Canadian festival buys fake snow

 

The usually frigid Canadian city of Winnipeg – often nicknamed Winterpeg – has been so mild and dry this winter that a popular snow-sculpting competition has been forced to truck in 200 loads of fake flakes for this year s annual event.

 

While Europe shivers through a severe cold snap that has killed hundreds of people, Winnipeg has enjoyed its third-mildest January in more than a century, with the average temperature a relatively balmy -10.8 Celsius (12.6 Fahrenheit).

 

It s been the same story across much of Canada. Toronto, the country s biggest city, was forecast to climb well above the freezing mark on Thursday, while Berlin will be at -11 C going into the weekend and Paris and London will hover around -6 C.

 

“People refer to Winnipeg as Winterpeg so they expect it to be really cold, but everyone is really happy about the warm weather,” said Emili Bellefleur, spokeswoman for Festival du Voyageur, which includes snow carvings of wolves, bison and cultural symbols around the city of 700,000.

 

“We re going to take it, you know?”

 

With supplies of natural snow skimpy, the festival is trucking in artificially made snow from a winter recreation area, similar to the machine-made snow used on ski hills.

 

Bellefleur said she knows of only one other year that the 43-year-old festival had to buy artificial snow.

 

Winnipeggers and others in Western Canada can thank a flip-flop in air pressure patterns for the mild winter, which has funneled warmer southwest air across the Prairies, said Natalie Hasell, meteorologist at Environment Canada.
Normally, the La Nina weather phenomenon off the Pacific Coast of North America would leave the Prairies digging out of frigid, snowier than usual conditions.

 

But this winter it s been much milder, and bone dry. Nearly all of the country s main grain-growing region has received below-normal precipitation since November 5.

 

While Winnipeggers have happily put away their snow shovels, a dozen of the Festival du Voyageur s snow sculptors, coming from as far away as Switzerland, the Netherlands and evenMexico have been shocked by the mild weather.

 

Usually, “the worst part for them when they come from Mexico is dealing with the cold itself,” Bellefleur said. “Not necessarily the (lack of) snow.”
 

Nokia to axe 4,000 jobs, move assembly to Asia

HELSINKI: Struggling Finnish phone maker Nokia plans to cut 4,000 more jobs at its plants in Finland, Hungary and Mexico as it seeks to cut costs by moving smartphone assembly work to Asia.

The cuts of 8 percent of the phone business workforce bring total planned job cuts at the group since Stephen Elop took over as Chief Executive in September 2010 to more than 30,000.

Nokia said in a statement the job cuts would take place in phases through this year. It has been reviewing the operations since unveiling the closure of its Romania plant last September.

“This was inevitable. It was a surprise it took so long for the decision to be made,” said Steve Brazier, chief executive of technology research firm Canalys. “Stephen Elop may be a polarizing figure, but he is proving effective at driving the change and he should be credited for that.”

Nokia’s recent business results have underscored the need for drastic cuts. Late last month it reported a 73 percent fall in quarterly earnings as sales of new Windows Phones failed to dent the dominance of Apple Inc’s iPhone or compensate for diving sales of its own old smartphones.

Its fourth-quarter smartphone sales shrank 31 percent from a year ago and the business made a steep loss for the quarter.

NO MORE PHONES BUILT IN EUROPE

Nokia said it would cut 2,300 jobs in Hungary, where it is a major exporter, some 1,000 in Finland and 700 in Mexico. It will continue to tailor models for specific operators at all sites.

Its Finnish factory in Salo, which was the cornerstone for its success in 1990s, has been the last remaining major phone assembly plant in the Western Europe for some time. Most rivals have moved their production to Asia.

The Hungarian government said it regretted Nokia’s decision.

Analyst Gergely Suppan at Takarekbank in Budapest noted the highest value-added activities would stay in Hungary.

The move comes only months after Nokia closed its plant in neighboring Romania, laying off some 2,200 people there.

Finnish unions demanded hefty cash payments to laid-off staff and Antti Rinne, chief of union Pro, said the announcement was damaging for Finland’s employment outlook.

“Raising the employment level and prolonging working careers is impossible if there are no jobs in Finland,” Rinne said in a statement.

Finland has pushed for years to prolong working careers as the Nordic country struggles with a shrinking work force and sluggish economic growth.

Nokia announced in April last year it would cut 7,000 jobs and unveiled a further 3,500 job losses in September. Its network arm Nokia Siemens announced cuts of 17,000 in November.

The group had 130,000 staff at the end of 2011, including Nokia Siemens.

Shares in Nokia were 1.2 percent higher at 3.93 euros, slightly outperforming the technology share index which rose 0.3 percent, by 5:53 a.m. ET. AGENCIES

Nine killed in Mexican bar shooting

 

Gunmen opened fire Saturday in a bar in the northern Mexican city of Chihuahua, killing at least nine people, including a policewoman and musicians in a band, a prosecutor s office said.

