Saturday, April 18, 2015

Douglas Mark Hughes, a mailman for the United States Postal Service, landed his gyrocopter on the west lawn of the US Capitol on Wednesday. He told his friends he was going to do this.

The mailman was flying his aircraft into restricted airspace when he landed on the lawn. He was immediately arrested. His stated intention was to deliver letters to all members of Congress concerning campaign finance statutes. As a protective measure, the Capitol complex went on lockdown for a time.

Hughes told the Tampa Bay Times of his intentions to fly the light-weight aircraft. The paper said they alerted the Secret Service and the United States Capitol Police, but FOX News reported some disagreement about this from Capitol Police. Hughes had no contact with air traffic controllers during the incident.

The mailman said his intention was non-violent, but he wanted to spread the word about his cause. The Secret Service questioned him some months before the incident.

Hughes was charged under United States Code Title 49, concerning transportation. He was released from jail under conditions including that he must not visit the US Capitol. He is currently under house arrest.

Besides this low-flying aircraft incident, a government employee crashed a drone onto the White House property a few months ago. Also, the Secret Service conducted drone exercises to combat against possibly rogue light-weight aircraft last month.

The airspace above the Washington D.C. region is protected below 18,000 feet MSL (Mean Sea Level) with the roughly fifteen-nautical-mile-radius Flight Restricted Zone which surrounds the VHF omnidirectional range located at Washington National Airport, which handles regularly scheduled commercial flights. Pilots are not allowed to fly in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area Special Flight Rules Area, which includes the Flight Restricted Zone, unless they have FAA authorization and are able to maintain effective communication with air traffic control with a two-way radio. Pilots must obtain a transponder code when flying under visual flight rules in this area. Law enforcement and air ambulance operations are exempted from the FAA authorization requirement if they can maintain communications with air traffic control.

The FAA was investigating this incident, along with law enforcement agencies. Police found no explosives in the aircraft.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Veteran White House journalist Helen Thomas, 89, announced her retirement yesterday with immediate effect, ending her fifty-seven year career, amid criticism over controversial remarks.

Thomas has been a correspondent for over fifty years and has covered every president from John F. Kennedy to Obama. Thomas, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, who blazed a trail for female reporters in politics in the United States, has ended her career after apologizing for saying that Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine.”

In retiring, Thomas stated: “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.”

Her departure as Hearst Newspaper columnist was announced after she was captured on video saying: “Remember, these people are occupied and it’s their land. It’s not Germany, it’s not Poland,” and that Israelis should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “they should go home” to Poland, Germany, the US and “everywhere else.”

Rabbi David Nesenoff, an independent filmmaker, said he spoke to Thomas outside the White House on Jewish Heritage Day on May 27. Video of her controversial comments were widely disseminated on the Internet by his website, rabbilive.com, that relaunched last week.

Thomas was absent from Monday’s White House briefing. She was dropped by her public speaking agency and a high school commencement address was canceled. The White House Correspondents Association called her remarks “indefensible”. The Hearst statement came shortly after White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called her remarks “offensive and reprehensible.”

Thomas has been a correspondent for fifty-seven years, she had worked for decades as a White House correspondent for United Press International and became a columnist for the Hearst newspaper chain in recent years. She was the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents Association, and, in 1975, the first female member of the Gridiron Club.

Thomas did little to hide her views, with her questions to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and their press secretaries often about the wars in the Middle East. Two weeks ago, she asked Obama, “Mr. President, when are you going to get out of Afghanistan? Why are you continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse? And don’t give us this Bushism, ‘If we don’t go there, they’ll all come here.'”

Helen Thomas has written five books. During Kennedy’s administration, Helen ended all presidential press conferences with a signature “Thank you, Mr. President” and always issued a caveat about her work: “In my career you’re only as good as your last story.”

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Australian treasurer Joe Hockey has agreed to reconsider the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on tampons and other hygiene products after being confronted about the issue on Q&A Monday night. Mr Hockey was responding to a question from student activist Subeta Vimalarajah.

