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Monday, May 3, 2010

Widespread protests occurred Saturday against measures being enacted by the Greek government to reduce spending in order to reduce a severe debt crisis.

The capital of Athens was filled with an estimated 17,000 protesters at gatherings called by three separate political groups. During the protests, small groups of youth broke windows of several buildings, set a government press van on fire, burned trash barrels in barricades and threw rocks and firebombs at police officers.

Riot police arrested at least fourteen people and sprayed tear gas to disperse crowds. Seven policemen and two demonstrators were reported to be injured. Another estimated 5.000 people took to the streets in Thessaloniki.

The demonstrations were called to protest against government plans to cut major portions of the national budget in order to receive an estimated 120 billion euros in aid from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The government formally requested the activation of the bailout plan on April 23, 2010, after the cost of borrowing funds on the open market became prohibitively high.

About 9 billion euros in Greek government bonds will come due on May 19th; without the ability to borrow from the market, government officials had to turn elsewhere. The looming deadline, in combination with the recent uncertainty of the markets over the economic stability of Greece, Portugal and Spain, has put pressure on Greek, IMF and EU negotiators to work out the final details of the aid plan quickly so that it can go into effect as soon as possible.

Among the items to be agreed upon are the exact measures the Greek government is going to put in place over the next three years to cut its debt, and the precise amount of aid it will receive in exchange. The Greek Cabinet is to meet tomorrow morning to finalize the measures before the formal announcement at noon.

The cuts in spending are expected to cut both pensions and salaries to public service workers, while raising consumer taxes. Greek unions have opposed the measures and were a major part of the protests. A nation-wide strike in protest of the budget cuts is planned May 5.

A participant in one of the protests said that “These measures are death. How people are going to live tomorrow, how they’re going to survive, I do not understand.” Alexis Tsipras, of the Coalition of the Radical Left, opposed the budget cuts, saying that “The Greek people do not owe anything to anybody. Those who have brazenly robbed public money and pension funds should pay for the crisis.”

Greece’s Prime Minister, George Papandreou, however, said that the cost-cutting measures were inevitable, and that they were essential to the survival of the country.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

A man has abandoned his nine children at a hospital emergency room in Nebraska, but will not be prosecuted under Nebraska state law.

The children, whose ages range from 1 to 17 years old, were dropped off by their unnamed father at Saint Joseph Hospital at Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha on Wednesday evening. Authorities are still trying to find the children’s mother.

According to Nebraska’s ‘safe haven law’, the parents or caretaker of any children aged 17 and under are allowed to abandon them at any facility that has a valid license with the state. As a result, the parents would not be prosecuted for doing so. Originally the law was to prevent infants from being abandoned, but was recently amended to include toddlers and teenagers.

Since the law was changed, at least 14 children have been abandoned at hospitals and police stations in Nebraska. State law says that all facilities must keep a monthly count of all abandoned children.

Friday, September 9, 2005

Italian-based Fiat Auto SPA and US-based Ford Motor Co. announced they signed an agreement to cooperate in designing two small car models. This came only seven months after General Motors severed their relationship with Fiat.

Both companies plan to work together on a new version of the popular Fiat Cinquecento and on a replacement for the Ford Ka, both to be based on the Fiat Panda platform.

The cooperation can help reduce the companies’ small car production costs and ease financial difficulties they are facing. Ford is struggling with high labor and health care costs, while Fiat suffers from its unprofitable Italian plants.

After the deal was announced, shares of Fiat rose $0.06 to $9.44, while Ford gained $0.06 to $9.95 on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Friday, January 12, 2007

The iPhone only made its appearance as a prototype and there have been controversies aroused.

The dispute has come up between the manufacturer of the iPhone (which was presented on Wednesday for the first time) — Apple Inc. — and a leader in network and communication systems, based in San Jose — Cisco. The company claims to possess the trademark for iPhone, and moreover, that it sells devices under the same brand through one of its divisions.

This became the reason for Cisco to file a lawsuit against Apple Inc. so that the latter would stop selling the device.

Cisco states that it has received the trademark in 2000, when the company overtook Infogear Technology Corp., which took place in 1996.

The Vice President and general counsel of the company, Mark Chandler, explained that there was no doubt about the excitement of the new device from Apple, but they should not use a trademark, which belongs to Cisco.

The iPhone developed by Cisco is a device which allows users to make phone calls over the voice over Internet protocol (VoIP).

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Australia’s Department of Defence spent thousands of dollars on controversial development seminars, Australian media reported Wednesday. The seminars are run by a San Francisco, California-based training company called Landmark Education. The company evolved from Erhard Seminars Training “est”, and has faced criticism regarding its techniques and its use of unpaid labor.

Australia’s Defence Minister Warren Snowdon said that the government is in the process of reviewing Defence Department expenditures on career development. “We’re in the process now of doing an audit, completely unrelated with anything to do with Landmark, which is being undertaken into learning and development to make sure that they meet our needs. … We have to be very sure that the courses that people do undertake are relevant, appropriate and indeed in line with what community expectations might be,” said Snowdon in an appearance on ABC Radio.

