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Saturday, May 2, 2009

After 100 days in office, United States president Barack Obama gave a speech on Wednesday, speaking about the swine influenza outbreak and the struggling economy, both described by the Los Angles Times as “two wars.” He used a prime time television slot to showcase his message throughout the United States.

During his speech, he said, “If you could tell me right now when I walked into this office… that all you had to worry about was Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, getting healthcare passed, figuring out how to deal with energy independence, deal with Iran and a pandemic flu, I would take that deal. I would love a nice, lean portfolio to deal with, but that’s not the hand that’s been dealt us.”

Obama also said the economy was not the only problem. There are threats to the country including “…terrorism to nuclear proliferation to pandemic flu.”

Regarding the swine influenza outbreak, he said that the U.S./Mexico border will not be closed because closing the border does not fix any problems, claiming that this method did not work in the past. Instead, he said that the best method for preventing the spread of the flu is hand washing, covering one’s mouth while coughing, and staying home when one feels sick. The Los Angeles Times described Obama “more like school nurse in chief than commander in chief.”

On the topic of waterboarding, Obama said, “I do believe that it is torture.”

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Obama%27s_100-day_speech_warns_of_U.S.%27s_problems&oldid=4629311”

Friday, September 15, 2006

BT Global Services this week laid out its vision for the next three years: its revenues to double in the USA, Japan, India and China, and £400m of annual savings, achieved through offshoring and slashing its procurement costs. £200m of this will come from a reduction in what it spends on technology from vendors on large systems integration projects.

CEO Andy Green admitted that BT had been slower than rivals such as IBM and Accenture to ramp up its offshore headcount. But he claimed that BT Global Services is thriving as the fastest-growing division within BT. He said that the division was outperforming its closest rivals, T-Systems, Orange Enterprise and AT&T Enterprise, which had all posted revenue declines for the most recent quarter. He said BT was fast becoming a familiar brand to businessmen in New York, Tokyo, Mumbai and Shanghai.

He disclosed a few revenue figures not revealed before. For the financial year ending March 2006, UK revenues rose just 2% to £5.5bn, while overseas revenues shot up 48% to £3.3bn. And of the £8.8bn total revenue, £1.6bn was captive work for its parent, while of the remaining £7.2bn, 18% came from the UK government sector and 17% from financial services. BT said it still harbours ambitions to conquer America, despite the failure of the ‘Concert‘ partnership with V in the 1990s.

In a separate story, BT announced it has chosen Chinese vendor ZTE to develop a dual-mode handset — 3G and DAB-IP — for launch by its BT Movio subsidiary next year. DAB-IP (in other words, IP over the DAB digital radio network) will enable BT Movio to broadcast four TV channels at acceptable quality to the handset.3G will enable video-on-demand, so that the users can specify what video clips or programmes they wish to watch. UK legislation specifies that no more than 30% of the DAB spectrum can be used for non-radio purposes, so BT is lobbying for more DAB spectrum to be released, to enable higher quality video and/or more TV channels.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=BT_Global_Services_to_double_US_revenues_and_cut_costs&oldid=566979”

Monday, August 3, 2009

Employees of two Thomas Cook travel agency offices in Dublin, Ireland have occupied their offices in response to management’s announcement of earlier closure dates for the sites. On Friday, July 31, 40 employees at the Thomas Cook store in Grafton Street began an occupation protest after the sudden announcement of the store’s immediate closure; workers at the store had previously been told, when the closures were announced on May 12, that the businesses would remain open until September 6. The day after, employees at the Thomas Cook-owned Direct Holidays store in nearby Talbot Street began their own occupation. A third Thomas Cook store in the capital, in North Earl Street, closed without incident; according to one employee who spoke to Wikinews, this is because the North Earl Street store was closed up and stripped out while employees were at home, leaving the workers to find an empty space instead of an office when they arrived for work the next morning.