“I started a petition against taxing the sanitary products under the GST. It now has over 86,000 signees and 11,000 submissions to the Better Tax Review. Mr Hockey, do you think that sanitary products are an essential health good for half the population?” she asked.

“Do I think sanitary products are essential? I think so,” Mr Hockey responded “Should the GST be taken off them? It probably should, yes. The answer is yes.”

He said that he will raise the issue with the next meeting of the state treasurers in July.

“I understand there’s long been a push to take the GST off goods, which are one way or another regarded as health products,” Prime Minister Tony Abbott said. “It’s certainly not something that this Government has a plan to do.”

He said he interpreted Joe Hockey’s remarks as meaning it was a matter for the states.

Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen said the matter deserved serious consideration.

“Why did it take till Mr Hockey was asked a question on live TV for him to acknowledge this was an issue?” he asked.

“I understand the concerns with taxing sanitary products — concerns that go back to the introduction of the GST by the Coalition.

“These are in effect health products and aren’t simply a matter of choice for women.”

The GST was introduced in Australia in 2000. The then Prime Minister John Howard said the tax on tampons was not a woman’s issue.

“I mean, of course if you look at tampons in isolation – just as you look at something else in isolation – you can mount an argument to take the tax off it,” Mr Howard said at the time.

“I could mount an argument to take the tax off children’s clothes. I could mount an argument to take the tax off old people’s clothes, I could mount an argument for a whole lot of things. But we’ve had that argument and if you start doing that, you will have no GST in the end, and the whole system will begin to unravel.”

Friday, May 12, 2006

Peter Costello’s budget announcement has led to rejoicing for small businesses, but the lack of joy for those pushing for radical corporate taxation reform has led to many businesses asking “what about us?”

Personal taxation and small business have been the big winners after this year’s federal budget. Although dampened by the twin economic threats of rising interest rates and petrol prices, there should be a reasonable amount of real income savings for both low and high income earners, with those receiving Medicare, or a superannuation benefit, privy to an even lower level of taxation (0% for those on super benefits).

Small business also has benefited from the Howard government’s 11th annual budget, with them receiving a higher level of reducing depreciation, leading to a higher level of deductions in the years following the uptake of new technology or other capital. They are also privy to a AU$435 million dollar tax cut to compensate for their changing accounting requirements under the government’s new AIFRS reporting standards, as well as increasing the uptake of both the small business tax relief scheme and CGT (Capital Gains tax) Concessions.

The budget was not a complete loss for big business however, as superannuation laws have been tweaked to streamline contribution and payment rules previously impeding those with multitudes of staff.

But this is not enough, says Big 4 accounting firm Ernst & Young. In their newly published paper “Taxation of Investment in Australia: the need for ongoing reform”. In it they lead the charge for a greater streamlining and organization of the corporate tax system in Australia, submitting that it will lead to reductions in “disincentives to work save and invest in Australia [as well as improving] the international competitiveness of Australian businesses.” This follows from a recent report brought out by Mr. Costello himself about the need for tax reform in Australia.

A budget night Mr. Costello was notably coy about any future reform of corporate tax in Australia. He alluded to the report by his ministers but kept from outlining the government’s plan precisely.

Tuesday, May 3, 2005

Time Warner Inc announced that they are unable to locate a container holding 40 backup tapes. These tapes contain personal information on 600,000 current and former employees back to 1986. This information includes details on dependents and beneficiaries, in addition to Social Security numbers. Customers were not affected, Time Warner said.

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating and has not found any evidence that the tapes have been misused. This loss affects most of the 85,000 current employees. The tapes were lost by Iron Mountain Inc., a data storage company, which routinely handles off-site data storage for Time Warner and many other Fortune 500 companies. Time Warner has said that the tapes would require expensive equipment to read them, and that they were encrypted.

Monday, May 9, 2005

At the Sellafield reprocessing plant, a leak in the process was spotted on April 19. The leak did not cause danger to people or the environment but it disturbed the normal operation of the plant.

