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Wednesday, February 23, 2005

London, Dublin – The illegal food dye Sudan Red 1, derived from chillies and banned in the EU since 2003, due to an associated risk of cancer has been found in several hundred products on European shelves. Products containing the illegal ingredient range from crisps, pizzas, casseroles and various chicken products to dozens of seasonings and sauces. The Italian food authorities found the illegal dye over routine checks, and thus alerted the British and subsequently the Irish authorities.

The dye found its way into the European food supply as a primary ingredient in a batch of Crosse and Blackwell Worcester Sauce ingredient manufactured in Britain by Premier Foods, which was then used in all of the affected food products. As a result of the find over 400 products have been withdrawn in the UK and Ireland. The financial cost of recalling all the affected products in Britain alone is expected to top £100m, €145m.

Despite the recall many industry experts are trying to calm the public. One common analogy in use is, “Just like one cigarette is unlikely to cause cancer on its own, one meal containing Sudan Red is also unlikely to cause cancer.” The problem is, if people regularly consume the dye, then the risk of cancer is greatly increased.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

A small plane crashed into a building, which was one of the Echelon office complex, in north Austin, Texas this morning at 09:56 local time (1456 UTC).

Federal officials say the plane owner was Joseph Andrew Stack III; presumed to be the pilot who set his house on fire on the 1800 block of Dapplegrey Lane in north Austin an hour earlier. He then drove to Georgetown Municipal Airport, approximately 20 miles away, took off and then crashed his private plane into the Echelon complex.

The Federal Aviation Authority indicated the light aircraft was a Piper Cherokee PA-28, as did news reports and eye witnesses. The FAA said the plane had no flight plan and was under Visual Flight Rules.

Mr. Stack committed suicide, and a suicide note has been located. Mr. Stack’s suicide note mentions anti-government and anti-corporate ideals, as well as problems with the Internal Revenue Service and that he lost money in the Enron scandal. Although the incident was intentional, a Department of Homeland Security official said that terrorism is not suspected. The online host of the note, T35 Hosting, later removed it in its entirety after the FBI requested its censorship. However, Wikinews has preserved the full text of the letter.

Austin Fire Department reported around 1100 local time (1600 UTC) that two people were transported to local hospitals and one was unaccounted for. One man was admitted at a local hospital under serious condition for smoke inhalation. The other man suffered from second-degree burns on 25% of his back and has been transported by helicopter to Brooke Medical Center in San Antonio and is said to be in stable condition.

The seven-story Echelon Building One is located on 9430 Research Boulevard and contains Internal Revenue Service offices. The Echelon building complex houses a number of federal offices, including Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Research Boulevard is the service road of U.S. Route 183. The incident has caused severe backups on both Research Boulevard and Route 183.

A witness told The Austin Statesman that he saw the plane flying lower than usual, then it made a sharp turn and hit the building.

An Austin County EMS official, James Shamard, said that smoke is visible from at least a mile from the crash site. Another official for the Austin Fire Department said that two persons who were working in the building are still unaccounted for.

MSNBC reports that there was some form of domestic dispute between Mr. Stack and his wife before the incident. He then reportedly used gasoline to light his house on fire. When the fire department arrived, they rescued his wife and teenage daughter.

According to Jerry Cullen, a pilot and former flight instructor who witnessed the crash, the plane was traveling at high speed at time of impact.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

In a New York press conference at 16:15 UTC, June 1st, Fritz Henderson, the Chief Executive Officer of General Motors, which filed for bankruptcy and Chapter 11 protection from its creditors earlier today, outlined a plan for what he called a “New GM”.

Speaking to the press under safe harbor provisions of U.S. law, Henderson described the events of today as a “defining moment” in the history of General Motors. Speaking to the public he said that “The GM that let you down is history,” and described a “New GM” that he expected to result from the bankruptcy process.

Henderson stated that he envisioned the bankruptcy process would take between 60 and 90 days. He stressed several times his view that the process would be one that is executed quickly, saying that not just a sense of urgency but “pure unadulterated speed” was his expectation of the process. He emphasized that “GM remains open for business” during the bankruptcy period, continuing to sell and to support its products, and that day one motions had been filed in the bankruptcy court in order to allow this.

Regarding the bankruptcy process he said, “We will do it right. And we will do it once.”

He stated that the plan for General Motors had the support of the United Auto Workers union, the Canadian Auto Workers union, the GM VEBA, and a majority of the unsecured bondholders of GM. He also mentioned that GM had already received €1.5 million in bridge financing from the German government.

