Thursday, February 15, 2007

The year 2007 marks the meeting of the major representatives of the watch and jewelry industry at BaselWorld Show, Basel, Switzerland. The Show will take place in the period of April 12 – 19, 2007. The international event is to attract over 2000 companies from 45 countries and about 90,000 visitors.

At present day the luxury goods business holds quite strong positions in the world industry and is still developing at high rates due to appropriate economic climate. Thus, BaselWorld is perceived by watch and jewelry producers and their partners as favorable new grounds for their further development.

BaselWorld is organized annually by MCH Swiss Exhibition (Basel) Ltd with a purpose to provide new business opportunities for the participants who are expected to exhibit their latest products in the exhibition area of about 160,000 m2. Visitors come to BaselWorld to keep aware of the current trends of watch and jewelry making, while retailers and wholesalers discover new partners and strengthen their links with well-established ones.

The exhibition is divided into product sectors presented in the six exhibition halls, among them there are the Hall of Universe and the Hall of Elements. This year the management of the Show has taken care of updating and redecorating the design of the halls.

All the participants of the event will be able to expand their business contacts beyond the fair in the BaselWorld Village located nearby. The ‘village’ comprises special facilities for partners to discuss their matters in informal atmosphere.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

In the United Kingdom, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) began a work stoppage at 19:00 BST (18:00 GMT) today after last-minute talks over pay, jobs and disciplinary issues broke down. The stoppage is expected to last 48 hours and could leave millions of travelers without transportation.

Sky News says that there are fears that the strike may affect fan transportation for the England national football team‘s 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifier match against Andorra at Wembley Stadium tomorrow. Football Association (FA) chief executive Ian Watmore announced that the game would continue as planned at 20:15 BST (19:15 GMT) and encouraged spectators to arrive at the stadium early. The stadium gates will now open at 17:45 BST (16:45 GMT).

No extra transport is being put on and overground trains will not stop at Wembley, and car parking and park-and-ride facilities are unavailable at the ground. Fears of lack of transportation raised the possibility that the game would be forced to play behind closed doors without the team’s supporters.

Watmore said that refunds will be available for supporters that do not attend the game. Last week, the FA decided to halt ticket sales at 70,000 in anticipation of a possible strike. Wembley Stadium can accommodate 90,000 fans for football matches.

In years past, the RMT has been known to clash with the London Underground and its privatised contractors Metronet and Tubelines.

On June 5, London Underground offered staff a four-year pay deal or a two-year deal which they called an “above inflation pay rise”. However, the RMT is seeking a 5% pay raise and a commitment to no compulsory redundancies.

The English national football team currently leads their group in the World Cup qualifying with 18 points and a 6–0–0 record. Andorra currently has no points and has lost all six of their matches. Although Andorra has been eliminated from competing in the 2010 World Cup, England is still competing for better placement.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Scientists have uncovered the largest Neolithic settlement in the United Kingdom at the Durrington Walls and believe that the village was inhabited by the people who built the Stonehenge monument.

Scientists say that the village was built around 2,600 B.C., roughly when Stonehenge was believed to have been constructed, and housed over 100 people.

Inside the areas which would have been the interior of houses at the time, scientists also found outlines of what they think were beds and cupboards or dressers. Pieces of pottery and “filthy” rubbish around the site. Animal bones, arrowheads, stone tools and other relics were also discovered.

“We’ve never seen such quantities of pottery and animal bone and flint. In what were houses, we have excavated the outlines on the floors of box beds and wooden dressers or cupboards,” said Sheffield University archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson.

So far, the dig has revealed at least 8 houses roughly 14-16 feet square, but scientists say that they think there may have been at least 25 altogether.

The site was likely to have been occupied only seasonally rather than year-round and evidence suggests that a lot of “partying” went on at the location.

“The animal bones are being thrown away half-eaten. It’s what we call a feasting assemblage. This is where they went to party – you could say it was the first free festival. The rubbish isn’t your average domestic debris. There’s a lack of craft-working equipment for cleaning animal hides and no evidence for crop-processing,” added Pearson.

The Durrington Walls are approximately 2 miles from the Stonehenge site.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The U.S.-based multibillion dollar online search engine, Google Incorporated, has announced Tuesday in a public statement on its official blog that the company has been the victim of a “highly sophisticated” and “targeted attack” against their corporate infrastructure that they allege “originated from China.”

The author of said statement, David Drummond, Google’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, noted that Google was not the only multinational corporation targeted. “As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses—including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors—have been similarly targeted.” The names of these other corporations in question have yet to be released. To this end, Google states that they are “currently in the process of notifying these companies,” and they are cooperating with the “relevant authorities.”

Drummond goes on to say that through a separate and unrelated investigation, Google has additionally discovered that the accounts of “dozens” of Gmail users worldwide who are “advocates” of political and human rights in China “appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties” as well.

However, he affirms that “…these accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.”

As a result of what has occurred here, Google said it has already made significant changes to the security infrastructure of its users’ accounts as to prevent something like this from ever happening again.

At the same time, Google advised individual users to use more discretion while online, “We would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords.”

Google launched its Chinese-language search engine, Google.cn, in January 2006. The only precondition to operating in China was that the company had to acquiesce to certain censorship demands from the one-party government. When defending their controversial rationale for operating in the socialist republic, Google said “…that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China, and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results.”

Nevertheless, Google has still been widely criticized for this voluntary censorship of search results of topics, such as the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, movements for Tibetan and Taiwan independence, and the Falun Gong religious movement along with other information considered harmful to the Chinese government. Some feel it goes against and is hypocritical of Google’s informal motto, “Don’t be evil”.

