Friday, January 27, 2006

West Papuan asylum seekers, who arrived in Australia last week, were forced to make a 4000 kilometre journey to Christmas Island despite suspicions they had tuberculosis. The West Papuans were flown to Christmas Island on an RAAF Hercules last week.

Two of the group, a man and his child, have now been flown the 2,600 kilometres to Perth, Western Australia from the remote Indian Ocean island. Air force personnel had initially refused to fly them, concerned that the flight crew’s health would be at risk.

“It’s a complete farce, absurd” said one health official. “It has not only posed an unnecessary health risk, it has been hideously expensive.”

The West Papuans were among a group of 43 refugees found last week on the far north-west coast of Cape York in Queensland. They had made a five-day journey from the Indonesian province in an outrigger canoe. They arrived with banners accusing Indonesia’s military in the province ruled by Jakarta of genocide and intimidation. Their 25m traditional boat was fitted with an outboard motor and was flying the outlawed West Papuan flag.

Amid media scrutiny and the disapproval of the Indonesian government, the boat people underwent health checks before being sent to Christmas Island. X-rays and other medical examinations strongly indicated that at least one man had tuberculosis, yet the group were flown to Australia’s Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre.

Upon landing at the Island, health officials recommended the patients be transferred to Perth. However, the crew of the RAAF Hercules refused to take them, saying they were not “adequately equipped”.

A Department of Immigration spokesman (DIMIA) said an alternative flight was arranged. “At this stage there has been no positive diagnosis for tuberculosis,” the spokesman said.

The removal of the asylum seekers to Christmas Island has been met with fierce criticism from many refugee rights groups and opposition parties, who say it was impractical, potentially traumatising and hugely expensive. The Immigration Department says it has interviewed most of the asylum seekers but won’t say if they have made formal asylum claims.

File:West-Papua-Rally Darwin2.jpg

Rallies in Sydney, Melbourne, Darwin, Canberra and Brisbane were held this week, in support of the West Papuan asylum seekers. Refugee rights advocates protested the forced transfer to the remote Christmas Island facility.

Melbourne auxiliary bishop Hilton Deakin told about 130 people demonstrating outside DIMIA headquarters in Melbourne that, “we know that already the Indonesian authorities, in Canberra and beyond, are trying to get to them.”

Yet the he Indonesian embassy in Canberra denied making any approach, saying: “I can guarantee that there has been no contact whatsoever, it hadn’t been requested, it was never even sought.”

But the Immigration Department has confirmed that “a junior delegation” from the embassy went to Weipa last Thursday seeking access to the asylum seekers. A spokesman for the Immigration Department said the Indonesians arrived in Weipa on Thursday but by then the Papuans had already been put on a plane for Christmas Island. The West Papuans were told they had a right to Indonesian consular assistance if they choose. “Not one has chosen to do so,” the spokesman said.

“The majority of these 43 people are leaders for free expression and self-determination and possible independence because of the oppression from which they suffer,” Bishop Deakin said. “Massacres, rapes and all the rest of it have gone on in that country for almost 30 years.”

He called on the Australian Government to cancel its training program with the Indonesian military.

Democrats leader Lyn Allison said the Australian Government had “got it wrong on this issue”. The 43 asylum seekers had been “whisked off” before they could tell their story, she said.

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle has called on the government to grant access to Papuan asylum seekers. The senator says they should not be in detention and they certainly should be allowed to communicate with the outside world.

Senator Nettle will go to Christmas Island this weekend to meet the imprisoned West Papuans. She said the immigration department is obligated under the Migration Act to allow her to meet them.

Meanwhile New Zealand Greens have offered to take the asylum seekers. “New Zealand can show the Howard government how to be compassionate, as we did back in 2001 when we took some Afghan asylum seekers from the Tampa,” the New Zealand Green Party Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Keith Locke says.

“It is shocking that the West Papuan refugees, having survived 450 kilometres of open water in a flimsy craft, are now bundled off to a Christmas Island detention camp – well out of range of those Australians who wish to help them,” he said.

“Under refugee law these Papuans deserve special consideration, having come directly from their claimed country of persecution, Indonesia, not via a third country, as is the case with most asylum seekers in this part of the world.

“The Papuans certain have a good prima facie case. I know from my own visit to West Papua last April that there is substantial and ongoing harassment of the local people, particularly those who assert their right to political self-determination,” said Mr Locke.

