smalltownfame.com

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

According to Norwegian and British newspaper sources, Jon Sudbø, a cancer researcher at the Norwegian Radium Hospital, fabricated at least 900 patient records in his research on NSAID drugs published in October of 2005 (PMID 16226613). According to the now-discredited research, the class of drugs, commonly used for pain management, was found to decrease the risk of oral cancer but increase the risk of heart disease.

This field of research is important for the future use of Cox-2 drugs and was received with great interest by the United States Food and Drug Administration and other organizations involved in drug safety and efficacy.

Several other scientists put their name to the article in the Lancet but claim they were misled by Sudbø. The Lancet is publishing a retraction in its upcoming edition. Probes are underway both to investigate how this article passed peer review, and whether previous research by Sudbø was fraudulent.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Byrraju Ramalinga Raju, founder and chairman of Satyam Computer Services, and his brother, B. Rama Raju, the company’s managing director, were arrested late Friday by Andhra Pradesh police. The brothers were placed under judicial custody in a Hyderabad, India jail and will remain there until January 23. Facing charges of criminal breach of trust (Section 406 of IPC), criminal conspiracy (Section 120-B), cheating (Section 420), falsification of records and forgery (Section 468), and fraudulent cancellation of securities (Section 477-a), they face up to ten years imprisonment if convicted.

After 18 hours of interrogation by the Crime Investigation Department (CID) at the state police headquarters, the Raju brothers were sent to the Chanchalguda prison and slept Saturday night on the floor along with 26 other low-risk inmates.

S. Bharat Kumar, the Rajus’s lawyer, asked the magistrate to issue orders for health monitoring. “His blood pressure is fluctuating and he needs medical treatment,” said Bharat Kumar. Mr. Raju appeared before the court Saturday while a team of doctors visited him after he had complained of chest pain.

Raju has Hepatitis-C, and both brothers have high blood pressure, so health precautions are necessary while imprisoned. Prison rules mandate service of jail food thrice a day. The menu includes 650 gm of rice thrice a day with 250 gm of vegetable curry and 125 gm of ‘daal’ plus tea twice a day.

Satyam’s chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas, who was also arrested Saturday, had undergone preliminary investigation and appeared Sunday before a special court, according to A. Sivanarayana, Andhra Pradesh additional director general of police. Srinivas was remanded to judicial custody until January 23 by Mr. D. Ramakrishna, Sixth Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, and sent to the Chanchalguda jail with the Raju brothers after interrogation by CID’s Crime Branch (the CB-CID). During his Saturday night arrest and probe by CB-CID, Srinivas made revelations which are contained in his confession letter as submitted to Network 18. “According to me fixed deposits are unreal and fictitious which were managed and was an understanding between the audit section management,” Srinivas stated.

The Hyderabad court on Monday postponed the bail hearings of the Raju brothers and Srinivas to January 16. To be defended by a battalion of 25 lawyers, the three accused will remain in Chanchalguda Central Jail until further court order. The Raju brothers were shifted Sunday to a mid-size Old Hospital Barrack cell shared with a bootlegger.

In 2008, the company struggled to purchase two infrastructure companies founded by family members of company founder and CEO Dr. Raju – Maytas Infrastructure and Maytas Properties – for $1.6 billion, despite concerns raised by independent board directors. Dr. Raju tendered his resignation on January 7 after due notice of falsified accounts to board members and the SEBI.

Since January 7 when two lawsuits were commenced, dozens of other class action law suits were filed against Satyam for hundreds of millions of dollars damages based on fraud in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, among others. The securities fraud class-action lawsuits have been filed on behalf of investors who bought Satyam American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) since 2004.

On Wednesday Dr. Raju admitted to falsifying and overstating Satyam’s cash reserves by $1B US dollars (£661m) or 94% of its cash and bank balances on books at the end of September.

The fraud was perpetrated several years ago to bridge “a marginal gap” between actual and accounting books operating profits, and continued for several years. “It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten,” B. Raju said.

