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Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Yesterday, in the Last 16 round of the UEFA Champions League 2015–2016, Spanish football club FC Barcelona defeated London-based club Arsenal F.C. 2–0 — Lionel Messi scoring both of those at the Emirates Stadium. Munich-based club Bayern Munich were held to a 2–2 draw against Italian club Juventus FC in the Juventus Stadium.

At London, Barcelona had a greater ball possession against The Gunners. The match saw two yellow cards. Unbeaten in their last 32 games, Barça were not able to net goals for more than an hour. Arsène Wenger’s team Arsenal held the defending champions, and it took 49 minutes for the Catalonians to have one shot on target. In the 71^st minute, Barcelona won the ball and began counter-attacking, where Messi–Suárez–Neymar, the MSN trio, broke the deadlock as the Argentine Messi scored his first goal against Czech goalkeeper Petr ?ech.

In the 83^rd minute, Mathieu Flamini who was just subbed in brought the Argentine down in the penalty area and the visitors won a penalty. Messi scored his second of the night leaving the English side facing an uphill battle. Arsenal have been eliminated in the Last 16 round five consecutive times. After the match, Wenger told BT Sport “Barcelona is a great team[…] We put a lot of energy in the game and technically we were very average.”

Barcelona in their last 33 unbeaten games have netted 100 goals. Arsenal are to play the second leg at Camp Nou on March 16.

In the other fixture of the night, between Bayern Munich and Juventus, the Germans had better ball possession. Thomas Müller and Arjen Robben put the visitors 2–0 up, netting in the 43^rd and the 55^th minute respectively. But after the hour mark, Paulo Dybala and Stefano Sturaro brought Juventus level by scoring in the 63^rdand the 76^th minutes, and the first leg finished in a 2–2 draw. The match saw four bookings, three for the visitors.

Juventus continued their unbeaten streak of now seventeen home matches in European competition since defeat in 2013 against Bayern Munich.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Friday, November 3, 2006

On November 13, Torontonians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Scarborough-Agincourt (Ward 39). Two candidates responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include Wayne Cook, Mike Del Grande (incumbent), Samuel Kung, Lushan Lu, Sunshine Smith, and John Wong.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

In a third case of staggering sums billed for “unlimited” Internet access reported this week, a French emergency-room doctor from Fontainebleau beats all records with a €159,212 (US$237,417) bill. The telephone-number-sized bill covers one month’s use of an unlimited 3G dongle on Orange‘s network; the beleaguered Dr Jean Spadaro has been battling this for six months.

“To begin with I thought it was a joke”, said Spadaro, confirming a story from l’Observateur du Valenciennois; The same newspaper that revealed last week a similar case — Eric Gernez, a café owner in Petite-Forêt near to Valenciennes — who received a bill for €45,000. Christophe Aupy-Fargues, head of an insurance brokerage firm in Saint-Herblain, west of Nantes, and another unlimited 3G dongle user, confirmed to Ouest-France on Monday the blocking of payment on a bill for €39,500 demanded by Orange.

“I subscribed in November 2008 to a basic internet access by 3G dongle at €30 per month […] seeing my bills reach sums going up to €860 in April, I decided in May to subscribe to unlimited access by 3G dongle with Orange business at €50 per month. When I saw my bill for May, I couldn’t believe my eyes: €159,212, for one month’s connection, it’s impossible, especially as we don’t use it all of the time” added Spadaro, the father of two children, aged sixteen and nineteen.

On opening the envelope in June, he expected to read an amount neighbouring the cost of his subscription; but, to his horror, it was €159,212; a demand large enough to make an emergency-room doctor’s head spin.

Spadaro claims France Télécom (Orange’s parent company) never explained to him that the “unlimited” package only related to the time spent surfing on the Internet — not the volume of traffic — limited to one Gigabyte per month. The package’s quota corresponds to moderate usage (reception of simple emails for example). As normal Internet users, the members of the Spadaro family surfed Facebook, YouTube, sent emails with attachments, received same, &c. That volume of traffic proved to be costly. €0.17 per Megabyte, or €170 per Gigabyte. Until the bills arrived, the Spadaro family were using the Internet, ignorant of the cost being incurred.