On Friday last week Indonesian security forces shot dead one Papuan protester, and wounded two others, in the Paniai district, where the 43 asylum seekers originate.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Shona Bracken is running for the Communist Party in the Ontario provincial election in Toronto—Danforth. Wikinews interviewed her regarding her values, her experience, and her campaign.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Buffalo, New York —Wikinews was the first to tell you that the Elmwood Village Hotel development in Buffalo, New York was to undergo “significant changes”.

The Elmwood Village Hotel is a proposed project that would be placed at Elmwood and Forest Aves. in Buffalo. In order for the development to take place, at least five buildings that house both businesses and residents, must be demolished.

To confirm and to get more information about the changes, Wikinews interviewed Eva Hassett, Vice President of Savarino Construction Services Corporation, the development company in charge of building the hotel.

Wikinews: The hotel proposal is being redesigned. Could you comment on that? What changes are being made? Are they significant?

Eva Hassett: The hotel has been resized as a 72-room, four story building. This is 10% smaller in number of rooms and a full story lower. We are also redesigning the facades in a way that will minimize the mass – more of a vertical feeling than horizontal. Different materials, windows, details. The smaller size of the hotel also makes the number of on-site parking spaces more appropriate and hopefully represents less of a challenge to an already difficult parking situation.

WN: Will you still be going before the city’s planning board as scheduled on February 28? Same for the Common Council?

Hassett: We will be on the Planning Board agenda this Tuesday morning but I do not expect that the Board will vote on the item that morning. I think we will be mainly explaining the new design and hearing input/questions.

WN: Will there be anymore public meetings?

Hassett: We would be happy to do one more big public meeting. We will be talking to Forever Elmwood about that on Monday (February 27, 2006). We would like to see if there is support for the new design and we also want to honor the public’s request for another meeting. I am hopeful that meeting can take place the week of March 6th.

WN: Is Savarino considering Mr. Rocco Termini’s design/proposal? If no, do you (Savarino) support/oppose?

Hassett: We are hopeful that we can build the hotel as redesigned. We think it would be a great addition to the Elmwood Ave. area, a good way for out-of-towners to see what Buffalo offers and a big help to the businesses there.

WN: Are you considering more time for the community to make a judgment?

Hassett: As I mentioned above, we expect to have one more meeting to get public reaction to the new design, and I think the Planning Board may want an additional meeting to make their determination. We do however, have constraints that will limit the amount of extra time. We still think it is a great project for the City and Elmwood; and we still want it to be something that the community wants as well.

So far, the City of Buffalo’s City Planning Board is still scheduled to meet at 8:00 a.m. (Eastern) on February 28, 2006 followed by the Common Council meeting at 2:00 p.m. on the same day.

Images of the design are not yet available. “We are working on the renderings this weekend, but I will likely have some early in the week,” stated Hassett.

Thursday, March 26, 2020

In a new study released by the Florida Museum of Natural History on Monday, scientists report spiky skulls evolved at least 25 separate times in different kinds of frogs. The survey was reportedly to be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lead author Daniel Paluh, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Florida, said, “Superficially, frogs may look similar, but when you look at their skulls, you see drastic differences […] Some of the weirdest skulls are found in frogs that eat birds and mammals, use their heads as a shield, or in a few rare cases, are venomous. Their skulls show how strange and diverse frogs can be.”

Some scientists had previously suggested smaller frogs would tend to develop spiky skulls, but that is not what this study reports. Here, researchers evaluated CT scans on 158 different species. They found frogs that had similar ecological niches — meaning they either acquired food in the same way or defended themselves from predators in the same way — tended to develop skulls with similar grooves, spikes, or specialized jaw joints regardless of whether they were ancestrally related to each other.

According to the study, skulls with spikes, grooves or ridges — called hyperossification — often accompanied frogs eating very large prey relative to their own body size. The strong, spacious skulls would allow the frogs to have very big mouths with which to catch birds, rodents, reptiles and other frogs. Spikes sometimes coincided with venomous frogs. The researchers speculated the spikes make it dangerous for predators to hit the frog’s head, as the spikes would break venom sacs under the frog’s skin.

Other bone formations included projections resembling fangs or lower teeth that different species of frogs use for catching prey and fighting. Very few frogs have true lower teeth.

