Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper assigned airforce aircraft to pick up Canadians in Lebanon

Friday, July 21, 2006

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper fulfilled his promise to use his own assigned airforce aircraft to pick up Canadians fleeing from the assault on Lebanon and who are currently stranded in Cyprus.

About one hundred people were taken on board the Prime Minister’s aircraft and flown out of Cyprus with Harper.

Harper, who greeted the evacuees, told the media in an interview that the situation was challenging for the government due to the numbers of Canadians fleeing the war torn region by boat to Cyprus.

Canada has one of the largest groups of nationals in Lebanon of any country in the world, and has already seen eight citizens killed in an Israeli air strike to date.

“Today has been a successful day, as far as the evacuation has gone,” “Nothing is perfect in ideal circumstances, and this is a war zone.” said, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

2020 Melbourne Lord Mayor candidate Wayne Tseng answered some questions about his campaign for the upcoming election from Wikinews. The Lord Mayor election in the Australian city is scheduled to take place this week.

Tseng runs a firm called eTranslate, which helps software developers to make the software available to the users. In the candidate’s questionnaire, Tseng said eTranslate had led to him working with all three tiers of the government. He previously belonged to the Australian Liberal Party, but has left since then, to run for mayorship as an independent candidate.

Tseng is of Chinese descent, having moved to Australia with his parents from Vietnam. Graduated in Brisbane, Tseng received his PhD in Melbourne and has been living in the city, he told Wikinews. Tseng also formed Chinese Precinct Chamber of Commerce, an organisation responsible for many “community bond building initiatives”, the Lord Mayor candidate told Wikinews.

Tseng discussed his plans for leading Melbourne, recovering from COVID-19, and “Democracy 2.0” to ensure concerns of minorities in the city were also heard. Tseng also focused on the importance of the multi-culture aspect and talked about making Melbourne the capital of the aboriginals. Tseng also explained why he thinks Melbourne is poised to be a world city by 2030.

Tseng’s deputy Lord Mayor candidate Gricol Yang is a Commercial Banker and works for ANZ Banking Group.

Currently, Sally Capp is the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, the Victorian capital. Capp was elected as an interim Lord Mayor in mid-2018 after the former Lord Mayor Robert Doyle resigned from his position after sexual assault allegations. Doyle served as the Lord Mayor of Melbourne for almost a decade since 2008.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

The San Diego, California suburb of Chula Vista has responded to the recent housing crisis with an aggressive blight control ordinance that compels lenders to maintain the appearance of vacant homes. As foreclosures increase both locally and throughout the United States, the one year old ordinance has become a model for other cities overwhelmed by the problem of abandoned homes that decay into neighborhood eyesores.

Chula Vista city code enforcement manager Doug Leeper told the San Diego Union Tribune that over 300 jurisdictions have contacted his office during the past year with inquiries about the city’s tough local ordinance. Coral Springs, Florida, and California towns Stockton, Santee, Riverside County, and Murietta have all modeled recently enacted anti-blight measures after Chula Vista’s. On Wednesday, 8 October, the Escondido City Council also voted to tighten local measures making lenders more accountable for maintenance of empty homes.

Under the Chula Vista ordinance lenders become legally responsible for upkeep as soon as a notice of mortgage default gets filed on a vacant dwelling, before actual ownership of the dwelling returns to the lender. Leeper regards that as “the cutting-edge part of our ordinance”. Chula Vista also requires prompt registration of vacant homes and applies stiff fines as high as US$1000 per day for failure to maintain a property. Since foreclosed properties are subject to frequent resale between mortgage brokers, city officials enforce the fines by sending notices to every name on title documents and placing a lien on the property, which prevents further resale until outstanding fines have been paid. In the year since the ordinance went into effect the city has applied $850,000 in fines and penalties, of which it has collected $200,000 to date. The city has collected an additional $77,000 in registration fees on vacant homes.

Jolie Houston, an attorney in San Jose, believes “Lenders will respond when it costs them less to maintain the property than to ignore local agency requirements.” Traditionally, local governments have resorted to addressing blight problems on abandoned properties with public funds, mowing overgrown lawns and performing other vital functions, then seeking repayment afterward. Chula Vista has moved that responsibility to an upfront obligation upon lenders.

As one of the fastest growing cities in the United States during recent years, Chula Vista saw 22.6% growth between 2000 and 2006, which brought the city’s population from 173,556 in the 2000 census to an estimated 212,756, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Chula Vista placed among the nation’s 20 fastest growing cities in 2004. A large proportion of local homes were purchased during the recent housing boom using creative financing options that purchasers did not understand were beyond their means. Average home prices in San Diego County declined by 25% in the last year, which is the steepest drop on record. Many homeowners in the region currently owe more than their homes are worth and confront rising balloon payment mortgages that they had expected to afford by refinancing new equity that either vanished or never materialized. In August 2008, Chula Vista’s eastern 91913 zip code had the highest home mortgage default rate in the county with 154 filings and 94 foreclosures, an increase of 154% over one year previously. Regionally, the county saw 1,979 foreclosures in August.

Professionals from the real estate and mortgage industries object to Chula Vista’s response to the crisis for the additional burdens it places on their struggling finances. Said San Diego real estate agent Marc Carpenter, “that kind of measure will add additional costs to banks that have been hit really hard already and ultimately the cost will be transferred down to consumers and investors.” Yet city councils in many communities have been under pressure to do something about increasing numbers of vacant properties. Concentrations of abandoned and neglected homes can attract vandals who hasten the decline of struggling neighborhoods. Jolie Houston explained that city officials “can’t fix the lending problem, but they can try to prevent neighborhoods from becoming blighted.”

