I know that title sounds a little weird, because if a stock exchange stops trading for over 3.5 hours, you don't expect much to happen in that time, and nothing much did happen, but not in the sense you might think.
What happened was this, at around 11.30am EDT, trading on the New York Stock Exchange floor was halted, due to what the exchange called an "internal technical issue", saying that a cyber attack was not the cause.
And yet, despite this, trading seemed to pretty much continue almost as normal on NYSE stocks. But how is that possible?
The New York Stock Exchange trading floor might be an iconic image, and a central point of trading in NYSE stocks, but it is by no means the only point for trading NYSE. In fact only 13% of all NYSE stocks that are traded during the day are actually traded through the NYSE trading floor.
There are about a dozen other places where NYSE stocks are traded, plus the options are on a separate platform, as is the OTC (Over The Counter) market, and the alternative market. The whole NYSE trading floor, is just one place where NYSE stocks are legally traded and the other trading floors were able to pick up the slack.
This story in itself provides us with two lessons, which is pretty rare to be fair. The first is the simple, always have back up plans, at least 1 and preferably more. That's a lesson that NYSE owners ICE obviously knew about and their back up plans were already in effect before the NYSE trading floor was halted at around 11.30am EDT.
My main problem with all these other backups is that they are all technologically based. In other words, it's all the same basic technology, just differently written systems that manage to talk to each other, and yet manage to maintain enough separation that when there was a problem, the other systems managed to keep going.
The second lesson I take from this story is not to be over-reliant on technology. Technology is actually a very useful thing, but especially these days with all the smartphones that I see people constantly staring at, we are in serious danger of taking this technology for granted.
When I first started doing radio back in 1990, computers were not being used to playout the music or the jingles or the adverts, in fact, they were barely more than a fancy text messaging system between studios. That all changed in 1992 with the arrival of Pirate FM 102.
In the past 25 years, computers have become a major part of the radio industry, with everything from news production, traffic management, music scheduling, station administration, playout and every other aspect just about handled by computers, and although I'm okay with it being that way, I am okay with it, because I was trained in the old fashioned methods, splicing tape with razor blades and joining together with sticky tape, cueing up records, cassettes and CDs manually, slamming carts into cart machines. All of these were standard things to learn when I started out in radio and now, they are techniques that many in the industry today wouldn't have a clue how to do, because they've never learned how to do them, because everything is done with computers.
But we are in an era where technology is pervasive, and we need to be aware that we need to be able to cope without it. The US TV series 'Revolution' dealt with that concept, and it didn't do a bad job of it, but the show was cancelled after 2 seasons and didn't really explore the basic concept as well as maybe it could have, by choosing to start the series 15 years after the permanent blackout had happened.
Maybe the most reassuring thing about this whole situation, is the very fact that despite the main trading floor going down for over 3.5 hours, stocks continued to trade as though nothing had happened. It suggests to me that all the systems did what they were supposed to do, and kept things going until the system got back up.
Indeed, the NYSE trading floor came back online 50 minutes before the official close, probably giving them just enough time to make sure that nothing else bad was going to happen with their temporary fix, before the close, and then they could spend the next 16-17 hours working on improving upon the temporary fix.
The real acid test will be tomorrow's trading day from 9.30am New York time. Then we will see if the system repairs have truly worked.
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York. Show all posts
Wednesday, 8 July 2015
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Occupy Wall Street.
Having been quietly observing the events in Zucotti Park, New York, across the United States and around the world in relation to the "Occupy" movement, it disappoints me to find that some of the politicians in the cities where these protests are happening have been strangely tone deaf about the movement.
Also, the media has behaved very strangely over the whole affair, at first trying to ignore the protests, then only begrudingly reporting when the police started to bring the violence to the protests. These protests were peaceful expressions of people's belief that too few people exercise too much power, a failed system. Yet, the media continued to portray these protests as anti-capitalist, which is taken to mean that the protesters wanted to replace the capitalist system.