One of the study’s authors, herpetologist David Blackburn, told Discover Magazine the frequency of spiky skulls evolving in otherwise unrelated frogs suggested some deep pattern frogs fell into as circumstances arose: “Somehow, these frogs are turning on some ancient developmental machinery in their DNA.”

Since 1973, when frogs skulls were last comprehensively surveyed, scientists have documented enough new species to double the number known to humans. Also, modern techniques exploit CT scans, of which Paluh and his team made liberal use. The research was part of the oVert project, funded by the National Science Foundation, meant to comprehensively CT-scan over 20,000 vertebrate specimens from United States museums.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Two web sites purporting to sell tickets to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games due to open in Beijing, China on Friday have been the subject of lawsuits from the International Olympic Committee in United States courts in recent weeks. The web sites, beijingticketing.com and beijing-2008tickets.com, were designed to resemble official sites and often appeared above the official sites in Google searches, and scammed some victims out of up to US$50,000 each for tickets to events such as the Opening Ceremony and swimming, which were listed despite the official Beijing ticket web site stating that tickets to all events had sold out as of July 27. The sites are believed to have taken in millions of dollars in total.

Ken Gamble, a private investigator from Sydney, Australia, believes the sites are operated by Terance Shepherd, whom Gamble has been tracking for several years in relation to other fraudulent web sites selling tickets to events such as the FIFA World Cup. According to Gamble, Shepherd’s modus operandi involves setting up the fake web sites, overselling the tickets, and then failing to produce the tickets. “The story’s always the same,” Gamble said, “it’s an ‘unfortunate mistake’ or someone has ‘let them down’. They promise a refund, which never happens, and the credit companies end up paying all the refunds.” Shepherd owns a home in the London suburb of Blackheath, although authorities believe he is currently hiding in Barbados.

On Monday, beijingticketing.com customers received an email from someone named “Alan Scott”, claiming that the site’s ticket supplier had filed for bankruptcy. The email recommended that customers should contact their credit card companies to seek refunds “immediately”, and said that the company would set up a call centre to provide assistance to its customers. However, the site has been shut down and a phone number previously listed on it has been disconnected. The company’s address, in Phoenix, Arizona, was found to be an empty office space. Visa International has stated that victims who used their Visa card to pay should be able to get their money back, but it is not yet clear whether the same will apply to all customers.

Friday, October 10, 2008

In an attempt to speak with as many candidates as possible during the 2008 Canadian federal election, Wikinews has talked via email with Paul Arbour. Arbour is a candidate in Ontario’s Carleton—Mississippi Mills riding, running under the New Democratic Party (NDP) banner.

The riding is currently represented by Gordon O’Connor, a Conservative. The Minister of National Revenue, O’Connor is up against the NDP’s Arbour, Liberal Justin Mackinnon, and Green Jake Cole. Previous MPs in the riding were Progressive Conservative, Liberal, and Canadian Alliance members. A riding since 1988, Carleton—Mississippi Mills is in the Capital region.

The following is an interview with Arbour, conducted via email. The interview has had very limited editing, to eliminate in-text mentions of website addresses, but is otherwise left exactly as sent to Wikinews.

Sunday, June 12, 2005

The government of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is in a severe political crisis. The crisis began after the exposure of a series of scandals which involve the Workers’ Party, the Brazilian ruling party.

In 2002, Celso Daniel, the mayor of Santo André, 10 km (6 miles) away from the São Paulo city, was murdered. Daniel was a member of the ruling Workers’ Party. The mayor’s brother says that Daniel died because he was in disagreement to a supposed bribe conspiracy organized by some Workers’ Party members. The case remains under investigation by police.

In 2004, the former adviser to the government of President Lula, Waldomiro Diniz, was accused of negotiating with “bicheiros” (men who deal with: “Jogo do Bicho”, or illegal gambling) and extorting money for Workers’ Party (PT) electoral campaigns. A supposed victim of extortion released a tape exposing Diniz. The tape’s authenticity has been verified by experts and it was aired by the major Brazilian television stations. A Congressional special commission was proposed by non-government parties so the denunciation could be investigated. The government succeeded in stopping the creation of the commission.

On March 16, the leading Brazilian magazine Veja published a story saying that according to documents of the Brazilian Agency of intelligence (Abin) the Workers’ Party received 5 million dollars to be used by political campaigns of their candidates in 2002 from the Colombian communist armed group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP). Abin said that the documents were not authentic.

