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Wednesday, July 21, 2021

A week-long lockdown began at midnight yesterday in the City of Orange, Blayney Shire, and Cabonne Shire local government areas in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, after a local resident was infected with COVID-19 by a truck driver at the Nestlé Purina PetCare food factory in Blayney, which the driver had visited daily from July 13 to 16.

The decision to go into lockdown follows what ABC News described as a “crisis cabinet meeting” of the New South Wales government. Under the new regulations, residents of the three areas will only be permitted to leave their homes for “essential” reasons. Shops, schools, and construction are remaining open. Five sites in Orange have been listed as exposure venues, and people who visited one or more are advised by NSW Health to get tested for the coronavirus and to self-isolate for two weeks.

A lockdown in the Greater Sydney area, including the Blue Mountains, Wollongong, Shellharbour, and Central Coast, has been ongoing since June 26 due to an outbreak of the Delta variant of COVID-19. New South Wales yesterday recorded 78 new cases of COVID-19. The Western NSW Local Health District has put hospitals on red alert, limiting visits.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

The British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne delivered the budget today, an annually-held audit of the country’s finances deciding how taxpayers’ money should be spent. He set out plans to boost the housing market in his fourth budget, as well as stating the economy will grow by 0.6% — half his prediction four months ago.

George Osborne revealed plans to improve the housing market, including a “Help to Buy” shared equity scheme which would offer buyers who can place a 5% deposit on a new house, a 20% loan to buy it. He said: “This is a budget for those who aspire to own their own home”. He also offered a new Mortgage Guarantee, created in conjunction with mortgage lenders — the scheme would allow them to offer loans to homeowners without the need for a large deposit and offer guarantees to support up to £130bn of lending for three years beginning in 2014.

As a measure to attract investment to the British economy, he announced to reduce corporation tax from 21% to 20% taking effect from April 2015. The rate of corporation tax has fallen from 28% in 2010 to the current level of 21%. The United Kingdom is to have lower rates of corporation tax than the USA at 40%, France at 33%, and Germany at 29%.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) stated the government debt reduction programme to reduce the budget deficit will miss its targets. The government has forecast the total public sector debt will begin to fall by the financial year 2015/2016, while OBR says national debt will reach a high of 85.6% of GDP, £1.58 trillion, in 2016/17. Osborne defended the government efforts to reduce the deficit and said: “Our judgement has since been supported by the IMF, the OECD and the Governor of the Bank of England.”

In response to the Budget speech, the Leader of the Opposition Ed Miliband said: “At the worst possible time for the country. It’s a downgraded budget from a downgraded Chancellor […] Debt is higher in every year of this Parliament than he forecast at the last Budget. He is going to borrow £200 billion more than he planned.”

The Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Ed Balls said to The Independent, “They are borrowing £245bn more in this Parliament, we said all along …said this two years ago, if they had moved more quickly with a sensible, targeted package of measures to kick-start the economy, which would have meant at that time more borrowing for a VAT [Value Added Tax] cut to bring forward housing investment, then we would have got the economy growing and the deficit coming down.”

The Business Secretary Vince Cable told the BBC in an interview, the “age of austerity” would probably end within the current decade, but made no more definite forecast.

The head of the British Federation of Small Businesses, John Walker, said: “The Budget opens the door for small businesses to grow and create jobs. The Chancellor has pulled out all the stops with a wide ranging package of measures to support small business. […] [W]e are pleased to see the scrapping of the 3p fuel duty due in September”.

Len McCluskey, the General Secretary of Unite the Union, criticized the budget for not helping working families. He said: “This is a Budget for the few by the few that attacks the many. Millionaires are days away from getting a £40,000 tax cut from the Tories, but George Osborne is using the budget to attack hard-working public sector workers. The worst chancellor in British history has gone further by giving big business another tax cut while staff caring for the sick get pay cuts. […] [H]e should have raised the national minimum wage by £1 and drop the senseless plan to give millionaires a tax break in a few days’ time”.

Tuesday, January 3, 2006

Two activists convicted for painting the words “NO WAR” in five-metre-high red letters on the highest sail of Sydney Opera House in March 2003, are facing court action again to prevent them from auctioning the equipment used to paint the controversial sign.

