Thursday, November 29, 2007

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan gave up his uniform in a ceremony yesterday in Rawalpindi. He handed power over to General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani at the headquarters of the Pakistani Army, after being the leader of the army for nine years.

In his final address as leader of the army, he said that the army was the saviour of Pakistan and that the army was his life. He also expressed his pride in being the leader of what he called a “great force.”

Musharraf had been under a lot of pressure to quit as army chief, since the country was put into the spotlight as a result of a state of emergency being declared. He is expected to be sworn in as the civilian president of Pakistan on Thursday.

Both the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, and the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, welcomed the change of duties. However, Bhutto indicated her party may not be prepared to accept Musharraf in his new non-military leadership role. Condoleezza Rice requested the state of emergency be lifted before the planned elections, which are due to take place in January.

Musharraf said General Kayani was “an excellent soldier” and that “the armed forces under his command will achieve great heights.”

General Kayani was named as the successor to Musharraf in October, before the state of emergency was declared in early November.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

On Thursday, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), a government anti-trust watchdog, fined US-based internet technology company Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc. ?135.86 crore (about ?1.36 billion, US$21 million) for manipulating their search results in favour of its products and syndicates, which affected business of rival companies. In the 190-page long decision, CCI said, “Google was leveraging its dominance in the market for online general web search, to strengthen its position in the market for online syndicate search services”.

In the ruling passed 4–2, the watchdog said, Google’s “search bias” caused “harm to its competitors as well as to users”. In 2012, Consumer Unity and Tests Society (CUTS), which is a non-profit organisation, and Bharat Matrimony filed a complaint against the search engine for manipulating the search results.

Google is to pay the fine within 60 days. CCI had fined them five percent of the average profit Google made over three fiscal years due to its Indian user base. Per the law, CCI could have fined Google up to ten percent of the profit.

Last year, Google was fined by the European Commission (EC) for favouring certain shopping services for the amount of €2.42 billion (about US$3 billion). That accounted for five percent of “average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet”, EC’s official statement read. Google was also fined by Russian Federation Antimonopoly Service for US$6.8 million in 2016 for favouring its own digital services.

“Whilst finding Google to have abused its dominant position, the CCI has nonetheless exercised restraint in recognizing the dynamic nature of online markets and not found Google guilty of every allegation”, Naval Shah, who was representing Bharat Matrimony from Shardul Amarchand law firm, told Reuters News agency.

A Google spokesperson said, “We have always focused on innovating to support the evolving needs of our users. The Competition Commission of India has confirmed that, on the majority of issues it examined, our conduct complies with Indian competition laws”.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Apple announced Monday that it has sold over two million iPads, just two months after the device began shipping in the US and only days after its international launch.

Apple shares rose 2.9 percent (US$7.41) to US$264.29 Tuesday afternoon. Market analysts also upped price targets and sales estimates in response to the announcement. Shares for AT&T, who provides data plans for the iPad, also rose yesterday.

Prior to the iPad’s April 3 launch, many analysts had speculated about the viability and marketability of the device. However, iPad sales have been faster than anticipated. Although it was only expected to sell one million iPads for the whole quarter, Apple announced in early May that it had surpassed the one-million mark in just 28 days. It again surprised industry watchers, who were expecting about 1.6–1.7 million iPads to have been sold when Apple announced that it had passed the two-million mark. iPad sales may make up over ten percent of Apple’s revenue this quarter, a feat that took the iPhone twice as long to achieve. The iPad has been so popular and supplies of the tablet so low that Apple tried to place limits on the number of iPads a person can purchase earlier.

Apple had postponed sales of the iPad to Europe and Asia until last weekend due to strong demand for the tablet in the US. In addition to the US, it now sells the devices in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.K., and will begin shipping iPads to Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Singapore in July.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

On February 14, a man staying at the Valley View Extended Stay America hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada was hospitalized after experiencing respiratory distress. The man lapsed into unconsciousness and has been at the hospital ever since.

Since the bills at the hotel were going unpaid, Extended Stay America began to evict the man from the room. Another man, described as either a friend or relative, went to the hotel on Thursday to collect the personal belongings of the hospitalized man.

