Monthly Archives: July 2021

Monday, August 30, 2010

Peter Lenz, a 13-year-old motorcycle racer, has died after being involved in a crash at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. While on his warm-up lap, Lenz fell off his bike, and was then struck by fellow racer Xavier Zayat. He was immediately attended to by the on-track medical staff and transported to a local hospital where he later died. Zayat was unhurt in the accident.

Lenz was due to participate at the US Grand Prix Racers Union event ahead of the world championship races. Racing from the age of 7, Lenz won nine national championships.

A comment was posted on Lenz’s Facebook fan page by his father. It said “Peter passed away early this morning when he was apparently struck by another rider. He passed doing what he loved and had his go fast face on as he pulled onto the track,” the posting said. “The world lost one of its brightest lights today. God Bless Peter and the other rider involved. 45 is on another road we can only hope to reach. Miss you kiddo.”

It is expected that Lenz’s death will re-spark the debate over age restrictions when it comes to professional racing. The Speedway officials declined to comment on the subject.

Lenz is the first person to die at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway since Tony Renna was killed in an IndyCar test in 2003.

Sunday, March 6, 2005

Four Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers were shot and killed while raiding a house in the rural town of Mayerthorpe, Alberta. The suspected shooter, James Rosko, 46, also died in the raid. The RCMP reported that he committed suicide after killing the four officers with his own rifle.

The officers were carrying out a court-ordered property seizure. They discovered stolen property and a marijuana growing operation.

The following officers were killed in action:

• Const. Peter Schiemann, 25
• Const. Anthony Gordon, 28
• Const. Lionide Johnston, 34
• Const. Brock Myrol, 29

The shooting has shocked the peaceful region and the country of Canada. The Liberal Party of Canada has responded by agreeing to recommend tougher laws for grow-ops. Local citizens are reacting to the losses with memorials and condolences.

The rural town of Mayerthorpe, with a population of about 1,600, is located about 130km northwest of Edmonton.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Sulpicio Lines, a ferry company in the Philippines, have been ordered to pay PH?6.24 million over the death of a man on board MV Princess of the Orient, which sank in stormy weather off Batangas in 1998. Ernesto Unabia was one of seventy confirmed fatalities in the disaster, which left eighty more missing.

Unabia was a 37-year-old seaman who worked on international vessels, and earned a ?120,000 salary. According to widow Verna Unabia, who filed the case with her three children, he was going to work on for thirteen more years and then retire. Unabia’s case is the first to be concluded, although most victims settled with Sulpicio without claims being filed.

Although Sulpicio lost their appeal several weeks ago, reporters have only today received access to documentation concerning the case.

Under Philippines law, employers are responsible for their employees actions. However, in Pestaño vs. Sumayang the Supreme court ruled that if it could be proved an employer had taken appropriate diligence when selecting employers then they could not be held responsible.

It was viewed that Sulpicio was responsible as they failed to remove captain Esrum Mahilum from the vessel despite a number of incidents involving the ferry while he was in command of it. Princess of the Orient had struck the bottom of Manila‘s North Harbour, sideswiped a container ship and suffered a crippling engine fire while berthed at North Harbour, being towed first to Cebu and ultimately Singapore for repairs.

Despite these serious incidents while the ship was under Mahilum’s care, however, he was not removed from captaincy or even disciplined. A Board of Marine Inquiry (BMI) investigation into the ultimate sinking of the Princess of the Orient would later say that Sulpicio did not have enough initiative to take action against him. The court ruled this made them responsible for his actions.

On September 18, 1998, the day of the sinking, Captain Mahilum was warned before starting out that severe weather was approaching. He wrongly calculated that the storm was safely distanced and left port regardless, running into the storm two hours later. Princess of the Orient began listing to the left and a distress call was sent, but she sank before help arrived. The BMI’s report blamed the disaster on the captain making “erroneous maneuvers of the vessel before it sank.” He remains missing to this day.

After the court ruled that this made Sulpicio liable to pay civil damages an appeal was filed, in which Sulpicio said that the captain “valiantly tried to save his ship up to the bitter end. He heroically went down with his ship.” Although he failed to properly supervise the abandon ship order he gave, he was last seen helping passengers to board life rafts. Sulpicio further alleged that careful analysis of the BMI report showed he did not directly cause the disaster.

