Tuesday, July 18, 2006

The New Zealand Commerce Commission has fined the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ). It has been forced to pay NZ$5 million in compensation to its customers, $500,000 in fines and $80,000 in costs to the Commerce Commission. The money will be placed into a bank account to be monitored by an auditor, and if there is any money left over it will be donated to a consumer organization.

BNZ has been forced to pay these fines for failing to disclose that they were charging their customers for the exchange of foreign currency during February, 2002 until May, 2004 on its credit and debit cards, which is a breach of the Fair Trading Act. They pleaded guilty to 21 counts of breaching the act. The BNZ say that they will contact their affected customers and that they should get their compensation by November this year. The bank is responsible for contacting all their customers.

The BNZ is the third bank to be charged, the two others were ANZ and the National Bank, which were charged $11.325 million combined as they had since become a single company.

There are still other ongoing prosecutions on these other financial services: Westpac, ASB, TSB, American Express, Diners Club and The Warehouse Financial Services. The Commission would not comment on these cases.

Paula Rebsotck, Commerce Commission Chairperson, said “the result was a victory for New Zealand consumers, many of whom would have unknowingly paid the currency transaction charges. While fees like these remain hidden, banks have no incentive to offer lower fees.”

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Ali Akbar Salehi, chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, announced Friday that Iran is scheduled to launch its first nuclear power plant in Bushehr. Russia said that it will start loading fuel into the reactor on August 21, 2010.

Russia has assisted Iran in the construction of this reactor since the mid-1990s. The proposal to build this reactor was put forth 35 years ago by Mohammad Rez? Sh?h Pahlavi, the former emperor of Iran.

Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, the current president of Russia, said that Iran and Russia are in active trade partnership. Medvedev called on Iran last month to explain its nuclear program.

The official launch is scheduled for August 21, 2010. Russia has promised to run the plant by supplying fuel and taking away fuel waste.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

The United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, yesterday announced the 2009 budget. The budget is an annual audit of the nation’s finances, and decides what should be done with taxpayers’ money.

The chancellor fell under scorn for his GDP growth forecasts, which are considered to be too optimistic in predicting that Britain will bounce back from its weakest economic performance since the end of the second world war. Darling forecast GDP growth of 3.5% in 2011, even after he was made to downgrade his predictions. He expects a record expansion of 1.25% next year, but chief UK economist Howard Archer disagrees, calling Darling’s predictions “mildly optimistic in the near term and much more optimistic in the long term.”

His plans for savers and pensioners, however, were commended by many, though was also criticised by a large portion of the populace. In the budget, Darling increased the amount that savers can put into an Individual Savings Account (ISA) from £7,200 to £10,200, of which £5,100 can be saved in cash. These increased limits will be available only to people aged over 50 from 6 October this year, and will not be available to everyone until 6 April next year. A number of financial experts described the move as being “too little, too late”, and Rumina Hassam, of price comparison website uSwitch.com, said: “The government’s decision to increase the cash ISA limit by £1,500 to £5,100 for the over 50’s is a just another kick in the teeth for the majority of savers as they will have to wait even longer to benefit. There is no doubt that savers have been sacrificed as a result of the plummeting base rate, bringing savings rates to an all time low.”

Thursday, July 3, 2008

69-year-old grandfather John Walsh stands accused of murdering three victims in the small New South Wales town of Cowra. All victims were killed in different ways.

Media organisations have reported that the 69-year-old man killed his five year old grand daughter by drowning; her seven year old brother was killed by a blunt force trauma to the back of the head, and his wife was killed by multiple axe wounds to her body – including her head.

New South Wales Police could not confirm the post-mortem examination, saying that the results of the post-mortem examination are not expected to be finalised for a couple of days and may not be immediately made public.

The 69-year-old man, who went before Deniliquin Local Court on July 1, 2008, was refused bail and charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. He is currently in a special holding cell on 24-hour watch at the Junee Correctional Centre. A further appearance is due in Wagga Wagga Local Court via an audio-visual link on July 7, 2008.

Saturday, December 10, 2016

On Wednesday the online instant messaging service Telegram announced IFTTT (If This Then That) integration in its client. This feature allows the users to connect their Telegram account to other social networks and web applications. This change came as a part of the 3.15 release. The project team has announced these changes on the official Telegram blog.

IFTTT facilities allow users to connect to multiple services from one platform. The bidirectional facility of IFTTT means a user can opt-in for receiving notifications from the connected applications in Telegram and for updating them using commands from Telegram.

