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Thursday, March 31, 2016

Businessman Rocky De La Fuente took some time to speak with Wikinews about his campaign for the U.S. Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

The 61-year-old De La Fuente resides in San Diego, California, grew up in Tijuana, and owns multiple businesses and properties throughout the world. Since getting his start in the automobile industry, De La Fuente has branched out into the banking and real estate markets. Despite not having held or sought political office previously, he has been involved in politics, serving as the first-ever Hispanic superdelegate to the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

De La Fuente entered the 2016 presidential race last October largely due to his dissatisfaction with Republican front-runner Donald Trump. He argues he is a more accomplished businessman than Trump, and attacks Trump as “a clown,” “a joke,” “dangerous,” and “in the same category as Hitler.” Nevertheless, De La Fuente’s business background begets comparisons with Trump. The Alaskan Midnight Sun blog described him as the Democrats’ “own Donald Trump.”

While receiving only minimal media coverage, he has campaigned actively, and according to the latest Federal Election Commission filing, loaned almost US$ 4 million of his own money to the campaign. He has qualified for 48 primary and caucus ballots, but has not yet obtained any delegates to the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Thus far, according to the count at The Green Papers, De La Fuente has received 35,406 votes, or 0.23% of the total votes cast. He leads among the many lesser-known candidates but trails both Senator Bernie Sanders who has received nearly 6.5 million votes and front-runner Hillary Clinton who has just shy of 9 million votes.

With Wikinews reporter William S. Saturn?, De La Fuente discusses his personal background, his positions on political issues, his current campaign for president, and his political future.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Over 1,600 volunteers registered to help build approximately 65,000 of the 500,000 sandbags to create dikes 20.5 feet (6.2 meters) high to protect the City of Winnipeg, Manitoba in the war against the Red River of the North flood.

700 volunteers answered at the rural municipality of St. Andrews alone. Once sandbags are filled for West St. Paul, St. Andrews, and Selkirk, then frozen culverts must be cleared.

The height of the river is expected to be Thursday, and predictions are that it will be less than Flood of the Century of 1997. There is no precipitation in the forecast, and snow in the province should be melted by the end of the week.

“The fear right now is we have to get that ice out of the river. The Amphibex [Excavators] are still working and breaking the ice apart, and everyday we buy with the warm weather and the current, it is thinning the ice down a bit, so when it does start to move, the better chance it’ll move right out into the lake,” said Paul Guyder, the emergency coordinator for the RMs of St. Andrews and St. Clements.

“I feel that we’ve done everything humanly possible to get ready,” said Gary Doer, Premier of Manitoba, “But … there are fallibilities with human behaviour. We can take every preventative measure as human beings possible and we can still get Mother Nature proving again she is superior.”

Communities with ring diking will partially or fully close their dikes at the beginning of the week. Provincial officials are considering opening the Red River Floodway gates around mid-week before ice is fully melted.

Ice jams could cause flooding within the city, however opening the gates could spare neighbourhood flooding when the river rises to the estimated 6.3 meters (20.7 feet) height. The province does have back up plans for dealing with ice jams within the city if they do occur. The unpredictability of ice jams and the ensuing water level rise may cause neighbourhood flooding. The city is raising dikes where the river has jammed with ice in the past such as on tight curves and past bridges. Likewise there are excavators and backhoes positioned at these points.

Vulnerable neighbourhoods on the river banks have been reinforced with sandbag dikes at vulnerable areas from the massive volunteer effort over the weekend. Guyader feels no more extra volunteers are needed, however volunteers are still being asked to leave their names and number in case of unpredicted need. Existing personnel will assess roads, and help with clean up.

Approximately 400 of the 800 people who evacuated the Roseau River Anishinabe First Nation have returned to their homes.

Former Premier, Dufferin Roblin, brought forward the floodway as a protection for Winnipeg residents and economy following the 1950 Red River Flood. The Red River floodway, “Duff’s Ditch” was finally finished in 1968, and its floodway gates have been opened 20 times saving Winnipeg from an estimated CA$10 billion in damages. The floodway expansion began in 2005 at a price of $665 million.

Polish and Chinese experts have come to survey the Red River Floodway, and Dennis Walaker, mayor of Fargo, North Dakota recognises the need for Red River flood defences down river. “Every town that you drive by from the Canadian line up to Winnipeg is either elevated or ring-diked,” said Walaker.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

The Large Hadron Collider, a vast scientific experiment to smash together sub-atomic particles, moved a step closer to its goal on Friday night. Physicists announced they had sent protons all the way round the 27 km ring beneath the France–Switzerland border, for the first time since a major failure 14 months ago.

