Elliot Lake mall search halted by threat of collapse - CBC
Rescue crews working at a severely damaged Elliot Lake, Ont., mall have been forced to call off their search for a possible survivor because of mounting safety concerns, including the threat of another collapse.
A portion of the roof at the Algo Centre Mall collapsed Saturday afternoon. When the roof gave way, metal and concrete debris crashed through two floors of the shopping centre.
Emergency teams were dispatched to the area and have been searching for a route through the rubble, but that has now been halted.
Bill Neadles, with the Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Team from Toronto, said engineers told him the Algo Centre Mall is under strain and too unstable for rescuers to enter safely. Neadles said crews were facing increasingly precarious conditions as they combed the debris for signs of life.
An unstable escalator that forced crews to remove their cranes from the site earlier in the day continued to separate from its supporting beams as the day progressed, he said.
"Realistically, the engineer's telling me he doesn't understand why it hasn't collapsed already," Neadles said. "The building is … totally unsafe."
When asked how many people they believe are inside the rubble-filled portion of the mall, police said they cannot account for two people.
Police confirmed earlier in the day one person was dead.
Signs of life were detected from another person who was trapped, but it's unknown if that person is still alive, CBC reporter Lorenda Redekopp said Monday after the news conference.
"Our team is certainly not happy," said Neadles. "I'm not happy, nobody's happy that we have to stop work. But that's unfortunately the way we've had to end this situation."
Neadles said local officials will resume control of the site, which is under investigation by the Ontario Ministry of Labour.
Ministry officials will issue an order for at least part of the mall to be demolished, he added.
A woman checks out the damage after Saturday's roof collapse at the Algo Centre Mall in Elliot Lake, Ont. (Cora Richer/Canadian Press)Local residents who gathered for the news conference wept, while some said a mine rescue team should be dispatched to the scene. Mayor Rick Hamilton said he had to depend on the expertise of the urban search and rescue team, CBC's Cheryl Krawchuk reported.
'Save our family and friends'
According to the Elliot Lake Standard, a group of about 50 people later gathered outside city hall to urge officials to resume the search. The local newspaper said the crowd was chanting, "Rescue missions never end, save our family and friends."
Members of the public were volunteering to go into the damaged building, CBC's Natalie Kalata said.
Meanwhile, the mall's manager said its owners would seek a court injunction against the decision to abandon the rescue efforts.
"Our hopes and prayers are with the families of those [affected] by this tragedy," manager Rhonda Bear said in an email to The Canadian Press.
"We heard they are stopping the search. The owners are pleading that they continue the search or allow trained [personnel] that are still willing to continue.
"They have lawyers who have begun an injunction against this decision to stop the search."
It's not clear how a court could order rescuers into a structure that had been deemed life-threatening.
The number of people missing or unaccounted for has fluctuated greatly since the collapse, with some names being taken off the list and others added, police Insp. Percy Jollymore noted earlier. At some points, police said as many as 30 people were unaccounted for.
"Overnight [from Sunday] it's grown again, with people calling in, worried about people they haven't been in touch with … I caution, it goes up and down," said Jollymore on Monday.
In a Monday morning interview with CBC News Network, the mayor would not talk about the building's structural safety and insisted the focus was only on the rescue effort: "There certainly may be time in the future to deal with that."
(CBC)In the aftermath of the collapse, many residents said the mall has had a history of problems dating back to 2005 with roof leaks, flooding and falling tiles.
CBC Community member Nikki Lafleur posted this comment: "Pieces of the roof have been falling on shoppers for a long time. The people of Elliot Lake have been saying something like this would happen and they keep putting a Band-Aid on it," she said.
Asked about his own visits to the mall and whether he noticed any possible problems with the mall's roof, Hamilton said that while he and his family shopped there, he's "just dealing with the matter now at hand which is the actual rescue."
Crews, including a 40-member search and rescue team from Toronto, have been working around the clock to secure the collapsed building so rescue efforts could start at the mall, located 150 kilometres west of Sudbury.
Maintenance work on roof
The collapse happened around 2:20 p.m. ET Saturday. There are reports two cars went through the roof. Twisted debris could be seen near a set of escalators, food court tables and lottery kiosks.
Yves Berube, who runs a jewelry store in the mall, said he had just stepped out to have a cigarette when the floor collapsed, taking off the front part of his shop.
"I didn’t even get a chance to light it [and] then all of a sudden, boom, everything caved in behind me," he told CBC News.
"So I went running back in to see, and that’s when I saw this monstrous hole.… There was one lady, when I went back in, she was still sitting in her chair. There were pieces of concrete and steel girders all around her.