To get started, users needed to query a relay called “IFTTT bot”. According to Telegram, the IFTTT bot provides over 360 services and can also be invited into group chats to facilitate collaboration. Applets need to be enabled to start the IFTTT services. Some of the applets supported are Gmail, Dropbox, Spotify, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google Drive and Pinterest.

Telegram claimed to be the first messaging application to be fully integrated with IFTTT.

In the new release, Telegram also introduced an option to “pin” the chats. The “pinning” feature allowed a user to pin chats to the top of the chat list, including up to five chats and up to five secret chats, by long press on the chat in Android and left swipe in iOS.

Other introduced features included a new photo high precision crop and rotate tool — the rotate accuracy reached a tenth of a degree — and a new video player for YouTube and Vimeo videos, allowing the users to watch these videos natively from the application. The “picture-in-picture” option in the new player allowed to watch a video and chat at the same time by dragging the playing video around the screen while chatting. The video playing in picture-in-picture mode doesn’t stop playing even when user opens other application.

These last two features — crop and rotate, picture in picture — were made available only in Android. Telegram said they plan to release new updates before the year end.

Previously, Telegram had introduced Telegraph, a publishing medium; and an “instant view” feature which loads articles from Medium and TechCrunch instantly.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

According to officials, Somali pirates have seized a luxury boat named the Ocean Explorer off the coast of the Seychelles archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Seven Seychellois crew members are believed to be on board. The boat is thought to be headed for Somalia.

Patrick Pillay, the Foreign Affairs Minister, said that the Seychelles government had contacted local naval forces who had pledged to “track down the boat.”

“The Indian Ocean Explorer has been seized by pirates about 600 miles west of the capital. What I’ve been told is they believe this has been taken to the Somali coast,” said Fergus Cochrane-Dyet, the British High Commissioner the Seychelles.

“As far as we know there were no foreign nationals on board. The vast majority of tourists come to the inner island resorts but a small number are more intrepid and visit the outer islands. I believe this yacht was used for visiting Aldabra,” she said.

This is not the first time Somali pirates have frequented the area: the Seychelles police chief stated that pirates held hostage three Seychellois sailors after their catamaran was hijacked in February.

Somali pirates, usually looking for a ransom, attacked over 130 merchant ships in the area in 2008. The International Maritime Bureau reports that number of attacks has increased by over 200% since 2007.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Wikinews recently spoke with Mark Busse, president of the BC Chapter of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, to find out what his organization’s views are of the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic mascots, Miga, Quatchi, and Sumi.

While the products at HBC stores of the mascots have been flying off the shelves, many have bashed the designs for having “too much” of a Japanese influence. As of 2001, 1.5% of Vancouverites were Japanese heritage, and 29.9% were of Chinese descent. Vancouver’s Chinatown is one of the largest historic Chinatowns in North America, and Japan has had diplomatic relations with the city since 1930.

This is the first time the Olympic and Paralympic mascots have been unveiled at the same time.

Busse is also a partner and the design director at Industrial Brand Creative, a design firm in the province. He is co-chair of Graphex ’08, a design exhibition at the Emily Carr Institute, which “showcases the best cultural, social and business communications in Canada.”

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Akio Toyoda, the President and Representative Director of Toyota, made a statement on Wednesday that the company is leaving the Formula One championship before the 2010 season. The primary factor behind this decision was said to be the current economic environment in the midterm perspective.

Panasonic Toyota Racing did not manage to ever win a Formula One race, winning only 13 podium and 278.5 points since 2002. Toyota will still be present in a number of racing series, including Formula Nippon, Formula Three, Super GT and NASCAR.

Another major Japanese automotive giant, Honda, quit Formula One prior to this season and sold the team to Ross Brawn. The renewed team Brawn GP with Mercedes-Benz engined cars won the 2009 Constructors’ Championship recently.

Other Japanese companies Subaru and Suzuki withdrew from the World Rally Championship prior to this season and Kawasaki pulled out of MotoGP.

The space cleared by Toyota may be now used by the BMW Sauber team’s possible successor if BMW can reach an agreement to sell the team after their decision to quit Formula One earlier this year. Toyota drivers of this season Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock, as well as the Japanese rookie driver Kamui Kobayashi, could now look for seats in other teams for 2010 including the new entries US F1, Campos, Manor or Lotus.