The experiment, the largest of its kind in the world, was first switched on with great fanfare in September 2008, but suffered an electrical fault just nine days later. This caused a leak of ultra-cold liquid helium, resulting in severe damage. Repairs have cost approximately £24 million, on top of the £6 billion spent originally.

Particles were injected into the ring at around 1500 GMT on Friday, and just after 1930 GMT the first completed circuit was confirmed. Further testing is planned for Saturday.

“We’ve still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we’re well on the way,” stated Rolf Heuer, director-general of CERN, the European research group running the collider.

The Large Hadron Collider is designed to smash together particles at almost the speed of light, creating conditions similar to those only moments after the Big Bang. By studying these collisions, scientists hope to shed light on theories such as supersymmetry and the Higgs boson. The six physicists Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble, Higgs, Brout, and Englert who predicted this particle in 1964 were recently awarded the 2010 J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics for this work.

Barring further problems, the first collisions are scheduled to take place in January next year.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Official pressure on the Hare Krishna community near Almaty in Kazakhstan is mounting, according to Norwegian religious rights organisation Forum 18. Following on from the demolition of homes at the end of last year three more home owners have been issued with demolition notices. If the owners fail to demolish their own houses the authorities have warned they will do so themselves and charge them for the cost.

Thirteen homes owned by members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness were bulldozed last November, although other homes in the village owned by non-Hare Krishna residents were not touched. Gauhar Beyeseyeva of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry is quoted as saying (to the members of the Hare Krishna commune) “We were denied the OSCE chairmanship specifically because of you people.”

Amanbek Muhashov, the chair of the committee for religion under the justice ministry told the Kazakh daily Kazakhstanskaya Pravda that some of the group members acquired land for the settlements by giving misleading information and thus the property did not conform to local regulations. This is refuted by the members of the community.

The OSCE’s Advisory Council on Freedom of Religion or Belief examined the dispute in detail last year and concluded that “state sponsored action has been focused upon members of the Hare Krishna community in a manner that suggests they have been targeted on the basis of their religious affiliation,” and that “this raises serious issues regarding the enjoyment of the freedom of religion and belief.” The Advisory Council also stated its “willingness to meet with the Kazakh authorities in order to discuss the situation and to extend its good offices to assist in the resolution of that dispute”. The Kazakh authorities have thus far given no official answer to the Advisory Council’s 27 November 2006 offer.

A. Kravchenko, the head of the prosecutor-generals denied any “religious implications” in the legal proceedings.

On 29 January Viktor Golous, Chair of the Hare Krishna Community, was summoned to a court hearing to continue the case on the ownership of the commune’s farm. At the same time, demolition notices were served on three more Hare Krishna home owners, who were told that they must demolish their own homes within five days. According to Forum 18 no previous notices had been given to any of the three Hare Krishna targets in regards to any claims filed against them, court hearings or court rulings. Thus they were unable to file an appeal and defend their property.

Golous appeared in court on January 30th with request that that – due to the short notice given – the hearing should be adjourned at least until lawyers were able to appear. Judge Jurhan Zhailybayev accepted the application for an adjournment and told Golous that he could leave as notice of the new date of the hearing would be sent to him. However, after Golous left the court, Judge Zhailybayev ruled – with only one of the three defendants present – that the Hare Krishna-owned farm should, in fact, be confiscated.

Members of the ‘Sri Vrindavan Dharm’ community in Karasai district question who is benefiting from the confiscation of their property?

Rati Manjari of the Hare Krishnas told Forum 18 on January 20th that “by this new claim the authorities are preparing to cancel a 2005 Supreme Court decision that the Hare Krishna community are the bona fide purchaser and user of the land.” She suggested that the authorities plan – “after they win this case” – to appeal to the Supreme Court to annul the Hare Krishna community’s purchase and thus ownership of the land.

Friday, July 17, 2009Following similar threats by workers at New Fabris and Nortel, workers at JLG in Tonneins, France, threatened to blow up several platform cranes. The JLG factory announced in April 2009 that it will fire 53 of its 163 workers by the end of 2009, while the remaining 110 jobs will not be secure over the next 2 years.

JLG Tonneins was acquired in 2006 with its parent JLG Industries, a maker of aerial work platforms, by the U.S.-based Oshkosh Corporation. Despite being hugely profitable in the past, production has been much reduced since 2008 with the contraction of the construction industry and lower demand for its products. Despite excellent past results the new American management demanded sweeping cuts at the company.

In the view of locals, “the company’s actions are a disgrace given the expensive perks, such as official cars, for its corporate fat cats, compared to the sacrifice, silence, and dignity demanded by the company of those it has made redundant.”

