Sunday, November 11, 2007

It just wasn’t their day for the two baseball teams on either side of the Straight, as China Stars and Uni-President Lions were both eliminated in a route at the Konami Cup 2007. The final of Konami Cup will take place between SK Wyverns and Chunichi Dragons.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Ricky “The Hitman” Hatton regained the IBF light welterweight title belt he relinquished less than 12 months ago when he defeated Juan Urango in Las Vegas, Nevada tonight.

“The Hitman” won by unanimous decision, as the fight went to 12 rounds. Despite early match odds suggesting Hatton would dominate the fight, this was not the case. Each round was close, but most pundits and judges alike agreed that Urango only won 1 of the 12 rounds, with Hatton taking the other 11.

Despite the unfamiliar confines of Las Vegas, Hatton looked touched by the ringing of football fan-like chants, familiar in British boxing, that rang around the arena, as more than half of it was filled by traveling support from across the atlantic.

Many in the UK will hope Hatton has ended the “curse” that has seen names such as Frank Bruno, Naseem Hamed, Barry McGuigan and others fall short while headlining fights on “The Strip”.

From here, it is widely believed “The Hitman” will move on to fight Jose Luis Castillo in June, again likely in Vegas.

Friday, November 27, 2020

Tomorrow, voters in the Australian electoral district of Groom are scheduled to go to the polls in a by-election following the resignation of Liberal National MP John McVeigh for family reasons. Groom is located in the state of Queensland, and is centred around the city of Toowoomba. At the last federal election, the Liberal National Party, Queensland’s dominant conservative party, won this seat by over 70% of the two-party-preferred vote, and since the seat’s creation in 1984, it has been held by conservative political parties.

Some political analysts considered this a foregone conclusion, with analyst Kevin Bonham having declared it on his blog as “Australia’s most boring by-election”, however Bonham noted the size of the swing may have been indicative of the dominant centre left Labor Party’s general performance in Queensland. There was a 4.2% swing against the Labor Party in the state of Queensland at the previous federal election.

Wikinews spoke to one of the four candidates running in the by-election, Craig Farquharson, who is running for the Liberal Democrats. Liberal Democrats describes itself as standing for “individual liberty, free markets and small government”. The party has two elected officials, who sit in the Victorian Legislative Council. Farquharson is a former military contractor and owns the King Vapealot vape store in Toowoomba.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Wonthaggi, Victoria — Wonthaggi defeated Leongatha at home in the opening game of the 2010 Gippsland Football League (officially the Gippsland League, GL) season this past Saturday. The match, unofficially dubbed “the South Gippsland derby”, was played a week prior to the other opening round matches.

The three remaining matches of round one are scheduled to be played next Saturday (April 10). Morwell will host Warragul in Morwell, Drouin will play Maffra in Drouin and Moe will host Traralgon at Yallourn North with Sale having the bye.

The Gippsland Football League is considered one of the “major leagues” controlled by the Victorian Country Football League, the governing body of Australian rules football in regional Victoria, Australia.

At the league’s annual general meeting in December, it changed it’s name from the West Gippsland Latrobe Football League. At the same meeting, Wonthaggi joined the GL after dominating the Alberton Football League during the past decade. The Power made five concecutive Alberton Grand Finals winning three, losing only to Yarram (2007) and Stony Creek (2009).

Wonthaggi Power Football Club is a result of a merger between Wonthaggi Blues, a former Gippsland FL team, and Wonthaggi Rovers, an Alberton FL team. In February, the Gippsland Football League announced that Wonthaggi would be changing their uniforms, because their original one was similar to that of Warragul.

Leongatha finished the 2009 season losing the minor semi final against enventual grand final winners Maffra. Leongatha defeated Drouin in the last Elimination Final under the West Gippsland Latrobe Football League banner.

Scores below are quoted as goals-behinds (total). Goals are worth six points, behinds one.

Wonthggi kicked off their first game in the major league with a opening quarter lead of four and a half goals over rivals Leongatha. The Power’s move from the Alberton League looked to be justified as they went in to cruise mode.

Leongatha slowly clawed back the deficit over the next three quarters but the first quarter result and inaccurate kicking caused them to fall short by one point.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that unemployment in the country edged down from 10.2% to 10% in November, with fewer jobs lost in the previous two months than anticipated. The latest monthly figure was discussed at a congressional hearing yesterday as president Barack Obama welcomed the news but said he is still not satisfied.

At a hearing of the bipartisan Joint Economic Committee at the Senate, lawmakers from both major US political parties cited the November unemployment figure as welcome progress. However, they also noted the economic pain many of their constituents are still feeling in an economy struggling with deep recession.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said Americans at all levels, but notably the middle class, continue to struggle. “While parts of our economy are clearly stabilizing, with the Dow Jones over 10,000 again, it is clear that other parts of the economy are still struggling. We need to make sure that all Americans, not just the folks who happen to work on Wall Street, feel that we are digging ourselves out of the hole,” she commented.

Despite a generally upward trend in recent months on Wall Street, Obama, administration officials, and economists continue to caution that employment will lag behind other indicators of economic recovery.

Keith Hall, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said the November figure, which still represents 15.4 million Americans out of work, is the lowest monthly job loss since the official beginning of the US recession in December 2007, and follows moderating figures in three previous months.