Workers at the plant noticed a discrepancy in the amount of material being reprocessed that enters pipes that lead to a set of centrifuges and the amount of material actually arriving at the centrifuges. They used remote cameras to find the crack where the material was escaping; over twenty tonnes have leaked into a steel lined chamber.

The material, consisting of mostly uranium and some plutonium dissolved in nitric acid, would have been reprocessed in the centrifuges. The large stainless steel chamber that now contains the spilled material is too dangerous to enter due to radioactivity, though it poses no danger to those inside or outside the plant.

The plant has been shut down pending repairs.

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).

Saturday, September 20, 2008

The parliament of Indonesia has approved government plans to make an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of shares in three major state-owned firms, privatising them. They are steelmaker Krakatau Steel, Bank Tabungan Negara (BTN) and national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia.

The parliament has left the process fully in the hands of the government, and has set the maximum stake to be sold at 30% for BTN and Krakatau, and 40% for Garuda. Although Indonesia has been known to fund budget deficits with privatisation, the intention is for the funds from this scheme to go to the businesses themselves to allow expansion.

Krakatau expects 3.2 trillion Rupiah (IDR) from the sale, while the estimated price for their stock is between IDR3 and IDR4 trillion (321 – 428 million USD). Both ArcelorMittal SA, the biggest steelmaker in the world, and BlueScope Steel Ltd, the largest in Australia, have expressed an interest in the IPO. Krakatau will use the funds to help finance an expansion scheme which aims to have production doubled to five million tonnes in 2011.

BTN, which focuses on home owner loans, has set itself a target income of IDR36.12 trillion (3.86 billion USD) in 2010 compared to a projected IDR22.9 trillion ( 2.45 billion USD) this year. Net profit for this year is projected at IDR472 billion (50.5 million USD)and is hoped to rise to IDR1.39 trillion (148.7 million USD) in 2010. The bank’s loan to deposit ratio is predicted to rise from 105.05% this year to 144.93% in 2012. BTN hopes to conduct its IPO before the end of 2008.

Garuda is not quite 100% state-owned to start with, unlike the other two, but is very close with 95.44% of the company belonging to the government. Like all of Indonesia’s 51 airlines, Garuda is on the list of air carriers banned in the EU due to safety concerns raised after a string of air accidents in the nation. Garuda expects to raise IDR4.2 trillion (449.4 million USD) in funds from the IPO, and will use IDR2.5 trillion (267.5 million USD) to pay off its debts and invest IDR1.7 trillion (181.9 million USD) in new aircraft.

The government is still working to get a deal to make IPOs for architectural firm Yodya Karya and three plantation firms called Perkebunan Nusantara III, IV and VII.

Friday, February 5, 2010

South African lawyer, politcian, diplomat and anti-apartheid leader Harry Schwarz has died at the age of 85. He died after suffering from a short, undisclosed illness.

Leader of the Democratic Alliance of South Africa Helen Zille paid tribute to Schwarz. She said “On behalf of the Democratic Alliance, I extend sincere condolences on the death of Harry Schwarz”. She added “Harry Schwarz will be remembered for his signal contribution to the development of our democracy. His piercing intellect, and long professional experience in banking, made him the most astute analyst in Parliament on economic and financial matters during his terms in office. He has engraved his place in South Africa’s political history. We will always remember him”.

Harry Heinz Schwarz was born in Cologne, Germany in 1924. At the age of 10 he arrived in South Africa as a Jewish refugee, he later served in the South African Air Force. After World War II he qualified as a lawyer from the University of the Witwatersrand.

As both a trained advocate and attorney, Schwarz served on the defence team on Nelson Mandela and several other anti-apartheid activists during the 1963-64 Rivonia Trail.

Schwarz entered politics in 1951 with his election to the Johannesburg City Council. He entered parliament in 1974 on the UP ticket. He was the opposition’s spokesman on finance until 1987. Despite being on the opposition he was chosen as South Africa’s ambassdor to the United States and served from 1990 to 1994. He was also South Africa’s first ambassador to Barbados, serving from 1993 to 1995.

His funeral is planned for Febuary 7th. He is survived by his wife Annette, and his three children Jonathan, Allan and Michael.