Friday, April 13, 2007

On Wednesday, Canadian BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Limited (RIM), reported preliminary fourth quarter and year-end financial results. Despite record profits, up from US$18 million in the same quarter last year to $188 million for the current quarter, the news was dampened by the revelation that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had formalized its investigation into RIM’s accounting practices.

An internal review by RIM, initiated eight months ago, revealed irregularities with how the company accounted for stock options. On March 5 of 2007, RIM co-chief executive and chairman, Jim Balsillie, resigned his position of chairman, due to the irregularities.

RIM had indicated, until recently, that the SEC probe into the company’s stock option granting practices was an informal inquiry. In a press release April 11, RIM suggested that “the informal inquiry has been converted to a formal investigation.”

In its press release, RIM indicated it would restate financials for the second and third quarters of fiscal 2007, and the fiscal year ended March 3, 2007 only. Through its internal probe, RIM had determined that the accounting irregularities for recently filed Canadian Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) statements would not result in a material adjustment. It would not, therefore, restate Canadian GAAP financial statements, filed previously.

Aside from the record profits just reported, RIM indicated that it had shipped approximately 6.4 million BlackBerry devices in fiscal 2007 and that 1.02 million subscriber accounts were added in the fourth quarter. At the end of the quarter, the total BlackBerry subscriber account base had increased to 8 million.

On the news of the formal SEC inquiry, RIM’s stock price was down over 8%, Thursday, on the NASDAQ.

Friday, September 29, 2006

Diamond Brownridge, a 5-year old girl from Chicago, Illinois, has died after a visit to the dentist. Children’s Memorial Hospital officials say that the girl was rushed to the hospital when she never woke up after being sedated for a dental procedure. She had been in a coma, on life support, since being admitted to the hospital early in the weekend.

“She passed very peacefully and beautifully,” said the hospital in a statement that the family issued.

Ommettress Travis, the mother of the girl, was asked not to remain inside the room while dentists were operating on the girl to repair two cavities and to have at least two caps replaced. Travis says after thirty minutes she was asked to come back in and found Brownridge not breathing, in the dentist chair.

Hicham Riba, a specialist and professional in anesthesia, who was also licensed, was the dentist in charge of the procedure.

“My family and I are so sad. May God bless Diamond and her family. Every time you have a tragedy like this, you pray more. I don’t think I will ever go back to a normal life after an experience like this,” Riba said in a statement on Wednesday, September 28.

According to the family, the girl had been given at least a triple dose of medicine that sedated her. Those drugs include: nitrous oxide gas, a single dose of an “oral agent” and an IV.

A judge has ordered that all equipment and materials used during the operation be protected and examined. The girl’s medical records have also been ordered to be examined.

There is no word on whether or not any charges will be filed against Riba or any of the dentist’s staff.

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

A car accident involving the car occupants and a dentist’s office happened on Sunday night in Santa Ana, California. A white Nissan sedan which was apparently driving too fast hit the raised concrete median on the road, after which it was launched into the air, slamming straight into the wall of the second floor of a two-story dental practice building, where the car got wedged.

According to the police, the car approached from a side street. The room of the dental office penetrated by the sedan was used as a storage space. A fire department crane was used to extract the vehicle from the building, which took several hours.

There were two people in the sedan. One of them managed to escape from the hanging vehicle on his own, while the other one remained trapped inside it for over an hour. They were both hospitalized with minor injuries, according to the Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA). According to the police, the driver of the car admitted narcotics use, and after toxicology tests the case is to be submitted to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.

The moment of the accident was captured by surveillance video from a bus which the car narrowly missed when becoming airborne.

According to OCFA spokesperson Captain Stephen Horner, there was a small fire after the crash, which was extinguished quickly.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Plastic surgeon to the stars Dr. Frank Ryan has died in a car accident at age 50. It is reported that the Jeep Ryan was driving crashed over the side of the Pacific Coast Highway and landed on rocks. Lifeguards were first on the scene and unsuccessfully tried to rescue Ryan. It is thought that no other vehicle was involved in the incident.

Dr. Ryan, a celebrity in his own right, performed plastic surgery on several stars including Janice Dickinson, Gene Simmons, Shauna Sand and Adrianne Curry. He appeared on several television shows and became one of the first people to perform plastic surgery on television in 1995.

A representative for Janice Dickinson released a statement about the death of Ryan. She said “Janice is deeply, deeply anguished! She is stunned and wants the world to know what a genius Dr. Ryan was.”

Ryan was traveling with his pet dog at the time of the crash; the dog was found seriously injured in the ocean and was transported to a local veterinarian. Dr. Ryan was pronounced dead at the scene.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Thursday, May 4, 2006

Rescuers are continuing their efforts to reach the trapped miners in the Beaconsfield mine in northern Tasmania.

A five tonne borer drilling machine has been secured in place to drill a one metre hole through the remaining 12-16 metres of rock that fell into the main shaft.

Since drilling began at 7pm last night, the machine has made a 2 cm wide pilot hole half way to the miners.

The trapped miners have been given egg sandwiches and yogurt, and have received apple ipod MP3 players filled with the miners favourite songs to pass the time and drown out the sounds of the drilling.