In a letter to the board, Dr. Raju said that neither he nor the managing director had benefited financially from the inflated revenues. Further claiming that none of the board members had any knowledge of the dire company situation, he noted that Satyam’s balance sheet as of the September 30, 2008, carried inflated figures for cash and bank balances of INR 5,040 crore (as against INR 5,361 crore reflected in the books). He alleged it also carried an accrued interest of INR 376 crore which was non-existent. He confessed that he himself prepared an understated liability of INR 1,230 crore on account of funds amid an overstated debtors’ position of INR 490 crore (as against INR 2,651 crore in the books).

Indian analysts have compared the Satyam-Raju scandal to the infamous American Enron scandal. Immediately following the media expose, PricewaterhouseCoopers, auditor of Satyam’s accounts, was set to be probed for complicity in the controversy. Times Now has reported that the Andhra Pradesh CID arrested PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) representative Gopal Krishnan for investigation on Saturday night.

New York-listed Satyam Computer Services Ltd., India’s fourth-biggest software firm, is a consulting and information technology services company based in Hyderabad, India. Founded in 1987 by Dr. Byrraju Ramalinga Raju, Satyam’s network spans 67 countries on six continents. It employs 53,000 professionals in India, the United States, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Hungary, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Japan, Egypt and Australia. Its monthly salary outflow is estimated at six billion rupees ($125 million). Deriving more than half of its revenues from the United States, it serves 700 global companies, 185 of which are Fortune 500 corporations.

Satyam’s clients include Nestle, Ford, General Electric Co., General Motors Corp., Nissan Motor Co., Applied Materials Inc., Caterpillar Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Sony Corp., and brought in about $40bn last year.

In December 2008, a failed acquisition attempt involving the company Maytas led to a plunge in Satyam’s share price. After Wednesday’s confession, Satyam stocks fell further by more than 70%, while the BSE SENSEX dropped to 7.3% Wednesday, causing the removal of Satyam Computer Services from its indices on Thursday. The shares free fell to 11.50 rupees on Friday, their lowest level since March 1998, compared with around last year’s high of 544 rupees.

The New York Stock Exchange has terminated trading in Satyam stock as of January 7, while the National Stock Exchange of India said it will remove Satyam from its S&P CNX Nifty 50-share index from January 12.

India’s biggest-ever corporate fraud has seriously tainted India Inc.‘s strong corporate governance image. “The admission of fraud in financial affairs has created an adverse impression in the minds of trade, business and industry across the world,” the Indian government admitted. The government intervened on Friday night, dismissing Satyam’s board of directors, announcing it will appoint representatives to manage the affairs of the insolvent outsourcing giant. The board would meet within seven days. Dr Yeduguri Samuel Rajasekhara Reddy, chief Minister of State of Andhra Pradesh, India, on Sunday said that the main agenda is to protect the jobs of the software professionals. “We are taking all needful steps in coordination with the government of India to ensure that the jobs of 53,000 engineers are protected and the shareholders’ money is salvaged,” Reddy said.

“We are working on the names. The Satyam case is an aberration. The credibility of the Indian corporate sector in general, and IT sector in particular, should not be allowed to suffer because of this.” Prem Chand Gupta, the Corporate Affairs Minister said. The Federal Government of India appointed a three-member independent board with full authority for Satyam on Sunday and was set to convene within 24 hours. “We have appointed Deepak Parekh, chairman of Housing Development Finance Corporation, Kiran Karnik, former president of IT industry body NASSCOM and C. Achutan, former member of Securities and Exchange Board (SEBI) of India,” Mr. Gupta said.

In early Monday trading (0535 GMT) after the creation of the three-member board, Satyam shares rocketed upwards 60% to 38.15 rupees, even though the main Mumbai market was down more than 2%. BBC reported that Satyam shares have jumped 51% to 36.05 rupees on Monday after the stock lost 87% last week. “The constitution of the new board is seen as a positive step by the market. It’s a confidence boosting measure,” K.K. Mital, Globe Capital, New Delhi head of portfolio management services said. “But the rally will depend largely on the financial situation at the company and the kind of measures that are taken to improve liquidity,” he added.

The Company Law Board, however, has requested Satyam’s interim board not to implement its decisions. “We are asked by the Company Law Board not to implement the decisions of the board. But we are allowed to continue our activity. The team which was constituted recently is continuing its work,” Satyam head global marketing and communications, Mr. Hari Thalapalli, said.

