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Friday, November 20, 2009

The family of a railway worker in Oxford, United Kingdom whose death was tied to cancer caused by asbestos exposure received a payout of approximately £100,000.

In 2005, Dudley Maasz was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a disease resulting from exposure to asbestos. He had been exposed to the substance during his time in the 1940s as a railway worker for Great Western Railway, where he took part in cleaning engines and serving as a fireman. Maasz died in July 2006.

The company BRB (Residuary) Ltd., the successor to British Railways Board, came to an agreement to give Maasz’s family a payout of £98,000 and costs as a settlement.

Brigitte Chandler, the Maasz family’s solicitor, told BBC News, “We were able to establish that Mr Maasz death was caused by asbestos during his employment at the Oxford works.”

Dudley Maasz’s brother Norman described him to BBC News as outgoing, and a “friendly chap”. He said that he had noticed his brother begin to complain of shoulder pain approximately four years ago, and subsequently began to sleep more and later was bedridden a majority of the time.

“One day I looked at him and thought — my goodness — he was half the size, he’d been eaten away, I felt so sorry for him,” said Norman Maasz.

BBC News reported that no individual from BRB (Residuary) Ltd. was available to provide a comment about the payout to the Maasz family.

Friday, October 14, 2016

Yesterday, English capital football club Chelsea FC announced a long-term deal with US sports company Nike.

Currently, German company Adidas made the kits for The Blues, a deal worth £30 million annually. Chelsea’s contract with Adidas runs till 2023. Chelsea is obliged to pay about £40 million to the German firm. Chelsea’s termination of Adidas’s contract was announced in May.

Per the contract with the US company, Chelsea would receive a reported sum of £60 million each year. Announcing a long term contract, Nike Brand president Trevor Edwards said, “The partnership with Chelsea reinforces our leadership position in football. We are excited to help grow the club’s global reach, serving players and supporters with Nike innovation and design.”

Chelsea director Marina Granovskaia, for the team’s part, said, “This is an incredibly exciting and important deal for the club.”

Chelsea won the Premier League in 2014–15 under Portuguese manager José Mourinho but they finished tenth last season.

Adidas and Spanish club Real Madrid signed a ten year contract earlier this year and the German sports brand sponsors other football giants like FC Bayern München, Juventus F.C., A.C. Milan, and Manchester United F.C.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

On June 4, a report published by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that in the past 16 years high school students have become less likely to engage in health risk-related behaviors such as having sex and taking drugs. However, the CDC found that Hispanic students were less likely to have reduced risky behavior when compared to Black and White students in several key areas.

The National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is run by the CDC every two years, and is an anonymous, self-administered survey of students in grades 9 to 12. In the 2007 YRBS, over 14,000 students were surveyed from across 44 U.S. states, 5 territories, and several individual school districts. The combined statistics used results from 39 states and 22 large urban school districts.

The survey showed that males were more likely than females to engage in most behaviors involving violence or risk of unintentional injury, including driving while drinking alcohol, carrying a weapon, and being involved in a physical fight, although females were more likely to have contemplated or attempted suicide. Males were also more likely to have smoked tobacco or marijuana, engaged in heavy drinking, or engaged in sexual intercourse, while females were more likely to have fasted for 24 hours or more, vomited or taken laxatives in order to lose weight.

While the proportions of White and Black students who had ever had sexual intercourse, and who had had sex with four or more partners in their lifetimes, all dropped over the period 1991-2007, there was no change in either of these statistics for the Hispanic population. Compared to their counterparts in the 1990s however, Hispanic students in 2007 were found to be more likely to have used a condom during their most recent sexual intercourse, and less likely to have consumed drugs such as cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana.

Hispanic students were more likely than White or Black students to go without food for 24 hours to lose weight, to take drugs such as heroin or cocaine, to drink alcohol on school property, and to have avoided school on occasion because of safety concerns.

In comparison with previous YRBS results, the survey found that the percentage of students who had ever had sexual intercourse decreased from 54.1% in 1991 to 47.8% in 2007, with a comparable decrease in the percentage who had had four or more sexual partners, from 18.7% to 14.9%. Decreases were also found in the percentage of students who had attempted suicide, who rode in a car with a driver who had been drinking alcohol, and who had smoked marijuana in the past month, but an increase in the percentage who had avoided school on occasion because of safety concerns (from 4.4% in 1993 to 5.5% in 2007).

