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Wednesday, March 8, 2006

At least 250 members of Australia’s emergency services personnel in New South Wales have been informed that they could die from exposure to fatal levels of asbestos following emergency response training south of Sydney.

Members of the Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) unit are thought to be at risk. They were told last week they may contract life-threatening illnesses following training on a demolition site at Holsworthy Army Barracks. The site was created to simulate rescues in the event of a terror attack or natural disaster. It has been regularly used by emergency services personnel since 2004.

Some of the emergency services personnel spent up to three weeks at a time crawling through the rubble.

Reports claim that when notified last week, senior personnel were left devastated. It can take decades for asbestos related illnesses to appear and can take up to 30 years before those exposed can be cleared of infection.

In addition to the emergency service personnel, doctors, nurses and hazardous material personnel could also be at a mild risk. Even Morris Iemma, premier of New South Wales, who visited the site has been warned he could be at risk.

According to The Daily Telegraph, a repected Sydney newspaper, it has been established that “No proper tests were done at the site before it became a training ground for hundreds of top-level rescuers in 2004″,”Personnel were kept in the dark for up to a year about the asbestos before being told last week”,”NSW public officials and a host of ministers may have been exposed”,”Ambulance chief Greg Rochford and Mr Mullins have been at the site and must face a health clearance”, and”The Dust Diseases Tribunal is conducting an investigation into the long-term impact the mass exposure could have on emergency services in NSW.”

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Ian Narev, the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, this morning “unreservedly” apologised to clients who lost money in a scandal involving the bank’s financial planning services arm.

Last week, a Senate enquiry found financial advisers from the Commonwealth Bank had made high-risk investments of clients’ money without the clients’ permission, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars lost. The Senate enquiry called for a Royal Commission into the bank, and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

Mr Narev stated the bank’s performance in providing financial advice was “unacceptable”, and the bank was launching a scheme to compensate clients who lost money due to the planners’ actions.

In a statement Mr Narev said, “Poor advice provided by some of our advisers between 2003 and 2012 caused financial loss and distress and I am truly sorry for that. […] There have been changes in management, structure and culture. We have also invested in new systems, implemented new processes, enhanced adviser supervision and improved training.”

An investigation by Fairfax Media instigated the Senate inquiry into the Commonwealth Bank’s financial planning division and ASIC.

Whistleblower Jeff Morris, who reported the misconduct of the bank to ASIC six years ago, said in an article for The Sydney Morning Herald that neither the bank nor ASIC should be in control of the compensation program.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006The Australian House of Representatives today acknowledged the impact of the recent devastating Cyclone Larry and the efforts of the support given to the residents and communities of north Queensland in order to restore normal life.

Phillip Ruddock (Liberal, Berowra) moved a motion expressing this after Question Time today, which included a description of the devastation wrought on the area, the response by the Australian Government and the Australian Defence Force, and thanked the efforts of people for their “willingness to roll up their sleeves and get on with the job of cleaning up and rebuilding their towns and centres.”

The Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley (Labor, Brand) supported the motion, and congratulated the move to put General Peter Cosgrove in charge of operations, stating that soldiers “know how to work through logistics issues…how to work around officialdom or blockages”, praised both local federal and state members of Parliament, and especially the Labor Queensland state premier, Peter Beattie.

Bob Katter (Independent, Kennedy) was more critical in his speech. Katter thanked Beattie for his immediate response, but also described his confrontation with him and said how first responses were “simply not working”, but also praised Beattie’s decision on Cosgrove. Katter also described how the incident was “the worst natural disaster inAustralian history” and how the banana industry in north Queensland was decimated. Katter went on to describe the financial problems of the people in the region, the “huge gap” between the cost of rebuilding and insurance payouts, also asking “Are we going to pay people virtually nothing to sit on their backsides to do nothing or are we going to pay them a decent wage and have them rebuilding our communities for us?”

The debate is set to continue in the Main Committee, as an opportunity for many more members of the House of Representatives to speak to the motion, without taking up further time in the Chamber.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

A High Court jury in Glasgow, Scotland yesterday found two men guilty of the murder of Liam Aitchison. 22-year-old males Jonathan MacKinnon and Stefan Millar reportedly committed the murder on November 23, 2011, inside an abandoned building in the village of Steinish on the Outer Hebrides island of Lewis. Outside the court, Aitchison’s father Norrie said the guilty verdicts would “finally allow Liam to rest in peace and bring his family some closure.” Sentence is scheduled to be passed on the convicted at the High Court in Edinburgh on June 28.

Liam Aitchison, who originally resided in Lochboisdale on the island of South Uist, moved up to Stornoway in Lewis and began working as a fisherman alongside MacKinnon and Millar after developing a social relationship with them. MacKinnon and Millar were both charged with Aitchison’s murder in December 2011. Having pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against them, the court trial for the two suspects started approximately one month ago.

The court was told of how Aitchison and Millar were listening to music and drinking alongside MacKinnon in his residence on November 22, 2011. As “a joke”, MacKinnon punched Aitchison during this visit. Upon receiving noise complaints from MacKinnon’s mother, the three walked from the house. The court was told MacKinnon commenced fighting with Aitchison after a bottle of aftershave he had apparently stolen from MacKinnon dropped out of his pocket. Prior to the murder, MacKinnon had stolen a meat cleaver from a boat he was working on and had been keeping it in his bedroom, the court was also told. The exact motive for the murder is unclear thus far.

