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Thursday, July 30, 2009

Eleven of the 25 workers at the Vestas factory in Newport, Isle of Wight, England who have been carrying out a sit-in since Monday July 20 have been sacked with immediate effect.

According to one of the protesters known as “Mike”, the occupiers were given their dismissal notices concealed under slices of their evening meal of pizza. The company said that the protesters have had ample opportunity to air their point of view, and had no choice but to sack eleven of the twenty five workers that they had positively identified; and that given that the fact that the action constituted a “fundamental breach” of trust, that the eleven would not be entitled to redundancy packages. A press release from the company said that Vestas “saw no other choice than to dismiss the 11 employees, who the company has positively identified as the employees currently participating in the occupation of the factory.”

The protesters remained upbeat, vowing to continue their occupation and have called upon the UK government to save the 625 jobs and to nationalise the Danish owned factory. Occupier Ian Terry told the BBC that if the occupiers are forced out, they plan to leave the building “peacefully”.

Vestas management were dealt a setback today in ending the occupation as Newport County Court ruled that the papers accusing the occupiers of aggravate trespass and requiring they surrender the office they occupy by July 29 were improperly served. The case has been adjourned until Tuesday August 4. In court, Judge Graham White said he was “distinctly uncomfortable” with what he perceived as Vestas’ effort to “get around the rules” in retaking the factory from the occupiers.

Legal representation for the Vestas workers had been offered by Bob Crow, secretary of the RMT trade union. Crow has pledged the “full solidarity” of the RMT and seven other unions with the workers occupying the plant.

Vestas management has also been providing the occupiers with hot meals in an apparent response to Crow’s announcement, made on July 24, that the RMT was planning on airlifting food into the factory by helicopter. Crow is meeting today with Ed Miliband, the Environment Minister.

Earlier in the week, Miliband pledged £6 million in funding to an expansion of Vestas’ Isle of Wight research and development centre, which currently employs 110 workers and could, said the Minister, be expanded to employ 40 more.

Rallies continued throughout the week in support of the Vestas occupiers. Since the occupation began, the Vestas workers have received declarations of support and solidarity from a wide swathe of the British left, including but not limited to: political parties Green Party, Respect, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Alliance for Workers Liberty, and the Communist Party of Britain; the TUCG group, which brings together the BFAWU, FBU, NAPO, NUJ, PCS, POA, RMT, and URTU; and environmental groups Greenpeace, the Campaign against Climate Change, Climate Camp, and Workers’ Climate Action, who claims credit for initiating the campaign to occupy the factory. Attendees of the Big Green Gathering, a large annual environmentalist rally which was due to take place starting today but was suddenly canceled on Sunday, are being encouraged to go to the Isle of Wight and take part in support rallies for Vestas instead.

Speaking to Wikinews about the “red–green” coalition supporting the occupation, a spokesman for the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty said: “We think this struggle is important on at least three grounds — it is central to the struggle for jobs, it is central to the struggle for the environment, and it is central to the struggle for rebuilding the labour movement.”

Photographs shared with Wikinews by the occupiers show the occupiers, mostly young men, talking, carrying out everyday tasks, and keeping in touch with the outside world via mobile phones. The use of mobile telephones in the Vestas occupation has given the press remarkable access to the occupiers and provided an effective platform for relaying their demands and feelings to the media. In contrast, Vestas’s designated media contact for the United Kingdom is on vacation. Attempts to reach Vestas Newport factory manager Patrick Weir, whom a Vestas representative at the company’s Danish headquarters stated was handling press inquiries regarding the occupation, received no reply.

Vestas plans to close the factory on July 31, citing the difficulties of obtaining planning permission for wind farms in the United Kingdom. All blades manufactured at Vestas’ Newport plant are sent to the United States. 1900 employees of the company in Northern Europe face job losses, 625 of them in Vestas’s plants in the south of England.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

34 accommodation units have been destroyed by fire at the Baxter Detention Centre near Pt Augusta in South Australia today. The blaze also gutted a kitchen, laundry, recreational area and officers’ station. The original blaze broke out around 4am ACST in the kitchen of the “White One” compound which houses single men. Fire units took almost three hours to put them out.

Fifty-eight detainees were evacuated from Baxter IDC. Six have been treated for smoke inhalation.

Immigration minister Amanda Vanstone says about 17 rooms have been ruined and others damaged. She says deliberate property damage will not be tolerated and the Australian Federal Police are questioning four detainees over the blazes and anyone found responsible will be charged.

“Anyone with no lawful right to be in Australia should leave irrespective of the behaviour that they’ve undertaken, but if someone with a visa or without a visa to be in Australia engages in criminal conduct that would be taken into account in terms of cancelling a visa,” she said.

The Metropolitan Fire Service (MFS) said four fires appeared to have been deliberately lit. “The first fire in the kitchen area was followed by three other separate fires within the complex,” an MFS spokesman said.

Refugee rights advocate Pamela Curr said she had concerns about the safety of detainees in the event of a fire because of the electronic doors. She said detainees at a detention centre at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport had been killed during a fire last month because authorities had been unable to manually open the electronic doors. “Thank heavens nobody seems to have been hurt today,” she said. “We’re always on the alert that Baxter is not a safe detention centre”.

Bernadette Wauchope from Rural Australians for Refugees says the destruction will continue until something is done. “They become so desperate that they attempt self-harm or attempt suicide or maybe resort to lighting fires,” she said. “After being locked up for years and years the feeling that they’re isolated and that nobody’s listening to what their stories are, often that, well it does contribute to these kinds of acts,” she said.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

What you are about to read is an American life as lived by renowned author Edmund White. His life has been a crossroads, the fulcrum of high-brow Classicism and low-brow Brett Easton Ellisism. It is not for the faint. He has been the toast of the literary elite in New York, London and Paris, befriending artistic luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Sir Ian McKellen while writing about a family where he was jealous his sister was having sex with his father as he fought off his mother’s amorous pursuit.

