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Friday, May 15, 2009

American automobile manufacturer General Motors (GM) announced plans Friday to shut down about 1,100 of its dealerships, in an effort to evade bankruptcy and lower its expenditures.

GM’s move comes a day after Chrysler, another U.S. car maker, released a list of 789 dealerships that it was closing. Unlike Chrylser, GM will not publicly announce the dealerships that it intends to shut down. Instead, dealerships whose franchises won’t be renewed after October of next year will receive a private letter telling them of the decision.

At the moment, GM has 6,246 dealers in the U.S. It intends to reduce that number to 3,605 by the end of 2010. GM said the dealerships that were to be closed are “underperforming and very small sales volume U.S. dealers.”

“They’re dealerships that are in most cases hurting, losing money, and in danger of going out of business anyway,” said GM’s sales, service, and marketing vice president in a telephone conference. “It’s a move that people could argue should have been taken years ago but this leadership team had no choice but to do it today.”

The dealers that are to be closed represent 18% of the firm’s dealership network, but only 7% of GM’s 2008 revenue.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

A suicide bomber detonated himself in a crowded Baghdad restaurant Thursday morning at approximately 9:30 local time (0630 GMT). 35 were reportedly killed and 25 wounded in the blast. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The restaurant was frequented by US-backed Iraqi security forces, often the target of Sunni Arab rebels and Islamist Al-Qaeda groups. A police officer said that at least four Iraqi police patrols were in the restaurant at the time of the bombing.

The bombing was one of the biggest attacks in Baghdad in recent months. A statement on an Islamist website used by Al-Qaeda said that the attack was a part of an Al-Qaeda campaign to counter recent raids by US and Iraqi forces on suspected militant strongholds near the Syrian border.

The attack came just a day after the bombing of hotels in Amman, Jordan, attacks also claimed by Al-Qaeda.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Sunday, a fire rushed through seven businesses at the Whitestone Shopping Center in Whitestone, Queens, New York, near the Cross Island Parkway in New York City.

The fire started at around 1:00 AM EST (UTC-5) on November 2, 2008 in a diner known as Lollipops. According to local sources, Lollipops was a popular restaurant in the area. The fire spread through the stores, up an awning and continued all the way to a corner of the shopping center. In the end, seven businesses were destroyed, including two banks, two restaurants and a GNC Nutrition Center. It took dozens of firefighters to put out the large blaze.

According to WCBS-TV, with his diner Lollipops destroyed, the owner was too upset to comment.

Nearby Chinese restaurant, King’s Chef, was also damaged. “I cannot open because of whatever rules – tomorrow’s Monday, Tuesday is a holiday,” the owner, Patrick Chan, told WCBS-TV. “If I cannot get them to come tomorrow, I am going to lose big time.”

Nearby residents reacted to the situation. Several residents have reported that it is a major loss to the community as they considered Lollipops to be a landmark. Several residents have reported knowing members of either the victim stores or others in the strip mall.

State Senator Frank Padavan commented on the loss of the shopping center.

“This is a calamity for many of these small businesses to be out of business, particularly in this economy,” he said.

The next day, investigators were boarding up the windows of the damaged stores. No one was hurt because all the stores were closed at the time of the blaze.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Mother’s Day was established on the second Sunday in May by Anna Jarvis after her mother passed away. Former United States President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the inaugural Mother’s Day in 1914.

“Miss Jarvis thought Mother’s Day should be a day you spend with your mother, or a day when you do something special for her like fix her dinner or repair her broken stairs,” said an archivist at Mary Baldwin College. “Mother’s Day has nothing to do with candy,” said Jarvis, “It’s really a shame to waste flowers for Mother’s Day.”

This year again, the American congress approved the observance and requested the president to call upon citizens to partake in the time honoured recognition of this tradition. “I, Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 10, 2009, as Mother’s Day. I urge all Americans to express their love, respect, and gratitude to mothers everywhere, and I call upon all citizens to observe this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.”

Tara McDonald, the mother of abducted Woodstock, Ontario eight year old, Victoria (Tori) Stafford, said “I would really hope to have my child home for Mother’s Day.” McDonald said that dealing with Tori’s absence since April 8 has resulted in “times when I sit in my house and bawl my eyes out and I curl up into a ball and I sob.”

61 year old Lynda McDade graduated Saturday from the University of Detroit along with her two daughters.

A mother under court order forbidding her access to her three children for three years was thrown in jail for approaching her child and telling him she loved him. The mother has been accused of turning the children against the father, a rich City financier who now has custody of the family’s children.

