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Thursday, March 31, 2016

Businessman Rocky De La Fuente took some time to speak with Wikinews about his campaign for the U.S. Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

The 61-year-old De La Fuente resides in San Diego, California, grew up in Tijuana, and owns multiple businesses and properties throughout the world. Since getting his start in the automobile industry, De La Fuente has branched out into the banking and real estate markets. Despite not having held or sought political office previously, he has been involved in politics, serving as the first-ever Hispanic superdelegate to the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

De La Fuente entered the 2016 presidential race last October largely due to his dissatisfaction with Republican front-runner Donald Trump. He argues he is a more accomplished businessman than Trump, and attacks Trump as “a clown,” “a joke,” “dangerous,” and “in the same category as Hitler.” Nevertheless, De La Fuente’s business background begets comparisons with Trump. The Alaskan Midnight Sun blog described him as the Democrats’ “own Donald Trump.”

While receiving only minimal media coverage, he has campaigned actively, and according to the latest Federal Election Commission filing, loaned almost US$ 4 million of his own money to the campaign. He has qualified for 48 primary and caucus ballots, but has not yet obtained any delegates to the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Thus far, according to the count at The Green Papers, De La Fuente has received 35,406 votes, or 0.23% of the total votes cast. He leads among the many lesser-known candidates but trails both Senator Bernie Sanders who has received nearly 6.5 million votes and front-runner Hillary Clinton who has just shy of 9 million votes.

With Wikinews reporter William S. Saturn?, De La Fuente discusses his personal background, his positions on political issues, his current campaign for president, and his political future.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Fannie Mae, a housing mortgage lender, has forgiven the mortgage debt of Addie Polk, a 90-year-old woman from Akron, Ohio who attempted to kill herself when she was being evicted from her home on Wednesday.

Polk had lived in her home since 1970, and refinanced her mortgage numerous times since 1997 when she first got a loan taken out against her home. When authorities tried to evict her, she shot herself once in the chest. Fannie Mae took over Polk’s home in 2007 after the loan company filed for foreclosure. One report from Reuters states that authorities tried to evict Polk more than 30 other times in the past.

“Just given the circumstances, we think it’s appropriate,” said Brian Faith, a spokesman for Fannie Mae who also said that the incident was almost immediately “on [their] radar screen”.

Polk is currently undergoing treatment at Akron General Medical Center and is expected to make a full recovery. She can return to her home as soon as she recovers from her injuries.

Polk was recognized on Friday when Dennis Kucinich, who is a democratic representative for Ohio, spoke of her incident during debates on a 700 billion USD bailout bill that the United States House of Representatives passed on Friday. He states that the bill does not focus on people in situations like Polk.

“This bill does nothing for the Addie Polks of the world. This bill fails to address the fact that millions of homeowners are facing foreclosure, are facing the loss of their home. This bill will take care of Wall Street, and the market may go up for a few days, but democracy is going downhill,” said Kucinich on Friday.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

US stock markets dropped to twelve-year lows on Thursday, amidst falling confidence in the financial sector and worries over whether the US automobile manufacturer General Motors will be able to keep operating.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 4.08%, or 280.52 points, at the closing bell, reaching a level of 6595.32, a new 12-year low. The Nasdaq Composite lost 54.15 points, or 4%, to 1299.59, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 plunged by 30.27 points, or 4.25%, closing at 682.60.

Every stock in the Dow Jones, other than Wal-Mart, either lost ground or remained even, and all stocks in the S&P 500 index lost ground.

General Motors’ shares lost 15.5% after the auto firm announced that its auditors had “substantial doubt” over whether it would be able to keep operating.

Shares of financial companies were lower by nine percent, with Bank of America losing 11.7% and Citigroup falling by 9.7%.

“What’s most worrisome is that we haven’t hit the crescendo yet,” said Bill Groeneveld, the head trader for vFinance Investments. “Asset-management divisions are getting calls to just liquidate everything, and we haven’t seen the big players come back in at all.”

