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Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne delivered the budget today, an annually-held audit of the country’s finances deciding how taxpayers’ money should be spent. He set out plans to boost the housing market in his fourth budget, as well as stating the economy will grow by 0.6% — half his prediction four months ago.

George Osborne revealed plans to improve the housing market, including a “Help to Buy” shared equity scheme which would offer buyers who can place a 5% deposit on a new house, a 20% loan to buy it. He said: “This is a budget for those who aspire to own their own home”. He also offered a new Mortgage Guarantee, created in conjunction with mortgage lenders — the scheme would allow them to offer loans to homeowners without the need for a large deposit and offer guarantees to support up to £130bn of lending for three years beginning in 2014.

As a measure to attract investment to the British economy, he announced to reduce corporation tax from 21% to 20% taking effect from April 2015. The rate of corporation tax has fallen from 28% in 2010 to the current level of 21%. The United Kingdom is to have lower rates of corporation tax than the USA at 40%, France at 33%, and Germany at 29%.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) stated the government debt reduction programme to reduce the budget deficit will miss its targets. The government has forecast the total public sector debt will begin to fall by the financial year 2015/2016, while OBR says national debt will reach a high of 85.6% of GDP, £1.58 trillion, in 2016/17. Osborne defended the government efforts to reduce the deficit and said: “Our judgement has since been supported by the IMF, the OECD and the Governor of the Bank of England.”

In response to the Budget speech, the Leader of the Opposition Ed Miliband said: “At the worst possible time for the country. It’s a downgraded budget from a downgraded Chancellor […] Debt is higher in every year of this Parliament than he forecast at the last Budget. He is going to borrow £200 billion more than he planned.”

The Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Ed Balls said to The Independent, “They are borrowing £245bn more in this Parliament, we said all along …said this two years ago, if they had moved more quickly with a sensible, targeted package of measures to kick-start the economy, which would have meant at that time more borrowing for a VAT [Value Added Tax] cut to bring forward housing investment, then we would have got the economy growing and the deficit coming down.”

The Business Secretary Vince Cable told the BBC in an interview, the “age of austerity” would probably end within the current decade, but made no more definite forecast.

The head of the British Federation of Small Businesses, John Walker, said: “The Budget opens the door for small businesses to grow and create jobs. The Chancellor has pulled out all the stops with a wide ranging package of measures to support small business. […] [W]e are pleased to see the scrapping of the 3p fuel duty due in September”.

Len McCluskey, the General Secretary of Unite the Union, criticized the budget for not helping working families. He said: “This is a Budget for the few by the few that attacks the many. Millionaires are days away from getting a £40,000 tax cut from the Tories, but George Osborne is using the budget to attack hard-working public sector workers. The worst chancellor in British history has gone further by giving big business another tax cut while staff caring for the sick get pay cuts. […] [H]e should have raised the national minimum wage by £1 and drop the senseless plan to give millionaires a tax break in a few days’ time”.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

San Jose, California — A woman eating a bowl of chili at a Wendy’s restaurant bit into a chewy bit that turned out to be a human finger. She immediately spat it out, warned other patrons to stop eating, and upon recognizing the object as a finger, vomited.

“I’m more of a Carl’s Jr. person,” the 39-year-old Las Vegas woman, Anna Ayala, told Knight Ridder. She said this incident was her first visit to a Wendy’s restaurant. Ayala described how she found the finger, “Suddenly something crunchy was in my mouth,” she continued, “and I spit it out.”

According to Devina Cordero, 20, after Ayala found the finger, she ran up to her and Cordero’s boyfriend and said, “Don’t eat it! Look, there’s a human finger in our chili.”

“We went up to the counter and they told us it was a vegetable,” Cordero continued. “The people from Wendy’s were poking it with a spoon.”

The restaurant is located at 1405 Monterey Highway, just south of downtown San Jose.

Wikinews reporter David Vasquez drove his car up to the drive-thru menu and found that chili was still on the menu, at a price of US$1.19 for a small serving. He also witnessed workers unloading supplies from a semi-trailer truck in the restaurant’s parking lot, and carting them into the back door of the establishment.

According to Ben Gale, director of environmental health for Santa Clara County, the finger did not come from any of the employees at the restaurant. “We asked everybody to show us they have 10 fingers and everything is OK there,” he said. The found portion of the finger likely belonged to a woman because of its long and manicured fingernail, also found in the food.

Officials seized the food supply at the restaurant and are tracing it back to the manufacturer, where they believe the finger may have gotten mixed in with the raw ingredients used to prepare the chili. The restaurant’s operators were later permitted to re-open after preparing new chili prepared from fresh ingredients.

As this story was filed, there was no mention of the incident on the Wendy’s corporate web site. Wendy’s issued a statement through a spokesman.

“Food safety is of utmost importance to us,” said Wendy’s spokesman Joe Desmond. He referred to the incident as an “unsubstantiated claim.”

“We are cooperating fully with the local police and health departments with their investigation. It’s important not to jump to conclusions. Here at Wendy’s we plan to do right by our customers,” Desmond said.

According to county health officials, the unfortunate woman who bit into the finger is doing fine, despite her initial reaction. Officials also noted that the finger would have been cooked at a high enough temperature to destroy any viruses.

The Santa Clara county medical examiner reported that the finger had a solid fingerprint, although investigators did not say if a search of fingerprint databases would be performed to find the owner of the finger.

Monday, September 4, 2006

The collision of a freight train with a passenger train just north of Cairo in the town of Shebin al-Qanater. The accident claimed 5 lives and injured another 30. It is reported that one of the dead was the engineer of the freight train.