 

About 20 to 30 armed men stormed the Far West bar and started shooting at about 1:30 am (0830 GMT) as a group called “La 5a banda” was performing, the Chihuahua prosecutor s office said in a statement.

 

Witnesses told authorities the gunmen first fired in the air, and then took aim at the musicians, who played a genre of music called “nortena” that glorifies the gang and drug violence plaguing Mexico s northern border states.

 

Five of the victims were identified as members of the band, including a woman. A policewoman also died in the attack, along with three customers, the statement said. Seven people also were treated for gunshot wounds.

 

Crime scene specialists recovered about 100 discarded bullet casings fired from high caliber weapons.

 

More than 50,000 people are reported to have died in drug related violence in Mexico since 2006, when the government of President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown led by the military.
 

“The Hobbit” has dwarves and Bilbo in its latest photo

By Sean O’Connell
TrendPK.com: Before any journey, even an “Unexpected Journey,” there needs to be a feast.

In the latest photo from Peter Jackson’s upcoming “The Hobbit,” the dwarves recruited by Gandalf the Great (Ian McKellen) tower over Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), suggesting just how much trouble our dear hobbit adventurer could be in for.

As opposed to other anticipated blockbusters, “The Hobbit” doesn’t hold back any of its marketing materials. We’ve seen great photos, a full trailer and on-set production diaries from Jackson, himself. (Check his Facebook page.)

Here’s the photo. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” will be in theaters on Dec. 14, 2012. What do you think of the new image?

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Blackberry trying to avoid the hall of fallen giants

 

Research in Motion, maker of BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, sent its co-chief executives packing last week and replaced them with Thorsten Heins, who had been RIM’s chief operating officer. How would he characterize his employer?

 

“We make the best communications devices in the world,” said Mr. Heins, who met with editors and reporters from The New York Times on Friday.

 

Not everyone feels the same way. Over the last year, RIM’s share price has plunged 75 percent. The company once commanded more than half of the American smartphone market. Today it has 10 percent.

 

RIM has two, maybe three ways forward.

 

The first — the one that Mr. Heins is clearly aiming for — is a triumphant comeback after a near-death experience. Think Apple and its iMac. RIM is on the verge of upgrading its PlayBook operating system — now with, among other things, e-mail, a feature that the original PlayBook bafflingly lacked — and will release the BlackBerry 10 OS this year.Behind Door No. 2 is a gradual decline and diminution as rivals like Apple, Google and Microsoft devour most of the market; to some degree, they already have. BlackBerry would keep the scraps — a small but dedicated following of corporate and government customers who want its proprietary messaging and security features.Then there is the third option: oblivion. The road of progress is littered with the corpses of fallen titans. Objects that once seemed as indispensable as the companies that made them have been mercilessly superseded — as seen below. And RIM ought to know: with mobile devices like the BlackBerry 957, it helped to extinguish the pager era.

 

SONY WALKMAN (1979-2010) Before the Walkman, “personal audio” meant holding a transistor radio to your ear. Sony’s invention created an entire category of devices and helped make the company the technology leader of the 1980s. New models (Thinner Auto-reverse) were eagerly anticipated, the LP was relegated to the attic and tender moments spent listening to mix tapes from that certain someone proliferated across teenage bedrooms. Sony seemed incapable of putting a foot wrong. It successfully moved the brand into compact discs with the Discman, then bought record labels and movie studios to bring about that illusory marriage of technology and content. When the digital revolution hit, Sony was too beholden to its proprietary formats, as well as to the inertia inside its media companies. Enter Apple and the iPod.

 

PAGERS (BORN 1951) At first, pagers were attached to people who worked in fields where lives were on the line. That usually meant doctors, though the group expanded in the late 1980s to include drug dealers. Early beepers displayed only numbers, giving rise to a numerical lexicon that included codes like 911 (call me back immediately) and 07734, which resembles “hello” when read upside down. Pagers briefly gained fame in early 1990s hip-hop, showing up in songs like “Skypager,” by a Tribe Called Quest. The pager’s fall was attributable to the disruptive and destructive powers of another technology: the mobile phone. Why beep when you can talk? And a pager message is so tiny that it makes a tweet look like “The Iliad.” The beeper does live on, in limited circles: its network remains more reliable than cell networks, making it useful to E.M.S. and other rescue workers.

 

PALM PILOT (1997-2007) Filofax brought personal organizers to their analog apogee in the early ’90s, but Palm brought them into the digital age. Palm Pilots were dazzling when they first appeared: all of your contacts, calendars and notes in one slim, pocket-size device. A touch screen, which required a stylus, made navigation easy. And you could add software, bought through an online store. Want a Zagat guide to go along with your personal data? No problem. In later years, Palm even added telephone features, creating a compelling, all-in-one gadget. Despite boardroom dramas that affected the company’s name and its ownership, Palm’s reputation as a source of innovative hardware and software endured until Jan. 9, 2007. Why that date? That’s when Apple introduced the iPhone.

