Archive for August, 2007
One Billion Light Years Across of Nothing
August 24th, 2007Via: Globe and Mail: Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That’s got them scratching their heads about what’s just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That’s an […]
More War on the Horizon
August 24th, 2007Via: Antiwar: No pullout from Iraq while I’m president, declares George W. Bush. On to Iran, declares Vice President Cheney. Israel is a “peace-seeking state” that needs $30 billion of US taxpayers’ money for war, declares State Department official Nicholas Burns. The Democratic Congress, if not fully behind the Iraqi war, at least no longer […]
Mother Teresa Doubted the Existence of God
August 24th, 2007I wonder: How many saints felt the same way as Mother Teresa? Via: CBS: In life, she was an icon for believers of God’s work on Earth. Her ministry to the poor of Calcutta was a world-renowned symbol of religious compassion. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Mother Teresa had a calling, she told […]
UK: Tracking Bugs in School Blazers
August 23rd, 2007Via: Guardian: A school uniform maker said yesterday it was “seriously considering” adding tracking devices to its clothes after a survey found many parents would be interested in knowing where their offspring were. Trutex would not say whether it was studying a spy in the waistband or a bug in the blazer but admitted teenagers […]
Lehman Brothers Shuts Down Subprime Unit, Fires 1,200
August 23rd, 2007Via: Bloomberg: Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the biggest underwriter of U.S. bonds backed by mortgages, became the first firm on Wall Street to close its subprime-lending unit and said 1,200 employees will lose their jobs. … BNC made about $2 billion of loans in the first quarter, down 40 percent from a year earlier, according […]
Late Loans Soar on Troubled Mortgages
August 23rd, 2007Via: Yahoo / Reuters: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said on Wednesday delinquent loans at U.S. banks jumped 36 percent to $66.9 billion in the second quarter, the biggest quarterly increase since 1990, largely fueled by unpaid real estate loans. Rising U.S. home foreclosures and problems in the subprime mortgage market have spilled into broader […]
Accredited Home Lenders Shuts Down
August 22nd, 2007Mortgage company collapse of the day… Via: AP: Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co. plans to shut down most of its business to survive the troubles in the home lending industry, the company said Wednesday. Accredited Home Lenders said it will cut its work force to 1,000 people — from 2,600 at the end of June […]
Wells Fargo: WTF?
August 22nd, 2007I’d really like to know more about the nature of what actually happened with this Wells Fargo disaster. Redundancy is one of the main characteristics of mission critical systems. Wipe one box off the face of the earth, and there could be one, ten or dozens more, in different locations, waiting to take up the […]
Fiber-Optic Cables Near Cleveland Sabotaged
August 22nd, 2007Via: Network World: ISPs in the U.S. experienced a service slowdown Monday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire. TeliaSonera, which lost the northern leg of its U.S. network to the cut, said that the outage began around 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, […]
Capital One Down for the Count; to Cut 1,900 Jobs
August 21st, 2007Via: Newsday: Turmoil in the financial markets claimed another company with workers in the metropolitan area Monday as Capital One Financial Corp. closed down GreenPoint Mortgage, a mortgage banker with operations in 31 states. Capital One, which acquired GreenPoint when it bought Melville-based North Fork Bancorp last year, said about 1,900 employees nationwide will lose […]
