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Thursday, December 24, 2009

Two people have been killed and 47 people have been injured as the result of a coach crash in Cornwall, England. The vehicle, which was carrying 48 passengers as well as the driver, were travelling back from a journey to the village of Mousehole to see Christmas lights. The accident occurred at 2215 GMT yesterday in the village of Townshend, not far from the town of Hayle. Road conditions at the time were icy, which may explain why the accident occurred. The first police car that arrived at the scene lost control on the icy road and crashed into the already overturned coach. The two officers in the car were uninjured, however the earlier crash had caused the deaths of two women. One of them died at the scene of the accident and the other was later killed as a result of the injuries suffered. 47 people were injured, five of them seriously.

The sequence of events that is believed to have happened, according to Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, is that the coach went off the road, collided with a tree, going through a hedge before finally overturning, causing the vehicle to end up on its side. 60-year-old Ann Ellis, who comes from the village of Illogan in Cornwall, was physically involved in the crash. Desribing her experience of this incident, she said: “All I can remember is a big bang and we just went over. I got trapped under somebody else and there was someone on top of me. It was difficult to breathe but two gentlemen dragged me out. I was shaken, really shaken. I think we all were. It was horrific.”

Derek Smith, lives near where the accident occurred. He said that “[w]e were just going to bed when we heard a knock on the kitchen door. She was covered in mud and had no shoes or socks on and was shaking as she stood there. I could hear this commotion going on.

She said to ring the police and ambulance as their coach had turned over and there were 50 people in it and some of them were injured. My wife rang 999 and the lady was in a real panic. We gave her some socks and boots straightaway because she was freezing as she had nothing on her feet.”

75-year-old Charles Parker, who is living in St. Agnes in the county, was also injured in the accident, suffering injuries to his leg and his head. “The roads were so icy,” he explained. “I heard a cracking noise and all of a sudden we had turned over. I remember later being helped out of the coach through a window. We were close to a house and they took most of the people in there. Then helicopters turned up. It was very frightening.”

Inspector Matthew Shaw, who comes from Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, explained “[i]t seems from initial investigations that the coach has slipped on ice. The road is covered in a sheet of ice, it’s treacherous, it’s difficult to even walk down there.” The amount of time taken to transport the injured passengers to a hospital was four hours.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

A bus crash in Victoria, Australia has injured at least 20 people, two of whom are listed as critical. One victim is reported to be still trapped in the wreckage.

The accident occurred between a bus and a semi-trailer on the Princes Highway in the Traralgon area around 10:50am AEST. The La Trobe Valley Busliner bus was traveling east when it collided with the back of a heavy haulage truck.

Those critically injured are being airlifted to a hospital in Melbourne. Others are being transported by Ambulance to La Trobe Valley Hospital in Traralgon.

SES crews are on scene, along with St. John Ambulance and fire crews.

The eastbound lanes of the highway have been blocked by police and traffic is being diverted.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Buffalo, New York —According to scanner frequencies of the Buffalo, New York fire department, smoke was reported on at least five floors at the northeast side at One HSBC Center in downtown Buffalo. The call came in around 10:50 p.m. (Eastern Time) on Friday January 18, not long after the ending of the NHL hockey game: the Sabres versus the Atlanta Thrashers which was held at HSBC Arena, a few blocks away from the tower.

According to firefighters communications the people that were on the 22nd floor made it out of the building safely. Firefighters saw “white smoke of varying intensities, believed to have been electrical” on floors 9 through 13. The source of the smoke was not identified, but the first alarm was on the 13th floor, followed by the 10th then the 9th.

Because of the cold temperatures and wind chills in the 10’s, workers at the tower were allowed back into the first floor, which has been cleared by firefighters earlier in the call.

At 11:41 p.m., firefighters gave the all clear to begin packing up with no conclusion as to where the smoke originated. They used ventilation fans to clear the floors of smoke and then shut them off to see if anymore smoke would reappear, which it did not. Remaining employees and personnel have since been allowed back to work. No damage is reported.

The tower, built in 1970, is the tallest in Buffalo and is home several agencies including the Consulate General of Canada. HSBC currently occupies 75% of the tower which has 40 floors. It stands at 529 feet (161.2 meters) tall.

Friday, May 7, 2010

US stock markets saw an unusually turbulent day yesterday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) losing almost a thousand points in thirty minutes, although later recovered somewhat to end the day with a smaller loss.

The DJIA had its worst fall since 1987, a drop of 9% or 998.50 points, before going back up a bit to close with a loss of 3.30% or 347.80 points to a level of 10,520. The Nasdaq fell 82.65 points or 3.44%, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index dropped 3.24% or 37.75 points.

According to some reports, the quick loss happened because a trader mistyped an order to sell a large amount of stock, causing the stock price to go down enough to trigger orders to sell elsewhere in the market. (By the following day this theory had been abandoned.) Other reports suggested that the biggest markets “slowed” their executions when it became clear that computerized errors were occurring; as a result, the vast majority of buy orders were briefly withdrawn, allowing the free-fall to continue for several minutes.

