Saturday, August 26, 2006

The Green Party of Canada will elect a new leader today. The new leader will replace Jim Harris, who stepped down after holding the position since 2003.

The candidates are:

• Elizabeth May, a former Sierra Club executive director
• David Chernushenko, the party’s deputy leader
• Jim Fannon, a real estate agent from St. Catharines, Ontario who is a four-time Green candidate, and founder of Nature’s Hemp food company.

May and Chernushenko, have emerged as frontrunners of the leadership race.

“We draw pretty much equally from across the entire political spectrum,” Jim Harris told CBC News. “If you were a Progressive Conservative, as I was, where do you go? The Green party supports Kyoto. We were opposed to the war in Iraq and yet at the same time we’re fiscally responsible. This is something that’s attractive to people.”

The Green party didn’t get any member elected in the January 23 general election, but the party did get about 4.5 per cent of the vote, enough to secure $1 million a year in federal funding.Chernushenko, an environmental consultant in Ottawa, got the most votes of any Green candidate.

Most Green party members have already cast their ballots by mail for the next leader.

May says that “her national profile and background as an adviser to the environment minister during Conservative Brian Mulroney‘s government are important for getting more Canadians interested in the party”. May referred to tackling climate change, urging electoral reform and ending Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan.

“I don’t really understand yet what she stands for. It’s a lot of rhetoric,” Globe and Mail columnist Jane Taber told CTV Newsnet.

“We will elect MPs by continuing to gain the trust and confidence of Canadians, and by reaching out to Canadians outside of our traditional base of support,” said Chernushenko. Chernushenko said the party should parachute star candidates into key ridings.

“Chernushenko sees a need for government regulation but wants to involve the private sector a bit more, and that’s consistent with Jim Harris’s ideas,” said Jonathan Malloy, political science professor at Ottawa’s Carleton University.

Jim Fannon, who spoke casually to the audience about his talents as a mediator, capable of bridging political gaps between the Greens, Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats. Chernushenko says though he may not always be able to “wow” a crowd, he remains a strong communicator and team player. “I can’t do the rah-rah motivational thing, like Jim (Harris) did an incredible job at, but I can go very deep on complex issues and explain them in plain language,” he said Friday.

Josh Matlow of Earth Roots said: “Elizabeth May is someone I would want to lock myself to a tree with; David Chernushenko is someone I would want to discuss policy with; and Jim Fannon is someone I would go for a beer with”.

Political analysts consider May, a veteran envirnomental activist but also a newcomer to the party, to be the strong favourite to win the race against party stalwart Chernushenko.

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

A man named George Schultz in Parksville, British Columbia is selling the boat from old TV series Gilligan’s Island at the cost of $99,000. The cruiser, originally cost about $290,000 in the 1960s.

“There have been a couple of modifications, so it doesn’t look exactly like the original,” said Shultz, a boat broker who’s selling the 36-foot Wheeler Express Cruiser for fellow Parksdale resident Scotty Taylor. “But it’s still the original boat.”

Originally, the boat’s name was The Blue Jacket.

“Just for the show, for a stage name, it was called the S.S. Minnow,” Shultz said. The name was a reference to Newton Minnow, once chairman of the FCC.

“He just liked the boat, he wanted to restore it, it was a nice looking boat, a wooden boat, a classic and he likes classic boats,” said Shultz. “The hole in the hull was actually the least of the repairs – the interior needed a lot more work”.

Someone later stole the plaque on the boat, but the 46-year-old boat still has the round life preserver with S.S. Minnow emblazoned on it and the skipper’s chair.

Thursday, October 5, 2006

Former Sarasota dermatologist Michael Rosin is heading to prison to serve a 22-year prison sentence for defrauding Medicare by performing unnecessary surgeries on elderly Sarasota, Florida patients.

On Rosin’s 56th birthday, in front of his family, Judge William Castagna sentinced him to 22 years in federal prison. The judge also ordered Rosin to pay $3.7 Million to the government, $3.6 Million to the medicare trust fund and $48,866 to patients.

More than 865 elderly Sarasota area residents had multiple surgeries performed by Rosin when biopsies showed of no signs of cancer, or could not be read. Rosin was convicted of diagnosing cancer on almost everyone who entered his office. Biopsy slides were found to have bubble gum or foam on it instead of skin samples.

Former patients of Rosin testified at the trial that his surgeries left them disfigured. The $46,866 awarded to the patients will help to repay them for the costs associated with the unnecessary surgeries.

Throughout the trial Rosin maintained that he was innocent. He blamed his office staff for the unreadible slides and the slides with the gum and foam on them. Rosin said his biggest mistake was giving his office staff too much access to the lab.