"I was looking up and seeing the sky where there should have been a roof.”
Bear, the Algo Centre Mall manager, told CBC News earlier Monday that repair and maintenance work has been done on sections of the building's roof over the last year but not in the area that collapsed.
She also said the shopping centre's owner completed an engineering and structural study of the building last month, but it turned up nothing.
However, many local residents insist the building was in need of repairs, and a local newspaper, the Standard, has previously reported that the mall's owners embarked on a massive overhaul of its roof several years ago due to leaks.
Elliot Lake mall collapse (CBC Infographic) With files from The Canadian Press
IOC says can keep London betting clean - Reuters UK
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) - Organisers are confident that they can prevent gangs behind illegal gambling from fixing events at the Olympics in London next month, a senior International Olympic Committee (IOC) figure said on Monday.
The jailing last year of three Pakistani cricketers in London and the latest match-fixing scandal to afflict Italian football have heightened alarm that corruption is undermining top level sport.
The Olympics are something of a paradox for bookmakers - the biggest event in the sporting calendar attracts a huge global TV audience but is a sideshow for most serious gamblers.
However, the IOC is taking no chances and is working closely with British authorities to ensure that fixing does not blight the London Games.
"Experts are telling us that the Olympics is not a primary target of match fixing because they are such a huge event, under such scrutiny, that it is a big risk to try to fix competition at the Olympic Games," IOC Director General Christophe De Kepper told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"We treat this as a serious threat and we have taken measures to be ready in case anyone would want to fix competition at the Olympic Games," the Belgian added.
Games athletes and officials are forbidden from betting on the Olympics. Britain's licensed bookmakers have signed up to scrutinise activity during the July 27-August 12 Games and will channel their findings through the Gambling Commission, the industry regulator.
"We will report any suspicious betting. The IOC has set up a joint assessment unit for the duration of the Games," said Bill South, a former police officer who is head of security for William Hill, Britain's largest bookmaker.
"All the operators will have 24/7 reporting. We will suspend or void bets if necessary," he told Reuters.
British bookmakers have said that betting on the Olympics is likely to be relatively small, comparing spending over the Games as a whole with what they take on a weekend of English Premier League football. That should making wrongdoing easier to detect.
"We would offer a market on any event but the chance of all events attracting a market is unlikely," said South.
"Our trading team will make an assessment of what a potential market looks like. The smaller the market, then anything unusual is more likely to be apparent."
TECHNOLOGY BRINGS TEMPTATION
Advances in technology have created rich new opportunities for those seeking to rig results or specific episodes in a contest - "spot fixing".
More and more events can be beamed live into parts of the world like Asia where sports betting is often illegal and therefore unregulated.
Mobile technologies have also facilitated the growth of in-play betting where punters can bet on a event already under way, That is legal in itself but exposes sports players to the temptation of fixing seemingly trivial incidents.
De Kepper says that tackling fixing was more complex than the battle against doping - a scourge of international sport which the IOC has spent decades trying to combat.
"The financial impact, the means at stake behind illegal betting are far, far more important than in the criminal/doping network," he said.
De Kepper said the IOC was not against betting itself, noting that many sports were funded by lottery or levies on gaming.
However, he said that the IOC needed help to eradicate the dangers posed by unlicensed bookmakers.
"That needs the cooperation of police, that needs governments to realise that this is threatening... the credibility people can have in organised sports," he said.
"This is a public order question that many governments around the world at this stage have not realised," he added.
(Editing by Alison Wildey)
RSS up in arms against Nitish over 'secular PM' - india.nydailynews.com
June 25--Without naming Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has lambasted those averse to Hindutva.
Blasting Kumar's recent statement that the prime minister should have secular credentials, RSS mouthpiece Panchajanya said that such comments were being made for vote-bank politics and minority appeasement.
"What is the meaning of saying the prime minister of the country should be secular? Our Constitution makers did not give any such 'distinguished identity' to the prime minister's post", pointed out an editorial in the publication.
The magazine said efforts were being made to give the prime minister a 'secular' identity, adding that harmony between all sects was a distinct feature of Hindu philosophy in India.
"To treat this Hindutva as communal and to make secularism an instrument for gaining power is nothing more than politics of convenience," said Panchajanya taking up cudgels for Kumar's bete noire Gujarat Chef Minister Narendra Modi.
Surprisingly, an article in the same RSS mouthpiece earlier this month had criticised Modi's style of functioning and blasted him for humiliating his one-time saffronite colleague Sanjay Joshi.
