? July 26, 2010
July 28, 2010 ?
July 27
- Read An Opinion On:
- Avlaw
IndiGo, a low-fare carrier launched in 2006, has climbed to second place in market share at the expense of Air India and Kingfisher Airlines and is the only one of India’s six main carriers making a profit, for now at least.While Kingfisher and market-leading Jet Airways have bought rivals, fly multiple plane models and have struggled to mix full-service and low-fare options, IndiGo offers one class of no-frills service on a single type of plane, the same strategy pioneered by U.S.-based Southwest Airlines.IndiGo also sells and leases back its planes, sparing its balance sheet and allowing itself to maintain a young fleet.Kingfisher, headed by liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya, has never made a profit and has grounded more than half of its planes as it struggles to pay staff and creditors and scrambles to find investors. Tax authorities last month froze its bank accounts.”Indigo has done everything right which Kingfisher has done wrong,” said Rajan Mehra, executive director at the Asia Pacific Academy for Aviation and Hospitality.Industry watchers say there is no great secret to IndiGo’s success, which they attribute to rigid adherence to a disciplined business plan, a task that grows more complex as the 50-plane airline adds a new plane every month.Still, IndiGo is not immune to the industry’s myriad headaches that include fierce competition, a weak rupee, high taxes, rising airport fees and the high cost of oil.”Indigo so far might have been doing better than the others, but they are facing the same operational costs, the same infrastructure constraints,” Mehra said.Airfares are low in India, where carriers compete with trains and buses for passengers. A one-way ticket for April 18 from Mumbai to Delhi, a distance of about 720 miles, starts at around 3,935 rupees ($79.50) on IndiGo, GoAir or Jet’s JetLite subsidiary, according to a popular travel website.Kingfisher and Jet have learned the hard way that travelers don’t want to pay for frills on India’s short domestic flights, forcing them to set up low-fare offshoots to compete with IndiGo and budget rivals SpiceJet and GoAir.”What the customer wants is on-time performance, he wants good service onboard, he wants consistent on-ground and onboard services. He doesn’t mind paying for the food,” said Mehra.LOW-COST, NOT LOW-QUALITY IndiGo’s rise mirrors that of Jet Airways in the 1990s, before it became a sprawling international carrier that has lost money in the last four quarters.”Jet also came from nowhere, took on Indian Airlines (now part of Air India) and succeeded to become a big market share holder,” said Mahantesh Sabarad, an aviation analyst with Fortune Equity Brokers.IndiGo has 21 percent of the domestic market, behind the combined low-cost and premium operations of Jet Airways, but up from its 17 percent share at the end of 2010.The Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) expects IndiGo to take the top spot from Jet in a few months in an aviation market that grew 17 percent in 2011 and is expected to expand by about 12 percent annually over the next few years.Last year, IndiGo placed what was then the biggest-ever commercial airline order for 180 Airbus A320s worth $16 billion to be delivered starting in 2015 when an earlier 100-plane order is completed. It also began flying to a handful of foreign destinations using the same narrow-body plane type.While IndiGo says it spends less than 1 percent of revenue on marketing, it cultivates a fun, irreverent image.A splashy advertisement to the tune of a Gilbert & Sullivan number runs in heavy rotation on local TV. Its inflight catalog is called “Hello 6E” — a play on IndiGo’s airline code — and many of its air hostesses wear the same bobbed wig.”Our only big objective is to prove that low-cost is not low-quality,” Indigo’s president, Aditya Ghosh, told a group of management graduates in New Delhi recently.Based outside New Delhi in Gurgaon, IndiGo was founded by Rahul Bhatia’s InterGlobe Enterprises, an aviation and travel services firm, and former US Airways CEO Rakesh Gangwal.The airline has said it would consider an IPO, but Ghosh said recently it has no current plans to do so.”They focused on simple things: on-time performance, clean, neat aircraft, good onboard service,” said Kapil Kaul, CAPA’s regional head.He said the carrier’s international operations pose a risk, given different competitive dynamics and the prospect that a rival such as Singapore Airlines’ Scoot startup could begin flying to Mumbai and Delhi with bigger Boeing 777s.INDUSTRY HEADWINDS Indian airlines will lose up to $3 billion in the fiscal year that ends this month, according to CAPA, with state-owned Air India accounting for the bulk of the losses.Safety in the cash-strapped sector has also been a concern. A December audit by the aviation regulator raised concerns over the safety practices followed by almost all Indian carriers. The audit singled out IndiGo for a review of its fleet expansion plans and highlighted what it said was a shortage of instructors and slow training of pilots and cabin crew at IndiGo and others.IndiGo said in January it offered clarifications to the regulator and that its expansion plans were intact.IndiGo says it earned 6.5 billion rupees ($131 million) in the fiscal year that ended last March, a result that Kingfisher’s Mallya has questioned.”Government policies can make or break any industry. So far, it has been downhill for civil aviation except for one airline that defies the odds and claims to be profitable, however unlikely that may be,” he wrote in a recent memo to staff.CAPA’s Kaul said he has seen IndiGo’s numbers and the airline is indeed profitable. He did say earnings will be “substantially impacted” in the current harsh environment.Ghosh acknowledged the tough market conditions. “If the fares are down and fuel prices are up, obviously it will create pressure on margins. But as long as we can keep our heads above the water, which basically means we have money for spare parts, for hiring people, for recruitment, that’s what profitability means for us,” he said.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Ikeda Kanako, a 21-year-old senior student of the Meiji Gakuin University and the first daughter of celebrity surgeon Yuko Ikeda, was kidnapped at about 1225 (UTC+9), June 26, 2006, in Shibuya, Tokyo.
