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Thursday, December 13, 2007

Controversial and explicit Canadian workplace safety ads have been pulled from television, and paper ads from some bus shelters for the Christmas season. However, the ads will return to air in January.

“It’s totally erroneous to suggest we’re pulling anything,” chairman of the Workplace Safety and Information Board of Ontario, Steve Mahoney said. “Our plan from Day 1 was to stop the ads around the middle of December when most of the advertising that’s in the media is focused on Christmas and purchasing gifts. We just didn’t want to be competing with all that stuff.”

In one of the TV ads a woman accidentally slips on grease on the floor and a large steaming pot falls onto her face, and she starts screaming to death. The ads end with the message “There really are no accidents”.

A paper ads shows a construction worker who is in a pool of blood with a forklift operation manual stuck in his chest. Another with a man who is slit by a “Danger” sign with his leg stuck in a machine. They show the messages: “Lack of training can kill” and the other “Ignoring safety procedures can kill”.

“The critics amount to about 25 per cent rating, and I’m delighted they’re upset about the ads because I wouldn’t want anyone to enjoy watching them.”

The videos have been viewed more than 70,000 times on the Board’s website and are gaining large amounts of views on YouTube.

The transit authorities of Hamilton and Mississauga will show modified advertisements. The transit authority of Guelph will show the ads in bus shelters, but the transit authority of Windsor will not because of the graphic nature.

“We’re not against workplace safety, but this is too graphic,” said Caroline Postma, chair of the Transit Windsor board.

Mississauga city councillour Carolyn Parrish said: “My son-in-law was telling me that they shouldn’t be on in prime time because when [my grandson] watches them he just about bursts into tear. Now he follows his mom around the kitchen to make sure she doesn’t spill grease. And he’s only four. There’s too much of a chance that … people are really badly affected by it, and can’t really do anything about it anyway.” She suggested the ads only be aired to workers with the jobs shown in the commercials.

Mahoney changed the earlier promise to air the ads only after 8:00pm to after 9:00pm at last nights meeting with Mississauga city council.

Mahoney said the commercials and paper ads are not “too graphic at all”. And they are “absolutely appropriate and they’re doing what they’re intended to do, they’re creating what I call a water cooler topic of conversation.”

Ninety-eight Canadian workers so far have been killed on the job this year.

Monday, November 28, 2005

SpaceX called off the much-delayed inaugural launch of their new Falcon 1 rocket on Saturday from Kwajalein’s Omelek Island launch site. The intent was to launch the U.S. Air Force Academy’s FalconSat 2 satellite, which will monitor plasma interactions with the Earth’s upper atmosphere and magnetosphere.

The launch was delayed, then finally cancelled after an oxygen boil-off vent had accidentally been left open. The oxygen was unable to cool the helium pressurant, which then proceeded to evaporate faster than it could be replenished. A main computer issue, probably serious enough to cause a scrub on its own, was also discovered.

This long-anticipated flight was originally expected to be launched in January 2005, however a series of setbacks forced a series of delays, with the flight most recently scheduled to be in early 2006. It was intended to be launched from the Kwajalein atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The maiden voyage was originally intended to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California with a Naval Research Laboratory satellite and a Space Services Incorporated space burial payload.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Pakistani officials said that a suspected US drone attack has killed at least eight people today, including foreign militants, in the country’s northwest.

The officials said that two missiles were fired at a compound being used by suspected Taliban militants in Mir Ali village, in North Waziristan, a region on the Afghanistan-border that is said to be a militant stronghold.

“At least eight people were killed in the drone attack. A compound used by militants was targeted,” said an unnamed official to the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.

Police official Mohammad Haroon said to the Reuters news agency that “it was a remote-controlled bomb. Two policemen died on the spot, while a third has succumbed to his injuries a short while ago.”

US military officials generally do not confirm attacks such as these, but its armed forces and Central Intelligence Agency employees in Afghanistan are the only forces that deploy pilotless drones in the region.

At least 65 similar drone strikes have killed about 625 people in Pakistan since August of last year, according to AFP.

Thursday, March 18, 2021

On Monday, Kim Yo Jong, vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and sister of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, warned the United States and South Korea as a reaction to the joint military drills conducted by the US and South Korea.

In a statement released by the Rodong Sinmun, Kim Yo Jong said: “The peaceful spring days of three years ago are unlikely to return”. Arirang News asserted the “peaceful spring” refers to the inter-Korean meetings held in April 2018.

In her statement, Kim described ‘the south Korean authorities’ as “all born with stupidity” and “become the dumb and deaf bereft of judgment”. In response to the drills — which the North Korean government reportedly perceived as a threat — Kim expressed the possibility of closing various inter-Korean organizations like the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country and the Kumgangsan International Tourism Bureau. “We also examine the issue of dissolving the Kumgangsan International Tourism Bureau and other organizations concerned as any cooperation and exchange with the south Korean authorities antagonizing us are no longer necessary”, Kim said.

Towards the end of the statement, Kim said, “If it [the United States] wants to sleep in peace for coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step.”

Speaking to Arirang News, Yang Moo-Jin, the vice president for public affairs at the University of North Korean Studies, said the message indicates “the regime is willing to talk […] as long as the South [Korean authorities] show some sincerity by not raising tensions through the joint drills”. Lim Eul-chul, a professor of North Korean studies at the Kyungnam University, said the North “is reaffirming its long-held stance that there will be no talks unless sanctions against the regime are lifted”. In an interview with Arirang News, Andrei Lankov, the director of the Korea Risk Group, said the message is nothing out of the ordinary, and similar messages have been coming each spring and the contents of this message are not to be overestimated. He qualified the statement as being “business as usual” and “by the North Korean standards it’s pretty tame”.

