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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.”

Monday, July 2, 2007

A wildfire in the Ashley National Forest has been blamed for three deaths and has led to the evacuation of about 500 residents of the communities of Whiterocks, Farm Creek, Paradise and Tridell in eastern Utah.

The fire broke out on Friday, June 29 at around 9:00 a.m. local time in Duschene county, north of Neola by state route 121, and proceeded to spread westward into Uintah county.

To date, the cause of the wildfire is unknown. An early report by public safety officials claimed it was caused by a faulty power line or transformer. However, a later announcement by Moon Lake Electric Association CEO Grant Earl disputed this.

By Saturday morning, the fire had spread across approximately 46 square miles of land and been blamed for three fatalities: George Houston, his son Tracy Houston, and Roger Roberson, all from Farm Creek. Eleven year old Duane Houston, George’s grandson, was able to escape the fire with only minor injuries.

The communities of Whiterocks, Farm Creek, Paradise and Tridell, consisting of approximately 500 local residents, were evacuated by Sunday, and at least five homes are known to have been destroyed. Those without family or friends to provide lodging have been relocated to the Ute Indian Tribe’s auditorium in Fort Duchesne and Union High School in Roosevelt.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency became involved in the management of fire fighting efforts on Sunday, and a specialized regional wildland fire team, the Rocky Mountain Type One Management Team, had begun to converge on the Uinta Basin to assist with the firefighting, along with about 100 members of the Utah National Guard.

Reports that same day claimed the fire was 5% contained, but that it had split into at least two separate smaller fires. Authorities declared their intention to prevent the fire from moving eastwards into Dry Fork Canyon and the town of Tridell.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Members of Australia’s Health Services Union (HSU) will go on strike in Victoria next week in a dispute over stalled wage and career structure negotiations. Over 5000 physiotherapists, speech pathologists and radiation therapists will walk off the job next week, effectively closing the state’s 68 largest health services.

The strike will force the closure of intensive care units and emergency departments across the state.

It is feared the strike could continue into Easter.

National secretary of the HSU, Kathy Jackson said admissions would be crippled, while intensive care patients would have to be evacuated to New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia as hospitals will not be able to perform tests or administer treatment.

“When an ambulance shows up you can’t admit a patient without an X-ray being available, you can’t intubate them and you can’t operate on them,” she said.

“If something goes wrong in an ICU you need to be able to X-ray, use nuclear medicine or any diagnostic procedure,” said Ms Jackson.

Ms Jackson said the HSU offered arbitration last year, but the state government refused. “They’re not interested in settling disputes, they hope that we are just going to go away.”

“We’re not going away, we’ve gone back and balloted the whole public health workforce in Victoria, those ballots were successful, 97 percent approval rating,” she said.

The HSU is urging the government to commence serious negotiations to resolve the dispute before industrial action commenced.

The government has offered the union a 3.25 per cent pay increase, in line with other public sector workers but the union has demanded more, but stopped short of specifying a figure.

Victorian Premier John Brumby said the claim would be settled according to the government’s wages policy. “The Government is always willing and wanting to sit down and negotiate with the relevant organisations . . . we have a wages policy based around an increase of 3.25 per cent and, above that, productivity offset,” he told parliament.

The union claims it is also arguing against a lack of career structure, which has caused many professionals to leave the health service. Ms Jackson said wages and career structures in Victoria were behind other states.

Victorian Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said he was not in support of the proposed strike and called on the government to meet with unions. “There could not be a more serious threat to our health system than has been announced today.”

“We now have to do whatever is possible to stop this strike from proceeding,” he said.

The opposition leader will meet with the union at 11:30 AM today.

Victorian Hospitals Industry Association industrial relations services manager Simon Chant said hospitals were looking at the possible impact and warned that patients may have to be evacuated interstate if the strike goes ahead.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

A 17 year old gunman has killed 15 in the towns of Winnenden and Wendlingen, near Stuttgart in southwest Germany, before being killed himself in a shootout with police.

Dressed in what has been described as black combat gear, the gunman entered Albertville school at 9.30am on March 11 2009 and, beginning with a particular classroom, started shooting at pupils and staff wandering through various 9th and 10th grade classrooms, reloading his handgun a number of times as he did so in a two minute shooting spree.

Reportedly aiming at the heads of his victims the gunman, identified as former pupil Tim Kretschmer, initially killed nine pupils, all except one being female, and three female teachers, one of whom was still a trainee who started only 4 weeks earlier. A further seven female students were injured. There are conflicting reports if a tenth student died from injuries later. Other students were injured as they attempted to escape by jumping out of windows.

Police received a call within three minutes at 9:33 a.m. the police entered the school at 9:40 a.m. to discover the bodies of the slain victims. A pupil managed to call for help using a mobile phone, and the headmaster apparently gave an early warning via the intercom so that some of the teachers were able to lock the doors to their classrooms from the inside, probably preventing more killings. From the first floor of the school, Kretschmer fired at the first police who arrived on the scene.

Kretschmer fled the school as further police arrived, and killed a gardener in a nearby clinic as he did so.

As the police evacuated the 1,000 pupil secondary school, Kretschmer, hijacked a Volkswagen Sharan and forced the driver to drive him south. Slowed by a traffic jam Kretschmer forced the driver to drive towards Wendlingen.

A police checkpoint was not able to apprehend Kretschmer. The car went off the road, and the gunman fled into an industrial area in Wendlingen about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the school.

Tracked by specialist armed police and police spotters in helicopters Kretschmer was finally cornered in the carpark of a car dealership in Wendlingen. Kretschmer, the son of a well known local farmer and businessman, made a last stand and killed a salesman and a customer before being shot by police marksmen being injured in the leg. At first it was unclear if the shooting killed him or if he was wounded and then shot himself. Police now believe that the evidence points to suicide.