Employees are demanding an improved redundancy package from Thomas Cook and allege a string of abuses by management. Thomas Cook management has offered the employees five weeks’ redundancy pay for every year worked at the company, in excess of the minimum two weeks’ pay per year worked required by Irish employment law, and says that the Grafton Street location had been losing money for five years. Employees, demanding eight weeks’ pay, counter that the company realised a profit of £400 million in the past fiscal year, of which €4 million originated from Ireland; and that Thomas Cook’s UK & Ireland chief, Manny Fontenla-Novoa, was given a bonus of €7 million earlier this year. 60 jobs would be lost in the closure of the two stores, which constitute all of Thomas Cook’s retail operation in the Republic of Ireland; a further 17 jobs were lost in the closure of the North Earl Street store.

	There are no jobs out there…We need 8 weeks to live on for the next two years

Before the occupations began, workers at Thomas Cook’s locations, who are members of trade union the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) had voted unanimously to strike, alleging that the closures were being done without sufficient consultation of staff by Thomas Cook management. Caroline Cullen, accounts assistant and TSSA staff representative at the Grafton Street location, characterises the behaviour of Thomas Cook management as “intimidation”. When the consultation period had finished, she said, Thomas Cook management sent Simon Robinson, an executive director of the company, and a male colleague of his to close the office. The presence of the Thomas Cook executives, two high-ranking, business-suited men, in an office where forty-two of forty-four employees are women is itself intimidating, Cullen asserts; she says that Robinson furthermore attempted to “bully” the employees into accepting the five-week redundancy offer by saying that if they did not accept, they would receive only the statutory minimum. “You cannot live on 5 weeks”, says Cullen. “Travel agents are closing every week. There’s a hiring freeze at the banks. There are no jobs out there…We need 8 weeks to live on for the next two years while we look for jobs.” The extra three weeks’ redundancy pay would, she estimates, cost Thomas Cook €400,000.

A series of TSSA demonstrations against Thomas Cook took place throughout July. Trade union Unite in Ireland has offered its support for the occupiers and says it will take place in demonstrations scheduled for Monday morning.

Thomas Cook has accused the TSSA of making use of “dirty tactics”, according to a statement from Thomas Cook UK & Ireland CEO Pete Constanti. A court order has been delivered to the Grafton Street office requiring the occupiers to turn the keys over to Thomas Cook management. The TSSA, meanwhile, says that Thomas Cook is “riding roughshod over the right to take industrial action by marching staff into a room and telling them they are going to close immediately”.

Cullen says that the occupation began spontaneously. “We didn’t think it would go so far”, she told Wikinews, but when the closure of the office was announced, the staff “opened the windows and started screaming, ‘we’re not moving, we’re not moving’. We haven’t moved since.”

Monday, August 3 is a bank holiday in Ireland. Both sides in the dispute have delivered ultimata: Thomas Cook management demands that all staff return to work on Tuesday morning as usual or else the offer of five weeks’ pay will be reduced to the statutory two weeks’ pay, while the TSSA says that if Thomas Cook management do not produce a better redundancy offer by Tuesday then the business will face a boycott by the TSSA’s 800,000 members.

Ireland’s Socialist Party and Dublin MEP Joe Higgins have declared their support for the Thomas Cook occupiers, with a press release on Higgins’ official webpage saying

The High Court order for workers to end their occupation and the threat of Garda action is a disgrace….The trade union movement must mobilise to prevent the Gardaí [the Irish police] being used against these workers. Supporters and trade union activists should come to the offices to support the workers’ action and defend the occupation against any attempt to force them out.

Socialist Party members have been leafletting Dublin over the weekend promoting demonstrations in support of the Thomas Cook employees. The smaller Socialist Workers Party has also declared its support and conducted demonstrations for the occupiers.

Cullen said that the support of the Dublin community has been “absolutely fantastic”. People are bringing the occupiers fresh-baked scones and cakes and donating money, while morale inside the occupied store is “brilliant”. In contrast to the occupation at Vestas in England, where employees have been inside the factory continuously for two weeks, Thomas Cook employees have a chance to go home for a few hours or sleep in one of five rooms at a nearby hotel, although many do sleep in the office overnight. Nearby businesses are providing the occupiers with food at discount prices and, again in contrast to Vestas, the police and security are not interfering with the arrival of food and drink. Thomas Cook management have cut off telephone and internet access to at least some of the affected offices, but employees stay in touch with the outside world via their personal mobile telephones.