In August the director of rail service in Egypt was fired after a similar accident killed 58 people in the town of Qalyoub. A public inquiry into that accident is underway amid growing criticism of the government for lax rail safety and transport regulation.

Mohammed Mansour, Egypt’s new director of transport has agreed that the transportation system is in need of extensive overhauls. The government has approved $860 million to develop the rail infrastructure, plus another $600 million in loans to private rail operators.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Two of Renault Formula One’s sponsors have terminated their contracts after Renault’s race-fixing last year. The move comes as Renault racer Romain Grosjean crashed into the same corner as the one Nelson Piquet Jr deliberately hit to ensure victory for his team-mate last year.

Renault’s main sponsor, Dutch bank ING, had already said it would not renew its three-year contract when it expires at the current season’s end, but has now pulled out four races early. It said the recent revelations were “very disappointing”. Spanish insurers Mutua Madrileña echoed this sentiment, saying that moral issues, as well as the fact the manoeuvre was dangerous, reflected badly on sponsors.

The firms have quit because Renault this month admitted to cheating during the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix. Piquet drove his car into a wall after fellow Renault driver Fernando Alonso had refuelled early. A safety car came out and as various drivers went in to refuel behind it, Alonso was able to move up and secure a win. Alonso, who is Spanish, was also personally sponsored by Mutua Madrileña and this contract remains unchanged.

Formula One’s governing body, the FIA, ordered a meeting of the World Motor Sport Council when the allegations surfaced. At that meeting, Renault were given a two-year suspended sentence that will see them kicked out of the sport if they cheat again in that time-frame. Team boss Flavio Briatore was banned for life and engineer Pat Symonds was banned for five years due to their roles in the incident.

These developments come days after the European Sponsorship Association said that cheating scandals jeopardised funding for teams in major competitions. Renault’s remaining sponsors are French-based international energy firm Total, tyre manufacturer Bridgestone, Russian communications provider Megafon, Pepe Jeans, and Internet educator Universia. Renault have confirmed an intention to remain in F1 despite the recent controversy.

Practice sessions for the 2009 Singapore Grand Prix were held today. “Sorry guys, I lost the car in turn 17,” Grosjean announced over the team’s radio, spinning out on the same corner as Piquet drove into a year ago to trigger the scandal dubbed “Crashgate” by the media. Once more, a safety car appeared while the Renault was removed. A photograph of the car after Grosjean’s accident did not reveal obvious major damage, though it did clearly show that the names of two sponsors have disappeared.

Sunday, October 6, 2013

On Tuesday, South Korea staged a huge military parade to mark its armed forces’ 65th anniversary in a display of long-range missiles considered a direct threat to North Korea. 11,000 troops and 190 different weapons systems were on display in the parade. Wikinews interviewed several specialists about the parade’s possible significance.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Four F3 Tornado fighter jets were launched by the United Kingdom‘s Royal Air Force to intercept Russian military planes. The eight Russian jets were flying in airspace patrolled by Nato, officials from the UK claimed. The long-range bombers were initially followed by Norwegian F16 jets, after Russia’s recent decision to reinstate Cold War-style long-range patrols.

14 strategic bombers were flying on long-range patrol, according to Russia’s Defence Ministry. They also confirmed that none had approached a foreign state and had been shadowed by aircraft from Nato countries.

The Ministry of Defence in the United Kingdom released a statement that the Russian Tupolev Tu-95 Bear aircraft, flying in four loosed pairs, were tracked by Norwegian aircraft before entering Nato airspace on Thursday morning. The UK currently holds responsibility for the Nato airspace, and launched four F3 Tornados from RAF Leeming in North Yorkshire, UK, to identify the bombers. The bombers eventually left the Nato zone, under tracking by UK aircraft and RAF radar in Northumberland.

An MoD spokesman confirmed that Russia was entitled to its long-range patrols, adding ‘The motivation behind any Russian military activity is a matter for the Russian government.’ Lt Col John Inge Oegland, spokesman for the Norwegian armed forces, said there had been several similar incidents in recent months, but that the Russian flights were not causing alarm in Norway.

Relations between Britain and Russia have worsened recently, particularly after Russia’s refusal to allow the extradition of a former KGB bodyguard suspected of murdering emigre Alexander Litvinenko in London last year. Relations with Russia would “continue as normal outside the unresolved extradition request”, a UK Foreign Office spokesman said.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Dell Inc. announced on Tuesday that it will partner up with the Microsoft-Nortel Innovative communications alliance (ICA) team to sell Unified Communications and VoIP products.

The announcement on Tuesday the 16th of October 2007 includes Dell selling VoIP, data and wireless networking products from Nortel and the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and other unified communications products.

The partnership with both manufacturers should allow Dell to provide a pre-integrated solution.

In March 2007, competitors IBM and Cisco announced they would join in the competition for developing unified communications applications and the development of open technologies around the unified communications and collaboration (UC2) client platform an application programming interfaces (APIs) offered by IBM as a subset of Lotus Sametime.

“We want to make it simple for our customers to deploy unified communications so their end users can get access to all their messages in one place – whether its e-mail, phone or mobile device. This will pave the way for more business-ready productivity tools,” said vice president of solutions, Dell Product Group, Rick Becker.

• Customers have four options:
  • Core Office Communication Server 2007 – provides instant messaging and on-premise Microsoft Live Meeting.
  • Office Communication Server: Telephony – enables call routing tracking and management, VoIP gateway and public branch exchange (PBX) integration.
  • Audio and Video Conferencing – allows point-to-point conference, video conference and VoIP audio conference.
  • Exchange Unified Messaging – provides voicemail, e-mail and fax in Microsoft Outlook, and anywhere access of Microsoft Outlook Inbox and Calendar.