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Friday, May 27, 2016

The Indian Government announced on Wednesday they will issue a notification to ensure all buses are fitted with panic buttons to prevent sex-related violence occurring on buses in India. The motion was introduced by Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari. Installation of the buttons is set to become mandatory on June 2.

Tests are under way on 20 buses running from Rajasthan to New Delhi. Buses are to have panic buttons, a GPS-enabled vehicle tracking device, and CCTV cameras. The new buttons are located at the front doors and when pressed, a police control room has the ability to view live footage recorded inside the bus.

Last month, the government announced that as of 2017, mobile phones can’t be sold in India without a panic button. With the press of a single key, the panic button alerts emergency services that assistance is required.

Since a fatal sexual assault three and a half years ago on a bus in New Delhi, accompanied by increased rates of sexual assault, the government has been pressured to help women avoid the dangers of sexual assault. The bus sexual assault three and a half years ago resulted in India-wide protests, and laws regarding sexual assault were overhauled.

According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), in 2014 New Delhi reported 1,813 rapes, more than any other Indian city. In more than 80% of rapes across India, the victim knew the rapist. In data from 2013, the rapists in 539 cases were parents, in 2,315 cases other relatives.

In 2012 the NCRB said the country had 24,923 reported rapes. However, this number grew over the following year, with 2013 seeing 33,707 reported.

In 2013, NCRB said New Delhi saw 1,636 rapes reported, with an Indian average of 92 women per day. The New Delhi cases alone account for more than four per day.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

A one-inch settlement of the roof of The Bay tunnel to the Montreal Metro caused authorities to evacuate 12 blocks of the Montreal downtown core.

Several people noticed water infiltration in the tunnel over the last few days. On Friday, August 24, at 1 p.m., while investigating another water infiltration incident, The Bay employees noticed that the ceiling of the tunnel portion of The Bay’s basement sales area had descended one inch over a 7 meter length. They subsequently called police. The police and firefighters evacuated the basement of the downtown Bay store. The police closed de Maisonneuve Boulevard from Aylmer Street to Union Street, over the area of the crack.

At 4 p.m., firefighters evacuated the Parkade Montreal Building and The Bay Department Store after finding pieces of concrete falling from the Parkade Montreal structure, a multi-story carpark with five levels of offices on top. They also evacuated the downtown portion of the Line 1 / Green Line of the Montreal Metro subway, from Lionel-Groulx to Berri-UQAM stations, and evacuated the McGill metro station, which is situated below The Bay tunnel. After consulting with city engineers, Centre 2001, the loading dock of the Bay and its Hertz car rental agency, Les Promenades Cathedrale underground shopping centre and office tower, and a neighbouring office tower to the Parkade were also evacuated. Police cordoned off an area from Bleury Street in the east to University Street in the west, and from Ste-Catherine Street in the south to President Kennedy Street to the north.

The closure of the Metro caused havoc to the Friday afternoon rush hour, as over 40,000 people regularly use the Green Line (Line 1) every day. Montreal Transit Corporation workers issued directions during the day, though some may not have been informed of a provisionary bus service to replace the lost subway service. Loudspeakers announced that commuters should use the unaffected Orange Line (Line 2), which has lines between 5 and 10 blocks south of Line 1 (Green Line), and also connects to Lionel-Groulx and Berri-UQAM stations.

The downtown area is intended to remain closed for at least the weekend, along with portions of the underground city, or RESO. The tunnel was built in 1966. For the last few days, city work crews have been working above the slab in question, digging a one meter trench to install a median and segregate a new bike path on de Maisonneuve Boulevard. The tunnel roof lies five meters below street level.

Residents of Montreal are frustrated with the crumbling infrastructure in and around the city, including the collapse of the de la Concorde Boulevard overpass over Autoroute 19 expressway last year, the shattering of a column holding up the Autoroute 720 Ville Marie elevated expressway last month, and other incidents.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Last night HBO premiered I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA. Since its inception, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has made headlines and raised eyebrows. They are almost single-handedly responsible for the movement against animal testing and their efforts have raised the suffering animals experience in a broad spectrum of consumer goods production and food processing into a cause célèbre.

PETA first made headlines in the Silver Spring monkeys case, when Alex Pacheco, then a student at George Washington University, volunteered at a lab run by Edward Taub, who was testing neuroplasticity on live monkeys. Taub had cut sensory ganglia that supplied nerves to the monkeys’ fingers, hands, arms, legs; with some of the monkeys, he had severed the entire spinal column. He then tried to force the monkeys to use their limbs by exposing them to persistent electric shock, prolonged physical restraint of an intact arm or leg, and by withholding food. With footage obtained by Pacheco, Taub was convicted of six counts of animal cruelty—largely as a result of the monkeys’ reported living conditions—making them “the most famous lab animals in history,” according to psychiatrist Norman Doidge. Taub’s conviction was later overturned on appeal and the monkeys were eventually euthanized.

PETA was born.

In the subsequent decades they ran the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty against Europe’s largest animal-testing facility (footage showed staff punching beagle puppies in the face, shouting at them, and simulating sex acts while taking blood samples); against Covance, the United State’s largest importer of primates for laboratory research (evidence was found that they were dissecting monkeys at its Vienna, Virginia laboratory while the animals were still alive); against General Motors for using live animals in crash tests; against L’Oreal for testing cosmetics on animals; against the use of fur for fashion and fur farms; against Smithfield Foods for torturing Butterball turkeys; and against fast food chains, most recently against KFC through the launch of their website kentuckyfriedcruelty.com.

