Choosing a much-detested raccoon as its mascot made a clear statement: Porter Airlines was going to be a daring, different kind of airline.
And the upstart that some doubted could ever succeed given the volatility of the aviation industry is celebrating its fifth birthday on Sunday.
Robert Deluce, president and CEO of Porter Airlines, uses the mascot, whom they call Mr. Porter, an alter-ego of sorts, to illustrate why they
The Toronto Historical Board plaque is the first hint to would-be buyers that 7 Wellesley Ave. is every bit as special as its $775,000 price tag.
And it is.
This classic Cabbagetown Victorian is a historic home without a history.
It
BlackBerry services buzzed back to life across the world Thursday, after a three-day outage that interrupted email messages and Internet services for millions of customers.
Research In Motion Ltd., the Canadian company that makes the phones, posted a statement that says services are improving.
Many BlackBerry users have been unable to send and receive emails and messages in an outage that started Monday in Europe. Web browsers haven’t been working either. On Thursday morning, BlackBerry users on Twitter and online forums were reporting that their phones were buzzing with incoming messages again.
RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis apologized for the outage in a video posted to the company’s site Thursday morning.
“It’s too soon to say that this issue is fully resolved,” Lazaridis said. “I’d like to give you an estimated time of full recovery around the world, but I cannot do this with certainty at this time.”
A crucial link in BlackBerry’s European network failed Monday, and a backup also failed. Although the underlying issues were quickly repaired, the system had built up a backlog of emails and messages that needed to be wound down. Meanwhile, messages destined for Europe were piling up at BlackBerry data centers in the rest of world. By Wednesday, the outage had spread to the U.S. and Canada, slowing service to a crawl there.
RIM shares were down 35 cents, or 1.5 percent, at $23.53 in premarket trading in New York. Investors have taken the outage in stride, figuring that it’s only one of many problems RIM is facing. The shares are up slightly since the outage began.
Wednesday was a good day for Fawad Khan.
He got up shortly before 3 a.m. and headed to a bank of computers in his Mississauga basement. While his family slept, he started trading.
One screen charted the euro in real time. It looked like the seismic readout for an earthquake. Trading in this kind of market, with one
Pancreatic cancer is notoriously lethal _ there are almost as many deaths from it each year as there are new cases. The deaths this week of Apple founder Steve Jobs and Nobelist Ralph Steinman bring unusual attention to this less-well-known type of cancer that has actually been declining despite no big advances in treatment or finding it early.
A decline in smoking, one of the top risk factors for the disease, may be behind the drop in cases.
Jobs lived more than seven years after being diagnosed with a neuroendocrine tumor _ a less common, slower-growing and more treatable type of pancreatic cancer than the kind that killed Steinman a week ago and actor Patrick Swayze two years ago.
The Apple chief kept details of his illness behind a firewall and declared he was cured after cancer surgery in 2004. However, five years later, gaunt and having lost a lot of weight, Jobs had a liver transplant. Experts said it was likely because his cancer had returned or spread.
A liver transplant sometimes can cure the type of cancer that Jobs had. But if it comes back, “it’s usually in one to two years,” said Dr. Michael Pishvaian of Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.
In January, Jobs announced his third and final leave of absence. He resigned in August and died on Wednesday.
Part of what makes pancreatic cancer so deadly is that the pancreas is as vital as the heart. You can live with just part of a liver or a colon, or only one kidney or lung. But the pancreas is a fish-shaped organ that makes digestive enzymes and insulin and other hormones that enable the body to make energy from food.
In the United States, pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths. About 44,030 people will be diagnosed with it and about 37,660 people will die of it this year in the U.S., the American Cancer Society estimates.
Possible symptoms are fatigue, back pain, abdominal pain, unexplained weight loss, loss of appetite, jaundice and nausea, according to the Lustgarten Foundation, a private group that finances research on the disease.
This cancer often is not found until it is advanced or has spread, and overall survival is dismal: 20 percent after one year and only 4 percent after five years.
However, with a neuroendocrine tumor like the one Jobs had, “people can live a longer time; median survival is five to eight years,” said Dr. Alan Venook, a pancreatic cancer specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.
