Author: Admin

Friday, May 26, 2006

Brampton, ON — On Wednesday, May 31 at 6:30 p.m., sculptor Alvaro Cervantes will host a meet and greet at the Visual Arts Brampton Creative Studio. Cervantes will be showing his precise sculptures to guests, and promoting his upcoming multi-week workshop at the studio. The course is open to students who love cartoon, no matter their skill levels or experience sculpting.

“We’re extremely pleased to present such a unique course at VAB,” group president Keith Moreau commented. “Alvaro is a master of his craft, and students are sure to benefit immensely from the experience.”

Alvaro has specialized in maquettes for 16 years, creating sculptures used by companies including Disney, Pixar, and Marvel Comics. His works have served as reference for animators, and as prototypes for toys. Some of his most recent work is for the Disney-Pixar film Cars, which will was released today in theatres. Cervantes has taught the workshop at Oakville’s Sheridan College, home of a respected Animation BA program.

The meet-and-greet is free for everyone. The timing and price of the course will be established by Wednesday.

The Visual Arts Brampton Creative Studio is located in the Bartley’s Square Mall, at the corner of Hurontario and Steeles Avenue. The studio is the only suite in the lower level, and is accessible through a glassed in lobby.

For more information on the meet-and-greet or the course, contact visualartsbrampton@gmail.com, or phone 905-453-9142.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Indonesian budget airline Adam Air has been given a three-week ultimatum by the authorities to prove its economic stability or its license will be revoked, said Transportation Minister Jusman Djamal. This is because major financial difficulties have become apparent today, with two major shareholders pulling out of the company.

PT Global Transport Service (GTS) and Bright Star Perkasa, who between them own a 50% stake in the company, have decided to sell back all their shares to their original owners, who control the other 50%. These are the family of founder Adam Suherman and Sandra Ang.

The companies invested in the airline last year, when the company was struggling after the New Year’s Day disappearance of Adam Air Flight 574 with 102 on board. The Boeing 737 (B737) was ultimately determined to have crashed into the sea near Sulawesi, and all on board are presumed dead. Shortly afterwards, Adam Air Flight 172, another B737, snapped in half during a hard landing, but held together preventing fatalities. These were not the first serious accidents for the company, as in February 2006 Flight 782 became lost for several hours after navigation systems failed and the plane entered a radar blackspot, forcing a subsequent emergency landing many miles from the intended route. The given reasons for the withdrawal are a lack of improvement in safety and financial irregularities.

The company has now also defaulted on debt payments to aircraft lease firms, resulting in 12 of their 22 planes being seized, and has cut the number of routes served from 52 to 12. The remaining ten planes are also in default and at risk of seizure. Adam Air owes leasing companies US$14 million compared to free capital of $4.8 million of free capital. They have agreed to buy back shares gradually for $11 million (100 billion rupiah), $6 million less than the investment firms paid for them. The cost difference will be borne by Harry Tanoesoedibyo’s family, the founder of PT Bhakti Investama, of which GTS is a wholly owned subsidiary. The companies have also lost 157 billion rupiah worth of investment in the company since the April 2007 deal. 9,325 Rupiah are currently worth US$1.

GTS director Gustiono Kustianto said that “Since we joined, our priority has been safety” but that Adam Air’s management had been unresponsive to pressure from the new investors to improve its poor record. Last weeek another company B737 shot off the runway during landing, damaging the plane and injuring five.

Lawyer Marx Andryan of Hotman Paris Hutapea, representing the investment firms, said they have documents proving the company has not adequatly seen to pilot recruitment, maintenance and insurance.

Suherman said “We have defaulted and the investors have done nothing about it. We’ll continue to operate as long as we have planes,” adding that there are no current plans to declare bankruptcy.

“Out of 22 planes, now we only have 10 because 12 of them have been declared in default. The other 10 have been declared in default as well, but I’m still trying to work out a way to restructure the payments,” he told Reuters. He went on to say that a cash injection is required, and that “There is a possibility starting on March 21 Adam Air will temporarily cease operations until there is a decision from the shareholders regarding the insurance premium.”

Tuesday, February 8, 2005 Microsoft has announced that it plans to purchase antivirus firm Sybari Software in order to expand its market within the computer security market. The takeover comes after Microsoft purchased Romanian security firm GeCad in 2003 and two months after an announcement that it is to acquire anti-spyware vendor Giant-Company Software.

Sybari is a private company based in East Newport, New York that develops antivirus software which can be used with Microsoft’s Exchange software, as well as with the Lotus Notes system.

This takeover is seen by analysts to be hostile move on Microsoft’s part, as it places the software giant in direct competition with market leaders Symantec and McAfee. Sterling Auty, an analyst with JP Morgan, told Reuters that he estimated that Microsoft could be competing for up to five percent of Symantec’s business and up to eight percent of McAfee’s revenue.

Microsoft’s shares rose $0.10 at midday to $26.26, while both McAfee and Symantec shares fell.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Singapore police arrested British author and journalist Alan Shadrake one day after the launch of his book about the country’s use of the death penalty.

Shadrake, 75, was arrested on Sunday morning at a hotel in Singapore and taken into custody by police on charges of criminal defamation, in response to a complaint lodged by the city-state’s Media Development Authority (MDA) over the contents of his new book, Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock. Separately, the Attorney-General served Shadrake with an application for an order of committal for contempt of court, accusing him of “cast[ing] doubt on the impartiality, integrity, and independence” of Singapore’s courts through his book.

