Monday, October 1, 2007

Kate Holloway is running for the Ontario Liberal Party in the Ontario provincial election, in the Trinity-Spadina riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed her regarding her values, her experience, and her 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.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

400 Australian soldiers have been officially farewelled at parade in Darwin, NT, ahead of their deployment to Afghanistan on Tuesday. Wishing the soldiers well, Defence Minister Brendan Nelson says there is a high risk associated with the mission.

“We know that this is a dangerous mission but it’s also an extremely important one,” he said. “They will go beginning this week and be deployed over the next few weeks.”

The group will work around the southern Oruzgan Province. Rising violence in the Taliban heartland province earlier this month prompted Australian Prime Minister John Howard to further strengthen the capability of the Reconstruction Task Force (RTF). Approximately 150 personnel will be added to the 240-strong force announced in May.

Defence says the RTF will form part of the Netherlands-led Provincial Reconstruction Team in the Oruzgan province under NATO.

More than 1800 people have been killed in fighting in Afghanistan this year, 92 of them foreign soldiers (12 being Canadian). A contingent of 190 Australian special forces, supported by a 110-member helicopter detachment, has suffered a steady flow of casualties since September year, with 11 wounded — a rate of one a month. The Age reports the Howard Government has “kept secret” how soldiers suffered the wounds, or the extent or nature of the wounds.

Dr Nelson said the soldiers would perform command, construction, communications intelligence, protection and logistics support. “We must stick with our allies and stand up for our values,” he said. He told the troops they would be “dealing with people who are fanatically opposed to our way of life and everything we stand for”.

Dr Nelson says the Australian contribution will also include skills training for the local population to “ensure the benefits of the deployment continue long after our personnel have returned home.”

Sunday, September 13, 2009

A “monster” Burmese python, weighing in at 400 pounds and stretching 18 feet long, was seized by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials on Friday after it was deemed unsafe in its cage near Lake Apopka, Florida.

The snake, named “Delilah”, is at least 16 years old. Melvin Cheever was caring for Delilah after his brother moved to West Virginia and left the snake behind temporarily. Officials with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission visited the home after a complaint arose questioning the security of the snake’s chain-link cage.

“I fed her this morning, gave her seven rabbits. She is as docile as can be. She’s as happy as can be,” said Cheever.

Officials called it the largest snake they had ever witnessed. Lt. Rick Brown with the organization’s investigations section said, “To me it’s a Goliath. It’s a monster of a snake.”

The incident occurs amid fears of snakes following the death of a 2-year-old Sumter County girl who was killed by her family’s pet python earlier this summer.

Delilah was transported to a properly licensed caregiver, but is expected to remain there only temporarily.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Studies carried out by researchers near the village of Khiam found radio active material at the site of bombing by Israel during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. The UN says that it has found no evidence of urianum-based munitions.

Two previously unknown Lebanese professors of physics, Mohammad Ali Kubaissi and Ibrahim Rachidi claim that the levels of radiation, about 700 nanosieverts per hour, twenty times the average levels, are consistent with the use of a depleted uranium bomb casing. Military use of depleted uranium is quite controversial due to its toxicity and low level radioactivity. Depleted uranium features in the list of weapons capable of causing mass destruction, superflous injury and unnecessary suffering, passed by the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the UNHRC in 1996 and 1997.

This analysis has been partially coroborated by an independent consultant specialising in career, organisation and community psychology issues, Dai Williams, affiliated with the environmentalist organisation Green Audit, with testing done by Chris Busby, a member of the Defence Depleted Uranium Oversight Board of the British Ministry of Defence and a director and co-founder of Green Audit. Williams believes that these anomalies may have been caused by Israel’s use of uranium based weapons involving some secret physical techniques, not nuclear fission; however, there are no known such physical processes.

The U.S. is currently the only nation known to use depleted uranium bomb casings and munitions. Some observers have claimed that Israel used depleted uranium muntions during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war; however, U.N. observers have never found Israel using depleted uranium.

This level of radiation is also consistent with Israel having destroyed some form of storage facility for nuclear material. Such facilities are speculated to exist in the Middle East, often controlled by Islamic extremist groups who (allegedly) hope to construct a dirty bomb.

Dirty bombs are not considered to be as effective militarily as merely using more explosives. Post September 11th news reports about the dangers of dirty bombs have been criticized as fear mongering for fallaciously assuming years of continued exposure by victims without acounting for clean up procedures, or even rain fall.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

35 children were killed and more than 40 were injured in a fire which roared through the ABC child care center in Hermosillo, Mexico on Friday afternoon. Among the injured were six adults, most who have yet to be identified. Over twenty other children have been hospitalized with burns. They have been transported to local hospitals and other medical facilities in the United States.

Neighbors, employees and firefighters broke walls to rescue unconscious children and babies from the fire in the converted warehouse building which was equipped with only one exit.

Three air ambulances, medical equipment and fifteen burn specialists were dispatched to the scene where children between the ages of six months and five years old perished from smoke inhalation. The majority of the injured and killed were under three years of age, said government officials.

Red Cross rescue workers say that 100 children were being cared for when the fire broke out. Sonora state Gov. Eduardo Bours confirmed that 142 children were in the child care center. Already, 27 of the 31 child fatalities have been identified, as parents continue to await news on their children.

Preliminary reports state that the fire may have started in the neighboring tire and car warehouse and spread to the childcare center. President of Mexico Felipe Calderón has placed the attorney general, Eduardo Medina-Mora in charge of the investigation into the cause of the blaze.

Mexico’s Social Security Institute also sent out resources to their privately run facility.

Hermosillo, population of over 700,000, is the capital of the Mexican state of Sonora 167 miles (269 km) from the American border.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

There were 5 games played in the National Hockey League on February 15, 2008.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has warned that the state of the housing market in the United Kingdom is the current biggest domestic threat to the country’s economy, due to lack of house building, and regulatory issues.

In an interview to be aired on Sky News today, he said the housing market is the “biggest risk” to the economy and has “deep, deep structural problems”. Of house building he said: “There are not sufficient houses built in the UK. To go back to Canada, there are half as many people in Canada as in the UK, twice as many houses are built every year in Canada as in the UK and we can’t influence that.”

“We’re not going to build a single house at the Bank of England. We can’t influence that. What we can influence […] is whether the banks are strong enough. Do they have enough capital against risk in the housing market?”

Carney also said the Bank of England would look into the procedures used to issue loans and mortgages to see if they were being granted appropriately: “We’d be concerned if there was a rapid increase in high loan-to-value mortgages across the banks. We’ve seen that creeping up and it’s something we’re watching closely.”

Kris Hopkins responded to Carney on behalf of the government, saying the government “inherited a broken housing market, but our efforts to fix it are working”. “We’ve scrapped the failed top-down planning system, built over 170,000 affordable homes and released more surplus brownfield sites for new housing. We’ve also helped homebuyers get on the housing ladder, because if people can buy homes builders will build them. Housebuilding is now at its highest level since 2007 and climbing. Last year councils gave permission for almost 200,000 new homes under the locally-led planning system and more than 1,000 communities have swiftly taken up neighbourhood planning. It’s clear evidence the government’s long-term economic plan is working.”

Earlier this month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on the UK government to “tighten” access to the ‘Help to Buy’ scheme introduced by George Osborne and the coalition government in 2013. ‘Help to Buy’ has also recently been criticised by three former Chancellors of the Exchequer — the Conservatives Norman Lamont and Nigel Lawson, and former Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling. Darling said: “Unless supply can be increased substantially, we will exacerbate that situation with schemes like Help to Buy.”