I saw no inidcations that any of the protesters actually wanted to replace the capitalist system, rather they wanted to reform it so that unelected corporations could not buy their way into political power with politicians at the expense of the people who actually elect those politicians.
And now with the evictions of encampments from Zucotti Park; Oakland and the eviction notices served to the protesters in London, it seems the movement might be being forced out of its home encampment. But the Occupy Movement, along with it's British cousin, the Uncut movement, have both taken root on the net, especially on Facebook and Twitter, and now the movement is global, and is growing. Tone deafness like the kind displayed by local politicians like Mayor Michael Bloomberg, will only feed the movement, not make it go away.
Keith Olbermann, on Current TV's Countdown With Keith Olbermann, highlighted other occassions when this has happened.
Below is the transcript of his "Special Comment".
"For the entirety of the life of our nation, democracy has been protected - not merely by the strenuous efforts of those of us who cherish it, but mostly, and most profoundly, by the limitless stupidity of those who would ration it, keep it for themselves and themselves alone, or destroy it.
The protests that ended the war in Vietnam reached critical mass only in 1970, when Governor James Rhodes of Ohio pounded on a desk at a news conference and called the student protesters at Kent State University un-American. They were not un-American, they were unarmed. And the next day, four were shot and killed by the National Guard and 10 days later, two more were killed at Jackson State.
Those protests had themselves only gone mainstream 20 months earlier, when Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago overreacted with mindlessness and sadism to the massing of demonstrators outside the 1968 Democratic convention and the whole world watched.
A century of the institutionalized, codified, legalized, pseudo-slavery that followed the real thing was fatally stricken only Governor George Wallace of Alabama used his inaugural address to promise, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." Within two years came the marches on Selma and the atrocities at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And ten weeks after the first violence, the president had proposed the Voting Rights Act to Congress.
The mounting paranoia of three decades of scapegoating of - and fear mongering about - liberals, only ended when its last white knight self-destructed on the national stage of televised hearings, when Joe McCarthy questioned the loyalty of the US military and - towards one junior attorney - he revealed the depths of his cruelty and megalomania. And he revealed that - at long last - he, indeed, had no shame.
Pick any moment in our history - our history as a country founded by and invigorated by and re-invigorated by protests - and you will find men like George Wallace and Joe McCarthy and Jim Rhodes and Richard Daley. Go back further - to men like the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company or the officials who sent the police to the Haymarket Square and the troops to the Pullman town or John Brown or George Grenville, the British politician who had a bright idea about the American colonies, an idea called the Stamp Act.
American freedom has not flourished in spite of these morons of history, it has flourished because of them - because they overreacted, because they under-thought, overreached, under-understood. We owe them our traditions of protest. We owe them our freedoms. We owe them our very independence. None of them ever understood that - around these parts anyway - suppression always creates the opposite of the effect desired.
Such a man is Michael Rubens Bloomberg, mayor of New York City and - as of today - the most valuable, the most essential, the most irreplaceable man inside the Occupy movement.
Who else but a cliché like Bloomberg could take a protest beginning to grow a little stale around the edges and vault it back in the headlines, complete with mortifying scenes of police dressed as storm troopers, carrying military weapons, using figurative bazookas to kill figurative mosquitoes?
Who else but an archetype like Bloomberg could claim a group of protesters was making too much noise in a residential area and then choose to try to disperse them by bringing out LRAD audio cannons, machines that send painful waves of sound indiscriminately over the very same residential area?
Who else but a cartoon like Bloomberg could have become rich creating a multi-billion-dollar media and news company and then authorize illegally preventing reporters from witnessing police actions he claimed were utterly legal, and then authorize the arrests of four reporters at a church?
Who else but a human platitude like Bloomberg could have just gotten back from Jerusalem - and the dedication of a ten-million-dollar medical facility for which he generously paid - and then enabled the image of policemen seizing 5,500 books from the Occupy Wall Street library, and throwing them in a Dumpster as if the cops were book burners?