In response to questions about the possibility of the United States federal government, a majority shareholder in the restructured company, dictating future product development and strategy, such as the sale of more fuel-efficient and green vehicles; he first observed that the federal government had already stated to him that it had “no real interest in running our business” and that he expected that still to be his job. Of the specific hypothetical scenario where the management of GM wants to make one type of car, because it thinks that it is the right thing for the business, and the U.S. government wants to make another type of car, he stated that “I don’t think it’s going to happen.” Expanding on that point he stated that he expected the “New GM” to focus upon “highly fuel-efficient and green technology”, and that operating both in accordance with U.S. environmental laws and in response to customer demand would naturally result in the New GM producing the types of vehicles that the U.S. government would encourage.

The “New GM” he also expected to focus on “four core brands”, and will size its dealership to match that. He stated that GM would offer a “deferred termination” package to dealers, to allow them to cease dealing in GM vehicles in a managed and gradual way.

He stated that the bankruptcy filings did not cover General Motors’ businesses in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East, and Asia and the Pacific. Of GM’s profitable ventures in China, specifically, he stated that they were “a critical part of the New GM”. In response to questions of whether the New GM would import cars from China to the U.S., he stated the formative company’s core principle that “We build where we sell” applied in both directions, with GM building in China to sell in China and building in the U.S. to sell in the U.S., stating that this shortened supply chains.

He declined to predict when the New GM would return to profitability, stating that the goal was rather to lower the break-even EBIT point for the company. He also declined to speculate upon when the U.S. government would sell its stake in the company, saying that that was a question “better addressed to the U.S. Treasury”, and merely saying that he expected it to be “years, not months” when the U.S. Treasury felt it would give “the right return for taxpayers.”

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Friday, May 19, 2017

Yesterday, Zomato, a food ordering and restaurant finding company, announced security breach of more than 17 million accounts, via their official blog. A hacker operating under the alias nclay uploaded evidence to prove they had the stolen data — hashed passwords and emails — for sale, Hackread.com reported. Zomato later announced they contacted the hacker, who asked Zomato to organise a bug bounty programme.

The food ordering company, with 120 million monthly users, said the payment information of the users was not located with this data and was not leaked. Zomato said it uses PCI Data Security Standards.

As a security measure, all the passwords of the involved Zomato accounts were reset and all of the accounts were forcibly logged out from the application and website. The company said only hashed passwords were compromised.

Hashed passwords are encrypted and, per Zomato, every password had a different “salt”, for cryptographic salting was performed before hashing the original password. A “salt” is a random set of characters added before encryption to make decryption to obtain the original passkey more difficult.

The hashed password itself can not be used to access the account. In the blog post before contacting the hacker, saying “internal (human) security breach”, Zomato suggested this could have happened after a worker’s development account was hijacked. After contacting the hacker, and promising a bug bounty programme on Hackerone, they said, the hacker agreed and removed the stolen data which was put on sale on the dark web. Zomato said they are looking forward to working closely with the ethical hacker community on security vulnerabilities.

Monday, June 1, 2009

United States automobile manufacturing firm General Motors filed for bankruptcy and Chapter 11 protection from its creditors at 12:00 UTC Monday, in a Manhattan, New York federal bankruptcy court. This was the largest bankruptcy filing for a U.S. manufacturing company, and with declared assets of $82.29 billion and a debt of $172.81 billion, and the fourth largest bankruptcy filing in recent U.S. history — after the bankruptcies of {{w|Lehman Brothers|| ($691.06 billion), Washington Mutual ($327.91 billion), and WorldCom ($103.91 billion).

The filing, expected to be the first of many, was for a New York GM affiliate, Chevrolet-Saturn of Harlem Incorporated. Numbered 09-50026, it named GM as a debtor in possession, and was filed before judge Robert Gerber.

GM is to be represented throughout the filing process by Weil Gotshal & Manges, a New York law firm specializing in bankruptcy.

The chief restructuring officer, named in the filing, is to be Al Koch, a managing director at AlixPartners LLP in New York, who will report directly to Fritz Henderson, the Chief Executive Officer of General Motors.

In its bankruptcy petition, GM listed its primary creditors as:

The amount owed to UAW excludes “approximately $9.4 billion corresponding to the GM Internal VEBA”. USD22,760 millions are owed to bondholders.