Lazard Ltd., who has a 7.4% stake in Satyam, sought representation on the new board and wrote as much to The Indian Ministry of Corporate Affairs. “As the largest shareholder in the company, we want to be consulted in whatever decisions are being taken by the Indian government. We have written to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and are awaiting a reply from them,” Hitesh Jain, a partner at ALMT Legal, who claimed to represent Lazard, said. “It is a fair proposal and we will take a decision as and when we clear other issues. No decision on this has been taken yet,” P.C. Gupta replied.

Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) also announced it will try to control the damage and take steps to boost investor confidence. “This exercise will be undertaken after the third quarter results and is expected to be completed by end of February this year,” a SEBI official statement said. A SEBI team is also investigating acting-CEO Ram Mynampati whose salary was greater than that of founder Dr. Raju and all the directors combined. Dr. Raju had just one fifth of Mynampati’s total package of over Rs 3.5 crore as of March 2008. All the directors comparably received only a total of Rs 2.6 crore as salary, commissions, sitting fees, professional fees and other receivables.

Further, the Andhra Pradesh Police CID and teams assigned by the Economic Offences Wing of the CB-CID conducted searches Sunday of homes of the accused including the ex-CFO’s office to gather documentary evidence about the financial fraud.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Today, the nominees for the 78th Academy Awards were announced in Los Angeles, California.

Best Picture nominees this year are Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night, and Good Luck., and Munich. The director of each of these films received director nominations. Nominees include George Clooney (Good Night, and Good Luck.), Paul Haggis (Crash), Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), Bennett Miller (Capote), and Steven Spielberg (Munich). This is the first time since 1981 that every Best Picture nominee also received a nod for Direction.

Brokeback Mountain leads this year’s Oscar pack overall, with eight nominations. Brokeback is followed by Crash, Good Night, and Good Luck., and Memoirs of a Geisha, who each earned six. Capote, Munich, and Walk the Line each received five nominations. King Kong, Pride and Prejudice, and The Constant Gardener picked up four nominations, while Cinderella Man, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and War of the Worlds pick up three. A History of Violence, Hustle & Flow, Mrs. Henderson Presents, North Country, Syriana, and Transamerica each received two nods each.

Best Animated Feature Film nominees are Howl’s Moving Castle, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. None of these films used primarily CGI-animation, the first year this can be claimed, since the 2001 creation of the award category. Corspe Bride marks both Tim Burton and Mike Johnson’s first nominations. Wallace & Gromit’s Steve Box is celebrating his first nomination, while co-producer Nick Park has three Oscars for Best Animation Short, a fourth nomination, of which he lost to himself in 1990. Hayao Miyazaki won the Best Animated Feature award in 2002, for Spirited Away.

Uniquely neither animation powerhouse, Disney or DreamWorks, is directly nominated in the category. Disney’s Buena Vista Entertainment distributes Miyazaki film Howl’s Moving Castle, while DreamWorks distributed Wallace and Gromit, animated by Aardman Animations.

Best Foreign Language Film nominees include Italian film Don’t Tell, France’s Joyeux Noël, Palestine’s Paradise Now, Germany’s Sophie Scholl – The Final Days, and South Africa’s Tsotsi. Italy has been up for an Oscar 27 times, France 34 times, and Germany has had six nominations. This is only South Africa’s second nomination, with the first coming last year, and Palestine’s first ever Academy Award nomination.

Nominees for Best Documentary Feature are Darwin’s Nightmare, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, March of the Penguins, Murderball, and Street Fight. March of the Penguins, produced in France, actually grossed more than any of the Best Picture nominees, the first time in history such an occurrence has happened.

The top 19 films in box office received a total of only 14 nominations, with a majority of these in the categories of Visual Effects, Sound Mixing and Sound Editing.

Perhaps one of the most interesting stories for Hollywood as a whole, is the tremendous success of Participant Productions in its first year of operation. eBay founder Jeff Skoll‘s movie house produced nominees Good Night and Good Luck. (6), North Country (2), Syriana (2), and Murderball (1). The company aims to fund feature films and documentaries that promote social values while still being commercially viable.