The article by former editor and Sangh ideologue Devinder Swarup said that the Sangh was unhappy with Modi for 'ignoring senior BJP leaders'.
Swarup's article came a day after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) mouthpiece Kamal Sandesh had slammed party leaders like Modi, Vasundhra Raje and B S Yeddyurappa 'who have not presented a united face in their respective states which are beset with internal party feuds.'
mahesh@khaleejtimes.com
UPDATE 1-Credit Suisse to make heavy job cuts in Europe - sources - Reuters UK
(Adds background on global securities industry layoffs)
By Sarah White and Douwe Miedema
LONDON, June 25 (Reuters) - Swiss bank Credit Suisse plans to cut up to one-third of senior employees in its European investment banking department, three sources familiar with the matter said, as a weak economy and tighter regulation continue to erode capital raising and advisory activities.
"In the European investment banking business, they are going to get rid of 60 directors and managing directors," one source said on Monday.
The cuts are part of a plan announced last year to sever some 3,500 jobs throughout the bank worldwide, but the focus on core investment banking signals that corporate despair about the economy persists worldwide.
The securities industry lost about 28,100 jobs during the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009. Surging markets over the next 15 months led to the addition of 10,000 jobs but pessimism after that brief spate of hiring has returned.
The new cuts at Credit Suisse, which earlier this month was slammed with a rare public warning from Swiss regulators to bolster capital, will affect bankers who advise on mergers and acquisitions, stock market listings, financing and debt issues.
"It is about a third of the directors and 10-15 percent of the MDs," the first source said, referring to what are typically the two most senior job ranks in the banking world.
The layoffs are expected to begin in July and could continue over several months, the person said.
A second source said the cuts could end up affecting 20-30 percent of senior investment banking staff in Europe.
Credit Suisse, which last year said it hopes to eliminate $2.1 billion in annual costs by the end of 2013, declined to comment.
Other major investment banks have begun cutting jobs after a rough start to the year. About 4,400 securities industry jobs were lost in the first three months of 2012 in the United States alone - the third consecutive quarterly decline, according to U.S. government statistics.
Several global banks have axed at least 50 people in Asia in the past three weeks, and more are on the way.
Credit Suisse had eliminated about 2,000 of its 3,500 targeted jobs as of the end of the first quarter across its three major divisions of private banking, asset management and investment banking. In all, it is shedding about 7 percent of its workforce, and the latest round comes under that target.
Like many rivals hit by rocky markets, earlier cuts have centered in stock and bond trading, two sources said. The latest round will primarily affect advisory and financing jobs in London, "but obviously spread across the zone," one of the people said.
The bank earlier this year said it planned to fire 126 employees in the New York area by Aug. 6. That comes on top of 109 people sacked there earlier this year.
This month, Chief Executive Brady Dougan told a newspaper he was not planning to issue new shares after the Swiss central bank called on the bank to improve its capital base.
The spat - followed by a three-notch cut in its credit rating by Moody's - led to speculation Dougan's future at the bank was in doubt, though the board has since come out to back Dougan, who is American. (Additional reporting and editing by Jed Horowitz in New York; Editing by Dan Lalor and Phil Berlowitz)
GooglePlusFeed, Follow Google+ users via RSS - Ghacks Technology News
Google still has not added native options to follow Google+ users via RSS on its social networking site. Ever since Google+ was launched by the company, users tried to come up with ways to generate RSS feeds for profiles on the site to follow users in RSS clients such as Google Reader, RSSOwl or my personal favorite Great News.
Instead of having to visit Google+ regularly, it is then possible to monitor new posts via RSS. Users who do that can then decide whether they want to visit the Google+ page, for instance to join the discussion, or ignore the post and wait for posts that are more of interest to them. Google+ feeds basically give you control over how and when you interact on the social networking site.
Back in 2011 I posted a tutorial on how to use Dapper for the purpose, and while it worked sometimes, it did not really work at others. Plus, the setup was rather complicated and not really suitable to quickly generate RSS feed links from Google+ profiles.
The free GooglePlusFeed online service provides you with the means to generate an RSS feed from any public Google+ profile. All you need to do is visit the service website, enter the profile ID of the Google+ user that you want to generate an RSS feed for, and an email address for verification purposes. If you do not want to reveal your real email, you can check out our list of disposable email providers to use one of those temporary addresses instead for privacy reasons.
