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What's in the News

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Paul

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1620 on: February 17, 2011, 04:45:32 AM »
Talk English, man, and don't be iconing me with your bloody icons!
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Ruth

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1621 on: February 18, 2011, 05:09:37 AM »
Quote from: Paul on February 17, 2011, 04:45:32 AM
Talk English, man, and don't be iconing me with your bloody icons!
Just a guess, because I'm puzzled too, but I think Day Dreamer was puzzled about the meaning of your post - especially in the news thread.
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Granny Mae

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1622 on: February 18, 2011, 02:50:14 PM »
Quote from: Paul on February 17, 2011, 04:25:39 AM
But her leash keeps breaking. Bloody quality control here!
Should I get a harness?

Paul, if you go to "The Bar (On Topic) then to "Pet Questions" I'm sure that DoctorsBecknStone can answer your question.  bfbfbfbfbf ahahahahah agagagagag You may have noticed,I just love these bloody icons. ahahahahah ahahahahah ahahahahah
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xwarrior

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1623 on: February 23, 2011, 12:14:26 AM »
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65 dead in devastating Christchurch quake

Bad news coming out of New Zealand through the day. The present death toll of 65 is expected to rise to something like 120 by tomorrow.

Best source for news is:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4688231/Deaths-destruction-in-Christchurch-quake
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becster79

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1624 on: February 23, 2011, 01:04:07 AM »
:( I hate hearing about huge earthquakes.....I *still* haven't gotten over Sichuan!
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Day Dreamer

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1625 on: February 23, 2011, 04:14:50 AM »
Sorry to hear x, hope the bad news stops there
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Escaped Lunatic

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1626 on: February 23, 2011, 02:41:46 PM »
Egad.  First a big part of HoganLand goes underwater and now the Kiwis are getting shaken to death.  What does it take to get a break from these disasters?
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becster79

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1627 on: February 23, 2011, 03:09:19 PM »
They've had a truly rough 6 months, EL. The first quake, 7.1 hit Sept 4 last year. Then the devastating Pike River Mine disaster where 39 miners died in December, now this. They can't get a break :(.
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Calach Pfeffer

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1628 on: February 23, 2011, 08:14:11 PM »
Why Alibaba's CEO had to go
Bill Powell

For several years now, the internet firm Alibaba-Taobao has been one of the
most prominent Chinese companies on the planet—thanks both to its
success and to its brash, charismatic founder and chairman, "Jack O' (Yun)
Ma, who started the online commerce company in 1999. Its
business-to-business platform, Alibaba.com, went public on Hong Kong's stock
exchange in 2007 and raised $1.7 billion—at the time the second biggest
internet IPO ever, behind only Google (GOOG). Its online consumer sales company,
Taobao, went mano-a-mano with eBay (EBAY) and effectively ran the global
giant out of China a few years ago.

Yesterday
 for the first time, Alibaba hit a big public bump in the road: It reported that 2,326 high volume sellers who
pay a fee to the company to pedal their wares on the site – "gold
suppliers," as they're called—defrauded customers over the course of two
years, with the assistance of nearly 100 Alibaba.com employees. Ma said the
sellers were organized "fraudsters." As a result of the scandal, Alibaba.com
CEO David Wei, and his deputy, COO Elvis Lee, both resigned yesterday.
Neither, the company stressed, are implicated in the fraud; both were
falling on their swords to accept responsibility. (Japanese style corporate
accountability comes to China.)

Wei, 40, had joined Alibaba in 2006 and oversaw the successful IPO. He also
helped Ma execute the vision of Alibaba.com as a destination for customers
outside of China to buy from small and medium-sized companies operating
inside the country. Ma, to be sure, has become as publicly associated with
his company as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates have with theirs. (His company's
annual "Alifest" is practically a revival meeting for Alibaba-Taobao users,
and the waif-like Ma is their inspirational leader.) But Wei was his
polished deputy, and he unfailingly projected an image of calm competence.

The scale of the fraud amounted to about $1,200 per incident, totaling around $2.8 million, and thus is "immaterial", as John Spelich, vice
 president for international corporate affairs says, from an earnings standpoint. That is probably the only bright spot in this scandal for Yahoo (YHOO), whose Chinese operations are run by Alibaba's parent company, of which it owns 39%. The Alibaba group's stock price in Hong Kong today fell more than 8%. Of course, what makes the scandal a huge deal for Alibaba—and why
the company has gone to extraordinary lengths to snuff it out—is the
apparent involvement of insiders on the sales staff in perpetrating the
fraud. Either willfully or out of negligence, the Alibaba sales people
"helped organized Chinese criminal rings establish Alibaba.com 'Gold
Supplier' storefronts so they could pose as legitimate businesses in order
to defraud buyers," according to an account of the scandal the company
published on a website it runs.

In an e mail to employees, Ma went further. He said the company's internal
investigation
 team members "knowingly allowed fraudsters to become [Gold Suppliers] so
that they could 'make their numbers' and receive commission income.'' (It is
unclear as of yet if any of the insiders received payments from any of the
fraudsters.)

Garden variety fraud on e-commerce sites is not uncommon, of course.
Yesterday, on a web site called Alibaba168.com, where buyers and sellers
exchange information about their experiences on the site, there was an
account of an Alibaba customer in Xinjiang, in far western China, who paid
12,000 renminbi (about $1,846) to buy a bunch of walnuts from a supplier,
which he then hoped to turn around and resell at a profit. The buyer did not
 execute his transaction via Alipay, Alibaba's Paypal equivalent,
 instead forwarding the money direct to the seller. He was ripped off.