A bullet was fired and one officer slightly cut when police stormed a Kawasaki apartment to rescue the girl.
Kanako was dressed in a white light half-sleeved cardigan, blue jeans with a bistre belt made of leather, a spring green camisole and carried a bag of Vuitton when she was abducted at a bus stop.
She was found unharmed 13 hours later by Japanese police at a condominium located in Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki, Kanagawa. The young woman’s make-up was not disordered; Kanako’s long brown fringe was not disheveled at all and she was wearing what she had been when she was kidnapped.
The kidnapping of Kanako was a big story in Japanese media in June, 2006. The story appeared in many newspapers as the front-page news on June 27, 2006.
Kanako and her kidnappers had been in touch with her mother using Kanako’s mobile phone. The effort to free her was helped greatly by a woman who witnessed the moment Kanako was taken; she wrote down the license plate of the van and other details.
Police traced mobile phone calls and were able to locate the van in Kawasaki where they detained two of the kidnappers as they went shopping.
One conspirator Li Yong, 29, from China, led the policemen to the apartment and tricked Kaneo Ito, 49, from Japan, to open the door. Ito managed to discharge one bullet before being restrained by an assistant police inspector, the first man in the room.
The other man involved in the kidnap of Kanako was Choi Gi Ho, 54, from South Korea. Kanato was freed unharmed.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department arrested three men on suspicion of conspiring to kidnap a woman and hold her to a reported 300 million yen ransom.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
A Pembroke Pines, Florida teenager killed himself Wednesday, November 19, while broadcasting on the live video site Justin.tv. After making suicide threats and being encouraged by Justin.tv viewers and Bodybuilding.com forum members, Abraham K. Biggs, 19, committed suicide by taking an overdose of opiates and benzodiazepine, which had been prescribed for his bipolar disorder.
Biggs first began blogging about his planned suicide 12 hours before the actual event. He died after taking pills and lying on the bed in front of the webcam. After the broadcast, viewers who apparently thought it was a hoax posted messages such as “OMG”, “LOL”, and “hahahah”.
Hours later, after being alerted by viewers who had noticed that Biggs had stopped breathing, law enforcement and paramedics arrived, discovered his body, and covered the camera. The Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office has reportedly confirmed Biggs’ death.
According to Montana Miller of the Bowling Green State University, the circumstances of this case were not shocking: “If it’s not recorded or documented, then it doesn’t even seem worthwhile. For today’s generation it might seem, ‘What’s the point of doing it if everyone isn’t going to see it?'”
Biggs’ sister Rosalind was angry that neither the website nor its viewers reacted soon enough to save him. “They got hits, they got viewers, nothing happened for hours,” she said. She described him as “very happy” and “friendly and outgoing.” “On a normal day, you couldn’t really tell that he got as low as he did.” However, he did have relationship problems with his girlfriend, according to a friend.
Mental health professionals have warned about the possibility that other mentally troubled people would copy his actions. According to Dr. David Shaffer of Columbia University, “Any video showing it as heroic or romantic or glamorous could reduce the anxiety people might feel about suicide. It becomes a respectable behavior and lowers the threshold of suicide.” He and other psychiatrists recommend that potentially suicidal teens talk to others and “tell what’s going on.”
|
This is the category for Health. Refresh this list to see the latest articles.
