Sunday, March 26, 2006

Buffalo, New York — For the second weekend in a row, demonstrators protested the Elmwood Village Hotel proposal on the proposed site.

The Elmwood Village Hotel is a proposed hotel by Savarino Construction Services Corporation and is designed by architect Karl Frizlen of the Frizlen Group. It is to be placed on the corner of Elmwood and Forest Avenues in Buffalo and will require the demolition of at least five properties (1109-1121 Elmwood).

The proposal also required that all five properties, including 605 Forest, be rezoned to a “C-2” zone, or a “special development plan.” The rezoning was passed by Buffalo’s Common Council on March 21, 2006.

Russell Smith, owner of the Six Nation’s Gift Shop at 1121 Elmwood, also participated in the protest.

“I am a Native American and we opened a Native American gift shop and we are just brand new [and just] opened. Having started out a business for the first time, and it the only Native American shop in the city, and I do not see the use of any hotel, especially at this district. The Elmwood Strip is pretty well established. Some of these people have been here a long while you know and they’re [Savarino Construction] disrupting their livelihood,” said Smith to Wikinews.

When Smith was asked if he was going to be in any of the shops in the new hotel he replied, “we don’t have the option of getting into the hotel or any of the shops that are going to be there. We haven’t [had] any idea that they [Savarino] were even planning to tear these buildings down to put a hotel here until we had moved in. I think thats a little unfair.”

Former City of Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello was asked to sign the petition to stop the hotel when he walked by, but he declined saying, “I respect what you are doing, but I am for the hotel.”

Despite the cold weather, at least 45 people showed up to walk the picket line.

For the moment, no further protests have been scheduled, pending the final decision on the hotel proposal by the city’s Planning Board which meets Tuesday, March 28, 2006. The meeting begins at 8:00am and will be held in room 902 on the 9th floor of City Hall in downtown Buffalo.

On Saturday morning several individuals attended a meeting with a lawyer to see what could be done, if anything, about the proposal and about Hans Mobius, former Buffalo mayoral candidate and owner of the properties to be demolished at 1109-1121 Elmwood.

One of the attendees, Nancy Pollina, co-owner of Don Apparel with Patty Morris, stated that “there is a case” but that she is likely unable to afford the large attorney’s fees. Pollina reports that she is looking into a “legal fund.”

Some of the affected are considering going to the New York State Supreme Court pro se to seek an injunction.

Some tenants of Mobius’s buildings have accused him of being a “slumlord” and claim that he “intentionally neglected” his properties with the intention of selling. Mobius, who has owned the properties for about 20 years, tried in 1995 to sell them to a developer who wanted to build a Walgreens Drugstore on the same site as the proposed hotel.

Mobius is expected to appear in housing Court on April 11, 2006. He has not returned any phone calls from Wikinews.

Tuesday, October 4, 2005

Dr. Stephen Schoenthaler, a Professor of Criminal Justice at the California State University in Stanislaus, has long argued that there is a link between a healthy diet and decreased aggressive behaviour, as well as with increased IQ and school performance.

Dr. Schoenthaler is well-known for a youth detention center study where violations of house rules fell by 37% when vending machines were removed and the cafeteria replaced canned food by fresh alternatives. He summarizes his findings by saying that “Having a bad diet right now is a better predictor of future violence than past violent behaviour.” In a very large test, Schoenthaler directed a study in meals at 803 New York City schools, in low-income neighbourhoods, finding that the number of students passing final exams increased by 16%.

Critics have questioned some of Dr. Schoenthaler findings, due to the lack of placebo control groups. However, more recent work by Dr. Bernard Gesch, a physiologist at the University of Oxford, has placed some of the work on a more scientific footing. Dr. Gesch found that nutrition supplements produced a 26% drop in violations of prison rules over a placebo, and a 37% decrease in violent offences. The Netherlands has embarked on a wider scale dietary research program in 14 prisons.

The short term behaviour consequences of ingesting sugar are well understood: an initial burst on energy, followed a sugar low in which your body produces adrenalin, which makes you irritable and explosive. However, Schoenthaler and Gesch suggest that there are long term impacts over and above the short term consequences of blood sugar variations.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

A British couple have died after their car collided with a bus carrying a group of children. The crash took part on the A64 at Staxton near Scarborough, North Yorkshire on Sunday morning. The bus continued on through a hedge line and hit an unoccupied camper van. Six passengers on the bus were treated for minor injuries.