Stock for the Procter & Gamble company fell almost 37% during the sell-off, about 75 minutes to the closing bell. An investigation started into whether any erroneous trades happened.

Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Jennifer Chelune spoke about the incident: “We don’t know what caused it. We know that that was an electronic trade […] and we’re looking into it with Nasdaq and the other major electronic exchanges.”

The Reuters news agency reports that, at their height, the losses cause equity values to lose $1 trillion.

Some stocks saw extreme, but short, changes; for instance, consulting firm Accenture saw its shares plummet from about $42 to four cents, although it later rebounded to close the day at $41.09.

Meanwhile, oil prices also dropped to lows not reached since February. Benchmark crude was down $2.86 to $77.11 in New York.

“The potential for giant high-speed computers to generate false trades and create market chaos reared its head again today,” said Delaware senator Edward Kaufman. “The battle of the algorithms — not understood by nor even remotely transparent to the Securities and Exchange Commission — simply must be carefully reviewed and placed within a meaningful regulatory framework soon.” Kaufman, along with senator Mark Warner from Virginia, called on Congress to investigate the cause of the mass sell-offs.

Nasdaq, meanwhile, says that all trades of stocks at prices 60% higher or lower than the preceding price at or around 2.40 PM “or immediately prior” are to be cancelled; it noted that it coordinated its move with the other exchanges.

Chief investment officer at Fort Pitt Capital Group Charlie Smith said: “I think the machines just took over. There’s not a lot of human interaction. We’ve known that automated trading can run away from you, and I think that’s what we saw happen today.”

In the past three days, the DJIA has lost 631 points, or 5.7%, mainly over concerns about Greece’s ailing, debt-burdened economy. Peter Boockvar an equity strategist for Miller Tabak, commented: “The market is now realizing that Greece is going to go through a depression over the next couple of years. Europe is a major trading partner of ours, and this threatens the entire global growth story.”

Monday, October 30, 2006

Wal-Mart severed links with Terry Nelson, a Republican strategist, last night because he had connections to a controversial Republican Party advertisement in Tennessee. The ad’s purpose was to blast Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr, who is running against Republican Bob Corker.

A blonde woman in the ad says, “I met Harold at the Playboy party”. As the spot ends, she winks and says breathily: “Harold, call me!”. The ad also “criticised” Canada. “Canada can take care of North Korea,” a man in the television ad says. “They’re not busy.”

Nelson and his company, CrossLink Strategy Group, were hired by Wal-Mart last year in an attempt to help the company.

Jesse Jackson, an American politician, and other leaders signed a letter distributed by WakeUpWal-Mart.com, asking the company to end its relationship with Nelson.

In an interview with the Associated Press Nelson said, “There was no intention to offend anybody and it’s unfortunate if people took offense. That was certainly not what people planned for or hoped for.”

A spokesman for Wal-Mart, David Tovar, issued a statement saying Nelson’s company had “sent a letter to Wal-Mart ending its working relationship with our company.”

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Afghanistan’s two presidential candidates, Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, withdrew their observers from the ongoing audit of votes yesterday, following the June presidential election.

Abdullah’s observers declined to participate, claiming fraudulent ballots were not being thrown out and questioning the legitimacy of the process. Ghani’s observers were later asked to withdraw by the United Nations monitors overseeing the process. They agreed, describing the decision as prudent.

The audit was continued in the afternoon.

The process of checking each of the eight million votes is part of a deal brokered by the US. The recount started a month ago. A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai has said the delay is affecting the country’s security, as the Taliban continue to launch attacks across the country. Analysts suggest it is also affecting the Afghan economy.

Both candidates have previously agreed to form a unity government involving the other. Abdullah’s side, trailing before the recount, is looking for more powers and responsibilities for the losing side, while their opposition apparently don’t want to weaken presidential power. Both candidates also agree US forces should stay in the country after 2014.

Thursday, June 30, 2005

A co-operation between the KDE group – makers of a free desktop for Linux – and the Wikimedia Foundation has been announced at the LinuxTag Conference in Karlsruhe. They intend to build a protocol which will make it possible to access Wikimedia project’s data from any application, but especially from the KDE suite.

The KDE Group will try to integrate some of the applications from the package with Wikimedia data. For example, AmaroK, media player, will use Wikipedia data to show information about music being played at the moment. Some other applications, including chemical database Kalzium, a database of information about the sky KStars and office suite KOffice will use data from Wikipedia, or from its sister projects.

It will be based on SOAP/WSDL technology, which is already used by the Google API. It could be used on almost every platform and programming environment.

It is also possible to include the Wikipedia archive in some of KDE’s CD editions to make it possible to use the data from Wikipedia on machines without an internet connection.