G20 Summit plans to inject US$5tn into economy before 2011

Friday, April 3, 2009

The G20 Summit held in London, England concluded Thursday with an injection into the economy of US$5 trillion by the end of 2010.

Global trade would be supported by $250 billion (169.5 billion pounds). “We are going to act decisively to kickstart international trade. We will ensure availability of at least $250 billion over the next two years,” said Gordon Brown Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

The International Monetary Fund IMF will have access to $750bn in resources of which $250bn will support special drawing rights.

Developing countries received $100bn which will be dispensed via Multilateral development banks. Towards this end, the IMF will sell off gold reserves.

China will support the IMF fund by $40bn, the European Union by $100bn, and Japan by $100bn.

There will be increased regulation on banking and credit ratings agencies. There was a commitment to clamp down on hedge funds, tax havens and toxic assets. To restore consumer confidence in the financial sector, a new Financial Stability Board will be initiated internationally. There would be new policies implemented to control pay and bonuses paid to the heads of banks and corporations.

The G20 leaders were adverse to protectionism and rallied to support international trade and investment.

The Leaders’ statement said, “We reaffirm the commitment made in Washington: to refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and services, imposing new export restrictions, or implementing World Trade Organization (WTO) inconsistent measures to stimulate exports.”

Eoin O’Malley, senior adviser on international trade at BusinessEurope, said “The measure also needs to be part of wider package to avoid protectionism and conclude the Doha round which will stimulate trade growth. The key point now is to move forward with Doha. The key now is implementation. G20 governments must act quickly to provide this finance to companies that need it urgently.”

Monday, June 14, 2021

Arthur Oliver Kostendt, a candidate running in the mayoral election of the US city of Cleveland, Ohio set to take place November 2, discussed his campaign and policies with Wikinews this spring.

According to Cleveland Scene, 29-year-old Kostendt is a member of the Cuyahoga County, Ohio Republican Party but has referred to his campaign as “casual”. According to his web site’s personal biography, he was a cadet for the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), scout platoon leader for the 2nd Squadron of the 107th Cavalry Regiment of the Ohio Army National Guard and logistics officer for the 1st Battalion of the 145th Armored Regiment. He served in Kuwait, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and assisted coalition force detachments in Southeast Asia.

Kostendt is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and summa cum laude graduate of Cleveland State University. He writes he uses an apostrophe to abbreviate his middle name as “Arthur O’Kostendt” instead of the customary period after the O to emphasise his Irish heritage.

A poll published May 5 by Baldwin Wallace University, which does not feature Mr Kostendt, has Dennis Kucinich and Basheer Jones leading in the mayoral race by 17.8 and 13.3 points, respectively, with a margin of error of up to five per cent either way. 48% of those surveyed were undecided. Incumbent mayor Frank G. Jackson, who won the 2017 Cleveland mayoral election with 59% of the vote, is eligible for a fifth term but announced on May 6 he would retire.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

U.S. science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, who was 91, died in Los Angeles on Tuesday, according to his daughter.

Bradbury’s most famous novels are The Martian Chronicles (1950) and Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and a collection of short stories The Illustrated Man (1951), but he was also known for helping write the script for John Huston’s film adaptation of Moby Dick (1956), his works for the televised anthologies The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents and hosting a similar TV show later, The Ray Bradbury Theater, which included episodes based on his work.

In an interview, Bradbury said that he was “that special freak, the man with the child inside who remembers all.”

He started as a short story writer for pulp magazines like many science fiction and fantasy writers in this period, and eventually compiled his first book: Dark Carnival (1947), a short story collection. He wrote his two most famous novels at the beginning of the 1950s. A book editor suggested he use his stories about Martians to create a unified work in book form, and Bradbury turned the idea into his Martian Chronicles. He said he churned out Fahrenheit 451 on a typewriter that he rented at the library for a dime every half hour at a total cost of US $9.80, which meant that it would have taken him exactly 49 hours to write the classic.

His book Fahrenheit 451 cut to the heart of book banning and burning in the twentieth century as it imagined a future in which books were outlawed and minds were controlled by the state through a TV-and-Internet-like technology. French director François Truffaut adapted Fahrenheit 451 into a 1966 New Wave film of the same name and in English, which starred Austrian actor Oskar Werner as the fireman Guy Montag and British actress Julie Christie as Clarisse. The BBC dramatized the same book in 1982. Fahrenheit 451 was even adapted to an off-Broadway play. Bradbury said he did not like the similarity of Michael Moore’s title for the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, a film critical of the George W. Bush administration, to his novel about book burning.

The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man have been a staple of reading in U.S. education. In an interview with Fox News in 2004, Bradbury talked about changes in reading that occurred in education since his generation of science fiction started their careers: “When I started writing that book [The Martian Chronicles] 53 years ago, science fiction was not being taught in the schools. Now every school in the country has a course in science fiction. So we have more power, more influence, more imagination than ever before. Millions of students now, in all the schools of America, are reading science fiction and especially, thank God, The Martian Chronicles.”

