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Friday, December 4, 2009

A classified European Union report for 2009 says Israel is actively pursuing the annexation of east Jerusalem. The report accuses Israel of implementing an intricate policy including expanding Jewish settlements and demolishing Palestinian homes. It says policies “are undermining prospects for a Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem and incrementally render a sustainable two-state solution unfeasible”; this is described as, “an integral part of a broader Israeli strategy.”

Israeli Foreign ministry spokesperson, Yigal Palmor, told AFP that the report was “dishonest”, “reflects the Palestinian propaganda” and “is based exclusively on Palestinian versions and figures.” This comes as EU foreign ministers prepare a statement on the Middle East. To allow for US initiatives, EU foreign ministers have not commented on the stalemate between Israel and the Palestinians over past months; but, diplomatic sources say there are “sensitivities” over a Swedish proposal to divide Jerusalem in any peace deal.

Citing official Israeli statistics from the Ministry of Interior executive director of Israel’s HaMoked (Center for the Defence of the Individual) said Wednesday that, “Israel has stripped Palestinians of Jerusalem residency status last year at a faster rate than at any time in the history of the state”. 4,577 residents of East Jerusalem have had their residence revoked in 2008, this is more than half the total revoked in the past 40 years. The Jerusalem municipality places severe restrictions on issuing building permits for Palestinian houses in east Jerusalem, since 2000 over 600 Palestinian-owned structures have been demolished and Palestinians receive fewer than 200 of the 1,500 building permits needed per year.

The 14-page annual report dated November 23 was drafted by European envoys and consuls in Jerusalem and Ramallah and presented to Brussels EU institutions a few days ago. This is the first time the annual report has been made public. Haaretz says, in the past, Israel has pressed the EU not to publish fearing it would undermine the European public’s view of Israel. The report was leaked to Israel’s Haaretz daily newspaper and obtained by AFP yesterday.

The EU report claims the Israeli government and Jerusalem municipality discriminate against Arab residents with regard to building permits, health services, education, sanitation and more. Allegations of assisting private right-wing Jewish organisations, such as Ateret Cohanim and Elad, to alter the city’s demographics are included.The report advises sanctions against people and groups involved in “settlement activity”, and taking other measures to protest Israeli policy and to stop the harming of the Arab population, including an “EU presence at Israeli court cases on house demolitions or evictions of Palestinian families when there is a risk of demolition or eviction of Palestinian families”, and “information sharing on violent settlers in East Jerusalem to assess whether to grant entry to the EU.” The report also recommends implementing measures to strengthen the Palestinian National Authority‘s presence in the city.

Archaeological excavations in Jerusalem near the Temple Mount are mentioned, suggesting “archaeology in this case has become an ideologically motivated tool of national and religious struggle carried out in a manner that modifies the identity and character of the city and threatens to undermine its stability.”

Sunday, July 10, 2011

British-based utility company Centrica, which holds ownership of British Gas, has announced its intentions to increase the prices of domestic electricity and gas later this year. On August 18, 2011, the company plans to raise the costs of gas and electrical supplies by eighteen and sixteen per cent, respectively. According to The Guardian, nine million customers will be affected by these changes.

British price comparison website uSwitch has reported that the “[a]verage household bill for a dual fuel British Gas customer will now go up from £1,096 to £1,288”. Mike O’Connor, the chief executive officer of consumer organisation Consumer Focus, has claimed that the announcement “will send a shock wave across the country” and will place an increasing amount of difficulties “on stretched household budgets. Consumers […] rightly question whether prices are fair.”

Phil Bentley, a managing director for British Gas, has claimed that value increases like this are “an issue facing all energy suppliers”. A director for British Gas, named Ian Peters, has claimed that “a fair return” will be made after the changes occur.

In 2010, British Gas experienced its largest ever profit, making £742 million (US$1,192 million, €835 million). Meanwhile, Centrica achieved £2.4 billion (US$3.8 billion, €2.7 billion) in profits. Richard Lloyd from product sampling charity Which? criticised the decision to raise prices, calling the declaration “unwelcome but unsurprising” for British Gas consumers.

Previously in December 2010, British Gas increased the price of its gas by 6.9%, which equates to £43 (US$69, €48). At the same time, the company’s electricity prices were raised by 6.7%, or £28 (US$45, €32). On Friday, Chris Huhne, the secretary of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, said that British electricity businesses must modify themselves so as to avoid “the cycle of fossil fuel addiction. Alternatives like renewables and nuclear power must be allowed to become the dominant component of our energy mix,” said Huhne.

This news comes to light as Scottish Power, a rival energy company to British Gas, announced last month their intentions to up the prices of their electricity and gas supplies by ten and nineteen per cent respectively.