Detective Inspector Geoff Carey of the North Yorkshire Police said that “The coach was carrying a group of young people as well as adults and they are very shocked. They have slight injuries but a great deal of shock.” He also commented on the after crash saying that “Had the Winnebago not been there the bus could have gone into the house.”

The bus was traveling from Pelsall to Primrose Valley holiday park in North Yorkshire to attend marching band competition when the accident happened.

The North Yorkshire police were unable to give any more details. The A64 was closed in both directions at Staxton at the junction with the B1249. Motorists were advised to avoid the area, which has become congested, according to police.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s plans to implement a carbon tax in Australia have hit a roadblock today with the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union Paul Howes demanding that exemptions be made to certain heavy polluting industries including steel production as well as concerns about whether jobs will be lost.

Steel producing companies within Australia including BlueScope Steel and OneSteel have supported the move by the union claiming that a carbon tax would affect Australian Jobs. Paul O’Malley, managing director and Chief Executive of BlueScope, said that “the tax threat is still real for the Australian Steel industry and for our customers.”

Paul Howes told The Australian newspaper that “if one job is gone, our support is gone.” Mr. Howes is a powerful figure within the Australian Labor Party who is believed to have been instrumental with the removal of PM Gillard’s predecessor Kevin Rudd. Support for the Gillard Labor Government has dropped to an all time low earlier this year, with only a 30% approval rating.

The move by the AWU has been supported by other unions in Australia, including the Transport Workers Union as well as Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Zaragoza, Spain — On Thursday, Wikinews traveled to Zaragoza, Spain to interview the nation’s most decorated Paralympian and IPC Athlete Council representative Teresa Perales. A wide range of topics about the Paralympics and sport in Spain were discussed including the evolution of Paralympic sport, disability sport classification, funding support across all levels of elite sport including the Paralympics and Olympics, the role of sportspeople in politics, sponsorship issues, and issues of gender in Spanish sport.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

U.S. Democratic Party presidential candidate John Wolfe, Jr. of Tennessee took some time to answer a few questions from Wikinews reporter William S. Saturn.

Wolfe, an attorney based out of Chattanooga, announced his intentions last year to challenge President Barack Obama in the Democratic Party presidential primaries. So far, he has appeared on the primary ballots in New Hampshire, Missouri, and Louisiana. In Louisiana, he had his strongest showing, winning 12 percent overall with over 15 percent in some congressional districts, qualifying him for Democratic National Convention delegates. However, because certain paperwork had not been filed, the party stripped Wolfe of the delegates. Wolfe says he will sue the party to receive them.

Wolfe will compete for additional delegates at the May 22 Arkansas primary and the May 29 Texas primary. He is the only challenger to Obama in Arkansas, where a May 10 Hendrix College poll of Democrats shows him with 38 percent support, just short of the 45 percent for Obama. Such an outing would top the margin of Texas prison inmate Keith Russell Judd, who finished 18 percent behind Obama with 41 percent in the West Virginia Democratic primary; the strongest showing yet against the incumbent president. Despite these prospects, the Democratic Party of Arkansas has already announced that if Wolfe wins any delegates in their primary, again, due to paperwork, the delegates will not be awarded. Wolfe will appear on the Texas ballot alongside Obama, activist Bob Ely, and historian Darcy Richardson, who ended his campaign last month.

Wolfe has previously run for U.S. Congress as the Democratic Party’s nominee. On his campaign website, he cites the influence “of the Pentagon, Wall Street, and corporations” on the Obama administration as a reason for his challenge, believing these negatively affect “loyal Americans, taxpayers and small businesses.” Wolfe calls for the usage of anti-trust laws to break up large banks, higher taxes on Wall Street, the creation of an “alternative federal reserve” to assist community banks, and the implementation of a single-payer health care system.

With Wikinews, Wolfe discusses his campaign, the presidency of Barack Obama, corporations, energy, the federal budget, immigration, and the nuclear situation in Iran among other issues.

Monday, September 4, 2006

The collision of a freight train with a passenger train just north of Cairo in the town of Shebin al-Qanater. The accident claimed 5 lives and injured another 30. It is reported that one of the dead was the engineer of the freight train.

In August the director of rail service in Egypt was fired after a similar accident killed 58 people in the town of Qalyoub. A public inquiry into that accident is underway amid growing criticism of the government for lax rail safety and transport regulation.

Mohammed Mansour, Egypt’s new director of transport has agreed that the transportation system is in need of extensive overhauls. The government has approved $860 million to develop the rail infrastructure, plus another $600 million in loans to private rail operators.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Buffalo, New York — Residents in Buffalo, New York fear that demolishing a nearly 200-year-old livery and stable which partially collapsed on Wednesday June 11, could cause an environmental hazard.