“This is one of the worst bear markets in the last 100 years; it started out with the credit crisis and the subprime [loans], but it is like a forest fire that has raced across the clearing and ignited other parts: Autos, auto parts, the insurance companies have been hit very hard. The credit crisis is causing an unraveling of industry after industry because the banks don’t lend,” said David Dreman, the chief investment officer of Dreman Value Management.

European markets were also lower today, with the London’s FTSE index losing 3.2% and the DAX index of Germany falling by five percent.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Studies carried out by researchers near the village of Khiam found radio active material at the site of bombing by Israel during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. The UN says that it has found no evidence of urianum-based munitions.

Two previously unknown Lebanese professors of physics, Mohammad Ali Kubaissi and Ibrahim Rachidi claim that the levels of radiation, about 700 nanosieverts per hour, twenty times the average levels, are consistent with the use of a depleted uranium bomb casing. Military use of depleted uranium is quite controversial due to its toxicity and low level radioactivity. Depleted uranium features in the list of weapons capable of causing mass destruction, superflous injury and unnecessary suffering, passed by the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the UNHRC in 1996 and 1997.

This analysis has been partially coroborated by an independent consultant specialising in career, organisation and community psychology issues, Dai Williams, affiliated with the environmentalist organisation Green Audit, with testing done by Chris Busby, a member of the Defence Depleted Uranium Oversight Board of the British Ministry of Defence and a director and co-founder of Green Audit. Williams believes that these anomalies may have been caused by Israel’s use of uranium based weapons involving some secret physical techniques, not nuclear fission; however, there are no known such physical processes.

The U.S. is currently the only nation known to use depleted uranium bomb casings and munitions. Some observers have claimed that Israel used depleted uranium muntions during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war; however, U.N. observers have never found Israel using depleted uranium.

This level of radiation is also consistent with Israel having destroyed some form of storage facility for nuclear material. Such facilities are speculated to exist in the Middle East, often controlled by Islamic extremist groups who (allegedly) hope to construct a dirty bomb.

Dirty bombs are not considered to be as effective militarily as merely using more explosives. Post September 11th news reports about the dangers of dirty bombs have been criticized as fear mongering for fallaciously assuming years of continued exposure by victims without acounting for clean up procedures, or even rain fall.

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

British pop group Girls Aloud have won the 2005 Popjustice £20 Music Prize with their single “Wake Me Up”. The award, organised by music journalist Peter Robinson, is given annually to the best British pop single of the previous 12 months and is a tongue-in-cheek response to the Mercury Music Prize, the winner of which was announced earlier in the evening.

This year’s shortlist included Basement Jaxx, Robbie Williams and Charlotte Church.

This is the second time Girls Aloud have won the award – they won the inaugural prize in 2003 for “No Good Advice”.

Also announced was the winner of the £20 Invoice Prize for the worst British single of the previous 12 months. The winner, charity single Band Aid 20’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, was the UK’s Christmas number one in 2004.

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.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Lord Terence Burns has been confirmed as the new chairman of British television channel Channel 4.

Burns, who was the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury from 1991 to 1998, will take the position on January 24, 2010. He will replace the former chairman, Luke Johnson, who is now retiring. Luke was chairman of Channel 4 since early 2004.

Lord Burns will also immediately take the position to try and find a new chief executive alongside Luke Johnson, after it was announced that the current chief executive Andy Duncan was to retire after being in the position for five years. Speaking about joining the corporation for the channel, Burns said: “I am delighted to be joining Channel 4. This is a time of great change as we experience the impact of the rapid development of digital technology in the communications sector and Channel 4 has a very special and continuing role to play.”

Colette Bowe is the current chairman of Office of Communications, or Ofcom, an independent regulator and competition authority for the communication industries in the United Kingdom. Speaking about this announcement, Bowe said: “He [Lord Burns] has an outstanding record of public service and a real depth of commercial expertise. He will provide strong leadership at a time of considerable change in the broadcasting world. I would also like to pay tribute to Luke Johnson’s tremendous contribution to Channel 4 in a period during which it has enjoyed considerable success.”