Monday, November 9, 2009

China has executed nine people for taking part in July’s ethnic unrest in the western city of Ürümqi, according to a local state news agency.

The official Xinhau news agency reported that the nine were the first of those convicted in the riots to be executed. It said the sentences were carried out with the approval of the country’s supreme court; however, it was not immediately clear where the executions were carried out.

Violence erupted in the Xinjiang regional capital of Ürümqi on July 5, after Uighurs protested the deaths of two Uighur factory workers in a brawl with Han Chinese in southern China’s Guangdong province.

Uighurs said the protests turned violent when police cracked down on the rally. Protesters then attacked ethnic Han people in the regional capital. Two days later, Han Chinese staged revenge attacks. Nearly 200 people are believed to have been killed, but the official toll is much lower.

At least 21 people have been sentenced in connection with the Ürümqi riots, in crimes ranging from murder to arson, robbery, and destruction of property. Twelve people have been sentenced to death.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

BBC Wales and iPTV station VTV are reporting that a light aircraft made an emergency landing at 13:00 BST at Treforest Industrial Estate near Cardiff.

The aircraft, an orange-coloured single-engine model Fox home-built kit was carrying two people when it made a forced landing on a section of dual carriageway within the industrial estate.

It is not known how severely the man and woman on board were injured, a spokesperson for South Wales Police stated that both of the aircraft’s occupants sustained “non life-threatening injuries”.

Treforest Industrial Estate is one of the largest business parks in the south Wales valleys. Its location, just two hundred metres from the main A470 expressway could have resulted in a far greater tragedy.

VTV reporter and private pilot Craig Handley said that the location of the accident “would have been the most logical place to try and set the aircraft down as the dual carriageway, which runs through the estate, is clearly visible from the air and is almost completely straight and wide.”

Today’s accident comes less than a year after a similar-sized aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing less than two miles away from Treforest Industrial Estate. A Cessna 150 suffered a sudden loss of engine power during its approach to nearby Cardiff International Airport.

The Cessna in the earlier accident collided with a group of trees shedding its wings before coming to rest on a small country road. The two occupants of that aircraft received slight injuries.

South Wales Police have not confirmed whether any motorists or pedestrians were injured when the aircraft in today’s accident made its emergency landing. The aircraft did cause some structural damage to a factory unit on the industrial estate prior to coming to rest, inverted, on the adjacent dual carriageway.

According to one eyewitness, the aircraft appeared to have experienced an engine-related problem seconds before impact.

A spokesperson, for Cardiff International Airport said that the aircraft had departed from Cardiff at 12:43 BST and that the airport’s Air Traffic Control centre had lost contact with the plane.

The Civil Aviation Authority’s Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) have been informed and are due to begin their investigation into the crash.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

At least 113 people are now dead and hundreds more are missing after a 10 foot (3 m) tsunami destroyed several villages in a series of remote islands in western Indonesia. The tsunami was caused by a magnitude 7.7 earthquake which struck on Monday at 9:42 p.m. local time (14:42 UTC). The epicenter of the earthquake was 78 kilometers (48 mi) west of South Pagai, one of the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra.

“We are predicting that people will need food supplies and shelter. The rain is coming down very hard, the wind is very strong,” a local police officer said, addind that emergency posts had been set up and patrols were being made to try and locate the missing. An official said that they had purchased 200 body bags “just in case.”

A local official said that most of the buildings in the coastal village of Betu Monga had been destroyed when the tsunami struck. “Of the 200 people living in that village, only 40 have been found. 160 are still missing, mostly women and children,” he said. “We have people reporting to the security post here that they could not hold on to their children, that they were swept away. A lot of people are crying.” Food supplies, he added, were running low.

Wisnu Wijaya, the preparedness director with the National Disaster Management Agency, said that the government is getting aid to the islands. “We already sent a rapid response team to this area, coordinated by the provincial government. We have local disaster management at Padang, because right now the condition of the wave is quite high,” he said. Wijaya added that high waves and stormy weather have made it difficult to reach the affected areas, and communication was a problem. Emergency shelters have been set up and the first team from Sumatra was arriving Tuesday evening to begin a rapid assessment of the aid that was needed. “Up to now, I think we still can manage this problem. Maybe also we’ll send staff to go there and make a better coordination. If they need national resources to deploy there, we’ll be ready to support local government,” Wijaya said.

The head of the regional government in the affected area told local television that some of the people recorded as missing may have moved to higher ground to take refuge from the waves. Rick Hallet, who was aboard his boat when the earthquake struck, told Australian television: “We threw whatever we could that floated—surfboards, fenders—then we jumped into the water. Fortunately, most of us had something to hold on to … and we just washed in the wetlands, and scrambled up the highest trees that we could possibly find and sat up there for an hour and a half.” The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued a statement saying that radio contact had been lost with a tourist boat in the area which could have been nine Australians and a Japanese national. A humanitarian organisation said that there were “genuine fears” for those aboard.

A spokesperson for a surfing resort on the coast of North Pagai said that they had “experienced a level of devastation that has rendered the resort inoperable”. Witnesses suggested that villas at the resort had been “wiped out” by the tsunami. One report suggested that a 10 feet (3 m) wave had hit the resort, causing boats to burst into flames. “There was a lot of debris floating in the water, including bar stools and other pieces of furniture from Macaronis Resort,” a member of staff said. Reports suggested that water had reached rooftops in North Pagai.

Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area prone to seismic shifts that spark earthquakes and volcanic activity. A massive earthquake in 2004 caused a tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people across the Indian Ocean. After that disaster Indonesia worked to establish early warning systems and disaster management programs to help deal with future quakes.