They have launched campaigns and engaged in stunts that are designed for media attention. In 1996, PETA activists famously threw a dead raccoon onto the table of Anna Wintour, the fur supporting editor-in-chief of Vogue, while she was dining at the Four Seasons in New York, and left bloody paw prints and the words “Fur Hag” on the steps of her home. They ran a campaign entitled Holocaust on your Plate that consisted of eight 60-square-foot panels, each juxtaposing images of the Holocaust with images of factory farming. Photographs of concentration camp inmates in wooden bunks were shown next to photographs of caged chickens, and piled bodies of Holocaust victims next to a pile of pig carcasses. In 2003 in Jerusalem, after a donkey was loaded with explosives and blown up in a terrorist attack, Newkirk sent a letter to then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat to keep animals out of the conflict. As the film shows, they also took over Jean-Paul Gaultier‘s Paris boutique and smeared blood on the windows to protest his use of fur in his clothing.

The group’s tactics have been criticized. Co-founder Pacheco, who is no longer with PETA, called them “stupid human tricks.” Some feminists criticize their campaigns featuring the Lettuce Ladies and “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” ads as objectifying women. Of their Holocaust on a Plate campaign, Anti-Defamation League Chairman Abraham Foxman said “The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent.” (Newkirk later issued an apology for any hurt it caused). Perhaps most controversial amongst politicians, the public and even other animal rights organizations is PETA’s refusal to condemn the actions of the Animal Liberation Front, which in January 2005 was named as a terrorist threat by the United States Department of Homeland Security.

David Shankbone attended the pre-release screening of I Am An Animal at HBO’s offices in New York City on November 12, and the following day he sat down with Ingrid Newkirk to discuss her perspectives on PETA, animal rights, her responses to criticism lodged against her and to discuss her on-going life’s work to raise human awareness of animal suffering. Below is her interview.

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Saturday, March 21, 2009

The older brother of Christopher Nolan, director of the films The Dark Knight and Memento, has been arrested in connection with an alleged murder in Central America.

Matthew Francis Nolan, 40, was arrested last month and is awaiting extradition to Costa Rica to face murder and kidnapping charges. He is currently being held in prison without bond.

Nolan is accused of killing Robert C. Cohen, a Florida businessman, in 2005 while trying to recover $7 million Cohen owed to another Florida man.

Costa Rican authorities said Nolan posed as a businessman and arranged a meeting with Cohen at a hotel.

Nolan and an accomplice, Douglas Mejia, then allegedly kidnapped Cohen and tried to extort the money from Cohen’s family, then killed Cohen when the plan failed.

Mejia has already been convicted of murder and kidnapping and is currently in prison.

Chicago authorities had been investigating Nolan for an alleged $700,000 bank fraud, which was unrelated to the murder, according to media reports. FBI agents arrested Nolan in February while he was leaving a Chicago bankruptcy court hearing.

The Chicago Sun-Times first reported the story on Friday.

Matthew Nolan’s brothers, Christopher and screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, are the filmmaking duo behind the films Memento, The Dark Knight and The Prestige.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

The leader of the government’s political partner, United Future and Revenue minister, Peter Dunne has announced that there will be personal tax cuts to go along with the confirmed business tax cuts in 2008.

Peter Dunne’s newsletter, sent yesterday, said: “The business tax reduction proposals I announced with Michael Cullen in the Business Tax Review in July will go ahead from April 2008, and they will be accompanied by personal tax adjustments as well, just as we foreshadowed.” They would be “the first major cuts by either government since 1996.” Peter Dunne was the Revenue minister in 1996 as well.

Finance minister and deputy Prime Minister, Doctor Michael Cullen, said: “Mr Dunne is clearly involved in an important branding exercise for United Future and nothing has changed.”

The Prime Minister, Helen Clark, did not comment.

Before Peter Dunne announced the tax cuts, the Government had denied any tax cut proposals until November/December when they could see a clearer picture.

Dunne said that the tax cuts would come in the form of rate cuts and threshold movements.

Cullen said that if tax cuts were offered then they will be for everyone, including those in the low to middle income ranges.

New Zealand First, another political partner of the government, claimed credit in its annual convention on Sunday that they were the ones who convinced Labour the value of tax cuts and changing the personal thresholds.

Cullen last week said, when he announced the surplus; “We are engaged in a business taxation review that will almost certainly produce proposals for tax cuts in the business area to come into force on 1 April 2008 . . . and that may have implications for personal tax rates and thresholds, but I can’t give you more information because [it is] not available.”

The business tax is dropping three cents to NZ$0.33.

Monday, July 20, 2009

A United States fighter jet crash on Saturday has claimed the lives of the two American pilots onboard in eastern Afghanistan, and a NATO fighter crash at Kandahar Airfield has injured two more pilots today.

The latest crash is the fifth in the space of a week. On Tuesday a helicopter was shot down, killing seven civilians. Yesterday a NATO-chartered helicopter crashed at Kandahar Airfield, killing sixteen, and another helicopter landed heavily elsewhere, injuring several people. Only Tuesday’s accident involved hostile fire.

Saturday’s accident involved a U.S. Air Force (USAF) F-15, which crashed at 3:15 a.m. Kabul time in Nawur, Ghazni. Both of those on the two-man fighter were killed. A spokseman for Ghazni’s governor stated that “The crash site was sealed off by coalition forces. Afghan police were not allowed to have access to this area.”

A board of officers will investigate the accident. “We mourn the loss of these two airmen and our thoughts are with their families, loved ones and their unit,” said a USAF statement.

Initially NATO did not identify the nationality of the pilots involved in today’s accident or the nationality or model of the aircraft involved. However the MOD of the United Kingdom later confirmed that the aircraft was an RAF Tornado GR4 which crashed on take-off. The crash occurred at 7:20 a.m. local time and the wreckage burned for five hours. Both pilots ejected safely but sustained minor injuries, they are currently being treated and assessed in hospital.