During the manhunt, police stormed the youth’s home in Leutenbach to conduct a search. Kretschmer’s father, a hobbyist hunter, legally owned 15 firearms and one was missing from the collection. The majority of the firearms were kept securely locked as German law mandates, however a handgun was kept in the parent’s bedroom and it is this weapon that is presumed to have been used. Also, all the ammunition was not locked away, and Kretschmer reportedly carried a “3-digit figure” of ammunition with him.

The police are still uncertain about the motive, as Kretschmer was known as a calm, inconspicuous person to the people who knew him personally. He didn’t have a criminal record and has apparently not made any announcements of his killing spree, neither online nor to any of his friends.

Kretschmer had been a graduate of Albertville school the previous year.

Two police officers remain in serious condition.

{{tasks|news|re-review}}Tuesday, January 9, 2018

On Monday, Democrats in the United States Senate announced they had gained enough sponsors to perform a congressional review of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s December 2017 reversal of previous rules regulating Internet service providers, commonly called Net Neutrality.

Under the Congressional Review Act, if 30 senators co-sponsor the action, United States Congress can vote on whether to overrule a decision made by a federal agency such as the FCC. Both the House of Representatives and the Senate would have vote in favor, and President Donald Trump would have to sign the review.

On Monday, Claire McCaskill of Missouri announced she was the 30th senator to agree to sponsor the floor vote. “What I’ve heard from the thousands of Missourians who’ve contacted my office is simple — consumers should have protected, free, and open access to the online content of their choosing,” she said in a statement.

The Obama-era Net Neutrality rules were revoked last month. On December 14, as protesters gathered in Washington D.C., the United States Federal Communications Commission under Chairman Ajit Pai voted 3-2 to overturn the 2015 decision, which forbade Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T from blocking individual websites or charging websites or customers more for faster load times.

Specifically, the 2015 decision placed the Internet under Title II of the 1934 Telecommunications Act, which established that Internet access must be regulated under the same rules as a utility. Currently, in the U.S., telephones are regulated in this way, but cable television is not. Cable providers can offer bundled services and otherwise select which channels to offer customers; they do not have to offer access to every channel the way ISPs have offered access to the whole Internet. The new rules voted on December 14 transfer the Internet from the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission to the Federal Trade Commission, which means instead of being forbidden from blocking websites or offering different access speeds, ISPs will only be required to disclose having done so.

Telecom analyst Gigi Sohn, who worked with Pai’s predecessor Tom Wheeler in 2015, said, “There are going to be fast lanes and slow lanes[…] As a consumer, that means some of your favorite websites are going to load more slowly, and it also may mean some of your favorite content goes away because the provider just can’t pay the fee.”

Former Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson said, “Net neutrality allowed something like Etsy to hang out a shingle on the web and give it a try”.

Supporters of the new rule argue Net Neutrality regulations were unnecessary. Commissioner Michael O’Reilly pointed out the Internet “has functioned without net neutrality rules for far longer than it has without [sic] them.”

“Quite simply, we are restoring the light-touch framework that has governed the internet for most of its existence,” said Chairman Pai, who argued removing the rules would make the Internet freer and more open.

“[T]he internet will continue to work tomorrow just as it always has,” promised AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Bob Quinn, who said his company would not block websites or discriminate with respect to content.

Opposition was organized almost immediately and was not limited to plans for congressional review: The Attorneys General for the states of New York and Washington have both announced plans for lawsuits against the new rules.. The United States Congress also has the authority to overrule the FCC’s decision by passing legislation. One such bill, House Resolution 4585, or the “Save Net Neutrality Act of 2017,” was introduced to the U.S. House of Representatives on December 7.

According to a poll conducted the week of December 6 by the University of Maryland, more than 80% of registered U.S. voters opposed the repeal of Net Neutrality, 75% of registered Republicans, 89% of registered Democrats, and 86% of independents, those not registered to either party. Before the vote, the FCC had accepted comments on the measure from the public through its website, FCC.gov. However, there have been allegations that many of the comments offered in support of the rollback were fakes. Before the vote took place, attorneys general from seventeen states and the District of Columbia sent a letter to the FCC asking the vote be delayed until the matter could be investigated.

The FCC’s decision must be published in the U.S. Federal Register before congressional review can take place or any lawsuits filed.

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Tuesday, July 5, 2016

On Sunday, in the quarter-final match of UEFA Euro 2016, hosts France defeated Iceland 5–2. Antoine Griezmann scored his fourth goal of the tournament and France is to face Germany in the semi-final.

France had greater ball possession and passing accuracy. Arsenal striker Olivier Giroud scored the first goal of the match in the 12th minute from Blaise Matuidi’s pass. Within ten minutes, midfielder Paul Pogba doubled their lead, scoring a header from Griezmann’s cross. A couple of minutes before half-time, Dimitri Payet scored the third goal. Before the referee brought the first half to an end, Griezmann chipped the ball over the keeper, netting the fourth goal of the match, and his fourth of the tournament. The first half ended 4–0.

In the second half, Kolbeinn Sigþórsson scored a goal for Iceland. But, Giroud restored the four-goal lead three minutes later, scoring a header from Payet’s assist. Birkir Bjarnason scored a consolation goal from header for Iceland in the 84th minute. The match ended 5–2 and Giroud was awarded the Man of The Match award.

After the match, Iceland forward Alfreð Finnbogason said, “A bitter end to a fantastic tournament for us but of course the game was lost in the first half. […] We really put Iceland on the footballing map. We have been getting messages from all over the world about how people are proud of us and that they really love the fighting spirit that we showed. So we can really go happy and proud from this tournament.”

Giroud and Payet have each scored three goals in the tournament and they are behind Griezmann for the Golden Boot trophy.