Cullen said that a chance for a peaceful resolution to the situation, without the involvement of the Gardai, was up to Thomas Cook management. “Thomas Cook have the chance to come to the table and talk to us. It’s in their hands, they still have the chance to come back.”

	We were not in any position to consult with senior managers who had their own hidden agenda

Pauline McManigan, a TSSA member and employee at Thomas Cook subsidiary Direct Holidays’ shop in Talbot Street, echoed Cullen’s sentiments. “John Kinnane [Thomas Cook’s managing director for Direct Holidays] has made things extremely difficult for all staff. He has intimidated staff, bullied staff and used abusive language toward female staff”, telling one employee today to “fuck off” in response to a query. Kinnane refused to recognise the TSSA as representing the Direct Holidays staff; without union representation, Direct Holidays staff “were not in any position to consult with senior managers who had their own hidden agenda and proved this when they closed the consultation down when staff said there were other matters that needed to be discussed.” Kinnane, she said, made threats similar to Robinson’s in order to get employees to vote for the five-week redundancy package.

McManigan says that Kinnane has demanded Direct Holidays’ staff return to work on Tuesday as normal. “That’s not gonna happen”, she replies, noting that the Direct Holidays staff did not trust Thomas Cook management not to close and strip out the store while the employees were not present. McManigan gave the following statement:

The staff at Direct Holidays based at 17 Talbot Street, Dublin 1 never had any intention to strike, officially or unofficially, on these premises, although we did pledge our support to our colleagues based at the Grafton Street store & our union, the TSSA, who have supported us wholeheartedly all the way through this. Thomas Cook sent their security firm to this building yesterday to intimidate its staff and try to bully them into handing over the keys to this premises. Staff refused to hand over the keys as there was a fear that the Direct Holiday shop based at 17 Talbot Street would be stripped over the bank holiday weekend and when we returned on Tuesday there would be no office here, as was done at North Earl Street Thomas Cook. Thomas Cook/Capital Holdings has provoked all staff based at Direct Holiday into the action. John Kinnane, the managing director of Capital Holdings has never supported staff at Direct Holidays and initiated senior members of human resources from the UK to come to us and bully us. Staff at direct holidays will stand firm united and strong through all of this. We will not stand down.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Dublin_travel_agents_occupy_offices_against_closure&oldid=1431546”

Saturday, April 17, 2010

In a new setback to the Thai government’s efforts to ease mounting political tensions, protest leaders escaped from their hotel Friday after security forces arrived to arrest them.

One, Arisman Pongruangrong, climbed down three floors using a rope, and was rushed away by supporters thronging the building. The police say Arisman led recent rallies at the national parliament, the election commission, and satellite transmission bases.

Officials earlier Friday said the government is preparing to arrest people linked to violent clashes with security forces last Saturday.

Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban, Thai security chief, announced the raid on the hotel as it was unfolding, saying that a Special Forces unit had closed in around a downtown Bangkok hotel.

“As I am speaking, the government’s special team is surrounding the SC Park Hotel, where we have learned that there are terrorists and some of their leaders hiding,” Suthep said.

A spokesman for the governing Democrat Party, Baranuj Smuthararaks, says arrest warrants have been issued for those suspected of being involved in the violence. Some of the suspects have been identified from photos taken during the clashes.

“Right now the government’s focusing on issuing warrants for acts of terrorism by the people who fortunately have been captured in action [in photos] by both the local and international media,” he said.

According to the New York Times, as many as five protest leaders had been staying at the same hotel as Pongruangrong. Those leaders later appeared together at a protest rally in Bangkok.

“I would like to thank all of the people who saved me,” Arisman said. “You have saved democracy.”The government says armed men infiltrated protester ranks Saturday and fired on troops trying to disperse a rally. Five soldiers and 19 protesters died during the clashes.

Thailand is facing its most severe political crisis in almost 20 years. The anti-government movement, led by the United Democratic Front against Dictatorship or UDD, demands that the government step down and call fresh elections.

UDD supporters, known as red shirts, have held protests in Bangkok for more than a month.

The UDD largely supports former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a coup in 2006 and remains overseas to avoid a jail sentence for corruption. Mr. Thaksin has strong support among the rural and urban poor, as well among some sections of the army and police.