Analysts have observed that the effect of the bankruptcy filing on the U.S. economy is not expected to be as major as it once would have been. One such voice, Mark Zandy, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com, commented that “Bankruptcy now is irrelevant in terms of the economic consequence of what’s happening to GM.” Such analysts believe that the economic impact of GM’s problems has already been felt, with its effects on parts suppliers and employment. They also believe that GM’s programme of accelerated payments, and its participation in a U.S. Treasury program to ensure prompt payments to parts manufacturers, will have cushioned the effect of the bankruptcy itself.

Speaking on Bloomberg Radio, David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, stated that the fragility of the parts suppliers, the loss of whom would threaten the entire automobile manufacturing industry, was of more immediate concern than the GM bankruptcy.

Also filing for chapter 11 protection today were Saturn LLC and Saturn Distribution Corporation, subsidiary companies of General Motors.

As a consequence of the bankruptcy, General Motors Corporation (GM.N) was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and was replaced by Cisco Systems (CSCO.O), these changes scheduled by Dow Jones & Company to take effect from the opening of trading on June 8.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

A tree known as the Anne Frank Tree, a 150 year-old chestnut tree that was made famous in the writings of Anne Frank‘s diary, has been saved from being chopped down by a Dutch court.

Frank was a Jewish girl who was hiding from the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II and often referred to the tree as being “comforting” as she looked out the hidden apartment skylight.

Officials for the city of Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Museum state that the tree is infected with a fungus and poses a public health hazard as they argue that it was in imminent danger of falling over. It had been scheduled to be cut down on Tuesday, but was saved after an emergency court ruling.

Judge Jurjen Bade said the tree did not pose an “acute danger” and ruled out what he called “extreme measures,” such as cutting it down immediately because conservationists claimed that it could be saved, and the city did not consider other alternatives to cutting it down.

According to the city the tree would have been replaced with an offspring of the original tree.

“We would rather have a young living tree that will be ten meters tall in ten years,” said the director of the museum, Hans Westra.

People have even begun to sell the tree’s chestnuts on auction websites like eBay where one of the nuts reportedly reached a bid of US$10,000.

Saturday, August 18, 2018

US soul singer Aretha Franklin died in her Detroit, Michigan home on Thursday morning, her publicist Gwendolyn Quinn stated on behalf of the family. According to the statement, the official cause of death was pancreatic cancer.

Per the statement, Franklin died at about 9:50 am local time, “surrounded by family and loved ones. In one of the darkest moments of our lives, we are not able to find the appropriate words to express the pain in our heart. We have lost the matriarch and rock of our family. The love she had for her children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and cousins knew no bounds.”

Aretha Louise Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee on March 25, 1942. After some time in Buffalo, New York, the family settled in Detroit around 1946. Her father was a preacher, and Aretha sang solos at his church when she was 10. Her mother died that year, having left the family four years earlier. Aretha had her first son before age 13, and recorded gospel music at 14. She contracted in 1956 to JVB Records, with her father’s help, then in 1960 to Columbia Records, and in 1966 to Atlantic Records. At Atlantic she focused on soul and rhythm and blues (R&B), and was highly successful. She acquired the nickname “the Queen of Soul” in 1967. Over the next seven years she was 33 times on the R&B Top Ten list. One of her signature songs, Respect, won her the Grammy Award for best R&B performance in 1968, and she won best R&B performance every year from then through 1975. In 1987 she became the first woman in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Franklin’s musical career resurged in the 1980s. Her last number-one hit was a 1987 duet with British singer George Michael, I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me). Her last public performance was in November of last year, at an Elton John AIDS Foundation event in New York City. As of June last year, according to Billboard, she was working on an album of collaborations with others, mentioning Stevie Wonder, Elton John, and Lionel Richie.

Franklin’s career was entwined with the civil rights movement. Her father’s politics brought her in contact with Martin Luther King Jr., with whom she toured in the late 1950s. Her father was involved in organizing the 1963 Detroit Walk to Freedom with King, and when King was assassinated in 1968, she sang at his funeral. Respect, and others of her songs, became anthems for the civil rights and feminism movements. She told Vogue magazine in 2015 she didn’t record Respect for a political movement; “Not just me or the civil rights movement or women — it’s important to people. And I was asked what recording of mine I’d put in a time capsule, and it was Respect. Because people want respect — even small children, even babies. As people, we deserve respect from one another.”

She sang at Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration as President of the United States. On her death, Barack Obama tweeted, “Aretha helped define the American experience. In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade — our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace.”

Aretha Franklin is survived by sons Clarence, Edward, Ted, and Kecalf.