The name of his play Dandelion Wine was used as an honor when it was used to name a crater on the moon. An asteroid, known as 9766 Bradbury, was named after him. At the turn of the century, his body of work was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Award committee in 2000, U.S. National Medal of Arts in 2004, and later a Pulitzer Prize citation in 2007.

The author’s grandson Danny Karapetian said, “His legacy lives on in his monumental body of books, film, television and theatre, but more importantly, in the minds and hearts of anyone who read him, because to read him was to know him. He was the biggest kid I know.”

Saturday, April 9, 2005

The Toronto Transit Commission is expected to strike Monday. The TTC workers union, the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113, rejected a deal offered by TTC management. They last went on strike in 1999. The average daily ridership exceeds 1.3 million passengers.

The city of Toronto has prepared to help deal with the forecasted traffic congestion by opening up free parking for car-pools at 14 city-owned community centres, banning parking on some city streets, and opening up some bus-only lanes to car-pools.

The initial deal, which was rejected, offered a 2% wage increase over five years. With a huge turnout the union-members voted against accepting the offer with a 99% majority according to a press release by the union. The union rejected the latest offer Friday reported to be a three-year contract with raises of 2.75 percent in the first year, three percent in the second and 3.25 percent in the third.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Rogers Cadenhead, the American owner of BenedictXVI.com, has made a few requests in his blog. Mr. Cadenhead registered the valuable domain on April 1 along with ClementXV.com, InnocentXIV.com, LeoXIV.com, PaulVII.com and PiusXIII.com; all in anticipation of the recent Papal conclave 2005.

After Cardinal Ratzinger’s election as Pope Benedict XVI, international media swooped on the domain speculating that it may be owned by a pornographer or casino company. However amid the wild speculation, Mr. Cadenhead dismissed these and promised not to sell the domain to any such enterprises.

However today in a humorous manner the prolific computer guide writer posted on his blog a few requests, namely:

1. Three days, two nights at the Vatican hotel they built for the conclave
2. One of those hats
3. Complete absolution, no questions asked, for the third week of March 1987
4. A back-cover blurb from the Pope for the next edition of Movable Type 3 Bible Desktop Edition. But only if he uses the book to create his own weblog, and
5. World peace.

However he was keen to stress that the requests are not demands and the whole thing was written in a witty humorous manner.

Saturday, April 30, 2005

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) has announced a recall of foods containing banned dyes which increase the risk of cancer. The food products were sold at the Tesco, Waitrose, and Somerfield supermarkets.

A Bristol company called “Barts Spices” found the illegal Para Red substance in their Barts Ground Paprika, which was sold in 48g and 46g jars with a “Co-op” label. The batch codes on the affected products are 5032 and 5089 (expiration Dec 2007), and 5075 (expiration February 2007).

Tesco also found that their 130g package of BBQ rice cakes (expiration November and December 2005) contained both Para Red and Sudan I.

“It would be very prudent to assume that it could be a genotoxic carcinogen,” FSA scientific advisers told reporters.

“As a company committed to supplying only the very finest quality food ingredients, we took the immediate decision to withdraw our ground paprika spice from all outlets selling the product and advertised a product recall in the national press,” a Barts Spices spokesman said in a statement.

Sudan I is only authorized for industrial use to colorize petroleum products, such as shoe polish. Para Red and Sudan I are banned under the British Colours in Food Regulations of 1995.

Britain last went through a major food recall in February, when Worcester Sauce was found to contain chili powder dyed with Sudan 1.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

United States presidential candidate John McCain announced today that he is suspending his campaign and sought to postpone a scheduled debate with his opponent, Barack Obama, to focus on the country’s financial crisis and says that Obama should also suspend his campaign.

McCain said he would be asking president George W. Bush to call a meeting for members of Congress in order to support Bush’s controversial $700 billion bailout plan, but also said that there is no consensus for the proposal and it will not pass in its current form.

He called the crisis “historic,” stressing the need for legislation and warning of “devastating consequences”.

“I am calling on the president to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Senator Obama and myself. It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem. It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the administration’s proposal and I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands. We are running out of time,” said McCain during a press conference.

Early this morning, Obama had called McCain and asked for the two to put aside partisanship and focus on the economic troubles. The two agreed to issue a joint statement supporting an economic fix, just minutes before McCain made his announcement. Bush is scheduled to speak to the people of the U.S. in a televised speech at 9:01 PM EDT tonight.

Obama responded to McCain’s speech minutes later, confirming that he would still attend the debate. He expressed a desire for fairness to taxpayers and an objection to rewarding those responsible for the financial crisis. Both candidates have stated that they intend to put politics aside to work on the financial crisis. Obama said, a president “is going to have to deal with more than one thing at a time.”

The proposal comes in the wake of Congressional hearings where US Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have urged support of the measures proposed by the administration. Despite such appeals, both McCain and Obama have expressed skepticism over the proposed bailout, and the U.S. Congress has shown a noted concern that the measure may not benefit ordinary home owners as well as those on Wall Street.