Meanwhile on the surface, the ever-growing media frenzy in Beaconsfield has forced the mine operators to enforce bag checks of rescuers entering the mine to ensure that no recording devices are taken into the mine.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Oakland, California —A developer’s recent glossy sales brochure hails the Coliseum Gardens housing development in East Oakland as the most comprehensive development to date for one of Oakland’s largest nonprofit housing developers, but close scrutiny of the project reveals that only 4 out of the 178 low-income public housing families displaced by the development actually managed to return to the newly rebuilt housing complex that was recently christened as Lion Creek Crossings.

Phase 1 of the 20 acre project at the Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek Crossings mixed income housing development was completed in June of 2006, with phase 4 of the development expected to be completed by December 2008.

Documents reveal that as an effort to reduce violence and drug trafficking within and around the Coliseum and Lockwood communities of Oakland, the HOPE VI program enabled the Oakland Housing Authority (OHA) to use nearly $61 million in federal funding to displace Oakland’s low-income communities from the above mentioned locations.

These projects are only a small part of what is known as the Oakland Coliseum Redevelopment Area, which is approximately 11 square miles in size, extending from 22nd Ave., all the way to the San Leandro City limits, and is located between E. 14th St., and the Oakland Estuary/Airport.

The OHA’s Board of Commissioners approved the selection of the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC), the Related Companies of California (Related Companies), and Chambers General Construction as co-developers of the Coliseum Gardens public housing site during its board meeting on October 21, 2002. As partners in the development project, the OHA owns the land, and the developers own the buildings.

As a result of the OHA approval, local nonprofit housing developer EBALDC and Related Companies, LLC., out of New York City, created Creekside Housing Partners, L.P., to take control of Oakland’s public housing property at the Coliseum Gardens site.

After the eviction of 178 families and the demolition of their 178 public housing units during 2004, Creekside Housing Partners (CHP) moved as quickly as possible to rebuild and finish off “phase 1,” of their project. Phase 1 of the development is managed by Related Companies, the tenants pay their rents to the New York based firm, and during the past 6 months the developers have moved people into 115 newly rebuilt housing units at the development.

Twima Early works at the management office of Related Companies located at Lion Creek Crossings and was eager to help shed some light on whats been going on at the newly privatized public housing site in East Oakland.

In an October 18 interview, Twima Early said, “During the past 6 months, we have completed phase 1 of our project and moved people into 115 housing units at our new development. Out of the 178 families who were originally displaced by our project, the OHA sent us a list of 13 families who were eligible to move back into this location, and only 4 of those families actually moved into our new development.”

“It seemed odd that the Housing Authority would only allow 13 families to move back into this location, and I can’t explain why so few were allowed to return,” said Early.

When Randy Shaw of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic learned how few of the original public housing tenants that were actually allowed to move back into the Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek housing development, he said, “The Hope VI program has once again proved to be the major cause of the displacement of low-income people. I’ve never heard of numbers so skewed before in regards to the displacement of families who were promised that the Hope VI project would be beneficial to them.”

Since 1994, Oakland officials and the Federal Government have targeted Oakland’s poor with nearly $84 million in federal funding through the Hope VI program.

The privatization of Oakland’s public housing units have been occurring at a rapid pace. When wealthy billionaire Stephen M. Ross, CEO of Related Companies, teamed up with local nonprofit housing developer EBALDC to re-develop the Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek housing complex, it became apparent that the developers made out much better than the displaced families did.

Carlos Castellanos of EBALDC is involved in the Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek development, and when I asked how did this project benefit the families who used to reside there or how is the City of Oakland benefitting from the displacement of so many families, Castellanos said, “These are loaded questions and not something that I want to talk about. I think that a lot of those tenants did not really want to move back, and I think that you really need to talk to the Housing Authority to find out what happened to all of those families.”

Vivian Haine resided in a public housing unit near the Coliseum Gardens site, and said, “About a year ago, Kim Boyd the site manager where I resided at, told me that I’m lucky to be living here even if there is no money for repairs at this building, because they didn’t have enough funding to finish off the project at Coliseum Gardens, and most of the evicted tenants had no where to go. I believe that many of the families displaced from the Coliseum Gardens development couldn’t find any housing to move into and may have become homeless,” Haine said.

Records show that on June 24, 2006, the OHA’s Board of Commissioners approved the use of market rate rents in its Project-Based Section 8 program at the Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek development, to cover a $600,000 funding shortfall after the EBALDC/Related Companies claimed that they needed more money to complete phase 3 of the project.

A Sept. 19, 2006, OHA memo mentions that EBALDC/Related Companies are co-developing the rental portion at Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek Crossings site, which will include 157 units of public housing. The total number of rental units, including public housing, now planned is approximately 440 units, plus another 28 units of for-sale housing which are planned to be developed by Chambers Construction Company.

With the demolition of 178 public housing units by the developers, and only 157 public housing units being rebuilt at the Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek Crossings housing site, theres been a net loss of 21 public housing units at this location.

The OHA and City of Oakland continue to funnel millions of dollars to the EBALDC/Related Companies partnership, in an effort to privatize part of Oakland’s public housing program in East Oakland.

Since its inception, the Hope VI program has resulted in the demolition of more than 120,000 public housing units across the nation, only to be replaced by 40,000 mixed income units, and less than 12% of the displaced families have managed to gain entry back into the locations they were originally evicted from. In order to make way for the new housing projects being developed that resulted in the privatization of the nation’s public housing properties, around 30% of the displaced families are given Section 8 vouchers, 49% are moved into other public housing units, and most of the rest of the tenants often end up losing their rental assistance.