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Monday, February 7, 2005

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Wednesday, July 7, 2010

The Netherlands defeated Uruguay in the semifinals of the 2010 FIFA World Cup on Tuesday. Uruguay was the last South American team holdout in the tournament. This year’s World Cup is is being hosted by South Africa.

Giovanni van Bronckhorst scored for the Dutch with a 35-yard shot in the eighteenth minute, while Uruguay’s Diego Forlan scored his fourth goal in this year’s World Cup to tie in the 41st minute.

However, after the Netherlands’ coach Bert van Marwijk replaced Demy de Zeeuw with attacker Rafael van der Vaart at halftime, the Dutch went on a roll, with Wesley Sneijder and Arjen Robben both scoring in the second half. They scored in quick succession, in the 70th and 73rd minutes, respectively. Uruguay later narrowed the Dutch’s lead to one point in injury time, but the orange-clad Dutch beat back late Uruguayan pressure after the injury time goal was scored.

The Dutch team was jubilant after their semifinal win. “This is unforgettable,” Sneijder said. “It was a tough fight and toward the end we complicated matters. Sunday we play in the World Cup final. I have to get used to that.”

Coach Bert van Marwijk was also happy. “This is very special. After 32 years we play the final again. Such a small country. We can be very proud of this.” Van Marwijk has been coach of the Netherlands for two years.

Fans of the Netherlands’ soccer team were wildly celebrating too. 45 minutes after the small Western European country won, many fans returned to Cape Town’s Green Point Stadium to see the players do a victory dance. Many of the fans beat drums and cheered “Holland! Holland! Holland!”

The Dutch will face either Spain or Germany Sunday in the World Cup finals. This will be their first World Cup final appearance since 1978, when they lost 3-1 to Argentina, who was playing on their home turf. The Dutch also lost the championship in 1974. Uruguay hadn’t appeared in the semifinals since 1970. However, they won the World Cup in 1930, and again in 1950, but they have since suffered a 60-year drought, which continues to this day.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

On Wednesday at 12:40 p.m. CET (UTC+1), Norwegian authorities were alerted to an oil spill in the Statfjord oil field. The spill originated from the oil platform “Statfjord A”, one of three platforms in the field, operated by StatoilHydro.

Kristin Hoffmann of Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (Petroleumtilsynet) told Dagens Nyheter: “This is the second largest in Norwegian history.” The amount of oil released into the sea is believed to be at least 3840 cubic metres, 25,000 barrels, or approximately 4,000 metric tons. This amount would rank the spill low on the list of oil spills.

“It is a significant amount and we are taking it seriously,” said Vegar Stokset, a spokesman for StatoilHydro, though he said the spill was “very far from land.”

The accident occurred in rough seas while tanker Navion Britannia was loading oil from a storage buoy, StatoilHydro said. Christian Sletner of the Norwegian Coastal Administration said, “StatoilHydro has a good preparedness plan, and a satisfactory system for handling this.” He added, “StatoilHydro is responsible for cleaning up. This is the ‘polluter pays’ principle.”

“The amount of damage could range from completely marginal to relatively large if substantial amounts reach land,” Sletner said. “The chances of it reaching land, at the moment, seem to be relatively small.”

No one was injured at the time of the accident and the platform will continue work as usual Thursday, said StatiolHydro Information Director Kai Nielsen. In a press release, StatiolHydro announced that four vessels are on their way to begin the clean-up, though they will have to wait for calmer seas to begin work.

Petroleum Safety Authority Norway said in a press release that it is demobilizing disaster teams and beginning to prepare for its investigation of the incident. It will also closely follow StatoilHydro’s clean-up.

Statfjord is 200 km (124 miles) off the coast of Norway, located to the east of Bergen. It is an oil and gas field in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, though approximately 15% of it is in the United Kingdom’s waters. At peak production, it produces over 700,000 barrels of oil per day. The field is one of the largest known under-sea oil fields in the world.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Highland Airways, which runs flights between Anglesey in north Wales and Cardiff in south Wales, has said today that it is business as usual, despite suspending online booking yesterday. Meanwhile, Liberal Democrats have called on the Welsh Assembly Government to withdraw the £800,000 annual public subsidy for the route (about US$1.3 million) and use the money on “green public transport” instead.

Although flights were continuing and passengers were told to “check in as normal”, the company stopped taking bookings for future flights yesterday, blaming “technical difficulties”. However, it also said that trading conditions were “difficult”. The company’s commercial director, Basil O’Fee, explained that the company’s problems had been “exacerbated by the severe winter and resultant reduced flying and reduced income.” He added that the board was in talks with potential new investors, and hoped for a outcome of these discussions to be known “within days rather than weeks”.

“It is now time to end this costly debacle before even more public money is poured into a service that is both economically and environmentally unsustainable,” according to Kirsty Williams, leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats. She wants the money spent on improving rail transport in Wales.

However, Ieuan Wyn Jones, the leader of the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru and the Assembly member for Anglesey, said that the service was an “essential link”. He hoped that the company would be able to keep going, or in a “worse case scenario”, that the route would be run by administrators while the Assembly Government looked at other options.

The company has carried 37,000 people on its twice-daily service since it started operating. According to Jones, this showed that that the service “has been a huge success with passenger numbers far exceeding expectations”.

