Tuesday, March 15, 2005A federal jury found Bernard Ebbers guilty on all nine counts in an indictment for fraud, conspiracy and false regulatory filings. The verdict was handed down by a New York jury after 8 days of deliberation on the former WorldCom CEO and mastermind behind the accounting scandal that brought down the telcom giant.

AP writer Erin McClam reported that when the verdict was announced, “Ebbers’ face reddened.”

Sentencing is set for the second Tuesday of next week when he could receive 85 years in prison for the conviction.

Ebbers who took the stand in his own defence, said he left the details of the company’s accounting to others and that he had no knowledge of shady practices. But Scott Sullivan, the ex-chief financial officer of the company and key prosecution witness, directly linked Ebbers to the fraud. Sullivan agreed to co-operate with prosecutors in the hopes of receiving a lenient sentence for his own involvement in the scandal.

The fall of WordCom sparked a massive class action law suit by investors. The plunge in WorldCom’s stock changed the capitalized value of the company in the range of $11 billion as the scandal unravelled. Secuities fraud cases stemming from the suits will probably break new legal ground where the involvement of investment banks and public accounting firms who would normally check company irregularities will be called into legal question.

Friday, August 5, 2005

I-Holding ehf, a Icelandic investment company owned by Baugur Group, Straumur investment bank, B2B Holdings and Birgis Bieltvedts, has bought 80% in Illum warehouse in Denmark from Merrill Lynch International Global Principal Investment. The same group recently bought Wessel & Vett A/S and Magasin du Nord, so it already owned 20% in Illum.

Illum will be run separately from Magasin du Nord.

Illum reported a profit and 11% gain in sales the first three months of 2005.

Skarphéðni Berg Steinarssyni from Nordic Investment at Baugur Group said the Danish retail market is increasing and they believe in Illum because it’s a well known brand in Denmark.

Icelanders invest in Denmark and UK

Icelandic companies have been investing heavily in Denmark for the last few years. Recently the Fons Investment ehf. bought the Danish airlines Sterling Air and Mearsk Air. Eimskip, a shipping company in Iceland, recently bought the shipping division of Mearsk. I-Holdings have been investing heavily in the Denish retailer market.

Baugur Group, as well as FL Group, have been investing in the UK market. FL Group has bought 11% in easyJet.com and has shown an interest in buying more. Baugur Group has been investing in the retailer market and has bought among other things Iceland supermarket chain as well as Hamleys, a well known toy store.

Friday, December 17, 2010

North Korea has warned of “self-defensive blows” to South Korea if they participate in joint, live-fire military exercises with the United States, scheduled to begin in the next few days. The U.S. and South Korea will be taking part in a one day, live-fire exercise on Yeonpyeong Island, the island which was shelled by North Korean artillery on November 23. Nearly 200 rounds of artillery were fired at the island. Four people were killed and another 14 were injured in the attack. South Korea had been taking part in annual military exercises with the U.S., off the island’s west coast when the attack occurred. They returned fire, firing nearly 80 rounds of artillery, but no damage was reported on the North Korean side.

“Second and third self-defensive blows that cannot be predicted will be dealt. The intensity and range of the firepower will create a situation more serious than one on Nov. 23,” said a statement released by the North Korean government via the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the country’s main news agency. It accused the two nations of creating “hysteria of war of aggression against the DPRK, escalating the military tension and confrontation.” The nation’s official website Uriminzokkiri, warns that “if war breaks out, it will lead to nuclear warfare and not be limited to the Korean Peninsula.”

North Korea further demands the exercises be canceled saying, “the South Korean puppet warmongers must immediately cancel the provocative coastal live-fire drills planned on Yeonpyeong.” The country considers any exercises that take place on Yeonpyeong Island, to be a violation of their territory.

According to the U.S. State Department, the exercises are part of regular drills between the U.S. and South Korea and are not provocative.

“These are routine exercises. There’s nothing provocative or unusual or threatening about these exercises. The North Koreans have been notified about what South Korea plans to do,” said Philip J. Crowley, a spokesman for the State Department. The U.S. and South Korea have no plans to cancel the exercises.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

The discovery of an old World War II bomb in a construction site has caused at least 1000 residents in Plymouth located in South-West England, to be evacuated.

