Thursday, March 8, 2007

Results are coming in for the Northern Ireland Assembly election held on Wednesday 7 March. With all first preference votes counted, both the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin have made gains: the DUP received 30.1% of first preferences, an increase of 4.4 percentage points on the 2003 election, while Sinn Féin won 26.2%, up 2.6 percentage points. This means that the two parties have gained more than half of the vote. The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) came third with 15.2%, the Ulster Unionist Party fourth with 14.9% and the Alliance Party fifth with 5.2%.

The election is a crucial step in restoring devolved government to Northern Ireland, which has been under direct rule from Westminster since October 2002, when the Assembly was suspended after allegations that an IRA spy ring was operating there. The resulting court case collapsed. Attempts to get the leading unionist and nationalist parties to resume power-sharing had failed until the St Andrews Agreement was reached in October 2006. This agreement commits Sinn Féin to accepting the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the DUP to accepting power-sharing.

All 108 seats have now been filled. The DUP are the largest party with 36 seats, followed by Sinn Féin with 28 seats. Their combined total of 64 seats gives the two parties a majority of ten in the Assembly, assuming that they are willing to work together. Among others, DUP leader Ian Paisley has been elected in North Antrim, as has Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams in West Belfast. DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson topped the poll in East Belfast, where Naomi Long of the Alliance Party was also elected. The leaders of the other two main parties were also elected: Mark Durkan of the SDLP was elected on the first count in Foyle, while Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey was elected on the third count in East Belfast. Alliance Party leader David Ford was elected in his constituency of South Antrim on the fifth count. Dawn Purvis, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), was elected on the last count in East Belfast. The Green Party won their first ever seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly, when their Northern Ireland chairperson Brian Wilson was elected on the tenth count in North Down with 2839 first preference votes.

Anna Lo of the Alliance Party has become the first candidate from an ethnic minority background to have been elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly, winning a seat in South Belfast with the fourth highest first preference vote in the constituency, 3829 votes. She said her decision to stand had been an extension of her community work, and that she wanted to give a voice to Chinese people who never felt they had any part to play in Northern Ireland politics. She also said she hoped that indigenous voters who were fed up with “tribal politics” would give her their support, and that she was determined “to be much more than a candidate for ethnic minorities”.

Counting the votes cast in the 600 polling stations continued through to Friday 9 March. Turnout was 63.5%, down 0.5 percentage points on the previous election. Assembly elections use the Single Transferable Vote (STV) method of proportional representation, with each constituency returning six MLAs.

A new power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive is to be formed by 26 March, according to the St Andrews Agreement. The election of a First Minister and Deputy First Minister requires the support of a majority of unionist MLAs and of nationalist MLAs (“parallel consent”). In practice this means that the largest unionist party and the largest nationalist party must agree to share power. If they cannot agree by the deadline the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont will be suspended again and MLAs will have their salaries and allowances stopped. Though there has been criticism of the deal reached at St Andrews by elements within both the DUP and Sinn Féin, the government in Westminster believes that these dissenters are in a minority.

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said to CNN: “I’m optimistic that we can achieve a working government on March 26, but it’s a very stark choice for them — get into power, or shut up shop”. But he also warned that “if this falls over on March 26, there is no prospect of another settlement for a very long time, maybe years”. On Friday 9 March Mr Hain began separate meetings with the leaders and deputy leaders of the DUP and Sinn Féin.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said he had “no problem” with working with the Unionists and shaking the hand of Ian Paisley: “I think it is very, very important in terms of representing a community that for a long time was marginalized and excluded. We’re about reaching out to the Unionists”.

But Ian Paisley claimed that Sinn Féin’s decision to support the police had been “qualified”, and said, “you can’t pick and choose how far you are prepared to go for peace.” He also said that Sinn Féin had to “turn from their evil ways”. To the BBC he said: “We will enter into talks tomorrow with the Secretary of State, we will be meeting the Prime Minister next week, and the hard negotiations are now going to start. Sinn Féin are not entitled to be at the table until they declare themselves for democracy. I am a democrat, I don’t speak to loyalist paramilitaries, I don’t speak to Sinn Féin”.

On Friday 9 March British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern made a joint statement. They said, “The message of the electorate is clear. After so many years of frustration and disappointment, they want Northern Ireland to move on to build a better future together through the restored institutions. Many of the practical issues which have been raised in this election campaign can and should be resolved locally.” They said that they would work closely with the Northern Irish parties to restore devolved government by the deadline of 26 March and praised the progress already made in this direction. “The people of Northern Ireland have suffered grievous pain and loss. But enormous progress has been made and there is now no good reason why we should not be able to complete this historic process. All must now take responsibility in government for building and consolidating peace, this is what the people of Northern Ireland want. They deserve no less.”

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Wednesday, March 9, 2005File:Plastic bag stock sized.jpg

They are cheap, useful, and very plentiful, and that is exactly the problem, according to researchers. A report issued on Feb. 23 by a cadre of environment and economics researchers suggested that Kenya should ban the common plastic bag that one gets at the checkout counter of grocery stores, and place a levy on other plastic bags, all to combat the country’s environmental problems stemming from the bags’ popularity.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Marty Bahamonde, the only FEMA emplyee in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina, testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, contradicts former FEMA director Michael Brown’s testimony and says Brown ignored his pleas for help.

