GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Runner Amber Miller beat her husband Joe in the 42-km Chicago Marathon 9 October, but the hard work wasn’t over yet for the day: she went into labour soon after the race and gave birth to a 7-pound daughter, June. Mother and daughter are doing fine. Miller was closely followed by doctors during the pregnancy and they advised her on how to handle the race. She says she alternately ran and walked, following their advice.
The 27-year-old mother has a son, 19-month-old Caleb.
Links to other sites: Chicago Tribune, Daily News, South Africa
Australians hold their breath as Cyclone Yasi nears
It’s water in Queensland, but snow in the US: the latest storm, being called a megastorm by some, cut a north-south path that stretch down to Texas and up past Chicago, a city accustomed to snow that nevertheless saw its two airports shut down. NPR reports that some 6,000 flights were cancelled across the country, with American Airlines alone canceling 1,900, nearly half of its daily schedule. Snow and wind are causing problems, but the biggest worry is the damage that can be caused by ice storms, which have struck many areas. Power outages, falling trees and collapsing roofs are already being reported but another worry looms for TV sports addicts: will football’s Super Bowl go ahead as planned next Sunday? Dallas-Forth Worth Airport closed for an hour Tuesday due to the storm and the playing field was described as an ice rink by one newspaper that took an upbeat note: plenty of ice for Super Bowl parties.
Australia’s Queensland area faces what could be the worst cyclone in a century, reports the Sydney Morning Herald, with 296 kph winds. The storm has already ruined weather monitoring equipment on Willis Island, off Cairns, where the storm is expected to land, and its strength means it will be felt far inland. Residents have been told by authorities they will be on their own during the storm, with emergency services unavailable in order to protect their safety.
Links to other sites: Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Minneapolis Star & Tribune
Some 400 self-proclaimed experts on bedbugs have converged on the Hyatt Rosemont in Illinois, near Chicago, for the world’s first convention on bedbugs; 200 others were turned away. The gathering brought together entomologists and pest control experts to discuss the growing problem of bedbug infestation, which is centred on the Northeast, with New York City the epicentre.
The bugs have become resistant to most commercially available insecticides. Attendees at the convention included bedbug hunters, and sellers of steam and chemical extermination methods.
But most agree with the judgement of Dini Miller, an associate professor at Virginia Tech: “We are not going to have a chemical saviour to this problem,” she said. “We’re all going to look at a long, tedious process for keeping bedbugs manageable.”
Links to other sites: Chicago Tribune, New York Times, NPR
Long-standing mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, has announced that he will not seek a record seventh term and will step down when his term ends in 2011. He made the surprise announcement at a routine press conference 7 September. “Simply put, it’s time. Time for me. And time for Chicago to move on”, he said.
Daley, a Democrat, leaves behind a legacy of major urban renewal, and made Chicago a world-class city for tourism, cuisine and the arts. It was Daley who set a national trend by pulling down housing projects, saying they were a failed social experiment. He imposed himself on the Chicago school board and forced through important reforms.
Daley has been “Mayor for Life” since 1989. When he steps down he will have beaten the record 21 years set his father, Richard J. Daley, by several months. Daley Sr. was mayor of Chicago 1955-1976.
Links to other sites: Chicago Tribune, New York Times
United Airlines has agreed to buy Continental in what the two are calling a merger of equals, for about $3.2 billion. The new airline, to be called United, will fly to 59 countries, 389 destinations, and it will be the world’s largest airline, with more passengers than Delta, the current leader. It will have $29 billion in annual revenue, based on 2009 figures. Chicago, hometown to United, will be its base and the CEO of Continental, Jefferey Smisek, will be the new boss of the combined airline. The deal must be approved by the two companies’ unions and US antitrust authorities.
Links to other sites: Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, Guardian, Houston Chronicle, United Continental merger site
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Friday often brings some of the world’s stranger bits of news, from amusing to weird to hard to believe:
- Young people who are not yet of voting age, in Geneva, Switzerland erected the first new and relatively small minaret, defying the 29 November popular vote that bans them: in the Place Neuve, out of cardboard. Institute of Race Relations, UK (Ed. note: here is a design for homemade miniature cardboard minarets, in case they suddenly sell out in Swiss shops)
- Manchester, England: a 29-year-old man was shot dead when he and friends were confronted outside the money exchange where he worked. Police say he was robbed for cash and for his laptop. A 20-year-old is in custody. Guardian, UK
- A heavily drunk man in the Perm Territory, in the Russian Urals, was saved from flames by his cat. He fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand and when the apartment burst into flames his cat leaped onto him, scratching his face until the man came to and phoned the fire department. Ria Novosti, Russia
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The company responsible for city parking meters in Chicago, USA is giving away up to two free minutes of parking time to dispel growing outrage at time discrepancies that have resulted in parking fines. The operator, LAZ Parking, says it is recalibrating its 2,200 “pay and display” parking meters because Chicago’s car-owners were being short-changed by inaccurate meters. And the company says it is rounding up to the nearest minute and adding an extra minute of time to the display tickets. The company says its meters are calibrated each night with an atomic clock. Some experts dispute that.
The city of Chicago privatized the parking meters in December 2008. In exchange for $1.2 billion, the city signed a 75-year lease with LAZ Parking. The price of parking jumped, and now costs $3.50 an hour in central Chicago. Furious drivers have stopped paying, or park in side streets, or have vandalized the parking meters. Chicago Reader, Chicago Sun-Times
It’s summer in Geneva, Switzerland, and with the annual office drain and fewer press releases the serious news takes up less space, and the lighter news around the world is keeping us all a little happier:
- One of the most cheering bits of news to come out of Gaza in years occured 30 July when children in Gaza appear to have broken a Guinness world record for the number of kites flown at the same time: the old record was 713 and the new one, still being calculated, may be as high as 4,000, thanks to an event organized by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Al Jazeera
- British women turned a cold shoulder on an attempt to beat the world record for the most women wearing bikinis in the same place, when only 42 of the 1,924 needed showed up; sunshine prevailed but a forecast for cloudy, cool weather in Southend-on-Sea, Essex was blamed. UK Telegraph
- Almost half of post-secondary students in a recent survey in Canada said they pass along their old tech toys – iPods, for example – to their less tech-savvy parents. The Globe and Mail, Canada
- At a music festival in North Germany featuring Anthrax and Napalm Death, organizers asked concert-goers not to kiss and share bottles of beer to reduce the spread of A/H1N1 swine flu. Reuters
- Scottish pride is on the line with new claims by a researcher that haggis, considered a national dish north of the English border, was actually an English dish 132 years before it was mentioned in Scotland (haggis, for the uninitiated, is made with oatmeal, liver, heart and lungs – and Wikipedia updated its entry on this today, based on the news). The Scotsman
- A “career shoplifter”, age 86, was arrested for the 61st time in Chicago, in a career that began with her first arrest in 1956. Chicago Sun-Times
The Sears Tower in Chicago, once famed as the tallest building in the world, has a new owner and with it a new name: welcome to the world, the Willis Tower. Marketing experts are debating whether or not the insurance company behind the name will be able to make it stick. Reuters
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The candidate files with details about bids for the 2016 Games arrived 12 February in the Lausanne offices of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from the four candidate cities: Chicago (USA), Tokyo (Japan), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Madrid (Spain).
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