You find the profile ID of a user when you open the user’s profile home on Google+. Just copy and paste the string from the address and paste it into the profile ID field on the Google Plus Feed site. (Check out mine, and while you are at it, why not subscribe as well)
GooglePlusFeed sends a confirmation mail to the email account that you have entered into the form, and once you load the verification link, it displays the RSS feed on its site. You can then copy the RSS link to your feed reader, and repeat the process if you want to subscribe to additional users of the site.
Keep in mind that the RSS feed will only catch public posts, and not private or limited posts, nor messages from one Google+ user to another.
Check out NirmalTV for two additional services that allow you to generate RSS feeds for Google+ profiles.
Related Articles:
Find People On Plus Lets You Search Google Plus UsersGoogle Plus RSS Feeds
Google Apps Users Can Now Join Google+
Google Rolls Out Https Search For Logged In Users
Google To Start Tracking Users Across Services
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Facebook taps COO Sandberg to be first woman on board - Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO |
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc named Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg a director on Monday, adding the first woman to a board that includes seven men.
For years one of the most vocal critics of the gender imbalance in Silicon Valley's executive ranks, Sandberg, 42, joined Facebook in 2008 and played a central role in guiding the social networking company to its $16 billion IPO in May.
Her promotion comes as Facebook seeks to cultivate a more mature image, as opposed to the college dorm-room startup reputation that has lingered conspicuously since Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg founded the company in 2004 after building a prototype website that judged the relative attractiveness of his female classmates.
"Sheryl has been my partner in running Facebook and has been central to our growth and success over the years," Zuckerberg, 28, said in a statement. "Her understanding of our mission and long-term opportunity, and her experience both at Facebook and on public company boards makes her a natural fit for our board."
Prior to joining Facebook to helm its business operations, Sandberg worked at Google, where she was credited for building the search advertising division into a massively lucrative cornerstone of the web giant's business.
She has been tasked with stoking similar growth at Facebook, which claimed $3.7 billion in revenue last year but is under pressure to justify its $70 billion valuation in the public markets.
At the same time, Facebook hopes the promotion of one of corporate America's most high-profile women will go some way to soothe concerns over its own gender issues, especially given Sandberg's advocacy on the subject.
Before Facebook went public, the California State Teachers' Retirement System, the second-largest largest pension fund in the United States, openly urged the company in February to diversify its board to include women while calling the makeup of the all-male panel "disappointing."
Two months later, the women's rights group UltraViolet held a protest outside Facebook's New York offices over the same issue.
The Menlo Park-based company faced embarrassment as recently as last week, when the Wall Street Journal published advance excerpts of a memoir by Katherine Losse, an early employee who recounted being harassed and propositioned by male co-workers until Sandberg intervened when she came onboard.
""By naming Sheryl to the Facebook board, it's clear the company received the message loud and clear," CalSTRS CEO Jack Ehnes said. "We are optimistic Facebook is on its way to further expanding the board while simultaneously creating the diversity and independence we think is important to the future sustainability of this vibrant company."
In recent years, Sandberg's clout within Facebook has been unquestioned while she has also served as its public face, often in place of the sometimes socially-awkward Zuckerberg, who has focused on improving the product. Meanwhile, Sandberg has represented the company at events like the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland - where she led a panel on women's advancement in January.
A former chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers during the Clinton administration, Sandberg serves on the board of Walt Disney Co and several non-profit organizations.
"Facebook is working every day to make the world more open and connected," she said in a statement. "It's a mission that I'm deeply passionate about, and I feel fortunate to be part of a company that is having such a profound impact in the world."
Under Sandberg's stewardship, Facebook navigated a rocky IPO in May but still faces a litany of growing pains, chief among which are its regular brushes with privacy controversies that threaten to erode the eight year-old service's popularity even as it approaches 1 billion users.
On Monday, the social network was again subject to fresh accusations that it had tampered with user privacy by changing the email contact listed for every user to a facebook.com address without notification.
Facebook defended the move, saying it was part of a broader, earlier effort to enhance "consistency" to the service.
"As we announced back in April, we've been updating addresses on Facebook to make them consistent across our site," a Facebook spokeswoman said. "In addition to everyone receiving an address, we're also rolling out a new setting that gives people the choice to decide which addresses they want to show on their timelines."
Facebook shares closed down 3 percent at $32.06 on Tuesday, still more than 15 percent off of its May offering price.
Aside from Sandberg, the company's board comprises of seven men, including Zuckerberg; venture capitalists James W. Breyer, Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel; The Washington Post Co Chairman Donald E. Graham; Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Erskine Bowles, the University of North Carolina president emeritus.
(Reporting by Gerry Shih, Poornima Gupta and Matthew Keys; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Tim Dobbyn)
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