Tuesday, July 21, 2009

About 30 workers at the Vestas wind turbine plant in Newport, Isle of Wight, England have occupied their factory in protest against the upcoming closure of the plant. The factory, the main site for the manufacture of turbines for wind power in the United Kingdom, is scheduled to close at the end of July, bringing with it the loss of 625 jobs; Vestas is a major employer on the Isle of Wight, which has a population of around 140,000.

The workers, most of whom are not affiliated with any union, began their occupation around 7pm.

Speaking via mobile phone from the factory, “Mark”, a worker in Vestas’s finishing shop who prefers not to give any last name for fear of management reprisals, called the atmosphere “really good.” “It’s all right, we’re getting a lot of support”, he said.

Calling Vestas the “world leader” in the manufacture of wind turbines, Mark stated that the goal of the occupation as “asking the government to nationalise us” as “Vestas aren’t willing to keep our factory open”. The plant is being closed despite rising profits at the company, which is focusing on sales in China in response to lower demand in Northern Europe. According to a report by the Guardian, the low demand in the United Kingdom is the result of the long and unpredictable planning process associated with constructing wind farms in Britain.

Mark told Wikinews that the workers at Vestas have received messages of support from members of the SWP, the TUC, and Unite. Members of the Socialist Party are also taking part in the industrial action and the party has announced its support for the occupation. According to Mark, the Vestas workers were “inspired” to occupy the factory through contacts with occupation organisers from the Visteon plant in Belfast, where workers staged a weeks-long sit-in in April of this year. Mark said that the Visteon workers told the Vestas workers that an occupation “is something we should do to stand up for ourselves.”

Mark closed by thanking the public for its support, saying “we’ve got to keep on doing this sort of work — it’s for all our futures”

Sunday, December 20, 2009

American actress Brittany Murphy has died at the age of 32 in Los Angeles, California, US, according to reports. She had been married to her husband Simon Monjack since 2007.

According to entertainment website TMZ.com, the actress had suffered a cardiac arrest in the shower of the house of her husband, Simon Monjack, and could not be revived. The Los Angeles Fire Department received a call from the house at around 0800 local time. The cause of death has not been released from a spokeswoman for Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre, the location where she was pronounced dead.

She was famous for appearing in such films as Clueless, 8 Mile and Just Married. The Los Angeles Police Department has now launched an investigation into the death. Nicola Perna, who is Murphy’s publicist, has released a statement saying: “In this time of sadness, the family thanks you for your love and support. It is their wish that you respect their privacy.”

As well as the films that she has already appeared in, Brittany Murphy is expected to appear in Sylvester Stallone film The Expendables upon its release in 2010.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

This year Israel turns sixty and it has embarked upon a campaign to celebrate its birthday. Along with technology writers for Slate, PC Magazine, USA Today, BusinessWeek, Aviation Weekly, Wikinews was invited by the America-Israel Friendship League and the Israeli Foreign Ministry to review Israel’s technology sector. It’s part of an effort to ‘re-brand the country’ to show America that there is more to Israel than the Palestinian conflict. On this trip we saw the people who gave us the Pentium processor and Instant Messaging. The schedule was hectic: 12-14 hours a day were spent doing everything from trips to the Weizmann Institute to dinner with Yossi Vardi.

On Thursday, the fifth day of the junket, David Saranga of the foreign ministry was able to arrange an exclusive interview for David Shankbone with the President of Israel, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shimon Peres. For over an hour they spoke about Iranian politics, whether Israel is in danger of being side-lined in Middle Eastern importance because of Arab oil wealth, and his thoughts against those who say Israeli culture is in a state of decay.

Shimon Peres spent his early days on kibbutz, a bygone socialist era of Israel. In 1953, at the age of 29, Peres became the youngest ever Director General of the Ministry of Defense. Forty years later it was Peres who secretly gave the green light for dialogue with Yassir Arafat, of the verboten Palestine Liberation Organization. It was still official Israeli policy to not speak with the PLO. Peres shares a Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzak Rabin and Arafat for orchestrating what eventually became the Oslo Accords. The “roadmap” that came out of Oslo remains the official Israeli (and American) policy for peace in the Palestinian conflict. Although the majority of Israeli people supported the plans, land for peace was met with a small but fiery resistance in Israel. For negotiating with Arafat, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shouted at Peres, “You are worse than Chamberlain!” a reference to Hitler’s British appeaser. It was during this time of heated exchanges in the 1990s that Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a Jew who thought it against Halakhic law to give up land given by God (Hashem).

Peres is the elder statesman of Israeli politics, but he remembers that he has not always been as popular as he is today. “Popularity is like perfume: nice to smell, dangerous to drink,” said Peres. “You don’t drink it.” The search for popularity, he goes on to say, will kill a person who has an idea against the status quo.

Below is David Shankbone’s interview with Shimon Peres, the President of Israel.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

An AS532 Cougar helicopter has crashed in the south-east of France, killing all six occupants onboard. The aircraft, owned by manufacturing company Eurocopter, descended in the Verdon Gorge — located in the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence — at roughly 13:30 CEST (1130 UTC) yesterday. Police lieutenant Benoit Gounine told Reuters “[t]he accident occurred in a place that’s very difficult to access, which is complicating our work”.