Last month, some men, supposedly involved in illicit negotiations with the Brazilian Post Service recorded a video which shows former Post Office Chief, Maurício Marinho, during a supposed bribe negotiation. In the tape, Marinho receives and puts in his pocket R$3,000 (about 1,259 USD) in cash. He insinuates that the scheme is commanded by deputy Roberto Jefferson. The recording was aired by the major Brazilian television stations.

Roberto Jefferson is the president of the government-allied Brazilian Labor Party (PTB). Lula da Silva said in a earlier occasion that he “would give to Jefferson a bank check in blank”, what means that he had high confidence on Jefferson.

Still related to the Post Office case, on June 2, Lídio Duarte, the former president of IRB, a government enterprise, denied allegations that money from some Brazilian government enterprises was going to PTB, Jefferson’s party. An earlier story published by magazine Veja, said that Duarte was a victim of extortion by a representative of PTB. According to Veja, Duarte resigned from the Presidency of IRB, because he had difficulties in continuing to give more money to PTB. Lídio denied this story to the police, and furthermore he said that he never have had an interview with Veja’s journalists.

On June 8, the magazine Veja released for download in its webpage, an audio tape where it can be heard the voice of Lidio Duarte during an alleged interview to Veja. In the tape, Lidio Duarte talks about being under pressure because someone was asking him more contribution in money for PTB. The tape contradicts the Duarte’s testimony to the police and because of that, he became subject of investigation by the authorities. The name of the deputy Roberto Jefferson is cited by Duarte in the alleged recorded interview to Veja.

After the Post Office scandal been exposed, the Brazilian Congress proposed the creation of a Congress’ special commission, so it could be investigated by the Parliament. The government, however, protested against it, arguing that political adversaries were anticipating the dispute to the next election for Brazil’s Presidency. Workers’ Party senator Eduardo Suplicy protested in Senate against his party decision. Because that he was very criticized and he got subject to punishment by the Workers’ Party.

On June 6, Roberto Jefferson told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo that the ruling Workers’ Party (PT) has payed Brazilian deputies 30 thousand Brazilian Reals (US 12 thousand) each, every month. The stock markets went down and the U.S. Dollar increased its value in relation to the Brazilian Real. A new Congress’ special commission was proposed by some Brazilian senators, so Jefferson’s allegations could be investigated. The Workers’ Party says that Jefferson’s allegations were untrue and that he had no proofs.

After Jefferson’s denunciation the focus of the scandal moved to the government and the ruling Workers’ Party. Because the government were under pressure, the Workers’ Party changed his earlier decision of stopping the creation of a Congress’ special commission for the Post Office scandal. The proposal for the creation of a Congress’ special commission for the Post Office scandal was approved.

On June 9, there was the first meeting of members of the Congress’ special commission for the Post Office scandal. Because of unsolved disputes between government’s parliamentarians and the other parties representatives, the meeting could not continue. The government’s block argued that it must choose the president and the report for the commission, since the government commission members are the majority. Other parties argue that according to Parliament tradition the government should choose one member for the presidency or report and the opposition should choose the other member.A new meeting was scheduled to the next week, on Tuesday, June 14.

Besides these scandals, the current Social Security Minister, Romero Jucá, is accused of havingoffered seven non-existent farms as guarantee for a financing from the Banco of Amazonia, among other denunciations of misuse of public loans. The current President of Brazilian Central Bank, Henrique Meirelles, is accused of financial fraud among other accusations. Also there is a denunciation of a irregular transference of founds of Central Bank to the construction of a new headquarter for the Workers’ Party.

On June 4, during the so called Curupira operation, the Brazilian Federal Police arrested members of IBAMA, a Brazilian agency for environment. Among other accusations, they are accused of selling irregular licenses for deforestation in Amazon. At least one of the suspects, a Workers’ Party affiliate, is under suspection of have used the money for the political campaign of a Worker’s Party candidate in Mato Grosso.

Besides the commission to investigate the Post Office scandal, another Congress’ special commissions were suggested by non-government members of Brazilian Senate: a commission to investigate the IRB scandal and another one to the investigation of Roberto Jefferson’s allegations. Also, it is expected that the Brazilian Courts rule against the earlier government decision of stopping the creation of a commission for the investigation of the alleged Waldomiro Diniz scandal.