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Thursday, December 23, 2010

Bairnsdale will return to Gippsland’s major Australian rules football league after members voted to join the Gippsland League (GL). The GL, East Gippsland Football League and the Victorian Country Football League, regional Victoria’s governing Aussie rules body, have all approved the move.

Bairnsdale will field teams in the seniors, under 18 and under 16 grades, but not a reserves side like the rest of the competition. Players not selected in the senior side will be able to play for a club in the East Gippsland minor league, under a unique transfer agreement.

They will play their first game back in the major league in Warragul on April 9 before playing their first home game against Moe a week later.

Their furthest away game will be to Wonthaggi – a one way trip of approximately 224 kilometres.

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.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

French fishing vessels have blockaded the English Channel ports of Calais, Bolougne, and Dunkirk.

The protest is an industrial action over tighter fishing quotas imposed by the European Union, with French fishing unions asking for their government to provide financial assistance or take a tougher line. CFTC Fishermans Union spokesman Bruno Dachicourt told Agence France Presse: “There are easily twenty boats blocking the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer in organized ranks. Not a boat will go in nor out.”

The fishermen are protesting the lowering of European Union quotas on fishing, which place a ceiling on the amount of fish that the fishermen of each member country are allowed to catch and sell. The EU has lowered quotas in response to concerns about the sustainability of fisheries, but each drop in quota reduces the amount of work each fishing vessel can do. “The feeble amount of the quota obliges us to close the fishing zones three months after the beginning of the catch”, said Stéphane Pinto, spokesman for the CFDT trade union group representing fishermen in Boulogne.

Ferry sailings between Dover in the United Kingdom and Calais were suspended, with UK authorities implementing the Operation Stack management plan in response. Under the plan sections of the M20 motorway are closed to traffic and used as a managed lorry park. Motorists have been advised to seek alternative routes if possible. Most cars and passengers from the P&O Calais-Dover sailings at 16.10 (apparently the first sailing affected), 17.40 and 18.25 left on the “Pride of Dover” at 11.47 arriving Dover at 12.30. Two SeaFrance ferries, Renoir and another, left slightly earlier.

Fishermen have also used fires and roadblocks to interfere with access to the ports by road.

The blockades come eight days after a similar incident in the Mediterranean, when French fishermen in Marseille, Ajaccio, Toulon and other port cities interfered with oil tanker movements and blockaded ports throughout the south of the country.

Wikinews is unaware of any official statement from the British or French Governments in response to the blockade.

Monday, April 20, 2009

The government has announced 13 June as the date for the upcoming Mount Albert by-election.

The by-election has been caused by former Prime Minister Helen Clark‘s departure to head the United Nations Development Program. While it is considered to be a safe Labour seat, the by-election is expected to be heavily contested.

Candidates must be nominated by 19 May.

Nominations for the Labour Party close on Wednesday. So far four candidates have put their names forward: Auckland city councillor Glenda Fryer, former candidate Hamish McCracken, University of Auckland political studies lecturer Meg Bates and employment lawyer Helen White. List MP Phil Twyford, widely expected to succeed Ms Clark, has not put his name forward.

The National Party has narrowed its possible candidates down to two: list MP Melissa Lee or unsuccessful 2008 candidate Ravi Musuku. The decision will be made at a party meeting on 4 May.

The Greens and ACT New Zealand will both contest the by-election, but have yet to select candidates.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

A four-year-old boy has been killed by a dog in the city of Liverpool in Merseyside, England. The child has been identified as John Paul Massey. The animal belonged to his uncle. The boy’s 63-year-old grandmother Helen Foulkes tried to protect the boy but ended up getting bitten by the dog in the process. She had to receive hospital treatment for the injury.

The dog itself was shot dead in the front garden of the house where the attack had taken place. The police had said that they did not take further action after receiving a report about dog breeding earlier this year.

Chief Superintendent Steve Ashley from the police force said about the incident: “In February this year a housing officer rang Merseyside Police to say they had received complaints of dog breeding at the address. At that time the police said it wasn’t a police matter and no action was taken by Merseyside Police.

That is contrary to our policies and an investigation is now launched into exactly what happened in February.”

Saturday, March 13, 2010

According to the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), the city’s taxi cab drivers overcharged their riders by more than US$8.3 million over the past two years, by setting their meters to illegally high settings.