A spokesperson for Eurocopter said the occupants of the helicopter were company engineers and test pilots. The aircraft, which launched from a heliport near Marseille, was being taken on a test flight and was due to be delivered to a customer later. Gilles Bruniaux, security development director at Eurocopter, said the helicopter occupants were “hardened professionals”.

Although investigations into the cause of the incident are ongoing, initial examinations by police and witness reports suggest the helicopter impacted with an electricity cable before descending. The owner of a restaurant close to the impact site told Agence France-Presse “customers having lunch on the terrace started yelling — there was an explosion and lots of black smoke”.

Verdon Gorge, one of the most famous in Europe, has a depth of 700 metres (2300 feet). The gorge is notable for its popularity with hikers.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Nelson Boys College was closed today because of an outbreak of gastro-enteritis in its boarding houses.

About 40% of the school’s boarding students have been hit with what is thought to be the highly contagious and violent stomach bug, Norovirus.

The principal, Salvi Garguilo, says the boys are being well cared for at the school, helped by Nelson Hospital.

They will stay isolated until they are no longer contagious.

Nelson College will reopen on Monday.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Zimbabwe has decided to abandon its currency, the Zimbabwean dollar, in favour of other currencies.

Acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced today that Zimbabweans will be allowed to make transactions in other currencies along with the local currency. “In line with the prevailing practices by the general public, [the] government is therefore allowing the use of multiple foreign currencies for business transactions alongside the Zimbabwean dollar,” he said, adding that the Zimbabwean dollar will not be removed from circulation and would be used alongside other currencies.

This decision comes during the current period of hyperinflation, which has massively devalued the Zimbabwean dollar. Banknotes up to $100 trillion have been printed, despite the removal of ten zeroes from the currency last summer to try to make transactions easier. The official inflation rate, last updated in July 2008, was 231,000,000% a year, although independent estimates place the number as high as 6.5×10¹⁰⁸, or 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion, percent.

Up to now, only vendors with licenses were legally able to accept foreign currencies, although the practice was widespread — private businesses altogether refuse to accept the unstable Zimbabwean dollar.

Large sections of the workforce, including teachers and doctors, have gone on strike because hyperinflation rapidly renders their wages worthless. Representative groups said salaries, now measured in trillions of dollars, are insufficient to pay for even the bus fare to work.

Zimbabwe also faces other crises, including a cholera epidemic that has claimed the lives of over 3,000 people, according to statistics from the World Health Organisation.

[edit]

Friday, October 23, 2009

Canadian authorities have dropped charges against 38-year-old Kyle Unger, who has served more than a decade in jail for a murder he did not commit. Hair from 16-year-old Brigitte Grenier’s body was used to convict him and has since been linked to someone else.

The case began at a rock concert near Winnipeg on June 23, 1990. Grenier attended the concert but then failed to return home. Her naked body was recovered from a nearby creek the following day in the grounds of the Roseisle ski resort that hosted the event. She had been beaten and sexually assaulted.

Unger later confessed to an undercover police officer posing as a drug dealer, and was charged alongside Timothy Houlahan. Both were found guilty, with Unger’s conviction helped by male hair recovered from the victim, which a forensics expert testified had come from the innocent man.

Unger, who had been imprisoned since being charged in 1991, was sentenced on February 29, 1992 to a minimum of 25 years imprisonment. The following year the Manitoba Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear it. In 1994 Houlahan’s conviction was overturned and he was released on bail pending a retrial; the 21-year-old chose instead to take his own life.

In 2003 the area’s Forensic Evidence Review Committee (FERC) began to look at cases involving hair samples. The next year authorities reported that they were able to relocate the hair used in the Grenier case, which they had previously believed to have been destroyed. Several months afterwards FERC said that the hair was not Unger’s.

It would be another year before Justice Holly Beard ruled in November 2005 that Unger should be released while his case was reviewed. On November 24, 2005 he was set free after nearly 14 years wrongly imprisoned. The review was completed this year and in March the conviction was overturned. A retrial was ordered by Federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.

However, prosecutors today decided that a retrial was highly unlikely to result in a conviction owing to the fact that no physical evidence links Unger to the slaying. He was formally acquitted of first-degree murder today. Grenier’s family have maintained that they believe in his guilt.

“It’s the first day of the rest of my life, a new beginning,” Unger said after leaving court today. He now lives in British Columbia. He said he was not angry over what happened to him, just upset. “When you feed off anger it just takes more from you. They already took my younger years away from me, why let them have my mind?” He says of his confession to the men he thought were gangsters that it was because he wanted to work for them: “When you’re young, naive and desperate for money, they hold a lot of promises to you, so you say and do what you have to do to survive, just like in prison.”

“Right now we are joyful that the man has an acquittal,” said Unger’s lawyer, Hersh Wolch. “This is a momentous day. The (justice) minister … rarely sends the matter to a retrial. Rarely. Tell me of one. And then an acquittal? It’s virtually unheard of. It is unheard of. So this is huge.”

Manitoba’s Attorney General Dave Chomiak says he will not be compensated despite his wrongful conviction because of his false confession. Prosecutor George Dangerfield, who convicted the pair in 1992, is having his cases reviewed owing to being involved in two previous separate miscarriages of justice — wrongful murder convictions against Thomas Sophonow and James Driskell.