Saturday, February 12, 2005A former employee of Google, Inc. has said he was fired after he made a series of unfavorable comments about the company on a publically-viewable blog. Mark Jen, formerly a Microsoft employee, began work at the Mountain View, California company on January 18. He then went on to make several observations about the company over the following week. In particular, some of the comments included information on the company’s financial situation garnered from an internal conference and indications of the company’s new products for 2005.

Nine days later, apparently of his own volition, Jen removed the comments from his blog. However, on January 28, Google fired him, an act which Jen attributes to his blogging. Google has not commented on his dismissal to other news sources, but has acknowledged that Jen no longer works at the company.

In his blog, on February 11, 2005, Jen appeared positive about his future. “I’ve actually viewed this as a great learning experience. Obviously, I’ve gotten a first-hand chance to learn about the power of blogging. I’ve also learned to be a little more analytical about situations, a lot more cautious and a lot less assuming.”

Friday, July 17, 2009Following similar threats by workers at New Fabris and Nortel, workers at JLG in Tonneins, France, threatened to blow up several platform cranes. The JLG factory announced in April 2009 that it will fire 53 of its 163 workers by the end of 2009, while the remaining 110 jobs will not be secure over the next 2 years.

JLG Tonneins was acquired in 2006 with its parent JLG Industries, a maker of aerial work platforms, by the U.S.-based Oshkosh Corporation. Despite being hugely profitable in the past, production has been much reduced since 2008 with the contraction of the construction industry and lower demand for its products. Despite excellent past results the new American management demanded sweeping cuts at the company.

In the view of locals, “the company’s actions are a disgrace given the expensive perks, such as official cars, for its corporate fat cats, compared to the sacrifice, silence, and dignity demanded by the company of those it has made redundant.”

The management offered severance pay of € 3,000 (US $4,200), however the workers demanded a severance package commensurate with “the wealth that their labor has generated.” Worker’s delegates requested a “supra-legal” payment of € 30,000, on Thursday 16 of July the management responded with a counter offer of € 16,000. On Thursday night the worker’s actions secured the € 30,000 settlement initially demanded.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Last night HBO premiered I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA. Since its inception, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has made headlines and raised eyebrows. They are almost single-handedly responsible for the movement against animal testing and their efforts have raised the suffering animals experience in a broad spectrum of consumer goods production and food processing into a cause célèbre.

PETA first made headlines in the Silver Spring monkeys case, when Alex Pacheco, then a student at George Washington University, volunteered at a lab run by Edward Taub, who was testing neuroplasticity on live monkeys. Taub had cut sensory ganglia that supplied nerves to the monkeys’ fingers, hands, arms, legs; with some of the monkeys, he had severed the entire spinal column. He then tried to force the monkeys to use their limbs by exposing them to persistent electric shock, prolonged physical restraint of an intact arm or leg, and by withholding food. With footage obtained by Pacheco, Taub was convicted of six counts of animal cruelty—largely as a result of the monkeys’ reported living conditions—making them “the most famous lab animals in history,” according to psychiatrist Norman Doidge. Taub’s conviction was later overturned on appeal and the monkeys were eventually euthanized.

PETA was born.

In the subsequent decades they ran the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty against Europe’s largest animal-testing facility (footage showed staff punching beagle puppies in the face, shouting at them, and simulating sex acts while taking blood samples); against Covance, the United State’s largest importer of primates for laboratory research (evidence was found that they were dissecting monkeys at its Vienna, Virginia laboratory while the animals were still alive); against General Motors for using live animals in crash tests; against L’Oreal for testing cosmetics on animals; against the use of fur for fashion and fur farms; against Smithfield Foods for torturing Butterball turkeys; and against fast food chains, most recently against KFC through the launch of their website kentuckyfriedcruelty.com.

They have launched campaigns and engaged in stunts that are designed for media attention. In 1996, PETA activists famously threw a dead raccoon onto the table of Anna Wintour, the fur supporting editor-in-chief of Vogue, while she was dining at the Four Seasons in New York, and left bloody paw prints and the words “Fur Hag” on the steps of her home. They ran a campaign entitled Holocaust on your Plate that consisted of eight 60-square-foot panels, each juxtaposing images of the Holocaust with images of factory farming. Photographs of concentration camp inmates in wooden bunks were shown next to photographs of caged chickens, and piled bodies of Holocaust victims next to a pile of pig carcasses. In 2003 in Jerusalem, after a donkey was loaded with explosives and blown up in a terrorist attack, Newkirk sent a letter to then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat to keep animals out of the conflict. As the film shows, they also took over Jean-Paul Gaultier‘s Paris boutique and smeared blood on the windows to protest his use of fur in his clothing.

The group’s tactics have been criticized. Co-founder Pacheco, who is no longer with PETA, called them “stupid human tricks.” Some feminists criticize their campaigns featuring the Lettuce Ladies and “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” ads as objectifying women. Of their Holocaust on a Plate campaign, Anti-Defamation League Chairman Abraham Foxman said “The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent.” (Newkirk later issued an apology for any hurt it caused). Perhaps most controversial amongst politicians, the public and even other animal rights organizations is PETA’s refusal to condemn the actions of the Animal Liberation Front, which in January 2005 was named as a terrorist threat by the United States Department of Homeland Security.

David Shankbone attended the pre-release screening of I Am An Animal at HBO’s offices in New York City on November 12, and the following day he sat down with Ingrid Newkirk to discuss her perspectives on PETA, animal rights, her responses to criticism lodged against her and to discuss her on-going life’s work to raise human awareness of animal suffering. Below is her interview.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Trevor Wilkinson, who founded the UK performance car manufacturer TVR has died at his home in Minorca, Spain. He was 85.