Who else but a hypocrite like Bloomberg could have overridden - by a backroom deal with the New York City Council - the results of two separate referendums, limiting those in his office to just two terms as mayor, so he could serve a third term? And then had police arrest, beat up and incarcerate a member of the New York City Council?
Who else but a putz like Bloomberg could have insisted protesters were not above the rule of law and yet - when the courts ruled he could not seize the protesters' tents and sleeping bags, nor kick them out of Zuccotti park, nor keep them from returning with their tents and sleeping bags - who else could have stalled for hours until he could find another judge to give him the ruling he insisted upon?
Who else but the epitome of tone-deafness that is Bloomberg could have better illustrated the fundamental issue of Occupy, when he puts the entire weight of the most people-driven city in the history of the Earth behind already-crushingly rich and their efforts to grab themselves still more advantages from those people and he, himself, is the 12th richest man in America?
Who else but a publicity addict like Bloomberg could have enabled the arrest of 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge and yet, two months later, frozen 20 square miles of New York City in gridlock traffic over two days, so somebody could film another goddamned Batman movie on the 59th Street Bridge? Leading to the inescapable conclusion that - if you want to tie up a little traffic during a protest for equality and freedom from corporate domination on a bridge in New York City - you will be arrested. But - if you want to tie up all of the traffic during a goddamned movie shoot for the financial benefit of corporate domination - the city of New York will embrace you and give you tax breaks.
Michael Bloomberg - no such a figure, no such a living, breathing embodiment of all that is wrong and all that is stupid in the establishment in this country could be ordered up from the works of fiction, or the casting calls of that goddamned Batman movie they filmed the weekend before he ordered the raid on Occupy Wall Street.
Obviously, Mayor Bloomberg, you should resign and your little bully of a police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, should go with you. You have overstepped all reasonable interpretations of your rights and responsibilities and you have made Americans and people around the world realize that you are simply smaller, more embarrassing versions of the tin-pot tyrants who have fallen around the globe in the past year.
But - as some of us first thought you might be, back on that fateful afternoon that sadistic cops pepper-sprayed four women who had already been trapped inside a police overreaction, and as we thought again the following weekend during the arrests on Brooklyn Bridge - Michael Bloomberg, you have now, indeed, become the symbol of the Occupy movement. You are ready to take your historic place with Mayor Daley and Governor Wallace and Senator McCarthy and Prime Minister Grenville and every other idiot who has made the fateful and fatal mistake of thinking that - just because he had power and money - that this was a nation in which everything has a price tag on it.
We need you, Michael Bloomberg. We need you to keep making these mistakes - tone-deaf, sensibility-offending, world-changing mistakes - like the pepper spray and the Brooklyn Bridge and the paramilitary assault on Occupy Wall Street last night.
Hell, Mike, the freedoms of this wonderful and transcendent nation - corrupted by the endless greed of you and the other dozen richest people in it, and the corporations who nevertheless have still managed to own you somehow - these freedoms will not be restored to us in just the next two years. I am endorsing you for a fourth term! Your nation needs you, Mr. Mayor! Occupy needs you!
Bloomberg now! Bloomberg tomorrow! Bloomberg forever!"
I think some sarcasm may have crept in there at the end...
Also, the media has behaved very strangely over the whole affair, at first trying to ignore the protests, then only begrudingly reporting when the police started to bring the violence to the protests. These protests were peaceful expressions of people's belief that too few people exercise too much power, a failed system. Yet, the media continued to portray these protests as anti-capitalist, which is taken to mean that the protesters wanted to replace the capitalist system.
I saw no inidcations that any of the protesters actually wanted to replace the capitalist system, rather they wanted to reform it so that unelected corporations could not buy their way into political power with politicians at the expense of the people who actually elect those politicians.
