Author: Admin

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.

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Saturday, July 7, 2007

At least 38 new cases of the H5N1 strain of bird flu have been found in wild birds in eastern Germany today. These discoveries, in conjunction with the fifth outbreak in France in 17 months, have prompted both countries to raise the bird flu risk assessment level.

German scientists discovered the outbreak after receiving 38 confirmed cases, all of which came from the eastern states of Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.

In France, three swans have been found dead in an Assenoncourt pond sparking a massive response from French authorities. Most bird related activities have been banned and a control zone half a mile (c. 800 metres) in radius has been placed around the pond. Careful monitoring will take place for any further deaths or signs of illness in this area.

Many commercial poultry owners have been told to keep their birds inside as a precaution to prevent the disease from spreading further through Europe.

French health minister Roselyn Bachelot has stated that the current state of alert is appropriate, given the potential risk to human life posed by influenza.

Authorities fear the virus may spread across Europe and cause a pandemic, as was seen in Asia and Europe last year.

Following the outbreak of 2006, 13 EU members (namely Austria, Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden) had all confirmed cases of bird flu.

In April last year, France found that more than 60 wild birds at a farm with 11,000 turkeys were infected with H5N1. Globally, where it has spread to humans, the virus has killed almost two thirds of the 300 reported cases, according to the WHO.

The time is 20:00 (UTC) on August 10th, 2006, and this is Audio Wikinews News Briefs.

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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Massive blackouts occurred throughout the US state of Florida shortly after 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time (18:00 UTC) on Tuesday afternoon. Out of the 4.4 million customers served by Florida Power & Light, Co. (FPL), about 680,000 residents were affected, with an additional two million-plus customers affected in other parts of the state. It is estimated that as many as four million customers throughout Florida were affected, with many different power companies losing control of their specific grids.

Power outages were reported as far south as the Florida Keys, on the original FPL grid, and as far north as Orlando and Daytona Beach, nearly 300 miles (483 km) away on the Progress Energy grid. Most of Miami-Dade and parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties suffered the worst outages.

FPL President Armando Olivera said that a disconnect switch failed at 1:08 p.m. at the automated substation west of Miami, and a piece of equipment that controls voltage caught fire about the same time. Neither failure by itself would have caused a widespread outage. The event at the utility’s Flagami substation consequently led to the rolling blackouts.

Originally the first failure was thought to have occurred at the utility’s nuclear plant at Turkey Point. It is still unclear how failure at this site spread, but with power turning off at the main Turkey Point location, which serves all of south Florida, FPL’s grid shut down as well. It contributed to a domino effect which ended up sapping energy from bordering grids all over Florida.

Police reported several people were stuck in the elevators of high-rise buildings in downtown Miami and several hospitals were running on backup power, although no injuries or fatalities have been reported. The blackouts caused major traffic jams and a few accidents, but the original outage was contained shortly after it occurred. All customers affected had power restored to them by 6:30 p.m. (23:30 UTC).

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Coinciding with Easter Sunday, Glasgow Cannabis Social Club’s annual 420 event was held on Glasgow Green, under sunny blue skies, and overlooking the river Clyde. Despite the city’s council attempting to revoke permission for the gathering at the last minute, police were happy for it to go-ahead with approximately a dozen officers attending in high-visibility vests.

The Daily Record reported five arrests were made for minor offences, likely smoking and possession of small quantities of cannabis. Taking a less-sensational — and more accurate — line of reporting, the Monday edition of Glasgow’s Evening News stated five were referred to the Procurator Fiscal who is responsible for deciding if charges should be brought.

Official figures provided by the police were that 150 attended. With people coming and going, Wikinews reporters estimated upwards of 200 attended, compared to nearly 700 who had signed up for the event on Facebook. Hemp goods were advertised and on sale at the event, and some attendees were seen drinking cannabis-themed energy drinks.

“I was searched and charged under the Misuse of Drugs Act (which is a lot of bollocks)” one attendee noted online, adding “not fair to happen on a brilliant day like it was, other than that I had a great day!” A second said they were openly smoking and ignored by police, who “were only really focusing on people who looked particularly young”.

Cannabis seeds were openly and legally sold at the event and a hydroponics supplier brought a motortrike towing an advertising trailer. Actually growing cannabis is, however, illegal in the UK.

With the event openly advocating the legalisation of cannabis, speakers put their arguments for this to a receptive crowd. Retired police officer James Duffy, of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, spoke of the failed United States alcohol prohibition policy; stressing such policies needlessly bring people into contact with criminal elements. Highlighting other countries where legalisation has been implemented, he pointed out such led to lower crime, and lower drug use overall.

One speaker, who produced a bottle of cannabis oil he had received through the post, asserted this cured his prostate cancer. Others highlighted the current use of Sativex by the National Health Service, with a cost in-excess of £150 for a single bottle of GW Pharmaceuticals patented spray — as-compared to the oil shown to the crowd, with a manufacturing cost of approximately £10.

Similar ‘420’ pro-cannabis events were held globally.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Sam Brownback is perplexed. The U.S. Senator from Kansas and Presidential candidate is a Republican whose politics—he is against marriage for gay people, he is against abortion, and he has a clean image in a party tainted by scandal—should speak favorably to the party’s base. But it has not. “I’m baffled by that myself,” Senator Brownback told Wikinews reporter David Shankbone. “We haven’t been able to raise money.”

A recent poll in Iowa has put him in eighth place, with 2% supporting his campaign. “If we don’t finish fourth or better in Iowa…we’ll pull out.”

Senator Brownback’s relationship with God infuses almost every answer you find below. Although he doesn’t feel “competent” to explain why God would dislike gays, he does feel strongly that allowing two men or two women to enter into the union of marriage will destroy it for heterosexuals. Pointing to the research of Stanley Kurtz at the Hoover Institution, Brownback asserts that Northern Europeans have “taken the sacredness out of the institution.”

In the interview, Senator Brownback discusses the tug-and-pull that befalls him when his constituents show up at his office and say, “Look, I’m a conservative, but we need this bridge, we need this subsidy, we need this hospital.” Brownback feels this spending system needs to be changed; however, when it comes to energy policy, Brownback is there for his constituents. David Shankbone asked the Kansas Senator, a supporter of cellulosic ethanol, why he doesn’t support the lowering of tariffs on sugar since sugar ethanol delivers 8 times the energy output of cellulosic ethanol. Brazil, in particular, has become energy independent because of its sugar ethanol program. It’s cheaper to produce, and there is vastly more bang for the buck in sugar fuel than in corn fuel; an entire country no longer needs to import oil because of it. Federal tariffs currently make sugar ethanol too expensive in the United States. “You’re going to kill the ethanol industry here just as it gets going,” was Senator Brownback’s response. However, there is a debate over whether the process to make corn ethanol uses more energy than the ethanol itself produces.

Below is David Shankbone’s interview with Senator Sam Brownback.