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Friday, April 23, 2010

Minas, one of the largest states of Brazil, has stopped the sale of the Toyota Corolla over safety concerns.

The move was made after nine Corolla customers reported that their cars automatically accelerated. The state public prosecutor’s office said in an online statement on Tuesday that the problem is blamed on accelerator pedals sticking underneath floor mats. Local government said the issue was “putting in danger the lives of occupants”.

According to the prosecutor’s office, sales of Corollas may resume when Toyota alters the floormats in its current models. Toyota has recalled over eight million vehicles worldwide due to acceleration problems.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

A Catholic school in Michigan, United States was evacuated today after several students became sick during a church service.

Bloomfield Hills Public Safety Director Rick Matott said St. Hugo of the Hills Catholic School evacuated its 860 students around 9 a.m. EDT today. At least three children had passed out during the church service. Two children reportedly had to be taken to area hospitals.

Medical crews and hazardous material experts responded to the school to determine the cause of the illness. However, it is still not known what caused the students to become sick.

Students walked to the nearby Oakland Community College campus while they waited for their parents to pick them up.

St. Hugo of the Hills Catholic School is about 15 miles northwest of Detroit.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

At the company’s own Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote at the Moscone West center in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the next generation of software products from Apple. Apple unveiled Lion, the new version of their Mac OS X operating system for desktop and laptop computers that brings new features to the software. They also demonstrated iOS 5, a new version of the operating system that powers iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. Alongside both announcements, Jobs also announced a new iCloud service to sync data among all devices. All 5,200 participating developers will spend the rest of the week in workshops with Apple employees; developer releases of each product were made available today.

Mac OS X Lion will be shipped in July through the online Mac App Store available on Mac computers for US$29. According to Apple, the update adds over 250 new features to the OS. Employee Phil Schiller discussed new multitouch gestures along with a dynamic task manager named Mission Control that shows open applications. During the keynote, Schiller said, “The Mac has outpaced the PC industry every quarter for five years running and with OS X Lion we plan to keep extending our lead.” It also adds full support for the Mac port of the popular App Store, full screen applications, iOS-style app icon lists called Launchpad, and other iOS-like features including a revamped Mail and Auto Save among others. Mac OS X Lion was announced at a different Apple event several months ago and will replace Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which was released in 2009.

Soon after, the company also introduced the latest installment in its popular mobile operating system iOS. The fifth version (iOS 5) introduces around 200 new features, including a revamped notification system, which combines messages and notifications from all applications installed on the user’s device. Scott Forestall, an Apple employee, also revealed that iOS devices would no longer require a computer for setup, allowing users to ‘cut the cord’ between their devices and PCs. Magazines and newspapers also have a new folder interface; the Twitter social network is now integrated significantly into iOS devices. Improvements to the mobile Safari browser were also announced; tabbed browsing and a Reader feature introduce desktop-like functionality. Finally, new camera features are built in, including the ability to take snapshots from the lock screen, as well as iMessages, a new messaging platform for iPhones and iPads.

CEO Steve Jobs returned to the stage to reveal Apple’s new cloud services offering, iCloud. The service integrates with Lion and iOS applications and syncs data between a user’s iOS devices. For example, calendar events created on a user’s laptop would be sent to their iPhone through iCloud. Apps, books, documents, photos, and more purchased or created on one device will be shared with others. The service is intended to launch in the fall of 2011 alongside iOS 5 and will be available with 5 gigabytes (GB) of storage for 10 devices for free. Earlier this year, Apple opened a 500,000 square foot data center in North Carolina intended to facilitate this new service. Jobs rounded the services off by unveiling a new iTunes feature that mirrors a user’s library in the cloud, allowing them to listen and download music to authorized devices. “We are going to demote the PC to just be a device. We are going to move the digital hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud,” said Steve Jobs during the keynote. iCloud and iOS 5 will be released in the fall of 2011; Apple announced no new hardware products.

Sunday, February 13, 2005Cordon-bleu chef Homaru Cantu has announced a technique which allows him to create dishes made of edible, inkjet printed paper. Cantu, a head chef at the Moto restaurant in Chicago, has modified an ink-jet printer with the help of computer specialists from local firm Deep Labs and loaded it with cartridges containing concoctions of fruit and vegetables. Using this modified printer Cantu then prints onto edible sheets of soybean and potato starch tasty images downloaded from the web.

“You can make an ink-jet printer do just about anything,” says Cantu. Once the items have been printed they are dipped into a powder made of soy sauce, sugar and vegetables before then being further processed by frying, freezing, or baking them.