And now with the evictions of encampments from Zucotti Park; Oakland and the eviction notices served to the protesters in London, it seems the movement might be being forced out of its home encampment. But the Occupy Movement, along with it's British cousin, the Uncut movement, have both taken root on the net, especially on Facebook and Twitter, and now the movement is global, and is growing. Tone deafness like the kind displayed by local politicians like Mayor Michael Bloomberg, will only feed the movement, not make it go away.
Keith Olbermann, on Current TV's Countdown With Keith Olbermann, highlighted other occassions when this has happened.
Below is the transcript of his "Special Comment".
"For the entirety of the life of our nation, democracy has been protected - not merely by the strenuous efforts of those of us who cherish it, but mostly, and most profoundly, by the limitless stupidity of those who would ration it, keep it for themselves and themselves alone, or destroy it.
The protests that ended the war in Vietnam reached critical mass only in 1970, when Governor James Rhodes of Ohio pounded on a desk at a news conference and called the student protesters at Kent State University un-American. They were not un-American, they were unarmed. And the next day, four were shot and killed by the National Guard and 10 days later, two more were killed at Jackson State.
Those protests had themselves only gone mainstream 20 months earlier, when Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago overreacted with mindlessness and sadism to the massing of demonstrators outside the 1968 Democratic convention and the whole world watched.
A century of the institutionalized, codified, legalized, pseudo-slavery that followed the real thing was fatally stricken only Governor George Wallace of Alabama used his inaugural address to promise, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." Within two years came the marches on Selma and the atrocities at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And ten weeks after the first violence, the president had proposed the Voting Rights Act to Congress.
The mounting paranoia of three decades of scapegoating of - and fear mongering about - liberals, only ended when its last white knight self-destructed on the national stage of televised hearings, when Joe McCarthy questioned the loyalty of the US military and - towards one junior attorney - he revealed the depths of his cruelty and megalomania. And he revealed that - at long last - he, indeed, had no shame.
Pick any moment in our history - our history as a country founded by and invigorated by and re-invigorated by protests - and you will find men like George Wallace and Joe McCarthy and Jim Rhodes and Richard Daley. Go back further - to men like the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company or the officials who sent the police to the Haymarket Square and the troops to the Pullman town or John Brown or George Grenville, the British politician who had a bright idea about the American colonies, an idea called the Stamp Act.
American freedom has not flourished in spite of these morons of history, it has flourished because of them - because they overreacted, because they under-thought, overreached, under-understood. We owe them our traditions of protest. We owe them our freedoms. We owe them our very independence. None of them ever understood that - around these parts anyway - suppression always creates the opposite of the effect desired.
Such a man is Michael Rubens Bloomberg, mayor of New York City and - as of today - the most valuable, the most essential, the most irreplaceable man inside the Occupy movement.
Who else but a cliché like Bloomberg could take a protest beginning to grow a little stale around the edges and vault it back in the headlines, complete with mortifying scenes of police dressed as storm troopers, carrying military weapons, using figurative bazookas to kill figurative mosquitoes?
Who else but an archetype like Bloomberg could claim a group of protesters was making too much noise in a residential area and then choose to try to disperse them by bringing out LRAD audio cannons, machines that send painful waves of sound indiscriminately over the very same residential area?
Who else but a cartoon like Bloomberg could have become rich creating a multi-billion-dollar media and news company and then authorize illegally preventing reporters from witnessing police actions he claimed were utterly legal, and then authorize the arrests of four reporters at a church?
Who else but a human platitude like Bloomberg could have just gotten back from Jerusalem - and the dedication of a ten-million-dollar medical facility for which he generously paid - and then enabled the image of policemen seizing 5,500 books from the Occupy Wall Street library, and throwing them in a Dumpster as if the cops were book burners?
Who else but a hypocrite like Bloomberg could have overridden - by a backroom deal with the New York City Council - the results of two separate referendums, limiting those in his office to just two terms as mayor, so he could serve a third term? And then had police arrest, beat up and incarcerate a member of the New York City Council?