Gloria Steele, Acting Assistant Administrator for Global Health honours the 20th anniversary of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), “Women make extraordinary contributions as caregivers and caretakers, as well as breadwinners and bread-makers. By averting maternal death and disability that cost families and communities so much, we can improve the productive capacity of women in their own nations”

Nadya Suleman, known as Octomom is spending this mother’s day weekend in a California hospital undergoing uterine surgery. This operation will also make Suleman’s family complete with fourteen children as she will no longer be able to physcially conceive a child following the surgery.

Mary Ann Wright, known as “Mother Wright”, died Thursday in Oakland, California, but not before achieving renown as advocate for the poor, and feeding the hungry. She founded the Mother May Ann Wright Foundation from her modest beginnings sparing meals to others while subsisting herself on Social Security checks.

Maree Vaile is a mother of three who was humbled by New Zealand’s Mother of the Year award. Her husband and children recognised the adversity the family has overcome and wanted to show their appreciation by nominating her in the “Mums on Top” online competition.

In Taiwan, students from South Taiwan who attend University in North Taiwan could board a special train provided by the Taiwan Railway Adminsitration so they could visit their mothers on Mother’s Day. “Give your mother a hug, a big and strong hug, because love is not only a noun, it is also a verb,” President Ma Ying-jeou said, “The older mothers grow, the greater is their need to feel needed. So we should show our love for our mother.”

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

For the first time in 40 years, the Royal Mint has chosen a new set of designs for the reverse of the coins, first introduced in the Coin Design Competition 2005. The designer, Matthew Dent of Bangor, North Wales, was paid £35,000 (GBP) for his designs, which depict the Shield of the Royal Arms spread over the six denominations below £1, with the entire shield embossed on the £1 coin.

The new coins are expected to come into circulation this summer – and Mr Dent envisions a success: “I can imagine people playing with them, having them on a tabletop and enjoying them. I felt it was important to have a theme running through from one to another.” he said, referring to the puzzle-like nature of the new design, which requires the coins to be arranged in a particular way to see the Shield of the Royal Arms.

The chief executive of the Royal Mint, Andrew Stafford, has said that the obverse of the coins will still depict the portrait of the Queen, like it has since 1998. The old coins will remain legal tender until they slip out of circulation.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

David S. Touretzky, prominent free speech activist and critic of Scientology, discussed his opinions on the recent Internet backlash against the Church of Scientology in an interview with former Scientologist and Wikinews reporter Nicholas Turnbull. The recent conflict on the Internet between critics of Scientology and the Church has been spurred on in declarations by a nebulous Internet entity using the name Anonymous that the Church of Scientology “will be destroyed”. Anonymous has directed recent protests at Scientology centres across the world, which have attracted significant numbers of individuals supporting the cause. In recent e-mail correspondence with Wikinews, a representative of the Church of Scientology declared that the Church considers the activities of Anonymous to be illegal, and that Anonymous “will be handled and stopped”.

Touretzky, a research professor in artificial intelligence and computational neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University, has been a prominent critic of the Church of Scientology since mid-1995, and has been protesting against Scientology vociferously since then; he has also run websites that publish material that Scientology wishes to keep suppressed from the public eye, such as extracts from Scientology’s formerly-confidential Operating Thetan (OT) materials. Touretzky views the actions of the Church of Scientology as being “a threat to free speech”, and has endured harassment by the Church of Scientology for his activities.

The Church of Scientology continues to suffer damage to its public reputation through increased exposure on the Internet and vocal protests by Scientology critics such as Prof. Touretzky. A recent event that focused intense attention on Scientology’s totalitarian attitude was the leak of an internal Church of Scientology propaganda video to the Internet video sharing site YouTube, in which celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise spoke heavily in Scientology’s jargon and stated that that “we [Scientology] are the authorities” on resolving the difficulties of humanity. The declaration of war by Anonymous followed shortly after this leak, in the form of a video posted to the Internet.

The ongoing dispute, cast by some as Scientology versus the Internet, brought Scientology terms such as “SP” (Suppressive Person, an enemy of Scientology) and “KSW” (Keeping Scientology Working) into general usage by non-Scientologists from the late 1990s onwards; increased attention has been drawn to Scientology by the release of the Cruise video in addition to media coverage. This focus has caused an even greater propagation of these terms across the outside world, as Touretzky comments in the interview.

Wikinews asked Prof. Touretzky about the impact that the activities of Anonymous will have on Scientology, the public relations effect of the Tom Cruise video, the recent departure of individuals from the Church of Scientology’s executive management, the strategies that Anonymous will employ and Touretzky’s experiences of picketing the Church.