Wilkinson, from Blackpool, left education at 14, getting an apprenticeship at a local garage. In 1946 he bought a local wheelwright’s business, which he renamed Trevcar Motors, which sold and repaired cars, as well as undertaking light engineering work.

He built his first car the following year. It was a two-seater based on an Alvis Firebird chassis for his own use. He then formed TVR Engineering, the name derived from his own – TreVoR. The first TVR was unveiled in 1949. It was a two-seater with an alloy body and a multi-tubular steel chassis.

The first production TVR was initially called simply the ‘Mark I’, but became known as the Grantura. This M-type glass fibre bodied car was to remain in production, in a modified form, until 1980, when it was replaced by the Tasmin, which had an angular wedge design.

Wilkinson himself left TVR in 1962 to form another engineering business, which specialised in glass fibre construction. He moved to Minorca after retiring.

The TVR Car Club website announced yesterday that he had died in Spain. The news was confirmed by a spokeswoman for Minorca’s Mateu Orfila Hospital. According to the TVR Car Club’s site “He was aware of the serious nature of his final illness but, according to a friend, took it in stoical fashion that was typical of the man.”

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Calgary city council voted 10 to 3 on Wednesday to stop fluoridating their water supply. This overturns a previous plebiscite from 1989 to add the fluoride in an attempt to reduce tooth decay.

Opponents of water fluoridation claim that there could be unknown health effects of fluoride, and question its effectiveness in preventing tooth decay. They also claim that individuals should be able to decide for themselves whether or not to use fluoride. However, Alberta Health Services maintains that current evidence shows that fluoride is both safe, and beneficial to dental health.

It is estimated that no longer fluoridating the water supply could save Calgary’s city council C$750 thousand (€550 thousand) annually, as well as cutting a C$6 million (€4.3 million) upgrade to the fluoridation system.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

In a continuing crackdown on tax evasion, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has alleged that brokers with a branch of RBC Dominion Securities, Canada’s largest brokerage company, helped clients set up accounts in the small European principality of Liechtenstein in order to avoid taxation on their wealth.

In affadavits submitted by the CRA, brokers with an RBC Dominion Securities office in Victoria, British Columbia, allegedly helped clients set up 16 offshore entities with a division of the LGT Group in Liechtenstein. While that is not a crime under Canadian law, auditors allege that the entities were used to help Canadians hide worldwide income. Thirteen individuals are either being audited or have made voluntary disclosures, admitting to tax evasion. The agency is presently investigating to see if there are any other individuals participating in this scheme. Regarding the inquiry, dubbed “Project Jade”, the CRA will only say that it was launched on information from a “confidential informant”.

RBC issued a written statement, saying “As a firm, we have never encouraged Canadians — not 25 years ago and not today — to set up entities in Liechtenstein, and we have never instructed our investment advisers to recommend that practice,” and “we comply with all CRA requirements. This means that we provide all our clients with the forms they need to meet their personal tax obligations, and also file reports with CRA that form the basis for reviews such as this.”

Three RBC employees are presently being investigated, with one remaining unidentified.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Retired CBS News television correspondent Mike Wallace, known for his tough interviewing style, died April 7, at Waveny Care Center in New Canaan, Connecticut, surrounded by his family. He was 93 years old.

“It is with tremendous sadness that we mark the passing of Mike Wallace. His extraordinary contribution as a broadcaster is immeasurable and he has been a force within the television industry throughout its existence. His loss will be felt by all of us at CBS. All of us at CBS News and particularly at ’60 Minutes’ owe so much to Mike. Without him and his iconic style, there probably wouldn’t be a ’60 Minutes,” said CEO and president of CBS Leslie Moonves. CBS plans a tribute broadcast in remembrance of Wallace, scheduled to air on April 15.

Wallace interviewed many famous people including former United States president John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, former first lady Nancy and former president Ronald Reagan. He worked for the CBS News magazine show 60 Minutes for almost 40 years and announced he would step down in 2006, and subsequently interviewed for the program sparingly. His last sit down interview which occurred on January 6, 2007 was with baseball star Roger Clemens.

Wallace won his 21st Emmy Award for his 2006 interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Wallace was 89 years old at the time. Wallace said that interview stuck out to him the most, as well as his interview with Russian-American classical piano virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz, which he later said was his favorite interview.

Wallace said the interview that most affected him was his documentary on the Vietnam War in 1982. In the report, Wallace said General William Westmoreland exaggerated enemy casualty figures so Americans would keep supporting the war. Westmoreland sued CBS (Westmoreland v. CBS) and Wallace for $120 million, and later dropped the lawsuit. The trial pushed Wallace into clinical depression and he admitted in a 2006 60 Minutes tribute to himself, that he attempted suicide by overdosing. Wallace eventually became a spokesperson for the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, formerly known as the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression. He appeared in a 1998 documentary about depression called “Dead Blue.”

Wallace attended the University of Michigan, where he delved into the broadcasting world. He graduated in 1939 and became a communication officer in the U.S. Navy for three years during World War II. In the 1940’s and 1950’s Wallace appeared on many television and radio shows doing both news and entertainment broadcasts.

He married a woman he meet at college, Norma Kaphan and they had two boys, Peter and Christopher. The couple divorced in 1948. Wallace then married actress Buff Cobb which ended in divorce. He married twice more to Lorraine Perigord for 28 years and then Mary Yates, his current wife, turned widow.

He is survived by his two sons, wife, stepdaughter Pauline Dora and stepson Eames Yates including several grandchildren.