The lifetime risk of developing pancreatic cancer is about 1 in 71, according to the cancer society. Men and blacks account for more cases than women and whites, possibly because of differences in smoking rates unsecured personal loans. Smokers have two to three times more risk of developing the disease. Use of smokeless tobacco also raises the risk.
Obese people, those who don’t exercise much and diabetics also have more risk for pancreatic cancer. Alcohol use might play a role: Most studies haven’t tied it to pancreatic cancer, but heavy drinking can lead to diabetes and liver and pancreas problems that pose a cancer risk, the cancer society says.
The best hope for a patient is that the tumor is operable. That was the case in February 2009, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a small, early-stage pancreatic tumor removed at New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
On the horizon are immune system treatments _ research that Steinman, the Nobel recipient from Rockefeller University in New York, was studying in the lab and trying on his own pancreatic cancer.
The immune system has a hard time recognizing and fighting cancer because the enemy is not an invading germ but our own cells gone rogue. Treatments called therapeutic cancer vaccines are ways to modify cells to help the immune system recognize the risk.
One such vaccine by NewLink Genetics, a small biotech firm in Ames, Iowa, is in late-stage testing now for pancreatic cancer. The company website says the larger study was initiated after a mid-stage test suggested improvement in survival.
Dr. Roderich Schwarz, chief of surgical oncology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, has enrolled a few patients in some immune therapy studies, which have not paid off in the past.
“Vaccines are coming along,” and last year’s approval of one for advanced prostate cancer suggests researchers may be learning to overcome some of the drawbacks of the past, he said.
“It’s quite possible that vaccines will claim their territory in the treatment of these challenging tumors,” Schwarz said. “It’s still in the development stage rather than the proven stage.”
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Online:
Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/pancreatic
Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/PancreaticCancer/index
Survival rates: http://bit.ly/oAxKl5
Research and support: http://www.curePC.org and http://www.lustgarten.org
Vaccine study: http://www.linkp.com/products/hyperacute-pancreas.html
German officials on Monday downplayed prospects of any quick and dramatic change of course in the eurozone debt crisis, days before a parliamentary vote on beefing up the continent’s rescue fund.
Weekend meetings of global financial leaders in Washington raised hopes of a change in strategy, with officials indicating that would focus on further boosting the firepower of the euro440 billion ($595 billion) rescue fund _ perhaps by allowing it to tap loans from the European Central Bank or otherwise leveraging its lending capacity.
Hopes for such a move boosted European stock markets on Monday, with German and French bank shares rising strongly.
However, ahead of a parliamentary vote Thursday on changes to the fund that eurozone leaders already agreed to in July, Berlin was keen to underline its attachment to its often-criticized step-by-step approach.
Thursday’s vote on expanding the powers of the rescue fund, the so-called European Financial Stability Facility, will be followed over the coming months by final decisions on a second bailout package for Greece and on a permanent rescue mechanism meant to succeed the EFSF from 2013, Finance Ministry spokesman Martin Kotthaus noted.
“That is quite simply the procedure that lies in front of us _ we will work through it step by step,” Kotthaus said.
When asked in Washington whether he supported the idea of leveraging the rescue fund, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said: “Of course we will use the EFSF in the most efficient way possible.”
His spokesman, Kotthaus, said that the EFSF “is how it is” and noted that only a small part of the funding has already been committed.
Asked about the possibility of leveraging the fund, he said “the discussion is not so far along that I could contribute any examples, ideas or subideas.”
Some in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right coalition already find beefing up the EFSF by giving it new powers hard to swallow, and anything beyond that could be a hard sell among its lawmakers.
Christian Lindner, the general secretary of the Free Democrats _ Merkel’s junior coalition partner _ called on the chancellor to provide clarity and stressed that his party opposes allowing the fund to tap ECB loans quick guaranteed personal loans.
A prominent opposition lawmaker, center-left Social Democrat Carsten Schneider, said the government should come clean on its “real intentions.”
“In Washington and Brussels they are already planning new programs in the billions, and in Germany the parliament and public are having the wool pulled over their eyes,” Schneider was quoted as telling Der Spiegel magazine.
Merkel’s spokesman rejected that accusation sharply.
“The true intentions of the government and the chancellor are on the table,” Steffen Seibert said. “They will be decided on in parliament Thursday.”