The court rejected the appeal, with judge Estella Alma Singco saying that while the failure to remove the captain wasn’t the direct cause, “such failure doubtless contributed materially to the loss of life.” Sulpicio were ordered to pay P6.240 million in lost earnings, P100,000 moral damages, P50,000 indemnity – which Sulpicio had already offered to all the families of the deceased – and P50,000 in pursuer’s litigation costs.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

The Australian House of Representatives have considered the bill regarding whether the Australian Health Minister Tony Abbott, or the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) regulate the abortifacient mifepristone (RU486), and has passed the bill unamended.

Earlier today, the Prime Minister John Howard (Australian Liberal Party, Bennelong) has spoken on the amendments earlier proposed by Jackie Kelly (Liberal, Lindsay) and Andrew Laming (Liberal, Bowman), speaking in favour of the Laming amendments and reiterating his support for Abbott, stating that he is the “best friend that Medicare ever had”, Abbott’s usual phrase he states in Question Time in support of the Government’s handling of Medicare.

Howard’s counterpart, the Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley (Australian Labor Party, Brand), spoke in support of the bill in its unamended form, noting that it is “simply commonsense that the minister does not have the scientific capacity” to evaluate the drug, and reiterating that the bill is “not really about Tony Abbott”. More controversially he however said that those with certain personal views such as Tony Abbott’s conservative Catholic faith should not hold certain offices in Government, which drew criticism from the Government later in the debate noting that an earlier Labor Prime Minister of Australia John Curtin‘s pacificism was a strong wartime leader.

Later, the Kelly amendments were put to the vote and were lost on the voices and in subsequent division with 49 agreeing to the amendments and 96 disagreeing. The vote on whether the bill should be read a second time 95 for to 50 against. In the consideration in detail stage, the Laming amendments were debated, but the vote on these amendments were lost with 56 supporting the amendments and 90 against them.

The bill as unamended was agreed to and passed the third reading on the voices, without having to resort to a vote.

Larvatus Prodeo (LP) blogger “Kate” welcomed the decision, but warned that the abortion issue was far from settled. “Personally, I think this is not only a good thing for women in Australia, but also demonstrates democratic processes at work. Now we can commence stoushing about whether or not the TGA should allow the drug into the country,” she said.

One commenter on LP, Paul Norton, suggested that division over the issue would deepen in the next few years, and that people opposed to legalised abortion would become more vocal. “I expect that the loud minority will become louder over the next couple of years, and more authoritarian and fanatical in their attempts to twist legislators’ and candidates’ arms, until State and Federal election results show that their loudness is directly proportional to their minority status amongst Australians.”

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Queen Elizabeth II, the British monarch, has today withdrawn and annulled a knighthood given to Fred Goodwin in 2004, heeding the advice given to her by a forfeiture committee. Goodwin is the former chief executive at the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) and was awarded his knighthood by the British government of the time for services to banking. The committee concluded “that widespread concerns about Fred Goodwin’s decision meant that the retention of a knighthood for services to banking could not be sustained.”

Goodwin was chief executive of RBS when they purchased ABN AMRO, a Netherlands bank, in 2007. The British government subsequently bailed out RBS for £45 billion, amidst the late-2000s financial crisis.

British prime minister David Cameron stated about the annulment: “The proper process has been followed and I think we’ve ended up with the right decision.” Cameron and Ed Miliband, UK Leader of the Opposition, both believed Goodwin’s knighthood should be removed. Miliband called it “the start of the change we need in our boardrooms.”

Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy PM Nick Clegg considered it to be the “right decision”. “[A]ppropriate” was the word George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer used to describe it. “RBS came to symbolise everything that went wrong in the British economy in the last decade,” Osborne stated. Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland stated the title was given “for services to banking which could not therefore be sustained”, calling the decision “correct”.

Goodwin does not have the right to appeal against the decision, nor had the right to provide the forfeiture committee with any representations. The monarch holds sole responsibility for withdrawing all knighthoods; on this occasion Elizabeth II followed the advice of the committee, who decided to recommend the withdrawal to her. The Cabinet Office announced the advice had been given to the queen on the understanding that “Goodwin had brought the honours system in to disrepute”.