The doctor’s bills, not listed in detail, are €53 for February, €346 for March, €860 for April before soaring to more than €159,000 in May. Spadaro also claims, with evidence of his letters in hand, he had increased the number of protest actions and received, in response, “warnings with threats of seizure”.

Battle-weary after six months of contacting his operator, Spadaro has lost all patience. “Since June, I’ve spent hours writing emails, letters or calling Orange to ask for an explanation. I’ve been passed from call centre to call centre, from customer services to debt collection. No one at Orange was able to give me the slightest clarification. A real wall”, he said. He has never contacted a consumer association, “due to lack of time and also because I trusted the people with whom I was speaking”.

At the end of last week he stumbled upon the article on the Observateur du Valenciennois internet site concerning the case of Eric Gernez. He then also threatened Orange with the press. “The result did not tardy”, he continues. “A customer services representative and a debt collector immediately contacted me by email November 16. And immediately afterwards I received a credit for €136,529”. A first credit having already been sent to him in June, Orange now considers the dossier as “definitively resolved”.

This resolution does not satisfy Jean Spadaro at all, who simply wishes that the bill be cancelled. “I have been a client with Orange for 17 years. I don’t want to attack their image, but here, enough is enough. It’s a question of principles”, he says, highlighting that “on forums, dozens of subscribers tell similar stories”. Furthermore, the two credits do not reimburse him for all of the additional fees he has incurred. “The following months, Orange tried to debit the sum from my account, causing rejection fees from my bank and unpaid fees from the operator. Around €35 each time”.

Exasperated by the whole affair, Spadaro awaits the end of his current contract with Orange in February next year. “I will cancel all of my subscriptions to Orange: 3G+ dongle, but also mobile telephone and internet”, he promises. He has been a client with the operator since 1997.

Orange has promised to work with each case of overbilling. Interviewed on France 2 on Wednesday, Jean-Paul Cottet, director of the business market for France, said that the number of problems were marginal. According to him, 4,000 professionals have opted for a package with a 3G key. It is “a 24/24 but not unlimited offer. Out of these 4,000 cases, there are 1% which are a problem” he explained, listing about thirty such “absurd bills”. “We will correct that”, he promised. “We will work with each client”.

Jean-Paul Cottet pointed out that the general public offers better protection to the client. Once the authorised download limit is reached, the service quality diminishes but there is no overbilling.

Asked about the information given to clients about the conditions of billing elements not included in the package, Elizabeth Alvez, communications representative for the regional department for the North of France, said that “all the tarification information is available at points-of-sale and on orange.fr. This information is given as part of the dialogue between the client and the vendor. We are obliged to communicate the prices.” Nevertheless, one must first of all take the time to read the entire contract with the salesperson before signing.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

The Australia Institute, an Australian research organisation that some consider to be aligned to the political left, has released its analysis of ideal locations for a nuclear power plant in Australia.

According to the institute, they consulted with a number of nuclear energy experts and determined the best possible sites for a nuclear power reactor in Australia. These sites include the popular holiday destinations of Port Stephens in New South Wales and Westernport Bay in Victoria.

The institute identified sites based on the needs of nuclear power generators. They said the most important criteria is for the site to be on the coast so it has access to large volumes of water used by the reactor for cooling. The institute found inland locations are not suitable as “Australia’s inland water supplies are unreliable and are already over-committed.”

The institute also reports that Port Stephens and Westernport Bay meet other desirable criteria, being near major electricity transmission lines and have good rail and port access for imported fuel rods.

The institute said that unused fuel rods would need to be imported, but “spent fuel will need to be stored in perpetuity”. According to the institute, in Europe nuclear waste is often stored on the power plant’s site.

