Friday, February 25, 2005

Feel free to use the Wikimedia sites to solve our Wikinews crossword. Please do not fill it out online as it would spoil it for other people; print it out and fill it in at your own leisure!

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Thursday, December 27, 2007

With the Climate Conference in Bali having come to a successful conclusion, Wikinews journalist Sean Heron interviewed Christoph Bals from the German NGO Germanwatch on his opinion of the outcome, and an outlook on the future negotiations. Christoph is the Senior Political Executive of Germanwatch, Co-Author of the Climate protection-Index and did lobby work on Bali.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The Supreme Court in Lausanne, Switzerland has ruled that Texas hold ’em poker is a game of luck, rather than a game of skill. As a result, only casinos can host poker tournaments in Switzerland. Private games with friends, even where money is at stake, are still permitted under the ruling.

Poker tournaments had been growing in popularity in the country, with many events held in hotels and bars. Such venues do not have to pay the 50% tax on profits levied on licensed casinos, nor comply with regulations combating money laundering and gambling addiction. Poker is now categorised alongside roulette and slot machines, which as games of luck can only be played inside casinos. Mathematics, strategy, and bluffing were less important in determining the result than chance, said the judges, overturning a lower court ruling to the opposite effect, and disagreeing with the stance of the country’s Federal Gaming Commission.

Before the ruling, it had been estimated by the Swiss Federation of Casinos that there were about 100 unlicensed poker tournaments every weekend. A Swiss poker website, SwissPokerTour.ch, has described the result as “a black day for all amateur poker players in Switzerland.”

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Australian shadow minister for work, family, youth, and community, Tanya Plibersek, gave a speech today on poverty as part of Anti-Poverty Week 2005. During the speech she criticised the government in a number of areas, including not committing to the UN Millennium Development Goals, the proposed industrial relations legislation, and the governments funding of services for the homeless.

Anti-Poverty Week runs from Monday 17th to Friday 21st October, and is derived from the United Nations International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17th. Shaun Mortimer, the coordinator of Anti-Poverty Week at UNSW, said that the week was about “creating awareness and finding solutions to the plight of those living in poverty all around the world.”

Ms Plibersek said that Australia is not doing enough to help those in poverty overseas. She said that Australia currently gives 0.28% of its Gross National Income in foreign aid, however this is far short of the United Nations target of 0.7%.

“The Australian government is refusing to commit to the 0.7% target,” she said.

The UN development goal states that governments should reach the target by 2015. Labor has committed to meet the target, but the government has not.

“Labor is committed to the 0.7% target. In the interim, the government should be spending 0.5% of GNI,” Ms Plibersek said.

Shadow Minister Plibersek accused the government of weakening Australias commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. The goals were agreed to in 2000 by all 191 member states of the United Nations. There are 8 goals, which signatory states have committed to work towards. The eight goals are:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

Ms Plibersek said that Australia signed on to the goals, but is now not honouring that commitment, and is attempting to reduce the impact of the goals in an attempt to win the favour of the United States.

“We signed on to the millennium goals,” she said.

“In it’s rush to be popular with the US the government went along with watering down the millennium goals”

Shadow Minister Plibersek strongly criticised the governments proposed industrial relations legislation. She argued that the proposed changes will disproportionately affect already vulnerable people such as single mothers, and push working people into poverty.

“Industrial relations changes will see poverty worsen. It will increase the number of working poor,” she said.

Speaking about the governments hypthetical worker, “Billy”, used in promotional material, Ms Plibersek said individual workplace agreements will result in lowered working conditions for all workers. She also claimed that if a working person is paid a wage that does not provide them with enough resources to live, they will need to depend on government services such as income support, and therefore taxpayers will be subsidising the low wages.

“If Billy can not earn enough to live, then taxpayers are effectively subsidising business,” she said.

“If the system has no minimum standards it will drag everyone down. Unions have fought against this for over a century”

Ms Plibersek spoke about the problem of poverty in Australia. She said that 2.4 million people in Australia are living below the poverty line, and 1 million of them have jobs. She also argued that wealth inequality is getting worse.

“We have a nation now more divided than ever. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer,” she said.

Ms Plibersek felt that this situation was unnaceptable, and that the solution was only a matter of will.

“I don’t think we have to accept that people will always be poor. It is a situation we allow,” she said.

She also criticised the government for inadequately funding services for the homeless, and said that many homeless people who wanted help were unable to find any. Ms Plibersek argued that women escaping domestic violence were especially affected by this situation.

“We turn away 1 in 2 people who approach homeless services for help,” she said.

Ms Plibersek also condemned what the government describes as the “skills shortage”, saying that there are lots of Australians willing to gain skills, but are unable to get places in training institutions.

“We turn 20,000 people away from TAFE and University each year,” she said.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

A man missing from a camping ground in southern Utah in the Western US since July 30 was found in Australia. His automobile was found in a campground of Dixie National Forest with a note that he would be back in a few hours. An extensive search and rescue operation was conducted to try to locate this hiker by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Utah.

Investigators in the Sheriff’s Office were able to track him down to Cairns, Queensland. Apparently before he was “missing”, he bought a one-way ticket to Australia. Bryan Butas, the missing hiker, apparently had been under a great deal of stress and “got sick of it all”, according to a telephone interview by the Associated Press.

Butas has been charged with insurance fraud, a second-degree felony, by Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap. This was because Butas plotted to obtain a $250,000 life insurance policy before faking his own disappearance. He has also been given a bill for $20,000 by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office for their search and rescue operations on his behalf.

