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Friday, October 2, 2009

Companies in the United States are shedding more jobs, pushing the country’s unemployment rate to a 26-year high of 9.8%.

The US Labor Department said on Friday that employers cut 263,000 jobs in September, with companies in the service industries — including banks, restaurants and retailers — hit especially hard. This is the 21st consecutive month of job losses in the country.

The United States has now lost 7.2 million jobs since the recession officially began in December 2007. The new data has sparked fears that unemployment could threaten an economic recovery. Top US officials have warned that any recovery would be slow and uneven, and some have predicted the unemployment rate will top 10% before the situation improves.

“Continued household deleveraging and rising unemployment may weigh more on consumption than forecast, and accelerating corporate and commercial property defaults could slow the improvement in financial conditions,” read a report by the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook, predicting that unemployment will average 10.1% by next year and not go back down to five percent until 2014.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, said that “it’s a very fragile and tentative recovery. Policy makers need to do more.”

“The number came in weaker than expected. We saw a lot of artificial involvement by the government to prop up the markets, and now that that is starting to end, the private sector isn’t yet showing signs of life,” said Kevin Caron, a market strategist for Stifel, Nicolaus & Co.

Also on Thursday, the US Commerce Department said factory orders fell for the first time in five months, dropping eight-tenths of a percent in August. Orders for durable goods — items intended to last several years (including everything from appliances to airliners) — fell 2.6%, the largest drop since January of this year.

The US government has been spending billions of dollars — part of a $787 billion stimulus package — to help spark economic growth. There have been some signs the economy is improving.

The Commerce Department said on Thursday that spending on home construction jumped in August for its biggest increase in 16 years. A real estate trade group, the National Association of Realtors, said pending sales of previously owned homes rose more than 12 percent in August, compared to August 2008.

A separate Commerce Department report said that consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of US economic activity, rose at its fastest pace in nearly eight years, jumping 1.3 percent in August.

Other reports have provided cause for concern. A banking industry trade group said Thursday the number of US consumers making late payments, or failing to make payments, on loans and credit cards is on the rise. A survey by a business group, the Institute for Supply Management, Thursday showed US manufacturing grew in September, but at a slower pace than in August when manufacturing increased for the first time in a year and a half.

Stock markets reacted negatively to the reports. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 41 points in early trading, reaching a level of 9467. This follows a drop of 203 points on Thursday, its largest loss in a single day since July. The London FTSE index fell 55 points, or 1.1%, to reach 4993 points by 15.00 local time.

Saturday, November 4, 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 Don Valley East (Ward 33). One candidates responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include Zane Caplan, Shelley Carroll (incumbent), Jim Conlon, Sarah Tsang-Fahey, and Anderson Tung.

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

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Beijing’s city legislature has approved a bill, one year in the making, to safeguard the historical and cultural heritage of old Beijing. The new 41-article set of regulations will come into effect May 1, requiring the city to protect listed heritage sites and unlisted sites deemed of historical or cultural value. It also guarantees protection for the area within the city’s Second Ring Road.

Director of the Beijing Administrative Bureau of Cultural Heritage, Mei Ninghua, said “the most encouraging content of the regulations is that Beijing will pay more attention to protecting the old city’s landscape in its entirety, rather than just focussing on scattered heritage sites.” This means the old city layout, colours of buildings, and the names of houses and lanes will have legal protection.

“We took measures to protect the city’s siheyuan courtyard houses by tagging protection plates on more than 650 of them in 2003, preventing them from being demolished or damaged during the city’s massive housing reconstruction projects,” said Mei.

“Now the new regulations give legal buttress to the protection of siheyuan courtyard homes, as well as other unmovable ancient treasures, that have yet to be listed but are at risk of being demolished during urban renovation.”

Modern Beijing, capital of China for 850 years, was built by Mongul Emporer Kublai Khan in 1267 AD. In the vicinity of the current city once was Ji (?), the capital of the State of Yan (?), a power of the Warring States Period – but it has been lost in the mists of time.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The house where Josef Fritzl used to live and where he imprisoned his daughter is set to be demolished.

Fritzl locked his daughter Elisabeth in the make-shift dungeon for 24 years. During that time he raped her repeatedly — and fathered seven children with her, one of whom died in the basement of the house.