Bidding for the next contract with the Assembly Government to provide the route closed last week, with Highland Airways thought to be the only entrant. The lack of other bids was “particularly worrying”, commented Jenny Randerson, Welsh Liberal Democrats transport spokesperson. “This does suggest that despite huge public subsidy, this service is still not seen as a viable, profitable, and green solution to this key transport need”, she said.

Highland Airways is based in Inverness, Scotland, where it operates passenger and freight services for island communities. The news that the company was in difficulty was said to come as a surprise to business and transport leaders in Scotland, where it is regarded as a “Highland success story”.

Friday, April 20, 2007

For the past week, approximately 100 sealing ships have been trapped in ice floes off the northeast coast of Newfoundland. The ships and their crew had been participating in the annual seal hunt off Canada’s easternmost province.

Several of the vessels have been damaged by the ice and supplies are now running low for those sailors awaiting rescue by the Canadian Coast Guard. As of Thursday, 6:00 p.m. EDST, some 20 crew members, out of an estimated 400, had been rescued.

A Coast Guard icebreaker, the Sir Wilfred Grenfell, on mission to free the trapped ships, itself became stuck in the ice. A Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) spokesperson indicated to CTV News that, although the Grenfell had since been freed, another icebreaker, the Ann Harvey, was now trapped. “It’s just such heavy ice that even ice breakers are having trouble,” said Erika Pittman, a communications officer with the DFO.

In addition to the crushing ice, extreme weather conditions have been hampering rescue efforts. Pittman suggested that conditions wouldn’t improve until sometime next week. The amount and thickness of the pack ice, according to Pittman, is the worst it has been for sealers in the past 15 years.

In addition to three icebreakers on hand, the Coast Guard is flying helicopters in to provide food and support to the stranded sailors. Most of the sealing ship captains have refused to abandon their ships, instead staying with them and hoping for a change in conditions or to be freed by the Coast Guard.

“Usually you try to stay with the ship because you think the safety is with the ship because the ship is big, but sometimes it is too late. In this case, we’re hoping that as it changes and the breakers and helicopters are there and we can get them all out,” said Brian Penney, a superintendent with the Coast Guard.

“They’re putting a lot of effort into pulling them out,” said Penny. “But the sheer numbers, it’s a very, very slow process.” According to Penny, approximately 15 of the longliners ships have had their hulls damaged by the ice to the extent that the ships are at risk of sinking.

Critics of the seal hunt point out that the annual hunt is not only “cruel to animals”, but is also a dangerous occupation for the sealers. When sealers have to be rescued by the Coast Guard, “Canadian taxpayers foot the bill,” suggested Rebecca Aldworth, director of Canadian wildlife issues for the Humane Society of the United States.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Since the AutoTronics Taipei was held from 2006, companies from electronic and automobile-related industries steadily made their stages and a good complementary in this trade show.

Before the first holding in 2006, because of the establishment of Car Electronics Pavilion in 2005 TAITRONICS Autumn (Taipei International Electronic Autumn Show), it (the pavilion) ever became a hot topic in these 2 industries. And eventually, Yulon Group recruited their sub-companies grouping their own pavilion to showcase automobile parts, accessories, and applications.

Currently, automobile navigation, mobile entertainment, and road safety, were included in modern automotive devices. But in a keynote speech of TARC Pavilion, Jamie Hsu (Consultant of Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Republic of the China) pointed out several threats and opportunities on the automotive industry, his words also echoed a notable quote by Yi-cheng Liu (Chairman of Taiwan Transportation Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association): “The automobile industry shouldn’t be monopolized by a company or its own industry. If this industry want to be grown up, it [the industry] should do more optimizations and transformations with the other related industries like IT and electronic.”

Although some participants like Renesas, Fujitsu, MiTAC, TomTom NV, and Agilent ever participated in Taipei IT Month, CeBIT, or Computex Taipei, but there were varied comments for participation on Computex 2008.

Renesas Technology, a participant of Computex 2007, won’t showcase in Computex 2008, but Fujitsu and TomTom both declared to participate in the 2008 Taipei IT Month.

Generally in the automobile industry, progressively conformed by the other industries, its success should depend on collaborations between different and similar industries because “not any company can do any monopoly in any industry” even though the automobile industry will become a “trillion industry” not only in Taiwan.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Comply or Die, the racehorse who won the 2008 Grand National has died at the age of 17. His death was announced by his former trainer, David Pipe. He died over at the weekend in Gloucestershire, where he had been staying with jockey Timmy Murphy. He was cremated on Monday and his ashes will return to Murphy.

Murphy was the jockey in the saddle when Comply or Die won the 2008 Grand National. Speaking to the Press Association, he spoke about the horse’s death. He said, “He was part of the furniture at home so it’s very sad. He gave me the greatest day of my career, obviously that can never be taken away. He paraded at Cheltenham and Aintree and was getting ready to do some dressage in the summer. I’m not actually sure how he died, to be honest, but it wasn’t nice to come home to. He was cremated on Monday. He was a happy horse and he was also very clever.”

During his racing career he made £798,809 in prize-money after winning a total of eight races.

The 2008 Grand National victory was his greatest achievement and he almost matched it when he came second place in 2009. He retired in 2011 but remained active, often being paraded at race grounds such as Aintree and Cheltenham. He also participated in some hunting activities. Pipe said, “Since his retirement he had been a lead-horse at Timmy Murphy’s establishment before trying his hand at dressage, a discipline in which he had proven very successful”.

Tributes have been paid to Comply or Die on social media by horse racing fans with several tweeting their appreciation and memories.