Dr Will Saunders and David Burgess were sentenced to nine months periodic detention and ordered to pay the Opera House Trust $151,000 for malicious damage to the building on March 18, 2003.

The pair spent six months in jail for painting the slogan on one of the sails of the Opera House on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. The protesters say they wish to auction the equipment for humanitarian causes in Iraq.

Police confiscated the paint can and two brushes used in the incident and have now applied for a court order to have the can and brushes destroyed. They are saying such an auction would contravene proceeds of crime laws.

Saunders said they wanted to auction the can and send the proceeds to humanitarian causes in Iraq. According to The Australian newspaper, Mr Saunders said the auction could be conducted by a registered charity to raise money for the Mother and Child Hospital in Basra.

He said the can should also be preserved as an important piece of Sydney history.

“We want to give the surplus money that we’ve raised, and anything extra we can make from an auction – not only the paint pot … I think we can raise many many thousands of dollars,” he said. “We’d be happy to come to any reasonable arrangement with the police about how this auction takes place … it’s just mean beyond belief, petty-minded just to destroy it.”

The matter will go before a Sydney court on January 16.

Meanwhile, the world-famous Sydney Opera House is one of 21 international landmarks short-listed to become the new Seven Wonders of the World. The list includes modern landmarks such as Paris’ Eiffel Tower and older candidates like the Colosseum in Rome and China’s Great Wall.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

A lahar at New Zealand’s Mount Ruapehu is all but over, without causing anywhere the level of havoc for which authorities were prepared.

The event was first confirmed by a 3 News helicopter, and then the Department of Conservation.

The Department of Conservation had said that a “moderate lahar” was moving down the side of Mount Ruapehu.

The lahar travelled down the Whangaehu Valley, past the Tongariro catchment; and then continued on to the Tangiwai Bridge, the site of the 1953 Tangiwai disaster, which was itself caused by a lahar.

The crater lake is currently being reported by a free phone number as at a warning level of 3a. The crater lake is also being reported at a level between 5.7-6.7 metres up the Crater Lake tephra dam.

The lahar emergency plan was activated by Civil Defence. The district mayor of Ruapehu, Sue Morris, and conservation minister, Chris Carter, said that the authorities had been very quick to respond to the emergency. All three electronic surveillance technologies had their alarms activated. Mr Carter said, “The lahar travelled down the path as predicted, and the early warning response system that this government provided worked exactly as planned.”

Highways near Mount Ruapehu were closed by the Ohakune police, including the Desert Road. The roads have now been re-opened.

A lahar has been expected for a long time now, and scientists say the lahar could have been caused by, among other things, the bad weather New Zealand has been having lately.

Since 1996 the water level in the crater lake at the top of Mount Ruapehu has been rising, which created a risk of a lahar last year.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

A Pembroke Pines, Florida teenager killed himself Wednesday, November 19, while broadcasting on the live video site Justin.tv. After making suicide threats and being encouraged by Justin.tv viewers and Bodybuilding.com forum members, Abraham K. Biggs, 19, committed suicide by taking an overdose of opiates and benzodiazepine, which had been prescribed for his bipolar disorder.

Biggs first began blogging about his planned suicide 12 hours before the actual event. He died after taking pills and lying on the bed in front of the webcam. After the broadcast, viewers who apparently thought it was a hoax posted messages such as “OMG”, “LOL”, and “hahahah”.

Hours later, after being alerted by viewers who had noticed that Biggs had stopped breathing, law enforcement and paramedics arrived, discovered his body, and covered the camera. The Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office has reportedly confirmed Biggs’ death.

According to Montana Miller of the Bowling Green State University, the circumstances of this case were not shocking: “If it’s not recorded or documented, then it doesn’t even seem worthwhile. For today’s generation it might seem, ‘What’s the point of doing it if everyone isn’t going to see it?'”

Biggs’ sister Rosalind was angry that neither the website nor its viewers reacted soon enough to save him. “They got hits, they got viewers, nothing happened for hours,” she said. She described him as “very happy” and “friendly and outgoing.” “On a normal day, you couldn’t really tell that he got as low as he did.” However, he did have relationship problems with his girlfriend, according to a friend.

