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Saturday, February 24, 2007

On 19 February 2007, XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio announced a move that will change the face of satellite radio in the United States and Canada: XM and Sirius will be merging, creating a single satellite radio provider.

Multi-million dollar losses, combined with increasing competition from internet radio, downloadable music, and HD radio were factors in this merger.

Mel Karmazin, CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio, described the problem: “We don’t want to take subscribers from XM. We won’t make money that way. We need new subscribers.” Likewise, XM executives say they can’t succeed by stealing Sirius subscribers. This leaves both companies with the problem of attracting new customers and distinguishing their brand, while at the same time trying to convince potential customers to pay $12.95 a month for radio, something that people are used to getting for free. Even if one company were to force the other out of the marketplace, the remaining company would have won a Pyrrhic victory, without enough capital remaining to take advantage of the situation.

The solution: make a deal now, while both companies are both strong and in a position to expand their technologies and services. That’s exactly what they plan to do: In press releases and news postings on both of their web sites, both companies have pledged to make the combined company better than either service by itself. “You’ve heard of 1+1=3,” Karmazin said during an invester conference call, “that’s what this is.”

Pending approval of the deal, each share of XM stock will be replaced with 4.6 shares of Sirius. Each company’s stockholders will retain approximately 50% of the joined company. Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin will retain his CEO title in the new company, and XM chairman Gary Parsons will retain his. XM CEO Hugh Panero will retain his position until the merger is complete, which should happen near the end of 2007.

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A compilation of brief news reports for Saturday, August 8, 2009.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said today that the flight disruptions triggered by the recent eruption of a volcano in Iceland cost the global airline industry a total of $1.7 billion dollars.

According to the IATA, airlines lost a total of $400 million daily for the first three days of the week that European airspace was closed. The closures also impacted an estimated 1.2 million passengers around the world each day, until airspace around Europe began reopening last night. IATA’s chief executive officer, Giovanni Bisignani, said that “[f]or an industry that lost $9.4bn last year and was forecast to lose a further $2.8bn in 2010, this crisis is devastating.” He also claimed that the airline industry would require three years to recover from the effects of the crisis, and called on governments to provide some form of compensation to airlines.

Bisignani also criticized the response of European governments to the ash threat, saying that they had over-reacted and the shutdown of all airspace was excessive. He said that “Airspace was being closed based on theoretical models, not on facts. Test flights by our members showed that the models were wrong. [The crisis] is an extraordinary situation exaggerated by a poor decision-making process by national governments.” Individual airlines also criticized the airspace closures. Micheal O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair, said that “It might have made sense to ground flights for a day or two…But by the time that that cloud has dispersed through 800 or 1,000 nautical miles of air space, a full ban should never have been imposed.”

In defense of the European airspace controller, Eurocontrol, the CEO of the Irish Aviation Authority, Eamonn Brennan, said: “It’s important to realize that we’ve never experienced in Europe something like this before. So it wasn’t just a simple matter of saying: Yes, you could have operated on Saturday or Sunday or Monday. We needed the four days of test flights, the empirical data, to put this together and to understand the levels of ash that engines can absorb.” Additionally, scientists in Switzerland said that studies of ash content in the atmosphere were high enough that the total closure of most European airspace was warranted.

Restrictions over air travel in Europe have been lifted in many parts of the continent today; three-quarters of the scheduled flights were operating, and most of the European airspace having been opened. Only parts of British, French and Irish airspace remain closed, and most of Europe’s major airports are open, although not necessarily operating at full capacity; at London Heathrow Airport, about half the scheduled departing flights were canceled.

Saturday, September 2, 2006

Former Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, 78, has been moved out of the intensive care unit at Sheba Medical Center after his condition “improved.”

“[There has been] noticeable improvement in his kidney function and the pneumonia in his lungs,” said David Weinberg, a spokesman for the medical center.

Sharon’s condition is still being called “serious” and he is still being held in the care department for respiratory functions.

Sharon suffered a major stroke in January and has been in a coma since then. On August 14, Sharon was admitted to ICU when he developed pneumonia.

Monday, October 30, 2006

On November 13, Torontonians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Etobicoke—Lakeshore (Ward 5). Two candidates responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include John Chiappetta, Joseph Mignone, Peter Milczyn (incumbent), Arthur Roszak, and Bojidar Tchernev.

Interviewed are newcomer Joseph Mignone, and incumbent Peter Milczyn. Click on either of their names to read their responses.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.

Saturday, May 27, 2017

On Friday, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a professor and former U.S. National Security Advisor of the Jimmy Carter administration, died at the age of 89.

The New York Times reported he died at a Falls Church, Virginia hospital.

Brzezinski’s daughter Mika announced her father’s death via Instagram. Others paid tribute to Brzezinski, including Joe Scarborough, Mika’s co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, via Twitter and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter via statement.

Brzezinski was born on March 28, 1928 in Warsaw, Poland. His father Tadeusz, a diplomat, moved his family from Europe to Montreal, Canada in 1938 before World War II. Tadeusz retired from politics in 1944 when the Communists occupied his home country, so his family settled in the Canadian countryside.

Zbigniew Brzezinski earned two degrees from Canada’s McGill University and then, in the United States, earned a doctorate from Harvard University. He began his teaching career at Harvard and then Columbia University.

Throughout 1960s, Brzezinski worked for John F. Kennedy as his advisor and then the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. During the 1976 selections he advised Carter on foreign policy, then served as National Security Advisor (NSA) from 1977 to 1981, succeeding Henry Kissinger. As NSA, he assisted Carter in diplomatically handling world affairs, such as the Camp David Accords, 1978; normalizing US–China relations thought the late 1970s; the Iranian Revolution, which led to the Iran hostage crisis, 1979; and the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, 1979.

For his role in politics, Brzezinski earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981 and later the U.S. Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service in 2016. He has lately taught international studies at the Johns Hopkins University and worked as a counselor for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Brzezinski wrote multiple books and some articles, including several from the 1950s.

Brzezinski was survived by his wife Eileen and his three children: daughter Mika and sons Ian and Mark.

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

On Sunday, female ice hockey players from North and South Korea joined one another for a training session before the upcoming Winter Olympics. Players from the two Koreas are to compete together as a united team for the events hosted in Pyeongchang, South Korea, which are scheduled to start on February 9; Seoul’s Unification Ministry said. The cross-border gesture is part of diplomatic efforts to ease tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula and the team was approved by the International Olympic Committee.

The International Olympic Committee selected Pyeongchang in 2011 to host the event, marking South Korea’s first opportunity since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. The earlier event was marred by violence as North Korea had bombed a South Korean flight several months prior, killing over 100 and boycotted the event. Inter-Korean relations have changed considerably in the ensuing thirty years, including the two sending unified teams for table tennis and youth football in other non-Olympic competitions.

The announcement that the two countries would compete together was a stated goal of South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Last year, he announced the proposal and the two nations went into discussion this month. After two weeks, they made the announcement to field a consolidated 35-strong team of ice hockey players and have joint skiing exercises with both team coaches involved.

According to Yonhap News Agency estimates, about 80% of South Koreans support dialogue, but the move to have a joint team has been controversial. Over 10,000 South Korean citizens sent a petition to South Korean President Moon opposing the union and a group of North Korean defectors held a protest at the South Korean National Assembly on January 24, tearing apart photos of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. Public support for eventual reunification of the Korean peninsula has waned in recent years, with the younger generation more skeptical of the possibility.