The 78th Academy Awards presentation will be held on Sunday, March 5.

• Philip Seymour Hoffman – Capote
• Terrence Howard – Hustle & Flow
• Heath Ledger – Brokeback Mountain
• Joaquin Phoenix – Walk the Line
• David Strathairn – Good Night, and Good Luck

• George Clooney – Syriana
• Matt Dillon – Crash
• Paul Giamatti – Cinderella Man
• Jake Gyllenhaal – Brokeback Mountain
• William Hurt – A History of Violence

• Judi Dench – Mrs. Henderson Presents
• Felicity Huffman – Transamerica
• Keira Knightley – Pride & Prejudice
• Charlize Theron – North Country
• Reese Witherspoon – Walk the Line

• Amy Adams – Junebug
• Catherine Keener – Capote
• Frances McDormand – North Country
• Rachel Weisz – The Constant Gardener
• Michelle Williams – Brokeback Mountain

• Brokeback Mountain
• Capote
• The Constant Gardener
• A History of Violence
• Munich

• Crash
• Good Night, and Good Luck
• Match Point
• The Squid and the Whale
• Syriana

• Good Night, and Good Luck
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• King Kong
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• Pride & Prejudice

• Batman Begins
• Brokeback Mountain
• Good Night, and Good Luck
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• The New World

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• Mrs. Henderson Presents
• Pride & Prejudice
• Walk the Line

• The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club
• God Sleeps in Rwanda
• The Mushroom Club
• A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin

• Cinderella Man
• The Constant Gardener
• Crash
• Munich
• Walk the Line

• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• Cinderella Man
• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

• Brokeback Mountain
• The Constant Gardener
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• Munich
• Pride & Prejudice

• In the Deep – Crash
• It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp – Hustle & Flow
• Travelin’ Thru – Transamerica

• Badgered
• The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation
• The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
• 9
• One Man Band

• Ausreisser (The Runaway)
• Cashback
• The Last Farm
• Our Time is Up
• Six Shooter

• King Kong
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• War of the Worlds

• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• King Kong
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• Walk the Line
• War of the Worlds

• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• King Kong
• War of the Worlds

Thursday, December 18, 2008

A team of eight transplant surgeons in Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, led by reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow, age 58, have successfully performed the first almost total face transplant in the US, and the fourth globally, on a woman so horribly disfigured due to trauma, that cost her an eye. Two weeks ago Dr. Siemionow, in a 23-hour marathon surgery, replaced 80 percent of her face, by transplanting or grafting bone, nerve, blood vessels, muscles and skin harvested from a female donor’s cadaver.

The Clinic surgeons, in Wednesday’s news conference, described the details of the transplant but upon request, the team did not publish her name, age and cause of injury nor the donor’s identity. The patient’s family desired the reason for her transplant to remain confidential. The Los Angeles Times reported that the patient “had no upper jaw, nose, cheeks or lower eyelids and was unable to eat, talk, smile, smell or breathe on her own.” The clinic’s dermatology and plastic surgery chair, Francis Papay, described the nine hours phase of the procedure: “We transferred the skin, all the facial muscles in the upper face and mid-face, the upper lip, all of the nose, most of the sinuses around the nose, the upper jaw including the teeth, the facial nerve.” Thereafter, another team spent three hours sewing the woman’s blood vessels to that of the donor’s face to restore blood circulation, making the graft a success.

The New York Times reported that “three partial face transplants have been performed since 2005, two in France and one in China, all using facial tissue from a dead donor with permission from their families.” “Only the forehead, upper eyelids, lower lip, lower teeth and jaw are hers, the rest of her face comes from a cadaver; she could not eat on her own or breathe without a hole in her windpipe. About 77 square inches of tissue were transplanted from the donor,” it further described the details of the medical marvel. The patient, however, must take lifetime immunosuppressive drugs, also called antirejection drugs, which do not guarantee success. The transplant team said that in case of failure, it would replace the part with a skin graft taken from her own body.

Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a Brigham and Women’s Hospital surgeon praised the recent medical development. “There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.

