Friday, May 25, 2007

Protesters in the Central Western New South Wales city of Bathurst gave Australian Prime Minister John Howard a cold reception as he arrived for a Liberal Party luncheon in the city.

Around 200 unionists and university students gathered to protest the Howard government’s new industrial relations regime called Workchoices, the lack of funding for higher education and the introduction of Voluntary Student Unionism.

Protesters claimed that the Howard government had ignored rural and regional Australia. Daniel Walton, the community campaign co-ordinator for Macquarie Your Rights at Work told Wikinews that Mr Howard was only interested in Bathurst after it had been moved to a marginal seat.

“In the 11 years Howard has been Prime Minister not once has he visited Bathurst”, he said.

“Now Bathurst is in the seat of Macquarie, which is seen as a marginal electorate, Mr Howard is suddenly interested in the city”.

The strongly blue-collar cities of Bathurst and Lithgow were relocated to the Macquarie electorate, previously considered a safe Liberal seat after an electorate redistribution.

Mr Howard was in Bathurst campaigning for the re-election of Kerry Bartlett and was a special guest at an invite-only Liberal Party fundraiser costing AUD$95 per person. The luncheon was attended by 400 members of Bathurst’s business community.

Unionists responded by offering a $0.95 “worker’s lunch” across the street.

Before the luncheon, Mr Howard held a community morning tea at the Mount Panorama motor racing circuit, promising funding of $10 million to investigate planning, engineering and environmental issues surrounding the construction of an expressway over the Blue Mountains following the Bells Line of Road route. Mr Howard said this funding was contingent upon the NSW government matching the federal government’s contribution and would be available under Auslink II from 2009.

Prior to the Prime Minister’s arrival at the luncheon, protesters called those attending the luncheon “Chumps”, booing at and calling MP Kerry Bartlett a “loser” when he walked outside. Unionists also chanted slogans such as “Workers united, we’ll never be defeated” and “Johnie Howard is a twerp, he wants to take our rights at work”.

As Howard arrived at the luncheon, protesters held up their placards and turned their backs on Mr Howard, claiming to be doing the same as his government had done to ordinary workers.

Michael Foggarty from the Public Service Association said while big business could afford luxuries such as a $95 lunch, workers were struggling.

“They might be able to afford $95 for lunch, but when you have workers on as low as $13 an hour that is a lot of money, ordinary workers are struggling under Workchoices”, he told Wikinews.

Mr Foggarty added that rising interest rates and petrol prices were having an impact on working families.

Giving a speech at the luncheon, Mr Howard said those wishing to dismantle the government’s industrial relations reforms were rolling back a “major economic reform”. Mr Howard said both Workchoices and the removal of unfair dismissal laws had reduced unemployment and generated prosperity.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Wikinews extended invitations by e-mail on March 23 to multiple candidates running in the Texas’ 6th congressional district special election of May 1 to fill a vacancy left upon the death of Republican congressman Ron Wright. Of them, the office of Democrat Daryl Eddings, Sr. agreed to answer some questions by phone March 30 about their campaigns and policies. The following is the interview with Ms Chatham on behalf of Mr Eddings, Sr.

Eddings is a federal law enforcement officer and senior non-commissioned officer in the US military. His experience as operations officer of an aviation unit in the California National Guard includes working in Los Angeles to control riots sparked by the O. J. Simpson murder case and the police handling of Rodney King, working with drug interdiction teams in Panama and Central America and fighting in the Middle East. He is the founder of Operation Battle Buddy, which has under his leadership kept in touch with over 20 thousand veterans and their families. He was born in California, but moved to Midlothian, Texas. He endeavours to bring “good government, not no government”. Campaign manager Faith Chatham spoke to Wikinews on matters ranging from healthcare to housing.

An Inside Elections poll published on March 18 shows Republican candidate Susan Wright, the widow of Ron Wright, is ahead by 21% followed by Democrat Jana Sanchez with 17% and Republican Jake Ellzey with 8% with a 4.6% margin of error among 450 likely voters. The district is considered “lean Republican” by Inside Elections and voted 51% in favour of Donald Trump in last year’s US presidential election. This is down from 54% for Trump in 2016’s presidential election, the same poll stated.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Latest figures from the US government say that the country’s economy gained 290,000 jobs in April, the largest single-month gain since March 2006.