“Evacuations are being carried out of properties within 100m [328ft] of the scene. Properties within the 100m-300m [328-984ft] zone are being advised to open windows and draw curtains,” said a spokesman for the police department in Plymouth.

Workers on the site discovered the bomb at about 10:30 a.m. local time in Plymouth, England on Brentor Road.

Reports say that the bomb is sticking out of the ground by about 6 inches, and weighed an estimated 113 kilograms, or 250 pounds, but could have weighed as much as 500 pounds.

“The item was protruding about six inches from the ground and was described as being up to 10-inches in diameter,” said a spokesman for the Devon and Cornwall Police.

The Army bomb disposal team from Wales is currently trying to figure out what to do with the bomb and it could take several hours before authorities can dispose of it. Reports say that the bomb will be taken to the ocean to be detonated.

“The precise nature of this operation and any potential route are yet to be confirmed,” added the spokesman.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Viktor Schreckengost, the father of industrial design and creator of the Jazz Bowl, an iconic piece of Jazz Age art designed for Eleanor Roosevelt during his association with Cowan Pottery died yesterday. He was 101.

Schreckengost was born on June 26, 1906 in Sebring, Ohio, United States.

Schreckengost’s peers included the far more famous designers Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes.

In 2000, the Cleveland Museum of Art curated the first ever retrospective of Schreckengost’s work. Stunning in scope, the exhibition included sculpture, pottery, dinnerware, drawings, and paintings.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

A robotic system at Stanford Medical Center was used to perform a laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery successfully with a theoretically similar rate of complications to that seen in standard operations. However, as there were only 10 people in the experimental group (and another 10 in the control group), this is not a statistically significant sample.

If this surgical procedure is as successful in large-scale studies, it may lead the way for the use of robotic surgery in even more delicate procedures, such as heart surgery. Note that this is not a fully automated system, as a human doctor controls the operation via remote control. Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery is a treatment for obesity.

There were concerns that doctors, in the future, might only be trained in the remote control procedure. Ronald G. Latimer, M.D., of Santa Barbara, CA, warned “The fact that surgeons may have to open the patient or might actually need to revert to standard laparoscopic techniques demands that this basic training be a requirement before a robot is purchased. Robots do malfunction, so a backup system is imperative. We should not be seduced to buy this instrument to train surgeons if they are not able to do the primary operations themselves.”

There are precedents for just such a problem occurring. A previous “new technology”, the electrocardiogram (ECG), has lead to a lack of basic education on the older technology, the stethoscope. As a result, many heart conditions now go undiagnosed, especially in children and others who rarely undergo an ECG procedure.

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

On Sunday, Disney’s Zootopia won the Oscars award for the Best Animated Feature Film at the 89th Academy Awards ceremony held at Los Angeles. Pixar’s animated short Piper won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film and Disney’s The Jungle Book won for Visual Effects.

Others competing with Zootopia in the category were Kubo and the Two Strings, My Life as a Zucchini, The Red Turtle, and Disney’s Moana. This was the first Oscar for directors Byron Howard and Rich Moore who were previously nominated for, respectively, Bolt and Wreck-It Ralph.

In the acceptance speech, director Byron Howard said, “About five years ago, almost six now, […] we got this crazy idea of talking about humanity with talking animals in the hopes that, when the film came out, it would make the world just a slightly better place.” The Disney movie addresses several social problems such as racism, sexism, prejudice, stereotyping, and fear. The New York Times said the parental guidance (PG) rated movie was “Funny, smart, thought-provoking — and musical, too.”

Before announcing the award, Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal said, “As a Mexican, as a Latin-American, as a migrant worker, as a human being, I’m against any form of wall that wants to separate us.” The movie was released in March, during the 2016 US presidential race.

In an interview with Variety, the directors of Zootopia said movies about bias and discrimination haven’t been Disney’s main focus, but during its production, “Things were not great in the world. […] It was more like we had our finger on something important right now and we really need to do our best to portray this as honestly as we can. Then with the election and the campaign, the real move towards governing by fear […] I don’t think we could have predicted it any closer with this film.”

With this win, the Walt Disney Company has won nine out of ten Best Animated Feature Film Oscars in the last decade, with Pixar Animation Studio winning six out of them. Zootopia also won Best Animated Film at the Annie Awards and the Golden Globe Awards.