You can also browse through all articles in this category alphabetically. |
From Wikinews, the free news source you can write. Sister projects
|
Subcategories
Pages in category “Health”
(previous page) ()(previous page) ()
- Read An Opinion On:
- Best Dentist North Bondi
By Adrianna Notton
Although wearing contact lenses is the ideal alternative to eyeglasses, it can time to get used to wearing and caring for them. If you are planning to buy contact lenses or you are a long time contact lens wear that has been having issues with your lenses, below are a number of helpful tips for great care for your contact lenses that will help you reduce the chances of getting eye infections and allow you optimal comfort.
Inserting Contact Lenses
1. Before handling the contacts, wash your hands with a mild soap and thoroughly rinse. Thoroughly dry your hands with a clean lint free towel. Make sure the soap you use does not have any lotions or lanolin.
2. To make sure the contact lenses are not stuck in the lens case, give the case a little shake before you open it.
3. Choose the lens that you always insert first. Slide the lens out of its case and onto the palm of your hand. Rinse the lens thoroughly with contact lens solution. Keep your finger tip that you are using to insert the contact dry and clean.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJifF8pz6Dk[/youtube]
4. With the contact on the tip of your finger tip, make sure it is not inside out. The edges will turn outward if the lens is inside out. With your other hand, open your eye by pulling down on the lower eyelid and up on the upper eyelid. While looking up or forward, place the lens on your eye.
5. Roll your eyes around and blink to center and settle the lens.
Removing Soft Contact Lenses
1. Before handling the contact lenses, wash your hands with a mild soap and thoroughly rinse. Thoroughly dry your hands with a clean lint free towel. Make sure the soap you use does not have any lotions, hand creams, perfumes, makeup, or lanolin. Rinse your hands thoroughly and dry with a clean with a clean towel.
2. Stand over a counter top or over a sink and cover the drain with towel to prevent the lens from being lost down the drain.
3. While looking upwards, pull down on your lower eyelid. Use your finger to tenderly move the lens to the white part of your eye.
4. Gently pinch the contacts with your thumb and index finger. Lift the lens off the eye. Don’t use your fingernails to grasp it.
Using the recommended disinfecting and cleaning solution for your specific contact lens, rinse and clean the lenses and then put them in the lens case that is filled with disinfection solution.
If you take your time and remain relaxed, you will be more successful at inserting and removing your contact lenses. As well, if it is essential that you use the appropriate contact lens solutions to properly care for and maintain your lenses. Also, good hygiene will help you reduce the risks of infections, irritation, and other eye problems. If you are planning to buy contact lenses, you can find great deals on contact lenses and contact solutions from reputable online contact lens retailers.
About the Author: For access to a wide selection of
acuvue advance for astigmatism
contacts, you should shop online at a premier online retailer for eye care. You will find the right pair of high-quality
acuvue advance contact lenses
for every individual’s tastes and needs.
Source:
isnare.com
Permanent Link:
isnare.com/?aid=964675&ca=Wellness%2C+Fitness+and+Diet
|
This is the category for Health. Refresh this list to see the latest articles.
You can also browse through all articles in this category alphabetically. |
From Wikinews, the free news source you can write. Sister projects
|
Subcategories
Pages in category “Health”
(previous page) ()(previous page) ()
| This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. |
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Wikinews has confirmed through several sources that a lawsuit filed against the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization of the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia, by the ‘Barbara Bauer Literacy Agency,’ has been dismissed. As a result of the associated conflict, edits pertaining to Bauer on Wikipedia were deleted and, following the commencement of legal proceedings, Wikinews exclusively obtained the offending texts and edits.
Judge Jamie S. Perri dismissed the case citing the 1996 Communications Decency Act, promoting free speech over the Internet. The act protects the provider of interactive computer services from liability for publishing content provided by another.
At the start of the court action, Wikimedia asked the court to dismiss the case. “Wikimedia asks the Court to dismiss the claims against it, with prejudice. The claims against Wikimedia are frivolous because they are barred as a matter of law by the Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. § 230( c), “Section 230” or the “CDA”), by the First Amendment, and by New Jersey law. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia written by its users, the content of which can be created, edited, or removed by anyone.
The claims arise from statements made on numerous Internet websites, which Plaintiffs assert describe them as being among the “20 Worst Literary Agents” and having “no…significant track record of sales to commercial (advance paying) published” states the motion filed in Superior Court of New Jersey, Monmouth County,” said the organization.
Before the case started, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) issued a press release that defends against a suit Bauer filed against Wikimedia which states that contributors on Wikipedia posted “libel statements” against Bauer that labeled her as number three on a list of twenty people grouped as the “worst” publishing agents, and included allegations that she had “no documented sales” through her firm. Complaints filed against her and her firm state that Bauer had a bad record when dealing with “commercial publishers,”, and questioning her practice of, “charge[ing] in advance of making a sale, against the generally-accepted industry practice.”