In an August 31 Blackberry email:

“Sir, I know you know that this situation is past critical. Here are some things you might not know. Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water. Hundreds still being rescued from homes” and “medical staff at the Dome expect to run out of oxygen in about 2 hours”

In an email from one of Brown’s aids:”Please schedule Joe Scarborough this evening… Also, it is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner. Gievn[sic] that Baton Rouge is back to normal, restaurants are getting busy”

Friday, March 18, 2011

As the nuclear crisis in Japan’s crippled Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant appears to worsen, Japan’s nuclear safety agency raised their assessment of its severity from 4 to 5 on the 7-level International Nuclear Event Scale, the same rating given the 1979 Three Mile Island crisis. Japan’s Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, said bluntly that the situation at the nuclear power plant was “very grave”. Weather forecasts indicate changing winds may begin moving radiation closer to Tokyo by March 30.

Efforts thus far to cool nuclear fuel in the reactors and the spent-fuel pools has produced little if any success, contends United States government officials.

Engineers are working frantically to connect electrical power to two reactors in the plant, as well as to restart the cooling systems and prevent overheating of fuel rods. Tokyo Electric Power Co. stated that it hopes to reconnect a power line needed to restart water pumps to the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors by Saturday morning. However, a TEPCO official cautioned that if the water pumps were damaged by the tsunami, they could fail to restart.

The extent of the damage to the plant’s reactors is still unclear. Japanese officials have concentrated on cooling spent fuel rods in Reactor No. 3’s storage pool. On Friday, however, steam was seen rising from Reactor No. 2., where an explosion occurred on Tuesday. Additionally, engineers said on Thursday that the steel lining of the storage pool at Reactor No. 4 and its concrete base seemed damaged, as attempts to refill the pool with water became increasingly difficult.

In a briefing on Friday, Philippe Jamet, a commissioner at France’s nuclear regulator Autorite de Surete Nucleaire, said, “We must avoid being overly optimistic. This will likely take human intervention like going into control rooms to reconnect valves.”

Thursday, December 27, 2007

With the Climate Conference in Bali having come to a successful conclusion, Wikinews journalist Sean Heron interviewed Christoph Bals from the German NGO Germanwatch on his opinion of the outcome, and an outlook on the future negotiations. Christoph is the Senior Political Executive of Germanwatch, Co-Author of the Climate protection-Index and did lobby work on Bali.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Paramedics employed by the Ambulance Service of New South Wales in Australia marched on the New South Wales parliament today. They called for the Government to sack Ambulance Service of New South Wales CEO Greg Rochford, hire 300 additional ambulance officers and 60 patient transport officers. Paramedics gave the Government 48 hours to agree to the proposed staffing levels or face industrial action.

“We are currently at the same levels of staffing that we had in 2002 and these not withstanding, also there’s been an increase in workload of 5 per cent per year every year since then,” said Health Services Union general secretary Michael Williamson.

The union also called for chief executive Greg Roachford and other senior management to be sacked over what has been described as a culture of bullying.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Cathal Ryan, an early board member of Irish non-designated flag carrier, and son of late co-founder Tony Ryan, has died. He was 48, and had been diagnosed with cancer.

Cathal bacame one of Ryanair’s first pilots, having trained as one in the 1980s in Sri Lanka, when his father set up the airline in 1985 in trust for his three sons, of which Cathal was the eldest. He left the Far East specifically to join the airline.

In 1986 he became the head of London European Airways, a business in which Ryanair had bought an 85% stake. This position, however, quickly disappeared as the carrier became Ryanair UK and was then merged entirely with Ryanair.

Over the next decade, Cathal worked both on the executive board of the airline and as a pilot, although he resigned from the latter by 1996. He remained with Ryanir until leaving the board 2002, by which time he was a multi-millionaire due to the success of the airline.

He continued to be actively involved with business ventures, taking an active role in running his family’s stud farm, as well as being a director for Irelandia, a family-owned investment company. With Irelandia he was involved in the launches of such airlines as Tiger Airways and AeroBus.

Cathal died yesterday at his home in Celbridge, Co Kildare, in the company of his children Cillian, Claudia, Danielle and Cameron, his mother Mairead and brothers Declan and Shane.

Friends and colleagues expressed surprise at his passing, commenting that at the funeral of his father, who had also been diagnosed with cancer, ten weeks previously he had “seemed fine.” Cathal had also recently begun regular trips to Italy, where he had become interested in the performing arts.

Ray MacSharry, a long-serving Ryanair director, described Cathal as “invaluable” to the air carrier’s “continuing success”. Michael O’Leary, CEO of the company, called him “one of life’s originals”.

“He was bright, charming, witty and tremendous company,” Mr O’Leary went on. “He was also an extremely skilled pilot, having become one of the youngest ever captains on the Boeing 747 aircraft, which he flew for Air Lanka in the early 1980s. Cathal’s vision, his expertise and his dedication to aircraft safety was pivotal to the development of Ryanair, and to our 22-year safety record.

“Cathal was one of Ireland’s aviation pioneers. He was a comet who shone brightly in our lives and has passed away at a tragically early age. We will all be much the poorer for the loss of his talent, his ability and his friendship,” Mr O’Leary concluded. “His vision, his expertise and his dedication to aircraft safety was pivotal to the development of Ryanair.”

His former fiance Michelle Rocca, mother of Claudia, expressed her sadness at his passing: “He was a wonderful father to Claudia; he and I had a very good relationship over the past number of years and he will be greatly missed by all of us.”

Others described him as a “well-heeled chap”, and one of the few members of Ryanair early in the airline’s history to be able to afford expensive items, such as his luxury car and his high-quality suit. Cathal’s prosperity had often helped Ryanir through financial problems in it’s early stages.

Several colleagues recalled one famous incident where airport authorities had refused to allow an aircraft he was piloting to be refueled unless it was paid for up front due to an unpaid bill. When Cathal was informed of the issue, he produced his gold credit card to pay for the fuel.