Thursday, May 19, 2005

Wikinews reported on May 17 that several weeks earlier British police had picked up an unidentified man wandering the streets of Sheerness, United Kingdom. The man who has thus far refused to talk, has demonstrated himself to be an excellent pianist—earning him the nickname Piano Man.

Since publication of our first article, we have been contacted by a fellow wiki contributor informing us that the Piano Man may be a British actor named Geoffrey Betts. Although our contact strongly believed he knew the identity of the man and contacted the relevant authorities in regard to his belief, this has turned out to be false. While Betts was not reachable by phone or e-mail, his website was recently updated to the effect that he is not the man in question. In the meantime, the search for the identity has been narrowed down to three leads by authorities.

The original interview between Wikinews editor CGorman and contributor Steve Magruder is reproduced below.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd faced intense scrutiny in federal parliament on Tuesday following days of speculation that he was considering scrapping cash bonuses to recipients of carer and seniors payments. Questions by the opposition during question time were dominated by the cash bonuses, with leader of the opposition, Brendan Nelson moving to censure the Prime Minister.

It was the first censure motion moved against the Prime Minister since his election last year.

For the past four years, the previous Howard government had made one-off payments to seniors of up to $500 and $1,600 to carers.

Facing repeated questions, the Prime Minister said “I guarantee that carers will not be one dollar worse off as a consequence of the budget”.

Mr Rudd said that the government was also looking at “the challenges of carers and pensioners in the long term” instead of through one-time bonus payments as the previous government had. Mr Rudd then called the opposition the “new party of compassion” and told the house that the Howard government had never committed to the payments in the long term, as they were not in forward budget estimates.

Brendan Nelson then moved a motion to censure the Prime Minister over his plans. During his motion, Dr Nelson called upon the Prime Minister to “get up, for God’s sake, get up, stand in front of that microphone and say to the carers of this country, ‘I, the Prime Minister of Australia, believe in you and will deliver you a lump sum payment in the budget.”

Dr Nelson also accused the Prime Minister of not seeing the significance of the bonus payments for those who receive them. “For someone earning $250,000 a year, a lump sum payment of $1,600 would probably make them think: ‘What’s that? It’s my credit card payment or whatever.’” said Dr Nelson.

The opposition leader told the House of Representatives that many people had been budgeting for the bonus payment and it was unfair for it to be taken from them. “If you are hanging out for that lump sum payment, it is absolutely essential for your budgeting,” said Dr Nelson.

When the Prime Minister spoke against the motion, he reminded the opposition that a Liberal party document said “A re-elected Coalition Government will consider continuing to pay these bonuses, depending on the economic circumstances at the time.”

Mr Rudd then drew attention to his $500 utilities allowance, which will be paid to aged and disability pensioners as well as carers to counter the rise in the cost of living.

Speaking for the motion, opposition community services spokesman Tony Abbott accused the Rudd government of “compassion fatigue” and said that the cardboard cutout of the Prime Minister which appeared in parliament on the previous sitting day had “more heart than this Prime Minister”.

The censure motion was defeated along party lines.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

The Tax Policy Center has published a table that states that taxpayers earning more than $10,000,000 in 2004 paid lower tax rates than taxpayers earning between $1,000,000 and $10,000,000. Among other things, it breaks down the average tax rate by cash income into various income tax categories.

According to the Tax Policy Center, the average tax rate paid by the 9,000 taxpayers earning over $10,000,000 in 2004 was 20.1%, more than 2% lower than the nearly quarter million taxpayers earning between $1,000,000 and $10,000,000. If taxpayers earning over $10,000,000 were taxed at 22.3%, the rate of those earning between $1,000,000 and $10,000,000, the federal government would have received an additional $4.8 billion in revenue.

Taxpayers who earned more than $10,000,000 paid a lower average rate than any category of taxpayer earning over $100,000. Although taxpayers in the $75,000 to $100,000 range paid 18.9% of their income in taxes, 1.2% less than those making over $10,000,000, taxpayers in the $100,000 to $200,000 range paid an average of 20.6%, or 0.5% more than those making over $10,000,000.

Furthermore, the Tax Policy Center’s analysis is described by David Cay Johnston, New York Times columnist and author of Perfectly Legal as “understating the real economic gains of those at the very top, who have perfectly legal ways to defer reporting income for tax purposes.”

The Tax Policy Center is a nonpartisian joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution and comprised of nationally recognized experts in tax, budget, and social policy who have served at the highest levels of government.

Monday, March 24, 2008

The President of the United States, George W. Bush, and his wife Laura Bush have introduced the 2008 White House egg roll. Mrs. Bush introduced the attendees to the event by saying “welcome, everybody, to the White House Easter Egg Roll, the 2008 Easter Egg Roll. This event is one of the happiest traditions on the White House lawn. It’s always fun to see the South Lawn filled with children. Thank you for coming. And I’d especially like to thank our entertainers, our readers, our volunteers, and our special guests.”

M. Bush dedicated the event to cleaning oceans. “We [the Bush family] want to remind you that we’re dedicating today’s Easter Egg Roll to our clean oceans. And there’s a booth here where you can find out how you can contribute to make sure that we’re environmentally sound stewards of our oceans. Ocean conservation is a important aspect of good public service, and it’s certainly something that Laura has on her mind, as she comes up to address you,” he said.

7,500 eggs are being provided for 2008 egg roll, with the White House estimating before the event that 22,000 people will attend this year.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Sweden’s first royal wedding since 1976 took place Saturday when Crown Princess Victoria, 32, married her long-time boyfriend and former personal trainer, Daniel Westling, 36. The ceremony took place at Stockholm Cathedral.