In March of 2007, Wikimedia was named in a lawsuit filed in Superior Court of Monmouth, New Jersey, along with 20 other defendants which included operators of the Absolute Write web site and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America who authored the list.
Wikinews has learned that Bauer’s Wikipedia article was deleted some time during the course of the proceedings, along with the edit history of her article and its talk page as a “courtesy.” During the investigation, Wikinews found that all edits to her article, and edits to pages requesting it to be deleted were deleted by Wikipedia administrator MaxSem.
Wikinews has also exclusively obtained all the edits affiliated with Bauer’s article, which was sourced accurately, the deletion requests along with the edit history of all pages related to the discussion about Bauer’s article. Fearing retribution on Wikipedia by other administrators and users, the source who provided Wikinews with the edit information wishes to remain anonymous.
The deleted Wikipedia article on Bauer stated that she claims “to have placed books with a number of well-known commercial publishers, but does not provide specific details of the books in question. In 2006, due to the number of complaints they receive, Writer Beware (part of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America writers’ organization) listed Bauer’s agency as one of the twenty worst literary agencies.”
Bauer’s article was started on May 25, 2006 but was not deleted until March 21, 2008 by Wikipedia administrator and Wikimedia office employee Cary Bass, who was not able to comment on the incident. It underwent two requests to be deleted, with the second one passing, and it was subsequently deleted. It had first been deleted on March 25, 2007 by “Doc Glasgow”, an administrator, amid allegations that the information presented in the article was “a bloody disgrace, full of ‘allegations of who said what on message boards. No mainstream media interest.” It was later restored on March 26 to undergo a “deletion review.” It was then deleted just under one year later after an extensive discussion.
Barbara Bauer was shown to have threatened a number of website hosts who reproduced the “Top 20 Worst Agents” list, or referred to her inclusion in the list; her complaints apparently prompted a brief takedown of the AbsoluteWrite.com site.
One blog even states that Bauer attempted to get people fired from their jobs, after allegedly posting information online that was in any way connected to the Top 20 worst agents.
“Barbara Bauer has been running around the Internet lately threatening people who’ve posted information about her fee-charging, non-manuscript-selling ways, including people who’ve linked to the Twenty Worst list. She has threatened legal action; she has even attempted to get people fired,” states Victoria Strauss on accrispin.blogspot.com.
The EFF, along with attorneys at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, are defending Wikimedia submitting a motion to dismiss the suit against the Foundation. The Foundation says that the First Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights and New Jersey law protect the contributors from any legal action.
Specifically, Section 230 of the act states, “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”
Bauer claims that her agency informed Wikimedia of the false allegations, and requested that they be removed. She also claimed that Wikimedia refused to remove the information when requested. Bauer further states that the contributors involved with her Wikipedia article “conspired to defame Plaintiffs and interfere with their prospective economic advantage.”
Mike Godwin, attorney for the Foundation states that the point of Wikipedia is to return the knowledge it provides, to a worldwide culture.
“We provide a platform through Wikipedia for smart citizens to give their knowledge back to a larger culture. Our ability to offer citizens that platform is what’s at stake in this case,” said attorney representing the Foundation, Mike Godwin in a EFF press release on May 2, 2008.
Despite the claim of freedom of speech, Wikinews has learned that on the same day, Godwin requested that the edits and the article on Wikipedia relating to Bauer, be deleted by a community action. Godwin also stated that the Foundation has “filed court papers in which we stated that the article is no longer available.”
“I’ve been trying to keep ‘Office actions’ to a minimum (partly in reaction to some fairly heavy-handed WP:OFFICE stuff in the past), and it would be helpful to be able to say that any given action was taken by the community, not by the Foundation,” said Godwin on Wikipedia’s Administrators’ noticeboard on May 2, the same day of the EFF’s press release. ‘Office actions’ are changes directly authorized by the Foundation which are made to content on any of the Wikimedia projects. The edits are made by staff members working for the Foundation’s head office located in San Francisco, California. Edits of this nature are generally “removals of questionable or illegal Wikimedia content following complaints,” according to Wikipedia’s policy on ‘Office Actions.’
A few minutes after, MaxSem, a Wikipedia administrator, deleted the edits related to the deletion request of Bauer’s article as a “courtesy” stating that there would be “legal problems” if the edits were not deleted.