CEO Robert Klein of Safeguard, a property management firm, told the Union Tribune that his industry is having difficulty adapting to the rapidly changing local ordinances. “Every day we discover a new ordinance coming out of somewhere”, he complained. Dustin Hobbs, a spokesman from the California Association of Mortgage Bankers agreed that uneven local ordinances are likely to increase the costs of lending. Hobbs advised that local legislation is unnecessary due to California State Senate Bill 1137, which was recently approved to address blight. Yet according to Houston, the statewide measure falls short because it fails to address upkeep needs during the months between the time when foreclosure begins and when the lender takes title.

Monday, March 28, 2005

Commander Leroy Chiao (U.S.A.) and Flight Engineer Salizhan Sharipov (Russia), suited in Russian Orlan spacesuits, left the International Space Station on a 4.5 hour long spacewalk to install antennas for the European Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), inspect and photograph other exterior equipment and launched the Nanosatellite mini-satellite. This is the last scheduled walk for the Expedition 10 crew.

At 06:25 UTC, the two astronauts left the station from the Pirs DC1 docking compartment/airlock and proceeded to install the last three of six space-to-space communication antennas for the ATV’s rendezvous and docking with the ISS next year.

Sharipov next deployed the foot long, 11 pound Russian Nanosatellite, tossing it into space by hand. The object of the experiment is to develop small satellite control techniques, monitor satellite operations and develop new attitude system sensors. Russian ground crews reported good signal reception from the satellite two hours after its release.

The two astronauts next proceeded to the aft end of the Zvezda service module. A Global Positioning System (GPS) antenna and necessary cabling for the ATV was installed and the men worked their way back to the airlock.

The station maintained its attitude, despite the loss of a gyroscope earlier in the space station mission, until the end of the spacewalk. Chiao and Sharipov reported being a safe distance from the attitude adjustment thrusters. Russian ground control activated the jets and normal attitude ofthe station was regained.

They returned to the airlock at 1055 UTC, completing the mission an hour earlier than scheduled.

Chiao and Sharipov arrived on the station October 16, 2004. They are scheduled to return to Earth on April 25, 2005. This marks Sharipov’s second walk in space and Chiao’s sixth.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Two more vessels have been hijacked in Somalia. Pirates have captured an Indonesian tugboat with a barge that was working for French oil firm Total and a Turkish container ship.

The Turkish vessel’s seizure was confirmed by a US Fifth Fleet spokesman. MV Bosphorus Prodigy is a 330 ft (100 m) container vessel flagged in Antigua and Barbuda. It is owned and operated by Isko Marine Company based in Istanbul.

The Fifth Fleet could not confirm the tugboat’s seizure, but an anonymous official with Total in Yemen could. He explained the boat and barge were headed to Malaysia from the Yemeni port of Mukalla. He said the crew consisted of both Indonesians and other nationalities, and that the vessels, which had been hired by a subcontractor, were not carrying any oil at the time.

The new hijackings came as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime asked for greater policing in the area by international bodies, and for the signing of agreements that allowed the arresting officer to take pirates back to the officer’s country for prosecution.

“Pirates cannot be keelhauled or forced to walk the plank, nor should they be dumped off the Somali coast,” said the office’s head Antonio Maria Costa. “They need to be brought to justice”.

Tuesday, January 2, 2007

Calgary, Alberta and the southern Alberta city of Lethbridge became the eighth and ninth cities in Canada to ban smoking in bars and restaurants.

On October 18, 2006, Calgary City Council approved of the bylaw that bans smoking in public areas.

Exemptions were put in place for bingos, casinos, and establishments with smoking rooms until January 1, 2008. First time offenders will pay $200 in fines. A city bylaw boss said people who deliberately go against the law could pay $3,500 or more.

“Obviously, I am ecstatic about it,” said Robyn Hauck back in October, who is an anti-smoking activist. “For us to be going smoke free Jan. 1, with a few exceptions, I couldn’t be happier.”

However, the smoking ban which came into effect on New Years Day didn’t have much effect on some smokers.

“I don’t ever tell anyone else how to live so they [the politicians] shouldn’t tell me how to live,” said resident Doug Baum, who was surprised that he could still light up at the local pub. “Pubs like this one are the last places you can still go to have a smoke and enjoy yourself.”

Another bar allowed customers to smoke.

“Absolutely we’ll keep smoking because it’s not fair the exemptions make it discriminatory,” said Chris Daskas, who owns Filo’s Restaurant.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

In light of an oil spill that occurred off the coast of southeast Queensland in 2009, a captain of a cargo ship and four companies are set to appear in court.

In March of last year, the cargo ship Pacific Adventurer, with Filipino national Bernardino Gonzales Santos at the helm, encountered bad weather, which resulted in its fuel tank being damaged by loose cargo, leading to the spillage 270,000 litres of oil into the Pacific Ocean. The oil later washed up on Sunshine Coast beaches as well as Moreton and Bribie islands and was dubbed “one of Australia’s worse environmental disasters” by the media.

Santos and four companies behind Pacific Adventurer face individual counts of discharging oil into the ocean and can be fined a maximum of AU$1.75 million in the case of the companies, while Santos faces a $350,000 fine if found guilty.

Santos is also charged with not taking reasonable action following the incident.

Richard Kendall, an executive of one of the involved companies, Swire Shipping LTD, said today that “[w]e are deeply regretful. But we will vigorously defend the charges […] We stand by Captain Santos, who is a first-class captain”.

Like Swire Shipping, China Navigation Company LTD and Bluewing Shipping LTD, who are both joint owners of Pacific Adventurer, pleaded not guilty to all charges.

However, prosecutor Peter Davis stated that “[t]he prosecution’s case is that the cause of the cargo going overboard was due to faulty lashings […] By failing to maintain the lashings, the defendants acted recklessly,” an act that prosecutors say should see the companies and captain pay.