Thursday, June 20, 2019

U.S. heiress Gloria Vanderbilt died on Monday at the age of 95, her son Anderson Cooper announced. She had advanced stomach cancer. Scion of the wealthy Vanderbilt family and the subject of a heavily publicized custody battle early in life, she later also became a performer, artist, and designer of porcelain, linens, and a well-known line of designer jeans.

Anderson Cooper, of CNN, one of Vanderbilt’s four sons, stated, “Gloria Vanderbilt was an extraordinary woman, who loved life, and lived it on her own terms […] She was a painter, a writer, and designer but also a remarkable mother, wife, and friend. She was 95 years old, but ask anyone close to her, and they’d tell you, she was the youngest person they knew, the coolest, and most modern.”

Vanderbilt was born in 1924 into the wealthy Vanderbilt family, great-great granddaughter of the railroad and shipping tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt. Her father, Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, died with liver disease when she was one. At the age of ten, Vanderbilt was the subject of a heavily publicized custody battle between her widowed mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, and her aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, who controlled a large piece of the Vanderbilt fortune. Her aunt won.

Although she had a trust fund worth US$5 million that she shared with one half-sister, over the course of her life, Vanderbilt also earned income herself through various pursuits. Encouraged to explore creative outlets by a psychotherapist, Vanderbilt took acting lessons and eventually performed on stage in The Time of Your Life in 1955 and appeared on television programs. She also focused on art and design, creating paintings, collages, linens, and a brand of designer jeans that would generate millions in sales. In 1990, the Smithsonian museum featured her jeans alongside the works of designers including Coco Chanel in an exhibit on gender and style.

Syracuse University pop culture professor Robert Thompson remarked, “The thing that really made Gloria Vanderbilt penetrate the American consciousness was the blue jeans war of the late ’70s and early 1980s […] The jeans moved from being functional clothes to designer jeans […] it was her attempt to take something that was so unglamorous and invest it in high fashion style.”

Vanderbilt was married to talent agent Pasquale “Pat” Di Cicco; conductor Leopold Stokowski, who fathered two of her sons; director Sidney Lumet; and author Wyatt Cooper; but, according to her memoirs, also had some degree of romantic involvement with, amongst others, Errol Flynn, Frank Sinatra, and Marlon Brando. She would later say her union with Cooper was her only happy marriage.

Vanderbilt also authored several books, including the memoirs Once Upon a Time and Black Knight, White Knight and the 2009 novel Obsession, which the New York Times called “the steamiest book ever written by an octogenarian.”

Vanderbilt is survived by two sons with Stokowski, Stanislaus and Christopher, and by her son Anderson Cooper. Another son, Carter Cooper, predeceased her.

Monday, August 31, 2009

A study performed at Edinburgh University, Scotland has shown that aspirin may do more harm to your health than good.

The research at the university in Scotland was to assess the effects of taking aspirin on a daily basis where no prior or existing medical conditions would merit its prescription. The researchers monitored 3,350 patients aged between 50–75, who were thought to be at risk of heart disease, but did not show any significant symptoms at the start of the study. Over an eight-year time period, 181 of those people taking aspirin had heart attacks or strokes.

More than 3,000 men aged 50–75 were randomly assigned to receive a daily dose of aspirin or a placebo pill and were watched over the eight year time period. There were 34 major bleeds in people taking aspirin, or 2%, in comparison to 1.2% of those who took the placebo. The Aspirin for Asymptomatic Atherosclerosis (AAA) have found that the routine use of aspirin does not prevent vascular disease or conditions and the use of it “could not be supported.”

Peter Weissberg, a professor at the British Heart Foundation, the company which was partly responsible in funding for the trials said, “we know that patients with symptoms of artery disease, such as angina, heart attack or stroke, can reduce their risk of further problems by taking a small dose of aspirin each day. The findings of this study agree with our current advice that people who do not have symptomatic or diagnosed artery or heart disease should not take aspirin, because the risks of bleeding may outweigh the benefits. Because it’s been around for a long time, people think, ‘It must be safe and it can’t do any harm’. They are taking it ‘just in case’ but it’s much more dangerous than some other drugs that people get concerned about, like statins.”

Professor Gerry Fowkes presented the research from the University of Edinburgh at the European Society of Cardiology congress in Barcelona, Spain, which was attended by more than 30,000 heart specialists.

“Our research suggests that aspirin should not be prescribed to the general population, although it does have benefits for people with established heart disease or other conditions,” stated Fowkes.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor candidate Wayne Tseng answered some questions about his campaign for the upcoming election from Wikinews. The Lord Mayor election in the Australian city is scheduled to take place this week.

