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Friday, April 15, 2005

The last British-owned volume car manufacturer, MG Rover, has closed down, with the loss of 5,000 jobs.

International accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCooper was brought in last week to put the company into administration. Today PwC announced that MG Rover’s only hope, the Chinese car company SAIC, had no interest in buying the ailing firm. With no further source of revenue, PwC has closed the company’s factory in Longbridge, Birmingham and has laid off 5,000 workers.

Some 1,000 workers will continue for a while to complete the remaining cars left on the production line.

The BBC reported PwC joint administrator Tony Lomas as saying “We’ll explore what we would describe as the break-up of the business, we will carry on with the interested parties who want to talk about pieces of the business.”. PwC said around 70 offers for various parts of the company had been made but no serious offers of money made.

Recent efforts to save the company had been centered on convincing SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp.) to buy the company as a going concern, but the Chinese company stated it would only buy the company if it’s financial position could be guaranteed to be secure for at least two years. The British government could not make such a commitment due to European Union trade and competition rules.

The SAIC company did buy the designs for the 75 and 25 models and for the K-Series engines for £67m.

The Rover car company has a long but troubled history. It was formed in 1968 after a series of mergers of existing car manufacturers, and was nationalized in 1975 after it ran into financial difficulties. In 1979 a long-running deal to collaborate on developing new vehicles was established with the Japanese company Honda. In 1988 the company was privatized and was bought by British Aerospace. In 1994 British Aerospace sold the business to BMW, who then sold the Land Rover brand to Ford and finally sold the company in 2000 for just £10, retaining the well-known Mini brand for themselves. The MG Rover company was run by a private group until its collapse.

MG Rover has not launched a new model since the 75 was introduced in 1998 during the period of ownership by BMW. Their next newest model was the 25, originally launched as the 200 series some ten years ago. Rover also produced the 45, which dates from 1990, and the ZF sports car first launched in 1995. Sales of Rover cars accounted for just 3% of the UK car market in 2004.

Tony Blair announced a £150 million support package for the recently unemployed workers of the MG Rover plants, though it has been claimed that his generous offer may be more as a result of the nearby marginal seats in the upcoming elections than compassion on his part.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

The Kenyan government has dismissed 25,000 striking health workers, mostly nurses, citing failure to heed government orders to recommence work and concern for the welfare of hospital patients. Speaking on behalf of the government, Alfred Mutua stated the workers were dismissed “illegally striking” and “[defying] the directive … to report back to work”, which he called “unethical”. The government asks that “[a]ll qualified health professionals, who are unemployed and/or retired have been advised to report to their nearest health facility for interviews and deployment”, Mutua stated.

The workers, who had been on strike for four days, were wishing to have improvements made to their wages, working conditions, and allowances. The strikes have caused a significant number of Kenyan hospitals to cease operations. According to Kenya Health Professionals Society spokesperson Alex Orina, the average monthly wage plus allowances for health workers in Kenya is KSh25,000 (£193, US$302 or €230) approximately. With an increasing number of reports of patients neglected in hospitals emerging, two trade unions met with the Kenyan government yesterday and negotitated a return to work, although a significant proportion of demonstrators defied the agreement, The Guardian reported.

Orina told Reuters the dismissals were “cat-and-mouse games, you cannot sack an entire workforce. It is a ploy to get us to rush back to work, but our strike continues until our demands are met”. Frederick Omiah, a member of the same society, believed the government’s actions would “make an already delicate and volatile situation worse”, expressing concern that demonstrations may continue in the capital Nairobi, amongst other locations. Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union chairperson Dr. Victor Ng’ani described government actions as “reckless”.

Mutua said the health workers were “no longer employees of the government” and had been eliminated from the payroll. While Ng’ani told the BBC of difficulties with finding other workers as skilled and experienced, Mutua reportedly stated that this would not be an issue. “We have over 100,000 to 200,000 health professionals looking for work today,” Mutua commented. “There will be a lag of a day or two … but it is better than letting people die on the floor, at the gate, or suffer in pain”.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Wikinews has learned through an investigation that anonymous edits on the Wikipedia article Chris Benoit were added about the death of his wife Nancy Benoit 14 hours before police entered the Benoit home to find the former professional World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Canadian wrestler and his family dead.