Who else but a putz like Bloomberg could have insisted protesters were not above the rule of law and yet - when the courts ruled he could not seize the protesters' tents and sleeping bags, nor kick them out of Zuccotti park, nor keep them from returning with their tents and sleeping bags - who else could have stalled for hours until he could find another judge to give him the ruling he insisted upon?
Who else but the epitome of tone-deafness that is Bloomberg could have better illustrated the fundamental issue of Occupy, when he puts the entire weight of the most people-driven city in the history of the Earth behind already-crushingly rich and their efforts to grab themselves still more advantages from those people and he, himself, is the 12th richest man in America?
Who else but a publicity addict like Bloomberg could have enabled the arrest of 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge and yet, two months later, frozen 20 square miles of New York City in gridlock traffic over two days, so somebody could film another goddamned Batman movie on the 59th Street Bridge? Leading to the inescapable conclusion that - if you want to tie up a little traffic during a protest for equality and freedom from corporate domination on a bridge in New York City - you will be arrested. But - if you want to tie up all of the traffic during a goddamned movie shoot for the financial benefit of corporate domination - the city of New York will embrace you and give you tax breaks.
Michael Bloomberg - no such a figure, no such a living, breathing embodiment of all that is wrong and all that is stupid in the establishment in this country could be ordered up from the works of fiction, or the casting calls of that goddamned Batman movie they filmed the weekend before he ordered the raid on Occupy Wall Street.
Obviously, Mayor Bloomberg, you should resign and your little bully of a police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, should go with you. You have overstepped all reasonable interpretations of your rights and responsibilities and you have made Americans and people around the world realize that you are simply smaller, more embarrassing versions of the tin-pot tyrants who have fallen around the globe in the past year.
But - as some of us first thought you might be, back on that fateful afternoon that sadistic cops pepper-sprayed four women who had already been trapped inside a police overreaction, and as we thought again the following weekend during the arrests on Brooklyn Bridge - Michael Bloomberg, you have now, indeed, become the symbol of the Occupy movement. You are ready to take your historic place with Mayor Daley and Governor Wallace and Senator McCarthy and Prime Minister Grenville and every other idiot who has made the fateful and fatal mistake of thinking that - just because he had power and money - that this was a nation in which everything has a price tag on it.
We need you, Michael Bloomberg. We need you to keep making these mistakes - tone-deaf, sensibility-offending, world-changing mistakes - like the pepper spray and the Brooklyn Bridge and the paramilitary assault on Occupy Wall Street last night.
Hell, Mike, the freedoms of this wonderful and transcendent nation - corrupted by the endless greed of you and the other dozen richest people in it, and the corporations who nevertheless have still managed to own you somehow - these freedoms will not be restored to us in just the next two years. I am endorsing you for a fourth term! Your nation needs you, Mr. Mayor! Occupy needs you!
Bloomberg now! Bloomberg tomorrow! Bloomberg forever!"
I think some sarcasm may have crept in there at the end...
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
NaVloPoMo 2009 – Day 3: US Election Day 2009
Ian Beaumont looks forward to today's off year elections in the US.
Monday, 2 November 2009
Viewpoint Extra - NY 23: Republican backs Democrat not Conservative
There has been a further fascinating development in the story of Congressional District NY-23's special election. Ian Beaumont examines these and looks at the possibilities for US right wing politics in the future.
Saturday, 31 October 2009
Viewpoint - NY 23: Conservatism's first big election breakthrough?
In New York, a special election for the House of Representatives has garnered a lot of attention. Ian Beaumont analyses developments.
Friday, 11 September 2009
Viewpoint: 9/11 +8
It was 8 years ago today when the world changed forever. 9/11 as it was to become known killed over 3,000 people in 4 separate attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York, the Pentagon in Washington DC and in Virgina. Ian Beaumont looks back at a day that lives in the minds of all who witnessed it.