According to Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Deputy Chief Kathy Suey, he found several vials of a white substance. He brought them to the attention of the hotel manager, who called police.

Initial tests, which further tests confirmed on Friday, the substance was the deadly toxin ricin, an extremely dangerous biological agent. Ricin is extracted from castor beans through the waste produced in the manufacture of castor oil. It is currently being used in cancer treatment research. There has been research for its use as a chemical/biological warfare agent. An amount smaller than the point of a pin will kill a human being. It is estimated to be several thousand times more toxic than cyanide and there is no known antidote.

Police cordoned off the area around Valley View between Flamingo Road and Harmon Avenue. Three employees and the man who made the discovery were taken to the hospital as a precaution. So were three police officers. They are all reported to show no signs of poisoning.

Nevada National Guard and other emergency services responded to secure the area. Residents at the Extended Stay America were allowed back into the building late Thursday. The hotel reopened fully on Friday after the room and other areas of the hotel were decontaminated.

The man whose room it was “is in critical condition and he is unable to speak with us right now. We have no indication why the ricin was in that room,” said Deputy Chief Suey.

“Usually, if [ricin victims] survive the first three to five days, they usually do fine,” Dr. Lawrence Sands told CNN. However, survivors often have long-term organ damage.

At least three pets were found in the room. “Two of those pets are fine. One of the pets is deceased or was put down,” Suey said. “The dog that was in there was without food and water for a week,” she added that there was no reason to supect it was exposed to ricin. Castor beans were also found in the room.

Officials have also recovered from the room a firearm, as well as an “anarchist” text containing an article on ricin.

Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Richard Kolko said the incident is being treated as a criminal matter and did not appear to be related to terrorism “based on the information gathered so far.”

Captain Joe Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said that ricin is not illegal to own unless it is intended for the poisoning of a person, adding that “We did have enough ricin to be of concern.”

In 2003, a man committed suicide in Las Vegas using ricin. There have also been a few incidents where ricin powder was found in the mail. Also in 2003, the United Kingdom had the Wood Green ricin plot which in the end found no ricin.

In 1978, Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov was famously assassinated in London with ricin injected with the tip of an umbrella.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

United States automobile company General Motors announced it has lost US$6 billion in the first quarter of 2009, amidst heavy declines in revenues. Not including special items, the firm said it had lost a net $5.9 billion dollars, or $9.66 per share.

In the first quarter of last year, GM had reported a loss of $381 million, or $0.67 per share. Most financial analysts had forecast the automaker’s losses to be over $6.7 billion, or $11.05 per share. GM had also reported that it had spent $10.2 billion in an effort to prevent bankruptcy. The manufacturer has received over $15 billion in bailout money from the federal government.

The company has a deadline set at June 1 to draw up a restructuring plan. If it doesn’t do so by then, it will be obliged to file for bankruptcy protection.

“We’re focusing very much on the cost side of the business but once you start losing revenues you get into a vicious circle from which you can’t recover,” said Ray Young, the chief financial officer for GM.

“We continue to see a 60-80 percent chance of a GM bankruptcy. While the GM equity today is largely uninvestable, we increasingly believe GM may emerge substantially stronger from a bankruptcy – provided the Chapter 11 process is not overly drawn out – particularly given the scope of targeted dealer cuts,” analyst Himanshu Patel said.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Roll up displays for use in hand-held gadgets will be available for mass production by March 2007 according to co-developer Philips. Working with US based paper pioneer E-ink, Philips have developed a 13cm wide screen which is just 0.1 millimetres thick and can be rolled up so that it is only 15 millimetres in diameter.

The screen, which Philips hope to license to makers of in-car satellite navigation systems, mobile web browsers and smart phones, uses no back light and displays a monochrome image in four shades of grey as well as black and white. According to Philips the screen is able to give a “paper-like contrast”.

The screen consists of a backing layer of plastic film which contains a matrix of transistors. This is topped off with layer transparent “electronic ink” capsules and a layer of clear plastic. The capsules are approximately 50 micrometres in diameter and contain polarised black and white particles. Using the transistors, a pattern of positive and negative charge can be applied which manipulates the particles to form monochrome images.

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.