lwsimmons.org

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Sunday, Wikinews sat down with Australian Paralympic guide skier Andrew Bor who was participating in a national team training camp in Vail, Colorado.

((Wikinews)) This is Andrew Bor, who is Melissa Perrine’s guide skier. How did you become a guide?

Andrew Bor: I was coaching with the team, the September before the games here. And the APC [Australian Paralympic Committee] found out, I’m not sure how, sent Melissa out to New Zealand where there was a training camp. She didn’t have a guide. And one of the coaches chose me to guide Mel.

((WN)) Had you done much guiding before?

Andrew Bor: Two days. Guided a visually impaired athlete twice before that.

((WN)) Was there a steep learning curve?

Andrew Bor: Yeah, very steep learning curve. Still learning.

((WN)) Is it more difficult as a male guide with a female skier, do you think, because the rules require you to use male ski equipment?

Andrew Bor: No. No, I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s any issue with that. The skis make a different radius turn. Sometimes. No, I don’t think it makes a huge difference.

((WN)) As a guide skier, do you think that guides should be getting medals when their skier gets a medal? Are you that important?

Andrew Bor: No, I don’t know. It’s the athlete’s performance really.

((WN)) But you’re an athlete aren’t you?

Andrew Bor: No. I’m their eyes if that makes any sense. If they don’t have the commitment to go down the hill, you’re never going to get them to go fast anyway. The guide’s responsibility is to put them in the right place. But beyond that…

((WN)) You’ve gotten support because of the performance in Vancouver? The government has been supporting you guys?

Andrew Bor: The government has decided to support the guides as equally as the athletes. Before I was employed by the APC, and now I don’t get paid by the APC, I get the same support levels. Otherwise, you can’t do it, you can’t afford the time.

((WN)) Why have you chosen skiing as opposed to oh, waterskiing or some other sport?

Andrew Bor: I’ve worked in this industry for about 20 years. Teaching skiing, coaching. It’s not something I chose to do, it’s something that kind of happened. After a while a door closed, a door opened. I enjoy the environment. Working outdoors and work in some lovely places. You get some great days when there’s blue sky and sunshine and other days in Australia where it might be two degrees and raining. But it beats working in an office.

((WN)) Do you think the classification system for blind skiers works and is a good one? Especially with the factoring issues, and you’re competing with B1, B2, B3, all compete against each other.

Andrew Bor: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a big enough pool of athletes to have three different classes. It’s never going to be ideal. Different classes have different issues. The handicap for the twos and the threes is fairly similar across the different disciplines. Maybe the threes have an advantage in the tech because they can see a bit more, but they have a bit of a disadvantage in the speed because they can’t see enough to see the next gate and have to rely on the guide. Bit of a trade off. It’s never going to be perfect. It’s a tough one.

((WN)) Are you planning to go to Sochi with Melissa?

Andrew Bor: Yes. Yes I am.

((WN)) Do you think you guys have, you and Melissa can pick up a medal, and you get a medal?

Andrew Bor: I think Melissa is yeah. I think Melissa has a fairly good chance. You know, if things fall in place. I think she’s got an opportunity to win at least a medal. If things don’t fall in place. Yeah. She might miss out completely.

((WN)) Do you plan to continue guide skiing with Melissa for a period following Sochi, or are you going to be like “I’ve had enough, I’m getting old, these mountains are really tall, I’m going to retire?”

Andrew Bor: I don’t know. We’ll wait and see. At the moment the commitment is until Sochi. You see with athletes, some announce their retirement early. Depends what Melissa wants to do. Depends on whether you achieve the goals that she sets or not. Whether she’s got unfinished business…

((WN)) But at the moment, the goal is Sochi?

Andrew Bor: The goal is Sochi, yes. You’ve got to have an end goal, and at the moment it’s Sochi. The energy of the last four years has been put into that. There’s been a commitment for her to go to Sochi, and at the same time you’ve got to commit to the same thing. The guide-to-athlete thing is a relationship that takes time to build and work out the needs of the athlete and the wants of the athlete. Beyond Sochi, don’t know. We’ll see.

A compilation of brief news reports for Wednesday, March 7, 2007.

The European Union has banned the 35 planes in the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) 45 aircraft fleet from flying in EU airspace. The reason provided by EU was that these plans do not fulfill the safety requirement for international planes and thus were banned. PIA has redeployed its Boeing 777 jets from US to EU flights to facilitate passengers in Europe. Flights PK 782 and PK 790 are still running on time from Toronto in Canada.