The agency reported that some taxi drivers set their meters so they would charge at the suburban fare, which is twice as high as the urban fare — within city limits, fare is 40 cents per 1/5 mile, outside city limits, 80 cents. 48,300 licensed cab drivers work in the city; according to data, 35,558 of them charged a rider inappropriately at least once, the city noted. The statistics also say that 3,000 of drivers had doubled the rates 100 times or more.

Riders who overpaid spent about $4.45 more per trip than they were supposed to, the commission said. 0.5% of all 361 million taxi trips taken in the past 26 were affected by inappropriate charging, the TLC reported.

New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, commented about the findings in his radio show, saying: “Some of these people could face serious charges. Now, how we would ever recoup the money and get it back to the individual payers, no, but we can stop the practice and we can make sure there’s penalties.”

The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a taxi driver advocacy group, however, commented that the overcharging could have been due to technology problems, and not because drivers were intentionally raising fare. Bhairavi Desai, who is with the group, noted that “[t]here should be a thorough investigation before judgment is cast on an entire work force.”

Monday, November 13, 2006

New measures to counter the threat of terrorism in UK are expected in the Queen’s Speech.

Sir Ian Blair, Metropolitan police chief, in a speech in Berlin, highlighted the scale of disaffection among the Muslim community, pointing to reports that between 40,000 and 120,000 Muslims believed that the London bombings, when four British suicide bombers killed 52 civilians, were justified. He believed that this disaffection was related to the very negative way in which many in the Muslim community perceived the country’s foreign policy. This view had been expressed last month by Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett and by the Head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, earlier in the week. However, Prime minister Tony Blair contested the strong connection to foreign policy, saying that the problem has “grown up over a generation”.

Sir Ian outlined where he thought new legislation was needed. Despite the fact that the measure had caused the Government to be defeated in the last session of Parliament, he wanted the extension of the 28 days suspects can be held without charge to be reconsidered. He wanted the law restricting the reporting of court proceedings relaxed to let people, particularly in the communities from which those on trial come, to see justice being done. As things stand, once they have charged a suspect, the police have no right to continue questioning; this should be changed, he said. He also wanted phone tap evidence to be allowed in court and flag burning to be made illegal. Home Secretary John Reid will have an opportunity of introducing new legislation in the Queen’s Speech.

Following Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller’s statement that MI5 has the task of keeping track of 1,600 suspects engaged in 30 known terrorist plots with a staff of 2,800, and that disaffection is increasing as never before, it is expected that more resources will be provided to support her department’s work. Patrick Mercer, the shadow homeland security minister said that both the intelligence and security servcies needed a substantial increase in resources. Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has said that his first priority as Prime Minister would be to head anti-terrorism measures personally. In his present post he has responsibility for the allocation of resources to government departments.

The opinion poll findings quoted by Dame Eliza are questioned by the 1990 Trust (a charitable trust supported by the Rowntree Trust, Comic Relief, CRE and others). Introducing an internet survey conducted between the 8th and 27th September 2006, Karen Chouhan of the 1990 Trust said “This (referring to Dame Manningham-Buller’s speech) is nothing short of irresponsible politicking and journalism which is designed to create a moral panic to pave the way for renewed legislative assaults on civil liberties and can only serve to fuel fears and hostility towards Muslim communities in the UK”. The specific criticism of the use being made of the ICM/Sunday Telegraph Poll, that has been widely reported, is that “some sections of the media have conflated Muslim respondents answering positively to the question of whether they have sympathy ‘with the feeling and motives of those who carried out the attacks’ (20% of those polled in the same ICM/Telegraph survey of February 2006 answered affirmatively) with the violence itself. To understand the motive behind an action cannot be equated with violence itself, and the media have a responsibility to create a clear demarcation”.

A Report from the Joseph Rowntree Trust, by Professor Stuart Weir, Director of Democratic Audit at the University of Essex, Dr Andrew Blick and Tufyal Choudhury was published today November 13, 2006. It concludes that “the government’s counter terrorism legislation and rhetorical stance are between them creating serious losses in human rights and criminal justice protections…and so are prejudicing the ability of the government and security forces to gain the very trust and cooperation from individuals in those communities that they require to combat terrorism.”

Parliament resumes its work next week when the Queen’s Speech will indicate what new anti-terrorist and anti-racist legislation the Government intends to propose.