Wednesday, February 16, 2005The British Countryside Alliance has lost its legal bid to keep hunting with hounds after the High Court rejected their appeal, which had been made on the grounds that the Parliament Act 1949 was invalid. The High Court rejected this, ruling that the 1949 Act was valid. This means hunting with dogs for foxes, hares and badgers will be illegal from Friday 18 February in England and Wales in accordance with the Hunting Act 2004.

The Countryside Alliance has said it is challenging the decision in the House of Lords (the highest court in English Law) and the European Court of Human Rights.

The RSPCA has said the arguments were “wafer thin”.

However the CA as said that the police would have difficulty in policing the law. The League Against Cruel Sports has said it is setting up a “crimewatch service” to police the ban.

Friday, March 6, 2020

Yesterday, an all-women crew ran the Mysuru–Bengaluru Tippu Express in the Indian state of Karnataka. The state-run Indian Railways launched this event ahead of International Women’s Day, for promoting gender equality at work places.

B Shiva Parvathi was running the train as loco pilot (locomotive pilot), and 22-year-old Rangoli Patil was her loco co-pilot. The train left Mysore Junction railway station at 11:30 am IST (0600 UTC), covering a distance of 139km to reach KSR Bangalore station. The train had banners on it which mentioned “International Women’s Day Celebration”.

Speaking to newspaper Star of Mysore, B Shiva Parvathi said, “It is a proud moment for me to be steering this train today along with my Loco Pilot Rangoli and the all-women staff”. Mysore Divisional Railway Manager Aparna Garg told Wikinews only 10% of the employees in the Mysore Division were women, which constitutes about 650 female employees.

Mysore district comes under the South West Railway (SWR) branch of the Indian Railway. Mysore Division of the SWR celebration of the Women’s day started on March 1, and is planned till March 10. Various activities are being conducted in this period, including health check-ups, yoga, sports competition and trekking, newspaper The Hindu reported.

“The theme ‘Equal for All’ is an effort of the Railways to promote more women workforce and empower them. Women of today are no less to any men, be it in any field. I hope through such initiatives, more number of women are motivated to take up jobs in their respective fields of interest”, Garg told Star of Mysore.

Friday, March 18, 2011

The New York Times announced on Thursday that it will start charging for full access to NYTimes.com, its online version. Beginning March 28, U.S. visitors who do not subscribe to the print edition will be allowed access to 20 articles a month. A digital subscription to the website will be required to read additional content.

The fee plan for Canadians is already in effect, allowing the NYT to “fine-tune the customer experience”, according to the announcement.

Unlimited access to articles will continue to be free for those users reaching the Times through links from search engines, blogs, and social media like Facebook and Twitter. The NYTimes.com home page and individual section front pages will continue be freely accessible.

The NYT unsuccessfully tried a pay wall six years ago. Due to declining profits and readership of its print edition, it is ready to try again.

According to comScore, a marketing research company that measures online traffic, NYTimes.com had 31.4 million individual visitors in February. It is the most-read newspaper site in the world, reported The Guardian.

“The challenge now is to put a price on our work without walling ourselves off from the global network, to make sure we continue to engage with the widest possible audience”, wrote Arthur Sulzberger Jr., NYT company chairman.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

The upcoming 2006 Brampton municipal election, to be held November 13, features an array of candidates looking to represent their wards in city council or the council of the Peel Region.

Wikinews contributor Nick Moreau contacted many of the candidates, including Derek Begley, asking them to answer common questions sent in an email. This ward’s incumbent is John Sprovieri; also challenging Sprovieri is Sherdaljit Dhillon, Mahen Gupta, Satpaul Johal, Dalbir S. Kathuria, and Vahid Saadati-Khanshir.

Thursday, December 1, 2005

U.S. President Bush re-stated his commitment to withdraw troops from Iraq and outlined goals for training Iraqi security forces that will guide such withdrawal. The presidential speech followed from a newly released White House document titled the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq. White House Press Secretary Scott McCellen claimed that the strategy outlined is what the administration has been following since 2003, and said that the released document is simply an unclassified version of the same for the public to review.