Sources

• “EU bans old PIA planes” — Gulf Daily News, March 6, 2007
• “EU imposes ban on all but seven PIA planes” — Pakistan Dawn, March 6, 2007

The Oklahoma Senate approved a bill introduced by lawmaker Patrick Anderson of Enid that enables police to seize vehicles when drivers fail to produce proof of insurance. The bill was tacked onto a measure to prohibit inserting microchips into people without their permission. 91,000 drivers have been ticketed for lack of insurance in Oklahoma to date.

Sources

• RON JENKINS, Associated Press. “Senators approve bill to allow vehicles to be seized” — Bartlesville Examiner Enterprise, March 6, 2007
• Associated Press. “Senators approve bill to allow vehicles to be seized” — FOX23, March 6, 2007

The New Orleans Saints have released All-Pro wide receiver Joe Horn because of money issues. The Saints hope to draft LSU (Louisiana State University) wide receiver DeWayne Bowe in the NFL Draft to fill Horn’s place.

Sources

• BRETT MARTE,LCanadian Press. “New Orleans Saints release four-time Pro Bowl wide receiver Joe Horn” — CBC News, March 1, 2007
• “Saints release Horn from his contract” — The News-Star, March 1, 2007

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Wikinews has learned at least six of the United Kingdom’s main Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have implemented monitoring and filtering mechanisms that are causing major problems for UK contributors on websites operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, in addition to 1,200 other websites. The filters appear to be applied because Wikimedia sites are hosting a Scorpions album cover which some call child pornography. Scorpions are a German hard rock band who have used several controversial album covers and are perhaps best known for the song Rock You Like a Hurricane.

The measures applied redirect traffic for a significant portion of the UK’s Internet population through six servers which can log and filter the content available to the end user. A serious side-effect of this is the inability of administrators on Wikimedia sites to block vandals, and other troublemakers, without potentially impacting hundreds of thousands of innocent UK contributors who work on WMF sites in good faith.

The filtering is in response to the Internet Watch Foundation‘s list of websites that host content reported to contain inappropriate images of naked children. The IWF considers those images child pornography. However, in the United States, where the websites of the Wikimedia Foundation are hosted, it is not considered obscene under the criteria of the Miller test, which requires that an obscene work lack “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value” – as album art is used to “brand” the album, it is considered to be artistic.

Contributors or individuals attempting to view an affected image or file, depending on their ISP, may get a warning saying, “we have blocked this page because, according to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), it contains indecent images of children or pointers to them; you could be breaking UK law if you viewed the page.” Other ISPs provide blank pages, 404 errors, or other means of blocking the content. Due to a configuration mistake at one Internet service provider, some users have reported being totally unable to access Wikimedia sites to the Wikipedia technical help desk.

“The Protection of Children Act 1978 as amended in the Sexual Offences Act 2003, makes it an offence to take, make, permit to be taken, distribute, show, possess with intent to distribute, and advertise indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children under the age of eighteen. The ‘making’ of such images includes downloading, that is, making a copy of a child sexual abuse image on a computer, so, in the UK, accessing such content online is a serious criminal offence,” says the IWF on their website in an article updated on November 28. The IWF say there are at least 800 to 1,200 websites on the list of those who host or contain offensive material. The list is not public and the IWF never notified Wikimedia Foundation about the blocking of Wikipedia content. The affected page does not display any message informing the user about blocked content on most ISPs, instead, a technical error message is shown.

However, Demon Internet redirects users to a block message on the IWF’s site explaining that the page was blocked as the organization suspects child porn or links to it to be present. The IWF states that, “we do not notify site owners that their websites are on our list.”

The concern for Wikimedia is for some images like an album cover from a 1976 record of the Scorpions titled Virgin Killer. It displays an underage girl, posing nude, with a lens crack crossing over her genitals, but nothing blocking out her breasts. The girl appears to be around ten years old. In the U.S., the band later replaced the image with one of the group. The cover was uploaded to Wikipedia in 2006, but Wikinews learned that on May 9, 2008 at (21:17 UTC), despite a result of strong consensus to ‘keep’ in a deletion request, the image was deleted, however for a different reason. It was deleted due to a claim by an administrator that it violated Wikipedia’s policy for dealing with copyrighted images, which require that any images used under the doctrine of fair use must alongside other criteria, “significantly increase readers’ understanding of the topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding”, with the administrator claiming that the article “lacked meaningful discussion” of the album art. This result was overturned using the deletion review process. Earlier, on December 6, the image was put back up for a deletion request, but it was later closed as Wikimedia “does not censor”.