His wife and children have since his disappearance moved to the wife’s parent’s home in Ohio. Butas’s parents came to Southern Utah to help in the search and were “embarrassed and shocked” to learn their son had merely run away from marital and financial difficulties, Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith said.

Washington County Sheriff Sgt. Jake Adams said his investigation included tracing an application Butas made for a passport, his purchase of a one-way airline ticket to Australia, and the life insurance policy that names his wife and children as beneficiaries. On August 18, Adams said Butas’s mother called him to say her son had called home the evening of August 11, several days after the search was officially called off for the missing man. Butas asked his mother for money and an airline ticket home, which she sent.

Butas has since been checked into the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Brecksville, Ohio, according to Adams, but will shortly return to Utah.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

San Fernando, Chile — Ten students from the Liceo María Luisa Bombal of Rancagua, O’Higgins Region were detained by the local police yesterday. Following their release, the students told the media they were required to remove their clothes at the police station.

The students, seven men and three women, took control of the building of the school early yesterday morning in response to the long delay in re-construction of the liceo, following the earthquake of 2010. At around 08:00 local time (1200 UTC), Leonardo Fuentes, general secretary of the Municipal Educational Corporation of Rancagua, authorized the police to clear out the students.

Student leader Jennifer Olivares told Diario VI Región the police “stripped off [their] clothes” ^{((es))Spanish language: ?Al llegar a la comisaría nos desnudaron.} upon their arrival at the police station, Comisaría de Rancagua, something which Lieutenant Colonel of Carabineros Iván Guajardo did not deny. However, police stated the students will be charged by the public prosecutor with robbing food from the school. “It’s a bit illogical that they stripped off our clothes, with the knowledge that there were minors and without [us] being delinquents, but students who took the school peacefully” ^{((es))Spanish language: ?Es un poco ilógico que nos desnuden habiendo menores de edad y no siendo delincuentes, sino estudiantes que estábamos en una toma que había sido pacífica}, said Olivares. Ignacio Muñoz, former leader of the occupation of the Liceo María Luisa Bombal, told El Rancahuaso “the Mayor [Eduardo Soto] promised to begin the reconstruction works last summer, and it’s August already and they don’t even begin to take the debris outside” ^{((es))Spanish language: ?El alcalde se comprometió a comenzar los trabajos de reconstrucción durante el verano de este año, y ya estamos en agosto y aún no comienzan ni moviendo los escombros del interior}. Education Regional Secretary (Seremi de Educación) Pedro Larraín said the government “does not share” ^{((es))Spanish language: ?No compartimos las tomas} such actions, “because they harm education” ^{((es))Spanish language: ?porque perjudican a la educación}.

The Region of Libertador General Bernardo O’Higgins was one of the first in 2012 to resuscitate the previous year’s student protests, more specifically at the Liceo Industrial de San Fernando, which was taken control by the students in late July, and which as of yesterday was still taken. The students of the Liceo Industrial were particularly affected, after the president of the school’s centro de alumnos Guillermo Horta Farías was stabbed outside the educational establishment on July 31; his fellow schoolmates subsequently organized a march in his honour in Rancagua, on August 8. As of August 11, eight high schools have been taken control of by students, in response to the government’s failure to satisfy the secondary and university students’ requests.

A compilation of brief news reports for Thursday, June 14, 2007.

A bomb blast during a soccer match at stadium in Pattani injured 14 police officers who were providing security for the game between two local teams.

Police said the bomb was placed inside a flower planter and detonated via cellphone, and that five officers were seriously injured.

Related

• “13 schools torched in southern Thailand” — Wikinews, June 14, 2007

Sources

• Agencies. “Soccer match bomb wounds 14” — Bangkok Post, June 14, 2007
• “Bomb at soccer injures five” — The Nation (Thailand), June 14, 2007

A 29-year-old man in Riau was confirmed today to have died of the H5N1 strain of avian flu, making him the 80th person in Indonesia to die from the virus.

“Before showing bird flu symptoms, he slaughtered and cooked sick chickens,” Muhammad Nadirin of the Health Ministry’s Bird Flu Center was quoted as saying by Kyodo News.

Indonesia has the highest number of human deaths from H5N1, and the highest number of cases at 100.

Sources

• Agence France-Presse. “Indonesia confirms 80th bird flu death” — Channel NewsAsia, June 14, 2007
• Kyodo News. “Indonesia bird flu cases top 100, death toll rises to 80” — Yahoo! News, June 14, 2007

An outbreak of H5N1, the avian flu virus, was reported today by a livestock official in Myanmar. He said about 1,000 chickens were slaughtered after the virus was found on June 3 in 28 chickens on a farm in Bago, about 50 miles (80 kilometres) north of Yangon.

It is the first outbreak of the bird flu in Myanmar, also known as Burma, since April.

Sources

• Agence France-Presse. “Myanmar reports fresh outbreak of bird flu” — Channel NewsAsia, June 14, 2007
• Associated Press. “Burma reports new bird flu outbreak” — The Irrawaddy, June 13, 2007

Hamas has said that their forces have taken control of the main compound of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas located in Gaza City.

Abbas was not in the compound at the time.

Reports also say that Fatah members fled the compound just before it was attacked.

Sources

• “Report: Hamas forces take over Abbas’s compound” — Jerusalem Post, June 14, 2007
• “Hamas takes over presidential compound in Gaza City” — International Herald Tribune, June 14, 2007