An anonymous edit from IP address 69.120.111.23 using the Internet service provider Optimum Online was made at 04:01 UTC on Chris Benoit’s Wikipedia article. On a paragraph about an earlier fight: “However, Chris Benoit was replaced… due to personal issues,…”, the anonymous editor added ” stemming from the death of his wife Nancy.” The edit was reversed just under one hour later with the comment: “Need a reliable source. Saying that his wife died is a pretty big statement, you need to back it up with something.”

Then just one hour later after the first edit reversion, another anonymous edit by 125.63.148.173 using unwiredAustralia.com.au, a wireless Internet service provider, was made adding about the aforementioned personal issues: “which according to several pro wrestling websites is attributed to the passing of Benoit’s wife, Nancy.” That edit was reverted just under 20 minutes later, with the comment: “Saying ‘several pro wrestling websites’ is still not reliable information.”

Further investigation shows that the IP address used to make the first edit is located in Connecticut, but the IP address is not linked to any computers or servers used by the WWE, but according to Cary Bass, Volunteer Coordinator for the Wikimedia Foundation, the IP address matches a location in Stamford, Connecticut where the WWE headquarters is located. Bass also informed the local authorities in Atlanta about the unusual edits, but it is not known if the edits were investigated by the police. The second edit was made by a computer in Australia from a wireless network.

“It didn’t become apparent until someone put the pieces together and realized that the comment was made by someone who apparently knew about the murders,” added Bass.

Fayette County Sheriff deputy Lt. Tommy Pope stated that police found the family at about 2:30 p.m. ET, which is 18:30 UTC, on Monday when the WWE called police and asked them to do a “welfare check” after employees of WWE received calls and text messages from Chris Benoit. Early Sunday, Benoit sent repeated text messages that read “My physical address is 130 Green Meadow Lane, Fayetteville Georgia. 30215.” Another text message reportedly said “The dogs are in the enclosed pool area. Garage side door is open.” The messages were sent around 4:00 a.m. ET.

Earlier, on Saturday afternoon, Chris Benoit placed a series of calls that explained why he missed his flight to Houston. The stories he told were mostly about his wife and son being sick with food poisoning and vomiting. Although, in one call he said that he and Nancy were at the hospital to be with Daniel who was hospitalized. Throughout he insisted that he would attend that live event in Houston.

When he missed the live event on Sunday, and the WWE couldn’t get hold of him, they contacted authorities. Police say that Benoit strangled his wife on Friday, smothered his son on late Friday or early Saturday, and then hanged himself inside his weight room on Sunday or Monday.

The Wikinews investigation is unable to conclude whether the anonymous editors had inside information about the death of Nancy Benoit.

This is not the first time Benoit’s article has been edited to show false or unsourced information, as the article’s edit history indicates a long history of promotional spam and vandalism. Around the time of the edits, the article contained a hidden warning to editors of the section mentioned, warning against adding rumours and speculations. For the time being, Benoit’s article has been protected in an attempt to stop the addition of fraudulent information.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has warned that the state of the housing market in the United Kingdom is the current biggest domestic threat to the country’s economy, due to lack of house building, and regulatory issues.

In an interview to be aired on Sky News today, he said the housing market is the “biggest risk” to the economy and has “deep, deep structural problems”. Of house building he said: “There are not sufficient houses built in the UK. To go back to Canada, there are half as many people in Canada as in the UK, twice as many houses are built every year in Canada as in the UK and we can’t influence that.”

“We’re not going to build a single house at the Bank of England. We can’t influence that. What we can influence […] is whether the banks are strong enough. Do they have enough capital against risk in the housing market?”

Carney also said the Bank of England would look into the procedures used to issue loans and mortgages to see if they were being granted appropriately: “We’d be concerned if there was a rapid increase in high loan-to-value mortgages across the banks. We’ve seen that creeping up and it’s something we’re watching closely.”

Kris Hopkins responded to Carney on behalf of the government, saying the government “inherited a broken housing market, but our efforts to fix it are working”. “We’ve scrapped the failed top-down planning system, built over 170,000 affordable homes and released more surplus brownfield sites for new housing. We’ve also helped homebuyers get on the housing ladder, because if people can buy homes builders will build them. Housebuilding is now at its highest level since 2007 and climbing. Last year councils gave permission for almost 200,000 new homes under the locally-led planning system and more than 1,000 communities have swiftly taken up neighbourhood planning. It’s clear evidence the government’s long-term economic plan is working.”