Another image that is questionable could be a screenshot from the 1938 film Child Bride. Its goal was to bring to light the attempts at banning child marriages. In the article on Wikipedia, a screenshot appears of then 12-year-old Shirley Mills partially naked after skinny dipping. In the photo, at least one of her breasts can be seen.

Other albums featuring nudity below the age of sixteen have previously caused controversy; Blind Faith attracted criticism as did Houses of the Holy, and Nirvana’s Nevermind.

Multiple companies have gone public stating that they implement the recommendations of the Internet Watch Foundation. Not all of these are known to have implemented measures against Wikimedia sites; the major UK ISPs thought to have affected Wikimedia sites are Telefonica O2/Be Unlimited, Virgin Media, Easynet, Plusnet, Demon, and Opal Telecommunications (TalkTalk).

Wikinews has contacted Wikimedia’s legal counsel, Mike Godwin and the IWF for a statement, but neither have replied as of this time.

Monday, August 14, 2006

Buffalo, New York —The preliminary hearing for a lawsuit filed against the Elmwood Village Hotel proposal in Buffalo, New York as well as the City of Buffalo has been postponed indefinitely and will take place “as needed” pending the resubmission of the proposal by Savarino Construction also of Buffalo. A request was made to New York State Supreme court Judge Justice Rose Sconiers, the judge to preside over the case, to discuss a “timetable” for resubmission, but the court “decided not to,” said attorney Arthur Giacalone who represents the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The hotel would require the demolition of at least five properties, 1109-1121 Elmwood and would cause the closure of several businesses. Already, two businesses, Skunk Tail Glass and Six Nations Native American Gift Shop have relocated, outside the Elmwood Strip. Don apparel, H.O.D. Tattoo and Mondo Video still remain on Elmwood; however, Mondo Video is planning on moving to a new location. The hotel will be 72 rooms and will cost at least 7 million dollars to build. Wyndham Hotels is expected to be the owner/operator of the hotel. The properites are currently owned by Hans Mobius. Two other properties, 605 and 607 Forest might also be part of the proposal. 605 Forest is owned by Pano Georgiadis, owner of Pano’s Restaurant on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. 607 Forest is owned by Mobius.

“There’s no new [court] date. The next appearance will be as needed,” said Giacalone.

The proposal was withdrawn by Savarino on July 13, 2006 to undergo “a do-over” and according to the Buffalo News, “shed the lawsuits” against the proposal; however, so far the proposal has “not yet” been resubmitted, but could be in about a “week.”

“With Council being out of session we have a bit of time [before resubmitting]. [We will] Probably resubmit] in a week or so,” said Sam Savarino, CEO of Savarino Construction.

“We welcome some discourse on this project and while we realize that, in all likelihood, we will not make everybody happy, we hope we can develop a consensus that what we provide on that corner will be something that is an enhancement to the neighborhood and the community. Better to have that decided (again?) in a public forum and through the approval process than through a debate over points of law in a courtroom,” added Savarino.

Despite the withdraw of the proposal, Giacalone states that the lawsuit his clients filed is still in effect due to the re-zoning of the properties, which he says are still in place and that he is “frustrated” that his client’s “day in court” has been delayed continuously by Savarino and the city.

Savarino believes that the re-zoning of the properties are “not in effect” because the proposal was withdrawn. He also stated that he is “unsure” on a decision to request the rezoning again because the “city suggested” the rezoning “last time.”

“We have pulled the request [proposal] so I would suppose it [the rezoning] is not in effect. We are as of yet unsure of whether or not to request rezoning of all the parcels. We are communicating with the City on this. You may recall that the City suggested this to us last time. We want to make sure we are doing the correct thing – and the proper thing. I am not sure whether I have a clear indication of that at this juncture,” said Savarino.

Savarino was asked if the proposal was going to be resubmitted or not, but did not answer the question.