Leading bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania withheld judgment on the Cleveland transplant amid grave concerns on the post-operation results. “The biggest ethical problem is dealing with failure — if your face rejects. It would be a living hell. If your face is falling off and you can’t eat and you can’t breathe and you’re suffering in a terrible manner that can’t be reversed, you need to put on the table assistance in dying. There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.

Dr Alex Clarke, of the Royal Free Hospital had praised the Clinic for its contribution to medicine. “It is a real step forward for people who have severe disfigurement and this operation has been done by a team who have really prepared and worked towards this for a number of years. These transplants have proven that the technical difficulties can be overcome and psychologically the patients are doing well. They have all have reacted positively and have begun to do things they were not able to before. All the things people thought were barriers to this kind of operations have been overcome,” she said.

The first partial face transplant surgery on a living human was performed on Isabelle Dinoire on November 27 2005, when she was 38, by Professor Bernard Devauchelle, assisted by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard in Amiens, France. Her Labrador dog mauled her in May 2005. A triangle of face tissue including the nose and mouth was taken from a brain-dead female donor and grafted onto the patient. Scientists elsewhere have performed scalp and ear transplants. However, the claim is the first for a mouth and nose transplant. Experts say the mouth and nose are the most difficult parts of the face to transplant.

In 2004, the same Cleveland Clinic, became the first institution to approve this surgery and test it on cadavers. In October 2006, surgeon Peter Butler at London‘s Royal Free Hospital in the UK was given permission by the NHS ethics board to carry out a full face transplant. His team will select four adult patients (children cannot be selected due to concerns over consent), with operations being carried out at six month intervals. In March 2008, the treatment of 30-year-old neurofibromatosis victim Pascal Coler of France ended after having received what his doctors call the worlds first successful full face transplant.

Ethical concerns, psychological impact, problems relating to immunosuppression and consequences of technical failure have prevented teams from performing face transplant operations in the past, even though it has been technically possible to carry out such procedures for years.

Mr Iain Hutchison, of Barts and the London Hospital, warned of several problems with face transplants, such as blood vessels in the donated tissue clotting and immunosuppressants failing or increasing the patient’s risk of cancer. He also pointed out ethical issues with the fact that the procedure requires a “beating heart donor”. The transplant is carried out while the donor is brain dead, but still alive by use of a ventilator.

According to Stephen Wigmore, chair of British Transplantation Society’s ethics committee, it is unknown to what extent facial expressions will function in the long term. He said that it is not certain whether a patient could be left worse off in the case of a face transplant failing.

Mr Michael Earley, a member of the Royal College of Surgeon‘s facial transplantation working party, commented that if successful, the transplant would be “a major breakthrough in facial reconstruction” and “a major step forward for the facially disfigured.”

In Wednesday’s conference, Siemionow said “we know that there are so many patients there in their homes where they are hiding from society because they are afraid to walk to the grocery stores, they are afraid to go the the street.” “Our patient was called names and was humiliated. We very much hope that for this very special group of patients there is a hope that someday they will be able to go comfortably from their houses and enjoy the things we take for granted,” she added.

In response to the medical breakthrough, a British medical group led by Royal Free Hospital’s lead surgeon Dr Peter Butler, said they will finish the world’s first full face transplant within a year. “We hope to make an announcement about a full-face operation in the next 12 months. This latest operation shows how facial transplantation can help a particular group of the most severely facially injured people. These are people who would otherwise live a terrible twilight life, shut away from public gaze,” he said.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

On Friday, various cities in the Indian state of Karnataka observed Karnataka Bandh ^{((en))English language: ?Karnataka closed} as the people opposed the Supreme Court’s judgement on the Kaveri river dispute. Most shops were closed to support the strike.

The Indian Supreme Court judgement instructed Karnataka to release 15,000 cusecs (cubic feet per second) of water from the Kaveri river for ten days to Tamil Nadu. Both of the states demand shares of Kaveri water which goes back to the time when Britishers ruled India.

Due to the strikes, there were no means of public transportation. Even the Metro Service in Karnataka’s capital Bengaluru didn’t run. Private cabs also didn’t provide service; airports were crowded as the passengers had no means of transportation.