Merkel has been caught between criticism from abroad for doing too little and from supporters at home who fear she is spending too much taxpayer money on the crisis. She went on German television Sunday night to defend her step-by-step tackling of the crisis.
She warned of the dangers a radical restructuring of Greek debt might bring at this stage.
“Lehman Brothers was allowed to go bust, and then the world was surprised that it fell into a deep crisis,” Merkel said on ARD television.
“What we have to learn is that we can only take steps we can really control,” she added. “The word ‘haircut’ is easy to say on its own … (but) we must go step by step.”
In financial terms, a haircut is a loss investors take on an asset. Many experts believe Greece’s bondholders will have to take a sharp haircut _ that is, not get paid back fully for the money they lent to the country _ if Greece is to have any chance of reducing its debt load.
“What we cannot do is, along the way, destroy the confidence of all investors, and (have) them say, OK, they did this with Greece now; tomorrow they’ll do it with Spain, the day after with Belgium or some other country,” Merkel said.
“Then no one anywhere would invest their money in Europe any more, and we have to prevent that.”
After eight months of contract-wrangling and negotiations that dragged past a strike deadline, supermarket workers in Southern California will stay on the job and shoppers won’t have to rely on Whole Foods or their corner liquor store for groceries.
Members of the region’s United Food and Commercial Workers voted to ratify a new contract with three major grocery chains, union local spokeswoman Ellen Anreder said, averting a strike of more than 60,000 workers that could have crippled the industry and left shoppers scrambling.
United Food and Commercial Workers local spokeswoman Ellen Anreder said Saturday that after two days of voting, members agreed to a deal struck Monday with Vons, Ralphs and Albertsons. Exact vote totals were not released.
“We’re all very grateful to our customers for their support over this eight-month process, and are very grateful that we can continue to serve them,” a tired-but-relieved Anreder said after the vote.
Union officials had urged their rank-and-file to ratify the contract, which they said addressed concerns about funding for the employees’ health plan, the main sticking point during months of negotiations.
“This package protects our members’ access to affordable comprehensive health care for themselves and their families,” the union said in a statement. “That was our top priority throughout the negotiating process.”
The supermarkets, meanwhile, said after agreeing to the deal that it would allow them to remain competitive. Messages left for grocery representatives after the vote were not immediately returned.
Details of the agreement were made available to members for the first time as they filed into their union locals’ headquarters or other voting locations to cast their ballots on Friday and Saturday.
“There was a sense of relief when people had an opportunity to really look over the new contract and see what was in it,” Ralphs clerk and union member Mario Frias said.
The deal ended months of sometimes testy discussions between union officials and representatives of The Vons Cos.; Ralphs Grocery Co., a subsidiary of The Kroger Co.; and Albertsons, which is owned by Supervalu Inc.
Ralphs had indicated it would initially close all 250 of its stores if there had been a strike; Albertsons had said it could shutter up to 100 locations, while Vons had said its stores would remain open.
The prospect of shuttered stores and tense picket lines brought fears of a repeat of the four-month strike in 2004 that cost the industry $2 billion and created a mess for shoppers. This time around, with unemployment at 12.1 percent in California, workers evidently feared that they would find little public sympathy if they voluntarily walked off the job.
The market chains, meanwhile, were likely reluctant to invite shutdowns and picket lines that might alienate shoppers already spending less due to the economic downturn.
Union leaders and the markets announced in July that they had reached a tentative agreement on the employers’ contributions to pension benefits, but remained far apart on payments to the union health care trust fund.
Union members voted overwhelmingly last month to authorize their leaders to call a strike. Those leaders said they were responding to what they characterized as the chains’ delaying tactics when they issued the required 72-hour notice Thursday evening to cancel the contract extension under which they had been working since March.
But after the Sunday evening deadline passed with neither a strike nor a deal, store employees returned to work. Union officials announced Monday that the tentative deal had been reached.
Asian stocks headed lower Thursday, stung by a pessimistic assessment of the U.S. economy by the Federal Reserve.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 slumped 1.6 percent to 8,598.32 while South Korea’s Kospi index slid 2.6 percent to 1,806.62. Benchmarks in New Zealand, Singapore and Taiwan were also lower.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index plummeted 3.6 percent to 18,138.32, with blue chip property developers among the biggest losers. China Resources Land Ltd. tumbled 10.1 percent while China Overseas Land & Investment slid 7.9 percent. China Vanke Co. lost 3.8 percent.