Some parties in the governing coalition want to set a clear time frame for elections to ease tensions. But the government says it will only call elections once the political situation has cooled.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Thai_anti-government_leaders_escape_capture&oldid=4203573”

Monday, June 7, 2010

Following a similar experiment in 2009, six men entered an enclosed room in Moscow last Thursday to simulate a flight to Mars. The Mars-500 team consist of a Chinese man, a Frenchman, an Italian, and three Russians. Only the Chinese man, Wang Yue, is a trained astronaut. The six waved goodbye, crying “see you in 520 days’ time!”.

According to Wang, not being able to see their families and friends was one of the greatest challenges, although e-mail is allowed during the experiment. Both Wang and the Frenchman, Romain Charles, expressed pride to be part of this experiment. Wang said, “it will be trying for all of us. We cannot see our family, we cannot see our friends, but I think it is all a glorious time in our lives.”

The joint-effort project is being organised by the Russian Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) and the European Space Agency; the goal is to study physical and psychological effects on would-be astronauts. All six men speak reasonable English; however, as Russian is another primary language for the simulated trip, Russian crew member Sukhrob Kamolov said body language will be used should they fail to understand one another.

Food for the volunteers will be rationed as it would in a real Mars mission. All supplies were supplied by China and loaded into the ‘simulated spacecraft’ prior to the beginning of the experiment. For backup, China is sending three mission support staff to Russia.

No women are included in the crew, excluding issues relating to a mixed-sex crew from the study. During a similar experiment in 1999, a woman complained that the captain attempted to kiss her.

Following 250 days of “travelling” to Mars, the group will split. Three will stay in the “spacecraft”, the other three going to the surface of “Mars”. Only two will actually leave the “spacecraft” to study the surface of “Mars”. After a month, the group will go through the return journey simulation, a 240 day trip. The men will follow a strict timetable, with 8 hours each of sleep, work, and leisure each day.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Men_isolated_to_mimic_Mars_flight&oldid=4582483”

Friday, October 2, 2009

Companies in the United States are shedding more jobs, pushing the country’s unemployment rate to a 26-year high of 9.8%.

The US Labor Department said on Friday that employers cut 263,000 jobs in September, with companies in the service industries — including banks, restaurants and retailers — hit especially hard. This is the 21st consecutive month of job losses in the country.

The United States has now lost 7.2 million jobs since the recession officially began in December 2007. The new data has sparked fears that unemployment could threaten an economic recovery. Top US officials have warned that any recovery would be slow and uneven, and some have predicted the unemployment rate will top 10% before the situation improves.

“Continued household deleveraging and rising unemployment may weigh more on consumption than forecast, and accelerating corporate and commercial property defaults could slow the improvement in financial conditions,” read a report by the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook, predicting that unemployment will average 10.1% by next year and not go back down to five percent until 2014.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, said that “it’s a very fragile and tentative recovery. Policy makers need to do more.”

“The number came in weaker than expected. We saw a lot of artificial involvement by the government to prop up the markets, and now that that is starting to end, the private sector isn’t yet showing signs of life,” said Kevin Caron, a market strategist for Stifel, Nicolaus & Co.

Also on Thursday, the US Commerce Department said factory orders fell for the first time in five months, dropping eight-tenths of a percent in August. Orders for durable goods — items intended to last several years (including everything from appliances to airliners) — fell 2.6%, the largest drop since January of this year.

The US government has been spending billions of dollars — part of a $787 billion stimulus package — to help spark economic growth. There have been some signs the economy is improving.

The Commerce Department said on Thursday that spending on home construction jumped in August for its biggest increase in 16 years. A real estate trade group, the National Association of Realtors, said pending sales of previously owned homes rose more than 12 percent in August, compared to August 2008.

A separate Commerce Department report said that consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of US economic activity, rose at its fastest pace in nearly eight years, jumping 1.3 percent in August.

Other reports have provided cause for concern. A banking industry trade group said Thursday the number of US consumers making late payments, or failing to make payments, on loans and credit cards is on the rise. A survey by a business group, the Institute for Supply Management, Thursday showed US manufacturing grew in September, but at a slower pace than in August when manufacturing increased for the first time in a year and a half.