“We are pleased that more high school students today are doing things that will help them stay healthy and avoiding things that put their health in danger. Unfortunately we are not seeing that same progress among Hispanic teens for certain risk factors,” said Howell Wechsler, Ed.D., MPH, director of CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health.

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Yesterday, US-based entertainment company Disney announced its plans to shut down Blue Sky Studios, the animation studio behind the Ice Age movie franchise.

“Given the current economic realities, after much consideration and evaluation, we have made the difficult decision to close filmmaking operations at Blue Sky Studios”, Walt Disney Studios said in the statement. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio will cease producing a movie-adaptation of Nimona, which was scheduled to be released next year.

Based in Greenwich, Connecticut, Blue Sky Studios was founded in 1987, and was later acquired by 20th Century FOX in 1999. Blue Sky’s control went to Disney in 2019 when Disney bought assets of FOX Studios for around US$71 billion. Blue Sky had worked on Joe’s Apartment, A Simple Wish, Alien Resurrection, and Fight Club. The studio went on to produce five Ice Age films, two Rio movies, The Peanuts Movie as well as Ferdinand, which received an Academy Award nomination for best animated feature film.

Disney also owns two other significant animation studios, Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Disney has closed Radio Disney and Radio Disney Country. Disney planned last year to lay off about 32 thousand employees, many from Disney’s theme parks. Disney also sold mobile video game unit FoxNext Games Los Angeles. Disney reported a US$2.8 billion net loss in the 2020 fiscal year.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The mascots of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia were just announced. Based on mythological characters, they are Miga, Quatchi and Sumi.

Miga, a sea bear who lives in the ocean with her family pod near Tofino, and Quatchi, a young sasquatch, represent the Olympics, while Sumi represents the Paralympics that follow afterward.

A sea bear is a First Nations creature, part killer whale, part Kermode spirit bear. While illustrated as being taller than the other characters, the mascot costume of Quatchi is the same height as the other two characters.

The third mascot, Sumi, an animal-guardian spirit, is a Thunderbird that wears the hat of an orca. Sumi will be the mascot of the Paralympics.

In 2004, the Times Colonist suggested a marmot might be a good mascot, except for their winter hibernation. The organizers still chose one, named Mukmuk, as their “virtual only” counterpart.

After the Olympic logo design was leaked the day before the 2005 announcement, organizers were extremely tight lipped until today’s news conference at a Surrey school. They apparently didn’t do any development on the characters on internet-enabled computers, to ensure the images or information wouldn’t slip out.

The characters were designed by the Vancouver and Los Angeles-based Meomi Design. Their characters have been used as part of iGoogle, a customizable homepage option from Google, as well as Electronic Arts, Girls Inc., Time Out Magazine, Cyworld, Nick Jr., Bang-on Clothing, and CBC4Kids.

The Vancouver organizers have a CDN$46-million merchandising program; previous Olympics have made as much as $100 million from mascot-related products.

René Fasel, Chairman of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Coordination Commission commented that “The IOC welcomes these imaginative new additions to the Olympic Family as they take their place on the world stage today – a symbol of the Games and of Canada. We know that when Olympians, Paralympians and visitors from around the globe arrive in British Columbia at Games time, they will fall under the spell of these captivating characters.”

The characters first appearance will be at a Bay store in the Lower Mainland; HBC is a major sponsor of the Games. They will then make their way to schools, take a break through the Christmas season, and fly to Ottawa for the Winterlude festival.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

According to media reports, a Colombian air force AC-47 (registration FAC1670) spy plane carrying five people has crashed near the Colombian city of La Dorada, in the department of Caldas.

All on board the plane are believed to have been killed, according to Colombia Reports. Among the dead, according to Monsters and Critics, are two technicians, a major and two second lieutenants. ABS-CBN News reports that the dead included three high ranking officials and two lower ranking ones.

Jorge Ballesteros, a Colombian air force official, says that the plane took off from an air force base in the city of Puerto Salgar and was on an exercise mission when it crashed. He also states that although it was on a training exercise, the plane was carrying bombs and machine guns.

A military team has been dispatched to the area to investigate the incident, but they have already put the blame on mechanical failure. Ballestero noted that investigators have ruled out a rebel attack and terrorism as possible causes.