But in an economy that has lost jobs for 23 consecutive months, Hall noted that long-term unemployed continued to grow, rising by 293,000 to 5.9 million, with little change in the number of Americans employed part-time but seeking full-time work.

Democrat Carolyn Maloney asked him about economist’s predictions that it would take 10.7 million jobs created to return the country to full employment. “Well, without offering an opinion on that 10.7 million jobs, at that rate though, it would be about three years,” said Mr. Hall.

Opposition Republicans responded to the latest figures by focusing on specific sectors that continue to lag and renewing their assertions that steps President Obama has taken since he came to office, such as the $787 billion stimulus, have had little impact on the economy.

Kevin Brady is the Republican co-chair of the committee. He said while the November figures are good news, there is not much more to celebrate.”We can’t celebrate a 10 percent unemployment rate, especially when the long-term unemployment continues to grow in very troubling numbers.”

But Maryland Democrat Elijah Cummings noted what he called a major improvement with job losses going from 700,000 per month at the start of the recession to 11,000 in November. “The report we received this morning is a clear indicator that the economy is slowly returning to growth,” he said.

In an appearance in Allentown, Pennsylvania on Friday, Obama called the jobs figure “modestly encouraging”, but noted that he will not be satisfied until there is sustained significant improvement. “We have still got a long way to go. I consider one job loss one job too many and as I said yesterday at a jobs conference in Washington. Good trends don’t pay the rent. We have got to actually grow jobs and get America back to work as quickly as we can,” he said.

The president had held a so-called jobs summit at the White House this week seeking support from business and union leaders for his economic recovery efforts.

Republicans responded with their own event on Capitol Hill, where economists such as Douglas Holtz Eakin, the former adviser to Senator John McCain who lost the 2008 election to Obama, questioned his approach to recovery. “Job creation in the United States is something that small businesses, entrepreneurs and the private sector will do but they cannot do it if they are burdened by a legacy of debt and the prospect of higher taxes to pay off that debt and that is the most troubling aspect of the policies this administration is pursuing,” he said.

In testimony to Congress this week, US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke agreed with economists who caution that despite hopeful predictions of moderately strong economic growth unemployment is likely to remain high well into 2010.

Friday, February 16, 2018

On Tuesday, the city council of Berkeley, California adopted by unanimous vote a resolution declaring their city a “sanctuary” for adult recreational cannabis use and sale. The resolution by the Berkeley council “declared [the City of Berkeley] to be a sanctuary for recreational cannabis customers, providers, and landlords.”

The resolution bars city employees including police from assisting federal law enforcement officials, namely the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, in enforcing federal laws relating to cannabis. The city’s measure includes protection for cannabis, but not other substances controlled and regulated by the federal government. California voters approved a referendum in 2016 that legalized cannabis production and sale in the state. That law took effect on January 1 this year.

The resolution was drafted by Mayor Jesse Arreguin and Councilmembers Ben Bartlett and Cheryl Davila.

While cannabis became legal for adults at least 21 years old under California state law, it remains a prohibited substance under the federal Controlled Substances Act. Under the U.S. Constitution, federal law is given supremacy to contradictory state and local law.

In 2008, the city previously declared itself a sanctuary city for medical cannabis, opposing federal officials seeking to shutter legal-in-California cannabis dispensaries.

In a tweet following the vote, the Berkeley mayor wrote, “In light of threats by Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions regarding a misguided crackdown on our democratic decision to legalize recreational cannabis, we have become what may be the first city in the country to declare ourselves a sanctuary city for cannabis.” The attorney general is the top federal law enforcement official in the U.S.

Last month, Sessions repealed a policy from the previous presidential administration providing legal shelter to states that legalized recreational cannabis. A January 4 memo from Sessions called for Justice Department prosecutors to enforce the federal ban on cannabis use and sale.

By another vote during the same meeting the city council reduced the sales tax on cannabis from 10 percent to 5 percent in a bid to draw more business.

Friday, March 16, 2007

The European Space Agency‘s Mars Express spacecraft has discovered ice deposits in the south pole of Mars that are larger than the state of Texas.

Scientists say that there is enough water in the deposits to cover the entire planet with up to 36 feet of water if the ice was to melt. Some sections of the ice deposits are up to 2.3 – 2.5 miles deep. The ice is composed of carbon dioxide, a little bit of dust, and water (90 percent of the water is estimated to be frozen).

What has caught the attention of the scientists working on the Mars Express project is that this may help reveal whether or not there is any (microbial) life within the ice.

Another perplexing question that scientists are trying to solve is what happened to all the water that produced all the channels on the surface of Mars.

Jeffrey Plaut, who is from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and who is also leading the study, noted that, “We have this continuing question facing us in studies of Mars, which is: where did all the water go? Even if you took the water in these two (polar) ice caps and added it all up, it’s still not nearly enough to do all of the work that we’ve seen that the water has done across the surface of Mars in its history.”

Currently, only 10 percent of the water is remaining and is located at the poles of Mars. It has been suggested that some of the remaining 90 percent of the water that disappeared could either be underground or could have simply left the atmosphere into space.

Saturday, July 25, 2020

The following is the second edition of a monthly series chronicling the 2020 United States presidential election. It features original material compiled throughout the previous month after an overview of the month’s biggest stories.

This month’s spotlight on the campaign trail includes interviews with the vice presidential nominees of the Prohibition Party, Reform Party, and the Life and Liberty Party.