Earlier this month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called on the UK government to “tighten” access to the ‘Help to Buy’ scheme introduced by George Osborne and the coalition government in 2013. ‘Help to Buy’ has also recently been criticised by three former Chancellors of the Exchequer — the Conservatives Norman Lamont and Nigel Lawson, and former Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling. Darling said: “Unless supply can be increased substantially, we will exacerbate that situation with schemes like Help to Buy.”

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Microsoft Corporation announced plans to launch a new security product later this year, named Windows OneCare.

Product features are to include anti-virus software capabilities, a new firewall and PC tune ups. The PC tune ups include utilities for improved backup and restore capabilities, and easy access to Windows PC maintenance tools for file repair and hard drive clean up.

The major elements of the product are:

• A firewall that (unlike Windows Firewall but like third party personal firewall products for Windows) prevents unauthorized programs from making outgoing connections
• Anti-spyware, based upon Microsoft AntiSpyware
• Virus protection, based upon technology bought by Microsoft from the Romanian company GeCAD
• Scheduled disc cleanup and defragmentation.
• Automatic backup to writable CD or DVD.

An early beta version of product, not including the anti-spyware capability, has already been released to Microsoft employees. A public beta is scheduled for later in 2005.

Microsoft plans to make Windows OneCare available to customers for a yearly subscription fee.

Recently, Microsoft bought Giant software, makers of antivirus and spyware prevention software. Windows Anti-Spyware software is already built on this system.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Solar Impulse, the world’s most advanced solar powered plane has just completed the first of the five legs of its trans-continental journey, flying fuel-free from San Francisco to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, in just over 18 hours.

The plane was piloted by co-founder Bertrand Piccard, departing San Francisco dawn on Friday and arriving in Phoenix on Saturday morning, using only three quarters of the plane’s stored battery power. “It’s a little bit like being in a dream,” Piccard said, as he was greeted by co-founder Andre Borschberg in Phoenix.

Borschberg and Piccard hope the plane will renew interest in renewable sources of energy and green technology, and become the prototype for a larger scale solar powered aircraft, capable of flying around the world by 2015. “If an airplane can fly day or night with no fuel, just on the sun’s power, of course it means that everybody in daily life can use this technology for his house, for heating and cooling systems, for lighting, for cars, for trucks. There’s so much we can do now to have a cleaner future,” Piccard said.

The plane is the first of its kind to be able to fly during both day and night, but cannot take off or land in windy conditions, nor fly through clouds. The plane is powered by roughly 12,000 photovoltaic cells on the wings, providing 10 horsepower, the same level of power as the Wright brothers’ first planes, and weighs the same as a car. “One hundred years ago, the planes had to fly in good weather and there was only one person on board,” Piccard said. “Now we have completely new technology, we fly with no fuel at all. But, of course, we need to fly in good weather and we carry only one pilot on board.

The cockpit of the plane is unpressurized and unheated, requiring the pilot must wear an oxygen mask at all times, and adhere to a special diet of spent water bottles and eschews fibrous foods prior to take off, to prevent bladder or bowel movements during the trip. Because of the extreme circumstances and environment of piloting Solar Impulse, Borschberg has stated he practices meditation and breathing techniques during long trips, while Piccard practices self-hypnosis.

Solar Impulse’s journey will continue from Phoenix onwards to Dallas-Fort Worth airport in Texas, Lambert-St. Louis airport, Dulles airport in the Washington area and New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, with each trip taking approximately 19 to 25 hours with 10 day rests in each city.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

A woman with a blood alcohol reading of 0.14 has been arrested and charged after crashing into a police car in Kings Cross, a suburb of Eastern Sydney early this morning.

Police officials claim the 27 year old woman was driving a Volkswagen the wrong way down a one way street when she collided with a police car parked outside Kings Cross Police Station. Following the collision, the woman drove off. Police later found the woman’s car in a nearby alleyway where she and a male were standing.

Both the woman and her companion were taken to Kings Cross Police Station where they were questioned about the incident. While at the station, police conducted a breath test on the woman, which returned a reading of 0.14 – almost 3 times the blood alcohol limit of 0.05 in New South Wales. Further investigation revealed that the woman did not hold a driver’s licence.

The woman was charged with mid-range PCA (driving under the influence of alcohol), driving whilst unlicensed and failing to give particulars after an accident.

The woman was not injured in the accident and the police car suffered only minor damage.