Australia’s S&P ASX 200 was 2.2 percent down at 3,984.40, with energy shares plummeting amid fears of a global economic slowdown. BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, lost 3.3 percent. Rival Rio Tinto Ltd. plunged 5 percent. OZ Minerals dropped 6.3 percent.
Falling gold prices hit precious metal stocks. Hong Kong-listed Zijin Mining Group, China’s No. 1 gold miner, lost 4.9 percent. Newcrest Mining, Australia’s biggest gold miner, fell 2.2 percent.
Ben Potter of IG Markets in Melbourne, Australia said in a report that he expects “a session of heavy selling as the world reacts to the Fed’s downbeat outlook for the US economy.”
In a highly anticipated move, the Fed on Wednesday announced it would buy Treasury bonds to help the U.S. economy. But Wall Street stocks fell anyway because the U.S. central bank made it clear that a full U.S. economic recovery was likely years away.
The Dow Jones industrial average lost 2.5 percent to close at 11,124.84. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 2.9 percent to 1,166.76. The Nasdaq composite fell 2 percent to 2,538.19.
The Fed said after a two-day meeting that it would buy long-term Treasurys and sell short-term ones to help the economy regain momentum. It surprised investors when it said it would include more 30-year bonds in its purchases than expected.
The Fed said it would buy $400 billion in 6-year to 30-year Treasurys by June 2012. Over the same period, it planned to sell $400 billion of Treasurys maturing in 3 years or less. The move is intended to drive down interest rates on long-term government debt, and could lower rates on mortgages and other loans.
The inclusion of more 30-year bonds than expected means the Fed saw the need to keep very long-term rates lower for an extended period. Many analysts viewed the move as an acknowledgment that the U.S. economy’s problems are long-term.
The Fed also bleakly stated that the economy has “significant downside risks” and that a number of problems won’t be easily solved, including high unemployment and a depressed housing market.
Meanwhile, the price of oil continued its slide on expectations that there’ll be less demand for energy because of the U.S. economy.
Benchmark crude for October delivery was down 99 cents per barrel to $84.92 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.00 to settle at $85.92 on the Nymex on Wednesday.
In currency trading, the dollar rose to 76.76 yen from 76.56 yen late Wednesday in New York. The euro fell to $1.3564 from $1.3667.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez headed back to Cuba on Saturday for a fourth phase of chemotherapy that he expects to be his last round of treatment for cancer.
Supporters greeted Chavez with songs and a prayer outside the presidential palace before he left for the airport along with Bolivian President Evo Morales, who was accompanying him to the island.
Chavez told the crowd that he is confident he is overcoming the illness.
“I’m sure that this week we will close the cycle of chemotherapy and we will be turning the page,” he told supporters, standing at the doors of the presidential palace.
“Chavez’s cancer is now part of this history,” he added, likening it to the short-lived coup he survived in 2002.
Chavez waved to the crowd wearing the red beret and fatigues from his years as an army paratroop commander.
Later, a military band played Venezuela’s national anthem at the airport as Chavez and Morales prepared to board their flight to Havana pay day loans.
Speaking earlier at the presidential palace, Chavez said he expected to undergo medical tests in Havana on Saturday night and then resume chemotherapy Sunday. He said he would return from Cuba before next weekend.
Once the treatments are finished, he said, it will be “goodbye to the threat of cancer, and then on to life.”
“I will come out strengthened,” Chavez said.
The 57-year-old leader referred to his 2012 re-election campaign saying “the battle that lies ahead is hard.”
He underwent surgery in Cuba in June to remove a tumor from his pelvic region. Since then, he has undergone three rounds of chemotherapy treatments, two of those in Cuba.
He has said that the treatment aims to prevent any cancerous cells from reappearing and that tests have shown no signs of a recurrence.
International pressure grew on Europe to find a lasting solution to the debt crisis that is shaking global financial markets, as the leaders of Greece, Germany and France were to hold talks Wednesday in an emergency teleconference.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Europe’s leaders know they’ve “been behind the curve” but he also sought to soothe investors, claiming the eurozone governments understood the severity of the situation and have the financial firepower “to do what it takes to hold this thing together.”