Stock markets reacted negatively to the reports. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 41 points in early trading, reaching a level of 9467. This follows a drop of 203 points on Thursday, its largest loss in a single day since July. The London FTSE index fell 55 points, or 1.1%, to reach 4993 points by 15.00 local time.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=US_unemployment_rate_reaches_9.8%25&oldid=973722”

Friday, October 5, 2007

You may not know Joseph Merlino, but he knows about you and what makes you function. He knows what turns you on and he knows whether it is a problem for you. Merlino, who is the psychiatry adviser to the New York Daily News, is one of the more accomplished psychiatrists in his field and he is the Senior Editor of the forthcoming book, Freud at 150: 21st Century Essays on a Man of Genius. The battle over interpreting Freud’s legacy still rages, a testament to the father of psychoanalysis and his continuing impact today.

On the eve of the book’s publication, Wikinews reporter David Shankbone went to the Upper East Side of Manhattan to discuss the past and future of Freud and psychoanalysis with Dr. Merlino, one of the preeminent modern psychoanalysts. Shankbone took the opportunity to ask about what insanity is, discuss aberrant urges, reflect upon sadomasochism (“I’m not considered an expert in that field,” laughed Dr. Merlino), and the hegemony of heterosexuality.

Dr. Merlino posits that absent structural, biochemical or physiological defects, insanity and pathology are relative and in flux with the changing culture of which you are a part. So it is possible to be sane and insane all in one day if, for instance, you are gay and fly from the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Dr._Joseph_Merlino_on_sexuality,_insanity,_Freud,_fetishes_and_apathy&oldid=2004061”

Monday, February 18, 2013

Venezuela’s government has opened a granite processing plant in the state of Bolívar, with the intention of providing about 25% of the granite required nationwide.

Ricardo Menéndez, vice president of the Productive Economic Area, said Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has yearned for the creation of this project to empower Venezuelan construction. Granito Bolívar is reportedly the most modern Venezuelan granite plant, not consuming community water or electricity, and is also the largest, with a daily capacity to supply enough material for use in construction of about 820 houses.

Menéndez said, “These granite blocks are the natural resources of our country, are the wealth we have as a country and often [some] simply decided to remove this richness from our country and take them to other countries” ^{((es))Spanish language: ?Esos bloques de granito son la riquezas naturales de nuestro país, son las riquezas que tenemos como patria y que muchas veces sencillamente esas riquezas decidieron sacarlas de nuestro territorio nacional y llevarlas a otros países}.

According to Menéndez, with the help of a state plan, Venezuela intends to exploit its 40,000 million cubic meters or more of granite reserves, generating a set of factories. “[T]he central theme is that these plants, all these factories, are for the construction of socialism; that means using our potential, develop the value chain within the country and of course that yields benefits from the point of view of the production system’s organization…. [Granito] Bolívar is not only the vision that historically we had of exposing richness, but the industries, basic industries we have, that level of our workers in the basic industries and in addition the development of the potential we have in the state” ^{((es))Spanish language: ?el tema central es que estas plantas todas estas fábricas son para la construcción del socialismo, eso significa utilizar nuestras potencialidades, dessarrollar la cadena de valor dentro del país y por supuesto que eso genere beneficios desde el punto de vista de la organización del sistema productivo … Bolívar no solamente es la visión que históricamente se tuvo de exponer las riquezas, sino que son las empresas, las empresas básicas que tenemos, ese nivel de nuestros trabajadores de la empresas básicas y adicionalmente el desarrollo del potencial que tenemos en el estado}.

For the construction of the plant, supplied by 23 quarries, the government of Bolívar provided about 30 million bolívares (US$4.7 million) and the national government €2.3 million (US$3 million). Bolívar reportedly has reserves of about 40,000 million tons of red, black, pink and white granite, sufficient for domestic demand for 200 years.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Venezuela_opens_granite_processing_facility_in_Bolívar&oldid=4351223”

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Obama’s 100-day speech warns of U.S.’s problems

BT Global Services to double US revenues and cut costs

Dublin travel agents occupy offices against closure

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Thai anti-government leaders escape capture

Men isolated to mimic Mars flight

US unemployment rate reaches 9.8%

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Dr. Joseph Merlino on sexuality, insanity, Freud, fetishes and apathy

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Venezuela opens granite processing facility in Bolívar