In response, a spokesperson for the Chinese Consulate in New York City, Wenqi Gao, said in a phone interview to The New York Times, “I want to reaffirm that China is committed to protecting the legitimate rights and interests of foreign companies in our country.”

In contrast, Sharon Hom, the executive director of Human Rights in China said, “It’s a wakeup call for the international community about the risks of doing business in China. The tendency has been for companies to keep their eye just on the benefits of doing business. But the risks are real—The risks are to our intellectual property. The risks are to our values.”

Analysts noted that this move has the potential to financially hurt Google, which has a somewhat limited share of the Internet search market in China, which is dominated by the Chinese-based Google-like website Baidu. Google’s shares fell just under two percent after hours to US$579.50. Meanwhile, Baidu shares rose five percent to US$406.

Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie said, “The consequences of not playing the China market could be very big for any company, but particularly for an Internet company that makes its money from advertising.”

“It will hurt their profits. They get eight to ten percent of their revenues from China,” said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst for Global Equities Research. “If they walk, they will eventually be invited back into China, because the Chinese people will request that. Openness always wins, but it will take some time.”

Tim Ghriskey, the chief investment officer for Solaris Asset Management said, “Clearly not good news for Google and clearly not good news for consumers. You’ve got to think that eventually Google figures out a way to deal with this. If they do have to shut down their Chinese operations, that they would be able to reinstate them. Hopefully soon. I can’t imagine that this would be permanent.” He added, “China is a great growth engine for every business. It is a great opportunity for Google as well.”

In response to all that has happened and what has been said, Drummond explains that this has “led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China.”

He goes on to state, “We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Drummond concludes his statement by trying to assuage the situation the best he can, “The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences…We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.”

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Nearly two feet of the rail route in Kashmir, India was blown up by militants near the Pulwama district, affecting train services from north to south Kashmir. The blast came a few days after militants fought with the Indian army in the area, thereby killing fourteen people.

“There were no casualties, as no trains were running when the militants set off a powerful bomb on the railway track,” said Aijaz Ahmad, a local police official. He added that train services have been temporarily suspended.

According to police, the attackers detonated an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) near Galbug at about 10 PM local time (4:30 PM UTC), Thursday night. Two feet of the rail track on the Qazigund-Baramulla area was damaged. This track was developed two years ago, police sources stated. The attack came just before senior officers were supposed to inspect ongoing works in the Kashmiri railways.

The track was repaired on Friday morning and train services resumed in the region. Kamal Saine, Deputy Inspector General of Police, south Kashmir, told the Press Trust of India agency that the damage to the track was not significant and it took a short time to mend it.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Two people are dead at a Michigan, United States community college in what police are calling a murder-suicide on Friday, the Detroit Free Press reports.

The victims, a 28-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman, were found in the Fine Arts Building of Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Michigan.

The Free Press reports that the suspected gunman entered classroom F-111 with a shotgun, killed the female and then shot himself. The two were in the same theater class, but police have yet to determine if there was a further relationship between the two.

“The original call was some kind of assault … shots in the building,” Police Deputy Chief Gregg Brighton told the Free Press.

“Officers responded to the scene, were able to get a perimeter on the building,” Brighton said. “An entry team entered the south hallway … as they entered they heard another gunshot. Officers were able to enter one of the rooms, and discovered two deceased parties. We cleared the building.”

Dearborn police and campus police secured the crime scene after evacuating some students from the building. The Free Press also reports that four Michigan State Police detectives are assisting local authorities in the investigation.

The school was locked down for several hours shortly after a 911 call was received. The lockdown has now been lifted.

The school will be closed for the rest of the day and the school will be offering counseling services.

Monday, March 12, 2007

24 of 26 Swiss Cantons rejected the proposal for a single health insurance system, in which premiums would be based on income and wealth. The vote on Sunday was the latest in a series of attempts to cut rising costs and ease the financial burden on citizens.

Around 71% of voters rejected the reform. Turnout was at about 46%, slightly above the Swiss average.

As expected, voters in the main German-speaking part of the country turned down the planned reform, which was supported by the centre-left but opposed by the centre-right as well as the business community, parliament and the government.

Opposition in the French and Italian speaking regions was less pronounced. The cantons Jura and Neuchâtel in the French speaking regions voted in favor of the proposed reforms.

Health insurance premiums are higher in southern and western Swiss cantons than in German-speaking areas.

The Swiss Interior Minister Pascal Couchepin said an important part of the Swiss Population appeared to be opposed to “a revolution” in health insurance but he said that he wanted current reforms currently under discussion in the Swiss Parliament to go ahead. He called on all sides, especially health insurers and the cantonal authorities, to make efforts to reduce spending on health insurance and aim for a greater cost efficiency. Currently Switzerland has 87 private insurers providing mandatory basic health care coverage for Swiss residents under a 1996 law. But costs have sky-rocketed. Over 100,000 people are not covered by health insurance due to non payment.

Opponents to the initiative argued that a single insurance system would lead to complacency and create a two-tier system, in which the wealthy would be the only ones available to afford to have additional private insurance coverage.

Supporters of the initiative said a single health insurer would increase the system’s efficiency and allow for annual savings of at least 300 million Swiss Francs (about $245 million) in administrative costs. Currently, the funding system is unbalanced, since many clients on low incomes use state subsidies to pay their premiums, according to the Green Party and the Social Democrats.

The initiative to unite all the insurance companies and introduce premiums based on wealth and income was the most recent in a series of attempts over the past ten years to reduce the public spending on health care. A proposal, similar to this recent proposal, to modify the funding system of the health insurance companies was rejected by 73% of voters in 2003.

Switzerland has the most expensive health system in Europe. Switzerland’s expenditure on health care was 11.6% in 2005, in front of Germany and France but behind the United States.