Aitchison’s death was caused by him being stabbed twenty times, as well as being hit with a bottle and stomped on his head. After he was killed, some items of clothing he was wearing, that he had borrowed from MacKinnon, were removed from his body; no trace of the items of clothing have been discovered since. Police have yet to recover any murder weapons. Due to a lack of solid physical evidence, the trial was predominantly inferential. The prosecuting side, lead by Iain McSporran, believed Aitchison would have been murdered within a 90 minute period on November 23, 2011, during a “communication silence” in which neither of the accused made use of their mobile phones.

No blood stains were discovered on the clothing of the suspects, although blood stains discovered at the scene of the murder matched MacKinnon’s DNA. However, the court was also told that MacKinnon had previously cut his hand in the abandoned building several years prior and that the blood stains could not be dated.

A key piece of evidence in the trial came from Dominic Long, who recalled how Millar boasted about the murder while conversing with him in a jail. Frances McMenamin, QC for Millar, subsequently claimed Long had exaggerated in his recount and was an unreliable witness as he suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

During closing speeches to the jury, prosecutor Iain McSporran said he believed the two accused were “laying a false trail” and had “linked their fates together” because of their conspiracy, while defence QC Frances McMenamin said the jury should not have been looking for “someone to blame” for Aitchison’s death. As the jury gave its guilty verdict, a shout from Aitchison’s family could be heard, calling the defendants a “pair of monsters”.

Speaking outside the court, Norrie Aitchison said his son “fought to defend himself but he didn’t stand a chance against the violence he came against that night.” After calling the experience of this murder case one which “no family should have to endure”, Aitchison said of the convicted: “The cowards who robbed our Liam of his life and his future should never be able to see the outside of a prison ever again.”

Liam “had his whole life in front of him”, said Detective Inspector Andy Logan, who was the senior investigator of his murder. He said MacKinnon and Millar had “completely betrayed this trust, and in a most brutal and callous way they killed him in a senseless and sustained attack with weapons.” The Detective Inspector called the murder case “a very rare occurrence in what is normally one of the safest places in Scotland”. The crime rate in the Outer Hebrides is amongst the lowest for any region in the United Kingdom; the last murder enquiry to take place on the islands was in 1968. “It was therefore, very shocking to the close-knit community,” Detective Inspector Logan said.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Unlike some parts of the US Federal Government, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been open during the federal government shutdown and recording a record-low number of complaints submitted by consumers against mortgage companies, credit card companies, student loan providers, banks, money transfer providers, companies who provide credit reports, and other companies providing consumer loans.

With data not available for yesterday, the first four days of the shutdown had daily totals of 37, 16, 13, and 3 complaints. With the exceptions of September 29 with 15 complaints and September 28 with 23, it is the lowest daily total since March 16 of this year when 36 total complaints were recorded and February 23 of this year with 14. The total complaints are also down from the same dates last year, when the total complaints per day for the first four days of October 2012 were 272, 298, 288, and 225.

Of the 69 filed complaints recorded so far this month, 27 were complaints about mortgage companies, 21 were about bank accounts and 10 were about credit card companies. 40% of credit card companies complaints, 42.9% of bank account complaints and 48.1% of mortgage complaints are currently listed as still in progress. Most of the rest have been closed with an explanation.

Bank of America leads all companies in terms of total complaints filed this month with 9. Bayview Loan Servicing, LLC andJPMorgan Chase have 7 complaints each. Ally Bank, Sovereign Bank, and Wells Fargo have 4 each. Flagstar Bankand Equifax have 3 each. Citibank, Nationstar Mortgage, TD Bank, Amex, and FirstMerit Bank have 2 complaints each. 18 financial services companies have 1 complaint each filed against them.

During the government shutdown, some CFPB staff have voiced their opinions on Twitter. Dan Munz, deputy assistant director for consumer engagement at the CFPB, tweeted, “Boy, shutdown week has really created a sudden bumper crop of amateur federal management experts.”; “Also, seems like Boehner is singlehandedly undoing whatever progress he’d made in portraying this as a Dem [Democratic Party] shutdown.”; and “Basically, there’s now a strong incentive to fill legislation with minor symbolic things you can bargain away later to protect the core.”

The agency has been able to stay open during the government shutdown because it is funded by the Federal Reserve. According to Amanda Terkel at the Huffington Post, Republican members of the United States House of Representatives have put closing the CFPB on their wish list of items in negotiating for a new debt ceiling limit. Party members have previously stalled the appointment of Richard Cordray as the CFPB boss as a way of hindering it from engaging in oversight of financial organizations in the the US.

Wednesday, March 9, 2005File:Plastic bag stock sized.jpg

They are cheap, useful, and very plentiful, and that is exactly the problem, according to researchers. A report issued on Feb. 23 by a cadre of environment and economics researchers suggested that Kenya should ban the common plastic bag that one gets at the checkout counter of grocery stores, and place a levy on other plastic bags, all to combat the country’s environmental problems stemming from the bags’ popularity.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

A Scottish woman who set out before Christmas to purchase a turkey finally made it home on Monday, after being cut off by snow for a month. Kay Ure left the Lighthouse Keeper’s cottage on Cape Wrath, at the very northwest tip of Great Britain, in December. She was heading to Inverness on a shopping trip.

However on her return journey heavy snow and ice prevented her husband, John, from travelling the last 11 miles to pick her up. She was forced to wait a month in a friend’s caravan, before the weather improved and the couple could finally be reunited.

They were separated not just for Christmas and New Year, but also for Mr Ure’s 58th birthday. With no fresh supplies, he was reduced to celebrating with a tin of baked beans. He also ran out of coal, and had to feed the couple’s six springer spaniels on emergency army rations.

“It’s the first time we’ve been separated”, said Mr Ure in December. “We’ve been snowed in here for three weeks before, so we are well used to it and it’s quite nice to get a bit of peace and quiet.”