According to the Labor Department, excluding temporary workers for this year’s census, the number of non-farm jobs increased by a seasonally adjusted 224,000.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, increased from 9.7% to 9.9%; the apparent contradiction is because 195,000 people who previously gave up searching for jobs started looking for work again, entering the labor force and augmenting the jobless rate.

The increases were larger than expected by economic analysts; according to a survey done by MarketWatch, economists believed the country would have added 185,000 jobs for last month.

President Obama commented on the numbers earlier today at the White House, saying: “This is the largest monthly increase in four years […] we’ve now seen job growth for four months in a row. These numbers are particularly heartening when you consider where we were a year ago, with an economy in freefall.”

Monday, October 1, 2007

Charles de Kerckhove is running as an independent in the Ontario provincial election, in the riding of St. Paul’s. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Friday, June 27, 2008

A Casa-212 aircraft owned by the Indonesian air force disappeared while on a flight from the capital Jakarta to Bogor in West Java Friday morning.

The plane was carrying 12 Indonesian military personnel and 6 civilians including a British, Singaporean and Indian national.

The plane was tasked to test a new digital camera designed to conduct aerial mapping and topography.

The aircraft was last sighted on radar in the Salak moutain region on the main island of Java, 90 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of the Indonesian capital.

The Indonesian military has deployed a search and rescue team in the area.

Authorities fear that the aircraft crashed in a densely forested area making any rescue difficult.

Air Force spokesman Chaeruddin Ray said the region was covered in thick fog and in a rough terrain.

Three planes and forty people were deployed into the region to look for the downed plane.

Indonesia has been plagued with several plane accidents resulting in a ban on the entry of Indonesian airlines into European airports. This is the second incident in Indonesian aviation involving a Casa-212. In January of 2008, a similar plane model owned by a private company also crashed.

The Casa-212 is a design by Spanish avionics company Construcciones Aeronáuticas, a turbo-prop plane designed for a short take-off and landing.

The Spanish company licensed an Indonesian avionics firm to assemble and manufacture this aircraft.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

US doctors are to interview 12 patients with a view to performing the first ever transplant of a human face.

The Cleveland Clinic will choose between seven women and five men to find the person most suited for the experimental procedure, which is a radical and controversial solution to extreme facial scarring or disfigurement.

Having practiced the procedure on bodies donated for medical research, the Cleveland Clinic team believe they have a 50% chance of success. The procedure will not live up to science-fiction predictions and give the recipient the appearance of the donor; the underlying bone structure is the deciding factor in the final appearance. The new face will end up resembling neither the donor nor recipient.

Surgeons in several other countries have announced being ready to perform this procedure in the past. However, the risk and non life-threatening nature of disfigurement have meant that gaining approval for the groundbreaking surgery has been difficult. Like many other transplant operations, the recipient would be required to take drugs to prevent tissue rejection for the remainder of their life. These drugs can have side effects and carry their own risks involving the patient’s immune system.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

US bank Goldman Sachs has been accused of fraud by the American regulator Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

According to the SEC, Goldman Sachs failed to inform investors of a conflict of interest in the banks’ marketing of sub-prime mortgage investments, which were being sold at a time of uncertainty in the US housing market. The SEC says that a Goldman subsidiary, Paulson & Co, had been involved in the selection of securities included in the mortgage investments. It had not been disclosed to investors that Paulson had bet that the value of the investments would fall, benefiting Paulson but not those who bought the investments.

The securities, which were combined into a package called Abacus that was sold to investors, lost over $1 billion during the collapse of the US housing industry. According to the SEC, Goldman, Paulson, and the creator of Abacus, a vice-president of Goldman Sachs named Fabrice Tourre, all knew that the housing market was going to collapse, but continued to sell Abacus despite the risks.

Tourre had been in command of selecting the investments within Abacus, and then was the person responsible for selling it to investors. He had told those who invested in Abacus that its components had been selected by an independent party, ACA Management.

In all, 99% of the investments within Abacus were downgraded, and investors lost upwards of a billion US dollars.

The SEC alleged that “Goldman Sachs arranged a transaction at Paulson’s request in which Paulson heavily influenced the selection of the portfolio to suit its economic interests.” In a short response from Goldman, the bank said that “The SEC’s charges are completely unfounded in law and fact and we will vigorously contest them and defend the firm and its reputation.”