Cantu has applied the technique to the printing of menus so that diners can further flavor their soups by ripping up the menu and adding it to the dish.

He hopes that his idea may find its way into popular media. “Just imagine going through a magazine and looking at an ad for pizza. You wonder what it tastes like, so you rip a page out and eat it,” says the chef who is working at perfecting the flavors and has applied for a patent on the technique.

Cantu also has plans for further culinary innovations. He plans to cook steak using a handheld laser that will sear the inside of the steak well done whilst leaving the outside medium rare. He also plans to use the laser to produce bread baked from the inside out thus producing a crust on the inside.

Trinity College is the name of a number educational institutions, some of which are below:

• Trinity College, Cambridge, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge
• Trinity College, Dublin, the sole constituent college of the University of Dublin
• Trinity College, Melbourne, a residential college of the University of Melbourne
• Trinity College, Oxford, a constituent college of the University of Oxford
• Trinity College, Toronto, a federated college of the University of Toronto
• Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, the liberal arts college of Duke University

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Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Today, Norway’s Socialist Left Party (SV) launched their new election initiative named “up from the couch.” The campaign aims to get first-time voters and so-called “couch voters” to vote in the upcoming election.

Kristin Halvorsen, the Norwegian Minister of Finance and Party leader for SV, explained, “It’s a wakeup call, because those who sit on the couch let others decide for them. That’s way we are mobilizing as much as we can until Election Day.”

In the 2005 election only 55 % of first time voters used their voting rights.“It’s a challenge to get the younger voters to vote, because many of them haven’t done it before. We know that adults and older people are better in using their voting right then younger people,” said Minister Halvorsen.

The 2005 election showed that 1 in 3 of the voters who had voted for SV in the 2001 election switched to the Norwegian Labour Party. Only 43% of SV’s voters continued to vote for them. On election day, SV got 8.8% of the total national votes. Minister Halvorsen stated “We have a goal to mobilize enough to get 10 % of the voter’s behind us.”

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Two Swedish men that were arrested for being suspected of sabotaging the Oskarshamn Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden, have been released from police custody. Both men were arrested on Wednesday after traces of Acetone Peroxide, or TATP, were found on a plastic bag. TATP is also an organic peroxide which is sometimes used in making household cleaning chemicals.

“Both men have been cooperative but they deny any wrongdoing and waived the right to legal counsel. There was no legal ground to hold them any longer,” said Swedish police in a statement to the press. The police also noted that an investigation is ongoing.

The unnamed men, in their 40’s and 50’s, were arrested after security officials at the plant discovered traces of the explosive substance on a plastic bag inside a bag one of the men was carrying. Both men were contractors hired to do welding work in the plant which is owned and operated by Oskarshamnsverkets Kraftgrupp OKG.

Security detected the material on Wednesday during what was described by CNN as a “routine” security check. Authorities were called to the plant along with the bomb squad, who sealed off parts of the plant. Police believe it was on one of the man’s hands when it rubbed off onto the bag, but no bomb was found on the premises after an extensive search.

TATP is “very unstable, very sensitive to both friction and shocks,” said Swedish Defense Research Agency expert, Svante Karlsson. A small amount could cause serious damage to someone handling the material which is described as ‘Mother of Satan’. Would-be ‘shoe bomber’ Richard Reid used the substance in an attempt to blow up American Airlines flight 63 from Paris, France to Miami, Florida in 2001. The same substance was also used in the July 2005 bombings in London, England.

Saturday, December 17, 2005The leaders of the European Union have struck a deal on the 2007-2013 budget. Negotiations were characterized by host country’s Prime Minister Tony Blair as “extraordinarily complicated”.

The biggest issues were different views between France, the UK and rest of the EU. UK wanted to keep it’s high membership discount, negotiated before economic growth made it one of the richest members, while other members wanted it to participate with relatively equal net payment. France’s primary issue was maintaining farming subsidies. Rest of the Europe was mostly interested in modernizing European economy by decreasing both UK’s discounts and France’s subsidies. Germany appeared as a pulling force between France and UK to secure the deal.

France continues to receive it’s highly criticized subsidies. The UK gave up 10.5 billion euros in exchange for a review of farm subsidies in 2008-2009, but the net membership discount will actually increase. Small member states such as Sweden increased their role as largest net payers in relative to output.

Key features in the reached deal:

• Total budget will be 862.36 billion euros, equaling to 1.045% of the EU’s total GDP
• Development aid will be 157 billion euros
• Farm budget will be 293 billion euros

Most see the resulted budget as a poor comproromise, but necessarily for the state of union and financial planning in the new member states.