Southern Railway officials reported no large-scale ticket cancellations for trains between Bangalore and Chennai. No trains on that route had to be rescheduled. But the bus services from Tamil Nadu’s capital Chennai to Bangalore were stopped near the border for security reasons and tickets were refunded for the passengers who booked tickets for Bangalore. There were fewer passengers as well.

Television service providers in Karnataka blocked more than 50 Tamil channels for the day. Tamil movies were not released as well. Tamil movies from some theaters were removed a day before. Though no major violence was reported, movie posters of Mudinja Ivana Pudi were burnt. Friday movie releases were postponed.

Kannada actress Ragini Dwivedi uploaded a video on Twitter saying, “Kaveri is ours, we will not let it go. Why should we give water when we don’t have any? Come out for the struggle, stand with the farmers. I am supporting the farmers, you too should.” ^{((kn))Kannada language: ??????? ????? ???? ???? ???? ???? ?????? ???? ?????? ????? ??????? ???????? ????? ??? ????? ????? ???? ???? ???? ????? ???? ???? ????? ???? ?????}

Internal exams in The National Institute of Engineering, Mysore were rescheduled to Sunday. Medical shops and petrol pumps remained closed in Mysore. The shops finally opened at 6 PM IST. Private schools also remained closed for the day, but were expected to run full day on Saturdays this month.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina —This weekend is the kick-off for two motorcycle rallies held annually in the U.S. eastern seacoast town of Myrtle Beach. Enthusiasts this year are expected to meet or exceed the 170,000 bikers that arrived last year in droves to the small resort town of 23,000. Festivities span two weeks, and extend again this year into the Memorial Day.

Leading off is the week-long Harley rally, followed by the next week’s BikeFest. In and around town, both day and night are punctured by the sounds of bike engines gunned and revved at stop lights and in parking lots. Groups of cycle riders dominate the streets.

“By Friday night, the front parking lot will be a full line of motorcycles to the corner.” said motel owner Ranjan Patel. The Super 8 motel takes up half a block at its location in the heart of the downtown motel strip. “Both sides [of Ocean Blvd] are nothing but bikes.” Both she and her co-owner husband agree, the influx of bikers dwarf in size the numbers of tourists who visit during regular summer months for ocean-side and family amusement park attractions.

The highly accesorised bikes, decked with chrome and polished to show it, flashed the townscape. Choppers made a showing, but road hogs dominated the ridership, often going twosome. Many rally goers arrived on the scene with SUV’s or big pickup trucks towing cargo trailers loaded with cycles.

Growth in the sheer size of the two rallies led police to make changes in the handling of traffic flow. During BikeFest last year, the mostly black crowd that came in on the heels of the largely white Harley rally the week earlier, were faced with confusion when the two-lane Ocean Blvd was made one-way.

A branch of the NAACP in Conway, the next town over from Myrtle Beach, alleged discrimination by Horry County and Myrtle Beach Police. They claimed authorities and police used an overwhelming and aggressive police presence, combined with a restrictive one-way traffic pattern, to intimidate and discourage the participants in the rally.

An injunction was issued earlier this week by U.S. District Judge Terry Wooten, who ruled that bikers at both rallies be treated the same. Myrtle Beach city lawyers immediately filed an appeal to the ruling at the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, saying “the trial court erroneously determined that the plaintiffs would likely succeed on the merits; that is, that the city of Myrtle Beach intentionally treats Memorial Day weekend tourists differently from others similarly situated because of their race.”

A plan to submit an opposition to the notice has already been announced by Michael Navarre, an attorney for Steptoe & Johnson, who represents the NAACP civil rights group. “We certainly don’t think the judge has ruled erroneously,” Navarre said, according to The Sun News.

Traffic control and safety measures were in full swing Friday morning on US-17. Both directions of the 4-lane divided highway south of Myrtle Beach had traffic cones and parking barriers set up to control traffic. Large flashing road signs on each side of the highway warned cars to use the passing lane. The warning sign flashed a message that the right lane was for motorcycle use only. Police monitored the pull-offs near a Harley dealer’s lot where popular attractions were set-up in the immediate vicinity.