Speaking of the “exceptional case”, the committee explained: “In 2008, the government had to provide £20 billion of new equity to recapitalise RBS and ensure its survival and prevent the collapse of confidence in the British banking system. Subsequent increases in government capital have brought the total necessary injection of taxpayers’ money in RBS to £45.5 billion.” The committee understood that “Fred Goodwin was the dominant decision maker at RBS at the time.”

Until this announcement, criminal conviction and professional expulsion were the only causes for which individuals had their knighthoods revoked.

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

A mother called the police in Kamloops, British Columbia (B.C.), Canada on Sunday morning after her 11-month daughter discovered a bag full of a substance that appeared to be fentanyl, a dangerous opioid drug, according to Kamloops Police, at the McDonald Park playground. She managed to get a hold of the small bag and kept her child safe.

In a statement issued on Monday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) confirmed they seized the substance, stating “In B.C., this has been considered a public health emergency since April 2016. Unfortunately this means issues like found needles and drugs are something that all parents must be mindful of while in public settings.”

Kamloops RCMP Constable Gary Gray said fentanyl had become a popular drug in Kamloops because it was potent, and colors such as purple were used as a signature by traffickers.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the opioid crisis claimed 15,393 lives in Canada between January 2016 and December 2019, according to the Canadian Public Health Infobase.

In Ontario, provincial police Detective Constable Daniel Dubé stated to the CBC in late June that the border closure between New York State and Quebec drove up the prices of illicit drugs, and traffickers had been stretching their products further. He explained that heroin, which had normally been laced with fentanyl, had been mixed with the sedative etizolam, or benzos, another drug of the nervous system depressant class.

The Executive director of the Ask Wellness Society, Bob Hughes, told Kamloops This Week that CERB (Canada Emergency Response Benefit) payments, a program related to the COVID-19 pandemic, presented an additional factor in a spike in overdose deaths this year. According to the B.C. Coroners Service, there were 170 suspected deaths in May alone, shortly after the CERB payments started, resulting from the abuse of illicit drugs. That showed a 93% increase from 88 deaths in May 2019. Clinic and advocacy manager Michaela Jyrkkanen, of Christian anti-poverty organization The Mustard Seed Kamloops, disagreed with the correlation between the overdoses and the CERB payments.

Last year, Vancouver researchers distributed take-home test strip kits which were capable of detecting fentanyl presence in other drugs. Dr Sukhpreet Klaire, the lead author of the study and an addiction medicine specialist, said the cost of the accurate test strip kit was 75 cents. More than 95% of the participants in her study indicated they would use the strip kits again.

Sunday, April 24, 2005

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced last Wednesday that it has agreed definitively to merge with Chicago-based Archipelago Exchange (ArcaEx) and form a new publicly traded, for-profit company known as NYSE Group. This announcement was followed two days later by NASDAQ®, which independently announced a definitive agreement to purchase Instinet Group.

Archipelago and Instinet are innovative e-trading (electronic trading) companies, and formerly were the two largest American rivals to NYSE and NASDAQ, in recent years taking increasingly large portions of their market share. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other regulatory agencies still have to review and approve the transactions, particularly with respect to US securities law and antitrust law, in order to ensure that the marketplace remains lawful and competitive.

Other pending issues for NASDAQ include obtaining the approval of Instinet shareholders, as well as customary closing conditions. NYSE must obtain the approval of its members and Archipelago shareholders.

These changes, a reaction to increased e-trading competition and a changed regulatory environment, will result in NASDAQ and NYSE trading each other’s shares and attempting to grab market share, which many hope will drive down transaction costs and ultimately benefit consumers. However, at least one commentator, Dan Ackman writing in Forbes, has noted that the trading commission at the NYSE currently averages less than a nickel (US$0.05) per share, and was less enthusiastic about potential efficiency gains from electronic trading at the exchange.

The transactions are also intended to make the two leading American stock exchanges more globally competitive with such exchanges as the London Stock Exchange, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange, and the Australian Stock Exchange located in Sydney.