This release follows growing public and congressional dissatisfaction over the continuing violence in Iraq, rising US and Iraqi death toll, revelations of corruption and misadministration in the reconstruction program and the administration’s handling of the war. A day before the president’s address, Sen. Hillary Clinton, in an E-mail to her supporters had said “Given years of assurances that the war was nearly over and that the insurgents were in their ‘last throes,’ this administration was either not being honest with the American people or did not know what was going on in Iraq.”

“As the Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, we will be able to decrease our troop levels in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists. These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders,” stated the President on Nov. 30 while speaking to Midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

As was expected, Bush did not set a timeframe for U.S. troop withdrawal, which is in direct opposition to recent calls for such a timetable by congressional leaders. The administration and its supporters label such a timeframe as “artificial”. In his speech, Bush characterized those calling for a withdrawal deadline as “sincere, but…sincerely wrong.” and said “Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would vindicate the terrorists’ tactics of beheadings and suicide bombings and mass murder — and invite new attacks on America.”

Bush admitted that there had been “some setbacks in training Iraq’s security forces,” and that their performance is still “uneven in some areas.” Earlier, in a congressional briefing, General Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, had said that so far only one Iraqi battalion out of 120 being trained was capable of mounting operations without support from U.S. forces. The strategy document released also stated that “it’s not realistic to expect a fully functioning democracy able to defeat its enemies three years after Saddam is finally removed from power,” prompting questions about when the administration made such a determination.

In the White House press briefing Scott McClellan did not directly answer a question about which, if any of the short, medium and long term goals set out in the strategy has been achieved, saying that “I want to say we’ve made real progress on all three fronts of the strategy for victory.” Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn) echoed the same sentiment, saying ” … examining the results on the ground, it’s clear that we continue to make progress on the political, security and economic fronts”

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass), felt the President was ignoring what his own generals are telling him.

“The large presence of American forces on the ground feeds the insurgency,” stated Kerry.

Democratic politicians generally dismissed the speech as a repeat of old rhetoric.

Harry Reid (D-Nev), Senate minority leader, accused Bush of “recycling his tired rhetoric of ‘stay the course’.” According to Reid, Bush had “missed an opportunity to lay out a real strategy for success in Iraq that will bring our troops safely home.”

Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Programme at the New America Foundation, said Bush’s war aims failed to address the strains on U.S. armed forces imposed by Iraq. “It’s a very expansive commitment and it blows by the structural questions,” stated Clemons. He added that those problems could only be resolved by a withdrawal, changing the current rules limiting the frequency of combat tours for individual units, or by moving towards a draft. Clemons said Bush was trying to escape those problems by portraying Iraqi forces as more ready than they actually are.

Washington spends more than $6b a month to keep its forces in Iraq. More than 2,100 Americans and many more thousands of Iraqis have been killed since the March 2003 invasion.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

The 1999 and 2000 year model Honda Civic SiR tops the list of Canada’s most stolen cars.

Consumer popularity also assures the cars will be popular with thieves. Its the second year in a row the Honda SiR has topped the list.

Rick Dubin Vice President of Investigations for the Insurance Bureau of Canada said “The Civics are easy targets.”

Dubin said that once stolen, the cars are most often sold to “chop shops” where thieves completely dismantle the vehicles. The automobile’s individual parts are worth more than the entire car.

The sheer numbers of the cars and their lack of theft deterrent systems make them thieves’ preferred choices.

1999 and 2000 Honda Civics do not come with an electronic immobilizer, however all Hondas from 2001 and onward are equipped with an immobilizer. Immobilizers will be mandatory on all new cars sold beginning September 2007. The devices enable an engine computer to recognize an electronic code in the key. If the code in the key and the engine don’t match exactly, the vehicle can’t be started.

In third place was the 2004 Subaru Impreza, while the 1999 Acura Integra came in fourth, with the 1994 Honda Civic rounding out the top five.

In sixth place, the 1998 Acura Integra, and the 1993 Dodge Shadow completed seventh.

When asked why early model vehicles are selected, he said that, “auto thieves continue to find it easier to steal older vehicles lacking an IBC-approved immobilizer. We’ve seen this trend developing for several years, and these results confirm it.”

Another Honda automobile, the 1996 year model Civic filled eighth place, with the 2000 German Audi TT Quattro in ninth.

The American 1996 Chevrolet/GMC Blazer rounded out the top ten.

None of the above cars had an electronic immobilizer.