 

POLAROID INSTANT CAMERAS (1948-2008) Edwin Land’s invention of instant-developing film in 1948 put a darkroom inside a handheld camera. That achievement gave his Polaroid Corporation a distinct advantage over traditional film cameras. By 1980, Polaroid was selling 7.8 million cameras a year in the United States — more than half of all the 15 million cameras, instant and traditional, sold that year. In 1985, it won a major patent-infringement suit, forcing Kodak to abandon its own instant-camera efforts. The victory was short-lived. The late ’80s brought the rise of the digital camera. By 2000, digital cameras began appearing on cellphones, placing cameras in millions of pockets. Polaroid declared bankruptcy for the first time in 2001 and stopped making instant film in 2008. Kodak declared bankruptcy on Jan. 19.
ATARI 2600 (1977-c.1984) It wasn’t the first game console, but the Atari 2600 brought video games into the home and popular culture. Over its life span, more than 30 million were sold. Pong, Combat, Pitfall and Frogger soaked up children’s afternoons. Then came the PC, which could play games and do much more. Atari rushed out games, assuming that its customers would play whatever it released. They didn’t. Millions of unsold games and consoles were buried in a New Mexico landfill in 1983. Warner Communications, which bought Atari in 1976 for $28 million, sold it in 1984 for no cash.

–Courtesy New York Times
 

Jessica Simpson tweets about pregnancy moving along

TrendPK.com: Jessica Simpson is pregnant with her first child with fiancee Eric Johnson, and as the process goes along, the singer and fashionista is discovering just want it includes.

Simpson hit up Twitter to reveal how her face is now also changing as a result of her growing baby, states UsMagazine.com. While she woke up one morning with plumped up lips, she thinks it is all because of the pregnancy.

“Is this how pregnancy face begins? Yikes!” Simpson commented on Twitter.

Do you think she’ll snap back into shape after her pregnancy?

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Adele to return to singing after surgery at Grammys

TrendPK.com: Adele will finally be coming back to singing after having surgery on her throat as she will be performing at the 2012 Grammy Awards.

CBS has formally announced that the young singer will hit the stage for her first performance in months at the show on February 12th, states UsMagazine.com. She hasn’t performed for about five months as she underwent throat surgery and needed to take time to recover.

The singer who is nominated for six awards commented on the news: “I’m immensely proud to have been asked to perform at this year’s GRAMMY Awards. It’s an absolute honor to be included in such a night and for it to be my first performance in months is very exciting and of course nerve-racking, but what a way to get back into it all.”

Will you tune in?

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Leonardo DiCaprio vacations in Mexico with rumored girlfriend, mom

TrendPK.com: It looks like things might be serious between Leonardo DiCaprio and his rumored girlfriend, Erin Heatherton, as the two hit up a vacation in Mexico along with his mother.

The two were spotted zip-lining in Mexico along with his mom, who he has not been quiet about how important she is in his life, states E! News.

All three were photographed together during the zip-lining trip, so it seems things are good for now.

It has previously been rumored that DiCaprio’s mom wasn’t a fan of Blake Lively which might explain the sudden end to their romance.

Do you think he’ll stay with this girl?

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Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana reportedly keep romance out of Sundance

TrendPK.com: Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldana have been rumored to be seeing each other, but by the way they allegedly acted at Sundance, people wouldn’t suspect a thing.

It is rumored that while they were promoting their film, ‘The Words,’ there, the two weren’t acting like a new couple, states E! News. Cooper and Saldana enjoyed the film’s premiere dinner and after party, but arrived and left separately.

Cooper reportedly spent time with his mother there while Saldana allegedly had her sister with her.

What do you think about their rumored romance?

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Drug deaths: Six more die, overall toll at 70

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LAHORE: At least six more people died of recent monster in the form of medicine reaction, raising the overall death toll to 70 in Punjab with government machinery fully charged against the responsible for the menace, as cases have been launched against five manufacturing companies, TrendPK reports Wednesday.

While visiting the patients at Jinnah Hospital here yesterday, Punjab Chief Minister Mian Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif said that measures are being taken on emergency basis to bring the situation under control triggered by reaction of the medicines of the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC).

He said that Medical Superintendent of Services Hospital had been made OSD due to poor performance.

The CM Sharif noted the matter was being thoroughly probed and stern action would be taken in the light of inquiry against anyone found guilty of negligence or dereliction. He was talking to media persons after inquiring about the health of the patients affected by the reaction of PIC medicines at Jinnah Hospital here on Tuesday.

The case for drug-spurred deaths has been registered against the unidentified miscreants. Meantime, a local court handed owners of three medicine-manufacturing companies to Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on three-day physical remand.

However, Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations Chairman Dr. Riaz Ahmed held the PIC responsible for the deaths. TrendPK

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