The management offered severance pay of € 3,000 (US $4,200), however the workers demanded a severance package commensurate with “the wealth that their labor has generated.” Worker’s delegates requested a “supra-legal” payment of € 30,000, on Thursday 16 of July the management responded with a counter offer of € 16,000. On Thursday night the worker’s actions secured the € 30,000 settlement initially demanded.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

London — The Open Rights Group, a pressure group pursuing reform of intellectual property law in the United Kingdom, held its first “ORGCon” yesterday at City University London. Approximately 100 delegates took part in six hours of panel discussions and workshops on a wide range of topics in intellectual property, discussing such subjects as “How To Talk To Your MP” and “ACTA: A Shady Business”, in what ORG billed as a “crash course in digital rights” designed to inspire campaigning on intellectual property issues.

Cory Doctorow, a fiction author and digital rights activist, led the keynote panel discussion “Thriving in the Real Digital Economy”, which opened the conference. Doctorow called for a “reframing” of the digital rights slogan “information wants to be free”. “The most important thing” about digital rights, he noted, “has nothing to do with art. We are refitting the information network with lots of control.” Digital rights management (DRM) technologies, Doctorow warns, build in limitations on how consumers exchange information and “abuse the market”. John Buckman of Magnatune followed up Doctorow’s comments, noting that DRM is “unsustainable” but that the public needed to “pressure companies into” open-source solutions.

A keynote speech by James Boyle compared the current age to the age just before application of the theories of Adam Smith and other early capitalist economists began breaking down the entrenched monopolies of mercantilism. Boyle called on the audience to come up with a “jaw droppingly simple” idea for a reformed copyright system; he gave his speech in front of a projection of the twitterfall as audience members commented on his words.

Boyle, like most of the conference, took a pro-reform but anti-piracy position, saying “It is a tragedy that an entire generation has lost the notion that breaking the law is wrong”. While several members of the Pirate Party UK, wearing matching t-shirts, attended the conference and held a fringe meeting during the last session, none spoke in the keynote sessions either as panelists or in the discussions.

Among the many workshops which comprised the last three hours of the day, Open Rights Group held a session on student groups and committed itself to establishing Open Rights Group Youth societies at universities across the United Kingdom. Young activists, such as Wikipedian Jdforrester, also dominated the “Your Shout” session in which any and all delegates could give three-minute speeches on any intellectual property subject which interested them.

The organisation hopes to host a second ORGCon in 2011.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Sweden’s first royal wedding since 1976 took place Saturday when Crown Princess Victoria, 32, married her long-time boyfriend and former personal trainer, Daniel Westling, 36. The ceremony took place at Stockholm Cathedral.

Over 1,200 guests, including many rulers, politicians, royals and other dignitaries from across the world, attended the wedding, which cost an estimated 20 million Swedish kronor. Victoria wore a wedding dress with five-metre long train designed by Pär Engsheden. She wore the same crown that her mother, Queen Silvia, wore on her wedding day 34 years previously, also on June 19. Victoria’s father, King Carl XVI Gustaf, walked Victoria down the aisle, which was deemed untraditional by many. In Sweden, the bride and groom usually walk down the aisle together, emphasising the country’s views on equality. Victoria met with Daniel half-way to the altar, where they exchanged brief kisses, and, to the sounds of the wedding march, made their way to the the silver altar. She was followed by ten bridesmaids. The couple both had tears in their eyes as they said their vows, and apart from fumbling when they exchanged rings, the ceremony went smoothly.

Following the ceremony, the couple headed a fast-paced procession through central Stockholm on a horse-drawn carriage, flanked by police and security. Up to 500,000 people are thought to have lined the streets. They then boarded the Vasaorden, the same royal barge Victoria’s parents used in their wedding, and traveled through Stockholm’s waters, accompanied by flyover of 18 fighter jets near the end of the procession. A wedding banquet followed in the in the Hall of State of the Royal Palace.

Controversy has surrounded the engagement and wedding between the Crown Princess and Westling, a “commoner”. Victoria met Westling as she was recovering from bulemia in 2002. He owned a chain of gymnasiums and was brought in to help bring Victoria back to full health. Westling was raised in a middle-class family in Ockelbo, in central Sweden. His father managed a social services centre, and his mother worked in a post office. When the relationship was made public, Westling was mocked as an outsider and the king was reportedly horrified at the thought of his daughter marrying a “commoner”, even though he did so when he married Silvia. Last year, Westling underwent transplant surgery for a congenital kidney disorder. The Swedish public have been assured that he will be able to have children and that his illness will not be passed on to his offspring.