Fears that Greece was heading rapidly towards a chaotic default have roiled markets for days, both across the 17-nation eurozone and globally.
Many investors are convinced Greece will not be able to fix its public finances under its current economic plans. Interest rates on the country’s 10-year government bonds soared to new record highs hitting the alarming level of 25.3 percent on Wednesday, more than 23 points higher than the German equivalent.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out this week to calm the market jitters and to distance herself from her vice chancellor, Philipp Roesler, and others who suggested a Greek bankruptcy was possible.
Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou will discuss the situation Wednesday evening, after a government meeting Papandreou called to address urgent fiscal reforms. The finance ministers from the wider 17-nation eurozone will meet on Friday in Poland.
Hours before the teleconference, Sarkozy and his prime minister “with a single voice reaffirmed France’s determination to put everything in place to save Greece,” French government spokeswoman Valerie Pecresse said of a Cabinet meeting in Paris.
Sarkozy wants the call to focus on “the need for efforts in return and commitment from Greece,” she said.
Europe’s big trading partners, like the U.S. and China, made clear that they want the crisis contained.
Geithner, who will join eurozone finance ministers this weekend in a meeting in Poland, stressed that European governments have to show they “stand behind” the financial system so that it can fund and finance the economic recovery.
“I think they recognize that they’re going to have to do more to earn the confidence of the world,” Geithner said in an interview with American news channel CNBC.
As Treasury chief and previously in his role as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner has been central in the U.S. response to the financial crisis that flared up after the collapse of Lehman Brothers investment bank in 2008.
He dismissed suggestions Europe was about to have its own Lehman moment. “Europe has a tradition of much more indulgence, support for their institutions. … there is no chance that the major countries of Europe will let their institutions be at risk,” he said.
China’s Premier Wen Jiabao said European countries needed to tackle their debt problems and make changes to help restore global financial stability and steady economic growth. Beijing has shown interest in helping financially troubled European countries by investing or buying their bonds.
“Countries must first put their own house in order,” Wen said.
It was unclear whether there would be statements after Wednesday’s teleconference from any of the three countries involved. Indications as to how the talks went would likely affect markets.
Roesler said Germany would deliver a “clear signal to the Greek government” that it must push ahead with reforms, including an ambitious privatization program that has lagged far behind targets.
Speaking during a visit to Rome, Roesler said it was “fundamentally important to re-establish the strength of the Greek state.” He said he planned to go to Greece with a delegation of German industrialists to see what investments could be made to help the Greek economy.
Traders hoped that some form of new support would emerge from the talks, pushing Greek shares higher. The main Athens index outperformed its counterparts in Europe, closing up 1.67 percent.
Some analysts were more skeptical, however.
“I could only see (the teleconference) having a damage-limitation objective because there have been too many rumors … as to what Germany or what our European partners are thinking about Greece,” said economist Vangelis Agapitos.
The main fear of a Greek bankruptcy is that it could destabilize other financially troubled European countries such as Portugal, Ireland, Spain or Italy. It would also have a knock-on effect on banks, many of which are large holders of Greek government bonds. Moody’s on Wednesday downgraded the credit ratings of two French banks, Societe Generale and Credit Agricole.
“We are confronted with the most serious challenge of a generation. This is a fight for the jobs and prosperity of families in all our member states,” European Union Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. “This is a fight for the economic and political future of Europe. This is a fight for what Europe represents in the world. This is a fight for European integration itself.”
Greece relies on funds from last year’s euro110 billion ($150 billion) international bailout. But the lifeline could be cut if the country continues to miss fiscal and reform targets.
The quarterly payout depends on reviews by Greece’s international debt inspectors _ the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, known as the troika.
The next batch, worth euro8 billion, is due in late September, but there were fears the troika would not approve its disbursement after the debt inspectors suspended their review earlier this month. They are due to return to Athens in coming days. Without the next installment, the country has enough cash to keep it going only until mid-October.
Greece’s government spokesman, Elias Mossialos, said Monday he believed the country would receive the funds.
In July, Greece was granted a second, euro109 billion rescue package, but the terms of that deal have yet to be finalized, with Finland asking for extra collateral guarantees.
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Pylas reported from London. Gabriele Steinhauser in Brussels, Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Theodora Tongas in Athens and Frances D’Emilio in Rome contributed.
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