Wikinews has learned that according property records with the city, the stable was converted into a gasoline station and auto repair shop in 1950, and is designated as a body shop. During that time at least four fuel storage tanks were installed on the property. Two are listed as 550 square feet while the other two are 2,000 square feet. All of the tanks are designated as a TK4, which New York State says is used for “below ground horizontal bulk fuel storage.” The cost of installing a tank of that nature according to the state, at that time, included the tank itself, “excavation and backfill,” but did not include “the piping, ballast, or hold-down slab orring.”

Property reports give the tanks a ‘construction code’ of a “C – Average”, meaning the tanks were not designed to last for a significant period of time. That rating has residents concerned that the tanks could pose an environmental hazard if they are not properly taken care of.

Wikinews has not been able to determine if the tanks have been removed or if they were emptied when the gas station closed sometime in the 1980’s. Wikinews has also contacted the city of Buffalo for a comment regarding the tanks, but has yet to receive a response.

The building was scheduled for emergency demolition on Thursday June 12, but was stopped by police after residents raised concerns for the safety of those living around the building. According to New York law, since the city ordered the demolition, they are required to perform an ‘Environmental Impact Assessment’ or SEQR when a project or demolition has the possibility of posing an environmental hazard.

According to New York law, a SEQR should be performed “to incorporate the consideration of environmental factors into the existing planning, review and decision-making processes of state, regional and local government agencies at the earliest possible time. To accomplish this goal, SEQR requires that all agencies determine whether the actions they directly undertake, fund or approve may have a significant impact on the environment, and, if it is determined that the action may have a significant adverse impact, prepare or request an environmental impact statement.”

The law states, “SEQR requires the sponsoring or approving governmental body to identify and mitigate the significant environmental impacts of the activity it is proposing or permitting.” It also states that it is the duty of the governmental body in charge of a project to enforce the laws of the SEQR. It also states that agencies must give “appropriate weight with social and economic considerations” when undergoing major projects.

The law also allows citizens to enforce the regulation stating, “citizens or groups who can demonstrate that they may be harmed by this failure [SEQR], may take legal action against the agency” or governmental body behind such a project. The court system in New York has been known to “consistently” rule in favor of plaintiffs who file lawsuits against agencies who do not perform a SEQR.

Residents won a restraining order to stop demolition after State Supreme Court Justice Judge John. F. O’Donnell signed a temporary injunction. Residents are concerned demolition crews moved too fast, and are not doing enough to protect them and their surrounding properties. They are also concerned that the city did not consider all the options or risks before ordering the building to be demolished.

On June 15, Judge Jerome C. Gorski ruled that the city can resume demolition, but “on a limited basis” only to remove fallen rubble that landed on properties, and to remove any loose bricks or material from the building, but not below its truss line. Because of the risk of further collapse, the workers are ordered “to use only hand tools.” to remove the loose material and debris. Residents are attempting to save portions of the building’s side walls and its facade. The demolition crew began to remove some materials, as ordered by the court on Tuesday, June 17.

Judge Gorski also ordered that the plaintiffs present their case in front the State’s Supreme Court in Rochester. The hearing took place on Monday morning on June 16 at 10:00 a.m. (eastern time), and the case is currently “being discussed,” said an anonymous source close to the lawsuit to Wikinews.

Bob Freudenheim is the building’s owner who has housing violations against him for neglecting the building. Residents state that Freudenheim should be “100% responsible” for his actions, and many are afraid that once the building is demolished, Freudenheim’s charges of neglect will be abolished. According to WGRZ Channel 2 News, in the past three months, Freudenheim has received at least five housing code violations from the city. WGRZ states that the orders, which they obtained, were to fix the building “to a safe condition.”

Freudenheim gave the city permission to demolish the building on Thursday June 12 during an emergency Preservation Board meeting, because he would not be “rehabilitating the building anytime soon.” Freudenheim, along with his wife Nina, were part-owners of the Hotel Lenox at 140 North Street in Buffalo and were advocates to stop the Elmwood Village Hotel from being built on the corners of Forest and Elmwood Avenues in 2006 and 2007, which Wikinews extensively covered. They also financially supported a lawsuit in an attempt to stop the hotel from being built. Though it is not known exactly how long Freudenheim has owned the stable, Wikinews has learned that he was the owner while fighting to stop the hotel from being built.

Freudenheim has not released a statement, and Wikinews has not been able to contact him regarding the issue.