Rosin’s attorney said that the doctor will appeal his convection. Rosin tried many different defenses including that he was not competent to assist in his own defense.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 16) negotiations continued this week in Bonn, Germany. The 4,500 attendees include government delegates from 182 governments, representatives from business and industry, environmental organizations and research institutions. COP 16 is scheduled to take place November 29 – December 10, 2010 in Cancún, Mexico.

Luis Alfonso de Alba, Mexico’s special representative for climate change, told Reuters, “Mexico does not want to raise false expectations but we certainly are ambitious”. He criticised the outgoing head of the U.N.’s climate secretariat, Yvo de Boer, and the European Union’s climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard for their scepticism.

Negotiating under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the next negotiating session is scheduled to take place in August, followed by another, final one-week intersessional meeting, before Cancún. The talks were designed to discuss issues that were not resolved at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15) in Copenhagen.

The two working groups are the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex (AWG-KP). These groups were specifically designed to negotiate a long-term response to climate change.

The AWG-LCA is the negotiating group tasked to deliver a new “COP16 negotiative text” ahead of the June negotiating session. The AWG-KP is to focus on emissions reduction commitments for the 37 industrialised countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol for the period beyond 2012.

There are also two UNFCCC standing committees meetings, the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI).

The conference is officially referred to as the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 6th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties (CMP 6) to the Kyoto Protocol.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

A US Coast Guard official said today that BP’s latest effort to plug the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been successful in slowing the amount of oil leaking from the well.

The official, Admiral Thad Allen, said that the procedure, known as a “top kill” operation, has been able to block some of the leaking oil at the source, the top of the damaged well. The operation involves pumping material into the well to plug the leak before cement is used to permanently seal the leak. Allen said the operation has “been able to force mud down and not allow any hydrocarbons to come up.”

BP hasn’t confirmed the success of the top kill operation, saying only that the “operation is proceeding as we planned it,” and that there had been no major incidents thus far. Although the possibility of failure is still present, experts say that the longer the procedure continues, the less likely it will be that anything goes wrong.

The procedure began yesterday afternoon, after diagnostics on the damaged equipment on the ocean’s surface indicated that it could withstand the added pressure of the mud being pumped into the well. Although engineers involved with the operation wore concerned that the pressure of the mud might not be able to overcome that of the oil, that has thus far not been the case.

Separately, a group of US scientists announced new estimates of how much oil was flowing from the well, ranging from 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day, far higher than BP’s original estimate of 5,000 barrels a day, a figure which BP warned was possibly inaccurate.

In a press conference Thursday afternoon, US president Barack Obama also announced new measures in response to the spill, which include:

• Suspending off-shore test drilling for six months
• Extending the moratorium on issuing drilling permits for an additional six months
• Cancelling the sale of leases for off-shore drilling.

In statements, Obama criticized the “scandalously close relationship” between government officials and oil companies in the past, saying that the Mineral Management Service, which is the agency responsible for monitoring off-shore drilling, had been corrupt for years.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

An 11-year-old boy has died after being shot in the car park of the Fir Tree pub in the Croxteth area of Liverpool, shortly after 1930 BST. An eyewitness, who had been drinking outside the pub at the time, said the boy was one of three playing football in the car park when a teenager, believed to be male, on a BMX bicycle fired three shots at the group from approximately 30 metres away, one hitting the victim in the neck. The other shots missed the boys, one hitting a car. The boy’s mother was called to the scene as people came out of the pub to help him. Other witnesses have suggested the incident may be gang-related.

A spokesman for North West Ambulance Service said: “We treated an 11-year-old with serious gunshot wounds.” He added the boy was taken to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, but police later confirmed he had died. Officers have sealed off the scene, including a neighbouring street of shops. There have currently been no arrests in connection with the shooting.

In an appeal to the local community to help catch the killer, Merseyside Police Assistant Chief Constable Simon Byrne said: “Someone out there knows who put the gun in his hand and I want your help to get the community to turn that gunman in tonight. This is quite an awful crime, quite senseless, and the community holds the clue to solving this crime quickly. You can only imagine the heartache of the family that’s been ripped apart.”

Local councillor Rose Bailey, who lives nearby, also appealed for people with information to come forward, saying: “It sends shockwaves through the community of Croxteth and really it must be devastating. To think your young son is out playing football and then to get a call to say he’s been shot, I really don’t know as a parent how you would handle that.”

The area around the pub was made a “designated area” by police last year, meaning officers could disperse groups and move people away from the area.

The incident is another in a growing list of shootings of minors, many gang-related, in the UK’s major cities in 2007.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

The upcoming 2006 Mississauga municipal election, to be held November 13, features an array of candidates looking to represent their wards in city council.

Wikinews contributor Nicholas Moreau has contacted as many candidates as possible, including Sean Semper-Whyte, asking them to answer common questions sent in an email. There is no incumbent in the ward; also competing for the position are Matanat Khan, Olive Rose Steele, Terry Pierce, Jr., Ron Starr, and former MP Carolyn Parrish.