Tseng runs a firm called eTranslate, which helps software developers to make the software available to the users. In the candidate’s questionnaire, Tseng said eTranslate had led to him working with all three tiers of the government. He previously belonged to the Australian Liberal Party, but has left since then, to run for mayorship as an independent candidate.

Tseng is of Chinese descent, having moved to Australia with his parents from Vietnam. Graduated in Brisbane, Tseng received his PhD in Melbourne and has been living in the city, he told Wikinews. Tseng also formed Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce, an organisation responsible for many “community bond building initiatives”, the Lord Mayor candidate told Wikinews.

Tseng discussed his plans for leading Melbourne, recovering from COVID-19, and “Democracy 2.0” to ensure concerns of minorities in the city were also heard. Tseng also focused on the importance of the multi-culture aspect and talked about making Melbourne the capital of the aboriginals. Tseng also explained why he thinks Melbourne is poised to be a world city by 2030.

Tseng’s deputy Lord Mayor candidate Gricol Yang is a Commercial Banker and works for ANZ Banking Group.

Currently, Sally Capp is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Victorian capital. Capp was elected as an interim Lord Mayor in mid-2018 after the former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle resigned from his position after sexual assault allegations. Doyle served as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne for almost a decade since 2008.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

An English lawyer has pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice. He faked a legal judgment and sent it to a father who was pleading in Taunton family court to be able to remain involved in his child’s upbringing. The lawyer, London barrister Bruce Hyman, now awaits his sentence. The judge indicated that he could receive a prison sentence. Bruce Hyman is well-known in media circles, having produced The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on BBC Radio. He also produced a series with Clive Anderson, at Above the Title Productions, called Unreliable Evidence.

The father, a former City financier, had attended a series of court hearings in order to make suitable arrangements to see his child following an acrimonious divorce. Shortly before one of these hearings he received an email, ostensibly from a self-help group to which he belonged, which had attached a Court of Appeal case that appeared favourable to an application he had made for the judge to stand down from the case. The father, who was representing himself, duly showed the case to the judge. At this point, Bruce Hyman, the lawyer representing the former wife, claimed to the judge that the case was a forgery, which indeed it turned out to be.

After confirming that the self-help group had not sent him the email, the father then embarked on some detective work his own. The fraudulent email was traced via its header to a dial-up internet connection and a phone number belonging to a shop in London. The shop was able to recover CCTV footage which showed a man sending the email from an Apple laptop. The man turned out to be Bruce Hyman.

Sentencing of Hyman is due in Bristol Crown Court on the 19th of September.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor candidate Wayne Tseng answered some questions about his campaign for the upcoming election from Wikinews. The Lord Mayor election in the Australian city is scheduled to take place this week.

Tseng runs a firm called eTranslate, which helps software developers to make the software available to the users. In the candidate’s questionnaire, Tseng said eTranslate had led to him working with all three tiers of the government. He previously belonged to the Australian Liberal Party, but has left since then, to run for mayorship as an independent candidate.

Tseng is of Chinese descent, having moved to Australia with his parents from Vietnam. Graduated in Brisbane, Tseng received his PhD in Melbourne and has been living in the city, he told Wikinews. Tseng also formed Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce, an organisation responsible for many “community bond building initiatives”, the Lord Mayor candidate told Wikinews.

Tseng discussed his plans for leading Melbourne, recovering from COVID-19, and “Democracy 2.0” to ensure concerns of minorities in the city were also heard. Tseng also focused on the importance of the multi-culture aspect and talked about making Melbourne the capital of the aboriginals. Tseng also explained why he thinks Melbourne is poised to be a world city by 2030.

Tseng’s deputy Lord Mayor candidate Gricol Yang is a Commercial Banker and works for ANZ Banking Group.

Currently, Sally Capp is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Victorian capital. Capp was elected as an interim Lord Mayor in mid-2018 after the former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle resigned from his position after sexual assault allegations. Doyle served as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne for almost a decade since 2008.

Monday, June 23, 2008

2008 COMPUTEX Taipei, the largest trade fair since its inception in 1982, featured several seminars and forums, expansions on show spaces to TWTC Nangang, great transformations for theme pavilions, and WiMAX Taipei Expo, mainly promoted by Taipei Computer Association (TCA). Besides of ICT industry, “design” progressively became the critical factor for the future of the other industries. To promote innovative “Made In Taiwan” products, pavilions from “Best Choice of COMPUTEX”, “Taiwan Excellence Awards”, and newly-set “Design and Innovation (d & i) Award of COMPUTEX”, demonstrated the power of Taiwan’s designs in 2008 COMPUTEX Taipei.