963, at a time when drug use was pervasive. He got his first taste of LSD in April 1964 which transformed him. “I remember the first time I took acid and walked outside, and the cars were kissing the parking meters,” he said in an interview with the Rolling Stone Magazine in 2007.

Deciding to provide his own LSD to ensure its quality, Stanley created his own lab to produce it. According to The Washington Post, “Working at first from a makeshift bathroom laboratory in Berkeley, Mr. Stanley produced at least 1 million doses of LSD between 1965 and 1967.” His LSD was widely distributed. The lab was raided and he spent two years in prison.

Stanley moved to Australia in the 1980s when he become convinced the Northern Hemisphere would be destroyed in the coming of a new ice age. He lived in the Australian bush near Cairns, Queensland.

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.