Giacalone states that there may be several resons as to why “a new application has not been filed. Is Savarino having a hard time coming to an agreement with Mobius? Has Wyndham Hotels backed out? Is Savarino negotiating with Pano to buy the [605] Forest Avenue property?”

Buffalo’s Common Council is scheduled to meet on September 9, 2006 after Summer recess.

Thursday, June 30, 2005

6,000 residents of Lismore in NSW have been told to evacuate their homes.

A couple is missing on the Gold Coast in Queensland. State Emergency Services (SES) workers are currently preparing to evacuate a number of nursing homes in the suburbs of Southport and Burleigh.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) have said that South East Queensland has recorded rainfalls of 368mm in the last 24 hours and that the Gold Coast suburb of Coolangatta has been averaging 80mm per hour for at least two hours. The Coolangatta airport was closed due to flooding.

Further south the city of Lismore has been inundated. A recently constructed levy has held back the waters of the Wilson river, protecting the town’s central business district.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Nine firefighters were killed on Monday while battling a massive fire at a furniture warehouse in Charleston, South Carolina.

Firefighters were called to the scene of a massive blaze at the Sofa Super Store in Charleston, S.C. at around 6:30 p.m. EST. At around 7 p.m., nine firefighters were sent inside the inferno to rescue people who were trapped inside the building. They rescued two before the ceiling collapsed on top of them. All nine firefighters who were inside the warehouse died. They are:

• Capt. William Hutchinson, 48
• Capt. Mike Benke, 49
• Capt. Louis Mulkey, 34
• FF Mark Kelsey, 40
• FF Bradford Baity, 37
• FF Michael French, 27
• FF James “Earl” Drayton, 56
• FF Brandon Thompson, 27
• FF Melven Champaign, 46

The disaster recalls Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse fire that killed six firefighters on Dec. 3, 1999, in Worcester, Massachusetts. The chief of the Worcester Fire Department flew down to South Carolina for the memorial service.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Eight people have been killed, including the two suicide bombers, and many more injured in two explosions at around 7.50 am local time in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. Reports from local news cite a Canadian, an American, and a Swedish citizen as being among the dead. Most of the wounded have been taken to local hospitals for treatment.

File:JW Marriott Hotel-Jakarta.JPG

The explosions were at two luxury hotels, the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton, popular with foreign businessmen in the business district and are reported to have occurred in the hotel restaurants during breakfast. The two hotels are connected by an underground tunnel.

Indonesian security were at first unwilling to confirm that this was a terrorist attack, however later reports revealed the attack to be the work of two suicide bombers.

A bomber and five victims died at the Marriott. At the Ritz-Carlton one person was killed in addition to the bomber.

According to police, the dozens of wounded included citizens of Indonesia, Australia, South Korea, the Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, Japan, India, and the United States.

Several amateur videos of the site after the bombing, taken by local residents, show large amounts of smoke; the two explosions took place only two minutes apart. The near simultaneous detonation of devices at multiple targets frequented by foreigners is a hallmark of the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah.

An additional unexploded bomb was later found and defused at the Marriott.

This has been the first successful bombing in some years. The same Marriott was previously the target of a terrorist car bomb in 2003.

A third explosion took place some hours later, in Muara Angke, North Jakarta. The police have declared this event to be unrelated to the other explosions, stating it was simply a car accident that lead to a tire burst and engine short circuit.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Ian Narev, the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, this morning “unreservedly” apologised to clients who lost money in a scandal involving the bank’s financial planning services arm.

Last week, a Senate enquiry found financial advisers from the Commonwealth Bank had made high-risk investments of clients’ money without the clients’ permission, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars lost. The Senate enquiry called for a Royal Commission into the bank, and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

Mr Narev stated the bank’s performance in providing financial advice was “unacceptable”, and the bank was launching a scheme to compensate clients who lost money due to the planners’ actions.

In a statement Mr Narev said, “Poor advice provided by some of our advisers between 2003 and 2012 caused financial loss and distress and I am truly sorry for that. […] There have been changes in management, structure and culture. We have also invested in new systems, implemented new processes, enhanced adviser supervision and improved training.”

An investigation by Fairfax Media instigated the Senate inquiry into the Commonwealth Bank’s financial planning division and ASIC.

Whistleblower Jeff Morris, who reported the misconduct of the bank to ASIC six years ago, said in an article for The Sydney Morning Herald that neither the bank nor ASIC should be in control of the compensation program.