Judge Markus Sonnleitner stated, “There is a lot of interest in seeing it disappear. This seems to be the sensible course as there is little chance of ever selling the property for a profit. It should be done as quickly as possible.” Ever since the case became known in 2008, there has been a question over what would happen with the property.

The property, in Ybbstrasse, Austria, has become an unlikely tourist attraction with several people showing up to take pictures of the house. The door is sealed shut to stop anyone from gaining entry to the building.

On Thursday, Fritzl received the news that he has been granted planning permission to build a project consisting of houses, an office block and an underground carpark. Fritzl produced the blueprints for the project two years before police were aware of his crimes.

Judge Sonnleitner announced the plans as part of Fritzl’s ongoing bankruptcy case.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Augustus Freeman Hawkins, a prominent U.S. figure in Civil Rights and Organized Labor history, has died at the age of 100, just three days ago, on November 10.

Born on August 31, 1907, Shreveport, Louisiana, he served as the first African American from California in the United States Congress, where he sponsored the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act.

Hawkins was a Democratic member of the State Assembly in 1935 to 1963; he was also a delegate to the National Conventions of 1940, 1944 and 1960 and a California Presidential Elector in the 1944 Election. Hawkins attended high school in Los Angeles, and received his undergraduate degree from the UCLA in 1931.

During 1963 to 1991, he represented California’s 21st District (1963-75), and 29th District (1975-1991), in Congress. Early in his congressional career, he authored including the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act establishing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Job Training Partnership Act, and the School Improvement Act. He was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. As chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, he sponsored the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, alongside Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. The Bill gave the U.S. government the goal to provide full employment; it also ordered that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board must give a Congressional testimony on the economy.

Over his career, Hawkins authored more than 300 state and federal laws. He also succeeded in restoring honorable discharges to the 170 black soldiers of the 25th Infantry Regiment who had been falsely accused of a public disturbance in Brownsville, Texas, in 1906, and removed from the Army.

Hawkins retired in 1991 to his Los Angeles home, and lived in Washington, D.C. for the remainder of his life.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

A power outage hit large parts of Tokyo, and Chiba, Japan. The electrical blackout occurred due to an industrial accident, in which a crane damaged some power lines accidentally at 7:40 AM local time (2240 UTC), the Kyodo News agency reported, quoting Tokyo Power Electric Co. Power was reported to have been restored to most areas within a few hours.

At least two elevators stopped with an unknown number of people trapped inside, said a fire official in Tokyo. Some train services were halted. The number of passengers was lower than normal due to a holiday. About 800,000 residences were affected by the blackout, according to the power company. Most services have since then been restored.

Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea delayed opening by an hour as many rides did not function due to the power problems.

Friday, January 6, 2006

The new CBS Corporation began trading on the New York Stock Exchange once again on January 3 after officially finishing its split with Viacom two days earlier. The split had been in the works since around March 2005 when Viacom announced it was breaking into two publicly traded companies due to stock price stagnation.

In June 2005, Viacom’s board approved the split and saying the CBS Corporation name would be revived for one of those companies. One of these units would receive most of Viacom’s broadcasting and mass-media portion of subsidiaries (CBS, UPN, Infinity Broadcasting, now CBS Radio) along with Viacom Outdoor (now CBS Outdoor), Showtime Networks, and Paramount’s television studio and a few other operations and announced long-time excutive Leslie Moonves would head that new company.

The split is filled with twists and turns. Viacom was founded in 1971 as CBS’ television syndication division and was spun off in 1973. Westinghouse Electric Corporation bought CBS and changed its name to CBS Corporation. In a ironic twist, Viacom accquired their parent company in 1999 and CBS’ stock symbol was de-listed as it became a division of Viacom. Ironically, the new CBS Corporation is actually the original Viacom. A new Viacom was founded and spun off containing MTV Networks (which contains CMT and Spike TV, two cable networks originally owned by CBS) along with BET, Paramount’s film studio and home entertainment divisions, online virtual pet game Neopets, and a music publisher. It also partially owns Sega of America along with the Sonic the Hedgehog trademarks and is currently in the process of acquiring DreamWorks.

CBS unveiled its logo, the iconic CBS eye, and launched the corporation’s official wesbite, cbscorporation.com