Monday, 3 August 2009
Viewpoint – Review of Season 1
Ian Beaumont looks back on the stories that have most influenced Viewpoint over this past season just gone.
Monday, 6 July 2009
A Republican I can agree with… almost!
The video you see below is Republican Congressman Peter King on New York, and he’s talking about the way the media has treated the Michael Jackson story. Now, I can agree with almost every word he says, but there just a few I can’t agree with. Look at the video and can you guess which ones I can’t agree with?
So, any guesses?
The words are “low-life”, “pervert”, “child molester”, “paedophile”.
Michael Jackson was NEVER convicted of child molestation or paedophilia. Now, if Peter King had used words such as “celebrity”, “singer” or “superstar”, then I could have agreed with him 100%. Being the TruthSeeker isn’t something I am for show, it is something that pervades every ounce of my being. Factual accuracy has to be at 100%, 100% of the time. It may well be that Peter King believes Jackson was guilty, like many others believe OJ Simpson was guilty of murder, but like OJ, he wasn’t convicted, so he should have tempered his opinions with words like “I think”, “I believe”, “in my opinion”, you get the picture. But no, Peter King used those words as though they were fact, recorded history, truth, undeniable. So, Peter King gets +50% on the TruthSeekerMeter, which rates a “partially true”
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Viewpoint – New York Senate Coup
In the wake of a Republican power grab in the New York State Senate, Ian Beaumont is uncompromising about Republicans and their so called love of "Democracy".
Saturday, 27 September 2008
Victoria Beckham's gravity defying PVC thigh boots?
Victoria Beckham is known to have worn some quite fetish orientated outfits before, but this one is a different level entirely. According to the Daily Mail, she's wearing PVC thigh boots that are without heels. True, the boots have no heels, but on closer inspection, they do not look like PVC to me. PVC is never that dull, nor that tightly fitted. These are latex pony boots. Latex is similar to PVC or Vinyl in that it can be very shiny, but without care and attention, latex can turn very dull. And pony boots are simply boots without heels.
I never expect the Daily Mail to get it right, but they do seem to have a penchant for picking out the fetish type outfits that some celebrities wear. I wonder why...
I never expect the Daily Mail to get it right, but they do seem to have a penchant for picking out the fetish type outfits that some celebrities wear. I wonder why...
Saturday, 12 April 2008
Scarlett Johannson and Natalie Portman to direct!
MegaStar reports that actresses Scarlett Johannson and Natalie Portman, who recently teamed up on "The Other Boelyn Sister" and apparently became best friends there, are both to make their directorial debuts in a new film, called "New York, I Love You", which is a collection of short stories based in the city of New York.
Now, I like watching these two on screen, but it will be interesting to see how their directorial debuts will be recieved. It's obvious that both are planning for a future behind the camera after they feel they've done what they can in front of it, so good on them.
Now, I like watching these two on screen, but it will be interesting to see how their directorial debuts will be recieved. It's obvious that both are planning for a future behind the camera after they feel they've done what they can in front of it, so good on them.
Monday, 10 March 2008
NY Governor linked to Prostitution ring!
This is a pretty big story in New York, and to be honest, in my view, this is a pretty big story overall. New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is reported by the New York Times website to have been involved in a prostitution ring. According to the report, he was caught on a federal wiretap meeting up with a high-price prostitute at a hotel in Washington, in relation to a ring, the Emporer's Club VIP, that was broken up last week.
So far, Eliot Spitzer has not indicated that he intends to resign, but sources have told WCBS TV in New York that Spitzer could resign as early as Monday evening and was not expected to continue as Governor. If he does, until the state constitution, The Lieutenant Governor, David Paterson, would serve out the rest of the term, and the post of Lieutenant Governor would be vacant until the next election in 2010.
This is big news, and to be honest, if he doesn't resign, it will be very damaging for Democrats in New York in upcoming elections, not just the Governor's race but other elections including possibly the 2008 Presidential race. By geographic association, if nothing else, this might also damage Hilary Clinton's chances if she doesn't distance herself signifcantly from Spitzer.