Mental health professionals have warned about the possibility that other mentally troubled people would copy his actions. According to Dr. David Shaffer of Columbia University, “Any video showing it as heroic or romantic or glamorous could reduce the anxiety people might feel about suicide. It becomes a respectable behavior and lowers the threshold of suicide.” He and other psychiatrists recommend that potentially suicidal teens talk to others and “tell what’s going on.”

Monday, September 7, 2015

The US economy added 173,000 jobs in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday. The unemployment rate fell from 5.3 to 5.1 percent, the lowest since April 2008.

Although August job gains were lower than most economists forecast, job growth numbers for June and July were revised upwards by a combined 44,000. Average job gains over the past three months stand at 221,000, compared to March-May’s 189,000 monthly average. Over the past twelve months, job growth has averaged 247,000 per month.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.3 percent, or 8 cents, marking the largest increase in earnings in seven months. Hourly earnings had risen by 6 cents in July. Wages have risen by 2.2 percent over the past year.

Job growth in August was primarily concentrated in the health care and social assistance, financial activities, and professional and business services sectors. Those three areas of the economy added a combined 108,000 jobs. Food service and drinking places employment increased by 26,000 over the month, and other economic sectors saw employment hold steady. Manufacturing, on the other hand, saw employment decline by 17,000 in August. A stronger dollar and worldwide economic weakness make US exports less desirable, leading to a flattening in manufacturing employment so far this year after steadily rising in the early years of the US economic recovery.

The solid overall job gains led analysts to slightly raise expectations for a decision by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this month. Investors raised the likelihood of a September rate increase from 26 percent before the jobs report to 30 percent, and stocks dropped by over one percent on Friday. “The payrolls data is certainly good enough to allow for a Fed rate hike in September,” said Deutsche Bank’s head of currency strategy, Alan Ruskin. “The big question is still whether financial market volatility will scupper the plans.”

“This is the first time the market has looked at a Fed meeting and really has no idea what the Fed is going to do,” said Mark Kepner, a New Jersey equity trader with Themis Trading. “Right now you’re looking at the overall uncertainty and that’s what’s hanging on the market. I don’t think this number in and of itself changes how somebody’s going to vote.”

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Bindeez beads, a children’s toy from Australia and manufactured by Moose Enterprise in Hong Kong, is being pulled off toy store shelves in the United Kingdom after traces of an illegal drug, which is converted into gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) when ingested, was found inside the toy. At least 20 million toys are affected.

So far at least three children from the U.K. and at least two from Auckland, New Zealand have fallen seriously ill and are currently receiving medical attention. The toy is also sold in the United States as Aqua Dots, with two reports received by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) of children needing hospitalization after ingesting the beads.

“We’ve asked all our customers to take them off the shelf while we retest everything to make sure the toys comply with all regulations,” said the company in a statement, although no mandatory recall has been issued for the product. The statement also says that the plant in Hong Kong was not using a chemical mixture approved by the company.

“This substitution was not at any time approved by Moose nor was Moose made aware of any substitution by the supplier,” added the statement.

The toys were supposed to contain a non-toxic chemical known as 1,5-pentanediol, but instead 1,4-butanediol, which is mainly used in creating the illegal drug GHB, was used in the toys. When humans consume 1,4-butanediol, the body converts it into GHB and could make the individual seriously ill, causing headaches, seizures, dizziness and in some cases death. GHB is a natural chemical found in a variety of things such as beef, wine and some varieties of citrus fruits. It is also used as a pharmaceutical which is sold as Xyrem.

Recent animal research indicates that drugs are available for human use which may work as antidotes to the poison, either by hindering its conversion to GHB with 4-methylpyrazole (fomepizole, Antizol) or by blocking GHB’s effectiveness at the receptor (SCH 50911). Rodent testing has found the lethal dose of 1,4-butanediol to range from 1.4 to 2.5 grams per kilogram body weight, but an antidote can increase the lethal dose by a factor of 10.

It is not known how the chemicals got mixed up, but officials for the toy company say that they are continuing the investigation. The toy is currently banned in all of Australia, but the company says all those who bought it will be refunded their money.

“The issue of how a dangerous substance was used in these beads and not the non-toxic substance … that is going to take us a few more days to uncover,” said Australia’s Fair Trade Minister, Linda Burney in a statement to the press.

The toy was recently named Australia’s number one toy for 2007.