Shadrake’s latest book discusses alleged “double standards” in the country’s application of the death penalty, and contains interviews with local human rights activists, lawyers, and former police officers, including retired Changi Prison executioner Darshan Singh; Singh later claimed that he had been “tricked” into the interview. In earlier media comments, Shadrake stated that he expected “trouble” but no concrete action from authorities over his book, lest they draw even more attention to its claims. Retailers took his book off shelves after inquiries by the MDA; a spokesman for the MDA stated that the book was not banned, but suggested that booksellers “seek legal advice to ensure that the books they sell do not contravene Singapore laws”.

Shadrake has written for a variety of newspapers, including The Daily Telegraph of London as well as the New Straits Times of neighbouring Malaysia. His previous book, The Yellow Pimpernels, told the tale of various attempts to escape from East Germany over the Berlin Wall. If convicted, he faces a two-year imprisonment and a fine.

A compilation of brief news reports for Tuesday, December 22, 2009.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Golfer Fuzzy Zoeller wants to sue the anonymous person who vandalised his article in the Wikipedia encyclopedia, a website resource almost anyone can edit.

An IP address from Josef Silny & Associates, a Miami education consulting firm, wrote a biased paragraph about him creating uproar from the golfer. The entry was posted twice: once sometime last year, and again in December 2006. The paragraph was removed last month, and deleted from the article history by Danny Wool, a staff member of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Zoeller is suing Josef Silny & Associates to find out who added this text.

“The Zoeller family wants to take a stand to put a stop to this. Otherwise, we’re all just victims of the Internet vandals out there. They ought not to be able to act with impunity,” said Zoeller’s attorney, Scott Sheftall.

The offensive edits, about which the suit is based, allegedly suggested that Zoeller admitted to consuming mass quantities of drugs and alcohol and beat his wife.

Through the court, Wikipedia can not be sued for a vandalous edit. The person or company, in this case, will be sued. In fact, the Wikimedia Foundation has not been contacted by Zoeller or his representatives about the lawsuit.

Friday, September 9, 2005

New Orleans, Louisiana —After Category 4 storm Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, on the night before August 29, 2005, several flood control constructions failed. Much of the city flooded through the openings. One of these was the flood wall forming one side of the 17th Street Canal, near Lake Pontchartrain. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is the primary agency for engineering support during such emergencies. A USACE team was assessing the situation in New Orleans on the 29th, water flow was stopped September 2nd, and the breach was closed on September 5th.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The prime minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, told a news conference earlier today that there will be a ten-month stop in the construction of new settlement housing in the West Bank. The Israeli cabinet approved the move by a margin of eleven to one.

“We have been told by our friends that once Israel takes the first meaningful steps towards peace, the Arab world and the Palestinians will follow,” said Netanyahu following the cabinet’s endorsement of the move. “Well, the government of Israel has taken a very big step towards peace today, and I hope the Palestinian and the Arab world will work with us to forge a new beginning for our children and theirs.”

The freeze was made “out of broad national interests with the aim of encouraging negotiations with our Palestinian neighbours,” he continued. “When the period of freeze ends my government will return to the previous policy of building in Judea and Samaria [the Jewish name for the West Bank].”

“This is a far-reaching and painful step […] We hope that this decision will help launch meaningful negotiations to reach an historic peace agreement that will finally end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,” Netanyahu later said.

Under the plan, construction permits for new residential buildings would be put on hold for ten months. The government said that “natural growth” — characterised by the construction of homes by young people, who were raised in the settlements and want to build houses for their own families — would be exempt from the freeze. Parts of the West Bank that Israel annexed to the Jerusalem municipality would also be excluded from the freeze. The building of schools and places of worship, which will enable settlers to live what Netanyahu described as “normal lives”, will also continue.

“We will not halt existing construction and we will continue to build synagogues, schools, kindergartens and public buildings essential for normal life in the settlements,” he commented.

The prime minister added that there would be no change to Israel’s existing policy on the issue of Jerusalem. “Regarding Jerusalem, our sovereign capital, our position is well-known. We do not put any restrictions on building in our sovereign capital,” he said.

Several members of the Israeli cabinet expressed their disapproval at the proposal, with the conservative, ultra-Orthodox Shas party boycotting the cabinet meetings.

“I think it’s a complete crumbling of Netanyahu’s position and is contrary to all of his electoral promises. He promised an end to unilateral steps, and here we see him after only a few months in office giving up, even though there is no reciprocity from the Palestinians,” said the head of the main settler lobby, Danny Dayan, to the Christian Science Monitor. We are 300,000 citizens, living in 150 communities. It is impossible to freeze us. I don’t how it will happen, but we will break this freeze.”

Many Palestinians also criticised the proposal, mainly because East Jerusalem was not included in the settlement freeze. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a Palestinian spokesman, said to the Wafa news agency that Palestine “rejects returning to peace talks without the complete cessation of settlement activities in the West Bank and Jerusalem.”

Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad also rejected the plan. “The exclusion of east Jerusalem is a very, very serious problem for us. We are not looking for the resumption of the process just for the sake of it, for it to falter a week or two down the road,”

Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordanian control, following Israel’s victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The Jewish state annexed that part of the city in a move that was not recognized by the international community.

Earlier this week, on a visit to Argentina, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stepped up his campaign to put international pressure on Israel to stop building on lands that Palestinians say are their own. Abbas urged US president Barack Obama, as well as leaders of other nations that support Israel, to press the Jewish state to end its construction of settlements on occupied lands.

Netanyahu has in the past offered to restrain settlement growth, but today’s announcement was the first time that he set a clear timeframe.