Wikinews originally intended to publish an article at the start of the court case, although it was deleted from the article by Wikinews administrator Brian McNeil, who said that it was deleted “per consultation with Mike Godwin” as the posting of any material relating to Bauer, on Wikimedia sites, could be considered contempt of court. The deleted copy of this article was then leaked to Wikileaks, who released a press release saying that the Wikimedia Foundation censored Wikinews. At the time of this The Register reported that “Wikinews – like its sister site, Wikipedia – bills itself as a place without bias. Ostensibly, it’s a democratic news source that never answers to a higher power. But that’s just a setup for the latest act in the world’s greatest online farce.” The Register has a long history of denigrating Wikimedia projects.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Four people have been shot and killed and at least 15 wounded when a gunman opened fire inside a LA Fitness center in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania. The gunman was among the dead.
Reports say the man walked into a dance room where an all-female Latin dance class was in session, turned off the lights and began to shoot people. CNN reports that the gunman was a “middle-aged white male.” One witness said he was carrying a duffel bag, which he put down before shooting into the crowd. After opening fire, he turned the gun on himself. At least 30 people are reported to have been in the room at the time of the shooting.
Allegheny County police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said, “I’ve never seen nothing quite like this. It was very chaotic. […] There’s a good belief that the shooter is deceased.”
Collier Township Police Chief Tom Devin stated that the police, “believe the shooter committed suicide at the scene but we’re not positive.” Police report that the shooter’s motive may have been a domestic dispute with one of the exercisers.
Mike Hentosz, a witness who was inside the gym, said, “I feel like it’s a dream. I don’t know what to think of it.” A woman participating in the class, Nicole, said that 10 minutes into the class, “a middle-aged white male walked into the class. He had a big gym bag. […] He looked out of place in a class full of women.” When he began firing, she reported, she ran out of the gym and escaped in passerby’s car.
- Read An Opinion On:
- Music Courses Northern Melbourne
By Jonathon Halston
Creating a winning game testing job resume is an often overlooked step in the process of getting hired for one s first game testing job. To stand out from the crowd of would-be game testers, it is critical to build a resume and cover letter that truly showcase not only your passion for video games, but also highlight exactly why your prospective employer should hire you for a game testing job, what you can bring to the table, your dream of making a career out of being a video game tester, and the benefits you can bring your new employer.
Many are unnecessarily intimidated by the idea of creating a professional resume and cover letter, and as a result, don t project the necessary confidence in their writing that they possess the necessary attribute to do the job well, thus bringing value to their new employer. For this reason, many resumes simply don t get a second glance. The way past this stumbling block is simply to focus on these three key areas:
What you can do well. Here would be a great area to discuss any unpaid experience you have acquired beta testing or testing games at home while working through a software testing guide while testing a video game.
What you have done well. Highlight in your work experience areas where you given ownership of a particular area, and how well you did that particular task or area of ownership. An example might be improved the time it took to clean a 12×14 carpet by 10% while maintaining or improving quality standards , or grew sales in my area by 7% .
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGTV8qLbBWE[/youtube]
How your work experience benefited your employer. An example might be improved profit in the plumbing department by 8% or developed a process that increased efficiency by 11%, thus reducing man-hours billed to company X .
Additionally, if this is your first game testing job, be sure and highlight any proactive experience you may have gained in the following areas:
Beta Testing. Any Beta testing experience you may have, paid or not, will demonstrate to your new employer that you understand the process of playing and testing the video game, finding bugs and filing them. This will be a huge plus on your resume, and will show that you have experience and perspective on how to actually test video games.
Online gaming beta testing. Sign up for all the online game beta testing programs you can find, and you will gain much in real-world testing and bug-filing experience.
At-home practice: Sit down with your favorite game and practice creating spreadsheets of Test Scenarios and Test Cases based on the guidelines you can find in any good book on software testing. Create practice test plans as well. Write bug reports for any bugs you may find using a good bug filing template, which you can also find in most software testing books.
Game design experience: Learning a few things, even practicing creating a simple game or designing a level, will look great on your resume, and make you a much better video game tester
Education Taking a few classes on programming, project management, game design, game art, and a number of other related subjects will assist you immensely and show potential employers that you are serious about becoming a video game tester, and stand miles above the rest of the game testing job seeking crowd.
Designing a resume and cover letter within this general framework will give you a huge leg up against other entry-level video game testers, and guarantees that you will be interviewed and hired for your first video game tester job and have no problem finding new video game tester jobs after you have completed your first gig!
About the Author: Jonathon Halston has tested video games for over 11 years. He started out as a contract video game tester, and soon became a Software Design Engineer in Test at a World Class Software Company and you can too. For additional information on creating a winning resume and cover letter specific to
game testing jobs
, visit
Hot-Game-Tester-Jobs.com
today!
Source:
isnare.com
Permanent Link:
isnare.com/?aid=408117&ca=Career