AC-47’s have been used by the Colombian air force for nearly 20 years, most of which were donated from the United States. They were provided to the country in an attempt to fight the illegal drug market and to defend citizens and the military against rebel attacks. They are also used to gather intelligence and come equipped with a state-of-the-art communications system, radar and infrared detection systems.

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

On Friday, April 28, Wikinews interviewed Ethan Zuckerman, the founder of Geekcorps, a non-profit organization that sending people with technical skills to developing countries for development projects. Ethan has also founded Global Voices Online and helped found Tripod.com, the free web-hosting company now owned by Lycos. He serves a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Tripod.

The interview was held publicly in a dedicated IRC channel.

• What insipred you to get behind Geekcorps, and has there been a big Geekcorps mission, yet?

I got interested in Geekcorps because I’d lived in Ghana as a student in 1993 and 1994While over there, I was amazed at just how little internet connectivity was availableI did a bit of volunteer work helping wire an environmental organization, but basically the only people who had regular net access were US embassy employees.So I was fascinated to learn that my friends in Ghana were getting online in the late 1990s, and I wondered whether anyone would start building net-based businesses, as people were doing in the USMy wife and I went back to Ghana to visit friends and found that there was a huge deal of enthusiasm about the web and the potential it represented, but almost no expertisepeople were really desperate to learn, but very few people were able to teach at the same time, I was ready to step down from Tripod, and I knew a lot of burned out geeksI started wondering whether some of my friends would be interested in sharing their skills in the developing world and whether that would be a useful thing to dolots of international development folks seemed to think it was a good cause, so I started working on it fulltime.We ended up sending about 100 people overseas over the four years I was involved with the projectwe usually sent about 6-8 to a country at a time, working with a variety of businesses, NGOs and government agencies biggest projects were in Ghana, Mali, Mongolia, Senegal.

• With Geekcorps you pushed the idea that newly tech-savvy citizens of developing countries could start online businesses to do digital work for the developed world. But from an American perspective, that’s outsourcing, the bane of US workers. How do you justify working towards a goal that might cost Americans their jobs?

Basically, I’m concerned about the ability of people all over the world to make a good living, send their children to school, build nice houses, have enough food and clean water, etc there’s clearly something of a tradeoff offered by all sorts of globalization – as millions of Chinese are lifted out of rural povery, industrial manufacturing jobs in the US disappear but the US has a pretty good history of innovating and creating new jobs in fields that require a lot of intellectual endeavor the US continues to found interesting software companies, pioneer new net services and generally do a lot of the interesting development on the cutting edge of tech I think a lot of routine coding jobs are up for outsourcing, but I don’t think that people who design software – or who manage the outsourcing and software development process – are going away any time soon it’s very hard to outsource creative activities – it’s somewhat easier to outsource repetitive processes.I think we need to worry less about individual job loss and more about the ability to continue creating new projects. at the same time, I’m very excited to see companies in the developing world moving up the value chain as well, starting to innovate and create new projects as well…

• Lately you’ve been involved with projects including Global Voices and Worldchanging. Where and how do the two dovetail, and where and how do they differ? What are the strengths of each?

They’re very different projects and communities, WC is a magazine -it’s a chance for a small group of smart people to write original content on green issues it’s a lot less global than GV – perhaps overly focused on the US and Europe – and has a tight subject focus GV is an edited aggregator People are not so much writing original, opinionated content on GV as they are linking to other content indeed, we ask people to try very hard not to be especially opinionated on GV. Not NPOV, but a similar perspective – you point, you don’t advocate<ethanz> also GVO is huge – 10 regional editors, about 60 regular contributors, a network of about a thousand blogs we regularly link to the community has a very different feeling – much more international, more 24/7. both are fascinating projects, successes in their own ways, but quite different on the tech issues, a little – in both cases, we’re taking very simple weblog tools and asking them to support very large communities. And a little bit on the issue of how they interface with mainstream media in both cases, we’re interested in amplifying memes and getting them picked up by popular press as well as on the web.

• Isn’t that a contradiction? you’re asking people to be “less” opinionated, but not asking them to be unopinionated?

Blogs are essentially about opinion, asking for NPOV in the blog space misses the point – we want to know what opinions people in Syria have but we want our middle east editor to try to fairly represent the different opinions taking place in that space that said, he’s got an opinion as well so asking for NPOV isn’t the right thing to do – asking him to point to a diversity of opinions is, in our case

Geekcorps can be found online at www.geekcorps.org and Global Voices Online is at www.globalvoicesonline.org.