Westling underwent years of training to prepare for his new role in the royal family, including lessons in etiquette, elocution, and multi-lingual small talk; and a makeover that saw his hair being cropped short, and his plain-looking glasses and clothes being replaced by designer-wear.

Upon marrying the Crown Princess, Westling took his wife’s ducal title and is granted the style “His Royal Highness”. He is now known as HRH Prince Daniel, Duke of Västergötland. He also has his own coat-of-arms and monogram. When Victoria assumes the throne and becomes Queen, Daniel will not become King, but assume a supportive role, similar to that of Prince Phillip, the husband of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Michael Gurian, psychologist and author of “What Could He Be Thinking?“, has claimed to identify approximately one hundred structural differences between male and female brains in a recent study. Gurian comments:

“Men, because we tend to compartmentalize our communication into a smaller part of the brain, we tend to be better at getting right to the issue, the more female brain (will) gather a lot of material, gather a lot of information, feel a lot, hear a lot, sense a lot.“

One major structural difference that Gurian has made clear is that males generally have more activity in the mechanical centers of the brain, while women have more activity in centers of the brain dedicated to verbal communication and emotion. A clear example of this is the hypothetical situation of giving a child a toy. He explains it as such:

“That doll becomes life-like to that girl, but you give it to a two-year-old boy and you are more likely, not all the time, but you are more likely than not to see that boy try to take the head off the doll. He thinks spatial-mechanical. He’s using the doll as an object.“

Another expert, Dr. Marianne Legato, says it all boils down to genetics, noting that the Y chromosome (which only males carry) has “at least 21 unique genes unique to males which control many of the body’s operations down to the level of the cells.”

Gurian agrees that culture is significant in brain development, but argues that biology plays an equally important role. He makes a point of how the MRI scans show that the female corpus callosum, the center of the brain which regulates communication between the brain’s hemispheres, is larger than the male’s. On the other hand, the scans also show that information flows more freely between the hemispheres of the male brain.

The exact role that brain structure plays in behavior, however, has been an area of considerable contention in science for literally hundreds of years. Early studies in craniometry conducted by Paul Pierre Broca were used to attempt to distinguish differences between human races, though have now been dismissed as scientific racism. The nature-nurture debate has raged for centuries in a variety of forms, without yet any clear resolution as to the role in which innate biological tendencies interact with environmental conditions or willed behavior. As such, studies relating to brain structure and claims to innate behavior often generate substantial controversy.

MIT anthropologist of science Joseph Dumit’s study of brain imaging in his book Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity, noted that the apparent “transparency” of such pictures (the appearance that they can be easily interpreted by laymen, when they are often the source of ambiguity and dispute by even highly-trained neurosurgeons) has led to their proliferation as indicators of objective truth in media and in courts of law, and that such conclusions are often knowingly exaggerated by the specialists creating the images for better visual effect.

The timing of Gurian’s book comes on the heels of another controversy over gender differences sparked by comments made by Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who blamed low numbers of women in the sciences on genetic differences. Summers has been criticized by a large number of academics and scientists, as well as by many news publications, in the wake of what he was reported as saying during a conference on January 14.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

US stock markets dropped to twelve-year lows on Thursday, amidst falling confidence in the financial sector and worries over whether the US automobile manufacturer General Motors will be able to keep operating.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 4.08%, or 280.52 points, at the closing bell, reaching a level of 6595.32, a new 12-year low. The Nasdaq Composite lost 54.15 points, or 4%, to 1299.59, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 plunged by 30.27 points, or 4.25%, closing at 682.60.

Every stock in the Dow Jones, other than Wal-Mart, either lost ground or remained even, and all stocks in the S&P 500 index lost ground.

General Motors’ shares lost 15.5% after the auto firm announced that its auditors had “substantial doubt” over whether it would be able to keep operating.

Shares of financial companies were lower by nine percent, with Bank of America losing 11.7% and Citigroup falling by 9.7%.

“What’s most worrisome is that we haven’t hit the crescendo yet,” said Bill Groeneveld, the head trader for vFinance Investments. “Asset-management divisions are getting calls to just liquidate everything, and we haven’t seen the big players come back in at all.”

“This is one of the worst bear markets in the last 100 years; it started out with the credit crisis and the subprime [loans], but it is like a forest fire that has raced across the clearing and ignited other parts: Autos, auto parts, the insurance companies have been hit very hard. The credit crisis is causing an unraveling of industry after industry because the banks don’t lend,” said David Dreman, the chief investment officer of Dreman Value Management.

European markets were also lower today, with the London’s FTSE index losing 3.2% and the DAX index of Germany falling by five percent.