Alibaba says the scope of the fraudulent activity in the cases that led to
Wei's resignation, which in many cases involved the "sale" of low priced
consumer electronics products, "appeared to be within the risk range for
e-commerce sites in general." The problem for the company is that all of the
customers defrauded were outside of China, and, as Spelich says, the
company's "raison d'être," its founding mission, was to link Chinese sellers
with buyers abroad (Alibaba is now trying aggressively to lure sellers in
India and elsewhere to use the site.)

Several years ago, the first time I ever interviewed Ma, he spoke in
his usual passionate tone on the one issue he saw as key to whether
e-commerce would take off in China in general, and at Alibaba-Taobao in
particular: "Trust," he said. Meaning, customers had to trust in the
quality of goods they were going to be able to buy online, but more
importantly, they had to be confident they were not going to be fleeced by
faceless sellers using the Internet to perpetrate their fraud. And all this
in a country where, shall we say, business ethics are still something of a
work in progress.

It turns out that fleecing is precisely what was happening for two
years—with the aid of a handful of Ma's own employees. (Again, Alibaba employs 5000 sales people, and around 100 were involved in the fraud, the company says.) Which explains why the
company has reacted so strongly, and so publicly, to an episode that, by the
numbers, seems to be but a minor scandal. As Wei's stunning resignation
yesterday demonstrates, it's not. As Jack Ma understood from the beginning,
if the customers can't trust Alibaba, then Alibaba isn't going have many
customers.
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A-Train

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1629 on: March 10, 2011, 06:00:48 AM »
Egypt...Libya...Wisconsin

Tens of thousands of protesters have been occupying the Wisconsin state capital building for over two weeks in an effort to stop the recently elected, Republican governor from removing the collective bargaining rights of teachers in the state.  His law was pushed through the lower house, (recenlty become majority-Republican), but was stopped in the upper house even though it also became majority-Republican in the last election.  The 14 Democrats stopped it by literally leaving the state and holing up northern Illinois, thus preventing a quorum by one vote.  They have been there in secrecy for over two weeks except for an appearance on The Daily Show.  Bizarre, indeed.
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xwarrior

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1630 on: March 11, 2011, 03:53:29 AM »
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New Relief Workers

Would you like to put your professional experience to use in a place where people desperately need help?

Are you motivated to travel to a distant foreign country, respond to people’s needs with humility and compassion, and work alongside them to provide solutions?

Do you suspect you might want to be a relief worker, but have no idea if you are qualified, or if you could even be of service to the most vulnerable?
 
If you answered “YES” to all these questions, then this next sentence should be of particular interest to you...

After 20 years of serving the most vulnerable, Medair has learned the immense value of working with teams that include both new and experienced relief workers. New Relief Workers learn the Medair context of emergency relief and rehabilitation, and are able to apply their depth of professional experience and skills right away to help save and sustain lives.

I wonder if Medair provided relief workers for the earthquake disaster in New Zealand?:

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Christchurch relief work keeps prostitutes busy

n influx of earthquake relief workers has made Christchurch's disaster a bonanza for the city's prostitutes.

Manchester St sex worker Candice, 24, said she has been run off her feet servicing search-and-rescue staff, builders, and even two New South Wales police officers.

"They took pictures with me to show the boys back home. They were in uniform but they took off their orange singlets because they said it ruined the picture."

"They are saying they are stressed out and they need to get some stress relief."


It's a relief to know that relief workers are getting some relief from the professionals in the business.   agagagagag
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piglet

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1631 on: March 11, 2011, 06:35:36 AM »
so if he dies as an expat he has to be rein-car-nated there? Do souls not know how to travel from one place to another? bibibibibi


EL Note:  Piglet, sorry to pull the link and alter things a bit.  Some topics shouldn't be brought up so directly as the words in that link, ESPECIALLY downstairs.  Even though this one was showing the official point of view, we wouldn't want to risk the topic causing any disharmony.
« Last Edit: March 11, 2011, 02:26:34 PM by Escaped Lunatic »
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dragonsaver

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1632 on: March 11, 2011, 11:38:45 PM »
Major major earthquake hit Japan.  Tsunami warnings for entire pacific area.  Possible 10 meter waves.  33 feet.  llllllllll

Taiwan next, probably will hit there before this post is read.  Next Philippines and Indonesia. Hawaii.   Australia, New Zealand.  All west coast of North and South America.

Nobody knows how high the waves will be when they hit the other countries. Some islands are lower then the potential wave height.  Hope the projections are wrong. 

« Last Edit: March 12, 2011, 12:35:13 AM by dragonsaver »
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The Local Dialect

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1633 on: March 12, 2011, 04:19:25 AM »
I've just been watching all the footage from the earthquake in Japan and ... there are no words. The tsunami hit Sendai, a city where I did a homestay during the summer after my senior year of high school. I wish I had some way of knowing if my host family is ok but I haven't spoken to them in at least 10 years. Watching the footage of those burning houses being swept out to sea is just chilling.
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piglet

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Re: What's in the News
« Reply #1634 on: March 12, 2011, 09:25:18 AM »
Truly truly shocking our thoughts go out to the people suffering there-and as always in such situations a feeling of helplessness....
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