So far, Eliot Spitzer has not indicated that he intends to resign, but sources have told WCBS TV in New York that Spitzer could resign as early as Monday evening and was not expected to continue as Governor. If he does, until the state constitution, The Lieutenant Governor, David Paterson, would serve out the rest of the term, and the post of Lieutenant Governor would be vacant until the next election in 2010.
This is big news, and to be honest, if he doesn't resign, it will be very damaging for Democrats in New York in upcoming elections, not just the Governor's race but other elections including possibly the 2008 Presidential race. By geographic association, if nothing else, this might also damage Hilary Clinton's chances if she doesn't distance herself signifcantly from Spitzer.
Monday, 4 June 2007
Viewpoint Extra: New York airport terror plot thwated
Well, two days into this story, developments get stranger and stranger!.
NPR reports that a twice-convicted drug dealer was the informant. It's a long way down the story, but it is worth reading all the way through.
MSNBC has an Associated Press story about how in fact the damage that would have been caused by an explosion would in fact have been quite limited, because it would not travel up and down the pipeline.
I have already seen blog articles call the timing of the announcement somewhat suspect, coming just a day before the Democratic Candidates Debate on CNN. Noel Sheppard of the Newsbusters blog even predicted this would happen, whilst the story was still fresh.
Plus, on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Democratic respresentative John Murtha, stated that he felt we were getting more of these plots BECAUSE the US invaded Iraq, not in spite of it.
Confused??? So is the Tardis!!!
NPR reports that a twice-convicted drug dealer was the informant. It's a long way down the story, but it is worth reading all the way through.
MSNBC has an Associated Press story about how in fact the damage that would have been caused by an explosion would in fact have been quite limited, because it would not travel up and down the pipeline.
I have already seen blog articles call the timing of the announcement somewhat suspect, coming just a day before the Democratic Candidates Debate on CNN. Noel Sheppard of the Newsbusters blog even predicted this would happen, whilst the story was still fresh.
Plus, on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Democratic respresentative John Murtha, stated that he felt we were getting more of these plots BECAUSE the US invaded Iraq, not in spite of it.
Confused??? So is the Tardis!!!
Saturday, 2 June 2007
New York airport terror plot thawted.
CNN has been reporting about a plot to bomb fuel lines at JFK International Airport in New York. It is also being reported right now on BBC News 24 and Sky News. There is more developements constantly being reported on CNN US and you can hear the coverage at CNN.com.
However, skepticism about the timing of the announcement has already been noted from Newshounds, saying...
"Here we go again. Another "aspirational" fantasy plot by yet another home-grown "cell" of Muslims angry about Bush foreign policy, uncovered by good police work and revealed just when the Bush administration has had a bad week."
I'll keep an eye on how the blogosphere reports this story.
However, skepticism about the timing of the announcement has already been noted from Newshounds, saying...
"Here we go again. Another "aspirational" fantasy plot by yet another home-grown "cell" of Muslims angry about Bush foreign policy, uncovered by good police work and revealed just when the Bush administration has had a bad week."
I'll keep an eye on how the blogosphere reports this story.
Friday, 18 May 2007
Webstream Of The Week: WABC Eyewitness News Now
Every week, I'm going to recommend a web media stream to either watch or listen to. This week, I'm going to point you in the direction of ABC's New York station, WABC and their digital service, Eyewitness News Now.
Despite the name, this is not a 24 hour news station, although it does cover live breaking news. At other times, it is a localised weather channel, powered by Accuweather.com.
Whilst this is not the best web stream around, it is a great example of how digital TV in the US works differently to in the UK. Whether the US system is better than the UK system is debateable, but at least, you have to chance to make up your own mind.
I rate this stream 7 out of 10, as the technical quality is good, and the text readable at the size on the screen, but I think that the content could be better.
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