The fact is, Edmund White exists. His life exists. To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950’s America and that White’s work is the progeny of his intimate effort to understand his own experience.

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone understood that an interview with Edmund White, who is professor of creative writing at Princeton University, who wrote the seminal biography of Jean Genet, and who no longer can keep track of how many sex partners he has encountered, meant nothing would be off limits. Nothing was. Late in the interview they were joined by his partner Michael Caroll, who discussed White’s enduring feud with influential writer and activist Larry Kramer.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Western New York is preparing for what some forecasters are saying to be a major ice storm.

The NOAA has issued several warnings for Western New York which begin at 7:00 p.m. [EST] on Saturday and continue into Monday January 15, 2007.

A Winter Weather Advisory has been issued for tonight and Sunday Morning for the “potential of heavy amounts” of ice, sleet and snow and has the potential to become “dangerous.” The advisory is set to expire at 8:00 a.m. [EST] on Sunday morning.

“Light freezing rain and freezing drizzle is expected to begin after midnight tonight and continue into Sunday morning. Precipitation amounts are expected to be very light; however, it does not take much freezing rain to make untreated surfaces slippery,” said the advisory on the NOAA’s website.

“It [the freezing rain] is not expected to be heavy enough to cause tree or power problems,” added the statement.

On Sunday night and Monday, “a wintery mix of precipitation with the potential for heavy amounts is expected Sunday night into Monday. This event has the potential to be much more significant than the precipitation tonight and Sunday morning. Heavy accumulations of snow, sleet or freezing rain are possible, which could lead to significant travel problems and utility outages caused by downed powerlines and poles,” said a statement on the NOAA’s website.

Although warnings and watches are posted, the NOAA says that the track of the storm is still “uncertain.”

“There is still a good deal of uncertainty” as to the track of the storm, “but this storm has the potential to become dangerous,” added the statement.

The same storm has caused more than 125,000 people to lose power near St. Louis, Missouri and power officials say that they are “still losing people,” said Springfield’s City Utilities spokesman, Ern DeCamp.

At least 6 people have been killed due to the storm around the Midwest and has caused schools and flights from and to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport in Missouri and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in Texas to be cancelled. 25,000 people in Oklahoma are still without power.

An emergency proclamation has been issued by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in California after below freezing temperatures caused “conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property.”

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

A new study released by Christchurch researcher from the Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences, David Fergusson, shows that “substantional benefits” come from a circumcision, a baby boy having his foreskin removed.

Mr Fergusson said that the rate of sexually transmitted diseases is halved due to circumcision, even after accounting for the amount of sex partners, unprotected sex and their family background. “Circumcision also reduces the risk of transmitting HIV and the incidence of urinary tract infections.”

The report, which was published in the international scientific journal Pediatrics, took 25-years to complete as it followed 510 males from birth until they were 25-years-old.

“The public health issues raised by these findings clearly involve weighing the longer-term benefits of routine neonatal circumcision in terms of reducing risks of infection within the population, against the perceived costs of the procedure,” Mr Fergusson said.

However the American Academy of Pediatrics has described the current study as “complex and conflicting.” The American Academy of Pediatrics opposes the practice, which is why in the US the circumcision rate has been falling since 1999.

In New Zealand, only between ten and twenty percent of all males are circumcised, which is one of the lowest rates in the world. Circumcision is the normal practice in Samoa and Tonga and also among Jewish and Muslim men.

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians said in 2004, “There is no medical reason for routine circumcision of newborn boys.”

The current study has made some health specialists reconsider their stance on the issue. “People feel passionate on both sides, but I’m going to recommend that we take another careful look at this,” said Jay Berkelhamer, US Academy of Pediatrics president and professor of pediatrics at the University of Florida.

Edgar Schoen, who has reconsidered his stance on the issue, he said: “The academy’s opposition is irresponsible. The benefits of circumcision far outweigh risks, and doctors should be telling parents that.”

“Even if it does bring down sexually transmitted disease, cutting normal tissue of an unconsenting minor is a human rights violation,” said Marilyn Milos, from anti-circumcision group, National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC).

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Gerald Levert, R&B singer, songwriter and producer died of a heart attack around 2:30 p.m. on Friday.

Gerald Levert was the son of Eddie Levert (of the soul group The O’Jays). Levert was known for a number of top ten hits in the 1980s and 90s, particularly “Pop, Pop Goes My Mind”, “Casanova”, and ABC-123″. Levert had finished an album, which is expected to go into release in early 2007.

The memorial service for his death will be held Friday, November 17, and scheduled to honor Levert are Stevie Wonder, Johnny Gill and Angie Stone.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Recent cyber attacks in Estonia that have paralyzed the high tech country’s Web sites are a threat to national security, according to the country’s Minister of Defense. This has concerned NATO, seeing that Estonia is a member state of the organization. The attacks have subsided this week.

The Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo also mentioned that Russia may have been behind the attacks. He stated that the IP numbers in the initial attack belong to Russian government offices, but says that it’s insufficient evidence that the government is behind it. The Kremlin is dismissing the accusations, saying that its caused by hackers producing fake Kremlin IP addresses.

The cyber attacks came after Estonia removed a Soviet-era statue of a Bronze Soldier in Tallinn, which angered many Russians. Riots have left 160 injured, and 1 dead.

Both NATO and the European Union views this as an attack on one of their member states. Three hundred Estonian IT specialist worked day and night to fix the problem.

The Estonian government plans to analyze server logs and data to find out who is behind the attacks.