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Sunday, July 8, 2007

In an ongoing labor dispute from May of this year in California, United States, Teamsters Local 952, which represents the Orange County Transportation Authority‘s 1,200 coach operators, went on strike at 12:35 a.m. (0035 hrs) PDT Saturday morning after a cooling-off period declared by State Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger expired.

Sanctioned picket lines have been formed outside Authority facilities in Garden Grove, Anaheim, and Santa Ana. About 200,000 regular passengers are affected.

Major sticking points in the negotiation appear to be related to cost-of-living increases and pension funding allocations. The strike was declared after the Authority’s bargaining agent said he lacked authority to approve a union counter proposal, which he said had to be taken before the OCTA’s board of directors, who will not be available to meet until Monday the 9th at the earliest.

Friday, July 23, 2021

With five active cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19, South Australia begun a one-week lockdown on Monday. Announcing the lockdown, state Premier Steven Marshall declared “we have no alternative but to impose some fairly heavy and immediate restrictions”.

The first case out of South Australia’s active cases was presented to Modbury Hospital on Sunday night, having returned from Argentina earlier this month. The fifth, which Premier Marshall noted as “far more worrying”, visited The Greek on Halifax restaurant at the same time as someone who was later confirmed to be carrying the virus. Chief Public Health Officer for the state Nicola Spurrier said “if anyone has been at The Greek on Halifax they need to get into quarantine and get tested”.

In accordance with new regulations, there are only five reasons for South Australians to leave home: essential work, shopping for essential goods such as food, exercise, but only with people from the same household and within 2.5 kilometers (2 mi) of home, medical reasons (which includes testing and vaccination against the coronavirus, but excludes elective and cosmetic surgery), and caregiving.

Schools have closed for all but children of essential workers, with online learning having begun on Thursday. Face masks are also be mandated for those who leave home. ABC News reported that “support for businesses is expected to be announced…”, with all non-essential retail required to close under the new regulations.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

The popular social networking site Facebook agreed to purchase the Instagram photo-sharing mobile app for US$1 billion in cash and stock Monday.

The app, which can be used to apply faux-vintage filters to photographs, allows users to share photos with one another both directly and through posts to social networking sites. Instagram was founded less than two years ago by two Stanford University graduates near San Francisco, California and the purchase is one of the largest acquisitions in Facebook history following after a failed takeover bid in early 2011 which had been declined by Instagram.

Facebook, despite its prominence as the largest website for social networking in the world, has had difficulties expanding into the mobile market, particularly the realm of mobile advertising. As of yet, Facebook lacks an advertising platform for its apps and has yet to capitalize off the boom in mobile phone use that Instagram is intertwined with.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg noted the importance of the ability to post to multiple social media sites at once in a post. He wrote on his personal timeline, “We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience.” He said Facebook “plan[s] on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.”

Many other small services that Facebook has acquired, namely Gowalla, Hot Potato, and FriendFeed, were all shuttered shortly after acquisition. The co-founder of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, in a company blog post, has denied any claims that Instagram would share the fate of these past services. “It’s important to be clear that Instagram is not going away. We’ll be working with Facebook to evolve Instagram and build the network. We’ll continue to add new features to the product and find new ways to create a better mobile photos experience,” he wrote.

Many reasons have been put forth for the purchase, and Zuckerberg commented, “for years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.”

Friday, October 16, 2009

A man has been arrested and charged after the assault of British singer Leona Lewis, which occurred on Wednesday. The attacker turned out to be 29-year-old Peter Kowalczyk, who suffers from a health condition called anaemia, which causes a reduction from the normal number of red blood cells. The condition also causes a decrease in oxygen-binding ability. His parents said that it “affects his state of mind”. He had also been suffering from a series of psychological problems, of which he was getting music therapy for from the National Health Service (NHS).

It was thought that he attacked Leona Lewis out of envy because she had won the third series of The X Factor UK, whereas he was turned down from the show, according to British tabloid The Sun. On Wednesday, Leona was signing copies of her autobiography “Dreams” for attending fans in a Waterstone’s book specialist store in the Piccadilly region of London, England. Kowalczyk was believed to be waiting for five hours to get an autobiography signing. When he did attack Lewis, he was immediately wrestled to the ground by security guards at the scene, while Leona was escorted away. The attack left a large bruise on her head.

Peter has been arrested and charged with assault. He was placed into a psychiatric hospital and sectioned under the Mental Health Act 2007 on Thursday. As a result of this incident, Leona Lewis has cancelled a trip to Germany, where she would have signed more copies of her autobiography. The 24-year-old singer is now being cared for in her East London home by Jo and Maria, her parents, and is also being comforted by Lou Al-Chaama, her boyfriend. It has been reported that Kowalczyk is due to appear in a court in late October 2009.

Monday, November 2, 2020

The following is the sixth and final 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: the Free and Equal Elections Foundation holds two presidential debates, three candidates who did not participate in those debates give their final pleas to voters, and three political pundits give their predictions on the outcome of the election.