Over 1,200 guests, including many rulers, politicians, royals and other dignitaries from across the world, attended the wedding, which cost an estimated 20 million Swedish kronor. Victoria wore a wedding dress with five-metre long train designed by Pär Engsheden. She wore the same crown that her mother, Queen Silvia, wore on her wedding day 34 years previously, also on June 19. Victoria’s father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, walked Victoria down the aisle, which was deemed untraditional by many. In Sweden, the bride and groom usually walk down the aisle together, emphasising the country’s views on equality. Victoria met with Daniel half-way to the altar, where they exchanged brief kisses, and, to the sounds of the wedding march, made their way to the the silver altar. She was followed by ten bridesmaids. The couple both had tears in their eyes as they said their vows, and apart from fumbling when they exchanged rings, the ceremony went smoothly.

Following the ceremony, the couple headed a fast-paced procession through central Stockholm on a horse-drawn carriage, flanked by police and security. Up to 500,000 people are thought to have lined the streets. They then boarded the Vasaorden, the same royal barge Victoria’s parents used in their wedding, and traveled through Stockholm’s waters, accompanied by flyover of 18 fighter jets near the end of the procession. A wedding banquet followed in the in the Hall of State of the Royal Palace.

Controversy has surrounded the engagement and wedding between the Crown Princess and Westling, a “commoner”. Victoria met Westling as she was recovering from bulemia in 2002. He owned a chain of gymnasiums and was brought in to help bring Victoria back to full health. Westling was raised in a middle-class family in Ockelbo, in central Sweden. His father managed a social services centre, and his mother worked in a post office. When the relationship was made public, Westling was mocked as an outsider and the king was reportedly horrified at the thought of his daughter marrying a “commoner”, even though he did so when he married Silvia. Last year, Westling underwent transplant surgery for a congenital kidney disorder. The Swedish public have been assured that he will be able to have children and that his illness will not be passed on to his offspring.

Westling underwent years of training to prepare for his new role in the royal family, including lessons in etiquette, elocution, and multi-lingual small talk; and a makeover that saw his hair being cropped short, and his plain-looking glasses and clothes being replaced by designer-wear.

Upon marrying the Crown Princess, Westling took his wife’s ducal title and is granted the style “His Royal Highness”. He is now known as HRH Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland. He also has his own coat-of-arms and monogram. When Victoria assumes the throne and becomes Queen, Daniel will not become King, but assume a supportive role, similar to that of Prince Phillip, the husband of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II.

April 12, 2005

In what authorities call a terrible tragedy, a four-year-old boy was killed Sunday afternoon by the family dog. The Orange County, Virginia USA boy was playing in his back yard while their dog, a Rottweiler–German Shepherd mix, was chained to a stake.

The parents of the boy were home when the mauling occurred, but there were no direct eye witnesses to the attack that took place in the Placid Pines mobile home park. County Sheriff C.G. Feldman said, “We’ll probably never know what provoked the attack.” he told the Associated Press, “The boy had grown up with the dog.”

A CBS6 broadcast said investigators saw no signs of parental negligence, and the boy was their only child. No charges against the parents were filed. The dog was euthanised Monday.

Sheriff Feldman stressed there were no similarities or connection with an earlier case of an elderly woman killed in an attack by 3 pit bulls in the nearby county of Spotsylvania just over a month ago.

Friday, April 15, 2005

The 11th crew of the International Space Station rocketed into space Thursday at 8:46 EDT. The Expedition 11 crew rode aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and two of them will remain in their new home-away-from-home for six months.

They were given a heartfelt send-off by Russian Mission Control chief Vladimir Solovyov:

“The people who are doing the job are real romantics who are involved in fascinating work for a miserable salary,” he told reporters after the launch, which he called a “remarkable event.”

Cosmonauts typically earn $144 to $179 a month.

The launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, came as ISS was on a north east heading approximately 230 miles above the southern Atlantic Ocean.

At the controls were Commander Sergei Krikalev, NASA Station Science Officer and Flight Engineer John Phillips, and European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori. Vittori will return April 24 with the prior crew, Expedition 10 Commander Leroy Chiao and Flight Engineer Salizhan Sharipov, after conducting some experiments.

Soyuz will dock with ISS at 10:19 p.m. EDT on Saturday. Live NASA coverage of the docking and hatch opening will be shown on NASA TV beginning at 9 p.m. Saturday and can be viewed on Internet TV at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv (Free Real Player or Windows Media Player required).

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Riots in the town of Salt in Jordan have ended. The violence followed the shooting of a man at a police roadblock; 34 have been arrested over the riots, as has the policeman who pulled the trigger.

25-year-old Suleiman Khreisat was shot in the head on Wednesday and remains in critical condition; according to police, his car appeared suspicious, as it had no licence plates and broken windows. A police major gave chase after Khreisat allegedly failed to stop and shot him; he is now detained for use of excessive force against a civilian.

“Salt residents wanted to know who shot their townsman, demanding that police identify him so that they could take revenge,” added Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed al-Khatib. Rioters attacked police kiosks, a traffic police building, and police cars. Stones were thrown at officers. Non-police targets included cash machines, streetlights, shop windows, cars and trees that were burned in two town squares. Roadblocks of burning tyres were formed.

“Several police officers and citizens were also wounded and have been hospitalized,” according to al-Khatib, who added that tear gas was used to battle rioters. He says all 34 arrested will face trial.