Dr Clive Hamilton, executive director of the Australia Institute said that the government is yet to give an indication on potential nuclear power sites and there is only a small number of sites which would be suitable for a power generation reactor. “It is not clear whether the Government has yet considered where the proposed nuclear power plants will be located, but there are only a limited number of suitable sites. Other likely sites include the Central Coast and the area south of Wollongong in NSW, the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, and Port Phillip Bay and Portland in Victoria”.

Mr Hamilton said that the institute had decided to investigate possible locations as there is little point having a nuclear debate where no possible sites are identified. “The Prime Minister has said he wants a national debate about nuclear power, but there is little point in debating it in the abstract”.

Mayor of Port Stephens, Craig Baumann is not impressed by the Australia Institute’s findings. He said he would be opposed to any nuclear power facility being built in Port Stephens.

“I just don’t like the idea of any power station, something like Vailes Point being stuck on the shores of Port Stephens,”

“Obviously the power station should be close to transport, obviously large volumes of water and the grid that it’s meant to service” Mr Baumann said.

Mr Baumann did however suggest a possible location for a power plant.”I’d suggest that they move the ships out of Garden Island and stick it right in the middle of Sydney.”

If the government decided on a location in Victoria for a nuclear power plant there would be some legal implications, requiring the federal government to overturn state law (which is difficult). Victoria enacted the Nuclear Activities (Prohibitions) Act in 1983 which states it is to “protect the health, welfare and safety of the people of Victoria and to limit deterioration of the environment in which they dwell by prohibiting the establishment of nuclear activities”.

Under the act, nuclear power generation is specified as a prohibited activity.

Tuesday, May 9, 2006For the first time in three decades, direct and at least partially public diplomatic communication will commence between the United States (US) and Iran. Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has sent a letter to the U.S. president George W. Bush proposing “new solutions for getting out of international problems and the current fragile situation of the world”.

Mr Gholam-Hossein Elham did not say whether the letter mentioned the nuclear dispute, one of the diplomatic problems currently straining relations between Iran and the USA. This information arrived one day after the Iranian parliament announced that it might retract from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if Western pressure over its programme was to increase.

Differing reports have been made as to whether or not the letter will be made public, and if so, when. In its online report of 8 May 2006, 09:25 GMT, the BBC quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi as saying that the contents of the letter would be made public once Bush had received it. The updated version of the report of 8 May 2006, 14:52 GMT, quotes Asefi as saying that the contents would be made public “at the right time”. An ABC report quoted Gholam-Hossein Elham as saying “it is not an open letter.”

Iran’s foreign affairs minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, delivered the letter to the United States’ interests section in the Swiss embassy in Tehran on Monday. The United States has not held diplomatic relations with Iran since the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said “this letter isn’t it. This letter is not the place that one would find an opening to engage on the nuclear issue or anything of the sort.”

“It isn’t addressing the issues that we’re dealing with in a concrete way,” she added.

John R. Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, also read the letter, saying, “I think it is typical of Iran that when major decisions are about to be taken … that they have tried to throw sand in the eyes of the proponents of the action. That’s what this may be.”

The letter has since been put on an official Iranian website, and on Tuesday, Ahmadinejad said “the letter to US President George Bush carries the Iranian nation’s views and comments on international issues as well as suggestions for resolving the many problems facing humanity.”

Monday, August 20, 2007

Two police vehicles were damaged and police officers narrowly avoided injury in Great Yarmouth, England after a mob of over 100 people assembled outside a local police station.

The event has been labelled by local police as a ‘major incident’ and has so far resulted in 15 arrests pertaining to violent disorder, possession of drugs and taking a vehicle without consent. Over 100 police officers were involved in the event; many of them from bordering counties.

The mob assembled in the early hours of Monday morning and threw missiles including wine bottles and beer cans at the building.

The conflict is thought to be connected to the prior arrests of three people driving a van containing sound equipment in connection with an unlicensed music event which was being monitored by the police several hours earlier. At the event, police had made three arrests and seized 44 vehicles.

The police are also investigating a burglary which occurred on Harfrey’s Industrial Estate in the close vicinity of the illegal music event. Police Chief Supt Scully has warned people away from the area as it is now being treated as a crime scene.