The Australian and Australia’s ABC News reported that Landmark Education had been listed in France as a “possible cult” in the mid 1990s. When asked about this on ABC Radio, a spokeswoman for the company in the United States, Deborah Beroset, responded: “What happened in France was that a commission established by the French parliament issued a report in which they listed almost 200 organisations as being possible cults … We were never contacted. We were inappropriately included in that list”.

In a program which aired Wednesday, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio program AM reported that Australia’s Defence Department spent at least AUD12,270 of taxpayer funds to send government employees to Landmark Education courses. According to AM, the Defence Department said it does not appear that further funds have been sent to Landmark Education since 2004.

In a statement released by the Defence Department, the government stated: “A search of Defence records does not indicate exactly how many individuals attended courses with this training provider, however it is believed it was a small number of individuals. … Defence has been unable to determine individual reasons for why groups within Defence choose this training provider.”

AM also reported that the use of unpaid labor by Landmark Education “has attracted the attention of the US and French governments,” and that some individuals in the mental health field have accused the company of brainwashing. When asked about the allegations by mental health experts that Landmark Education’s techniques amounted to brainwashing, Deborah Beroset responded: “Well, there is absolutely no credence to that whatsoever.”

In a March 9 article in the Herald Sun, Peter Rolfe reported that taxpayer money was used to send at least 37 police and government staff from Victoria, Australia to seminars run by Landmark Education. Police and Emergency Services Minister Bob Cameron said that “Decisions on the appropriateness of staff attending courses by Landmark Education are made by individual managers who remain best-placed to assess the development needs of their staff,” but State Liberal MP Murray Thompson told the Herald Sun that the funds should have been put towards fighting crime. Apple Inc., Reebok, and Mercedes-Benz have sent employees to Landmark Education seminars, according to a spokeswoman for Landmark.

In October 2006, Landmark Education took legal action against Google, YouTube, the Internet Archive, and a website owner in Queensland, Australia in attempts to remove criticism of its products from the Internet. The company sought a subpoena under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in an attempt to discover the identity of an anonymous critic who uploaded a 2004 French documentary of the Landmark Forum to the Internet. “Voyage au pays des nouveaux gourous” (Voyage to the Land of the New Gurus) was produced by Pièces à Conviction, a French investigative journalism news program. The Electronic Frontier Foundation represented the anonymous critic and the Internet Archive, and Landmark withdrew its subpoena in November 2006 in exchange for a promise from the anonymous critic not to repost the video.

Landmark Education is descended from Erhard Seminars Training, also called “est”, which was founded by Werner Erhard. est began in 1971, and Erhard’s company Werner Erhard and Associates repackaged the course as “The Forum” in 1985. Associates of Erhard bought the license to his “technology” and incorporated Landmark Education in California in 1991.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo who was held hostage for 15 days, was traded for five Taliban prisoners, as confirmed by Italian and Afgani authorities.

This likely represents the first time during the Iraq War or War in Afghanistan that prisoners were openly exchanged for a hostage. An Afghani government source said the swap “was an exceptional measure taken because we value our relations and friendship with Italy.”

The move received sharp criticism from allies of Italy. In Washington, a senior State Department official said the United States was pleased the journalist had been released unharmed, but was troubled by possible ramifications of the swap. A spokesperson at the British Foreign Office said the deal sent “the wrong signal to prospective hostage-takers”.

Maxime Verhagen, Foreign Minister of the Netherlands spoke against the swap, “When we create situations where you can buy the freedom of Taliban fighters when you catch a journalist, in the short term there will be no journalists anymore.”

The international backlash is the latest headache for Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who has fought hard to keep troops in Afghanistan despite resistance from pacifists within his centre-left coalition.

Prodi briefly resigned last month after a defeat in the Senate over his foreign policy, including Afghanistan, and needs the Senate next week to approve a refinancing of the mission.

An opinion poll published by Mastrogiacomo’s newspaper, La Repubblica, showed that 51 percent of Italians surveyed supported the exchange, while 41 percent opposed it.

Thursday, July 7, 2005

A Florida man is being charged with 3rd degree felony for logging into a private Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) Internet access point without permission. Benjamin Smith III, 41, is set for a pre-trial hearing this month in the first case of its kind in the United States.

This kind of activity occurs frequently, but often goes undetected by the owners of these wireless access points (WAPs). Unauthorized users range from casual Web browsers, to users sending e-mails, to users involved in pornography or even illegal endeavours.

According to Richard Dinon, owner of the WAP Smith allegedly broke into, Smith was using a laptop in an automobile while parked outside Dinon’s residence.

There are many steps an owner of one of these access points can take to secure them from outside users. Dinon reportedly knew how to take these steps, but had not bothered because his “neighbors are older.”